Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[SBR2]

3 hours ago, therealfalconpawnch777 said:

I have heard people say that, several times throughout my life. It's either an older phrase or regional dialect, but is not something to point out as strange at this point. There's plenty of other stuff in this issue that needs scrutiny.

I'm just saying it's a very odd phrase and I've literally never heard anyone say it.

[Polkadi~☆]

14 hours ago, E-122-Psi said:

Sonic and Sally wouldn't even interact AT ALL for about twenty issues following this case, such an overhaul of plot points happen keeping them separate, Sonic supposedly spends the whole time thinking Sally still hates his guts.

Stories written by Bollers following the slap still has Sonic and Sally interact. Yeah, Sonic thinks Sally hates his guts and is ready for an argument whenever she approaches... but the perspective is surprisingly different on Sally's end, where she gets upset when the topic of them arguing or her own parents comes up in the conversation (read the issues before and after the slap, Sally is in a rough place). She still cares about Sonic, even if Sonic understandably can't see that. A backup story written by another writer has Sally introspectively observe that she was in the wrong and that she needed to talk about her feelings to Sonic instead of bottling them up and exploding.

There seemed to be some kind of character arc regarding Sally and the relationship she has with her parents that Bollers was trying to write. But, like a lot of things Bollers introduced in the timeskip, it got ignored once Bollers left. It wasn't so much that it went unresolved, but he wasn't around to resolve it, and other writers just forgot about it. Or other writers do remember, but they only remember the slap and nothing else.

 

Can't say the same for Penders. To make a sweeping statement, he can't write women.

[E-122-Psi]

1 hour ago, Polkadi~☆ said:

Stories written by Bollers following the slap still has Sonic and Sally interact. Yeah, Sonic thinks Sally hates his guts and is ready for an argument whenever she approaches... but the perspective is surprisingly different on Sally's end, where she gets upset when the topic of them arguing or her own parents comes up in the conversation (read the issues before and after the slap, Sally is in a rough place). She still cares about Sonic, even if Sonic understandably can't see that. A backup story written by another writer has Sally introspectively observe that she was in the wrong and that she needed to talk about her feelings to Sonic instead of bottling them up and exploding.

There seemed to be some kind of character arc regarding Sally and the relationship she has with her parents that Bollers was trying to write. But, like a lot of things Bollers introduced in the timeskip, it got ignored once Bollers left. It wasn't so much that it went unresolved, but he wasn't around to resolve it, and other writers just forgot about it. Or other writers do remember, but they only remember the slap and nothing else.

 

Can't say the same for Penders. To make a sweeping statement, he can't write women.

Nah, I don't mean the slap, I mean the conflict in this issue with Sally blaming Sonic for her father's injuries. Despite the scenario being cleaned up to her pretty early she doesn't really bother to talk it out with Sonic and they spend a huge time afterwards elaborately separated from each other. It seemingly only existed to galvanise Sonic's hasty actions throughout this arc.

It does kinda make Sally feel like a 'jerk-sue' as a by-product sometimes in this era, that she has so many lashings out and arc and writer shifts prevent her having to mend things or even having to so much as say a simple "sorry". It just gets ignored and the story moves on. Even for the slap it really felt like Ian only felt obligated to resolve it at last because fans weren't gonna let that one go. Sally is usually someone who calls out other people's misgivings after all, not the other way round.

A more remorseful take on her who had her temperament acknowledged and had an agency in mending it could have done a better job alleviating her uglier moments. Instead these moments are just sort of....things. Infamous things.

Hell, this was a problem that existed about her since the VERY FIRST ISSUE. The story sides with the notion that Sonic and Antoine screwed up her plan to sabotage the roboticizer, despite the fact that to set up this plot, she has to keep them in the dark about the plan for no reason besides huffy temper. This one was at least a badly written gag story though.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Goodness, it really is a different story when I look back at these Issues I used to love reading as a kid. They’re certainly different when you look at them with a quality eye when you’re older.

Really goes to show that Sonic sells no matter what tho.

Also makes Ian’s work stand out even more when he takes control later. A lot more—if he hadn’t spiced things up before the reboot, I can’t say I’d feel the same way about them as I would later down the line before Worlds Collide.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #90: Sword of Omens

This isn’t a terrible cover but Mina seems a bit… overly-anime girl here, if you catch my drift. The camouflage green is doing it’s job rather well though. They really do blend into the cover. Sonic looks fine. His ears are a bit odd looking but whatever.

Spoiler

Karl Bollers is in charge of this first story with James Fry and Ron Lim on pencils together. Interesting combination.

This scene begins where we last saw Sonic, going through the woods with the Sword of Acorns in hand. He’s a lot sharper than one is likely to give him credit for, of course, so he immediately recognizes that he’s being watched and demands the person show themselves… only to be greeted by Mina Mongoose.

It’s here where Sonic and Mina have their first real conversation with one another since the last time they spoke. It’s interesting how Mina is choosing to cope with her losses here because it kind of feels like she barely is. Sonic, appropriately just refers to her as a girl because he doesn’t immediately recall meeting her. He’s mostly just telling her to be careful and stuff but Mina really doesn’t care about being ambushed by robots or anything. She figures it’d be better to get captured so she could at least confront Robotnik about why he destroyed her life.

Unfortunately for her, she’d be given an unsatisfactory answer. The man is just insane so unless she’s ready for the answer to be “Just Cause” I hope she’s willing to just go back to babysitting…

She does get teary eyed when explaining this to Sonic and even mistakes his look of concern for a look of “what a wimp” as she calls it. Then she’s seriously about to chew this hero out for having the Sword of Acorns when it belongs to the king, not assuming a knighted soldier would be given a circumstantial opportunity to wield it on special occasion, right before they get ambushed by Combots, just like she wanted. Supposedly.

Eggman is gloating about the thing he just did back at his home base. He brings up, conveniently at the same time, that the Sword of Acorns seems to be able to restore Uncle Chuck and Muttski. I guess he was told this by his robots considering he wasn’t there for this brief interlude with the king. He then is seemingly contemplating doing something about this while looking over Uncle Chuck.

At this point, the only thing that would make sense to do is destroy them but… again, what do I know?

We then cut back to the Acorn Family, all together in a row and happy once more… that is until Max attempts to get up and join the queen. He can’t move his legs. Just then, Dr. Quack waltzes in and says “I’m sorry but Max’s kingly boots are no longer going to be made for walkin’.”

No, before he can explain what I already know from having read way ahead, we cut back to Sonic who has the Sword of Acorns taken from him via robot magnetism and Mina almost kidnapped on the side. After a few confusing lines of dialogue, he rescues her… until he doesn’t because the camouflage part of the Combots comes in to be disruptive.

They turn invisible and then beat the shit out of him before turning visible again. It’s a great tactic. He should probably exploit it more often.

Mina picks Sonic up and charges off, going way faster than she apparently seems to think she should be able to. This means something has… possibly awakened in her? I guess?

Anyway, we cut back to the hospital where we see Dr. Quack leading Geoffrey into the room of doom and gloom. For some reason this image here amuses me greatly.

Don’t know why.

It’s interesting how when Dr. Quack was first introduced, he was being presented as this super cool dude, for whatever reason. I don’t know why Penders wanted his doctor character to be seen as hip and cool with the kiddies but now he’s just the guy who tells us what's wrong with the characters when they get hurt so I guess things didn’t turn out quite how he wanted it to.

Anyway, we’re in part two of this story now so I don’t know if the Ron Lim part of the penciling has overtaken things here but the art has taken a nosedive. When Elias gets the news that the king is paralyzed from the waist down and has to be a temporary head of state, his head inflates. Not in ego, he definitely doesn’t want to do this. I mean, literally, his head inflates.

Also, for some reason, the speech bubble of Hershey addressing Geoffrey says “What? Are you sure Hershey?” which obviously means that Geoffrey and Hershey are cosplaying as each other someone got the names confused because they look and sound similar.

Anyway, Geoffrey tells the king that the Sword of Acorns was stolen because, I guess, Sonic just took it without telling anyone. So, I take it back. Mina probably had more of a right to be upset with Sonic than I figured. Stupid me, thinking that he ran it by the kingdom before he ran off with it. Here I was thinking they just said “Yes, good idea. Go do it.” and then Sonic went to go do the thing.

Sigh. Always expect the drama. Always.

PFFFT! What?! Okay then. So THIS just happens, randomly. Yeah, sure. I guess we need the Combots to retreat…?

Geez. First a random Earthquake and now… I guess two meteors or something are headed for Robotropolis. Damn. Maybe staying in this spot isn’t worth it Eggman. I’m not saying you need to give it back to the Acorn Kingdom of course. Blow it up and move out. Apparently they picked a bad spot.

Mina tells Sonic she lost the sword when he woke up, which means that not only did Sonic take the sword without telling anyone but he also lost it to the Eggman Empire. Wow. This is a bigger deal than I thought it was when I saw Sonic leaving with the sword last time. They made it seem like the cliffhanger was “Who’s watching Sonic in the bushes?” when they really should have emphasized the act of Sonic taking the sword more. 

To be fair, I probably wouldn’t have cared still but I’m at least recognizing the friction that this could cause.

Sonic immediately zips off to try and nab the sword. Eggman, at the same time, heads outside to observe the situation as his combots return. He really wants them to hurry the fuck up before those two meteors hit. He almost has a heart attack when he sees Sonic.

The Combots face Sonic down again, going for the cloaking device maneuver, but now Sonic just watches their footprints and manages to knock the one with the sword down with ease.

Unfortunately, half of its body gets cut in half by the forcefield around Robotropolis that Eggman just put up, with the top half still holding the sword. As such, Eggman just walks right up and snatches the sword away, leaving Sonic to deal with the two meteors heading right for him.

So, that was a fairly straight-forward tale. I’ll say it was pretty good, despite the nose dive in art quality the second half took. Although, to be fair, the first half didn’t look as good as the other James Fry stories I read before.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #90: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

We’re back with our prison guards, alleged writer Mr. Ken Penders and Steven Butler on pencils again. 

We actually begin after the cliff-hanger from the last part of this story. Yanar is being helped up by his fellow echidnas while Gala-Na is observing the fact that the Snottigham Mayor, or whatever his name is, has already been defeated… and there’s no sign of Knuckles. Odd.

Antoine and the rest are trying to reach where the action is and eventually Rob has to use his bow and arrow to zipline them down so they can join the fray. He does this by first insisting that they dress up as firefighters before charging in.

Rob is the best, ladies and gentlemen.

This was a good first couple of pages but I was quickly reminded that this was a Ken Penders story soon after. When these heroes burst through the fog, they come across Gala-Na and her group as they’ve finally found Knuckles amongst the smoke. He never left the area but the reason there’s so much smog is because it’s the afterglow of his Super Saiyan Ultra Instinct transformation.

Meet Green Apple Knuckles everybody.

Now, I knew somewhere down the line this was coming… I just didn’t know where. I had been given a hint that Penders was going to have Knuckles usurp Super Sonic’s spotlight in the Perfect Chaos fight so I naturally assumed it would happen there but all that ended up being was a Spider-Man rip-off.

No, instead, it’s happening here. It didn’t really have any proper build up as far as this particular story goes. The focus was more on a collection of characters with different issues to resolve so I guess he was correct in assuming I wouldn’t have expected this to happen now. Though, the decision to have this happen off screen is odd.

There’s not much to say about this now. They bring up Dimitri and the Chaos Syphon again and my eyes kind of glazed over reading about that but the important bit is the fact that Knuckles never aimed a Chaos Syphon at himself so why is he like this? Antoine suggests it was passed down through the family but Knuckles blows that off seeing as how this has literally happened to no one else but him before.

One, considering a ton of his history was kept secret from him until now, I doubt he should feel confident in knowing that. Two, this is obviously just a by-product of your dad microwaving you as a baby and turning you into a mutant because he had a context-less bad dream once. A bad dream that, by the way, I recall having Robotnik’s face in there somewhere and not only does Robotnik not look that way anymore but Robotnik is someone whom the echidnas have actually refused to offer any assistance in taking down. I feel like Locke’s methods of handling this getting worse and worse in hindsight is just an inevitability at this point.

The High Sheriff gets up because he’s not done being a bastard and slaps Antoine across the face when he tries to appeal to him as his son. Gala-Na tries to rally the troops, as it were, so they can obliterate him but Knuckles vetoes that by freezing the High Sheriff into place and waiting for Antoine to explain whatever plan he has. 

This next page has nothing but problems with it so I’m posting the whole thing.

So… even though we weren’t shown this, Antoine’s group just flew across the globe to stop by where Rotor was, apparently knowing full well where he was despite being kicked off his home by his hypnotized family and saved by that group's Freedom Fighters. We didn't get any follow-up to that so this is leaving us with no choice but to assume a lot and fill in a ton of gaps.

Then Rotor just… handed them a device that does this convenient thing. I.. guess he took it with him to help with the effort to saving his family or he built it super fast for them when they showed up… but he had this thing and he gave it to them and THEN they flew to Mercia. 

I… I feel like it would have been far more appropriate had this been hinted at a little bit. It’s not as though this was sprung on Penders out of nowhere. This is part two of this story right? You don’t need to show them going to Rotor but at least drop a line about it. At the very least do that. 

Second, uh, why has Gala-Na’s character skyrocketed to bitch mode? She was definitely not like this before. She wasn’t militaristic before. She wasn’t this paranoid before. She sure as hell wasn’t red before. What happened to the mysticism and the desire to be in tune with nature? Albion is supposed to be this paradise that’s free of the turmoil and strive of the politics and army bullshit that plagued the echidnas before. That was the entire point behind this place. This place looked over all the other echidna shit going on with Echidnapolis and the Dark Legion and shook its head in pity at it.

NOW Penders just decided that this place is just ANOTHER one of those? I actually had a bit of respect for this place and for this character despite the cringy Jesus allegory stuff that was being attached to it because of that. You know, at least they weren’t doing that other shit. Now they are and it’s awful.

I guess Penders just doesn’t want me to like any of these echidna groups.

She’s so unreasonable and so willing to murder this poor guy’s dad even though they’ve found a more than acceptable solution. They’re even offering to literally take him away from you and she’s acting like this one dude is the biggest of all evil plagues upon the world that ever existed. 

It’s some guy’s dad who was turned into a robot. Get the fuck out of here.

Anyway, Knuckles says NO and then the story just decides to end.

No one knows what Knuckles did by shouting NO but it magically fixed everyone’s problems for the sake of this awful author’s convenience.

Antoine and Bunnie are magically flying away with Antoine’s dad in the backety back seat.

Amy and Rob are just alone in the forest back in Mercia, I assume.

Gala-Na and her forces are standing there muttering over the fact that they didn’t get to kill that guy. Gala-Na is also muttering some shit about Knuckles’ powers awakening and whatever the fuck. She’s a bitch now so who cares. I guess this is the direction he wants to take her. Now she’s just a boring bitch with an awful attitude and a much less discernible design.

Well, that’s it and that’s all for this one. The first story was a perfectly fine, typical Sonic adventure and sometimes that’s all you can ask for. The second story was more infuriating Penders nonsense. It’s probably extra frustrating that he took a semi-respectable character and decided to downgrade the fuck out of her. I didn’t love her or anything but I at least respected that she wasn’t what she is here. Now she is what she is here and it's fucking terrible. Good job.

 

Sonic X - Issue #11: No Thanks for the Memories - Part 2

Goodness, gracious, these covers are so good it hurts. This is fantastic. I could only ever dream of being able to create something like this, my god. It would take forever to point out all the excellent details strung about this thing so I’ll just give it it my badass seal of approval and get to the content. Spaz is wonderful.

Spoiler

The issue begins with Sonic, Amy, and Knuckles falling through the new location while arguing about the merit behind Sonic’s desire to save them from a tyrannical mad man. Or rather, it’s mostly just Knuckles who's got problems with the way Sonic’s handling things. This is a reminder to everyone that this was back during the time when Knuckles was an actual rival to Sonic as well as someone with more of a cautious streak to him rather than just someone with a frothing desire to punch shit.

Although it's funny, at the time I recall complaints about how Knuckles being an idiot were at their peak here despite him being portrayed as the most focused on his duty to protect the Master Emerald than ever. I can’t help but shake my head, looking back on it, wondering how they would have reacted to Boom Knuckles. 

That said, Knuckles’ position isn’t one I’m in agreement with here. Obviously, that’s fine. Friction between characters is a lovely thing that keeps things interesting, which is why I still welcome things like this. The comic kind of sums up Knuckles’ position near the beginning of Sonic X as “Whatever’s happening in there, it’s Sonic’s fault.” which is a funny way to boil that down to. 

Anyway, Knuckles bangs his head against the bottom of the fake Eggman’s Eggmobile and is made to look dumb and helpless so Sonic and Amy have to drag them off.

Back with Grandpa Chuck and Chris, the sulking over being alone again, despite still having people around him, commences for a bit before Chuck points out that the Master Emerald’s energy signal is on his tracking device so they go to look into that.

Meanwhile, Sonic is now an expert at how Classic Sonic works so he hands Knuckles the rings that allow you to take a hit and tell the others to not bother chasing after Eggman because they won’t be able to catch him. Then they release the next character from the capsule.

Bursting out like a bat out of hell.

They all fall through the floor into the next level. When I saw this level, I had trouble identifying it because I’m so unversed in the levels of the classic games. I thought it was Hydrocity for a second there because of the water and had to look up the stage because that didn’t seem right. When I saw that it was the Labyrinth, I didn’t feel as stupid as I thought I would. From a glance, the major differences seem like a change in color when you’re not playing the stages. At least to me.

They come across the Fake Eggman and do the boss fight associated with it. It’s a cute page.

So at this point, this plan has thoroughly confused me a bit and it would seem as though I’m not alone on that front because Bocoe and Decoe confront Eggman on the merit behind his plan and try to ask the simple question, “But why tho’?”

For all intents and purposes it doesn’t seem to make much sense. We see Eggman literally playing this game. He's trapped Sonic and his friends in and right off the bat I’m wondering how this thing functions. Is he playing as all the enemies and minions in the game? If so that would be kind of sick. I’d love to play a Sonic game like that. 

Eventually, Eggman lays out his plan when the confusion emanating from his robots becomes too much for him.

So yeah, it’s a stupid plan with a dumb reason for persisting but it’s fun so who cares? Bokkun is eating Eggman’s nutball crunch!

After this happens, they make it into the Starlight Zone stage where they finally come across Tails. I was wondering when they would. It seems weird that they’d leave him so close to the end but I guess it was just the random order of things. A part of me wondered if they were going to go into Sonic 2 and then he’d show up. It did tickle me a bit that Tails even mentions how long his stay there has been.

