Graphics Books

A must read for anyone with type 1 diabetes, or who knows someone with type 1 diabetes, or who likes to read a great book.

I was driving when my 8 year old daughter announced that "Stacy has type 1 too, mom!" "Who is Stacy?" I asked her. "Stacy, the babysitter..." she replied. I started to tell her she didn't have a sitter named Stacy when I realized she was talking about the book she was reading, The Truth about Stacy. How cool! My daughter has type 1 diabetes and had found a heroine who she could really relate to!

We got other BSC books from the old series to read (not the graphic novels), but they hadn't been updated the way the versions Raina Telgemeier illustrated and adapted. Kudos to Raina, who took the time to learn about type 1 and make sure the information was up to date and accurate.

I love the BSC, and the earliest books in the series are my favorites. Ann Martin is one heck of a writer, and this third book in the BSC series tackles some serious issues - Stacey's struggles with diabetes, moving to a new town and fitting in, the loss and re-gain of old friends. A subplot in this book is the girls dealing with a copycat club called the Baby-Sitters Agency that threatens to put them out of business.
Ann, I wish you had written every single book in the series and not used ghostwriters for so many of them!

Raina Telgemaier has outdone herself in this adaptation of a book from the incomparable Baby-sitters Club series!!

This book was one of the best books in the baby sitter club serious and you know there were a LOT! This book really got deep in to Staceys feelings about having deiabets and her strugles with that.
Also the whole club is faced with a problem...some one else has started there own baby sitters club!!!!!!!
Now this wouldn't be so bad if that club wasn't getting more people calling them....and then when that club pays a trick on them the baby sitters club knows the other club HAS to go!!!

I thought that this book was brillantly written! go AMM!I mean of course there is going to be compeition and everything with the club, and how sometimes parents can be so impossiable! even though we know that they do care they seem a little overprotective and dont really listen to what we have to say, so i like this book a lot. and i like it when stacey and charollete bonds, this book is realy good. and its so sad how stacey was upset because she cares about the babysitters club because she doesnt want to lose any of her friends, and i liked that her and laine[her former best friend] were cool again.

This book was mis-listed for one of my classes, but after buying it, I found myself taking it everywhere with me and reading it anytime I had spare time. Every time you look through it, you learn something new. As most artistic people are, I'm very visual, and all the examples really enhance the book and help to cement the ideas and rules. Very colorful, helpful and ultimately FUN TO READ! I love this book and recommend it!!

If you bought this book your going to be extremely happy. I have 5+ years in design and I'm learning new things as I go through this book. It's teaching me things my teachers in COLLEGE did not even teach. This is hands down one of the strongest books I've ever read and the exercises inside provide so much great hands on experiments for you to play with.

If you already spent the money to buy The non-designers graphic design book you need to buy this! This goes into so much great detail than I would've expected.

All I can say is WOW. Great investment. I've totally changed the way I look at design.

This is the book that was missing in college. So what makes the difference between Wow and O.K. Read it, study it, do the excersizes... follow it. I wish every hobbist in the digital scrapbook world would discover this book.

Jim Krause is one of THE BEST teachers of our time.

I had to buy this book for school, but I love the way it's laid out. It's very colorful, very informative, and it's small size with a strong plastic cover makes it easy to take with you everywhere or throw in your purse.

I have learned a lot from this book so far.

This book covers the basics of graphic design and is great for a beginner. It's also worthwhile for any intermediate or advanced designer to have in their collection for review. It's a small book so it's easy to carry around and not daunting to read.

I can't get enough of the Fables series. Snowfall has background stories from some of the main characters in the series. Some of them are cute, some are informative, some are heartbreaking, and all of them have great artwork in them. Regardless of whether you're a fan or not, 1001 Nights of Snowfall is a beautiful book. The re-imaginings of fairy tale characters as more in-depth people is as fantastic as the different artists' work.

This is another welcome addition to the series. I can't wait for the next one.

