[Review date: June 2001]

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been.'"
John Greenleaf Whittier, "Maud Muller"

     I've been doing retro reviews of Sonic comics for some time
now, and for some reason I never felt about any of them the way I
do about the Princess Sally miniseries.  There's a hesitancy to
approach this miniseries that I haven't felt before.  Part of the
reason is that the miniseries Ken Penders wanted to write bore no
resemblance to the finished comic.  So let's look at the back
story before plunging ahead:
     At some point Sega looked at the SatAM continuity and sensed
some potential in the female lead.  The writing team of Mike
Kanterovich and Ken Penders was assigned to do a Princess Sally
miniseries.  Sega wanted to gauge her acceptance by the Archie
Comic fan base with an eye toward her possible inclusion in the
game continuity.  So Mike and Ken, conscious of the deadline they
had to meet, forged ahead and crafted a three-part miniseries. 
In that miniseries, Sally ends up discovering a literal Mobian
underground: a society of roboticized Mobians living in the
Robotropolis sewer system.  And among them is none other than
Sally's mother, the queen, herself one of the roboticized.
     Doesn't sound like the miniseries you remember reading? 
Chalk it up to "creative differences."  With the story written
and the release date on the horizon, both Sega and Archie decided
that this particular story was NOT what they had in mind.  Don't
ask me why.  Perhaps they just wanted Sally to be a furry action
figure; Lara Croft with fewer clothes.  Making a character's life
tragic by giving her a roboticized mother was apparently not what
the Powers That Be had in mind.
     So Mike and Ken had to try again.  They worked on a couple
more treatments.  Ken has hinted that in one of them Sally and
Bunnie would have carried on like Thelma and Louise.  Finally,
Mike and Ken came up with the following story.  However, the
toing-and-froing with Archie and Sega meant that the rollout of
the series was delayed.  This, according to Ken, negatively
impacted on sales of the book.  Now, without any further ado:

     "Deadliest of the Species"
     Story: Mike Kanterovich and Ken Penders; Art: Art Mawhinney;
Ink: Rich Koslowski; Lettering: Bill Yoshida (Part 1), Mindy
Eisman (Part 2 and 3); Color: Barry Grossman; Editor: Scott
Fulop; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-In-Chief: Richard
Goldwater: Unwarranted Interference from the Sega Home Office:
Jennifer Hunn, Cynthia Wilkes, Bob Harris.

     Mawhinney/D'Agostino covers: Sal takes center stage in the
final covers.  I say "final" covers because if you look carefully
at the covers for the series as advertised in earlier issues you
get a sense of the Might Have Been miniseries.  Cover 1 backs her
up with the Backup Freedom Fighters to be introduced later, with
ghostly representations of Robotnik and Geoffrey St. John which
is pronounced "Sinjin."  Like the line from Monty Python: "It's
spelled 'Luxury Yacht,' but it's pronounced 'Throat-warbler
Mangrove.'"  On cover 2 Sal hang-glides into the action as her
back-up group is being attacked, and on cover 3 she does battle
with ... herself?  Patience, gentle reader: all will be revealed. 
Well, almost all, anyway.

