Sonic #27 [Oct 1995]
     Penders [cover debut]/D'Agostino cover, the credits buriedin the text by Robotnik's left
boot.  The newspaper device was never tried again; considering how tough it is to juggle the
prose so that it's halfway readable behind the characters, I'm not surprised.
     "A Scrambled Hedgehog"
     Story: Ken Penders; Art: Art Mawhinney; Ink: Rich Koslowski; Lettering: Mindy Eisman;
Color: Barry Grossman; Editorial: Fulop, Gorelick, and Goldwater.
     After the Underground leaves a message, Sonic arrives in town to pick up the mail. 
Having been spotted, he makes a break for it, but is stopped short by a SWATbot that gets in his
way, knocking him out cold.
     Sonic wakes up in the clutches of both Dr. Robotnik and...the Old Amnesia Plot.  If you
haven't seen it done 50 times already, let me introduce you:
     The loss of memory due to physical trauma does have a certain amount of medical truth to
it.  Post-traumatic amnesia (either total or partial) is not uncommon in accident victims, abuse
victims, etc.  Usually, though, the trauma involved is fairly acute, as in a car crash, and involves a
prolonged state of loss of consciousness.   Unfortunately, Hollywood shorthand tends to go right
from Head Trauma Event (having an Acme anvil land on one's head) to Total Memory
Loss/Personality Shift.  More likely, it's the events surrounding the trauma itself that tend to be
forgotten/suppressed; this is especially true with psychic trauma, in the case of post-traumatic
stress disorder.  Total memory loss from a blow on the head has become such a cliche that it even
showed up in the SatAM ep appropriately titled "No Brainer."
     But back to the story.  While Snively is in favor of wasting Sonic on the spot, Robotnik
knows an opportunity when he sees it.  Unfortunately, WE don't get to see Robotnik gaining
Sonic's trust and otherwise smearing his image all over Sonic's "tabula rasa."  What we see
instead is a physically-recovered Sonic working out on the heavy bag...oh, excuse me, that's a
Rotor replicant.  Sonic then gets his orders to infiltrate the group, thus giving Robotnik the
location of Knothole...which Sonic, despite his memory loss, has to manage to remember on his
own.  Yeah, I know, HUGE plot hole, but Sonic forges ahead anyway, unaware of the electronic
parasite he's carrying.  
     Sonic manages to have his memory jogged a little by the sight of a tree trunk.  Taking it as
the entrance, he appears unaware that he's being observed not only by Robotnik but by Rotor,
who finds that the hedgehog is bugged.  Sonic is sealed in the tunnel, but in a MAJOR plot cheat,
Ken (via Robotnik) has not only provided Sonic with an off-panel means of communication, but
with a hand-mounted blaster.  Sonic thus crashes through the barrier and encounters a three-way
junction, one path leading to the dreaded two-page spread of Saturday Morning toons on ABC
(back in the days before Disney bought the network).  Let's see: "Madeline" is now showing on
the Disney Channel, "Reboot" has landed on Toonami, Bugs and Tweetie and the rest of the
Warner crowd were acquired by Ted Turner, "Schoolhouse Rock" has been revived as a touring
musical revue playing to Baby Boomer nostalgia, and I'm sure NOBODY was sorry to see the
animated "Dumb and Dumber" bite the dust.  Oh, and for the record, the show that "Free Willy"
replaced had something to do with a blue hedgehog...
     ...who's doing the "decisions, decisions" bit and makes his choice just when Robotnik
temporarily loses the transmission.  Don't you just hate it when that happens?  By the time the
connection has been re-established, Sally has ordered the tunnels to be flooded, which REALLY
puts Sonic's non-swimmer status to the test.  Since he's got nowhere to go but up, he does just
that, burrowing for the surface.  "Funny, though, how I knew instinctively what to do," he thinks,
as Ken drops a red herring to make us think that maybe Sonic will snap out of it on his own.  He
finally comes up for air, fairly close to the outskirts of Knothole.  While the residents duck and
cover, Sonic crashes through the last barricade and enters the control room singing the theme
from "COPS."  A simple "I'm heeeeeere!" would've sufficed.  To be continued.
     HEAD: Never mind that the amnesia plot is so old it's got whiskers down to its knees:
Ken's gonna run it past us one more time.  So let's look at some other aspects of the story.
     This story starts out with a great idea, horribly executed.  I like the idea of Freedom
Fighter operatives working in Robotropolis disguised as SWATbots.  I even sort of liked the
notion of using a graffiti-based code for relaying messages.  But why, why, WHY did Ken have to
succumb to a case of the cutes and dub one of his operatives "Sleuth Dawggy-Dawg?"   And the
ending is no better, as Ken couldn't resist having Sonic quote the theme song from "COPS,"
though I'll bet he could have if he'd really tried.
     Lest you think me to be a first-class spoilsport, let me say that I appreciate a good in-joke
as much as the next writer.  I've perpetrated a few myself in the past.  In one passage of my fanfic
"Runaway," I list a number of Mobian "song titles" which are, in fact, all taken from the same
source: they're lyrics from different songs that appeared on the "American Beauty" album by the
Grateful Dead.  Only a serious Deadhead would have gotten those, however, and the joke wasn't
so broad as to cause massive groaning by the audience.  The trick with in-jokes, at least IMHO, is
to keep it as light as possible so as not to call attention to itself and bring the narrative flow to a
halt.  Fortunately, Ken has gotten less heavy-handed with his in-jokes over the years. 
Unfortunately, he can still slip up, as when he tried to work in the Sally (mis-)coloration during
"My Special Friend" (K29).  That entire exchange was out of character for both Sally and
Knuckles, and needlessly represented the awakening of a dog that had been asleep for quite some
time.
     Speaking of dogs, I don't know whether Ken or Art gets the blame for turning SD-D (I'd
type in his full name again but I fear my gag reflex will kick in if I do) into a dead ringer for
McGruff, which would be like dressing a Mobian bear in blue jeans and a ranger's hat, giving him
a shovel and calling him "Smokey."  It's like I said about the Sally colorization deal in K29: "We
GOT the joke, Ken; we just didn't WANT it!"
     That said, the story flows well enough for material this creaky.  Sonic is properly clueless,
though allowed only a hint of insight as to what's been suppressed.  Robotnik, as well, is in
character, and Sally manages to avoid simply being the martinet.  In short, the material works in
spite of itself.  Head Score: 6.
     EYE: The usual authoritative work by Mawhinney.  Eye Score: 8 (because he has to bear
SOME responsibility for the SD-D bit).
     HEART: N/A