I bought this book just yesterday. I was captured by unusual and amazingly beautiful graphics of this book. I never heard about Bill Willingham before so this was my first encounter with his work.
By the end of this book I was rather depressed than entertained. Not because of the quality of this book but rather on the stories told by Bill Willingham are actually depict a real world/ real life human sufferings and problems.
He can bring forward those deepest fear and concern of human. The story of frog prince is the one in particular i found to be the most sad of all.
I would say this work is a must to be collected. But I would say that the stories are not suitable for those under 21 years old.

A great graphic novel, with some of the best storytelling that I have seen. Even if you have not yet read Fable, this can be a good entry into the series (which is what I did). My only complaint is that the book is a bit short, even if the production values (binding, art, glossy pages) are high.

Somehow, thumbing through this comic had never really grabbed my attention - or really turned me off, either. I finally decided to make up my mind one way or the other, and took this first of the collected monthlies home.

And darn well about time, too. Although the premise almost invites bad execution, the stories and artwork both meet very high standards. Artwork by Vess, Bolton, and Kaluta set a high tone, one that the other artists rise to. The stories pull the reader in, too. They draw on the familiar characters of childhood fairy tales, but move them forward in a world of dark forces and dire conflicts. There are no "adult" themes here, but there's still plenty to please a mature and thoughtful reader, and certainly not much for a young child.

I hung back from this title for a long time - well, I've made other mistakes, too. I enjoyed this first collection immensely, and I'm coming back for more.

-- wiredweird

I love the show 'Heroes,' but this isn't the show. This compilation of the on-line comics is nice to read, but not essential to the enjoyment of the show even though it does add to the cache of information the show offers. The artwork is not very good at all in some of the mini-issues, and the writing is minimalistic.

If you like comic books and the show, I recommend you read this. If you like the show but don't like comic books, don't come near this. If you don't like the show but love comics, stay away.

I'm glad my library had this in stock! I'd have hated to pay for it just to get 30 minutes of entertainment.

I really liked how this book came. It was wrapped up in plastic so it could be kept as a collectors piece. I gave it as a gift and when he opened it, the graphics were unbelievable. I think that everyone in our family wanted to borrow it. I love the book! Too bad I couldnt read it before I gave it :(

i'm a huge fan of the tv show, heroes. and i love illustrated books. so i was pretty stoked when friends gave me this gorgeous book for christmas.

the chapters in this book (each very short) were created, originally, as web comix for the show's site. they were developed prior to and concurrently with the show's script development. as a result, they're complimentary to the show, as opposed to merely being a recap of the first season. there are characters who aren't in the show, and scenes with the show's characters that aren't in the tv episodes.

that said, this book would be almost impossible to follow for someone who didn't see the show.

the illustrations are stunning, and i really enjoyed it. but, ultimately, it's a book for fans of the tv series.

Over the years we've seen superheroes leap from the four colour pages of comics onto the big screen and even the television.

The quality of these shows has varied greatly over the years. But, for the most part, the movies were terrible up until the turn of the century.

Take a look at the movies that we had based on superheroes, until Tim Burton's Batman, (lets try and forget Batman 3 & 4, ok?) they pretty much all sucked! Any of you old enough to remember the original Spiderman movies from the 70's? Dr. Strange anyone? Or, how about the Swamp Thing?

The same can be said about most superheroes that made it onto the small screen. Sure, there were some pretty good shows (Flash anyone?), some that were so campy I'm shocked that they survived (Batman from the 60's), and some that were just mediocre, but somehow managed to stick around for several seasons (Mutant X comes to mind).

I personally found that the best way for superheroes to be portrayed was, of course, through the animation medium. We've had numerous Spiderman, Superman, Batman and X-men incarnations over the years, and every few years the studios try to re-imagine our favourite superheroes.

Once again, to varying degrees of success.

Now, Back in September of 2006 we had a show hit the airwaves that totally changed the face of entire genre for television.

