Grant Morrison's Doctor Who #1(2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Grant Morrison's tenure on Doctor Who Magazine was a brief one spread from 1986-88. Working for Marvel UK, Morrison wrote 3 stories. The two-part 'Changes' and 'The World Shapers', a three-parter illustrated by John Ridgway (2000 AD). These tales featured the much maligned Sixth Doctor portrayed by Colin Baker. Morrison's third and final story, 'Culture Shock', was a single-issue adventure starring the penultimate classic Doctor, Sylvester McCoy's Seventh. Transformers' Bryan Hitch was the artist of that work. 

In 2008, IDW Publishing obtained the rights to produce comic books based on the BBC flagship sci-fi franchise, Doctor Who. Immediately, IDW began releasing reprint series based on Marvel's Doctor Who stories beginning with tales starring the Fourth and Fifth Doctor. That series, titled Doctor Who Classics, introduced stories that hadn't seen print in the United States in almost a quarter of a decade. 

Fans were indeed rabid for these reprints. Soon somebody remembered that Grant Morrison had done a run of Doctor Who stories and the combined fan base of Whovians and Grant Morrison devotees clamored for their release. If IDW went in order of Doctors, it would probably be another couple of years before the tales of the Sixth and Seventh Doctor were reprinted. That just wouldn't do! So IDW Publishing rushed a two-issue miniseries to print to meet the vocal demand. 

'Changes' and 'Culture Shock' comprise the first issue. Issue #2 collects all 3 segments of 'The World Shaper.' 

In 'Changes', the TARDIS detects an intruder aboard. The Doctor isn't very worried as TARDIS security measures will prevent the use of lethal force aboard the vessel. That all changes when the stranger overloads the TARDIS circuitry disabling the safety features. Guest starring human companion Peri Brown and the shape-shifting Whifferdill companion Frobisher, who appears regularly as a penguin.

The Doctor goes solo in 'Culture Shock' when the Timelord intercepts a psychic plea from a primordial collective. One should note that the TARDIS is featured in this story and many Whovians consider the TARDIS to be a character until itself. If one considers such a tale to not be a Doctor Who solo adventure, my apologies.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #34 (Written by Grant Morrison, Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

V #10

Issue #10 begins with one of the best covers of the entire series. Rival leaders of the Visitors Diana and Lydia stand in front of a white background, swiss-cheesed with bullet holes. Lydia is using the bar code box as a prop to rest one of her legs on. Diana is poised, ready to strike in her white commander uniform. She didn't wear that outfit for very long. But it was quite memorable. 

And those blasters! That was the coolest sci-fi laser gun of my childhood, next to Han Solo's blaster. I loved my toy version of it. When you squeezed the trigger, a little motor inside caused sparks to shoot out. It was so fun!!!

As for the material inside, there's a lot going for it and I'm not just singing Cary Bates' praises. The book feels thicker than the other issues do. Yet, the last page claims that there were 24 pages of story, which for 1985, was standard for a DC Comic. 

As mentioned with last issue, the leaders of the Resistance are in New York City on a recruitment drive. There really hasn't been much Resistance activity since the Big Apple is positioned in an area of the planet where reptiles can't survive for very long. As a result, the Visitors have focused on more sub-tropical areas to maintain a militaristic presence, such as Miami and L.A. 

However, with the coming of spring, more and more Lizards are slithering into the city that never sleeps. See the warmer it is, the less effective the Visitor poisoning agent, Red Dust, is to them. To prevent the Visitor Spring from taking place, members of the alien race who are opposed to Diana's harsh rule called the Fifth Column, are working to place a weather device atop the Empire State Building, ensuring 365 days of colder temps along the Eastern Seaboard. 

While the Resistance works to getting this gadget in place, Visitor Walter, in a human disguise, has found Mike Donovan. Under the false impression that Donovan is Diana's secret human lover, Walter is ready to turn the Resistance leader into reptile chow. Now Donovan must play the role of bait in order to keep Walter and the Visitors from stumbling upon the Resistance's climate change plans or else the coast is toast!

Like I said, a ton of stuff occurs in this issue, including a cat fight of sorts between Lydia and Diana. Of course, nothing that would affect the plots of the TV show is going to come from this battle. But it's still a guilty pleasure for sure seeing these two go at it! There's nothing sexual about the rivalry between Lydia and Diana. Those antagonistic scenes were some of the best writing of one-liners and yo mama type insults in TV history!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars. 

Quantum Leap #13 (2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

"Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. 

He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better.

His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home."

