Tragedy and The Perils of Subjective Reality in Adventure Time 19

Overture: In lieu of The Wednesday Review, I take a look at the remarkable Adventure Time 19's approach to tragedy, loss, madness, and issues of subjective versus objective reality and its thematic similarities to Lem/Tarkovsky/Soderbergh's Solaris.

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It's a volume-light, quality-unremarkable Wednesday for single issues (for me, anyway), but one remarkable stand-out comic makes the calm before next week's likely flood of new books worth it: Adventure Time 19 by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb.

I've mentioned Adventure Time (the show and the comic) quite a bit here on The Comic Pusher, and for good reason. Pendleton Ward's remarkable creation is an inventive character-based action-adventure comedy with consistently superb storytelling in a richly detailed fantasy world populated by entertaining and emotionally realistic characters. Throughout the subtle and effective continuity of the series are woven increasingly complex stories of heartbreak and loss, madness and despair, love and friendship and mysteries of science and magic and the heart. Despite being fiction aimed at younger audiences, Adventure Time often presents a level of emotional maturity and humanism that one would be hard-pressed to find in most fiction of any stripe. The best Adventure Time comics reflect this duality of accessible high-energy storytelling interlaced with thematic maturity. Where the ongoing Adventure Time comic is always entertaining but can be sometimes uneven, two mini-series -  2012's Marceline and the Scream Queens by Merdith Gran and Natasha Allegri's Fiona and Cake from earlier in the year - each represented some of that year's best comic storytelling. And today's issue 19 from writer North and artists Paroline & Lamb ranks with the very best we have yet seen in this remarkable universe.

The last part of a story arc, the issue opens at the conclusion of the previous one with Finn, Jake, and Ice King on a dungeon quest, scattered across the multiverse by the remnants of The Lich. The dimension Finn ends up thrown into is the "Farmworld" dimension (from the season five three-parter), a reality where Simon Petrikov stopped the Mushroom War a thousand years earlier and where Finn has a human family and Jake is just a dog. Finn can easily see through the benefits in this dimension as nothing more than an illusion set up to entrap him. He escapes and breaks Jake free from his counterfeit reality (where everyone has Jake powers; "Oh, so that's what this feels like!"). They end up in Ice King's reality, and try to convince him to leave. But he doesn't want to.

Early on in Adventure Time, The Ice King was an annoying villain of the week, set up again and again to get punched down by Finn and Jake. But nothing is ever quite what it seems on Adventure Time, and Ice King was slowly changed from the central villain - at first presented as a wizard king with ice-ninja powers, more goblin than human - to the central tragic figure (and occasional ally of Finn and Jake). A full thousand years before the events of the series, Ice King was a normal human, Simon Petrikov. Simon was an archeologist who was in a happy relationship with the love of his life, Betty. At some point, he discovered the mystical grimoire The Enchiridion and the Ice Crown, an object not unlike Tolkein's One Ring. He puts on the crown and is granted immense power, at the expense of his relationships and career. Betty leaves him, and soon afterwards the Earth is engulfed in biological and nuclear war. Petrikov survives thanks to the Ice Crown, and encounters the young vampire Marceline Abadeer in the mutating ruins of the Earth. While trying to protect Marceline, Simon repeatedly resorts to using the Crown for the powers it gives him. But the cost on his psyche and his soul is too great. He and Marcie survive, but Simon falls completely under the Crown's spell - he looses all memory and develops his current malicious persona. He would survive, immortal, but at the total cost of his humanity, forever plagued by unrelenting hallucinations, with no memory of his past.

What transpires in Adventure Time 19 would be no less powerful on its own, but is even more moving in light of the knowledge of Ice King's immutably tragic past. Finn and Jake come across Ice King and his fiancee, Betty. They try to convince Ice King that Betty and the world aren't real, but an illusion of the Lich. "Betty" recalls details of their shared past to prove her actuality, but Finn asks how Ice King can possibly know that what she says is true. Ice King reveals that "Here, I can remember. Here I can think clearly ... There's no cost, no price" to the Ice Crown's powers. Betty takes the crown and makes an ice-construct, emblazoned with the words "Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts." As the world around them bursts into flame, Ice King single-mindedly pleads his case: "This feels like reality, only better. This Kisses like reality, only way way better. ... It's a paradise ... I can finally BE that person I remember." But Finn and Jake won't let Ice King fall victim to this reality - despite whatever Ice King feels and believes, the subjectivity of his experience, the true reality is darker, a controlled illusion, and they break him free. As their world burns down around them, "Betty" screams in pain and Ice King reaches out to her. "Simon, I-I don't feel fake-" she pleads. "You're just as real as I remember," he says as she crumbles into dust in his arms.

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These few pages of illusory reality speak volumes. Ice King has spent the last thousand years as cold and broken and alone as a human could get, to the point where he is so far from his humanity as to be physically no longer human. He is presented a reality where he not only regains his memory and is free from the psychosis which has plagued him for centuries, but he can retain his powers and be with the last, lost love of his forgotten life. The best comparison is to one of my favorite movies, Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, based on Stanislav Lem's novel and Andrei Tarkovsky's film. (I'll restrict my comparative analysis to Soderbergh's Solaris as I have not read Lem's novel and Tarkovsky's film is beautiful but maddening and not nearly as concise as Soderbergh's vision.)

In Solaris, a psychologist, Chris Kelvin, is sent to a space station orbiting an alien world, Solaris, where something very wrong has happened to the crew of the station. When he gets to the station, the surviving crew reveal that the planet is living and reaching into their minds and creating constructs of people from their pasts. These constructs are not human but look and act human. Or at least some version of it. It doesn't take long for Kelvin's construct to arrive, his dead wife. But this isn't his wife, no matter what his senses tell him - just like Betty in Adventure Time 19, she is just a simulacrum of his memories of her. But in the end Kelvin chooses death on the planet to be with this copy of his passed wife rather than go back to the objective reality of loss and pain.

