Retronauts - 554: Valiant's Nintendo Comics

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

When the NES was born, so too were books based on Nintendo's characters. Nadia Oxford leads an essential conversation about the gilded age when Valiant Comics took a crack at putting Mario et al. on paper. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week on Retronauts, play Game Boy and do crimes. Hello, one and all, welcome to Retronauts. I'm your host for this month, Nadia Oxford. If you recall last month, I talked about comics that were included with your childhood issues of Nintendo Power, you know, Star Fox Zelda, Super Metroid, you know, pretty good stuff. So I'm not done talking about childish things. I'm never done. So this month I decided we're going to be talking a bit about the Valiant Nintendo comics published in the West by Valiant Comics in the early 90s. And this should be a ton of painful fun, I suppose, because this comic does have a few skeletons up its sleeve. But first, I'm going to introduce my two guests.

One of my comic book-consuming deviant friends here is writer Daniel Kassor. Say hi, Daniel. Tell us what you do. Hi. From 2010 to 2017, I ran Post Arcade, the video games vertical at the National Post in Canada. Since then, I've been laying low. And by laying low, I mean getting paid work that is not related to video games because that seems to be the thing that you do these days. You kind of do.

Like, I've slunk away from video games. game writing, but I'm still writing. You just can't find me as easily as he used to be able to. I think I remember post-arcade. I'm sure I read it. So that's really cool. Yeah. We were both in Toronto and probably going to the same press events, but I don't know that we ever met. No, I don't think we have. Even though your name's kind of familiar. Oh, man. So Toronto's a small city, even though it sprawls everywhere. Yes, exactly. And for my second guest, we have my good old friend here, writer podcaster Matthew Green, who I'm really excited to finally be podcasting with.

So say hi, Matt. Hey, there, Nadia. Thanks for having me. Oh, anytime. I'm really glad to have you here talking about crazy-ass comics, like God intended. Yeah, these comics have a special place in my heart, even though they're just terrible. I would say that they're like one notch above terrible. They're like terrible adjacent, you know?

Like, they're definitely worse comics than these. Yeah, yeah. I think we can get into that in just a second. And in fact, why don't we talk a little bit about how we got into the comics? Speaking for myself, I don't even know these existed until my husband, like we got married, he brought over a bunch of weird American stuff. And this was included amongst it, like just a whole collection of the Valiant Mario comics, which include stories about also Zelda.

Captain N is a big one. Game Boy, we'll get into that because, oh, boy. And there's also, like, random smatterings of other characters, too. Like Little Mac will certainly talk about his adventures. getting, I don't want to use the word Bukaki, but there was a kind of a scene in one of the comics that gave me a terrible vision, but we'll get to that.

For now, I guess that's all I can really say about how I got into the comics. How about you, Daniel? Well, I'm 42 years old. I got these comics new when I was a kid. So my dad and I used to go and get comics every week. Every Friday, we would go to the comic store. And as soon as I saw that these Nintendo comics,

Nintendo, something that I absolutely loved, were in the shop. I knew I had to have them. I had to have all of them. And so I started getting them new. And in the back of one of the issues, there was a coupon spelled coop, like cupa. And I cut that out of the comic, like a heathen. And I sent that in knowing that I would get a discount on the 12 issues of whatever series I was ordering. And I started getting them in the mail, just like my Nintendo power.

Oh, that's actually, now that service. Did you grow up in Toronto? No, I grew up in Edmonton, which is actually where I live now. It's still in Canada, but not in Toronto. Are you, I know someone got mad on me at Twitter for saying Edmonton was very cold and no one wanted to live there because it was very cold. Is that you? I think it might have been me, but Winnipeg is definitely colder than Edmonton.

Oh, absolutely. It's called Winterpeg for a reason. And Toronto is not nearly as cold as people in Toronto think it is. Oh, God, no. Even I know that. It's just, thank you, Great Lakes, for moderating our temperature. I am good with that. But you guys, so when I was a kid in Toronto, I didn't see too many dedicated comic book stores at that time, but I was probably looking in the wrong spots.

I grew up in the north end of the city rather than in downtown. So was there at your age, when you bought these comics, there was an established store that you got it from? There was an established store, but also I was not finding these things at 9. My dad, who is a huge comic book fan, who has dozens and dozens of long boxes down in his basement now meticulously organized, it definitely was the one who got me into comics and got me reading there. That's pretty cool, yeah, because like you said, those were comics that you would not see unless he knew where to look. Like when we were kids on the rack, what did he have? He had Archie. I know Sonic was out a lot.

It's probably what gave him part of his fame. we'll talk about Sonic some other day, because dear God, Sonic always demands like two back-to-back episodes. Whatever you're talking about with Sonic, it's big. Speaking of the Sonic comics, though, like these sort of Sonic comics, you, like, you read

the first five or six issues and you're like, what's going on here? And then they kind of establish their own world and their own continuity and they get more confident. These comics sort of feel like what would have happened if the Sonic comics were not actually allowed to do that. And they're,

They're cut off and they're sort of getting to the point where they might have a confidence and then they just end. Yeah, they just kind of drop off the edge of the cliff. That's actually an interesting discussion. But first, Matthew, we should probably introduce you before we crowd you out. I appreciate that. I'm reminded of the future. I'm a quote where Mr. President, our people tell the same story about, oh, it's not a funny on my head one I thought. Anyway, I've done that a million times.

Yeah. I was nine, ten years old when these comics were first out. And just like Daniel, my father took me down to the local comic book shop to buy them every month, had to use my allowance money, took me down to Eric's baseball cards and comics. Oh, that sounds so Simpsons. I love it. Doesn't it? It's funny you say that because the owner was very comic book guy. Oh, boy. Yeah, I can imagine. And you go on the store, it's a rat's nest of boxes and back issues and board games on the back and weird art and cardboard standees and trading cards. But on the back wall was this massive rack of all. the new comics that month. And over the course of the month, he would rotate them out

as new ones came in every week. And the Nintendo ones were always smack in the center on the lowest shelf. Perfect for, you know, little children to see and grab. I cannot tell you how I found out about them because I don't remember them being in Nintendo Power at the time. It must have been that cultural playground osmosis that we all had as kids.

Yeah, for sure. One kid finds out about it and then everybody else knows about it within the week. But I never had enough allowance to buy all of them that came in. And I don't believe Eric ever had them all because I bought all the Mario's I saw. I bought a couple of Zelda's. I have all the Game Boys. I have a handful of Captain N's that actually bought last year off at eBay. And that was just a nostalgia. Hey, let's see what's out there kind of thing. Yeah. And I have the hardbacked best of collection of Super Mario Brothers. Definitely don't have that. That's apparently pretty rare, what I understand. Yeah. I was actually

kind of glancing at the prices they had on eBay and they're not cheap. Some of them are a little cheaper than others, but they're all like, they can command three figures quite easily. Really? Yeah, a few of them can. I paid $10 for it when it was... Good job. You know, it also could be a fact that I was glancing and that's like what they were asking versus what you're actually going to get paid. I know a lot of people go on eBay saying, hey,

I have this piece of junk, it must be worth something. Give me $100. And you might get lucky. There was one woman ages ago who sold a bra that fell out of her ceiling. And she just put on eBay as quote unquote, this nasty bra that fell out of my ceiling. And it was so compelling that it did go for quite a bit of money. That was a, that was pretty funny. So, yeah, these comics were published by Valiant, which was a label that broke off from, I believe, well, back then DC and Marvel were both, like, as they are now, Titans and Greedy and not paying their writers with these serves.

