Blueprint for Success
December 9th, 2009
Glad people seem to be enjoying the comic! The idea stemmed from an encounter with Lakitu where he literally gave me 99 lives without even trying. I can just see him reporting back to Bowser what had happened. I like that Ray suggested the ‘blueprint’ style as it gives a fresh look to the comic and allowed us to work in that great punchline.
Aw, man… just when he got to the end, too. All that knowledge…
Well guys, I find the final joke to be the best part of the strip. If you would have left it out, the comic would have been pretty awul. The Bowser blueprint idea is an interesting one, but the direction you took it was probably not the best.
Final panel saved the rest of the comic.
Oh. And I am welcoming me back to the fold. I’ve been gone for a few months and have a handful of podcasts to catch up on. I’ve got everything take care of though now. Even the Spindash Raypisode.
I promise I won’t do it again.
Oh. Do not say “Raypisode” out loud while in the presence of others.
Yeah, it does sound like something you’d need therapy to get over….
I have to completely agree. Amazing comic, well planned and well executed. Final panal went from making it funny to hilarious. And similarly, I also haven’ commented consistently in a while so I too am welcoming myself back (hmm do I sense a new podcast feature?? :-P) (No… no I don’t).
Also, for what it’s worth, I’m 18; 6 years above 12 and consider your comic one of my favorites out of the many webcomics I read. I imagine you have plenty of older readers so don’t worry about the army of 12 year olds out there. They’re all off playing the new Sonic games; everyone else is here reading the comic π
Um… Tom? I don’t think you actually read my post.
It seems the only thing we agreed on was that the last panel was the best part of the comic.
Doesn’t sound like you “completely” agree.
Oh oops, you’re kinda right. See I suffer from Comment Skimming Syndrome where I read maybe the first two lines of a comment and then skim for keywords. Sorry for the confusion
What a way to start off the comments this week: the making of the word “Raypisode.” Lol, new readers are going to think this is a creepy furry site now.
And I’m a freshman in college. Woot!
Hey this has nothing to do with your comment, but…where’d you get your avatar? Is it custom? Just askin cause that Ganon looks Koopa whoppin hilarious!!!
This comic is great!
More pages *g*
I would love to have a print version full of those tips.
Very funny indeed. The comic was quite funny but the twist at the end made the whole thing worthwhile. The artwork was quite nice also. The only thing I’m not keen on this week is the logo, but you can’t have everything and it’s not exactly the most important thing in the world.
Nice work guys : )
well tip 1 comes all the time in the toad in the chest missions
Not that I expect any better from Bowser, whose own planbook consists of one page (Capture Princess, escape distance of eight worlds), but nearly 1000 pages of minion information (of which numerous pages would only apply to a single species), would certainly be better organized in chapter form.
Though, now that New Super Mario Bros. Wii cements Toad as a species just as capable as Mario, it seems that the Toad battle bible could be revised from “Run screaming and wait for Mario” to “You’re just as capable as Mario, so quit wining and rescue the Princess.”
Good comic! The art is very nice and its a cool idea. My favorite parts are the names of the tips and the a.k.a lines.
I love the idea of Toad asking Peach out on a date. I bet you could work that into the background of a later strip.
Well, that’s another punchline only available for comic like yours…
Great one!
Some of these are easy wallpaper fodder. Good job.
I agree. I would LOVE to see 121 as a wallpaper.
I agree, 121 needs to be a wallpaper.
When reading tip 999, the first thing i thought was, that would be awesome in full color. Ray, you’re amazing.
The first person to make a custom level showing all of those things happening in sequence gets a cookie.
XD great makeup for last week (not that the last one was bad) i loved it! its so true, the first level of SMW for the SNES showed the Kooky Koopa Krawl for lives aslong as you didnt mess up
“Confused mosh pits of fail,” that is a quote if I have ever heard one.
Yes! A comic I get and like! SCG! Although I think that koopa his safe. He’ll just end up in is shell for a while. There’s no cliff or anything. Also, why do the evil Koopa’s only wear sunglasses in Paper Mario?
Tip #1000:
When standing on a bridge over lava, leave the self destruct key in plain view. This will lure mario into your “attack zone,” by which I mean the zone where you will pace back an forth in a semi random manor. When shooting Fireballs, your aim should also be random, as you do not want to be predictable.
Tip #1000 Addendum
If the Fireballs don’t work, start throwing hammers from the Hammer Bros. Throwing them in an almost identical pattern may be enough to make mario slip up.
Tip -1 and if that dosent work throw the princess at mario then start ground pounding because you notice what you did then let mario push the axe key thing
And the worst part of it all is that he just set mario up for a whole bunch of free 1-up’s!
I really liked this one. Maybe Bowser should have put tip #999 at the beginning of the book.
