What time is it? Adventure time! For those of you not
familiar with Adventure Time it’s an
animated television series aired on Cartoon Network. It’s about a human boy
named Finn and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake, a dog with magical
powers to change shape and size, who go on quests and adventures in the
post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo. It’s an adorable, surrealistic humour series
that’s become so popular it’s grown into a huge franchise with merchandise,
videogames, and comic books. Seeing Red
is one of the many comics that Adventure
Time has spawned!
In Seeing Red Marceline
the Vampire Queen has to go back home for a family reunion. Normally, she would
skip out, but it turns out she left her beloved axe bass behind the last time
she was there and her father has decided to get rid of it! With the help of
Jake the dog, Marceline travels around the dark and dangerous Nightosphere to
try and find her axe and teach her father a much needed lesson about
communication!
The author of Seeing
Red is Kate Leth and the illustrator is Zack Sterling. Leth is a Canadian
comic artist and writer who has been posting comics online since late 2010.
She’s known mostly as a web-comic artist but she has published a few
anthologies and works for Adventure Time and Braves Warrior. Sterling
is an illustrator, designer, and sequential artist based out of Portland. He studied at The
Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Art Institute of Portland and has
worked for Penguin Young Readers Group, Cartoon Network, and BOOM! Studios. You
can find both Leth and Sterling
on Tumblr at kateordie.tumblr.com, and zacharyxbinks.tumblr.com respectively.
In Seeing Red the
plot follows Jake and Marceline as they search through Marceline’s home land of
the Nightosphere for her treasured axe. It was nice to see these two characters
together since Jake is so rarely seen without Finn and hardly ever alone with
Marceline (since he’s still a little horrified of her being a vampire). The
characters do learn lessons–especially Marceline and her father who aren’t
always on the best of terms–but there’s precious little character development
throughout the piece. It’s not surprising
with something as popular as Adventure
Time; there doesn’t really need to be in-depth character development–you
already know what the characters are like!
The art style in Seeing
Red is the standard Adventure Time art
style. Yes. It has a standard style. The characters are really minimalistic in
facial and body structures and it makes them exceedingly adorable! The
characters have noodle-like arms and legs and the style lacks any consistently
sharp/straight lines. The landscapes are also minimalistic but that has more to
do with where the story’s set than the overall style.
Seeing Red isn’t
the best Adventure Time comic I’ve
ever read but it was definitely a departure from what I’ve read in the past.
Having Marceline and Jake go on their own adventure without anyone else really
was a stroke of genius since I’ve yet to see it done before!
My final thoughts on Seeing
Red is that it’s a good Adventure
Time one-shot comic. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that someone who has
never seen Adventure Time before
start with this comic, but having even the slightest knowledge of the franchise
will allow you to just jump right in! So go for it ‘cause what time is it?
Adventure time!
No comments:
Post a Comment