Sonic #105 [March 2002] Spaz/Harvo (or Ribiero; they can't seem to make up their minds)/Ray/Pepitone cover: Sonic's down, and so are his fans. Hope is the only one who seems to be distraught by this turn of events. It's hard to read what the other hyoomons are thinking/feeling but one gets the impression that they're not all that concerned about his well-being. "You Say You Want A Revelation?" Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Pam Eklund and Andrew Pepoy; Color: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editor/Art Director: Justin F. Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor in chief: Richard Goldwater A couple Raspberry Berets have taken possession of Nate's effects and are moving them out. "I guess King Max got the bad news," Sonic observes. The real bad news is that Sonic's anorexia is worse than ever. Sure he's always had skinny arms and legs but this is just plain ridiculous. Guess Ron Lim didn't use the two-issue hiatus to practice drawing the hedgehog hero of this series. Nice to know as we close the year out that the quality of the drawings is up to the usual standard. Anyway, Uncle Chuck thinks that Nate's probably been roboticized by now, which gives Sonic an idea. Back amongst the Os, Colin takes time out of his busy schedule, which consists of wearing the same spacesuit he was wearing when he landed, to listen to Hope. Except that Ron seems to have momentarily forgotten that Hope is supposed to be a young girl. In one panel she's decked out not only with large eyes but with a set of Kim Basinger lips. Colin refuses to believe that Bro Ivo had anything to do with the robo-furries, but guess who then shows up to set the record straight. Back at Castle Sore Thumb, King Max is reflecting on Elias's recent departure and playing the blame game. He apparently doesn't know that, like the game of Thermonuclear Destruction in the film "War Games," the only way to win THAT game is to simply not play. Back in Robotropolis, Robotnik breaks the news to the Os that they're living in a community that's a replica of Love Canal right down to the toxic smegma that's killing them. As for Robotnik himself, it doesn't matter because he's a droid. He then offers to convert the populace, whether they want to undergo the procedure or not. Passing over the dialogue involving Colin and Agnes, Colin takes a swing at Robotnik. He connects, and becomes an android. It's that whole Midas touch thing. Agnes tells Hope to make herself scarce. Back at the castle, Uncle Chuck reports on Robotnik's Midas touch, and Sonic suggests hauling out the Sword of Acorns for another round of Zam The Bots. Max states that he is only one of two individuals who have ever so wielded the Sword. Excuse me, "WEILDED" the Sword. Nice to know as we close the year out that the quality of the lettering/proofreading is up to the usual standard as well. Anyway, that's Sally cue to enter, speaking as the other user of the Sword; you know, the one who used it and DIDN'T end up paralyzed from the waist down. She tells her father than he can trust her to rescue Nate. Someone in this comic trusting someone else; THAT'S a novel concept. Anyway, in one of those good news/bad news deals, Sally's told to take Sonic as an escort. Sonic can sense that Sally's keeping her enthusiasm about being with him in check, when... OK, we're going to have to wait another four months before Sally and Mina finally have it out and, with any luck, we can trash the Huge Misunderstanding subplot once and for all. For the present, however, Mina dashes on-panel, puts a full-blown hug on Sally for freeing her mom, then dashes off again. Either Sally should start rethinking her grudge against Sonic at this point, or else Mina should change her name to Ellen Degeneres. Either way, Karl provides absolutely no follow-up whatsoever to this development. We then get two pages of Hope in the Big City, on the run from Robotnik whose voice and visage appear to be everywhere. OK, explain this one to me: Robotnik offers not to roboticize Hope's grandmother Agnes if Hope gives herself up. Agnes says to Hope: "Don't listen to him!" Then Robotnik says: "I couldn't have said it better myself!" So, uh, what are we supposed to believe? That Robotnik didn't mean the first offer? That he didn't expect Hope to turn herself in anyway? Maybe if the whole sequence on page 8 had been scrapped and this scene had been spread over 3 pages instead of two Karl Bollers could have written it so that it made some sense. In any event, something happens to Agnes that