Sonic the Hedgehog #202 (Sep 2009) Yardley!/Jensen cover: Sonic and Khan rushing in where Sally feared they'd tread. Good cover pose and the foreshortening works, but looking at the outline of Sonic's smirk makes me think that Nike might be thinking about a lawsuit ... unless it's product placement. You can't tell these days. "Dangerous Territory" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Steven Butler; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu Don't ask me why they ran the "Welcome to the Planet Mobius" disclaimer at the top of the page; they've never needed to before, and if any comic needed it it would be Sonic Universe. But there's no mistaking Sonic and Monkey Khan as they run and fly, respectively, into harm's way. The Dark Egg Legion, being a bunch of bad eggs themselves, oblige by firing on our heroes. They manage to evade and deflect the incoming, and Khan helpfully gives Sonic the cue to expound for the sake of the newbies while the hedgehog gets physical with some of the DEL. Lien-Da then drifts into the story issuing a not-very-effective threat as Khan totals her ride. She then calls back her Legionnaires and calls in ... Wait a minute, those are BATS?!? Lemme check the last 2 issues. Whoa, my bad; they ARE bats, but as drawn by Tracy Yardley! their wings were so understated I didn't even notice them. Now Rouge, you KNOW she's a bat because she's got a very pronounced pair of ... OK, let's not go there. Anyway, Sonic is momentarily thrown off-balance by the Yagyu bats but soon recovers and allows Khan to do some exposition of his own. Lien-Da then has her forces open fire, and Khan is grazed by a stray shot; not to worry, it's just a scratch that will heal over and disappear in a couple pages. After adapting to the lousy odds, though, the Iron King shows up to deliver a round of ... you guessed it, MORE exposition. What's worse, Espio takes advantage of Sonic's not knowing about his rejoining the Shinobis to sucker-punch the hedgehog while Khan himself gets blind-sided by Lightning Lynx. "You're one of the Raiju Clan, but I don't remember you specifically," Khan says to Lynx. This is a cue for L. L. to make with the exposition himself. But the situation has become unsupportable; Sonic and Khan are ready to keep up the one-on-one action against Espio and Lynx but with the Legionnaires and ninja bats harassing them at the same time they decide on a strategic withdrawal and hitch a ride on the next cloud out of there. Lien-Da orders the Legion to shoot them down, but the Bull King countermands that order for the sake of the psychological value of Sonic and Khan coming out of a lop-sided fight on the losing end. If Robotnik were in his right mind, or what passes for his right mind, he'd tell his majesty that he tried that exact same strategy in S175 and lived to regret it. Lien-Da begins to realize what Scott Evil must go through with his old man, while Espio maybe, just maybe, begins to regret his shifting his allegiance to the clan back home. For the record, Lynx looks like he could use a visit to an E.R. himself. At the palace Sonic debriefs in front of Knuckles, Elias, and Sally, which is a neat trick considering he doesn't even wear pants. As Knuckles ponders an apparent plot hole, Elias ticks up the security alert while Khan, who tells Sally to call him "Ken," goes from Monkey King to Drama Queen and starts doing his impression of Shadow from the recent Sonic Universe arc. HEAD: "Ken"? I suppose that's close to Khan but it's still a stretch. Then again, his Chinese name is "Sun Wukong." Calling him "Sun" might be confusing, and he can't call himself "Kong" because Universal Studios owns the rights to the King Kong name (Really!). Speaking of ownership, Khan's Japanese name, Son Goku, is now pretty much identified with the Dragonball franchise created by Akira Toriyama. So it looks like they're going to go with Ken. Sorry, but I can't go there myself; the association with Barbie's plastic consort is too deep. Sonic and Khan have never really gotten along in the comic, and their pairing here is just as deadly. It's not as deadly for the Bull King, Lien-Da and their respective minions, however, as it is for the story. This story is a combination of slugfest and gabfest. There are only a handful of panels in the whole story that contain no dialogue, and those still manage to work in sound effects and/or grunts and groans, such as when Espio clocks Sonic. OK, Ian felt the need to indulge in exposition to clear things up for the readers, but after a point (for me, it came about the time the Bull King showed up) it just gets to be too much. By the time Lightning Lynx reintroduced himself after I'd thought he'd had enough to say in the back story of the last issue, I was like "Shut up and fight, already!" And this from someone who doesn't even like fight stories. Scott Evil: "I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!" Dr. Evil: "Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't." From "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" And after Ian resorts to The Villain Lets Sonic Get Away Alive business for the second time in a little over two years, the last time being S175's "Eggman Empire," I don't get it, either. I know the provisions of the Comic Code Authority may have something to do with it, but come ON!! This could have been handled way better. It didn't have to be anything nasty, either. I remember the following scene from "Mulan": [Shan-Yu releases two captured Imperial scouts to give the Emperor a message] Shan-Yu: "How many men does it take to deliver a message?" [Hun Archer draws back his bow and aims] Hun Archer: "One." Even without the payoff of someone taking an arrow in the back, that exchange more than