Ninja Gaiden

Ninja Gaiden

Posted by Brian • May 11, 2016

Original Release Date: January 3, 2001

Those have to be some of the worst motion lines in the history of both motion and lines depicting said motion. I had the right idea; the execution wasn't quite there, though.

This is a weird comic. There are numerous references to real-life friends in the names of the comics Mike reads. There have been a couple of other less obvious references in a couple of the earlier pages, too. I was really big on giving people shout-outs, not only to get more people to read the comic, but also certainly to garner the acceptance of others. Looking back, too much of this comic is taken up by insecure high-school pandering, and I feel silly having done that.

Aside from that, I do enjoy the chess match hijinks. The dynamic between Stu and Evil Bad Guy Ninja implies that they were adolescent adversaries who are now rekindling their rivalry as adults, but with the same pettiness and trash-talking from their younger years. It feels like they are trying to be adults by settling their differences through a game instead of immediately trying to slaughter each other, but then Evil Bad Guy Ninja is evil and cheats, and everything turns into a mess from there. It doesn't really flow with Stu's eventual character, but it still works, so I'll let it pass.