Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[BlueSky]

Well, dunno 'bout you guys but if it's interesting, absurd is fine. One of my favourite tubers claim he's a dadaist after all... And yeah, I suppose it was the best way they could explain the grampa Gerald thing after they estabilished Eggman's fatherline before that happened. Can't really blame them or can I.

Like, I dunno, I get over-excited whenever I start over-explaining the concept of space-brain-squids to some careless friend/random person I've known for couple of minutes. I guess I'm crazy. Don't send an ambulance though.

But yeah, I suppose one good way to tell Sally and Antoine apart during that time just from their backs is prolly the hair, especially in this sepia coloured case, since Sally has way longer. I dunno, I sometimes spend 10 minutes over-analysing a page or something.

Now I remember how girls ran after Elias sometimes, like really. Dunno where that came from.

 

[Meta77]

55 minutes ago, BlueSky said:

Well, dunno 'bout you guys but if it's interesting, absurd is fine. One of my favourite tubers claim he's a dadaist after all... And yeah, I suppose it was the best way they could explain the grampa Gerald thing after they estabilished Eggman's fatherline before that happened. Can't really blame them or can I.

Like, I dunno, I get over-excited whenever I start over-explaining the concept of space-brain-squids to some careless friend/random person I've known for couple of minutes. I guess I'm crazy. Don't send an ambulance though.

But yeah, I suppose one good way to tell Sally and Antoine apart during that time just from their backs is prolly the hair, especially in this sepia coloured case, since Sally has way longer. I dunno, I sometimes spend 10 minutes over-analysing a page or something.

Now I remember how girls ran after Elias sometimes, like really. Dunno where that came from.

 

Its cause he was a prince and good looking.  Basically the old Disney troupe where everyone wanted him simply for being a prince

[BlueSky]

12 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

Its cause he was a prince and good looking.  Basically the old Disney troupe where everyone wanted him simply for being a prince

I was more thinking about why my memory decided to remind me of that little detail... sorry about my non-nativity. 

But whatever, you're prolly right anyway in what you said.

[Big Panda]

I just thought: Ian’s recently been dropping details as to what the comic would’ve been had it continued (300 being a Freedom Fighters vs Eggman turning point, and the post-300 storyline being the metal virus arc).

But what about Sonic Universe? Has he revealed what issues 99 and 100 would’ve been?

[Guergy]

It just makes wonder what could had been for the comic, I really hoped we would Archie get to Issue 300 as least.

[BlueSky]

Whatever there was in store, I suppose it'd have been something I could actually care about. The solicits were pretty promising and there were characters I actually liked that didn't sport Sega plot armour. That's kind of killing most of the tension and when I'm reading comics I'd appreciate there'd be some bits I couldn't be too certain of, otherwise it'd be pretty boring.

As much as I felt sad about Antoine getting Metal Sonic blown straight onto his face it was still interesting and exciting. In a way. As an example.

My newest conspiracy theory was Sega kept ArchieSonic around just enough time to get the world record broken.

[Cuz]

On ‎8‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 4:06 PM, BlueSky said:

My newest conspiracy theory was Sega kept ArchieSonic around just enough time to get the world record broken. 

Oh, they blew that thing to bits long ago. I remember first seeing that award toted around while the comic was still in the early hundreds. xD 

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic Live!  - The Last Game Cartridge Hero

It’s finally arrived. 

It’s finally here. 

All your favorite nightmares are coming true. The horror you involuntarily dreamed about has come to fruition. Gaze in terror as Sonic has clearly suffered a stroke and his eyes and darting in the opposite direction from the resulting assault on the neurons in his brain. He’s using his newly acquired demonic powers from hell to reach through your TV and steal your children with his freakishly huge, gross, monster hands.

I can only imagine how much pain that poor boy is in, having his arm gripped by that freakish alien. 

Enough about this clearly awful cover, let’s dive into the bullshit.

We open on Robotnik, confusingly, poking his head out from his base and screaming into the thunderous night sky for Sonic to come and face him head on “Man-Bot to Hedgehog”.

I can only assume Robotnik is drunk. I can’t find any reasonable explanation towards why he’d be doing this. Especially since Sonic is already headed towards him.

Sonic goes inside and confronts Eggman, draw so primitively, he’s almost a caricature of himself.

Drunk Robotnik pulls out a Sally Acorn who has a thousand yard stare, a curvature that draws attention to how naked she is again, and a device on her head that, I assume, means she’s been hypnotized. There goes Sally, proving her worth again.

Sonic confirms her worth by saying the line, “Let her go, Robutt-nik! This is between ME and YOU! Always has been, always will be!”

Well, I guess you heard it here folks. The Freedom Fighters are expendable.

Robotnik responds by saying Sonic is correct.

Sonic says “I’ll get out of this yet.” and Robotnik claims that would make a great epitaph for his tombstone. That’s a great line, admittedly.

Sonic has no come back for that sick burn and says “Oh. Guess I’ll just die.”

So he does. He just stands there and lets the robots vaporize him.
 
It happens.

Hurray! Sonic is dead.

All hail Dr. Robotnik!

We then cut to a photo of a real child, sitting in his living room, playing what had to have been the coolest fucking Sonic the Hedgehog game released in the early 1990s. He’s complaining about the fact that he died.

So, whatever game it was, it had dialogue, a fleshed out story, Naked Sally, SWAT-Bots, SatAM designs, and a Drunk Robotnik. Whoo-wee~! How insane is that?

The kid laments this loss because he assumed he was doing well. His sister is being a creeper by hovering over him at an odd angle and doing the “Oh, YOU!” meme face.

This is where we get the title “The Last Game Cartridge Hero” which… I guess is supposed to be an homage to “Last Action Hero” because this plot presumably involves someone from a fictional world coming to ours… but… well, in reverse.

Sonic actually intends to pull these kids into HIS world as this creepy, ghost white hand coming of the TV to clamp itself on this kid’s skull clearly shows.

Sonic, as it turns out, is floating in a green void. He claims it’s like being trapped in one of Rotor’s computers. I guess…?

Robotnik, now alone and full of beer, takes Sally to her cell where he has all the other Freedom Fighters locked away. I’ll just go ahead and assume the cell is highly reinforced. 

Tails calls Robotnik a “Creepola.” 

I like that. It sounds like something I would say as a kid. Like “Crapola.”

Anyway, the two kids return home from school and Sonic, still trapped in the void, overhears them. The kids notice something is up with the TV but before they can figure out what, Sonic grabs them and tries to forcefully pull them through the TV screen. He does this because he can’t get to them for help.

Sonic doesn’t consider the fact that he just pulled two children into the television set with no way of knowing how to get OUT of the television set. He literally did this because he himself couldn’t leave.

Also, Sonic claims he needs their help. Aside from advice on what’s happening, which they also can’t provide, how and why do you need the help of two human children?

When Sonic pulls them in, Sonic ALL OF A SUDDEN mouths off some science babbly gook about how energy surges made it so that he made contact with them and their arrival made the surges stronger. Now he’s willingly forcing these two kids to randomly go where these surges take them next because… I dunno. He’s an idiot?

Sonic says that hopefully it’ll take them to Mobius… so he doesn’t KNOW where it's taking them. 

Oh, would you look at that? As luck would have it, we’ve been transported towards the surface of a planet made entirely of acid. Whoops. At least he won’t die alone. He’s got these two innocent children that he kidnapped to die along with him.

Everything about this is a mistake.

By the way, the kids are totally cool with being kidnapped by Sonic the Hedgehog and taken away with no clear sign of where they’re going or even if they’ll be able to get back. 

We cut back to Robotnik and Snively who are doing a bunch of forced music puns all leading up to a joke about how Robotnik wails in defeat whenever he’s beaten. I’m sure it’s funny to somebody. Anywho, the Freedom Fighters are… out of their cells right in front of Robotnik as he gives his latest monologue.

There are Swat-Bots behind them so… I assume this is supposed to insinuate that they’re still captured but the problem is that they fight regular Swat-Bots all the time. They don’t look handcuffed or restrained in anyway…

In fact, Rotor looks bored. Antoine is staring off into space, wondering whether or not his baguettes are burning in the oven. Bunnie just looks like her stunt-double stayed in the shot for too long.

Have I mentioned that the art in this story looks like some shit I’d have scribbled down when I was ten? 

So Robotnik’s plan is to send a deadly missile into space that’ll somehow place countless killer satellites around Mobius and also send the Freedom Fighters "into eternity" by shoving them into it…

Now, I have no clue how that’s supposed to work. Is the missle going to explode into a bunch of killer satellites that’ll fly around the circumference of Mobius? Is the missile going to release the satellites one by one as it shoots into space and then flies around it…? Will it explode when it’s done? Is that how he plans to kill the Freedom Fighters off? Or maybe he thinks letting them drift in space is enough? Fair enough but the practicality of this plan is rather shit. Go back and try again.

Also, why can’t Rotor just do science on the missle they get trapped in? Have you run out of techno-babble to explain why you can make that work?

For some reason, when the Swat-Bots lift them up to carry them inside the missile, none of the Freedom Fighters try to resist. Once again, I have no clue why. They could easily take these Swat-Bots out but they don’t.

Oh wait. Now I remember. Sonic said it was just between him and Robotnik.

I apologize. I forgot that the Freedom Fighters are completely expendable.

Tails, the only one of the Freedom Fighters who has spoken so far as well as the only one showing any kind of emotion or concern for their situation, asks where Sally is. Robotnik says he shoved her somewhere at the bottom of the missile. Like luggage.

So, at that moment, Sonic and the kids come out of the portal. A kid points out that it’s a Swat-Bot in front of them and that it is indeed cool. Sonic, unable to handle something other than him being called cool, reves up his feet and humiliates the poor robot by grinding them against its anus.

The Swat-Bots that don’t get humiliated like this show up to grab Sonic.

This works until it doesn’t.

Sonic, unlike his friends, fights back and easily manages to escape.

Oh yeah, the kids are here. Sonic grabs the kids by their arms and jumps down to the lower level of the missile. The kids somehow land without their bones shattering to dust. Once they make it inside the missile, Sonic somehow figures out that there’s only three buttons he can press to make it stop. How he knows this? Fuck if I know. 

Sonic presses one and it stops. So hurray. Sonic did it by bullshitting his way through a tremendous ocean of luck.

They’re clearly not even trying with this nonsense. Sonic had no way of knowing any particular set of buttons would stop this missile and he was given no reason to assume the one he pressed would be the one to stop it. He literally goes “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo” for fuck’s sake.

They go down to see that Robotnik and Snively are gone? Why? Because they went through the portal Sonic came through, that’s why. They thought they were done for so they bailed.

When Sonic and the useless hanger-ons kids who are totally important and essential to the plot come along, they get sucked into the portal because… I guess the portal felt like being a dick. I mean, it wasn't doing that before but it does it now because...?

They end up right in front of Robotnik and Snively where the art-style has changed. Not for the better. Not for the worse. It looks different but it feels equally as awful as the other style. One of the kids points out that the other one looks like they stepped out of a Speed Rider cartoon.

If that’s bootleg Speed Racer than that makes sense. You all look like bootleg individuals right now.

So here’s where the shit gets confusing.

… Yeah, let that sink in.

Robotnik is happy to see Sonic. He ambushes him with a shit ton of Swat-Bots and tells them to surrender or else he’ll hurt the two liabilities standing next to him. Here, Sonic actually can’t harm them because these kids are walking targets and shouldn’t even be in this fucking story. They’ve contributed nothing to the plot except to point out what’s happening.

