Sonic the Hedgehog #139 [Oct 2004]

Pat Spaziante cover: Sonic Wants You ... to read his comic book. 
And who am I to go against him?

Axer frontispiece: I don't know whether that's Dimitri or a
future Knuckles or what, and frankly I still hate the comic
enough that I don't particularly care, so let's move on.

"Return to Angel Island Part 2: Avatar"
     Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Jon Gray; Ink: Mike Higgins;
Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Mike Higgins; Editor: Mike
Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief:
Richard Goldwater; Sega functionaries: Robert Leffler and Takuma
Hadori.
     Last time we left our heroes they were surrounded by Dark
Legionnaires in the Lava Reef Zone.  So what comes next?  If you
said "Fight Scene" you too can be a comic book editor.  Gray
gives us a neat splash-and-a-half of the characters starting to
mix it up: the effect is Shaw Brothers meet Warner Brothers.  I
was a little surprised that Espio pulled out a bunch of shuriken;
I thought his knowledge of ninjitsu extended only as far as
stealth and invisibility.  But we get no further than page [3]
when Karl favors us with a grammar goof: "I forgot how strongly
Knuckles feels for these dudes," Sonic thinks to himself instead
of "I forgot how strongly Knuckles feels ABOUT these dudes."  To
"feel for" someone is to display sympathy at the very least and
compassion or affection at the most.  After all, Shaka Khan sang
"I feel for you/I think I love you" and not "I feel for you/I'll
kick your butt now."
     Anyway, the fight comes to a screeching halt on page [4] on
orders from [pause for Big Dramatic Soap Opera Revelation Moment]
... Lara-Le.  Next thing Knuckles knows his mom is hugging on him
in front of the guys and his stepfather Wynmacher is prostrating
himself in front of him because he's supposed to be the Avatar. 
Lara-Le suggests that they change the venue, and give Remington a
chance to spruce up since he's way over his freshness date.
     Passing through a ring portal, the gang find that they've
arrived at the Hidden Palace Convention Center where Avatar-Con
is ready to get under way now that the featured guest has
arrived.  I don't know if Karl or Jon supplied the following
dialogue, but it's the best exchange so far this year:

SONIC: I didn't get a reception like this when I came back from
the dead.
KNUCKLES: Don't make me hurt you.

     We're then introduced to a semi-villain, a member of the DL
who's dressed like something out of a 1930's Flash Gordon serial. 
True to form, Karl has blessed/cursed him with a name that's only
slightly easier to pronounce than the Xorda: Doctor Finitevus.  I
think it's fin-uh-TEE-vus ... or maybe it's fin-uh-TAY-vus or
perhaps fin-IH-te-vis....  You know what, from now on I'm calling
him "Dr. Fin" or just "Doc" when he's the only Ph.D./M.D./D.D.S.
or whatever in the room.
     The Doc then ushers the group into the presence of [BDSORM]
Lien-Da!  Turns out she's keeping the Master Emerald and housing
the echidna refugees.  Knuckles wants to skip the family history
and cut to the ME, and Lien-Da obliges, throwing in a little back
story when they get there: seems that the Brotherhood managed to
keep Robotnik from getting his mitts on the ME but then
disappeared.  Locke, who was left behind after the aforementioned
confrontation (abandonment being a huge part of Guardian
relations) left the ME in Lien-Da's keeping while he went out and
got himself captured.  She then drops the hint that Dimitri is
"no longer ... with us" while conveniently leaving out the fact
that he'll come back as a Floating Futurama-type Head 25 years
from now.  Then, possibly because Karl would rather be writing
for Superman, he mistakes the Master Emerald for kryptonite. 
There's no other explanation for Knuckles suddenly being racked
with pain.
     Despite the fact that they've got the whole Hidden Palace at
their disposal for R&R, Sonic and the Chaotix and the rest of the
party dine al fresco while Knuckles overdoses on some domestic
whine.  As if he didn't have enough problems, a couple True
Believers named Pollu and Meri-Ca bring their blind daughter to
Knuckles and ask him to do his impersonation of Jesus Christ. 
This causes the Doc to lose it completely; after insulting the
pair's religious beliefs he storms off-panel.  Then Julie-Su and
Vector threaten to break the truce they established between
themselves after Knuckles's death cheat.  This then causes
KNUCKLES to lose it completely: "I'm sick and tired of the way
this comic has been going!"  Oh, I'm sorry, he's talking about
the mission; I'M the one who's sick and tired of the way this
comic has been going.  But we have one more BDSORM left where
Knuckles is introduced to ... Mace, his baby step-brother, who
then proceeds to show Knuckles his Bamm Bamm Rubble
impersonation.

