Sonic the Hedgehog #179 (Oct 2007)
     Yardley!/Amash/Jensen cover: Sonic expresses his
displeasure at a wanted poster of Tails: "Enemy of the State." 
Yeah, right!  I mean, look at that shayna punim.  Is that the
face of a subversive?


     "House of Cards: Part 2 : Royal Flush"
     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: Representatives for Sega Licensing: Cindy
Chau, Dyna Lopes, and Robert Leffler (1957-2007).

     "If any of you read the credits at the beginning of the
Sonic comic, you'll note a special thanks credit to Robert
Leffler and Dyna Lopez of SEGA. Robert was the main man when
it came to getting approval from SEGA for the stories used in
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG. He's been the face of SEGA at Comic-Con
and many other conventions too numerous to mention. He's been
a close friend and confidant for many years.
     "It's with an extremely heavy heart that I say Robert
passed away on August 5 from his fight with cancer.
     "It's difficult to put into words what I have to say, so
I'll let what Dyna Lopez of SEGA had to say about him be my
statement for now.
     "'Robert's solid work ethic, patient diplomatic
negotiations, and easy going spirit are just some of the long
list of rare and genuine qualities that made him a very
special and unique person. He was a patient mentor, a true
friend, an all around kind of guy. He will be deeply missed as
he has formed many friendships over the years and contributed
so much and more to our Licensing Department and to Sega as a
whole. As many of you know, he was the face of Sega at many
trade shows and industry events. Even though he is no longer
with us, his memory and spirit will undeniably live on.'
     "Saying you will be missed hardly touches the surface,
old friend."  Ken Penders

     That enough reality for ya?


     Sonic and Tails are just getting warmed up to resume
their brawl which began last issue.  They have to compete with
the theme-based cast drawing at the bottom of the first page. 
I guess showing Nicole building the aforementioned "house of
cards" is appropriate since she's the one who cobbled New
Mobotropolis together, but why do I think it would be even
more appropriate to show the "living computer program" playing
solitaire?
     Anyway, we get two pages of Tails getting in about one
punch per page to Sonic's none, plus the little guy going into
the kind of Drama Queen Mode not seen since S155's "Line of
Succession: Part 1."  Seems Tails is mainly playing for time
for the sake of his 'rents who are...
     Breaking into the castle with unsettling ease.  "You said
your peace [the phrase is really "to say your piece," but
never mind] back in the detention center," Elias tells
Amadeus.  Translation: "Now it's MY turn to bore the readers
with a huge amount of verbiage."  But since that's a violation
of the Action And More Action Doctrine, the boys are soon
threatening each other with sharp, pointy things.
     Back at the Jailhouse Rock, Sonic decides to take the
fight outside, more to get away from the trash talk coming
from the spectators than anything else.  Tails continues
yelling at Sonic until we realize that Tails is still cheesed
about losing Fiona.  Despite the Five-Finger Kissoff she gave
Tails in "Truth of the Heart" (S172), the little guy is still
uber-resentful of Sonic's horning in on his action:
"Everything I care about, you take away from me!" he yells,
conveniently forgetting that Sonic also shlepped his 'rents
back from Argentium, the planet shaped like a donut (Mmmmm,
donuts!) in S170's "Coming and Goings."  Sonic then suddenly
says, "Oh, well, take your best shot, then."
     Of course, just on the point of something interesting
happening, we cut back to the duel in the castle which only
lasts two panels before being broken up by a monolithic slab
of some sort rising up out of the floor and separating the
combatants.  That was Neo-Nicole's idea; she also brought
along Sally, looking decidedly cheesed herself at having been
left out of the story until now.  Little Sister then rips into
Big Brother and Amadeus for basically acting like guys, and
reminds them that she's been in the leadership business ever
since the SatAM cartoon premiered in 1993.  Underneath her
retro-red hairdo, it looks like she's got the most level head
in the castle.
     Now, let's return to Tails and Sonic, where the
hedgehog's soft answer has managed to turn away a boatload of
tween wrath.  Sonic admits that he hooked up with Fiona
because he himself was on the rebound after the Sally
Smackdown in S134's "Say You Will," though with an Evil Twin
Plotline also in play at the time it was kind of hard to tell
the playas without a scorecard for a while.  He also figured,
incorrectly, that Tails would get around to noticing that
Fiona was in no mood to return Tails's affections.  Thus Sonic
admits to being a jerk, about which see my review for the last
issue.  And with the ritual handshake and bestowing of a
noogie (Yardley! does NOT show them hugging and thus misses
the trifecta), the two are reconciled.  Like THAT wasn't going
to happen!
     The two then burst in on the Royals where they discover
that cooler furry heads have indeed prevailed.  Over some Earl
Gray, Amadeus and Elias have decided that the one piece of
furniture the castle needs is a Cabinet: specifically, half a
dozen Mobians to act in an advisory capacity to the King. 
While Max is less than enthusiastic about this turn of events,
at least Amadeus demonstrates his lack of power-seeking
ambition by not running for one of the six new Council seats. 
Rosemary is one of the candidates, however, which may put a
crimp in Tails's relationship with his mom, about which we
still know absolutely nothing.  But even before the ballot
boxes can be stuffed, who should show up but the Dimitri
Floating Head doing his Silver Surfer impersonation and
heralding the soon coming of Enerjacticus ... er, Galactijak
... oh, you know who I mean.

