Strange Pictures, Vol. 1

Aiba adapts Japanese author Uketsu’s bestselling psychological horror novel into a genre-defying, uniquely unsettling work of manga. This opening volume introduces a sequence of seemingly isolated mysteries, each sparked by what appear to be innocuous, childlike drawings. A pregnant woman posts a series of increasingly ominous doodles to her personal blog; a little boy’s drawing of his home hints at looming threats within—or surrounding—his family; an amateur detective becomes determined to unravel the meaning behind secret messages encoded within a drawing left at the scene of an unsolved murder. As the story progresses, Aiba allows an accumulation of recurring details, narrative gaps, and the juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory details to implicate the reader in the work of interpreting both imagery and the subtle connections between each storyline, creating a steadily increasing sense of a vast and complex interconnected overall narrative.