Chef Yasmina and the Potato Panic (Family Comic Friday)

Today's Family Comic Friday offering has just enough fear factor to be a perfect amuse bouch for the upcoming Halloween season. 

Aspiring chef Yasmina is on a budget. She's been utilizing fruits and veggies from her nearby community garden. But when a conglomerate buys the land and tears down the garden in lieu of an experimental crop, the young lady will have to make ends meet. And that means making secret raids on the rooftop garden of her overhead neighbor. 

Within weeks, a new product from the mega corp that bought up Yasmina's garden hits store shelves. It's an immediate success. In fact, you could call its fans rabid. That's because for some reason, anyone that eats the GMO potatoes in the new food stuff starts acting like rabid dogs; to the point of even chasing the neighborhood mail carrier. At first, Yasmina avoids the fervor, preparing healthy meals with the assistance of a pair of gardening fanatics. But when her father eats the mysterious potato product, she'll need all the help she can get to save the day. Even help from the neighbor that she pilfers produce from.

I thought Wauter Mannert's 2019 debut four-colored graphic novel was a great read. It was like a cross between Top Chef and The Walking Dead. Only there's no real zombies and there isn't any eating of brains! There was some oddball humor and some really unusual characters, which I chalk up to the creator being Belgian. Though I don't approve of anyone stealing items from another's property. I understand that Yasmina's theft helps bring the story to a successful conclusion to the story. But being the victim of multiple thefts in my time, I take umbrage with the hero making liberal use of the five-finger discount. And I am sure parents and guardians will feel the same as I do.

Despite my disappointment with that character flaw in our hero, I liked Yasmina and I hope that she might have some more unusual adventures with food. She does some amazing things with food. Her father has a culinary background as well, working at a Belgian fries restaurant. I think there was a missing opportunity by not having a couple of recipes included in the book. Though I greatly appreciated Mannert's one-page comic about the lives of children in Belgium and his director's cut commentary offers some amazing insight into the artist's creative process and inspirations for the story.

Genetically Modified Organisms have been in the news and cause for culinary debate for a good couple of decades now. As a culinary teacher and chef, I can tell you that not every scientific advancement in our food supply is as terrifying and reckless as the potatoes in this book. There have been some creations that straddle ethical practice. But there's also been some that have positively influenced our growing world. GMOs is one subject that my state wants different educational departments to cross teach and this is an excellent book that can get the discussion rolling with the young readers in your life while also entertaining. Plus, it was a great pick to whet my appetite for October fun which I just can't wait to get here!

Recommended for readers aged 8-12.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Nuts!: The Battle of the Bulge (2025 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

The Ardennes Offensive, code-named the 'Die Wacht am Rhein'- the Watch on the Rhine, was Adolph Hitler's last ditch offensive to regain important ground lost in Europe since the Allied Invasion of Normandy. After an assassination attempt by one of his officers, Hitler regrouped. His tightened his inner circle and planned a campaign that was to throw the Allies into chaos. 

There were 2 main objectives:

1). Re-capture the railroads along the Meuse River.

2). Re-capture Antwerp; a major port city in Belgium.

Once both objectives were obtained, the Nazis would hammer the combined American and British forces in a circle and with their supply lines severed, slowly strangle them off unto surrender. In order to achieve this success, the Germans had to drive the Allies out of Bastogne and the surrounding region. Driving out the American troops from Bastogne would give the Nazis access to the key routes North to Antwerp.

Hitler did succeed in throwing the Allies forces into chaos. Along with catching the American troops off guard, as it was believed that an unofficial truce would go into effect with the upcoming Christmas holidays, the Nazis committed some serious sabotage. The Fuhrer had built into his plans for several Nazi squads of paratroopers, dressed as Americans, to drop behind enemy lines. They soon began to cut telegraph and telephone wires, mine roads, switch directional markers and straight up lead American forces on wild goose chases throughout the Ardennes.

The sabotage portion of Hitler's plan was perhaps the most successful part of 'Die Wacht am Rhein'. It took the Allies several days to figure out what was going on. By Christmas, 1944, 10 days after the campaign began, the Allies had eliminated most of the mischief makers. Unfortunately, the Allies became their own worst enemies. Several American bomber expeditions were marred by terrible navigation errors. One mistake in particular put the Americans 60 kilometers into Allied controlled territory ravaging the town of Malmedy. Huge mistakes such as this led to American GIs to refer to the Army's 9th Air Corps as the' American Luftwaffe'.