Robotnik leads Sonic and the kids along to the next… room? I think they’re inside a base now. There was something that looked like a base behind Robotnik when they arrived but they were standing on a moon crater thing… it looked like they were in Starlight Zone. 

Whatever. They go inside a room and then we are greeted with this:

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!

The boy says he gets it. He then blurts out “Multiple Universes, right?”

Okay… but HOW?! Like… what?!

Robotnik went into the portal so… I guess that’s supposed to insinuate that he could go to multiple universes… but… HOW did he find ALL these Robotnik’s so fucking fast AND THEN have them begin and almost complete a giant fucking statue of himself? When did he have time to make all this? Sonic was busy pushing a single button in the amount of time it, apparently, took for Eggman to go into a portal, find a shit ton of different versions of himself, build a base, and had multiple Robotniks build a giant statue of himself??????

Also, Sonic sure got lucky that the portal sent him directly to THIS specific location. Wouldn’t want to end up in the Acid Dimension now would we?

When Sonic asks Steve, the boy, how he knows about this, Jesse, the girl, says he’s been watching too much “Space Trek”.

These kids are weird. Why the fuck are they watching bootleg versions of Star Trek and Speed Racer? You can’t be so poor that you’re unable to afford the real versions of the shows. They cost about the same price as the knock offs on the racks at Wal-Mart.

I know it’s because the comic doesn’t want to say the name of the actual show but that’s part of the point. How about you keep your references to yourself if you’re not allowed to actually make the reference?

What the fuck is Robotnik doing now? Is he taking the kids and Sonic away? Okay… let’s… do that I guess. Sonic makes a puckered lip, kissy face when he’s tossed onto his stomach in a cell.

Sonic meets up with more people in the hole he’s tossed in except this time, they’re adults. I contemplated whether or not these two people were probably guys from the Archie office but then I realized I didn’t care.

Robotnik finds a giant globe of Mobius and says that the humans have created a portal to their world in an act to create “so-called entertainment”.  He plans to use it to take over the worlds or whatever but oh no, the other Robotniks decide they’re gonna rebel. Does this matter? Nope. Moving on.

Inside the cell, the two adult men, Mori and Jerry, reveal that they created Sonic. Yeah, not Yuji Naka or even someone remotely Japanese. These two milk-toast losers made Sonic. Also, they reveal to him that he’s not real. He exists inside a game cartridge. Except no he doesn’t because the sketches of Sonic were transmissions over a device that… something or other and intergalactic space piss… I… I can’t… my brain is fried...

Then one of the Robotniks blows the door to their cell down and pulls off her Robotnik mask to reveal a woman underneath???? She says that she was… trying to promote their latest game when this happened????

When WHAT happened???? Someone kidnapped you and forced you into a Robotnik suit complete with a mask???????????????????????????

Then the two made-up creators of Sonic says this shit.

I… so… Robotnik is about to be gunned down by the other Robotniks and… Sonic saves him and one of the human guys tells Sonic that he can… save them by punching the access code to the control pad of one of their Sonic games…??????

B-But… how??? Are they IN a game right now? I thought they were in another dimension? They didn’t say shit about being INSIDE a game! Why would punching the access code on a game do… anything? WHAT?

Well… they do that and the robots shut down. Then Sonic congratulates the kids on being completely useless. The creators of the "Sonic game cartridge" say that they can send everyone back but it’ll be a one way trip. The how and why is lost to time at this point. I’ve given up. 

They go back. All the Freedom Fighters are okay. The kids meanwhile, are excited to play the next "Sonic game cartridge". I keep saying "Sonic game cartridge" because THEY keep saying "Sonic game cartridge". Was it a thing back then to say "Sonic game cartridge" instead of Sonic game? I dunno. I don’t actually care. 

HOOOOLYYYYYYY FUUUUUUUUUCK!

Whoever made this, please-

Sonic Live! - The Substitute Freedom Fighters

My brain is trying to reconstitute itself after that… whatever that was. This new story, I noticed right away, is drawn significantly better than the last story. That ushered in a slight bout of comfort.

It begins with Rotor working on something. The other Freedom Fighters, except Sonic, enter and Antoine asks Rotor in Comic Book French-ese what he’s doing. He says he’s created the Micro Belt-Cam. It’s a device that you attach to your belt and it’ll record your fights. He says it’s so that they can review their teamwork. Then they immediately get word that Swat-Bots are attacking and they head off to deal with it and test the cam.

The narration box says that they don’t come back.

The twist is that they all suffered massive heart attacks on the way to the battle, probably.

Well, either way, later Larry Lynx enters and shouts “HEY! IT’S ME! LARRY LYNX!” 

I remembered him from the Secret Freedom Fighters story arc that happens way, waaaaaay down the line… but the narration box says “Remember him from Sonic #12?” 

This is happening to me a lot, where I see a character I recognize from the future and the narration box tells me that they actually appeared in an earlier issue that I’ve forgotten. Perhaps it’s because this usually happens with the issues I haven’t chronicled on here. I remember Carl Condor despite him being far less worthless to the plot than Larry, most likely because I actually wrote about him. Or maybe it’s because my brain is melting.

Larry has broken into the Freedom HQ uninvited and immediately spots Robotnik shouting about having beaten the Freedom Fighters and Sonic on the monitor. When Larry sees this, he’s astonished and I’m guessing he’s ready to blame himself because he blurts out how whenever he’s around something bad happens.

In a more adult oriented comic book, I could see the jokes centered around Larry graciously taking the opportunity to kill a ton of random passersby. If Larry walks by you, look out for falling pianos.

Well, anyway, Larry realizes he needs to do something so he runs out screaming for help. He comes across Cyril the Eagle.  The caption says “Hey look…! It’s Cyril the Eagle from Issue 12!”

Do I remember him? NOPE! 

As Larry explains that the Freedom Fighters got captured and reveals that Robotnik got rid of Sonic somehow, more people come in to listen, which just amounts to Sally’s gang of Freedom Fighters in training that includes the future council members. They need a plan! So what are they gonna do?

Excellent. Beautiful plan. I love it. 10 outta 10.

I may sound condescending here but it turns out making it up as they go is actually a really good plan. They got to Robotropolis together and spot the Swat-Bots. When asked how they’ll get rid of them, Larry says he’ll take care of it and runs right in the middle of them all. They say that they’re totally gonna shoot him and he double dog dares them too…

The robots fire and somehow end up tripping and flopping about, shooting each other in a perfect square, not landing a single hit on Larry. 

Cyril flies and finds the entrance for them. Dylan the Porcupine takes a spine off his head and uses it to unlock the door. Hamlin uses himself as a bowling ball to knock away all the Swat-Bots in their way. They’re all over this.

What’s strange is that they actually spot Sonic confronting Eggman… he’s okay but there’s no explanation given as to why Robotnik was talking about having gotten rid of him. They ignore him for now and go and free Sally and the other Freedom Fighters. As they’re leaving they say that they need to go find Sonic and move out but the next scene is Sally awarded them with wrist-watches to communicate with them should they need their help again and giving a medal to Larry.

She’s made him the new leader of a team called the Substitute Legion of Freedom Fighters.

This is all well and good but… what was the deal with Sonic? 

I mean, the way this story handled him was so strange. He wasn’t with the others in the beginning. Then Robotnik reveals he actually already took care of Sonic before the Freedom Fighters came. Then the Substitute Freedom Fighters spot Sonic confronting Eggman in the background. Then they rescue the other Freedom Fighters, say they need to find Sonic and move out, and then the next scene is Sally awarded them with no Sonic in sight.

I don’t even know what to call that. How confusing.

This story was fun though. Charming and cute even. 

I don’t think Larry has this team in the future though so… I’m thinking things may not go well for him.

Sonic Live! - Knuckles Quest 2

This is an even better drawn story. It looks amazing, right out of the gate. Plus, it’s a cohesive narrative that’s actually essential to the main plot centered around fixing King Acorn. It looks like this extraneous journey is being pushed out of the way by supplementary material and side-stories so hopefully that means we can take a break from it in the main story. Hopefully.

Here, Knuckles has traveled to a remote location within the great forest that’s been untouched and hidden for who knows HOW long. He comes across a bunch of fairy tale creatures that… I was a little confused by at first. I figured they were physical illusions but I wasn't entirely sure. He punches a bunch of cheetahs. He punches a very oddly muscular and veiny looking human male in the face. He punches a dragon in the face. He punches the Grim Reaper in the face.

Knuckles is proving that most problems can be solved by a single punch to the face.

Knuckles recites the cryptic message the Ancient Walkers gave him about the Charlatan, the enchantress, and the paladin. Knuckles puts two and two together and realizes that he’s entered the domain of the Charlatan because these are all illusions he’s fighting.

He comes head to head with the man while trying to explain that he came here peacefully and wishes for help. The Charlatan already knows that the Ancient Walkers sent Knuckles and is pretty chill about letting him in due to being impressed by Knuckles discovering his secret. Knuckles’ response to this is pretty good.

I’ll say again, I love the way this is drawn. How such a good drawing of Knuckles exists in the vomit inducing Sonic Live, I’ll probably never fully understand. 

Unfortunately, hope of this lead being super substantial kind of floors itself here. The Charlatan explains that he used to work for the king and Knuckles mistaking thinks this means he seriously has a chance at getting reliable information and not just being sent to yet another vague location.

Nope. This man tells Knuckles that “You may receive guidance from the Land of Dark… IF you can even locate this mysterious realm.”

Yeah, no, that’s just great. He can receive GUIDANCE from a place he’s never heard of before and is apparently super hard to locate. Gee, thanks for your help.

“If you see sire Acorn again, tell him Merlin Prower wishes him well.” He says as Knuckles leaves.

Knuckles has no reaction to this dude giving him his full name. I can only assume that Knuckles either doesn’t care that he might have a connection to Tails or just doesn’t know Tails’ last name. Either one would be easy to believe. 

Sonic Live is a terrible lab experiment gone wrong. Rip out the pages of the two decent stories at the back of it and keep them safe while you burn the rest of it. You’ll be ridding the world of a great evil. 

[Big Panda]

The two kids in the photos are Ken Penders’ real-life son and niece.

I feel properly, genuinely sorry for the poor buggers. I mean, think about it for a moment: you’re a little kid, your dad/uncle works on a comic book about your favourite video game character(?*) and he turns around and goes “hey, slugger! You wanna be in a Sonic comic?”. Being the huge Sonic fan(?*) and naive little kid you are, you jump at the chance. Dream come true, right? Only without realising it, you’re being inserted into a poorly-written, self-insert fanfic-tier crapfest of a comic that would go down in infamy among the fanbase for years to come. Maybe it seemed cool at the time, but then, you were a dumb little kid who didn’t know any better. Regardless of that fact, you now have to pay for that choice that no child would have been in their right mind to make by forever having your childhood likeness associated with the steaming pile of shite that is Sonic Live.

 

*I don’t actually know if the kids were Sonic fans themselves. More likely not, since I’m sure either of the kids would’ve had a Sega Genesis in their home and not have to pose with a sideways TV remote instead of a game pad.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

12 minutes ago, Ernest the Panda said:

sideways TV remote instead of a game pad.

"I find it rather amusing that a TV remote turned sideways was used in SONIC LIVE, and then a decade later, NINTENDO would use the same concept for their WIIMOTE technology, coincidence?" 

