Sonic #114 [Nov 2002]
     Spaz/Ribiero/J. Ray cover: This time Archie Comics gives
special props to artist Drew Struzan, who did the poster art for
"Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones."  He's done way more than
that; his poster credits include such diverse works as "An
American Tail," "Cannonball Run," "Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone," and the second and third Indiana Jones movies. 
You can see them at (where else?) www.drewstruzan.com
     In last month's Freditorial, Justin said that Pat Spaziante
was happy to get this assignment.  I should think so; there have
been times in the past when Spaz has had to work up a cover with
no idea whatsoever as to the story since the deadlines were so
tight.  I think Sonic #95 was one such cover.  So what we have
here is a basic plug-and-play layout based on Struzan's poster
for the film, with Sonic in for Anakin Skywalker, Sally as Queen
Amidala, Tails as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Dimitri as Yoda, Mammoth Mogul
as Jango Fett, Knuckles in for a battle scene, and Amy Rose as
the team of C-3PO and R2-D2.
     When I got the issue in the mail my gaze focused upon Amy
Rose, standing there with that goofy pose and that goofy smile. 
My first impression was that she was all wrong for the cover. 
But I've had time to think and have reconsidered; now I think
she's the best thing on the cover!
     The cover, in fact, is an apt metaphor for what's happened
to the whole Star Wars franchise lately.  The cover is all
earnestness and solemnity, like the story line for the film. 
It's also beautifully executed, which parallels Lucas's
preoccupation with the digital look of the picture.  But the Amy
Rose character reminds me that somewhere along the way all the
fun drained out of the series and was replaced by excitement:
battle scenes and chases and races.  The bot banter between 3PO
and R2 ("Don't get technical with me!") was great stuff.  The
small touches, such as Han Solo banging on the Millennial Falcon
to get it to cooperate, reminded us that we're supposed to be
ENJOYING ourselves, people!  Unfortunately, the space opera has
become positively Wagnerian in size and scope, and that's not
necessarily a good thing.
     I mention this because I was afraid for a while that the
comic was headed down the same path.  Sonic had become too
earnest, his attitude having dropped from him like a shed quill. 
Sally was consigned to the background with her parents. 
Potentially interesting characters went underutilized while other
characters were misused.  There seemed to be more interest in how
the book looked than whether the stories inside were any good. 
Things HAVE started looking up and I think that the book is in
the process of rebuilding, though last month's wan adaptation of
"Cry of the Wolf" should serve as a caution that Archie can slip
back into the mediocrity of days gone by at any moment.  Good
looking cover, though.

     Great J. Axer frontispiece that pretty much gives away the
plot.

     "Twice Told Tails"
     Story: Benny Lee; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Andrew Pepoy and Pam
Eklund; Color: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell;
Editor: J. F. Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-
in-Chief: Richard Goldwater.
     Pausing before a cave as storm clouds gather, Tails peers
into the blackness only to see two red eyes looking back at him. 
He freaks, and as a result he wakes from the recurring nightmare
he's been having.  This wakes up Sonic and brings the grown-ups,
Sonic's parents and Uncle Chuck, into the room.  Bernie suggests
professional intervention but they'll have to settle for Dr.
Quack.  Sonic tries to reassure Tails but then drops off to
sleep.  Waking up a few minutes later, he discovers that Tails
has flown the coop, literally: he's not only revved up his tails
but also the Tornado, Tails's biplane.  Tails takes off with
Sonic in pursuit.
     Sonic catches up with Tails after he lands at what Tails
feels to be the cave he's been dreaming about.  They enter, and
soon Tails is beside himself ... or, at least, standing in front
of a caped version of himself floating inside a transparent
sphere.  They also have company: Mammoth Mogul.
     Let's bring the newbies up to speed: in "Don't Let The
Island Hit You On The Way Down" (Mecha Madness Special), the
Chaotix first met M.M., a long-lived pachyderm from Mobian
prehistory who was one of the first to encounter a Chaos emerald. 
