We first met Shannon O'Leary at the last Alternative Press Expo, where she was showing the floppy versions of her books and Fortune's Bitch.

Now, she's about to publish a hardbound, 120+ page graphic novel version of Pet Noir and, lucky us, we got an early review copy.

Let us tell you, nothing makes a six-hour plane ride go faster than chuckling at graphic representations of pet crime stories (see the depiction above of dog maul-case lawyer Nedra Ruiz, as drawn by MariNaomi. Holy crap, that's funny).

O'Leary's the editor, one of the writers, and even does art for one story in the book; all in all, 26 people contribute the stories.

Animals. Sequential art. What's not to like? The stories are divided into two distinct categories: Pet Noir ("Notoriously strange but true tales of pet crime that made sensational headlines") and Pet Crime Confidential ("Hair-raising personal stories of everyday crimes against animals").

The book starts off with a bang. "Some people collect things they like . . . some people collect things they need . . . then there are things people shouldn't collect because they aren't things: they're cats." Shannon, who penned this tale, if of course talking about "The Petaluma Cat Lady," amusingly illustrated by August Bournique. And, of course we know it's kind of wrong, but we laughed our ass off at the incident where the guy threw that poor doggie on the freeway a few years ago, as depicted by Paul Musso in "The Freeway Incident." (It's funny because of how Musso draws the despicable dog tosser; we're in no way laughing at poor Leon's sad fate.)

We were amused, intrigued, and in some cases delighted with what we saw in the review copy. For more info, we went straight to the source -- an interview with Shannon O'Leary follows:

Pet Noir