Exploring the Land of Ooo An Unofficial Overview and Production History of Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time Paul Thomas University of Kansas Libraries Lawrence, KS Copyright © Paul A. Thomas 2020 This work may be shared freely between individuals as long as it is a) clearly attributed and b) done so for non-commercial purposes. Other than the University of Kansas Libraries research portal (KUScholarWorks), this book is not to be offered for download anywhere else. Published in the United States of America by University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence, KS 66045 ISBN-13: 978-1-936153-19-0 The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and/or those individ- uals interviewed. They do not reflect the official positions of any production house, television network, or other entertainment company. This work was not produced or authorized by Pendleton Ward, Cartoon Network, Cartoon Network Studios, Warner Brothers, and/or Frederator. (All intellectual property related to Adventure Time, including, without limitation, any copyrights or trademarks, are owned by Cartoon Network, Inc., and any unauthorized and unlawful use of such intellectual property is prohibited. Cartoon Networks, Inc. reserves all rights.) Adventure Time, its characters, and its plots are referenced in this book under the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law, which protect works “for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.” Under Candy Kingdom law, any violation will result in seven years dungeon (no trial). Text used on cover and spine courtesy of Ask-Angelo (2017): https://tinyurl.com/y9xhoet3 Table of Contents Acknowledgments v A Note on Season Divisions vii Introduction: “C’mon, Grab Your Friends” 1 Part 1: Who’s Who in the Land of Ooo? Character Profiles 11 1. Two Rad Bros: Finn the Human & Jake the Dog 12 2. Sugar & Spice: Princess Bubblegum & Marceline the Vampire Queen 28 3. “Best Friends [and Foes] in the World”: The Ensemble Characters 46 4. The “C-Listers”: Other Characters of Note 71 Part 2: Behind the Easel: The Production of Adventure Time 94 5. “Video Makers”: How an Episode Was Made 95 6. “Come Along with Me”: The Production History of Adventure Time 104 7. Good Jubies: The Guest-Animated Episodes 158 8. The Institute of So Und: The Music of Adventure Time 178 Part 3: “Storytelling”: How Adventure Time Told its Tales 208 9. Monomythic Time: Finn and the Hero’s Journey 209 10. The Creative Use of Retconning 227 11. The Three Levels of Adventure Time 234 Part 4: Pure Finndemonium! 242 12. The Ins and Outs of the Adventure Time Fandom 243 Conclusion: “The Fun Will Never End” 269 Appendix A: Episode List 271 Appendix B: Original Production Schedules for Seasons 7+ 299 Bibliography 301 Index 315 Image Permissions 321 About the Author 323 Acknowledgments There are numerous individuals who helped to make this book a reality, chief among them being Pendleton Ward, Adam Muto, Patrick McHale, and all the other wonderful artists who worked on Adventure Time. Your collective labor has yielded a bona fide masterpiece. On a similar note, I would like to thank the crew members and series affiliates who have shared their valuable insights with me over the last few years: Sam Alden, Alex Campos, Casey James Basichis, Ako Castuera, Ashley Eriksson, Evil, Graham Falk, Ghostshrimp, Polly Guo, Tom Herpich, Derek Hunter, Ke Jiang, Tim Kiefer, Derek Kirk Kim, Laura Knetzger, Sandra Lee, Kirsten Lepore, Jesse Moynihan, Justin Moynihan, Kris Mukai, Hanna K. Nyström, Kent Osborne (who, I should note, promised me one of his Emmys if I “make [him] sound smart” in this book), Jack Pendarvis, Gary Portnoy, Andy Ristaino, Lindsay Small-Butera, Rebecca Sugar, Soichi Terada, Rich Vreeland, Thomas Wellmann, Steve Wolfhard, Michelle Xin, and Niki Yang. Thank you for taking the time to not only correspond with a lowly fan but to also share your experiences with that fan. To all my Adventure Time pals—namely Eric Becker, Niko Colum, Patrick DeDonder, Sophie-Mai Hewlett, Dan Jensen, Wilbur Nether, Justin Smith, Jared Stickler, Ben Woods, and Elyse and Michael Zauchenberger— as well as my followers on Tumblr, all the folks on the old LandOfOoo.com forum, and the many, many fans to whom I spoke while writing this book: I cannot even begin to count the number of hours I have spent chatting on - v line about who is the best character, arguing at the dinner table about our individual headcanons, or discussing series developments at get-togethers. Let’s be stupid forever! To Brian C. Baer, Paul Booth, Lisa Camp, Sherilyn Connelly, Vickie Doll, Valerie Estelle Frankel, Andrew Friedenthal, Rosalyn Lucas, Layla Milholen, Donald E. Palumbo, Seven Rockhold, Elijah Siegler, Cynthia Zhang, Jagm, Jake