Sonic #20 Mar 1995 [Review date: December 2001] Manak/Harvo cover: Sally, Tails and Rotor turn on the waterworks as Sal lays a wreath at a monument to the "late" Sonic. In the corner box Sal continues to mourn, lamenting that Sonic passed at the tender age of 20 issues. Knuckles' passing at the also-tender age of 32 issues would occur in the future. "That's The Spirit!" Story: Angelo DeCesare; Art: Dave Manak; Ink: Harvo Mercadoocasio; Color: Barry Grossman; Lettering: Bill Yoshida; Editor: Scott Fulop; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor in Chief: Richard Goldwater. Taking a cue from the opening credits of the SatAM show, Sonic and Sally swing into one of Robotnik's installations in search of an "anti-matter machine." According to Sal, Robotnik would use the device to "make himself and all his 'bots invisible." Which doesn't exactly square with the definition of antimatter given in the Star Trek Encyclopedia. There, we learn that antimatter is "matter whose electrical charge properties are the opposite of 'normal' matter." Which sound innocuous enough until you remember that when matter and antimatter get together "both particles are annihilated, and a considerable amount of energy is released" accompanied by body parts flying in all directions if you're standing too close. Which is why "controlled annihilation of matter and antimatter is used as the power source for the warp drive systems used aboard Federation starships." Heavy stuff for this comic, and small wonder DeCesare had to dumb it down. Still, he manages to use only two panels and one page to set up the plot. Thanks to Nicole, they locate the device in an area that's suspiciously light on security. Doing his fool-rushing-in imitation, Sonic enters the chamber containing the device only to get shut inside. Seems that Robotnik couldn't get the concept to work, and since he needed a write-off for tax purposes he planted a rumor about the device and simply used the hardware as hedgehog bait. Sonic in turn plants an explosive device on the thing and tries to get out before detonation but is tripped up by some cables. There's not a dry eye in the forest as a disheveled Sally makes her way back to Knothole with the news that Sonic died in the line of duty. OK, there are TWO dry eyes and they belong to Tails, who steadfastly maintains that Sonic is still alive and proves the saying well-known to twelve-step veterans that "denial" isn't just a river in Egypt. Historic footnote: Notice the covers (what you can see of them) for the issues of the Princess Sally miniseries. Notice especially that they bear no resemblance whatsoever to the final covers. They not only hint at a broader involvement of Robotnik in the original story, but arranged together the Art Mawhinney- designed covers would have formed the first cover triptych, a device that would be used to generally good effect during the lifetime of the Knuckles comic. Back at the blast site, we learn that Robotnik's writing off of his invention was a little premature. Sonic is still alive, but as a result of the blast has been rendered invisible, inaudible, and insubstantial. He makes it back to Knothole in time for his own memorial service, which Tails is attending but otherwise boycotting. Sally rather too abruptly tells Tails to "get real," while Sonic tries to get Sally's attention. However, his hand passes through her, thus keeping intact the Archie No Possible Romantic Involvement policy. Thinking he's passed on, Sonic wanders off. He mulls over his options, but deciding that "being a ghost is totally uncool," he takes a kick at a rock and learns the hard way that the antimatter effects are wearing off. He returns to Knothole only to find, thanks to a note left by Tails, that the rest of the gang are off on a mission of revenge. As the gang, dressed like commandoes/stalkers approach Robotropolis, Snively observes their progress and reports it to the boss. They take to the air in the "Buzzard 'Bot" unaware that Sonic has stowed away on the flight. Because he's still invisible though now audible, he takes the opportunity to mess with Robotnik's head. Telling Robotnik to "give Mobius back to the freedom fighters, exercise and get a hairpiece," Sonic reverts to normal just after Robotnik and Snively bail. Later, after a reunion which we unfortunately don't get to see, Snively realizes the truth but decides to hold off telling the Big Boss for a little while. HEAD: This was a really great story! Too bad Angelo DeCesare didn't think of it first. Even counting six months backward between the date of the magazine and the production of the story, which feels about right, this story would still had to have been produced sometime in 1994. Back in 1992, however, was the