Sonic v. Knuckles: Battle Royal #1
     no date
     "Battle Royal"
     Let's get right to the point: this is a piece of crap.  And
not just because of the mutant artwork.  Everybody except for the
Chaotix and Sonic himself is horribly off-model: Dulcy looks like
she's auditioning to be a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day
Parade, and Tails has one of those too-large baby heads.  The
artist is in love with weird points of view--page 4 panel 2 and the
double-page spread on pages 9 and 10 are prime examples both of
weird staging and even weirder composition.  And the figures look
more cartooney than they did in the cartoons; they're little more
than colored-in outlines.  Then again, so is the background.  Look
at pages 13 and 14 -- there's barely any detailing in the trees and
the grass, as if the artist didn't have time to bother giving the
scenery (or the characters themselves) any kind of weight, any
sense of reality.  Either that or he just didn't care to work up a
sweat.  This drek makes Manak look like Michelangelo!
     As for the story, that can be summed up in two words: "What
story?"  This was intended to be a continuation of both "Knuckles'
Quest" and "Prelude to Apocalypse" in #46, and a lead-in into
"Taking The Fall" in #47.  But aside from Mammoth Mogul's
insinuating himself into the Endgame plot sideways with no hint of
his involvement in the story arc up to this point, "Battle Royal"
contributes NOTHING to the story arc.  Reading the story was in
fact a waste of time: all you really had to do was read the splash
page (which pretty well telegraphs the climax of the story) and the
Epilogue on the last page.  The 24 pages inbetween were a waste of
paper, a return to the dreary Itchy-and-Scratchy fight plots I'd
thought Archie had outgrown.  The ONLY character given any kind of
attention is Mammoth Mogul, and even then all you need to know
about him at this point is that as far as he's concerned he's God. 
Don't worry about seeing the King suddenly made whole on the last
page and thinking you may have missed something: that went
unexplained in this story just as it did in "Taking The Fall."  It
would have been nice to have been offered SOMETHING besides yet one
more angle to the Endgame arc that serves to confuse rather than
enlighten.  It would have been nice to offer the reader some ray of
hope.  But hey, welcome to the Brave New World!  My ass!
     Frankly it's getting to the point where I don't CARE how
Endgame plays out.  With each new issue, with each new Endgame
installment, Sonic the comic is becoming less and less
recognizable.  The characters and situations that drew me to become
a Sonic fan in the first place are being cast aside.  One of the
messages I was asked to post in the Princess Sally Memorial
Cybershrine said something to the effect that the Knothole Freedom
Fighters didn't just lose a member of the team when Sally died--
they lost the heart of it.  And I feel like that's what Archie is
doing: cutting the heart and soul out of the world I'd become a fan
of.  If their replacements were in any way interesting and
compelling maybe I wouldn't mind.  But "Battle Royal" left an
extremely sour taste in my mouth.  It was bad art in the service of
pointless writing which did nothing but waste my time and money. 
I've never cancelled a magazine subscription in my life but the way
I feel right now I WILL cancel my Sonic subscription if the
conclusion of Endgame is even half this infuriating, and then
someone else can post reviews or summaries of the comics to the FAQ
File because I will have lost the desire to have anything to do
with the comics.  The story was written by Kent Taylor and Ken
Penders, Sam Maxwell did the pencil work, Jim Amash was the inker,
Karl Bollers was the colorist, Jeff Powell did the lettering, and
the management team consisted of J. Freddy Gabrie as editor, Victor
Gorelick as managing editor, and Richard Goldwater as editor-in-
chief, and each and every one of them should be ashamed of
themselves!
     You want to find out about the other story in the issue, read
it yourself; I'm too disgusted to even look at my copy.