Ristaino, Andy – Night of the Living Vidiots

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Night of the Living Vidiots

Full disclosure: Andy works for Adventure Time (he was, according to Wikipedia, instrumental in their getting their only Emmy so far), which means that this book automatically just went up a few notches in my mind. And if you haven’t watched that show because you’re an adult and think that it’s only for kids, you’re wrong. Pendleton Ward, Tom Herpich and Jesse Moyhihan were all mini comics people before making that show, so their hearts clearly come from the right place. Says I, even if I am biased. Anyway, I’ll take a calm step back and evaluate this book purely on the merits. This is a collection of short stories from Andy, done between 2004 and 2013, put together with the invaluable financial assistance of Kickstarter. Stories in here include the title story (about humans who are consumed by literal televisions and end up spouting inane advertisting/self help lingo as they convert everybody they come into contact with), a wolf man and his hot rod (and the law on his tail), an anime extravaganza featuring smaller ships that form a larger robot against nature, Dr. Mario Bandini and his unintentional (and often horrific) heroism, the continuation of that wolf man story (also featuring a vampire lady and a giant squid), and the high price of winning a race to impress the ladies. That anime story was probably the best of that really solid bunch, as the idea of two giant robots playing poker with cars (with card symbols painted on the hoods) to go with the stakes of said game was a thing of beauty, and there’s no getting away from the sheer joy involved in that ending. Recurring characters play a big part of this book too, and it never hurts to break up a collection like this with short single page strips. These are mostly the Death Shirt and Frosty Beveraged Man, who is just like the Kool-Aid Man but full of beer. He gets into all sorts of ethically questionable adventures and, again, Andy really stuck the landing with that character. Oh, and there’s Mangfish, who deals with all of the problems that a man-eating monster would deal with while taking his date to the prom. It’s a really solid collection of stories, many of them are in full and glorious color, and I’m of the continuing opinion that everybody involved with Adventure Time should be as rich as humanly possible, which doesn’t leave you very many reasons not to buy this. Unless people misusing “your” sticks in your craw, that is, as he gets that wrong an alarming number of times. But he gets it consistently wrong, which is oddly comforting to me. Anyway, I highly recommend this, and don’t let my nitpicking at the end here scare you off. $20

Posted on March 9, 2015, in Reviews and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Comments Off on Ristaino, Andy – Night of the Living Vidiots.

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