Black Hole (comics)

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Black Hole is a graphic novel written and illustrated by Charles Burns. It was originally published as a 12-issue comic book series between 1995 and 2005 by Kitchen Sink Press and Fantagraphics, and then released in a compiled hardcover edition by Pantheon Books in 2005.

Set in the suburbs of Seattle during the mid-1970s the book follows a group of mostly middle class teenagers who over the summer contract a mysterious sexually transmitted disease known as "the Bug" or "the teen plague", which causes them to develop bizarre physical mutations, turning them into social outcasts. Some take shelter in a suburban Tract home while the owners are away on vacation, while others with more visible deformities lurk in "The Pit", an encampment in the woods outside of town. The mutations are often considered a metaphor for AIDS, an illness that would ravage in the next decade (the 70s were often considered the height of the sexual revolution). The look of the comic is meant to evoke the feel and atmosphere of classic 70s teen horror films like The Last House on the Left, Carrie and Halloween.

In November 2005, the message board of the Comics Journal reported that Black Hole will be adapted to film by the French director Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension). In March 2006, comics news site Newsarama reported that Neil Gaiman and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary would be adapting the screenplay, and in May 2006 Gaiman confirmed this in a Time magazine interview.[1] [2]

[edit] External links

• Official page on Pantheon's site
• Burns page on fantagraphics.com
• Review in TIME magazine
• Review in Washington Post
• In Development IMDB page for Black Hole (2008)