Creators: Art Baltazar, Katie Cook, Tony Millionaire, Kat Leyh

$3.99
Boom! Studios

Sometimes, it’s good to stretch. Popular comics are known for sticking with their “house” styles, so properties like DC Super Heroes or The Simpsons tend to gravitate towards sticking to a familiar form. And yet, every so often, an indie author is given a chance to play around with a property, and the results can be a lot of fun when a familiar character is given new life outside the house style.

The “house deviation” isn’t that uncommon–DC has brought in indie artists on special events like Bizarro Comics and Wednesday Comics, and Bongo’s Simpsons books tend to get experimental with their annual Treehouse of Horror titles. Well, rising star Boom! Studios has upped their game and gotten some indie artists into their Adventure Time title. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, as Boom! has had plenty of Adventure Time backup stories and specials outside the show’s signature style. However, Adventure Time Comics is their first dedicated effort to bringing in different talent to the comic on an ongoing basis.

Given Adventure Time’s weird setting of a post-nuclear holocaust landscape populated by people made of candy and Japanese rainbow unicorns, these “weird” artists fit surprisingly well while still working within their own signature styles. There’s nothing special about any of these stories–kooky, yes, but not Earth-shattering. The charm comes in seeing Art Baltazar apply his adorable childlike style to a story about Finn going to a land of toothpaste, or to see Tony Millionaire (!) have fun with a giant purple cat in Ice King’s palace, or in seeing fan-favorite Katie Cook do a Lumpy Space Princess story, because that just fits so damn well.

Adventure Time Comics is, then, an art jam. Adventure Time as a show has been eating up the animation landscape for almost a decade now and seems to be this generation’s…well, I’m not sure what. Tiny Toons, perhaps, but the show is definitely something and its mark on animation and childhoods everywhere will be felt for a long time. The Adventure Time comic is another opportunity to bridge the television-to-comics gap for many kids, but even better, Adventure Time Comics is a chance to introduce kids to the beauty and variety of comics as an art form. This is worth a look, or better, worth handing to someone who needs a bridge into comics.

Rating: Five Beemos out of Five