Sonic the Hedgehog #169 (Jan 2007) Tracy Yardley!/Jim Amash/Jason Jensen cover: "Sonic goes super!" the cover announces, immediately reminding me of half a dozen Youtube AMVs where cartoon characters ranging from Robotnik to Aang the Avatar mouth the words sung by Big Gay Al in the South Park movie. You can tell the characters are "super" because Sonic is golden, Shadow is a lighter shade of golden, and Tails ... is wearing a beach towel around his neck which could only get him in trouble because it could get tangled up in his tails, which is how he flies in the first place. So what's his deal; as Tails he flies but as Super Tails he ... flies? Does anybody else think this stuff through? It's good artwork and a strong composition, but the longer you look at it the sillier it gets. "Order From Chaos: Part 2: The Great Harmony" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater Where did we leave off last time? Right, Tails and Shadow have been plugged into some sci-fi device designed to retrieve Chaos Emeralds. So naturally the story begins somewhere else: with Sonic coming across the chassis of his dad. The good news is, Dad is more or less OK because A.D.A.M. is really a M.O.R.O.N.: "he told me to go somewhere and self-destruct. He didn't give me a deadline, though." Loopholes; don't ya just love 'em? Next, thanks to A.D.A.M. going into Villain Blabbing His Head Off mode we get a totally unnecessary reminder of Sonic's itinerary during the Tossed In Space arc (S124-129). Ian neglects to mention the world of the Azurites, who worshiped Sonic as a deity because he fell asleep on his butt in one of the worst Sonic stories of all time. Still, the recap uses up two pages. And what are the odds that it was those self-same planets Sonic visited that were the homes of the various Chaos Emeralds? We also get a one-page digression to Angel Island where Locke and Finitevus compare dental work and the effectiveness of their favorite brands of deodorant while quoting from the first Sonic Adventure game for no good reason. Aside from being echidnas themselves these two clowns have NOTHING in common with Tikal, who at the end of the game went back to her full-time job as the heart of Chaos and mother-figure to those little onion-heads the Chao (c.f. my article on Tikal in the Sonic-wiki at http://www.nz17.com/sonic-wiki ). But let's get back to the story. Sonic doesn't get beat up in the ensuing fight, but it's clear that A.D.A.M. can hold his own. For one panel, though, Tommy's consciousness (and his kisser) break through, allowing Sonic to be diverted enough so he can finally get clocked by A.D.A.M. Sonic then tries a new tack, running up the tower and drawing power from the emeralds. He thus morphs into Super Sonic. The bad news is, A.D.A.M. pulls the same trick. At this point, Robotnik decants Shadow (who's gone platinum) and Tails (who's wearing that beach towel) and says "Let's you and them fight!" Tails then gets an idea: since all those Chaos Emeralds were pulled into this story, they can be kicked back out. So Tails and Shadow team up, with Tails telling himself for no good reason that he's finally fulfilling the Great Harmony Clause in his contract, though I'm betting the writers will drag it into the story again in a year or two as needed. Anyway, the Emeralds are all shipped off to the Zone of Silence. What will happen to the Emeralds once they're there? Tails doesn't know and we don't care. So the Chaos Emeralds are out of the picture, Eggman's crummy fleet is coming into view, and who shows his face again but ... Tommy, asserting control of his own shell. Here's his big speech: "I'm sorry for everything, really. I'm sorry I've been such a pain. I'm sorry for all the trouble I've dragged you [Sonic] into. And I'm especially sorry for letting A.D.A.M. do this to everyone." That pretty much confirms it: Tommy Turtle is the SORRIEST character in the history of this comic. But knowing that the Eggfleet is bearing down on him and that the writers are editors STILL don't know how to develop his character properly and that the fans are sick to death of him and that he was a success in his initial appearance when he died at the end of the story, Tommy lets himself gets blasted into turtle soup by the Egg Fleet. Shadow and Robotnik exit upstage, and Sonic and Tails mourn a life that can be measured in wasted comic book pages. And among the fans, there was much rejoicing (yay). HEAD: It's a pretty sad commentary when the highlight of a story is a character dying, but Tommy was that kind of character in this kind of comic. Herewith, a brief biography of Tommy Turtle: Tommy made his first (and what should have been his last) appearance in 2002 in S117's "Tortoise and the Hedgehog." He was clearly a character who merited