Sonic The Hedgehog #152 [Oct 2005] Pat Spaziante cover: Once again, Archie resorted to a dummy cover for their thumbnails, and we were the dummies for believing them. That cover showed Sonic surrounded by (clockwise) Sally, Amy Rose, Fiona, Bunnie and Mina, none of whom are especially happy to see him but all of whom appear in this issue. Sonic was shown with hand open and a "What?" expression on his face. Now check out Cover 2.0. The girls still don't look exactly thrilled to see Sonic, and the close-up is so tight that the couple of breaking hearts circling Amy Rose have disappeared off to the side. Also Fiona was retired, Mina was moved down to Fiona's space and Rouge was put in Mina's place for no reason that I can discern. But it's the figure of Sonic that made me want to spit on the cover. He's winking, flashing a thumb's-up, and wearing a hideous grin that's as much a leer as anything else. And if all this wasn't heavy-handed enough for you, there's the added headline "Play On Playa." It's just as well that Bunnie's left ear is covering Sonic's crotch, otherwise Spaz would have had to resort to a censor bar. Which is all bad enough but for one crowning fact: THERE ARE NO PSEUDO-SEXUAL HIJINKS WHATSOEVER IN THIS ISSUE. That pretty much wrapped up last issue (please Aurora), but someone in the Archie hierarchy either told Spaziante to do an inaccurate and frankly insulting cover or else they green- lighted something Spaz had done on his own. Either way, it looks like I'm not going to have to work very hard to determine the Worst Cover Art for 2005. "Engage!" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Jim Fry; Ink: Al Milgrom; Color: Josh and Aimee Ray; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater; Sega Reps Who Must Be Wondering If Everyone Connected With This Book Has Lost Their Mind: Robert Leffler and Dyna Lopez The following is a direct quote from the very first text box in the very first panel on the very first page of this story: "Despite all the destruction and defoliation that Doctor Robotnik has enabled for the past eleven years, two months, one week, four days, thirteen hours, forty-two minutes, and thirty-seven point six seconds since seizing control of Mobotropolis..." And the Geek Sign starts flashing aboard the Satellite of Love. You know, Ken Penders worked so hard to do an opening designed to make me want to hate every square inch of this comic so I'm not going to disappoint him. Ken: I hate this story already. Congratulations. Anyway, we watch as Lupe, in a thankless bit part, leads her pack across the landscape. But since that might be an interesting opening for a story, we cut to Dr. Eggman speaking in sentence fragments: "Sonic the Hedgehog ... or more succinctly ... how is it he always gets the better of me?" It feels as if a speech balloon broke away and floated up and off-panel. ADAM informs Dr. Eggman that he can't answer that last question due to "Insufficient Data" not to mention bad grammar. There's a bit more tedious banter before Eggman says, in effect, "Well, if you're so smart, let's see YOU come up with a way to take over the world!" before he storms out of the room, whereupon ADAM says "Y'okay." The method of choice: nanotechnology. We then cut to the place where the nanites are being deployed: the meadow Lupe and the pack just happen to be crossing. So now we know why the wolf pack appear in this story: they serve no purpose other than to be on the receiving end of a threat. So much for the set-up; here's the rest of the joke: "Sonic's Angels" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Jon Gray and Al Bigley; Ink: Al Milgrom; Color: Josh Ray; Lettering: Jeff Powell Not wanting to miss out on the fun, Rotor is delivering some more bad dialogue himself: "...we're receiving this live feed. Suffice it to say, what you're looking at is ACTUALLY TRANSPIRING even as we speak." Suffice it to say, that bit of redundancy is for the benefit of those in the audience who aren't clear on the concept of "live feed." For his part, Sonic isn't clear on the concept of punctuality and gets the cold shoulder from Sal for showing up late. It occurs to him NOT to tell her or anyone else about the Invasion of the Evil Twin, which apparently makes too much sense and would get in the way of the plot. So like Ol' Man River, the Idiot Plot will just keep rollin' along. Now on to new business. Rotor guesses that the metallic mess will terraform the natural environment "into a sprawling artificial development" and screw up the real estate values of Knothole, which the thing should overrun in 24 hours. Sonic, of course, wants to cut to the chase. While Rotor, Uncle Chuck, Tails and Tommy go off by themselves to set up a command center apparently from scratch, Sonic is sent off with Fiona, Amy Rose, Mina and Bunnie. I don't know why, either, and Ken's dialogue is no help at all: "Speed could be the key on this go-round" is the most helpful word balloon in the bunch, though it does nothing to explain why Sonic appears to have been saddled with a harem. They catch sight of the outskirts of the thing and Sonic gets nostalgic for the good old SatAM days. Amy Rose gets scared because ... well, because the script says