gets the point across. In some ways, it's even colder because we don't see the violence. This story needed some serious editing down. On the next to last page, Sonic's entire word balloon in the second panel could have been dropped with no impact on the story whatsoever. A couple of his lines to Espio during the battle could have been lost as well. Ian can do, and has done, better than this. The pacing of "Mobius: 30 Years Later," the current arc in Sonic Universe, has the voltage and tension of an episode of "24," but you can feel this story arc slow to a crawl under the weight of its own needless dialogue. Head Score: 5. EYE: Steve Butler is far from being a Sonic newbie. He did artwork from S61's "Total Turbulence" back story to S75's "I Am The Eggman." He was also responsible for single-handedly smoothing over the artwork in "Endgame: The Director's Cut" where he had the unenviable task of making a visually coherent whole out of the varied styles of the artists who piled on in one of the worst ideas the comic ever had. He was supposed to link up with the Knuckles comic to start work on Knuckles #33; too bad the title ended with issue #32. According to his Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Butler, he's also worked for a number of other comics, and in 2007 was behind the redesign of the flagship comic for Archie, imparting a more realistic design to the characters in place of the classic Dan deCarlo-inspired look. Yet I most dearly remember his work on a "Woody's Round-Up" comic he did for an issue of Disney Adventure magazine. The visual style was so close to vintage 1950-60s kids comic art it was breathtaking. In any event, it's good to see him back on his old stomping ground. He certainly livens up Monkey Khan, who has defeated a number of other artists who've tried to draw him in the past. A few of his poses look forced and artificial, but overall the drawing is great. His modeling of the other characters, especially Sally on the last pages of the story, is especially well-done. Welcome back, Steve. Eye Score: 10. HEART: In thinking about the Shan-Yu scene mentioned above, I got to wondering what would happen if, as Sonic and Khan were retreating, Sonic got a parting shot to the head from Espio that knocked him unconscious. The location of the final scene would have shifted from the Council chamber to a room at Tommy Turtle Memorial where Sonic is still sleeping it off, and Sonic's dialogue could have been parceled out to Sally, Elias and Knuckles with only the barest of rewriting required. On the story level, it wouldn't have had much of an impact since it's obvious that we're in for an extended bout of exposition from Khan in the next issue and Sonic can sleep through a good chunk of it before he wakes up as ready to go as he was after he got beat up by the Babylon Rogues in S163-164. No it wouldn't have made much of a story impact. It would, however, have brought a serious Heart factor to this story. One of the unfortunate things about being the central character in a comic book is that you're not only resistant to serious injury and death, you're called upon to demonstrate that fact by getting the crap beaten out of you on a semi-regular basis. That's a no-brainer if you're Superman, but Sonic has displayed the same kind of invulnerability on more than one occasion; "Dangerous Territory" is just the latest in a long line of such encounters for the blue blur. When this sort of thing keeps up long enough, the violence (watered down to begin with under CCA provisions) becomes even more meaningless and even pointless. When the target is Khan in this story, the result is little more than a glorified paper cut that heals up and disappears within a few pages. But if something were ever to happen to Sonic that would sideline him, if only for one issue of a story arc, that would wake up the fans who actually CARE about the character. That could be enhanced by having the hedgehog mishpoche (Jules, Bernie and Uncle Chuck) keeping a vigil around his hospital bed. In poker parlance, it's the difference between penny ante and going all-in. Unfortunately, there's very little Heart to speak of in this story. The violence inflicted on Sonic and Khan is rendered meaningless (see Khan's self-sealing injury mentioned above). And to all appearances Khan will be making a bid for the sympathy of the readers by launching into emo territory with a self- pitying monologue on how he screwed up somehow back home. So not looking forward to that. Heart Score: 3. "A Lonely Girl's Story" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Jamal Peppers (debut); Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman Jr. Though I'm STILL convinced that the Iron Queen plans to dump Snively when the time is right, we see them canoodling after the confrontation with Sonic and Khan. Then Snively delivers that deadliest of pick-up lines: "You know all about me and where I came from but I know so very little about your past." Duck and cover, it's exposition time: Seems that Regina was "born into a cult of technomages" who practices "magitek." This arcane art involved learning "how to control the electrical impulses found in all active electronics;" I suppose for all inactive electronics they learned where the Off-On switch was and how to change the batteries. Fast-forward to when the cult was broken up and Regina arrested. Rather than put the minor Regina into some kind of social service limbo she was exiled. She also alludes to the fact that the Great War was just getting under way, but wasn't about to subscribe to the policy of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and throw in with the furries, represented in one panel by a pair of hedgehogs looking suspiciously like