my two favourite comics of all time are love and rockets (more gilbert than jaime) and krazy kat. and art school confidential by dan clowes has a special place in my heart being that i'm an art student and that strip reflects my experience of art school almost entirely.
recommended japanese comics:
akira - Katsuhiro Otomo (the comic totally blows the film out of the water)
black and white - Taiyo Matsumoto
ranma - rumiko takahashi
secret comics japan - various (this is a totally amazing collection of japanese underground comics)
lone wolf and cub - kazuo koike
uzumaki - junji ito
i totally disagree about japanese comics being better than western stuff, the best western stuff i've read Ware, Clowes, Love & Rockets etc, is easily on a par with the best japanese stuff i've read. apparently though, according to a japanese friend of mine, barely any good manga gets translated into english, the vast majority of stuff that does come out over here is fairly shallow teenage stuff.
but as far as jap horror goes i'd definetly recommend checking out Secret Comics Japan, and also Junko Mizuno's stuff -more for the art, her writing isn't so great, and another amazing artist called Toshio Saeki, he doesn't do comics though, he just an artist
junko mizuno:
toshio saeki: