Sonic & Knuckles Mecha Madness Special #1 [n.d.]
   Cover: Spaziante has done some excellent covers for Sonic
comics.  In fact, it appears that about four of them appear on
the front of this issue.  I know Ken Penders has said that
Spaziante's art can sometimes go beyond the linear, but this is a
bit much even for a die-hard Spaz fan like myself.
     "Mecha Madness"
     Story: Mike Gallagher; Art: Pat Spaziante
     [Caution: entering deconstruction zone.  Expect to encounter
major plotholes for the next 6 paragraphs.]
     Picking up where "Rage Against The Machine" [Sonic #39] left
off, Mecha-Sonic has beat up Bunnie and Knuckles and is now
trashing Knothole.  Gallagher, in the first of numerous instances
of careless writing, tries to reassure the reader that Knothole
has been evacuated and the damage is "structural."  Fine, but
when your "structures" consist of simple thatched-roof dwellings,
we're still talking major urban renewal here.  Anyway, Rotor
brings out a grisly little souvenir from Sonic #3: the "Port-O-Bot"
roboticizer that made Bunnie what she is today.  While Rotor
expresses some hesitancy at fighting fire with fire, Sally starts
raving uncharacteristically and rather ruthlessly.  In the hope
that we won't notice how out of character she's getting, Knuckles
regains consciousness.  Unfortunately, he's still punchy from his
encounter with Mecha-Sonic and so he comes up swinging.  He decks
Antoine and almost knocks Rotor out before Sally gives him a boot
to the head.  Apparently, the best way to come to one's senses
after being beaten up is to get beaten up some more; the old
"hair of the dog" theory, I suppose.  The two of them then
exchange implausible pleasantries, implausible because they speak
of a time when Sally and Knuckles knew each other before
Robotnik.  It's been well-established (except for Gallagher,
apparently) that Robotnik took over Mobius when Sally and the
rest of the gang were about 5 years old ("Blast To The Past,"
Part 1), so there could have been nothing romantic about those
old times that they so fondly recall in the kind of really
insipid dialogue we haven't been treated to since "Growing Pains,
Part 2" (Sonic #29).  Yet insipid dialogue with romantic
undertones is apparently just what the veterinarian ordered, as
it causes Bunnie to come to.  Anyway, Gallagher gets back to the
plot as Sally hands Knuckles a neuro-overrider and he dives head-first
 into the roboticizer, despite Bunnie's warning that
roboticization can put a "cramp" in one's social life.  Uh, the
word is "crimp" not "cramp", Bunnie, but never mind.  Rotor starts
singing a hymn, but what's one more implausibility at a time like
this?
     Back at what's left of Knothole, Tails has overseen the
evacuation of the village and, realizes that he's been targeted
by Mecha-Sonic, decides that this is a good time to make himself
scarce.  Mecha-Sonic, in a brief but noteworthy sequence, can't
quite bring himself to blow his little bro out of the sky.  This
moral dilemma is interrupted by Robotnik, who tells Mecha-Sonic
to just radio in the coordinates for Knothole so he can level the
place himself with...
     OK, Gallagher has done some stupid plot turns in the past. 
"Let's Get Small" (#33) with its "French Frirus" enemy was really
bad, and how he got Tails out of the Roboticizer in "Growing
Pains, Part 2" was incredibly dumb.  But to have Robotnik glibly
talk about literally nuking Knothole with atom bombs is just
plain unforgivable.  Gallagher proved in "Let's Get Small" that
he couldn't make the jump from storytelling to science-fact and
this only confirms it.  I'm sorry, but this is where Gallagher
lost me as a reader, only because I know too much about what
nuclear weapons can do.  As much as I wanted to be able to
suspend disbelief while reading the remainder of the story, I
simply couldn't.  
