The latest from Smudge is the most gruesome and horrific yet!  Mansect hails from a half century back – 1975 – and runs 240 monster-filled pages; a landmark work of horror manga. 

Smudge sez:

"Humans grow and age. They change. But always we are the same person, the same creature. Not so with insects, whose powers of metamorphosis alter not only their shape and size, but also their very beings. And now, because of one young man's unhealthy obsession with bugs, humans also find themselves transformed into disgusting, decrepit, bloodsucking insect monsters!

Published in 1975, Koga Shinichi's MANSECT is a shonen horror classic by one of the undisputed masters of the genre. Swarming with mesmerizingly gnarly imagery and freakish bio-evolutionary speculation, Koga here demonstrates why his name is uttered with the same quivering reverence as horror manga legends Mizuki Shigeru, Umezz Kazuo, and Ito Junji. MANSECT is the third volume of SMUDGE, a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga, curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg."

The masking of memories of childhood trauma via the monstrous seems to be an operative psychological aspect of the narrative; have gto keep digging to find out...

It's here: the first book from Bubbles Press! 

This is, more or less, a compilation of Holmberg's amazingly detailed Instagram posts, fleshed out with additional commentary and an introductory essay.  To the best of our recollection, the seed for this book is an actual exchange on one of Ryan's Instagam posts, wherein Brian enthused, "These posts are so great, you should collect all of these posts into a book!" and Ryan replied, "I think YOU should collect them all into book."  And the rest is history...  

Here's the book details:

400 Pages 
Black and White 
Perfect Bound

"Despite having only two dozen manga translations, 80 essays, 50 reviews, one exhibition pamphlet, and zero solo- authored books to his name, Ryan Holmberg, PhD, is widely regarded as the biggest fish in the puddle-sized sea of alternative manga in the Anglosphere. Fresh off a major professional setback, in 2017 Dr. Holmberg departed for a two-year stint as a Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo, where he would commence to document his research findings, translation troubles, and escapades with aging manga artists in a series of detailed Instagram posts @mangaberg. Since returning to the United States in the fall of 2019, Dr. Holmberg has continued to undermine his academic career as a so-called “comics scholar” by spending way more time than he should, and sharing more about his personal life than he should, on his Instagram account.

Collecting nearly 400 pages’ worth of behind-the-scenes peeks into the nitty-gritty of manga research—as well as a never before published manifesto of Dr. Mangaberg’s musings about comics translation—THE TRANSLATOR WITHOUT TALENT is a tell-all slog through two-plus years of activity of your favorite nose-in-the-mud manga scholar. This genre-defying volume spotlights some of the best and weirdest alt-manga and gekiga artists, with extended tangents into the politics of nuclear power and social discrimination in Japan. It is perfect for anyone obsessed with obscure, amazing, and all-too-frequently retrograde manga, but does not have the patience to scroll through a lengthy Instagram feed. Comics studies has never before seen anything like THE TRANSLATOR WITHOUT TALENT, and it may never again. Published by the comics and manga fanzine BUBBLES in its first foray away from the xerox machine.!

FEATURING: 
Tsuge Yoshiharu 
Tsuge Tadao 
Baron Yoshimoto 
Katsumata Susumu 
Ebisu Yoshikazu 
Hirata Hiroshi 
Tsurita Kuniko 
Koike Kazuo 
Yokoyama Yuichi 
Hayashi Seiichi 
Torikai Akane 
Dash Shaw 
AND MORE…

THIRD PRINTING NOW AVAILABLE!