Sonic #25 [Aug 1995] [Review date: Feb 2001] Spaz/Harvo/Heroic Age cover: This was the first time that an anniversary cover was appropriately colored. This being the silver anniversary of the comic, silver is the dominant color. Which as appropriate as Sonic squares off against his mecha self. "Go Ahead...Mecha My Day!" Story: Mike Gallagher; Art: Pat Spaziante; Ink: Harvey Mercadoocasio; Lettering: Mindy Eisman; Color: Barry Grossman; Editor: Scott Fulop; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-In- Chief: Richard Goldwater. As Rotor installs a sneaker cam on one of Sonic's shoes, he makes the mistake of doing so while Sonic is still in them. That means the hedgehog has to hold still; not his best event. "Two words, Rotor: Bore-ring!" So right out of the box, we have a VERY strong character study of Sonic, something that's become too easy to forget. And it's all done in the context of a powerful splash page by Pat Spaziante. That's the good news; the bad news is, Princess Sally's line several panels later: "Because of all us Freedom Fighters here in the secret village of Knothole are in grave danger!" Simple enough to see what went wrong here: the words "of" and "all" got accidentally transposed. Still, the mechanical errors that have plagued the comic over the years (problems with spelling, grammar, etc.) would appear to be of long standing. But back to the aforementioned grave danger. It's the "Collision Chaos" zone from the Sonic CD. I've tried playing it on my PC. I've never gotten farther than the "Wacky Workbench" zone (I think that's what it's called). In fact, the game play for the CD itself strikes me as wacky. More than once I've warped into Past and Future versions of zones without the slightest clue as to what I did and why it worked. It also took forever to load between screens, though I attribute that to my hardware. There were several things about the CD-ROM that impressed me, mainly the opening animation I stumbled across somehow or other. In the style of the Sonic anime, it ends with Sonic making his way up a gigantic chain toward Robotnik's floating fortress or Little Planet or whatever. Maybe one of these years I'll discover if there's any ending animation. But back to the comic. Robotnik takes credit for creating the zone as a way to trap Sonic. For bait, he orders Mecha-Sonic to kidnap Amy Rose. This happens in the game early on, during the "Palmtree Panic" stage. After Robotnik communicates these recent developments to Sonic, we cut away to Snively in a Robotnik suit. His job in this story is to simulate the platform game experience by preventing Sonic from doubling back. The Knothole gang try to take a meeting, but it's almost as chaotic as some of Spaz's page layouts. Sonic has Tails fly on ahead to scope out the situation; all the better to get him trapped along with Amy Rose. So with two hostages to rescue, Sonic heads into the zone. As Sally and Rotor engage in some shtick concerning Snively's driving Sonic forward (and as the sneaker-cam plot point disappears somewhere along the way), Sonic eventually runs into Mecha-Sonic. Mecha's kind of on the serious side; several years in the future, Dan Fingeroth would do a better job of character development with Metal Sonic in the Heart of the Hedgehog arc (S85-86). But after the briefest of fights they race each other down the Stardust Speedway Zone. The route features a "Coming Soon" ad for the Sega Saturn; ah, the glories of 20-20 hindsight. Robotnik, meanwhile, utilizes the help of Crabmeat to demonstrate a final touch to the Sonic trap that's pure Wile E. Coyote. Pro-Art: Just about every creative takes a turn at drawing (mostly) Sonic (except for Kanterovich and Penders who draw Robotnik and Sally, respectively). Freddy Mendez's Sonic looks like he definitely belongs in another genre, Joe Pepitone makes him look as angular as a piece of modern furniture, and I'm surprised Frank Gagliardo managed to keep his job after depicting Sonic as a nitrous oxide abuser. Back on the track, Mecha manages to get the better of Sonic using...a speed bump?!? But they're soon neck-and-neck as Sally hits the silk. "No wonder Sonic's so crazy about her!" Rotor muses. Not if Editorial has anything to say about it. Now in the home stretch, Sonic does that Figure 8 maneuver that several artists have managed to misunderstand (c.f. John Hebert, "Immortality Is Infinite..," S56). Mecha Sonic tries to keep up but blows a couple gaskets instead. And as Rotor continues in