After goofing off for a couple millennia, he tried to take over
things with a band of ineffectual villains.  I say "ineffectual"
because they and Mammoth Mogul were easily repulsed by the
Chaotix, despite M.M.'s assertion that his being exposed to the
Chaos emerald gave him "limitless power."  I guess even limitless
power has its limits.  He laid low until the "Battle Royal"
special during which he contrived to get possession of the Sword
of Acorns, thus jeopardizing King Max's recovery, or at least
postponing it until "Return of the King."  He also put in an
appearance in the Dark Vengeance arc (Knuckles 7-9), where he
drained the Chaos energy out of Enerjak and left him as plain old
Dimitri.
     His next big appearance was in Kent Taylor's "Immortality is
Infinite..." (S56).  The character's bad traits came to the
forefront: he was long-winded, over-written and frankly something
of a bore.  He also, thanks to John Hebert's artwork, shed his 3-
piece suit at some point and revealed that notwithstanding his
wool he also has a taste for leather.  And he revealed that his
limitless power derived from hunks of Chaos emerald embedded in
his chest.  Drawing on this power, he slaps everybody around,
including the trio of Super Sonic, Hyper Knuckles, and Turbo
Tails.  He's finally defeated by Locke and Sabre doing ...
something or other ... and encasing him inside the Master Emerald
in what was one of the most confused and confusing story endings
outside of Endgame.
     The end?  Hardly.  In Sonic 79's "The Chaos Factor" Robotnik
whangs the Master Emerald with a sledgehammer, all part of the
fun 'n' games of the Sonic Adventure adaptation arc.  While that
gave Robotnik something with which to animate Chaos, it also
unleashed Mammoth Mogul who, true to form, waited for almost
THREE YEARS to put in another appearance in the comic!
     And, to add one more layer to the story and to bring in one
of the most misbegotten plot points ever to saddle the comic, it
was M.M. who managed to switch the Tails who was snagged by
Athair in S94's "New Order" with a "sentient duplicate to serve
as a simulacrum."  I TOLD you his dialogue was overwritten, a
sentiment Sonic shares as well: "Are you trying to get into
college or something?"  The existence of the double, however, did
not come to light until the Chosen One story arc (S95-97), and
that development almost fatally soured me on the comic.  But be
patient; we're about to put that particular unpleasantness behind
us.
     Sonic tries to attack M.M. while pseudo-Tails (for want of a
better handle) starts having an identity crisis.  P-T snaps out
of it soon enough and attacks M.M. from behind, which allows
Sonic to get some licks in himself.  With the odds now two
against one, M.M. decides that this is a good time to leave. 
Like I said, even limitless power has its limits.
     Yet the story isn't over yet.  In a surprising bit of pathos
(for this comic, anyway), the faux Tails disappears as the "real"
Tails emerges from his bubble.  And with a poorly-drawn tear in
his eye, Sonic is reunited with Tails.
     HEAD: Not bad for 11 pages.  Of course there are plenty of
plot holes available for those who want to play The Game, as
science fiction writer Ben Bova calls it.  The Game is when SF
fans spot flaws in a story, at which point "they're all over you
like a pack of wolves," to quote Mr. Bova.  Hey, look at it this
way: we keep the writers on their toes.
     Of course a major plot hole Lee doesn't bring up is the
seamless way pseudo-Tails has functioned in the comic since his
"introduction" by M.M.  Usually it doesn't work out that way.  In
the SatAM ep "Sonic and Sally" it was Tails, in fact, who first
began to suspect that "Sally" was a robot double planted by
Robotnik because of the way she misread a story to him; Sonic
himself tumbled to the fact when she messed up the Freedom
Fighter Handshake.  For that matter, I remember an ancient "Jonny
Quest" ep where a couple small things, like his style of kissing,
gave away a phony Race Bannon.  This situation can be called "The
Devil's In The Details."  There's been nothing like that in the
comic until now; pseudo-Tails has functioned flawlessly, perhaps
because the other writers didn't know that there had been a
switcheroo.
     As mentioned above, this story was a result of Ken Penders's
"Chosen One" story arc.  Ken had to take a chainsaw to his
original "Chosen One" story line, which at 66 pages had been
planned for the Knuckles book but which wound up severely
abbreviated to 18 pages in order to appear in the Sonic comic. 
The other writers have carried on as if pseudo-Tails WERE Tails,
with nothing to hint that there was a problem.  But since Ken
went public with the Tails-isn't-Tails plot point, it had to get
dealt with one way or another.  This is the way.
