Cloud Nine (comic)
Cloud Nine is a comic released by Valiant Comics imprint Nintendo Comics System. It was one of five stories included in Super Mario Bros. #1, and was later reprinted in The Best of the Super Mario Bros. Its title is a reference to a phrase referring to happiness or satisfaction.
Plot synopsis[edit]
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, with one asking, "Why is he going 'cockadoodledoo'? He's a mushroom!" to which his companion responds with "You want he should yell 'mush!'?"
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 ("Looks like 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, and noting he "scared the tick-tock out of poor Stopwatch!" while cradling the traumatized timepiece. When the king calms down, and mentions his bed has "more lumps in it than a bag of oatmeal," Mario decides it's time the king got a new mattress, which Stopwatch agrees to with a loud "You can say that again!"
That afternoon, Mario, Luigi and the king head to a mattress store called Snooze World ("Over 40 Million Winks Sold - A Division of Wart Enterprises"). Entering the store, and noting all the snoring echoing all around them, Mario tells the elf-like salesman (who constantly bounces up and down on beds, causing Mario to think "Why do salesmen always have such bouncy personalities?") 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 too hard, too soft, too lumpy and not lumpy enough, despite onlookers noting nothing seems wrong with any of the beds. As Mario and Luigi grow annoyed over the king's pessimism, behind them, the salesman is grabbed and stuffed in a sack by Wart, who approaches the brothers (wearing a fake moustache, suit, bowtie and glasses as a disguise) and, after accidentally calling them bozos, suggests they try a Cloud Nine Mattress. When Mario notes the noises coming from the sack Wart had stuffed the salesman in, the amphibian dismisses them, saying the wriggling sack is a talking pillow ("people who talk in their sleep will have something to talk to!") When King Toadstool expresses interest in a Cloud Nine Mattress, Wart leads him to the elevator, giving the signal to a Pidgit to announce, "Even though this is a bed store, we are having a super sale on all plumbing supplies! 100% off our already incredibly low prices! This sale is going on right now just outside by the garbage dumpsters!" When Mario and Luigi leave to check out the plumbing sale, Wart leads King Toadstool into the elevator, listing off floors as the Pidgit, now riding a flying carpet, tows it away from the building.
Realizing they were tricked, Mario and Luigi head back inside, release the salesman, and, as they bang on the closed elevator doors, piece together that Wart abducted the king (with Mario notably saying that this is not the first time). 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.
When the king falls asleep, the bed begins moving through the air, stopping 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 rain, as Wart laughs hysterically at their expense nearby.
As the Mushroom People begin protesting outside the castle, angered over the bad weather the king is unknowingly causing, Mario and Luigi catch up the to the sleeping monarch in a bi-plane (when Luigi mentions the old plane is noisy, Mario points out that the noise is actually the king's snoring). After Luigi maneuvers the plane under the cloud, Mario climbs onto the top wing, and starts working to stop the bad weather with his plumbing gear (noting, "Whether it's a faucet or a rain cloud... a drip's a drip!") Mario is successful in turning off the bed's bad weather, and as the Mushroom People celebrate ("Hooray! We like the king again!"), he states, "there's just one more drip to take care of..."
Some time 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, which dragged the frog tyrant to the middle of the Fungus Forest, and dumped him there. Winking to the reader, Mario tells the king, "that sounds like quite a dream, your drowsiness! Quite a dream!"
