Synopsis
And you thought your adolescence was scary.
Suburban
Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the outset that a strange plague
has descended upon the area's teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact.
The disease is manifested any number of ways - from the hideously
grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) - but once you've got it,
that's it. There's no turning back.
As we inhabit the heads of
several key characters - some kids who have it, some who don't, some
who are about to get it - what unfolds isn't the expected battle to
fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness of it, or even to treat
it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie
portrait of the nature of high-school alienation itself - the savagery,
the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape.
And then the murders start.
As hypnotically beautiful as it is horrifying (and, believe it or not, autobiographical), Black Hole
transcends its genre by deftly exploring a specific American cultural
moment in flux and the kids who are caught in it - back when it wasn't
exactly cool to be a hippie any more, but Bowie was still just a little
too weird.
To say nothing of sprouting horns and moulting your skin . . .
Black Hole is the perfect teenage graphic novel. It is sexy, scary, weird, sad and cool. It is about as messed up as it's posible to get when representing a semi-normal world.
It has angst about catching a strange S.T.I. (sexually transmitted infection), not just on a normal level, but on a kafka-esque 'One day Gregor Samsa woke up and found he had turned into a beetle' kind of strange. Catch it through sex and it will warp and change your body in a random way, probably leaving you disfigured or looking like something that's come out of Lovecraft's imagination.
For all that, this is still a very honest reflection of the normal worries of teenagers - who the cool people are, who you fancy that doesn't fancy you, money, love, school.
Why is it called Black Hole? Perhaps that extra orifice that occurs. Perhaps the abyss you can sink into with love, or the abyss of despair, or living in memories. Take your pick.
I think this is something most teenagers should read. Not the ones who worry too much (talk about tipping over the edge..), but the supposed cool, or together, or smart, or silly, the air-heads and jocks, the geeks and slobs, anyone and everyone can relate to this.
And for those parents who've forgotten how alien the world seems when you have triple levels of hormones rushing through your veins, and who need to relate to their own teenagers, this is for you too.