Chris and Chuck fly towards the old base that they thought had blown up in that really awesome two-parter where they invade Eggman’s base and blow it up. The fact that it’s somehow just here again is a little disconcerting and a little silly. Eggman is presumably playing the game inside here and is going on about how the heroes are almost out of energy and it’s going to help his Eggmoon plans when they are. I really don’t understand how. Out of all the preview connections to actual things that happened in the show, this one is the most nebulous. Also, Eggman claims that the sprite he uses in the game is of his grandfather… I guess Classic Eggman is Gerald Robotnik when he was younger here?

The heroes save Vanilla, Cream, and Cheese from the Scrap Brain Zone and then move onto the Final Zone to take on that annoying final boss fight that crushes you if you don’t get lucky enough. 

However, Eggman didn’t count on Chris and Chuck finding his old Beachfront Base. They head inside and see Sonic and the others strapped to a row of tables with headsets on their faces, with a device connected to the Master Emerald. Chuck wakes Sonic up, Sonic wakes the others up, and grabs the Master Emerald before the base launches into space.

Also, yes, as has been pointed out, Angel Island is still floating despite the Master Emerald having been taken. 

So that’s that. Game Over.

I do appreciate the helpful summary at the bottom explaining where the story is going next thanks to its desire to spread itself throughout the show. The real tragedy is the fact that they’re out of ice-cream though.

That was just as good as the last issue as far in it continuing to do the same thing the last one did and it did it just as well. This was a cute little excursion for an anniversary that’s long since past. After said anniversary, nothing would ever be the same again though. Let’s not think about it too much and move on. I’ll admit to being interested in returning to Area 99 again.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #91: Crash

This cover is fine. I don’t have a ton to say about it as its just two people plastered over it. One of them looks fierce and intense but by the nature of who this character is, its hard to get too excited by it. That doesn’t mean this’ll be a bad time necessarily. Let’s get into it.

Spoiler

This first story is by Karl Bollers with Ron Lim on pencils here. Things look a little wonky here at the start where we see… Rotor? He’s climbing some rocks, saying he’s almost back to Knothole and sees the meteors crash against the dome of Robotropolis. How close to Robotropolis is Knothole? If it was really this close then that puts into question how secret that place could have been for a genius like Robotnik. 

Also, why is Rotor here? Why is he just randomly climbing some rocks by himself? Didn’t the others in Antoine’s group have to stop back at the Arctic place to get a device hand delivered by him just a little while ago? Why is no one explaining things about him properly? I have no idea what the authors are trying to do with Rotor anymore.

He meets up with Mina who is looking for Sonic and then they find Sonic immediately. He then no sells the cliffhanger of the last issue by explaining that he escaped by using one of the many quick and easy ways to escape.

Yeah, I didn’t mention it because I felt the need to give the comic the benefit of the doubt but that was a pretty weak sauce ending for the last issue.

“Now that those meteorites have fallen and killed Sonic to boot--!” is the line we open on with Eggman when we cut back to him. This truly is an older version of this character. It’s hard imagining he would think those things just killed Sonic nowadays.

Then… uhm… a really confusing scene unfolds here. First, he grabs the Sword of Acorns with the intention of seeing if it can really restore Mobian minds. That’s fine. It seems like an appropriate precaution to take… but then he waves it in front of Uncle Chuck and Muttski and nothing happens… and for some reason he gets mad? Almost randomly, he screams in anger about how his Combots were destroyed which is portrayed as a thing he just now recalled.

Then, he says he’s gonna use the sword to instead strike down Uncle Chuck and Muttski… and then just tosses the sword at their feet and leaves, claiming it’s not as satisfying without Sonic to see it. While that’s true, I’m not sure why he would EVER just TOSS the fucking SWORD OF ACORNS on the ground like that? Also, if Uncle Chuck regained his lost free will, why would he show that to Eggman? Plus, if it didn’t work, why risk it working by leaving the sword in their presence and then leave it behind on top of that? I could buy him holding off because he wants to kill them in front of Sonic. At least that’s an explanation for why he hasn’t destroyed them yet but these other actions are self-destructive for no reason.

Geoffrey shows Elias where the Sword of Acorns was stolen. For some reason Geoffrey feels the need to convince Elias that the sword was targeted specifically, using the line “Does a pirate steal a treasure chest to purloin a single gem?” 

I mean, in the world of Sonic probably. That one gem could be some magic item that creates infinite pizza or whatever right?

Nate finally enters the hospital room to see Max in bed after having heard the news. After parroting the obvious bit about his foolish decision to head into battle, Dr. Quack suggests they let Sally’s mom go out and see things aside from the depressed white walls of the hospital room.

Sonic tells Mina and Rotor to fuck off and goes into the base himself. Arachnis, all of a sudden, comes down and snatches the sword away with a yoink, leaving the obviously free Uncle Chuck to lament its loss but ultimately not see it as a big deal. Because, yes, obviously if he got his free will back he wouldn’t show it to Eggman. I’m not sure why Eggman keeps assuming things like this. Like, when he sees the sword is gone he doesn’t even question it. He goes “OH NO!” and then calms down and asks why he would care since the sword didn’t even work.

Like, even if you had no need for it, the bargaining chip the Sword of Acorns would afford you is nothing to sneeze at. Also, hey, a magical sword is just GONE. Someone clearly must have stolen it. You’re not concerned that someone broke in? Not even a tiny bit?

Mina and Rotor return to Knothole, with Rotor wondering why Mina was with Sonic if she’s not a Freedom Fighter. Then after Sally has a moment with her mom, we cut back to Sonic who is being ambushed by mind controlled Robians rather than Combots. That gives Sonic the desire to run… so he does. Chuck watches him go and is left in the position he was in way near the start of the book. 

This feels like a massive retread. I can only hope this whole “Uncle Chuck as a Spy” thing doesn’t last too long.

Anyway, Sonic comes across the things that crash landed and it turns out they weren’t meteorites. Again, that was something I suspected seeing as how Eggman’s computer said they were unidentified objects and he just randomly assumed they were meteorites.

They’re Saiyan pods and they open up leaving Sonic stunned as Vegeta and Nappa step out to destroy the w--

So anyway, that was that story.

Meh.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #91: Hired Guns

Back in Ken Penders land with special guest, Steven Butler, Nack and Nic the Weasel are back…! 

They’re here to try and capture Knuckles. Look out my boy. You’re in danger… maybe.

There was a scene where Nack was trying to get a girl and then when Nic showed up she assumed he was married and smacked him in the face. It was stupid. Anyway--!

They realize that the job is risky but they move on anyway in Nic's new ride.

It’s literally just the Millenium Falcon. 

… I’m trying to envision these two as proper Han Solo types and it’s not working. Nevermind the fact that just having a ship that looks like this and not providing a proper explanation for why just makes this stick out like a broken, sore thumb. It’s almost too stupid to make fun of.

They’re not headed for Angel Island though. She doesn’t say where but there are plenty of other places where slimy echidnas hideout.

We cut back to Knuckles who is spelling out the ridiculous plot that just randomly, finally came to fruition last time. He’s been turned into a living chaos emerald by his dad.

It’s so fucking dumb. 

It’s here, several pages in, where he decides to put the title of the story in too.

Nack and Nic get their ship caught by some technical field or something that takes control of their ship and makes them land safely onto Albion. At first, when I saw this, I thought the people of Albion had caught wind of what they were trying to do and were about to stop them. Then I thought that this was merely a security measure where they captured any ship that flew over their island, which would be a massive dick move but not one I’d say they wouldn’t attempt at this point.

However, when the echidna from the control center welcomes them into Albion and then the two of them just waltz in and take a seat to get debriefed by Gala-Na on what the deal with Knuckles is, it dawns on me that Gala-Na literally hired two assassins to track down Knuckles. 

She says when she leaves that they’re just a ruse so that they can locate Knuckles and then deal with him themselves. I have to question why these two assassins would be able to do that above you guys and your machinery. I also don’t admire the passive nature with which she’s just willing to do this. She does mention doubling their reward if they bring Knuckles back alive but Jesus Christ, what a stipulation to have to make at all.

Why? Why do we need more asshole Echidnas? We couldn’t have ONE society of echidnas that weren’t awful? Fuck me.

Yeah, that issue happened. I don’t really have much to say about it. Eggman being incredibly oblivious was a little frustrating. The return to the status quo of Uncle Chuck being a spy wasn’t appreciated. The scenes with Sally’s family were unnecessary. The Knuckles story continues to be trash. It’s all par for the course really.

 

[Cuz]

You're finally in the era where I started seriously following the books (I mean, I went and back ordered a crap ton of stuff then, but this is were I the books were up to at the time). A lot of fond memories here, even if it does take a lot of soap opera turns about now. 

 

[thumbs13]

The X comics having to write around the show leads to a lot of weird bits, honestly.

[Silvereyes]

It is a bit weird the X comics contunity. Eventually by the back 20 issues I think they just give up and have them all set right before Sonic and co leave Earth. I like the X comics, some of them are really funny, but I also kindof wish they took the opportunity to make the comic as the "fourth season", take place after season 3's events. Basically do what IDW are doing in the aftermath of Forces. I don't know, I assume they just wern't allowed to do that? Still, the X comics do have some real gems.

[SBR2]

Spoiler

Quote

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Issue #90: Sword of Omens

Give me sight beyond sight.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

This isn’t a terrible cover but Mina seems a bit… overly-anime girl here,

Yeah...I'd say get used to that. It's 2001 now and the kids love them annie may's so Archie's gonna bank on that.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

they get ambushed by Combots, just like she wanted. Supposedly.

In other news Combots still exist apparently!

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

We then cut back to the Acorn Family, all together in a row and happy once more… that is until Max attempts to get up and join the queen. He can’t move his legs. Just then, Dr. Quack waltzes in and says “I’m sorry but Max’s kingly boots are no longer going to be made for walkin’.”

The Acorn Royal Family. The most cursed Royal Family in all of Children's media.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

he rescues her… until he doesn’t because the camouflage part of the Combots comes in to be disruptive.

Seriously I thought these guys were destroyed. They last appeared in Endgame and haven't been mentioned since.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

For some reason this image here amuses me greatly.

Aw, shit. We're in Ron Lim town. There's no turning back.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Anyway, we’re in part two of this story now so I don’t know if the Ron Lim part of the penciling has overtaken things here but the art has taken a nosedive.

I mean those are basically the same thing. But seriously though I think it was split so the first part of the story was done by Fry and the second by Lim. Also I probably won't stop dragging Ron Lim. I just don't like his pencils. On anything.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Also, for some reason, the speech bubble of Hershey addressing Geoffrey says “What? Are you sure Hershey?” which obviously means that Geoffrey and Hershey are cosplaying as each other someone got the names confused because they look and sound similar.

I think it was supposed to be attached to Geoffrey actually.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

PFFFT! What?! Okay then. So THIS just happens, randomly. Yeah, sure. I guess we need the Combots to retreat…?

Remember those Spaceships they've been showing off and on? No? Well it's time to resolve that.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Wow. This is a bigger deal than I thought it was when I saw Sonic leaving with the sword last time. They made it seem like the cliffhanger was “Who’s watching Sonic in the bushes?” when they really should have emphasized the act of Sonic taking the sword more. 

Yeah they should have had a scene of Sonic stealing the sword without anyone noticing before the last page but eh, what are you gonna do they have like 16 pages to work with for the lead story at this point.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

He does this by first insisting that they dress up as firefighters before charging in.

Rob is the best, ladies and gentlemen.

Man Fire Force Season 2 looks great.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

No, instead, it’s happening here. It didn’t really have any proper build up as far as this particular story goes. The focus was more on a collection of characters with different issues to resolve so I guess he was correct in assuming I wouldn’t have expected this to happen now. Though, the decision to have this happen off screen is odd.

I will say this much Penders technically did set this up. He's had characters talking about how super uber powerful Knuckles is for a long time and has been including bursts of his power since I want to say the Election arc of the Knuckles comic and the last major one being the Spider-Man rip off (Knuckles' has Chaos Emeralds in his eyes during that which was hinting towards this). So it's noit like it hasn't been built up...but it does still come right the fuck out of nowhere here. Luike you said this story has barely even been about Knuckles hell it hasn't even been about Angel Island exploding and it's so weirdly underplayed. Knuckles is a Chaos God now but just see how big a difference that actually make.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

This next page has nothing but problems with it so I’m posting the whole thing.

So… even though we weren’t shown this, Antoine’s group just flew across the globe to stop by where Rotor was, apparently knowing full well where he was despite being kicked off his home by his hypnotized family and saved by that group's Freedom Fighters. We didn't get any follow-up to that so this is leaving us with no choice but to assume a lot and fill in a ton of gaps.

How...much time passed between Antoine, Bunnie and Amy Leaving and this backup story? Seriously the timeline/reading order I always say always depicts the Sonic and Knuckles stories in these issues as being concurrent but I don't think that's actually possible.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Second, uh, why has Gala-Na’s character skyrocketed to bitch mode?

Ooh I know! Because none of the Brotherhood are currently around and he needs some Echidna to be a dick to Knuckles for no obvious reason.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

sulking over being alone again, despite still having people around him,

FEEL BAD FOR THE RICH BOY! FEEL BAD FOR THE RICH BOY!

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Then they release the next character from the capsule.

I'm like 99% certain that's a boob joke. Which is funny because Tracy actually didn't draw Rouge all that busty yet.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Eventually, Eggman lays out his plan when the confusion emanating from his robots becomes too much for him.

Ooh, Event Comic references let's see what we got. Secret War. Kingdom Come not an Event comic but ok. Both the original Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis nice. And of course House of M. Maybe the Ultimate Marvel line too but either way bravo Mr. Edkin.

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Also, Eggman claims that the sprite he uses in the game is of his grandfather… I guess Classic Eggman is Gerald Robotnik when he was younger here?

This is weird. I think it's an actual misconception people have or had before Generations. That Classic Eggman was Gearld since he is more regularly referred to with the Robotnik surname. That of course ignores how Eggman and Gamma and the citizens of Station Square regularly refer to him as Dr. Robotnik in Sonic Adventure but whatever.

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Also, yes, as has been pointed out, Angel Island is still floating despite the Master Emerald having been taken. 

I still don't get that. I don't think Joe understood how the Master Emerald and Angel Island work.

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Things look a little wonky here at the start where we see… Rotor? He’s climbing some rocks, saying he’s almost back to Knothole and sees the meteors crash against the dome of Robotropolis. How close to Robotropolis is Knothole? If it was really this close then that puts into question how secret that place could have been for a genius like Robotnik. 

Also, why is Rotor here? Why is he just randomly climbing some rocks by himself? Didn’t the others in Antoine’s group have to stop back at the Arctic place to get a device hand delivered by him just a little while ago? Why is no one explaining things about him properly? I have no idea what the authors are trying to do with Rotor anymore.

Again how much time has past? This is the same day Antoine and co left right? How the hell is Rotor back? Jesus Christ communicate writers!

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

They’re Saiyan pods and they open up leaving Sonic stunned as Vegeta and Nappa step out to destroy the w--

Too bad it's Sunday. Though it's Monday when I'm actually commenting on this but...

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

There was a scene where Nack was trying to get a girl and then when Nic showed up she assumed he was married and smacked him in the face. It was stupid. Anyway--!

Why does she assume she's his wife? They look identical.

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Nevermind the fact that just having a ship that looks like this and not providing a proper explanation for why just makes this stick out like a broken, sore thumb.

What do ya mean. She says she got it from an old boyfriend. Clearly Nic used to date Han Solo which honestly is something I'd expect from Legends continuity. (Incidentally this is sarcasm)

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

We cut back to Knuckles who is spelling out the ridiculous plot that just randomly, finally came to fruition last time. He’s been turned into a living chaos emerald by his dad.

It’s so fucking dumb. 

It’s here, several pages in, where he decides to put the title of the story in too.

It's times like this where you realize Penders was writing these six-seven page backup stories as if they were full 22 page issues of Knuckles the Echidna. The book being canceled  was little more than an inconvenience to him. 

 

[Dr. Detective]

On 9/28/2020 at 11:23 AM, SBR2 said:

  Hide contents

I will say this much Penders technically did set this up. 

 

I know. Thats why I said "as far as this story goes". This particular issue of the book wasn't really focused much on Knuckles' ascention nonsense, thats why, here in this story about finding Antoine's dad, the payoff for all that stuff happening here felt random.

I didn't need a reminder of all the set-up Penders has done. As I say in the post, I was anticipating this for a while.

[SBR2]

21 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I know. Thats why I said "as far as this story goes". This particular issue of the book wasn't really focused much on Knuckles' ascention nonsense, thats why, here in this story about finding Antoine's dad, the payoff for all that stuff happening here felt random.

I didn't need a reminder of all the set-up Penders has done. As I say in the post, I was anticipating this for a while.

Fair enough. I do agree that it is super random that it just kinda happens. They could have had Knuckles randomly pulsating with power throughout the story or something to indicate it was about to happen. But no we have to spend a lengthy amount of time on bullshit with destroying Gala-Na's character.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #92: The Wrath of Khan

I’m shocked, nay, stunned that it took this long for them to make the Star Trek joke. Who could have seen them holding off until issue 92? Not I. I do like how, on this intense looking cover where Khan has exploding laser like eyes, the bottom just says "Also in this issue: Sonic Shuffle." Wonderful. The cover is fine. Coincidentally, Ian Flynn made reference to this issue of the comic on this week’s Bumblekast. He said it was terrible.

Spoiler

This is another Karl Bollers story but the pencils and letters are by Michael Higgins. Alright. Someone I haven’t heard of again. Please. They’ve gambled on a new artist and lost. I’m begging you, let this one be good.

Nevermind. I should have known that this isn’t a wish I’ll get granted for a long, long ass time. 

We begin on a lone figure trudging through a wasteland for three-hundred and fifty two… hours. Now that’s a lot of time and a very specific amount of time but usually when I hear a big number like that, I expect the unit of time to be way longer. Like weeks or months. Or even years. 

I guess I’m just too used to really ancient motherfuckers.

We cut to Eggman, suddenly really pissed off that the Sword of Acorns is gone when last issue he tossed it away and when he found out that it was gone, asked himself why he cared. Now, I guess, he’s suddenly realized the advantage having the sword brought him. Oh Eggy. How your whims change from issue to issue. It’s very unbecoming of a genius like you.

Anyway, the humans… I mean, Overlanders (sigh) in that panel above are responsible for those UFOs that landed outside of Robotropolis. They were space crafts and inside of them were goofy looking humans with stupid names. One of them I think I know, one of them I definitely know, and the other two I’ve never met before. 

