Sonic #107 [Apr 2002] Spaz/Ribiero/Ray cover: "Ladies and gentlemen, Sonic and Hedgehog with special guests, the Backstreet Boys!" I'm sorry. There's no way I can take this cover seriously. I know these are supposed to be the members of Paladin Team Sigma Alpha-2, and they're supposed to exude danger and menace and generally remind us of the guys who went into the jungle with Arnold in "Predator" and never came out. Unfortunately, Pat Spaziante undercuts that image; whether he did so on his own or on orders from Management is the only open question. Heaven knows he tried with the one guy wearing chains and the cow skull on his shoulder, though all that did was remind me of the old pro wrestling tag team, the Road Warriors. But look at the composition as a whole: the too-choreographed poses; the too- pretty faces of the guys, especially the one on the far right; the too-neat and too-high-tech uniforms; even the back lighting which gives the impression of stage lighting throwing exaggerated shadows downstage. The whole composition screams "Boy band in concert"! It's not BAD art by any means, certainly not a candidate for Worst Cover Art of 2002, but it IS unintentionally hilarious. "Crouching Hedgehog, Hidden Dragon: Part 2" Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Pam Eklund and Andrew Pepoy; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Lettering: Jeff Powell and Julie Liu (I'm guessing she did the kanji); Editor/Art Director: Justin F. Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-In- Chief: Richard Goldwater. Sonic and Tails have a hard time tearing themselves away from some video game or other (one that they didn't have to schlep down to "the arcade" to play) to tend to the business at hand. For the benefit of those just joining the comic, Sonic has to spell out the plot for a nearly-hypnotized Tails. Proof that video games rot your brain. Commander Brass (I'm not going to guess how he got that name) harkens back to America's involvement in Vietnam by using the phrase "terminate with extreme prejudice." I think that phrase was best summed up by the air pirate Don Carnage on Disney's TaleSpin: "Shoot them! A lot!!" Sonic is either so bored by Brass's presentation or else stayed up so late playing video games that he nods off. Sally gives him a quick poke with her elbow, which is about as much physical contact between the two as the comic's management will allow. Sonic wakes up just in time for the arrival of some old friends: Paladin Team Sigma Alpha-2. Remembering how he cleaned their clocks at the prologue to Sonic Adventure 2, it's all he can do to keep from busting a gut. President Square doesn't get it; the Siggies aren't about to admit that Sonic got the better of them; Sal makes the diplomatic save. Sonic, Tails, Bunnie and the Siggies then chopter out to Pyro Island. "Pyro," of course, is the Greek word for "fire" so the scene now shifts to Fire Island. Those of you who know what I'm hinting at, feel free to make your own jokes. The furs show up the Siggies right from the start by not using parachutes. The Knothole crowd is more at ease on the island than the Siggies, though nobody seems to notice the two red glowing eyes looking at them. Suddenly two of the Siggies turn up missing. While the remaining Siggies suggest that they start looking for their buds, Sonic begs to differ. He also has to step in between one Siggie and Bunnie before the fur REALLY starts flying. The groups part company. One of the advantages of being a furry is that you think like one. Tails decides that the dragon has taken up residence behind a waterfall, and the three get drenched going in. And who should they find, nursing a broken arm, but their old friend from Knothole, Dulcy, who made it back into the continuity after all! Unfortunately, she's shacked up with Zan, the Chinese-style dragon from the previous installment, and he doesn't care for her taste in friends. To further embellish the plot, Dulcy tells her friends that the attacks by Zan were retaliatory strikes because the O's wanted to use Fire Island for military testing [insert second round of jokes here]. There's a nice bit of ambiguity as Bunnie points out Dulcy's broken arm and Zan justifies what we assume was his previous attack on Sonic by talking about "blowing off a little steam," something which dragons do on a pretty regular basis, I'd imagine. While Zan continues talking tough, he's suddenly muzzled by the three remaining Siggies. Before they can waste either Zan or Dulcy, Sonic field-strips their weaponry in record time. Zan, meanwhile, busts out of his muzzle and intends to make short work of the Siggies. When Dulcy tries to stop him, Zan does his impersonation of Sammy Sosa hitting a home run; unfortunately, Dulcy gets to be the ball. Bunnie and Tails catch up with her outside the cave, and Bunnie puts the pieces together: Dulcy's arm got busted by Zan, probably while he was "blowing off steam," as he put it. As Bunnie does some curbside counseling, Sonic manages to stay one step ahead of Zan. The Siggies, however, have other plans. Planting some explosive charges, they hot-foot it out of the cave while everyone else is otherwise occupied. The cave collapses with Sonic and Zan inside. We don't know Zan's fate and can only assume the worst, but Sonic, in a replay of the deus ex machina from "Crash!" (S91), manages to burrow his way to safety. The Siggies report that Zan's been neutralized, and President Square and Sally congratulate each other, blissfully clueless as to the details. HEAD: Let's