The organizers of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards announced on Friday that renowned horror manga creator Junji Ito has been nominated for induction into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame.
Out of this year’s 18 nominees, voters will select six individuals to be inducted. Additionally, the organizers have already pre-selected the late manga creator Shigeru Mizuki for induction this year.
In 2023, Comic-Con International in San Diego honored Ito with its Inkpot Award. That same year, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards nominated Ito’s Black Paradox manga for Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia.
Pan-Asian film and entertainment studio Through the Lens Entertainment, in collaboration with horror brand Fangoria Studios, is producing film adaptations of Ito’s The Mystery of the Haunted House Parts 1 and 2, as well as Bloodsucking Darkness.
A new anime, Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, featuring 20 of Ito’s stories, premiered globally on Netflix in January 2024. Additionally, Ito’s Uzumaki manga was adapted into a four-episode anime mini-series that debuted on Toonami on September 28.
Junji Ito Manga
Previously, the television anime Junji Ito “Collection” adapted stories from the Itō Junji Kessaku-shū collection along with those from Fragments of Horror. The 12-episode series premiered in January 2018.
Crunchyroll streamed the anime with English subtitles as it aired in Japan, while Funimation provided an English dub. The anime’s second and third DVD sets included an adaptation of Ito’s Tomie.
Several of Ito’s works have inspired live-action adaptations, including Uzumaki and Tomie, while his GYO manga was adapted into an original video anime project.
The Eisner Hall of Fame has previously inducted several Japanese creators, including Osamu Tezuka (2002), Kazuo Koike (2004), Goseki Kojima (2004), Katsuhiro Ōtomo (2012), Rumiko Takahashi (2018), Moto Hagio (2022), and Keiji Nakazawa (2024). Akira Toriyama and Naoki Urasawa were nominated in 2019 but were not among the final inductees.
