UFO Mushroom Invasion – Shirakawa Marina
UFO Mushroom Invasion – Shirakawa Marina, a 1976 SF horror manga gem translated by Ryan Holmberg and published in the new Smudge imprint from Living the Line Books / 208-page paperback, 6 x 8 inches, published 2024 / b/w art with some color extras / ISBN 9781961581012
If you bought the killer Japanese-language “Mushroom Manga Masterpiece” anthology from me in the past, you’ll recognize this art since Marina took up a major chunk of the collection. Now it’s in English!
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“UFOs are one of the world’s greatest mysteries…and I hope they stay that way. For the day that aliens reveal themselves may very well become the beginning of the end of life on Earth as we know it!”
A flying saucer crashes deep in the mountains of Japan. Wary of the hyper-intelligent beings they find inside, the government hides from the public all news of the alien craft. But it’s not the strange visitors themselves that they should be afraid of―the real danger is the parasitic spores smuggled aboard! Will Earth survive the UFO MUSHROOM INVASION?!
Originally published in 1976, Shirakawa Marina’s UFO MUSHROOM INVASION is a masterpiece of sci-fi horror. Drawing on his deep knowledge of Japanese folklore and the supernatural, Shirakawa created one of manga history’s cult classics and an unforgettably creepy entry in the canon of spore-horror. With an essay by weirdologist Udagawa Takeo, UFO MUSHROOM INVASION is the second volume of SMUDGE, a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga, curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg.
