I recently had an opportunity to write a short essay for the comics website Shelfdust about Junji Ito’s short story “Town of No Roads” (道のない街), a stand-alone manga from 1992 included in the 2002 collection Alley (路地裏), which was published in English translation by Viz Media in 2024.
“Town of No Roads” is an oddly structured story that begins with a teenage girl’s experience of having her privacy violated. After she decides to leave home, the manga follows her journey into a weird labyrinthine suburb that’s been rebuilt into one giant wooden house. I’ve always been intrigued by the imagery of “Town of No Roads,” and I thought it might be fun to explore its take on the theme of postwar nostalgia as expressed through its uncanny architecture.
Part of my conclusion is a paragraph that goes…
The pleasure of a labyrinth is that you can enjoy the sensation of getting lost while always knowing that you can simply leave. Perhaps the same can be said of nostalgia as well, and so much the better. The reactionary mode of thought that insists society used to be better when protections for individual rights and dignity were more limited has unpleasant implications, after all. Perhaps it’s best not to linger in this space for too long.
This conclusion makes sense in relation to the story, but what I also mean is that a mode of thought that holds that “things were better before Second Wave Feminism” (which definitely existed in Japan) steps into the territory of horror. I don’t say that part out loud in my essay, but a careful reader will probably understand what’s going on. In all fairness, I’m not entirely sure that Junji Ito intended for a political message to be read into this manga; but, if nothing else, it feels validating to know that he finds certain aspects of the postwar period as creepy as I do.
I’ve been a fan of Punko’s work since her debut manga-style graphic novel Bizenghast, which takes place in an isolated small town perched above a giant crypt. Stagtown is a return to a similar setting, but it’s a much more nuanced and mature piece of storytelling graced with remarkably confident and atmospheric art.
Just as I’m comparing Stagtown to Bizenghast here, I make a number of connections in my review of the graphic novel, including comparisons to The X Files, The Magnus Archives, and Stephen King – who coined the phrase “peculiar little town” that I use in the review title. I’ve pointed out these connections not because Stagtown is derivative. In fact, Punko’s art and writing are quite distinctive, as is her particular take on small town horror. Rather, I make these comparisons to emphasize how deeply Stagtown is connected to some of the primary roots of contemporary American Gothic. As I write toward the end of my review:
Underneath its elements of supernatural horror, Stagtown is a story about young adults who are stuck in place. The characters feel fresh and contemporary, but the setting is haunted by the analog horror sense of being cut off from the broader culture and society. Frankie and Felix are doing their best to overcome a less-than-ideal situation, but their efforts have depressingly few tangible results. Stagtown is small-town gothic horror that would make Stephen King proud, but it’s also a cautionary tale about economic recession, suburban stagnation, and a younger generation trying to survive in a world that has no place for their dreams or energy.
I recently had the honor of writing a review of Strange Cases, the debut graphic novel of the popular illustrator Riotbones. Strange Cases is a historical drama about a law student who investigates supernatural mysteries in a colonial city that’s sinking under the weight of its own Gothic architecture. When I shared a link to the review on social media, I described the story as a cross between Ace Attorney and Bloodborne, but it’s much more than a simple comparison can convey. The writing is just as gorgeous as the art, and Riotbones addresses the uneasy legacy of colonial rule with a subtlety that sharpens the edge of the story’s brilliance.
I didn’t mention this in my review, but Strange Cases is also queer in a way appropriate to the late Victorian period. The queerness is largely subtextual, but this is an expression of one of the primary themes of the story; namely, that some things benefit from not being openly perceived, and many people remain outside of neatly defined categories by choice.
Here’s an excerpt from my review:
As a genre, the gothic lures the reader with the promise of hidden secrets coming to light. In the context of Western Europe, these secrets often lurked in the shadows cast by the industrial revolution. For a person who doesn’t belong to the imperial core, however, shadows have a different meaning. Perhaps, Riotbones suggests, not everything benefits from exposure to an “enlightened” Western gaze. For people who don’t fit neatly into rational, scientific categories, the shadows provide a more comfortable place to exist. Now that Jude finds himself in a position between “colonial” and “native,” he must learn how to navigate the liminal spaces that exist beyond the boundaries of the law.
