Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 232: Nester

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

Mario might be Nintendo's big-time mascot, but for six years of Nintendo Power, one banana-haired brat served a similar role. In what amounted to one of the first manga series snuck into the hands of American children, Nester existed as the foil to the real-life know-it-all Nintendo rep Howard Phillips, who used his insider info to humiliate a small child through a few dozen very entertaining and expertly drawn installments. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Bill Mudron as the crew explores the brief but notable history of Nester throughout both print and games.

This week on Retronauts, we look back on when bow ties were cool. Hello, folks, welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie, and today's topic is Nestor. Before I go on to explain who Nestor is and why you should care, who else is here with me today? Who's across from me? Henry Gilbert, and I just ate 99 pizzas, as I was told to by a little child. That is a filthy lie, and that child is just a scoundrel. And who do we have on the line?

We've got Bill Mudron, Bill Best Play Control Muddron from the, God, what podcast on my own? Tarty the Party podcast. Yeah, these guys just looped me in because I guess I have something to say about. Nestor because I worked on the last, I guess it wasn't the last Howard of Nestor comic for Nintendo Power. It was just the last. Nestor, just Nestor. Wasn't Nestor and his son Maxwell? Yes. Yes. Comic Bethlehem. I drew the damn thing. I don't remember. You're part of the rich, the rich tapestry that is the Nestorverse. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the third generation Nestor content I was able to contribute to. Well, this topic entered my mind because Jeremy, of course, does the virtual boy works.

episodes for YouTube, and one of those games for Virtual Boy that he did an episode about is Nestor's Funky Bowling, a very odd license to have in 1995. And during that episode, you can hear me say, I'm doing a Nestor episode, I'm earmarking it now, and now here I am doing it, and no, I have not run out of ideas. I still have lots of ideas for Retronauts, rest assured. But Nestor is an interesting thing as part of the history of Nintendo propaganda. I really want to talk about... Have you guys not done a Howard and Nestor episode yet?

I mean, this is our Howard Nestor episode. Oh, okay. I was wondering if you're going to divide the comic into two halves. Oh, no, no, absolutely not. You'll finally do that, like, talking about the Howard. I mean, you can always do a Howard Phillips episode, but I like the idea of just, like, devoting a whole mini episode to just Howard Phillips in his cartoon form. Oh, we are going to talk plenty about Howard, but before I continue, just to give some context, Nestor was a character in the original Nintendo Power comic. Howard and Nestor, which ran from the first issue until around 1993, and it went through many different changes. And, of course, Bill on the podcast here, long after the comic was retired, he returned for the final issue of Nintendo Power to be the last artist of that comic franchise.

I had no idea Nintendo Power still existed until, like, I think a year before the last issue hit, someone asked me if they could do an interview with me about some video game maps I had drawn. And, yeah, it pains me to say it, but I had no idea Nintendo Power still existed until that interview. Well, somebody worked at the public. sure of that. I'm not super surprised. I mean, the behind the scenes history of Nintendo Power was that it was published by Nintendo for the longest time, but when they were not wanting to publish it anymore, got

purchased by Future Media, which no one knows the name Future unless you were paid by them. But they own their website, Games, Radar. I used to work at official Xbox magazine, the unofficial PlayStation magazine

that then turned into the official PlayStation magazine. And when I started at Future, that was in 2009, no, 08 when they purchased Nintendo Power. And so, like, we had three official magazine. Yeah, the closure. Yeah. Now, they had them about five years before it finally got shut down. So Nintendo Power, we did an episode about it. It was episode 19 of this independent run of Retronauts. We give a lot of context as to what it is. But to wrap it up really quickly here, it was essentially propaganda made by Nintendo. And you know what?

It was really good propaganda. It worked on a generation of children. It was the best propaganda. Because nobody was making a magazine about Nintendo games that came out every other month and then every month. It made you feel like you were part of something.

Yeah, you were part of a secret club when you got that magazine in the mail. And as somebody who was reading Nintendo Power magazine alongside its competition, it was usually better. Like it had way better screenshots or it had way, at least the quality. I'm not talking about it's independent reviews of things.

That quality was low on that metric. But if you wanted a guide to where to jump to in Super Mario Brothers or Zelda, you couldn't beat it. Well, and the comics like Nester, Howard and Nester, is what exactly kind of helped set Nintendo Power, apart from all the other gaming magazines, was the fact that they would actually spring for extra content like that. It wasn't just news and reviews, which, again, Nintendo Power was never very good at because it was mostly about the tips and everything like that. But, yeah, it was the fact that they sprung for extra stuff like, like, even aside from the comics, but like even they illustrated Howard and Nestor awards and stuff. There was kind of a presentation that they did that, I guess, was kind of taking largely from Femitsu magazine. Oh, yeah, like that, like other Western gaming magazines weren't doing at the time, which was. interesting. Part of the reason the magazines were so fun

is because they used a very Japanese style layout. If you look at Japanese magazines even today, especially gaming magazines, they are so busy. Like lots of popouts, lots of big texts everywhere. It's sort of the opposite of what the next generation magazine was. Where it's just like white backgrounds

with very square, sterile screenshots, everything is evenly spaced. No Nintendo Power is like different color text. Headings, pictures, pop out art, pop out blocks of text. It's just a big fun mess on the page. A random drawing of like agreeably or a guy with a baseball bat in the corner of an article about a video game that didn't even have baseballs or baseball bats in it, just random stuff.

Here's a funny image for you. It's just like, well, we got empty space. We got to fill it. Yeah, it felt like the mind of a 12-year-old in the best possible way, in the best brightest colorful way. And they're still fun to flip through. And I will say that the reason why they're very Japanese is because, so Nintendo, you've heard us talk about Nintendo before, of course,

and it was a way of suddenly giving Americans who were slightly xenophobic Japanese entertainment. It really is, yeah. In a subtle way, like, let's kind of erase the Japaneseness of this, but still, we want to sell you these products. Number one, Nintendo Power was very Japanese. In fact, it was laid out by a company called Workhouse, USA.

