Adventure Time Vols. 1-14
By Ryan North
This is so much like the show, it makes me go, "Daaww!" when I read it. The humor and it's cartoon quality is the perfect distraction for when the series goes on break.
BMO is found cooking at the beginning of the 5th issue and is excited to show Finn and Jake what he'd baked, but how they'd have to share it, so the boys decide they'd rather compete for the whole cup-cake. BMO comes up with the idea of whoever can run in the most straightest line for the longest will win, and then begins continuing to build creepy Finn and Jake robots. Meanwhile Finn and Jake turn their run into a walk and then start running into obstacles of the hilarious nature which only comes from Adventure Time watching and or reading. Then they run into a strange guy named Adventure Tim. They have some weird adventures together and at the end wonder what Princess Bubblegum's invention was, which I suppose we'll be learning in the next issue, since BMO had received a message from her about needing their help for it, but since they were on "important business" needed a rain check. After, is a cool short which is melted clocks and Escher-like, then a mini of the Ice King getting intimidated by the Vampire Queen. This was a good set of stories.
The third issue starts with the Lich destroying Earth. Finn and Jake are surprised at not being dead and seeing the Lich, Jake reveals the Lich must have sucked the Earth into his bag. Finn is then found in a Jake-plane coming down to where Bubblegum and the others are stranded. Then they have to figure out a way to overpower the Lich, which Finn figures they should form teams to do, since they didn't have enough crystals to protect them from the Lich's mind control. Then Finn decides they need to join forces to take the Lich out since their divided teams didn't work. They succeed, but now can't find the land of Ooo and we end the segment. Then we get a mini-comic with Breakfast Princess having a hang-out sesh with Lumpy Space Princess set up by Finn because he knows they don't get along well, she saying it's because Lumpy makes too much drama. Lumpy Space Princess is getting tired of waiting for her and decides to snack on a piece of bacon from Breakfast Princess's bacon field and catches her in the act. She educates Lumpy Princess how families live on the bacon and she'd made one family lose their home, so Lumpy Space Princess takes them home for feeling so bad at not knowing what she'd done. Lumpy Space Princess does a decent job of caring for them and visits them when they are able to go back to their regrown home, the ending of which is pretty funny with the breakfast microbes' makeover appearances and personalities. The mini, is a one-pager with Finn as the fall-guy. I'll be curious to see the conclusion of the main story.
The first issue begins with the smiling snail waving at peeps and supposedly being responsible for releasing a dangerous and evil skeleton-looking guy. Five days later, Finn and Jake are practicing battle "burns" when they hear an explosion, upon investigating they see the Lich going after Tree Trunks, Finn and Jake go after the Lich once it starts heading for Candy Kingdom and Finn tries out one of his battle burns on him, which doesn't do anything other than get the Lich to warn them to prepare for the end of their world, so Finn and Jake get to become "one" again Jake-suit-style and super-duo the Mother which fails and they end up in the Lich's bag. There is also continual reference of needing to save Princess Bubblegum and, "everyone else in Candy Kingdom", not naming names, ha-ha. They then meet Desert Princess, who they share the same goal with and shows where she got her moniker, but unfortunately won't help them escape their current holdings, which the princess believes can't be done. Then we skip to the Ice Kingdom and see the Ice King working on a novel about Cake, Jake, Finn and Fionna, when it gets blown away and the Ice King is sucked out by the Lich, which is where the story is to be continued... Sighs The reason I hate comics segmenting stories, only so I can forget it enough when I need to start it up again, oh well, this is Adventure Time we're talking about so, I can't complain to it's wild acid-like trip. We then start up a story with Princess Bubblegum being interrupted by Tree Trunks about an order she thought was canceled for Cinnamon Bun's party, but Princess Bubblegum shares with her how she canceled because she preferred a mysterious cider, literally from the sky. Tree Trunks goes off, a bit disappointed, but comforting herself with the fact some critters still liked her cider. Then she sees a disturbing figure and sees it heading where she gets her apples from, so follows it, sensing this must be her competitor and once she discovers and tastes some cider outside the mysterious figure's home, soon gets pulled inside by Cinnamon Bun. Then the plot thickens when Tree Trunks learns Cinnamon Bun didn't make the cider, but was on a juice cleanse. Then we uncover the nasty reason of where the different flavored cider is coming from also getting a cleaned up ending with everyone, including Finn, Jake and Princess Bubblegum at Cinnamon Bun's party and inadvertently tasting where the flavor came from; icky.
