The six issues released so far focus on three high school students. Keith, a "normal" teen, is an insecure youth with a crush on a classmate named Chris, who barely notices him. Rob has "the bug", manifested by a small mouth on the neck, but has managed to conceal it from his peers. Chris and Rob share mutual attraction, but when Chris discovers Rob's condition she is repulsed. She later finds she has caught the disease from him. Ostracised by her schoolmates, Chris soon finds Rob is the only one she can talk to about her new problem.
All of this might be horribly cheesy if it weren't a product of Charles Burns' extraordinary artistry. Drawing realistically but with thick, cartoony lines, his illustrations are graceful and eye-pleasing even with ugly subject matter. More importantly, his evocative imagery shows this to be the work of a thoughtful artist. Surrealistic dream and drug trip sequences figure predominately, and symbolism, especially of the phallic and vaginal variety, abounds. Believable and identifiable characters couple with effective dramatic writing, raise the series well above the level of soap opera. Burns is a masterful cartoonist, and Black Hole demonstrates interesting art actually can be made about teenage mutants.
