In Zoroku, the hapless title character yearns to draw colorful pictures, but evil villagers make fun of him... and his condition. It seems that a little rash has turned to a boil, and a boil to many, and many to something much, much worse. Poor Zoroku becomes covered with a "colorful purulence," and the villagers and their children drive him away to solitude, deep into the forest by a strange lake. Unfortunately for him, the purulence gives off an odor that would curl paint, and his boils ooze so badly, maggots infest them in the hundreds. The story does have a happy ending, though, sort of.

Any hardcore horror fan would love a copy of Lullabies and his Hino Horror 1: The Red Snake. Here, the younger member of a truly unsavory family is trapped by a dark forest that never lets him leave, and a house that contains an ancient mirror, behind which lies a maze of long corridors filled with demons from hell. And you thought the commute to work was bad. Grandma thinks she's a chicken and lives in a nest of twigs, Grandpa has puss-filled warts that he likes having squeezed, and dad collects bugs, lots of bugs. All hell breaks loose when a crack in the mirror lets the demons out. Just make sure you don't eat before reading this one.

No manga library would be complete without the engrossing The Drifting Classroom, Volumes 1-11, by Kazuo Umezu (also made into a 1987 film). Sho has a fight with his mom, and when both wish the other would never come back, the universe obliges them. Unfortunately for Sho's classmates and teachers, the universe includes the entire Yamato Elementary School along with him. What follows is something like Stephen King's The Mist, but with kids.

In Volume 1, the realization of what happened slowly sinks in and the hunt for food begins. Sho takes the leadership role as the struggle to survive against the desolate world they find themselves in butts up against the growing panic quickly setting in, pitting kid against kid and teacher against teacher. Be warned: kids and teachers drop like flies in this manga. While there is little gory illustration, Umezu keeps constant tension going from panel to panel, and the frying relationships between everyone moves the story at a fever pitch. There is a real sense of horror here as estrangement from their normal life and parents leaves the kids in shock and disbelief, the the teachers without a clue as to what to do.