     Fan Art: I've said it before and I'll say it again: I know Mitch Resk is only 6 years old, but
those speed lines make Sonic look like he's wearing a diaper.

     "SONIC TRIPLE TROUBLE INTRODUCTION INSIDE!" the cover boldly proclaims. 
Their idea of an "introduction" is two pages of hype by Gallagher/Manak/Harvo that say nothing
about the stories themselves.  It has some interest, as we look at it five years later, because things
in the comic have changed.  The "witch doctors" pictured are actually the Ancient Walkers, who
eventually shed their dinosaur suits and became more visually effective as disembodied floating
masks.  Here, they only look clownish, big surprise.  And Princess Sally works on her
impersonation of Michael Silberkleit appraising Melissa Joan Hart's outside work.

     Sonic-Grams: Once more, it's Editorial v. Creatives with Paul Castiglia, Andrew Pepoy
and Frank Gagliardo being set upon by Scott Fulop and Freddie Mendez.  Future colorist
Gagliardo is described as the "dude [who] keeps Sonic happy by making sure our comics look
perfect before going to our printer," at which point all bets are off, as the Death Egg #2 fiasco
demonstrated.  Letters: Rachel Risdal doesn't get the answers she seeks concerning the "alternate
future" in "The Return" (S22), and unless Ken can figure out a way for "Knuckles: 20 Years
Later" to see print, neither will anyone else.