Correction: In last month's review I stated that Marina Tay, a.k.a. Rina Cat, is from Singapore. My bad: she's from Malaysia. To quote someone whose name I forget, geography was never my province. Sonic #113 [Oct 2002] Spaz/Ribiero/Ray (?) cover featuring Sonic, Sally, Robotnik (pre-Endgame), Snively and the Wolf Pack. Very effective composition and use of lens flare to put Robotnik in the shade. The ground fog is a nice touch as well. "Cry of the Wolf" Original script: Pat Allee; Adaptation credit: J. Oliveras, Karl Bollers (disavowed); Art: Many Hands; Color: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editor/Art Director: Justin F. Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater. Uncredited J. Axer frontispiece: Gaze well upon it; it's the best piece of artwork between the covers. The credits cite Ray & Ray for "special props" while failing to give proper props to Pat Allee for the original story. I wondered about this for a moment, but then I remembered: this company has their own definition of "props," given the way they treated Dan DeCarlo. Shades of "Naugus Games"! The story starts with Sonic, Sally and Antoine "deep in exploration" in the dark. They haven't cheaped it out by using the white-eyes-and-black background shortcut that was used to kill four pages of "Games," though the presence of five pairs of eyes is a sad reminder of things past and, to be fair, it was also a device used in the original ep. What the heck are they doing in there anyway? Let's go to the videotape: "Cry of the Wolf" was a follow-up episode to "The Void," wherein we were first introduced to Naugus, who didn't have a first name at the time, and we discovered whatever happened to Sally's father. Come to think of it, HE didn't have a first name at the time, either; Ken Penders gets the credit for bestowing that on him in S58's "The Living Crown." Before having to go back to the Void because he'd crystallize if he remained on Mobius Prime, which was a plot point that would be incorporated in the comic between "And One Shall Save Him" and "Return of the King," Max supplied Sally with a list of Freedom Fighter groups. How he was able to put that list together from his exile in the Void was never really explained. Sonic, Sally, Antoine and Dulcy travel out to the middle of nowhere because the Wolf Pack is one of the Freedom Fighter groups on the list and they're trying to track it down. It's while they're traveling that they first come across the lightning field, where Sonic almost gets his tail singed. The group then find a series of caves in a canyon, apparently inspired by the cliff-dwelling Anisazi (the ancestors of the Pueblo) Indians. It's at this point that Dulcy disappears from the story because of her "claustrowhatsis," plus the fact that squeezing a Mobian dragon into one of those caves would be like trying to park a Chevy Suburban in a doghouse: no chance. OK, I could see it happening if the dog in question was named Clifford. At the same time, Sonic teases Antoine about how the place is supposed to be cursed. Big mistake; this gives Antoine (or "Tony" as Dulcy calls him) the excuse to go into high-strung freakout mode. Anyway, with the three of them having fallen down several layers into the underground cavern, this is where the comic came in... After a little bit of exposition, and after Sally's had a chance to put on a fresh coat of day-glo red lipstick, Sonic zooms ahead to check out the situation. He almost zooms off a cliff, then goes back to report the dead end to the gang. Suddenly there's a howl in the distance, and Antoine freaks himself into Sally's arms. This bit of comic relief is a direct quotation from the ep. One of the Pack members then shows up to guide them. Their reluctance is rewarded when they fall through a trap door and into the midst of the Wolf Pack. It's at this point that Lupe introduces herself and the Pack. Visually and in her words, she furthers the impression that they, like Native Americans, lived off the land and left "nothing behind but their footprints." It's a great line, and I'm sorry it got left on the cutting room floor in order to make room for the phrase "some deeper than skin" when Lupe mentioned Robotnik's attacking the Pack. I preferred the simplicity of the original "not without scars," but anyway. Of course, Sonic's line about how "there could be other freedom fighter groups" was inserted into this rewrite because they didn't want to have to drag the King's List plot point into this adaptation. Lupe then opens a door to reveal ... the equipment that used to be in the store room of my high school audio-visual department where I worked as an AV geek for three years. That's what it looks like, anyway; in the TV show it was in fact the piece of ordnance that puts in a rather underdrawn appearance about 4 pages from now. While this is going on, we cut to Snively being dressed down by Robotnik. Seems he's been beta-testing what the comic book calls an "experimental hovercraft." That ain't the way it played out on TV; in the original ep, this was a test pod that was part of the Doomsday Device Robotnik was putting together. As would be demonstrated in the second