Sonic #91 [Feb 2001] Spaz/Penders/[Josh Ray] cover: A hopping mad Sonic [well, that's what it looks like] plus the latest in the series "Butt- Ugly Cover Villains." For Special #15 it was Naugus; this time around, it's Kodos. There's some kind of spacecraft being reflected in the blade of the Sword of Acorns; reminds me of something I saw on "Space: 1999." Please note the inside cover ad for Betty and Veronica fashion dolls. Betty and Veronica in plastic...nah, too easy. "Crash!" Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Jim Amash; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Editorial: G- Force. What's a subsidiary character gotta do to get some attention around here? If you're Rotor, you have to do a little rock- climbing. He's been officially gone since, what, issue 72's "I, Robotnik." That's a YEAR AND A HALF, not counting the rather lame update, "Home and Back" (S85). But he's sidetracked from the last leg of his journey by the crash of the two UFOs from the previous installment. Making his way to the point of impact he encounters Mina, who's been looking for Sonic. The latter happens to make his entrance from below, conveniently putting himself right in front of his comrades. To demonstrate that even in happier moments Sega's got the leash tied good and tight, his entire reaction to the reappearance of his childhood bud after all this time consists of: "Rotor? Dude, you're back! Cool!" Not even a poorly-drawn handshake, let alone a hug for the big guy. Mina, like the readers, want to know what happened to Sonic when the bogies landed. Well, according to Karl Bollers, Sonic merely burrowed down, made a 90-degree turn somewhere along the way, and missed the impact. This isn't quite as far-fetched as anything Mike Gallagher might have come up with, but it does strain credulity. I mean, meteors have been known to pack a wallop. The Tswaing Crater in South Africa is about the same size as the Barringer Crater in Arizona, which measures in at almost 600 feet in depth and almost a mile across. That's a whole lotta hole! Now, even if you didn't know about that kind of seismic potential, I have to ask WHY Sonic chose to go DOWN to get out of the way. He had 360 other degrees on the compass to choose from for escape routes! And to date none of the creatives have gone out of their way to portray Sonic as being possessed of recklessness bordering on suicide. Let's cut from loose cannons to swords. Now that he's got the Sword of Acorns, Robotnik doesn't seem to know what to do with it, and gets especially ticked off when it doesn't seem to work as expected on Uncle Chuck. He toys with the idea of using it to skewer Uncle Chuck in a fit of pique, but even then he ends up leaving the thing on the floor as he waddles off to take his Ritalin. Let me guess: Page [6] was the last page of this comic to arrive at the printer. Either that, or it was redrawn at the last possible moment in a dark room. I mean, it's a mess! The modeling is pedestrian and the draftsmanship (particularly in the second panel) pales by comparison with the Fan Art, let alone the rest of the story. I've seen coloring books for first graders make use of more subtle lining. Jim Fry took exception with my recent statement that when we pay $2.00 for a Sonic comic we expect to see a certain pride of craftsmanship on display. Your Honor, I'd like to enter page [6] of Sonic #91 into evidence. Fortunately, the rest of the comic art is several notches above THIS poor thing, but consider this to be the fruit of Archie Comics' management style. Back at the KMC, Sally offers a clumsy exposition for the benefit of the newcomers, Nate Morgan re-enters the story for no useful reason, and Dr. Quack does his impersonation of Steven Tyler of Aerosmith if Steven Tyler was a duck. I have to wonder whether this page wasn't put on the opposite side of an ad page because it's so worthless. Sonic, meanwhile, brings Rotor up to speed on the Sword. As he takes off to retrieve it, and as Rotor and Mina head for Knothole, the smoke clears enough to reveal that the two meteorites were, in fact, space ships. Anyone surprised? I didn't think so. Back at the Sword, Uma Arachnis the ninja spider drops in, snatches the blade, and leaves. All the while, she's watched by Uncle Chuck, who doesn't move a muscle. He doesn't dare, because it would blow his cover. I TOLD you his mind had been restored and he was just fakin' it! BTW, one minor spelling nit: since he was Sonic's uncle/surrogate father, "Sonie" might be a more appropriate spelling of the term of endearment used by Uncle Chuck. Robotnik re-enters and Uncle Chuck goes back to playing Statues. Robotnik figures that Sonic trashing his ComBots is still a waste of valuable villain resources, so he withdraws them. Queen Alicia, meanwhile, has changed out of her hospital gown and into a simple shift with matching pumps. Frankly, I'd have expected more for a Queen, even if she's been out of the monarchy loop for a decade, but since the