Sonic #98 [July 2001] "Sonic Adventure 2 : Official Sega Dreamcast [which they aren't making anymore] Adaptation" [no thanks to the boys over at Sega ... see below] Last Things First: It's been just a little over a year since the fans have had to deal with the first Sonic Adventure adaptation. But if you think WE had it bad, the writers were worse off. With next to nothing to go on, they forged a multi- part series attempting to meld the comic and game realities while tossing in a few quirks and digressions of their own (such as the Mysterious Cat Country interlude). It was not a high point in the comic's history, nor was it anything like a good time for the writers. Well, here we are again, and Ken Penders gets points for honesty in his Sonic-Gram for the month, which I feel I must quote at length: Before any of you start bombarding us with letters inquiring about any of the new characters or questions concerning the new Sonic Adventure 2 game, I have to level with you. I couldn't answer you guys (at least not at this time), because none of us at Archie have even played the game. At most, maybe Spaz has tried out the demo that was previewed with certain game titles, but beyond that, all we had to work with were a few JPEGS and the briefest of descriptions concerning the characters and the story lines, as the game developers insisted on absolute secrecy. And keep in mind that Ken and Karl wrote their respective stories something like six months ago, so remember how much less information was available back then. Looks like the writers have been thrown even fewer crumbs than last time by the game developers, who have gone into full-blown Dennis Nedry omnipotent computer geek mode ["You didn't say the magic woooooooord!"]. So, in order to have SOMETHING ready for the rollout of SA2, the writers decided to provide us with the game prologues in comic form, letting those of us who can play the game take it from there. But I won't be one of them. Nothing personal, Sega, but not only do I NOT have a Dreamcast, I'm spectacularly mediocre at the games I do have on CD-ROM for my PC. As Knuckles in Sonic and Knuckles, I always die in the Sandopolis Temple of Doom, I don't know HOW to attack Robotnik when I'm playing the Marble Hill Zone as Tails, and as Sonic I've managed (once) to get past the eyeball security system on the Death Egg. I fare a little better on the Sonic CD, having just managed to get through the Starlight Speedway (which I think should be renamed the Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Turnpike), but in the few times I've managed to get to the goal with 50 rings I have yet to score one lousy Timestone! So I'm going to have to learn about the plot from better players than I who get on the Internet and reveal whatever secrets the game has. But let's cut to the chase: Spaz/Harvo/Ray + Ray cover: Sonic boarding, Shadow looking over his shoulder, Robotnik in his whatever that is, and barely visible, an 18-wheeler about to turn them into three-course roadkill. Cluttered but cool computer graphics. Good foreshortening of Sonic's left hand. "Sonic Adventure 2" Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Pat Spaziante; Ink: Harvey Mercadoocasio and Nelson Ribiero (p9); Coloring: Spaziante and Ribiero; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editorial/Art Director: Justin F. Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-In-Chief: Richard Goldwater. Let's do the Time Warp again: Robotnik is seen doing a jump to the left and a step to the right to avoid being shot at by Silver Sonic 2 at the conclusion of S85's "Big Payback." We're told he was chased "all the way to remote Prison Island." I no longer care WHAT they call it, or even if it's the same thing as the Devil's Island Gulag Whatever (actually, it's not the same as the Notorious D.I.G., but we don't learn this until the next story). Robotnik falls through a hole in the ground and we are told he "had befallen a ghastly fate." I went to the Good Book when I read THAT one: Warriner's "English Grammar and Composition,"one of two books no aspiring writer should be without, according to Stephen King (the other being "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White). My dictionary lists "befall" as having both transitive and intransitive forms. Short course if you were absent that day in English: a transitive verb expresses an action that has an object ("Sonic buckled his sneakers."), an intransitive verb lacks an object ("Knuckles morphed."). In this case the core sentence uses the transitive form, but also puts the verb "befall" in the passive voice: "It appeared the lunatic Eggman had befallen a ghastly fate." I'm used to seeing "befall" used in the active voice, but it could also be used in the passive voice ... when the object of the verb PRECEDES the verb. The correct form of the sentence should have been: "It appeared a ghastly fate had befallen the lunatic Eggman"(see Warriner's, Chapter 1d). I quote further on use of the passive voice according to Warriner's (Chapter 8h): "The choice between the active or passive voice of any particular verb is usually a matter of taste, not