Brace yourselves for the Shock and Awe that is THE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2003 BEST-WORST LIST Yes, it's time to crawl out of our spider hole and cast a queer eye on the path the comic trod in the year just past, a year when Sonic ran not in California for the office of Governor but on the surface of a barren planet in an equally-barren Star Wars ripoff. So let's give a look at Sonic #119-130: BEST COVER STORY: "Home: Part 1: The Blue Blur Returns" by Karl Bollers (S130) When Karl Bollers sprang "Sonic Adventure 2.5" (S124-125) on us and invoked the legendary "Crisis On Infinite Earths" as his inspiration, I don't mind saying I was more than a little apprehensive. "Crisis" after all was the one-year story arc that was supposed to reset the DC Comics continuity after years of neglect and prodigal growth. I found myself wondering just who was going to be dead when Sonic finally got punted back to Mobius. Happily, not only is just about everyone of importance still present and accounted for, but "Returns" features both the return of a credible villain (even if Eggman has turned to Weapons of Mass Destruction instead of roboticizing technology) and a serious injection of Heart into a Sonic story. In a comic that had never exactly been known for displays of emotions, Sonic is on the receiving end of a number of heartfelt welcomes as well as the kind of welcome back kiss from Sally that had landed on the cutting room floor back in the bad old days of "Endgame." And the stories Karl wrote expanding the character of Mina (S120's "She's Gotta Have Him" and the "Hearts Held Hostage" arc of S122-123) demonstrate that after 10 years the comic may finally have found a voice worth listening to. WORST COVER STORY: "Tossed In Space: Part 3: Evo-Solution" by Benny Lee (S127) There was plenty of bad writing in 2003, most of it contained in the "Tossed In Space" story arc (S126-129). There were also a few filler items thrown in that really should have been thrown out instead, most notably the Justin Gabrie ego trip "Better Read Than Dead" (S126). But keeping it to the cover stories, "Evo-Solution" takes the category. I keep coming back to this story as an example of story-telling that fails completely. Sonic, in the course of the "Tossed In Space" arc, lands on a planet where evolution happens around him at lightning speed and Sonic himself is venerated as some sort of deity. If he resembles any kind of deity in this story, it's one of those reclining Buddhas in Southern Asia because he sleeps through most of the history of the planet. This story is alleged to have been inspired by an ep of "Star Trek: Voyager" which I didn't see but which apparently Benny Lee did. Too bad he couldn't have improved upon it. Like "Seinfeld" this story is about nothing; unlike "Seinfeld" it's not even remotely entertaining. BEST BACK STORY: "The Royal Signet" by Romy Chacon (S120) Few characters in the comic have been as ill-served as Queen Alicia, wife of King Max and mother of Sally. After being little more than a soggy prop when Ken Penders introduced her in the Forbidden Zone arc back when the Knuckles comic was alive and kickin', her appearances in the comic since she was poured out of her pickle jug have been less than impressive. Neither Ken Penders nor Karl Bollers seem to have imagined her as a character in her own right: a personality with a sense of self. She was a warm body to use when convenient, nothing more. It finally took Romy Chacon, in "The Royal Signet," to discover what Ken and Karl couldn't. The Queen Alicia in this story is a complete person: poised, articulate, sensitive, a mother to her daughter and a queen to her subjects. And Chacon breathes the same life into Sally and even Rosie, another minor character who for the most part hasn't lived up to her potential. This story was a small miracle of writing and one of the best pieces ever to appear in the history of the series. The magic was reinforced by Art Mawhinney, who did some of his best work for the year for this story. A gem. WORST BACK STORY: "The Last Robian" by Karl Bollers (S123) On Ken Penders' message board this past year, Bob Repas asked why nobody seemed to be very interested in the fact that all of the roboticized Mobians suddenly started showing up deroboticized except for Sonic's father, Jules. To answer that question, one only needs to read "The Last Robian" and then recall the words of Stephen Bach from his book "Final Cut" as he described the disastrous opening night screening of the motion picture "Heaven's Gate": "I was sitting in a room full of people ... and not one of them had been made to care about what was happening on that screen." For whatever reason, Karl Bollers simply abandoned any sense of narrative in a story where four of his five pages were dominated by expository text boxes instead of dialogue balloons. This technique, which made the story feel more like an outline with pictures, simply drained any kind of feeling out of the whole project. Perhaps the story could have been saved somehow. But the short answer to Bob's question is: nobody cared. And writing is supposed to MAKE people care. Please, let's never forget this. BEST STORY ARC: "Hearts Held Hostage" by Karl Bollers (S122-123) Archie Comics had long maintained that the gulf between "action" stories and "character development" stories exists practically on the chromosomal level; it's as fundamental and immutable as the difference between the genders. In this two-part story arc where Nack the Weasel (backed by three nameless cronies) kidnaps Sally and both Sonic and Mina go off to rescue her, Karl Bollers bridges that gulf with ease and elegance. Mina, who has gone through some significant changes herself this past year (see below), finally realizes the depth of the feelings Sonic and Sally