Review: Rick and Morty : Youth in Rickvolt #1

The first issue of ‘Rick and Morty: Youth in Rickvolt’ sets up a pretty familiar concept – in reaction to increasing overreach from an oppressive force, a rebellion is born, and threatens to develop into a full-out social revolution. In this case, the oppressive force happens to be Rick Sanchez, and the rebels are a scrappy bunch of pre-teen guerilla soldiers from a mysterious young universe. ‘Youth in Rickvolt’ has even chosen to hang it’s storytelling hat on one of the most widely referenced uprising narratives of all time – ‘Apocalypse Now’. Despite treading fairly familiar ground, ‘Youth in Rickvolt’ is still a really fun first entry into what promises to be an interesting new entry into the pantheon of Rick and Morty Comics from Oni Press.

Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’ is a film so parodied and so revered that there can’t be that many angles left to take on it at this point. To look further back, ‘Apocalypse Now,’ was a modernized take on a much older work of art – Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness,’ which was published in 1899. Both the book and the film concern themselves with a man given the task of looking for another man who is, by his very existence, a threat to the status quo. In ‘Heart of Darkness,’ the threat is an ivory dealer named Kurtz that inspires rebellion in the Congo during the heyday of colonial rule, and in ‘Apocalypse Now,’ Kurtz is a high-ranking member of the American military stirring things up in Vietnam. 

It’s a story that lends itself to adaptation – there is always a new ruling class, and there are always those who rebel against that rule.

This particular rebellion begins with an almost Socratic dialogue between Rick and Morty in regards to the potential assassination of a kindly old man that isn’t really an old man, but it turns out he is just a kindly old man. Morty is obviously miffed about almost being tricked into murdering the wrong dude, but the real issue is that Rick has reneged on his promise to let Morty drive the ship after the assassination.

When Morty goes full sullen teenager about it all, his predictable, age-appropriate actions are met with full-blown mania on Rick’s part. Rick needs to be rankling somebody in order to feel alive, and having Morty turn his nose up at potential adventures is just killing him. He’s so desperate that he even suggests a day of temporal shift driven time-jumping, which is also turned down.

But none of Rick’s efforts have an impact. Morty remains sullen and disaffected, and his chilly demeanor drives Rick to get up to some desperate business. One of the things that make this inaugural issue so fun is the slightly wacky narrative structure. The cold war between Rick and Morty moves along at a standard enough pace for a while, but then Rick snaps, disappears into the garage for exactly three panels of a door with science-y sound effects, and suddenly there’s a full blown ideological war going on at the Smith house. Rick just keeps shouting that this is all just a misunderstanding, but we have no idea what that misunderstanding is. We eventually learn that Rick has created a new universe for some reason, but we’ll have to wait and see how it all shakes out. Lil’ Revolutionary Summer may have proven herself to be a real leader out in the field, but somewhere in the deepest jungles of this mini-universe, is the Kurtz lurking in the form of Rebel Universe Morty.  

We’ve got three very strong covers on the go with ‘Youth in Rickvolt,’ Issue #1, but this month’s variant cover winner is Warren Wucinich’s propaganda poster inspired piece, which I would be proud to hand inside my locker/cubicle any day. Will I be rushing out to the comic book shop to check out the new issue when it comes out on September 18th? I think yes!