Sonic X #40 (Feb 2009) Pat Spaziante cover art. If this is a Best Of montage, showing Sonic trashing a bot, Sonic taking on Chaos from the Sonic Adventure game, and Sonic surrounded by Power Rings, it doesn't look like I've missed much. "The End" Seriously, that's the title. Story: Ian Flynn; Art: David Hutchison; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Phil Felix; Editorial: the usual suspects Cream the Rabbit is hosting a tea party where the guests are her mother Vanilla, her Chao Cheese, a teddy bear, and Sonic. While Cream provides the exposition (and at HER age, too!), the extremely laid-back Sonic joins in. However, who should crash the party but Shadow and Metal Sonic, fugitives from "Hedgehog Havoc: Part 2" (S196). Shadow gives the bot a boot off the table, but Metal isn't even phased. Being quicker on the uptake than Shadow, he announces that he's going to look for the resident Dr. Eggman. Having trashed Cream's tea party, Shadow takes off with Sonic at his side supplying even more exposition. Seems that in THIS reality, Shadow is supposed to be dead, following the events of the anime's Sonic Adventure 2 adaptation. Sonic then decides to give Shadow and the readers a tour to fill everyone in on what this reality is supposed to be like before it winks out. First we come across the Chaotix rebuilding their clubhouse after Vector trashed it by being hit with a growth ray. The page does afford one bit of dialogue which has to be an homage to "Monty Python and the Holy Grail": VECTOR: Hey, Sonic! Is that Shadow with you? SONIC: Yeah! VECTOR: Isn't he dead? SONIC: Long story. He's better now. By the time Sonic is through talking to the Chaotix, Shadow is looking for the exits. We then cut to Station Square Elementary (where, let it be noted, an American flag of sorts is flying). Sonic and Shadow get a royal welcome from Frances, Helen and Dan who then promptly drop out of this story. But it's left to Chris Thorndyke to provide the tearful reunion while Shadow wordlessly implores Sonic to get him out of here. Can't say as I blame him. Small wonder we see Chris near Mr. Stewart the teacher during recess; otherwise the older kids would be beating the snot out of the little crybaby. But in this comic's headlong rush to extinction, we have to leave Shadow's absurd "Hello, I Must Be Going" moment with Chris and cut to "Eggman's Tower," the shape of which serves as yet one more reminder that the Doc REALLY needs a girlfriend! Eggman's various comic relief sidekicks, Bokkun, Bocoe and Decoe, are freaked out by the sight of a Metal Sonic, but the Doc knows a killer ap when he sees one. We then cut to Sonic introducing Shadow to Sam Speed, probably one of the worst character name/puns of all time, who tries to explain to Shadow why the Station Square Police Department uses Formula One race cars to catch speeders. I hope the Police Commissioner of Station Square can do as good a job explaining it to the voters when they see the department's fuel bill. Unbeknownst to them, however, their meeting is being spied upon by the Military-Political Complex in the person of high- ranking G.U.N. officers and Jerome Wise, aide to the President of Station Square. But as soon as everyone sees that Shadow has apparently returned from the dead, they all remember urgent business elsewhere and pull the plug on their spy op. Eggman gives Metal Sonic a self-serving tour of his facilities on his way to escorting Metal to a rematch with Sonic. For his part, Sonic has run out of characters for Shadow to meet, so they're both chilling at the shore when Eggman and Metal Sonic show up. Once again, the presence of Shadow becomes a freak-out factor. Shadow, taking up where he left off and no doubt wanting to get out of this nutcase zone ASAP, Chaos Controls Metal and himself out of the picture, leaving Sonic and Eggman facing each other. Eggman then says "Toodles" or words to that effect and high-tails it back to the tower where he makes sure that Shadow (or the one from that continuity, anyway) is still in suspended animation after having been rescued by the Doc. As the story (such as it is) comes into the home stretch, Sonic links up with Tails, Amy Rose, Knuckles and Rouge, all of whom are more or less eye candy at this point. We also get glimpses of Chris's surrogate parents: Mr. Tanaka the Thorndyke majordomo, Ella the Maid, and Chris's Uncle Chuck. Rouge banters with her G.U.N. partner Topaz, and then everyone comes on page for the title of this story: "The End." And so it is. HEAD: When I saw Sonic X #1 and noted that it was written by veteran comic writer Joe Edkin, I figured that since a pro was at the helm and since I hadn't seen very many eps of the anime I'd focus on the main Sonic comic and let that one take care of itself. And it did, for about three years. Ian Flynn, who was the final writer for the title, names names in the "ThanX For Everything" feature at the back of the book. Thanks to an editorial decision, the continuity of the comic was limited not only to the SonicX animated series but, according to Wikipedia, "between the Chaos' saga, to sometime before episode 52 of the anime, taking place at certain times in between the episodes." That definitely set some limitations. Case in point: the