Sonic the Hedgehog #142 (January 2005) Spaz/Butler/Amash/Ray cover: So who brought what to the party? Pat Spaziante did the figures of Sonic and Chibi Hope while everyone else did ... everyone else. Axer/Ray frontispiece: "Five heroes have risen against the darkness" ... sorry, that's the ad copy from the Spyro game on the inside cover. Axer gives us the SIX heroes who are the Freedom Fighters we'd come to know before Karl started futzing around with them. Sally is tucked in the back of the group. Coincidence? I think not. "The Original Freedom Fighters : Part 1" Story: Romy Chacon; Art: Art Mawhinney; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Josh Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater. And now, the Amazing Vanishing Narrator! After four text boxes at the beginning of the story where someone ruminates in the first person about Hope, the Voice promptly disappears. That is SUCH a rookie mistake when writing a story, but unfortunately it's also not unknown in this comic. Speaking of mistakes, Hope made the mistake of letting her homework slide, so we find her at a rather built-up library in Knothole; apparently after all the defense contracts were taken care of in Sonic's absence (the Tossed in Space arc) something for public works was left in the budget. She surfs over to a Web site displaying the title characters, who may as well be introduced now: a gray-and-white tiger named Colonel Tig (I assume the I is long) Stripe who apparently had the same tailor as Antoine; a toy bulldog named M. P. Bull Bones; Private Trey Scales, a hooded cobra with arms (!!!); a giraffe named "Spot Long" wearing the mother of all turtleneck sweaters; and a reddish pigeon-type bird with the unbelievable name "Sir Peckers." The Knothole library's net-nanny software must have been disabled for Hope to have been able to access that page. After passing by one of several throwaway characters as she leaves the building, Hope's notes are blown out of her hand in what turns out to be Sonic's wake. Being the hero of the comic and a gentleman to boot, he retrieves her homework. Hope asks Sonic about Stripe, and Sonic launches into his Ben Kenobi impersonation: "Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time!" Passing by the "Lake of Rings" (which sounds more Wagnerian than "Power Ring Pool" or whatever they used to call it), Sonic launches into the story after having named the five characters for a SECOND time. According to Sonic, when Robotnik began his takeover of Mobius, Tig came out of retirement and started trying to bring order out of the immediate chaos. As Scales and Bones take down a SWATbot, a 5-year-old Sonic arrives on the scene, which begs the question of how he was able to hear the dialogue that happened before he showed up, but anyway. In this version of reality it's Tig who orders Sonic to get Rosie, Julayla and the kids together and head for Knothole by way of (in-joke alert) "Old Man Gallagher's house," Mike Gallagher having been the writer responsible for the Sonic Kids stories. Other Mobians also beat feet to Knothole. It only takes two panels to build the place up. This gives way to two stirring pages of ... the five newbies sitting around talking as Sonic and Sally look in through a window. Bottom line: Tig proposes a guerrilla insurgency against Robotnik by performing "hit and run ops to hurt as much of Robotnik's infrastructure as possible." Guess Robotnik felt he didn't need to Shock and Awe the Great Forest. This promising development came to grief, however, when [dramatic sting] "they were betrayed by one of their own." HEAD: I thought the rule was "NO MORE NEW CHARACTERS!" But since we're dealing with a flashback the Original Freedom Fighters aren't technically "new" anyway. But let that pass. According to slangmeister Eric Partridge, the British word "pecker" was derived from the action of a bird eating, the verb "to peck." The act of sustaining oneself extended to what was being sustained; hence in Britain "pecker" came to denote spirit, courage, fortitude. In the 19th century a Briton could say such sentences as "Keep your pecker up" and "Be firm, my pecker" (the latter being a line from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera "Trial By Jury") and think nothing of it. On THIS side of the Atlantic, however, things went a little differently. Probably as a pun on the resemblance in form and action to the bill of the woodpecker, the word "pecker" became a "vulgar" (Partridge's description) term for "penis." I've digressed along this line because I still can't understand why Archie Comics, one of the most conservative outfits around, let a character get named "Sir Peckers." The most charitable explanation that I can come up with is that in the editorial transition from Gabrie to Pellerito the name slipped through the cracks somehow. Then again, giving a character a name like that tracks with the sense of humor of the preadolescent boys who make up the comic's core readership according to Archie. These are readers who devour Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants books (a series that's faced at least as many attempts at censorship by indignant parents as J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books) and who are guaranteed to get a hoot out of Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling." The name "Sir Peckers" is actually one of the few entertaining things about a story that turns out, in this first half at least, to be amazingly dull. And it comes back to the (in)ability of faux-Romy to do anything decent with the characters. I've stated my belief that there are two