Back in the ā90s, we knew three simple things: Comic books were the future, everything should get an adaptation into everything, and nobody would ever regret ska. There were also many things we did not know: how comics were the future, who to trust with those adaptations, and why we wore suspenders with T-shirts. It is in this world we find New Adventures of Mega Man — a Brazilian comic book adaptation of Capcomās flagship character.
Now, just because Brazil is a huge market and Mega Man was basically the mascot of this entire company, that doesnāt mean you could pay anybody to give a single shit about anything. Every single person involved with making this comic later admitted theyād never played a single Mega Man game — they didnāt even look into it after accepting the job. The writer, Jose Pereira, only heard about Mega Man briefly, from a friend, and figured a twice-translated game of telephone was enough due diligence to get to work.
Still, this wasnāt a knock off. This wasnāt fanfiction. This was all officially licensed. Itās basically Mega Man canon. Everything youāre about to see is technically part of the Mega Man universe, every bit as valid as Junk Man, possibly more valid than Sheep Man. Maybe the characters will show up in a future Smash Bros. update after the licensing rights to the roast chicken from Final Fight fall through.
Letās get started:
First, you should know that New Adventures of Mega Man could not keep an artist. They exclusively hired fifth graders who got a smiley face in Creative, and they still couldnāt keep one on for more than a single issue. Possibly because none of those artists could keep a consistent style through a single page.
If you look closely you can see the eraser marks that commemorated the exact spot the artist realized they couldnāt draw a human figure with perspective. And I get it: Thatās a big ask for a kid whose biggest gig, up until now, was drawing Kim Possible topless for a dollar in Study Hall.
Jesus, why are my alarm bells going off so hard?
There is something up with Roll, but itās hard to pin down. Maybe itās because sheās centering every frame with her tits, or maybe itās because she fell into quicksand on the first page, which isnāt always a fetish thing, except yes it is. But something about this feels like walking in on a 13 year old with a suspiciously paused fighting game.
Weāre lucky Roll specifically calls out Mega Man as being her brother, and that this takes place fifteen years before incest was cool, otherwise I would be certain weāre about two pages from a DeviantArt spread.
(EDITORāS NOTE: Nobody tell Brockway about human nature!)
In the first few pages weāve met Rollās butt, Roll, Rollās titties (in Quicksand), and now this. It is always time to worry when a writer takes extra panels to explain how a woman can be dismantled with no consequences.
Now pay close attention, because when a comic puts the entire story on hold just a few pages into the first issue to infodump everything about the plot, you know itās going to be important later.
Thatās bold, Jose, to take a full page just for exposition right up fr-
Itās a big move, Jose, taking two whole pages for exposition before youāve established any stakes or charac-
Thatās a huge swing, Jose, taking three pages for exposition right at the start. But okay, weāve got our evil robots, weāve got Dr. Wily, this is Mega Man. Weāve also got some weirdly prominent harping about Big Government that is surely a product of clumsy translation. It would be insane if Capcomās officially licensed Mega Man comic for the entire Brazilian market was an unhinged political manifesto full of robot incest.
Thatās just not going to happen.
(EDITORāS NOTE: Nobody tell Brockway about human nature!)
So anyway, did you get it? It was a lot to swallow with no chaser, but did you get every last bit of that exposition, with the robots and Dr. Wily and all?
Okay cool. Fuck you.
None of that will come up again.
On to issue #2! The art has changed, the story has changed, really the only anchor for returning readers is Rollās perpetually roving titties.
Hey, thereās more canon! Mega Man is dressed head to toe in denim. Denim helmet. Denim-covered gun. The little battle panties? You better believe those are denim.
Every time you see Mega Man now youāll mentally picture him as freshly escaped from a Canadian trailer park. Every level is really just him running through obstacles on the way from the second worst strip club in Saskatoon to the Loverboy cover band set at the worst strip club in Saskatoon. Thatās what Canada really looks like: Lots of vast pits and disappearing platforms. Itās why they have to have such a good healthcare system: Poor jump timing.
Man, Iām really uncomfortable with the prominent sexuality of Roll, whoās a very young child in the games, but again, thereās no way — thereās no way the official Capcom adaptation of their flagship character delves into incest. Not in 1996. Not in issue #2! Not at the very start of issue #2!
Thereās no way!
Two whole pages! Two whole pages of robo-incest right at the start of-
Three whole pages of-
Four straight pages of robo-incest open the second issue of Capcomās official Mega Man comic for Brazil.
āLetās do some plug and play!ā Is the line responsible for the most mandatory trainings at Riot Games, and itās not great that all Mega Man characters are impulse molesters just immediately trying to grope any accident victim that comes careening through their wall — but hey Mega Man? Maybe donāt equip Stone Throw here. You literally Mega-came in your denim jumpsuit while watching your sister strip just two pages ago.
