Sonic the Hedgehog #228 (October 2011)

Spaziante (post-Lee) cover: It’s your basic 3: Sonic, Tails and Eggman, plus an unknown skulker who won’t intrude into the story, anyway.

“Sonic Genesis Part 3: Divide and Conquer”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Presidential Front-Runner: Mike Pellerito; Sega Licensing Reps: Cindy Chau and Judy Gilbertson

And it looks as if someone has hit the Cosmic Reset Button since the last installment because the background looks like we’re right back where we started in the Green Hill Zone. Well, we HAVE been warned that we’re in an “ever-changing [adventure] … different from what you know from the Sega games AND the comics.” So if it doesn’t seem to make sense, just go with that.

We start with Sonic finally hooking up with Tails as the rest of the Knothole gang (minus Bunnie) follows after. While the two geeks (Tails and Rotor) talk shop, Sally makes with the exposition: Eggman survived the encounter in the Scrap Brain Zone. Anybody who’s surprised by this development, raise your hand. I didn’t think so. Anyway, she’s cut off in mid-speech balloon by an earthquake. While Sally wants to implement an infrastructure-centered policy of trashing Eggman’s infrastructure, Sonic is more in favor of just chasing Eggman and beating up on him. Tails gets to come along because, as Sonic assures Sally, “I taught him how to handle himself.” I’m not touching that one.

As Sonic’s beefed-up crew heads for the next Eggman factory, we cut to the Expositionsphere where Eggman, wearing old school Mickey Mouse pants, summarizes Phase One of his plan as, and this is a verbatim quote, “We did that … thing … to the planet. You know … that thing….” Yeah, really helpful, fat boy. This frees him up to ponder the imponderable, i.e., try to predict the unpredictable hedgehog. Good luck with that! Snively appears to be the only one concerned that just maybe reality in their universe is self-correcting and is ready to shake off the changes that Phase One imposed. Hey, so long as one of the changes it manages to undo is Sally’s death cheat, I’m on board. That’s not necessarily a spoiler, unless it turns out to be a lucky guess.

Anyway, back at the Chemical Plant Zone, Rotor notes the output of “chemical fuel,” as opposed to coal or trees, and asks “Can you imagine how many joules that much fuel could produce?” I think that would depend on how efficient the generator is that would be sucking up that fuel. I once had to drive a station wagon that got like 9 miles per gallon, but I digress. Anyway, it gives the geeks something to talk about for half a page. Tails tries figuring out from looking at the pipes which way to go, while Sonic just plunges into the nearest pipe to scope things out. And they arrive at the same conclusion as the others, who took the elevator. How convenient.

In the next room, another tremor shuts them in and unleashes a batch of “mega muck,” which Tails helpfully describes as “poison soup” [insert school lunch joke here]. Sonic busts through the wall near the roof and the group heads for safety, with Sonic chaperoning Sally.

Once in relative safety, Sonic and Sally continue to debate strategy while Sonic has a brief and indistinct flashback of Sally’s death cheat. That settles it as far as he’s concerned; he leaves Sally and the group to cripple Eggman’s supply lines while he goes after the big guy who happens to be out of town in the Death Egg 2.0. but Sonic apparently doesn’t know this. Tails doesn’t know this either, and takes off after Sonic. Sally begins having second thoughts by the time they get to the Oil Ocean Zone. Meanwhile, Sonic and Tails have managed to backtrack to wherever Tails parked his plane (don’t ask how), and once over the Metropolis Zone Sonic walks out on Tails in mid-air. It reminds me of comedian Richard Wright’s reason for not skydiving: “I see no reason to get out of a plane while it’s working.” But you can take those kinds of liberties if you’re a video game/cartoon/comic book character. So Sonic heads off for what we all hope is the Final Boss Stage so we can resolve the Sally death cheat. And maybe deal with Naugus. Remember Naugus?

HEAD: Finally, this story gets out of side-scroller mode. It takes a while and the story is half-over when it happens, but it happens.

The two major changes are the flashback to Sally’s death cheat (more about that in the Heart section) and the “discussion” aboard the Death Egg 2. If there’s one rule that gets bent to the breaking point in time travel and other alt-reality stories, it’s injecting self-awareness into the story line. The movie “Groundhog Day” is a prime example. If Phil, the Bill Murray character, never tumbled to the fact that he was reliving the same day over and over and that he could tweak his life, that movie would still be running. Logic, however, would dictate that barring outside intervention the people in an alt-time scenario would continue to act the same way under the same circumstances.

In this comic, Snively drops the plot bomb of an imminent “space-time collapse” threatening to undo Phase 1. Pair that with Eggman’s total lack of concern and Ian more or less lets it be known that this stretch of a story is likely to snap back. The only questions are: when and how much.

