Silent Screams, Beautiful Monsters: A Meditation on the Dark Art of Suehiro Maruo

 

Silent Screams, Beautiful Monsters by Tosh Berman

Suehiro Maruo's "The Strange Tale of Panorama Island" based on the novel by Edogawa Rampo

The wonderful Edogawa Rampo novel turned into a brilliant manga comic by Suehiro Maruo. I reviewed the Rampo book in detail, so I am just going to concentrate on Maruo's interpretation of that novel. First, he follows the narrative very closely, and strange enough, the Rampo novel is more erotic, but saying that the original source is like a full-watt battery for Maruo. He takes "The Strange Tale of Panorama Island" to another level. 

Reading this I am  not disappointed with what he has done with "Panorama Island." Usually with a visual book like this or even "Foam of the Daze" one can be disappointed by the artist who is re-interpretating the original source, because it fails the reader's vision of that work. But I think Maruo not only respects the work, but I suspect it is a very important text for him and his work. He follows the Rampo vision, and added his touches, but in many ways Maruo (with respect to his work) is very much the son of Rampo. They share the same sensuality mixed with a taste for violence and the bizarre. Maruo's heart is very much with the early 20th Century and his work with Rampo's book is the perfect marriage or relationship. 

What one hopes is that there will be more works translated into English for both Rampo and Maruo - and that must happen now!

Usamaru Furuya's "Lychee Light Club"

I accidently ran into manga artist/writer Usamaru Furuya's work via looking at the cover of his version of Osamu Dazai's great novel "No Longer Human." Mind you I haven't read it yet, but Dan at Skylight Books in Las Feliz put this little dynamite in my hands. "Lychee light Club" is a group of damaged kids who have a powerful unhinged chess loving' leader, who at the same age controls this goth gang. They kill, destroy, and build their own version of a Frankenstein, who has one human eye that belongs to a member of the gang.

The violence is very extreme and over-the-top, which .....makes this work better then others. The art here very much reminds me of another manga artist i.e. genius by the name of Suehiro Maruo, who is a major influence on Furuya. The manga is based on an actual theater piece of the same title and helped put together by Maruo - so this is very much a literal tribute to the original stage production as well as to the works of Maruo.

The narration is pretty good, but for me, its the visual aspect of the piece that grabs my attention. Its one long beauty of a penmanship by Furuya. Like everything else there is so much dregs in the field of manga, its nice to be exposed to someone who is really using the medium of comics to not only break into new ground, but also just pushing to the horror and violence that this medium is or can be great at.