Toy Story #3
Written by Jesse Blaze Snider
Art by Nathan Wilson and Mike DeCarlo
Colors by Mickey Clausen and Eric Cobain
Letters by Deron Bennett
BOOM! Studios
Price: $2.99
Release date: April 14, 2010

Toy Story #3 continues the ongoing series with part four of The Return of Buzz Lightyear. This storyline started with Andy receiving a new Buzz Lightyear toy. When they found out that Andy was going to return the new Buzz Lightyear for a different toy, we see the new Buzz force the old Buzz, or ‘Sally’, into the box so he doesn’t have to return to the shelf of the store. This spurs a rescue mission with the new Buzz and the recently purchased Booster. In the last issue, new Buzz and Sally are in a race to see who should go back to Andy and the new Buzz cheats by releasing a display of bouncing balls to stop Sally from winning the race. In this issue, we see the conclusion of the race and a lot of the backstory of the new Buzz and the end of his adventure.

This new ongoing Toy Story series has been very true to the original source material and fits with the style of both movies. This storyline very much reminds me of the second movie and part of the first where we follow the toys in adventures outside of the house. I really enjoy the characterization of each of the toys that is very true to the movies. I also really enjoy the introduction of new characters and the different variant versions of Buzz Lightyear. Overall Jesse Blaze Snider captures the magic of Toy Story and runs with it in a way that will please any Pixar fan and entertain kids who read it.

The art, credited to Nathan Wilson and Mike Decarlo, is great throughout the book but there are quite a few panels with no backgrounds and just solid color. While this isn’t something that necessarily kills the look of the book, when you are dealing with a story as stylistic as Toy Story, you have a great opportunity to work with the backgrounds and play with size comparison. This is something I really hope they take and run with in later issues. The art otherwise is wonderful and it is very understandable that there is less backgrounds considering the amount of characters needing to be drawn throughout the story.

The standout of the art is the colors by Mickey Clausen and Eric Cobain. The way they capture the Pixar look on the page is stunning. I really enjoy a lot of the colorists that BOOM! Studios has taken to using in most of their books. They tend to perfect the look of every licensed story with ease and I am curious to see how this is possible. Do they do a lot of reference to source material? Whatever they do, it works.

As a whole I enjoyed the story and will continue reading.

RATING:
Toy Story #3: 3 out of 5
Series: 3 out of 5