(W/A/CA) Charles Burns. The setting: suburban Seattle* the mid-1970s. We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area's teenagers* transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) but once you've got it* that's it. There's no turning back. What unfolds isn't the expected battle to fight the plague* or bring heightened awareness to it * or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation itself the savagery* the cruelty* the relentless anxiety and ennui* the longing for escape. And then the murders start.