Before I begin, let me set the record straighter than it was last time around. After posting my rant about S139 I got my ears pinned back by Karl Bollers himself over on the Mobius Forum message board at SonicHQ. Cheap shots aside, he said that the grammar goof early on [inappropriate use of the phrase "to feel for" someone] and the name of Dr. Finitevus were added by Editor Mike Pellerito. He also let it be known, with backup from Ken Penders, that the "Don't make me hurt you" two-liner was written by him, that writers write and illustrators illustrate, that fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, and that this is how the American comic book industry operates, now and forever, world without end, Amen. Sonic the Hedgehog #140 [Nov 2004] Pat Spaziante cover: rather ordinary treatment of Sonic and Knuckles; can't say the same for Locke, however. Given his placement over the Chaos Emerald (in a pose that has no bearing whatsoever on the events of this issue's story), I couldn't help but wonder whether Archie wasn't planning to kill him off at some point and turn HIM into the Avatar. Which would mean that Knuckles is going through a lotta teenage angst for nothing. Then again, my record for predicting where this comic is going isn't exactly sterling so don't take me too seriously. Axer/Jensen frontispiece: smile, you're on canid camera (and only the REALLY old Sonic fans will get THAT joke). Kage is presumably on the right; I'm not clear who the red shirt is on the left; I think it's supposed to be Harry. "Return to Angel island : Part 3 : How Many Echidnas Does it Take to Protect a Master Emerald?" Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Jon Gray; Ink: Michael Higgins and Andrew Pepoy; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Michael Higgins and John Workman; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater; Sega Functionaries Who Brought Who Knows What to the Table: Robert Leffler and Dyna Lopez. After the High Solemnity of last issue's story, we cut right to the comic relief: Knuckles freaking at the sight of a loaded baby. Knux has been there and done that, back 6 years ago in Knuckles #19, but this is his half-sib we're talking about. He's introduced as Knecapeon Mace, or "Kneecaps" for short. The kid doesn't care any more for his name than do Knuckles's companions, so Knux has to demonstrate that echidna blood is still thicker than the ink used to draw and print this page. And he gets smacked upside the head by the kidnik for his trouble. Back to the plot. Knuckles still has major self-doubts about the expectations that have collected around him as the presumed Avatar, and he makes himself scarce. He heads for the palace, brushes past Lara-Le and Dr. Fin (who only acts as set dressing in this installment) and does the angst thing while being watched by [Big Dramatic Soap Opera Revelation Moment #1] Archimedes the Fire Ant, who I don't believe has seen steady work since Knux's comic got canceled. Cut to New Megaopolis where General Kage, a partly-robotic dingo whose name means "Shadow" in Japanese and which he can't use in translation for obvious reasons, is informing Robotnik that Sonic and the gang are on Angel Island and, no, they haven't found out where the Master Emerald is yet. The doc gets offers of help from [BDSORM #2] Mecha and ADAM, but instead he liberates one cliche (see BDSORM #3 below) while keeping his "op" under control with another cliche (the old pain collar). Julie-Su wakes up Knuckles so he can attend the mission briefing hosted by Lien-Da: their mole has located Locke, and the Legion plus Sonic's gang will mount a rescue effort. Remington, Saffron, and Knuckles's folks stay behind to take part in the final splash page, while all those who can't run as fast as Sonic are issued flying saucers from the Dark Legion Motor Pool (which is under contract to Halliburton). Over in Dingo City (which used to be Echidnaopolis), Kage is taking a break from working over Locke who still hasn't cracked yet. Harry, presumably the cab driver under the old regime who's doing scut work for the dingo overlords nowadays, loses Kage's breakfast and Kage loses his cool just as Robotnik gets back on his tail about Locke. Cue the jazzy Jon Gray fight scene. Locke rats out Harry as the Dark Legion's mole to Sonic, now that it's kind of pointless to keep that a secret any longer. He also says hello to Knuckles, but Karl doesn't linger on the father-son moment as Kage returns at full boil. Sonic and Knuckles give each other that look that says: "OK, hopped-up big- talking villain here; we know the drill." One destroyed dingo later, Robotnik punctures Sonic and Knuckles's self- congratulations by telling them that he's got an agent looking for the Master Emerald while the heroes are busy elsewhere. It's [BDSORM #3] ... THE RETURN OF JUSTIN