Category: NERDING DAY

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Pokemon Training Video

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The Hood 🌭

If I showed you a comic book starring Cat-Man, Ragman, Pied Piper, and The Hood, you’d yawn the entire time you were cursing the monkey’s paw that granted a DC/Marvel crossover, but only starring D-listers. Then I’d explain: these were the original monikers from the ’40s, and you’d ask, “How racist are their adventures?” 

Oh! How to stuff a symphony into a box? Like society, Cat-Man Comics is a racism rainbow. Cat-Man faintly echoes imperialism through a Jungle Book childhood after his parents get themselves murdered in Burma. Ragman has a more vibrant White Man’s Burden, dragging his superstitious manservant Tiny into gangster brawls and the Nazi bullets—all for the good of a society that oppresses him. 

Ragman’s a millionaire who thinks a cheap suit disguises him, and at that level of entitlement, ignorance comes standard. This sweet, stupid son of privilege fights foreign white supremacists who threaten the white supremacy at home that he never questions.

Tiny somehow infiltrated a submarine at sea, caught a bullet, and still took out the Nazi who shot him. Yet because he talks like the writer was secretly lampooning Black stereotypes, the clod who signs his checks is clueless who the real hero is. Ragman has never–not even once–asked Tiny about his pottery or favorite rainy day record.

Pied Piper mostly fights vampires and werewolves, so he mainly targets eastern Europeans, yet leaves the Nazis alone? Suspicious. 

None of these amateurs can match The Hood, who embodies institutional racism on a cellular level. His right fist is hatred, and his left fist bears no name because it jabs faster than sound. He’s the fourth branch of government, and it’s a hickory switch.

The appropriately named Hood’s origins are as murky as his motive: “America, therefore FUCK YOU.” His only powers are short bursts of flight and universal aggression. That’s all the abilities of a turkey in mating season, if the turkey knew a lot of slurs for Asians. Like, any Asian. Take a look at his debut, in which he fights—no lie, The Yellow Horde. 

Oh, that’s a relief. They’re just AIM scientists. Boy, this could have quickly gone grim—

Woah! Who is this masked racist with muscles of iron and prejudice of steel?

Depending which identity he’s using that day, Agent Major Craig Tom Wood Reynolds Williams was either an “FBI operator” or a war pilot, but all of the Hood’s aliases wait until an attack is in progress to prepare for battle.

When Horde saboteurs start lighting people on fire, his first move is to hide and change his underwear. As a superhero he’s neither super nor heroic. Two panels into his debut, he has absolutely revealed his secret identity. No way the plant owner will forget “Craig Williams, undercover FBI man” showing up the same time as The Hood. He just has to ask himself “Who’s the one person I’ve met lately whose face is so spiteful he’d hide it?” Craig looks like the kind of guy who has kids just so he’ll always have someone weaker to be mad at.

Yeah, wade back into the cloud of sleeping gas! Stop being a bunch of weak-willed oxygen breathers, says Dumb-Dumb Hood, from a girder high above the gas where he could have been secretly lurking this whole time. 

That’s when things cross into “Racist even for the ‘40s.”

Look, dehumanizing our enemies is the only way we’re ever going to get this slaughter of our fellow man going, and The Hood debuted practically hours before Pearl Harbor. But Japan had been atrocitizing China for four and a half years at that point. Lumping those two nations together was a bold statement and it said: “Blow them all to Hell, and let Anglo-Saxon God be too busy to sort them out.”

At the Tong mission hall, he beats the hell out of several Chinese caricatures, despite knowing they’re slaves fighting for their lives. He insists he just wants to talk while mocking his outclassed victims, until a giant (also named Tong) hands his ass to him. Tong inadvertently founded The Special Olympics by hammer throwing The Hood, and prompting all decent human beings to cheer with joy. 

Then comes the twist:

With the brains of the operation revealed to be a white man with a gun, Super-Lindbergh suddenly finds a gentler way, and literally pulls the rug out from under his foe. I think he only opposes Nazis because he considers their alliances with non-white nations weak. 

The Hood also uses gentler insults with Nazis. Only once does he call them “monkeys” and that’s the least insult he slings at Pacific nations. Every Japanese agent he fights would be genuinely touched if he softened his invective to “Take that, you cackling hyena-men from before the Great Flood!”

No, if you want to see The Hood go full throttle on Nazis, you’ll have to watch him strangle dogs. 

Sure, they were Nazi dogs, but can a dog really hold a racial ideologies? I refer you to the Nuremberg trial of WHO’S A GUT BOY? DU IST DIE GUT KLEINE KINDER, HUNDEN! 

Also: Craig is dating women on both coasts, under at least one assumed name. 

Now behold, the master plan:

The Teufelhunds devastate America’s key wartime industries of talkie films and Sunset Boulevard cosplay. An imitation Gene Autry gurgles his thanks as The Hood strangles as many canine windpipes as his little hands can grip. But no thanks is necessary. Craig hasn’t killed this many dogs since primary school. He was made for this. But a more efficient response is required:  

Our champion slowly drives a van thirty miles to smash dogs through a Malibu mansion’s skylight. But he doesn’t do it for the medals. 

If you think abusing animals is exciting, just watch The Hood unleash his fury on targets he esteems even lower: foreigners with epicanthic folds.

