Sonic #106 [Apr 2002] Spaz/Ribiero/Ray cover: "Dragons Lair," the cover declares, which reminds me of the pioneering interactive, videodisc-based arcade game of the same name featuring animations by Don Bluth. None of that here, though, and unfortunately for her fans, no Dulcy either. Some of the fans, and I was among them, had hoped that she would be the dragon in question in this story arc and that she'd be returned to the continuity. She's still an appealing character, in a Mihoshi sort of way. The cover itself is impressive enough, though I get the feeling that Pat Spaziante may have been more than a little cheesed by Nelson Ribiero's addition. The clue is the signature: "Spaz Shmaz." Quick language lesson: in Yiddish the preface sh- or shm- (sometimes sch-) is tacked onto a word as a prefatory sound to indicate derision and contradiction. The classic example cited by Leo Rosten in "The Joys of Yiddish" is: "Cancer-schmancer, so long as you're healthy." Rosten gives no indication, however, as to where the practice came from and why the use of those particular letters. Personally I think they just sound neat. "Crouching Hedgehog Hidden Dragon" [Sorry, can't help with the kanji subtitle] Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Pam Eklund and Andrew Pepoy; Coloring: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell "with assists by Julie Liu"; Editor/Art Director: J. F. Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater. As someone serves up a heaping helping of exposition, Antoine seems to be having a bit of trouble keeping the Freedom Fighter Special under control. Sonic, meanwhile, has other concerns: "What's up with Sal?" he wonders. So do I. Her forehead has gotten HUGE! She looks like a Metalunan, the intelligent aliens from the sci-fi film "This Island Earth." Anyway, the FFS eventually lands at Station Square. Sally warns them to be ready for anything; what they're NOT ready for is the star treatment they're accorded. She must have forgotten that, having tackled Perfect Chaos a while back, they just might be welcome. They then get to meet "the President." Aside from having perfect teeth, he doesn't seem like that big a deal. Anyway, over dinner Sally drops the other boot: she's looking to resettle the Overlanders who walked out on Robotnik last issue, and wants to settle them in Station Square. "The physical and cultural differences are too great," she says, in response to the question of their moving to Knothole. Because the Station Squares [hey, I think the name works] don't jump at the offer, Sonic demonstrates that his diplomatic skills are on a par with Geoffrey Sinjin's interrogation skills, until cooler auburn heads prevail. Sally uses Nicole to display a hologram of Robotnik, explaining that he created Shadow from the second Sonic Adventure game. She then sweetens the deal by offering to give the Squares "all tactical information on this individual." The writing, however, is ambiguous enough so that we're not sure whether she's talking about Robotnik or Shadow. President Square can't figure it out either and wants to sleep on it. That evening, Sonic is playing left-handed guitar in what I presume to be his hotel suite and flashing back on King Max taking physical therapy and asking him to bodyguard Sally on this mission. As he breaks off the guitar playing and joins Rotor and Tails as they head for "the arcade," he fails to notice the dragon sailing across the night sky. The next day, President Square is reviewing the taped footage of Sonic's various battles with Shadow, Chaos, and Silver Sonic II. In dialogue reminiscent of the opening of S66's "A Friend In Deed," he and his secretary have the following exchange: Prez: He's certainly got all the right moves. Sec'y: That he does, sir ... that he does. This scintillating verbiage is interrupted by a dragon attack. "Is that what I think it is?" President Square asks. He no sooner wonders out loud whether this isn't a job for Sonic the Hedgehog when our hero shows up on the scene. With Bunnie, Tails and Rotor on their way to deliver a slightly tardy assist, Sonic gets whip-snapped by the dragon's tail, dashes up a tree and into a nearby pond. President Square finally gets around to admitting that they've got a slight dragon infestation problem, which is why they didn't agree to take in the O's right away. Sonic then cuts to the chase: If he plays dragon exterminator then the O's become Squares. "You've got yourself a deal," President Square says, and we've got ourselves a plot for next month. HEAD: The story itself is pretty straightforward: the Freedom Fighters travel to Station Square to try to get them to take in the Overlanders and discover there's at least one dragon on the loose. Karl Bollers can't be faulted for that. It's HOW the story's told that could use some improvement. Identify the speaker of the following dialogue from page 1: "There it is, Freedom Fighters ... the entrance to the hidden city of Station Square! Who'd ever believe an airplane carrying Overlanders smacked into this mountain centuries back and the survivors discovered a lost continent beneath it?" It doesn't help that during this dialogue all we get visually are exterior shots of the Freedom Fighter Special. So who IS talking? We pretty much have to do this by process of elimination. Sonic? It can't be him because it's missing his standard cool argot. Sally? Not likely, since Antoine calls the speaker "Mon ami," and he'd have used something more formal when replying to Sally, such as "My Princess." Tails? Sounds too grown-up. Bunnie? Can't be; there's no trace of her Southern accent. So that pretty much leaves Rotor, who to