Military-Political Complex cited above. I found it interesting that, in one of the anime eps that I caught, the attitude of the Station Squares toward the Mobian drop-ins started out as ooohing and aaahing over their cuteness but then shifted toward fear and distrust of them as aliens. I don't know if the comic ever played up that shift (probably not; see below) but it does explain why G.U.N. was brought in to monitor Sonic and his friends. I also found myself wondering, when this particular story was over, what the prequel was like. After all, pretty much the only point to this story concerned the various reactions to Shadow's apparent resurrection. Even Eggman is affected; after all, he was the one who retrieved the body. What I was left wondering, in short, was how the Sonic X comic treated the "death" of Shadow and its aftermath. Short answer: it didn't. I went over to the Knothole Forum and asked about the continuity of the Sonic X comic, which elicited a thorough and rational response from none other than Jonathan Gray himself, responding under his handle WB. Here, in part, is his reply: "The Sonic X comic takes place in a nebulous period after the end of Season 2 (The Sonic Adventure 1, 2, and Battle arcs) and very beginning of Season 3 (The Space Saga) making it in continuity with the show more or less. "Because of this decision, Shadow was not around during this period due to his death in the SA2 arc as he did not come back until somewhere around the beginning of the Space Arc (his presence in the universe of the SX book would have been a major continuity error). The decision by Sega and Archie to have the SX comic take place in between those seasons was mostly due to necessity and tone. Sonic X in general was a light-hearted show at its onset and the comic reflected that albeit in goofier regards to some degree. But I think that the general consensus among those executing the book was that because of this, nobody wanted to deal with the Space Arc in the comic - not because it was bad at all mind you, but because Season 3 was pretty heavy and much darker in tone compared to the rest of the show. So the Sonic X comic in general went off a mix of the happy, goofy Sonic X/early Sonic comics approach and in doing so and staying true to the continuity, it meant Shadow stories in Sonic X were off limits A) because Shadow is always a pretty grimdark character anyway and B) he was already featured prominently in the main comic also." The elephant in the room (or the black hedgehog, in this case) was the demise of Shadow, which everyone knew about and which everyone could FINALLY talk about in the final installment of the comic when it no longer mattered. Good idea in theory; in practice, I don't know. It seems as if nobody knew quite what to do with the demise of Shadow once the embargo was lifted and the "goofier" "light-hearted" dynamic of the comic could change. As a result the story bogged down in set pieces where characters see Shadow returned from the dead and react; rinse and repeat. It reminded me way too much in this regard of Michael Jackson's misbegotten "Dangerous" video, which took two kinds of reaction shots (delighted children, comically panicking adults) and pointlessly ran them into the ground. I get the feeling that the decision to lock the comic down in time may have hastened its demise. For one thing, they missed out on the sprawling Space Arc with its emotional high point coming with the sacrificial death of Cosmo, Tails's plant-based love interest. Couple that with the determination that the Sonic X comic was supposed to be as light and fluffy as a dandelion seed and I have to wonder whether the comic's folding wasn't a foregone conclusion. The same fate could well have befallen the main Sonic comic, which was heavy with "Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog" overtones in the beginning before it adapted and became less "lighthearted and cute," to use another one of Jon Gray's phrases. But the comic has continued to change over time; nothing testifies to that fact better than the misfired appearance of the old school villains in the S187-188 story arc set in Mammoth Mogul's casino. You can't go home again, even in a comic book. Life is change, there's just no getting around it. Your 4-year-old relative may be indescribably cute, but you have to face the fact that he won't be 4 forever. Of course, Archie Comics would have a hard time buying that, seeing as how they've managed to keep the flagship comics in a high school milieu for more decades than I've been alive. So I also have to wonder whether the folding of the Sonic X comic wasn't Archie's way of admitting that stopping time was NOT a good solution to continuity issues. DC, of course, famously tried ironing out acquired continuity wrinkles in "Crisis on Infinite Earths" but to no avail. And even as Archie tried to maintain an artificially frozen continuity with Sonic X, Sega was issuing games that multiplied continuities like cells in a petri dish and introducing darker elements as well: "Sonic Rush Adventure," "Sonic Unleashed," "Sonic and the Black Knight," "Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood" ... At some point, I imagine the Archie Powers That Be throwing up their hands in surrender