A more accurate title for “Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return” would be ‘Bill & Ted’s Mostly Triumphant Rehash.’ Filled with recycled ideas of pre-established Bill & Ted conventions, it’s more of the same. That’s not entirely bad, in fact I’d stand by the ‘Triumphant’ part, but more originality could’ve gone a long way.
WRITTEN BY: Bryan Lynch & Ryan North
ART BY: Jerry Gaylord & Ian McGinty
PUBLISHER: BOOM! Studios
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE: March 11, 2015
The beauty of the original films was how totally different Bill & Ted’s experiences were both times. In the first film they have an excellent adventure through time, which is a total blast and sees them completely subvert people’s perceptions of time travel. Twisting it in their own special way. Next they go on a bogus journey through the afterlife, which is super rad and sees them distorting people’s perceptions of heaven, hell & the Reaper himself. They conquer the spiritual plane and in an impeccable pay off use their powers of time travel, learned in the previous film, to defeat the villain. Perfectly tying both films together, while each still has its own specific voice. That is what this comic is missing, it relies too heavily upon what came before instead of forging its own path. Scared or maybe unsure of how to continue on its own too legs, it takes one leg from each of the films and hobbles along on those.
Hardcore Bill & Ted fans will eat this comic up, there’s fun to be had here, especially with all of the self-referential humor. Filled to the brim with numerous little easter eggs that all those true Wyld Stallions can scour each and every page for. For their part Bill & Ted are perfectly on point, they sound and act just like you remember. Lynch & Gaylord have captured their mannerisms expertly and flawlessly transferred them to the page.
For what it’s worth the backup story by Ryan North and Ian Mcginty, ‘Bill & Ted And The Bogus Virus’, is superb. It takes way more chances and from an originality standpoint it’s much stronger than the main story. Focusing on Bill & Ted’s Robot Usses receiving an ‘e-mail’ from the future that mixes up their circuits, making them more apathetic and standoffish towards their masters. It uses time travel in a much more interesting way, having Bill & Ted circa 1991 visit their far off future and our present, 2015.
Bill & Ted are still Bill & Ted, if you love ‘em, you’ll love ‘em here. It’s the framework they are trapped in that truly holds them back. This is only the first issue in a 6 part series so things could totally turn around in the plot department. If you’re not already a fan there’s nothing here for you, but if you are I urge you to give this a read.
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Torin Chambers is a rad dude from the nineties who does film stuff or something. Thomas the Tank Engine is his favorite transformer. Find him on Twitter @TorinsChambers