Black Hole



Black Hole is a twelve-issue comic book limited series written and illustrated by Charles Burns and published jointly by Kitchen Sink Press and Fantagraphics. Published as a 12-issue comic book limited series between 1995 and 2005, the first four issues were released by Kitchen Sink Press and after Kitchen Sink went out of business, Fantagraphics republished the first four issues and the remaining eight. A compiled hardcover volume was released by Pantheon Books in 2005, though this version lacks crucial pages included in the initial publication.

The plot of the comic series follows a number of Seattle teenagers who, over the summer, contract a mysterious sexually transmitted disease known as "the Bug" or "the teen plague", which causes them to develop bizarre unique physical mutations, turning them into social outcasts. It particularly followed four teenagers, Chris, Rob, Keith and Eliza, switching back and forth between their stories as they come in contact with and contract the disease.

The suggestion of a film has been up in the air for a while, in November 2005, the Comics Journal message boards reported that Black Hole would be adapted to film by the French director Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension). In March 2006, comics news site Newsarama reported that Neil Gaiman and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary would be adapting the screenplay, and in May 2006 Gaiman confirmed this in a Time magazine interview. Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary later left production with it moving to Paramount Pictures and the direction of David Fincher. Fincher himself has abandoned the project to focus on the American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. And then... the project just sat there, until 2018, when New Regency and Plan B announced that they had the rights to make a film based on the story. Whether anything ever comes of this remains to be seen.


 * Body Horror
 * But Your Wings Are Beautiful: Keith's reaction to Eliza's
 * Can't Get Away with Nuthin'
 * Coming of Age Story: A weird example, certainly, but it's there.
 * Fable Remake: Of the emergence of AIDS in suburban seventies America.
 * Magical Realism: sort of.
 * Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Eliza
 * Nested Mouths
 * Trademark Favorite Food: Eliza's "best sandwich in the world:" balogna, lettuce, and Miracle Whip (never mayo) on white bread.