Wanderers of the Mushroom Kingdom
is a Mario fan-comic written and drawn by BeethroBudkin07, and started on January 27th, 2011. It features a group of characters trying to find their way home. However, their journey is put on halt when one of the team members is kidnapped, and the others rush to his rescue. The first ten or so pages are mostly comedic in nature, and while that aspect remains afterwards, the focus is mostly on the story in more recent updates.
The band of adventurers features Gyro, a Cyborg Goomba who complains and is easily scared; Adexab, a radioactive Spike Top who acts as the cool-headed leader; Brocius, the Deadpan Snarker Shy Guy who acts selfishly; Frank, the cheerful but childish golden Fuzzy; Sid, the nerdy Blooper; and Dervius, the Trigger-Happy mercenary Boo with a Rocket Launcher.
The comic can also be found on the Giant in the Playground Forums and on the author's deviantArt gallery.
The author cancelled the comic in February 2016 citing other projects taking time and energy leaving him insufficient of both to continue.
Wanderers of the Mushroom Kingdom provides examples of:
- Art Evolution: From Page 14 and onward, all of the character designs were revamped to look cleaner and closer to the original material.
- Characterization Marches On: In the early pages, the characters were much less fleshed out, especially Brocius and Frank, the former of which Took a Level in Jerkass later on.
- Curbstomp Battle: K-9 #001 ends up taking out Gyro, Adexab, Frank AND Dervius with one of its arms sawed off.
- Funny Background Event: The red eyes in the forest background often spout random dialogue.
- The K-9 and Chow in Page 13 also count as one.
- Great Big Book of Everything: Sid carries one with him.
- Improvised Weapon: Gyro manages to create a pick by combining a rock and a pencil together.
- Ironic Echo: After neutralizing K-9 #001, Belome paraphrases the dialogue it had used earlier to dismiss K-9 #239 for supposedly protecting Gyro.
- Invisible Anatomy: We see Gyro and Frank holding objects despite lacking any arms.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: K-9 #001.
- Right Behind Me: Invoked when Brocius starts trash-talking Margaret. Being who he is, Brocius doesn't take back anything of what he said.
- Shout-Out:
- Belome, the K-9's and Chows, and Mokura are all characters from Super Mario RPG.
- The fortune room in Belome's Temple from the same game is also referenced.
Gyro: It looks so... ancient. 1996 ancient.- Here's Dervius' reaction to hearing that ghost busting troops were being sent to his location:
Dervius: I'm going to be attacked by robots with proton packs! Ooh, I better watch out for their ghost trap! - Weaksauce Weakness: Dervius, easily the strongest of the protagonists, can be taken out with hammers.