Japan is blitzkrieging, and it makes The Hood restless. His heroic super senses tell him that somewhere the crime occurs of two cultures mixing.

We find our hero escorting actress Rae Girlfriend home from dinner at Cresent Pictures, Inc. You can tell by Rae’s face what kind of plastic covers she’ll put on the couch where she mourns her sullen, xenophobic boyfriend. “That’s the Major,” she’ll caw. “My gentleman caller, he died fighting those sneaky [censored]s in Seattle in 1951. Do you know women are showing their bare shoulders on TV ads these days? Two Puerto Ricans moved in across the hall, but I don’t think they’re married. Disgusting.”

Yup, that’s an internment camp. 

Golden Age comics moved fast: in three panels we went from Rae worrying tonight would be one of Craig’s extra-chokey sex nights to unfounded paranoia swaddled in hate speech, to presenting America’s third-biggest crime against humanity as a good thing. 

The five escapees, who probably weren’t radicalized until FDR stole their homes and businesses, flee to a ranch in southern Idaho. 

Ignoring Japan’s fiendish plot to insert a spy in the…back kitchen of a ranch? How did those cowhands not realize what they were dealing with the moment they saw he was fastidious? Haven’t they read Bokker’s Big Book of Racial Phrenology, 1938 edition? It says “Order is in the Japanite’s nature, as it is, too, to call everything honorable.” The entry went unchanged until 1987, when it was expanded to say, “Karate tentacle.” 

Defying the natural democracy of the Western cookhouse, the four men (I guess one died in transit?) plot to steal a ridiculously dangerous explosive for coordinated kamikaze shenanigans. 

Unfortunately for them, they’re stealing from Maj. Craig Wood, a.k.a. The Hood, a.k.a. The Grand Cyclops. The only things he lives for are explosions, racially motivated attacks and other, government-sanctioned racially motivated attacks.

Behind him, Rae (evening gown edition) looks at herself in the mirror with womanly concern. Her neck is free from sex bruises. Tonight will be a good night for justice.

Storing the equivalent of several nukes in a Western safe, Dr. Carson is set upon by six(?) Japanese agents dressed as cowboys. It’s 1941, and this comic thinks the outfit that will attract the least attention is the same one Billy the Kid died in.

America can’t afford to lose that formula even though Carson probably can reconstruct it, so The Hood orders our national defense not to shoot the bombers out of the sky. He flies to their farmhouse, spouting hate speech for no one’s ears but his own.

The Hood bravely attempts to do what an inexperienced pilot already did with a cargo of explosives. Fortunately:

Every one of these terrorists forgot their guns, so one of them changes the plan from coordinated destruction of a half-dozen cities to “Just the five of us die right now.” But unlike Craig’s fury at minorities receiving equal treatment, the Carlyte doesn’t explode!

He hit that dude so hard he knocked all four of their hats off. That’s the universal sign for defeat, but this is Hood’s America, and America doesn’t bow to the authority of the larger universe. When you battle The Hood, the punches are just there to distract you from the real attack on your humanity.

Back home, Rae subtly emasculates Craig, never knowing the iron fist that clutches the erotic edge of asphyxiation she craves is sitting right in front of her.

Which brings us to The Hood’s coronation as King Clod of Ignorance Mountain: the time he single handedly decimated Japan’s population. I don’t want to come out too strong against the guy fighting the Axis Powers, but for everyone who asked, “Why doesn’t Superman just go to Europe and end the war?” the creators of The Hood thought the answer was, “And spoil all this fun?”

Bokker’s Book claims “the skull of the Japan Man is paper-thin to accommodate his naturally obedient, honorable brain,” but even so, axe-punching a brainpan is risky. Hood only shattered his fist to prove he can repel the horde single handedly, but don’t let that distract you from the fact that “The Yellow Horde” now references an entire nation. 

Because Craig never does any soldiering or investigating, he’s hanging out at an airfield, waiting to see if his pilot buddies want to get drunk and tell jokes about blindfolding POWs, when Hirohito’s grocers launch a sneak attack during peace talks. America’s heroes scramble to the air, and also so does The Hood.

Of all the times Craig has fled from danger to put on his special big boy suit, this has to be the dumbest. It’s an aerial battle, and everyone on duty already noted his presence before a previously unaccounted-for pilot clogged the radio channel with his gleeful kill count.

He chases them back to their aircraft carrier and lands with no plan to get home. Not knowing when to quit while you’re winning is such a Craig move, it’s amazing his parents didn’t name him America. Or maybe they did. He’s got so many aliases I can’t keep track.

In what must surely be his version of a real-life porno, Hood is trapped at sea with five thousand asses to kick and ten thousand ears to tear off. 

His fist buffet is cut short when an officer “treacherously” fights back. Then the guy tells him to “Prepare to digest one honorable bullet.” It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s still better repartee than “This will put you to sleep!” or “I’ll tear your ears off!” Maybe we should follow this guy’s adventures instead? 

Alas, they spare Hood’s hateful life and bring him to the emperor.

Oh, look at him. He’s so into it. He welcomes your pain. The Hood feeds on torture. Meaningless sacrifice is the butter on his unnecessary sadism bread. “Ungh. Please. Stop. I beg you.”

Hirohito wants to break the embodiment of American Yeehaw Johnny Cowboy’s spirit, but The Hood literally kicks his ass. This is the moment he’s been waiting for. It’s all coming to fruition. Glorious, unfettered violence at last.