Three of them get named first here. Lady Agnes, which whenever I hear the name “Agnes” I think of “Angus” like “Angus Beef”. 

Cheddermund… there’s legit a dude named fucking Cheddermund… okay…

Then there’s Hope Kintobor, our little angel from the future issues of the book that ends up having a lot of meaningful interactions with Snively in plot points far better written then what I suspect I’m about to read here.

I have to assume the main dude is Eggman’s (Or the deceased Julian’s) brother whose name I’ve forgotten.

Sonic gets spotted by Hope and is called a wild animal. She runs to grandma and before Sonic can be handled by these soldiers, a robot shows up and tries snatching them away, which sends Sonic into action, destroying and rescuing them.

Back at Knothole, Geoffrey’s still pissed that the sword is gone and has decided to head outside and scream at people until, I guess, something happens to make him happy. Then Mina does something hilarious. 

The fake coughing fit when Rotor brings up Sonic saying he needed to get back the sword happens and it ends up being the thing that gives her away.

I’ll admit, I do rather appreciate that.

Eggman looks on the monitor and sees to his utter surprise, his brother Colin (that was his name. I knew it was something generic and unexciting like that) is here, just outside his city. Although, he roboticized his Colin from the alternate dimension he came from but he’s gonna… do it AGAIN! Yes, it’s so EVIL! Doing things AGAIN! BWAHAHAHA!

Anyway, Sonic tries to warn the people that they’re not safe and is clearly not attacking them and saved them from a dangerous robot so, certainly he’s earned himself a little of the benefit of the doubt… except no he hasn’t because Overlanders are racist AND dumb.

The instant someone else shows up, whose human… err… Overlandian (I guess) and says something totally opposite to what Sonic says, this Colin dude is seemingly about to immediately believe him. To be fair, Eggman’s probably banking on the fact that he no longer looks like the dead Robotnik to trick them, which would explain why Colin has no reaction to seeing this holographic face of his brother. He doesn’t even look the same and he’s technically a different version of him anyway. Sonic turns around when someone responds to his suggestion that Eggman is lying about him being a danger, which very neatly puts him into his Sonic Adventure pose.

And then Monkey Khan shows up looking like a caricature of a bad late night talk show host.

What’s even funnier is that on the next page, when Part 2 of the story starts, not only does he look completely different but the foreshortening takes a massive dump all over the page. 

Unless Monkey Khan is supposed to be transforming into a giant, I’m not sure why he suddenly becomes huge here. Also, the soldiers behind Sonic have taken to dancing like this place is the Boogie Wonderland. 

Khan tosses a spear through Eggman’s hologram and Eggman uses that as leverage to prove they’re dangerous and ushers them all to race to Robotropolis. Not only will the Safetybots, or whatever he called them, not throw spears at you but they’ve got freshly baked cookies made by Squidward's mom!

Back at Knothole again, Geoffrey’s screaming and threats aren’t working on Mina so instead, Hershey tells him to leave and then politely asks her for information and then promises that the thing she’s worried about will become a non-issue. That works. 

Huh. Interesting how people are more willing to cooperate when they’re not being treated like some sort of safety hazard. 

Also, there’s a weird bit here where, when Geoffrey finds out what he wants to know, he says he could kiss Hershey and Hershey, in her mind, is asking why he doesn’t do so already… which… I dunno. I guess that’s the start of their relationship now? I know that becomes a big deal later on.

Anyway, we cut back to Robotropolis where Khan is trying to go ham on the city… but Sonic is trying to stop him because there are Overlanders in the crossfire. 

The Overlanders get fearful when they see the Swatbots but Eggman’s hologram proclaimed them to be… Protectorbots. Yeah. That’s it. Protectorbots.

Then Colin wipes their fears away by telling everyone to listen to his brother Julian… so… I guess there goes my theory that he was listening because he wasn’t aware of who he was.

Now, I know in most cases it’s usually smarter to listen to someone who you do know personally than someone you’ve just met BUT the difference here is that Julian Robotnik was a Robo-Hitler who fucked up the home of the Overlanders and then proceeded to take over the world…? You yourself weren’t a fan of him and he definitely wasn’t a fan of you so I can only assume that common sense loses to abject racism this day.

That’s not my only problem with this scene. The dialogue between Sonic and Khan is a bit rough here. Khan wants to destroy Robotropolis and, on literally any other day, this would have been fine but these Overlanders landed here right the fuck now which means Sonic’s gotta save them from his rampage. That’s all well and good but when Sonic asks why he’s suddenly trying to kill Eggman, Khan tells him that Eggman just burned down his village and roboticized the survivors.

Sonic’s response is “Join the club”.

… That’s a headdesk moment right there. Not the best thing to say to a rampaging monkey with superpowers if the intention was to de-escalate the situation. That’s not even accounting for how insensitive that is overall.

We get a bit of a strange, kind of pointless full page scene where Rotor and Tails meet up and do a high-five… and that’s it. Next page.

We see Queen Alicia sitting and talking with Sally about everything that’s happened in her absence. She’s lamenting having missed Sally’s whole childhood which is funny since she’ll have to "join the club" on that one seeing as how her dad was banished into the Zone of Silence and Elias was stuck with the echidnas. 

We then cut back to the fight with Khan where Sonic is trying to rush by him now to save the people, which he probably should have just done regardless of Khan being there honestly. If he had zipped by and rushed them away one by one, and was careful to avoid Khan’s blasts, he probably could have managed it.

But now he’s struggling to do so in the "Wrath of Khan", as it were, with dialogue that, need I remind you, is really kind of terrible.

What the actual fuck does this even mean?

Anyway, Sonic fails.

The force-field dome comes up again with the Overlanders that Sonic was trying to save trapped inside. Sonic tries to scream at Khan about how it’s all his fault but Khan is clearly ignoring him because he wants Eggman’s roton ass on a platter.

Then we end on the bit that I should have seen coming but secretly hoped wouldn’t happen for the sake of what little sanity I have left… the part where Sonic screams Khan.

Oh my God. How embarrassing.

He’s looking a lot more Sannik than Sonic in this picture too. Geez.

This story could have been good but the art and crappy dialogue just kind of made it really not-good. I knew Khan was coming, I just didn’t know in what way, and honestly I’m okay with this development so far. I just… need it explored in a good story now.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #92: A Sonic Shuffle Tie-In: Premonition

I misread the title of this story as “Promotion” which was probably the fault of me recognizing it as a promo for the game. Either that or I had AoSth Robotnik on the brain. 

Either way, it’s Penders and Ron Lim again, here for some… meh.

Anyway, since this is based on Sonic Shuffle, it’s a tie-in to one of the few Sonic games I’ve never played before, nor seen the cutscenes of. I have no idea what happens in this game. I just know it’s a party game and there’s two characters named Lumina Flowlight and Void in it. That’s it.

Here’s Lumina.

Sonic’s impression of her is that she’s a figment of his imagination brought upon by him eating too many chili-dogs. What a first impression.

Unlike some of the tie-ins in the future comic issues, these are still being treated as though they’re happening within the story proper of the Archie comics, which is why Sonic asks where Sally and the other Freedom Fighters are. It’s strangely specific that it was just Tails, Knuckles, and Amy that showed up there with him. Almost as if the franchise considers them main characters on a grander scale in terms of the franchise than his comic book and TV cartoon pals. Almost.

Interestingly enough, I think the Archie comics do this for a while. Sometimes they have the game’s canon separate, but I recall the Rush and Riders story being something that very easily were used to tie in to the Archie books while promoting the games. 

Yet, in other instances, like Rush Adventure, Unleashed, Black Knight, Colors, and Generations, they were just disconnected side-stories at the back end of certain issues that acted as re-written versions of the opening cutscenes to the games. 

The one for Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood served as a prequel though, showing how Knuckles got captured. Sonic and the Secret Rings had a comic that came on a disk with the game under a certain condition. Then Lost World also had a prequel comic that told you nothing. 

So yeah, they haven’t all been consistent. I don’t even know if Heroes or Shadow got one or if the elements of those games were just woven within the comic without a promotion. I know there's a slight SA2 adaption coming up but I don't think it's going to be handled the same as the Adventure arc based on what I've seen. I also haven’t heard of one for Sonic 06 but who cares?

Anyway, Lumina shows Sonic the Precioustone and it’s a crystal that’s made out of dreams or some shit. The evil Void wants it. It’s not a Night into Dreams rehash. Void is not Reala. Shut up and don’t think about it.

Void touched the Precioustone and did the horrible thing of turning precious creatures into carnivores… and the carnivores into…? 

Also, the grass is receding. Like in the Lion King where Scar was such a shitty king that nature didn’t even want to be around him and then it returned once Simba came back.

The place is called Maginaryworld and for some reason, I don’t know the reason, I keep thinking of Bobobo-Bobo-Bobo whenever I read that word. It’s such a random ass thought. I wish I knew why I was having it.

Anyway, Lumina goads Sonic into doing what she wants by saying he’d be going against his nature as Sonic to refuse her. It’s an appeal to his ego and his sense of self, which despite her happy, friendly smile, is an impressive manipulative technique to get him to do what she wants. 

Now, to save Maginaryworld, we’ve got to rush to the stores and buy Sonic Shuffle. I’m so interested in what happens to this place I’ve just been told exists and is in danger.

This was fine actually. For all my jokes, it’s just Penders scribbling down a summary of what you’ve got to do in Sonic Shuffle and he does it well enough considering the task. No one really cares about this. Not even people interested in these games really give much of a shit about the comic promoting it if it’s just a side-story at the back of the book. Maybe a little interest exists when the game is still an enigma but it loses that luster when the game is out and 20 years go by.

Not a particularly good issue. The first story was hampered by horrendous art and frustrating dialogue. The ending page of said story was so embarrassing it nearly sucked the soul from my body. The second story was a Sonic Shuffle tie-in that I honestly had more tolerance reading than the main story, partly because it was easier to look at despite it still not being drawn that well, but also partly because it was just a simple summary of an existing game’s plot and it’s open-ended nature means I don’t need to commit it to memory. Thank Christ.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #93: Crime ‘N Punishment

This is an awful cover. Parts of Sonic look okay but others look mangled and broken. Sonic’s weird, wiggly, Xehanort fingers look gross and painful. However, the big fail is Sonic’s horrifying mouth. Don’t stare at it for too long. The rest is just people pointing fingers at him. Overlanders and at least one Mobian are to be precise, with the others just looking on. I guess this is another one of those issues where Sonic’s public enemy number 1. Well, so long as we’re treading old ground, we might as well do this again.

Spoiler

It’s Karl Bollers on writing duty and James Fry on pencils here. It's been a pattern of Bollers being in charge of the first story and Penders being in charge of whatever fanfiction he wants to write on the second story for quite a long while now. I wonder if that status quo might change soon. So far, aside from the Sonic Shuffle tie-in, it’s been a Sonic story to lead us off and then a Knuckles story to end on. I guess because those two are the only main characters now. The Sally family drama is happening in between these pages sort of at random. Every time we’ve been cutting back to Knothole, it’s been for about a page or two.

So yeah, anyway, like I said, we’re treading old ground here. Sonic’s beating himself up for letting the King get clocked on the head while he was busy rescuing Elias (which is a fairly good reason to be distracted seeing as how that was literally the mission) and has lost the Sword of Acorns (which is entirely his fault so… yeah). 

I didn’t ask this before but I’m not sure I understand how the king getting punched in the head by a robot made him paralyzed from the waist down. I’m not a doctor so maybe it's possible it works like that. I dunno.

Sonic comes back to Knothole and lands in a pointless net that Geoffrey set up and should have known from the jump that Sonic could and would (and does) easily spin out of. Geoffrey is placing Sonic under arrest for stealing the sword and Sonic brings up the mistake of them thinking he murdered Sally back in Endgame and then Geoffrey admits to making a mistake then but he’s totally right this time.

Sonic, actually being wrong this time, just says he doesn’t answer to the Skunk. Then Elias shows up and says he answers to SOMEBODY though right?

I mean, he got Knighted. He should answer to somebody by virtue of that alone really. It’s not my personal preferred flavor of Sonic. I do appreciate more the guy who has no master except the wind that blows free and the guy who isn’t afraid to kick kings off their thrones if they’re being evil dicks that are gonna destroy the world… but I understand. This is just where things got started and continuity dictates that it continue that way unless… I dunno, they want to disrupt the status quo.

To be fair, early in the comic was when they could have probably done that and gotten away with it. However, by the time Ian Flynn comes along, it’s definitely too ingrained within this book as a part of this version of Sonic’s identity. Trying to do so probably would have been met with a lot of resistance. 

Maybe.

After a brief scene of Holographic Meatloaf Eggman lying to the Overlanders about how safe they’ll be and how he’s gonna give his dear brother Colin a special suite all his own, we cut to Kodos who has the Sword of Acorns.

No joke, I legitimately forgot that he had the sword. This didn’t happen that long ago either. I just don’t care about Kodos. Probably even less than I thought.

Back with Sonic, he’s speaking with Elias side-by-side in a friendly chatty manner. However, Sonic wishes to speak with Sally and Elias says whatever he has to say to her has to go through him instead. Sonic, daydreaming about his apology to Sally in a really cheesy panel, refuses to say anything and leaves. Geoffrey tries to scream at Sonic to show respect by Elias holds him back, saying to let him be. Why? Cause Elias is a good boy.

We get more of Sonic’s pity party of one until, from behind, he sees Mina rushing in at him.

They collide. 

RUN!

CRASH!

DERP!

LAUGH!

“Do-Me Eyes”

Someone interrupts them.

That was the scene that just happened. 

Hmmmmm. It would seem this relationship is blossoming just a tad bit more. 

You know, I do have to say, I admire how slowly this is happening, quite a whole lot. It would seem that Bollers isn’t taking to the idea that Sonic is setting his eyes on another girl and is just like “We’ll be smooching by morning”.

It’s been a while since Mina’s introduction and so far the two have managed to hang out on occasion and have just reached 'sideways glance' mode. That’s an impressive amount of patience.

He’s interrupted by Antoine and Bunnie holding the restrained High Sheriff. They want to know who to take him too and then Nate shows up to solemnly drop the bombshell on them that the king is paralyzed from the waist down. Sonic’s immediate line after hearing that is “All my fault” followed by Bunnie, hilariously going “Whatcha talkin’ bout Sugah hog?”. 

It’s like they did the Shaft thing but on accident.

Nate sits down with Sonic and is about to tell him something that was so obvious that I was saying it myself about how the king was kind of dumb for leading the charge on a reckless mission like that… but Sonic races off before he can finish, apparently having caught wind of something. It’s funny because this is seconds after Sonic lamented blowing off Elias about something else in his depressed screed.

Sally is being told by Geoffrey that Sonic stole the sword and no one knows why. Before Sally can freak out, her mom tells her to stay calm and let Elias handle it. She even says he’s got the aid of St. John so of course there’s no need to worry. Alicia has been out of the loop for quite a while because having St. John as the aid isn’t too comforting a thought.

Case in point, the instant they’re out of earshot, Geoffrey just turns to Elias and tells him he sucks at being a leader. Now it’s only been… what… like, maybe a day? I don’t know how Geoffrey is so certain of this but maybe he can just tell because Elias is a good person and it takes a major asshole to be king and take on kingly duties behind the scenes. 

Luckily, Geoffrey is an asshole so he’s got this covered.

Now, what's interesting about this scene is the fact that Geoffrey’s actually right in a number of places here.Despite not having nearly enough info to know if Elias is actually good at this or not, being able to pick up on him not being a good pick is pretty easy. He was isolated from all this stuff for far too long and on top of that he doesn’t even WANT the flipping position in the first place. Sally is the one who held down the fort all this time. It should rightfully go to her but it isn’t because her dad IS stuck in his old man ways… and also, everytime Penders gets a crack at writing for Sally, he makes it so that she agrees with whatever her daddy says in the end, openly admitting to being wrong and feeling ashamed for standing up to his royal pain in the ass.

What’s interesting on top of this is how this feels like a tactical play on Geoffrey’s part. This is a long ways off from the reveal that he was secretly working for Naugus (the thing that made him a good character suddenly) but so casually making a deal with the acting king to just… BE the one making the decisions behind the scenes is a very manipulative play. That’s probably not the intention here but it’s amazing how well it works with what I know happens down the line. 

My sympathy remains with Elias here of course. I’m in full support of him escaping the shackles of his “destiny” or whatever and being free to be like Sonic. Well, like a version of Sonic that isn’t this one. 

Oh yeah, Arachnis steals the Sword of Acorns from Kodos while he’s sleeping. I guess he only handed it to Kodos to pretend like he was still on his side? Or maybe he literally just changed his mind? Who knows? Who cares? Who the hell even is Arachnis to us, really?

Back with Eggman, Colin is being all buddy-buddy with him as best he can but Eggman wants him to stand back for fear of “germs” and then inquires about his family.

So… Colin remarried after Snively’s mother passed away but his second wife “didn’t survive our STAR TREK” (actual dialogue) and now he’s left with Lady Agnes, who is his mother in law, and Hope who is his stepdaughter.

… Then the scene just cuts away. Very strange way to end that scene, I must say.

Sonic is shown racing back to Elias in order to massage his guilt.

Aww. He looks so sad.

Sonic actually hands out his wrists, expecting handcuffs, but Elias says he’s not going to arrest him because he’s a hero. He, however, must still be punished so his knighthood is being revoked and he’s going to be confined to Knothole as a minor.

That’s right. OFF to the daycare center with you!

We end on Elias pointing at Sad Sonic and making this decree while Geoffrey looms behind Elias’ back. I will say that if all that was Geoffrey’s idea, he showed impressive restraint in not arresting Sonic. Then again, he definitely knew how that was going to go down. Not well.

This first story was much better than the story of the last issue. I’m not sure where Khan went. It kind of seems odd that he would fly away from Robotropolis when the dome came up but if he did, I can only assume he’s searching for a way to gather more power to tear it down?

Either way, this development with Elias and Geoffrey is the biggest take away from me here. I enjoy this quite a bit. I can only hope our good boy finds what he’s looking for.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #93: Bagging the Big One

Here’s our Ken Penders story… and this time, it’s 100% all Penders. This story was written by Ken Penders. It was penciled by Ken Penders (eww). It was lettered by Ken Penders (get ready for a ton of bolding). Also, it was colored by Ken Penders.

Oh dear. Oh dear. Ohhhhhhh… dear.

So, not a page in and I run smack-dab into a problem.

Saffron.

It’s another design change for her, one of many that will permeate throughout the book as a never ending cycle of not knowing what design this character they’ve created is supposed to have.

