Bullwinkle and Rocky #4 (2026 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

After a brief defection to Charlton Comics, Moose and Squirrel returned to Western Publishing. From 1972 to 1980 under the Gold Key imprint. Legacy numbering was used for the series with the fun beginning with issue #3. Over the course of the series, at least 6 Whitman variants would be produced.

The new series, now retitled Bullwinkle and Rocky, from just being named after the noted alum from Wottsamotta U, was still riding high from syndication reruns. After The Bullwinkle Show ceased producing new material in 1964, the show continued on network television in reruns on Sunday mornings under several titles. Thanks to syndication packages that also included a repackaged run on a series called The Hoppity Hooper Show, it would not be until the 1990s before America saw a Bullwinkle void on the airwaves, albeit very briefly.

Seeing that Bullwinkle and Rocky were appealing to a new generation of cartoon viewers, Western Publishing was able to cut costs by recycling in material from their Dell and Gold Key archives. Even cover art from that era was reused, with only the new title and a new price tag being the only changes. A small handful of issues saw new material, mostly starring Rocky and Bullwinkle. Backup features starring Dudley Do-right, Sherman and Peabody and 'Fractured Fairytales' were all reissues, as the smaller page count for the 70s Gold Key issues allowed for those segments to be spread out over multiple issues. Some issues, such as issue #12 was compromised of only reprinted material.

In issue #4, Bullwinkle is signed by a producer to become the next singing sensation. A la Johnny Bravo on The Brady Bunch, Bullwinkle fame is more based on appearance and very little talent. The second story has the friends at a carnival where Bullwinkle wins a special prize. Unknown to the colorblind carny, who is secretly an agent of Pottsylvania, he's accidentally given a hollowed out cane filled with top secret blueprints to the Moose instead of Boris and Natasha. The dastardly duo spend the rest of the story chasing Bullwinkle around the festival in hilarious attempts to steal the cane.

There are 2 back-up features. Sherman and Peabody travel to Roman times to see a very indecisive Julius Caesar stymied by superstition. The 'Fractured Fairy Tale' skewers the classic Jack and the Bean Stalk with Jack's mother taking a more active role.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #19 (Cartoon Comic Adaptation from the 1970s) of the 2026 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Bullwinkle #1 (2026 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Jay Ward's beloved characters Rocky the flying squirrel and his best friend Bullwinkle J. Moose made their first comic book appearance in what is collectively known as Dell Four Color #1128 (Aug., 1960).  The first issues were titled 'Rocky and his Friends' and included fan favorite segments and characters such as Peabody and Sherman, Dudley Dooright, and Fractured Fairy Tales. However, once it became clear that Bullwinkle was the star of the show, later issues forthcoming from the Four Color series were singularly titled Bullwinkle.

Those Four Color editions are quite rare and command hefty price tags. CGC listed a 9.6 rated slab of issue #1270 as being sold for $980 in 2013. As long as you don't mind getting a facsimile edition reprint, you could take your chances with a more affordable issue of the moose and squirrel's first official solo series from Gold Key. The risk being that while material from the nearly dozen issues of Four Color devoted to the NBC cartoon that ran from 1959-64 ran as reprints in the 1962 Gold Key series, not every issue was a faithful reprint of that earlier material. 

Making things even more difficult for collectors is that this Gold Key series was later retitled Bullwinkle and Rocky in 1972 with issue #3, after a nearly decade long hiatus. Some collectors try to overlook the repeated contents in various issues and set a goal to own a copy of each Four Color release as well as the 25 total issues that made up the first series. Some of the Gold Key issues also had Whitman variants. 

Issue #1 has a full slate of segments, just like a typical episode of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, at this time retitled The Bullwinkle Show on NBC. In the bookending Rocky and Bullwinkle stories, the duo run afoul of secret agents Boris and Natasha. First, they stumble upon a plot where the spies have been stealing rare birds for use in appropriating Top Secret government blueprints. Later, Bullwinkle gets a chance to start in a major Hollywood picture. Only it's another plot by Boris and Natasha to kill the Moose. 

The Dudley Do-Right story is a caper in which Snidely Whiplash kidnaps the Mountie's girlfriend Nell during a blizzard. Mr. Peabody takes his boy Sherman on a trip to visit Odysseus inspiring him to build the Trojan Horse. Lastly, the Fractured Fairy Tale sees the Ugly Duckling trying to find his place in the world, only to become a model for beauty cream: the BEFORE model!

