Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[SanPolo4389]

Maybe the mission was them taking a look at the power signature if it was similar to a Chaos Emerald and GUN were getting Emeralds to get in a higher power to defend themselves? It's just guessing on my part.

 Also Kuzu you bring up a good point that if you take Team Dark out of it, it would flowed a bit better. 

[SkyHorizon]

8 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It was a bit of a weird shift for me, seeing him patting Cream on the head and calling her cute being followed up by having him saying his urge to maim something was rising because she talked about him being comfy. I doubt it’s an urge to maim her of course. That’s not why it feels inconsistent. It’s just hard for me to compartmentalize him in my head the way the book wants me to. I guess he’s just a sweetheart until we can think of something funny for him to say with regards to how much he loves destruction. I guess that’s how he works.

Uhm... no? It's just a robot who's inner nature is to destroy that found someone so cute that it made a little break into his heart of steel. And when he realize it (like when Cream gets excessively cheesy, no pun intended, in the sidecar) he feels conflicted and his original coding reawakens. I really don't understand why it is so hard to understand something as basic as this. You may not like it, but it's not difficult to understand, seriously.

 

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Normal Shadow probably wouldn’t have bothered being too conflicted by this truthfully. 

Which makes him OOC when you compare it with the Shadow of SA2.

 

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Amy tells him to stop whining and that Sally didn’t hit him THAT hard which… I have no idea how she could possibly know that. Unless she hits you on the regular as well and you consider her hits to be the equivalent to a paper fan batting you in the face, let the man whine about his pain. It’s the very least you can do to a struggling sniper who just wants to blow a hole through your brain.

It's called "irony"

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Blaze practically does a cat hiss with her ears down as she clutches it and holds it away from her.

Ah, yeah, I loved that image

 

 

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

You tossed the Master Emerald shards back to Knuckles when he did you a single kindness.

Uhm... your point?

 

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I know it’s supposed to be funny but I hate it so much!

Too bad. It was one of the highest point of Pre-Reboot Omega. Unfortunately, that little bit of tridimensionality that was given to his character is completely lost in IDW.

 

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

By sunset they head back to Freedom HQ where Cream is telling her mom about everything that happened. Vanilla looks like her hands are shaking as she hears the tale. The worried mom thing isn’t doing it for me with her either, even though it’s understandable. But I dunno. I like how she is in IDW and Sonic X more. She seems way more chill and sure of herself and sure of her daughter. 

That’s a minor, personal thing though.

Fair enough. This is a point that can be understandable. We may not agree on some points, but that doesn't mean opinions should be based on baseless assumptions. This consideration wasn't.

 

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

She’s got a lot of drool there, I must say.

Oh, god, never noticed it before. And can't unseen it now!

 

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The conversation Sonic and Geoffrey have on their way over to Freedom HQ has hints of homoeroticism to it too. 

 

Yeah, I always was (pleasantly) surprised that something like that got accepted in a Sonic comic

9 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I say it’s fine. Truth of the matter is, the situation with Nicole has always been outwardly scary. It’s nice to see it be addressed and having Mina’s music be the thing that rallies the people into thinking about it is a good idea in my opinion.

Plus, you just know she’s going to feel remorse for all this. Sometimes heroes need a lesson to learn.

Agree 100% with you here. Really interesting concept. Citizens are ungrateful assholes but, hey, that's what happens in real life.

 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

 

The funny thing is that if you remove Team Dark from the arc entirely, it suddenly flows a lot better lmao.

 

Either that, or maybe have Team Dark stick with the heroes.

I can see where Ian was going, but the take here fumbles the moment Rouge decides to be a bitch over the Sol Emerald and Shadow and Omega go along with it because their excuse is “duty calls.” With two antagonists, Team Dark would’ve been a great help—and when was the last time we’ve even seen Blaze, Amy, and Cream interact with them?

Then again, there are parts we’d never get a chance to see—Amy actually getting a hit off of Shadow for one would never be anything we’d see until that point.

In hindsight, the issue was a way to get a mix characters who hardly interacted with each other, much less be in the same spot as each other. I’ll admit, it’s hard to pass that kind of opportunity up, but it gets really chaotic with everyone at one team or another’s throats.

