By Shintaro Kago, published by Fantagraphics. Hardcover, 200 pages, black and white, 2025. From the brilliant and twisted mind of manga artist Shintaro Kago, a new collection of short stories rife with skin-crawling suspense, visceral body horror, and pitch dark-humor. In 2018, manga artist Shintaro Kago made his English debut with Dementia 21, a collection of absurdist manga short stories. Readers found themselves delighted and disgusted by his penchant for body horror, black comedy and the surreal paired with his emphatic, kinetic art style. Kago returns at the height of his powers with Brain Damage, where he dials up the gore and absurdity to new heights. Brain Damage collects four new short manga stories, a tantalizing blend of the hilarious and the macabre. In “Labyrinth Quartet,” four identical young women trapped in an eerie building must solve the mystery of why they’ve been gathered there — while being hunted by a knife-wielding stalker. In “Curse Room,” a plucky health aide is tasked with keeping zombies peaceful, lest they go on a brain-eating rampage. In “Family Portrait,” people throughout town are strangely disappearing without a trace, and the key to it all is a senile and perverted old man. Finally, in “Blood Harvest” a series of gruesomely mangled bodies are found in pristine cars — and it appears something sinister lurks within these masses of glass and steel.
