Sonic the Hedgehog #184 (Mar 2008) Yardley!/Hunzeker cover: Enerjak vs. Super Sonic, Dr. Fin vs. Locke, Knuckles vs. Chaos Energy. Nice design if a little heavy on communicating that this issue is all about fighting. But first, let's get the IMPORTANT stuff out of the way. Wedged onto a page in the middle of the cover story and sharing space with the annual Statement of Ownership small print is the news that "SONIC-GRAMS IS COMING BACK!" That's a development that deserves all caps. What happened to it in the first place? Starting with issue 148, Archie Comics began implementing a cross-promotion deal with industry giant DC Comics. Archie was supposed to hand over two pages of the Sonic comic (I don't know if it was the same with their other titles such as Sabrina) to DC to plug DC-related products; presumably the same thing was supposed to happen in DC comics with Archie stuff. How did it work? As I said in the 2005 Best/Worst List: " ... those two pages had to come from SOMEWHERE, and since the stories had already been decided upon and there was no way Archie was going to lose any more ad revenue, that meant that the Sonic-Grams and Fan Art pages were expendable. In the ten comics from S148 onward inclusive, the Sonic-Grams appeared only in issues 149, 151, and 157. The fan art disappeared completely until S157, and then had to share the Sonic-Grams page after being reduced to the smallest of thumbnails." At the time, I thought this was a kick in the head for the fan base, which had been sending letters, e-mails and fan art to Archie. The art varied wildly from the childlike (literally) to the polished and professional. But it at least gave the fans some indication that the comic knew about them. That faded when the pages were dropped. So what changed? I'm not sure, but this may be the first fruit of Victor Gorelick's stepping into the Editor-In-Chief slot vacated by the death last year of Richard H. Goldwater. It's a good sign IMO that the title is reaching out to the fans again. I can't analyze the Statement of Ownership circulation figured in order to determine whether the comic NEEDED to reach out to the fans. So by way of re-introducing the feature the comic reprints 4 (count 'em, four) thumbnails for the next issues. They communicate very little except that Mina is getting dragged back into the continuity (literally, in the case of the S185 cover art) and that a bunch of villains will be making life miserable for Sonic (including the oldest of old school villains, Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts on the cover of S187). Since the disappearance of Sonic-Grams over two years ago, I've been satisfying my fanart jones by having a page for myself on the DeviantArt site, where I've discovered not only some incredible Sonic fan art and marked them as Favorites, but also dA pages by Archie Comic contributors past and present, including Ian Flynn and Dawn Best. I'd like to believe that the remaining hardcore fans will start getting their props again in the comic, but I'm not holding my breath. Anyway... "Chaos Angel" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John H. Workman; Editor/Managing Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick From Albion to New Mobitropolis to the Angel Island venue, everybody's tuned in to the Brawl For It All: Super Sonic vs. Knuckles dba Enerjak. Sonic starts out by drawing Knuckles away from the Island, then taunting him by breaking his staff and polishing his helmet. I know it's supposed to look like a case of Super Noogies, but you ever tried giving a noogie to someone wearing a freakin' helmet? A blast of Chaos energy directed against Sonic does nothing; "I'm invulnerable," Super Sonic tells Knuckles, which is a surprise to me since I've never been able to get Super Sonic through the very last stage in Sonic 3. But enough of the fighting; let's slow the story to a crawl and listen in on some dialogue. Locke is getting grief from two sources: Julie-Su and Archimedes. The latter reminds Locke that it was his tampering with the unhatched Knuckles's DNA and his training Knux to be a Guardian that started him down this road; Ouch! As Julie-Su and Archy make themselves scarce, so do the Destructix who grab the next Warp Ring out of town. So do Fiona and Scourge after a little foreshadowing. I know Warp Rings are canonical, having appeared in the Sonic CD game, but they're in danger of becoming too easy a gimmick in this comic. Back at the fight, Sonic swipes Knuckles's helmet but before he can move in and give him some real noogies Knuckles teleports him below the surface of Mobius. Sonic's comment is dead-on: "He tries to stop a burrowing species by burying him? At least he's as clever as ever." It takes another