Its been ten long years but Charles Burns has finally finished his epic comic book, Black Hole. Black Hole is wildly surrealistic and disturbingly real at the same time. It takes place in the 1970s in Seattle where a group of teenagers have a sexually transmitted disease that eventually transforms them into mutants. The book is strong metaphor for your body changing in adolescence and how it affects your mindset. Big things are happening with the book, The Hills Have Eyes director Alexandre Aja plans to direct the film adaptation of it from a script by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.
Buy Black Hole
Daniel Robert Epstein: When did you finish Black Hole?
Charles Burns: It was like in August of 2005.
DRE: Why did it take you so long to finish?
CB: A number of things but mainly it was that I had to do other work. I did a lot of starting and stopping because I do advertising and illustration work. But I work slowly anyway. I have this painstaking way of writing, drawing and painting.
DRE: How much of the book changed from when you originally thought of it?
CB: Because of the complexity of the story I really had everything outlined from the time I started. There certainly were things that changed or developed as I worked on it but they changed in a positive way. I think what happened was there were just instances where I was able to find better ways of telling the story. In a certain way, the fact that I was starting and stopping on it was helpful too. It gave me time to reflect and step back into the story.
DRE: Did you always plan on not explaining a lot of it?
CB: Yeah, I hate explanation, at least in my stories. I like leaving things open to interpretation instead of spelling things out Hollywood style.
DRE: What was the original inspiration for Black Hole?
CB: What I wanted to do was examine adolescence and think about what that transformation from childhood to adulthood is. I approached it as thinking about this kind of disease you go through that transforms you. Some people come through to the other end unscathed and others dont. I took what would already be a very turbulent, difficult period in everybodys life and added this other element of this disease as a catalyst to push things and make things stronger.
DRE: How do you think it works as a whole book rather than reading it serialized?
CB: It was always intended as a book. I serialized it for a number of reasons, mainly so that I could set deadlines. I did enjoy putting them out as pamphlets in serialized form. I think the whole plot fits together like a jigsaw.
DRE: Is it autobiographical in any sense?
CB: I grew up in Seattle so there are elements there. For example you have the woods, the evergreen trees, the ocean, all these natural elements that are going on in the Pacific Northwest. But as far as the autobiographical aspect of it, its certainly based on my experiences growing up with my friends. Its not purely autobiographical; I never knew a girl that had a tail.
DRE: They exist though.
CB: They surely do somewhere.
DRE: I read a lot of independent stuff and works like this are usually filled with music references. You do have one or two but was it important to you to keep the time period out of it?
CB: Its funny, I talk to people who are teenagers right now and theyre saying that I nailed what it feels like going through that part of your life. I set it specifically in the 70s because that was when I was going through that adolescent transformation and I have knowledge about that time period. I wouldnt be able to set it in the 1990s or currently because I just dont have the knowledge needed to make it seem authentic. I made some music references, but thats not the focus of the story. The 70s just happens to be the time period I can talk about with some experience.
DRE: Black Hole is the closest Ive come to reading a book that recreates a bad acid trip. At one point I had to put it down because it was starting to freak me out.
CB: Thats good. Im glad to hear that. There are a lot of things that are hard to write about or express and one of the hardest is that sort of thing. I just dug really deep and tried to think about what that kind of paranoia and fear is all about.
DRE: Were you trying to recreate the idea of someone going through a trip?
CB: I guess so. There are some things you see like visual distortions and hallucinations, but its hard to find a middle ground where its not these hokey, corny, over-the-top hallucinations. He goes out in what he thinks is a natural environment, out of the city, down this dirt path and thinks that he can calm himself down that way. Then when hes touching this dirt ground, he has a horrible reaction to this moving thing thats underneath him.
DRE: Was creating the book very free flowing?
CB: It was in some ways. When I was writing it, I tried not to edit myself in any way whatsoever. I wanted to include every single idea that would come into my head. In that regard, I was paying attention to my subconscious ideas. But it certainly wasnt free-flowing when I had to structure the whole story. That was a very elaborate, well thought out process.
DRE: Howd it get to Pantheon Books?
CB: It was just a matter of me wanting to work with a mainstream publisher in the sense that they had distribution in bookstores and good promotion. I know Chip Kidd, a book designer there, who has also been handling the graphic novels. Thats how it worked out.
DRE: Were you surprised at the amount of press you got?
CB: Yeah, I was pleased that it got such positive reviews. It seemed like overwhelmingly positive reviews. Theres always a few where someone doesnt get it or doesnt like it, but thats understandable.
DRE: It must have been a shock that so many people understood the book.