It was the American subsidiary of a Japanese group who worked under the publisher, Tokima Shoten, who I believe, like, co-owned Ghibli at one point in time. Yeah, yeah, you'll still see... Oh, is that... I wonder if that... That's where the producer for Studio Ghibli, he worked for a manga magazine before jumping ship, the co-found Studio Ghibli with Takahada and Miyazaki. Yeah, that's what, Tashiro or Tishiro?

Yeah, I can't specifically remember. If you ever see the documentary, the King of Dreams and Madness, he's pretty much the main character in that documentary. He's the most relatable guy. Yeah, he's the producer trying to reign in everyone else. And he's the guy who keeps Studio Ghibli running. But yeah, that's, I didn't even think about that. That's interesting. Okay.

I just watched the Whisper of the Heart in theaters they just did again. And yes, Tokuma Shoten is one of the credited ones. Like, even in 95, they were still working with Jibla. I think they were like co-funding or something like that. Anyway, they're connected. But more importantly, so by the time the late 90s rolled around, we just figured out as a society like, no, American kids love anime. They love manga. They love these kind of drawings.

But before then, publishers were like absolutely not get rid of the big eyes. We don't need to see this. kids will hate this, this is not American. That was all happening on the game publishing side, but in Nintendo Power, it was full of Japanese as hell drawings and illustrations and layout. They were not afraid to be Japanese, and the masthead was just

full of Japanese names. Yeah, no one really, because 12-year-old kid's not going to be looking at the masthead, but if you go back and look at that masthead, it is just you would think it was just a Japanese magazine from just all the art credits and the layout and everything like that. And they had the Western Office kind of like overseeing the content with Gail Tilden

and everything like that. But still, yeah, in terms of just getting the illustrations and all the text onto the paper, yeah, that was all very Japanese, yeah. And eventually, you know, overlapping with Howard and Esther, the comic will be talking about soon, Nintendo Power would just straight up publish manga. Like, here is Mario manga. Here is Zelda manga. Yeah, I miss all that stuff. Oh, that was, that really was one of my first exposures to manga in that specific style was the, was Ishinomori's Zelda comic. like it just felt so weird and different like in 92 i was reading every american comic i could get

my hands on i was such a huge comic book fan but i still was reading much japanese stuff and so when i first saw these like sparse eerie looking drawings of you know link going through caves and whatnot it really struck me as like wow this is different i don't know why but this is so different yeah i've told a similar story about falling in love with anime and manga and sort of japanese designs a bunch of times, but it was really like me trying to figure out, like, why do these things look like this, and who makes them, and why do I like them? And like, over

time, I found out, oh, these are from Japan, and this is what anime is, this is what manga is, but from the very beginning, I was drawn to things like Howard and Nestor's original run, and the Mario comic, and the Zolto comic, just because of like, this looks so different and cool. Where are more things that look like this? It was alien and cool, especially, which is

rare in a magazine that was designed for American 12-year-olds. It actually did feel a little transgressive a little like legitimately alien in a way that I don't think the people who were in charge of Nintendo Power kind of thought they were doing it was and I yeah I know it was

I know friend of retronauts Chris Kohler like in an interview with Miamodo he had, Miyamoto had said like he had wanted that manga created of the Zelda one at least to kind of you know internationalize it more and introduce that artist of the world

and I think Miyamoto wanted to be a manga artist too like before being a game designer as well. Oh, yeah. And you can even see a specific art influence in some of the early, like the cabinet artwork for Donkey Kong and punch out and stuff. He was the guy always giving all the characters

little plus teeth. Oh, I love those so much. And so, yeah, I mean, he's totally, like, influenced by that whole kind of Tizuca, Astro Boy kind of feel and stuff. And yeah, I could totally see how he could have wound up becoming a manga artist if he didn't end up falling into video games

or, I guess, toy making, which I guess is, But he's always said he would have done if he hadn't become a video game designer. But, yeah, that's, especially the original run of Howard and Nestor, that's one of the things I loved about Nintendo Power so much. Aside from me and all the information about video games and stuff, I loved him played at the time, was the graphic design for, oh, God, you have the guy's name for who originally illustrated Howard and Nestor.

That's right, a Shooji, I. Yeah, there was a Western sensibility in how he used watercolor and drew, It was very kind of Mobius looking, but just, oh, I put the kind of the graphic sensibilities. And, of course, there's all the manga kind of like, suddenly characters will suddenly turn Cheeby or something like that. You know, that just permeates, I guess, all manga stuff. But, yeah, it just looks so gorgeous. It looks so much better than a cartoon comic strip for Nintendo Power at 1980. It had to look.

And it only got better, too. Once you got, I guess, he only illustrated for a couple of years. But, like, when he was, like, doing, like, some of the duct tail strips and, uh, uh, Howard and Nester strips about like Mega Man, man, that stuff looks good. That's like Howard and Nester was the Duck Tales intro to the rest of Nintendo Power just looking like the rest of a normal Duck Tales episode where you wonder, why is the whole magazine? It set the bar too high off the bat. But I want to talk about the comic really briefly about what it is to set it up.

So Howard and Nester, number one, we'll talk a bit more about him later. But Howard Phillips is a real person. He was a Nintendo of America employee who served a major. role. So he was in the comic as the foil to Nestor, a fictional child who sort of represented the way kids would play video games wrong. And

through the comic, he would be proven wrong by Howard, who would say, here is the actual tip for the game we're trying to tell you about while Nestor gets it wrong every time. It has a little goofus and gallant flavor to it, too. Like, Nestor's a little punk. Yeah, I had, yeah, rereading

these, I didn't realize what a punk Nestor was. like I as a kid I liked Nestor I was like yeah Nestor is a cool kid like me yeah he's transgressive he's the Bart Simpson he's transgressive and he does whatever he wants but as an adult you just want to slap the crap out of him

in the beginning of the comics it's like Howard is sort of there in the first panel but as things go on Nestor is like in the video game world saying when's that fuck are going to show up I know he's going to show up I know he's going to show up and ruin things that's one of the funny things about the comic is that Leo Nestor's always digging himself into a deeper hold and getting more freak out

and you know he's he's turning more into a cheeby mess caricature of himself. Whereas Howard just, like, walks into whatever situation that Nowors is just, that Nestor has just dug himself into with his hands in his pockets and his little bowtine. He's like, hey, what's going on? Let me help you out. And it's just kind of funny how. For a strip like that, that was a pretty good comedic dynamic they had between the two characters, even though, you know, again, it was just an excuse just to give out one last extra little video game tip in a magazine. But it was cute.

