do you want to experience a video game, but really don't like the idea of playing it yourself? maybe you want to see various takes on the same story? video game comics are just for you. street fighter has a abundance of these, and a abundance of various different takes on how SF2 actually went [to the point where in terms of multimedia content SF2 might be just the most adapted video game ever, and for good reason]. you may know of UDON, the book publisher...company...thing that handles the street fighter comics currently, but this article will not be about their giant seperate street fighter universe where bison's backstory is him going into a romani community only to kill everyone except rose [how very european of him] or where magic steroids are a real thing, but rather the non-UDON stuff, from western to eastern, as true to the spirit of this series. starting with...
potentionally the most singlehandedly wildest shit that happend to street fighter in the same year where there's even more wild shit that happend to street fighter. for those whose minds immediately go to marvel or DC when hearing western comics, malibu is this tiny american comics company from the 90's. i don't know what they made, but they made superheroes. they're also responsible for this thing i'm currently covering. now, you might see that this comic is only really 3 issues...we'll get to that. to get to that point, we must first go through the comic together! that way we can peice together what caused it to be so short. sounds adventurous, right? starting with...
jesus christ.
i know it's done by a 90's american comic company, but jesus christ.
actually opening the book, we find ourselves ryu willingly and consciously almost ending sagat's life in a street instead of in front of a distant temple in thailand and him being very aware of what he did with the help of his the reason why the names of antsatsuken moves are left untranslated. [it's because they sound nicer when japanese]
willingly opening his mental scars for some fucking reason, sagat punches a TV depicting this very traumatic moment for him. meanwhile, balrog insults him, and sagat takes the reasonable response to that.
the boys suddenly have their boyfighting stopped by one of the most ugliest bisons i had ever laid my eyes on, also showing why giving him normal human pupils is a bad idea.
and we get to one potentional clue why this comic was so short-ryu is a fucking weirdo? to chun-li? and they're being paired around like they're love interests? despite the fact that ryu-the REAL ryu-most likely just doesn't care about that shit??? and chun-li in this moment would be too busy with her cop work to pursue love?? and he instantly fucking hadoukens her when she, like any normal person, rejected his weird advancement of trying to grab her from the back. oh and he's misogynistic.
to continue this wonderful introduction to the literal first female character in a fighting game [to my knowledge], they then immediately switch on a dime as chun-li strips her hairbuns [how salacious] and smooches him real good. meanwhile, ryu gets up and basically calls her off for her being somewhat reasonable with her new job as a policewoman, that job she explicitly picked up so she can actually hold the man who 28k'd her father to death responsible for what he did, and then proceeds to ''what about'' about ken masters just to get her back. [did i write that notation right, by the way? also shen long mention because everyone thought he was real at the time.]
after some flashback nonsense telling us that ken is doing films apparently [i hope fei-long shows up] and the impossibility that ryu ken and chun-li were ever friends at first because chun-li was literally going on her own quest with her own bare hands and legs, we flash back to the present with ken doing a commercial. immediately after the fact, ken encounters balrog and proceeds to get jumped by the shadaloo kings.
...okay, less jumped and more tiger'd to death by sagat. ken is 5'10 like ryu is while sagat is 7ft, so really he should've just crouched down if he wanted to save himself.
after some more brutalizing takes place and after we learn that sagat is racist towards americans, balrog learns from him typing with gloves in the street fighter cartoon and actually types without his gloves on. he's on discord, talking to his friend M. bison. like any discord conversation, they're discussing how to kill someone. meanwhile, bison vents his frustrations about sagat by snapping someone's neck.
after some various miscellaneous scenes about ken still getting his ass beat by sagat, balrog asks sagat to cut ken's hair off so they can send his scalp to ryu's home.
the next chapter, beyond the random ass cameo from a malibu original character, is malibu remniscing on all of the different SF2 characters they could have included and wrote about but couldn't due to capcom begging them to just cancel the fucking comic so what they did was cram the rest into the third chapter. i don't see why though! but they could've just replaced ken with the ferret if they wanted to after them literally killing ken off in the most gory fashion. thus ends malibu street fighter. we'll miss you, and we'll never see you again. so what do you think cancelled this comic?
jumping to the year of our lord 2023, this was born and released by IDW due to a collab between TMNT and SF6, and is the first time bison appeared in anything even relating to SF6 before he actually showed up all dirty and homeless as a FNaF jumpscare in summer games fest. why? because they're both 80's properties and therefore are retro. and because i think TMNT was already collabing with a bunch of retro properties too beforehand. it's like chun-li and ryu in power rangers: battle for the grid, shut up. unlike whatever the fuck was the last thing i covered, this is in a more campier tone, and it's not the first time street fighter held hands with a old western property. give it a read yourself if you like both of these, the turtles weren't really there in my early life enough for me to actually care about the turtle part, but it's fun.