get the Siggies out of the way first. In this story, they were the weakest link. Sonic recognized them, but they either didn't recognize him or didn't want to acknowledge that they'd met before and had come off the worse for the encounter. Mostly, they act like Sonic, Tails, and Bunnie aren't even in the same frame. Two of the Sigs then turn into redshirts when they reach Fire Island, and Karl never gets around to telling us exactly what happened to them; we can only assume that Zan did something nasty to them. The fact of the matter is, Karl really didn't NEED to bring the Siggies back into this story because there was nothing in this story that built upon their previous encounter with Sonic, except for Sonic getting a good laugh out of their entrance. Sonic's low-level tweaking of them never really went anywhere; none of them threatened to ice Sonic in retaliation for humiliating them, which I would have expected from at least one of the dudes. Maybe something could have been developed with an extra page or two at Karl's disposal. Bottom line: any old squad of Overlanders could have done the job. It didn't HAVE to be the Sigs. Dragons are one of the most universal of mythical creatures, occurring in the lore of Europe, Asia, and (if you count Quetzalcoatl) Central America. Thus, there are dragons and there are dragons. When I wrote the fanfic "Homecoming" about Dulcy returning to the realm of Mobian dragons, I only created four varieties based on the ever-popular Greek elementals -- ground, air, water, and fire, with Dulcy being an air. In the Harry Potter series, one of the books on the required reading list for First Years at Hogwarts is Newt Scamander's "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them." From reading that book, which Rowling published as part of a charity drive as a slim paperback along with Kennilworthy Whisp's "Quidditch Through The Ages", we find that Scamander lists nine different kinds of dragon. Zan is a Chinese Fireball, a.k.a. a Liondragon. Not as territorial as other varieties, it is still aggressive and in feeding prefers pigs and humans, so maybe we don't have to wonder about what happened to the two Siggie redshirts. As for Dulcy, she'd probably come closer to being a Common Welsh Green. In any event, it's good to see her back, despite the dire straits into which she's landed; more about her domestic situation later. Aside from the Siggie plot point which never went much of anywhere, the only other weak spot was the opening gambit involving Sonic's reminding Tails of the plot. Exposition is one thing, but I hate when its use makes the characters look clueless. Otherwise, Karl gets a good deal of traction with this story, especially in juxtaposing the final panel with the dialogue between Sally and President Square. Head Score: 7. EYE: A poster on Ken's message board recently sang the praises of Ron Lim's work on the Silver Surfer series back in the 1990's. Once again Ron does good work with the Squares, and his Dulcy is surprisingly on-model. I only wish I could say the same for the other Freedom Fighters. Sally still looks wrong, Tails still looks like he's morphing into Goofy (his nose is SO wrong!), and there are times when Bunnie's ears are so long and streamer-like they make her look like Sailor Moon! More of the same from Ron, unfortunately. Eye Score: 5. HEART: I have to admit, Karl really surprised me with the Dulcy's Keeping Company With Another Dragon plot point, but as if THAT weren't enough it turns out that there's the whole domestic violence subplot happening as well. As I pointed out in my review of S97, the majority of the comic book characters we know of today came out of either the Depression or the early 1960's Age of Atomic Anxiety. As such, they brought their social milieus with them. Back then, a secret identity was standard equipment with just about every superhero, and the attendant need for secrecy loomed so large in the stories it went unquestioned. Somewhere along the way, though, that started changing, and the comics have started seriously reflecting that change. The most recent example was the script for Amazing Spider-man #38 (old numbering, #479), which revolved around Aunt May confronting Peter Parker with her knowledge that he's Spider-man. It's an amazing script, one that was unthinkable in decades past. In the course of the story, for example, Aunt May admits that she'd have been better prepared to have found out that Peter wore dresses instead of a superhero costume. And it needed a major talent to do justice to the story: J. Michael Straczynski, best known as being to Babylon 5 what Gene Roddenberry was to Star Trek. So in a sense it's not all that surprising that, for Karl's last cover story before being moved to co-back story writer status along with Ken Penders, Karl should aim to inject a bit of relevance into a comic that had always been considered kid's stuff by the management and which seems to be heading back in that direction (see below). And he got it right with Dulcy's blaming herself for Zan's abuse, a not-uncommon reaction among victims of battering. The ending, in fact, is more moving than that Karl did for S66's "A Friend In Deed," where Sonic, Tails and Nate Morgan contemplate the self-sacrifice of Eddy the Yeti. By Ron's putting the main characters in silhouette, it's easy to believe that despite the pain she'd suffered at the talons of Zan, Dulcy would still be saddened by his apparent demise. I say "apparent" because death cheats have become an unfortunate hallmark of the writing