Sonic #116 [Jan 2003]

     Spaz/Ribeiro/Ray cover, and a VERY dynamic cover it is of
Bunnie and Rouge engaged in aerial combat, with Sonic along for
the ride and I'm guessing not enjoying himself.  But when did
Bunnie start hitting the peroxide bottle?  Somewhere along the
way she's gone from being a homey brown bunny to being the color
of a ripe banana.  Not a good look for her.

     Axer/Amash/anonymous colorist frontispiece of Sonic, Bunnie,
and Rouge amid the ruins of what may have been meant to be
Robotropolis.  It sure shows a lot more damage than the city
featured in this issue; more on that as we go.  Nice modeling of
Rouge, but it leaves out or at least softens the elements of sex
and danger in her character that IMHO make her interesting.

     "Operation: Off Switch"
     Story: Benny Lee; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Andrew Pepoy and Pam
Eklund; Coloring: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell;
Editor: J. F. Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-
in-chief: Richard Goldwater.
     Sonic and Bunnie, who's sporting a purple warm-up jacket
with her pink top, get briefed by President Square.  Seems he's
got reconnaissance photos of "an abandoned city in Mobius'
northern hemisphere," which really doesn't narrow things down a
whole lot.  What's NOT narrow is the "new super-artificial body"
the late Ivo Robotnik is constructing for himself, despite the
fact that he's dead.
     This might be a good time to clue in the newbies.  It is
duly noted that Robotnik's old bod was nuked in S110's "Station
Square Attacks."  What was NOT duly noted was the fact that THAT
body was his post-Endgame model as revealed in S75's "I Am The
Eggman."  Seems that there is no REAL Robotnik anymore, only
Robo-Robotnik, who was first encountered in Sonic #19's "Night of
a Thousand Sonics" and who turned up later in S22's "The Return."
What's his deal?  Seems he's supposed to be the "true" Robotnik
consciousness or whatever, and he can keep downloading himself
into different bodies.  This is supposed to explain why the same
villain could look so different when comparing the SatAM version
with that of the pre-Adventure games as well as the Adventure
games themselves.  So the unstated assumption, which the newbies
will have to wait until next month's "Cyber Race" to learn about,
is that this is just the latest download from Robo-Robotnik.
     Prez Square tells our dynamic duo that Rouge was sent out
"nearly twelve hours ago" and hasn't been hear from since.  And
the writers thought THEY worked under tight deadlines!  Makes me
wonder what the travel time is between Station Square and
Knothole if he felt he had to buzz Sonic and Bunnie if Rouge
hadn't gotten the job done by lunchtime.  Sonic must be wondering
this himself since he pretty much points out that calling him in
in the first place would have made more sense.  Whereupon
President Square falls apart and literally begs Sonic on bended
knee to take the assignment.  Oh yeah, I can see why HE got
elected; makes me wonder about the other losers ... er ...
candidates.  Once more when dealing with the O's Sonic has
trouble keeping a straight face (see "Crouching Hedgehog, Hidden
Dragon: Part 2," S107), and insists he was only kidding.  Mobians
must have a very subtle sense of humor because I'm still trying
to figure out what the joke is here, though looking at Pres.
Square I have a good idea WHO the joke is.
     Turns out the city in question is "Old Megopolis," complete
with broken-down Statue of Liberty knock-off in the harbor. 
Sonic resists the urge to quote Charleton Heston: "Darn you all
to heck!!!"  Hey, this IS an Archie comic!  After a quick survey
of the city from a rooftop, as if they could see inside
buildings, Sonic and Bunnie split up, and we follow Sonic from
here on.
     Sonic's not on his own for very long when he's targeted by
some defense system or other firing missiles at him.  Rather than
go into a lot of bulldada about creating false after-images of
himself to confuse the missiles, as he did in the infamous "Big
Goodbye" (S50), he simply outruns them as he gives them a tour of
the city subway system.  What exactly happened to the missiles is
never explained (my guess is that Sonic has a tighter turning
radius in enclosed spaces), nor do we know why Sonic can look at
a nondescript pair of unmarked doors and think "There it is!"
     "It" turns out to be the latest manifestation of scientific
evil ready to plague Mobius: WEEBLE (r) ROBOTNIK!  I'm sorry, but
that's what he looks like, if you ignore the tail-like robot arm
that appears to be coming out of his butt.  Sonic isn't in a
position to ignore it after getting sucker-punched a couple
times, but he pulls it together almost immediately and runs
Weeblebotnik ragged until the arm shorts out.  Having rendered
his foe armless (sorry, I couldn't resist), Sonic takes a stick
of low-tech dynamite, probably provided courtesy of the Acme
Company, lights the fuse and shoves it ... well, I know where I'd
have liked to see him shove it but this being an Archie comic
Sonic has to settle for sticking the TNT in Buttnik's pie hole. 