So, yeah, it was a spinoff of the big companies and founded in 1989 by Steve Masarkey, I believe that I pronounce his name, sorry if it's not, and a former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. Bob Layton, who was known for his work on Iron Comics, was brought on board as well. You will see their names kind of hidden on the margins of the stories. And it seemed to be a tight team that worked on the whole thing. There were sometimes, like, names didn't recognize who would come in from the outside probably to do like contract work. But for the most part, these were the guys working on the comics. And this is actually very interesting timing because Polygon just released an article where Bob Layton talks a little bit about his time in Valdeen. And he says, probably the biggest mistake they made in the beginning was grabbing all those licenses because they also grabbed WWE slash WWF.

And that must have cost them a lot of money. And by the looks at they got a lot of licenses at once because I know things were a little looser back then in terms of licensing. But nowadays, can you imagine one comic book publisher just coming out of the ether and saying, oh, yeah, we have the rights to Mario, Zelda, Game Boy, Captain End, like, everything. and we're all, we're just going to be making comics willy-nilly on this. Not something you could get away with these days. I'm not even sure if Nintendo of Japan knew about Valiant Comics doing their thing because everything was so,

communication was just nothing back then. You could send a telegram or something, not a telegram, but like, you know, a courier or a phone call, but back then it was like, if you wanted to screw around with their property, that was the time to do it because no one was coming to stop you. There's also the, like, you wouldn't assume that any of the people of Valiant spoke Japanese or any of the, the people at Nintendo of Japan, I mean, many of them probably did speak English, but a lot of the people making the decisions probably wouldn't. So it would always be through two or three levels of intermediaries, even if it was happening.

Yeah, I mean, I've said it in the past, but just look at Captain N, which this version of Captain N actually does not have the third-party characters because they just couldn't negotiate their rights. So there was someone paying intention. But in the interim, we got a couple of characters. We got Samus Aaron, a very, really interesting interpretation of Samus Aaron. And, yeah, I'll get back to that in a sec. But Valiant basically, I feel like they published everything at once, then dropped it on the floor and ran, because I think they spent a little bit too much money on this. So the comics did not really have a chance to grow. And I think they had the potential to grow, especially the Zelda stories are generally good.

The Metroid stories were good. Mario was always a goofy-ass one-off comic, but that's all it really could be. Look at the Mario movie. Mario saves the princess, hooray. We have a billion dollars. So what works, works. but I wouldn't call them terrible. Matt, you call them terrible.

What would you justify them being terrible on? Because even at nine years old, reading them, I would finish it and go, well, I enjoyed the artwork, but the jokes landed flat a lot of the times. There's a couple of good gags here and there, and I think we'll get to that here in a few minutes based on our pre-show notes. Yes. But the writing was just pretty poor, and they didn't follow what I thought the character should be doing. And, of course, when you're nine years old, you know exactly what those characters should be doing. Oh, of course. And if they're not doing that, then it's just wrong.

No, I totally agree. As someone who my fanfic origin story was to write Mara and Luigi because I wanted them to swear and fight and they did. So I completely understand you're coming from. At the same time, I also understood, okay, I can write Mara and Luigi's swearing and fighting. They probably can't do that officially. Like, I had enough sense in my head to know what was realistic and what wasn't. But I do know what you mean about the jokes. I found the same thing of Super Mario Bros. Super Show.

Like, they went over my head when I was a kid. But reading them now is kind of like, it's kind of funny. I like that. Like, Mario having a ship named the Spirit of Flatbush. That's pretty funny. And I would also say that I think a lot of the impression for the quality of these comics comes from the Mario ones, which are so similar to the Japanese Mario comics, but just not as good, that it is really hard to kind of not think of them as kind of being, You know, want, want, well. That said, I would say that the comics are in general better than the cartoon shows that they are based off of the Mario ones and all of the other ones as well.

Yeah. I do notice that some of the art, especially for the Mario ones, are a bit sloppy, but they did not have a lot of references back then. So I have to give them props. Obviously, they use the cartoons. You can see they have like the Deke style, Princess Deke style kind of combination cupa wart, which was always a fascinating design. And I don't know who, but years ago, someone sent us a perfect, just a beautiful cupa in that style as of plushy. And we never found out who sent it. And it's just like a great plush.

And I love it so much because to me, that's the cupa I grew up with. So, yeah, I appreciate that they kind of used that for these stories. But as you say, it was a lot of wordplay, a lot of puns. And the thing is, it did try to be as goofy as the Japanese manga Mario Comics, but it didn't have the bouncy artwork. And that's really what kind of pulls everything together. What do you think, Matt? The artwork really felt like it came out of the instruction manuals of the day. And for me, that's a definite plus because there were two versions of Mario when I was a kid.

It was the pixels on the screen and then the artwork and the manuals. So as long as you stuck to one of those styles in your merchandise, you were fine. Somebody, I think it was you, Matt. Well, actually both of you wrote about how basically the pricing of the magazines here. Now, I don't know a whole lot about how they were priced. So if you want to talk a little about that, it'd be great. Yeah, so, oh, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say that in the beginning,

they were all published on this very nice premium cardstock type paper. I think we have those, yeah. Yeah, glossy covers. Yes. Yeah, and they were $2 a comic, more or less, like $1.95. That was expensive for the day. Yes. And then as time went on, they weren't selling very well.

They dropped the price down to $1.50 and went down to just your basic paper staples for the binding they decayed faster but I look at the ones in my collection the paper ones are short in the yellow a little bit even though they're in sleeves for you know 30 years but even still it's cheaper paper it's cheaper ink they fade a little bit they're just

on held together as well but those those premium glossy cardstock ones looked just as good today as they were the day they were published yeah and when I when I opened up my box of miscellaneous comics to pull these out it was very obvious which comics were the Nintendo comics because they stood out as being much more robust than everything else in that box of comics.

And when I pulled them out, I treated these comics like absolute garbage when I was a nine-year-old. And they held up amazingly well considering how much damage I put them through. The paper is just so much better. And the covers particularly, you could just drop it and ram it into things. I think I walked into a post while reading one. I was so engrossed as a child. And, you know, you can see the little fold in the cover, but it mostly hung together.

You can see the bloodsade on the cover. It adds drama to the scene to the fighting for Mario and Cupa. Yeah, we have, the ones we have, I think, really felt like they were actually professionally bound. They weren't stapled, as you said. But I think we do have some of the staple ones as well. All of my comics are really buried down there somewhere. But they are on Internet Archive,

if you want to go ahead and read them. Definitely worth a look. They sure are something. But, yeah, I like you're walking into the post story. That's pretty good. That's something I would do. See, I was not good at treating my stuff nicely.

Getting married, my husband just, like, through a fit because he goes through my instruction booklets, and I wrote, like, swear words on the pages with crayon. I had two brothers, and they did the same thing. And he's like, how could you treat your stuff like this? And it's like, Mr. Only Child, go stand over there. But, yeah, I am kind of bad.

I actually cut up my Final Fantasy 3 box for a school project. Yeah, you can't see it here, dear listeners, but Matt just winced. What I think about it, I winced. Oh, man, just back then there was no value to it. Oh, if I could only go back in time. I still have all my old boxes. Yeah, all of my NES boxes and all of my super NES boxes. My dad meticulously kept them all in a closet somewhere.

And then he gave them to me when I was moving out for the first time and I just threw them away. And yeah, right, right. That is the correct reaction. And yeah, now all of those games, if I were to ever sell them or if I ever wanted to really create a meticulous, you know, collection, they're worth a whole lot less money. So, yeah. Yeah, unfortunately. Daniel, you wrote here, I'm intrigued. You said that you're, you put in the coupon.

as we mentioned earlier, and something about how your dad took the Magnus Comics. Now, Magnus was one of the labels of Vallehan, wasn't it? Was it a try-hard, Leifeld sort of production? No, no, the Magnus comics were actually, like, they're kind of old school. Like, they kind of felt like the kind of comics you'd get in, like, the 50s or the 60s, like Prince Valiant kind of things. Oh, yeah. Like, they weren't bad.

