Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[Cuz]

Aw Mike, see what you've done, you went and chased one away~

 

I was gonna wait until #134 to ask this, but while I'm here, do you have any overall thoughts on the run from #88-125? The time-skip sort of marks a new era of the book for me.

 

On 1/28/2021 at 4:22 PM, Arthur_Cavendish said:

I just finished Archives volume 24 after years of reading the series. That puts me at issue 91 and all I can say is...what happened to King Acorn? I always thought he was a cool character but post issue 50 he became such a douche to Sally. In previous issues they showed he cared for Sally but then they screwed up his character and made him completely unlikeable. Now I feel the  characterization betrayal that people felt when Luke Skywalker got reintroduced in Last Jedi. 

Yeah, I remember it threw me for a loop when the King became a crotchety old man much later in the book, and partly thanks to Mike's reviews I've realized the writing had been on the wall for sometime. I had actually given Max too much benefit of the doubt because I didn't have a good handle on where the Super Special "Return of the King" fit in with the main books and had mistaken a lot of his misogyny for Nagus' influence that came to light in that special. 

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #133: Home - Part 4 of 4: Finale

This cover looks and feels a bit odd to me. I dunno. It kind of looks like everyone’s melting together in a smushed up pile of silly putty to me. Also, it’s a little random how Bunnie is just tucked away there in the bottom corner like that. This is one of many upcoming drawings of Sonic in this book where the top of his head looks like a growing lump or a mountain. I guess that could also be what his spines look from far away.

Spoiler

 

We begin with Sonic getting blasted at by M and deciding that he needs to hurry and make himself look good, less his humiliation be broadcasted back home for his girlfriend and her folks to bear witness to. If he looks lame her parents might push for someone tougher.

We cut back to Eggman and Shadow where Shadow is about to pull an IDW Issue 5.

Although, the dialogue is cheesier.

I will say though, I dig it. 

We cut back to Tails dealing with A.D.A.M and… honestly, when I first saw this last issue I thought Tails was literally only just doing it to distract him. That’s definitely still true but I honestly think he might be trying to form a solid relationship with the sentient A.I.

He’s giving the guy the ability to try and understand riddles. Well, sort of.

Still needs some work. He’ll get there though.

We cut back to the battle outside the city where the supposedly weakened Knuckles is on the front lines, charging ahead.

I’m going to try and not get angry but to be honest, and to back up what I said earlier, there’s no fucking way the book has been AT ALL clear about what Knuckles’ deal is. It isn’t until a page later, where it’s flat out said properly, for the first time, that Knuckles can’t glide. Being under the impression that Knuckles lost his Chaos Powers, you’d think it’d be understandable that in that one panel from 125, when he fell on his chin and restated that he lost his powers one would still think he was talking about his Chaos Powers and view that as an attempt to use them to stop the overpowering Xorda attack. 

But no. Stupid me assumed Knuckles was just Knuckles and the only thing Locke did was pump Chaos Emerald energy into him so that he’d have Chaos Emerald powers. The distinction between regular Knuckles and what Locke did apparently never existed. Apparently 100% of what Knuckles is has been linked to Chaos Powers, including his strength and his gliding ability. 

I literally didn’t think that would be the case. At all. Not once since reading this book. I seriously didn’t believe that they’d have allowed Penders to say that Knuckles’ natural Knuckles-like abilities from the games were also because of the powers of a Chaos Emerald. That still makes no sense to me and I don’t know how his natural strength and his regular gliding ability could be likened to Chaos Powers but it apparently is.

I’m getting more and more angry as I talk about this, to the point where I’ve contemplated quitting doing this all together. I’ve failed to keep the anger in check and I apologize in advance for the rant.

Knuckles is literally saying he’s still got his muscle. The only way I would have known that he was losing strength wouldn’t have come until a story down the line because the book did not do a sufficient job of explaining how this all worked. If I’m seriously going to be told that it did then I’m giving up because fuck that. 

I’m not entertaining this bullshit anymore. Penders can fuck right off with that nonsense. The intricacies of how Chaos Powers work and what does and doesn’t qualify as them are somehow more complicated than “The green stuff is Chaos Powers”. Knuckles is acting like Knuckles here and he’s still talking like he’s got strength. Of course I assumed he was still strong. The book isn’t doing anything to contradict that assumption. It just looked like Julie-Su was worried because he was dead before, which is understandable. So if I seriously got hounded over something that I wasn’t even supposed to know yet because of this, I’m fucking livid. Yeah, part of it is me being triggered that I got accused of being petty and looking for reasons to hate a character when I was just generally confused. Yeah, that set me off and made me hesitant to ask questions and I’m honestly not over it yet but the idea that it happened because I possibly misunderstood something that Ken Penders created makes me really upset.

Also, fuck Julie-Su. Fuck her. I’m going to be even more angry whenever I see her goddamn face now because of this shit.

I’m really pissed off if you couldn’t tell and I once again apologize but I need to emphasize just how horrible all this shit with Knuckles has been. This is legitimately the worst written thing I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing with regards to Sonic. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not being hyperbolic. This is terrible. I’m astonished that SEGA allowed this to happen.

So basically, Knuckles, who still has strength, but is also apparently losing his strength or has lost some of it at the same time, is charging in the front lines of a battle and that’s okay. 

Sonic is fighting M and M manages to graze his shoulder when she aims for where he’s supposed to be instead of where he is and this triggers Sally’s PTSD and she runs off crying about Sonic’s impending death happening again.

Yeah, I think it’s hard to argue that she was lying when she said she knew he was fine the whole time. 

Bunnie comes in and punches M into a building and Geoffrey throws a bomb that causes an explosion on top of that. Fiona fixes up Sonic’s arm in a sling while Sonic asks Bunnie to carry Antoine off to the Aircraft Carrier to stop him from launching the missiles. Bunnie doesn’t want to take Antoine though and they share an angry glance before she relents and does it anyway.

Sonic is confused as to why they aren’t happy to be together and Fiona has to inform him that they broke up months ago. Before Sonic can go “SAY WHAAAAAA--?!” Mecha bursts out of the wall, looking fierce and beautiful in her natural skin.

She didn’t strike me as one to care that much about her makeup. I guess this is a rather extreme case though.

Back with A.D.A.M and Tails, he’s finally got his first riddle down. The answer to what’s black and white and read all over is a newspaper, which is a hard one to get because the grammar isn’t all there on that one but whatever. Tails is super excited for him but can’t contact him anymore after that. I guess because A.D.A.M succeeded, he felt it was time to head back to Eggman.

Knuckles is out here, destroying robots with his fists. I’m not going to get angry about how I’m still not being shown that he’s weaker or how it was silly of me to assume he could still fight and destroy robots when the comic is literally showing him do that. I had to stop reading to take in a deep breath though.

… But still… they said he lost his powers, not that he was losING his powers. If he lost his powers then why can he still do this? Unless, there’s something else I missed about how his strength may be the result of Chaos Powers but unlike the power to glide it deteriorates over time and doesn’t leave instantly like the rest of his powers? Is that something they made clear and I missed that too? 

I don’t think I want to see Knuckles for a while. 

What a time for that to happen when I’ve got 12 more Knuckles stories to read about him in the future.

We cut back to Eggman and Shadow where, for some reason, Eggman still hasn’t been dealt with by Shadow. Apparently the two of them have just been standing there the WHOLE time. I would say that maybe this was happening at the same time as the other events but no. Sonic fell in the water and then Eggman was immediately ambushed by Shadow. Then the ENTIRE fight with M happened and then Sonic told Antoine and Bunnie to come here. 

So that WHOLE time that was going on, Eggman and Shadow were just standing here across from one another doing nothing. I guess Shadow is either all talk or he was looking for an excuse to not actually have to kill Eggman for fear of going against a SEGA mandate. Then again, I’d be shocked to learn those even existed at this time considering all this stuff with Knuckles.

Shadow smacks Eggman once in the face and then, somehow, Eggman just falls away while channeling Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.

I don’t know how that happened or how Shadow let it happen. I guess it’s to be expected since Eggman IS faster than Sonic. It only stands to reason he’d be faster than Shadow.

Shadow, for some reason, isn’t strong enough to rip off that metal panel he’s under as we see in the next panel. It’s almost as if the stars aligned to make sure the doctor escaped. Then Bunnie flies through the ship and destroys it, making the ship sink, and the ATOMIC MISSILES just explode under the water. 

I’m not going to question whether or not that was a good way of handling it because asking questions is bad. Just go with it.

M is fighting with Sonic’s friends. She grabs Espio’s tongue and swats Geoffrey with it, humorously. Seeing Espio do chameleon thing's feels weird but I'm also not against more of it.

She’s then about to say “I am Mecha, hear me roar” before Sonic cuts her off and literally cuts the ground below her feet away, sending her into the water below.

If I didn’t know any better I’d say that was the end of Mecha. I do know better though, so I won’t.

Everything is done now. 

Sonic heads home with an arm in a sling. Shadow is staring off into the middle distance, because he’s Shadow, though his colors are STILL wrong in this issue. Sally is crying into her mother, being comforted since Sonic being grazed in the shoulder by that laser wasn’t enough to kill him. 

Oh, and Eggman scolds A.D.A.M for having fun. 

He didn’t get the memo that his Swat-Bots routinely used to put down signs that said NO FUN ALLOWED.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #133: Mobius 25 Years Later: Midnight In The Garden

Writer/Inker: Ken Penders
Penciler: Steven Butler
Letterer: V. Williams
Colorist: Jensen
Editor: Justin Gabrie

The summary calls Rotor, the emissary, Lord Rotor.  I’m not doing that. He’s just Rotor. However, the fact that he’s being referred to as that really helps sell how grandiose everything is being made out to be now, doesn’t it?

Knuckles and Rotor have a nice chat with one another about protocol. Knuckles pretends to act like he cares that Rotor didn’t show for his daughter’s party, mentioning that fights have broken out over less, before he acts like himself and asks what’s up. Rotor just tells him to look at the sky.

It’s covered in lightning. 

Knuckles doesn’t get it so Rotor tells him it's the beginning of the end.

Knuckles says “The end of what?”

Bless you Knuckles.

The next two pages are me forcing myself to sit through Julie-Su and Lara-Su having this really annoying, super generic mother and daughter fight where Lara-Su complains about being treated as a kid, and how dad used to do this, and mom used to do that, and “when I have kids I won’t be on their case all the time” and blah blah blah. 

It’s really gripping stuff that makes me really like the characters. Totally. I love how this character just complains all the time about stuff I don’t care about. It’s so entertaining. 

The scene ends on Lara-Su asking if she’s got a say in the matter of what’s best for her and Julie-Su pretending to ponder it before saying “No.” 

So there you have it folks. 16-year-old Lara-Su just had an unveiling party and is immediately told afterward that she has no say in what’s best for her. Maybe I’m biased because my mother never told me anything like that before but I can’t say I find that endearing either, personally. Your mileage may vary depending on the kind of parents you had I guess but I don’t like it.

We cut back to Knuckles and Rotor’s talk about how the end of the world is coming and Rutan overhears it while making out with Salma, Espio's daughter.

It doesn’t happen often, as I’m more open to certain things being in Sonic comics, but there are times where I’m looking at a panel in a Sonic the Hedgehog comic and I can’t help but go… “Hmmm… this feels off.”

Anyway, Rutan is happy to hear that the world is ending and wants to tell his mom about it. 

 

This issue was… an ending to a story. Sure, we’ll go with that. Honestly, I can’t help but feel things just kind of fizzled out here. M’s defeat was more layered than the other stuff, I guess but even that kind of felt like it didn’t stick the landing. Meanwhile, the entire thing with the battleship felt really underwhelming. I guess it did a good job selling me on this having been a hard fought battle though. It kind of feels like we’re back to business as usual though and after the Xorda attack and the space adventure, a part of me doesn’t know if it's quite okay with that just yet. Hopefully Eggman initiates something a little more impressive next time.

Meanwhile, the Knuckles story continues to go nowhere. We learned that lightning equals the end of the world. That’s it. Two pages of the final story was dedicated to two characters that I don’t care about bating generic whiny teenager and doting mother dialogue back and forth at each other and I wasn’t here for it. 

The angry fire in the pit of my stomach that’s been ignited whenever I see Archie Knuckles or Julie-Su has risen to a new level after this escapade though. I’m probably going to be way tougher and harsher on them from here on in without even realizing it. Maybe it’ll be unfair but I really do feel like a button was pushed that’s ignited a flame in me that cannot be extinguished now. Every time I see their faces I’m going to get mad all over again. I think I’ve hit a point where I’m done finding what Ken Penders has done to this character funny. 

Perhaps I’ll calm down one day. I’ll remember that this is just a comic book about a cartoon echidna hedgehog and get back to being a bit more tongue in cheek about it but this latest escapade really did a number on me. 

 

Sonic X - Issue #22: Decoe and Bocoe's Not-So-Excellent Misadventure

I doubt Sonic X is going to be able to cool me down today but I hope it does. This cover is great and I see it all the time at the comic shop I frequent. Somehow throwing away Bocoe and Decoe has magically led to the magnificent capture of Sonic the Hedgehog. Funny thing about the robot sidekicks is that they never get destroyed. It’s always the Egg Pawns that face the full brunt of Sonic’s wrath. Maybe Sonic just finds them funny.

Spoiler

 

Writer: Joe Edkin
Pencils: James Fry and Ian Thompson (robot designs)
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Josh Ray
Editor: Mike Pellerito

Joe Edkin is back! Hello old friend.

This issue begins with the world famous duo of Sonic and Captain Westwood.

Yeah.

Sonic tries to work together with the man properly but he just tells Sonic to fuck off while stealing the idea that Sonic suggested they do and applying it to his robots and himself like a professional douche.

Eggman is, meanwhile, trying to destroy them and tells Bocoe and Decoe to press a button that won’t make all the robot's limbs detach.

Unfortunately, they press the button that makes the robot’s limbs detach.

Eggman gets mad at them for this but I gotta say, it’s hard for me to because I’m a little confused as to why Eggman had such a button in the first place. I’m really not sure why he’d put it in the cockpit like that either. If you need a button like that, at least put it under some safety glass.

Eggman retreats and Westwood dances over the detached limbs, saying they can use it’s tech for parts. Then Sonic rolls his eyes and the Looney Tunes circle fades us out. Just another cartoonish adventure for the duo of Sonic and Westwood.

We cut back to what appears to be a travel sized Egg Carrier to see Eggman yelling at his goons for something that was mostly his fault.

Seriously, look at it. It looks like it’s just sitting in the park somewhere. It’s gotta either be super small or the perspective is out of whack.

Bocoe and Decoe defend themselves from Eggman by bringing up the obvious things I just brought up. I didn’t even need to do any talking. They were on top of it.

Of course, because this is a more comedy oriented comic, the flaws of the villain are very much intentional so making fun of the fact that they’re there is a lot harder to do. Especially when the lackeys always point the flaws out. 

Eggman doesn’t want to hear it though and fires them. 

Eggman is really not having it today. I’m not entirely sure what was so special about this particular defeat or even that particular dressing down of his weird machinations but hey, who am I to question the great Doctor Eggman?

Some idiot who writes reviews for Sonic comics on the internet, that’s who.

Bocoe and Deoce wander the streets, with tons of people looking at them in the background because they’re two lumbering robots walking the streets. They might as well be their own circus act. 

However, they’re concerned about paying for their motor oil so they decide to get jobs. I love how unquestionably nice they’d be without Eggman around. It’s such a charming dynamic.

Even cuter is how Bokkun is keeping in touch with the two of them over the phone. It’s sweet knowing they still care about each other.

Cheesecake sounds good right about now. 

Although, it’s a little concerning just how happy Eggman is.

Eggman’s no stranger to singing and dancing though. Bokkun has definitely seen him do it before. One of the best scenes in the movie is when he’s dancing.

Still, we get to see the early fruits of his labor and it’s… quite the doozy.

I can already see where this is going.

There’s plenty of ways this can go but I’m going to wager a guess that they’ll end up being, somehow, too evil for Eggman’s liking.

Meanwhile, Bocoe and Decoe have gotten a job at an ice-cream shop and right when Sonic, Tails, and Chris enter to grab a bite, they run across the new hires and the huge, store wide mess they’ve made.

When Decoe explains the situation to Sonic, Sonic hurriedly cleans everything up before their, understandably upset, boss is about to fire them. I kind of wish I got to see the minute details of how Sonic was cleaning everything up. Did he have to lick the carpet to get those ice-cream stains out?

Of course, since this comic exists in the land of convenient timing, a news report comes onto the screen where Scarlet Garcia is reporting that Area 99 is being attacked AGAIN. Talk about returning to the scene of the crime. Sheesh.

What’s hilarious is that when Chris says they need to do something, Tails points at the TV screen and says Sonic is already there. As they’re watching the news report, Scarlet turns and just sees Sonic waving as he runs by. It’s a really great way to utilize speed for comedy.

Sonic meets up with Westwood again and tells him that the two robots are probably here for the limbs Eggman left behind. I like that Eggman is really gung-ho about making sure the GUN geeks don’t keep his fucking technology. It’s great. 

Westwood refuses to tell Sonic where the limbs are because he thinks he and Eggman could be working together… but then when Bukon and Dukon crash into one of the buildings, he just says “Blast! There’s where the limbs are!” 

So, nice going buddy. I can see why you’re the best of the best.

Sonic goes in to challenge them. The robots claim he’s threat level 2, to which Sonic replies that he’s “off the charts” sounding rather offended. I mean, who’s to say the threat level doesn't only go up to two? For Eggman, the threat levels could be 2 for Sonic and 1 for everything else.

Or maybe not, since Sonic gets his ass kicked and they make off with the limbs.

Anyway, it’s time for the easily predictable thing that I predicted to happen.

Can’t say I still don’t find it amusing that it does.

Ah yes, the ol’ “You’re obsolete, we’re the master’s now” troupe. It’s wonderful. I never get tired of it. I think the best implementation of it was in Chalkzone where Brainiac No. 3 unleashed Brainiac No. 4 during a chase and he immediately froze No. 3 in carbonite and then proceeded to chase the heroes, taking his place, as if nothing had happened.

Back at the ice-cream shop, Sonic shows up covered in dirt and sees the shop just destroyed yet again. It looks even worse actually. Bocoe and Deoce promise to have it cleaned in a week. Two weeks tops.

I love them.

Bokkun comes in and tells them that Eggman is in need of their assistance. They’re hesitant to leave but their new boss literally begs them to while crying waterfalls from his eyes. So they go since he insists.

Eggman knows that Sonic is his last hope and not only is he right about him making a grand appearance, but we also learn that Sonic’s impossibly good at math.

Sonic wrestles with them for a bit before they reveal that the robot they’ve been working on is actually a missile. They immediately launch it towards the heart of Station Square, leaving Sonic to go stop it. I don’t exactly know how. I guess he’ll… kick it… really hard? Shrug.

Dukon and Bukon aren’t stupid so they immediately notice when Bocoe and Decoe try to free Eggman and chase them down, saying outright that their ineptitude is a threat to their plans succeeding. They suck so bad that it has a chance of not only disrupting their plans but accidentally destroying them.

I’ll wager a guess that’s what’s going to happen.

Decoe and Bocoe slip on a dropped banana from the ice cream shop and crash into the machine that was keeping Eggman locked inside, so that it opens and Bokkun can toss Eggman the remote that shuts them down.

Huh. I guess that’s a way to do it.

It’s also poetic that when Eggman shuts them down, their limbs pop off.

WOW. I guess there is a reason for a limbs-popping-off button. It’s to stop your sentient robots from betraying you.

Eggman launches them into the sky and Sonic homing attacks the missile back to the base where it collides with their robot parts and destroys them.

Eggman then offers Bocoe and Decoe their jobs back for somehow less pay despite having never paid them before. 

Bokkun just wonders if he has a remote that’ll remove all their arms and legs too.

Good question. Wouldn’t put it past him.

 

Yeah, that was fun. Pretty standard story with an expected result but hey, they did it just fine. There’s not too much to say about it aside from that. It totally lived up to what I expected it would be when I saw the cover. Although, I guess I pictured there being more moping from Bocoe and Decoe but the way they just got a new job and immediately sucked at it while being humble about how bad they were was definitely the funnier approach, for sure.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #134: Home: Epilogue - Say You Will

Uh-oh.

Why do I get the feeling I’m about to review something historic.

Spoiler

 

Words: Karl Bollers
Pictures: Jon Gray
Inks & Letters: Michael Higgins
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor: J.F. Gabrie

If my hunch is correct about what this is about, you’re about to see someone who doesn’t give a fuck about Sonic and Sally’s relationship react to something monumentally upsetting for the people that do. Holy shit, I’m excited. Bring it on.

The cover was nicely drawn by the way. It’s also an homage to Spider-Man #50.

This is the one where Spider-Man gives up on being Peter Parker… 

… No wait. Peter Parker gives up on being Spider-Man.

I got confused because the opposite is going to happen in this story. The hero is going to continue being the hero and the girl is going to give up on him.

Spoilers.

Right off the bat, the art for this first story by Jon Gray is really great. 

It’s adorable and charming and different in a way that’s actually really cute and appealing rather than self-destructive and distracting.

That said, this was quite the issue to just randomly be given the task to draw. I mean seriously. What a horrible stroke of bad luck. I think sometime last year or so he randomly started getting shit by idiots on twitter over it again. Because a bunch of so-called adults still, after 15 or so years couldn’t get over their furry romance being temporarily inconvenienced for the 50th time.

