Sonic The Hedgehog #199 (June 2009) Tracy Yardley!/Jason Jensen cover: Apparently Yardley! and Jensen didn't get the memo that the whole Red State-Blue State thing is over. In the background is a tease, the identity of whom will not be revealed in this issue. "Knocking On Eggman's Door" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: Teresa Davidson; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing Police: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu It's the morning of the final assault on Eggman and what's left of his empire, and Rotor has pulled an all-nighter so New Mobitropolis can view the assault live. Leading a combined force of Mobians and Chaotix, Sal orders them to do it to it. Meanwhile, Lien-Da can't believe that their own defensive plan calls for a half-baked barrier that Sonic can penetrate. She and Floating Head Dimitri, however, speak darkly of "the REAL plan" and Snivley's mystery woman. Back outside, Bunnie and Mighty have torn Eggman a new ... doorway, and Amy Rose piko-hammers Sonic through like a croquet ball. After one page of everybody else following Sonic inside, the battle with the Legionnaires is joined with boatloads of banter to let us know that they're not taking all this too seriously. Sally even jokes about her fate in "Endgame," which tells you how threatening this assault is (not very). The only really interesting development is when Knuckles and Julie-Su confront Floating Head Dimitri which, of course, is a cue to... Cut to Lien-Da reporting to Snively that her troops are losing on schedule. The Sniveler, for his part, is sprucing himself up for his date with Regina which ain't gonna happen in this issue. Sorry to disappoint. Sonic, Sally and the team are also disappointed that the Legion has apparently decided to do their impersonation of the Iraqi Republican Guard during Operation Desert Storm as they put on a display of close-order retreating. Meanwhile, Knuckles orders Dimitri to get out of the way, and after a one-panel speech Dimitri basically says "Y'okay." Everyone then arrives at what Espio calls the bottleneck: a solid wall of junk with a hole just big enough for someone (read: "Sonic") to crawl through to the other side. Sonic zooms in and past the Legionnaires on the other side who put up no resistance whatsoever. Even though Sonic gets the feeling that this is a trap, he continues on, true to his platform-game heritage. Elsewhere, Lien-Da is ordered to make sure the Legionnaires delay the rest of the Mobians and Dimitri waits at the "landing bay" for Regina's arrival while Snively himself moves down front to get a better view. What's to see? Sonic walking into a small enclosed space (Shades of the final level of Sonic CD) and Eggman inside a robo- spider with a mark on its abdomen that's practically flashing "Hit Me Here." Believe it or not, that's it until next time. HEAD: This story is a total tease: all set-up and no delivery. Everyone pretty much spends the whole story getting into position until the next issue, #200, when things are really supposed to happen. Really. This is one of the maddening things about writing for comics: their addiction to numerology. Because the next issue is #200 it's supposed to be a major milestone for the comic (a good number of which never even make it this far). I can see that. What I CAN'T see is simply spending an entire issue setting things up. So how well has it worked until now? Here's a rundown of the previous efforts: #25: "Go Ahead, Mecha My Day" features a dizzying adaptation of one stage of the Sonic CD game: the Stardust Speedway where Sonic races Mecha Sonic to rescue Amy Rose. The story itself wasn't too bad, with Mike Gallagher's script being just fun enough without going overboard and beating everything to death. Pat Spaziante does a bravura job with the story art. #50: "The Big Goodbye" was, of course, the ill-fated and eviscerated conclusion of the "Endgame" story arc. Editorial cut Ken Penders's original script (intended for a 48-page special) down to size, then compounded confusion by letting the writers toss in their work almost at random. The result was a reissuing of an expanded edition to mollify the confused fans. #75: Karl Bollers's "I Am The Eggman" features as the villain Robo-Robotnik, a.k.a. Robotnik Mach 2. He battles Sonic in a space station while his Shadow-Bots trash Knothole. The action flows well, though Bollers exchanges one set of loose ends for another. At least he didn't make good on the threat of infinite Robotniks. #100: Karl Bollers's "Reunion" begins with Robotnik being able to roboticize as a touch and it goes downhill from there. Kodos falls from a great height and dies, Sally dies and is resurrected, Arachnis the ninja spider dies, and Nate Morgan is roboticized. Still, the story is more incoherent and less interesting than this summary would indicate #125: "Sonic Adventure 2.5 Omega." This story, like "Endgame," is dependent on a gimmick instead of an actual story the readers can care about. Instead of having every writer tag in with an addition to the story as in "Endgame," every character who ever appeared in the book gets shoe-horned in for at least one panel's