I think my dad was just much more interested in that kind of. comic than I was at the time. Okay, okay. Because he wrote, he took the comics, I'm thinking, why were there boobies? Because in the 90s, everyone was drawing boobies. Yeah, if they had been a like blood spot, I think, is the other major valiant superhero. If they were

that, maybe he would have taken them because they were too violent. But I don't, I don't think so. Like, I was reading Peter David's Incredible Hulk at that time, which is the sort of thing where it's like deep psyche and child abuse and that sort of stuff. And, you know, great stuff for an 11-year-old or a

10 or 11 year old. Yeah. Everyone has their first story like that where they read something way too old for them. For me, it was Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. Oh, yeah. That warped me a little bit. But, yeah, also some points that were also brought in the notes talking about how the covers and the art were made to really, they really did feel like those old Marvel Superman and

sorry, DC Superman, please don't kill me. Like those old school comics is what I'm saying, like at the time, like more action-based. They did kind of give the impression. of something that's like, hey, kids, here's Superman rescuing the day, except as Mario or a Captain N. It wasn't like manga or something, which has like a very continued deep storyline. This was, these were all one-offs.

And I wonder, and I wonder if the, if you believe the same thing, if maybe if Zelda in particular have been given time to flourish, if we would have had something a little more substantial in time, even Mario, any of the titles they published, really. Game Boy was a four-part series. Oh, Game Boy is an epic. Game Boy belongs alongside the Odyssey. We're not including Gameplay here. Well, the Legend of Zelda comics,

every book had two stories plus a couple of little, like two-page one-off kind of deals. But there was that one issue where they had the two-part story in one book. So you wound up with like a 22-page story, you know, minus the ads. That's a taste of where it could have gone if it had more opportunity to develop.

Yeah. And the stories in the last issue of Zelda also, they were two separate stories, but they were linked. and they talked to each other. Like, events in one story mattered for the events and the other story and vice versa. And so, like, you could tell that they were putting, like, a level of care into that that didn't go into the cartoon show, which, if I recall correctly, often had, you know, was done in a very short period of time with a very small group of people. And so, yeah, like, I could have seen the Legend of Zelda develop into something.

I could have seen Captain N also develop into something. Maybe that's something is a, maybe that's something as a Metroid comic, though, because they sure, like, were like, oh, this Samus Aaron character has room to grow, can have character arcs. Who cares about the stupid, you know, self-insert Mary Sue Kevin character.

Also, she's a cougar. We're not going to talk about ages. Everybody's legal. Come to think of it. There were a lot of stories focused on the dog. Do you notice that? Yeah, you're right. Duke, Duke. That was the dog's name. I always wanted a dog like Duke. And I look at the intro now for Captain Nand. You see it's like the realistic one. And you can see they just took a yellow lab and painted a black circle over its high represent Duke. Poor thing. I am looking at these covers, actually, that one of you put into the document, thank you for that.

And I have to say, the Zelda ones are really great. Like, there's this one of Link fighting Adaria, who is the alligator, soldiers from Zelda 2 and dear God they're terrible and it looks like just as menacing here as it would like in the game come out of you with their freaking axes very very like again action based covers

meant to kind of get the kids in and yeah it could have matured a little bit more but didn't get that chance and what I always found interesting is that the Zelda comic Link had a horse I think in the cartoon he had a horse too and to this day I wonder I don't know if like Japan has

Japan must have watched by this point like these cartoons that we had as kids, whether ironically or unironically. And I don't know if that was the inspiration. Of course, a hero has a horse. Maybe there's nothing to it. But I just remember his horse's name was Catherine, which is such a stupid, weird name for a horse. Epona is much, much better. I think it's a pretty general idea that you would get to if you were trying to expand what Link was doing.

Yes. Although Catherine in the States for his horse in Japan, though, they localize the horse's bird out. Come to think of it. Are you serious? I'm not. Oh, I just got that. That's pretty good. Thank you. I should have warned you that I have the power to say things that are totally wrong and they sound real. I've been told that by many people.

That's pretty good. That's not at all harmful on the internet. You should use that for a prank. No one will get harmed. I think like a good example of what I was talking about kind of the dual nature of the comics is, for example, there was a issue of Mario where there was, I don't even know why they invented this, a quote, stupid bomb that people will get hip. by the bomb and they would turn stupid. Now, this is a very standard, I think, one of those stories that come off a template and someone erases the dryer marker and, like, fills in, okay, here's Mario, here's Cupa, here's whatever.

But there is one great scene where something goes in reverse and a sniff it becomes brilliant and he emerges from the cloud of smoke with a little mortar board that you see on professors and he's saying E equals MC squared.

I just have this panel of Cupa looking at the reader and saying, I don't see how this could possibly work out to my advantage. And I just thought that was really funny. You did have your moments. I don't know if you remember any particular yourselves. I just remember about that issue. It wasn't a stupid bomb.

It was the stupid bomb. St.O-P-I-D. Yeah. Stupid. Yeah. Cooper had a plan to drop these stupid bombs on the mushroom king to make everybody stupid. And instead, he wound up basically just bombing everybody, I accent, including his own people. That's why he needed the smart bomb to undo it, and which he tested them.

You sniff it and was like, okay, this is getting out of control. Most of the Mario character wound up being stupid for that issue. And it was mainly a Cooper story as he tried to figure out how to fix this. Yeah, yeah. It was actually pretty funny. And I can't remember if this was the case. But did the bomb not even affect the king who was kind of stupid by default? I remember a joke like that.

Yeah, he was like, I feel fine. Nothing wrong with me. I'm the smartest man in the room. There was a reboot episode about this whole exact thing. And so I can't, although I guess this would come first. But that's what I think of. We are helping. We are helping.

I actually found the Mario comics to be the least memorable of all of these. Like I'm like, oh, I remember this story and I remember this story. And then I realized, no, those were the Japanese ones. Like they were similar, but just I didn't, they did not imprint in my head the same way that some of the Captain N stories or the Zelda stories or even the Game Boys. stories, which it really did. The, yeah, Mario, even though it's not a very

story-heavy property, it certainly has the potential to be linked into something that's more interesting to follow, like the Mario manga we were talking about. That has an overarching narrative. The princess is kidnapped. We have to find her.

A whole bunch of stupid stuff happens along the way because it's a Mario world. That's all you really need. And I think breaking up the Mario, the valiant Mario stories into like bite-sized comics, it kind of doesn't establish the world quite as nicely, and it does make it a little less memorable, even though

I'm looking at a panel where, uh, I, I don't even know who did this or why or how they got away with it. Princess Peach is on a, a pidget flying carpet for Mario 2, and she's floating to quote unquote the cup zone. And she's literally swearing. She's like, you know, obviously they like censor it, but she's saying, oh, fuck, but she can't say fuck. So they make it like, you know, symbols. But that was the funniest thing because it's so random. This is a, this is a story which turns to a punk and turns evil and oh, look at me, I'm Princess so-and-so, and I'm motorcycle, room, room, room. But she swears before she even, like, gets turned to a punk, which makes it funny as hell.