It worked. that, you know, news was great. I want to talk a little bit about Howard Phillips, though, because we could do a whole podcast about him and his career. He sort of just came out of hiding in 2012. I mean, he was always a semi-public person. But in 2012, that's when he came out and said, I want to tell all my stories now,

and I want to give interviews, and I'll have my own Facebook page. So a lot of this information came out after 2012. I believe I was at the Classic Gaming Expo in 2012 when he gave one of his first, like, public speaking appearances. Yeah, Howard Phillips, he started doing the, you know, the contour schedule. I wonder if he's like, you know, the kids, kids are off to college now.

I got free time again. I think so. I always assume someone like that is either got a Kickstarter or they've got like cancer. And they're just coming out and trying to like just clear the X for me. I think he actually did have a Kickstarter too. Yeah, for a failed app. But he does not dress like Howard in the comics with the nice suit in bow tie. He's very much like vacation dad with like a nice button up and kind of a blousey button up and shorts and sandals.

Yeah. I mean, we were in Vegas. well I always got the feel from Howard Phillips he's like he's your cool dad who plays video games like that's how he was pitching himself to our generation of kids even though like at the time wasn't it just like a 25 year old kid just like working in their warehouse yeah he was in his mid to late 20s so philip started in 1981 when nintendo of america was basically a mom and pop shop uh with six employees he was one of them so in a fairly short amount of time he went from basically like unloading trucks with donkey con machines to being

the Japan-America liaison. Yeah, he was the mascot of Nintendo of America practically. Yeah, he would... I think essentially, I mean, he did run test programs for arcade games and things like that, but he essentially became the one-man focus group, like

Howard, play these games, which of these games should be the Nintendo launch lineup? He decided on that. And I find this dubious, but he claims to have finished every game that was released for the Nintendo during his tenure. I'm sure he laid hands on every game that came through, but,

But, I mean, unless he had, like, debug mode turned on for every game. That's possible. Yeah. I mean, look, I, it's hard for me to distrust Howard Phillips because he was the, you know, like, the most trusted man in my childhood. But that does sound a little impossible to have, basically, he'd be doing that on top of what his full-time job was, which was being a PR spokesman for Nintendo. Yeah, yeah. And he was PR spokesman. And we talked about him before where, again, this.

is the 80s. We are still harboring some resentment over certain wars and certain economic conditions. People misunderstand what a big deal that was, too. Yeah, yeah. Howard Phelps was the white face of Nintendo. He really was. I mean, Nintendo was a scary Japanese word. Ooh, the president is Genio Takeda. What does that even mean?

Are they making fun of me? But no, Howard Phillips, Howard Phillips, Whitey McWhiterson. He's going to be there in a bow tie to tell you things are fine. Don't ask where the games are made. Just smile and nod. It's for everybody. is out of these games. Don't yell at us. It's okay. I mean, you can see the fear of the Japanese thing, even

just a few years after Phillips left Nintendo, there was, when the story came out that Hiroshi Yamuchi was going to be the principal owner of the Seattle Mariners, the reaction to that was insane. Well, he had the only reason he bought the

or I don't know if he bought it outright or, but the only reason he invested in the Mariners was I think he specifically said he wanted to pay back the city because because the Mariners were threatening to leave. And he was like, no, Seattle's always been really good to Nintendo. We want to pay this back. And, of course, yeah, the media exploded saying,

oh, my God, the Japanese are taking them over baseball. Yeah, it's like the Mariners, Seattle would have simply not had the Mariners if it wasn't to Yamuichi. And, well, then also, though, led to some of my childhood confusion for a time in the pre-Wikipedia days. I knew of Howard Phillips from the comics. Oh, yeah, this thing, yeah. I always said the wrong name myself a couple times.

podcast. When I saw Howard Lincoln doing interviews for the N64, I was like, is that the guy from the comments? Did he get hit by aging rate? Why is he bald and lawyerly now? It's like, wow, he really aged badly after leaving Nintendo. What happened to him in Russia? I tried to negotiate those Tetris rights.

Howard Phillips and Howard Lincoln are different people, but they both worked on Nintendo. I don't know. We still haven't seen them together in the same room. It's true, it's true. But Howard Phillips was lured away to, I believe, JVC, who was producing... How is that was super weird. I believe they were publishing LucasArts games for consoles, but

he essentially was kind of sick of being Nintendo's PR face, and it was taking him away from games, and he wanted to be part of games and game development, but Nintendo wanted him just to be the face. Well, it sounded like a very heavy workload too, though, because he still... I'm sure he didn't pay a lot, too. I mean, as kids were just

assuming that he must have gotten paid in video games, he must have been a millionaire, and who would want to turn down a job just playing video games all day, and I'm sure it was not that glamorous. Well, in David Seff's book, Game Over, I remember, a Howard Lincoln quote of him saying, like, you don't work

in Nintendo to be rich. Their executive pay was more on the level of Japanese executive pay, which is very good pay, but not ridiculous, ludicrousness of American executive pay. And so I would think that, I mean, it also sounded from, as I recall,

from other Phillips interviews, that it just sounded like they did expect him to still play a lot of the games while also having these responsibilities, which I think is a more standard expectation in a Japanese company than it is in an American company. So these comics, they follow a very similar formula in which Nestor tries the wrong thing over and over again, and in the end, he is owned by Howard, who has the right idea.