Indeed, Ice King consciously makes the same exact choice as Kelvin in Solaris, completely acknowledging the objective artifice of the subjective reality he is experiencing. Both Solaris and Adventure Time 19 raise powerful questions about choice and reality. Ice King is plugged into the Matrix and is fine with it. And can you blame him? For the first time in centuries, Ice King can be Simon Petrikov, he can be sane and sound of mind, and live happily ever after with the woman he loves. Even if this is not objectively real, even if Betty is a construct made from his own buried memories, for him it is undeniably subjectively real. And subjective reality is no less real to the one experiencing it as supposed objective reality. He chooses painless suicide wrapped in the entrancing embrace of love and sanity over pain and loss and madness because who wouldn't make that choice. This isn't a matter of Ice King not knowing the consequences of his actions but accepting them with open arms.

Finn and Jake break Ice King free, but not without a note of recognition of pain and sadness from Finn and Jake. In a brief moment of lucidity when he doesn't have the Crown infecting his mind, Ice King recognizes the necessity of their actions. And he puts on the Crown and goes back to the only world he knows. If there is any silver lining to Ice King's tragedy, the effects of the Crown will make him forget the brief moment of happiness he felt. That reality is wiped away from existence completely, objectively and subjectively.

This isn't the first time the Adventure Time franchise has played with the themes of subjective reality. In the episode Puhoy Finn falls into an elaborate pillow fort and finds himself transported to a pillow world where he grows to be an adult, gets married, raises a family and dies of old age, only to come out of the fort. The memories of that time melt away like a dream, but it is more than suggested that Finn lived out those decades fully and completely. It was real to him for that entire lifetime whether or not it was an objective reality.

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There's even more to this issue as Finn, Jake and Ice King team up on the remnants of The Lich, in what is clearly a parable about the fight against depression and encroaching madness that many people battle every day. Capturing the insidious manner that depression can be used as a weapon against the Self, the Lich taunts Ice King: "I knew your secrets. I knew your failures. I knew the people you've hurt, and better, the people you've let be hurt. Why do you fight? It's hopeless." Ice King, after acknowledging his failures, notes "Giving up is easy. You know what's hard? To believe in your own worth, to know you've got something special in you ... even when you can't see it." North, in a small space that seems like pandering feel-good philosophy to get out of the conflict, really captures the infective echo chamber of depression and the first steps to escaping it. Whether or not in the long term Ice King can find peace, free from madness and amnesia, is to be seen, but increasingly as the series goes on you hope more and more for him.

Many live action dramas and long form comics cannot do what Adventure Time frequently accomplishes. It is elements like these that give Adventure Time a unique place as a hugely popular and hugely entertaining fantasy-adventure comedy that tackles complex themes with the amazing maturity and subtlety of literature.

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Adventure Time 19 is in stores today, and airs Mondays and in frequent re-runs on Cartoon Network.

Quick Hits: 9 Newish Comics for Wednesday, April 24 including Jupiter's Legacy, Adventure Time, Batwoman, FF and More

It was a huge week of releases - my stack was thirty books deep - with some truly extraordinary comics to give quality to the quantity. In this week's Wednesday Review I look at a bunch of new comics from the past two weeks including Jupiter's Legacy, Adventure Time, Batwoman and much more, and I throw some love at FF and MIND MGMT which were a couple of the best single issues I've read this year. 

Leading with Adventure Time again, this time the series-proper. Adventure Time by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb has been consistently entertaining, but for me often lags behind the spin-off minis like Fiona & Cake and Marceline & The Scream Queens. Indeed, when I voted in this year's Eisner Awards, I didn't vote for Adventure Time despite its many nominations (I did vote for Meredith Gran's Marceline, however). As I've said before, Adventure Time isn't bad at all, it's just that the several serialized stories, while entertaining, have been too long and don't quite hold up over several issues. But Adventure Time 15 is a self-contained one-shot, and it's also the best issue of the series so far. In the issue, Magic Man shows up and ruins Princess Bubblegum's Princess Tea Party, and naturally Fin & Jake save the collected princesses from his evildo. Unfortunately, they're blasted with a magic ray that removes their ability to speak - EXCEPT they can talk in pictograms that appear over their head in word balloons, word balloons the other characters can see and try to interpret. This is a wonderfully ingenious use of the language of comics within the very story and word balloons themselves. In a story where the Princesses are the ones saving the day, there are plenty of laugh-out-load moments throughout including priceless Lumpy Space Princessisms. This feels like a solid episode of Pendleton Ward's astonishing television series, full of energy, fun little character moments and snappy dialogue, except it exists so solidly within the language of comics that it can only exist on the comic page. Adventure Time 15 is inventive, clever, and a hell of a lot of fun - it almost made me regret snubbing it at the Eisners, but if North, Paroline & Lamb keep giving us issues like this they'll get my vote next year.

