Sonic the Hedgehog #146 [Apr 2005] Shadow cover. Simple elegance. What the cover of this comic ought to be. "The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown: Part 1 : Prototype" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Steven Butler; Ink: Ken Penders; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater. The frontispiece gives way to a frontal assault as we get three pages of Sonic and Shadow beating the mucus out of each other. THAT'S entertainment! Sonic turns on the waterworks to cover his retreat, and Shadow skulks off-stage. Wonder whether his shoes squished after he'd gotten hosed down. Tails, Tommy and Bunnie arrive looking for Sonic, while Shadow makes his way through "the complex." "What complex?" you may ask? Patience, dear reader. He skitches into a room and demands a status report from "Isaac." "Isaac" happens to be a gold-plated version of the Gamma bot from the first Sonic Adventure game. The name is an in-joke, to be read in context with another couple in-jokes coming down the pike. Anyway, Shadow flashes back to last issue's confrontation with Locke and Hope, and then because he likes the feel of it he flashes back even more to when he first sensed some homing signal or something that reminds him of Prof. Gerald. He then took the express elevator from Angel Island to Mobius [unless you're a biomechanically-engineered super-being, do NOT try this at home!!], and encountered a security system powered by hack writing. I quote in full: "I had triggered a defensive device, but I survived." That tells us absolutemente nada, and is a waste of a perfectly good text box, but never mind. He discovered Isaac in storage, "activated his release" [by opening the door] and evaluated his pre-natal experience ["you were not immersed in fluids, as I had been"]. Isaac came online and went into exposition mode, explaining that he'd been equipped with Body by Clarke and software by Niven. I'll save the discourse on the in-jokes in this passage for the head section. Seems C and N slapped the bot together "ten millennia ago," which tells me that his warranty's long expired by now, and that they had nothing whatsoever to do with any element of the Sonic continuity. But since when has THAT ever stopped the writers? Speaking of Sonic, Rotor and Fiona (!) arrived to find Sonic with the wind knocked out of him. They radio Bunnie that they need some medical assistance, whereupon she runs off (flies off, actually) leaving Tommy and Tails alone inside a strange facility with no idea of how to hook up with the others. Sonic, meanwhile, is recapping his encounter with Shadow from the first three pages; technically this is more of an exposition than a flashback but it feels the same. "I'm not sure [Shadow's] even Mobian like us!" Rotor declares, demonstrating that he was A.W.O.L. from the Sonic Adventure 2 continuity. We then get two pages of a bat Badnik acting as Eggman's eye in the sky. After rambling on about the plot, Eggy then slaps together a version of Metal Sonic. "You've met the players [and] the stage has been set," the final text box declares. So that means, what, the real story hasn't started yet? HEAD: Let's talk about in-jokes. Writers write about what they know, and sometimes that knowledge is edged in sideways in a fashion that seems clever to the writer and which MAYBE the audience will pick up on (emphasis on maybe). In this story, Ken rolls out the names of three science fiction authors: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Larry Niven. This isn't Ken's first attempt at this, having had Julie-Su find a copy of Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" among Knuckles's personal effect after he "died." Likewise, in "On His Majesty's Secret Service" (an in-joke right there), he not only named one of the royal operatives "Fleming" after James Bond author Ian Fleming, but he named another one "Smiley" after the spy hero George Smiley created by author John LeCarre. Nor is Ken the only one. Karl Bollers, it turns out, named Mina after his late grandmother Minerva O'Ffill. This, however, was more along the lines of an homage since Karl didn't let the readers in on the source for her name until after she'd died; specifically, he fessed up in the final panel of the Hearts Held Hostage story arc. This is one of the key differences between an in-joke and an homage. An homage is usually intensely personal while with an in-joke there's an assumption that SOMEBODY in the audience is going to sniff out the writer's act of cleverness. And hey, my