Sonic #22 [Comic date: May 1995; Review date: Sep 2001]
     Spaziante/D'Agostino cover: Tails inquires about a shadowy
figure, a very LARGE shadowy figure.  Given that this is a Sonic
comic, the answer should be a no-brainer, but this is no ordinary
comic so a brief history lesson is in order.
     In the previous issue, Ken Penders presented his debut solo
story, "The Three Phases of E.V.E."  The acronym in question is
the Exceptionally Versatile Evolvoid, a mechanism that "learns"
from its experience.  Think of the Borg constantly upgrading
themselves when under attack.  Long story short, E.V.E. turns on
his/her/its creator, destroying Robotnik.  Before it can do the
same to Sonic and Tails, however, Sonic appeals to its better
nature or higher programming or whatever, and it takes off on a
journey of self-discovery.
     Sega did not take kindly to the story when they learned
about it.  In fact, as Ken himself admitted, they "had a cow" at
the prospect of Robotnik biting the big one.  Ken had to do some
fast talking and promised that he was really, really going to
bring Robotnik back in the next installment.  Which is this
issue.

     "The Return"
     Story: Ken Penders; Art: Pat Spaziante; Ink: Harvo
Mercadoocasio; Coloring: Barry Grossman; Lettering: Mindy Eisman;
Editor: Scott Fulop; Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-In-
Chief: Richard Goldwater.
     We open with the Royal Family of Mobius on an outing in the
countryside.  The Family happens to consist of Sonic, Sally, and
the kids, last seen at the end of "Sally's Quest" from the In
Your Face special.  This idyllic scene is interrupted by
lightning striking a nearby tree from a clear sky. 
Unfortunately, there's more to it than that, because the
lightning carries an apparition of Robotnik.  Wasn't he supposed
to be out of the picture?  That's what Sonic and Sally want to
know, never mind the readers.
     Cut to a space station of some sort far from the Mobian
surface.  The "energy" that was the lightning, I think, is
harnessed by something in the ship, and Robotnik emerges.  The
first thing he encounters is a vid screen featuring his metallic
self, Robo-Robotnik, last seen in S19's "Night of a Thousand
Sonics."  "Haven't you figured it out yet?" Robo2 asks Robo.  No,
and neither have I.  "This world is an alternate time line from
the Mobius you know," he helpfully explains.  We then get a
version of Robo-Robotnik's death that I think goes a little
something like this:
     In what was supposed to be his final confrontation with his
version of Sonic, Robo2 roboticized himself, uploading his core
memory into the space station which he just happened to have
floating above ... well, it would have been HIS Mobius, in which
case that's his Sonic, Sally, etc. down on the planet in the
first panel.  Swell; five pages into the story and already I'm
losing track!
     As for Robotnik, he explains that E.V.E. really didn't
destroy him in the last issue, just "flung" him into an alternate
time line.  Thus Ken brings one of the first of many plot cheats
to the comic.  Assuming that Robo2 has been bundled with Streets
and Trips, Robotnik asks for directions to get back to his own
Mobius.  Which I assume would be Mobius Prime.  And unfortunately
for us, Robo2 complies. 
     Cut back to what I assume to be Mobius Prime.  I say this
because Sally isn't wearing a tiara, Tails doesn't look as if
he's aged, and there aren't any kid versions of Sonic and Sally
running around.  The Freedom Fighters, minus Bunnie I note, are
sorting through the debris Robotnik left behind when E.V.E.
dispatched him in the last issue, unaware that they're being
spied upon by the Sniveler himself.  Sizing up the situation, he
reacts the way any comic book lackey in such a predicament would:
he throws a tantrum.  "To think that Sonic has finally won it
all!" he declares to nobody in particular.  He thinks.
     Unfortunately, that rather grandiose pronouncement of
Snively's appears to have been a trigger phrase that launches
Operation: Wasteland, wherein all of Robotnik's SWATbots and
other implements of destruction suddenly activate and start
trashing everything in sensor range.  Think of it as Ken's
tribute to "Maximum Overdrive."
     We then get a couple pages of Sonic dispatching SWATbots
while Sally makes the point that they're outnumbered.  As Antoine
leads the retreat, Snively finds himself looking at the business
end of a couple SWATbots himself.  
     But let's take a fan art break.  Jenny Ramos does a neat
comedy sketch of Sonic and Knuckles with each other's head fur
and shoes, Eric Stubblefield contributes a drawing inspired by a
story in S17, and James Yang draws Sonic and Tails with the kind
of huge eyes fans won't get to see until Jim Fry starts
contributing artwork.
     Snively's goose appears to be cooked but just then Robotnik
reappears and changes the menu to SWATbot Flambe.  He then
realizes that Snively has inadvertently started Operation:
Wasteland by uttering the trigger phrase out loud and word-for-
word.  Gee, what are the odds?  Robotnik doesn't like the idea
that he's gone through all that trouble to be regenerated and
shipped back to his own dimension only to be a witness of his own
scorched Mobius policy in action.