Issue #2 begins with the continuation of the Lich's goings-on, showing him heading for Marceline's "lair". We then see Finn and Jake feeling quite down for not being able to save the world in the time amount Finn would've predicted "normal", then once Finn hears the Desert Princess's story of how she'd gotten there, and the possibility of her being more than one of the candy citizens, but not believing in her own supposition, Finn decides he agrees with her way of seeing it, in his usual way. Then we are subtly reminded by Marceline how she's still being attacked and go back to her side of the story. Marceline seems to get overpowered and meets Bonnibel on a beach where she might know a way off the island they're stuck on and how Marceline tries to prove some of her transformations could be helpful. Then we skip back to Finn and Jake who see the Ice King and decide to "mess" with him. In the process they run into Lump Princess and then finally decide to dig their way out and head to the bottom of the bag, which sucks them in as they try to figure a way out. We then see Marceline and Bonnibel on a makeshift raft with Marceline using one of her shapes to help sail. When they reach land they run into Lump Princess who's crying about how Finn and Jake were dead, ending this installment. We then begin a story starting with Finn and Jake singing about laundry. When they check on their load, Finn notices everything has turned red, caused by a sock Jake loved, but hardly wears. Then Finn remembers how Marceline could probably suck the red out of all of his reddified clothes so they go off to ask her for assistance. She makes them do chores in return and poor Jake's sock changes color as well. Then we get a one page mini of Marceline after a show, which was entertaining as well. Damn, I love Adventure Time in both it's forms.
The 4th starts with Marceline thanking the little sand and ice Finn's and Jake's for keeping the Lich busy whilst they battled it out. They meet Bubblegum back on the planet where they see the place is covered in sand. Finn then agrees to locate Sand Princess, who disappeared and would restore the planet to how it should be, also taking on the task of restoring Breakfast Kingdom as well, to Jake's lazy dismay. Then we see the Ice King has to do with the Sand Princess's disappearance. Finn gets the Ice King to release the Sand Princess and she comes up with an idea to get the sand off of everything. One hiccough occurs when the sand princesses don't want to jump in the hole, which was the other part of the plan, because they had a crush on Finn. Finn obliges to their request and the end consists of a new land being added and Finn acquiring a new friend in Sand Princess. Then a mini of young Marceline, which is cute. Then we get a strange one about bears and their leader, Party Pat coming up with a way to eat dip which he makes especially for their party. Main story was better, but it's still cute-sy.