of correctness. However, it is important to remember that a passive verb is usually less forceful than an active one and that a long succession of passive verbs usually produces an awkward and unpleasant effect." Robotnik survives the fall and comes to with tiny little monkeys crawling on his head (don't ask). He finds himself in "a lab that was sealed shut by the Station Square military." Me, I'd have shredded the contents and blown that puppy to bits, but that wouldn't have helped the plot. We then get another sentence that you should run past your English teacher when school's back in: "Robotnik had been made to again look foolish by the meddlesome Sonic but in an instant his luck had about-faced." I'll concede that one can find the verb "about-face" in the dictionary, but try working it into your next conversation and see what kind of looks you get. And then there's the split infinitive "to again look foolish." Rewrite: "Once again Robotnik has been made to look foolish by the meddlesome Sonic, but in an instant his luck had changed." Anyway, we then get two pages of Shadow stealing the Chaos Emerald from the Station Square Bank. Exit Silver Sonic 2, boldly trying but ultimately failing to stop him, as Karl Bollers ultimately fails to stop the proliferation of his adverbs. This is followed by one page of "J. J. Moto" doing some very basic and very boring detective work. Moto, who looks a lot like Tenchi Masaki wearing a trenchcoat and who may have been named after the lead character in a series of 1930s detective novels written by John Marquand, looks at the head of Silver Sonic 2 and makes sure the "surveillance record" from the bank is sent to the former Mayor, now President, of Station Square. Don't know if this is part of the game, or whether Station Square has changed its constitution within the last "several months." As for the Mayor/Prez, he schedules an interview with Rouge, who appears in ONE LOUSY PANEL of this story. But given how little Karl had to work with, I suppose that's understandable. She's hired to retrieve the gem, and disappears from the narrative. The Prez calls out the military, specifically "Paladin Team, Sigma Alpha 2." Get it? "Sigma Alpha 2"? SA2? A little product placement at no extra charge. The team takes off from the deck of an aircraft carrier... ...and they encounter Sonic ... somewhere or other ... somehow or other ... as the readers have an encounter of their own with ... DIALOGUE! Yes, the previous 8 pages have featured marathon narration by Karl Bollers, and only now does anyone get around to saying anything. Sonic is able to evade Paladin Team's fire and kype their hardware but he eventually gets netted. As he's being taken aboard the team's helicopter gunship, he notices a loose screw. As tempted as I am to make a joke about this, I can't help but wonder just what the heck this has to do with anything. We have no idea where the screw is located on the ship, what it's supposed to be holding in place, or how Sonic uses it (IF he uses it) to open his cuffs, subdue everyone on board the copter, and open the door. Terrific; last month Sonic was a superhero, now he's McGuyver! Sonic uses SOME piece of the copter, maybe a hunk of the blade, I don't know, and skyboards back down to the ground where he abandons the hardware and performs some maneuvers that reveal yet another bit of product placement: he's now wearing Soap Shoes (thanks to Andrew Sautter for pointing this out to me). The trademark feature of Soap Shoes can be seen in the bottom panels of page 15 and at the top of page 16. Where the arch support is, there is a "grind plate." This affords the wearer the ability to try and kill himself grinding across stairsteps and down bannister railings. Extreme skateboarding without the skateboard. And as a public service, I feel compelled to reproduce the following cautionary note from the manufacturer: By purchasing these wicked shoes, you hereby take full responsibility for any of your actions. Some of which may leave you scraped, battered, bruised, fractured and possibly dead. You will not hold SOAP responsible in the event that any such bodily harm may be done to you. For you are acting on your own free will in so choosing to perform any idiotic grinds. We (SOAP) did not manipulate, twist your arm or hold a gun to your head. We just came up with these really bitchin' shoes. But Sonic doesn't have much leisure to think about footwear as the 18-wheeler featured on the cover begins to chase our hero and we segue into the game action. HEAD: Yes, I'm going to continue to rely on the old ratings categories. No, I'm no longer going to assign numerical values. I meant what I said last time when I announced that I've abandoned any hope that the book will improve. That's especially true with a one-shot issue like this one. So why bother rating anything if nobody's going to aspire to get or keep the ratings up? Faced with the same task (set up the game story with bits and pieces of information), each writer has approached the task differently. While Ken will rely heavily on dialogue to move his story along, Karl spends the first half of his story laying