Sonic Super Special #11 "Girls Rule!" Spaz/Penders/J. D. Ray cover: Most of the regular female characters from the continuity. Spaz seems to have taken the comments about his uvula shots to heart for there's not one in sight. In contrast, though, he depicts Bunnie with a mouthful of bridgework as imposing as the pre-1989 Berlin Wall. In one respect, Archie has taken the SatAM continuity a step further. Back during the first season, Bunnie and Sally were the only females on the show. This was broadened in the second season by the introduction of Dulcy as a semi-regular, Lupe as a minor player toward the end, and Rosie as a one-shot character. The ranks of females in the comic, though, now include all of the above plus Amy Rose, Hershey, Bernie (Sonic's mom), Barby the Downunda lab rat...er...koala, Julayla (in flashback), Queen Alicia (in suspension), Mrs. Summersby, and most recently Mina. And when it comes to what is now the late, lamented Knuckles line we're talking not only Julie-Su but Knuckles's mother Lara-Le, Kommissar the black leather babe from the Dark Alliance arc, and an assortment of minor characters whom we'll be lucky to ever see again. Not too shabby considering that none of them bear the slightest resemblance to the dismal collection of airheads and clothes horses that represent the female gender in Archie's flagship comics. "Ascension" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Jim Valentino; Ink: Ken Penders; Color: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editorial: G-Force. In contrast to the frontispiece of Sally in traditional dress by Suzanne Paddock, Pam Eklund and Nelson Ribiero, we get a splash page of a nude Princess Sally about to take a splash herself. Specifically, she's stepping into what I will continue to refer to as the pool of goo first introduced in "The Living Crown" (S58). This obvious homage to the Great Link on Odo's homeworld from DS9 is part of the ritual that Mobian monarchs are supposed to undergo. For those of you just joining us: Sally's father, Max, like his fathers before him, took a dip in the pool when he was 10 years old. Sally had to take a pass since by her 10th birthday she and the rest of the Knothole gang were freedom fighters-in-training. This fact was left out of Sally's pre-dip soliloquy, though it would have fit the theme just as well. She also states (somewhat clumsily, I thought) that her long-lost brother Elias had renounced his claim to the throne, which would be news to King Max who, I believe, still doesn't know that neither of his kids want the job. Anyway, Max only explained the existence of the pool to Sally in "The Ultimatum" (S60), wherein we also learned that according to the goo Sally is fated to be wed to Antoine. So we (along with her brother) watch as Sally spends the story furry-dipping in the pool in what is part flashback, part head trip: She sees herself as an infant with her mother, as a girl getting a lesson in _realpolitik_ from Julayla, and she gets to grok with her father. What? Oh, right: GROK (grahk) verb : To understand something so completely that one becomes part of what one understands. (From Martian, "To drink"). Word coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 novel "Stranger In A Strange Land." Follow along closely, this trip's going to get longer and stranger before it's over. Max appears to Sally out of what I imagine would look something like the psychedelic light show toward the end of Stanley Kubrick's "2001." Max gets the Golden "Duh!" Award with Clueless Clusters for telling Sally what she probably learned on her own after having been effectively orphaned at age 5 and having been a guerrilla fighter since age 10: that life's tough. When Sally asks her father how come he never told her about Elias, the sib pops in and gives her a talking to before rezzing out. And here's where the drugs REALLY kick in because Sally is confronted with a technicolor cosmic vision of herself introducing yet another sepia-tone flashback/forward sequence, this one apparently contemporaneous with the Knuckles: 20 Years Later special Ken said he was working up to and which may actually APPEAR 20 years from now the way things are going. In brief, Sally and Sonic are married and life hasn't gotten any easier as Mobius comes under attack yet again so she evacuates the kids last seen in "The Return" (S22). The Cosmic Sally pushes the pause button to urge herself to "complete the cycle." Sally, however, decides that she'll take a pass on acquiring perfect knowledge and comes up for air. She tells Elias that she's in no