I think it's funny because in the late 80s, early 90s, it is like the explosion of Nickelodeon and the idea of, like, kid power and kids rule and adults drool. But in this comic, every time a little brat is shown up by a sensible adult. In this case, someone in their 20s, but still. It's so more culturally Japanese in that style, I think, because I think around the exact same time, I was, I was the biggest fan of the BK Kids Club. I'm like, finally, a place for cool kids like me to be cool. I forget you guys a little, a little bit younger than I am, which that just, yeah, that that cracks me up, okay. But that's how I saw most things, but then in my, in my child memory, I just thought, oh, yeah, it's Nestor hanging out with Howard, they're equals.

but the comics are very clear they are not equals like Nestor is an annoying jerk who everyone hates and he hates that's the tenor of the comics is hey stupid kids here's the adult to tell you actually how to do this stuff the comic actually has kind of a condescending

view towards Nintendo Power's own readership in that kind of way it's kind of funny but we're talking about the Shueji Emai run which was only 18 comics again they're very glorious they're very well detailed I will say that I believe over time, it seems like Nintendo is shaking their finger at,

no, no, no, you can't just draw the Ninja Turtles in this comic. So over time, the amount of licensed characters that appear shrinks drastically. Like, you're talking about the Duck Tales comic, Bill. Is that all just like a duck shows up, but it's not like any of the characters? There are just ducks with space helmets on, yeah. I feel like they must... I didn't even pick that up. Okay, yeah, that's hilarious.

I feel like they must have gotten in big trouble for that Turtles one. Yeah. The Turtles one was them crossing the line where in the Turtles comic, Nestor is literally hanging out with the turtles. April O'Neill is there. They're drawn doing all their turtle stuff. They say it's the teenage mutant ninja turtles. It's April O'Neil. They're putting words.

With those weirdly drawn ninja turtles with those kind of weird opaque masks and they all look kind of. I love how creepy they are. I don't like those designs. I love the sneers. I love a classic blank-eyed turtle sneer. Oh, God. Yeah, no, that's funny. Like, Mega Man stuff showed up.

But, like, yeah, I can imagine, especially as Nintendo got more popular and the third-party licensees had a bigger say in, like, how Nintendo can handle their, their content in the magazine. Yeah, I could see the things most have gotten tricky for the content for the Howard Master strip, yeah. One thing I did notice that's interesting about this strip is that also, I believe, Ami is doing the English lettering, which is why it looks very awkward. It looks like someone. It looks like someone who doesn't under, who doesn't really draw English characters too often. doing it like for the first time. It looks like you're like from a collection of stencils of like, yeah, yeah. It's funny because you'll have like word balloons at the beginning of the strip where it's like

these fast empty word balloons with just a couple words within the word balloons with all this empty space. And then the next panel, you'll have like 20 words crammed into this tiny word balloon that's way too small. And I don't know what was going on there. Like I don't know if that was like somebody at Nintendo of America, like sending a script to him. And he had, I don't know how much English. knew or what. Yeah, some of the strips also have

pasteovers with like typed text. Okay, I mean, if we were to draw someone who would hand us like Japanese and say, okay, replicate this written Japanese on this piece of paper and then they publish out in the comic, people be like, that looks awful. Oh, yeah, for sure. A child drew that. But yeah, it adds to like the very handcrafted nature of

these very detailed comics, though. The fact that it looks like it was painfully drawn in every little tiny letter. Some of the layouts in them are like amazing to me in that like, I think I saw one page that had at least 12 panels on it, if not more. It's just so...

No, it's an ungodly amount of work for what that comic had to do. For just two pages at some point. And then, yeah, some of them are just like so overloaded with text in the first panel that I feel that like they felt some pressure that they're like, this doesn't explain the setting enough. We need an entire first panel that's just 80 words explaining what Lone Ranger is. Yeah. Well, I get the feeling too.

I'm sure they didn't have like a professional comics writer writing those comics. I'm sure it was somebody who may have never been paid to write anything before in their entire lives, now having to write the comics for these Howard, like somebody at Nintendo of America having to write these Nintendo Power scripts and then sending them off to Japan to get illustrated. And then between that, yeah, and the guy having to, yeah, write all this text that he doesn't know what it's maybe actually saying. And it creates kind of a stilted stew that's combined with the attractive art is very specific. It creates a very specific aesthetic to that era of the Howard Masters. Oh, definitely.

Again, I still love. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. lasted for 18 installments. There were three final Howard and Nestard comics, but they were not drawn by him. But oddly enough, they still feature his header art with the Howard and Nestor

drawings and the heads and the text. So you did the research to see who actually drew those, right? I did, yeah. So the first artist was Art Nichols, who also worked on the awful value Nintendo comics. Even as a Nintendo fan, I bought those and I was like, these are disgusting. So as a

mega comics reader, I did know Art Nichols from like He, at Marvel in DC, he was kind of a fill-in artist in the 90s, which is, you know, when the A-level artist needs to some time off to get back on schedule, they'll do a fill-in issue drawn by somebody, and that was usually Art Nichols thing. So he's more of just a workman-like artist. And though, yeah, those valiant comics, I was so disappointed reading those as a kid, too. I still bought like three or four of them and just poured over them all the time. But like, once you're used to the immaculate art of Yoichi Kotabe in the manuals of Mario, then you see like this, the Game Boy one was just like, Mario jumps out in the real world. And it's just like offensive to the eyes.

It's so ugly. And you can even see how he's kind of tracing some of the faces from the original comics. Yeah. To try to stay on model a little bit, but the bodies aren't quite the same. And so I'm sure, I'm sure they were not paying a lot. And I'm sure the time, well, we'll get that. I'm sure the deadlines weren't very good. So you end up just squatting out whatever you can to get the comic done,

which is exactly what I did too. So I can't throw too many sticks and stones in that situation. So, Henry, you're familiar with Jim Shooter, right? Oh, very familiar with him. Yeah, yeah. So I guess he was part of something called Voyager Productions, which is actually the co-owned Valiant Comics or they own Valiant Comics. And one thing I noticed, there's a great article about Howard and Nester

and all the different artists. You can just search, if you search Howard and Nester, there are like three links, and you'll find it. But he said, I was surprised to hear an American comics guy say this, but he said, quote, the Japanese were and are very proud of their comics industry. As a rule, at least at that time, they didn't think American comics were anywhere near as good as theirs. The consensus opinion was that they were the pros and we were quirky, amateur, second stringers. But on the basis of our licensed comics for Nintendo of America, Nintendo of Japan picked us Americans to do their custom pack-in box art for F-0. Wow, I didn't know that part.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, Jim Shooter is Marvel's big dick energy guy of the 80s. He was like this Wunderkeen of comic writing where he wrote his first comic at like 15 published by DC and he just moved on up the ladder very quickly. And he was just a very aggressive businessman who had, he made a lot of the big moves in 80s comics that then paid off into the 90s. And when he quit Marvel as their EIC, he then started his own company Voyager, which I believe purchased Valiant. Valiant had existed before.

