House of Odd

House of Odd
Dean Koontz

The third graphic novel adventure featuring Dean Koontz’s hugely popular character, Odd Thomas – the small-town fry-cook who can see the dead.Odd Thomas’s bestselling author friend, Ozzie Boone, asks Odd to pay a call on an old friend: Hollywood producer Nedra Nolan, who has just bought a dilapidated mansion in Pico Mundo and hopes to make it her retirement hideaway.However, mysterious occurrences – windows opening of their own accord, rooms going cold, and chandeliers crashing to the floor – have frightened away every workman she hires.Odd and his girlfriend Stormy think they can determine what might be haunting the huge old house. But not even Odd’s ability to see the lingering dead can prepare him for the horror he discovers in the rambling cellar…

Contents

Title Page

House of Odd

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

About the Creators

Artist’s Sketchbook

An Excerpt from Odd Hours

Other Books by Dean Koontz

Copyright

About the Publisher

ABOUT THE CREATORS

DEAN KOONTZ is the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers. He lives with his wife, Gerda, in Southern California.

QUEENIE CHAN was born in Hong Kong and emigrated to Australia when she was six years old. She is the creator of the mystery-horror graphic novel series The Dreaming and has illustrated three graphic novels based on Dean Koontz’s character Odd Thomas. She provided art for the Boy’s Book of Positive Quotations by Steve Deger and draws a number of online comic strips on her personal website: www.queeniechan.com/

LANDRY Q. WALKER has been writing comics for twenty years, and is the co-creator of Kid Gravity and Little Gloomy—two comics that were featured prominently in Disney Adventures Magazine. He is best known for his 2008 reinvention of the DC Comics character Supergirl and is currently looking forward to seeing his comic series The Super Scary Monster Show adapted into animation.landrywalker.blogspot.com

ARTIST’S SKETCHBOOK

This is the third graphic novel to star Odd Thomas, following In Odd We Trust and Odd Is on Our Side. In the first book, artist Queenie Chan established the appearance of Odd and Stormy. In House of Odd, her challenge was to come up with the look of Hollywood producer Nedra Nolan and the members of the CISI team whose investigations would form the center of the plot. On the following pages are Dean Koontz’s descriptions of each character, plus Queenie’s sketches and comments as she sent them in for Dean’s approval.

NEDRA NOLAN

“A successful film producer among whose hits were two films based on Ozzie’s novels. She should resemble Helen Mirren.”

VERN

“A forty-something guy with Einsteinian hair, who talks about ghost chasing as if it’s as refined a science as quantum mechanics, but it’s really just idiot jargon.”

CASSANDRA

“A thirty-something true believer who comes with her cat, Houdini, which she sometimes holds and points like a dowsing rod to lead her to the haunting spirit.” Queenie argued that Cassandra should have dark hair, saying, “Honestly, few psychic ladies are blonde. It doesn’t seem to fit the image.” But Dean liked this first sketch, asking only that Cassandra’s “gypsy shawl” be deleted.

KIRK

“Kirk was so traumatized by seeing on DVD The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with Don Knotts when he was only eight years old that he sees supernatural threats everywhere and feels that he must ‘stand up to Disembodied Evil wherever it is found or be doomed to live in a world ruled by capricious ghosts dedicated to a reign of terror because they can no longer eat Rocky Road ice cream and drink good beer.’”

HOUDINI

Oddly enough, Houdini was the only sketch Dean rejected, saying he too closely resembled Terrible Chester, Ozzie Boone’s cat seen in Odd Is on Our Side.

Queenie dashed off a quick revised sketch and Dean approved it right away.

An excerpt from

ODD HOURS

by Dean Koontz

Odd’s adventures continue in a series of full-length novels by Dean Koontz. The first novel is Odd Thomas, which was excerpted in the graphic novel In Odd We Trust. The second is Forever Odd, excerpted in the graphic novel Odd Is on Our Side. Here you can read an excerpt from Odd Hours, the fourth in the series, which begins when Odd meets a young woman he has seen in a troubling dream—and ends with Odd facing dangers he could never have imagined. The story will continue in Odd Apocalypse, on sale Summer 2012.