Sonic Universe #5 (Aug 2009) Yardley!/Hunzeker cover: strong group pose of Lien-Da, Knuckles, Sally and Sonic, and Lara-Su with Manik and Sonia. Trust me, Lara-Su's hang-dog expression at having to consort with the Royal Rugrats is a tease. More important is the Hunzeker coloring here; it's far more subtle and nuanced that what we usually see. And the personalities of the characters, especially the key threesome in the foreground, really come through. A very strong entry for Best Cover Art. "Mobius 30 Years Later : Part 1 : Five Years of Peace" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Jim Amash, Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Teresa Davidson; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu As if we haven't had enough retrospective news stories on TV lately what with those inspired by the deaths of Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite, we now get more of the same from Future Mobius. This time, however, we get a talking head narrating a slide show instead of a video montage. The head in question belongs to Sasha Cat of News 11, who actually started life as a little kid/bit player in S144's "Love and Loss." Her facial editorializing makes me wonder whether she interned at Fox News. For those of you who never read the Mobius 25 Years Later 2.0 arc in S166-167, and even those who did, Sasha gives a rundown of some of the events that swirled around the arc while leaving others unstated. Hang on: Seems Shadow conquered Mobius and brought it under his less- than-benign control; this included the marriage/merger of Shadow and Sally. This is pretty much the only explanation of how it happened that a loner like Shadow would ever marry anyone, let alone Sal. With the capital relocated to Angel Island, Shadow kept the populace in check with his Dark Presence, which looked like the Dark Legion 2.0. Sasha doesn't mention that he also established a Maria cult, probably to help legitimize his rule. For her part, Sally worked to relieve the misery of the people afflicted by her hubby. The change began when Tails (who isn't mentioned in the report) and Lara-Su came upon a down-and-out Sonic. Sonic figured his fall was due to his messing around with time and space at the conclusion of the Mobius 25 Years Later 1.0 arc (about which more in the Heart section). It was finally Lara-Su who cleaned Shadow's clock; what exactly happened to Shadow isn't spelled out in S167 but it appears that he became trapped in a mess of Chaos energy, and Ian never did make it clear in the comic what happened after that. Meanwhile Sonic hooked up with Sally and the two of them eventually got busy. We see the results of that busyness in the present: son Manik and daughter Sonia, whom I figure to be about age 4. The royal couple is preparing to step out for the evening, so they've enlisted Lara-Su the Guardian to babysit. From the look of things, she's had to deal with the twins before and they have a good relationship, except when Lara-Su has to whip out the ol' Chaos Control to control the chaos of dealing with two preschoolers. With the twins provisionally tucked away, Lara-Su blows in a call to her rents. Even though they're supposed to be on some kind of diplomatic mission, Knuckles and Julie-Su (minus her electronic dreads) look more like they're filming the opening scene for a Cialis(tm) commercial. After Lara-Su signs off, the kids try to make a break for it but she responds in kind. This kind of fun can't last forever and it doesn't. Seems Lien-Da is still on the scene and in charge of agents known as the Dark Eyes and Dark Hands; collectively they're the Dark Presence. Apparently Mobians prefer using only a handful of adjectives and have run "Great" and "Dark" into the ground. Despite the "I want to hurt something real bad!" look on her face, she decides not to go after Lara-Su so long as she's sitting the Royal Tweebs. She does make it clear that she plans to bring down Lara-Su along with Knuckles, Julie-Su and the Royal Couple. Ian doesn't explain who or why just yet, but she's seen carrying a photo of herself with her son, Rutan, who did little more than skulk and sulk at the top of the stairs while Lien-Da exposited all over Dimitri's head. In M25YL 1.0 he broke curfew and tried to snog with a lass named Salma. Whatever happened to Rutan, it's pretty clear Lien-Da blames everybody she wants to bump off. We switch over now to the suspense part of the story. We also watch Lara-Su hook up with the Prowers: Miles, Mina, and the kids Melody and Skye, who's got a really bad case of shyness about the crowd he's in. And of course nobody notices the suspiciously-dressed echidnas taking up their position under the direction of Lien-Da. As the Royals step out to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd of both humans and furries, Lara-Su spots the A-Team on a nearby roof. To the accompaniment of Sonic's speech-making, Lara-Su clocks the baddies but realizes that they were just a diversion, the lack of ammunition being the tip-off. Lien-Da fires an RPG at Sonic and Family but just as it looks like all is lost the projectile is captured and exploded inside an energy bubble provided by ... Hi-yo, Silver, away! HEAD: Yes, Sonic is saved by a deus ex machina. But if you thought THAT was outrageous, you should have seen the climax of the final episode of the last season of "24." "Experimental stem cell therapy;" gimme a break! It gives me great pleasure to report that Ian Flynn has again proved me wrong. In responding to a letter in the previous issue of SU, I noted that we've seen very little of the everyday home life of the main characters, especially when it comes to married couples with families. Well, Ian is all over that one in this issue. We get Sonic and Sally at home and interacting with their kids, and we get a sidebar of Knuckles and Julie-Su picnicking. This may not have anything to do with the primary plot (Lien-Da tries to assassinate Sonic) but it does set up the reader to sympathize with her intended targets. And as a bonus, we also get some much-needed character development WRT the furries of the future. Best of all, the interludes strike just the right note; they don't feel phoney, cloying or forced, which is easy to do when writing about children. When it comes to the action set-piece of this story, Ian doesn't clutter up the sequence with a lot of clever action movie one-liners. Instead, we get Sonic