It’s a good thing Ultimatum #5 hadn’t been delayed another week because that would have cut into my current vacation. Right now I’m getting ready for a trip to Orlando, to experience Disney World and Universal. I’ll see about getting a picture with Dr. Doom. Hey, you know what they should do? They should have someone working at Universal Islands of Adventure dressed as Mace the cyber ninja. That would rule and be a waste of everybody’s time.

I’ll be back in a week, but stick around for the 50 articles hermanos is working on and whatever it is Esther is doing. I’m sure she’s up to something.

In the meantime, here’s something rather odd I discovered on YouTube when I typed “Herman Smirch” through Google. Herman, you might remember, is the main character and lowlife from the Game Boy comic. There isn’t much about him out there, other than an entry on a Mario Wiki site, but I did find… whatever this is.

Later.

Back in the early 90’s, the comic company Valiant struck a deal with Nintendo. Over the next two years or so, Valiant would release a multitude of series based on Nintendo franchises. There were a couple that felt natural. Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda each had their own cartoons at the time, so they would get picked up. Captain N: The Game Master would also get his own comic, though transformed due to the inability to use videogame characters outside of Nintendo. There was even a series called Nintendo Comics System that acted like an anthology of stories featuring those I mentioned and miscellaneous games like Dr. Mario and Punch Out.

Around that time, Nintendo’s Game Boy was still fresh on the scene and they wanted to do whatever they could to get the word out. Sure, advertising was easy for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Captain N was one big commercial for the console and all its games. Well, all the games that weren’t on that crappy knockoff cartoon Power Team (anyone else remember that? It had the monster truck Bigfoot, a basketball player and a talking tomato). Anyway, outside of commercials and magazine ads, how do you advertise what is essentially a lesser NES that you can carry around with you?

With the Captain N cartoon, they eventually introduced a Slimer-like character named Game Boy who was one, big, annoying Game Boy levitating around. With Valiant, they went in another direction. They gave it its own comic book.

I’m sure by now you’re already asking the million dollar question: “How exactly does a Game Boy comic work?” That’s a very good question and having found out the answer, I just had to get my hands on this 4-issue series.

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