pursuit of Snively and as Sally gives Robotnik a boot to the head and as Mecha checks his warranty and as Amy Rose and Tails cheer him on, Sonic crosses the finish line as part of a very impressive splash page. To really wrap things up, and to add insult to injury, Sonic tells Robotnik he "saw [his trap] coming a mile away" but offers to stand in harm's way if it'll make the fat boy happy. Of course, Sonic is fast enough to scoot out of danger and we get a final sequence that, like the trap itself, is a fitting homage to the Roadrunner cartoons. "25 issues and going strong," the story declares. Those were the days. It only remains to run the credits over a Spaz/Harvo page that manages to work in most of the major players from the previous two dozen issues. Oddly enough, Uncle Chuck and Muttski are shown both before and after being roboticized. HEAD: Plot-wise, we've got a platform-game-based story here. The object is to get from Point A to Point B. It's HOW the story gets there that makes it impressive. Sonic is in full-blown smart-aleck mode here, unlike the emotionally ambiguous Sonic we've been seeing lately. Sonic gets to deliver such deathless lines as "Bring it on, 10-W 40 breath!" And the other players don't fare badly, either, though sometimes the humor is a little TOO knowing, such as Antoine's Sci-Fi Channel joke. And events have conspired to render Sally's remark about the soon-to-be-late Princess of Wales positively creepy. Mike Gallagher must have relished this assignment. He's since done good work ("Eve of Destruction," SSS9) and bad work ("Some Enchantra Evening," SSS10), but this was probably the high water mark of his having fun with the book. And that comes across, so we get caught up in it, too. Head Score: 9. EYE: Gallagher isn't the only one who got to cut loose (to the extent that Archie would let him) for this special issue. After having provided the art for "Three Phases of E.V.E." and "The Return" (S21-22, respectively), Pat Spaziante gets another crack at doing story art. Like his covers, his story art is impressive to the max. It IS linear, after a fashion, though not in a two-neat-columns-of-same-sized-panels sort of way. We get two splash pages (three if you include the credits page) and a two-page center spread. It DOES get kind of crowded in spots, such as page [4]. But other times the balance is good and the posing of individual characters is even better. My favorites are Sonic and Tails on page 1, Tails at the top of page 9, Amy Rose half the time and Sally pretty much all the time. Too bad Bunnie was MIA. Small quibble. To my mind this work was better than what he did for the ill-fated S50, though in terms of sheer pictorial brilliance he's never really surpassed the frontispiece for S43's "The Dream Zone." Which WAS a tough act to follow. Eye Score: 9. HEART: This story is a romp, and despite the potential menace of Mecha, the danger to Sonic, Tails, and Amy Rose isn't that serious. Amy Rose's spines inflict more damage than anything Robotnik comes up with in this story; personally, I thought that was a cute running gag. This is a bit of fun, and it works on that level. "Game, set and match," as Sonic sez. Heart Score: 10. Sonic-Grams: Scott Fulop's out, Freddie Mendez is out, Paul went to Mattel last I heard. "The Adventures of Scott and Paul" was flat, too "in" and SO not funny! Anyway, we get short boxed thanks to Spaz, Harvo, Gallagher, and three Sega reps who themselves may have moved on down the road: Jennifer Hunn, Cynthia Wilkes and Susan Reyes. Making 25 issues was a milestone back then; it's probably more so now with the market as weak as it is. The tone of the book may have changed considerably (which is not necessarily a bad thing), but an element of fun does seem to be missing from the stories lately. In "Mecha My Day" Sonic didn't have to apologize for being a loose cannon; he made it work for him. I think that helped bring the audience along as effectively as anything else. The fans may want more than simplistic, episodic stories (they've got the flagship Archie comics for that), but at heart we still want the old stuff, too: to be able to root for the hero and boo the villain and rejoice at SOME kind of payoff, such as the reunion of the Acorn family in S89's "Thicker Than Water." This story accomplished all of those goals, and embodies part of what's kept the fans hanging in there: the hope that it'll get this good again and that the comic can be enjoyed. Those were the days, indeed.