Updates: in the last issue there was a thumbnail of a brilliant piece of fan art but these old eye bones had trouble reading the name. Turns out the name was "A. G. Davis" but it's now A. G. Burley ... she's jumped the broom since then. She still has a page at deviantArt under the name "HypaDawg," and even though she's taken down her fan art in favor of original work it's still worth a look. Also, I've been informed that the mysterious Shade, leader of the Marauders in "Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood," is ... an echidna! This of course could lead to major headaches for comic writers if they ever try to cross over from the Archie continuity, but since the only other echidna Knuckles has encountered in the Sega continuities has been Tikal (who's really more of a ghost from an ancient echidna civilization) somehow I don't think ol' Red is going to complain. Thank the Sonic Chronicles game manual for the skinny on Shade. Sonic the Hedgehog #193(December 2008) The signature says this is a Yardley!/Jensen cover but in the opening credits they give props to Sonic comic veteran Pat Spaziante. While they sort it out: Sonic does a routine that would have won him the gold in Beijin as Amy Rose is about to get her hammer yanked away from her. That's not the anti-Omega they're dealing with but ... well, let's just say the eye coloring is no accident. "Otherside : Part 1 : How The Other Half Lives" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink : Jim Amash; Color: Josh Ray; Lettering: Teresa Davidson; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega licensing reps: Kristin Parcell and Cindy Chau Sonic is getting ready to cross over to the other Mobius, dba Moebius, where he faces the dread prospect of ... QUALITY TIME WITH AMY ROSE. To her credit, Amy is aware that sucking Scourge and the SS back to his own world can also be enhanced by making things hot for him while they're there. The star posts deliver them to what looks like a corridor in an art museum, but the welcoming committee consisting of an alt- Omega decorated with peace symbols on its shoulders has other plans. Sonic and Amy Rose pull out their respective moves, but the alt-Omega uses a couple of non-lethal crowd control measures to stop them. Amy Rose is hit with quick-setting foam that freezes her to the spot, and Sonic gets Screamed at, the Scream being the name for an Israeli crowd control weapon that uses sound to disorient and nauseate people. And it works faster than showing people the artwork from "Naugus Games." At this point, enter Dr. Kintobor, the solicitous and ectomorphic alt-Robotnik of Moebius. The robot, which the Doctor refers to as "Buns," then releases Amy while saying "Cain't see colors too well in this thing." Before the outlines of this particular spoiler can be filled in, Sonic tells Dr. K about Scourge and the SS making trouble back on Mobius, at which point the Doc suggests a change of venue. As the reader changes venue back to Mobius, where Sally's worrying about Sonic ... and yeah, probably Amy Rose, too. She's interrupted by the arrival outside the city of Miles Prower. She goes out to meet him joined by Tails, Bunnie and Antoine. Miles then does a show of good faith by handing over the bombs he was supposed to use on the city, and proposes a joint venture. But we venture back to Moebius where the Doc goes into exposition mode for the benefit of Amy Rose and the readers who haven't been here before. But then we come to what is, for me, the money shot of the story: the fact that the alt-Omega is actually a biomech suit housing the alt-Bunnie, relaunched as "Buns Rabbot." I'm not sure I like the name, but hey, "Tails," "Buns," same difference. Though she was alive, well and intact when last seen in S151's "Chaos Emeralds Are Forever," she has since contracted NIDS, also known as Maria Kintobor's Disease, and the Omega-styled "care unit" developed by the Doctor acts like a mobile stasis chamber keeping her alive and giving her work providing non-lethal security. Buns suggests recruiting the alt-Amy Rose, aka "Rosy the Rascal," but Dr. K isn't too keen on the idea. Before the good doctor can explain himself... We pop back to Mobius in time to catch Miles's exposition as to the SS. Since they were never organized enough to settle on a leader, it was apparently an easy matter for Scourge to take over the evil twins and kick them up a notch; hence the upgrade of the anti-Rotor into Boomer the Borg and so on. Miles proposes a union of the SS and the Freedom Fighters if Sonic can put a dent in Scourge. After Nicole reports that his story checks out, Sally agrees. Before we get back to Moebuis, there's a 1-page ad for an "Archie Christmas Album." Bah, humbug! Back to Moebius, where Sonic and Amy Rose are being outfitted to proceed to Castle Acorn, with the bionic Buns coming along as back-up. After making a mother hen of himself, Dr. K finally lets the three get on with the plot. But if they thought the castle was in pretty sorry shape, they find something even sorrier in the person of Rosy, who's wearing the old school Amy Rose clothes dating back to before Amy Rose's retcon by Sega for the first Sonic Adventure game. The change happened in the course of S79's "The Discovery" though we don't see the results until S80's "If Wisher Were Acorns." Sonic