GABRIE!! WITH HAIR!!! No, sorry, it's that stupid Kraven The Hunter knock-off from the last story arc to run in the Knuckles comic. COMMENTARY: OK, I don't want to start another round of insults here but I'm having a seriously hard time figuring out whose idea it was to have Mace speak in a language I can only call Iconic. Whoever came up with it, it's a great idea, inspired by the Iconic language that grew up with the Internet. It reminds me somewhat of the language spoken by Grundoon, a diaper-wearing groundhog toddler in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" comic strip. A typical Grundoon speech balloon would contain a sentence along the lines of: "GMP KWTSPF MRPLZT QTNXKF." Not full-grown English but it gets the point across. I've also been informed that "Knecapeon", whoever came up with it, is an anagram for "No Knee Cap." This is supposed to be a joke. (SFX: crickets chirping). Thought so. Nobody seems to think "Knecapeon" is much of a name including the character; I wasn't too crazy about "Finitevus" or "Xorda," either. Perhaps the best commentary on the way the name game is being played nowadays was provided by an artist over at www.yerf.com, Lissa B. Treiman: "Whenever people make mystical characters with earrings up the wazoo and glowing tattoos and magical dragons living up their butt, they give them complex, made-up names like Naphtzirea, Tyrnabuul, Naadirea, Foobar, etc. Now, I'm not saying I have anything against such names, but I mean, at least one of them had to have had parents that got sick of forgetting how to spell their kids' names. Whatever happened to Josh the Warlock? Or Robert the Conjurer? Where's Steve the Alchemist?" Her contribution to the debate can be found at http://yerf.com/lissa/darrel_lorez.jpg. And for the record, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" did feature Tim the Wizard, and more recently the Disney Channel has given us "Dave The Barbarian." These were SUPPOSED to sound ridiculous; in the case of the Xorda and Finitevus, it's more of an accident but no less ridiculous. This being Part 3 of a 4-Parter, we get a lot of development before we MAYBE get some payoff next issue. This book does play by the rules of loose continuity, after all. Which explains why plot points from 5 or 6 years ago are showing up in the book all of a sudden. The good news is that aside from Dr. Fin, Mace and General Kage, Karl has adhered to the "No New Characters" standard. Unless, as one fan has suggested to me, Dr. Fin is really Moritori Rex trying to worm his way back into the book after escaping the Forbidden Zone arc in a cloud of faux Latin. Just as well; the LAST thing we need are a whole buncha newbies cluttering up the landscape. The bad news is, the Anonymous Hunter Dude's presence demonstrates one of the problems with the American comic book industry in general. When Ken dropped the nameless hunter into the King of the Hill arc (which was fated to be the final story in the Knuckles comic), he pretty much borrowed him whole-cloth but reclothed from Spiderman. Same with Monk, though I don't know who the antecedent of the not-so-great grape ape was in the Marvelverse. Borrowing still goes on in this book and probably always will; in place of a Star Trek or Star Wars reference, the sharp of eye will see in the Lab Gamma on page [7] a quotation from "The Matrix;" M, of course, is a holdover from the Terminator franchise. But when's the last time any of the creatives went and had a little FUN with what they borrowed? When's the last time they rethought these cliches and decided to tweak them instead of treating them with undeserved reverence? Case in point: the whole Hunter plot point was stale and moldy when Ken dropped it into "King of the Hill" 5 years ago. Been there, done that, couldn't stay awake. If you're going to drop a hunter into a story, why not play with it a little? I asked myself that question and I came up with a fanfic plot that will NEVER EVER see the light of day at Archie Comics: have the hunter be a crew member from the Cha Cha Maru. The Cha Cha Maru is a space-going submarine belonging to a 17-year-old girl named Tita. That's "Captain Tita" to her crew of pet shop hunters, specializing in capturing the kind of aquatic wildlife that live in the gaseous seas of the Planet Yietta as documented in the manga and anime "Plastic Little" by Satoshi Urushihara. Tita is carrying on the work of her father in seeking out these life forms to be pets. So why not have one of the crew members be commissioned by Robotnik to capture Sonic? Robotnik being who he is, I don't see him taking Tita seriously as being the Captain and will only deal with someone older and male; he will pay dearly for this insult. One of the crew members then goes on the hunt but instead of trapping Sonic he nabs Sally instead. The crew argues about this