CB: Yes but I think another reason I went with a publisher like Pantheon was because I did want to this book to reach an audience that wouldnt find their way to a comic book shop. There have been plenty of people that have told me that theyve never read a comic or a graphic novel before, but that they enjoyed Black Hole. Part of my goal is to have an audience thats not just people whove always liked my work, but people who are being introduced to it for the first time.
DRE: I read that Big Baby was a precursor to the Black Hole.
CB: Ive been doing comics since the early 80s, so Ive got a number of books out. There are a number of characters that Ive worked with, Big Baby being one of them. Another character called El Borbah who is a Mexican wrestler and detective.
DRE: I believe Fantagraphics promoted Big Baby by saying it was the inspiration for Black Hole.
CB: There was a Big Baby story that dealt with this whole teen plague idea but it was a very different approach. I played with the idea of a disease that only affects teenagers in a number of stories. I realized I needed to purge myself of it, to get the story out once and for all. So thats what Black Hole was.
DRE: Did you make up the look of the mutant teenagers as you came up to their parts in the story or did you pull them from a sketchbook?
CB: All those things. I trick myself into finding the best way to write a story. Sometimes Ill do little thumbnail sketches. Sometimes Ill work on note cards. Sometimes Ill sit down at the computer and type the story straight through. The characters developed as very rough sketches. For example, I needed to have a slightly overweight girl, so I needed to think about what she would look like, what she would be wearing and all those things.
DRE: Your wife is a painter, whatd she think of the book?
CB: This has been one of those things my family has been living with for a very long time, so its part of a landscape here. I do every single thing in the book, except the lettering of the dialogue because for some reason, despite all the precision of my line work, my lettering looks horrible. She actually had the job of lettering the entire thing.
DRE: Have you been with her since you started Black Hole?
CB: Yeah and well before that. Shes a painter and I do comics so luckily theyre related, but different enough that we dont have this competitive nature. Im not getting into the same painting shows she is or shes trying to get published or vice versa. We can comment on each others work, but its not a matter of competition.
DRE: I assume you still do a lot of commercial work.
CB: Yeah, Ive been doing the covers for The Believer for a couple of years. I do occasional advertising work as well. Right now Im working on a book cover for Carl Hiaasen.
DRE: Since the Black Hole book was released, has more commercial work come in?
CB: About the same. I think the nature of the work is that its not going to flood to a huge amount. Its been fairly consistent over the years.
DRE: Were you surprised that Black Hole got optioned to be turned into a movie? It doesnt seem like something that leaps to mind in terms of a movie.
CB: I think just the opposite. Its certainly not going to be the same experience as reading the book but on the other hand I think that the core of the story would lend itself to a good movie.
DRE: Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary are writing the screenplay, are you fans of theirs?
CB: I know some of their work but Im not as familiar as I should be. I know that Avary worked on Pulp Fiction and I enjoyed that movie.
DRE: Did you ever read much of Neils work?
CB: Not really. Im not that familiar with it.
DRE: Do you think youll want to have much contact with them?
CB: I dont know. Im not sure how it all works. I know that theyre doing the screenplay and I guess I couldve tried to work on a screenplay myself. I just wanted to move on and work on another project. Theres such a difference between the kind of work that I do and what would function as a screenplay. I think that I would be spinning my wheels if I tried to do it. Somewhere in the contract, Im supposedly functioning as a consultant.
DRE: Did you see The Hills Have Eyes yet?
CB: No, I havent had a chance, though it certainly seems interesting. Ive seen the original and I cant imagine how one would do a remake of it.
DRE: Its pretty disgusting. Its got mutants in it, but Im sure when it comes time for your work, theyll go for a much different look.
Are you working on another book yet?
CB: Right now, Im working with a French production company doing a short animated movie called Afraid of the Dark. Its part of a feature film theyre putting together from different stories and the theme is the fear of the dark. Im doing all the character designs, the writing, the storyboards and the directing. My part is an 18 minute portion of the film and its being animated. Im flying back and forth from Paris.
DRE: Were you involved much with the cartoon that was made of Dog Boy for Liquid Television?
CB: I wrote the screenplay for that. Theres a lot of things that I wrote that did not end up in the final version and a lot of other people that were involved in rewriting, editing, re-everything. IT turned out to be a different story.
DRE: Is that ever coming out on DVD?
CB: Not that Im aware of. I know it came out on that Liquid Television show for MTV around the same time as Beavis and Butthead and Aeon Flux.
DRE: Do you have another book in mind yet?
CB: Im taking notes for another story right now.
DRE: Would you do it as a graphic novel or would you want to serialize it again?
CB: Im not sure exactly what form its going to be, whether its going to be a long story or a short story. I certainly dont know if I have another 380 page story in me, but who knows?
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy Black Hole
Daniel Robert Epstein: When did you finish Black Hole?
