Sonic the Hedgehog #183 (Feb 2008)
     Yardley!/Hunzeker cover: Sonic getting ready to mix it up
with Kunckles-as-Enerjak while Eggman and Shadow sit this one
out, looking decidedly clobbered.  Hey, I thought *I* handled
the spoilers!


     "Desperate Times"
     Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash;
Color: uncredited; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Mike
Pelerito; Managing Editor/Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick;
Sega Licensing reps: the late Robert Leffler, Dyna Lopez, and
Cindy Chau.

     OK, we had to wait a month, but FINALLY we get a reaction
shot from Julie-Su concerning Locke's willingness to off his
own son.  "He is no longer Knuckles! Now he is only Enerjak!"
he explains.  I waited for him to say "I have no son!!" but
instead, after the first page splash he simmers down to
deliver the exposition on the "weapon."  In this case, it
looks like a high-tech pick-axe which makes me seriously doubt
its potential.  Julie-Su raves on while Sonic thinks they
should at least have a look at it.  He says this while giving
Julie-Su a broad wink of the eye that only somebody as
completely oblivious to reality as Locke could fail to read. 
The three take the nearest warp ring to the weapon site and
find it guarded by Scourge, Fiona and a half-dozen ineffectual
villains.
     Meanwhile, Eggman has Knuckles bottled up in one of his
"last few egg grapes," when Snively escorts the Floating Head
of Dimitri into the room.  Dimitri offers his assistance, but
Eggman insists, with all the assurance of the engineers who
said that the Titanic was unsinkable, that "everything is
under control."  Of course that's Knuckles's cue to break out
of the egg grapes and take out a couple city blocks in the
process.  Eggman calls in the fleet and beats a retreat with
Dimitri saying "I told you so!"
     As for Sonic and his companions, there's a pretty typical
fight going on: you've got one baddie punching out another
because Locke executes the tricky maneuver of ducking a punch,
Fiona and Julie-Su are mixing it up with each other as the
only girls at this party, and the so-called Destructix have to
double-team against Sonic in order to get any kind of
traction.  This goes on for almost three pages until the
cavalry arrives in the form of ... Archimedes the fire ant who
sets up a literal firewall to cover their retreat.
     Down in the nearby depths of whatever storage facility
the wonder weapon was kept in, Archimedes goes into such a
long and pointless spiel that Sonic amuses himself by
retrieving the pick-axe and then, when the villains who were
supposed to be guarding it arrive, going into spin-dash mode
and shattering it before it can even be used.  The Destructix
can only stand around looking like idiots, but Locke is
seriously honked off by this development.  Sonic, however,
goes off to implement his own plan.
     Let's see, Knuckles has broken out of the egg grapes (and
put that plot point to rest once and for all, I hope) and
Sonic has trashed the alleged wonder weapon of the echidnas. 
So let's check back with Knuckles who is casually dismantling
Eggman's robotic horde.  The Egg Fleet, the one that couldn't
even make a dent in Nicole's force field a couple issues back,
launches an attach on Knuckles that he easily turns back onto
the ships themselves, as they do that self-destruct number
from the "Sonic Heroes" game.  Eggman, Snively and Dimitri
then decide that it's time to hunker in the bunker.
     But self-righteous destruction of a planet's
infrastructure while wearing anachronistic pseudo-Egyptian
clothing is hard work, so Knuckles warps himself back to the
Master Emerald for a recharge.  Dr. Finn meets him and starts
to go into a modified incantation lifted from "Sonic
Adventure" but Sonic himself crashes the party, boards the
Master Emerald, and goes super to set up the next (and
presumably final) story in this arc.