     Surprisingly, it works fairly well, especially considering
the corner Benny Lee found himself in.  He's never written for
M.M. before and so the character still comes off as a windy bore,
but it looks like that's the characterization we're stuck with.
     Yet another plot hole, due most likely to the page length
limit, is M.M.'s retreat when set upon by both Sonic and Tails. 
He shows the same lack of backbone he did in his first
appearance.  While he's done some impressive stuff since then,
it's as if he STILL doesn't know how to deal with this limitless
power he's suppose to possess (more on that later).
     And Mammoth Mogul has been keeping Turbo-Tails prisoner ...
why exactly?  To "enable my return to prominence."  OK, thank
you, that was very helpful.  NOT!!
     Finally, I have a problem with the disappearance of pseudo-
Tails.  Sure it provided an element of pathos, as did the similar
disintegration of Bunny, the mutant Powerpuff Girl, in the
episode "Twisted Sister."  Did P-T have some sense that he was
going to disappear?  Did Mammoth Mogul have anything to do with
it?  Benny Lee gives no clue as to how or why this happened but,
frankly, our relief at resolving this whole thing is so great
that we may not care.
     The whole point of this story, after all, is to undo S97's
"To The Brink," where the Tails-isn't-Tails plot point was first
floated.  That story, in its own perverse way, made this story
possible.  We now have only one Tails to deal with, and one major
plot hole has been closed.  I wonder if any of the writing
courses Benny Lee took covered this kind of damage control. 
While it isn't perfect, it's a far cry from the disaster that the
comic became after "To The Brink."  Head Score: 7.
     EYE: The best that can be said for Ron Lim's artwork here is
that he resists the temptation to copy Hebert's depiction of
Mammoth Mogul as someone looking like he'd wandered off the set
of a gladiator movie.  His artwork hasn't really improved for
having been on hiatus for two issues while we've been treated to
the work of Art Mawhinney and Many Hands.  Tails STILL looks too
doggy and Sonic's arms are too skinny.  Lim's work may look good
when compared with that of Many Hands, but he's not even close to
being in the same league as Mawhinney.  Eye Score: 5.
     HEART: The party line that has been consistently put forward
by Archie Management was that Sonic was a pre-ado boy's comic and
that meant that Sonic would never, ever, under any circumstances,
well, OK, yeah, he can go ahead and cry.  Benny Lee is to be
congratulated for breaking through the barrier that kept the
comic emotionally arid, but I also think that we fans who have
complained long and loud about the emotional poverty of the
characters can take a moment to congratulate ourselves.  If any
moment in the history of the comic warranted a decision to
finally turn on the water works, even more than the conclusion of
Endgame, it's this one where Sonic gets emotionally whipsawed by
watching Tails disappear and then come back to him.
     It remains to be seen, of course, whether there'll be any
follow-through on this development.  I don't expect it to be a
regular feature of the book, but it certainly lets some fresh air
into a comic that almost suffocated last year.  But the fans can
still rejoice because, even if the Management puts their game
face back on and goes into serious denial, this story puts them
on record as giving Sonic a heart.  Heart Score: 10, and let's
enjoy it while it lasts.

     "Ultimate Power: Part 1"
     Story: Ken Penders; Art: Ken Penders (layouts) and Dawn Best
(penciling); Ink: Ken Penders; Color: Josh Ray; Lettering: Vickie
Williams; Editor: Justin Gabrie.
     Given the emotional complexity of Knuckles's character, I'm
not surprised to see that he's got a lot of baggage.  Oh, my
mistake, the baggage belongs to Simon and Floren-Ca, Julie-Su's
adoptive parents, who are being moved into posh digs in the city. 
Seems there are perks that come with being a Guardian, and it
doesn't hurt that Knuckles DID bring everybody back from wherever
Dimitri had sent them earlier.  
     Speaking of Dimitri, after a well-placed caption box informs
us of his prognosis, we eavesdrop on a conversation between
Dimitri and Lien-Da.  Dimitri seems to be betting his life,
literally, on Knuckles Doing The Right Thing, whatever that turns
out to be, and he makes Lien-Da promise to continue his policies
if he cashes in his chips.  She does so in a nicely laid-out
extreme close-up sequence.  I wonder if making a promise with
your eyes closed is an echidna thing that means it doesn't count,
like crossing your fingers?
