Some of you may be thinking, is that black smudge in the middle right of the second panel the black hole? Yes people, it is. Despite the rather colorful renditions you may have seen elsewhere, we are talking about something with gravity so intense, even light can’t escape, so yeah it’ll be a wee bit hard to see. A black hole has yet to be directly observed in space far as I know, only indirect observations of it’s effects on the space around it (like gravitational lensing of light coming from behind it). Yeah I know, realism in a superhero comic, the lolz. I’m funny that way.
UPDATE: A family emergency has taken up a good portion of Thursday, my main comic page creation day, so there will be no new page this week. I’ll have the Page 24 ready by next Friday, June 7th.
Yes, a black hole will cause gravity lensing, but most black holes are seen by a much brighter effect: The disc of matter falling towards the black hole gets extremely hot from the gravitational stresses and impacts with other matter, plus the radiation caused by breakup of matter close to the event horizon.
True enough, but most of the matter that would make up the accretion disk is already in the black hole (more accurately, part of the black hole, made up from the asteriods slammed together as shown last page), and what little is left is probably not enough to “light up” the hole. It is a small black hole after all, only about the mass of a large moon or small planet.
Now I like her even more – she took my advice! 🙂