Comic Review: Adventure Time #3

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Finn, Jake, and the accompanying Flame Princess head to the Candy Kingdom on their search, but arrive just in time for an art gallery opening…and a scorned artist!

OUR TAKE

We are at the penultimate issue of this arc of the new Adventure Time comics, and possibly of the run overall, and to my pleasant surprise, this issue was actually a bit of decent fun. While most characters are still only really acting in a surface level version of their personalities, we do get some appearances from Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, which is nice to see, even though Marceline’s redesign for this series (or possibly just this issue) is certainly a…choice. It’s not particularly bad or anything, but it also doesn’t look great. That aside, this plot is yet another that feels like it would have fit pretty much anywhere in the first few seasons with its zany and high energy nature, this time involving another character exclusive to these comics: The Impressionist, an artist with special abilities to trap others in his detailed background paintings. Though it seems that he didn’t fully explore his powers, as once Finn, Jake, Flame Princess, and several others are trapped, they immediately start moving around the paintings hung up next to them, letting them all be drawn in many varying art styles before the Ice King (who just kind of shows up) is able to free them, with the Impressionist imprisoned in a painting himself for his crimes.

Like with the last issue, this story is pretty much only tangentially related to Finn and Jake’s main quest of obtaining the Enchiridion, but it at least FEELS more focused and connected since it involves characters who are usually very central to the show. And probably more importantly, this is just a really neat idea to have for an Adventure Time story, as well as one that I genuinely would have liked to see animated if it was given the chance. Seeing Finn and Jake jump around several different artstyles (some deliberate references like the Scott Pilgrim looking pic, since Scott Pilgrim is probably Oni Press’s most famous comic) is a really creative and fun thing to see, even if the Impressionist, the one who put them there, is pretty thin when it comes to villainous motivation. Still, this is a solid issue that you should pick up. And that just leaves us with one more issue for Best of Buds and, if the August solicitations are to be believed, the end of this run, with the issue released in August being a Bubblegum and Marceline college AU story for some odd reason. Ah well, see you next month for the finale!