Issue Date: December 11, 2005

Books

Alien nation

A new graphic novel delves into teen angst.

Teenagers often feel uncomfortable with their changing bodies. In legendary pop artist Charles Burns' unsettling new graphic novel, "Black Hole" (Pantheon, $24.95), several Seattle teens afflicted with a strange plague actually shed their own skin. Burns, 50, says, "Queasy. Paranoid. Monster movie. Teen anxiety," are the words that best describe his latest work, 10 years in the making. Recently we spoke with him:

What were your early influences?
It was a mix of superhero comics, monster magazines and classic strips like Dick Tracy. Then I found out about underground artists such as Robert Crumb, whose comics were not purely commercial ventures, but artistic ventures. Those were the comics I wanted to make.

How tough are your characters' teen years?
Rather than just going through the typical pains of adolescence, they are suffering through this disease that parallels adolescence. Characters have a facade where things are normal on the outside, but internally, things are very wrong.

So art really does imitate life. How have your teen readers responded to your work?
What makes me feel good is I've heard from people going to high school who tell me, "I got it -- I figured it out."

-- Lewis Beale