In a week where The Massive (literally) almost jumped the shark, MIND MGMT (along with this week's FF) had one of the best single issues I've read this year. In MIND MGMT 10 Matt Kindt gives us a largely self-contained issue that continues to build on the labyrinthine superspy epic he's been building to since the beginning. The focus is on Duncan, a private investigator who is also a very powerful telepath: he can sense the thoughts and desires of every living thing within a fifteen mile radius. (For a man who can pretty much get whatever he wants, this is a profession chosen out of ennui rather than challenge or desire.) Rather than being overwhelming, the key element of his power - like a supertelepathic version of Laplace's Demon¹ - is that by knowing the position and intention of every living thing around him he can process the direction of reality and even bend it to his whim by subtle manipulation. Lyme and Meru need Duncan and the power he wields, and the second half focuses on the central question of how to get to someone, how to surprise someone as powerful as Duncan. The first half is a layered and detailed examination of character and intention, the thoughts and feelings swimming around Duncan throughout as an effective and integral part of the milieu as Kindt's beautiful watercolors. From the telepaths of the Marvel Universe to indy works like Bodyworld, explorations of telepathy in comics are frankly nothing new, but here Kindt's presentation of Duncan's powers and Lyme & Meru's attempts at confronting him utilize Kindt's unique visual style in breathtaking and effective ways. Kindt is consistently upping the creative ante with every issue of this phenomenal series, and you can even read issue ten as a stand-alone tale. (If you've been meaning to read MIND MGMT, pick this issue up or get issue one as part of Dark Horse's One for $1 reprint series, or read my review of the first volume here.) And as for this week's aforementioned issue of Brain Wood's The Massive (also from Dark Horse), Declan Shalvey's art is a decided disservice to the tale, not that Wood's absurd story is much better. Hopefully this is just a hiccup in an otherwise interesting and well-produced series, but if the downturn continues one could easily see issue 11 as the point where the book figuratively - and quite absurdly enough, literally - jumps the shark.

One of the best new Marvel Now books is Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie's Young Avengers. This book is fresh and entertaining and such a joy to read, and Gillen has a solid grasp of these characters. In each issue, Gillen utilizes the many strengths of his longtime collaborator McKelvie, who's bold line and innovative layouts are a perfect fit for the story. About once an issue Gillen & McKelvie come to the line represented what we usually get in superhero fare, and they obliterate it. In their work on this series they are simply shattering mainstream conventions, with wit and a smile. More than a gimmick, their stunning and inventive constructions play with the language of comics like it was their own personal toy, all while dropping bombs rooted in interpersonal relationships and genuine character drama. This week's issue four finally brings the team together ("Come with me if you want to be awesome." Yes, please.) while showing that Kid Loki is still Loki, the liesmith, the manipulator of truths, the seeder of doubt. It exists in triptych with Matt Fraction's Hawkeye and FF as the best of Marvel Now, modern, post-superheroic superhero supercomics. And this week's FF - with fill-in Joe Quinones aping Allred/Allred fairly effectively - was just as good as Young Avengers, achieving extraordinary heights in its self-contained one-shot. The Yancy Street Gang are up to shenanigans that Scott Lang deviously unravels, Dragon Man looks for a missing Bentley in a cutaway Baxter Building to take your breath away, and one of the single best pages of the year gives us a moment of acceptance and beauty and love, funny and touching and exhilarating throughout. Fantastic Four has always been about family, and that even when you're not related, its the family you chose and fight for and love despite and because of who they are that matters. Astonishing stuff.

The only reason I read Batwoman is for J.H. Williams III's art. Williams is an extraordinary artist, utilizing multiple styles of illustration and innovative whole-page layouts that make his work distinct from pretty much everyone else working in comics. The downside is that his work takes a while, so we are often left with mediocre fill-ins. And I really have not been liking his work as a writer on the title - the whole story with La Llorna just doesn't interest me, and I miss the work Greg Rucka did with Williams on Batwoman when she was introduced in Detective Comics a few years ago. That's why Batwoman 19 was a pleasant surprise. Trevor McCarthy's art utilizes a lot of the same visual tricks that Williams often uses without it seeming like he was ripping off Williams' style. McCarthy's stuff finds the balance where his art is visually cohesive with Williams' while being just different enough. It feels right for the title even though it obviously isn't Williams. And the story holds up, too. In it the DEO are manipulating Batwoman into going after Batman (with a nice little twist at the end), and Batwoman & Flamebird's family come to terms with Flamebird's new vigilantism. The Flamebird stuff is really fascinating, actually. Jacob Kane, who supports Kate Kane's work as Batwoman, is also supporting Kate's cousin Bette in her new identity as Flamebird. There is some craziness that must come into play when you risk your life and get dressed up and go out and punch criminals. One could make the argument that supporting someone who does this makes you partially responsible for what happens to them. Bette has almost been killed once already, and yet her family are choosing to enable her dangerous activities. Ultimately how is this different than a family that ignores a person's drug addiction or self-abusive behavior? Even worse, the Kanes are actively encouraging it. Unsurprisingly when it comes to the Bat-family of characters, someone is put in a situation they shouldn't be, be it small children or just plain untrained people fighting supervillains. And far too often with the Bat-books, these issues are raised but not ultimately addressed - sure Batman got his son killed, but that's not going to stop him from recruiting another Robin, indoctrinating another child soldier. In Batwoman, we see the role family plays in this brand of superheroics, and in their irresponsible enabling it is a profoundly negative and potentially destructive one.

Reading a Frank Quitely comic not written by Grant Morrison is like reading a Sean Phillips comic not written by Ed Brubaker (and we get one of those, too, in this week's Dark Horse Presents). In the first issue of the much much much anticipated Jupiter's Legacy out this week from Image, Mark Millar and Frank Quitely give us a superhero tale focusing on the latest generation of superpowered people, the immediate descendents of the first generation of superheroes that rose up in the dark hours of Depression-era America. The first third is about the quest for those powers, one man's dreams infected by a mysterious island and the island that gave rise to superheroes. The second third is a modern-day battle between some superheroes and some random supervillain that has a really, really cool moment & panel that brings the fight to a stop only to devolve into tired arguments about the role of superheroes in the modern era of corporate malfeasance in the great recession. The last third is a dull look at some young superpowered twentysomethings as they hang out at a club and overdose on spacecoke. The entire thing is startlingly underwhelming. There is great focus on the idealism of the golden age heroes and the cynicism and lack of service in the modern age heroes, but the idealistic golden-agers and their motivations in the 1930s are more than a little silly, and the modern-agers are just dull celebutantes. And the argument about the role of modern superheroes was overwrought and just plain dumb in a been-there-done-that kind of way. The ending of the issue is sudden and barely shrugworthy. Quitely's art is of course stunning, but he's trying to spin gold out of straw and it's just not working. The anticipation for Jupiter's Legacy has seemed to reach a fever pitch, as a new creator-owned superhero book from a couple of the industry's top-flight a-list talents should (though, lets be honest, Millar is a huckster's huckster, a hustler's hustler who can sell water to a fish). It's just a damn shame that the book isn't very good.

