Nowaways, Street Fighter is one of Capcom’s prized franchises and it’s nice to see it get a nice revival (along with the 2D fighting game in general) in recent days. With a whole bunch of games and tons of material, it’s perhaps fitting that the series got a nice little mythology and continuity behind it… something for people to get behind whenever they want to make supplemental material.
Which is a good thing… because tripe like today’s subject matter should never be conceived ever again. And no, I’m not referring to whatever Spider-turd Joe Quesada has tossed out recently…
By some strange stroke of (bad) luck, I had somehow managed to gain access to the old Street Fighter comic books from now-defunct publisher Malibu Comics. They used to do a whole bunch of other comics before they were bought out by Marvel or something… not really familiar with their stuff, but I do recall a Deep Space Nine comic that they did. I have heard of the comics and their less-than-stellar quality. There’s a good reason the series lasted three issues: because Capcom hated it.
Yeah, that’s right. All the bad decisions they’ve made with the franchise over the years and THIS COMIC is one they went out of their way to can. It must be a really bad comic.
Nonetheless, when I came across the comics, I couldn’t help but check it out for myself. So I read through the three issues I got (essentially the entire series, since it was cancelled). And all I can say is… WOW.
Now let’s bring this up into context; back in the day, Street Fighter II was a relatively new game and outside of character endings and whathaveyou, there was very little source material for people to look at in terms of character backgrounds and storyline. There were no references to Bison clones, Dark Hadous, and it was understood that Ryu beat Sagat and scarred him in the first tournament because he was the better man and not because of some cheap-shot that was retconned in later on to make Ryu seem like he got lucky… ahem, but I digress. Back then, it was more about playing as a fighter and have him/her beat all the other fighters to win the tournament. Nothing more, nothing less. It isn’t like today where we have a shitload of source material to work with… that doesn’t eventually get retconned or contradicted later on, at least.
So Malibu took a few liberties here and there (Ryu and Chun-Li are attracted to each other because… they’re Asian, Blanka has glasses for some reason, Edmund Honda doesn’t have facepaint and wrestles with the Ferret, a Malibu Comic character)… and the story revolves around the supposed death of Ken… WHAT?! THE?! FUCK???!!!!!
Kill off one of the main fighters in the game? Yeah, easy to see why Capcom didn’t like this thing.
Here’s the thing; I’m reading through this and I have a hard time figuring out where they’re going with this. The first issue doesn’t really have anything going on other than establishing some semblance of back story (that is all contradicted by official material anyway, so what do I care?), the second issue mostly focuses on the battle between Sagat and Ken as well as the bloody aftermath (am I reading Street Fighter or Mortal F’N Kombat?!), and the final issue focuses on the aforementioned fight between Honda and Ferret, all the while attempting to introduce a new combatant to the ranks whom we’ll never know about because the series wasn’t allowed to go farther than it did.
I guess I should mention the art – a lot of online reviews I’ve read considered to the art to be downright terrible – especially compared to the game’s official artwork. All I’m really going to say is that the artwork isn’t all that great, but at the very least, they look like the characters they’re supposed to… outside the oddball creative decision here and there; Honda without facepaint, Blanka with glasses… just to bring up a couple points. And the writing isn’t entirely crap either… although the way that they try to interject the various win quotes of certain characters do get annoying over time. Oh yeah, there’s Sheng Long too… yup.
Now Malibu did include a couple pages to explain what could have been and even admitted that “Capcom doesn’t like our comic, so it’s now cancelled.” And while something like this was caught before it could grow out of control, it didn’t stop Midway from approaching Malibu to produce a series of Mortal Kombat comic books – and that particular venture lasted longer than this three-issue Street Fighter comic.
If you’re looking for an oddball curiosity piece in Street Fighter lore and happen to come across these comics, I’d say go ahead and pick it up if it’s on the cheap. You’re not going to get a great story, you’re not going to get a product that is true to Street Fighter lore (although back then, there wasn’t much), and you’re not going to get “the good kind of cheese” that you’d get out of the live-action movie or G.I Joe branded action figures (yes, Street Fighter characters were once part of G.I. JOE. Figure that one out)… BUT what you do get is an interesting study on a product that is the result of not having an expansive canon to follow and consult. You get something that is the result of open interpretation due to not having enough information from official sources. You get a really strange comic that might have seem bad back then, but downright baffling today.
And you also get the knowledge that of all the ill-conceived projects Capcom has approved, THIS is the one they shut down. And you get to see why…
dtm666 