S85 (Aug 2K) Spaz/Harvo/Ray cover with a video fight game theme that says it all. Can't tell what's happening with the pixelated images in the background but the foreground slugfest needs no explanation. "The Big Payback: Chapter One" For some reason, there are no further chapter divisions in this story, nor is there any indication that the story is "To Be Continued" on page [18]. Chalk up another one for loose continuity, I guess. Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Jim Amash; Lettering: Vickie Williams and Jeff Powell; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Editorial: G-Force. "I have had ENOUGH!" Screams Dr. Robotnik, echoing the sentiments of too many Sonic fans. He continues railing on about Sonic defeating Perfect Chaos, conveniently ignoring the fact that Chaos blew him and the Egg Carrier II out of the sky in "Menace To Society" (S83). But who ever said that evil geniuses have to be rational? His idea of payback: yet another Sonic bot. As the fake sun rises in the fake sky of Station Square and shines down upon some very real damage, everybody left standing has gathered to give Sonic and the crew an appropriate send-off, when the aforementioned bot shows up. His idea of a send-off is a little more permanent. BTW, the bot is finally identified on page [8] as "Silver Sonic II" (the first one presumably having gone down with the Egg Carrier) but he looks more like Exhaust Duct Fan Lint Gray Sonic to me (to borrow a descriptive phrase from Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word"). Anyway, the Sonic bot launches a couple missiles at our hero as the butt-kicking commences. If this has been a Ken Penders story, Sonic would have paused to muse about creating after-images of himself to confuse the missiles, much as he did in "The Big Goodbye" (S50). Karl Bollers simply has Sonic haul tail as he supplies a monologue which IMHO perfectly captures Sonic's character: "Ro-Butt-nik's flunky has targeted me and only me. Cool." See, it IS possible to mix action and personality in a story! While Sonic loses the missiles in a revolving door, Tails tries yelling at the Sonic bot. That doesn't help, but Big snagging him with his fishing line slows him down, if only for a second. The bot, however, feeds Big a facefull of Tails before unsnagging himself and directing your basic eyeball heat ray or whatever at Sally, Bunnie and Amy Rose. Surprise, surprise: nothing comes of it, but it does allow Sonic to re-enter and blind-side the bot. The two combatants take it indoors, crashing into the electronics section of a department store if the numberous TV sets in the background are any indication. The Sonic bot is apparently savvy enough about architecture to recognize a supporting column when he sees one, so he demolishes ONE LOUSY PILLAR and the entire high-rise conveniently collapses. It looks impressive, but having watched a special on controlled demolition on the Discovery Channel I didn't buy it for a minute. But IOACB (It's Only A Comic Book). The bot emerges from the rubble to the delight of Robotnik who's watching this...well, it's never really established HOW he's watching all this but I think I'm overanalyzing things again. The bot leaves the scene as the remaining Mobians (too easily) clear away the rubble to reveal...the fact that hedgehogs are burrowing animals. While the Sonic bot is cutting across town, Sonic just happens to intercept him in mid-flight. At this point Sally consults Nicole and Karl Bollers tries manfully to justify Nate Morgan's existence. Sonic, meanwhile, decides that hanging on to the bot's ankle may not be the smartest move so he lets go just as he's about to get blasted. Tails catches Sonic before he hits the ground, in a move I last saw in the Marble City Zone of Sonic 3 & Knuckles (note: I haven't gotten beyond that level), but he also gets conked on the head by the bot's foot which he (the bot) shot off. NOW Sonic's mad; he spin-dashes into the bot, decapitating it. We then wade through a page of Robotnik patting himself on the back for having remembered to install a homing device in the bot. Yeah, that'll be a REAL help, especially if you've got any spare heads lying around. The Freedom Fighters finally split the scene (minus Big and Froggy) but are forced to land after an undetermined amount of time as the ship starts losing aerodynamics. Nate points out that the ship was sabotaged, but the effect of this announcement is spoiled by the fact that the likely saboteur is still back in Station Square. Unless there's a mid-air sabotage plot point I'm missing. Robotnik, meanwhile, finds that SS II is not only intact, but had been reprogrammed to defect. HEAD: Basically, this one didn't suck as badly as I'd feared. The pacing was good (and in a fight story, that's about all you've got going for you) and Sonic's aside on page [4] was a nice touch. That's not to say that this story didn't have problems, quite apart from the business with the too-easily-collapsible building. The "sabotage" of the Freedom Fighter Special came out of nowhere