Issue 12 begins with Lump Princess spying on the gang and thinking they were excluding her from all the fun they were having, so she forces BMO to include her in the game, even though it's only three-player. When she tries to get the group's attention, she soon realizes she isn't actually a player, but is in the game. To entertain herself she makes up a story, starring herself and a surgeon, she chatting to the 'GO' sign next to her. She doesn't see the guys come back and so gets BMO to extract her from the game and steals the duo's snacks before heading out. We then see a doughnut creature carrying a piñata horse, Manfried with a message for Finn and Jake, but the doughnut drops him on the way, breaking him, which he survives, but is technically fine when doughnut guy sticks some of his sugary stuff to glue him back together, which is when they see Finn, Jake and Marceline running to detect Ewlbo. Manfried shouts the message to them as they pass and Finn comes up with a plan to draw Ewlbo out, which the group agrees should work. It draws the wizards out, as planned and as Marceline checks them in for the contest, she runs into one who vandalized herself, giving him rightful retribution and ready to check-in more. After getting through her wizard line and not obtaining Ewlbo, we move on to how Jake is getting on. He's playing his own game of cards which gets the wizards who have come to reveal their true names upon his winning, which doesn't do him any good, since Ewlbo isn't hanging about, so we move on to Finn's ploy, which would have worked if anyone had known of or was Ewlbo, but no one has any information. Then Truth Field Projection Princess gets Finn to reveal an embarrassing fact about himself since he was under her spell, which is when Jake and Marcie come by to see how he had done. When they realize he didn't have any luck either, BMO starts dragging Jake away and so the other two tag with him whilst he runs along, destination unknown, but ending with Marcie trying to wake them up for having arrived some place which stumps her as to what to do, which is where we end until the next issue. The mini comic has to do with the Ice King passing out free comics and entrancing everyone into not being disturbed, which annoys Finn due to having lots of interesting ideas to share and so when Jake picks up a comic and Finn decides to see what it's all about, they begin to fight to be able to read it. When it gets destroyed, they come up with a plan to get everyone to stop reading the Ice King's comic, which involves making their own, much cooler comic to get everyone out of their trance reading. Jake doesn't know how to make a comic, but fortunately Finn walks him through it, actually showing how to make one, for anyone interested in doing one themselves. They finish making their comic and begin distribution of it which does exactly what it's meant to, even when the Ice King comes back with more copies of his own, everyone being too interested in Finn and Jake's comic to pay him any attention, pissing him off to no end, which is the end; a good issue, can't wait to see the continuation of the main story.
The 10th issue is a choose your own Adventure Time, so this should be interesting; also since this happens to be the comic which was given on free comic book day! We uncover what kind of comic this is by the Ice King announcing it when BMO asks what time it is. This comic has no problem breaking the fourth wall, but they only say it once at the beginning and the rest is shown through magic! Then, Ice King breaks down who's in charge from then on when Finn tries to punch him and can't. Then we get pointed at when the Ice King mentions who is now in command of their little lives, but fakes us out when it's supposed to be Gunter, who disappeared at the perfect moment and they now don't know who has control; ha-HA. In the end, we get to see the Ice King get what he deserves. Then the Ice King agrees to confess to them the reverse spell, if they accede to being his best friends. Not agreeing makes getting to the Ice King's truth much easier, but then we wouldn't see the "hell" he put's the boys through before confessing to them what's up. We then choose either PB or Marceline to help, but Marcy's not home. We have a short ending after PB can't help and the other timeline has Peebles taking the Ice King into custody for princess-napping too much. The Ice King then reveals to them where he discovers the spell and Jake proclaims they must away to the Ice Kingdom, whilst after making the boys toot in the other timeline they go to Adventure Tim for help. Then in the Tim timeline they try to overload us and under load us with too many options, which they continue to do so, or we can decide to give up control without a fight. The other option has Peebles casting the spell again, but on us and the Ice King says he's learned his lesson and won't cast spells similarly to this one anymore, but we all know how he is, and completes the choosing story; much more fun the second time I read it. The next comic shows Ice King and Gunter watching an infomercial in which the Ice King wishes to do some purchasing, but Gunter makes him aware of their lack of space to store his wannabe new baubles. The Ice King decides it's time for his version of a yard sale. Finn and Jake both see things they want and Jake's discovery makes the Ice King nervous, not wanting to sell, but Jake confirms it's incapacity for blowing anything up, he then using his personal "butt batteries" and it seeming to work fine after. We then see the Ice King was reading a bedtime story to an Ice Prince, who wonders how any of this is happening at all if the world had been blown up, but the ending is funny so I won't give any more details, what with being quite descriptive already. Great issue.
