Sonic Universe #13 (April 2010) Yardley!/Hunzeker cover: a straightforward depiction of the heroes along with a more impressionistic rendering of the Gossamer Clan, aka the Ninja Spiders. Not bad, but it feels a little congested. "Journey To The East: Part 1: Endless Reach Of Fate" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Jason Jensen; Lettering: Teresa Davidson; Assistant Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor: Mike Pellerito; Editor-in- Chief: Victor Gorelick; SEGA Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu And we get right into the swing of things with a splash page of Sonic kicking Ninja Spider butt. This is for all of the fans who felt that the action/violence quotient has been running sparse lately. And it looks like the same pattern is going to hold as the beady-eyed Li Yuen calls a halt and tells Sonic to get his blue butt "To the Temple of the Golden Lotus!" It's not that Sonic is having a hard time of it; it's just that we're due for an expository flashback. The colors fade as we're told that "Hours ago" Li Yuen was first showing Sonic and Tails around the Temple. Tails innocently enough asks "What's the story of this place?" which then triggers, thank you very much, a flashback within a flashback. Seems that in the long ago the dragons who lived there didn't have much to do except fight with each other (My guess was it was about politics). After long enough they realized that they'd ruined the placed and left, probably looking for somewhere else they could ruin. But they did prophecy the coming of the Great Golden Lotus King to restore peace and unity. Which brings us back to the present and Sonic contemplating a statue that bears a certain resemblance to Monkey Khan. Whether Khan is the real deal or not, Sonic can at least take solace in the fact that the status doesn't also depict a squirrel girl massaging his gums with her tongue. But since the pace of this story is starting to flag, we get an appearance by a couple of Gossamers, one of whom Sonic pins to the nearest wall to ask what happened to their gear. Seems the clan Bride wanted to take a meeting and the best way she thought to get the attention of the newcomers was to attack them (an attack the readers missed, except for the above-mentioned splash page). So, Sonic splits to the Gossamer HQ where Sally, Khan and Tails have been tied up. Tails is as chipper as ever, Khan is cheesed that they were overwhelmed by superior numbers, and Sally's got a major case of the sulks. Taking a cue from S209's "Iron Dominion: Part 2," Khan takes a crack at talking her down. Sally then performs a meltdown medley folding in plot points from some of the past 10 issues with a dash of Hope Kintobor's rap from SU4's "Ultimate Lifeform" about hating herself for having abandoned Knothole. I'll spare you Khan's rap except for the opener: "You are better than this." It's enough for Sally, who pulls herself together. Seems that Khan really was paying attention to Sonic's tough love primer in S209. OK, settle back and open up a cold one, we've got a LONG stretch of talk ahead of us. The furry foursome meets (deep breath) "The Bride of the Endless Reach, Bride to the House of the Gossamer Clan, She who knows the course of Fate, She who can obtain all things." Whew! Sally and Khan (the latter with a little prompting from Sally) trot out their full titles; Sonic and Tails are too laid back to even try B.S.ing the Gossamer Bride. Unfortunately for Sal, G. B. then asks Sal "Whatever happened to Uma Arachnis?" Sal then goes into exposition mode for a couple panels to explain that Uma and her descendents are all dead and that the Sword of Acorns was destroyed as well. G. B. comments on this development, though her English is too high-flown for Sonic and Tails. She then indicates that Uma knew what she was getting into thanks to The Web of Fate. A spider web the size of a ginormous tapestry, it is the oracle for the clan. Unfortunately, Khan chooses this moment to get in the Bride's veiled face. She tells him that 1) it's proprietary to the clan; 2) it's not a detailed to-do list; and 3) Monkey Boy's got a lot of nerve talking to the Bride that way. At this point, Sal intervenes and turns on the diplomacy. She introduces Khan to the concept of "Live and let live" while also presenting the Bride with the option of peaceful co-existence. Khan, as resident King With No Subjects, pledges his honor and asks the Bride to ante up. After more high-falutin' verbiage, she announces her clan's defection from the Iron Dominion. Everyone then celebrates by going out for Chinese, which isn't too difficult to find in the D.K. From the body language between Sal and Khan, Sonic (and Ian) finally realize that there's supposed to be a romantic subplot going on here, but before it goes very far Tracy Yardley! succumbs to 3D fever as a ninja throwing knife, like the one featured prominently in the initial cutscene from the "Sonic Heroes: Team Chaotix" segment crashes the party, or at least a teapot. It seems that now the local Yagyu ninja bats want to take a meeting. Which sets up the next issue. HEAD: The business with the formal introductions (or informal in the case of Sonic and Tails) is no exaggeration. The pastor of the campus church at the university where I work was born and spent his first 10 years in Japan, where his parents were missionaries. He reported on a trip back there he took a few years ago, where he hooked up with a boyhood friend and current church officer, Shinmyo Tadaomi. The pastor spoke of him using two different names/titles; he sometimes referred to him as "Shinmyo Sensei" or "Elder Shinmyo" as befits a church leader, and sometimes using the hideously familiar nickname "Tad." So it was no stretch for Sonic and Tails to take an American approach to the formalities while Sal and Khan (the latter with some reluctance) observed the proprieties. The opening of the story was awkward enough, with Ian basically bypassing the fight between our heroes and the Ninja Spiders. That kind of action sequence, seems to me, tends to have a hard time getting past Editorial; I mean, the