NOTE: We're talking a MEGA-SPOILER at the end of this review.
     Knuckles #19 [Best if read before Dec 1998]
     Spaz/Penders cover: Talk about a snowy picture!  Knuckles faces
off against Geoffrey and his platoon of crackheads...er... crack
commandoes.  Wombat Stu is AWOL, but that doesn't matter because the
confrontation doesn't happen in this issue anyway, if it happens at
all.  In case you didn't figure it out, Locke is the one pushing the
buttons just off-screen.  No big leap of reasoning here: this is
another triptych cover and all you have to do is check the thumbnail
cover of #20 in the back of the issue to see how it fits in.  But I'm
literally getting ahead of myself.
     Truth in advertising: Ken shared the script for this one with me
some time ago, and I've been biting my tongue WRT certain developments
ever since.  However, any speculation as to what's going to happen in
the remainder of the arc is just that since this is the only part of
the story that was shared with me.
     "The Forbidden Zone: Part 1
     "Whatever Happened To Queen Alicia?"
     Story: Ken Penders: Art: Manny Galan; Ink: Andrew Pepoy; Color:
Barry Grossman; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editorial: G-Force.
     Credits page: this time the "noble house" expository text shares
the page with the credits and a Spaz drawing of Geoff slipping on that
crossbow glove of his (which he doesn't do in the story proper).  Note
that the text speaks of the King sending "his wife Queen Alicia" to the
Floating Island, but later refers to determining "the true fate of [the
King's] loved ones."  Unless the Queen managed to clone herself en
route, this can only be a reference to the statement in "The Mission"
(Sonic #64) about "the boy."  Like I'm giving anything away here.
     As a reminder that this is basically connected to the continuity
of the Sonic books, we get a cameo appearance by Antoine d'Coollette. 
He appears as the pilot of a rather oddly-camouflaged plane.  I can
understand the jungle colors, but why only on the bottom?  So that
nobody will be able to spot the plane from the air if it crashes in the
jungle and lands upside-down?  Or maybe because someone thought nobody
would think that a jungle-green plane in a blue sky would be noticed
from the ground.  He must be flying at a high altitude because his
dimestore French accent passes out from lack of oxygen after two
panels.  Speaking of odd, maybe it's been a while since Manny drew any
characters other than the inhabitants of the Floating Island, but the
look of Geoff and his team is, well, odd.  Their heads are so large
that when I first browsed through the book I thought that Sam Maxwell
had split the artistic chores with Manny Galan on this one.  Anyway,
they picked a rotten day to hit the silk.  As the rain turns to snow
and as they have to dodge the story title on page 3, Geoff goes into
Sgt. Rock mode and starts leading the troops toward the Royal Compound.
     Of course, like everything else on the Island, they're being
watched by Locke.  His preoccupation with snooping on everybody sort of
reminds me of the results of a study that came out a while back; it
concluded that people who spend a lot of time surfing the Net are
lonelier and more socially isolated than people who have real lives. 
Locke is beginning to look as obsessed with monitoring the Island while
parking his can in front of a bigscreen as Captain Ahab was in his
pursuit of Moby Dick.  He then warns Sabre of the impending fan art,
which is pretty good.  Carlo Spacone's drawing of Sonic and Tails with
Knuckles and the Chaotix looks like it was done on Silly Putty(tm) but
for 8 years old it's not half bad.  Laurel Caldwell does a nice
portrait of Julie-Su, and Paul Goninan sends in a montage from Down
Under (for the uninitiated, "N.S.W." is New South Wales, one of the
seven states of Australia.  I THINK there are seven--geography was
never my province.  Sorry about that.).
     Locke surfs over to the Mobius Military Web site and pulls up the
record of Geoff's dear, dead dad, Ian.  Sabre, in a burst of possible
foreshadowing, hints that the Overlanders might take it wrong if they
learned of a Mobian military presence on the Floating Island, however
informal.  As Locke begins to talk about Knuckles having interests
beyond maintaining the splendid isolation of the Floating Islanders, an
alarm goes off and he surfs over to the Aircraft In Trouble Web site. 
Then he sees that the pilot of the downed craft is his ex, Lara-Le. 
Now it's personal.  He finally peels himself out of his chair and walks
off; you get the feeling he's not in the mood to send any Candy-
grams(tm).
     While Sabre puts in a call to Remington, we find Knuckles and
Julie-Su walking in a winter wonderland.  "Where the heck did this
winter come from?" they wonder.  Before they can make it to shelter,
they find a woman nearly buried in a snowdrift, muttering something
about her baby.  We can only assume that some time has elapsed between
Knuckles' discovery of her and his kicking in the door to her
apartment.  He located the nursery (complete with Rugrats(tm) bed
linen) and its occupant, apparently in good health.  At least it
appears that her lungs and alimentary tract are in good shape.  Matt
Groening, in one of his "Life In Hell" cartoons, stated that the sight
of a male getting kicked in the groin is a sure-fire laugh-getter, no
matter what the context.  I would add to that (based on their
prevalence in sitcoms and so forth) the spectacle of a male panicking
when told by his wife that she's gone into labor, and that of any male
when facing the business end of a loaded diaper.
     Remington, meanwhile, has gotten Wynmacher (Lara-Le's fiance, for
those of you just joining us) out of the shower to tell him that her
hovercraft went down in the storm and that he might want to tag along
with the rescue team and get in their way.  Apparently he's NOT told
that Lara-Le's ex knows about this as well and that one or both of them
could expect to lose some teeth if he suddenly shows up.
     With regard to the two-page ad for Post(tm) cereals with a tie-in
to The Rugrats Movie(tm) [makes me wonder whether Post isn't ready to
come out with a limited run of Alpha-Bits(tm) with Reptar(tm)
marshmallows], plus the Rugrats blanket in the baby's room on pages 11-
12, this would be a good time to mention one more facet of Manny
Galan's imminent departure from being the regular Knuckles artist, a
factor beyond the litany of woes mentioned in my review of Knuckles
#18.  Simply put, Nickelodeon made him a better offer.
     Short range weather report: continuing snow with blowing and
drifting and decreasing temperatures.  There's some talk among the
troops about the "funky weather."  I talked about it with Ken, who
indicated that this was a way to re-introduce the Day of Fury subplot
left over from the Forgotten Tribe arc.  For whatever reason, the
connection's been left unsaid in this issue.
     As Geoffrey and the gang approach a large structure of some sort,
Locke leaves Haven (presumably for the first time since he got there 6
or 7 years before) and almost immediately after finding Lara-Le they're
trading accusations just like old times.  Get it out of your system
now, Locke, before her new boyfriend shows up.
     After Knuckles turns the infant over to someone in authority (a
female someone, I hasten to add), he and Julie-Su join Wynmacher and
Remington as they all head for the airport to fly to the Forbidden
Zone.  Which reminds me: there was a Forbidden Zone that figured
prominently in the original "Planet of the Apes" movie, and now might
be a good time to observe a moment of silence in memory of Roddy
McDowell.


