Sonic Universe #17 [August 2010] Yardley!/Hunzeker portrait of Tails: "I'm cute and you're not!" "Trouble in Paradise: Part 1: No Rest For The Weary" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Phil Felix [Debut]; Assistant Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu It's the "young genius" and the not-so-newlyweds gracing the splash page that opens this arc. Tails has modified the Sea Fox one-animal submarine, outfitting it with two sidecars; this makes engineering sense but take a moment to think about the intimacy factor. He's taking Bunnie and Antoine to Cocoa Island, not to be confused with "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys. I love that song. Right away on page 2 Tails has got a problem: a third off-island has appeared that Tails doesn't remember from his back story (we'll get to that shortly). Antoine suggests that since Tails did the map-making himself maybe it was an error on his part. Nobody suggests that Tails check with Google Mobius because this is supposed to be an uncharted island. Anyway, the pull in to shore, but they are not unobserved. The trio is being watched by ... oh, let's just fast-forward and spoil the whole thing right now. Since this is a modified recap of the "Tails Adventure" video game (Game Gear; 1995), the watchers are members of the Battle Kukku Army, or the Battle Bird Armada as it's called in the American version. One thing for sure: the two Battle Kukkus observing Tails, Bunnie and Antoine certainly qualify as birdbrains. Apparently, the island only has one comfortable and stable structure, and Tails calls dibs on it. He thus leaves Bunnie and Antoine to rough it on the beach, hoping that they don't "get bored" during their honeymoon. Ant's raised eyebrow is about as racy as this comic will get with the situation. We then get a page of thought balloons and text boxes from Tails trying to shoehorn the TA continuity into that of the Sonic comics; on the whole, it works out pretty well. While TA was positioned as a prequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (the game where Tails officially hooked up with the Blue Blur), we learn here that Tails first came across Cocoa Island on his way home from his original miniseries, and that he killed a lot of time here during the Tossed In Space interlude (S126-130). The Battle Kukkus, however, are seriously freaked as they observe Tails flying up the trial to his workshop. This also gets the beak of the command Kukku, who's named "Speedy," seriously out of joint. But it's time for the two-page interlude where Bunnie and Antoine engage in extremely safe asexual and Archie Editorial- approved activities such as camping. Tails, meanwhile, is working on a "pet" project: building a robo-fox subsequently named "T-Pup" which is really a gloss on the "Remote Robot" from the game (where it's also known as "Mecha Tails" in the Japanese version). Typical nerd past time: when on a tropical island, stay indoors and play with computers. As Bunnie and Antoine sit around the campfire that evening, Antoine feels the need to ask the bunny he married in S174 (just before Knothole got trashed by the Egg Armada) if they didn't jump into things too soon. On an otherwise useless page, Bunnie makes a point too often missed in this comic: "We've been fightin' for the world since we were li'l, and we've had to grow up fast." Meanwhile, under cover of this romantic interlude, the Battle Kukkus set up a surprise invasion, which is literally a rude awakening for Tails. Back on the beach, Bunnie and Antoine realize that the only way out is through, so they spend one page sizing up the situation and another page taking out the Kukkus and their battle mech. Tails and T-Pup take to the air and are confronted by two Kukku hover units. No, his life doesn't flash before his eyes; that's only a flashback to some of Tails's lesser moments when he needed someone to pull his tails out of the fire. But to prove he's a big kid now we get a page of him taking it to the Kukkus, followed by a page of Speedy demonstrating that he's got game, too. Back on the beach, Bunnie and Antoine are clocked by another battle mech. As the Kukkus haul them away, we cut to Tails vs. Speedy. The latter grounds the former and then grandly announces: "I am Speedy, the sixteenth Battle Kukku of the Battle Bird Armada. And I am your end, freak!" Not if Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu have anything to say about it. HEAD: Thanks to Sonic Retro (www.sonicretro.org), I was able to come up to speed on the details of the "Tails Adventure" game, also called "Tails Adventures." In that game, Tails is solo and chillin' on Cocoa Island when the Battle Kukkus drop in; their objectives, naturally, are the Chaos Emeralds on the island. Everybody wants Chaos Emeralds. There are 12 different locales where the game is played out in stages. Unlike the Sonic 2D games there's not much speed action here; instead, there is a more deliberate RPG-type game play. In fact, Tails has to retrace his steps as new items are acquired and new tasks present themselves before he fights the final boss, who turns out to be Speedy's father, the fifteenth Battle Kukku. Since the Tails Adventure game (I'm sticking with the singular rather than the plural) is the skeleton upon which the meat of this story will be hung, a number of questions present themselves. How much of the sprawling game will be spread over the next three issues? And how do Antoine and Bunnie figure into all this? Based on Ian's adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2 in the second Sonic Universe issue's "Time and Again," that's a tough one to answer. The conceit of that issue was to parallel selected scenes from SA 2 with a side-story where Sonic, Shadow and Rouge disable Dr. Eggman's lamely-named Doom Laser. Ian's adapting of SA2 was spectacularly uneven; in the opening scene he gets the dialogue between Sonic and Shadow in the White Jungle perfect, including the sequence's too-frequent use of variations on the word "fake." It reminds me of the hilariously redundant opening line of "Kung Fu Panda": "Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend." Yet Ian also invents a get-together between Sonic, Shadow and Rouge outside Eggman's pyramid HQ which culminates in the three of them taking the space shuttle to ARK. In the game, Sonic traveled to ARK with Amy, Tails and Knuckles by shuttle while Shadow Chaos Controls himself, Rouge and the Chaos Emeralds she's stolen to the ARK. In short, I have no clue how deeply Ian will deal with Tails Adventure. We'll just have to wait and see. As for the newlyweds, they