Museum of Terror Volume 3: The Long Hair in the Attic

Junji Ito has been called the Japanese Lovecraft, only with more gore and a better grasp on the way the world works. i can see that, too, because most of his stories turn out to be the stuff of memories. When I read the "title story" in this book that had a girl find out that the mice in her attic were something more ominous, I thought it was really creepy. The same for other stories - they all have a way about them. There are twelve in all, listed below: 1) The Bio home 2) The Face Burglar 3) Den of the Sleep Demon 4) The Devil's Logic 5) The Long Hair in the Attic 6) Love as Scripted 7) Sword of the Reanimator 8) Heart of a Father 9) Unbearable Maze 10) The Village of Sirens 11) The Bully 12) A Deserter in the House I have to say that bio Home was one of my least favorite, and the "in the attic" was one of the best. Depending on the story, the state, and how your mood is, these can seem funny in a morbid way or sickening in their own ways as well. And now, in this version, you get almost all of Ito's work. i love that about these three editions because they have 300-400pages, read as they should, and correct old mistakes. This leaves just you and the pictures, merging the tales into something worth curling up and reading.

Im a new fan to Ito's manga horror and I am blown away with what this man can come up with. Just when I think I know what might happen, he takes a story to a whole 'nother level! I havent read the first volume yet cause im afraid it might just be more of the same from Volume2, which I loved. so I got this one instead. NOw Im just gonna go ahead and get volume one cause the curiosity is killing me!!

While Tomie is an awesome character, it was relieving to see other stories of the dark corners of Junji's mind. I thought this was better than the previous two volumes. Somehow you could see these stories happening in your own back yard.

Junji Ito's brand of horror always struck me as being somewhat different than most other horror manga artists. His obsessions and trademarks are always recognizable. And you always get the feeling that there's an underlying message to the bizzare events his characters go through. But unlike the surreal and erotic-grotesque stories of Suehiro Maruo, or the overwhelming bleakness of Hideshi Hino, Junji Ito seems to have a fun, sometimes absurd sense of humor about the things that scare us most. I was very happy to hear that Dark Horse was reprinting the Tomie books along with NEW Junji Ito material. Having already read Tomie, I decided to pass on the reprints and anxiously await for the release of Museum of Terror Vol.3. This was worth the wait. It's way thicker than the average manga book. All of the stories in here are pretty old, so the art and content may not be what you're used to from Ito. But it's fascinating, and a hell of a lot of fun to see his development as a writer and an artist. You get 12 stories, that's 388 pages: 1) Bio-House 2) The Face Burglar 3) Den of the Sleep Demon 4) The Devil's Logic 5) The Long Hair in the Attic 6) Love as Scripted 7) Sword of the Reanimator 8) Heart of a Father 9) Unbearable Maze 10) The Village of Sirens 11) The Bully 12) A Deserter in the House The Long Hair in the Attic was printed before in the Flesh Colored Horror anthology. But you get to see it again here in its original, unflopped, Japanese format. The standout stories in this volume are definitley the emotional, and supernatuarlly charged, "Heart of a Father", and the apocolypticly creepy, "The Village of Sirens". The latter having been an influence on the Silent Hill and Siren videogame series. There's a lot of the classic Ito horror staples: Ghosts, Girls in distress, abnormal obsessions, and the (un)usual slew of grotesque and bizarre terrors. If you're a Junji Ito fan, and you're tired of flipping through your old copies of Tomie, Flesh..., Uzumaki or Gyo, you can't pass this up. It's definitley worth the read. And if these sell well, there's always hope that Dark Hose will start printing new horror manga from other creators in the near future.