Sonic #97 [July 2001]
     Spaz/Harvo/J. D. Ray cover: As Sonic lurks up-lit in the
shadows, various drones and droids patrol the mean streets of
Robotropolis.  Terrific artwork in support of a lousy premise.
     
     "My Secret Identity"
     Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Nelson Ribiero (p1-8), Harvey
Mercadoocasio (p9-16); Ink: Ken Penders (p1-8), Pam Eklund (p9-
16); Lettering: Jeff Powell; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Editor/Art 
Director: Justin F. Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick;
Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater.
     Ken Penders let it be known on his Web site's message board
that when he inked pages 1 through 8 he did so without the
benefit of dialogue in the word balloons to help him along.  But
considering that the first bit of dialogue Sonic has in this
story is "You da man now, 'hog!" I'd consider that a blessing. 
For all the work that went into his costume, he still looks like
something from Ninjas R Us.  Maybe when Arachnis dispatched Kodos
in "Enemy Mine" (S95) she told Sonic where to shop for an outfit
like hers.
     Back at the palace, we see the results of Geoffrey Sinjin's
handiwork.  NOTE: I've recently learned that, according to
British pronunciation, Geoffrey's surname is NOT pronounced the
way it is spelled.  If we were to go by the rules of the Queen's
English, if his name and rank were "Lieutenant Ralph St. John" it
would be pronounced "Leftenant Rafe Sinjin."  Actually, I'm
somewhat relieved to hear this, as I've never liked the surname
that Ken Penders saddled Geoff with.  Not that I have anything
against Christianity; far from it.  But to me the association is
far too Earth-bound for events happening on another world in
another reality.  And I'm not comfortable with naming a comic
book character who's in the middle of doing a heel turn and/or is
demonstrating that he's a complete dingbat after one of the
Apostles.  So I'm going to spell it phonetically from now on.
     Anyway, thanks to Sinjin's shoot-first-lamely-interrogate-
later strategy, a few key phrases are missing from what's left of
Uncle Chuck's recorded message, in particular the fact that
Robotnik is no longer in possession of the Sword of Acorns.  So
Geoff is all up for looking for the sword precisely where it
isn't.  Seems he doesn't score any higher in the Patience
Department than Sonic does.
     Sally, who sat in on the examination of the bot, asks Elias
why Sonic hasn't been brought into the loop.  Before anyone
realizes that this idea makes a great deal of sense, Geoff shoots
it down and Elias more or less lets Geoff have his way.  As for
Queen Alicia, she tells Sally this is her brother's decision.  I
don't know where Sally picked up her initiative, leadership and
level-headedness, but it appears that she didn't get them from
her mother's side of the family.  Either those qualities skipped
a generation, or else (what's more likely) they were cultivated
in the process of growing up in Knothole.
     Sonic lurks near the exit to Knothole as Sinjin's commandos
arrive and provide enough exposition for Sonic to learn that
they're looking for swords in all the wrong places.  He figures
rather than try to locate Arachnis and the sword he'd better tag
along and save Geoff's bacon.  
     Back at Robotnik's we encounter the Doc with Colin,
Cheesehead and ... no, that's not a Ferengi offering to tighten
up the comic book's loose continuity in exchange for Robotnik's
weight in latinum bars.  It's a very badly drawn Snively.  Sorry,
Ken and Nelson, but he really looks horrible!  I mean, compare
this ... thing ... with the Snively headshot on page 14.  I'll
save the detailed description of the artistic flaws for the EYE
section.  Anyway, Colin does a Nate Morgan: he provides a little
exposition before walking out of the story.  As Cheesehead
downloads the computer records of the O's futile search for a
Class M planet, Robotnik prepares to promote Cheesehead from Bit
Player to Guinea Pig.
     Sonic tails Geoff and company through Robotropolis.  It
would appear that Sinjin's stalking skills are on a par with his
interrogating skills, for the group is soon detected, causing
Robotnik to put Cheesehead (who now, thanks to Ken's inking,
looks a whole lot like the late DeForrest Kelly as Bones McCoy)
on ice.  Sonic manages to put Robotnik's spy satellite out of
commission but it doesn't prevent Geoff et al. from being
captured.