she has to be, but then the script also says that she gets over it two panels later. The plot kicks in big-time when something grabs hold of Bunnie; you can skip past the Bionicle advertisement, I did. Sonic scopes out the complex and discovers ... the Return of the Uber-Twerp, aka Snively! Bunnie, meanwhile, is getting a serious probe job by some weird egg-logo thing. What the heck is it? Uber-Twerp tells Sonic that they're the nanites, defined by Okuda et al. in the "Star Trek Encyclopedia" as submicroscopic robots designed to perform various biomechanical functions, only ADAM is programming them now, "and if we don't stop them before long..." Snively threatens... ...they'll replace Jon Gray with Al Bigley. Well, the change in artists IS pretty abrupt. Fiona then busts into the story to talk about the EMP devices the Snivler has been planting. Sonic doesn't know what an EMP device is; maybe Fiona should have called them "gizmos" because that what Sonic asked for in S102's "Family Dysfunction" and that's what Rotor delivered. We then discover WHY Ken saddled Sonic with so many ops: according to ol' Lightbulb Head, all three EMP bombs have to go off simultaneously. That means Fiona, Amy Rose and Mina all have to push the same button at the same time. It's not the best plan, since Bunnie's limbs would go kerflooey along with the nanites, but the plot hasn't handed Sonic the resolution on a silver platter yet so that's the best they've got. Snivley crosses his heart that he's on their side. Mina conveys Fiona to her appointed site because Ken is apparently the only one who still remembers that Mina's supposed to be as fast as Sonic. While the players take their marks, Sonic comes upon Bunnie who is in the process of becoming part of The Contiguity. Yeah, I know it's a mouthful but "The Continuum" has already been taken and "The Continuity" is a dirty word in the comic book industry. You know what? I'm calling it like I see it: what we have here is "Borg Lite." OK, the comic gets pretty dense from here on so brace yourselves. Sonic thinks Bunnie is doomed, but then the deus ex machina, aka Uncle Chuck, checks in. Because Uncle Chuck saw the Star Trek episode "The Ultimate Computer" where Kirk had to out-reason the M-5 supercomputer, he tells Sonic to try out-thinking Borg Lite. Because Bunnie is both robotic and organic, Sonic asks where's the logic in trying to assimilate her. Borg Lite could have said "Silicon rules!" and threatened to finish roboticizing her, which has a certain logic to it. Instead it says "Lemme get back to you on that one" and shuts down the process. "A miracle!" Sonic declares. "Bad writing!" I call it, right down to the B-movie melodrama of Bunnie saying to Sonic "Your [sic] mah hero!" and kissing him. And since an earthquake making a way of escape for the good-gals-plus-one-guy-plus-twerp would be one cliche too many for the denouement, the roof simply dissolves without any explanation whatsoever. It wasn't because of the EMP bombs, which after a certain amount of build-up were never deployed. This was explained in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it word balloon of Amy Rose's toward the very end of the story. But better a bad explanation than no explanation at all, and the explanation as to why the Sniveler is suddenly in Uncle Chuck's command center is pretty bad. Fiona tells the group that ADAM "booted Snively" out of the complex; and she knew this ... how exactly? HEAD: Where to begin with this mess? How about giving credit where it's due? The title of the sort-of prologue, "Engage!", was lifted from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I don't have to explain where Borg Lite comes from. Plus the resolution of the plot comes straight out of the original series episode cited above. Ken Penders has managed to pull off a Star Trek Hat Trick. Let this be a lesson to all would-be writers: you are what you eat. That is to say, whatever fires your imagination is going to show up in your work so you'd better consume a balanced diet. Joe Edkin, whose adaptation of Sonic X will be debuting soon, suggests the following: "Read novels. Read newspapers. Read non-fiction. Watch foreign films. Go to the theater. Expose yourself to more than what you find on comic book shelves. The more you know about the world around you, the more material you will have from which to draw stories." Ken Penders has never been shy about what his influences have been: the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming, Star Trek, and other comic books. For "Sonic's Angels" we DEFINITELY know from where Ken drew this story. Unfortunately, like a lot of comic writing, this is one of those stories that was a fairly good read while I was into it but left me saying "Wait a minute..." when it was over. The biggest problem: I never could figure out what the purpose of the nanites were, aside from fulfilling the role of a plot menace. Let's go back to Ken's source material. In "The Ultimate Computer," the crew of the Enterprise is threatened with obsolescence by the presence of the M-5, a supercomputer developed by the eponymous Dr. Richard Daystrom of the Daystrom Institute (as overplayed by William Marshall, who would