and was too much of a contrivance to set up next month's story, whatever THAT'S about. And while I appreciate Nate Morgan trying to justify his existence more by reprogramming the Sonic bot, the fact that Nate could reprogram the bot at all had to qualify as the most convenient coincidence since Jeff Goldblum's laptop computer JUST HAPPENED to be able to interface with the computer aboard the alien mother ship in "Independence Day." One more small point which isn't small to me at all. I feel justified in critiquing the stories in the comic mainly because I've tried my hand at writing some Sonic stories of my own and fan response tells me I'm pretty good at it. As a writer, I've tried to keep in mind the "otherness" of the Sonicverse. I didn't want to treat Mobius as if it were merely some kind of furry Earth. There are recognizable elements, sure, but I also look for the things that make Mobius unique and invented them when I've had to. Thus I put together a description of a Mobian funeral in "Bloodlines" and of a Mobian Mother's Day ritual in "First Honor." Karl, on the other hand, catches himself TWICE lapsing into Earth English idioms and tries getting out of it the same way each time. On page 10 panel 3 Sonic speaks of kicking SS II's can "six ways to Sunday...whatever the heck that means." And on page 14 panel 1 we have Robotnik saying: "That hedgehog really gets my goat...whatever that means!" It's doubtful that the former would be understandable to a Mobian unless they were familiar with the Norse and Roman deities whose names inspired the day names [Wotan for "Wednesday," Saturn for "Saturday," etc.]. The "goat" reference is a little more obscure and comes (most lexicographers agree) from the world of thoroughbred horse racing. Having been bred and trained to be high-strung animals, especially stallions, horses have been known to be more relaxed if they share a stable with a goat. Don't ask me how it works, it just does. And the best way to throw a horse off his game (if you're from a rival stable) is to deprive him of his roomie by literally getting his goat. As for the reference to "heck" it of course is an euphemism that would be meaningless to a Mobian unless they were somewhat versed in the basics of salvation according to Christianity.... Uh, I seem to have wandered again. Still, it is gratifying to see Karl thinking about his choice of words, if only after the fact. Head Score: 6. EYE: Ron Lim still needs to give Tails a haircut, but the artwork is better than it was in "Sonic Adventure" (SSS13). The female characters, especially, are much improved; his drawings of Sally make me think that he's been studying some old Art Mawhinney artwork (especially page 13 panel 5 and page 17 panel 3). As implausible as some of the set pieces were (especially the building collapse), he did well by them. I don't know what Frank Gagliardo could have done differently, though, to have the Sonic bot LOOK silvery and not the dull gray he ended up. Eye Score: 7. HEART: Besides Sonic's aside already mentioned, the scene on page [12] is worthy of note. Sonic's motivation to put an end to this fighting and trash the bot didn't get cranked up enough until Tails got KLONKed. THAT'S when he got serious. That kind of touch has been absent for far too long from the book, and the book's been poorer for it. All along we've been relying on the background news that Sonic really cares about his little bro; in this story, Karl actually lets him prove it! About time, too. Heart Score: 7. "Home and Back" Story: Karl Bollers; Art and lettering: "DiamondRose Studios" Well, after an absence of a WHOLE FRIGGIN' YEAR (since S72's "I, Robotnik" to be precise) Rotor's tusked countenance once again graces the pages of a Sonic comic. Too bad the story is going to be as leaky a vehicle as the bathysphere he appears to be trapped in beneath the Mobian North Sea. After spending a page explaining to the reader that Rotor is in trouble we get two pages of exposition that only partially explains things so let me fill in some of the details for the benefit of the newcomers: Waaaaay back in S26 we were introduced to a group of Arctic Mobians: Guntiver (wolf), Augustus (polar bear), Sealia (seal), Erma (ermine) and Flip (penguin). Their one-shot appearance didn't stay that way as Sealia and Augustus were featured later in the "Tundra Road" story arc (S31-32). In that two-parter, Rotor returns to the old home ice floe only to discover that Robotnik had used a "neuron bomb" to fry the brains of everyone there and subjugate them. The last thing Rotor did in the story was escape from the mind-controlled walruses (walri?) out to destroy him on orders from Robotnik. Rotor, as already mentioned, left the book in S72 on the pretext of looking for his people since Robotnik bought the farm in "Endgame." Now for the current exposition, which goes a little something like this: Rotor learns from the Arctic Freedom Fighters that the herd is back to normal. He's reunited with his mom and kid bro and everything's cool (forgive the pun) until the herd