I was initially going to read the entire series, but I'm trying to force myself to do less, so I decided to just focus on the first volume. I picked iI was initially going to read the entire series, but I'm trying to force myself to do less, so I decided to just focus on the first volume. I picked it up for the Realm of Comics club.
Content notes for blond dreads, cartoon gore, lots of murder, loss of family member, children in danger, and queer villains.
And looking back through all my saved video transcripts over on Wordpress it appears that the last time I shared my feelings about Lovecraft pre-date this practice. So here we are again; I'm not going to let the name go by without commenting on it. Even if its much less of a hot take these days.
TLDR, A huge influence on swaths of modern horror, it's hard for me to feel anything but disgust for a man who thought the scariest thing in the world was anything not purely anglo-saxon, able bodied, straight and male etc etc. Very shallow and hateful to say the least.
But moving on to new to me creators we have the incredibly popular Joe Hill, who according to his wikipedia is described as "Joseph Hillstrom King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novel Heart-Shaped Box, Horns, NOS4A2, and the Fireman; the short story collection 20th century ghosts and strange weather... He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award. King is the son of authors Tabitha and Stephen King, and the brother of writer Owen King."
Which I think covers most of the basics. Well besides the fact that while this is my first written by Joe Hill read, much more recently he had the opportunity to work on an imprint for DC Comics... Which resulted in The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado and DaNi. I read and reviewed that book just this summer and ended up rating it five out of five stars. So definitely check that out.
Looking at Rodriguez' wikipedia page, apparently Hill and Rodriguez co-spawned the series of Locke and Key. He also won an Eisner for Best Limited Series in 2015 with fellow Chilean Nelson Daniel for their work Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland. Also published by IDW.
Keywords that came to mind reading this book: legacy, family, teenagers, death, supernatural, and betrayal.
But moving along to how I feel about the writing and art, etc etc I am unsure of where to start.
The art style was not my favourite. Technically speaking it's probably fine, and scrolling through reviews (much like everything to do with this book) my opinion is one of the minority. It's not a style I feel like I run into very often, or at least in a very long time... and while it doesn't appear that any of these other books that I have previously read that this art style reminded me of were actually by Gabriel Rodriguez, I didn't like them. So it's a sort of gut level reaction.
Story and writing wise, I find myself in a very similar minority opinion. Technically and craft wise fine I suppose, this story was actually kind of offensive. So proceed with caution; I know many of you are potentially fans. If the goodreads stats are anything to go off of. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Anyway, I disliked this book so much it actually had me doubting whether I actually like horror at all. And to be fair I am rather picky, because while horror can be really fun and subversive and empowering, it can also just further stigmatize people who are already being shit on by the entire world already. Much like comedy I guess there's punching up aspects and there's punching down aspects. And maybe in the larger context of the entire series or whatever there's more of a balance, but for this volume it definitely felt like it was really punching down.
To be somewhat fair, the way that characters were introduced, there are many flawed people in this book. Particularly when it comes to adults, there are no perfect people. But that isn't to say there is not a wide gap between the people we are supposed to root for and those we are clearly not to feel sympathy for. Because there is, and a lot of it seems to start with the patriarchal concept of the nuclear family.
On the one hand we a father, brutally murdered, of three children and the husband to a wife. Traumatized, the family comes even closer together and retreats to an old family home where there is magic that also has very strong family legacy bloodline vibes. Which are also things, going on a bit of a side note, that I have become much more suspicious of in stories as I've matured, seeing as I'm not a fan of the monarchy or eugenics.
In contrast our initial baddy comes from an apparently "broken family" that played some part in creating the murderer who we spend most of the comic with. Violent, both of Sam's parents are coded as poor, trashy, brutish and stupid in their own way.
Of course we eventually meet the actual big bad of the volume, perhaps the series IDK; a magical creature of some sort they use many of the characters to their own ends, yet unknown. Oh and guess what, they shift their gender at the end. Isn't that just peachy?
And queerness really is something that only the bad guys have in common. Because everything is heteronormative except for that gender presentation shift and the survival sex work that Sam engages in to get himself across the country... Only to murder the client in the end. Really putting the cherry on top, as it were, sarcastically speaking.
Looking at ability vs disability.. the "deformed" character, who also probably has the most mental health stuff going on, is also the bad guy. How avant guard.
This volume was fairly devoid of any sort of racial diversity.
So yeah... I did not like this at all. If people feel like the series eventually becomes a bit more self aware I guess let me know. Meanwhile I'll be re-watching the purge or something.
I am still interested in where the the whole DC Comics imprint went, and where Hill might go from there. But this is a one star for now....more
And today we are taking a look at the stand-alone manga Remina from Junji Ito and translated by Jocelyn Allen. This book was originally published in 2And today we are taking a look at the stand-alone manga Remina from Junji Ito and translated by Jocelyn Allen. This book was originally published in 2005 in Japan and subsequently translated into English and published in so-called North America in December of last year.
Content notes for crucifixion, mass hysteria, torture leading to execution, body horror, attempted rape, as well as giant tongues and eyes.
The depiction of violence in the book was pretty graphic. Perhaps not the most graphic, but the depiction of pain and suffering seemed to be one of the things that Ito was trying to focus on so it was depicted in detail.
This is in fact my first Junji Ito title I've read - at least as far as I can remember. I've certainly heard a lot of praise for Ito in my time on mangatube and I would like to pick up a couple more Junji Ito titles, as I feel like the reviews for Remina are a bit more mixed then usual. Although it might just feel that way because it is, I believe, his most recently translated work. It was still nominated for a few a few awards. But yeah, you should probably leave me recommendations in the comments as to what your favourite Junji Ito title is, assuming it is not in fact Remina.
