Product Description

The complete graphic novel cycle, with Ellison's short stories featuring illustrations by Corben. Beginning with "Eggsucker," chronicling the early days between 14-year-old loner Vic and his brilliant, telepathic dog, Blood, the book continues and expands into "A Boy and his Dog," showing how much smarter Blood is and how loyal Vic is. Each adaptation is followed by the actual Ellison short story, illustrated with previously unpublished art by Corben.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #793001 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Synopsis
AN IBOOKS EXCLUSIVE! THE ONLY VOLUME TO EVER COLLECT ALL THE "BOY AND HIS DOG" MATERIAL BY AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR HARLAN ELLISON! The acclaimed series of short stories around the adventures of Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood, by Harlan Ellison is brought together as one stunning graphic novel by Richard Corben, one of today's leading fantasy artists. This conjugation of talents forms a powerful saga of love, death, and the consequences of both in a devastated society. - After winning a Nebula Award for Best Novella, "A Boy and His Dog" was made into a movie starring Don Johnson and Jason Robards, which itself won a Hugo. - In addition to the graphic novel adaptations of "A Boy and His Dog," "Eggsucker" and "Run, Spot, Run," this volume contains the original short stories by Ellison. - Features never-before-published sketchbook material from Richard Corben, critically-acclaimed artist for Heavy Metal magazine, Hellblazer (DC Comics), and The Incredible Hulk (Marvel Comics). - In a career spanning fifty years, Harlan Ellison has won more awards than any other living fantasist.

Customer Reviews

Vic & Blood: the Continuing Adventures of a Boy and His Dog
This is a beautiful piece of work, a combination of story-telling in a traditional, graphic-novel format, interspersed with the three prose-written passages that to date, comprise the sum total of Harlan Ellison's short stories in the popular "A Boy and His Dog" cycle. Each of the three short stories ("Eggsucker," a prologue to the events chronicled in "A Boy and His Dog" and lastly, "Run Spot Run") is retold in comic-strip format, and vice versa, resulting in a highly comprehensive chronicle of events.

For any readers as yet unfamiliar with "A Boy and His Dog," these stories follow the nightmare-scenario exploits and adventures, in a post-apocalyptic world, of fifteen year old Vic, and his engagingly sarcastic, cynical and world-wearily wise canine mentor Blood, the telepathic Puli-Alsatian cross. As in most post-apocalyptic stories, Vic and Blood's tale is played out against a relentlessly brutal back-drop. The uniformly harrowing grim-ness of their situation - and of some of their actions - is only made bearable for the reader by the touching devotion that our two heroes show to one another. This, in a sense, could be said to be the whole point of the book.

This current (2003) edition, 'Vic and Blood: the Continuing Adventures of a Boy and His Dog,' represents, as far as I can tell, a fairly faithful reissue of an earlier collection (originally published in 1988-9) of exactly the same pictures and stories, one that was previously entitled 'Vic and Blood: The Chronicles of a Boy and His Dog.' In the 2003 book there are of course, as would be expected from any DVD-adapted culture, a number of add-ins; a new prologue by Harlan Ellison, for example, and also a number of additional panels on the sides of certain pages, which have written on them one-off quips and observations, entitled 'The Wit and Wisdom of Blood.' Some of these are very amusing but in general they work, in terms of convincingly being wit and wisdom (or not) to a greater or lesser degree.

On the whole the subtle difference in the title and in the cover illustrations between the two existing editions of this same book could unfortunately prove confusing - and very disappointing - for any unwary readers or Vic 'n Blood fans: the new book isn't really in any useful sense a continuation from the earlier one, nor does it add greatly to the story told in it. This one is undoubtedly an extremely attractively-presented piece, and a highly entertaining read, and as such it would be a very worthwhile addition - especially given the apparent scarcity of copies of the 1989 original - to anyone's collection. In this review, I feel in all good conscience that I do have to mention, as a final point, the dreadful cliff-hanger ending of 'Vic and Blood,' however. This has, all by itself, knocked my star-rating of this book from a 4 or 5 down to a three. It is one thing to leave fans queuing in the morning at a book-shop - online or otherwise - desperate to buy the following instalment of - whatever they've been reading - so they can find out what happens next. But when a hanger ending is perpetuated into a reprint edition, and it is left hanging for fifteen years and more - as is the case here - things have really gotten beyond a joke.