the said ''first time street fighter held hands with a old western property''. coming from IDW once again, this was in 2016, and compared to turtle power-this is actually more reasonable and has a storied history to it. see, back in the 90's, hasbro decided to play with the popularity of SF2 by merging the series into their G.I. joe toyline. this did nothing except give us the most funniest shit such as dhalsim with guns and give us the most funniest commercial for a toy ever. since it's another property i don't particularly feel anything towards beyond remembering the stupid PSA overdubs, there's not gonna be much talk about this either. read it yourself as well! i severely don't understand why they gave M. bison the fucking hulk haircut and why they decided to do a joke thing with rufus getting psycho power'd but alright.
a simple manga adaption of the SF2 movie. follows the same beats but ends with bison dying a shockingly gory death. all that ever needs to be highlighted is that the book starts with ken driving while practicing his marriage proposal to eliza, only to get jumped WHILE driving by the shadaloo kings only for it to cut to the most funniest shot of ken masters taking horrified sight at the man before him with the largest bust he had ever seen in his whole life.
shown above: ken witnessing that men can go to P cup with enough effort.
a adaption of street fighter alpha, telling it's own story as all adaptions go-but still touching on ryu's inner struggle with the satsui no hado. all i can remember from this is that unintentionally funny scene of bison carrying a woman's body only to phase into the ceiling. this also gets a sequel that's adapting SF3 for the entire fucking subsection of the street fighter community that loves SF3!
a tiny manga dedicated to cammy working as a MI6 agent. if only i were able to read french or brazillian portugese...
another gaiden, this time about the adventures of the various world warriors in the SF2 roster-ranging from ryu sparring with somebody only for said somebody's dog to get punted 10 feet in the air by akuma, eliza doing eliza things as all good elizas should do [though it's a little more about ken and ryu than anything...maybe she went to dream about that.], ken travelling only to meet E. honda on the way, cammy taking a briefer from her agent life only to find her love of cats [and also vega is there], and more.
now this is a little bit of a historic manga, because this is where karin kanzuki, the ken to sakura's ryu, actually originated from! it's just a silly little slice of life manga, yes, but imagine being the author and seeing that your silly little street fighter OC was literally made canon.
it's just a comic adaption of the greatest street fighter film, with SOME minor differences. they cut my favorite line for example:
''what in god's name are you showing him?''
'' 'tis merely educational programming.''
and they didn't even adapt the tuesday scene properly by having bison be in his uniform instead of the robe. it's a fun read, but just watch the movie. ends on a cliffhanger too! a cliffhanger that we unfortunately will never see be resolved for both media.
potentionally the weirdest one in this pile of comics. this is a chinese comic book [specifically from hong kong, had to add this since it's important because the place apparently loved street fighter a whole lot], a manhua in other words-probably know that word if you look at chinese stuff alot-and it was released extremely close to SF2's release, right on the same year too. infact, it's early enough that M. bison's entire design is just a red color variant of washizaki from riki-oh, if you want a guage. released by jademan comics, this is the most unique take on street fighter 2 out of every adaption i've seen of the game's story. taking place on a post-apocalyptic earth-think fist of the north star rather than mad max-rather than a normal, modern day world. complete with KISS cosplayers, too! i cannot read the language on this obviously, but i can attempt to parse what's going on, and the synopsis from what i could gather is: in a post-apocalyptic world, bison decides to set up shop on what remains of the earth and create a whole new industrial sprawling city on it's remains and begin a tournament with badges keeping track of fighters. oh,
and yoshimitsu from tekken is there as a minor villain.
besides that, the most weirdest thing that stands out to me specifically is the choice to make bison be..i believe, chun-li's father. infact, he's so chun-li's father that we see him have onscreen sex with a woman in a scene that i cannot comprehend due to the giant language barrier. just...just see for yourself.
but what's the most funniest shit is that after a timeskip we see him see the fruits of his labor, only to hear that the woman he railed for like 9 hours has a boyfriend, in which his response is to come over to her significant other's room explicitly to jump that specific man with the help of the rest of the shadaloo kings.
also, have the most hardest page of him smoking.
as is, the manhua was sold primarily in hong kong, but also in other areas of south east asia-but it was never allowed to be sold in japan. i truly wonder why.
brazil. home of blanka, laura, sean, the country with the highest murder rate, and the only country with real life cartoon logic. i couldn't really say much about this? because a youtuber from portugal covered this quite well-more than i ever could especially since i will never know how to search for these. watch his videos for yourself!
what he missed though was that there was a brazillian street fighter...swimsuit photo collection? pinup book? i don't look at pinup magazines, general art collection of various world warriors lounging in the beaches of brazil. in the 90's. years before UDON became the official capcom pinup book producer. only 10 artworks as opposed to UDON's literal collection of these. the name of it to search it better is 'galeria de verao'.
a more normal deviation, here is a simple manga adaption of SF2 itself. nothing to write home about, it's pretty damn cool and worth a read. here's a funny shot of a rebel attempting to shoot bison directly at his nether reigon.
there are far, far, FAR more street fighter comics out there. if i had to cover them all, i would be 100 years old by now. such is the existance of doujinshi. but regardless, that's all of the relevant ones i could find!