And speaking of pretty and dumb... If there's something that can be said about Frank Cho, it's that he's good at drawing dinosaurs and boobs and butts and, apparently, big gorillas. There's much to criticize about his style, mainly the lack of variation in the female form - but the one body he loves to draw he loves to draw well. Beyond the eye-rollingly scantily clad women populating his stories, he's a damn fine craftsman with a detailed style. It's cheesecake, for sure, but it's high quality cheesecake. In Savage Wolverine 4, writer/illustrator Cho keeps on giving us a Shanna the She-Devil story with Wolverine and Amadeus Cho in the Savage Land. There is much stabbing and there are dinosaurs and it's all very dumb. But it is pretty in a shallow, vacuous kindof way. Far less shallow and far more entertaining is Chris Samnee's art in Daredevil 25. Marcos Martin and Paolo Rivera are hard acts to follow but Samnee manages to pull it off with style. In the story written by Mark Waid, someone with powers similar to Daredevil is coming after the Man Without Fear, and DD may have met his match. While the ending is a little silly (just finish him off!) the art throughout is pretty amazing.

Quick Hits: Ten New (and Newish) Comics and Collections for Wednesday, April 10

In this week's Wednesday Review I look at a bunch of new comics from this week (and last week, while we're at it) including Thanos, Batman, Spidey, Adventure Time, Marvel NOW and more.

(And while you're here, check out my reviews on the new releases Indestructible Hulk 6 and Julio's Day.)

Adventure Time, come on and grab your friends. Fionna and Cake 4 drops today and we get yet another fabulous comic written and illustrated by Fionna creator Natasha Allegri. Much like Meredith Gran's superb Marceline mini-series - truly actually seriously one of 2012's best comics - the side series continue to be better than the ongoing Adventure Time book. Which isn't to say that Adventure Time proper is bad, it's quite good. It's clever and fun and zany but it just doesn't click the same way Fionna and Marceline do. Part of the appeal of Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake is that this isn't just some all-ages perfunctory hackwork thing for Allegri, she created these characters for the Adventure Time television show, and they are clearly near and dear to her heart. The gender-swapped universe of Fionna and Cake is far more than just a Rule 63 version of the Adventure Time universe, these are fully fleshed out characters with their own unique perspective on the world of Ooo. Allegri's Fionna is a fierce, independent teenage girl who likes to punch stuff and she's pretty awesome. In this week's number 4 we get a largely stand-alone issue: the ongoing drama of what the Ice King did to the Fire Elemental gets a sliver of exposition, but the focus is on Lumpy Space Prince, just as divinely ridiculous as L.S. Princess. He steals Fionna's magic wand to make himself beautiful. The introduction to this sequence is just as stunning as the first magical pages of issue one, with the mini-series characteristic flowing script on an all black page, "To be on the cusp of impossible beauty has been my curse since the day I was born..." A remarkable sequence of simple beauty, followed by a series of wonderfully silly misadventures, cured by good ole fashioned punching. Allegri's cartooning is inspired and full of love and life. This is a wonderful comic in every aspect, delightful, whimsical, funny, elegant in story and art and lettering. Even for casual fans you can dive right into this without the other issues, and the rewards to loyal Adventure Time fans are legion. Not as deep as Gran's Marceline and the Scream Queens but just as good, this is shaping up to be one of the best series of the year.

I'm a huge fan of Jason Aaron. Scalped is one of the comic medium's true masterpieces, and I have always been consistently entertained by his superhero work for Marvel. Thanos (the world destroying Mad Titan) is a big deal for Marvel right now - for Marvel the comic publisher he will be playing a significant role in Brian Bendis's cosmic books and Jonathan Hickman's Avengers, for Marvel the movie studio he's the Big Bad of Phase Two. Marvel's got a lot invested in Thanos right now, so an origin-type mini-series written by Aaron sounds like a pretty awesome idea. Except the execution of the opening chapter that new series is just kind of lame. Thanos Rising #1 not bad, it just kindof is, and that's all. Featuring art by Simone Bianchi, (who I've never really cottoned to, to be honest) the book opens with Thanos meandering the ruins of Titan (Saturn's moon which once hosted an advanced sentient species). Titan, and many another world, lies in ruins because of Thanos, and his perambulations are a trip down memory lane, back to when he was but a wee lad, many years before he would develop his infatuation with the lady Death. Born with a mutation that made him all purpley and odd looking, his father was a well-regarded (royal?) scientist-type who always accepted him. Thanos's mother on the other hand, immediately upon his birth (with possibly the best case of mother's intuition in the history of the galaxy) tried to kill him. She was rewarded with a lifetime stay in the looney bin for her prescience. Anyway, we get small vignettes of Thanos as a kid mercilessly taunted um, completely accepted by his peers. As a student he gleefully tortured animals uh, was queasy around scientific dissections. There was a small incident where some of his friends died and a weird girl was taking a liking to him, but nothing all that traumatic. Aaron doesn't exactly follow what one would expect of such an origin, which is nice, but honestly, the book is kind of toothless. It's unimpressive fluff. I didn't know what to expect going in, but I didn't expect the book to be boring, which, sadly, it was. (This week's Thor was really, really good though. Read that.)

