Top of The Pile: Rick and Morty vs Cthulhu #4

At the end of this four-issue Rick and Morty vs Cthulhu mini-series from Oni Press, I'm delighted to say that the dream team of writer Jim Zub, artist Troy Little, colourer Nick Filardi, and letterer Crank! have stuck the landing.

Without a doubt, this has been my favourite comic book of the year so far and it's going to take something very unusual and unexpected to unseat it from its throne.

There's no need to rehash the plot as I've covered that in my previous reviews (here), but events come to head with a perfectly-crafted debate on the nature of existence between Rick and Azathoth, the supreme elder god at the core of Lovecraft's Mythos, that rivals any of Captain Kirk's legendary verbal sparring matches in the original Star Trek.

Master scribe Jim Zub blends the existential horror of Lovecraft seamlessly with the scathing, self-aware humour of Rick and Morty (managing to have a pop at the creators of the show, as well as old HPL himself, along the way). 

Zub's writing is gorgeously accentuated by the reality-warping art of Troy Little here, truly capturing the Lovecraftian concept of indescribable cosmic entities and things man was not meant to know.

As you might expect from a Rick and Morty sequence of this nature it takes a very metatextual turn and eventually culminates in a resolution that reminded me of several moments from In The Mouth of Madness as well as the ending of the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie.

However, this leads to a couple of epilogues that not only leave the door open for possible (yes, please) sequels but also - as suspected - ties the comic into the familiar sequence in the Rick and Morty opening credits that feature Cthulhu.

I'm not sure if the uptight Lovecraft would have "got" this mocking, yet oddly also reverential, spin on his creations, but I can highly recommend it for fans of both these franchises looking for something a bit out of the ordinary.