Tomie: Deluxe Edition (2016)

Author: Junji Ito | Illustrator: Junji Ito | Page Count: 745

'Her only real interest is herself. She wants to be desired. To see how far she can lead men. It's not that she wants their love. Just a boost to her ego. That's all she cares about. Men, of course, will take it all wrong and fall for her. Strange thing is, when a man falls too far, too hard, he wants to cut her to pieces.'

In the horror world the true icons are the ones who contain that indefinable mystique, that allure which ensnares your attention and draws out your fears. Tomie Kawakami is one such icon. Her outside complexion may be her greatest killer quality. She's the it girl with the highest standards who's on every man's mind. To even set eyes upon her is a death sentence. Tomie doesn't simply inspire great adulation in her suitors, but awakens a sickening and jealous bloodlust which endangers not only others but Tomie herself. They love her to pieces, literally. 

Junji Ito truly created the perfect monster in Tomie. She's that seemingly immortal sci-fi creature who keeps coming back to life. She's that beautiful, out-of-reach sex symbol. You want her so bad you'll kill your friends to be with her. Unfortunately, you'll kill her too...again and again. 

Included are the 20 Tomie manga stories (originally three volumes) into one hardcover. The book's aesthetic follows Viz Media's previous releases of Uzumaki & Gyo with cover and interior art sprinkled throughout the opening and closing pages. 

Tomie was the first manga Junji Ito ever produced. In terms of artwork, he is still honing his craft in the first few stories. He makes good use of POV and obviously grasps the importance of creatively utilizing B&W, but some movement is awkward and there is a lack of refinement in the lines. By the fourth story Ito is near the top of his game. 

The first third of the collection encompasses one Tomie tale. Each chapter has its own plot and some are direct continuations but certain subsequent stories are linked only by either a location or a significant supporting character. It starts with "Tomie" and ends in chapter six with the fantastic yet bizarre climax "Mansion." After that the most important chapter is "Waterfall Basin", which helps disperse the seeds of Tomie into the world as the stories become more sporadic, stand-alone and in my opinion, lesser. Strength lies in a grand storyline as in Ito's successful epics Uzumaki and Gyo. The concepts for many of the remaining chapters are still strong, but a number of them have abrupt and perplexing endings which lead nowhere. Not every single detail must be explained for a satisfying conclusion, but certain ideas are incomplete at best.

That being said, Viz Media's Tomie: Deluxe Edition is a horror manga fan's dream come true and belongs in every Junji Ito follower's collection. It satisfies a number of different genres including science fiction, horror and guro. Ito's mastery of shock is ever evident in his use of burst climaxes throughout Tomie. The sense of dread and excitement is there as you turn each beautifully drawn page.

3½ beauty marks below the left eye out of 5

Gyo: 2-in-1 Deluxe Edition (2015)

Author: Junji Ito | Illustrator: Junji Ito | Page Count: 400

“What the hell is this?”

Tadashi loves his girlfriend Kaori, though the reader may find it difficult to feel similarly because her inner-bitch rises to the surface often. One of Kaori's defining features is that she has an acute sense of smell. When the ‘death stench’ first hits Okinawa it’s Kaori that's most affected. What’s causing the stench makes its presence known shortly afterwards, and that’s when things go full Junji Ito. You'll be thanking the olfactory gods that the book isn't a scratch 'n' sniff.

The creatures that live in the sea have evolved in weird ways. Their peculiarities make sense when viewed in their own environment, but on land they're so alien looking that they can be terrifying. Even the ones we're familiar with, such as sharks, would take on a whole new level of terror when making a beeline for some poor sap on a street full of cars.

The full horror of Gyo reveals slowly but the story isn't slow. It gets increasingly bizarre and ridiculous, though, helped along by some black humour and hindered by some school-yard humour. The two things are an odd pairing that for me just didn't fit together comfortably, but the artwork is always spectacular.

The Gyo storyline ends on page 358. It's followed by two shorts. The first is The Sad Tale of the Principal Post, a four-page story that's well-drawn but not very good otherwise. It's followed by what's without a doubt the best thing in the whole book, the thirty-two-page The Enigma Of Amigara Fault. Coincidently. it's one of the first Ito stories I ever read; it hasn't lost any of it's creepy power.

