Animorphs is a Comic-Book Adaptation of the book series of the same name as part of Scholastic's Graphix line. It is illustrated by Chris Grine. The series has so far adapted six novels, The Invasion, The Visitor, The Encounter, The Message, The Predator, and The Capture.
Tropes specific to the graphic novels:
- Adaptational Consent: In Animorphs: The Message, when Ax acquires the human Animorphs he says <With your permission> and touches Cassie's face without further explanation. In the comic she has a line of dialogue where she realizes that he's asking permission to acquire her and says it's okay.
- Adaptational Curves: Andalites in the books are described as delicate, almost dainty-looking, and somewhere between cute and scary. In the first issue Elfangor and Visser Three are rendered as very chunky with broad lower bodies and heavy thighs. Art Evolution occurs and the Visser is progressively slimmer in each appearance.
- Adaptational Weapon Swap: The thugs in this rendering of Animorphs: The Predator don't have guns but various other weapons including a baseball bat. Some of their hand positions are still pretty gun-like, and the old man they'd been menacing hucks a rock at Marco and then in the next panel is clutching the bat in both hands with his arms at full extension in a way that looks a whole lot like he'd been drawn shooting at Marco, as in the book, and aimed the gun at him. The change makes Marco fleeing the alley and forgetting his groceries a bit nonsensical. Similarly, in this rendering of Animorphs: The Capture, the Controller at the hospital uses a Dracon beam instead of a handgun.
- Adaptation Deviation: In the books, Marco's hair was originally longer and he gets a haircut in book 10, The Android, because his cover model has short hair. Here, he has short hair from the start, though in each book, it gets longer. In book 5 it's as long as on that book's cover.
- Adaptation Dye-Job:
- Jake and Tom's hair is ginger instead of very dark brown.
- Jordan's hair is blonde instead of brown.
- In the second book, one of the guys shooting at them in bird morph has a blond ponytail. Here his hair is reddish-brown.
- In an odd version, the Taxxon's Alien Blood is switched from yellow to blue (possibly because their bodies are already yellowish, so the blood wouldn't be as noticeable), and Hork-Bajir's from blue-green to purple.
- Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In The Invasion, Elfangor sends the Animorphs his courage while saying <Courage, my friends.> He still says that line in the graphic novel, but it's not explained why.
- Adapted Out: Jake doesn't have a vision of Crayak in this version of The Capture, nor does he have a dream of stalking Tom in tiger morph.note
- Alien Blood: Taxxon blood looks like blue foam and Hork-Bajir shed purple blood. In general, aliens can bleed all over the place but red Earthling blood is used more sparingly. There's some evident in Tobias's first kill, sticking to his beak. When Marco's hurt as a dolphin though, it's stylized as black.
- Art Evolution: The first volume has a somewhat different style from the next few. How Grine draws Andalites also changes with each volume, becoming less chunky and eventually gaining black-on-white color on their stalk eyes, like their main eyes.
- Bait-and-Switch: Marco says no when asked about going on a mission to look for a cloaked Yeerk ship. Then has to clarify he's not sitting out the mission, he's talking about it being a school day and they can't all cut class at the same time that four morphed Andalites may be seen attacking the Yeerks, as Chapman may get suspicious.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: They don't actually, physically fight, but dialogue between Jake and Temrash is represented by Jake in a blank white void with Temrash as another Jake wearing a black turtleneck. Immediately after he's infested Jake is in monochrome and Temrash has full saturation but as the three days pass Jake picks up more color as Temrash fades, until they're entirely reversed.
- Beard of Evil: Chapman has a full beard, something that was never mentioned in the books (and was absent in the TV series).
- Bowdlerise:
- While most of the Family-Unfriendly Violence is intact, The Invasion doesn't depict the Taxxons eating Elfangor's remains.
- The hillbillies in The Visitor are drinking soda instead of beer, and they're played more comically. One of them returns to follow Rachel into an alley, which is portrayed as inept and goofy and a chance for her to scare him rather than as threatening.
- Starting in Book 5, real guns are no longer depicted. As a result, the muggers who attack the old man before he is saved by Marco in gorilla morph use a baseball bat instead. This seems to have been a last minute change as everyone who used guns in that scene is still drawn as if holding them.
