Free Comic Book Day 2026- MegaMan Showdown Special # 1

 By Mark Rodriguez

This has been a long-time coming. I got this one way back in May but I've been to busy to get to this one until now. Looks like we'll be seeing a fight between ProtoMan and Bass. There's also a back-up story related to MegaMan Battle Network.

"Rival Robots" opens with a news reporter that looks a lot like Chun Li, covering the story that Dr. Wily has broken out of the Mega City Prison and had been running free for a week. His robots have run rampant all over the world and they can only hope that Mega Man can put a stop to this. Dr. Light is working on a robot that MegaMan found. As he fixes him, he wonders who created it. As he opens the arm cannon, he's surprised to see a chip with Dr. Wily's symbol on it.

The robot snaps awake showing that he was pretending to be knocked out. He swats Dr. Light away and says he's is Bass, Dr. Wily's strongest creation. Bass checks the computer to see what Light has been up to (we see the Rush add-ons that MegaMan gets in MM6) and downloads to a disc. He starts blasting everything, setting the lab on fire. Bass grabs the disc and runs, telling Light that Mega Man knows where to find him if he wants to finish their fight.

 

Bass watches the lab on fire and looks at the disc he stole. He wonders what Wily would want with this considering he already has him. Something blasts the disc out of his hand. A familiar whistle is heard (well, familiar if you played the games since you can't hear a comic book)  and ProtoMan arrives, standing on a tree branch. He says that Bass's plans end here.

 

Bass shoots at ProtoMan, calling him the failed prototype that Wily told him about. ProtoMan fires back which Bass dodges by leaping out of the way. ProtoMan leaps off the tree and he's already lost if all he can do is quip. ProtoMan hits him with a kick across the face. Bass grabs his foot and swings him away. He proclaims that he's the strongest robot in the world. ProtoMan is sent flying into a tree. Bass charges up his Bass Buster arm cannon and calls him a 'rough draft' and a 'never-was'. 

Bass opens fire and ProtoMan jumps out of the way. The blast still hits the tree, however, and now it's coming down. ProtoMan dashes over and catches the tree before it could land on a deer. This, unfortunately, leave him wide open for Bass to blast him. ProtoMan is sent flying back, but luckily the deer got away. He reaches for his shield but remembers he gave it to MegaMan earlier. ProtoMan surveys the area and smirks. Bass calls him out, telling him to show himself. He asks if all of Light's creations are weak.

Bass notices ProtoMan's scarf from behind a tree. He's ready to shoot but sees it's just the scarf on its own, tied to a tree branch. ProtoMan appears behind him and blasts him. Bass is angry and fires off a Charge Shot. ProtoMan smiles as he sees it coming. 

MegaMan is flying on Rush in his jet mode when he sees the huge beam blast flying out of the forest. He determines that it's near Dr. Light's lab.

Bass has been knocked off his feet, which only makes him angrier. He gets up and looks around, being caught off guard by a falling tree branch. ProtoMan drops in with a punch across the face. Bass is rocked but says he hasn't won the fight yet.

Bass and ProtoMan both draw their arm cannons against each other. Bass says it's a stalemate. ProtoMan asks how he expects to beat Mega Man if he can't even beat him. Mega Man is flying overhead and asks if anyone is down there. Bass runs off to find where he dropped the disc before Mega Man shows up. As he leaves, ProtoMan drops to his knees to catch his breath (or to recover or something, does he breathe?). Bass finds the disc and says Dr. Wily has plans for it. He warps away. 

 

MegaMan drops onto the scene and notices all the trees being blasted away. MegaMan looks around and wonders what happened. He flies off with Rush to make sure that Dr. Light is OK. 

ProtoMan is resting up against a tree, hidden from view. He says this time Rock got to arrive at the nick of time to save him. 

 

"A different World" opens as MegMan.EXE lands into the arena and draws his arm cannon. He is caught off guard by what he sees. Guts Man.EXE is his opponent and he not only towers over MegaMan, but is combining his fists to form the Guts Hammer. Lan Hikari, Mega's human operator, downloads the Busterguard Battle Chip. This gives MegaMan an energy shield to block against the huge sledgehammer attack. Roll.EXE watches alongside Glide.EXE, and roots for Mega Man.

