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Street Fighter Masters- Blanka Free Comic Book Day 2022

 By Mark Rodriguez 

Udon's Street Fighter comics are always a treat and something to look forward to every Free Comic Book Day. This time the focus is on Blanka, everyone's favorite electrical beast from Brazil. Let's check it out.

Blanka is relaxing on a tree branch in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. He has pics of Sakura and Dan taped to the tree and he has one of his Blanka Chan dolls with him. 

Blanka has a dream about his life as a kid, flying in a plane with his mother during heavy rain. One of the plane's wings is hit by lighting and he holds onto his mother as it starts to go down. The plane hits the ocean. The child survives the crash and walks onto land as the plane's remains wash ashore. Scared and alone, the kid lets out a scream.

Blanka wakes up as he hears a man yelling out to someone. Blanka watches him and decides to look around and find what this guy is looking for. Blanka hops off the tree, bouncing off several trees until he finds a cat plushie on the ground. He grabs it and runs off with it. Meanwhile a girl is wandering around, as she finds herself lost in the jungle. 


The girl entertains herself with a frog she found but suddenly a gator jumps out from the river. Blanka flies in and knocks the gator away with his Ball Attack. Blanka slowly approaches the girl as she is terrified of this big green monster heading towards her. Blanka stops and pulls out the plushie. The girl is happy to see her toy again and hugs him. Blanka grabs her and hops off back towards where he saw the man.

The man is sitting on his truck and has lost hope of finding his daughter. Blanka sets the girl next to him, which surprises her father. Blanka remains hidden but smiles to see the father and daughter hug. Suddenly he sees a group of mice running past him, soon followed by a group of deer also running. Blanka runs towards the direction of what the animals are running from to see what is causing this. 

Blanka finds a bunch of men armed with chainsaws and pick axes and construction equipment as they start to tear down the trees. The Street Fighter jumps into action and gets rid of these men. Just then the men fall back as this tall muscular lumberjill shows up, showing no fear towards the electric beastman. 

So will this woman be in Street Fighter 6?

The Street Fighter flies at her with his Ball Attack and she punches him out of the air. As Blanka recovers from this, the woman picks up a tree trunk and swings it around. She launches the tree trunk at him and Blanka leaps out of the way. He lands near her with an Electric Ball Attack which shocks her. Not to be deterred, the woman fights back and starts trading blows with Blanka. The girl picks up a rock and throws it at the Blanka. Blanka looks to see who did that and sees the girl running towards the woman, who is her mother. Blanka sees the girl hug her parents the way he once did as a child and runs off. 

As the sun sets, Blanka is back laying on his branch. Blanka sees old photos he has, his mother holding him as a child, and a new one of her holding him as his grown up bestial self. Blanka ends the story striking a pose (I think?) feeling glad to have helped the girl find her family, regardless of how it went down. 

My thoughts-

So this was a simple dialogue-less story, a little adventure in Blanka's life in the jungle. Due to lack of actual words, we get to see everyone being more expressive to make up for it. We get to see the gears turning in Blanka's head so to speak.  I did like the callback to Blanka's origin, or at least part of it. A lot of longtime fans know Blanka was a regular human kid that survived a plane crash and grew up in the jungle. The part Capcom never made clear was exactly how he turned into a green guy with electric powers. 

It was a good little story, though one can't help but ask what happened next? So the missing girl is related to these people that are tearing down the rainforest, and this lumberjill is clearly not going to let Blanka stand in their way. So... what will happen the next day when they come back? In the story Blanka realized the lumberjill was the kid's mother and he helped the family reunite and left to no longer cause them any trouble, but are they gonna go right back to tearing the place down? I seriously doubt they were destroying the rainforest just to find the kid and now that they did they'll just pack up and go home. 

The lumberjill though... not only does she have a cool design, she literally punched Blanka right out of the air while he was doing his Ball Attack. Put this girl in Street Fighter 6.

The book also advertises a series on Sagat's origins coming soon and also shows some Blanka character art that has been used throughout the years starting from Street Fighter 2 to what we have now. Seeing the classic World Warrior and Champion Edition art took me back.

Overall a good story, great colorful art, I just couldn't help but think what would happen to Blanka the following day giving all this unfinished business.

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