We begin with Sonic in Dr. Quack’s office. He’s just gotten his X-Ray taken because Dr. Quack is holding a black sheet that says X-Ray on it.

Dr. Quack asks if Sonic’s stuck anything in his ear while in space, which I initially thought was just a cute line but turns out he totally did. I had forgotten about the alien language implant. The doctor tells him that it’s melded with him which freaks Sonic out. He even curses in a manner that makes it look like a bunch of kindergarten letters.

It’s great that it turns out to be nothing to worry about, or so the doc says. It was all worth it to see Sonic flip the fuck out still.

This man definitely doesn’t have a problem getting across what Sonic is supposed to be feeling. That’s for damn sure.

Sonic looks a bit downtrodden and opens up a little about how different everything is. He also brings up Dr. Quack’s eye-patch, which my own eyes were traveling towards as well. I couldn’t even remember if he already had it or not but he didn’t. He explains that he stepped on a landmine while trying to help out on the open battlefield so now he’s just staying as the royal physician rather than risking his life to save others in the war. 

I guess that’s fairly disconcerting but I do appreciate how being at war with Eggman is not only being taken seriously but is also, slightly different from where this comic started where they were just a bunch of, well, Freedom Fighters. They’ve already got the brand name down though so I guess they can’t change it. “Soldiers of the Acorn Kingdom Fighters” doesn’t have as good a ring.

However, I do think this might be the start of an even bigger problem with the comics where the Freedom Fighters, after having long since obtained their freedom, are going to walk the path of functioning like soldiers and eventually we’ll have to deal with a council and politics and other stuff of the like. Some of that stuff can be good and a lot of it, when Ian takes over, is genuinely fine but the stuff where Sonic feels like a soldier for this god forsaken kingdom has always been the worst part about these books for me and it’s only going to get more ingrained into him as we go down the line.

Sonic meets up with his family and Sally and asks where Tails and Knuckles are. That’s when Queen Alicia lets it drop that they’re preparing for a party. It’s going to be a celebration for his return. Sounds like fun! 

THERE HAD BETTER BE TACOS, GODDAMIT!

Everybody's always having parties and forgetting to bring the tacos. I mean for fuck’s sake…!

Either way, everything is going great. Sonic and Sally professed their love to one another before Sonic was supposedly gone forever after the Xorda attack and now that he’s back, they can start right where they left off. This is displayed by a kissing scene that’s honestly the best one these two have ever had because the artstyle actually makes it look adorable rather then sensuous. I prefer this.

I also love the epic foreshadowing as well.

♪ I know something you don’t know! ♪

Sonic leaves the hospital and is hounded by the new paparazzi yet again. I do like that this is a new element to his standard of living. It doesn’t take much to show little things like that and I appreciate the attempt to emphasize how things are different for him.

It’s also really efficacious seeing Sonic so happy. The fact that he’s in this art-style really helps too. He’s in this massive group hug with his folks and uncle and smiling about how his parents left his room the way it was. He goes to sleep with his arm in a sling but he’s the most comfy he’s been in a long time. All this you can tell just from looking at his face.

Then Sonic wakes up and finds out that his implant has made it so he can talk to Muttski.

This is fantastic. 

Honestly, this entire story so far has been fantastic and it’s almost entirely because of the art. 

Sonic runs down the stairs calling out for his mom and dad about the fact that their dog is a talking animal. Who’d have ever guessed such a thing were possible?

His freak out clears up just in time for him to realize the obvious. It’s because of his implant, as was stated earlier.

His family doesn’t entirely get it so he tells them about the Bem and also relays to everyone why it was that his dad wasn’t returned to normal.

The almost fourth-wall breaking Muttski quote at the end juxtaposed with the despair in the panel above it is unintentional comedy at it’s finest. Or maybe it was part way intentional. It wouldn’t surprise me if it were.

Still though, poor Jules. I would say that this does give him a decent chance at outliving his son but I don’t know if that’s a comforting thought for him. Lack of warmth and the inability to eat delicious tacos ever again doesn’t seem worth the prize of leaving all your loved ones behind as your robotic shell stands the test of time… 

… Wait, that doesn’t sound good either. 

Uh. Happy scene time! Sonic and Tails have a reunion!

Aww~!

See? It’s always a heart-melting scene whenever these two hug… but then, of course, the next emotional punch hits with Sonic finally getting the chance to tell Tails about his parents being alive.

The emotional gut-punch of hearing that they’re alive has to be one thing but to then be presented with a gift from them and THEN to see and hear them for the first time…! 

It’s a nice touch that Sonic is also crying too. He’s so happy for his brother and the fact that he just got done relaying information to his own parents about the state of his father is probably making the parental energy surrounding them even stronger. 

Yeah, the story’s been really good so far. It’s interesting because I could see this being more of a standard issue but the art is doing it’s job exceedingly well and the writing is normal again, after the awkward exposition talk that was taking place one or two issues ago.

We cut to the party where Mina is on stage, now a musician who has people calling her the Songoose. She sings a song that I can’t hear the music to so, as per the imagination of my brain, it sounds really awful and generic in my head. 

King Max shakes Sonic’s hand and welcomes him back before going on stage and making the announcement that not only are he and the queen going to tour the world but--!

You and me both Sonic!

Sally being the active ruler is something the King Max from way back would be frothing at the mouth in his attempt to refuse. To think, I could have been hearing the screams of the old, insane loon shouting about how she can’t lead because she be a woman had the writer been Penders instead. 

It’s almost enough to make a grown man say, “Huh… about time.”

I do like how this is just being presented as a surprise announcement too. We didn’t need any preamble for it really. 

Granted, she’s only standing in while they’re gone and Elias was expected to just take the whole thing over but… I mean it’s better than nothing. Thank God he didn’t just give the job to the nearest man he trusted.

“Please handle the throne while I’m gone. I’ll choose literally ANYONE but my daughter. She’s a woman and therefore can not do it. Ask my wife. She’ll agree because I told her too.”

The amount of times King Max has been a terrible father and a terrible king is not proportional to the amount of times he’s acted like this obviously. Even now, you can make the case that he’s being emotionally manipulative by keeping her here when we saw during the conflict with Mecha that she wanted to rush out and help but was stopped. 

Maybe some people just shouldn’t be parents, is all I’m saying.

Everything about these next four panels is pretty great, in a way, for being super easy to make fun of.

Mina hugs Sonic and he’s genuinely happy for her success, as he’s the one who inspired her to do what she does now, however, Sally’s got that petty teenager side of hers still festering in her gut so she looks unamused and grabs at Sonic’s hands the first chance she gets like an insecure person would do. Stuff like that doesn’t help her case for being stable enough to handle what’s coming next but even before all this stuff happened, she was acting like this. You’d think she’d be over the whole thing of being bothered when Mina hugs Sonic after that one issue where they sat, talked, and bonded but nope.

Then Ash comes on the scene, finally making his debut in the book as Mina’s manager and as Sonic goes to shake his hand, gets a death glare from him and emphasizes that he’s her boyfriend.

Sonic has done nothing wrong so he doesn’t deserve the look he’s getting but I do think part of him is surprised to hear that Mina’s moved on. As was said, crushes come and go. Even I, as someone with no interest in dating, is aware of that. It’s just the nature of human relations in general really. Sometimes it’s easy to forget when so much fiction has two characters meet as babies and shows them marrying when they’re adults.

It’s hard not to get sucked in by the art here already but the fact that the Chaotix are now randomly in their modern designs is a big step up.

Yeah, it just happened. 

No Power Rangers/Flash outfit and magic force field was required. No destruction of the body and replacement of a robot shell was needed. No wishing on a magic thing to age yourself into a new design. They just look different now.

Good. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Tails’ gradual change probably felt like the most natural of the changes though.

Speaking of Tails, we’re sowing the seeds of a very troubling situation concerning our buddy. Right as Knuckles is answering Sonic’s question about why he and the Chaotix are in Knothole with a concerning explanation of Eggman having taken Angel Island over, he spots Tails with Fiona and starts to worry about him.

This is what happens when a male fox is immediately smitten with the only other female fox he’s ever seen in his life. 

Don’t worry though. Sonic’s going to help Tails by… snatching her for himself. 

Yeah. That oughta help.

This whole thing with Fiona is very strange by the way. I think we only really had one story with her before that gave her any real focus and the details behind what her deal was were very obscured. I couldn’t very well make out the full picture with what we got back in that story about Mighty. The timing of when that could have happened was already pretty confused.

Ever since she hasn’t been in much of anything and only recently started being a part of the group since the Xorda attack. However, it’s only been her sat in the background. I wouldn’t be surprised if people had completely forgotten that Eggman made a robot version of her. I can’t even properly recall why he did. I think it was just to fuck with Tails.

Rotor comes out, holding what looks like a doomsday missile, and casually mentions that he’s retired from away missions. Now he just sits in Knothole and invents stuff for the field agents. 

Goddamn. If it wasn’t clear that the comic had no clue what to do with Rotor before it’s certainly clear now. You write him out of the book for issues on end with that stupid hypnotized family subplot and then he comes back to do nothing for several issues only for it to just casually be revealed that he’s done going on field missions.

I mean, hey, whatever you gotta do to find some sort of purpose for him. I’m not really one of those people who thinks having him just team up with Tails as science bros would be an appropriate answer to that problem but I could be proven wrong with the right writer I suppose. 

Rotor fires a green energy blast into the sky and makes a giant visage of Sonic and Sally kissing and then of them holding hands. Way to twist the giant fucking knife that’s about to come for the readers. I genuinely appreciate the hustle.

We get Geoffrey and Hershey St. John’s reactions to it which honestly had me smiling a bit.

I’m genuinely happy for them. Like, a lot. This is all very nice to see and I can only hope it continues.

Even though I’m aware of Geoffrey’s fate later on. 

The two of them head off to do a daring mission for King Max, aka, their Honeymoon.

Sonic asks Bunnie what the deal with Antoine is. Bunnie says that THE WAR CHANGED HIM!

WAAAAAAAR! 

Yeah, he’s got a scar and he’s all hardened as shit now. The last war didn’t do this to him but THIS war did. This war was special. The vast majority of his years facing off against Eggman didn’t do shit. This past year though, whoo-wee, now THAT was a doozy.

He looks like he’d slit the throat of anyone who so much as tried to approach him. Including the king.

I do wonder if I’d be sat here complaining about this had I been reacting to this not knowing where this is eventually going to end up. I mean, I was told this was originally supposed to be a hardened version of the real Antoine but PFFT! This would have been a stretch to rival Luffy’s Gum Gum Pistol if that’s true.

Bunnie saying the line, “The war changed him” is too funny. Oh, but I guess I’ve forgotten that none of this is good. That’s why it’s called war.

Sally tries to talk with Sonic which has a cute moment where one press member asks for a picture for the front newspaper and they both gladly take one with smiles on their faces. 

This comic works really well when everything is adorable. It needs to try that out more often.

Anyway, all that really wholesome, fun, cute, heart-warming stuff has come and gone. It’s time to get to the moment that made everyone hate the entire issue despite it being really good up till now.

Sally stops Sonic and has a chat with him. She talks to him about how it’s going to be a big responsibility for her to overlook the operations of the kingdom while her parents are away and she wants Sonic by her side. That’s all. Fairly straight forward.

Sonic is surprised and says “Me?” and that’s all it takes for Sally’s switch to be flipped, most likely because she’s aware he doesn’t like the sound of that. 

Sonic just explains that they’re in the middle of a war and he can’t just stay in the city beside Sally. That’s a fair and reasonable response. Sonic has proven to be their most valuable fighter, time and again and Sonic not being around could be argued as the only reason Eggman had the chutzpah to outright declare war instead of relying on weird, sneaky plans that did very little to advance the plot. Seriously, all the strife I had to endure back when Eggman was body hopping and getting his city blown up every other issue was an insanely long stretch of boring.

It totally stands to reason that their best bet for winning and reducing casualties would be to have their best guy on the front lines, fighting the good fight. Eggman’s hilarious breathing exercises from when he found out that Sonic was still alive could probably attest to that.

Sally isn’t thinking reasonably though. She’s thinking emotionally. As we all know, that can be an incredibly dangerous thing to do. Not always, but in most cases, it tends not to end well when you do that.

Sonic, despite being the one who I would argue has gone through the most traumatic experiences between the two of them, not just because he almost died, but because he felt responsible for the deaths of tons of aliens because of E.V.E, witnessed the death of an entire planet, a fleet of ships, and then saw E.V.E herself commit suicide, followed by having to leave Tails’ parents behind in space and helping the person who saved all the roboticized people escape prison and have to make due with a life of exile… and STILL chooses to fight in the war to save all the people he loves.

Look at him. 

He wants to be with Sally so badly that he’s crying at the idea of possibly risking a future together with her for the sake of the world. After all he’s been through, I wouldn’t even blame him for wanting to at least take a break. However, he knows he’s one of, if not the, most valuable player in the game and if he wants not just Sally to be safe, for Tails’ parents to be able to come home to their child, for HIS parents who recently re-entered his life to be safe, for Uncle Chuck to be safe, for Muttski to be safe, for the rest of the Freedom Fighters and the citizens to be safe… he’s gotta risk his own happiness and his own life to make it happen.

It’s a surprisingly powerful scene and the art-style really sells the emotion. I keep praising the art but it’s really good. I can’t praise it enough, honestly.

I honestly don’t ever recall Archie Sonic in any of the later issues making me view him this way. For the longest time, I didn’t even like him in the issues I had already read and owned before starting this retrospective. It’s really the ultimate display of how self-less a person Sonic is at the core of his heart despite all the cockiness and brashness of his personality.

How ironic it is that Sally would say the exact opposite.

Not just say the exact opposite, but also react as though it were the exact opposite situation too.

BOOM! 

You see that thunderous blast of an explosion behind the two of them? That’s the infamous sound of THE SLAP!

It rocked the foundation of the Archie Sonic fanbase in a boom that saw the salt spray endlessly, for years to come. Some people with very little to look forward to in their lives still harass this wonderful artist for DOING HIS FUCKING JOB by drawing the scene that was asked of him all those years ago. 

For a Sonic the Hedgehog comic; one that not only had it’s entire continuity rebooted but was THEN cancelled soon after. 

I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s ridiculous but if 2020 has told us anything it’s that the height of stupidity doesn’t discriminate between what happens in real life and what happens in a book about cartoon animals.

You know, I’ve only ever heard about this and the intense reaction that it had and how horrible of a moment it was but witnessing it play out now… well, let’s continue I guess.

Sonic’s reaction to being slapped across the face is the correct one.

Sally’s isn’t.

Right off the bat, I need to get this out of the way. Despite being 100% on Sonic’s side in this situation, I’m also not upset at Sally here. One is because I don’t really care about their relationship, sure, but the other is because I, at the very least, can see why this is happening.

I’ve read the defense of Sally’s position on the Thanks, Ken Penders blog that was recommended to me on this particular issue. I don’t agree with every point brought up within it but I agree with most of it. I’m aware that she’s had a tough time of it… but I’m afraid I don’t see it as enough to find this behavior excusable. She’s definitely in the wrong here, no matter how much I try and sympathize with her plight because, the fact of the matter here is, she’s not sympathizing at all with Sonic’s plight. She’s the one being selfish, truthfully.

Sonic just belted out his heart to her about how horrible everything has been for him recently. He sacrificed himself and thought he was about to die. He watched planets die. He watched people get killed. He saw someone he sought to save, blow themselves up out of guilt. He watched someone almost get persecuted for daring to save his family and friends from remaining robots for the rest of their lives and had to leave behind Tails’ parents in space only to come back to find out that a year of his life was stolen from him and that they’re in the middle of a war.

Compared to that, I’m not being presented with much that Sally has to stand on here. Yeah, she thought Sonic was dead but you know who else did? Sonic’s parents. Uncle Chuck. Tails. Amy. All these other people that love Sonic unconditionally too. 

HOWEVER, I do also see the threads of WHY Sally is acting the way. It’s not a matter of her just being a fucking, crazy psycho bitch out of nowhere. This was definitely set up. I’m not even upset at her. Most of that is probably because I already anticipated this happening because of how infamous this is, but another is because her position is a bit more unique than some of the others. That being the fact that she’s indeed been treated like absolute garbage for the majority of this book’s run.

We did in fact see how she’s taken the loss of Sonic in a different way compared to the others. Not everyone is going to react the same way towards losing someone and it’s unfair to expect them to. That’s why it’s easy to argue that the other people in Sonic’s life not reacting like this doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things because everyone has their own way of handling situations like this. I can totally agree that Sally has PTSD over Sonic’s death, a far cry from her having believed he was alive the whole time. 

The defense of Sally saying that there’s other people that could handle Eggman doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t matter if that’s true or not. Sure, Tails outsmarted A.D.A.M and Bunnie destroyed all of Eggman’s nukes in one quick swoop. You could totally argue that Sonic did very little in THAT particular battle but it’s not really proof that things will go that smoothly for the others all the time nor is the fact that Sonic doing little and getting injured means it’ll happen that way again. They need all the help they can get. We have tons of examples of Sonic being the one who turns the tide at the last minute. Hell, his sacrifice with the Xorda is an example of that, and it’s the whole reason this mess started.

On top of that, it’s not up to Sally to decide that Sonic isn’t needed in the war effort. That’s really only a decision Sonic can make and whether you agree with that or not, my sympathies are always going to fall with the guy who’s willing to set aside his trauma and his feelings for the sake of the people he’s trying to save, unfortunately.

Plus, it does sting a lot more that Sally decided to do this in front of a crowd that included his parents and his friends… at a party that was happening to celebrate his return. That’s also not very good.

One excellent point that the blog brought up, however, is how bad it was that this wasn’t written with the intention of looking at the perspective of both parties. Most of the stuff with Sally is so subdued that you could (and most people did) very easily ignore it or have not seen it coming. My sympathy lies only with Sonic in this situation as a result of that. I bared witness to all the horrible stuff he saw and had to go through and now I’m watching him come back home and while in the middle of trying to deal with the fact that he’s lost a year of his life he gets slapped and dumped in front of basically the entire city and is left crying on stage with a busted arm.

There’s no way to look at this and not feel sorry for the guy. I can’t blame anyone for being venomously upset at Sally for this either. 

That’s entirely the fault of how the writing made this shake out and it’s a good argument for why this particular scene is badly written even if I did in fact enjoy the rest of the book.

Now as for the point about this being a set-up for something that was never resolved due to the fact that in a few issues Bollers is going to end up leaving due to being fed up with Penders and his bullshit… that’s unfortunate BUT… the reality of the situation is that the comic doesn’t properly handle this. Bollers not being around to conclude what he set-up doesn’t magically make it so that things don’t end up happening the way they do. It just makes one more aware of how unfortunate the state of events that led to it happening are. As such, I do feel it’s appropriate to be upset with Sally here…

… That said, I’m not. I do also thing that recognizing that things weren’t properly resolved is a good reason to also choose to NOT be upset with Sally here as well. It’s up to the individual really. 

What isn’t appropriate and will never be appropriate is harassing someone on Twitter over it because 15 years ago, in a continuity that no longer exists TWICE over, because something happened to create relationship drama between your two favorite fictional furries… AGAIN.

I’ve read the conspiracy theories about Jon Gray secretly conspiring with the Illuminati to ruin Sonic and Sally’s “perfect” relationship or whatever and it’s just fucking gross and weird. 

So that’s my two-cents on the slap. Honestly, it’s a little strange that, out of all the horrible, awful shit this book has done, this is easily the most controversial thing. I guess that speaks to how much people care about their ships not sinking versus anything ethical and proper concerning the way Sally and Knuckles have been treated.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #134: Mobius 25 Years Later - In Transit

Writer/Inker: Ken Penders
Penciler: Steven Butler
Colorist: Jason Jensen
Letterer: Vickie Williams

After that last story, I don’t feel in the mood to talk about whatever nonsense Penders has in store for me today. Hopefully it won’t be too much to think or talk about.

The story begins with Rotor doing a recap. In it he talks about how him and Cobar have a “close personal relationship” which I guess is all you need when you’re dancing around something that you could have easily shown more effectively two issues earlier.

Whatever though. He talks with Knuckles. It gets mentioned that Knuckles is choosing to have a robotic eye instead of getting a new, cloned eye. I guess because he can detect and sense things with a robot eye but I’m sure that if they have eye cloning technology they have devices that can do the same without being in your eye so I’m not sure I get it.

Knuckles detected the two teenagers kissing and let's them go. Then he heads to where the guardians are where his grandfather is super old and yet, for some reason, Sojourner is still super young looking. I don’t get how some get old and some stay young. Maybe it was explaining and I just overlooked it because it was a bunch of confusing word diarrhea.

Sabre shows up, also not looking any older or any different, and says Lien-Da’s a treacherous person so watch out. Knuckles says he’s actually more concerned with Rutan. Basically it’s an excuse to spy on the kids. It’s an echidna family tradition.

Rotor and Cobar are doing the same thing too. They’re all watching Lien-Da scold her son and his friend and find out that Lara-Su was apparently supposed to cover for them so… that makes daddy Knuckles upset.

Anyway, the only important bit here is that Rotor lets it drop that the king, Sonic, isn’t fond of echidnas or Knuckles.

“ESPECIALLY the Guardian”, he says. 

This part of the story was just a bunch of adults invading the privacy of someone else's household and talking about how they teenagers they're spying on are super dangerous, probably.

Whatever.