own hands aren't exactly clean here. In my very first Sonic fanfic, "Bloodlines," I had a scene where Bunnie is in Robotropolis and walks past "the old Klein Bottle Works." If you don't know from topology that could just sail right by you. But if you do know something about it, you'll remember that a Klein bottle is a cousin to the Mobius strip. Go to (where else?) www.kleinbottle.com for pictures and prices. I did something similar in my fanfic "Runaway" where I dropped a number of song titles in one scene: three Mobian love songs ("Sweet Blossom," "You Flew To Me," and "More Than Words Can Tell") and a lullaby ("There Is A Road"). This probably wouldn't mean anything to most of the people who read the fanfic ... unless they're total Deadheads. And then they'll recognize that not only are they all Grateful Dead lyrics (taken from "Sugar Magnolia," "The Attics of My Life," "Brokedown Palace," and "Ripple" respectively) but they all came off the same album, "American Beauty." Probably wouldn't mean much to someone who wasn't a Deadhead, though. And that's OK. That's my first rule of in-joke writing: the joke should serve to set the mood or otherwise help the story along. The story always takes precedence. The joke shouldn't be the point of the story or bring it to a dead halt if the reader doesn't get it. I'll admit that I was able to assimilate Clarke and Niven because they were passing references; they weren't out in front waving their arms and demanding attention, as it were. But I felt decidedly uneasy by Ken's christening a robot "Isaac." Sure it's a logical choice since Asimov was the one who came up with the Three Laws of Robotics (which Eggman apparently feels he can ignore). But I stumbled when it came to Isaac because of another joke: in the animated series "Futurama" there have been appearances by a robot bartender names "iZAC." This is not only a goof on the name of a particular MP3 player, but also on Isaac the Bartender, a character on the old "Love Boat" television series played by Ted Lange. I guess I'm showing my age when I admit that I thought of THAT Isaac first and only later about Asimov. But let's get to the story. Despite some temporal shifting on his part (starting with the fight between Shadow and Sonic followed by a double helping of flashback from each of them), Ken is able to set up the plot and establish where everyone is and why. I admittedly got a kick out of his having Bunnie zoom off to Sonic's aid while leaving Tails and Tommy stranded. No doubt their isolation sets them up to encounter Shadow and/or Metal Sonic somewhere down the line or to rescue Sonic from an impending confrontation, but for me the fun is in its subversive send-up of the cliche of the crew member dashing off to help one of his/her comrades without realizing "Oh, yeah, that sorta strands the other guys, doesn't it? Oh, well." What I did NOT appreciate is the fact that this was pretty much the extent of Bunnie's involvement in the story: being transformed from a rabbit to a go-fer. Yet one more example of how Archie Comics continues to squander a character with loads of potential. I mention this because I recently happened to surf past ep 17 of the anime "Fullmetal Alchemist." What caught my attention was the sight of the lead character, Ed, going through much of the ep with his right arm missing while it's being serviced. When I saw that I thought: "Whoa! One MORE example of what they should be doing with Bunnie in the comic." But then I remembered that thanks to the skittishness of Archie Management and/or Editorial Dr. Quack was shown in S134's "Say You Will" talking about having been injured by a land mine but demonstrating his injury by wearing an eyepatch. The logic of this continues to elude me, but I take it as one more piece of evidence that this comic is basically doomed to being no better than mediocre. It's going to be interesting to see what Ken does with Metal Sonic this time around. Its last appearance was in Danny Fingeroth's celebrated two-parter, "Heart of the Hedgehog" (S86- 87). Fingeroth invested Metal Sonic with a well-defined and even likeable personality which took the arc beyond the Fight Story cliche. But given that this installment BEGINS with three pages of fighting, I'm not getting my hopes up. Head Score: 7. EYE: Steve Butler does his usual top-drawer work on the characters. Fiona looks good, and it's not his fault that we know nothing about her in this story; she, like Tommy Turtle, has been dropped unceremoniously into the mix. Robotnik is REALLY trying