on exposition. This has the advantage of acknowledging the reality of the situation: with not much to go on, ladle on the narration. The disadvantage is, it's less emotionally engaging than relying on dialogue where a character's personality can come through in what they say and how they say it, provided the writer lets them. In this case, characters pop up (Moto, Rouge, the Paladin Team members) then disappear. That's a pity, especially when a character has as much potential as Rouge. Speaking for myself, I'd have handled pages 3 through 6 differently: made it one long exchange of dialogue between the Prez and Rouge (whom I imagine as a kind of Sharon Stone/Mae West combo platter, lots of sass and attitude with enough menace to make you wonder about her ultimate allegiance). It would have been sort of an homage/goof on all those scenes where Batman appears in Commissioner Gordon's office out of nowhere, gets brought up to speed, then slips back into the night. But I'm just projecting my own idea of how I'd write for Rouge given the scraps of data available. She may behave differently in the game, I don't know. Still, she seems like she'd be fun to write for. Too bad the game developers are such maniacs about secrecy that they continue to sabotage any hope for a decent game adaptation story. EYE: Pat Spaziante slips inside the covers and does the story art. The results are actually linear and dramatic; Hugo Brass on page 7 is all teeth and bulging neck tendons, his weird beard notwithstanding. Sonic's acrobatics are probably game- inspired but still well-rendered. The Paladin Team members look decent as well but ... why do all these special forces units have to dress the same? Sure, it's a military thing; a bunch of armed guys all dressed alike is visual shorthand for "Military." But even though Pat worked at varying the heads and giving them each a measure of distinctness, I keep wondering what the group would look like if Pat redrew them as if they were the crew of the PT boat chugging its way up to the heart of darkness in "Apocalypse Now." I look at Team Paladin, and I do NOT hear "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones playing in the background. But that's just me. And then there's Rouge. I knew, I felt it in my bones, that the character would undergo breast reduction before being depicted in the comic. I've seen the game screen shots, I've seen the inspirational art, and I can tell you that Rouge has (to borrow an euphemism from a Firesign Theater routine) a balcony you can do Shakespeare from. But not in THIS comic. That may be one more reason why she only made it into one panel of this issue. HEART: Karl's dilemma was obvious: the opening of the game is about Sonic, but Karl had to utilize SOME other characters to lay out the premise. So thanks to exposition mode, he can just bring them in, pose them, talk about them, then shove them off- panel so he can bring in the next poor mope. It gets the job done, but it also prevents us from learning anything real about the characters themselves. We're spoon-fed the information that Moto is supposed to be a hot shot police investigator and that Rouge is supposed to be some kind of treasure hunter. The four pages I'd have rewritten as a dialogue between Rouge and the Prez could have said a lot about both the Prez and Rouge and whether they'd done business before. But Karl went his own way. Fair enough. It's just that if you keep this up long enough you get to the point where there's no real reason to care about the characters any more. They become like the magical bit players in the Knuckles' Quest arc: little better than cardboard cutouts to move around as the plot demands. If you ask me, there are better ways to get and keep an audience. "When Shadow Awakes" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Pam Eklund; Coloring: Frank Gagliardo; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editor: Justin Gabrie. The bullet-head in the lab coat is none other than Gerald, Robotnik's granddad. What we get from his monologue (which takes up almost all of the first two pages) is that he's aboard an orbiting science lab called the Ark and his life's work is more or less in the tube in front of him. And no, I don't think it's Queen Alicia. The experiment is supposed to hold the key to nothing less than immortality. It's sort of personal for Gerald, in that "my granddaughter would be cured of the ailment that cripples her." I've looked ahead and seen this granddaughter, named Maria. What is her ailment? What's crippling her, and how? We're neither told nor shown. I'll have more to say about THAT later. Just as Gerald sends a wake-up call to the test subject, he gets a call from Maria who tells him that a military shuttle is approaching. A nameless functionary, whom I am forced to call "Colonel Bluebeard" for want of a proper name, boards the ship ready to shoot first and think later. Whatever is crippling Maria (a fact reiterated by one of the soldiers), it doesn't prevent her from climbing a ladder and getting Shadow and herself to an escape pod. But before she can get inside she's zapped and the pod is