Also, the fact that the page opened on them discussing what children they were gonna have when they get married is kind of nuts. I guess because they’re teenagers it’s slightly better but the knowledge of what Charmy’s canon age in Heroes and beyond is kind of skeeved me out for a bit. My fault, I know. 

Thankfully, the light of their green apple lord and savior, Knuckles the Echidna, comes down from on high. He’s green, like the fucking Grinch, yet again, and is here to visit. 

Now it’s time for the second problem; arguably the biggest for a self-respecting artist and writer worth their salt, the fact that these backgrounds are stock photo images. YET AGAIN!

What’s weird about this page in particular is that the final panel’s background isn’t really projecting the same thing that was to the side of Charmy and Saffron as the panel right above them was. It’s incredibly distracting looking at this in general. It’s like something off of a William Street Adult Swim show, only nowhere near as charming or as funny.

Nack and Nic are watching this whole thing go down and Nack stops Nic from firing at Knuckles, knowing it’s not going to do anything to him and figures they do it in, somehow, a more underhanded manner. 

More underhanded then sniping him in the back? Okay then. I guess if anyone would know, it would be the echidnas Nack.

Knuckles is busy telling Charmy what happened, which leads to this glorious image.

Like… I couldn’t imagine putting something like this out there and not being embarrassed by it. Hell, he’s still okay with doing shit like this to this day. That image of Lara-Su from the LARA-SU CHRONICLES IN ALL CAPS has her standing on a photo of a waterfall too. 

It just gets worse from there. Nack approaches Knuckles, Charmy, and Saffron and has a chat with them that quickly goes south when he threatens to snipe the bees from afar via his partner should Knuckles not go with them quietly. 

I’ll admit. That IS more underhanded. Good job Nack.

This scene, however, looks horrendous. It just keeps getting worse to look at.

God, like, I know Charmy mentioned his retconned ability to grow bigger to Knux, but it’s still weird how he’s basically the same size as him in this pic. It wasn’t even that way back when this was revealed.

Nack taunts get interrupted when Yanar and Gala-Na show up, having interrupted Nic from taking her shot so that they could confront Knuckles themselves. She’s going to leave him at the mercy of the Chaos Syphon in an attempt to drain him of his energy.

So that’s that. 

These assholes paid Nack and Nic to find Knuckles. They got their money and Knuckles is being restrained and is, supposedly, about to have the thing we’ve been building up to for however long sucked from him. Yeah sure. I’m sure this’ll go without a hitch and there will be no repercussions whatsoever.

This is a very odd story.

Well, that comic was actually fairly enjoyable until it became the Ken Penderp Show at the end. Elias is a good character and one who’s sympathy rests with me. I’m truly hoping to see the outcome of this development concerning his standing as king. I’ll admit to being less interested in seeing how Sonic overcomes his sadness since I feel like this situation regarding him is treading on old ground, just a bit. However, it’s nice seeing him be so humble and open to punishment for the very stupid thing he did. 

Obviously, fucking obviously, the Penders story was garbage from king garbage of the garbage dynasty. I don’t know how Archie allows him to get away with that embarrassing stock background bullshit. How are we past the time of Sonic Adventure and still lacking in quality control? My God. 

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #94: New Order

What’s this? We’ve been mandated to suddenly take the Sonic characters to school? Why the fuck would we do something as mental as that? Surely, this obvious and disgusting ploy at being hip with the kids by reminding them of the horrors of school in their escapist fantasy about talking animals fighting an evil mad man won’t come to pass… surely!

Nah, but, you see… Peter Parker goes to school and these are the days of desperately trying to win over the audiences of other people rather than catering to your own. So, since Sonic is just like Peter Parker, he has to go to school too and deal with bullies, and tiny mini-skirts, and HOLY HERA! WHAT’S WRONG WITH MINA’S FACE?! Talk about school anime-ing it up. It’s even more alarming that it’s literally just her. Whose bright idea was that? Who thought any of this was a smart thing to do? 

Spoiler

Karl Bollers is the writer and James Fry is the penciler. Try as they might, however, they’ve boarded a sinking ship. This isn’t going to go well for them, regardless of what they do.

We begin with Sonic monologuing about all the changes that Elias has made. Apparently it’s been months/years or someone used magic on the village because now they suddenly have a brand new hospital, a prison (HAHA!), and a high school. 

Both Sonic and Sally are thinking about one another without deciding to go see each other. Oh well. It would seem that the good news is that they’ve officially given up on Robotropolis. They’re just turning Knothole into their new home now. I guess that’s just how it’s gonna stay.

Sonic is still worried about those Overlanders that went into Eggman home turf though. Eggman's been stuck in his lab, working on something to fuck them over with for six weeks when Colin asks him to spend time with his family. This talking point is my favorite.

We need the robots patrolling everywhere, less the dreaded furries get in, apparently.

We find out here that the reason Colin isn’t aware that Eggman is actually an evil tyrant is because when he lost the war to the furballs, he and his people limped their busted asses off into space in search of a new home I guess. Hopefully, wherever they went didn’t have any aliens, otherwise they’d be at war again because of their hatred of things that are different.

Then they are surprised when a monitor shows Snively in shackles due to being out past curfew. Odd, seeing as how he’s been MIA all this time. I don’t even really recall where he was seen last. Was it when that weird explosion happened way back when? Meh. Whatever. I don’t actually care. He’s here now.

What I do like is this entire next page. Everything here is golden.

I love how Sonic can dish out teasing but can’t take it. I also love that kissy face Tails is making in the panel where he asserts the obvious knowledge of both their feelings for one another. It really is the best whenever Tails gets one over on Sonic.

A very strange sequence happens where Sonic and Tails wake up due to a supposed earthquake. We see them with huge feet with toes, meaning they hadn’t indoctrinated the blob feet thing yet, and then they go out to take care of the mini-disaster.

The thing is, this is supposed to be a depiction of what’s causing it.

To be honest though, I have no clue what I’m looking at.

Sonic and Tails arrive so that Tails can throw Sonic at it and he destroys it and that saves the day? I guess?

It’s weird. At first I thought their desire for adventure saw them mistaking construction equipment for a raging robot attacking and them destroying it was going to lead to a scolding but instead we just cut to Eggman talking to Snively in a cell, offering him a chance to get revenge on Papa Colin for treating him like crap. 

Then we cut back to Sonic and they’re on their way to school. This earthquake thing isn't brought up again. What a sufficient waste of two pages.

Anyway, they’re at school now.

Good lord. It feels like a parody of something already. Sonic going to school and making mention of having a principal. 

Once again, we cut back to Eggman’s home base. This doesn’t feel like an efficient way to do this issue. Going back and forth every one or two pages just feels awkward and strange. At least separate them in larger chunks. I’m getting whiplash here.

Hope doesn’t trust Uncle Julian because he’s obviously evil and goes exploring...until she’s face to face with what looks like a metal dog and runs like hell away. 

Then, one of the unintentionally funny bits of the issue happens again. Tails, in a rare scene for him, is speaking with kids his own age and realizes he’s somehow forgotten his backpack… so he runs off to get it when Athair shows up.

“You thought changing to your Modern design would fool me didn't you? You didn’t think escaping from the Chosen One bullshit would that easy DID YOU????!!!”

Again, seems like a random spot to input this. I guess the point of this happening now is due to the inconvenience of it all but damn. This turtle character observing Tails talking to no one looks like Tommy Turtle… but then again, it could just be a regular turtle. Tommy’s design and this design are both generic turtles.

Sonic sits next to Mina in class and Bunnie next to him. Sonic doesn’t spot Sally. Boo-hoo, I guess. Then Morgan comes in and he’s the goddamn teacher…

…………………..
…………………..
…………………..So anyway, the story ends with Sonic asking where Sally is and our brilliant cliffhanger is Nate informing him that she’s getting PRIVATE LESSONS AT CASTLE ACORN!

OH MY GOD! WHO CAAAAAAAAAAARES?!

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #94: The Best Laid Plans…

That title bodes well for the efficiency of this stupid plan these echidna have.

We had a single issue where Penders took care of literally everything. Now we're back to having Ron Lim on pencils and the other stuff handled by other people, as it should.

Nack and Nic have gotten their money so there’s no reason to stick around. Nic suggests worrying about the two bees but Nack blows it off, wondering what they could possibly do. I guess that was the lead in to Charmy and Saffron attempting to prove what it is they can do to help. I was mostly wondering why Nic gave a shit when they’d already gotten their money. I’m with Nack. Who cares about any of this after that?

We see Charmy and Saffron work their way towards the scene where Knuckles has been strapped to the Chaos Syphon. You know, the very dangerous item that Gala-Na was worried that Knuckles had used like Dimitri to gain all that power…? Yeah, she’s using it on Knuckles.

It would feel like treading old water talking about how awful they are and how hypocritical they are and how this is character assassination for the sake of absolutely nothing… so instead, I’ll complain about how Charmy is drawn now. The way he’s drawn in this book makes it look like he’s not wearing a helmet. It looks more like Penders (and now Ron Lim) thought that the red outline and the circular black top were just Charmy’s actual head. The way it’s drawn offers me zero chances to give him any slack on this assertion too. 

Knuckles is in pain and is resisting the draining of his power. Upon seeing this the two bees decide to stop them. Charmy says to Saffron, “You stop the techno geek while I handle the heavy artillery.” 

Saffron’s response is this--!

WHY!?

Why does Penders keep writing the woman in this book like they're completely insecure? Seriously. Nothing about that line would or should have set off this reaction from a normal person. Holy fucking granola bars Batman.

Anyway, they mess with the controls and… SOMETHING happens. I don’t know what though. Knuckles flashes white like lightning and then… ascends to Heaven like the Jesus Christ of Echidnas? Or maybe he’s actually in a smoking heap on the ground? Or maybe that’s just a different echidna that got hit with Knuckles’ power because they all look the same? I seriously can’t tell what’s happening.

"Next: How about... THE CHOSEN ONE!"

How about… NO?

Anyway, Nack and Nic bail. I would too.

I want no part of this confusing mess but… I trudge along anyway. It’s time for more Chosen Ones and prophecies. Bleugh.

So this was awful. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world or anything but there’s no defending this. What even is this? Who thought wasting their time with school drama in a Sonic the Hedgehog book would go over well? Even the Nazi stuff could probably be explained away as just being a parallel to Eggman being a tyrant, even if a lot of it is handled in the worst way you could possibly handle it. I mean, this isn’t worse than taking a  Holocaust poem and re-writing it to be about anthropomorphic cartoon animals but the decision to do this at all comes from the same dense well of missing the point. It’s going to take a while before this comic is able to efficiently resemble something comfortably "Sonic the Hedgehog" and stay that way. 

 

[Sonictrainer]

1 hour ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

 

A funny thing about this story is that this how Dr. Finitevus came to be.

That echidna lying on the ground in the bottom left panel on the last page is him. It's very hard to tell that another echidna was absorbing some of Chaos Knuckles' energy in the panels so it's never clear. Of course, we'll meet him again in #139

[SBR2]

Spoiler

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

The Wrath of Khan

KHAN! KHAAAAAAAAAN! Yeah I know they straight up make that reference but I couldn't help myself.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

pencils and letters are by Michael Higgins. Alright. Someone I haven’t heard of again.

I can't remember is he was previously on any other issues but he is mostly an Inker I believe. This is to my knowledge his only fully penciled story and it's comprised mostly of either traced or heavily referenced art so...yeah no big loss there.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Lady Agnes, which whenever I hear the name “Agnes” I think of “Angus” like “Angus Beef”. 

Cheddermund… there’s legit a dude named fucking Cheddermund… okay…

Mmm. Anges beef with Cheddermund. *drool*

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Then there’s Hope Kintobor, our little angel from the future issues of the book that ends up having a lot of meaningful interactions with Snively in plot points far better written then what I suspect I’m about to read here.

Hi hope. Get ready for a lifetime of misery!

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

The fake coughing fit when Rotor brings up Sonic saying he needed to get back the sword happens and it ends up being the thing that gives her away.

I’ll admit, I do rather appreciate that.

Who doesn't love a trope being called out as a trope by characters?

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

except no he hasn’t because Overlanders are racist AND dumb.

Kinda redundant to use two similar words one after the other like that. :p

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

What’s even funnier is that on the next page, when Part 2 of the story starts, not only does he look completely different but the foreshortening takes a massive dump all over the page. 

I can't tell is those Overlanders are running away or directing traffic. Yeesh this art.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Also, there’s a weird bit here where, when Geoffrey finds out what he wants to know, he says he could kiss Hershey and Hershey, in her mind, is asking why he doesn’t do so already… which… I dunno. I guess that’s the start of their relationship now? I know that becomes a big deal later on.

Y'know for a comic series known for it's romance drama and love octagon's half the romances just kinda happen in this book with almost no build up don't they?

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Protectorbots. Yeah. That’s it. Protectorbots.

I'm like 99% sure that's a Transformers subgroup.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Now, I know in most cases it’s usually smarter to listen to someone who you do know personally than someone you’ve just met BUT the difference here is that Julian Robotnik was a Robo-Hitler who fucked up the home of the Overlanders and then proceeded to take over the world…? You yourself weren’t a fan of him and he definitely wasn’t a fan of you so I can only assume that common sense loses to abject racism this day.

No see it's ok because they've been in space since the great war ended. I'm not kidding that's literally the explanation given. I'm not sure if it's in the next 2 but if it is I'll mention it.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Sonic’s response is “Join the club”.

...Dammit Bollers sometimes you get Sonic and sometimes you seriously don't. Sonic would never be that callous to this news. It's so weird and out of character.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

But now he’s struggling to do so in the "Wrath of Khan", as it were, with dialogue that, need I remind you, is really kind of terrible.

What the actual fuck does this even mean?

1. Kahn's "I Have Had Enough of You!" is a reference to Search for Spock. Seems a little odd in a story titled after Wrath of Kahn but maybe that's what Bollers was going for IDK. 2. I'm glad Sonic eventually got over his distaste for Pokémon and tried to save Pikachu's life. 

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

it’s a tie-in to one of the few Sonic games I’ve never played before, nor seen the cutscenes of.

I've seen the Cutscenes. Clement put them up as part of his Sonic Let's plays. I don't think I really retained anything that happened though but you could probably find them on Youtube.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Unlike some of the tie-ins in the future comic issues, these are still being treated as though they’re happening within the story proper of the Archie comics, which is why Sonic asks where Sally and the other Freedom Fighters are. It’s strangely specific that it was just Tails, Knuckles, and Amy that showed up there with him. Almost as if the franchise considers them main characters on a grander scale in terms of the franchise than his comic book and TV cartoon pals. Almost.

My question is where is this set? Like Knuckles is Red and they appear to be in Knothole. Most timelines I've seen place it during the Freedom Fighters trek home but I'm not sure how well that actually works. Also It's funny you mention the game tie-in's from future issues because this basically starts that trend. SA2 will be a full issue but still ends on "play the game to see how the story ends".

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Interestingly enough, I think the Archie comics do this for a while. Sometimes they have the game’s canon separate, but I recall the Rush and Riders story being something that very easily were used to tie in to the Archie books while promoting the games. 

Yet, in other instances, like Rush Adventure, Unleashed, Black Knight, Colors, and Generations, they were just disconnected side-stories at the back end of certain issues that acted as re-written versions of the opening cutscenes to the games. 

Rush Adventure is kind of a weird case. It was almost certainly written as vague about it's placement and later on during the King Scourge arc and Universe #1 it's transplanted into Archie continuity. All the rest are "Another Time, Another Place".

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Then Lost World also had a prequel comic that told you nothing. 

I don't know about that. I think it's a pretty neat look at how Eggman got control of the Deadly Six. Also I'm not sure but I think it and the Dash and Jump adaptations are Post-Reboot canon. But don't quote me on that.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

I also haven’t heard of one for Sonic 06 but who cares?

I recall Ian Flynn once saying that Sega gave them the whole script. I have a fuzzy memory in mind about there maybe being plans for an 06 Adaptation that never came to fruition but my memory is shit and that could be something I made up. I do recall Steven Butler renders of 06 enemies being in the Encyclopedia and resembling his art style around the mid-2000's but IDK.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

I didn’t ask this before but I’m not sure I understand how the king getting punched in the head by a robot made him paralyzed from the waist down. I’m not a doctor so maybe it's possible it works like that. I dunno.

The only medical knowledge I have comes from Scrubs so your guess is as good as mine.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

After a brief scene of Holographic Meatloaf Eggman lying to the Overlanders about how safe they’ll be

While pretending to do work and driving around waving at them no doubt.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

saying to let him be. Why? Cause Elias is a good boy.

A very good Husbando boy.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

They collide. 

RUN!

CRASH!

DERP!

LAUGH!

“Do-Me Eyes”

Someone interrupts them.

That was the scene that just happened. 

Hmmmmm. It would seem this relationship is blossoming just a tad bit more. 

I believe that's what the call in Hollywood a "Meet Cute". This is also one of the only times I can think of that Sonic actually seems to reciprocate Mina's feelings. He mostly feels like he's barely a part of this love triangle.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

It would seem that Bollers isn’t taking to the idea that Sonic is setting his eyes on another girl and is just like “We’ll be smooching by morning”.

Honestly I doubt he was all that into the idea. According to ThanksKenPenders this was more the editors idea than it was his. I'd honestly kinda believe that with the previously mentioned fact that Sonic is barely a part of this love triangle and the only other time he showed attraction to Mina being under the pen of writer widely believed to actually be Justin Gabrie himself.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Case in point, the instant they’re out of earshot, Geoffrey just turns to Elias and tells him he sucks at being a leader. Now it’s only been… what… like, maybe a day? I don’t know how Geoffrey is so certain of this but maybe he can just tell because Elias is a good person and it takes a major asshole to be king and take on kingly duties behind the scenes. 

Luckily, Geoffrey is an asshole so he’s got this covered.

See it's things like this that give Ian's later twist with Geoffrey credibility. Like this is done sincerely in Bollers eyes but there's just such a tinge of manipulation to it.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Oh yeah, Arachnis steals the Sword of Acorns from Kodos while he’s sleeping. I guess he only handed it to Kodos to pretend like he was still on his side? Or maybe he literally just changed his mind?

Arachnis is a woman. I'm not really surprised you didn't pick up on that I don't think they've used any gendered pronouns but she has babies in a few issues. I also clearly don't know when you started reading so I don't know if you read any issues that mentioned or featured her children.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

He, however, must still be punished so his knighthood is being revoked

What was the point of even giving Sonic a knighthood? It was barely even brought up.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

So, not a page in and I run smack-dab into a problem.