     For the benefit of those who missed the "Prologue" to this
story that appeared in S20, there's a one-page synopsis that,
unfortunately, doesn't quite capture the feel of the original
sabotage sequence which Mike and Ken wrote without much dialogue
but with numerals counting down instead.  I've wanted to see less
dialogue cluttering up some of the scenes; Ken proved that it
COULD be done and hasn't really done much of it since, the
wordless page where Sally first encounters Nicole in the In Your
Face special being a notable exception.  To denote the end of the
introduction a group of SWATbots, whose dialogue makes them sound
as if they were on loan from Mike Gallagher, open fire on Sal and
Geoff.  Geoff's crossbow bolts prove to be less effective for the
moment than Sal's slingshot paintballs.  After a little friendly
banter, Sally pulls a grenade out of her vest and terminates the
remaining bots.
     Our two heroes scoot into the Great Forest and we're soon
being introduced to the B Team: Penelope Platypus, Arlo
Armadillo, Hamlin Pig -- yeah, I know it's a bad pun, but the
Fleetway comic had a character named "Porker Lewis" so you can
take your pick as to which is worse -- and a porcupine named
Dylan.  They're camped out awaiting word from Sally.  Geoff
arrives first and makes his usual entrance: he jumps Hamlin and
threatens to turn him into a cutlet.  Sally, now wearing a purple
vest instead of her usual blue one, finally shows up and keeps
the two from mixing it up.
     The next morning, Sally lays out the plan as well as the
plot: this group is assigned to knock out three of Robotnik's
power stations, theoretically knocking out his ground defenses in
the process.  It's one down, two to go as they head off to the
second power station.
     They find it "at the edge of The Great Forest," which
actually looks more like the Great Jungle.  Fittingly, the power
station is a bunker with Aztec Temple overtones.  No sign of an
echidna named Tikal anywhere but something inside the station
starts firing at them.  Sally leads the group forward and lobs a
grenade inside to settle the SWATbots.  She then feeds a virus
into the system's station but instead of sneezing it coughs up
some weird-looking Orb-bots.  These guys aren't just hovering cam
units; they're spheres on flamingo-type legs with Crabmeat eyes. 
Oh, and they start shooting at our heroes.
     Break for Sally Art.  It's early in the game, so the art
doesn't begin to approach the fever pitch it achieved in its Dead
Sally Art phase after S47 (Endgame: Part 1).  For my money, the
most interesting piece of art is Scott Moffatt's drawing of Sal,
whip in hand and monocle in place, as a sado-dominatrix.  The pose is
taken from a one-panel depiction of the AntiSonic's posse in "The Good,
The Bad, and The Hedgehog" in S11, and would be used again by Jim
Valentino in "Zone Wars: A Tale of Two Hedgehogs" (SSS10).
     Back to the action.  Borrowing a page from the Luke
Skywalker playbook, Sal uses some computer cables to do unto one
of the Orb-bots what Luke did to the Imperial walker at the
beginning of "The Empire Strikes Back."  Once more, Hamlin is the
one in peril but it's Sinjin who makes the save.  To dispose of
the second bot they put the following plan into effect: run out
the front door and let it chase you until you get to the edge of
a cliff which the bot then falls off ... of.
     Geoff's earlier bit of heroism, unfortunately, hasn't done
much to ease the bad blood between Geoff and Hamlin; the Hammer
must've looked ahead to "My Secret Identity" (S97).  True enough,
Ken Penders's penchant for secrecy and narrative trickery makes
itself known before the story is over.  During the night, Sinjin
sneaks out of the camp, passes through some kind of warp field,
into some hidden fortress or other, and confronts ... Sally under
glass.

     Like Part 1, Part 2 opens with a page of exposition followed
by a rousing fight sequence.  This time it's Hamlin and Geoffrey,
mixing it up mano-a-mano using those padded pole things.  Geoff
smacks Hamlin around but when it appears that he's getting a
little too carried away with it Sally intervenes.  Again.
     The third targeted power station is on a plateau-like
island.  Getting as close to it as they can by land, the group
deploys hang-gliders to finish their approach.  Trouble is,
they're picked up on radar and almost finished off by
anti-aircraft guns.  Arlo's hang-glider goes down, but the others
still manage to locate him and the wreckage.  Penelope stays
behind with Arlo and what's left of the group makes its way
inside the power station after throwing something at a SWATbot
and causing it to fall down.  Yeah, it looks about as lame as it
sounds.  Once inside they plant their explosive charges only to
have Sally get grabbed by what's referred to as an "octo-pod": an
8-tentacled, faceted-eyed centipede sort of bot with a Mohawk
hairdo.  While the thing looks like it's going to chow down on a
helping of Leading Lady Tartar, Geoff plants one of the charges
on the underside of the thing while Sal sort of liberates herself
by spraying paint in the eye of the beastie, though she refers to
it as "Red Dye #2."
     Ancient history lesson: In 1977, the U. S. Food and Drug
Administration banned the use of a common food coloring known as
Red Dye #2 because it proved to be carcinogenic.  Why Sally would
be carrying around a can of the stuff I don't know.  This is
probably either Mike or Ken's idea of humor.  Whether it occurred
to them that most of the comic's readers wouldn't get the joke
because they weren't even BORN in 1977 is a mystery.
     The group returns to find Arlo and Penelope gone.  The group
then glides off the island without them.
     Later that evening, Geoff steals out of camp, does the
hidden door trick, and now we have a DOUBLE helping of Sally
Under Glass.  This is duly reported to Robotnik, who apparently
is babysitting Madd Cat for Dr. Claw from the "Inspector Gadget"
cartoon.  After Geoff signs off, Sally with the Blue Vest On
wakes up and rejoins the story.
     The next morning she leads the group toward the outskirts of
Robotropolis while Geoff delivers the other Sally, presumably the
purple one, to Robotnik.
     A fan art by Shawn Helton shows Sal in some sort of mecha
suit; not a good look for her, IMHO.  There's also a letter
wherein "Sally" fudges the question of whether she's ever met
Knuckles.  Answer: yes, but they won't get around to writing
about it in earnest until around the "Mecha Madness" special.

