Nintendo (Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Captain N) · Valiant Comics · From 1990 · 36 issues
Valiant Comics' Nintendo Comics System (1990–1991) published simultaneous comic adaptations of Nintendo's major franchises — Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Captain N, and others — as part of a short-lived but fondly remembered licensed line.
Valiant Comics, working under licence from Nintendo, launched the Nintendo Comics System in 1990 as a series of separate titles covering Nintendo's most prominent properties. Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda each received individual series, Captain N: The Game Master received a comic adaptation of its television show, and Game Boy and Metroid were covered in shorter-run titles. The line was distributed through newsstand channels as well as the Nintendo Fun Club and Nintendo Power subscriber base, giving it unusually broad reach for a niche licensed property. The Super Mario Bros. comic was the most prolific and the most tonally adventurous, using the game's established characters — Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, Toad — in standalone stories that bore little relationship to the games' actual plots. Writers George Caragonne, Charlie Nozkowski, and others wrote Mario into scenarios ranging from absurdist comedy to genuine adventure, giving the characters comic personalities substantially more developed than anything in the games' minimal narrative. The Mario comics are remembered for a specific comedic sensibility — dry jokes, fourth-wall awareness, and an affectionate irreverence toward their subject — that distinguished them from the straight adaptations common in licensed comics. The Metroid comic, a standalone one-shot, is notable for revealing Samus Aran's gender on the first page rather than using it as a revelation — an unusual creative decision at the time when the game's manual revealed Samus's identity only after completion. The Legend of Zelda comic by writer Bob Layton gave Link a more aggressive, wisecracking personality ("Well excuuuse me, Princess!"), which became an internet meme decades after the comic's publication. The entire Nintendo Comics System line ended in 1991 when Valiant shifted focus to its original superhero universe.
The first major American multi-franchise Nintendo comics line, notable for Link's "Well excuuuse me, Princess!" catchphrase and an irreverent Mario comic tone that outlasted the series itself.
The Super Mario Bros. comic's tonal approach — irreverent, self-aware, willing to make Mario into a comic figure rather than a straightforward hero — reflected the difficulty of adapting a game whose narrative was entirely minimal. Writers who had nothing to adapt invented their own Mario, and the resulting character was funnier, more neurotic, and more interesting than the games' silent protagonist. The comics gave Toad a personality, gave Princess Toadstool genuine agency, and treated the Mushroom Kingdom as a strange place rather than an adventure backdrop.
This willingness to depart from source material served the comics better than strict adaptation would have. Players who came to the comics from the games received something new rather than a retelling of a story they already knew. The approach was commercially logical — readers wanted expansion, not repetition — and produced comics that have held up as period pieces in ways that more dutiful adaptations rarely do.
Captain N: The Game Master, adapted from the DiC animated series, was the most conceptually unusual property in the line: a teenage boy transported into the Nintendo universe, accompanied by Mega Man, Simon Belmont, Kid Icarus, and eventually other Nintendo characters, fighting Mother Brain and her alliance of game villains. The comic adaptation by writer George Caragonne took creative liberties with the cartoon's already loose interpretation of Nintendo properties — the show's Simon Belmont was a vain incompetent, its Mega Man was inexplicably green — but expanded the universe in ways the animation budget had not allowed.
The Captain N concept — a shared Nintendo universe in which characters from different franchises coexisted — anticipated the crossover structure that Nintendo itself would eventually explore through the Super Smash Bros. series. The idea that Mega Man and Link could exist in the same world was purely a licensed fiction in 1990; it became a Nintendo-endorsed canonical premise in 2001. The comics and cartoon were ahead of their licensor's own willingness to play with the idea.