Sonic #112 [Sep 2002] Spaz/Ribiero/Ray cover: We get a glory hog instead of a hedgehog front and center as Antoine dominates the cover. Which wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the cover were less busy. Crowding in Bunnie, Sally, Rotor and Tails (who aren't necessary to the cover story, anyway) adds nothing to the cover and just clutters up what was a decent composition. And no, that's not a Robotnik Mini-Me hanging from the bottom of Tails's plane: that's Astal coming along for the ride once again. "Mistaken Identity Crisis" Writer: Benny Lee; Art: Art Mawhinney; Ink: Andrew Pepoy and Pam Eklund; Color: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editor/Art Director: Justin Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater. The story opens with a conversation between Antoine and General Pere. Man, I wish somebody at Archie would break down and give him a first name! Anyway, in the midst of the General recounting one of his war stories, they're interrupted with what looks like the appearance of a portal of some sort. Sonic dashes to the scene, saying: "I've seen this special effect before!" It's a nice little bit of deconstructionist dialogue, and for whatever reason it works better than the classic "Look! Something is breaking through the fake sky!" Sonic makes the catch as he takes delivery of an armful of Zonic, only this time around the Zonehog is much the worse for wear with a major dent in his helmet. Whatever it's made of, it apparently wasn't designed to actually protect the wearer's head. Maybe next time the Zone Cops will think twice about getting their uniforms from the lowest bidder. Sonic decides that the first order of business is to get Zonic some medical attention. The general's admiration of Sonic is not lost on Antoine, who looks to be literally overshadowed. Sonic brings Dr. Quack and the newbies up to speed about Zonic, who's sporting a serious bump on the head, though following the Peter Sellers rules of pronunciation Antoine and his dad would call it a "bimp." Leaving the medical facility, which looks way more rustic on the outside than on the inside, Sonic runs back into Antoine and his dad. Midway through accepting praise from the old man, Sonic realizes that Antoine is inadvertently getting ignored. Taking Antoine aside for a minute, he suggests a plan to spread a little of the glory Antoine's way. As Antoine hooks back up with his dad, Sonic is paged to the infirmary because Zonic is waking up. Meanwhile, Antoine and the General just happen to run across "one of [Sonic's] worst enemies." Give it up for: the Antisonic, last seen in ... it HAS been a while, hasn't it? Anyway, Antoine thinks that this is Sonic in cosplay mode and, with the blissful cluelessness of someone who thinks everybody else is in on the joke, manages to clean the Antisonic's clock with a lucky punch. It's only when the real Sonic and the real Zonic arrive on the scene that Ant realizes there's at least one hedgehog too many around here and that the whole fight thing was the real deal. He then takes a well-earned faint while the Antisonic wonders whether he didn't take a wrong turn and ended up on Bizarro World instead of Mobius Prime. HEAD: This 11-pager has the same feel as stories that were twice that long from back in the early years of the comic. Benny has stated that he'd be concentrating on the core Freedom Fighters, and he delivers in this story. Impressively, he doesn't reduce Antoine to the kind of raw nerve that he was in the second SatAM season in particular. In the TV series he had a certain striving for glory that made him something of a pill, but he's far more subdued here and far less of a jerk, and with good reason. I'll say more about that in the HEART section. The plot itself is an old one and has served animators well, especially at Hanna-Barbera. I believe both Fred Flintstone and George Jetson took turns impersonating a burglar for varying reasons, only to attract the real burglar, magnet-like, to add the necessary "Uh-oh!" factor to the plot. So for a story like this to work it has to be character- driven, and mercifully the right characters are driving it. Antoine is probably the perfect foil for this plot, with enough vainglory to allow himself to wade into danger unaware toting a false sense of security along for company. Again, he never overplays it, as he very easily could have. His appearance is enough without being too much, and that balance can make even a tired plot like this one work. Head Score: 9. EYE: Art has a last name, and it's "Mawhinney." As a veteran of the comic's early days, I have to say it felt like greeting an old friend to see Art Mawhinney's work again. Being away from the gang hasn't dimmed his ability to bring them to life. Sonic no longer looks like a fugitive from Stick Figure Theater having a bad quill day. Mawhinney's art brings the old sureness, the old sense of authority, back to illustrating Sonic in the classic style. And not just Sonic. Some of the incidental characters, such as the small fox on page 2 with the olive vest and gloves, carry the same weight and sense of believability, even though they're the comic book equivalent of walk-throughs. Then there's the staging. The opening layouts shift from WEV (worm's-eye-view) to BEV (bird's-eye-view) without any sense that he's just playing around with the perspective. That's because Mawhinney is more than just a comic book illustrator. When he left off illustrating Sonic, it was because he had enough work to do