Charles Burns: It was like in August of 2005.
DRE: Why did it take you so long to finish?
CB: A number of things but mainly it was that I had to do other work. I did a lot of starting and stopping because I do advertising and illustration work. But I work slowly anyway. I have this painstaking way of writing, drawing and painting.
DRE: How much of the book changed from when you originally thought of it?
CB: Because of the complexity of the story I really had everything outlined from the time I started. There certainly were things that changed or developed as I worked on it but they changed in a positive way. I think what happened was there were just instances where I was able to find better ways of telling the story. In a certain way, the fact that I was starting and stopping on it was helpful too. It gave me time to reflect and step back into the story.
DRE: Did you always plan on not explaining a lot of it?
CB: Yeah, I hate explanation, at least in my stories. I like leaving things open to interpretation instead of spelling things out Hollywood style.
DRE: What was the original inspiration for Black Hole?
CB: What I wanted to do was examine adolescence and think about what that transformation from childhood to adulthood is. I approached it as thinking about this kind of disease you go through that transforms you. Some people come through to the other end unscathed and others dont. I took what would already be a very turbulent, difficult period in everybodys life and added this other element of this disease as a catalyst to push things and make things stronger.
DRE: How do you think it works as a whole book rather than reading it serialized?
CB: It was always intended as a book. I serialized it for a number of reasons, mainly so that I could set deadlines. I did enjoy putting them out as pamphlets in serialized form. I think the whole plot fits together like a jigsaw.
DRE: Is it autobiographical in any sense?
CB: I grew up in Seattle so there are elements there. For example you have the woods, the evergreen trees, the ocean, all these natural elements that are going on in the Pacific Northwest. But as far as the autobiographical aspect of it, its certainly based on my experiences growing up with my friends. Its not purely autobiographical; I never knew a girl that had a tail.
DRE: They exist though.
CB: They surely do somewhere.
DRE: I read a lot of independent stuff and works like this are usually filled with music references. You do have one or two but was it important to you to keep the time period out of it?
CB: Its funny, I talk to people who are teenagers right now and theyre saying that I nailed what it feels like going through that part of your life. I set it specifically in the 70s because that was when I was going through that adolescent transformation and I have knowledge about that time period. I wouldnt be able to set it in the 1990s or currently because I just dont have the knowledge needed to make it seem authentic. I made some music references, but thats not the focus of the story. The 70s just happens to be the time period I can talk about with some experience.
DRE: Black Hole is the closest Ive come to reading a book that recreates a bad acid trip. At one point I had to put it down because it was starting to freak me out.
CB: Thats good. Im glad to hear that. There are a lot of things that are hard to write about or express and one of the hardest is that sort of thing. I just dug really deep and tried to think about what that kind of paranoia and fear is all about.
DRE: Were you trying to recreate the idea of someone going through a trip?
CB: I guess so. There are some things you see like visual distortions and hallucinations, but its hard to find a middle ground where its not these hokey, corny, over-the-top hallucinations. He goes out in what he thinks is a natural environment, out of the city, down this dirt path and thinks that he can calm himself down that way. Then when hes touching this dirt ground, he has a horrible reaction to this moving thing thats underneath him.
DRE: Was creating the book very free flowing?
CB: It was in some ways. When I was writing it, I tried not to edit myself in any way whatsoever. I wanted to include every single idea that would come into my head. In that regard, I was paying attention to my subconscious ideas. But it certainly wasnt free-flowing when I had to structure the whole story. That was a very elaborate, well thought out process.
DRE: Howd it get to Pantheon Books?
CB: It was just a matter of me wanting to work with a mainstream publisher in the sense that they had distribution in bookstores and good promotion. I know Chip Kidd, a book designer there, who has also been handling the graphic novels. Thats how it worked out.
DRE: Were you surprised at the amount of press you got?
CB: Yeah, I was pleased that it got such positive reviews. It seemed like overwhelmingly positive reviews. Theres always a few where someone doesnt get it or doesnt like it, but thats understandable.
DRE: It must have been a shock that so many people understood the book.
CB: Yes but I think another reason I went with a publisher like Pantheon was because I did want to this book to reach an audience that wouldnt find their way to a comic book shop. There have been plenty of people that have told me that theyve never read a comic or a graphic novel before, but that they enjoyed Black Hole. Part of my goal is to have an audience thats not just people whove always liked my work, but people who are being introduced to it for the first time.
DRE: I read that Big Baby was a precursor to the Black Hole.
CB: Ive been doing comics since the early 80s, so Ive got a number of books out. There are a number of characters that Ive worked with, Big Baby being one of them. Another character called El Borbah who is a Mexican wrestler and detective.