we're not allowed to see and poor traumatized Hope is surrounded by Dante-quoting bots ordering her to surrender. Fortunately, Sonic arrives and ricochets all over the bots while Sally takes Hope in tow. Sonic then dashes off and appears in Robotnik's HQ. He manages to keep his distance from Robotnik, but spin-dashes around him so that he buzz-cuts a hole in the floor and the floor gives way. Sonic would have preferred to stay one floor up, but a boot in the butt from Snively sends Sonic into the room where the android versions of Colin, Agnes, Cheesehead and Nate await. Sally then arrives, with a whole group of Os in tow. Don't ask me where they came from. This time, however, the ZAM trick doesn't work. Robotnik then shows up and we get yet one more kick in the continuity, not as bad as the Tails-isn't-Tails abomination but bad enough. According to Robotnik, if one WANTS to be roboticized one's free will isn't compromised, which is the first I'VE heard of it. Too bad Uncle Chuck isn't there to compare notes; I have a feeling he'd disagree. In any event, Snively joins hands with Robotnik and is roboticized. A suddenly-magnanimous Robotnik offers the Os roboticization or exile, which is a step up from forced roboticization and quite simply contradicts what he'd said back on page [5]. Since it's getting too confusing to keep score any more, Hope leaves with Sonic and Sally, as the rest of the Os wander off to compare notes as to just what happened in this story. HEAD: I'd have thought that the two-month hiatus would have given Karl Bollers a chance to think through the story, shave off and sand down the rough edges, and otherwise make it more coherent. Instead, it only serves to muddy the waters even more than they were before. All of a sudden we're supposed to believe that if one WANTS to be roboticized one's free will is left intact? That's NEVER come up before. If it had, as I'm sure it would have during the roboticizer's beta testing, Uncle Chuck would never have abandoned the process for the very reason that roboticization DOES short-circuit the will, whether the subject volunteers or not. This goes back to why Uncle Chuck created the roboticizer technology in the first place: as a means of improving the quality of life for Mobians. But the whole thing was abandoned because of the free will problem. This is the premise the comic has been operating on all this time. This was the situation that was spelled out in the SatAM ep "Blast To The Past: Part 1," and this is one of the facts that SHOULD have found its way into the series's Character Bible. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot: Ken Penders is still WRITING the Character Bible! And at least he was able to squeeze in Snively's roboticization as the last sentence of this month's installment about the little twerp. I've also tried to be generous WRT the "toxic poisons" [are there any other kind?] plot point. I mean, here's a group of hyoomons that have lived on a starship for 10 years before returning to Mobius. You'd think ONE of them would know something about medicine or environmental hazards and been able to independently figure that out. Unless that one was Cheesehead. In any event, the Os collectively would have to be as dumb as a sack of hair not to realize that there was something rotten in Robotropolis. But I'm sorry; I can only suspend so much disbelief. And please, just WHAT was the Hope/Agnes/Robotnik sequence about? Aside from being about two pages long? Was Robotnik serious about the offer? If he was jiving Hope, was that implied in the "I couldn't have said it better myself" line? Wouldn't it have been simpler to just broadcast Agnes's roboticization for the sadistic kick of it, and simply not bother with any surrender offers? Just a simple "Say 'Goodbye' to Grandma, blondie!" This story had a coherent narrative line as a whole, but when you look at its component parts it's kind of a mess. The only exception is the stuff that happens in Knothole; it's when the action shifts to Robotropolis that things start to fly apart. Head Score: 5. EYE: I thought, I honestly thought, that Ron Lim would be playing to his strength of drawing hyoomons when the story switched to dealing with Hope and the Overlanders, and for the most part it worked out that way. Unfortunately, this is still Sonic's comic, and he and the other Mobians continue to be ill- served by Ron. One of the biggest problems is character expressions. There just aren't that many of them on display. Ron's art never rises to the occasion. Take the throne room