     After a one-page recap we rejoin Sal and what's left of the
group already in progress battling SWATbots.  Remember, Arlo,
Penelope and Geoffrey are not among them.  Hamlin refers to Geoff
as "The original Mr. Useless," thus anticipating Sinjin's
breathtakingly inept interrogation of Sonic in S96's "The
Messenger" by more than five years!  Some blaster fire cuts away
the catwalk under Hamlin's hooves and Sal has to save his bacon
yet again!  And HE thinks GEOFF is useless!  Guess it takes one
to know one.  The group then charges through a door only to
discover ... Robotnik, Geoff, purple Sally, and some large bots
behind a glass wall.  And some ads.
     Hamlin is incensed by Geoff's apparent act of treason.  I
can hear Homer Simpson now: "Mmmmmm, incense and bacon."  Sorry,
mind wandered for a second there.
     Ham lunges at Geoff for the umpteenth time but is told to
back off by blue Sally, whom Robotnik reveals is an
auto-automaton he'd planted in the group; the business with
blowing up the substations was all part of her/its beta testing. 
Robotnik then begins to roboticize the other/purple Sally but his
attempt blows up in his face along with the purple Sally.  Seems
that roboticizing a robot is such a redundancy that the machinery
couldn't handle it.  But we're barely at the halfway point of the
issue and Mike and Ken are just getting warmed up.  Some "Stealth
bots," the ones behind the glass walls, emerge and make a grab
for Sally and her cohorts, but then the cavalry arrives in the
form of some back-up secret service agents boring up through the
floor accompanied by Dylan and Penelope.  The back-up agents are
named "Smiley" and "Fleming," in a bow to the spy novel genre
that was a seminal influence on Ken Penders.  I mean, after all,
his handle on e-bay is something like "Ken007."
     But like any self-respecting James Bond-genre villain,
Robotnik makes good his escape while initiating that beloved plot
device, the self-destruct mechanism.  While we're treated to a
reprise of the countdown from the prologue, the group beats a
hasty retreat and leaves the facility in some flying saucer-type
units located in "Hanger 18" [sic].
     More Ancient History: in 1980 the pseudo-documentary "Hangar
18" was released; note the correct spelling.  It claimed, long
before "The "X-Files" made "Roswell" a household word, that the
United States military was keeping the wreckage of a flying
saucer in the aforenumbered location.  This was back in the days
when budgets for such films were low and belief in the reality of
UFOs was confined to fringies and weirdos.  This shlockhouse film
was more "out there" than the Truth could ever hope to be.
     After passing out some commendations to the B Team, it's
time for the exposition: blue Sally was the real Sally and purple
Sally was the droid.  It was hard to keep that plot point
straight sometimes because of the tinted glass of the hibernation
chambers or wherever they were being kept.  Geoff was
double-crossing Robotnik while leading Robotnik to believe that
it was the Freedom Fighters that were being scammed.  Arlo and
Penelope got off the island "without a trace" thanks to the
corkscrew-like vehicle used by Smiley and Fleming, though I think
that it probably would have left a pretty big mound of dirt when
it left.  And but for differences in forms of address when the
droid was talking to Geoff, it "behaved in an entirely
appropriate manner," according to Arlo.  And after a kiss which
Sonic could never have gotten away with until "Endgame: The
Director's Cut," the story more or less ends.

