Knuckles #18 [Nov 1998] Spaz/Galan/Penders/Ray/Heroic Age cover: Kragok and Knuckles about to duke it out, with Remington and a spectral Tobor/Golden Eye watching. "Deep Cover: Part 2 of 2 "Debt of Honor" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Manny Galan; Ink: Andrew Pepoy; Color: Barry Grossman; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editorial: G-Force "Most noble" page: what had been known as the "Echidna Security Team" in earlier issues has apparently undergone a name change somewhere and is now the "Echidna Security Agency." Otherwise, no news, but let's deal with a piece of old business before plunging ahead with the story: In my review of Knuckles #17 I didn't speculate as to the identity of the being in cryogenic suspension in Haven. One of my correspondents, Katie, sent an interesting guess as to who was on ice. Since the review came out, a few more readers have written to me, and almost all of them guessed that it was...Queen Alicia, whose fate is the subject of the story arc beginning with the next issue. I think it's an interesting guess not only because it seems so logical, but also because I like to think there's an unspoken sense among the fans that Princess Sally needs to catch a break. So far things have not been going her way since Sonic and Tails left on their wild goof chase [pun intended] of Naugus. Her major contributions to the story line between Sonic #57 and now have been going skydiving with some bit players and being told by her father that she either marries Antoine or else loses her place in the line of succession. In fact, that's about ALL her father has told her as he directs Geoffrey St. John to put together a recon squad to land on the Floating Island and check things out. Even when Sonic used to ignore Sally's advice in the SatAM series back when the war with Robotnik was still on, he was never as disrespectful of her as her old man has been. So, like I said, there's been a lot of guessing that the Queen is chilling in Haven. Not according to Katie, though. When in doubt, check the evidence. In this case, note the beaded bracelet the figure is seen wearing on page 11 panel 2. According to Katie (and I've done some checking on my own and confirmed this) only one other character has been shown wearing a piece of jewelry that looks like that: Janelle-Li. In case you missed it, Janelle-Li was the mother of Athair and the grandmother of Sabre. That would make her Knuckles's great-great-grandmother. The bracelet is on display in several places in Knuckles #11, and even appears twice on the frontispiece art where the "noble house" text gets in the way. Yet the drawing was so powerful (even if the event depicted never happened in the storyline) that I created a link to it from my review of the issue. So why is she on ice, and how does this relate to the talk about "outsiders?" As the minutes of the last meeting between the Brotherhood and the fire ants in #17 suggests, the term "outsiders" can pretty much refer to anyone who isn't an echidna living on the Floating Island. And Janelle-Li's son, Athair, was spending quite a bit of time hanging with outsiders, particularly Sonic and Tails (the Tails miniseries "Southern Crossover"; "Immortality Is Forever...." in Sonic #56) in addition to dropping out of the Brotherhood to stay with Yanar's tribe. Since Athair couldn't bring himself to abandon the tribe to be at Janelle-Li's bedside, that opened a rift between him and Sabre. So when Sabre "went with the Ancient Walkers, and continued our family's proud [Guardianship] tradition" as Athair said in #11, apparently it didn't include (as I had assumed) laying Janelle-Li to rest. This also gives us some insight into the concept of "loose continuity" and the way Ken Penders's mind works. As we learned from Sonic #49, under the doctrine of loose continuity Archie isn't obligated to tie up any loose ends within a given story. So Ken left the impression that Janelle-Li was dead during Athair's flashback in #11, only to call that assumption into question some 6 issues later. But frankly, I can't tell you WHY Janelle-Li was frozen, assuming that it is her after all. Ken will let us in on the story himself. Maybe not THIS year.... So where were we? Right, Knuckles #18. Particularly in Lara-Le's living room where she and Julie-Su are keeping Tobor/Golden Eye company. But just as he starts to ruminate on how being a Guardian had impacted his family life (either that or how family life had impacted on his being a Guardian)... We cut to where we left off last time: Knuckles paying a visit to Kragok. Apparently the ESA doesn't have it in the budget to issue prison uniforms because Kragok is still dressed