I guess I should explain why this will be my last review of the Sonic the Hedgehog comic. You know it's gotten bad when you go out of your way to AVOID reading the comic, and that's what I find myself doing these days. I even felt that way about "Price of Flame: Part 1" in S155 despite the fact that I've always had a soft spot for Dulcy as one of the secondary characters. But when S156 arrived I just ignored the whole issue for a variety of reasons. One is that I've come to realize that I simply don't like the direction the comic is taking, and I get the feeling that with the current crew at the helm there's little hope of things changing at all, let alone for the better. The recent exchange of posts between Ken Penders and myself has only served to deepen the conviction that it's time to get out. You can read them for yourself on Ken's message board. Ordinarily I'd have been all over him for making me sound unrealistic for expecting a Carl Barks classic every months and for not sharing his view that there's simply no topping the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comics of the golden age. Truth is, I never read anything by Barks, Kirby or Lee, mainly because my tastes never ran in that direction. And any temptation to treat them as little gods of comic book orthodoxy died when I discovered a different breed of comics, written and illustrated by creatives named Tezuka, Matsumoto and Takahashi. It only deepened my conviction that American comics have been spinning their wheels since the beginning of the 1960s while manga has been pushing the outside of the creative envelope all along. I've made no secret about my being a Sonic fanboy rather than a superannuated comic book geek, but more and more I get the sense that the Sonic comic is turning into just another comic book, and I'm NOT saying that like it's a good thing. It was time to make a decision. And no, I won't continue to review the Sonic X comic, either. I haven't followed the SatAM series with anything approaching regularity, and I'm not going to try and fake it. I have nothing against Joe Edkin, and I wish him the best of luck in working with the book; he sounds like he's got his head on straighter than a lot of creatives. But it's time to make the break. I'll leave the site up until I decide whether to shut it down or not. I may browse Ken's MB and that at Sonic HQ from time to time, but I'll probably stop posting after a while. At some future point I'll figure out a way to liquidate my collection of Sonic back issues, and will announce it when I'm ready to do so. If anyone wants to drop me a line for whatever reason, I'm still at drazen@andrews.edu, but I don't expect a lot of mail. And I'll write one more Best/Worst List, for 2005, before I completely call it quits. I stayed with the fandom this long because of fan love, because I could see and feel each of the characters I was writing about in my fanfics, and that made them feel truer than what I'm seeing in the comics these days. Now, reading the comic is like going to a high school reunion and realizing that too much time has passed and you don't know ANY of these people anymore. And maybe Ken's right about my expectations being too high for this comic to support. So rather than continuing to complain, I'm going to put this childish thing away. It won't be so bad. This won't be the first time I've proved the truth of the line from the song "Bare Necessities" from Disney's "Jungle Book": "When you find you can live without it/You get along not thinking about it." But anyway.... Sonic the Hedgehog #156 [Jan 2006] Sanford cover: in contrast to last month's sparse and effective design, we get a hedgehog hodgepodge as loud as the yellow background: (in no particular order) Sonic displaying his punching technique, Sally displaying her collagen lip implants, Bunnie displaying her own implants, Antoine displaying his phallic symbol, Tails displaying his mouthguard, Amy Rose displaying her elbow, Fiona displaying her green hair and freaky eye condition, and Rotor displaying his utter contempt for the story arc because he's not in it. "Line of Succession: Part 2" Story: Ken Penders; Art: Jim Fry; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief; Richard Goldwater; Sega Thought Police: Robert Leffler and Dyna Lopez Sally and Antiantoine have tied the knot, amid a shower of thought balloons as they exchange insincerities before the cameras. There was some question as to why Sal's wedding dress looks so 1980s. I'd say 1981, to be precise. That was the year Great Britain's Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, and we now know