Another year of New York Comic Con bites the dust and with it comes the fourth installment of the Plus Prop Challenge. Started in 2010, the Plus Prop Challenge is based on walking around Artist Alley and getting various artists to draw the same character… with a prop. That character with another object. What that object is is completely up to the artist, making it a fun creative exercise.

In previous years, we’ve seen Venom Plus Prop, Juggernaut Plus Prop and “Macho Man” Randy Savage Plus Prop. This year I went with a more video game route with Mike Haggar Plus Prop.

For those of you who have no idea who Mayor Mike Haggar is, he comes from the Capcom video game series Final Fight. In it, he’s a semi-retired professional wrestler who went into politics and got elected Mayor of Metro City. The place is overrun with street crime, so Haggar’s gotten tough on it while proving that he won’t be swayed by bribes or threats. Then one day, he gets a message that his daughter Jessica has been kidnapped by the Mad Gear Gang. Rather than give into the ransom or bowing to the Mad Gear and their leader Belger, Haggar decides to take action. He gets Jessica’s boyfriend Cody and their mutual ninja friend Guy to join him in taking the streets and beating the shit out of everyone getting in their way, from militant nutjobs with grenades to transvestites to an entire family of Andre the Giants.

Haggar would go on to appear in a couple Final Fight sequels and a one-on-one fighting game spinoff for the Sega Saturn that nobody played. He showed up as a playable character in Capcom’s wrestling classic Saturday Night Slam Masters and its sequel. For years he’s only shown up in cameos until being brought back into the spotlight with Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

I’ve found that about 2/3 of the artists were familiar with Mike Haggar. Let’s see what they came up with.

Mike Haggar with Q-Bert Arcade Machine
By Chris Giarrusso

Mike Haggar with Phone Booth
By Jacob Chabot

(note: this is the other side of this conversation)

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