It's 1935 in Seoul, Korea, and struggling artist Yun Iho has been commissioned by the elderly, reclusive Madam Song Jeonghwa to paint an updated portrait of her. When Iho goes to pick up the art supplies from the previous artist's room, he finds an ominous note tucked between paint tubes: “Do not finish the portrait.”

When he actually meets Madam Song, he finds her to be startlingly young and beautiful, yet she asks him to paint her as though she were eighty. What could it all mean? Listening to her seemingly unrelated stories about a spate of unsolved murders in Shanghai that happened long before Iho was born does little to allay his confusion.

In a slowly unfolding revelation, each panel drenched in more dread than the last, Iho learns that no artist has ever left Madam Song's hotel alive. He starts to suspect the horrifying truth of what she is, and what, exactly, she might be capable of. . . .

Delusion has a story and art by Hongjacga. Lettering by Carolyn Grant with Iasmin Omar Ata. Published by Inklore (September 2, 2026). Rated 16+.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

I can't write this review without pointing out that The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula have intersected before - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen exists, after all. But I much prefer the way Hongjacga is doing it in his series Delusion. There's no actual Stoker or Wilde characters running around 1935 Seoul or 1880 Shanghai, but they're present nonetheless as Hongjacga calls upon the spirits of their novels to create his manhwa.

The main portion of the story takes place in 1935, in what was at the time called Gyeongseong – Japanese-occupied Seoul. Yun Iho is an artist, primarily a portraitist, struggling to make a living, so when a strange man comes an offers him a plum assignment painting a wealthy, reclusive lady, he's in no position to turn it down. The woman in question is Madam Song, owner of a luxury hotel primarily frequented by foreigners, and every couple of decades, she has her portrait painted. Yun expects to meet an elderly woman based on the artwork he sees on the walls of her home, but when he meets her, she looks like she's in her twenties – and her request to him is to paint a portrait of her aged up more than the most recent. Essentially, he's been hired to falsify the visual record by painting a fictional portrait of her as the old woman she ought to be.

It doesn't take long to figure out that she's a vampire. The story isn't even trying to hide that – Yun notices her fangs, strange behaviors, and the blood spattering the halls very early on. This is less a story about the discovery of a monster and more about understanding one. And Madam Song very much wants to be understood – when she realizes that Yun has figured out her secret, and that the vampire hunter who trails her has already made contact with him, she begins to tell Yun her story. She's an inherently unreliable narrator, of course, but is the hunter any more honest? How much can anyone be believed?

Hongjacga says in his afterword that the themes he's working with are “love and compassion.” Although they may feel distant right now, they are present. Yun wants to leave, but he's also compassionate enough (and curious enough) to want to listen to Madam Song's story. Her origins back in 1880s Shanghai, where she was made to perform as “Maehwa” for wealthy patrons, is all about her mother's love for her and her need to be set free to find her. And as the book goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer that all Madam Song truly wants is some compassion from others. She didn't choose to become a vampire. She doesn't want to drink human blood. She's trapped by her situation as much as Yun is, still being forced to perform for others as she was when she was Maehwa, putting on a show of humanity.

Unlike Dorian Gray's portrait, Madam Song's show her as she wishes she could be. The greyscale artwork with bursts of red and yellow demonstrate how trapped everyone in this story feels, by their lives or by the Japanese occupation or other outside forces. Grim and haunting, Delusion is a vampire story that you don't want to miss.