And so he re, it was like all these old characters like Magnus and Harbinger, and he rebooted them as new characters for the 90s comics boom. And part of the 90s comic boom, too, was you just had to keep expanding, expanding, expanding. So Valiant, I would guess probably, you know, they look more attractive. than Marvel or DC because Nintendo's the big fish to Valiant. Like Marvel or DC might

say like, well, hey, we're Marvel. You can't tell us what to do. Valiant is the co-high to the Simpai of Nintendo in that situation. Interesting. Yeah, I had no idea about any of this. So, yeah, Art Nichols was the Valiant artist who did the final three Nester comics, sorry,

the final three Howard Nester Comics, and then continue to make Nester's adventures. Oh, God, yeah, forgot about that. Yeah, wrong-looking Nestor and his wrong-looking adventures, yeah. Without Howard, so... It made me unhappy. What's funny is, like, so only through Facebook posts by Howard that we find

out that Shuji Mai is the artist being Howard and Nestor. Yeah, because, yeah, my own personal research into this before Howard had pointed that out, there was a lot of doing online as to exactly who that was and what exactly work that they had done for both Nintendo

and also just other video game stuff, yeah. But the funny thing is that when Art Nichols took over, he got an entire like introduction by Howard, like, here's our new artist, our Nichols, he does this, this and this. It'll be a look a little different, but he's still very good. Like, the other artists got nothing, not even a credit. I mean, that feels more like, you know, the accepted practice in America is more like, you have to credit the artist.

Maybe in Japan, it's more like, eh, it's for a magazine, and you don't need a credit. Yeah, and I feel like Shuji, I think, like, his main role in life and career is, like, commercial illustrations, where most of the time, those are not. credited to anybody yeah well because the the ad you're doing is the star not your name like so yeah you're lucky if you can sneak your signature into the illustration that you're working on you know but the final artist for nestor's adventures which they switched to very quickly towards the end was a guy named dan speigle who was born in 1920 and his first comic yes and his first comic was an annie oakley comic in 1956 wow and after that he did the hop-along

Cassidy comic, which is very popular, selling millions of copies every month, presumably. Wow. So you went from Cowboy Comics in the 50s to sort of entering his twilight years, drawing Nestor's adventures. Can you imagine? I hopefully wasn't that difficult a concept to explain to him when you got the gig, like, okay, there's these things called video games that you hook them up to your TV. Kids want to read this comic about how you have to sneak, like, tip for one of these video games into the, yeah, yeah. I would hope you had a grandchild that could at least play it. that's yeah hopefully yeah like or who knows he could have been a gamer grandpa it's it's possible

you never it's no yeah it wasn't 1920 is not that old for someone drawing something in the 90s but still yeah yeah pretty old 70s still 70s yeah 70s but yeah looking at his history he mostly did like licensed comics for like dell and gold key so he was used to drawing characters that were not his in worlds he didn't know yeah yeah i mean he that seems to be a skill he'll see him i didn't really know because if they didn't work at Marvel or D.C. or one of those top level places, I didn't follow the artists all that closely. But I mean, in both cases, they're just like, they're a shadow of what was created anyway.

Plus, I mean, they're not being paid on the level to really try to put an artistic stamp on it either. Or, I mean, would Nintendo, power publishers even want them to draw them too different from how Howard and Esther looked before? Yeah, true. I don't think so. You never underestimate editorial influence on something that you're reading in terms of comic stuff. Because, yeah, you have no idea exactly what's decisions were being made that were going over the artist and writers' heads. So before Bill's final comic, there was an unpublished final comic, which was never made to be published.

It was just made for Howard. Drawn by Mai, it's a very cool comic. I had no idea this existed. I just found it. Like I said, there are four results if you search of Howard and Nestor. This is one of them. And it is an exclusive comic about Howard and Nester, about Howard leaving. And it is full of spicy jokes about drugs and him calling Nestor a bastard.

Fells him a little shit. Yeah, it's like, it's PG-13, but it's really fun. And it's extremely well-drawn for being something that no one would see. I'm sure Nintendo paid that the same amount for it as a going-away present. Yeah, no, it's just a cute. I mean, you know, Japan takes their going-away presence seriously, I think. You know, if it's an amicable split, of course. so that kind of gift is just such a great one yeah it's uh how i'm reading the strip now

howard turns into the speed demon while he's racing a little mario cart it's yeah that's that's fantastic feels like they were driving in carts together to get ready they're like well we're thinking of developing a cart racer let's go car racing philps is in town i do god i love you my i love the one panel where it's like it's not even a video game they're racing f1 cars so it's tied into something i guess but it's something yeah uh Howard is running nester into the wall and he's saying take that you little shit and Nester is saying, Howard, listen to yourself. What would Gail say?

Gail was the editor-in-chief. I love that. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. I just, I love that that shows that even we were thinking, we were thinking the same thing that they were thinking internally. Howard in every comic is just like, well, okay, Nestor, if you think that's the right door, I mean, and then Nestor's like, shut up, dork, I know what to do. And you just are thinking to yourself, Howard must be so pissed that this kid keeps telling him he's wrong and then fucking up.

So now finally, Howard, in a real comic, gets to let loose. It'd be like, shrew, you suck. I'm surprised Nestor survived that comic. But in the end, it's revealed that Howard's bow tie as a clip on. It's the next to last panel is Nestor taking the bow tie off of Howard, yeah. And I have to wonder if that was real because in the actual Nestor, Nestor's Adventure comic, it's revealed in the first one without Howard that it was a clip on all along. Yeah.