- Color-Coded Speech: Every character has differently-colored speech bubbles when using thought-speak. Jake is orange, Marco is grey, Tobias is yellow, Cassie is green, Rachel is pink, Elfangor and Ax are blue, and Visser Three is red. In the adaptation of The Encounter, Tobias' hawk instincts influencing him from within is depicted as black thought bubbles with yellow text. In the adaptation of The Capture, when Temrash 114 speaks to Jake during their Battle in the Center of the Mind it is shown as black bubbles with white text.
- Composite Character: In the second book, the guy who bothers Rachel after her gymnastics class is Chester, one of the bumbling hillbillies who was shooting at them when they were in bird morph.
- Curse Cut Short: In The Invasion, Rachel calls the Hork-Bajir-Controllers "stupid sacks of lizard...", but gets interrupted by one of them shouting.
- Cut Himself Shaving: In The Invasion, Temrash 114 explains away the injuries his host received from being slapped down a flight of stairs by a fire-breathing hydra alien as being scratched by cats.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference:
- In The Invasion Rachel and Cassie are drawn with slightly exaggerated eyelashes compared to the boys, which are absent in subsequent books. Rachel also has earrings in the first graphic novel but not the ones following it, though that could be the result of morphing healing her pierced ears - the book series never says if that happens.
- Also in The Invasion, Jake's father Steve is drawn noticeably different from how he is later drawn in The Capture, mainly with a thinner face, different hairstyle and is clean shaven, while in the latter he looks more like an older Jake with a mustache (which, to be fair, he could have grown in the intervening time). His mother is also drawn as younger in The Capture than in The Invasion, though it's possible she's simply wearing makeup.
- Easter Egg:
- One of the video games at the arcade in The Invasion has a picture of a monster on the side that looks like a Hork-Bajir.
- One panel of The Visitor has a building named "Applegrant Bookshop" in the background, a reference to K. A. Applegate and Michael Grant, the original authors, who are sometimes referred to jointly as "Applegrant" by fans.
- In The Encounter, the car salesman, Dealin' Dan Hawk resembles Mad Man Mooney, a car salesman from The Muppet Movie, one of Chris Grine's favorite movies.
- In The Encounter, a hawk hand puppet is seen in the mall. On his Twitter, Chris Grine likes to share previews and joke art, including the joke that he'd represent Tobias's tormented inner monologue by having him talk to a hand puppet, Li'l Tobias, on the end of one wing.
- Also in The Encounter, one of the stores in the mall is called "Grinetastic Puppets". Grinetastic is the social media name of the illustrator Chris Grine.
- Earlier in The Encounter, two of the park rangers are modeled after Nate and Tyler, the hosts of the podcast "Animorphing Time", which Chris Grine has appeared on. This podcast is also referenced in The Message, when Cassie states "It's Animorphing Time" before morphing.
- In The Capture, Rachel reads The Art of War. In the book version of The Message, Cassie commented on Rachel having a board of inspirational quotes including from the Art of War.
- Funny Background Event:
- In the third issue, while the characters debate a plan they pass the trout that Cassie just caught from person to person in order to acquire it. Each of them grimaces while holding it - is it slimy and struggling? - and Marco actually has it pressed against his head for a moment.
- In the adaptation of Animorphs: The Message, there are two panels depicting a group of Taxxons falling from the Blade Ship into the ocean. Among them, pretty far away and not commented upon, is a very unlucky Hork-Bajir who presumably was in the wrong place at the wrong time and sinks haplessly into the depths when the Taxxons start to swim.
- Fun T-Shirt:
- In The Invasion, Marco wears a T-shirt with the phrase "I heart naps" on it during their first raid on the Yeerk Pool. He says that he doesn't want to ruin any of his good shirts.
- One of the rednecks in The Visitor complains about the Animorphs making him spill soda on his "good shirt". It's a shirt with the word "GOOD" on it.
- In the same comic, Rachel's sister Jordan wears a shirt with "Beans" in a heart.
- The opening of The Encounter has Price-Cut Polly fed by a man whose baseball cap has a logo saying DERP.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: In The Invasion, Tobias puts on headphones while walking through the construction site, highlighting how he is hanging at the back of the group and in his own little world.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Jake is infested because after setting the jacuzzi of Yeerks to full heat and churning water, he leaned in gloatingly to watch them freak out. Doing so instead of immediately morphing let him get knocked into the pool.
