Sonic Universe #24 [March 2011]
     Yardley!/Amash/Hunzeker cover: this is a variation on our
old friend, the Wrestling Card layout.  As recently as Sonic
#211, Yardley! had characters pairing off against each other in
Battle Royal mode.  More of the same here.


     "Treasure Team Tango: Step 4 : The Parada."
     Story: Ian Flynn, Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash;
Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Phil Felix; Editor: Paul
Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; President: Mike
Pellerito; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu

     After a one-page re-introduction to the swollen cast of
characters, they start mixing it up again.  Except for Cream, who
holds back because ... well, SOMEONE has to add a page's worth of
exposition concerning what little is left of the plot. 
Eventually she joins in on the fun, landing on Nack just as he's
about to restyle Amy Rose's hairdo with a firearm.  Amy then
tells Blaze to drop what she's doing (keeping Bark at bay, in
this case) and they take a meeting in the middle of a ring of
fire.  Blaze tells the two to go away, but Amy Rose and Cream
state that they're going to demonstrate the Real Power of
Teamwork(tm).  Or words to that effect.  Blaze is not about to
argue.
     First order of business for Amy is interrupting Shadow's
attempt to knock some sense into Bean's head, which is a hopeless
errand if there ever was one.  Shadow then has to decide whether
he's in this story for GUN's sake or Blaze's.  While he's
pondering this, sentiment on Team Babylon leans toward getting
out of this mess, so Jet snatches the Sol Emerald from Nack. 
Shadow then Chaos Controls himself onto Jet's board; he evicts
Jet and takes possession.  Wave and Storm beg to differ but
before they can capitalize on bookending Shadow, Rouge and Cream
land on their heads and Amy Rose takes possession of the bauble
and laterals it over to Blaze.
     But as Bean attempts to disrupt things with one of his bombs
(one of those old school spherical models with an external fuse,
usually associates with late 19th and early 20th century
anarchists), Blaze reminds him and everyone else of her
pyrotechnical abilities by snuffing the fuse.  This sends Bean
into an emotional tailspin; honestly, William Wordsworth didn't
mourn over the death of his sister, Lucy, as much as Bean does
here over his UXB.  Of course while he goes on and on (and on and
on and on) for two pages, the Sol Emerald keeps changing hands. 
Realizing that this isn't getting anybody anywhere, Amy Rose
hooks up with Rouge to try to bring order out of this chaos.  So
the next two pages are spent herding the Babylon Rogues and Team
Nack into a central location so Blaze can re-light the bomb's
fuse.  The last panel on page [17] could have been omitted so
that the sequence could have gone straight from relighting the
fuse to set-up for the KABOOM to KABOOM to aftermath.  The only
thing missing would be musical phrases from the Looney Tunes
theme at the beginning and end, as in the Candygram scene from
"Blazing Saddles."  This interlude is enough for Jet, who pulls
the rest of the Rogues out of the game before her boards sustain
any real damage, and for Bark who collects Bean and Nack and
heads for the sidelines.
     Rouge then attempts to take possession of the Emerald, but
Shadow puts the kibosh on that and Rouge more or less goes along. 
We never DO learn what "mission" Team Dark was on that made it so
important for them to get the Sol Emerald (which, let's remember,
Dr. Nega just happened to drop into their world by accident).  So
after some farewells ("We'll have to kick butt together again
some day," Amy Rose tells Blaze), Blaze leaves.  The one-page
postlude back at FFHQ adds nothing to the story.


     HEAD: Technically, "parada" refers to a stop in the
choreography.  And a stop to this story arc, thank goodness!
     At this point, Ian has pretty much abandoned any sense of
this being anything serious and is going straight to the funny. 
Despite interludes such as Amy Rose confronting Shadow as to
which side he's on and Rouge's abortive last attempt to take the
Emerald for herself, the business with Blaze snuffing Bean's fuse
and his subsequent mourning over it pretty much sum up where this
story arc has found its level.  Despite the one-page interlude
with Marine involving all kinds of nasty weather which ran in
SU22, and Blaze's repeated warnings of dire consequences should
her mission fail, this story plays it for yuks.
     Very SAFE yuks, as it turns out.  In spite of various
weapons on display, the threat of their use, and the climactic
explosion of Bean's ordnance, nobody seems to have been in any
real danger of any real harm.  And if there's no sense of actual
harm or danger, the whole story is phony.
     So, too, is Shadow's "mission."  While Shadow and Omega were
literally dropped into this story at the very end of SU21 as
backup for Rouge, and the vague "mission" was introduced to give
Shadow a reason to take possession of the Emerald, by story's end
it doesn't matter why exactly Shadow needed it in the first
place.  If anything, Shadow needed it as an excuse to stay with
the story and to keep from phoning it in for the past three
months.
     And then there's Blaze in prophet-of-doom mode.  She makes
very sure that everybody knows that terrible, awful things will
happen to her world if she doesn't find the Emerald and make it
back home.  This includes the foreshadowing with Marine mentioned
earlier.  So at the end, she and the Emeralds disappear.  Does
she make it?  Is she able to heal her world, even if temporarily? 
We don't know and Ian isn't about to interrupt a perfectly boring
last page to tell us.  Anywhere other than a comic book, this
kind of writing would be a disgrace.  Which tells you something
about writing for comic books.
     At the end, the clubby friendliness of Team Rose and Team
Dark is too reminiscent of the bonhomie at the final page of
"Trouble In Paradise": it's phony and unrealistic.  They haven't
survived mixing it up with Team Nack and Team Babylon so much as
they've survived Ian's writing.  Head Score: 4.
     EYE: Tracy Yardley! reinforces the feeling during Bean's
eulogy for an unexploded bomb by having other characters mixing
it up like fugitives from Sergio Aragones marginalia in pursuit
of the Emerald.  "The show must go on" and all that.  Yardley!
does good work, as always, but it's in the service of one of the
weakest story arcs in a long time.  Eye Score: 7.
     HEART: In THIS?!?  Bean's maundering over his unexploded
bomb is a caricature of Heart.  n/a


     Sonic Spin: Paul Kaminski devotes the column to an overview
of coming stories, but mostly has to do with marketing reprints. 
Major developments: Naugus in StH, Enerjak in SU, and coloring by
Ray Dillon.  There's also a cringeworthy tease for "Sonic:
Genesis" to possibly coincide with Sonic's 20th anniversary.  

     Fan Art: Luz turns the Archie staff into furries, MAQ gives
us Cream on ice, and Claybourne's Sonic is looking kind of roly-
poly.  Fan Funnies: Dundan reminds us that some Wisps are not to
be trifled with.

     Off-Panel: It features three characters who had little or no
reason to appear in the TTT arc, and manages to be about as funny
as the arc as a whole.

     Fan Mail: Ethan comes out as a Gamma and Omega groupie, and
asks about Eggman's becoming just sane enough to spring himself
from prison; Dillon asks where Bunnie and Antoine hooked up and
why Eggman isn't a SU staple; and Anton is told that Cream and
Blaze never connected as far as Archie Comics is concerned, which
is too bad.  That might actually have led to some depiction of
character development, and the publishers of "Treasure Team
Tango" can't afford any of THAT, now can they?