turns on him again. Presumably the latest Robotnik incarnation re-established the mind control that had been broken. Rotor takes refuge in the not-very-spherical bathysphere and it starts to sink. Not on purpose, either. He bails out underwater (neat trick, too, considering how many foot pounds of pressure are being exerted on the glass from the outside) and tries to make a break for it but passes out. Fighting through the haze of Photoshop Blur, he comes to and realizes he's been rescued by the AFF who tell him that Robotnik's back in town. HEAD: And just what did THIS accomplish? What developments have there been in Rotor's story? Hardly any. He's in with the AFF now, and that's about it. The herd was OK but now they're not. Rotor STILL isn't back in Knothole to challenge Nate Morgan's role as resident techie. And once again the flashback plot device gets worked to death: 2 of 4 pages are pretty much devoted to Rotor's exposition. Head Score: 4. EYE: OK, to refresh my memory, I looked at the Rotor artwork by past artists (Mawhinney, Butler, and Ortega, specifically). NONE of the above have ever thought to bless Rotor or any other walrus with the tail he displays here, nor have any of them made him look so, well, UGLY! I can't say what it is, I think it's the proportions, but the character design just looks WRONG! No wonder the artist(s) concerned wouldn't go public with his/her/their real names. Eye Score: 2. HEART: Much as I wanted to believe that Rotor reuniting with his people was a good thing, somehow it never came together for me. Maybe because the point of this story was to tease Rotor (and us) with a relative moment of happiness before snatching it away again. Compare this with Bunnie's becoming temporarily deroboticized in the SatAM ep "Sonic Conversion." She actually logged some screen time back in her old bunny bod, so we had a chance to sympathize with her when she reverted. It didn't happen here, possibly because Rotor's happiness was in the context of a flashback. When you start out the story with Rotor in the middle of peril, that kind of prevented me from investing enough emotional capital in his reunion. Of course, Karl only had 4 pages to work with, so he didn't have room to do the job right. Still, it was something of a letdown. Heart Score: 3. Off-Panel: Ordinarily, the spectacle of Sonic running is no biggie. But the spectacle of Sonic running out on a restaurant tab takes on a new poignancy in light of the state of the industry. As Ken Penders reported in his latest chat session, sales for all comic publishers are off something like 30%. I don't know enough about the market to say whether this is the death knell for the medium (as Ken suggests) or whether this is only a temporary hiccup. After all, I've heard more than one report of the video game market's demise and they're still around. I also remember the confident predictions of not too long ago that the TV show theme song was going the way of the dinosaur just before the Rembrandts had a hit with the theme from "Friends." But Archie Comics is serious enough about the financial situation to have let go of Dan DeCarlo, creator of both Sabrina and Josie and the Pussycats and one of the artists who helped define the Archie visual style we know today. This within a year of his being feted at the San Diego Comic Con last year for his life's work. Of course the management at Archie, like management everywhere, will never come out and ADMIT that the industry in general or their little corner of it in particular is going through tough times at the moment. Management, no matter where, tend to treat bad news as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy and will squash it at all costs. Even if it's the stone cold truth. Let's hope that Sonic makes it to #100; there's been a moderate amount of hype about it, but I won't believe it until I see it. Sonic-Grams: Kristi Hagadone asks if a Mobian year is longer than an Earth year, which is a polite way of asking "Doesn't it seem like this batch of stories has gone on forever?" Raphyel Jordan wants to see Sonic and Sally's relationship get off dead center and is basically told "Over our dead body!" Craig Thorgellson asks about the parents of Bunnie and Tails. Well, the fate of Tails's dad was covered in "Eve of Destruction" (SSS9). As for Bunnie's people, I know at least one fanfic writer who's covered that territory, but modesty prevents me from dropping names. Ebony Ann Harmon thinks Geoffrey St. John "is a big fat jerk"; no argument. And Emma Hourigan writes: "You really like annoying people, don't you?" Couldn't have put it better myself. No Fan or Pro art. Mini-blurb for S86. Not only does Monkey Khan (and his handler, Dan Slott) return with an origins story, but we get a tiny thumbnail of the cover showing the eyeball of "one of your favorite villains." Even with trifocals and a magnifying glass I couldn't tell who it was. The eye is wrong for Antoine's dad, who'll probably be showing up in #89. It could be the Antisonic, but he never takes off his shades, so who knows?