Family Album "The Early Years"



"Family Album "The Early Years"" was a one-page comic that first appeared in the Nintendo Comics System comic book, "Super Mario Bros. No. 3." Originally published in 1990, the comic offers the first interpretation of what Mario and Luigi were like as children. It can be considered one of the earliest appearances of Baby Mario and Baby Luigi. The comic implies that Mario and Luigi are not twins, a development that Nintendo retconned into the Super Mario series in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, published roughly five years later. With five captioned panels, the comic resembles a family photograph album. Later, the comic was republished in "Adventures of the Super Mario Bros. Feb No. 1", "Super Mario Bros. - MARIO'S SPECIAL POWERS," and "The Best of the Super Mario Bros." "Family Album" was created by John Walker, Dan Danglo, P. Zorito, Ken Lopez, and Kingman Huie.

Story
The comic is a series of five captioned photographs that, together, briefly tell the story of Mario's life as a baby and as a toddler. When Mario was born, he was unlike other babies in that he had a full head of hair and mustache stubble. He showed an affinity for plumbing from the very beginning, taking apart his mother's sink while she bathed him. A jet steam of water hit her in the face to her displeasure. As time passed, Mario's stubble grew into a full mustache by the time he became a toddler. He "fixed" his father's pipe, making it emit bubbles instead of smoke, much to his father's displeasure. However, Mario showed a great talent for sports as well. He had the most home runs on his entire neighborhood softball team. Mario used his "lucky bat," a plunger. The future plumber's interest in the profession only grew as he aged, and by the time Luigi was born, Mario could fix nearly every leak. In the last picture, he is shown studying Luigi, with a wrench and a bag of diapers behind him.