Did you enjoy my annotations for issue one and issue two of this miniseries? If so, good news! (If not, shove off!) I have annotations for the third issue, right here waiting for your lovely eyes! Obviously, as with the previous posts, this will have great big massive spoilers for the issue, so take that into consideration. Please enjoy, my pals!

Pages 2&3: Okay, there’s a lot to unpack on these pages, haha. First and foremost is a reference to something other than Adventure Time for once: Jake’s monologue on these pages is a loose reference to one of the very best issues of classic Fantastic Four, number 51, “This Man … This Monster!” In that issue, among other events, Reed Richards travels through the Negative Zone and muses to himself about the nature of reality:

There are cameos on these pages from a bunch of the “cosmic” things of the AT universe, including the Catalyst Comet, the Lich, a copy of the Enchiridion, Glob Grob Gob Grod, the Finn Sword, and Prismo (in a rare 3-dimensional appearance). There’s also a herd of Time Lards with clocks on their bellies.

Also in this image, note the most minor and in-jokey reference in this entire series: the satellite on the middle-left with the word “FELIS” on it. In the episode “Fionna and Cake and Fionna,” someone asks Ice King where he gets the ideas for his Fionna and Cake stories, and he replies that they’re “beamed into [his] melon every night.” Later that episode, we see him sleeping as a pink laser zaps into his head, carrying images of Fionna and Cake. I chose to interpret this as a reference to one of my favorite authors, Philip K. Dick, who believed that he was receiving knowledge in the form of an information-rich pink laser beam from a satellite called VALIS. So this satellite, FELIS (get it? like cats?), is the source of the Fionna and Cake stories—in my version of the universe, anyway.

Page 4, panel 4: Chronologius Rex declares that he is the lord of Time, not meatloaf. Meatloaf has been established multiple times as Finn’s favorite food.

Page 5: And here we come to the crux of this issue: Finn’s possible futures. Issue 1 of this series was about Finn’s past, issue 2 was about his present, so naturally issue 3 is all about his futures. Obviously none of these should be taken as “canon;” I just came up with three possible paths Finn might take based on what we’ve seen him do throughout the series. I’ll explain my thinking after the third sequence.



All three of the futures are color-coded—the Candy Knight future is pink, obviously.

Page 6: I love Mari’s designs for Queen Bubblegum—the high ‘80s shoulders are great! My suggestion for Old Peppermint Butler was that he be smoother and shinier, as if he’s a candy that’s been sucked on for too long.

In panel 2, the “Dinner Kingdom” is kind of a half-reference to the Breakfast Kingdom in present Ooo.

And in panel 5, note old Finn’s Jake medallion.

Page 7, panel 4: I am not sorry for the “bunch” of banana soldiers joke.

Page 8, panel 1: Beards are indeed a factor in many of Finn’s futures: pretty much every time we’ve seen an older or artificially-aged Finn, he’s got a beard of some sort. I continue the trend in this issue.

Page 8, panel 5: This is a futuristic version of Founders’ Island, the main human settlement outside of Ooo, fixed up and fully repaired. The implication is that Finn not only returned to the human islands, he also helped fix the place up.



The color scheme for the Teacher Finn future is blue, connecting with the water and sky surrounding them.

Page 9, panel 2: I love Teacher Finn’s design so, so much, you guys. I described him as a lovable old professor, someone with his mother’s compassion and his father’s roguish charm, and Mari knocked it out of the park. Note his Jake hat.

Page 9, panel 3: “Homies help homies: always!” is the Adventure Time philosophy in a nutshell.

Page 9, panel 5: Note that Finn is still using his old, trusty sword Scarlett in this future. She’s even more nicked and battle-scarred, but I’m sure she’s still good in a fight.



Page 10, panel 2: Dodging eggs while fighting was part of Finn’s training from Rattleballs in his eponymous episode.



Page 10, panel 2: When it came to Finn’s human wife, I told Mari to make her look a little bit like a human version of Flame Princess. I figured Finn if has a type, it’s her!



Page 11: The third and final possible future is the Space Captain Finn future, which is green-themed for no particular reason. This future is based on the idea that Finn and his Candy Kingdom pals team up with the remaining humans to build a spaceship to take them away from Earth, which is about as likely as anything else in Adventure Time, haha.



