Elect Mario for Man of the Year

Cover art

"Elect Mario for Man of the Year" is a Nintendo Comics System story that was printed only in Adventures of the Super Mario Bros. #6.

Summary

The Mushroom Kingdom is preparing for its annual Man of the Year ceremony, and Mario is the odds-on favorite to win. Toad says that he's making the pasta for the potluck dinner, but Mario volunteers to do it, saying he'll make his family's famous homemade pasta sauce. With that, Toad lends him his Koopamart Kredit card. Mario heads off to the Koopamart, stomping on bunches of Shy Guys on the way. Once at the Koopamart, he passes out pins to the Mushers shopping there while picking up the ingredients for his pasta sauce, including the secret ingredient - C. Mentum's Famous Sticky Juice. Just then, a young Musher named Elliot asks him to get him a Shy Guy mask from a rack he can't reach. Mario does so, but after he walks away, Elliot's mother tosses the mask away and it lands in Mario's shopping cart right as he's heading to the checkout line.

When Mario gets home and starts working on his family's homemade pasta, he finds the Shy Guy mask in his shopping bag and puts it out of the way. Toad comes in to ask Mario how he's doing making the pasta sauce, and Mario keeps his stirring spoon behind his back so as not to reveal the secret ingredient to Toad. However, he does not notice the sticky juice dripping off his spoon and on to the mask behind him. After Toad leaves, Mario goes back to making the pasta sauce and gets some of it on his face. Grabbing the nearby towel that he put the Shy Guy mask on to, Mario tries to clean the sauce off of his face and ends up getting the Shy Guy mask stuck to his face. Struggling to get it off, Mario calls Toad back in for help, but Toad mistakes him for a Shy Guy trying to steal Mario's secret sauce and kicks him out of his own house.

Later, Mario makes his way through World 1 of Subcon, heading for the Man of the Year ceremony, because knows that Luigi, who has an antidote for the sticky juice, is probably already there. In the process, he encounters several Shy Guys, a Hoopster, and a Birdo who are friendly to him because they think he's a fellow Shy Guy. In conversing with the 8-Bits, Mario learns from Birdo that Bowser, his competition for Man of the Year, has been stuffing the ballot boxes with votes for himself.

Mario arrives at the convention center just as the Princess is announcing that he has won the Man of the Year award, but since he's not here, Luigi is accepting the award for him. Mario comes up on stage to ask Luigi about the antidote for the sticky juice, and the Mushers in the audience, seeing him with the Shy Guy mask on, think he has turned evil. They start criticizing Mario as Luigi works on mixing up the antidote. One Musher then asks Luigi who was the runner-up for Man of the Year, and to Luigi's surprise, he finds that it's Bowser. Bowser arrives to make his acceptance speech just as Luigi applies the antidote to Mario's mask, allowing him to pull it off. Mario accuses Bowser of cheating to win the award and then tricks him into admitting he paid a lot to print up fake votes for himself. With Bowser's dirty tactics exposed, Mario wins the award by default. Bowser storms out, unaware that the Shy Guy mask Mario pulled off has now gotten stuck to the back of his shell.