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.