You know, Iām almost rooting for the new guy. Sure, heās a creep and potential sex criminal, but at least heās not into Amish speed-dating, like our protagonist. Itās good to have a break from the robo-incest for a bit.
ā¦
Breakās over!
Remember: They werenāt looking for Mega Man X, they were flying across the planet and randomly crashed into his house for a quick Alabama pitstop. I know it seems silly to pause here, in this official Mega Man adaptation full of softcore sister-lust, just to criticize Joseās hack writing. But I had to. Because Jose does:
Good on these nerds for drawing themselves as insufferable as they surely are. Thatās the image that makes me reconsider every time I think about getting back into D&D. Thatās the final question on the Bully SATS. Thatās a MENSA meeting at a Dennyās if Iāve ever seen one, and Iāve seen exactly one.
But more importantly: this fucking sisterpalooza thinks itās earned Deadpool rules!
It is so dangerous once you start breaking the fourth wall. That tool is way too easy to rely on, and if you see a comic start doing it all of a sudden, itās either about to become a genius parody or the vile, problematic rantings of a madman. If weāre talking an Alan Moore joint, it might be both, plus a pretty hefty section on how all young girls should learn to enjoy banging gross old wizards.
Iāll be honest, I bumped a research-heavy premise this week thinking Iād take a little break to tackle this fun, kooky video game comic.
But where do you stop with this? Thereās so much wrong here. This is compressed wrong. Itās wrong from concentrate. I looked over my notes once Iād collected everything I wanted to talk about here and found the Google doc was 90 pages. I fucked myself harder and faster than a Mega Man finding a wounded sister.
Hey, letās check back in on the comic real quick, something the comic barely does.
Hereās something else I love about New Adventures of Mega Man — even the translator cannot believe this shit. Look at the little note at the bottom. More and more of these hasty margin scrawls show up as the translation team desperately explains theyāre not just garbage at translating, this is really happening.
āHoly shit,ā they say, double checking their dictionaries. āThis is really happening.ā
āIs Mega Man X seriously making a joke about anal sex with his sister here?ā They mutter. āNobody will believe this. Nobody will believe this was the official Mega Man comic of Brazil. Theyāll think it was some rogue pervert translator. You have to head it off, or theyāll string you up for this. This is how my father died, translating Creamy Mami The Magic Angel into arabic. I wonāt go out like that!ā
Anyway, back to the story-
No?
Not back to the story.
See, this is what I mean!
Breaking the fourth wall wasnāt the plan from the start – it didnāt happen once in the first issue — but now weāve breached the seal. Now thereās a precedent for Jose to stop writing story, which is hard, and instead just rant blindly on the page aboutā¦
Wait, did he just imply Capcom, whose comic book he is currently writing, is a bunch of corporate fascists?
And double wait — Jose Pereiraās authorial insert is a rejected Sailor Moon character from one of the later seasons, when they started running out of planets and miniskirt material? Fantastic. No, I mean that is legitimately fantastic. If it wasnāt for the robo-incest — for the so much robo-incest — I would actually love this.
Holy shit, we need to stop. We need to recap what just happened in the last uh… two pages? That canāt be right. Thereās so much!
Jose, who has been savagely oversexualizing the only female character in the series, just inserted himself, as the sexiest female of all, in order to declare war on this very comic book.
And he acknowledges all this, then directly dares anybody to fire himā¦ at the end of issue #2! Haha this is issue #2, remember!
Fuck yes, take down the entire corrupt Brazilian comic book industry, Capcomās officially licensed Brazilian Mega Man comic book adaptation!
This is canon. This is all Mega Man canon! The official stance of Mega Man is that Brazilian comic book publishers are all sluts for corporate dick! Thatās, I donāt know, thatās what Mega Man 7 was really about! You didnāt play it! You canāt prove me wrong!
Haha this rant is eight pages! These comics are only 25 pages long! The entire last third of this comic book introduces Joseās Mari-Su, who immediately breaks the fourth-wall with an aggressively sexual takedown of this comic book!
Fuck!
This is fuel to me. This is what I run on. Holy god damn, I have too much energy.
Iām going to do a backflip, I bet I could do a backflip right now!
Okay, Iām back. I canāt do a backflip and I canāt take a dog in a slapfight and none of my neighbors want to footrace, but I fucking love this. I love everything about this. If this was a Grant Morrison joint I would be getting its logo tattooed on my fists right now.
But also are you sure, New Adventures of Mega Man? Are you sure, Jose? Are you positive youāre the champion this industry needs, when you were given two issues of a video game adaptation and you spent 5/6ths of it on robo-incest, and the last 1/6th declaring yourself the savior of comic books?
Iāve never seen somebody go this mad with power this quickly, and I once gave a 2nd grader nunchucks.