     HEAD: Show of hands: anybody here who thought that maybe,
just maybe, the weapons that were going to be used against
Knuckles might just have been even a teensy-weensy bit
effective?  Anyone?  I didn't think so.
     Sure, we know about the track record of the Egg Fleet,
and there was every expectation that the Egg Grapes couldn't
hold Knuckles.  But for sheer uselessness nothing beats the
unnamed wonder weapon the Brotherhood threw together in their
spare time.  We get no idea of what it's supposed to
accomplish, how Sonic or whomever is supposed to make it work,
or whether Knuckles would still be alive after it's used.  The
presumption is that he wouldn't survive it, and that's all it
is, a presumption.  We're told nothing.  I was left with the
distinct impression that Ian and Tracy didn't even bother
working up a sweat trying to figure out what this weapon is
supposed to do and how it's supposed to look.  Why bother if
Sonic is just going to trash it anyway?  Tracy could have just
as easily drawn a box or a sphere with a set of old school
rabbit ears like a TV antenna on the top and a button off to
one side.  I know we're entering the home stretch of the story
arc here, but this is just plain bad work.
     But there's no skimping on the fight scene, is there? 
Too bad it never amounted to anything.  The drawing where Sgt.
Simian clocks Drago because Locke has enough sense to duck a
punch stands as a representative drawing for the entire fight
sequence: the fight just goes on for too long and is too inept
to raise the readers's interest until Archimedes shows up. 
There's way too much palaver between Julie-Su and Locke going
on.  And of course since this is an Archie comic even the
panel showing Julie-Su battling Fiona manages to look
uninteresting; that pose of Fiona's is just ridiculous.  I
know this is all in the interest of Ian's action-and-more-
action philosophy, but pointless action that only exists to
get the reader to the next installment gets very old very
fast.  Head Score: 4.
     EYE: Tracy puts in some good work illustrating a lazy
story: the Knuckles breakout from the Egg Grapes and Locke's
limbo avoidance of getting punched are nice.  Not nice enough
to overcome the half-hearted writing, but nice.  Eye Score: 8.
     HEART: For all of Julie-Su's screaming at Locke, it
doesn't advance the Heart factor of this story at all.  N/a


     "Ashes and Dust"
     Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Jim Amash;
Color: Jason Jensen, Lettering: Jay Dubb [Do I really have to
point out that "Jay Dubb" is a variant on "J. W." as in "John
E. Workman"?]

     You know you're up against a boatload of exposition when
someone, Scourge in this case, delivers a line like "Not that
I get your plan, or what it's all about, or whatever."  And
Doc Finn obliges, offering up a heaping helping of back story
from the Sonic and Knuckles comics about the comet, the
Dimitri-Edmund sibling rivalry and the Legion vs. Brotherhood
grudge match.  Tracy fills a splash page with echidna faces,
but it only elicits the complaint from the Doc that "Seventeen
generations of Guardians and five Grand Masters have resulted
in nothing."  We also learn how Remington got drafted by the
Doc (sort of), and that the Zone of Silence has been renamed
once more; I won't give the new/old designation away out of
respect for the memory of a great writer, Rod Serling.  When
Finn starts babbling on about all of Mobius being "cleansed in
a wave of emerald fire," Scourge takes his leave without
asking "Anyone ever tell you that you sound like David
Koresh?"

     HEAD: As tiresome as these back-of-the-book back stories
can get, the lone interesting development is saved for last,
with its hint that Dr. Finn has achieved full Mad Genius
status by wanting to basically wipe the slate clean.  That's
taking it to a level that Eggman never dared; the fat man has
too much of a self-preservation streak.  It also hints that it
may be the Doc himself who'll be making the "ultimate
sacrifice" hinted at in the blurb for #184.  And we won't miss
him a bit.  Lose Scourge in the process and I won't complain. 
Head Score: 7.
     EYE: Everything hinges on the last page and the last
panel.  With no dialogue, it's up to Tracy to leave us with
the impression that Scourge thinks Dr. Finn is a couple chips
short of a nacho platter.  And he does, in a very effective
drawing of Scourge, one that makes wading through the rest of
the story art worthwhile.  Eye Score: 7.
     HEART: I hope I'm not reading too much into Scourge at
the end, but that was the ONLY compelling reason to hang in
for what was yet one more by-the-numbers exposition fest.  If
the story doesn't play out that way I will be EXTREMELY
disappointed ... unless Ian has something even more impressive
waiting in the wings.  Heart Score: 6.