The book collects together both volumes of the Gyo manga into one beautifully bound HB edition. It's the same format and size as Viz's Uzumaki: 3-in-1 Deluxe Edition (2013); I tip all my hats to Viz for that. Uzumaki is the better story, so if you can only afford one book it's perhaps the better choice.

4 gashunks out of 5

The Hellbound Heart (1986)

Author: Clive Barker  |  Page Count: 128

'Everywhere, in the wreckage around him, he found evidence to support the same bitter thesis: that he had encountered nothing in his life—no person, no state of mind or body—he wanted sufficiently to suffer even passing discomfort for.'

The novella that became more famous for being filmed as Hellraiser (1987) by Barker himself is a fine example of how good an author he used to be. His prose effectively blends the fantastical with an exploration of the common from an uncommon perspective. In Frank Cotton Barker created a character for whom hedonistic desire has exceeded earthly pleasures, forcing him to cross an unseen border into the realms of the unknown: a meeting with the Order of the Gash.

The Cenobites, as they're more often referred to, are creatures for whom dealings in pleasure are a currency and a privilege, but their definitions of what pleasures of the flesh entail long ago exceeded the human sadomasochistic scale.

There are only four main characters. Unlike Frank the other three aren't as seasoned or as inherently obsessive in their pursuits. Their world is smaller. They're regular people with regular needs. Part of what makes them interesting is that, while each person's desire is different, they're tangled up together: two are in a loveless marriage, while the third is dealing with feelings of unrequited love. Everyone, including the antagonist Frank, craves something that only exists outside of themselves, and some of them dare to reach for it.

As first chapters go it's one of his more repulsive ones. The calculated grossness continues in the same vein throughout. You get the feeling that Barker has visualised the scenes so completely that he was able to move around within them, see them from all angles and even, on occasion, smell their vileness.

The Pinhead character that has become the hideous figurehead of the film series isn't in the book, or rather isn't the same as the one film fans will be familiar with. Putting his image on the cover was a cheap lure by Harper Collins. But I do love the unifying border design they used across all their early Barker books.

4 perverse logics out of 5

The Shining (1977)

Author: Stephen King |  Page Count: 512

'A shaft of light coming from another room, the bathroom, harsh white light and a word flickering on and off in the medicine cabinet mirror like a red eye, REDRUM, REDRUM, REDRUM— '

The Overlook Hotel, aptly named in more ways than one, has an attic filled with memories and a basement filled with recorded history, printed and imprinted, waiting to be rediscovered. Sandwiched between the two catalysts are the guest rooms, impersonal spaces haunted by deeds more permanent than the people that temporarily occupied them. They say every hotel has its ghosts, but the ones in the Overlook are more active than most other places.

As struggling writer Jack Torrance receives the details of his winter assignment at the Overlook, the reader gets a detailed rundown of the building, albeit from a biased perspective. It's an efficient device that also gives us our first insight into Jack's thought process. He's a quick-tempered, ex-alcoholic who's seriously lacking in paternal skills. Even when he's trying to be pleasant and caring it's hard to like him because his inner-bastard is always present, waiting for an opportunity to gain the upper hand. More often than not, if he does a good deed it's in the hope that it'll be noticed and go toward balancing out his meanness, not for any inherent sense of rightness for its own sake.

Time-bomb Jack's five-year-old son, Danny, is the most fascinating character. He wants to ease the tension that exists between his parents. He takes the weight of responsibility for their happiness onto his young shoulders and won't do anything to upset it, even if it traumatises him. He's a polar opposite to Jack's selfishness.

Danny has a level of intelligence not often found in someone his age, but what sets him apart even more from the norm is his special insight into what people are thinking. Unfortunately for the boy, the feelings he receives must share space with childhood fears and a very fertile imagination.

The conflict of the already broken family unit trying to hold together while their environment tries to tear them apart is the main focus, but there's horror elements, too, internal and externalised, that are more chilling than terrifying.

It's a long book with a lengthy build-up period. I admit I got bored more than once with some of the superfluous aspects of the many backstories, but each time was short-lived because King's fluidic prose pulled me back into the action when he returned the story to the present. Also, I'd hoped for an ending more memorable than the one given. It wasn't a letdown, but it didn't outclass what preceded it. It's one of those 'the journey is better than the destination' novels.

