Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

By Comix

Aztecs were like the Vikings of the Americas; they were brutal, strong, and had a penchant for worshipping their gods through the blood of their enemies. With an empire that spread from Central Mexico to Northern Guatemala, the Aztecs were a force to be reckoned with, not only by neighboring cities but by the conquistadores who were foolish enough to step on their land. Unfortunately for the warring tribe, the Spanish eventually wiped out a large portion of the population and raided whatever was left, single-handedly destroying them. Sacrifice, by Dark Horse comics, throws a large monkey wrench into history by presenting an alternative to this well-known tale, in the form of a time-travelling boy determined to save the endangered race. A surprisingly engrossing read steeped in the past of a long gone war, Sacrifice is a must-read for fans of both history and the occult.

The comic starts with a suicidal teen named Hector, whose friend just busted him out the local crazy house after a failed attempt at his life. As they are shooting the breeze, Hector suddenly gets hit with a violent seizure and shoots off into a world hundreds of years before he was born. Finding himself in a thick jungle far from where he was, he, like, almost immediately, gets caught by a tribe of Aztecs and is taken back to their leader. The tribe starts to argue amongst themselves about what to do with Hector, but thanks to Hector’s sun-dial tattoo, he is saved from the sacrificial altar and deemed to be a new priest. Soon we find out that there is more to the Aztecs’ problems than mere squabbling, especially in respect to god worship and human sacrifice, and with Hector seemingly falling from the sky, it is up to him help resolve these matters. As he attempts to appease everyone around him while trying to find a way home, more figures come out of the woodwork; most worryingly, these include the Spanish. As their invasion draws closer, Hector does what he can to prevent the inevitable bloodshed, in so doing changing the face of history forever.

Sacrifice is one of those comics you don’t really see coming. A mix of real-life events with a touch of the bizarre, it’s a bit different from other warrior-in-little-clothing titles. While it definitely doesn’t shy away from the blood and guts of war, that is not its main focus. The comic spends a lot more time trying to explain the relationships between two of the Aztec tribes and delves deep into their religious natures and blood rites. While it’s a bit slow-burning in the beginning, it takes all of that build up and uses it as a jumping off point into a well-written story about gods, sacrifices, and the philosophy of life and death. Clashing the moral ideals of the past and present, Sacrifice paints a beautiful portrait of where civilization used to be versus who we are now and how little things have really changed. The ‘magic’ parts are fantastically done and add to an already epic tale, instead of cheapening the overall work. In short, it’s pretty wicked.

The comic is a collaborative work between writer Sam Humphries and Dalton Rose. Humphries is better known for his work on the Marvel title The Ultimates and Uncanny X-Force. He has also done some smaller works such as Fanboys Vs. Zombies and John Carter: The Gods of Mars, but he is still relatively new. The writing and dialogue here is very smooth, if not a bit slow. There were a couple of parts where I was tempted to drop the comic, but trust me, stick it out. It really pays off. The art by Dalton Rose plays perfectly with the tone of the story, combining a mix of indie comic style dipped in traditional Aztec art. It’s a very clean style that could transfer to other titles, but it really works for Sacrifice. Rose has worked with other writers on independent titles, but like Humphries, he’s also pretty new. From what I gathered, he studied at Savannah College of Art and Design and just went into comics from there. Honestly, I’m hoping to see more from this pair in upcoming years.

Sacrifice was originally self-published with the support of various artists and writers in the comic world. Dark Horse is officially going to release the collected edition in a beautiful hardcover graphic novel on August 21. This girl managed to get a sneak peek and it’s a pretty comprehensive release with sketches, alternative covers, and process notes. With a very reasonable price of twenty bucks, this is definitely worth picking up.

By Keri O’Shea

I always fucking hated Beverly Hills 90210 with an absolute passion. As imports from the US go, it’s right up there with Ruby Wax and the school prom: a tedious, aspirational display of not-very-much being enacted by people who were far too old to be hanging around a school anyway. So, you can imagine how far my heart sank when I received the press release for Gregg Araki’s movie Nowhere, and found it gleefully described as ‘a Beverly Hills 90210 episode on acid’. Oh. dear. As Nowhere is also part of a trilogy, I should probably offer another mea culpa here, by saying that I haven’t seen the two other films – in fact, this was my first experience of an Araki film altogether. This may explain some of my enmity towards Nowhere. I accept that. The rest of it can be explained by the fact that this is just a terrible film.

