Sonic the Hedgehog #212 (June 2010) Sanford Greene cover: As near as I can tell, Greene hasn't worked on covers for this comic since the 50s (issues 153-156, to be exact). It was about the time that Ken Penders's "Line of Succession" made me want to give up on the comic for good, a situation that was impacted by Archie's giving up on Ken Penders for good. Anyway, Greene gives us Sonic moving straight ahead, Espio doing likewise, Robotnik in the background, and Regina Ferrous Oxide (aka "Queen Rust") saying "WADDYA MEAN I'M NOT IN THIS ISSUE?". "The Roads We Take" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman; Assistant Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu It's been a week since the events of the last issue, and Sonic and Tails are taking Nicole (the hand-held version, not the hand-holding hologram) back to Robotnik's old digs to see if there's any sign of him. This all comes across in big bursts of expository dialogue; this won't be the final helping of word pasta Ian dishes up, either. As for the Big Guy, Eggman and Snively are hunkering in the bunker where Robotnik once again vetoes a mission to rescue R. F. from wherever she's being held back in the Dragon Kingdom. We also learn that Lien-Da is recovering from the headache Regina inflicted on her in the previous issue, though we don't get to see her recovering from the damage the way we did in "Birthright: Part 1" (S205). And Eggman lets Snively know that Lien-da and Snively are both under his roof because, like the old saying, he's into keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. Over in the D. K., Sally and Khan engage in a contest to see who can deliver the biggest helping of exposition within 4 pages; looks like a tie to me. Aside from some amorous looks and one bout of tongue-wrestling, the Sonic-Sally-Khan romantic triangle subplot is then packed away for who knows how many months/years/decades. Back around the campfire on Angel Island, the normally taciturn Espio does the heavy verbal lifting by spilling the beans on his various comrades because ... well, because he can. We learn: that Vector was originally from Downunda but lost his accent somewhere along the way, probably about the time that Sonic Heroes was dubbed into English with Vector ended up sounding more like he's from Brooklyn than from Brisbane; that Espio didn't know all that much about the Brotherhood so he didn't tell Knuckles anything; that Charmy's brain got scrambled by his incarceration in the Egg Grapes; and that Mighty's sister is still somewhere out there affiliated with the Dark Legion. Mighty takes this pretty hard, and Espio apologizes for spreading the news before having all the facts in. If he'd been THAT scrupulous, though, that would have meant 4 pages of the Chaotix just sitting around doing nothing. Instead, we have Espio doing a lot of talking and the Chaotix just sitting around doing nothing. Until Mighty walks off. Back at Eggman Towers or whatever Robotnik's HQ building is called, Nicole gets a nibble on her line. Sonic and Tails break into an old storeroom and uncover ... you can't see it but it's the Head of Dimitri whom Lien-Da stashed away in "Birthright: Part 2" (S206). Back on the Island, Mighty is packing up to take off and look for his sib. This has Ray so broken up that his stutter, which seemed to have been cured as recently as Sonic Universe #11's "Echoes of the Past: Part 3," is back with a vengeance. I guess the little guy must REALLY have abandonment issues. He whines until Mighty agrees to bring him along. And finally, Sal returns to Mobius via a borrowed warp ring and hooks up with Sonic. Believe it or not, that's the end of the story as well as the culmination of a year-long story arc. HEAD: What we have in this issue is NOT a story: it's a checklist of plot points that Ian will be getting around to, Archie Comics Editorial willing. In terms of narrative, this is the weakest example I've seen in this comic since Karl Bollers's "The Last Robian" (S123), about which I said the following when I named it as the Worst Back Story of 2003: "For whatever reason, Karl Bollers simply abandoned any sense of narrative in a story where four of his five pages were dominated by expository text boxes instead of dialogue balloons. This technique, which made the story feel more like an outline with pictures, simply drained any kind of feeling out of the whole project." "Roads" has a bit more of a narrative element than "Last Robian" but not by much. There's still the crazy jumping from one side of the planet to the other with no common thread, the heavy servings of word glop dialogue, and the dangling plot threads. Actually, Ian doesn't so much tie up loose ends in this story as he exchanges the frayed old loose ends for shiny new loose ends which will be addressed ... someday. The Angel Island scene is a particular disaster in this regard, with Espio vomiting plot points all over his comrades. Some of them weren't even necessary; ever since Vector's Aussie accent was repossessed in favor of what Espio called "an overbearing street lingo'" there's been no real reason not to let that particular sleeping dog lie. It's the equivalent of the question of Sally's coloration from the really early days of the comic. And Mighty getting the news that his sister (that he even had a sister is news to me) had gone over to the Dark Side was handled with all the subtlety of a car bomb going off on "24." I'll save a fuller description of the Sal-Khan farewell for the Heart section, but once again Ian hedges his bets WRT the key side of the Sonic-Sally-Khan triangle: Sally herself. She has a long exposition on how much Khan has grown during this arc, and she speaks of the "rebuilding" that she needs to do back home, but it's such an understated reference to the fact that the rebuilding has to take place between her and Sonic that I honestly missed it on the first read. But what's really weird is how she defines the relationship between them: she's