     HEAD: Knowing the troubled history of the Sally miniseries,
I can understand why Mike and Ken relied on relentless action
plotting in this story and why Ken's emotional touch has been a
little less sure ever since.  I mean the story moves along well,
which fulfills the action requirement.  And that seems to have
been all that Archie and Sega requested.
     Not that there aren't any flaws in the narrative.  It didn't
occur to me until way later, but the only way that the Sally
switcheroo would work in the story would be if Robotnik were
either color-blind or else could only see in black-and-white.  I
never tumbled to the vest color key coding, which I thought was a
continuity glitch, but other sharper readers did.  Back on page
22 of part 3, Arlo notes that robo-Sal was agonizing over making
tough decisions in the wake of the loss of Arlo and Penelope. 
But except for a drawing of Sally tucked into the midground of
one panel on page 18 of part 2, we don't actually SEE that this
happened; we only have Arlo's word for it.
     I suppose actually depicting such agonizing introspection
would have gotten in the way of the plot.  Still, it highlights
my major problem with the story: the droid was TOO GOOD AT BEING
SALLY.  In the SatAM ep "Sonic and Sally," the same plot device
was used: Sal was kidnaped by Robotnik, who then arranged for
Sonic to rescue a robo-Sally that had been designed to infiltrate
Knothole.  In that story, the devil was in the de-Tails: intimate
little actions, such as the droid Sally's lack of familiarity
with a bedtime story she was reading to Tails, convinced the kid
that something wasn't kosher.  OK, her glowing red eyes were also
a giveaway.  And Sonic tumbled to that fact when the droid
fumbled a ritual handshake.  This time around the bot was
flawless, which raised the question in my mind: if it was so
good, did it have sufficient consciousness to evaluate its
objective, exercise moral choice, and defect?  Fans raised the
same point about Mike Gallagher's Fiona droid in "Growing Pains"
(S28-29).  They were hoping against hope that the Fiona droid
would switch sides.  It didn't work out that way, of course, but
it reveals the problem of working with the old bot double plot
device. At least Mike and Ken wrapped it all up in three issues,
thus avoiding the trap of loose continuity where plot points like
this can linger on for an eternity.  Head Score: 7.
     EYE: Nice authoritative artwork by Mawhinney.  The character
modeling is never off for a single panel.  I don't know whose
idea it was to give Madd Cat a one-panel cameo; maybe Ken thought
to add it as an homage to the Bond nemesis Blofeld.  And the
facial expressions communicate far more than we've been seeing
lately.  Eye Score: 9, if only because I found myself wondering
what Frank Gagliardo would have done as colorist.
     HEART: In an action locomotive like this, there's not much
room for sentiment, especially when your hand is still stinging
from having been slapped by Sega.  That's why we had to be told
that the Sally droid expressed emotions when she didn't do a
whole lot of that in the story.  Neither did the REAL Sally, for
that matter.  There's a lot of talk about the mission, a couple
of save-it-for-Robotnik speeches, and what feels, now that I look
at it, like a totally gratuitous romantic denouement.  I know I
should talk; I ended up falling into the same trap at the end of
my first Sonic fanfic "Bloodlines."  I had to put my own spin on
the ball, of course.
     Ken tried to kick-start the notion of a three-way romantic
tussle between Sonic, Sally and Geoff in "A Robot Rides The
Rails" (S31) and "Brave New World."  And the fans were led to
believe that this plot point would rear its ugly head in the
current continuity, as an extension of Geoff's treachery and
conniving and as a counterpoint to the threatened pairing of
Sonic with a new character, Mina.  Yet, here we are at the Sonic
#99 milestone, and if Geoff has designs on anything, whether
Sally or the throne, Karl Bollers hasn't gotten around to
communicating them.  Perhaps the finest expression of that idea
was Pat Spaziante's frontispiece for S43; it's a piece of art
which, I think, is one of the finest ever to appear in the comic. 
And even THEN it isn't about whether Sonic or Geoff cares more
for Sally: it's about the clashing of two oversized egos.  For
all intents and purposes, the Sally-Geoffrey romance angle has
been dead for years.
     Ken's gone on to try to inject some emotional content into
his stories, especially in the Knuckles books.  And there have
been moments: Charmy getting the news on Mello's death and
Mello's funeral in the Chaotix Caper arc, the final scene of the
First Date arc, and Bunnie and Antoine's scene together in
"Upgrade" (SSS11).  Other times, however, Ken swings and misses. 
In two different reunion scenes, involving Knuckles and Locke in
"Childhood's End" (K25) and Julie-Su and Simon in "Shadows"
(SSS11), what could have been a heartfelt moment is brought to a
screeching halt as one of the characters shuts up while the other
launches into an extended monologue.  Locke's reunion with
Lara-Le in the Forbidden Zone arc also just felt wrong.  Ken
shows us Locke planting an unsolicited kiss on Lara-Le's lips; I
am absolutely convinced that she followed this up by slapping his
face.  Or she SHOULD have.  It doesn't matter what I think,
though, because that's where Ken cut the scene.  And whether for
lack of space or because of an inability to see an opportunity
and exploit it, Ken didn't think to have Geoffrey locate his
father's grave on the Floating Island in the Forbidden Zone arc. 
I will NEVER, EVER understand why he passed up a chance like
that!  Maybe Ken's simply more at home with relentless action
plotting that's devoid of introspection and emotion, but I find
myself wondering whether his experience with writing the Sally
miniseries and the ongoing demands for emotional neutrality from
the Sega higher-ups haven't hurt his craft.  Heart Score: 3.

     Sally-Gram: Fanboy Horace Hawkins pleads his own case for
Sally, anticipating the fan reaction to her demise in "Endgame"
that management never saw coming.  Scott Fulop's editorial
solicited reaction for the idea of a Princess Sally comic; I know
*I* voted for it.  Maybe it's just as well it never came to be. 
Aside from the possibility that she would have been trivialized
like Betty or Veronica, she's at her best when she plays off
Sonic and vice versa.  The two simply need each other to make the
narrative better; that's ANOTHER lesson management needs to
learn.