what a sham THAT royal wedding and the accompanying marriage turned out to be. So I'm guessing that photos of that wedding were the point of reference for Jim Fry's illustrations. Too bad his target audience is so young that they won't get the joke, since the wedding happened, what, close to 25 years ago when the vast majority of the readers were either unconceived, unborn, or in diapers. Sonic, meanwhile, is asking a shadowy figure living in an unaccountably Southwestern-appointed cottage, to intervene in the nuptials. He gets a curt "No" for his trouble. On his way back from the meeting, he runs into Mr. And Mrs. Exposition who just happen to be talking about the royal wedding Sonic just missed. He tries to crash the reception but is stopped cold by the big ape guards (and as they say at that showcase of American comic book writing and art at its most typical, superdickery.com, "Everything's better with monkeys"). As Sally tells the guards to throw the bum out and Antiantoine makes a heavy-handed Snidely Whiplash exit to see to it that the King graduates from coma to casket, we see a ring-wearing cloaked figure riding to the castle and momentarily entertain the hope that Peter Jackson has taken over the comic. No such luck. Despite Sonic's name being on the cover, Mysterious Cloaked Figure gets past the guards! He turns out to be (no surprise here) Prince Elias. Why has "No" become "Well, OK" in the space of less than three pages? Seems his wife talked him into a change of heart. "These are dangerous times," he quotes her as saying. What she said to him was probably something more like: "You WHAT?!? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR FURRY MIND YOU THINK I ENJOY LIVING IN THIS STUPID CABIN YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF A SO-CALLED LIVING YOU MAKE CUTTING WOOD AND YOU TURNED DOWN THE CHANCE TO LIVE IN A CASTLE WHERE WE COULD HAVE THREE SQUARE MEALS A DAY IF IT WEREN'T FOR THE FACT THAT I'M STILL LACTATING THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY FOOD IN THIS HOUSE AT ALL SOME DAYS NOW YOU GET YOUR FURRY TAIL OVER TO THE CASTLE AND TELL THEM YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND OR ELSE I'M GO TO THE COMIC CODE AUTHORITY AND SUE YOU FOR SEPARATE MAINTENANCE SO FAST BUSTER YOUR POINTY EARS ARE GONNA SHEAR OFF!!!" Or words to that effect. Elias, with Sonic in tow, burst in on Antiantoine just as he's getting ready to play Dr. Kevorkian with King Max. Antiantoine does everything but say "Curses, foiled again!" as he makes as graceful an exit as possible under the circumstances. After what must have been a very one-sided conversation with the comatose King, Elias makes his presence known at the reception and asserts his right to the crown. All Queen Alicia can think to say is that Elias's step-child wouldn't be a legitimate heir to the throne. You know, typical mother-and- child reunion stuff. This is one of the spots where I knew it was time for me to leave. I'd actually thought that Romy Chacon's "The Royal Signet" did a fantastic job of fleshing out Alicia into an actual personality. But the warm-hearted, likeable monarch in that story is absent from this one. She is, however, adept enough at changing plans to elevate Elias to next-in-line-for-the-throne, which in the thought balloons of Antiantoine translates to "Target for tonight." His method of assassination is pure Three Stooges: he plans to shake hands with the new King-apparent and use the poisoned hypodermic as a not-so-joy buzzer. The ploy is so transparent that even Sonic sees through it. His math gland FINALLY kicks in after half a dozen issues, he puts two and two together and realizes this is the Antiantoine. Sonic punches out the villain and half-way calls a halt to the Idiot Plot the comic has been saddled with for half a year (the Antisonic is still horn-dogging around Station Square with Rouge, according to Ken Penders). As Sonic uses the Zone-Link Generator (another fine product of the Deus Ex Machina Corporation) to make the switcheroo, Elias presents Sally with an annulment of the marriage that kicked off this story. With that kind of power at his disposal, legitimizing his stepchild should prove to be not that much of an obstacle. In the end, Bunny and Ant are reunited, Sonic tries his hand at exposition with Fiona, and we see Tails either still mourning his lost love or else feeling sorry for himself because he doesn't have any lines in this story. After last issue's drama queenery, he frankly didn't deserve a second chance. HEAD: You can smell the testosterone coming right off the page of this story. It's heavy on the