In Odd We Trust (Graphic Novel) (Odd Thomas Graphic Novels)

This "graphic novel" sucks big time. The illustrations are amateurish and the story line is very weak and totally disappointing as it rehashes for the most part old information about Odd before his girlfriend's death. I definitely do not recommend this trash, especially at the price of $10+.

Odd Thomas is often sought out by the local police chief... not that he's a bad guy, but he has a gift. He has the ability to see dead people. Did I mention that he frequently speaks to Elvis. Yes, THE Elvis and in his living room no less! When an acquaintance of his and Stormy's (his girlfriend) has a horrible encounter with her stalker/killer and her seven year old babysitting charge is murdered Odd jumps at the chance to help her. He also has seen little Joey's ghost around town and needs to help him cross over, but he can only do that if he catches the killer. Odd must use his gift and his ghostly encounters to help solve this case before the murderer strikes again. Odd Thomas was an incredible read! It was fast paced and very suspenseful. I also liked how if you look for it at the end you can read the first chapter of the novel, Odd Thomas. There are also character sketches in the back too, so you can see what the sketches up to the final choices looked like!

I loved Odd Thomas #1, had mixed but mostly positive feelings about the others, and am a fan of graphic novels and manga, so I thought this would be at least decent. I was wrong. What I experienced was unnatural dialogue, lazy plot, and stupid and unbelievable character reactions and attitudes.

I'll change some plot details slightly to avoid anything beyond mild spoilers:

1) Let's say there's a teenage character whose father comes home. The father says, "Hey, how was your day?" The teenager responds, "Hello father. I had a satisfying day. I think that I may compose a letter to my aunt this evening." If that teenager is supposed to be an alien or robot, then nicely done! If he's supposed to be a normal teenager, that's absurdly bad dialogue writing. And I don't think any of the characters in this book are supposed to be aliens or robots.

2) If both the characters and the police know who a child killer is, are on the lookout for him, and are aware that he plans to kill again . . . and then the characters find him sitting in the backseat of a car in front of a house, unarmed, with the ignition off and manage to get him at gunpoint, what do you think would happen next? If you answered, "They have some awkward dialogue and then inexplicably let him climb into the front seat and drive away before calling or yelling for the police (who, by the way, are already at that very house)," you're a winner!

3) When the characters arrive at a scene where a kid was just stabbed to death in order to comfort the babysitter who found his body, it's a little out of place for them to drawn as randomly smiling, laughing, and grinning.

4) Here is a rough outline of the plot itself: Bad guy is stalking good guy's friend. Good guy chases bad guy a few times, but bad guy gets away. Bad guy kidnaps friend. Good guy finds bad guy, beats him up, and saves the day. The end. That's it.

I'm just going to pretend this book doesn't exist, and hope the series gets back on track with the next Odd installment.

Dean Koontz's thoroughly enjoyable and readable Odd Thomas series gets the graphic novel treatment in the paperback IN ODD WE TRUST. The series has been a bestseller for Koontz for years, and here he fills in some of the missing details of Odd's life. IN ODD WE TRUST is a prequel, an original story that begins before the first book in the series.

The premise of Odd's life is that he sees dead people. Or at least their left-behind spirits. These spirits are sometimes looking for justice or resolution to their lives, and Odd is enlisted to help, along with his tough-as-nails, gun-toting girlfriend, named Stormy (yes, Stormy is more than a bit of a cliché at this point; luckily, she is rescued by being a fresh and genuine character and has enough heart to stand on her own).

IN ODD WE TRUST may introduce some new readers to Koontz's work, but more likely it will introduce some Koontz readers to manga (the book isn't true manga; it reads left to right). It's a great format for Odd, since he's a bit of a superpowered guy anyway, and it's nice to have a visual representation of Odd's native Pico Mundo, California, and the restaurant where he makes the tastiest pancakes in town.

Odd and Stormy are determined to find the killer of a recently murdered young boy (the book's creepy opening shows the boy's spirit reading a newspaper account of his own murder). They work at solving the crime while, somewhere outside, the killer plots again. It's not exactly groundbreaking fare, but Koontz has always had a unique eye for the suspenseful. He's having fun here, too, using the format to great effect and creating an atmosphere of chilling and eerie effectiveness.

Koontz has enlisted the help of noted manga artist Queenie Chan (the Australian artist is probably best known for her great work on TOKYOPOP's The Dreaming series). Chan also helps with the writing here, so the graphic novel doesn't have the same feel as Koontz's prose series, but it's a nice changeup here.

The series gets some new life, and additional insight, from this work. Koontz includes an essay at the end that explains how he created the character of Odd Thomas and how he draws his inspiration for the work. Koontz promises that ultimately there will be six books in the Odd Thomas series and that "His end will prove to be there in his beginning, and his beginning in his end." Fittingly, the book then segues into the first chapter of ODD THOMAS, so readers can see exactly what that beginning was. Chan's sketchbook work is also included, a nice behind-the-scenes touch for readers.

Despite its fictional timing set before the opening of the first novel in the series, IN ODD WE TRUST is not the best introduction to the characters of Pico Mundo. New readers will want to check out ODD THOMAS first before checking back here. The experience will be more rewarding that way.

--- Reviewed by John Hogan

Odd Thomas is my favorite Koontz series, and the tone of the main books are a quirky sort of black humor horror, carried by the main character Odd Thomas. The main novels have action, are well paced, and dip into elements of the supernatural in order to contrast Odd's humble humanity. Target audience is adult urban fantasy, focused on suspense and horror, in manga terms -- main series is seinen.

Compare the GRAPHIC NOVEL, written in Shoujo style. (For those that don't know, the target audience of Shoujo is young teenage girls.) Emotion is substituted for action, pacing is slow, and the elements of the supernatural are elevated from support into a major element. The previous cast of functional supporting characters are now in the muted background (characterization of supporting cast is lobotomized), to contrast Odd's oddity, and the horror element is toned down. Way down. Stylistically, where Koontz is careful to cover ever detail, Queenie-chan is sloppy, portraying dialogue about secrets in public places. These style changes meant I didn't like this offering.

If you expect this illustrated short story to be anything like the main series, you'll be disappointed.

It's good, I guess, for artists to take occasional chances. There is no doubt that Dean Koontz is an artist and that Odd Thomas is one of his most brilliant creations. However, I have my doubts about Queenie Chan.

If you're not already among the converted, Odd Thomas is the young Pico Mundo, California short order cook, famed for his pancakes. He has other unusual talents as well. Attracting those departed from this life who haven't made the transition to the afterlife. Folks like Elvis, Frank Sinatra and the lesser known, particularly those who have been murdered.

Without guns, knives or even great courage, Odd comes up against some major violent criminals and always prevails. Odd is a genius in his own right and the creation of a genius.

Queenie Chan is a Manga (Japanese graphic novel) writer and artist. Somehow she and Koontz teamed up to produce an Odd Thomas Manga, more or less a comic book for adults.

There's nothing really awful about it, but I don't think it does Odd Thomas justice. The Manga format is simply not well suited for conveying the subtlety that makes Odd Thomas such an appealing character. My understanding is that Queenie Chan also wrote much of this. Since it lacks the dry, ironic wit so typical of Dean Koontz, I don't doubt that.

Anyway, it isn't awful and I suppose if you are a Manga fan, it has its virtues. But if you are an Odd Thomas fan, you mat find it disappointing. And if you have never known the pleasure of an introduction to Odd Thomas, don't start with this.

