{"id":44367,"date":"2025-06-17T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=44367"},"modified":"2025-06-12T14:57:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T21:57:05","slug":"fragments-of-horror-woman-rebel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/fragments-of-horror-woman-rebel\/","title":{"rendered":"Fragments of Horror \/ Woman Rebel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FRAGMENTS OF HORROR \u2013 WONDERFULLY CREEPY STORIES THAT ARE AS WEIRD AS THEY ARE ORIGINAL<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Fragments of Horror<\/em>
by Junji Ito
Viz Media
2015, 224 pages, 5.8 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches (hardcover)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fragments of Horror<\/em> is a collection of eight wonderfully grotesque and creepy short stories. A seemingly bright and pretty architecture student terrorizes a family while having a bizarre relationship with their house. A boy tries to hold his body together after cheating on his girlfriend. The number one fan of a novelist finds herself in a sick situation trapped in the writer\u2019s basement. A young woman who just eloped can\u2019t understand why her new husband won\u2019t come out from under his futon covers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by horror manga artist Junji Ito, whose influences include H.P. Lovecraft, the stories are as weird as they are original, while the art is crisp and expressive. What I love is the way these stories, set in modern Japan, are about seemingly normal lives that take a twisted turn into the bowels of darkness. They remind me of my favorite Twilight Zone<\/em> episodes, the ones that start off in a stylish, mid-century modern house or office where sharp-looking people go about their ordinary lives\u2026 until a crack in normality suddenly appears, the creep factor sets in, and they enter the twilight zone. My only regret is that there aren\u2019t more stories here, but fortunately Ito isn\u2019t new to the genre and has many other titles that I\u2019ll be picking up soon. \u2013 Carla Sinclair<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WOMAN REBEL \u2013 PETER BAGGE\u2019S GRAPHIC BIO OF THE CONTROVERSIAL FOUNDER OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story<\/em>
by Peter Bagge
Drawn and Quarterly
2013, 104 pages, 6.8 x 9.1 x 0.7 inches (hardcover)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I think of Peter Bagge, I think of his work in Hate<\/em> or Neat Stuff<\/em>, both comics about teenage angst and living in suburban malaise. Therefore, when I saw he wrote Woman Rebel<\/em>, a biography of Margaret Sanger (the woman responsible for Planned Parenthood), I was curious. Once I started reading, it made perfect sense. Discontent, anger, and frustration with the status quo translate perfectly to the life of Ms. Sanger. Margaret Sanger is most famously known as the founder of Planned Parenthood and for her endless fight for women\u2019s access to birth control in the early 20th century. The book highlights key moments in Sanger\u2019s life \u2013 it starts with her childhood (she was born in the 1880s to Irish immigrants) and takes us through her early work as a nurse, mother, and eventual activist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes this biography unique are Bagge\u2019s illustrations. His faces, especially the contorted, frustrated ones that work in Bagge\u2019s earlier work (say, on his teenage anti-hero Buddy Bradley) cross over really well. There is a lot of sadness and anger in Sanger\u2019s life, whether it was her mother (who had 18 pregnancies in 25 years) or Sanger herself facing the many smug and misogynistic critics attempting to halt her progress. There is a lot of emotion in this book, the same that made Sanger persevere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After reading Woman Rebel<\/em>, I went online to learn more about Sanger and was immediately slammed by my own ignorance as to what a controversial person she is today. Aside from any expected generic criticism of Planned Parenthood, she is described as a \u201cracist eugenicist\u201d and guilty of \u201cblack genocide.\u201d Bagge addresses this controversy in his afterword \u201cWhy Sanger?\u201d He delves into how she advocated birth control to women of the KKK (that\u2019s right – the KKK – another reason why this book is full of surprises) as well as black women living in Harlem. Bagge gives lots of examples of how her legacy has been dissected over time, and Bagge\u2019s description of her critics is great: \u201cIt\u2019s an irony festival!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of how you feel about Margaret Sanger\u2019s legacy, this book is an illustrated education into a woman, that as Bagge puts it, \u201clived the lives of ten people,\u201d and is directly responsible for the access women have to reproductive health care in 2016. The only actual criticism of this book for me is that I wanted more. The book could be twice the length, and dive deeper into more details of her life, because it seems they are endless. \u2013 Amy Lackpour<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Issue No. 71<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[2398],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44382,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44367\/revisions\/44382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}