Comics Review: Rick and Morty – Issue #6

Spoilers Below:

This month’s issue of the Rick and Morty Comics was a bit different. Instead of being about the usual antics of the titular characters – or even Beth, Jerry, or Summer – it instead focused on The Ball Fondlers, a fictional team of TV soldiers first seen in the season one episode, “Rixty Minutes.”

I actually first heard about this issue months ago, and was a bit skeptical. Why would I want to buy a Rick and Morty comic in which the best characters don’t even appear? But of course I gave it a shot…mostly because it’s my job to review it.

The Ball Fondlers (Fulgira, Loggins, Benjamin, and Attila Starwar) were deep in the jungle, attempting to locate and rescue a U.S. Senator held captive by militants.

After a back-and-forth battle, the Ball Fondlers ended up succeeding, thanks to Benjamin, who requested an ice cold Clarg Lite to celebrate.

The whole thing ended up being some kind of lengthy show-commercial hybrid that Rick and Morty were watching.

Best Bits:

1) The only typical feature of Normalhead Regulararms were his legs.

Remember that skepticism I mentioned earlier? Well, it didn’t stop once I began reading the issue. In fact, by the halfway point I was really starting to get bored with the whole thing. It was just some kind of far-out A-Team-type action spoof with cliché dialogue, guns and bombs, and censored profanity.

The senator and his rat friend – along with Attila’s rhyming lines – provided a few chuckles, but I was still rather disappointed. Everything Rick and Morty represents seemed to be absent, save for the weird plot and characters.

Which is when I realized that this wasn’t really so far off. As much as I lamented The Simpsons Illustrated comic (which also came out yesterday) for its stylized spoofing and lack of humorous dialogue, this is a different situation.

Rick and Morty is always taking us to extremely weird places full of extremely odd characters, and “Rixty Minutes” was a brilliant episode that often lived in the alternate universe world instead of the real one (for lack of a better term). However, that show also had the talented improvisation (or pseudo improvisation) of Justin Roiland, as well as a kick-ass soundtrack to the Ball Fondlers show – oh, and it actually had the regular Rick and Morty characters for a large chunk of it. This one only had one frame. Although I laughed a good amount at that one frame, so it did better than the aforementioned comic.

Still, this ended up being a neat experiment that just wasn’t as funny as the usual issues.

Not this time, at least.