Jays Stephens cover image for Cartoon Network Action Pack #26

Cartoon Network Action Pack is an anthology series for young readers from Johnny DC, an imprint of DC Comics that focuses on kids’ comics.  Cartoon Network Action Pack takes action-based animated series from cable’s, Cartoon Network, and adapts them into comic book short stories, with stories running from two to eight pages.

A few months before the first two episodes aired on Cartoon Network (October 3, 2008), “The Secret Saturdays” debuted in the pages of Cartoon Network Action Pack #26.  The world’s great cryptozoologists, Doc and Drew Saturday, and their son, Zak, (along with their animal friends Komodo and Fiskerton) are in Fuji doing underwater fieldwork.  Zak is bored out of his mind, until he discovers that one of his father’s ancestors met his end in Fuji.  The action begins, and Zak will also discover something surprising about himself – his deeper connection to cryptids than he ever imagined.

Also, in this issue: Ben learns more about the origins of a pair of the alien forms he can assume with the Omintrix.  In between these two “Alien Data Files,” Ben, Gwen, and Grandpa Max battle their own “swamp thing” in the mystery of “Dora Flora.”

For me, with my obsession with “The Secret Saturdays,” the treat in this issue of Cartoon Network Action Pack is the opening story “The Cannibal Curse.”  In a quiet way, this story captures the fast-paced, monster-fightin’ fun of the series, largely because “The Secret Saturdays” creator Jay Stephens does triple duty on this story as writer, inker, and colorist.

Not that the Ben 10 comics should take a backseat.  The various writers and artists of the comic book versions of the hit Cartoon Network series, “Ben 10,” continue to do excellent work in producing fun Ben 10 short stories and vignettes.  It’s a pity Ben can’t get his own regular series.

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