Smudge, the manga imprint of Living the Line, has licensed Shinichi Koga’s Mansect, a vintage pulp horror manga in the same vein as the work of Junji Ito and Kazuo Umezz. Complete in a single volume, Mansect is a bio-horror story about a man who somehow turns human beings into bloodthirsty insect monsters. The manga was first published in 1975 by Akita Shoten. Smudge will release it on February 12, 2025, with an MSRP of $19.95.

Koga died in 2018 at the age of 81. His best known manga is the horror series Eko Eko Azarek, which ran from 1975 to 1979 in Akita Shoten’s Shonen Champion magazine and was collected into 19 volumes by Akita Shoten. Although that series was very popuar in Japan, and was adapted into live-action films, television dramas, and anime, Mansect is the first of Koga's works to be published in English.

Smudge, which is curated by manga scholar Ryan Holmberg, recently published UFO Mushroom Invasion, its second title (see “Smudge Announces New Horror/Sci-Fi Manga”).