Romy Chacons out there: one who knows how to write and one who doesn't but hides behind the Chacon name. This story shows signs of belonging in the second category. Just read the two pages where Tig outlines the Knothole insurgency for the other four. Look at Tig's dialogue, then at the dialogue for most of the other characters (I don't think the snake has any lines in this scene). Unlike the dialogue in "The Royal Signet" (S120) which is honest and natural and actually gives a sense of each character, the words here are flat and generic. "Old Man Gallagher" did better when he created the Downunda Freedom Fighters for the Tails Miniseries. Sure he took the easy way out by turning Guru Emu into a late 60's throwback but that was still far more personality than faux-Romy has given to any of the OFF presented here. You would have thought that Bones would speak with an English accent or that Trey Scales would have been portrayed as being East Indian. Well, OK, *I* had thought it, but then when confronted with a cobra I first thought of Nag the cobra from Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book." On a side note, Gallagher also took the step of integrating the Downundas with the inclusion of Barby Koala who, despite her un- koala-like appearance, is definitely female. Faux-Romy has turned the OFFs into an old boys' club. And yet these two pages of dialogue represent the highlight of the story, which is basically about Sonic yakking at Hope for seven pages out of eleven. It's a lot of dialogue and exposition and no real story whatever. As it is, the only kind of involvement faux-Romy can come up with is at the very end by raising the question of just who is the traitor in their midst. The early voting is for the snake, largely because of the presence of a villainous snake with bionic arms in the British Sonic comic. Personally, I think that's a little too easy, not only because it's been done on the other side of the Big Pond but because after two thousand years of Christian iconography it's second nature to automatically bad- mouth the Snake. Unfortunately, none of the other characters (except Tig, as Sonic depicts him) is anything remotely like well-defined enough to enable a guess one way or another. I can only hope that things pick up next issue. Head Score: 4. EYE: Just as there are two Romy Chacons, I also get the feeling that there are two Art Mawhinneys. The first one brought his usual authoritative style to the story from the beginning. Then we get to the scenes narrated by Sonic which look and feel ... different, somehow, I can't put my finger on it. I mean, it looks like his work but it looks like someone monkeyed with it or somebody's scanner ate it or something. I WANTED to like the illustration at the top of page [11], but it just looks so funky! Like someone forgot that this was a day scene instead of a night scene and there were too many shadow lines thrown onto the characters. It just looks odd, that's all I can say. Makes me wish Josh Ray had just gone with the sepia overlay convention for doing flashbacks. Eye Score: 8. HEART: This story would have been more emotionally engaging if Sonic had been telling a story. He doesn't of course, choosing to provide mounds of exposition and no narrative. So there's really very little here to hold the readers' interest. Except for one panel tucked away in the middle of all that exposition: "They even rescued me once when I [Sonic] was seven. I was too close to Robotropolis and was in way over my head." Now why on Mobius couldn't somebody have looked at that panel and thought: "You know, THAT would make a half-way decent story if we develop it. Better than THIS cure for insomnia, anyway!" It would have been perfect. It would not only have put Sonic in the story as an actor and not just a narrator (which is what he is here), but also given the readers a chance to SEE the OFF in action and not just listen to Sonic talk about them. I don't know why the writers are so quick to forget that comic books are a VISUAL medium; the name of the game is SHOW and Tell. As it is, we're given no real reason to like, much less care about, the OFF aside from the fact that Sonic was inspired by them. None of them really jumps off the page, not even their alleged leader Tig. Bones knows how to use a staff in close combat, but you can't really build a personality around a martial arts move though Lord knows Eastman and Laird tried with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Heart Score: 6. "I Wanna Be A Freedom Fighter!" Story: Romy Chacon; Art: Steve Butler; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John E. Workman. If you can get past the one page near-splash of an old model tutu-wearing Amy Rose throwing a tantrum about not being a Freedom Fighter, you will be rewarded with 4, count 'em 4, pages of Sally talking and talking and talking and TALKING about how Amy Rose has become a Freedom Fighter, with occasional comments from Amy Rose herself. HEAD: This is almost as bad as Karl Bollers's "The Last Robian" (S123), where Karl more or less abandoned trying to tell a story and simply outlined the plot points that had to be covered as a set-up to "Sonic Adventure 2.5 Omega" (S125). I'm tempted to say that faux-Romy did the same thing here, the only difference being the use of dialogue balloons instead of text boxes. Or maybe that should be "monologue balloons" instead, because all we get are heavy lumps and clumps of information with nobody really talking TO each other except at the very end. And even THEN the dialogue is no better than it was in the preceding story. If the whole point of this story was Amy Rose getting a medal for heroism for swinging her pico-pico hammer, then DragonMasterHawk made a good point on the Sonic HQ Message Board when he called this "a two page story ... told in five." Head Score: 3. EYE: Steve Butler does his best to weave an artistic fig leaf to cover the nakedness of this so-called story. I was most impressed by his work on page [1] where he gives us a strong Mawhinney-inspired drawing of Old School Sally and Amy Rose. As impressive as the rest of Butler's art is, it still doesn't help the story. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Despite the writing, there seemed to be moments in the story, such as Amy Rose interrupting Sally on page [4], where something like personality tried to claw its way through the page only to be beaten down by the sheer weight of the flat prose. Just as the one panel in "The Original Freedom Fighters : Part 1" gave a hint as to how that story should have been handled, the momentary repartee between Sally and Amy Rose hint at how THIS story could have been better handled: Instead of the story being about the public reception where Sally bestows the bijou on Amy Rose, it could have been set just BEFORE the public ceremony. That way, it could have been a one- on-one dialogue between Sally and Amy Rose on the order of Karl Bollers's "The Crush" (S109) or even Romy's own three-way dialogue in "The Royal Signet" (S120). It would have given either of the characters SOME chance to get their honest feelings out on the table, and if a story isn't going to have any action then that's the next best thing as the writers of manga and anime have demonstrated countless times as they shift from "dry" to "wet" story-telling. But not here. The affect is as flat as most of the dialogue. Reading this, a phrase used in the 9/11 Commission Report comes to mind: "failure of imagination." Heart Score: 3. "Mobius 25 Years Later: Moment of Truth" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Stephen Butler; Ink: Ken Penders; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John E. Workman After ten months, this story arc is starting to give Knuckles sleepless nights and a headache. Show of hands: who else can relate? Remember Lara-Su? Last time she showed up was as window dressing in "Slumber Party" (S139). She's back now, reminding her dad and the readers that she's supposed to be nagging Knuckles about her being a Guardian. Cut to the Old Farts of Science. Seems Knuckles and Cobar can't get their End Of Life In the Universe As We Know It Simulation to work on their computer. Must've forgotten to download a driver or something. Anyway, Rotor has the kind of brilliant idea that is aptly appropriate to a story appearing in a comic book: since the problem was CAUSED by too much time travel, he suggests .. TIME TRAVEL! After a one-page digression/reprise of Sonic telling Sally he's not cut out for this business, Sonic and Knuckles find out that Rotor and Cobar want access to "Robotnik's Tachyon Displacement Chamber"(tm) so they can send someone back in time to "collect data." The downside: whoever the poor sap is who makes the journey may not be able to make it back, they'll maybe be arriving at "the point when the problem originated" which may be when the Quantum Dial was reset in which case they may be more concerned about saving their own bacon than taking notes, and the Tachyon Displacement Chamber may not even be working after all this time and good luck trying to find spare parts. Sonic's reaction to all this hair-brainery: "Go for it!" I think I can see why he doesn't feel qualified to make these kind of decisions. After Sonic tells the Old Farts of Science to meet them at the shuttle port (and what do you want to bet that they WON'T have any freaky weather to contend with?), all that's left is to find someone to do a possibly fatal Sam Beckett impersonation. That's Sam Beckett the character from "Quantum Leap," not to be confused with Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), the author and playwright best known for the absurdist masterpiece "Waiting for Godot." And who should Knuckles run into but Lara-Su who's regaling Princess Sonia about her frustrated ambition of being a Guardian. I get the feeling that in the final panel Knuckles is looking at Lara-Su as if, like a character in a Tex Avery cartoon, she slowly morphs into a giant lollipop with the word "SUCKER" on the wrapper. HEAD: Well, it took eleven months, but the plot has FINALLY developed to a point where there's something significant likely to happen. But let's consider who the possible candidates are for making this one-way ride: KNUCKLES: There's a possibility that Knuckles could make the journey himself. After all, he arrived late to the party in S125's "Sonic Adventure 2.5 Omega" and without his glide, having just been kicked out of Echidna Heaven by Aurora. So he may not technically be violating the rule which holds that you aren't supposed to occupy the same point in space-time twice, a rule that was cheerfully ignored when needed in the Back To The Future movies. Besides, this would also allow Knuckles to carry on the family tradition of ... ABANDONMENT! He may still not have completely gotten over Locke's disappearing through a wall of flame into Haven when Knuckles was at the tender age of 10, and he wants to inflict the same emotional pain on Lara-Su by saying "You want to be a Guardian so bad? Take two steps that way to the deep end of the pool and close your eyes." LARA-SU: If she'd had more of a part in this story, I could get a better idea of where this is going. As it is, the focus has been so