Heroes hit the airwaves.

Now, this show, as anyone who follows it knows, isn't about flashy special effects or multi-coloured spandex... it's about people.

Ordinary people who are doing their best to lead normal lives, people who discover that they possess extraordinary abilities that set them apart from humanity.

And, of course, the secret organization that plans on controlling these special people.

Another thing that really set the show apart from others of its ilk that didn't survive (Birds of Prey, anyone?) is the fact that it was also supported online. Fake blogs, trivia, production stills, being able to watch entire episodes online and finally, one really, really cool feature...

The online graphic novel.

In my case, I didn't bother reading the online graphic novel, simply because I'm not all that big into comics, and, to be totally honest? I completely forgot about it!

That is until I found the first volume, which contains the first 34 issues of the online comic, at my local bookstore.

Being a fan of the series that I am, I decided to pick it up. Despite the fact that I'm not really what one would call a fan of the four colour books.

I bought the book for several reasons. First of all, I skimmed the book and was, for the most part, pretty impressed with the artwork throughout. Even years ago, before married life took hold of me when I was heavily into comics, I found that if I didn't enjoy the art, it didn't matter how well it's written. I just couldn't read it.

That wasn't the case with this graphic novel.

Secondly, and the biggest reason is because I AM a fan of the series. It was really neat to see all these short comics that add more depth to the main characters, and others that showed up only for a very brief period of time in the show.

To me, it was just filler, background information, but useful information, not regurgitated info that we already knew about in the show.

Since I haven't followed comic book writers or for that matter artists for nearly two decades, I have no idea who the people were that were mentioned in the credits. I don't know what work they have done previously to the graphic novel, so I can't say if any of them are considered to be powerhouses in the industry.

Still, I enjoyed the artwork throughout. It was, as one person has put it in the past, up to my fascist demands when it comes to artwork.

As a bonus, there is an introduction Masi Oka AKA Hiro Nakamura and an interview between series executive producer Jeph Lobe, and series writers Aron Eli Coleite and Joe Pokaski.

Now, in ending, the book is hardcover, and because of this, quite expensive at $[...]Canadian and $[...] American. But, consider that it is over 234 pages in length, you're getting your money's worth.

5 out of 5

This graphic novel contains a serie of short stories that were previously published on the internet and that give you additional information about the characters and all the story. It's an amazing read if you're a fan of HEROES, as it provides you with some interesant hindsights on the Heroes's world.
Also, the drawings and the story telling are superb.

Maison Ikkoku by Rumiko Takahashi is one of the greatest series ever made.
Chapter Summary:

WHAT ARE ALL THE NEIGHBORS DOING?
Yusaku Godai is a depressed, flunking college student, who is constantly bothered by fellow tenants in the apartment building he lives in, Maison Ikkoku. As he's about to leave out of frustration, he comes face to face with the new manager of Maison Ikkoku, Kyoko Otonashi, who he immediately falls in love with.
MY NOTES
First chapter. Establishes all of the tenants (besides Mr. Ichinose in graphic novel 6, and Nozomu Nikaido in number 9).

MR. SOICHIRO
Yusaku realizes Kyoko has a boyfriend named Soichiro, when she mutters it in her sleep. He then finds out her dog is named Mr. Soichiro.
MY NOTES
Learn Kyoko's dog's name.

SPRING WASABI
Godai accompanies Kyoko's family to the anniversary of someone's death. That someone: Kyoko's dead husband, Soichiro!
MY NOTES
Yes, we find out Kyoko's deep, dark secret.

SOICHIRO'S SHADOW
Yusaku gets a job tutoring Kyoko's niece, Ikuko. And he learns Ikuko isn't the model student.
MY NOTES
I believe this has the first of anyone's visions of Soichiro.

ALCHOL LOVE CALL
Godai gets drunk one night and shouts to the whole neighborhood that he's in love with Kyoko.
MY NOTES
Yes, Godai admits his love, however, thinking he begged Kyoko to look at him naked when he was drunk, he tells her it was a joke. So Kyoko gets mad at him for lying.

