KANG #41 [#93]

Wait, how come you get DP?

Of all the comments to make, that is what you go with? Pshaw!

I'm pretty sure if you look around the Fan Sub forum, you'll notice it's pretty standard for significant creations (of type and quality) to get Dragon Points.
If a single submitted fake background or some such gets two DP, it probably stands to reason that a variety of faked sprites with an on-going narrative should probably get the same.

Special note: Played it a little fine here. Please note that Reiko's speech bubbles are a little higher than Rain's and should be read first (top to bottom order). Cheers!

KANG #42 [#94]

the best part was the part with scorpian

This is way more story than actual MK2 Kintaro ever thought about having!

The Reiko sprite is really nice of course... Rain is alright I guess, I can see you trying to replicate his MKA look but I guess I really love that look and it's not represented enough. That'd take a lot of work though so it's hard to blame you for not including it.

Also, Scorpian iz kool B)

Kintaro was such a great contributor to the aesthetic overhaul of MKII, it's always struck me as a real shame that he didn't live up to the hype. It's the now classic MK problem of introducing a character, telling us he's a badass, but showing us a new guy whose major contribution is to be in a state of defeat.

We know his motivation was to avenge Goro's "disappearance," and I think when you start to look at the behaviour of the Shokan Empire in later stages of the games, it's easy to look at Kintaro as a politically minded character. Rather than a one-dimensional bruiser, it's nice to give him the credit of a General who was fit to step in for a Prince. A guy who cares about the direction of his people and who has a vision of political ideals that their allegiance to Shao Kahn represent.

If I can get beyond MKII, I think Kintaro can continue to be an interesting part of inserted sub-plots -- a bit like Rain and Reiko in #94. Especially when you consider Goro's flip-flopping between allies.

For now [RE: #94] Kintaro is just an acting General who's delegated his guard position at the Dorfen to a lower ranked, blue-sashed, ponytailed, pale-faced, glove and boot wearing Shokan.


I'm still not supremely confident with sprite edits, so I tend to keep it quite simple to allow for easy recreation for different poses. I wasn't sure about trying to do too much with Rain (especially since he had an unedited cameo earlier), but I couldn't stand the thought of an undefined palette swap.

My reasoning was that Shao Kahn wants to supress the memory and legacy of Edenia, so he wouldn't allow Rain to have quite as much gold and flourish in his costume design. I wanted to allude to the MKA design, while also keeping it a bit more tethered to the generic and restricted. If I were to look at Rain beyond his service to Kahn, I would expect to go a step further with the sprite edits and try to more completely reflect the MKA design. It's definitely one of the great upgrades they've made.

It was a similar logic driving Scorpion, which I wanted to keep simple, but with a traditionally ninja-inspired individuality. Hence the full body black and the gauntlets, which were inspired in part by the Shinobi III design of Joe Musashi.


Scopreon iz mah faverite. B-)

As was noted in the initial stages of this thread -- these strips numbered fifty-three and up have a much more serious tone than the mixed foolery of the 'first series'. I've never really thought of that as a problem, since most of us know the important details of "MK1", but it's bound to be a bit jarring for the uninitiated.

Since the arrival of Scorpion in #94 roughly initiates the beginning of Act 2, and also refers to a slightly new angle of backstory; I thought it might be a good opportunity to finally go back and create a new version of 1-52 that fits more consistently with the rest.

This poses various challenges, chiefly related to the fact that there's a set number of strips available. This means a lot of planning needs to go into the structure, which itself is much less naturally laid out as a linear event because of the nature of "MK1"s simpler times and tournament structure. There's a question of what needs to be shown, what I'm interested in embellishing in a different way (ie; tournament brackets), and how some of the interesting pre-tournament backstory can fit in. I'd also like to try to use some different graphical ideas, without disconnecting from 53+.

I'm not entirely certain about tackling these strips before continuing on from #94, but at this time you might like to read through 53-94 and share any thoughts or opinions you have based on that complete chunk. It'd be good to get some feedback from new voices floating around, I'm sure.

The following post will contain an intro that started as a test for some ideas and serves as a sort of prequel to any MK1 strips that might eventuate, with references scaled down to represent the challenges the characters face in MK1, but with a few subverted hints toward the bigger threats that exist. One could refer to a lot of things, for example.

KANG #00

I love this series, as you know. As much as we've heard about the story of MK1-MK3, we don't really know it. It's nice to have those gaps filled. While some fools might disagree and call it "fanfic-y bits", I think that's what makes it great. It's a shame that the MK team has all these shells of characters and never does anything with them.

The visual style is also very pleasing. Most sprite comics, including my own, are simply copy/paste-onto-background, but you clearly put a lot of effort into making the most of each panel, with tasteful (and tasty...!) use of effects.

I really hope you can keep it going as far as you can. Looking forward to the new 1-52.

Thanks a lot for the thoughtful response!
Popular comic book writer Alan Moore once said, 'It's all fan-fiction'. For a guy who reached heights on the back of characters who predate his work by decades (or centuries), it's a pretty solid statement of fact. MK's borrowed and appropriated along the way, making it a mantra very relevant to this series as well, which is getting on in years, and will almost certainly be inherited in the same way as comic book characters.

