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steveatwaywords's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Black Hole has earned its reputation as one of the best (and more disturbing) stories out there. It's not just the unsanitary lives of 1970s teen drug use or nudity common to its pages, not merely the starkness of the black and white illustrations, but the strange normalization of an STD that physically, grotesquely, even cosmically, deforms young people which captures and repels us. It's the complete absence of an adult world which has emotionally and psychically abandoned them all except through pointless media. It's the unreasoning escapism through hallucinogenics which confuses delusion with vision or even visionary awakening.
The allegory to our social and psychological approach to the AIDS epidemic is an obvious reading, but Burns does not allow us to see it merely as this. In brief, in many ways this disease "talks back," suggesting something more cosmic involved. And what is also clear: the disease is psychologically transformative, as well. An over-simplified reading ("This is a story of x") is in many ways a misreading.
That there is something else operating here, some other sense of (dis)order, is clear then, but Burns will never let us know precisely what that is. The naivete of its protagonists, all making fateful choices and fatal miscommunications, must in the end make some sense of themselves and their own desires, which--properly--is at the center of the story.
And this, I think, is where Burns falters at points. Rich in symbolism and foreboding which is never fully explicated or unraveled, distracted by subplots which undermine the larger terrifying themes (did we really need to add a murder mystery to all this?), I found myself leaving the otherwise absorbing story to wonder at how it was crafted, and that's never really a good sign. I wondered if Burns began his series without really having plotted its story arcs, without understanding where and how it might resolve itself. This is easy to understand with multi-volume graphic novels which are published across months or years. But this reality does not absolve the creator from nevertheless telling a satisfying story coherent and tightly focused. The Victorians did it with more ambition and fewer tools at their disposal. What's more, other graphic novelists do it: I'm thinking of Tynion or Gaiman as obvious examples.
Even so, there is nothing I've read quite like Black Hole, and its images and deluded characters will not leave me anytime soon.
The allegory to our social and psychological approach to the AIDS epidemic is an obvious reading, but Burns does not allow us to see it merely as this. In brief, in many ways this disease "talks back," suggesting something more cosmic involved. And what is also clear: the disease is psychologically transformative, as well. An over-simplified reading ("This is a story of x") is in many ways a misreading.
That there is something else operating here, some other sense of (dis)order, is clear then, but Burns will never let us know precisely what that is. The naivete of its protagonists, all making fateful choices and fatal miscommunications, must in the end make some sense of themselves and their own desires, which--properly--is at the center of the story.
And this, I think, is where Burns falters at points. Rich in symbolism and foreboding which is never fully explicated or unraveled, distracted by subplots which undermine the larger terrifying themes (did we really need to add a murder mystery to all this?), I found myself leaving the otherwise absorbing story to wonder at how it was crafted, and that's never really a good sign. I wondered if Burns began his series without really having plotted its story arcs, without understanding where and how it might resolve itself. This is easy to understand with multi-volume graphic novels which are published across months or years. But this reality does not absolve the creator from nevertheless telling a satisfying story coherent and tightly focused. The Victorians did it with more ambition and fewer tools at their disposal. What's more, other graphic novelists do it: I'm thinking of Tynion or Gaiman as obvious examples.
Even so, there is nothing I've read quite like Black Hole, and its images and deluded characters will not leave me anytime soon.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Drug use, Sexual content, and Blood
Moderate: Addiction, Bullying, Cursing, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, Toxic relationship, Grief, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Dysphoria, and Pandemic/Epidemic
This is a very graphic work of a sexually-transmitted epidemic that deforms teens.