black hole by charles burns

I just read Charles Burns' huge graphic novel Black Hole literally in one sitting, except for getting a drink of water. I feel like my eyes are going to wither away now, and half the book made me feel like I was tripping along with the characters, but it blew me away.

His work might be familiar to you from the covers of The Believer. The story is, like many comics and graphic novels, all about the difficulties of adolescence.

But this one has a twist. There's a bug going between the kids at a school that turns them into freaks, with weird tumors, tails, mouths and other growths—the usual teenager awkwardness turned malignant. A bunch of them go out to live in the woods, but the strain of freakishness combined with teen angst is too much for one of them...

This was one of the most stunning pages in the book—especially after a bunch of creepy pages of decay that come before it. (Click image to see a larger version.)