Charles Burns: The Hive (Random House) (2012) (GN) - (invisifan)

This is the second book in Charles Burns' Tintin-inspired "Nitnit" trilogy.



Publishers Weekly review:

" Burns's oeuvre is frequently cited as 'strange,' but that's perhaps
oversimplifying a world more thought-provokingly described as
recognizably like our own, except for when it's not — and it's the
difference between the two where Burns's power to shine a light on
the darker side of human nature lies. This is the second volume of
a trilogy begun in X'ed Out, and as such has an unfinished feeling.
We return to Doug, the protagonist, whose recounting of his
relationship with a young woman shifts back and forth between the
less surreal of the book's two environments and another where his
apparent alter ego works in a dreary factory/hospital providing
books to its monster patients. Both scenarios occur in an eerie
alternate reality whose visuals exude a sense of uncomfortable,
riveting silence that fixes the reader's attention to the tale's
odd events. Burns's stark work operates on its own nightmare logic
and as a result, flesh-crawling events spew forth in the most
mundane of settings. Romance comics, misshapen mutants, reptile
men, a nightmare of disembowelment that yields a fetal pig,
photographic obsessions and more stake out their territory — the
result will stick with readers long after being absorbed. "