I looked it up: Joseās plan was to eventually kill off all of the Mega Man characters and have Princess be the main character. There would be no Mega Man in the official Mega Man comic book. Just robot incest and takedowns of corporate art.
He made plans for this, as though they would be allowed to continue! Hahaha who would be paying you?
This is astonishing, a new record. If this was a Malibu property theyād make it to issue #3, have every character die in a sewer, and then end with an apology. Jose Pereira barely made it to issue #2 before committing suicide by editor. Literally spitting in his paycheckās eye and daring the very title of his comic book to fire him. This is the hardest Iāve ever seen anything destroy itself, and I once gave a 2nd grader nunchucks.
New Adventures of Mega Man was a fire that burned so quick, for how bright it shone. This was the most succinct account of manās self-destructive nature that Iāve seen outside of a college essay about The Great Gatsby. This is wonderful. This is beautiful. This…
ISNāT
OVER
Thereās no fucking way he got a third issue after that!
HE GOT FIVE ISSUES!
Fuck you, Patreon. Let me change the text color to red. Let me center it. Let me change the font to āOops! All Dicks.ā That sentence deserves flair!
Thereās no explanation for this five issue run, other than that everybody in charge skimmed the first issue, said āyep looks fineā and went on a four-month vacation. Nobody checked in on this. Nobody – not the editors, the publishers, certainly not Capcom. Everybody just left the kid at home alone and he immediately broke into the IP cabinet and got fucking shitfaced on Mega Man.
I needed a light week out of this one. That was my hubris. I understand now. Iām done fighting what has to be done.
This has been Part 1 of my coverage of New Adventures of Mega Man.
Holy shit.
Iām gonna try that backflip again.
ā¦
This article was brought to you by a hot tip from Swift, and by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, John, who was once given nunchucks by an awesome stranger and absolutely ruled his 2nd grade class for one glorious afternoon.
22 replies on “Nerding Day: New Adventures of Mega Man, Part 1 š”
I was going to make some dumb fucking joke about how this new Protomen album took a weird direction, but sometimes you just have to step back and marvel.
From the glass 20 stories high, I have… Watched my sister strip(?)
We truely are The Dead.
How the fuck did this not get 400 issues. I would subscribe right now.
One of the tell-tale signs that somebody writing about Mega Man has never played the games is when they think Protoman was a bad guy.
This is glorious. He went mad with power on such low stakes. I kinda want to see where his career went.
Oh god, I was not ready for this. When I got the notification for this article I thought it was going to be about that shitty Mega Man cartoon where we all laughed at dramatic Gutsman ass reveals. I was not prepared for Capcom-approved Roll titties and genderbend self-inserts.
Ho. Lee. Shit. I went into this expecting this to be some kind of Seanbaby style Photoshopped fake book that I found myself wishing were a real book, ala Shatterhand. I was not prepared for this. And yes my mind, body, and soul, they all NEEDED this.
No, the shtick is that Seanbaby always lies and it’s always rad, and Brockway never lies and it’s always rad.
Is there a word for “infurating but also confusing and strangely uplifting”?
This is true too, and it’s a pretty good shtick Seanbaby has going on honestly. Because really, are YOU going to call him out for being a liar? Only if you have a “getting roundhouse kicked in the face” fetish.
Also, I don’t think there’s a single word for that, but I believe the phrase is “New Adventures Of Megaman”.
Professional translator here. Kudos and salutes to the translator of this insanity. I’ve often WANTED to put befuddled contextual footnotes in like that in my own work.
Every time you said “canon” I became 3% more dead.
Appealing to Brockway’s humanity is tragically useless. Mario Lopez has it. It was drawn into the void along with my innocence. Yo, Brockway, Brock-0, big B, ya followed my Seanbaby defeating advice yet? I know ya can take him! I bought the strategy guide from the PoxCo mail order catalouge.
I’m glad these are finally getting some more attention.
what is this i don’t even…seriously we have no clue what the hell
this really went 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye
So, I left my first comment yesterday on this article, but it’s been stuck in moderation limbo for an entire day. Is the stuff in this comic so depraved that just mentioning it sets off some kind of automatic moderation flag?
I knew suggesting this was a good idea. Just such a bizarre corner of 90s licensing madness that would have been a barely remembered footnote if it weren’t for the internet.
It was a fantastic idea. What a great tip. It doesn’t stay as interesting after issue 4, but there is so much here!
I will have you know sir that I HAVE indeed played Mega Man 7. How did I find a copy? I, uh… Look over there! It’s a distraction!
Get Equipped With
Non-Japanese Sort Of Hentai Doujinshi
Jokes on you, strip clubs are banned in Saskatoon.
I think that makes the joke on Saskatoonians…
Also, was I the only one freaked out by how Roll seems to have some sort of nipple tumor in the first photo? That shading definitely makes it look like itās growing in a very bulbous not-at-all-concentric way.