Commentary:
     At least for the duration of this story arc I'm suspending
my Head/Eye/Heart scoring system.  This comic has wandered so far
from the path of Sonic righteousness that it would be useless to
try to quantify its relative badness.  Besides, I get the feeling
that nobody at Archie pays attention anyway.
     We get a fight and a LOT of exposition here, which is par
for the course for a 4-parter.  Unfortunately, so many of the
developments come as such a soap opera shock that after every
BDSORM I feel like the comic should fade to black and go to
commercial.
     Jon Gray's artwork brings a vibrancy to the comic that the
talking-head material itself lacks, but there are times when the
art runs at cross-purposes to the story.  It's one thing for Gray
to have fun with the fight scenes (I especially like his Julie-Su
aerial attack of a Legionnaire on page [4] which looks like a
Mexican wrestling move), but mercifully he knows when to rein it
in when the story switches to High Seriousness.
     A couple moments, though, I had to wonder about, such as
when Dr. Fin raves out at Pollu and Meri-Ca because of their
belief in the Avatar.  This was a dish that could just as well
have been served cold.  Instead, the Doc comes off like some kind
of Militant Secular Humanist, the stuff of a Jerry Falwell
nightmare.  Then there's Mace's debut in the comic.  Of course
you have to consider the alternative: just having a splash page
of the little ankle-biter would have been as boring as ... well,
as boring as looking at someone else's baby pictures.  So Gray
can be forgiven for having a little fun at Knux's expense.
     Lien-Da's outfit could have looked like something out of a
Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight screening, but Gray mercifully
took a pass on that cliche.  I thought that the pink hearts on
her boots and belt buckle, though, was a classic example of
sending mixed signals; Catwoman meets Care Bear.
     Bob Repas let it be known on the Ken Penders MB that Ken
hated the idea of having Wynmacher be one of the True Believers
in the Avatar.  I don't know why Ken found this objectionable,
unless he didn't conceive of Wyn as being a Believer.  That's not
a problem as far as I'm concerned.  As part of my day job I
frequently read articles about unbelieving spouses who have
eventually converted so we're talking about something with a high
degree of probability.  As for Wyn himself, all I know about him
is that he was a decent kind of echidna and treated Lara-Le way
better than Locke ever did.  He was also shown too many times in
the Knuckles comic with a glass of something in his hand; maybe
the Hidden Palace Zone is another name for "rehab."
     And unfortunately, that's ALL we know about Wyn.  Sketching
him out wasn't the highest of priorities for Ken at a time when
he was busy keeping the Knuckles comic afloat; it was Knux's name
on the cover, after all.  So let this be a lesson to aspiring
comic book writers: if one of your subsidiary characters is
pretty much of a cipher, if you haven't got a very firm grasp of
the inner workings of your major and minor characters when you
sit down to write a story, don't be surprised if another writers
sees to it that the character gets religion if that's part of a
refit.  You may think you'll be able to fill in the details later
on, but trust me: 99 times out of 100 "later on" never comes. 
That's one more reason why I detest the doctrine of Loose
Continuity: it can breed a false sense of security in the writer.
     At this point I'm waiting for this comic to settle one
question in the next two issues: whether Karl is serious about
this Avatar business or not.  I should point out that my concern
is all about how Karl plays with the idea of religion in this
story, and it's based on my own long-standing professional
interest in the subject; if it weren't for that, this current
story arc would hold zero interest for me.  At least this
installment doesn't feature Psycho Psally trying to bite Sonic's
head off.  Obviously Dr. Fin is the voice of secular modernism
here; he's also woefully outnumbered by the majority of the True
Believer echidna refugees in the zone.  Robotnik probably
couldn't care less.  Remember Robotnik?


     "Mobius 25 Years Later: Slumber Party"
     Story: Ken Penders; Art: Steven Butler; Ink: Jim Amash;
Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John E. Workman
     The women folk pull together a party tray of junk food for
the kids.  After harassing his big sister, Manik wants his dad to
teach him how to shoot pool.  The girls dish.  Knuckles looks out
a window.

