Comics Books

This is a very cool book, chock full of wild and creative illustrations. A quick, but fun read.

Reading this book, I felt like I could see the movie in my mind. The vivid descriptions and word play are incredible. The book is filled with awesome illustrations to accompany the equality descriptive words. This futuristic adventure is mildly paranoid while still touching on enough reality to make you think. It is almost like a cousin to a comic book. It was incredibly well written and engaging. I highly recommend this book.

Similar to Jack Kerouac's seminal beat novel On the Road, Montauk Babies is the story of Al Leedskalnin and quantum physicist Peabody Freeman, who are traveling across country in 2011 in a '73 Buick Riviera, on a mission to keep time-space from imploding in on itself.

The title comes from the 1930s secret government experiments in invisibility, time travel, and mind control, when Nikola Tesla and several other physicists undertook experiments in multiple realities, eventually creating a "time tunnel" between 1943 and Montauk Island of 1983. According to the story, Leedskalnin was a subject of the Montauk experiments and is thus acutely aware of how these interdimensional gaps threaten to destroy humanity. And only a "Montauk baby" is spiritually equipped to save the earth.

Montauk Babies could loosely be called a graphic novel because of its lavish illustrations, though the narrative is in text form, albeit printed, at times, on the horizontal and even upside down, in a font that is nigh impossible to read clearly. While this may echo the plot conceit of a world falling apart and of events dislocated in time, it is also downright impossible to read.

Even with this in mind, Montauk Babies is an entertaining and provocative read, of interest to science fiction buffs, conspiracists, and comic-book lovers.
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This is a really well done graphic novel. The story is exciting and keeps you glued from beginning to end and the beautiful color illustrations are unlike anything I have seen in other graphic novels.

Great read and cool art. This book is really unique. Lots and lots of depth to these characters. I can really see this being made into a movie. I'll be the first in line. Best graphic novel to date that I've come across.

Wow another great book from naruto, this book was sweet and great the fight between haku and sasuka was great, and the whole thing of this book is awsome nice and enjoyable books to read i have 14 naruto books and there were awsome iam going to get more but this was great.

My 9 year old son won't rest until he collects the entire series; I'm just happy he wants to read!

Time for climbing...and more training...and more Tazuna and family and find out about Inari's Dad. More of all cool manga. Guess who's baaaaaaaaack You'll have to find out

Time for climbing...and more training...and more Tazuna and family and find out about Inari's Dad. More of all cool manga. Guess who's baaaaaaaaack. You'll have to find out by reading

Kakashi is resting his poor body with training Sasuke,Naruto,and Sakura.Let's see if they can get the hang of runing up trees.Also,Naruto unknowing meets Haku who he thinks killed Zabunza.We also see Inari's real problem with heroes.Last but not least,a final confrontation between Zabunza and Kakashi.Wait a minute...he seem to have brought a friend...

I'm very picky with buying manga I'm not familiar with, and I haven't seen the entire series so I was skeptical about picking this up. But this is not a purchase that will be regretted. This excels the show in some areas. It takes its time to focus closely on the characters and their development, it stretches out few episodes to go into great deatail. Along with the terrific storytelling is the art. The art in here is superb, definetely one of the best in manga. At the end, it also has articles about evangelion from various people. The two aspects of manga, art and storytelling, are the highlights of this book, so it should defeintely be picked up.

SO far, I've read Evangelion books 1-3 and loved them all. The story is just great, action sequneeces are just so suspense full, I literally couldn't put the book down. Besides that, the art work is great. I didn't thing they couuld fit huge mechs into a comic book, but they did a great job of it. This is one of the best Manga epics I've ever read. I suggest all the books to everybody.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is far most the best manga/anime i have ever seen and read. The plot of the story gives it real life and deals with very much sci-fi and mecha. It also revolves around a world where our world could probably end up being. The characters are very vivid and interesting and my knowledge of Eva is far more than what i am writing here. If anyone would like to email feel free to!

out of all the neon genisis mangas, I like the third the best but you can't get to the third without the second. this was a realy cool book though. there was fewer battle scenes than in the first book but they were still great. shinji is more rebelius in this one, he refuses to follow misatos orders and fights the angel to the end. some cool new weponds and charactors await you as shinji takes on another dreaded angel and an angry misato afterwards. the art is incredibale and the characters are still great in NEON GENESIS EVANGELION vol.2 (p.s. the only reason I gave it 4 stars is beacause they don't have a 4 and a half star rating.)

