"Don't touch that! It's H2SO4!" shouted Tom acidly

Most of Walt's readers are probably too young to remember Tom Swift. Tom Swift -- Tom Swift Jr., in the second series -- is the central character in five series of books of American juvenile sci-fi and adventure novels. The first book in the series appeared in 1910, and new titles have been published as recently as 2007, bringing the number of Tom Swift Books to over 100.

Translated into many languages, the books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Tom Swift has also been the subject of a board game and a television show. Development of a feature film based on the series was announced in 2008, but as far as I know, it never went into production.

What makes Tom Swift interesting to me is the way he talked. The numerous ghost writers who penned Tom Swift (under the name of Victor W. Appleton) never let Tom say anything simply. There was always an adverb following the quote to describe how Tom said it -- sternly, seriously, happily and so on.

This was such a cliché that people started making jokes about it -- puns or "Wellerisms". Examples: "Let's have a Judy Garland show!", said Tom gaily. - "Where's my favourite picture magazine?", asked Tom Lifelessly - "I can't find my old board game," said Tom Cluelessly.

Apparently Walt is not the only fan of these jokes, known for decades now as "Tom Swifties". This morning I discovered a whole website devoted to Tom Swifties, which includes a link to a dictionary of them. "I recommend it to all lovers of puns and word play," said Tom encouragingly! [That wasn't a very good one. Ed.]