first airing of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled "The Next Phase" by Ronald D. Moore. In that story, Ro Laren and Geordi LaForge suffer the same fate as Sonic in this story, only on ST:TNG it was due to an exploding Romulan cloaking device. There are some obvious similarities, including the reactions to the "deaths" of the crew members, featuring a jazzy memorial service in 10 Forward. Being a Star Trek ep, of course, the material isn't totally dumbed down so we get to watch Ro Laren assess the Bajoran view of the afterlife. Still, DeCesare gets points for pushing the comic into this kind of territory. As the same time, he's able to keep Sonic with both sneakers planted in the continuity that brought the readers to the comic in the first place. From the first page where he tells Sally as they're doing the Tarzan number inside Robotnik's factory that "this gives us a chance to chat" to the last page where he demonstrates that he's literally alive and kicking, this is NOT the Sonic that the fans had to endure for much of 2000-2001. He's capable of assessing his situation but he never breaks character in doing so. Despite the intense subject matter the treatment is leavened with enough appropriate humor to sell it. A rare gem of writing for the comic. Head Score: 10. EYE: I have no idea why Dave Manak was tapped for the artistic chores. Maybe Art Mawhinney was committed to other work; his prologue to the Princess Sally miniseries is next in this comic. Maybe Dave was just available. It's not as if there was a lot of choice back then; aside from one of two Scott Shaw! stories, Mawhinney and Manak were pretty much it in the art department. However, Manak at this point had yet to realize that he could do more serious work well, as with S104'a "Myth-Taken Identity: Part 2." Here, on pages 5 and 7 where the Freedom Fighters are supposed to be mourning one of their fallen comrades, Manak's style just isn't up to selling the material. I've said it before and it bears repeating here: asking Dave Manak to tackle something this serious is like trying to stage "King Lear" with the cast of "Midsummer Night's Dream." And Barry Grossman's coloring job is no help at all. Again, though, it's not like they had a lot of choice, since Frank Gagliardo hadn't started coloring for the book yet. Manak's does good work, but still I can't help but wonder What Might Have Been. Eye Score: 4. HEART: The comic had already touched on reaction to a death in S18's "In The Still Of The Night." In that story, it was Sally's reaction to the death in old age of her old teacher Julayla. The stakes are considerably higher with Sonic's name on the memorial statue, and Angelo DeCesare does what he can. It still falls way short of what he could have done. Because one of the subtexts of this story is not Tails's denial so much as a lack of follow-through with regard to Sally. Adolescence is intense enough for a lot of kids who go through it, and it's too easy to forget that Sonic and Sally are both adolescents themselves, though as far from the Riverdale crowd as you could get. The prospect of lost love, though, can REALLY turn that intensity up past 11. Certainly enough has been written about it, from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" to Scott Spencer's "Endless Love." Sally's initial sorrow was believable enough, but I couldn't help but see more to it. Sure, she'd have to try to get Tails to admit the "reality" of Sonic's demise. But I bet that would only apply to the "public" Sally, the leader of the group. I imagine that, in private, she'd be devastated. As for the revenge mission, it wouldn't surprise me if Sally half-expected to throw her own life away in the process; I covered this angle in my first fanfic, "Bloodlines." As for the ending, I can see SO MUCH happening between the second and third panels on page 15 as Sonic makes himself known to the group. I picture Sally's reaction to be at least as intense as Spock's in the "Amok Time" episode of the original Star Trek upon learning that Captain Kirk wasn't dead. And later, she'd have a confession to make to Sonic: "Tails never stopped believing you were still alive ... I wish I could say the same about me." Sonic's idea of reassuring her, of course, would be something along the lines of, "Hey, no harm no foul, Sal!" THAT is the potential this book has always had, and this is one of the reasons why I've stayed with it for so long. Maybe one of these days someone will actually follow through and realize that potential without having to kowtow to management directives. Heart Score: 5. Fan Art: Nothing noteworthy except the fact that of the five drawings that appear here, both Sonic and Knuckles appear three times. "Deadliest of the