     HEAD: I can see where Ian was going with the story
structure: double-tracking the revolution plot with the Tails-
Gets-Mad-At-Sonic plot.  Trouble is, the former was the weaker
of the two.  
     Unless you count Amadeus yakking about changing the
system virtually every time he put in an appearance up until
the last issue, there was NEVER any sense that the government
of Knothole was falling apart and NEEDED an overhaul.  And
when the revolution DID come in the last issue, it was handled
in a gratuitous manner: there was no build-up to it of any
kind, no feeling that this was something that had taken root
in ANY of the Mobians.  We're TOLD that Rosemary was writing
manifestos when she wasn't being a wife and mother, but we
never saw it happening and never read a word that she'd
penned, which kind of compromises that plot point.
     And the ending was cut from the same cloth.  In this
issue Amadeus and Elias face off first with words, then with
blades, but before anyone's swash could get seriously buckled
it was all over: Sally broke up the fight and they worked out
a compromise that, like the revolution itself, was presented
to the reader and to Sonic as a fait accompli.  Ken Penders
may not have done a very good job of rabble-rousing in writing
speeches for Benedict in the Dark Alliance arc (Knuckles #22-
24), but at least he tried.
     No, the real story here was Tails finally popping like a
tick in Sonic's face after all these years.  Ken Penders also
said that he wanted to explore the relationship between Sonic
and Tails since, according to him, you don't see too many
teenagers (like Sonic) hanging with tweens (like Tails).  Ken
never got the chance, so it looks like Ian decided to try his
hand at it.  Did it work for me?  That's a question best
answered in the Heart section.
     But Ian has kept another Sonic tradition alive:
squandered potential.  This story, like the one in the last
issue, featured five pages of information about various
buildings in New Mobotropolis.  As such, they had all the
compelling interest of a total stranger's slide show of their
vacation.  This two-issue story arc had a total of 44 pages
available for storytelling, and Ian only used 34.  I simply
can't believe that he couldn't think of a way to open up the
story more and take advantage of the opportunity.  As I've
said already, he could have given the would-be revolution more
of a back story, and he could FINALLY have gotten around to
depicting Tails's home life and how he relates with his
parents ... unless Sega has declared that to be a No-Fly Zone. 
But I kind of doubt that because Ken managed to show Sonic,
the senior member of the franchise, interacting with HIS
parents.  It wasn't stellar writing, but again he gets points
for trying.
     I wouldn't make such a big deal about this but for the
fact that I miss the Letters and Fan Art pages that Archie
sold off to DC for the purpose of crossover advertising.  Come
to think of it, DC hasn't had ANY advertising in the past two
issues at least, so maybe that deal fell through, I don't
know.  Archie is certainly taking every opportunity to push
its own products, though.  Head Score: 7.
     EYE: I've usually been able to take Tracy Yardley!'s
artwork in stride, and there have been moments where it's been
exceptional.  But when I saw the last panel on page [11],
where Sally finally enters the story, the artwork stopped me
like a brick wall.  
     OK, Sally's original character design, with her large
head stuck onto her compact but otherwise well-proportioned
body, has become something of a joke within the Sonic fandom
(c.f.
http://antyep.deviantart.com/art/Unwanted-Company-56884357 ). 
My own explanation for it, from the fanfic "Back Upon Itself,"
was that Sally was a low birth weight baby, she was self-
conscious about her appearance, and she wore those
anachronistic Princess Jasmine outfits as a child (in the
