Street Fighter II #9

May 1995. Cover price 95p.
40 pages. Full colour.
Manga Publishing Ltd.

Edited by Dick Hansom.

Photo cover (uncredited).

Contents:

 2 Street Fighter II Presents the Official Movie Adaptation of Street Fighter credits. / Indicia

 3 Street Fighter, part one, w: Mike McAvennie, based on the screenplay by Steven E. de Souza, based on the Street Fighter video game series, produced by Capcom; p: Nick Napolitano, i: Bob Downs, lettering by Tim Harkins, colouring by Lee Loughbridge.

r: Street Fighter: The Battle for Shadaloo (DC) #nn (1995).

19 The Truth is Out There in-house advertisement for The X-Files.

20 Street Fighter II poster

22 Lock Up Your Sons! It's Tank Girl in-house advertisement.

35 100 Street Fighter Trading Card Albums to be Won competition.

36 Lights, Camera... Action! text feature (uncredited); photographs (uncredited).

38 Prepare to Face a Deadly New Life Form in-house advertisement for Manga Heroes #04.

39 Get Blown Away With Masamune Shirow's New Dominion Tank Police in-house advertisement for cideocassette.

40 Street Fighter. Unplugged. advertisement for Upper Deck trading cards.

It would be interesting to see sales figures for this issue compared with the previous issue, though (as that seems unlikely) I would hazard a guess that advance word-of-mouth on the state of the film adaptation would likely have hurt this issue some. Attached to the front, as an incentive to continue past reprints of the manga, there are some trading cards. They are very attractive trading cards, mind you, but with a focus on the film representation rather than comic art.

There's still no introduction, although reprinting the film adaptation would have been the perfect opportunity to start heavy promotion.

Chun-Li Zang reports, for GNT News, on the A.N. forces who are consolidating their hold on Shadaloo City. Ken Masters and Ryu Hoshi are arrested, after attempting to cheat Sagat (by selling on toy weapons as the real thing), and placed in A.N. custody. When a fight breaks out in the yard, Colonel Guile gets the idea to use them in order to locate M. Bison's fortress.

Bison oversees Dr Dhalsim's research, which is progressing with Blanka's transformation into a perfect soldier. Ken and Ryu manage to get their hands on a truck, and with Vega's assistance make a break for the gate to escape the A.N. forces. Guile is shot in the escape, though Chun-Li manages to place a tracker on the truck before it disappears. Balrog discovers that the signal they are receiving is facing interference from another signal, and deduced that it is coming from the A.N. headquarters.

Sneaking in to the HQ, Chun-Li learns that Guile is alive, though she manages to escape before being confined. Zangief, meanwhile, makes acquaintance with Ken and Ryu.

This is a fairly representative adaptation, for good or bad, of the film, with art which manages to convey the mood and setting appropriately. It is rather a steep decline in quality from the art of the manga, but it has its own charm. The storyline may be ridiculous, even for a video-game tie-in, but the real problem is how quickly the strip blasts through each plot point, leaving characterisation behind.

Not the finest moment in film adaptations.

A two-page feature, though ostensibly concerning the film adaptation, makes note of the merchandising bonanza which had arisen from the success of the originating games, though shies away from a complete list of available items. It is rather surprising to see contemporary writing discussing the film in terms of its success, having accrued $30 million in its first 25 days, and its soundtrack album reaching tenth place in the charts.

A side-feature, The Bison Trooper's Guide to Shadoti, is an interesting attempt to create a language, Shadoti, for use in the franchise. It isn't, despite sounding so promising, nearly as useful as it might have been.

#08

Street Fighter II

#10