- It's for a Book: Jake explains to his mom that he's wedged behind the refrigerator with a roach motel in his hair because he was collecting dust bunnies for a school project.
- Lighter and Softer: While the comic is largely faithful to the books, there are additional jokes, more is Played for Laughs, and dark implications are frequently skimmed over. For example, in book 2 The Visitor, Rachel is catcalled by a college-age man who follows her into an alley; she's afraid and morphs to defend herself and scare him away, then later blames herself (and is blamed by her teammates) for not keeping an eye out and avoiding people like him. In the comic, she says "Don't follow me into this dark alley!" and smiles as if about to pull a prank as she goes, and the character following her is comedic and bumbling and doesn't appear any older than she is.
- Limited Wardrobe: Often averted. The kids' civilian clothes and morphing outfits vary with some articles of clothing repeating. In The Encounter alone, across several days Rachel morphs in a leotard with legs included, a gray T-shirt and black shorts, a pink tank top with those shorts, and a legless black one-piece leotard. By book 3, the boys have found shirts tight enough to morph, even if they don't wear them every time.
- Mind-Control Eyes: Animals being acquired go into a trance, which is represented here by having swirly patterns in their eyes.
- Multi-Bodied-Morph Panel: The first issue features Tobias morphing into his pet cat in order to prove to Jake that what they experienced at the construction site wasn't a dream, here adapted as a lengthy sequence of Tobias assuming feline traits with every iteration until he shrinks out of his clothes. Notably, this is an example of the cheating variant, as though the scene and background remain consistent across the entire panel, it's been broken up into multiple panels.
- Mythology Gag:
- Rachel's letter to Melissa at the end of The Visitor is signed with the "A" from the TV show's logo.
- In Cassie's first appearance in The Encounter she's wearing a NIN shirt under her overalls, a reference to Animorphs: The Reaction where she got her mom to buy her the new Nine Inch Nails CD and told her it stood for "Nice is Neat".
- When the whale is talking to Cassie in The Message, one of the images it shows her is a sequence of five overlapping images showing her morphing into a dolphin, in the style of the original cover of the book.
- Narration Echo: In The Invasion, when Jake's narrating to the others about his plan to morph into a lizard to spy on Chapman, he says that "Marco didn't like it." Right underneath, Marco says, "I don't like it."
- Non-Standard Character Design: Everyone has black eyebrows except Mr. Chapman, whose eyebrows are the same brown as his hair (until The Message, where Chapman has black eyebrows). There is also a security guard with gray hair in The Invasion whose eyebrows are also gray. In The Encounter, Dealin' Dan Hawk, who owns the car dealership, as well as one of the human Controllers supervising the truck ship, have eyebrows that are sometimes drawn as black and sometimes as gray, depending on the panel. In The Predator, the old man being mugged and one customer of the grocery store have gray eyebrows, while Chapman's eyebrow color varies depending on the panel.
- Only Six Faces:
- All the human Animorphs, and most other humans for that matter, have identical facial features. Adults may have different face shapes but usually have the same eyes, mouths, and noses, and other kids all have the same faces. Ax's human morph, which is a combination of his four human teammates, does not in any way stand out.
- Taken to the extreme in The Predator, where character designs are even more obviously reused. One customer of the grocery store who sees Ax looks like Melissa Chapman with slightly brighter hair. One of the mall cops looks like a thinner version of the policeman Controller who kidnapped Cassie (and was Killed Offscreen) in The Invasion. A man seen standing next to the aforementioned mall cop in one panel looks like Mr. Chapman without his glasses.
- In The Capture, a Controller security guard at the hospital also looks like Mr. Chapman without his glasses. At the end of the graphic novel, Jake's father looks noticeably different from his appearance in The Invasion, looking more like an older Jake with a mustache.
- In The Predator, Ax and Visser Three are nearly identical in close-up. Ax's throat and chest are tan, while the Visser's got some faint suggestions of lines around his eyes, but they have the same face.
- Race Lift: In initial previews of The Invasion, Marco had paler skin which was darkened for the final release due to fan feedback.
