Franken Fran #1-2

This omnibus edition of Katsuhisa Kigitsu's darkly playful manga pairs the first two volumes behind a cover that says everything you need to know: a blonde, amber-eyed young woman in a loose lab coat — bolts visible at her temples — fixes the reader with a cool, unsettling stare. Kigitsu's linework balances the clinical (that open coat, the surgical aesthetic) with something decidedly uncanny, setting the tone for a series that clearly delights in mixing beauty and body horror. At $19.99 USD, it's a generous entry point into one of manga's more memorably strange takes on the mad-scientist genre.