Sonic then runs off before the inevitable kaboom, though in the
last panel Sonic is so far away that there's no SFX accompanying
the explosion.
     HEAD: It's official: Benny Lee has just written his first
turkey.  It's not like it wasn't going to happen sooner or later.
     This story has a LOT of problems.  One of the biggest has to
do with where exactly this action is taking place.  Go back to
page [4] and the arrival of Sonic and Bunnie at "Old Megopolis." 
Note that the lettering in Sonic's word balloon at the bottom of
page [4] is distinctly different from the lettering for Bunnie's
word balloons.  This makes me wonder whether there wasn't a
certain amount of confusion as to just what city this is.  It
couldn't be set in Robotropolis because it would be way more of a
ruin and probably still "hot" as a result of the radiation from
the aforementioned nuking the city received.  And Rouge might
have had a tough time getting past the force field that
supposedly sealed the fallout inside in the first place.  
     The time element is another problem in the story.  Station
Square, if the map of Mobius is to be believed, is a LOOOOOONG
way from Knothole, since the Freedom Fighters had to travel by
air to get there in the "Crouching Hedgehog, Hidden Dragon" story
arc.  Even assuming that Bunnie has enough flight capability to
make the trip while schlepping Sonic along like an overnight bag,
it would've taken a good chunk of time to make the trip.  Which
means that Prez Square got in touch with Knothole well before the
12-hour mark on Rouge's mission clock.  
     I can't understand why Robotnik chose such a lame form to be
reincarnated into ... or downloaded into or whatever you want to
call it.  I'll grant that as a quick-and-dirty bod he can occupy
until he builds himself a better one it'll do, but that still
doesn't stop it from looking totally ridiculous.
     As for the climax, it is transcendently stupid.  Maybe I'm
too old to be impressed by the Chuck Jones/Tex Avery Insert a
Stick of Dynamite Into the First Bodily Orifice That Presents
Itself Gambit, but when you're at page 11 of an eleven-pager I
suppose you have to do SOMETHING.
     This story shows up the limitation of the present Sonic
comic format.  It really doesn't compare well with the stories
that ran during the first two or three years of the comic.  It
wasn't that the material was new and the writing necessarily had
to break new ground.  There was also a bit more room to do it in. 
Eleven pages is enough to do something good, but it makes it hard
to do something GREAT unless you REALLY work at it.  And given
both the comic's deadlines and the limitations of the form,
that's pretty long odds.  Benny Lee had to stumble at some point;
at least he got it over with.  Head Score: 3.
     EYE: There were some people on Ken Penders's message board
who complained of this incarnation of Robotnik looking ugly.  I
wouldn't go THAT far, but IMHO he DOES look incredibly stupid.  I
don't know whether Ron came up with the Weeble idea or whether he
drew it on orders from Benny Lee.  The end result is still the
same.
     Cutting corners visually seems to be the hallmark of Ron
Lim's style here.  Look at the first three pages, set in what is
supposed to be Pres. Square's office.  Remember, we're talking
about the president of a country here.  So what kind of an office
does he rate?  Aside from lines meant to suggest a hardwood
floor, there's a bookcase filled with volumes that look almost
identical, a desk and a chair, maybe some kind of
telecommunication device on the desk along with a blotter pad,
and that's it!  This reminds me of a classic scene from "Plan 9
From Outer Space," the infamous Ed Wood Jr. movie considered to
be so bad it's actually entertaining.  In that scene, an Air
Force colonel is in his office at the Pentagon, which features a
blonde wood secretary's desk, a chair, a phone, a reading lamp,
and a map of the United States on the wall.  And even though it's
masked in a later scene, viewers can clearly see that the US map
has the logo of the Santa Fe Railroad prominently displayed in
the lower left corner.   An Air Force colonel can't do better
than a free map he got at the railroad station?  
     This only demonstrates that when you try to cheap it out,
even if it's the only way to make deadline, what you're left with
looks ... cheap.  Don't even get me started on Ron's rendering of
the city; almost all of it appears to have been dashed off with a
straight edge and pen except for the Empire State Building
silhouette.  It's an empty, soulless backdrop, nothing more.  I
wouldn't make such a big deal of this were it not for the fact
that the work of J. Axer is a hedgehog of a different color; his
ruins are better-looking and more convincing than Lim's
buildings.  Eye Score: 3.
