Review by Frank Plowright

Central to the Rick and Morty TV show is the premise of alternate timelines and dimensions, and the Rick and Morty who star in this collection, and indeed in Volume Two, aren’t the Rick and Morty of the animated series, although you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. The reason for the compromise is writer Zac Gorman not knowing where the TV continuity was heading in 2015, and not wanting to contradict it.

‘The Wubba Lubba Dub Dub of Wall Street’ begins with Morty being lectured by his father on having to contribute to the household, stridently objected to by Rick, who has an easier way to make money. As seen on the sample art, why earn it when you can exploit a machine that predicts the future?

Gorman has a good ear for the type of quickfire nonsensical dialogue characterising the TV show, and has the grumpy and iconoclastic Rick seemingly dragging a complaint Morty in his wake, yet Morty may be a teenager, but he’s also the voice of reason, even when faced with the impossible. One set of circumstances rapidly being swept away by another is captured, as is the high density of offhand, often visual jokes.

There’s a deceptive simplicity to the animation, which is actually harder to transfer to comics than may first seem to be the case, which is why it takes artist CJ Cannon a little time to settle in. He delivers the expressions and ludicrous situations from the start, but the layouts take a couple of stories to settle into place.

A prison labyrinth, a shape-shifting alien creature and life on an alien farm all figure before Gorman brings the madness to an end on a planet where Rick once started a revolution. It’s all great, and so’s the following ‘Mortballs’ by the same creative team. It begins as a parody of the Bill Murray summer camp movie Meatballs, before moving on to Nightmare on Elm Street.

If you’d prefer these stories in hardcover head for Rick and Morty Book One, and they are also combined with Volume Two in the first Compendium. However, missing from that is the series of short back-up stories by Gorman and Marc Ellerby. They have Morty’s sister Summer recast as an action hero, how Jerry gets through the day, an alternate universe where Morty’s the genius, and Beth’s secret life.

Like the TV show? You’re certainly safe with Rick and Morty Volume One.