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Graphic Novel Review: Tombs: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Tombs: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Viz Media, 2023

ISBN: 9781974736041

Available: Kindle, hardcover

Junji Ito’s Tombs presents a collection of nine original horror manga tales. In the titular story, Kaoru and her brother Tsuyoshi take a trip to visit their mutual friend, Izumi, in her new town. One the way, Tsuyoshi hits a young woman with his car. The siblings load her into the vehicle, only to find out she is dead and they transfer the body to the trunk. When they make it to town, they are perplexed by the random countless tombstones in the middle of the road. A few townspeople explain that they appear where people have died. Izumi corroborates these claims, even showing them tombstones that are inside her family home. The dead are not to be touched.

“Clubhouse” is an intriguing haunted house story. Friends Yukari, Chikako, and Minae enter an abandoned building. Minae decides to explore the second floor, while the other two wander the first. Soon after they leave, the friendship between Chikako and Minae deteriorates. Yukari, upset by her friends not speaking anymore, pleads with Chikako to make up with Minae. Chikako, however, has a new group of friends who frequent the haunted house they explored.

The “Slug Girl,” poor Yuko, hates these little creatures. She used to be so talkative, but she falls silent when her tongue transforms into, well, a giant slug. She’s tried cutting it off, but it grows back. Can her family and friends help her?

In “The Window Next Door,” Hiroshi and his parents move into a new house, where the closest neighbor only has one window on the second floor. Unlucky for him, it’s right across from his bedroom window. In the middle of the night, Hiroshi hears the woman next door calling to him. He is met with a terrifying sight when he looks out his window. She repeats her call to him night after night.

“Washed Ashore” is the story of the corpse of a strange, massive sea creature found on a beach. It is mysteriously luring people to it. The scientists studying the monster notice clear patches along the body. A commonality between all of those who are drawn to it is that they are missing loved ones. When bystanders get closer to the body and look closely into the clear patches, they find the unexpected.

In “The Strange Tale of the Tunnel,” a town is plagued by disappearances tied to a train tunnel. Goro, whose mother committed suicide in the tunnel when he was young, finds his sister wandering there when she is not watched. A group of scientists starts to study strange occurrences associated with the disappearances, such as strange sounds, unexplained wind, and blood dripping from the stones.

“Bronze Statue” is a cautionary tale. Mrs. Sonobe is a jealous woman obsessed with the beauty she has lost. Tsuchiya, a master of working in bronze, made the statues of Mr. and Mrs. Sonobe installed at the local park. Through her statue, she eavesdrops on conversations of the mothers who bring their children to the park, and she doesn’t like what she hears. She unexpectedly invites them for a social to unveil another statue. When their hostess leaves the room, they begin to discuss their honest feelings about the situation. Mrs. Sonobe, of course, doesn’t like this. How far she is willing to go to preserve her beauty in statues knows no bounds, and the women, as well as her bronzeworking miracle man and herself, will find out the lengths she will go before she exhausts her options.

In “Floaters,” Ryoichi finds his friend Masao, who has been out of school for a few days, with a bug net at the side of the road. He tells mutual friend, Kyoko, about it, when they see a hairy mass on a tree branch. It shifts in Ryoichi’s hand and starts proclaiming it’s love for Masao…in Masao’s voice. Soon, everyone in town is seeing these things floating around, some stating other townspeople’s secrets and innermost thoughts. The floaters from celebrities become the most coveted to catch and keep

The last story in this collection is “The Bloody Story of Shirosuna”. Dr. Furuhata moves to a small village where the townsfolk are all weak and emaciated. Perplexed at what could possibly be afflicting everyone in town, he starts an investigation that reveals a disturbing secret.

This is a strong addition to the Junji Ito Story Collection series that Viz Media has been releasing. The body horror in all of the stories is up to par with the best of Ito’s work, such as Uzumaki and Gyo. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Kirsten, Reply

Graphic Novel Review: Tomie: Complete Deluxe Edition by Junji Ito

Tomie: Complete Deluxe Edition by Junji Ito

Viz Media, 2016

ISBN: 9781421590561

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

Femme fatale Tomie Kawakami, with long dark hair, hypnotic eyes, and a signature mole under her left eye, makes men love her, regardless of their age. She drives them to madness and sometimes murder, whether the target is a rival or herself. Dismemberment is the common treatment of her corpse, which comes with unexpected results. Her body has the ability to regenerate, multiply, and animate.