speechifying in the background while Lara-Su does her thing. This provides, not just action, but suspense. The focus of everyone else is on what Sonic is saying and only the two Dark Hands and Lara-Su are busy with other matters. And the timing of the attack is flawless. No sooner does Lara-Su realize she's been conned in the last panel of the page than Lien-Da gets off her shot in the first panel of the following page. This keeps the tension up and doesn't give the readers a chance to catch their breath. Sasha can't help but become an exposition machine in this story, but at least that's her job and the gimmick works here. There are a number of explanatory text boxes but they're kept to a minimum. Unfortunately, the loose continuity inherent in the comic book medium is as loose as ever so a lot of details which might escape the newbies, such as who Rutan is, are left unstated. It'll be interesting to see if the holes will be patched up in the next 3 installments. This is one of the strongest stories that have appeared in a long time. Head Score: 10. EYE: Tracy Yardley! does his best in the story, especially the tricky crowd scenes where it's easy to get lost. He does, however, run up against the biggest obstacle to telling a future Sonic story: the difficulty of making the characters look, well, older! It's easy enough for Tails since he just has to get taller while keeping his proportions believable. When it comes to Sonic and Sally, though, we just sort of have to take it on faith that they're now closer to middle age than to adolescence. That may be inherent in depicting furries, real or fantasy. I didn't appreciate how old our cat, Furrball, was getting until she lost a lot of her body fat, took on a scraggly appearance, and started losing a step. Then she REALLY started falling apart. But let that pass. That problem aside, Yardley!'s artwork is strong and likable, and again the skewed panel placement during the RPG attack helps heighten the tension of the moment. Eye Score: 10. HEART: This is probably a good time to bring the newbies up to speed on the precursor to this arc: Mobius 25 Years Later 1.0. During 2004, Ken Penders told the story of Angel Island in serious trouble because Sonic had done so much zone-hopping in his youth that it threatened the integrity of the space-time continuum. Or something. Ken actually used as his premise "Force of Nature," an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" which blamed warp speeding for tearing holes in the fabric of space. Myself, I have a hard time buying that. In response to the situation, Sonic and Sally, with Sonia and Manic in tow, meet with Knuckles the Guardian, Julie-Su and Lara-Su who had just turned 16. In this version, Sonia and Manic aren't twins; rather they look more like a teen and a tween, respectively. The arc ends on an ambiguous note with Sonic and the crew try to mend the rift in the fabric of time and with Sonic disappearing. Next stop: Skid Row. This is the best explanation for the bottom of page [5] where Sonic gets all nostalgic for some reason. The reason, apparently, is that this is his second go at parenting since he retains a dim memory of the previous timeline and of the two kids who no longer exist. Ian hammered home this point in M25YL 2.0, that Sonic and even Sally retain some dim memory of their lives before the Big Cosmic Reset. This is a gross violation of the rules for telling time travel stories, if you ask me. Still, without forcing the issue Ian does give Sonic a chance to feel something other than smug satisfaction. Couple that with Knuckles and Julie-Su exchanging Been-There-Done-That glances as Lara-Su gives a shout out to the kids in the bedroom while she's on the phone, and you get a pretty clear picture that Ian means for these creatures to enjoy their lives for the moment, notwithstanding the minor hassles of parenting and babysitting. You begin to wonder "Who'd want to do anything nasty to these nice characters?" That's where Lien-Da comes in. In the old Bruce or Ahnuld action movies, it was easy to spot the target: the friend on the police force on the verge of retiring and enjoying life for a change or some variation on the theme. It got to the point where you expected the writers to just draw a target on their foreheads and get it over with, it was so blatant. Ian doesn't overplay his hand here on that score, but it's still a rarity for the comic to actually show Sonic and Sally and everyone else enjoying the fruits of their freedom fighting labors and having happy lives. The first 9 pages of this comic are really worth savoring; I'll probably want to look through them later when the writer(s) start heaping poo on the characters again. Heart Score: 10. My Sonic Universe: Tony is way too big of an Omega fan; Ender is told that the Special Zones (of which Feist is in control for some reason) will be worked into the stories when possible. An unsigned letter asks if Shadow is a bot and, if not, how did he survive his demise at the end of Sonic Adventure 2. The absolutely cynical answer is that Sega realized that they were onto something with the character when it was embraced so heartily by the fans so they brought him back in his own game with Robotnik salvaging him. Can't be any worse than the comic's insistence that he was rescued by space aliens. And really, whoever does these letters should know better than to drop a major spoiler into the answers without some kind of warning. In response to Charity's question about Chip from "Sonic Unleashed," the writer not only shines off any kind of guess as to his species but they then commit major spoilage by stating that Chip, who throughout the game had been more of a comic relief sidekick than anything else, is in fact "the Light Gaia" as opposed to the Dark Gaia whose powers Eggman was trying to harness. To call Chip "a spirit of goodness," though, completely misses the point that's hammered home at the end of the game by the professor's speech about the coexistence of light and darkness. It's actually a pretty classic mythological device: the unpromising runt who turns out to be the indispensable hero. Fan art: pretty good selection of material, and even the fan comic by Ben works well. As for the Satsunami drawing, "Thanksgiving Chaos," you can find it at http://satsunami.deviantart.com/art/Thanksgiving-Chaos-104866454. I'd stay away from the rest of her gallery if you're underage, though.