Comics? That's Not Funny

This weekend I'm off to Wondercon in San Francisco, billed as "Northern California's most popular comics and pop culture event." I'm going to spend some quality time with a cartoonist buddy who is trying to break into the sordid world of adult comix. While there I'll be sure to get an autograph from original Chewbacca Peter Mayhew, check out the Gumby seminar, and will naturally vote for my favorites in the Annual Wondercon Masquerade. It's been years since I've geeked out in quite this fashion, and I'm looking forward to it.

In somewhat related news, comic artist extraordinaire Charles Burns, a Seattle native, will be at the University Bookstore on February 26 to present the new paperback edition of his magnum opus "Black Hole." Black Hole is set in Seattle in the mid-70's, and tells of a horrible sexual disease infecting the city's teenagers. The illness isn't horrible like your standard V.D., but rather in that it causes mutations which vary from victim to victim. Characters find themselves with tails, with extra mouths, with webbing between their fingers, with rotting skin. And yet despite the monster movie grotesquenesses, it remains a touching story of sexual coming-of-age in which very human characters deal with the consequences of their pending adulthood. It took Burns more than 10 years to write the comic and it shows in the stunning design of each page and the intricacies of the plot.