     OK, now if I were writing this as a fanfic, I'd part company
with Karl at this point (as if I'd ever allow myself to ever GET
to this point!).  We're talking about Sonic the Hedgehog here,
someone who's been taking down SWATbots for years now.  The
internal logic of the story dictates that Sonic should lose the
costume, let the SWATbots know that the Priority One Hedgehog is
in da house, and simply spin through the bolt-brains.  This would
accomplish three laudable goals at once: it would let Geoff know
who's REALLY in control of the situation, put Geoff in Sonic's
debt, and it would afford Sonic a chance to give Sinjin a clue as
to what Uncle Chuck's message REALLY said.
     But of course that's too satisfying to get the approval of 
The Powers That Be, plus the whole point of this exercise is to
get everybody arrested.  So Geoff surrenders like Wainwright on
Bataan.  Look it up.
     Don't ask me why Sonic doesn't mind having his identity
concealed as he and the others are led past a poorly-drawn mob of
hyoomons.  To me it only underscores how pointless this whole
"secret identity" business is, anyway.  But once everyone is in
the slammer we realize that one of the Laws of Anime is in
effect, the one that says that no matter how cheesy a costume one
wears, no matter if it's a simple face mask, one is rendered
totally unrecognizable.  Geoff would have to be as thick as
concrete not to recognize Sonic's voice, eyes, and the general
silhouette of his quills.  Of course, everybody else is just as
uncomprehending and they don't even make an effort to engage this
stranger, who calls himself "Sneak," in conversation.  Clearly,
the story has turned into an Idiot Plot.
     Before Sonic can leave in disgust, however, Bomb makes a way
of escape.  That's the good news; the bad news is, Bomb and Heavy
have been rewired by Robotnik so one can only presume that Geoff
will now unwittingly reveal the location of Knothole to Robotnik
by leading everyone back home.  Once again, Geoff proves that
"military intelligence" is a contradiction in terms.  But Karl
really didn't have to put Geoff, Sonic, and everyone else through
this Idiot Plot to achieve the objective of having Robotnik
discover the location of Knothole.  Thanks to recent development
in the book there is an alternate.  Because of the massive public
works projects initiated in Knothole and documented in "New
Order" (S94), if Robotnik wants to find Knothole all he has to do
is LOOK OUT A FARGIN' WINDOW!!
     Sonic scoots ahead of the others, sheds his threads, and
prepares to head back to Knothole when he encounters ... The Off-
Panel Voice!  Maybe we'll know whom it is next month, maybe the
month after.
     HEAD: So what did THIS accomplish?  Geoffrey sinks to new
levels of incompetence by not waiting for a full forensic report
on the bot he wasted, getting his people captured, failing to
recognize Sonic, and then not suspecting the timely provenance of
their escape.  Oh, and Karl gets to do some Old School writing by
trying to turn Sonic into a <gag> Superhero.
     Just how old is the Old School?  Let's go back to 1930, to
the story of a strange being from another planet who finds
himself on Earth with powers unknown to its inhabitants, and who
must assume a secret identity in order to survive.  Sounds like
Superman, right?  Well, it isn't.  This was the premise of a 
science-fiction novel, "The Gladiator," by Philip Wylie.  But the
elements were all there so that when Siegel and Shuster created
the Man of Steel in 1938, the story elements were already well-
worn cliches.
     The Superhero, that mainstay of the American comic book
industry, is just about the last remnant of the Great Depression
to be found on the cultural landscape.  With economic uncertainty
at home and numerous countries succumbing to totalitarianism of
the Left or Right in Europe and Asia, there was a willingness to
believe that one individual could solve the world's problems
through an application of will and strength.
     And this idea didn't just surface in comic books.  A 1933
novel by Thomas F. Tweed, "Gabriel Over The White House," told
the story of Judson Hammond, a corrupt President of the United
States who, after being in what should have been a fatal car
crash, receives a Heavenly vision sufficient to cause him to
recover.  By applying Populist political solutions he solves the
problems of Prohibition, organized crime, disarmament and
unemployment, and only once he has pretty much assured world
peace does he get around to the business of dying from his
injuries.
     A good many of the Superheroes we know today (Superman,
Batman, Captain America) actually came out of a very narrow
period: the years 1938-1941.  Captain America, for instance,
predated the bombing of Pearl Harbor by a mere nine months. 
Others came in as part of a second wave during the early 1960s. 
These were tied to the country's anxieties about atomic energy
caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis and debate over the Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty.  Both Spiderman (whose origin involved being
bitten by a radioactive spider) and the Incredible Hulk (whose
metamorphosis was due to exposure to gamma radiation) debuted in
1962.
