Junji Ito: the horror legend who drew your Thoughtseize
The most famous horror artist alive drew real, tournament-legal Magic cards. This is how a dental technician from Gifu ended up on your Thoughtseize.
Junji Ito: the horror legend who drew your Thoughtseize
It is October, which means it is Junji Ito season. The undisputed master of horror manga has drawn actual tournament-legal Magic cards, and his versions might be the scariest pieces of cardboard ever printed. Let's talk about the guy.
Who he is
Junji Ito was born July 31, 1963 in what is now Nakatsugawa, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. He started drawing at age four, inspired by his older sisters' comics, Kazuo Umezu, and Shinichi Koga, but he did not go straight into manga. He trained as a dental technician in 1984 and drew comics as a hobby on the side.
In 1987 he submitted a short story to Monthly Halloween that won an honorable mention in the Kazuo Umezu Prize, with Umezu himself as one of the judges. That story became Tomie, the immortal-girl horror saga that ran for 13 years. Then came Uzumaki (1998-1999), the three-volume spiral obsession masterpiece, plus Gyo, Hellstar Remina, The Hanging Balloon, and The Enigma of Amigara Fault, the comic that has traumatized the entire internet more than once (Wikipedia).
The style
Ito works mostly in black and white, with obsessively fine line work that builds dread instead of relying on gore alone. His recurring themes are body horror, ordinary people sliding into irrational compulsion, and cosmic situations that punish everyone equally and without explanation. The signature move is taking something mundane, a spiral, a balloon, a hole in a cliff, and letting it metastasize until the whole page is wrong. You can spot his art from across the room.
The cards
In October 2022, Wizards released Secret Lair: Special Guest Junji Ito, four hand-drawn black-and-white reimaginings of classic black cards: Thoughtseize, Doomsday, Carrion Feeder, and Plaguecrafter (Wargamer). Perfect color pie, honestly. There is no artist better suited to Thoughtseize than the man who draws people ripping their own faces off.
Then in Phyrexia: All Will Be One, Ito illustrated the manga-variant Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, one of the priciest showcase cards in the set (Dot Esports). A horror artist drawing a body-horror villain for a body-horror set. The match was obvious.
Why you should care
Spooky season is card art season. If you play black in any format, there is no version of Thoughtseize that fits the vibe harder than his. And the next time someone at the table asks who drew the unsettling one in the sleeve, you will have the best answer in the room: the dental technician from Gifu who accidentally became the most famous horror artist alive.