Would’ve been better as a 2 v 2 Team battle of Team Rose (& Blaze) + Team Dark vs Team Hooligans and Babylon.

[Kuzu]

Ya know, its funny I actually forgot that Max promised Naugus the throne too and that's a plot point from SATAM of all places...why is my brain working weird about this??? I barely paid attention to old Archie before Flynn's run but I'm remember things now.

30 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Either that, or maybe have Team Dark stick with the heroes.

I can see where Ian was going, but the take here fumbles the moment Rouge decides to be a bitch over the Sol Emerald and Shadow and Omega go along with it because their excuse is “duty calls.” With two antagonists, Team Dark would’ve been a great help—and when was the last time we’ve even seen Blaze, Amy, and Cream interact with them?

Then again, there are parts we’d never get a chance to see—Amy actually getting a hit off of Shadow for one would never be anything we’d see until that point.

In hindsight, the issue was a way to get a mix characters who hardly interacted with each other, much less be in the same spot as each other. I’ll admit, it’s hard to pass that kind of opportunity up, but it gets really chaotic with everyone at one team or another’s throats.

Would’ve been better as a 2 v 2 Team battle of Team Rose (& Blaze) + Team Dark vs Team Hooligans and Babylon.

Or just cut it down to Rouge and Omega, as the former is the only one who has any actual personal motivation here. When you get down to it, Shadow has no business here. Unless it's a major threat, or something personally related to him I can't see him willingly participating in this arc unless Rouge called for him specifically as backup when shit was getting out of hand. 

And Rouge is a easy fix; just have her be unaware of the danger of Blaze not having the emerald. She could try to steal it, prove unsuccessful, Blaze explains the situation and Rouge relents. Easy. 

[Dr. Detective]

I just noticed that the translator Tails is using in the Colors side-story isn't the Miles Electric. Interesting.

[SkyHorizon]

On 12/5/2021 at 8:41 PM, Kuzu said:

And Rouge is a easy fix; just have her be unaware of the danger of Blaze not having the emerald. She could try to steal it, prove unsuccessful, Blaze explains the situation and Rouge relents. Easy. 

Yeah, however one could think about it, that would have surely worked better, you're right. Even though I'm pretty sure that some people would have said "BuTwHyShAdOwDiDn'TeXpLaInItToRoUgE?!?ThIsIsBs!!!" just because... that's how Sonic fans function

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #220: In Service to the King, Part Two

Haha! Hoho! It’s that other infamous cover. The one where it looks like Sonic is covered in… anyway. I actually have a ton of problems with this cover. Yeah, it’s weird how the water is just pooling into and around Sonic’s eyes. That’s a bit gross but I’m mostly talking about my reaction to this cover when the original solicits came out.

You see, when this cover was first revealed, Geoffrey hadn’t been revealed to have been a traitor yet. So, when I saw this I initially thought that this was going to be the reveal of whoever the traitor Silver was looking for this whole time was. It wasn’t.

Even weirder than that though is how this cover is for the issue AFTER Sonic already got betrayed. Even if the intention was to trick us into thinking we were going to find out who the Freedom Fighter traitor was I don’t see how it serves them to put this cover on an issue after the one where the event already happened. 

This is not a very good looking cover. It’s really hard to look at for too long, honestly. I think it’s time we moved on.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

Sonic is still free-falling in Feist’s Special Zone. That sounds dirty actually.

He’s stuck here and pondering what the hell Geoffrey could possibly be up to since he doubts he made off with that Chaos Emerald to seriously give it to King Max.

We then cut to where Geoffrey actually is and we’re treated to a delightful scene where I got to partake in Mammoth Mogul’s wonderful bantering ability once again. 

He truly has the best words.

Anyway, Geoffrey has to reiterate for the man that the emerald isn’t for him, but for the sake of restoring Naugus back to his former glory, as it were.

Mogul doesn’t want to let his favorite pet go nor does he want to risk Naugus challenging him. It’s an interesting concern he has because I recall Naugus bowing to Mogul the instant he found out that he was the originator of the order of Ixis but he rightfully calls that Naugus is not going to be happy when he’s lucid enough to be pissed off about being a pet.

