Before we get to the SONIC THE HEDGEHOG BEST/WORST LIST FOR 2007 here's a message from the Writer's Guild of America: " ." Thanks, guys. This was a year of major changes in the comic, both on and off the page. Knothole was destroyed but the characters moved into new digs. And there was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it revolution which eventually installed a new system of government. Off the page, cancer claimed both Archie Comics co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Richard Goldwater, and Sega Licencing representative Robert Leffler. But now it's time to look at the good and the bad, the prime and the subprime, of issues 171-182: BEST COVER STORY: "I Am" (171) This story was one pleasant surprise after another. Shadow not only trashes Eggman and scalps Snively, but he's having an identity crisis. To help him get over it, Neo- Nicole reappears and plays Beatrice to Shadow's Dante as he encounters the long-lost Maria in a virtual world that owes a little too much to the interactive diary of Tom Riddle (the future Lord Voldemort) in "Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets." Even if Shadow doesn't get all his answers, he does get closure with the virtual Maria. And for sheer absurd brilliance there's Snively piloting the Egg Lobster, a giant mechanical crawdad. Ian pulls off a minor miracle. WORST COVER STORY: "Round-Up" (173) What should have been a centerpiece for the comic, Antoine's proposing to Bunnie, was summarily executed in the first panel and only occasionally alluded to afterwards as this talky story plodded forward, rounding up one villain, and one plot point, after another. For all the development in this story, there's nothing to move the reader on an emotional level. This is a case of Ian trying to do too much in the space of one story; it felt as if any promising development was cut short in order to get back to the checklist. Did Ian really have to quick march us through all these plot points? BEST BACK STORY: "High Stakes on the High Sea" (180) Primarily on the strength of the character of Marine, this shortie leads the pack in a dismal year when the back stories were either crowded out by the Eggman Empire arc, ignored in favor of a tour of the buildings of New Knothole, or treated as excuses to bury the reader under tons of exposition. Despite being a mere commercial for the Sonic Adventure Rush game (that title alone deserves a prize for being both wordy and unenlightening), it sets up the game's back story while concealing the unfortunate truth that players will spend their game time looking for parts for Marine's ship. Any story that can make a lame game sound more fun that it is deserves recognition. WORST BACK STORY: "Albion's Shameful Secret" (182) This story gets the nod for what it DOESN'T say. The main purpose of this story is to deliver a heaping helping of exposition concerning Dr. Fin's back story. It's also supposed to make us dislike Dr. Fin for some reason other than his taste in clothes. In this case, we learn that Fin let all that Chaos Energy go to his head that he tried to leech off Knuckles during the latter's Green Period, which then paved the way for Fin's enabling of Eggman to trash Albion and ship its inhabitants off to the Egg Grapes. OK, that sounds as stupid as it reads, which is pretty typical for any comic book. But the rush to certify Fin's villain credentials once more shined off what exactly happened to the populace of Albion and the others done in by the Egg Grapes. Maybe it's just the way comic books handle this kind of holocaust, I don't know, but it's small wonder that Heart is getting harder to find in this title (see Worst New Character below). BEST STORY ARC: Eggman Empire (175-177) The best stories of any medium contain that breath-taking catch where something unexpected and brilliant opens up. That happened here when, after watching Eggman trash Knothole, we see him dishing out seconds to our heroes only to realize that they've moved on up to a new Knothole ... or should that be "knew Knothole"? ... Anyway, it's good to see the gang FINALLY catch a break instead of having to claw their way out from under yet another mountain of poo that the writer shovels on top of them (c.f. Sonic in the Endgame arc). This was a story arc I could actually ENJOY instead of endure. WORST STORY ARC: House of Cards (178-179) You know you're in trouble when a revolution is launched in the very first panel without any set-up whatsoever (aside from Amadeus Prower yammering on about his problem with the Royals every chance he gets) and literally fails in the next. What should have had way more scope and depth is treated like filler. I can understand Ian's two-track storytelling device of coupling political instability in Knothole with the strained relations between Sonic and Tails, but the former was thoroughly mishandled. If Ian had cared as much about the political plot as about the personal, this could have been a decent 4-parter; instead, it's a mediocre 2-parter. I wasn't expecting "War and Peace" but a little more thought and effort could have saved this one. BEST COVER ART: (175) While Tracy Yardley! was responsible for every other cover on the comic, it was left to former cover artist Pat Spaziante to deliver the boldest cover for the year. While not a depiction of anything that actually happened in the story, it certainly grabbed the readers's attention. And the down-lighting of the figures completely tipped it in for me. WORST COVER ART: (173) It's not a BAD cover per se, but it's just so ... generic! It could have appeared on any issue of the comic. BEST STORY ART: "House of Cards: Part 2" (179) Despite the disappointing content, Tracy Yardley! was able to bring off some decent moments in the art for this story. The otherwise routine fight between Sonic and Tails was rescued by the occasional close-up of the characters (even Tails, while he was in emotional overdrive) and the respective Sonic-Tails and Prower-Elias reconciliation scenes were also well-handled. WORST STORY ART: "Worth The Effort" (172) As much as Tania del Rio's artwork helped define Neo- Nicole in the acclaimed "Stargazing" (151), her