The only thing better than the Adventure Time cartoon, with its irresistible mix of retro video games, old school fantasy novels, Dungeons & Dragons and the general inviting, exciting and off-beat tone of all the best children's animations? The Adventure Time comic, that couples all of those things with the equally inventive and irresistible charm of Ryan North, writer of the brilliant Dinosaur Comics. North's run is coming to an end in the New Year but his tenure has seen some of the best Adventure Time stories anywhere, with a ludicrous amount of jokes and references packed into each page - especially when it came to the choose-your-own adventure issue. It worked in the way that, y'know, all choose-your-own-adventures work. Just in comic book rather than prose form. You made a choice, flicked to a page, and saw how that particular decision turned out for the characters. Something that was captured in vivid, nostalgic detail with indie artist Jeffrey Brown's variant cover for Adventure Time #25, which imitated the stylings of those old, pulpy Fighting Fantasy books from the seventies, with the main cast of the series decked out in classic fantasy finery. The felt-tip style colouring just caps the whole kid-cool look off.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