style for this comic, from "Endgame" to the present. Still, I have to applaud Karl for this story. I've been wondering for years whatever happened to the writer of the excellent "Running To Stand Still" (S54). Turns out he had one more really great story in him, and he tells it well despite the opening exposition and the whole business with the Siggies. Nothing about the abuse subplot feels tacked-on or OOC. It was a surprising development handled very well. It's kind of a wrenching experience to see that this happened to someone as sweet as Dulcy; sort of like finding out that the prom queen from your high school class was busted in a raid on a crack house. If there's anything unsettling about this plot point, it's the sneaking suspicion that Karl needed to give us some reason to hate Zan. That way, we wouldn't have any regrets when the Siggies, who as agents of GUN want to take over Fire Island themselves and are looking for an excuse to blow Zan away, off the dude. But like the Is Sally Dead plot point that Ken had running through Endgame, this one sort of backfires on Karl. Because you're still left with the impression, however ambiguous, that despite treating Dulcy the way Drago treated Hershey in Endgame, she still had feelings for the fireball, which makes the ending that much more poignant. Heart Score: 10. Fan Art: After a long absence, this feature is back. Unfortunately, the artwork on display isn't anything special. I have to wonder why Genarro Rubino's Tails appears to be juggling crescent wrenches. Sega Data File: For those of you just joining us and wondering what the deal is with Dulcy, Ken provides a biography. This only hints, however, at the more endearing qualities that came through in her appearance in the second season of SatAM's "Sonic The Hedgehog" where her voice work was done by Cree Frank, who also voices Suzie Carmichael on "Rugrats." Connect The Dots: Just to keep the book from getting TOO entrenched with a more mature audience, there's a connect-the- dots picture of ... of ... I must've taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque ... You know, there's a reason why these dots are usually numbered instead of color-coded. I hope I'm not going color-blind in my old age. "Unification: Part 2" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Dawn Best; Layouts: Ken Penders; Ink: Ken Penders; Coloring: Robbie O'Ouinn [sic] [debut]; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editor: Justin Gabrie. Lien-Da is NOT a happy camper, having discovered that Knuckles has just undone the whole Zap Everyone Into Another Zone plot point from "Best of Times, Worst of Times" (SSS14). In fact, much of this story consists of characters we haven't seen in a while doing the Agonizing Reappraisal routine. Dimirti is the first, earning the first Golden Duh! Award for 2002 with his observation that Knuckles "has demonstrated more power in that one act alone than I ever did in my Enerjak persona!" Yeah, well, I think moving an entire civilization full of living being from one spatio-temporal dimension to another just by using your mind qualifies. Lien-Da (and I LOVE that baleful look she gives Dimitri at the bottom of page 1) takes a page from the Commander Brass playbook and suggests termination with as much or as little prejudice as necessary. After being cautioned by Dimitri, she instead looks for someone to manipulate. Hey, I hear Prince Elias is looking for work. As for Lara-Su, she decides in the tradition of Marty McFly that she's better off time-traveling under an assumed name; in this case, Jani-Ca. Wynmacher and Lara-Le then join the party, even though the last we saw of them they were lip-locked at the Albion's Honeymoon Suite, and she has to make sure she doesn't slip and call Lara-Le "Grandma." And after WAY too long, the Chaotix are back ... somewhere or other. I forget what they were doing in "Best of Times..." when everyone got zapped. Oh, yeah, they and Knuckles were busting heads at Dark Legion Central. Back at Haven, it's the Brotherhood's turn to wonder what happened. As if in response, Locke gets a quick mental phone call from Knuckles: "Hi, Dad. Everything's cool. Talk to you later. Send money." "I fear my good intentions may have turned into my worst nightmares," Locke says, alluding to his zapping Knuckles with Chaos energy before he was hatched. To paraphrase Vector: "Gee, what was your first clue, Sher-Locke?" Knuckles, meanwhile, shows up for a less-than-emotional reunion with his mom, who accuses Knuckles of not taking care of himself. Oh, I don't know; from the look of things, he's certainly been eating his greens. And just to complicate things even further, the warbird comes in for a landing and Dimitri beams down. Knuckles, however, tells Remington to cool it with the firearms action as Dimitri claims that "the Technocracy wishes to rejoin echidna society." On whose terms, pal? HEAD: "Jillekenes!"? Time travel stories are a pain to write. One of the glaring problems here is why Lara-Su feels the need to use a phony name. I mean, think about it. How meaningful would the name Osama bin Laden have been twenty years ago? Maybe a handful of people in the United States would have known about the dude, tops, and they'd all be like State Department employees working the Saudi Arabian desk. And remember, Knuckles and Julie-Su haven't gotten busy yet so there's no way the name Lara-Su would mean anything to either of THEM! It's not like either one has been making a list of baby names recently, being preoccupied with other matters. But such is the illogic of time travel stories. "Jillekenes!"