Review: RICK AND MORTY 10TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1

It’s hard to believe it, but Oni Press has officially been churning out high quality Rick & Morty comics for an entire decade! Over the past ten years, what started as a simple supplement to an extremely popular animated series has slowly grown into a multifaceted multiverse that morphs every month to mirror the dark whims of a rotating rogue’s gallery of incredibly talented writers and artists.

Since the Rick & Morty tv show has always gone all-in on the idea of alternate universes, the comics have always been free to get as weird and wacky as they want to be. Of course, the show itself has always been totally weird and wacky, but not in the ‘let’s spend four months telling the tale of Goldenfold and Rick battling it out to become god-planets’ way. A television show just doesn’t have the space to noodle around that much. The comics and the cartoon all exist in different spatial realities within the same cosmic sphere – making them all simultaneously canonical and inconsequential. And, as we all know, big round anniversaries are just a little bit more special than regular old anniversaries, which means they have to be celebrated just a little bit harder. To mark this momentous moment in comic book history, Oni Press brought together a truly crackerjack creative crew that crafted the supersized wild ride that is the Rick & Morty 10th Anniversary Special. 

This 50 page opus of frenzied fan service was   by one of the finest teams in the Mortyverse – Alex Firer and Fred C. Stresing. They’re a writer/illustrator team that knows their source material inside and out. They’ve pulled out all the stops for the 10th Anniversary Special with this ramshackle retrospective on pretty much every single thing that’s ever happened over the course of the show.

We’re at least 40 callbacks deep by the time Rick just comes out and says that they’re going to cram as many references as they can into this issue. As it turns out, they can cram in a whole hell of a lot! It’s entirely possible that this comic references every single episode of Rick & Morty.   I didn’t check, but it feels like it does. Somebody should look into it, because that would be cool.

Rick’s attempt to move out of his iconic garage and into an old folks home becomes a veritable who’s who of classic characters, all commingling with one-note losers you barely remember. There’s interdimensional cable going on, the butter robot is on a rampage – even Gene is there! We’ve got nothing but a whole lot of blips and a ton of chits going on here!

There’s so much happening on every page that it’s easy to forget that there’s a story unfolding here, and it’s a reasonable enough excuse to unleash an absolute onslaught of Rick & Morty’s greatest hits. The full page psychedelic Squanchy in Wonderland alone is worth the price of admission. It’s not just about looking back at all the laughs – it’s about the dark future of fandom that will destroy us all!