Sonic the Hedgehog #151 [Sep 2005] Pat Spaziante cover: "Sink or Spin." Sonic tries to stay afloat as the comic's continuity goes down the drain. "Chaos Emeralds Are Forever" Writer: Ken Penders; Art: Art Mawhinney; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick, Editor-in- Chief: Richard Goldwater. "So what about Sonic?" the text box at the beginning of the story asks. Since the last story pretty much focused on the Antisonic acting more like a horndog than a hedgehog, it's a fair question. Turns out he's back on the Antimobius facing the wrath of the rest of the Antisonic's gang in full revolt. Including, for the first time in something like 10 YEARS (!!), the Antibunnie. After the Antisally puts the boot in somewhere the Comic Code Authority wouldn't approve and the Antirotor shows up with a taser, the Antibunnie gets to take a small-sized shot at Sonic. For the record: she's physically intact. Someone suggested that her clothing is a ripoff from the character of Silverblue, the goth bunny featured in David Hopkins's e-strip "Jack." It looks sort of like it, but without the non-CCA cutouts and fishnet stockings (which are probably a bear to ink). She also has her left ear pierced in two places, which was how I described her in "When A Bunnie Meet A Bunnie." But lest Richard Goldwater start mashing the Legal Dept's number on his speed dial, let me just say that the comic has typically done so little with the stolen goods that it almost doesn't matter. Back on Mobius Prime, the Antisonic is sizing up Rouge and asking "Where was she on my Mobius?" Given the topsy- turvy nature of the opposite worlds, I'd say she was probably working in law enforcement, specializing in recovering stolen jewelry, so it's not like he'd have WANTED their paths to cross. Long proposition short: he offers to give her a tour of Angel Island and she gives him a lift. Literally. Meanwhile, back at Dr. Evil's hideout ... sorry, but it does appear that Sonic has gotten himself entangled in what the Dr. called "an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death"; i.e., they've tied up Sonic and hoisted him up by a rope hanging from a tree branch. They will then fire AT THE ROPE so Sonic falls into the convenient body of water below and drowns. If this were an Austin Powers movie, Scott Evil would be all "It would work a lot better if we SHOOT THE FREAKING HEDGEHOG INSTEAD!!!" Ken, however, has them go through with their original plan, which is the comic book equivalent of Doctor Evil opening up an industrial-strength can of "Sh!" on Stott's butt. Back on Angel Island (yeah, Ken does a lot of back-and- forth cutting in this story), the Antisonic almost blows his cover by professing ignorance of who Locke is. Fortunately for him, L-dawg shows up at that precise moment, and Rouge re- engages the old guy in conversation. Keep in mind that Sonic was tied up, dressed in the Antisonic's leathers and (most important) can't swim. So of course, in the second panel of the next page, WITHOUT ANY EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER, he demonstrates that his previous situation was indeed easily escapable. At this point Antoine, who's apparently been passing as the Antiantoine as long as he's been here, decides that this is a good time to go medieval on Sonic. Sort of; after all, he is coming under the impression that this is the real Sonic so he has to manage the juggling act of attacking Sonic while keeping him in one piece. Lotsa luck. Sonic kicks off the engineer boots he was wearing and cleans the respective clocks of the Antis. Sonic then tackles the Antirotor, gives the flimsiest possible explanation as to how he escaped the aforementioned easily escapable, then asks for a shortcut back to Mobius Prime. Back on Angel Island, the Antisonic watches as Rouge turns on the smarm ... er, charm ... for Locke while he heads down to the Chaos Emerald chamber where he encounters ... Sonic, who was supposed to go to Mobius Prime but must've taken a left turn at Albuquerque. There follows several panels of useless digression before the butt-kicking resumes. It's accompanied, as always, by classically bad Ken Penders dialogue like this example from the Antisonic: "By any means necessary, babe ... whatever it takes ... so that I'm numero uno ... and you're not!" If the dialogue in this book hadn't already met its cliche quota, that speech alone was sufficient to put it over the top. At this point, Locke manages to overcome Rouge's blandishments and remembers that he's supposed to be guarding the Master Emerald so he makes himself scarce. He arrives just in time to engage in that corollary of most Doppelganger Plots: Guess The Hero. In this case, it's easier to guess who's the phoney baloney. He dismisses the Antisonic with the following speech: "You'll leave now of your own volition or I'll show you the way out!" However, Locke doesn't GIVE the Antisonic a chance to leave of his own volition; instead, he launches him out of the chamber without so much as a "Don't forget to write if you find work." But Ken didn't change the script in light of the action; maybe the line just sounded too good to edit out. Back on the surface of the island, a disappointed Rouge is about to write off the Antisonic until he gives her a peace offering from the chamber. It's the beginning of, if not a beautiful friendship, at least a sensible business arrangement. Possibly because Locke was in retirement prior to the Return To Angel Island arc, he doesn't have Archy BAMF Sonic back where he belongs but drops him off by flying vehicle instead. While Sonic wonders to himself what the Antisonic could have been up to, he finds himself on the receiving end of more solicitude than usual from Amy Rose and Bunnie. Sonic doesn't even TRY to put 1 and 1 together to get anything remotely resembling 2. Ladies and gentlemen, it's official: we have an Idiot Plot. HEAD: For those of you just joining us, an Idiot Plot is a story that can only