Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show

Maruo Suehiro

Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show was the first of Suehiro Maruo's manga to be translated into English, and it's pretty easy to see why he developed a cult following among extreme horror fans almost overnight. From the opening panels of this twisted, disturbing graphic novel, Maruo is going to go for the gut. You're probably going to like it for the images alone. Which is good, because the story is told in impressionist form, to the point of losing a good deal of the story (an old folk tale about a girl tricked into becoming the slave of a sideshow) in the process. Granted, some of that could be happening in the translation, but I doubt it; pages of panels would have to be intercut for a truly faithful retelling of the folk tale.

Still, it's a very pretty thing, as long as extreme gore fits your definition of pretty.