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

In the late 1980s, Archie Comics revisited the Riverdale superheroes concept. Only this time, it was the teachers and staff of Riverdale High School that became empowered.

When Archie's science experiment explodes, several members of the faculty gain superpowers based on skills they've developed over their careers. Thanks to years of writing across a lengthy blackboard, Ms. Grundy's right arm becomes super-stretchy. Coach Clayton, develops super breath, thanks to his persistence with a P.E. whistle. His sneezes can also stun a criminal! Principle Weatherbee develops clairvoyance due to years of anticipating problems that arise within the realms of public education. Rounding out the group is Professor Flutesnoot, who became nigh invulnerable thanks to decades of suffering through exploding science experiments.

The four faculty members decide to become a superteam. Grundy sews up a quartet of very itchy wool costumes and the staff of Riverdale High become known as the Awesome Foursome. Their first adventure uncovers a plot in which the town's criminal underground seems to increase the crime rate through subliminal messages implanting in discount video tapes rented to Archie and his friends. 

George Gladir scripted with art by Stan Goldberg. Rudy Lapick inked. While not billed as a miniseries, Faculty Funnies was not intended to be a new regular title. The concept came to a planned end with issue #5, seeing the teachers losing their special abilities and realizing that being an educator who cared as their true super powers. 

The book was filled with the usual one-page gags and short stories; this time around starring other members of the RHS faculty. Gladir crafted a one-pager featuring the former drill Sargent turned Assistant Principal, Mr. Howitzer. Hal Smith wrote the 2-page filler starring the oft flummoxed Miss Haggly. And yes, that's the same Hal Smith who played town drunk Otis on The Andy Griffith Show! Again, the art in both was provided by Stan Goldberg with inks by Lapick. The pair also crafted the cover to this issue.

A fun, and at times silly comic of which I wouldn't mind having the other issues to round out a complete run.

Completing this review completes Task #26 (An Archie Comics release from the 1980s) of the 2026 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Food For Thought: Essays and Ruminations by Alton Brown

How many people can say that Alton Brown told them to go to culinary school. Well he did and I did. Mind you, I didn't just enroll as soon as he gave me advice at a Raleigh area food expose when I asked him about some of my career goals. The time just wasn't right. But what he told me was definitely something that I spent a very long time thinking upon.

Thanks to a life changing back injury which resulted in an ill-fated, but fun as heck running, hot sauce shop, I finally took Alton's advice and enrolled in culinary school. About a year later working in the school's store room, I found that I had so much fun educating the hapless students who came in looking for extra ingredients ordered by their chef instructors  that I made it my ultimate goal to become one myself.

I spent the recommended 5 years time sloughing through the culinary industry rising to the rank of sous chef when I got the chance to go back home to teach at the very same culinary school where I got my degree in Hospitality management. When the school, which was a for-profit institution, finally closed after tons of pressure from the Federal government, I found myself wanting to continue teaching. But all of the culinary schools were either shutdown or over an hour away commute. So I found myself working as a freelance restaurant consultant, which opened me up to a bunch of culinary experiences. Finally, in 2019, I found a new home as a culinary teacher... for high school students! 

Anyways, I know that this is a really long setup for a review of a book written by Alton Brown. But feel like I should mention all of this because the Food Network legend is my biggest inspiration as a culinary teacher. I use humor, games, videos, props and unusual facts to help inspire those called 'Generation Alpha' to want to become the next generation of chefs. With cell phones, the threat of Ai destroying the restaurant industry as we know it, and a general disregard for hard work, it's a very difficult task. Thankfully, growing kids love to eat and TikTok for all it's annoying little habits, has done more to inspired young people to go experiment with their food than just about any reality series hosted by Gordon Ramsay, the late Anthony Bourdain and Guy Fieri combined.

This book is comprised of essays written by Brown primarily for this volume. It's not a collection of works he's has previously published in other publications. Here, Alton reflects on how his past history both involving and separate from food inspired him to go to culinary school for his second degree in order to change the scope of the traditional cooking show with his brilliant series Good Eats. Alton also looks at food portrayed as in books, TV and movies, his thoughts on the future of the culinary industry and potential trends we might see on our dining room table - that is if communal eating is still destined to be a thing in 5-10 years. He also postulates his theory for teaching the next generation of cooks and chefs. 

This was the chapter of which I was most interested in seeing how I stacked up. I mean, I asked the guy nearly a quarter of a century ago how do I become the host of my own cooking show and while I don't have a weekly series on cable or the Internet, I am hosting my own cooking show 3 times a day, 5 days a week; barring summer break, teacher work days and those blessed school holidays!

Alton says that to be an effective teacher you must entertain, engage and empower. I try so hard to do these 3 things. I've been trying my entire career as a culinary teacher which I have been doing for just about a decade. At least my wife thinks I do these well. And I do have contact with some of my students years after they've graduated and I am not just talking about being friends with on Facebook.

I love teaching and I try to learn from my mistakes. During my first day as a high school teacher, I got all high and mighty about the term 'Chef' and told a couple swaggering teen boys who declared themselves to be chefs that they hadn't earned the title. Needless to say, I didn't connect with those 2. But I have learned that when a kid calls themselves a chef, they're not attempting to challenge my skills, knowledge and experience. They're showing a passion for an art form that one day they might want to make into a career. 

From this read, I didn't even know Alton Brown wasn't really a chef. Nor does he want to be referred to as one. He considers himself a 'food educator.' And for the sake of pretension, true chefs don't refer to themselves as that, I learned.  For the most part, I refer to myself as a culinary teacher or instructor. But just as. French teachers have their students call them Madame or Monsieur, I do have my guys call me Chef. It's my way of making our Culinary labs as real world approached as possible by maintaining Escoffier's kitchen brigade system. I've stepped away from the ego trips for the sake of making a quality impact on my students and their career goals.