- Ken Penders

(no not really, but considering he tried to imply Avengers Endgame took inspiration from his story, well, would you put it past him to say this?) 

[Dr. Detective]

59 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

"I find it rather amusing that a TV remote turned sideways was used in SONIC LIVE, and then a decade later, NINTENDO would use the same concept for their WIIMOTE technology, coincidence?" 

- Ken Penders

(no not really, but considering he tried to imply Avengers Endgame took inspiration from his story, well, would you put it past him to say this?) 

Iwata was reading Sonic Live from his favorite comic book author Ken Penders when suddenly he saw a remote turned sideways and said "Brilliant! Ken Penders, I most humbly apologize but I'm stealing your idea! WaWaWaWaWaaa-!" 

He laughs like Wario. Thats how much he delights in stealing from Ken Penders.

The Wii owes its success to goddamn Sonic Live.

[DabigRG]

On 6/17/2019 at 2:52 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Issue #37 - The Day Robotropolis Fell

Oh dear. That's... quite a cover. It's going to be hard to refrain from making jokes about how Sally is naked.

Right off the bat, I have to say that the writing in this issue is very weak. It's so loose it feels like its held together by silly string. This feels like an issue where things are just happening to the characters and they're reacting based on what the plot is calling for. It's not infuriating or anything but these little ticks in the set-up were getting to me after a while but I'll explain that in a bit.

Oh? Off to a good start, I see.

Gonna have to see what this is about again.

Quote

Anyway, the issue starts with Sonic and Sally waiting in a junkyard for Uncle Chuck, who if you'll recall, is an undercover robot dude stuck in Robotropolis. We get our traditional Sonic slapstick moment when Chuck opens the secret door that Sonic was sitting under and launches Sonic into the air where he then lands hard on his butt. It's great.

Chuck leads them to his hidey-hole and shows them seismic waves on a screen. Then this exchange happens.

Sonic: If that's your heart rate unc, you should see a mechanic!
Uncle Chuck: I wish it were, Sonic...

I know what they were going for here but it really does sound like Uncle Chuck just wished he had a heart attack.

 Good ole black comedy. Also puns.

Quote

So it turns out that Robotropolis is about to suffer an EARTHQUAKE! Robotnik knows this and is evacuating himself, Snively, and all his SWAT Bots into a spacecraft that'll hover over the city until it passes. During that time, the city will be defenseless and crumble.

Boy howdy~! That sure is lucky! I couldn't help but think how much it would suck had that Earthquake hit Knothole instead. Or if it turned out Robotropolis was so advanced that a regular earthquake did nothing to it. Or if a random Earthquake didn't randomly happen at all. All of those would have sucked. Phew~!

Oh, I think I'm remembering now! At least that there was an earthquake, anyway.

On 6/17/2019 at 2:52 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Robotnik is shown evacuating and we get a scene where Snively shows concern for the roboticized people they left behind. Robotnik's response is "Who cares, you idiot! They're just MACHINES!"

Most of the ones left behind were roboticized people which infers that they are indeed no longer mortal because of his cruel actions. How very sad.
 

I was gonna say it's funny that Snively showed concern for other people, but then he was mainly a opportunistic schemer and never near as malicious as Robotnik himself now that I think about.

It is funny how Robotnik completely disregards their lives while taking the time to save all of his Swatbots, though.

Quote

 Not to worry though because Uncle Chuck has a plan. See there's a De-roboticizer in Robotropolis (???) and Uncle Chuck plans to lure all the robots in the vicinity to it. Then, in his own words, he says that he's going to override the De-Roboticizer's circuits and when it explodes he's counting on it to have a blanket effect...

So they do that. They reach the city, a tremor happens, they get lucky when a hole opens up that allows them to get through (Boy, so lucky this issue) and then Uncle Chuck deliberately sends a signal to all the remaining robots that tells them to head right where they are. Then he pulls the lever on the De-Roboticier, it explodes, and shoots a blanket effect out at all the robots... except him... apparently? Sonic points out that Uncle Chuck is still a robot and Uncle Chuck says that he'll get his chance one day and that it's better for the cause that he stay like this.

So...did it work? 

And yeah, I don't get that whole blanket effect thing considering the point of the roboticizer is to transform someone while they're inside of it, kinda like a CAT scan in Bunnie's case.

Quote

Then a regular Southwest Airlines plane arrives, out of nowhere, all of a sudden, at that very moment, and lands with Rotor coming out and saying he's gonna fly all the people away. Interesting. We didn't SEE them contacting Rotor and telling him to show up with Southwest Airlines but I guess that's something the audience is expected to just assume happened.

 

I thought Antoine was the pilot?

Quote

It's here where I have to stop and ask... What even?

There's so much about what I just wrote that doesn't make any sense or just seemingly comes out of nowhere. I need to stop and analyze this for a bit.

THINGS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE ABOUT WHAT JUST HAPPENED:

1. Why is there a De-Roboticizer in Robotropolis? What does he need one for aside for it being something to eventually be stolen and used against him by the Heroes? I understand that you never know when a tyrannical monster whose goal is to roboticize everyone to do his bidding might need to do the opposite of that but I gotta admit, I can't think of a scenario where he would. Robotnik still has a metal arm. He hasn't even used the De-Roboticizer on HIMSELF. Why does he have it?

Maybe it was brought up before and explained then but I seriously have no recollection of that. I'm sure one of you guys could tell me.

Good question. Like, I can only assume he either built it himself or Chuck built it at some point but never got to use it.

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2. Uncle Chuck says that re-wiring it to explode when he activates it will create a blanket effect that will De-Roboticize all the Roboticized people... okay. So, I actually don't care that much about the fake pseudo science there and whether or not that would actually work. Trying to figure out the logistics and functionality of an already fictional device is pointless and a bit too nitpicky for a Sonic comic. No, my issue is the fact that it works on all the robots ...except him. Even though he was standing right in front of the machine and was literally the one who pulls the lever. In the massive BLANKET explosion that happened across everyone there, he was somehow the ONLY one not changed back. HOW?! This isn't even a problem with the science or whatever, it's just obviously not possible. The machine exploded right in front of him and all the robots behind him and yet he wasn't affected by the blast???

.Yeah, seriously. 

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3. Rotor shows up out of nowhere and says that he didn't expect there to be so many people to save. I'm left to assume he brought a huge ass Southwest Airlines plane to cart away three people, I guess. They never show us how he knows what's happening or how much about the situation he was told. Uncle Chuck doesn't even tell Sonic and Sally about his De-Roboticization plan until they GET to the city which means he had no means of getting OUT of the city when this was done. Everyone reacts to Rotor showing up like it was a huge surprise and Rotor didn't expect there to be so many people. Neither were aware of the other's situation. If Chuck had just told them his plan BEFORE they went to the city, Rotor might have been able to accommodate everyone because as it stands, Sonic and Sally get left behind because the plane can't hold everyone. They also might not have had to worry about how they were going to get out of the city too. 

He probably underestimated just how many Robians they'd be able to turn back.

However, the surprise is a considerable red flag. The only explanation is that he was watching them somehow and realized they'd need a quick ride out of there.

On 6/17/2019 at 2:52 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It's all, once again, VERY lucky that this happened. I guess not for Sonic and Sally because, as I say, they get left behind because there's not enough room on Southwest Airlines. I'm going to set aside whether or not I buy that the plane could fit literally everyone they had with them except for those last two people. Maybe it's a weight thing. I dunno. The comic never says.

Anyway, they have to escape the city themselves now. Sonic tells Sally to keep moving and stay vigilant.

Sally proceeds to not do that at all, instead opting to stand still while the city is literally crumbling around them because of an Earthquake, while yelling into her mobile flip-phone for Nicole to respond.

She appropriately gets crushed by a rock for this bout of extreme stupidity.

Nicole comes through with the information Sally requested though. That's good. Sonic's only got 10 seconds to use the fastest route out of there. Sonic makes it after jumping through a hole in some fallen debris and then we immediately smash cut to a ceremony celebrating the awarding of a golden acorn to Uncle Chuck and Sonic, who gives his Golden Acorn to Nicole. Wow. That was abrupt! We didn't even see Sonic escape the city or bring Sally back home or anything. He jumps through some debris and the next panel (not even the next page) we're somewhere else during the aftermath.

Weird.

 

Okay, yeah, that was pretty dumb.

Guess we had to make that cover actually correlate somehow. 

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Then Robotnik comes back down from space and says he's going to rebuild the city but there's nothing to worry about in terms of attacks because he's going to put up a force-field around it while it's being done.Okay. Go fuck yourself Robotnik. If you could DO that then why the fuck didn't you have a force-field up before? Maybe Dulcy the Dragon wouldn't be able to easily sneak in and overhear your plans if you kept that force-field up all the time. They just infiltrated your city! How can you-?! Jesus...!

I have a feeling this issue is going to be more significant going forward but the structure of this tale was really odd and it feels like some things could have been ironed out a lot smoother than they were.

Egh. Maybe he's just building one from what's left? I know the force field is a crucial plot point for something down the road, but that's a wait.

Still, that layout tho.

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The amount of convenient things that happened and how quick the resolution was leads me to believe this was something done to just quickly de-roboticize all the people in Robotropolis without any fanfare...

... Wait a minute. HOLY SHIT! ALL THE PEOPLE IN ROBOTROPOLIS WERE DE-ROBOTICIZED! THAT'S A THING THAT JUST HAPPENED?????!!!!

No joke, I was editing this review and was about to post it when it literally just hit me that THAT happened! What the fuck...? THIS is how it happened? In one issue? Because of a random Earthquake that took place? It was so understated and fast that I didn't even process it. Are things being rushed? 

 

Probably.  A bit weird though...

What is this, Issue...37? Huh. I guess that's not too too weird, but still.

On 6/17/2019 at 2:52 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Also, the art in this issue was very odd as well. For some reason everyone looked stilted and significantly unanimated. There were points where you could tell you were looking at a drawing of a character rather than a believable panel of a specific action moment frozen in time. They looked like mannequins basically. Sometimes their expressions didn't even match. There was a point where Uncle Chuck tells Sonic that the De-Roboticizer is going to explode and Sonic responds by shouting "EXPLODES?!!" in a way that seems like he should be worried but for some reason he's got a doofy smile on his face.

Not the best art. Not the worst though. 

 

Oh, that stuff. Guess this is the beginning.

Who did this issue?

On 6/17/2019 at 2:52 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Issue #37 - Bunnie's Worst Nightmare!

The second story is a solo-story about Bunnie having a nightmare that she eventually becomes fully roboticized. It's such a convincing nightmare that she even dreams up convincing techno-jargon to explain why it's happening. 

It's actually a little creepy and unsettling, especially witnessing how she looks with a complete robotic sheen. Her eyes being black but her pupils remaining blue while the rest of her is this purple-ish looking metal is significantly scary to look at. 

I will say that if Robotnik did create something like this, it really would mean that there was no hope. I'm assuming he can't, otherwise he would have. 

 

Which is why you didn't post a picture.  

Why is Robotnik there, though?

On 6/17/2019 at 2:52 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

The title was a spoiler of course. She runs away because she doesn't want to endanger everyone and sleeps under a tree only to wake up the next morning completely fine with Sally not having a clue what she's talking about when she brings up what happened. It was all a nightmare. 