in his Dark Legion rags. Knuckles then informs Constable Remington that this face-to-face is going to be more like hand-to-hand and would he please lock the door on his way out. Remington does so, with some reluctance, and presumably goes off to find a heavy-duty spatula for when it comes time to clean one of the two of them off the walls. Back in Haven, we find Locke and Sabre (with a cameo appearance by Tom Servo on page 6 panel 1) discussing the fact that the power outage that hit them is looking less like an accident and more like a surgical strike from within. But that only lasts for one page because we're up to page 7 and the advertised Knuckles-Kragok "slugfest" still hasn't started yet. Knuckles tells Kragok he's "tired of all the lies and secrets"; you're talking to the wrong echidna, pal! You'd be better off complaining to someone in Haven. But just as the fight gets under way, it appears that some vortex Kragok opened up to deal with our hero has sucked them both in. As Kragok overacts and as Knuckles is being watched by either Gleep or Gloop from "The Herculoids"... It's back to the front parlor at Lara-Le's where she asks the question that occurred to most of the readers of last month's story: "How [could] Hawking mistake a Dark Legionaire [sic] for his son"? "As hard as it is to comprehend," Tobor/Golden Eye replies, "it took only the cruel touch of fate to turn the unimaginable into dark reality." Sounds like Golden Eye has engaged the services of Kent Taylor as a dialogue coach -I haven't read that kind of heavyweight prose since Kent's "Immortality Is Forever...." To recap: Tobor/Golden Eye comes to under the rubble of a collapsed building that cut short the slugfest HE had going with Moritori Rex. Once again, we watch as Hawking misidentifies Moritori Rex who, after he pulls himself from the ruins, gets told by a mallard medico that his vision is failing. Uh...what IS it with the typecasting of ducks as doctors on Mobius? Hey, I got the joke back in Sonic #43: doctor, duck, quack, it wasn't that hard to figure out! Anyway, thanks to some implants Tobor BECOMES Golden Eye, and he theorizes that the same thing may have happened to Moritori Rex, allowing him to maintain the facade of being Tobor. But when Lara-Le asks how he could have fooled Tobor's wife, Voni-Ca, Tobor/Golden Eye and Ken Penders change the subject... As the reader is returned to Knuckles and Kragok back in whatever limbo Kragok sent them to. Knuckles smacks the Legionnaire around a little and demands the "real deal" about Tobor... While the "Guardian" of the same name sits around Haven listening to Sabre, Sojourner and Spectre spending a full page making it painfully obvious that the place just happens to be vulnerable to attack at the moment. Back in Limbo (for want of a better term), we get a good deal of exposition from Knuckles going back to the time when Edmund became the first Guardian in response to Dimitri's megalomania. Then it's Kragok's turn; while not citing the "Dark Legion" story arc (Knuckles #1-3), he recaps Edmund's demise thanks to Dimitri's son, Menniker, who in turn was zoned out along with the Dark Legionnaires by Edmund's son Steppenwolf (see Knuckles #3). It's hardly a prison, though, for "periodically, we would manage to escape, only to be thwarted by whichever Guardian we met up with at the time." In one case, it appears that they met up with a Guardian named LaForge; I deduce this because he'd wearing a "Next Generation"-style visor and a suit of clothes rather blatantly modeled on a Star Fleet uniform. This might be a good time to pause and address the impending departure of Manny Galan as the regular artist for the Knuckles series (after #25, he's outta here). After floundering around in the Sonic books, he seemed to find himself with this series. He will be sorely missed because he gave the series its visual definition and, let's face it, he gave us a major babe in the person of Julie-Su. I'll be looking forward to his dropping by from time to time to do occasional work for Archie. Despite this, there were a few problems. Lien Nguyen of Vista, CA (whose letter appears at the end of this issue) stated that she had conversed with Manny Galan and she let it be known that Galan wasn't the happiest of campers. He cited: DEADLINE PRESSURES which forced him to submit work with which he was less than satisfied; CENSORSHIP by the management (in one case his Dingo Empire logo had to undergo some retooling to make it less Nazified; in another he was forced to erase a gun someone was holding to Julie-Su's head; in yet a third instance the drink Wnymacher was holding in Knuckles #16 was something stronger than milk before higher-ups