スーパーマリオくん 9

As much as Volume 8 caught me off guard for jumping between a bunch of stories before getting back to the Super Mario Land 2 arc, I think Volume 9 has me kind of appreciating Super Mario Kun as a sort of anthology comic in a similar way to Fleetway's Sonic the Comic, where each volume has a few different stories based off of different games rather than being a singular narrative that flows in order The analogy isn't exactly precise since Sonic the Comic is the anthology containing multiple stories whereas individual chapters of Super Mario Kun are published in a different magazine and only become an anthology of sorts in collected editions. The other difference being that Sonic the Comic had stories about other SEGA properties and only later devoted multiple stories per issue to other characters in the Sonic-Verse whereas Super Mario Kun might be bouncing back and forth between multiple games, but they're all Mario games which means the meta-knowledge of what order the various Mario games came out in does help.

My suspicion that it's a Nintendo-mandated thing to advertise a specific game doesn't hold quite as much water since the first arc of this volume is actually the first original story not based on any specific game (though it does kind of become an extremely loose Yoshi's Safari adaptation at the end, perhaps Nintendo complained that the previous Yoshi's Safari one-shot didn't actually promote the Super Scope enough?). I tend to wonder if the bouncing around might be some residual fear of dragging things on too long given they seemed to get actual complaints about how long the Super Mario World arc took, but I digress.

The opening arc is pretty interesting for a few reasons, the first being that it's set in the future. We don't know exactly how far, Mario looks the same and it's not like everything's suddenly robots and chrome, but we are told this is "a long, long time after Mario defeats Bowser and Wario". Mario's opened a cookie shop with Yoshi and business is good but he's actually forgotten the old adventures and while the arc is as humorous and wacky as anything else in Super Mario Kun it's also weirdly kind of melancholy to see one of your childhood heroes just... forget about all the good times. Even seeing Bowser's castle destroyed and empty for who knows how long is kind of sad. At one point Yoshi pulls out Mario's overalls and hat and he laughs them off as being old fashioned. It's really bold and I don't know that we've ever had a deep dive into what Mario would actually do if there wasn't an adventure to be had or a villain to topple (aside from Kart Racing, Tennis, Golf, being a Doctor, okay maybe we have). Eventually he gets a message from Peach that the now-peaceful Mushroom Kingdom is being overrun with enemies from all the old games and even as he starts getting into things, Mario's kind of rusty and takes a while to get back on his game. They don't really linger on a deep character study, but it's an interesting approach and at one point they make a pretty significant reference to a scene from the live action movie which caught me off-guard since I've never seen that referenced in any other Mario media. The story does end up using some Yoshi's Safari elements, especially by the end, but I'd still say this is largely an original story (and even the ones based off the games are pretty original since there's not much to go off of) and it was pretty interesting.

After that it's another Mario and Wario adaptation, again on top of the one-shot at the end of last volume and this one's a lot of fun. It starts of with Bowser of all people worried that Peach has a bucket stuck on her head and seeking Luigi's help. Why Luigi specifically? I don't think they explain. But it is cute that he searches for the bros without hesitating and they actually work together without friction. I love a good "villain teams-up with the heroes" story and it cements this idea that Wario is a bit more of a legitimate threat than Bowser which was kind of hinted at in the previous volume. This dynamic seems like it's going to keep playing out which I think will be a lot of fun as long as Wario keeps making trouble.

There's also a random one-shot adapting the classic Mario Bros arcade game of all things, and while it is kind of filler it's still nice to see the 8-Bit era get some representation in the series since the comic started in the SNES era.

Lastly, we finally do get back to Super Mario Land 2 arc, and the two chapters devoted to it this volume are weirdly heavier on the gross-out humor than usual which might not be to everyone's taste, but I kind of enjoy how brazenly cursed it is. We actually get a bit of explanation on what the deal is with that Hippo from the game, apparently if you sing a particular spell to him, it causes his sleep bubble to take you to the Space Zone... except that bubble pops so he makes a fart bubble instead and Mario travels to space in a fart. Yes, you read that right. Wario also masters the art of "Snot Art" which is extremely in-character for Wario even if this is a bit before they started leaning into his penchant for gross-out humor.

The volume finishes off with some more pretty interesting puzzles, the language barrier did get me on one since it dealt with math and time and fractions and there's one that feels more like one of those "lateral thinking" puzzles where the explanation's kind of out-of-left-field (or maybe I'm just salty I didn't get it) but I do maintain that the brain teasers are getting increasingly creative and unique which makes for a fun break between chapters.