Moving along to his Goodread's bio "Junji Itō Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1963, he was inspired from a young age by his older sister's drawing and Kazuo Umezu's comics and thus took an interest in drawing horror comics himself. Nevertheless, upon graduation he trained as a dental technician, and until the early 1990s he juggled his dental career with his increasingly successful hobby — even after being selected as the winner of the prestigious Umezu prize for horror manga.
The most common obsessions are with beauty, long hair, and beautiful girls, especially in his Tomie and Flesh-Colored Horror comic collections. For example: A girl's hair rebels against being cut off and runs off with her head; Girls deliberately catch a disease that makes them beautiful but then murder each other; a woman treats her skin with lotion so she can take it off and look at her muscles, but the skin dissolves and she tries to steal her sister's skin, etc.
Ito's universe is also very cruel and capricious; his characters often find themselves victims of malevolent unnatural circumstances for no discernible reason or punished out of proportion for minor infractions against an unknown and incomprehensible natural order.
His longest work, the three-volume Uzumaki, is about a town's obsession with spirals: people become variously fascinated with, terrified of, and consumed by the countless occurrences of the spiral in nature. Apart from the ghastly, convincingly-drawn deaths, the book projects an effective atmosphere of creeping fear as the town's inhabitants become less and less human, and more and more bizarre things begin to happen.
Before Uzumaki, Ito was best known for Tomie, a comic series about a beautiful, teasing and eternally youthful high school girl who inspires her stricken admirers to murder each other in fits of jealous rage. Eventually, unable to cope with her coy flirtation and their desire to possess Tomie completely, they are inevitably compelled to kill her — only to discover that, regardless of the method they chose to dispose of her body, her body will always regenerate.
In 1998, during the horror boom that followed the success of Ringu, Tomie was adapted into a movie. Since Tomie, many of his works have been adapted for TV and the cinema."
Which does seem to lean towards me not being terribly thrilled with any of his representations of women. But a person can hope I guess. Thoughts?
What kinds of keywords came to mind? Horror tropes, torture, apocalypse, mass panic, sacrificial lamb, and cosmic horror?
The Goodread's description is "An unknown planet emerges from inside a wormhole, and its discoverer, Dr. Oguro, christens the celestial body "Remina" after his own daughter. His finding is met with great fanfare, and Remina herself rises to fame. However, the planet picks up speed as it moves along in its curious orbit, eliminating planets and stars one after another until finally Earth itself faces extinction… Is the girl Remina the true cause of the catastrophe? A masterwork of horror from Junji Ito, unfolding on a universal scale."
Definitely more plot then character driven, the characters are merely pawns to move the plot along.
Not a terribly wordy book. I managed to read it in one day between two commutes. Of the writing I didn't like in the story, the dialog was largely OK.
And while the detail to which Ito renders the torture of Remina and Daisuke is not my favourite thing in the world, the art and page layouts etc demonstrate a very high level of skill.
As you may have already guessed, the female representation in this book did not hit me particularly well. The level of expression and action from Remina in the story does come across as very outdated. But perhaps more so, in my opinion at least, I don't generally see a need to consume fictional media that involves the intense suffering and torture of anyone. Centering a woman like this is only playing the torture up for shock value. OH NO it's soooo much worse because this innocent girl who is literally calling for her daddy as she's being crucified. I am powerless enough in my own life when it comes to all the people around me who are being tortured and killed by the housing, tainted drug and covid crises to really feel entertained or diverted by this sort of thing.
Would a B movie plot about a seemingly intelligent planet slurping up every planet in our solar system as humans run around frantically in the face of their inevitable demise have been timely and entertaining? Yes. The proportion of B level movies I consume has sky rocketed during Covid. I don't have a problem with tropes, especially if they are put together in satisfying or transgressive ways. Mobs in fiction generally do not have much coherence to their motivation, but Remina the woman seems rather tacked on and only detracts from the plot in my opinion. Why don't we center her father more?
The only sexuality in the book is basically an attempted heterosexual rape before the man in question turns Remina back into the hands of the mob trying to torture her to death by way of sacrifice.
While this crises is no doubt international, but I believe everything is focused on Tokyo and there doesn't appear to be any racial diversity.
Class felt like it got touched on a bit as there are some particularly powerful people who are temporarily able to leave earth to land on Remina the planet. Their fate was a small bright spot in the book.
Ability vs disability did not feel like it was really brought up. On a slightly related note, the main villain who is most determined to sacrifice Remina the woman is visually depicted as a monstrous other, which seems like a fairly ableist concept. Non normative bodies are EVIL.
So yeah, TLDR not a new favourite horror for the spooky season. I ended up rating this an OK two out of five stars. I feel like Ito is obviously very skilled so I almost went with three stars, but the narrative choices just do not make this a book I can recommend as anywhere close to good....more
Originally published in 1997, Cowa! is an incredibly charming all ages one-shot from the mangaka behind Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, and perhaps one of Originally published in 1997, Cowa! is an incredibly charming all ages one-shot from the mangaka behind Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, and perhaps one of the most famous Japanese creators in North America, Akira Toriyama.
Not an easy story to really pick apart, suffice to say that this story of a bunch of monster children and famed murderer saving the day is all the charm of Dragon Ball without any of the problematic parts. An obvious companion to the likes of the extremely popular Nightmare Before Christmas, I would also recommend Little Vampire by Joann Sfar if you have not already picked up that one. #365DaysofHalloween...more
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