page of mixing it up before Sonic realizes that this could turn into a VERY long battle. Julie-Su and Archy, meanwhile, BAMF onto Angel Island where Dr. Fin is watching the show. He tells Jules there's no stopping the Sonic-Knuckles fight because ... and here he lets his warped little mind wander so much he thinks he's in a Harry Potter book ... he's put a "hex" on the Master Emerald. Then he makes the characteristic Babbling Villain Mistake of telling Julie-Su that the only way to unlock the hex is through someone committing an act of self-sacrifice. At this point, the characters get all emo, with Julie-Su saying "I wanna B ded!" then Archy saying "No I wanna B ded!" then Locke warp-ringing in and saying "Frgt U I wanna B ded!" even though he shouldn't have been able to hear what Fin was saying. By this time, Fin realizes that everybody's nuts and resorts to old school kicking and hitting while rambling on about how the fight is supposed to destroy Mobius. Don't ask me how that's supposed to work, unless the prospect of Super Sonic and Hyper Knuckles punching each other out forever is supposed to bore everyone on Mobius to death. Archy, who knows he has no fan base to speak of, grabs a handful of Fin and BAMFs him out of the scene. That leaves it up to Julie-Su and Locke to decide who dies. Locke explains his reason for self-destruction this way: "The Brotherhood of Guardians had its reasons for how we raised the next generation. ["Badly," if you ask me] We only wanted to protect those we loved, even if we had to do it from afar." That's the extent of his explanation, which is probably no help at all to the noobs who were never exposed to the Knuckles comic. It's enough for Julie-Su, who decides Locke is more expendable than she is and lets him recite Tikal's old rap from Sonic Adventure, which doesn't make much sense outside the game but that's never stopped Ian before. This bit of mumbo jumbo releases the Emerald's hold on Knuckles, reverses his Enerjakness, and leaches the super out of Super Sonic. We don't get to see WHAT it does to Locke, who presumably joins the immortals, i.e., the other dead Guardians cluttering up the ethereal realm (c.f. the reunion of Hawking with the recently-deceased Tobor in S100's "Welcome To The Dark Side" and the unbelievably boring "Afterlife" arc, S121-124). Knuckles sizes up the situation and attacks Fin in villainous mid-rant. Fin escapes a fall from Angel Island and certain death via ... if you said "Warp Ring," then it's official: that plot device has become overused. At this point, Knuckles is FINALLY reset to what he's been in the games all along: a solitary figure guarding the Master Emerald all by his lonesome. This may or may not be an improvement. Discuss. HEAD: OK, I can see Knuckles/Enerjak being used as Fin's plaything and unleashing tons of Chaos energy on the planet to "destroy it in order to save it," to use the Vietnam War-era expression and the logic that went with it. The prospect of Super Sonic and Hyper Knuckles fairly equally matched and slugging it out forevermore, however, makes no sense except for its entertainment value (for Fin if for nobody else). That's bad enough, but then with no real hint as to the whys and wherefores Fin digresses off into Mumbo Jumbo Land. It was with S100 that I began using the phrase "mumbo jumbo" to describe any kind of reliance in the comic on elements of the supernatural to move the plot along. Mind you, I do NOT agree with those who claim that the Harry Potter books are gateway drugs that will lure innocent little kiddies into dabbling in the occult and shooting hoops with Satan. J. K. Rowling's brand of magic is far from the stuff of serious occultism. And the collection of eccentrics and flakes who populate her world of non-muggles pretty much bears that out; if she were really trying to sell a belief in divination, for instance, Rowling wouldn't have made Sibyll Trelawney into such a dip. As far as I'm concerned a fallback onto the supernatural is evidence of just plain bad writing. By contrast, the "Eggman Empire" arc (S175-177) earned high marks by relying not on some supernatural deus ex machina to set things right but on a particularly neat turn of the plot which introduced New Knothole and a changed dynamic in the storytelling. That story EARNED its ending; it didn't hand one to the readers on a plate. Granted that villains like Fin are obtuse; that can be part of their make-up. But he shouldn't be arbitrary. And that's what the business with hexes and self-sacrifice felt like here: it felt arbitrary, something tacked on in the last installment without any kind of build-up. I can speak from experience, having dabbled in a certain amount of mumbo jumbo for my fanfic "Mobius Apocalypse." But