Regular Show 2017 Special featured Reviews 

“Regular Show” 2017 Special

By | April 27th, 2017
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Regular Show gets a Summer special, dudes! Check our review below, which contains spoilers.

Cover by Derek Fridolfs
Written by Derek Fridolfs, Pamela Lovas, Sara Goetter, Kristin Kemper, Hannah Blumenreich, Alex Solis, and Ellen Kramer
Illustrated by Terry Blas, Sara Goetter, Kristin Kemper, Hannah Blumenreich, Alex Solis, and Ellen Kramer
Colored by Terry Blas, Jen Hickman, Kristin Kemper, Fred C Stresing, Alex Solis, and Ellen Kramer
Lettered by Ed Dukeshire

Mordecai, Rigby, Skips, Benson, and all your favorites from the hit Cartoon Network series embark on a series of adventures in this very special anthology issue of Regular Show. Features work from The New York Times best-selling writer Derek Fridolfs (Study Hall of Justice), Hannah Blumenreich (Spidey Zine), and a series of new groundbreaking storytellers! Rigby attempts to make dinner for a date night with Eileen, Rigby is caught lying about his birthday to get free cake all year, Mordecai agrees to be Rigby’s roller-skating coach, and Muscle Man accidentally summons the Four Mini-Bikers of the Apocalypse in new stories!

I was a huge fan of the slacker comedy Regular Show in its first year, but I felt like it started getting stale after that. This is my first exposure to the series as a comic book, and my reaction is about as mixed as you’d expect from an anthology like this.

First up is a ten-page story where the park workers realize Rigby has been claiming almost every day as his birthday. When I think of Regular Show, I think of the dual literal and ironic meaning of the title, in that the situations often start out regular but eventually turn supernatural. Fridolfs followed that mold here in introducing the Birthday Council, composed of three mystical clowns who force Rigby to eat hundreds of cakes. It all did feel very Regular Show, but it didn’t particularly make me laugh. Blas keeps most character designs completely true to how they are in the show, the only exception being Rigby. While the character is clearly identifiable as Rigby, he also gets to be much more expressive, which certainly makes his extended solo scenes more entertaining.

Next is a six-page parody of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Yes, you read that right. High-Five Ghost is Shinji, Muscle Man is Misato, and Benson is Gendo Ikari. In all honesty, it’s a spot-on parody that manages to distill the most memorable scenes and quotes of the show — Shinji’s “I mustn’t run away,” Ikari pressuring Shinji, the final two episodes — into just five pages. The catch, though, is that there isn’t much of a story beyond that parody. The sixth and final page contains the only Regular Show-related parts, and even then it’s more about repeating long-standing fan criticisms about the ending of Evangelion than it is about telling a Regular Show story. The short did land well for me, probably harder than any other in the book, because I had that familiarity with Evangelion. But for people who don’t, I’d imagine it wouldn’t land at all.

The art in that story carried the parody well. With character designs set firmly in the Regular Show style, the framing of the panels was all Evangelion. I loved how the Gendo/Benson panels were completely in darkness, other than the character, desk, and chair. And what a perfect interpretation of the infamous folding chair shot, with High Five Ghost’s hand slumping down with the rest of his body.

Over in the next story, Mordecai teaches Rigby how to roller skate. There are no supernatural elements here, but there is a well-done montage, which is standard for the show. That montage successfully poked fun at the lazy coach stereotype, as Mordecai’s form of coaching involves riding alongside Rigby in a golf cart and eating a sandwich while Rigby overexerts himself. I also laughed at the fonts used in the flyer. Something about purposely using a bad design scheme always gets me.

Most interesting about this story were Kemper’s colors. A lot of them fell near the green/blue/purple side of the color spectrum, giving the story an interesting look that was both warm and cool. She also used shadows and gradient coloring for the characters, whereas all other stories in this issue except the later two-pager used a flat style. This didn’t exactly change the story itself or feel fitting — just an interesting choice. Maybe it would have made more sense if it was only done in the roller rink scenes, as opposed to every scene.

Continued below

Next, we get a ten-pager about Rigby trying to cook for Eileen. There is no catch. That’s the story. Which isn’t totally a bad thing: Mordecai and Rigby share a fun scene, we get an eight-panel cooking montage, and there’s a nice emotional moment at the end. Blumenreich uses a simplified, slightly cruder art style here, which actually allows for more expression than is the standard for the show. As a whole, this story didn’t do too much for me, but it was by no means bad.

Next up, we have a nearly plotless two-page story where Mordecai and Rigby fight over the last slice of a pizza. The lack of any real story ultimately doesn’t matter, though, since it acts more as a feature for Solis’s detailed, high-octane art. They’re a fun two pages to look at for the sheer insanity contained in those nine explosive panels.

Closing out the book, we are treated to a classic Regular Show story in which Muscle Man unleashes the “four mini-bikers of the apocalypse” upon doing donuts with his mini-bike. While I never warmed to Muscle Man as a character, he works in this story. Kramer gave the story a solo-cartoonist vibe, in which the art and story feel as one. She clearly wrote the story with her panel layouts in mind, and she clearly drew it knowing exactly where the word balloons would go. This was probably my favorite story in the group, in terms of technical skill shown in both story and art.

All in all, this Summer special is a mixed bag. The one story to truly make me laugh wasn’t even much of a story and wouldn’t mean anything to those unfamiliar with Neon Genesis Evangelion, a completely unrelated show. For fans of Regular Show, you get some nice, faithful art, along with some standard stories featuring the characters, as long as you’re cool with the $7.99 price tag. As someone who jumped ship on the show a while ago, however, this didn’t exactly win me back.

Final Verdict: 5.8 – A few good laughs couldn’t save the overall mediocrity of these stories at this price point, though die-hard fans will likely still enjoy it.


Nicholas Palmieri

Nick is a South Floridian writer of films, comics, and analyses of films and comics. Flight attendants tend to be misled by his youthful visage. You can try to decipher his out-of-context thoughts over on Twitter at @NPalmieriWrites.

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