Sonic the Hedgehog #177 (Sep 2007) Yardley!/Amash/Jensen cover: Sonic, looking like something Blaze dragged in a mere two issues ago, appears more or less fully recovered, secure in the knowledge that he will NOT get the crap kicked out of him this time by Robotnik, who's slinging the checkered ball on what appeared to be a length of bend pipe. No way a rope or wire could have that many kinks in it. "Home, New Home" 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 Ian starts out with Neo-Nicole doing a first-person exposition. Back in the bad old days, Ken Penders would start out a story this way, then promptly forget about the first person exposition after a page or two. Either that, or else he would introduce story elements that the character who does the opening narration couldn't possibly be omniscient enough to know, thus undercutting the whole concept. So let's see: Neo-Nicole gets to do some opening exposition about the story on the first page ... and then Ian promptly forgets about her, relying on generic text boxes to handle transitions, etc. Which is just as well because, again, there will be scenes where Neo-Nicole couldn't possibly know what's going on and where her narration would be inappropriate. I'm beginning to wonder whether this sort of thing isn't just the industry standard for comic book writing. Anyway, on the first page we get the troupe of secondary villains set up for us (Mammoth Mogul, Ixis Naugus, Bean, Bark, and Nack, remember?), and on the second page Neo-Nicole throws them back in the slammer, to be forgotten for the rest of this story, at least. The rejoicing over this streamlining of the story is cut short when the Egg Fleet finally starts attacking. Neo-Nicole starts seriously de-rezzing and tells Sally "Catch you later," though Sally takes her disappearing act pretty hard. C'mon, Sal, she's just going to work! Sally and Elias decide that everyone's pretty shook up from the preceding issues so a little R and R is in order. Sonic, despite the fact that there's not a scratch on him, is ordered to report to sick bay. There he runs into Rotor, who's as flat on his back as his weight will allow, and a disoriented Charmy. Dr. Quack credits "residual magic ring energy" with Sonic's looking good, which is a good an excuse as any. And now, a one-page interlude: Dr. Fin is communing with the Master Emerald when Scourge reports that Dimitri has escaped, which the Doc thinks is a GOOD thing while he works on "the return of Enerjak." I thought Dimitri used to BE Enerjak before Mammoth Mogul got hold of him, but anyway.... Back at Neo-Knothole, Antoine is the only character with sense enough to worry about the bombardment going on outside while Bunnie and Sally reminisce. Sally then decides that what she needs is a good retcon and some spa time. Back at the fleet, Snively is spared telling Robotnik for the umpteenth time why he hasn't yet blasted a hole in the shield by figuring out who's taking pot shots at the flagship. Turns out, after an absence of 15 issues, it's Hope, stepdaughter of Colin Kintobor, Snively's brother. Seems she took his advice in "Ties That Bind" (S162) and went to "the United Federation" (Everybody say it with me, "WHAT?!?") but imagine her surprise upon coming home for a visit (well, that's not really clear in her exposition) to find the former Knothole blasted to excelsior. She then exits, vowing to leave and go back to school and become an engineer and then come back and "kick both Eggman and your butts!" If she can crack through the glass ceiling. The scene ends ambiguously enough, but we're led to believe that Snively takes a pass on the chance to thin out the family tree. Back on the ground and under the shield, Amadeus Prower is wondering out loud how to exploit the bombardment for political advantage, thus driving that plot point home for the umpteenth time, when Robotnik shows up in his battle armor and wails on the shield. He could have used the contrails of his missiles to spell out "Surrender Sonic" in the sky, but it's been done. In response to his "little tantrum," Sonic strolls outside the city where Robotnik tells him "This battle armor was specifically designed to out-perform you at every level!" Apparently, it was NOT designed to withstand lower-level attacks, so Sonic stands aside while the rest of the gang, including Sally with an old school SatAM hairdo, start taking apart the battle armor. Once he's been peeled like a jumbo shrimp, Sally orders him to move his hinder back to New Megaopolis. In response, Robotnik calls in an air strike from the fleet which is blocked when Neo-Nicole extends the sheild to cover them. Neo-Nicole then puts in an appearance and tells him "No, seriously, take a hike." He does, and there is much rejoicing. HEAD: As much as I liked this story, it left me with a LOT of questions. The first one being: "Where did Nicole learn how to do shields and how come they can't do them as well on Star Trek?" Honestly, no matter which series or movie you watch it's always "Diverting all available power to the shields!" or "Shields down to 30%!" or "The shields canna take much more a this, Cap'n!" You get the impression that Star Fleet gave the shields contract to the lowest bidder, who was a descendant of the guy who figured it was all right to send down-armored Humvees into Iraq. But Robotnik has the fleet throw everything available at the shield over Neo-Knothole and nothing happens. Just another day on Mobius. It's nice to see the critters get a break for once, but I just have to wonder. Speaking of Star Trek, my next question