DON'T FENCE ME OUT
Kyoko and Mrs. Ichinose start taking tennis lessons under the local housewives tennis coach, Shun Mitaka.
MY NOTES
First appearance of Shun Mitaka, the handsome tennis coach. And yes, he falls in love with Kyoko too, however he's much more mature than Godai.

"LOVE" MEANS NO SCORE GODAI!
The Ikkoku tenants and Mitaka go out for lunch, and something so simple proves to be a hazardous event.
MY NOTES
Godai tells Kyoko that he wasn't lying when he told her he loved her.

DOG DAZE
Godai offers to take Kentaro to the beach. Mrs. Ichinose, not feeling safe with Godai looking after her child, invites Kyoko to go with them. Kyoko accidentally mentions it to Ikuko and she insists on coming, then Mrs. Ichinose invites Mitaka to drive them. However the kids sneak Mr. Soichiro into the car...
MY NOTES
Godai and us find out Mitaka's fear... of dogs!

A SALTY DOG
Mitaka doesn't go in the ocean because of Mr. Soichiro, and eventually the adults all take a canoe ride.
MY NOTES
None.

MEMORIAL COOKING
Kyoko cooks dinner for Yusaku.
MY NOTES
Kentaro has a crush on Ikuko.

ONE ENTANGLED EVENING
Much to Godai's dismay, he gets a full time girlfriend named Kozue Nanao.
MY NOTES
Kyoko's whole date with Mitaka is spent with her thinking angry thoughts at Yusaku. Poor Mitaka! Also, the first appearance of Kozue Nanao.

1-900-TROUBLE
Godai gets calls from lots of different woman, aggravating Kyoko.
MY NOTES
Godai joins the Puppet Club Theater.

WITH A LITTLE NONCHALANCE
It's Kyoko's anniversary of working as manager of Maison Ikkoku and Godai gets enough courage to ask her out on a date.
MY NOTES
A year goes by EXTREMELY quickly, however the other years do not go by as fast.

CAMPUS DOLL
Kyoko accidentally gets dragged into being the princess in a puppet play, while Yusaku's already assigned to play the prince!
MY NOTES
A really funny chapter.

This is the beginning of the Maison Ikkoku saga, an absolutely wonderful romance story by Rumiko Takahasi. This book will let you know all about the characters and how the love relationship between the main characters develops in the beginning. This is a must buy book for the fans of Maison Ikkoku.

This is the beginning of the Maison Ikkoku saga, an absolutely wonderful romance story by Rumiko Takahasi. This book will let you know all about the characters and how the love relationship between the main characters develops in the beginning. This is a must buy book for the fans of Maison Ikkoku.

Maison ikkou is [in my oppinion] in rivalry with ranma 1/2 for the best series ever. It's so realistic to how people act, how things look and I think you get more envolved in Maison Ikkoku than any regular book you'd read. in each frame you just see it happening, instead of a bunch of lines on a peice of paper describing an action. It's more of a feeling, of course I wouldnt expect anything less from Takahashi. This is a completely wonderful series and I recommend it to anyone, I also reccomend any other comic series from Rumiko Takahashi.

If you've ever read the interviews of the author on her rare trips to the states, there are two things that stand out. One, she had trouble understanding why Americans would like something like Maison Ikkoku, based so much on the typical Japanese life style. Two, she (Rumiko Takahashi) created this to be a comedy, that about the life of a bunch of weird characters in a rooming house. Her normal actions (based on what she did with LUM: Urusei Yatsura) would be to continually introduce dozens of new characters and probably tenants to build the story around. This didn't happen, as the story developed an unexpected focal point, an unusual romance between two of the original characters.

As for the first observation, while it is true that the culture depicted here is Japanese, and some things may be confusing to an American audience, a part of that originality is what makes it interesting. Romance and comedy are universal concepts to nearly all cultures. We may eat differently, may have a different educational system, and do many other things in a different manner, but our actions and reactions are basically the same.