The 8th issue starts with Jake opening the door to discover bad robots who hurt him and Finn and PB ask him to hold them off until they can arm themselves. After doing so though, they realize their weapons aren't going to defeat as many of the robots as there are, so PB directs them in a back-up plan. They escape inside Jake and he runs into Choose Goose after they learn the robots have destroyed Candy Kingdom. Unfortunately Choose Goose doesn't help them and Jake comes up with another plan when he sees the robots coming for them. He heads them off whilst Finn and PB run for cover at Marceline's old abode, which they ascertain when Jake joins them. Then they swear to give all they have to making the sweetest time machine they can, but not before Finn receives one awesome token from PB, then leaving to fix the future. After they leave, Peebles is found by BMO in an awesome robot suit and they both beat up robots until Finn and Jake fix the future, getting the continuation in the next issue. The next story has us follow Hot Dog Princess and her wish of having her beloved bun back as her birthday wish, which PB grants. Peppermint Butler then accompanies Hot Dog Princess to the land of the dead to collect her prince, they run into a big duck-billed baby on the way and when they reach another area of the land, they run into a skeleton-looking fellow who updates them where Bun Prince is, but Peppermint Butler must pay the price, melting him into bones. When Butler confirms he's alright, they continue on to regain Bun, but when Hot Dog sees him finally and he blows her off, she's a bit ticked off, leaving the story slightly open-ended with Butler's declaration of finishing what they'd started. An interesting installment, indeed.
The sixth installment starts with Princess Bubblegum conducting one of her experiments and finishes her time machines, when Finn and Jake pop by and she's able to show-off her endeavor. They immediately take the piece for a ride into a minute before and are all pleased by the experience, testing it once more, but then Jake get's button-pressing happy and Bubblegum makes a royal decree on how their future usage of the machine will be; I rhymed accidentally on purpose. Jake finagles a way to get around the rule, though and waits for the right time to press the button by himself, sending only himself back in time so he can win rock, paper, scissors and go out and discover some emergencies they can get into so they can use the machine more. At the end of this part, the princess smashes the machine, but Jake comes in later and is thinking of repairing it, which we won't be privy to until the next issue. The next story has Jake and BMO making a video for Finn to cheer him up for not being able to get past a level in his video game and LSP doesn't want to be the character assigned her and the Ice King wants to change the movie's whole theme. By the end, it didn't matter because BMO did something which any gamer would have sulked over and probably would want to die after it was done, but Finn remembered the bright side because of Jake's grammatical change in the sentence used. A quick and entertaining story.
The seventh starts with Finn and Jake getting buff because of the time machine button they still keep pressing and when they look for BMO to see if he'll get a buff bod from it too, they see their house seems to have gotten quite messy in their "absence". Then Finn comes up with the plan to get PB to fix the situation caused by their tom-foolery, but whilst they're on their way, Jake not only turns into a different form, but the environment also seems different, once noticed by Finn. Then a robot which looks a lot like Finn starts shooting at them and their renewed resolve to find PB persists. When they do, she scares them with her Robot-welding mask and realize she's been promoted, which they should have been aware of already. PB, who is now QB, helps them timeline the past 15 years, they not remembering for having pressed the button and time-skipping to their future bods and reality. After getting updated, Finn promises to help defeat the robots. Unfortunately, Queebles shoots the declaration out of the water when she reveals to them it is what they've been doing for the past 15 years and it hadn't been doing much except getting them into a stale-mate with the robots and the time machines they had, plus the ones QB had invented won't work, so now Finn and Jake are stuck there forever; or at least until the next issue. The next story has Peebles philosophizing with BMO about time travel and each page has an apology to Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury, respectively. The next story has us follow Finn and Jake and Peebles doing boring things, in the words of the narrator. We then get back to PB talking to BMO about time travel and another apology to Larry Niven and a final apology to Michael T. Gilbert (no clue who they are, most likely will research). We then get a mini-drama with Lump Princess in woe of her existence. Then we see Jake waking Finn and informing him of what he'd seen PB do to the time machine and what Jake had done after she'd left, bringing Finn to show him the results. When Finn relents in Jake pressing the button to the time machine one more time, Jake shows him what happens now instead of what's supposed to happen, which Finn thinks is awesome, but they both go to NEPTR to see if it can be fixed. NEPTR succeeds in fixing it, plus keeping the awesome "toots". Then Finn and Jake are covered by cardboard boxes once pressing the button again and when they break free of them, they have their awesome bods again, ending the issue.
