Junji Ito

[Anne Summers]

I've read Uzumaki (Spiral) and Sensor recently and they are really very good. I wondered if anyone else is a fan of his stuff and what I should read next, there seems to be quite a bit to choose from. 

I'd rather read the full length stories rather than short story collections, which a lot of his books seem to be. Unless any of the collections are really amazing. 

[sandman]

Only read Spiral so far, but as someone who doesn’t like Manga much I thought it was pure genius 

[cassidy]

I think he's a bit of genius. He's certainly what I would consider an auteur of horror. 

 

I even like Dissolving classroom. 

[matt0]

I haven't read any of his recent stuff, but I did read Tomie, Gyo!, Uzumaki and some of his short stories back in the day. Horror comics are so hard to do because everything is on the page in front of you, you don't breath life in to scenes with your imagination the way you do with prose and it's much harder to play tricks on the reader with jump scares, quick glimpses and obscured visuals the way films can. Frequently they default to out and out gore or the grotesque.

 

Junji Ito though has some kind of magic touch. His drawings can make your skin crawl, but the concepts live on in your imagination. Once he's turned an idea around four or five times, forced you to look at it in different ways, your imagination just keeps on running, keeps on churning those ideas over and over.

 

There's one short story about a fault line that opens up in Japan and there's strange people shaped holes in it that people living nearby become morbidly curious about. It's one of the most unsettling things I've ever seen and about as perfect a piece of comics storytelling as you'll ever encounter.

[Anne Summers]

1 hour ago, sandman said:

Only read Spiral so far, but as someone who doesn’t like Manga much I thought it was pure genius 

I'm the same, never really got into manga. 

I definitely recommend you read Sensor. Similar themes but if anything a bit more Lovecraftian. I was read it in one sitting last night and was pretty much awestruck right through it. 

[wev]

I've got Uzamaki waiting to be read.

 

I have read No Longer Human though, which, apparently isn't like his other works (it's an adaptation of a Japanese authors autobiography) and "enjoyed" that.

[TheShend]

3 hours ago, matt0 said:

There's one short story about a fault line that opens up in Japan and there's strange people shaped holes in it that people living nearby become morbidly curious about. It's one of the most unsettling things I've ever seen and about as perfect a piece of comics storytelling as you'll ever encounter.

 

That's 'The Enigma of Amigara Fault' 

 

It's the perfect midnight Halloween read to unsettle before bed.