Sonic the Hedgehog #185 Yardley!/Jensen cover: Sonic dragging Mina back into the continuity, with various ominous shadows in the background belonging to Mammoth Mogul, Naugus, and Bark (I think) as well as one ridiculous one belonging to Bean. A well-designed cover, even if it doesn't do a good job of communicating the story inside. "Mogul Rising : Part 1 : Needful Things" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Matt Herms (debut); Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Josh Ray; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor/Managing Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick Unlike the cover, Mina sees herself off the plane and on top of Sonic. But first things first: she nicely twists the arm of her boyfriend, Ash, to get him to apologize for acting like a jerk before and competing with Sonic for the title. Once that's out of the way, he leaves to get the band settled in and to avoid the ensuing three pages of exposition: Sonic shows Mina what's left of the old Knothole, which looks like the landscape in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." Do yourself a favor, read "The Road" if you haven't already. Turns out Mina's been writing anti-Eggman songs, and feels that the tune she wrote about the destruction of Knothole doesn't begin to describe the reality. Not exactly in the same league as Bono, but her heart's in the right place. They then adjourn to Freedom Fighter Headquarters. I have no idea what the flag with the number 3 on it signifies, unless they're expecting an attack by golfers. They hook up with Mighty and Tails who are helping to rehab the place, and bump into a panel of awkward silence when Mina brings up Knuckles. In the course of the tour of the rehab project, there's an incoming call from Nicole to Sonic: Mammoth Mogul wants to take a meeting. Once Sonic arrives at Mogul's cell, Mogul gives Sonic a chance to meet his demands; Sonic counters that Mogul isn't in a position to demand much of anything. Though perhaps Sonic should have taken Mogul's mention of a "new iteration of the Fearsom Foursome" seriously. Maybe if Mogul had said it in English. "That Night," as the helpful text box says, Mogul turns on the juice in order to "reach across the ether to my imminent minions." Translation: three MORE pages of exposition. Seems ol' Fuzzbutt had managed to cross paths with Mina, Mighty and Tails back in the long ago: Mina when she first appeared in the comic in issue #76, Mighty at some hitherto undepicted moment in his kidhood when he and his little sister were orphaned because their parents (who had made their living by thievery) were busted; and Tails during the misbegotten Tails-Isn't-Tails interlude which was part of the fun and games of Knuckles's Green Period back around 2001. These three are manipulated by Mogul to convince a fourth operative to cooperate: Sonic himself. HEAD: One of my correspondents has written to me reporting a rumor that the "mind controlled heroes story [the "Mogul Rising" arc] would have run longer, if someone in the higher ups weren't paranoid about the owners of DBZ thinking that Archie was ripping off the Marjin Vegita (back when HE was mind controlled and had that M on his forehead)." That's giving Archie, Ian, and DragonBall creator Akira Toriyama way too much credit. If this story rips anything off, props should go to John Frankenheimer, director of the landmark 1962 political thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" and to the 1959 Richard Condon novel upon which it was based. In that story, a Korean War veteran names Raymond Shaw is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving his platoon. Trouble is, that never happened: the platoon was captured and brainwashed by their Commie captors into believing that Shaw had saved them. Shaw, for his part, was turned into a sleeper agent who would do the bidding of his puppet master(s) without remembering what he was doing. Turns out that the agent in the U.S. ordering him around is none other than his domineering mother, magnificently played by Angela Lansbury. This Commie Dearest asked the Party for a killer but didn't know they would brainwash her own flesh and blood. But putting thoughts of revenge aside for the moment, she exploits her son to manipulate the career of her second husband, a U.S. Senator who is also a Commie agent and who lets his wife do his thinking for him (e.g., when he needs to come up with a specific number of alleged Communists in the Defense Department he can denounce in the manner of Joe McCarthy, she puts a ketchup bottle in front of him, whereupon he's ready to announce that there are 57 known Communists working for the DoD). Her plan culminates at a political convention where her hubby will be nominated for Vice- President; she's arranged for her son to assassinate the Presidential candidate during his acceptance speech so hubby can step in and run in his place, thereby putting a Commie in the White House. And you thought YOUR family