proceed so long as the characters act like complete idiots. It never occurs to Sonic to connect the friendliness of the girls with his own time of absence. It never occurs to either of the girls to thank Sonic for the swell time or to complain about any incipient venereal diseases so Sonic can go "Say WHAT?!?" and deny that he was even keeping company with them. It doesn't occur to him to report his abduction and time of absence to Princess Sally who might be able to make the connection for him. Everybody acts like idiots. Hence, we have an Idiot Plot. Somehow I don't think that the connection will be made by any of the cast members in next issue's much-touted "Sonic's Angels" (which I STILL find to be a thoroughly cringeworthy title). And so long as the connection remains unconnected, we will still have an Idiot Plot no matter how hard the new story line tries to ignore it. I figure this means automatically docking Ken at least 3 Head Points per story until the idiocy is resolved. As for Sonic's escaping the easily escapable, I can think of three reasons why Ken put it in the story; pick one: 1. It's a Comic Code Authority thing that they can't show Sonic being directly shot by the Antis, so they had to put him in a bizarre and indirectly threatening situation that was, of course, still easily escapable. Then again, the comic didn't hesitate to show the shooting death of Maria in S98's "When Shadow Awakes," so there goes THAT theory. 2. Ken knew that the scene was a joke. Such death threats had become absurd even prior to the Austin Powers movies, but since those films effectively deconstructed the situation the creaking death scenarios appear more absurd than ever. One of my favorite riffs on this subject is from the film "The Great Mouse Detective" where in a masterpiece of Spielbergian timing Basil of Baker Street manages to survive 4 or 5 death traps set for him by the villain Ratigan (marvelously voiced by the great Vincent Price). And in the e-strip "Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures" by Amber Panyko, there's a hilarious non-canon spy spoof which, among other things, posits a means of death that James Bond never had to confront: http://www.missmab.com/comics/Vol471.htm 3. Ken DIDN'T know that this was a joke, which makes him one of maybe half a dozen writers in the world who still take this nonsense seriously. And Ken still suffers from his share of dialogue problems. The worst was probably when he addresses the following line to the Antitails, which is so inscrutable it deserved to be quoted in full: "Too bad I don't have my Ripmonster CD for you to groove on while dazed and confused!" OK, I know "Dazed and Confused" was a Led Zeppelin song from 1969 (and which was possibly ripped off from a song by The Yardbirds, but that's another story) as well as the title of a 1993 movie by Richard Linklater. However, the "Ripmonster" thing totally eludes me. It'd be one thing if this were just Ken's way of signifying to us Baby Boomers, but the whole thing is kind of ... never mind. The story itself is straightforward enough once you've bought into the initial premise of the Evil Twin Plot. Unfortunately, Ken seems to be deliberately putting off the resolution of the plot for a later time. That may end up doing more harm than good to a continuity that's been almost completely fubar for the last year and a half. Head Score: 5. EYE: Art Mawhinney manages to make Rouge look ... well, there's no other word for it ... cute. This as opposed to the Fox Network which didn't (or couldn't) visually censor the imported "Sonic X" where Rouge looks not just cute but sexy. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Putting aside the whole Evil Twin deal, I note that the stand-out character in this story is ... Locke. To understand why I say that, you have to go back beyond the Return To Angel Island arc to the Knuckles Comic run. Back then, Locke was no candidate for Father of the Year. He was secretive, manipulative, monomaniacal, and so busy grooming Knuckles for the role of Guardian that nothing else seemed to matter, not even his relationship with Knuckles himself. Hence his attempts to genetically engineer Knux using Chaos radiation, a situation that backfired horribly during Knuckles's Green Period. This is definitely a kinder, gentler Locke in action here, a far cry from what he was in the Knuckles book. He's actually engaged in managing the rebuilding of Angel Island, he's not trying to keep himself holed up in Haven (or what's left of it), and he's unusually (unusual for him, anyway) solicitous of Sonic once he's dismissed his Evil Twin. To this day, I have no idea whether Locke's character in the Knuckles book wasn't due to Ken having some father issues which he managed to work through in the course of writing the memorable "Father's Day" installment of M25YL. It's an interesting change for Locke and, if not in keeping with the book's continuity, at least it's a change in a good direction. That, unfortunately, is about the brightest point in an otherwise dreary story that is heavy on the butt-kicking and which ends as an Idiot Plot. Heart Score: 4. "Stargazing" Story: Tania del Rio (debut); Art: Tania del Rio (debut); Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering : Jeff Powell Sally awakens one evening sensing a presence in her room. Nicole has nothing to say when queried but the fact that the door was left ajar is testimony enough. Sally goes into the forest where she comes upon a being she's never seen before who addresses her by name and who sounds like Nicole. In fact, she identifies herself AS Nicole, but since she sort of reminds me of a Neopet I think of her as Neo-Nicole. Taking a cue from Romy Chacon's "Circuit Me," it seems Nicole has been working on a simulation program to enable her to take on a form that would enable her to experience life sensuously. Unfortunately, it's a temporary patch of a program and she'll have to resume her original