Hopefully I've hit a few stronger notes than the average fan-fic, with as much consideration for the source material as the potential to subvert an interesting experience out of it. After all, everyone here knows how the strip started, how it ends, and most of the important checkpoints it visits along the way. Distractions and disagreements suggest I've at least done something right in terms of the goal to keep fresh the beats of a story we all know.

As you so astutely noted, goals to play with the design and format of sprite comic strips, and embellish characterization absent from even the best moments in the games, has also been something of consideration along the way. Thanks for mentioning that!

Going back to "MK1" probably won't simplify matters any, but it will be nice to put a consistent tone of backstory to the current strips. One that will no doubt prickle with it's similar deviations, such as the conventional logic of a tournament bracket, which has always been absent. "Kang" certainly hasn't been a definitive account of the MK canon, but with reverence for the checklist of details littered throughout the games, it certainly isn't implausible. That is, of course, assuming MK2011 doesn't change everything we thought we knew any way!

i like how you included shujinko and blaze thats funny

I can't think of any reason to argue against MK1 having a bracket. I came up with one myself a year or two ago somewhere in XD's analysis thread. I might not agree on the order you go with, as I have my own ideas, but that's hardly canon anyway, and I only argue when you deviate in ways that blatantly contradict the games, like giving the whole Lin Kuei clan cryomancy or saying Kahn's a deformed Shokan.
I am curious if you'll acknowledge the existence of endurance rounds and the mirror match or ignore them as just gameplay features. I always thought they were an interesting element to the tournament, like first, Shang wants to stop Liu from reaching the finals with Goro, so he twists the rules and throws two guys at once at him, then there's some sort of mystical "face your worst enemy: yourself" scenario where Liu has to overcome the metaphor of his own flaws or inner demons by literally fighting an illusory body double.

A spiritual interpretation of mirror matches is something that's crossed my mind before, and I think it's a nice genre-appropriate idea, but with a fixed 52 strips to work with, I don't plan to go there.
I think if I tried to force that kind of deviation, particularly late in the game like the ladder, it might just evoke bad memories of Liu Kang's Annihilation fever dreams. It's a game mechanic. As you guessed, it'll go the way of power bars, bonus points, and arcade towers. I also don't expect to hide from Liu Kang's probable victory. I want to treat him with a bit more sense of a life and legend before the tournament, a bit more like a conventional Hong Kong martial arts hero.

I'm aiming for a relatively clean premise of a conventional thirty-two fighter elimination bracket. I plan to allude to the endurance mode concept in an unsurprising way, but I want the idea of Shang Tsung's corruption of the tournament to be more devious than outright cheating (at least until the controversial island ending already seen in #53).

One of the issues I might take with MK1 is the fact that there's a very small collection of fighters, most of whom aren't archetypes you might expect in rank for a tournament with the greatest fighters in the world.
The movie's forecasting of their destined importance is a very valid influence, but I'll also suppose that Shang Tsung is subverting failure with his invitations, whilst accounting for other concerns, too. Like the MKII strips, these larger contexts of logic will have a flow-on effect.

The explanation for an unimpressive MK1 feature cast will apply to Outworld fighters as well (who are more structurally integrated into the bracket 50/50), which will also connect to the reasoning of an MKSM-inspired version of the ending, and suppose a more expected linear unfolding of events into MKII's plots -- which themselves stemmed from the goal to try to impress a more generous sense of characterization than the games sometimes offer.
Shao Kahn is a deliberately distant concept during MK1, to be revealed in silhouette much later in the on-going series [#56, #59], but his 'big picture' is influencing everything at the tournament, just as it has in the MKII strips.


To keep it fresh, interesting, and consistent with the later strips (which elaborate on backstory elements), the MK1 portion might deviate slightly from the conventional perspective of the narrative we know.
In some sense, the MK1 period is double-redundant because there'll be commonalities between this version and what was in the original silly Kang strips, and 53+ tell us where it's all headed. There's also much less scope in the material to adapt, and more retellings of it in different mediums that cover the key points quite thoroughly.

I would expect structural tweaks to be a little jarring for some. I could see the nature of a 16-16 all-too-convenient Earthrealm/Outworld tournament upsetting some arcade pundits, and/or the layout of results [a few hints in the above teaser/test pic]. I'm sure not everyone will agree with choices to retain and discard information from the games. There's always blind spots and personal preference for information that can't be helped [ie; the referencial logic of kori techniques as a practised art, expressed and suggested by the games themselves, irrelevant to any congenital predispositions or inherent capacity other characters might have...].

It'll probably be a little while before we can see how it all unfolds.
Being locked into those 52 strips means more specific front-end planning from panel to panel than my usual method. The overview has always been in place, but for now, self-referencial indulgence is these conversations, which at least help keep me thinking about it.


Thanks! Any other thoughts?

i like how you included kintaro thats funny

I do think Kintaro is seacrestly a great politically minded influence in Kang.

EDIT: Also, the more I look at the quotient of feature fights, the more I think I might include a mirror match. I had a specific take in mind that I didn't really expect to fit, but I'm starting to think I'll montage less important early round fights, which will leave room for some fleshing out. Not entirely sure...