Super Special #6 Sonic 50: Director's Cut There IS such a thing as a "director's cut": it's the version of a motion picture that is put together under the supervision of the film's director and is meant to display his personal vision of what the film is about. Afterwards it is usually subject to being sliced and diced by the film's editor. Sometimes the further editing helps, sometimes it doesn't. Is there anybody in the audience who DOESN'T know the story behind this one? Well, just in case there are, I'll make it brief: The "Endgame" story arc (Sonic 47-50) culminated in an issue that principal author Ken Penders had planned to be a 40-page special. For reasons beyond his control, he had to cut 13 pages in order to make the story fit a standard-sized comic book. The results were less than satisfying. So, a year later, Archie is taking another run at it. Needless to say, this is not a literal "director's cut" of the book since many of the original pages simply weren't drawn when the word came down that space was limited. Ken has assured me, however, that he used his original plotline for the story. I won't be covering it in every detail myself. I will, however, be doing some side-by-side comparisons with the previous edition. In order to distinguish between the different versions of the story, I will be referring to the ORIGINAL #50 (also known as "The Last Goodbye") as 50.1, while this present incarnation (complete with new title) will be referred to as 50.2. Individual pages will be similarly noted: thus, page 1 of the first version is "50.1.1". Where I have included the names of the creative forces at work, they will appear in this order: writer/pencil/ink. Hey, this kind of thing is what I do for a living! Spaziante cover: Sonic's gesture says it all. "The Big Goodbye, take two!" Surrounding him are his Uncle Chuck and his father Jules (pre-robotic forms), Robotnik (nice lipstick, dude!), Snively, the Ultimate Annihilator, and a helping of Sally Under Glass. This last element is something of a revelation in that Ken played fast and loose with whether Sally was really dead throughout the original story arc. I don't suppose it's spoiling anything at this late date to be up-front about it. Credits page: the credits page of 50.2 makes use of the original Spaziante/Penders cover art as a background. This takes the place of the Mawhinney/Pepoy cartoon frontispiece in 50.1, the one that reminded me of a Mad Magazine parody of a Sonic comic. Unlike 50.1, they've lumped ALL the creative names together under one heading rather than specifying who was responsible for what transgressions. The only new name is Steve Butler, who pencilled most of the new pages. And now, a short lesson in CorporateSpeak: "More often than not, once a story is told, all that remains is the finished "accepted" version, the bad as well as the good exposed for all to see." Translation: Once we publish something, you're stuck with it. "Very rarely does the creator have the opportunity to revise the creation and tinker with it until the finished account is the version it was always meant to be." Translation: So many of you wrote in asking "What the freak happened!?" that we decided to do it right this time. This text is as close to a formal apology from the management at Archie as the fans are going to get. The first three pages of the special (50.2.1-3, in my shorthand) are the same as 50.1.1-3 except that the panels on 50.2.2 have been resized slightly. This resizing will be evident throughout the book. But 50.2.4-5 are a revelation: Robotnik awakens and is informed that a test subject awaits. The guinea pig in this case isn't a pig at all: he's an Overlander (in other words, a hyooman) who meets his fate courtesy of Robotnik's "devastating weapon" while Snively has other ideas. Now, if you were asked to cut 13 pages from a 40-page script, which pages would you lose from this sequence? Some of them? All of them? Would you think: "Heck, let's cut out the last two pages and ignore the fact that they establish just how rotten Robotnik is to sacrifice one of his own kind that way, they help establish what the showcase weapon is we're dealing with, and they foreshadow Snively's treachery"? If so then you, too, have the kind of decision-making skills necessary to work in the comic book industry. Maybe I'm missing something here but I'd have cut back on the dream sequence (or cut it out altogether) and made sure that those last pages were left in. I would dearly love to know the reasoning behind leaving the dream sequence intact and sacrificing the pages which actually had something to do with the plot! Pages 50.2.6-9 are the same as 50.1.4-7 with a few changes. For one thing, Ken has changed the title from "The Big Goodbye" to "For Whom The Bell Tolls." Since corporate higher-ups ultimately vetoed Ken's idea to kill off Sally, the first title had lost its original meaning anyway. In addition, several panels have been expanded to fill the page: the first panel of 50.2.6, the last panel of 50.2.7, the top panel of 50.2.8 when Dulcy makes her appearance, and