season finale, the Doomsday Device would launch these drone "pods" so that they would travel underground, surface at various locations around Mobius and start lasering everything in sensor range. But after what happened with the Ultimate Annihilator in the course of Endgame the writer or editor or whoever was responsible for this adaptation decided that they weren't going there. As the Wolf Pack and the Knothole Gang are moving the cannon into position, Snively's scout ship arrives. Snively orders the pilot bot, which looks like a shop vac, to scan the area. The Pack then gets a shot off at the pod, but to no avail. They then go to Plan B: Sally hands Sonic a poorly-drawn power ring (remember power rings?) so Sonic can lure the pod into a box canyon and create a whirlwind that slams the pod and Snively's ship into the cliffs. Unfortunately, that doesn't work on either ship. The Snivler catches sight of Sonic and Sally and arrests them. Sonic then interrupts Snively in mid-gloat by somehow eluding whatever bonds held him and getting the better of his captor. Yes, it looks as unconvincing as it sounds. Sally makes herself useful by downloading the pod specs into Nicole while Sonic decides to utilize a more powerful energy source to destroy the pod: the lightning field. In a clumsy segue, the rejoicing over the destruction of the pod and Snively's unresolved fate shifts back to Knothole. While Lupe did indeed announce the involvement of other Freedom Fighter groups during the ep, it was only because Sally knew to contact them because of her father's list. And a bunch of poorly-drawn fists puncture the air in a salute to freedom. HEAD: Trying to mesh the continuity of the TV series with that of the comic is hard enough under ideal circumstances, but it's pretty obvious in this case. The problem shows up on page 1 where Sonic, Sally and Antoine have to rely on lumps of exposition to tell the readers where they are and how they got there. It's clumsy, but the alternative would have been to make the story longer, which probably wasn't what the Powers That Be had in mind. I have no idea who was assigned to deal with this. Karl Bollers has already disavowed any responsibility for this project despite his being given credit for it, in much the same way Ken Penders distanced himself from "Naugus Games." I found myself wondering whether this wasn't some perverse form of discipline at Archie Comic Publications: "Instead of cutting your page rate even further, we're going to see to it that you get credit for a really lame story on your resume!" "Cry of the Wolf" was one of the better scripts from the SatAM series. Too bad the adaptation couldn't have been more faithful to it. The early use of the lightning field in the ep was a legitimate use of foreshadowing of a key plot point: how to destroy the seemingly indestructible. It also nicely underscored a key difference between the Freedom Fighters and Robotnik that was more than skin-deep: closeness to Nature. While Robotnik's whole deal was the subjection of Mobius and Mobians, the Wolf Pack was presented if only in flashback as a group in harmony with nature. In addition, it was by harnessing the power of Mobius itself that Sonic was able to destroy the pod. The writer(s)/adapter(s) did the best they could with what was given them. While the results were at best mediocre, part of the problem was unavoidable. It's extremely difficult to get a 4-pound story into a 2-pound bag. Head Score: 5, on the strength of Pat Allee's script rather than Archie's retrofit. EYE: I looked at the page art for some time, trying to figure out what medium was used. It didn't resemble anything I'd seen between the comic's covers lately. I've heard the term "watercolors" used by one or two fans. I eventually found myself leaning toward the notion that it was done with spray paint on concrete: the art reminded me of a poorly-tagged building. In the end, I settled on the conviction that what we have here is the artistic equivalent of a first draft being palmed off as a finished product. I have the honor of owning five pages of Mawhinney artwork from the comic, one of which was sent to me by the artist himself (page 1 of "Taking the Fall," S47). In these drawings you can see the classic artistic process in action: the ghosts of blue pencil roughing showing through beneath the inking, the second thoughts and occasional scratching out or re-inking of spots using an ink that dried differently and has faded to a mocha brown or an ashen violet rather than retaining its crisp blackness. It shows the thought and consideration that went into production. Now look at the art here. I got the feeling that everything was sort of dashed down onto the paper, an impression underscored by the absence of meticulous inking of detail, a hallmark of the J. Axer style. Where some characters have been outlined it appears to have been done with a colored felt-tip marker, the broad-tip kind favored by graffiti artists. Where the black felt-tip marker was used for outlining, it seems to have been reserved for Sally's eyes; I haven't seen that kind of heavy eye lining since King Tut's death mask. The modeling frequently strains