Image: Dark Horse

Rick and Morty is one of the smartest shows on TV—and crafting the adventures of the dysfunctional duo can be a challenging and arduous process (part of which is why season three took so long to premiere). An extensive new art book documents just what goes into creating the show, and we’ve got a look inside.




Published by Dark Horse, The Art of Rick and Morty is a deep dive into the world of the show, featuring never-before-seen production art, scripts, and concept work from the earliest days of the show’s existence all the way up to today. As well as being littered with nuggets of info about alternate takes on characters and storylines, the book also, weirdly enough, has insights from the characters—metatextually commenting on the weird and wonderful artwork of themselves and the myriad strange (and often gross) beings that we’ve seen in their dimension-hopping adventures.

Check out a few pages from the art book below, making their debut here on io9—including a look at Morty’s crippling experience with grappling shoes, Rick’s secret underground sub-basement (which was nearly going to turn into a spaceship in the season two finale), and most intriguingly, a notes-covered draft for “Lawnmower Dog,” the second-ever script written for the show before it was even picked up for a series.



The Art of Rick and Morty releases September 12.