Tom Strong, Vol. 1

I really like Tom Strong. The Alan Moore creation is a combination of Superman, Doc Savage, Tarzan and Flash Gordon. I've previously read the 2 hardcover volumes that comprised the entire run of Tom Strong's Terrific Tales. While the series wasn't entirely filled with adventures starring Tom, there were enough of him to make me a fan; desiring to complete a run of his regular series.

I swear that I've read the first issue before. Maybe the premiere issue of Terrific Tales reprinted some of Tom Strong's origin story. Maybe I've committed that legend to memory just as I have with the debuts of Batman, Spider-Man and dozens of other superheroes. But I doubt it.

7 issues are reprinted in this volume. The first 4 issues are self-contained. I love that. You get a full compliment of 30 some pages of action, adventure and a smattering of sci-fi, set in the year 1999. Within is also a glimpse of Tom's past adventures, which are pretty extensive considering that he's nearly 100 years old. I think each flashback had had something to do with the current predicament, which often sees a long-thought vanquished for returning from the dead. You might think that Alan Moore is stuck on a comic book trope. But in reality, he's eviscerating how often publishers love to bring characters back from the dead instead of letting sleeping dogs lie.

The last 3 issues all involved cliffhangers. If I was buying Tom Strong, when it was new,on a monthly basis and the pacing went from one-and-done tales to cliffhangers with a 30-day wait for the conclusion, I would have been pissed. Chalk it up for collected trades and hardcovers!

The second half not only sees the return of a World War II era foe, it also introduces a new foe that while I knew what was coming, I was shocked that Moore managed to do it. Tom is essentially raped and his DNA is used to make an Über Tom who really hates dad. Add in that Tom's wife is a black African princess and their child is mixed, the conflicting superiority complex and family loyalty of Tom's son makes for a very intriguing look at Tom Strong's future.

The original series of Tom Strong ran for 33 issues. There's 5 more volumes out there. Out of print, but not exactly something that collectors are scrambling to add to their collections, I should not have very much trouble getting my hands on them. Unfortunately, I have so much stuff on my ever growing wish list, it might be a while before I find volume 2. But rest assured, if I found the concluding editions on an amazing deal, they'll definitely be coming home with me.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Little Audrey TV Funtime #10 (2025 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

If you ever thought that the character Little Audrey was a nicer version of Marge's Little Lulu, with way less attitude, you might be on to something. After Paramount decided to not renew the contract to produce further Little Lulu cartoons under their Famous Studios division, Little Audrey was created as a replacement for which the studio would have full creative rights to. That also means that the early Harvey Comics staple didn't debut to the world in comic book form. Little Audrey got her start as an animated cartoon designed by animator Bill Tytla. 

The first Little Audrey short debuted on the silver screen in the December, 1947 holiday tale  'Santa's Surprise.' In it, the New York based Audrey along with separate children from around the world, all get the idea to stow away in Santa's sleigh. Tired from his trek around the globe, Santa falls asleep back at the North Pole. Silently, Little Audrey and friends sneak out of the sleigh and clean up St. Nick's workshop for the many gifts he's bestowed the children of the world. Then using an unexpected mastery of Santa's sleigh, the children all return home without Santa being none the wiser.

From 1947-1958, Little Audrey starred in 16 animated shorts for Paramount. 17, if you count her cameo in a 1948 Popeye cartoon featuring Olive Oyl. Little Audrey's appearance with Popeye's girlfriend was fitting as both characters were voiced by Mae Questel, who also was the voice of Betty Boop from 1931-37. 

Little Audrey's move from the silver screen to comics was spurred on by competition. Disney and Warner Bros were poaching the best of the best in the animation business. The quality of Famous' new releases were showing major signs of decrease. Paramount began to sell off its catalog in order to keep the animation studio afloat. The character had previously been licensed to St. John's Publications from 1948-52. 24 issues of her own self titled publication were released. But during that time, Paramount still owned the rights to Little Audrey. With the purchase by Harvey in 1952, the publisher owned the character outright along with Casper the Friendly Ghost, Baby Huey and others.