And I'm thinking, like, it's not exactly like the kind of thing that makes the Sidori rated R or anything like that, but it is the kind of thing where someone from Nintendo, I would think, would look at that and say, what was that? That's one of those, this is an instance I've been through several times where you do something like that because you think you're funny or you think you're clever, or you just forget you did it entirely. And then you go back and you read your published work and it's still there and you say, oh, shit, that went through. So maybe it was something like that.

Someone thought they were testing the waters just to be an asshole about it. And they won. Congratulations. Ba-pa-pa-pa-pa-pah-pa-pa-pa-pah. The cupa-zone sign on that cloud that the princess passes, that's the payoff to an earlier joke. Because as the carpet she's on takes her higher and higher out of her control, first she goes through the ozone. That's right. Then she goes through the oh-no zone.

and then she winds up at the Cooper zone. I thought that was funny. The oh no zone is pretty funny. Yeah. It's an oh shit moment, if you will. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Like, she's justified.

Don't get me wrong. It's just like, oh, Bobba. Oh, having so much trouble. Oh, one of you put up a picture of Mario looking really high. And he says, I am Dirk Drainhead. Oh, right. This was the story where he got hit on the head and he thought he was Dirk Drainhead. Yes.

As I recall. His favorite comic book hero. in the world of the Mario comics was Dirk Drainhead, a fantastic plumber hero that runs around with a towel for a cape and a plunger for a sword. Of course. Of course. And he gets knocked on the head and spends the whole issue thinking he's Dirk Drainhead

and Luigi and Toad have to rein him in and keep him from getting too out of control. But in his stupor of thinking he's the plumber hero, or the other plumber hero, he actually does manage to defeat Coupa and save the day. Of course, of course. At the very end that he gets to the comment, bookshop to buy the latest issue of the dirt greenhead comic and they're sold out because cooper bought them all to line his burdo cages oh god the burdos and cages like that's just so many disturbing implications i i appreciate the wordplay but when you know what the character is all about

that's kind of weird i yeah i see a panel here you put down where uh luid's looking really pissed off the comic book shop owner and you're saying what do you mean you just sold out the latest bareness blue blood issue and he's looked like he's about to like shank this poor guy who runs the places. Like, is that for him or is that for peach? That's what I want to know. Toadstool. Excuse me. It's for Toadstool. Oh, I'm so, I tend to go back to old localizations, but Toastool is one of those that I actually, they brainwashed me successfully. I guess they caught me just in time. But you're right,

in the comics, it's all Toadstool. I mean, Mario 64 established that her full name is Peach Toadstool. So, you know, both are correct, technically. Yeah, if you want to be on a first name basis with her, that's fine. That's true. She's always Princess or she'll cut your head off. with like a rainbow axe or something. Oh, one character we need to talk about who shows up oftentimes is Stanley the Talking Fish. He kind of reminds me of,

didn't the Mario manga have Stanley the salesman? Was that his name? I know he was a character, like a salesman. So that's an interesting parallel. Is that friendly Floyd? Floyd, I'm sorry. I was thinking, okay, so no, it's not a weird, it's not a parallel.

I was just mixing things up. But it's kind of the same idea. You have a scumbag character who's all like, you know, slimy and annoys everyone. Those are not very good stories because I don't like Stanley, the stupid idiot fish. No. He has a bow tie, though.

And go ahead. I was going to say the best thing to come out of those stories, though, is that Stanley decides he wants to woo Wendy Cooper. Yes. But Stanley is currently dating Big Bertha, and she is jealous of this attempted woo-wich. And poor Wendy gets her ass kicked up and down the ocean in this comic. Mario is trying to save the day and is just kind of caught up in the crossfire. at the end of the story Mario and Wendy

propose a 10 minute truce to go get sodas and talk bad things about Stanley the Talking Fish Yeah, okay I see that here in the panel you put down That's pretty great

Yeah, she gets choked out By a big birthday They shouldn't get eaten But I do like the panel Just the very idea of Mario and Wendy calling a truce And saying, you know what This guy's a dick

Let's just talk about how this guy is a dick If Wendy was always my favorite Kupling because she was the girl Even though she was a real You know what to beat the first time I tried to beat her in Mario 3, and I felt kind of betrayed because it's like, we're both girls. You shouldn't be made to me like this. Another interesting thing about the Mario comics is just the designs and how they kind of evolve over the course of the comics. If you read the first issue, the design of Toad makes him look like a mushroom from Mario One.

And they sort of have that going for the next issue and a half, I guess. But then it very much becomes the established toad look that we get in Mario 2, which is sort of still the toad look today, a variation of it. But it is very weird how they were kind of off book for that first issue. And clearly they were paying attention enough to get on book. But in a lot of these places, it feels like they were given no oversight whatsoever. So it's interesting what did and didn't get affected by that. There's a story called The Legend. that just sets up the storyline from the original NES game.

If you're totally unfamiliar with these characters, this will get you caught up. And that's where you can see this off-model toad a lot. He's all over that one. Yeah, I kind of noticed, like, again, I was talking about how the early media, supplementary media that we had in the West for these video games and whatnot, like the design documents just were not there.

And that's why we have a Captain N with Simon the way he looks and Megamand the way he looks because everyone had to kind of eyeball the screen and see where they were going. So I wonder if there is that really confusing story that people still quote from Super Mario Brothers 1 in the instruction booklet about how the mushrooms were turned into different things. So maybe they kind of seized upon that point, like mushrooms are simple people turned into objects. Therefore, the things that come out of blocks, those are the subjects of the Mario Kingdom. And I guess Mario eats them on occasion. We'll talk about that.

And I did notice, like in the first couple of issues, it kind of naked. They're just people with like stalks for bodies. and weird spindly hands and feats. But I'm looking at one of the later issues here where it's called Betrayal Most Proper. And that involves Wooster, who is the retainer to the king in this comic series. And yeah,

I remember him being naked and scary in the first early part of the story. But he has close in this story now. He's very dignified. And I think this is an issue where he just walks away from the king because the king is such an idiot and he's had it. Yeah, he goes to work for Bowser.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. Something interesting here that I either forgot or did not know, Wart showed up in one of the comics? One time. This one. This is a story called Cloud 9, where Wart poses as a mattress salesman and sells the king a booby-trap bed that will abduct him when he goes to sleep on it. Okay.

And Mario Luigi remarked that Wart kidnapped the king again, which implies that this happens a lot, and we just don't ever see it. It's so dull. We just keep it off screen. Yeah. Now, that's interesting because Wart, like, the version they have of King Coupa himself is that mix of Wart and Cupa. Since the way I hear it, they didn't really know what they were looking at in terms of who the villain was going to be for the animated show. So they made him a Wart Cupa baby. I mean, the only way you'd know that this is Wart is one, they call him by name.

And two, the character design is the same as Cupa, but he's wearing a, like, a purple capy robe thing that was out of the video game from Mario 2. So if you're familiar with the source material, I guess you can make the connection. Yeah, yeah, easy enough. But Warth's a very, very underutilized villain. I would like to see him come back in some capacity. I do like how his scheme involved around sleep, though. That is, see, that's good canon.

That's good use of canon because, yes, Warth does rule the land of nightmares. So good job. You know, they didn't hate this comic. I mean, it was a paycheck and it nearly ruined them, too, but they did care enough to make it entertaining, at least mildly. Mildly.