scene. Max is going through some heavy emotional stuff: regret, guilt, surprise. But it really takes a leap of the imagination to see ANY of that in Max's face as depicted by Ron Lim. Not that he's solved his off-model problem, either. I've mentioned Sonic's too-thin limbs. Uncle Chuck has the same problem; in page 1 panel 1, in fact, he looks like an electric orangutan with pipecleaner arms. Tails continues to look too doggy, as well. But cheer up, Sonic fans, help is on the way. In 3 or four months a new artist will join the crew: J. Axer. Yes, another fan artist, whose kickin' work is on display at teamartail.com takes his place beside Dawn Best as they show the so-called "professionals" how this game is played. And it won't be too soon for me. Eye Score: 4. HEART: The emotional cornerstone for this tale is the Robotnik/Agnes/Hope scene. It manages to evoke the proper mood with some help from Ron Lim; Hope looks properly forlorn at the top of page 9. Still, the mood is established DESPITE the writing and not because of it. I simply disregarded the word balloons and let it happen visually. Where we go from here I don't know. Hope's situation, whether she's allowed to stay in Knothole, is scheduled to be resolved in S108. I guess she'll be in limbo until then. I can only hope that, given a bit more time, Karl will have found a way to actually flesh out the character. It's not that big of a problem. Heck, I can supply some insight into Hope's character and it would only take one page. I was noodling through a story line that would involve Hope's being taken to Knothole by Sonic, and came up with the following: PANEL 1: Sonic and Hope in the foreground, the trees of the Great Forest in the mid- and background. Sonic jerks a thumb toward the trees. Hope isn't looking at him as she stares, wide-eyed and smiling, at the forest. SONIC: OK, kid, from here on we walk. HOPE: Oh, WOW! PANEL 2: BEV [bird's-eye view] of Sonic and Hope standing at the base of a tree looking upward. Sonic is puzzled. HOPE: This is ... SO ... COOL!! SONIC: What? PANEL 3: Sonic looks quizzically at Hope, who is looking closely at the trunk of a tree and places her hand against it. SONIC: You've never seen a tree before? HOPE: Only on vid screens. PANEL 4: Close-up of Hope's hand against the tree, her fingers feeling the texture of the bark. HOPE [Caption box]: "I was born and raised on a starship!" PANEL 5: Sonic stands with his arms folded across his chest, a dubious expression on his face, as Hope bends down to happily examine a bunch of wildflowers growing at her feet. HOPE: And you get to live with real trees ... real grass ... real flowers... PANEL 6: Hope does an exaggerated take as an insect flies out of the clump of flowers, startling her. Sonic doesn't change his pose, but he smirks at her. HOPE [broken balloon]: AAAUGH!! SONIC: Real bugs! In answer to the title question, I don't want to change the Sonic world; just take a bad continuity and make it better. That's all I want from this comic. Nothing maudlin, no sentimentality; just a sense that these are NOT characters who are dead behind the eyes. And it'd not that difficult. I mean, if I can do it.... Heart Score: 5. Character Bible entries [I know Ken calls them "Data sheets" but that's what they ARE] for Snively and Dimitri. Fan Art: Art by Kevin Soares, Jenny Dee (how the town fathers let her get away with it, I don't know) and Ethan Porter, but Kim Alek's drawing of a super-kawaii Tails with flower and bicycle tire gets pride of place. "Myth-taken Identity: Part 3" Story: Mike Gallagher; Art: Nelson Ribiero; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Inker and Letterer: Unknown. Guru blabs his head off for the benefit of the latecomers as he climbs down a rope ladder and enters the control center for the dam he discovered in the previous installment. Making a startling discovery, he runs off and we find... That the bunyip has released Bill, Barby and Walt after Barby managed to communicate with him. OK, I can accept that, but what I'd like to know is how Walt and Barby got into the "airtight underwater observation deck" with no signs of an airlock anywhere. Also, if the observation deck is "airtight" it must make communication from one side of the glass to the other rather difficult. I know, I know: mere plotholes. Let's move along. Anyway, it's now the bunyip's turn at exposition. He was a happy enough monster until Crocbot showed up and built the darned dam. So he's not really a monster, Just Misunderstood. This situation is easy enough to solve when Guru