We're getting closer to the fabled Endgame and I'm starting to notice a significant change in the dynamics of the story. THAT was an incredibly rushed way to fix all the roboticized people. Again, it happened so fast that my mind didn't even process that it did happen and I had to edit in my reaction to it. I'm assuming this is where the comic started preparing for the end. It's starting to feel like it.

 

 

But of course.

My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think the next issue may introduce characters among the citizenry.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #44: Black and Blue and Red All Over

Oh hey. Evil Sonic’s back. Finally. An excuse to see Sonic get his ass kicked and be expected to enjoy it because he’s the villain and I’m supposed to.

We begin with Rotor showing off his gun to Sonic. This is the beginning of one of those weird PSAs you see on TV where the kid shows his parent’s gun to his friend and then accidentally blows his friend’s fucking brains out. 

Of course, this ain’t no ordinary, every day gun. This is… an advanced gun.

That’s right. When Rotor fires this at you, forget turning into swiss cheese. You’ll be lucky to be a bubbling puddle of nacho sauce on the floor.

This is reminding me of a scene from a comic way down the line (I don’t remember which one but I definitely remember reading it at least once) where Rotor says to Fiona that the Freedom Fighters don’t use guns. “It’s just not how we do things” or something. Now, even before I saw Rotor weilding a gun or even really before I knew much of anything about the Freedom Fighters, I knew for a fact that this was horeshit. This also reminds me of a comic waaaay down the line during the Flynn era, where Rotor calls back to the line he said about not using guns and calling himself a hypocrite for it, which just makes me love Ian’s writing even more. 

Now, I’m spending a lot of time talking about this gun because of one very simple fact. The comic doesn’t. It kind of forgets this even happened as we move on. I have no clue why a page and a half was dedicated to this but… when you’ve got big guns, show them off I suppose.

No, the real meat and potatoes starts when Rotor gets a signal on his monitor. Again.

Turns out there’s trouble brewing on Angel Island. Better go deal with it. Oh wait. No. They say they have to go tell Sally for some reason. I guess cause she’s their leader or whatever. 

Then Sally runs in and says “No need, I’m already here.” Oh wow. Thanks. We got that totally necessary step out of the way really quick. Let’s move!

That was a crack at this whole Freedom Fighters system thing. I apologize. I know it’s a different book but I can’t turn off the part of my brain that’s just like “If this were Sonic as I know him, he and Tails would just take off. Why’s he gotta answer to this princess… fuck…”

To be fair, the comic isn’t wasting any time. They rush to the plane and Antoine is already there, I guess because he read the previous pages and knew what was up. That’s when they take off and we cut to Knuckles who is currently headed for the Chaos Chamber where they hold all the Chaos… I mean the Chaos Emerald. Yeah, that’s still weird.

Also, this is a good time to point out that the art in this issue… ain’t the best.

Say hello to Silly Puddy Knuckles ladies and gents.

Jesus Christ Knuckles. Look at those cankles. Get yourself a burger, girlfriend.

Anyway, he gets inside and Evil Sonic is there. He’s Sonic but he needs a leather jacket to pretend he’s cool rather than a runny mouth. 

He talks like a fake gangster and everything.

Ya mook.

He says he’s there for the emeralds and says that “Just because YOUSE guys have problems don’t mean we hafta solve ‘em for ya!” 

Knuckles’ question is “We?” 

My question is “What? Are we gonna ignore the fact that what he just said made no sense?”

Anyway, yes, “We?” is a valid question too since Evil Sonic seems to be the only one there. But then an arm from off-screen punches Knuckles in the face and it’s revealed that it’s attached to… shock-horror, another Knuckles.

It’s… Irish Knuckles.

“And I’m not one to trifle with once I get me IRISH up!” is a line that Irish Knuckles says when he punches Knuckles in the face. 

He’s Knuckles except he’s Irish and he’s got blue eyes and a stupid cap on his head.

Irish Knuckles has teamed up with Evil Sonic, a version of Sonic who wears sunglasses and a leather jacket, to fight regular Knuckles.

Listen, I’m fucking serious. This is what’s happening.

Oh and Knuckles lost. Knuckles lost to Irish Knuckles.

After that, Archimedes, the ant guy, shows up and says he showed up when he got the news that Knuckles got his ass kicked. Knuckles says, quite appropriately, that he didn’t know news traveled that fast and Archimedes replies by saying that there’s still things that Knuckles doesn’t know about him…

… Then he proceeds not to tell us what that is. I guess it’s just a super duper secret how he’s able to find out the “news” of something that literally just happened seconds ago. I may be wrong but I have a sneaking suspicion that I never will.

Anyway, Knuckles and the Ant leave to see Sonic and the others show up. Knuckles realizes that it’s going to be “one of those days”. 

Knuckles describes to them who invaded his home and Sonic feels like he might know who that is. A description like “Looks exactly like you except was wearing a leather jacket and glasses” isn’t exactly the hardest thing to figure out. Next thing you know, we’re on the Cosmic Interstate.

Sonic is on the road while the others are literally flying an airplane through the Cosmic Interstate. It’s really weird.

Again, I have to re-state, that this is another one of those situations where they’re calling back to something I read but completely forgot about because it was during the time before I started to chronicle this stuff. I totally didn’t remember that they went to the Cosmic Interstate before. The memory isn’t so bad here because I have a pretty vague idea of what it is. It’s just the road to these other dimensions. Like a less dangerous version of the void or whatever. Although, I don’t know what happens if you fall off Snake Way here.

Anyway, we get to the… stupid shit inside the plane when Knuckles turns to Sally and brings up their wholly unnecessary secret past. I’m being serious here too. This is some dumb shit.

I truly don’t understand what Penders thinks the end goal of this is going to be. I feel like he isn’t seriously attempting to set-up a possible love rival with Sally in Knuckles… but I can only really feel this way because I know it doesn’t go anywhere up to where I’ve read. Yet, that’s also kind of disingenuous of me because I mostly remember issues 160 and beyond. I blocked out the issues from 150 to 159 from my memory (Mostly. Issac the robot guarding a corpse still lingers in my mind...) and I’ve literally read none of the stuff before that up until where I am at this moment.

So maybe there was a Knuckles and Sally… thing that happened that no one talks about. This is certainly the first I’ve heard of them having a past together in these books. I guess it’s just THAT negligible. No one’s ever like “remember when Penders tried to trick us into seriously believing that there MIGHT be a chance Knuckles posed a threat to Sonic’s unhealthy on-again, off-again relationship with Sally? Boy, wasn’t that a weird, pointless experiment?”

This mostly just feels like a pointless detour to trick people into wondering “Well… MAYBE there’s something going on between these two” even though he knows damn well there’s no chance he’ll make it a serious thing.

I feel like that has to be the case, otherwise I’d be forced to believe that Penders was so up his own ass when it came to writing Knuckles that he seriously considered putting the idea out there that Knuckles could do the nasty with Sally. Meanwhile, he’s, at the same time, trying to already do that with Geoffrey St. John. Although, because Geoffrey’s his own character, his narcissism is making it so that Geoffrey’s a lot more forward and creepy about it.

Considering how I never hear anyone go to bat for Geoffrey and Sally as a pairing and I’ve literally never even HEARD of people pairing Knuckles and Sally, it would seem these attempts to set up OTPs for the rabid fans of pairings out there didn’t succeed. 

That’s astonishing to me because fans will literally make up shit when it comes to pairings. Putting one in their mind and having it have NO lasting effect has got to be a huge sign that you just don’t know how to resonate with an audience. 

What am I saying though? It couldn’t be that this book lasted because Sonic was popular and not because Penders was a writing genius. No. Perish the thought.

Considering how bad I know the book is going to get soon, joking about that doesn’t even feel right.

I mean, seriously, this shit that Knuckles and Sally talk about here doesn’t even mean anything. Sally arrived on the island with her dad and she came across Knuckles at random. The two of them sat down and had a heart to heart about how hard it was to be in their positions.

Identifiable? Relatable? Sure, but that doesn't at all feel like the reason this is being forced in here. 

Knuckles had to go back to his dad and couldn’t talk with her again lest his father find out that he broke the rules of his apprenticeship. I don’t know what those rules are but I assume he’s not allowed to talk with anyone... ? I guess? The book makes it seem like Locke didn’t even know Sally and King Acorn were on the island with this passage but I’m not entirely sure how they could have hidden from him if they arrived by loud flying craft and stayed there for part of their vacation.

Well, anyway, Knuckles asks if they should tell Sonic and Sally gives the lazy, “Deal with it later” answer that I knew she was gonna give. They land in the Opposite Day Zone and Sally is given the run down that in this world, everything is flipped upside down. The Freedom Fighters are the bad guys and Robotnik is a kind family doctor. They illustrate this by showing Evil Sonic kicking a Swat-Bot in the butt which… is not any different from what regular Sonic does, so maybe not the best example.

Unless the commentary here is that Sonic and Evil Sonic are more alike than they think. I can get behind that.

Rotor sends a flying… thing to scan the area for… stuff and Sonic asks if it’s ironic that they use technology to try and take down a technological dictator. I mean, I guess they are living in a subtle environmental message. It’s probably smart to pretend as though the technology itself is evil and not the way it’s used… right?

Of course not. That's dumb. Moving on.

Evil Sonic and Irish Knuckles jump out of the bushes and attack. Now they get into a fight!

Sonic taunts Evil Sonic and makes him look like a wuss. He gets his ass kicked fairly easily by the end of this so I’ll just focus mostly on the Knuckles fight.

These fights apparently go on for quite a while. There’s no point in doing a play by play because it’s just some punches and some cartoony fight clouds. 

Tails completely undermines the fight by looking at his watch and telling the audience that the fight is uninteresting and boring.

I mean, I guess I can give Penders credit for having the guts to tell the audience when the events of your comics aren’t interesting. Than again, Rotor immediately says he’s enjoying it after Tails says this so… maybe this was him trying to head the audience off at the pass.

Thankfully, they shift gears fairly quickly here. All of a sudden, despite having no problems punching the shit out of Knuckles up to this point, Irish Knuckles pulls back his fist and says he’d hate to do this… so he won’t. Then he just stops fighting.

Then Sonic slams Evil Sonic into the dirt beside them, having won his fight because he’s objectively better than Evil Sonic now. I suppose.

Irish Knuckles explains that he should never have resorted to violence in the first place, no matter what the reason. He then explains that the Chaos Emeralds powering his island are being drained and that if he doesn’t restore it soon, all will perish.

Knuckles, for some reason, gets even more upset at him for this, proclaiming that Irish Knuckles is a wimp and an embarrassment of a guardian because he doesn’t believe this is worth continuing the fight over. Now, this is dumb for a number of reasons but the main one is the fact that what happens next leads to a proper resolution of the conflict because he didn’t continue to pointlessly fight you. A lot of problems can be solved by avoiding pointless fighting and talking it out with people.

Irish Knuckles explains that he doesn’t live on a floating island but an island underneath the sea.

Because opposites and shit.

The island is surrounded by a big air bubble that’s running out of oxygen due to the energy of the emerald being sucked away. If the oxygen leaves, the bubble is gone and so is all the life on the island. 

Atlantinopolis is the name of the place and the characters are all on their way there in the next scene… because fighting is dumb when you can just talk things out and get the help you need. Right Knuckles?

