[Seated around the table are the same three figures as last time: Harry, Gearbox and Lobo.] LOBO: OK, who's got the next issue? HARRY: You mean Knuckles #31? Somebody's bringing it. LOBO: Yeah, well they'd better get here before.... [A fourth figure enters: A middle-aged overweight male wearing glasses.] LOBO: Well, look who's here. Mister College Geek himself! "Sorry I'm late, guys, I only just got it. And I STILL can't find Special #11 anywhere!" LOBO: Hey, quit your fraggin' whining already! Just leave it and get lost. GEARBOX: Listen, maybe he should stick around this time. LOBO: Why? GEARBOX: Hey, he created me and used me in a fanfic. I owe him one. HARRY: Yeah, and he named me Best New Character for 1998. For all the good that does me now. LOBO: All right, all right, the feeb stays. Just remember who the Main Man is around here. "No problem." LOBO: So wadda we got? "Well, I should probably remind everyone that you're copyright DC Comics...." LOBO: Hey, frag the legal stuff, will ya? "OK. We...er...we have the Galan/Penders/Heroic Age cover...." GEARBOX: Hey, what's with the yiffin' circle? LOBO: Yeah, I thought this story was about this dude hunting Knuckles. Is he gonna do it bare-handed or what? "Well, I think someone at Archie probably thought they needed to add that to the cover art after the Columbine High Massacre." LOBO: For what? "I don't know. They probably thought that highlighting firearms would be bad for their image. See, the comics industry has been pretty sensitive about these issues ever since 1954 when someone named Fred Wertham...." LOBO: Save it for the lecture hall, Perfesser Dweeb. GEARBOX: Better keep it moving, know what I mean? "Sure. Anyway, there's the credits page..." LOBO: Which you can feel free to skip...if you know what's good for you. "So noted. Anyway, we get two pages of Sabre and Sojourner discovering their communications are offline and they're not sure why." LOBO: Two pages of boredom, if you ask me. "Yeah, well...." LOBO: Yeah, what? "Well, I DID have a problem with one of Sabre's lines on page 1." GEARBOX: Which one? "Where he says that 'The sensors are off the dial.' Usually when something's 'off the dial' there's too much juice. Like in "Ghostbusters" when someone described the PKE readings as 'burying the needle'." LOBO: Hey, lay off the movie reference before I bury YOUR needle! "That's...er...going to be pretty tough to do. See, Ken uses a lot of movie references in his work, and this story arc is no exception. The plot itself...." LOBO: That's it! Class dismissed! Get ready to lose some teeth! GEARBOX: Hold it, hold it! Let's just get through this, all right? Lobo, cool it down. And you, maybe you'd better keep your yiffin' mouth shut until spoken to. "No problem." GEARBOX: OK, so back on the surface Monk mouths off to the human hunter guy. LOBO: Yeah, well at least there's ONE cast member who ain't no lady! HARRY: But he gets zapped by a phaser or something on the next page for his trouble. That's about how it goes in this business. GEARBOX: So anyway, after some yiffin' robot carries off the monkey we go back to Locke and Archimedes. LOBO: Hey, Perfesser! Got anything to say about this page? "Well, two things, really." LOBO: Sorry I asked. "For starters, Archimedes gets the 'Golden DUH! Award' for saying that anyone that can take Haven offline is 'a force to be reckoned with'." LOBO: And...? "And...Locke must have a lousy sense of direction if all he can say in answer to the question 'Where do we go?' is 'Out there!'" LOBO: Maybe I was wrong about you. "By the way, I think Ken Penders lifted that line from the ending of the first Star Trek movie." LOBO: Or maybe I was right and you should keep your yap shut. GEARBOX: So, we come to the guy's spaceship. "Yeah..." HARRY: What are YOU down about? One more issue, and you won't have to put up with the book any more. "And believe me, my wife would love nothing better! She's rather I spent my time writing something that could make money. It's just that...well, I had some problems with this whole sequence." LOBO: Oh, yeah? Like what? "OK, this character's going on and on about sportsmanship, but the fact that he blows a bird out of the sky in his first appearance makes a liar out of him." HARRY: Maybe Ken wanted to show he's just a hypocrite. "Maybe, I don't know. But the dialogue he has on pages 9 and 10...I had a lot of trouble with it." LOBO: Lemme see that. 