     Back for a quick guest shot, M.M. discovers the answer to
the question I posed a while back: Did the dingoes make it back
to the Island as well?  Yes they did, and one of them managed to
keep his taxi medallion in one piece.  The cabbie, presumably our
hairy old friend ... I mean our old friend, Harry ... whisks M.M.
to wherever the Dark Legion has set up shop these days.
     As Julie-Su and Knuckles leave the apartment building, they
run into the Chaotix.  Right away, Knux and Julie-Su get on
Vector's bad side, so Julie-Su spells out the plot for his
benefit and ours.  She also unceremoniously cleans the croc's
clock for him.  Now THAT'S the Julie-Su we've come to know and
love!
     HEAD: It's been a while since the Knuckles plot was in play,
long enough in fact for me to forget that Simon and Floren-Ca had
something to do with the story.  Never mind; the story moves well
and it was kinda sweet to see Julie-Su's character expanded a
little bit by showing some filial interest in the two oldsters. 
Then she sealed the deal by putting Vector in his place.  Gotta
love it.
     Lien-Da, in contrast, seems to show the same kind of concern
for Dimitri that a buzzard shows for something that isn't dying
fast enough to suit it.  She's still more cool than cold, but did
anyone else get the impression that she's got her own game plan
going?
     OK, I know that Mammoth Mogul's appearance here was largely
strategic in that it was meant to move the plot along and to
bring the readers up to speed.  I also know that any broad use of
his limitless power might have come off as a mega plot cheat. 
Still, I couldn't help asking myself the question Captain Kirk
asked in Star Trek V: "What does God need with a starship?"  Or a
taxicab?
     All told, though, Ken's latest story is off to a great
start.  The characters are in place and they've been neatly
defined.  More importantly, Julie-Su actually gets to do more
than question Knuckles's judgment, which is pretty much what she
was limited to doing in S100's "Welcome To The Dark Side."  And
"welcome" is definitely the word that applied here.  Head Score:
10.
     EYE: After a hiatus Dawn Best is back.  While her work lacks
the high detail of J. Axer's (see below), it's great in its own
open way.  It's uncluttered and friendly and still, like Julie-Su
in the next-to-last panel, gets the point across.  Her grasp of
gesture is as true as ever, even in the case of the back-lit
Lien-Da of page [3] panel 2.  Eye Score: 10.
     HEART: There are essentially four vignettes spread over six
pages.  The first, showing the interaction between Julie-Su, her
folks and Knuckles, is really kinda sweet.  While the interlude
featuring Dimitri and Lien-Da is of another flavor entirely, the
mood that it sets is also flawless.  And while the M.M. interlude
was your basic plot mechanism, the reunion of the Chaotix with
Knuckles and Julie-Su was perfect with Julie-Su reasserting her
place in the group.  Those vignettes gave you a feel for who the
characters are when they aren't speaking Ken Penders's dialogue. 
That's the kind of character enrichment that the comic has been
avoiding for far too long.  Let's hope this is a trend.  Heart
Score: 10.

     "Young At Heart"
     Story: Karl Bollers; Art: J. Axer; Color: Josh and Aimee
Ray; Ink and Letterer: Conor Tomas (debut); Editor: J. F. Gabrie
     Well, so far in this issue we've put the Tails-isn't-Tails
plot point to sleep, re-introduced Mammoth Mogul, and shifted the
action of the Knuckles story back to the Floating Island.  What
next?  How about blowing the dust off the Knothole High School
plot point, last heard from over a year and a half ago in S96's
"The Messenger"?
     We get a great opening panel of the Freedom Fighters and Amy
Rose walking through the forest, with Tails looking apprehensive
and Amy Rose looking angry.  Turns out that school's back in, and
Tails and Amy Rose are being escorted to class.  Sally, with
impeccable logic, explains that without Robotnik to act as a plot
point, the kids have to attend classes.  Lest Amy Rose think this
totally unfair, Sally explains that even though the Freedom
Fighters are on-call, that doesn't mean they don't train in their
own unspecified way.
