Bride of Deimos Vol. 1by Barb Lien-CooperReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk. Publisher
Credits Grade: 8 Horror manga graphic novels like Bride of Deimos astound me. They're all illogical (or at least governed by dream logic), original, strangely paced, mystifying, underwritten, moody, creepy, sometimes grotesque, and strangely addictive works. As when one watches the film Kwaidan (a.k.a. 4 Japanese Ghost Stories), reading horror manga makes one feel as if one has accidentally ingested peyote and is slowly starting to trip out, without really knowing what's causing all the paranoid delusions and bizarrely beautiful and terrible images.Bride of Deimos, like the classic horror manga Ugimaki, is a trip and a half to read. At first, the graphic novel looks like a gothic romance crossed with a teenage shoujo manga. The set up sounds the same: A cute schoolgirl is relentlessly pursued by a love-sick but thoroughly evil androgynously handsome demon. He is convinced she's the reincarnation of his lost love, so he torments her unmercifully, as a cat plays with a mouse. Hokey sounding, huh? It's not. The execution is EVERYTHING in Bride of Deimos. Don't let appearances fool you or you'll be caught off guard the way I was. I read this manga, really not expecting to be scared. I read the first story and thought, "mmmn, interestingly creepy." I read the second and thought, "That's horrifying!" I didn't think anything about the other stories, as I was too busy reading them. They were quite addictive little morsels of imaginative evil. By the end, I'd found that this super weird series had grown on me like space moss grew on Stephen King in that 1980's horror film based on EC comics (you know, that segment vaguely based on that Edwardian horror story about the castaways that ended up as green moss — what the hell was its title again?) I'm pleasantly shocked to say that I want MORE as soon as possible. Written: April 28, 2003
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