     It's hard to think of very many Superheroes who came to be
after that period.  Even with his considerable resources, Ted
Turner wasn't able to make Captain Planet a household name.  The
"Dark Knight" wasn't a new creation; instead, he was Frank
Miller's revisionist rendering of a pre-existing Superhero. 
Spawn may have been spawned relatively recently, but to call him
a "hero" of any kind is IMHO a stretch.
     In fact, the Superhero genre has fallen on such hard times
that the tendency these days is to play it for laughs.  Ben
Edlund's "The Tick," the "Justice Friends" from "Dexter's
Laboratory," and "Ka-Blam"'s "Action League Now" are prime
examples of this.  And what does it say about the health of the
Superhero when the three hottest Superheroes today ("hot" in
terms of recognition and marketability) are not Superman, Batman
and Spiderman ... aren't men at all ... but are named Blossom,
Bubbles and Buttercup?
     With bulging eyes instead of bulging biceps and wearing
coordinated A-line dresses instead of capes and hoods, The
Powerpuff Girls have succeeded not because they worship at the
altar of the Superhero, but rather because they go against the
conventions.  Sure, they do battle with Supervillians (most
notably Mojo Jojo, an evil genius monkey with a chronic case of
verbal diarrhea), and there have been Superkid/Superbaby
variations in the past, but the popularity of the Powerpuffs has
to be a factor (at least in part) of their willingness to set up
the Superhero genre in order to knock it back onto its own Buns
of Steel.
     Two eps of The Powerpuff Girls demonstrate this
dramatically.  In "Super Zeroes" the girls, much like Sonic in
this story, assume identities based on established comic book
Superheroes.  Blossom becomes Liberty Belle, a Wonder Woman
knock-off.  Buttercup adopts a Spawn-like aspect, calling herself
Mange.  Bubbles, taking things a different direction, bases her
persona Harmony Bunny on a character from a manga.  Needless to
say, the experiment proves to be a disaster: Liberty Belle's
gadget-laden car can't get to the scene of the latest giant
monster attack because of traffic gridlock in Townsville, Harmony
Bunny's preferred method of travel (a pogo stick) isn't much
faster, and Mange refuses to go out after the monster while it's
daylight (it goes against her image).  In the end, the monster
has to explain to the girls that they really don't need the
costumes, the gadgets, or the attitude. [And, if I may 
editorialize, neither does Sonic.]
     Even more telling is the episode "Fallen Arches," wherein a
trio of villains whose careers peaked in the 1940s come out of
retirement.  Blossom can't bring herself to kick their aged
butts; she's learned that kids should respect their elders. 
Instead, she convinces the two aging Superheroes who had stopped
them a half-century before, Captain Righteous and his sidekick
Lefty (takeoffs on Captain America and Bucky), to come out of
retirement themselves.  It's both funny and pitiful watching the
two old geezers suit up; as someone who's within spitting
distance of turning 50, I found it painful to watch Captain
Righteous tucking his flabby pectorals into his costume.  This is
the perfect metaphor for the Superhero these days: one foot in
the grave, the other in Spandex support stockings.
     Yet despite the fact that the genre probably should have
died some time ago, despite the fact that the condition of the
comic book industry as a whole just might have something to do
with the condition of the genre, despite the shifts in post-
Depression popular culture that encompass World War II, the Cold
War, the Summer of Love, the Vietnam War, and the advent of the
Internet, American comics still treat the Superhero as the Holy
Grail, as the ultimate end of the comic art.  The Superhero,
despite being on life support, is still trotted out as the reason
for being for comic book writers and artists.  How else does one
explain the misbegotten, otherwise incomprehensible travesty
known as The Backstreet Project, wherein comic book sage Stan Lee
sought to turn the pioneering boy band the Backstreet Boys into
... you guessed it.
     Karl seems to have caught the virus and its full-blown
manifestation is "Sneak."  Sonic apparently named his alternate
persona after his favorite footwear.  Which is understandable,
but there's one thing I know about sneakers from personal
experience: after a while they can smell really bad.
     There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER in the Sonic
continuity that even justifies Sonic's entertaining the notion of
dressing up in any way, shape, or form to do what he has to do. 
