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One of my favorite comics is getting a rerelease. - Printable Version

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One of my favorite comics is getting a rerelease. - Dark Jaguar - 16th August 2016

http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/16/12505222/super-mario-adventures-twilight-princess-comics

A couple years back, the Nintendo Power Link to the Past comic got a rerelease, and I thought that was a good comic. In terms of quality though, I personally think Super Mario Adventures was the best thing Nintendo Power put together. I have the collected release, dog earned and worn, and I must say it's one of the best things I've ever read, and the best characterization of the Mario cast outside of Super Mario RPG. I like "sweet with a short fuse" Peach way more than "eternal sunshine and light" Peach as she's portrayed in the current stuff. She's just a lot more fun, and frankly she does more in this comic than the brothers do. It's also got solid comedy throughout. This comic still makes me laugh.

I expect this reprint will likely include the one "Mario Adventure" short that didn't make it to the original collected edition, the one with Mario and Wario fighting over who buys a Samus doll for Peach. Maybe it'll include more, but I can't overstate how much I recommend this thing. My all-time favorite comic (note that I'm not an avid comic reader, so I've got like maybe half a dozen I bought mainly due to very insistent recommendations) is All-Star Superman, but this comes in very close. That's right. My favorite comic is a Superman comic that embraces everything silly about Superman (like dino-people in the center of the Earth), does it straight, and somehow makes it work. My second favorite is a promotional tie-in comic printed in a magazine made to sell me toys. Watchmen's pretty good, but I guess I just like happier more positive stuff than the grim darkness so many stuff goes for these days.

One of my favorite comics is getting a rerelease. - A Black Falcon - 24th August 2016

Hmm... which Mario comic is this? Is this the Mario World one that ran opposite the Zelda LttP comic? Sorry, as I said in the other thread I remember liking the Zelda comic more for sure, that was my favorite Nintendo Power comic. The various Mario comics in NP were amusing though, from what little I remember... it has been a long time since I read any of them, I haven't read a compilation version of them, unlike the Zelda comic.

Quote: I like "sweet with a short fuse" Peach way more than "eternal sunshine and light" Peach as she's portrayed in the current stuff. She's just a lot more fun, and frankly she does more in this comic than the brothers do. It's also got solid comedy throughout. This comic still makes me laugh.
I kind of think what happened here is that the more interesting version of Peach is now Daisy, while Peach became the not great and incredibly negatively (gender-) stereotyped character we know. But Daisy never appears in the platformers, only the party game stuff, so it sidelines the more interesting version of Peach, unfortunately.

I wonder, will Nintendo ever stop being so sexist?

Quote: My all-time favorite comic (note that I'm not an avid comic reader, so I've got like maybe half a dozen I bought mainly due to very insistent recommendations) is All-Star Superman, but this comes in very close. That's right. My favorite comic is a Superman comic that embraces everything silly about Superman (like dino-people in the center of the Earth), does it straight, and somehow makes it work. My second favorite is a promotional tie-in comic printed in a magazine made to sell me toys. Watchmen's pretty good, but I guess I just like happier more positive stuff than the grim darkness so many stuff goes for these days.
I've never actually regularly read a superhero comic book series. That said though, I recently found a box full of all the comics I bought as a kid, which was pretty cool to look through! It's a smallish collection, half a bag full of comics, but they seem to all be there. I thought those were gone forever years ago, but here they were... awesome. They are mostly Disney comics of course, stuff like Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the like. Disney's comics were my favorites for sure. The few non-Disney comics are mostly a handful of issues of Archie comics; the one Ninja Turtles comic I had, which is not one of their normal issues but instead a more kid-focused '90s eco-themed double issue (one story has them taking on people dumping toxic waste in Bigfoot's forests, the other illegal whalers); and a few other cartoon comics like an issue or two of Woody Woodpecker, some Harvey (Casper the Friendly Ghost) comics, and the like.

My favorite "comic" series ever, though is, by a lot, The Cartoon History of the World series and its sequel, The Cartoon History of the Modern World books. I read the first two volumes over and over back in the '90s, and the three later volumes, which released in the '00s, are also fantastic. Of course I love history, but Larry Gonick did a fantastic job of making it both informative and funny at the same time! Incredible series.

One of my favorite comics is getting a rerelease. - Dark Jaguar - 25th August 2016

Nintendo Power only ran one Mario comic in it's entire history, so yes, that's the one I'm talking about. I liked the Zelda comic too, but it did feel a bit rushed. So many things were just glossed over, and while the ending was bitter sweet, I didn't really feel like that touching moment had been earned.

