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Junko Mizuno's HELL BABIES!Reviewed by Tony Cooley
It's unusual to see a review of an art book on a website, but Mizuno's work is so captivating that fans of her work should know whether they should buy this or not. "Junko Mizuno's Hell Babies" is a collection of illustrations from Mizuno spanning 1998-2001. The book itself is about 90 pages long and is a soft cover with a rubberized sleeve featuring Mizuno's illustration highlighted in glitter. The craftsmanship that went into making this book, from the cover, quality of printed images, to the paper stock is terrific. The book is set up to introduce the characters by year and character set. There are the Hell Babies, Vulgarity Babies, and the Baby Files which give a little bio and back story on some of her recurring characters. Mizuno's work features a super deformed style that shows a heavy influence from fairytales with flair from various counter-cultures such as high School gangs, Japanese myths, and tattoo flash art. A good portion of the illustrations inside feature some kind of nudity, but it does so without ever being overbearing. Mizuno's work mixes imagery of sexy and cloyingly sweet women with alternative culture. Samples (click image to enlarge) :
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Author:
Junko Mizuno
In almost all of Mizuno's works the women are the heroines of the story and dabble in some sort of deviant activity. Hell babies is a great showcase of some of her works, but the low number of illustrations you actually get when compared to the MSRP of the book makes it a bad value. This is the only thing I can say that is a negative of her work if you are a fan like I am. Move over Hello Kitty, if you like graphic design, alternative culture and cute things... Hell Babies is for you!