 

This issue was honestly really good despite it’s infamy as something supposedly really bad. It’s got one really badly handled scene at the end that wasn’t even close to being one of the worst things this book has done. Everything else was super cute and heart-warming with fantastic artwork that charmed the hell out of me. Since so much of the issue was taken up by the first story and the first story was mostly good, I’ve still left this one with a good, happy song in my heart. I can’t say I have too much reverence for the infamous nature of the Slap, especially having now read it in its original context. 

Meanwhile, Mobius 25 Years Later is dragging its feet so hard that it’s bleeding ink all over the pavement. Nothing has happened so far. It’s just been people talking about things that they’re scared COULD almost, potentially end up happening while a bunch of teenagers whine and do badly written, cliché teenager things. It’s not even remotely approaching anything that could even be mistaken as the least bit fun or interesting. 
 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I'm going to go with my normal hot-take - I don't think the Slap is a bad scene IMO, at least in the context of how Sally's been treated over so many issues of the comic. I think it's totally fine to see that Sally is in the wrong with this argument, because she clearly is in a lot of her points, and in asking Sonic to stay back when he's the biggest contributor to stopping Eggman and a lot of the context around the scene clearly demonstrates she's using Sonic as an emotional anchor. She's not angry at him, per say - she's fawning her own frustrations at both herself, and her family - onto Sonic. 

The biggest example is the core of the argument - Sonic's role in the war. We've already established time and again - even during Home itself that Sally wants to be out on the field, coordinating with the Freedom Fighters. That's been a constant since Issue 100, she hates being locked up in Castle Acorn, she hates being treated specially due to her role as Princess despite being a capable field leader - and having done so for many years. She wants to be on the front lines ensuring everyone is getting home safely.

Yet, her circumstances just doesn't allow it. She's accepted her parents' whims for so long, especially in such a dramatic war setting now. She lost the one person she'd been placing her emotional needs on, right after acknowledging they'd wasted so much time with love triangles, and stupid games when they both knew it all along. When Sonic comes back, the first thing she wants to do is go out and help them stop Eggman's scheme, and yet she's still forced to play along with her parents' wishes.

When Sonic nearly gets blasted by M, it's not just Sally being forced to relive his death - it's the fact she's just a passing witness to it now. When Sonic sacrificed his life in #125, Sally had no say in the matter, she had to accept the fact he was right - only he could do it, and both he, and everyone else paid the price for it, and Sally had to live with the fact.

Now, here she is, in a scenario where she could have been there, where her experience and her presence could've made a difference in that fight, and yet she couldn't, because for the umpteenth time, she was forced to sit and stay by her parents. For the umpteenth time, she was forced to watch her friends play soldier, while she hid away in the safety of Acorn Castle. Where she actively made a decision there and then to let Sonic go alone, because she believed her parents knew best, and Sonic almost paid that price again.

Sally during the Slap is not in an emotionally good place, and that needs to be acknowledged IMO. We can talk all day about thinking logically and emotionally, and so on, but you have to look at the fact that by that stage, she's hanging onto a thread and trying to find any kind of agency in her life that she can.

With her parents leaving, and pawning off the duties of ruler to Sally, that has placed her in the worst imaginable position. It's not just about willingly sitting back and letting her friends go to war for her - it's her and her alone that would be actively sending her friends on missions running potential risk of death constantly, while she sat back in Castle Acorn without a care in the world. Imagine the guilt on her mind if she'd sent Sonic to whatever usual Eggman scheme he has lined up for that day, and Sonic kicked the bucket during it. Not only would all of Sally's thoughts of uselessness come back - she would have a very active hand in letting it happen.

Making Sonic her consort, and making him an active ruler was her last chance to make any kind of difference in Sonic's safety. By ensuring he rules with her, that he stays back in the kingdom, she's at least make a decision to keep him out of danger, and of course - obviously Sonic would not go for it, and frankly - Sally is very much in the wrong for expecting him to even consider it, and is even further in the wrong for trying to call him out for his decision, but I don't think it's a shot at Sonic.

When Sally calls him selfish, I personally see it as a dig towards herself. Since she'd been putting all of her emotional needs onto Sonic, when Sonic made that make or break decision, because Sonic was too selfless to accept that kind of deal, Sally let out all of her frustrations about herself out. How she was doing nothing while her friends were fighting tooth and nail for their lives. She took every shitty feeling about herself and piled it onto Sonic, hoping Sonic making that choice would justify it all, and when it didn't, shit hit the fan hard. 

If you're purely looking at it at the context of "oh here's this shipping blowing up", then yeah - it's bad. But in a story-telling context, I think it's anything but. I actually think it's pretty good how complex the conversation and the context is. Sonic is clearly right with what he's saying, but Sally's not completely hateable here because the context shows why she acts so unfairly. It was being built up to for ages, and even how Sonic and Sally initially became a couple wasn't very healthy, so this was a long time coming.

Looking at the whole scenario from her perspective sheds a different kind of light on the whole argument, and shows that while Sally is in the wrong with her demands towards Sonic, and her attitude towards the sacrifices he's made, there's a lot of believable reasons why she'd been so far driven to hoisting this decision onto him, and I think that's good. It's obviously not great, as many have said, and it's obviously another contributor of drama, but I think in of itself, it isn't that bad.

Frankly, I don't think it'd be quite as infamous if the next 20 issues weren't all just pathetic and terribly written love-triangle drama nonsense from Penders, who was supposedly trying to get them back together somehow.

That's my hot take on it anyways.  

[SBR2]

I was going to do my normal replies but fuck it I feel like an asshole.

I'm so sorry that my Knuckles comment last week has lead you to consider stopping this. There's no excuse for how I worded it and I feel like shit that I made you so mad man. I swear that wasn't my intention and honestly I shouldn't have acted like it was super obvious because of fucking course it's not. Nothing is obvious in these comics especially not at this time. 

You were perfectly in your rights to believe that Knuckles was just Knuckles because there is no reason to believe otherwise. 

[Dr. Detective]

23 hours ago, SBR2 said:

I was going to do my normal replies but fuck it I feel like an asshole.

I'm so sorry that my Knuckles comment last week has lead you to consider stopping this. There's no excuse for how I worded it and I feel like shit that I made you so mad man. I swear that wasn't my intention and honestly I shouldn't have acted like it was super obvious because of fucking course it's not. Nothing is obvious in these comics especially not at this time. 

You were perfectly in your rights to believe that Knuckles was just Knuckles because there is no reason to believe otherwise. 

No, please do. I actually always look forward to them, if you can believe it.

I'll admit, I was a bit bothered by it but only really at the part where you said I was looking for more reasons to hate Julie-Su. I was genuinely confused by what she was saying and thought it made no sense, so I treated it that way.

Perhaps the post didn't make it clear but my anger is actually directed at Ken Penders here. The moment I was left facing this issue was the moment his nonsense stopped being funny to me.

I can't look at Knuckles, or Julie-Su, or Locke, or Lara-su, or any of those Brotherhood assholes without getting upset now, it feels like.

In case everyone wasn't aware, Penders is an infuriatingly bad writer.

[Silvereyes]

Very late to the party on this, but I did want to throw out there that the plot of issue #127, where Sonic is stuck in a pod in a world which is evolving extremely fast, is the plot of a Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Blink of an Eye". That episode aired in 2000, #127 came out in 2003. Pretty good episode actually, sortof dives into the plot a bit more over the 45 minute runtime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(Star_Trek:_Voyager)

Also sure there is a Treehouse of Horror story from The Simpsons and a Futurama episode which have similar ideas too, where a civilization evolves exponentionally quickly.

Throwing my hat into the ring too quite late, but yeah, I enjoyed the Tossed in Space stories as well. They're just a bit of fun really, nice just to get away from all the drama on Mobius. Even the story where Sonic returns isn't too bad either, I think doing a 1 year time gap can be a smart move. Nice to see some things come of it like Mina now being a pop star, Knuckles is now just a regular with Knothole now rather than being stuck on Angel Island, some nice character redesign tweaks. But then you get stuff that doesn't work, Antoine is now a hardass jerk, Bunnie and Antoine being pissed at each other is annoying character melodrama, Mina's new boyfriend Ash is a dick for drama. Not to mention it seems like they want to try and convince us that this war with Eggman is a new situation, but, it isn't. I mean, what, was the fighting with Eggman before just a skirmish, now it's a war for some reason. Really I actually think they should of used the opportunity to introduce a new bad guy or threat, like someone says to Sonic "well, there is also the Crimson Empire who has taken over the Eastern continent of Mobius, but we know nothing about them, who leads them...", basically some foreshadowing.

And ofcourse, M25YL. Borderline hilarious for how bad it is and how Penders seems to have no understanding of what kids want from their comics. It's amazing and baffling.

[Arthur_Cavendish]

I've seen a lot of dislike for Dave Manak's pencils. I really enjoy his artstyle, especially for the earlier issues. Honestly, him and Art Mawhinnery (as well as the occasional Spaz) are my favorite pencilers. 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

On 2/4/2021 at 1:31 PM, Arthur_Cavendish said:

I've seen a lot of dislike for Dave Manak's pencils. I really enjoy his artstyle, especially for the earlier issues. Honestly, him and Art Mawhinnery (as well as the occasional Spaz) are my favorite pencilers. 

Early Dave Manak is solid. Most of the criticism of him seems to be based on his later work, which I haven't seen enough of to give a solid opinion on, personally. But it does make sense that his style, reminiscent of classic Western cartoons, would be more fitting for the series' early history.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #135: Agent of K.N.O.T.H.O.L.E.

What an unintentionally hilarious cover. I mean, my God. How dramatic can you be? I love specifically how your dialogue is written so as to entice all the readers to look at the front cover and wonder about who the person who lived could possibly be. Imagine their disappointment when they find out it’s this one character you met once several issues ago. I just got the mental image of this cloaked figure being Maria. Wouldn’t that be funny? Although, from a glance, I had always assumed it was Merlin Prower even though he didn’t die. It just looks like it should be him.

Spoiler

Writer: Romy Chacon
Penciler: Ron Lim
Inker: Nelson Ribeiro
Letterer: Vickie Williams
Colors: Jason Jensen
Assistant Editor: Mike Pellerito
Editor: J.F. Gabrie

So there’s no mystery to this. Right off the bat, the info page just straight up tells you what the deal is and who it is that might be alive. Yeah, it’s Sonic’s childhood friend who we only found out about that one time during the Tortoise and the Hare story. It’s literally called “The Tommy Trilogy” which is just magnificent.

That story was pretty good, all things considered, so maybe something could be mined from it but I don’t quite know if it’s deserving of its own trilogy follow-up.

The writing in this opening bit with this cloaked figure walking to this shady bar feels a little off. It’s almost like it’s confused as to which emotion it wants to hit.

Remember when saying something and then saying “NOT” immediately after was a thing? I do. I remember how lame it always was. 

I can’t tell if Romy is trying to be try-hard, edgy here or if he’s trying to be a little humorous. I mean, am I supposed to take what that password is at face value and not laugh or…?

We cut to a scene where Snively, who’s just BACK for some reason, and also roboticized again, somehow, is speaking with Dr. Eggman in that pitch black room from Sonic Lost World, a game that won’t be released until 10 years from now.
They’re talking about deploying some sort of secret weapon. That’s all well and good but uh… am I going to get an explanation for why Snively is all of a sudden no longer missing and a robot again? The comic is going to explain that right? Maybe it will but… I’m so worried it won’t because so often it doesn’t.

Thankfully, when the cloaked figure sits down with another cloaked figure, they get to talking and the subject of Roboticization comes up. Oh yeah, it was Sonic in that cloak and the person he was meeting was Tommy. The code they used was “When is a tortoise not a tortoise…? When he’s a turtle!”

I hope they’re having fun pretending to be good at this.

They talk about how Roboticization is something that Eggman scarcely uses nowadays. He’s picking and choosing now. I’m not entirely sure why but it’s just “not his thing” anymore and he’s very picky about who gets to be a robot. Reversing the effects of the De-Roboticization that the planet just went through sounds like something that would give the man a robo-gasm. I’m not sure why he’s suddenly picky about it. You’d think he’d want less free-thinking people on his side but then again, I can see the benefits to lording yourself over goons who have the ability to be afraid of you. We see that with his commanders down the line and it’s also nice to have an assortment of evil personalities to work off of. 

The two of them get ambushed as they’re talking by what looked like generic metal goons. However, they were given a huge panel to show themselves off for a reason that I honestly couldn’t fathom. They didn’t look special or interesting at all.

Even Sonic isn’t impressed.

It wasn’t until I heard the names “Sergeant Simian” and “Predator Hawk” that I realized, “Holy shit, this is the Destructix!”

… WEIRD.

God, if there’s one group that’s been treated like a massive after thought, it’s these guys for sure. They show up as Mogul’s gang and then that falls through and they end up teaming up with Sleuth “Doggy” Dawg (still the best name) and Drago the Domestic Abuser for the prison escape a while back. Then… something happens and they get defeated again and they’re just gone from the book until just now where they’ve apparently all been roboticized. 

If anything, their roboticization forms are so generic that I couldn’t even recognize it was them. It took until someone mentioned their names for me to catch on.

Well, anyway, a fight breaks out and they lose because they suck. Sonic ends his fight with Simian and Hawk by jumping over Hawk as the two of them charge at him and they collide into each other. Apparently, it was a super hard collision because you see screws and metal bits go flying.

Then Sonic catches up to Tommy who’s just… fine. He re-wired Sleuth and Drago, somehow as they were chasing him, and made them jump into a lake… because he can just do that?

It’s a very strange, suspicious ending for sure.

So that was the first story. Tommy’s back, we’ve got news that Eggman has found a way to reverse the effects of the De-Roboticization, and the Destructix are all more machine now than Mobian. Fairly productive set of new bits of info for such a short story.

Did it live up to the grandiose nature of the front cover? Eh.

Honestly, when you make the reveal of someone being alive dramatic and it’s just some turtle what else can you do? 

It’s not like he took off the hood and OH MY GOD, IT’S BLACK DOOM! BACK FROM THE DEAD FROM A GAME THAT DOESN’T EXIST YET! AAAAAH!

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #135: Anonymous

Writer: Romy Chacon
Penciler: Art Mawhinney
Inker: Jim Amash
Colorist: Jason Jensen
Letterer: J. Powell

Eggman is overlooking the roboticized Destructix that he apparently didn’t know were being roboticized. They just got brought to him at random by his Swat-Bots, already turned into robots. Interesting.

He’s also especially confused by how they’re robots now when he hasn’t even figured out the mystery behind why everyone on Mobius stopped being robots.

He also talks about how he’s actually just straight up been UNABLE to roboticize anyone. So not only did the Bem beam de-roboticize everyone but it’s keeping the roboticization process subdued. 

Eggman and A.D.A.M have a little humorous tit for tat and try to ascertain who did this to the Destructix to try and figure out what the deal is and how roboticization can be achieved again.

A.D.A.M is doing the Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy Shuffle right now.

Eggman persists, demanding that A.D.A.M scan for anything useful within the memory banks of the Destructix. A name is bleeped out of the dialogue within the memory. At first, I thought someone might have cursed but Eggman acknowledges the bleeping so, it was intentional on the part of whoever did this. Obviously, they have technological know-how to rival that of Eggman.

This is all very interesting, honestly. It would seem Tommy’s information was a little askew. Eggman isn’t picky about who to roboticize. He literally can’t. He just found these guys, basically at his doorstep, and took them in. 

A.D.A.M takes hours to finish his scan and the access is denied. He’s about to self-destruct as punishment for his failure, but Eggman stops him, which is golden.

He does present Eggman with a name… though, only after mentioning there was one in passing as though it weren’t a big deal.

It was then when it all clicked for me.

The title of the story.

The name that was just given.

This is the beginning of the “Anonymous” storyline.
I was getting really sucked into the mystery too. However, after hearing the name, I’m both sorry and happy to say that I already know who this is and where this is going. I’m sorry because I REALLY wish I could re-experience the magic of what’s going to happen here without having already read the story associated with it. I’m also happy because I get to find out it’s origin and I’m getting pumped all over again.

I really love that later story guys. It’s so good.

This particular tale ends with Eggman proclaiming that whoever this Anonymous is, they have his attention.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #135: Mobius: 25 Years Later - Dealing With the Devil

Writer: Ken Penders
Penciler: Steven Butler
Inker: Jim Amash
Letterer: Vickie Williams
Colorist: Jason Jensen

If Issue #134 really was Karl Bollers’ last issue then my God, what an infamous one to leave off on. You gotta give the man credit for that. He made sure one of his final stories was remembered.

Now we’re going to be getting a bunch of Romy Chacon stories for a bit followed by a smattering of Ken Penders at the end. That’ll last for however long it takes for Penders to snatch the reigns from the main story yet again.

There’s an entire list of ideas that Bollers didn’t get to use and I kind of want to go through them all and talk about how interesting they are. Some of them at least.

Idea 1 - Sonic and Amy becoming a couple after being stranded at sea together and keeping it a secret from Princess Sally.

Response 1 - I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t mind Sonic and Amy dating. In fact, I prefer it to Sonic and Sally, definitely. However, the whole “keeping it a secret from Sally” bit sounds like a desperate ploy for needless drama. That would just make the two of them seem like assholes. Yeah, their dating is none of Sally’s business if that’s what they want to do but deliberately keeping it a secret from her would make it seem as though they were doing something wrong, were aware of it, and instead of trying to fix that, chose instead to hide it. 

Also, I know Sally’s role is mostly to be Sonic’s girlfriend, and that’s fine for the most part, but all her development being tied to either love or this kingdom I don’t care about has done nothing for any kind of excitement I could possibly have for her appearing. I hear that in SatAM they focus mostly on her being a field agent and the kingdom thing was more of a background element. That sounds SO much better than this shit. She’s barely done a thing in this book. She either doesn’t do anything or whenever she tries to do something, someone tells her she can’t. Ugh.

***

Idea 2 - Tails reuniting with his parents by traveling into space on a modified tornado.

Response 2 - It sounds fucking silly but by God does it also sound really awesome. I guess it’s technically not that silly since the X Tornado can handle being in space in Sonic X. It was literally designed to do that.

***

Idea 3 - Amy’s origins being explored in a fuller adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog CD

Response 3 - Eh. I think what we got of Sonic CD was fine enough BUT I will admit that actually seeing the scene where the tarot cards tell her to go out in search of adventure or her hero has always interested me.

***

Idea 4 - Knuckles departing Angel Island after learning that his presence exposes the location of the Master Emerald, going on a global pilgrimage to learn martial arts, and battling a Dr. Eggman controlled-Monkey Khan while under the control of the Iron Queen before discovering the Master Geode.

Response 4 - BWHAHAHA! MASTER GEODE?! Okay... well, the rest sounds fine and some of it actually happens way later in the book, though, under different circumstances that have nothing to do with Knuckles. I don’t even remember if we even see Knuckles at all during the Iron Dominion Arc.

***

Idea 5 - Sally being a pawn in a villainous plot by the corrupted Source of All and Ixis Naugus to prevent the future first previewed in Sonic In Your Face!

Response 5 - I like the idea of the Source of All getting it’s worthless ass corrupted, however, the idea that it couldn’t see itself just getting blown the fuck up is even funnier to me. Also, I’d rather not have yet another story where Sally is referred to as a pawn. I don’t even like her character all that much but I’m offended for her at this point.

***
Ideas 6 and 7 - Bunnie and Antoine breaking up due to a change in Antoine's personality, with Bunnie's origins later being explored and her true name being revealed as Scarlette O'Hare (which may have served as the inspiration for Scarlette Rabbot and Bunnie's codename when she was in the Metropolis Egg Army).

Antoine gaining his scar due to an accident with a knife and becoming a villain after allowing himself to be possessed by a corrupted Source of All in hopes of winning Bunnie back.

Responses to 6 and 7 - So this was ACTUALLY supposed to be the real Antoine huh? Except, instead of it being because “THE WAR CHANGED HIM!” it was actually because Parallax from Green Lantern infected him and turned him evil. Or rather, the Source of All. I gotta say, I’m really digging the idea that the Source of All was just a big pool of fucking evil that these dumbass Acorns submerged themselves into, while naked, for generations and used that as the excuse for why they should rule. 

I don’t care about Bunnie’s last name.

***

Idea 8 - Rotor retiring from field duty in order to pursue a role analogous to that played by "Q" of James Bond fame.

Response 8 - Oh hey! That’s actually a really good idea for Rotor. Sally could be field leader and Rotor could be the Q back at headquarters. Meanwhile Tails is their field tech agent. That’s great. I like it a lot… although, I guess with Nicole around that would kind of be hard to fully justify still. I mean, she could probably do more than Rotor can back at the base while still out on the field with them. Hmm… God, this Rotor issue really is a tough one to crack if you’re not just a fan of there being two tech guys on the team that work together on stuff. Since I’m not a fan of that idea, I guess I’m at a loss for what to do.

***

Idea 9 - The Source of All surviving Robotropolis' destruction and reconstituting itself in a remote mountain range, beginning to exert control over King Max, brainwashing the Arachne Clan and another group of Spiders known as the Strand, and possessing Antoine while under the control of Ixis Naugus.

Response 9 - A lot of brainwashing going on here. I suppose it’d be nice to get some actual closure on the Arachne thing so as to not let that character and her spiders feel completely random. 

***

Idea 10 - Locke and Lara-Le putting aside their previous disputes to help raise Knecapeon "Kneecaps" Mace after his father Wynmacher ends up in the Egg Grape Chamber.

Response 10 -  

***

Idea 11 - Nate Morgan surviving the destruction of Robotropolis, being de-Roboticized by the Bem, and returning as Coconuts' amnesia-addled ally, who creates a new Metal Sonic, Metal Amy, Metal Knuckles, and Tails Doll that are mistaken for Robian versions of the heroes.

