Comic Book / Toy Story

To new adventures, and beyond!

In 2009-2010, the Toy Story series got a comic book adaptation by Boom! Studios. It ran for eight issues and took place before the events of Toy Story 2, with plotlines involving Andy's Buzz meeting a new Buzz Lightyear determined to take his place and the toys throwing a competition to win a kiss from Bo Peep.

Tropes that apply to the comic series:

• Actor Allusion:
  • Sarge gets one of his men, a man named Private Pyle, to move his keister by threatening to rip him off his baseplate and put him on Buster detail. R. Lee Ermey certainly made a career off of playing characters like this, but this line is in reference to the role that made him famous.
  • Mr. Potato Head tries to get the Buzz Lightyear variants to stop attacking by trying his hand at stand-up comedy, as his actor Don Rickles did. He even uses a fair share of Rickles' catchphrases.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Most of the toys are much snarkier with each other than they were in the movies, constantly calling each other names and verbally jabbing at each other.
• Call-Back:
  • While going to investigate the new arrival to Andy's room, Woody suggests that he handle it. Buzz accuses Woody of being worried that he'll steal the cowboy's thunder, referencing his jealousy in the first film. Woody, of course, is being honest, and doesn't want Buzz to deal with said toy being another version of himself.
    • In that same conversation, Buzz mentions nothing is scarier...except maybe Sid.
  • New Buzz's Establishing Character Moment is almost identical to Andy's Buzz's in the first movie; he pulls out his wrist communicator to analyze his surroundings before firing his laser at the first toy he meets (in this case, Andy's Buzz).
  • Both Buzz and Woody bring up the former's troubled experiences with learning he was a toy and not a space ranger. Buzz even tells Woody that he told Booster everything the cowboy told him.
  • In Issue 4, during the competition for a kiss from Bo Peep, Buzz mentions that he had just beaten a new toy in a race the previous week.
• Call-Forward: In Issue 7, Woody talks about how he was at Cowboy Camp with Andy, like they do every year, which is a key detail from the second film.
• Cock Fight: Issue 4 features a struggle between Woody and Buzz over who gets a kiss from Bo. This boils over into a full-on competition involving all the male toys in Andy's room, like Hamm, Slinky, Mr. Potato Head and Rocky Gibraltar.
• Continuity Nod:
  • While Andy's opening his present from Grandma, he thinks the package contains X-R, Booster, or Emperor Zurg, all prominent figures in the cartoon.
  • Buzz is still missing his wrist communicator decal, which he peeled off during his Heroic BSoD in the first movie.
  • Woody briefly calls Buzz "Sally Nesbitt", a nod to Mrs. Nesbitt, the persona Buzz took on during his Heroic BSoD in the first movie.
• Court-martialed: Well, a toy's version of one anyway, but when Andy's Buzz holds one under the jurisdiction of Ambassador Buzz, he charges New Buzz with treason, assault with a crayon, wrongful imprisonment, and conspiracy to return. New Buzz admits to all the charges.
• Fantastic Racism: New Buzz hates Buzz Lightyear variants, primarily because kids wanted them and not him.
• Foreshadowing: Andy initially hopes that the toy his Grandma gave him is Booster. Guess who he gets when he returns Buzz?
• Freudian Excuse: New Buzz spent all of his life living on a shelf, unopened and unwanted by any child due to them already having a genuine original Buzz Lightyear figure, and wanting variants instead. After spending a long time being returned over and over again, he fakes being delusional to replace Andy's Buzz with himself, so he could find an owner who loved him.
• Ghost Story: The main plot of Issue 7 revolves around the toys telling scary stories around a campfire while Andy is away at a sleepover.
• Hidden Depths: Booster is able to figure out he's a toy before Andy's Buzz can tell him.
  Booster: "I'm a coward, not an idiot."
• Heroic BSoD: Andy's Buzz, after being "accidentally" returned, thinks he's become useless. He snaps out of it when he hears his friends in danger.
• I Hate Past Me: Buzz is noticeably combative with the New Buzz, who thinks he's a real space ranger - just as Buzz himself did in the first movie. It turns out, however, that New Buzz was faking it, transitioning Andy's Buzz's annoyance from being replaced with a nut-job to just being replaced in general.
• Interquel: The comics take place between Toy Story and Toy Story 2.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Despite trying to be otherwise friendly upon his arrival (albeit in a very put-down manner), Andy's Buzz quickly comes to blows with New Buzz. Later, Booster invokes this by having the variant Buzz Lightyear toys fight against Andy's toys to free him from their capture.
• Malicious Misnaming: New Buzz calls Andy's Buzz "Sally" as a means of differentiating the two. He soon gets all of Andy's toys to start calling him it too.
• My Future Self and Me: Played with, but one of the many Buzz Lightyear variants is Ambassador Buzz Lightyear, a version of the character who hails from the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command series finale, and is described as being the "All-seeing, all-knowing" version of Buzz from the future. This gives him the knowledge that he's a toy, and he gets to interact with Andy's Buzz and New Buzz. Of course, seeing as they are toys, there really is no disastrous consequences.
• Nightmare Sequence: Rex has one the day before Andy is supposed to take a trip to the natural history museum, as he fears he'll be replaced by a scarier dinosaur. He imagines the rest of the toys as fearsome dinosaurs before being eaten by this new dinosaur toy.
• Obfuscating Insanity: It turns out that New Buzz is doing this; he's fully aware that he's a toy, and only acted like a typical Buzz Lightyear in order not to arouse suspicion.
• Shout-Out: Ambassador Buzz Lightyear is meant to be the Toy Story series' version of Ambassador Spock, complete with beard and being from the future.
• Spotting the Thread: Woody figures out that New Buzz has replaced Andy's Buzz by noticing the distinctive lack of Andy's name on the bottom of his boot.
• Superior Successor: New Buzz looks just like Andy's Buzz, but he still has his communicator sticker, possesses a much cleaner, less-faded paintjob and pointedly isn't deluded about his nature as a toy like Andy's Buzz was (because Andy's not the first owner he had). Though it's downplayed in that Andy still prefers his own Buzz over the new model.
• The Big Race: Ambassador Buzz has Andy's Buzz and New Buzz race around the store to compete for who gets to stay with Andy. Thanks to some Etch'A'Sketch toys confirming the winner, Andy's Buzz gets to go home.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Booster, Andy's newest toy, disappears from the comic after issue 3.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Both Andy's Buzz and New Buzz get this after their respective arcs in The Return of Buzz Lightyear. After he spent some time thinking he was useless to Andy compared to a new, fresh-out-of-the-box Buzz Lightyear toy, Woody assures him that Andy only wants one Buzz, and that's him. Meanwhile, New Buzz gets one from Ambassador Buzz, whom, despite finding his actions poor, understands why he did them, and encourages him to make amends with Andy's Buzz before it's too late.