as a storyboard artist working on several animated shows, as he had worked on the SatAM Sonic in the past. That requires a way of thinking, a way of visualizing a scene, that isn't part of a How To Draw Comic Books course. A storyboard artist isn't thinking in terms of a print medium, but rather of a visual medium, whether television or motion pictures. It's a more dynamic approach than working with comics, and I've always appreciated it when Mawhinney brought that dynamism to his Sonic work. Welcome back! Eye Score: 10. HEART: If General D'Coollette hadn't been Zammed back into his right mind, this story could just as easily have featured Antoine trying to impress either Bunnie or Sally. Instead, Benny Lee makes this a story about an even heavier theme: Fathers and Sons. I can't say that this theme hasn't been getting a workout lately because it's never left. In fact, it's literally as old as the Bible; the pivotal moment in the story of Joseph is when his brothers, not knowing he's the Egyptian official they've been dealing with to buy food, plead with him not to hold Benjamin for ransom. The reason: it would kill their father, who is also Joseph's father. That's when he decides that the masquerade has gone on long enough. Hollywood has done its fair share of mining this particular vein, whether the relationship is real or merely metaphorical. Perhaps the greatest recent example has to be "Field of Dreams." So it's not as if we're talking about foreign territory here. And Benny Lee does a great job of working it into what could have ordinarily been just another retread of a tired plot. Because instead of wanting to get the girl, Antoine wants his father's approval, or even his admiration. That's a pretty heavy theme to work at, and Lee doesn't strike any false notes. Sonic realizes that Antoine's relationship with his dad isn't being helped by Sonic's being in the limelight so much, and even Antoine, to his credit, realizes that Sonic deserves it. That unspoken realization, communicated mainly by the pathos of Art Mawhinney's drawings of Ant, pulls Antoine out of the pit of being a comic relief buffoon and actually makes him a sympathetic presence. And I gotta tell ya, THAT takes real skill! And speaking of Sonic, this story convinces me more than ever that last issue's "Trouble With Grrrls" HAD to be something that Karl Bollers, Steve Butler et al. produced because someone in Management and/or Editorial said to. We're talking two different Sonics here! Last month Sonic was (I have to go back to the phrase I used last time) shallow and superficial. That's NOT the Sonic on display here, the Sonic who doesn't need to be beaten over the head himself to realize how much the General's praise of him is putting a hurting on Antoine. And he still manages not to run afoul of the Conventional Wisdom which holds that he's not supposed to wuss out in a boys' comic. So I'm going to continue pretending that last month's story never happened. I like this Sonic way better. Heart Score: 10. Data Files: True confession: I haven't read these in a while. In fact, I actively AVOID reading them the way that Ken, Karl et al. are supposed to avoid reading fanfics, and for somewhat the same reason. Just as they don't want their vision of the characters cluttered up with fan perceptions, so my writer's ego has convinced me that even though the Archie writers are the professionals they've probably got it "wrong." Like I say, that's pure ego talking, but I've also come to the conclusion that despite what the Data Files say, their TRUE feelings about the gang will show up in the stories themselves no matter what the Data Files say. I won't comment on the discrepancies that have crept into some of the files, but I will pass along a comment from a Sonic fan, Eric Christensen, who returned to the fandom recently and read the Tails profile: : we learn about Amy Rose's "noble" heritage, and about how Tails : was replaced : by a doppelganger during his transformation into Turbo Tails : and how it's : only a matter of time before his fate is - : : WAIT A @*#%&!* MINUTE!!! : : Tails was replaced during his supposed transformation into : Turbo Tails?! : Let's see, that was in roughly issue #56, and this is Issue : #112, divide 112 : by 2 and you get - : : YOU MEAN THAT THE REAL TAILS HAS BEEN MISSING FOR ONE HALF OF : THE ENTIRE : COMIC SERIES?! S114, when this is all supposed to be clarified if not actually resolved, can't come too soon for me. Fan Art: Sarah Phillips does a nicely colored rendering of Sonic, Samantha Moro submits a cute portrait of Rouge (who has yet to appear in the comic outside of one panel in S98, which ought to tell you something about her potential for the book), Kristi Hagadone does what I like to think is a picture of Lara-Su surrounded by the significant echidnas in her life, Chase Parham submits another drawing of Sonic in gray trenchcoat with a Chaos emerald pasted to his forehead (I STILL don't know what that represents!), and Michelle Howe submits envelope art featuring Sonic, Sally, Tails, Knuckles, and some power rings. Remember power rings? And "muy bravo" to Alina Velazquez for her drawing of "Sandra." Who's Sandra? I don't know. Certainly not Sandra Nightweaver, the black vixen created by David Pistone and used to good effect in the fanfic of Joseph DelaCroix. Let's see: she's got Rouge's coloring and ears, though they're adorned with gold earrings and more silver hoops than Camryn Manheim goes through in an entire season of "The Practice." She's