Over the course of the 1950s, Little Audrey's design evolved from how she looked in the animated shorts to a style that was more uniform with the rest of the Harvey line. Instead of a Kewpie doll with rosey cheeks dressed in blue, she adopted a red and white ensemble and a face that looked more like she was a distant cousin to Richie Rich. 

Little Audrey TV Funtime was one of 4 titles that started Little Audrey and friends during her heyday at her new home. The series ran from 1962-1971 for 33 quarterly issues. This book was a tie-in for a weekly syndicated TV series than showed Harvey's inventory of shorts produced by Famous in the 40s and 50s. This issue has at least 2 ads for the TV series. Though why Harvey Comics only released a TV Funtime based on Little Audrey and not her fellow co-stars is unknown. However, this reviewer speculates that it has something to do with how strikingly different Little Audrey looks on TV compared to her Harvey Comics adapted style. 

Little Audrey's cast was nearly identical to Little Lulu. Her best friend and sometimes foil, Melvin had a clubhouse with a sign out front that said 'No Girls Allowed', just like Tubby. Lucretia, Audrey's best gal pal, was a poor little waif who's not very bright, in the vein of  Annie Inch, while diminutive Echo was a less bratty version of youngster Alvin Jones.

One thing that Little Audrey outpaced Little Lulu at was diversity. One of her best friends is a bald black child named Tiny. Just like with The Little Rascals, Tiny interacted freely with the white children in a community that seemed to ignore racial segregation. Tiny's vernacular was not made up of broken pigeon English like the character of Ebony White from Will Eisner's The Spirit and his mother appeared as an upper middle class stay at home mom who isn't afraid to clash with anyone, including the local police, when Tiny is confused as being a bank robber in this issue.

Other stories inside this issue includes Little Audrey confusing an insect collector and a hobo both as her long lost uncle, her trying to keep cool with pals Melvin and Lucretia and Tiny accidentally scaring his friends when they turn a haunted house into their new clubhouse. There's also an improbable farce where Lulu thinks she broke her father's favorite chair and is able to replace it with a new one at the department store for just a dollar down.

By 1976, Little Audrey was all but forgotten at Harvey. All of her titles were quietly cancelled; replaced by Wendy the Girl Little Witch, a polka-dot loving clone named Little Dot and the ever hungry Little Lotta. Little Audrey  did return in the 1980s; albeit for a very brief period. In 1988 Harvey reissued several classic Little Audrey stories in a 3-D gimmicked one-shot. During Harvey's short-lived revival period when it was purchased by MHM Communications, Little Audrey returned with all new stories in the early 90s. Unfortunately, that series along with several others was quickly cancelled with the new owner focusing on cartoon and live action franchise opportunities. 

Since then, the character has been relegated to just a couple of blink and you miss it cameos in media based on Richie Rich and Baby Huey. A classic design of Little Audrey was to appear in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but had to be scrapped as the license couldn't be cleared in time.  Little Audrey along with her contemporaries who succeeded her were all given contemporary makeovers the animated series Harvey Girls Forever that aired for 4 seasons on Netflix. 

Still no return to comic book form in almost 35 years. 

Completing this review completes Task #2 (Comic from the Silver Age (1956-1970) ) of the 2025 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Douglas Adams' The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (A Madman Re-Read)

It's hard to believe that when Douglas Adams died in 2001, he had only published 11 books. That number just seems in error. Adams had released 5 volumes in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Yes, I did mean trilogy.  He also released a compendium of the radio scripts for Hitchhikers. Adams also gave us 2 Dirk Gently books. The remaining 3 books were co-written by Adams about made up words, similar to Sniglets and a treatise on endangered animals. The last book, Last Chance to See was considered by the author his greatest work. Though how anything can top The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is beyond me 

Just because Douglas Adams only finished 11 books before his death at age 49, that doesn't mean he wasn't a prolific writer. He contributed a number of articles on subjects varying from computers to religious beliefs and almost everything in between; most of which were published in magazines and newspapers in the UK. The Salmon of Doubt seeks to give his fans one last conversation with the extremely witty and hilarious author while also offering what the third Dirk Gently or the sixth Hitchhikers book might have been had he survived. 

