A Sprite Comic on the Bob and George Web site that retells the Mega Man storyline, incorporating obscure characters from the Game Boy, PC and WonderSwan games as well as original characters. It starts from the beginning collaboration between Wily and Light, details the creation of two prototypes (only one of which is Super) and Mega Man's battles to bring down Wily.It features various flash forwards to possible futures, and Polka Reset Man, the un-super prototype's Split Personality may be a Stardroid from one such future. The series is memorable for showing an Alternate Alternate Character Interpretation of Mega Man as a rapidly learning robot, rather than an ice cream loving dumb-bot. It's also notable for showing all sides in the conflict as having a rather good learning curve. The second storyline likewise has a more worldly feel as various factions of Red Shirts and world governments try to take steps to reverse engineer and use the robot technology, all while Wily gains some impressive technological advantages of his own and Mega Man and Dr. Light struggle to keep pace.The humor is based on the character's idiosyncrasies: be it Heat Man's laziness, Ice Man's playful ditziness, or the Red Shirt Army's utter (and Genre Blind) expendability. It also lapses into author commentary by Disgruntled Ferret, and POV pieces of minor bit characters like "Brave Core", an awakened Sniper Joe who thinks he's Brave Heart... for robots!Has absolutely no relation to MS Paint Adventures.Can be found HereThe character sheet can be found here.This Webcomic has examples of the following tropes:
The Harmony Support Units (And the robots they take over) are weak to Cut Man. Which leads to a Crowning Moment of Awesome for him - he fires the Rolling Cutter and gets blasted by Mega Man, but uses the Rolling Cutter's Boomerang Comeback effect to hit Mega Man anyway and break him free of the Harmonies.
Not really surprising, considering who Quintet used to be.
Alternate Universe: A number of alternate timelines are shown as side-stories. As X explains in a filler, there's only one actual timeline, and when you mess with time travel, you destroy the projected one, which is what Wily's up to between the first and second games.
Anachronic Order: A few climactic fight sequences (Mega Man Vs. Dr. Wily, Mega Man Vs. Spike Man, Atlas Vs. Crash Man) are skipped over to be recapped later.
And I Must Scream: Played for laughs for a few strips in the second game adaption when Reset Man's AI is placed in a storage device.
Badass in Distress: Small and temporary example when Flash Man tries to kidnap Dr. Light. Being a squishy human, Dr. Light still needs help, but is still able to contribute to his escape.
Bag of Spilling: Subverted everywhere. Mega Man, Genre Savvy enough to realize this might happen, attempts to keep his weapons from the first game by saving them on a computer, but Dr. Light finds out and deletes them just before Wily attacks. Then Mega Man loses some more of his abilities when he dies.
Bears noting that that is one of many instances. Mega Man is the nicest guy you could meet, but if you threaten any innocent people, or worse, actually kill people, he will fuck you up.
Blatant Lies: All of Dr. Wily's machines are for mining. Really.
Bond One-Liner: Many. Subverted on one occasion, when a badly-damaged Mega Man tries to do one after delivering the fatal blow, but passes out before he can finish.
Reader: Excited when we lose, grumpy when we win. That's Quick Man.
Allegro, the eponymous Greatest Killer, also falls into this.
Brainwashed and Crazy: Wily snuck in virus type programming into all the original robot master's to get them to defect. The POV comics with Cut Man's desperate struggles to remain himself are... disturbing and heartbreaking. Then you have the likes of Ice Man jumping headfirst into it and helping to spread the Mind Control.
Also, anyone under Quintet's Mind Control or using one of his support units.
Buffy Speak: Disgruntled Ferret likes to play around with grammar and tenses. The page pic is an example.
Call Forward: Dr. Wily utilises custom microchips to reprogram robots and bring them under his control, warping their personalities along the way; this is a precursor to his eventual Maverick Virus as seen in the X series.
A few future Lightbots showed the ability to "Dark Morph" and gain the abilities/appearance of other Robot Master models; some have speculated this to be a reference to the Doc Robot (of Mega Man 3) and Dark Man (of Mega Man 5).
Chekhov's Gunman: Guts Man was stated, several hundred comics ago, to have been kidnapped with Electric Man and Fire Man, and hasn't been seen since he was destroyed several years before that. He finally shows up in comic #1001.
The Chew Toy: Metal Man. He deserves it, though, considering he trash talks everyone.
Cloning Blues: Copy-Mega Man becomes quite violent when others imply he's not the "real" Mega Man. He was assembled from field data acquired by Enker, so he possesses some combat skill. He lacks the drive of the original, though.
He also doesn't know that Mega Man is the battle mode of Rock, likely due to Wily's ignorance of that fact.
Harmony-infected robots are rather like this as well. Metal Man Blade Man is like this in spades, as he will alternate between Hot Blooded and Non-Sequitur at the drop of a hat.