artistic ability fails her completely this time. Her modeling of Julie-Su and Amy Rose were bad enough, but the same facial expressions kept appearing and reappearing. Pretty sad, really. BEST NEW CHARACTER: Marine, "High Stakes On The High Sea" (180) The introduction of game characters, playable or not, into the comic continuity has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. Some, like Shadow, instantly click with the readers and the writers can make them work. Others, like Rouge or Blaze, just don't seem to translate well; Rouge is of course too sexy for this comic (a fact that didn't stop the "Sonic X" anime from making use of her) and Blaze is too reserved. Being too reserved is NOT a problem for this year's winner in the category: Marine, the non-playable red panda from Sonic Rush Adventure. It's been a long time since a Sonic character stood up off the page the way Marine did in her one and only appearance in "High Stakes On The High Sea." Her in-your-face personality and enthusiasm were in evidence as soon as she entered the story by getting inside Sonic's and Tails's personal space. She may only be able to return as an incidental character, but so long as Ian keeps her personality dialed up she's welcome any time. WORST NEW CHARACTER: Mr. And Mrs. Prower, House of Cards story arc (178-179) Last year, I expressed a certain amount of hope that, with Tails reunited with his family, the comic would be able to stretch a little bit. I especially hoped that we could get a look at Tails's home life and the dynamic of his actually having parents. I should have known better. Despite a story arc that offered loads of opportunities to observe the home life of the Prowers, it never happened. We don't know how Rosemary got any mothering in while writing political manifestos, or what kind of father Amadeus was when he wasn't rambling on and on (and on and on and on) about what was wrong with the monarchy until a revolution broke out for no real reason. That they were cardboard characters going through their respective motions was bad enough. That Ian Flynn totally blew off a chance to add emotional depth to the comic in a context beyond the Sonic-Tails relationship makes it even worse (see above, "Worst Story Arc"). They'll probably disappear from the continuity completely at this point, unless some other use for them can be cobbled together. And that's a shame. BEST DIALOGUE: "I have an Egg Lobster, and I know how to use it!" "I Am" (171) WORST DIALOGUE: "Well, snap my fanny and call me mouth!" "House of Cards: Part 1" (178) These two bits of dialogue have one thing in common: a certain level of absurdity. Sure, I liked Ian's self- referential humor that pretty much strained the fourth wall, but there was something about Snively's piloting the Egg Lobster that just nudged his line into the ridiculous. And I mean that in a GOOD way. The same can NOT be said for Bean's line in "House of Cards: Part 1." It bears enough of a resemblance to an actual expression, or a kind of expression. The best example of what I'm talking about is "Well, paint me yellow and call me a cab!" which I believe appeared in an issue of the comic review "Raw" edited by Art Spiegelman. This actually works very well because "call me a cab" becomes a pun on two levels. Bean's line, unfortunately, is pushed too far into the absurd to keep from falling off the cliff into oblivion. He ends up sounding brain-dead. BEST NEW IDEA: Exposition Machine I've complained for years that certain characters in the comic, from Nate Morgan onward, existed only to provide exposition when needed and then to go away for the duration. This style of storytelling reached its logical conclusion in the hologram of Gala-Na in "Albion's Shameful Secret" (182). Here she was a LITERAL exposition machine, designed to save Locke the trouble of regurgitating back story all over the recently debugged Remington. The Gala-Na Exposition Machine is the neatest solution to the problem, but unfortunately not a long-term one. In the very next issue, Fin was serving up heaps of exposition while being prompted by leading remarks from Scourge such as "Not like I get your plan, or what it's all about..." and "Why go to the trouble of bringing Enerjak back at all?" Whatever the solution, it's not to be found here. But the Exposition Machine is still a neat way to deal with a pesky problem. WORST NEW IDEA: Quickies There have been memorable moments in this comic this past year. Make that, there SHOULD have been memorable moments in this comic this past year. Unfortunately, the rule with Ian Flynn seems to be "The bigger the moment, the quicker we get it over with." That's exactly what happened to Antoine's proposing to Bunnie and Amadeus Prower's attempt at revolution to overthrow the monarchy. Each event was pretty much covered in the opening panel of their respective stories, then dropped in favor of whatever is happening next. There was no build- up, no engagement of the emotions of the readers, no explanation of what was happening. As should be realized by now, this comic is pretty much fool-proof. The readership, whatever its demographics, is not going to abandon the comic unless something REALLY outrageous occurs, something on the order of the Endgame story arc or a general catastrophic decline in the writers' ability to tell a story. As much as Ian Flynn's writing has been an improvement over the weaknesses of Karl Bollers and Ken Penders (outrageous plotting and horrid dialogue, respectively), Flynn seems to be so obsessed with making sure things HAPPEN that he has no sense of rhythm. And it's not as if Ian doesn't know how to focus on Heart when he needs to: the Shadow-Maria encounter of "I Am" demonstrates that. But you can still sense Flynn's impatience at such moments, his desire to get back to having one of the characters hit someone or wreck something. Maybe the problem is that Flynn is just doing his job: writing for a comic book, embodying all the mediocrities that that implies. All these years I've been waiting for the comic writers to break free of the mold, to stretch, to do more with the medium and actually take the writing to the next level. I'm still waiting.