While it serves as an interesting and horrifying story all on its own, Black Hole is a metaphor for the often bumpy ride through adolescence: everything from high school with all its own specific and unique problems to the discovery of sexual intercourse. This further spreads the sexually transmitted disease. Regardless of the warnings against sex and the strange new deformations they all see around town, the kids still continue to have sex with one another. The group of teens are all into drinking, smoking dope, and having sex, however, they are all seeing the new plague spread worse from one day to the next. There are many scenes typical of a coming of age story similar to those you might have also seen in films like Dazed and Confused or something newer like American Pie. Burns uses these images to continually reinforce his overall theme concerning the shared struggle of growing up and the difficult transition from an adolescent body into a strange new one.īurns’ comic tells the story of a group of teenagers in the 1970s living through an epidemic of an STD-like plague which turns those infected into mutants. Examination of the imagery Keith witnesses early on while hallucinating reveals a pattern emerging which continues through Black Hole. His hallucination serves as a moment of foreshadowing while also working in regards to the comic’s overall depictions of struggles with adolescence, the transformation all of the teenagers undergo following their sexual awakenings, and the obsession with sex including vaginal imagery braided through the comic. One teen named Keith dissects a frog during science class and while doing so experiences a hallucination before blacking out. The story switches between the perspectives of several teenagers in a small town, however, the imagery throughout is consistent from one character to the next. The Charles Burns comic Black Hole focuses on aspects concerning the coming of age adolescents face as they move from teenagers towards maturation, and the shared experiences most of them go through such as awkward social situations and sexual discovery. Black Hole: The Grotesque Imagery of Sex and Adolescence

Black hole by charles burns