Oh, Dan Slott, you continue to surprise me by how much I LOVE Superior Spider-Man including last week's new number 7. I was mad-skeptical going in and every issue you win me over more and more. Spider-Otto has been going a bit too far of late, killing a dude a couple of issues back (a really bad guy, sure, but still killing). This murder had a handful of the Avengers debating what the dilly with Spidey, killing is just too far, though they do nothing at first because of the Avengers discussing this - Captain America, Spider-Woman, Black Widow, Thor, Wolverine - all have killed in the past (a couple have killed lots of folks). The final straw is Spidey's mercilessly savage beatdown of some c-list publicity hounds and the good guy Cardiac. Killing is one thing, but Spider-Man losing his cool before the world and going after those below him is just bad for business, and the Avengers finally confront him, much to ghost-Peter's delight. About damn time, too. Slott's scripting is energetic, logical, nasty fun, Humerto Ramos on art is Humberto Frickin' Ramos just killing it. Most of the issues are self contained or super easy to dive into, so if you've been on the fence about reading this, just do it. It's so weird and different and fun and cool.

DC's Animal Man 19 from Jeff Lemire and Steve Pugh was the first issue after the recent, long cross-over with Swamp Thing involving something called the Rot. Swamp Thing is the avatar of the Green, Animal Man Buddy Baker (actually his young daughter) is the avatar of the Red (animals, logically), and for far too many issues they fought the rot, death and the like. Whatever, I stopped reading both when that crossover began and issue 19 was the first part after that whole mess, a nice jumping-back-on point. Unfortunately, the issue was one long extended bit of hand-wringing over the death of Buddy's son in issue 18. A lot of Buddy confronting the elders of the Red demanding they bring his son back to life, his wife leaving him over the death, lots of boohoohooing. Yeah, kids' deaths suck, I get it, but when can I get the entertaining comic about Buddy Baker that the initial New 52 story arc showed was possible? Because if there is more of this slog through grief and yadda yadda, I'm just going to drop the bloody book again.

Everyone! Buy lots of these! They'll put your kids through college, for reals!

Hey, speaking of getting your son killed, lets check in on Batman! Things are dark and weird in Batman and Robin 19. Bruce Wayne is frankly off his rocker, going after Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. (Frankenshade to the cool kids) because Frankenstein is some weird undead dude and Batman can totally use him to resurrect Damian! Riiiight, Bruce, chill out homie, you're barking up the wrong tree with this and - oh, too late, you're already disassembling Frankie stitch by stitch while raving like a madman and oh, look at all those cadavers you totally just stole. Red Robin shows up and tries smacking some sense into him, but that dude too far gone. Bruce is a mess, this book is a mess, at least there' symmetry. Oh, and about that cover - Batman on the front, and behind the gatefold (oh, yeah, DC is doing gatefolds this month, viva la 90s) is Carrie Kelly as Robin. That would be the Future Robin from the Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns continuity. What the Frankenstein is she doing on the cover? Is she the new Robin? Well, no. See, unknown to Bruce (and conveniently the audience) she'd been giving Damian acting lessons or something and shows up at Wayne manner demanding payment and to know where the kid is for more lessons. Bruce eventually tracks her down to her place where she's having a costume party and she's dressed as Robin, hoho! Kelly is written as a firebrand of some entertainment, but the concept is as messy as the whole Frankenshade A-story and doesn't actually end with her as Robin or even going in that direction. Sure this is the first DCU appearance of the character, but its a bit disingenuous, to be generous. Over in Batman 19 there are some mistaken identity shenanigans going on that are obvious, really. Plus some Bruce brooding over dead Damian that's more effective than the siliness in And Robin. A very efficient, straight-forward, really well put together Batman comic. Snyder and Capullo for the Bat-win, as usual. Also, a Superman/Batman back-up with art by Alex Maleev? Say what? That shizz isn't even on the cover. A nice little surprise for your $3.99.

A few new Marvel NOW collections came out last week, including All-New X-Men by Brian Bendis and Stuart Immonen and Fantastic Four/FF by Matt Fraction, Michael & Laura Allred and Mark Bagley. First, in All-New X-Men: Yesterday's X-Men (collecting the first five issues in hardcover), Bendis has the X-Men team from the 1960s brought to the present by a dying Hank McCoy to teach current Scott Summers a lesson. A shifty premise that I doubted even more than Superior Spider-Man going in. I tried it out because of Immonen on the art, and I stuck with it because it's a surprisingly entertaining comic that doesn't stretch believability too much. A nice opener for the new era of Scott Summers renegade, the book is just a lot of fun, plain and simple, and holds together very nicely. In Fantastic Four: New Departures, New Arrivals, we get the first three issues each of Matt Fraction's Fantastic Four with Mark Bagley and FF with Michael Allred. Marvel's decision to alternate the two titles in one volume is doubly perplexing because the storylines don't really alternate lock-step after the first issues, and they didn't do this with the end of Jonathan Hickman's superb run which absolutely did alternate. Frustrating, but whatever. The Bagley stuff has the first family going out on a trip through time and space on Reed Richards' behest, FF follows the gloriously Allred/Allred illustrated adventures of the replacement heroes at the Future Foundation. I've been enjoying the Allred stuff way more than the Bagley stuff, weird heroes and odd story be damned, and would have much more appreciated an Allred only volume (though it looks like subsequent volumes will thankfully be separate). This is Marvel and you take what you can get, and at least at six issues of content the $15.99 price point is a great value, so unlike Marvel of late. (And also new in hardcover is Iron Man: Believe, collecting the first five issues of the Marvel NOW relaunch. Well, I can't believe how wretched Greg Land's art is. Not even the normally excellent Kieron Gillen can overcome it. Just spend fifteen bucks more and get the first nineteen issues of Matt Fraction & Salvador Larroca's superb run in one fantastic deluxe hardcover instead.)