Geoffrey manages to give Mogul a great sales pitch though. He says that even with a Chaos Emerald, Naugus wouldn’t be a challenge for him. Point two is that all the instability he’s about to cause is going to stress people the fuck out and they’ll clamor to his resort to relieve some of it, giving him a ton of business.

Point three is that what he’s going to do will guarantee that Sonic becomes miserable.

That’s the one that sells him on letting him have Naugus. 

Geoffrey doesn’t even realize how right he is about that too.

So, Skunk Mercenary goes up to the guy with the emerald, some chaos voodoo happens, Naugus’ eyes uncross, the gap in Electro’s teeth fixes itself, and then viola, Ixis Naugus is back and ready to just… immediately be the biggest douche to the guy who just restored him.

Geoffrey tries to be all formal and respectful to this ugly looking troll demon man but he drops that as soon as his ungrateful claw hand threatens to snap his head off. He does a magic poof out of his grip and decides to fuck the pleasantries and just starts arguing with the man like they’re a married couple.

The best thing about this scene is how fucking majestic and wonderful it is seeing Mogul so happy to witness it. The denizens of the world truly do know how to put on a great show.

He’s truly living his best life. You can’t help but be happy for the man.

Anyway, the thing Naugus is so pissed about is two-fold, neither of which really mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. He told Geoffrey to ensure the kingdom still stands and that he wants the Acorns removed.

The first one has already been accomplished. There is a kingdom called New Mobotropolis. It’s not the one Naugus remembers because the Egg Grapes fucked up his brain before he could see the new Nanite city but it’s something he’s angry about when he doesn’t have to be, so it matters not. 

The second one hasn’t been accomplished yet but, to be fair, how the flying fuck Naugus expected a single skunk to remove an entire ruling class family is beyond me. Maybe he thought that he was just going to poison all their drinks? If he wanted them dead I guess it’d be worth a shot but Geoffrey makes it clear that they were necessary to maintain stability.

Or something as close to stability as possible concerning Max’s bullshit. Elias is king now but this council and the old, decrepit fossil in the wheelchair are pretty big hindrances to some things.

They argue for a while but then Geoffrey says the magic words about doing something terrible to Sonic and instantly he’s forgiven.

He’s got the approval of the locker room villains. Welcome to the club, Freshman Skunk.

Back with Sonic and Feist, the giant panda man is bored.

He’s bored! BORED NOW!

So when Sonic suggests it, he decides to play a game with him where he has to bounce on some yellow balls to freedom.

Sonic makes it out and Feist is entertained and happy. He also, very kindly, had it be a challenge where Sonic has to reach the way out too, which he probably didn’t have to do if he just wanted entertainment.

It’s weird but the book makes it seem like he’s being nice here. He even gives Sonic a compliment.

Which is why it kind of threw me for a loop a little when Sonic just starts insulting the guy behind his back when he leaves.

I mean, I guess Feist is all that stuff Sonic just called him but, I dunno, it looked a bit like he just did you a solid, even if it was for his own amusement. Oh well.

Sonic speaks with Nicole, asking if Geoffrey passed through. She sensed a Chaos Emerald had been brought by but when she asked she got no response so she left the portal open. 

Sonic got lucky as fuck on both fronts. Sheesh.

Later, he reports to the council and the king about what happened, spritzing water all over the floor as he speaks. Elias, seemingly aware of his father’s bad nature (and correcting himself before he can call Max his father in all their presences so he can be formal) asks Dr. Quack if Max has been attempting to retake the throne.

Instead of immediately saying yes, Dr. Quack goes on about how much trauma Max has been through and how much of a useless, ashy, old, rattle bones of a crypt keeper he is and how he isn’t a threat to anyone the way he is. Dude has way more than just a foot in the grave at this point. He’s barely alive.

Still, the answer to that question is yes. Even if Sonic and Geoffrey were only pretending to acquiesce to his demand for that emerald, Max wanted to see Geoffrey because he felt the man could help him get back the days of old that were instilled into him by his, also, awful parents when he was a kid and so on and so forth.

