Sonic #86 (Sep 2K) Spaz/Harvo/J. D. Ray cover: "Hey! Didn't we beat the Sonic- fights-a-robotic-double-of-himself plot line to death last month?" Not exactly. Interesting composition, though. "Heart of the Hedgehog: Part 1: Evil's Return" Story: Danny Fingeroth (debut); Art: Sam Maxwell; Ink: Saleem Crawford (debut); Lettering: Jeff Powell; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Editorial: G-Force. Remember what happened last month, in "The Big Payback?" How the Freedom Fighter Special was forced down...somewhere or other...under ambiguous circumstances? You wouldn't know it from this story, except for a text box on page 1. Even though there's a fleeting allusion to the completed Sonic Adventure arc, Sonic and Tails say NOTHING WHATSOEVER about their comrades back at the downed aircraft. Which leads me to believe that Danny Fingeroth's debut story wasn't written with the current continuity in mind, and only needed minor alterations before being declared ready-to-wear. And the fact that the text boxes in the first panel are lettered in two different styles only deepens my suspicions. But let's just get into it. Sonic and Tails are out doing a little "rat racing," to borrow a bit of fighter jock lingo from "The Right Stuff," when Tails hits an air pocket and goes into a tumble. Sonic makes the save, but aside from the fact that Tails appears to be having a REALLY bad fur day thanks to Sam Maxwell, his self-confidence seems to be the only part of him that was damaged. Sonic then tries bucking up his best bud, in a scene that demonstrates that Danny Fingeroth is DEFINITELY the new kid on the block. As an encouraged Tails goes off to log a bit more flight time, Sonic starts to prep some lunch. When Tails fails to show, though, Sonic takes off to look for him and encounters...Metal Sonic. At least, that's what it says on the page. Sonic dueling with a robo-version of himself is a staple of many of the games. So I'm told by Sonic fan Andrew Sautter; I've never gotten far enough into any of them to find out first-hand. And the variations on the theme are...well, the Pat Spaziante pro-art at the back of this issue gives you an idea of the dimensions of the problem. You've got your MechaSonic, your SilverSonic, your MetalSonic ("Metaru" in the Sonic anime), your upgraded MetalSonic in this story, not to mention Sonic actually getting roboticized himself back during the "Mecha Madness" arc. There was also a PseudoSonic in S2, but that was before my time. For me, they all blur together into a confusing cast of cast-iron characters. After getting Sonic's attention and supplying a page of exposition for those of us who might be confused (I confess to being in that number), Metal not only admits to having kidnaped Tails but adds insult to injury by demonstrating that Sonic is now the new slo-mo in town. He then traps Sonic in some kind of restraint powered by that most insidious of forces in the known universe, PhotoShop Blur. Metal decides to play cat-and-mouse with Sonic. He tells him that Tails is the cheese in this game and that he's trapped inside a volcano. Sonic goes after his little bro, but Metal's deviousness chip must have shorted out because the only thing he can seem to think of to slow down Sonic is to sucker-punch him. He's described as "one happy inhuman metalloid," which isn't a stretch because Sonic and the gang aren't hyoomons anyway, remember? Metal gloats as Tails is about to be turned into an order of extra-crispy, as even Archie admits that next month's installment is headed into the toilet...what? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it said "Continued Next Issue In Lavatory." HEAD: Danny Fingeroth is a veteran of the big leagues, having worked (we are told) on Spiderman. That makes him one of several veteran comic book people who have worked on Sonic (another creative, Chris Allan, had previously worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). This must be a symptom of the slump happening in the industry. I imagine writers and artists standing outside the doors to comic cons all over the country, holding hand-lettered cardboard signs that say: "WILL WORK FOR ARCHIE." Fat chance of THAT happening, the way things are going; details later in this review. What we have here is what I call meat-and-potatoes writing: Sonic, Tails, and a villain. No loose threads, no dead end plot points, no one-page digressions to satellites or spacecraft. The upside is that Fingeroth can concentrate on one crisis: saving Tails's tails. After the Sonic Adventure arc which swerved all over the highway, from the Mysterious Country Cats to the Station Square infrastructure, this is positively refreshing. The downside, however, is that there ARE interesting characters and subplots out there waiting for the proper treatment. Mostly, it appears that they're being deferred until S88 and issues thereafter, if they're dealt with at all. Too bad; Fingeroth may only be a temp, but it'd be interesting to get the perspective of a comic veteran (and survivor of Marvel's descent into Chapter 11) on such story angles as the fate of Queen Alicia. Head Score: 8. EYE: Sam Maxwell's been taking lessons. His background art, though simple, isn't nearly as minimalist as it was during the Lupe and the Wolf Pack arc (S67-69). His drawing of Tails is kind of cute, but I have NO idea why Tails's fur is