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Charles Burns' Black Hole #12 By LJ Douresseau Feb 23, 2005 - 3:06:00 PM Fantagraphics Books

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BLACK HOLE #12

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

CARTOONIST: Charles Burns

48 pp., B&W, $5.95



Charles Burns concludes his decade long graphic novel in BLACK HOLE #12. I’ve only had the extreme pleasure of reading recent issues of this fine series. Still, that’s enough to realize that Burns has delineated youthful alienation via the comic book in such a way that it is palatable to the reader. I get depressed just reading this, but I can’t deny Burn’s achievement. If the great horror novels can leave me creeped out and a damn good romance novel can make me yearn for love, great comics should make me feel. And boy do I feel my loneliness when I read Black Hole.



Teens Keith and Eliza look for a happy life together. Meanwhile an endless ocean of deep black rot swallows Keith’s dreams. It’s a deluge of debris similar to what we saw in the recent tsunami devastation. Another character, Chris, yearns for home and the chance to start over, but the specter of a deformed admirer keeps her on the road to lonely. Afraid to go back to the warmth of the familiar, she runs from a present that she believes must include her wannabe boyfriend, Dave, but that only keeps her running to an uncertain future.



As an illustrator, Burns has long used his lush black and white brushwork to lovingly reveal a sour wellspring of dark and disquietude. Normalcy is but dried and flaking paper skin to cover the most horrid deformities and corrosions. It’s sad that this truly unique tale is coming to an end, but scary to imagine what Burns will think of next. A

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