I approached this book as a student coming back to his mentor after years in practice for a refresher course on whether or not the pupil had achieved a job well done. I still fight with feelings of inadequacies because I've never once ever been mentioned in the same sentence as any teaching award, much less even been nominated. But I feel like I've lived up to Sensei Brown's philosophy on the culinary world and how to teach it. Have I made mistakes? Oh, yes. But I think that my philosophy on how to make cooking and eating even more fun and exciting than it already is, was thanks in very large part to Alton Brown.

If you became interested in cooking around the turn of the 21st century, during the heyday of the Food Network before it became all about competition instead of creativity and love of the food, whether you became a culinary professional or not, you need to read this book. Use it as a reference to see how well you did over the years. Did you pick up the baton from Alton and his predecessors? (In my case, that would be Julia Child, Martin Yan, Jeff Smith of The Frugal Gourmet and Chef Masaharu Morimoto.) Or did you let the pursuit of perfection kill that spark of passion for cooking?  

We've all had meals that missed the mark. I still remember the third meal I ever tried to make after becoming a foodie. My wife and I still talk about how terrible it was. But despite injury and a lack of time, I still haven't given up trying to make my next meal my greatest work of culinary art. And I've got Alton Brown to thank for it and I think you can too when you pick up this 2025 dissertation on the state of the world of the culinary arts.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

The Burnout Cure: Learning to Love Teaching Again by Chase Mielke

I started reading this book in January and had to take a break on it for a while. I teach high school culinary which hadn't been a easy thing to do with the pandemic happening during my first couple of years as a high school teacher. I had had several near breaking points in the past. So when my admin team offered this book as part of a book club for CEUs, I jumped at the opportunity.

I actually started out the 2023-24 school year pretty good. Aside from being the only teacher still wearing a mask, and being like the only person at my school to still not get COVID, the first half of the year started quite well. The winter holiday came, my wife and I dodged a bullet by not going to visit in-laws who all got sick and I started out the new year forgoing ice cream and OTC pain killers that I was taking way too many of and having fatty liver issues with. Through January, I was feeling really good. And then it was February...

Around February 2nd, I started feeling pain over not just all my joints, but in the very center of my bones. Especially my femurs. But worst of all was my skin condition from having a family genetic issue. I was feeling every inch of skin over my entire body at the same time. It was this burning itch, constantly. I couldn't sleep. I was so exhausted. I was miserable. 

Thankfully, the admin team leading the book club behind about this book was so supportive. The other participants were too. I still went to the meetings, but I gave up on the book because I just couldn't concentrate on it and I felt like I could only devote my small remaining energy to lesson plans and teaching. 

Things thankfully got better at the end of March, right before spring break. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Put on a couple of meds that calmed things down. And I learned about my condition and started figuring out ways to cope with the disease. 

So I started up the book in April. Nope. Then my goat was stolen. I went into an obsessive depression trying to find her. Then my Siamese cat Sarakit got sick and died. Needless to say, it took a while before I was in the right frame of mind to finish this book without giving in to burnout.

I set a goal to finish this book before I started back to work for the upcoming school year. I completed the last 100 pages with just over 4 weeks to go. Based on what I read in this book, I would like to think that author Chase Mielke would consider that a success! Goal achieved. 

The Burnout Cure is aimed at teachers because Mielke is a teacher himself. Or at least he was before winning some awards and then probably became administrator as what usually happens to the good ones. Anyways, despite the education career focus, this is a book that anyone needing help and encouragement surviving a job or career that just didn't turn out as well as expected could benefit from. It gives a ton of tips on how to interact instead of just dealing with the current generation of students. Plus it offers tips on finding the good based on the worth you place on yourself instead of how you interpret your management team values you.

For example, my program and school has produced 2 consecutive district Teacher of the Year winners. (One actually was eventually named TOY for our entire state). My department boss really made me feel valueless because of those winners and how she told me once that she shouldn't have hired me based on a lesson plan that was a huge success with the entire school, despite being a tad extravagant. Anyways, as I was continuously passed over for TOY (heck, I've never ever been nominated), I began really thinking that I was a terrible teacher. That thinking got extremely worse during my massive fibro flare over the winter. Yet, my book club and my wife pointed out that with having students asking if they could put up flyers for my missing goat, asking me to come to prom and then graduation and then after graduation requesting to have lunch with me over the summer as a group with me, the only teacher, it's those kind of relationships built that is way more important than winning TOY. 

Chase Mielke, has helped me reframe my thinking. Heck, I'm looking forward to going back to work... mostly. (I mean, what teacher wants to lose their vacation days?) With my illness, plus diabetes and anxiety disorder, I feel more empowered to say no and not for reasons of being a jerk. I also feel ready to focus on the student and parent relationships instead of just checking off boxes for the admin team's approval. 

If a book like this can win over a pessimist like me, even to the point that I am recommending this book to other teachers, as well as my bride...

Look, I'm still not a fan of the extra admin work we teachers are forced to do. And I'll continue to keep a secret weapon in my arsenal: my sarcastic and slightly dark sense of humor used to disarm tense situations in my classroom. But I feel that thanks to this book,  I can feel better in myself as an educator when I decide that my caring teaching relationships with my students are far more important than filling out busy work data projects for the department of education. If you're a teacher, especially one in need of encouragement because you'll on the cusp of calling it quits or pondering early retirement, you really should give this book a read! It very well could be the life preserver you need in order to keep making a difference in the life of a child.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.