to morph into Eggman. Eye Score: 10. HEART: This story demonstrates why it's such a frustration to deal with Ken Penders stories. He does a good enough job of writing usually (so long as he leaves the first person singular voice to someone else), and you want to engage with the characters and situations. But there's still that emotional distance between the story and the reader. I've lamented before that this seems to be a hallmark of the Penders style that borders on the incurable. Even in his most intimate work to date, "Father's Day" (S143), you can feel a certain distance, holding back, hesitation. I thought at the time it was due to the artwork, but now I wonder whether it isn't indeed part and parcel of the Ken Penders style. Maybe this style actually works when telling action stories to pre-ado boys (as fight sequences go, the one that opened this story was first- rate), but the Sonic fandom has grown considerably more diverse over the years. But by its own admission, this story is just a prelude. It remains to be seen whether the next installments are able to broaden and deepen and become something worth reading, or whether it turns into one more Mindless Fight Story. Heart Score: 4. "Out Of Your Shell" Story: Romy Chacon; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Rick Koslowski; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Vickie Williams. Tommy has a crisis of self-confidence because he feels neglected and isn't sure where he belongs in the Knothole scheme of things. He finds himself, however, when he files and organizes Rotor's papers. HEAD: The Sonic comic is allegedly aimed at a pre-adolescent audience. This story, however, feels more like it's aimed at a pre-school audience. As soon as I read this story I remembered where I'd encountered this plot before: as a subplot in the second Care Bears movie, and in an episode of the television series featuring the same characters. Wanting to feel like you belong somewhere aside from your family may be a major part of adolescent psychology, and needing to believe one is still capable when confronted with a losing streak is a necessity in toddler and preschool developmental psychology, and these elements CAN be woven into a successful story. Just not THIS one. If you want to see how the theme was best handled, I refer you to the script by Kevin Hopps for my favorite Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers ep, "The Cola Cult Caper." In the course of that episode, Gadget drops out of the group after one of her inventions misfires and injures Zipper. She joins a group that appears to be a cross between the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and the Marketing Department of Coca-Cola. The writing resonates with me because it manages to touch on the themes of the psychology of belonging and self-confidence as well as popular religion and consumerism (videocassettes of the soft drink company's commercials form the received text of the cult members). This story should have been so good. Tommy starts out at a disadvantage, of course; one fan has gone so far as to tell me that Tommy was a more interesting character when he was dead. After a perfectly good and emotionally engaging act of self- sacrifice in "The Tortoise and the Hedgehog," he was brought back into the comic for Justin-only-knows what reason. And once he was reintroduced we discovered what we'd suspected all along: Tommy brought nothing to the table. So what's the quick-and-dirty way to put over a character? Throw a pity party. Make us feel sorry for him/her. The formula is as old as the medium; both Superman and Batman, after all, started out as orphans. Having played the Poor Tommy Card, Romy (or faux-Romy) goes on to find something that Tommy CAN do around Knothole: filing Rotor's paperwork. OK, THAT was so lame and anti-climactic I couldn't even think of a snappy comeback for this review. It was like one of those "Zen moments" on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart. And this is supposed to endear Tommy Turtle to the readership? Head Score: 3. EYE: Ron Lim aids in the selling of Tommy Turtle (which is the real theme of this story) from the very first panel. All you have to do is look at the shelves above the respective beds of Rotor and Tommy. One is a sloppy catch-all for anything and everything; the other is a near-neurotic example of a place for everything and everything in its place. Nice to see he got into the heavy-handed spirit of the script, but it hasn't helped his artwork when it comes to Rotor or