Hollow: Ten Tales of Fallen Knights collects a series of original short stories about knights who have found themselves in unfortunate circumstances. In the shadows cast by crumbling kingdoms, what inspires these knights to keep fighting?
Though the primary genre of the stories in this zine is dark fantasy, their tone is elegiac bordering on hopeful. Just as in my Ruins zine, the underlying theme is “regrowth after disaster,” though a few of these knights’ means of achieving that regrowth is a bit violent. Some dragons really need to die, if you catch my meaning.
All of the knights who appear in this collection happen to be female; but, as in the Dark Souls games that loosely inspired these stories, their gender is the least important thing about them. I just think lady knights are cool.
A free digital version of the zine is available on Itch.io, and paper copies are on Etsy.
Evelyn: A Gothic Tale is an atmospheric 2D puzzle platformer currently being created as a solo project by the Italian artist and game developer Frankiesbugs. The demo for Evelyn, which is free to download from Itch.io, features full Xbox controller support and takes about ten to fifteen minutes to finish, though you’ll likely want to spend more time exploring.
You play as the eponymous Evelyn, a small skeleton in a jaunty blue dress who’s become bored in her underworld crypt and wants to return to the world of the living. Getting there will be no easy task, however, as the way is obstructed by numerous gates and barriers. In addition, Evelyn will need to collect enough flames to light her way forward through the final stretch of darkness between worlds. If she manages to get her bony fingers on enough flames, she might even be able to secure an additional passage for her charmingly pathetic friend Rupert.
There’s no combat in Evelyn, but environmental hazards will hinder the player’s progress. In the demo, these hazards primarily consist of pits and spikes that Evelyn must jump over in classic 2D platformer style. The twist that Evelyn brings to this formula are its light-based puzzles, which involve obstructing or redirecting beams of light in order to trigger changes in the world and thereby grant Evelyn the keys she needs to pass through a series of grand stone gates.
The game mechanics involving light also carry over to the platforming. While most of the map is rendered in a vibrantly colorful style that still manages to convey the atmosphere of an underground crypt, a few of the side paths are shrouded in actual darkness broken only by strategically placed lamps. In order to navigate these dark sections, the player must rely on the instincts developed in previous sections while paying close attention to the lamp placement. The interplay between light and dark sections is perfectly balanced. I was always excited to venture into the darkness of a shadowy side path, but I always felt relieved to return to the well-lit areas.
Evelyn features full controller support, and I played with an Xbox controller with no problem at all. Evelyn’s movement speed is perfect in relation to the size of the map, as is her jump height. Though I suspect this game might be classified as “casual” in terms of difficulty, its gameplay is enhanced by a nice balance between freedom of movement and the small areas of friction impeding progress. Evelyn’s health bar contributes an additional element of challenge, as you can only fall into so many pits or spike traps before you have to start over. I will admit that I died a few times while exploring, but experience and familiarity with the map compressed the time I needed to navigate back to the point I died, resulting in a pleasantly smooth learning curve.
When I think about what makes a good Metroidvania, it’s not just the level design and gameplay, but also the sense of exploration and discovery that (more than anything, I think) distinguishes the genre from an action platformer like the Super Mario games. The hand-drawn characters and environment of Evelyn inspire a sense of moving through an actual world, especially in the details of the background art that caused me to wonder how a particular creature might have come to be tucked away in a particular dark corner.
The icing on the cake of any standout Metroidvania is the writing. Balance is important in this aspect of game design, as the text needs to walk a fine line between being too sparse and too voluble while simultaneously offering intriguing information without indulging in exposition. The writing in Evelyn is fantastic, from the dialogue to the text on the collectible daguerreotypes, and each character has a distinct voice (and there’s one character in particular that really surprised me, bless his heart). Evelyn herself is a silent protagonist, but her in-game animations express a great deal of character, as does the narrative animation that opens the game in the style of a silent film from the 1920s.
I’m amazed by how well-polished this demo is, and I’m curious to uncover more about the story behind this crypt and its restless inhabitants, which seems just as disturbing as the character art is cute. Everything about this spooky little game works in concert to lure the player deeper into its underground world, and I’m looking forward to spending more time in the company of these strange skeleton children. For the time being, I’m cheering Evelyn on as she makes her way out into the world.
Kuro is a free-to-play homebrew PS1 gothic horror game that takes about twenty minutes to finish. There aren’t any jumpscares, but the story is as dark as the chunky retro polygons are cute.
