Ryan Holmberg – författare

A headless busty blonde, a face-stealing psychopath, a sleazy serial-killer sculptor, a horny handsome hunchback, a vengeful caterpillar cuckold, a torturous hangover in the pits of hell. Welcome to the raunchy and gristly world of FACE MEAT, from the decadent imagination of outlaw polymath Bonten Taro—ex-kamikaze, ex-yakuza, singer, songwriter, actor, world-famous tattooist, husband of seven, and underappreciated pioneer of “pinky violence” femme fatales and adult horror manga. While Mizuki Shigeru and Umezz Kazuo were paving the way for horror in shonen and shojo magazines in the 1960s, Bonten was secretly doing the same in erotic men’s rags—and the results are as trashy as you’d expect. With an essay by Bonten booster and B-gekiga expert Kunisawa Hiroshi, FACE MEAT includes fourteen hair- and pants-raising stories that have never before been assembled under a single cover in any language! FACE MEAT is the fourth volume of SMUDGE, a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga, curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg.

Art and literature historians of the future will be flabbergasted that Yokoyama existed in our time. He is a visionary on the level of William Blake. PLAZA is a parade of invention, set to the beat of turning pages.- Dash Shaw (Cryptozoo, Discipline) Bigger, bolder, and louder than ever before, neo-manga artist Yokoyama Yuichi is back with PLAZA! Inspired by Carnaval in Brazil, PLAZA offers a maniacal extravaganza of marching, dancing, leaping, firing, cheering, smashing, and exploding over the course of 225 eye-and-eardrum-confounding pages. Originally published in Japan in 2019, this oversize English edition of PLAZA brings to full, hyper-animated life the spectacular graphic art of this genre-defying work of avant-garde comics.

Nejishiki unveils the most iconic scenes from Yoshiharu Tsuge s highly respected body of work alongside his most beloved stories. A cornerstone of Japan s legendary 1960s counterculture that galvanized avant-garde manga and comics criticism, the title story follows an injured young man as he wanders through a village of strangers in search of emotional and physical release. Other stories in this collection follow a series of weary travelers who while away sultry nights and face menacing doppelgangers. Even banal activities like afternoon strolls uncover unsavory impulses. The emotionally and erotically charged imagery collected in this third volume remains as shocking and vivid today as it did upon its debut fifty years ago. Tsuge s stories push boundaries, abruptly crossing the threshold of conventional storytelling. Unassuming protagonists venture further into eerie symbolism against a shadowy, perceptibly dreamlike landscape easily mistaken for the real world. The angst that pervades postwar Japanese society threatens to devour his characters and their pastoral sensibilities as each protagonist s wanderlust turns surreal.

The wife of Japan s most lauded manga-ka documents a year in their lives with her own artistry. In 1981, Fujiwara Maki began a picture diary about daily life with her son and husband, the legendary manga author Tsuge Yoshiharu. Publishing was not her original intention. I wanted to record our family s daily life while our son, Shosuke, was small. But as 8mm cameras were too expensive and we were poor, I decided on the picture diary format instead. I figured Shosuke would enjoy reading it when he got older. Drawn in a simple, personable style, and covering the same years fictionalized in Tsuge s final masterpiece The Man Without Talent, Fujiwara s journal focuses on the joys of daily life amidst the stresses of childrearing, housekeeping, and managing a depressed husband. A touching and inspiring testimony of one Japanese woman's resilience, My Picture Diary is also an important glimpse of the enigma that is Tsuge. Fujiwara s diary is unsparing. It provides a stark picture of the gender divide in their household: Tsuge sleeps until noon and does practically nothing. He never compliments her cooking, and dictates how money is spent. Not once is he shown drawing. And yet Fujiwara remains surprisingly empathetic toward her mercurial husband. Translated by Ryan Holmberg, this edition sheds light on Fujiwara's life, her own career in art, writing, and underground theater, and her extensive influence upon her husband's celebrated manga.

“UFOs are one of the world’s greatest mysteries...and I hope they stay that way. For the day that aliens reveal themselves may very well become the beginning of the end of life on Earth as we know it!”A flying saucer crashes deep in the mountains of Japan. Wary of the hyper-intelligent beings they find inside, the government hides from the public all news of the alien craft. But it’s not the strange visitors themselves that they should be afraid of—the real danger is the parasitic spores smuggled aboard! Will Earth survive the UFO MUSHROOM INVASION?!Originally published in 1976, Shirakawa Marina’s UFO MUSHROOM INVASION is a masterpiece of sci-fi horror. Drawing on his deep knowledge of Japanese folklore and the supernatural, Shirakawa created one of manga history’s cult classics and an unforgettably creepy entry in the canon of spore-horror. With an essay by weirdologist Udagawa Takeo, UFO MUSHROOM INVASION is the second volume of SMUDGE, a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga, curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg.

Have you ever pondered what it would be like to marry a gorilla? Or to have your deepest desires granted by a satanic genie? Have you ever considered sacrificing your children to culinary aliens, separating your soul from your body, or bioengineering a sex beast? If so, MY GORILLA FAMILY is for you! Comprising fourteen mind-melting stories from the early 1970s, Iijima Ichiro's MY GORILLA FAMILY offers an intimate, profoundly humanistic-and profoundly disturbing-introduction to one of the most bonkers imaginations in the history of Japanese comics. With an essay by wacko-manga archaeologist Onishi Shohei, MY GORILLA FAMILY is the fifth volume of SMUDGE, a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg.