IN ODD WE TRUST, Dean Koontz, Queenie Chan, Ballantine Books, 2008, 204pp
Odd Thomas lives in the desert town of Pico Mundo, California, and is a favorite Dean Koontz-created character. Readers like the young fry cook’s prde in his fluffy pancakes and his quiet humble nobility. They also like how Odd draws to himself the silent ghosts of people needing help to set things right. With him is his sidekick, Elvis. Like the ghosts Odd encounters, the King is silent. And being insubstantial like the other ghosts he more fleetingly encounters, like Lyndon Johnson, Elvis can’t offer much back-up.
Koontz has written four Odd Thomas novels, plans to complete the series with two more, and along the way has launched a series of graphic novels that preceded the events of the first of the novels.
This graphics novel pits Odd and his gun-toting firlfriend, Stormy, against a child-killer who has struck in the small town. The ghost of one of the latest of those children appears before him to petition for help in resolving the situation. Being Odd Thomas, he can not refuse.
The illustration style is characteristic of Japanese manga, a graphic novel form with its own unique artistic style. In Japan, manga is incredibly popular. Everyone reads manga, at home, on the subway, everywhere. There are manga on all kinds of subjects for all ages from history, nonfiction and business to romance stories, science fiction and explicit eroticism. The manga style, whose roots trace back into Japanese art although as a form only arising since World War II, is influential throughout Asia and around the world. Popular manga could lead to animated movies (anime). As anime films in the US like Battleship Yamato and Akira became popular, they brought mounting more exposure for manga that had inspired them and the art style characteristic of manga. The manga style continues to increase in popularity in the United States.
I admit up front that I still have not acquired the taste. I love the Odd Thomas stories, but I left comic books behind when I was a kid. Like this book, comic books carry lightweight stories. If you are more visually oriented or more in tune with comics than me, this will no doubt appeal to you because it is a good story.
The book includes an appendix about how Queenie Chan came up with the artistic rendering of the characters and there is an opening chapter from Koontz’s first book of his series, Odd Thomas. I will probably read the other books, especially if available at bargain prices, but my own main interest will be in seeing the last two novels of the series come out.