Flesh Colored Horror

Rating:
Summary: Six Creepy Stories of Human Weakness and Supernatural Horror
Review: This collection of Junji Ito's early horror shorts is a mixed bag. Some of them are excellent, some interesting but flawed, and some of them seem like warm-ups for his superb _Uzumaki_. If you're an Ito fan or a horror fan, it's worth picking up _Flesh-Colored Horror_ to see more of his creepy ink work and twisted stories.

Ito's strength as a storyteller is his ability to ground strangeness in a realistic framework, making it seem plausible and horrific at the same time. Vanity and betrayal are common themes, especially in the just-desserts stories. When he combines social and psychological nastiness with the outlandish macabre, the results are striking.

It might be heartening for an aspiring artist to chart Ito's growth. He starts out seeming uninterested in drawing anything but gore and pretty girls--even the young men look like pretty girls--and gradually learns to draw other character types.

I particularly like "Approval," a story about a man who can't get away from the woman he loves and her hateful family, and "Flesh-Colored Horror," which follows a kindergarten teacher and her concern about a bizarre-looking, ill-socialized child's violent behavior in her classroom. "Approval" is a classic type of story, but "Flesh-Colored Horror" is like nothing I've seen before or since.

None of these stories match the graphic novel _Uzumaki_, but if you're hesitant to invest in those two volumes (with a third due out this fall), this isn't a bad place to start and see if Ito's work is your cup of tea.

Rating:
Summary: Six Creepy Stories of Human Weakness and Supernatural Horror
Review: This collection of Junji Ito's early horror shorts is a mixed bag. Some of them are excellent, some interesting but flawed, and some of them seem like warm-ups for his superb _Uzumaki_. If you're an Ito fan or a horror fan, it's worth picking up _Flesh-Colored Horror_ to see more of his creepy ink work and twisted stories.

Ito's strength as a storyteller is his ability to ground strangeness in a realistic framework, making it seem plausible and horrific at the same time. Vanity and betrayal are common themes, especially in the just-desserts stories. When he combines social and psychological nastiness with the outlandish macabre, the results are striking.

It might be heartening for an aspiring artist to chart Ito's growth. He starts out seeming uninterested in drawing anything but gore and pretty girls--even the young men look like pretty girls--and gradually learns to draw other character types.

I particularly like "Approval," a story about a man who can't get away from the woman he loves and her hateful family, and "Flesh-Colored Horror," which follows a kindergarten teacher and her concern about a bizarre-looking, ill-socialized child's violent behavior in her classroom. "Approval" is a classic type of story, but "Flesh-Colored Horror" is like nothing I've seen before or since.

None of these stories match the graphic novel _Uzumaki_, but if you're hesitant to invest in those two volumes (with a third due out this fall), this isn't a bad place to start and see if Ito's work is your cup of tea.