How to do justice to Neon Genesis Evangelion? I'm not entirely sure it's possible to describe this book with words. Yes, it's a comic book--but not in the sense most Westerners will think of them, or even the style of most manga.

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Japanese "Shinseki Ebangerion") was one of the most controversial manga in Japan for the very reason it's so enjoyable. Unlike most comics, which are focused on action and little else, Evangelion involves heavy character development. The story centers around the introverted, socially inept 15-year-old Shinji Ikari. He works (so to speak) for NERV, a government agency devoted to repelling the attacks of the Angels--mechanical beasts seemingly bent on destroying humanity.

With Shinji is the First Child Rei Ayanami. Together, they pilot huge robots known as Evas (short for Artificial Human Evangelion). Close to Shinji is Misato Katsuragi, his 20-something commanding officer, whom he also lives with, not having anywhere else to stay.

Do not be fooled, Evangelion doesn't skimp on the action. But where this story really shines is the characters--per traditional manga, each one has deep character flaws. But they interact somehow much more naturally than most characters in such stories seem to. Each has his or her own set of confounding problems to deal with.

This volume in particular deals with Shinji's conflicting concepts of who he is and who he is told to be, and his more outward battles both with the Angels and with schoolyard bully Toji Suzuhara. The entire feel of Evangelion is enrapturing: the world is a dark reflection of our own situation, and despite the abnormal circumstances under which Shinji exists he still manages to come across as a very human character, something which can at times be almost frightening.

I reiterate, it is difficult to put in words how compelling this manga is. Whether or not you normally look at comics, Evangelion is more than worth the time and money.

~Kei

For a Pearls Before Swine fan, it's an excellent choice.
If you've not read the comic strip before, read a few online first. It's a well written strip that definitely keeps the reader entertained. I've not been disappointed in the least by any of Stephan Pastis' books.

The cartoon characters are my favorite and having this book is wonderful.
It is to read over and over and over and when and where I want.

Pastis is a genius. When I need a lift, I just open to any page and read until I can't stop laughing.

This is a bizarre little cartoon with a great warped sense of humor. One warning; if you don't like puns and word play, this isn't for you, because this book has some of the worst puns I've ever read. Very clever.

The two main characters are Rat and Pig. Pig is sweet, naive and more than a little stupid. Rat on the other hand smokes, drinks and is arrogant as well as slightly psychotic. Other characters pop up like Zebra who has had numerous friends and relatives eaten by lions. These animals go to work and go out on dates, and make political and social statements that only cartoon animals can get away with. Pearls Before Swine is along the same lines as Bloom County and Far Side. It's not at that level yet, but is well on its way.

This is the only good comic out there. I was getting older and i realized that garfield was really dry and then i discovered pearls. This is the best comic book ever! omg omg omg

This is my 3rd Manga ever and I was simply blown away. I ordered this book along with Osamu's other Buddha titles. I had no intention of reading it at first glance because I had other more coveted titles, anyway I just took a while to browse it and I couldn't put it down for next 4 and half hrs till I finished it. Its hands down one of the most engrossing book. Osamu is simply brilliant and is a master story teller weaving all human emotions in this superbly crafted book. His brillance lies in developing each character and handling it in such a way that left you gasping and wonder how keen an observer Osamu was.

If this were a film, it would surely be a mixture of art-house in moments and Cecil B DeMille in others -- with intimate character development but spanning Japan, China and the Middle East. It's thriller, love story, medical drama, spiritual quest, adventure and crime story with an eu de scifi wafting over the whole concotion. Typical Tezuka drawing style, which I find clear and compelling but others may have their own opinions.

