Wednesday, November 25, 2015

CBR Adventure Time The Flip Side


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I mean, it's Reverse Adventure Time!
 

Comic title: Adventure Time: The Flip Side
Art by Wook Jin Clark
Written by Colleen Coover & Paul Tobin

Published by Boom! Studios imprint KaBOOM!
From December 2014
Lineup Adventure Time series
Format: Trade Paperback collecting the Adventure Time: The Flip Side mini-series issues #1-6.

Not only is Adventure Time a great successful modern Cartoon Network animated series, but the comic book line published by KaBOOM! has been getting some big praises as well.

Thanks to the huge success of the main on-going series from the winning team of Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb & Mike Holmes and its sister-series of Original Graphic Novels from Danielle Corsetto, Zack Sterling & Meredith McClaren, BOOM! has been publishing all sorts of tie-in mini-series to provide even more Adventure Time material for the fans.

After the great Marceline and the Scream Queens, Fionna & Cake and Candy Capers, it's time to finally give Finn and Jake their first mini-series as main characters! 

Adventure Time: The Flip Side was written by the Eisner Award-winning creative team behind Bandette, Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover. This time the comic takes the form of an epic adventure told through a 6-issue mini-series!


Our story begins with Finn, sick in bed. You see our hero is suffering from something called "Quest Deficiency". And the only way to cure this illness is to go back doing some questing! After only finding a few silly bad mini-quests, they decide to take the only available mission on the back of the Land of Ooo's official "Adventurer’s Posting Board"! But that might just turn into their most complicated adventure yet...

You see, any quest on the back of the questing board is actually a reverse quest! What they thought would be a fairly standard quest to save Painting Princess from the Monkey Wizard turns out to be having to convince said Monkey Wizard to kidnap this Painting Princess instead!!

Sounds like a simple enough quest, right? But the problem is the more time passes the more the entire land of Ooo in danger! Things start getting reverse at random! Princess Bubblegum warned them!

It all starts pretty simple, but the Monkey Wizard doesn't seem interested in PP at all. He has his own Banana Guards throw Finn and Jake outside... To convince him they get some help from the only princess kidnapping expert in Ooo, the Ice King himself! They try all sorts ideas, using some mystical gemstone, ask for help from Ricardio, the Ice King's evil magical heart, Marceline help them track MW's pet rabbit back from the clutches of the legendary Princess Skyblade Harbinger and even face this gang of Apocalyptic Racers...

Meanwhile things keep getting messier and messier as everything is turn the opposite of what it should be - underwear becomes outerwear, wizards become cowboys. Why? It doesn't even make any sense - in fact it's the opposite of making sense!

They fight in a war-like voting competition, get some dating tips from Lumpy Space Princess as our heroes race to put an end to this curse getting worse over time...


The Flip Side is a really fun zany miniseries!

A lot of familiar faces pop up.

Despite the self-contained nature of the mini-series, they didn't really bother explaining or recapping who all these characters are. This is clearly a book made for fans.

It's fast-paced, goes all over the place. It doesn't feel as deep or rich as some of the bigger episodes on the actual show, but it's just as packed with tons of stuff.


Adventure Time: The Flip Side is another great AT book in KaBOOM series.

It has some great humor and tone. There's a lot of funny sight jokes in all the panels. A lot of creative touches such as the ever-changing face of Painting Princess.

Plus some gorgeous art frin Wook Jin Clark, author of Megagogo. It manages to both capture the tone of the show and even do its own thing, with a slightly more expressive and cartoony outlook than usual.

The trade collection also reprints the various covers KaBOOM did as it is often the case. Amongst the regular artists such as Colleen Coover we also have the likes of Ru Xu, Ellen Alsop, Britt Wilson, Sina Grace, Kick Iluzada, Nicole Miles, Sloane Leong, Kali Ciesemier or even Sarah Stone. Each playing off the few themes seen in the series (like the post-apocalyptic race or the old west) and just having fun with the characters.


Overall, Adventure Time: The Flip Side is a really fun colorful Adventure Time comic.

It's a really good book with plenty of humor. It's a fairly fast read, a real page turner. A fun all-age book. Check It Out if you're a particularly big fan of the show!

It's not without a few flaws. It was good, but it didn't feel like something that should require a mini-series, it could just as easily have been a storyarc in the main AT ongoing. And despite how ambitious it seemed on the surface, it was just another AT story. It just lacked a little something special to take full use of the miniseries.

If you're a collector, keep an eye out for the new Mathematical Edition hardcover that was just released. Although it's just a reprint, without any real additional material since these issues didn't feature backup stories this time around.

I give it:
    2.5 / 3 Snoopies!

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