black hole

is the name of the Charles Burns graphic novel I read last night. It's a decade's worth of work collected into one book, a sprawling overlapping narrative with horror-sci/fi trappings (the concept involves a bug transmitted by bodily fluids [mostly sexually, though in one powerful scene, it's made clear that spit alone can do it] that causes animalish mutations amongst a group of teens). But that's the setting, not the reason for the work itself. It's a character-driven story, it's low on artificial drama, and it's deeply deeply sad. I've been reading any number of graphic novels lately - lots of bus time plus rediscovering the library and rediscovering my love of the comic book form, i guess, after bumping into an AMERICAN SPLENDOR compilation a few months back - and while all the ones I've read have been good, this one packs a wallop all its own.

BLACK HOLE is being made into a movie; unfortunately, the director Alexandre Aja, responsible so far for the brutal horror films HAUTE TENSION and THE HILLS HAVE EYES (remake), has been slated to direct. To be fair, I haven't seen either film, and also to be fair, there are any number of disturbing and grotesque effects that are necessarily part of the BLACK HOLE narrative that I have no doubt he'll nail. But unless he displays a heretofore unpublicized skill for tenderness and melancholy, the film will lack the very qualities that make the graphic novel truly extraordinary.

All of which is to say, I suppose, read the graphic novel.

48 HOURS film festival this weekend. Time to take a nap.