Super Mario in: The Night of Horror
This was a Halloween special of Club Nintendo, Germany’s official Nintendo magazine. It ran in two parts, in the nominal Halloween issue (issue 5, September/October) in 1996 and 1997. Both parts are here for your convenience. I did the translation, editing, etc., myself.
This comic seems like the turning point for the magazine, where things start getting really silly. It introduces a few running jokes that are used in subsequent comics, including the made-up greeting “Holerö” which gained enough prominence to be a central plot point in a later story.
The idea of this comic is that a bunch of Nintendo characters live together in a Brooklyn apartment building (although we only see 7 of them in the comic). Their night is ruined when Wario conspires with a demon to infest the place with monsters straight out of horror movies (see if you can spot all the references). Mario, Link, and Kirby team up with the aid of Van Helsing’s vampire hunting gear, and later the Necronomicon itself to fight them off. It’s spoooooky! Well, it’s wacky and weird, which is exactly what we love about Club Nintendo’s comics.