Holiday Books: Graphic Novels.

''I need a time machine,'' the leader of a terrorist group mutters midway through DUNCAN THE WONDER DOG (AdHouse, paper, $24.95). ''Go back to Olduvai -- flood it when there's still a chance.'' In this ambitious, beautiful, mystifying first graphic novel by Adam Hines, the unhinged villain has a better reason than most to wipe humanity from the earth: She's not human. She's a Barbary macaque who goes by the name Pompeii, and she's just set off a bomb at a California university. ''Duncan the Wonder Dog'' tweaks the old song into a provocative new question: What if we could walk with the animals, talk with the animals -- and the animals fought back? This nearly 400-page volume is, according to its 26-year-old author, the first of a nine-book series. As with so many contemporary graphic novels, its high-concept story sounds like a movie pitch waiting to happen (''Dr. Dolittle'' meets the Baader-Meinhof gang) -- but in this case, the deliberate pace and embrace of elision discourage casual reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]