Adventure Time #36, Boom! Studios

 

Of all the sentences I've read in comics news this week, none have been as much of an emotional rollercoaster as this one: Ryan North is leaving the Adventure Time comic, and will be replaced as writer by Christopher Hastings.

The announcement comes after almost three years of North's tenure as writer alongside artists Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb, which included multiple awards for the series including an Eisner for Best Publication For Kids, and was revealed when the solicitations for January's issue were released, announcing the new team of Hastings, the creator of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, and artist Zachary Sterling, who previously worked on Boom!'s line of Adventure Time original graphic novels.

One assumes that the switch in creative teams has something to do with another recent announcement. North and Erica Henderson will be launching the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl ongoing series at Marvel next year, a project that may have required some schedule clearing. Still, with Adventure Time, North, Paroline and Lamb have produced some of the most enjoyable comics of the past few years, and it's a shame to see them go.

UPDATE: It turns out my assumptions were unfounded. North clarified over Twitter that the team's decision to leave the book came well before Squirrel Girl was in the works, saying "I never had to choose between my two loves (those two loves being adventure and also rodents)." I regret the error, but it's nice to know it'll be possible to get your North fix well into next year.

On the other hand, as someone who's been a fan of Hastings for years, I'm incredibly excited to see what he's going to bring to the table for Adventure Time, and Sterling's work on the OGNs was pretty fantastic too. They seem like natural choices to follow North, Paroline and Lamb, especially considering that North and Hastings previously worked together on Shiftylook's Galaga comic, which we called one of the best stories of 2013.

Hastings and Sterling take over Adventure Time in January's Adventure Time #36.

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