Sonic Universe #8 (November 2009) Yardley!/Hunzeker cover: Sonic and the New Freedom Fighters take a flying leap. "Mobius 30 Years Later: Part 4: The Freedom Fighters Of The Future" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason jensen; Lettering: Teresa Davidson; Editorial Assistant: Paul Kaminski; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chuef: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu Looks like the castle has a serious Chaos problem, which is actually a Perfect Chaos ... excuse me, Tikhaos ... problem. Going up against it: King Sonic and a bunch of kids half his age at most. What they do for starters, "they" being Lara-Su mainly, is bring the readers up to speed with some exposition. Seems that when Tikal tamed Chaos the result, in their timeline anyway, was "a very unstable being" made even moreso when exposed to stupid amounts of Chaos energy. How did she get exposed to stupid amounts of Chaos energy? Shadow, of course, who rambles on for a page about how the world needs to be punished for rejecting him (Insecure much?) and about his eventual return once Mobius has learned its lesson. He then completely vanishes from the story, don't ask me how. And don't ask where he went, because we're not told that, either. This development is brought to you by Loose Continuity. But back to the action. Argyll lets Sonic know that the EST is running crowd control, so he puts Lara-Su in charge of monster watching while he tends to family business. Lara-Su gets the rest of the kids to serve as back-up as Sonic drops into the Panic Room where nobody is really panicked to see him: the kids are all over him, Sally is a bit more restrained but still glad that hubby's home, and Silver is just regaining consciousness. After Silver wakes up enough to confirm that this is the sitch that brought him back to the past, Sonic arranges for his family and Silver to vacate the castle before any more of it falls down around their ears. The kids are having a great time, and it's nice to know that Sonic can still sweep Sally off her feet. And now, a pause for Wall-Of-Exposition. Argyll informs everyone that evacuation is slow but moving right along, and that "the damage has been pretty minimal so far no injuries." And you can thank the CCA for that, but Argyll gives props to Lara-Su and the kids. He also reports that, just like the climax of the Harry Potter books where anyone who'd been put under the Imperius curse by the Death Eaters snapped out of it when Voldemort died, the members of the Dark Presence have all come down with a severe case of "What The Hell Were We THINKING?" and released the Prowers. We then get four pages of the kids going up against Tikhaos, with Melody making the save when Jacques (they changed the spelling of his name, and no, there's no explanation) almost gets flattened, Belle rescuing Skye, Lara-Su getting smacked down by Tikhaos for trying to reason with her/it/them/whatever only to have Tails make the save, and Mama Mina hustling her kids out of there as Silver goes all grandiose and gets in Tikhaos's green face. Lara-Su reports that they've got Tikhaos cornered but that's about it, at which point the Royal Rugrats suggest that Sonic kick it old school and refer to the first Sonic Adventure game, the plot of which is probably as literally familiar to the tykes as a bedtime story. Sonic takes a spin at the head but is stopped by the kind of energy burst that makes you cough up your power rings. But just as Sonic is shaking that off, the Royal Tweebs perform the Ewww-worthy maneuver of smashing through Tikhaos's head. That's enough to floor Tikhaos and allow Lara-Su to devolve it back to Tikal mode by chanting what's apparently come to be called "Tikal's Prayer." What happens to Tikal, they never say; maybe she can be rehabilitated and won't have to go back to living in a fish bowl full of pistachio ice cream. After Sonic hands out kudos all around, he confers with Silver before the latter hitches a ride back to his dimension, then Sonic and the new kids on the block (minus Argyll) pose for their publicity photo. Meanwhile, we cut to Downunda; whether it's in the present or the future isn't stated. But there's nothing under-stated about Dr. Fin, who makes his entrance as we make our exit. HEAD: I've already voiced my displeasure with the ending of the Team Dark arc (SU1-4), which managed to undercut whatever edge Shadow, Rouge and even Omega brought to the story. Same here: a daikaiju (Japanese movie monster like Godzilla) getting bested by a couple of preschoolers? What's up with that? Fortunately, Archie has told us exactly what's up with that. In the same way that a response to a letter to the editor in the infamous Sonic #49 took time out in the middle of the Endgame arc to explain the concept of Loose Continuity, Editorial did the exact same thing in response to a letter that appeared in Sonic Universe #7: "While the comics will sometimes have their darker' moments, we're really more interested in telling fun stories. You can have fun with a little bit of an edge, but you can't really be all grim-and-gritty and still be accessible to everyone. We're sure you'll like where we go with things, though!" This seems to parallel the lesson Sega itself learned when it comes to video game production. In the old-time side- scrollers, there wasn't much room for grim-and-gritty. That changed with Sonic Adventure. The disappearance of the ancient echidna civilization was brought on by Chaos's rage against its war-mongering chief who dared to try to exploit the Chaos Emeralds in his drive for conquest and the willingness of his troops to run roughshod over Tikal and the Chao to do it. OK, it wasn't highlighted in graphic detail, but anyone playing the game should have gotten the idea. Heck, even when Sonic is contemplating going super against Chaos, an Offstage Voice in the English dub shouting "Yeah, Sonic!" in what's supposed to be an encouraging tone is so badly dubbed in it sounds phoney and awkward, as if it were meant to erase the thought that maybe, just maybe, Chaos had already killed off a bunch of the Station Squares. That game moment called for IMO an eerie, ominous silence during which Sonic weighs his options and reaches his decision. In fact, I got the same phoney and awkward sense reading this story. "The damage has been pretty minimal so far no injuries." I'm sorry, I'm not buying that for a second. And it's been that way with most of the later Sonic games. The death of Maria at the hand of G.U.N. is the emotional lynchpin of Sonic Adventure 2 and the key to understanding Shadow's personality. The fate of the future world Silver tries to avert in Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) doesn't leave room for the possibility of "no injuries." Merlina's mindset in Sonic And The Black Knight is especially dark, though it sets up the amazing (for Sonic) line about living life to the fullest in the time you have. In Sonic Unleashed you have Chip fading and his "I'll never forget you" voice-over after the professor yammers on about light and dark coexisting. The current message, according to Sega, is that you can't please everyone and guess what, they're not going to try anymore: " If you read everything, we need to be all things to all gamers with Sonic, and that's a difficult thing to do,' said Mike Hayes, the head of Sega Europe and, as of last month, the head of Sega of America as well. Trying to put everything into one game and making everybody happy is impossible. And I think that's something clear going forward.' "So as Sega proceeds to, in Hayes' words, review our Sonic road map,' fans young and old should prepare for an approach that will produce Sonic games that won't satisfy everyone at once. "Sega's core Sonic target, in fact, isn't those who grew up with Sonic. It's those who are growing up now. It very much is in that under 12 group,' Hayes said. And what we have to do is make a Sonic that is of a quality that delights that audience, first and foremost. I'd argue that we very much achieved that with products like Sonic Heroes on PS2, and I think we did that with Mario and Sonic 1 on Wii and DS. I think we did it some ways with Sonic and the Secret Rings on Wii. I think [the Wii's Sonic and the] Black Knight was a good game.' "Hayes is less satisfied with Sega's execution of those Sonic games that have been on the more powerful Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. I think we've had challenges with [the 2006] Sonic the Hedgehog and Unleashed,' he said. [The 2006 game] Sonic the Hedgehog sells extremely well at a budget price. So clearly it's very popular with a young audience. But first and foremost is: We've got to make a quality game for that audience. Does quality mean it's got to be a Metacritic 90 percent? Well not necessarily. It's just got to be quality that's appropriate for them. Then we've got our core fans, and what we need to do is now and then produce a Sonic that will appeal to those fans specifically.'" [Source: Kotaku, http://kotaku.com/5336675/sega-impossible-to-please-all-sonic-fan s-with-one-sonic-game] It's the off-hand reference to "our core fans" that interests me. It looks like, after all these years, Archie Comics and Sega of America are finally on the same page when it comes to looking at the Sonic fandom. Unfortunately, they've both come to see their core audience as the preadolescent boy market of the moment. As for the comic, we've already noted that the prevailing editorial philosophy is going to be fun with a bit of an edge rather than edge with a bit of fun. Hey, it's their book and they're going to slant it toward their "core fans." It's not like there isn't an alternative out there on the Net. As of this writing, there are just over 16,000 Sonic the Hedgehog fanfics at fanfiction.net alone. And I sincerely doubt that most of them were written by preadolescent boys. So Sonic isn't leaving anytime soon and he belongs as much to those of us who "play with him" by doing fanart or fanfiction than he does to Sega or Archie. That's good because this story's conclusion was extremely dubious. OK, Sonic doesn't floor Tikhaos on the first try; but then his two KIDS deliver the coup de grace? I'm sorry, but that's just wrong! I can tell that Archie wanted to dial down the menace by slipping in the "no casualties" line, but this is just too much! It literally makes going after the final boss look like FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY! And Ian indulges in Loose Continuity in this story with a vengeance. We don't know what becomes of Shadow. We don't know what becomes of Lien-Da. We don't know what happened between Lien-Da and Rutan and what Lara-Su might/might not have had to do with it. We don't know how Antoine's and Bunnie's kids ended up with cybernetic enhancements. We don't know what will become of Tikal; hopefully she'll be treated a little more humanely. We don't even know if Dr. Fin has reappeared in the comic's present or its future, a problem which would have been solved with a simple text box alteration. This is loose continuity that's so loose it's liquid. I know Ian has been writing this comic for some time, and overall I like his work, but after the bad ending for the previous arc and now this one, I have to wonder whether his working for two titles at the same time isn't taking its toll. At the very least it's beginning to look like he could use the services of a closer for his Sonic Universe stories. Head Score: 5. EYE: Yardley!'s work is again faultless, plus he gets to prove himself in large set pieces where Tikhaos is on the rampage. Eye Score: 10. HEART: In addition to the Sonic family interchanges (I loved Manic's motor-mouthed run-on sentence on page [7]), Ian also dangles several possible relationships among the Freedom Fighters 2.0 in front of our eyes, particularly Jacques and Melody. And I liked the moment where Mina gets all fuzzy and domestic in the middle of rescuing her kids. Nice touch. Unfortunately, that was offset by the way the Tikal-Chaos plot was left hanging. Heart Score: 6. Off-Panel: two strips very loosely based on the just-ended arc. The cannonball one was amusing, which was more than could be said for the Knuckles Wants His Props strip. They make me want to, oh I don't know, submit my own ideas. You should, too. Letters: Charity wants to know how come Shadow got so nasty. She's obviously thinking of the SA2 Shadow who got softened up by his memory of Maria; that was a whole nother continuity. She also inquires about the possibility of a Sonic movie. THAT discussion has been kicking around the fandom for a long time, possibly for more years than Charity's been alive! Mike Pellerito, if he's the one writing the answers, passes the buck to Sega, in any event. Michael asks about Iblix and Mephiles; maybe they were too edgy for the comic now. In the end Mike falls back on "you never know." And Michael asks what happened to the rest of Team Dark in the M30YL continuity. I can see Omega acting as muscle during Shadow's rule, but I think Rouge would be living full-time at a spa somewhere, aging as gracefully as possible and able to pay for it from her jewel horde. And finally he asks about the Babylon Rogues; sing along with Mike: "You never know." Allison also wants to see future Rouge and Mike says "We might just have to do that." Middle-aged Rouge; the mind boggles.