Credit for artists and authors were not yet common place in comics published in the early 1960s. Al Kilgore was originally believed by most comic book historians as being the main artist of these pages. However, later research has come to light that Jerry Robinson, Fred Fredericks and Mel Crawford all may have contributed to this issue as well, as they all worked at times on the previous Four Color series issues. Dave Berg and Jack Mendelsohn are amongst those attributed as having written in various Rocky and Bullwinkle titles.

Completing this review completes Task #18 (Cartoon Comic Adaptation from the 1960s) of the 2026 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge "Only a Poor Old Man": The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol.12

I'm having a bit of a rough time right now, waiting for several medical appointments to hopefully diagnose that mystery ailment of mine. Thus, I have needed a pick-me-up. Thankfully I still had a Carload Barks Library volume on hand. 

Starring my favorite of the Disney Ducks, this edition contains the first four Uncle Scrooge solo issues by Dell. Though Uncle Scrooge has previously appeared in issues of Walt Disney Comics and Stories and Donald Duck, the contents here are not to be overlooked! There is a Duckburg money bin sized amount of origin story and key first appearances of supporting characters and relics. Glittering Goldie, Scrooge's lucky dime, and his biggest foes, the Beagle Boys! Although, by this time, it would be the 3rd appearance of the Beagles. In the other 2 times, they were cameos with no lines. The title tale 'Only a Poor Old Man's, sees the crooks finally talking and actively attempting to rob McDuck of his vast riches. 

Major events in Scrooge's early days are explored here. His discovery of the massive Goose Egg nugget when a sourdough in the Klondike is retold. We'll also learn some of the major talents the entrepreneur has gleaned over time building his fortune. Fluent in several languages, Scrooge can also communicate with various animal species.

It's not just Uncle Scrooge whose backstory is being developed. Donald is pretty much established. But his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie are beginning to transition from mischievous brats to valuable resources in Uncle Scrooge's globetrotting adventures for fabled treasures. The Junior Woodchuck Handbook begins to see wear and tear in epics that see the ducks discovering Atlantis and a Utopian, or Duck-topian version of Shangri-la. 

The stories are still a bit rough around the edges. It's like the first season of a now classic TV sitcom. The lighting isn't quite right. Background information on a character might be a bit inaccurate from the eventual finished product. Heck, you might even find that some of the original cast will be changed over time. Still, to see the early version of my all-time favorite Disney characters was so awesome. 

(Note: The first three issues were originally published as part of the massive Dell Four Color Series, #s 386, 456, & 495. They are retroactively known among collectors as Uncle Scrooge #1-3.)

The director's cut commentary by several noted 'Duck experts' was as usual. The backstory information and history of Carl Barks was so interesting. I'd love to read a biography about this iconic comic creator. But when these experts start to wax philosophic about how some random item in the background of a single scene was Barks' silent protest against totalitarianism.  Have these experts never taken advice from Sigmund Freud? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

A Christmas Carol

It's an annual holiday tradition of my own accord to consume in some way a version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's one of my all-time favorite stories and I am a sucker for it in any form of media. I'll even fawn over a parody or a reboot of it. I just love the story and it's not the holidays without it's heartwarming message.

This year, I selected this 2009 adaption from Campfire. An Indian publisher, this version is in English and is a very faithful retelling of the Victorian era classic. The art is very good. But it's not clean. For one thing, Victorian era London wasn't a very tidy place. But the images by Naresh Kumar have a sort of woodcutting effect to them that makes the artwork seem a little faded and muddled from multiple printings over time.

Every year, I notice something that I never really noticed before. Here, Scrooge's time visiting his nephew, Fred, is covered more in-depth, with the reformed miser actually partaking in holiday parlor games with the entire household. Meanwhile, Scrooge's visit to the Cratchit household doesn't even occur. Instead, Scrooge provides the family with a Christmas feast as an unknown benefactor, thanks for multiple deliveries, while not even revealing to Bob Cratchit his emotional change of heart upon the employee's return to work on December 26th. At least it's revealed that Tiny Tim DOES NOT DIE and that Ebenezer becomes like a second father to the lad.

I still can't figure out Jacob Marley's timetable. He always makes it seem like Scrooge gets visited by ghost #1 on Christmas morning, ghost #2 on Boxing Day and the third ghost on December 27th. It's got to be some kind of old English way of telling time because it has never made sense to me. 

A very good retelling. More classic than contemporary. That's not a bad thing! I've read quite a few versions of the book that really try to push the envelope and it was refreshing to get a very straight forward adaptation for a change.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Star Trek Annual 2025

I haven't been reading IDW's Star Trek. It's an all-star series that takes place sometime after the events of the last episode of Star Trek: Voyager, with Benjamin Sisko returning from his time with the Bajoran prophets. Captain Montgomery Scott has designed a revolutionary starship, the Theseus. It has a warp core that utilizes a contained neutron star and the entire computer system is a neural link-based network that runs through the entire craft.

