Review by Frank Plowright

Let’s say up front that while there are highspots, despite the heavy presence of artist CJ Cannon, Book Two isn’t as good as Book One, but it is the starting point for the quality Rick and Morty supplies for the remainder of the series.

That’s because the second half introduces Kyle Starks as series writer, and he’s excellent at transferring the quickfire dialogue, insane personalities and ridiculous situations of the TV show to comics. His only misfire here is the story he draws himself. He can draw, but his style is functional rather than startling, and when Cannon or Marc Ellerby are on hand why would you want anyone else on the art?

Thankfully Cannon draws Starks’ opening statement, the three part ‘Br-Ricking Bad’, in which Rick decides there’s money to be made in supplying drugs, and someone able to hop through dimensions can source the best possible. For such an anarchic series, there’s often a strangely conventional moral code applied to Rick’s excesses. He gets away with some appalling stuff, but so often his schemes come to nothing. That’s very nicely worked by Starks, who also supplies more than enough inspiring comedy along the way.

The other main writer is Tom Fowler, who’s better known as an artist, yet the one story he also draws is another disappointment, not for a different style, but for not capturing the characters. Cannon draws the three chapters of ‘Head Space’ opening the collection with what was the first published story Fowler also wrote, and it doesn’t hit the spot either. The ideas are there, but the jokes are laboured, oversold and it’s an astonishingly wordy script from an artist.

‘Ready Player Morty’ is by Pamela Ribon, with Ellerby having a rare chance to move from the back-up features and draw a full length story. It’s a clever script with two threads. Rick considers high school is a waste of time, so hooks Morty up to a simulation machine aiming to have him graduate in a day. Meanwhile there’s the problem of Summer and Jerry switching minds. Ribon maximises the embarrassing possibilities of both in a sometimes laugh out loud episode, and Ellerby drawing Jerry’s head on Summer’s body is genuinely creepy.

Ellerby both writes and draws the six page back-up strips, with five of them presented here taking a tour around the entire Smith family and all of them funny. If it follows the publication pattern of the first Rick and Morty Compendium, these will be absent from Vol. 2, although they are found in the trade Volume Four. There were no back-ups to Fowler’s material in Volume Three.