status of her dress has been so volatile (she's worn everything in that stasis tube from a full-length gown to a skin-tight hi-tech body suit to absolutely nothing) she probably needs to start out slow to stabilize her fashion condition. Karl Bollers makes an effort to portray mother and daughter with "some catching up to do," but frankly it's too little too late. Sally, apparently, still hasn't come clean with Elias's reluctance to take the throne, though King Max's current condition may have pushed that plot point out of the picture for the time being. A perfunctory page depicting the return of Rotor to Knothole gives way to a far more elaborate page depicting the handing over of the Sword to Kodos. And we have a contender for Worst Line of Dialogue for 2000: "Did you get it? Dumb question, of COURSE you got it." This IS a comic book, after all, and I'd have thought that the visuals would have communicated that fact. Sonic (remember Sonic?) finds that instead of fighting ComBots he's being confronted with a pack of roboticized Mobians, with Uncle Chuck along for the ride. Sonic avoids the confrontation, thus keeping Uncle Chuck from letting Sonic know what happened to him. Sonic's path just happens to take him past the crater where he sees the extraterrestrials emerge, but we'll have to wait a month until WE get a look. I think I can contain myself. HEAD: The good news is, Karl has put a LOT of major elements into this story: Rotor's return, Sally and her mom, Uncle Chuck's status, the presence of aliens on Mobius, the return of Kodos and his possession of the Shiv of Acorns. It's all great stuff. So why doesn't it FEEL great? As many times as I read this story, I wanted it to make me feel something for what was happening, and yet just as a story element started coming together the plot would shift gears like a long-haul truck driver. We cut from Rotor to Sonic's escape, to Robotnik, to Geoffrey, to the Royals, back to Sonic, to Uma, to Uncle Chuck, to Robotnik, to the mother and child reunion, to Rotor, to Kodos, to Sonic. *Whew!* The net result, unfortunately, is that the reader is inundated with plot points to such an extent that the narrative flow is overwhelmed. Something, somehow, could have been sacrificed so that what remained could have been better developed. My candidates for exclusion: Pages [6] and 13. They could have disappeared without a trace and left two more pages to spend on one of the other plot point. But in what now appears to be the mad dash to Sonic 100 Karl is working like crazy to get his plot points out into the open. One can only hope that once the comic enters triple-digit territory he can slow down and start telling the stories the way they should be told: with deliberation and careful plotting. Head Score: 6. EYE: How come Ron Lim manages to make the villains (Robotnik, Kodos and Uma-sama) look good while making everybody else (read: "the good guys") look funky? Not a good sign. Mina is particularly ill-served, IMHO. Some of the drawings are just plain kooky: Nate Morgan's head isn't just too big for his body, he looks like somebody's caricature of Sammy Davis Jr. as Uncle Remus. Dr. Quack looks even weirder. If it weren't for the fact that the drawing is cropped off to one side, I'd think he was illustrating an optical illusion: "Is his bill wider than his head is tall?" Queen Alicia in mufti looked right AND wrong at the same time; I can't explain it, really. And once more, page [6] is close to being inexcusable. I wish I knew the story behind it. After the abysmal art of SSS15, it's clear that the Sonic comic is in a visual slump and needs to pull up fast! Eye Score: 3. HEART: Plenty of potential with very little realization. Think back to "Thicker Than Water" (S89) and Jim Fry's work for that story. His drawings of Sally and Elias at the bridge, his repeated motif of hands joined, helped make the story work. Aside from a few close-ups (some of them extreme, such as Sally's and Sonic's eyes), there's little attempt here to draw the feelings inherent in the material, which is what a story like this demands. When it does happen, as in the scene where Sally and her mom embrace, the result is a big zero. Is it asking too much to work at emotionally engaging the readers once again? It probably is, given present working conditions. More's the pity. Heart Score: 3. Ad for "Sonic Shuffle:" Keep that in mind, we'll be getting back to it later. "Hired Guns" Story: Ken Penders; Art (Finale): Steve Butler; Ink: Pam Eklund; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Coloring: Frank Gagliardo; Editorial: G-Force. "A watering hole of ill-repute;" it ain't no Riverdale malt shop! Our old friend Nack is putting the moves on one of the barmaids when someone leaves a serrated calling card. Enter Nic, and the barmaid suddenly loses interest. Since Nack won't be getting any love, he settles for money: the commission that he and his sib will be getting for doing...something or other...to or for or with