Review: Black Hole

Black Hole by Charles Burns
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fairly decent graphic novel. The art is unnerving, there is a pervading sense of nihilism and it's creepy all around. I really enjoyed the gothic feel of the art, it lends weight to the story. The story itself is good, but as an extended metaphor it kind of loses its edge because of how old it is. It feels less relevant today, more like a call-back to a different time.

The pacing is pretty decent, it spends a lot of time building up where nothing significant happens and then escalates. That said, I would've preferred more time to get to know the characters? Maybe more sub-plots that explored them?

The weakness here is coherence. The jumping around, the disjointedness, they don't lend themselves to a very coherent telling of the story. This meant that I was sometimes pulled out of the book because I had to step back and try to make sense of it. This happens on two levels. On one hand, sometimes the panels and story get a little lost. Maybe it's the jumping around in time, maybe it's the characters and lack of investment which means I had to think back to figure out if I'd met the character before. On the other hand, there's also this sense that I'm constantly trying to figure out what the book is trying to say. Is there a lesson here? It feels like there is, but the metaphor is lost sometimes and the emotions are a bit confused.

Still, a very well-made, highly interesting graphic novel.

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