Black Hole (Front cover: Issue #7)

"Black Hole" is the original cover illustration for the comic series of the same name. The comic explores 1970's adolescence using a mysterious 'teen plague' as a metaphor for the sexual anxiety that runs rampant through these hormonally charged years. This elegant ink drawing is formally simpler and less grotesque than his other work, but still demonstrates Burns' signature: highly stylized draftsmanship that appears too perfect to have been done with 'regular human hands,' as Burns' former college classmate and professional colleague, Lynda Barry, once remarked. "Black Hole" might remind the viewer of the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden by the serpent, albeit in a more sexually-charged, darker contemporary context. Compositionally and thematically the work also resonates with pictorial representations of the myth of Leda and the Swan, painted throughout history of Western art (Pontormo, Leonardo, Boucher, and even Cy Twombly have all addressed this subject). In the myth, the mortal Leda is raped by the god Zeus; Helen of Troy is born from this union.