Mansect

From the publisher: Humans grow and age. They change. But always we are the same person, the same creature. Not so with insects, whose powers of metamorphosis alter not only their shape and size, but also their very beings. And now, because of one young man's unhealthy obsession with bugs, humans also find themselves transformed into disgusting, decrepit, bloodsucking insect monsters! Published in 1975, Koga Shinichi's MANSECT is a shonen horror classic by one of the undisputed masters of the genre. Swarming with mesmerizingly gnarly imagery and freakish bio-evolutionary speculation, Koga here demonstrates why his name is uttered with the same quivering reverence as horror manga legends Mizuki Shigeru, Umezz Kazuo, and Ito Junji. MANSECT is the third volume of SMUDGE, a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga, curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg. From the Publisher’s Weekly review: This viscerally horrifying vintage manga by the late Koga, best known for the Japanese manga and film series Eko Eko Azarak, marks his long-awaited English-language debut. Hideo is a lonely young man who only keeps company with his insect menagerie. One day, he finds himself going through a metamorphosis similar to his beloved caterpillars. A cottonlike substance emerges from a cut on his leg, then from his pores, to imprison him in a cocoon. After his home catches on fire, he emerges from the ashes in a wraithlike shape and begins to attack and turn other townspeople into insect-human hybrids. A young boy who picks up Hideo’s gnarled hand, which resembles a tree root, starts aging at an impossibly fast rate; another boy, Goichi, realizes that his father, who was presumed dead, has also been turned into a monster. Koga’s stark black and white artwork walks a fine line between overwrought and perfectly gruesome as he pushes the conceit to glorious, gory extremes, combining the ick factor of insects with body horror and social critique. “Human society is so stupid and cruel. I see that clearly now that I’m an insect,” opines Goichi’s father. Admirers of Junji Ito and Kazuo Umezz will revel in this