That said, the run of Nintendo Power comics is still very good. The "big four" (Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, and Metroid") they released back to back in the early 90's still stands out as quality stuff, and stuff Nintendo still calls back to. Nester's recurring comic was also pretty enjoyable, though by it's nature (a weekly one-off series lampooning the big game of the moment) it was often hit or miss in how funny any one comic was. Still, I remember it fondly enough. Having Nester grow up and have a kid to pass the torch to in the final issue's comic was a good way to conclude it. It's too bad Nester's one actual video game appearence was a Virtual Boy game, and a bowling one at that. There were a few others, like the early Battletoads comic. Those weren't as good as the big 4 though. Battletoads in particular is that special kind of "so bad it's good" though, so I still recommend giving it a read. Probably the WORST bit of fiction they ever attempted in Nintendo Power went to that prototype for Captain-N short story they wrote in the earliest issues. As a kid, I didn't think it was so bad, but wow these days it is one of the most painful reads I've ever seen.

I've checked through those high quality comics I just mentioned (in particular the big 4), and I noticed something. Those 4 comics were all written and drawn by a variety of Japanese people. That's right, it's written in Manganese, but it doesn't suck! There's not a single overbearing idiot protagonist and crew of "I beat you, now we're friends" allies to be found. No creepy "oops I fell on your boobs" moments or "I'm pulling out a deus ex technique to beat the baddy" situation to be found in any of them. Further, the artistic styles of all 4 are very distinct from each other, and none really resemble the "stereotypical anime style" so many of those shows do these days. It's very surprising, but then I remember that the entertainment industry in Japan has entered a real rut as of late, seemingly getting all their ideas off a bullet point style list, and it wasn't always like that.

One of my favorite comics is getting a rerelease. - A Black Falcon - 29th August 2016

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Nintendo Power only ran one Mario comic in it's entire history, so yes, that's the one I'm talking about.
Oh really? I'm sure they had at least some single-page things beyond that one -- I definitely remember a Mario & Wario one... but there was only one big multi-page Mario comic? Okay. As I said I don't remember much about it then. There's one chapter though where they drop into a big pile of Yoshi eggs, yes?

Quote: I liked the Zelda comic too, but it did feel a bit rushed. So many things were just glossed over, and while the ending was bitter sweet, I didn't really feel like that touching moment had been earned.
That's a fair criticism, but how much can you do with trying to tell such a big story with only 12 chapters with that strict a page limit? I think it does the best it can at being an epic adventure within some pretty short chapters. There are times where I wish there was more to it, such as how dungeons seem to mostly get skipped to go straight to the boss fights, but how much more could be done with those space restrictions? And despite that, it's still a really great series, and I liked the ending. And on top of everything else good about the series, was it also the first appearance of Zelda helping out in the final boss fight, something she later did in OoT, WW, and TP, too? It's the first time I remember seeing that for sure, at least.

Quote:That said, the run of Nintendo Power comics is still very good. The "big four" (Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, and Metroid") they released back to back in the early 90's still stands out as quality stuff, and stuff Nintendo still calls back to.
Star Fox and Metroid... I guess those existed, but remember even less about them than the Mario one. After the early '90s they cut back on the amount of comic pages in the magazine beyond Nester and such, but there were still a few later ones, such as the multi-part Shadows of the Empire bit taken out of the comic books, I believe.

Quote:Nester's recurring comic was also pretty enjoyable, though by it's nature (a weekly one-off series lampooning the big game of the moment) it was often hit or miss in how funny any one comic was. Still, I remember it fondly enough. Having Nester grow up and have a kid to pass the torch to in the final issue's comic was a good way to conclude it. It's too bad Nester's one actual video game appearence was a Virtual Boy game, and a bowling one at that. There were a few others, like the early Battletoads comic. Those weren't as good as the big 4 though. Battletoads in particular is that special kind of "so bad it's good" though, so I still recommend giving it a read. Probably the WORST bit of fiction they ever attempted in Nintendo Power went to that prototype for Captain-N short story they wrote in the earliest issues. As a kid, I didn't think it was so bad, but wow these days it is one of the most painful reads I've ever seen.
I should be glad I don't think I ever read this Captain N story, then? :p I have barely ever seen the Captain N show, much less read a story about it in the magazine...

Quote:I've checked through those high quality comics I just mentioned (in particular the big 4), and I noticed something. Those 4 comics were all written and drawn by a variety of Japanese people. That's right, it's written in Manganese, but it doesn't suck! There's not a single overbearing idiot protagonist and crew of "I beat you, now we're friends" allies to be found. No creepy "oops I fell on your boobs" moments or "I'm pulling out a deus ex technique to beat the baddy" situation to be found in any of them. Further, the artistic styles of all 4 are very distinct from each other, and none really resemble the "stereotypical anime style" so many of those shows do these days. It's very surprising, but then I remember that the entertainment industry in Japan has entered a real rut as of late, seemingly getting all their ideas off a bullet point style list, and it wasn't always like that.
Japanese artists drawing Western comics, you mean? Huh. I guess some of the Nintendo Power comics kind of are that though, like Zelda for example...

