In the hustle,bustling centre of the city that is Shibuya remains the last Tower Records. The top floor sells a wide range of foreign books and magazines. Upon seeing this I couldn't resist this purchase after living on a diet of manga.
Good ole underground comics.
Just looking at Charles Burns artwork is a delight for the eye.
In day to day scenes, its like its been drawn in black oil on white paint. It perfectly evokes a the achieved spin; mixing 50's B-Movie horror concepts, teenage rights of passage, teen romance, real life horrors imagined and real.
When the horror elements do come into play its an eerie, icky biological,horrific squirm fest that juxtaposes nicely amongst the clean cut 1950's styled white picket fence, "Perfect America".
The story as ever in Burns works (like Big Baby), takes a rumored horror, a B-Movie cliche, that slowly creeps up on the unwitting inhabits of his story. Unlike Big Baby, Black Hole is a grittier, less naive story, of pot smoking teenage kids looking for the usual pubescent kicks.
It focuses well on the "outsiders" of high school cliques, turning it into an almost disease like plague stressing well the isolation and bitterness the less popular kids can be treated to in High Schools.
Its out in collected Hardback or individual issues from Fantagraphics.
A great read.