Knuckles (Ken is being purposefully coy here). As the weasels head off in the Millennium Falcon, Knuckles (who now looks less like a nightlight and more like himself) is meditating on the sad state of the comic book industry when he feels a great disturbance in the Force. But we forget about Knuckles after one measly page and return to the Falcon as it passes through some portal or other and into Albion air space. Nic and bro meet up with Gala-Na, Yanar, and the rest of what passes for Albion's governing body. They play back some footage from "Picking Up The Pieces" [K15] and "Primary Evil" [K24], and we're informed that Dimitri's little diagnostic "hastened further mutation" on the part of Knuckles. Ken leaves this installment with the dire words "where nothing is at it seems" which can only mean that the story has the potential to careen all over the highway. Steve Butler's message is much more terse: "I'm outta here!" HEAD: Now THIS is storytelling with a point. Aside from the one-page digression to Knuckles himself (who is a lot more sedate than he was the last time), the focus is on Nic and Nack, with a shift to Gala-Na just at the close. Granted, at only 8 pages it didn't have as much chance to wander all over the map the way "Crash" did at the beginning of the book. But under the influence of cutting a story meant for the Knuckles title down to size so that it would be an acceptable back story, Ken has pared it to its essential elements yet managed to retain the personalities of its central characters. That's what storytelling is supposed to do, whether in a novel or in a comic book. We'll have to wait two months before the next installment, as the Sonic Shuffle adaptation will be substituting for the Knuckles story next month. Head Score: 8. EYE: Steven Butler appears to have found work enough to draw him away from Archie, especially with Disney Adventure magazine. There, he's done brilliant comics such as "Duck Avenger," "Buzz Lightyear" and especially "Woody's Round-Up." His work is authoritative in feel the details in the opening sequence are beautiful: that foxy barmaid is a minor miracle. Thanks for having visited Mobius, Steve. Eye Score: 10. HEART: For someone who freaked out big time last issue, Knuckles is pretty calm about it. On the one hand, I think that's a good thing. He's not preoccupied with it, and he still has the presence of mind to remember his primary objective: the Floating Island. Necessity, however, dictated that the introspection be kept to a minimum. Pity. Heart Score: 6. Somic-Grams: Still no "Off-Panel," though that's supposed to come back next month. The blurb for S92 mentions not only the as-yet-unvisualized space aliens but the return of Monkey Khan along with the debut of Mike Higgins as Sonic story artist. And then there's the Sonic Shuffle adaptation, written by Ken Penders with art by Ron Lim. If you want to know the plot, go back to the ad for the game; it'll tell you everything you need to know. Looks like it'll be presented as yet one more crummy zone story. BTW, the ad calls the heroine from Maginary World (though I've also seen it spelled as one word) "Illumina," whereas here she's simply "Lumina." My guess is she's called one thing in the Japanese game and the other in the American. C.f. Neo's original name of NiuNiu. I guess this happens a lot. Letters: Sarah Durocher writes her life story as a Sonic fan. Mike and Rosy Griffith make a sensible suggestion [a relational diagram of the characters], and Jeff Pennington wants to see Sonic and Sally get serious. Too bad he doesn't know as yet that the writers will sorely try his patience and goodwill by linking Sonic with Mina for no good reason that I can think of. And just as a counterpoint to some of the weak art we've been subjected to lately (page [6] of "Crash," "Naugus Games"), we close with a strong ensemble of Fan Art: Eva Richarte Prieto, a terrific fan cartoonist of long standing, gives us a drawing that could be titled "'Twas The NiGHTS Before Christmas; or, A Visit From Saint SoNicholas;" Charla Andrus does a very simple, very effective portrait of Rob O' The Hedge; Jen Valentino weighs in with a super-kawaii (i.e., cute) drawing of Tails; and what Sal Detillio's drawing of Sonic lacks in technical skill it certainly makes up for in attitude. I think any or all of them could have done a better job on "Naugus Games" than the anonymous "Many Hands." BTW, I just noticed that on the Sonic Checklist SSS11 is identified as "Sonic Co-Stars Take The Lead" while conveniently failing to mention that the five characters in question in that special are FEMALE co-stars. Is Archie so ashamed of that fact that they're running away from it? Apparently it has yet to occur to anyone at Archie that the diversity of Sonic's readership is an asset and not a liability. But the Old Boy Network can be as unstoppable as a ComBot. If that's how they want to be, fine. If the book fails, I'm convinced they'll have no one to blame but themselves.