Episode 48 - JunJi Ito

This episode starts with Gerry Conway's passing.  Rest in Peace to one of the greats.

I also talk about my weekend and FCBD 2026

Solo Episode! Hey Guys, we lost the Moon Knight audio, so we're starting MAYNGA Month a lil early with some Junji Ito overview.

This episode will also cover discuss Gerry Conway's passing, and FCBD 2026

Please Send Questions and Feedback to Any of the following: Vote for the Junji book or story you want to hear us chat about all through May!

Bluesky: @comicbooksbeyond.bsky.social
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Gmail: comicbooksbeyond@gmail.com

Check us out on Youtube as well!

Comic Books Beyond would like to thank:  The Crew of the Talking Comics Podcast, Brandon McNulty, Lisa and Brad from Comic Book Couples Counseling, Alex Jaffe, Jeremy Whitley, Jimmy Gaspero and John Klein III of Shadow and Flame with Magik Podcast. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey everybody, and welcome to the Comic Books Beyond Podcast. On this show, we're all about helping new or old readers find new stories. We focus on accessibility and demystifying the weird stuff, but we try to keep the magic alive, and we are anti-gatekeeping. I am your host, Vic, and we are gonna get into today's episode. Okay, so if I sound a little bummed out today, I am. Um unfortunately, we had a really cool episode, and um we had to scrap it. Uh we were recording our moon night episode. If uh you heard the last episode of the show, I mentioned this briefly. Um one second. Uh if you heard our last episode of the show, we mentioned this briefly. Um we had some technical difficulties with the app we were using, and I don't think we're gonna use it anymore. One of our hosts just couldn't stay connected, and instead of giving us one track with like cut up audio, it gave us like 50 tracks for him, and it I I just couldn't work with it. Like we were I I couldn't find a good way to do it, and I was honestly really stressed, and it really like bummed me out, and you know, so I didn't want to just do a clip show where I pulled in the best parts, it just kind of felt weird, and I it would still have been a ton of work to do that. So we might try to re-record that at some point, but yeah, but stuff happens, maybe I'll do like some kind something for it. I I don't know. But anyway, we're instead of talking about that, we're actually gonna kick off um manga month. And I want to actually talk a little bit about uh Junji Ito today. You know, this um this is gonna be uh a bit of a different kind of episode. Instead of talking about one book, we're just gonna kind of run through all of his books that I own. Uh, we're probably gonna gloss over a few. And here's what I want from you guys. If anything, any of these books sound particularly more interesting than others, I want you to write into the show, email us through Gmails, read reach out to us on Blue Sky, leave a Spotify comment, something like that, just let us know. Uh, and I'd love to do a full episode in our normal style on one of these and hopefully get some of the other hosts on. Um, the reason we're doing this instead of, you know, a normal episode is I want to give you guys an episode every week, even if it's not uh our normal style, it's as close as we can. And I I frankly, I just don't have time to do uh something that's gonna require a lot of research and editing and reading. And because I'm honestly leaving in about three days for um a little trip. Uh, we're all pretty busy right now. I don't think any of the hosts would be able to, any of the other hosts would be able to hop on. So I'm recording two editing, uh, two videos or uh two sessions back to back. And um we're I'm gonna just schedule them to go out and we're just gonna kind of go with that. And uh I I decided since it's May, we're gonna do a manga month. I I want to do a Minga month, we'll call it. So, you know, in in addition to just having to travel, uh, we're traveling for Garnet's husband's uh bachelor party, uh or soon-to-be husband's bachelor party. And uh on top of that, it's Cottie and mine's uh 12th wedding anniversary. I've got some work I have to do, you know, at my day job. And, you know, it's also summer or you know, getting to be spring in New York. And I have a lot of yard that I have to take care of. It's it's I I literally take a week off to work on that, and you know, I'm gonna do some work on the show and we'll we'll get the other episode up as quickly as we can. But yeah, uh, I'm I'm excited to talk about some manga because, you know, I'm really, you know, looking forward to doing some horror manga with you guys. I I am not a big manga person, to be honest, but the manga I like, I tend to really like it. And we're we're gonna be talking about horror for the next couple days or next couple weeks. Um, so now we're gonna start with Junji Ito, as he's a very popular um manga writer artist. I think the proper term is mangaka uh for that. No, I I don't know a ton about manga. I know a lot about Western comics, but just the manga I know, I know a little bit of. Um now I do really want to recommend a YouTube channel called uh Super EyPatch Wolf. Uh, he's pretty popular, so I imagine some of you have seen him. Uh, but he has some great videos on Junji Ito that I watched in like 2022. And this kind of led to my obsession with his work. And I I really never miss a Junji Ito release. Um the first time I remember reading his stuff was in the early 2000s or