3½ unquiet guests out of 5

Let the Old Dreams Die (2005)

Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist | Translator: Marlaine Delargy | Page Count: 518

“…as I stood there, I don’t know why, but I became more and more convinced that if… if she turned around… she wouldn't have a face.”

A collection of eleven short stories from the Swedish author, most of which were originally published in his homeland as Paper Walls (2005).  The English language edition added the titular Let the Old Dreams Die, which takes place after Lindqvist’s full-length novel, Let the Right One In (2004).  Similarly, the last story in the book, The Final Processing, is a sequel to the full-length Handling the Undead (2005) novel.  The remainder of the shorts are standalone but some could be called spiritual successors in other ways.*

Some will appeal to people with a twisted, grisly imagination, but some will only really make sense to individuals who've felt isolated, distanced or uncomfortable in their own skin or in familiar surroundings.

A lot of the protagonists are in a position whereby they fear the truth of a situation because it will invariably cause some kind of gulf to open and separate them from their safe, routine existence.  The situations start normal but the observations fantastical; together they create a strange believability, even when logic says that those kinds of things really couldn’t happen… I hope.

I've never had such difficulty in choosing a quote to use on a post.  I had a dozen or more jotted down, each as good as the other but for very different reasons and evocative of equally different emotions.  If the endings had been as perfect as the singular observations, the book would've been even better.

3½ meaningful lyrics out of 5

*The US edition appears to be missing Paper Walls, whereas the UK edition lacks Tindalos.  Mine’s the UK edition so I have no idea what Tindalos is about but I can say with certainty after having read it that I’d not want Paper Walls to be absent.

Uzumaki: 3-in-1 Deluxe Edition (2013)

Author: Junji Ito | Illustrator: Junji Ito | Page Count: 648

“Spirals… this town is contaminated with spirals.”

Some fears are universal, such as the eeriness of an empty corridor or short-cutting through a shadowy graveyard at midnight, and some are more specific, such as islanders and their complicated relationship with the sea; Junji Ito has the uncanny ability to tap into both kinds and use them to full effect.

Uzumaki (Spiral) is the story of a small coastal town, Kurôzu-cho, and a girl named Kirie Goshima. The town has a strange influence upon its inhabitants that most of them are oblivious to, but as the peculiarities escalate Kirie begins to take notice of how horrific everything is and how difficult it is to escape.

Making the source of the horror a shape, the titular uzumaki, as opposed to an entity that can be hunted and killed creates a fine line between bizarre and ridiculous, but Ito seems to be fully aware of that; he takes that invisible line and warps even it into a spiral. The result is that the weirdness creeps from deeply unsettling to just plain silly and back again, sometimes from one panel to the next, but approach it with an open mind and you’ll be drawn invariably and uncomfortably inward. The attention to detail in the environment helps a lot. Everything feels saturated with a Lovecraftian aura. The people that live in Kurôzu-cho are warped but believable.

Each episodic chapter is somewhat self-contained but also adds to the overall arc and moves the narrative forward. Something that I'm certain will divide readers is the abrupt way each one ends. Some people will feel they were cut short. I'm guessing that by withholding a traditional resolution Ito was hoping to leave the reader with disturbing thoughts, thoughts that would wriggle and worm their way around the consciousness until they’re exorcised. In my case that exorcism was sometimes as ineffectual as the attempt at purging malady was for some of the book's characters. (Those mushrooms! Wiggins.)

The book collects into hardcover all three volumes of the Uzumaki manga.

4½ bent shapes out of 5

Let the Right One In (2004)

Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist | Translator: Ebba Segerberg | Page Count: 519

'They could give a number of reasons for why they had to torment him; he was too fat, too ugly, too disgusting.  But the real problem was simply that he existed, and every reminder of his existence was a crime.'

Lindqvist has been described as ‘the new Stephen King’ in the press.  It quickly lets you know that you're getting a well-written horror novel but it isn't just a lazy journo way of getting an idea across, because he really does write like King.  His character development, his plotting and his reliance on the reader to fully invest in the magic realism of the world are uncannily similar.  He also has almost identical failings as King: the awkward wording at the end that ruins an otherwise perfect paragraph of prose, the over-indulgence, the pop culture references that date the work, etc.  They're all here.

