Street Fighter | Round One: Fight!

Okay this one is for all the children of the 90s. I’m talking about the guys and gals out there that remember Beverly Hill 90210, Vanilla Ice and the mighty battle between the Mega Drive and the SNES. Takes you back a while doesn’t it now? Well this book is the best way to remember the old days while at the same time thrusting forward and seeing what the characters are up to since you last checked up on them. I’m talking about Street Fighter of course.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about this is a comic based on a video game that was one of the top selling during the 90s. In many ways it defined the versus genre. The characters are very enduring which is why the fans of this series are legion. The original premise of the story is that the Street fighter tournament is held in order to establish who is the ultimate fighter. So as you would imagine this attracts a number of fighters from all over the world. It worked well for the game itself but it’ll be tough to sustain a comic book series based on this idea alone.

Luckily for the Udon boys and gals Capcom has kept this franchise alive and kicking in a number of other fields. Notably anime. If you’ve ever seen the Street Fighter Animated Movie that was released in the mid-90s, a couple of years after that god awful movie from Hollywood you’ll be happy to know that the story found between these pages is in many ways a direct extension of the foundations set up in that movie.

With such a large cast of characters to choose from it would be a massive undertaking for any writer to try and give each and every character their turn in the spotlight, however writer Ken Siu-Chong is able to manage several threads, following several characters without really loosing you in the process. The main characters he concentrates on are Ryu, Ken, Guile, Chun-li, Cammy, Bison, Akuma, Charlie Nash, Sakura and Vega. Other characters do come in however it’s either for a quick spotlight or a quick fight. I guess it’s one of the very few comics out there that you not only want there to be a fight, it’s kind of expected and required ^_^.

In between all of this he’s also introduced a nice little addition to the mythology which I’m actually not sure if it existed or not (although I’m pretty sure someone will mention one of the multitude of games that made this point) and that was the Akuma was/is Ken and Ryu’s master’s brother. I like that little twist on things, as I’ve never understood the connection between the two, and the anime (both movie and tv series) doesn’t really elaborate on this fact at all either.

The artwork is provided by the Udon studio. It’s a different way of doing things really, but effectively it’s not just one person that draws anything. These guys were all about actually hitting their deadlines and providing a certain amount of quality which is why they banded together. The artwork in here is top notch the entire way. All the characters moves are rendered with great accuracy and the anime feel is created to great effect. As a great addition to this package is all the alternative covers which include a couple by one of my favourite artists ever Shinkiro.

I’ve got the original packaged trade paperback from Udon that was released under the Devil’s Due banner. Udon has since then moved on and is self publishing their own books and I believe have released the trade paperback once again as a complete package, although I could be completely wrong (the Udon website was down when I tried to check for this information).

If you’re up for some nostalgia done in a great way that brings you up to speed as to what’s going in the Street Fighter universe and progresses their story then this is one of the best nostalgia books you can get.

Writer: Ken Siu-Chong
Artists:Alvin Lee, Arnold Tsang, Long Vo, Rob Ross, Alan Tam, Noi Sackda, Andrew Hou
Colourists: Arnold Tsang, Joy Ang, Hanna Chen, Gary Yeung, Shane Law, Andrew Hou, Saka, Ben Huen, Herbert Kwan
Publisher: Udon Comics and Devil’s Due

(ps this is the first and last time I will put everyone’s name in the credits, in the future I shall refer to you guys as Udon ).