Singaporean comic artist Sonny Liew will be contributing to a comic tie-in of Adventure Time, a popular American animated television series.
Liew, who won three Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards last year for his 2015 graphic novel, The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, was offered a co-writing gig for Adventure Time Season 11 by comic book publisher Boom! Studios.
The 43-year-old clarified to The Straits Times that he will not be scripting the series due to scheduling conflicts, although he provided story ideas for the first few issues.
Adventure Time, which was created for Cartoon Network by American animator and screenwriter Pendleton Ward, follows the adventures of a boy named Finn and Jake, a shape-shifting dog, who live in the post-apocalyptic land of Ooo.
The Emmy Award-winning television series ran from 2010 to Sept 3 this year.
The comic series, Adventure Time Season 11, is an official continuation, by Liew and My Little Pony writer Ted Anderson and illustrated by artist Marina Julia. It will be released on Oct 10.
Liew has long been a fan of the show and worked on a 20-page story for issue 25 of Adventure Time Comics earlier this year.
For the new comic series, he suggested focusing on certain objects that told the history of Ooo after the events in the final cartoon series - "playing a little off books like (Neil MacGregor's) The History Of The World In 100 Objects" - and to have the narrative skip back and forth between multiple timelines.
"I wanted the opening chapters to be not too Finn and Jake-centric, partly because a lot of my favourite episodes of TV shows were the ones that focused on side characters."
He suggested that the story ultimately centre on the characters Marceline the Vampire Queen and her father and deal with the themes of immortality and memories.
He eventually decided to pull out of scripting duties, however, to focus on his own original graphic novel.
He has just wrapped up comic miniseries Eternity Girl with writer Magdalene Visaggio for DC's Young Animal line, about depressed immortal superhero Caroline Sharp.
"It would have been fun to work on (the Adventure Time series), but maybe the scale of it was a bit too much... You'd have to deal with not only the needs of the franchise from Cartoon Network, but also fan expectations," he said.
"In the end, it wasn't the right fit at this particular moment in time."