The “when” question concerns in which issue the snap-back will happen: my guess is #230. Having it happen in the next issue would sort of mess up the integrity of the story arc…

OK, did I just take this story arc way too seriously?

As for the “how much,” that’s another way of asking how far back the snap will be. If it clears Sally of the death cheat, she’ll know what awaits her in the hallway of doom and then take the necessary precautions. I actually expect nothing less of the one character with real intelligence in this continuity. In other words, the death cheat will be a TRUE death cheat.

Knowing all this, unfortunately, renders this entire story arc irrelevant since the whole thing will soon come to an end and we can resume normal programming. In which case, NONE of what’s happened up to this point means anything: the characters déjà vu-ing all over themselves, Tails geeking off with Rotor, the mega-mack (or muck, if you prefer), NOTHING! Ian has written a four-issue digression, a total waste of trees and ink. And people wonder why comics get no respect as a legitimate art form. Everybody’s just been going through the motions here waiting for the cosmic rubber band to either snap back or break. And since the rubber band breaking has not been presented as an option that pretty much determines which road this story will take. Head Score: 2.

EYE: Pat Spaziante has moved on, and Tracy Yardley! has to shoulder the artistic load. Some of the artwork LOOKS like Spaziante is still doing the set-ups, but the overall effect is that the comic is waking up from the Sonic Genesis dream/nightmare. The penultimate page is a gorgeous splash of Sonic hurtling javelin-like toward the surface of the planet in pursuit of Eggman; this is great work by Yardley! The effect is spoiled, however, by the fact that unbeknown to Sonic Eggman is in space aboard the Death Egg 2; you want to yell “Hey, dummy, you’re going the wrong way!” at the page. Sadly, this is the most entertaining sequence of the comic. Eye Score: 9.

HEART: The biggest strategic error committed during the “Endgame” arc (S47-50) was that Ken Penders did too good a job of selling the Sally death cheat. It overshadowed the Sonic Must Prove His Innocence plot that should have been the core of the story arc … at least until S50’s “The Big Goodbye” when the whole thing went into a spectacular meltdown and at which point nothing could save it. Here, Ian simply takes the opportunity, after having a sweet interlude between Sonic and Sally, to drag the death cheat into the comic and deposit it, still warm and bleeding, on the page.

That’s probably a good thing, actually. The Sonic Genesis arc as a whole has contributed nothing to the series and gotten the characters themselves nowhere. It might have been a hoot for those who have memories of the games, but the side-scroller format just simply doesn’t work from a narrative standpoint. That’s why I wondered early on how the comic was going to be able to sustain itself except by borrowing VERY heavily from the SatAM continuity, which was able to stretch beyond the slavish plotting confines of a side-scroller story.

The point of this arc, after all, is that Eggman’s plan to roboticize all of Mobius at once (as hinted at in his scene with Snively) isn’t going to happen, especially not since Ian has foreshadowed the inevitable snap-back. Eggie’s going to fail; it’s just a question of how.

Killing off Sally isn’t going to happen, either. The snap-back will provide a convenient means for Sally and/or Sonic to know what’s coming and to rewrite the story. Free will trumps determinism, and that’s about the best outcome this story could have if you ask me. Heart Score: 4.

Sonic Spin: It’s all about the cover art.

Fan Art: Blake and Emmett submit Sonic anniversary art, while Jed notes that Sonic and Sally are still running together. The fact that Archie allowed it into the Fan Art section is another sign that the air is leaking out of the death cheat.

Off-Panel: I know those orbiting eggs from one of the Sonic 3 boss encounters. And yes, they can be that frustrating. Just be sure to duck when they explode and send out slo-mo shrapnel.

Fan Funnies: Vandalism in a good cause. Reminds me of a piece of Teen Titans fan art: a paintbrush-wielding Terra is being chased by Slade who’s been painted swatches of red and green as she calls back to him “MERRY FREAKIN’ CHRISTMAS, SLADE!”

Sonic-Grams: Joy is told that the 2010 compilation is available, that Amy Rose only has eyes for Sonic, that Editorial won’t say what would happen if a character from another continuity stumbled into Mobius Prime during Phase 1, and that having Espio and Shadow answer the mail wouldn’t be a bad idea. Andrew says he’s taken up subscribing to the comic again now that he’s married; for the benefit of the “future kiddos.” And if they’re all girls, don’t be afraid to go brony. And after 12 tries, Jacob gets his letter published and lets it be known that the turn of events in Genesis have left him “perplexed.” Stand in line, Jake. This arc can’t be over too soon for all concerned.