ICv2 reported on Friday that Last Gasp Publishing has licensed Suehiro Maruo's (Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show, The Strange Tale of Panorama Island) manga adaptation of Rampo Edogawa's The Caterpillar (Imo-mushi) story for release in English in hardcover and paperback in 2026.
Rampo Edogawa wrote the story in 1929. Maruo serialized the adaptation in Enterbrain's Comic Beam magazine from May 2009 to August 2009. The company released the manga as a compiled volume in October 2009. The annual Angoulême International Comics Festival nominated the manga for Best Comic in 2010.
The original 1929 short story follows the tragic homecoming of a disfigured, limbless World War I veteran to his wife. Edogawa is best known for his detective and suspense stories that he wrote over the course of four decades. "The Caterpillar" short story has been already published in English in the Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imaginationprose book. Edogawa's story inspired a live-action film in 2010. Kōji Wakamatsu directed the film and 60th Berlin International Film Festival nominated it for its Golden Bear award.
Hiroshi Harada adapted Maruo's 1984 erotic horror manga Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show (Shojo Tsubaki) into an anime film in 1992. The manga also inspired a live-action film adaptation in May 2017. Blast Bookspublished the manga's one compiled volume in North America in 1993.
More recently, Maruo launched the An Gura (an abbreviation for "underground") manga in Kadokawa's Monthly Comic Beam magazine in November 2021, and ended it in March 2023.
Last Gasp Publishing released Maruo's The Strange Tale of Panorama Island manga in English in 2013. The manga was nominated for the 2014 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. Last Gasp will publish a paperback edition of the manga in October.
Publisher Bubbles Zine released Maruo's Beautiful Monster manga in English in February 2025. Ryan Holmbergtranslated the manga.
Maruo won the "New Artist Prize" of the 13th Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prizes in 2009, although he has been drawing manga professionally since 1980.
Source: ICv2 (Brigid Alverson)