We love when fans discover things we’ve never seen before.
Though it was released here in the States in 1973, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist didn’t arrive in Japan until one year later. In conjunction with the release, a magazine by the name of Shonen Sunday commissioned comic book artist Kazuo Umezu to put together a several page comic-style spread based on the film for that year’s July issue; this is information, we must point out, that we learned from the blog Kurorama. As it turns out, the man behind the blog just stumbled across the mag in a shop in Tokyo, and he uploaded the entire panel-by-panel spread today.
The art, which I had personally never seen, is insanely cool, essentially recapping the film’s story in Umezu’s own unique style. Blog owner “JohnnyTKO” explained the awesome find:
I’ve loosely written about one of my favorite films before, The Exorcist, as well as my favorite Japanese horror comic writer, Kazuo Umezu. Little did I know that these two things have come together at some point in the past. After digging through many malls and shops across Tokyo with overwhelmingly large quantities of devil-knows-how-old magazines and books, I found a 1974 issue of Shonen Sunday. To commemorate The Exorcist‘s release in Japan, then-to-be legend Kazuo Umezu was asked to create a full color spread in the July 7th issue of Shonen Sunday. At the time, Umezu was 38 years old and had a few of his most famous works of his career already behind him.
Check out the art below and head over to Kurorama for a full translation of the vintage comic!