the brothers Jules and Charles in a visual quotation from the final part of the infamous "Endgame" arc, "The Big Goodbye" (S50). The only alternative for her was to hit the highway and become a psychotic loner, honing her skills and nursing a grudge. Once she got to the Dragon Kingdom, she decided to get over her anti-furry prejudice and to throw in with the Bull King. She conveniently forgets to tell Snively how she engineered the death of the Bride of Rich Knights ... wouldn't want to give the kids reading this any ideas about homicide as a career strategy. HEAD: By now, Arthur C. Clarke's observation that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (from "Profiles of The Future", 1961; also known as Clarke's Third Law) has become a tired commonplace. It's way too easy, of course, to keep the two separate. Thus, in his 1983 fantasy novel "Ariel," Stephen Boyett posits a world where one day technology no longer works but magic does. One notable scene from that book, however, has to give a contemporary reader pause: where the protagonist can't help comparing the then-extant World Trade Center to Tolkien's Two Towers. Score one for technology misapplied. Still, Ian gets points for bridging the two, if only in the sketchiest way possible. In the Iron Queen's first appearance in the comic (S60's "Arsenal of the Iron King") she really had no defined power to speak of. She used her scepter ... somehow or other ... and was basically little more than a Rita Repulsa knock-off. Which may be just as well; if the Iron Queen or the Bull King (or even the Monkey King) appeared in the comic as depicted in Asian literature, they might be considered too hardcore for the CCA guidelines. So Regina (whose very heavy-handed last name, according to various wiki out there on the Net, is "Ferrum") may or may not be an orphan; she seems to be, as she makes no reference to any family other than the Magitek Monks or whatever they called themselves. Even when Raven of the Teen Titans franchise was growing up, her mother Arella was still in the picture. If it was Ian's intent to show her as being an orphan, as a way of building a measure of sympathy for Regina, it fell short. Show of hands: anyone else think that a small girl being raised by a secretive group of older guys wearing robes is more than a little bit creepy? And for me the entire monologue misfires, not only because it's wall-to-wall exposition but because as a villain her side of the story can't help but be more than a little self-serving. And as mentioned above, she's mum on the details of her slaying the Bride of Rich Nights to get where she is today. It feels like something is missing here (see Heart section). Head Score: 7. EYE: I wasn't able to find anything about Jamal Peppers on the Net, and there's nothing in his deviantArt gallery (where he goes by the handle "SnakeDiver"), but then again he's only been on dA for a month. Still, this is a VERY impressive debut. The pairing of Snively and Regina presents one of those match-ups like WALL-E and EVE: the pedestrian guy and the hottie. In Snively's case, he's this little lightbulb-headed twerp while she's statuesque. In order to keep the height difference from being too jarring, Peppers hits upon the inspired device of keeping Regina's tushie planted on a divan; this brings her and Snively more eye-to-eye than they were in the previous issue's "Change in Management." Peppers concentrates on drawing humans, and his only attempt at drawing furries is depicting Charles and Jules the hedgehogs and the Bull King. I have to say that WRT the latter drawing, I'm impressed by the panel where Regina prostrates herself in a really well-composed WEV shot. A very good launch. Eye Score: 10. HEART: The story may be titles "A Lonely Girl's Story," but it fails to deliver any sympathy for the she-devil. True, we were spared any lapse on Regina's part into self-pity in the center section, where she concentrated on survival and domination as her major themes. Still, despite the title, "loneliness" was the last thing that came across. The obvious limitations of course are a) that she's the villain, and b) that this is only a five-pager which with very few exceptions is only good for delivering heaps of exposition in this comic. In that sense it works, but it just feels like there's something missing here, I don't know. Heart Score: 6. Sonic-Grams: The answers to one of Andrew's questions need a little clarification: Mike Kanterovich and Ken Penders were responsible for "Night of a Thousand Sonics," the plot of which owes a heavy debt to the Terminator franchise as well as to S11's "The Good, the Bad, and the Hedgehog" where Kanterovich and Penders introduced the Anti- Sonic, since relaunched as Scourge (calling him the Evil Sonic became untenable in 2001 when Shadow the Hedgehog was featured in "Sonic Adventure II" and became an immediate fan favorite). What started as an homage to the Evil Twin trope ballooned into numerous alt-Sonics over the years. As for the title, the phrase "Night Of A Thousand _____" has been around for a while. The BBC called their 40-year retrospective special of 2000 "Night Of A Thousand Shows," and there's a song titled "Night Of A Thousand Stars" in "Evita." "Arabian Nights"; yeah, right! Thumbnails: I'm looking at the cover art for S203 and thinking "Double Agent," one of the oldest tropes in the business, where Good Guy pretends to have a falling out with the other Good Guys and turns Bad Guy in order to infiltrate the gang of Bad Guys. That's the only reason I can think of for Bunnie's heel turn, and I also have to wonder whether Antoine is going to blow the whole gig by trying to rescue her once she's inside the gang. Or maybe I'm wrong; wouldn't be the first time.