Ship Shape is the sixth Ben 10: Alien Force comic published in the Cartoon Network Action Pack series, published by DC and Cartoon Network. This story appeared in issue 37 of the series.

Plot

Julie and Ship are playing on her porch as her boyfriend Ben walks up to them, presenting Julie with a gift, a green, alien, emerald necklace.

As Ben is putting the necklace on her, Ship transforms into a tank and points the barrel at Julie. As Ship shoots, Ben tackles himself and Julie out of the way, turning into Chromastone to block another shot. All the while Julie is commanding him to stop to no avail.

As Chromastone is getting run over by the tank treads, Julie escapes to get help from Gwen. Ben looks up from his sad situation embedded in the road, to see Ship transforming, relievedly back to his usual friendly, and non-destructive, self. While petting Ship, Ben thinks about what could have happened.

Visiting Kevin in his garage for answers, Ben proposes the idea the Forever Knights may be controlling him once again, though Kevin can't give any help than to confirm he's all right now.

Gwen and Julie arrive to meet the two of them, though as Julie runs up to greet Ship, he once again transforms into a gun, this time mounted on Kevin's car, unsurprisingly to Kevin's (and also the others') dismay.

Gwen shields the quartet from a barrage of projectiles while Ben transforms into Brainstorm to figure to out. As Julie and Kevin run into the garage to help, Ship gets angrier, with Gwen quickly grabbing Ship with her Manna. As she does so, Ship transforms back to his regular self.

Seeing this, Brainstorm deduces that it was the necklace, made from a fragment of the now destroyed Petropia, that has been causing Ship to attack. Before he can make Julie understand this though, she again gets close enough to Ship for him to attack, this time upgrading Kevin's car and trapping her inside.

Ben quickly switches to Humungousaur and wrestles the car until Julie to able to throw the necklace to him, to which he in turn throws it upwards, hopefully to outer space.

The three are relieved to see Ship back to normal, permanently. The team think that next time, maybe Ben should stick to flowers (from Earth) as a present.

Characters

Main Characters

• Alien Force
  • Ben Tennyson
  • Gwen Tennyson
  • Kevin Levin
• Julie Yamamoto
• Ship

Aliens Used

• Chromastone
• Brainstorm
• Humungousaur

Continuity

• This episode is a sequel to Pet Project, with the characters referencing the other time Ship was being controlled, that time by the Forever Knights.
• This story alludes to an unseen adventure in space where Ben finds a green emerald. It's later revealed it was from Petropia, placing this story before The Secret of Chromastone.

Allusions

• The living car could be a reference to multiple pieces of media featuring the same concept, possibly the similarly murderous "Christine" from the Stephen King book of the same name.

Errors

• Julie's house is similar to its depiction in the series, yet the garage is shown as separate, there being a second floor window, a double door, and one window on the right as opposed to two.
• Kevin's house is similarly different to how it is seen in Vendetta, with the garage being on the other side of the house entirely.

Julie's House as seen in the comic

Julie's House from The Perfect Girlfriend