Street Fighter

I don't have a favorite guest artist, which is a good thing for everyone else. This strip was done by our boy Dadicus. He also co-wrote it. Boo-yah. Check out more of his work on his deviantArt page.
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There was a time in my life when I wanted to play Street Fighter professionally. Hell, there was a time in my life when I basically did play it professionally. I was twelve. On weekends I’d catch a ride about twenty minutes out of town, across the Georgia border to a nearby junior college (it sounds so exotic!) and I would play Street Figher II for hours. They had a small arcade in the back of a small variety store on campus and I set up shop with my cap turned backwards, a pocket full of quarters and a Crystal Pepsi in hand. My hook was I let my opponent choose my character for me. If there was a character they were no good with, they assumed that guy sucked and they could handicap me so they’d bet more. Almost everyone picked Dhalsim for me. But Dhalsim can fucking bring it.

I’d wager anywhere from a quarter to a couple of dollars and the college kids ate that shit up. “Yeah, sure, kid, I’ll play. But you don’t stand a chance because I’m in college.”

I did, in fact, stand a chance.

It wasn’t the kind of cash on which a body could retire, but it kept me in comics and soda for a summer. Strangely this piece of my history has never once gotten me laid.

But I look back at that time and what I see is a row of quarters like talismans, like horcruxes, a small piece of a warrior's soul marking his place, marking his time to make his stand, to take his shot. To be. I see those quarters lined up against the cab stretching the length of the screen and I see a little kid with way too much confidence and the entire world stretched out before him. I see a ballsy little kid who can be anything. And, a half a lifetime later, I see that not much has changed.

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