“Adventure Time” #1 is one of the few titles at Multiversity to have received a perfect score (one of only two that I’ve personally given out this year), so it would stand to reason that a new comic from the mind of Pendleton Ward would earn another Perfect 10.
Right?
Written by Joey Comeau
Illustrated by Mike HolmesPOWER! RESPECT! Based on ADVENTURE TIME creator Pendleton Ward’s brand-new animated series! Join Chris, Wallow, Beth and Danny, four 16-year-old heroes-for-hire, as they warp from galaxy to galaxy, saving alien races with the power of their…emotions. They’re noble, righteous and totally bodacious!
Bravest Warriors and “Bravest Warriors” make for a relatively interesting scenario. Created as a web cartoon for Ward’s new Cartoon Hangover channel, the cartoon follows four teen space adventurers who fight for justice in the galaxy and probably also enjoy a good pizza party. It’s another quirky take on a familiar genre, but the trick of the situation is that the show has not actually aired yet. The cartoon itself will air in November, which means that “Bravest Warriors” the comic is our first experience with this new cast of characters.
It’s too bad, then, that this first foray into their ongoing adventures is so disappointing. The “Bravest Warriors” comic is a bit of a sloppy version of the same things that make “Adventure Time” endearing, as if someone saw the obtuse humor the show and comic employs and thought, “Anybody can do that.” Instead of capturing the humor of a genre and creating a light-hearted take on its foibles, “Bravest Warriors” is a book that meanders about like a comic lazily doodled in a high school notebook, hoping to rely on style over substance, jokes over story. There’s no real direction, no real coherent thoughts other than a group of characters who like hanging out — and for a first issue, that’s really not enough.
The biggest problem of the issue is that when it finally reaches “the point,” the comic book is over. The Bravest Warriors are seemingly neither brave, nor warriors — at least, that’s not what this comic says; they’re basically just your average/stereotypical college student. For 16 pages, we’re not given too much to go on: two pages are dedicated to their “job” (which apparently is just pushing a button and then high-fiving genocide) while seven pages — almost half the comic — feature the cast watching TV and talking about watching TV. It’s meandering and a bit non-nonsensical for the sequential storytelling medium, which begs for the creative team to show instead of tell, and while the various sequences in the book are supposed to be light-hearted scenes that assumedly buck genre trends, it honestly seems like more time was spent collecting cool variant covers for the book than worrying about the interior content.
Suffice it to say, a comic book about kids watching TV isn’t really entertaining — at least, not when they’re supposed to be the bravest of warriors. Comic books like that can be entertaining, sure (Dan Clowes can pull it off), but anyone who picks up the book based on the title and cover alone are in for a let down. The book’s premise seems like a riff on “Green Lantern”-type books, but we’re given something closer to Beavis and Butthead, albeit a version in which Mike Judge is a tad bit less cynical.
It’s an odd dichotomy, however, as Mike Holmes certainly captures the Ward-ian style of art for the book. All things considered, this looks and feels like the style that Ward has cultivated for his shows, and just like Paroline and Lamb in “Adventure Time,” Holmes naturally and effectively imitates the style without feeling like he’s just coasting. Truth be told, Holmes alone carries this book through an otherwise unappealing story, and not for nothing, as much as I am happy to critique the meandering story, Holmes does pretty much nail all the TV clips that we see them watching. From a shark in space to a date with a gerbil, it is visually humorous — and that, at least, is undeniable.
It’s only Joey Comeau’s script that drags the book down, with an entirely dull storyline and a lot of failed gags. The dullness of the opening sexism-based joke, for example, is a fair indication of most the book’s humor. Comeau’s writing in “A Softer World” has certainly set a given precedent for his particular brand of off-the-cuff humor, and there’s certainly something to be said for the oddball jokes we’ve seen with Adventure Time, where “Bacon Pancakes” can be literally the funniest thing on the planet. Yet here, Comeau’s three panel joke system doesn’t fit well into the long-form narrative, and something as simple as two muffin’s fighting to the death just plays off as forced instead of quirky. That and Comeau’s attempt to ape North’s alt-text in a few choice sequences ultimately just falls flat.
So as far as introductions go, the main story is a poor foot to start off on. While pulling from the quirky web comic crowd certainly worked for the “Adventure Time” comic, it’s just not the case with this book. It’s lucky that the comic features a back-up strip by Ryan Pequin, however, because that’s the closest thing we get to what you’d likely expect from a book with this title and cover. It actually features the Bravest Warriors being an off-brand of brave and warrior, and that’s what you’re paying to read. With eight different covers to the book — all but one of which giving the implication that this is a book about teens in space having adventures — with a solicit that implies you’ll find a story of teens who “warp from galaxy to galaxy, saving alien races with the power of their… emotions,” you’d assume you’d get more than a muffin-off some TV watching.
Final Verdict: 4.0 – Pass