DRE: I believe Fantagraphics promoted Big Baby by saying it was the inspiration for Black Hole.
CB: There was a Big Baby story that dealt with this whole teen plague idea but it was a very different approach. I played with the idea of a disease that only affects teenagers in a number of stories. I realized I needed to purge myself of it, to get the story out once and for all. So thats what Black Hole was.
DRE: Did you make up the look of the mutant teenagers as you came up to their parts in the story or did you pull them from a sketchbook?
CB: All those things. I trick myself into finding the best way to write a story. Sometimes Ill do little thumbnail sketches. Sometimes Ill work on note cards. Sometimes Ill sit down at the computer and type the story straight through. The characters developed as very rough sketches. For example, I needed to have a slightly overweight girl, so I needed to think about what she would look like, what she would be wearing and all those things.
DRE: Your wife is a painter, whatd she think of the book?
CB: This has been one of those things my family has been living with for a very long time, so its part of a landscape here. I do every single thing in the book, except the lettering of the dialogue because for some reason, despite all the precision of my line work, my lettering looks horrible. She actually had the job of lettering the entire thing.
DRE: Have you been with her since you started Black Hole?
CB: Yeah and well before that. Shes a painter and I do comics so luckily theyre related, but different enough that we dont have this competitive nature. Im not getting into the same painting shows she is or shes trying to get published or vice versa. We can comment on each others work, but its not a matter of competition.
DRE: I assume you still do a lot of commercial work.
CB: Yeah, Ive been doing the covers for The Believer for a couple of years. I do occasional advertising work as well. Right now Im working on a book cover for Carl Hiaasen.
DRE: Since the Black Hole book was released, has more commercial work come in?
CB: About the same. I think the nature of the work is that its not going to flood to a huge amount. Its been fairly consistent over the years.
DRE: Were you surprised that Black Hole got optioned to be turned into a movie? It doesnt seem like something that leaps to mind in terms of a movie.
CB: I think just the opposite. Its certainly not going to be the same experience as reading the book but on the other hand I think that the core of the story would lend itself to a good movie.
DRE: Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary are writing the screenplay, are you fans of theirs?
CB: I know some of their work but Im not as familiar as I should be. I know that Avary worked on Pulp Fiction and I enjoyed that movie.
DRE: Did you ever read much of Neils work?
CB: Not really. Im not that familiar with it.
DRE: Do you think youll want to have much contact with them?
CB: I dont know. Im not sure how it all works. I know that theyre doing the screenplay and I guess I couldve tried to work on a screenplay myself. I just wanted to move on and work on another project. Theres such a difference between the kind of work that I do and what would function as a screenplay. I think that I would be spinning my wheels if I tried to do it. Somewhere in the contract, Im supposedly functioning as a consultant.
DRE: Did you see The Hills Have Eyes yet?
CB: No, I havent had a chance, though it certainly seems interesting. Ive seen the original and I cant imagine how one would do a remake of it.
DRE: Its pretty disgusting. Its got mutants in it, but Im sure when it comes time for your work, theyll go for a much different look.
Are you working on another book yet?
CB: Right now, Im working with a French production company doing a short animated movie called Afraid of the Dark. Its part of a feature film theyre putting together from different stories and the theme is the fear of the dark. Im doing all the character designs, the writing, the storyboards and the directing. My part is an 18 minute portion of the film and its being animated. Im flying back and forth from Paris.
DRE: Were you involved much with the cartoon that was made of Dog Boy for Liquid Television?
CB: I wrote the screenplay for that. Theres a lot of things that I wrote that did not end up in the final version and a lot of other people that were involved in rewriting, editing, re-everything. IT turned out to be a different story.
DRE: Is that ever coming out on DVD?
CB: Not that Im aware of. I know it came out on that Liquid Television show for MTV around the same time as Beavis and Butthead and Aeon Flux.
DRE: Do you have another book in mind yet?
CB: Im taking notes for another story right now.
DRE: Would you do it as a graphic novel or would you want to serialize it again?
CB: Im not sure exactly what form its going to be, whether its going to be a long story or a short story. I certainly dont know if I have another 380 page story in me, but who knows?
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
priq:
Hey does anybody remember OK SODA? I loved his can art!
kes:
Charles Burns is a personal favorite of mine. I've been very influenced by his art and point of view. I love the way he takes the cheery, "Leave it to Beaver"-ish paradigm and twists it like taffy. Black Hole is wonderful, but his real gems (in my humble opinion) are the "Skin Deep" and "Big Baby" collections. "Skin Deep" is AMAZING and "Burn Again" (included in Skin Deep) is one of the wildest, most original critiques of organized religion and spiritual torment ever. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys very, very dark humor.