But the point about the Mushroom Kingdom is that it's not JUST the Mushroom Kingdom, he's conquered entire continents of land in every game outside the Kingdom borders. As a surprise attack. It wasn't just a gradual and effortless military push. Everything happens just *snaps* like that.
Actually, because the games never address it, the comics suggest that he has taken over parts of the world as broken as it may have been for the last
entierly too long and made the main book a slong, and now due to archies reactionsbto it's legal issues...strait up uselesss 3 years I think. So in one version he does have military might...but I personally dont like that.
My favorite version of the guy is the now...kind of incompitent. Like he's smart and a coward like, I like that. But how I view the character is oddly enough the underdog. He's someguy who lives in a ship in the sky because he cant take much over besides some occasional place that gets destroyed. And never seen again.
See Mario's plight is he's the everyman trying to save the day. To a degree that's what sonic was suppoused to be, but sonic characters have evovled over time to the degree where they are god like, its him despite being the evil genious is the underdog. When I see bowser I go, will he win? I know he wont, but that's what conveyed. When I see eggman? I go good luck. Because he's out of his league, eggman is still often to this day not the main badguy of his games, hes just trying to make an evil buck. Just trying to do it, live his life...of evil.
And thats why I love the character. See bowser is supposed to be threating but he gets rocked all the time. But eggmans kind of incompetent and coward so him getting rocked works with his gimmic. Bowser is vegeta, someone you wanna see do something cool, but never really does. Eggman is hurcule, you thought that shit on his shoe mad him look bad, it actually made him stronger it powers up eggmans gimic. And he knows that, so at least in game he is not affraid to lie and coward his way to almost victory. He's an honest liar.
And the biggest contributions to this to his amazing characterization, oddly enough is Knuckles and Shadow. You would think its sonic, but his interactions with sonic even with new kind of sassy sonic are still very much wrote and one note. You know the progression a million miles away. Its why I appreciate sonic boom on some level including different characters to allow for such interesting interaction. And why I advocate for their playable inclusion in main line titles again. They make eggman more interesting, and obfuscate the fact sonic isnt that interesting at all
But I'm rambling a bit. Why are knuckles and shadow interesting in this regard, they are two things in the world eggman doesnt wanna deal with by himself because he sees them as a net loss for himself. So he comes up with other ways to deal with or...in shadows case not deal with the problem. This makes eggy endearing because now hes human. When folks do a bad guy of this type they are ussually the biggest baddest type dudes. They are the end boss but the reason like eggman and dedede, they are ussually a chucklefuck compared to the extradimensional horror that is the actuall problem. That allows him to be a character, admittedly bowser gets this inbthe rpg games but those character representations are largely non representative of the same characters in the main line, also paper mario thanks to who thanks to whoever has become the "bowser is the ultimate end boss" type thing.
To get into specifics in the case of knuckles he strait up lies and cheats. He dont wanna deal with knuckles, knuckles will mess him up. And he has most powerful emerald, he wants that and doesnt wanna deal with the guy, so how does he figure that out? He lies and cheats uses his gullibility gets knuckles to shatter the emerald himself so the quest to reunite them conviently ends on your ship. It shows he's not a mindless tyrant. He knows that you cant actually handle every problem. On the opposite end of bowsers " im going to rule everything mentality.
In shadow's case, its even more intersting, shadow isnt that gullible and exceedingly thourough. Thats the guy who when offered to oppertunity to actually learn more about himself chose no so hard he murdered his entire family of the course of a few days, because that's the level "im not fucking around" that guy is. So how deal with this problem, he doesnt he often avoids shadow entierly and if shadow comes across him eggman tries to ask hom for help and actually help him in return because trickery might get him killed as he learned. And he respects him, eggman respects things. Bowser does not. Eggman has unique dynamics...bowser does not. Even when bowser lost his memory bowser gonna bowser, and while that in itself is kind of endearing, I value eggmans pseudo ability to adapt more.
Sonic runners oddly enough has a good reprisentation of the insurmountable odds eggman has against him.
So my point is Eggman is not as cool as a dinosaur that shoots fire, thats why he's cooler than a dinosaur that shoots fire.