Wednesday, January 31, 2007 Okay, so it's 2008 and this commentary is well, 6 years late, but since the site is getting some more traffic thanks to Gombie's Mugen release. I figure if I ever was going to do these commentaries, it might as well and probably should be now, rather than later. I'm going to cover a lot of stuff in these commentaries and it's probably a good idea to read "The History of Gombie" before reading these, because I'm probably going to refer to that a lot. Okay, here we go. Prologue: Part 1 One of the first things people may notice is that I wrote "Gombie Gombie". This is not a typo or a goof of me accidentally writing his first name twice. Gombie's full name actually is Gombie Gombie. Why? Well, 2 reasons. Back when I was a kid and me and my best friend and co creator of Gombie were still filming these Goonie Goomba movies with a crappy camcorder, my friend decided to create a new character a new antagonist that was revealed to be Gombie's father: Mortimer Gombie. Before this point Gombie had no last name. So now that it was decided that Gombie was Gombie's last name, we had to decide what Gombie's first name was...and basically for the sake of stupidity and the fact we didn't really want the original Gombie to now be referred to under a different moniker. Also it's just the embracing of silliness and stupidity. Definitely not a reference to that shitty Mario Bros movie, though I was aware of that connection at the time. The more discriminating eye will notice that all the characters look different than they do in later strips. This was made before I streamlined the images/sprites in Flash. I also was doing this old art shading style I used to do where I shade in around every edge of each color area. I eventually ditched that when I realized it made everything much more difficult to draw and it didn't actually add that much to the quality of the image. You'll also notice that I'm drawing the goombas without gloves a lot here in the early strips and you pretty much never see a goomba without gloves now. Goonie is in the class of 85 because when I made this strip it was the year 2002 and 1985 was the correct year for him to be his current age at 2002. Now it's 2008 and I just now restarted this comic up, but for continuity's sake it's still 2002 in the Gombie timeline. Which also means I'm going to logically stick to what was around in the Mario universe at the time. I know that's completely unneccesary, but I'm kind of a stickler for detail, even if it prevents possible cameos from the awesomeness that is Goombella. Goombella kicks ass. She should be in every Mario game. The "secret area" that's mentioned that Goonie's lab is east of is actually "Top Secret Area" from Super Mario World. I can't remember for sure but I think the reason I didn't include the word "top" in the comic was I was worried my memory was fuzzy and that place wasn''t actually called "Top Secret Area", but it was and it is. This Top Secret Area reference has been around since the original Mario Paint version. I almost didn't include that shot of a Koopa and a Toad because at first I kind of wanted to avoid making this storyline too Mario based, but I eventually decided I didn't want to deny/betray the origins of Goonie and went ahead and included them instead of sticking only to Goomba characters. That being said, I have NO INTENTION of putting Mario in this comic or any of the main Mario characters. This comic isn't about Mario. Besides people would probably expect me to do morbid comedy like having Mario die randomly or involve him in really crass humor. I personally just hate that shit. Even though some of this strip may seem like extreme morbid comedy, it's okay because I try to keep the silliness seriousness balance in check. What I mean is: It's not like I'm throwing some puppy eyed cutesy animal into a blender. That makes me ill to watch, not laugh. Unfotunately it's that kind of bullshit morbid humor that has ruined Newgrounds for me, but enough about that. Back to the comic. That shadowy figure? I didnt forget about him. That will come back to bite Goonie in the ass later. FUN FACT: Maria's umbrella is a Resident Evil reference. So's the PF Virus, (though just barely...) Goonie's kids and their names have been set in stone forever, though they also havent done anything important in forever except you know getting kidnapped by villians in spin off movies. I plan to give them more attention this time around but it's honestly kind of hard. I mean let's face it. The Clones steal the show. STUPID FACT: Goonie's "NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" wail where the camera looks down on him was kinda inspired by Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back which I had watched right before making this. Don't worry it didnt influence the plot. Maria's always been doomed to die. STUPID FACT 2: People still get Goombie and Gombie confused. I guess it's understandable how people would get confused but I notice I have to point out that Goombie isn't the same character as Gombie still sometimes. They also seem to think that both their names are pronounced the same and they're not. If it helps, Goombie rhymes with "Boom Bee" and Gombie rhymes with "Bomb Bee". If I had made the series at a later point in my life I probably would have named Goombie something else, but like a lot of things in the strip: If that's how it was originally that's how it will stay. And the last thing I have to say about this one is almost every strip in the series has an "Emperor symbol" hidden in them somewhere. If you didn't spot it already, the first one is on Goonie's toolbox. - Carmell

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