Review by Frank Plowright

Morty is trapped on an Earth where there’s a version of Rick hunting down and either caging or killing alternate versions of Morty. It’s not a good place to be, especially for the Morty with ants crawling over his eyes.

Without knowing Pocket Like You Stole It is based on the cellphone game, the graphic novel doesn’t make a lot of sense to begin with as you’re throw into the middle of the story. In the game assorted Ricks with different personalities, although all still bonkers, are collecting Morty’s for various purposes. One likes the tragic Mortys, one likes them dumb, and there’s a council of Ricks overseeing everything. As in the game, Morty has to assemble a team to overthrow the Ricks. The problem is that Rick may be mad, but he’s a genius.

One of the joys of watching Rick and Morty is the assorted alternatives who appear. One presumes writer Tini Howard created every alternate with a prominent role, but artist Marc Ellerby fills those backgrounds with dozens of others, and he’s able to imitate the style of the show’s animation so well they’re creatively satisfying. And because it’s not just Rick and Morty who have alternates, Ellerby is kept extremely busy.

Howard’s plot works, but she’s a little too clever in following a game formula, so the pages look good and the dialogue is fine, but Morty goes around in circles before landing where he needs to be. This runs to five chapters, but would have been a far stronger story for being compressed to three. It’s also found in Rick and Morty Book Four.