Betwixt

Betwixt gathers six horror short stories by manga creators from Japan and the US. Each one sits in the space between the known and the unknown, the border where ordinary life meets something that should not be there.

Three of the stories are by Japanese creators: Ryo Hanada, Aki Shimizu and Shima Shinya. Their tales are rooted in Japanese ghost and creature traditions, with spirits and monsters that live alongside the people around them.

The American contributions come from Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad, who work as a pair, Leslie Hung, Sloane Leong and Hua Hua Zhu. Their stories lean toward paranoia, and they make the stranger on the street, or the person next door, a source of dread.

This is a horror anthology in manga form, so each story is short and self-contained and can be read on its own. Junji Ito supplies the cover art and a foreword. The collection offers a range of styles and scares from creators on both sides of the Pacific, and the question it keeps asking is whether anyone will cross that border.