This was the introduction to the classic 90s sci-fi series Quantum Leap starring Scott Bakula as Beckett and Dean Stockwell as Al. Created by Donald P. Bellisario, Quantum Leap ran for 97 episodes (including a 2-hour pilot movie) on NBC for 5 seasons from 1989-1993. 

In this time travel based series, Sam Beckett traded lives of an assortment of people. During his adventures through time, Sam would become a woman, an elderly black man, a Navy Seal, a minor league baseball player, a young man with Down Syndrome and the notorious Kennedy assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.  Every life that Sam took control over, he would have to correct some sort of mistake in the time line in order to get closer to going back home to his time period of year 1999.

From 1991-93, Innovation Publishing produced 13 comics based on Quantum Leap. The premise of unique circumstances behind Sam's leaps continued with the time traveller switching places with a death row inmate, part of a pair of identical twins and a department store Santa in the series' lone holiday comic. Issue #13 was to be released as a one-shot special titled 'Time and Space'. However, due to production delays, this project became what would be the series' final issue documenting Sam Beckett's 1963 experience of leaping into an extraterrestrial aboard an honest-to-god UFO.

Issue #13 ended with a soft cliffhanger. After saving a human couple who were abducted by the aliens, Sam leapt into the body of a toddler. Issue #14, which was titled 'Two Dweebs and a Little Monster', was to be the first of a 3-part trilogy in which Sam leapt into the bodies of youngsters. The first chapter would have Sam's host being kidnapped by a pair of bumbling brothers seeking to sell the child to baby brokers. But with NBC cancelling Quantum Leap and Innovation founder David Campiti's departure leaving the company in disarray, the comic adaptation was sacked. A promised annual with Sam leaping into the body of a heart surgeon in the middle of an operation with his patient flat-lining on the table, was also cancelled. 

The biggest problem of Quantum Leap wasn't the fan base. They were loyal and vocal. Even through season 4, some episodes drew audiences of up to 18 million viewers. NBC just didn't have faith in the show. The home of the peacock changed Quantum Leap's schedule 8 times in the show's 5 year run! Thus a major complaint from the fans were that they never could find the show!

The plug was finally pulled by NBC execs on May 5, 1993. In the episode titled 'Mirror Image', Sam leapt into his body. Only, he didn't return to his time period. Instead, Sam found himself in a bar in Western Pennsylvania on the exact day and time he was born. Facing a bartender who claims to be in control of Sam's leaps, Dr. Beckett is given a choice of going home or correcting the biggest mistake of his time travel career. Ultimately, Sam leaps to the 1960s, informing Al's then wife Beth, that Al is alive and imprisoned in a Vietnamese POW camp.

As a result of Sam's sacrifice, history is changed. Al and Beth remain married upon Al's freedom. The couple wind up having 4 daughters, one of which would be involved with Project Quantum Leap. Dr. Sam Becket (sic) never returned home. 

Speak about fan outrage! NBC received countless phone calls requesting at a chance to bring Sam home. A letter campaign was launched. For decades, Scott Bakula teased fans with hints of a feature-length movie to bring Sam Beckett home. Finally in 2022, the Quantum Leap project was revived, ironically on NBC. Only, Bakula was a no-show and sadly Dean Stockwell had passed away the year prior.

The spirit of Al Calavicci is alive and well in the new series as the backstory of the reboot tells of how Al never stopped searching for his friend. As mentioned earlier, daughter Janis, would have a troubled relationship with project coordinator Magic Williams; the now older Navy Seal that Sam had leapt into. Though new leaper Dr. Ben Song went back through the Project Quantum Leap accelerator to save his fiancee from an evil leaper, season 2 provides hope that Ben might run into Sam Beckett before returning to 2022 California. Right now, Scott Bakula denies being involved with the reboot. But Leap fans can dream. 

And yes, while I realize NOW that I read this book previously, I actually don't remember it! So, is it really a re-read???

Script by Christine Elaine Hantzopulos. Art by Luke Ross. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #23 (A Time Travel Story) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Marble Season (2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

From the look at 2013's Marble Season, one can see a fight about to break out. However, based on the name of the title, the about to begin melee is not over the classic kids game of marbles. 

Marble Season is a semi-autobiographical look at the childhood of Gilbert Hernandez. More of a series of glimpses in the lives of a group of school kids that live in an interracial neighborhood in Southern California. Set sometime in the early 1960s, these vignettes reflect a nostalgic love for the music, TV shows and films, games, comic books and especially that childlike wonder of growing up.

The title for this book actually is about the events that transpired during a child's book-ended experience with the game of marbles. At the beginning of this book, main-character Huey, a Hispanic boy of around the age of 10, is teaching a young girl how to play the game. To help her practice, Huey gives the girl one of his marbles. Once Huey leaves, the child promptly swallows the glass ball. At the end of this graphic novel, Huey is informed that the little girl had to be hospitalized after swallowing several more marbles! Everything that happens in-between is the official Marble Season game card.