Response 11 - That sounds like a more respectful direction to take the character at least. At the VERY least he wasn’t just forgotten as a character that only existed to be ruthlessly and emotionally beaten down until he was blown up.

***

Idea 12 - A.D.A.M. and Nicole becoming romantically involved, leading to A.D.A.M. seizing control of the Shadowbot army and leading them from New Megaopolis to Knothole.

Response 12 - As funny as this sounds, what happens with A.D.A.M later on is the better story. Although, it does give me flashes of the evil Nicole from Ghosts of the Future. I know this summary technically never says that Nicole was on board for a betrayal or even that A.D.A.M was trying to attack Knothole. He could have just been giving them Eggman’s Shadowbot army as a gift. However, I like the idea of Evil Nicole more.

***

Idea 13 - A new Dingo Regime leader named Colonel Mange being introduced, with Croctobot, Jack Rabbit, and Gala-Na being reintroduced as Robotnik Sub-Bosses over Downunda, the Great Desert, and Albion. This would have led to the disappearance of the Downunda Freedom Fighters and a confrontation involving the Mercian Freedom Fighters.

Response 13 - Who. The Fuck. Cares. About. ANY of these characters? 

***

Idea 14 - Evil Sonic coming to enjoy impersonating Sonic and enjoying the love of his parents and adulation of his people, leading him to plan to eliminate Sonic and permanently take his place.

Response 14 - This is a really good idea. A really scary idea. A really common idea. Also, it’s an idea that they end up doing with Antoine instead so… I guess it would technically be redundant too. I still like it though. Although, it’d have been impossible to do after Scourge hits the scene.

***

So those are all the ones I had something to say about. The rest I didn’t really care too much about. All of them sound interesting and imagining how different the direction the comic would have taken had any of them been done is fun to think about.

At least until it was inevitably rebooted because of Ken Penders and his bullshit.

Oh yeah. That’s right. I’m reviewing a Ken Penders story.

Uh.

Lien-Da screams at her son for six pages.

At the very least, it’s more entertaining to read than watching Julie-Su do it with Lara-Su. Both of those characters are insufferable. This at least felt more natural.

Why am I skipping over it then? Because, despite it being a better version of the parent talking to their child scene from before we don’t learn anything new. Lien-Da gets nothing out of her son and at the end she goes to contact Julie-Su because she doesn’t believe him when he says nothing happened.

That’s it.

Well, technically, that’s not true. We also get a little glimpse into what Dimitri meant when he said that Lien-Da used to be treacherous. Not too much info is given though. He talks about how cross with him Eggman was when he refused to help him out due to his change of heart and how Lien-Da, instead of properly helping him, acted in her own self-interest. They do this right in front of her son, which he’s thankful for, until the conversation shifts back over to him.

It’s still gross watching Ken Penders have characters talk about the differences between teenage boys and girls though.

He can’t not bring subject matter like this up without a girl being offended at a male for telling them that girls belong at home even though the man they were talking to didn’t even say that. 

This issue was perfectly fine. The first story was okay. It had a nice set-up and what we learned was substantial. The second story was easily the best of the three. The intrigue and the mysterious angle behind what we learned in the first story enhanced things quite a bit. I also got excited due to knowing what’s ahead concerning certain plot points and that’s always a good feeling. The third story was more of nothing happening. I didn’t think it was possible for a story to drag this much but good God, we’re STILL waiting for the inciting incident to kick off here. Lien-Da talked for six pages and learned NOTHING. Holy shit.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #136: The Infiltrator

Jules’ life is a dumpster fire ain’t it? It’s just going to be one thing after the other isn’t it? Oh well, at least he’s got a family. That’s the important bit I suppose. Also, really beautiful looking cover. Nice background especially. Really sells the beauty of this tragic figure. By that I mean, the robotic hedgehog in the bridal carry. 

Spoiler

Words: Romy Chacon
Pencils: Art Mawhinney
Inks: Andrew Pepoy
Letters: Jeff Powell
Colors: Jason Jensen
Asst' Editor: Mike Pellerito
Editor: JF Gabrie

Art Mawhinney is back, which is great. I could spot his style at a glance but while I was glancing I also noticed that Tails was suddenly back to not having blue eyes. I suppose that’s more the colorist’s deal but it still took me by surprise… only to then see that, no, it was just for one panel. His eyes are blue. 

For a second I was worried we were still jumping between transitioning and reverting back to what we used to do. Sonic Heroes is out now. The transition should be long over with so I’m glad.

Also, those chili-dogs actually look really good. Remember in the way earlier issues where it looked like they were covered in gross pink slime? We’ve truly come a long way.

Anyway, who’s that Pokemon at the end of the panel there, walking in through the door? Why it’s Hedgerat. He’s a ground type.

No, it’s Sonic. He comes in and says in response to how he is, “Dead tired. Mission RAN all-night. Pun intended. Sonic go beddy bye.”

Ah. You know you’re about to collapse when you break out the woozy baby talk.

I almost face-palmed at the reason Tails stayed behind though. It would seem that Romy hasn’t quite forgotten the school plotline. I guess it’s easier to remember when they literally live in a house with two parents taking care of them. Sonic literally sleeps in a racecar bed. Still, I was hoping they’d leave it behind completely. Now I’ve gotta wrap my brain around Sonic telling Tails not to go on a mission with him because he needs to study for a test.

Fucking Tails, the child genius, is struggling with a common test at a school in Knothole. Get the fuck outta here.

Sonic kind of rudely inhales the chili-dogs his mom made for breakfast and then slumps off to his room. His dad tries to call him out for his rudeness but Sonic just slams the door and mutters “Yeah, yeah”. The subject of teenage angst is brought up but I dunno. He seemed pretty open about how stressful the mission he just went on was and he looks about ready to die. It’s definitely less teenage angst and more the obvious nature of being sleep deprived. 

Still, I do agree with his dad that he could have grumbled out a thank you to his mom. 

Tails races off to school because, despite Sonic saying “Good night” it’s actually morning. I like how they call him Miles too. Although, for some reason, it’s spelled “Myles” in the book. Weird.

Anyway, we briefly cut to Eggman where the narration tries (and fails) to poetically tell us that he’s doing acts of evil. A.D.A.M informs Eggman that the Infiltrator #127 they were talking about in the last issue has successfully infiltrated and they’re ready to commence with the infiltration procedure. Like an infiltrator does. #Title-of-the-book.

Tommy leaves the scene while Bernie and Jules have a bit of a heartfelt scene together. Bernie apologizes for accidentally placing food in front of her husband and is about to cry. Jules tries to play it off as a joke, by mentioning he took a bite even though his servos didn’t agree with it. When that bombs he just resorts to saying he’s used to this and also that, maybe there’s a way to reverse it still.

Maybe there is but it’s not going to happen in this book’s lifetime.

Honestly, a part of me thinks it’d be simple to do with a de-roboticizer and the chaos emeralds. They’re like magic or something right? We find out in 06 that they can cure death or something so Jules could totally be healed probably. Wouldn’t take too much of a stretch to write.

Tommy has reached Sonic’s room while the two parents are talking. Jules noticed Tommy leaving though, because again, he was being rude by not excusing himself. God, he’s Parenting Level 200 right now isn’t he?

Anyway, Tommy tries to literally drill into Sonic’s fucking head.

He’s got machine limbs now! Tommy NO! 

Also, I love the way Sonic looks right there. Him being collapsed on the bed like that is such a mood. God, he looks so comfy. I could go for a bit of that right about now.

Jules bursts into the room, of course. If his sensors didn’t pick up that something was wrong, the sound of a drill probably would have. Not for Sonic though. It takes the sound of a drill and his dad bursting through the door to wake him up. 

Jules tries to go at him but Tommy very quickly and easily terminates him with a drill to his chest.

Now, I assumed Tommy just had robo-limb enhancements and was being mind-controlled by Eggman. 

Apparently not.

It’s just a Robo-Tommy. 

Sonic didn’t know this. There’s literally no way he could have. However, he took a very, highly educated guess and just spin-dashes his way through Tommy’s entire body, slicing him in half like a hot knife through butter when he sees his dad go down.

“Gotta find… a tailor. BECAUSE I RIPPED MY PANTS! DYEAHAHAHA!”

No, he’s gotta take him to Uncle Chuck of course.

Still, looking that scene over, it’s miraculous how good of a guess that was. No hesitation. No mercy. It’s understandable considering that was his dad who just got fucked up.

Sonic hurriedly gets him onto Uncle Chuck’s table in his lab and asks if he can be repaired. Uncle Chuck blatantly tells him that he can fix his body but he can’t recreate the spark of life that makes him a Robian. 

Fewer things are more sad than seeing Sonic the Hedgehog crying over the loss of his dad. Ah man. 

Even more crazy is how this is totally not something you’d ever see today. In any capacity. 

For as well drawn as this is, and how good it is at selling the emotion, not everything went smoothly in the art department concerning his mom.

Holy Hera! Talk about doing the ugly cry. There’s something funky happening with those eyelids, I swear.

Also, when you color tears straight blue, sometimes it tends to look like a weird substance is leaking out of their face rather than crying if you’re not careful. 

Uncle Chuck is taking this shockingly well though. Maybe he’s already long since resigned himself to the idea that his brother might die or IS basically a walking corpse. Dark but… well, you know.

Sonic rushes off to get the next best thing to the Chaos Emeralds; the Power Ring. It appears out of the lake and he snags it, rushes back home and slams that shit right into his dad’s chest.

I love the typo in that passage at the top. It’s always great when the narration boxes get undermined by something like that.

On the next page, Sonic and Chuck are outside talking about how Sonic saved Jules’ life. We don’t get to see him so we’ll just have to take their word for it.

Uncle Chuck then produces a microchip from the Tommy Turtle bot that says “Tommy Tortoise (Season 17) Model 101 - Megaopolis” and Sonic, for some reason, zeroes in on the phrase Season 17.

Sonic straight ups says that Season 17 means Tommy is alive and that they have to go save him.

I… don’t know what Season 17 means or how Sonic knows what it means. I also don’t know how it means Tommy is still alive. At best, I can assume it means a lot of attempts were tried to recreate Tommy using Tommy’s body but that doesn’t mean the body is alive. Right?

Well, whatever. Sonic IS right so I guess I’ll let it slide. It’s very interesting how sometimes the narrative decides it wants Sonic to know things about how machines work. Then again, maybe it’s super common and I’m the dumb one. That very well could be the case.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #136: Mobius: 25 Years Later - Girl Talk

Writer: Ken Penders
Penciler: Steven Butler
Inker: Jim Amash
Colorist: Jason Jensen
Letterer: Vickie Williams

Eww! No,God. Please no. That title. For Heaven’s sake, Penders, don’t engage in “GIRL TALK” for the good of humanity. Get out of the teenage girl gossip circle, please.

So the issue actually begins not where we left off but with Julie-Su speaking with Queen Sally over her television monitor. 

I didn’t notice this before when I saw Julie-Su last issue but why does it look like she’s ONLY wearing an apron? She looks super naked here. She’s not. She’s wearing a black outfit underneath but for the first page you can barely notice it.

Anyway, this first page is just the two wives complaining about the eating habits of their sons, daughters, and husbands. 

Sonic doesn’t like “toffetti” which, when I look it up on Google or DuckDuckGo it yields NO results relating to food so either it doesn’t exist or it’s misspelled. Knuckles apparently doesn’t like spicy foods which makes him the exact opposite of me. I put extreme Jamaican hot sauce on everything.

So far this #GIRLTALK isn’t all that interesting. It gets even stranger when they then start complaining about how their husbands don’t like to conform to the restrictive and limiting standards of the life-styles that have been foisted onto them by tradition and needless pandering to old systems and monarchies that don’t work or are extremely ass-backwards and destructive.

Sally says that Sonic wasn’t the king for two years after they married. Max still was during that time. Meanwhile, Knuckles hates being the guardian and apparently that’s a problem because he’s got a perfectly good daughter who’s willing and ready to take up the position, even though Knuckles made it clear that he thinks the Guardian position should go away. 

Again, I agree with Knuckles on that. He should just get rid of it. That way he doesn’t have to do it and his bratty daughter doesn’t get to bask in this strange, glorified promise of privilege she wants so badly. 

Sally also complains about how her son Manik doesn’t want to be a prince and how her daughter likes the idea of being a princess. Good for Manik. He sounds like someone who’ll grow up to be someone decent. 

Yeah, I gotta say, the stuff the wives are complaining sounds like stuff I’m on board with. I’m totally with Sonic not wanting to be king. I’m totally with Manik not wanting to be a prince. I’m totally with Knuckles not wanting to let Lara-Su be a guardian and I love the idea of him getting rid of the whole guardian thing too. Not seeing the problem here.

I guess they don’t REALLY care because they then spend the next two pages rattling off about mundane household shit. We also see the entire process of Lien-Da entering the conference call of boring moms. Literally each step is shown to us. 

Boy howdy, this sure is some riveting stuff.

Lien-Da and Julie-Su have been completely stripped of their agency and vigor and are now a gaggle of babbling house-wives talking about preparations for dinner and how to properly engage in conference calls.

ISN’T THIS EXCITING????????!!!!!

I’m actually not joking about this next bit. When I got to the part where Lara-Su walked in and started whining about how embarrassing it would be if her friends found out that Manik had a crush on her, I started to uncontrollably laugh.

Nothing funny was happening. I just burst out laughing. I think it hit me all at once how absurd this was. I was sitting there thinking, “What the fuck am I even reading right now? What am I doing?”

It was just so silly. I’m reading a Sonic the Hedgehog comic book where all these girls are gathered round to talk about mundane bullshit that no one could conceivably give a fuck about. I was looking at the pages and marveling at how much fucking dialogue there was and how none of it was them saying anything of importance or general interest. I’m literally just reading the dialogue of a typical boring household conversation and when it hit me that this was what was happening, I guess my brain broke and I just started laughing like a crazy person in need of a straight jacket.

Lara-Su says that the reason she’s home early is because a lightning storm caused a power outage. Sally brings up that strange lightning storms have INDEED been happening. You know, the ones that have been brought up numerous times now? Sally asked Rotor about them but he just shrugs and says it’s nothing. 

So in case you missed that, the lighting storms are indeed… STILL happening. Oh dear. What tremendously wonderful, new information. 

That’s it by the way. They talk about how weird the lightning is and then they just… stop talking about that and move on to inviting Lien-Da for the get together that’s also been alluded to ever since this Mobius 25 Years Later story started. It still hasn’t happened yet of course. We needed the important scene where all the moms talked over the monitor about getting together for dinner. Oh, and Lien-Da just leaves and they give her their regards.

Why the fuck did Lien-Da even call Julie-Su again? I guess it was to trick you into thinking some progress was going to be made in the story or the character was going to learn something new. But no. She’s still learned nothing and neither have any of these other characters. 

Abby, the maid girl who spent this entire story somehow complaining even harder than the other girls have, chops a lemon in half and then says what she’s going to be making for the dinner and we end on Lara-Su saying that it sounds gross. Abby also doesn’t say what dessert she’ll be making. Just that there will, in fact, be dessert.

I love how this is our ending image. Someone cringing.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #136: Patience

Writer: Romy Chacon
Penciler: Ron Lim
Inker: Nelson Ribeiro
Letterer: Vickie Williams
Colorist: Jensen

Ron Lim, who apparently can only draw spines super long, has now been put on art duty for a story where Knuckles is the focus. Can he even draw Knuckles?

Nope. Seems he’s good at drawing his bootleg friend, Knuckles the Hedgehog though.

This is a Knuckles story where Knuckles stares at Angel Island and contemplates how much it sucks that Eggman took control of the island. He then starts rushing at the island at full speed, knowing that it’s at the highest peak now and he can only get onto the island without his power of flight (apparently it’s not considered gliding here) at this very moment.

As he rushes towards the island, he generates a ton of excuses for why he has to do it and runs down a list of things that would be cool to have such as the Brotherhood’s respect and approval (I’d personally pass on that) but lands on the reason being to save his mom.

He’s about to grab hold of the island to climb on but the king’s words keep echoing in his head about how patience is a virtue and how they don’t have the resources to take back Angel Island. He’s assuring Knuckles that when they do, he’ll give the order himself and hopes he can trust him.

Even though it sounds logical, and the king probably is correct, Knuckles still ends up agreeing with King Max and stopping himself by using the worst logic he could have possibly used to justify it.

Knuckles, your father believing in anyone or anything should be the biggest of all the red flags in the fucking universe by this point. If that’s all I had to go by, I’d tell the king to go fuck himself and jump on there right quick. Not to mention the fact that King Max is awful as well. 

Both these people are awful. I wouldn’t have faith in either of them. Yet, the story is painting doing so as the correct thing to do. Really, it should have just landed on the fact that Knuckles trying to take back the entire island by himself would have been suicidal. Especially if he’s truly weakening. That would have been more than enough but then, I guess we’d have to find some other way to waste pages of the book since nothing continues to happen in M25YL. 

Knuckles leaves and the ending shot is of Eggman complaining to A.D.A.M that Knuckles was oblivious to all the Swat-Bots waiting to riddle his body full of holes and blow him up. If ONLY he had stepped onto the island. 

So yeah, he made the right choice. I agree that not doing that was the correct choice, even before the surprise Swat-Bot ambush at the end. It’s just the part where instead of talking about how dumb the idea itself was, it was regulated to the idea that Knuckles should believe in the shitty ass king because his shitty ass father did. Boo.

The issue averages out as something that’s just okay, unfortunately. I actually did rather enjoy the first story. This Tommy Trilogy isn’t turning out to be so bad, despite how funny it is that this random character that is suddenly really important to Sonic’s past is being played up as super important again, all of a sudden. He’s not been insufferable or anything though so it’s been completely fine. Plus, exhausted Sonic was kind of adorable. M25YL, however, sunk our battleship yet again. #GIRLTALK wasn’t false advertising at least. It was indeed just a bunch of girls talking. There was nothing of substance there and we learned nothing except what food they’ll be eating at this dinner they’ve been talking about since this thing started will be. The last story was mostly just Knuckles psyching himself up to do something he didn’t do for the sake of teaching him a lesson in patience. It would have been fine had the characters he was respecting the wishes of weren’t awful people. 

I guess I can at least say that this issue gave me a good laugh, even if it was me just laughing at nothing in particular because my brain snapped in half when it hit me that I was just reading page after page of moms talking about their fucking dinner preparations.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #137: Robo-Dyne Systems

Behold the first issue of the Tommy trilogy to actually have Tommy on the cover. Love the art doing it’s best to pay homage to the Sonic Channel art. I guess things feel more official when you’ve got characters drawn in the style of the official Japanese site. That or Adventure 2: Battle’s cover. 

Spoiler

Words: Romy Chacon
Pictures: Steven Butler
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Jason Jensen
Letters: Jeff Powell
Editor: Mike Pellerito
Whoa there. Mike Pellerito just upgraded to editor for this issue. Did he eat JF Gabrie? Poor guy.

Meanwhile, the writers seem to be just a double team of Romy Chacon and Ken Penders from here on in… for right now. I feel like I’m in for a pretty dark time ahead for at least 25 or so issues.

Holy shit though. That looks really goddamn cool, I gotta say. Man, I miss J. Axer doing all those intro art pages now that I think about it.

This first page really does pretty much confirm for me that Bollers is officially out of the picture though. We begin with the Freedom Fighters on an aircraft to New Megaopolis where Tommy is supposedly being held. The first thing that stuck out to me was how hard it was to read Bunnie’s dialogue because some genius thought it’d be great to have to write out even more of the accents these characters have. So much for comfortable reading.

However, the second thing that hit was that ending conversation there between Sonic and Sally. It’s so weird seeing it just happen like that with such a strangely passive acknowledgement of what happened before while at the same time having Sally engage in immediate hypocritical behavior.

I didn’t make mention of it being weird that the next issue after 134 had nothing to do with the romance and, yeah, Sally’s not been in the last two issues but I’m pretty used to this comic introducing something heavy and then having the next story be something that had nothing to do with what was just revealed. I fully expect them to cut away and not revisit certain things for issues on end, which in real time would be the equivalent to months and years passing.

Still, to have the readers wait two to three months after Sally slapped Sonic on stage like that for a follow-up to not even really happen and instead just be Sonic going “Sally! You’re here? WHOA! That’s weird. Anyway, let’s save Tommy. NO ARGUMENTS HERE!”

This was the thing that made it clear within the text that Bollers is gone. It’s such a strange way of handling this. It’s basically having Sally immediately confirm for us that Sonic was right. No matter the reason, she’s diving into the heart of New Megaopolis with him. Her parents aren’t around to tell her she can’t so she does, even though she apparently needed Sonic to stay and be her right hand man or something. I guess it actually wasn’t that big a deal this whole time.

A lot of the arguments in Sally’s favor die a quick death when the writer put in charge of handling what was set up back there just ignores it. If anything, I could see this exasperating the problem of #134 and making it seem not only pointless but as though Sally was reacting like a random, spontaneous bitch.

I’ll bet it does Sonic. It’s really nice that we skipped over the part where we worked our way back to having that make sense too. Really appreciate it.

Also, when Sonic says New Megaopolis makes Robotropolis look like Candyland, Tails says “That it ain’t, Sonic” and Sonic has the fucking audacity to respond with “Ain’t ain’t a word Tails” like he’s his freaking home room teacher. 

How am I only two pages in? I’ve bitched so much already.