date is the most personality-impaired member of the Knothole gang. But this sequence highlights one of the reasons why comic book writing isn't exactly taken seriously as a form of writing. What you have here is a big, gooey lump of exposition with no hint of any personality on the part of the speaker. It might as well BE the Freedom Fighter Special that's talking! BTW, an accent may help identify a speaker, but it's only a quick-and- dirty excuse for giving someone a personality. Karl DOES get points, though, for keeping Antoine's accent alive. But in order to put across a sense of personality it would take such a clear understanding of the character that their dialogue would be unmistakable. The sequence as it stands is just more of the same dead-behind-the-eyes writing the comic has been serving up for years. The plot is simple and intelligent, but there are still problems to be confronted. Head Score: 8. EYE: Once more, Ron Lim is far more at home with drawing his Station Squares than with the Freedom Fighters. Sally, as I've already said, is ill-served by getting a huge forehead. And on page 7 panel 3 her hair looks like a pot boiling over. Talk about a bad hair day! And Rotor is still suffering from Shrunken Head Syndrome. This would be funny if it wasn't THEIR book! Eye Score: 5. HEART: There are at least two stories that could have been told between S105's "You Say You Want A Revelation?" and this one. And they could have been both interesting and insightful. They spring from the question: Just what DID happen after the O's walked out on Robotnik? The only hint we get is Sally's remark about their being too "set in their ways" to live in Knothole. Which makes me wonder whether anyone even tried. Didn't the thought of getting back to Nature after being cooped up on a starship for ten years appeal to ANY of them? Did the thought of sharing the Great Forest with the furries turn the Overlanders off? Did they riot and threaten to trash Knothole, chanting "Two, four, six, eight/We don't want to integrate!"? And what about Hope, whose fate will be spelled out in two or three issues? I'd thought that she might act as a catalyst, possibly inspiring the O's to at least give it a try. Whether she did or not, I guess we'll never know. OK, so maybe that plot line hits a little too close to home, with its thinly-disguised treatment of race relations. But maybe it should have been told BECAUSE it's that volatile! Heaven knows the comics as a whole have flirted with relevance before and will do so again, though Archie Comics is so hopelessly stuck in their own alternate reality that their management would probably never allow it. Still, I can't help but wonder. Speaking of flirting, aside from one or two moments involving an introspective Sonic, there's not much that's emotionally grabbing about this story; mostly it's just an exercise in marking time until the dragon shows up. Heart Score: 4. Fan Art: Tubby Fleck, alias plaza355, takes honors for sending in an e-drawing of Knuckles staying one step ahead of King Boom Boo from the Sonic Adventure 2 game. Now THIS drawing has some personality to it! Sonic and Shadow square off in a drawing by Johnny Ledesma, and Leonard Martin gives Prince Elias the manga/anime treatment. In fact, all three drawings show some Japanese influence, right down to Elias's cotton candy-pink hair. Sega Data File: 7 Ken Penders manfully tries to fit a Station Square peg into a round hole, the one he and Karl Bollers dug for themselves during the Sonic Adventure adaptation when they tried melding the Sonic island from the Sonic anime with the Station Square from Sonic Adventure by, as you can see, putting Station Square inside the Island. One Point of Interest Ken failed to mention: the fake sky above the city, as in the now-deathless line: "Look! Something's breaking through the fake sky!" ("Menace To Society," S83). I'm sorry, but there's no way on God's green footstool anyone can say that line AND keep a straight face! And no, the "convex hologram panels" don't count. "Reunification: Part 1" Story: Ken Penders; Layouts: Ken Penders; Actual Art: Dawn Best; Ink: Ken Penders; Color: Josh Ray; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editor: Justin Gabrie Remember the Floating Island? It's about time we got back there. If it looks desolate, it's because the entire populace was teleported off into another Zone in "Best of Times, Worst of Times," SSS14. We find materializing on the Island not Knuckles, but a "being he never imagined." In fact, she's not even a glint in Knuckles's eye yet. Give it up for ... Lara-Su! Decked out in a vest that's more than adequate to hide the discreet white chest band that's the mark of the Guardians, she wonders not only where she is but WHEN she is. As she moves out to scout the city, she manages to miss a couple Dark Legionnaires searching the area. You can tell they're with the DL because even though they're not wearing those Jawa hoods they report in to "Great Dimitri." As for Great Dimitri, he may not be doing so great as Lien- Da becomes solicitous about his health. But they both know she's chomping at the bit, waiting to take over the Legion. Lien-Da decides to jazz with Dimitri's blood pressure instead of his blood sugar by bringing him the news that Knuckles has left the building ... or spaceship or whatever, and is on the Floating Island. His apparent intent: to use all that pent-up Chaos energy "to reverse the effects of the quantum beam." Lara-Su notes that not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. That means either everyone's off in another Zone, or else they're home hanging their stockings by the chimney