UFO Mushroom Invasion
Marina Shirakawa author Takeo Udagawa author Ryan Holmberg editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Living the Line LLC
Published:17th Sep '24
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“UFOs are one of the world’s greatest mysteries...and I hope they stay that way. For the day that aliens reveal themselves may very well become the beginning of the end of life on Earth as we know it!”
A flying saucer crashes deep in the mountains of Japan. Wary of the hyper-intelligent beings they find inside, the government hides from the public all news of the alien craft. But it’s not the strange visitors themselves that they should be afraid of—the real danger is the parasitic spores smuggled aboard! Will Earth survive the UFO MUSHROOM INVASION?!
Originally published in 1976, Shirakawa Marina’s UFO MUSHROOM INVASION is a masterpiece of sci-fi horror. Drawing on his deep knowledge of Japanese folklore and the supernatural, Shirakawa created one of manga history’s cult classics and an unforgettably creepy entry in the canon of spore-horror. With an essay by weirdologist Udagawa Takeo, UFO MUSHROOM INVASION is the second volume of SMUDGE, a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga, curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg.
"Shirakawa plumbs the existential dread of the unknown to audacious effect..." — Library Journal
"Shirakawa’s work recalls other horror manga artists of the period, like Kazuo Umezz, but with an even wilder vision. His human characters are stiffly drawn, but he excels at depicting bizarre fungal forms with disturbing biological accuracy, and the naive aspects of his artwork only deepen the sense of wrongness. He periodically veers away from the story to discuss related subjects that pique his interest, such as UFO lore and mushroom-themed Japanese folktales. Horror devotees will be delighted." - Publishers Weekly
"Shirakawa Marina manages to take the existential horror of mushrooms and UFOs seriously enough to make you ask yourself why you weren’t scared of them already. Through painfully bold arrays of brush and linework, UFO Mushroom Invasion is the kind of comic that forces you to surrender to it; if Shirakawa can teach us anything, it’s that audacity and dedication will always be a recipe for good horror." — Jenna Cha, THE SICKNESS
“Reminiscent of sci-fi horror from the 1950s with all the campy charm it entails” - Lynzee Loveridge, Anime News Network
“Dark, weird, mycology-obsessed old horror manga. Read it and know what has been missing from your manga life.” - Shaenon Garrity, Otaku USA
“UFO Mushroom Invasion flew in from somewhere completely off my radar and I’m glad it did. I feel lucky to exist in a galaxy where there are still sublimely strange classic horror comics like this one waiting to be discovered.” - Minovsky
ISBN: 9781961581012
Dimensions: 203mm x 152mm x 25mm
Weight: 386g
204 pages