Well, things get weirder. After suffering through more encrypted accent speech from both Bunnie and Antoine, they land on a building without being spotted by Eggman somehow (I guess he’s keeping up the tradition of having really shit security) and Sally makes the groups.

Her and Sonic go in first. Rotor (who’s here despite it being said in #134 that he wasn’t going on the field anymore. I guess that’s another scrapped Bollers idea.) and Bunnie are supposed to be a bit behind them while Antoine and Tails are supposed to guard the plane. However, Hard-Boiled Antoine says he should be there to protect the princess and Sonic gets all chummy with him because he’s more willing to get himself killed and looks angry all the time. Tails actually gets a little upset by the way the split shook out which is kind of cute.

At this point, I’m really wondering if the Sonic and Sally thing is just going to be ignored but no. I knew better than that at least. This comic can’t pass up the chance to have it’s relationship drama and sure enough, when they reach the Robo-Pryme epicenter where tons of Infiltrators like the Tommy one was being made Sally… decides she doesn’t want to be a reasonable, good leader anymore. All of a sudden.

This is so batshit insane. 

What the hell is up with Sally here? I can’t blame this entirely on what happened in #134 like the comic wants me to because it doesn’t even make sense that she’s here considering what the fight in that issue was about. On top of that, what she’s saying is stuff that SONIC would say on one of his more reckless days. Except, no, even reckless Sonic would prioritize saving one of his friends before focusing on shutting down this massive manufacturing thing that they just now happened upon.

Something like this requires a bit more time in the oven to plot out. Meanwhile, the thing they came here to do still hasn’t been accomplished yet and Sally just wants the team to shift priorities entirely?! What kind of tactic is that? Do the thing you came here to do first and then plan something out for the much bigger problem ahead.

When Sonic points out that they’re not going to be able to do that in a sneaky way, which is important if they don’t want Eggman alerted to the fact that they now know about the infiltrators while he’s still got Tommy in custody, Sally just responds with “It’s my call, so I’ll take responsibility” which is something that only addresses the part about getting in trouble with her dad… which, if I may be frank, is the LEAST important thing that Sonic brought up.

It doesn’t even matter because their loud arguing gets them spotted.

So yeah, turns out that whole argument was pointless too because they end up doing both, really quickly and easily. Sonic and Sally immediately use Nicole to find Tommy’s whereabouts and just head there while Rotor and the rest stay behind to blow the Robo-Pryme machine up.

Rotor, Bunnie, and Antoine lose track of Sally until she comes out and starts to whisper a plan to Bunnie. Rotor asks her where Nicole is though which is the obvious clue that this is an infiltrator and not the real Sally.

Although we knew that already since she was shown being raced off with Sonic. Speaking of which, the two of them manage to find Tommy chained up. 

Ah yes. The reunion we’ve been waiting for I think.

It’s Tommy Turtle, the character that’s been there this whole time and is an incredibly important figure in both Sonic and Sally’s lives, back for REALZ this time. 

Anyway, Rotor calls her and tells Sally that they’ve laid all the bombs out and they’re ready to blow the place up and leave. The Sally and Sonic Infiltrators that attacked them were very easily taken care of by the way.

Sonic, Sally, and Tommy make it outside to be surrounded by Swat-Bots but swooping in like a big damn hero on the get-away ship is Tails with a huge smokescreen to cover the hero’s escape.

The bombs go off and the heroes leave for the sunset where more complaining about explaining this to Max happens. Who gives a shit about Max? Fuck him.

If that was it for the infiltrators I’m a bit disappointed. Seems like an idea like that would definitely be something Eggman would want to keep mass producing regardless of this one area being destroyed. I’d like to believe they’ve solved nothing by doing this.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #137: Mobius: 25 Years Later - Trouble In Paradise

Writer: Ken Penders
Penciler: Steven Butler
Inker: Jim Amash
Letterer: John E. Workman
Colorist: Jason Jensen

Apparently, the title wants us to know that there’s trouble in paradise. Is there really? Does that mean something is going to finally happen? Finger’s crossed that a character learns some new information or… does something with the current information we have. The riveting stuff where we watch a bunch of old moms talk about what to make for dinner can’t last forever after all. 

Or maybe it can. Who knows? Penders has done worse.

The summary for this issue given at the top is literally just what we learned in the very first part of this story way back when. It’s got to be some kind of a joke right?

We finally see King Sonic as he’s walking with Queen Sally to an airplane that’ll take them to Angel Island. Sonic really does not want to go. Apparently Knuckles did something last year and Sonic denies holding a grudge. Also, his son Manik looks exactly like him and is also way bigger than I feel he should be.

I haven’t read all of the M25YL stories so perhaps my confusion is warranted but of the ones I did read, those being only the ones Ian Flynn wrote in the main issues and then later in Sonic Universe with M30YL, Manik shouldn’t look this big. But I’ve also gotten word that the Lara-Su that showed up in the issues before this one isn't’ the same one as the brat in these issues now. I don’t know how I would come to find that out naturally but even so I’m already thinking too hard about this for something that hasn’t even started it’s story yet. For all I know, Manik could just be drawn to look older than he actually is.

I’ve got this paranoid need to overanalyze everything Penders does now, even if the art is done by Steven Butler. Or maybe my memory is wrong.

Anyway, this entire issue is a two-way split screen between the two husbands talking to their wives about their emotional problems. For Knuckles, he’s basically complaining the whole way through until finally both he and Sonic get pressured enough by their wives to explain what ails them.

Sonic comes right out and says what I’ve been thinking. He doesn’t think he’s fit to be king. Now, obviously, because he’s about to go on a bit of a pitiful tale about how it doesn’t suit him, the narrative is going to ultimately be in favor of that being the wrong idea to have, to which I say, the narrative is incorrect.

Sonic belts out the woes of being unfit to rule, which is a very proper concern to have. Someone absolutely shouldn’t be ruling if they both don’t have the drive nor the proper talent to make it work. Sally is very strangely dismissive and unsympathetic to all the points Sonic brings up, even mistakenly thinking his grievance lies with being a father at one point, which is really weird.

Two of her responses is “It’s not like you didn’t know what you were getting into” which is an appeal for him to get over it because he risked being king as a consequence of falling in love and marrying someone and “You picked a heck of a time to have a mid-life crisis” which is… just an insult, honestly.

Sally’s talking about the mysterious thunderstorms that are happening, of course, and so are Knuckles and Julie-Su in the panels across from them. I haven’t posted any of theirs so far because there’s nothing of interest happening in them. It’s just Knuckles whining endlessly while Julie-Su tries to get him to talk to her properly about something we already know.

The Sonic and Sally conversation is more interesting just based on it being something new but it’s not being given any legs to stand on because Sally refuses to engage with Sonic about it.

So, in the end, nothing really happens again.

The issue ends with them arriving for dinner. Stupid me thought that they’d actually have the dinner this issue but no. What do you think this is? An express train?! We can’t go too fast now, can we?

I swear, every time this Abby character opens her damn mouth it’s some sort of insult or complaint and Julie-Su has to shout her name in a scolding manner to get her to knock it off. I don’t know why she hired Koala Karen as her assistant but maybe get someone nicer next time instead of the first name you read off the maid catalog.

It would be forgivable if she were funny or had the same charisma as Jeffery the Butler from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air but she doesn’t.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #137: One Part Ooh-La-La, and Two Parts Treachery!

Writer: Romy Chacon
Penciler: Al Bigley
Inker & Letterer: Michael Higgins
Colorist: Jason Jensen

Bollers had a lot of plans for the series before he got fed up with Penders and his bullshit and hit that old dusty trail. One of them was for Antoine which was a thing that was being set up for some kind of swerve. I was told he was actually supposed to be hardened by the war but upon reading those tidbits I found online about Bollers plans it was supposed to also involve the Source of All.

The idea of the Source of All being this huge corrupting evil thing is fucking brilliant and I love what it would mean with every fiber of my being. It would have been the ultimate proof that the Kingdom of Acorn as it stands today was indeed a bit of a joke.

That said, once again, the idea that it was an all powerful source of infinite knowledge and it couldn’t see it’s Tangy ass getting blown the fuck up is a deliciously hilarious end to it as well. I keep saying that but I need it reiterated because it’s great.

With Bollers gone though, the task of following up on what the deal with Antoine is falls to his contemporaries and it’s honestly just as good, if not a better idea all together.

This story begins with Antoine alone in his room, preparing an acceptance speech from the king, when he starts overlooking a letter he got from Bunnie that talks about how much she loves him. In it they recall a story about his old squeeze coming to town. 

One day, when Bunnie comes in to check on him, he runs away and is then immediately located by her. So, he tells her what’s up. It’s a story about how when they were younger, Sonic was a bastard to him. Go figure.

Weird how Antoine looks relatively okay and Sonic just looks straight up terrible.

Anyway, Antoine says that Tatiana is coming back for a visit, as per the letter he got, and was worried Bunnie would be bothered by that. Now this is usually the part where Bunnie would tell him he was being ridiculous and that she loves him and knows he’d never abandon her so why bother getting bent out of shape over a visit from an old friend.

… Or rather, that’s what I was expecting but no. Tatiana comes out of the woods at that literal exact moment, somehow finding Antoine here in this exact spot, and hugs him. Bunnie’s response is to cross her arms in a huff and go “Hmph! Well don’t let ME keep you two from hooking up again!”

…Sigh… I just… really fucking hate it.

Like, I can’t stand ALL the women in this book just jumping to irrational anger every time the man in their life does something… not even all that threatening. I don’t even want to talk about it anymore.

Antoine, OF COURSE, drops Tatiana after the hug and says he wishes to be with his girlfriend Bunnie and the two walk off together. Antoine reaffirms the obvious to Bunnie about how he loves her and about how Tatiana broke his heart so badly that he was afraid to love again until he met her (which isn’t true because he totally had feelings for Sally but whatever) and the two embrace.

Back in the room, Antoine finishes reading the letter of Bunnie pouring her heart and soul out for him… and then rips it in half and goes back to reciting his acceptance speech.

It’s a quick and visceral, abrupt end to that heartwarming tale and it’s a really effective one. Really makes you want to know what the guy’s deal is, whether you’re on board with the story being told with him or not.

So, good job even if the art could be better in a few places.

Yeah, this is yet another issue where all the stories were fine, I guess. All the problems they had make this a fairly below average issue overall though. The first one was a lot quicker than it probably should have been but at the same time I don’t know if you really would want to spend too much time on the Tommy Trilogy than necessary either. I will say, the first two stories in the Tommy Trilogy were better by virtue of being more intriguing. This last one just felt like business as usual, although with a few confusing caveats concerning the state of Sonic and Sally’s relationship.

Seeing Sally so unsympathetic to Sonic in the M25YL story didn’t help matters there either. I guess this is just the part where I have to sit through seeing these two characters fight. It’s probably tough for someone who wants to see them together but it’s way tougher for someone like me who doesn’t give a shit about their romance. Nothing’s happened yet in this story. This dinner they’ve been talking about still hasn’t begun and I covered three issues today. There was no Sonic X this week. How am I still not at the fucking dinner?! 

The Antoine story was easily the best one in this issue for me just because it managed to convey a relationship well (for the most part) and ended on a note that almost sucker punches you in the face. You can accomplish a lot with very few pages it seems.

On 1/30/2021 at 4:23 AM, Cuz said:

Aw Mike, see what you've done, you went and chased one away~

I was gonna wait until #134 to ask this, but while I'm here, do you have any overall thoughts on the run from #88-125? The time-skip sort of marks a new era of the book for me.

I actually missed you asking this. That's quite a long stretch of time to remember so I had to look back over the covers. As I did though I realized that most of it was just an assortment of mostly random stories where it felt like the comic had no idea what it was doing and trying to find it's footing. It doesn't look like there were any real arcs happening. The direction was so wild and strange and nowhere was that more evident when they suddenly decided the characters had to go to school only for that to be abandoned shortly thereafter. The love story with Sonic and Mina wasn't the worst thing ever but it also wasn't very good. Knuckles dying and coming back to life was some strange, haughty, pretentious nonsense but that's par for the course with Penders. Mammoth Mogul integrated some good stuff into the book, like that story with the second Tails and a little bit of insight into what it was that got Dimitri to grow more of a heart but it wasn't enough to save it. 

Stories like the domestic abuse with Dulcy, who hasn't appeared since that story, seeing Hope being put into the story due to select Overlanders returning from space, finally seeing the Rotor family story get wrapped up, and the sloppy integration of the elements from SA2 did little to help things as well.  Then there's the unceremonious removal of Kodos and his spider ninja sidekick who betrayed him. They were two characters who scarcely, barely had a point and never amounted to much of anything in the end. Getting rid of the Source of All was a net positive but the Sword of Acorns being a thing that still has legs somehow doesn't feel good. I don't even know what to make of Snively's position in the book right now either.

Then there's all the stuff with Eggman where he was body hopping and kept getting his city destroyed. Nate Morgan gets written out in one of those escapades but it ends up not mattering. Then the book decides Eggman needs to be flesh and blood again anyway. 

It was a hodgepodge of just stuff happening before we eventually got the really awesome Avenegers story with the Xorda attack. I can't say I have too high of an opinion of it all. I'd have said the book was in trouble if I didn't already know where it goes and where it actually ends.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Couple of thoughts off my head:

• This isn't Karl Bollers' last story (Thankfully) - he's got two more arcs to go, one of which being the absolute best you'll see out of pre-Ian Archie - which is Return to Angel Island (138-141). Won't spoil too much, but it's an arc that tries it's damnest to make things happen with the echidnas, and tie it back to the game lore, and it's also quite infamously where Penders' petty ego showed itself best, as he couldn't handle Bollers making things happen with his cast, so he called it a "hissy-fit" and tried to retcon the events quickly, although Ian later stopped it, using Enerjak Reborn to show that the echidnas will never recover from what Eggman did (and rightfully so, given their selfish actions). 
• His final arc (#153-154) is a holdover from previous issues focusing on Nack trying to finish his contract on Mina. Karl unfortunately leaves following Return to Angel Island, and Penders takes up full writing responsibilities right up to #160 and...not to be a pessimist, but this is going to frankly be one of the most painful periods of the comic, if not the most painful. A period of time where Penders did some really downright disgusting things with the characters, and didn't really give a fuck about others. I won't go into it because I assume you wanna see for yourself, but he'll nearly tear down and completely destroy several characters before he thankfully leaves. 
• I think the Tommy Trilogy is a holdover from before #125. I obviously can't prove that, but the sheer fact that Tommy's original death happens around the early 110s, and the fact Snively's still roboticised, well after the issue where he and Eggman were turned back to human pretty much shows that this was planned to be way earlier, likely before #125 when we were still getting all of the light-hearted stuff. Archie infamously was trying to run through their story back-ups during the final 30 or so issues of Penders/Bollers, and the first 20 of Ian's issues, to the point that a story clearly intended for pre Issue 100 was placed into #150 (A LANDMARK ISSUE).

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Couple of thoughts off my head:

• This isn't Karl Bollers' last story (Thankfully) - he's got two more arcs to go, one of which being the absolute best you'll see out of pre-Ian Archie - which is Return to Angel Island (138-141).

Ah yes. I completely forgot about that. I'm looking forward to it.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

3 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Ah yes. I completely forgot about that. I'm looking forward to it.

While I also remember - I feel like a few of the criticisms here could be chalked up to "holdover stories having to be very hastily rewritten to reflect current events". As I said, based on some of the aspects like how long it's been since Tommy's original ""death"", plus some of the stuff like Snively still being roboticised, I'd imagine the story was very hastily rewritten to tie in the then current events of the comic (Sonic and Sally's breakup) because it'd be really weird if they didn't address it. 

[VO.SUPER]

Ugh... nostalgia. #136 was my first issue. I didn't understand a damn thing of what was going on. 

[thumbs13]

The Antoine story has a lot of holes in it, but it's pretty effective. But it's hilarious to imagine someone just moving away in the middle of this war where people are getting roboticized. 

[Cuz]

Quote

Idea 12 - A.D.A.M. and Nicole becoming romantically involved, leading to A.D.A.M. seizing control of the Shadowbot army and leading them from New Megaopolis to Knothole.

Response 12 - As funny as this sounds, what happens with A.D.A.M later on is the better story. Although, it does give me flashes of the evil Nicole from Ghosts of the Future. I know this summary technically never says that Nicole was on board for a betrayal or even that A.D.A.M was trying to attack Knothole. He could have just been giving them Eggman’s Shadowbot army as a gift. However, I like the idea of Evil Nicole more.

Okay, Adam just sending Robotnik's inventions into Knothole to court Nicole just sounds too good. I wish they used that. Like, not in any impactful way, but as a cheap one-off like when Sonic found that lamp and his dog became the fastest thing alive for a day. 

Quote

Idea 13 - A new Dingo Regime leader named Colonel Mange being introduced, with Croctobot, Jack Rabbit, and Gala-Na being reintroduced as Robotnik Sub-Bosses over Downunda, the Great-----

Wait

Quote

Croctobot!!!

Did you mean that amalgamation of two bit villains fused into one for a cheap (and effective!) gag in 160, or did you mean vanilla Crocbot? If the former just surprised to hear it was an old idea they were tossing around this far back. xD

and honestly, for someone that looks like a Sonic recolor, Rob'o usually makes it out of this book looking like a saint so I wouldn't of minded catching back up with him. Haha. He's kind of a sleeper hit with me.

Quote

Idea 14 - Evil Sonic coming to enjoy impersonating Sonic and enjoying the love of his parents and adulation of his people, leading him to plan to eliminate Sonic and permanently take his place.

Response 14 - This is a really good idea. A really scary idea. A really common idea. Also, it’s an idea that they end up doing with Antoine instead so… I guess it would technically be redundant too. I still like it though. Although, it’d have been impossible to do after Scourge hits the scene.

Ummm.... 

#150's gonna hit you hard isn't it? I can't wait.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Completely serious - Issue 150 is the most horrible, disgusting issue of the entire series, out of any era - bar none.

[Cuz]

Seriously, like I can forgive the 25 to 30 years later stuff by virtue of being confined to a nebulous future, but 150 is ALL of the books worse traits coming to roast on the main narrative. I mean it's also such a spectacular dumpster fire, that it just sends me into a fit of laughter when I think about how it ever made it to print, that I can't even be mad at it. 

That issue's one big punchline to me.

[Shadow Chaos Control]

Issue #137, is that Franklin the Turtle grown up from the Nick Jr. Show?  

[Dr. Detective]

7 hours ago, Cuz said:

Seriously, like I can forgive the 25 to 30 years later stuff by virtue of being confined to a nebulous future, but 150 is ALL of the books worse traits coming to roast on the main narrative. I mean it's also such a spectacular dumpster fire, that it just sends me into a fit of laughter when I think about how it ever made it to print, that I can't even be mad at it. 

That issue's one big punchline to me.

 

8 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Completely serious - Issue 150 is the most horrible, disgusting issue of the entire series, out of any era - bar none.

What's funny is that I own issues 142 and onward, even though I only started over at 160 whenever I wanted to re-read the comics. So I must have read 150... but I only read those issues one time, several hundred years ago, without the context of what happened before them, while barely paying attention because I thought the art was mostly awful, before letting them collect dust. I don't remember a goddamn thing about it but based on the context clues you guys are giving, I have an idea of what this is. 

[E-122-Psi]

The general problem with the slap I have is that the story is blatantly conveyed to have Sonic and ONLY SONIC'S sympathetic POV. You could at least mildly empathise with Sally's outburst if they shown some sort of build up of emotion. Hell even just a small remorse shot before Sonic lashes back at her and riles her up again. But no, all we get is 'demon head' Sally, hell nearly every shot it's Sonic turn to say something we don't even see her reaction. It really prevents ANY attempt to get her side of things and leaves her almost looking like an unhinged abuser, especially with the manic artwork. The nearest we see is a facing back shot of her shaking her fists at him, which arguably does more to suggest a 'So NOT sorry, you SO deserved that' reaction to her slapping him in the first place.

I think another thing is, as usual with Sally, the complete lack of consequences in terms of how anyone treats her. Even with abide by the idea that she was going to eventually realise her mistake under Bollers, the simple fact is that her actions are glossed over by everyone else. It feels like even Ian was hoping he could just gloss over it and pretend it never happened until fans made perfectly clear this was the line for them and she had to make at least a halfway apology.

Combined with the other 'jerkass Sally' instances ongoing here that similar just don't work well or just fizzle out in an unmeaningful way, it really comes off like the team just don't understand how to write Sally as a flawed character, at least not one that has her mistakes thrown at her effectively, that they just see her a character that is meant to be on the winning side of arguments and that curt and hypocritical side is just a 'necessary evil' when dealing with fools (a problem that was admittedly evident from the very first issue of the comic). Hell on the other side of the story arcs Sonic IS Sally's king as she wanted and he's just getting told to take it like a man. They could have done a real perspective into what Sally was demanding from Sonic here and how uncompromising she is herself. Even more annoyingly is that it ends up being culminated like a really dark extremity of a SatAm parable of Sonic not listening to Sally, his legacy and his even kids (the thing he made clear he DIDN'T regret) being retconned away from him to make sure that he NEVER questions Sally's approach for him ever again.

It might just also be another case of Penders just not understanding how to write females as individual characters with agency. "Yeah, women suck, just gonna have to deal with it."

The irony is that the slap is probably the nearest to the comics managing to play off of what seem like Sally's fundamental vices to me; her overprotective borderline control freak nature combined with her ornery attitude whenever anyone fights it. It's all just handled in probably the worst possible way, representing all the stances towards Archie Sonic being this badly written soap opera.

