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Weird in an entirely harmless and wholly entertaining way (if you’re into that sort of thing) is Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs. If there’s anything cuter than those big-eyed, tiny-skirted Japanese manga characters, it’s Japanese manga puppies. And this book has both. It’s the story of an ultra-naive teenage girl, Suguri, who decides to move to Tokyo on her own and gets a job at a pet store. Turns out she has a sixth sense when it comes to dogs. She’s crazy for dogs! It’s a ridiculous construction and results in all kinds of awkward dog-related situations, as well as miracles of veterinary medicine that save the lives of the cutest puppies ever drawn. Sure it’s silly, but come on who doesn’t love puppies?

Dark Horse is a reliably weird publisher, so it’s no surprise to find a couple of odd offerings coming from them. Ten years in the making, Harlan Ellison’s Dream Corridor collects a number of graphic-novel interpretations of Ellison’s short stories. They’re adapted and drawn by top-notch artists such as Curt Swan, Paul Chadwick, Mark Waid, Gene Ha, Steve Rude and Steve Niles. An eerily lifelike Ellison stares out from the cover drawn by Brian Boland; between stories, the author introduces and contextualizes his works. The stories themselves range from one-joke shorts to more elaborate thought experiments.

Billed as the Lost Prequel to Jimbo in Purgatory, Jimbo’s Inferno by Gary Panter is as beautiful as it is bizarre. It’s a tall, skinny book whose giant, creamy pages are crammed with Panter’s chaotic line drawings in tidily arranged square panels. A companion volume to the equally engrossing Jimbo in Purgatory, Inferno sees its intrepid hero he of the flattop haircut and musclebound torso plunging into the vile netherworld of Focky Bocky, a vast gloom-rock mallscape filled with all manner of frightened and frightening creatures. The sheer genius of transforming Dante’s vision of hell into a shopping mall allows for plenty of absurdist brilliance, most of which plays out in the hilariously over-the-top incongruity of the dialogue. In one panel, Jimbo turns to his tour guide/parole officer, Valise, and asks, Another river: is it boiling blood? But no, Valise assures him: It’s REALLY hot Dr Pepper. Think the archaicism of Dante spliced with the aggression of, say, Pulp Fiction. But in a really pretty, gorgeously put-together volume with a cool cover.

The Salon by Nick Bertozzi also uses a visual medium to comment on visual arts, and it does so in a similarly bizarre fashion. The young painter Georges Braque seeks the patronage of the famous Leo and Gertrude Stein; quickly invited to join their salon, he learns that the Steins are terrified. A mysterious blue demon-lady has been prowling the streets of Paris at night, murdering artists and gallery owners. Then comes the weird part: To hunt down this killer, the salon’s members (including Picasso, Apollinaire and others) drink blue absinthe, which allows them to enter any painting they choose. They’ve deduced that the killer is Paul Gauguin’s mistress, and she’s hiding out in his paintings. The book is vivid and dynamic, all strong lines, intense blues and greens and punchy dialogue. His take on Picasso as a volatile, childlike savant is priceless. Best of all are the Frenchified sound effects: instead of bang! or kapow! you have clonque! and kique!