SatAM "Blast To The Past" two-parter and in her appearances in
Mike Gallagher's Sonic Kids stories) to disguise the fact. 
But otherwise her character modeling worked for me.
     I don't know when Yardley! decided to give her, and most
of the other characters, blown-up hands and feet as well. 
That's what stopped me cold this time.  It isn't just that
Sally's hands were merely ginormous, they also have an
arthritic lack of grace about them.  It's like looking at a
furry version of the character modeling for the TV adaptation
of "Tak and the Power of Juju."  Everything else worked well,
though.  Eye Score: 8.
     HEART: Given the Tails back story up until now, I
honestly can't think of any other way that Ian could have
resolved the Sonic-Tails conflict.  Sonic couldn't very well
have beat the kid into submission.  And 11-year-olds can be
full of themselves as they start ramping up toward
adolescence.  It makes me wish that Ken had never written
"Line of Succession" which more or less created the fault line
between Sonic and Tails.  But Ian played the cards he was
dealt as best he could.
     Over on page [15], where Sonic busts in on the Royals and
discovers that the revolution has more or less fizzled out, we
see Sally, Amadeus, Nicole and Elias in the mid-ground, while
Meg and Rosemary give their attention to Baby Alexis in the
background.  That's an apt symbol for this comic's attitude
toward the family.
     More than once, I thought that the comic would step over
into serious Heart territory by way of its depiction of
families in the book.  I thought it would happen with Hope
Kintobor, who was an extremely likely candidate for an
audience identification figure, being the same age (if not the
same gender) as the alleged core audience.  I also thought it
would happen when Ken brought Sonic's parents and Sally's mom
into the continuity.  The VERY rare interplay of Sonic and
Uncle Chuck is another example.
     Alas, it never really happened.  Hope's been shoved out
of the continuity to try to get into a United Federation
engineering school, thus pretty much guaranteeing she'll never
be heard from again.  Neither Ken nor Karl Bollers ever gave a
voice to Queen Alicia to make her a believable mother-figure
for Sally; Romy Chacon managed it in "The Royal Signet" (S120)
but nobody else followed up on it.  Jules and Bernie remain
somewhat remote from Sonic and don't feel like his parents.
     And to the growing list of lost Heart opportunities we
may as well add Amadeus and Rosemary Prower.  Throughout this
arc they interacted very little with Tails, their alleged
offspring.  The biggest parent-child moment in the story is
when sonny boy busts Dad out of jail, so you have to wonder
just how functional this family is.
     Pretty much the only Heart moment in this story, then, is
the Sonic-Tails face-off.  It worked well enough, though Tails
seems to recover a little too quickly from his outburst; once
again, Ian could have lingered a bit more on the resolution
and sacrificed one of the useless Tourist Guide pages if he
needed the space.
     But as an examination of the relationship between Sonic
and Tails, I'm afraid we're no better off than we were before
the story broke.  After verbally disarming Tails, Sonic goes
into his spiel which Tails accepts.  That's not the problem. 
The problem is, we still don't know what kept them together up
until there was the one-sided falling-out between the two of
them.
     The Sonic-Tails conflict may have been resolved, but the
end result is that one more bit of previous bad writing has
been cleared away like so much debris.  We're no closer to
understanding why the two are buds, though, and there's a good
chance the issue just may come up again.  The comic's official
writers may not have the freedom to disregard previous stories
and really think and feel their way through to a convincing
explanation, but I'd sure like to see them try.  Heart Score:
7.