worth of an appearance. As for Sonic, the disarming of the Xorda's "gene bomb" results in his disappearance. As Mobius mourns his presumed death, he has to schlep across space for the next 5 issues or so. #150: Ken Penders gives us Sonic's evil twin, the Anti- Sonic, in "Hero To Zero in No Time At All." Confusing, disjointed and frankly dishonest storytelling, this is in its own way a set-up for the ghastly Line of Succession story arc (S155- 156) which married Sally off to Antoine's evil twin and brought me thisclose to giving up on the comic all together. The only thing that stopped me was word that Archie Comics had also run out of patience with Ken's style and sacked him. #175: Ian Flynn marks the occasion with the wholesale destruction of Knothole. "Eggman Empire" is the first installment of a 3-parter; the second installment neatly turns the tables on Eggman and actually cuts the Freedom Fighters some much-needed slack in the process of giving them a new and safer home. Seems to me that there's nothing intrinsically special about a 25th issue unless it a) is part of a story arc, whether setting one up or closing one down, and/or b) features some sort of gimmick to take the place of an honest effort at writing. The quality of these "anniversary" issues has been wildly uneven and better work more worthy of being celebrated has popped up out of left field: "I Am," "Father and Son," "Stargazing." That's why I call this tendency to goose up every 25th issue "numerology": it's just superstition. It's also kind of dishonest because this story's energies are diverted into making sure everybody's ready for the next Big Deal Issue. We get enough of a sense that something's going on but Ian is intent at not tipping his hand. That's a legitimate concern when writing a serialized work like this, but I get the feeling he's thinking too much about the next story. That makes me wonder why I should care about THIS one. What's going to happen? All I know is, it'll probably end up going contrary to the plans and expectations of everyone: Sonic, Eggman, Snively, Dimitri, etc. We'll have to wait and see if it does it well. Head Score: 7. EYE: Everything is as it should be, but there are only a handful of stand-out moments. My favorite is Vector and Julie-Su inadvertently watching each other's back. The worst is Sally's no-face farewell to Sonic which totally drains the Heart out of the scene (see below). Eye Score: 9. HEART: With the stakes as high as they are, it's unforgivable that Archie reverts back to its old way of doing the comic as the wealth of plot detail in setting up for the next issue minimizes the Heart factor. The Sally-Sonic encounter (I can't in good conscience call it a hug because it looks like she's using him as a tackling dummy) is thrown off not only by Yardley!'s decision not to show Sally's face but by his giving Sonic a facial expression more appropriate for the guest of honor at a surprise birthday party than someone about to undertake a hazardous mission with plenty of unknowns. And Amy Rose's fish- faced display of affection is so over-the-top that it too conveys the message "Nothing to see here emotionally." Let's face it, at this point the story is being relentlessly plot-driven. I suppose that seemed the only logical thing to do on the eve of issue #200, but I'm still convinced that the book is the poorer for it as a result. Not that anything I say about it at this point will change the way Archie does business, but I'm just saying. Heart: 5. Sonic-Grams: Drew W. asks some intelligent questions and gets a variety of tone for answers: In order to explain why Locke dies twice in the comic (once in flashback during the Mobius : 25 Years Later arc in S143's "Father's Day" and more recently in S184's "Chaos Angel"), M:25YL is dismissed as an "alternate future." Editorial tries to explain that Scourge turned purple when he powered up because purple is an "inverse color" to green. It also explains that Shadow turns "white-gold" when he powers up, which doesn't explain the red trim not turning green. Anyway, that clears it up for me, because I always thought Shadow went platinum. About Fiona, they say no more than that she "slipped away," even as Ian the writer ignored her fate completely. They drop the hint that maybe Rouge is angling to snare Knuckles's affections. Sthey don't mention that so long as Julie-Su has become an established character in the book the best that they can hope for is a romantic triangle. And Omega, heaven help us, will resurface in SU3. OK, he's never been my favorite after Sonic Heroes with his constantly describing other robots as "useless heaps of metal" when he's not exactly foolproof himself. Thomas S. wants to see more Blaze and Marine. I have yet to receive ANY Sonic Universe issues for which I sent in an annual subscription, but as I've said before the prospect of those two together is such an Odd Couple set-up that I'm curious to see how it works. Fan Art: Stefan L. from Buckingham in the UK sends in a group portrait, the "awesome" nature of which is diminished like the drawing itself as it gets reduced to postage-stamp size. And there are dummy covers for S200 and SU3.