Rosemary suggests that they get the Acorn Family in hiding for the time being, since they can’t be sure what Geoffrey is doing or why. Elias vetoes that as far as himself and Sally are concerned. His place is here and he knows Sally wouldn’t budge even if they ordered her to hide. He doesn’t mind them putting up guards for the rest of his family though.

He also decides he’s going to wait it out a bit and see if Geoffrey explains himself… while thinking back to when Geoffrey manipulated him when he first became king. He’s consciously deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt which is the kind of gesture that makes me like the idea of him being king but also has that air of tragedy to it as well.

I admire his ability to not take things too personally here but confirmation of what’s what is going to hit them all hard and it’ll be a longer while still before we get the full story of what Geoffrey feels and why.

Back then, my sympathy aligned with Geoffrey’s anyway since I hated the kingdom so much. I kind of felt like it deserved to be taken over by a more honest tyrant. Nowadays that opinion hasn’t really changed. It’s just more nuanced since I have the full context now. 

Parts of what’s about to happen are going to be really frustrating but other parts will feel sort of cathartic. It’s going to be mildly confusing times ahead.

We then cut to the music group with Mina and the scrapped Sonic sound-test band (who all have Sonic’s shoes because of that and it’s really hard not to look at when you notice it)

The monkey speaks like how Vector used to talk back in old Archie and the chicken can apparently only say “Yeah.” and nothing else.

They really don’t want to do a song that sends a message. The idea of sending any kind of message is heavy to them and it gets in the way of playing simple pop. What’s funny is that Ash even told her to tone it down a bit.

I understand the sentiments at least but perhaps diving into the topic of whether or not one should send a message when one has the power to do so isn’t one I wish to go into here.

Since this seems to be the issue where people get what they want by making one, final, convincing last statement, when Mina is refused by the rest of the band again she just gives them a really scary hypothetical and they’re all on board.

Oh dear.

This song about fear mongering needs lots of love indeed.

I’m actually starting to see the problem the more I read into Mina’s dialogue and logic here. I understand that she’s scared but there is a part of me that wonders if she ever thought or does think of Nicole as her own person, looking this over.

It’s weird because I’m unable to really recall much in the vain of interactions between the two. Mina never seemed like the type to forgo a relationship with a friend because they were an A.I but… honestly, who knows? Her character’s focus has mostly been on stuff pertaining to romance. Her music being directed at something like this is quite the huge turn.

It’s really interesting to think about but I worry about the execution. I can at least see why some might have been turned off by her acting this way.

Naugus is going to take heavy advantage of the bad vibes coming the kingdom’s way though. Geoffrey has informed him that a lot has changed since he’s been gone and Naugus is willing enough to defer to him for now.

Truthfully, anyone who came along after Max would have been an upgrade. I like my boy Elias though so perhaps this was bad timing on your part, Naugus. You could have had my full support rather than just most of it.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #220: From the Inside Out

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Ray Dillon
Letters: John Workman

We begin this story with a reference to a television show done correctly.

See how much more natural that comes off over just forcing a character to say some lines from one of Crush 40’s greatest hits? 

The next couple pages are Eggman messing around over the person he’s fixing up in glorious, Riddler neon green shining down on them. 

He shows off what the bombs inside the legionnaires looks like as he replaces Lien-Da’s.

He also goes on about how he knows about her Neural-Override Chips and applauded how underhanded their functionality is. He also talks about how the Iron Queen vi-passed it and set off Lien-Da’s bomb anyway with her “magic” which he uses in quotations.

See, he doesn’t think very highly of magic. He goes into that here nicely.

He’s truly a man of science.

To be fair, there is shockingly very little magic in the Sonic series. Most of the series is rooted in science fantasy elements more often than not. If it’s not Eggman then It’s always either ancient technology or aliens or both. Even the god-like beings that crop up from time to time are mostly based around the elements like water or lava... which isn't really magic.  Creatures with weird powers and straight up “magic” feel a bit different when tooled around with.

That’s probably why the Chaos Emeralds stand out so much. They’re the one element of the series that stands, unequivocally, as magic bobbles which makes them being the one element of the series that remains so starkly rooted in mystery work so well. To this day, I feel I know less about them than I do any creature like Dark Gaia, Black Doom, or the Wisps. 

