Odd Is on Our Side Read online

  This is the second graphic novel to star Odd Thomas, following In Odd We Trust. In that first book, artist Queenie Chan established the visual appearance of Odd, Stormy, and Chief Porter. In Odd Is On Our Side, her challenge was to come up with the look of another major character, bestselling mystery novelist Ozzie Boone, as well as his New York editor, Valerie Malavont.

  MERYL STREEP LOOKALIKE. NEW YORK LITERARY TYPE.

  Ms. Malavont was approved right away, but Ozzie proved to pose a challenge!

  FOR SOME STRANGE REASON, I THOUGHT OZZIE WAS BLACK. AFTER IT WAS CONFIRMED THAT HE WASN’T, I REREAD THE BOOKS–AND WHILE THERE WAS NOTHING THERE THAT SAID OZZIE WAS BLACK, I DIDN’T SPOT ANYTHING THAT SAID HE WAS WHITE, EITHER. SINCE OZZIE WAS KNOWN FOR BEING SAGACIOUS, I PROBABLY SUBCONSCIOUSLY THOUGHT OF HIM AS MORPHEUS FROM THE MATRIX MOVIES (HENCE WHY HE WAS BLACK IN MY MIND).

  Dean’s immediate comment was that Ozzie is not black. Queenie wrote back,

  “For some reason I’ve always imagined him as dark-skinned. I guess I’ve had this image of Ozzie in my mind from the start of reading Odd Thomas, and couldn’t separate myself from it. I’m perfectly happy to do a redesign.”

  The second sketch wasn’t right either.

  WHEN IT TURNED OUT THAT OZZIE LOOKED MORE LIKE ORSON WELLES, I IMMEDIATELY ASSUMED HE LOOKED LIKE THE OLDER, MORE INTENSE ORSON (RATHER THAN THE YOUNGER VERSION). HOWEVER, I PERSONALLY DIDN’T FEEL THIS IMAGE SUITED THE CHARACTER OF OZZIE (AND INDEED, IT DIDN’T REALLY).

  “All we know about Ozzie’s appearance is that he’s HUGE, and not much more,” Queenie wrote after this sketch was rejected. “Perhaps Dean can suggest another celebrity who looks like Ozzie, like he did with Valerie and Chief Porter. That makes it infinitely easier.”

  Dean replied: “Ozzie Boone is in his late forties, weighs 400-plus pounds, and has a sweet but not babyish face. Herewith several photos of the comedian Lou Costello. He was not as heavy as Ozzie, but his face is a good place to begin. He had a sweet pudgy face but in his way he was handsome, too. His hair would work well for Ozzie, also.”

  THIS FINAL OZZIE SKETCH, BASED ON LOU COSTELLO, WAS DEFINITELY THE ONE I LIKED THE MOST.

  Queenie put pen to paper once again, and the final result was approved.

  THE GREAT BODACH STRUGGLE

  The other artistic challenge in Odd Is On Our Side was that of the bodachs, the supernatural heralds of death and disaster. The bodachs feature heavily in the Odd Thomas books, and yet they proved difficult to render in a way that communicates the menace and evil they embody in the novels. Here is Queenie’s first attempt:

  This proved to have too much of a specific form. Dean described the bodachs as slinky, wolfish shadows that flow from place to place. He asked Queenie to try again.

  Still not quite right. This guidance came back:

  “Delete all the curlicues. This design element makes the creature seem too cute and almost friendly. It takes away from the menace they are supposed to convey. Imagine what it would look like if you drop black ink in a pan of water. There would be no pattern to how the ink moves in the water from time to time. Rather, it’s an amorphous blob shifting.”

  BECAUSE THE FIRST SKETCH WAS TOO “PRECISE,” I DECIDED TO DRAW THE NEXT TWO SKETCHES AS LOOSELY AS I COULD.

  BUT AS IT TURNED OUT, BODACHS HAD NO DEFINITE SHAPE SINCE THEY LOOKED MORE LIKE BLOTCHES OF INK FLOATING IN WATER, SO I JUST DECIDED TO DRAW THEM DIRECTLY ONTO THE PAGES.

  This final version was approved. Said Queenie: “It’s hard to make a shape-shifting blob look menacing … so I gave them glowing eyes.”

  SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT

  Adaptor Fred Van Lente had the task of turning Dean’s story for Odd Is On Our Side into a panel-by-panel script. Questions came up as he did so, not all of which could be answered by reference to the novels. Odd fans will be interested to learn these details.

  Fred: Does Odd automatically know the identity of every ghost he comes into contact with?

  Dean: When Odd looks at the lingering spirit of someone he didn’t know in life, he has to figure out who they are by the context of their apparition (as, for example, the various ghosts in the burnt-out casino in Forever Odd). He does not automatically intuit the spirits identity.

  Fred: Can Odd tell at first glance whether someone is a ghost?

  Dean: Odd knows a ghost is a ghost only if he knew the dead person or if the apparition displays its mortal wounds. As in the first book in the series—with “Fungus Man,” alias Bob Roberts—Odd sometimes can mistake a lingering spirit for a living person, until the entity is either unable to speak (the dead don’t talk) or does something ghostlike, such as walk through a wall, whereupon Odd knows with what he’s dealing.

  The ghost has no aura or identifying essence. Of course, if Odd sees someone but Stormy or another living person doesn’t see them, Odd knows at once that he’s seeing a ghost.

  OZZIE BOONE

  The script introduced Dean’s character Ozzie Boone, bestselling novelist, to graphic novel readers for the first time, and Dean wanted to make sure that the Ozzie readers meet in this book is the same in all details as the Ozzie we get to know and love in the novels. In the first-draft script, Fred included a few lines indicating that Ozzie knew how to defuse the bomb inside the spider piñata because of research he’d undertaken to write a book series about a police bomb squad expert named Paddy McSorely. Dean wrote back:

  Dear Fred,

  Ozzie’s famous detective series are described in Odd Thomas, in chapter sixteen: The first is about a very “fat detective of incomparable brilliance who solves crimes while tossing off hilarious bon mots. He relies on his beautiful and highly athletic wife (who utterly adores him) to undertake all the investigative footwork and to perform all the derring-do.” The second series involves “a likable heroine in spite of numerous neuroses and bulimia.” Ozzie proudly—and slyly—proclaims that no novels in the history of literature have featured so much vomiting to the delight of so many readers. I want to avoid adding character facts that contradict those in the books, so I’d like to avoid this series about Boston Bomb Squad inspector Paddy McSorely. Being a mystery writer and a demon for detail, Ozzie will know something about bombs when he needs to act late in the story; he should just mention, at the time, having written a story about a mad bomber.

  THE VILLAIN

  Early in the process, Fred proposed a religion-based motive for Norman Turley, the villain of Odd Is On Our Side, to have poisoned a number of trick-or-treaters. Dean responded with this:

  The Odd Thomas stories try to avoid both politically correct villains and needlessly negative characterizations of whole groups. Consequently, I would like to see Norman Turley not be a crazy Christian trying to warn people about a “pagan” holiday. Maybe make him the owner of a flower shop and a neighborhood greenhouse who got tired of having his windows soaped by trick-or-treaters. Then he might use a plant poison to contaminate the candy he gave out.

  Dean provided helpful details about what type of poison would work best for such a plan:

  Strychnine is almost too powerful a poison for this. It’s a Class 6 toxin, with a victim-reaction time of ten to twenty minutes, and faster in children. It wouldn’t be logical to assume that most—or in fact any—of the kids who ate that candy survived. Better to go with something like the seeds of corn cockle—a Class 4 toxin—which would give authorities time to recognize the symptoms as those of poisoning and time for physicians to successfully treat the victims. Corn cockle is sometimes grown as an ornamental plant. If Norman Turley was a florist/greenhouse operator, he might use corn cockle as filler in some flower arrangements and would know the power of the seeds. It might be fun if he was caught because the symptoms of poisoned children—nausea, acute gastroenteritis, fever, giddiness, delirium, weakness, depressed breathing, sharp pains in the spine—were reminiscent of those Turley’s wife suffered before she died three years before the little girl who was costumed as a ghost. Mrs. Turley was thought to have died of anaphyl
actic shock caused by an unspecified allergic reaction. But when Turley replayed the trick on the kids, Wyatt Porter made the connection.