     Tails and Amy are dropped off at "Knothole High School."  My
problem with that was that Amy Rose is 12 (according to S80's "If
Wishes Were Acorns...") and Tails is 10.  That would make them
candidates for middle school rather than high school.  Maybe
they're sharing space in the building, I don't know, because they
sure don't get lumped in with the freshmen; instead, much to Amy
Rose's chagrin, she's "stuck with the babies" and with a teacher
who looks like he climbed down out of the same family tree that
produced the late, unlamented Warlord Kodos.  The class itself is
pretty basic stuff: answer the teacher's questions, make faces at
the person next to you, get stuck with detention with a couple
fanboys (Jonathan (WB) Gray and Artie, to be specific).  You
know, the usual.
     HEAD: This is a character study rather than a story per se:
an observation of Tails and Amy Rose (especially Amy Rose) in a
school environment.  She does get a workout during this sequence:
disgruntled at having to go to school at all, hopeful that she
can hang with kids her own age, down again when she's stuck with
the lower grades.  It made me think of a Disney Channel TV series
about a junior high student, and no I don't mean "Doug," whom I
consider to be a Nicktoon who got traded.  I'm thinking more
like:

     Amy Rose, Amy Rose
     Thinks that Sonic's really cool
     Amy Rose, Amy Rose
     Moved to Knothole
     Amy Rose, she and Tails
     Have to go to middle school
     That's the way that it goes, Amy Rose!

     But for that to happen, the story would have to have been
ABOUT something, or at least something other than Amy and Tails
catching detention.  Not that there aren't possibilities: having
Hope integrate the class has major potential!  But the book
needed a dose of cute and this did just fine.  Now if only
someone had thought to re-do Sally's word balloon on page [2]
panel 2 to make that parenthetical phrase less awkward.  Head
Score: 9.
     EYE: In addition to Axer's usual excellent work (his Bunnie
on page [1] looks really adorable), he does something neat on
page [5], filling in some of the spaces between the panels with
the usual school desk detritus: math papers, graphs, essays,
doodles, something written in Japanese hiragana script.  Hey, Bel
Kaufman did an entire novel relying on letters, interschool
memos, homework papers, excuse slips and so forth (Up The Down
Staircase).  And Amy Rose herself looks really cute on page [5],
just before she starts making faces at Tails.  Great stuff.  Eye
Score: 10.
     HEART: You want to know why Tails and Amy Rose were shunted
off to school instead of getting to hang with the other Freedom
Fighters?  Take a look at how they act in a classroom.
     It seems that one of the hardest things for the writers to
get a handle on is the fact that Sonic, Sally and most of the
rest of the group are still teenagers.  That, after all, is one
of the hooks that keeps the teen portion of the fan base coming
back.  And Amy Rose and Tails are pre-teens.  You wouldn't know
it from some of the dialogue in past issues, though.  Mike
Gallagher's script for "Growing Pains: Part 2" (S29) gave Tails
dialogue that was not only beyond Tails's years but beyond
belief.  He also provided overwritten lines for the young Sally
and Knuckles in "My Secret Guardian" (SSS9).  In all fairness,
though, Tails got treated better in the course of his own
miniseries; he'd struck out on his own in the Sea Fox and spent
his time inventing a comic book persona for himself because he
resented being treated like a kid.  Mike Gallagher got that
exactly right.  Here, Karl doesn't have to ape Mike's previous
work; all he has to do is SHOW us how much of a kid Tails still
is.  On that level, this story works.
     If I have any reservation, it's that all the acting-out in
class comes perilously close to looking like a Meet Cute.  OK, so
it's not in the same league as Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, or
even George Bailey and Mary Hatch in "It's A Wonderful Life." 
Still, it'll be interesting to see if somebody in Mamaroneck
actually thinks this pairing has potential.  Heart Score: 10.

     Fan Art: Sara Jean Dembowski, from my old home town of
Berwyn, Illinois, sends in a drawing of the three points in the
Huge Misunderstanding triangle; Jared Li does a drawing of Sonic
in the style of all those turkeys that schoolchildren draw by
tracing their fingers; Jessica Bourne sends in a drawing with yet
ANOTHER fan character: Tails's sister, Faith; and Brendan Bogley
most definitely remembers Power Rings.

     Off-Panel: Ribiero misses a glorious chance to do an homage
to John Belushi as Bluto in "Animal House" by not having Sonic
scrunch Aluminum-Sonic into the shape and size of a beer can
which Sonic can then flatten against his forehead.  As it is, one
of the best tributes has to remain Worf's re-enactment of a scene
from the toga party in the course of the ST:TNG ep, "Q-pid": 
"Sorry."