It’s fascinating to think about but the actual point of the story isn’t Eggman compartmentalizing his thoughts on science versus magic. It’s to show us that he’s fixed up Lien-Da nicely.

“You and me, we both enjoy the GAME and there’s no reason to be penalized for that!”

So yeah, Eggman’s insane. 

That’s a very passive way of putting it but he explains it for us.

I know that Ian Flynn writing for the newest game(s) comes with a whole host of limitations and what not that probably aren’t as big a deal in the comics … but man would I love it if we had some sort of Legionnaire or Eggman’s Dozen situation crop up in the games.

This is just such an interesting and unique way of handling the scummy villainous side of things, where they all work together for the explicit purpose of building up the man in charge so they can knock him off his throne and take all his things… and the man in charge KNOWS that and finds the idea of them trying exciting.

He radiates so much Chad energy, it’s astounding. Yeah, that attitude sort of backfired before but so what? He recovered from it. He’s back in the game and he’s loving it. 

Godspeed Eggman. 

Fairly simple issue. Honestly, looking back through it, not a lot happened. Geoffrey and Naugus had a nice talk made all the more amusing by Mogul beaming with happiness in the background of it. Sonic escaped and told everyone what was up and then we got Mina pushing her band to learn and perform a song about pushing a message to stay strong brought upon by fear to the masses. The final story was also very nice but, again, looking at it for what it is, it’s just a bunch of dialogue really. I do love having so many overhead panels of Eggman’s face to gawk at. He’s quite the wonderful specimen to look at but there’s not much else going on there.

Despite that, it was perfectly fine. It’s an issue done for the sake of setting up a ton of things and it did that. Mission accomplished. Gold star.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #221: Changing Tempo

This is a really great cover and one I remember very well. One, because I recall going back to this issue a lot to look at the beautiful artwork inside. Two, because we’ve reached a bit of a crossroads as far as I remember people on those old SEGA forums tolerating the way the books were being written at the time. The train we’re on is going to hit a number of controversial stops.

This is also going to be one of those issues where people are going to get pissy and angry at one another. There will be a lot of childish whining from a ton of the characters here and threats made into the faces of people who are supposed to be friends over understandable issues. However understandable they are, though, it won’t supersede the fact that they’re mad and therefore they’ll be mad back, ultimately making the situation worse.

Was I outlining what happens in the issue just now or the stuff that happens on your typical Sonic forum? You decide.

I remember so many sour faces and hurt fee-fees around this time. Man, what a terrible memory.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Ben Bates
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

So, before I begin with this issue, I want to stress that no matter what I say here, I do find the direction this story is going in to be interesting from a narrative standpoint. I want that out in the open because… no doubt I’m going to be a little rough on some of the characters for their behavior here. I’ll most likely make fun of someone who’s on the side you agree with, probably, and if that happens just know I do it for fun.

Kay. 

Sonic and Sally go to Mina’s concert. Sonic dragged her here because he really wants Sally to chill and relax even though he’s the one who got shot in the back by the “traitor” Geoffrey earlier. 

Sonic was apparently under the impression that Sally didn’t like Mina (Oh ho ho. Future sight is at work here…) but Sally says that she’s bought some of her albums. Then Sonic brings up her being all awkward around him when her name was brought up and she just straight up admits to being jealous cause she thought she liked him (which she did).

Sonic treats this like it was a ridiculous thought (it really wasn’t) and says they should have just talked to each other about it. It would have saved them a lot of angst.

Angst can be fun but definitely not in the way the comic handled it before #160, I’ll tell you what.

Then Sonic tries to push for him and Sally to be a little bit more than friends with this spring-board he’s got now that they’re talking about this but Sally informs him that she’s taking time to figure out what it is she wants.

So, not yet… apparently. I mean, according to Cream the fucking Rabbit they’re dating again so… *shrug*.

Then Nicole shows up in a very, very adorable outfit and Sally goes to hug her.

Sonic gets all bitchy about being cock-blocked.

Boy are they not going to be happy she showed up. 