got through with it); THE PAY for which he got to put up with all of the above (this confirms what another artist, who shall remain nameless, told me: that just about anything pays better than drawing for Archie Comics). By way of solace, Manny indulged his penchant for putting little visual gags and in-jokes in his work. They had been acceptable elsewhere but for whatever reason they ran into opposition in the Knuckles books, according to Lien. Now, I like a good in-joke as much as the next guy, and I've indulged in a few myself, though they've been pretty oblique. In one of my fanfics, for instance, I made a passing reference to a building in Robotropolis that used to be the "Klein Bottle Works" and left it at that. I'm not going to take the time here to discuss the relation of the klein bottle to the Mobius strip, but I think that was my sole indulgence in that one story. In this issue, Galan resorted to THREE such jokes up to this point (Tom Servo's cameo on page 6, the fugitive from the Herculoids on page 9, and the Star Trek uniform on page 15). I don't know to what extent Galan took the slings and arrows of one fanboy out in cyberspace to heart, but judging from his litany of woes as cited by Lien I can only hope that the grousing of a self-appointed critic wasn't the straw that broke the Manny's back. I've always thought highly of Manny's work for the Knuckles series, and if I complained about the in-jokes it was only when it seemed to me that they had been carried to excess. Galan hasn't closed the door on Archie, for which I'm grateful. Manny, you've earned a break, along with the thanks of Knuckles fans. Hope to see you around from time to time in the world that you helped bring into existence. OK, let's get back to Kragok's exposition. Kragok then adds that his father, who just happens to be Moritori Rex, discovered how to eavesdrop on the Floating Island from Limbo. And so it was that Moritori Rex became Tobor/Red Eye. Kragok then has Knuckles fall for one of the oldest tricks in the book while he makes a break for it through a portal of some sort. At that moment, Lara-Le informs Tobor/Golden Eye that she can't find any documentation on either himself or Voni-Ca in the family albums (which can be serious sources of information for someone into genealogy). Just then Tobor/Golden Eye's spider sense goes off and he takes a flying leap out the window. Julie-Su doesn't care for the former Guardian's abrupt departure and as Lara-Le gets ready to tell her what it was like being MARRIED to one... Tobor/Golden Eye encounters the energy rift through which Kragok (the son of his former foe, Moritori Rex) emerges. Tobor/Golden Eye drags Kragok back into Limbo to continue the grudge match from days gone by. This leaves Knuckles to return home to a cheerful reunion with Julie-Su (who professes that she's not interested in taking their relationship to the next level...yet) and Lara-Le. But this wouldn't be a Ken Penders story without a depiction of authority figures minding someone else's business, so as soon as Haven gets back online the Guardians huddle around the monitor to watch Knuckles being embraced by a Dark Legionnaire (even if she IS a babe). So let's check our score cards: there are TWO Tobors running around. Tobor/Golden Eye is smacking Kragok around in some zone or other, while pseudo-Tobor/Red Eye/Moritori Rex continues passing himself off as a Guardian in Club Clueless, otherwise known as Haven. As for Constable Remington, someone should tell him that the problem of prison overcrowding at ESA Headquarters just got relieved somewhat. Ken's given us some VERY complex storytelling, and injected an element of uncertainty and suspense by the revelation that one of the Brotherhood isn't just a retired busybody; he's a retired busybody with an agenda written by the Dark Legion. I hope Manny Galan enjoyed drawing the last panel on page 20 as much as I enjoyed looking at it. Beyond a pro-art poster of Espio done by Ribiero is: Fistful of Letter. I put that in the singular because Lien Nguyen's letter is a LONG one and, frankly, deserves to be quoted at length. She correctly cites "Fathers and Sons" as the emotional turning-point of the series; it was the moment when Knuckles stopped being simply Sonic's "friendly nemesis," stopped being just a guest star in someone else's book. Her perceptive letter shows how the series has become far more than a reason to fill twenty-some pages a month with just fight scenes. Wonderful analysis, Lien. And blurbs for Knuckles #19, Sonic #65 and the Image Crossover special, along with fan art. Actually, I'm looking forward to the crossover represented by Knuckles #19 more than I am the Image special.