Tommy; the drawing of Rotor running across the panel at the top of page [3] is about the weirdest, weakest thing I've seen in a while. As for Tommy, he looks like he's auditioning to be reincarnated as one of the Bem. Eye Score: 4. HEART: So now the Knothole Brain Trust (the name actually dates back to a British radio program, "Brains Trust," where a panel of experts would field questions from callers) has been broadened to include Tommy Turtle. And his position as subordinate to Rotor is to tidy up after the big slob. Somehow, though, I don't see the readers appreciating Tommy playing Felix Unger to Rotor's Oscar Madison. If you didn't get that last one, do a search on Neil Simon's play "The Odd Couple." The theme of the play is that the character traits and quirks that caused the meltdown of the marriages of Oscar and Felix threaten their friendship when they have to live under one roof themselves. But don't look for anything like that here. This story, after all, was specifically designed to make us feel sorry for Tommy and to justify his up- to-now unjustifiable existence in the comic. I'm sorry, but it's simply not a compelling enough reason to turn Tommy into a major player. And with so many other furry species out there more deserving of attention (badgers, raccoons, bison), why another turtle?! Didn't Eastman and Laird play out that mine? Heart Score: 3. "Circuit Me" Story: Rome Chacon; Art: Al Bigley; Ink: Michael Higgins; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Vickie Williams. There are some doors Mobians were never meant to open, but that doesn't stop Rotor from messing around with a Power Ring. The problem he discovers is that by messing with the Ring it could either "level Knothole or it could just burn the ring out." This is called "hedging your bets." As Sally tells her handheld computer Nicole to run a diagnostic on the Power Ring... OK, I've seen The Old Switcheroo Plot initiated by mad scientist inventions (Yogi Bear, as well as one of those weird Tom and Jerry toons directed by Gene Deitch), supernatural forces acting through mysterious objects (Tale Spin and Teen Titans), hypnotism (several Warner Brothers cartoons), and lightning striking while two characters are on the phone (Jimmy Neutron). Faux-Romy takes it to a new low by having Sally TRIP OVER AN EXTENSION CORD AND SPILL SOME UNSPECIFIED LIQUID! "Tommy Turtle: clean-up in aisle 2." Rotor is slow to realize that Nicole's reactions are actually those of Sally trapped in Nicole's housing. By the time he finally does, Nicole in Sally's body has wandered out the door and is grooving on all the serious organic input of sensory data. Her tripping out is interrupted by Sonic walking into the story for 4 lousy panels. Sal's love for Sonic overloads Nicole's ability to pilot Sal's bod as well as the ability of the readers to believe this stupid plot. So, in an equally stupid denouement, Rotor arrives and declares "It's only temporary." As in temporary inanity? HEAD: The only cartoon plot device older and creakier than The Old Switcheroo Plot is the Doppelganger Plot, which hasn't really worked well since Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper." The very worst example IMO was in an ep of the Jetsons version 2.0: "Space Bong." This inane script that also gives us a James Bond ripoff plot (the name of the ep is the name of the George Jetson look-alike master spy "Space Bong" which sounds like "James Bond" only if you squint your ears) and Mr. Spacely throwing temper tantrums because dinner is late made me think that whoever wrote it must have been sucking on a space bong at the time. But we're talking about The Old Switcheroo Plot here, and "Circuit Me" has to stand as one of the worst examples of it I've ever seen in my half-century of corroding my brain with cartoons and comics. The set-up was quick, dirty, and implausible, and the resolution was even worse: a shrug of the shoulders and a "Never mind!" reminiscent of Gilda Radner's character of Emily Litella on Saturday Night Live. I'll admit I disliked this story going in, knowing that it was a reworking of The Old Switcheroo Plot. After I finished reading it I disliked it even more after realizing that despite the hoary heritage of the plot, there was actually a kernel of a great three-part story arc in here. Here's an outline that I came up with after about 24 hours of part-time noodling: Part 1: The Old Switcheroo occurs when Sally brings Nicole into physical contact with the Power Ring, something that didn't happen in the story (or, if it