Saffron.

It’s another design change for her, one of many that will permeate throughout the book as a never ending cycle of not knowing what design this character they’ve created is supposed to have.

I don't see the problem. Clearly she's a Time Lord and is in her second Regeneration.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

I guess because they’re teenagers it’s slightly better but the knowledge of what Charmy’s canon age in Heroes and beyond is kind of skeeved me out for a bit. My fault, I know. 

Trust me I get it. Irt doesn't help that if the Chaotix arc in the Knuckles comic is anything to go off of Penders doesn't even know how old Charmy is.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

What’s weird about this page in particular is that the final panel’s background isn’t really projecting the same thing that was to the side of Charmy and Saffron as the panel right above them was. It’s incredibly distracting looking at this in general.

What you expect Penders to give a shit about Continuity?

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Issue #94: New Order

It's Time!

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

HOLY HERA! WHAT’S WRONG WITH MINA’S FACE?!

Oh, White guys drawing Anime in the 2000's. Just...why?

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Apparently it’s been months/years

It's another fun game of "What time is it!?" Athair picks Tails up in this story so he can crossover with the Knuckles storyline but there's nothing in the Knuckles story to imply it's been all that long since Nic and Nack captured Knux.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

This talking point is my favorite.

We need the robots patrolling everywhere, less the dreaded furries get in, apparently.

As a Furry I am both offended and kinda get it.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

We find out here that the reason Colin isn’t aware that Eggman is actually an evil tyrant is because when he lost the war to the furballs, he and his people limped their busted asses off into space in search of a new home I guess.

Ah, ok it was covered in one of the three you did. Either way that's a totally rational response to losing a war. Go to Fucking Space!

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

We see them with huge feet with toes

And the Foot Fetishist go wild!

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Anyway, they’re at school now.

*Weezing laughter* Oh, God. Bunnie's Daisy Duke design. Rotor's hip hop clothes. This is amazing.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Then, one of the unintentionally funny bits of the issue happens again. Tails, in a rare scene for him, is speaking with kids his own age and realizes he’s somehow forgotten his backpack… so he runs off to get it when Athair shows up.

"You seen my bookbag?" is legitimately funny honestly. Also it's always so weird seeing characters with regular ass names like Cody hanging around the same universe that has "Bunnie Rabbot" and "Rotor Walrus".

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

 

...I gotta be honest that's not a bad gag.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Knuckles has been strapped to the Chaos Syphon. You know, the very dangerous item that Gala-Na was worried that Knuckles had used like Dimitri to gain all that power…? Yeah, she’s using it on Knuckles.

TBF I think the idea is more that she's trying to suck out all that extra Chaos energy in him.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Saffron’s response is this--!

WHY!?

Why does Penders keep writing the woman in this book like they're completely insecure?

"Female empowerment means screaming at men that they don't need no man right?" ~Ken Penders

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Or maybe he’s actually in a smoking heap on the ground? Or maybe that’s just a different echidna that got hit with Knuckles’ power because they all look the same? I seriously can’t tell what’s happening.

Actually that is another Echidna on the ground in fact he'd later be retconned to be Dr...

 

14 hours ago, Sonictrainer said:

A funny thing about this story is that this how Dr. Finitevus came to be.

That echidna lying on the ground in the bottom left panel on the last page is him. It's very hard to tell that another echidna was absorbing some of Chaos Knuckles' energy in the panels so it's never clear. Of course, we'll meet him again in #139

...oh. Someone beat me to it. Well that's on me for waiting until today.

 

[Dr. Detective]

17 hours ago, Sonictrainer said:

A funny thing about this story is that this how Dr. Finitevus came to be.

That echidna lying on the ground in the bottom left panel on the last page is him. It's very hard to tell that another echidna was absorbing some of Chaos Knuckles' energy in the panels so it's never clear. Of course, we'll meet him again in #139

Oh really now? Well, that just goes to confirm how good of an idea this was. 

God, what a bunch of idiots. I think the pool of echidnas that are actually competent or kind just got whittled down to like five characters.

Knuckles' mom, Wyn, Remington, Marie-Ann, and I still like Athair too.

[Mr Silvia]

Wasn't a shit ton of artwork "traced and copied" for issue 92?...

Yeah, scroll to the bottom here https://thankskenpenders.tumblr.com/tagged/StH 92/chrono

[VO.SUPER]

Wow. All that traced artwork. What on earth was up with Archie's quality control in this period? It feels like things didn't finally get back together until 160# for quality.

[Cuz]

I always had the impression the book was on a shoestring in this era. Particularly from issues 100-120ish the page crunch fought between the Sonic plots, and Knuckles plots gets so bad neither sides feels like it's getting anywhere for awhile. 

[PC the Hedgehog]

Kind of a neat Archie Sonic-related thing: longtime Archie Sonic penciller Steven Butler is writing and drawing a new comic with his daughter that features Sonic-esque characters. Looks interesting.

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic X - Issue #12: Attack From Area 99

It would seem that Sonic’s defeat is imminent and is about to be broadcasted for all to see on those TV screens behind him. Oh say it ain’t so. Sonic’s gonna die. 

Spoiler

 

He’s gonna die of boredom I mean. 

This is the first page of the issue and it just starts with Sonic staring up at nothing and shouting “I’M BORED!” like a toddler. 

The art here looks rather well done but I checked and it’s Tim Smith III again. So he must have gotten better or he’s taking a few cues from Tracy Yardley perhaps. I can’t really say. Joe Edkin is still the writer though.

Turns out “I’M BORED!” is going to be Sonic’s catchphrase for a while. He’s complaining because this is the point in the show where Eggman was in jail. He seriously tries to provoke Knuckles into a fight just to keep himself entertained and it doesn’t work. So he goes and bothers Tails and Uncle Chuck who promptly tell him to fuck off so he does. When they tell him Chris is at Soccer practice, Sonic runs to Chris and interrupts his Soccer practice like an asshole and has to be told that him being on the team would be cheating. So he goes to Sam Speed and becomes shocked to hear that officers are first responders and not always in action.

Each place he visits, he repeats his little catchphrase. It’s also here where the art takes a nosedive and goes back to being what I usually expect from Tim Smith III. So that first page must have had some intense inspiration behind it. 

Turns out Sonic should have stuck around because Tails is visited by people from the Guardians and is told that the country needs him. 

Sonic does get his wish for action though. Eventually Sam and his men get a report that some idiots are doing speed racing and are so caught up in it that they didn’t notice a mom and her baby walking across the street. 

The way this is drawn is kind of hilarious because the car ends up hitting the baby and shoots the carriage through the air like a missile and launches the baby out of it.

It’s incredible. Talk about being over the top. You’d think the driver would have hit the breaks at least once they got in their line of sight but nope. He just power slammed into that baby carriage so hard he sent it flying in the air and towards the side of a building.

Of course Sonic rescues the baby and works with the S-Team to take down the two speeders, easy peasy. 

Meanwhile, Tails’ adventure takes him to a base where Captain Westwood appears and decides to bring in his own brand of continuity to the series. Remember that alien robot thing that he and Sonic uncovered a while back? Well it’s here and Tails is needed to uncover its secrets.

Except not really. 

Tails is here so Westwood can use it to his advantage of course. The fox waltzes in and starts using his otherworldly tech to open compartments and scan things all over it like a techno-wizard of some kind. This makes Westwood super happy. He just can’t wait to kick Rouge and Topaz out.

Now, you may be asking yourself… is Tails pressing that button a bad thing? It might not have been but then Westwood, for some reason, the instant the button was pressed and the alien ship started to take off, decided that THAT moment was when he needed to take over and push Tails out of the way. 

He then presses a thing that starts firing off lasers and makes a rampage happen. You can tell he knows he fucked up by the way he says “Oops” after he does it too. Classic Westwood.

Meanwhile, Sonic is still on his sugar-high and is running around Sam, wanting more action. Sam tells Sonic that they have to wait until their next call comes in and that it could take hours, days, or even a week… but then it happens immediately, so that’s good.

It’s an Eggman signal too which is probably just code for “Giant, weird looking robot, most likely shaped like some sort of animal is attacking the city” because that’s exactly what’s happening despite Eggman being in prison. 

Sonic immediately recalls what this thing is and tells Sam that his weapons won’t work on it. Inside of it, Westwood and Tails are besides themselves, trying to figure out how to get the thing to stop. Tails is trying to disconnect all the wires and junk but the tech uses… alien techno-magic I guess to repair themselves. I guess.

It’s odd because despite how wonky Tails and Sonic seem to be drawn the machines and backgrounds are really, really well done. It looks great.

The fight that ensues is fairly well done too. The purple haze in the background offers a neat atmosphere too. Sonic attacks the robot repeatedly but a force-field is up that wasn’t there before. It’s also way more powerful too.

Sam notices a tiny hole in the force-field (that’s being used by the robot to fire lasers through)  but it’s too small for Sonic to fit through so Sonic has Sam fire his grappling hook into it. Then Sonic pulls on the cord so that it’s head lurches down and when it fires it’s laser again, it bounces around the force field and takes itself out instead.

I really admire this tactic. Well done my boy.

It’s funny how Sonic doesn’t know these two are inside it though. Imagine if he just ran straight through it and it exploded with them caught in the fireball. I believe I offered this scenario up as well back when some of his friends were taken over by a few of Eggman’s robots.

It’s a good strategy is all I’m saying. Sonic seems to carelessly run through robots a lot.

Anyway, when the robot falls and crashes, Sonic races around to see who could be behind the attack. 

Then to his shock, he sees that it’s Tails and Captain Westwood, that iconic dastardly duo of evil. His nemeses strike again!

No, of course not but you just know Tails is gonna get roped into taking the blame for it.

 

That was fun. Sonic being bored led to a lot of things happening. Although, most of it was out of his control. Even with Eggman away, the world keeps on spinning and unfortunately asshole Government agents, alien technology, and lunatics who run down babies in the street are all still out there. I think the next issue is gonna be one I really enjoy though as I have a recollection of what’s to transpire next. I get a kick out of seeing heroes in prison I guess.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #95: Enemy Mine

Speaking of ripping off Spider-Man, holy shit dudes. I will say this is a really well done rendition of the Spider-Man webbings. I don’t even feel like making the obvious risque joke about this. It’s a very striking image, definitely. Not my favorite kind of Sonic art or cover though, personally.

Spoiler

 

It’s still Karl Bollers and still James Fry. So that’s good I guess but I’m reminded that it doesn’t really matter immediately upon seeing Sonic rushing out of school with a bookbag. It’s so goofy. Like maybe this could have worked as a non-canon parody of high school drama anime or something… and even then that’d be pretty cringy.

After school lets out, Sonic tries to go see Princess Sally but Geoffrey, addressing him like he’s some lost little boy, tells him to schedule an appointment if he wants to do that and shuts the door, telling him that “she’s royalty, you know”.

That’s actually pretty sad. What a strange situation to be in eh? Being childhood friends and war buddies with someone and then… being forced to go to school and not being allowed to see said friend because the fact that she’s “royalty” is suddenly super important. 

Protocol and acknowledgement of the state of a monarchy; all things that are the antithesis of Sonic’s character. This Sonic’s got a lot on his plate due to actually caring about a lot of this stuff. I kind of wish he’d just bolt past Geoffrey and say hi anyway but the thing about his standing in the Archie books is that he’s got something to lose by doing that since he’s not really a free-spirit.

My urge to just see him rebel and kick down the door and boot the king off his throne the instant he tries to kill innocent people who had no choice but to turn into robots is kind of aflame right now I guess. Again, I’ve no problem with him being a different kind of Sonic but try as I might, I can’t see Sonic as a soldier. 

Anyway, back with the Eggman family.

This is so weird.

Snively tells his dad, who somehow looks way younger than him, that he’s bald because male-pattern baldness affects the intellectual types. I wonder if that’s true…

Anyway, Kodos, the idiot, rampages through Robotropolis once he realizes that the Sword of Acorns was taken. However, Eggman sees him on his monitors and sends his robots after him, driving the man out with his lasers.

“Show our visitor that Robotropolis has a no-fur policy” is a line that gets said, much to my amusement once again.

Everyone cheers Eggman on because he saved them from the rampaging animal. Though, ironically, that one was actually dangerous.

Sonic, meanwhile, heads home and finds Tails’ abandoned bookbag. His inner monologue says that he should have figured something was up when he found the bookbag but he just assumed he saved Tails a headache searching for it. However, this is actually kind of not true seeing as how Tails did genuinely just lose his backpack. He lost it before Athair even showed up so… Sonic’s initial assumption actually wasn’t wrong.

Sonic goes home, says school was fine to his mommy and daddy, and then goes to lay on his racecar bed… 

...You know, this is feeling more like elementary school Sonic the more I’m looking at it… at least until the part where he sneaks out of his room at night. That seems more like a rebellious teenager… but it’s still super weird that he’s sneaking out at night at all. Why should Sonic the Hedgehog have to do that? I’d imagine even if he had parents in the other continuities he’d still do what he wanted and go where he wanted. 

Everything is so weird. Stop being weird.

He comes across Bunnie who says it's past Sonic’s bedtime (getting weirder) but Sonic explains that he’s going to save those Overlanders before Eggman goes all Jim Carrey on them.

When they get there though they see the Overlanders just sleeping calmly so they just leave. Bunnie apparently thought it meant Eggman had gone soft. 

I’m not sure why neither of them didn’t just assume Eggman was planning something other than immediate robotization. He does other things after all.

They leave and then Sonic hears a tree falling in the woods and goes “IS IT EGGMAN???!!!” and races after it like a dog chasing a bone.

Instead he happens upon Kodos and Arachnis fighting one another over the Sword of Acorns. How disappointing.

Back with Eggman, he calls in Snively to tell him the reason why he didn’t immediately roboticize his family. Yeah, it wasn’t because he’s randomly gone soft. No, he was just thinking of something especially cruel for them. So cruel that it makes Snively tear up in joy.

It must feel good to be an unrepentant monster.

Sonic kicks Kodos in the face. I don’t see Arachnis anywhere but I don’t care. Apparently, Kodos has lost his mind because after he gets hit he doesn’t even properly react to Sonic aside from wanton random attacks. He doesn’t even properly speak right here.

SO-WUUUUURD?

He grabs Bunnie, spins her around over his head, and tosses him into Sonic. Then… I guess it injures her badly? I mean… she’s holding her arm so I guess it hurt a bit but for some reason this prompts Sonic to order Bunnie home.

He tells her to but she refuses… so he then yells at her to in response.

Yeah, you shouldn’t have. I really don’t get why you did.

It’s incredibly awful of him to just scream at someone who just went along with your desire to help those people and didn’t report you for sneaking out of Knothole. I guess maybe this is just a strange way to show him being emotionally distraught. After all, he can’t see Sally and… he has to go to school. So… yeah?

Sonic goes skulking into the woods after Kodos, by himself, and gets ambushed by Kodos and knocked into a web… who gets ambushed by Arachnis and is beaten off screen by her.

I’ll admit to this being the most entertaining part of the issue for me.

Kodos was left beaten on the ground and Arachnis, surprisingly, let Sonic free. As Sonic leaves, dragging Kodos back with him, we end on a shot of eggs in a tree.

So this was an odd one. I kind of went all over the place in terms of what I was feeling but on the whole this was merely below average. Nothing about it was awful except maybe Sonic’s weird outburst. 

I’m guessing the book is now going to attempt making Arachnis someone we should care about now. Good luck I guess.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #95: When Destiny Calls

Ken Penders sure does love his destiny doesn’t he? 

Green Apple Knuckles is… wandering through the snow somewhere far off. I guess at the end of the last issue he teleported away and just wound up here.

Knuckles is in intense pain and is, for some reason, in disbelief that his dad would inflict something on him this painful. 

Then Athair and Tails show up to see the downed Knuckles.

Tails also asks the very important question of who would set up a plan where the intention was to hurt one of the subjects of the plan. 

Athair’s desire to circumvent the nonsense that Locke and the Brotherhood have wrought does make his exploits fun to experience. It continues to be a bit strange that Tails is allegedly important to the echidna stuff yet that’s not borne much fruit yet. He had a transformation once as a part of that Chosen One bit I guess. Tails is like… the third Chosen One in these books I think or something. Sonic’s the main Sonic Prime, Tails is destined to do something eventually, and Knuckles was mutated by his father to be special. 

I’m sure there’s more.

Knuckles’ uncontrollable energy goes off and starts shining so brightly that Athair has to warn Tails to shield his eyes less he go blind. Then Tails looks after the light goes away and is transported to Angel Island. He goes off in search of Knuckles, calling after him and asking for permission to help. He’s such a good boy!

Of course, we see the fruits of Locke microwaving his baby start to really go haywire. Knuckles is literally suffering right now. He’s curled up, grasping at his head, SOBBING because of how much it hurts. When Tails tries to help, he swats him in the face in an uncontrollable swing of emotion.

We’re back to contemplating just how bad a person and how awful a father Locke truly is. The disgusting piece of shit mutated his son, lied and emotionally scarred and manipulated him his entire life, and is now forcing him to suffer the repercussions of his own decision… for the sake of nothing. 

I’ve yet to see anything within this plotline bear any fruit. When it bears fruit, it won’t be anything that makes this worth it either. There is no enemy, no phenomena, that Penders can craft that’ll make it necessary for Knuckles, and Knuckles alone, to go through all this bullshit.

He was sobbing folks. I just don’t know how much worse it can get. 

Knuckles’ next energy explosion just completely knocks out Tails and he has to be transported to his Uncle Merlin who has a chat with Athair about how fucking dumb it is to push Tails to fulfil the Chosen One nonsense as a cub. 

He’s a main character though so he has no choice.

I love Merlin’s line here though.

Yeah. Fuck the echidnas. Please, let them destroy themselves. When destiny calls, don’t answer it. A fucking fox child shouldn’t have a responsibility that has nothing to do with him thrust upon him for the sake of saving a society of assholes. Fuck that.

Athair says he agrees because that task was assigned to Knuckles but now Knuckles can’t so Tails has to. Why? Because “fate” or some shit. 

Also, the Ancient Walkers are dying. Why? I dunno. They just are.

Shit’s happening just because. These old guys just need to deal with it and they can’t turn to those echidna idiots for help. They’ll probably just say “THROW A NUKE AT IT” and hope the problem goes away.

 

That wasn’t a very good issue. Neither of these stories were good on their own but the second was significantly more infuriating, if only because witnessing Knuckles having to bear with the consequences of what Locke did to him was not fun. I know Penders is going to continue championing this asshole as being in the right too, despite him being obviously aware that the echidnas are destroying themselves. How is he going to justify and balance all that out? I dunno. He probably won’t.