and saying "OK, anything goes!" and deciding to morph "Sonic X" with its singular continuity into "Sonic Universe" where stories could move from one continuity to another. But that's another review for another time. The Sonic X comic has had its run, and I can only hope that Mike Pellerito learned his lesson and won't make the same mistakes with Sonic Universe. If you want soft and fluffy from now on, Mike, go to a restaurant and order the souffle. Head Score: 4. EYE: There was something ... off ... about the Hutchison- Austin artwork for SX40, and not just because humans are such a rarity in the main Sonic comic. It all looks rough and generalized with minimal backgrounds, except for the scenes inside Eggman's tower. Even the shots of sky look like they were shopped in, and the splash pages at the opening and closing of the story do away with backgrounds completely. It's not bad per se, but it just feels like their heart wasn't in it anymore. Eye Score: 5. HEART: The only character in the book who shows anything like a major emotion at Shadow's "return" ... an emotion other than shock and fear, anyway ... is the universally-despised Chris Thorndyke. It's interesting because, let's face it, "lovable" isn't one of the first words that comes to mind when one thinks of Shadow. Then again, Chris himself hasn't got much of a character himself. The archetypal Poor Little Rich Kid whose parents are so absorbed with their respective careers that they don't have time for him, Chris can only turn on the waterworks in this story; even his friends take Shadow's return more in stride than he does. It makes me think that if it weren't for Chris's abandonment issues, he might not have any personality at all. If there had been anything like a proper set-up in the comic, it could have been made to work. As it stands there was no set-up at all; Shadow was just dropped into the plot and everybody was immediately supposed to recognize him and the improbability of his return. Actually, the return of Shadow can be seen in one of two ways. One is the pure cynicism of Sega's wanting to bring back a successful character for another round of exploitation after his initial appearance in the Sonic Adventure 2 game proved to be a huge success. The other is that the surprise return of Shadow shouldn't have been a surprise at all. The key is in the game itself, and Sonic's parting words "Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog." "Sayonara," after all, is NOT simply the Japanese word for "goodbye." Literally, the word means "thus if it be, indeed" or "if it is to be that way." To shift languages altogether, "sayonara" is the equivalent of "que sera, sera," or "whatever will be, will be." Please, no singing. Maybe this parting is permanent, maybe not, who knows. As it turns out, it wasn't all that permanent. But the treatment of Shadow's cross-zone "resurrection" ends up looking like what happens to an armchair athlete after he makes a New Year's resolution to get his shape in shape and exercises himself into back spasms or worse. As a writer of fanfic and legitimate fiction, I know dark and I know light and this story can't seem to strike a balance between the two. It brings in Shadow, an event which segues into a variety of awkward moments, after which the reader is hustled along to the next awkward moment. Even with the comic's last gasp, it doesn't know how to rise to the occasion emotionally. What makes this even weirder is that the Sonic X anime didn't hesitate to go over to a story "heavier and darker in tone" in the Space Arc. And it didn't even break new ground! Sure it gave Tails, the perennial youngster of the series (if you don't count Cream the kindergartener), a romantic interest in the form of Cosmo, and then gave her a self-sacrificial act that, in some instances, was too much even for 4Kids (Big surprise!). When Tails screams out at Sonic "I trusted you!", meaning that he trusted Sonic to protect Cosmo, it hits home way harder than Chris's reaction to Shadow's return in this story. Of course, the story did have a happy ending in the anime- manga tradition: Sonic presents Tails with a seed, and in the final scene of the final Sonic X season we see that the seed has sprouted in a pot in Tails's lab. In a bow to a belief in reincarnation, it signals the hope that somehow or other Tails and Cosmo will be reunited. Mike Pellerito or whoever at Archie Comics may have thought he was doing the little kids who read this book a favor by dialing up the cute and shielding them from the rough stuff. As counterpoint, I submit the following quote from Neil Gaiman on the newly-released animated version of his "Coraline": "Someone asked me last week if Coraline would be an appropriate film for their six-year-old son. I don't know. That's like asking me if their six-year-old would like mushroom soup. I don't know the kid and so I have no idea what is appropriate for him." As I said, the decision to serve up Sonic X as chocolate mousse instead of mushroom soup, as it were, may have helped doom it. One of these days, the Archie Powers That Be will get a clue about who keeps buying the comic. Until then, I can only hope that the Sonic Universe comic is made of stronger stuff than Sonic X proved to be. Heart Score: 4.