When modern audiences think of masters of horror, there are a few names that assuredly come to mind. People like Stephen King, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven have all made massive contributions to the genre at large and solidified their names as being synonymous with the idea of terror; even those who haven’t seen all of their work can usually name The Shining, or Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. But once you widen that scope outside of the Americas, quite a few more people join the list, including one of the most (morbidly) beloved manga artists of all-time.
Junji Ito published his first piece, Tomie, in the pages of Monthly Halloween back in 1987 and never looked back. He’s written and illustrated countless tales of the macabre and the truly unsettling, from lesser-known short stories like The Hanging Balloons and The Enigma of Amigara Fault to longer, more iconic works such as Uzumaki and the ongoing Tomie series. Calling him a legendary figure in the genre would be an understatement, reinforced by the sheer number of times his art has been adapted to the screen: 10 movies based on the Tomie series, a few animated TV shows, and an adaptation of Tomio directed by Ito himself. Nowm there’s a new one on the way, a TV series guaranteed to bring nightmares to a whole new audience.
