Sonic the Hedgehog #209 (April 2010) Yardley!/Jensen cover: Nothing says "comic book cover art" like a giant green floating head. Unless it's a monkey. "Iron Dominion: Part 2" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman; Assistant Editor: Paul Kaminski, Managing Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu Yes, this comic really DOES have a thing about domes! In an exposition splash page, we see the Eggdome from which the Irons now run the show, the New Mobotropolis dome which they've recently added to their holdings, and the dome-shaped cover of the old Freedom Fighters HQ, now just about all that our furry heroes, all four of them, have left. It's within this last structure that Sally is beating herself on the dome, metaphorically speaking, berating herself for not having thought through the chain of events before the Iron Queen captured Nicole and New Mobotropolis. Sonic then invites Khan to take a shot at dealing with a distraught Sally. Khan tries by reminding her that he got techno-maged by Queenie himself. Sonic then steps in and finishes up by telling her to "stop wallowing in self-pity and start coming up with a plan!" This actually works, much to Khan's confusion. Sonic tells him that this is the sort of thing that comes from being in a relationship over the long haul; he doesn't mention that he and Sal have a history that goes back about a dozen years. As for Sally, she gets the word from Tails that he's simply not quick enough to hack into Nicole via the mainframe. Sonic then suggests that if they can't beat the computer, join it: get digitized as they were in the classic "I Am" (S171) wherein Shadow met up with a digital Maria via a corrupted copy of Gerald Robotnik's diary. Sal green-lights the plan and tells Khan NOT to come along on this ride; instead, he's supposed to watch Tails's back while he monitors the goings-on from the top of the digital rabbit hole. On the far side of the matrix, Sonic and Sally prepare to enter the Queen's holdings but face a reception committee of one: Nicole, dba "Iron Nicole." Tells you how much imagination the Queen has when it comes to renaming files. Sally confronts Nicole, hoping to get her to snap out of it. This rattles Nicole but then the Giant Floating Queen Head shows up, looking to go all anti-viral on the Mobians. While Sally tells Sonic she's got an idea, Sonic wonders how the Queen got here. In answer to that, we cut to the Queen communing through her scepter or whatever it is, and telling Snively to stop bugging her. He leaves and gets a report from Lien-Da on the taking of prisoners. One of them is Uncle Chuck, who's not at all thrilled by the sight of Eggman in stir. A remark from Chuck gets Robotnik to ruminating and ... cue the Microsoft start-up music. Meanwhile, we missed the plan Sonic and Sally hatched. One aspect of it calls for Sonic to get in the Queen's face, literally, but he's body-blocked by Nicole. While this is going on, Tails is watching the action in digital mode and translating/commenting for Khan's benefit. Tails is a little too distracted by the fight to realize that he's just told Khan where the mainframe is located. Only after Monkey Boy leaves the room does Tails get all "Wait, what?" and chases after him. Seems Khan thinks the only helpful thing he can do is crash the mainframe and "put Nicole out of her misery." That's what happens when you think EVERY problem is a hardware problem. Tails, however, is insistent on Khan holding off until Sonic and Sally take their shot. And it's back again to the Digital World. Demonstrating that she's as capable of thinking analogically as she is of thinking logically, Sal reasons that technomagic is just programming with magical trappings so she succeeds in casting a firewall without resorting to wand waving or reciting any Latin- sounding incantations. I think she's starting to get the hang of this place. Queenie tries to get in her face, though, but Sonic finally succeeds in getting in the Queen's face while Nicole is isolated by Sally. The Queen's reaction: "I hate that hedgehog!" I think SHE'S getting the hang of this place, too. Isolated for the moment, Nicole loses her Iron trappings and brings Sal up to speed: the Queen's forces are rounding up the Mobians, and they still have reserve units back in the D.K. Sal puts a long-range strategy together while Nicole agrees to act the Iron part and work from within. With the broadest of possible winks, Nicole makes a show of pushing back against Sally, and Sally and Sonic hop the next bus out of there. Back at HQ, Tails doesn't reveal Khan's lack of faith in Sonic and Sally, while Sal lays out their itinerary: subvert the Iron Empire from within the Dragon Kingdom, then clean the clock of the Irons. HEAD: This is a good point to break the story apart and Ian does just that. Thanks to the fact that there's a second Sonic title to play with, Sonic Universe will be covering the foursome's quest to weaken the Iron Empire at home while the Sonic comic proper will focus on the local insurgency. It was a pleasant surprise to note that Ian used not one but TWO key plot moments from SatAM episodes in this story. The first was the opening sequence where Sally was berating herself for not having thought everything through. This neatly mirrors a scene from the epic 2-parter "Blast To The Past" which features Sally berating herself for not having thought everything through and blaming herself for the fact that two Mobian redshirts on their mission were captured and roboticized. The second involves Nicole's turning double agent against the Iron Queen. This was a direct quote from the equally-memorable "Sonic Conversion" episode where Bunnie and Uncle Chuck are temporarily deroboticized and, thanks to Sonic's exhortation to fight against his programming, Uncle Chuck turns double agent against Robotnik and begins his stint as a spy. I know that there are those who want the comic to get past its SatAM roots, but this story makes a darn good case for just how central to the whole Sonic narrative the SatAM characters and situation really are. My repeated rejoinder to such