Strange Pictures

Aiba’s mesmerizing manga adaptation of the psychological horror novel by Japanese “masked-writer” Uketsu (Strange Houses) draws icy menace from fictional found art. The narrative recounts the unsettling circumstances surrounding several sets of drawings before revealing unexpected links between them, inviting the reader to solve their puzzles. In this first volume, college students Sasaki and Kurihara seek out eerie online stories for their paranormal club, and stumble upon the blog of a man whose pregnant wife drew a series of odd, numbered pictures imagining her son’s future before she died in childbirth. Do the pictures contain a coded message? Who is “the person I love the most” to whom the blog is dedicated? The story then switches abruptly to an overworked widow whose art-loving son creates a troubling crayon drawing in nursery school. All the mysteries rely on visual puzzles, optical illusions, and clues hidden within the drawings, which makes comics an ideal medium for adaptation. Aiba’s art is slick, attractive, and faintly sinister, recalling Junji Ito, and for the “found” art he switches up to pastiches of various naive styles. It remains to be seen in future volumes whether all the plot threads will lead to a satisfying resolution, but fans of mystery and horror will enjoy poring over the images and guessing at their hidden depths. (June)