Sonic #127 [Nov 2003] Spaz/Ribeiro/J. D. Ray cover: Sonic not so much over a barrel as entering a planet's atmosphere in one. Sonic is powerless to affect the outcome of events, which happens to be the dominant motif of the cover story. Axer/Tomas frontispiece: Diagram illustrating the theory of Azurite evolution, accompanied by the evolution of the Team Sonic logo. "Tossed in Space : Evo-solution" Story: Benny Lee; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Conor Tomas; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editor: Justin Gabrie; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater. We're off to outer space We're leaving Mother Earth To save the human race... Sorry, fans, this submarine-like spacecraft is too boxy in the prow to be the venerable Space Cruiser Yamato. It's the "Magesteron," the D'Novulan trading vessel mentioned in the last issue. Having taken Sonic on board, Sonic tells the barb-tailed D'Novulans that the Blodex had told him that he'd be given something to "translate all intergalactic lingo," presumably including slang words such as "lingo." Ron Lim wisely doesn't give us a peek at the device; the fact that Sonic sticks it in his ear makes me wonder whether it isn't really a Babel fish borrowed from the estate of Douglas Adams. Of course, SOMETHING has to go wrong on the voyage. In this case, a planet explodes, pelting the ship with debris. "What're we gonna DO?!" yells Sonic in dialogue that sets the tone for his role in this story. Captain Oe (let's be thankful it wasn't Captain Eo) gives the order to abandon ship. Since having Sonic and Oe share the last escape pod makes too much sense, Oe uses his scorpion-like tail to paralyze Sonic, tosses him into the pod and launches it while he goes down with the ship. And Oe knew that his stinger wouldn't kill Sonic ... how exactly? But like the Captain said, "now is not a good time to debate." Whatever neurotoxin Oe stuck Sonic with begins to wear off as the pod splashes down on a planet. Even though it isn't snowing, the weather outside is still frightful. At least Sonic can live off the stored rations in the pod "for a couple weeks." And he knew they were there ... how exactly? We're told that Sonic took an eight-hour nap; and Sonic knew this ... how exactly? Since the rain had ended and the planet suddenly has a breathable atmosphere, Sonic emerges and gets the impression that nature on this planet has shifted into overdrive. I think it was the tree springing up, then going deciduous on him in a few seconds that gave it away. When a mudbug of some sort crawls out of the ooze, Sonic freaks, gives the plot away, and heads back to the pod to chill a little more. He naps for an hour; he knew it was an hour ... how exactly? I make a point of asking because the rest of the story depends on standing most of the accepted laws of physics on their collective head. Like the protagonist of H. G. Wells's "The Time Machine," Sonic gets a front-row seat on the accelerated biological and social evolution of the planet. He also tells us what it is beyond any comic book's capacity to communicate: that time seems to have slowed to something resembling the kind of crawl he's used to. Emerging from the pod, he meets some not-so-little green men who nevertheless call themselves the "Azurites." Roughly translated: The Blue Man Group. Seems that throughout the centuries these throwbacks have had a deep reverence for Sonic despite the fact that our hero's been asleep on his blue butt the whole time. Taking the brakes off their time-jazzamathingie, the Azurites build a ship around Sonic in a matter of moments and he heads off the planet. And he's going ... where exactly? HEAD: OK, I'm going to come out of the closet at this point. I don't want to get into any flame wars or anything about it, but honesty demands my confessing that I didn't have the easiest time buying into this story because I'm a creationist. "Let there be light," Genesis chapters 1 and 2, seven literal days, the whole package. Not that I don't know the basics of the theory of evolution and the flaws thereof; this just isn't the time or place to get into it. But what we have here IS a comic book version of the theory, so it gets points for appropriateness. Biology aside, Benny Lee's physics leave a lot to be desired. In Wells's opus, his hero moves through time himself at an accelerated rate thanks to the title machine. Lee's taken the situation and inverts it; here, Sonic turns out to be some kind of cosmic slo-mo as Azurite society races past around him. Not only that, Sonic isn't even trying! If the escape pod was some kind of stasis unit it would have been more credible. Maybe it was in the first draft but Justin Gabrie thought the concept would go over the heads of the kidniks, I don't know. There are a considerable number of plot holes in this story: the universal translator, which manages to handle a language that hadn't even been developed yet (Azurian); Sonic's getting tranquilized by Captain Oe, the rations in the pod, and his departure at the helm of a spacecraft he never received instructions on how to fly. But the worst is yet to come. In last issue's "Red Chaos" Sonic was able to actually DO SOMETHING in a story where he was the star: he took on the Bzzzz, spawned Super Sonic via the Red Chaos Emeralds, and got punched around before it was "Time Over" for the story. So what does Sonic do here? Does he get to motor? Does he get to boom and zoom? Does he get to spin and win? Does he even manage to get off a wisecrack or two? No, but that doesn't seem to matter. The Azurites appear to be such a bunch of slackers that they're easily impressed by a creature that's asleep on his hedgehog hiney for almost the entire duration of their history and prehistory. That's the worst thing about this story: it may FEATURE Sonic