All this Chosen One nonsense does is just serve to rip the agency away from the characters. Knuckles is all-powerful because his dad microwaved his egg as a baby. Tails is the chosen one because fate randomly decided that a random fox child was going to be the one to save the echidnas from themselves. The Ancient Walkers are dying and… I dunno, there might be an explanation for that but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was happening because shut up. 

All that coupled with having to bear witness to Sonic acting like an elementary school child makes it so that I’m feeling very out of it with these guys. There’s only so much leeway I can give the comic when it comes to being different interpretations of these characters at this point. I’ve tried my best but it really wants me to not like this and it's working.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #96: The Messenger

This is a nice enough cover. It’s drawn… okay. The idea of the reflection coming off of the robots is sound. It makes their warped anime designs more palatable. I think the thing that really saves this are the colors by Josh Ray though. They look nice and pleasant.

Spoiler

 

At times I worry that my mind is in a bit of a garbled mess trying to consider when I’m being hard on the book for when it’s genuinely awful and when it’s partaking in nonsense that I personally don’t like or care about. However, I do my best to differentiate between the two. This current arc,however, has just been incredibly strange for me. The 10th anniversary logo is on the cover now. We’re heading towards the time of Sonic Adventure 2. The more this comic goes on, the more the game elements sneak their way in and the harder it is to make the differing elements between the two continuities feel succinct for these writers. There’s a way to do it but that way won’t be discovered for a long ass time. Right now, Penders is determined to keep the comic on track with his weird fanfiction and Bollers has been mandated to take the Sonic characters to school so that he can be more like your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. 

It’s a miracle this thing survived as long as it did.

Bollers is writing for this one too, though we have Nelson Ribeiro on pencils this time. It looks fine on this first page but...

We begin in the hospital. Kodos is in bed and Dr. Quack has surmised that he’s suffering from radiation poisoning that has affected both his body and mind. That explains why his speech patterns descended to wild animal territory. It’s incredibly weird that this villain randomly came back into the story after being gone for so long only to succumb to this in a manner that was so understated and sudden that I didn’t even realize it happened until it was literally spelled out for me here. I guess someone must have realized how shit he was and instead of fixing it decided to just do this. Okay.

They found him outside and Geoffrey was apparently called to the doctor to be told that because it’s a mystery how he got there. Although Geoffrey immediately knows who's responsible for dragging his ass here… and to his credit, he’s right even if he’s only right out of spite.

We cut to Sonic on the spot after this too. This scene is very weird.

I don’t know how to properly explain this but for some reason, everything about the way this is drawn and paneled gives off an incredibly creepy vibe to it. It’s strange seeing Sonic’s parents just sitting at the table, watching their son eating with those red robot eyes of theirs. However, the way Sonic’s eating is also very strange. The second panel especially throws me off. The way he’s holding the bowl there makes it look like the milk and cereal should be spilling onto the floor. 

Then on the next page, he looks like he’s turned to weirdly molded clay or something.

I don’t understand how you draw this and say to yourself, “Yeah, that’s how his mouth should look when saying this line.”

Then Geoffrey stomp-tromps his way into Sonic’s house. It’s interesting that this is being written by Bollers because he’s definitely reverted back to being the incredibly disrespectful guy he was before since this whole thing started. Either Penders coached him on how to write him his way or he’s realized he can better utilize his character as an asshole. In what way, I’m not entirely sure. He’s mostly just being tremendously unlikeable and not in a way that makes focus on him feel necessary.

His confrontation with Sonic goes about as well as you’d expect because of how bad he is at his job.

DRAT! FOILED AGAIN!

God, you suck so much Geoffrey.

Just to rub salt in his face, his literal last line before leaving is “Has Princess Sally contacted you? Guess not. Don’t be late to school.”

How childish. First you disrespect him and his home by barging in and calling him “Boy” which, by the way, doesn’t make you look good if you were aware of the age difference but still chose to be love rivals with him, and then upon leaving you just randomly bring up the fact that he can’t see Sally within the same speech bubble of you flaunting the fact that he has to go to school and you don’t. It’s so incredibly petty and unnecessary.

I’m trying to run down the manner in which having a character like this around would be beneficial to your story. Usually, these types are the bully characters that exist to get comeuppance in the end but that doesn’t ever happen with him. He’s just allowed to fester and be awful. Then there’s the route of finally pushing him to the other side and making him a villain, which they’re not interested in and never will be. It happens eventually but only when both these writers are out of the picture. Then there’s the route of making him soften up a bit… which was happening for a bit there when Bollers was initially handling Geoffrey but now he’s regressed to being just as bad, if not worse, in some cases.

So instead of those three paths, he’s JUST a useless asshole. Who cares about the King’s secret service? Who cares about the KING? I guess it’s better now that Max is paralyzed and Elias has taken over. I actually care about Elias because he’s best boi right now. The dynamic of having Geoffrey taking the lead by making all of Elias’ decisions for him is a good plotline but I don’t think it’s being done to capitalize on Geoffrey’s standing as a possible villain here. His efforts here are probably intended to be genuine and if they are that makes it a worse deal for Geoffrey’s character because, again, it means he’s JUST a useless asshole.

In Eggman’s base we see a Sonic shaped figure ambush a Shadowbot and then dismantle it. Hmm. Kay. I’ll fake wondering who that could be.

Geoffrey reports to the new king about his lack of findings and Sally remarks about how she wishes to see Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters. He reminds her of the danger and she says she’ll go another time to satiate him but is obviously thinking about sneaking out later. Good for her.

Back in class, Mina is passing notes in a scene that leads to an actual good joke.

Instead of checking a box, he asks “AT WHAT?!”

He finds out later that she wants to be tutored in speed. She discovered she had speed powers at random in that other issue so now she wants help controlling it. Makes sense. 

Rotor shows up and Sonic asks if Tails crashed at his and Antoine’s place last night. Rotor says neither of them did, which just serves to make Sonic more worried.

So, question, Rotor seems to be back for good now I assume, otherwise he wouldn’t be attending school. If that’s the case, then why the hell did he leave in the first place? I mean, the thing he left to do didn’t get accomplished. He left the book for a really long time and when we checked in on him it was revealed that he failed to do what he set out to do and instead of working to fix it has now just returned and is attending school?

Like, I understand the perils of not knowing what exactly to do with Rotor but WHAT?!

I could come up with something better than this. Just end the Rotor’s family plot line already. It’s weird just having it endlessly hang in the background while he’s here pretending everything’s fine.

Suddenly, everyone’s running away from a Shadowbot. I called it a Swatbot earlier and went back to reword it but honestly, it’s not that different. I actually don’t entirely know what the point of getting rid of the original Swatbots was because these things are being utilized the exact same way. I guess it’s true that they take more than a single shot to take down though, I’ll give them that.

Sonic rescues Nate from being attacked by it and Bunnie smashes it through a wall in a shot of mishandled action panels that don’t handle character placement well. Either way though, the robot eventually talks and it’s Uncle Chuck’s voice on the other end. He reprogrammed a Shadowbot to go deliver Sonic a message. Shocked? Of course you’re not.

He informs Sonic that the Sword of Acorns was taken from Eggman by Arachnis and… that’s it. He doesn’t say anymore because at that moment, Geoffrey and his goons burst in and shout that they’re determined to ruin everything and make things worse. So they take down the robot and Geoffrey tells his men to “Ignore the boy” and recover the specimen.

Sonic tries to tell Geoffrey off but Geoffrey, not addressing Sonic himself yet again, tells BUNNIE to get Sonic out of there before he arrests him for interfering with an investigation. 

Then Bunnie does that.

It’s incredibly frustrating. The only way this is going to work out in the end is if there’s major comeuppance for this behavior because there’s no excusing this. 

Later, Mina, Bunnie, and Rotor go to Sonic’s house to visit but his parents say he’s not in the mood to see anyone. He apparently didn’t even come out for chili-dogs which is shocking. In his room though, Sonic is reading a Transformer comic--

Or rather, a comic where a guy walks into a phone booth and comes out dressed in an Optimus Prime Superman costume. That’s ffffffffucking weird but okay.

This gives Sonic an idea. 

If he’s not allowed near the investigation as Sonic, he won’t go as Sonic.

Now that’s the spirit. Rebellious Sonic, coming through. 

Although, he’s still worried about repercussions from this kingdom so I guess it’s not a super good fix but hey what can you do? 

I’ll finally get to see what “The Sneak” is after so long of not knowing what the fuck Espio was talking about in Journey to the East.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #96: The Chosen One

SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH.

Just call me Zor because I’ve just lost the will to go on, reading that title.

But thou’ must.

Merlin and Athair are overlooking the unconscious Tails as he rests in bed. Merlin is really not on board with this Chosen One nonsense and although Athair takes responsibility for the state of the poor boy the fact remains that the powers that be, nay, the will of Ken Penders decrees that he be forced to serve this plot surrounding the echidnas. 

Why Tails? Why did the universe decide a young fox cub was the one to fix the echidna bullshit? I dunno. It has a sick sense of random humor that way.

Merlin asks this question too and the answer Athair gives is a bit flimsy. He says that Knuckles and Tails are friends and they’ve cooperated with each other on many occasions. He then proceeds to name exactly two occasions and implies that to be enough.

Merlin is still not on board with this and just as Athair is about to go “But the prophecies--”, Merlin says “Fuck yo’ prophecies. When have they been right?”

Athair starts to explain that a lot of this depends on who is interpreting it. His mistake was not being able to respect the importance of free will. That’s a very interesting lesson considering prophecies are usually things that completely undermine free will. All the achievements that Naruto kid accomplished suddenly felt very hard to celebrate when it was revealed it was the work of some prophecy. I had already lost respect for his ambitions when he became obsessed with reforming his murderous angsty boyfriend but that took the cake. Prophecies dictate what’ll happen regardless of what the chosen one desires. What’s free will got to do with it? 

Before we can find out, we hear some pained groaning from outside their walls. Green Apple Knuckles has made his way there and collapses, going to sleep once he realizes his father, mother, and his shit girlfriend aren’t coming. It’s very sad. It’s impossible looking at this and not feeling intense disgust at Locke yet again.

They decide that now might be a good time to do magic voodoo on Tails and with a heavy sigh, Merlin gives in and does it.

This next panel made me laugh. I thought it was a printing error because there was a speech bubble with nothing in it but no. They foolishly decided to give people the chance to send in their own spell incantations for Merlin to say.

It’s either that or he said “Fuck.”

Anyway, Tails turns into Turbo Tails.

Which is just Tails but with a red cape. 

I do kind of admire how lame that is still. You really need to try in order to be that lazy.

Still, Turbo Tails is summoned and he goes out to confront Knuckles. Tails is apparently still in the right frame of mind. He realizes he’s transformed and has now gone out to try and help Knuckles. Knuckles, however, isn’t feeling too cooperative. It gets worse when he senses Merlin and Athair. Merlin pops out with the floating disembodied ghost head of Athair floating next to him and tries to calm Knuckles down by saying they just want to help him and figured it’d be better served to have him chat alone with Tails.

Knuckles calls him a liar and goes to grab him which prompts Turbo Tails to deck him.

Tails says he’s gonna have to beat up Knuckles because he’s not in the right frame of mind right now and Knuckles is just convinced that he’s an enemy because the power his dad injected into him is, of course, nothing but negative.

We end on this panel with a very bad final caption here at the bottom.

I’m sorry, did you say DEATHMATCH? Between the little fox cub and Knuckles? Why???

Also, Echidna-Style? How can the deathmatch be done echidna-style when one of them isn’t an echidna? Can echidna-style deathmatches be done with only half an echidna in the echidna-style deathmatch? I guess so.

Whatever. Fuck this.

 

This issue was frustrating. I don’t even know if it was merely due to being bad or just because of how monumental the assholic nature of Geoffrey St. John is but it’s gotten to be too much. We’ve only been at school for three issues now and it already feels like we’re spinning our wheels on this. I need this to not be so fucking boring. Everything’s been reset to be basically the same as it was but with slight alterations so I’m going to need something big to happen soon. Ken Penders’ weird Chosen One gunk isn’t pleasant to have to experience but if it leads to something big, I’ll at least welcome that. Though, he loves to sit on things for way too long. It’s gonna take forever even now.

[SBR2]

Spoiler

15 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Sonic X - Issue #12: Attack From Area 99

Oh, dude I don't know if you already were planning this but I'd definitely do the next 2 issues after this if I were you since they're Halloween themed. Just kinda works out.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

 

I will say this Tim Smith 3's art looks a whole lot better on this opening splash page. This is also the last issue he drew. Though he does draw a Tails backup story in #149 which is his only contribution to the main book.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

The way this is drawn is kind of hilarious because the car ends up hitting the baby and shoots the carriage through the air like a missile and launches the baby out of it.

That is one ugly baby. Like yikes.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Then Sonic pulls on the cord so that it’s head lurches down and when it fires it’s laser again, it bounces around the force field and takes itself out instead.

And this is the end of the mysterious alien War of the Worlds Tripod storyline. I can't help but feel like Joe Edkin had more in mind for this subplot but the book started going more slice of life and less heavy continuity with the exception of Ian's S.O.N.I.C.X. storyline after the next 2 issues.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Anyway, back with the Eggman family.

This is so weird.

"Hey son. How've you been since I treated you like dirt forcing you to flee and join your uncle?"

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Snively tells his dad, who somehow looks way younger than him, that he’s bald because male-pattern baldness affects the intellectual types. I wonder if that’s true…

I've been balding since my early 20's and I'm at best average intelligence and my dad is a dumbass so...I'd say no.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

“Show our visitor that Robotropolis has a no-fur policy” is a line that gets said, much to my amusement once again.

This is fursicution.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

He tells her to but she refuses… so he then yells at her to in response.

Yeah, you shouldn’t have. I really don’t get why you did.

We need drama. Quick have Sonic do something he'd never ever do!

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Knuckles is in intense pain and is, for some reason, in disbelief that his dad would inflict something on him this painful. 

I mean he's shown so much love and care for him that I can totally get it. :p

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Of course, we see the fruits of Locke microwaving his baby start to really go haywire. Knuckles is literally suffering right now. He’s curled up, grasping at his head, SOBBING because of how much it hurts

But Locke had his reasons y'see.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Also, the Ancient Walkers are dying. Why? I dunno. They just are.

A plot thread that'll go largely ignored until Ian finally deals with it early in his run.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Tails is the chosen one because fate randomly decided that a random fox child was going to be the one to save the echidnas from themselves.

What's weird to me is when Mike Gallagher introduced that plot thread it had fuck all to do with the Echidnas. Just that Tails would bring about a Great Harmony and the Chaos Emeralds were involved. That's it. But naturally Penders had to slap him onto his Echidna lore.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

We cut to Sonic on the spot after this too. This scene is very weird.

Who eats cereal like that? He looks like he's dumping the bowl on his lap.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

His confrontation with Sonic goes about as well as you’d expect because of how bad he is at his job.

1. This would be a great meme. 2. Coco Puffs and Coca-Cola. Breakfast of champions.

 

16 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

In his room though, Sonic is reading a Transformer comic--

Or rather, a comic where a guy walks into a phone booth and comes out dressed in an Optimus Prime Superman costume. That’s ffffffffucking weird but okay.

The only explanation I have is that Riberio is a massive Transformers fan (A Gewunner FYI) so he just decided this superhero should be Optimus Prime. Nevermind the fact it makes no sense.

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

This next panel made me laugh. I thought it was a printing error because there was a speech bubble with nothing in it but no. They foolishly decided to give people the chance to send in their own spell incantations for Merlin to say.

SHAZAM! FOR THE HONOR OF GREYSKULLS! MAGICAL SOURCE MYSTIC FORCE!

 

17 hours ago, Dr. Mike Acula said:

We end on this panel with a very bad final caption here at the bottom.

I’m sorry, did you say DEATHMATCH? Between the little fox cub and Knuckles? Why???

Also, Echidna-Style? How can the deathmatch be done echidna-style when one of them isn’t an echidna? Can echidna-style deathmatches be done with only half an echidna in the echidna-style deathmatch? I guess so.

Whatever. Fuck this.

I just hope they turn into Claymation.

 

[Dr. Detective]

On 10/12/2020 at 11:08 AM, SBR2 said:

  Hide contents

Oh, dude I don't know if you already were planning this but I'd definitely do the next 2 issues after this if I were you since they're Halloween themed. Just kinda works out.

 

I was not. This was just a happy accident. 

On 10/12/2020 at 11:08 AM, SBR2 said:

  Hide contents

And this is the end of the mysterious alien War of the Worlds Tripod storyline. I can't help but feel like Joe Edkin had more in mind for this subplot but the book started going more slice of life and less heavy continuity with the exception of Ian's S.O.N.I.C.X. storyline after the next 2 issues.

 

I had a feeling something had to have been up with that. A part of me does kind of like the fact that the uncovered alien vessel remained a mystery though. It sells itself as more creepy and, well, mysterious that way.

On 10/12/2020 at 11:08 AM, SBR2 said:

  Hide contents

What's weird to me is when Mike Gallagher introduced that plot thread it had fuck all to do with the Echidnas. Just that Tails would bring about a Great Harmony and the Chaos Emeralds were involved. That's it. But naturally Penders had to slap him onto his Echidna lore.

 

I remember Athair being there when it happened but I don't remember him saying it had to do with the echidnas either. This is definitely something worth rolling my eyes at even harder. Tails can't even have something all his own now apparently. 

It's like, the most random thing ever forcing a connection between Tails being the Chosen One and saving the echidnas. Why? Even today with Knuckles being more friendly with Sonic and Tails, that connection would be hamfisted and strange. 

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic X - Issue #13: Hare-Um Scare-Um - Part 1

We’ve hit upon this issue just in time for the Halloween season. It’s also fortunate that this also happened to be Issue 13 of the book. I love this cover to bits. I especially admire how it’s yet, another cover of the heroes being in mortal peril with apples that are clearly bombs going into Tails’ pack. Also, the situational irony of Chris being dressed up in his thief outfit while getting the stuff in his bag sucked away by Bokkun is great. My favorite part is the simple act of Tails cutely holding out the bag, asking for candy. He’s all on his tippy toes. It’s so cute. Halloween is the best time of year for me. I wish it could go on for at least another month.

Spoiler

 

Joe Edkin is the writer once again but we’ve changed artists. This issue’s art is the work of David Hutchison. It looks relatively similar, though, at the moment, it feels slightly more improved.