Ode To Kirihito is one of those stories that fills you with inspiration and hope. Tezuka doesn't hold any hands or make the world more gentle then it needs to be: the picture he paints is a very bleak one, filled with racism, elitism, selfishness and greed. And yet, we as humans can still somehow overcome all this.

This is an excellent manga, and I highly recommend to anybody who enjoys a great story.

This is an amazing story and one that clearly no American would ever do. And I am referring to more then simply setting it in Japan. The blending of genres is something that Americans get touchy about, Americans like genres that are clear cut and a book that is part medical drama/part interntional adventure/part love story would put a lot of them off.

Kirihito

Gentle dog-faced doctor,
You wander such a difficult world.
Your self-importance, your violence,
emptied out by suffering,
You are more you now
Than before you had a dog's face.

This was the first "comic book" I had read since 1940. I read it in one sitting.

I fell in love with Only the Ring Finger Knows with it's initial manga release. It was a beautiful story not only about young love, but a love that developed and grew stronger and more passionate as time went, despite the fact that it seemed a forbidden desire. Only the Ring Finger knows separates itself from the typical BL manga in that the couple is forced to struggle with being accepted by society, as most gay couples ultimately have to. Wataru and Yuichi's relationship is also more drawn out and heartfelt in the novel, and the brand new pretty illustrations scattered throughout are definitely a treat. While the translations were awkward at points and by no means perfect, the overall effect of the manga still transferred to the novel, and you truly feel the pain of Wataru's broken heart, and then relief when they finally do end get together and overcome everything. It's a lovely read and definitely worth buying, especially if you're a fan of the manga. (And if you haven't read it, this is a good start too)

I love these books. I really like the normalness of this novel I guess. It's not some fantastical story with demons have sex with pretty boys. It's an as true to life story as you'll get. I can;t say anything on the poor translation quality. My mind overcompensates and fixes most typos and syntax erors automatically. Ona few occasions I had to stop but if you're like me you shouldn't have any trouble.

As DMP's first Novel translated because of its popularness as a Manga I would have expected DMP to take a little more time to make this Novel perfect. There are a couple of mistakes and whatnot and confusing areas (due to lazy translation) but overall it's a beautifully written story (mainly contains everything in the Manga of the same title) and the images are gorgeous.

It's a light BL Novel atm, doubt it'll reach a Yaoi Label. And goes for 4 volumes.

But this is a deffient buy for anyone who is looking for a Novel to add to their Yaoi/BL collection.

I guess most of us pick up this novel because we enjoy the manga version.
I like the manga but I love the novel more. This novelist's expression of the boys' budding love is simply beautiful. Thankfully the translation did not let us down even though more editing would have been appreciated. I could not help regretting not knowing Japanese (sigh!).
Vol 1 has 2 stories. The manga is based on the first story but even the pleasing graphics and faithful adaptation could not beat the expressive words depicting the angst and romance in the novel.
And of course there is the second story which is even more emotional and the last part when our 2 boys finally consume their love is touching and warmly romantic and described with a fluid grace. This second story was never published in any manga form.
For the price, the novel is definitely worth its weight in gold considering I have no qualm about spending close to $10 bucks for the manga.
Glad there are 2 more volumes to go in this beautiful series. After reading "Don't worry Mama" and this, I am hungry for more translated Japanese BL/Yaoi novels.

I absolutely love this novel! The story itself is great to begin with; not that the manga didn't do a wonderful job bringing the characters to life, but it didn't continue the second part of the novel which was about Wataru and Yuichi's time together as a couple.

The first half of the novel titled "Only the ring finger knows" is similar to the manga, so i won't elaborate more about this part. The second part titled "The lonely ring finger" is what you should look forward to (i know i did!).

"The lonely ring finger" is a continuation of Wataru and Yuichi's relationship after they became a couple; how they try to spend time together without revealing themselves to their peers in school, a bet that is out-of this-world, etc, etc; in my opinion, this second part tells more about their "human" side and their struggles to stay together (like how any other normal couples would) despite all the mishaps and lies.

Other than a few typo errors here and there, i find this novel a joy to read and have; it's a must-have for you yaoi fans out there! I can't wait for the second novel to be released in July!!!!