Plot doesn’t seem to figure all that highly here, and nor does characterisation, but here – essentially – is what happens. ‘Dark’ (now how’s that for a nickname you chose for yourself?) is a teenage boy going through a totally bogus existential crisis whereby it doesn’t seem like anyone, anywhere will ever truly love him for himself. He ponders this crisis when he’s not drawling witticisms, participating in slow-mo masturbation or indulging in his other favourite hobby, video editing. He adores his sorta girlfriend Mel, but she’s forever hooking up with megabitch Lucifer (and again, make up your own nickname dear?) and then, everyone they know seems to be in the throes of various dysfunctional, check-box kinky relationships and flirtations with drugs. This is the order of the day as they all rock up to a party one Friday night and head for even more weirdness along the way…

In the interests of balance, and to try to be as positive as I can, I’ll get on and talk about the things I liked about the film. Well, it certainly boasts an interesting, distinguished cast, many of whom went on to do great work. We have James Duval, Heather Graham, Mena Suvari, Christina Applegate, Rachel True, and in cameo roles, Traci Lords, Rose McGowan and Shannen Doherty. You can’t deny, that’s a hell of a roll call. In terms of how the film was shot (as opposed to why, ahem), I liked lots of aspects of the cinematography. Coming at this film from the perspective of someone who usually reviews new films which often have identical, washed-out colour palates, it was refreshing to see such a bright, bold film, peopled with bright, bold people; 90s sub-cultures definitely had more variety to them, and that’s reflected here. Lots of the sets are superb, interesting to look at, and benefit by the interesting use of lighting, whilst a lot of the songs on the soundtrack showcased the best of the sleazy alt-rock of the decade.

As I’ve said elsewhere, though, a film is not a painting. A film can look good, but if that’s all it can do, then it’s not enough – and Nowhere, ultimately, smacked of hedonism as imagined by someone who really doesn’t get out that much. Adding the correct jumble of drug and sex references and making a party the crux of the plot? I felt embarrassed and drained, by the end. The script, overblown but not so overblown that I could laugh at it or with it, is peppered with silly names, sillier insults and comes delivered by a horde of doe-eyed bulimics and unbelievable junkies. The inclusion of a rape scene felt like yet another cynical decision, the about-face fantastical elements which crept in towards the end of the film failed to add anything in the way of depth or exposition, and – well – all I could think of during Nowhere how much I now want to re-watch Fire Walk With Me to cleanse my palate.

Sure, it could just be that I don’t ‘get it’. That’s fine. I can live with that. My main sentiment, though, by the time the credits rolled was that Nowhere perfectly illustrates the problem with aspiring to surrealism. Here’s a truism: films which aspire to surrealism almost invariably suck. To come back to Fire Walk With Me, that’s a film which seems to naturally embody the thrill of the weird in the course of its storytelling and, as with all David Lynch movies which I’ve seen, it works very well indeed. Surrealism should be a pleasing side-effect, not a guiding principle, and if you try too hard to be weird, you’ll probably wind up being weak. Oh well, if you’re an Araki fan, you might be pleased to know that this upcoming DVD re-release will feature an audio commentary by the man himself, as well as by stars James Duval, Rachel True and Jordan Ladd. Meh.

Nowhere will be released by Second Sight on 26th August 2013.

By Kit Rathenar

I think this may mark the most times that Brutal As Hell has ever reviewed a single movie, given that we’ve covered this one here, here and here already. That being the case, I was asked in this review of Monster Pictures’ UK release of the already-legendary anthology film The ABCs of Death to focus on the DVD extras as well as the finished product itself. As it happens, the extras are almost all specific to the individual shorts, so I’m simply going to go through, do some ultra-brief reviews and tell you what you get for your money in the extras for each short in turn…

A – Apocalypse. I’m impressed with Nacho Vigalondo for squeezing trauma, tragedy and a twist into such a short piece with both humanity and narrative sophistication. Sadly, the only extra here is a short clip showing how one of the special effects was done – a shame for a film that was very much more about character and story than it was about splatter to begin with.

B – Bigfoot. Adrían Garcia Bogliano offers an evocative, well-executed and darkly playful take on the myth of the boogeyman. This one stood well on its own, but the DVD adds a routine but watchable “making of” clip that isn’t terribly informative, but still conveys the impression of a team of professionals not afraid to have fun doing their jobs.