I know you think that’s the world’s first Wheaties joke, but “beaties” are Craig’s morning flagellations with a rubber hose to prepare himself for the crucible of pain America asks of him. And he eats that shit dry. 

Your guns mean nothing to him. None of this is real. He’s marauding through an illusion. World War II is just a video game, and Craig has entered the God Mode code. 

The Hood leaps lustily towards an anti-aircraft cannon, and barely has time for racism before he—

Oh no. 

—aims it at the POW camp. 

Enslimed with the spattered tissues of his enemies, The Hood finds no more violence to be done here. All is destruction. And still, whispers Ares in his ear, still, he is not finished yet. No, he will never be finished.

A moment of horror at his actions comes over Craig. This goes beyond battle. This is war crime. Surely, allies are among the dead. He must flee. No one need ever know what happened here—

But it is far too late for him. Something dark takes the stick, and the plane banks south towards Yokohama.

They must be taught the lesson, these termites in the shape of men. They must become the lesson, so no nation, ever again, will look at the remains of what had been their families, and think it was sanity to challenge the United States…

He remembers all of it. Every single, glorious second, etched into his brain like acid lithographs. He has no regrets. There is no more need for the lies, the assumed names, the girlfriends, mere pageantry, the appearance of a mortal life. He will never take off the hood again.

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Topless Connection: who fights under the moniker THE TIE and uses a magical necktie to control the uppity- what? Why do I have to stop typing this joke? Oh, ohhhh. Right.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: New Adventures of Mega Man, Part 2 🌭

When we last left the heroes of New Adventures of Mega Man, Capcom’s officially endorsed Mega Man comic for all of Brazil, Mega Man and Mega Man X briefly stopped trying to fuck their increasingly naked sister just long enough for the author to declare war on Capcom and all of the comics industry.

That was two issues. That all happened in two issues! 

It was magical. Jose Pereira, the author of this five-issue run, showed up to the office Christmas party in a mini-skirt, told off the boss, tried to nail the secretary on top of Santa, then set the building on fire while still inside it. And they gave him three more issues!

He didn’t even get fired! He quit! He’s my hero and he should be yours, too.

Anyway, I hope that recap helped you get back into the New Adventures of Mega Man headspace. You got it all? 

Good. Now blow it out your ass.

Fuck you for even paying attention to it. It will not come up again.

The comic now takes place in Sao Paolo, and this is the very first page of issue #3:

Pereira spent the entire first issue clumsily worldbuilding a Mega Man comic from shit his drunk roommate almost remembered about Krion Conquest. Then he ditched the entire thing in issue 2 in favor of getting hilariously fired as hard as anybody ever has. 

He somehow failed at that. 

He still had a job! Nobody foresaw this! This is like crashing that boat in the Suez canal and then, when it’s all over, your boss tells you to come in early for work tomorrow. 

You would have other plans! Probably for suicide!

But no, Jose Pereira still had a job to do, and that job was to make everybody regret giving him a job. He started by once again throwing everything away, and opening issue #3 with Mega Man X on a nationlistic rant about Sao Paolo.

I’m not sure why we’re bothering with the modesty of those little leaf codpieces – you will see full on Roll titties before this issue is out. 

Mega Man X, attempted sister fucker and successful murderer of millions – that’s canon! That’s officially-licensed, Capcom endorsed Mega Man canon! – is trying to gaslight his sister about the glory of Brazil, but she’s having none of it because she got on the internet once, so she knows the truth.

I’ve long said that people who prefer Mega Man X to the originals are fascist pigs who should be first against the wall when revolution comes, but now I have proof! Officially licensed proof!

I know what you’re thinking: “How can Roll’s titties grow in every panel?” and “When did we start carefully rendering her bare nipples through her shirt?” 

But I know what else you’re thinking: “At least X and Roll being at odds means one less robot trying to bang his cybersister.”

Don’t you get sick of being wrong all the time?

We are, holy shit, just five pages into issue #3 and one of our main characters has gone so Bolsonaro it’s a wonder he doesn’t have robo-COVID, only briefly pausing his jingoistic manifesto to confirm to nobody that he would totally still bang his sister, even if she’s wrong about the importance of historical accuracy and trusting the internet. 

Wait, hold on-

I know we’ve seen her strip in front of her brother, half-drowned in quicksand, and cheerfully dismembered just so we could hit every one of Mississippi’s most popular PornHub searches, but do you think Roll is sexy enough? 

I know she’s wearing an open shirt with no bra and two pages ago 90% of the pencils went to the shadows around her nipples, but I feel like the raw sexuality of this character, who is a child in the video games, has not been fully expressed.

That’s the 10th Roll wardrobe change of the first three issues of New Adventures of Mega Man, each one with 80% less fabric. She looks like a Rob Liefeld Good Try™. He’d get a lollipop, a smiley-face, and eight million dollars for that gender-swapped DeviantArt Shatterstar. 

But I know what’s happening here. I know ‘90s anime rules. I was there. I know when a woman gets metal titties and her body starts devouring her thong, that means she’s about to kick some ass. I know that. 

The Mega Men don’t.

We once again pause the action so both iterations of Mega Man, then-flagship characters of Capcom, can carefully explain to a woman why she’s useless. 