'Monster? You think I kill in cold blood? If there's one thing I'm not, it's being a poor sport.'" "See what I mean?" LOBO: Nah, not really. "That last sentence is all wrong! The word 'being' doesn't belong there. It makes the guy sound like English is his second language or something!" LOBO: I suppose you could do better. "Give me a second to think about it...OK, it would make more sense to drop the whole sportsmanship angle and have him deliver a line something like: 'Monster? I show you hospitality and you repay me with insults? Where are your manners, Guardian?'" GEARBOX: Yeah, yeah, and THEN he almost blows Knuckles's ass off. Now THAT'S funny! "And what's with that extra word balloon for Knuckles about the gun? Looks like it got put in later by someone at Archie, either that or someone at Sega." HARRY: Oh yeah, THAT brain trust! "And at the bottom of the page where the hunter shows Knuckles a picture of Julie-Su and asks 'Need I say more?'. When I first saw that I was screaming 'YES!' at the page!" LOBO: What was YOUR problem? "C'mon! This guy could have taken that picture at any time! It's not like he'd kidnaped her or had a picture of her being put in a choke hold by his droid or anything. It...it just didn't work for me, that's all." LOBO: OK, sit back down and shut up before you bust an artery or somethin'. So we get another page of filler before we get back to business. "With another Star Trek prop." HARRY: Where? "The collars! That's straight out of the episode 'For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky' from the original series." LOBO: Leave it to a college boy to know THAT! "And on the next two pages you have a combination of the original movie premise and 'The Defiant Ones'!" LOBO: I'm gonna hate myself for askin', but what the frag are you talking about?" "The original plot for this story was taken from a 1932 movie, 'The Most Dangerous Game,' directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack, which itself was based on a short story by Richard Connell. It's about this psycho hunter who invites human guests to his remote island so he can hunt them down like animals." LOBO: Now that I'd like to see! "You probably have. The plot's been recycled a hundred times, most recently in films such as 'Crocodile Dundee II' and 'Predator.' But 'The Defiant Ones' was another movie altogether. Directed by Stanley Kramer in 1958, it's about a couple escaped convicts who hate each other's guts because one's black and one's white but they're shackled together so they've got to cooperate." HARRY: So in other words, this guy handicapped Knuckles by sticking him with Monk. "Exactly." GEARBOX: Yeah, but we'll have to wait until the next issue until this guy starts kicking ass. "And...I don't suppose there's any point in rating this story, is there?" LOBO: You know, for a college geek, you're pretty smart. I'm outta here. GEARBOX: Yeah, see you next month. HARRY: I'll bring the black armbands. [The other characters exit] "Espio the Chameleon: Part 2" "The Best of Friends" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Colleen Doran; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editorial: G- Force. After reading the previous installment, I went back and checked Sonic #75. Sure enough, according to Karl Bollers Valdez originally volunteered to stay behind and cover the retreat of Geoffrey's Commandoes, leading to the use of dialogue from Star Trek II. So what happened? According to the exposition by Valdez, he was more or less abandoned by Geoffrey and captured. The fact that one lousy text box at the bottom of page 2 is supposed to explain the blatant contradiction left me with a sour taste in my mouth. Maybe it's because it reminded me too much of Benedict's screed from the Dark Alliance arc ("Election Eve," K23). Then we get a panel of Eggbotnik (I'm trying to keep the various incarnations straight here) "reprogramming" Valdez to be a henchlizard. Valdez demonstrates his new villain status by roboticizing Liza and threatening to do the same to all the chameleons unless Espio rats on Knuckles. Forget it. The book ceases publication after the next issue and I just can't bring myself to care about it any more than Justin Gabrie can bring himself to announce that the book is on the terminal list. And the rather pointless and trivial edition of Off Panel didn't help my mood any. Or maybe it was being around Lobo. Guess he never heard of "deodorant." "I heard that, ya fraggin' bastich!" Later.