     Cut to page 15 where Sonic FINALLY comes to the realization
that there are more SWATbots cluttering up the landscape than he
can handle.  He may be fast, but here he's not too swift.  But
Robotnik realizes that he has to pull the plug on the Wasteland.
     Robotnik then does unto Sonic and the gang what Ken has done
to the readers on several occasions: remind him that appearance
and "reality" are two different things.  Without spelling it out
for Sonic, he calls the whole thing a draw and says "You owe me." 
And the story more or less ends, presumably with Sega's
executives more satisfied that either Sonic or Robotnik.
     HEAD: This story demonstrates everything right and
everything wrong with Ken Penders's style of storytelling.  The
opening is great, and like the ending of "Sally's Quest" the
vision of the characters' future is so ideal that the fans can't
possibly find fault with it.
     Not so the management.  The ending of "Sally's Quest" was
apparently so disagreeable to the Powers That Be that Kanterovich
and Penders had to go out of their way to depict this as an
ALTERNATE Mobius, as if the creatures of Mobius Prime have no
right to happiness.  It was a blatant attempt to make peace with
Sega by assuring them that such radical concepts as marriage,
home, and family have no place in the Sonic continuity.
     While the Operation: Wasteland plot device wasn't half-bad,
I had a hard time believing the ease with which Snively managed
to utter the unwieldy trigger phrase.  I mean, who is going to
say "Sonic has finally won it all!"  Wouldn't "Robotnik is dead"
have been a more likely trigger phrase?  Or even "Buttnik bit the
big one"?  Again, the odds are simply too long that Snively would
have spoken the exact words needed.
     Finally, the story revolves around Robotnik's return and
Operation: Wasteland.  The Freedom Fighters serve no real purpose
in this story except to get shot at by SWATbots.  Action plotting
like this is Ken's strength, just as his limited ability to
convey emotions in his stories is perhaps his greatest weakness. 
Head Score: 6.
     EYE: Pat Spaziante turns in a bravura performance.  He keeps
his exuberant layouts in check, with only minor breaks of the
panel such as Sonic's left hand in the very first panel.  There's
really nothing to fault here, except maybe the coloring slip-up
on page 9 panel 1 where Sally's head fur goes from auburn to
candy apple red.  Minor problem, really.  She's been through
worse.  Eye Score: 10.
     HEART: I reread this story years after it first appeared,
and I wasn't this disappointed since the Forbidden Zone arc (K19-
21).  I've always felt that that story arc was the best work Ken
Penders has ever done for the book.  It certainly had the
greatest potential: the introduction of Elias, Knuckles finally
entering Haven, the discovery of Queen Alicia Under Glass.  It
was all great stuff.
     But I couldn't help but think of the Ones That Got Away. 
Ken had spun the Knuckles story so thoroughly by that point that
he could very well have extended the arc into a graphic novel. 
There were subplots that begged to be told: Hershey's reaction as
a female to Elias, what life had been like for Elias living with
the Sommersbys especially after getting a taste of the
Brotherhood's parenting skills, whether Locke ever interacted
with Elias at all while busy watching his own flesh and blood on
closed circuit surveillance, and most telling of all, whether
Geoffrey would have discovered his father's grave on the Floating
Island and his reaction to that.
     This was all pure gold from a writer's point of view, a
once-in-a-lifetime chance to enrich the characters of the book,
and Ken didn't do a thing with any of it.  Once more, he poured
his efforts into the action plotting: the freak blizzard burying
Echidnaopolis, Elias and Geoffrey's troops caught in flood waters
and then being rescued by Locke, Knuckles mixing it up in Haven
with Moritori Rex.
     And when compared to other works by Ken, such as "Endgame," 
"A Robot Rides The Rails," and the Chosen One arc, I've had to
conclude that getting under a character's skin and communicating
their feelings is something that Ken has yet to learn, and may in
fact never learn.  He may simply not be programmed to write such
stories while working in the context of an American comic book
industry which, as presently constituted, is simply too hostile
to that kind of writing.
     As stated in the article "What is manga?: the influence of
pop culture in adolescent art" by Masami Toku in the March 2001
issue of Art Education (p11-17), Japanese manga was built on
innovation rather than on having artists and writers slavishly
copying American comics.  As the artwork and storytelling grew
more complex, modeled on American and European cinema, the
readers didn't abandon manga as something that had become too
complicated for them.  They went along with the changes, allowing
the industry to develop.  Put simply, as manga raised the
readers' expectations, the readers rose to the occasion.
     In the U.S., however, the comic industry may have engaged in
their own "innovations," if you could call the work of Frank
Miller "innovative," but they never rethought the medium as a
whole.  They especially never rethought the audience.  Aside from
whatever conservatism is inherent in Archie Comics' corporate
culture, the book has been hobbled by various assumptions.  One
of them was that this is a comic that appealed to pre-adolescent
boys and girls wouldn't form a significant share of the
readership.  Another was that the book might not last all that
long, as many comics were being canceled within a few years of
being launched.
     As I write this, however, Sonic has crossed the triple digit
threshold with no indication of slowing down, and Ken Penders has
engaged the services of a female fan artist, Dawn Best, as an
apprentice.  So much for the conventional wisdom.
