All I Know about Pregnancy, I learned from Black Hole

Nora looks at a new transition through the lens of a comic masterpiece

I first read Black Hole by Charles Burns when I was freshly out of college, trying to make a go of it in Chicago, and working at an indy comic book publisher, Devil’s Due Publishing. The graphic novel, where a community of teens in the 1970’s just wanna f*ck, but keep getting thwarted by a strange and grotesque sexually transmitted infection, hovered like a spectre in my head as I, too, was trying to figure out the whole intimacy thing in what felt like a junkyard of possibilities. The black and white used in the comic seemed both more black and more white than any color I was familiar with and they starkness infused my wanderings in that cold and huge city; I felt a certain apprehensive clarity at the ugliness of things as I rode public transportation or walked for miles over gritty city sidewalks. 

The second time I read Black Hole, I was 41 years old and pregnant, 37 weeks, with a being that had improbably implanted in my uterine lining many months back. By age 40, I had not expected to give birth; years of miscarriages and tests pushed me down what I assumed was a childfree path. But, things turned out differently, and I, mostly trepidatiously, went to doctor’s appointments and packed a hospital bag. (With a copy of Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? for some in-between-contractions reading. I never ended up cracking it.). 

I felt pulled to read Black Hole during this period, so many years after my first reading, because there was something about the visceral black and white drawings of tails growing from the end of spines, of skin peeled off whole, tiny mouths bleating for more that kept sparking in my mind. I was measuring my own changing nipples for breast pump flanges, watching a dark line grow up my belly like some stain, experiencing steady pulses of nausea and dilations of pain on a daily basis. It’s no wonder the body horrors of Black Hole echoed for me as I read The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ guide to pregnancy, with each passing month revealing how many more milliliters of blood I was pushing through myself and my son. 

I was familiar with some (great, funny, honest) comics of motherhood—as we have showcased previously!—but I didn’t feel pulled to them during my own pregnancy. When I finally, finally got to the point of carrying a child to term, did I want a novel experience? Actual, experienced motherhood stories to draw from? instead, I seemed to want to see my own pregnancy, and birth, from a certain time and place, one of a comic that struck me as so gross and exquisite, much like what was happening with my body. Reading Black Hole again helped the pieces of pregnancy and birth come together in a consequential image—suddenly, I was ready to be a mom. 

Or maybe I just really needed to read a surreal coming of age told by a masterful artist. Whatever the case, I really love my new babe, and am really exhausted, and can’t wait to show him my favorite comics. 

Oh, I am also moving to Houston, TX. Where my husband got a job at Rice University. If any readers are there, let me know! I’d love to meet up. Or, if anyone has any comic book shop recs (or others!), I would love to hear them!