Sonic Universe #28 (July 2011)

Yardley!/Amash/Hunzeker cover: It’s Silver v. Enerjak. Looks good but c’mon, who didn’t see THIS one coming?

“Fractured Mirror Part 4: Picking Up The Pieces”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Steve Downer; Lettering: Phil Felix; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; El Presidente: Mike Pellerito; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu

We rejoin the action on “a world beyond what you know from the Sega games” but not too unfamiliar, either. In this case, we get a scene reminiscent of one from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” where there was a break in the action and Harry contemplated the dead and the dying laid out in the Great Hall of Hogwarts after the attack of the Death Eaters while being taunted by Voldemort because all the death and carnage he’s caused by not going one-on-one with Voldemort. Here, we get Jani-Ca lining up … well, they’re not dead bodies, just DeCored Recolors. But you know that’s going to get old and the antidote is … one-on-one Silver and Enerjak action for like about 4 pages.

Then, being the completist that he is, Enerjak can’t help showing off his really rare Core/Prelate collection from the last page of Part 1: Sally, Shadow, Khan, Dulcy, Rouge, you name it. Not that they’re all that formidable up against Jani-Ca armed with the Sword of Acorns. And just to make sure Editorial doesn’t get any complaints, Jani-Ca has a little disclaimer she delivers after slicing the Bean Prelate: “The Prelates feel no pain, they don’t think, or feel, or live … and can’t be brought back to life without our help!” Translation: this is as close to fighting zombies as an Archie comic is going to get.

After another page of Prelate combat, Silver spends a couple pages dragging Enerjak to some island. But as he stops to wonder whether maybe he hasn’t gone overboard and edged over toward the Dark Side, Enerjak dusts himself off and says “My turn.” And he wails on Silver for a page, and…

Let the record show that halfway through Part 4 of this 4-parter, Silver finally gets it. He reviews some of the fortune cookie-grade wisdom bestowed upon him by Mogul and Edmund, the most relevant crumb of which being Mogul’s “Energy is what moves all matter. It is yours to guide and manipulate.”

And manipulate is what he does. Realizing that he’ll never outmuscle Enerjak, he simply starts shoveling Enerjak’s power back at him, doing everything but reciting the old incantation “I am rubber, you are glue/What bounces off me sticks to you.” And speaking of old incantations, Jani-Ca shows up to serve up a helping of Tikal’s Prayer. This is answered in a surprising way by her being upgraded to Enerjak 2.1, though she insists that the villain module failed to be installed. Her dad, meanwhile, is downgraded to a major has-been.

Knux tries to get one more hit of energy from the Sword, but Jani-Ca smashes the Sword of Acorns instead. After a page worth of Jani-Ca speaking of using her Enerjak powers for good instead of evil, Silver uses his Time Stone and checks out. This leads to a quickie reunion with Edmund that lasts a page, followed by a one-page set-up of the next story arc which is set in Zone Prison and features Scourge.

HEAD: The climax of this story arc was actually kind of neat. Ian realized that simply having two comic superguys “whaling on each other” gets pretty old pretty fast. So, as with several kinds of martial arts, Silver uses his opponent’s strength against him. Again, as in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” it’s like Harry using an elementary Expelliarmus charm to get the better of Voldemort in their final battle.

Really, this is a pretty good story. OK, it’s a pretty good three-parter that never should have been padded out to four. I know that editing down a published story is tricky business, if Ken Penders’s experience with “Endgame” is any indication, but what scenes here could have been edited down with no damage to the story proper? The fights between Silver and Enerjak, the scenes between Silver and his mentors, the fights between Silver and Enerjak, and … oh yeah, the fights between Silver and Enerjak. And yes, I realize that they were kind of the point of the story arc as well as the life blood of comic books in general, but after a while they got really tedious. Which may have made Ian’s choice of denouement (Silver NOT fighting Enerjak) all the sweeter.

I also respected the scene where Knuckles, shorn of his Enerjak powers, tries to get one more boost of his old energy, sort of like Bilbo Baggins in Rivendell trying to get his hands on the One Ring one more time. His Golum-like “Yessss” was a total giveaway of his intentions. OK, that didn’t sound TOO geeky, did it?

On the other end of the moral decisions scale, Jani-Ca’s promotion to the office of Enerjak was both well-handled and a surprise. The moral dilemma for her was actually worthy of a bit more page time than Ian gave it, but even though she was quick about it, the bottom line is that she did the right thing.

As I said earlier, the scene with the Recolors and Jani-Ca’s explanation of the invincibility of the Prelates went by way too quickly. I mean, she’s talking about an Army Of The Undead here. How cosmic is THAT? But in a blink Silver and Enerjak are back to playing punch-buggy.

Someone wrote me to ask how sacred the 4-part story structure is, since Archie has settled on it as a way to populate their Sonic Archives. This arc is a pretty good example that the 4-parter isn’t always the best format for telling a story. As I’ve said before, some of the best story-telling in this comic has involved stand-alone stories such as “Stargazing” or two-issue arcs such as “Thicker Than Water.” I hope Editorial isn’t boxing Ian in by the need for 4-parters, and that he’s writing some shorter pieces that can be held as inventory stories should the need arise. The downside of that, or course, is that the comic has seen its share of inventory stories that never should have seen the light of day in the first place. But that’s Editorial’s headache, not mine. Head Score: 8.