Haha, awesome comic guys! It seems its really hard to find good help these days, but at least Bowser is trying his best to help them out! Too bad for that last koopa though, Bowser just does not know how to put things into a good order.
<3 Your best in a while, I love it.
Lol, this is my favorite kind of humor! The sarcastic, witty, sort of humor. Anyway,
Tip 1#: Pokemon Identity Crisis
Koopa’s and goomba’s are not pokemon. I know it seems hard to believe, but goomba’s have more moves then just shimmy and tackle. The same goes for Koopa, except you don’t use rollout by waiting for some fat plumber to jump ontop of you
Tip 47#: Protecting of Warp Pipes (I.E. Piranha death trap)
There needs to be a Piranha at every secret warp pipe. Unfortunently, all of you magically have to take a bathroom break when you hear footsteps above you. You’re plants, the only waste you give off is oxygen.
Tip #45: If All Else Fails (Aka, Operation Pamela Anderson)
If all else fails and we can’t ever defeat Mario, there is still one thing we can do! Call PETA! We’re all technically animals (yes, even your great king is considered a giant tur….dragon.) We’ve all been stombed on, fireballed, tail whacked, froze, spun and thrown, and beaten for the last 24 years! That’s animal cruelty! That should be atleast seven years, right?!
Tip 998# The Rightful Heir (Aka, I’ve been doped)
You’re true King is not I, Bowser, but that mobboss Toad. He’s a slipery little fellow. He told me if I gave him my crown, he would try to not give Mario any powerups. Too bad I didn’t read the small print that said he’d try and not actually do it.
Nice comic! I loved it! Looks like Mario is about to pull of the infinite 1-up trick. Even that’s even worse than the line of Goombas!
But where are tips 1-31, 33-47, 49-120, 122-385, 387-562, and 564-998? Come on, at least put some effort into it… And wasn’t it you guys who hated when people gave numbered lists like that when there weren’t really that many things?
I may be thinking of something else…
Also, I loved the “See also” for the bullet bills.
Ha, tell me about it. The only reason I caved for Tim’s request was because the joke was funnier knowing that Koopa Troopa had spent so very long reading through all the tips just to get jumped on when he reached Tip #999. The same can not be said for television commercials about Clorox bleach or something – we don’t gain anything for them pretending to have hundreds of tips.
Yeah, I knew we’d get some flak about the numbering, but there was a purpose to there being so many tips.
Couldn’t he have just skipped most of them, though? I don’t think Koopas need to know not to jump out of water and stay on land, for instance. Isn’t this book organized into chapters for each enemy or anything?
Also, Tim, I think the real reason Ray suggested the blueprint style was so he could copy/paste things easier. π
I think if you had done it like the homestar runner welcome counts the takes, you may have gotten a few less comments about the numbering, but I think it works just fine. Also, I hope you’re feeling better/get well soon Tim.
@ CKCheeseBoy:
No he couldn’t. When Bowser tells his minions to read something they’d better damn well read all of it! At least if they don’t want a fireball up their derriΓ¨res.
“Pop quiz! Tip 482?”
“Errrr…. don’t march in single file towards a glowing golden Mario with a surprisingly upbeat backing track?”
“THAT’S TIP 483!” *WHOOOSH*
Woah! Wait a minute guys!
I’ve got a great idea for an iPhone app…
Ugh, I was going to comment about the random numbers too,, it was the first thing i thought of when i noticed this comic, but I wanted to make sure ray was the one who complained about it.
Nice comic as always, guys! I agree that a couple of these should be made into wallpapers. My background has been homosexual long enough.
You know what I hate? When commercials and things have “Tip 32”. It’s not actually Tip 32, because there’s no Tip 1-31, you just arbitrarily picked 32. Why not just call it “Tip 1”, since that’s what it actually is?
π
But seriously, decent comic. Not great, but not bad.
Wait a minute. I could have sworn in a past podcast that there was a complaint about randomly picking numbers for tips. Just like those commercials, “fashion tip #68: shop at some place for some deals.” I mean, I just saw one of those commercials and immediately thought of Ray complaining about those.
Okay, sorry for the nitpicking. I love the comic and the one detail – “see (picture of winged-koopa).” I just love how you’re poking fun at intelligent design in video games. Although this reminds me of, and this is just me, a previous Lace comic poking fun at video game design. Also, nice to see each of the tips being put on unique paper designs. In other words, the physical pages don’t look the same – well maybe except for tips 32 and 121. The others look individually unique, or am I wrong? Anyways, great comic and nice going!
Nicely done, enjoyed the “see also: parakoopa” for the bullet bills, as well as the actual description for the bullets, been a little while since I truly enjoyed your comic.. or could it be that I should be studying right now, nah, it can’t be that
Very nice new comic! Definitely put a smile on my face. Now I have a challenge for you… I dare you… DARE YOU… to come up with the rest of the tips. They don’t have to necessarily be illustrated, but can you come up with the rest of them? I see no problem with using Ryman’s suggestions to go ahead and knock out a few.