form of computer consciousness. Sally stays with her until the program terminates, with an ending sequence that inspired me to write the following haiku: As part of me dies For the first time in my life I can see the stars. HEAD/EYE/HEART: I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times this comic has tried to transcend its medium, to become more than a mediocrity, and succeeded. "In The Still Of The Night" (S18), where Sally attends the death of her mentor Julayla, was the first and the story that hooked me on reading the comic. "The Royal Signet" of S120 was another, as was Karl Bollers's "Running To Stand Still." This story jumps to the top of that short list. This isn't just writing, this is magic. And I don't mean the false mumbo-jumbo involving the Ancient Walkers and the Source of All. However unfair it might be, comparing this story with the entire "The Good, The Bad and The Unknown" arc demonstrates the difference between comic book writing and GOOD comic book writing. GBU was all over the map as it cut between Sonic and his opponents, other members of the hero group, and the villains, including one of the worst characters ever to be dropped into the mix, Isaac. Here the focus is simple and intimate: it's just Sally and Neo-Nicole. And it's amazing that in Neo-Nicole del Rio hasn't just given us a Sally clone but an entirely re-imagined character, whereas Isaac was a direct visual quotation from the Sonic Adventure continuity. Neo-Nicole embodies all the elements that simply got glossed over in "Circuit Me." You sense in this character a desire, a desire to be what Sally is. In other classic stories such as "Pinocchio" or the "Wizard of Oz" or even to some extent Data from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," it's a desire to be human, to be "real." But reality comes at a price, and Neo-Nicole pays it. This is the real genius of this story: del Rio doesn't simply give us one more character with which to clutter up the continuity. Rather, we have someone who is in her own way mortal. I'll be the first to admit that when I saw del Rio's "manga" reworking of several Archie titles ["Sabrina" and "Josie and the Pussycats"], I had my doubts. For one thing, the characters's lips seemed too prominent. It reminded me far more of "Totally Spies" than the authentic shojo manga (girls' comics) I've seen. But this story perfectly demonstrates del Rio's understanding of one of the cardinal qualities not only of manga and anime, but of Japanese culture: "mono no aware." "Mono no aware" (the last word is pronounced with three syllables) carries a meaning of "sensitivity to things," though "aware" can also be translated "sadness." Its Western translation might just as well be "pathos of things" or "tragedy of things." It's been defined as "a serene acceptance of a transient world" and "a gentle pleasure found in mundane pursuits soon to vanish." Its symbol, used in countless anime and manga, is the cherry blossom. It appears brilliantly for a while, then falls to the ground and dies. Neo-Nicole perfectly embodies that quality, and unlike Isaac the rambling robot who yammered on about the formation of Chaos Emeralds, Neo-Nicole doesn't have to explain her existence because it is so transitory, so temporary. We are caught up in the fact that she exists now and won't exist in another moment. This touches our hearts in a way no character in this book has done since the Mina of "Hearts Held Hostage." This story also differs from GBU in its fundamental structure. GBU was (sort of) about the missile threat and the half-hearted fight between Sonic, Shadow, and Metal Sonic. "Stargazing" is far different. As Michiko Kakutani said in her review of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" in the New York Times, this story is "a character-driven tale ... a story that creates a hunger to know more about these people who have become so palpably real.... Indeed, the achievement of the Potter books is the same as that of the great classics of children's literature, from the Oz novels to 'The Lord of the Rings': the creation of a richly imagined and utterly singular world, as detailed, as improbable and as mortal as our own." When was the last time anyone got a sense of THAT from this comic? The writers have been so busy thinking of Mobius as an alt-Earth that the singularness, the detail, the improbability of such a world just never showed up on their radar. I sometimes get the feeling that the writers just never even TRY to work even a portion of the magic that infuses great works such as Miyazaki's acclaimed anime "Spirited Away." "Stargazing" is about the kind of being in the kind of world that we should have been reading about in this comic all along. If there's a flaw that makes this masterpiece, it's page [4] panel 4 where Sally's right arm looks uncomfortably funky. But I know how tricky foreshortening can be so I'll let that pass. And I couldn't help but smile when del Rio, in repeating a similar moment in a SatAM ep, had Sally changing out of her nightgown and into her way more revealing vest. I know that del Rio needed to make her debut in a short story that wouldn't make waves in an already-turbulent continuity. Still, this is a strong piece that not only vaults to the top of the list for Best Story Of The Year but introduces us to a Best New Character. One hopes that the writers find a way to allow Neo-Nicole (or whatever they end up calling her) to come back into the story every once in a while. And Tania del Rio has become a writer to watch. Head Score: 10; Eye Score: 10; Heart Score: 10. Sonic-grams: Mike says next to nothing in answer to the letters, except that Shadow in the comics won't be packing heat the way he does in his new game. Safe bet there. Blurb for S152. And a possible dummy cover for Sonic X #1. It's interesting that besides Sonic and Eggman it shows two polar opposite females: the innocent child Cream, and the mature and worldly-wise Rouge.