Sonic Universe #15 (June 2010) Yardley!/Hunzeker cover: Sonic and Tails (aka, The Franchise) get prominent placement above Conquering Storm, with Fiona and the Destructix fading into insignificance. "Journey To The East: Part 3: No Love In A Conquering Storm" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Teresa Davidson; Assistant Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu Apparently Fiona belongs to the school of thought that you have to club a mule in the head with a 2x4 to get its attention. That would explain her ambushing Sonic and Tails in the previous issue. Right now, however, nobody is in much of a mood to listen to anything she has to say. Being true to the story formula that each installment has to begin with an ambush or a fight of some kind, even Sally wants to mix it up with Fiona. Khan's attempt to reason things out with the Sarge doesn't hold much promise, either. Fiona, however, pulls the plug on the fun and games for the sole purchase of launching into an extensive exposition which goes something like this: After bugging out of Freedom Fighter HQ during S194 (Once again, Editorial slips up: Fiona makes NO appearance in S195), she heads on over to the appropriately-named Bottom Of The Barrel Bar and Grill attached to Mammoth Mogul's casino. Sure enough, that's where she finds what's left of the Destructix, as well as Sleuth Dawg who's on his way to retirement but who still does most of the heavy lifting in this flashback. S. Dizzle tells her and us that Drago is back in Eggman's orbit though he hasn't put in an appearance yet, and Lightning Lynx went back east to the old country. This latter development has shaken up the Destructix pretty bad, except for Flying Frog who appears to have been well-shaken to begin with, probably as a tadpole. Fiona then makes the HUGE mistake of trying to play head games with Tails again, but Sally puts a stop to that, executing a move that you never saw in any of the catfights on "Dynasty." The two groups cut to the chase: the Mobians are still trying to peel the clans away from the Irons, and Fiona's posse wants to peel Lightning away from the Raiju clan. Traveling to Raiju HQ, which is one of the Irons's old properties, they send a party over the walls to raise the inner door while Sonic and Sarge take out the front door. They then make their presence known to Conquering Storm (she's a lynx as well, despite my first impression that she was a rabbit). She proves to be a tougher sell than the other clans, whereupon Khan proposes that they duke it out. Lightning is sent in to fight the "champion" of the Mobians, who turns out to be Sonic acting as designated hitter. And now, a brief pause to consider the cover art for the Archie Americana Best of the Seventies comic. I was around during the Seventies, and the only thing missing from this eye- aching cover (Archie Andrews in the KISS Army?) would be Mr. Lodge doing the perp walk as he's arrested for the work he did on the Committee to Re-Elect the President. If you have to ask WHICH president, you've got history homework to do. L. L. gets the first few licks in, spilling his guts about the emotional investment he's made to his clan. Then it's Sonic's turn. The old saying is that the fox knows a hundred tricks while the hedgehog knows only one but it's a really good one. Sonic does his thing, and his attack is reminiscent of every dodgeball player's nightmare. And the fight is over in one page. Connie rewards Lightning's efforts by kicking him out of the clan, for the second time apparently. Then we get a totally gratuitous use of the L-word from Lightning, which actually gives him some motivation but not a second chance. The other Destructix welcome him back into the fold, with Fiona offering a vague promise of some kind of revenge against "them" (whether the Raiju clan or the Mobians is left purposefully vague) as a consolation prize. For Connie's part, she wants to take over the whole shootin' match in the D.K. once the Irons are out of the picture. Outside the castle, Tails thanks Sally for her intervening with Fiona earlier. Sal commiserates with him with a word balloon that is way better than the artwork to which it's attached; Sal's expression spoils the mood completely and costs this story serious Heart points. Then the damage is further underscored by Sonic uttering one of the most outrageous lines of dialogue to appear in the entire history of this comic: "Actually, I thought it was kind of hot." Remember, we're talking about one female punching another female in the ovaries. Cap everything off with a weirdly-lettered word balloon for Sally at the end, "I'm drowning in testosterone," and you have one of the most bizarre comic pages of all time. There's nothing left now but to spell out the final mission: talk the Shinobi Clan into deserting the Irons. Which is the cue for one of its members to decloak and to offer his services to the group: Espio. HEAD: The big mystery in this issue is: Why did Archie Comics switch over to glossy stock? There's certainly no question as compelling about the story itself. The