You play as Kuro, a mysterious visitor to an abandoned Shinto shrine. The moonlit shrine is beautiful and peaceful on the outside, but its interior conceals an underground labyrinth haunted by the ghost of a brutally murdered young woman named Miu. As Kuro, your job is to find and reunite the parts of Miu’s corpse so that her spirit can move on.
Along with Miu’s head and body, Kuro must acquire the means to open three locked doors. Though the game’s map isn’t overly large, Kuro moves slowly (with tank controls) across spaces presented to the player from dramatic angles. It’s unlikely that you’ll become lost, but the game does an excellent job of conveying the disorientation of wandering through a dark basement.
For me, the standout scene is when Kuro enters a locked room that’s completely empty except for an old television whose screen is filled with static. When Kuro interacts with the television, she’s transported to an otherworldly landscape where she meets the man who killed Miu. He explains what happened, but this isn’t the end of the story. Once Kuro returns to the shrine and begins to dig deeper, the player learns that murder is probably the most wholesome thing that happened here.
I genuinely appreciate the developer’s commitment to including every gothic trope they could think of. One might argue that the writing is somewhat clumsy, and that the game’s twenty-minute playtime isn’t sufficient to allow ample space for its horrors, but I’m of the opinion that the writing is just as integral to the retro aesthetic as the graphics. I feel like there’s a tendency to remember games like Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil 2 as “well-written,” but PS1-era games had a tendency to hit you with a cascade of revelations in the most basic and matter-of-fact prose. Kuro matches the tone of this style of video game writing perfectly.
I also love to see this kind of gothic story in a setting that isn’t European, and I’m fascinated by the idea that a Shinto shrine would have a basement. Perhaps a shrine constructed overseas (in British Columbia, for instance) might have an underground level, but this would be unthinkable in Japan, where shrine buildings are always elevated above the ground in the traditional Polynesian architectural style.
The reason for this is 100% practical in a wet and humid climate, where various types of unpleasant things (primarily mold, fungus, and insects) would quickly infest the ground level of a building. Also, the water table is generally so close to the surface that it would be difficult to prevent underground rooms from flooding. There’s also a spiritual component to the architecture, as Shinto belief systems tend to associate anything inside the earth with an otherworld of rot and impurity. This otherworld is a necessary space for the cycle of life, but it’s not a good place for humans to be under any circumstances. In terms of its spiritual utility, one of the purposes of a shrine is to demarcate the boundaries between worlds.
So a Shinto shrine would not have a basement. But if it did. The horrors of Kuro would definitely happen there.
I admire how Kuro explores the idea of transgressing an extremely powerful taboo. Between the lost-media stylization of the game’s retro graphics and the grotesque quality of its writing, the player definitely gets a sense of wandering through a place they’re not supposed to be. Kuro is a short and simple game, but it’s very well-observed and surprisingly effective.
I recently had the immense pleasure of writing a review for Comics Beat about Pig Wife, a massive graphic novel drawn by Abbey Luck, a Hollywood animator who specializes in Adult Swim style bizarro art. Pig Wife is definitely Hollywood, and it’s definitely got a Gen-X style “alternative” edge to it. Neither of these things is to my taste, usually, but I love Pig Wife for what it is: namely, a gothic “weird girl” coming-of-age story set in a not-quite abandoned labyrinth of mine tunnels in rural Pennsyltucky.
I say in my review that it’s easy to read this 500-page book in one sitting, and I mean it. Pig Wife tells an incredibly entertaining story; but, appropriately enough, there’s a lot going on below the surface. Here’s an excerpt from my review:
By forgoing the nuances of character, Pig Wife can focus entirely on plot, and the plot is a well-oiled machine that grabs the reader and aggressively drags them down into the tunnels. Moreover, by virtue of the broad strokes of its characterization, Pig Wife is also able to convey the allegorical elements of its scenario.
The coming-of-age story in which a young hero embarks on a journey has a universal appeal, but teenage girls (and slightly older girls, if they’re trans) often undergo a separate ascent from innocence to experience that I think of as “climbing out of the pit.” By “the pit,” I mean the everpresent tarpit of internalized sexism and misogyny, and the mine tunnels of Pig Wife are as good of a visualization of this pit as any.
