How Adventure Time saved Cartoon Network

It’s safe to say that Adventure Time (AT), the hit eleven-minute cartoon about Jake the dog, Finn the human, and their crazy adventures, has been a huge success for its studio/host channel, Cartoon Network (CN). Now in its sixth season, the show has amassed a huge audience of children providing consistently high ratings, and succeeded in fostering a ‘cult favourite’ status among many adults. There’s not a nerdy shop around without AT kitsch of some kind, and college students worldwide have posters of it hanging in their rooms. In short, nerds, parents, students and stoners all love Adventure Time!

In fact, it’s been more than just a success to the channel, it’s been a life saver. Before AT, CN was actually struggling a bit. It got so bad that a few years ago, in an attempt to compete with Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, they started investing in live-action programming! Most of it was rubbish, but they were too scared to take risks on creating new animated content, which is often expensive to produce.

That is until AT came along. AT was the success they needed to boost their confidence in their animation division, and it shows. AT has blossomed into an animation ‘renaissance’ of sorts for the channel, and to a small extent the Western animation world in general. CN has done an excellent job of capitalising on the success of the show in the best way possible for everyone: by recognising talent.

AT’s creator, Pendleton Ward (a name so whimsical its owner couldn’t be anything but a children’s cartoon creator), surprised many last year by announcing he had already quit the show halfway through season five. The reason this was surprising is that no one noticed! There was no obvious dip in quality after he left. And the reason for that is that the show has amassed not just a huge audience, but a large talent pool. The show isn’t just one man; it’s built on the work of incredibly talented animators, storyboard artists, writers, directors, and more. The executives at CN must have realised this, because they’ve greenlit three shows by creators whose main credit is AT. Here’s a guide to some of them.

Bravest Warriors

The first show to come from a former AT person, Bravest Warriors has nothing to do with CN, but an online-only studio/YouTube channel called Animation Domination. Debuting in 2012, it’s is an animated short series (five minutes per episode) from Ward himself, with a more sci-fi aesthetic, and slightly older characters. It’s still got all of AT’s charm and whimsy (mostly thanks to the heart-wrenchingly adorable Catbug), and has been met with critical acclaim. Despite each episode’s brevity, there’s a surprisingly complicated plot going on beneath the surface, and I don’t know about you but I’m excited to see where it goes!

Steven Universe

The first show CN itself picked up from an AT personality, Steven Universe is an eleven-minute animated series created in 2013 by former AT writer Rebecca Sugar. (As far as I can tell, yes, this name of pure whimsy is really hers.) If you thought AT was charming, you are not prepared for the pure, undiluted charm Sugar pours into Steven Universe. Steven himself is charming, his interactions with other characters are charming, the aesthetics are all charming… you get the picture.

But amazingly, alongside the charm is a surprisingly heartfelt story about loss and the value of life and family, with wonderful morals so simple that kids will absorb them easily, and profound enough to still mean something to cynical grown-ups like us. It also has a refreshingly feminist narrative, not despite its male protagonist, but because of him. Steven learns the value of good female role models (or rather, he has an innate sense of this from the start) through his guardians, the Crystal Gems, and hopefully he imparts some of that insight to the kids at home.

Over the Garden Wall

Over the Garden Wall was a ten-episode miniseries aired on CN last year, created by former AT writer, creative director, and boring-name-haver Patrick McHale. It can best be described as a weird bastard mix of the Brothers Grimm, L. Frank Baum, and Mark Twain, with sources like Walt Disney and even Dante thrown in for good measure. Simply put, this series was a masterwork. Its miniseries format lent itself to being very tightly written, with a strong beginning, middle and end, and it needs to be watched about five times to get everything out of it. It lingered in my mind for weeks afterwards, too.

Like with all fiction, it would be nothing without great characters, and maybe I was just projecting, but I loved the fusspot/complainer Wirt and his younger brother, the endlessly optimistic Greg, who both became immediately likable as they wandered through the Unknown. Also, I won’t lie, I teared up a bit (ok, a lot) at the end.

And Still More...

For completeness, there are two more shows to mention here: Animation Domination’s Bee and PuppyCat, and CN’s Clarence, both from former AT staff. But even then, this isn’t the whole story. CN has been very good lately at finding new talent through development programmes of various sorts (Over the Garden Wall was based on a short film McHale made in 2013 as part of CN’s shorts development program). The fact that a lot of their new shows are from young, inspired creators is a testament to a channel taking risks, and those risks paying off for the channel and the audience. So, jaded twentysomething millennials, remember the ‘golden age’ of CN studios cartoons in the late 90s/early 00s, with stuff like Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, and The Powerpuff Girls? Well, it’s back.