tells everyone about the explosives he happened to find. The dam is blown up and the bunyip is happy. HEAD: Guru in this story seems to have suffered from the Antoine Disappearing Accent Syndrome. In this case, however, it's his 60's hippie argot that almost completely disappears. Sure there are one or two spots, such as "Holy Hendrix!," where it comes through. Otherwise, Gallagher is so busy winding up this tale that he forgets to translate some of Guru's lines into hippie jargon. "Look at all this antiquated equipment" could at least have been rendered as "Dig these old-time controls, man!" "How typical!" is too straight for the character; having him say "Bummer!" would have done the job. But that, and the observation deck plot holes, are the only real flaws in the story. We've had the set-up and development, and now it's time for the resolution. Remember "resolution"? Where a writer actually brings a story line to an ending, usually one that satisfies the readers? Didn't get too many of them in 2001, did we? Especially the satisfaction part. If Karl Bollers had titled the cover story in this issue "You Say You Want A Resoluton?" the answer from the fans would have been a thundering "YES!!!" Head Score: 6. EYE: Nelson Ribiero? What IS it about working with this comic? Manny Galan's work on Sonic stories was far from impressive; in fact, it was downright bad, displaying many of the same faults Ron Lim demonstrates. Yet when he went over to the Knuckles books he shone like a star, and set the bar for every artist that followed him. And now Nelson Ribiero has followed suit. I don't mind saying I was NOT impressed by his work in the Sonic book, particularly S96's "The Messenger." The modeling was off and it all just seemed so weird-looking. Here, he turns in work that's little short of brilliant! I was sort of put off by his use of Earth maps of Australia and Papua New Guinea as backgrounds for some pages, but the framing device of the lashed sticks was a neat idea. He couldn't do anything with Barby's modeling, of course, but his retrofitting of the bunyip with a shark's tail and dorsal fins didn't hurt at all. But for whatever reason, being able to draw Sonic seems to elude all but a handful of artists. Dave Manak was the early star, though Art Mawhinney really set the standard. A lot of artists came and went over the years, and they never really did justice to the blue blur. Yet here Ribiero just turns in really great work! Let this be a lesson to Archie Comic: give the back stories to whomever you want, but when you find a good Sonic artist, as opposed to some hack who can make your artificially short deadlines, hold onto him/her with both hands. Eye Score: 9. HEART: The plight of the bunyip was the story here, and it was treated in retrospect. Not that much to go on, really. N/A. Off-Panel: I don't know from Lou Maldonado, I don't get it, I don't read the flagship Archie comics, let's move on. This Just In: Karl Bollers gets to write this one. He compares the recent spate of Sonic stories with seasons of a television series. Which sort of makes sense, but there's one kind of TV writing that Karl doesn't mention and which definitely applies to writing for Sonic: you have to think of Sonic as an ensemble show, like "Friends" or "M*A*S*H." The characters are too well-loved by the fans and too well-defined by the past to ignore the individual quirks of each cast member. And, despite their differences, they function best as a unit as they play off each other. This is where the Sonic-Sally interaction has been sorely missed. Heck, the Sonic-Antoine interaction hasn't gotten much of a workout lately, either! Letters: Kudos to Andrew Sautter, who's sent me videotapes of the game play for the Sonic Adventure games, for getting a letter in print; see above for news of the proposed "pitching change" represented by the upcoming Axer advent. But the most interesting part of the column was Ken Penders's non-answer to Elizabeth Gasparecz asking about the ages of the Freedom Fighters. Ken brings in the info from the Sally Character Bible page and everything else except the phases of the Mobian moon(s) and STILL avoids saying how old they are. So Elizabeth, if you're reading this, with the exception of Tails who's 10 years old everyone else is 16. Even Antoine, whom the Archie crowd claims is 19 despite the fact that no such age difference has been demonstrated in the Sonic Kids stories where it would have been most noticeable. Ken, you're a writer. Writers communicate. Leave the tap- dancing to Savion Glover.