The Basics

A collection of horror one-shots. The title story tells of a tragic and dangerous shape-shifter, a stealer of faces.

My Thoughts

As opposed to the previous volume, this was definitely more on track of what I love to see from Ito. In particular, “Falling” captured perfectly that penchant for tragedy that Ito has. His horror becomes more effective not just for the cosmic nature of it in most of what he writes, but for the empathy with the characters. In the case of “Falling”, we are told the story through the eyes of a husband watching his wife suffer from a mysterious illness, and it feels like this is where Ito found the personal story within the horror that made it that much more effective.

I’m also a fan of “Scarecrows”, another horror story that finds a personal, empathic edge that makes it all the sharper. But the star of this collection is definitely “The Hanging Balloons”. The artwork is incredible, which makes the very idea of it, and it’s a very strange idea, truly terrifying.

Ito rarely explains why a thing is happening. Mostly he just presents the events, and no one ever gets an explanation. For me, this makes the whole thing scarier. What’s worse than stumbling blindly into a void? What tickles at our fear centers more than the unknown? But I could see this annoying some readers, so fair warning.

In truth, there isn’t a weak story to be found in this volume, and I highly recommend it.

Final Rating

5/5

The Basics

A collection of horror one-shots. The title story tells of a school teacher dealing with a troubled student. He is aggressive and bullying toward the other children, and something appears to wrong with his skin. As if it’s thinning. Things get a lot more serious when the teacher visits his home…

My Thoughts

For the most part, I enjoyed this collection, though it’s clear this was earlier in Junji Ito’s career. This wasn’t the stage where he was drawing some of the absolutely insane art that you’ll find in Uzumaki or Tomie. Many of these stories seemed downright mundane as far as the art is concerned, compared to what I know he can do, but the storytelling itself was still strong.

Out of the stories here, I thought the title tale, “Flesh-Colored Horror”, was strong. “Dying Young”, which was about a disease that made the homely girls at a local school beautiful before killing them, was another of the more robust stories. In this case, it was an interesting play on the vampire myth, though other readers might think I’m stretching to say that. I felt there were parallels to be made, and I liked the originality of it. I also felt this story was attempting to be a commentary on vanity, how it destroys, and I appreciated that about it.

The weakest of the stories was definitely “Beehive” for me. It was a revenge story incorporating bees, and it just didn’t do anything for me.

Even though this is a somewhat tame collection for my tastes, I think this would be a great place to start for those of you who want to cautiously get into Junji Ito’s work.

Final Rating

4/5

Bill Gaines, yes the publisher of Mad Magazine for over 40 years, also published a line of horror comics called EC Comics with titles like Tales from the Crypt (remember the TV show based on that?) and Vault of Horror. By the late '60s, EC was long out of print but the tradition of horror comics was continued by James Warren with his black and white comics Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella. EC looks kind of dated now, but Dark Horse is about to give them a fresh coat of ink with a new collected works in book form. Read all about it here: 

DARK HORSE TO PUBLISH EC LIBRARY: TALES FROM THE CRYPT COMING THIS HALLOWEEN!