C – Cycle. A tightly focused little exercise in the macabre that answers no questions but leaves the viewer with a strangely queasy sense of comprehension nonetheless, from Ernesto Díaz Espinoza. As extras, he’s provided a couple of deleted scenes – whose deletion makes perfect sense, as they wouldn’t have added anything to this stiletto-sharp little piece for being left in.

D – Dogfight (see main image). Marcel Sarmiento supplies my favourite film of the entire ABCs with this emotional curveball of a short that takes the relationship between a man and his best friend in a gut-punching new direction. If anyone in the entire ABCs deserves a Best Actor award, it’s Riley the dog; which is why I was delighted to discover that the “making of” bonus feature shows – with reassuring openness – the tricks, effects and awe-inspiring levels of dog-training that went into creating this beautifully savage film without harming either human or animal stars. A genuine masterpiece.

E – Exterminate. I’m not a fan of spiders and Angela Bettis does nothing to change my mind with this disappointingly simplistic riff on a particular horror trope that thankfully is mostly restricted to the realms of urban legend. No extras.

F – Fart. There are two kinds of people in the world – those who find fart jokes funny and those who don’t. From what I can tell, most of the population of Japan consists of the former, and certainly Noburu Iguchi is one of them. Despite its resoundingly absurd premise this light-hearted little romance-with-a-twist had me laughing for the duration, and the attached making-of reveals that it did pretty much the same for the cast and crew. I defy even the most po-faced critic not to chuckle somewhere along the line here.

G – Gravity. A snapshot of tragedy in paradise from Andrew Traucki, utterly stripped of context but still leaving a coldness in the gut. No extras.

H – Hydro-Electric Diffusion. Thomas Malling’s surreal riff on a Nazisploitation flick could have equally well been filed under F – for either Furries or Fascists, which aren’t two things I usually expect to see together. Despite this, taken for what it is this tale of the good, the bad and Third Reich mad science is well worth a look and a smile. The extras here are a little too extensive and repetitive (the parallel screening of the finished and making-of versions of the film doesn’t add anything to the making-of itself) but the how-to of making really convincing anthropomorphic animal masks might be of interest to many viewers and practical use to a few…

I – Ingrown. I was halfway to writing off Jorge Michael Grau’s painful little lock-in sequence of a woman’s victimisation and death as mere torture porn until I saw, in the final credits, the words “2015 women murdered in the last 10 years in Mexico… the horror is not on the screen”. And when Grau explains in the making-of how this message was deliberately framed to dovetail with the film itself, I realised that the compilers of the ABCs did this stark little piece a huge disservice when they moved all the credits to the end en masse. Respect to Grau for sacrificing his chance to make a merely artistic statement, in favour of this obviously far more personally significant one.

J – Jidai-geki (“Samurai movie”). About all I could glean from this is that Yudai Yamaguchi is a fan of funny faces, and the behind-the-scenes footage mostly reveals that it’s surprisingly hard to pull the right funny faces at the right moment and then film them effectively. Comical but disposable.

K – Klutz. I was almost expecting the K to be for Khazi, since once again we’re in the realms of bathroom humour with this animated short from Anders Morgenthaler. Gross as it gets, but with little beyond that to its name. No extras.

L – Libido. I’m somewhat glad that Timo Tjahjanto didn’t contribute anything else to go with this ultra-extreme piece of psychosexual horror, since I was wincing enough sitting through the piece itself. An endurance test for both the characters and the audience, this film will leave you either unable to masturbate for a week, or possibly, for some people, needing to do so the second the credits roll. While I was definitely in the former camp I’m still impressed with the sheer horrific imagination on show here. No extras.

M – Miscarriage. I think Ti West was stuck for inspiration, as he’s fallen back on a cheap combination of hot-button subject matter, and a quick gross-out punchline. There’s a nasty whiff of misogyny, too, in the choice of “baby mama” as the designation of the main and only character in the credits. No extras.

N – Nuptials. There’s an old joke about a man who bought a parrot that used to live in a brothel. I can only assume that joke is told in Thailand too, as Banjong Pisathanakun turns a variant on the idea into a short that goes from cuteness to catastrophe in one swift slide. Predictable but neatly executed. No extras.

O – Orgasm. I adored Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet’s magnificent Amer but was disappointed in this, not least because in its plotless, eventless sensory overload it could easily be a cutting-room outtake from another project that needed a sex scene shortening. I do love those two but this time, I think they’re faking. No extras.