mood to succeed Max and in essence hands the hot potato of succession back to Elias while she towels off. HEAD: This story gives new meaning to "Head Score" because of its hallucinatory quality. It's a series of flashbacks and special effects that take us literally into Sally's thoughts. Despite the unorthodox structure it doesn't lose its way or get too weird. Still, of all the life lessons Sally has learned so far, it's odd that Ken almost completely ignored the extent to which being a freedom fighter against Robotnik would have molded her life. Doing so meant that Ken was stacking the deck and leaving out a major chunk of Sally's life, one where she learned more about leadership than her father could ever have taught her, where the stakes were just as high as they were in Julayla's predator-prey object lesson, and where she learned about following her heart because at some point she'd given hers to Sonic. That's simply too much not to take into account, and it would have altered the emotional tone of the story dramatically if Ken had sought to include this one indispensable part of Sally's psychic history. I suppose Ken did so out of space considerations, or else because Sally is trying to transcend that part of her life (though Ken never even comes close to making that point) but the story could have been so much more compelling if he'd included it. But the story probably would have turned into a graphic novel if done right. Head Score: 6. EYE: There hasn't been this much of Sally on display since she woke up in the middle of the night to discover the arrival of Nicole in "Sally's Quest" (In Your Face special). But it was a different Sally visually. In looking at Valentino's art and that of Art Mawhinney (and I bought the original page art, BTW) the difference is obvious: Valentino still thinks Sally is a human in a fur suit. Her proportions here are certainly closer to human than anything else. I'm not really complaining; I consider it a blessing that Jim Valentino didn't perpetrate the same unsightly art that characterized his work for the Dark Alliance arc (K22-24), and he has made Sally and the other characters look great in spots. I especially liked the drawing of Alicia holding the infant Sally on page [3] and even the face-to-face between Sally and her father on page [6]. But one look at Sally's proportions and at Elias and his uncharacteristically Spawn-like cape on page 2 and you can easily see where Valentino's heart is, and it ain't on Mobius. Eye Score: 8. HEART: I wanted to get into this one, but something just didn't click. For one thing, the story feels like it took place at the wrong time. The editorial box in the front states that this takes place between S73 and S74 when Sally still had access to the castle basement prior to Robo-Robotnik's takeover. And yet the mood of the story makes it FEEL as if it belongs just after K29's "My Secret Guardian." Remember the set-up: Robo- Robotnik large and in charge, the city evacuated, the King dethroned yet again, Sally's mother hovering between life and death, her mission to the Brotherhood a failure, her relationship with Knuckles strained, her father still distant and evasive. I know I'D want some answers! And maybe Sally thought she'd find them at the bottom of the pool. But somehow, in the middle of all the grokking and Sally's ultimately deciding to follow her heart, we were shut out of her heart from the very beginning. She never relates her seeing her mother in vision to the fact that Queen Alicia is on ice. As I said already, the subject of Knothole and the rest of the freedom fighters conveniently never really comes up. Valentino and Penders seem to have confused serenity with passivity. This is a strangely cold, dispassionate journey to the center of Sally's mind. She gets in, she gets out, she's made her decision. Any kind of involvement in what Sally's been through drains away with the last drop of goo. In the end, nothing sticks. Far too detached in a Kubrickian sense for what should have been a pivotal moment for the character. I don't like stories where the characters are dead behind the eyes, and in a story like THIS it's positively unforgivable! Heart Score: 2. "Solo" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Ken Penders; Ink: Ken Penders; Lettering: Ken Penders; Coloring: Josh and Aimee Ray. This time it's Hershey's turn to do something other than take orders from Geoffrey and stand around looking cute. She sneaks into Eggbotnik's headquarters where he's on the phone with Pere D'Coollette. She orders up a diversion to go and hold the