Roll doesn’t listen, and we get another reminder that “sister” doesn’t mean something else in Megalese – these people are family, they want to fuck each other, and they’re definitely actually related.

And if, hold on- 

I did promise you Roll’s full and bare breasts this issue. I’m sorry, I almost forgot. 

Now, my Portuguese is terrible – I can basically only say “do you want to see the sister’s robot titties, and then have some delicious potato and cabbage soup?” but apparently that’s all I need to make the Letters to the Editor Page.

Back to the action-

Fuck! We missed the action! 

Now it’s time for Mega Man X to, of course, accuse the original Mega Man of White Knighting, call his sister a whore, and then once again reiterate that all women are good for is domestic upkeep.

Oh shit! Is that…?

That’s an evil robot!

Fuck yes, we’re going to do Mega Man stuff! That robot looks like his theme is uh…

What is that armor supposed to be? Maybe race cars? Race Man? That’s a worrisome handle. What are those, robot anuses? I’d almost prefer Gape Man to Race Man. Seriously, what is that evil robot’s theme? We need to know so we can predict his attack style!

He’s Mayor Man?

He’s Mayor Man! 

Holy hell, I kind of forgot who we were dealing with here. I think Jose Pereira is my new favorite insane idiot and you’re reading that on this site, so you know what these stakes are. He put precisely one evil robot in his Mega Man run, and it’s the fucking mayor of Sao Paolo – a corrupt socialist! That’s how unwilling he is to do any Mega Man shit whatsoever. The evil robot isn’t even named Something Man, as tradition demands. Maludijan is a portmanteau of three actual mayors of Sao Paolo, just so Jose Pereira can libel and then kill three real politicians on one page.

But not before Mayor Man destroys Roll using his special weapon: Electoral Missiles. 

Maybe that’s a pun that doesn’t translate from Portuguese, or maybe we have prior proof that you literally can’t pay Jose Pereira to give a shit, so it’s probably that.

But don’t worry! Roll isn’t totally dead. We established that she can be erotically dismantled in a manner that you cannot prosecute for — every Jose Pereira’s fantasy. 

She hasn’t been killed. But she has been reduced to “just a box.”

That’s a little on the nose, even for the comic featuring the evil robot mayor of Sao Paolo’s Electoral Missiles. 

And hey, if having a beloved video game protagonist explode a chimera of politicians the author doesn’t like isn’t a weird enough right wing political jab for your taste, have I got a meanwhile for you! 

So the villains, not previously mentioned, have a big evil plan and it’s to open a portal to alternate dimensions so they can… preach the virtues of their belief systems? This is just interdimensional Mormonism. That’s the worst thing Pereira can think of: Women with agency who disagree with him politically being allowed to talk. 

But wait, they want to spread the word of communism to dimensions who haven’t heard of it, but also pull in a great communist warrior from that dimension which, again, has not heard of communism? It’s amazing that we got the plot and a plot-destroying plothole in two consecutive panels. 

So who is this mighty warrior who will surely fight for Marxism just as soon as you explain Marxism? Is it any college freshman? No! It’s…

Oh shit, it’s Princess, the gender-swapped authorial insert of the man who hates women! Read nothing into the fact that the guy who spent the last three issues calling women useless whores wrote himself in as the sexiest lady of all. Read nothing into the fact that she took Roll’s cue and changed into something even skimpier. Read nothing into the fact that-

You know what? Just stop reading into facts. Nothing good will come of it.

Because Princess is finally here, and every single time she’s been shown we, the readers, are explicitly promised she’s going to fuck everything up big time. 

So get ready to fuck things up! 

Surely!

I mean, it would be crazy if we forgot about Princess entirely to, say, dedicate the entire next issue to child prostitution in Brazil. That would be nuts. It would be insane if the issue after that still didn’t mention Princess. It would be completely mental if Jose Pereira risked his job, his career, possibly his life just to unveil his grandest creation — a big-titted anime girl who only says what he wants — and then promised she would wreak unfathomable destruction every time she was on the page, only to quit the entire comic book without ever having her do a single thing. That would defy reason.

So here’s issue #4 of New Adventures of Mega Man. It’s about child prostitution in Brazil.

This is actually Roll’s origin story, and we open on her dancing with another little girl, which is a very Brazilian thing to do, only to get power-slapped by a controlling older woman, which is an even more Brazilian thing to do.

She goes on to, hold on-

I almost forgot to tell you to eat shit for remembering anything from the previous issue! 

Wow, okay. I am dropping the ball here. If you slipped up and accidentally remembered something that happened, or were expecting anything like a coherent storyline to emerge from any of the previously mentioned plotlines, please take a moment out now to go to fuck yourself as hard as you possibly can. We’re on the honor system here, don’t ruin it for everybody.

Back to Roll’s origin story — and remember this is an officially licensed, Capcom-endorsed IP so this is all technically canon:  

Mega Man’s sister was human trafficked.

This is it. This is most of the issue. Just page after page of loose collections of traumatized girls breaking the panel flow while middle school poetry struggles to explain that human trafficking is actually pretty gross, you guys. 

Hey, real quick reminder: This is a Mega Man comic.

Hey, real quick reminder: This is Roll in the games.

That sprite is now a child prostitute. 

That’s canon! 

