Brain Damage

From the brilliant and twisted mind of manga artist Shintaro Kago, a new collection of short stories rife with skin-crawling suspense, visceral body horror, and pitch dark-humor.

2026 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards WINNER Best Short Story

In 2018, manga artist Shintaro Kago made his English debut with Dementia 21, a collection of absurdist manga short stories. Readers found themselves delighted and disgusted by his penchant for body horror, black comedy and the surreal paired with his emphatic, kinetic art style. Kago returns at the height of his powers with Brain Damage, where he dials up the gore and absurdity to new heights.

Brain Damage collects four new short manga stories, a tantalizing blend of the hilarious and the macabre. In “Labyrinth Quartet,” four identical young women trapped in an eerie building must solve the mystery of why they’ve been gathered there ― while being hunted by a knife-wielding stalker. In “Curse Room,” a plucky health aide is tasked with keeping zombies peaceful, lest they go on a brain-eating rampage. In “Family Portrait,” people throughout town are strangely disappearing without a trace, and the key to it all is a senile and perverted old man. Finally, in “Blood Harvest” a series of gruesomely mangled bodies are found in pristine cars ― and it appears something sinister lurks within these masses of glass and steel.

Black-and-white illustrations throughout

Shintaro Kago is a manga artist who has gained a cult following for his transgressive work marked by horror, sci-fi, psychedelic erotica, and a keen sense of the grotesque. His comics include Fraction (2009), Super-Dimensional Love Gun (2019), Dementia 21 (2020), and Brain Damage (2025). He lives in Tokyo.

Zack Davisson is an award-winning writer, translator, and lecturer. He is on faculty at NYU in the Translation and Interpretations department and active in his fields. He translated globally renowned entertainment properties such as Go Nagai's Devilman and Cutie Honey, Leiji Matsumoto's Space Battleship Yamato and Captain Harlock, Satoshi Kon's Opus, and Shigeru Mizuki's multiple Eisner Award-winning Showa: a History of Japan.  Davisson is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Japanese Yokai, Kaibyo: The Supernatural Cats of Japan, Yurei: the Japanese Ghost, and Yokai Stories. His other works include Ultimate X-Men from Marvel comics, Wayward from Image, and The Art of Star Wars Visions from Lucasfilm.