Face Meat by Taro Bonten

Face Meat by Taro Bonten

A headless busty blonde, a face-stealing psychopath, a sleazy serial-killer sculptor, a horny handsome hunchback, a vengeful caterpillar cuckold, a torturous hangover in the pits of hell. Welcome to the raunchy and gristly world of FACE MEAT, from the decadent imagination of outlaw polymath Bonten Taro--ex-kamikaze, ex-yakuza, singer, songwriter, actor, world-famous tattooist, husband of seven, and underappreciated pioneer of pinky violence femme fatales and adult horror manga. While Mizuki Shigeru and Umezz Kazuo were paving the way for horror in shonen and shojo magazines in the 1960s, Bonten was secretly doing the same in erotic men's rags--and the results are as trashy as you'd expect. With an essay by Bonten booster and B-gekiga expert Kunisawa Hiroshi, FACE MEAT includes fourteen hair- and pants-raising stories that have never before been assembled under a single cover in any language FACE MEAT is the fourth volume of SMUDGE, a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga, curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg.

"From influential Japanese cartoonist and pioneering tattoo artist Bonten comes a collection of unsettling short stories bursting with visceral horror and mind-bending surrealismIn the late 1960s, while peers such as Shigeru Mizuki and Kazuo Umezz were revolutionizing horror comics in respectable mainstream manga magazines, Bonten’s work was relegated to appearing in the pages of disreputable underground men’s magazines. Free from the need to appeal to mainstream sensibilities, Bonten blended elements of body horror, supernatural terror, and psychological thrillers, imbuing his tales of serial killers, demonic entities, ghostly apparitions, and literal descents to hell with existential dread and a raw, feverish energy. Bonten’s remarkable illustration makes use of bold, inky linework and exaggerated body language and facial expressions to evoke a nightmarish atmosphere and to depict characters who appear contorted by obsession, desire, rage, or to the whims of an oppressively violent world. Translator Holmberg and historian Hiroshi Kunisawa provide essays offering valuable context on Bonten’s influence on Japanese culture, as well as the evolution of Japanese horror comics.VERDICT Not for the faint of heart, though readers interested in vintage horror or eager to visit the outer limits of macabre will surely find this an essential collection." - Library Journal

Tadao Tsuge (born in 1941) has been drawing comics since the late 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was one of the central contributors to the underground comics magazine Garo, and the magazines Yako and Gento. In addition to cartooning, Tsuge is an avid fisherman and has written essays on the subject. He has held full-time blue-collar jobs for most of his artistic career, most significantly on the cleaning staff at one of Tokyo's for-profit blood banks, which figures prominently in a number of his works. In 1995, cult-film director Teru Ishii made a movie based on Tsuge's comics. Tsuge lives in Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781961581074
ISBN 10	1961581078
Title	Face Meat
Author	Taro Bonten
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Living the Line LLC
Year published	2025-06-10
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.