Sonic, Tails, Sally, Rotor, Knuckles, Irish Knuckles, and Evil Sonic all head to the city together and are directed by Nicole beneath the area towards the sound of intense drilling. It’s being perpetrated by none-other than, of course, Dr. Robotnik.

Sonic gasps in surprise, saying that he must not be satisfied with messing with just one world. I guess he blocked Sonic Live from his memory already. Trauma isn’t that easily forgotten in the real world though.

Robotnik says this world is a great place to find raw materials but it’s also a great place to test his stuff before he uses them on Sonic. When he says “test his stuff” I assume he also means “An excuse to destroy shit without having to worry about the Freedom Fighters catching on”.

Because there’s no war here, Robotnik is able to get away with this because the people living here chalk up any disturbance he makes to natural occurrences. So, random ass earthquakes.

Robotnik orders his Swat-Bots to send them through a chute and into the water. We’re shown a scene of the Swat-Bots grabbing Sonic and Knuckles… and the next scene is TAILS coming through the chute, complaining that Robotnik said “Woman and Children first” and proclaiming he’ll get Robotnik for that. It’s an odd transition. VERY odd.

We cut back and the next person being shoved into the chute is… Evil Sonic? 

Evil Sonic says this wasn’t part of the plan and fights off the Swat-Bots. Then, Sonic, Knuckles, Sally, and Rotor surround Evil Sonic and demand to know what this “plan” was. I guess they assumed he was working with them in an honest effort to help out Irish Knuckles save this city. Well, that was silly of them. 

Also, why did we get shown a scene of the Swat-Bots grabbing Sonic and Knuckles, then jump to a scene of Tails and Evil Sonic being pushed to the chute, and then jump to the next panel where Sonic and Knuckles are suddenly free? There’s like three things wrong with that all at once. Comics are a visual medium. The visuals need to flow and make more sense than this. 

It gets stranger because after the panel where the characters surround Evil Sonic, we go to the next page where Sonic and Knuckles are headed downstairs to confront Eggman with a little caption box at the top where one of them is finishing their statement to Evil Sonic. I guess this was supposed to be a scene transition past the part where they shove a tire iron up Evil Sonic’s ass but it’s starting to feel like whoever is in charge of paneling this comic is rushing through this. The jumps to the next parts of the scene are incredibly jarring all of a sudden.

At least I understand what they were trying to do but things are happening too quick. It’s hard to process it. 

Sonic says they know everything now. Evil Sonic made a deal with Robotnik for “a piece of the action” but didn’t really know what he was getting into like most small time thugs. They don’t say what the “piece of the action” Evil Sonic was expecting to get was. He hasn’t really done… anything. He fought Sonic but Irish Knuckles fought regular Knuckles too and they BOTH stopped when things were talked over. I don’t think I get what Evil Sonic wanted.

Well, whatever. Robotnik’s got a BIG FUCKING GUN and he’s firin’ his lazer everywhere. Archimedes shows up out of nowhere to bitch at Knuckles to get a move on cause, apparently, Robotnik has opened a gateway to their Chaos Chamber. I assume he did that when he fired his gun. So… it can obliterate you but also open paths to other dimensions. Hey, that sounds like what Rotor was saying HIS gun could do in the opening! Maybe this is where that gun comes back into play!

You guys remember right? That big fucking gun that Rotor showed off at the start? He claimed it could shoot so hard and fast that it could tear through dimensions and shit. Maybe that seemingly pointless scene will make a creatively written, impressive callba- No. Of course that’s not what Penders does here.

Robotnik is shooting all over the place, trying to vaporize the heroes. Sally and Sonic distract Robotnik while Knuckles and Irish Knuckles nab the Chaos Emerald that’s in the Chaos Chamber. They do this while Robotnik is trying to taunt Sonic to the best of his ability but is coming off rather lame.

Robotnik: Did I ever tell you what my favorite dish is? Roasted hedgehog! It’s out of this world!
Sonic: How would you even know?
Robotnik: I’ve had it before! Yum Yum. Eh? I FORGOT THE EMERALD!

I like to think he wasn’t lying when he said he’s had it before. The idea that he roasted and ate some poor hedgehog as some sort of sick coping mechanism for dealing with Sonic amuses me in a twisted way.

Anyway, yes, the two echidnas managed to grab the Chaos Emerald from the Chaos Chamber thanks to Robotnik opening up a portal back to it. Robotnik, now that he has a Chaos Emerald stolen from Evil Sonic’s world, says he doesn’t need Knuckles’ emerald and fires a blast at it to destroy it. 

Why he didn’t just aim at the echidnas, I’ve no clue. You’d think he’d still avoid destroying that emerald if he could help it but that doesn’t matter because when he fires at the emerald, this shit happens.

So after Robotnik… vanishes, they stick the six emeralds that were made after he destroyed the one emerald into six conveniently made slots and fix the force field around the underwater island. 

Then they take a bullet train back to the surface where Tails and Rotor are waiting. It’s here where I realize just how pointless it was that the two of them were even here. I guess it’s fine though. It’s not like they felt the need to shoehorn every Freedom Fighter into this story. Bunnie never shows up and Antoine only appears to complain about having to fly the plane and then disappears from the book entirely.

So, Sonic gets upset when he realizes that Irish Knuckles never explained what happened to Robotnik. He then explains it but... it doesn’t make any sense. 

Irish Knuckles says that the blast sent Robotnik back where he came from. So, back to his world… I… but… he also says that he fired that blast to DESTROY the chaos emerald so it couldn’t be used against him. Now this gun that Robotnik was using has the power to ROAST people but also open portals to other dimensions… I assume that’s why the Chaos Chamber suddenly appeared there. Robotnik fired a blast that blew a hole to Sonic’s normal dimension where the Chaos Chamber was. So, I’m guessing the logic Irish Knuckles is trying to use is that Robotnik fired the blast onto the Chaos Emerald and it bounced off the emerald and sent him back home… but, he says that Robotnik was trying to send them on a trip but he ALSO says he was trying to destroy the emerald.

So which is it?

Did Robotnik fire a blast that was going to destroy the emerald? Isn’t that sort of what happened? It shattered and six little emeralds were used to re-power the city… and they all already had six emerald slots designated and ready for them to power the island which means that… the six emeralds were held inside an even bigger emerald? But… also it tears through dimensions so it sent Robotnik back home? So it does both at the same time?

If Robotnik hit Sonic with that gun would it have fried his body but sent his corpse back to his home dimension? Robotnik’s body didn’t get fried though, I assume. Was it because the part that fries you already destroyed the emerald so he only had to worry about the part that sends you back home when it hit him? Did the laser stat effect waste itself on something and therefore was unable to repeat it again when it hit Robotnik? Did the gun that can cut through dimensions also burn the thing it touches but also can BOUNCE off things it destroys but taniqogkwkqLPfPLEMRBMK.

I’m thinking entirely too hard about this.

It makes no sense.

Evil Sonic complains about still being tied up in the ship. Irish Knuckles calls him laddie again. Then we end on another confusing panel where Rotor says he anticipated using his remote scanner for everywhere except where they needed it. I’m… not sure what he means. He only used it once and, while it’s true they didn’t need it when he used it, where exactly DID they need to use it in that mess? 

Then the issue just… stops. It doesn’t even end. It just stops. 

We don’t get any closure with Irish Knuckles, or Evil Sonic, and Robotnik is… apparently not dead. We don’t see him either.

Honestly, I’m really confused as to what the point of all this was. 

Did Penders even write a story?

This is a very consistent problem I’m having with the current issues. He’s making up a bunch of rules that are extremely inconsistent and explaining it in ways that aren’t coherent. It doesn’t help that the structure of this story was a bit strange. It starts off feeling as though its got enough wiggle room to spend time on something pointless and by the end, it doesn’t even have enough time to properly wrap up the story. 

We’re getting close to the Endgame. Maybe he’s just starting to not give a shit because he thinks the end is near.

[Heckboy]

Really sad they didn't bring Irish Knuckles back except in like one flashback later.

[Sonictrainer]

1 hour ago, Heckboy said:

Really sad they didn't bring Irish Knuckles back except in like one flashback later.

Yeah, not until issue #193

[DabigRG]

Rafa Knight made a model of Lupe that was intended to be used for Sonic 277.

[Big Panda]

Vaguely Archie Sonic-related news:

Ian and co are doing another Cosmo miniseries.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #45: Guerrilla Thriller

Guess who’s back? That’s right. It’s Curtis the Caveman from Phil of the Future. Aren’t you excited? Really well drawn cover though, I must say. Good job as usual Spaz.

I couldn’t actually remember this character’s name. I recalled it was something primitive and silly and it turns out I was right. They called him Mobie. I suppose because he was an ancient Mobian encased in ice. The one who saved the very easily knocked out Sonic the Hedgehog from being torn apart by a metal dog.

Anyway, the comic gives a recap of that scenario, as they should. I forgot he was an artist. 

We begin with that really awkward, never seems to flow correctly, tradition of a character saying Sonic’s full name with the special title font in one separate word bubble before continuing their statement in the next bubble.

I hate this trend and I'm glad the IDW comics don't ever do it.

Also, you read that correctly. Robotnik has yet to set up a command center in the jungle despite knowing many of his enemies are there. The reason is because he hates the jungle…

... I mean… you know doc, color me an idiot but I’d consider that to be even MORE of a reason to set up a command center there. Like, you encase all your shit in metal right? You’re the deforestation side of this subtle environmental message right?

But no, Robotnik says he doesn’t wanna go cause it’s hot, and there’s wild animals, and all the plants. Snively points out that he won’t HAVE to go (no shit) because the Eco-Destroyer will do all the work. I assume that’s some sort of robot. Again… I’m not sure why Robotnik couldn’t figure this out himself. I guess for comedy. 

We immediately cut back to Knothole where the spying Uncle Chuck has told the Freedom Fighters everything. Sally’s plan is to separate into two teams… well, not her of course. She needs to stay back again because she’s got the incredibly important task of figuring out how to take out the Eco-Destroyer. You know, that machine that was only just named and none of them have seen yet. She needs to figure out how to destroy that. Quick somebody give the princess a nice comfy seat and a glass of warm milk while she racks her brain over this… fuck…

This next sequence of events is really strange.

Sonic races ahead of Rotor, since I guess they’ve decided to go together, but the next page shows Rotor looking at some berries and Sonic coming up from behind him? I guess Sonic raced around the whole forest and then caught up with Rotor. That’s not really the strange bit though. Rotor talks about how he stopped their important mission to randomly study these rare berries.

They’re Narcolyptus Berries and they cause sleepiness. Now, at this point, my brain is telling me that this is a really sloppy set-up for some sort of plot point… and it turned out to be a rather immediate turn around because in the next panel, Sonic is telling Rotor that he wished he’d said that before he ate some.

I mean... sure.

So Sonic goes to sleep and the INSTANT he does, the two of them get ambushed by Gorillas in combat outfits.  At this point I’m hoping these berries are never brought up again literally just because of how funny it would be if we wasted several panels on Rotor, out of nowhere, stopping to examine some rare berries and Sonic eating them just so they could explain why the two of them got so easily captured. It’d be hilarious.

Well, either way, we cut to the Jungle camp of the Gorillas where, apparently, they aren’t being believed when they’re trying to tell the locals about Robotnik’s plan. The gorillas are forcing Rotor to cook a stew for them while explaining that they’re going to force Rotor to stay and invent weapons for them as well as be their personal cook. I suppose Sonic’s just a bonus capture for them.

