20200422 Imposter Scene Page 1

This is a rough sketch comic (8 pages) depicting the opening scene for my Mario & Luigi RPG: "Eclipsed Memories."

The main plot starts at Yoshi's Island during their annual Fruit Festival when Toadette gets eaten alive by Yoshi. It turns out that that wasn't Yoshi at all, but an imposter - a member of a race of toad men that I named the Sapians. To read about "toad men" you can look at Incredible Hulk Vol 1 No 2 (marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Incredi…). Ultimately, I came up with the Sapians in a desire to poke fun on the Toads and the name of their race. Having Wart, who is a frog character, as the main villain gives me an excuse to give him a frog-like race based more or less off of himself as his newest minions.

Now the Sapians don't actually eat Toads. Only this one member, whom I've named Glip, did, and that was out of an impulsive craving for mushrooms. It took me a while to come up with this reason, but when I did, it ended up poking fun at another aspect of the Toad race: Are they actually mushrooms or not? I personally say that they aren't. They are humanoid and mammalian and that they simply exhibit mushroom-like qualities. Glip, on the other hand, thought they actually were mushrooms that could walk and talk. In the words of one Sapian operative: "We think that when he saw you [Toadette] that day, he thought you were the . . . fully matured . . . final form of those Mushrooms . . . that they eventually pulled themselves out of the ground and became Toads."

Hopefully this isn't too unusual, but it makes for some interesting humor surrounding the Toads.