Odd Is On Our Side
Book 2, Odd Thomas manga series
Fred Van Lente, Dean Koontz, & Queenie Chan

It's Halloween in Pico Mundo, California, and there's a whiff of something wicked in the autumn air. While the town prepares for its annual festivities, young fry cook Odd Thomas can't shake the feeling that make-believe goblins and ghouls aren't the only things on the prowl. And he should know, since he can see what others cannot: the spirits of the restless dead. But even his frequent visitor, the specter of Elvis Presley, can't seem to point Odd in the right direction.
With the help of his gun-toting girlfriend, Stormy, Odd is out to uncover the terrible truth. Is something sinister afoot in the remote barn guarded by devilish masked men? Has All Hallows Eve mischief taken a malevolent turn? Or is the pleading ghost of a trick-or-treater a frightening omen of doom.

Up until the ending of this manga, I was going to say that this was better than the first Odd Thomas manga and I was going to rate it at four snails. But the ending completely ruined it for me.

Most of this manga was decent. The drawing was all right, the story was better than the previous manga's story, and the addition of Terrible Chester and Ozzie was fantastic. But as soon as I read the ending, I went from quite liking this, to disliking it and wanting to throw it in the trash.

What could have been a really good Odd Thomas story in manga form was ruined by the Scooby Doo ending. Neither Koontz nor the Odd Thomas series of novels ever used a Scooby Doo ending and the fact that this manga did, was horribly disappointing.

What is a Scooby Doo ending you might ask? It's when you find out who the villain is - and then unmask them from their Halloween costume (which would have been fine)... and then unmask them to have been pretending to be a little old lady when in actuality they're a recently released man from prison who hates Halloween. Yeah, the ending is just that bad.

I don't recommend this manga, especially to Odd Thomas and Dean Koontz fans. Seriously, the ending completely ruins everything.

My rating: Two out of five snails.