So what do you say Ray? (lol… say ray)… What was I saying? Oh right.
You man enough to take the challenge? Are you? ARE YOU!? π
Nice comic! Clever and entertaining. (My shortest comment ever?)
This is a great comic! I want each of these on a T-Shirt! π
Eat a few pies and you’ll be able to get them all on the same T-Shirt π
This comic sucked! I didn’t get the joke!!!! BLAAAUGGH! lol, sorry, couldn’t help it.
This was great! A real comeback from last weeks mediocre comic! THIS is the direction this comic should stay in.
Very nice comic guys, my favorite in a while.
Good comic.
It’s been a while since I last said this, but this is easily one of my favorite comics! The blueprint style really worked out for this, since it was a bit easier to draw and still looked very nice. The tips themselves were pretty clever, but the addition of the ending really put it over the top for me. Fantastic Job Guys! π
XD Amazing. Great comic in basic concept (I’d love to read a whole book of that sort of thing!) and the punchline is also spectacular! Kind of inconvenient they leave that tip for last, isn’t it…
Great comic guys! I was giggling all the way.
Also, does Bowser’s ghost writer get extra coins for alliteration on the front cover. π
I just noticed all the different expressions on the different goombas. Nice touch Ray
And the number one requested Christmas present for the 2009 season is… Bowser’s Battle Bible!!
Flaming brilliant! If external factors are any gauge, the Bullet Bill panel seemed to get the best response from me, but they were all great puns. Especially like the expressions on the goombas in panel two, and the “see also: [paratroopa]” in the BB panel. And the final two panels led to a nice way to close out the comic, especially with that subtle reference to the “infinite”^ 1ups trick.
By the way, I wonder if this book contains a “don’t leave the axe-key thing next to the bridge you’re standing on” section. Somehow I doubt Bowser is quite so willing to admit his own mistakes. =P
^(Disclaimer: Said 1ups trick is not really infinite, as each 2D Mario game has a timer, likely put in place to prevent anyone from actually getting infinite 1ups, which would likely explode the universe).
Though I’ve never tried it, I heard trying that trick in Super Paper Mario will actually subtract points.
Here is a youtube vid of what happens when you try the trick.
Its low quality, but it is sufficient to show what happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUSGRvfm2JE&NR
Really loved the comic. I actually discovered you guys a couple of weeks ago, and then spent an entire work day reading your archive instead of actually working… which was not bright, but totally worth it.
Also, I want to say, as someone who reads a LOT of webcomics… yours is one of the consistently better webcomics out there. Even the one’s people seem to b*&# about are better than, say, anything Dueling Analogs has done in the last year.
I wonder what numbers 1000 and 1001 would be, since books like this always include 101 or 1001 items in them for some god awful reason.
Meh, I definitely didn’t enjoy it as much as everyone else seemed to. Too much reading and the punchline didn’t make up for it.
I feel the same. This comic USED to be good.
nice comic guys but tip 999 should go for all koopas because if you added bowser writing it and not a koopa that would be awesome
Lemmings don’t actually jump off cliffs, that was just a false trope propagated by Disney, to get them to do that in the film they drove them over the side of the cliff using a bulldozer as far as I remember. Good ole Walt eh. Excellent comic as always π
They actually launched them off a cliff with a turntable!
wikipedia (with reliable sources π )
Yo guys, great comic. I loved it before the punchline (which still made it better)!
Anyway, its been awhile since I commented, so…..yeah. And I know your not even going to read this but, if you havent aready, my friend pokefun_jake or whatever “rose fromhis grave” a while back with no mention in the following podcast. I dont know if you already have mentioned him though. Still need to watch Monday’s podcast. Ciao!
New comic toggle icons!
You forgot tip # 782…
“Koombas, when marching at your post, try not to dance to the catchy music in the background. One little swing of the arms and legs during the ‘baahhh’ part of the song will stop you in your tracks. Making you easy prey for Mario. If you can’t stop yourself from dancing, at least take a tip from the Goombas and do a little hop. This may catch Mario off guard. Remember, your little skip to background music may end up as a ‘dance of death’.”
Hi, don’t suppose anyone can tell us what the handwriting font used was? π
Cheers! D.
Sure thing. “Handwriting – Dakota”
I would kill to get these images in wallpaper size! Love the comic!
flippin sweet!!!!
Wait… you got the idea for the joke from an infinite 1-up trick from a Lakitu, yet the Lakitu’s not in there? FAIL.
…Just kidding. Funny comic, but it is odd that the Lakitu tip wouldn’t be shown.
Maybe that should’ve been the first tip, not the last…
Also, I like how the Koopa looks up at the end like “OH SHI-“
One of my favorites…