"Hey, Harry! About yiffin' time you got back. What's the word on the Main Man?" "No word, Gearbox. There's no sign of him. Must be running late." "I don't think he's gonna show at all." "That's all I need!" "So what do we do now?" "Let's cover the back story first and hope he shows soon. Got it?" "Yeah, right here. Knuckles #32." "This really bites, you know that?" "I hear ya. Let's just get this over with. You got the Galan/Penders/Darrin Moore/Heroic Age cover. Now lemme turn to the back story...OK, 'Espio the Chameleon: The Worst of Enemies.' Penders, Doran, Pepoy, Gagliardo, Williams, Gabrie. Uh...hey, what the yiff's a 'gaurdian'?" "A what?" "A gaurdian." "I ain't never heard of one of those." "It says so right here, dude. In the 'Story Thus Far' text box: '...in obtaining the Chaos Emerald from the Gaurdian of the Floating Island.'" "I think that's supposed to be 'guardian.'" "So who yiffed up here?" "How should I know? They don't tell me anything anymore." "Must've figured this was gonna be the last issue so nobody gave a spraint." "OK, so Valdez is ordering Espio around. On the next page he's ordering Espio around. On the page after that Valdez talks with two other bots before ordering Espio around." "Kinda slow, isn't it?" "It gets better on the next page. Espio leads everyone into a room and he's like out of sight or something. Then he drops Valdez through a trap door and wrestles him into some water before he can blow up whatever's connected to that button on his wrist." "Then what?" "Well, next thing we know Espio's rescuing a bunch of captured chameleons before the ship blows up." "So did he kack Valdez? I didn't think bots could drown." "All it says here is: 'He won't be swimming ashore any time soon'." "What the yiff is THAT supposed to mean?" "Do I know? So what did you think of the story arc?" "I don't know. It started out kinda cute with Julie-Su and all, then you get Valdez pulling the double-cross on Liza and turning her into a bot, then you get Espio getting out of this trap. I guess he's supposed to be kinda broken up about his friend in the last panel there. But what I'd like to know is how the yiff he got out of the pool and what happened to Valdez?" "Guess we'll never know. And WHERE'S Lobo?" "I'm tellin' ya, he ain't gonna show!" "So what do we do?" "Review the cover story and then get out." "What do I do with this card?" "What card?" "This card with all the legal stuff about Lobo being copyright of DC Comics..." "What would the Main Man say if he were here?" "'Frag it'?" "Exactly. "OK: 'King of the Hill: Part Three: To The Death.' Real appropriate title!" "Can we just do this?" "All right. Penders, Penders, Mercadoocasio, Gagliardo, Williams and the editors. Knuckles shows Monk a trapdoor leading to an underground city and the ape's bent out of shape about how he thought he knew his way around the island..." "Whoa, hold it. This is the same Monk who got thrown off the island by the yiffin' Guardians and who only just got back after having been stuck on Mobius for years, right? And he's honked because he thought he knew his way around? What a sprainthead!" "And since he's still trying to push Knuckles around... literally...I have to agree with you. Anyway, while they're doing their thing, the hunter guy is tracking them down and finds the trap door." "What about that?" "What?" "'Ingenius'?" "That's supposed to be 'Ingenious'." "Well, who's the in-genius who got it wrong?" "I told you, they're not telling me anything any more!" "Let's just keep going, Harry. So now we get two pages of Locke and Archimedes on board Hunter's ship which almost blows their asses off before they can get to the trophy room." "I think we're finally getting to the good part here. Hunter takes a shot at them, he misses, they run, and Hunter sounds like he's getting off on the hunt." "Wherever he learned to hunt, it sure wasn't in no yiffin' army." "What do you mean?" "I did my time in the Great War. There's nothing 'exhilarating' about wondering when you're gonna get your ass blown off, and there's no kick in blowing someone else's ass off or in seeing it happen to your buds. Anyone who gets off on killing is a yiffin' murderer, end of story." "Yeah, well this one's still got a few pages to go. Knuckles and Monk try to set a trap for Hunter, he catches up to them, he shoots at Knuckles and misses, Monk jumps him and I think ends up getting killed, it's kinda not clear." "Whoa, what happened here!?" "Looks like Knuckles pulls a 'Carrie' on Hunter and almost takes him apart along with his weapon." "Shoulda done that sooner." "According to the text, he didn't know he had it in him. Anyway, Locke and Archimedes arrive too late and..." "What the yiff!?" "What?" "THAT's how the story ends? Knuckles didn't kick Hunter's ass?" "No, looks like they just locked him up." "What a waste!" "Hey, he DID try to kill Knuckles..." "I mean the ending was a waste!" "OK, you be the college boy and tell me how YOU would've ended it!" "All right, I will! Knuckles shoulda took Hunter apart with all that Chaos energy, I mean, it almost happened to him in the Dark Vengeance arc, right? Then there should've been a final scene where Knuckles realizes that with Monk being dead he was once more the unchallenged king of...." "King of the hill?" "Nah, just leave it unfinished. Just have Knuckles thinking about what a yiffin' waste this whole business with Hunter was." "Yeah. Kinda reminds me of something I read once from a guy named Montaigne. It went something like: 'You can sit on the highest throne in the world, but you're only sitting on your own tail.'" "Yiffin A! THAT should've been the last