take up considerable space in the issue but so far have served no real purpose other than getting attacked. If anything, they give Tails a purpose ... sort of. He's brought them to Cocoa Island for their vacation (they sure aren't acting like it's a real honeymoon!), which gives him a reason to be there to do things which, come to think of it, he could just as easily have done at New Mobitropolis. Unless this is his way of getting out of the work of rebuilding the place after the Irons trashed it during their reign. Antoine and Bunnie definitely serve no real purpose if this is basically a recap of Tails Adventure, and the hastily-constructed T-Pup is nothing but the game's Remote Robot with a look that makes him Tails's a)droid, b)pet, c)little brother, d)all of the above. The story is off to a fine action-and-more-action start; I just have to wonder where it's going and whether there's any point to making the trip. Head Score: 7. EYE: There's nothing to fault in the artwork, except possibly with T-Pup. I wanted to find a picture of the Remote Robot for comparison's sake, but no such luck. Bunnie and Antoine are looking good, but even in the Clothing Optional world of Mobius, neither of the honeymooners is in any danger of getting nekkid. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Tails Adventure does bring something to the Sonic continuity. If you want to know how Tails became a little gearhead, look no further. In Sonic 2, Tails was little more than Sonic's shadow, a side presence. He didn't even have his own spin-dash move; he'd acquire that before appearing in Sonic 3. He also didn't have his mecha mojo working during the SatAM Sonic series or "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog." Only with "Sonic Adventure 2" does Tails come out of the workshop closet. This makes Tails's construction of T-Pup understandable, with a side order of creepy. Basically, Tails fashions a bot in his own image. It's cute, but also kind of awkward. In 2009's ill-fated "Astroboy" movie there's Trashcan, a dog robot who looks like a cannister vacuum cleaner and is programmed to act like a canid. Here, Tails has programmed T-Pup to act like a canid which means that while he LOOKS a lot like Tails he doesn't get the chance to act like him. There's something just ... off about the situation. What's really off, of course, is that Tails is in the proximity of two sexually-frustrated honeymooners, sexual frustration being a common syndrome for anyone appearing in an Archie comic. I'm sorry, but the vibe coming off the situation is several shades of wrong. Personally, I can think of a couple of Mobians who should have made the trip and whose presence would have taken the story to the next level: Amadeus and Rosemary Prower. You remember: Tails's parents. First off, it would make a lot more sense for Tails to be accompanied by his folks, who are a couple of the most underutilized animals in the history of this comic. If anything, it would make Tails's ruminations on page [5] and [14] that much more interesting. After all, he's being shadowed by a couple of reminders that despite his l33t engineering skills he's still a kid, so it's like he's got something to prove. Second, we could FINALLY have seen the Prowers as a fully- functional family unit. Or maybe even a dysfunctional one. Just as Tails had to get his negativity about Sonic's overshadowing of him out into the open in the "House of Cards" arc (S178-179), this could have been Tails's opportunity to show Mom and Dad that he's "not a child." Still, there's something pretty childish about locking oneself away in a workshop and building one's own best friend as Tails does with T-Pup. That circumstance would have given the opportunity for dialogue on page [10] a whole new level of meaning as Amadeus and Rosemary take an evening stroll in the moonlight and discuss their deteriorating relationship with Tails and whether their prolonged absence on Argentium is something for which he can ever forgive them. Almost no other plot point in this installment would have had to be changed by replacing one couple with another. It certainly would have upped the Heart level considerably above the more pedestrian discussion between Antoine and Bunnie of whether they jumped into matrimony too soon. The mystery, of course, is why Archie Editorial continues to avoid the obvious. Unless Ian has something bordering on the spectacular waiting in SU20, I honestly can't see that having Bunnie and Antoine in this story is going to help it any. Like the chaste honeymoon the two of them are on, they appear to be going through the motions in this story, and that's a guaranteed way to bring down the Heart factor. Heart Score: 5. Call For Fan Art: the book announces a Tails fan art competition. Winner will get their work in SU20, plus a Sonic plushie backpack, a Sonic and Knuckles T-shirt, and a Sonic and Tails pin set. Three runners-up will get the same deal except for the t-shirt and backpack, plus their artwork will probably be way smaller. Digital submissions have to be on a CD, unless you want to take a chance on mailing in your submission. Deadline for submissions is August 20. And speaking of ... Fan Art: it's all Tails, of course, by Monzy, Nina and Phoebe. Fan Funnies: Sonic doesn't wear pants because of the friction factor; what's Tails's excuse? Off-Panel is dedicated to explaining the names of the characters. Aside from the off facial modeling of Bunnie by newcomer Ben Bates, it looks good. Don't ask me whether it's funny. Seriously, just let's not go there. Letters: Eric is told that a Silver story arc is high on the fan requests list; here's hoping that he's not so clueless this time as he was in his other appearances (c.f. the Mobius 30 Years Later arc); that there's at least an idea for a return of Scourge arc out there, that Sanford Green's original sketchwork for the cover of S212 appeared in the Free Comic Book Day issue of Sonic, and that a meeting of the Super forms of Sonic, Silver, Shadow, and Scourge would be ... well, if you ask me, it sounds more like a "Family Guy" cutaway than anything that could support its own story arc. Trent is not told anything remotely factual about Espio's "betrayal" of Mobius in the Iron Dominion arc; Editorial does, however, labor to sustain the cover story that Khan is a cyborg. I don't know; I think the fanbase could have handled a visual demonstration of some Terminator-style peeling skin/fur during S204 when Regina was smacking him around. Cariane asks what echidnas are, requests a Rouge arc, wants to know where Cream is, and wants to know where Big's parents are.