[SBR2]

Well snap. Ryan already mentioned all the Bollers stuff and the Holdover stories thing. So I guess this'll mostly be jokes and observations.

Spoiler

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

So there’s no mystery to this. Right off the bat, the info page just straight up tells you what the deal is and who it is that might be alive. Yeah, it’s Sonic’s childhood friend who we only found out about that one time during the Tortoise and the Hare story. It’s literally called “The Tommy Trilogy” which is just magnificent.

Romy Chacon thought this Turtle was interesting enough to bring him back from the dead. That is something. I'll admit I got into the comics around #140 so I don't really have people's seething hatred for Tommy. He's just kinda there. But knowing the context of him being in a pretty decent story where he died and then brought back and shoved in people's faces for so long yeah I can kinda understand where people are coming from.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

We cut to a scene where Snively, who’s just BACK for some reason, and also roboticized again, somehow, is speaking with Dr. Eggman in that pitch black room from Sonic Lost World, a game that won’t be released until 10 years from now.
They’re talking about deploying some sort of secret weapon. That’s all well and good but uh… am I going to get an explanation for why Snively is all of a sudden no longer missing and a robot again? The comic is going to explain that right? Maybe it will but… I’m so worried it won’t because so often it doesn’t.

Yeah as Ryan said this and the later inconsistencies with Sally are a result of this one originally being meant to be published earlier. Apparently this was a regular practice I guess to avoid deadlines.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

They talk about how Roboticization is something that Eggman scarcely uses nowadays. He’s picking and choosing now. I’m not entirely sure why but it’s just “not his thing” anymore and he’s very picky about who gets to be a robot.

I always assumed it's that the Bem made it impossible to Roboticize anyone which is why Eggman activated the first Genesis Wave, I mean that arc has a lot of talk about how Roboticization just plain didn't work at all.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It wasn’t until I heard the names “Sergeant Simian” and “Predator Hawk” that I realized, “Holy shit, this is the Destructix!”

… WEIRD.

God, if there’s one group that’s been treated like a massive after thought, it’s these guys for sure. They show up as Mogul’s gang and then that falls through and they end up teaming up with Sleuth “Doggy” Dawg (still the best name) and Drago the Domestic Abuser for the prison escape a while back. Then… something happens and they get defeated again and they’re just gone from the book until just now where they’ve apparently all been roboticized. 

Of course later this will be retconned as Ian wanted to actually use them.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

He also talks about how he’s actually just straight up been UNABLE to roboticize anyone. So not only did the Bem beam de-roboticize everyone but it’s keeping the roboticization process subdued. 

Oh, that's why Ian made a point of specifying Roboticization doesn't work. Because it was blatantly said that it doesn't. And here I was being called out on Bumbleking when #230 dropped for believing the text.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

This is all very interesting, honestly. It would seem Tommy’s information was a little askew. Eggman isn’t picky about who to roboticize. He literally can’t. He just found these guys, basically at his doorstep, and took them in. 

My guess is that this backup was written to try and clear up the inconsistencies with the main story and current continuity.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It was then when it all clicked for me.

The title of the story.

The name that was just given.

This is the beginning of the “Anonymous” storyline.
I was getting really sucked into the mystery too. However, after hearing the name, I’m both sorry and happy to say that I already know who this is and where this is going. I’m sorry because I REALLY wish I could re-experience the magic of what’s going to happen here without having already read the story associated with it. I’m also happy because I get to find out it’s origin and I’m getting pumped all over again.

I really love that later story guys. It’s so good.

This particular tale ends with Eggman proclaiming that whoever this Anonymous is, they have his attention.

Now in total fairness this story went through like 3 different writers (and Ken barely even touches it) so there's a lot of ideas for what Anonymous was going to be before we got what we did.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Idea 1 - Sonic and Amy becoming a couple after being stranded at sea together and keeping it a secret from Princess Sally.

While personally I don't mind if Sonic did end up with Amy (I like shipping but Romance isn't exactly a key selling point for the series) This feels kinda...icky. Like if Sonic and Sally are already broken up then why would Sonic and Amy need to be all kissy face in secret? Also Sonic would never keep a relationship secret or try to hide from his ex. 

 

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Idea 2 - Tails reuniting with his parents by traveling into space on a modified tornado.

 The original pitch for Sonic X season 3 was weird.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Idea 3 - Amy’s origins being explored in a fuller adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog CD

Personally all for this one. Amy is in desperate need of fleshing out at this point.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Idea 4 - Knuckles departing Angel Island after learning that his presence exposes the location of the Master Emerald, going on a global pilgrimage to learn martial arts, and battling a Dr. Eggman controlled-Monkey Khan while under the control of the Iron Queen before discovering the Master Geode.

Response 4 - BWHAHAHA! MASTER GEODE?! Okay... well, the rest sounds fine and some of it actually happens way later in the book, though, under different circumstances that have nothing to do with Knuckles. I don’t even remember if we even see Knuckles at all during the Iron Dominion Arc.

He's in some of it. Though the Universe arc Echoes of the Past is set in that period so falling into traps and learning there were even more lies he was told by his people was taking up a lot of his time.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Ideas 6 and 7 - Bunnie and Antoine breaking up due to a change in Antoine's personality, with Bunnie's origins later being explored and her true name being revealed as Scarlette O'Hare (which may have served as the inspiration for Scarlette Rabbot and Bunnie's codename when she was in the Metropolis Egg Army).

Antoine gaining his scar due to an accident with a knife and becoming a villain after allowing himself to be possessed by a corrupted Source of All in hopes of winning Bunnie back.

Responses to 6 and 7 - So this was ACTUALLY supposed to be the real Antoine huh? Except, instead of it being because “THE WAR CHANGED HIM!” it was actually because Parallax from Green Lantern infected him and turned him evil. Or rather, the Source of All. I gotta say, I’m really digging the idea that the Source of All was just a big pool of fucking evil that these dumbass Acorns submerged themselves into, while naked, for generations and used that as the excuse for why they should rule. 

I don’t care about Bunnie’s last name.

Honestly...it isn't a terrible idea but IDK I still have to say "Evil Antoine replaced him" is still one of Penders better ideas. As for Bunnie's name...that is a long way to go for a not that funny Gone With The Wind joke.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Idea 8 - Rotor retiring from field duty in order to pursue a role analogous to that played by "Q" of James Bond fame.

It's better than him prematurely aging and becoming a politician. Honestly they should have played up making him Tails mentor since Archie Tails wasn't ever that smart before but now he's Miles Neutron Boy Genius.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Idea 13 - A new Dingo Regime leader named Colonel Mange being introduced, with Croctobot, Jack Rabbit, and Gala-Na being reintroduced as Robotnik Sub-Bosses over Downunda, the Great Desert, and Albion. This would have led to the disappearance of the Downunda Freedom Fighters and a confrontation involving the Mercian Freedom Fighters.

Well...that's essentially what happens with the Dark Egg Legion when you think about it, huh?

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

I love how insane this looks out of context. "THE PARK!? I TOLD YOU NOT TO WALK THROUGH THE GRASS AND SMELL THE FLOWERS!"

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It’s still gross watching Ken Penders have characters talk about the differences between teenage boys and girls though.

God, this man grew up in and stayed in the 60's but still desperately wants brownie points for not making Female characters damsels sometimes.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

He can’t not bring subject matter like this up without a girl being offended at a male for telling them that girls belong at home even though the man they were talking to didn’t even say that. 

Who's a more embarrassing Male Feminist? Ken Penders or Joss Whedon?

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Art Mawhinney is back, which is great. I could spot his style at a glance but while I was glancing I also noticed that Tails was suddenly back to not having blue eyes. I suppose that’s more the colorist’s deal but it still took me by surprise… only to then see that, no, it was just for one panel. His eyes are blue. 

Art is back but only kinda. See he's not credited but for some reason ever panel she's in Bernie is drawn by Nelson Ribiero. I don't think the art would have been drawn when the story was originally written so I can't imagine this is to like cover up her originally being Roboticized or anything. Then again maybe that's exactly the case. I legit don't know.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I almost face-palmed at the reason Tails stayed behind though. It would seem that Romy hasn’t quite forgotten the school plotline. I guess it’s easier to remember when they literally live in a house with two parents taking care of them. Sonic literally sleeps in a racecar bed. Still, I was hoping they’d leave it behind completely. Now I’ve gotta wrap my brain around Sonic telling Tails not to go on a mission with him because he needs to study for a test.

Fucking Tails, the child genius, is struggling with a common test at a school in Knothole. Get the fuck outta here.

This is once again why I refuse to take character age seriously unless they make it absolutely clear said character is a child. Seriously can you imagine Sonic running through a loop-de-loop trashing robots and kicking Eggman ass then stopping and thinking "Shit! I forgot to study for math class!"

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Although, for some reason, it’s spelled “Myles” in the book. Weird.

Letters. We only acknowledge them when they make a mistake. That's mostly a joke but have you ever noticed how frequent that is?

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Honestly, a part of me thinks it’d be simple to do with a de-roboticizer and the chaos emeralds. They’re like magic or something right? We find out in 06 that they can cure death or something so Jules could totally be healed probably. Wouldn’t take too much of a stretch to write.

Honestly not a bad idea. Place them in a circle and have Bernie kiss him. That's how the dark ritual goes.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Not for Sonic though. It takes the sound of a drill and his dad bursting through the door to wake him up. 

I relate. I'm a very sound sleeper.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Huh. Uncle Chuck is also drawn by Nelson Ribero. Weird.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Sonic rushes off to get the next best thing to the Chaos Emeralds; the Power Ring. It appears out of the lake and he snags it, rushes back home and slams that shit right into his dad’s chest.

When all else fails cast Cureaga. That's what I learned from Kingdom Hearts.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Uncle Chuck then produces a microchip from the Tommy Turtle bot that says “Tommy Tortoise (Season 17) Model 101 - Megaopolis” and Sonic, for some reason, zeroes in on the phrase Season 17.

Sonic straight ups says that Season 17 means Tommy is alive and that they have to go save him.

I… don’t know what Season 17 means or how Sonic knows what it means. I also don’t know how it means Tommy is still alive. At best, I can assume it means a lot of attempts were tried to recreate Tommy using Tommy’s body but that doesn’t mean the body is alive. Right?

Well, whatever. Sonic IS right so I guess I’ll let it slide. It’s very interesting how sometimes the narrative decides it wants Sonic to know things about how machines work. Then again, maybe it’s super common and I’m the dumb one. That very well could be the case.

Nah. I got no idea how Sonic pieced this together. Maybe he thinks a Robot Duplicate means the original is alive but that kinda defeats the purpose of being a duplicate, right?

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I didn’t notice this before when I saw Julie-Su last issue but why does it look like she’s ONLY wearing an apron?

Oh, thank God I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that. I don't know if that's on Penders or Butler but someone needs to go to Horny Jail right now.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Sonic doesn’t like “toffetti” which, when I look it up on Google or DuckDuckGo it yields NO results relating to food so either it doesn’t exist or it’s misspelled.

Knowing Penders it's some dumbass Sci-Fi version of Tofu.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

So far this #GIRLTALK isn’t all that interesting. It gets even stranger when they then start complaining about how their husbands don’t like to conform to the restrictive and limiting standards of the life-styles that have been foisted onto them by tradition and needless pandering to old systems and monarchies that don’t work or are extremely ass-backwards and destructive.

Women be complaining about their Husbands. Y'know. I grew up around parents who clearly didn't like each other and fought constantly and  see my Cousin screech at her husband a lot and it's like "Get a Divorce if you hate each other so much. Christ." Maybe I'm Naïve but I thought marriage was supposed to mean you wanted to spend time with that person.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

These women were strategists and warriors now they're boring suburban housewives complaining about First World Problems and making dinner plans. Even if you don't like these characters you have to admit this is a major downgrade.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Lien-Da and Julie-Su have been completely stripped of their agency and vigor and are now a gaggle of babbling house-wives talking about preparations for dinner and how to properly engage in conference calls.

Also...apparently on speaking terms because according to Penders "Family is more important than political opinons" or some other bullshit which as a Bisexual man afraid to come out because of how openly homophobic his family is can I just tell Penders to sit on a tack?

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I’m actually not joking about this next bit. When I got to the part where Lara-Su walked in and started whining about how embarrassing it would be if her friends found out that Manik had a crush on her, I started to uncontrollably laugh.

Nothing funny was happening. I just burst out laughing. I think it hit me all at once how absurd this was. I was sitting there thinking, “What the fuck am I even reading right now? What am I doing?”

It's funny she's so terrified by him having a crush on her because he's younger than her but like by my count he's 13 or 14. It's a 2-3 year gap.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I’m literally just reading the dialogue of a typical boring household conversation and when it hit me that this was what was happening, I guess my brain broke and I just started laughing like a crazy person in need of a straight jacket.

Man you haven't even gotten to the sleepover yet. I feel you so bad. At this point I'm always crying out "THERE'S APOCALYPSE HAPPENING! FOCUS ON THAT!"

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Why the fuck did Lien-Da even call Julie-Su again?

Allegedly to get information. She fucking didn't though. She just chatted like a casual buddy. God I fucking hate this story.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Abby, the maid girl who spent this entire story somehow complaining even harder than the other girls have, chops a lemon in half and then says what she’s going to be making for the dinner and we end on Lara-Su saying that it sounds gross. Abby also doesn’t say what dessert she’ll be making. Just that there will, in fact, be dessert.

Abby is legit my favorite character. She just seems so done with these Echidnas and their bullshit and I can relate. You can't convince me she isn't planning in killing the lot of them.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Behold the first issue of the Tommy trilogy to actually have Tommy on the cover. Love the art doing it’s best to pay homage to the Sonic Channel art. I guess things feel more official when you’ve got characters drawn in the style of the official Japanese site. That or Adventure 2: Battle’s cover. 

Get used to Spaz drawing covers in this style. You're going to be seeing it for awhile.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Editor: Mike Pellerito
Whoa there. Mike Pellerito just upgraded to editor for this issue. Did he eat JF Gabrie? Poor guy.

The change has begun! Granted we're still a few issues away from any major changes but Mike's here to start putting us on the right track. Fun fact he blocked me on Twitter because I was trashing Archie as a company and he followed me. Whoops. I don't know if the fact I'm an idiot comes through.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

However, the second thing that hit was that ending conversation there between Sonic and Sally. It’s so weird seeing it just happen like that with such a strangely passive acknowledgement of what happened before while at the same time having Sally engage in immediate hypocritical behavior.

Yeah this is no doubt another victim of previously being written for earlier. Clearly some rewrites happened but Sonic and Sally bitching at each other is not the course correction Chacon believes it is.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It’s Tommy Turtle, the character that’s been there this whole time and is an incredibly important figure in both Sonic and Sally’s lives, back for REALZ this time. 

That might also play into peoples dislike for Tommy. He's just super best buddies and the most important person in all their lives despite never having been mentioned ever before.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The summary for this issue given at the top is literally just what we learned in the very first part of this story way back when. It’s got to be some kind of a joke right?

Previously on Mobius 25 Years Later: Rotor said there would be an Apocalypse and then jackshit happened!

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

We finally see King Sonic as he’s walking with Queen Sally to an airplane that’ll take them to Angel Island. Sonic really does not want to go. Apparently Knuckles did something last year and Sonic denies holding a grudge. Also, his son Manik looks exactly like him and is also way bigger than I feel he should be.

actually do like the concept of this splitscreen between Sonic and Knuckles that ends with a single panel of the Royal family at the Echidna's door. It's kinda neat.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I haven’t read all of the M25YL stories so perhaps my confusion is warranted but of the ones I did read, those being only the ones Ian Flynn wrote in the main issues and then later in Sonic Universe with M30YL, Manik shouldn’t look this big. But I’ve also gotten word that the Lara-Su that showed up in the issues before this one isn't’ the same one as the brat in these issues now.

Eh...I kinda don't want to spoil it but there's some shenanigans at the end of this that lead to some changes when Ian does his. As he used to say before changing to #KnowingSmile "You'll see".

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Sonic comes right out and says what I’ve been thinking. He doesn’t think he’s fit to be king. Now, obviously, because he’s about to go on a bit of a pitiful tale about how it doesn’t suit him, the narrative is going to ultimately be in favor of that being the wrong idea to have, to which I say, the narrative is incorrect.

Sonic belts out the woes of being unfit to rule, which is a very proper concern to have. Someone absolutely shouldn’t be ruling if they both don’t have the drive nor the proper talent to make it work.

Here's my thing. I honestly don't mind Sonic and Sally being Married With Children (Love and Marriage) but I kinda wish it had been the opposite direction. That Sally accepted Sonic's life of adventure and realized she wanted to be a part of it. She throws the crown in the trash and she and Sonic raise their kids as a badass adventure family. Yeah I've accepted Pre-Reboot Archie Sonic is absolutely not the Free spirit Adventurer of the games, he is tied to the Acorn Kingdom pretty heavily, but I really don't buy that even if he loves Sally Sonic would ever want to give up adventures. Hell that's a part of what led to their breakup.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

So, in the end, nothing really happens again

Man that should just be the tagline for Mobius 25 Years Later.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

There's a rare funny Penders line that sadly got cut. After Julie-Su's "Manik isn't even a Teenager" line Abby was supposed to reply "I meant the King." I guess they ran out of space so it was replaced with another Lara-Su brat moment.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I was told he was actually supposed to be hardened by the war but upon reading those tidbits I found online about Bollers plans it was supposed to also involve the Source of All.

Yeah my bad. It's been a while since I read Bollers plans so I blanked on the details.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

So, he tells her what’s up. It’s a story about how when they were younger, Sonic was a bastard to him. Go figure.

The infamous "Sonic cucks Antoine" story. I kid. Nobody remembers this. Also this is supposed to tie up a comment Ant made about a bad experience he had with women in the Image Comics crossover which also something nobody remembered. Also also Al Bigly's art is horrid. He also drew some of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comics Hamilton did in the 90's and the looked equally this bad. Supposedly he did pretty good on Batman Adventures though.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2021 at 3:30 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Back in the room, Antoine finishes reading the letter of Bunnie pouring her heart and soul out for him… and then rips it in half and goes back to reciting his acceptance speech.

So as much as I do think retconning Ant to Evil Ant was one of Ken's better ideas I'll also admit this story alone makes it make literally zero fucking sense. Like why is Patch having such a positive reaction to a memory he doesn't even have? He's smiling reading the letter. Maybe he's a romantic at heart?

 

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic X - Issue #23: Hedgehogging Their Bets

The fact that someone appears to be spying on Sonic via a security camera in the living room of a young boy’s house is fairly creepy. I don’t think the Sonic Haters club here cares much for being mature considering they’re throwing dangerous fucking weapons at pictures of him on the wall and drawing on his face. The best they could think of was a tongue sticking out of his mouth though? It looks more like he’s mocking them even more. You couldn’t at least make it look like he was drooling like a moron?

Fantastic cover though, in all seriousness. I love looking at things like this that can do organized chaos well. It spurs me to be better at what I do.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Josh Ray
Editor: Mike Pellerito

Ian and Tracy! Ah, it’s my boys, back at it again.

The issue begins with Sonic being chased by a purple S-Team car. He’s about to escape when he’s ambushed by two G.U.N robots at the corner of Yardley Rd and Flynn St.

That’s right Sonic. You’re at the mercy of Yardley and Flynn now. There’s nowhere for you to go but up.

Instantly, I know the two characters responsible for both of those things. I’ve got more familiarity with the back end of the Sonic X comics than the beginning. I also have a real affinity for lore and I know Ian Flynn does too. We’re about to get a heavy, heavy dose of it too.

Just like Sonic is getting a heavy dose of knockout gas due to running right into a trap.

Funny. You’d think his enemies would take more advantage of the fact that Sonic falling asleep or getting knocked out was when he’d be at his most vulnerable. They never do though.

Instead, we get the Anti-Sonic Fan Club. I love it and I appreciate pretty much everyone who's in it honestly.

Our adorable blue hedgehog doesn’t quite get it but he’s getting a ton of hate, not just online this time too.

He wakes up in chains and has a ton of bright lights shined on him before being talked at by a shadowy group of outcasts who all had their lives ruined because of him.

Sort of.

Jay Jonah Military Man here confuses the hell out of Sonic with his accusations of him being a menace.

I love these delusional fuckwits. 

This is really just a collection of losers who either overreacted or did something to fuck up their own lives and found a convenient excuse in Sonic because he’s an alien.

He’s different and therefore should be feared and killed.

First one on the docket is a man who made quite a strange impression on me when I saw his episode as a kid. This is Card Passer, the leader of C.L.I.P. 

This happened during an episode that was PRETTY DAMN CLOSE to the finale of the second season where all of Sonic’s friends were about to return home to their world. I remember at the time being like “YO! CHILL THE FUCK OUT DUDE! SERIOUSLY!” when I saw him randomly launch missiles at Eggman without official permission. You give the crazies a button they’re semi-responsible for pushing and they’ll take full responsibility without a hitch. Then they’ll act surprised when they get punished for it.

Like seriously, this guy saw the President making a speech about how he wished Sonic and his friends a safe journey home, turned off the TV in disgust, then got all pissy about how Sonic’s friends were making people fall in love with the idea of peace.

He hears that Eggman is working with the military on something and decides to bomb the hell out of him. Then when Sonic shows up to save him, he decides he’s gonna kill Sonic too because he’s a traitor now. He also has a weird habit of rubbing his fingers at the foot of his shoe.

