Flipped!: David Welsh And A Few Friends On Recommended Spooky, Scary And Supernatural Manga



By David P. Welsh

Will walking fish be the new zombies? This is the question I'm left with after asking some folks for their recommendations for spooky, scary and supernatural manga. (I added the hyperlinks below.)

Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic and Good Comics for Kids turned to that meticulous illustrator of horror Junji Ito's Gyo for her shiver of choice:

"Like many other children of the 1970s, Jaws left an indelible impression on me," Dacey wrote. "I wasn't just terrified of swimming in the ocean, I was reluctant to immerse myself in any standing body of water -- swimming pools, bathtubs, ponds -- that might conceivably harbor a shark. That irrational fear of encountering a great white somewhere it's not supposed to be even led me to wonder what it might be like to bump into one on land -- could I outrun it?

"I'm guessing Junji Ito also suffers from icthyophobia, because Gyo looks like my worst nightmare, a world in which hideously deformed fish crawl out of the sea on mechanical legs and terrorize humans, spreading a disease that quickly jumps species. As horror stories go, many of Gyo's details aren't terribly well explained -- how, exactly, the fish acquired legs remains unclear despite talk of military experiments gone awry -- but the imaginative artwork appeals on a visceral level. Gyo's highpoint comes midway through volume one, when a great white shark chases the hero and his girlfriend through a house, even scaling the stairs (no pun intended) in pursuit of its next meal. The scene is utterly ridiculous, but it works -- for a few terrible, thrilling pages I learned the answer to my long-standing question, What would it be like to be chased by a shark on land? In a word: scary."

Dacey isn't alone in her fondness for Gyo. Blogger and critic Jog (who also contributes to The Savage Critics and comiXology) examined the fine line between tittering and terror:

"Hopefully someone else will mention horror manga godhead Kazuo Umezu, 'cause I'm going with his most popular latter-day acolyte as far as manga-in-English goes: Junji Ito. Or, at least he was the most popular for a while; Dark Horse's short story collection Museum of Terror apparently bombed hard enough in 2006 to get canned after three volumes, and I don't think he's been seen around here since, which is ironic since we've gotten a lot more Umezu since then, offering some historical context for this kind of oddball mainstream giggle-terror, like horror with comedy but not horror-comedy, if you know what I mean. Which is something largely unfamiliar to American audiences, who're more likely to dismiss horror as failed if they laugh; they 'win' against the scare if it's funny. The Umezu-type style seeks integration of those impulses as an authentic, giddy whole: think of teenagers shouting and giggling from the communal experience of watching Paranormal Activity in a theater, and think of concentrating that into a solo experience, and you're on the road I think.

"Er, anyway: Gyo is my favorite example of that, at least in its first volume because it gets so much out of the perfect 'world turned upside-down' premise of all the fish in the ocean suddenly getting legs and storming the land. There's so much weird, alien shit in the sea, and Ito's super-tactile art sells the horrible panic of huge, stinking, rotten-in-the-sun unblinking beasts with perpetually open mouths shambling around in an army of millions, burping and bumping and smothering you with their sticky bodies and dragging you down their throats, and you recognize them from Shark Week and fish tanks and that's why it's awful! And it's so funny too, with cops drawing their guns on landsharks and girls screaming like it's an Italian Jaws rip-off with a $200 million budget. The second (and final) volume kinda screws it up though, piling on back-story and human consequences and junk science and plot points and crap, but there's something to be said for a perfect cut of serial, right?"

For as-yet-untranslated shivers, Jog pointed to Suehiro Mauro's The Laughing Vampire:

"Then there's the wide world of guro, or even ero-guro, the extreme, often pornographic fringe of horror manga (which isn't to say there's no Kazuo Umezu influence there either, but we're talking before and beyond the pale as two sides here). This stuff has a reputation I guess as little more than rusty-smelling romps through Nonconsentylvania, and I suspect those interested in such orthodoxy might be interested in one of the rarest manga-in-English items of them all, Creation Books' Beauty Labyrinth of Razors, a custom-edited (and brilliantly-titled) 'best of' collection for artist Jun Hayami's relentless short stories, which no printer in the U.K. was apparently willing to handle, so they released it as an e-book for a little while and now it seems to have vanished entirely. I actually haven't read it; can't find it. The Hayami shorts I've read are totally relentless sex and violence.

"But there's more to 'guro' artists than that: take Suehiro Maruo, a pro artist since 1980 who hilariously won the New Artist Prize at this year's Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prizes for The Strange Tale of Panorama Island (due in English next year from Last Gasp). He's possibly one of the best pure draftsmen in Japanese comics and a creepy, inspired visual designer, blending the domestic influence of 19th Century printmaking and pre-WWII militarism fashion with heavy, composed figures and layouts not a million miles away from the Euroisms of Katsuhiro Otomo or Jiro Taniguchi. His sledgehammer patriotic satire Planet of the Jap was the best part of Blast Books' excellent Comics Underground Japan anthology, though his solo books -- Blast's Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show and Creation's short story collection Ultra-Gash Inferno -- are way out of print.