After Adams's death, a family friend was able to access the late author's computer and download a large number of his archived writings. His editor and his widow then sifted through the works, culling from not necessarily the best of the best, but a selection of works that most described the type of complicated man Douglas Adams was. 

A staunch conservationist, Adams's time dressed as a rhinoceros during a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro is documented. The author was also an unabashed techie who loved computers almost as compulsively as I love comic books. A couple of articles read like lost chapters of Orwell's 1984, giving insight into how technology will change our lives; especially in terms of how we will shop online. I also think he should be credited with being a visionary on the formation of the Google Cloud Platform, having lamented in the mid-90s how nearly impossible it was for him to write something on a computer to be reviewed by his editor on another model without just having to take his computer with him in person to his publisher.

Don't think Douglas Adams wasn't able to combine his two great passions. In 1992, he managed to convince a tech magazine to fund a trip to the Great Barrier Reef in order to determine which offered a smoother ride: a new underwater one-man submersible or a giant sting ray. Needless to say, the diving experts wouldn't let the author actually touch a ray, let alone ride one. But he did manage to see a nearly 8 foot wide specimen in action and came to the conclusion that it was perfectly designed.

If conservation and technology were Douglas Adams' passions, Atheism was his guilty pleasure/soap box. And yet throughout this entire book, there's a sort of contradiction in his lack of beliefs in a creator. An admirer and later best friend of Richard Hawkins, one of the leading Atheist scientists whose also really vocal about it, there are several writings and interviews on his lack of faith in there being a God. To him and Dawkins, everything happened by accident. But if that is the case, then how can a stingray be perfectly designed? Too many of Adams' case for evolution is that there cannot be a God involved in the process. I personally don't see why it's so wild a thought that God could design something with the intent that as it's situation changes, the creation has certain traits built into its DNA to evolve with its surroundings. Who says that God can't keep creating new stuff after a much needed rest on the seventh day?

His 25-page speech 'Is There an Artificial God?' was my least favorite entry in the entire book. It was so rambling that it took me 3 days to finish. I hate that a stupid street preacher who was probably talking more out of his rectum than through the Holy Spirit caused Douglas Adams to become an atheist. I also hate that Adams believed that all religions were all part of 'the church'. I'm sorry but the Hindu religion is not a branch of Christianity. And the work of Baptists, Methodists or even the 21st century's Catholic should not be held accountable for the sins of the Catholic Church in the 14 and 1500s!

Douglas Adams was also a noted screenwriter. Some of the best Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes were worked on by Adams in one way or another. A couple of never produced treatments for skits to be performed with Python Graham Chapman are included and they are hilarious. There's a short story from the early days of Hitchhikers character Zaphod that had merit. But since he's probably my least favorite character in the franchise, that could explain my lackluster enthusiasm for it.

The main reason why I think most people, including myself wanted to read this book is for the title story, 'The Salmon of Doubt.' Adams began tinkering with it was a Dirk Gently novel. But as explained in an interview before you get to the story, Adams began to see that it might have worked better as a Hitchhikers story. 

I don't know. I thought it was rather entertaining and I could really envision a lot of the things Dirk saying in this book as being said by actor Samuel Barnett who played the title character for 2 seasons on BBC America's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.  I loved the interconnected way seemingly unconnected events played out. The dialogue, which was always Adams' strong suit, was brilliant and hilarious. I just hate that it was never finished.

Perhaps the most hilarious part of this book is the ending. It's the program from Adams' memorial service. For someone who was 'convinced there is no God', he sure had a lot of prayers, hymns and preachers at his funeral. He also had Pink Floyd's David Gilmour playing 'Wish You Were Here ', which was pretty cool. And considering how unfunny things have been around the world lately, I wish Douglas Adams was here too 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.