The biggest difference between the two, at least with this novel, is that Lindqvist doesn't give the reader anyone to like.
Firstly, there’s young Oskar, the school bully's favourite punching bag.  Ordinarily it would be he that receives our sympathies but his vivid imagination and morbid fascination with death keep him just outside the realm of likeable.
Next, there’s Eli, the girl next door.  Is she the one?  She’s as much a victim as Oskar.  She has some likeable and noble traits but she exists in another world.
Then there’s Eli’s adult protector but it's certainly not he, for reasons I can’t expand upon in this review.  In fact, all of the adults are selfish and flawed in some way; there’ll be no parent of the year awards given out to any of them.

I feel I should give a warning before you even consider picking up the book: there’s some graphic sexual content that most readers will find offensive, both morally and ethically.  If you don’t get offended then you've got serious, serious problems.  Parts of it make for very uncomfortable reading.
Elsewhere, there are some equally graphic horror moments that are so well described, so beautifully depicted, that you may even be reeling back from the page as you read.  They really are magnificent in a grotesque way.

The ending is abrupt.  It makes sense within the context of the story but it’s almost as if Lindqvist thought, I guess I’d better end this now, it’s gone on long enough.  He subsequently wrote a short story that you can find in the collection Let the Old Dreams Die (2012) to document what happened afterwards, and to clarify his intentions because they’re unclear and open to interpretation.

4 complex puzzles out of 5

A Darker Magic (1987)

Author: Michael Bedard | Page Count: 184

He sat up on the bed and suddenly caught sight of his reflection in the dresser mirror in front of him.
And then an incredible thing happened. It was as if the image rippled suddenly, like a piece of painted scenery in a play. And when it settled again he found himself staring at a totally different room. It was barren and devastated. Hunks of plaster dangled from the wall, leaving the lathing gaping through like bone. The walls were covered in crayon scrawl.
He swung around... The room was as it had been before.

A horror story about an odd teenage boy with an affinity for magic tricks and the 3 protagonists who cross paths with him and investigate his mysterious nature like why no one can seem to ever find him and what his possible connections are to an incident in an abandoned train depot decades earlier that has haunted the older schoolteacher ever since.

The tale is pretty standard stuff and really just a step above a cruddy campfire scary story, but Bedard is at least competent in his writing and does a decent job of giving world building detail to make the stock story interesting and the characters fleshed out enough to at least see it through to the end. If you are inclined to like such horror stories this might be up your alley. There are better options surely, but genuinely decent passages like the quote above put it above lesser choices. Plus it was clearly written for  a younger audience so I can't bash it for not being to my taste and it is pretty decent for being his first novel.

2½ stabbing disembodied heads magic tricks... for kids! out of 5

Heart-Shaped Box (2007)

Author: Joe Hill | Page Count: 400

"A girl, walking beside a taller boy who sported a yellow bow tie, shrank back against her companion as they went past. Bow Tie put a comforting arm around her shoulders. Jude did not flip them off and then drove for a few blocks feeling good about himself, proud of his restraint. His self-control, it was like iron."

I'm a huge fan of Joe Hill's contributions to the comic world- I think Locke & Key is probably the best comic being published right now- so I was anxious to check out one of his novels as well. I started with Heart-Shaped Box, a novel about an aging musician who finds himself being haunted after purchasing a dead man's suit on the internet. The book started out as a pure horror tale, and had some wonderfully creepy moments, but soon, it became more of a redemption tale than anything else. But as the book became less scary, its characters grew stronger, and it was a gripping read throughout.

At times, I wanted to scream at the characters for failing to put certain pieces of the story together, but the book was involving even when I could tell exactly where it was going. The surprises that do happen are mostly small, but those moments feel special, and give the book's cast more depth. I found the ending to be a little bit unsatisfying. This is partly because figuring things out ahead of time meant that there was no grand reveal scene, but also because it just wasn't my sort of ending, and I suspect many readers will be pleased that things pan out the way they do. All in all, this is a solid debut novel, and I may dive into Hill's second book tonight.

3.5 girls named after states out of 5.