with care. Just then, the wind picks up, and I mean it picks HER up and deposits her a distance away from where she started. Said wind, in fact, was apparently caused by the displacement of air as the former inhabitants of the Floating Island return. Constable Remington offers to help the stranger to her feet and Lara-Su realizes, in a thought balloon, "it's the echidna who killed Knuckles!!!" O-kaaaaay. HEAD: I suppose Ken was working off of some internal logic when he paced the stories the way he did, but now that Knuckles has finally undone the damage from "Best of Times..." all I can say is "It's about freakin' time!" If he'd have thought to do that, oh, I don't know, back about nine months ago we could have been spared some really bad writing, such as the Kragok-Tobor- Hawking interlude in S100's Welcome To The Dark Side." As far as I'm concerned, Ken's started the new year off right: with a short and to-the-point story that brings things back to what passes for normal around these parts. For the time being, anyway. Head Score: 9. EYE: With the appearance of the as-yet-unnamed Lara-Su, one of the most insistent fan questions of recent times finds an answer. For years now, literally, ever since Ken Penders broke the news that the "Knuckles : 20 Years Later" story arc would feature the daughter of Knuckles and Julie-Su, a segment of the fan base has been peppering Ken with the same question during every chat session: "What color is Lara-Su?" To tell you the truth, I NEVER imagined that there's be this kind of fan frenzy for a character even before she sets foot on the page! And it's significant that she's a teenage girl; this should demonstrate once and for all that that's a segment of the fan base that will NOT be denied. They were poised ... primed ... READY ... for one of their own to enter the continuity. And a lot of fan art (and I don't know how much fanfic) has been waiting on the answer to the question: "What's her color?" So now we know: she's red with her mother's violet eyes and hair to match. The glasses perched on the end of her snout were actually inspired by the eyewear of one of the fans. And let us all take a moment and thank Jah that Ron Lim was NOT doing the artwork for the Knuckles books when it came time for Lara-Su to make her appearance. Instead, Dawn Best did the pencil work and am I glad! Ken may have planned the layouts on each page, but I have to wonder whether anyone else could have captured Lara-Su's pensive moods at the top of page 5. That, to me, is one of the tests of a comic artist: can you make a character look good when they're standing still and not just in motion? This is one of the traits that separates old school comic artists from the manga and manga-inspired artists: a Zen- like appreciation for stillness without a dependence on broad action. Not that Dawn is a slouch in THAT department, either. Welcome aboard, Lara-Su. Eye Score: 10. HEART: Any concern about Lara-Su meeting up with her dad "Back To The Future"-style sort of takes a back seat in light of the last panel's revelation that Constable Remington is somehow slated or fated to kill Knuckles. Then again, to paraphrase a certain ex-president, that depends on what your definition of "kill" is. Ken has already gone out of his way to demonstrate that dead isn't necessarily dead in his stories, and I'm not talking about the faux fatal fall of Princess Sally in "Endgame." We just saw Hawking return and escort Tobor through the echidna equivalent of the pearly gates in "Welcome To The Dark Side." So already the notion of "killing" Knuckles is a bit meaningless. And there's no reason Ken shouldn't follow through on this plot point; after all, he spent two stories drumming it into our heads that Knuckles couldn't alter the past even with oodles of Chaos energy at his disposal, so why should we think Lara-Su will be any luckier in altering what may be Knuckles's future but which is also HER past? Don'cha just hate time travel stories? I've got good vibes about Lara-Su for the moment, but admittedly it's still early in the game. She looks like she inherited a measure of her mom's spunk and attitude, something that Julie-Su herself has been missing lately. But it remains to be seen whether Knuckles's daughter in a fight ultimately acts like Lara-Le or Lara Croft. I think her fans are betting on the latter. Frankly, so am I. Heart Score: 7. Off-Panel: I don't know who Ellen is, or why Sonic has become a Riverdale zombie. I get the impression that she's the Archie Comics Webmistress. Sonic-Grams: More like "Sonic-Gram," actually, as almost the entire two pages is taken up by mike_online's letter which explained to me, as it does to everyone else, who was whom in the Freedom Fighters of the Galaxy arc (S103-104). Ken or Justin or whoever wrote this said that "a number of the younger readers" (you know, the ones they consider their core constituency) "were more than a tad curious about the source material." Translation: they didn't get that the story was a parody because they weren't familiar with the Guardians of the Galaxy. As a result, they didn't know what the freak was going on! And considering that this letter appears a scant 3 months after S103 came out, I get the queasy feeling that fan confusion was more widespread than Archie Comics is willing to let on. I may be wrong. Finally, Archie observes the annual ritual of printing how sales are doing in such a way that only someone with an advanced degree in engineering can understand all that tiny type. Fortunately, Sonic fan Ron Bauerle is so qualified. Basically, he says that sales continue to decline, but the RATE of decline is not as steep as before.