Word: graphically
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...DIED. JEAN-MICHEL FOLON, 71, Belgian-born painter and graphic artist whose work was familiar to millions from poster campaigns and magazine covers for The New Yorker, Esquire and TIME; in Monaco. An unwilling student of architecture, Folon left his hometown of Uccle, near Brussels, for Paris at the age of 21, but first found success in the U.S. with his eye-catching, whimsical pictures of birds, flying men, rainbows and billowy landscapes. Always prolific, Folon's style survived translation onto postage stamps, giant subway murals and, in later years, to animated films and sculpture...
...arrival of Halloween always brings with it a plethora of horror-related media, including comix. This season's standout graphic novel focuses on one of the scariest of all horrors: high school. The title of Charles Burns' long-awaited book, Black Hole (Pantheon; 368 pages; $25), says it all. For many people-including myself, naturally-high school felt like an endless, inescapable vacuum without air or light. Unlike more conventional horror stories set among high school kids, where each one gets "offed" by a masked killer, Black Hole uses the worst parts of emerging adulthood, like changing bodies, alienation...
Though Burns has been making comix since the early 80s, Black Hole is his first full-length graphic novel. Given that it took ten years for this book to reach completion, it may also be his only one. (It appeared over time as series of twelve comic books.) But you can't fault Burns for laziness. Once you see one of his illustrations, you see why it took so long. Possessing a graphical style as unique and instantly recognizable as Edward Gorey's, Burns works in meticulous detail using heavy inks that seem to bring out the worst horrors...
...Part of that consistency is in the careful follow-through of visual motifs introduced in the earliest chapters. Black Hole may be the most Freudian graphic novel you will every read. Dreams and symbols play a major role the development of character and theme. Vaginal-like openings appear in such forms as branches being pushed aside or a cut on someone's foot. Guns and serpents make for opposing sexual symbolism. While such imagery has been used before, Burns smartly applies them in ways unique to the medium, integrating them into the very design of the book...
...ability to analyze human expression, a skill made obsolete by keyboards and screen names. A lip twitch there, a cleared-throat here, and a sharp intake of breath from competition to the left—these were the precursors to quick uploads and winning odds. Bluffing was an art; graphic animation counted for little. Strategic smiles meant more than statistical breakdowns...