It wouldn't be until after the New Year that a major counter-offensive was launched. With a massive show of air superiority by the British, Hitler began to throw his biggest guns into the campaign, launching massive V-II rockets, super-sonic precursors to jets and super-sized tanks filled with untrained crew into the mix. By January 9th, victory for the Allies was all but certain. Hitler finally gave the order for his army to retreat; needing to re-fortify Berlin against the encroaching Russian forces coming from the East. 

On January 28th, the attack commenced. The victors crowned this final test of Nazi might as the Battle of the Bulge after the shape of the Allied lines that were pushed to the West by the Nazis. Generals George Patton and Anthony McAuliffe stand as major players in the Allied victory. Patton, leading the third Army, had an amazing clairvoyance, seemingly always one step ahead of his Nazi counterparts. McAuliffe, as acting Commander of the 101st Airborne exhibited tenacity as well as true-blue American stubbornness when he simply responded 'Nuts!' to a Nazi demand for surrender while defending Bastogne. 

His reply is the inspiration for this book's title.

Nuts: The Battle of the Bulge was painstakingly crafted completely by Willy Harold Vassaux. Born in Belgium, Vassaux's father was an American aviator, who fought in World War II. He too became a pilot, serving in the Belgium armed forces as a reservist. His own experiences as well as his father's service in the war gave Vassaux an amazing eye for not just detail, but field manual accuracy for his historical comics. He featured periods of history included the Iraq War, the early days of the Tour de France and the Knights Templar. In 2008, Vassaux was commissioned by the IOC to create the first ever official Olympics comic book for the Beijing games.

The Ardennes Offensive is Vasaux favorite subject, having created 3 different graphic novels about the Battle of the Bulge. Nuts! was his first work about the campaign. It was originally published in 1984 by the Belgian comic book publisher Lombard. The first edition was released in English and was 64 pages long. A French edition, along with an English revision debuted in 1994 for the book's 10th anniversary. When B.H.P. Editions reissued the book in 1999, the page count for the book ballooned to an impressive 95 pages. Editions of Nuts! has been released in several languages, including German, in which the cover shows Nazis soldiers in action instead of Allied Troops.

Completing this review completes Task #18 (A Work of Nonfiction) of the 2025 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Troubled Waters

    

   This graphic novel is perhaps the rarest book I have. Not because it's old or that only a handful of copies exist. Troubled Waters is rare because it was originally published or released in the 15 or so member states of the European Union. That's right, this graphic novel was designed Office for Official Publications of the European Communities of the European Parliament specifically for the peoples of the EU!

    This Belgium book was released in 2003 to help (mostly) students to understand the ins and outs of the European Union. Apparently, it got the job done as this book won the 30th Annual International Comic Stip Festival's Alph-Art for 'best campaign using the comic strip medium.' So, with all that said, how did this book end up here in North Carolina?

   I found Troubled Waters at the monthly Dollar Book Sale in Raleigh. I love to collect comics, of course. But one of my favorite type of comics to collect are publications sponsored by organizations and corporations as a sort of tie-in to teach and inform about some sort of concept. Whether it be a blatant 32-page ad for Subway subs or a Supergirl adventure about the importance of using seat belts, if it's a freebie comic used to educate or advertise, I want it in my collection. And that's why I grab this book when I saw it!

   Along with being an educational tool about how bills become law in the European Parliament, Troubled Waters is also a little bit of a spy thriller. Irina Vega is a member of the Parlament and she's just brought forth a clean water bill. But someone isn't happy with her sweeping measures and is making threats to her and some of her environmental activist friends. When a mystery man presents her with some vials of polluted water to test, Irina will need her wits and luck to make sure her bill gets passed and that no one gets hurt or worse.

    This was an interesting read, mostly because of its country of origin. But I think that also caused a bit of disconnect with me. The book contains a number of signs and artwork in French. While the dialogue is written in English, I think this book was originally written in French. That being said, I don't think the transcription was that very good. It's like a poor game of Telephone in which a Japanese spoken Godzilla movie was translated into Spanish and then dubbed in English. Something just got lost in translation.

   Sadly, the art's not all that good either. The characters hardly look the same from panel to panel. I'm not one to talk, I am not a great artist. But when you have dozens of characters in a story, you need to be able to keep them straight. On the flip side, this artwork is very similar to another Belgian work, Herge's Tintin, in both color palette and inking.

   I'm gonna keep this book even though I had trouble with it. I just did an Amazon search for this book and I can't even find it there. It's a hard one to find. But it is an interesting case study that I recommend you check out if you get the chance. Just don't pay more than I did for this- about a buck.

   Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.