The situation at hand is exactly what I outlined it would be last time. Tails and a GUN agent were seen exiting the robot that destroyed the city and as such the blame is about to come their way… or at least the way of one of them, if Westwood has anything to say about it.

Now, I will say that despite my anticipation for what’s about to come I’m definitely not above criticizing how some of the characters are being portrayed here as the fallout reaches its crescendo. 

When we cut to the White House, we see the president, very strangely and uncharacteristically jumping to the conclusion that Sonic shares the blame for what happened in the city despite being the one who teamed up with Sam to stop the alien robot literally just because he’s best friends with Tails, the one they actually saw exiting the piloted robot.

Topaz is here, counteracting the President’s very strange points as he makes them, which only serves to highlight how odd it is that he’s making these points in the first place. He says that he doesn’t understand why Sonic and his friends would turn against them, noticeably putting Sonic first, again, despite the fact that it was Tails who was in the robot. Topaz has to point out that Sonic was the one who saved everyone.

The president responds to this by not responding to it at all. In fact he totally ignores the focal point of her dissenting opinion by finally acknowledging that TAILS was in that ship but then justifies his concern as plausible by just saying that because Tails was on the ship it means that Sonic and also ALL OF HIS OTHER FRIENDS are possibly conspiring with Dr. Eggman.

Topaz, again, points out the logical fallacy with this concern of his, that being that DR. EGGMAN IS IN FUCKING PRISON but he again, completely ignores this in favor of wanting Tails, Westwood, and for some goddamn reason, Sonic, to be brought to him for an explanation.

Who are you and what happened to the loveable ball of chungus that was the president on that show? Where is this extreme paranoia coming from? 

I’m not saying there isn’t a logical thread he could take to arrive at the conclusion that one of Sonic’s friends might be at fault for what happened and it would be important to take a cautionary step towards resolving the issue by questioning the party that could be responsible… but that would literally only entail questioning Tails and Westwood. The people who were actually found inside the robot. Why is the President suddenly under the impression that Sonic and his pals function in some sort of hive mind?

“Yeah Tails, you go attack the city with that random GUN agent while I pretend to save it. It’s the perfect plan. No one can stop the Animal Borg from assimilating everyone.” - A quote from Sonic the Hedgehog.

I’ve spent entirely too long on this scene but it bothered the hell out of me because it’s so strangely written and intensely out of character for this man at THIS stage in the show’s life. This would have made more sense closer to the start of the series but not AFTER the Eggmoon shit. There aren’t many episodes left before they get sent back home at this point.

I do rather enjoy the scene that takes place after this one though.

Low key, my favorite bit here is the part where Scarlet Garcia says to the camera that they’re totally going to interrupt your normal programming. I would say “Thank God they don’t do this anymore” but that would imply I watch enough television nowadays for it to be a worry of any significance. 

After this, we cut to a scene where Vanilla, Cream, Cheese, Chris, and Emeral are watching this news report. Vanilla leads into a conversation with Cream about how interesting the lives they lead are before going into a spiel about how dangerous this all is and then saying that they’re going to need to find their own place to live, away from Station Square, in the hopes of escaping the danger. It’d be interesting contrasting this with Season 3 where Cream asks her Mom if she can go into space and she sees no problem with it. In fact it was a whole plot point of the initial episode involving the Chaotix about how Vanilla had complete faith in her daughter and her friends ability to protect her that made Vector’s concerns on behalf of the two of them entirely fabricated within the confines of his strange, quirky mind.

Sonic and Tails are talking alone, in a scene where Tails has an absurdly long torso and is also, somehow, the same height as Sonic.

It bothers me how close that drawing of Tails is to being perfect. Just shorten his torso a bit. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Yeesh.

Anyway, some Government goons show up and tell the two of them to return to Washington. I guess Sonic ends up being more willing to go on account of two of the goons with Westwood making it clear that Westwood is ALSO wanted there too. He’s not getting out of this one unscathed.

Back with Cream and Vanilla, Cream is crying about the idea that they’d have to move away. Chris tries to stand up for Cream by relating her situation to his and Vanilla says that perhaps the reason he’s been allowed to risk his life chasing that mad man, Eggman, around is because his mom isn’t too aware of what exactly he’s doing. Well, speak of the devil, she has a chance to talk to her about it because Lindsey is home from a movie shoot early.

I love how this talk with Vanilla goes down because it’s not even really a discussion. Lindsay completely misunderstands the initial point Vanilla wasn’t even half-way done trying to make and pushes her into an invite for a relaxing vacation down at their Summer Cottage. It’s a mother-child bonding experience courtesy of the filthy stinkin’ rich. Who would say no to that?

Vanilla ends up agreeing to go, as you would.

We’ve come to another point in the issue where the art kind of nags at me again. It’s not terrible but I am noticing issues with sizes and foreshortening. I have problems dealing with those a lot myself so I’m especially good at noticing when it’s kind of gone wrong a bit.

There’s parts of this issue where either Chris looks too big or Cream does and it’s hard to get a read on what’s actually supposed to be the portrayal of their sizes here.

Another thing that bugs me is how Chris’ eyes just look the exact fucking same in every panel he’s in.

It’s that same super relaxed look on his face throughout the entire issue no matter what he’s saying or what emotion he’s supposed to be having. The expression on his face in the bottom panel almost looks like his face is frozen to me. Like someone photocopied “Generic-Anime-Eyes.png” over his face in each of these panels. 

Also, Cream is huge in that last panel right? Like, somehow her head is reaching his shoulders and her feet, while walking, are reaching the back of his knees. Either the ground dips super hard RIGHT where Chris is standing or she’s floating a bit... 

I’ve seen worse, but stuff like this still sticks out regardless.

This next page is a page that, for some reason, whenever I look back on the Archie Sonic X comic, it’s the first one that comes to mind.

This interrogation scene right here is actually really well done and did a lot towards fully engrossing me within the plotline that was being established by this book. I was probably mildly enjoying it before but this kind of sleaziness on display by a member of the government and how it was being utilized to fuck over people with genuine concern for the safety of the populace at heart acted as an intense page turner for me. 

However, the thing that really sold it was that final line where they cross-cut between both Sonic and Tails and in unison just put their foot down and exclaim that if what Westwood is saying isn’t lining up with what they’re saying “Then Westwood is lying”. 

It’s a really effective scene. I absolutely adore this one. 

The President, his secretary, a general named Rotach, Topaz, and Westwood are observing these interrogations on the monitors. Literally, everyone here except for Westwood are offering valid reasons for why Sonic and Tails should probably be given the benefit of the doubt. The fact that Westwood keeps interjecting between the points made in the favor of giving them that benefit does little to disguise the fact that he’s outnumbered in this scenario. 

Now, this actually isn’t to say that under normal circumstances, considering that Sonic and pals were pulling a long con wouldn’t be something that you’d want to take into account, however, under the circumstances that led to this situation I’d say it’d be a harder case to sell on the whole… but then again, the government isn’t actually known for making decisions based on what’s rational. Often the reactions are emotional ones disguised as rational ones through the use of over the top flowery language. 

So the outcome of them eventually deciding to arrest Sonic and Tails is totally believable to me, sad as it is. I do still maintain that the leap the president made in shoveling Sonic and his friends together in this scenario was uncharacteristic of him but the scenario itself I don’t have too big of a problem with. I love this plot development, even if the manner in which we got here was rather clunky.

Meanwhile, Cream and Chris are living the ultimate childhood fantasy of getting to wander eerily empty streets alone and go into Ice-Cream shops where no one is there and gorge on the food without any parental or adult supervision.

The downside to that is the fact that they’re being clearly monitored by ghosts.

Back with the two moms, Vanilla is thanking Lindsay for the vacation but is making it clear that it’s not going to change her mind. Here we see that Lindsay actually isn’t as ditzy as she made herself out to be earlier and offers the counterargument that I was thinking of bringing up earlier about how moving from Station Square was not going to guarantee her daughter’s safety for one. Secondly, being around people who can offer help and protection just makes more sense from a standpoint concerning this world. 

Vanilla isn’t super convinced yet, but she promises to think it over.

Eventually, after Chris and Cream finish their naughty ice-cream eating they start to really get freaked out by the atmosphere around them. Not only has someone knocked over an ice-cream scoop despite there being no one to do so but the constant chanting of “JOIN US! JOIN US!” is closing in on them. 

In fact, it’s HERE!

PFFT! I love the cartoonish, olympic dive they do into the cabinet. I also love that Chris seeing the people who own the store now possessed by ghosts is the first thing that gets him to change his expression. 

They eventually make it out and start to scramble away. Chris’ maneuver of giving the ghosts ice-cream headaches by assaulting them with creamy delight actually manages to give them room to scream their heads off out of there while pondering why the Boom Boos have returned when they’re not even at that creepy castle from before.

It’s a mystery, to be sure, but one they’re currently going to have to work through without Sonic because of my other favorite scene in this book.

Sonic and Tails in prison.

I know Sonic’s been arrested before but it’s nice that Tails is with him this time. Also, the black and white stripes work well on them too. 

I could see them easily working their way out of this situation themselves or with the helping hand of a third party so the glee I get from seeing them in this situation is purely more focused on the love of the troupe. 

It’s one of the gateways towards an intriguing set-up and follow-through for me. All it takes is to throw characters you like into prison and then instantly, you’ll have set up the audience to anticipate either a prison break or a sequence of harsh consequences that pay dividends at the end of the scenario that make up for the injustice ten-fold.

Or it could just be the thing they decided to do that episode. Either way, it’s always one of my favorite plots.

Anyway, we cut back to the other, more dire plot line of an entire villa full of people being possessed by ghosts and chasing two children in search of their mothers… there’s an impressive amount of content in this book actually.

The good news is that they do in fact find their mothers.

Go on.

Give mama a kiss.

 

This was a great issue and one that spoke to ME personally because it was just inundated with stuff that would appeal to me regardless of the kind of book it was outside of the context of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic X alike. I love stories that involve prison. I love Halloween and spooky stories within children’s media in general due to their more flexible nature when it comes to being inventive with the utilization of horror troupes and creatures. I love the development concerning Westwood and where his machinations have rather unfairly landed Sonic and Tails. I was not kidding when I said that the bit with the two of them proclaiming Westwood to be a liar was the defining moment that escalated the book into being something that could go beyond simply being entertaining and instead enwrapture me with the actual story it was trying to tell. 

Yes, there are problems with it and I went into those in depth but despite them I still loved this issue. 

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #97: My Secret Identity

This is a really nice looking cover. The drawing is solid. The colors are great. The effect used to get those bright lights shining on it looks really great. It’s covers like these that do an effective job of tricking me into thinking I’m in for something good. I certainly hope that’s true this time.

Spoiler

 

Karl Bollers is the writer and the art is a duo effort between Nelson Ribeiro and Harvey Mercadoocasio. Everything looks in order so far.

We get our typical suit up sequence of Sonic putting on his outfit. It looks alright in the book. For some reason his cape is just as black as his outfit as opposed to the cover where it’s yellow. I guess if you’re going under the cover of darkness you’d want to steer clear of bright colors but the outfit on the cover still looks better regardless.

Meanwhile, Nate and Sally are observing the Shadow-Bot that was taken in by Geoffrey, only to discover the thing that Sonic already learned a long while back. Oh geez, think of the time we could have saved had they listened to Sonic or let the robot continue to speak. 

They conclude, thankfully, that it’s no doubt Charles’ voice. Although, it’s kind of funny that apparently his voice is coming through a squawking robot.

Is it Scratch? Does being possessed by Uncle Chuck give you the voice of Scratch?

Anyway, they know the Sword of Acorns was taken so they’re ready to go and retrieve it. Sally goes to Elias and wants Sonic to be let in on the deal since Chuck is his uncle. The name ‘Sonic’ is the cue that Geoffrey needs to froth at the mouth in anger, going so far as to get all up in Sally’s face and yell at her. 

This guy used to burst into the room and make-out with Sally without warning. 

I can’t believe this but he’s reached the point where he’s more willing to keep Sonic under the heel of his boot over even pretending to take Sally’s feelings into account. This is all something that could be easily solved with a well handled heel turn.

Elias sends Geoffrey’s team off to take care of this and Sonic, dressed in his outfit, happens to catch them on the move while up in a tree. He’s made it his mission to follow behind. The race is on to see who can massage their ego first by recovering the sword.

We cut back to Eggman and Snively who are busy making a fool out of Colin by pretending to not be dangerous psychopaths. He leaves Professor Cheddermund in their hands to give them a detailed report of their unsuccessful trek across the universe for a new home. As soon as he leaves though, we find out that Cheddermund is under their control, through the helpful visual of computer code being reflected in his glasses.

By this point, Geoffrey’s team and Sonic are in the base rather deeply. Of course, Eggman is aware of this because he’s got screens all over the place, though, one of them cuts out right as he’s about to make another comment about the furry community three issues in a row.

Also, now might be a good time to mention this but the art for Eggman and Snively is particularly strange. I wouldn’t say it’s bad but it's very different. Snively looks like a villain from an extremely old timey superhero comic and Eggman doesn’t really look fat but more like an overinflated balloon.

You can practically hear the air pump churning as it remains stuck up his rotund ass.

Sonic had actually used his cape to cut out the visual on the floating drone that Eggman was using to spy on the group but it didn’t matter because the gaggle of Shadow-Bots in the base just happened upon them.

Sonic sees this and jumps down to help them, which leads to possibly my favorite, unintentionally comedic two-panel spread in this book yet.

“Bitch, you what?”

The next page shows them all captured.

Motivation poster of the Eggman Empire right here: Down with the Furries.

What happens next got a little confusing to me, admittedly.

Sonic is put into a cell with Geoffrey and his troupe of unimportant-important characters where Eggman takes them out one by one to interrogate them. Sonic introduces himself as “The Sneak”, a Freedom Fighter from Sandblast City. He asks Geoffrey what Eggman told him when he was being interrogated and Geoffrey says nothing happened. Apparently Eggman wasn’t even there. He was just tossed into a different cell for a bit. Why this would be the procedure that gets done is strange enough but the argument that Sonic and Geoffrey inevitably have confuses me a bit too.

Sonic is really gung-ho about doing whatever he can to get the hell out of there but Geoffrey is adamant about not leaving. Sonic is suggesting they hurry out because Heavy and Bomb can’t be roboticized, as if that’s the only danger they’re in. Geoffrey surprisingly takes the position of not leaving a man behind, which I don’t necessarily know if that’s what Sonic’s trying to argue but I can’t really get a huge read on what Sonic is trying to suggest fully because Geoffrey keeps interrupting him to insult him and call him a coward.

Eventually, a huge explosion happens that destroys the Shadow-Bots outside the cell. Heavy says that Bomb exploded when he felt he was safely out of range. It sounds like a nice enough plan and they make their escape before the fighting between the two immature balls of ego continues.

The escape is super easy which baffles Sonic considerably. Turns out he’s got good reason to be baffled because it most definitely is too good to be true.

Like I said earlier, being roboticized isn’t the only bad thing that could happen. Eggman reprogrammed Heavy and Bomb to stage the breakout, which is why he isn’t bothering to erect his force field. 

At this point, I’m wondering where this is going and what the point of this event was seeing as how we, at this point, have accomplished nothing aside from two of the group now being potential Eggman spies. 

Sonic races by the others, which apparently doesn’t set off any red flags about who The Sneak’s secret identity could be, and hides his costume in a log.

Then, the story gets hijacked when someone tells Sonic to freeze. Why? Well, that’s because it’s time for Sonic Adventure 2 apparently.

Yeah, it’s just happening. Like, right the fuck now. 

It’s incredibly weird. It’s like we were in the middle of something and now it’s randomly time to run this plot through with a giant GUN truck that comes in out of nowhere.

I’m… eager to see where this is going but goodness me, what a disjointed story this ended up being here at the end.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #97: To the Brink

It’s our Ken Penders story of the issue now. Ron Lim’s art is with him here and it’s, again, hit or miss. When it comes to Tails, specifically, it mostly misses.

Tails and Knuckles are headbutting now. Knuckles punches him into a wall and Turbo Tails flies back out, saying that he wants to help. Knuckles keeps trying to provoke Merlin and Athair into fighting him for no reason and Tails has to do his best to keep Knuckles in check.

It’s kind of brutal how relentless Knuckles is here. Eventually, it just devolves into Knuckles beating the shit out of this child who is trying his best to prove to Knuckles that he’s a friend and that he wishes only to help.

If Tails weren’t currently super-powered, this image would be even more impactful than it already was. 

As is, it’s still really powerful. 

It’s just… so mean.

This final hit knocks him out by the way. There were more hits than these two but those felt like the most powerful ones to be sure.

I’m trying not to comment on the fact that Knux has laser eye beams.

Then Knuckles hears Julie-Su’s voice in his head and blinks out of there with a crackle.

Merlin goes to his nephew and blames himself for this, wondering why Turbo Tails just stopped functioning correctly. Athair, confused as well, decides to dive into Tails’ subconscious to find out.

And uh… apparently… he finds something out but what it is isn’t told to us because mysteries and shit.

Sigh.

Like, I just want to be told something straight for once. I don’t really understand the point of leaving this story as is. Literally all that happened was that Tails got horribly and viciously beaten into the fucking asphalt and any comforting reason that would put into perspective the reason why to help sell this as something necessary is just going to be hidden from us for no reason.

Fuck you then.

 

This issue felt incredibly pointless on the whole. I was expecting there to have been a reasonable advancement or a conclusion to this thread of the Sword of Acorns having been stolen but all that happened was that they got dicked around and then the plot got hijacked by Adventure 2 out of nowhere. I don’t really get it. However, it pales in comparison to the uselessness of what the Penders story entailed. It was just Tails getting beaten up and punched into the ground by Knuckles. Then when they bring up the possibility of an explanation for it they decide not to say it, instead opting to hide it under a ton of confusing dialogue about Tails thinking he’s himself or whatever. I swear to God, Tails better actually be himself. There’s only so much I can take of this kind of nonsense.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #98: Sonic Adventure 2

It took me a while to realize what it was about this cover that bothered me so much and then I realized it was because the style of cover reminded me of those awful Super Special covers. Now this cover is nowhere near as bad as those. In fact, it looks fine. I’m just not a fan of this kind of style in general. I’ve been trained to see something that looks like this and not like it. Anyway, we’re here finally. It’s time for Sonic Adventure 2 and its kind of surreal. Granted, that game came out almost 20 years ago so maybe it shouldn’t be but it somehow feels newer than it should all these years later. Time is an illusion. 

Spoiler

 

OOOOOOOH! So this is interesting. Karl Bollers is writing the main story again, sure, but this time both the pencils and colors are being done by Spaz. I wonder how this’ll turn out, here at the time of Sonic’s 10th anniversary.