And speaking of Fantastic Four, aw, gee wiz, this week's new number 6 was a BLAST. The Fam Four (well, six, but that's not as alliterative) goes back to the Big Bang and run into a Big Bad who's a BLAST from the past. (Once you read the issue, my puns here will be infinitely more clever to you, I swear.) The issue is packed with sci-fi adventure, humor and action. It's a damned fine superfamily superhero comic. A good stand-alone issue, too, and I love a good one-shot.

Quick Hits: Avengers 7, Hellboy In Hell 4, Adventure Time With Fiona and Cake 3, and Age of Ultron 1

It's a solid week in new graphic novels, including the Sleeper Omnibus by Brubaker & Phillips, a new printing of Eisner's Last Day in Vietnam, Humanoid's gigantic printing of Jodorowsky and Moebious's The Luminous Incal, and a superb value in the complete Shade - all 12 issues in one GN by for just $20. Right now, though, I'm going to highlight four new individual issue releases out today, Wednesday, March 6.

Avengers 7

Avengers 7 continues Jonathan Hickman's visionary turn at Marvel's flagship team. Of the several Avengers books, it's Hickman's two ongoing series that take the cake week in, week out. After a few issues featuring fantastic origin pieces, things dive back into the thick of it with the encroachment of the New Universe into the 616, a new White Event in the modern era. The Multiverse is collapsing and a new Starbrand is sent to Earth, but things go terribly wrong. Featuring a nifty twist and expectedly fantastic art from Hickman's S.H.I.E.L.D. collaborator Dustin Weaver, this is a fantastic bit of storytelling. This is just the beginning of a very long story that gives us a truly unique turn with the Avengers, utilizing the best of Marvel's large catalog of unique characters otherwise gathering dust in dime bins. I'm getting a Grant Morrison vibe reading these, not in the sense that Hickman's stuff is derivative or like Morrison's at all, it's not: What it is is a fresh turn featuring big stakes and bigger ideas, so many the pages can barely contain them. This is the best thing to happen to the Avengers since the Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon and that little movie that came out last year. Extraordinary stuff.

Hellboy In Hell 4

Hellboy in Hell 4 is unbridled Mike Mignola, an assured cartoonist with a unique storytelling style working gleefully with his best creation at the top of his game. Every little trick of narration that Mignola invented in his moody, horror noir stlye is on display, in a creepy, dark underworld inhabited by mysteries and questions and demons. Hellboy is in Hell, and Mignola is like a kid in a playground. This is some of his best stuff, creepy, moody, funny, dark. And Dave Stewart's colors proves why he is one of the best in the business.

Age of Ultron 1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Bryan Hitch is everything that is wrong with event comics and superhero comics. An ugly mess from start to finish, we open with a destroyed New York under the apparent oppression of a returned Ultron. Hawkeye is on a solo mission to rescue Spider-Man (Superior or Amazing, does it even matter here?) from some C-listers who made a deal with Ultron or something. Whatever, when he finds him and brings him back to the small handful of surviving heroes, they aren't too pleased because Ultron could have infected them or something and there's lots of Bendisian arguing and blahhhhhh. We're dumped into this mid-story to, I guess, shock us that things have fallen so badly, that Ultron has somehow completely taken over and our heroes are helpless. What we get is another event comic where everything is destroyed and everyone is at risk, and nothing matters because in six months everything will be shiny and new again but until then every other comic will feel the Age Of ULTRON!!! and it's all so pointless and ugly and stupid and I'm sick of stories like this. Widespread wanton death and apocalyptic destruction for the tenth time this year. And of course, this is an Event, hoho, and There Will Be Tie-Ins, because every Marvel comic should be just as shitty. Bendis's dialogue is his standard overlapping useless mess, Hitch's needless hyper-detailed art is just as hopeless and ugly as the whole bloody concept, and to make matters worse there is a 1990s style Chromium foil cover thing. You can put chrome on a turd, but it's still a turd. The worst part is that there are, like, 11 more issues of this tripe. It's books like this that make a True Believer truly bitter. Please stop, Marvel, just... stop.

Adventure Time!

But then I got to Adventure Time with Fiona and Cake 3 and all was right with the world. Natasha Allegri is having so much fun with her gender-swapped versions of Pendleton Ward's extraordinary cartoon, it oozes out of the pages. There is a glorious moment when Fiona and Cake absolutely revel is candy-gore. A bunch of stuff happens, and it's wonderfully illustrated and even the lettering is inspired and whimsical and fun. Thank Kirby for are comics like this. It's funny and pretty and exciting and wonderful and... just buy it.

Analysis: Adventure Time: Goliad

Adventure Time, Season 4, Episode 10: Goliad
Original airdate, June 4, 2012

This is a reprint of an article written in Summer, 2012.

"I Was Afraid This Might Happen" ~or~ "It's My Way Or The Highway, Gob-Globbit" - An analysis of the Adventure Time episode, "Goliad"

Adventure Time is the remarkable television series from Pendleton Ward and Cartoon Network. It is that rare show that easily appeals to kids and adults alike, possessing a complex and nuanced continuity and quality of character-based storytelling unlike any other animated series on the air. Here I analyze one notable recent episode, "Goliad."

