Byline: Joseph Szadkowski, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

This chronic feature lets me review what recently has passed my bloodshot pupils. So pull up a chair, break out the sarcasm filter and welcome to:

Mr. Zad's comic critique

* Fractured Fables, graphic novel (Image Comics, $29.99) - This full-color, hardcover anthology will entrance readers looking for a twisted take on some of the world's beloved children's stories and songs.

The 160-page book allows some of comics' brightest stars to take artistic license with classics such as Three Blind Mice and Pinocchio.

Thirty multi-page tales, mainly in the sequential-art format (with a couple of illustrated stories tossed in), feature the talents of such distinguished creators as Mike and Laura Allred (Madman), Whilce Portacio (Uncanny X-Men), Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man), Jill Thompson (Scary Godmother) and Terry Moore (Stranger in Paradise).

Most all of the stories deliver either through colorful and eclectic art or the skewered prose that elicits a laugh, or least a smile.

Here are just a few of my favorites:

* Little Red Riding Hood is updated by writer Bryan Talbot and finds the brightly dressed child on a direct path to the Big Bad Wolf's stomach - until she displays some surprising skills. Painter Camilla d'Errico brings a bit of an anime influence to the action and makes me exclaim when viewing Red, My, what gigantic blue eyes you have.

* Doug TenNapel's Rumpelstiltskin turns the classic into a Ren and Stimpy episode. He dementedly uses a grotesque art style that chaotically blends with the sophomoric hijinks of a magic little man who can turn hay into...