Along with buying Maleficarum, I bought Street Fighter Gaiden volumes one and two by Mami Itou. Apparently this comic was made in 1996. :lol: I loved it, the art is a little less refined in this volume, but I really can't get enough of Ms. Itou's art style. There are a seven chapters which deal with six different characters, Chun Li's story takes up two chapters. Each story is stand alone, so if you feel like reading Guile's chapter as opposed to Ryu's chapter then you can, the only one that needs to be read in order is Chun Li's. There are some sketches and two koma(?) in the back which is nice, I've always loved those and was super entertained when Gundam Wing included them.

Reading Ryu's story, he's typical Ryu. :lol: The next story is actually about Eliz, Ken's wife (girlfriend?). Ok, so she's really just talking about Ken the entire time. Why's the chapter named after her? Chun Li's story is her in San Fransisco hunting down a new street drug because she believes its connected to Shadaloo somehow. T. Hawk vows to fight against Shadaloo and beats the snot out of Balrog in the process. Fei Long's story is very Bruce Lee, and Guile beats the snot out of someone to keep them from joining Shadaloo.

The only thing that bothers me about this comic, and Maleficarum, is that the Japanese characters for sound effects are replaced with English words. I've been reading manga for at least 10 years now. I started when manga was flipped, edited, names were changed, and any Japanese character was taken out to the point where they are how they are now, in the original format, romanised names, and sound effects left where they are with a little side note as to what it means. So upon reading this book, I honestly thought we were past that point. I was under the impression that these volumes haven't been released previously in the US, but you wouldn't think so based on the sound effects, ha ha. Kinda dropped the ball there, Udon. ;P

So now onto Volume 2!!!