#issue 10 stcb

[sonicthecomicblog]

I’m liking this strip already

[sonicthecomicblog]

So, now we’re moving onto something a bit different. Nigel Kitching’s Decap Attack strip.

We should cover what Decap Attack actually was before doing anything else. In summary, it was a westernization of a Japanese game developed by Vic Tokai and called Magical Hat no Buttobi Turbo! Daibōken (rolls right off the tongue), which in itself was based off an anime called Magic Hat, which I had never heard of until covering this stuff. This is no Doki Doki panic story we’re dealing with here: Decap Attack was exactly like Magical Hat, except in every single way possible. The story, characters, music, art, and even level design was completely different; only the rudimentary gameplay remained.

Both Magical Hat and Decap Attack are more or less spiritual sequels to the earlier Vic Tokai games Psycho Fox and Kid Kool. I know almost nothing about Psycho Fox, but I do know Kid Kool is an appalling excuse for a platformer, and that makes me hesitant to even approach Decap Attack. However, I’ve heard that it is a massive improvement on Kid Kool and Psycho Fox, and it’s seen today as more an overlooked classic than anything else. Maybe one of these days I’ll try it out since it’s available on the Switch.

The very basic plot of the game is that Max D. Cap, a giant demon thing from the underworld intent on conquering the living world with his monster army and breaks Body Island (an island shaped like…a body) into seven parts. Frank N. Stein (guess who he’s parodying?) creates a headless mummy abomination called Chuck D. Head and sends him off to send D. Cap and his army of goons back to hell. It’s a pretty basic plot but I think I prefer it to the Japanese one. A concise (yet somewhat scathing) review can be found here: https://www.honestgamers.com/15292/genesis/decapattack/review.html

So, that’s all basic stuff that you can find through some googling, but I thought it worthwhile just to have it. Now onto the strip itself:

Yeah, so this is immediately different to the Sonic stuff. It’s much more humorous and campy, and Kitching’s art style is about as far from Elson’s as you can get. It’s much more basic and harsh, with little dimension to the characters, and looks more like what you’d expect from a British children’s comic of the time (although the grotesque elements are of course exaggerated). I like it a lot though, and it serves the grotesque manner of what Decap Attack is supposed to be much better than Elson would give us. We also witness somebody be murdered on the very first page, that's cool

[sonicthecomicblog]

And now we’re dealing with this freak. Can we just reflect on what a horrifying existence this has to be, like imagine one day you were involved in an industrial accident and instead of being put out of your misery you become a damn liquid abomination who can only live an existence of floating around in some dank basement. This is some body horror stuff. Like of course he wants to kill Sonic, literally what else does he have going on

[sonicthecomicblog]

Here’s another instance of me posting a panel just because it looks awesome.

Also, these guys are way more fun than the SWAT Bots and you can’t convince me otherwise

[sonicthecomicblog]

Here’s Harry Enfield (who I know mostly from being the first ever guest on Top Gear’s 2002 format and having a two-minute lap) playing a Game Gear

Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden’s vocalist (just before he was replaced by Blaze Bayley) is also here. He doesn’t look very impressed. Could you imagine a Sonic game with Fear of the Dark as the soundtrack (I wanted to say Powerslave or Seventh Son since those are better albums, but FotD is more time-appropriate)

Some of the guys from The Clash are also here during one of their sad reunion phases. Even the staff of STC knew that these guys were passe as shit by the early nineties

[sonicthecomicblog]

Okay, time for issue 10

I’m going to be covering Decap Attack starting from here. Despite never playing the game, the strips for it were awesome and I think are worth covering. Unlike the other non-Sonic strips, these were also written (and drawn) by Nigel Kitching, and it was in fact considered his pet project. The Decap Attack stories would continue deep into STC’s run (all the way until issue 132 in mid-1998), long after the game it was based on became irrelevant. It’s also the only non-Sonic story to appear in Sonic the Comic Online. So yeah, it’s kind of a big deal

[sonicthecomicblog]

In summary, this strip just led us through the very, very shoddy creation of Chuck D. Head and told a lot of parody horror and dad jokes. It’s extremely basic compared to the Sonic stuff so far, but I enjoyed it, and we’ll see where it goes

[sonicthecomicblog]

This guy’s a real piece of work isn’t he…I’ll be here all night folks