On sale next week from the kaboom! imprint of Boom! Studios, Adventure Time: Bitter Sweets is the fourth in a series of original graphic novels starring the characters from Pendleton Ward's enduringly popular and influential animated series. The first three, printed in black and white, explored scenarios and relationships like Finn and Princess Flame's budding romance; a coming-of-age journey with some of the series' idiosyncratic princesses; and a teen-type angst opus starring Marceline the Vampire Queen. Courtesy of writer Kate Leth and artist Zachary Sterling, Bitter Sweets is a full-color adventure (obvs) focused squarely on Princess Bubblegum and Peppermint Butler, who is her butler (obvs), as they traverse the lands beyond the Candy Kingdom.

Boom! promises the Princess' road trip will take a "dark and twisted turn," which is of course no less than we expect from Leth, writer of not just the previous AT graphic novel, Seeing Red, but also IDW's distinctly dark Edward Scissorhands, Archaia's Fraggle Rock and, of course, the occasionally deranged comic strip Kate Or Die, published here at ComicsAlliance.

While the nature of Bubblegum's conflict won't be known to us until the book goes on sale next week, we can be certain it will look fantastic. The artist of the previous two AT OGNs as well as the incoming drawer of the AT ongoing series, Zachary Sterling's art has leveled up big time with Bitter Sweets, as you can see from the exclusive preview pages below. Also an animation designer, Sterling's characters and poses fit Leth's scenarios and jokes so perfectly that you would think the whole book was the work of a single cartoonist. And of course, the colors by Whitney Cogar are similarly on point, easily making Bitter Sweets the most visually excellent Adventure Time graphic novel so far.

Even if you're not intimately familiar with the AT universe and its characters -- and I'm not, at least not compared to some people around here -- you will probably find yourself eager to read more of this very funny and eminently cute comic when you reach the end of this advance look.

 

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