Mildly. Let's talk a little bit about Captain N and how it differs from Mario, because it does quite substantially. First of all, do either of you watch the Captain N's show growing up? Oh, religiously. Yeah, I'm almost certain that I saw every single episode with, you know, creepy chain smoker Mega Man and giant chin, Simon Belmont. But I couldn't tell you the plot of a single episode, unfortunately. they had episodes where they tried to follow the games and it just turned weird like i remember there were interesting like stories based around dragon warrior which nobody played even though

they really tried to shove the game down everyone sewed and only idiots like myself picked it up but yeah just they had to do what they could because again this is these are shows without any kinds of references so what they did with with dragon quest is like they just made like this land of dragons and the dragon lord was in charge and you were being mean to all the other dragons and it's like oh it isn't the game plot but it's cool enough so it had his competent episodes and it's uh episodes capital e episodes and uh it had mother brain to be fair it was Audrey two Audrey three if you like yeah I remember mother brains sorry go ahead I was just said there are episodes with games like Bayou Billy and Puss and Boots and you wonder who was clamoring for this one

Yeah, the Puss and Boots one confused the hell to me because I'd like, who the hell played Puss & Boots? And I'd imagine it was hugely popular in Japan because they love Pousin Boots over there. Yeah. Toy and all that. Yeah. I always assume when it's a weird game that is featured in any of these

that money was exchanged at some point. I mean, I don't know, but I just assume. No, you're absolutely right. I now remember the Bayou Ability episode is infamous because it was missing a background at points. Just background quit, went home, took five. They were just standing in a beige void. And they drew a really strange bio-a-billy.

I never played Bio-Billy, so I wasn't exactly a fan of the episodes where I didn't play the game and didn't know about it. But I sat there and ate at all because that's what a good consumer does. There's one episode of the show called When Mother Brain Rules that supposedly nobody at Deke or NBC has any knowledge of where it came from. But you would hope that one of them would know, since they developed and broadcast it. That sounds like creepypasta stuff right there. It does. It's a clip show. Yeah.

It just has clips of other episodes. without the dialogue. So its characters just, you know, smooth the mouse. And there's a narrator guy that's like, meanwhile, mother brain sent the eggplant wizard over to the castle to try and steal the source of power. It's like, who's this guy?

Why is he narrating? And how come these clips are all just random order stuff? No one knows where that came from. That is so weird. I've never heard of that. It's not on the DVD. Right. But you can find it.

I'm sure it's on YouTube still. It was years ago. It's got to look for that. Daniel, have you ever heard of that? Am I, like, out of the lip here? I've never heard of that. That sounds like something that a distributor was like, we need this many episodes for it to count for our syndication deal.

And they just made one out of clips. And, you know, the guy from the mail room did a voiceover to make it make it make sense. Oh, shit. I need me. He's stuffing the last of his mail into some whole, okay. Meanwhile, at the Palace of Power. That's really interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that.

So, yeah, Captain Nent in the comics. as we said before, he did not have the third party characters with him. No Mega Man, no Simon, thank God, and no Kid Echreis. So in their places... Oh, Kid Echrester's there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yes, we did have Pitt. That's right. That is Nintendo. Nintendo, please release Kid Icacris Uprising.

His name was not Pitt in the comics. His name was not... That's right. It was Kid Icarus. That confuses the hell out of me to this day. I still vary between the two. We're lucky that Belmont wasn't just named Mr. Castlevania. I remember watching the Castlevania three episode and being like, this is one of my favorite games. What are you doing? What is going on here? I did like how they made mention of the Paltrygeist King, though. That's some deep canon that I appreciate.

But, yeah, in the place of these third-party characters, of course, at Samus. I'm trying to remember if Beyond Samus and her friends and enemies, there was anything else that replaced like Mega Man and the like. There was another henchman from Mother Brain who was one of the Kid Icarus gods. I'm blanking on his name.

He came from Kid Echris. He was one of the, he wasn't a monster. He was like a, like a barbarian guy. Hmm. I don't remember him for some reason. I guess he wasn't very memorable. He wasn't in many issues, but he was there. Yeah. Yeah. The The Kidikris guy was not in many issues. Because I think really early on, they seemed to go, oh, Captain N kind of sucks.

Let's make a Metroid comic. That was the right thing to do. Yeah. I don't know if you guys have ever seen, but a while back, somebody put up concept art of what Deke wanted to do. I think it was Deke for further cartoons based on Nintendo properties. And he had Metroid. And it was some dude, of course, just like some space marine looking ass dude firing on an alien. It's like, okay, well, you missed the point.

Thanks. Congratulations. never happened, of course, but we did get, honestly, the best part of the comic was Samus. I'm not going to lie. I really like this interpretation of Samus. Samus in Captain N. She's greedy. She's a bounty hunter. She's out there for money. And again, Captain, she wants, you know, Captain End to ask, but we're not going to go too far into that. She does literally want him to be his, like, space, her space king, so they can rule the galaxy together. But yeah, she's drawn really nicely. One of you, I think it was you, Daniel, put down the first instance that we have of blonde sadness. I think you might be right. Yeah, I couldn't, I can't find one before this.

This was 1990. So I can't think of one that would have been before this. All of the official Nintendo art of her not in her suit was from that Metroid 1 ending. And there, the color of her hair is defined by the sprite palette of whatever else she's wearing, whether it's a swimsuit or her. armor, and it's never blonde. It's always light brown to green. But yeah, here we have blonde Samus, and blonde Samus is what we get after this pretty much

consistently. You know, some of the Nintendo Power comics have like light brown hair, but no, it's pretty much consistently blonde after this. There is a cover for a Captain N comic where we have, I think Kevin was ruling over the planet of trash in some alternate dimension, and Samus ends up there. And he's just, like, bullying the shit out of robots and just living like a king on top of his pile of garbage. And he's wearing thigh boots that go way up to his groin. And it's not a bad look other than the thigh boots.

I don't know what's going on with those. But Samis, who joins him, because awesome, we get to be trash marty together. She has a really fetching outfit. Like, it's green fits her really well. She has his amazing boots. She's like, wow, I want those boots. So that's probably one of the more compelling stories. One of the weirdest stories for sure, because it was trying really hard to be posted.

apocalyptic like mad max garbage planet captain n captain planet i don't know that was the time portal one wasn't it yes yeah um so excited to talk about comics yeah this is like the best story that they had though i can see why it's worth being excited over did you do you want to cover it or should i oh go ahead oh you probably know all the dirty details are okay yeah yeah go ahead all right yeah kevin falls into a time portal and sammas goes in after him it's now 15 years later kevin been there for 15 years on the garbage planet. And he's become this Mad Max thigh boot guy

ruling over everything. But the catch is that now he's interested in Samus. He's ready to be her space king. Oh, that's right. He aged. Yeah, she's, yeah, because now he's older and wiser and has forgotten about Princess Lana and is ready to move on. And he's like, hey, Sammas, great. Let's go.

Let's, you know, be king and queen of the trash world. And she is just all over this and is ready to go for it. And then she thinks, no, no, this isn't right. And And also we need to get back to the status quo of the book. So she winds up, like, shoving him back through the portal and undoing it. And everything resets the moment Kevin disappeared originally. So that story in the end never happened.

But she still remembers. She still remembers. That's right. Like a single tier running down the cheek kind of thing going on there. That is the kind of story that as silly as it was, if it had to be given a proper arc, that's the kind of thing that would have, like, carried the series forward a little bit. I think they had a good thing going with Metroid, if nothing else. Yeah, and like with if Kevin had become sort of a secondary character and not like sucked in like you read it his backstory so he wasn't literally a self-insert character for the kind of kid who would be reading the book.

Like I can see it being an interesting Metroid comic because as you said, this is one of the most interesting takes on Samus. It gives there like there, there's definitely room to tell stories with the sort of ambiguous character that. she is here. And they didn't get room to do that. No. And let's not forget, there was another great issue with her where she goes to jail. She just gets trialed by this pink Floyd kangaroo court and gets thrown into jail. Oh, the judge is Ridley.