at least I had the supernatural element going on from the first chapter and didn't save it until I needed something to save my narrative bacon in the final chapter. I know that Warp Rings are canonical, though frustrating; I speak as someone who's played Sonic CD, prevented Metal Sonic from stepping on small animals, and made some Good Futures along the way, without ever managing to gather ONE LOUSY TIME STONE THE WHOLE TIME ... sorry, I really don't want to talk about it. And while the characters were using the Warp Rings in moderation I had no complaints. But in this story they're used on FOUR different occasions. The third is the lamest: Fin uses one to grab a handful of Julie-Su who was otherwise just out of his reach. As an escape device for the Destructix, Scourge and Fin, I can understand it. But this is just gratuitous defiance of time and space, on a par with the Acme Portable Hole from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" OK, it's also funny, but it still drags a serious confrontation between characters down to Looney Toons level. I understand that Ian swears up and down on his message board that Locke is really really truly dead and that this is not a death cheat. I have no reason to doubt him, but then again I can understand why the fans would think that. For one thing, we don't ever see a body AFTER Locke's death, nor do we see what happens to him DURING his demise. Does he evaporate or what? Ian finesses the point. We're stuck not knowing. I'm not certain whether this is a Comic Code Authority thing or one of Archie's in-house Rules and Regulations, but it doesn't make Ian's job any easier. He's already done this kind of blink-and-you'll-miss-it death scene twice: for Tommy Turtle, and for Sir Connery. All very clean and neat; TOO neat, actually. So neat that it effectively denies the impact of the death so that Sonic and Tails had to work up some major crocodile tears for Tommy and there was a lot of graveside rambling about Sir Connery in the issue following his Obi-wan Kenobi-like exit. Then, too, this is a comic book, and the industry as a whole is notorious for giving death a bad name. The latest example is the recent announcement by Marvel Comics that Captain America, who was killed off almost a year ago, will be coming back to life, sorta kinda. Let me explain. Marvel killed off Captain America by having his alter ego, Steve Rogers, assassinated in March, 2007. End of story? Hardly. In the beginning of February 2008, Marvel announced that they're planning to have the Cap's red-headed sidekick Bucky Barns thawed out of suspended animation a la Austin Powers ("Oh, behave!") and start throwing the shield around. This sort of playing fast and loose with storytelling is why I generally hate comic books, or at least the kind of writing they rely upon. I suppose the major point is to reset Knuckles as the sole resident of Angel Island and sole Guardian of the Master Emerald, in accordance with the game continuity. Fair enough; Sega should have some say in how their character is depicted. But I'll be interested to see what happens with Julie-Su. Does she have to go back to New Knothole to bide her time? We couldn't very well expect to hear her tell Sonic "Take a hike, hedgehog, and if you see the island rockin', don't bother knockin'!" This IS an Archie comic, after all. Head Score: 5. EYE: Tracy manages some good effects, including the subterranean Sonic. Still, even he must've realized that Sonic and Knuckles, super or not, fighting on and on gets pretty tiresome. So does Julie-Su pointing and lecturing, a motif he uses three times. Eye Score: 8. HEART: Paul Dini, who authored scripts for the "Superman" and "Batman" animated TV series, recently complained on his blog that "the villain falling to their death from a great height [is] the only acceptable way for a baddie to meet their end in a cartoon (Gaston, Frollo, the bear in 'The Fox & The Hound,' Scar, the poacher in 'Rescuers II', anyone notice a trend here?)" That's not quite accurate: Syndrome in "The Incredibles" got sucked into a jet engine, nobody bit the big one in either of the Toy Story movies, and Tarzan was present when his adopted "father," Kerchak the gorilla, died from a gunshot wound. His death gave what happened some emotional sense. Sadly, there's not a whole lot of that in this, the concluding chapter of the Enerjak 2.0 arc. THE pivotal event here, of course, is the "death" of Locke. Even that, however, has a built-in cheat. As established by Ken Penders when he was crafting the Knuckles back story, the members of the Brotherhood don't just die; they transition onto another plane of existence. This can actually get sort of ridiculous. In S100's "Welcome To The Dark Side," as