Ms. Tree's Thrilling Detective Mysteries #2 (2025 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Ms. Tree was created by crime novelist Max Allan Collins and artist Terry Beatty. She made her debut in 1981 in the pages of Eclipse Comics' anthology series Eclipse. The idea behind the creation of Ms. Tree was inspired by mystery novelist Mickey Spillane and his character Velda, the spitfire secretary of private eye Mike Hammer. According to Collins "What if Velda and Mike Hammer eventually got married, and on their honeymoon he was murdered?- that's Ms. Tree!

A play on the word 'mystery', Ms. Tree is a widow who takes over her husband's detective agency after his murder. In her first story titled 'I, for an Eye', the private investigator captures the murderer; uncovering ties to the Muerta Crime Family in the process.

This begins a private war between Tree and the Muertas that will unfold for years throughout the pages of her first solo title Ms. Tree's Thrilling Detective Mysteries. Eventually Tree's stepson fell in love and married one of the daughters of the Muerta Family's matrons. The Muerta declared Ms. Tree as 'family' and the feud was quashed before eventually going legit. In this 1983 issue, Tree is ambushed by a highly skilled hit-man, who is also a master of disguise, and is wanted for the murder of the daughter of one of the Muerta brothers. Recovering from her assault, Ms. Tree takes on the case as things have just gotten personal and if she can bring down the mobster who ordered the hit on her hubby; all the better!

Ms. Tree's publication history is just about as complicated as her family tree. After issue #3, the title was shortened to simply Ms. Tree. Eclipse stopped publication after issue #14. Eclipse publisher Dean Mullaney, the book was cancelled due to low sales. However Collins has gone on record defending the book's popularity; instead claiming that once his contract with Eclipse was up, he got a better offer to publisher the continuing adventures of Ms. Tree with Cerebus publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim. 

The legacy numbering for Ms. Tree continued with issue #15 at Aardvark-Vanaheim. When married co-publishers Dave Sim and Deni Loubert divorced in 1984, Loubert formed her own house, Renegade. Ms. Tree, along with titles such as Flaming Carrot and normalman, were retained under the new company as Sims departed with his intellectual properties. Three issues of Ms. Tree were co-published as Aardvark-Vanaheim/Renegade as the company restructured. 

Ms. Tree made it to issue #50, just as Renegade was going defunct in 1989. However, Ms. Tree wouldn't languish in comic book purgatory for long. In 1990, she found a new home as DC Comics. No longer a monthly series, the detective would pop up about every 3 months in the pages of Ms. Tree Quarterly. The title ended with issue #10 in 1993.

It would be almost 25 years before the world saw the return of Ms. Michael Tree, which is not only the first name of her deceased beloved, but her actual birth name as well. Collins wrote a few short stories about the character around the time she was being published by DC. In 2007, Collins collaborated with the imprint Hard Case Crime to produce the full length novel Deadly Beloved. Terry Beatty even got in the act, painting the book's cover. Sister publisher Titan Comics would eventually reissue the entire Ms. Tree comic portfolio with the Eclipse run, all the way through her tenure at DC Comics in a 6-volume compendium. 

Along with the continuing Ms. Tree story, this issue introduces a new vigilante hero called the Scythe. Created by Dean Mullaney, the Scythe is a private investigator named Roger Loring by day. A contract killer called the Button Man is killing detectives who are snooping around a criminal playground called Patterson's Dancehall. Figuring that the mysterious killer cannot assassinate someone they don't know, 'Rog' dons a cowl and wields a whip with a silver hook at the end. 

Frank Miller contributes a 2-page center spread pin-up devoted to famous detective Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

Collins and Beatty also contributed to a one-page interactive whodunnit called 'The Mike Mist Minute Mist-eries.

Completing this review completes Task #22 (With an Original Cover Price of $1.00) of the 2025 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Survival of the Fittest: Who's Got The Best Medicine? (Family Comic Friday)

I haven't done a Family Comic Friday in a while. I haven't given up on the project. Far from it. It's just that I've not really had much time to head to my local library. Plus, for the kids section of graphic novels, they got rid of the ' New Arrivals' section, making it a bit harder to find newer stuff to review. That being said, I did find something recently new at my branch. So let's take a look at Survival of the Fittest: Who's Got The Best Medicine?

