Wednesday, July 20, 2016

CBR Adventure Time OGN Vol. 5: Graybles Schmaybles


Today let's check out the fifth Adventure Time original graphic novel.

Sadly this spinoff series isn't about secondary characters anymore and what we have here is another adventure of Finn and Jake... without leaving their couch inside the treehouse!


Looney Tunes Show
Over the Garden Wall - Special #1
Regular Show - The Movie / Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land
Steven Universe
Steven Universe Vol.1 (KaBOOM!)
SU Original Graphic Novels: Vol. 1: Too Cool for School

Comic title: Adventure Time Original Graphic Novel Volume 5: Graybles Schmaybles or simply Adventure Time: Graybles Schmaybles 
Art by Bridget Underwood & Meredith McClaren
Written by Danielle Corsetto

Published by Boom! Studios imprint KaBOOM! Studios
From April 2015.
Lineup Adventure Time OGN series
Format: Digest-sized softcover original graphic novel.

Along the super-popular Eisner award-winning main Adventure Time comic book series, Boom! Studios keep publishing all kinds of mini-series. From the stand alone spinoff series to their line of companion original graphic novels. Don't let the volume number fool you, despite that on the spine these are perfectly self-contained standalone stories.

The first few graphic novels explored different set of secondary characters outside the main heroes of the series Finn the Human and Jake the Dog. Following four digest-sized manga-inspired (think Scott Pilgrim) graphic novels - Playing With Fire, Pixel Princesses, Seeing Red and Bitter Sweets - comes yet another installement, Graybles Schmaybles!

This volume was inspired by the anthology of shorts stories format from the show - the "Graybles"!

This 5th volume was in the hands of a new creative team, written by Danielle Corsetto with art by Bridget Underwood, and released last year in April 2015.


Our story begins when Finn and Jake were helping Party God out in the woods. They suddenly found this weird little tiny cube lost in the middle of the forest!

They take it back home to the treehouse. When all of a sudden the little cube projected a 3-dimensional representation of the Ice King's kingdom! But IK can't see them! So it must either be a playback of something that happened earlier or just a projection. Someone stole one of Ice King's crownjewels!

Our heroes get projected into various situations. They get to look at different scenes playing in other parts of the world! And they discover they can pause and edit the scenes, like adding a lot of junk around LSP to drive her crazy!

But who's been stealing all this stuff all over Ooo?? And how's this little pink cube linked to the thief?!


Graybles Schmaybles is a fun little tale that actually feels exactly like one of the episodes on the show.

It was really well captured and plotted by Danielle Corsetto, who did a great job getting everyone's voices perfectly right.

The art doesn't try to match as much the actual style of the show, unlike the main comic book series. Bridget Underwood's artwork is quite lovely, cartoony and full of live! The characters are always jumping and running around.

The series is now lovely put in color, compared to the first few earlier titles. Giving a nice watercolor look to the backgrounds to better separate them from the main characters.

There's a lot of cameos and appearances from characters from the show, the "Grayble" short story format really worked nicely for this graphic novel. And in pure tradition of the show it even contained both a clear theme as well as a secret hidden theme. Can you find it?!

Finally the graphic novel once more contains a little backup feature, a short story written and illustrated by series regular Meredith McClaren. It actually ties into the ending of the main feature and it's titled "Flan". BMO tries to make a flan for our heroes, and it's totally completely adorably cute!!


Overall, Graybles Schmaybles is a great addition to the series!

While I wasn't a big fan of the idea of Finn and Jake hijacking one of the OGN like this, the whole "Graybles" short story anthology format (containing several shorter tales tied by the little cube projecting our heroes around the world) really helped both make this book unique and memorable.

It's a really great story, in pure style of the show. I Really Recommend it to any fans of the show as well as newcomers!

I would prefer to see this spinoff sister series reserved for minor secondary characters instead, but it looks like Finn and Jake finally took over these books as well for now...

I give it:
2.5 / 3 Snoopies!




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