By Hirohiko Araki
Comics Lit,$19.99, 128 pages

A ghost story is always a fun read, especially if you can link it to something real. Rohan at the Louvre has a haunted painting, which incorporates an ink that is blacker than black, made from the sap of a thousand-year-old tree that was acquired by the Louvre. Young Rohan is told of the painting by a woman who promptly disappears. A decade later he is in Paris and decides to look the painting up. Bad things commence happening when they look the painting up for him. The idea behind this is actually pretty cool; the Louvre is attempting to stoke interest in itself by commissioning books that are set there. This is a neat little ghost story; Rohan has the ability to literally read a person like a book, and uses that ability to eventually deal with the painting. Like the best ghost stories it depends on a lot of foreshadowing to pump up the monster, and then the monster delivers. Although this is a light read, it hearkens back to when campers gathered around fires to scare each other. This is a book you will want to read to a kid just to see him jump.


Reviewed by Jamais Jochim,

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