Full Metal Alchemist manga has a release date

FULL METAL ALCHEMIST
By Arakawa Hiromu
A long awaited 4-volume manga series that tells the story of young brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric who attempt to use the science of alchemy to bring their mother back to life, with life changing and action packed results. (June)

From Viz, which will also be releasing Hunter X Hunter in April.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,956125,00.html via Animenewsnetwork.com

ETA: Just noticed-- the series has only four volumes? Is that right? How can they possibly pack that much story into four volumes? I would have guessed eight to ten.

Also, please do not put spoilers in the comments (should anyone feel moved to comment). Thanks!

Full Metal Alchemist manga has a release date

FULL METAL ALCHEMIST
By Arakawa Hiromu
A long awaited 4-volume manga series that tells the story of young brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric who attempt to use the science of alchemy to bring their mother back to life, with life changing and action packed results. (June)

From Viz, which will also be releasing Hunter X Hunter in April.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,956125,00.html via Animenewsnetwork.com

ETA: Just noticed-- the series has only four volumes? Is that right? How can they possibly pack that much story into four volumes? I would have guessed eight to ten.

Also, please do not put spoilers in the comments (should anyone feel moved to comment). Thanks!

Books which warped me as a child

While looking up yet another book I read when I was a kid while doing memoir rewrites, I finally figured out that the dead dog book which I had always remembered as Old Wullie is actually called Bob, Son of Battle. It's by Alfred Ollivant, and is the extremely-- no, EXTREMELY gory and tragic story of an old Scotsman and his killer dog, Red Wull, which people inexplicably thought was a nice rousing dog story for kids. And it's online via Project Gutenberg.

My cat-vacuuming did not extend to reading the whole thing, but I did go to the end to see if I'd embroidered its bloodiness in my memory. Nope. Turns out I understated it. Read-- if you dare-- what I read when I was nine, and share in my trauma.

( Cut for length, dialect, and the horripilating story of how every dog in a dog-ridden Scottish village attacked Red Wull en masse )

Over the dead body he stooped.

"What ails ye, Wullie?" he asked again. "Will you, too, leave me?"

Then Bessie, watching fearfully, saw him bend, sling the great
body on his back, and stagger away.

Limp and hideous, the carcase hung down from the little man's
shoulders. The huge head, with grim, wide eyes and lolling tongue,
jolted and swagged with the motion, seeming to grin a ghastly
defiance at the world it had left. And the last Bessie saw of them
was that bloody, rolling head, with the puny legs staggering
beneath their load, as the two passed out of the world's ken.

In the Devil's Bowl, next day, they found the pair: Adam M'Adam
and his Red Wull, face to face; dead, not divided; each, save for
the other, alone. The dog, his saturnine expression glazed and
ghastly in the fixedness of death, propped up against that
humpbacked boulder beneath which, a while before, the Black
Killer had dreed his weird; and, close by, his master lying on his
back, his dim dead eyes staring up at the heaven, one hand still
clasping a crumpled photograph; the weary body at rest at last, the
mocking face--mocking no longer--alight with a whole-souled,
transfiguring happiness.

The end