I go from month to month waiting for these books. I am never disappointed. Mr. Axler keeps you wanting to turn the page and see what our heros get into next. Please keep them coming. Faster if possible.

As a fan of all things space opera, I was pleasantly surprised by the alternate world visited in this book--and the fact that it seemed so authentic. I can easily imagine the author writing Star Trek and Star Wars novels. "Outer Darkness" is one of the best novels in the series, very entertaining and enjoyable all the way through.

Once again Outlanders bridges the gap between just another sweaty men's adventure series and a "legitmate" genre. This is a cutting edge series with sharp, intelligent heroes who know victory doesn't always rely who has the biggest guns. Big brains help, too. Fast-moving, funny at times and even tragic, this novel is a classic in the series. Loose ends are tied up and I felt sort of sorry to see Beth-Li go. The space-opera part of the novel was riveting, wonderfully detailed, but it reminded me more of Starship Troopers or Hammer's Slammers than Star Trek. "Outer Darkness" is one the best in a great adventure series.

The last part in the Lost Earths Saga was a thrill-ride from start to finish. It kept me turning pages until the wee hours of the morning. A terrific book.

Well M.E. you did it again. At the beginning of the Trilogy I had a hard time following it. I didn't really understand the reason behind going to the alternate earths. But at the end of Outer Darkness, everything made Perfect Sense! It was to date, the best you have written. The way things are going, it won't be long before Outlanders begins to out sell Deathlands! The character interaction, as always, was superb. The story flowed beautifully. There were some interesting Star Trek references! I'm embarrased to admit that most had to be pointed out to me! Ah well. Keep up the good work as always! A fan till the end.

I bought this book at a ued bookstore in fairly bad shape, but it was excellent.
Bloom County is one of the funniest comics out on the streets today. If you want to start reading Bloom County, Though, don't start with this book! Start with "Billy and the Boingers BOOTLEG". I just read this book at school, and I thought it was hilarious. This is an excellent book. The best series, i'd say, would be when Steve Dallas becomes Mr. America. That was SO Funny!
But, the best strip in this comic is the one when Opus and Portnoy are sitting in the pond, and pous tells about his favorite song (Yesterday)
Read This comic!

Close your eyes and go back in time 20 years. Ronald Reagan is in the White House and getting ready to run for a second term against Walter Mondale. Disco, Heavy Metal, and Michael Jackson compete for space on a new network, MTV. In the funnies, Bloom County provides a humorous take on American society. This collection from 1983 and 1984 can take you back to those golden days when the Soviet threat made terrorists seem insignificant.

I love the "Bloom County" seiries - the deranged goings on of various animals and humans, Steve Dallas the lawyer, Opus and of course, Bill the Cat. Mr Breathed's humor is right on target and very funny.

I recommend this book highly

Bloom County was one of the greatest comic strips ever to have existed, and possibly the best comic in the whole decade of the 1980's and that was when Calvin and Hobbs (by Bill Watterson) and The Far Side (by Gary Larson) were in their prime.

The best comic strips today are Scott Adams' Dilbert (which jumped the Shark a few years back, but still have good moments), Get Fuzzy (by Darby Conley) and a few online comics, most notably User Friendly (by Illiad) and Sinfest (by Tatsuya Ishid). See www.userfriendly.org and www.sinfest.net for some good stuff.

Bloom County dealt with political and social issues in original and novel ways. He didn't shy away from issues, and always dealt with things in a nice and funny way. Lovable Opus the Penguin became the soul of the strip. The plush Opus dolls I still own to this day are some of my favorite possessions.

Yes, it does look a lot like Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury. But Breathed was not copying it, but satirizing it and paying homage to it at the same time. Especially the way Milo Bloom played when compared to the Doonesbury's Uncle Duke... who Trudeau was just spoofing off from the real life Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (author who is most famous for his quasi-novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas").

However, my favorite character was Oliver Wendell Holmes, the young computer hacker who fought apartite in South Africa through his invention, which was going to turn all the white people in South Africa black. Then there was the time he basically brought down Western Civilization as we knew it when he hacked into the New York Stock Exchange and put "A vast Ye mattes, Bank of America's about to go belly up" across the ticker. He got a well deserved spanking for that.

