Sonic the Hedgehog #174 (June 2007) Yardley!/Jensen cover: OK, I don't get it. We know Bunnie and Antoine are going to tie the knot, so why blot them out with the heart-shaped ... blot? And why are Sonic and Sally looking at each other like they want to blow this pop stand and get a room, while Amy Rose is crying a fountain and Tails looks like he's watching the Super Bowl or at least something other than a wedding. Add in Jason Jenses's garish coloring job and you have cover art that isn't bad but is definitely wrong, like an out-of-tune instrument. "Union" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater It's the day of the Rabbot-D'Coolette nuptials, and everybody's getting spruced up. Sonic and Tails get into above-the-cummerbund formal wear and attend a bachelor smoker for Antoine where the point appears to be wearing down the groom's self-confidence. At this point, we get introduced to the subplot: Espio's gone stag to Robotropolis or Eggmanland or ... what ARE they calling it these days? After some brief exposition by Omniscient Narrator, he decides to return to Knothole where Bunnie is getting prepped by Sally and Rosie. After two pages... We're back to Espio's mission where the Narrator's yammering almost gives Espio away so... He cuts back to the wedding. Knuckles and Julie-Su are decked out in Ragnarok Formal Wear, which is a pity because it means Ian passes up the chance to work "Knux" and "tux" into the same word balloon. But the two echidnas rule out participating in anything similar anytime soon because the Dark Legion didn't do weddings and Knuckles is too busy channeling Ken Penders with his "who needs a ceremony" remark. Sonic then joins the Royals and engages in some banter with Sally. Queen Alicia gives the impression that Sally's line about "Some of us like to be prepared instead of waiting for the last second" constitutes the kind of "teasing" that goes on between young marrieds. Take it from someone with three decades of marriage under his belt: it's the same for us oldsters. Ian's writing gets about as awkward at this point as Sonic and Sally feel, so enter the Prowers. It all looks OK until the line from Amadeus: "Soon you [Elias] won't have much more power than that, anyway." When Tails asks what he meant by that remark, which only needed an ominous musical sting to make it complete, Amadeus explains that he and Rosemary "have a number of suggestions for the structure of the kingdom." Naturally, with something that suspicious, Ian shifts gears to ... Espio learns the "complete, horrifying, unstoppable plan" of Eggman. He panics and gets busted. "But everyone else wouldn't know that, would they?" Thank you, Omniscient Narrator, dba Captain Obvious. Back at the wedding, Elias is conducting the ceremony. "Isn't it touching?" Omniscient Narrator asks, making me wish I could pop him in the chops. At the same time, I'd like to throttle Ernest Mayes, who authored the comic insert wherein Batman goes up against the Penguin and his plan to kidnap Cal Ripkin. Why? Because Ripkin used to play for the Orioles. What next for the Penguin, go to Rome and threaten the College of Cardinals? Back to the comic I bought and paid for. Espio makes a break for it, which is intercut with the exchange of rings between Bunnie and Antoine in a sequence that, for me, drains the moment completely. Espio, declaiming as if his life depended on it, confronts ... Eggman, wearing some jive glove that would embarrass Michael Jackson. I'm sorry to say I am so NOT impressed by this villain anymore. Maybe something worthwhile will happen in the next installment, but I'm not betting cash money. HEAD: It's not unusual for a story to keep more than one plot going simultaneously, something I'm reminded of whenever one of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" films shows up on TV. In fiction writing, you can keep distance between the different stories simply by ending one chapter and beginning another. That isn't an option here, and while there is some interest in what's going on, the cutting from one story to another becomes dangerous because if it's done too often the commitment to either story comes into question. This method reaches a peak in the rapid intercutting between the wedding and Espio's attempted escape. The heart of the former and the suspense of the latter are drained away by the device of putting both story lines on page [14] which looks like nothing so much as Ian surfing back and forth between two different TV programs. The responsibility of the author is to show equal commitment to both stories; what I came away with was