     HEART: I'd like to say that this story was emotionally
involving for me and clearly demonstrated the concept of "Heart"
I look for in this comic.  I'd LIKE to say that, but in all
honesty I can't.  There isn't an honest emotional moment in it,
not even in the beginning when the Prez goes into abject begging
mode for no clear reason and in a manner that comes close to
being over the top, or when Sonic tries to pass off his earlier
comment as a joke (which I STILL don't get).  It ends with the
"climactic" confrontation between Sonic and the Robotnik du jour,
the first in what I fear will be a series of many.
     When Ken Penders first went public with the notion that
Robotnik would never "die" but would simply keep downloading
himself into one version after another, even unto the Robotnik
Action Figure in K25's "Childhood's End" (which will reappear in
the course of the Knuckles: Twenty Years Later arc ... maybe), I
was thoroughly depressed.  I want the Mobians to catch a break,
to get to the point where they don't have to be on a war footing,
where they can be (dare I use the word?) Happy!  
     That was the saving grace for the otherwise light-weight
"Meanie In A Bottle" which ran last month.  It featured Sonic NOT
in combat mode, without the furrowed brow, not getting intimate
with someone by using a handful of explosives.  He was, in short,
a Freedom Fighter between fights, and Benny Lee's vision of Sonic
and Muttski in that story was charming.
     This particular incarnation of Robotnik was so stupid and
easily defeated that it didn't represent much of a fear factor. 
Still, some of the everyday exercises such as "Young at Heart"
(S114) aren't just filler meant to take up 5 or 6 pages.  They're
at least as important in terms of understanding the characters as
the longer stories, especially WRT their personalities, which is
why for the most part they've worked so well this year.  Too bad
the same couldn't be said for this story.  Heart Score: 2.

     "Bat Fight!"
     Story: Karl Bollers; Art: J. Axer; Ink: Jim Amash; Color:
Josh and Aimee Ray, Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editor/"Referee": J.
F. Gabrie.
     And now, after a deservedly long hiatus, Archie Comics
presents: a Mindless Fight Story!  It's one page of set-up and
four pages of Bunnie and Rouge pounding on each other.  Plot? 
Story?  Characterization?  Fuggedaboudit!
     HEAD: I'm reminded of TIME Magazine's review of "A Fistful
of Dollars," the groundbreaking spaghetti Western directed by
Sergio Leone: "A nameless stranger (Clint Eastwood) rides into a
sleepy Mexican town.  He kills some bad guys, he kills some more
bad guys, and then, for a change of pace, he kills some more bad
guys.  Then he rides out of town.  Music up, fade out."
     One of the main differences between this mindless fight
sequence and others that have gone before, such as #59's
"Opposites Detract," the aptly-named "Battle Royal," and just
about any occasion where Monkey Khan puts in an appearance, is
that Karl Bollers does NOT feel the need to have the ladies say
SOMETHING, ANYTHING, in absolutely every panel of every page.
     I have mixed emotions about this.  I've been arguing for a
long time that the drawings, the visual element in a comic,
should carry more of the narrative weight of a story instead of
being something to break up the word balloons.  Karl obliges me
here and demonstrates that it can be done.
     Having said that, I have to point out that, unfortunately,
Rouge's first major appearance in this comic is the occasion for
an Idiot Plot.  As you'll remember, and as Bunnie seems to have
conveniently forgotten, the whole point of this exercise was to
see if Bunnie could locate Rouge on behalf of President Square. 
Had Bunnie been able to communicate this to Rouge successfully,
the fight would have been considerably shorter and fewer teeth
would have been loosened on both sides.
     I also had a hard time figuring out the context of Bunnie's
"Oh, no you didn't" on page 2.  So perhaps there WAS more
dialogue that somehow landed on the cutting-room floor thanks to
J. Fred's refereeing.  And the ENDING!  The dialogue is the only
thing about that last panel that can be described as "flat." 
Head Score: 3.
     EYE: To nobody's surprise, J. Axer nails Rouge's look.  I
didn't think she had gray eyes, but it works for her.  And he
knows how to do a fight scene.  Eye Score: 9.
