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Comics, like cinema, is an eminently modern medium. And as with cinema, looking closely at it can swiftly acquaint us with the profound weirdness of modernity. Do that in the context of a discussion on Charles Burns' comic masterpiece Black Hole, and you're guaranteed a memorable Weird Studies episode. Black Hole was serialized over ten years beginning in 1995, and first released as a single volume by Pantheon Books in 2005. Like all masterpieces, it shines both inside and out: it tells a captivating story, a "weirding" of the teenage romance genre, while also revealing something of the inner workings of comics as such. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the singular wonders of a medium that, thanks to artists like Burns, has rightfully ascended from the trash stratum to the coveted empyrean of artistic respectability\u2014without losing its edge.

BIG NEWS:

\u2022 If you're planning to be in Bloomington, Indiana on October 9th, 2024, click here to purchase tickets to IU Cinema's screening of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, featuring a live Weird Studies recording with JF and Phil.

\u2022\xa0Go to Weirdosphere to sign up for Matt Cardin's upcoming course, MC101: Writing at the Wellspring, starting on 22 October 2024.

\u2022\xa0Visit https://www.shannontaggart.com/events and follow the links to learn more about Shannon's (online) Fall Symposium at the Last Tuesday Society. Featured speakers include Steven Intermill & Toni Rotonda, Shannon Taggart, JF Martel, Charles and Penelope Emmons, Doug Skinner, Michael W. Homer, Maria Molteni, and Emily Hauver.

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REFERENCES

Charles Burns, Black Hole
\nClement Greenberg\u2019s concept of \u201cmedium specificity\u201d
\nTerry Gilliam (dir.), The Fisher King
\nSeth, comic artist
\nChris Ware, Building Stories
\n\u201cGraphic Novel Forms Today\u201d in Critical Inquiry
\nRaymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity
\nVilhelm Hammershoi, Danish painter
\nRamsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh
\nG. Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form
\nDave Hickey, \u201cFormalism\u201d
\nNelson Goodman, Languages of Art
\nChrysippus, Stoic philosopher
\nScott McCloud, Understanding Comics