Nicole does so at her own peril though. She is very much aware of what people are saying about her and it’s a little ironic because the fact that she’s a part of the city’s systems and can hear things is kind of part of the reason why people are freaked out.

Sonic with the duck-lips is kind of funny to look at here. It’s going to be even funnier when he gets the rug pulled from under him in a bit.

Stories that try to realistically tackle the reactions of the people within the city and the conflicts that arise amongst the masses after a tragedy is averted are understandable ones to tell for a book like this. After the Iron Dominion, it was definitely the right avenue to go down to… again, for a book like this.

But, Sonic is here talking about how he just wants to listen to the concert and not think about politics and the stuff the villains are doing and it’s kind of funny because that’s basically his entire life. Him wanting a reprieve from it is understandable so the fact that that shit is literally about to follow him into his pop song entertainment is lovely.

Then, of course, we have the shadow melders here to invade the concert.

Geoffrey goes on for a shockingly long time about how much Naugus needs him and how good his plan is. It’s interesting because their relationship is being perpetuated by a lot of irritation.

Geoffrey just goes on and on about why what Naugus is doing is a bad idea and why they should stick to his plan. Eventually, Naugus has to tell his apprentice to shut up and then promptly asks him if he can feel the fear in the air.

This man LOOMS like nobody’s business.

Look at him.

That right there is an expert loomer.

Anyway, we cut back to Mina’s band as they’re about to go on stage. Seeing a setting like this, I always get immediately nervous even though I’m not in a band and have barely ever held an instrument much less played one.

It’s astonishing how well the tension of sitting in a waiting room before going out to perform on stage can carry over just by looking at it is.

Mina encourages her team but then turns to Ash and is like “I’MMA THROW UP!” which is pretty funny. He reassures her though and they go out there to immediately incite some angry as fuck rock at the crowd.

It’s music so powerful and angry, it assaults Sonic, Sally, and Nicole like a tidal wave.

Ugh. This honestly just reminds me of when I went to my first and only concert, courtesy of the fact that I had to take my younger sister to see Five Seconds of Summer. I sat there, hunched over, with my hands in my ears the entire time because the shit was so fucking loud. I was going to die. I wanted it to be over so badly.

It wasn’t that I thought the music was bad or anything. I literally couldn’t process it. The only thing I remember that night is that one time they got a fan to come on stage and strum one of their guitars and another instance where I locked eyes with a young boy who was doing the same thing I was; putting his head down and plugging his ears.

I never had the desire to go to another concert again. I would not be able to handle it. I remain unable to figure out how the screaming girls in that place could.

If I were in this city, I would be sat at home, playing video games or something. 

Okay… so… the first… uhm…

This is where things go a little bit… off the rails.

I totally get what Mina is going for here. It makes sense. It’s fine to start off with. The lyrics on the first page are actually fine.

This is all just vague enough for it to not seriously mean anything to Nicole specifically. It’s just a pretty standard expression of fear. It’s a literal expression of how she’s totally had nightmares and how she wishes for people to hear her voice about all the fears she, and a lot of other people, have about the situation.

However, it’s fine. It’s a canvas that has the pieces lined up on there. No one really has to know that Mina was literally having nightmares and what not. That’s fine.

… But then this donut starts using a female pronoun in her song and it’s like… you might as well just say Nicole’s name at that point you know?

She also starts talking about the city and all that jazz. There’s even a lyric in this painfully obvious song about how painfully obvious this all is. What’s fucking hilarious is that Sonic is so oblivious to this that he’s jamming out to the song even though Mina just sang a lyric that literally just said “But heroes aren’t listening!” 

It’s funny because he’s part of what she’s talking about and him rocking out is proof that he’s not listening!

So Mina gets everyone to chant “WE WON’T BE AFRAID! WE’LL SAVE OURSELVES!” over and over again and because Nicole is smart and gets what the obvious subtext is, she starts crying and then runs away, spewing tears from her eyes.

Also, Espio is there for some reason. I’ve heard from Ian’s podcast that he was apparently going to try and do a romance thing between him and Nicole. Sounds pretty random but it doesn’t matter because Shard came along and people liked that instead so he set that one up in its place. 

