“Yesterday’s” Comic> Adv. of the Super Mario Bros. #9

Did I say #6 the other day? Blame the allergies. 🙂

Why use surf boards when you have Bullet Bills?

Adventures of the Super Mario Bros. #9

Valiant (October 1991)

Like the previous issue, this has two separate stories, Super Mario Brothers and Captain N: The Game Master. Like before the credits for the stories don’t tell you who did what, which is a disappointment. Their names are written outside the panel and that’s it.

I’m going to review each story separately this time.

It’s Father’s Day and the Koopa Kids are trying to decide what to get him. They decided to kidnap Princess Toadstool (not referred to as Peach in those days, Mario fans so don’t get on my case about it) and what follows is what happens when the stupidest kids capable of feeding themselves go to kidnap a princess. I will give the writers (whichever one of the people in that list wrote this) for using the right names for the Kids (for some reason, DIC’s Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 gave them new names, for example calling Wendy O. “Kootie Pie”) and they do resemble their official art at the time. Otherwise the story isn’t all that funny and the characters are not the fun kind of stupid. Not that any of Valiant SMB comics were all that humorous, but at least it did take place in the game world. Unlike the cartoon.

Maybe somebody knows: did Valiant ever put out a Captain N comic in the relaunch? I haven’t seen one in the normal comic format, just the bigger/thicker stock paper version of the first launch. This story I will have to read again when I get to my Captain N comics and it’s not a very good one. Off-panel, Duke fell into a river and caught a cold. Kevin’s concern about his dog annoys Kid Icarus, who for some reason in the comic version is jealous of Duke, thinking he should be Captain N’s #1. I hated seeing Kid written that way since that’s counter to (granted what little) personality he had in the show. And this is one of the few writers who remembered the “a-cus” endings to Kid’s sentences. THAT I could have done without as it was the one thing I found annoying about the show character.

It’s the ending that really bugs me. The trio was investigating reports that Mother Brain was preparing another assault and happen to stumble on Eggplant Wizard and his army of samurai (no idea what game they’re supposed to be from). They overwhelm Kevin and Kid, but then they run off when Duke appears because they’re actually a bunch of cats. Even Eggplant Wizard isn’t scared of Duke, and the dog is sick. The samurai cats (no pizza) have weapons and outnumber him. It’s a lame joke, I think the point is that Kid gains a bit of respect for Duke (which wouldn’t last long as a later comic had him jealous of the attention Kevin gives Duke again) but the whole thing falls flat.

Recommendation: If the first issue registered a “don’t bother looking for it unless you’re a completest”, I’m not even sure this is worth getting if you are. Both stories are lame, and you’ll see the Captain N story again in his original comic. Really, I’m thinking about adding this to the purge. It’s kind of pointless.

Up Next: If you see this post in time, I’ll be live-tweeting reviews to this year’s Free Comic Book Day run (look for hashtag #BW-FCBD) with a wrap-up on Sunday along with Best Scene of the Week and Best Scene of Free Comic Book Day 2011. And if I can get one done in time, Jake & Leon.

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• “Yesterday’s” Comic> Adventures of the Super Mario Bros. #1 (bwmedia.wordpress.com)