line of this story!" "Well, that's it. Wonder what happened to Lobo?" "Forget him, man! Just turn off the yiffin' lights and let's get the yiff out of here." And now, a special edition of OFF-PANEL: As Harry drove his cab back to the barn for what he was sure would be the last time, he passed through a seedy part of the dingo enclave of Echidnaopolis, a part of town so rough even the Echidna Security Team didn't go there without a very good reason. He drove past a bar which appeared from the street to be perfectly normal. Inside, the clientele -- a representative cross-section of the dingo underclass -- huddled nervously in the corners and against the far wall. They were putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the only two beings seated at the bar. One was a hulking blue-skinned humanoid. His companion was a red echidna who bore the distinctive chest band that marked him as being a Guardian. It was he who addressed the bartender in the careful, measured tones of one born to the most noble of echidna houses: "HEY, *I'LL* TELL YOU WHEN I'VE HAD ENOUGH, PAL!!" "Yeah, and bring us something else," his companion added as he picked a bottle up off the bar. "This fraggin' stuff's got as much kick as an empty sneaker, and it don't smell as good!" He further registered his dissatisfaction by hurling the bottle through the bar's plate glass window. By the time the last shard of broken glass hit the sidewalk, the bar patrons had decided that this would be a good time to make a mad dash for the exit. Soon only the two at the bar were left while the bartender set a couple bottles in front of them before retreating to a far corner himself. He didn't know what was in the bottles and neither of the other two seemed to care. "Hey, Lobo, you wanna hear something funny?" "What?" "I'm the Guardian of the Floating Island!" he announced to the empty bar before slumping back onto his barstool. "Guardian," he said bitterly, "what a joke!" "I ain't laughin'." "It wasn't my idea, you know. Getting a spinoff. I used to come in one or two times a year, trade punches with Sonic, that was it. I was 'Sonic's friendly nemesis,' whatever THAT means! "It was Sega. They saw how much Sonic was pulling in every month and thought that anything connected with the guy was gonna make money for them. It was their idea to spin me off, not mine. Just like it wasn't my idea to pull the plug." "Yeah, the bastiches giveth and the bastiches taketh away." "They did it right, too, you know? Me and Ken Penders, I think we worked pretty good together. And Manny Galan, you couldn't have asked for better artwork from the guy. I was given a girlfriend, a mom, a dad, friends, family, a society, the whole bit. Now...now I feel like I let every one of them down. "And the fans! Right up to the end we were getting fan mail from Australia, Singapore, from all over the world! But do you think it mattered to the suits?" "Nah, the bastiches don't listen to the fans any more. They only listen to the fraggin' bean counters." "And you wanna know the worst of it? They couldn't just put a bullet in my brain and put me out of my misery. No, they have to humiliate me by making me show up to do 6 or 8 pages a month in the back of Sonic's comic! I gotta keep showing up and looking at that stupid hedgehog smirk. They tell me I'm lucky that I can keep working. Yeah, right, working in Sonic's shadow." "Tell me about it, pal. Think I'm looking forward to playing second fiddle to Superdweeb for the rest of my fraggin' life?" An uncomfortable, sullen silence settled over the bar for a few seconds before someone appeared in the doorway. It was a human, bald and sporting a goatee. Ordinarily he'd have been stopped at the door by the burly dingo bouncer and told "We don't like your kind in here" -- "your kind" being management -- but the bouncer had taken off along with the rest of the patrons. The human approached Knuckles and tried hard not to make eye contact with his companion. "Come on, Knuckles," he urged, "let's get out of here." Knuckles didn't move. "I'm serious, Knuckles! If Archie Comics found out you were in a place like this they'd cancel your contract in a heartbeat!" "Leave me alone!" was Knuckles's surly reply. "Why don't you go hassle Melissa Joan Hart some more?" "Knuckles, you have to be on the set tomorrow morning for the Sonic Adventure adaptation." "Big deal." Then a second later he turned to the human with a haunted, sad look on his face. "Justin, you were my editor. You should've looked out for me. You should've fought harder for the book." "It was purely a business decision, Knuckles. The bottom line..." "Don't give me bottom line! I MADE money for Archie Comics! It just wasn't enough after Sega took its cut, that's all. So what happens? Sabrina gets a crummy spinoff, you get to call yourself an Art Director, and I go back to carrying Sonic's shoelaces." "Now look, we've been through all this before...." "You don't understand! I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody!" He lowered his head. "Instead of a bum. Which is what I am." "Come on," Justin said with more than a little paternalism in his voice, "you're starting to sound like a Ken Penders script." Putting his arm around Knuckles's shoulder, he eased the echidna off his barstool. Without protest, Knuckles let Justin guide him out of the bar and into the night. Lobo didn't move during the entire conversation. He reached for one of the bottles, swallowed the contents in a couple of gulps, then slammed the bottom of the bottle onto the bar. The sound echoed through the empty room like cannon fire. "Comic books! I hate this fraggin' business!"