Fragments of Horror

Fragments of Horror

Manga Volume

Fragments of Horror is a collection of various short stories by the mangaka Junji Ito. Ito is a writter and illustrator of horror who draws immense influence from Lovecraft and other similiar writters who depict horrors that are behind human comprehension and acts of malevonce and cruelty by humans. The cover art itself is a nightmarish parody of Edvard Munch's "Scream". By bending a already well known painting into something else, Ito has made it so that a sort of unheimlich uncannyness. Unnatural things are a part of this cover part; the screaming man is a character from Ito's short story "Red Turtleneck" which is a about a man who has become cursed and is adament that the only thing keeping himself alive is by holding onto his head to keep it from falling off. The decapitated fish on the pier is what the man fears of becoming if he lets go. To the left of of the cover is the image of a laughing woman- the woman who had cursed the man; she is another example of the unheimlich has while she has the shape of a person, her blue skin and red eyes show her other-worldliness. This cover clearly showcases how far book cover art has evolved as the familiar and unfamiliarness of it plays up the horror value by creating an uncannyness.

Junjo Ito

Jakob Ware

23 February 2020

Still Image

Japanese,English