Most important to me, however, Bloom County forms one of the great memories I have from High School. Reading Bloom County and talking about it with friends was something I really have fond memories of from that time. Maybe it was just something from youth that maybe you remember as a little better than it really was. Things like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams and the Night Court TV series seem that way to me now. Heck, I find much of Night Court to now be unwatchable. But Bloom County still seems to be very much readable to me. The 1980's in most ways basically stunk. But there were some minor high points to civilization as we knew it, and Bloom County was one of them.

This book was probably the best of the regular collections. It is good that I now hear that Breathed may be restarting Bloom County again.

Although perhaps not the best introduction to the characters of Bloom County, this book will please fans of Opus, Steve Dallas and the rest.

Opus heads off to the South Pole, Steve Dallas becomes a sex gargoyle but still doesn't get the girl and the 'roaches continue to cause trouble.

Despite it's vintage, Bloom County continues to appeal and it looks just as good from both sides of the Atlantic.

Too often, when a good novel makes the transfer from one media to another, the result is less than stellar. How often have you seen a good book make it to the silver screen, only to have the heart and soul of it lost in the translation? I saw that this comic was available for quite a time, but hesitated purchasing it because of what I "knew" was usually done in these situations. However, I weakened because I do enjoy Smith's Libertarian Universe series so much. I was curious too, if truth be known, and besides, I needed a fix of something by LNS.

I am very glad I did!

The artwork is typical of the genre... garish colours, almost cartoonish drawings, but close enough for you to tell who is human and who isn't,... but they are very effective and lovingly drawn. They do the job of presenting the characters involved effectively. If only one artist did all this work, his work ethic is amazing. I would be interested in finding out just how long the project actually took!

The "heart" of the novel, "The Probability Broach" has been kept, especially the heartfelt dialogue between Clarissa and Win just after his forceful interrogation of their Federalist prisoner. This is, I feel, a very key point in the novel/comic, and it is well done. I understand LNS himself had a say in what was presented, and I feel it shows. Even if you have not read the original novel... and who in their sane mind would NOT read the novel?... you get the total overall picture of what the book "means", and what the author is trying to make you understand about Libertarian values. All the important events and characters are presented in the correct sequence.

After I completed the comic version... and it was good enough to get me to read it almost uninterrupted... I couldn't resist, and so broke out the original novel again, and read it for perhaps the 20th time, just to compare. It was good to read it again, but I was satisfied that the graphic novel "does the job" nearly as well. Yes the novel is better, for me, in giving detail and feelings, but the comic version was great too!

I lent the comic to my son-in-law, and he totally enjoyed it, not having read any LNS before. When he finished he asked me if I had the novel. He is presently reading it. But, we are two very satisfied readers of the graphic novel of The Probability Broach. If you are an L. Neil Smith fan, you should get this work of art, simply as a collectors piece. However, I feel you will be very satisfied with its presentation. New readers will be able to see and understand what they should about this particular political viewpoint, and go away happy. I ,for one, wish this were a reality, however, I fear Man's evil nature prevents it. There are just too many "Red Barons" out there who want or need to control others to allow this revolution to take place.

I just hope "The Venus Belt" gets published in this format as well, but I doubt it will. The work involved in producing something like this is worth it for a one-of-a-kind effort, but since no "new" Libertarian values are presented in the second book, the need to publish is simply not there... but, I hope I am wrong.

Having read the novel The Probability Broach, I was very interested in seeing the graphic novel. It was very well done, and compliments the novel well.

I would highly recommend it to any Probability Broach/L. Neil Smith fans.

I had read the novel first, and so I was a bit skeptical when I read the comic version. I was very amazed to see so much from the novel included in the comic version. After reading the comic version, I could not recall that anything had been left out. Very well done and entertaining. The illustrations were well done and quite similar to what I had visualized in my imagination while reading the novel.

In this era of so many comics being turned into big screen movies, I cannot wait for the movie version.

