This week's recommended new release is Black Hole by Charles Burns.

This new hardcover collection finally brings Burns' highly acclaimed and now hard to track down 12-part series together in one bookshelf-worthy package. Set in Seattle in the 1970s, it is a dark and unique depiction of adolescence as local teenagers find themselves victim to a sexually transmitted disease that turns them into mutated freaks. Some of the mutations are entirely deforming while others are subtle and easy to hide. The story focuses on a group of teens that are forced to join a group of mutated refugees that have started their own sub-culture in the woods outside of town.

Burns' woodcut-like linework and heavy use of blacks belies a psychological dark side to his storytelling and his penchant for clean, almost friendly depictions of the grotesque make you unsure whether you should laugh or cringe. This is his masterpiece which he has been toiling on for years and is now printed in a beautiful Pantheon-published book for us to pore over late into the night.

For a great interview with Burns about this book click here.