Possession, it seems, is not just nine-tenths of the law. The idea of not being in control your own faculties, or worse still, having something else in control, lies at the heart of a vast amount of fiction. The approach differs, ranging from the comedic in Steve Martin's ALL OF ME, to the cop buddy-movie portrayal in Top Cow's recent NO HONOR, but the result is always the same. Two warring personalities in the same body is an instant story.

It's also got some truth to it.

Two years ago, an unusual form of mass panic gripped areas of China. Men became convinced their genitals were shrinking back into their body and resorted to horrific measures to stop them doing so. They wedged them between branches, tied or nailed them to objects, all apparently, to no avail. And all for no reason. An example of "mass hysteria", the idea of testicular retraction took hold and there was nothing anyone involved could do.

This sort of thing, interestingly, has only been used fleetingly in comics. Britain's EAGLE anthology comic ran a strip featuring a photographer with a Mafia hitman's hand in the early '80s. More recently, NO HONOR used the same conceit of marrying the "possessed limb/body" storyline to something completely incongruous as the manga PARASYTE, by Hitosi Iwaaki. For NO HONOR, it's heist and samurai movies. For PARASYTE, it's teen angst and visceral horror. PARASYTE is DAWSON'S CREEK meets John Carpenter's THE THING, and the effect is quite extraordinary.

Parasytes are a race of worm like aliens who land on Earth and have only a limited time to bond with a living host before they die, be it a dog, a bird or a human. On bonding, they make their way to the brain, consume it - and the entire head - and take its place. They assimilate vocabulary and behaviour relatively quickly and have total control over their host's DNA. They can alter their face or turn any part of their body into a weapon, seemingly at will. However, the process is far from exact.

Shin Imada, the series' protagonist, is an example of this. A 17-year-old schoolboy, Shin wakes up during the process and, horrified by the creature in his arm, ties a tourniquet around his shoulder. The parasyte lodges in his left hand and is trapped there. It makes contact and explains that the two of them are now trapped together. Without the worm, Shin will die and without Shin, the parasyte will die. Calling itself "Lefty", the creature explains about its race and its desire for fresh meat. The parasytes are carnivores, and, initially at least, humanity is at the trop of the menu.

Superficially, PARASYTE bears more than a passing resemblance to a number of American titles, particularly SPIDER-MAN. Both have an unpopular schoolboy as the hero, both have their hero gifted with powers no others can know about, and both have the hero constantly wrestle with the burden of his responsibilities. However, there the similarities end. While Spider-Man chose the safe route of superheroics, PARASYTE takes a more complex, morally ambiguous path. By turns teen comedy, visceral horror and science fiction, it changes its style almost as much as Lefty changes shape.

The Fortean element here is the concept of the possessed limb and Iwaaki constantly uses it in new and interesting ways. Lefty studies Earth history incessantly and, due to his reliance on Shin, is quite open about the parasytes and their plans. Indeed, in many ways he's quite friendly - aside from making it absolutely clear that while he can't kill Shin, he won't hesitate in killing anyone Shin tries to tell about the parasytes. From a visual point of view, it's also used to tremendous effect. The fights between parasytes are swift and balletic, filled with gracefully curved barbs and sudden, vicious wounds. Similarly, the parasytes themselves are used in consistently interesting ways. In later books for example, Shin gains an ally in another partially possessed human. However, instead of being trapped in a hand, this man's parasyte is trapped in the bottom half of his face, allowing him to change his appearance.

Foremost however, the alien factor is used to emphasise Shin's adolescence and the awful mistakes that people can make during that time. Indeed, in one of the best comedy moments in the series, Shin's father discovers him with his tourniquet in hand as he frantically tries to stop Lefty eating his brain. His father immediately asks him if he's on drugs.

Where PARASYTE really comes into it's own, however, is where its separate plot lines collide. There's a constant sense of unease during the scenes at Shin's school, especially when Hideo Shimada, a fellow parasyte and school student, is introduced. Underneath the obligatory slapstick and the "Is she really going out with him?" interplay, there's a feeling that everything is about to go horribly, brutally wrong. And it does. PARASYTE doesn't shy away from how the aliens feed, and their attacks on humans are horrifically bloody. What makes them all the more disturbing is Iwaaki's decision to have the parasytes maintain their human form when attacking

The fight scenes, as a result, have both a genuine sense of tension and, at times, of abject horror. A single parasyte can and regularly does decimate large groups of humans, and as a result, Shin's own battles with them are both tense and tinged with a genuine sense of the alien. He is, by rights, still human and yet he's the only person to regularly survive parasyte attacks. This in turn ties into Shin's ongoing desire to be a "normal kid" which, with his knowledge and abilities, he can never be.

Indeed, the "normal teen" plot is used time and again as the anchor for the other stories. By using this, most realistic plot as the book's core, Iwaaki ensures that PARASYTE never spirals down into unrelenting horror. In fact, the book mirrors its subject matter in many ways. Just as a thin skin of normality is placed over Shin's life by his personal relationships with his family and friends, they also give the book a much needed heart. However, beneath this is the constant, insect-like threat of the parasytes and Lefty's threat to Shin's safety and the safety of those close to him. Unlike Kevin McCarthy in INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS, Shin cannot afford to run screaming down the street, telling everyone who'll listen that "they're" here. Thanks to Lefty, Shin has become one of "them".

This is further accentuated in later books when the parasytes strike at Shin's family home through an entirely different and genuinely horrifying source. The injuries that Shin sustains force a change in the nature of his bond with Lefty, and from that point, the series is powered as much by Shin's questioning of his own humanity as it is by his attempts to fit in.

The "teen" plot line becomes equally important from a narrative point of view. Sara, Shin's sometime girlfriend, is a constant presence and becomes an integral part of Shin's development when she starts to become disturbed by his behaviour. The other girl who's interested in him, Kana, gains still more importance when it is revealed she has partial ESP and can sense both full-blown parasytes and partials like Shin. What she does with this knowledge, and the consequences of her actions, greatly affect the later volumes.

Just as this plot allows Iwaaki to keep his characters firmly grounded, the development of the parasyte plot line allows him to provide a new and highly original take on the alien invasion story. While the parasytes initially feed indiscriminately on humans, they quickly realise how vulnerable they are. Organised into groups, the parasytes systematically gain funding and take over people of increasingly high social standing. In one of the later volumes, for example, Shin discovers to his horror that the mayor of a nearby town is now a parasyte.

Interestingly, the parasyte plot line neatly combines with Shin's own. Just as Shin, subconsciously or otherwise, becomes convinced that his parasyte components make him both less and more than human, the parasytes are beginning to assimilate far too well. Just as Shin is becoming more like a parasyte, the parasytes are becoming more human. And even then, he's still alone.

Ultimately then, this is what the "possessed body part" story brings to PARASYTE. Iwaaki uses the concept to tell both an innovative first contact story and a genuinely original variation on the troubled adolescent story. Shin is the classic "troubled schoolboy" of manga, complete with terrible secret, unease around the opposite sex, and an awkward relationship with his parents. The only way he can grow as a person is to continue to fight the parasyte menace and, by extension, a part of himself. In short, to win he must grow up.

Alasdair Stuart is the manager of Travelling Man comics in York, and writes for the Manx Independent newspaper.

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