Suit, Sithsaber, several anonymous peer-reviewers, Kevin Smith, Josh Bolick, and Marianne Reed: Thank you for helping me with some of my questions, sharing your research with me, reading through chapter drafts, and/or helping this manuscript find a home. To Sarah Midori Perry, Gus Lobban, and Jamie Bulled: Your music helped give me the strength to both start and finish this book. (Now, it’s time to take a break!) And finally, to my wife, Trina: Thanks for being the Marceline to my Bubblegum... vi A Note on Season Divisions The division of the show’s first six seasons are uncontroversial. However, much digital ink has been spilled about the correct division of seasons seven and beyond. Throughout this book, I will use Cartoon Network’s “official” season divisions (for a total of 10 seasons), as they are the ones used on the Adventure Time DVD and Blu-ray box sets. For those curious, a comparison of the production vs. post facto ordering of the show’s final few seasons is presented in Appendix B. vii Introduction: “C’mon, Grab Your Friends” When I was a child growing up in the 90s, I watched a lot of cartoons. I had a soft spot for Nickelodeon shows like Hey, Arnold!, Doug, and Rugrats, and the CBS program Garfield and Friends, but the truth is that I would watch pretty much anything animated if given the chance. I liked me- dia that had silly set pieces, wacky dialogue, and zany action. Most cartoons scratched that itch. Unfortunately, as I grew older and “matured” (read: began to internalize many of my interests so as to not appear too “weird” to my judgmental peers), my love of cartoons fell to the wayside. I instead began preoccupying myself with other hobbies, like reading fantasy literature, playing computer games, and performing music. By the time I graduated from high school and entered into the “adult world,” my interest in cartoons was a thing of the past. Or so I thought... Things started to change when I went to university in 2011. I roomed in a hall with 50 other young men, several of whom were art majors with eclectic tastes in popular culture. This meant I often found myself engrossed in conversations about the merits or defects of contemporary animation. During one discussion in particular, a friend of mine suggested that I watch a silly cartoon called Adventure Time about a boy named Finn and a magic dog named Jake. At the time, I had only seen a few snippets of the show, which, to be honest, it had not impressed me that much; this disinterest was largely due to my ignorance, as I erroneously assumed that Adventure Time 1 Introduction was some sort of hyperactive nonsense factory, grounded solely on “random” humor and gross-out comedy. (Oh, how naive I was...) My limited understanding of the show persisted until the start of the fall 2012 semester. During the afternoon on a day in late August, I was chatting with my hall-mates in our communal TV room when I noticed the friend who had earlier recommend Adventure Time sitting in the corner of the room. He was looking at something on his computer and laughing. Always in the mood for something funny, I meandered over and saw that he was watching one of the newest episodes of Adventure Time (specifically season four’s “Sons of Mars,” in which the main characters journey to Mars and meet Abraham Lincoln). What I saw on that computer screen was captivating. The show was overflowing with the lushest of colors, it had a magnificent handle on made-up language, and its humor was so versatile. Perhaps it is corny to say, but I felt something deep within me. It was a sort of pure, unmediated joy—the kind I remembered feeling as a child when I would wake up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons. That night, I queued up the first episode of Adventure Time and took the deep dive into the Land of Ooo; I binged the rest of the series soon thereafter, and by Christmas of that year, I was officially hooked. When 2013 rolled around, I was purchasing merchandise and joining online fan communities made up of people who were just as passionate about the show as I was. Then, in the summer of 2014, I took my interest to the next level by starting a Tumblr blog titled GunterFan1992, on which I posted my thoughts about individual episodes. I also used this site as a way to reblog production updates and share artwork made by the show’s crew members. Hardly anyone paid me attention when I made my first few posts, but in time, more and more people were dropping by. Within a few months, I had somehow amassed over several thousand followers. As my readership continued to grow, I decided to mix things up a bit, and so, in July of 2015, I reached out to some of the folks who had worked on the show, hoping to conduct “mini-interviews” about the show’s produc- tion via email.