the center panel of 50.2.9. These are cosmetic changes, but again one has to wonder whether someone wasn't paying too much attention to the page borders and not enough attention to the flow of the narrative when this was being cobbled together the first time. A textual change takes place on 50.2.9. This time Drago's speech segues not to Robotnik's headquarters but to Downunda. Ken and Steve take a page from "Down and Out in Downunda" (Return of the King Special). Page 4, to be precise. This time, however, instead of having Antoine, Bunnie, Barbie and Walt jump the ComBot they quick cut to the loading dock. There's some further borrowing from "Down and Out...", page 9, to establish Bunnie and Antoine's getaway, before we jump to... 50.2.12-15 (=50.1.8-11). Not only is the page art once again enlarged, but Sonic gets an extra word balloon. The one on 50.2.14 where he asks "Where's that wolf working with the SWATbots?" in noticeably thinner letters does NOT appear on 50.1.10. It makes Sonic look less clueless than before, though we're still left to guess as to when he actually found out about Drago's role in all this. While the wolf beats feet (or paws), 50.2.16 consists of a series of bunny hops across pages 10 and 11 of "Down and Out in Downunda." Steve Butler and his unidentified inker do a good job of approximating the Ortega/Eklund artwork. More important, Ken manages to preserve Mike Gallagher's rant about the U.A., something 50.1 thought it could do without. Big mistake. Huge! Yet Ken still wasn't able to do more than hint at where Antoine obtained the bomb he eventually planted. Better than nothing, though. In what amounts to a major retrofit of the story, what had been a seamless sequence of Drago getting hit with a rock on 50.1.12 gets expanded over 50.2.17-19. Drago loses a word balloon but encounters Hershey instead (Butler makes her look sort of leggy; I think I still prefer Manny Galan's version in #48). After some preliminary banter she demonstrates the concept of "mood swing" by going medieval on his tail. By the time she finally beans him with the rock, it looks a lot more understandable and a lot less ridiculous. Looking back at it, the sequence in 50.1 reminds me of the classic line from Paul Dini's animated Batman script, "Almost Had 'Im": "I threw a rock at him...it was a BIG rock...." Speaking of scripts, Hershey gets a rewrite on 50.2.19, the 4th panel, where "climbing it" was substituted for "hanging" in the original. Things stay the same for 50.2.20-22 (=50.1.13-15) except that Snively gets a line before Sonic expounds on the beloved after-image theory. And both Sonic and Snively get a little extra dialogue on 50.2.23 (50.1.16) which explains the Sniveler's going after Sonic on his own, but it still leaves the original Taylor/Maxwell/Mercadoocasio sequence as one of the most muddled of the story. You might want to take a deep breath before leaving 50.2.24 (50.1.17) because here's where the rewrite really kicks in and the two story lines part company. What had originally taken two measly pages the first time around (50.1.18-19) is fattened up to six (50.2.25-30). In the original, the presence of Bunnie and Antoine was fleeting at best, and there was effectively no development of the plot before Sonic and Robotnik started trading punches. Now, the other two furs are far more visible, and look at the plot points that get added: Antoine clarifies the business with the bomb and they find the U.A. "IN ZAIRE" (though I think that since the last coup it's called the Democratic Republic of the Congo now). Unfortunately, Robotnik gets off a shot before the pair could blow it up and Sonic gets to watch Knothole being destroyed. And boy, THAT would have been helpful to see the last time around. Antoine plants the bomb, somewhat belatedly, but at least the background BOOM establishes that it was the bomb in the U.A. that caused the "crossed wires" that lead to the system crash. It also leads, unfortunately, to a recap of the Taylor/Spaziante/Mercadoocasio fight sequence on 50.2.31-32 (50.1.20- 21). It's still confusing, but thanks to all those added plot points we know that the last panel (which looks like a scene from a kung fu movie designed by Lisa Frank) is meant to show what Sonic and Robotnik were doing to each other at the moment the U.A. backed up and destroyed everything. To enhance the effect we get two VERY effective new pages: 50.2.33 is a simple pencil drawing of the two combatants at the moment of the blast. I don't know whose idea it was to leave it as a pencil study. I think it's more powerful that way, though the effect is spoiled somewhat by Spaziante patting himself on the back. 50.2.34, meanwhile, is a perfect use of empty space to denote total desolation. And it helps immensely in that it puts the top of 50.2.35 (50.1.22) in context. The sequence of Sonic's glove (followed by the rest of him) emerging through that ring or whatever made no sense in the original, but is helped considerably by the preceding white page. So it would appear that the first time around, whoever was in charge of