Everything in this sequence is of course heavily inspired by Star Trek: the Next Generation, a show that I love and grew up watching. The Minerva A.I. is the ship’s computer, obviously, warning of “excessive sparks detected on bridge.” Jake is Finn’s right-hand-man, just like Riker was to Picard (and Finn even calls him “numero uno,” like Picard’s “number one”). Lady Rainicorn is the equivalent of counselor Troi, Fern is a bit like Data, and Jake’s skateboarding granddaughter Bronwyn is the hotshot kid pilot, like Wesley. Princess Bubblegum is the engineering chief—she always struck me as preferring the role of scientist rather than royalty, frankly—assisted by Frieda and BMO. Flame Princess, upgraded to Plasma Princess, powers the ship as a whole. And Finn himself sports a beard similar to Commander Riker’s—which is appropriate, as a future version of Finn was voiced by Riker’s actor, Jonathan Frakes!

When coming up with these futures, I thought about what the Finn we knew might be most drawn to doing, and boiled it down to three major options: fighting and defending (the Candy Knight future), teaching and training (the Teacher Finn future), or exploring and leading (Space Captain Finn). For what it’s worth, I don’t really have a preference, or any opinions on which future is most likely—one of the strengths of Adventure Time has always been finding ways to surprise its audience with something that makes total sense in retrospect. If Finn does have a “canonical” future, it’s probably something I would never have thought of, but which makes perfect sense.

Page 11, panel 4: Princess Bubblegum yet again mentions “zanoits,” which are maybe some kind of mysterious particle? It’s a funny word and deserves to be used more often.

Page 12, panel 1: I mentioned in my annotations for the previous issue that I felt bad making Susan revert to her simpler speech patterns, since by this point in the series she’s perfectly capable of using big words. I tried to make it up to her by making her the ship’s communications officer, who would use big words all the time.

Additionally, the “Tuffbone sector” is a reference to Meredith Gran’s Adventure Time miniseries, Marceline: Gone Adrift. In that series, Marceline explores space and meets other races, including the Tuffbones, dog-like alien critters.



Page 12, panel 2: Note that Shelby (the worm who lives in Jake’s viola) is wearing a bandolier similar to Worf’s. I was particularly proud of that idea, haha.

Page 12, panel 4: Jake’s exclamation of “Outrageous!” is a reference to another role by his voice actor, John DiMaggio: it’s the catchphrase of Aquaman, from the Batman: the Brave and the Bold series.

Page 16, panel 3: A “dead world” is another bit of unexplored Adventure Time lore: they’re apparently where people go when they die, but they’re not quite the afterlife as we think of it? Or it is, but there’s a lot of them, like at least fifty? Unclear.

Page 16, panel 4: I had to work in the title of the show somehow.

Page 17, panel 3: I wanted to make sure I referenced my favorite song from the show, “Everything Stays” by Rebecca Sugar, and this seemed like the perfect time to bring it up, as Jake discusses the inevitability of change.



Page 17, panel 4: When I described this panel in the script, I specifically mentioned the series Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the weirder depictions of the end of the world you can find. I love the image of the enormous stone blocks sinking into an endless sea.

Page 18, panel 5: Chronologius’s epithet for Jake, “starchild,” references Jake’s actual origin as a half-alien creature. I checked the dates, and apparently I finished the script for this issue just a couple weeks after the episode “Jake the Starchild” aired, in which Jake’s parentage was fully revealed.

Pages 20-21: Finn’s final “confrontation” with Chronologius might feel a bit underwhelming—essentially, all he does is convince Chronologius to give them an opportunity to escape. There’s no big battle, no war of wits; it’s already been established that Chronologius is basically invulnerable, so it’s not like Finn could beat him in a fight. It’s not terribly exciting, but that’s kind of the point: over the course of this issue, Chronologius becomes more sympathetic to Finn and his plight, particularly after seeing all the good he did (and might have done) in the world. So it’s less about beating up some big bad dude, and more about convincing someone to act like a pal. In a way, Finn beats Chronologius by making him into a friend.

Would it have been better if the ending was more exciting, action-packed, crazy-style? Maybe! Looking back on it, I feel like I could have given Mari more chances to do cool art stuff—the first half of this issue has some pretty far-out sequences and nifty new things to draw, but the second half is basically three characters talking against a mostly boring background. Thematically I feel like it’s better to have Finn succeed by befriending the villain, rather than just punching his lights out, but it definitely doesn’t have the same visual impact. Overall, I’m still proud of it, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be improved.

That’s it for issue three! Join me next time for—issue four?!? Yes! This three-part miniseries is in fact a four-part miniseries, ending with Finn and Jake’s adventures through time! Look forward to it, my chums!