"I'd like to make a license request for this, one of his more mainstreamy pieces, a little girl/little ghoul love & murder story from 2000 that's low on logic and stuffed with evocative poetical trash horror images, like a Jean Rollin movie captured perfectly on the page. Historical post-war atrocity hums around the edges, but really it's all about the thrilling sensation of teenage love spilling over into a glorious rejection of all of society's values and morality. How teen vampires ought to be. I haven't read the 2004 sequel. Maybe I'll read both someday, in English, in my hands."

Turning to industry types for their horror of choice results in a nice mix of titles and types. Asako Suzuki, Director of Manga for DC's CMX imprint, offers an old-school, shôjo-flavored option:

"I am not a big fan or horror or scary stories, but there are some I like. Obviously, I like Kanako Inuki's Presents -- if not, why did we license it, right? Especially, the episode about a girl knitting scarves with her hair just creeped me out -- I understand that David enjoyed the series, too, so I wonder which episode is his favorite. Other than Presents, I like Junji Ito's Gyo -- that series was quite scary! It is not licensed in the United States yet, but Yokihi-den by Suzue Miuchi (author of Glass Mask) traumatized me for some time."

Presents is indeed a personal favorite, especially in the category of comeuppance theatre -- comics where terrible things happen to horrible people. All of the stories have a grisly-cute charm, but my favorite has to be the one about the girl who's obsessed with collecting manufacturers' freebies to her everlasting regret.

Tokyopop Senior Editor Lillian Diaz-Przybyl opts for both a novel and the manga it inspired: Goth, authored by Otsuichi and adapted by Kendi Oiwa.

"Not for the faint of heart, this manga and novel duo written by Otsuichi is both gruesome and psychologically horrifying. Goth tells the story of two impressively morbid high school students who bond over a series of mysterious incidents in their area. Sounds generic, but Goth is definitely a series where excellent execution puts it way above your average horror. I read the manga first, as part of our acquisitions process, and enjoyed it quite a bit, but didn't get around to reading the novel until more recently (in translation -- my Japanese isn't quite good enough for prose). Of course, then I couldn't put it down. Otsuichi's great writing adds some shocking narrative twists that are difficult to pull of visually, so while the manga follows most of the novel, it skips at least one story for that reason. But the manga, drawn by Kendi Oiwa of Welcome to the NHK fame, is still appropriately dark, creepy and elegant, and a complete reading experience on its own, so if you just buy one version of Goth, you won't regret that one. But be warned: it earns its M-rating in a big way. Highly recommended!

Diaz-Przybyl gives "bonus mentions... to xxxHolic, Natsume's Book of Friends, and Petshop of Horrors for creepy supernatural themes (and varying degrees of homoeroticism), but Goth definitely wins the 'scary' award for me."

Last but not least, Viz Media Senior Editor Eric Searleman offers a mix of hard-core, old-school horror and sweet, supernatural stories:

Gyo isn't the only Ito book that earns roundtable admiration, as Searleman cites Uzumaki: "Creepy and inescapible horror. Ito's best work. Ghastly Graham Ingels would surely approve." He turns to Viz's online initiative, SIGIKKI, for Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida: "Is there a layer of subtext below the grissle? I don't know. The artwork is stunning, regardless." I absolutely concur with his inclusion of Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasyte: "Imaginative and mindbending. Totally crazy. A tip o' the hat to Del Rey for bringing it back into print." And if only someone would bring the horror manga of Hideshi Hino back into print, including Searleman's choice, The Bug Boy: "Poor li'l bug boy!" On the significantly softer side, he mentions one of my favorite magical comedies, Wataru Yoshizumi's Ultra Maniac: "A young witch casts love spells that go totally awry. Perfect reading for young girls who want to add a little bit of magic to their Halloween."

While many of my favorites were included above, I'll throw in a few more. Tomie, written and illustrated by Junji Ito, included in Dark Horse's Museum of Terror is my favorite Ito manga, about a beautiful, horrible undead girl who punishes the wicked. I can also recommend anything by the aforementioned Kazuo Umezu, though my heart belongs to The Drifting Classroom, where the most terrible things happen to an entire elementary school.

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* from Gyo
* from Gyo
* from The Laughing Vampire
* from Goth
* from Presents

*****

David P. Welsh has loved comics since his parents first used Archie and Casper to sedate him during long trips in the family station wagon.

He's worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, and later sold out for the glamorous world of public relations. Prior to relocating to The Comics Reporter, he wrote his Flipped column for Comic World News for just over three years. He's written articles on comics for print outlets and a variety of other web sites.

He lives in West Virginia, which he says has gotten a lot easier since the Starbucks and Barnes & Noble opened up.

You may e-mail David with questions or commentary You can write to this site about David's columns

Please bookmark his site, Precocious Curmudgeon.

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