CutMan.EXE is watching the fight and recognizes Mega as the one that took down Gospel. He sees his change to attack MegaMan.EXE from behind with his scissor weapon. CutMan says he might no longer be a vice commander, but he can still 'cut it'. He goes for a high five with GutsMan, but the larger NetNavi sends him flying with a punch. CutMan asks what's going on.

GutsMan says MegaMan is his friend and he was just helping him test his upgrades. He doesn't like it when other Navis interferes in his fights and asks if CutMan would rather be his test subject instead. Cut Man says he's rather cut and run and gets the hell out of there.

 

Roll and Glide arrive, and Roll hugs and kisses MegaMan on the cheek (Lan and Mayle aren't siblings). GutsMan asks where's his kiss since he heard them cheering for Mega Man earlier. Glide says he wasn't the one that got attacked and he's still the hero since he chased Cut Man away. 

Just then ProtoMan.EXE arrives. He's on the trail on one of the rogue NetNavis that got away during the Gospel incident. Roll asks if he means CutMan, and MegaMan and GutsMan just finished defeating him. GutsMan corrects her that he was the only one that defeated him. She tells ProtoMan that he just ran off due East and he just missed him. ProtoMan says MegaMan did well, but he shouldn't risk his safety getting involved in official matters that he should have left to official Net-Battlers. Roll stands up for MegaMan, but he agrees to take Proto's advice.

 

ProtoMan tells his human operator, Lord Chaud, that he gathered new intel and will continue his pursuit of CutMan. The human operators, Lan, Mayle, Dex and Yai tell MegaMan that they're off as Lan's mom is making curry for dinner. Dex will work on upgrades for Guts Man and tells Lan that he will beat him next time. Mayle reminds the crew that they have a test to study for. Yai (Glide's operator) says she'll ace the test as usual. As they vanish, MegaMan says Lan will beat them unless the test involves eating curry.

As MegaMan also warps away, the scene is being watched by Bass.EXE. He says these pathetic weaklings aren't worth his time... however the 'blue one' got his interest.

 

My Thoughts-

Pretty fun story which introduced Bass to the comic. Bass was first introduced in MegaMan 7 in which he pretended to be a good guy before revealing that he works for Wily. He also appeared in a Super Famicom name called RockMan and Forte (Japanese game, Japanese names). The comic did a great job keeping his main personality, thinking he is the absolute best and strongest robot Dr. Wily ever created. It sometimes works to Wily's detriment as Bass will question why he needs to create other machines while he's still around.

I liked ProtoMan's fight with Bass. The final line about MegaMan finally coming to his rescue. This ties to the games where ProtoMan comes to the rescue during certain cut scenes and/or cameos in MegaMan 3-6. Even in MegaMan 5 where the villain was believed to be ProtoMan himself, the real deal came in to prove his innocence and expose the imposter.

The art is fun and energetic, but there's one panel that doesn't make sense. In that one panel, Bass grabs onto what I can only assume is ProtoMan's foot but that orange-orb thing makes no sense. ProtoMan doesn't have that on the back of his leg, and while he has a similar thing on the bottom of his foot, it's not that color. On top of that, it doesn't look like we should be able to see the bottom of ProtoMan's boot from that angle. The panel would have looked a lot better if that orb thing wasn't there. 

 

I liked the little cameo of Chun Li (or someone that looks like her) being the news reporter in the beginning. This is a funny nod to her being a news reporter in the first Street Fighter live action movie. It's a callback that even made it to some of the games, where she tells people she is not a news reporter. 

The MegaMan Battle Network story was a fun little intro. I have only heard of the games and have never seen the anime. The original anime was called MegaMan NT Warrior, and apparently this is the first time the Americanized version of Battle Network was put into a comic. Thankfully a bit of Google-Fu helped me get the names of the human operators (I only remembered that Lan was the main character). I have to say, Bass.EXE looks badass and he still has his arrogant personality.  

 

The fact that CutMan called MegaMan a dweeb might be a reference to the 90's MegaMan cartoon where a lot of the villains would call him a dweeb. That version of CutMan would also mostly use cut-related puns.

Overall a fun read. I find it funny how MegaMan took a bit of a back seat in this. He mostly cameos in the first story, as ProtoMan and Bass took center stage. In the second story GutsMan socks CutMan out and then the focus shifts to ProtoMan and Bass. I'll eventually get back to the MegaMan comics as now there are several to read.