good guys come off the worse for it. Ian does his best to maintain some kind of narrative flow, and it generally works, but we still end up with the awkward flashback-in-a- flashback. Still, it's hard to think of what could have been cut here in order to make room for a more linear development, so this may be a case of trying to get 10 pounds of story into a 5 pound bag. In "Iron Dominion: Part 2" we get Sally having an expository meltdown. Here, even though Ian chose to wait 8 pages, he gives us Sally having an expository meltdown. No wonder the poor girl's reduced to tears: she's getting in a rut! Once was enough; the second time, I had a hard time buying it. After all, this is the same Sally who, while the G.B. weighs her options, tells Sonic "We stick together to the end" in case things go south. I'm pretty sure that the readers weren't lost by the verbose middle passage of the story where our heroes confront the Gossamer Bride and end up detaching the clan from the Irons. It may not have lived up to the "Action and More Action" credo but made perfect sense in this story. And in case any readers fell asleep, the knife-throwing bit in the third act should have awakened them. As for the titular Web of Fate, Ian mercifully keeps the mumbo jumbo dialed down here, with a distinct lack of visions or mood lighting (compare with the treatment of the ill-fated Suh-wooooord of Acorns and the whole Source Of All gimmick alluded to in this story). That's as it should be; the meaning of the web is lost on the outsiders. Light shows and ghostly appearances would have pushed the whole sequence into mere camp. Head Score: 9. EYE: The best moments of the Yardley!/Jensen artwork are the least obvious. For one thing, I love the layout on page [15] which develops into a close-up of the Gossamer Bride and Khan getting in each other's face; it helps ratchet up the tension of that scene. Likewise on the next- to-last page when Tails reverts to canine type after the teapot is shattered. Li Yuen looks like an anomaly here, but Yardley! has chosen to stay close to the original Frank Strom design for the character. In the case of Li Moon, her pupils have been dialed back a bit and have changed color. But Ian didn't need to make any substantial changes, such as the ones he SHOULD have made with some of the DUFF members but didn't. But that's another rant. Eye Score: 10. HEART: In the same way that Ian waited until S207's "Blackout" to do some major character development that might undergird the alleged romantic subplot, he has Sally go through a second emotional meltdown in as many stories, I sense a pattern here: ignore the plot point for a number of issues, and then lay it on thick. The body language between Sal and Khan is still chaste, as befits an Archie comic. The dialogue between the two of them during dinner is far from what would be considered hot, and the overall sense is that this scene could have played out the same way at Pop's Chocklit Shoppe (what used to be known as Pop's Malt Shop in the flagship comics) if they served pot stickers along with cheeseburgers. In short, Ian is taking his sweet time about dialing up the romance subplot. It doesn't help that he undercut the possibility for it even in the beginning of the comic, before Sal's latest meltdown and Khan's response. The whole Lotus King plot point hammers that home: Khan may be as royal as Sally, but his destiny lies along a different path. And Sally's been through too much to turn her back on Knothole to go chase after Khan; that, after all, is at the heart of her rant. So unless Ian plans to carry this whole epic story arc past Sonic #212, the Sonic-Sally-Khan triangle is slowly and steadily turning into a non-issue. Heart Score: 8. Fan Art: Julie does a sketch composite of some of the major players; note that Sally and Sonic are in a not- unfamiliar pose. Fan Funny: Levi does a riff on Rouge the Bat. Reminds me of a strip in the online comic "Doc Rat" by a cartoonist who calls himself "Jenner" after the featured rodent from E. B. White's "Charlotte's Web." The rat/doctor of the strip is interviewing a bat who seems to have suffered multiple head injuries as a result of his sleep disorder: "Every time I drop off I drop off." Off-Panel: Um, this is supposed to be about Sonic having jet lag, but I'm pretty sure the effect has been exaggerated for alleged comic effect. Sorry, but it's not that effective. Now, if Sonic had simply zonked out and landed face-down in his eggdrop soup.... My Sonic Universe letters: Taylor asks for a fan-based comic; while Editorial points out the fan art and fan funnies, I'd say that THIS is a fan comic, considering that Flynn and Yardley! started out as Sonic fans. Apparently Taylor never knew what this book was like when all the creatives were drawn strictly from the Old Boy Network. Editorial also uploads a bunch of information Taylor didn't ask for about Shadow's creation. So when IS Shadow's birthday? I vote for June 19, the release date for Sonic Adventure 2. Harrison is told that there was a lot of good response to "Mobius 30 Years Later," which doesn't surprise me. There's a broad hint that Archie will capitalize on that response at some point. Michael is told nothing about plans to work Mephiles into the comic. He also asks for a canonical finale to the "Sonic Underground" continuity. Memo to Editorial: Price of success, guys. I haven't waded through the Sonic fanfics out there to see if it hasn't already been done, but it's one more idea Ian can percolate in the back of his brain if he wants. Editorial blows off Michael's request for information on "Project Needlemouse," which was simply the Sega code name for the Sonic 4 video game [rated E with an advisory for "comic mischief"]. And in case you're wondering whom the Lanette Lassiter is that Editorial mentions, she does have a MySpace page that not only features a Sonic background but a Sonic cursor. And speaking of Lassiters, maybe Archie can talk to Pixar about a Sonic movie, which Michael also requests. Heaven knows I trust their writing. Trouble is, Sonic might end up being pulled down into the Disney swamp.