One word: disturbing.

There are no words to sufficiently describe how disturbed I was after reading Charles Burns’ Black Hole. Even while taking into account the fact that the images are merely illustrations, I found it difficult to look at them for too long. Every panel in the novel is sketched with such detail that the story seemed to be playing out like a movie in front of my eyes. Because of this, each illustration resonated in my mind that much more vividly. Even as I tried to convince myself that the black-and-white illustrations weren’t real, I couldn’t help shuddering each time I saw a picture of Chris in the process of shedding her skin or Rob with his second mouth exposed on his chest. The novel’s unusual plot only adds to its overall creepiness, so there’s never really a respite from the feeling of unease that settles in from the first page.

There is one sequence in the novel which I remembered long after reading it, where Chris and Rob are sitting in the woods, kissing. By this point, Chris is already experiencing the effects of the virus and, as a result, isn’t as freaked out by Rob’s deformity. The first four panels of the section progress from aspect-to-aspect as Chris asks a reluctant Rob to show her his second mouth. Chris brushes aside Rob’s protest that his side effect of the bug is gross before the panels switch to moment-to-moment transgressions. In the fifth and sixth panels, Chris kisses Rob’s second mouth, intrigued rather than disgusted by it. Having her own genetic mutation, I can understand why Chris isn’t bothered by Rob’s second mouth, but that doesn’t mean I find it any less creepy. The following five panels return to aspect-to-aspect transgressions of Chris and Rob as they decide to stay in the forest, where they can be together in private. In the last panel, Chris says, “I’d stay here forever if I could,” which is ironic because, at this moment, she could never imagine that the forest would become her home once she’s forced to leave her family. The novelty of the situation seems to romanticize everything for Chris, which is why she truly believes that things will work out between her and Rob.

The ease with which Burns depicts situations involving the plague-stricken teens, such as the previously mentioned sequence, is unnerving to say the least. Because the novel never ceases with its barrage of gruesome images, there was never a point where I was comfortable enough to linger on an illustration for more than a few seconds. Another example of Burns’ nonchalant attitude towards the disease is when Keith first notices that he’s developed its side effect. A week after his first sexual encounter with Eliza, Keith discovered “tiny dark bumps” that appeared around his ribs. The next two panels progress from aspect-to-aspect progressions as Keith realizes the bumps are a part of his body. The bumps soon morphed into “little tails” that resembled tadpoles. To show the similarities between the two, the next panel illustrates five tadpoles, each with wavy tails that look like the pieces of flesh hanging from Keith’s body. Burns pushes forward with his comparison by relating a story from Keith’s childhood in which he and his cousins caught tadpoles in a river, kept and forgot about them, until they eventually died and started to rot. Although I’m not quite sure why, the last panel showing a pile of decomposing tadpoles humanized the story for me in a way that no other images could. Maybe this is because I kept picturing the same fate for Keith, although I sincerely hoped this wouldn’t be the case.