Finn and Jake are trying to confirm their current time and whether they'd made it to their own time, whenever it is, starting the 9th issue. They then realize they've gone far back in time and so go back to the machine to go forward a bit. After hitting the button again we go back to the original pilot episode of Adventure Time, which obviously isn't forward. Finn then decides he'll take the lead on the time machine this time, but before going, leaves a note explaining what had happened to his sleeping bag he'd lost years before. They go a bit more forward and run into BMO to determine what time it is, ha-ha. They apprise BMO of what will happen if they don't destroy the robot-thems and BMO agrees they need to beat them up. After completing their task, but still remembering the future which will not be and having the older bods, they go to see Peebles to consider if she can help them not get senior-ized earlier than before. PB fakes them out by expessing to them they can't be fixed and then rescinding her statement. They get their old bods back and all the time machines disappear and after PB goes to Royal Court, Finn takes a gem to the bank to save for 15 years, but when they get back home, they see their evil robot selves are back and whilst Jake takes care of them the second time around before they turn evil, Finn goes after BMO to state to him what's up with them. Then they end with Peebles and Finn playing video games on BMO. Cute story. The next story starts with Finn and Jake competing on who will catch the biggest fish, Finn taking the lead, but soon the fish tries to take out Jake's fish and then Finn himself, but then Jake pulls out an even larger fish scarfs Finn's fish and then it's on again. Finn not giving up in getting the biggest fish, but then the fish starts to head for Candy Kingdom and they go off to kill it and get eaten. Then, after defeating the fish as posing as bait, they take the credit equally, but confide in PB in confidence they're each solely responsible for the catch, leaving PB showing a dubious look at them both.
The 11th issue has a guest artist (as they all do), at the beginning with Princess Lump (reverse it), is freezing her lumps, then the actual story begins with Marceline who makes a knock knock joke before going inside to talk with Finn and Jake. They were watching a race-car vampire movie, but were ready to play video-games when Marceline asked. Then BMO surprises the guys with their most favorite game ever, Punch Guts III and sucks them into his brain frame making sure to warn them they'll die in real life if they don't win the game. They start and immediately get to level 5, where they've been shrunk and are now inside the Prince who's trapped and they are falling towards his stomach acid. They meet up with the virus boss, who Marceline decides is adorable, but kills quite easily, then they kill all the little baddie viruses, which is when they start questioning why the game is so easy so far. They go through all kinds of levels reminiscent of 80s "vidya-games" to get to the final boss. Marceline keeps accumulating lives and when they get to the boss, "pings" him with a touch and they win the game, then noticing someone, who is closely named to elbow, having hacked the game and upon returning to reality is told by BMO forcefully, the game was perfect, with a no-arguments sort of attitude. They then realize BMO isn't acting like his normally unusual-usual self and follow him to his next scheduled meeting. After witnessing his strange behavior with another appliance, Marceline breaks down the possibilities of what has happened to BMO not being an accident, ending there until the next issue. We then have an unrelated Adventure Time comic to end the issue; I enjoyed the first story, foshow, the second was philosophical and good for those who need to expose a deeper meaning in their comic-reading.