     HEART: I had really, REALLY hoped for better from Rouge's
introduction; after all, her one-panel cameo in S98 didn't really
count.  In SA2, Rouge is a very well-developed ... OK, well-
thought-out ... character.  Her interaction with Knuckles,
especially the scene where he makes a last-second grab and saves
her life, is really telling.  When a player of the game completes
a task with time to spare as Rouge and she scores an A, her brag
line, "It's all too easy for me!" says volumes about her.  And of
course her weakness for jewelry is one of her defining flaws;
we're not told how she got trapped by Robotnik but it's not hard
to imagine that something sparkly was the bait.  She was a
complete personality, with strengths and weaknesses on display.
     Yet all that goes off to the side in the context of a
mindless fight story such as this one.  You get no sense of
personality at all from either of the ladies.  Seeing Rouge do a
Stacey Keibler impersonation does the character and the readers a
disservice.  Next time let's see Rouge as Rouge and not as a pro-
wrestler.  Heart Score: 1.

     Fan Art: Susan Rosenberg and Kelly Cox each draw the same
exact pose of Tails, and you couldn't ask for two more different
drawings.  Kelly manages to give Tails a middle-age spread. 
Phillip Pagdilao and Courtney Fountain each submit a portrait of
Sonic.

     "Ultimate Power: Mid-logue: The Lesson"
     Story: Ken Penders; Art: Ron Lim; Ink/Color/Lettering: Josh
and Aimee Ray; Editor: Justin Gabrie.
     No, I'm not wondering what the younger Knuckles is doing in
the presence of his father; rather, I'm scratching my head over
the word "mid-logue," but I'll save that for later.  We're told
that the creatives "have taken a detour in the telling of our
current storyline."  No, you think?
     The young Knuckles and Locke, whose beard has turned a shade
of blue your own grandmother wouldn't be caught dead wearing,
watch as three figures enter the Chaos Chamber.  They're
apparently after the Chaos Emerald which "is what keeps the piece
of real estate airborne."  As Locke tells Knuckles to stay under
cover, the lad is joined by his older self, though the former
apparently can't see or hear the latter.  But being your typical
boy-type kid, Knuckles the Younger doesn't stay in place for very
long.
     The story then bogs down over the question of whether this
is a dream, a flashback, a deja vu, a bout of time travel, or
what.  Since Ken doesn't seem to know himself, let's not waste
time on it.
     Knuckles the Elder, or Green Knuckles if you prefer, enters
the Chaos Chamber as Locke confronts what appear to be three
roboticized Mobians.  These, we are told, are "Robotnik's scout-
bots," though you have to wonder why Buttnik didn't go all the
way and use humanoid instead of animal forms.  Anyway, the bots
quickly abandon their cover story of being low on fuel in favor
of stating that their on a statch-and-grab mission for "the
Master."  Before Locke can say that he has a problem with that,
Red Knuckles tries to get the drop on the baddies and gets
swatted like a fly for his trouble.  Locke responds by ... well,
here's how he explained it: "When I projected my consciousness
onto the gem, it became a conduit for draining their power
circuits."  Oh-kaaaay.  Knuckles then quotes Stan Lee and we end
up with Knuckles watching as Locke gets an incoming call from
Constable Remington.
     HEAD: Let's talk about words.  Today's word is "neologism."
     A neologism [neo, "new" and logos, "word"] is a freshly-
coined word.  No matter how long the English language has
existed, no matter how many foreign words are borrow, no matter
how much slang is appropriated, there seems to always be a need
to invent words when the current inventory just doesn't cover it. 
Readers of this comic deal with one such word in every issue:
"echidna," a New Latin word based on the Greek for "viper."  When
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he also created the
concept of space redefined by technology: two people could
converse as if in the same room even though they might be
separated by hundreds of miles.  Yet there was no single word to
describe this concept until William Gibson coined such a
neologism in his 1984 novel "Neuromancer": the word "cyberspace."
     For this story, Ken Penders has apparently coined the word
"midlogue" or "mid-logue."  It tries to convey the meaning of a
passage being neither prologue nor epilogue, each of which
incorporates the Greek word "logos" meaning "word," and since it
comes in the middle of a story arc, that's what puts the "mid-"
in midlogue.
     I was puzzled when I saw the word, and my spell checker
doesn't think too much of it, either.  This is not because it's a
bad neologism; ungainly, maybe, but not disastrous.  But there
are a lot of other words that will do just as well.  "Digression"
is one.  "Interregnum," which carries the primary meaning of the
space of time between the death of one king and the accession of
his successor but which has also come to mean any break in
continuity, is probably too far over the heads of the pre-ado boy
demographic.  Personally, I favor "flashback," which itself is a
neologism from the motion picture industry and which would serve
quite well in a comic book.  Or Ken could have just skipped the
whole thing, simply called this story "The Lesson" and let the
readers figure it out for themselves.
