Black Hole - Charles Burns

--Review of Charles Burns'' graphic novel Black Hole - with lots of shiny pictures as promised--

I have to admit that I am somewhat a comic book rookie. In high school I remember the craze of bringing in ultimate spiderman for the 10 minutes of compulsory reading school used to enforce on a wednesday morning. I remember reading a few of these, but never really getting into them. I always disregarded comics as a kind of illegitimate art form. One which could never say anything profound, but was a pass-time of those who found regular novels 'too boring' or inaccessible. Oh, how I was wrong. The first graphic novel I ever read was The Complete MAUS, last christmas. Since then my opinions have changed. But this entry isn't about MAUS, (as much as I would love to sing its praises almost endlessly - it really is great), it is about Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole. I picked up Black Hole solely because (like Eeeee Eee Eeee) it is on my postmodern fiction module next term (I am being a good student this time, and getting prepared). I knew nothing about the book before I picked up a very well read copy from the library.

The novel tells the story of a group of teenagers who are affected by a sexually transmitted disease which causes them to physically mutate. These mutations aren't particularly obvious in some cases. One woman grows a tail, another man grows a second mouth towards the base of his neck. They may not be obvious, but they're pretty gruesome nonethteless. The disease can be contracted through either sexual contact, or a mixing of bodily fluids. The one really creepy thing about the bug is that it causes affected characters to shed their skin. The novel follows the actions of two main characters, one male - Keith, and one female - Chris, and switches between the two, offering a sexually balanced tale, a form which works surprisingly well. We experience through the course of the comic how these two characters contract the bug, and the aftermath, which results in them becoming social and physical outcasts who are forced to go to various lengths to either hide themselves or get away from other people.

All of the illustrations are monochrome, like the successful MAUS comics. Burns' style, however is much more clean cut and precise than Speigelman's making many of the panels incredibly impressive and almost vibrant in their contrast. This novel could essentially be classified as horror, or teen horror, or by some as B-horror. The high contrast of images suits this genre so well, because it adds a sense of startling postmodern realism to many of the more graphic scenes (i.e. the skin shedding, but most of which I shouldn't speak about for fear of ruining the book) which you might not get with a more sketchy style. The very realistic drawing style however, combines with a very creative and unconventional ordering of panels. Burns at his most impressive makes use of the seperate panels to depict one area of a whole picture. It is hard to explain in words, but basically you get whole but fragmented images (such as the one directly below). There are also two or three occasions where a very 'rules of attraction-esque' technique is used whereby two halves of two different faces lain side by side make a whole. This creativity also manifests itself in the chapter headings, which are far from conventional, usually consisting of an image of something, mysteriously framed in an expansive black page. (None of the chapters are numbered, and none of the pages are either).

Burns seems very keen (like Tao Lin does in Eeeee Eee Eeee) on not keeping to a completely linear plot development. But whilst Tao Lin completely confuses the order of events in the novel, Burns at least retains a strong sense of direction - his confusion of time comes through the retrospective thoughts of characters, and the gaps of time between the events in each chapter (which we, as readers, in some cases, are encouraged to estimate for ourselves). You find at some points that because of the two interlinking plots, that of Keith's and that of Chris', one will sometimes seem to move faster or have more gaps than the other. Which means that events will take place, and then after the events have taken place, the character will back track on what happens directly before that event, but only after it has been told (I hope that makes sense). The effect is that you are encouraged to re-interpret the information you've been given, and consciously re-order things. Burns doesn't really use this technique to much effect though, it's not as if any assumptions you may make about these characters are overturned by their then retrospective indulgences, in order to perhaps overturn stereotypes the reader may have had, or expectations (though I realise this is very difficult and requires a lot of psychological insight into the reader and their expected thought process whilst reading).

Black Hole is clever in its use of the concept of the sexually transmitted mutation, an idea which could easily have been very cheesy - but Charles Burns does his idea justice (even if it does come across as a bit of an 'in your face' allegory for AIDS). The concept of the bug is manipulated so that it allows the author to enlighten us as to the reasons why one may become a high-school outcast. Many of those who contract the bug become deviant not only because of their disease, but due to their personal natures. It's hard to elaborate further without ruining the plot, but Burns highlights in particular those with bisexual sneaking into homosexual tendencies, and to an extent (and I am wary to say this), those with a tendency towards bestiality. But the novel isn't as skin deep as just correlating physical mutation and the outsider status. It gives us a psychological insight into this status, coming most prominently from the character Dan, a boy who was 'unpopular' in school and forced to leave because of his mutations. There is a lot in there that I haven't yet seen, I'm sure of it. I'll be reading it again in a few weeks when I have had time to think about it in more depth.

From a personal perspective, its one of the most enjoyable things I've read in months (honestly). I had to discipline myself not to read the whole thing in one sitting. Unlike MAUS (excuse my constant references to it) the artwork seems more purposeful. MAUS is almost a comic which relies more on its speech than its imagery (probably a big claim to make). But Black Hole is incredibly different, the artwork and the way it is presented plays an active part in the storytelling process. It is more than a straightforward comic (like MAUS), it actually is a great work of art, and would be a beautiful book to own, even to just look at the pictures (many of them amusingly vaginal - and a selection of which can be seen in my previous blog post on the novel). The story is engaging and the concept is well thought out and executed. As I said, there's a lot in there, from sexual deviance, to critiques on high school shootings, and even the holocaust if you want to push it that far. Mind you, it's not for everyone. If you're not into horror you my want to steer clear. But what strikes me most, and what I'm still most impressed with is the layout of panels and the effects of different types of panels including whole page images, strange zoom effects, and the bizarre portrayal of dreams in comic format. It really is more than your bog-standard comic. I rate it highly.