Captain N: The Game Master comic is, on the whole, very weak. Stories are often stifled by the format, cramming far too much into 10 pages to the point where most stories simply don't have room to breathe. They simply can't afford to linger for any time on important character moments. There's a lot of goofy shit that attempts to capture the idea of the original series. Which to the comic's credit, it does; it's just too bad that the original series was garbage. So I'm not sure how much praise I should offer to someone who has managed to successfully emulate shit.
The artwork is lazy. The books are laid out in an almost mechanical fashion, where almost every page is in a fixed, 6-panel arrangement. If they want a larger panel, then they'll just take two panels and fuse them together. Indeed, a significant plot-point in one story, the way Mother Brain thinks of the N-Team, is de-emphasized simply because the artists are too lazy to give us a real, detailed look at the mutant monsters Mother Brain imagines.
But there are glimmers of competence and, dare I say, even talent. There is evidence that the writers gave the slightest of shits about what they were doing. Characterization is spotty, but the traits they provide are actually used. When they're not clowning around with nonsense and bullshit, they do make some attempt to look into the nature of these characters. And they are willing to have meaningful conflict between the heroes of the story.
This can be seen no better in the fact that all of the good (relatively speaking) stories, save Nervous Breakdown, involve Samus Aran in some way. And that's just not a fanboi's perspective. What she brought to the cast was something that the cast in the TV show never had: real conflict. Not merely, "Simon's jealous of Kevin's skills, but nobody cares because he's a big pussy and will never be of value ever." She represents a powerful force, but her allegiance is always to herself first and foremost.
The best example I can show of this element is in The Happy Zone. Pit is perfectly willing to let Kevin make his own choice; Samus is not. The interplay between Samus and Kevin is what drives that story and turns it from being forgettable into one of the more interesting stories of the series. To have that, you need a character who won't be Kevin's doormat, which Pit almost always is. You need a character that can be imposing (which Simon never was in the TV show, which is why he failed in his duties as The Lancer), who can be forceful and forthright. And while she does let Kevin make the choice, she's always there, arguing with him about it.
Oh, Pit could have had that role. But because they imported him from the TV show, they had to go with the TV show characterization. You know, to the degree that he had characterization in the TV show (I believe his biggest character moment revolved around an Adam West expy called Wombat Man. Yes, really).
And I think that's part of why Samus works so well as a character in this series: she belonged to the writers. The other characters were defined by the TV show: Kevin was the lifeless Mary Sue; Lana was his bland Mary Sue love interest; Pit was the bumbling sidekick. Indeed, it's probably a very good thing for the comic that they didn't get access to Simon and Mega Man (for more reasons than just further murdering their characters). Samus was a blank slate for the writers to pour an actual character into. They could develop her along whatever lines worked best for the needs of the story.
More than that, Samus became a tool the writers could use to fuel the characters of others. Her interaction with characters, her conflict with them, helps bring out elements of their character just as much as Samus's. Remember: Lana's best (or by some measures, only) character moment was when she was willing to fight Kevin and Samus to seek vengeance for her father. It showed who she was as a person, and you couldn't really do that story without Samus. More to the point, because Samus had already been established as a major badass, even sans-armor, it showed just how much Lana was hurting that she thought it was a reasonable idea to take her on in a fight.
The stories are very much a product of their day. In the 80's and early 90's, before the Anime revolution really hit, Status Quo was very much God. While nowadays the idea of a story not having a progressing plot with changing characters and such seems childish and quaint, that was common for children's television in those days. That was not merely standard, but expected, almost to the point of being enforced. And this comic, an adaptation of the TV show, fell into that rut.
So many potential plots were completely sabotaged just because of the need to hit the Reset Button. They could have done an entire multi-issue plot-arc about finding a way to get Lana out of the Happy Zone. They could have explored the idea of Samus having been body-jacked to kidnap Good King Charles. Even the whole "Mother Brain runs out of power" thing could have become an arc. And while you would eventually hit the reset button, you could use multiple issues to explore the consequences of that. What her henchmen would do to keep her alive. What the N-Team will do to stop them. And so on.
But no, no continuity, no continuous storytelling with evolving characters. Just pat, 80's cartoon-style storytelling: keep the situation going for as long as possible.
The Alternatives
I made mention of the Zelda comic earlier, also produced by Valiant Comics for their Nintendo Comic Series brand. It's a much better comic; here's my idea as to why.
When it comes right down to it, the Zelda comic was better because it had better source material. I pointed out that Samus was the best drawn character in this series, and that's mainly because she was invented for the series. Thus the writers could give her an actual character, rather than the cartoonish figures from the Captain N TV show.
And there's the difference. As corny as the Zelda television show may have been at times, it was still a solid show. It had real characterization for its leads that was clear and well devised. The interplay between Link and Zelda worked in the show, all memes aside. You got their relationship, you could see it in how they worked as a team. It was almost to the point of a romantic comedy for boys.
This was something the writers had to do by necessity almost; they only had three real characters to work with (Link, Zelda, and Ganon. How very Triforce of them). With so few characters, even 80's kid's show writers had to develop them to something beyond lifeless caricatures. They couldn't hide weak characterization by just having more weak characters.
By contrast, Captain N the TV show had five hero characters as well as three antagonists. And that doesn't count cameo one-shot heroes/antagonists, or the various additions to the regular cast (like the odious "Gameboy"). When you have that many characters, caricatures are sufficient (in the 80's); after all, developing characters takes effort, and we have to expend as little of that as we can get away with. Just look at the cast: they had three bumbling sidekick characters who were all useless in their own unique ways.
This is also part of the reason why the Sonic comic based on "Sonic: SatAM" has survived for as long as it did: better source material. That's not to denigrate any of their writers; obviously they had a big hand in the month-to-month success of the work. But when it comes down to it, it's a lot harder to clean a house when it starts off in a garbage dump. And Captain N is not a good place to start looking for success in terms of writing quality.