The second observation is what makes Takahshi such a great author. It would have been easy to ignore fan reactions, and just make another episodic, sitcom. She instead must have listened, and presented her audience with an epic romance, comedic, thriller, that encompasses possibly the most complete story ever presented in serialized manga. There are fourteen volumes of the Viz compilations of this work.

One more important point is worth considering. I'd advise buying the volumes soon as possible; Viz is going to the smaller size on almost all their series. Since these are already shrunken down art frames from the original manga. Shrinking them more is just wrong, but Viz has determined they can't sell most graphic novels at the higher price mark, and they are heavily discounted. I've gotten some of the new size, and they just are not as good.

A must read for anyone with type 1 diabetes, or who knows someone with type 1 diabetes, or who likes to read a great book.

I was driving when my 8 year old daughter announced that "Stacy has type 1 too, mom!" "Who is Stacy?" I asked her. "Stacy, the babysitter..." she replied. I started to tell her she didn't have a sitter named Stacy when I realized she was talking about the book she was reading, The Truth about Stacy. How cool! My daughter has type 1 diabetes and had found a heroine who she could really relate to!

We got other BSC books from the old series to read (not the graphic novels), but they hadn't been updated the way the versions Raina Telgemeier illustrated and adapted. Kudos to Raina, who took the time to learn about type 1 and make sure the information was up to date and accurate.

I love the BSC, and the earliest books in the series are my favorites. Ann Martin is one heck of a writer, and this third book in the BSC series tackles some serious issues - Stacey's struggles with diabetes, moving to a new town and fitting in, the loss and re-gain of old friends. A subplot in this book is the girls dealing with a copycat club called the Baby-Sitters Agency that threatens to put them out of business.
Ann, I wish you had written every single book in the series and not used ghostwriters for so many of them!

Raina Telgemaier has outdone herself in this adaptation of a book from the incomparable Baby-sitters Club series!!

This book was one of the best books in the baby sitter club serious and you know there were a LOT! This book really got deep in to Staceys feelings about having deiabets and her strugles with that.
Also the whole club is faced with a problem...some one else has started there own baby sitters club!!!!!!!
Now this wouldn't be so bad if that club wasn't getting more people calling them....and then when that club pays a trick on them the baby sitters club knows the other club HAS to go!!!

I thought that this book was brillantly written! go AMM!I mean of course there is going to be compeition and everything with the club, and how sometimes parents can be so impossiable! even though we know that they do care they seem a little overprotective and dont really listen to what we have to say, so i like this book a lot. and i like it when stacey and charollete bonds, this book is realy good. and its so sad how stacey was upset because she cares about the babysitters club because she doesnt want to lose any of her friends, and i liked that her and laine[her former best friend] were cool again.

This is the first book of a wonderful series. Yostuba&! is a wonderful 'slice of life' story revolving around the titular character. The special thing about Yostusba's perspective is she may be a 5 years old, but she's also a touch weird for a 5 year old. I would definitely recommend reading this and it's other volumes when you are in a bad mood; her innocent charms will lift your funk immediately.

Yotsuba written by Azuma Kiyohiko (author of Azumanga) is one of the best mangas you will read. It is mainly focused on Yotsuba and everyday life, but of course if that were the case it wouldn't be interesting. The real reason why life is so much fun in the manga is because of characters such as Yotsuba, her father, the next door neighbors (Asagi, Fuka, Ena), Jumbo and others* (there are side characters but later on they became part of the main story) There are life lessons and there are fun stories that are realistic and that is one of the main reasons why I think readers can relate and connect with the story/character. This volume and in fact the entire series can be enjoyed by everyone and is recommended for anime, manga and even those who have not read any mangas at all! Please do not overlook this manga as it simply one of the best out there. Once you are done with the first volume, you must simply own all of them (which I do currently up to volume 5)

I picked up the first book after reading how great the reviews were about it and I was impressed. Yotsuba&! is definitely not the kind of book I normally buy, but I am really glad I did. I found myself laughing out loud a number of times because of the situations Yotsuba finds herself in and the mishaps she causes. I'm looking forward to buying numbers two and three tomorrow. If you like reading manga that makes you laugh, this book is a good choice.