have for each other, yet is still willing to take a bullet meant for Sally after realizing she and Sonic will never be an item. By writing in such a way that satisfies both the action and character constituencies, Karl demonstrates that the comic can support a broad- based writing style aimed not just at the alleged core pre-ado boy segment. WORST STORY ARC: "Afterlife" by Ken Penders (S121-124) When compiling this list, I tried to remember anything significant about this story arc wherein Knuckles confronts Aurora, the echidna deity. Know what? I couldn't remember anything, except that Knuckles manages to be delayed by flashbacks for four issues before being kicked back into the continuity. HOW can someone write about the afterlife, even of an imaginary species, and fail to make it even remotely interesting? This is hugely cosmic territory we're talking about, and to fail so completely to do justice to it takes either real skill or else a complete lack of appreciation of the subject. I hadn't expected Dante's "Divine Comedy," but I hadn't expected this pot of overcooked pasta, either. I had always thought Ken Penders was capable of as many hits as misses in his writing, but "Afterlife" demonstrates that it's possible to take even the most compelling topic of all, mortality, and bore readers to tears with it. Perhaps Ken should stick to his beloved action stories and stay away from the cosmic stuff. At the very least, before trying something like this again he should go where Archie will never ever tread and read Dave Hopkins' e-strip "Jack" for a treatment of the afterlife that's strangely compelling when it isn't an eyebrow-raising gut-slam. BEST COVER ART: S130 It's ironic that some of the better covers of 2003 graced the issues that contained the "Tossed In Space" arc, where the stories themselves consisted mostly of warmed-over space opera. Yet these covers were outshone by Spaziante's cover for the beginning of the "Home" arc. Whereas the "Space" covers are well-designed, they're also impersonal in the sense that Sonic is either alone or squared off against someone/something else. Here, though, Sonic gets a reminder of who or what he left behind when he went into space. The cover isn't so much about Sonic's return as it is about Sally's continuing grief that he's gone. Fight scenes such as the cover for S126 are flashy but also easy enough to do; this cover manages to communicate with the readers on a deeper level. WORST COVER ART: S125 Pat Spaziante churned out a half-dozen "magazine-style" covers for the comic (S119- 124), meaning that they were mere character studies, free-standing figures with no background, no context, no reason. There was nothing really special about them, or the cover for S129 which fell back on the same design, but they shone with brilliance when compared with the cover of S125. This is a mess! The visual gimmick of S125 was that every character who ever appeared in the comic would do so again in "Sonic Adventure 2.5 Omega" in only in one panel. The resulting story art, which drew on the talents of a half-dozen artists, was less schizophrenic than the art for "The Last Goodbye," the final installment of Endgame in S50. But Spaz's cover is, if not schizophrenic, definitely claustrophobic. Aside from appearing to be a response to a dare that Spaz couldn't get everybody on the cover, it's just crowded and pointless, a more fitting subject for a poster than for a comic cover. It would also (if you'll pardon me for lapsing into word processing jargon) work better laid out in landscape mode than in portrait. And in a too- crowded cover composition, Spaz's indulging his love affair with Astal finally tipped it in for me as the winner of this category. BEST STORY ART: Stephen Butler, for "Home: Part 1: The Blue Blur Returns" (S130) Art Mawhinney, Stephen Butler, J. Axer and Dawn Best all contributed strong artwork to the comic in 2003, but Butler came back to the comic in a big way. His artwork managed to save the otherwise mediocre "Dust Bunnie" (S119) and he became the Mina master thanks to his work on "Songbird" (S121). But for "The Blue Blur Returns" he pulled out all the stops. In a development foreshadowed by a page of "Dust Bunnie" featuring a zoom in on Bunnie as she cleans the clocks of a horde of roboticized Mobians, Butler's artwork manages to be more cinematic as he uses a page of quick cuts as Sonic wipes out some SWATbots, zooms in on Sonic after the fight, then zooms in on Princess Sally as she mourns the loss of Sonic. This increasingly cinematic style of comic art acknowledges that film and television have swept past comics as visual media that have greater influence on the audience. In an industry that must either advance or slide backwards into oblivion, Steve Butler's work clearly indicates the direction that the art in this book should take. WORST STORY ART: Dave Manak and Jason Jensen, for "Agent Sonic vs. Agent Knuckles" (S127) This was a tough call because overall the artwork in the comic has improved by quantum leaps over past years. Heck, any time someone other than "Many Hands" does the artwork it's an improvement. For this story, however, Dave Manak reminds us of art from the bad old days of the comic in its first years with a broad send-up of Antonio Prohias' long-running "Spy. Vs. Spy" series from Mad Magazine. Yet even this feature might have been forgivable if Jason Jensen, whose coloring work has been of the highest caliber ever since he came to the comic, had decided to do a proper homage to Prohias. Instead of depicting Sonic and Knuckles as black and white (or white and black, your call) in a gray scale world, he resorts to the kind of primary colored eye candy last practiced by Barry Grossman. The result feels less like a parody of Prohias and more like ... well, like a Sonic comic feature