I couldn’t fathom being THAT paranoid about this when they were specifically trying to get Sonic and the others back home. You’d think that idea alone would have calmed his ass down but it only spurred him to act faster. There’s no other explanation other than wanting actual blood on his hands and it’s kind of disgusting. However, qualities like that do make for good villain material at the very least.

Anyway, he was able to get away from prison with the help and speed of one Hector Dragg. 

This guy was the only member of this group that I was unable to recognize at a glance. That’s appropriate because he’s easily the most obscure. Literally blink and you’ll miss him. That’s how fast he goes by.

He’s seen during the first episode when Sam and his men are suiting up to go catch Sonic. He’s also probably the guy who told Sam to use his weird power engine, or “Special Milk” to catch Sonic on that road. 

If this guy was endangering lives and being too reckless for fucking Sam Speed than yeah, you probably oughta be fired. Sorry dude. It’s already hard to fathom being a racecar driving police officer but a life-endangering one too? Honestly, I’d have been happy to be the third fastest person in the world. 

I don’t even care that the Pharaoh from Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged would laugh at the notion of winning the bronze medal. It’s still a medal goddammit. However, there’s that ego at play here. He got fired because his ego went out of control. It doesn’t even matter that it was Sonic that took the first place spot. If it were literally anyone or anything else, he still would have reacted the same probably.

We’re 0-2 on this being Sonic’s fault so far. I’m enjoying this quite a bit.

Next is Howard Watcher, Warden of Prison Island.

Now THIS guy I remember a lot. Like, his fucking 4kids voice was ringing in my ears the entire time I was reading this dialogue. I remember watching with bated breath as the anime covered my favorite part (well, one of my favorite parts) of the Sonic Adventure 2 storyline. When I saw this guy, laughing and screaming at the top of his lungs about how cool and awful the Flying Dog was and how it was gonna “Sniff them out!” when he sent it after the invaders, I was like “Hell yeah, the Flying Dog!” because I was an excited little kid who was getting to see a game I played being acted out on TV.

Honestly, this guy may have a little bit more of a leg to stand on as far as blaming Sonic goes. True, Eggman was ALSO invading the island and technically the ones who busted him out were Amy and Tails but Sonic’s the only one who draws any ire around here so of course, along with all the admiration, he gets all the blame too. 

Sonic was imprisoned there unjustly but it’s not like he specifically had him arrested. He was the warden and it was his job to keep him there. That’s it. The fact that the heroes broke out and blew the island the fuck up is not his fault. The breakout was the fault of the heroes and the island blowing up was Eggman’s fault. So, if his reputation got ruined because of that then… yeah, that’s a little fucked.

That said, I don’t really feel sorry for him because in the Prison Island episodes of the anime he was being an unrepentant fucking asshole. He was so fucking READY to kill Sonic and the others and screaming at his monitors like a goddamn lunatic. Even the guy sitting next to him turned to look at him like, “Really?” but was mostly thinking about how bad he felt for Sonic.

His motto was also “Take no prisoners” which… as a Prison Warden that’s kind of messed up. It’s why he ordered Amy and Tails ( you know, two kids basically) to be blown to bits instead of captured. He’s not a good person.

Next we’ve got another familiar face, a guy I remember specifically from the second episode of the anime, giving a speech to the television screen while holding a monkey that fiddled with his glasses, about how Sonic was a machine.

It’s Doctor Kai Narasu.

… Chimera projects?

… What the fuck? I don’t even remember reading that part back when I read this issue so long ago. Dude, what the fuck was he doing in his lab? 

Was he on some Shou Tucker shit?

YEESH. 

If he was then yes, please, take his tenure away.

This one was particularly interesting to me actually. I think his appearance here was the first time I ever got that sense of taking cameo bits of people and turning them into characters when it came to these comics. Two of these guys before were already characters and one of them was a background person who had no real personality to speak of or much of a foundation to work off of other than being a member of the S-Team.

This guy though, I remember watching that second episode of Sonic X as a kid and being upset that the scientist guy said that Sonic had to have been a machine. I don’t know why. Now that I’m older I don’t see why he initially believed that wouldn’t have been the obvious conclusion. Even now, machines still have the capability to move quicker than living beings, including Sonic. It’s not far-fetched at all.

Based on his explanation here though, it sounds like this happening to him was also completely his own fault. I don’t really understand why anyone would dedicate their life to constructing a paper on why Sonic had to have been a machine. I also don’t understand why you’d do that without meeting the specimen first. I guess because his ego was so big, he thought it was obvious and that the other scientists were all stupid for considering it might be anything worth further study.

You’d think this would be a scientist’s wet dream, seeing a creature from another world and wanting to explore it’s anatomy and discover what it was all about. To have such a huge ego on you that you’d forgo that for the sake of being right above all else isn’t very admirable. Nor is it worth much pity when the rug gets pulled out from under you. Seeing him slumped over in sadness made me feel sorry for him when I first read this issue long ago but what I didn’t pay attention to were the empty animal cages around him. 

The sad looking animals he was experimenting on for his fucked up chimera projects were set free. So, no, that’s definitely a good thing. This guy is a horrible person. Again, lovely villain qualities here. I look forward to your next attempt at a Baxter Stockman project Mr. Ego Scientist.

Next is Li Yan. This guy is probably the most unique out of this little group of ragtag also-rans.

He doesn’t actually give a fuck about Sonic. His grudge is against Knuckles and Hawk for what they did to him back in Episode 17 of the show. This guy is from a Chinese suburb where he and his gang, the “Bruiser Boys” tried to steal the red chaos emerald and sell it on the black market. He’s the only one here who started off as a criminal already. He’s also the only one here who’s got beef with Knuckles and is only using Sonic as a means to get at him. The fact that this guy is sitting among a bunch of former police, government, and intelligence agency people kind of does a lot to round this cast out a bit, honestly.

I remember that episode of Sonic X being one of the more down to Earth ones, if only because it dealt with subject matter that 4kids had to censor the fuck out of. Obviously they weren’t going to be able to properly handle anything that dealt with gangs and the black market. This was also the episode where Knuckles ran into a strip club. They had to cut that out from the English Dub, of course. 

Finally, we have my favorite. The man. The myth. The motherfucking legend, Jerome Wise.

I have an unnatural infatuation with this loser. He’s seriously the best running gag of the show in my eyes. Dude starts out as the President’s aid and freaks the fuck out over dumb shit that could have been easily averted had he been a decent person. 

He sends a bunch of helicopters to capture Sonic so he can shake hands with the President while Sonic is in the middle of escorting a girl in a goddamn WHEELCHAIR around so that she can go see some flowers. He makes a deal with Dr. Eggman to force Sonic to participate in a race with Sam Speed as a publicity stunt to increase the President’s popularity, but then gets fired when it comes out that he endangered lives because he was worried that Sonic’s popularity would overshadow the President’s. Then, after getting fired because his attempts to be the best aid a President’s ever had and possibly make history or some shit backfired, he becomes a garbage man and then eventually loses that job too and just becomes a recurring bum for the rest of the show.

Then he dresses as the Black Knight to fight in the tournament but gets scared away by Knuckles there. 

There’s also a running joke in the Japanese version where he’s constantly going on about a girl named Vivian. She dumped him.

It was just kind of amazing witnessing this man start off as this arrogant aid to the president and then just work his way down to being a homeless braggart. His personality didn’t even change. The only self-reflection he ever had was how it was totally Sonic’s fault that he made all these incredibly stupid decisions. I was fascinated by it. 

He also came up with their group name.

I admire what it must have taken to make an acronym out of Sonic X like that. Too bad you had to write Sonic breaking out in laughter at it, Ian.

So after that embarrassing revelation, Sonic easily spins out of their pathetic chains and runs away. Obviously, he could do that the whole time, he was just listening to their stories because he was genuinely curious who else besides Eggman would go this far to capture him.

Li Yan tries to get his Bruiser Boys to stop him but Sonic bowls through them like they’re a bunch of bowling pins.

Watcher tries to use the fact that they’re in Prison Island to take advantage of the situation and sends his robots (designs stolen from Eggman, obviously) and his wall-chains out to nab Sonic.

Sonic escapes though because of course he does.

He heads home where Chris is wearing a football helmet and holding a golf club because he’s pretending to be a drill sergeant ready to lead a rescue mission for Sonic. However, Sonic shows up and ruins that plan. I love Chris’ reaction to it.

He’s kicking the helmet away in the background. I love it whenever he gets written like an actual kid. It really doesn’t happen often enough.

The next scene is them all sitting at a table discussing what Sonic found out. Of course, it’s pointed out that none of their reasons are his fault. The closest argument they had was Watcher’s situation and even then, his reputation being ruined wasn’t exactly the best reason. Plus, he’s an asshole.

Tails says that they shouldn’t be worried about it but Sonic actually disagrees, saying that they’re a bunch of wackos with a lot of connections and technology at their disposal. They could be a real threat.

The issue ends with the S.O.N.I.C.X group all talking to the Organizer on the screen in their base. He’s the one who gathered them all together and is supposedly the big bad of this escapade.

Unfortunately, the biggest unresolved thing of this book is going to turn out to be that we never find out who it is, officially.

Even though it feels kind of obvious that it’s Captain Westwood.

 

If you couldn’t tell, I really enjoyed that. Like a lot. I’m a sucker for villain groups. I’m a sucker for Sonic lore. I’m all for stuff like this, absolutely. It’s no surprise that Ian Flynn was the guy who took the time to scour through all the notable humans that he could within the show with easily exploitable personalities to formulate this group. I’ll never stop admiring his willingness to do stuff like that for our entertainment.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #138: Return to Angel Island - Part 1 of 4: The Message

So when you guys were talking to me about Return to Angel Island I didn’t think it’d literally be the next story. I also didn’t realize how close I was to Issue #142. Once we get there I’ll have officially caught up to the issues that I own. Although, I still won’t remember jack shit about what happened between #142 and #160 because I let those issues collect dust because of how confusing the stories were and how awful the art was. At least for most of them. According to everyone, I own some of the worst these comics have to offer which doesn’t surprise me considering one or two stories I’m thinking about right now.

Still, we’re reaching a point where I’m eventually going to have context for all that stuff and it’s going to feel weird. As for this cover, it looks nice enough. You can tell there were attempts to recreate the Sonic Heroes poses for the characters. I think they relatively succeeded.

Spoiler

Story: Karl Bollers
Pencils: Jon Gray
Letters & Inks: Michael Higgins
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito

I was told that Karl Bollers’ actual last story was Return to Angel Island. That was something I already knew but had forgotten about due to Romy Chacon showing up to take the reins out of nowhere. It really felt like he was gone for good but he’s got one last hurrah for us and he gets to do it alongside Jon Gray to boot. That’s even better.

We start off back in the King’s chambers where he’s screaming his head off about the mission to save Tommy Turtle. Max kind of takes a cue from me a little bit when he brings up Sally ruling in their stead but going off to do missions and shit. Only, he’s bringing it up because he cares about her serving the monarchy. I brought it up because it was in direct contrast to the reason she said she was breaking up with Sonic.

Sonic is a delight here though.

Even after what happened he still wants to stick up for Sally and does it with a bright smile on his face. Albeit a fairly nervous looking one. Gotta love the peace signs though.

Sally is less than enthused about him caring though. What transpires is something that Bollers unfortunately initiates. Yes, he won’t have time to carry this across the finish line so apologies in advance for criticizing someone’s incomplete machinations but the way this is structured still doesn’t feel quite right.

At the moment, Sally’s still not been given any chance to show her side of the story. That was the biggest thing that kept the infamous slap from being something we could see both sides to and thus have it shake out as just a mere unfortunate situation. Instead, because we’re still not being shown that, Sally is continuing to just come off as really mean and insensitive.

My sympathy has no choice but to align with Sonic. Even recognizing that Sally’s been dealt a shit hand and been treated like crap throughout the entirety of this book’s run, the book is doing a disservice to that very easily capitalized position by not zeroing in on it. Just having King Max yell at her like he’s always done because they played hooky isn’t really enough to get across how she must be feeling, even if it is obvious that something's wrong.

She really doesn’t need to be as mean as she’s being here obviously. I understand that it happens when you’re in a bad place but there’s a part of me that can’t help but think there’s not going to be any realization after this about how bad she’s treating him nor any apology for it. 

That said, there are flakes of an understandable position within what she’s saying here too. At least on an emotional level. I don’t give a fuck about the Acorn Kingdom personally. Were I to continue the comic myself, I’d gain a lot of enemies by writing a story where Eggman succeeds at burning it to the ground and the heroes not having a backup city created by Nicole, hidden up her ass somewhere, for it to be immediately replaced. 

I’d probably make the Freedom Fighters function like actual Freedom Fighters again and not cops and soldiers for their stupid kingdom.

However, Sally does care about it and feels tied to it. She’s wanted to be entrusted with responsibility like this for a long time and now that she’s got it, it’s not quite what she imagined. Nor did it really happen because the king had the utmost faith in her. He says that he does, now that he’s being written by Bollers, but actions speak louder than words. I can’t help but look at him and think he only gave it to Sally because the boy he gave birth to got the fuck out of dodge because he realized immediately that this shit sucks fam.

We cut to the farewell party for the King and Queen, where everyone is all smiles. Of course, Sally and Sonic are all smiley but like… waaaaay across the stage from each other, hugging their leaving family members. Uncle Chuck is leaving with the king and queen along with Antoine, who is in charge of the Elite Guard.

I saw a bunch of writing on their packages and leaned it to see what they said, figuring they couldn’t be names of people who worked on the book.

They were actually places from within the Sonic Universe of course. Obviously, I recognized Frog Forest and Bingo Highway from Sonic Heroes first. Station Square and the Mystic Ruins from Sonic Adventure were my next “Oh hey! Look at that!” moment. Cocoa Island took a bit of thinking but I was pretty sure that was the island from Tails Adventure. Casino Night City from Sonic 2 is there. Seems they’re heading to a lot of casinos. Lucky ass rich people.

Wild Canyon from Sonic Adventure 2 is there as well. I guess it’s like the Grand Canyon but wild. Club Rouge from Sonic Battle just made me think of them getting wasted at the bar followed by sexy things happening. I had to narrow my eyes to read Mount Stormtop. I wasn’t sure if that was a location from a game I had never played but it wasn’t. It’s the Archie original location where the thing with the Iron Queen happened. South Island is obviously Sonic 1. Resort Island is Sonic R which I only got by looking it up. The last name there is Holly… something. It’s obscured by someone’s hair in the crowd. After looking up Sonic locations with Holly in it that end in “--it” I came across Holly Summit which is a location from Sonic Battle, a game I’ve never played.

So that was a fun little scavenger hunt.

Anyway, they leave.

The next page, everyone is having a really fun looking rowdy party at Uncle Chuck’s diner. I can’t help but think everyone over ran the place to steal food while he was gone or something. I know that’s not what happened but I like the idea of it. 

Sonic’s in the middle of complaining about Sally while insulting Knuckles to his face before they hear a loud crash. 

Charmy and Saffron have entered the chat.

It’s been about 100 years since the two of them were in the comic but because Sonic Heroes happened, Charmy’s been made relevant again… in one of the worst possible ways you could do it.

“We lost everything. Crawling in my skin, these wounds, Princess!”

I’ll admit, I do really like seeing Charmy’s serious business face with the dark shady eyes but that’s a reaction birthed by me being a big fan of the character. I could see anyone I showed this panel laughing their asses off because of the contrast between who Charmy is and what this panel is depicting.

“You see Princess… WAR! WAR IS HELL!”

Indeed it is. 

So it’s been an incredibly long time since Charmy’s been around and the last time he was in the book in any meaningful, prominent way a javelin was stabbed through his heart in an emotionally crippling experience where he was poisoned with LSD, suffered through his best friend’s death and funeral, and forced himself to live a life he didn’t want to live being the prince to a colony he originally ran away from, like Elias, because he was told that being unhappy was the responsible thing to do.

He’s appeared once or twice since then but it wasn’t anything substantial. He comes back into the story officially right here and immediately we find out that Eggman had attacked and killed everyone in his colony with a bunch of Egg Pawns. All the families and their neighbors are dead. It’s just Charmy and Saffron left. 

All this happened off-screen. There wasn’t even a story dedicated to it. 

I can’t help but feel this was a bit of a lost opportunity. Especially considering how many issues before the Xorda attack were wasted on frivolous bullshit. If I could rewrite time and space, we would have had an issue before this where we got to see this happen and I would scrub away one of those earlier issues that pissed me off where nothing was happening. 

Although, if I could rewrite time and space I’d probably change a hell of a lot more than that about this book.

Even worse than the anger-inducing way this situation just ended up happening and was explained to us in a single panel is the fact that the moment gets immediately interrupted by some dude telling us that we’ve gotta shift our focus to Angel Island now. I almost don’t want to out of spite honestly. Charmy’s shaking and crying with his face on the fucking floor over this. How am I gonna just move on from hearing his life was just casually ruined off-screen?

Imagine being told to go back to your colony to live as a prince because you were told it was the right thing to do only for it to get burned down and destroyed not too long after you did. What fresh hell that has to be right? 

Not to worry though. The eventual memory loss will take care of it.

Anyway, the important bit that spurs the action into taking place is the fact that Knuckles’ shitty dad is being locked in a room or something.

Oh no. 

Not Locke.

A challenger has been issued to the dream team. This mission’s gonna need them all… except Sally.

It’s a story about Knuckles and the Chaotix going off to save Locke. Sonic is here too of course because he’s a hero goddammit. To Sally’s credit, she knows that and wasn’t planning on stopping him, much to Sonic’s embarrassment here when he jumps the gun with the assumption that she was trying to.

God, Jon Gray’s art is just the best. He should have come around a lot sooner than he did. For real.

I do like how Charmy and Saffron have just super-glued themselves into the Chaotix like the Delightful Children from Down the Lane or something. 

You know it’s almost as if the only reason they’re here is because we needed the full Chaotix to do a Chaotix story and Charmy being written out of the book for so long didn’t leave many comfortable avenues for it to happen naturally. So instead we just got an incredibly rushed explanation for what happened to them off-screen.

Some lip-service is paid to Charmy’s feelings though. It’d feel incredibly awkward if none was.

So there’s that at least. 

It’s a little hard to be too upset at Bollers for the decision considering Penders was the one who just randomly decided to make Charmy irrelevant for so long. Doing a story like this probably had more thought put into it than I’m giving it credit for but it really does stick out like a sore thumb that they wanted the ensemble Chaotix here for this story and they just needed to… jam that square block into the circular space to get there.

Bunnie, who flew them to space (It's actually just night time but it looks like space), complains about not being allowed on the mission but Sonic gives her the only logical in-universe answer over an image of them parachuting down alongside the first comic rendition of the Chaotix flight formation from Sonic Heroes.

We finally got to see the Chaotix flight formation and all it took was the mass genocide of Charmy’s home. 

Sonic’s answer is a fine enough reason. I know the real reason is because thematically, Knuckles’ Chaotix doing this just fits better with the book and Sonic is here because he’s the main character.

That’s fine though. I do appreciate a lot of thematic story elements as well. Not to mention, when you’ve got a colorful group of characters and some genuinely charming drawings and writing to back it up, things run a hell of a lot smoother.

The charm on display here is great and it doesn’t even do anything to harm the contrast of the incredibly dark and scary atmosphere of what he’s found because it’s all still within the same style despite the differing tones. 

It’s one of the reasons why One Piece’s art style works so well despite how intense and heavy the subject matter can get.

The heroes invade and a bunch of the dingoes that are standing guard just get their asses beat and humiliated beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Humiliation like this is bad enough when you’re drawn roughly but with a goofy art style like this, you’re made to look as fucking stupid as possible and there’s nothing you can do about it because you suck.

Although, I will say, it’s kind of throwing me off how cute the dingoes look. That said, it’s even funnier seeing them get beat when they look that adorable too. 

Espio choking out a guy with his tongue has gotta be one of the worst ways you could go. I guess besides being stung in the ass by two bees.

Knuckles, however, shows us for the first time just how weak he is though. He was fine during the initial battle with Amy and the others but he’s apparently been losing his physical strength this whole time to the point where two random dingoes are just giving him the business like it’s nobody’s business. 

Still, it all ends with Vector standing on a mountain of losers. Whenever I see a loser pile like that, I can’t help but imagine myself as a part of it. The thought always crosses my mind, “What if I were some poor, dumb henchman for some bad guy and I just got stung in the ass by some bees, choked out by a dude’s tongue, or tazed by some echidna girl, and my entire role in life was regulated to being given a cartoony KO and stuck inside a pile of unconscious losers while someone sticks a flag over me and rests their foot on the pile I’m in.”

Seriously, Vector is just standing on them. His feet could be in my face or in my recently stung butt. Or something even worse. Where is Vector sticking that pole? What if THAT ended up jamming into someone’s butt huh?

It’s just… no one ever stops to think about the henchman you know? 

In all seriousness though, I was a bit curious as to why they were all dingoes and not robots. Did ALL of the dingoes just decide to side with Eggman? Did they think it’d be a better deal then sticking with the echidnas who were dragging their feet on accommodating them while they tried to live in society together?

I couldn’t blame them if that were true, honestly.

Turns out though… it is true. Well, partly. I don't know if how unfair the echidnas were being was put into consideration. The book may just want us to view the dingoes as a bunch of assholes.

Knuckles gets a full explanation from Remington when he shows up and he’s...not looking so hot.

This guy looks like the exact opposite of the no-nonsense, in-control leader of security personnel that I’ve known for so long. Dude’s got flies buzzing around him. 