These guys aren’t very nice it looks like. Still, this doesn’t seem to be enough for Sonic to just want to beat them up and take Rotor away. 

Oh yeah. Sonic is awake now. 

What a stunning plot development those fucking berries were.

Anyway, Sonic says that if the gorillas want weapons he’ll go get them some in exchange for their freedom. The gorillas IMMEDIATELY agree to this and let Sonic go, claiming that they’ll do something bad to Rotor if he tries something funny. They don’t say what they’ll do to Rotor. Just that he’ll “suffer the consequences”. 

Sonic’s brilliant plan is to race over to the gorilla’s own stockpile of weapons, shoot past the guard there, chuck a bunch of their own weapons into a wheelbarrow and race back. He even says “Am I clever or what?” and I’m just kind of like… no.

Now, if these gorillas clearly weren’t supposed to be incredibly fucking stupid I’d bring up how relying on them not recognizing their own stockpile of weapons might not be “clever” so much as a strange “gamble”. However, I don’t have to because Sonic was so fast he accidentally chucked the supply officer into the wheelbarrow too.

The next scene, the two of them are in chains. Sonic’s apologizing to Rotor for not noticing that he chucked a whole, live gorilla into the wheelbarrow of weapons…

A gorilla guard tells the two of them to shut the hell up and Sonic snaps back at them, wondering why they’re such assholes now despite hearing that they were supposed to be gentle and timid. The gorilla guard explains that Robotnik being… around made them this way. Robotnik has never invaded their forest or anything but… I guess paranoia caused them all to turn into assholes and stockpile on weapons and shit. That’d be an interesting angle to take but it’s something I feel I mostly fabricated myself here. There’s very little in terms of an actual explanation for this since the book is making it clear that Robotnik has not journeyed into the jungle.

I’d actually like to explore the idea of a culture changing itself due to being scared of changing as a result of what Robotnik has done to the surrounding civilizations. It’d be a great way to explore the subject matter of how areas not directly affected by something like this could still be impacted.

No time for that though. Snively immediately rides in on his gnarly looking Eco-Destroyer! 

We finally see what it looks like. I’d want to see Snively do donuts in that thing.

We then cut to the next page where Snively is now standing in front of Sonic. I guess instead of running Sonic and Rotor over with that machine he figured it’d be smarter to stop the machine, get out of it, march over to Sonic with some Swat-Bots, and gloat about having captured him. 

Sonic says that the gorillas captured him and that Snively couldn’t even catch his breath. Good line.

Snively gets mad and marches back to the machine to contact Robotnik, saying he’s gonna enjoy it when he orders Sonic roboticized. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I suppose I understand why he wants to capture Sonic and roboticize him instead of just run him the fuck over with this machine but on the other hand, its kind of hard to ignore just how deliberate an opportunity to just take him out this feels like. Not to mention, they already roboticized him before and it didn’t go so well. Unless he wants a repeat of last time, or he’s got some sort of contingency plan, I’m not sure roboticizing Sonic is the best course of action anymore.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that robotization would feel like a justifiable threat in place of just using the Eco-Destroyer to run over Sonic if I didn’t already know that this process isn’t permanent in the comics. There was a lot of mileage to get out of keeping robotization permanent but I do suppose it makes it hard to fulfill the fantasy of actually turning Sonic into a robot when you have such a strict stipulation attached. Now that they’ve already done the Mecha Sonic vs. Mecha Knuckles thing, where do you take that threat next? How do you up the ante?

These aren’t questions the book is interested in answering and that’s fine. It thinks it’s going to end soon.

As we speak, Mobie, Bunnie, and Tails are watching from behind some cover. They then ambush the Swat-Bots and beat them up. Tails calls one a tattle-tale when it tries to cry out for help while the fox bashes it’s robo-brains in. How very merciless.

Mobie and Sonic have a nice little reunion when Rotor interrupts and says they’ve got to take care of the Eco-Destroyer. It’s still turned off because Snively is in the middle of contacting Robotnik. 

In a VERY weird bit of exposition, Rotor says that they need to shut the machine down and that he knows the Gorillas will be glad to help them. Bunnie points out, however, that all the gorillas have mysteriously fallen asleep. Sonic asks how that happened and then Rotor explains he did it by putting those plot-device berries into the stew earlier. 

Like, Rotor, you’re the one who brought up that the gorillas would want to fight with them and then when Bunnie and Sonic say that they can’t because they’re asleep, you admit to being the one that made them go asleep? Why did you bring that up then? I’d understand if Sonic saw them sleeping and asked why but you kind of just brought them up as a viable option to help out knowing full well they wouldn’t be able to. Was that you trying to be funny?

Well, either way, they all come up with a plan and… it’s pretty simple. Sonic says he can destroy it from the inside no problem. Bunnie says that if Snively turns it on, Sonic will get destroyed. Sonic says than he’ll just have Tails distract Snively first. So they go do that. 

Snively has just gotten off the communication monitor with Robotnik, whose on his way to the jungle by plane. He tells him that he wants to board the Eco-Destroyer and observe the jungle’s destruction in action. Tails flies in front of the window and makes faces at Snively. Snively tries to zap him. He misses all his shots. Then Tails leaves.

Tails then flies down to Sonic who is holding a wrench, claiming to have loosened a few thousand screws on the inside of the machine while Tails was making faces at Snively.

When Robotnik goes inside and Snively turns the machine on, it collapses. Just like that.

The surprise Snively wanted to show Robotnik was the captured Sonic the Hedgehog but I guess Snively didn’t put it together that if Tails was outside making faces at him, it was possible that the fox arrived to help Sonic out of his bonds. Shrug. 

So, as expected, the gorillas thank Sonic for saving their lives. Sonic says that they’re all in this together and then asks them to say goodbye to Mobie for them since he ate half of the Mobius stew and is sleeping in the pot.

So the day has been saved, thanks to Sonic, Tails, Rotor, and Bunnie coming here by happenstance and thinking on their feet, with no established plan, to stop the Eco-Destroyer.

BOY! I SURE AM GLAD SALLY ACORN, OUR GLORIOUS AND USEFUL LEADER, STAYED BEHIND TO THINK OF A PLAN TO DESTROY THE ECO-DESTROYER! SHE SURE CAME IN HANDY AND PROVED HER WORTH!

Seriously though.

This story wasn’t bad or anything. It was fairly typical. I will say a lot of the elements within it ended up being a lot more pointless and underutilized than they clearly wanted. Those berries, as a plot device, felt like something that was trying to be relevant but by the end of the story served almost no purpose at all. I don’t know why Rotor randomly stopped to hold a magnifying glass up to these berries. I don’t know why a simple ambush on Sonic and Rotor couldn’t be done to get them captured. I don’t know why it was necessary to put the gorillas to sleep if the plan that Sonic and Tails went with didn’t require their help at all anyway. Their incorporation into the story was sloppy and as a plot device they were unnecessary.

However, one of the things that you’ll no doubt notice that I’ve been doing issue to issue is pointing out just how useless Sally has been. I think it just hit peak ridiculousness here though.

In this issue, literally ALL Sally does is tell the other Freedom Fighters to go into the jungle in two groups. She doesn’t give them anything specific to do either. Meanwhile, her reasoning for not going with them is that she needs to stay behind and think of a plan to destroy the Eco-Destroyer, a machine she literally just heard about and has never seen nor does she know the functionality of. How the fuck was she going to think of a plan to stop it without any actual information on it?

Well, turns out it doesn’t matter because that was the last we saw of Sally in this story. She doesn’t show up again. Sonic and Tails come up with a plan between the two of them and it works. The only way this could have been better is if they DID cut back to Sally and showed her asleep in bed or something. 

I’ve never felt more like this book was trying to validate that feeling within me that this Freedom Fighter system is a little less necessary than they want me to believe. Or rather, at the very least, it’s doing a good job of making me wonder what Sally’s point is now. She’s not been doing much leading lately and the shit they need to do has been getting done despite that. 

This isn’t even mentioning the fact that this is another issue where Antoine is a no-show. I don’t know if they know what to do with him at this point either, which is a shame because I actually like Antoine a bit.

I’m sure this all changes as we go on… maybe. I never really felt Sally was all that necessary in the issues I’ve read from 160 onward either but… maybe the book tries a bit harder from here on in? Hopefully it’s not JUST unhealthy relationship drama from this point on.

Mobie also wasn’t necessary to this story either. Despite his big hulking bod being heavily featured on the cover he didn’t DO anything except toss one Swat-Bot into another Swat-Bot at one point and release Sonic from his shackles. He doesn’t even show up until the final act of this plot line and after he does those two things he stops doing anything until he gets featured in the ending joke. 

So there you go. It was a very typical story with elements within it that present themselves as more important than they actually are. It wasn’t a badly told story by any stretch though.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #45 - Knuckles Quest 3: A Land of Dark, A Knight of Virtue!

We rejoin Knuckles on his journey to save Sally’s dad for her, because Sally’s too busy catching up on beauty sleep, where it looks as though Knuckles is a slave to a bunny lady. He’s delivering her fruit and everything!

Knuckles recounts how he ended up here. He and Tails received a dumb riddle from the Ancient Walkers. Knuckles fought children story illusions created by the charlatan, Merlin. Then he returned home to briefly fight Irish Knuckles in Issue 44. Then he went back to his island to break his vow to do this by himself by enlisting the help of the Chaotix. Then he left on his own anyway and got ambushed by the sorcerer and enchantress from the riddle.

With one look she controlled his will and now he’s the first in what he assumes will be an army of brainwashed banana peelers.

Knuckles runs through the riddle in his head and proves just how infinitely smarter he is here than he ever was in the games by dissecting it. He deduces that the enchantress isn’t that strong. He thinks over the part of the riddle where it mentions facing the sorcerer, enchantress, and a paladin and realizes he doesn’t SEE a paladin and decides that the part about needing to be patient is just him needing to wait. 

So he does that. He cleans and mops the floors. Helps the cat put on his cloak. Gives them food. He’s their slave for days before the wall is burst through and Sir Connery, the mighty crusader, enters with the intent to slay these vile heathens. 

Ah-ha. So it was Sir Connery. Called it. Granted, he was the only paladin character I knew the existence of so it might not be that impressive.

Anyway, Sir Connery raises his Sword of Justice and shines a light on them. This causes the enchantress to become distracted enough that if frees Knuckles from his mental bind. 

Instead of uppercutting the enchantress like he said he would, he dives fists first into the black cat sorcerer. There’s this weird scene where he steals this cats items and then pretends to make them disappear like magic only to have it revealed to us that he actually hid his stuff behind a trunk just so he could distract the sorcerer for an extra punch to the face. It’s weird.

I did kind of find it funny that Knuckles talked about initiating echidna magic and made up a bunch of nonsense magic words.

“Shahela Zumbee… to the Land of Gumbee!” he says.

Anyone remember Gumby? I do.

Old stop-motion was so relaxing and unsettling that it was kind of mesmerizing to me as a kid.

Sir Connery explains that he left the Royal Guard of King Acorn so that he could go on a journey to purge black magic from all the realms. How many realms? ALL of the realms. 

Knuckles asks if he got the sword from King Acorn. Sir Connery says that he got the sword from the Ancient Walkers. Knuckles says “Hey! Since I’m their number one boy, why don’t you join me?” 

