CANDY

“Adventure Time: Candy Capers” #6 by Ananth Panagariya, Yuko Ota and Ian McGinty concludes the mini-series saga in which Finn and Jake go missing, and Princess Bubblegum has charged Peppermint Butler and Cinnamon Bun with filling the hero void. At the beginning of “Adventure Time: Candy Capers” #6, Peppermint Butler has given up on finding new heroes, and has turned instead to synthesizing them from sugar. His line, “Heroes can’t just be found, they have to be MADE!” is hilarious because it turns feel-good advice into a justification for Frankenstein-style shenanigans. Peppermint Butler’s resulting “recipe” for heroism has a classic fairy-tale progression into disaster. Peppermint Butler’s can-do attitude leads him horribly wrong, and then he and his co-conspirator Cinnamon Bun must spend most of the subplot trying to right all the trouble they have created. The plot is nothing new, but the details make it worthwhile, particularly the dialogue. The overarching story of “Adventure

“Adventure Time: Candy Capers” #2 by Ananth Panagariya, Yuko Ota and Ian McGinty presents “Mystery, She Wrote,” a self-contained adventure starting Marceline The Vampire Queen and Tree Trunks as they solve a mystery in the appropriately-named Bloodskull Village. “Adventure Time: Candy Capers” #1 paired the bossy Peppermint Butler and hyperactive Cinnamon Bun together, but the second issue focuses on yet another pair of supporting characters who are called to duty. Peppermint Butler sub-contracts the detecting and being-a-hero job (that Princess Bubblegum previously delegated to him), to Marceline and Tree Trunks through a “Royal Hero draft.” Panagariya and Ota’s story is worth reading for its charming, offbeat humor alone, and it was a stroke of inspiration for them to pair the two main characters. The framing plot device is the classic setup where two strangers are thrown together by circumstance to solve a crime. She’s a grumpy 1000-year old vampire, and she’s a pygmy elephant wi

It’s a strong franchise that can basically jettison all the primary characters for the bulk of a story and still end up with a totally great comic book. That’s exactly what “Adventure Time: Candy Capers” #1 does as Ananth Panagariya, Yuko Ota and artist Ian McGinty take Finn and Jake (and even Princess Bubblegum) and make them little more than a plot device so that they can shine a great big character light on Peppermint Butler and Cinnamon Bun (as his trusty sidekick). The results are super fun. Panagariya and Ota have a deliciously consistent handle on all the characters here, and they plainly revel in the opportunity to focus on Peppermint Butler and Cinnamon Bun. When Princess Bubblegum realizes that Jake and Finn (and the completely ordinary hammer she gave them and now needs) are missing, she puts Peppermint Butler on the case. Clearly more interested in being a (somewhat evil?) Sherlock Homes with a Cinnamon Bun Watson in tow, Peppermint Butler takes his mission from PB to fi

“Mister X” is one of those comics where I know I should hunt down some collections and finally read them (after all, any comic where the Hernandez Brothers and Paul Rivoche drew the early issues has got to be worth a look), but I’m largely unfamiliar with Dean Motter’s comic that put him on the map. With this one-shot telling a three-part story about a pharmaceutical heiress being kidnapped and Mister X hired to bring her back, it felt like as good a place as any to give it a whirl. Motter’s story is a little flat, unfortunately. It’s not bad, but I feel like there should be some sort of kick to it that never quite arrives. In many ways it’s a stereotypical hard-boiled detective story, as Mister X tries to find the missing Tootsie even as a body part is delivered to her grandmother wrapped up in a candy box. Mister X eventually solves the case, but the logic chain on doing so feels a little weak, and I’m not terribly convinced it’s that deep of a story to begin with. Still, it’s a co