In this 2025 annual, Mr. Scott receives a distress call from the one person he would never expect in a million years: Captain James T. Kirk! The engineer had designed a holographic fail safe to activate if ever the Theseus's computer was in danger of failing. To help Mr. Scott best address the issue, the program took the form and consciousness of Kirk and is advising him to destroy the computer core. 

Sisko believes that there is something more behind the computer's seeming deactivation protocols and advises his team to get to the ship's central CPU to isolate the problem. Suddenly, the crew is split up. They find themselves on not just different Federation ships, but in different timelines with classic and modern crew members with a dwindling timer on the ship's self-destruct.

The only series missing is Lower Decks, unless there's someone from that animated series in the background, but illustrated to look real life. A great anniversary issue. Or it would be if 2025 was an anniversary year for Star Trek. However, if this is an appetizer on what to expect for the 60th anniversary of the iconic sci-fi series, I believe we're all in for a treat.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Spider-Man Holiday Spectacular #1

Marvel decided to make Spider-Man the headliner for their 2025 holiday special and I think that was a brilliant idea. Working with high schoolers and middle school students as well, I can attest that the wall crawler in all of his many forms is extremely popular. Actually, I think I referred to it as 'absurdly popular' because I am seeing girls of all ages and races wearing Spidey shirts, hats and bookbags! I've never seen an across the board popularity of a superhero like this before. 

So I think I have established that Spider-Man is having a moment.

In this one-shot, Peter Parker is planning on spending a nice, quiet Christmas with his Aunt May. However, she's unexpectedly booked herself on a cruise, leaving Parker with nobody to share the season with. Almost immediately, he finds himself being asked by any and everyone in the Marvel universe to spend Christmas with them. Parker thinks they're all feeling sorry for him. However, Wolverine lets it slip that the invites aren't out of pity. Instead, everyone is fighting for the privilege to give Peter Parker the best Christmas ever!

Spider-Man is the heart and soul of Marvel Comics. There's no doubt about that. Written by Rainbow Rowell, this was a brilliant way to showcase the rest of the Marvel Universe, that is probably grossly overlooked by all but the most discerning of comic book fans, while featuring Marvel's most popular character. Sadly, as today's youngster isn't buying comics, I question how much of an impact having Spidey as the star of this holiday showcase is going to make on readership among those 13-21. As the advisor for the comic book club at the high school that I teach at, I just don't think it's going to move the needle that much, if at all. 

But of all the 2025 season holiday releases, this one might have been the best. It was heartfelt. It was festive. It was classic Spider-Man, with a perfect ending, set in the modern era. I loved it!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

The Flinstones and the Jetsons #18

I've still got a few books from this past holiday season to review. This one from 1999 was a DC series that had both Flintstones and Jetsons stories in the same issue; but aside from the occasional cover that had Fred and George interacting together, never seemed to have the two actually meeting in a story. 

There are 2 Christmas themed stories here. The cover carol is a parody of It's a Wonderful Life, though Wilma and Barney don't get married as the illustration would imply. It's Christmas Eve and Fred was expecting a big bonus in order to buy Christmas dinner and presents for everyone. However, he didn't get that bonus and instead of asking his boss why, Fred is wishing he was never born. So the Great Gazoo grants his request and Fred views life without him ever being a part of it. However, it all seems like his friends and family are much better off without him... on the surface.

The Jetsons tale was a slapstick farce. Elroy doesn't believe in Santa Claus anymore. Naturally, George rents a Santa costume and tries to restore his boy's faith in Christmas magic. Too bad for George, he forgot to disarm the elaborate alarm system to his home, the robot maid Rosie!

I enjoyed both stories with the Jetsons story probably being my favorite. Not because the first story was bad. As Christmas story aficionado, of not just comic books, it drives me crazy that the Flintstones celebrate Christmas! How is this possible?!? Jesus wasn't even born yet! Who's birth are these cavemen commemorating? 

I'd be okay with a situation similar to Star Wars. They celebrate Life Day, which with the decorating of trees and wearing of red, surprisingly looks a lot like Christmas but isn't. If the cave people of Bedrock celebrated the solstice and it just happens to look very festive like Christmas, I would be okay with that! Just don't call a pre-Christianity holiday Christmas! 

Sorry, but I have to acquiesce to my pet peeve and rate this issue a bit lower than I would normally.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.