We begin the 13th issue where we left off in the last and learn there are an abundance of robots milling about and probably not the kick-back kind. Finn and Jake are up to the challenge though, since they had a nice bed-time rest and are ready for the adventure these robots may give them. BMO begins receiving an update along with the other robots and Marceline takes Finn and Jake for a better look at what is happening. BMO reboots, but not for the better, supposedly now Ewlbo having taken over. Marcie tries to intimidate him, but it doesn't work and so Finn and Jake team up to try and hack into the robots themselves, which Marceline tries to help them with. Jake gets them to a new spot to initiate their plan, recovering a computer to use, but Marcie soon realizes Finn and Jake have no clue how to hack anything, so she takes over. At first Finn and Jake aren't impressed, but then Marce brightens the resolution and they get starry-eyed with inspiration to hack databases the first chance they get, which is when Marcie notices a suspiciously named file and opens it. Then they get their Tron moment, entering the program and meet Ewlbo in "computer-land". Ewlbo then shares his history and we then get his true moniker, which got changed because of the two programs which merged and made all of the robot's change. Ewlbo's plan was to use a robot body and help them overwrite the program, believing he could control the merge, but Marceline knew better and it was proven after Ewlbo ignored her warning, which we get to see more of in the next issue. The next comic has to do with Finn and Jake trying to distract a visitor who loves to eat delicious things and so Jake distracts him by turning himself into a burger to get his attention away from Candy Kingdom. His plan seems to have worked, but when PB and Lady come by to congratulate him, Lady ends up nibbling on Jake. The next comic has Finn and Jake run into a magic hat reminding me of the sorting hat of Harry Potter, giving Finn a title which doesn't impress him much. Then his royal adviser lists all the things which need doing, since Jake has decided to postpone their adventures so he can focus on the duties Finn didn't want to handle due to the kind of royalty he'd been bestowed with. In order to make the meeting Finn must attend and not choosing the right mudflap for his carriage, he now proposes they run to the meeting for being late and making the Kingdom of Rad Hats look bad if he doesn't stick to his schedule. It ends with Finn busting into the meeting and upsetting Lump Princess for uncovering Finn's new title, which is where it ends until we finish the story in the next issue; not a bad grouping of stories, I still can't wait to see where it goes.
The 14th issue seems to be much longer than any of the others and continues where the main story left off. We learn Ewlbo joined with all the other robots becoming a ginormous one which the trio must defeat since he'd lost memory of his objective in the transfer. The robot mashing then divulges he's decided to take his creator's name since he's overwritten him as Marceline and Jake try to attack him. They guess the robot's plan and try to focus on not hurting their robot friends who have been taken over by Ewlbo. Jake saves Finn from being squished by Ewlbo and does so in a clever way, which is explained by side-note at the bottom right of the page. Then Ewlbo makes "a big mistake" in Finn's terms, since he's caused Jake to fall down a precipice sort of dealie and also has an originally-plastered sad face to go with it. Marceline then tries to campaign whatever part of the real Ewlbo to take control, but is fooled and then told the creator of the program has been deleted. Ewlbo seems to have won and been fully taken over, but then Finn pulls one more switch-eroo which shows Jake being the one to end the robot's rebellion and putting the trio back into the original game they'd been playing at the beginning of the story. They then employ a cheat code to get their robot buddies back to normal. Everyone was coming back to their robot senses when Ewlbo pops up again and shows they aren't the only one's who can cheat in this game, but the trio gets the robots to go into transformer-mode once more to fight off the bad guys made by the bad guy. During the battle Finn and Jake keep trying to impress each other with every bad guy taken down. They then begin dismantling Ewlbo's pixels and tossing them down to his bad guy minions after discovering the fly-mode in their robot-selves. They are finally finished with the game when, after checking if BMO is alright, he asks if they'd like to play some video-games, which of course, everyone says, "yes!" They then run into the original creator and he's fine since the virus hadn't dumped the trash and they end with having the opportunity to explore the big universally large game together, which brings all those past video-games some know and love melding into one; I enjoyed this one, dramatically funny. We then move on to the second half of Princess of Rad Hats which leaves off with Finn being seated in alphabetical order with the other princesses, which put him between Flame Princess and another, when the Ice King crashes through the window. He apparently wanted the opportunity to have the new princess be kidnapped like the others and the fact it was Finn and he wasn't a girl princess made no difference to him, but when he was about to take Finn away, Jake shows up and tries to talk sense to him, but the Ice King, whilst realizing the strangeness of the situation, must stick to his princess kidnapping ways, regardless of the princess' boy or girl-ness. Finn is in the midst of feeling sorry for himself when the princesses come to rescue him and show him how being one of them is actually as good and so Finn decides to be the "BEST PRINCESS EVER", but the hat called Cloche, isn't impressed with his capabilities and when Finn realizes the only way he can end being a princess is to be fought by Cloche, upon her attack, he feigns defeat and she becomes the new princess, to his relief and PB's disgust, since he apparently hadn't learned anything from her advice. Jake gets the last word by giggling at a joke he'd helped create near the end, as is their way; another good issue, I'll be pleased to read more.