still stuck in the atmosphere of the aftermath of S134's "Say You Will." I mean, c'mon! This is issue 212, six years have gone by (OK, that's 6 years of OUR time) but it seems Sally can't get past how she "ended things poorly" back then, in spite of all the adventures that have happened since then during which the subject somehow never came up. And then there's Ray's stutter. And here I run up the white flag: I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what Archie is doing with Ray; I can only hope SOMEONE in Mamaroneck does. I could understand Ray having a stammer, even though I thought it was a quick-and-dirty way to give him a personality. But then, halfway through the "Echoes of the Past" arc (SU9-12) it went MIA. Ray's stutter was still there even after he did that faux power-up act with the Master Emerald, so I know that couldn't have been the cause. I figured "OK, some den mother must've written to Archie and complained so they sent the word down that Ray's stutter was hereby banished." But it looks like it was just given a time-out instead, which is now over and Ray's speech impediment is back ... for no real reason. This was really no way to end a story. The teasing of other plot points could very well have waited for their respective stories to be told. About the only character who was immediate impacted here was Dimitri, and even that was teased rather than told. This wasn't a climax to the story; it was an anticlimax. Head Score: 3. EYE: Tracy's great artwork couldn't mask the problems with the story. The layout on the last 3 pages feels more cramped than the rest of the issue, and only underscores the feeling that Ian has piled everything together before turning his back on it. Eye Score: 9. HEART: The major problem with the Bunnie-Sally scene in S207's "Blackout," as I've said before, is that Sally never gets a chance to open up and be honest about her feelings toward Sonic; she simply agrees with Bunnie's assessment and lets it go at that. Here, Sally's a bit more open, emphasis on "bit". She tells Khan: "I ended things poorly between us, and I have to be sure there isn't something there to be salvaged. I have to be fair to him." Keep in mind that this goes back to S134's "Say You Will," and that a LOT has transpired since then, including Sal's forced marriage to the antiAntoine (which was subsequently annulled), the real Antoine proposing to Bunnie which certainly would have given Sally something to think about in the run-up to the wedding, Knothole getting char-broiled by the Eggman Armada only to be reconstructed by Nicole using leftover nanites from "Sonic's Angels," Knuckles getting turned into Enerjak 2.0, Sally being brought up before the Council on charges but calling Hamlin's buff, Scourge making a royal pain of himself acting like Sonic the Horndog, and now after having defeated Robotnik for the umpteenth time they spend a dozen issues subduing the Irons and engineering regime change in the Dragon Kingdom. And that's not even counting the peeks into the Mobius of the future where Sally enters into a reluctant marriage with Shadow before wedding and bedding Sonic and becoming a mom again. I'm sorry, but in all that toing and froing I thought there would have been SOME point where Sally would take honest stock of her relationship with Sonic. She's had ample opportunity to get past what happened in "Say You Will." That Ian tries to convince us that in fact she hasn't gotten past it yet strains credulity. What makes this even more galling is that I KNOW Ian can deliver the goods in terms of portraying honest emotions. "Stargazing," "Father and Son," the Mobius 25 Years Later 2.0 and Mobius 30 Years Later arcs, all show what he's capable of doing. The alternative to Sally-Khan was the Sonic-Amy tease, which went absolutely nowhere. No surprise; so long as Amy Rose is still a minor there's NO WAY it's going to get any traction without pushing things into the Genuinely Creepy neighborhood. Still, shouldn't SOMEONE have dusted off the L-word at some point? I mean, that IS sort of the point of a romantic subplot. The closest ANY of the characters came to it was Sally's line "I think I'm falling for someone else" back in "Blackout" (S207). The whole phrase IS "falling in love." But for whatever reason, this comic can't seem to bring itself to commit. It's not that there aren't plenty of potential couples in Mobius who could model what happens when love is taken to the next level: Sonic's rents, Rosemary and Amadeus Prower, the King and Queen, Bunnie and Antoine themselves; any one of those couples could serve as a marriage model, and Ian tried to some extent in "Blackout" with Bunnie and Antoine in couple mode. But it all feels false here, which is a beef I've had against the comic for years, literally. It's almost as if the comic was more comfortable with Knuckles's parents being divorced than with all those others being married. It just fails. Heart: 4. Fan Art: Speaking of which, in a fan art section devoted to less than the "ton of shiny new fan art" devoted to SonicxSally, Brittany's drawing manages to cover a far wider emotional spectrum of their relationship that was on display during the Iron arc, including a "Say You Will" reference where it DOES look like Sally's gotten past it. Somehow, I don't think Editorial will let itself be affected by what the fans feel. Off-Panel: If he floats, therefor he's made of wood ... and ... he's a WITCH! BURN HIM!!! Sonic-Grams: Pretty disappointing batch of mail this time around. Kenneth can't believe what's going on with the comic's idea of romance; neither can I (see above). Justine is in the SonicxAmy minority, but is also a fan of Matt Herms's artwork. Amber wants to rank as Sonic's #3 fan (less competition for the slot), but c'mon, she should be docked a few slots for asking what kind of animal is Amy Rose. And we get a lot of back story of Geoff who, after appearing in two issues of this arc, has mercifully packed it up and gone home.