arc has officially settled into such a rut you could have predicted every move. First is an attack of some kind, followed by a meet-up with the local clan leader who may or may not be a Bride. Then there's the official renunciation of allegiance to the Irons and the setup for the next installment. Everything else is commentary. Granted this makes things easier when it comes to planning the stories, but this is getting seriously rote. Thanks to this installment I can now safely say that I am sick and tired of ninjas. I know that the CCA restricts the ability of the ninja clans to do their proper thing in an Archie comic. But when they DO do their thing lately they end up doing it badly. Look at the beginnings of Parts 1 and 2 of this story arc. In the first, Sally, Tails and Khan have been overpowered by ninja spiders, though we don't get to see it. Sonic collars one of the ninjas and they all end up getting escorted to the meeting with the clan Bride. Compare this with the second story where nobody is overpowered by the ninja bats (Maybe the sun was in their eyes, I don't know). Sonic collars one of them and they all end up getting escorted to the meeting with the clan honcho. The basic repetition of the story structure aside, this arc is not exactly burnishing the ninja reputation. These guys are supposed to be stealthy, cunning, ruthless, and above all skilled. You wouldn't know it from this arc. They aren't even FUN, something that Masashi Kishimoto manages to get across in his "Naruto" manga/anime series. The only variety on display is in how each of the clans is convinced to dissolve their allegiance to the Irons. With the Gossamer clan, it involved their Bride consulting the Web of Fate. With the Rich Nights, Khan appeals to the Machiavellian side of the nameless head ninja bat. And with the Raiju, it's an old-fashioned slugfest between Sonic and Lightning Lynx. Like there was any question who was going to come out on top of THIS one! Honestly, this arc is suffering from fallen arches. It can't be over too soon. And my expectations about Conquering Storm get set up one more time before being completely demolished. I figured that NOW, after being ill-used at the beginning of the story arc and then shipped back to the home office, we'd get to see her strut her stuff. Between the iron-toed footwear and her built-in brass knuckles, I expected to see some major kung-fu action from her. But no; she spends the whole story parked on her butt. But how else would we know that she's a cat, right? Seriously, her design was simply too good for someone with as thankless a role as hers. While Ian hasn't indulged in exploiting stereotypes in his writing, I fear he's been making an exception. The Flying Frog character joins the ranks of Bean, Rosy, and even Robotnik through much of the course of this arc as Mentally Handicapped Characters Played for Laughs. I completely understand the comedic role that a character like that can play. The point of the character is in his or her unconventional outlook on life, which can sometimes be used to the advantage of the heroes. That was the point behind "Howling Mad" Murdoch on "The A-Team." Bean brought a nice absurdist diversion to the comic in some of his pronouncements. I felt the same way about Mas and Menos in the animated Teen Titans; they weren't crazy but were different enough to keep the story off- balance, especially when they spoke Spanish. Lately, the trend on TV has been not so much characters who are mentally imbalanced as extremely eccentric; examples would be Penelope Garcia on "Criminal Minds" and Henrietta "Hetty" Lange on "NCIS: Los Angeles." But the use of mentally deranged characters stopped being funny in this continuity when Psycho Rosy on Moebius morphed into Elmira from Tiny Toons whenever Scourge was in the neighborhood. This sort of thing hasn't yet gotten to the point of being offensive to anyone with a mental disability but Ian should put an embargo on these kind of characters before he ends up crossing the line. And if he does cross it, Archie WILL hear about it; I can't say for certain, but I'm convinced that Ray's stutter was cured by parental pressure on the publishers. Head Score: 5. EYE: I didn't say a lot about it in the previous issue, but while Yardley!'s artwork is strong enough, he somehow drops the ball when we get to an emotional passage, as if he can't bring himself to plug into Ian Flynn's dialogue and support the tone. In Sonic Universe #14, in the scene where Sally and Khan more or less agree that it's just not going to happen between them, the drawing of the two of them was just plain wrong! The body language, facial expressions, the eye contact or lack thereof, NOTHING about that panel indicated that there was an emotionally major passage ahead. One rather ambiguous drawing of the two holding hands (in extreme close-up) had to do all the work. Here again, we had the same thing when Tails thanks Sally for stopping Fiona from screwing with his head. This should have been a cue for Sally to show her maternal, protective side and artistically the