our sympathies: a friend of Sonic, overshadowed by the villains, who saves Sonic's hide at his own expense in the story's finale, which was surprisingly poignant for this comic. It worked well and was a cut above the usual quality of Sonic scripts. End of story? No way. Someone (I blame then-editor Justin Gabrie) thought Tommy deserved to come back, in the comic book death cheat tradition, so he reappears in S135's "Agent of K.N.O.T.H.O.L.E." The fact that he's "revealed" in the next issue to be a droid and that the REAL Tommy doesn't manifest himself until S137, at a time when the book's new editor Mike Pellerito was bringing the continuity to heel, is not a fair explanation as to why the character was so unfocused. The short answer: nobody ever figured out what to do with him. Why he was brought back at all without a clear idea of who he was and where he fit in, I don't know. Maybe someone was suffering from an advanced case of Eastman-Laird Syndrome, where you think that turtles just automatically work as comic book characters. In any event, by S145 Tommy was a regular member of the cast. Unfortunately, it seems the writers were never given any guidance of how to play him. Romy Chacon's "Out of Your Shell" (S146) had him playing Felix to Rotor's Oscar in an Odd Couple arrangement. Ken Penders included him in the fun-and- games of the Good/Bad/Unknown arc, where Tommy's character remained undefined ... but then again, the same could be said for Fiona Fox in the same story arc. He was later promoted to Brain Trust Bit Player, but again without any writer getting a handle on him. The turning point, of sorts, came in S154's "More Than Meets The Eye," a 2005 Ken Penders tour-de-force where Tommy gets infested with nanites and turns into a Swiss army turtle, his shell able to assume various shapes. This seemed like a typical Penders homage to comic book heroes generally and the Transformers franchise in particular (as if the story title didn't sufficiently hammer THAT point home for anybody!), but because Tommy had no visible personality going into the story the nanite gimmick didn't help him. Or if it did, it helped him look more ridiculous than ever, and the fans heaped tons of abuse on Tommy. Ken might have been on his way to developing Tommy in S159's "Insidious" wherein Tommy begins shedding nanites like flu virus, but Ken's relationship with Archie Comics was abruptly terminated at the end of 2005. With a Sonic fan now at the writing helm, Ian Flynn, Tommy's days were clearly numbered. "Order From Chaos" was part of Ian's housecleaning of the comic. This story arc would clear out A.D.A.M., Mecha, the nanites, and Tommy in a much-needed reset of the continuity. Looking back to "Tortoise and the Hedgehog," Flynn replays Tommy's death by self-sacrifice, thus bringing the character full-circle and hopefully killing him off once and for all. I never sensed any sympathy for Tommy among the Sonic fans, and the writers (other than Romy Chacon handling Tommy's initial appearance) never worked hard to generate any sympathy for him. His appearances always felt obligatory and forced, as if they somehow expected some sort of magic to happen and that he'd suddenly blossom as a character without any hard work on their part. Folks, there's a reason why writers are paid to do what they do: they're supposed to make us WANT to care about characters such as Tommy, and they're supposed to have the tools with which to do so. Other characters have been similarly thrust onto the comic's pages but they eventually found their footing: Mina burst into song, Amy Rose grew up (a little bit). But a number of other characters such as Fiona and Hope Kintobor still haven't really found their footing yet. Hope's situation was so bad that Ian Flynn exiled her from the story line with the maybe-she-left- Knothole-but-maybe-she-didn't ambiguity of S162's "Ties That Bind." But the highlight of the Order From Chaos arc is the euthanasia of Tommy Turtle. Ian Flynn has put an end to Tommy's misery. And that of the readers. Aurora knows there isn't much else memorable about this story. I'm still trying to get what the point is for Super Tails or Turbo Tails or whatever the little guy's designation is supposed to be. And Shadow is more or less just along for the ride. But maybe it's enough that Ian's taken one of the worst ideas ever to find its way into the comic back out again. Head Score: 7. EYE: Tracy's skills continue to be on display, but he needs to learn how to dial it back. All the gnashing of teeth in this story (Locke, Doc Fin, Super Tails, Super Shadow) put my own teeth on edge. But the twilight sky on the final page, as our heroes mourn the loss of Tommy, is nicely done and appropriate to the mood. Eye Score: 8. HEART: This story is heavy