“Adventure Time” in Amber: Its Bittersweet Nostalgia and Comics
“We are on, like, the bleeding edge of history. Everything ahead of us is totally unknown and there is no guarantee that everything’s going to be alright. It is exciting, but it is also pretty scary. You know?”
Jake Jr, “Another Five More Short Graybles”, 2013
I got into Adventure Time during kind of a dark, lonely period of my life, binging the first few seasons on Netflix alone in a crappy apartment after coming home from a stifling, demoralizing work environment. I’d been a big animation kid growing up, watching a lot of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network shows, but hadn’t really thought much about what might be going on in the medium for years, so when I started hearing so much about this new show and decided to check it out, I was flooded with a cozy, nostalgic feeling. What was it about this silly Cartoon Network kids show that really captured my imagination? Show creator Pendleton Ward and a talented team of writers, artists, and animators, built a truly unique and ground breaking piece of children’s entertainment during its eight-year run.
Ward once stated that his favorite emotion was “feeling simultaneously happy and sad,” a state that I think people can find relatable at any stage of life for reasons that change as they grow older. In spite of being in my thirties, the absurdist humor and adorably cute high fantasy tropes painted over a melancholy yet ultimately hopeful core Ward brought to the show drew me in. Whether the comfort of childhood nostalgia, particularly one tinged by fantasy roleplaying games and millennial angst, or the bittersweet heart of the series, it resonates emotionally while never feeling trite. As a candy-coated fantasy adventure world built on the post-apocalyptic ruins of a recognizably contemporary Earth, this juxtaposition of the hopeful with the despair over the collapse of our world comes out of this moment of historical uncertainty and appeals, I think, to people living in this environment no matter their age.
As things in my own life improved and I found myself in a much better place over the next few years, I never got around to finishing the TV series, even as it wrapped up in 2018 after ten seasons to great acclaim. Recently, during these uncertain times and the stress of my partner’s pregnancy and the birth of our new child, it was comforting to return to the Land of Ooo. Finishing the last seasons of the series with my newborn, during those long, early nights of multiple feedings and distinct lack of sleep, I’m not ashamed to say that I was weeping by the end of it, holding our baby and thinking of watching it again when they are older.
Re-watching the earlier seasons and experiencing the continued growth of the seasons I missed and reaching the bittersweet conclusion of the show, I realized that my feelings about the show had evolved over the years, from a nostalgic yearning for the lost enthusiasm of youth to a readiness to face an uncertain future with hope. This, I think, illustrates a cool feature of the show as it grows with its viewers and deftly achieves that balance of being a children’s show with its own relevance and things to tell grown-ups. There’s been a lot of discussion of Adventure Time as a TV show already over the last ten years, though, as critics analyze the influences that shaped Ward’s viewpoints and the elements he added to the show: its “trippy” appeal to adults (often identified as stoner teens and twenty-somethings), philosophical complexities, and its collaborative process as a work of animation. Can these elements carry over into the copious tie-in media spawned from the show during this time?
Like many such media franchises, there has been a fair amount of licensed merch and other miscellaneous products released, and I tracked down a lot of it in the years since I started watching, only pausing as the series progressed further than I had seen. Obsessively checking out the copious ephemera spawned from the show, from middle-grade chapter books to stuff that has more obvious appeal to adult fans of the series, like comedian (and voice of Hunson Abadeer, lord of the Nightosphere) Martin Olson‘s Adventure Time Encyclopedia or the art book, but the various comics series published by Boom Studios are the most natural extension of the brand.
With the completed TV series behind me, I was left to fill the hole left in my new baby caretaking routine by finishing up these comics with the show fresh on my mind. Wrapping up the last volumes of the main Adventure Time comics line, the various stand-alone Adventure Time Graphic Novel series, the Sugary Shorts collections of extra backup stories, the entirely separate Adventure Time Comics series of comic shorts, and the numerous spin-off comic series, it was all a bit much to keep track of!
All in all, though, it was interesting to see how these works captured the spirit of the show and how they differed. As a whole, the comics are basically intended for children, even more so than the show itself, and that’s okay! I can at least explain away my recent penchant for reading material intended for preteens as work-related. Comics and animation complement each other as both are visual mediums, sharing a lot in craft, emotion, and action. The comics bring me back to the show in a way that other mediums, like the chapter books, did not.
It is quite impressive how consistent and strong the quality of these peripheral stories have been, replicating the voice and the feel of the animation remarkably well in the transition from animation to still panels. Drawing talent from many talented names in alt-comics, as well as from the show itself, they are all well worth checking out. After all, there is a lot of overlap between storyboarding and animation and comics writing and many animators and writers in the animation industry have a toe in comics as well. In some ways sanctioned fanfiction, these multiple lines allow for differing approaches to the setting and characters.
