CREDIT: BOOM! Studios
Rating: 3/5 – Icy Hijinks Perfect for Fans of the Cartoon.
by ComicSpectrum reviewer Dallas Fitzgerald
Let me get this out of the way right off the bat– Adventure Time is not really my thing any more. I was once an ardent fan, tuning in every time a new episode would air, but the tried and true formula of the seemingly random “filler” episodes started to wear on my nerves after several seasons. That said, the episodes with emotional depth have really stuck with me, and Ice King remains one of my absolute favorite characters in the series so I was pretty hopeful for this series having never touched an Adventure Time comic prior. How exactly was that hope met?
My immediate reaction to the issue (and the solicits, mind you) was that the cover art was really appealing. That’s a really good cover! Kudos to Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb for what is for me the best part of the package. Pranas Naujokaitis delivers writing that is exactly what I expected coming into an Adventure Time book. It reads like an episode of the show, and while that’s certainly not a complaint, it didn’t blow me away, either. Abracadaniel made me smile just as much as he always does, but this was not writing with emotional depth, it was the typical “random” humor that Adventure Time seems to frequently rely on. To be expected from the title, and more importantly, most likely what those looking at this book expect.
The art inside is suitable for the title and doesn’t stray far from what I expect from an Adventure Time title. The linework is sketchy and loose, very fitting for the overexpressive poses and facial expressions the series is known for. The colors threw me for a loop, though. They felt simultaneously washed out and muddy AND bright and colorful. It came off as visually confusing for me. The “intentionally sloppy” lettering style was most likely an aesthetic choice and entirely intentional, but is one of the first times in my reading experience that the lettering made me want to stop reading almost immediately. Disjointed and making extremely poor use of the space within bubbles, the lettering was extremely distracting to my reading experience.
This issue should resonate with fans of Adventure Time who relish the standard style of the cartoons. For me, the Ice King is a character with way more depth than it might seem at first glance, but this comic seems to be ignoring that depth in favor of surface-level Ice King hijinks. I don’t necessarily see this as a negative, but it did disappoint me because I was hoping for a deeper examination of this character in his first solo series.
Reviewed by: Dallas Fitzgerald
(dallas@comicspectrum.com)
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