Hidden away in the Black Friday email from JacknJellify, the studio behind Battle for Dream Island and its various spinoff series, was the reveal of the company’s first comic book. Available for order now, with plans to be fulfilled in December, is Seven’s Secret Orb.
The 55-page comic hails from Florence Chapell, an animator on JacknJellify’s “object show” universe, which includes Battle for Dream Island and its subsequent seasons/spinoffs.
“Seven’s Secret Orb is really the project of one of our animators, so it’s been a big lesson in delegating,” series co-creator Michael Huang told me in October. “At this point, Cary [Huang] and I have sort of let go of the whole creative side….Everything we do, everything that’s on the store right now, it’s all DIY, so [publishing] has been a learning experience.”
Here’s how the website describes the story:
“When a strange new number visits with an alluring orb, the residents of the Pillary Ruins go crazy trying to take it for themselves. Check out the newest adventure featuring the BFB cast in this exciting new comic book with 55 fully colored pages written and illustrated by Florence Chapell!”
It’s been more than a decade since Cary and Michael Huang launched Battle for Dream Island, an independently-produced animated series that helped launch a YouTube mini-genre of “object shows.” With apparent influence from Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Homestar Runner, the show serves is a quasi-reality competition show in which various characters (who are…objects…named after their appearance) compete for control of a luxurious island.
“There’s so much to the whole [object show community]. We’re like 15 years into it existing, and it’s kind of unrecognizable from what it was like five years ago or ten years ago,” Michael Huang told The Beat in October. “When it first started emerging in 2012 or so, it was really tiny, because the show was really tiny. But as more and more object shows started, more and more viewers started creating these object shows. It really started to fragment and grow. It’s a whole umbrella of umbrellas. It really is, at this point, sort of this archipelago of friend groups and Discord servers that all seem to be the heart [of the community].”
As with TPoT 20, the next episode in their sprawling storytelling universe — BFDIA 23 — is heading to select theaters next week.