on the action, with only the first page (Sonic and Jules) and the last page two pages or so (Tommy's demise) doing anything to move the needle on the Heart meter. The former is a much-needed reminder that Sonic does have an emotional connection to some of the other characters in this book besides Sally and her would-be rivals for the hedgehog's affections. The Tommy situation is something else entirely. Ideally, the character who gets killed off should have engendered enough goodwill among the readers that there's some kind of emotional impact when they're snuffed. But as Tommy's pre- demise apology hints, what the readers are likely to feel when Tommy buys it is more like a profound sense of relief that we won't have to put up with him any more. That's a legitimate emotion, but not for one of the book's alleged heroes. It is, rather, a monument to the failure of the writers to understand the character of Tommy and to transmit that understanding to us. For all the tears shed by Tails on Tommy's demise, I predict there will be plenty of dry eyes in the fandom. Heart Score: 5. "...For A Friend" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Steve Butler; Ink: Ken Penders; Color: Aimee Ray; Lettering: Ken Penders In a major change of gears, Ian goes for the kind of action story that used to be Ken Penders's domain, with Espio making his way into what used to be Golden Hive Castle. Far from looking like a background for a Honey-Nut Cheerios(tm) ad, it's been taken over as a base of operations for Eggman. Espio breaks in, uses Nicole (with a Neo-Nicole icon on display) to hack into Eggman's computer, and learns that the populace more or less scattered after Eggman took over the hive. Having Neo-Nicole set the place to overload, he punches a hole in the hive with his shuriken then pulls himself out with his tongue. Ew, gross! HEAD: This story has the feel of a Ken Penders story, right down to the character of Ray the Flying Squirrel, who does his flying in a saucer this time around. At the beginning, we hear him speak with the stutter he was given (there are actually three kinds of stuttering: repetition, prolongation, and abnormal stoppage; Ray seems a victim of the first variety). When we catch up to him at the end, not only has the stutter flattened out but he's wearing a jacket. It gives the impression to any newbies that he was just shivering from the cold. This flattening out of a speech characteristic happened so often when Ken was writing for Antoine, in which case his accent would vanish, that that's what I thought of when seeing Ray here. Then too there's the story structure. Even while discussing Robotnik's psyche and the fate of the colony, it all leads up to the destruction of the hive. Of course, Espio has to get in at first. This involves the plot device that Roger Ebert calls The Impregnable Fortress Impregnated. The Temple of Doom mining complex penetrated by Indiana Jones and the Death Star are two examples. Admittedly, Espio doesn't have to run such a formidable gauntlet this time around, but what do you expect for 8 pages? This is action writing, and it gets the job done. This story does have a Zen moment; either that, or else I missed something somewhere. After dispatching the solitaire- playing robot, Espio asks out loud "Why would Dr. Robotnik program his machines to show fear?" A better question would be, "Since when does showing a word balloon with a single exclamation point in it constitute a display of fear?" Surprise, maybe, but where's the fear? That kind of appeal to an emotion where it's not really on display was, for me, one more sign of Ken Penders's writing style. I await Ian's blossoming as a writer in his own right. Head Score: 7. EYE: Maybe it's because Butler was working with the Chaotix this time around, and they're a notoriously tough bunch to draw, but Ken's inking seems to come through more than Butler's pencil work. This only heightened the perception for me that this was a Ken Penders holdover. Eye Score: 7. HEART: The only driving factor here is that Espio is doing this little search-and-destroy mission for Charmy's sake. Which is great if you know the guy's back story. I thought I did, but there's still something holding back the story, something that kept me from doing anything other than tagging along with Espio through to the last page. I don't know whether this would have worked as an 11-pager, with a bit more space to either make Espio's progress through the hive more challenging or to allow for a flashback of Charmy to shore up Espio's motivation. This story just sort of went through the motions, which to me was the final reminder of the Ken Penders storytelling style; I felt the same way during long stretches of the Mobius: 25 Years Later arc. Heart Score: 4.