was dysfunctional! Unlike sleeper cells where the various agents go on about their lives until the order is given to do whatever it was they were set up to do (see just about any season of "24"), sleeper agents in fiction are supposed to carry on with their lives until awakened by a post-hypnotic suggestion or, in the case of "Needful Things," mental telepathy (in "The Manchurian Candidate" the trigger was a playing card, the Queen of Diamonds). Here, Mammoth is the trigger, waking up his sleepers and getting them to pile on Sonic. This story has several HUGE problems which make me wonder why it was green lighted in its current condition. Never mind that, in the real world, the central conceit of "The Manchurian Candidate" ... that people can be hypnotized into taking actions they wouldn't undertake consciously because they would go against their moral beliefs ... just doesn't work. This was demonstrated in an ep of "Mythbusters." Never mind that it didn't even work in "The Manchurian Candidate"! The film climaxed at the convention when Raymond, up in the rafters of the convention center in a projection booth and armed with a sniper rifle, assassinates not the targeted Presidential candidate but his Commie mommy and stepfather before turning the rifle on himself and making a Kurt Cobain exit. Never mind that (What are the odds?) Mina just happens to come to Knothole at this point in her tour and Mighty just happens to be on site helping with the rehab project so that all four of Mammoth Mogul's sleeper agents are in the same neighborhood. The problems with the plot of this story go way beyond that. For instance, WHY does Mogul need to brainwash THREE other Mobians in order to activate ONE? As one of the characters in "Saving Private Ryan" said, "You wanna explain the math of this to me?" If Sonic was such a hard nut to crack, why would Mogul even have bothered? Wouldn't it have made more sense for him to have marked, say, King Max, Prince Elias or Princess Sally and manipulate them instead? Maybe he figured Sally's mind was too powerful for him to exploit, but certainly there were other Royals he could have marked if all he wanted to do was take over the Kingdom or get handed a Get Out Of Jail Free card. And speaking of powerful minds, let's not forget the acclaimed "Sonic Conversion" ep from the second season of the SatAM series. In that one, Uncle Chuck's deroboticization fails but he still manages to break the mental hold Robotnik had on him, and thus begin his career as a hedgehog/mole feeding information to the Knothole gang. Long story short: there are a lot of parts in this story but so far some of the major gears don't mesh very cleanly. And that's not to mention the problems with the STRUCTURE of this story. For a 14-page story, a whopping 10 of them are loaded down with exposition of one kind or another: from Sonic, from Mina, from Mogul. Only toward the end do we get any action in this story, and what is it? Ian's old standby, Let's Beat Up On Sonic. And on top of everything else, you'd have to be blind not to notice the presence of Ash as Mina responds to the siren call of Mogul, though we're spared the scene where Mina slips out of her jammies and into her street clothes. Tails and Mighty, being pretty much nude all the time, don't have to worry. So I will only be surprised if Ash DOESN'T make an appearance in the next issue. Ash could very well prove to be, in the heavy-as-lead dialogue of Mammoth Mogul from S56's "Immortality Is Infinite...", "the unknown probability factor in my plans ... unfathomable ... uncontrollable...." Unfortunately, prose like THAT set the tone for Mammoth Mogul's lines ever since. So we all get to look forward to Sonic trying not to get beat up AGAIN! Ian had better have a really juicy plot twist or two waiting for us because this story is a major candidate for a crash landing. Head Score: 3. EYE: While Tracy Yardley! goes into rehab for his workaholism (j/k), it's left to Matt Herms to step in and do the character modeling based on Tracy's layouts. Matt Herms, artist for the Web comic "Sticky Floors" (the title reminds me of all those movie theaters I attended in my misspent youth), talks about Sonic in the VERY FIRST ENTRY of his blog http://herms85.livejournal.com [redacted for obvious reasons]: "I'm a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan the universe and the Archie comics, mostly (gaming-wise, I'm in Mario's corner). Anyway, so whilst packing boxes for my big move to central Florida this last month, I went through alotta' old papers. Old drawings. Doodles. And the thing is, I can remember exactly where I was, what I was thinking, with practically every drawing. And wow, I remember back in 2004 I thought I was the sh*t. XD "See, as much as any of us will attempt humility whenever we're complimented because we're not so much humble as just too socially awkward to take compliments =P the secret thing is that we have huge egos. Big, manly, beefy egos. Geez, back in '04 I was a fresh-face