<<•>>  edited by Sean Michael Wilson  <<•>>  This much anticipated anthology of manga from off the beaten path premiered at SPX and is now on our shelves.  It weighs in at a substantial 400 pages and contains the work of 33 artists, including the recognized figures, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Imiri Sakabashira, Takashi Nemoto and Kazuichi Hanawa, who have had books published in North America by Drawn & Quarterly, PictureBox and Ponent Mon.  More important, perhaps, is the first time looks at lesser known and unknown lights of Japan's alternative manga scene, and they are on ample display here.  The material in AX runs the gamut from the crudely drawn and obscenely scatalogical work of Takashi Nemoto, who makes Johnny Ryan look tame by comparison, to the cutesy cuddly Shinya Komatsu, to the super-polished works of both Keizo Miyanashi (think Paul Gulacy) and Takato Yamamoto (think Suehiro Maruo), to the jaggedly angular Otoyo Mitsuhashi and a world of variety inbetween.  Sexual relations are a common thread in many, but by no means all, of the works in AX, and are plainly on disply in more than one tale, making this a definite ADULTS ONLY item.

Here's another classic from the manga underground, courtesy of Breakdown Press and Ryan Holmberg. Red Night collects stories originally published during the 1970s and '80s, for the most part in Garo.

Breakdown Press sez: "A wild entry into a violent world of obsession, madness and the perversity of the gods. In Hanawa’s work cruelty and decadence go hand in hand, and desire is accompanied by a macabre twist. Hanawa Kazuichi is one of the true pioneers of manga - his trailblazing work in erotic grotesquerie and folk horror has made him one of Japan’s most revered and imitated mangaka. Since his debut in the legendary alt manga magazine Garo in 1971, Hanawa has been skewering the morals of Japanese society through chilling tales of debauched medieval aristocracy, many of which are collected in this volume. First published in 1985, Red Night was Hanawa’s breakout book in Japan. This translation of the expanded edition is his first collection in English since his 2006 manga Doing Time, about the artist’s imprisonment for illegal possession of a firearm."

“Hanawa’s comics, while linked intimately to the very foundations of culture and education, are imbued with the reality of nonsense.” - Akasegawa Genpei

Translated by Ryan Holmberg

ALSO: Please be forewarned that this volume contains potentially disturbing depictions of violence, cruelty, and perversion.

148 × 210mm -- 224 pages -- offset printed -- paperback -- ISBN: 9781911081302

Printed by 12.Matbaa in Turkey.