Comic Thoughts: Tomie
I've mentioned this in a previous post, but I've been a fan of Junji Ito ever since I read his Amigara Fault short comic. I've picked through other works over the years, but I've had a copy of Tomie sitting unread on my shelf for ages.
Tomie is a collection of short stories about an immortal girl (named Tomie, obviously) who repeatedly drives men insane with love for her, generally culminating in said men murdering her and chopping her into little bits.
It's a pretty fucked up concept, and the first couple of chapters definitely had a good gut-punch feeling to them as the concept was introduced and Tomie kept returning, but after a few of these stories it honestly started to get old. The stories each had a bit of merit, but most amounted to a "What if Tomie did THIS?" accompanied with a payoff at the end of a couple stellar body horror panels.
What if Tomie was underwater? What if Tomie was in the snow??
The final few chapters tied together a semblance of a larger narrative with some extra deranged nonsense, but the collection ended on a pretty unsatisfying note. I came for unsettling, and honestly the most unsettling story was the very first one in the collection, before any of the body horror or immortal girl stuff comes into play.