so frizzy. He does his best work on Metal, and a well-rendered villain is, I suppose, important in a story like this. The layout on page 4 is a winner, though the rest of the pages are pretty conventional, mercifully. Eye Score: 7. HEART: Tails was depicted as a hotshot pilot during the Sonic Adventure adaptation. Here, especially in the opening sequence, Fingeroth takes a more realistic reading of the character and depicts him as a ten-year-old who's still learning the ropes and who's subject to discouragement. You KNOW that D.F. is new to the Sonic comic, where hints of vulnerability in its main characters are avoided at all costs. Page 5 is a small miracle, and a reminder of what the comic could be in capable hands. Heck, it reminded me of what Karl Bollers could have done with the book after such a promising start with "Running To Stand Still" (S54). That was Bollers B.N. (Before Nate). This is icing on the cake of a Tails-in-distress story. Hate to think that this is just a fluke and that Karl will go back to business as usual in 2 months. Heart Score: 10. "Against The Haunted Past: Part 1" Story: Frank Strom; Art: Frank Strom; Ink: Harvo; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Editorial: G-Force Flash back "ten years": Robotnik was alive and well and stuffed in a rubber suit. Snively was wearing a dead hampster on his head. King Max is obtuse as ever pretty close to the eve of his downfall. Robotnik needs a test subject. Quick cut to... In the previous Monkey Khan outing ("Den of Thieves," SSS8), the action took place in the "township" of Leung Kar. One of my correspondents, a Chinese living in Singapore, got a hoot out of that one. So I checked. "Leung Kar" is derived from the name Tony Leung Kar Fai (or Tony Leung for short), a famous Chinese actor in Hong Kong films such as "Touch of Evil" (1995), "Ashes of Time" (1994), "A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon" (1989), etc. His appearance in the Jean-Jacques Annaud 1991 film "The Lover" led to his being named the Asian Man French Women Would Most Want to Have Sex With in a French magazine poll. Looks like Frank has recycled the joke this time around as well. Doing the major monkeying around is Ken Khan, whose aggressive sports style is a turn-off for the other monkey kids in the settlement. He gets dressed down by his dad, "Lord Lau Khan, respected community leader." Wonder if that's what it says on his business cards? Ken, it seems, is to fighting what Sonic is to running, and he's not in sync with his dad's neutrality in the Overlander/Mobian war (remember THAT plot point?). Anyway, Julian kidnaps the simian kid. I'm not sure exactly what Julian means by his page 4 speech about turning the chimp into a "cyborg." Obviously he managed not to get roboticized. Anyway, Khan does well enough in a field test against some Os that Julian considers using the kid after all. Little Kenny, however, has other plans but before he can rewrite Mobian history the monkey gets zapped, presumably by Robotnik. That hand jive on page 5 where Julian shocks the monkey is never really explained. The story skips over developments spelled out in the initial Monkey Khan outing and fast-forwards to the present where Khan finds himself imprisoned and talking to Robotnik 2.0. How did he get captured? The story skips over that as well. Maybe next month. HEAD: The gears don't totally mesh in terms of continuity. When MK first made the scene in S55 he spoke of being released from "decades" of imprisonment though in reality it would have barely been one decade. Also, the cyborg-ification of Monkey Boy is a black box affair. That is, we all know there's such a thing as a roboticizer but we're never told what hoo-doo Robotnik pulled to enhance Ken Khan. It just...happened. But that may be a function of the limited space Frank Strom had at his disposal. For the most part, though, the story elements work. Head Score: 7. EYE: I can't say that I've ever been a major fan of Frank Strom's artwork, though he did a Pro-Art portrait of Julie-Su that I thought was excellent. Here the work is serviceable, though like Sam Maxwell in the preceding story he doesn't wander far afield. Just as the previous story had a cast of 3 (Sonic, Tails and Metal), this story mainly focuses on Robotnik and Monkey Khan, with minor appearances by other characters, including an orange-haired ape with the kind of sideburns I haven't seen since I was in high school. Not spectacular but not spectacularly off-model, either. Eye Score: 7. HEART: Taking a page from Ken Penders' "For Whom The Bell Tolls" (Endgame: Let's Get The Ending Right This Time special), Julian unleashes his furry fighting machine on a group of hyoomons instead of on some Mobians. That kind of ruthlessness worked for me in terms of defining Robotnik's character. Khan's character, though, was sadly shortchanged by the short format. He's a belligerent hothead, and that's about all we find out about him. With some more pages at his disposal, Frank could have gone a little more into depth about the dude and what made him tick. THAT'S what I want to see in an origin story. Chalk up one more missed opportunity in a book that's running out of chances. Heart Score: 5. Off-Panel: I remember "the tradition of the old 'Adventures of Scott and Paul'," and that name is no accident: the strips were self-referential to a