Jerry

After Koontz's "Odd Thomas" series started to take off, he went back and did a couple of prequels as graphic novels with Queenie Chan (with whose previous work I have to confess I'm not a t all familiar). This is the first of those and it's not terribly impressive, neither the story nor the artwork. Odd, of course, is a fry cook in the small Southern California desert town of Pico Mundo, and he sees the dead. Especially, he's sought out by the deceased who need help, usually because they're murder victims and they want both vengeance and to stop the killer before he does it again. Oddie has a girl friend, Stormy, who's kind of a hard-core type (she packs a gun), one of his closest friends is the chief of police, and his boss at the diner is something of a mother-figure for him. In this volume, Stormy has a friend who housekeeps and nannies for a couple of families, one of whose young children has been killed in her own kitchen. The friend also has a stalker who leaves her very scary letters. Odd is on the case on behalf of the dead girl and he's trying to prevent what everyone assumes will be the next death of a child. Of course, it's not that simple.

The thing is, every time you think, "Aha! That's a red herring! Something else is going to happen!" or, "This other character is actually the bad guy!" it turns out you're wrong. The person you first suspect will be the next victim, . . . is the next victim. The first bad guy you come across, . . . is the Bad Guy. Frankly, this is terrible plotting. And the art? Chan obviously has a lot of experience with manga because all her characters have a certain look to them, and all of them are also nearly generic, to the point where it's difficult to remember which ones are which. (With the exception of Stormy, who is the only one with solid black hair.) Some of the dialogue is pretty good, but that's not enough to save the book. I suspect this effort would have been more successful if Koontz had simply written it as a novelette.

Dean Koontz's thoroughly enjoyable and readable Odd Thomas series gets the graphic novel treatment in the paperback IN ODD WE TRUST. The series has been a bestseller for Koontz for years, and here he fills in some of the missing details of Odd's life. IN ODD WE TRUST is a prequel, an original story that begins before the first book in the series.

The premise of Odd's life is that he sees dead people. Or at least their left-behind spirits. These spirits are sometimes looking for justice or resolution to their lives, and Odd is enlisted to help, along with his tough-as-nails, gun-toting girlfriend, named Stormy (yes, Stormy is more than a bit of a cliché at this point; luckily, she is rescued by being a fresh and genuine character and has enough heart to stand on her own).

IN ODD WE TRUST may introduce some new readers to Koontz's work, but more likely it will introduce some Koontz readers to manga (the book isn't true manga; it reads left to right). It's a great format for Odd, since he's a bit of a superpowered guy anyway, and it's nice to have a visual representation of Odd's native Pico Mundo, California, and the restaurant where he makes the tastiest pancakes in town.

Odd and Stormy are determined to find the killer of a recently murdered young boy (the book's creepy opening shows the boy's spirit reading a newspaper account of his own murder). They work at solving the crime while, somewhere outside, the killer plots again. It's not exactly groundbreaking fare, but Koontz has always had a unique eye for the suspenseful. He's having fun here, too, using the format to great effect and creating an atmosphere of chilling and eerie effectiveness.

Koontz has enlisted the help of noted manga artist Queenie Chan (the Australian artist is probably best known for her great work on TOKYOPOP's The Dreaming series). Chan also helps with the writing here, so the graphic novel doesn't have the same feel as Koontz's prose series, but it's a nice changeup here.

The series gets some new life, and additional insight, from this work. Koontz includes an essay at the end that explains how he created the character of Odd Thomas and how he draws his inspiration for the work. Koontz promises that ultimately there will be six books in the Odd Thomas series and that "His end will prove to be there in his beginning, and his beginning in his end." Fittingly, the book then segues into the first chapter of ODD THOMAS, so readers can see exactly what that beginning was. Chan's sketchbook work is also included, a nice behind-the-scenes touch for readers.

Despite its fictional timing set before the opening of the first novel in the series, IN ODD WE TRUST is not the best introduction to the characters of Pico Mundo. New readers will want to check out ODD THOMAS first before checking back here. The experience will be more rewarding that way.

--- Reviewed by John Hogan