So you know that's going to go well. Ridley is an interesting design in this comic because, again, nothing in the way of concept art. So they made him this weird kind of bug-looking thing instead of a big dragon we know today. Kind of more alien in that respect. I appreciate the look. but he looked very silly in this comic with like his gavel and like just kind of like had his feet up on the all right you're going to you're going to jail and it's like don't this mockery of justice spare me and the whole thing but they do end up in jail her and lana and of course samus is like 10 feet tall so she's like tangleana hey stick with me i'll protect you and it was just a really it was a good story because i remember like samus just like breaks up a fight between prisoners and says no you got to redirect your energy towards the establishment that's the you need to be be angry at.

And I'm trying to remember how they got out. I think there was a prison break, but they actually reformed this jail where there was like people being beaten and starved and stuff. And they made it into an actual like facility meant for rehabilitation. That was pretty good. That was someone who had an idea in their head and said, you know what? I don't know what else to do with this idea. I'm going to put Samis and slana into it and get my paycheck because otherwise just

going to go to waste. That's the kind of thing I do in my mind. I had a lot. Matt, do you remember that story? Do you have any additional, like, cool insight into it? I don't remember that one that well. Really? No. It was a good story. It's definitely one the ones I have. I remember the one where there's another Captain N. A more futuristic looking guy that shows up that is wearing like a proper power suit that's all like Tron lines and like a superhero take on the Captain N idea. And he's better than Kevin in every way. And he's going to be the new captain and Kevin you can go home and retire because I'm here now and I'll take the princess

and say today you can just go and of course it turns out that he that he's a created plant by mother brain one of her plots and in the end yeah in the end it turns out that of course he's evil and they expose him and destroy him and back to the status quo at the end but it had some pretty cool images because the cover for that one is the superhero tron line captain end shooting Kevin with his own zapper like you're telling him that you're telling him that you you're obsolete now. Cool. Yeah.

I mean, it looked like something out of a regular superhero book of the day. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of

what they went for with their comics for sure. Did Santa get horny for him? Because she seems to have a lot in these comics.

I don't remember her being in that one. Yeah, I don't think she was in that issue. The one issue that she was not in and sort of

the lead character in. Oh, she should have been there. She would love having two Kevins. She would have like, oh, man, it's my birthday.

Probably why she wasn't there. Well, she did have her own story. where she goes up against a hunter who was actually designed after one of the characters, sorry, one of the enemies from the game. I don't remember what it was called, but had like the big arms. I remember the character's name was Big Time. And I just liked his design. I thought that was funny.

And Big Time kind of churned on her because there's a bounty on Sammis's head because, of course, there is. That was just a fun little kind of what Samus does when she's a lone kind of story, like, especially when money's involved. It was, it's fun to see female character be allowed to be greedy. I like that when that's allowed to happen. Oh, go ahead, go ahead. I was going to say, before we move off of Captain N, I do want to say just both in the cartoon and in the comic, the design of Mother Brain is really creepy. Isn't it, though? Like, she looks like she's going to eat your face.

Like, that was definitely like, as a kid, I was like, ooh, what's going on there? And the combination of the voice as well, like I already was very familiar with a little shop of horse at that age. But you're right. Usually the redesigns they have for these characters, they're not always great for Captain N and the stories and whatnot. But yeah, I think they did a good job with Mother Brain. Mother Brain in the original game, she was just a tank with a brain. And not a whole lot going on there.

So I like how they, there's something very Japanese about her design. Like we all know by this point, a lot of Japanese studios who were involved with designing the quote unquote American cartoons we grew up with. But she has a mouth, like a big red mouth full of these really huge. unsettlingly human teeth. And when she opens her mouth at the top, there's nothing behind her. She has no throat, no esophagus, no nothing. But you're right. She looks like she would bite your face off and somehow eat it. So moving on then from Mother Brain's mouthless maw, however that works, we have The Legend of Zelda.

And we talked a little bit about this already because it was a really well, you know, pretty well done in the terms. of the, compared to the other comics, especially Mario. Basically, as someone wrote here, I think that was you, Matt, they took the treatment of Legend of Zelda that the cartoon gave the game and kind of made more out of it. And I see we were coming from, because if I recall, they even went ahead and explained like, okay, hello, here's our hero, Link.

He grew up here. He's an Apple Farmer. I think he was an Apple Farmer in these comics. And he gets tied up into his destiny, and that's the way it goes with Link. If I'm correct in that assessment, that's how it happened. Yeah, there were maps in the back pages. of the book, like, here's the map of

of Hyrule and it's based off of Zelda 2. Here's the map of the North Palace and everything inside the North Palace where you find the shops and here's what the throne room is. It was all very detailed. They did their world building on this one. They did. I think the, again, like I said, the creators all kind of seem to share the

duties. I don't think anyone was specific to one book, but I feel like they had a little more fun with Zelda and felt like they had more to work with, which of course they did. I remember they actually did some really nice designs with what they had from the sprites. They pretty much nailed the Lionel's.

Nintendo makes them a lot beefier and a lot more frightening, but yeah, they made them a pretty serious force. And I mentioned the Darius. I like the way they drew those. Yeah, they did a pretty good job. And most memorable story, according to the notes here, the power and the price, or the one where Link is able to steal the triforce of power and uses defeat Ganon, but it starts correcting him and changing his face pig-like. It's kind of like a Galadriel vibes there. Like, I will become a mighty queen.

All shall love me and despair. So he throws away the Triforce of power and restore to normal after discarding it. You probably shouldn't leave a Triforce lying around, dude. I know you're in trouble, but... Well, he threw it down a bottomless pit and Gannon dived down after it. Cool. Yeah, and

I, like, that bottomless pit is something that from my childhood, like, I remember that burrowing into my brain and it being like nightmare fuel, it's sort of like, well, if it's bottomless, you could just fall forever. You wouldn't, you'd dive starvation on the way down. And like, I don't know

why that aspect of the story just knifed into my brain. But it was a very evocative story in general. Like I, when we were putting together these notes, both of us were very much honed in on this story and said, hey, this is the one. This is the one you remember. It's such a good story that a lot of people I hear talk about this. And they think it comes from the cartoon itself, but it doesn't. It is definitely just here in the comics.

Now, the comic choose the cartoon design. Maybe that's where some of the crossover comes from. But it's all building to the moment where Link has started wearing a Gannon-type cloak when he comes across with power. And you never get to see his face. You just see that brown shock of hair sticking out the top. And then his face is cloaked in darkness.

And eventually Zelda tells him that, you know, you don't need to team up with Gannon. You've become Gannon. And Link tosses the cloak off and looks in the mirror. And he's somewhere in between Link and Gannon. He's got the big features, the nose, the tusks, the big ears, the sharp teeth. and Anthony realizes he's gone too far

and has to get rid of the Triforce. But that's the shocking reveal but the whole thing is building up to. He also has a red hand or is that just a comic an artist's decision. The red hand is where he originally grabbed the Triforce and it burns his hand.

Cool. And that's like his Triforce handling hand now. Ah, so he, that's like it can take the power. It's kind of like the Monado. Like Dunman can take the power but he's the only human who can do it besides the Shulk of course.

But he has a damaged arm or hand forever. And it's the only way he can wield it. That's pretty cool. I like the kind of thing. And I also like the point that this story came up before we kind of had the story about the golden land and the corruption and all that stuff and changing form and the dark world. So that's a nice foresight there. Kind of like the horse. Good stuff. And yeah, I'm looking at the map of Hyrule that they put into the book. And you just know someone on the team is like, ah, I love maps. I'm drawn to map. Go to hell. And they drew a map. And it's a good map. A very detailed map. Like, the kind of art that you put into that map, that really goes over like castle by castle, palace by palace, and has a lot of detail in it. The tender love and care put into that is way higher than every other page of art in the Zelda book. And the Zelda book already had sort of a higher grade of art than most of the other books. So you could tell that somebody was like, I'm going to spend.