Probably the best book on liberty and freedom has been transformed into a beautifully illustrated Graphic Novel. Scott Beiser teams with the author of the original book L. Neil Smith, to create a new and stylishly updated version of the original novel. Beiser's artwork jumps off the page with depth and clarity, evoking feelings of immersion into this world. If I could dive in and live there I would. Excellent!

This graphic novel has to be considered both as an SF/Action-Adventure story, and as a piece of Libertarian propaganda.

As SF, it's colorfully imaginative, and runs with a theme previously used in L. Sprague De Camp's Wheels of If and the TV show Sliders (with a dash of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia thrown in). The story is usually fast paced, but there are a few points where the propaganda acts like an unwelcome speed-bump (as when the medic spends two pages preaching to our Gulliver character about the psychological problems of pacifists who won't bear arms in self-defense). The art is eye-catching, and filled with whimsical background touches (e.g. the cameo appearances by Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Olsen, Peter Parker, and Billy & Mandy).

The Probability Broach is also largely successful as Libertarian propaganda (more successful than the environmental propaganda in Callenbach's Ecotopia, which shares a similar narrative structure). The alternate history of the "over the rainbow" world has plenty of shocks for casual readers, and encourages them to delve with an open-mind into real-world history regarding the Whiskey Rebellion and minor American politicians like Albert Gallatin. More importantly, its alternate world is largely plausible, especially to readers who have already been steeped in the works of Hayek, Virginia Postrel, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman, or who have already been persuaded by themes in Reason Magazine or John Stossel reports.

There remain gaps in the argument, though: like most Libertarian fiction, marriage and children seem out-of-place in this world. As in Ayn Rand's fiction, children are typically ignored, or if they appear at all, they enter as though they'd wandered in from a Victorian-era book written for children: the children are thoughtful and well-mannered enough to handle the responsibility of gun ownership or contract law at six years of age, instead of being subject to the kind of wild passions and fits that seem to demand authoritative parenting and restraint. In a post-Columbine world, the idea of gun-toting seven year olds strikes a sour note (though there is a temptation to see the kind of private school system that would avoid creating either Columbine-style pressure cookers of forced attendance, or the petty tortures cited in privately-run British boarding schools like the one depicted in Kipling's Stalky & Co.).

Further, the graphic novel is guilty of card stacking. "Our" world is depicted as one in which every historical example of government encroachment (short of pre-Civil War slavery) is carried one step further. For example, Executive Order 6102 (a Great Depression measure that prohibited "hoarding" of gold) is not only still in force in 1987 (instead of having been repealed on Dec. 31, 1974), but has been expanded to cover other precious metals.

Finally, the propaganda doesn't seem to adequately address why anyone short of a would-be dictator would be tempted away from the Libertarian model. Marxism never arose in the alternate world (Gallatinism swept Europe instead), slave-holders were *talked* into emancipation (by a President who, historically, was one of the few Revolutionary leaders who didn't include a manumission clause in his Last Will), the Plains Indians were apparently quick to reject tribal authority and the notion that their land was Sacred (in the alternate history, Manifest Destiny continued as a series of peaceful trades of land for precious metals and "stock options"), the Tragedy of the Commons never resurfaced (perhaps the alternate world's Confederacy arrived at a common law distribution of property rights for the broadcast frequencies, ground water, and air?), and Freemasonry is the closest thing witnessed to religious extremism.

The alternate world's Confederacy participated in a few variants of the "good" wars, but always via privately raised armies of volunteers, a method that uncomfortably resembles the distinction between 2001's nation of Afghanistan and the "unaffiliated" Al-Qaeda network that it harbored. The novel is gutsy enough to directly address the security question (how does a society that doesn't believe in borders or arms control stop a foreign army from assembling within its borders?), but the answers given seem terribly weak in a post-9/11 context, and remind readers that in real world history, an organized army was able to easily defeat a rag-tag band of farmers in the Whiskey Rebellion.

But despite these open questions, the graphic novel and the society it depicts remain compelling. I look forward to reading the unabridged prose version!

