Comic Review: Adventure Time #15
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Betty tries to take a newly restored Simon to Mars with her, but he won’t go until everyone else is safe. Finn and Jake confront a scorned Magic Man, who is bitter about Betty not returning his feelings. Meanwhile, Prismo grants the Lich’s wish and Golb returns to cause chaos!
OUR TAKE
We’re at the penultimate issue of Nick Finn’s run of the current Adventure Time comic…which currently doesn’t have anyone to take the baton, based on the comic solicitations for the next few months. Could this be the beginning of the end of Oni Press’ time in The Land of Ooo?! Hard to say, but for now let’s just focus on the issue at hand, which I think really nails the build up to next month’s finale! Or, that’s what I would say if I didn’t get this weird deja vu when it comes to Golb coming back and The Lich doing…something. We dealt with both of them less than a year into the comic’s run, and back then it felt way too soon since it was only the seventh issue, but now they’re back half a year later and it feels like barely any time has passed. As mentioned, Lich goes to see Prismo to make a wish, just like in the show, but instead of the end of all life, he wishes to “defeat every Lich in the universe”, which raises the question of how many liches there are in the universe. Though as show watchers may remember, making a wish through Prismo sometimes leads to him simply sending the wisher to a new universe where the wish was granted instead of granting it in the main one. But in this case…The Lich just asked to defeat every Lich. So, did he get sent to that world or was he an unintended victim of it? I can’t imagine he’d be so dumb as to not word his wish very carefully but hopefully we’ll find out what happened next issue.
Meanwhile in the main plot, Marceline is cleaning up Magic Man’s mess of opening up the portal to the underworld, while Magic Man himself is throwing an incel fit about Betty not liking him. And now that Ice King has reverted to an Ice King colored Simon, I suppose we need to fill the incel shaped hole he left in the world. Speaking of Ice-Simon, he’s currently…thawing out, I guess? His memories are slowly coming back to him and Betty is ready to get the Glob out of there and start over in a version of their old lives on Mars, but Simon is adamant about making sure the place they’re leaving is safe first. This is a bit of a departure from Betty in the show, as while she was dead set on helping Simon escape the Ice Crown’s influence, I don’t think she was so single minded that she would leave everyone else, including Marceline, deal with the mess she’s partially responsible for while she and Simon take off. Thankfully, Simon’s conscious wins through and they’re able to subdue Magic Man with Finn and Jake’s help, but the Ice Crown is shattered in the fight, which lets Golb escape from it, and leads us into the final issue of the run, releasing next month. Despite some repeated stuff, and fighting Golb again feeling way too soon to do again, the good art really helps to keep things cohesive and flowing, so hopefully we’ll have that next time for the finale! And even beyond that, we have that Quadruple Feature miniseries and the Halloween special to hold us over until we learn what the future is.