go on to lend Shakespearean solemnity to his portrayal of the King Of Cartoons on "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" and as the title character of the Blacula films during Hollywood's blaxploitation era of the 1970s). In "Ultimate," the M-5 takes itself too seriously and blows two Federation ships to particles during what was supposed to be a simulation. The sight of his computer shooting up the fleet turns Daystrom into a basket case. Kirk reasons with the M-5, asking what kind of punishment it deserves for the taking of innocent lives; shamed, the M-5 shuts itself down. This is obviously the ending Ken wanted for this story, but one size does not fit all. Sure, the M-5 got a little too uppity and started terminating humans for no good reason. So did the HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey" but it had its own justification: it believed the Jupiter mission to be too important to trust to fallible humans so the most effective way to eliminate the possibility of human error would be to eliminate the humans. As for the nanites, I reread the story when I was done and I'm STILL fuzzy on what they were supposed to accomplish. Were they a threat because they were going to roboticize organic (i.e., living and breathing) Mobians, after Karl worked so hard to consign that plot point to the dumpster in the course of the Tossed In Space arc? Were they assimilating only Bunnie's bionic limbs? That means they happened to grab the one Mobian they would be a threat to. That doesn't clear up what they would do with the rest of the populace such as Lupe and the pack. I'm sorry, but the plot is so soft on this point that the argument lifted from "Ultimate Computer" falls flat, plus it doesn't explain the hole opening in the roof of the complex as a way of escape. Another "miracle," I suppose. The whole final page has a very bad feeling, as if Ken looked over the story, realized that a lot of stuff had happened without any explanation whatsoever, and decided that this was his last chance to explain the unexplained. So we get a lot of expository verbiage that can barely be called "dialogue" because it simply doesn't sound conversational. That's when I realized how fuzzy the mission of the nanites was. A rereading didn't help matters any. Ken's writing first appeared in Sonic with issue #11, and I started reading the comic with issue #18; I therefore have been reading his work in the comic about as long as he's been writing for it. And this is NOT the level of writing I've grown accustomed to from Ken Penders. I remember the strong story arcs he wrote for this comic and for the Knuckles comic during its 2.5 year existence: the Lost Tribe and the Forbidden Zone arcs were stand-outs. But even for the near misses (the First Date arc) and the disasters (Last Game Cartridge Hero, Afterlife), I still sensed that Ken was swinging for the fences, making an effort. Not any more. When you lift the climax from an old Star Trek ep and try to graft it onto a Sonic the Hedgehog story, it's a sign that you're not even trying. I don't know why Ken lost his edge. Maybe it's because the comic has been around long enough for the writers to believe that it won't be cancelled next week so there's no anxiety about the future driving them to do good work. Maybe the simple act of moving to California has dulled the senses that had been honed of necessity by living in Buffalo. Whatever the reason, Ken is in a slump here, and piling gimmick on gimmick (the introduction of Borg Lite, the reintroduction of Snively) can't mask that fact. Head Score: 5. EYE: For good or ill, I'm treating the two stories in this book as one. That means reviewing the work of three artists lumped together a la "Endgame." Jim Fry returns to the book after too long an absence. His attention for the first 5 pages is focused on Robotnik/Eggman, and he succeeds in making him look menacing for the first time in a long time. This underscores the fact that the switch from SatAM Robotnik to Sonic X Eggman has meant that the central villain of the series has gotten more ridiculous-looking as a result. Fry brings back some of the old danger, and he's no slouch in drawing Lupe and the pack members, either. Here's hoping his work shows up again. Jim Fry Eye Score: 9. The next nine pages are the work of Jon Grey. He tries to work the old "Charlie's Angels" logo into the title page but the effort is diffused by the script: he may have been hoping for a goof on the old T-and-A TV series, but that's not the way Ken wrote it. The script undercuts Gray again in his half-splash drawing of Bunnie being worked over (one almost wants to say "raped") by Borg Lite. It's a powerful drawing hampered by the fact that the script never makes clear just what Borg Lite is doing to Bunnie and what the point of the Contiguity is, anyway. The work is impressive enough, but this is one of those cases where the material may have been too heavy for Gray's artwork; it feels like he didn't get to have any fun this time. Gray Eye Score: 9. Then we get to the Al Bigley material, and visually the story falls apart. The furry characters, especially Mina, are poorly served here. Bigley, like too many old school comic