soon as Tobor and Kragok rather cleanly bit the big one, Tobor found himself confronting the long-deceased Hawking and asked him "Am I dead, Father?" to which Hawking replied, in typically overdone Ken Penders prose, "You have transcended your corporeal shell, my son." I really wish Tobor had replied "Uh ... I'll take that as a 'Yes'." While Locke's redemptive self-sacrifice managed to get the job done and to free Knuckles from Fin's control, it's really not handled in a very satisfying way. Knuckles, for instance, doesn't get to confront Fin by saying "Hello. The main problem, of course, is that we don't get to see Knuckles grieve; we barely see him realize what has just happened. We DO get Julie-Su blubbering on about Locke as she more or less falls into Knuckles's arms, but then we cut away to Fin in full rant just as the light dawns on Knuckles. I'm not certain whether this narrative speed bump was dictated by the page budget, Archie's guidelines, Ian's personal style, or what. But the bottom line is, it just doesn't work. For that matter, Julie-Su's emotional life is something of a mess. In Ian's scheme of things the only thing she's really good for is hectoring the nearest available target (Locke, Fin, Knuckles himself ... that is, when she's give any lines at all). It's as if merely establishing her as "Knuckles' love," as it says on the cover page of this story, is enough of a resume for her and she doesn't actually have to say or do anything that would recognizably demonstrate it. Sure, she volunteers to sacrifice herself for him, but that's effectively diluted when Archy and then Locke get into the act. She doesn't even volunteer to stay with Knuckles when the story's over; at least, that's the impression the story's ending leaves. I can understand how Knuckles might want some alone time to get his head together after his recent stint as Fin's puppet and witnessing his father's demise for the second time in the history of the comic, and as I said this is understandable for a Sega-dictated retcon, but this doesn't bode well. The emotional content in this story is minimal at best. Characters react when the must then move on after they've gotten it over with. It's the emotional equivalent of fast food. Heart Score: 5. "Anything" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Stingray Grafik Wurks (my Spellchecker would like to register a formal complaint about that name); Lettering: John E. Workman Yes, it's time for "Lien-Da Sings The Blues." The former Dark Legionnaire is seen pouring what passes for her heart out to an unseen audience. We're treated to yet another monologue, giving a quick explanation of where the Dark Legion came from. Typically, she claims that they were being persecuted "for our devotion to the technology that gave us our supremacy." But let's cut to the chase: she's ready to hand over the Legion to (surprise, surprise) Eggman, so long as she gets to be the Grandmaster in immediate charge of the troops. Since Eggman's robots bit the big one thanks to the Enerjak Attack, he's hurting for troops himself. One hitch, though: Eggman's already given the Grandmaster position to ... Floating Head Dimitri, who looks like he clicked on one of those Male Echidna Enhancement pop-up ads on the Internet. Hint to Lien-Da: if Dimitri ever wants to change his rank from Grandmaster to Overfiend, RUN!! HEAD: This story is the perfect example of why I hate it when villains get to do the exposition: it always comes out slanted and self-serving. Maybe that's also why I distrust autobiography compared to biography or even just plain history. She conveniently forgets Edmund's side of the story, Edmund being Dimitri's brother and his opposite number in echidna cultural history, but I understand that Ian only had five pages to play with. Still, it gets the job done: it fills us in on the fate of the Legion, sets them up as being a new subset of villains (whose first task, I should imagine, will be to rebuild those parts of Eggman City or whatever they're calling it these days that went bye-bye when Knuckles/Enerjak stomped the Egg Grapes once and for all), and demonstrates that Eggman is an equal opportunity sneak ready to double-cross any species. Head Score: 8. EYE: I'm sorry, but Dimitri 2.1 with the enhanced tentacles looks kind of ridiculous. Still, it's probably not as ridiculous as anything else they could have come up with, be it robo-body or flying saucer platform. Maybe he just needs to demonstrate his skills. Take your time, D. Otherwise, Yardley!'s artwork is well done, especially the tricky POV drawing of Lien-Da shaking hands with Eggman at the bottom of page [3]. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Not in THIS story, folks. Heart Score: n/a.