Yes! In case you hadn’t heard, I had the incredible honor of writing a miniseries tying into the finale of Adventure Time, and it was a blast and a half! AT has always been one of my very favorite shows—it’s so weird, so beautiful, so completely unlike anything else out there—so it was a huge deal for me to be offered this opportunity. Not only did I get to write for these characters I love so dearly, I got to write a story that summed up the entire show, a story about the series as a whole, what it meant to me and viewers like me, and the ideas and themes that drove it.

On the other hand, that meant I had to write a series that encompassed literally the entire series, playing on and calling back to ideas from its entire run. No pressure! I just had to write a miniseries that encapsulated my love of a decade’s worth of television, comics, video games, books, and toys! Easy as pie!

In preparation for writing this miniseries, I went back and rewatched the entire series up to that point. I also read all the comics that had been published, as many of the books as I could get my hands on, and played through some of the video games. I wanted to absorb as much of the world as I could, to try and understand what makes it unique and why we love it so much, and then produce a work that not only reflected all of these diverse creations but also stood on its own merits as a story.

Again, no pressure.

What I ultimately created was, I hope, a comic that pays homage to all the things I love about Adventure Time, and puts into words (and pictures) the feeling of the show as a whole. Whether or not I succeeded isn’t really for me to judge, but I’m certainly proud of the work I did, and I hope readers enjoy it as well.

I also want to sing the praises of my collaborator Mari Julia, who provided the art for the entire series! Mari had done some work on earlier issues of the AT comic, as well as doing their own lovely comics and illustrations, and they are talented beyond belief, let me tell you. They were an absolute pleasure to work with, and their art made this miniseries into something truly special. I highly encourage everybody to check out Mari’s work at their personal site!



What follows is my list of annotations for the first issue of the miniseries. I’ll explain all the little references and easter eggs I threw in, as well as my creative choices and the reasoning behind parts of the story. Obviously there will be spoilers for the first issue, so get a copy if you haven’t already and read along!

The Concept



Let’s start with the concept. I was given a very basic framework for this story, which is that issues 1, 2, and 3 would be about The Past, The Present, and The Future. That’s all the initial direction I got; everything else came from me and my editor, Whitney Leopard. We batted around a few basic ideas, but we quickly settled on the idea of a Christmas Carol-like structure, in which Finn is visited by visions from across time.



The how and why came right after that. I wanted to create a Lord of Time, simply because there isn’t one in the Adventure Time universe—Prismo can kind of affect time, as can the Cosmic Owl (heck, even Clock Bear can mess with time), but there isn’t an entity who rules or controls time. I came up with the name “Chronologius Rex” just by messing around with words that have to do with time and adding some faux-Latin syllables. I had a very basic idea for the design, which is that he would have six of everything: two from a baby, two from an adult, and two from an old person. So that’s why he’s got six eyes, six arms, etc. Beyond that, Mari also threw in some clock and hourglass elements, ultimately coming up with a design that I think is amazingly inspired and fits perfectly into the world of Adventure Time.

So that’s what I started with: a story about Finn confronting his past, his present, and his potential futures, going on a journey through his life. I will say that this made for a very Finn-centric story, since everything is about him, and I had to find ways to give some page time to other characters like Jake and Bubblegum. But at the same time, Adventure Time has always been, at its most basic level, a show about a boy growing up in a strange magical world, and I felt like this miniseries should retain that focus on Finn.

The Annotations

Page 1, panel 1: Of course I have to start with the classic Adventure Time question. (Other potential subtitles for this miniseries included Time’s Up, Time of Your Life, and Time Out, to keep the “time” theme going.)

Page 1, panel 2: Joshua, Finn and Jake’s dad, is a really fun character to write for. There are so many characters in Adventure Time with really distinct voices—both in the sense of how they sound and in the sense of what words and phrases they use—so when writing these characters, I had to try and imagine each specific actor saying their lines. If I couldn’t do it, then the line needed tweaking. Joshua’s line came pretty easy—I know what I wanted him to say, and I knew how he would say it, since he’s got that great 1930s newsman voice.



Page 1, panel 4: Okay, here’s the first really deep-cut easter egg: Jake snuffling around in the snow for a slice of ham is a reference to a line from the episode “Hot to the Touch” (4x01). When Finn and Jake are watching the newly-escaped Flame Princess wander around the land of Ooo, they have this exchange:

Finn: Oh, Jake… look at her. She’s innocent. Like the steam off a puppy’s nose, searching for ham in the snow.

Jake: Guy drops one piece of ham in the snow and he never hears the end of it!