Chapter 1 opens with Reiko, Tomie’s classmate and best friend, discussing the titular character’s death. However, Tomie returns during the middle of a classroom lecture, much to the shock of everyone. Tomie’s death is told in a flashback. When the class heads out for a field trip, Tomie and the teacher are having a conversation where it is revealed they are involved in an affair. This turns into an argument and Tomie falls off the cliffside. The teacher and students agree to dispose of the body by dismembering and passing all 42 pieces out to everyone with instructions to dump the pieces in different places. Tomie’s heart is given to Reiko for disposal. Upon Tomie’s return, Reiko and another classmate want to turn themselves in for what happened, but the rest of the class gives chase, only to be rescued, in a way, by Tomie. At the end of the chapter, Reiko has moved and wonders about her mysterious friend. The last panel reveals a heart regenerating limbs and a face that has the same mole and telltale beauty in a cave near the beach.

This first chapter sets the tone for the entire manga. Ultimately, the reader is left with more questions than answers, but Ito still manages to tell a compelling story. Is Tomie a monster, or is it possible that depending on the chapter she is the reflection of humanity’s fears and obsessions? She can dig into the minds of the men she attracts, often by a mere glance. She’s often sweet to her victims (or targets} one minute, and insufferably cruel the next. Tomie is adept at gaslighting anyone she interacts with. In one chapter, a piece of her is kept in a vat in the basement of Morita Hospital. When Tomie fully regenerates, the doctor responsible for the experiment attempts to take ownership of her, which goes badly for him and those involved. In another chapter, two men are obsessed with Tomie, both convinced that their rival’s’ version is the false Tomie and needs to be murdered.

That is not to say that everyone that comes into Tomie’s crosshairs is an appropriate target. A young woman babysits for a deranged couple who found a swaddled baby Tomie on their property one night. The infant is obsessed with anything red, and the parents are driven to do everything they can to accommodate their new child. Another chapter, which is rather disturbing, reveals that Tomie affects the mind of a child so much that he becomes obsessed with her to the point of denying his real mother and starts calling Tomie by that title. Her tendencies to seduce men are leveled at this young boy and can be considered grooming behavior.

This volume is more than the story of Tomie. It is the evolution of Ito in his storytelling and his artwork. With over 700 pages, the omnibus is massive. The first installment of the Tomie series was published in 1987 and the last in 2000. Ito’s artwork and storytelling becomes more detailed over time, so the volume not only provides a great story but also a kind of archive of Ito’s work. This was not the last appearance of Tomie, as there was a series of films produced between 1998 and 2011. This was my first exposure to Tomie, which ultimately led me to the manga. These are worth a look if you are so inclined. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Kirsten, Reply

Booklist: Final Girls

Wow, final girls have really had a great summer! July saw the release of The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (reviewed here), and with the very end of August, I see Stephen Graham Jones’ newest book, My Heart Is A Chainsaw, is being released. I have not had the opportunity to read that yet, but I highly recommend The Final Girls Support Group (on a side note, my daughter was delighted that the characters were getting therapy).

The final girl is the survivor who takes down the monster in slasher movies. When fiction touches on her, it’s usually in a meta sort of way. Here are a couple of titles to try out if you are in the mood for a tale about final girls.

Final Girls by Riley Sager follows Quincy Carpenter. the lone survivor of a massacre at a cabin in the woods ten years earlier. Quincy, along with two other girls, Lisa and Sam, who survived slasher-style massacres, were labeled “Final Girls” by the media. She has done her best to move on, finding a boyfriend and starting a baking blog, but things start to fall apart when Lisa apparently dies from suicide, leaving a message on Quincy’s voicemail. Then Sam, who has been off the grid for years, appears at Quincy’s door and Quincy’s carefully constructed life starts to fall apart. The twist in this story was not what I expected it to be. Sager does a great job of deconstructing the final girl trope and this was a very difficult book to put down.

Final Girls by Mira Grant introduces Esther Hoffman, a journalist determined to debunk proprietary virtual reality technology that situates participants in horror movie scenarios to force them to face their worst fears. The scientist in charge, Dr. Jennifer Webb, challenges Esther to try it out with her. Events out of their control result in the two of them being trapped in the virtual reality scenario together, with disturbing results.

Final Girl Pocket Manga vol. 1 by David Hutchison drops four girls in a seemingly abandoned, isolated town, where they are stalked by its residents, and must escape their nightmare situation. Only one of them can be the final girl, though… Readers voted for their choice of final girl, and a bloody, full color climax reveals the survivor.

The Last Final Girl is also by Stephen Graham Jones. Taking a . chance with an experimental format, he has written it in a screenplay format, following the structure of a slasher movie. His love of the genre is clear, with many references to existing movies and “in-jokes”. The structure and the dependence of the audience’s understanding of the text on comprehension mean this will appeal to a very niche audience, but that audience will love it. Graham has also written an amazing final girl in his last novel, The Only Good Indians.

The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky starts us out with a final girl– Rachel Chavez, who was attacked in her home and survived. Rachel is a scholarship student at a fancy private school who starts out with no friends, until she discovers a secret club of horror lovers, The Mary Shelley Society, who create “fear tests”, horror scenarios that they try out on friends, classmates, and family. There’s no way this could end badly, right?