thinks that, due to the nature of Moebius, Rosy's experience with the magic ring plot device warped her brain. Rosy confirms his suspicions, whereupon she decides to show the group her Maxwell Edison impersonation. HEAD: The story's really getting traction now that Ian isn't staging a marathon fight. For personal reasons, the main focus for me is Buns Rabbot. Back in "Chaos Emeralds Are Forever," Ken Penders decided that the anti-Bunnie should be intact because, let's face it, a benevolent alt-Robotnik wouldn't have had any reason to roboticize her. And back in 1996 when I wrote "When A Bunnie Meet A Bunnie" (has it been that long?) I ended up giving Dr. Kintobor a reason to partially roboticize her: as a rite of initiation into the anti-Sonic's gang she stole a sky cycle, lost control and crashed it, and the bionics saved her life. Ian doesn't go either route. Instead, he has Buns come down with the same medical condition that led Gerald Kintobor in Sonic Adventure 2 to set up shop in space with his afflicted granddaughter, Maria, who is shot down in cold blood by G.U.N. but not before she forms a bond with Shadow. We never really know what the condition would have done to Maria due to her untimely death, and Ian isn't about to look a gift disease in the mouth here, either. It does give him a reason not to completely roboticize the alt-Bunnie but to do the next best thing: to lock her away inside a biomech modeled after an Omega robot. Anyone who knows anime will automatically think "Roujin Z." A 1991 feature-length anime by "Akira" creator Katsuhiro Otomo, it tells the story of a prototype high-tech hospital bed that provides absolutely complete care for the old man who is its first patient. Once the computer brain of the mega-bed gets hacked into by some guys in the hospital's geriatric ward, things start happening. The bed, which is really a beta-test for an automated weapons system being developed by the military, busts out of the hospital with its patient because the old man wants to visit the seashore. Here, Ian takes the automated medical care angle of "Roujin Z" and melds it with the Omega character from the Sonic continuity in what I think is a stroke of genius. He ends up roboticizing Buns but not in the old school use of the term. Ian doesn't spell out what Buns's life is like confined to the Omega biomech, and rather than analyze it too much I found myself thinking: "If you're wondering how she eats and breathes And other science facts (la-la-la), Just repeat to yourself, It's a comic book, I should really just relax...'" As for the Omega bot's non-lethal weaponry, such things do exist or are in developmental stages. I've already mentioned the Israeli version of a sonic weapon, the Scream. The quick- hardening foam isn't meant to seal demonstrators or other hostiles in a cocoon, as sort of happened to Amy Rose, but it is looked on as something that can be used to hose down weapons and render their moving parts unmovable. Google "non-lethal weapons" for an overview of these and other items. Dr. Kintobor is pretty much what he has been in previous appearances in the comic. But we're also introduced to Rosy, the alt-Amy Rose. I definitely have mixed feelings about the character. On one level, the segue from infatuation to obsessive homicide goes beyond the mere mirror Mobius that Ian could have used here. It also addresses the original Amy Rose retcon in S79-80 where the comic had to play catch-up with the Amy makeover for Sonic Adventure. They stuck with the comic book model of having Rosy wish on a power ring, but with some definitely nasty side effects. I have a problem with Ian's treatment of Rosy. It may be attributable to the CCA, I don't know, but the most dangerous people with questionable sanity are the ones who think THEY'RE the ones who are sane. Having Rosy admit that her brain is broken sort of compromises the character and softens the impact somewhat. But again, that may have been a CCA mandate. Whereas his relaunching of the alt-Bunnie is flawless, I'm uneasy with Rosy. It's one thing for Ian to play Bean up as an absolute loon to afford some comic relief. Rosy feels like she's way over the line, and I don't mean just in terms of overacting. Any kind of comic sense is lost in the volatile mix of infatuation and rage she exhibits. This almost feels like exploitation. Miles, for his part, comes off as a little heavy on the droll side but is still convincing. Nothing about his explanation of how the SS got the way they did feels false or self-serving, as it very well could have been. But the strength of this story is in the characters themselves. It's about them, not about how many punches they can land against each other. This is, in short, a character-driven installment which really works way better than the fight story set-up. Head Score: 8. EYE: The usual level of great artwork from Yardley! I especially liked the down shot of Sally, Rotor and Tails, and the close-up of the bag of explosives Miles drops. The use of what could be called night colors for the interior of the ruined castle is also effective. