{"subjects": ["graphic novel", "Comics & graphic novels, general", "Medicine", "Comic books, strips", "Graphic novels", "Nineteen seventies", "Plague", "Teenagers", "Sexually transmitted diseases", "Romans graphiques", "21.39 graphic arts: other", "18.06 Anglo-American literature", "Jugend", "Sexuell \u00fcbertragbare Krankheit", "Comicroman", "Amerikanisches Englisch", "Fiction", "Alienation (Social psychology)", "Diseases", "Murder", "Erotic comic books, strips", "Adolescence"], "key": "/works/OL573448W", "title": "Black Hole", "authors": [{"author": {"key": "/authors/OL41818A"}, "type": {"key": "/type/author_role"}}], "type": {"key": "/type/work"}, "covers": [226975], "description": {"type": "/type/text", "value": "Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the out-set that a strange plague has descended upon the area\u2019s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways \u2014 from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) \u2014 but once you\u2019ve got it, that\u2019s it. There\u2019s not turning back.\r\n\r\nAs we inhabit the heads of several key characters \u2014 some kids who have it, some who don\u2019t, some who are about to get it \u2014 what unfolds isn\u2019t 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 \u2014 the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape.\r\nAnd then the murders start.\r\n\r\nAs 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\u2019t exactly cool to be a hippie anymore, but Bowie was still just a little too weird.\r\n\r\nTo say nothing of sprouting horns and molting your skin\u2026"}, "latest_revision": 11, "revision": 11, "created": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2009-12-08T05:32:35.201065"}, "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2025-01-23T11:07:00.828263"}}