but it's not really ABOUT Sonic. A lot of stuff happens TO him but he doesn't bring anything to the table himself. His role is entirely passive: Captain Oe putting him to sleep sets the tone. In a way, this story reminds me (dimly) of "Deconstruction of Falling Stars," the final ep of the fourth season of "Babylon 5." In that story, we witness the history of the Interstellar Alliance as viewed and skewed by the passing of eons of time, as well as the apotheosis of John Sheridan, his elevation to the status of legend. The same thing sort of happens here to Sonic, but for no really good reason. At least Sheridan had a resume; he accomplished something. What did Sonic do besides take a couple naps? And for this he becomes a god? I'm sorry, I'm not buying it. Head Score: 3. EYE: Once again we confront the great cosmic mystery: why is it that when Ron Lim draws the D'Novulans and Azurites they end up looking more convincing than Sonic? It's as if Sonic is the ONLY thing in this story that he can't get his pencil around. Everything and everyone else looks impressive enough, even though Ron falls into the old cliche of the Uniformity of Space Aliens. There are no variations in height, weight, or even a discernible gender among each of the two groups: one size fits all in the body department. Compare this with Steven Butler's rendering of the Blodex, including the depiction of an adult and a young one which I thought was charming. Eye Score: 5. HEART: In addition to my reading the Bible to inform faith and doctrine, it also fires my imagination. I've written two Biblical novels so far, I'm working on a third, and even if I were to write something with a contemporary setting my faith would end up informing and influencing what I write. An example of something I tried writing a decade or two back, and which I may dust off and rework one of these days, is one of a number of stories about the animals aboard Noah's Ark. That story intersects with this one quite neatly. According to the Genesis Deluge story, while it rained for 40 days and nights the water didn't recede to allow disembarkation from the Ark until about a year after the rains started. So I asked myself: If the smaller insects, the fruit flies and such, had sufficient consciousness to understand what was going on, how would they handle having generation after generation die off during that year's time? Would they even remember life on the outside the way that the longer-lived mammals and reptiles and birds would? Sort of the same thing happens with the Azurites and Sonic. The Azurites lived and died and evolved and piled one generation upon another. And all the while Sonic was asleep on his butt. I'm sorry, I keep coming back to that! The one good idea this story had never got developed because its protagonist never really did anything himself! You can't get much more pointless than that! At least in the case of American literature's most celebrated slacker, Rip Van Winkle, he got the chance to demonstrate to his neighbors when he woke up that he'd managed to sleep through the entire Revolutionary War! But this story could have worked with ANY OTHER character from the Sonic continuity in Sonic's place. The end-result would have been the same. Actually, it probably would have been more interesting if the story had featured Antoine; imagine the chagrin of the worshipful throng of Azurites when they realize just what a nebbish Antoine is when he's awake. We're two stories into the Tossed in Space arc and already it feels like it's running out of gas, with no sense of how to best utilize Sonic. Get Sonic back to Mobius, and fast!! Heart Score: 2. "Agent Sonic vs. Agent Knuckles" Story: Mike Gallagher; Art: Dave Manak; Ink: presumably also Dave Manak; Color: Jason Jensen; Letterer: Unemployed; Editor: J. F. Gabrie. For the first two pages of this 5-pager, we get a return to the old Joke and Dagger Department of yore, as Sonic and Knuckles reprise the comic stylings of the White Spy and the Black Spy from Antonio Prohias's classic "Spy vs. Spy" series in Mad magazine. But by page three the story threatens to devolve into the same old same old involving Sonic and Knuckles simply throwing punches at each other until Robotnik intervenes in a situation, with matching pun, that reminds this Mad veteran more of Don Martin than Antonio Prohias. The two spies team up to get at Robotnik only to be foiled by the REAL Black Spy, Shadow. You'll notice that there wasn't much plot detailed here. That's deliberate: we're talking a one-page gag feature expanded to five. HEAD: ON May 1, 1960, just three days before new repressive press laws were to go into effect, the head of the Association of Cuban Cartoonists, Antonio Prohias, fled the country and emigrated to the United States. Finding himself in New York City without a penny to his name, as thousands of other immigrants before him had done, he found employment in the editorial offices of Mad Magazine. Mad itself had undergone a taste of suppression, of a home- grown nature. In 1952, publisher William Gaines has launched EC Comics which specialized in horror comics such as "Tales From The Crypt" and the "Vault Of Horror." One of his other titles: the rather busy "Tales Calculated To Drive You Mad." But then came Dr. Fredric Wertham. His 1954 book "The Seduction of the Innocent" convinced worried parents that it was the crime and horror comics of the day, rather than any complex social causes, that were responsible for juvenile delinquency in America. Yeah, I know it's simplistic nonsense, but people bought it. Thanks to Wertham appearing before a Senate panel in 1955, a major panic ensued. By one count, over 300 comic book titles folded as a result. The Comic Code Authority was launched in 1955 to show that the industry could police itself and therefore Washington didn't have