EYE: There’s a lot to see here, and Tracy Yardley! gets a chance to submit some dialogue-free pages, even if they’re fight scenes. And who else noticed that Jani-ca’s glasses disappeared when she assumed the Enerjak form? I guess LASIK surgery comes with the job. Eye Score: 10.

HEART: Ian actually gets the biggest Heart moment out of the way at the beginning: when Jani-Ca stacks the empty bodies of the Recolors like logs that have become firewood waiting to happen. There’s actually something a little touching about her addressing her fallen comrades conversationally, even though they’re not about to answer back and her speech is simply an excuse for a round of exposition. And someone, whether Ian or Editorial, felt the need to explain in a text box that “Core” means “concentrated spirit.” Apparently, according to another correspondent, the whole business with Cores and Prelates is a concept imported from Ian’s “Other-M” fan comic that he worked on before joining the Archie stable. Again, this seems like a roundabout way of speaking about “souls” without resorting to the S-word. It’d probably be asking for trouble.

The good news is Silver FINALLY gets some character development here instead of simply moving from one fight bracket to another and taking one side or the other in a number of exposition conversations. The bad news is most of THAT happens in all of two panels when he wonders whether he isn’t letting this power trip go to his head as Edmund and Mogul had warned him. After he switches play books and starts fighting Enerjak with Enerjak, Jani-Ca pretty much takes center stage and doesn’t yield.

Looking back on it, the reader can be forgiven in thinking that this is a Jani-Ca story with Silver as a supporting player. She does stand up off the page to a greater degree than Silver, even if Silver and Enerjak’s mixing it up is the alleged center of the story (or the major excuse for the action, anyway). In this story, in fact, she has major scenes at the beginning and end, which sort of offset the macho mojo of the Silver-Enerjak duel. And her “This is my mother’s [Core]” moment demanded more time than it got. Her somewhat goofy expression just didn’t resonate with the inherent emotion of the moment. Honestly, could anyone who had lost their mother been put into such a scene and not shed at least one tear?

The perennial problem of writing Sonic fanfic and comic stories alike is ably demonstrated by this arc: Sonic, or in this case his recolor Silver, just can’t carry a story alone. They need a villain to work off of (Eggman, Enerjak) and/or a REALLY interesting sidekick (Tails, Knuckles, Sally). Silver especially needed Jani-Ca in this arc because there was simply no way to spread a simple fight story across 4 issues of the comic. Jani-Ca became a major presence in this in part because the male lead, Silver, is something of a numf to begin with.

That’s why I believe one of the major objectives for the Sonicverse is to figure out how to reunite Silver and Blaze. And I’m not saying this just to push Silver/Blaze shipping for its own sake. Those two kids really do complement each other. Silver is powerful but lacks a certain amount of direction as well as being somewhat naïve. Blaze is powerful to a lesser degree, but you sense that she’s a bit more worldly-wise. And both characters weren’t served very well in their respective story arcs recently; Silver here was mainly a fighting machine and a listening ear when Jani-Ca and the Recolors went into exposition mode, while Blaze appeared to be just along for the ride in stretches of the Treasure Team Tango arc when she wasn’t playing second-fiddle to Amy Rose or singing yet another chorus of the My World Will End Without The Sol Emeralds Blues. Those two need something to make the jump to being successful characters; I suggest that what they need is each other. Heart Score: 6.

Sonic Spin: Timing is everything here, at least in terms of page layout. Since Paul Kaminski’s column deals with the Jani-Ca-to-Enerjak change, it would have been deadly to place it before the switch itself in the story. As it is, it appears pretty much simultaneously. But there’s also a plug for the 15^th Sonic Archive, covering issues 55-58 to keep the column properly commercial.

Fan Art: Fergal gives us Silver vs. the Mighty Prelate, or is that the Prelate Mighty? Dante gives us Jet while Diana supplies an appropriately moody Super Shadow.

Fan Funnies: From Susan in Kuwait: Silver and Shadow duke it out to determine who’s the top Recolor. As Sonic observes, “This could take a while….”

Off-Panel: There’s a reason Ian shouldn’t try and flog the Silver Getting History Wrong angle. It just isn’t working out. But that doesn’t stop him from trying in his best Wile E. Coyote manner.

Letters: The ads squeeze in on the space and only allow room for two letters. Noah notes that Sonic and Knuckles were more, shall we say, gutsy back in the day before they subsequently slimmed down. But one thing at Archie Comic hasn’t changed: they don’t want to hear about fan chara submissions except as artwork that has no chance of finding its way into the comic storyline. Knowing this is par for the comic book course, you can appreciate why the fandom for “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” lit up like the Fourth of July when the show acknowledged the fan base’s use of “bronies” for male ponies and their renaming of the deejay pony Scratch Vinyl as “DJ Pon3.” Susy reopens an old wound when she suggests that publication of the Knuckles comic be resumed. She claims to have read only one issue, but we don’t know which. I have to wonder whether it was one of the issues in the final “King of the Hill” arc, which had nothing to do with propane or propane accessories. But speaking of issues, one of the biggest arguments against restarting the series can be summed up in two words: Ken Penders. That title was pretty much his baby, and resumption of it would have to take all of his past developments into consideration. And given the current litigious atmosphere between Penders and Editorial, Archie must feel that they don’t need that kind of grief. My recommendation to Susy: write your own fanfic and cut out the middle man. Works for me.