     OK, I got that off my chest, and Mecha-Sonic suddenly has
Mecha-Knuckles on his fanny before he can radio in the
coordinates.  The two of them reprise the same stalemate they
danced to in "Crash of the Titans" [Super Sonic v. Hyper Knuckles
special #1], including a VERY impressive two-page spread of them
duking it out.  Bear with me, the plotline gets complicated here:
Mecha-Sonic punches Mecha-Knuckles with sufficient force to send
him in the direction of Robotropolis and (what's not quite
clearly spelled out) into the path of the nuclear missiles. 
Mecha-Knuckles, however, draws Sonic toward himself with a
magnetic field so that they both connect with the incoming
warheads.
     As impressive as Spaz's artwork on page 15 might have been,
there was no way I could have taken it seriously as an atomic
blast.  Robotropolis is a wreck, but Gallagher conveniently never
broaches the possibility that any Mobian worker-bots (including
Uncle Chuck) might have been destroyed in the blast as well.  The
Freedom Fighters in the outskirts seem to have been miraculously
spared the standard nuclear firestorm which is the aftermath of
an atomic blast, as were both Mecha-Sonic and Mecha-Knuckles,
though they're much the worse for wear.  Mecha-Knuckles retrieves
Mecha-Sonic and, after some exposition that's at odds with the
facts from the TV show concerning the consciousness and will of
someone who's been roboticized (about which more later), he
catches up with the rest of the Knothole gang.
     Fasten your seat belts; from here on, the ride gets REALLY
bumpy!  Mecha-Knuckles is taken to the old roboticizer to be
deroboticized; apparently, it has a "reversal system" that nobody
thought of using on Bunnie at the time, or even now.  While
Mecha-Knuckles is in the oven, Nicole has run a diagnostic that
drags us all the way back to Gallagher's last effort, "Ring of
Truth" (#35).  Nicole lets it be known that when Sonic grabbed
that billionth ring and went through all that hoo-ha with the
Ancient Walkers, he managed to acquire an "internal shield"
(courtesy of Deus Ex Machina Internal Shield Company).  Despite
the merely "structural damage" to Knothole, Rotor no longer has
the equipment to try reviving Sonic, and apparently it doesn't
work if you were roboticized in some other contraption.  Nicole
then asks to do the job itself; the sequence on page 24 is
impressive if once more implausible.  Knuckles, himself restored,
"flies" home, thus indicating that the "ejector" unit in "Rage
Against The Machine" was a waste of time and an inconsistency in
the story.  So now it's time for the happy ending, right?  Wrong! 
Sonic is busted for treason: i.e., for allegedly disobeying
orders and going ahead with the plan he'd proposed back in the
beginning of "Rage...."  This is the set-up for issue 40's "court
martial of Sonic" plot, and frankly it's even more implausible
than the whole atom bomb business.  For one thing, Sally has not,
as far as anyone knows, declared Knothole to be anything more
than a resistance group fighting against Robotnik.  Technically,
even if she were of age she'd have no legal standing to invoke
any of the old Mobian laws unless she had declared herself to be
the head of a government-in-exile, which as far as I know she has
never done.  She is, after all, still holding out for the return
of the True King, her father.  Then, too, Uncle Chuck clearly
stated in the "Sonic Conversion" episode of the TV series that
roboticized Mobians are aware of what's going on around them: "we
just can't do anything about it."  Sonic even demonstrated this
by his hesitancy to shoot Tails several pages back.  A first year
law student could get Sonic acquitted of the charges.
     If you ever saw the film "A Fish Called Wanda" you know the
scene where Kevin Kline says : "DisapPOINTed!"  That's my verdict
on this story.  Once more, as with "Growing Pains," Gallagher starts out
strong only to falter badly coming out of the backstretch and
heading for the finish line.  Gallagher started well with
"Rage..."; he was trying to go beyond the merely jokey and write in the
spirit of the TV series and he had a simple, linear plot line to
work with.  By the SECOND PAGE of "Mecha Madness" when Sally is
talking like some kind of drill sergeant, I got the sense that the
train was going to jump the tracks.  Ken Penders has stated that, in the
past, stories which had involved two sets of art (Manak/Mawhinney
works such as "When Hedgehogs Collide", #21) ended up that way
because the artists and writers had to meet deadlines.  I'm
beginning to think Gallagher needs a backup writer for when he
runs out of gas toward the finish.  And Heaven help us, it's not
over!
