Cloud Nine (comic)

First page of the comic

"Cloud Nine" is a Super Mario Bros. comic released by Valiant Comics under the Nintendo Comics System brand, originally published in Super Mario Bros. No. 1. Its title is a reference to a phrase referring to happiness or satisfaction.

Plot synopsis

As morning approaches in the Mushroom Kingdom, a Mushroom person announces the sunrise by loudly bellowing "Cockadoodledooo!" to the annoyance of the other nearby Mushroomers. In his bedroom, King Toadstool is woken up by his anthropomorphic alarm clock, Stopwatch, who he irritably swats at and chases out of the room. Stopwatch leads the king to the breakfast table, where a servant is attending to Mario, Luigi, and Princess Toadstool, who take note of the king's mood, with Luigi noting that the king "got up on the wrong side of the royal bed." The king's antics cause the servant to accidentally pour hot tea on Luigi's lap, which the princess ignores, instead asking her father why he is upset, noting that he "scared the tick-tock out of poor Stopwatch!" while cradling the traumatized timepiece. The king calms down and explains his bed has "more lumps in it than a bag of oatmeal," and Mario decides it is time the king bought a new mattress, which Stopwatch irritably agrees with.

That afternoon, Mario, Luigi, and the king head to a mattress store called Snooze World. Entering the store, and bothered by the snoring around them, Mario tells the elf-like salesman, who constantly bounces on top of beds, that the king needs a new mattress. Told to follow him to the king-size beds, the salesman bounces across several mattresses, with the king, Mario, and Luigi following close behind.

Trying several beds, the king, who leaves muddy footprints everywhere he goes, finds them either too hard, too soft, too lumpy, or not lumpy enough, despite onlookers noting nothing wrong with any of the beds. As Mario and Luigi grow annoyed over the king's pessimism, the salesman is grabbed and stuffed in a sack by Wart, who approaches the brothers while wearing a fake mustache, suit, bowtie and glasses as a disguise, suggests that they should try a Cloud Nine Mattress. When Mario notes the noises coming from the sack he had stuffed the salesman in, the amphibian dismisses them, claiming that the wriggling sack is actually a talking pillow. When King Toadstool expresses interest in a Cloud Nine Mattress, Wart leads him into an elevator, giving the signal to a Pidgit to announce a 100% off sale on all plumbing supplies taking place by the garbage dumpsters. As Mario and Luigi leave to check out the plumbing sale, Wart and King Toadstool enter the elevator, listing off floors as the Pidgit, now riding a flying carpet, tows it away from the building.

Realizing that they have been tricked, Mario and Luigi head back inside and free the salesman, and, as they bang on the closed elevator doors, piece together that Wart has abducted the king. Up in the clouds, or, as Wart calls it, the "2,927th floor" and "Cloud Nine Bedding Department," the king is impressed by what he believes to be "nice wallpaper" before Wart leads him to the "cumulo-nimbus special," a bed-shaped cloud which he guarantees will have the king sleeping "like a little prince." When the king tries the bed and begins to fall asleep, Wart excuses himself, and heads back into the elevator, claiming he is going to get the paperwork.

However, when the king falls asleep, the bed begins moving through the air, passing over a town and coincidentally, Mario and Luigi, who, while bemoaning the loss of the king, note the king's loud snoring and the shadow cast by the bed, which begins releasing thunder, lightning, and rain. As Wart watches from the bushes in anticipation, the king's bed ruins a picnic, then moves on to the castle, where Princess Toadstool and a servant, who are hanging out laundry, are drenched in the rain, as Wart laughs hysterically at their humiliation nearby.

As the Mushroom People begin protesting outside the castle, angered over the poor weather the king is unknowingly causing, Mario and Luigi catch up to the sleeping monarch in a biplane. After Luigi maneuvers the plane under the cloud, Mario climbs onto the top wing, and starts working to stop the poor weather with his plumbing equipment. He is successful in turning off the bed's poor weather, and as the Mushroom People celebrate, he mentions that "there's just one more drip to take care of..."

Sometime later, the king, after being brought down and put to bed by the Mario Bros., wakes up and tells the brothers, his daughter, and Stopwatch that he just had the strangest dream, which ended with Mario harpooning Wart with a plunger tied to a plane, who dragged him to the middle of the Fungus Forest and dropped him there. Winking to the reader, Mario tells the king, "That sounds like quite a dream, your drowsiness! Quite a dream!"

Characters

• Mario
• Luigi
• Princess Toadstool
• Wart
• King Toadstool
• Stopwatch
• Pidgit
• Mushroom People
• Snooze World salesman

Notable mistakes and errors

• In the original version, when Wart whispers to the Pidgit, it is misspelled as "Pidget."
• When the servant accidentally pours hot tea onto Luigi's lap, King Toadstool's left hand is not colored in.

Version differences

• In the German translation, the twin beds featured in Snooze World are referred to as double beds, with the "Identical" twin beds merely being referred to as twin beds and the "Fraternal" twin beds being referred to as "Mom & Dad" beds.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning	Notes
Finnish	Pilvilinnoja	Cloud castles
German	Auf Wolke 9!	On Cloud 9!
Portuguese	Nas nuvens	In the clouds