BLACK HOLE... The uncanny sex men

In this episode, we'll look at Charles Burns' seminal graphic novel Black Hole, a haunting and creepy graphic novel about loneliness, longing, and body horror. The 12 issue series began in 1995 and concluded ten years later, and is about a group of teenagers afflicted with a veneral disease that creates awful bodily mutations, forcing them out of society.

While it's impossible to overlook the comic's narrative connections to the AIDs epidemic, and the paranoia and panic it engendered, Black Hole is way more than just an allegory. It's a thriller, a horror story, a coming-of-age tale. And like most of Burns' work, its impact reverberates well after you've turned the final page.