"Goliad" starts with Finn and Jake being summoned to the Candy Kingdom: Princess Bubblegum, spurred on by her prior near-fatal encounter with The Lich, and after more than 80 hours with no sleep, has created an heir to the Throne to rule over her Kingdom when she someday dies. Creating living things is old hat for the superscientist-monarch, and she has outdone herself with Goliad, a large, immortal sphinx-like creature forged from Bubblegum's own DNA. Goliad introduces herself to Finn and Jake with the voice and casual innocence of a small child. Despite the exertion and sleeplessness, Bubblegum wants to start teaching the being about leadership - Goliad was designed to be smart, literally scary-smart. Fearing for Bubblegum's health, Finn and Jake intervene, offering to teach Goliad all they know. Bubblegum agrees, and sleeps. Finn and Jake go out into the world with a genetic nuclear bomb.

While Finn builds an obstacle course to physically develop Goliad, Jake takes her to a nearby pre-school to learn some basics. Instead she is witness to a school of really, truly terrible, misbehaved youths. After the kids try to eat Jake's brain, Jake looses his cool. Goliad sees this as a valuable lesson in leadership: To get the kids through the obstacle course, she immediately reverts to bully tactics, yelling and intimidation. Finn implores her to not be heavy handed and authoritarian, but to use her brain. At this point, a third eye emerges from Goliad's head. She telekenetically freezes Finn and forces him through the obstacle course, an act that is clearly physically and mentally traumatic to a young hero who has been shown accustomed to physical and mental trauma. To this point Goliad has been seen as wide-eyed to the world and a bit over-eager, not intentionally dangerous. She took control of Finn's body and mind, forced him through against his will because this was the quickest, most efficient way - she has no concept of the pain she caused, or of the ramifications of bypassing Free Will in such a manner.

Finn, gasping: "You can't just control people or whatever, it's messed up." And here, the turn. Without hesitation, without a shred of doubt, Goliad answers simply, serenely, "No, Finn, this way is good. Everyone did what I wanted. Really fast, no mistakes, calm, like you said. This, definitely, is the way to lead." Goliad is no mere overgrown child fumbling her way through a strange, new world: she is a being of immense mental and physical power with no regard for choice or the well-being of those under her, where there is no concept of the end not justifying the means because there are no means, only the end. She is completely certain of the righteousness of her actions because she is achieving the ultimate goal of peaceful leadership, not just the imperative of the potential ruler but her genetic imperative, the very thing Bubblegum created her for.

Upon hearing Goliad's counter-argument of peace through control, no matter how morally repugnant, Finn does not immediately reject it as evil. He stumbles, and questions "No, no, wait, is that true?" Finn has a very well-defined moral code and an utterly unshakable sense of right and wrong. When confronted with this new reality of peace through absolute power, absolute control, Finn sees a shade of grey and for the first time in the series he is stopped in his moral tracks. We, the audience, are not given an answer and must work through the myriad issues of the use of power and free will ourselves (few television shows have the fortitude, intelligence, and faith in the audience to pull this off, just some of Adventure Time's many qualities).

We cut to the heroes who track down Bubblegum and inform her of what has happened. Bubblegum responds to news of Goliad's sudden embrace of authoritarianism through mind-control with an astonishing and revelatory resignation, "I was afraid this might happen." She confronts Goliad, who is now far beyond her ability to control, and attempts to reason with the creature, to introduce a more sympathetic, empathetic philosophy of rule. Bubblegum shows Goliad a bee and it's symbiotic relationship with the flower: the bee gets what it wants, the flower gets what it wants.

But Goliad cannot be persuaded, she has found the Answer to the Question of Rule and it is Control, and the right to rule is hers by virtue of her Power. There is nothing else to consider, not safety or happiness or choice. Goliad, with the same sense of serenity that comes from knowledge of pure righteousness, pure power, takes the bee: "Bee cares not for flower. If getting pollen hurt or kill flower, bee would not care. Bee is stronger than flower." She crushes the bee. "Goliad is stronger than bee." She resurrects the bee. "Goliad is stronger than all." This is a frightening display of the universal corruption of Power. This is Might Makes Right, the true story of Power in every System.

Bubblegum, thinking to herself, sees that Goliad is simply too powerful, "too far gone, too corrupted... I'll have to disassemble her and try again." But Goliad reads her mind and casually takes the castle and the Kingdom. This is all Goliad's, now, and Goliad rather likes that. Bubblegum rushes back to her lab to create another Candy Sphinx, one that can counter Goliad's immense power. After force-feeding Jake the nearby inhabitants of the Candy Kingdom, Goliad tries to rip Bubblegum's plan from Finn's mind (unsuccessfully - this is the greatest hero in all of Ooo, after all). And when all seems lost, Bubblegum arrives with a new being, a new nearly omnipotent Übermensch (Übersüßigkeitmensch, perhaps?). A being of blond hair and with a single-minded purpose, Storm-o.

Storm-o quickly takes out Goliad, freeing Finn. Goliad sees right away what has transpired. "Wait, brother! Why must we fight? Rule with me!" Storm-o is implacable, refusing to yield. Now Goliad sees her fate, a fate Storm-o has already embraced. They lunge at each other and end up locked in psychic battle, two perfectly matched beings of incomprehensible power, trapped inside the other for the rest of time, the total stalemate. Finn asks "If Goliad and Storm-o are the same, how come Storm-o's a good guy?" Bubblegum: "I used some of your heroic DNA in the recipe, and [tellingly here:] not Goliad's." Storm-o, the creation of Princess Bubblegum and the genetic scion of Finn the human, and also the final puzzle piece in the picture of Bubblegum as villainess-potential.

Let's look at the root of the conflict: Princess Bubblegum, after nearly meeting her mortal end, and only after discovering that the science/magic of Ooo cannot extend her own life into the infinite, creates a creature of extraordinary power to extend her rule past the bounds of death. She intentionally designed an immortal creature capable of mind control to subjugate her Kingdom for Eternity. An act she knew could backfire! ("I was afraid this might happen.") And backfire not for the first time, either: The Earl of Lemongrab, who briefly usurped power in season 3, was also created to be heir-apparent. Lemongrab, Bubblegum's creation, responded to power by trying to imprison everyone.