fault. Paul Castiglia and Scott Fulop spent almost every installment heaping poo on the hapless creatives, while the actual characters of the book were nowhere to be seen. Under Gallagher and Manak, the characters put in more of an appearance, and the creatives and other Archie Comic peons (in this case, Mac jockey Tito Pena) are more likely to come out looking good at the expense of the Freditor (who seems to have changed into his disco ice cream suit for this installment). Let's keep the "tradition" of the old strip dead and buried, 'kay? Sonic-Grams: Fred says there are no plans to bring Sonic to Cartoon Network (or anywhere else, presumably); the hint is dropped that just because Amy Rose has matured a little that doesn't mean she's done any growing up; and the Tails-Fiona mis- match (she's older than he is now, if I recall that misbegotten story arc in K26-28 correctly) is suggested as a possible story line. I'm still waiting for Archie to apologize for depicting Barby Koala as having the hots for a 10-year-old in "Outback Gut- Check" (S61). No Fan Art, but there's the Find-Your-Name page, and the aforementioned Pro-art. Look fast before it disappears. And the book WILL disappear sooner or later. More likely, I'm afraid, sooner. Before I had a chance to post the first version of this review, word came back from attendees at the San Diego Comic Con that Archie will stop printing Super Specials after #15, which will be an "inventory" issue; i.e., they're going to take a bunch of crappy stories they had lying around the office and print 'em. That means no "Knuckles: 20 Years Later" (which was to have been SSS16) and no Super Secret Special which may or may not have been Pat Spaziante's manga homage (SSS17). Ken Penders has stated that he'll try to work K:20YL into the Sonic comic as a back story but won't be able to do so until after S100. Fluff up your pillow and dream, Ken; the way things are going, Archie will pull the plug on the Sonic Comic ITSELF in less than a year's time. The handwriting's on the wall, peeps, and it doesn't say "Shinginta" (c.f. K21). Archie Comics has been cutting its ties to the Sonic comic for a while now, and it's not going to take much to convince the management to deliver the coup de grace. The evidence (based on observation and without input from anyone at Archie Comics, as if they'd give me the time of day!): 1. The management at Archie Comics canceled the Knuckles title with no warning, and without even waiting to see if sales figures would improve. Ken Penders has said that he didn't know about the cancellation until he was working on the last page of the King of the Hill arc (K32). 2. With the market in an overall slump, nobody in management seems to think that now might be a good time to take advantage of shelf space being freed up by the demise of other titles. So they canceled the Specials. 3. The Specials were the last venue for stories that weren't mindless exercises in action for action's sake. Whatever flaws "The Best of Times, The Worst Of Times" (SSS14) might have had structurally, it was WAY more ambitious and engaging than the fare we've been getting lately. 4. Across the pond, Sonic The Comic (a UK Sonic book with a completely different supporting cast) ceased publication earlier this year. If Sega couldn't save that title, why should we believe the American comic is safe? 5. The firing of Dan DeCarlo, and the bunker mentality that inspired that bonehead move, suggests massive retrenching is coming to Archie Comics. So you know they're going to be tempted to hang on to their proprietary characters (Archie Andrews and the rest of that crowd) for dear life, and end their obligation to Sega at the first opportunity. We know that Archie is LOSING money the way their deal with Sega is structured, with Archie paying Sega a fee for use of a licensed character PLUS a percentage of the sales receipts. Fact Of Life time, kids: Money talks, the hedgehog walks. 6. For reasons nobody is willing to talk about, management has decided NOT to do anything special for S100. At first I thought that this was due to a plot development such as the death of Queen Alicia that wouldn't be worth hyping. I'm not so sure, now. Now I'm convinced that management doesn't expect there to BE a Sonic 100. They plan to abort the book before it hits the big one-double-zero so why build expectation for something that ain't gonna happen? That's why I'm instituting a new feature with this review: THE SONIC DEATH WATCH Countdown to S100: 14. Odds of S100 appearing: 64-to-1 against. I arrived at the odds by a purely unscientific method. I started with the premise that the appearance of S100 is a sure thing (1:1). Then, for the first point listed above I changed the odds to 2:1 against and increased the odds geometrically for each point that argues against the appearance of S100. Anyone who knows anything about probability is undoubtedly laughing himself/herself sick at my methodology but I'm sticking with it. The odds are going to get better as the countdown to S100 decreases, and worse based on any other news coming out of Mamaroneck. And I don't expect management to do a turn-around and start trumpeting S100 at this point. Remember, we're talking about the same brain trust that sacked Dan DeCarlo! For right now, it does NOT look good, Sonic fans, and all I can do is hope and pray that I'm wrong.