calls has been "OK, come up with something better, something more compelling." Hasn't happened yet. And we're not that far from the show's 20th anniversary, either. In contrast to the set pieces from "Blackout" (S207), which included Junk trashing Fort Matchstick and the rather unconvincing bout of girl talk involving Sally and Bunnie, here we get several sets of serious character interaction, and it's all good. We start with Sally raving, then being brought back down by Sonic. Sonic and Sally then confront Nicole, with Queenie mainly as a gimmick/spectator. This is followed by Snively inadvertently getting Eggman to come to his senses after his taking a 9-issue vacation from sanity. There's some great interaction between Tails and Khan, which matches the Sally- Nicole dialogue. Before, we'd had plot situations with dialogue thrown in. In this story, the dialogue isn't an overlay slowing down the story development, it IS the story development. Sally comes up with the strategy to work against the Irons, but it's in the context of her interacting with Nicole. Khan is still kind of a butt, but before he can demonstrate it by trashing the Mobian mainframe Tails talks him down by sticking up for his friends and insisting that Khan has to trust them. Because neither of these developments is accompanied or replaced by some bout of comic book action, it makes the development that much more plausible and makes Junk's one-bull wrecking crew act from two issues ago look even more useless than it proved to be. And with just as little fanfare, Robotnik finds all of his marbles. The moment itself is understated, which is a good thing: raving villains like Junk aren't nearly as effective as the cold ones. That's pretty much how we were introduced to Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs." After Agent Starling passes cells populated with over-the-top lunatics, she gets to Hannibal's cell. He's polite, well-dressed, well-mannered, and more dangerous than anyone else from the get-go. There's a bit of that in this story as well: the effectiveness of understatement. Very well done. Head Score: 10. EYE: Usual great work by Tracy Yardley! with only one jarring note: when Sally is reunited with Nicole, we're given something I haven't seen much of in this comic since "Endgame." It's the dreaded Arm's-Length Hug. I know that sometimes the nature of doing comic book art requires doing things that are out of the ordinary (c.f. the lefty handshake between Sally and Nicole on p. [19]). And there has been a general reaction against too-close personal contact at schools across the country due to the H1N1 outbreak. But I'm sorry, the Arm's-Length Hug just looks wrong, even if someone at Archie thought that two female characters in a clinch looks even wronger IF you know what I mean AND I think you do. Eye Score: 9. HEART: Major Heart points here because, as stated above, action gives way to emotion. It's good, for instance, to see Sally begin to lose it at the beginning of the story. We're used to seeing a cool and in- charge Sally so it's almost a little jarring to see her beside herself. And it's really not such a stretch for Sonic to step in and act like a bucket of cold water dumped on her head. Even if Sally's faith in herself is shaken, Sonic is unshakable. Same thing with Tails when he gets in Khan's fuzzy face before he can pull the plug on Nicole. The kid doesn't get dialogue this juicy very often, and he handles the scene well: "We're heroes! We do what's right, even when it's hard!" "It isn't a matter of being hard,' Tails! This is IMPOSSIBLE!" "Was it impossible to save Bunnie? Was it impossible to save YOU? ... NOTHING is impossible!" Wow! Back in SU12's "Echoes of the Past: Part 4" the dialogue between Knuckles and Fin gets weighted down with cliches until Knuckles makes it personal with the "I want my father back!" line, but it's not enough to keep the dialogue from slipping backward for much of the rest of the story. Here, Ian's work is way stronger and the feeling that only temporarily broke through the Knuckles story runs through this one like a high-voltage cable. This has to be the strongest installment of this story arc to date. Heart Score: 10. Fan Art: A double dose of Sally art, from S. Wiedmann and Arion, the latter actually bringing a situation to the artwork and not just a figure drawing. Fan Funnies: Ariadna asks a not-so eternal question about Mephiles but it's still a darn good one. There are, however, some fan arts out there that picture a Mephiles with a mouth, such as http://th01.deviantart.com/fs15/300W/f/2007/116/8/5/Mephiles_The_ Dark__by_Mephiles_Fanclub.jpg Off-Panel: "Hey, Sonic! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat." "But that trick never works!" "This time for sure!" OK, OK, I'll stop being old. Sonic-Grams: Scott gives props for the Iron arc as a whole, "something new to the comic, without taking everything away from the familiar territory that keeps the characters grounded"; TJS lays out his completist credentials; and Al begs to differ with Scott: not only does he complain about Butler's artwork for the Iron Dominion arc, but he'd prefer "if something would actually happen ... 201-202 were nothing but setup, while 203-204 taste like filler." Somehow, I think he'd be more satisfied by the happenings in this issue. And along with a shout-out for the participants at Ian's message boards at Bumbleking, Editorial expresses surprise that "you kids still sent snail mail let alone had the capacity to bury us in it!" Honestly, what kind of inferiority complex do you have to have to get work in the comic book industry? Ken Penders has stated that for years the book's creatives lived in perpetual fear of the title being cancelled; did they honestly have no clue as to how popular they were out among the fandom? Or did they measure it only by circulation numbers? Part of the problem is the clause in their professional ethics that keeps them from reading fanfic and looking for fanart on their own for fear of walking into a plagiarism trap. Well, I say the fandom should sent more material; bury em alive with it!