These schemes have long since stopped being a benevolent back-up plan to ensure continuity of power. It is simply reckless tyranny.

And here is where a startling character revelation seems to emerge: Princess Bubblegum may be the Story's great antagonist.

One of Adventure Time's remarkable traits is the consistency of the subtle and nuanced character portrayals. The creators have a very clear vision of who these characters are and what they mean to each other and the roles they will play in the larger story woven in the background. In repeat viewings you see that there is not a wasted character or line of dialog. Seemingly one-off or background characters (or even sight-gags, hello Waving Snail) come back later, often in important roles. Bits of seemingly throw-away character dialog are revealed to expose massive elements of who these characters are. Some episodes hinge on plot twists that rely on the viewer's knowledge of the characters and their histories and relationships. But as with anything, not everything is as it seems: The Ice King is at once the show's cheapest plot tool (he wants princesses, Finn and Jake intervene, repeat) and the show's most tragic character (a thousand years ago he unearthed an artifact that took over his mind, destroyed his relationships, cursed him to be an immortal ninja ice-wizard-monarch plagued by constant visual hallucinations).

Bubblegum is good-natured and she cares deeply for her people and for science as a tool for progress. But she is also consistently portrayed making terrible scientific mistakes (usually in the aim of achieving something pretty disturbing) resulting in everything from the all-powerful ruler-sphinxes to multiple instance of mass zombie-ism. When confronted with a massive error in judgment in the creation of a god-like sphinx, she creates another one. There is no check or balance on the science she wields, no second opinion or oversight on the ethics or consequences of her actions. Is she a mad scientist using her royal subjects as test subjects, a pink, pretty Doctor Doom? Or is she simply a driven scientist who seeks progress at nearly all costs. Both can achieve amazing results and the line between the two, as exhibited in Bubblegum's actions and even personality, can be very blurry.

Now take the creations of Goliad and Storm-o. Storm-o is inherently, unshakably good because of Finn's DNA. Bubblegum makes this clear, but she's also obfuscating a deeper truth with tricky wordplay. She contrasts the two being's dual-nature by noting that Storm-o doesn't have Goliad's DNA. What she means (and what we can see right away) is that Storm-o doesn't have *her* DNA.

Storm-o is good because of Finn. Goliad is evil because of Bubblegum.

Goliad decides she knows what is best for her people, and will do whatever it takes to ensure and enforce peace and order. Just like Bubblegum. Goliad used mind-control, Bubblegum uses science. And there is the unavoidable grander metaphor in the deadlocked sphinxes, pure opposites of equal power, fated to an eternity of even-matched battle. Finn is still coming to terms with the inescapable reality that, despite everything they have been through, Finn and Bubblegum will never be together (a great pain in the heart and soul of our hero). And maybe the message in the image of the deadlocked sphinxes is that Finn and Bubblegum cannot be together, not because of mere incompatibility but because they are opposites, destined to be at odds in the future. Finn can never be with Bubblegum because to be with her is to put himself and his home in the crosshairs.

Is Bubblegum a young woman teetering on the razor's edge of good and evil? Is she a developing villain? Or is she like most people, a good person capable of ungood things? Bubblegum is not a true villain in this story by any means (that would be the Lich, of course), but it is hard not to see the potential for villainy in her or to entertain the idea that some act of hers may put Ooo in some grave jeopardy? I may be reading too much into this of course, but this is a series that hides things in plain sight and thrills in seeding stories that do not pay off for months or years. The stories of Storm-o and Goliad are not over and the fate of Ooo may be intertwined with theirs.

Whatever the potentialities, there is salvation for Bubblegum and Ooo in Finn the Human. Finn's inherent goodness, his willingness to fight Fate, and his belief in the goodness of others may prove to be the x-factor that tips the scales in favor of Bubblegum's redemption. And he has shown in dozens of instances that he will fight for what is right until he cannot fight anymore - he is nigh-unstoppable. Mere destiny has not stopped Finn before and I don't see that happening now, especially if it involves someone he loves. In the episode "The New Frontier," Jake dreams of his death, a prophesy to be embraced - Finn successfully fights off the weight of destiny and disrupts the very path of the future itself to save his brother. Even the presence of the Cosmic Owl, one of the series' two acknowledged deities, could not dissuade Finn from saving Jake. Bubblegum can drift towards villainy all she wants (or doesn't want), it matters little because Finn will be there to stop it, or die trying.

Finn may also be the salvation of Bubblegum because Finn will always believe in Bubblegum, always, no matter her actions. But even Finn's unassailable belief in others may prove to be his undoing: In the episode "In Your Footsteps" an impressionable bear shows up mimicking Finn, looking to be a hero like him. Jake does not trust the bear, but Finn sees nothing wrong and accepts and encourages the bear in his path. Finn's belief and acceptance backfire on him - unknown to him, the bear was an agent of The Lich, and the bear-spy succeeded in delivering to The Lich the Enchiridion, the manual of heroism on Ooo and the device that nearly succeeds in turning the entire Multiverse over to the Lich. Finn's pure heart was nearly the key to his ruin. If he was wrong about the bear, could he be wrong about Bubblegum? Could Bubblegum be used against Finn unknowingly, only to turn on him knowingly?

And perhaps this all means everything to the future of our characters and the show, and perhaps it is all meaningless.

"Goliad" is one of Adventure Time's most complex and layered episodes in a series full of them. Time will tell the importance and impact of these events, or at the very least reveal that I think about shit like this way to much.

c) 2012, 2013 Jeffrey O. Gustafson