If you're not already a fan of Harlan Ellison, this is emphatically NOT the place to become one. This volume is a collection of short stories written by Ellison and translated into graphic format, apparently just for the novelty of it, since quite frankly a lot of the stories don't really lend themselves to the medium. The stories vary from okay but not mindblowing to so poor that even Ellison himself admits they're bad--which brings us to the most irritating part of the book. Ellison has self-inserted himself as a narrator-cum-tourguide who wanders the literal "dream corridor" between stories introducing each one, talking about himself in a gratingly self-congratulatory tone, and beating the reader over the head with some extremely ham-handed visual puns.

Were I an experienced and dedicated reader of Harlan Ellison's, who had read broadly of his work and felt his self-congratulations were warranted, I could imagine finding his tone personable and endearing, and might consider this book a welcome rounding out of my collection of his work, since a lot of the stories seem to be from the early (and long-lost) days of his writing career. However, as it is, this was my first encounter with Harlan Ellison, and it's likely to be my last as well. Nothing I read here was particularly inspiring, and the choice to re-do his stories in the comic book style didn't seem especially well thought-through, as the only story I might say I enjoyed reading was the last one in the collection--the one that was plain text. ( )