Inexplicable (Comic) Book Review: Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario Land comics rule

While I've written at length about The Wizard here and here, and everyone is in agreement that the Super Mario Brothers movie sucked, there is one Mario-themed production that was shockingly good: The comic book series.

Besides the example to the right, you can find a bunch of page scans on this website. (Note: Clicking on any of the images will make them full-size, so that you can actually read them.) I'm not actually sure how I ever came across them. I dimly recall an aunt buying me the big red "Best Of" book that I still have to this day, but I'm not sure how I got an additional copy of it, or several other issues, or the four Game Boy issues that were about Super Mario Land.

However, the key thing about all of them is their surprising sophistication. Like some of the better cartoons to follow - SpongeBob Squarepants, Shrek - there was a lot of references in there that would fly over the head of a kid. You know, like how all the flowers in the king's garden are named Bud. There were pop culture references that you wouldn't get as a kid, along with puns that required a somewhat-advanced vocabulary.

As part of the moving into a new apartment, I was re-reading the "Best Of" book I had and chuckling to myself here and there. Most of the humor still holds up. Also worth noting is the artwork, which is what appealed to me most as a kid. The characters and backgrounds are vivid and bright, even more so than the Super Mario Brothers cartoon that was also pretty solid. The comic book series comes the best at recapturing the artwork of the second and third games of the Super Mario Brothers series.

So, if you see a copy lingering around a used book store, by all means pick it up. It's the perfect sort of odd purchase that you'll probably like, or it makes a great unique gift for someone who's into video games. (My other recommendations on this front: Game Over, an incredible biography by David Sheff about the rise of Nintendo, and The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven Kent, an exhaustive look at the video game industry shortly before the launch of the PS2 and X-Box.) It also might make for a good investment, since they go for $10 to $40 online, it seems.

As I said at the start of this entry, all the comic images are coming from this website, which has a ton of archived comics related to the whole series. Really, really good stuff! And, I haven't forgotten that I owe y'all a Baggage review - I'm at work now, so I'll check my DVR and have it up after I get home.