Each time Mario and Luigi journey off for the Mushroom Kingdom — or any one of the other countless worlds found within Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. franchise — the pair of titular brothers get down to the nitty, gritty business of protecting the innocent from those who would do them harm. The plumbers also happen to look damned good doing it.
While there’s no telling when we all might get a chance to experience a bit of the Mushroom Kingdom’s magic for ourselves in the real world (unless it’s safe enough to ship us all off to Universal Studios Japan next year), there is some good news on the horizon. Nintendo’s teamed up with Viz Media to bring just a little bit of the fungal glory to us at home with Super Mario Manga Mania, a manga series written and illustrated by Yukio Sawada that follows Mario and Luigi on a number of their rag-tag adventures.
This preview of the English translation — debuting exclusively on Gizmodo today — introduces you to the manga’s incarnations of both Mario and Luigi, and spotlights how the brothers put their heads together in order to get out of tight situations in their quest to, amongst other things, save Princess Peach. From the look of things, the manga’s keeping it light and breezy in terms of suspense and stakes. It feels like the perfect chapter to close 2020 out on for Nintendo’s flagship mascots who, like the rest of us, have just been trying to make it through this year.