Outside of reading Koike Kazuo and Kojima Goseki's massive twenty-eight volume Lone Wolf and Cub, I have rarely read a volume of manga over the past half decade. However, the one short series that I did read, Azumanga Daioh, by the artist, Azuma Kiyohiko, inspired me enough to pick up the first volume of his currently running series Yotsuba&, and I must say that it has been a long time since a comic, or any book for that matter, has made me laugh out loud repeatedly and made me reread it immediately after completing it.

Yotsuba& stars Yotsuba, a five-year-old girl whose father Mr. Koiwai describes not only as being "strange" but as someone that "can find happiness in anything," which she does numerous times within the book. Milk, air conditioners, ramen, etc. everything is a thing of wonder to young Yotsuba, so, therefore, it should be no surprise that her move to a new city with her dad causes her much joy, albeit much confusion. There along with her father and their gigantic friend Jumbo, they mete the Ayase sisters, Asagi, the pretty one, Fuka, the "unpretty" one, and Ena, the youngest but most serious of the three girls. With eyes open to everything, Yotsuba finds adventure and fascinating things everywhere.

Yotsuba& is refreshing. At least in the first volume, there is no drama, no doomed love affairs, or a blue-haired man hell bent to destroy the world. Instead, the reader is given a view of the world of a young child. A world that still holds wonders hiding under every leaf. I definitely look forward the reading the other volumes of this series to see how Azuma fleshes out the characters and to see the wonders which Yotsuba discovers day to day.

I picked up the first book from a book store. I started reading it and could not stop. I soon hope to pick up volumes 4&5.
Youtsuba it a little green haired girl who is very energetic. The first book starts with her and her dad moving into a new town. Then many fun things happen. (I will name a few but not alot or it will be spoiled) Three of my favorite events were: (1 Yotsuba got hit with a swing in the park. (2 One of Yotsuba's neibors met Jumbo(Yotsuba's dad's friend) for the first time. He is abnormally tall, and scary. (3 When Yotsuba thought her neibor was a stranger and got scared of her.
If you like comedy this is the series for you!
I hope my reveiew helps!

I got this book as a gift. Honestly, I wasn't so sure at first. It is written like a comic book. But as I read it, I realized that it reads just like any book and that the comic pictures make it that much more interesting and unique. I learned a lot from this book, too. I would recommend it to anyone.

This is my first Graphic Novel, but not my last. I loved the story and I felt that the book had a really nice flow. Marjane Satrapi as an exceptional story teller and has a very strong voice. I read this shortly after seeing the movie, and though I loved the movie, I felt that it left alot of important stuff out. The book really helped fill in some of the gaps, and you also got to see Satrapi's personality a bit more. I look forward to reading her other works. If you have never read a Graphic Novel, this is a great place to start.

I was surprised to find it was in comic strip format, but I enjoyed the lite reading.

Without harping too much on what has already been said about the political observations that Satrapi makes or her commentary on the limits faced by everyone (and most especially) women in Iran, the truly inspirational achievement of this work is how honest she can be about herself in the story. That with everything whirling around her, the fact that she can be honest about both the good and the bad of the relationships she'd been in, the despair both at home and abroad, the flickers of hope that she clung to during the darkest times and how (true to the reality of a hopeful young woman) the very worst thing that can happen is ultimately to let down yourself and to let down your loved ones is stark and amazing. The scene where she loses the trust and the good standing with her grand mother is heart-breaking and yet could happen to any teenage girl anywhere in the world. That it's depicted in basic drawings doesn't detract from the power of the moment in the least.