     So much for the story, as for the artwork, it was great art
in the service of a deteriorating storyline.  And Spaz continues
to provide the most amazingly erotic rendering of Sally.  Others
range from the cute to the moving.  But Ron Bauerle's point is a
good one: do we need to see the back of everyone's throats when
they have their mouths open?
     "Robotnik rules" art.  As if.
     "Don't Let The Island Hit You On The Way Down"
     Story: Kent Taylor; Art: Harvey Mercadoocasio (debut)
     The writer of "The Rise of Robotropolis..." (#38) teams up
with long-time inker Harvo on a story taking place on the
floating island.  We arrive in the middle of what looks like the
equivalent of a Royal Rumble wrestling match: the Chaotix are
getting beaten up by some unheralded invaders: Charmy Bee is
knocked out of the sky by Predator Hawk (no relation to
Studebaker Hawk -- considering the number of lame puns on display
in the rest of this issue, I thought I'd get you in the mood),
Mighty is knocked out by Guerrilla Warfare (guess what kind of
animal HE is?), Lightning Lynk (who looks like a Gremlin) attacks
Espio Chameleon, and Flying Frog gets the drop on...whoever the
croc is, I forget the name.  That takes up three pages;
"Suddenly" (these things always happen "suddenly") the Chaotix
wake up and do the House Afire(tm) routine on the others.  And it
only takes them ONE page; that's how you know they're the Good
Guys.  The match is interrupted by the appearance of "the former
ruler of Mobius", Mammoth Mogul, who stylistically bears a
striking resemblance to a bit player in a _manga_ by Osamu
Tezuka.  Having been exposed to the energy of a Chaos Emerald, he
had achieved "limitless power" and the key to the executive
washroom.  Apparently Limitless Power isn't all it's cracked up
to be because he was eventually dethroned.  Anyway, over the
millennia (with two "n"s, get it right!) MM says he has
discovered the true power of the Chaos Emerald embedded in the
head of his walking stick, and he is now ready to snatch the floating
island's emerald, make a play for Mobius and oust Robotnik. 
Which sounds good on paper, but one frontal assault from the
Chaotix and he's retreating to rethink his strategy over the next
few centuries.  Being immortal, you can afford to be lazy like
that.  Serviceable artwork, with (as I said) some Japanese
influences, in the service of a standard Set-Em-Up-Knock-Em-Down-He-
Who-Fights-And-Runs-Away plot.  For a villain MM is too much
of a pushover.  All talk and no action.  Reminds me of Pat Buchanan.
     "Eel of Fortune"
     Story: Gallagher/Art: Dave Manak
     Gallagher returns to the medium he appears to be most
comfortable working in, God help us, as by popular demand (Hey,
*I* demanded a spin off comic for Princess Sally, but did they
listen?), the Forty Fathom Freedom Fighters from the Tails
Miniseries "Southern Crossover" do five pages of jokey shtick. 
The plot in a clamshell: freedom fighters meet new villain (Eel
Capone), freedom fighters defeat new villain.  Lotsa bad puns, a
stupid ninja angle, I've wasted too many electrons on this one
already.
     Coming attractions: Sonic's court martial in #40 (and the
Nack is back); in #41 Geoffrey St. John makes a return visit as
we take another run at the Zone of Silence/Void/King Acorn plot
from "Heart of Darkness" (#36): "Daddy, whom would you rather
have as a son-in-law....?"; yet another 3-parter (I haven't even
seen issue 1 of the Knuckles 3-parter yet!), "The Death Egg
Saga."  Looks like the Death Star to me.  If Gallagher ends up
working on this one, rest assured the Farce will be with us!