Sonic X #1 (Nov 2005) Spaz cover: You should know from the beginning that I haven't watched that many eps of the Sonic X series, and what I have seen is due to my taping isolated eps pretty much at random for later viewing. But I have to say Pat Spaziante has nailed the look of the series (created by TMS Entertainment, reworked for the American market by 4Kids). I'm actually impressed by the understated rainbow aura effect. "Savings and Groan" Story: Joe Edkin; Art: Tim Smith III; Ink: Rich Koslowski; Color: Ben Hunzeker; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater. Since this is the premier issue of the comic it was felt that we newbies needed to come up to speed on a cartoon series that premiered, what, something like three years ago? Anyway, we're told via text boxes that Sonic, his various friends, the villain Dr. Eggman, and the seven Chaos Emeralds were sucked across a space-time dimension to Station Square which, in this Sonicverse, is "on a parallel planet Earth." Now Sonic and the gang are supposed to protect Station Square from Dr. Eggman's various plots. But first, speaking of coming up to speed, it's off to the races: a one-on-one match between Sonic on foot and Sam Speed in some souped-up race car. The race takes up all of three pages of the comic, and I really don't have to tell you who takes the pixeled flag. Sam (who if I remember the pilot ep was actually a cop specializing in high-speed chases so he's not just some random speed demon or NASCAR fanboy) doesn't think much of Sonic's win; Sonic isn't too crazy about Amy Rose's fan-girl reaction, either. But Sam isn't the only one throwing himself a pity party. We cut to Dr. Eggman loudly complaining that he has to pay retail for the components he needs to build devices with which to conquer the world. Decoe and Bocoe, his two comic relief robots, point out that the "world-conquering thing" may have something to do with it, but Eggman has other ideas. Having just gotten clear on the concept of "currency," Eggman thinks that the first step in Operation Show Me The Money is to send D/B (my shorthand for the comic relief bots) to interface with an ATM; the results are predictably pathetic. Back at Chez Thorndyke, Chris is informed that there's a sitch that requires his immediate attention. Turns out his folks are home. This is no big in a lot of other cartoon series where the parents never seem to be anywhere else (e.g., "Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius"), but Chris's dad is the CEO of a computer company and his mom is an actress, which explains his lavish lifestyle. This not only is in keeping with the Bruce Wayne Rule (The only thing as good as superpowers is an unlimited line of credit), but it also means that Chris doesn't see enough of them. This led him in one ep to pretty much kidnap Sonic and run away so his folks would reunite and look for him; he seemed to think that was the only way he could get them to spend quality time with him. This is the sort of behavior that engendered a deep fan hatred for Chris, though I think he'd still survive in a match-up with Tommy Turtle. Eggman, meanwhile, has discovered that currency is kept in banks, "and tomorrow, we shall visit one such bank and remove all its money." Makes it sound as easy as invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, doesn't it? To aid in the heist he enlists the services of the "Packratbot Ben-728." You'll have to wait for the Head section if you didn't get the joke about the name or the song. During what I'd like to think is a pretty chaotic breakfast, Chris's rents make plans for an outing to the beach, or, rather, to their villa on the beach. Real everyday people, the Thorndykes. While Sonic takes a pass on the trip, the Thorndykes make a stop at the bank en route. And guess which savings institution Eggman has targeted? We then get a one-page interlude where Sonic hooks up with Knuckles on Angel Island for a helping of exposition-to-go and an explanation of why Knux won't appear in this story. Except on this page. Back at the bank, the Thorndyke butler, Mr. Tanaka, gets clocked by Ben. Amy Rose pulls out her mallet and uses it to deflect the trajectory of a couple missiles, leaving Eggman looking like Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons. Tails whisks Amy out of harm's way while Eggman ponders for a moment whether to focus on the stealing the money or on clobbering the critters. This is Sonic's cue to show up. Seems he got back into town and overheard on the police radio about the bank robbery in progress. Ben-728 proves to be on the formidable side and before Tails can get hold of a power ring (Remember power rings?), they spill out of his backpack and just sit there standing perfectly upright. Sonic has one roll over to his shoe or something, but while a re- energized Blue Blur decapitates Ben, Eggman collects the remaining power rings and takes off. Sam Speed, who turns out to be Chris's uncle (news to me!), shows up late. Speaking of late, the portly Prez of Station Square drops by Chez Thorndyke to congratulate Sonic the following week (according to the text box) while Eggman announces a new career goal: destroying Sonic. HEAD: Bear with me if you've heard this one: A: Ask me what's the most important quality you can have if you want to be a stand-up comedian. B: What's the most important qual.... A (interrupting): Timing. That's pretty much the feel I got from reading "Savings and Groan" and then remembering some of the eps of Sonic X I've seen. I don't fault Joe Edkin; it's just one more way American comics differ from Japanese manga: pacing. Manga doesn't have the kind of break-neck pacing found in American comics. Because manga can run hundreds of pages, writers can afford to stretch out some "trivial" scenes to maximize emotional impact or foreshadow events. Even sports manga (a genre not generally available in the US compared to, say, sci-fi/fantasy) doesn't rush things; a baseball game could take several months worth of weekly installments to play out, and a card game in "Yu-Gi-Oh!" may take just as long. This carries over into the Sonic X pilot ep where the Blue Blur went head-to- headlight with Sam Speed for the first time. But since Sam and his pit crew aren't at the center of this story, the race doesn't take up much of the page allotment. It's wham, bam, thank you Sam. Likewise, because we're expected to know about Chris's relationship with his parents as a result of the series, the set- up and delivery of his reunion with them is accomplished within a mere 4 panels on page [8]. This gets the point across