I don't care if you're paying me, you know, $70 a page or probably maybe even less than that. I'm going to spend two weeks on this. No, for sure. Yeah. Just kind of putting it out there, too, a little bit off topic. I think we have not been north of Death Mountain since. And it's about time we go north of Death Mountain again, Nintendo. I love Tears the Kingdom.

I love Breath of the Wild. But please, I want to have Death Mountain to the South of me. again and suffer as I try to go through that maze. Yeah, you can see that landmass in Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, but you just can't go there. You know, there's mountains, there's fields, but, you know, not you. Not you. They're not for you.

Maybe someday. Is there anything you wanted to add about Zelda before we move on to the meat, I suppose, the main course of this thing? I'm good. Zelda, speak now or forever rest of your peace. Just as you said earlier in the episode, this is the one that felt like it could have had the 200-issue Archie comic, like the Ninja Turtles or Sonic, where all of this lore got expanded in a huge way, and there were deep characters and all that, and it just doesn't. It ends after, you know, a handful of issues instead. Yeah, like, I think this is the comic that really feels like its own thing.

Mario is Mario, but the jokes can work in any context for the most part. Zelda, they really put effort into the enemies, the lore, the setting. I would have liked to see that expand someday. So that's the way it goes, I suppose. In the meantime, we got Game Boy. We've got Game Boy comic. Do one of you gentlemen want to rattle off about this one? Because it seems like there's a story behind it.

I'll start off by really setting the table. It is really hard to overstate how weird this comic is. It is deeply, deeply bizarre. And I knew that it was deeply bizarre when I was reading it at nine years old. And, like, everybody could tell how weird it was. And I just like that that is sort of the baseline understanding that you have to go into with the Game Boy comic. They, Game Boy was written by George Carragone, who unfortunately met his death. He committed suicide not too long after that a few years, if I'm not mistaken.

I had heard that the Game Boy comic was the last thing he wrote. And it was kind of, no, it wasn't the last thing he wrote. It wasn't the last thing of wrote. After he did the Game Boy comic, he went on to found Pennsylvania. house comics. Oh, that was after. Okay. Yeah.

And the penthouse comics, a lot of his friends basically said that working for penthouse, uh, set them onto a dark path, drugs, etc. And, and that was, uh, part of his downfall. That's really too bad because, I mean, he was an incredible writer. Even though the Game Boy comics are weird, you're not going to forget them. Like they're probably the most memorable thing that came out of this. I mean, the Panthers. channel I'm looking at where the guy, there's a kid who's playing his game boy.

I finish level one, two doors, no, three. And like, there's a mysterious door appears in his game. And Mario jumps out. And this kid just looks like he dropped like the worst LSD of his life. And he didn't, like, it's the kind of thing you should trip along to. Otherwise, you're in a lot of trouble. He's not tripping along to this. He's really scared.

And Mario's just really having a good time. I'm like, hey, I'm here to defeat Tatanga. Where's the Tanga? And, of course, the guy's like, der. So, yeah, so go ahead. Oh, you go ahead. The main character of the Game Boy comic, though, is not Mario. You know, he's in every issue.

It's Herman Smirch. That's right. You want to talk about Herman Smirch for a minute? Please, let's talk about this middle-aged man who hates children. Yeah. I don't know why they thought this was a guy to build a comic around. Basically, he's a middle-aged guy that is just a complete creep. That apparently he's, he steals a Game Boy.

he's hypnotized by the Super Mario Land game because the Tanga is trying to cross over to the regular world and he brainwashes Smurch into committing crimes and trying to kill Mario. Yeah, but the thing is, does he really need to brainwash him? Because Smurch is a really bad person to begin with.

Like, the way that we're introduced to Herman is that he bumps into someone on the street who's asking him for change. Then he, direct quote, says, Biggers should be shot. Damn, son. Then he spends the next full page and a half of the comic complaining about how society is going to hell and how he almost got mugged.

And he's complaining about this to his boss at, like, the Radio Shack knockoff shop that he's working at. And then sort of offhandedly, we find out that, Oh, he got his Game Boy. Guess he stole it from the shop and his good-natured boss who seems to be actually a nice guy. And, like, that is how we are introduced to this guy. And he doesn't get better. It's wild.

And as the stories go on, though, he is still affected by Tatanga's magic. So when we see him in the second issue, he's all disheveled in five o'clock shadow. He's sweating. His hair is a mess. He's haunted by a superhero Mario. Yeah. I guess he's such a bad person so that we don't feel bad that all these bad things happen to him. But, like, he's such a bad person.

If you had any sympathy for him at all, it's gone when he smacks Mario with a lundrum tray. That's right. And the sound effect is spang. Yep. You don't forget a thing like that. It's a perfect sound effect. But, yeah, he's just a miserable so-and-so. And I almost feel like, God bless Carragona.

I think he was trying to tell something deeper here. And he kind of succeeded in a way because, in my view, it's a story about a man who's so miserable that he has no control over his life that when he realizes he can sink even lower, he realizes I have to stop or I'm going to be lost to God's light forever. And he does kind of reach that point where, first of all, Tatanga, he could step on Tatanga if he wanted to. He could step on Mario if he wanted to. Everyone's tiny. Tatanga's always towing around Daisy and trying to Princess Daisy and being. Oh, my love, will you marry me now? I captured the world for you. And Daisy's probably like, what the hell? Why did you capture these creep, these giant creeps? What is going on? Take me home. And yeah, he does have a change of heart. And it has something to do with space. The cover is actually an empty space suit with Mario flowing around it, looking like he's having the time of his life. And yeah, we just, Daniel just kind of showed to me. That is absolutely the cover. But I can't remember why he changed his mind. I don't know if either of you remember. It's been a long time. It probably has something to do with, you know, seeing that there's so much more out there.

One of those, you know, eye-opening, my God, Atollah Star, his moments, it'd be my guess. I'd be happy if you sacrifice himself, but I don't think he did that. I think everybody came home safe at the end. Yeah, I don't remember him dying. That was only the second issue. And there were two more issues, one where Mario fought a fighter jet or was not fighting a fighter jet, but was flying alongside one. And one where Mario was doing a plumbing on a. nuclear power plant

and then fainted due to radiation poisoning and was lying in a puddle of toxic waste before he was picked out and he was fine he was fine later Chernobyl Mario yeah this sort of gets into this Mario is also a weird Mario too right like this isn't the Mario from the Super Mario

by this comic this is the Mario that lives in your Game Boy and comes out of your Game Boy and has no point of reference other than Super Mario Land, which is the only Game Boy game that really is referenced in any way in the Game Boy comic. If you want to get Mario out of your game

at the end of the level where there's two doors, one that goes to the next level, one that goes to the bonus round. In the comic book, there's a middle door. And if you take him through the middle door, he'll pop out of your Game Boy and save the day. Oh, boy, Mario, do my laundry. Take the Mi-Sseeks from Rick and Morty.

Do my laundry and you can get back to your Game Boy. Why did you bring your friends? The Tanga starts swarming out. But they do eventually say that you're absolutely right about that, Dan. I'll never even thought about that. But whereas Mario in the other comics is kind of like loose and fun and, you know, slapstick and cartoony, this Mario is very serious, like very Mario, Mario, Mario, Mario. He is the, as you say, he came out of the Game Boy to save the day, I guess, to rescue Daisy as well.