P – Pressure. Originally titled “Paramaribo” for the capital of Suriname where it was filmed, this visceral, sympathetic portrayal of how far someone might go for what they love held my attention with its rich visuals and powerful, dialogue-free soundtrack. The extras here are interviews with director Simon Rumley, a shy man who seems much less at ease in front of a camera than behind one, and cinematographer Milton Kam – both interesting viewing, if low-key. I was touched by the compassion and lack of prejudice shown by both men, despite their dealing with several different kinds of social marginalisation and stigma here both onscreen and off – two thumbs up.

Q – Quack. Someone had to make a meta-film about the challenges of making a film based on an awkward letter, and Adam Wingard rises to the challenge with the help of a duck. Sadly, I suspect it’s because he genuinely didn’t have any better ideas. No extras.

R – Removed. Running Dogfight a very close second for my personal favourite here, Srdjan Spasojevic’s contribution mixes visceral body horror with an evocatively cryptic plot that must surely be only a snapshot of an entire story waiting to be told. If there’s one film here that I’d like to see expanded to a feature, this is the one. The only bonus here is a photo gallery featuring a handful of on-set snaps, neatly reflecting the odd sense of frustration-born-of-admiration that the film itself creates. Show me more, dammit!

S – Speed. Jake West almost lost me at the opening of this faux-grindhouse tale of two women, one car and a monstrous pursuer thanks to some painfully wooden acting, but the combination of this film’s raw, hyper-chromatic beauty and the dark twist of its ending left me forced to admit I’d enjoyed it. No extras.

T – Toilet. Yet more animated bathroom humour, this time of an even blacker tint, from Lee Hardcastle; a man whose claymation filmmaking style is so stripped-down that when asked to provide a behind-the-scenes, he simply talks to the camera for three minutes and in that time manages to explain his entire process from storyboard to completion. While I’m not a huge fan of this particular piece, I’ve got to applaud his genuine talent.

U – Unearthed. The death of a monster from a slightly unusual perspective, courtesy of Ben Wheatley. I think this suffered from being a short, as I’d have cared a lot more about the events if I’d seen the rest of the prior plot. No extras.

V – Vagitus. Kaare Andrews attempts to squeeze an entire futuristic dystopia into a very small space with moderate success; though as with Removed, this is a scenario that could clearly have been expanded to much greater length, as the inclusion of a deleted scene makes further apparent. The lengthy behind the scenes segment has some interesting moments, mostly pertaining to the FX and props, but was rather spoiled for me by its self-congratulatory tone. As for the tedious “Animatics” segment that consists entirely of the storyboard being run on-screen with the dialogue of the film recited over the top, the less said the better.

W – WTF. Another take on the “we’ve got no ideas for this letter” gimmick, according to Jon Schnepp the “plot” here is about the contents of people’s subconscious minds becoming real. All I can say is that I’m glad my own subconscious isn’t that of an attention-deficient man-child, then, because I’d hate to deal with this on a daily basis. The behind-the-scenes footage only reaffirms this film’s general air of delight at its own idiocy, as does the blooper reel that consists entirely of Schnepp and a crony laughing too hard at their own dialogue to actually deliver it. Unfortunately, they’re probably the only ones who were.

X – XXL. Xavier Gens has created a masterpiece of nightmarish social commentary with this tragic, traumatic take on what our society’s obsession with skinny women is doing to the rest of us who can’t fit into those jeans. I watched this through my fingers out of pure empathic distress, and yet was glad every second that someone had had the courage to create this horrifying testament to the unreasonable expectations and the suffering that so many women deal with in silence every day. No extras.

Y – Youngbuck. A creepy, clingingly unpleasant little fable of abused innocence and deserved revenge that Jason Eisener has for some reason dressed up entirely in eighties trappings; from the look, to the feel, to the acid-neon colours, to the soundtrack. Obscure, macabre and strangely compelling. No extras.

Z – Zetsumetsu (Extinction). While Yoshihiro Nishimura’s deranged portrait of an alternate Japan where nuclear energy got way out of hand has a certain weird charm for its sheer joie de vivre, the behind the scenes footage demonstrates that when a film didn’t make any sense to start with, seeing how it was done won’t leave you much the wiser. Oversexed, politically incorrect and utterly chaotic, this is at least a truly fitting end to the rollercoaster ride that is the ABCs of Death.

