If you’ve yet to experience Cartoon Network’s beloved Adventure Time animated series, there are few precautions to prepare you for its delightful brand of strange. But let’s try. Bake a cake. Or have someone bake you a cake. Or purloin one from a windowsill. Make sure it’s a warm cake. Put your face in the cake. Open your eyes. Blow a raspberry. Find a mouthful of gold doubloons and emeralds. Remove your face from the cake. There’s a clown wizard to wipe your face. He’s gelatinous. Literally. He’s made of gelatin. Someone starts playing a piccolo.
You now have some idea just how peculiar the adventures of Jake the dog and Finn the human truly are. But you might not know how awesome those adventures also are, concurrent to their weirdness. So awesome and so weird, in fact, that each installment can only be 11 minutes long. You get two chunks of odd per episode with some commercials for cereal and other cartoons. Any more and you’d fall over and turn into rock candy.
That double dose of deranged carried over into Kaboom!’s new Adventure Time comic. Issue #1 is available now on Graphicly. It’s no less unusual and entertaining than its cartoon counterpart. In fact, it may be even more of both. In essence, it’s the perfect feel-good comic to chase away the gloom.
The main story, the first chapter in an ongoing tale, is written by Ryan North with art by Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb. It mirrors the visual style of frenetic pace of the animated series. Centered around the return of the vile Lich and an enchanted pouch capable of devouring entire worlds, it’s a great showcase of Adventure Time‘s dystopian landscape and fantasy tone. Finn and Jake are eager to test their sick battle burns on the hated Lich, but it’s going to take more than bravado to get them out of this scrape.
The second story , Aaron Renier’s “My Cider the Mountain” is both beautiful and deeply creepy. As any Tree Trunks episode ought to be. You may never look at spa retreats or cinnamon buns the same way again. And forget cider. That’s going to remain suspect for good.
Are you ready for some weird? Check out Adventure Time #1 or, you know, get a cake. But then come back and check out the book. It’s wild.
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I cannot recommend the show, the comic, or Paul’s review strongly enough. They are all excellent.
I agree that everything involving Tree Trunks is creepy.
I should also note that my daughters (who are 5 and 7) loved this issue, so if you’ve got a youngster you have one more reason to pick this up.
I love this show. The book is awesome too
Yeah, I actually enjoyed “My Cider the Mountain” more than the main story. But all in on, it was something a fan of the show would like, it is hard to capture the cartoon in a comic but it was enjoyable.
I’m sold
Great comic I was lucky enough to score the wraparound variant cover, love it!
LUCKY!
Everyone needs to have a little bit of this in their life.
Fo’ Sho.
Is this show made by the same awesome wackjobs behind Professor Brothers and the alternate Harry Potter audio track? If so, I must devour it all…
Also, Ryan North writes the greatest of all the webcomics, DINOSAUR COMICS! Read it always: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php
Wait what?! I love Dinosaur Comics! Instant buy!
Great comic that captured the show to a “t”. Loved it.
Thank you Paul. For writing and exposing more people to the wondrous, excellent fun of the Land of Ooo. My kiddos and I LOVE the show. We quote it all the time. Sing the songs. And now we have a comic book to enjoy together. Its like having chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream…YUM!
Just found out Paul Pope is doing something for the Adventure Time comic!!! ALGEBRAIC!
Awesome interview with Adventure Time creator Pen Ward http://www.newsarama.com/comics/advneture-time-pendleton-ward-120213.html
Damn, I read those 3 panels about the Lich and I enjoyed it more than I dare say… I’ll try to find this comic at my LCS! I just browsed ComiXology and it wasn’t there… 🙁
And I just saw that the show was recently released on DVD! Thanks guys! 😀
It’s also on Graphicly.
Yeah I just saw it. I’ll confess to never having tried Graphicly before. I’ll give it a go on my android! 😉 1.99$, I got nothing to lose!
Great comic and great review!