     On the way to the airport, Knuckles is hit with the one-two punch
of learning that his mother's hovercraft went down in the storm as she
was going to meet with his father (whom Knuckles had presumed was dead
all these years, having seen him disappear into a wall of flames in
"Fathers and Sons" and having said in so many words that he believed
his father was dead just before going off on "Knuckles' Quest" in "In
Every Kingdom There Must Exist A Little Chaos," Sonic #42).  This
development is so heavy we cut away from Knuckles for the rest of the
story.
     Back in Haven, pseudo-Tobor/Moritori Rex finds out that Locke has
gone to meet with Lara-Le under less-than-ideal conditions.  PT/MR
fears that his cover is about to be blown; don't ask me how, none of
the geniuses in Haven seem to have tumbled to him yet.
     Geoff confirms that they have indeed arrived at the Royal
Compound.  His preferred method of gaining access to the place
(breaking and entering) doesn't sit too well with a Mrs. Sommersby or
her son, an officious type known as "The Colonel."  From his demeanor,
I'd guess that his last name is "Blimp."  You might want to check with
a history of Britain during World War II to get the reference.
MEGA-SPOILER ALERT: You might want to skip the next two paragraphs if
you don't want to know more than Ken's already told you.

     After stating that Geoff and the gang had dropped in trying to
find out what had happened to Queen Alicia, we cut to the dramatic
final splash page where they confront...oh, what the heck, you'll find
out next month anyway.  Ladies and gentlemen, meet "the boy": Sally's
long-lost brother, Prince Elias.
     Karl Bollers, BTW, came up with the name "Elias" according to Ken
Penders.  Though the name is a Hellenized (Greek) form of the Hebrew
name Elijah, this isn't another case of the Alicia/Elisha screw-up that
occurred in Sonic #49.  Most likely Karl came up with the name for a
far more prosaic reason: it was Walt Disney's middle name.

     Having spoiled that, I haven't really given much away.  We knew
there was a missing male somewhere in the story line, we really haven't
learned anything else about him, and we STILL don't have an answer to
the question asked in the title.  On top of that, Knuckles just found
out that his father is alive and PT/MR is starting to panic.  So as
usual in a Ken Penders story there's more than enough plot to go
around.  I'd just like to know if he's ever going to resolve the Day of
Fury subplot some time this century.
     Pro-Art: For those readers who have a need to see Knuckles beating
up on SOMEBODY (and Archie Comics must believe they're out there),
guest artist Mike Kazaleh contributes a drawing of Knuckles punching
out some robo-canine while Robotnik's return is teased yet again.
     Fistful of Letters "revisited": Apparently Editorial thought
better of their policy announced in the last issue of printing one
really juicy letter instead of a bunch of ordinary ones.  So Elizabeth
Koculyn's praise of the Forgotten Tribe arc, along with her observation
that the book has a female following, shares the page with two other
letters and an e-mail.  From other female fans, I might add.  And there
are plugs for Knuckles #20 and Sonic #66 and the Image Crossover
special which I wish would just come out so we can be DONE with it
already!  Then we can relax and get around to dreading the appearance
of the NEXT Super Special, which threatens to feature a story where
Sonic meets an alternate Sally who happens to be a Sailor Scout.  Or
something.