Earning her license is supposed to grant Rebecca freedom, but the atmosphere Johnson creates suggests that there is no escape available.Īs readers, we don’t necessarily root for Rebecca’s escape. Later, the curved trees and vegetation in the woods where the young girls play feel like they are always creeping up the panels, always moving.
As Rebecca’s car rushes past the lush fields, tall stalks blow in the wind, concealing a fox Rebecca spots as she drives. The comic is illustrated in heavy gray pencils and black inks, and all the natural backgrounds use eerie, kinetic line work and shading. Later, Johnson also reveals that Rebecca and Sally’s houses seem to be nestled in a wooded area where they played as kids, adding to the sense of lonely helplessness the setting creates. The stalks of corn on the cover are immediately echoed in the background of the Live Bait Family Buffet – a lonely building that greets readers on the first page and through the windows of Rebecca’s car. Johnson’s setting for Black Hole Heart creates a perfect, lonely atmosphere. It’s hard to avoid anyone in a small town, but Rebecca is strangely keen on avoiding Sally, and seems especially wary of her illness. However, the newly licensed Rebecca has to drive Sally to the hospital twice a month for doctor’s appointments, otherwise her father won’t let her use the car. Their families are neighbors and the girls were friends as children but no longer seem to have a connection. Sally is sick, and her sickness seems to have taken over her life. Rebecca is a surly teen, sick of her job at the Live Bait Family Buffet and her life in a tiny town. The story takes place in a rural, truly middle-of-nowhere town, and tracks the now-broken friendship between Rebecca and Sally. Johnson that just took home the 2020 Ignatz award for Outstanding Minicomic. Johnsonįriendship is the focus of Black Hole Heart, a horror comic by Cathy G. Friendships end, and can’t be repaired, but they still influence our lives. Sometimes, people change irrevocably in unexpected ways.
Horror stories examine relationships in ways that don’t follow normal logic, and I find that exciting and fascinating. Perhaps paradoxically, I also LOVE horror, a genre where questions often go unanswered, or the source of the horror is never fully explained. I am the kind of person who wants everything to make sense, and for everything to have a reason.
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