Commentary:
     This story sucks bigger than a room full of Kirbys.  Nothing
happens, and Ken manages to keep nothing from happening for six
pages.  After all the installments to date, Mobius 25 Years Later
grinds to a screeching halt.
     The problem with the story?  There are so many I don't know
where to begin, so I'll pick one: the STORY!  Remember the story? 
Knuckles pretty much told Sonic and Sally that guess what, the
world may be coming to an end.  You'd think that would have
registered with one of the two rulers of Mobius.
     But even Sally ... level-headed, intelligent Queen Sally ...
winds up acting as dead behind the eyelashes as Sonic.  Not that
she isn't given an opening.  Ken indulges in some useless world-
building on page [4] (what my twin brother in his book on anime
calls "tourism") by having Lara-Su explain the rules of the board
game "Situation": "You just roll the dice, move how many spaces
the dice tell you, and your fate is determined by what space you
land on."
     OK, you're the Queen of an entire planet.  Your father the
King was dethroned and exiled to another dimension when you were
5 years old.  After that you grew up in a forested redoubt.  At
age 10 you and your little animal buddies began engaging in
guerrilla warfare and random acts of terrorism to try to reclaim
the planet.  You've become closer to some of your comrades than
to others; you married one of them, didn't you?  Fast-forward to
earlier this evening when you've been told that the world you've
been responsible for is possibly getting ready to fly apart.
     When I read that business about "fate" I immediately thought
"OK, THERE'S a cue for Sally to start at least a page's worth of
having her life and the lives of her children flash before her
eyes."  That's what would have happened if this had been written
by someone who puts more of a stress on character development
than worrying about futuristic snack foods and party games.  But
whether Ken had his mind on something else at the time or for
whatever reason, nothing registers with Sally.
     Or Sonic.  We get no sense that this is eating at him,
either.  We get no sense that he may be thinking that Manik's
asking him to teach him the fine art of hustling pool may be the
last father-son thing they get to do together.  There's nothing
in Ken's script or in Steve Butler's artwork that even hints that
Sonic is giving the impending end of the world a moment's
thought.
     Butler is no help when it comes to Knuckles, either.  The
Guardian's entire contribution to the story is to stand and look
out a window.  He's either contemplating the possible end of life
as he knows it, or trying to remember where he put his car keys.
     And Butler also provides us with a nice cloudless sky to
enable Knuckles's contemplation of the moon.  So far in this
story arc, everyone talks about the weather but the creatives
don't do anything about it.  We've seen one panel's worth of a
light show and that's all.  Sure, Lara-Su talks about getting out
of school early because of a weather-related power outage, and
there's talk about how lucky the Mobian Royal Family is not to
have gotten their flight canceled by bad weather, and there's
talk about how lucky they are to have good weather during the
pool party.  
     Hello!  This a comic book!!  It's a visual medium, where
Show counts for more than Tell!  Where are the earthquakes?  The
flooding? The volleyball-sized hail?
     This is deja vu all over again.  Ken Penders did the same
thing when he introduced the Day of Fury plot point back in the
Forgotten Tribe Arc of the Knuckles comic.  And he had the exact
same problem: the Day of Fury, which promised Apocalyptic weather
patterns that would have made a hurricane look like a hiccup, was
good for one bout of volcanic activity before Ken got bored with
it and decided to play Robin Hood.  He's fallen back into the
exact same habit here, and thanks to Steve Butler the skies are
not cloudy all day.
     Somewhere along the way someone either forgot that this is a
storytelling medium or else lost track of just what the story
was.  Karl Bollers did the same thing only differently in "The
Last Robian," which is storytelling at its most nonexistent.  In
my 2003 Best/Worst List I called it a story outline with
pictures, and I stand by that description.  Sort of the same
thing has happened here.  Ken and Steve have set the mood well,
Ken nattering on about junk food and Steve depicting a languid
Arcadian (or at least suburban) calm with practically no hint of
an impending storm.  But that's no substitute for nuts-and-bolts
storytelling.  It's like trying to make a movie based on set and
costume designs instead of a script.  Actually, they already did
that; it was called "The Phantom Menace."
     Did I expect over-the-top pathos or wall-to-wall
sentimentality?  No, but I expected some amount of thought as to
what was going on and characters that seemed to be aware of their
situation from one installment to the next.  Ken's work isn't
usually this unfocused, which suggests that the turmoil at Archie
Comics may have been at its height when this was being put
together.  In any event, we're left with a story that can very
easily be forgotten without impairing the M:25YL story arc in any
way.  And that's NOT good writing.

     Off-Panel: Mike thinks that the strip isn't about Sonic. 
Unfortunately.

I'm going to skip the Sonic-Grams and the blurb for S140 and the
Editorial and cut to the ...

Fan Art: Someone keep an eye on Heather Scoggins.  The girl's got
game.  The poses she gives the characters aren't lifted from the
graphics of game boxes or manuals but seem very much in-character
with her subjects.  This reinforces my conviction that the fans
should take over the production of the comic and let the
professionals take a break.