Aside from his gloves and shoes, he doesn't wear anything!  In
this regard, he's always been more "Streak" than "Sneak."  He's
never needed an alter ego to leave Knothole; he could always just
zip out at the speed with which he kyped the Sword of Acorns in
the first place (in "Thicker Than Water," S89) and escape
detection.  Likewise, since when did Sonic's in-your-face
attitude change?  He wasn't afraid to show himself to Geoff and
company in "Saving Nate Morgen" (S71).  Karl might argue that
Sonic has done some introspection of late, and the change is due
to his dealing with his "loose cannon" status.  Which is a good
enough motivation, but why didn't Karl SAY so in the course of
the script?
     It's all too reminiscent of the scene in "The Big Goodbye"
(S50) where Ken Penders has Sonic musing about throwing a couple
of guided missiles off his tail by varying his speed and creating
after-images of himself or something.  I'm still trying to figure
out how effective that would be if he were evading heat-seeking
missiles.  Everything Sonic had done up to that moment, however,
argued that his attitude should have been: "Hey, I can outrun
some slo-mo missiles.  I'm SONIC!"
     Well, Sonic will have to take an enforced break from the
continuity to appear in the Sonic Adventure 2 adaptation next
month.  With luck, he'll forget where he stashed his costume and
Karl Bollers will have gotten this Superhero business out of his
system.  Head Score: 4.
     EYE: One of the "rules" for classic figure drawing holds
that the top of the ear should be placed on a line that passes
between the top of the eye and the eyebrow, while the bottom of
the ear should reach a point parallel with the bottom of the
nose.  Someone, either Ken Penders or Nelson Ribiero or both,
tried following this rule to the letter when doing the drawings
of Snively on pages 5 and 7, and the results are there for your
inspection.
     I remember asking on Ken's message board once how Ken's
doing work for Disney Adventure magazine (where he contributed
art for an Emperor's New Groove story) differed from his Sonic
work.  Bob Repas replied that, for starters, Disney insists on
using model sheets, "lots and lots of model sheets."  And while
Bob added a ;) at the end of this comment, I still came away with
the feeling "Gee, he makes it sound like a bad thing."
     I don't know what passes for model sheets for the artists
who draw the comic, but following them might have kept Snively
from looking like a monstrosity.  Look again at page 5 if you
dare.  Snively's eyes are too small, he has eyebrows he never had
before, and what's the deal with what one fan called "the 'cut
here' surgeon's lines around the eyes"?  This doesn't even take
into account the criticism from some fans that Snively has 7
hairs instead of just 4.  The Harvo-Eklund Snively is looser than
the Ribiero-Penders Snively, but it's way closer to being on-
model.
     And why are there even two art teams working on this?  Short
answer: Blame the Editor.  Deadlines continue to be so tight that
it practically guarantees this kind of uneven, not to say
schizophrenic, page art.  Let's face it: none of the people
involved here do their best work under pressure.  Eye Score: 3.
     HEART: The good news is, Sally is FINALLY doing something
other than passively accepting her being under house arrest.  The
bad news is, she's shot down much too quickly so we can get back
to the stupid Superhero plot.  Interaction between characters is
kept to a bare minimum: Geoff, Elias, and Alicia talk AT Sally
and not with her, and NOBODY except Sinjin talks to Sonic/Sneak. 
We're supposed to feel for to the plight of Cheesehead simply
because Robotnik is doing ... something ... to him.  Without
anything else to go on, there's no reason to care about him.  Or
anyone else in this story.
     Once more, the influence of the Superhero can be seen
working to the detriment of the comic.  Lately Superheroes have
become lone wolves, outcasts, symbols of the Individual against
the System.  This was NEVER, EVER, the subtext of Sonic the
Hedgehog in its prime.  Sonic was always part of a team, an up-
front part of the team but a member nevertheless.  Sonic as a
loner simply doesn't work, as Ken Penders would have discovered
(the hard way) had he turned Sonic into such a loner as a result
of what he wanted to do in "Endgame."  Heart Score: 3.


     "To The Brink"
     Story: Ken Penders; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Ken Penders;
Lettering: Vickie Williams; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Editor:
Justin Gabrie.
     Long story short: Knuckles and Tails beat up on each other
for 5 pages of an 8-pager.  Then this story goes to Hell so fast
it's breathtaking: First Knuckles hears Julie-Su's voice (at
least, that's whom he identifies it as belonging to), and
vanishes.  Merlin and The Athair Floating Head try to discover
why Turbo Tails went down for the count so quickly.  Athair does
a Netherhood mind probe and boy, does HE get a rude awakening. 
