It’s a Rick and Morty comic, brah. Watch out for spoilers, brubarino.
Written by Kyle StarksCover by CJ Cannon
Illustrated by Kyle Starks, Andy Hirsch, and Marc Ellerby
Colored by Rian Sygh
Lettered by Crank!OH MY GOD IT’S INTERDIMENSIONAL CABLE TIME! Rick and Morty are wanted fugitives in an alien dimension, so until the heat dies down, there’s not much to do but watch interdimensional cable! Can you even believe it? A special one-shot issue drawn by writer Kyle Starks (with a special cameo by Andy Hirsch)! Meanwhile, Jerry learns a painful lesson in film history in this issue’s back-up comic drawn by Marc Ellerby!
You know that feeling when you go into something expecting a good time and you end up completely unmoved by the experience? And you try to distance yourself from unfair comparisons to judge itself on its own, and still find it lacking? That was my experience with this “Rick and Morty” comic.
When looking at a book based on something else, it’s always going to be compared to its source material. In this case, I couldn’t help but compare it to the Rick and Morty TV show. For me and many others, Rick and Morty has made its name as a cartoon that can at once intelligently twist tropes, be batshit insane, and deliver genuinely moving character work. On every single one of those counts, I think this comic fails.
Any trope-twisting is derived directly from what the TV show already did, because this issue recycled a plot device from the show: the interdimensional cable set. Instead of giving a new twist on the concept, which originally let the show creators comedically deconstruct TV shows, here it’s used solely for some uneven jokes. Every now and then we do get some flashes of brilliance: there’s a two-page strip where Starks and Hirsch ape Garfield, perfectly capturing Jim Davis’s style from character design to line thickness to layout. This one ended up working better than most others to me, because it was comic book specific; it’s much easier to lampoon comics within a comic book than it is to lampoon TV from within a comic. This is the only instance of Starks going for comic book parody, so the rest starts off at a disadvantage.
When looking at the insanity levels, things don’t get nearly as wild as they could. After some quick set-up, Rick and Morty essentially stay in a hotel room for the entire issue and watch TV. They make some off-the-cuff remarks, none of which mean much and none of which are particularly funny. The TV scenes, which can last anywhere from one panel to two pages, can be unexpectedly tame (and not for comedic effect) or can attempt insanity without fully reaching it. One scene parodies cooking shows and would seem to be going a “Food Wars” route with the chefs having orgasmic experiences with their food. It ultimately didn’t work for me, though, because the pacing wasn’t right. In one set of three panels, the contestants each present their dishes as if absolutely nothing is abnormal, and then suddenly they’re all cramped into one panel with food all over their faces. Honestly, I wouldn’t have known what Starks was going for if not for the host’s speech balloon that said “Whoa! I’m getting hot already!” The issue packs so many small scenes in that it doesn’t give most of them the time, space, or development they need to reach satisfying levels of insanity.
Finally, there’s the matter of character work. We get almost nothing here. Because most of the issue’s pages are spent on the TV shows, that leaves precious little space for character moments. The little asides we get from Rick and Morty give us enough to laugh at, though there isn’t anything telling beyond the jokes. I will give Starks credit for the smooth set-up and final resolution which show off why we might like Rick and Morty. But that’s about it for this issue.
On a positive note, the issue has no technical problems on the visual side. Every page has three rows of panels with most rows broken into two panels and some broken into one or three. The characters look on model, the designs all do what they need to and look different from each other, and Sygh’s color art does the heavy lifting on making each TV scene visually stand out from the others. It’s straightforward, but again, the art works perfectly well for this concept. It’s the writing that kept me from enjoying the issue.
Continued belowAll of Kyle Starks’s independent work has been phenomenal, from “Sexcastle” to “Rock Candy Mountain.” He has a way of cleverly playing with tropes, twisting expectations, and being downright hilarious while doing it. His characters always have way more depth than they have any right to, as do the plots themselves. In theory, he’s the perfect creator to take on Rick and Morty. In practice, though, it falls flat. I don’t know whether this was a matter of editorial oversight or if it’s the general problems that come with writing a tie-in book while a show is still running. All I know is that this issue didn’t work for me.
In all, I was completely disappointed by this issue of “Rick and Morty.” I thought it didn’t work as a companion to the TV show or as a comic on its own right. I know that the creators, and particularly the primary one here, Starks, are capable of producing work much greater than this, and maybe they have elsewhere in the series. But this issue wasn’t the one to win me over.
Final Verdict: 5.5 – The creators and property are way better than what we got here. Unfortunately, a few solid jokes can’t save a book that just doesn’t work.