mistake, someone wondering out loud what kind of creature this is. Sally's abrupt answer: "I'm a Mobian," is supposed to parallel Charlton Heston's "Get your stinkin' paws off me...." line from "Planet of the Apes" in terms of dramatic effect. They usually don't hunt down sentient beings. Sally then has a one-on-one with Captain Tita. At this point in the story, there should be that staple of Urushihara stories: above-the-waist female nudity as Tita invites Sally to share the use of the ship's bath/water park built in one of the holds of the ship meant to store whales at one time. Sally hasn't had much experience with Overlanders and certainly not with naked ones. Tita, who's somewhat self-conscious about the size of her breasts, thinks Sally shares her belief that they're too small; it's Tita who freaks, however, when Sally describes them as "magnificent," magnificent bustlines being an Urushihara trademark. Sally then goes on to explain how self-conscious she was as a child about her scrawny arms and legs which is why she sort of hid them by wearing those Princess Jasmine outfits from the SatAm two-parter "Blast To The Past." A bond is thus formed between the two teenage girls. The rest of the story would revolve around Tita managing (with advice from Sally) to perpetrate major damage to Robotnik's infrastructure, damage Robotnik might have had an inkling of if he hadn't dismissed Tita as a teenage girl. He gets away, of course (barely), and Sally and Tita part on good terms. It's a simple, coherent, three-step story where the Hunter does not become the overbearing cliche it did in "King of the Hill." Granted there are those who won't like it because it's a crossover; let that pass. But my point is I'm weary of Old School writers who still believe that everything worthwhile that can be done in the comics has already been done by Marvel and DC in some metallic Age or other and any reference to those glory days must be done on bended knee with the kind of reverence usually reserved for a religious icon. Lighten up, people; that's how to grow this book. "Mobius 25 Years Later: A Difference of Opinion" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Steven Butler; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John E. Workman. To escape the terminal boredom of the last installment, Sonic and Knuckles take it outside, walking off into Flashback Country. According to Sonic: An attempt in the recent past by Eggman/Robotnik to swipe the Chaos Emeralds caused Knuckles to morph into "a living Chaos Emerald once again." This revelation has inspired deep religious fervor amongst many of the fans: "Green Knuckles AGAIN? Oh, God, NOOOOO!!!!" Knuckles then used his newly-rediscovered abilities to do what he should have done the first time around 3 years ago when this happened to him: blast somebody, in this case, Robotnik. Not content to stop there, Knuckles goes on to engage in some world-building of his own. The look on Julie-Su's face on page [4] seems to say it all: "I'm ORANGE! I'm NAKED and I'm ORANGE!!!" This is Knuckles's idea of paradise? When Sonic suggests that "the world started ending right about ... there," Knuckles offers a counterpoint: the problem started when Sonic then used "some gadget you didn't understand" which Sally called a "nullifier." It almost nullified Knuckles permanently as it leached the Chaos energy out of him, put his eye out (I'm sure his mother warned him it would happen!), and ruined a perfectly good pair of shoes. The two of them argue to a stalemate as to where the responsibility lies, and it isn't until the final panel that someone remembers the freaky weather plot point and cues the light show. COMMENTARY: Anyone who's played any variation of Sonic slot machine in any of the games knows that it's not an all-or-nothing payoff; as in real life, slots offer small payoffs in addition to the huge ones. And this story arc NEEDED some kind of payoff to keep readers interested. Trouble is, Ken either forgot to put in a small payoff or thought that simply introducing the offspring of Sonic and Knuckles would be payoff enough. Nuh-uh. If this were a book manuscript I was editing, I'd suggest the following change: rewrite "My Dinner With Sonic" and "Slumber Party." It's about at this point that the story bogs down and the readers need to be re-engaged with the plot. We also need to be more credible about the threat to Mobius and Angel Island. I'd have opened "Dinner" in the same way, at poolside, only have Manik get soaked by a huge splash in front of him. Manik would be halfway through congratulating his dad on a killer serve when he stops and notices that ... Sonic has yet to serve the ball. A hush falls over the party as attention is drawn to what looks like a giant floating iceball. Just then Knuckles yells for everyone to get inside "NOW!!" as the