"Black Hole" Charles Burns

“It's the bad place I always come back to in my dreams.” 

― Charles Burns, Black Hole

"Black Hole" is a 12-issue graphic novel series originally published between 1996 and 2005 and issued in book form in 2006.  One of the things that drew me to this graphic novel, other than it simply being a graphic novel, which is almost enough to reel me in, is that it is a story of teenagers from the 1970s, and thus, teenagers living out their dreams, or in this case nightmares, during the same time I was a teenager.  Their biggest problem is catching "the Bug," a sexually-transmitted disease that transforms their bodies in bizarre and metaphorically appropriate ways.  For example, one girl, who finds that she does not quite fit into the group of teenagers that she is associated with, catches the bug and finds she is able to shed her skin.  A teenaged-boy that has trouble expressing what he thinks gets "the Bug" and now has a mouth that only tells the truth.

Some of the manifestations of the disease are easy to hide and those students try "to pass" for unaffected students.  Others are obvious, such as growths on faces, tails that don't hide well under clothing, and other deformities.  The obviously affected students are outcasts and they set up a community in the nearby woods to have a safe place to be themselves.  Sometimes once popular students find they are more comfortable among the outcasts.  And, as many off the blurbs about the graphic novel state, "... and then the killings begin," which makes it seem that there are murders going on and a mystery to be solved.  The only mystery is the ongoing one of identity and community and love, and how one decides who and where to be.

The story is told from the viewpoint of several of the teenagers and through the stories they are told by others.  There are flashbacks to earlier Bug-free times, and we learn much of the story of what happens between the teenagers after the fact when someone is pouring his or her heart out to another or in their thoughts or dreams.

Cover page of the
first chapter of
"Black Hole" by
Charles Burns

I had trouble putting this book down and even when I was done I went back through it rereading and looking at parts of it again.  Especially the beginning, when there were images that foreshadowed what was to come, and those images took on different meanings after the story was read.

I like to include a quote from the book at the beginning of the post, and for a graphic novel I prefer a panel or tier, but it is the artwork of the novel I was more interested in than quotes.  I have started yet another figure drawing class, and maybe after 10 or so I might feel I can draw the human body.  My instructor, Jack, emphasizes the anatomy of the human body and how to capture the shadows and recessions that give shape to the underlying skeletal and muscular structure.  I struggle with this and am amazed at the detail that Burns can evoke by simple, and astonishingly consistent, black and white images where the shading is all done with hashes and solid black.

During the last studio session of one of my classes with Jack he had us use hashing instead of side-of-vine-charcoal shading.  It was one of my favorite drawings even though I left it far from finished.  Burns' work reminded me of that and I think I'll work on that this Wednesday in class.  Sadly, we have very few live models that have muscle definition like the images in "Black Hole," but it doesn't hurt to draw them with more definition than they have.