Author and artist Gilbert Hernandez is one of the founding fathers of the second generation of underground comics. In 1981, Gilbert, along with brothers Jaime and Mario, created the groundbreaking comic Love and Rockets. In issue #3, Gilbert introduced readers to the magical land of Palomar. Set in a fictional Latina American village, Gilbert's Palomar is a land out of time, free of modern day technology, led by a fiercely independent young woman named Luba.

2014's Bumperhead is a rough follow-up to Marble Season. The book doesn't have any of the main characters from this book. But like the first book, Bumperhead is set in Oxnard, Gilbert Hernandez' hometown, and all of the adults are mysteriously absent. Critics liken both stories as a sort of mature, lifelike Peanuts. And if you take a look at Huey's baby brother, he sure does look like a tiny version of Charlie Brown. However more adult Marble Season may be considered to the Charles Schulz comic strip, this work is nothing compared to the more explicit subject material covered in Herandez' Love and Rockets and further body of work. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #19 (Main Character is a Minority) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Radium Girls

I first learned about the Radium Girls or Ghost Girls as they were originally coined a few years ago from an episode of Mysteries at the Museum. It's a tragic true life tale that seems unfathomable today. But in the 1920s and 30s, dangerous products made of radioactive material and the work conditions of said merchandise was commonplace. There were no lead lined rooms or full body radiation suits. In fact, the main characters of this book regularly decorated themselves with radium as well as ingested it, despite their management team proclaiming total safety!

At a plant in New Jersey, young women make a living painting illuminated dials for wrist watches with a water based paint that contains uranium. As the paint was rare and expensive, employees were told to work sparingly with the material. Plus with the numbers on the watch being so small, precision was required. 

The women were told that the paint was safe and that making a fine point by placing the brush up to their lips would assist the workers in completing 250 dials per week: the quota for the girls to remain employed. At night as the women returned home, they gave off an eerie glow from the paint that got on them. Eventually, these ladies earned the name as Ghost Girls.

Because of their new celebrity as well as the promised safety of the paint, the Ghost Girls started painting their nails, faces, even teeth with the radium mixture before a fun night on the town. At first, things were really hopping for them. Unfortunately, that gilded age slowly came to an end when the employees began to lose teeth, experience extreme pain and fatigue and ultimately die of mysterious causes.

This powerful graphic novel tells the story of a small group of these employees, now referred to as Radium Girls, as they seek damages against their former employer. With time running out, the company uses both smear and delay tactics to avoid litigation. It seems like a long shot, five dying Davids against one Goliath of a corporation. But what transpires will change work safety conditions for generations to come.

I would like to say that the unnecessary sacrifice of the Radium Girls was the end of unsafe working conditions in the United States. Heck, I can't even tell you that this nearly forgotten part of American history meant the end of unsafe uses of radioactive material for sale to the general public! (In the 1950s, the A.C. Gilbert Toy Company sold the Atomic Energy Lab set, which contained 4 uranium based ores, to young kids!) Still, what happened as a result of the plight of the Radium Girls was at least a step in the right direction. A very small step, sadly.

An engrossing story that I feel a little guilty enjoying to read because of the tragic subject matter. It's a very quick read that uses a powerful minimalist color palette. The art style reflects the various schools of design during the time period. And, oh my God! The cover glows in the dark. 

Don't worry. It's not radioactive. I think...

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

The Founding Foodies: How Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin Revolutionized American Cuisine by Dave DeWitt

I managed to rescue this book from the library of the Art Institute of Raleigh-Durham when it closed in 2018. I thought that my mother-in-law would enjoy it (and she did). However, once returnedm it just stayed on my to-read shelf until recently.

The Founding Foodies is a scholarly work intended to explore the culinary impacts on American society made by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. In reality, the author should have just focused on Washington and Jefferson. Ben Franklin is maybe mentioned 15 times in this book and really the only thing I learned about him in a culinary stand point was that when Franklin was ambassador to France, he ate so much rich food that he had to resign his commission due to gout. 

Benjamin Franklin is known for his many inventions. The biggest impact of these innovations to the world of food has got to be the Franklin stove. Yet, Dave DeWitt doesn't talk about Franklin's appliance at all. Not even in passing.

If the name Dave DeWitt means anything to you, that's because he's both the creator of Chile Pepper Magazine as well as the Fiery Foods and BBQ Show extravaganza held annually in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For the sake of transparency, I have met Dave DeWitt back when I owned a hot sauce store and I have been a subscriber to Chile Pepper Magazine for decades (although DeWitt is no longer affiliated with the publication). Despite the acquaintance, I am not being compensated for this review.