There’s one final extra on the second disc that I have to mention, though: AXS TV’s “A look at the ABCs of Death”. A short teaser reel featuring snippets from the films and insights from some of the directors, it’s a watchable little piece that would certainly have made me want to see the ABCs if I hadn’t already – but the thing that most caught my eye about it was a single red screen featuring the pull quote “Bloody fun – Brutal as Hell”. See, I told you we’d reviewed this thing too many times…

By Tristan Bishop

If you’re in love with film, you tend to find something to enjoy in nearly every film you watch, whether it be a performance, or camera-work, or (in the case of horror fans), a nice bit of gore. Most films aren’t great, a lot aren’t very good, but there will usually be something to hook the film buff and keep us watching. Once in a while, however, a film comes along that is so misguided in concept and execution that it beggars belief and makes watching the thing a chore. Ladies and gentlemen, I present, The Sigil.

How about this for a set-up? We learn that a mysterious event wiped out 41 people in a house in LA. At the time the government released a statement claiming the disaster was caused by an undiscovered uranium source. Yes. A very very VERY localised uranium source. So localised, that even the house six feet away hasn’t been evacuated. Devan, whose brother died in the house, decides to go on a road trip to the house in order to come to terms with his death (because rooting around in a uranium-rich environment is generally the sane way to deal with grief). She brings along her friend Nate, who brings along his camera-toting friend, as they have decided the journey should be documented on film (yep, this is, at least partially, a found footage film). Nate and Logan, being massive arseholes, decide that the point of the journey is to ‘blow the lid’ on the government conspiracy, rather than to help Devan come to terms with her loss. They attempt to break into the house on arrival, but are stopped by the young neighbour, Miki (played by her namesake Miki Matteson), who takes them aside and reveals that not all of the people in the house that night are dead…

It feels a bit harsh to trash a first feature, but in this case it’s probably well-deserved – a low budget does not mean you can skimp on a script, or some good ideas, and it certainly does not mean you can wheel out the now-tired found footage sequences that have been plaguing the direct-to-DVD market for far too long and expect not to piss off your intended audience. The set-up is patently ridiculous – it’s such an obvious government cover-up that no-one would have believed it, and those involved certainly wouldn’t have just left the house unguarded for any passing conspiracy-theorist to go and have a look. The characters are the biggest bunch of dickheads I’ve had the misfortune to spend 70 minutes with (at least it’s short!) and this is really not helped by amateur performances all-round (excepting the generally OK Matteson – credit where credit is due!). The found footage format is mercifully only used for about 50% of the film, but even this is no real saving grace with a film which even at such a short length feels stretched to breaking point. When the climax does come, there is a twist that, if it had been handled with any amount of skill by the film-makers, could have been rather good, but here it is signposted for a good half of the film, and the climatic sequences themselves are choreographed so ham-fistedly that they elicit no more than a head-slap and groan from the viewer.

So please, first-time directors: if you value your audience and aren’t, as I suspect in this case, contemptuous of horror fans and you’re just latching onto a cheap genre as a way of getting your name out there, get a script, rehearse it until it works, dump the found footage (unless you’re willing to work on other technical aspects such as sound design – which the recent The Entity got right), or at the very least give us a bucket of the red stuff, because we won’t stand for this crap for much longer.

Review by Comix

Japan has no luck. If it’s not a natural disaster destroying half the coast, then it’s Godzilla or some other godforsaken monstrosity tearing apart whatever’s left. After so many crises and near brushes with death, you’d think the Land of the Rising Sun would be prepared for the possibility of anything, but sometimes, even the most carefully laid plans can’t foresee the danger right under its nose. Enter Parasyte, a comic of epic proportions which starts with something incredibly small: spores. One of the earlier adult horror comics to have made the transition over to English, Parasyte is still fondly remembered and read as one of the pinnacles of alternative manga. At a time when Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z were forming the minds of young kids, Parasyte – along with Viz’s adult collection Pulp and early Dark Horse manga – was shaping the imaginations of the older readers who were looking for more mature titles following the immense popularity of Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Vampire Hunter D. Parasyte offered up exactly what they were looking for, along with blood, boobs, aliens, and a possessed left hand that craves human flesh. In short, good times.