Species: Prologue" Story: Mike Kanterovich and Ken Penders; Art: Art Mawhinney; Ink: Rich Koslowski; [Coloring and Lettering uncredited] All in a night's work: Sally makes a silent entrance into Robotropolis, with an energy substation as the target. She scales an outer wall, gets past a SWATbot guard, enters a control room, uses Nicole to activate the station's self-destruct program, and with 8 seconds to go before the place blows is stopped short by the first appearance of "Geoffrey St. John, late of His Majesty's Secret Service, current leader of the rebel underground." Fortunately they're far enough away from the blast site so they're only shaken, not stirred. While Sally mulls over Geoff's post-explosion exposition, the SWATbot that was supposed to be out of commission gets a target lock on her. To be continued. HEAD: This is a seven page story, yet aside from a couple of audio responses from Nicole there's NO DIALOGUE on the first five of those pages. I was impressed when I first saw it and I'm still impressed. One of the strengths of graphic novels as well as manga is the way that the art carries its share of the narrative weight. That's the way it should be in a visual medium. It's taken a while for American media to get the message, though. The 1940's Superman cartoons produced by the Fleischer studios were a case in point. They were nothing more than animated transcripts of episodes from an earlier Superman radio series. They were so literal that the original narration was retained on the soundtrack so that the audience was told what was happening while they were watching it in the animation. Thus when someone on screen pulls out a gun, you have a narrator saying: "Suddenly, he pulls out a gun!" Compare that with several episodes of "Samurai Jack" where there's no dialogue at the beginning of the ep. It still works because the visual storytelling makes narration useless. Then ask yourself why comics have to have dialogue and/or thought balloons in every panel on every page. Here's proof that it doesn't have to be that way. I applaud the effort and am sorry others haven't tried following the same trail more than occasionally. Head Score: 9. EYE: Aside from the Barry Grossman-style coloring job, Art Mawhinney's artwork has the same dynamic quality as the writing. He makes particularly good use of close-ups: Nicole on page 3 panel 5, Sally's hand on page 3 panel 7, Sally's face on page 5 panel 4. Art has brought his experience as an animation storyboarder to his work here. You can see he's thinking like an animator, thinking in terms of movement, instead of thinking like a comic book writer and just having characters pose so they can have word balloons come out of their mouths. Very well done. Eye Score: 10. HEART: The initial panel says it all: Princess Sally, posing inside the rifled gun barrel that's part of the opening sequence of every James Bond film that's ever been made or that ever will be made. Ken Penders has been seriously influenced by spy novels in general and by Ian Fleming's books in particular, so much so that he named one of his incidental characters in the comic "Fleming." And I don't think it was an homage to Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. This is Sally as Action Heroine, before Lara Croft made the genre her own. As such, she's not here to relate to Geoff. Not yet, anyway. And what ABOUT Geoff? His first impression isn't the best, as he's ready to gas Sally before learning who she is, then he makes with the snappy salute. Visually as well as personality-wise, he's a far cry from the 2001 model Geoffrey who subverted Prince Elias for no apparent reason, who was in his own way even more of a loose cannon than Sonic, and who's recently been sidelined with a nanobot infestation. Whatever Kanterovich and Penders had in mind for Geoff, it never carried over into the Sonic comic, nor was his potential fully developed in the Knuckles books. Sad, really. Heart Score: 3. Sonic-grams: "Any Sonic the Hedgehog fan is sure to be a Princess Sally fan," but what Scott Fulop's editorial DOESN'T say is that the two will never have a thing going on if management has anything to say about it. I believe that the lack of a tearful reunion scene in "That's The Spirit!" may not have been an accident. Anyway, the Princess Sally Miniseries is plugged with no clue as to the turmoil behind the scenes which I've spelled out numerous times in subsequent reviews. Mark Cooper asks Sonic to have a daughter by Sally so he (Mark) can have a date; either he's extremely hard up or else he's one serious furry. Scott tells Joshua Bertram that Antoine is from the "French" part of Mobius. O-kay.... Still, that's better than Bean Leveille, none of whose questions were answered.