Thomas Jefferson is the main focus of this book. The third POTUS is responsible for bringing French cuisine to the American populace. While Dave DeWitt gives a ton of praise to Jefferson, thankfully the food historian doesn't gloss over the fact that Jefferson owned slaves and that he really did a number over the whole Hemmings family.

George Washington's impact on how American's eat is more on the agricultural side. Jefferson was a Renaissance man. Washington was an everyman. Washington brought composting and use of manure into vogue with the American farmer. These strides helped to make our nation a land of plenty. But once again, Washington was a slave owner. Though our first president seemed to be a little more benevolent or at least fairer in treatment than Jefferson was to his slaves. But not by much.

DeWitt spends a little bit of time examining American food norms prior to the American Revolution. But one of the author's main focuses is on spirits. Fresh drinking water wasn't as readily available as one would think. So distilled beverages were a necessity. As were hot beverages, as the high temperatures killed microbes. While I did know that the Revolution changed us from a nation of tea drinkers over to a land of coffee addicts, I didn't realize that our independence made us whiskey connoisseurs.

While beer never really has lost its hold on the nation, tariffs on wheat, barley and hops from England led to Americans making their own alcoholic beverages. Rum was a biggie at first. But English controlled sugar cane fields and molasses supplies put a kibosh on that. Enter whiskey! Our abundance of eye and oak helped create bourbon and American pubs and bars were never the same. 

Also of alcoholic note- hard ciders. Though once beer became favorable to Americans again, it took a back seat. Though, DeWitt's discussion of the drink inspired me to try a hard cider for the first time just last week. YUM!

DeWitt includes quite a few recipes in this book. Many of which I am interested to try. Especially the peanut soup. I fell in love with the dish when I went with my parents to Mount Vernon. Only imagine my heartbreak when I learned that the recipe I devoured wasn't the recipe of George Washington's. Apparently, you don't get to eat at his homestead. I apparently had my peanut soup at a nearby inn.

I learned a lot about early American food history. Some of which I think will be beneficial to my culinary teaching career. I would love to devote a week of French inspired foods to my students and the teachers in our upcoming food ventures. I just don't think most of what I learned about distillation is things I can share with high schoolers.

Worth Consuming.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Shazam: Thundercrack (Family Comic Friday)

The moment I found out about this graphic novel, I was ecstatic to say the least. I loved the first Shazam movie. I eagerly await (still) a chance to see the sequel. And I've learned over the years that I really am a fan of the Big Red Cheese.

Shazam: Thundercrack isn't a sequel. Nor is this 2023 graphic novel a tie-in to the new movie Shazam: Fury of the Gods. Instead, this book is a midquel, taking place in the middle of the first Shazam film. Consider this read to be a director's cut of deleted scenes with author Yehudi Mercado adding more details into Billy Batson and Freddie Freeman's exploration of Batson's new Shazam powers. 

As Billy Batson develops his Shazam powers, the teen begins to experience improvements in his physical prowess as a mortal. One day while talking his way out of getting in trouble for skipping class, Billy makes an impressive throw that catches the eye of the Fawcett high football team's Coach. Now Billy finds himself the new star quarterback with Freddie joining the cheer squad as the tiger mascot, Tawky Tawny. Unknown to Billy and his teammates, their cross town rivals have been utilizing dangerous synthetic enhancements sponsored by Dr. Sivana and that the final game of the season promises to be a blood bath!

Mercado's artwork is spot on. The renderings of the characters are more cartoony than life- like. But these are excellent caricatures of the actors. I love how this franchise keeps incorporating those fanciful elements of the Shazam family into the DC Cinematic Universe like having Tawky Tawny be the Fawcett high school mascot. (Fun Fact: Fawcett was the name of the original publisher of Shazam Family comic books) And with the enhancements of the rival football team, whose mascot are the Atoms, we get a non-Nazi inspired version of the robotic Shazam nemesis, Mister Atom, that I totally get behind!

A great book that ends with a small flaw. Seemingly, Billy's coach knows the he's secretly a super hero. Yet at the end of Shazam only Freddie and the other foster kids where Billy lives know that Batson is super powered. Maybe Fury of the Gods addresses this. Maybe I am reading too much into the coach's thanks. But it makes for a potential continuity error that I just can't get behind. 

A fun read for young readers who love the film series. Subject matter might be a little more advanced, what with the technology misused by the opposing team and it's subsequent techo-jargon. But definitely a read that captures the spirit of Shazam perfectly.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.