anchovies, and Geoffrey serves up a helping of building flambe. That's not enough to get Eggbotnik off his duff and away from the com board, however. Realizing that she'll have to do the job herself, she pitches a delayed-action grenade down an ventilation duct. Whether she throws like a girl or not, it's effective enough to get Eggbotnik out of the room. She confirms that Valdez has been roboticized instead of doing it the easy way and buying a copy of Knuckles #31. She reports to Geoff just as her calling card makes its presence known. HEAD: A basic six-pager to establish not only that Valdez has become a metalhead, but it gives Hershey something substantive to do for the first time in a long time. Her sentence on pages [2] and 3 could have used a rewrite along the lines of: "You don't want to attract anyone's attention, especially the EggMan's!" And am I the only one who picked up on the fact that Geoff was being a little TOO concerned about Hershey's welfare? Hmmmm? Head Score: 8. EYE: Note the moon on the first page. THAT is IMHO a good use of PhotoShop Blur: to soften the image just enough to create the desired effect while not going so far overboard that it draws attention away from everything else on the page. Similar kudos for the building demolition on page [4]: it's just enough without being too much. I have nothing against PhotoShop; I DO have a problem with excess of anything and gratuitous trickery. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Not a big factor here unless you pick up on the fact that Geoff and Hershey could become an item down the road. She could do worse, and if you remember "Endgame" she already has. Heart Score: a neutral 5 but with some potential. "Family" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Colleen Doran; Ink: Ken Penders; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Color: Josh and Aimee Ray. Looks like Lupe and the pack, with their pet humans (once more with five fingers...don't know why I even bother counting anymore) have made it back to...well, Reynard calls it "our once proud city" but that's only one of two examples of Ken distancing himself from the SatAM origins of Lupe (in the ep "Cry of the Wolf") at warp speed: 1. In a flashback, Lupe recalls to the freedom fighters how there's had been a peaceful and agrarian (not urban) civilization, where they were "living off the land and leaving only our footprints" or words to that effect. 2. Their visual depiction in that ep had them strongly resembling Southwestern Native Americans, something that the Archie creatives have NEVER picked up on! But I suppose it's a little late in the day to be arguing about it now. What I WILL argue about is Lupe's being addressed as "Senorita." I haven't taken Spanish since 1970, and what I remember clocks in at the "Donde esta la casa de Pepe?" level of complexity. But I DO remember that "senorita" (the diminutive of "senora") refers to an unmarried female: a Miss rather than a Mrs. And Ken clearly establishes later on that Lupe was once married and a mother. So what's with the "Senorita?" You'd think they'd at least refer to her as "Senora" as a courtesy title since she appears to function as the alpha female of the pack! Forget it; I'll just be driving myself totalmente loco if I keep harping about it. As dismal as the odds look of finding anyone, Lupe hopes that her old mate, Lobo, would leave her a sign. And we get a sign, without so much as a shout of "INCOMING!!" The pack comes to and are greeted by a welcoming committee of Lupe's husband and cubs, robotic version. And the villain of this piece, the one responsible for the dastardly deed: UNCLE CHUCK!? I searched in vain for a plausible explanation within the story for the unaccountable heel turn on Uncle Chuck's part. Unless you've read "The Best of Friends," (K31) and deduced that the same fate befell Uncle Chuck as befell Valdez (i.e., some fancy programming with an evil villain chip), you're going to be just as lost as I was. Lupe is the first to go into the roboticizer, but she's no sooner transformed than she draws on her last ounce of free will to trash the equipment and allow the pack to make a break for it. HEAD: Thanks for nothing, Ken! I thought this issue was supposed to showcase the ladies, not trash one of the more underutilized characters. But I suppose you bought into King Max's party line in "Ascension" about the world being a tough neighborhood and how an author has to make ruthless choices yadda yadda yadda. I (and a bunch of other Lupe fans, from the e-mail I've received) simply think your choice of