sequence should have been milked like a purebred Guernsey. Instead Yardley! gives us such a weird expression on Sally's face that it totally subverts the sequence. Mobius 30 Years Later proved he has the chops to do emotional warmth and tenderness, so I'm at a loss to explain the breakdown here. The problem, IMO, could have been solved by putting the two in a hug with Sally's face hidden on the far side of Tails's head. Otherwise, Tracy's talents are all on display, such as the close-up eyes of Khan and Conquering Storm. Eye Score: 8. HEART: The good news is, Lightning Lynx breaks out of the pack of interchangeable baddies and actually displays some personality. The bad news is, the personality in question was lifted directly from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." When "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was being filmed, author J. K. Rowling was taken aside by Alan Rickman, who has played Severus Snape for the run of the series, and asked what Snape's motivation is for treating Harry like something he wants to scrape off the bottom of his shoe. Rowling met with Rickman for an hour and let him in on what the rest of us only discovered when "Deathly Hallows" was released: that ever since childhood Snape had been carrying the torch for the girl who would one day be Harry's mother. Her murder by Voldemort, in the attack that the infant Harry survived, was what pushed Snape to play double agent throughout the series, as a Death Eater providing intelligence to the Order of the Phoenix. In the context of the entire Harry Potter series, Snape's character makes sense. I wish I could say the same for Lightning Lynx. His crush on Conquering Storm came out of left field so fast that it felt both right and wrong; on the one hand it was understandable enough that it would motivate him to break with the Destructix, but on the other hand it still felt like a gratuitous lifeline to justify the character's existence beyond this particular story arc. Hey, weirder things have happened in this comic; e.g., Duck Bill's sudden about-face in SU12's "Echoes of the Past: Part 4." Then there's Sally's gut-punch to Fiona. As gratifying as it was for someone to intervene on Tails's behalf, it still felt wrong. A punch like that is a macho male move. From Sally I'd expect either a boot to the head (even though she and Fiona did that move on page [3]), or else have Sally grab a couple handfulls of ear and get in her face. Like the Lightning Lynx confession of love, the punch was emotionally satisfying but wrong in every other respect. Which brings us to the Sally-Tails scene on page [20]. As I said, this is probably the most outrageous single Sonic comic page this side of Endgame. The disconnect between Ian's words and Tracy's drawing is as wrong as Sonic's description of the Sally-Fiona catfight as "hot," an adjective I'd expect him to use to describe a chili dog instead. And the final word balloon, which is the work of our old friend Mystery Letterer, makes me wonder what Sally had said at first and whether it was censored by Editorial. There's emotional content in this story, but something's warped it so that it's pretty near unrecognizable. I don't know if the fault lies with the writing, the illustrations, Editorial, or a combination of the three. What I do know is that what could have been satisfying and a strong underpinning of the story flew apart and turned into a liability. And that's a major disappointment. Heart Score: 4. Fan Art: Sweeney does a sweet drawing of Ray, Paulina's cast drawing is good though Sally here appears to be embarrassed, perhaps at being the only girl in the room. Fan Funnies: I don't know if Alexander got to see any leaked Sonic 4 footage and whether the bomb is part of the plot, but Shadow gives an admirable demonstration of the use of Occam's Razor. Off-Panel: Evolutionists and creationists can agree on this one: lame joke. Letters: Mari's expression of appreciation for an emotive moment in the Knuckles arc gets a cheap shot response, though she's also told that a Tails arc is on the way and that Julie- Su's back story happened way back in Special #11's "Shadows." Macey gets totally blown off for wanting to know who's Rutan's daddy; either they're keeping it in reserve in accordance with the doctrine of Loose Continuity, or else they're still waiting on results of the blood test. Lauren B. Gets told the Official Cover Story as to the variation of coloring that Sally underwent in the early days of the comic. The prosaic truth: the animation studio DiC (now dba Cookie Jar) hadn't settled on a color model by the time Archie went to press. The "toxic spill" cover story came way later. As for Sally, Editorial delivers a non-answer on whether she'll be featured in an SU story arc; in a no-brainer sidebar, there probably will be a Silver arc at some point. If so, I hope that Blaze turns up as something more than she was in SU1: someone who's along as a counterpoint to Marine. I like the interaction of the two, but I think in terms of Blaze's potential Ian has barely scratched the surface.