Word: graphics
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...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...
Rather, writers like Burns and Ware are prime examples of the major weakness of graphic novels: they are emotionally difficult and even hateful to readers. They demand you to be engaged, they demand you to look and absorb every sweat-inducing detail, and worst of all, they mock happy endings...
...Graphic novels have a long way to go before reaching the bestseller lists. Yet Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” series about the Holocaust, for instance, won a Pulitzer Prize. It is unlikely that the lack of widespread acceptance of graphic novels is due to inferior writing—indeed, it seems unlikely that readers of ludicrously popular “The Da Vinci Code” were drawn in by its prose or character development...
...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...