Strange thing for Knuckles to say but alright. Sir Connery refuses because he’s got black magic to purge! He then drags the enchantress and the sorcerer away. Not before sending Knuckles to continue his extremely long goose chase to find this thing that hasn’t yet confirmed itself to be the solution they need by telling him to locate the Evil Mathias Poe and Damocles the Elder and tells him to NOT go to the cavern filled with chaos but to the OTHER caverns on the floating island filled with chaos.

Knuckles himself proclaims this sounds like another goose chase, which I agree, but is happy he doesn’t have to look far this time. 

I’m still not sure why people are speaking in riddles or why the location can’t just be given. Maybe it just wants to tick me off specifically. Well, I’m in this for the long haul. You can’t get me to stop reading now, no matter how hard you try. 

I survived Sonic Live you fucks.

[Polkadi~☆]

I always enjoy your reviews/retrospective, Mike! You have a snark about shoddy writing and strange art, and you’re brave enough to read through some of the worst in the series. Really, your posts are the only reason that I look at this topic! I can’t wait to see what you think of Endgame, heheh...

Just a side note, I found that there was a special that took place between #44 and #45, called Sonic Blast. That could be another to look at, if you’d like, as I can see you’re determined to read all issues!

[Dr. Detective]

7 hours ago, Polkadi~☆ said:

I always enjoy your reviews/retrospective, Mike! You have a snark about shoddy writing and strange art, and you’re brave enough to read through some of the worst in the series. Really, your posts are the only reason that I look at this topic! I can’t wait to see what you think of Endgame, heheh...

Just a side note, I found that there was a special that took place between #44 and #45, called Sonic Blast. That could be another to look at, if you’d like, as I can see you’re determined to read all issues!

I already know. I'm reading Sonic Blast right now. Thanks though.

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic Blast Special - Sonic Blast

That was a good comic. An inconvenient truth.

Welcome to Sonic Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Can you feel the bone chilling terror as these flickies come to fly directly in front of your face in two whole dimensions?

No? Too bad. You’re fired.

We begin with Robotnik’s face screaming at Snively through a screen. Apparently the television static is forming the structure of Robotnik’s face in a move I can only refer to as literal magic. He’s telling Snively that it’s of utmost importance that none of the Freedom Fighters hear what he’s about to say and tells him to make sure the scrambler keeps the communication from being intercepted.

Snively prompted begins work on vindictively doing the literal, exact opposite of that.

That’s right. The only reason the Freedom Fighters get altered to what Robotnik’s doing in this issue is because Snively sabotages Robotnik’s communication network on purpose for the sake of getting back at him for being stuck to his butt for days.

I don’t blame him. The lingering smell that comes with being stuck to the butt of a rotten egg? Let me tell ya… it ain’t over easy.

We cut to Rotor, Sally, and Tails who are indeed getting the signal thanks to Snively. Tails asks if Rotor is watching Mobius’ Most Wanted, seemingly very interested in watching a show about murder and death but no, instead it’s their next mission. Sally runs to go and find Sonic and we get this wonderful two page spread of Sonic chilling on the beach. 

Sally asks if Sonic’s okay and Sonic responds by saying that he’s actually been thinking about the stories Sally has told him about Knuckles.

Okay. So apparently Sally told Sonic about Knuckles off screen. Kay.

Sally immediately tries to no sell it by saying that it’s her job to keep quiet about certain things because she’s a princess. She then immediately gets to where she knows she’ll get Sonic good when she suggests she’s actually interested in a guy with blue bristles. Sonic thinks it’s him but I know for a fact that it’s Cookie Monster. Still, this doesn’t stop her from goading him to accept her kiss. Sonic gulps in horror. Not because he’s worried about kissing her but because she’s got the most gross looking puckered lips face ever.

Anyway, Rotor and Tails ride up to them and Sonic jumps back. Kiss averted. It’s the interrupted kiss troupe. Only difference here is that your mileage may vary on whether you care or not.

Sally tells Sonic to join them on their way towards Flickie Island. Sonic does that and Sally wishes them good luck. 

Yup. Sally’s not coming along again. This time she doesn’t even offer a reason. She says “Go with your fellow Freedom Fighters” and they peace out.

Also, by fellow Freedom Fighters, she again means JUST Tails and Rotor. That’s right. No Antoine, yet again. Bunnie’s not here either. 

This is getting bizarre. This is turning into a pattern. Sally stays behind and most of the focus is on Sonic, Tails, and Rotor. Bunnie is around, here and there. In fact, she’s got a side-story at the end of this special. However, aside from a one panel cameo joke, in which Antoine himself doesn’t even presently appear, there’s no scenes with Antoine yet again. He’s been gone for several issues now. What is he doing?

Well, we cut to Flicky island where Robotnik, crazy old fat man that he is, is busy monologuing to these flickies that can’t understand him. He’s very poetic. He goes on about how Flicky Island is a place where flora and fauna bloom with precious gemstones like rubies and diamonds. 

Holy fuck. If Rouge the Bat existed at this point in time she’d have a heart attack. Ian could have taken advantage of that during his Archie run if he wanted to. Too bad that she was regulated to second sidekick for so much of it after a certain point.

Robotnik, however, says that he has no desire for monetary gain. He wants their rarest of rare gemstones. A Chaos Emerald! He’s so excited to find one that he’s got a Chaos Emerald in each eye. He could just pluck those out of his eye sockets and he’d have a nice little set.

He goes on to say that the Flicky has no natural predators and as such they don’t fear or react badly to strangers. As such, Robotnik is able to literally pick one up and drop it into a portable Roboticizer. Out comes a metal flicky. 

The birdemic is about to begin.

Robotnik then scares an unturned flicky and then follows it. Apparently he thinks that doing so will make it seek salvation and thus lead him to the Chaos Emerald. 

I don’t know if I follow the logic but… this works so… I dunno.

We cut to the edge of Flicky Island where Sonic, Rotor, and Tails have arrived in time to see the flock of birds. Rotor thinks they look a bit weird. Tails puts on a headset to go check it out. Rotor tells him to be careful. Tails says he’s proven his maturity back in Downunda already and tells him to chill.

Then Tails gets attacked by a bunch of the metal birds and crash lands into the water.

He’s alright though. He gets fished out and says the only thing that got hurt was his pride.

It was a pretty amusing sequence. I’m a bit of a sick person who gets enjoyment from seeing cartoon children beaten up by metallic birds. 

That’s not all that strange though. I’ll tell you what's strange. The continued bullshit surrounding Sonic’s made up powers and move-set.

I know that this comic is set during a time where a lot of what Sonic is wasn’t clearly defined yet but there’s no reason things should feel THIS inconsistent. It’s very strange how Sonic randomly pulls powers out of his ass that we never see before and he never does again. An example is when he spun his fists and made two tornadoes spring from his hands like he was Jin the Wind Master from Yu Yu Hakusho.

Sonic does something similar again. Only this time it’s a very… odd representation of his speed. Like… I wanna say it skirts the line of suspension of disbelief but I’m not sure. Sonic is fast enough to be able to run on water so… 

… Well to explain what this is, the birds attack their little ships. So, Sonic reaches into the water and… the official explanation he gives is that he’s SO FAST that before the physics of displacement can take place he… rolls the water into a ball and then chucks it at the bird…?

I’d actually be more willing to chalk this up to a more intentionally ridiculous AoSth gag had the comic still retained it’s more AoSth feel from when I first started reading it (and the silly total time elapsed there at the end tells me that’s what they were going for) but it feels off here. I think the reason is because they’ve pushed the tone towards being a bit more serious than before. It’s not quite SatAM serious but it’s not quite AoSth silly so it’s doing this weird in-between thing that sometimes leads to strange things like this.

The explanation feels like it’s trying to explain something awesome he just did rather than painting it as a joke. 

… Sonic picked up the water and molded it into a ball and threw it at the roboticized flicky.

Before I can stay confused by this… somehow the Flicky turns back to a normal bird???

Then Rotor says “That clinches it! Salt-Water reverses the Robo-Mode of Flicky birds!”

??????????

So… first of all… Rotor says that like it was at all something that was in contention. Like, “That clinches it!” is a phrase that someone says after a long amount of deliberation over a subject that’s been tested and argued over a significant amount of time. Even if it’s five minutes, it would have been longer than the nothing we got.

Instead, Sonic randomly chucks a ball of salt water at a bird and it turns back to normal and Rotor says they cracked the case.

And it’s like………………………………… wat?

This isn’t even going into the fact that I’m pretty sure it’s never been said before that Salt-Water can turn off Robotization. Is it weaker because he’s using a portable version? The book never says that’s the case. If Robotization can be fixed by dumping salt water on people then that’s an impressive diffusion of stakes. Like holy moly. What a horrible plot point. What a dumb way to find out about it too. Jesus Christ.

So, Sonic jumps and saws his way to the shore to go find Robotnik. Meanwhile, Rotor and Tails grab a bunch of super soakers full of salt water and blast their way to the shore to try and fight the metal flickies off. This is a thing that happens.

Sonic’s already on the island at this point and he’s admiring the flowers blooming with gems before coming across a flicky and asking if he knows Robotnik. He even draws a picture of him in the sand. The flicky goes crazy and leads Sonic to where Robotnik is.

Where is he? He’s overlooking the giant ring from Sonic 3D Blast that you put the flickies in. It’s a portal to another dimension that houses the Chaos Emerald that Robotnik is looking for… he assumes. Again, he’s correct about all this so… I still don’t know how he knows this shit to be honest.

Anyway, he attempts to jump into the ring but Sonic football tackles him from the side, knocking him to the ground. Robotnik says that Sonic has interfered with him "for the last time" and shoots a particle beam at him. A cloud shaped like Sonic is left behind and Robotnik seriously thinks he vaporized him.

Of course not though. That was just a smoke cloud Sonic left behind from rushing away so fast. Sonic then does the very disgusting act of giving Robotnik a wedgie.

Sorry to say but today he’s going commando. That’s right Sonic. You just grabbed yourself a big mound of flabby rotten egg butt!

… Why yes, it DOES get weirder.

The two of them start to argue and bring their faces closer to one another… and then when they touch noses, Sonic gets electrocuted.

That’s right.

Robotnik set off a neural disruption field on him thanks to the off chance that he and Sonic did a nosey with each other.

I feel like I’m drunk despite not being someone who drinks.

While Sonic is dizzy, Robotnik jumps down the hole and ends up in an area that’s replicating a stage from Sonic 3D Blast. He’s in an egg robot with two metal arms (suddenly and without explanation) and punches Sonic in the face. We go through the maze like stage and end with the robot destroyed and Robotnik laying on the ground, supposedly beaten.

Sonic gloats by tugging on Robotnik’s cape and Robotnik responds by gloating that his cape is super special awesome as well.

His cape comes to life and snakes itself around Sonic, wrapping him up into tight binds that completely subdue him.

Okay, seriously though, where is all this shit coming from? His cape can do this? Doing a nosey with Robotnik sends volts of electricity through your body? Sonic can throw water balls at people like Mermaid Man and Jimbei from One Piece?

I’m reminded of one of my favorite lines from Jackie Chan Adventures whenever Uncle explains literally anything to Jackie; “You’re making this up.”

So, Robotnik walks up to the nearby stone statue of a giant flickie bird and plucks the emerald right off of it.

The stone flickie opens its eyes and gets super angry at Robotnik. I guess he didn’t figure the emerald would be well guarded by a race with no natural predators. Can’t say I blame him. I still probably would have had a contingency plan just in case. I’d imagine just grabbing a Chaos Emerald and leaving would never be so simple.