launched, its sole occupant having witnessed Maria's cold-blooded murder. Gerald is only informed of his granddaughter's demise once he's been transported to "our Prison Island." As Gerald works like a drone, he sends up a lot of thought balloons to bring the reader up to speed: seems that the Ark is equipped with a secret super weapon: the Eclipse Cannon. Somehow, it will be activated (I think I missed a detail or two) and Gerald leaves behind the record Robotnik will find in the previous story. Not trusting Gerald, Colonel Bluebeard orders him executed and the island sealed. Which brings us to our previous story.... HEAD: SA2 is actually two games, as I understand it. You can start out as Sonic (the good scenario) or as Shadow (the evil scenario). This story is pretty much a set-up for the evil scenario. It leaves out a few factors, probably because Ken didn't know about them at the time. I'm pretty sure Maria's "crippling" condition wasn't one of them. EYE: It's official: Ron Lim is a fairly decent comic book artist. That's the good news; the bad news is, he's a better hyoomon artist than a furry artist. And when you draw for a furry book, that's no small consideration. My guess is that Ron trained in the Old School, where hyoomons were expected to be the top of the heap, whether they were dressed in Spandex or not. That's why I'm glad that, when Ken went shopping for an apprentice, he went looking among Sonic fans who were furry artists. It's not just a question of staying on-model, though that's part of it as well; consider the Sally with human dimensions from "Ascension" (SSS11) and the rather ghastly rendition of Snively in last month's "My Secret Identity." I really believe furry art is a specialty. HEART: Ken's reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out another one. This time, it's the "Hire The Handicapped" Shortcut. As with Athena's muteness in the Wolf Pack arc (S67-69), and Ray the Squirrel's jackhammer stammer in the Mighty arc (K26-28), Maria's alleged handicap adds nothing whatsoever to the story. We don't even know what it IS, furcryinoutloud! It could literally be anything from AIDS to zygomycosis. So why bother? Based on his track record, it would appear that Ken bestows handicaps on characters as a quick-and-dirty way of making them sympathetic. We're supposed to feel sorry for Maria even before she's blown away. It's not the first time in the comic that a character has actually died on-panel, but this IS more of a jolt than when Sonic kacked his surrogate father in "Zone Wars: Giant Robotno." It's usually been Ken's speed to kill someone off-panel: Edmund in "Sins of the Fathers" (K2), Prince Emerson in "Shot Heard Round The World" (S72). But it appears that the cold-blooded murder of a child isn't enough of a jolt for today's audiences, it has to be the cold-blooded murder of a HANDICAPPED child! Why Ken bothered gilding the lily like that, I'll never know. Perhaps he would have gone for the softer off-panel effect but for the fact that Maria getting wasted on-screen is part of the Evil set-up and Ken was more or less stuck with it. So are these stories badly written? Not necessarily, given the limitations placed on the authors. I've already hinted at some of the ways I'd address the stories if I were writing them: use of dialogue between the Prez and Rouge, losing Maria's handicap. It's not something I've done throughout my being a Sonic fan, though. But increasingly it's becoming easier for me to see how these stories are done and to see how I could do them a little better. Or a LOT better. That's why I'd like to present: HOW TO WRITE FOR COMIC BOOKS by Daniel J. Drazen [Ken and Karl will probably get a good laugh out of this] Step 1: Learn how to write. I know that's like the Steve Martin comedy bit, You Can Be a Millionaire and Never Pay Taxes Again, where the first step is "Make a million dollars." But after watching the Sonic comic story line flop around like a beached carp for the last few years I'm convinced that if you can't write a good story without using pictures, what makes you think you'll have an easier time writing an illustrated story? And I will go to my grave maintaining that as a subgenre of narrative fiction, comic book writing has to, HAS TO, follow the same old rules as writing serious fiction if it wants to succeed. Step 2: Learn to use the tools. I used to think there was something complicated, almost arcane, when it came to writing for comics. This impression was encouraged by Archie's only engaging the services of established comic book writers. I know better now. Once a writer is proficient enough as his/her craft, it simply becomes a matter of tweaking one's work to fit the format, of learning how to use the tools. And of course we all know the three best ways to learn: practice, practice, practice. Here are some of the points to practice for the aspiring comic book writer: Working within a finite number of pages. Knowing how much of the narrative burden to lay on the artist. Paring down one's dialogue so that it doesn't overflow the space available for word balloons but still manages to communicate what you want it