     Ever since I realized that the comic book existed, I have
been waiting for it to follow the manga path, to start thinking
outside the panel frame and take the characters where they
belong: into a world that was both fantastic and credible, where
the characters had a depth that belied their two-dimensional
representation, that could manage to spin yarns that would engage
the younger readers while not insulting the intelligence of the
older readers.
     I'm waaaaaiting!  Heart Score: 4.

     "Tails' Knighttime Story"
     Story: Angelo DeCesare; Art: Dave Manak; Ink: Jon
D'Agostino; Lettering: Bill Yoshida; Color: presumably Barry
Grossman.
     You think it's tough getting a hyped-up kid to go to bed,
try managing one who can fly.  It's evening in Knothole and Tails
is too revved up to settle down.  Sally tries reasoning with him,
then uses a proverb to segue into a story, as the plotline goes
medieval:
     The story concerns a knight by name of Sir Runalot, as
played by Sonic.  Tails in this story is Mortail, Sir Runalot's
page.  As such, he's basically there to polish the boss's armor
and pretty much travel in his wake.
     One day, when Sir Runalot is off on vacation, Mortail tries
on the boss's armor and basically does nothing to discourage the
impression that he's Sir Runalot.  Unfortunately, the masquerade
gets him enlisted by the locals (Sally and Uncle Chuck in 14th
century couture) to confront "the evil Sir Knightmare of
Robotannia" (guess who?).  Mortail, of course, is instantly in
way over his head, but then Sir Runalot shows up and gets the
better of Knightmare even without armor.  A diverting little
fable, even if it didn't achieve the desired objective: Tails is
still wired.
     HEAD: And now for something completely different.  Unlike
the previous story, this one is meant to be a bit of fun.  Angelo
DeCesare serves up a short story in the tradition of Mike
Gallagher.  He tries to inject some slight redeeming social value
in the story, but it still works well enough.
     There was a time when I would have passed over a story like
this without even thinking about it.  I'd have dismissed it as a
jokey, lightweight piece of filler.  But the latest Sonic comics,
particularly the ones that appeared since S89, have actually made
me appreciate these stories even more than I used to.  Because as
I write this, the book is just no fun anymore.
     I know that I've been one of those who've wanted the comic
to be more than an excuse to lose $2 a month.  I'd wanted the
comic to be more reflective of the SatAM style of storytelling
where there was the guerrilla war against Robotnik as a pretext
for both credible action sequences and also well-written
interactions between the characters.  Instead we've been
subjected to confused and depressing plots and characterizations
that become more and more wooden with the passing months.  After
some of what we've been through in the book, it's easier to buy
into a story where Sonic/Sir Runalot returns early from his
vacation because "airplanes hadn't been invented yet."  This
story kept its goals modest and attained them.  Head Score: 7.
     EYE: Dave Manak didn't have to do anything to adjust his
style in working for Angelo DeCesare, since this is a story in
the Mike Gallagher mold.  The style works just as well here.  And
Sally doesn't look half bad in a full-length dress.  Eye Score:
8.
     HEART: Buried beneath the surface of this story is a key
idea that would come to be foundational for several future
stories: Tails' resentment at being the junior member of the
firm.  Here it formed the basis for Sally's story, but the story
ends with Tails apparently not getting it.  The theme would
"resurface," if you'll forgive the pun, in the work of Mike
Gallagher: "Submersible Rehearsal" (Triple Trouble special), 
"Growing Pains" (S28-29), and "Southern Crossover" (the Tails
miniseries).
     It's really quite a natural for the comic to have tapped
into this topic.  Tails, after all, is supposed to be around the
same age as the core audience and should be able to view the
world from the same perspective.  And one aspect of that
perspective is that Tails is at an age where he's on the
borderland of being able to participate in the fight against
Robotnik as fully as everyone else.  Yet he's still treated like
"the kid."  Which makes him appealing to the readers but leaves
him on the outside looking in sometimes.
     It's interesting that Sally doesn't quite get it at first. 
Despite the fact that she's been there and done that herself, she
takes the "It's not all fun and glory" approach to dissuading
Tails.  Of course, this story was also written at a time when the
Sonic Kids specials weren't even a glint in the editors' eyes.
     On balance, though, it's good that this story opened the
door to the topic, however slightly.  As situational as the story
is, the personalities of Sonic, Tails and Sally still come
through in the writing.  The light behind the eyes hasn't gone
out.  Yet.  Heart Score: 8.

     Sonic-Grams: Among some of the responses to the letters:
"Maybe" the meeting of Sonic and Tails will be depicted [that
would have to wait for SSS9's "Eve of Destruction"], "Keep
reading" to find out about Sonic's mother [in the Brave New World
special], the ages for the Freedom Fighters are given as "around
fifteen" [Sonic and Sally], "around five" [Tails!], and "keep
reading" [everyone else].  Betcha can't tell that they haven't
written a Character Bible yet.  Josiah McDaniel displays total
Sonic fandom, and Jenny Ramos has the hots for Knuckles.  And the
Powers That Be thought that this book might not last?