“The cat-eyed boy”. Forty years later, the idea resonates with all the retro charm of the most outrageous inventions of the wildy imaginative sixties. And indeed, the (superb) covers of those two volumes wouldn’t seem out of place among movie posters of the time. Having established his solid reputation as “master of horror” in the […]

Having coined the “horror manga” term, Umezu Kazuo experienced his first success with Hebi Shôjo (“The snake-girl”) in 1966, the first book from a bibliography specialized in the nightmarish. Incidentally, Hyôryû Kyôshitsu (The drifting classroom) won the annual award from Shôgakkan in 1975, and was even adapted as a television series in 2001, under the […]

To appropriately celebrate Umezu Kazuo fifty years of career, Shôgakkan undertook in 2005 the great project of a complete collection of his works, gathered under the title “Umezz Perfection !”. Hailed as the “ultimate version of horror as viewed by Umezu, the creator of Japanese Horror”, the collection is currently composed of thirteen volumes : Hebi-Onna, Negai, […]

Some manga are like American blockbusters : conforming themselves to the genre standards, they quietly unfold following a well-travelled road, already trodden a thousand times, where a few detours might bring some surprises, until the arrival to the unavoidable as well as foreseeable conclusion — incidentally, this is the very principle on which Wes Craven has […]

Around an unusual cover, the promotional wrapper states modestly : “I wanted you to discover it”. Such an urge to share the strange universe of Moni Moni that Aihara Kôji doesn’t even wait for the interior pages to begin his story — which starts right off the cover, and ends up (reluctantly) on the back cover, […]

Just as we were getting used to stacks of little books written right-to-left, just as manga has spread to the point where it is henceforth part of the comics reader’s landscape — in this universe of sleek lines and flawless patterns, with its characteristic big eyes and little panties — Black and White hits us […]