     This Justin: Nice of J. Fred to acknowledge SatAM's debt to
the Star Wars franchise.  When he neglected to mention, though,
was that their Robotnik was closer to Darth Vader than the Eggman
of the video games or the buffoon Robotnik on "Adventures of...." 
who was the Robotnik of choice for the comic in the early days of
Gallagher/Manak.  What will the next incarnation of Robotnik be
like?  Stay tuned.
     As Justin's list demonstrates, resemblances between the
Sonicverse and the Star Wars franchise tend to break down pretty
fast.  Antoine as 3PO?  Antoine as an anticipation of Jar Jar
Binks, maybe, but....  And that's good; if there were too close
of a correlation you'd end up with the same kind of joke
crossover you had with "Freedom Fighters of the Galaxy" (S103-
104).  
     Justin didn't say when he took over Sonic; most likely it
was after Scott Fulop departed the office around issue #36 or so. 
As someone who's able to remember the comic from that far back, I
have to say that it didn't need to lean on Star Wars to succeed. 
That's because the writers, in their own way, saw the characters
as distinct and well-rounded personalities in their own right,
and not as stand-ins for the creations of George Lucas.
     THAT, more than the resemblance of the situation of Freedom
Fighters vs. Robotnik to the Star Wars franchise, is what gave
the series its identity, its voice.  George Elrick, in the
"Science Fiction Handbook for Readers and Writers," notes that in
the first film of the series Carrie Fisher couldn't develop the
character of Princess Leia "for the simple reason that the
character had no depth."  That was never true with the SatAM
Princess Sally.  She had plenty of chances to be developed, most
especially when she was paired off with Sonic and the two
personality styles could clash.  By "Return of the Jedi" the
character of Leia was more developed, despite the fact that at
times she could still be little more than set-dressing, as she
was in the scene with Jaba the Hutt where she's wearing that
Boris Vallejo slave girl outfit.
     And the comic has already been in danger of going too far
down the Star Wars path, turning it into a path to destruction. 
Remember, Ken Penders had originally envisioned turning Sonic
into a stereotypical comic book loner-on-a-quest, after the
manner of Luke Skywalker seeking to apprentice himself to Yoda. 
But the management and creatives have by now learned the lesson
that Sonic functions very poorly in a vacuum.  He needs his li'l
bro Tails; if he didn't, "Twice Told Tails" would have been
meaningless.  Sonic also needs Sally; otherwise, why even bring
up the Huge Misunderstanding Triangle?  And he needs the other
Freedom Fighters; if he didn't, he and Tails would still be
collecting cast members like souvenirs on the ill-fated Round-
The-World-Tour.  In short, the Sonicverse is perfect as it is, or
was as the case may be, and Management has finally come to see
this as they inch toward reintroducing Robotnik and even Snively
or Robo-sniv or whatever he is at the moment into the continuity. 
Coincidental comparisons between the Sonicverse and Lucas's
oeuvre are best left to others; those responsible for creating
the comic are better off dealing with the Sonicverse and its
inhabitants as is and learning how to function within it rather
than trying to turn Mobius into Tattoine and Knothole into
Riverdale.
     Sonic-Grams: Isiah Otten lets JFG know that "it started to
seem that the older comics were more interesting."  I think
management finally got the message; and it only took a few years
of the fans beating them over the head to get the message across. 
While Isiah clocks in at the high end of the pre-ado demographic,
Celene Night has been a fan for 10 years which makes her a
hardcore.  JG doesn't comment on her observation that Ron Lim's
artwork looks "rushed."  Brendan West checks in from Hamilton,
New Zealand.  You know, we've had letters recently from New
Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, and Malaysia, so what does
THAT tell you about the distribution system that the creatives
keep ragging on?  That it functions best in the Eastern
Hemisphere?  As for the point Brendan brings up, I nurture the
hope that the "robotic touch" got neutralized when Station Square
bombed Robotropolis, but that's just me.  And Ken Charters asks
why Knuckles is green "all of a sudden."  Boy he HAS been away
from the comic!  He also asks why the echidnas (most of them
anyway) wear clothes as opposed to the Knothole crowd.  Justin's
answer: "Echidnas like to think they have a better sense of
fashion."  Tell that to Guardian Rembrandt, Fred!