Don’t get uppity with me about canon! Capcom officially sold the license to Mega Man to this insane comic book company and then they took a summer off to discover themselves. They let this happen, and that means it’s forever part of Mega Man lore now. 

Roll is a former child prostitute, Mega Man wants to bang his sister so bad he creams his denim jumpsuit just to look at her, and Mega Man X is a gaslighting nationalist who also, of course, wants to bang his human trafficked sisterbot. 

Remember, this is a comic book. A fun comic book for kids.

This isn’t even a Very Special Issue where they eschew comic book conventions to tell a serious story.

Here’s page 14 Just abject despair and misery, full of frightened naked children and… nazis, I guess? Mega Nazis?

Now here’s page 15… fan mail!

Whoa! Cool! Look at that neat Mega Man 2 fan art! Ha ha, get ‘em Blue Bomber!

Here’s page 16!

There’s no way, there’s no fucking way you went to the store with your saved-up allowance to buy a comic book with your favorite video game character on the cover and expected to get a pretentiously cut splash page about child molestation. But again — look back at that fan art. Kids are buying this!

Kids are learning that, hold on –

You’re worried, aren’t you? Don’t worry. I feel you worrying again! You’re worried they take Roll to a gross dude who molests her. 

Don’t worry.

Only all those other girls got molested, Roll was purchased by a man who just wanted to flay her and turn her into a cyborg.

You were worried!

And he’s only going to turn her into a prostitute AFTER she’s in the robot body! So the sexbot will look grown up – you know, the one we’ve been ogling every single issue — but it’ll be a child’s brain in it. That makes it morally okay, because by the time you finish explaining it to people who might judge you, they’ve already written you off as a terminal nerd and aren’t listening for the really bad part. 

You worried for nothing! 

Hey, real quick reminder: that’s Dr. Light, the creator of Mega Man, who apparently worked abducting children and turning them into bionic moonwhores before having a crisis of conscience.

So that’s Mega Man canon, too. Dr. Light, this guy:

Built so many child prostitute robots that he just couldn’t build another child prostitute robot, and that’s actually why he built Mega Man in the first place. To stop the child prostitute robots! He built!

That’s, I don’t know, the plot of the first Mega Man. Here’s the intro to Mega Man for the NES.

Capcom left that wording nice and vague, but now we can fill in the blanks. Dr. Wily’s “evil desires” were to build child hobots, and as soon as you pressed ‘start’ Mega Man ran off to mercy-kill the young sex slaves trapped inside the powerful robotic frames of Ice Man and Guts Man. That’s what you were doing, playing that game! 

Eat Bubble Lead, child prostitute!

Anyway, that was issue #4. Jose Pereira has one issue left to peddle his madness. But now you’re feeling prepared for it. You’re ready for anything he can throw at you. Fuckin’ Capcom’s communist Brazilian child trafficking robot armies, whatever! You can handle this next swerve.

Here’s issue #5: A fun rollerblade race! 

Straight up. No swerves. 

It’s just a Wacky Races-style rollerblade derby starring your favorite Mega Man characters. 

Jose Pereira opened with a pretty basic ‘awaken the savior’ plotline in issue #1. Then he went completely mad with a nothing amount of power for three straight issues, filling them with rants about big government and socialism, proclaiming that all Brazilian comic book publishers are sluts for corporate dick, and decrying the fascists at Capcom itself. He spun out for an entire comic full of just artsy minimalist splash panels about human trafficking and child prostitution — and then he wrapped it all up with the mandatory ‘90s rollerblade issue. 

Hahaha, fantastic. He knew. He knew you’d come to expect the abuse, that you flinched every time he raised his hand, and the only thing he could do to surprise you was instead use that hand to lace up some bitchin’ blades and shred the gnar.

Fuck you, the reader, in every direction. That’s really what Jose Periera wanted to get across in his time with New Adventures of Mega Man. That’s it. That’s the only consistent message he carried through every single issue.

Well, that and all women are ‘washing machines.’

He just really thought that was hilarious. 

…
This article was brought to you by a hot tip from Swift.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: New Adventures of Mega Man, Part 1 🌭

Back in the ‘90s, 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 Capcom’s flagship character. 

Now, just because Brazil is a huge market and Mega Man was basically the mascot of this entire company, that doesn’t mean you could pay anybody to give a single shit about anything. Every single person involved with making this comic later admitted they’d never played a single Mega Man game — they didn’t 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 wasn’t a knock off. This wasn’t fanfiction. This was all officially licensed. It’s basically Mega Man canon. Everything you’re 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. 

Let’s 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 couldn’t 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 couldn’t draw a human figure with perspective. And I get it: That’s 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 it’s hard to pin down. Maybe it’s because she’s centering every frame with her tits, or maybe it’s because she fell into quicksand on the first page, which isn’t 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. 

We’re 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 we’re about two pages from a DeviantArt spread. 

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Nobody tell Brockway about human nature!)

In the first few pages we’ve met Roll’s butt, Roll, Roll’s 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 it’s going to be important later.

That’s bold, Jose, to take a full page just for exposition right up fr-

It’s a big move, Jose, taking two whole pages for exposition before you’ve established any stakes or charac-

That’s a huge swing, Jose, taking three pages for exposition right at the start. But okay, we’ve got our evil robots, we’ve got Dr. Wily, this is Mega Man. We’ve also got some weirdly prominent harping about Big Government that is surely a product of clumsy translation. It would be insane if Capcom’s officially licensed Mega Man comic for the entire Brazilian market was an unhinged political manifesto full of robot incest. 

