
I need to read this!
How many volumes are there and is it particularly long?
Get the first manga from Dark Horse, don't even bother with GitS2: Man-Machine Interface.
Overall, though, I thought the manga was the weakest of the three iterations, with the movies just barely edging out the two series. It's all good, though, except Man-Machine Interface.
By the way, I finally got around to watching the manliest manime ever made: Fist of the North Star. Gallons of blood, people getting ripped apart left and right, tons of awesome fights, huge guys that are over 30 feet tall, and fighting all the time. The ending's a real cop-out, though.