Turns out they’re referring to Knuckles as the Avatar, not because he’s the master of the four elements, but because he fulfilled the prophecy of the Ancient Walkers. Apparently someone was supposed to die and then come back to life to liberate them or something.

I’ll be honest, the Ancient Walkers and their prophecy has been out of the book for so long that I don’t even recall what it said or what the significance was. Knuckles seems to believe they’ve got the wrong guy though, if only because he’s not feeling so hot about who he is at the moment.

It does low-key bother me that they’ve made it out to seem as though ALL the dingoes sold the echidnas out though. In all that time, none of the dingoes formed any kind of relationships with the echidnas that weren’t just sour and negative? I guess even if they did, whoever sold the echidnas out must have specified that only the dingoes were to be spared so maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe some of them were forced to do this…?

However, that can't be the case because then my sympathizing with the loser pile that Vector stuck a flag on might have some merit to it when it came to a few of those people there. It’s best that we ignore critical thinking and treat the dingoes like some sort of hive mind that betrayed the echidnas all at once, together, without any problems or conflicting emotions.

Of course, even thinking that to be how it went down, the echidnas are all mostly awful so it’s hard to sympathize with them anyway. I sympathize with poor Remington here though. The guy was captured and held in a cell for months and now that he’s out he looks practically insane. The idea of this religious prophecy being true is elating him so much. It’s so remarkably sad.

We cut to Dingo City (formally Echidnapolis) where General Kage, a mostly-robot-reconstructed maniac, is about to torture Locke for the information on the whereabouts of the Master Emerald. Eggman knows it has to be here because if it weren’t Angel Island would not still be floating.

Oh God. Look at those lightning hands. Look at Locke’s face.

… Welp. Have fun.

As for the Heroes, they end up getting surrounded by the Dark Legion. 

Are they here to fight or will the fact that they’re echidnas mean that they’re on our side and thus should be sympathized with? Who knows?

… I guess a lot of people do since this book came out such a long time ago but whatever.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #138: Mobius: 25 Years Later - My Dinner With Sonic

Writer: Ken Penders
Penciler: Steven Butler
Inker: Jim Amash
Letterer: John E. Workman
Colorist: Jason Jensen

My Dinner With Sonic sounds like the beginning of a comedy sketch.

Sonic is playing ball with his family at the pool of his friend’s house. Instantly I got flashbacks of me being taken to barbeques where there were pools that we could have a little fun playing in while the adults talked. My dad is the kind of guy who loved entertaining us as kids though so he was totally the Sonic in this situation, splashing about and knocking the ball about.

It had to have felt weird though, reading this issue where Sally is yelling at Sonic about how they’re through and that it’ll never work between them and then jumping to this story at the end of the issue where they’re married, have children, and king and queen.

What would I even make of it?

I’d probably take the romance drama even less seriously, if that were somehow possible. It’s one thing to know the fighting is just there to create drama and fail to make you wonder “what if” but it’s another thing to literally show in the same issue that in the future they’re just fine. I wouldn’t have even bothered to entertain the possibility of alternate futures because the comic isn’t talking about that being the case either.

Anyway, Sally says this horseshit.

Is this supposed to be one of those, “Well, when you get older, relationships tend to break apart” things? Maybe it’d be fine to do that with plain old friends but I’m having a hard time imagining myself not speaking to MY younger brother for three years despite the fact that he literally lives on the other end of the country from me.

The only world I can see this being at all possible is one where, in the future, Tails becomes a villain and Sonic has trouble properly finding him to snap him out of it. Either that or… I had another possibility in mind but it disappeared. I’m trying to sit here and think of scenarios where Sonic and Tails would not talk to each other in three years.

The only other thing I can fathom is that the version of Sonic that would do that would be the kind that would be sat in a kingdom, playing the role of a king, and not care about running around the world and going on adventures anymore.

I guess that’s what this Sonic is but it didn’t come to mind because that’s not Sonic to me.

PFFFFFFFFFF…!

WHAT?!

Also, Tails is married to Mina here which is… odd. I mean, it’s 25 years later so the age thing isn’t a big deal but… did the two of them even speak to one another? 

It’s also telling that he’s not married to Fiona by the way.

Even the girls pointing out how weird this sounds and how different that is from the hedgehog playing games in the pool with his kids isn’t enough to keep my brain from doing spinneroonees  in my head. What the hell?

God, I remember my dad tossing me into the ocean when we played at the beach. Stop being nostalgic. I’m upset at you.

Well, that’s a little different I suppose. My dad never bullied me or whined about not getting the chance at the ball. 

We cut to a dinner scene after this. The kids are gone. It’s just the boring adults sitting around the table and talking. Again.

It’s exceedingly weird how Knuckles speaks about the multiple dinners and get-togethers their families have had. This all just makes the whole “hasn’t spoken to Tails in three years thing” make even less sense and even harder to believe. According to this future, Sonic’s family spends more time with Knuckles’ family than Tails’ family? Somehow? What on Earth does Penders think Tails is to Sonic? 

It takes some chit-chat about food and surprise at Sonic being able to use big words before the actual thing this dinner was using the tension to build up to comes into play. The two of them start off having a conversation about nothing important and in four panels it delves into them shouting at each other over how much the other sucks at handling their position and who’s got the more important job between them. 

The kids are outside the doors listening in before heading off. Sonia and Lara-Su are concerned about ending up like that one day while creeper boy Manik wants to whistle and slowly put his hands on Lara-Su’s back.

You don’t want to be this kid guys. Not only does his dad dunk on him but if he’s got a crush on you, he’ll do that thing people do in cartoons where they test the waters and immediately get jabbed in the chest and shot down.

Suffice to say, these two aren’t even friends let alone candidates for romantic lovemaking. 

If someone ever threatened to slap me silly I’d probably run for the hills and stay as far away from them as possible. I don’t know how characters in fiction can get over something like that so quickly but I envy the ability to. I need stronger self-esteem and these characters have it somehow.

It takes the entire rest of this story but finally, on the last page, they start talking about the fucking storm that Rotor and Cobar were researching.

Although, it’s explained in a way that makes this all feel rather tedious and pointless.

“They didn’t think you’d listen to what they had to say so they came to me… and now I’M telling you the same thing and you’re going to believe ME now even though you should have more of a connection with Rotor than you do me. Especially considering the fact that we just argued and yelled at each other over literally nothing for the last 3 pages.”

All Knuckles says here is that they’re going to need to either find a solution or not and just die. Which is a "no shit" thing to say. 

Sonic asks for a third option and Knuckles says they can always try and find a way to get everyone off the planet before it just blows up.

So we have verbal confirmation from Knuckles that this catastrophe coming is actually within the core of the planet and Freeza’s five minutes are almost up after 25 years. The planet is going to explode.

Hurray.

I actually had a bit of a ball with the first story. There were things about it that, for the sake of my own sanity and wonderment, I had to point out as not being too in favor of but on the whole I did enjoy myself. Each page had something I wanted to screenshot and capture and it took a lot of restraint not to just point at all the artwork and go, “Ah man! Look at that! It’s so neat!” after every sentence I wrote. The second story continues the train of tedium. Sonic has just now been informed of the planet’s eminent explosion because Rotor saw fit to waste our time by not telling him because he thought Sonic wouldn’t believe him. Knuckles needed to be informed too but I don’t understand why the ball couldn’t have gotten rolling faster by just telling Sonic first rather than having Knuckles tell Sonic after Rotor tells him. It makes no sense and obviously Rotor was wrong about Sonic not believing it because he does instantly. Fuck man.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #139: Return to Angel Island - Part 2 of 4: Avatar

You know, it’s only now at the end of Karl Bollers time as a writer for the comics that I’m realizing that this whole time Ken Penders never really owned what he was allowed to do with these echidnas. I always kind of treat Knuckles and all the stuff around him as Ken’s toys to play with which is why it never fully sinks in that Karl Bollers is the one deciding how the stuff with the echidnas is shaking out here. It’s because of that fact, however, that Ken Penders is going to get all pissy and immediately try to undo any of what happens here when it’s his turn to write for the main story again. 

Anyway, this cover is nice to look at. This style is fairly nice to look at in general, though, I do find myself yearning for something a little less like this the more of it I see. I think I tend to think of character renders more so than a cohesive cover when I see them in this style. Maybe that’s what’s tripping me up.

Spoiler

Story: Karl Bollers
Pencils: Jon Gray
Letters & Inks: Michael Higgins
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito

The first page is instant fire. In more ways than one due to the flaming jet backs the Dark Legion are wearing. However, the thing that drew my eye was Charmy doing the Iron-Man Infinity War poster pose.

BRING ME THANOS-EGGMAN, MOTHERFUCKERS!

So they’re all fighting the Dark Legion here. The fighting commences in a manner that is for lack of a better word, fucking epic. Sonic clashes swords with a Dark Legionnaire that creates an explosion that cancels the attacks out. Knuckles uppercuts one of them. Ray gets so excited about the fight that he literally starts to strip.

Weird.

Whatever though. He’s having fun and he’s a boy so I guess that means he can get away with it.

Anyway, as I predicted, it was a misunderstanding. Someone calls for them to stop and says they’re actually on the same side. Why? Because they’re echidnas and not those filthy dingos, even if they were terrorists. 

The one who called out to them was Knuckles’ mom and his stepdad Wynmacher. Wyn is acting just like Remington though. He’s on his knees, kissing Knuckles’ hand, and calling him Avatar. He even does that thing where Knuckles tells him to stop calling him the Avatar and he says “Yes, Avatar” like a brainwashed cherub. This Avatar thing is really sad.

Things kick up a notch, however, when they take a warp ring to the main epicenter of the echidna’s hideout where they’re greeted by even more adoring fans and an awesome new sinister face. It’s the debut of one Dr. Finitevus. 

This guy has an extremely gnarly design. Not to mention, Knuckles’ mom and Remington all have very great looking altered designs as well. I can actually tell them apart, which is nice. This collection of echidna designs is definite proof that these characters can be the same species and not look exactly the fucking same. 

It also helps that Finitevus, especially, is a color that isn’t just another shade of red or orange. Dude’s pure white. It’s very unsettling to look at.

We head for the Hidden Palace Zone, which is hidden and literally has a palace. Finitevus leads us into the center of the place where we see another familiar face.

It’s Lien-Da and she’s looking fantastic. The colors of this room look breath-taking as well. Everything in this comic looks so fucking cool now!

Yeah, so, as was explained by Lien-Da there, it was Knuckles’ mom that sent the message that got Knuckles to come here. Surprisingly, Lien-Da isn’t talking like she’s trying to set up a dinner date with her sister here, though she is being condescendingly accommodating, which I like.

It’s so strange. All of a sudden, looking at Finitevus, Lien-Da, Lara-Le, Wyn, and Remington I can see all this echidna shit actually working. Probably because aside from two or three others that aren’t here right now, these are all the echidna characters that I actually like. It’s so interesting what a change in art direction and character writing can do for a group of characters isn’t it? That’s the magic of story-telling. That whole "no bad characters, only bad writers" thing really is true. In another universe, Sakura Haruno might not actually be the worst written creature to ever ooze sludge across the page of a manga.

Speaking of the pages, they continue to look stunning and wonderful. Lien-Da asks only Sonic and Knuckles to accompany her and they head into the next room where they just happen to come across a piece that reminds me of the ending to a classic Sonic game I wasn’t able to beat.

As cool as this is, I don’t quite understand Knuckles’ dialogue here. He says it’s not Sonic and yet it IS Sonic and then he says it’s Super Sonic…

So it IS Sonic then.

Whatever though, that mystery can wait. Lien-Da almost literally says that too.

She pushes the doors open to the next room where we get the surprise of a life-time. 

No, it’s not that the Master Emerald is here or that it’s being called the Master Emerald now or that the artwork looks gorgeous as hell with this beautiful shade of green. Seriously, Jason Jenson is killing it with the colors man. I almost feel bad about the shit talking I did earlier but I don’t really because Shadow really did look bad there so…

NO, what’s REALLY surprising is the fact that the Brotherhood of Guardians fought to defend the emerald and went MISSING!

Holy hell, they’re gone and are missing to this day? You don’t say? Ah man. I was hoping to see them get blown up by a stray missile or torn to shreds by Egg Pawns. However, an unceremoniously off-screening is probably what they totally deserve. I approve.

That is, if Penders is going to stand for them actually being gone. I shall see I guess.

Hell, they might even return in THIS story. I need to learn not to get too excited about the things I want to stick in this book. So often, things tend not to.

One thing I also forgot to mention is that Lien-Da confirmed that the new dingo leader IS General Kage. He’s not just an off-shoot from General Stryker with the same title as him. I’ve seen Kage before but only in a story where he didn’t matter and thus the one thing that stuck out about him was his design. I got it in my head when I was reading the story where I saw him that he must have been an important character in a story of the past but I didn’t think much of it beyond that because so much other crazy stuff was happening.

It continues to feel interesting seeing characters that I’m familiar with in one aspect or another show up for the first time. That’s going to end at around the time I reach #142 but then something even more exciting is going to kick off where I get to re-read those stories and have actual context for them instead of just abject confusion until I reach #160. 

Anyway, Lien-Da explains that it was Locke who entrusted the Dark Legion to watch the emerald while he remained behind to deal with the enemy. All I’ll say about that is that I’m… less surprised than I feel I should be that he entrusted the Dark Legion to watch the emerald.

Knuckles is suddenly in a lot of pain. It’s cute seeing Sonic tend to him but I think the thing that stands out the most to me here is how, yet again, the designs of these echidnas have made the impossible possible. Locke looks like his own fucking character now. Despite being the same color he isn’t also the same exact model of Knuckles. The character creation function didn’t just stick a beard on Knuckles’ character model and call it a day. Look at his eyes. Look at the way his dreadlocks are down. You couldn’t confuse that with Knuckles at a glance and even if you did, you’d definitely have to examine him because he’d a funky looking Knuckles.

We get an explanation for what Knuckles’ deal is when he heads outside, alongside literally the only image of Knuckles and Julie-Su I’ve seen before or since that actually makes them look like a cute couple.

You know it really does help when you act supportive and kind. I can’t fathom why that would be the case but hey, it works.

Also, I gotta say, the idea of the Master Emerald sucking away power instead of giving it is interesting. Not only that but taking power away from Knuckles specifically. That’s quite the interesting turnover.

Two parents approach Knuckles and tell him that their daughter lost their eyesight and tell him about how they refused cybernetic implants from the Dark Legion because they believed the prophecy about the Avatar bringing them miracles or whatever. Dr. Finitevus, sort of rightfully, gets super pissed off about this and screams at them for refusing the Legion’s tech. He talks about how it was all a fairy tale and that Knuckles was off being indisposed while their daughter lost her sight.

After Finitevus’ outburst concerning how much Knuckles sucks, Sonic tries to break the ice in a similar manner that he did with Max. However, that doesn’t last long. When Knuckles denies being the one the prophecy was talking about, Vector asks if he’s sure. Julie-Su says the prophecy was bunk and Vector brings up her agreeing with the Dark Legion and that starts a whole fight that Knuckles has to interrupt.

He then screams about how he hates this whole mission. He even shouts about how he hates dealing with “fascist dingoes” which is great. 

Just as he’s in a bad mood, his mom tosses a baby at him and tells him that it’s his little brother.

Oh my God. Knuckles with a little brother. Could you imagine such a thing being allowed in the games? So weird but really cute. 

I already know his name is Kneecaps. I’ve been kind of waiting for him to show up.

Anyway, that’s how that story ends for today. I wonder if that’ll be enough to cheer him up. Doesn’t look like it right now though.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #138: Mobius: 25 Years Later - Slumber Party

Writer: Ken Penders
Penciler: Steven Butler
Inker: Jim Amash
Letterer: John E. Workman
Colorist: Jason Jensen

So Manik is one of THOSE boys. Like I knew he was already pretty bad but he’s one of those boys who is in permanent horny mode and not in a way that’s all that endearing or bashful. He’s written as someone completely unsympathetic who exists to be dunked on every time he’s on screen. He’ll get humiliated by his father, yelled at by Lara-Su, shown to try and trick girls into doing what he wants with a gross game of spin the bottle only for that to backfire too.

He tries to do the spin the bottle thing with all these older girls with supermodel bodies and then the parents come in and he runs away. Lara-Su says that she knew he was up to something and the rest are, for some fucking reason, confused by this. So she explains. She doesn’t say because it was obvious. She says it was because he was a boy, basically. 

Manik runs off because he didn’t want his mom finding out that he was about to trick the girls into stripping naked or whatever the fuck he was going to force them to do and as soon as the butt monkey leaves, they play a different game called Situation where you roll a die and whatever you land on is your fate. Or something.

Also, there’s a scene where Salma is upset that they know she’s got a boyfriend. I don’t care.

Manik runs to see his dad and catches him playing pool. For some reason, he’s really impressed by how good he is and gets excited about being taught to be good at it. I guess now it’s okay for him to act like an innocent boy.

Knuckles is staring out of a window. Next scene.

The girls, including their moms, are all participating in a slumber party together. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen or heard of that happening before. Not in real life and not in any media I’ve seen. If a mom does show up they’re usually ushered away by the teenager claiming that their presence is embarrassing. I don’t think Penders knows or cares about that though. He really wants to do more #GIRLTALK and I’m sat here suffering through it.

I’ll be honest, I’m kind of half-assing this one because the instant I saw the slumber party with all the teenagers beginning their gossip shit, I became immediately annoyed and desired to be anywhere but where the comic was trying to take me.

Nothing happens here. Less than nothing happens here. The story ends with the girls all asking their moms about why Knuckles and Sonic act like they don’t like each other and they just say they don’t know. Then Julie-Su lets Lara-Su in on the secret that she’s loved Knuckles ever since she first saw him. Yes, it’s quite the fascinating secret that nature forced you to be infatuated with someone you’ve never met and despite having nothing in common and no real reason to like him or be with one another you just ended up together by the whim of your weird as hell puppet master.

The Return to Angel Island story has, so far, not been anything super ground breaking but I’m definitely enjoying it and having fun. I’m almost astonished that this is possible with a story centered on the echidnas but it is if you’ve got the right cards in play. The 25 Years Later story is almost impressive in its ability to waste the audience’s time. I’ve never seen a story like this where nothing has transpired to the point where characters keep circling the drain of being handed the same information we were given since this story started. More people knowing that the world is ending doesn’t mean anything. No one’s acting on it. We’re literally sat here watching these characters have dinner and then a sleepover. Why the fuck are we focusing on this? The planet’s going to explode right?  I really wanted it to explode in mid-conversation during that goddamn sleepover.

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

@Dr. Detective Mike - Yeah so fun fact on that whole Tails M25YL bit - not only is there the random "Tails and Sonic don't talk to each other" thing - but IIRC - someone actually did ask Penders why Mina and Tails were a thing because it was just such a fucking weird shipping, and you know what the response was?

Tails is with Mina because she's fast. And her super speed reminds him of Sonic.

Yep, that is it. That is the explanation as to why Tails and Mina are in love. Because Mina is fast like Sonic.

Additional fun fact - Tails is/was my favourite game!Sonic character, and Mina's my favourite Archie Sonic character, so this is like a double dose of absolute fucking stupidity from Penders. Even as someone who is a big fan of each, this shipping genuinely makes me scratch my head, and reminds me how much Penders just doesn't get these characters.

Also - I'm pretty sure the whole thing with Sonic and Tails was considered a massive failing of the arc too. Go figure as soon as Ian was on board for his two parts of M25YL, one of the first things he does is have Sonic and Tails reconcile, and acknowledge how shitty Sonic was (as written by Penders here).

[Kuzu]

Can't believe how close you are to Flynn's run on the book. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Also - the Guardians (idk if you care or not about spoilers - so) - but if you've read Enerjak Reborn, you're good.

Spoiler

The Guardians are in fact one of the changes that remain. Not because Penders had enough sense to know no one fucking cared, and everyone hates them, but because he left before he got the chance to do it.

The short version is Penders went about immediately attempted to retcon all of what Return to Angel Island introduced, and Locke was apart of that - he tried to have him set off to find the Guardians, and it was highly likely it was gonna happen. However - he leaves before he resolves that plot point, and Ian - well we all know he doesn't particularly like the Guardians much more than the rest of us.

Sooo - Ian ends up taking what Penders did and using the "retcons" to make the impact harder. Knuckles is fucking livid when he discovers Locke's been damning the consequences and allowing anything to happen to the Master Emerald - and even making threats about Knuckles' mother to emotionally blackmail Knuckles to return to Angel Island. 

What made it worse was Knuckles at least assumed Locke needed backup for guarding the emerald, but nope! He actually wants Knuckles to help him track down the Guardians, while Locke was so obsessed that he was dumb enough to leave the safety of the echidnas and the Master Emerald in the hands of Scourge, the Destructrix, and Fini so he could find the Guardians, and then he tries to threaten the safety of the echidnas and Knuckles' mother, which again - makes Knuckles go ballistic.

Cut to Enerjak Reborn and Ian reveals what happened to the Guardians. After their lifetimes of being absolute shitty assholes, and all of their misdeeds against Mobius, and everyone who isn't an echidna, they get exactly what's coming to them. Fini uses all of them as lab rats, experimenting on them for an undetermined amount of time following them moving the Master Emerald. When they outlive their usefulness, Fini decides a bit of poetic justice is in order and banishes them all to the Twilight Zone (the place where the Guardians had imprisoned the Dark Legion so many times before).

So yeah, they weren't hit with a missile or anything, but being humiliated, experimented on, and ultimately banished to a prison zone is the next best fate.