And not that graphic novels these days have any trouble being seen as legitimate art, but Persepolis certainly puts a nail in the coffin of the arguments made by detractors.

Trust this book for it's emotion, for it's personal honesty, for it's attempts to always find something good even under the most extreme circumstances. It is not a history book. It is a personal history book. And it is one that deserves applause.

In the chapter "The Shabbat", set before she leaves for Austria in 1984, Marjane describes how Iraqi Scud missiles start raining down on Tehran, killing her Jewish childhood friend and neighbor, Neda. However, according to Jane's Intelligence Review and other sources, no missiles reached Tehran before Iraq's Al-Husayn missile programme in February 1988. Why would she lie about this?

The Far Side Gallery is the first collection of Gary Larson's crazy comic strips featuring hordes of talking anthropomorphised fauna and fowl of all shapes and sizes.

These are generally very amusing, and generally very witty, and you are bound to get some fridge or door material out of one of these.

Gary is sorely missed. Almost no one saw it the way he did. I hope another comes along.

Okay, it's a collection of Far Side comics, which is what I want, so it's awesome for that reason. BUT, the actual final product in book form is a little disappointing. First, all the comics are black and white. Yeah, it's not about the art and you don't miss much without color, but come on, would a little color kill anyone (especially ones that were originally color)? Second, it's pretty thin on strips, with 4 to a page most of the time (a good amount) sometimes 2 on a page, and even occassionally one comic on a single page! It looks pretty silly with just one giant comic on a page.

Larson's original gallery has so many classic Far Side cartoons that you can not justify not owning this sensational collection of his work. Larson may well have retired a while ago but the power of these works of brilliance to make the reader laugh will never fade. There have been many who have copied Larson's style but I have never come across anyone else who has even come close to achieving the quality of The Far Side.

Buy The Far Side Gallery along with its sequels, the original smaller books that make up these galleries are also great buys, along with the calendars and other merchandise. Larson's 2007 calendar gives all the proceeds to wildlife conservation (which obviously inspired a lot of his work) so get that too. You can never own enough of The Far Side.

In this volume (originally released in 1984) of the Gallery collections you will find such classic Far Sides as on Noah's Ark "Well that's it for the unicorns, from now on all the carnivores are confined to C Deck", the father being held up by his shirt collar by an invisible man with his son saying "BigBob is tired of you saying he doesn' exist, the smashed bottle falling from the clouds with humans running away with the word Uh-Oh! from the sky. The bears riding in the circus car saying "Looks Like a trap I said, nonsense no one would set a trap way out here in the woods you said...." The crocodiles on the river bank saying "That was incredible, no fur, claws, horns, antlers or nothing, just soft and pink" and of course the classic picture of dinosaurs smoking with the caption beneath "The Real Reason Dinosaurs Became Extinct" are just a small sample of the classic laughs within this sensational masterpiece.

Some of my earliest memories are filled with reading The Far Side on my father's lap after the evening meal. Whenever I asked my parents for a one of the standard collections, they told me to wait, one day they would all be in one book. Then, for Christmas one year, I got this book.

What can I say, but thank you Mom and Dad and thank you Mr. Larson! The Far Side was, and still is, funny, original, and timeless. This collection gives you some of the best of the original strips and lends itself well to watching the progression of humor up and through until the end.

Count D, the androgynous, keen on the tranvestite clobber owns a very strange, supernatural pet shop, where you want to be careful what you wish for when you ask him for a recommendation. Apart from that, the first part he is on holiday with a detective and his kid brother, and they run across a man who claims to have seen a mermaid 50 years ago, and has been obsessively hunting it ever since.

Thrown in a volcanic eruption, to make it more interesting.

I picked up Pet Shop of Horrors on the strength of it's reputation as both one of the best josei (women's) manga and one of the best horror manga. It's a reputation well earned.