an expendable female sucks, that's all. But then the total cynic in me, the part burned beyond recognition by "Endgame," can't help but believe that Lupe could still make a comback. More on that in the review of the next story. Head Score: 3. EYE: What a difference a change in artists can make. Athena and Aeriel (Ken doesn't even bother dropping their names in this installment) look nothing at all like Sam Maxwell's rendering of them for the original story arc (S67-69). They actually look human, and I don't just mean the number of fingers they have. While the girls may only be so much window dressing in this story, they're at least recognizable as such. The rest of the artwork is well done as well. Eye Score: 8. HEART: Well, my basic criteria for this rating is that the readers are made to care about what happens to the players. And Ken's managed to do just that while honking off the Lupe fans in the process. Heart Score: 9, for all the wrong reasons. "Upgrade" Story: Ken Penders; Art: James Fry; Ink: Ken Penders; Coloring: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell. Boy, I hope the freedom fighters' HMO will cover the kind of diagnostics Bunnie is going through. Antoine provides a quick flashback as to what happened: during a bout of heavy lifting Bunnie passed out. For a change, Quack actually gets to do something medical instead of something stupid (as in "The Dream Zone," S43). He informs Bunnie that her bionic body parts are losing the war with her central nervous system, and if left unchecked will go so far as to join the other side and become toxic. She doesn't have a lot of options here: amputate her robotic parts which would leave her with a head, one arm and a torso; try to deroboticize her and run the risk of it being the death of her; install more compatible hardware and kiss off the possibility of ever being deroboticized. Not a pleasing prospect. Later, in a scene that would have had the Sega plotmeisters howling their guts out in protest if it were Sonic and Sally, Antoine visits Bunnie and pledges not just his support but his love. And with Nate Morgan brought in on a consult, we're introduced to Bunnie 2.0. HEAD: Ken's been talking about doing a story where Bunnie has to confront her being partially roboticized for quite some time -- he first mentioned it to me almost three years ago, at the 1997 Motor City Comic Con. He said he wanted to explore the character from the standpoint of Bunnie having a sort of handicap. I have to go on record and say that when I saw how Ken handled Ray the Squirrel's stutter (the Mighty story arc, K26-28) and Athena's muteness, I wasn't exactly filled with confidence. But Ken managed not to overstate the case or put Bunnie in an implausible crisis. And for the first time since his introduction, Dr. Quack actually makes himself both useful and credible. Head Score: 10. EYE: It takes some artists a while to get the hang of drawing for Sonic. I remember Manny Galan doing a rather poor job until he lateraled over to the Knuckles books, where he started turning out glorious work. James Fry doesn't seem to have needed a break-in period. He's been turning in great work since he first came on the scene, so good that it almost redeemed the atrocious script of "Zone Wars: Prelude" (SSS8). Bunnie may be more kawaii (Japanese for "insufferably cute") as he draws her but it's not bad. And his tender rendition of Antoine and Bunnie is absolutely perfect, and makes the Sega-dictated arms-length clinches between Sonic and Sally look all the more phony. The PhotoShop blurring of Bunnie and her visitors on page [3] was gratuitous but not overdone. Eye Score: 10. HEART: Now THIS is more like it, campers! This is not the same Antoine that was on display in "The Map" (Battle Royal special), nor even the perennial klutz so recently resurrected in the adaptation of "Ghost Busted" (SSS8). I complained earlier, as I've complained before, that it's too easy for a writer to have characters go through the motions, to have them come off as dead behind the eyes. That's not the case here. There's no telling how much time had elapsed between the bottom of page [4] and the top of page 5, but you get the sense that Bunnie was left alone with her misery for a good long while. Antoine is totally sincere in what he says to Bunnie and it comes across. And even newcomers to the book can't help but care about Bunnie's plight. And making the reader care about what happens to the characters is what writing is all about. Heart Score: 10. But what about the fans who got cheesed because of the roboticization