Review: Rick and Morty: Kingdom Balls #3

So far, 2024 has produced precisely one surreal saga of scrotum swords that expertly deconstructs the popular concepts of story structure, and it’s ‘Rick and Morty: Kingdom Balls’. The penultimate issue of this unpredictable opus from Oni Press is on newsstands now, and it’s an absolute must read for anybody who likes thinking about narratives and their arcs. 

For those of you who are just joining us, each issue of ‘Kingdom Balls’ brings us to a new realm that exists under the law  – we’ve started out in the Man v Man world, and the last issue brought us to Man v Nature land. Both of those comics were truly excellent – Josh Trujillo and Ryan Little are incredibly clever writers that really know how to break down the so-called standards of storytelling into little more than spaghetti strands of pure silliness. There’s also a ton of ‘Ball Blades’, which are magic swords with testicles  on them. As always, the art of Jarrett Williams is endlessly entertaining, and colourist Hank Jones brings a discernible sense of life force to each world. 

For their contribution to this month’s collection of cool variant covers, Jarrett Williams and Hank Jones have offered an airy interpretation of how to look chill on pillars in a high concept universe, even when your ex is there too. This cover also makes Rick’s boots look totally excellent. 

The variant cover from Mike Vasquez captures Rick in one of those morose moments we normally only see at the end of an episode of R&M, with 

Rashad Doucet’s artwork has a casually oversaturated, light-drenched quality that makes it seem like every character is in the middle of their very own Sailor Moon moment. His variant cover features a stoic Morty, a sword happy Rick, and an irrelevant Jerry in freefall that gives the observer a little boost of art energy. Rick’s boots are looking good here as well.

With the third issue of ‘Kingdom Balls’ comes the third story-verse – Rick Marty, and Jerry have now reached the realm of Man v Society. Specifically, a society made up entirely of dreamers, led by Rick’s ex-boyfriend, Julio. This is a story of high strangeness – you can tell from the Lovecraftian confections. This story is great on it’s own, but it also does a solid job of depicting features of Rick’s sexuality that are often only alluded to in the animated series. 

It’s not that animated Rick is squeamish about his enjoyment of the wide variety of genitals he’s encountered, it’s just that he just kind of only openly dates traditionally pretty humanoid women. Sure, Unity controls a multitude of gendered individuals that Rick likes to fool around with, but when it comes down to it, those people are all just glorified sex toys.

One could argue that, during the wormhole trip in the Whirly Dirly Conspiracy episode, Jerry, Rick, and that Pom Pom guy experience the truest sexual connection possible, because it exists forever, outside of time. But Rick kills that guy right afterwards, so I wouldn’t classify that as a healthy relationship.

But Rick and Julio had a real relationship – it developed over time, had its highs and lows, and ended for a perfectly normal reason – namely, Julio eats his Cthulhu Chews too robustly, which indicates to Rick that it’s time to bail. We’ve all been there. Julio doesn’t take the break-up well, and the dream-world society is born. So yeah, Kingdom Balls is not just a great comic, it’s important queer literature that will be lauded by the intellectual elite for the remaining duration of humanity’s pitiful reign on earth.