The primary setting is San Francisco's Chinatown, where the mysterious, effeminate Count D (we don't in fact learn his real name, as Count D is actually his globetrotting grandfather, but for the purposes of the story we'll call him D) runs a petshop with a seedy reputation and whose clients have an alarmingly high death statistic. Detective Leon Orcot vows to close the shop and put D behind bars for murder and whatever else he can pin on him. More on that in future volumes - for now we're just getting accustomed to the format of the series.

Each volume generally tells the tale of four pets and their owners and what happens to them after the sale. In the premiere, we meet a gentle, empathetic Bird of Paradise trying to lighten his mistress' depression; a monstrous rabbit who is both her new owners' desperate dream and worst nightmare; a Basilisk who falls in love with her master; and a noble, heroic Doberman determined to protect his blind mistress from the still-at-large murderer of her parents who might be after her next. Of course, this is Pet Shop of Horrors, not Lassie, and when their tales are told, things will only have turned out well for one of the four...

The pet shop scenario allows D and Leon to be a point of reference throughout the series so that new situations don't have to continuously be set up. The banter between them is often amusing, and D himself is fascinatingly ambiguous. In some ways the stories are somewhat predictable (although the ending of one gave me quite a whallop), but that's not always a bad thing, and some have rather deep things to say about treating not only our animal companions but fellow man well. The animals themselves are diverse enough to keep things from getting stale.

It is worth addressing the manner in which the animals are presented here. Throughout the series, they appear to their owners as humans, which anthromorphizes them (think the ballet Swan Lake, the musical Cats, or the anime Wolf's Rain). An interesting aspect is that the animals reflect the human cultures of their indigenous area. The Bird of Paradise, for instance, appears as a beautiful androgynous youth in the traditional dancing garb of Bali to represent his plumage, while the Doberman appears as a handsome young man in a German military uniform.

A mixture of fantasy and horror, this is worth a read for anyone old enough to handle the fact that it is a horror series with some frames which earn it a 16+ rating.

Pet Shop of Horrors has a lot of magic and insight in its stories.
Count D, with his love for nature and animals, webs a mystical tapestry in which mankind is another thread, that constantly menaces to rip the cloth of Life apart.
I recoment this manga for anyone who likes magic and animals, and sweets.

I really enjoyed this series and the artwork is definetly some of the best! ^.^ Also get the DVD version of this. Unfourtunately they only did one dvd of this manga but that was excellent also.

Affectingly humanistic AND gleefully misanthropic all at once, PET SHOP OF HORRORS is a 10-volume series revolving around a Chinatown pet shop, the highly unusual animals it sells, and the (often unpleasant) fates which befall its patrons. Running the shop is "Count D", a young Chinese man with a charming smile. Trying to run him in is Leon Orcot, a grumpy police detective who is convinced D is behind all those nasty, animal-related incidents.

Each volume contains three or four clever, creepy, well-characterized stories focusing on an individual customer. Meanwhile, the series as a whole gradually unveils the story of Count D, and his quasi-adversarial relationship with the dogged-but-dense detective.

A lot of reviewers here explain the "rules" of the series to you. But I really enjoyed reading Book One "cold" and figuring it out for myself. The confusion is half the fun, and the real charm of the series is the way the stories subversively mess with our perceptions.

Some stories are better than others, of course. I was briefly alarmed at a dip in quality at Book 4, but Book 6 bounced the series back. Even so, Books 4 and 5 each contain one first-rate story, and overall work just fine as a brief change of pace. Book 10 concludes the series with four interconnected tales focused on the recurring characters. It is one of the best final books of a manga series that I have yet come across.

The "rating" jumps from T13 to T16 after Book 3. But I think that Book 1 gives you a good idea what you are in for content-wise. The detective does not watch his language, mermaids don't wear tops, many of the stories, uh, don't end well, and there is gore and extreme weirdness. But it is never gratuitous or stupid, and risque content is clever rather than crass. My local library has the full series, but it is STILL at the top of my To-Get List. It is that good.