In the biggest pile of steaming bulldada to hit this comic in a
long time, Athair informs Merlin and the readers that THIS ISN'T
TAILS!!  Who is he and where did he come from?  It's "a conundrum
for which even I haven't any answers," Athair replies. 
Translation: "How the hell should I know?"  I read the rest of
this story, but I felt so betrayed by this trick ending that it
never sank in.  I finished it echoing the sentiment expressed on
Ken's message board by the abbreviation: "WTF?"  I assume this
needs no translation.
     HEAD: This isn't the first time Ken has pulled the Old
Switcheroo.  In "Deadliest of the Species" (the Sally
miniseries), much of the middle part of the story featured a
Sally droid in place of the real deal.  Ken would have liked to
pull the same stunt in Endgame, putting a Sally droid in the
coffin to be awakened by Sonic, only to inform the readers a year
later that Sally had really and truly died in S47.  Instead, he
had to settle for having Sally's rope cut not by Sonic but (and I
STILL can't believe someone got paid money for thinking up an
angle this freakin' LAME!) Hershey wearing a Sonic suit and
convinced that Sally was Snively.  Not content with that, he did
it twice in Battle Royal: he not only substituted a phony Sword
of Acorns for the real deal, he brought in a droid King who was
exposed in "Escape From The Floating Island" (S49) when it self-
destructed.  Moritori Rex, of course, passed himself off as Tobor
throughout the Deep Cover and Forbidden Zone arcs, and in the
Dark Alliance arc it turned out that Benedict, the political
front man for the Dark Legion, was yet another bot.
     And now THIS!!
     Stephen King admitted, in "On Writing," that his original
idea for "Misery" would have had Paul Sheldon, the put-upon
writer and reluctant houseguest of Annie Wilkes, dead at the end
and the one-of-a-kind edition of "Misery's Return" bound in
Paul's own skin.  The rest of the body probably would have been
devoured by Annie's pig.  But King admitted: "no one likes to
root for a guy over the course of three hundred pages only to
discover between chapters sixteen and seventeen the pig ate him."
     Same story here.  The fans had been rooting for Tails for a
couple of months now and have been anticipating the Chosen One
arc for years, only to discover on page 7 that sorry, this isn't
even Tails.  WTF?!?  Narrative is supposed to move the story and
the reader, not slam them both into a brick wall painted to look
like a tunnel.
     Do you have any idea how much I hated "Battle Royal"?  I
hated this story even more, and "hate" is not too strong a word. 
Ken isn't telling a story here; he's performing a magic trick! 
Stage magic, after all, is a matter of misdirection and illusion,
convincing the audience that one thing is happening when all
along there's something entirely different going on.  Come to
think of it, the same principle applies to Three Card Monty and
the old Shell Game.  I finished this story and felt I'd been
conned!
     But we're not supposed to worry.  As Ken assured people on
his message board, "I have plans" for Tails.  Terrific, Ken; your
plans and 50 cents will buy you a copy of USA Today.  Well,
here's some news that won't cost you a cent: 
     I give up!
     I've had people ask me what it would take to get me to
abandon the comic.  I didn't know, quite honestly.  Well, now I
do.  Sonic 97 is on the whole so lame, so poorly thought out and
executed, shows such little respect for the audience, that I here
and now officially give up any hope that the book will ever get
better.  It's crap, it's been crap for a long time, and for the
foreseeable future it's going to continue to BE crap!
     Please note I'm not giving up on Sonic fandom.  If I'd gone
that far, I'd have made arrangement to give away my Sonic comics
and game CD-ROMs, deleted my Sonic Web site, and as a testament
to what Archie's management did to a once-beloved comic, I'd have
mailed Justin Gabrie my Sonic plushie ... after first tearing its
head off.  No, I'm not about to do that.
     But the book has strayed from the path of Sonic
righteousness to such an extent that I doubt it will ever find
its way back.  Quite simply, it's programmed to fail.  The
writing has become shot through with plot holes so big you can
fly the space shuttle through them.  The characters, once vibrant
and well-defined, have become as flat as the bristol board
they're drawn on.  Thanks to the razor-thin deadlines imposed by
the editors, the comic will continue to be produced in a slap-
dash, careless manner.  And that's all apart from the contents of
the stories themselves.  According to recent blurbs and
developments, here's what we have to look forward to: Sonic and
Sally breaking up, Tails missing in action, Knuckles on a rampage
and allied with the Dark Legion, someone in Knothole marked for
"death" or roboticization or something similar.  NOT my idea of a
good time!
