HERO OF THE WEEK: PICCOLO (Bird Studios)Real Name: Piccolo Jr
First Appearance: Weekly Shonen Jump #998 (February, 1988)
Fight Club Ranking: #DNR
Featured Fights:
- Yet To Be Featured on Secret Wars on Infinite Earths.
Between the wanderlust of a new year, and gearing up for Black Panther in theatres -- I kinda missed out on noting a fairly major event in comics/pop culture multimedia! I figured Hero of the Week can double-back to pick up the tab on a personal favourite that's still hitting its stride.
Dragon Ball FighterZ was released to home consoles around this time last month, bringing Dragon Ball's trademark ki-blast hyper fighting back to the traditional fighting game arena. Think Street Fighter IV more than Tenkaichi Budokai and you get the general distinction of the new game.
It's all about focused side-to-side combat, rather than powering-up in three dimensions. Of course, one of the great aspects of FighterZ has been its strong sense of character, and its anime-influenced presentation! Past DBZ games did an admirable job of emphasizing the vast roster of obscure characters, and their story-driven locations and skirmishes -- but FighterZ really hones in on being a great fighting game with a library of intuitive references. Great news for gamers and fans alike!
I'm always a little mindful of the traditional divide between American comic book readers and Japanese manga/anime culture. Around these parts we obviously favour the former, but for the sake of my own nourishment, I've been inviting more of these other interests into the mix. Of course, if you really examine it, the era known as Dragon Ball Z is really a gateway between the two worlds.
What started as a 'boy's own' version of Journey to the West took a hard and iconic twist with the late eighties. If you know to compare Goku with fellow good-natured alien refugee Superman, then you're on your way to common ground. From there you might observe a character like Vegeta as a stand-in for General Zod, and Piccolo as loosely analogous to Martian Manhunter.
Unlike DC's Martian; Piccolo begins life as an antagonist spawned from the elder demon king - Piccolo Daimou. Junior pursues a similar brand of evil until the emergence of common enemies from space tempts a team-up with Goku. This begins Piccolo's path to redemption, leading him to become a more soulful, noble warrior, who supports the increasingly powerful feats of Goku and Saiya-jins.
So far on Secret Wars on Infinite Earths we've scratched the surface of Dragon Ball with the first of four Quarter Final bouts at the 23rd Tenkaiichi Budokai tournament: Taopaipai versus Tenshinhan, and Chi-Chi versus Goku. The next battle will feature Piccolo, and I look forward to getting to it.
In the mean time, we'll have to settle for inducting Piccolo as our final February Hero of the Week! If you're on the look out for more Dragon Ball, be sure to scroll past the DC and Marvel blocks of the Secret Index Archive to find future updates! You can also dabble in some other similar realms of interest by checking out the master list for our 2017 Heroes of the Week!
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