Tommy, Chuckie, and friends take on Saturday afternoon at the pizza arcade in a The Hobbit-style adventure, but this first graphic novel for the franchise shows a difficult transition in writing for a longer work and a lack what made the comic reboot of this original 90s Nicktoon so great.
Written by Pranas T. NaujokaitisCover by Chrystin Garland
Illustrated and Colored by Maurizia Rubion
Lettered by Mike FiorentinoStu and Drew have taken the babies to the local arcade for a relaxing day of pizza and games. But when the arcade’s token stock goes down to one, a frenzy breaks loose and darkness descends upon the arcade floor. Every child seeks the precious golden coin for their own game with no thought to the needs of all the children of the land. It is up to Tommy and his noble fellowship of Rugrats to march the one token across the treacherous game room floor to the fabled volcano arcade machine, told to yield a stream of tokens if you win, in order to save the day. Writer Pranas T. Naujokaitis (Adventure Time: Ice King) and artist Maurizia Rubino lead the Rugrats on an epic quest like no other!
One of the charms of BOOM! Studios’s reboots of “Rugrats” when it was a serialized comic is its blend of modern technology into the babies’ adventures. It didn’t shoehorn or blatantly call attention to the fact that the parents now used smartphones and drones to keep tabs on their progeny, but just acknowledged their presence. This was a seamless marriage of an early 90s property into 2019 reality. The babies still managed to put one over on their sometimes clueless parents while making a sly statement on modern society’s desire to make technology a band-aid for all the problems of the past.
“Rugrats: The Last Token” has that, for the most part, missing. There is a certain sense of perpetuity in script by eschewing away from that angle in this story: a day at the pizza arcade that turns into grand adventure for the little ones when there are no more tokens for the games that will keep their afternoon attention. The trip to Wizard Rat prompts moments of wistful sentimentality from the parents about how their childhood hangout really isn’t what they remembered it to be, certainly something today’s GenX and Boomer parents and grandparents may reflect on when they take the kids out to their local Wizard Rat equivalent. Lessons of “winning isn’t everything” and Angelica’s Veruca Salt-esque behavior (and those consequences) have relevance from generation to generation (and more so now as we’re in the thick of the winter holiday season). No doubt the creative team had this idea of permanence in mind. But reboots like this need more than that to stick, particularly for readership with a shorter attention span who gravitates towards serialized manga and Tik Tok videos. Quaint pleasant remembrances and a retro feel only can go so far and appeal to only so many readers.
“Rugrats: The Last Token” feels like a recycled script for the original Rugrats run that was never used, or a concept that was under consideration for the (now-shelved) feature film reboot. Just turn the babies’ quest for that final token to a game that promises more tokens into The Hobbit, something recognizable to a 21st century audience (thanks to the 2012 film), and there you go, 1991 meets 2019.
This is the first full length “Rugrats” graphic novel, and the growing pains in making the transition from serialized story (be it the miniseries or one-shots) shows. There’s too much time spent on exposition and establishing the premise in the arcade that you’re left fatigued by the time Chuckie transforms into Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins, complete with hairy Hobbit feet. (Possibly some sly commentary on how bloated those original Hobbit films are?) Stu and Drew’s desire to “fix” the animatronic characters of Wizard Rat didn’t contribute anything to the overall plot, other to show that the adults’ boredom and provide an empathetic reference point for adults reading this story with their kids. If you took out that side plot, it wouldn’t impact the main story, so it’s proof it isn’t necessary.
Continued belowThe length of the book (115 pages) works out to be a four issue arc of a comic (using average page count of 24), so the issues of pacing aren’t related to overall length, but in time spent on exposition, main narrative, side plots, and denouement. All that aside, the script gets the characterization of our main players right: scardey-cat Chuckie, spoiled brat Angelica, leaders Tommy and Suzie, and forever bickering Phil and Lil. The adults are their one-note charmingly clueless selves (save for Grandpa, who never hesitates in speaking his mind), and that’s as they are to be. They are not the stars of the show.
Maurizia Rubion brings experience in work on other cartoon licenses to this graphic novel, and it shows. Character linework is extremely precise, looking it was lifted right from original animation cels. This a Rugrats world that you will easily recognize. In the “adventure” portion of the story, Rubion brings together the babies’ alternative Hobbit personalities well, without having them lose their essence. Fantasy Chuckie looks just like real-world Chuckie, just with some hairy Hobbit feet, and Lil’s look is straight from Evangeline Lilly’s Tauriel. The babies’ fantasy counterparts aren’t all lifted straight from Tolkien, though, and on first blush that can be confusing for fans trying to match Rugrats to the Hobbit world. Angelica’s witch bears more resemblance to Disney’s Maleficent than anything from the world of The Hobbit, and Tommy takes on a role of generic knight. But that is the nature of pretend play that these babies love: it’s how their minds interpret the characters, and it’s slippery, never a carbon copy.
Could “Rugrats: Lost Token” been a better work if it was a shorter one-shot than a full length graphic novel? That’s a possibility. There’s still a great deal here to like: the fun of pretend play and high fantasy, life lessons useful at any age. It may just be a story still in search of a proper format, and lacking in what helped this cartoon I loved in junior high be something today’s tweens enjoy with their parents who also remember those early pioneering days of Nicktoons.
