Adventure Time #13
Created by Pendleton Ward
Written by Ryan North, Josh Lesnick, Chris Schweizer
Art by Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb, Josh Lesnick, Chris Schweizer
Letters by Steve Wands
Covers by Mike Holmes, Kel McDonald, JJ Harrison, Mike Bertino, Brandon Peterson
KaBOOM!
Release date: February 20, 2013
Price: $3.99

Welcome back! Part three of Ryan North‘s BMO virus arc in Adventure Time the comic series continues at a moderate pace. Let’s catch you up. In Adventure Time #11 Marceline, Finn and Jake are invited by BMO to play Super Guts Punch 3 inside his “MAIN BRAIN GAME FRAME.” They play and win only to discover that BMO has been hacked.

Adventure Time #12 is sidetracked by an unannounced visit from Lumpy Space Princess(a character I think is best in *very* small doses). Elsewhere, the team decides to track down the evil wizard Ewlbo who has hacked their friend, BMO. They formulate a plan to have another Awesome Wizard Battle and use it to suss out the culprit. (Check out animated series episode Wizard Battle to see what happened the first time that…well…wizards battled in Ooo.) Each character’s way to interview the wizards of Ooo is as unique and amusing as their poster drawings advertising the ruse battle. Their plan is a bust but BMO continues to spazz out from his operating system being hacked. He eventually leads the trio to a bunker where other hacked robots in Ooo have gathered.

Adventure Time #13 is where we get answers. It’s the meat of the story I mentioned in the review of issue #11. Marceline vamps out! Finn and Jake’s “Emergency brotimes!” tactic weirds me out a little. And we get a full-on reference to the Mushroom War that happened a thousand years before! I’ve noticed the animated series mentioning the calamity that destroyed the world-that-was and led to the eventual creation of the Land of Ooo more and more these days. I wonder if we’ll get to see the Mushroom War at its flash point. (I’m not counting the events of Finn the Human as a guide because it was an alternate universe, Adventure Time fanatics. Cartoon Network won’t squirm out of making a Mushroom War movie that easily.) We also learn that Marceline was a master hacker before computers went out of style and magic got big.

Three issues in and we finally get face-to-face with the conflict. And the face of that conflict seems mighty familiar. Finn and Jake have had more than their share of dark times. This is especially surprising since Adventure Time is advertised as a “kids show.” But we know better than that, don’t we? But even in the face of dark times I dig it when the guys act like their pre-teen ages as they do in issue #13. (Well I guess Jake is technically older but he usually goes with the flow when around Finn). It’s the unbridled enthusiasm of these heroes that inspire me. It’s infectious. There’s not much in the world that gets these heroes down and there’s a lot in their world that tries on a daily basis. Marceline retains her chaotic neutral alignment and leads the guys to the Big Bad.

Has anyone else noticed the fourth wall breaking lines at the bottom of the pages? Seriously, you should go back and have a look at those.

The art by Shelli Paroline and Brandon Lamb remains a pleasure. I swear the flow of action became smoother as well. There’s a slight Art Shift in this issue. It’s not as dramatic as the Art Shift in issue #11. The group goes virtual reality to meet the mighty Ewlbo in a Tron inspired virtual scape.

There are two mini-stories this month. One story called The Devilish Devourer of Delicious Delicacies, written and illustrated by Josh Lesnick, in which Jake becomes an enticing burger to defeat a foe. There’s another short wherein Finn becomes The Princess of Rad Hats. This one was written and drawn by Chris Schweizer and takes place in the Kingdom of Rad Hats. I don’t have anything review-wise to add to this except that I wanted to type ‘Kingdom of Rad Hats.’

The Adventure Time comic series is growing on me the more issues I read. It’s satisfying that itch that develops between new airings of the animated series. It’s also bringing me smiles where before the smiles were all too few.