That’s just not going to happen.

(EDITOR’S 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 Roll’s perpetually roving titties.

Hey, there’s 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 you’ll 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. That’s what Canada really looks like: Lots of vast pits and disappearing platforms. It’s why they have to have such a good healthcare system: Poor jump timing.

Man, I’m really uncomfortable with the prominent sexuality of Roll, who’s a very young child in the games, but again, there’s no way — there’s 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!

There’s 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 Capcom’s official Mega Man comic for Brazil. 

“Let’s do some plug and play!” Is the line responsible for the most mandatory trainings at Riot Games, and it’s 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 don’t equip Stone Throw here. You literally Mega-came in your denim jumpsuit while watching your sister strip just two pages ago. 

You know, I’m almost rooting for the new guy. Sure, he’s a creep and potential sex criminal, but at least he’s not into Amish speed-dating, like our protagonist. It’s good to have a break from the robo-incest for a bit.

…

Break’s over!

Remember: They weren’t 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 Jose’s hack writing. But I had to. Because Jose does:

Good on these nerds for drawing themselves as insufferable as they surely are. That’s the image that makes me reconsider every time I think about getting back into D&D. That’s the final question on the Bully SATS. That’s a MENSA meeting at a Denny’s if I’ve ever seen one, and I’ve seen exactly one.

But more importantly: this fucking sisterpalooza thinks it’s 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, it’s either about to become a genius parody or the vile, problematic rantings of a madman. If we’re 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.

I’ll be honest, I bumped a research-heavy premise this week thinking I’d take a little break to tackle this fun, kooky video game comic. 

But where do you stop with this? There’s so much wrong here. This is compressed wrong. It’s wrong from concentrate. I looked over my notes once I’d 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, let’s check back in on the comic real quick, something the comic barely does. 

Here’s 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 they’re not just garbage at translating, this is really happening. 

“Holy shit,” they say, double checking their dictionaries. “This is really happening.” 

“Is Mega Man X seriously making a joke about anal sex with his sister here?” They mutter. “Nobody will believe this. Nobody will believe this was the official Mega Man comic of Brazil. They’ll think it was some rogue pervert translator. You have to head it off, or they’ll string you up for this. This is how my father died, translating Creamy Mami The Magic Angel into arabic. I won’t go out like that!”

Anyway, back to the story-

No? 

Not back to the story.

See, this is what I mean!

Breaking the fourth wall wasn’t the plan from the start – it didn’t happen once in the first issue — but now we’ve breached the seal. Now there’s a precedent for Jose to stop writing story, which is hard, and instead just rant blindly on the page about…

Wait, did he just imply Capcom, whose comic book he is currently writing, is a bunch of corporate fascists?

And double wait — Jose Pereira’s 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 wasn’t 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 can’t be right. There’s 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 him… at the end of issue #2! Haha this is issue #2, remember! 

Fuck yes, take down the entire corrupt Brazilian comic book industry, Capcom’s 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! That’s, I don’t know, that’s what Mega Man 7 was really about! You didn’t play it! You can’t 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 Jose’s 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. 

I’m going to do a backflip, I bet I could do a backflip right now!

Okay, I’m back. I can’t do a backflip and I can’t 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 you’re 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? 

I’ve never seen somebody go this mad with power this quickly, and I once gave a 2nd grader nunchucks. 

I looked it up: Jose’s 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 they’d 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 paycheck’s eye and daring the very title of his comic book to fire him. This is the hardest I’ve 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 man’s self-destructive nature that I’ve seen outside of a college essay about The Great Gatsby. This is wonderful. This is beautiful. This…

ISN’T

OVER

There’s 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 “Oops! All Dicks.” That sentence deserves flair!

There’s no explanation for this five issue run, other than that everybody in charge skimmed the first issue, said “yep looks fine” 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. I’m done fighting what has to be done. 

This has been Part 1 of my coverage of New Adventures of Mega Man.

Holy shit. 

I’m gonna try that backflip again.

…

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.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Coming Out of Their Shells

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Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers – Official Fan Club Video 🌭

The Power Rangers Mailed Me A VHS Tape That Gaslit And Exploited Me. Hi, for your sake, I hope you’ve never heard of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Official Fan Club Video. It is a bad and cursed videotape! It was the single grossest experience of my Power Rangers fandom, if not my entire childhood. And I say that as the former owner of a Lord Zedd action figure.

When I was a mere Schmidty The Child, I had an abiding faith in the fundamental goodness of VHS. VHS tapes offered me bounteous Disney movies, and endless Thomas The Tank Engine stories, and a made-for-kids documentary about how large commuter hovercrafts work. That last tape is 100% real and may explain more of my adult life than I am comfortable with. Was I one exiting-the-opera mishap away from a career as a vigilante crime fighter, dressed as a hydrofoil? Who can say. Point is: I was primed to believe no VHS tape would ever try to break my brain.