Who knew that the animal kingdom had their own version of Shark Tank? Survival of the Fittest is an invention competition where creatures create amazing new products for humans based on the special properties of their very own bodies. Judging the competition as usual are Hammerhead Shark, Cookiecutter Shark and Tiger Shark. Today's episode, hosted by Hermit Crab, the trio of predators will be shown several potential lifesaving medical marvels. 

There's the extremely sharp teeth of the sea urchin that never gets dull as a potential new type of surgical scalpel. Mosquito shares a new form of syringe that is based on the bug's proboscis and is supposedly painless. And much more innovations based on the animals in the sea, land and air are in store!

And don't think that the sharks don't get in on the act too! Great White Shark has an idea to eliminate post-operative infections by having all of the equipment in the operating room textured like the sandpaper skin of those predators of the deep.

I loved the idea behind this book. There's a design segment at the end of the book that explains how such animal based technologies are in the planning stages at current time; along with hyperlinks to help young readers learn more about these amazing inventions. (You'll have to type those out as this is not a digital book that I reviewed.)

I only wish that I could have understood what was going on between the host, Hermit Crab and contestant Octopus. Was the 8-armed invertebrate flirting with the crab as he kept changing shells during every commercial break? Was the Octopus just being friendly? Was there mischief afoot? I really couldn't tell. Those interludes were pantomimed and I really could have used some words, or narrator descriptions to fully follow along with that part of the story.

I also felt that another contestant should have won, having a much better invention than the winner. But that's more of a matter of personal preference and nothing against the quality of this entertaining and educational graphic novel.

There's at least 1 other book so far in the series. 'Who Will Come Out on Top?' is about engineering innovations . If you have a young reader in your life who loves science, especially when animals are involved, this is a series that needs to be introduced to them! The vocabulary and some of the concepts are a bit advanced. I'm thinking that without a trusted adult to read along with, this is a book suited for 4th graders through 6th. 

With the inclusion of the shark tank of judges, this series makes a great summer read!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Shazam: Fury of the Gods

When it comes to their movies, DC has a god problem. Not God, the Almighty. Though, that's definitely something that could be debated at a later date. What I'm referring to are the gods that occupy the pages of DC Comics and the visual media adapted from them. With exception of Wonder Woman, her people of the island of Themyscira and her eternal foe, Ares the god of war, DC's heavenly hosts just don't manage to capture the imagination of theater goers like Thor, Loki and such do. 

What about the New Gods? They're pretty popular among fans! True. But the average person doesn't know the difference between Steppenwolf the character and Steppenwolf the band who brought us the hit song 'Born to Be Wild'. I argue that a lack of familiarity with the villains in Scott Snyder's Justice League doomed the film way more than Joss Whedon's interference with the final cut. And that's also what doomed Shazam: Fury of the Gods!

When 2019's Shazam concluded, we were teased with a potential team up between Doctor Sivana and that domineering worm, Mr. Mind. I was so pumped for the sequel. Even with the poor showing of The Rock's Black Adam movie, I was expecting the Big Red Cheese and his Shazam family to take on Sivana, Mind and Black Adam in this sequel. And if Adam wasn't in the picture, maybe we'd get that evil brute Ibac! Instead, we got 3 daughters of Atlas who I've never heard of before in my life!

The daughters are played by Helen Mirren, Lucy Lui and the controversial actress Rachel Zegler. Lucy Lui was pretty good as the menacing Kalypso. She played a really good psychopath. Zegler was okay. But her romance with Freddy Freeman made her predictable. And I think Helen Mirren is one heck of an actress. But I just don't see her playing the role of a titan/goddess out to punish humanity because they turned their backs on the old gods. In her prime, Mirren is just too nurturing. Throw in a magical apple, some tree of life that actually does just the opposite and a bunch of mythical creatures that are more bark than bite and I was seriously bored with a lot of this movie.