     "Mid-logue" is the least of this story's problems.  The
exact nature of this short, strange trip is another.  Ken goes
out of his way to smack Knuckles in the face with the realization
that this isn't just a stroll down Memory Lane for him.  It
appears to be some kind of time travel flashback because he
experiences things he couldn't have remembered, having been
smacked by one of the bots on the first occasion.  But Ken
doesn't quite clue us in as to what exactly it IS.  This not only
introduces an element of confusion, it also disrupts the pacing
of the story.
     I was also concerned about the "scout-bots," which look for
all the world just like roboticized Mobians, or "robians,"
another neologism I could have done without.  Without that
crucial designation, we'd have gotten the impression that Locke
was being his old amoral self again, not hesitating to "kill" if
the occasion called for it.  It reminded me too much of the scene
from the "King of the Hill" arc where the Brotherhood, in
response to Monk's bullying of Knuckles, tie him up and throw him
off the Island to what would surely have been his death.
     The worst, though, is the Grand Canyon-size gap between
Locke's actions and the "moral" of the story, quoting from the
Gospel According to Spiderman: "With Great Power Comes Great
Responsibility."  Yes, Ken borrowed it word for word.  I know
that Ken has an abiding admiration for Stan Lee, Kirby, Eisner,
and the other heavies of the industry, but is this really the
best way to showcase it?
     Martin Buber, in his short tales of the Hasidic masters,
tells a story about Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol.  Rabbi Zusya 
expressed the concern that, when he faces God in the judgment, he
wouldn't be asked why he wasn't more like Moses, or more like
Elijah.  Rather, he was afraid of being asked why he wasn't more
like Rabbi Zusya!
     At some point, homage becomes a way of not having to think
about what one is doing.  Ken, you've shown that you can do good
work on your own.  Work on that.  We don't need to know that you
can quote Stan Lee.  Or the Beatles.  Head Score: 5.
     EYE: A double dose of Ron Lim this month.  His drawings of
the Knuckles cast aren't off-model but they're still "off" in a
way I can't describe.  The eyes of the echidnas appear to have
been drawn freehand, and Knuckles, whatever his age, has been
cursed with those infamous too-skinny arms.  Eye Score: 6.
     HEART: I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for the young
Knuckles as he was left alone by Locke with a badly-drawn tear in
his eye, but Ken passes up the opportunity to squeeze a drop or
two out of the situation by having teenage Knuckles start musing
about "Is this a dream or what?"  Of course, it might have been
awkward if Knuckles had actually managed to give himself a hug. 
It would have been just as bad for Knuckles to remember Locke's
dramatic abandonment scene; that would have been a flashback
inside a flashback.  On the whole, not very engaging.  Heart
Score: 5.

     This Justin: Fred lets us know that one of the back stories
next month will answer the question "How did Robotnik survive
being nuked and download himself into that stupid-looking Weeble
body?"  All in five pages, yet!  One of my major gripes about the
Icon story arc (S69-70) is that it never really was established
WHY Jack Rabbit wanted to keep Sonic and Tails prisoner in
Sandblast City.  Romy Chacon, making her debut in this comic,
will attempt to answer that one in the next issue.  Swell, it
took someone something like four freakin' YEARS to tie up THAT
loose thread!  At least she'll have her stuff illustrated by Art
Mawhinney, so the scenery should be good, at least.  And then
there's the next Knuckles installment.
     In other news, a temporary cover redesign is in the works
starting with S118, and he starts hyping S125.  So far, all I
know about it is that Ken Penders in his latest chat session said
that it would be a one-story issue.
     Sonic-Grams: The Huynh Brothers catch a colorful discrepancy
in the Amy Rose data file.  They also describe the art of Many
Hands for the "Cry of the Wolf" adaptation as being "'animation'
type of drawing"; I'd call it first draft storyboard quality.  A
Lupe fan and former comic reader returns to the fold; Fred might
want to think about working her back into the continuity one of
these years, if only as a one-shot.  A newbie, KoolKongo6, wants
to know if Cream the Rabbit, and presumably Cheese her Chao baby,
will be appearing in the book; the answer is, they've got enough
work trying to fold Rouge and Shadow into the mix.  Frankly, I'm
STILL waiting for them to something worthwhile with Rouge.  Doug,
writing on behalf of the Sonic Squad, sings the praises of S114
but thinks that Benny Lee's killing off of the faux fox in "Twice
Told Tails" was "a bit too sad."  Nice to know I'm not the only
one mining this comic for Heart.