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Ken Penders, in "Chaos Emeralds are Forever," couldn't be bothered with giving the anti-Bunnie much of a character; it was enough for him that she was intact enough to kick Sonic's butt. In "When A Bunnie Meet A Bunnie," I was consciously writing a Bunnie fanfic so I was probing the emotions of both her and her counterpart. To that end, I allowed for a certain vulnerability on the part of the alt-Bunnie. Flynn sees Buns as being a hardened character along with the rest of the SS. He hasn't gotten around to telling any individual back stories but his collective description is pretty plain. I don't begrudge Flynn his decision; he's telling the story his way. I have a MAJOR problem, as I think I've made clear, with Rosy, aka Psycho Amy Rose. I wasn't expecting anything like Alex Forrest, the stalker Glenn Close played in "Fatal Attraction" (1987). This, however, is way closer to Baby Jane Hudson. The 1962 film "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?" features Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in what Tim Dirks called a "psychological thriller, black comedy, and over-the-top camp classic." Jane Hudson (Davis) had been a famous child star named, of course, "Baby Jane Hudson." Like all child stars, though, time took its toll on her career and her sister Blanche (Crawford) enjoyed greater success as a film star until an accident left her paralyzed and in a wheelchair. The two live in an old mansion where Jane torments her sister. Ian has been building sympathy for the SS since S192, and even managed a hint of feeling toward Scourge himself at the climax of last issue's back story, "Father and Son." Here, however, he gives us a Rosy who is even more monstrous than Sonic the Werehog (see below). The characterization is just so over the top that it feels like something left over from some random darkfic. That's all well and good, but it undercuts what Ian has been saying about the SS and Scourge: that they're not absolute evil incarnate. Emotionally the gears just don't mesh very well. Heart: 6. "Sonic Unleashed" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Josh Ray; Lettering: Stingray Grafik Wurks We come into the story as Super Sonic confronts the loser Eggman once again. The doc, however, traps Super Sonic and uses seven Chaos Emeralds (what else?) to leach the super out of him. While His Eggness fires something and destroys something else, Sonic suddenly and without any explanation whatsoever goes werehog. Eggman's reaction is to say "Well, THAT was unexpected" and to flush Sonic and the spent Emeralds out into space. Sonic falls from many miles in space to some unidentified planet and survives, his werehogness (which affects even his shoes and socks!) wearing off with the rising of the sun. And that's the cue for the commercial. HEAD: And it's ANOTHER thankless 5-pager that flogs an upcoming video game, in this case "Sonic Unleashed." I quote the story line as it appears in Wikipedia: "The game follows Sonic the Hedgehog as he attempts to restore the world to normal after his nemesis, Doctor Eggman, splits the world's continents into pieces with a powerful new ray weapon and the power of the Chaos Emeralds, as well as his struggles with his new beast form generated by the corrupted Emeralds, Sonic the Werehog." That sentence is way more helpful than Ian's retelling, since the comic book story gives us no clue about the world's splitting, the nature of the weapon that did the nasty (Shades of the Chaos Syphon from S94's "The Best Laid Plans," which never actually SHOWED the device that was used on Knuckles), the "Dark Gaia" creature that was unleashed when the world was hit, the corruption of the Chaos Emeralds which Sonic has to repair in a round-the-world visit to various locations, and of course the whole werehog thing. But let's face it, the werehog element is simply a hook to power up Sonic in the night sequences of what could have been just another routine Sonic game. Without the werehog gimmick, this game would be a clone of "Sonic Rush Adventure" which consisted of Sonic and Tails scouring an island for parts to repair Marine's ship (Marine was the best thing about the game and she wasn't even a playable!). As it is, Sonic has to tear around the fractured world to retrieve the spent Chaos emeralds; once he does, he has to confront the Dark Gaia, the power of which Eggman had planned to harness in his drive for world domination (you think he'd have learned his lesson after failing to harness the power of Chaos in the Sonic Adventure game, but apparently there's a fine line between "genius" and "mule-headed"). The Archie version isn't nearly as compelling as the 6- minute opening sequence to the game itself which is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5naB4B-BZRI . It leaves a different impression in several respects: it depicts the wave of robots and weapons Sonic had to get through to confront Eggman, it shows Sonic powering up with the Chaos Emeralds, it shows Eggman not all that surprised when Sonic assumes his werehog form, and it features Eggman declaiming like the babbling villain that he is about harnessing the power of Dark Gaia. It makes you realize, in short, the extent to which Ian cut to the transformation sequence as if it were what the game is all about. Of course Sega has a history of not giving Archie sufficient details of upcoming games and that may be the case here. This is not only yet another thankless lead-in to a game, it's also one where some of the more