I have not made an episode of ✨my new podcast (please subscribe!)✨ about VHS. But I could do that! My new podcast is called ‘Secretly Incredibly Fascinating’ (or ‘SIF’). The Video Home System (or ‘VHS’) fits that title. VHS played a key role in the modern history of movie piracy. VHS tapes combine unrecyclable plastics and toxic metals — thanks again, The 20th Century! Also 1990s VHS culture begat the hilarious Jerry Maguire Pyramid Project. There’s a lot there! But that’s not why I am here, today, on this hot dog industry trade journal website. I am here to illuminate the crimes of the worst VHS tape ever perpetrated upon me.

I do not remember much of 1994. So I do not remember badgering my parents into signing me up for the Power Rangers Fan Club. The Internet says this is the box of stuff you received, by mail, if your parents wrote a check to Saban Entertainment:

And you know what? That box is fine! That box is borderline professional! Knowing how Saban Entertainment made Power Rangers, I’m surprised that box isn’t a heap of old Japanese boxes spliced together. I’ll bet I loved that TOMMY sticker, before we threw it out. It’s also stuff my parents bought, up front, before I watched its VHS tape. So there was no reason for the tape to describe the box’s contents in scammy carnie framing.

Wow! I guess the number twenty can be snake oil. And watch out! Because that pitch from “Zack”, a.k.a. The Black Ranger (I know, I know) is the tip of the multilevel marketing iceberg.

It is time for me to admit you can click this link and watch the Fan Club Video for yourself. It’s online! What nightmare isn’t? HOWEVER: you should maintain a safe distance from its contents. Remain nestled in the safety of 1-900-HOT-DOG, where I can show you what’s 1-900-wrong-with-this. Because this Fan Club tape crushes the spirit of any viewer. And worst of all, it is most crushing if you are a Power Rangers fan. Because it promises to fulfill an MMPR fan’s greatest dream, before extremely doing the opposite.

I cannot overemphasize the exciting nature of this tape’s first moments. The opening montage offers glimpses of Hollywood stuff!

It shows crowds of fellow Power Rangers fans! Some of them your own age!

It even shows the Power Rangers, in uniform, in front of the public, with their helmets off! A thing that never happens in the TV show!

(Side note: the montage also includes kids in D.A.R.E. t-shirts. Not exciting. And not surprising! This was 1994. The Marvel Cinematic Universe wishes it held as much cultural sway as mid-1990s D.A.R.E.  If you told a Clinton Era Parent there was a way to put D.A.R.E. in the water supply, they would’ve scaled their suburb’s reservoir with a hose between their teeth and a song in their heart.)

Remember: this is a Fan Club Video. That means the opening minute makes an incredible promise. You — a Power Rangers fan, and (probably) a child who never hears the truth about Adult Stuff — you are about to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favorite TV show slash folk religion. Unlike Santa Claus, and kissing, and the casual nationwide endorsement of homophobia, you will understand this component of your world.

And then…the rest of the video happens. Here are highlights from the expectation-crushing twenty-nine minutes that follow. (If I was a monster, I would call it the “over twenty-eight!!!!!!” minutes that follow.)

Each Power Ranger takes turns shilling about the box you already bought. Zack (The Black Ranger) gets stuck with that numberwang part I mentioned before. Billy (The Blue Ranger) explicitly promises “exciting looks behind the scenes” of the show.

Cut to the fakey lair of Zordon (a talking head in a tube) and Alpha (a less macho C3PO). They share a LONG discussion of the fictional origins of the fictional Power Rangers. Power Rangers fans know more about this story than The Nativity.

Alpha closes with an initially promising statement: “Now let’s meet the Rangers” (You: “HOLY SHIT FINALLY”) “…starting with Jason.” (You: “I HOPE THAT MEANS THE ACTOR IS ALSO NAMED JASON”)

Cut to the guy who plays “Jason the Red Ranger”. He answers unheard questions from an unseen interviewer. He does this while sitting in Zordon’s lair. No one establishes whether this is the actor borrowing that set, or the character borrowing Zordon’s office between kaiju. The first story from “Jason” is about learning martial arts. Could still be the actor or character. Our path has not yet forked.

Sudden cut to his next story: “When I was in the green dimension with Goldar…”  Game over, kiddo. He immediately ramps up the tape’s central fraud: he tells you several more stories where the Power Rangers are real. The video mixes in B-roll which doesn’t help sell this conceit since in a lot of it you can see the Power Rangers actors holding scripts.

At one point Jason says he likes rock ‘n roll music, but he likes hip hop too, because “I get that from hanging around with Zack too much.” Jason then describes being embarrassed to be seen in public doing hip hop dance moves with Zack. “He’s turning me too black!”, he more or less says out loud. At least one million children watched this.

The Yellow Ranger (I know, we all know) says she is a Power Ranger in real life, and almost had to fight a mantis monster by herself one time. She is also too busy with high school to date right now.

Alpha pops back in to set up another montage of the cast receiving makeup, the crew operating cameras, and more definite Hollywood stuff. So they’re back to being actors on a TV show? Wait, no, The Black Ranger comes in to describe the physical feeling of morphing, a thing he claims to have done in real life.

He is not good at describing it. 

The Black Ranger also describes the physical experience of punching a Putty in the face. “They feel kinda…I dunno it’s weird, it’s hard to describe actually–kinda like putty.”  Next, he says he likes ice cream.

The Blue Ranger describes overcoming a fish phobia to fight a fish creature from outer space. He also claims to be a nerdy high school student, with a real interest in “science and the world and ecology and things like that.” I cannot decide which claim feels faker.

