About this Strip

There's a lot going on in this comic, so let's run down everything. Firstly, most of Super Metroid is secret passages and alternate routes. I think you could literally skip 55% of the game's map if you wanted and still easily clear the game. I'll have to ask a speed runner about it at some point.

Yes, Samus threw the chest around. That's how you open chests in the Mana series, and this section of the comic is using Mana maps with a Mana treasure chest so it felt one hundred percent appropriate. That's just what you do.

Although she showed up for a few cameos before, Samus's first real part in the story was when she joined up with the "Other Heroes". That was back in the first 100 comics of this whole dang series. So it's been easily over 3300 comics since her introduction, and now, all these comic later, she's finally getting her first alternate outfit. Wow. It's the Varia Suit, although those of you that have played Super Metroid might be wondering why, if it's Varia, the suit is so green. That's because the sprites Jorge made for Samus are much closer in color to the standard Varia Suit. Her Power Suit, the armor she starts with in that game (and many others) is actually much more yellow, but the orange and red color scheme is one everyone knows and feels much more like "Samus". That meant I had to come up with an alternate color scheme for Varia, so I went with something in line with the Fusion Suit (since this version of Samus really isn't from any specific place in her continuity), a kind of hybrid scheme between Power Suit and Fusion Suit. I like it, and she looks very different from her "default" scheme in CVRPG.

Note, if she does get Gravity Suit later, I'll likely give it a purple scheme more in line with Super Metroid.

I love it when the bonus comic ends up longer than the main comic. But yeah, I had a bunch of ideas for alternate versions of the comic I could have done. Obviously I didn't because I wanted to give Samus a power upgrade and Varia seemed like the best call. Still, these ideas floated around in my head.

If you're a newb player the reserve tanks -- backup health tanks that can refill you when needed -- seem great. They're pretty useless, though, for most players.