That's hilarious. That was really fun in the rereading of it because I did, I remembered actually being kind of, of sad when the last Howard's trip happened because it seems like a joke in the in his last regular comic it seems like a joke that Howard is leaving of like yeah Howard says he's leaving he'll be back in the next issue then in the next issue Howard's name is Xed out and it's the nesters adventures then he says it's a clip on that's when I actually got sad as a kid like oh howard's really gone no it's a little like uh the character's writing off into the sunset at the end of the Indian Jones and Last

Crusade where you go back and rewatch it that's got a little more emotional wait after you've seen that for the first time and realize that actually is kind of the end. It's a good thing the Lone Ranger was coming out for the NES. That is a good game by the way. That's a good point actually, yeah. Don't sleep on that. So then we have Bill's comic, Nestor and Max, the final Howard and Nester

comics, so like 19 years later after the characters retired. Which is funny because I am someone who does, I only consider the original EMI comics to be canon, which is funny that you guys even have me on here because even I'm like, my own comic doesn't count. It's cute, but blah, blah, blah. I will say it's a very good approximation.

I mean, you're clearly going for EMI's style, because that's what you like. Yeah, this happened. This salt became a thing because of Phil Theobald, who worked at Nintendo Power at the time. He hit me up and was like, okay, hey, don't tell anyone Nintendo Power is closing down. We want you to do a last Howard and Nestor tribute comic, except we can't use Howard because Nintendo's not quite sure if Howard would sign off on this, and this is all happening. So quickly, quickly, we don't have. have time to get in touch with Howard to get the clearances or anything like that.

And yeah, I guess Nintendo Power Editor-in-Chief, Chris Slate gave me a script. I only had literally, I think it was a weekend to draw this thing, which killed me. Because I wanted to, I keep on wanting to go back and redraw this strip because I would love to make it look like, I know I could if I had the time make this look like an actual EMI strip. But I only had three days. I needed two weeks. But, yeah, this whole thing came together in literally the course of a week.

weekend and yeah it's ness and his kid max which i that was set up somewhere else that he's got a kid named max i think yeah yeah i think uh i think in nintendo power they did a one-off comic a couple years before years that was like just max or yeah or something like that was implied that this was the true final nester comic yeah there are some deep cuts in here like nestor or sorry maxwell with his finger in the air with a star on the end which is from the nester awards what they would have original Nestor art every year.

I think I snuck that in just as because I love the Nestor awards and the illustrations for the Nestor awards so much which hey that's a whole other episode you could do now. That's what I really run out of ideas. There's a lot to talk about

the Super Mario Brothers 2 ending or the fact that you know whatever. That last issue of Nintendo Power was so touching as a long time reader like an issue one reader who had come on and off of it

when I got to see I'm sure I saw it before the public because I was lucky enough to work in the building with them when I saw it covers like this is the perfect cover like this claymation style of Super Mario Brothers aping the Super Mario

two cover that was the first issue was just perfection yeah that was sculpted by a friend of mine named Leslie Levings who she works for J.J. Abrams bad robot company that's another thing because Phil was we were in the middle of working on this comic and Phil was like do you know who anyone's sculpts

And I was like, yeah, I know someone who did these like little clay beastly sculpture things that she does for JJ Abrams and stuff. And so she got looped in to do the cover. I got looped in to do the Howard and Nester comics. And, yeah, again, this is all due to Phil Theobald. He was the one who had the idea to come out and reach out to me. And I guess he was the one, in retrospect, I think he was the one really pushing for there to be a last Howard and Nestor. Yeah, no, it's Howard. I keep on wanting to call him something else.

Howard and Nestor strip in the comic and also make sure. there was a clay cover. The last issue that called back to the first issue. That was all filthy of bald. And it's the final page of Nintendo Power 2. Which I forgot about that.

This is my copy of that issue has been sitting in on my bookshelf for the last couple of years. I forgot it's literally the last thing you see before you, yeah. Oh, man. I have also closed out of magazine before too,

so I know the honor. But it was, no one knew it was ending. It was EGM. Which you've done illustration, you're done an EGM illustrator too, right? Or is that just one up? Yeah.

I mean, that's, yeah, yeah. I've killed a lot of magazines Your comic is great The last panel does give me goosebumps It was the end of an era It was sort of the end of magazine era too Pretty much, yeah And it was a moment of like

Feeling your age Knowing you grew up with this And you're watching Like I like that the message of it is There's always more video games to play But your childhood is dead Like yeah With email conversations with Chris and Phil

That was one of the things where we didn't want it It is a Modlin comic but we didn't want to make it so a boo, boo, boo about it. We wanted to say, hey, this thing is ending, but there's always things to look forward to on the horizon. Yeah, like you said, it's like,

and whoever wrote the comic, it was Phil who wrote it, or? No, Phil facilitated it. Phil wanted to write it, but things were so on fire behind the scenes at Nintendo Power at the time that I think editor-in-chief Chris Slate round of Ronda Brunner.

I like the way it's put in the comic where it's like it's not over, it's 100% complete. It's like full completion. Yeah, it's very cute way to wrap things up. But yeah, your comic is online. All of the Nestor comic are easy to find online. Check out EMI's run. I do want to talk about really quick. Nestor made some

appearances in video games, but number one, so two years after Nestor was dead, Nintendo Power, two years after Nestor's adventures came to a close. There was Nestor's funky bowling on the virtual boy. I command all of you go out and watch Jeremy's video. Yeah, that says everything you need to know about Nestor's funky bowling. I mean, all you need to know is that it's a bowling game. They've all controlled the same way since the 80s, except that Nestor is in it and his twin sister, Hester is in it, who was a new character exclusive to this game. Not a discontinuity, I say. I'd say

she's not Canada. Yeah. But the main thing you need to know is like it isn't explicable. Like there was not Nestor nostalgia yet. It was 1995. He was discontinued. It could have been anything. It could have been Mario. I would, it feels like something that Nintendo turned down that it could

be Mario and it was just the America side. I was like, this has to star somebody. It can't just be virtual bowling. A meeting needed to end. Yeah, it's Nintendo's equivalent of like, it's Mr. Pants, where you're like, how the hell did this ever have? Like, yeah. Have I met Mr. Pants? Do I know him? But yes, he got his own game for the virtual boy. And then he made some minor appearances before that. So before 1995, he appeared also inexplicably in the game NES play action football. So when you would finish a game, Nestor would be there, straight up, Nestor, telling you who won and who lost in the score. I mean, I don't know why it was Nestor, but he was there. somebody's got to say it so why not the cool kid i mean maybe that was uh i mean like well americans know what football is so have the american kid from that video game a comic computer.