This seems to be true of Harmonized robots in general. As observed in the comic:
Disgruntled Ferret: Reset Man looks so happy that the creepy robot is getting what's coming to him. I don't like Reset Man being happy.
Mega Man, too.
Disgruntled Ferret: It's kind of irritating that at this point I can blow off Mega Man's arm and he's barely even annoyed. I like torturing characters, and he's taking away my fun here.
Cranial Processing Unit: Averted. At one point, Crash Man and Heat Man discuss this trope when it's revealed that Crash Man's CPU is in a different location than the head(which was reserved for More Explosives. Guess what happens, or rather, doesn't happen when Mega Man slices off Crash Man's head.
Played straight earlier, where a future Rock kills Allegro by stabbing him in the face. He then Lampshades it, saying if he made robots, he'd put the brain someplace else, like in the butt.
Gretzky Has the Ball: Intentionally used when Mega Man and Ice Man start goofing off. Mega Man claims Ice Man almost got a hole in one - while they were hitting a basketball with a baseball bat.
The Mecha Dragon of Mega Man 2 fame has recently arrived on the scene.
Indy Ploy: Mega Man's plan for everything. The fact that one robot decimated his armies with this tactic is the final nail in the coffin for Wily's Villainous Breakdown.
Informed Ability: Reader states that Quick Man is the strongest of Wily's 8, but we only ever see him fight Mega Man (not counting the soldiers he massacres, as well as the last member of the Fodder Force). We do, however, see Crash Man leveling entire military bases and buildings due to the sheer volume of his firepower, not to mention the fact that he manages to defeat Atlas twice.
Mega Man: When I fight, the ones who take damage are me and the enemy. If I've already taken damage, that means the enemy has to take more for things to balance out. Dr. Light: I... that... ...Just go back to the lab, Mega Man.
Quintet is also capable of doing this to the Robot Masters of the Wily 8. It's possibly a sign that he helped Wily construct them, using his knowledge of more advanced future robotics.
Just a Machine: Dr. Wily subscribes to this school of thought.
Kick the Dog: A number, most notably Wily berating Enker for asking Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?, Allegro killing an alternate version of Rush, and Quick Man casually killing the last of the Fodder Force Uber Team.
Killed Off for Real: Fire Man, after being defeated in Harmony Mode and short-circuiting in water.
Large Ham: It's easier to mention who isn't this in this comic. Everyone gets their moments of this. Even Dr. Light.
Also counts as Incredibly Lame Pun, considering he was fooling Light at first by passing off his original plans as mining robots. Even the Wily Machine.
No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Completely averted. After the first major arc, several other organizations are reverse engineering their own robots, including their own Robot Masters.
Nuking The Fourth Wall: The Atomic Dragon's attack in this comic is so powerful it vaporizes the comic's boundary frame between the third and fourth panel.
One-Man Army: Mega Man fits this until the second game kicks in. Crash Man is a definite example, reminding Wood Man that he had enough ammunition to level the city in a blind and deaf rage. Blind and deaf due to missinghis head at the time.
Only Mostly Dead: When a robots is destroyed, it can be rebuilt without much trouble, so long as the memory chip is intact.
Paper-Thin Disguise: When sending robots into the field, the military just gives them a hat for disguise. Or in Atlas' case, a hat and a Badass Longcoat.
Pet the Dog: Wood Man's guilt over killing humans, and Quintet coming to Enker's defense.
Recurring Character: A somewhat Hot Blooded Sniper Joe that Mega Man reprogrammed with Thunder Beam by the nickname of "Bravecore" occasionally shows up.
Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. Early "Ferret-vision" comics aside, Dr. Light's genius and affinity with robotics is very obvious and beneficial to the heroes. He first helped out the US army during the first major finale (the siege on Skull Castle), which would later come round to bite him in the arse. Since then he's been an even bigger asset to Mega Man, re-building him more than once, inventing his new Support Unit, revamping and bringing in a good-old giant mecha into battle and even rewinding time.
Retcon: In Ferret vision, there was Polka. Now that Disgruntled Ferret is paying attention, there is Reset Man. Proto Man also no longer goes by the name Blues anymore.
More generally, everything involving Light and Wily from the early, silly strips was seemingly dropped from canon once the comic got serious and flashbacks now reveal rising tensions between the two (and Light's idiocy is completely dropped).
Interestingly, Dr. Wily mentions that Light made Wily Machine 1 for him in strip number 972.
Ridiculously Human Robots: General Spearcarrier initially mistakes Roll for a human girl, much as Lieutenant Gunnady mistakes Mega Man for a little boy. Also, the robots bleed. In Electric Man's case, they bleed a lot.