First I would like to say that before a friend introduced me to Ranma I never would have even thought of reading a manga of any kind. Now after reading the first four books I find that I cant wait for the next two I ordered to get here so i can read them and order some more! Rumiko Takahashi is brilliant!

Where do i begin? Oh ok I somehhow reaveal my secret to everyone and my weakness

Ranman 1/2, Volume four is an AWESOME addition to the Ranma series! It is great! It has more excitement, romance, and cool guys!! (Yup, two new male characters who are awesome....plus there's Ryoga and Ranma......) In this book, you also learn Ranma's "weak spot." It's really interesting. You will know what it is if...you read the book!^^The only thing is, Ryoga isn't in this book as much as I'd like...but this book developes more of Ranma's personality, so I won't be mad. Volume four is probably my favorite Ranma 1/2 volume so far (I've read Volumes 1-4). It ends at a cliff-hanger, though. Well, Ranma 1/2, Vol. 4 (actually all Ranma 1/2 books) is really great! I highly reccomend it! Read it!

Well, Ranma gets not one, but two new rivals in this volume. The first is Hikaru Gosunkugi, who wants Ranma out of the way because he wants Akane. What does he do? He decides to offer his services to Kuno! The two join forces to discover Ranma's weak spot! But come on... Gosunkugi's incompetent! How could he learn it? Well, he does, and it turn out to be felines! But Gosunkugi is the least of Ranma's worries... it seems that a certain amazon from China isn't out of his hair like he thought! Shampoo's back, and has a curse of her own, which seeing as it's a cat one, it will probably dampen their relationship. Enter rival no. 2, Mousse, Shampoo's would-be lover, who challenges Ranma to a man to man fight! But with Shampoo's great-grandmother Cologne using a deadly pressure point touch on him, Ranma is stuck in girl form! Ranma now has to beat Mousse and get the cure for his condition! Things get hectic, ending in a cliffhanger, but it's really great stuff. Luckily, now that the book's been rereleased with a cheaper price, it's now more affordable to fans!

Ranma Saotome's life was complicated enough when he just had his turning-into-a-girl curse to deal with. But the fourth volume of Rumiko Takahashi's "Ranma 1/2," Ranma has a new slew of problems -- creepy stalkers, hidden phobias, martial-arts crones, and a girl who won't accept that "no" is his answer.

A new kid has arrived at school: stalkery, cadaverous Hikaru Gosunkugi, who harbors a crush on Akane and deep hatred of her fiancee Ranma. So he begins trying to find out what Ranma's hidden weakness is, but the fearless young martial artist claims there is nothing. Unfortunately, Gosunkugi is spying when Ranma's weakness is revealed -- cats -- and he tries to use it against him... with shocking results.

No sooner has Ranma recovered from his peculiar adventure than the tenacious Amazon Shampoo arrives again. Not only does she have a Jusenkyo curse of her own -- the cat -- but she has her wizened great-grandmother Cologne in tow. Cologne is determined to see Ranma marry Shampoo. And so, as Ranma squares off with a rejected suitor of Shampoo's, the old lady traps him in the body of a girl...

The fourth volume of his gender-bending action-romantic-comedy introduces some important characters. As well as bringing the incredibly persistent Shampoo back, it also introduces wizened-yet-feisty Cologne, and Mousse, a formidable master of hidden weapons. Or rather, he WOULD be formidable if he weren't legally blind.

The fourth volume also has the advantage of showing that Ranma isn't perfect -- up until now, the teenage martial-artist hasn't been slowed down at all, whether by lunatic athletes or ultra-strong romantic rivals. Giving him a raging cat-phobia -- so bad he passes out -- gives him more humanity. As Akane says, "It's cute to have a little weakness."

And speaking of Akane, she gets her first taste of romantic rivalry in this volume, when Shampoo sets up shop nearby. Though both Ranma and Akane claim that they don't even like each other, their mutual hostility towards any rivals is proof enough that they are starting to fall in love. If only Akane didn't freak out, and Ranma didn't insult her.

The fourth volume of "Ranma 1/2" is a pivotal one, adding even more characters to the romantic spiderweb that stretches all over the series. Weird, wild and funny.