early to mid-2000s, maybe late. It was either high school or college. I graduated high school in 2006, so within two years of that, um our one of our co-hosts, Mike, actually handed me one of his books and it grossed me the hell out. And uh I finally finished it in 2022. So I I do like it. It just took me a long time to do it. Um, not sure if I said this already, but if this episode sounds a little more scripted than normal, uh, that's because it is more scripted than normal. Normally it's just me with an outline. This one is a bit more scripted because I had a few points I definitely wanted to hit on. Um, so what appeals to me about Junji Eto, it's pretty simple. I mean, he writes some of the most imaginative, imaginative horror out there. If I had to make a comparison to Western comics, in a way he reminds me of what Grant Morrison does. Uh now, Grant Morrison's imagination is out on Front Street, but Junji Ito's imagination is on Front Street, Main Street, and all the weird alleys you didn't know existed. Now, I love the idea of cosmic horror, and I thought it wasn't exactly possible for a horror comic to um work in a visual medium and until I read some of Junji Ito's work. While everyone is, you know, somewhat familiar with uh the racist piece of shit formerly known as uh HP Lovecraft, his work isn't really that adaptable, and honestly, it's more conceptually good than it is actually good. Um honestly, I read like Call of Cthulhu a long time ago, and it's just not that great. Like the idea is good, it's just so dated of writing, and it's old, stuffy old man writing that I just don't love it. Uh, but he's simply evoking more theoretical horror, and that's just not easy to do when it comes to like visual medium, ex unless you're Janji Ito. And he found a way to do that and draw it pretty consistently. The angles and the camera shots of his work, they're often considered oppressive or uncomfortable, and kind of like some of his panel layouts, like they they create this like uncanny value that doesn't look like a traditional comic page, while still also looking exactly like a comic page. And he can just push normal ideas past any logical limit. He'll do like an extended definition and of just like a fairly innocuous world or of an innocuous word, like like a like the word spiral, and he'll make it utterly terrifying. And while we all love to see, you know, total pieces of shit get what's coming to them, sometimes Junji Ito just he does something a lot worse. He'll sometimes just punish a character for just simply existing. You know, I can understand how this might not appeal to some people and it might just seem cruel and ugly, but is that not part of life we've all had to deal with? No good deed goes unpunished sometimes. I'm not trying to give anyone a sob story here or anything, but I've definitely been in that position. Have you guys ever done a favor for someone and ended up being taken advantage of? I'm gonna guess you probably have. It's probably happened more than once. I think the main appeal of these books for me is not just the art, but the conceptual ideas. It's the horror. I love horror. My favorite genre it is horror, simply just because you can do anything. Horror to me is a comfort in a way. While it's about making you uncomfortable, it's scary to think about. It's immersion therapy. And at the end of the day, my life is nowhere near as bad as a horror novel. And that's a good reminder to everyone, I think. Alright, so let's hit the books. Now, he has a book coming out soon called Statues. It's it's I think it's actually already out. I uh thought it was coming out this month, um, but I will be picking that up as soon as possible. It looks like it's already out though. So let's burn through a couple of them. We're gonna just talk high-level. Whatever sounds most appealing, this is what I want you guys to request. All right, we're gonna get this one out of the way. It's the one everybody knows. Uzumaki. So it's his most famous work, and this is where I kind of was talking about the extended definition of a spiral. Uh, I've already alluded to it, but and I would love to cover it. I I definitely would, but there's things I would like to cover instead of this. This is about a town that gets obsessed with the spiral shape. And like a spiral is fairly innocuous, but like you can also see some other pretty scary things about a spiral. Tornadoes, whirlpools that can suck you down, um, slugs and snails themselves. They're not like the most pleasant to look at, but I wouldn't call, you know, call them horrifying. Junji makes these things truly terrifying. Uh, it's it's his most like not it's one of his most novel novel books, like graphic novel style books. A lot of what he does is shorter or anthologized or like series of short stories. It's like this one and maybe two, three others that really fit more of a true graphic novel uh definition. Uh now he has a lot of uh short story collections, and the current versions that I own, these are apparently reprints of his work that had previously like gone out of print in like earlier editions. Now, these books include, but they're not limited to Alley, Tombs, Moan, Lovelessness, Soichi, Shiver, Smashed and Deserter, along with the new one, uh, I believe Statues is coming out. Now, Shiver is considered his greatest hits work. This one is really good, um, but it might not be as tightly linked as some of the others. Uh, this one just kind of is, in quotes, his best work, if you