got the one-piece garment, with gauntlets and boots. It's a cute drawing, and also a significant one: for what I believe is the first time in the history of this comic, a fan character has made it onto the Fan Art page! Let this drawing serve as one more witness to the fact that Sonic is not completely under the control of Archie Comics or even Sega. Sonic is a phenom with a life of his own. The same is true for some of the other characters: Shadow suddenly has something of a following. Rouge and even Elias can say the same. And I saw how little control Archie has over Sally's fandom back during Endgame when I opened the Cybershrine to see how serious the fans were about her passing (short answer: to the extreme). I recently went to the Site 9 Web site, where bad fanfics are given the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, and discovered that of the 1,325 MySTed fanfics available there, 62 of them, or almost 5%, are Sonic fanfics. This compared with other major sources of inspiration such as Sailor Moon (98 Mysted fanfics), anime in general (94), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (96); in contrast, Star Trek: The Original Series has inspired only 14 MySTed fanfics, even fewer than the 18 inspired by Pokemon. To me, the fact that so many fanfics, good or bad, have been inspired by Sonic is significant. It means that despite the conventional wisdom, despite problems with comic book distribution, despite infrequent releases of games, despite the lack of a TV series except for a handful of eps on VHS or DVD, Sonic is here to stay. The potential is huge! That's what I thought when I bought Sonic #18 and felt myself being assimilated into the Sonic fandom. You know, I'm STILL waiting for Sonic to be properly exploited here in the States. Recently there have been signs that Sonic is being marketed more than adequately in Japan: character plushies have appeared on e-bay, and Bob Repas posted a picture of someone at AnthroCon 2002 sporting a Rouge backpack. Character backpacks appear to be something of a fad in Japan; think of Henry from "Digimon Tamers" passing Terriermon off as a backpack in order to take him along on the class camping trip. And there have been definite expressions of interest by the fans on Ken's message board. But somehow or other the merchandise never washes up on the California shore or anywhere else in this hemisphere. And I'm afraid that's a danger that continues to haunt the comic. As Roger Ebert said in his review of the latest Austin Powers movie: "Not every Bond movie is good, but once you start going to them you would never think of missing one. Same with Austin Powers. The third movie ... is a step or two down from the first and second, but it has some very funny moments, and maybe that is all we hope for." Perhaps it's a false hope, but I've been hoping for more, way more, from the comic since S18. And I frankly gave up hope with S97. The comic feels like it's starting to get good again with this issue, but I'm not encouraged by Archie's track record in these matters. The comic can still go bad, and when it goes bad, as it was for most of 2001, it can get downright awful! But like the man said, we don't want to miss anything. That's still no excuse for producing something as crappy as "Naugus Games," though. "Forgiven" Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Art Mawhinney; Ink: Nelson Ribiero; Color: Josh Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editor: Justin F. Gabrie. Uncle Chuck is in full grind mode as he buries himself in work rather than attend a going-away party for Lupe and her familia. He brushes Sonic off, successfully he thinks, but then is interrupted big time because Sonic brings the party to him if he can't bring himself to the party. Apparently, Sonic feels that everybody here tonight must boogie and Uncle Chuck is no exception to the rule. But Unc can't find it in himself to get down and boogie-oogie-oogie with the others. He leaves the party, followed by the guest of honor. Lupe points out that Uncle Chuck's been avoiding her since S100's exodus from Robotropolis. Turns out Uncle Chuck's got a world class case of the guilts for having built the roboticizer in the first place and for using it on Lupe back in SSS11's "Family." Lupe cites the extenuating circumstance that Uncle Chuck was under Robotnik's control himself at the time and can't really be blamed by her or anyone else, so why is he playing the solitaire version of the Blame Game? The other partygoers, no doubt wondering what happened to Lupe, gather round as the going- away party turns into an affirmation festival for the benefit of Uncle Chuck, which goes to show that when you've been roboticized sometimes you don't need a set of wrenches to get your head straight. HEAD: In commenting on a question on Ken's message board about Tails's parents and whatever happened to them, I stated under the heading "What Did You Expect from this Comic, Consistent Continuity?" that we never exactly learned how Lupe got from the junk pile at the end of "Family" to Knothole for this story, since it hadn't ever been established that she'd been with the mass exodus of roboticized Mobians in S100's "Reunion." For pointing this out I got royally flamed by Karl Bollers whose basic point, if I divine it correctly, is that I was criticizing him for a lapse in continuity that a) he didn't set up (that was done by Ken Penders), and b) was more or less thrust upon him because he had been "asked" to work Lupe into a