That could be it. Also, in other games, he's just mentioned. So these are all games that, at least the first two are games that were pushed really heavily by Nintendo Power. So Dragon Warrior 1. I think they assume that if you play Dragon Warrior, you are a Nintendo Power reader because we will eventually... You probably got your copy of the game through Nintendo Power, yeah. One of my favorite comics was the Dragon Warrior One they did, just reading it now, because it's... That whole go back through the back door to open the thing.

It's like, this sucks. This is a stupid secret. And so finally, they had a comic that was one of the rare ones where I was on Nester's side of like, this is dumb that you have to walk around out through the back door. So in Dragon Warrior One, there are characters named Howard and Nester, and they're not depicted as being those characters as they are visually, but they're in the game. Most of that game is actually text, so it makes sense. It would be like, oh, yeah, the mayor of this town is Howard or something like that. But the little sprites aren't drawn, but I believe, like, people are looking for Nester, which implies that Nestor has gone.

gotten lost or something like that. Yeah, I beat that game, and I don't even remember that part, you know. It's a very, it's a very, like, minor NPC in Dragon Warrior. Like, there are like three NPCs that are, like, notable. That's also the same game where they changed was that the hero of legend is Link in that game, too. Like, oh, yeah. The Lucas Nation has a couple.

Yeah, they have little jokes like that. Yeah, a few little jokes like that because it, uh, they were getting a little cheekier in that game, which they for the longest time in Dragon Quest localization, they just didn't know how humorous or not to be. It was always a struggle for them

So in Star Tropic At a certain point in the game A character wants to teach you how to fish for a quest Or to progress in the game If you say no He responds with is your name Nester Because Nestor didn't want to learn shit It was a joke for Nintendo Power readers

Yeah Yeah it was a cute nod to Nintendo Power And of course If you were playing Star Tropic You were probably Nintendo Power Kid in 1990 Oh yeah They also did have a Star Tropic comic as well So that was them

Oh, did they? I think it's the last name my comic is Star Tropic. Really? Oh, okay. So in the game, uh, to the earth, who knows why? Nestor is named as the president of the terrestrial federation in the credits. Sure. I don't know why.

It's probably a reference to Nestor of Nestor and Howard or Howard and Nestor, but he's there. Oh, and we didn't even say his name is Nestor because NES. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought, uh, I thought about that. I was like, I think that's one is you can just assume. If you're listening to this podcast, you got that joke. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And finally, another very weird not to Nestor. In Pilot Wing 64, the character, Link, is just Nestor. It is just straight up Nestor. It's where there's no called Nestor? Was there like a rights issue? Because it is obviously just a 3D representation of that character. Yeah, I don't really understand. I mean, it was made by Argonauts published by Nintendo.

They could get the rights to just put Nestor in there. But I don't know. By 96. You never know, with publishing rights and stuff like that. Things could get murky over the ages. By 96, maybe they just weren't ready. nobody was in the mood to like rubber stamp it or send a fax like or send 80 faxes to make it happen exactly yeah but that is the one 3D representation of nestor in the world his hair is perfect for three dimensions like he had love that hair that's my favorite thing about the characters lose banana slices oh it's great a rooster hair yeah he had cloud's hair's hair before cloud i was gonna say exactly yeah just as this introduced us to manga it also introduced us to anime hair styles like hair could be weird colors and spiky as you want it to be exactly yeah uh so my final question and bill uh put something in the notes i think he's very opinionated on this

can there be a nestor without a howard bill your thoughts no you can't nestor's the jerry lewis of video game magazine icons which i mean that's what the the nestor adventures proved is that without howard there to be the straight man yeah it was like a martin lewis it's just a comic about a jackass kid it doesn't know anything yeah he needs to get put in his place by somebody they needed to they should have just created a new Howard-type person to tell him like, ha ha, you're wrong or whatever. Well, Howard was just so nice about it. I think, yeah, the balance doesn't work the same.

From the first comics that really are just so down to earth of, I'm a kid playing a video game and I'm an adult man. In my room. In those ones, the style always was Nestor like can barely stand Howard's presence and it's all just thought balloons and saying like, this jerk doesn't know anything. thing. And when you lose that balance, it's just like, he definitely became in Nestor's adventures more of a Bart Simpson for sure. And even Bart Simpson by himself, you can't just have a

whole cartoon that's Bart Simpson. You need the rest of the family and the rest of the town and something to balance it out because just an asshole by himself, just being an asshole. No matter how much attitude you got, that's just only half of the equation. Yeah, I think they believed a lot in that character to have him persist after Howard left. Yeah. They had to develop the character and give him a little more just gravitas or just flesh out the character. Give him some kind of personality tics that's not just

hey, I'm sassy and I'm stupid. But they didn't do that, so who cared? I guess it says a lot about Nintendo and how well they worked their magic on us where as kids we cared about one of their employees leaving. Exactly. Howard was like... The guy who worked in the warehouse, we ascended him to be a god

above us. It's crazy. I mean, it feels like he was the reggie of his time, but even more in hearing then the Reggie that we knew. He was so cool because he had the white Nintendo Power sweatshirt. That made him a golden god. Yeah. My little brother had that a similar sweatshirt too, but the ones they sold in stores, but not as good.

