“Deserter” by Junji Ito
You can always trust that any collection of stories by Junji Ito will be a wonderfully creepy and creative experience. And with this collection of some of his earlier works, The Deserter does not disappoint.
A vengeful family hides an army deserter for eight years after the end of World War II, cocooning him in a false reality where the war never ended. A pair of girls look alike, but they aren’t twins. And a boy’s nightmare threatens to spill out into the real world…
This hauntingly strange story collection showcases a dozen of Junji Ito’s earliest works from when he burst onto the horror scene, sowing fresh seeds of terror.
I adore Junji Ito's work. I have done since the first time I was introduced to it. But, like a lot of great horror writers, his longer stories can have a tendency to meander. Horror often leans towards fitting shorter forms than other genres, and even books written by the masters could lose whole chapters without losing anything.
In fact, an argument could be made that the perfect form for horror fiction is the short story. I'm not going to get into that debate here, but I will say Deserter definitely falls into the "pro" column.
Deserter is a collection of some of Ito's early works. And you can tell. I felt the artwork, in particular, lacked some of the more openly visceral elements found in, say, Uzumaki or Gyo. There was only one page, for example, where I was stopped in my tracks by the unsettling artwork alone.
But while the art itself may not be as beautifully grotesque as some of the author's later work, don't think this takes anything away from the stories themselves. While none may have had that stand out, halt you in your tracks moments, there were no duds. Each one pulls you in with its own unique premise and leaves you with that wonderful mix of satisfaction and wanting more.
Here, perhaps, we have an example of Ito's storytelling ability over the artistic. It can be easy with author/illustrators to put their success down to their art. But by pulling back on the visual horror, we see how great Ito's premises and plots can stand on their own. (That's not to say the artwork isn't amazing, of course.)
Of course, I was going to recommend The Deserter. Junji Ito's work is always excellent, and I'm never anything but thrilled and creeped out by his work. If you want a collection of stories that can unsettle you with a single premise and wonderfully unsettling imagery, you simply cannot do better.