story, probably as a lead-in for next month's adaptation of a SatAM Sonic ep, "Cry of the Wolf." No harm, no foul as far as I'm concerned. Knowing now the circumstances under which this story came about, I can see why Karl took off on me. Basically, he got angry at me because he couldn't get angry at his editor, who put him in a rather stressful and unenviable position. Not for the first time, either; the writers had to chafe under a number of editorial edicts, one of which spawned the late and VERY unlamented Nate Morgan. Still, Karl has done excellent work with what was given to him. He gets right down to the matter of establishing Uncle Chuck as being an escapist, burrowing into a pile of "work" to avoid having to face the consequences of past actions. When the action shifts outside, he finds that the last thing that Lupe wants to carry with her on the return trip west is a grudge. This is the kind of insightful work Karl did in the classic "Running To Stand Still" (S54) and he still knows how to get the job done. Too bad that he has to do work like this DESPITE his editor rather than with Justin's help. Head Score: 10. EYE: If in the future I ever express the belief that inkers are interchangeable drones serving as handmaidens to the artists, all you have to do is mention Sonic #112. Never has the work of different inkers working on the drawings of the same artist stood out with such clarity. Ecklund and Pepoy did what I considered to be classic inking of Art Mawhinney's work for "Mistaken Identity Crisis." Now look at Nelson Ribiero's work. Compare the detailing on the General with that of Uncle Chuck. Chuck is covered with far more printed circuit filigree that the General. There are also some minor variations in character design which, again, are due to the inker since the artist hasn't changed. Still, it a difference that doesn't become a distraction. Eye Score: 10. HEART: So could this story have come to pass if Lupe were truly unavailable? Of course. There are a number of human, robotic or partially-robotic characters whose existence could have justified their inclusion in the story as agents of forgiveness: Bunnie. She could have put the case to Uncle Chuck just as well as Lupe. Hers is a fleeting presence at best in the story, and the juxtaposition of her ears sprouting out of Hope's head on page 5 makes for a nice bit of unintentional humor. And while we're on the subject... Hope. An official orphan, what with her father and grandmother not only roboticized, but also dead and gone thanks to the events of "Station Square Attacks!" (S110). She'd have every reason in the world not to be too fond of Uncle Chuck, either. But let's go with the most obvious choice: Jules. Uncle Chuck's own roboticized brother. And Uncle Chuck couldn't plead temporary domination by Robotnik when he hit the switch in "For Better or Worse" (S77). Sure, it was a last- resort sort of thing that saved Jules's life after he'd been shot up by the Os, but it's still a pretty heavy bit of irony. Still and all, this is a story that's been a long time coming, at least as long as the classic "Running To Stand Still." There, Uncle Chuck's estrangement from Sonic was due to his not having told Sonic sooner about the fate of Sonic's parents; he's never had to fess up to his own feelings about being the Father of Roboticization. It's not an easy point to deal with; Allee and Hurst only touched on it briefly in the SatAM two-parter "Blast To The Past," and even then the point was the exploitation for evil purposes of the process by Julian/Robotnik. We finally come around to the heart of the matter, and why Uncle Chuck is still carrying that load around. No matter how it worked out or who ended up having the heart-to-heart (or what passes for it in this comic) with Uncle Chuck, it's enough that it finally happened. Heart Score: 10. Off-Panel: Which is the biggest picture of blubber: Rotor in panel 4 or Justin in panel 3? This Justin: "Enough about the comic, let's talk about me." Justin may have picked a bad time to start talking about his being influenced by George Lucas's space epic, since with the release of "Episode II: Send In The Clones," there's been a lot of talk that Lucas himself has lost his way, that he'd become more preoccupied with the look of the films and the mythological pretensions behind it than with the story itself, and that worst of all he's forgotten how to have some good old-fashioned FUN with the material and to bring the audience along for the ride. Hmmmm: a preoccupation with style over substance, the forsaking of real and identifiable characters in favor of wooden archetypes, an indulgence in high seriousness that drains the fun out of everything; I hate to say this, but Lucas's influence on Justin may run deeper than he himself can know, and I don't mean that in a good way. Maybe that's why I enjoyed the stories in this issue as much as I did: they're closer in spirit to Ep 4 than to Ep 2. Sonic-Grams: Briton Mark Teo's critique of "Reunification: The Conclusion" in S109 may have had more to do with its trick ending than with the story's place in the continuity. Mark isn't the only far-flung fan on this page; we also get a letter from Marina Tay, a.k.a. Rina Cat from Singapore, whose work I mentioned in my last review. SatAMhog gets a letter printed as well. Katrice Georges brings up an error in the Knuckles family tree which Ken cops to and which as a topic of discussion is still thrashing around on Ken's message board. And we get only a thumbnail of S113.