mother of all hailstorms breaks wide open. Windows are smashed and walls are cracked as everyone heads for the basement. Abby supplies the comic relief, as is her destiny: Abby: "My kitchen!!" Julie-Su: "Forget the kitchen, save your hide!!!" Both families ride it out in the basement until the storm passes over. Surveying the mansion afterward, everything is a wreck; the roof is pretty much gone and the beds are smashed. Knuckles then gets to deliver the curtain line as he says to Sonic: "I suppose you're wondering why I asked you here." The "Slumber Party" is canceled and the replacement story finds everyone (except Knuckles) dining on meager rations by candlelight because the power is still out (a condition to which a good number of Floridians in the summer of 2004 can unfortunately relate). Julie-Su has just brought the Mobian Royals up to speed, thus saving some tedious recapping of the plot. As they're absorbing the news, Knuckles comes home after keeping a straight face while assuring the Powers That Be that he's on top of things. Sonic and Knuckles then start verbally sparring, in a foretaste of what will come in "Difference of Opinion" but then one of the kids, either Lara-Su or Sonia, breaks down and tells the two dads to "SHUT UP!" She starts seriously freaking about how they almost all got killed and dissolves in tears in her mother's arms; think Dominique Dunne in "Poltergeist" coming home to find the house being overrun by a light show and dead bodies and screaming "WHAT'S HAPPENING?!?" That's when Sonic and Knuckles take it outside and set up "Difference of Opinion." This way, the stakes have been raised for the whole story, the threat of apocalypse is actually put ahead of useless world- building exercises, the audience gets a payoff, and we don't have to wade through two boring installments where nothing really happens and the plot doesn't really go anywhere. This present installment actually brought something to the table concerning the end-of-the-world plot point, something that the previous two stories didn't. This has been the cardinal sin of this story arc to date: Ken forgetting just what story he's telling. It can only be hoped, having flashed back to the past, that Ken WON'T give us a reprise of Green Knuckles. Whatever else the fans may think of him, and they haven't been shy about voicing their objections to his making a comeback, my complaint about him was that he didn't really DO anything with all that Chaos energy inside him. That was a clear violation of the dictum by Russian playwright Anton Chekov (1860-1904) that when you bring up a serious plot point you don't just leave it hanging; as he put it, "If there's a gun on the mantle in the First Act, it should go off in the Third Act." Then again, Chekov never wrote for American comic books so he never picked up the habit of Loose Continuity. I don't know what it is about writing for comics in general and writing for this one in particular, but for most of its history this comic has suffered from repeated glimpses of greatness which have been unutilized if not squandered. Terrific plot points have gone begging (Forbidden Zone), characters with potential have been underdeveloped (Rosie) while lame ones have gotten the attention (Tommy Turtle), and entire travesties have appeared in print for no good reason ("Naugus Games"). It was because I began to believe that this comic would never, ever live up to its potential that I snapped when I read S138 and almost abandoned the fandom for good. But one halfway-decent installment of a story arc that's moving with the speed of an aforementioned lame character isn't enough to efface the memory of the two boring installments that came before. The assurance on the message boards is that the comic is in a transition phase; Archie had better hope that they haven't lost too many readers by the time the ride is over which appears is going to happen ... some time next year. I hate this business. Blurb for Sonic #141: "The moment you've been waiting for has finally arrived." You mean Archie is going to apologize for what they did to Sally in S134's "Say You Will"? Mike manages to say nothing real about S141. Off-Panel is colored by ... "Pablo Peacockso." That's about as funny as "Knecapeon Mace." Sonic- grams: Eric Treadway informs Mike that the comic is the "bomb- diggity." No comment whatsoever. Mike does drop a hint that Evil Sonic is going to make a comeback at some point; I have very mixed feelings about that development, but I think I'll save them until he bothers to put in an appearance. Fan Art: Top honors go to Luis Perez for his group shot, Zac Streich for his well-shaded coloring of Sonic, and Andrew Davis for a nice bit of self-criticism about his writing ability. I'm in the opposite situation; if you've ever seen any of my drawings, you'd know why I'm a writer.