Oh. 

Oh my god. Can… Can Spaz just draw the comic until Issue 160? Please?

Perhaps I’m jumping the gun on that but this is seriously the most impressive thing the book has offered up to me in… ever. It looks unreal. I’m astonished they allowed something that looked this good into any of the issues being released around this time. The mandate that demanded it look like crap was still in full swing I imagine.

Okay, that’s hyperbolic of me to say but still. I mean, Jesus Christ.

The story here is basically the comic repurposing one of its comedic endings where Mecha Sonic chased Eggman off into the sunset into being about how he stumbled and fell right on top of the scene where Gerald Robotnik and his old lab equipment were. So, in this story, rather than deciding to seek the information and his prize out himself, it was discovered solely by happenstance. I suppose either one works. What really matters is the agency Eggman took upon releasing the safeguarded secret after all.

In the pages following we get more splendid art showing the green emerald getting stolen. I almost called it a Chaos Emerald but I keep forgetting that they’re supposed to be Super Gum Gum Chaos Blast Powered Emeralds or whatever. 

Yeah, I’ve totally given up on the names. Sorry.

We also get a Commander J.J being put on the case of figuring out who made off with the emerald and defeated Mecha Sonic. I guess that “protector of the city” thing was only viable in as much as needing to find a way to introduce our newest character in a cool manner. You’re done son.

I will say that the one thing about the art that I’m not sold on is, sadly, how Shadow the Hedgehog himself is drawn.

The bulbous yellow cuffs on his hands and feet especially look off. They’ve got these weird groves to them that aren’t there in the games which makes them look like he’s wearing miniature floaties. The big issue is more so how Shadow himself looks. It’s not working for me. I do certainly hope this isn’t the case where all the humans, items, and backgrounds look fantastic but the animal characters themselves are a touch too off in this style to work in my eyes. That would be a crying shame.

The news that the city’s last remaining Chaos Emerald (hey, the book called it a Chaos Emerald. That means it’s okay for me to do it too. Hooray!) sent the President into a panic.

Oh yeah, the President’s here now. 

OH YEAH, Rouge the Bat is here now too!

Good God, her neck.

Also, she’s ginormous. 

Also, her outfit is gray. 

What a first image for this character eh?

So things are progressing in basically the same manner as in SA2 though under different inciting incidents and slightly altered circumstances. 

We’re getting more of a focused and in-depth look at the branch of GUN that was responsible for hunting down Sonic thanks to Commander Hugo Brass here and his team.

For those of you who were curious as to what the Team Sigma Alpha-2 from Sonic Adventure 2 looked like… well, here they are. 

Finally, the mystery is solved.

Anyway, we cut back to where Sonic was being ambushed at the end of that other issue; the boring one where he became The Sneak that we just talked about.

After a little fight where Sonic acts like Sonic, his trademark cockiness lands him trapped in a net that he can’t escape from. Then the very next scene, we see him in handcuffs and in a helicopter over Station Square. 

I’m actually happy to report that Sonic himself is drawn to my liking here. He’s drawn especially well in the scene that happens next. It’s the famous starting cutscene of SA2 of course. The nostalgia hit me like a brick and the music was playing full blast in my head as the lines, word for word, were made clear on the page.

Aside from the part where he says “Juicin” of course.

I dunno. Somehow, Sonic actually responding to the man’s question in this scene as well as that response being a single word makes it come off as significantly lamer to me. 

The dig about how shitty the flight was and the complaint about there being no food or movies wasn’t said aloud. He merely thinks it in his head. I mean… I guess it’s still there so whatever but they could have taken out “Juicin”. There was no need for “Juicin”.

The next few panels are all just Sonic going through the level. Everything that makes up the level is there, including those weird steel beams that float up and down without explanation. Then, when Sonic thinks he’s in the clear, our favorite character shows up, the real star of the show who makes his lovely debut in this game alongside Rouge and Shadow… the fucking GUN Truck!

Ever just get washed over by the desire to play a Sonic game? Seeing these last couple of pages made it hit me like I was getting run over by this goddamn truck. 

This looks amazing and the adaptation, though understandably changed to better fit the comic’s narrative, was surprisingly well-done here at this first stage of it. I’ve been told it doesn’t last for too long so I’m curious as to how exactly it gets handl--oh wait. I didn’t read that final caption box too well.

Oh.

Oh so you’re… not planning on abandoning the lame as fuck school/sword of acorns/Geoffrey’s a prick storyline in favor of a comic adaptation of Adventure 2 utilizing Spaz’s fucking fantastic looking art? 

I mean… I know this book is millions of years old and also no longer being published but like… could I send a carrier pigeon to the past and demand that they… NOT do that? 

Why… why would you do this to me? Give me a gem of greatness like this, proving that you absolutely have what it takes to make an awesome comic, and then just… not do it. Are you mocking me? Is that it?!

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #98: As the Shadow Awakes

Writer Ken Penders and Penciler Ron Lim for this story...

Then Woody points to a proper SA2 adaptation drawn by Spaz and written by Bollers and I go “WHERE?!” 

Then he laughs and falls the fuck over like an asshole.

To be fair, the art in this story looks perfectly fine. Maria doesn’t quite look right to me but she didn’t in the original SA2 either so that’s fine. Although, the hair is the wrong color but that’s the fault of the colorist. 

No, the problem is, of course, the dialogue and story. It just begins with Gerald Robotnik monologuing to us about who he is and what he’s doing to absolutely no one in particular and he does this for two whole pages before Maria contacts him and warns him that an Overlander Carrier is coming to their station.

There are quite a few changes here and a lot of which I’m not sure why they were made. First, the narration box says that the specified length of time this happened long ago is unknown rather than the highly talked about and significantly repeated mark of 50 years. Second, uh, apparently there’s NO ONE aboard the Ark aside from Gerald and Maria. I… don’t see how this is a change that was necessary for the Archie adaptation here but that’s how it is.

Third, instead of a group of GUN soldiers, it’s just some asshole with a gun and a bunch of normies dressed like Burt from Accounting complete with white long sleeved shirts and business ties.

That mean old scientist won’t let us play with his toys. 

WHAT?!

Apparently, these are soldiers though. One of them is a lieutenant. They don’t look like it… at all… but I guess they are.

Gerald said in his long ass monologue that he was looking for a cure to diseases and shit. I’m not entirely sure why the military needs that and not specifically the general public and the government either. I dunno. I feel like them raiding the Ark and shutting it down because his research was getting too dangerous makes a bit more sense so far. The guy’s experiments led to the creation of a giant fuckoff lizard with life-support tubes and shit all over it that fired black balls of electric death at you when it felt threatened. I can at least see where their concern came from on that end.

This however just makes them look like they’re a bunch of whiners. At the very least wait until the experiment is finished before you raid it. In this scenario you still WANT the experiment right? In the one in the game, they didn’t WANT the experiment anymore so of course they tried to stop it.

God. Penders, even when you have something handed to you on a silver platter you’ve gotta make it not make sense anymore. For fuck’s sake.

Oh it gets worse.

Over the years, there’s been a couple of depictions of Maria’s death. The implied one in the original SA2 was the one that showed you the least. The one in Sonic X was fairly haunting but appropriately censored by the show… and then censored even more by 4kids (though, shockingly, they kept in the part about her dying). The one in Shadow the Hedgehog is probably the more egregious I was aware of up until now where you see the little girl’s look of shock, the soldier holds out the pistol, and then the gunshot goes off.  It’s odd because that one makes the least sense considering she doesn’t put Shadow in the pod in that one. The look of determination on Maria’s face as she defies the soldier's orders in Sonic X did a lot to make that tragic moment double as a heroic one too where the one in Shadow’s game was literally just a girl getting shot. It wasn’t handled the best.

However, I feel like all of them pale in comparison to the comedy stylings of Ken Penders’ adaptation where the soldier shouts “DON’T MOVE OR I’LL SHOOT” and then just FUCKING SHOOTS HER ANYWAY!

I laughed SO HARD at this. It’s not supposed to be funny but it is.

Why… why would you have it go down like that?!

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he says as he shoots her.

It’s like a sketch where a police man beats your unconscious body with his nightstick while shouting “STOP RESISTING!” over and over again.

After these people reach Gerald and threaten him back onto the surface, they inform him tactlessly that Maria was killed for no reason and force him to get to work on building another Project Shadow for them. Gerald says “Yeah, sure I’ll do that” and then actually gets to work on his revenge project. He built the Eclipse Cannon within the Ark a while back (for reasons that will go unexplained until Shadow the Hedgehog, the only loose thread that SA2 had that actually got answered in that game) along with the fact that Shadow’s downloaded bio-matter will remember his desire for revenge and a left behind microchip for anyone who wishes to take him up on his wish.

This is all well and good but it remains strange seeing this all connected back to the Overlanders stuff when they’re not even planning on giving the story arc its own focus within the comic. I guess they expect people to play the game and just imagine that the humans are Overlanders and Station Square is an Ancient City. Also, they’re going to have to imagine the arc happened without the Freedom Fighters yet again for no explained reason. Also, also, they’re gonna have to ignore the fact that Knothole and Robotropolis don’t get mentioned. Let’s also not forget the state of the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds…

The mental gymnastics you’re being expected to do here isn’t entirely fair. The IDW comic was made with the idea of it being an offshoot of the games but this comic doesn’t have that luxury so I guess it’s only fair to expect them to work with what they’ve got but… I do feel like they could have tried for something a bit different. A semi-adaption like they tried with Adventure 1 but done way better would have been fine. 

It at least would have been a better use of paper compared to this school bullshit.

Anyway, I guess they eventually catch onto the fact that this man who’s way, way smarter than them could very easily be pulling a fast one on them so they decide it best to scrap the project and to just execute the fucker. They abandon the island and seal everything inside. 

I guess it’s, on the whole, not the worst thing ever. After all, the behavior of these assholes in both versions of this story is unacceptable and idiotic. Although, I could follow the idiocy of them a bit better in the original game. These fools kept changing their minds every few pages and it was really unimpressive of them to do so, I must say.

 

That adaptation at the start was God-like. It was breathtaking. It was wonderful. It was Sonic Adventure 2 and it was awesome. Of course it stands to reason that they’d get Spaz to do something special for them like that but the comic isn’t usually known for doing reasonable things so it stands as an incredibly wonderful surprise seeing it happen the way that it did. I suppose I should at least be happy I got that but… I really wish we could have scrapped the last couple of issues and just reworked things so that this somehow came first. I dunno. Maybe they could have used magic to do it.

The Penders story was terribly written and the art quality drop was disappointing but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world… but of course, there had to have been at least one moment that was monumentally ridiculous. That Maria scene was hilarious. 
 

[Shadow Chaos Control]

A favorite of mine, the return of Super Sonic and Hyper Knuckles, this time working together against Mammoth Mogul. This featured Tails’ super form, Turbo Tails: 

[SBR2]

Spoiler

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Also, the situational irony of Chris being dressed up in his thief outfit while getting the stuff in his bag sucked away by Bokkun is great.

I think that's supposed to be the costume he wore in the SA2 Adaptation based on Bruce Lee from the Green Hornet.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

 

They're bring Giant Robots. They're bringing Chaos Emeralds. We have to build a wall around Mobius!

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Sonic and Tails are talking alone, in a scene where Tails has an absurdly long torso and is also, somehow, the same height as Sonic.

Tails buddy you need to hit the gym. Got a bit of a ponch there.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

 

God that merging in the last 2 panels is great. David Hutchinson isn't my favorite artist on this book but he could deliver some cool stuff every so often.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

 

Aw, shit Deadites! I should point out I'm not the first to make an Evil Dead connection. I believe the blog Hedgehog's Can't Swim also made that one. But come on their literally saying "Join Us" like in the original Evil Dead. It has to be intentional.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Is it Scratch? Does being possessed by Uncle Chuck give you the voice of Scratch?

I think the radio is supposed to be making that noise. Trust me I have experience with blaring radio noises my dad has one and a lot of the time the audio from it makes and ungodly squawk.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

I can’t believe this but he’s reached the point where he’s more willing to keep Sonic under the heel of his boot over even pretending to take Sally’s feelings into account.

Hey at least he's being honest about what Sally really meant to him now. Just a lay and nothing more.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

 

Ok I know furries weren't as wide spread at the time but...this had to be intentional right? Like Bollers had to have known.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Eventually, it just devolves into Knuckles beating the shit out of this child who is trying his best to prove to Knuckles that he’s a friend and that he wishes only to help.

Nice to see Operation: Throw an 11 year old at a Demi-God is working out swimmingly.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

And uh… apparently… he finds something out but what it is isn’t told to us because mysteries and shit.

Oh, yeah I forgot this was were this plot started. I'm not going to spoil it but it's very dumb.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

It took me a while to realize what it was about this cover that bothered me so much and then I realized it was because the style of cover reminded me of those awful Super Special covers.

It almost makes me wonder if this started life as a special or the start of a miniseries or something but Archie decided "screw that we aren't paying to publish anymore extra books anymore."

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Can Spaz just draw the comic until Issue 160? Please?

It sucks he's always so busy. I'd love for him to have done more interior work but ah, well.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

almost called it a Chaos Emerald but I keep forgetting that they’re supposed to be Super Gum Gum Chaos Blast Powered Emeralds or whatever. 

Yeah, I’ve totally given up on the names. Sorry.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

The news that the city’s last remaining Chaos Emerald (hey, the book called it a Chaos Emerald. That means it’s okay for me to do it too. Hooray!)

Just a reminder the Super Emeralds were Chao and they vanished with Tikal and Chaos. All Emeralds from here on are Chaos Emeralds.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

OH YEAH, Rouge the Bat is here now too!

Yay my favorite character! I can't wait to see how Spaz rendered her as if I haven't already read this issue before and seen the art!

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

 

OH, GOD! MY SWEET GIRL WHAT DID HE DO TO YOU? Also way to spoil the plot twist Bollers. I think this came out just a little bit before SA2 was officially released so yeah Karl pretty much ruined the reveal that Rouge is working for the government.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

For those of you who were curious as to what the Team Sigma Alpha-2 from Sonic Adventure 2 looked like… well, here they are. 

Finally, the mystery is solved.

They look like 90's Comic characters trying too hard to be Anime. Cool.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

The nostalgia hit me like a brick and the music was playing full blast in my head as the lines, word for word, were made clear on the page.

*Kickass SA2 version of It Doesn't Matter intensifies* I may not think the game has aged particularly well but I can't deny this scene makes a great first impression.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

The dig about how shitty the flight was and the complaint about there being no food or movies wasn’t said aloud. He merely thinks it in his head. I mean… I guess it’s still there so whatever but they could have taken out “Juicin”. There was no need for “Juicin”.

1. Wait was it? I could have sworn his lips were moving. 2. He is thinking "Juicin'" it's in a thought bubble.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

This looks amazing and the adaptation, though understandably changed to better fit the comic’s narrative, was surprisingly well-done here at this first stage of it. I’ve been told it doesn’t last for too long so I’m curious as to how exactly it gets handl--oh wait. I didn’t read that final caption box too well.

Oh.

Oh so you’re… not planning on abandoning the lame as fuck school/sword of acorns/Geoffrey’s a prick storyline in favor of a comic adaptation of Adventure 2 utilizing Spaz’s fucking fantastic looking art? 

I mean… I know this book is millions of years old and also no longer being published but like… could I send a carrier pigeon to the past and demand that they… NOT do that? 

Honestly this makes me really sad the Super Specials were no longer being made. If you ask me a better way of doing this would have been a 48 page special to begin the plot (basically this issue but longer) a four issue miniseries to tell the base story of the game (maybe have Knuckles get captured by Eggman to power the Eclipse cannon or set it after the current arc or something) and a second 48 page special to do the final story. But I suppose at this point Archie wasn't making as much on the Sonic book so they stopped doing spinoffs until Sonic X rolled around.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Second, uh, apparently there’s NO ONE aboard the Ark aside from Gerald and Maria. I… don’t see how this is a change that was necessary for the Archie adaptation here but that’s how it is.

I mean TBF I don't really recall anyone but Maria and Gerald being referenced as being on the Ark until Shadow The Hedgehog. I mean it's a Colony so yeah you'd assume that there'd be other people.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

Third, instead of a group of GUN soldiers, it’s just some asshole with a gun and a bunch of normies dressed like Burt from Accounting complete with white long sleeved shirts and business ties.

That mean old scientist won’t let us play with his toys. 

WHAT?!

Apparently, these are soldiers though. One of them is a lieutenant. They don’t look like it… at all… but I guess they are.

I'm assuming Ron didn't get the memo. Also Jesus Christ this dialogue. Not that the GUN soldiers ever had much personality but somehow Penders gave them less. Like say what you will about Sonic X at least they gave the soldier who killed Maria a story and humanized him. Penders is just like "Nah they're scary military thugs who revel in killing sick children."

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

The one in Sonic X was fairly haunting but appropriately censored by the show… and then censored even more by 4kids (though, shockingly, they kept in the part about her dying).

I'm so glad someone else realizes that they didn't cut out her death. The soldier still talks about how her face haunts him. Yes he says they "took her away" but all the implications are still there that he killed her.

 

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

However, I feel like all of them pale in comparison to the comedy stylings of Ken Penders’ adaptation where the soldier shouts “DON’T MOVE OR I’LL SHOOT” and then just FUCKING SHOOTS HER ANYWAY!

"Stupid Girl!" Yeah why give the soldier pathos or make him a character when you can make him call the sick child he murdered an idiot for getting in his way?

Also...I hate the "soldier murders a sick child" part of the plot so bad. I get it it's a tragedy that sets Shadow on his path of vengeance because Gerald reprogrammed him to think a 12 year old wanted bloody revenge or maybe not I don't fucking know what Shadow's memory deal is. But it just reeks of trying too hard to be taken seriously. I don't mind stuff like the Echidnas being wiped out by Chaos or the Metal Virus plot in IDW but this? This just feels needlessly dark for the sake of dark. Honestly I'm just not keen on a lot of SA2's plot. You can go more serious with Sonic but I just feel like people go to far and forget the general tone of the games that preceded this one.

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:40 PM, Dr. Mike Acula said:

, they’re going to have to imagine the arc happened without the Freedom Fighters yet again for no explained reason. Also, also, they’re gonna have to ignore the fact that Knothole and Robotropolis don’t get mentioned. Let’s also not forget the state of the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds…

Also don't forget Knuckles being red and not a Demi-God. There's a reason Ian later finished this Adaptation and cut out Tails and Knuckles. And Amy. Leading to several questions as to who exactly let Sonic out of his cell?