Gegegegegegegeh! Welcome, foul creatures, to Beat’s Bizarre Halloventure. Every week this October, three evil writers will recommend their favorite spooky books and series from Japan, Korea and elsewhere. This week we have spooky children, tentacled husbands, and, of course, illness.
Erma
Writer/Artist: Outcast Comics/Brandon Santiago
Platform: WEBTOON CANVAS
Happy Halloween, birb nerds! What better time than spooky month to read some creepy webtoons? This week’s pick is something frightening but cute: Erma, a long running series published on WEBTOON CANVAS. It’s about the titular Erma, a little girl with pale white skin, flowing black hair, and deep black eyes. Her ghostly powers include flight, telekinesis, digital teleportation, and intangibility. Erma’s parents are Emiko, a Japanese yokai clearly inspired by Sadako from The Ring, and renowned human author Sam Williams.
The story follows Erma’s daily misadventures as she attends school, hangs out with her friends, and spends time with her family. Since her mother is a yokai, Erma’s relatives include other familiar creatures from Japanese myth. Sometimes they share experiences you’d expect from any slice-of-life family story. Other scenes are much more supernatural.
Erma is rendered in black and white with spare use of grayscale and screentone. Despite that, the artists strike a good balance between the use of whites and blacks. The composition feels so natural that it’s worth studying to learn values and contrast. The art is also inspired by early webcomics and newspaper comic strips.
I’m amazed by how long this series has been in production. Since its debut in 2014, Erma has received over 700 updates spread across comic strips, postcards, and companion art pieces. It has an animated short film and even its own video game. Erma goes to show the endless possibilities you can achieve with just a cute, simple concept. — Justin Guerrero
How About a Cosmic Horror?
Original Story: Lee Jeungu
Adaptation: Galpil
Art: Gilmok
Platform: Manta/Tappytoon
Everyone has a general idea of what elements make up the horror genre. Jump scares, gore, blood, death, killings, mutilated bodies… anything that has ever frightened you awake from a nightmare. But there might be a good chance that you’ve never heard of cosmic horror, or Lovecraftian horror.
Granted, I don’t read much horror, as life is scary enough by itself (ha!) But this is the first time that I’ve encountered cosmic horror in a manhwa. How About a Cosmic Horror? is a romance horror manhwa that clocks in at 26 episodes. The story follows Irae, a young woman who wakes up in the hospital one day to discover that she’s now married. While everyone fawns over how kind and handsome her husband Yohan is, all Irae sees is a man in a suit…with tentacles for a face.
We as the readers feel as unsettled as Irae does. She doesn’t know the person who calls himself her husband. She can’t see his face. She can’t get rid of the uncanny feeling there’s something off about him. Yet everyone else, and Yohan, are telling her the opposite. Who does she trust? It’s a great page turner.
There are dashes of humor in the story, such as how Yohan’s “head” changes according to whatever mood he’s in. In one scene when he feels flustered by Irae, his head turns into a cardboard box with hearts spilling out of it. There’s even a scene where his tentacles make a heart sign for her, which is weirdly cute and kind of funny. The greatest irony of all is that Yohan claims Irae sees his true self. Which is…a planet? Tentacles? Or a dark endless void?
How About a Cosmic Horror? is great for romance fans who are interested in horror but still like some spice sprinkled in there. — Hilary Leung
Manhole
Writer/Artist: Tetsuya Tsutsui
Assistants: Katsuhiro Nakamura & Naoya Suganuma
Translation: Mercedes C. Gilliom
English Adaptation: Nube Consulting
Lettering: Ti-Lala
Publisher: Kana
In Manhole, Tetsuya Tsutsui sets out to tell a sprawling story set within a limited space. For the most part I believe he succeeds. The series follows the Sasahara Police Department as it tracks down a man hellbent on creating a global disease pandemic, all the while containing the various outbreaks caused by his experiments. It’s gruesome, gory, and detailed. Don’t eat while reading this!
This is an information-heavy series with many procedural elements, names, and places to remember. There were plenty of times I’d find myself returning to previous chapters and even volumes to remind myself of details as new characters were introduced. Even at just three volumes it can sometimes feel like a much longer series.
Manhole stars detective Ken Mizoguchi and his assistant Nao Inoue, as well as a nicely rounded supporting cast. After a mysterious man exits a manhole and disturbs a local market, clearly suffering from some unknown physical ailment, Mizoguchi and Inoue find themselves way out of their depth.They learn that the villain wants to create a placid society free from desire by infecting people with a parasitic worm known to cause filariasis: a sort of natural lobotomy.
While the police in this series do their jobs to the best of their ability, at times a few of them go beyond their boundaries, and even resort to illegal actions. It’s by no means a condemnation of the police, and Japanese and American police aren’t 1:1 anyway. But that the police are shown to be flawed was a welcome wrinkle in this story.
Likewise the villain is shown to have understandable reasons for doing what he’s doing. Of course, their actions are beyond the pale. While Manhole’s delivery can be clunky and over-the-top, the series is set on examining his viewpoint versus his actions, which at the very least allows for some nuance to seep in every now and then.
Tsutsui’s art has a realistic, gritty style to it that fits this story perfectly. I don’t think Manhole would work with a more stylized (or moe) cast. Still, there are moments where some characters look very similar to one another. Regardless, Manhole is an interesting series that’s not too long. I recommend it. — Derrick Crow
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