Adventure Time: Ice King
Writers: Emily Partridge, Pranas Naujokaitis
Artist: Natalie Andrewson
Colourists: Andy Brinkman, Natalie Andrewson
Editor: Shannon Watters
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
A review by Amelia Wellman
One of my favourite aspects of the Adventure Time comics is the six issue miniseries they do. They cover smaller side characters with self-contained storylines like Marceline’s band The Scream Queens or fan-favourite gender bends Fionna and Cake. They’re always cute diversions from the main storyline, each six issues long. Adventure Time: Ice King is the newest trade release for the side series.
Ice King might be the pro when it comes to kidnapping but he finds himself on the other side of things when he wakes up to find his faithful companion Gunther the penguin has been taken! It’s a high flying adventure as Ice King looks for help in the wackiest of places, tries to be cool, and learns something new about himself along the way. Follow Ice King on his first spotlight adventure, it’s time to see the beauty behind ice puns.
Of everything that could have happened on Ice King’s first solo adventure, I was a little disappointed in what did. Adventure Time: Ice King follows the Ice King as he searches for Gunther. He quickly gets side-tracked when the cool wizards approach him to join their secret society. A shopping montage, a makeover montage, a training montage, and some overtly Breakfast Club visuals later, and Ice King is part of the group at the expense of his real friends. It’s all a little too clichéd for me, especially since it’s not playing with the cliché, it’s just presenting it to us again. And the heavy Breakfast Club references? I love me some John Bender as much as the next person, but in a kid’s comic like Adventure Time it feels so forced.
The most disappointing part of Adventure Time: Ice King is how empty it feels at some points. It feels like the narrative really had to be stretched to cover a half year comic arc. It would have worked much better as an eleven minute episode than a six issue miniseries.
The art of Adventure Time: Ice King has a messy, doodle quality to it. Andrewson’s style is very basic with minimal details in the backgrounds but lots of colours throughout to keep it interesting. A clever detail throughout is that the lettering looks like handwriting. It’s a nice detail to include since Ice King is always writing fan-fic and each issue of the story is prefaced with a bit of that fan-fic. There’s also a gallery of variant covers tacked on the end, which is a nice way to showcase the art of each issue.
The Verdict
Check it out to Skip it. Compared to some of the previous six issue side stories that Adventure Time has produced, I don’t think Adventure Time: Ice King is one of the best, but if you’re a fan of the algebraic animated series, it’s worth checking out Ice King’s first solo story.