at the leash. The Sonic at the top of page [10] looks like he's coming down with the mumps, while the drawing of him four pages earlier has him bearing a striking resemblance to Peanut of "PB&J Otter." Lupe introducing herself at the top of page [8] is definitely on-model, but she goes downhill from there, culminating in her transformation into the creature at the bottom of page [15]. The scar under her eye, to which she alluded with a gesture and the "not without scars" line in the TV episode, is drawn inconsistently ... when Many Hands remembers to draw it at all. And the workmanship of the power ring is similarly shoddy: it's bent and lumpy and proof positive that drawing a freehand circle is probably one of the hardest tasks an artist can undertake; Many Hands didn't think to avail himself of any kind of template to make it look halfway decent. Finally, check out the figures at the bottom of page [16] as they're running away from the pod. They're mere squiggles, suggestions of characters. Sonic and Sally are identifiable, but just barely. This art doesn't begin to approach the careless suckitude of Many Hands's previous outing, "Naugus Games." That story gave new meaning to the term "cheaping it out" when 40% of the pages, or 10 out of 25, were given over to either white eyes against a black background or else a lame snowflake patters with dialogue balloons in front. At least here you got the sense that someone tried. But he should have tried harder! For the most part, Many Hands draws the way I draw, and if you've ever seen anything I ever drew you know why I channeled my energies into writing. Eye Score: 3. HEART: This story raised more questions for me than it answered. Why scrounge out "Cry of the Wolf" and adapt it anyway? Whose bright idea was this? Why didn't they make the effort to do it right if they were going to do it at all? Of all the inconsistencies that have plagued this book, this has to be the biggest. After years and years of trying to disavow any connection with the SatAM continuity, we have a story that tries to adapt a SatAM ep! This constitutes a complete reversal of company policy and would be applauded by those of us fans who appreciated the strengths of the TV series were it not for the fact that a lot of those strengths simply never translated well to this story. I get the strong impression that what we have here is yet one more Inventory Story: something that was just lying around because the end-result was too crappy to plug into the regular continuity. There would seem to be two reasons why this story ran at this time. Last month, in "Forgiven," Lupe more or less walked out of the comic continuity for the time being. Hey, with this crowd you never know when someone's going to come back; see the return of Mammoth Mogul in next month's ish. So, as a parting "salute" to a character who hasn't lacked fans, they ran this one-shot story. The other factor, I believe, is that there was a one- issue hole in the schedule and some quick-and-dirty filler material was needed that wouldn't impact on the main continuity. As far as I'm concerned, "Forgiven" didn't need any improvement, and Archie should have scrounged up something of higher quality even if they only needed something to plug up a hole. Not one of the comic's better moments. Heart Score: 3. This Justin: Due to the length of the adaptation, Justin decided to sacrifice everything but his own column, which he uses to continue talking about Star Wars. This time, he approaches it from the visual influence side, citing the appearance of ships, weapons and other props used as models by the artists. How well I remember: there have been several depictions of land cruisers and the Millennial Falcon, not to mention a similar usage of Star Trek vessels and hardware. It doesn't always work out, if you'll remember the infamous "censored bat'tleh" from "Door to the Past"(S82). And of course, Justin makes it sound like a good thing, all part of the fun and games at Mamaroneck. Guess what, Justin? Some of us got tired of the joke after the first few times around. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I like a good in-joke as much as the next fan boy, but not when it becomes so blatant that it trips up the reader. And after a certain point use becomes overuse, like Spaziante's love affair with sneaking Astal onto the cover something like once a year. We get the joke, but we don't want it. This philosophy culminates in next month's cover, which in terms of composition is supposed to be a goof on ... excuse me, inspired by ... the poster art for "Attack of the Clones." Yeah, right, whatever: I'm more concerned about the FREAKIN' STORY INSIDE and whether the comic will FINALLY put the Tails Isn't Tails plot point out of its (and our) misery once and for all. If the story fails to do that, what's the point of having a killer cover? Speaking of philosophy, next time Justin promises to discuss "how Star Wars influenced me to take the direction I did with this book when I first became the editor." Yes, the book actually had a direction once upon a time. Looking back on the comic during 2001, though, all I can say is, You coulda fooled me.