The beginning when the 'Shazamily' saves a crumbling bridge full of car riders to the tune of Bonnie Tyler's 'Holding Out For A Hero', had promise. The unexpected return to Djimon Hounsou as the supposedly dead wizard Shazam was warranted. I loved the banter between him and Freddy. And the ending with that very much needed cameo and the whole family enjoying the spoils of victory was a great way to end the film. But the middle was so complicated and I found myself fiddling around on my phone instead of paying attention to the movie. In fact: I recorded this film on my DVR in March, where I made it through the first 45 minutes. It wasn't until now in July that I finally got up the nerve (and care) to complete it. In all honesty, I just finished it so that I could review it and get the 2 hours back on my recorder.

Some are going to argue that the 2023 film bombed because of the pro-Trump platform of lead actor, Zachary Levi. It probably didn't help. But it didn't deter me from watching it in theaters. Out of this world ticket prices led me to wait for it to come on TV. (For those of you wanting to blame the pro-Palestinian comments of actress Rachel Zegler for this movie tanking, her comments came AFTER Fury of the Gods left both the silver screen and Pay-Per-View.) Really, what killed this movie was that it was smited by the gods. The deities of Egypt in Black Adam couldn't illicit an opening segue into more interest for the second Shazam picture. Using obscure Greek gods stuck a knife through its heart. As a result, James Gunn, with his new vision for the DC cinematic universe, buried any hopes of a third movie with what I suspect will be a blockbuster with the new Superman coming out tonight!

Not Worth Consuming!

Rating: 3 out of 10 stars.

Still Pumped From Using the Mouse

We all have that one book that no matter how much we enjoyed it, it takes forever to finish. Not because we hated the book (I had already mentioned we enjoyed it.) Nor because we wanted to savor it, because we don't want it to end because we love it so much. Instead I'm talking about the book that for one reason or another, we misplaced it. 

It could have been because we had to stop reading after getting sick and just not felt like reading. Or we packed it to take with us on a trip and when we got home, we forgot to unpack our bag of reading materials. Or it could be because you had to move the bed and accidentally put the book in your pile of books to sell back at one of your favorite used bookstores. In my case, when it comes to this collection of Dilbert comic strips, I actually did all 3!

I started this book almost 2 years ago. I got a really bad flu and my head and eyes hurt so much that I replaced reading (and pretty much everything else) with sleeping. Then I took this with me to read during a trip to DC for our 25th anniversary and somehow put a whole bag of books in the closet, forgetting that it existed for almost 6 months! Then around after the holidays, I made the mistake of putting this collection in a pile of books I was going to take for exchange for some valuable trade credit. Good thing I looked through the pile before I took it in or I would have sold it without completing.

I know that Dilbert creator Scott Adams has come under fire for some very controversial political statements in recent years. That's not why it took me forever to finish it. I just kept losing this book. Heck, I'm still not even sure how I wound up with this book in the first place.

Still Pumped From Using the Mouse is the 4th collection of Dilbert comic strips. Published all the way back in 1996, the cartoons were from 1994-95. Despite being 30 years old plus, I felt like the subjects were even more topical today. Work-life balance, corporate jargon and buzzwords, efficiency and the dangers of dating in the workplace (though way more humorous here) are covered here and I reality I couldn't tell if Dilbert's office was operating in the 90s or the 2020s. There's a week's worth of strips where a little girl blames the previous generation about failure to save the earth for her peers that could have been about Greta Thunberg if published today. And don't get me started on Dilbert's pet Dogbert. His attempts to enslave the populace via technology just screams how pervasive the Internet has become in our lives, especially through social media and influencers. 

Well, I finally finished this book. NOW I can add it to my stack of books to sell for another round of trade credit. It was funny and very relevant, despite being decades old. It just proves how brilliant the comedic mind of Scott Adams is, no matter how much you might disagree with his most recently troubling comments and views.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.