Sonic the Hedgehog #195 (Feb 2009) Yardley!/Jensen cover: a mysterious hand OK, who am I kidding, it's Silver beckons to most of the hedgies in this ep, excluding Rosy. Looks like the fight has gone zero-gravity. Heaven knows the plot is just about weightless at this point. "Hedgehog Havoc: Part 1" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: Teresa Davidson; Editor/Managing Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing Functionaries: Kristin Parcell and Cindy Chau. Looking as distraught as possible in an Archie comic book, Jules and Bernie ask Nicole and Uncle Chuck "Tell us where our boy is." That's their way of saying "Cue the exposition." The request and opening credits kill one page, and the expo from Nicole kills another. Sadly, without a 5- page back story, Ian had those 5 pages at his disposal and has just burned two of them; this doesn't look promising. Long story short, Sonic and Scourge are back on Moebius where there's some 4-way action going on between Sonic, Scourge, Amy Rose and Rosy. The latter, now that Scourge has shown up, has forgotten the homicidal tendencies hinted at two issues ago which made her a promising psycho character and can only think to make fish faces at Scourge. For his part, Scourge never does more than yell at the crazed fan girl. I suppose he could have treated her the way he treated the SS, but I don't think the CCA would've signed off on that. The story loses another chance to get traction when we devote a page to Amy Rose establishing that Buns, Ian's anti-Bunnie, has had her Omega-mech incapacitated by Rosy, though it just has enough structural integrity to get her back to the shop for some body work. With that, Ian gets his Buns out of the story. That's too bad because there are a number of characters rushing in to fill the vacuum. We get two pages of Eggman putting Metal Sonic back together, and a fairly obvious speech balloon from the Sniveler tying in to his recent text messaging buddy from "Sleepless in New Megaopolis" (S194). The fact that he assumes "RF" to be a female is news to me after all he DIDN'T ask "A/S/L." Anyway, no sooner does Eggman boot up Metal than it disappears in pursuit of Sonic. I guess to a control freak like Eggman, a robot with initiative takes the fun out of it. Back in Mercia, Silver is still chatting up Rob and Mari-An. He proposes that he and Rob hop the nearest warp ring to Freedom HQ, arriving in the middle of Sally engaged in a shouting match with herself, or with Alicia which is almost the same thing. After a touch more exposition, Silver and Rob head for Moebius. It takes them three pages to make the trip because hedgehogs are piling up in Moebius. First Shadow barges in, interrupting a perfectly good head-on collision between Sonic and Scourge. Then Metal FWASHes onto the scene, then FINALLY Silver and Rob show up. Maybe they took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Since the air is by now heavy with testosterone (and motor oil, in the case of Metal Sonic), Amy Rose and Rosy crash the party and we cut to a splash page of almost everybody beating somebody up. After another page of trying to get a straight answer, Silver hits the Cosmic Pause Button so he can do his own exposition. Mercifully, we're spared the canonical story which means we don't have to listen to him babble on about the Iblis Trigger and the intervention of Solaris the time-god. This time around, Silver thinks that Sonic is a Freedom Fighter who turned on his comrades and screwed up the future. Scourge has had enough of this (and I can't say as I blame him) and starts roughing up the boys but still can't bring himself to do more than yell at Rosy. Sonic then suggests that everybody focus their tiny little minds on beating up Scourge. Scourge's response is to run away, but only to the throne room where thanks to a slew of Chaos Emeralds under the seat cushion he powers up into a purple Super Scourge. HEAD: And all THAT took up 22 pages. If this story were any more padded, you could wear it as a winter coat. After one promising bit of character development in last month's installment, Ian has slipped back into fight story mode relieved only by some exposition for the benefit of the noobs, and some comic relief in the form of Rosy. Her fate is the worst of the characters present. When introduced, it was with enough of a sense of menace and instability that made her interesting. Unfortunately she must have been considered TOO interesting because she's been reduced to channeling Elmira from "Tiny Toon Adventures" whenever Scourge is around. And since we first saw Rosy with her hedgehog hinder parked on Scourge's throne, I have to wonder how come she didn't benefit from the presence of the alt-Chaos Emeralds. Is their effect selective or did they help push her over the edge into madness or what? Too bad Ian never thought about any of this ... or maybe he did and Mike Pellerito warned him about thinking too much in the comic book business, I don't know. Silver is also particularly ill-used, though not nearly as much as Blaze was in her one crummy appearance in this comic in a two-part back story by Tania del Rio. Even Shadow, who's usually good for some angst, doesn't do much here. Not yet, anyway. Scourge's sarcastic remark toward the end of the story aptly sums up this installment: "Throw enough chumps at me and hope it works...." Frankly, it doesn't. And now that he's ridiculously powerful, it feels like we're in for more of the same, despite the fact that help could come from any one of a number of directions. On Moebius itself, Buns and Dr. Kintobor could still intervene, backed up by the rest of the populace (whoever and wherever they are) who would be glad to see the back of Scourge. The Freedom Fighters and the SS back on Mobius could jump back into the story as well, but they can't seem to get their acts together. So we're left with fighting and more fighting with no clear resolution in sight. I can only hope that, when it comes, it'll be worthwhile and not just a deus ex machina quickie. Head Score: 4. EYE: Yardley! does his best given the material, and the splash page is impressive. That's the good news. The bad news is he assists with the subversion of Rosy as a believable character. Eye Score: 7. HEART: Amazingly, there's not much Heart in this installment, which has no emotional focus aside from the limp exposition by Sonic's rents at the beginning. Pretty sad, but it still managed to keep this story from dropping off the Heart radar completely. Heart score: 2. Sonic-Grams: Kana F. is reminded that Ian Flynn rose up through the fan ranks to write for the book; Farron S. is told that the "gizoid" from "Sonic Battle" was actually Emerl, who has appeared in the "Sonic X" TV series as well as the sprite comic "Sonic and Pals" at http://www.sonicandpals.com/ . I tried reading up on him at Wikipedia but gave up in the middle of a discussion on accumulating hit points. Ciaran Q. not only elicits an answer about "Sonic the Hedgehog: the Beginning" that was as long as her question, she gets THIS classic bit of double- talk about Locke's fate: "Sadly, Locke isn't coming back. Then again, spirits of the Guardians tend to stick around, so you never know..." In other words, he isn't coming back unless he comes back. Thanks a bunch. Plug for S196 with Super Scourge vs. Sonic Fan Art: While Fares and Haydeel Z. in Saudi Arabia contribute drawings of Sonic and Tails, pride of place goes to Phillip B. for his ... well, they're called "Sonic Action Figures" but they look too much like Beanie Babies not to be called such. We have Amy Rose, Sonic, Knuckles and Tails. All they need are ear tags with bad poetry on the inside.