? At least the Brotherhood, the Chaotix, and the rest of the echidna populace (and, one presumes, the dingoes as well) are all back on the island and able to interact with Knuckles. But you know what would've been nice? Giving us some idea as to WHAT THE HECK THESE CHARACTERS HAVE BEEN GOING THROUGH SINCE THEY GOT ZAPPED OFF THE ISLAND!! They appear to have SOME consciousness of what happened to them, judging from the dialogue of the Chaotix. I'd just kinda like to know where they were and what they've been doing. I know that Ken has had to make some cuts in his stories to accommodate their running as back stories, but the characters themselves are either strangely oblivious, or else supremely not interested in a rather vital plot point. Still, it would have been nice to know. It would save the whole Zapping Everybody Into Another Dimension plot point from meeting the same fate as the Knothole Is Three Hours In The Future plot point: a somewhat interesting concept that never really got utilized by the writers and which will henceforth not be mentioned in the comic again because it would cause too much embarrassment. "Jillekenes!"? Why didn't Ken just have Lara-Su say "Zoink!" and get it over with? This story has slipped into the development phase, with all the players moving into position for the next major development involving Dimitri and Echidna Civilization As We Knew It. And Ken is setting things up fairly well. So we'll have to wait and see what happens. Too bad he had to lose some bits along the way. Head Score: 8. EYE: I don't know to what extent Ken's "layouts" included positioning the characters, whether for instance it was Ken's idea to have the half-close-up of Lien-Da on page 2 panel 3. Whoever had that idea, it was very well executed by Dawn Best. And that sheepish grin of hers in page 2 panel 6 and her look of surprise in the last two panels on page 5 are priceless and infuse the character with life and a personality. Really great stuff. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Having entered the development phase, there isn't much room for emotional involvement, and oddly enough the moment with the most potential, Knuckles reuniting with Lara-Le, is ... flat. I don't know what other way to describe it. Knuckles is so low-key he's practically comatose. As for Lara-Le, she demonstrates WHY I think Ken should have devoted at least a little space to what happened to her and the others when they were off-island. Whatever happened to them SHOULD have impacted them one way or another. The experience's apparent effect on Lara-le is non-existent, as it is for Remington and everyone else. Good or bad, it should have been the topic of conversation between Knuckles and Lara-Le right off the bat. Instead, Ken has Lara-Le go all June Cleaver. It just doesn't work. No wonder Ken quickly brings Dimitri center stage to move away from this plot point. Heart Score: 5. Please note the ad for the Sonic the Hedgehog DVD and VHS cassettes. Unlike the videocassettes, the DVD contains a fifth ep, "Sonic and the Secret Scrolls," which is accessible after besting a trivia contest. The fans who maybe got into Sonic as a result of the Sonic Adventure games can now see what we SatAM fans have been raving about and which has been largely inaccessible for quite some time. What's more, the creatives now also have access to the material. They can experience the artwork that inspired Mawhinney and Manak, and see how the characters interact after the voice actors have breathed life into them. I don't know whether Archie will spring for DVDs for Karl, Ken and Ben or whether they'll have to pay for them out of pocket; the investment would definitely be worth it. In fact, with the rerelease of the SatAM material, the release of the Sonic Adventure 2 Battle game and the debut of Sonic for GameBoy Advanced, the blue dude with the attitude is enjoying something of a renaissance. Of course, the hardcores amongst the fans never doubted that it would happen. But that now puts the ball in Archie's court to get past some of the recent developments that have frankly bogged down the comic and led it off the paths of Sonic righteousness [e.g., Knothole High School; the Sneak]. THIS JUST IN: Karl handles the editorial chores and breaks the news of the format change starting next issue. Here's how it's going to be: The cover story will be reduced to 11 pages, written by newcomer Benny Lee and illustrated by Ron Lim; there follows a five-page back story written by Karl Bollers and illustrated by another newcomer, fan artist J. Axer. Rounding out the issue will be a six-page back story written by Ken Penders and illustrated by Dawn Best. That's 22 pages of story material in a 32-page book, plus two pages for Sonic-Grams and the front cover. The remaining seven pages will include ads, and I'm afraid nothing else. We'll see. SONIC-GRAMS: Ken explains that the appearance of the Knuckles Family Tree was unavoidably delayed because of more pressing matters last September. Hey, understandable. Ken and or/Archie can always post it on their respective Web sites. Ken also passes up a chance to do a Sonic lightbulb joke, and admits that he hadn't been including species information in the Data Sheets. Better late than never. OK, what the heck. This was originally a sumo wrestler joke, but it works: "How many Robotniks does it take to change a light bulb? Five; one to change the bulb, and four to pick him up off the floor after the stepladder collapses."