I think I made one with like a, like I drew on a white shirt with like a magic marker because, you know, because I didn't get lucky enough to win one for the magazine. Well, this was, well, I'm thinking of just, it's crazy to think of it now, but my little brother and I, we both had. I saw it in an old photo. photograph of us. We're just wearing shirts that just have like Mario's face on it that just say Nintendo. Like just the, the concept of Nintendo was enough for a sure. And it's the laziest branding extension of just Nintendo. It's Mario's face. The end. As a kid, I was the type that if I read a magazine like the Boy Scouts magazine, I'd flip straight to the comic, the one page or comic. And so, yeah, that was good stuff too. I loved Howard and Esther for that reason. Yeah. Yeah. And

once, the once Howard was gone, I did care a little less. Like, I didn't like his little stinker cartoons as much. And, I mean, my mind knew it, but I could sense it subconsciously. But also, I didn't like the shift in art. I didn't know I was a weeb yet, so I didn't know why I just liked it. But I will say, number one, there are 18 comics you should read, and they are all like two pages. So it'll take you 10 minutes to get through them.

Just search for Howard and Nestard comics. You'll find all of them, including Bill's comic, including the Lost, never published, dirty comic. Not too dirty, but still a little spicy. It's just sassy. It's not like... It's PG-13. Yeah. But, I mean, they're all worth looking,

especially if you like comics. Like, Emi, I don't know if he did a lot of comics. Somebody online was telling me, I was talking about him on Twitter the other day, that they found art books of his, but with none of his game stuff in it. Oh, shit. I'd actually like to check that out.

That'd be fascinating to see. And he has, like, five game credits for things like, Alundra 2, like character design and monster design for certain things. Like, he's done a few game things. I believe just for hire, though. Yeah. Oh, I'm sure he's just a free.

freelancer, yeah. I'm sure he's probably, hopefully he's retired by now, but. I would hope I would love to find out more about that guy's stuff. If I ever went to Japan and I'd love to see if I could dig up, like, yeah, find any actual books about his stuff and just see what his work was like outside of his Nintendo Powers, because he's

legit only one of my favorite all-time illustrators working in any medium. And he just drew Howard and Nestor for a couple years. That's my only exposure to his work. We barely talked about his spot art in the magazine, like the Nestor award stuff, like Final Fan. There's like random illustrations he would do that were clearly his

of the same style, like, hyper detail. Do you so much better than everyone else. You're like, oh, my God. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. It's that guy. He's so good. But yes, please read these comics online. They're very fun, especially if you want to see just, like, how they were envisioning Nintendo games as comics. And I think, I kind of didn't say this on the podcast, but one of the reasons I like these comics

is because it gave you more of the bigger picture of the game. Like, you saw the flat pixels on the screen, but it was fun to see the characters in the game in these very well-done illustrations. So that was another special when they were first selling the Final Fantasy because he did some of the illustrations, spot illustrations for Final Fantasy and Nintendo Power.

And he did a really good job bring to life. Like, they kind of learn their lessons from Dragon Warrior. They're like, oh, we got to get better illustrations that better show the characters and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, so Pizza Chef Emote. Well, I love that stuff. So good. But yes, Shooji, I believe he's still alive.

He was only born in 1964, so he's in his mid-50s. Oh, that hurts. He's only like 25 when he did that stuff. He was a young man doing these comics. Oh, God. he's home he's probably ascended to being a god himself he's had that much more time to get better in the last 30 years oh I really want to see what he's doing now but Bill

thank you for joining us for retinauts I think this is your first time on the show and it was great I think so yeah probably my last because the way I talk I am so disappointed in you know this was great please I know you're doing a lot of stuff you've got a podcast you've got arts you've got things for sale like what's going on with you we gotta cut the short so I'll just tardy to the party podcast dot com or tardy to the party just Google that phrase. We're the podcast that comes up

whenever you Google that. I have a podcast where me and my friend, Daniel. We just talk about stuff that we've always wanted to watch your play or listen to before, and the podcast is us finally watching and listening that stuff. Like the first episode was me playing Yoshi's Island because I had never played Yoshi's Island before, but I heard it was so good.

We did a whole two-part episode about Final Fantasy six because I never played Final Fantasy six until just a couple years ago, and I always heard that was the best one. We did all kinds of stuff like that. Mostly it's old movies and stuff, but yeah, we've done some gaming episodes and that's always been fun so yeah tardy the party well and uh i mean i i didn't want you to go before i talked up like your studio jibilly inspired arts is some of my favorite stuff i have i have i think

six uh of your posters up in my hallway just like i got in frame they're just so nice yeah i just made those available on in on it's called imprint dot com but it take the eye out it's I-N-P-R-N-T. And I have some gaming maps available at Mudron at big cartel.com, too. So if you, I've done some video game maps of the old overworlds of some of the Zelda games and the Castle Rating and stuff like that.

So really good. Yeah, I'm just a freelance illustrator. I've got some work at the Gallery Nucleus in L.A. right now. They have a big Disney exhibit and yeah, I'm just a general, just schmuck. I got nothing in particular. I just brought pop culture stuff. I don't know if he said this on the podcast, but you can follow him on Twitter at Mudron. M-U-D-R-O-N. That's his last name. So yes. That's Bill.

He's great, and we talked a lot about Nestor. But as for us, if you want to support Retronauts and get our episodes one week at a time in at a higher bit rate, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts, and for three bucks a month, you can adjust that, and that will support our entire network we don't to podcast one anymore, so we're not supported by them. So your Patreon dollars are more important than ever,

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where we go through the entire series of the Simpsons from the beginning. We're getting into season 10. now crazy already. It's happened. Plus, we do the What a Cartoon podcast for me and Bob talk about a different animated series each week, a different episode each time. We've, in the past, even had odd retronauts co-host Jeremy Parrish for an episode or two. So you should definitely check all of those out. And if you'll go to our Patreon, you'll get to hear those early and ad-free with a ton of extras. Please check out the Patreon at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. And I've been your host for this one, Bob Mackie. Follow me on Twitter as Bob Serraveau. And that's it for this episode of Retronauts. We'll see you Monday for a brand new podcast.

Thank you so much for listening, folks. Later. Thank you.