Black Hole - Charles Burns

What a fabulous graphic novel!

The back of the book wrote,
"It was like a horrible game of tag...It took awhile, but they finally figured out it was some kind of new disease that only affected teenagers. They called it the, "Teen Plague," or, "The Bug," and they were all kinds of unpredictable symptoms...For some it wasn't too bad - a few bumps, maybe an ugly rash... others turned into monsters or grew new body parts...but the symptoms didn't matter...oncce you were tagged you were "it" forever"

Yea, so it sounds a little cheesy, but it has been recognized in many graphic novel anthologies for two things, one, it's very creative thought provoking story, and two, for it's beautiful black and white drawings.

I got into graphic novels a few months ago and have been on a reading rampage, everything from Art Speigelman to Julie Doucet. I first delved into them because I had been doing some pen and ink drawings, and thought that I could draw inspiration from the drawings in the graphic novels, shortly thereafter I fell in love with the way that a graphic novel tells a story. It's not just a story with pictures, or kids stories, it's an incredibly creative way of sharing a story or personal thought, relating to pictures. It's fabulous.

At the beginning of Black Hole, I was a little turned off by the idea of teenagers in the, "mid 70s" that scene has been scrutinized by authors, and playwrites for at least a decade, and I was sick of it, but Charles Burns is able to portray a very realistic portrait of teenagers in the mid 70s without blowing things like drug use, or ex-hippies out of proportion. I quickly put aside my feelings and fell in love with the story.

This is definately worth reading, and I'd give it a 8/10.
Happy READING!