Books › Black Hole
Black Hole
368 pages
A hypnotic, high-contrast descent into the grotesque anxieties of adolescence, where teenage alienation takes terrifying physical form.
What it feels like
Reading this is like waking up from a fever dream in the dead of a 1970s suburban night. The experience is anchored by stark, hypnotic black-and-white artwork that casts deep shadows over every page, creating an atmosphere of suffocating dread and eerie stillness. It moves at a steady, deliberate pace, pulling you deeper into a surreal landscape where the awkwardness of puberty manifests as literal, grotesque mutation. The tone is unflinching and melancholic, capturing the raw, messy reality of teenage sexual awakening and social isolation without ever looking away. It is a masterpiece of body horror and psychological tension that will captivate readers who love dark coming-of-age tales, indie comics, and stories that explore the monstrous side of growing up.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- claustrophobic
- surreal
- nightmarish
- Tone
- eerie
- melancholic
- unflinching
- detached
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- teenage alienation · bodily mutation · sexual anxiety · loss of innocence · social ostracization
- The writing
- Stark, high-contrast black-and-white artwork paired with sparse, hauntingly mundane dialogue.
- The arc
- Begins in restless teenage ennui and descends into inescapable, nightmarish isolation and tragic acceptance.
- Who it's for
- Fans of body horror, surreal coming-of-age stories, and meticulously inked indie comics that explore the dark underbelly of adolescence.
Content notes
- body horror
- sexual content
- drug and alcohol use
- violence
- murder
- suicidal ideation
About the book
Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the out-set that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways — from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) — but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s not 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 to 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, 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 anymore, but Bowie was still just a little too weird.
To say nothing of sprouting horns and molting your skin...
Description from Open Library.
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