of Lupe in the previous story? I don't mind saying that I was one of them. But as I said earlier, the only antidote left to me is the cold cynicism with which I regard the management at Archie Comics. A close reading of the text reveals that Ken has, in fact, hedged his bets. He refers to Bunnie's limbs "after all the modifications." In other words, he implies that she's been tweaked so much in the past that she's a walking kludgework. That gives Ken the chance to say that for Bunnie deroboticization is not an option. Of course, that hasn't stopped other writers at other times and in other stories. Let me call the roll: Uncle Chuck: Temporarily deroboticized by Ben Hurst in the "Sonic Conversion" episode of the SatAM series. Bunnie: See above. Princess Sally: Roboticized and successfully deroboticized in Angelo DeCesare's "Steel-Belted Sally" (S29) Knuckles: Roboticized and successfully deroboticized in Mike Gallagher's Mecha Madness (Mecha Madness special) Various miscellaneous Mobians: Successfully deroboticized _en masse_ in Angelo DeCesare's "The Day Robotropolis Fell" (S37) In a sense, it doesn't matter what Ken has written: deroboticization has been done, and even if it won't happen for Bunnie the comic has already made it clear that it CAN happen! To quote one of my favorite legal maxims from the TV show "Law & Order": "You can't unring a bell." And not only has that bell been rung, it's my contention that should the need ever arise in the future, a writer (maybe even Ken himself if the occasion calls for it) WILL deroboticize Lupe or Uncle Chuck (who seems to have ended up on the scrap heap with Lobo and the robocubs) or Valdez or any other roboticized Mobian. I mean, they're still making it up as they go to a certain extent over there in Mamaroneck. "Shadows" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Pat Spaziante; Ink: Ken Penders; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Coloring: Josh and Aimee Ray. Remember back at the beginning of the First Date arc (K26- 28) when Julie-Su was cheesed at Knuckles for leaving her so he could spend the better part of a story being talked to by someone not of his generation and being fed a whole lotta names and other information about his family? Well, now it's HER turn! Julie-Su skedaddles out to the old Dark Legion HQ, which was supposed to have gone bye-bye in "Army of Darkness" (K3). It's still in enough of one piece to allow her to stroll down memory lane. Apparently life in the Dark Legion was so drab that taking a shower was their idea of a good time. Just her luck, though, she seems to have arrived on Visitors Day for she senses someone else in the building. She trips an alarm system that somehow ushers her into the presence of another Legion veteran: an echidna named Simon who looks as if his Social Security number would consist of a single digit. Better keep a pencil and paper handy for making notes and diagraming a family tree because from here on out this story is about as straightforward as a Russian novel: Seems that Luger, the son of Moritori Rex, married Merin-Da who laid a double-yolk egg and hatched the twins Kragok and Lien- Da. Mama Merin-Da, however, proved to be one of those wispy, frail females one usually associates with 19th century literature, so she died. Luger, for his part, didn't stay out of circulation long, and married Mari-Su. Naturally the two kids, now teenagers, didn't think kindly of the new arrangement or of the fact that they had a new half-sister, Julie-Su, to deal with. Julie-Su was "shunned" and "ignored" by her half-sibs, though considering how the Dursleys treated Harry Potter I'd say she got off easy. Then Mari-Su met with a "tragic [and probably suspicious] accident." Luger gets disqualified as Father of the Year because he "didn't know the first thing about raising a child" despite having sired three of them. Julie-Su then gets fobbed off on Simon and Floren-Ca before Luger gets written out under equally ambiguous circumstances. This tragedy coincided with Kragok's rise to power. The reason Julie-Su doesn't remember any of this (and I had a hard time keeping it all sorted out myself) is that Kragok neutralized Julie-Su's memory with a conveniently-implanted "memory neutralizing chip." That explains the blank expression on Julie-Su's face at the bottom of page [10]. Unable to get rid of Simon the way King David got rid of Uriah the Hittite, Kragok regained custody of Julie-Su when she was closer to the Legion's age requirement, and Simon and Floren-Ca eventually retired to the Floating Island and Simon just happened