want to call it that. If you're familiar with the uh hanging balloons, that story is in there. Uh, if you know the Grease story, that one's in there too. Uh, I really liked uh Tombs and Alley. Those are two of the more recent ones. Um, a couple of the stories will appear in multiple collections. Um, I would really like to go deeper on these uh just because, you know, I know a decent bit about these works, but I've never like dived too far into the thematic like relevance in relation to the stories, except for a couple of them. Um now I think lovelessness might be my overall favorite. If I'm remembering this one right, this is the one that focuses on like one conceptual character or like a recurring villain in a way. And uh I liked that, and I think it's only four longer, shorter stories. They're short stories, they're just I think there was only four of them as opposed to like eight or ten or twelve, however, many are in the other ones. Uh, Smashed and Deserter, those are from the early days of his work. Honestly, the most fun thing about these stories is just to see how much better he is now than uh, you know, what he used to be. I'm not saying he was like a bad uh mangaka at all. He was always very good, but his work has improved so, so much. Uh, I wasn't a big fan of Suichi. He's kind of like the annoying little brother from hell character. He's this kid who like chews on nails, and I know he loves the little scamp, like Genji loves little scamp. I just find him so goddamn annoying that I can't take it. Uh, but if you guys really want it, we'll talk about it. Um, he shows up a couple times. He's got his own collection, then other of his stories are in other spots too. Um, now he has adaptations of a few other works. Um, uh, an unknown novel called uh Frankenstein, which was written by Mary Shelley. Uh, I know that one's uh, you know, really off the cuff, uh, but he found this work from like the early 1800s um about this dude who raises another dude from the dead, and he adapts that into a manga. If you guys would be interested in me talking about this Frankenstein, I really hope I'm pronouncing Frankenstein correctly. Um, you know, there's a lot of movies out there, but I've actually strangely not seen uh any of them or had to read the book in college and write a bunch of stuff on it. I never had to do any of that. It's really weird that I escaped that book. Um uh now he has this uh maybe it's a little more popular of an of a novel than Frankenstein. Uh this book called No Longer Human, which was originally written by Azumu Daza. I am probably pronouncing that book incorrectly, or that name incorrectly. Um now uh Azum No Longer Human was originally called Does Not Qualify as Human. This book is dark, dark. I've read both a novel and I've read the adaptation. It's a pretty faithful adaptation, and I don't really want to compare which one is more dark than the other. Um, but this one might actually beat blood on the tracks for the darkest episode we've ever done. I'm not even going to give you the full description of this one, but it was originally uh translated as does not qualify as human. I believe that is the literal translation. Uh, and the main character feels basically that they're just a subhuman person. They're also like a piece of shit, but they're treated very poorly early on in life. Like it's it's a very dark novel. And uh if you are familiar with some of his other works, you can kind of see why he might want to have adapted that, because some people the suffering is a big part of his work, and I think just showing the absurdity of life and just how some people can suffer for no reason is a big recurring theme in a lot of his work. And I think that might have been why he chose to adapt that novel. Uh, another big popular one I didn't actually list here for some reason is called uh sensory. Now, this one has some of my favorite um art in it. This is about a girl who's traveling in the woods and she kind of finds a cult, and I think they think of her as a god that they also need to sacrifice or something. Uh, then there's like a reporter who's kind of trying to research the story. It's really cool. Uh, it actually, I think, is his most underrated book, and that's one I'd truly love to cover. Uh, we also have Tumiye. Now, Tumie is one of my personal favorites. It's really hard to say that I like have a really favorite Genji story because they're all very, very good. There's a couple that are just not for me. But Tumie is about a uh femme fatale style character who is um killed. Uh, she's a young girl who is killed, and the stories generally deal with her coming back to life and killing other people who really, really deserve needing to be killed. There's a handful of stories that don't follow that pattern, and we might gloss over them if we talk about it. Uh, next up we have Jan and Mu, uh, Junjito's cat diary. This is about this is an autobiographical story that's just kind of horror mangaed up. Uh, this is about Junji moving in with his significant other and learning to deal with her cats. I think this one is pretty cute, and I can definitely understand the feeling. Uh, I don't understand my wife's cats. I've been studying these two little gremlins for, you know, 12 and 14 years. They are definitely adorable and cute, but cats are just weird, man. Like, I don't know, my cats are just hanging out on the bed right now, and they want to break into the little recording office that I'm in. And by recording office, I