editing thought they could simply edit out the cataclysmic explosion which was sort of the point of the action. Karl Bollers's original coloring job of the page is deliberately muted for the occasion. From here on, though, it's a straight recap of 50.1.22-26 in 50.2.35-39. A couple of lines are added to try to clarify the "three hours in the future" business, but I'm still not buying it. Also, the rewrite of Dr. Quack's exposition in the 4th panel of 50.2.37 (compare with 50.1.24) should have been proofread a little more closely. And things pretty much stay the same for 50.2.38-39 (50.1.25-26), which is followed by... Excuse me a minute. YES!!! YES!!! WO-HOO!!! 50.2.40 is, for all intents and purposes, Ken Penders' apology to the fans for not having gotten it right the first time. He informed me that he had requested that Art Mawhinney draw the page, and that he and Justin Gabrie were prepared "to fight tooth and nail" to keep the page in if Sega gave them any grief. As it turned out, it was only suggested that Art redraw Sally's legs (the original pose was thought to be too "suggestive"). Small price to pay for one of the few signs of life the book has demonstrated in quite a while. Apology accepted. 50.2.41 is a slightly rewritten repeat of the last page (50.1.27). And sliding momentarily past the Sonic-Grams page, we see a repeat of the Scott Shaw! and Paul Castiglia "pin-up" cover. What it lost in color it makes up for in visibility. I didn't even NOTICE Knuckles standing behind Antoine the first time around. OK, is it a better book than 50.1? No contest: WAY better! Not perfection, but as close as this project is going to get. Not all the loose ends were tied up successfully: we never found out HOW Drago got Hershey into the Sonic suit on display in #49, and Richard Smyers has asked why, if Sally still had any memory of someone who looked an awful lot like Sonic cutting her rope and sending her to the pavement in #47, she didn't try to strangle Sonic when she saw who it was who woke her up (my guess: short-term memory loss induced by the trauma of landing). But this edition is light years ahead of its predecessor in terms of narrative and even visual coherency. In addition to the pages contributed by Spaziante and Mawhinney, Steve Butler has done a good job of filling in the blanks visually (though his Antoine needs a little work). He managed to do a fair approximation of the styles of Dave Manak (when Hershey started wailing on Drago) and Nelson Ortega (for the Bunnie and Antoine Downunda sequences). The jumps between styles this time around were therefore a lot less abrupt. Combined with the intact story line, we do indeed get an idea of how 50.1 was SUPPOSED to be. Could the editing have been better the first time around? I thought of that as I looked at the story and tried to figure out what to cut. I came to the conclusion that simply losing a page here and there would not have been sufficient. The entire story would have had to be re-thought out and rewritten; simply lifting out pages and hoping for the best wouldn't have been enough. What could have been lost: Robotnik's flashback in the beginning, some of the business with Sonic and Geoffrey on the Floating Island, Sonic's battle with Snively, the expositions by Dr. Quack and Rotor could all have been trimmed. But a writer builds a certain flow, a certain structure, into a narrative. Ken had planned for #50 to have a certain rhythm, and that rhythm was thrown out the window when he had to cut the story down to size. Editing the story down might have made some sense in print, but in a visual medium such as a comic book 50.1 was doomed early on: as soon as the decision was made to start cutting. Sonic-Grams: Plug for Special #7: the Image Crossover issue. Also Knuckles #16, Sonic #63 and NiGHTS #5. Two thumbnail-sized Fan Art pieces, and one photo of fans with plushies. Only one letter: from Sally fanboy Leon Baker in the U.K. who says we in the States have "some decent characters to work with" in the continuity that Archie seemed to want to abandon for a while there. Which brings me to the question: what is the legacy of "Endgame"? By now it's best forgotten that the point of the story (and the poignancy inherent in the title of 50.1, "The Big Goodbye") was to kill off Princess Sally. I'm sure Ken had some notion as to where the book might have gone had he followed through on that idea. No doubt at some point he would have relied on the characters and situations of the Sonic X-treme game (then in development) to show the way. But Sonic X-treme was shelved, Sally was revived, and most of the stories showing Sonic and Tails on their own have been less than inspired. Meanwhile, the most compelling story developments have been about...Princess Sally (especially "Ultimatum" in Sonic #60, and the story arc slated to begin in the forthcoming Knuckles #19). What's the legacy of "Endgame"? Once more, I'll let Ken Penders have the last word (based on an idea by yours truly): it's in the Archives section of my Sonic Website (http://www2.andrews.edu/~drazen/archives.html).