to get into the act. Some comics, though, survived by morphing. Gaines retooled one of his former horror comics into something more, well, comic. Rechristened "Mad" for short, it shifted its emphasis toward social satire, reinventing itself to stay within CCA guidelines. It soon branched out into doing parodies of motion pictures, popular songs, and television shows. An especially ripe target was the field of advertising. It was easy to keep tabs on the industry, since Mad happened to have its offices on Madison Avenue, a street synonymous in the 1950s with advertising. One of the regular features of the magazine when I was a reader in the Sixties and a little beyond was "Spy vs. Spy." Every month a pair of needle-nosed spies dressed in porkpie hats and trench coats (like the ones worn by all the baddies in S69's "A Day In The Life") engaged in wordless combat with each other. Originally designed by Prohias as an anti-Castro cartoon, "Spy vs. Spy" became something like the classic Roadrunner cartoons that Chuck Jones was producing at about the same time. The plot, as demonstrated on the first two pages of this story, had either the Black or White Spy engaged in stealing some Top Secret document or device. The White or Black Spy would appear to get the drop on them, but by the end panel the tables would be turned. That was the formula. Prohias would continue pitting spy against spy until his retirement in 1990 when other hands took over the series; he died in 1998. In its own way, it was a pretty gutsy feature that never could have appeared a decade before. In the early 1950s, paranoia about Russian spies was so acute that accusations of being a Communist Party member or even a sympathizer ("com-symp" being the shorthand for "Communist sympathizer") could ruin careers and lives. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin rode this wave to dizzying heights of notoriety as he alleged that Communists had infiltrated the highest levels of government. As it turned out, though, he had as much luck finding actual Communists in Washington as President Bush is having at finding actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. McCarthy's reckless conduct finally caught up with him; censured by the Senate and deprived of his seat, he retired to Wisconsin where he spent the next year drinking himself to death. Yet by the late 1950s, spies no longer engendered the fear and paranoia they once did. Not only did "Spy vs. Spy" devolve into a general comment about the absurdity of the spy game as a whole(the allegiance of the two spies was kept ambiguous and neither the White Spy nor the Black Spy always won), but Eastern Bloc spies were lampooned in Jay Ward's "Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" in the persons of Boris Badinov and Natasha Fatale. On the level of nostalgia, this story worked best for me on the first two pages, where it reprised the one-page format from Mad. The other three pages were a little weaker because Gallagher lost the rhythm, but he recovered by the last page. The last panel is significant because at one point the original series would occasionally feature "Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy." In this variation on the theme, both the Black and White spies would end up with the short end of the stick and a gray femme fatale would come out on top. Which makes me wonder why Gallagher cast Shadow as the third spy instead of Rouge. Head Score: 7. EYE: The visual style is close enough to vintage Prohias to be acceptable, but there are two serious problems. First, what made "Spy vs. Spy" so perfect was that aside from their coloration the two spies were identical. The message was clear: spies are all alike, no matter what country they're working for. The obvious physical difference between Sonic and Knuckles undercuts the parody at this level. Speaking of coloration, WHY did Jensen decide to go 4-color retro with this? Back in Special #15, we had the notorious "Sonic Spin City" which tried to echo the edgy black-and-white visuals of Frank Miller. But if EVER there was a comic that cried out to be done in black-and-white, it's "Spy vs. Spy." Why Justin Gabrie as Art Director didn't take it in that direction, I don't know. Eye Score: 6. HEART: What can you say? This is a one-page gag expanded to five pages. Heart Score: n/a. Fan Art: Is it my imagination, or did Geoffrey Bradbeer and Jessica Fryer use the same artwork as a model for Sonic? Scott Wiley seems to have put more attention to detail in his Egg-O- Matic than in the figure of Robotnik; this kid has a future in engineering. And Christa Sandoval contributes a very dynamic Shadow. This Justin: Talkin' about Sonic X but not saying very much. One of the recurring observations on Ken Penders's message board about the show is the quality of the dub: the consensus is, the music in the original was far superior and the English voice actors aren't exactly outstanding. The voice acting in the original SatAM Sonic was one of the factors that hooked me because they used solid talent: say what you will about Jaleel White, he defined Sonic as much as Brad Pierce, Kath Soucie and Christine Cavanaugh defined Tails, Sally and Bunnie, respectively. And Sierra Hedgehog made the following observation: "Worst Line in First Episode: When Robotnik refers to Cream as 'Little Creamy-[D]reamy'. Sweet Merciful God that sounded SO WRONG!" Sonic-Grams: Ken Penders, who's working the mail room, tells Kevin S. that the comic business is such that he'd be better off trying to break into the industry in general rather than Sonic The Comic in particular. It's not clear what idea of Jonathan Chang's Ken is referring to; maybe the commemorative poster based on the cover art for S125. And attaboys from S-Jay, Ever Loyal, and zfreak2004, all of which elicit nothing of substance.