To get myself off the front page... I thought that I had exhausted the supply of scenes that led me to where I am today, but a conversation with Susi about people with enormous furry crushes on Bowser ensued soon after I arrived at his place, and that suddenly dredged a comic that I'd seen when I was about eight from my memory. A short search on the Internet, and here it is:

http://trsrockin.com/images/smb_fair4.jpg (Other pages have obvious URLs around this one, but... this is the main event)

Yes, just water this time, but once again I can't believe the extent to which my childhood entertainment collaborated to irreversibly mess me up in the head.