One of my favorite comics is getting a rerelease. - Dark Jaguar - 30th August 2016

From what I've seen, those 4 comics were Japanese comics written in both English and Japanese. The styles certainly seem different than any western comics too, especially at the time. Apparently the person who made the Zelda comics is also famous for some comic about cyborgs called Cyborg 009 or something. I think I saw the cartoon based on it on Cartoon Network back in the day. Seemed pretty good.

The Metroid one is well known in Japan as well. It seems they weren't made JUST for Nintendo Power, that's just the only place they could publish them in the U.S. The Super Metroid and Starfox comics were made by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benimaru_Itoh who apparently did a lot of comics for Nintendo games, but most of them only saw release in Japan.

It's a fair point that the Zelda comic had a lot of constraints that had to be worked within. I still like it, mind you. But if I'm going to compare it to the Mario comic, I gotta dock some points for that issue. (And yes, you're thinking of the right one, that is the one where at one point they fall in a nest of Yoshi eggs, and that Mario and Wario comic was a one-off side story (actually they did two of them) set in the same comic universe and made by the same person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamakichi_Sakura Who is apparently known mostly for this specific comic.) There's a point where Mario turns into Dr. Mario to treat a ghost's depression with Carl Sagan style speeches about the grandness of the cosmos and our tiny insignificant position therein. There's another point where Princess Peach single handedly takes out most of the Koopalings and blows up a fortress. It is amazing.

That short story I described as a "Captain N prototype" wasn't technically about Captain N. However, the cartoon took ideas from that short story and turned it into Captain N. The story, I think, was actually called "Captain Nintendo", and it was... really really bad... Captain N itself was a work of genius compared to that initial short story. Yes, short story. Technically, it wasn't a comic, just a two part reader's digest style thing.

One of my favorite comics is getting a rerelease. - A Black Falcon - 1st September 2016

Dark Jaguar Wrote:From what I've seen, those 4 comics were Japanese comics written in both English and Japanese. The styles certainly seem different than any western comics too, especially at the time. Apparently the person who made the Zelda comics is also famous for some comic about cyborgs called Cyborg 009 or something. I think I saw the cartoon based on it on Cartoon Network back in the day. Seemed pretty good.
Did the Zelda comic ever actually get a release in Japan? I always thought it was made for the US market... but yeah, since it's by a Japanese author it definitely has a different style from an American comic. Beyond the obvious art style differences, that bittersweet ending probably wouldn't be like that in an American comic for example, I would guess.

Quote:The Metroid one is well known in Japan as well. It seems they weren't made JUST for Nintendo Power, that's just the only place they could publish them in the U.S. The Super Metroid and Starfox comics were made by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benimaru_Itoh who apparently did a lot of comics for Nintendo games, but most of them only saw release in Japan.

It's a fair point that the Zelda comic had a lot of constraints that had to be worked within. I still like it, mind you. But if I'm going to compare it to the Mario comic, I gotta dock some points for that issue. (And yes, you're thinking of the right one, that is the one where at one point they fall in a nest of Yoshi eggs, and that Mario and Wario comic was a one-off side story (actually they did two of them) set in the same comic universe and made by the same person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamakichi_Sakura
Ah, the Mario & Wario ones were spinoffs of the main Mario comic? Right. I remember that being amusing... though it surely helped that I actually had a Game Boy, unlike the NES or SNES, so Wario was a character I knew well. Wario Land 1 always has been one of my favorite Mario-related games ever!

Quote: Who is apparently known mostly for this specific comic.) There's a point where Mario turns into Dr. Mario to treat a ghost's depression with Carl Sagan style speeches about the grandness of the cosmos and our tiny insignificant position therein. There's another point where Princess Peach single handedly takes out most of the Koopalings and blows up a fortress. It is amazing.
... I definitely don't remember those parts. I might have to look this collection up.

Quote:That short story I described as a "Captain N prototype" wasn't technically about Captain N. However, the cartoon took ideas from that short story and turned it into Captain N. The story, I think, was actually called "Captain Nintendo", and it was... really really bad... Captain N itself was a work of genius compared to that initial short story. Yes, short story. Technically, it wasn't a comic, just a two part reader's digest style thing.
Ah. As we didn't own a TV in the '80s, much less a Nintendo, I did not exactly follow Captain N much, or read the early Nintendo Power or Nintendo newsletter stuff. Sure, I played the NES at friends' houses when I could, but that's different from having something yourself.