outta' high-school. I had plans, man! I was gonna' get onto the convention circuit, start shopping my portfolio around to Marvel and DC and maybe land a gig on Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comic, alongside my buddies Jonny Gray and Ian Flynn, and we were gonna' rock the face offa' that thing. All within 2005." As he says later in the entry, "plans change." But it's nice to know that Archie snagged a Sonic fan when looking for another artist and not just another comic book artist whose resume doesn't include any significant furry work (cf. Gary Bedell's disappointing story art for S168's "Courage and Honor"). I like Herm's style, and he included a very charming page in his blog relating his courtship of and proposal to his wife. His work is also on display at his deviantArt site, http://herms85.deviantart.com. However much Tracy Yardley!'s layout determined Herms's drawing style, he does a sweet job with Mina talking to Sonic in the ruins of old Knothole, and with the narrow panel during the awkward silence when Knuckles's name is dropped. And I have to say he totally won me over with the single panel of Mighty's childhood which reminded me of the final scene of "Return Of The King" (book or film, take your pick) where Samwise returns to the Shire, his friends having left for the West, to face a life of domestic happiness. That's the same quality I took away from the drawing; the supposedly ill- gotten gains seemed to me just part of the furniture. Herms is a very welcome addition to the talent pool and has given us a very strong opening. Welcome aboard. Eye Score: 10. HEART: There's actually a good amount of Heart in this installment. Unfortunately, you have to shovel off a load of exposition to uncover it. Both Mina's discussing the destruction of Knothole and her getting caught up on the Knuckles news had definite emotional impact, but the moments suffered because of a need to keep the plot moving. Likewise, it seems Mammoth Mogul waited until Mina, Mighty and Tails were all emotionally vulnerable to a certain extent before "marking" them, as he put it. Of course, Mogul didn't care about what they were going through except that their woes gave him an opportunity to exploit. This heartlessness on his part actually cements his villain credentials even more than whatever woolly-brained scheme he's got going involving Sonic and the other sleeper agents. Too bad you almost have to decipher it on the fly and watch out for incoming exposition. Heart Score: 8. "Misfit Badniks: The Salty, Soggy Sequel" Story: Mike Gallagher; Art; Dave Manak; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Aimee Ray; Lettering: John E. Workman If you're a relative newcomer to the comic, know that the opening line by Motobug, "I had to go to the rust room," pretty much sets the tone for this story. We get a quick update of the story 15 issues ago that set this one up to explain why the Sonic-sized Pseudo-Sonic in that story is now ginormous. As the Badniks begin proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," the party is broken up by the (re-)appearance of the Forty Fathom Freedom Fighters, who were introduced during "Southern Crossover," the Tails miniseries back in 1995-6(!). The good guys and the bad guys fight some more, but just as the Giant Pseudo-Sonic is going online he gets flattened by Fluke the whale, then scrunched up into a metal cube with other assorted villains. I don't know what they're going to do for an encore, despite Sonic's soliciting feedback on them. HEAD: Ian Flynn, at the beginning of his writing for the comic, promised "Action and more action." And Mike Gallagher, kickin' it old school, shows him how it's done. There's no need to elaborate on the plot, if this story can be said to have one, because the summary paragraph above pretty much covers it all. The only aspect of the story I haven't covered are the recurring puns, and I am SO not going there! The problem with the aquatic freedom fighters is pretty much that they ARE aquatic. Unless the writer(s) can get Sonic and crew underwater, there's no chance they'll be interacting in any meaningful way. Sure, Fluke the whale and Bottlenose the dolphin can function above the water while they catch a breath, but they're still pretty limited. It may be another 15 issues before someone figures out how to work them back into the comic again. Head Score: 4. EYE: Despite Aimee Ray's abilities as a colorist, the coloring in this story is as flat and undistinguished as Michael Grossman's when he was coloring for Dave Manak back in the day. That one aspect of the comic's artwork has evolved nicely, thanks to the past work of Jason Jensen and Frank Gagliardo, becomeing more nuanced and more impressive. Here, as if in pursuit of nostalgia, it's as if it never happened. Which is a shame, because this story needed something aside from nostalgia for a collection of one-dimensional villains to hold the interest of the readers. Eye Score: 4. HEART: For nostalgia buffs only.