Tons of artwork has to get done today! From caricatures to hiking cartoons to illustration, etc! Was hoping to be at a presentation today by Rick Smith, son of author Patrick Smith who wrote the Florida legendary book, ‘A Land Remembered’, but that looks impossible two hours before his presentation. Pen to paper and I’ll post what I can.

On January 28th I was part of a symposium about the condition of our springs in north Central Florida. My part was to illustrate each of the speakers. This is one of Ryan Smart, of the Florida Conservation Coalition, who spoke of legislation to help cover the issues of our Florida springs.

Here’s a piece of the Swampy’s Florida weekly cartoon that will appear tomorrow. The subject is Ma Barker, the famous gangster who met her end in Florida.

Tampa: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow by Michael Bane and Mary Ellen Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is more of a sales book of Tampa than anything else. There is certainly plenty of history here and that part is very well written. Then the book steers into the future and suddenly statistics and construction plans fill the pages. Seems the first and second parts were written by two different people, which would explain the two authors.

There are plenty of photos strewn throughout. All black and white except for a few center pages of color.

The history presented is mostly complete, though sections are missing. Little is mentioned of the mob activity or anything at all about the black community.

The book is best as a time capsule of life in Tampa in 1980. So very much is written about upcoming projects at the time, community committees planning the future, construction firms and banks.

Bottom line: I recommend it to anyone wanting to know of Hillsborough County’s history.

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Because I keep politics out of the web of this website, this is a pantomime performance of these cartooned characters set up for this week’s editorial cartoon. Feel free to caption this yourself below!

This was penciled on paper, inked the same, scanned and colored.

On January 28th I was part of a symposium about the condition of our springs in north Central Florida. My part was to illustrate each of the speakers. This is one of the set of Dr. Bob Knight, one of our most knowledgeable experts about water in Florida. Knowing Bob helped me play more here than i did with the others.
Bob opened his talk by announcing he had more bad news. I took it from there.

I’ll be posting the rest over the next week or so.

Survival…Zero! by Mickey Spillane

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Spillane could sure spill a fast-moving, well written, intriguing mystery. This one is just terrific. Today’s mysteries are so poorly constructed I know who did it and how within the first quarter of the book. There seemed to be solutions to the puzzles in this story, but with so much going on, it was not easy to figure out. Ya kinda can guess who might be behind this and that. It’s the whys and reasoning that had me baffled until the end. That makes this an excellent mystery in my book!

A few weeks ago I was deciding which book in the stacks to read next and saw I had two series action books written at the same time – around 1969 – and wondered how much they might be alike and how much of the culture – counter, being the media frenzy – was covered.

The first, a Nick Carter roust-a-bout hardly referred to the time period at all from it’s West Coast perspective. Spillane’s East Coast perspective was very different. The mess of the ’60s is a part of the story and is well spun into the novel. Spillane’s Mike Hammer has plenty to say about society intentionally jumping off a cliff. Historical viewpoints that only add to reasons to read this book.

I’d guess many of today’s narrow minded people might find this book to be ham fisted and being of a time past. Too bad for their lost of reading and considering other perspectives. There are too many people today who seem to forget our society had good reason for the bulk of it’s existence to look down on lazy slobs who hate life and don’t want to reason so much they must inoculate themselves than be a part of it.

What’s really interesting about people who think Spillane’s story is of the past are the movie studios spitting out non-stop explosive, gun blazing blockbuster movies and the big selling, gun blazing, gory video games that some of those same people must be putting money into. Those media monsters are far more ham fisted than this novel is.

Bottom line: I recommend this novel.

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Last night I was part of a Florida springs symposium with a wide variety of speakers updating the audience about the current status of our natural springs and about upcoming legislation.

My role was creating a unique painting of each speaker during their presentation. A few are on the table below. I have a bit of cleanup to do with each and I’ll post them here in the next week.

The Doomsday Formula by Nick Carter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Considering it’s genre, this is a good book with typical Nick Carter trimmings. A lot is obvious and that takes away a lot. How Carter gets through the story is not so obvious, which has me rate the story good.

The setting is rather well defined for such a short book. The characters are very loosely defined. Who they are is obvious. The writing is standard with the Carter character with the best lines.

I’m reading this prior to reading a Mickey Spillane book written at the same time. Thought it would be interesting to read similar genre series books of a time period that was seeing enormous thrusts off a cliff for America. This book hardly refers to the 1969 period of hippies, Viet Nam and the like.

Bottom line: I recommend this book for the action/adventure enthusiast.

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Path Of The Assassin by Brad Thor

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is certainly a thrilling novel. It’s rather well written (Though, did spot quite a number of typos in the text set). There’s a good story with good twists and turns. For the espionage adventure reader, there is a lot of fun and well worth reading.

However, something about the Thor books bother me. I’ve read about four of them and all leave me feeling that the stories are contrived. In this case, the idea that the hero is thrown together with someone who quickly becomes very good battling with well trained military members seems as if the author went through a checklist of characters to fill the story with instead of having a story and letting the characters create themselves. The other obvious intent of the partner seems the same. The final wrap up was various obvious from the start and frustrating to end with as compared to begin with.

I’ve got the entire Thor series and will likely try another down the road. Call me a sucker. I do like the overall story and the exciting scenes included.

Bottom line: I recommend this for the espionage/action/adventure reader.

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Here’s a page from the upcoming ‘Swampy’s Florida: Melbourne’. Swampy and friends off to construct everything in sight as so many did around Melbourne in the 1950s. The book should be available in two months through The Knowledge Exchange.