It's Mumunununs-day again.
The challenge with Oni Press' Rick and Morty comic has always been in how well it can mimic the high-concept storytelling and quirky humor of the animated series. Naturally, its success has varied depending on the creative team. But Rick and Morty #28 faces an added challenge in that it sets out to serve as a direct sequel to one of the show's more popular episodes, "Interdimensional Cable." It's a risky move, and sadly, one that doesn't really pay off for the series.
It doesn't help that the show itself is already guilty of going back to this well. The fact that Season 2's "Interdimensional Cable II: Tempting Fate" took a meta approach and readily acknowledged the dangers of looking backwards didn't entirely offset the fact that it felt a little redundant in the wake of its predecessor. That problem is only compounded in "Interdimensional Cable III" which does nothing new with the concept even in the jump to a different medium. Once again, Rick and Morty find themselves with time to kill and nothing to do but channel surf through every network in the multiverse.
The general format works well enough in print form, even if writer/artist Kyle Starks doesn't do enough to create clear transitions between shows in his art. A hard "change shows only at the end of a row of panels or a page" rule probably would have helped here. But the real problem is that too many of the gag TV shows feel like remixes of what we saw in the previous two "Interdimensional Cable" tales. There's another "Gazorpazorpfield" segment. There's a segment that basically recycles the "plumbus" gag from "Interdimensional Cable II." In general, Starks captures the spirit of the show's "let's be as weird and random as possible" approach to these TV clips, but in a way that never ventures very far outside of what we've seen before. Not that any of the segments last long enough to build much momentum in the first place. It's telling that the ending, which moves away from the TV motif to explore a more immediate conflict, is the part of this issue that stands out the most.
As far as the art goes, Starks' style is suitably crude and frenetic enough to match the source material, but his lines are too thick and heavy. Rick and Morty's animation style is very flat and two-dimensional already, but the heavy lines accentuate that aspect too much. The art also stumbles during one key sequence where a familiar character appears in a new role, but that character is drawn so off-kilter as to be completely unrecognizable.
The backup story at least fares better. Marc Ellerby delivers an amusing story that hinges on the caustic relationship between Rick and Jerry. This story both does a better job of capturing the look of the series and taking advantage of Jerry's ability to constantly be his own worst enemy.
The Verdict
It was certainly ambitious of Oni to attempt a sequel to "Interdimensional Cable" in comic book form, but this issue only further suggests that that concept needs to be put to rest. This issue mainly settles for recycling the general formula and even some specific gags, and it struggles to fully replicate the distinctive look of the animated series.
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