So that’s the reason for the steam coming off Jake’s nose in this panel. (And yeah, from the way Jake’s line is phrased, it sounds like he dropped the ham, not dad, but hey, maybe his memory is faulty.)

Page 3, panel 3: The Jiggler is, of course, the eponymous creature from the episode “The Jiggler” (1x06). I always liked that little dude.

Page 4, panel 2: Marceline originally owned the Tree Fort, as we all know, and as was depicted in the episode “Evicted!” (1x12). Most of the references to specific episodes in this first issue come from early episodes, like season 1 or 2, or episodes set in the past or with flashbacks.

Page 5, panel 5: BMO is another character who’s got a very distinctive way of speaking and took some work to get right.

Page 6, panel 5: It’s Shoko! When trying to find a character who would be the guide through Finn’s past, I immediately thought of Shoko, his past incarnation (or at least the only one that could walk and talk). I don’t get much into Shoko’s backstory or personality in this issue, but the thing is, as much as I like Shoko as a character, there’s not much more to be done with her. The episode we saw her in already gave us as much of her backstory as we need to know—horrible childhood, raised in a dojo, thief and criminal—as well as shows us her eventual tragic end, so there’s not much more that I could add as a creator. But as a time-echo guide to Finn’s past, she works perfectly.

Page 7, panels 4 & 5: I’m proud of this trick transition, making it look as though Finn and Jake are just on opposite sides of a door—except they’re really, really not.

Pages 8 & 9: Hot dang I love this spread! I don’t really have anything to add here, I just want to point out once again that Mari is a dang virtuoso, haha.

Page 11, panel 5: Rex’s line “You cannot conquer time” is a reference to the poem “As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden. The relevant couplet is:

O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

Page 12, panel 5: And to continue the poetry references, Rex’s line here is a reference to the poem “Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day” by Delmore Schwartz:

Time is the school in which we learn,

Time is the fire in which we burn.

Page 13, panel 5: PB makes a note of the famous FINN + JAKE - TIMELESS clock on their kitchen wall. That’s not the last time the clock will appear.

Page 14, panels 1-5: Here we get a slew of references to previous episodes, but to be honest, most of them were chosen by Mari. I suggested a few, but the specific moments were up to them.



Page 15, panel 3: Finn’s line here and following took a couple drafts to get right. Finn has never been a guy to give up and accept things, or believe that something is unchangeable, so it made sense to me that he would reject the notion of destiny. Conversely, Shoko is something of a fatalist; her troubled early life and her inability to escape her ultimate fate makes her more susceptible to the idea that her path is laid out for her. Even she doesn’t buy totally into destiny, but there’s a clear arc to her life that she can’t deny.



Page 16, panel 4: I love the goofy dragon design, so I was happy to put him in somewhere. It’s so goofy!

Page 17, panel 3: The moment when Finn and Jake actually find the Tree Fort has never been shown in the show or the comics, so it seemed like ripe territory for this particular story. Whether or not these comics are “canon” is an argument as vast and difficult as it is pointless, so let’s just say that this story makes the most sense to me personally: Finn and Jake, out exploring one day with their dad, happen upon this awesome treehouse and decide to live there one day, after they move out of mom and dad’s house. I deliberately left it vague as to how and when they moved in there, since we still don’t know the circumstances under which they moved out of their parents’ house, but this scenario makes the most sense to me.



Page 18, panel 2: So the whole reason that Finn is trapped in the Vanishing Point, set to be erased from time itself, is because he made a vow to spend every day having adventures with Jake, and yesterday he decided not to hang out with Jake. Originally I was thinking that it was a more important event that he missed, like Jake’s bachelor party before his wedding to Lady Rainacorn or something, but ultimately I liked the mundanity of Finn just wanting to take a day off. At the same time, I’m certain there’s an episode or a story somewhere when Finn and Jake spend the day apart, so technically his oath should’ve been violated long ago. But hey, the canon is fluid and time is a river, so let’s just keep on swimming, okay?

Page 22, panel 4: I absolutely wanted to end the first issue on a downer note. If this series is meant to feel like the end of Adventure Time (even though it isn’t going to actually be the end of Adventure Time), then the stakes need to be high and the costs need to be enormous. I wanted everything to seem totally hopeless, as if our heroes have no chance of success and no way to fight back. This is the beginning of the end, after all. But don’t worry—Finn and Jake aren’t defeated yet!

That’s all my notes for issue 1! This issue is actually relatively light on the references—the real deep cuts mostly appear in issues 2 and 3, while this issue is primarily the setup for what comes next. I’m excited for all you lovely people to see what we’ve put together in this comic!