but doesn't leave much room to see Chris as a Poor Little Rich Kid ... but more about that in the Heart section. As promised, here's the 411 on Ben-728 if you didn't get the joke. It's an allusion to the 1972 motion picture "Ben" about the heartwarming friendship between a lonely invalid boy (Lee H. Montgomery) and his homicidal pet rat Ben. This is a sequel to the 1971 film "Willard" about a geeky misfit who sics a couple killer rats on Ernest Borgnine in revenge for stealing the family business. "Ben" features a larger number of rats, a younger and allegedly cuter protagonist, a higher body count with not a whole lot of gore, and a theme song sung by Michael Jackson from VERY early in his solo career. One thing I can say about Joe Edkin at this early stage that I haven't been able to say about many other Sonic comic creatives: it looks like he actually wants to have FUN while writing the comic. The last time I sensed this in the comic was in the work of Jon Gray, during "Return to Angel Island" when Knux and the readers are introduced to Knuckles's baby brother, Mace, and at the beginning of "Love and Loss." It comes through here in small moments, like when a characters asks a Station Square policeman "Is that a new accent?" Since I'm not a regular viewer of the show, I can't help but get the impression that this is a joke at the expense of the dubbing work done by 4Kids. Then there's the "comic book writer" applying for a bank loan, which is pretty much self-explanatory. Nice touches; hope they don't fall by the wayside as the book goes on. Head Score: 8. EYE: Tim Smith's artwork is mostly true to the artwork of the series, though occasionally there appears to be a problem with the relative size of the furries. In the last panel on page [3] Tails has ballooned out of proportion. But this is early on in the comic's run. When Steve Butler was asked how drawing comics for Disney Adventure magazine differed from drawing for the Sonic comic, the answer he gave was that working for Disney involved "lots and lots of model sheets." Whether Tim Smith has been given model sheets to work from here is beside the point. In the Internet era Tim's got access to more than enough screen shots from the series itself to use as model sheets, so there's no need to re- invent the wheel. Eye Score: 9. HEART: This is a relatively simple, humorous action story, despite the fact that in its run so far Sonic X has managed to accumulate a fair amount of emotional baggage. There's only one piece of baggage on display here, though: Chris's relationship with his parents. There was a time when the Poor Little Rich Kid was a venerated cliche, showing up in Johanna Spyri's "Heidi" in the person of her friend Klara, and in the works of Frances Hodgson Burnett ("The Secret Garden," "A Little Princess"). The best- known example, at least in terms of comic books, is the harvey character Richie Rich. There was never any danger of Warren Kremer's Richie Rich falling into the deep end of the sentimentality pool, but I do remember a story back in the day where Richie's friends, Freckles and Pee Wee, are quarantined at the Rich estate when Richie comes down with measles (I think it was). Their poverty-stricken folks worry that the boys will think less of them after spending two weeks in the lap of luxury, but this was the 1950s and they needn't have worried: family trumped fortune in the end. There have been precious few examples of the Poor Little Rich Kid since the Greed Is Good 1980s, but there was an interesting variation on the theme in the third season of "Digimon." Rika (Ruki in the original) lives in a pretty non- traditional family: her father is absent due to her parents' divorce, so she lives with her mom and grandmother in a very comfortable private house; compare that with the apartment where Henry and his family live, and the quarters for Takato and his parents above the bakery they own and operate. Rika's mom, like Chris's, is an absentee parent because of her job as a high- powered fashion model. So Rika adapts by becoming hard and emotionless while channeling her energies into being the Queen of Games with her skill at Digimon cards. She also, for the first two-thirds of the series, wears a shirt with a broken heart on the front (Can you say "Cry for help"?). Her relationship with Renamon starts out equally unemotional, but this changes as the series progresses. In the first ep of the series, digimon are nothing but data as far as she's concerned; in the tear-jerker finale as all the digimon devolve into non-existence, she's finally able to tell Renamon "I love you!" It's pretty clear that in the Sonic X series Chris is a Poor Little Rich Kid who could have anything he wants except the family he needs. That's where Sonic and the gang come in. They extend Chris's family beyond the Thorndyke servants (Tanaka the butler and * the maid) and Chris's grandfather. To what extent they lived up to these roles in the series, I don't know. I also don't know the extent to which the absence of Chris's parents from the scene drove the plot, but I'm pretty sure it must have to some extent. As I said, American fans of the series haven't been Chris fans, and stunts like his kidnaping Sonic to force his parents to look for him haven't helped his reputation. Japanese audiences, though, probably didn't see it that way. Any relationship in Japan, whether familiar or professional, depends on "wa." This carries the meaning of a harmonious consensus, "about all group members working in concert toward the same goal" (Anime Explosion, p34). Yet how can a family work together toward anything when Dad and Mom are off pursuing different careers in different parts of the world? That was the real motivation for Chris's stunt in the TV series. His actions may have seemed selfish, but a Japanese audience would have recognized the last shot of the episode, the beatific smile on Chris's face when his parents show up at the family cabin, together, looking for him. Realistically, we can't expect moments like that in the Sonic X comic. Though they're a part of the series itself, it just doesn't play well to an American comic book audience, especially when the publisher is convinced that their target demographic is preadolescent boys. Still, it makes me realize that no matter how well- structured and entertaining a Joe Edkin story based on "Sonic X" can be, there will always be missing pieces from the television series, pieces that managed to get lost in translation. Such as the suggestive repartee between Rouge and Agent Topaz ... but that's a topic for another time. Heart Score: 5.