- Red Is Violent: The sadistic Big Bad Visser Three has red speech bubbles.
- Running Gag: New ones, not seen in the novels.
- In the first comic, as in the novel, Jake morphs lizard and drops his tail when it's stepped on. In the second comic, while killing time Marco asks if he'd feared that he'd demorph and not have buttcheeks. In the third one he asks if the lizard tail turned into a butt when he morphed back, and if he did, if someone found it and took it to the lost and found.
- Jake hogs the nachos when meeting with the others at the mall in book one. When Marco complains he exclaims that he ate a spider as a lizard and can still taste it. In later comics both will bring up "nachos" as a shorthand for gross, undesirable food.
- During conversations that start while they're human, one Animorph will often turn to another and say "Gah!" as they hadn't realized the other had already started to morph and are met with a Nightmare Face. And whenever someone is halfway through a feline morph, they'll call Marco "Meowrco".
- Scene Cover: Books 1, 4, and 5 have covers depicting scenes. 2 could be construed that way too, but Rachel looking tense against a brick backdrop isn't as immediately recognizable.
- Shapeshifting Heals Wounds: As in the books. Additionally, when Marco and Rachel fight some other kids at their school in The Predator Marco gets a black eye in the fight. Then when he claims Rachel and another girl were fighting over him, the other girl blacks his other eye. In their next scene Rachel notes that he's fine now and he says he morphed osprey in his room to heal.
- Shirtless Scene: With the kids not having entirely limited wardrobes, Jake and Marco's morphing outfits sometimes don't include shirts. (The books say that Jake wears bike shorts, but do not indicate whether that's all he wears.) This is the case as of the second book, though Marco puts on a shirt almost immediately after demorphing. They both wear shirts in the third book. In the fourth book, Jake again doesn't wear a shirt while morphing (possibly due to the missions in this book requiring aquatic morphs), though Marco does. In the fifth, Jake's morphing outfit is back to including a shirt.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: In this adaptation, the kids get to choose whether to acquire a male or female wolf instead of Jake and Marco flipping a coin over who gets to be male. Marco complains about having to morph a female wolf and is told that he chose her. He protests, asking how he was supposed to know which was which, only to be told that it had said so on the cage door. Either he Failed a Spot Check that badly, or he'd actually wanted this specific morph.
- Transformation Horror: Fully portraying how horrific-looking morphing is written to be would take a lot of time and detail. Chris Grine's rendering is easier on the eyes than those depictions but still quite a bit more grotesque and detailed than on the book covers, and comes with sound effects. The kids usually grimace with bulging eyes during the process.
- Truer to the Text: Unlike the TV show, the graphic novels follow the books' plots note-for-note with only minor changes.
- The Un-Smile: When Temrash tells Jake about how great it is to be a full member of the Sharing in The Invasion, Tom briefly regains control of his facial muscles in an attempt to warn him. It's depicted here as a strained, forced smile with tears in his eyes.
- This Is Reality: In The Invasion.Marco: You guys are crazy! This isn't a comic book or...or whatever! It's for real!
- Verbal Tic: When Jake talks halfway between his human and tiger forms, he sometimes slips "meow" into his words.
- The Voice: In The Capture, the Yeerk Temrash is never seen as a Yeerk, only controlling Jake and appearing as a second Jake in a black turtleneck in a Battle At The Center Of The Mind situation. When he dies, unlike in the original book his slug body isn't shown emerging from Jake's ear. This is particularly strange since in the graphic novel of the previous book, a preview for this one did show Temrash as a Yeerk.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Rachel's Stress Vomit in The Visitor after she dreams about being a shrew is shown from above with her head obscuring the toilet.
- Wolverine Publicity: The cover art for book 5 prominently features Ax demorphing from human at the mall. This certainly is a prominent part of the story, but aside from book 1 the other comics have the viewpoint character emphasized over all the others, and this is a Marco-POV book.
- Your Size May Vary: Taxxons in the books are described as cylindrical aliens ten to twelve feet long, which can raise the first third of their bodies upright to use their hands. By simple math that makes them three or four feet tall. Taxxons in the first graphic novel loom taller than Hork-Bajir. They're smaller in subsequent issues.