There are two versions which got released in English, one with Americanized names and one with the original Japanese (I’ll get into that later), but for the sake of the review, I’m going to stick with the Japanese originals. The comic begins with our hero, Shinichi Izumi, who lives with his parents in the suburbs of Tokyo. Shinichi is pretty much your average teenager; he likes music, girls, and being awkward. One night, as he’s chilling in his room, strange, alien spores flutter down from the sky and settle over Japan. As they land, worm-like creatures crawl from the shells and begin to body-snatch anything they can get their ‘hands’ on. One, though, has the unfortunate luck to try to take over Shinichi and while attempting to crawl in through the kid’s ear, is suddenly stopped by a pair of headphones and mistakenly enters his arm. Here begins a journey of strange relationships and bloody adventures, as the now dubbed arm-parasite Migi, is forced to share a body with Shinichi, who is less than excited to have his arm possessed. As they learn to get along, other body-snatched humans/parasites begin coming out of the woodwork, curious and disgusted by Migi’s failed attempt to take over Shinichi’s body and keen on eating and taking over the entire human race. In classic heroic tale style, the pair’s destiny becomes clear as they realize they are the only thing standing between Earth and a total alien invasion.

Parasyte is a classic tale of aliens and savior-of-the-universe type story, but what really stands out are the parasites themselves. They are incredibly gnarly. The way the parasites work is that not only do they take over people, but they snatch up anything that moves and, for food, they eat the same type of creature that they had become. Essentially, they became cannibals. As they take over the brain, they kill the host and adapt to their surroundings, only to come out when they have to eat or fight other parasites for resources and man, oh man, do they fight dirty. The parasite can manipulate the host body into various shapes, a la The Thing, and attack with various shape shifts (such as splitting their heads open or making blades with their arms), reinforcing human strength, and dodging bullets and knife attacks with quickened speed. They lack emotion and would run over a squadron of grandmas if it meant having a nice old lady goulash for dinner. This comic perfectly plays on our fear of other people, especially if you’re paranoid; but on a side note, it does have its share of lighter moments. Despite everything, Shinichi is still a teenager with plenty of girls coming and going. So, if I really had to to summarize Parasyte, it would be as a horror high school story aimed at adults.

Now, when I say it was one of the first horror comics to be translated into English, that doesn’t mean it was one the first horror comics in general. Japan has an incredible history of horror comics, some even reaching cult status among horror circles, but Parasyte (first released by Mixx/Tokyo Pop) was one of the initial comics to transition into English. Also, since it was one of the earlier mangas to hit the translated comic market, it was first adapted in a flipped format (left-to-right instead of Japan’s right-to-left) and the names were changed to sound more American, so as to appeal to audiences abroad. Shinichi became just Shin, a character named Reiko Tamura became Tamara Rockford, and Migi (whose name means ‘right’ in Japanese) became Lefty because as they flipped the comic for the English-speaking audience, Migi wasn’t a right hand any more. There was also a second version released by Del Rey that printed a translated version as well, but this time keeping the Japanese format and all the names went back to their originals. Really, it comes down to preference, but it’s an interesting observation at the lengths foreign countries used to go to just to appeal to other domestic industries.

Parasyte is written and illustrated by sci-fi/horror mangaka (manga artist) Hitoshi Iwaaki, who, along with his characters during the Mixx/Tokyo Pop run, also got his name romanticized, but only to Hitosi Iwaaki. Though he has written tons of other comics, only Parasyte has managed to hop over the pond. His art style, while not exactly distinctive, does break away from the standard big-eyed cartoons and goes for a more subdued style, focusing more on story than large and flashy splash panels (which actually made the monsters more intense.) This was especially noticeable when Parasyte was getting big in the nineties; a time when long legs and short skirts were all it took to get famous. Parasyte was first published in Japan’s manga magazine Morning, but moved over to Afternoon after a few issues, where it remained for its entire run from 1990 to 1995. When it was finally collected into books, Japan released a total of ten volumes, whic,h oddly enough, became twelve volumes through Mixx/Tokyo Pop, then eight volumes through Del Rey after Mixx/Tokyo Pop edition went out of print. Why the volumes were different is beyond me, but there you go.

As I mentioned, there are a couple of different versions for you to pick up. As always, there is the Japanese version, but unless you know Japanese, there’s really no point. While the Mixx/Tokyo Pop edition is easier to read with the flipped format and less Japanese-y names, it’s also more censored; it tends to Americanize cultural references and cuts out like, tons, of boobs (yet keeps all the violence). Also, the Mixx/Tokyo Pop editions are out of print, so while some books can still be bought for a dollar, others are going to be harder than hell to get. I suggest getting the Del Rey version. Along with the proper art and names, the volumes are thicker, so you don’t have to buy so many books, and they are way easier to find. It’s a great read for fans of body horror who have been looking for a fix after a John Carpenter marathon.