Book Review: Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo

It's MARVELous

Another giant (and weighty) leap for comics history as Taschen delivers the goods on Marvel. The huge books follows the same format as the story of DC Comics Taschen published in 2010 though with a couple of differences: the five fold-out Timelines in the DC book are now presented as a loose insert printed both sides and folding out to fifty-five inches wide; there is no index, which I find sort of amazing in a title like this.

The editorial covers eight decades of Marvel and author Roy Thomas would seem the obvious choice to write about the company, he was an editor there from 1965 to 1980. The four chapters, each opening like the DC book with a spread wide bit of art printed on thick paper with reflective metallic ink, look at the origins of Martin Goodman and his Timely Comics of which Marvel was a subsidiary group of titles. Timely morphed into Atlas comics in 1951 which eventually, in the early sixties, became the Marvel line that carries on today and the book is right up to date, too, with the cover of Black Widow issue six from July this year.

A nice feature of the editorial are references to comic and media items through the decades and how they related to Marvel and their comic characters. I think the real strength of the book is the art, pages and pages of covers, spreads, individual frames and several examples of cover art (blown up big) as inked but before the color was added. A two-page foldout of Steranko's spread from Strange tales 167 is also included.

The book's production is, as the DC title, first-class. Beautifully printed and bound with all the images getting deep comprehensive captions, eight pages at the back have biogs of several dozen writers and artists who were the real masters of Marvel. Taschen have thoughtfully provided a blue silk bookmark.

Overall a feast for the eyes but what will the next book be about? I'm putting my money on EC comics getting the Taschen treatment, in three or four years time.

75 Years of Marvel Comics: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

The huge book comes with a handy cardboard carry case.

Right: there are several pages that show inked cover art.

Steranko fold-out

One of the metallic ink chapter openers

Eight pages like this at the back of the book with biographies

The loose insert Marvel Timeline

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Adventure Time fans would be delighted with this humungous 352-page hardcover. It's really worth the money considering the price and how much content there is.

Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo provides an in-depth look at the origin of the animation and the creative process of making one. It's packed with concept art of the characters, environments and the early sketches used by creator Pendleton Ward's for pitching to studios. The characters are amusing and the art style is certainly very "Adventure Time".

The highlight of the book is the lengthy interview-style text from the start to the end of the book. The staff artists talk about the stories, characters and art. It's written in a casual manner but yet is very insightful. You'll read about the history of Adventure Time, the story pitches and changes that led to Cartoon Network picking it up, style guides on how to draw the characters, interviews with voice actors, and a lot of interesting things that happen behind the scenes, the many side stories, muses.

For the artworks, there are lots of character designs. Finn the human, Jake the dog, Fionna and Cake, Ice King, Bumblegum Princess, Rainicorn, Earl of Lemongrab and many others. Environment art are of the various kingdoms, space, the Tree House, "Beautopia" and other settings in the post-apocalyptic, magical land of Ooo.

The character designs are unusual. The artists explain the style guides, like why Finn only has dots for eyes, the rules for the world of Ooo, e.g. if you're born with dots as eyes, you're not supposed to grow sclera, the white part of the eye. The Cosmic Owl's design was inspired by a light pattern that hits the urinals in the toilet at the workplace. Many of the designs look like they could be doodles from some kid's textbook. But that's also part of the charm because not everyone can draw like that. Pendleton Ward had great difficulty assembling a crew of artists who can draw just like that. All images are captioned to explain what they are and where they come from.

The last section of the book is dedicated to fan art. This section also has the staff artists drawing the characters in any style they like, e.g. such as in Street Fighter style.

Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo is a wonderful book that looks at the work it takes to make such as animation possible. It's well written, insightful and fun to read. Highly recommended to fans of Adventure Time.

There are two publishers for this book, Titan Books and Abrams. Abrams seems to be distributing for USA and Canada, and Abrams for Europe.

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The Abrams published edition is available at:
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