Comic Review: Adventure Time #10

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Finn talks with Billy about what got him to retire from heroing before getting back on the hunt for Robot Finn, while Marceline tries getting Ice King to watch a tape by Simon, his former self, about the potentially dangerous power behind the Ice King’s crown.

OUR TAKE

We’re halfway through this four part story arc, and the series has officially hit double digits, so now seems a good enough time for some characters to slow down a bit and think about what they really want going forward. For Finn, it’s finding out why his hero Billy (who we found out was actually still alive last issue) decided to stop adventuring with his wife Canyon (who has apparently been a known figure in this comic’s world and not a new character introduced just last issue for the first time). And while it was nice to see Finn getting a good lesson about learning to slow down and ease up on the dangerous adventures before you don’t come back from one, what instantly stuck out to me was how verbose this version of Billy is compared to his show counterpart. Part of that is that this is a comic and you don’t need to worry about people recording lines, but also because his voice actor, Lou Ferrigno, is deaf, and so probably couldn’t get out this much dialogue anyway. Still, it’s a solid thing to teach Finn, who can now move onto the rest of this current adventure with some wisdom in his arsenal. He does run into Robot Finn near the end of the issue, but we’ll discuss that more next time when it’s more of the focus.

Meanwhile, in the issue’s B plot that doesn’t really fit in with the Finn stuff and seems to randomly cut back to at any given time, Marceline is trying to discuss things with Ice King about his crown and his former life as Simon, showing him a tape recording Simon’s experiments with Betty…and Marceline. Yeah, apparently another difference between this continuity and the show’s is that Marcy was with Simon and Betty long before the event that ended the regular society, which also colors a bit of her relationship with them differently since she would have known them in a stable environment. It’s unclear when they would have picked her up then, but maybe we’ll learn about that later on. And yet another difference is what is causing the big conflict between Marcy and Ice King, that Ice King is actually reluctant to learn more about Simon, even acting hostile to it until Marceline pleads with him and relenting to watching the tape. It looks like this will be a big part of the two remaining issues of this arc, so we’ll see where it goes in the following issue as well.