to. Pacing the action through the use of splash pages, creative layouts, and strategic page breaks. Please note that NONE of this involves dumbing down the material in order to pander to the imagined tastes of ten-year- olds. It's mostly what I call "mechanical." The nature of the medium dictates the use of these conventions, just as the medium of the sonnet dictates that it should contain so many lines of poetry written with a particular meter and rhyme scheme. As we've seen all too clearly of late, writing for comics is NOT rocket science. And it DEFINITELY has nothing to do with learning how to work with "loose continuity," which I am now thoroughly convinced is an instrument of Satan, an excuse for a writer to let down his discipline and produce sloppy work. As long as the temptation exists to leave troubling details unresolved in the name of loose continuity, a writer will be tempted to take the easy way out when writing a story. There will always be the comforting illusion of being able to go back and solve the problems at another time. And with the "revelation" that Tails isn't Tails at all, and the realization that "Knuckles: 20 Years Later" will show up in the Sonic comic (if it shows up at all) as a pale mutant form of the story it Might Have Been, we fans are now reaping the bitter harvest of that kind of thinking. Writing for comics is like writing a serial, but even serialized works aren't open-ended. Charles Dickens himself wrote some of his books in serialized form, but he ALWAYS knew that they'd have to be wrapped up at some point. Manga artists function the same way. They write a story with a definite cutoff point. It may run three months, six months, a year. Then it's printed as a trade paperback if it's popular enough. If it's REALLY popular it'll be spun off into animation and the storyline will be extended (or, in the case of "Tenchi Muyo," the characters will be recycled in different contexts, which is what happened to Sasami). Since the original manga are printed on newsprint and are meant to be discarded when the paperbacks come out, there's no bag-and-board tradition in Japan. But the point is, I believe loose continuity does more harm than good and a serious writer won't even think about relying on it. Even a serious comic book writer. Ken Penders and I will never see eye-to-eye on this point, but so be it. Oh, there's one more point I want to stress: Follow your heart. I do NOT mean that every page of a story should drip with pathos. This goes back to Step 1. If you want to produce bland, indistinct characters who are pretty much interchangeable, go into the kitchen, get some chilled dough and a cookie cutter and knock yourself out. As a writer, your characters have to have SOME kind of inner life in order to make them real enough to be embraced by your audience. Even if they're an audience of ten- year-olds. They respond to well-defined characters as well as anyone else, and don't let some suit tell you otherwise. OK, lesson's over. For now. Off-Panel: Knuckles drops by the Art Department and demonstrates that he has a firm grasp of the obvious. Makes me think that the artists don't appreciate the short deadlines any more than the fans do. Save some of that ink for the Art Director, guys. Sonic-Grams: In addition to Ken's quasi mea culpa, he also lays down some rules for fan art submissions: artist's personal information on the back of the drawing, use blank paper, color submissions only, computer art should be in .tif or .jpg format at 300 DPI resolution. He also states that the focus of the letters will shift to "talking about what you liked or disliked about the stories themselves." Which is what I thought I'd been doing all along. Blurb for S99: After getting burned by S97, I am not looking forward to resuming this story line just on general principle. That they're going to work at splitting Sonic and Sally only makes it worse. Letters: Ken tells James Giles that the audience for this book is "demanding." Yeah, but are the creatives able to meet those demands? And will Editorial let them? Eivind Kirkeby of Norway(!) takes Ken up on his suggestion to inform him as to what would make the comic better; Ken replies by barely outlining Spaziante's manga project (as it's become known to us Net- dwellers) and sort of admits that at this point the project doesn't stand a snowball's chance. Long-time Sonic fan Andrew Sautter writes in, hoping for some explanation of Kent Taylor's ponderous pachyderm of a story, "Immortality Is Infinite," reiterating Eivind's comments on the manga special that never will be, and wanting to see a reunion of the original creatives; Ken's reply is totally noncommittal. I've already read one e- mail which posits that the confused climax of "Immortality..." would be a good way to explain the Tails switcheroo ... meaning that Tails hasn't been Tails for the last FOUR YEARS?!? And a host of letters asking for character bios, many of them expressing approval of Mina. Obviously Ken doesn't know about the message board where one of the passwords used to be "minasucks" so I wouldn't be too quick to say that fan opinion about her is unanimous.