the sense that there was nothing else on and Ian was too bored to stay with either story for very long. And we get a new villain in the form of Amadeus (and possibly Rosemary) Prower. This would sort of explain something that's been bugging me since S170 when Tails was reunited with his parents. We've seldom SEEN them since their arrival. It would have been nice to work them in at the end of "Truth of the Heart" (S172) where Tails only TALKS about his mom. And when they ARE seen, Amadeus usually has a not- so-hidden agenda he wants to pursue. I was never comfortable with their sudden provenance in "Coming and Goings." Out of the entire population of a planet (OK, it was a pretty lame planet IMO), how did only those two survive? That should have been a red flag right there, but I was curious to see how Ian would develop these characters. Short answer: he didn't. And now it looks like just another chance for the writer to yell "Psych!" That's not always a bad thing: Amber Williams just recently pulled off something similar in the "Abel's Story" sidebar of her e-strip "Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures" at www.missmab.com. Only she managed it with no foreshadowing whatsoever: just a stunning announcement following a sudden act of violence. My great fear, of course, is that the Prowers will turn out to be Black Arms agents. Long-time readers of these reviews will recognize my utter hatred for dragging space aliens into the Sonic continuity, mainly because when it's been done it's been done badly (see the Tossed in Space story arc, S126-129). But since Sega itself resorted to space aliens (Black Doom) in the Shadow videogame, I suppose I'll have to swallow my prejudice and prepare for the worst. Head: 5. EYE: Right from the cover, with the over-the-top expressions of the members of the wedding party, I got the strong suspicion that Tracy Yardley! was interested in subverting the wedding in favor of Espio's spy mission. He really brings more conviction to the latter than the former, though the scattered reactions of members of the wedding in the splash page toward the end (especially the various couples making eye contact with each other) help redeem the situation. Eye Score: 7. HEART: I sensed that for this story, either Ian too was more interested in Espio's caper than in the wedding, or else Editorial told him not to girl it up too much. Either way, what could have been a major Heart event missed a lot of opportunities to really take it to the next level. Instead, we gets talk. And more talk. LOTS of talk! Sonic talking to Tails, Bunnie talking to Sally and Rosie, Knuckles and Julie-Su talking to Sonic. Line after line of exposition instead of dialogue. Any one of these scenes could have been the nucleus of a major Heart moment, but it simply never happened. For whatever reason, Ian dials down the emotional volume and little if anything like Heart comes through. Which only makes me wonder whether Ian isn't just planning to blow it all to hell in S175. Heart Score: 3. "See Ya Later Chao: Part 2" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Michael Higgins; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Michael Higgins Turns out Eggman "detected high levels of mystical energy" and showed up ready to prospect for chaos emeralds, power rings, or other assorted jewelry. He's bummed to learn that it was nothing more than Chao activity, but figures that if he trashes the Chao garden the day won't be a total loss. It takes a bit of tinkering by Tails and choreography by Sonic and Knuckles but they manage to give Eggman's ship a taste of his own drill bit. While Eggman escapes and Sonic and Knuckles decline the adjective "bad," Tails realizes that the wreckage has left the Chao homeless. Thus their relocation to the Ring Pool/Lake. Which is where I thought they were found in the first installment. My bad. HEAD: Ian's writing rises above the thin material, especially the exchange between Sonic and Eggman on the first page. I don't know why "Did I already ask about magic rings?" cracks me up, but it does. Same with Sonic and Knuckles reciting the "We Bad" rap. Tails's Treknobabble was a bit much, though. Head Score: 9. EYE: Maybe Tracy Yardley! is more cut out for action stories as well. His work here is more convincing that in "Union," with the top panel of the third page being one of my favorites, followed by Tails's facial expressions throughout. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Nothing major going on in this action story, which is just as well considering the results of the previous story. Heart Score: n/a