Outside of the games themselves, one of the best things about Street Fighter (and fighting games in general) is the amount of artwork they inspire from talented creators all around the world.
Udon Entertainment offers a great way to feature some of the works in an official capacity, and they’ve got a collection of new books coming that should capture the attention of Capcom fighting game fans — especially with the sexy cover art variants available featuring the leading gals (and guys) across Street Fighter and a number of other titles.
Their long-running Swimsuit Special is making a return for seemingly the 10th straight year, but now Udon has expanded that out to the Street Fighter & Friends Swimsuit special.
That means on top of the world warriors, characters from Darkstalkers, Power Stone, Star Gladiator, Captain Commando Rival Schools and more Capcom fighters and beat ’em ups will be included in the festivities across the 32-page comic.
Artist Reiq had the honor of doing the main cover art featuring Chun-Li, Tiffany and Rouge on the beach in their swimwear while Zangief and Blanka are hanging out in the background.
Cover B was made by Kajin-Man with a sexy Morrigan and Yellow Iris from Battle Circuit embracing Rose in front of the water, so they’re definitely making some deep cuts with the characters included.
Besides the blank cover, the only other one still available for the Swimsuit Special features a very busty take on the Rival Schools nurse Kyoko with art from Ickpot.
All of these are still up for pre-order with a release planned for sometime in July where the first two cover versions are selling for $5 each while the online exclusive Kyoko cover is $20.
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On top of that, Udon is also gearing up to launch a new Street Fighter World Warrior Encyclopedia with the World Tour Edition.
This new book includes 224 pages covering every main and side character updated through Street Fighter 6 with profiles, allegiance charts, interesting facts and obviously a ton of art.
There’s a standard hardcover edition up for pre-order for $50 with cover art from Andrea Cofrancesco featuring all the leading ladies from SF6 (plus Sakura) though hardcore fans will probably be looking at a different version.
The deluxe hardcover is up for pre-order as well with an alternate cover art from Cofrancesco featuring a sexy Cammy laying on the beach next to Juri and Kimberly, and that’s certainly not all.
Also included is a double-sided poster and a special metal bill of 100 Bison Dollars that’s really cool too.
The new encyclopedia is scheduled to release sometime in November 2024.
Finally for an actual comic book, the first issue of Street Fighter Masters: Lily is coming in September with a special swimsuit cover edition coming from one of our favorite artists in Quasimodox for $20 plus a limited golden version for $50 that’ll only have 250 copies produced.
There will be a handful of other cover variants for the Lily book available as well.
More information about their current and upcoming releases can be found on Udon’s official website.
