La Chenille #[nn]

Against a deep black void, Suehiro Maruo's cover for this 2010 Le Lézard Noir edition arranges a striking vertical tableau: a wide-eyed, open-mouthed male face at the bottom, draped in blue fabric, with an owl perched above him, and entwined figures in vivid red-and-white patterned clothing cascading upward in a dreamlike, unsettling composition. The visual tension between beauty and unease is quintessential Maruo, whose precise, ornate linework drives both the cover art and the interior adaptation of Edogawa Ranpo's story. Fans of Japanese ero-guro aesthetics and literary manga will find this French-language edition — translated by Miyako Slocombe — a genuinely captivating object.