artists, is so wedded to the conventions of drawing humans that he can't shift gears and draw furries with the compact proportions that make them believable. On top of that, the pages themselves feel overpacked; there's too much happening and too much being said so that there's a claustrophobic feeling about Bigley's page layouts. It's one of the reasons I thought that maybe this was several stories stitched together Frankenstein-style; Bob Repas, however, insists that this isn't the case. In any event, the Bigley art is the weakest of the three, though even he too may have been confused by the script's intentions in showing Bunnie's disappearing/reappearing left eye; it's yet another reminder that Ken was never clear on just what Borg Lite was trying to accomplish. I mean, if you can't enlighten your illustrator, what hope do you have of communicating with the readership? Bigley Eye Score: 4. HEART: The emotional core of this story was Bunnie's being subjected to whatever Borg Lite was doing to her. As for the whole nanite plot point, all I can say is: It's been done. And better. The two part "Apprentice" story arc of Teen Titans (the TV series) did it right. Part one turned out to be all set-up as the recurring villain Slade infests Starfire, Cyborg, Raven and Beast Boy with nanites. The point: basically to blackmail Robin into coming over to the dark side as his apprentice. If Robin balks, Slade will use the nanites to inflict possibly terminal suffering on the Titans. The turning point comes when Robin, witnessing the Titans on the verge of being killed off by the nanites, injects himself with nanites. "New deal, Slade. If I lose my friends, you lose your apprentice. And I know how you hate to lose." Slade calls it a draw and everyone gets disinfested. That story reminded me of a similar one. The "Eye Of The Beholder" episode from Disney's Aladdin starts off with a debate between two recurring characters: Fasir the blindfolded seer and Mirage the evil cat-woman (very nicely voiced by Bebe Neuwirth). Fasir maintains that love is the most powerful force among mortals; Mirage dismisses it as a weak emotion. So the rest of the ep plays out as an experiment to see who's right. Mirage connives for Princess Jasmine to use a skin potion that starts turning her into a poisonous serpent creature. Aladdin and company set off with Jasmine to seek the antidote: the fruit of a particular tree. Long saga short, Mirage blasts the tree just as they get there and withers the fruit. At this point, Aladdin makes a decision: he applies the potion to himself, determining that he'd rather live with Jasmine as a monster than live without her. Fasir tells Mirage "Welcome to Loserville" and restores the fruit. What's the difference between "Sonic's Angels" and the other two stories? Quite simply, "Angels" is NOT character- driven. In the first two, it was a question of what was Robin going to do faced with the loss of his friends and what was Aladdin going to do faced with the loss of his beloved Jasmine. In the comic, Sonic takes his cue from Uncle Chuck and applies some uncharacteristic cleverness to get Bunnie out of her jam. The solution came from the communicator, not from the heart. This story also underscores a creeping flaw in Ken's writing of late. He's taken to fragmenting (segregating, really) what had once been a unified and well-functioning team into distinct cliques: you have the Royals (Sally), the Brain Trust (Rotor, Tails) and the Operatives (Sonic, Bunnie, Antoine). This kind of job-based discrimination may work if you're thinking about Her Majesty's Secret Service where functions are so well-defined there's no overlap and where M and Q and 007 will never trade off roles, but it's murder on the kind of friendships that had been developed by these characters as they were growing up together in Knothole. The longer Ken keeps this up, the more tenuous the relationships between ANY of them become. And the more THAT happens the more emotionally sterile the book becomes. Ken made a feint and a bow in the direction of a heart- driven story with Eggman's interesting off-hand remark at the very beginning: "We're talking about teenagers, ADAM ... nothing but emotions and hormones, which makes them anything but predictable." Now THAT would have been the basis for an interesting conclusion to this story! Why on alt-Earth didn't Ken come up with something that would play off that remark? Why couldn't he have had Bunnie's fear (an emotion) play havoc with the Borg Lite's attempt at assimilation or whatever? Why couldn't Sonic's unpredictability have played a part in undoing Borg Lite and not an uncharacteristic burst of logic that was cut-and-pasted from a television show that's almost 40 years old? There's been some revisionism concerning the kiss between Sonic and Bunnie at the end. Al Bigley drew it as a straight Hollywood kiss, while Ken through Bob Repas has stated that Sonic was supposed to be shocked by Bunnie's action. But it really doesn't matter in the end: this was a story where the act of communication between author and reader pretty much broke down anyway, and it failed emotionally as well as narratively. Heart Score: 5. No letters, no promos, no fan art.