heavy on the Franchise (Sonic and Knuckles themselves) that the Why Can't I Be a Guardian Plot Point, which more or less disappeared by the time she let herself out of the bathroom in order to attend her own Unveiling after Part 1 (S131), needs some heavy-handed writing to revive it in our memories. But would Knuckles, who was all set to break into a chorus of "Sunrise, Sunset" at his daughter's Unveiling, have the gall to volunteer her for a possible suicide mission? Or is Lara-Su so sick of her life as a teenage minor comic book character that she's ready to jump head-first into the Tachyon Displacement Chamber? And now, here's Bob Repas (courtesy of Ken Penders's Message Board) telling us everything we never wanted to know about tachyon particles: ...The tachyon particle is a theoretical particle postulated upon the premise that everything in our universe has a mirror or opposite effect. Their existence has been mathematically proven, and it's thought that several neutrino detectors buried deep in the earth have actually detected a tachyon trail left by a passing particle. The reason they haven't proclaimed it as such is no one is quite sure what a tachyon trail should look like, never having a bunch to study. :) In any case, the true tachyon (not the science fiction mumbo-jumbo) is a particle who's limiting barrier is the speed of light. But, you say, the speed of light is the limiting barrier for everything! Nothing can travel faster than light! From our universe, this is true. However, the tachyon's light speed barrier isn't the fastest that it can go...it's the slowest! Adding energy into a tachyon actually slows it down, while taking it away makes it go faster. It's the mirror to what happens in our universe. Carrying this forward, as we approach the speed of light, our relative time slows down. If we hit the speed of light, time stops. So what happens when you go faster than the speed of light? The mirror theory says that time should start to reverse, to actually travel backwards. This is why you'll see tachyons appearing in just about any time travel story. Thank you, Bob; take some enriched plutonium out of Petty Cash. And no, I have no idea what a Tachyon Displacement Chamber is or how it works. Matter of fact, I don't think it's appeared in the continuity until now. Sounds like it should kick butt, though, doesn't it? And I suppose when you're writing for a comic book, that's enough. Unfortunately, it's also possible that neither Knuckles nor Lara-Su will be making the trip after all. All you have to do is consult the preview media and the dummy cover of S144 to see that Ken could have Sonic himself make the jump. Unless someone cuts into line ahead of him. In short, who knows where they're going with this? The story (yes there IS a story here, unlike the first two pieces) actually moves well and ends with a serious dilemma. Pity that we had to wade through several months of fluff during the summer to get to this point. Head Score: 10. EYE: Despite being seriously overworked this month, Steve Butler's artwork doesn't lose a step. My favorite visual moment: Sonia's face as she's listening to Lara-Su whine about being frosted out of the Guardian's position. I can imagine her thinking behind that patient smile of hers: "Sweet Mobius, doesn't this girl ever SHUT UP???" Eye Score: 10. HEART: We not only have a cliffhanger choice to make, we have a moral dilemma as well. If it will indeed comes down to the choice of father or daughter going into the TDC, the result is going to be a gut-wrencher either way. It would be a no-win situation for Julie-Su: to lose her husband or to lose her child. And this dilemma represents a HUGE improvement in the level of writing for this comic. The biggest problem I had with Ken Penders's "Ultimate Power: Mid-logue: The Lesson" (S116), aside from its ungainly neologism "mid-logue," is that Ken tried communicating the teaching from the Holy Book of Spiderman: "With great power comes great responsibility." Trouble is, Knuckles didn't EARN that insight. Peter Parker, HE earned it, at the cost of his Uncle Ben's life. But with the possibility of either Knuckles or Lara-Su putting their lives on the line, this kicks the story up more than a couple notches. Not that I couldn't be wrong, but I'm kind of used to getting disappointed by this comic. Here's hoping something good still comes of it. Heart Score: 10. Blurb for S143: the fuller exposition of "Father's Day" in the preview media make mention of a reprise of the Locke-Knuckles relationship, which was never the healthiest example of father- and-sonship I could think of. Certainly sounds more interesting than the next OFF installment, though. Mike's editorial flogs the impending Sonic-Shadow match-up. He fails to mention the impending return of ... Tommy Turtle in the same issue. And for the completists, Specials 1-10 are being reprinted for sale. However, they didn't really start numbering the Specials until #7 ("Parallel Paradigm") so consult the checklist to see what's what. Off-Panel: Mike probably thinks this feature is about him. Sonic-Grams: a 17-year-old fan returns to the fold; Rachel Cox still remembers the Sailor Moon rip from Special #8 and is told her order of Cream/Cheese is in the works along with a Rouge return; and Edward Kaj is told to expect Metal Sonic to return. Fan Art: The good news is, there are SEVEN examples of fan art in this issue. The bad news is, some have had to be reduced to the size of postage stamps to fit them all in. The most interesting drawing of the lot is Tails riding a broom (which strikes me as being unnecessary) by Amanda Yanez.