My most recent review for Comics Beat is about Witchcraft, a graphic novel by Sole Otero, an internationally famous Argentinian comic artist whose style has developed in a cool and unique way during the past decade. Witchcraft is a massive book, but it’s an incredible page turner. The writing is brilliant, and the art is both extremely stylized and exactly what it needs to be to tell the story, a gothic cautionary tale that jumps between the present day and various periods in the history of Buenos Aires. And the story is indeed about witches and magic and power. This book is so goddamn good, and I feel very honored to have been able to write about it. Here’s an excerpt:
Witchcraft is primarily set in Buenos Aires, and the narrative jumps between historical periods when the witches were active and the present day, when the gender politics of their activities are far more complicated. It would be easy to see the witches as feminist saviors as they run women’s clinics and shelter members of the local indigenous population, but their benevolence is called into question by the nature of their magic, which requires the victimization of men and the silent complicity of their fellow women. Instead of a feminist message, what Witchcraft offers is a fast-paced and high-stakes story about cycles of abuse and the human cost of the sacrifices necessary for the marginalized to survive.
Symbiosis is a free-to-play RPG Maker horror game about a murderous mad scientist living in a house in the woods with an adorable child. The story has two endings, and it takes about 25 minutes to play through the game once.
You play as Magnolia, a geneticist who left her university post after a mysterious fire broke out in her lab when her research came under public scrutiny. She now lives in isolation with Mint, a curious and precociously intelligent young boy whom she’s raising as her son. According to local rumors, Magnolia is a witch. It doesn’t help that hikers have a tendency to disappear in the forest surrounding her property.
The game begins as Magnolia carves up the corpse of someone she caught sneaking into her house. She’s interrupted by Mint, who can’t sleep and wants a bedtime story. Unfortunately, there are three more intruders in the house, and Mint won’t stay in his room. Your job as the player is to turn the remaining intruders into corpses – for science! – while ensuring that Mint remains out of harm’s way.
Magnolia’s house isn’t too terribly large, but it’s big enough to have all sorts of nooks and crannies to poke around, as well as various journals and research notes to find. The player can use these clues to figure out who Magnolia is and where Mint came from, although you’ll have to make your own decision regarding Magnolia’s feelings toward Mint and what the fate of the pair will be. The game’s creator has posted a guide for the two endings (here), and this short devlog also contains their thoughts on the story and characters.
What sets Symbiosis apart from the crowd of RPG Maker horror games is the creator’s gleeful willingness to allow Magnolia to be messy and problematic. She initially seems to be a complete sociopath, and her bad behavior is a joy to watch. As you witness her interactions with Mint unfold, however, her character becomes more complicated. Why Magnolia feels affection for Mint is open to interpretation, but I think it’s fair to say that her attachment is genuine.
The way I interpret this relationship is that it’s an analogy for the process of artistic creation (or scientific discovery, as the case may be). In order to create something meaningful, an artist has to be unpleasant, selfish, and more than a little antisocial. Gradually the art comes to take on a life of its own, and it’s up to the artist to decide whether to let it go or to keep it firmly in the orbit of their own dysfunctional personality.
Lest you think I’m spoiling the story, fear not – there’s all sorts of nasty business in Magnolia’s past for the player to discover. This woman is a legitimately horrible person, and her crimes are fantastic fun.
Symbiosis tells a short but grisly story through simple narrative adventure gameplay intercut with stylishly illustrated cutscenes, and I enjoyed it enough to go back and see both endings. I definitely recommend this game to fans of gothic horror, demonic women, and questionable scientific ethics.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been an early reader of Antoine Revoy’s newest graphic novel, The Harrowing Game. I love this book, which is strongly inspired by Junji Ito but still very much its own thing. I’m also lucky to have gotten an opportunity to write a review for Comics Beat. Here’s an excerpt…
The Harrowing Game will delight fans of Junji Ito and H.P. Lovecraft, to be sure, and connoisseurs of horror will appreciate Revoy’s intriguing interpretations of familiar tropes. Revoy twists gothic stories into broken reflections of cultural anxieties, and the storytelling is no less dramatic for the subtlety of its social commentary. If nothing else, it’s a pleasure to get lost in the details of Revoy’s spectacular illustrations. Whether you’ll be able to find your way out untouched and undisturbed is another story.
