All short story collections are mixed bags. That's not a pejorative statement about short stories by any means; it's simply the nature of the beast. Brain Damage, a collection of four horror tales by manga creator Shintaro Kago, defines this tendency. When it's good, it's very good, playing with horror and comedy in equal measure. But when it falters, it falls hard, resulting in a couple of stories that are a bit hard to take.

The strongest piece strictly from a writing standpoint is the second, Curse Room. The back copy describes it as being about “a plucky health care aide” working with zombies, but that doesn't come across for the greater part of the tale. Looking for this plotline that doesn't seem to be appearing is part of the strength of the piece; you know what's supposed to be coming, but there's no real sign of it doing so. Kago plays with our expectations in multiple ways, opening with what looks like a young woman living in a haunted apartment, helped out by her friend, who's doing her level best. But as the pages turn, it begins to look not quite right; there are bits and pieces of the young woman's life that just aren't adding up. Is it just a haunting, or is there something else?

The answer to that is only the halfway point of the piece, which again is a very strong element of the story. We find out the truth about the young woman and her friend in a way that's almost too simple. It's horrific, yes, but in a way more reminiscent of the 1962 film Carnival of Souls than anything else – it's sad and unsettling, but not truly scary. It's only when the “friend,” actually the health aide of the plot description, moves on that things start to truly unravel, making all of the successes and good intentions portrayed in the first half of the story look, at best, naïve and at worst foolish. There's a light bit of humor to the ending that works.

That's a hallmark of most of the stories; Kago often interjects a bit of humor into the endings of his stories. It works best in this one because it plays with the readers' expectations and feels organically like a piece of the plot. That's why it's a bit surprising that it doesn't work as well in the fourth story, Blood Harvest, because the entire setup is outrageously silly. Or perhaps “campy” is the better word – it's got all the genius of a classic B horror flick, taking something that's only dangerous when misused by humans and making it bloodthirsty and sentient. The less spoiled about this story, the better, because it is a delight to find out for yourself. Still, I do feel that Kago's use of humor undercuts the ending. While the piece is campy all the way through, the way that the creator leans into the silliness for the final page feels like a step too far. B-movies are fun because they take themselves seriously; Blood Harvest fails to do that at the very end.

The third story is the most difficult of the batch. Family Portrait is, to put it mildly, a lot to take. It follows a family trying to cope with their increasingly erratic grandfather, a man who regularly sexually harasses and abuses his teenage granddaughter. Alongside this, people in their neighborhood are starting to vanish, leaving only their clothes behind, and no one knows whether they're being murdered or not. The way these two circumstances inform each other is well done, and it's a statement on the power of the human mind and what happens when it begins to degrade, such as when someone has dementia. But the sexual assault “jokes” (and they are meant to be funny) take away from any cleverness the actual plot has, making this the worst story in the book. Had it left that element out, it would have been quite good.

While the first tale, Labyrinth Quartet is good but largely unremarkable except for its combination of yuri and horror, the entire volume comes with a variety of horror elements in both art and writing. People who aren't fans of gore may not want to pick this up, as it doesn't shy away from various forms of that, including body horror and plain old gross images. Family Portrait also makes use of holes where there shouldn't be any (i.e., on the human body), and while it doesn't go nearly as far as some of Junji Ito's use of trŷpa, it still stands to discomfit people with trypophobia.

While some of the imagery in the book may be gross, Fantagraphics' physical book is gorgeous. Unlike Raging Clouds, this one doesn't have a dust jacket of textured paper, but its larger trim size and thick pages make holding and reading it a pleasure. The covers do show fingerprints, but the binding is perfect for holding the book all the way open without damaging it, and it does feel like something worth the asking price of $29.99. Zack Davisson's translation is, as always, excellent.

If you're a horror fan, Brain Damage is a good collection to pick up – and that goes double if you like campy B-movie horror. The third story has some serious issues, and the fourth undercuts itself a bit, but if you like Junji Ito, it's a good time to discover Shintaro Kago as well.