mean my closet, because that's where I record. Uh, by the way, sorry if you uh hear any background sound today. I try to keep that out, um, and it shouldn't really cut through too, too much, but uh, I do have to have a window open, unfortunately. Um we have only a couple more to go through. I'm skipping a few of these. Uh the ones that I'm just skipping talking about are uh Black Paradox, Liminal Zone One and Two, Fragments of Horror, and Dissolving Classroom. And then he has two other things he was involved in, Mimi's Tales of Terror and uh oh, I can't remember in Stitches. Um, some of those were collaboration stitches and Mimi's Tales of Terror, I think were stitches and uh adaptations. Um Liminal Zone and Black Paradox, I don't actually remember all that well. And Fragments of Horror, uh, I remember was a new short story collection. It's it's I just don't remember that's one of the very first ones I read, but I also read it like right on top of a bunch of other really good ones. So that one doesn't stick out. Um, but if you guys are interested in hearing more about those, please let me know. Like you can look up any of his work that I don't uh mention here. I'm just trying to cover the real big highlights that I like a lot. Uh now we have two more big ones. We have uh Rominia. Now, this is a favorite of mine. This is a one full story, it's shorter. Now, Friend of the Pod, uh, Brandon McNulty, said he's not a big fan of this one because the main character has no agency in the story. And this is one thing why I love talking to Brandon. This is exactly the reason why I love this story. I love that the character has no agency in the story. This is a horror story where the story revolves around a person over a coincidence. This is cosmic horror and it's kind of like Hollywood horror in a way. And I just find this fascinating that while it's still an out there bonkers story, this is a great representation of life where you get characters who um they you you sometimes in life coincidences happen to you. You're in the wrong place, wrong time. This is again an up pushed idea of this, and I don't think this story gets enough love. Now, finally up, we have Gio. Uh, Gio, I might be mispronouncing, I'm just not very good with at this. Uh, now this is utterly disgusting. This is robot fish that attack society based on, I believe it's an old World War II experiment. That, and they while they attack people physically, it's the smell. And you can literally smell this book. It's that gross. Uh, but it does have a special place in my heart. One of our co-hosts, Mike, uh, he handed me this. Uh, this this is the book he handed me in either high school or college, and it really freaked me out. It is just gross. Now, I I may not want to talk about that without throwing up. Like maybe we can make a game out of it. Every time my stomach churns, we take a shot. I don't know. But if any of these books sound appealing, please reach out over Blue Sky, Gmail, or leave a Spotify comment. And we're gonna get cracking on, you know, a longer episode with hopefully some hosts, some co-hosts on this. Now, uh, next week, we're actually going to uh cover something that's a little dark. Uh, like we're dealing with dark manga all month. Just strap in, that's what we're doing. We're gonna talk about a book called Fire Punch. Now, Fire Punch is written by Tatsusuki Fujimoto. That is the uh same writer artist as uh Chainsaw Man. Uh, we're probably also doing Chainsaw Man this month as well. Uh, you can read Fire Punch either in the collected edition. Uh, we're really only gonna spoil anything from volume one. That's more conceptual stuff. We're gonna try to keep spoilers as light as possible. You can also read this on the shown and jump app, uh, but you have to use the browser, the web browser on this one. It's heavily locked down, like they don't want that one just out there for little kids to get into. It's pretty goddamn dark. So uh as always, guys, be good to each other, take care of yourself, check in on your people. I hope you guys have a great week. And uh, I'm sorry about you know missing the moon night, but you know, it is what it is. And we have to just move on. And I want to continue. I'm I'm committed to making sure you guys get an episode as I I really just don't want to miss a week. That's what it comes down to. All right, as always, please reach in. If you have nice comments for us, we will happily read it, read it over the show. Uh, if you want to leave us a rating, we ask for honest ratings only. Uh, if you leave a nice review, we will happily read that on the air. If you have any feedback to help improve the show, please send it our way. Uh, I'm at Comic Books Beyond on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Blue Sky is where I mostly hang out, uh, and also Gmail. Uh, with that, we are just gonna, you know, we ask you always stick around for after the uh end of the show for thank yous to all of our friends of the pod for the shows we've guested on and other guests we've had on. All right, everybody. Have a good one. I'd like to give a thank you to the crew of the Talking Comic Books Podcast, Brad and Leese of Comic Book Couples Counseling, Alex Jaffey, Jeremy Whitley, Bran McNulty, Jimmy Gasparo and the crew of Comic Book Yeti, and John Klein III of Shadow Flame with Magic. Most importantly, I'd like to thank all of our listeners and supporters. Be good to each other out there and take care of your people. We'll see you next time.