did, it was unclear thanks to Al Bigley's artwork). Sal is knocked out but (and this is where the story doesn't go) we follow Sally down the rabbit hole as it were where she surveys an electronic landscape. If the readers need something cozy and familiar it could be either a green gridwork on the order of Digimon Tamers or perhaps a Matrix white world. There, she meets "Nicole-OS," the handheld's operating system who is an electronically idealized form of Sally. Nicole-OS tells Sally that she's only the back-up who came online when the Primary Nicole-OS was lost. She doesn't know how Sally got in there but tells her that she has to get out in a certain amount of time before she's deleted by a guardian sub-routine. Meanwhile, Sally comes to as Sonic, Rotor and the others gather around her. Sonic tells her that he was afraid that he'd lost her (yet) again; she hugs him close and, with a hint of green glow in her eyes that Sonic can't see, she tells him "Don't worry, Sonic. I'm not going anywhere." Part 2: The installment starts with Nicole-in-Sally spacing out as in the top of page [5] of the original. It's not just groovin' on Mother Nature, though: she ticks off Sonic by scarfing the chili dogs off his plate and generally not taking anyone else into consideration. Sally-in-Nicole, meanwhile, is working with Nicole-OS against the internal clock because Nicole- OS is due to be overwritten at the same time Sal could be deleted. Meanwhile, we cut back to Nicole-in-Sally as her emotions overwhelm her and she goes to pieces over a crisis that demands something other than a computer's analytical skills to solve it. Part 3: The crisis is averted (I see Rosie bringing her wisdom acquired over the years to solve it) and Sally-in-Nicole figures out a way to signal through Nicole what's going on. Rotor is told how to un-do the switch, but there's the stated possibility that if it doesn't work right Nicole's circuits will fry and Sally will be lost forever. Nicole-in-Sally asks Sonic for a last kiss before returning to her own dimension. The switch-back is a success. The potential for this kind of story is there, and with "Love and Loss" as a precedent, Mike Pellerito had no excuse letting this get printed unedited and unimproved. That's what editors DO, as I learned from the editor of my two books. A good editor takes a crappy story and makes it better; he doesn't leave it alone just because it was crap when it was purchased. "Circuit Me" has vaulted to being the top contender for Worst Back Story of 2005. Head Score: 1. EYE: Al Bigley is yet one more old school comic book artist more at home with hyoomons than with furries. He tries hard with Sally and improves after stumbling badly right out of the gate. There's actual expressiveness in her face when she catches sight of Sonic, though her subsequent swoon is a little weird. The potential is there. Eye Score: 5. HEART: The notion that love is such an overpowering emotion that it's enough to short-circuit even the most brilliant computer is the one redeeming plot point in an otherwise miserable story. Yet in what's basically a 5-page piece of nothing, it has to fight to be recognized. More interesting, it signals yet one more step away from the Sally rant of "Say You Will." It's only taken, what, a year? Heart Score: 7. Letters: Mike's editorial style in answering these letters will come up in Off-Panel. Mike promises/threatens a return to various plot threads left dangling from Mobius 25 Years Later including the Tails-Mina pairing; he also hints that the "Chaos control" bit from Sonic Adventure 2 just may have something to do with the whole time-travel-cosmos-busting plot from the arc. Fan Art: Evan and Zach Zimmerman each contribute a piece, Brittany Wolfe draws some of the ladies of Knothole, and Sarah Davies does an excellent Sonic-Sally drawing that displays both talent and personality. Editorial: Another reassurance that M25YL isn't a dead issue, plus vague plugs for S150 and the Sonic X miniseries. Blurb for S147: continuation of Good/Bad/Unknown; another waste of space in the form of editorial self-indulgence; and a Tails-Muttski story. Interestingly enough, Al Bigley had some of the page art for this story on display at his Web site and it showed Tails interacting with Muttski before M-dawg was deroboticized. It'll be interesting to see if he had to revise the plot point and how the book will explain it if he didn't. Off-Panel: if this is the kind of garbage we can expect in next issue's "This Side of Parodies," I think I'll take a pass.