Comics I Read Last Week - Week 3

Welcome to the third installment of my weekly feature thing Comics I Read Last Week where I briefly (or not so briefly) talk about comics I read last week. Pretty simple really. I had an unusually hectic week last week so the list's pretty short this time.

Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake #1-6
Natasha Allegri, Patrick Seery, Britt Wilson, Betty Liang, Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Lucy Knisley, Whitney Leopard, Rebecca Mock, Kate Leth, Jen Wang, Amanda Thomas, Terry Blas, Kimball Davis,

This is what a messy pile of comics looks like.

Damn there are a lot of people involved in a print comic. That list doesn't cover the cover artists for cover variants I didn't buy, the bizarre error on one inside cover claiming that Amanda Palmer is responsible for colouring a cover or the cover artist(s) for the cover to the cover variant of issue one that I have because it's got a new cover for the second print version and the inside cover only lists the cover artists for the standard cover variants.

That sentence features the word cover twelve times, in case you were tempted to go back and count.

Anyway, I finally got issue six, the final issue of this series on Tuesday, and of course what do you have to do when you pick up the last issue of a story? Read through the whole lot again of course.

In case you've somehow managed to avoid ever hearing of it (What? Do you live under a rock or something?) Fionna and Cake are the gender-flipped versions of Adventure Time's Finn and Jake created by Natasha Allegri (the main writer for this series). They first made their appearance along with their own supporting cast of gender-swapped characters in an astoundingly awesome episode of the third season of the show.

The comic isn't quite as aweome as that episode, but it's still pretty awesome. The main story starts with Fionna and Cake stuck inside because of the rain when they're distracted by a bunch of baby fire lions (which are adorable) fleeing an attack by the Ice Queen. Before our heroes can intervene a boy jumps into the fray, a boy made of fire!

It's a fun, slightly odd, meandering story featuring silly swords, daft costumes, a candy dungeon and a disturbingly bizarre looking Lumpy Space Prince.

Wierdo.

There are also back-up stories in four of the six issues featuring stolen sweaters, sinorses, a disturbing glance at the Lemongrabs and a severe lack of bathing.

The trade for this series isn't out quite yet, but it should be soon and you should buy it when it is.

Son of a Father
Nam Dong Yoon, Translated by Kim Hyun Sook

Son of a Father by Nam Dong Yoon is this week's odd one out being the only one not based on a kids' cartoon and also the only digital comic and the only translated comic. It's the odd one out for a number of reasons really. Coming in at 157 pages, Son of a Father is a collection of stips about a young boy and his parents.

It's one of the comics I got as a backer of the last Kickstarter for The Whole Story, which is a series of collections of completed comics organised by Ryan Estrada, starting at a dollar for the basic bundle, which is still hundreds of pages anyway. I went for the one above that, the Double the Comics bundle, which meant I got this and another of Nam Dong Yoon's books along with a bunch of other stuff.


I didn't particularly enjoy the comic the first time I tried to read it. I don't know why really, because it is actually a pretty good comic. I think it's just one I really have to be in the right mood for. Some comics I can read any time and some not so much. I gave it a second chance though and I enjoyed it a lot more, so yeah, it's definitely worth giving his stuff a try.


My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #9
Katie Cook, Andy Price, Heather Breckel, Neil Uywtake, Bobby Curnow

Yep, another Pony comic. I actually haven't managed to grab issues 7 and 8 yet because my local comic store is useless, but luckily 9 is the start of a completely new story featuring Big Mac going shopping for some nails. Sounds simple enough, right? Of course not! Nothing is ever that easy.

This is another fun, well written and drawn issue and  one of the things I love about these comics is just how much extra stuff there is to notice when you reading through again. In fact I'd say it requires at least one time through without reading any of the dialogue because there are just too many great little details that deserve your attention.

Also, I do like a well presented boom.

Duckula #1-4
Various (uncredited)

I mentioned in last week's entry about there being a much better Duckula comic than Celebrity's attempt and this is it.

The London Editions version of the comic that started a year later in 1990 is a much, much better affair. Like the Dreamstone comic I covered in the first installment of this feature someone at the comic decided they needed to cover the show's first episode in comic form, but unlike the Dreamstone comic they did it well.

Each issue features two different Duckula stories. Most of them are stand alone stories, but the first story in issues one and two is a two part retelling of the first episode, featuring the origin of the good Count, the world's only vegetarian vampire duck. It all comes done, you understand, to a ketchup bottle.

Apparently using ketchup instead of blood in your occult ceremonies to summon the undead has some serious effects.

Other stories feature a Duckula starting a TV station, Duckula starting a band, a disasterous trip to Florida, the lost city of Atlantis, a keep fit obsession and an encounter with the British tabloid media.

I'm joking about that last one. It's really a story about a doppelganger, but y'know, it could have been about the British press.

As well as the two Duckula stories each issue also features an installment of 'Marlin the Magician'. The first part tells his origin where he rescues a time travelling Merlin from a dustbin and he gives him a book of spells in way of a thankyou.  The next three issues are part of a story called "The Back to the Front" in which young Marlin is teleported off to a place where an evil wizard has made everything go all topsy-turvy and everyone say the opposite to what they mean, which leads to a couple of small problems as you'd expect.

I'm not sure why London Editions decided it would be a good idea to include a completely unrelated story alongside the Duckula stories, but it's entertaining enough and who can resist a comic that dedicates half a page to a girl petting a bunny?

Tune in next week for more Duckula, more Bone and a bit of Plagued by Ryan Estrada. Plus whatever else I feel like reading between now and Sunday.