compelling elements were missing from the comic account. Head Score: 4. EYE: Tracy Yardley! does a good job with the transformation sequence; too bad that was considered the money shot here and that the whole Dark Gaia angle gets shoved off-panel. Eye Score 6. HEART: When I was growing up and had a major jones for monsters, there were the Big Three: Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman. Why the attraction? I suppose it had something to do with facing one's unspoken fears by externalizing them. But these guys have endured in the popular imagination. And now Sonic gets a dose of wolfman fever. Werewolves, who are shape-shifters who turn into wolves or human-animal hybrids at the full moon, date back to ancient Greece; the details of the legend as we know it gelled in medieval Europe. One becomes a werewolf either by being bitten by one or else by a curse being placed on the unfortunate; in Sonic's case, he and the Chaos Emeralds were subjected to beams emitted by what look like a bank of oversized cell phones. I know it sounds weird but that's what they look like to me; watch the opening sequence for yourself. It's weakness was to certain plants such as rye, mistletoe and wolfsbane. Only in the 19th century did the killing of a werewolf with something made of silver enter the canon. "Cures" for lycanthropy included medicine, surgery, exorcism and exercise (seriously: you were supposed to get them exhausted through physical exertion. Good luck with THAT!). The most famous werewolf from my kidhood was Lon Chaney Jr.'s portrayal of Larry Talbot in "The Wolf Man" (1941). What was notable about it was the poignancy attached to the character; like a previous screen werewolf, Wilford Glendon as played by Henry Hull in the 1935 British film "Werewolf of London," he finds that he's a menace to those he cares about when the transformation is upon him. He doesn't want to hurt them but he can't control himself, something to which any alcoholic can relate. More recently, there was Remus J. Lupin, as featured in the Harry Potter continuity, portrayed in politically-correct fashion as a victim of anti-werewolf prejudice. Hollywood make-up artist Jack Pierce designed Lon Chaney's facial appearance, and it was pretty much canonical until the 1981 Joe Dante film of the novel "The Howling" which featured special effects by Robb Bottin. At the other end of the spectrum was the 1957 American International cheapie "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" wherein a young Michael Landon plays a juvenile delinquent who submits to hypnotherapy to help him with his anger management problem. However, he regresses into a werewolf instead. The film did great business and the phrase "I Was A Teenage [whatever]" became a comedic staple in the 1950s and 60s. Landon, BTW, used the werewolf routine in a back-handed tribute to the film in an episode of his later series "Highway To Heaven." In a sense, though, the very phrase "teenage werewolf" can be seen as a redundancy. At times adolescence can seem like another name for lycanthropy. You sprout hair, your voice turns into a growl, and ... well, here's a snatch of dialogue from the 1948 humor/horror hybrid, "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein": Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.): "You don't understand. Every night when the moon is full, I turn into a wolf." Wilbur (Lou Costello): "You and twenty million other guys." I've gone into this extended digression on werewolves to demonstrate what the gamemeisters at Sega took a pass on when turning Sonic into a werehog. In one sense, Sonic's transformation mirrors that of the world (whichever one it is in this game) split into pieces by Eggman and threatened to be overwhelmed by the power of Dark Gaia. But beyond that, it's really nothing more than a simple power-up gimmick akin to tagging in Knuckles/Big/Omega/Vector in "Sonic Heroes." Then, too, something about transforming into an animal gets lost in translation when you ARE an animal to begin with. It's one thing for a Larry Talbot to lose his humanity and rationality when he becomes a killing machine as a werewolf. It doesn't have quite the same punch when it happens to a hedgehog. E. D. Thweatt, in part of a comic strip series where Sonic is telling Tales a campfire story about a werehog (the series is at his deviantArt page, http://thweatted.deviantart.com/ ), nailed the absurdity of it perfectly when he described the creature as "part anthropomorphic animal, part anthropomorphic some other animal." Like the first Sonic Adventure game, the game's story seems more compelling than the game itself looks to be, and that element is absolutely lost in Ian's quickie 5-pager. Pity. Heart Score: 3. Sonic-Grams: Jay B. asks about the sequence of Knuckles's family tree and asks whether the Shadow back story will be developed in the comic; he's fobbed off with "Eventually." Mike L. is told that the Ultra- and Solar-Sonic and Turbo-Tails aren't scheduled to reappear, though they'd probably be right at home in the upcoming "Sonic Universe" comic title. The guy responding to the letters (Mike Pellerito, I presume) says he'd "like nothing more" than to collect the Knuckles stories as the Sonic stories are being collected. And there's some routine fan art and the thumbnail cover for S194.