Disney Ralph Breaks the Internet : Choose Your Own Adventure REVIEW
For this review, we have an interesting case as this story will be a select your story so basically you decide how the story will unfold with multiple choices per page. Along with this, we have a mini story from Disney Princess artist Amy Mebberson involving Vaneloppe and the Princesses. I have been waiting years for a Wreck it Ralph comic and now I finally get to hold one in my hands.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
WRITER Joe Caramagna
ARTISTS Emilio Urbano,Andrea Greppi, Marco Forcelloni, Michela Frare
The adventure starts off with Ralph and Vaneloppe first entering the Internet on their way to EBay to try and find the Sugar Rush controller for Vaneloppe’s broken game at the arcade , the first choice you have regards being distracted by the ads or venturing on. I chose getting distracted to see what would happen.
For this review, let’s stick with Ralph and go through his journey. After Vaneloppe leaves for Ebay to get the controller, he goes against Knowmore’s advice and decides to walk around the Internet rather than go in one of the hyper cubes. He gets distracted by a pop-up with some cookies. After eating some, he runs across a site called Mal’s Warehouse and goes in against the better judgement of the pop-ups around the building warning him about the bad cookies.
The site is full of bootleg movies but that does not interest our hero at all, he is merely interested in the free cookies in the two treasure chests as he runs across some pirates. They soon turn on him since he does not have a password. You either change your password or run away, I chose the latter for this adventure since Ralph would not know how to change passwords.
The pirates are about to attack but thanks to Ralph blabbing about a cheat code, he is allowed one bootleg movies, he ends up choosing the one that annoys even them, the one with the song that won’t leave your head while building a snow castle in mountains, you know the one.
Ralph runs away, cookies in hand as he soon spots two more distractions, a building called Instagram which has a picture of the Sugar Rush handle on its outdoor exhibits or a blue bird muttering hashtags. I chose to follow the blue bird, loved them in the film.
Ralph soon follows the blue bird to a whole tree full of the birds. Ralph overhears one of them spreading foul opinions on Sugar Rush as he climbs up to try and settle a score with the blue menace. Ralph begins grabbing on to the birds as the foul comments start getting to him.
You now have three branches full of birds, the one you choose determines which path you go on. If you choose one with over 17 likes, you proceed to a branch that takes you to Ebay.
You reunite with Vaneloppe who also got lost during her adventures on the Internet and proceed on to EBay. They soon come across a slowdown of users, Ralph suggests he tosses his cookies at them to get them off the Internet, the two start bombarding everyone with pop-ups and cookies to reach their desired site.
The fun does not end there, go back to the beginning, there are over 10 other story routes you can go through involving Vaneloppe, Ralph and Vaneloppe together and the citizens of the arcade going through their own side plots. What are you waiting for ? Adventure is out there.
-WARNING : THE SIDE STORY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET, PLEASE DO NOT READ BEFORE WATCHING THE FULL MOVIE PLEASE –
HEART FROM THE START, EYES ON THE PRIZE
WRITER AND ARTIST Amy Mebberson
CLEAN UP Michela Frare
In this side adventure, Vaneloppe visits her new Disney Princess friends over at the Oh My Disney website, she asks them for help on how to become a better at Slaughter Race. Ariel offers tips on collecting spare parts to fix vehicles on the fly rather than wait for the game to reload. Jasmine offers a headband so Vaneloppe could see better and Belle offers her books on some of the most famous racers in literature. Hopefully these little tricks help her out in the full story.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Ralph Breaks the Internet: Choose Your Own Adventure was certainly an interesting experience that’s for sure. Having the readers choose their own path makes for great re-reading since you can go through a dozen different paths if you do it wisely. The art is simply stunning capturing the look of Disney animation with its bright digital colours.
The side story should have been a little longer to highlight some of the other princesses but I fear maybe legal issues got in the way. But seeing Amy Mebberson returning to work on some new Disney Princess content is as wonderful as always considering her work is now the focus of several Target and Hasbro products this year.
I hope that this book could lead to an on-going Wreck-It Ralph series from Dark Horse comics one day, one half of an issue could be Joe Caramagna writing a Ralph story and the other could be Amy writing a Vaneloppe focused story. I can always dream, now to find a metaphor, a rhyme and some special water to have my I Want song come true.
RATING : 9 out of 10