action, which also means No Girls Allowed. Alicia elevated her son to the throne instead of her daughter, and that's about the extent of girl power in this story. Sally and Bunnie don't really do much of anything except accept what circumstance (i.e., Ken Penders) drops on their headfur in the course of the plot. This is writing for pre-ado boys with a vengeance. There was a bit of a debate going on at Ken Penders's message board as to whether Sonic was the marrying kind. I really don't want to get bogged down about it here; I just want to point it out because aside from that question Ken really didn't bring anything else to the party. The Antiantoine is just as big a melodramatic ham as ever, delivering juicy bad dialogue such as "UNSPEAKABLE DOG!!! I'll see you thrown into zhe dungeons for zhis!!!" and plotting to eventually eliminate Meg and the baby once Ken figures out a way to work them into the story. And committing regicide of a comatose king with a hypodremic full of ... well whatever it was full of ... has got to be at least as cowardly and villainous as tying a one-armed war veteran to the railroad tracks (see last month's review). As for Sonic, you have to wonder who switched HIM with an imposter. The allegedly climactic battle between him and the Antiantoine demonstrates that Ken Penders has completely lost his feeling for the characters. You'd think that Sonic would be fast enough to duck the other guy's punches, but he isn't. And because the battle takes place at a wedding reception Ken missed a golden opportunity to have a little fun and have a food fight break out, which is always a sure hit with the pre-ado boy demographic. But does Sonic seal his victory by serving the Antiantoine a slice of wedding cake right in the chops? No. Instead we get a generic fist fight that's so old school the only thing missing are the sound effects: POW! BAM! BIFF! SOCKO!! At least Karl Bollers had Sonic do some burrowing in the "Songoose" arc in the fight against Heavy 2.0; either Ken's completely forgotten Sonic's strengths here or he's just not trying. I'd like to say that with this story Ken has FINALLY brought the misbegotten Evil Twin Plot to a well-deserved end. I'd LIKE to say it, but I can't because he hasn't wound it up at all, only sent the Antiantione back where he came from. The Antisonic is still running around albeit off-panel. And as long as THAT is a factor, no matter what Ken says on the message board, the comic's story line will be continually compromised by doubt as to whether that was the REAL Sonic in any given scene. Ken's been saying that what was thought to be an intimate moment between Sonic and Fiona in Part 1 was actually a huge misunderstanding perpetrated not only on Tails but on us, the readers. On purpose. That's probably one of the contributing factors to my leaving. I mean, I should have seen it coming, it's such a Ken Penders trademark: the tendency to abandon storytelling as it's generally understood in favor of the fake-out, the head-game, the succumbing to the temptation to jump out from behind the bushes and yell "Psych!" I've seen it often enough in this comic, and I've just seen it once too often. For the record, as I mentioned in my previous review, had that been the real Sonic who'd gotten an earful from his best bud, he would still have been brooding about it when Bunnie arrived with news of the impending nuptials. The fact that Ken depicted Sonic as not bestowing another thought on Tails's blow- up told me that either he didn't care about the little guy's feelings or else that wasn't really Sonic. I chose to believe the latter because I most certainly did NOT want to believe that Sonic could be such an insensitive butthead. But Ken seems to think that Sonic IS an insensitive butthead. Then again, so do the writers for the sprite-based e-strip "Power Rings" (at http://www.wizard-alcove.net/) but at least they know how to make it funny! I was only recently reminded by someone who had abandoned the Sonic fandom some time ago and who recently posted a comment at the Rinacat DeviantArt page concerning some recent Kim Possible/Shego fan art that there's a difference between Archie Sonic and the Sonic the fans know and love. The more I read the comic, the more I realize how true that is. I cannot love or support the Archie Sonic; he's not even that likeable anymore. And even were I to resume writing Sonic fanfic, which may be the only cure for an excess of Archie, I've got to get away from the comic. So I'm ending the review right here; no ratings, no further comment. See you at the Awards Ceremony when the Best-Worst List comes out.