Robotnik runs and tries to head for the golden ring he came in through. The ring is, however, shrinking as time elapses. I’m not entirely sure why. I’m guessing because the emerald was taken? The comic never says this is the case so I’m assuming it’s literally only happening to create tension.

Sonic gets an idea and makes it sound way more smart and scientific than it actually is. 

“That’s it! If I vibrate at maximum speed the atoms in my spines will pass through the plaidmantium cape!”

The atoms in his spines will… wha-?

Sonic rolls around on the ground and his spines rip through the cape for him. That’s what happens. I don’t understand why they felt the need to make that sound more complicated and technical than it was. He applied force to it and it broke apart.

Sonic zips up and smashes against Robotnik’s tummy to bounce back through the ring and ends up on Flicky Island again. Robotnik is about halfway through the ring when he does this and realizes he’s about to get stuck. He asks Sonic for help.

Sonic laments being the hero and pulls Robotnik all the way through but Robotnik’s arm is still on the other side, being enclosed by the ring. It’s also the arm that happens to have the Chaos Emerald in it so he refuses to let it go and let his entire arm through. Thankfully, a flicky on the other side pecks at his arm and makes him go “YEOWCH!” so that his hands falls out and the ring closes all the way.

Sonic says “Good! It had to be a Flicky bird!” 

Robotnik asks what’s so good about it? He lost a Chaos Emerald! Sonic says that he means that the flickies must have escaped into that ring and are now out of his reach. Robotnik brings up that he still has a roboticizer and tons of robo-flickies left…

...But then Tails and Rotor show up and exposit all the shit they did off screen. Tails drops the scrap metal from his now destroyed roboticizer in front of him and calls him “Chubbs” while doing it. Rotor explains that they de-roboticized all the flickies and had them all go back through the ring before destroying it. His entire plan just got foiled and he cries.

Even crueler, Sonic, Tails, and Rotor ride off the island. Robotnik tries to call out for them, even waddling into the water after them saying that Sonic destroyed the Exoskeletal Battlesuit that flew him here (I’m guessing that robot Robotnik fought him in that showed up out of nowhere) and that if they leave he’ll be marooned on the island.

Since this island only grows gems and jewelry from it’s plants and all the flickies are gone, there’s nothing to eat. He’ll most likely die if he’s got no way to communicate with Snively either.

Sonic doesn’t take this chance to capture him or anything. He just laughs and says they’re gonna leave him on the island by himself.

Robotnik screams out “I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG!” and the story ends, supposedly with Sonic and the gang crueler laughing about letting Robotnik starve to death, alone on an island. 

Now, he most likely gets off of it but I’m just letting you guys know that this is totally what our heroes did. 

Ahhhmmm, yeah. This was cute. I actually liked this more than what I read last time. There were a lot of confusing logic fallacies with this story but honestly, it’s all pretty negligible. There’s nothing much to get up in arms about. 

Sonic Blast Special - The 1st Annual T.U.F.F Awards

This is a gag story. It’s a very odd one though. I actually didn’t get that this was supposed to just be a stretched out 6 panel gag until half-way through it.

The whole thing can be summed up by these two panels.

And there you have it.

It’s an ego-driven ceremony that the Freedom Fighters created to celebrate themselves in front of a large crowd of people who won’t be getting any awards. Thankfully, it all goes wrong and just ends up embarrassing everyone.

Sonic is about to read off an award he’s going to give to himself, “The Fastest Freedom Fighter” but the video shown is of Sonic sleeping. Rotor explains that Sonic goes to fast to catch on film so he got a video of him “Fast” asleep. Ahahahaa…~! WHOOO!

Bunnie is the strongest freedom fighter because she can open a jar of jam. Tails is the bravest freedom fighter because he’s fighting off a mosquito with a fly swatter. Antoine is the most loyal because he’s being caught on video saying he knows who ate all the doughnuts but promising to never tell while belching. Sally is about to be awarded the Smartest Freedom Fighter but she unplugs the monitor and kills the lights of the show.

Sally says she’s proving she’s the smartest by ending this horrible show, which is the best joke of this two page interlude.

Sonic Blast Special - Bugged Bunny

Here’s a story about Bunnie Rabbot. 

It starts with her sleeping in the middle of the forest with Robotnik and Snively dressed as leaves, standing in the bushes over her.

Yeah that sounds about right.

Snively explains that they’re here to place a tracker on Bunnie so that they can follow her and have her lead them back to Knothole village. They needed to dress up as leaves to camouflage themselves. Sounds… logical, I guess.

Bunnie wakes up and immediately heads off. She runs into a place where weeds have grown enormously huge. She stretches her limps and starts walking through them. Snively suggests they go around them. For some reason, Robotnik gets angry and claims that’s nonsense and insists they go THROUGH the huge weeds that they can’t see through.

I’ve no clue as to why. He’s got a tracker on Bunnie. Going around the large as fuck weeds wouldn’t impede what you’re trying to do…

Well, he makes it through the weeds but some animal snaps and bites at his butt. Because karma.

Bunnie hops across a lake filled with rubber plants (???) and Robotnik follows her. He jumps too hard and the bouncy plants shoot him into a tree and it’s funny I suppose. This is, I wager by the title, some sort of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd thing but it’s not as creative as those cartoons were.

Bunnie jumps over a cliff gap to land on the other side. Robotnik… doesn’t decide to do the Wil E. Coyote thing and follow her. Instead, he realizes that the tracker will lead them to Knothole anyway so they decide to head back to Robotropolis and get out of their dumb leaf costumes. Sounds reasonable enough.

Unfortunately, when Bunnie landed on the other side, her tracker fell off. Then a gopher ate it and burrowed underground.

The ending panel is Robotnik and Snively digging in the ground for the location of Knothole well into the night. Fairly clever way of having his plan undo itself. I will say that these trackers need a better sticky adhesive if Bunnie’s jump was enough to knock it off her.

So that’s Sonic Blast. It was cute. Except for all the times when it wasn’t.

[DabigRG]

3 hours ago, SBR2 said:

To try and get off the topic of Shadow Ian tweeted out his original plan for the Metal Virus in Archie. https://mobile.twitter.com/IanFlynnBKC/status/1165702486382043138

Just goes to show you not to toss ideas. You can always use them somewhere. 

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

I'm kinda having a chortle here. 

On one hand, that planning guide for what we would see in the comic is obviously a bit messy.  On the other, that sort of shorthand would immediately register with the genius who made it and I can't say I've never done something o the sort. 

So I went ahead & did some brushing up for context. By filling in the blanks, I think the trajectory was something like this:

[Look out down below]

Guess this lends credence to his implication that the IDW Metal Virus was somehow related to Null Mind

 

 

Here's my translation as a proper part of this post:

• STH 288-291 Genesis of a Hero/Classic Quadrilogy Adaptation
• SU 95-98 Freedom Fighters
• STH 292-295 Branching Paths, Sonic-Man Heroes, SegaSonic Arcade Adaptation, and ???
• SU 99-102 (Probably something special)
• STH 296-299 ???
• SU 103-106 (Probably Team Rose fixing Nicole)
• STH 300-302 (Lead in to Metal Virus)
• STH 303-304 Sonic Vs Maw plus Brain Trust Backup Arc
  • 303 Sonic & Tails > Maw P1; (Rotor > Breezie P1)
  • 304 Sonic vs Maw > Infected & "Dead" P2 ; (Rotor & Nicole P2)
• SU 107-110 Blaze & Bunnie vs Null Mind
  • 107 Bunnie & Blaze P1 Blaze Null; (Sonic & Captain Metal)
  • 108 Blaze Lure P2, Null Retreat; (Sonic Escape Captain Metal)
  • 109 Vs Captain Metal I Quac)(?), Find Null Core P3
  • 110 Bunnie Goes Deep, Sees Past, Blaze Frees, Sonic Infection Protects, Null Escape to C.M. P4
• STH 305-308 Patient Zero On the Move
  • 305 Sonic "Dead", Tails trying to remain ConEIDNT(Confident?), + Shijin Warrior vs Zombots, Contained, Sonic Calls-He's OK! (Nicole & Phage P3)
  • 306 Sonic & Tails B Desert Raiders P1, Vs Zombots > Vs Sonic (Rotor & Tails > Rotor & Breezie P4)
  • 307 Sonic & Tails Retreat/Nephthys Contains P2 (Rotor Broadcast P5)
  • 308 Sonic & Eggman Vs Zombots, Egg Bosses Leaving > Zavok (Sally & Antoine > Cassia/Clove P1)
• SU 111-114 Antoine Search for Swords 
  • 111 Antoine P1, Cassia/Clove_Blowout, Get Sword, (Sonic & Eggman)
  • 112 Antoin P2, Cortez in lead, Leave N(?), Get Sword > Avalon, (Sonic & Egman)

[Big Panda]

Still barely understand a word, but great job.

[DabigRG]

50 minutes ago, Forgetful Panda said:

Still barely understand a word, but great job.

You're welcome.

I admittedly took your request a bit literally and just typed out what was on the paper; I was basically jumping between three or four separate story lines after all. 

It can be reinterpreted later.

EDIT: 

Let's try this again

STH 303-304 Sonic and Tais go to Red Outback Zone(presumably) and fight Maw, ending with Sonic getting infected and seemingly dying as a result.

STH 303-307 Backup: Rotor, Nicole, and later Tails confront Breezie and later Phage, presumably due to discovering their connections to Eggman and try to find out what he's planning with the Metal Virus. Upon doing so, Rotor sends out a broadcast about what they learned.

STH 305 With Sonic presumed dead, Tails tries to remaind "ConEIDNT"(Confident?) as he helps the Shijin Warriors fight and contain Zombots in Yurashia, after which Sonic calls to let him know he's okay.

SU 107-110 Blaze and Bunnie continue to go after Null Mind after he returns, eventually finding his Core and forcing him to escape to CM(Captain Metal?). Meanwhile, Sonic somehow ends up in the clutches of a rebuilt Captain Metal(for some reason) and ends up having to fight him alongside Blaze(?), which involves him and/or his infection somehow "protecting" or something. Also, Bunnie gets trapped/whisked in something before eventually being freed by Blaze and this causes her to see the Past, presumably her/Null's backstory.

STH 306-7 Sonic and Tails help the Desert Raiders fight Zombots, which ends with Sonic & Tails retreating while Nephtys presumably contains the Zombots.

STH 308 Sonic and Eggman either team up or encounter each other fighting Zombots. Meanwhile, the Egg Bosses start leaving(?) and Zavok shows up, presumably near the end.

STH 308 Backup: Sally and Antoine end up crosses paths with Cassia and Clove, presumably after either going to do something with Wolf Pack or perhaps in an attempt to gain their assistance with the Zombots.

SU 111-112  Antoine goes on a search for some special swords: Part 1 features a "blowout" with Cassia & Clove, while Part 2 has Cortez get involved by taking the lead, which presumably motivates Antoine to leave N(?) and head to Avalon. 

SU 111-112 Backup: Sonic and Eggman do something presumably related to the Metal Virus.

[Big Panda]

For those who might have missed it, Ian said in a follow-up to that tweet that, should he ever get the chance to continue with the Archie continuity at some point, he’d do something completely different now (since there’s no point in telling the same drawn-out story twice).

If that were to happen, by some miracle, what direction would you want the series to go in should it continue?