Finished Black Hole by Charles Burns. Terrific book with great illustration work. It’s like Clowes on acid. The book was weird and wonderful, having a good deal of that special kind of sadness that graphic novels seem to have cultivated into some other, more refined emotion entirely. A loneliness which might be depicted in such a book as an empty beach on a rainy day.

There is an attraction here. By tapping into that longing feeling of adolescence—an emotion which might be embedded in the medium itself—the book creates a special, under-the-blanket communion with the reader which, at least in my case, leaves him wanting the artist to fill the pages with more emptiness.

The story of Black Hole is about a sexually transmitted disease that sweeps the high school population of a Seattle suburb in the nineteen seventies. This disease isn’t one that just makes you hurt when you pee, though; it transforms the infected physically. Sometimes in minor ways, a few bumps or a tail, other times making them monsters. In the middle of this, the teenagers try and live and grow up, try to make it past being teenagers. Some succeed, maybe. Some don’t.

Good, weird, stuff. Read if you like Velvet Glove Cast in Iron or sometimes listen to old Bowie albums and nod knowingly.

ALSO

Watched the new Rodriguez/Tarantino double header, Grindhouse. Two words: kick ass. The first, Planet Terror, is a schlock-gore fest that would make Fulci proud, and then make him puke! It succeeds in making fun of the genre and itself and still being a good story and a much better movie than most straight horror films. Tarantino’s offering, Deathproof, is even better, with an edge-of-your-seat chase sequence the likes of which I ain’t seen since maybe Bullet. Real stunts and real big cars driving real fucking fast. Mix with plenty of Tarantino dialogue and more than a little of his swagger and you get a great film. You could feel everybody in these films having fun, and the audience responded in kind (the beer helped), shouting at the screen, laughing, applauding. The most fun I’ve had at the movies since my first Rocky show.

Labels: books, movies