Rule Of Cool: Another favorite of Disgruntled Ferret. Quote from commentary below:
Disgruntled Ferret: (Regarding this comic◊) In the Game Boy game where Mega Man uses it, I think Mirror Buster is just a shield that can bounce shots, but instead I made it this thing that absorbs attacks and fires them back as some kind of converted blast. Why? Because explosions.
Schedule Slip: Combined with loads and loads of Filler, and long story arcs. It'll probably be awhile before we get to Mega Man 3... but we're getting there.
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Air Man, but piss him off and he defaults to a much cruder way off speaking, meaning that he probably invokes this trope intentionally.
Shooting Superman: The military with regular weapons or the E1s against any of the Robot Masters.
"Targets sustain no damge from shot. Calculating..."
"Conclusion: cannot retreat. Keep firing out of spite."
Instead of being referred to as a "Mega Man Killer", Enker instead goes by the title of "Mega Man Hunter"◊. Possibly as a nod to the X-Hunters and Maverick Hunters, possibly just to sound less silly.
Shown Their Work/Mythology Gag: Ferret clearly knows his classic series Mega Man. Although the majority of humans are (probably) original, startlingly few of the robots aren't from an actual source.
Enker and Quint(et) from the Gameboy games could also qualify. Although significantly more well known than the previous robots, they are still quite obscure.
Let it be known that Enker showed up in this comic long before(years before even) he was revealed to appear in Mega Man 10.
What's interesting is that Enker, who showed up in 1 GB, is introduced in the 1 NES arc, and Quintet, who showed up in 2 GB, shows up in the 2 NES arc. Me may yet see Punk in the MM 3 arc.
Mega Man: I'm a super fighting robot. I'm here to super fight.
Heat Man being lazy? Yeah that's canon to the games.
Crash Man's Mega Man and Bass quote:
"I am the Destroyer!"
Quick Man's physique is a blatant reference to how Hitoshi Ariga drew the character, rather than the official MM 2 art or sprite.
His status as Rock's rival (of sorts) harkens back to the character's original role as envisioned by Inafune:
Ariga: When I was playing 2, I always felt like Quick Man got some preferential treatment. On the stage select screen, his horns were allowed to go beyond the actual frame of the portrait and, when he appeared in-game, his horns would shine. Inafune: All of those things were intentional. We were trying to give him a special role in the game, as Mega Man's main rival. I guess you could compare him to Bass and Proto Man in the more recent games.
Metal Man, who is often mocked for being hilariously vulnerable to his own round, bladed weapon, is depicted as being weak to the Rolling Cutter, a round, bladed weapon.
Sort of. While much more competent then Reset Man, he's so handicapped by his poorly-designed body that he struggles to beat a Sniper Joe.
Speaking of the "other" guy, what happened to him? Will we see him again? What about those scenes we saw while he was around?
If Ferret ever covers 8 or 5 GB, we will. This comic alone is proof of that. In it, you can see what is clearly supposed to be Sunstar talking to a dragon guy robot thing, who also makes a clear reference to Duo. Furthermore, said dragon guy is later seen in another flashback with what is clearly supposed to be Evil Energy. The real question is whether or not the comic will ever get to that point.
Super Powered Robot Meter Maid: Rock and Roll were created to help Dr. Light in the lab and clean the house, respectively.
Super Prototype: Averted with Polka Reset Man, who's barely able to defeat a Sniper Joe. Later played straight with Atlas.
Surrounded by Idiots: Played straight in the first arc. Subverted in the second, where Wily's new minions are competent to the point of being Dangerously Genre Savvy, but Wily still treats them like this.
Showing that the abused always kick downwards, Enker treats his fellow Robot Masters like this.
In the fillers where he appears, X is definitely this. Zero, iX, and Harpuia all manage to be not all there in some way or other.
X: Oh hell, he raided the women's locker room for 'prizes' again. * Runs offscreen* You choose strange ways to die, Zero!
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Wily 8 do not really cooperate well with one another in battle, often getting in each others' way. Their general personalities also seem to clash.
Likewise, Enker doesn't get along with any Robot Masters seen so far.
Theme Naming: Aside from the obvious musical-themed names (Rock n' Roll, Enker, Quintet, Allegro and Bass), there's also the support duo known as "Reader" and "Writer".
Quintet: It sounds like you(Dr. Light) know more about it than me, but how about a more convenient way to put it? "This is a robot with no past and no future."
The Dragon: Enker to Dr. Wily. Despite his rank, battle prowess and intellect, he still takes severe flak from Wily.
Xanatos Speed Chess: Of course, when Mega Man's more heroic nature comes into play, Quintet's had to pull some rather dodgy maneuvers. Lampshaded by Ferret himself:
Disgrunted Ferret: You ever get the feeling Quintet's flying by the seat of his robotic pants?
The character sheet can be found here.
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