And it's almost like he doesn't know or forgot his other friends existed. and that kind of stuff was always a little bit creepy to me. Is he an alternate dimension, Mario? Did he just forget? Does he have amnesia? This is the kind of thing that turns through my head when you're eight years old

and don't have anything better to do. I mean, I would take a read on it that in Mario Land, there is no Luigi or Toadstool or anybody else in the other game. So, of course, this instant of Mario would not know that. Yeah, no, absolutely.

That's always, that's the adult explanation. When you're a kid, you just want the fun, stupid explanation. But yeah, I know you absolutely right. Because an adult who thinks rationally, most of the time. It's like, well, you know, these characters aren't in Game Boy, so why should we have them in the cartoon or the comic? That makes sense. And they did the same thing with the Mario, sorry, the Mega Man Ruby Spears series, where it's like, okay, well, in that series, in Mega Man 5, we think Protoman's a bad guy, therefore he's going to be the bad guy for Dr. Wiley. And it's just, yeah, it makes sense, but it's not as much fun as it could be. So Game Boy, as we have all determined, it was very strange, but it tried very hard to tell us something a little deeper. Don't do drugs.

That's the message. Before we go, let's talk a little bit about Little Mac. He's little, so we'll talk a little bit about him. I love Little Mac. He's always been one of my favorite characters. Like, if you look and punch out, if you really pay attention, he jumps up and like to hit the big guys. And as someone who's five feet tall, you know, I just respect the hell of that. So I was glad to see.

He had a couple of dramatic comics in these valiant comics. Only a couple of stories, though. The one I remember vividly is, and I made the Bukaki reference earlier. with a very unfortunate Vukaki reference. There's a story called The Hunt or the Fox and the Hound or something of that degree where I don't even remember why, but Little Mac was let loose in the streets and he was going to have people like chase him and punch the shit out of him. And I don't remember the motivation, but it happened.

And there's a scene where he gets overwhelmed and just he has all these guys punching and I'm like, you know, I had thoughts and I thought that was funny. But they were okay stories like you're very, you know, Rocky Baboa, Doc, he could just a picture and, you know, talking like, get out of their kid, get there. What did you guys think of it? I don't know if you were big punchout fans or not. Join the Nintendo Fun Club today, Macra.

Oh, there you go. That's the only thing you need to say. That's all it matters. Yeah, as I skipped over those comics. I wasn't really a punchout fan. And they only appeared in the Nintendo Comics System comic book, which was a grab bag, hodgepodge, reprinting of other stories from Mario Zelda, Captain N.

Right. And there were a couple of originals like the Punch Out one. Somebody just dropped in there because they had nowhere else to go. Little Mattis homeless. I remember those Nintendo comic system ones feeling like a rip-off as a kid because you would get them. And they actually, I think they in fact, many of them cost more than a regular issue. They were larger. But you get them. And it's like, oh, I already own this issue of Super Mario Brothers. The story is reprinted there. And I think I

maybe got one of them, and I didn't get the one with Little Mac in it. Yeah. And whenever I was, like, looking at Little Mac stuff at that point, I would be like, where's Mike Tyson? You know, no, Mike Tyson. It's not real. Oh, my God. That's so perfect.

I love that. Where is Mike Tyson? Come on, guys. Pay for it. Pay your license. Let's do this. They should have had, like, just make another dude and call him like Mike Blison or something.

I was like, yeah, I'm the brother of that other guy. And I also want to kick your ass, little neck. Yeah, or Mr. Dream, I guess, would have been the off-brand Mike Tyson that they replaced him with. But by then they had Mr. Dream, too, didn't they? Most likely. It was the 90s. When they re-released Punch-out or reprinted it, they did it with Mr. Dream because they realized, like, Mike Tyson was already doing bad stuff at that point, even though he hadn't done his really bad stuff at that point. Yeah, he was kind of like, he was a little bit controversial at the 90s went on.

And one thing I always found very interesting, this is slightly off topic as well, but until Smash revealed Little Mac, I had no idea that Japan just never grew up with nostalgia for Punchout, which makes sense because I guess, you know, Mike Tyson doesn't have the same weight over there as it does here, but here was like, wow, Mike Tyson, he's the greatest wrestler, he's a greatest boxer of all time, and everyone had the game because the name was there, and we all grew up with it. But no, when Little Mac was revealed as in Smash, I remember vividly people from Japan. saying, who is this guy? Oh, I get it. He's from, he's, you know, Americans know him, but we don't know him very well. That was a really interesting twist because until that point, Nintendo could be very Japan-centric and wouldn't really cater to the West as often. So that was a little bit of education for me. Little Mac, the ambassador of Goodwill, I suppose, in getting his ass. Little Mac is the, Little Mac is the fire emblem of America, I guess. Yes, yes. We learned each other's cultures through Smash. How very, very nice. Oh, gracious. Well, this has been like a great, great episode. I hope you both enjoyed talking a bit about these, these books, these comics. Matt, I saw your pictures here of your collection. Congratulations. It is flawless. I don't see a page out of, just no bent pages, nothing. Everything's pristine. Good job. Thank you. Yeah, I always took very good care of my stuff as a kid and into adulthood.

Yeah, you and my husband have a lot in common, and I do not have a lot. I am the box cutter. Someday I will cash out Retire to a private island Oh, invite me along I need a drink I see no comment on my My collection Which is riding loose

And yellowing in the sun Comparatively Oh, you're right Yes, I see it now here I also see the little panel It says believe it or else Kupa pointing at you It's very cute

I like that But we did the best we could I mean like my collection Is far from pristine too It's certainly not complete but I really enjoy talking about these comics because they are out there. So, yeah, thank you everyone

for just kind of reading comics alongside us this beautiful summer afternoon. That's what you do with summer afternoons. If you want to support Retronauts, and why wouldn't you, go to Retronauts.com and sign up for our Patreon. And if you get the $3 level, you get episodes a week early,

and add free, a $5 pledge will get you two extra episodes in addition to all the other stuff and access to the Discord and the magical Nintendo 64 number will get you the opportunity to set a topic of your very own. I can't remember once every three months

or once every six or four, but it's in that bracket somewhere. So Daniel, why don't you go ahead and do you have anything you want to promote? Say hi. I now work in fields where I'm not allowed to actually talk

about what work I'm doing anymore. But you can find me on Blue Sky at D-KAS, Z-O-R, or I guess you could go to the same place on, X. X. Matt, how about you?

Of course, you can find all of my blogging work at press the buttons.com where I've been writing since 2005 and also been podcasting since 2010 with the Power Button podcast and all the old episodes of that show were there too. No ads. It's all free. Take as many as you want. Listen to them. Take you a long time.

But it's well worth it. I agree. And if you find me on social media as well, I'm on the app, formerly known. on Twitter, of course, at Press the Buttons. I'm on Blue Sky at Press the Buttons and on Mastodon at the Press the Buttons. At what is it? Press the buttons at myfi. Something like that.

Something like that. So getting used to how that one works. Yeah, yeah. As for myself, I am also part of the Acts of Blood God podcast. They do talk about games, RPGs in particular, old, new, eastern, western. But if you want to support us over on Patreon, we are at patreon.com.com for slash BloodGododod pod. We have a whole bunch of tears you can sign up for. We talk a whole bunch about RPGs, a whole bunch about Final Fantasy 14 on Charlie and Dropouts, which is my other podcast.

It is a Final Four machine podcast. Blah. So, I hope you all enjoyed this. Until next time, thanks for listening. And if Tatanga pops out of your game, boy, you'd best just trip along with it. You know, I don't know.