I agree that it should be done with great care. This is really the only example I subscribe to. An enormous factor in treating those comics like that is, quite simply, a total famine for worldbuilding outside of the games at that time. For me they hold the same weight as Mario & Wario-- not quite as likely to be canon as Wario's Woods, but still less dubious than a crossover with Bomberman (although the fact that it's just Bomberman by himself makes it easier to swallow).
If it weren't for the fact that every single one of the Wario stories is a slice-of-life taking place during the characters' down time, I would not treat it as canon. Like, maybe Metroid is also a game in Mario's world? How should we know? Mario's never been to GameStool before.
Wario's character didn't even start to solidify until around the time of VBWL, really. As far as the games go, the only reflection of his character becoming more & more concrete is watching how he behaves from game to game. Compare the idle animation from 1 and 3 and already there's a massive leap in characterization. (Although, the fact that Wario even had an idle animation at all gave him a leg up on Mario in 1993.)
If you consider the Western Adverts to be at least reflective of canon at all, then even Wario Blast felt more like a teenager going through a phase but acting like it's their passion (when was the last time Walleo planted one on a bomb, hvv??). Especially if you consider the VBWL advert. Like-- nothing says "im 15" quite like "im a devil inside =)"
Basically what I'm saying is, the fact that so many different sources during that early time frame had a general idea of who Wario was but not a concrete idea is a real contributing factor. Wario acted the ways that he did because nobody had anything specific, but because for the most part he was nebulous, it's easier to reconcile the resulting products with each other.
That's because every time, the only thing anyone could fall back on to flesh him out was A) what humanity as a whole relates to, and B) making him interact with well-established characters, because a lack of information made it hard to calculate what his behavior would be if he was alone. There wasn't really a set way for him to act. No one wants to risk making him act out of character, but they didn't know where the mines were in this field.
Even the Mario-kun arc where Wario sacrifices himself for the sake of Mario & his friends can be reconciled with the Nintendo Comics interpretation, even if not the events. That's nothing like Wario as we know him (unless he knew he'd come out unscathed. Then maybe). However, once you think about that same moment under the blanket of "Early Wario" it no longer feels out of character.
I think that's because outside of those bits of humanity I mentioned, you can't really add more character traits to the mix without having more information from the source first. Otherwise you'd potentially be introducing elements the reader wouldn't recognize in any other version of the character, which would usually mean your take on the character sucks. (Semi-related: the fact that they wouldn't brazenly ignore this intangible boundary is why their fanfic got them a job.)
There just wasn't enough information for anyone to be able to make him commit to any one path. If the limits you could take Wario's character to were made plain by a circular holding pen, and the story writing teams were the people inside it, then in 1994, that circle's diameter was about the size of a personal bedroom.
Actually, I can't think of any material outside of You're Getting Very Greedy from that period where Wario was shown to be miserly in particular, so possibly even less than that. I don't think Nintendo specified that Wario wanted all that money for money's sake, only that it was going towards outdoing Mario. The fact that he places relatively little emphasis on 'bazillion coins' versus "buy ME a castle BIGGER than MARIO'S" supports this. His #1 vice at the time would've been Envy, rather than Greed, which is really bizarre to think about.
You couldn't reconcile those comics with present day Wario because they're too far removed of concepts, but you can with early day Wario. The main reason why I would and do reconcile them, rather pointedly, is Early Wario already being hard to reconcile with Present Wario period.
That magnitude of difference despite being canon all the same is what attracted me toward treating the Nintendo Comics like they were part of canon. It serves the narrative of Wario having a sort of "coming of age" arc (which lasted about as long as a real life human's does, deliciously). Especially how in them, just like the early era games, his identity is tied to Mario in much the same way children's identities are defined by their parents until they're going into their teens. Pretty poetic, in that sense.
Even if you don't decide the comics themselves are canon, the behavioral patterns we see from Wario are plausible enough to qualify, because they give a potential look at explaining why Wario was never a solo act outside of WL1 until VBWL came out. Note how he was never the hero of his own story, but he was keen to play the villain in someone else's.
