I've been a fan of user cbishop's series of blog posts, titled "Would U Buy It," where he proposes ideas for TPB's of various little-known story arcs in various comic books. Inspired by them, I decided to do a special one, this being for a DVD. BUT, since this website is dedicated to the comics medium, the good thing is, three of the TV shows I'll be mentioning has had a comic! So without further ado.....

We all have DVD collections we'd like to see. Here's one of mine:

Part	Series	Episode Title Original Airdate Warrior King's Role	The Warrior King in Each Series
1	Street Fighter: TAS	"The Warrior King" November 16th, 1996 Central
2	The Savage Dragon	"Endgame" November 16th, 1996 Central
3	MK: Defenders of the Realm	"Resurrection" November 16th, 1996 Cameo
4	Wing Commander Academy	"Recreation" November 16th, 1996 Central

The 90's, while a mostly-terrible decade for comic books, was a good decade for both comic book television shows AND video games. More non-DC or Marvel comics got their chance to hit it big with a larger audience with many TV shows, and one of these four you see here is an example of that. Unfortunately, the majority of those shows (save for the 1997 Spawn cartoon, which lasted 3 seasons on HBO) were short-lived, between 13 and 26 episodes each. The same was true for most video-game based shows - the only one that lasted longer being Captain N: The Game Master. These same four shows above were brought together on the USA network as part of their Action Extreme Team lineup for Saturday mornings. Yeah, that's right, these shows:

What many people don't know, is that on one day, all four had a crossover, and while it did not depict the characters meeting one another, it did feature an overarching story that connected each show. That story centered around a mysterious and noble character called the Warrior King, voiced by Star Trek: The Next Generation's Michael Dorn (aka Worf). The crossover began in Street Fighter, where we're introduced to the king as his world is under attack by rogue wizards. His mystic vizier tells him that he must leave with his kingdom's Orb of Power, the very artifact that keeps their kingdom alive. When a stray magical beam knocks the Orb out of his hand and into the portal the vizier created, the king goes in after it, facilitating the crossover. The Orb would land in each show's respective universe, where its power would vary, depending on both the universe and those who wielded it:

• In the Street Fighter universe, the Orb falls into the hands of M. Bison, who uses it to hold the world hostage with its power to control the elements.
• In the Savage Dragon universe, the Orb falls into the hands of Dragon's foe The Fiend, who uses it to increase his size and own power by absorbing those filled with great hatred.
• In the Mortal Kombat: DOTR universe, Shao Khan gives it to the resurrected Shang Tsung, who uses its elemental control to drain Raiden's power.
• In the Wing Commander universe, it turns the desert planet Oasis into a paradise.

After that last episode, the Warrior King was never seen again. The strangest thing about this crossover was that there was absolutely no promotion for it whatsoever, not in the respective shows' bumpers or advertisements. A weirder thing was that all the episodes were aired out of order of their respective runs so that this entire (subtle) crossover could be seen in chronological order.

While two of the episodes are in fact on DVD (the Street Fighter one on the second Region 1 box set and the Mortal Kombat one on the complete series Region 2 DVD), I thought that, if the respective license holders could put their differences aside, a standalone DVD of this entire crossover would be a fun novelty. Four episodes of four different shows (considered bad by most fans of each respective franchise), based on four different properties telling a single, interconnected story, all featuring Michael Dorn voicing the equivalent of a watered-down, Saturday morning cartoon Conan the Barbarian. I would title this DVD just "Saga of the Warrior King", but what with brand recognition and all that, it would have to be something along the lines of "Street Fighter/Savage Dragon/Mortal Kombat/Wing Commander: Saga of the Warrior King". I imagine this would be a great addition to say, the bargain DVD section of Target or the like.

All but one episode (the Wing Commander episode) are available to watch on Youtube (this playlist).

For more commentary on this unknown crossover, visit these two sites:

• Countergeek: Who is the Warrior King?.
• WCNews: Saga of the Warrior King.

So, let me hear it from you, Viners--in the words of cbishop, would you buy it?.

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