Adventure Time Comics 1 Featured Reviews 

“Adventure Time Comics” #1

By | July 28th, 2016
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Bite sized “Adventure Time” exploits that flesh out Pendleton Ward’s fun filled world with help from some top cartoonist talent.

Written &  Illustrated by Art Balthazar, Katie Cook, Tony Millionaire, & Kate Leyh

Oh My Glob! We’ve unleashed some of the industry’s best cartoonists loose in the Land of Ooo to share their most algebraic stories in their own voices!

The first issue is so math thanks to Katie Cook (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), Tony Millionaire (Sock Monkey), and Art Baltazar (Patrick the Wolf Boy). You’re lumping welcome!

Future issues of this ongoing series will feature radical stories from Jeffrey Brown (Darth Vader and Son), Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise), Kelly Thompson (Jem and the Holograms), Box Brown (Andre The Giant), and more!

The world of Finn and Jake is a place of innumerable Adventures. Making the leap to a more comic strip style narrative structure feels like a very logical step and it’s surprising that it’s taken this long to get here. Exploring the world of Ooo in smaller, more manageable chunks allows the guest artists for this issue to plum previously unseen depths. The resulting combination doesn’t always flow quite as fluidly as you might like but it’s definitely exciting to see a very different side of Ooo.

Weather it’s Balthazar’s bizarre toothpaste-fuelled flight of fancy, Cook’s Mean Girls-esque  brunch battle between Breakfast Princess and Pastry Princess, Millionaire’s miniature epic about the escape of Goliad, or Leyh’s cute tale about Finn learning the dangers of DIY, each writer seems to truly appreciate the nuances and absurdities that make up the idiosyncratic inhabitants of the world of “Adventure Time”. These tales work best when they have a proper grasp of the scale in which they’re working. Cook and Leyh are probably the least ambitious when it comes to narrative, but their stories both stand out most for me because of the way they seem to embody a real ‘slice of life’ in Ooo, instead of trying to cram 20 pages worth of story into 5.

Conversely Millionaire and Balthazar’s shorts both struggle slightly towards the end. The stories flow well over the first couple of pages but slam to a halt in the final pages in a way that hints at the idea that they still had more to tell. Writing story in a single issue is supposed to be one of the most challenging requests you can ask of a comic book creator so it’s understandable but there might be a few hiccups when you ask them to condense it down even further to just a few pages.

Each writer also provides their own illustrations, and it’s great to see some familiar faces recast in fantastically varied styles. The expressively cartoonish representation that “Adventure Time” fans love still on full display here, but each artist has simplified the character designs somewhat in order to provide a style that wouldn’t feel out of place in 3 panel funny pages strip. 

Leyh and Cook are probably closer to the more traditional “Adventure Time” Style in their execution. Cook in particular really manages to capture the depth and breadth of Ooo in the few panels alotted, as she takes us from cafes to the Ice Kings Kingdom via magical lakes, rivers, and roads, all the while packing her panels full of puns and sight gags that will require a re reading to fully appreciate.

The bizarreness of Millionaire’s almost woodcut style illustration is probably the most jarring, but that weirdness is definitely in keeping with the spirit of Ooo. The sheer range of styles on display in this debut issue have made me really excited to see what other artists do when let loose in the land of Ooo. And with seasoned cartoonists like Jeffrey Brown and more experimental artists like Box Brown, I’m sure the best is yet to come.

Final Verdict: 6.8 – A strong debut into a slightly new format that promises ooodles of fun!


Stephenson Ardern-Sodje

Stephenson splits his time pretty evenly between reading, watching TV, and sleeping. He has got a degree in English and Creative Writing, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to take anything he says seriously. In his spare time he's working on making the transition from comic-book reader to writer. Failing that he's planning on winning the lottery, he's just got to work out the right numbers first... You can follow his often incoherent thoughts over at @slate_grey.

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