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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  General Discussion  |  Comics  |  Topic: Black Hole 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Black Hole  (Read 2612 times)
Velorath
Contributor
Posts: 8980


on: February 21, 2008, 12:52:42 AM

Somewhere between a year and a half to two years back, I was reading through some more obscure stuff looking for good things to discuss here.  I was looking for stuff that wasn't exactly mainstream, but at the sometime didn't want to talk about stuff that was so hard to find that even if someone were interested enough to check it out, they wouldn't be able to find it here.  To that end, I read a number of tpb's from known writers, of stuff from back when they were still doing indies (Brubaker in particular did some cool stuff back in the day like The Fall).  One of the books I'd seen in my local B&N, was Black Hole by Charles Burns. 

Essentially it was exactly what I was looking for.  It was somewhat easy to find (maybe Charles Burns past work illustrating covers for Time and the New York Times Magazine got the book a bit of credibility a graphic novel might not otherwise receive), but still fairly obscure to casual comics fans.  It had a striking visual style, and story that was unlike anything I'd read in a comic.  Nevertheless, I never got around to discussing it here, because I learned quickly that you don't really get any conversation in a topic when nobody else has read the book in question, nor are likely to have read anything else by the author.  Even if someone eventually gets around to picking it up at some point, by the time they're done reading it the topic is already long dead.

So it was that the book had drifted off into the back of my memory, when I saw today that David Fincher (of Zodiac and Se7en fame) was on-board to direct a movie based on Black Hole.  Not only that, but he might be working off a screenplay Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction co-writer) and Neil Gaiman were hired to write a couple years back.  Now it's a very bizarre story, the focus of it being on an STD that causes strange mutations in people (teenagers predominately are the "victims" of the STD in this story and make up the central cast).  Some get off easy with less noticeable mutations like a tail for instance, while some end up completely fucked up.  There's some other stuff going on (a series of mysterious murders of mutated people is one of the main subplots), but the main draw is art and characterization.  I'm really not sure how would ever work as a movie, but if it does well, and it gets people who don't ordinarily read comics to check out the graphic novel, there are certainly a lot worse representatives of the medium than Black Hole.
stu
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1891


Reply #1 on: February 21, 2008, 05:55:15 AM

This comic rocks. I think it took Burns almost ten years to complete the series and I'm betting that new movie, Teeth, is partially based off of it.

One of the few horrifying horror comics I've read and I regret not buying the complete series when I had the chance. I haven't seen it since and that was nearly four years ago.


edit: Amazon sells a hardcover version for about $18. For a title like this though, I'd rather hunt down the individual issues. I'm strange like that.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2008, 05:59:53 AM by stu »

Dear Diary,
Jackpot!
Kitsune
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2406


Reply #2 on: February 28, 2008, 09:24:14 PM

My roomie got the hardcover book.  I read it, and came quickly to the conclusion that it was one FUCKED UP comic.  But, oddly, beneath the fucked up was a pretty basic story of teenagers being stupid about love and obsession.  It was an odd combination, an easily-grasped storyline tethered to a horrible backdrop.
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