to be poking around DLHQ when Julie-Su started snooping around, thus setting up The Reunion Scene. Gee, what are the odds? HEAD: OK, we now know a lot more about the history of the Dark Legion, as well as Julie-Su's biography. We also can figure out (we have to, because Ken didn't come right out and say it) that Lein-Da and Kommissar are one and the same. What I had a hard time figuring out is: why didn't this story do anything for me? Maybe it was the sense of deja vu, the sense that we'd been there and done that in "Childhood's End" (K25). It's the same exact plot, really: the central character encounters a parental figure from their past who spends their time spewing forth great gobs of exposition. Or maybe it was because Julie-Su, like the reader, has to be spoon-fed the details of her past because Kragok washed her brain and she can't do a thing with it. Knuckles at least had a past of his own and was simply brought up to speed on the history of his father and his ancestors. Or maybe it was the Dickensian convenience with which the paths of Simon and Julie-Su crossed inside the abandoned Legion post. There are other reasons I'll deal with in the Heart section, but the bottom line is that like "Ascension" this story seemed to keep this reader at arm's length: it may have been interesting in an academic sort of way but it was curiously uninvolving. One more concern: that memory chip. It's certainly a convenient plot device, but it could come back to haunt Ken later on if Julie-Su doesn't figure out a way to get it removed. Because as long as that puppy is in place, she could be brainwashed yet again by Dimitri and such followers as he has left. This COULD set up a struggle between Julie-Su's impaired memory and the Soultouch (the good old Head vs. Heart conflict), especially if Knuckles's life was on the line. But given Knuckles's second-class citizenship now that his comic's been retired I don't think we'll be seeing a story like that in the Sonic comics any time soon. So any of you fanfic writers who want to run with it can feel free to do so. Call it a Christmas present. Head Score: 7. EYE: Spaz has loaded down each page with details, and in some cases they prove to be interesting in and of themselves -- I'm specifically thinking of the scene of Merin-Da's funeral. Still, everything balances out right and nothing looks too busy. His rendering of the young Julie-Su is especially cute; Ken must have figured that, given her rough childhood, Julie-Su would have had a hard time getting a story in a Sonic Kids special so she'd have to make do with a flashback. And the blue-purple flashback coloring was extremely appropriate. Don't know how long it took Spaziante to do these pages, but they may explain why we don't see his work more often aside from his cover art. Eye Score: 10. HEART: Julie-Su is a trusting soul, isn't she? She bumps into some old coot in Legion HQ who feeds her this involved story about her origins and she accepts it without a blink. And that's only one aspect of the story that troubled me. The whole business with the memory chip is another. The classic scenario for foundlings is to have some token or symbol of their origin, anything from a birthmark to a locket to a document. According to John Boswell's history of child abandonment, _The Kindness of Strangers_, this served the practical purpose of providing the minimum amount of identification to prevent the child from possibly marrying a sibling later in life. So it isn't just a writer's convention to include these small details. But Julie- Su's got nothing to go on, which of course is why she's poking around the ruins in the first place. But I suppose the pacing of an 11-page story dictated that Julie-Su wouldn't have time to reflect on what she'd heard; she's only allowed enough time to swallow it whole. No matter how benign and trustworthy Simon might seem, I got the feeling that she rushed into this. That undercut what I'm sure Ken intended to be a heartwarming ending. Heart Score: 6. Off-Panel: Now we know where Melissa Joan Hart has been getting her vocational guidance. Sonic-Grams: Commercial for Sonic Adventure, which is what the comic will be turning into for the next 6 months. And a warning about the layout for the Comic Shop News reprint in the next Sonic Special. The cover inker is credited as being Harvo while it clearly names Ken Penders on the cover itself. And you wonder why these people have continuity problems! And blurbs for a couple of issues that are already old news. Well, at least I got my copy of the special during THIS century!