TRYING to goof on Prohias and not quite getting it. BEST NEW CHARACTER: Mina the Mongoose For the longest time since her introduction in S76, the character of Mina the Mongoose felt put together on the fly. She started out as another Pretty Victim but with enough moxie to try and rescue an unnamed someone from Robotnik's clutches before being pulled away by Sonic. She was then blessed with Sonic's speed for no discernable reason; this was supposed to give her something in common with Sonic but didn't even work well as comic relief. An attempt to develop a Sonic-Sally-Mina love triangle in 2001 went absolutely nowhere, as did a lot of plot development in that ill-fated year, and it seemed that in the following year with S106's "The Crush" the plug had been pulled on that development. Surprisingly, Karl Bollers managed to find Mina's voice at about the same time she found her own. Drawing on that shop-worn piece of advice from countless after-school specials, "Just be yourself," the readers discovered Mina had a talent for singing, which isn't really showcased very well in a comic book where the quality of her voice exists totally in the reader's imagination. This, more than gratuitous speed or a schoolgirl crush, gave the readers a reason to care about her. And Karl then brought it all together in the Hearts Held Hostage arc where Mina experiences a broken heart before taking a bullet in the back. Now if only some of this Mina magic can rub off on the other characters.... WORST NEW CHARACTER: The Xorda The Tossed In Space arc is instructive in that it studiously avoids trying to gross out the readers with its depictions of extraterrestrial life. The D'Novulans, th Azurites, the Bem and the Blodex all look exotic without resorting to gratuitous ugliness or slipping into the ridiculous. They are characters who, though alien, possess a measure of dignity and even charm. Then there are the Xorda. I haven't seen space creatures of this kind, these full-of- themselves brainazoids, since old horror movies of the 1950s such as "The Brain From Planet Arous." Even Bagbar Breeblebrox and his gang of mercenaries in "Starmada" (S128) show more visual appeal than these monstrosities. Even worse, their failure to eradicate life on what is alleged to be Earth (I'm sorry, I'm still not buying the Mobius-is-a-future-Earth plot point) parallels their failed attempt to eradicate life on Mobius. They're not only ugly, they're losers! Maybe they'll cross paths with Naugus and destroy one another. Or is that too much to hope for? BEST DIALOGUE: Justin: "Yes I would ... considering this is only a five page story and we're already at the end of page 3!" (Better Read Than Dead, S126). OK. I'm a sucker for deconstruction. WORST DIALOGUE: Sonic: "Come with me if you don't want to be killed." An obvious riff on Ahnold's "Come with me if you want to live" from Terminator 2 ("Welcome to the Wheelworld," S129) BEST NEW IDEA: None. Anything good that happened in this comic in 2003, from the development of Mina to the emotional depth and breadth of the Hearts Held Hostage arc, isn't a result of doing anything new. It's simple old-fashioned nuts-and-bolts meat-and-potatoes fast-ball-right-across-home- plate storytelling. Keep up the good work. WORST NEW IDEA: From Source to Saucers The Sonic comic had always had so much going for it in terms of characters and situations, I never thought that it needed to resort to magic and mysticism, what I've called mumbo-jumbo, to affect the continuity. Not that the writers themselves seemed to believe in it very much, either; most of the time, when it appeared it was either gratuitous or unconvincing. The Source of All was one such example: after a promising introduction, it became the vehicle for a couple of stories that felt to this old hippie like warmed-over psychedelia. Even when the mystical was handed to them on a plate, as was the case with the Tikal back story in the first Sonic Adventure adaptation, the writers handled it awkwardly, though not having the game developers play straight with them undoubtedly had a lot to do with it. The good news is, the mumbo-jumbo was kept to a minimum this past year. The bad news is, that's because the writers fell back on space opera instead. Don't get me wrong; I like space opera as much as the next fanboy. I just have to wonder what the heck it's doing in THIS comic. This is seen nowhere more clearly than in the connection between "The Last Robian" and S129's "Welcome To The Wheelworld." How did all those roboticized Mobians revert to normal? Did Sally use Nicole and finally find a key file in Robotnik's computer? Did Uncle Chuck and Rotor finally get it right? Turns out it was the work of space aliens! Or, to be specific, one space alien: Ceneca 9009, who'd been working on shifting orgos to bots and back again. As with any deus ex machina, this development is handed to the characters on a plate without their having to do anything to earn it, which is probably the least satisfying method to resolve a plot point possible. This had been the basis for the Freedom Fighters' campaign against Robotnik: to stop his takeover of the planet and to find a way to restore their family and friends. Now suddenly that's taken off the table. By space aliens! Justin Gabrie apparently forgot that he was editing "Sonic the Hedgehog" and suffered under the delusion that he was editing the Weekly World News. No doubt this is all part of a logical re-fit of the comic continuity, and the re-fit is off to an apparently good start based on the first installment of the "Home" arc. But to facilitate the change using space aliens is more than a little hard to stomach. Let's just hope that we can concentrate on Mobius and its inhabitants for the foreseeable future and that the aliens can be tossed back in space where they belong.