What’s cooler than being cool? Ice KING! Welcome back to the pediatric perversion that is the world of Pendleton Ward. This six issue series is dedicated to the peculiarities that define our Ice King, hopefully providing some insight into why he’s such a princess snatching old coot. Through what seems like innocuous run-ins with various denizens and princess’ we are deceived into legitimate character building!
The Ice King is hunting for his ironically kidnapped penguin but needs the help of a super-cool and super-secret wizard gang to get him back. And thus ensues a series of seemingly random encounters that, upon reflection, managed to successfully give us a peek under the royal robes to find a reluctantly helpful but also not helpful monarch. It’s easy to write off these interactions as trivial and insignificant but by the time I finished the last page I was surprised at the quality of the sum of these character building moments.
But alas, the King needs to be cool and, as anyone with half a brain knows, if you want that cool and indifferent je ne ce quoi, you seek out vampires. And unlike those twinkle toed pussies in Twilight these vamps got scary swag. The search for cool takes us to some fun places and to some fun extremes, making this issue a weird cross between Adventure Time and Clueless.
What I enjoy about this series so far is how light and easy it is. It’s silly and simple but don’t let that disarm you! When I sat down to write this review all these ridiculous interactions between burger people and vamps and cool wizards accumulated to make a good character foundation. It’s easy to almost forget that the Ice King’s ultimate goal is to recover his kidnapped penguin Gunter because it’s only lightly mentioned, but this remains a well plotted out book that will generate more than just a few chuckles.
Score: 4/5
Adventure Time: Ice King #2 Story: Emily Partridge Writer: Pranas Naujokaitis Artist: Natalie Andrewson Publisher: BOOM!/KaBOOM Price: $3.99 Release Date: 2/17/16 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital