Fred Van Lente teams with Dean Koontz for ODD IS ON OUR SIDE, the second manga based upon Koontz’s ODD THOMAS series. As with the first, IN ODD WE TRUST, this skews younger and is illustrated by Queenie Chan.

In the Halloween-themed Del Rey release, griddle master/dead seer Odd Thomas senses not all is well in his hometown as it preps for fall festivities. But sniffing out the bad guys is more difficult when everyone is dressed in spooky masks.

The supernatural story works in snatches of elements from the original novel, namely the appearance of spiders, a bomb and the ghost of Elvis Presley, albeit with non-tragic results. All in all, while not a must-have, SIDE is a better offering than any of Koontz’s prose sequels, which are the very definition of “diminishing returns.” —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.