If you consider the Western Adverts to be at least reflective of canon at all, then even Wario Blast felt more like a teenager going through a phase but acting like it's their passion (when was the last time Walleo planted one on a bomb, hvv??). Especially if you consider the VBWL advert. Like-- nothing says "im 15" quite like "im a devil inside =)"
Basically what I'm saying is, the fact that so many different sources during that early time frame had a general idea of who Wario was but not a concrete idea is a real contributing factor. Wario acted the ways that he did because nobody had anything specific, but because for the most part he was nebulous, it's easier to reconcile the resulting products with each other.
That's because every time, the only thing anyone could fall back on to flesh him out was A) what humanity as a whole relates to, and B) making him interact with well-established characters, because a lack of information made it hard to calculate what his behavior would be if he was alone. There wasn't really a set way for him to act. No one wants to risk making him act out of character, but they didn't know where the mines were in this field.
Even the Mario-kun arc where Wario sacrifices himself for the sake of Mario & his friends can be reconciled with the Nintendo Comics interpretation, even if not the events. That's nothing like Wario as we know him (unless he knew he'd come out unscathed. Then maybe). However, once you think about that same moment under the blanket of "Early Wario" it no longer feels out of character.
I think that's because outside of those bits of humanity I mentioned, you can't really add more character traits to the mix without having more information from the source first. Otherwise you'd potentially be introducing elements the reader wouldn't recognize in any other version of the character, which would usually mean your take on the character sucks. (Semi-related: the fact that they wouldn't brazenly ignore this intangible boundary is why their fanfic got them a job.)
There just wasn't enough information for anyone to be able to make him commit to any one path. If the limits you could take Wario's character to were made plain by a circular holding pen, and the story writing teams were the people inside it, then in 1994, that circle's diameter was about the size of a personal bedroom.
Actually, I can't think of any material outside of You're Getting Very Greedy from that period where Wario was shown to be miserly in particular, so possibly even less than that. I don't think Nintendo specified that Wario wanted all that money for money's sake, only that it was going towards outdoing Mario. The fact that he places relatively little emphasis on 'bazillion coins' versus "buy ME a castle BIGGER than MARIO'S" supports this. His #1 vice at the time would've been Envy, rather than Greed, which is really bizarre to think about.
You couldn't reconcile those comics with present day Wario because they're too far removed of concepts, but you can with early day Wario. The main reason why I would and do reconcile them, rather pointedly, is Early Wario already being hard to reconcile with Present Wario period.
- Wario wouldn't target a big name celebrity's house, and if he did, he wouldn't wait until the owner was gone before stealing it.
- Wario wouldn't bother to magically seal the door 6 times over just to keep the owner from getting back in. If he could steal it to begin with, how does that guy even hope to take it back?
- He wouldn't occasionally drop in to harass and taunt an approaching invader then fly off and leave the job to someone else, he would take them out as soon as he knew they were there, and in person (like with the Sugar Pirates in II). He wouldn't rip someone else's act and shrink upon taking damage. He wouldn't take damage. He wouldn't use lives!? Who said he needs them?!
- He wouldn't make "bigger than Mario's" a pre-requisite for his place of residence. Who'd be asking about that? Luigi?
That magnitude of difference despite being canon all the same is what attracted me toward treating the Nintendo Comics like they were part of canon. It serves the narrative of Wario having a sort of "coming of age" arc (which lasted about as long as a real life human's does, deliciously). Especially how in them, just like the early era games, his identity is tied to Mario in much the same way children's identities are defined by their parents until they're going into their teens. Pretty poetic, in that sense.
Even if you don't decide the comics themselves are canon, the behavioral patterns we see from Wario are plausible enough to qualify, because they give a potential look at explaining why Wario was never a solo act outside of WL1 until VBWL came out. Note how he was never the hero of his own story, but he was keen to play the villain in someone else's.
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