is "Who or what is the United Federation that Hope is talking about?" Last I heard, her only available destination was Station Square, where the Overlanders who more or less abandoned her (as hinted at in "A Girl Named Hope!" in S108) settled after leaving the continuity. Then again, the fact that the Sonic X comic is utilizing Station Square may have had something to do with Ian's having to create an alternative. Next question: what the heck is Dr. Quack talking about when he examines Sonic and says "Look at your eye, for instance. It's already on the mend." Sonic had an eye injury? True, Sonic ended up with a closed left eye at the end of S175's "Eggman Empire," but by page [9] of the next issue it was barely noticeable. And by this issue it's "WHAT eye injury?" I'm surprised Quack was even able to diagnose anything wrong with it. Again, I don't know if it's a Comic Code thing, an Archie standards thing, a Sega thing, or some combination thereof. Finally, I found myself wondering "What kind of power source has Neo-Nicole utilized to keep the shields up and running?" We're definitely past the low-tech SatAM Knothole here, despite the fact that the architecture still features small thatched-roof cottages in contrast to the hellacious high-tech city where Robotnik reigned. Then again, I found myself asking the same question about the Mowe (pronounced "moweh"), the one-person flying wing featured in Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind." So maybe I should just accept it and move on. All this aside, the story really worked for me, and it's nice to see the kids FINALLY catch a break for once. It was hard to say that about the Bunnie-Antoine nuptials in S174's "Union" because Ian kept cutting in with the Espio subplot. The resolution of the plot was especially enjoyable, with Sonic stepping back and letting his buds do the work. It reminds me of the Flying Battery Zone from the Sonic & Knuckles game where the one boss is defeated by making it punch itself out, and Sonic escapes from what I like to call the Xenon Lamp Room by having the lamp destroy the room. I've always liked the ironic twist of getting the technology to destroy itself. Here, though, we have Robotnik having crafted battle armor that is SO Sonic-specific that it's not built to deal with anyone else. This probably works better in fiction than in fact, but it's still a sweet denouement. For that, I'm ready to forgive almost all the other improbabilities. I say "almost" because the business about Sonic's eye was just a tad too much and could have been left out all together with no harm done. Head Score: 9. (Note: all scores are for the arc as a whole) EYE: The clue to Tracy Yardley!'s inspiration for Neo- Knothole is in plain sight in the first panel on the first page: that spikey-petaled flower just behind Neo-Nicole. It's a direct quotation from the Sonic CD game, and a reminder of one of the alternative strategies for playing the game: the pursuit of "making a good future." Instead of simply moving across the platform from Point A to Point B, one can warp to the Past, find and destroy the clamshell roboticizer (there's also a Metal Sonic trying to step on small animals), then warp to a good future with few hazards and brilliant coloration. The same effect can be achieved by collecting the seven Time Stones, but I've yet to get even one of those so the less said about that option the better. Tracy Yardley! has not just done a Knothole knockoff. This is a Good Future Knothole, brought into the present by Neo-Nicole. We don't get to see a lot of it, which I'd like to in future stories. In one stage of the game that takes place underwater the good future features plant life as an integral part of the plumbing. I hope that this continues. Otherwise, the artwork for the arc as a whole is a well-done combination of the intimate and the spectacular. Eye Score: 10. HEART: The two big moments in this arc are when Robotnik wipes out Knothole and beats up on Sonic in "Eggman Empire," and the trick play Nicole came up with which was revealed in "Cracking the Empire." Sonic's rematch doesn't quite measure up. And that's not the only thing. For whatever reason, a number of heartfelt moments just have trouble working for me. The worst is Hope's two-pager; she shows up, yells exposition at Snively over the radio, then leaves, not to return until who knows when. It had the potential for being a Heart moment but it turned into a verbal drive-by. Same with Sonic visiting Rotor in sick bay. As was the case with Sonic's eye problem, the artwork left me with the sense that he wasn't really banged up all that badly. And Rotor redirects Sonic's concern to Charmy, whose injury is so comic it's trivialized. Perhaps the most unforgivable is the Sally-Bunnie dialogue on pages [8-9]. Here, Ian suffers from the same problem he had on display in S173's "Round-Up" where the Bunnie-Antoine wedding became a plot point that had to keep getting out of the way of the action. There is a certain pace necessary to get Heart across, and Ian managed to find it in both "I Am" (S171) and the awkwardly-titled ""Mobius 25 Years Later: Part 2: Tempus Aeternus" (S167). Here, however, it feels like just another excuse for Sally and Bunnie to provide exposition rather than to really open up. In the same vein, Ian is so busy flogging the Amadeus Prower Has Something Up His Sleeve plot point that it drains any kind of Heart out of a scene that includes him and Tails together. I know some stories are tricker to work Heart into than others, but this is not progress. Heart Score: 6.