     And I simply don't expect things to ever get any better.  I
await no plot twists, I expect no miracles of narrative. 
Focusing on style rather than substance (by getting in new
artists or by bringing in visual elements borrowed from anime)
will do nothing to change things.  I will continue to review the
comics, but with this difference: I expect each issue from now on
to be an unqualified disaster.  It only remains to be seen just
HOW disastrous each issue is.
     Of course, I'll have to adjust my rating system accordingly. 
Perhaps a measurement of pounds per square inch of air pressure
to indicate quantitatively how much an issue sucks.  I like to
think this method would appeal to Ron Bauerle.  Or a rating of
from one to ten derailed box cars to indicate just how much of a
train wreck an issue was.  Or maybe I should just go with the
simplicity of rating the comic from one to five piles of crap.
     I mentioned my feelings to a friend.  His reaction was to
help me put things in perspective by reminding me: "It's only a
comic book."
     That's what makes this so sad.  I didn't even know the comic
existed until I saw the Sonic-Sally "wedding" cover of Sonic #18. 
The story was kind of light-weight but it worked in the confines
of its own logic.  It was also FUN, something a lot of fans say
the comic hasn't been for a long time.  And then there was "In
The Still Of The Night."  That story was a revelation.  It made
me want to stay with the book, hoping that it could get that good
again.
     It never did.  Sure, it had its moments: the Spaz
frontispiece for S43, the two Sonic Kids specials, "Running To
Stand Still," the Forbidden Zone arc, "Thicker Than Water."  On
the whole, however, it never again even began to approach the
potential I thought that it had.  And now I'm convinced it never
will.  And when this comic folds, its epitaph will have already
been written: "It Was Only A Comic Book."  Head Score: 0.
     EYE: I don't care.
     HEART: Maybe Ken gets his jollies by stringing the readers
along, hiding in the bushes so he can jump out and yell "Psych!" 
That's not my idea of writing.  But at least now I know why the
first two installments of The Chosen One were so lifeless, why
they didn't do a thing for me (they earned Heart Scores of 5 and
3, respectively).  At first I thought maybe it was because Ken
had to cut a 66-page story (intended for the Knuckles comic until
it folded) down to 24 pages.  Or maybe I was just missing
something.
     I know better now.  It was all a set-up.  Ken was so busy
demonstrating to the readers that he had nothing up his sleeves
he forgot to tell a decent story.  He knew that this pseudo-
Tails, whoever he is, wasn't the real deal.  To be blunt about
it, he didn't care, and it came through in his work.  I never,
EVER, want to have that charge leveled against me for what I
write.  Heart Score: 0.
     Which is why I will also continue to write Sonic fanfic.  I
can no longer trust the writers for Archie Comics to produce
anything worthwhile having to do with Sonic, Sally, Tails, et al. 
Besides, I find that a lot of my fanfic is reactive.  It's
written as a result of the kind of bonehead stories Archie has
been printing, coupled with a conviction that I can do way better
myself.  Karl and Ken did nothing with the Knothole-is-three-
hours-in-the-future plot point; I wrote "From Time To Time."  Ken
continues to remain silent as to what Bunnie's counterpart in the
world of the Antisonic is like; I wrote "When A Bunnie Meet A
Bunnie."  Dan Slott had Sonic commit "patricide" and then walked
away; I wrote "Zone Wars: Intervention."  Ken didn't have room to
expound on what Prince Elias's life was like when he left Haven
and showed up at the Royal Compound to live with the Sommersbys;
I'm working on a fanfic about that right now.  So it's not as if
reading the comic will be a total waste of $2.00 a month from now
on; I look forward to being inspired to do better than the so-
called professionals.
     I'm going to skip everything else and end with the Fan Art.  
This is the final irony.  Not only are we shown 4 less-than-
spectacular examples of fan art (though Levi Little manages to
inject some much-needed humor in his drawing), we're also told
about the One That Got Away.  Chris Fried's artwork, we are told,
was beautiful but could not be reproduced for display in the
comic.  So Ken's got it hanging over his desk.  I don't begrudge
him this particular perk, but the situation is just too symbolic. 
There's great Sonic stuff out there, but we'll never see it in an
Archie Comic.  Why do I find that so sadly appropriate?