Next we cut to Alpha whining, “Ay yi yi, the computer indicates that thousands of fan letters have arrived.”   Zordon gives the order, “Gather the Rangers together, Alpha, so that they can answer a few of them.”  Zordon is not an ambitious being.

The Rangers then video conference in to answer some of the fans’ most desperate questions like how it feels for the Pink Ranger to be a superhero (it feels morphenominal), and how Zack came up with the idea for Hiphopkido (he combined his love of dance and martial arts). In a shocking twist, The Green Ranger and the Pink Ranger both confess the Green Ranger and Pink Ranger like each other. They behave as if they’re spilling the beans. The tape then cuts to a clip of Greenpinkbrangelina making an agreement to go on a date, and then kissing. The clip is from a Power Rangers TV episode you already saw.

The Green Ranger says his past fights with his fellow Rangers were caused by villains casting magic spells on him. Children need to learn conflict resolution skills and this was an opportunity for that. Next, Alpha (seductively?) introduces a Power Rangers music video “made just for you” It’s a song from the show, played over clips from the show.

It eats three minutes.

The Rangers finish by telling you to learn D.A.R.E. America’s 8 Ways To Say No To Drugs. Then they depart, and credits roll over an empty stairwell for a long time.

Once again, the Adult World has lied to you. And sure, they couldn’t tell kids the real dirt behind the scenes of MMPR. Kids didn’t need to know about Saban screwing the actors out of all royalties, or the homophobic bullying of The Blue Ranger, or the cast getting dragged back to work one day after the catastrophic Northridge Earthquake. All that stuff is for grownups! Such as attorneys!

But I was a kid who wanted to know how stuff worked. Most kids are like that! You don’t have to be a Hovercraft Weirdo to want to know how TV works. Within ten years of seeing this tape, I would thank Entourage (!) for teaching me (!!!) the most basic basics of Hollywood. But Power Rangers could’ve done that. Show me a soundstage. Or a craft services table. Or the story of Saban Entertainment founder Haim Saban, who played bass in Israeli rock bands before splitting the atom of “Japanese show plus woodchipper.” Heck, they could’ve shown me Ron Wasserman, a.k.a. “The Mighty R.A.W.”, the artísté behind MMPR’s soundtrack of “Mannheim Steamroller, but secular, and flavor-dusted.” If this picture from the Power Rangers wiki is any evidence, Ron liked to receive attention!

But no! They lied to me. They told me Zordon was a real being with a deep interest in the D.A.R.E. Program. And then… the real marketing began. Because that 30 minute “fan video” was a Trojan Horse. That useless fraudulent half hour of Power Rangers “information” was the brain-lube for an ad for a whole separate TV show. Zordon’s voice comes on to announce, “NOW, stay tuned for an EXCITING preview!”

That is the corporate-speak introduction to a five minute commercial for VR Troopers. I am pretty sure it went straight into the VHS tape from a Saban Entertainment investor meeting, with no further editing. For example, it mentions Saban Entertainment several times. I did not know what that was. I borderline did not know what companies were. What I did know, from the initial stages of school, is that the world revolves around spelling words right. So I noticed when this video presented us with the main character of VR Troopers…

… followed by this spinning newspaper of his father’s haunting disappearance:

That’s correct: the headline establishing the hero’s dead father (and central motivation!) misspells his dead father’s name. It’s like building a Superman story around his Kansas parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kente. Anyway, here is Grimlord, the villain of VR Troopers, whose jaw cannot open and close.

He is like if you gave a TV dog whatever the opposite of peanut butter is. And here is [TBD Albert Einstein Version Of Zordon] explaining why the show is called VR Troopers:

Nope! Not what that is! And I wish they told me the truth about how VR worked. Or about the three separate Japanese shows they cobbled together to make VR Troopers, because even as a tiny child I could kind of tell. But this advertisement skips that information, to focus on:

The show’s stereotypical Asian sensei, who is so stereotypical he does his personal accounting on an abacus…

The show’s dog, named Jeb. Good news: Jeb talks! However, Jeb talks like they gave Jeb whatever the cheaper version of peanut butter is…

Further pro-Saban statements shouted by a movie trailer voice over random explosions (because this was designed to be played in the back of the limo it was written in), followed by an all-time desperate closing line:

I’m surprised Jeb the talking dog doesn’t follow that with a Jeb Bush-esque “Please think virtual reality is cool.” Anyway, that is the final thing in the VR Troopers investor commercial. It is not the final thing on the VHS tape.

A man trying to squeeze eight minutes of copy into a twenty second spot advertises the Power Rangers song album, books, “adventure cassettes” with “bonus limited edition trading cards!” AND an “in your face 3D RANGERVISION” adventure in your “read-along storybook” and its gotta-have-em 3D glasses!”

Is nothing sacred? Can entertainment meet its audience’s needs under capitalism? Does money ruin every childhood sooner or later? In this article’s final section I will achieve humanity’s first-ever good answer to that question. By rooting our praxis in the Aristotelian traditioCONTENT WORLD WIDE WEB CONTENT LIMIT REACHED. TO READ MORE BUY POWER RANGERS ADVENTURE CASSETTES!

Alex Schmidt is a keen adventurer. Listen to his podcast, Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, and follow him on Twitter.