The main Adventure Time comics series, for instance, which ended in 2018 along with the show on its 17th volume of collected issues crafted unrelated epic storylines, often building to new apocalyptic events besetting the land of Ooo. Each issue seemed to serve as an episode with the condensed volumes serving as their own season in the show. Even as they became a little repetitive over the years as the line shifted writers, repeating themes and tropes, this isn’t too unsurprising given the frantic pace of publication of the various series. The last one, Volume 17, was a worthy conclusion to the series, bringing back some of the earlier artists and writers from the series’ run, including Ryan North and Mariko Tamaki.
The Sugary Shorts and Adventure Time Comics anthologies of comic shorts drawn from filler in various other publications are always interesting grab bags, allowing a multitude of artists to tackle the Adventure Time characters and worlds in their own diverse styles, to differing degrees of success. Some seem to just rehash common themes of the series, while others focus on its stranger or more unique aspects, or take minor supporting characters in interesting new directions. Of course, it’s always fun to see a familiar scene through a different style. The ones that focus on the more introspective moods of the show are stronger in general than the ones that go for pure comedy.
The Original Graphic Novels (OGNs) are longer, more in depth takes on the material, generally focusing on one fan-favorite character and building a unique storyline around them, often riffing on other genres, from noir to westerns to pirates. While occasionally going in interesting directions, often this amounts to an excuse to dress the characters up in various outfits (which is fine, of course). The last few of the series, “Princess and Princess” and “Thunder Road” by Jeremy Sorese, and “Marceline the Pirate Queen” by Leah Williams follow the general trends of the series and seem like throwbacks to earlier seasons which creates great comfort food. My favorite of the lot was “Islands” by Ashly Burch and Diigii Daguna, which I read before reaching that point in the TV show; so much was mysterious to me, but I was still drawn into the storyline by its distinctive artwork and affecting characters.
However, can these series stand alone as comics as well as media tie-ins? Well, perhaps not.
Part of the show’s appeal is, I feel, its brevity. Ward and his team do a wonderful job of encapsulating all of their whimsy, emotional resonance, and imagination into eleven-minute increments while at the same time slowly telling its overarching story. At the same time, this allows the show a kind of real-time effect as we watch Finn, for instance, grow from a 12-year-old to a 16-year-old. In the current HBO shows, he’s a twenty-something now! Shudder. Yep, having a kid of my own illustrates just how fast time can go when you are literally watching a human grow. The longer pace of the comics, particularly the OGNs, can threaten to drag things out past this optimum. Also, they kind of exist in limbo as compared to the show’s chronology leaving them kind of stuck in time, with a younger Finn, say, lacking some of the eloquence that the show developed.
In the end, I felt that the most effective tie ins were the spin off series which, like the OGNs, focus on fan favorite characters like Ice King and Marceline or the gender-bent alternate interpretations of the characters, Fionna and Cake, but tie them more directly to the events of the show. “Fionna and Cake: Party Bash Blues” by Kate Sheridan and Vivian Ng, for instance, tells an engaging if quite sweet story (not too surprising when the main antagonist is a monstrous cake) that allows readers to spend more time with characters who have relatively limited time in the show itself. Also, the Marcy and Simon miniseries written by Olivia Olson, the voice actor for Marceline the Vampire Queen herself, is a very effective send-off for the fan-favorite parent-child relationship, even though wrestling with that sci-fi trope minefield of time travel. Olson brings a lot of understanding of the characters into the comic, perhaps making it one of the best interpretations of the series in comic form.
Likewise, Ted Anderson’s “Beginning of the End”, which serves as a fun and nostalgic retrospective for many of the weird one-shot characters and plot twists of the show thanks to a strange time-eating entity, and Sonny Lieu’s
“Season 11”, which does a great job tying up some of the last hanging plot threads from the show’s last season in an affirming and satisfying way, are both strong, if not essential addendums to the show. Each illustrated by Marina Julia, these two comic miniseries really concluded my reading quest on a positive, fulfilling note.
Still, would I recommend the comics series to someone who is not already a fan of the show? While a kid might get drawn into the vibrant scenes and images and punchy, fun dialogue of the typical volume, and perhaps be inspired to check out the show, I feel for the most part it’s just too tied into the show, for better or worse. In addition, the multimedia capabilities of television, the voice acting, music, and effects work together to create a whole that can feel lacking in static interpretations, no matter how closely the work approximates the show. While one can easily hear the voice actors in your head as you read if you have seen the show, it can’t quite compare.
But then again, it certainly serves its purpose as filler material and kids who are really into fantasy and imagination might get a lot out of them, even if they are unfamiliar with the TV show, and would probably spark them to want to check it out. While the comics might not grow with their audience quite as much as the show, there are certainly worse ways for your ten-year-old to spend their time, and I’m looking forward to sharing them with my own kid in a few years.