It’s very weird to think about. I believe the last time Mina did one of her concerts, Espio was actually meditating in his house before Khan showed up with his lightning so… either he’s changed his mind about concerts or he’s literally just here so he can see the moment Nicole runs off crying.

Regardless, the focus isn't on that. It’s on the fact that Naugus just bore witness to the city belting out a tyrannical call to keep fear alive.

He’s also the one amplifying it so that their feelings go out of control here. 

This is a lovely image. The idea behind this gives me some very Wonder Woman vibes too. The whole thing with Aries in the first movie where he whispered suggestions to people with innate feelings regarding certain evil stuff feels very much in the same vein as this. He’s not putting anything in their heads that wasn’t already there. He’s just making it worse.

I’m actually a huge fan of that kind of villainous tactic being used in fiction. It doesn’t completely strip the character being manipulated of their agency. Not entirely. That’s a cool foundation to build off of for some character development if there ever was one.

I also must applaud the idea of Naugus using a concert as a way to do this too. It’s a very creative, narrative use of Mina’s standing as a singer. 

Mina then gets SUPER fucking political and just shouts to the audience about how the heroes protect people from threats on the outside and that they’ve got to protect from threats on the INSIDE. I mean, Jesus. 

Like, she really has almost no reason not to say Nicole’s name at this point.

After the concert, there’s a cute Ash and Mina scene of them happily going on about how successful that was and talk of hitting the road and what not… but the band mates are standing outside, wishing for the two of them to head in ahead of them because they don’t want to deal with the angry Freedom Fighters that just got partially roasted in there.

Ash and Sonic have a traditional face off but the big scene comes when Mina just transforms into the biggest bitch I’ve seen in quite some time.

Sally then destroys her with facts and logic.

And Mina’s reaction is to just watch them go with her hands on her hips like she’s thinking, “Now what was all THAT about?”

Hmmmmm…

HMMMMM…!

Do you think this went a little too far?

I’m leaning towards maybe?

It is admittedly a little hard to gauge just how much of Naugus’ influence is causing Mina to act out this way and get all steamed in the head over things that were absolutely not the fault of the heroes, or Nicole.

Nicole’s standing as Iron Nicole did NOT last that long. I believe it was a single issue before she was back to normal. Perhaps someone should have informed the masses that weren’t there to witness her reveal of this to quell the nerves a bit.

However, the rest of what Mina says also falls apart even if you ignore the fact that Nicole was on their side during that debacle for WAY longer than she wasn’t. 

Like, even Sonic is about to point out that they had to head to the East in order to dissolve the Iron Dominion properly. Sally tells him to save it but no. I’d actually really like to see what her response to that would have been…

…Then again, her response to what Sally said to her isn’t shown either. Either that or she had none.

I’ll admit, reading Mina say all this shit was extremely hard. 

Like, it was REALLY hard to get through without wincing or getting a little hot under the collar. It’s embarrassingly wrong. I know she doesn’t know she’s in a comic but were she to read this page I could only imagine the second hand embarrassment she’d feel nowadays.

The idea behind her actions is sound but this is such an intensely flimsy argument. Sally is right about saying Mina needs to factor more responsibility into her lyrics because this is just straight up irresponsible of her. Why is she going on about politics that she doesn’t even understand? She didn’t even have the full picture of what happened when she went on this venture. 

The way this is being carried across makes it harder for you to sympathize with her side of the story. It kind of reminds me a bit of the slap; a situation where there’s an imbalance in what feels right and wrong about this as presented by the comic.

This ending page, however, I love.

I love it so much.

There’s nothing I love more than witnessing the “heroes” and the people they’re supposed to protect falling apart all around the area while the villain, lurking in the shadows, just cackles evilly about how he’s SO going to take credit for all of this.

I actually remember being mad at Sonic for saying that line back then. I considered it petty and immature. Now, however, I kind of like it. I like seeing Sonic have so much contempt for the people of this city; the people he’s sworn to protect.

It feels good.

I’ve never felt so much like Naugus before in my life. I could practically dance.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #221: Second Impressions, Part One

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: James Fry
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: John E. Workman, Jr.
Colors: Matt Herms

Nicole is crying alone in what looks like a storage unit. However, Dimitri, the rescued and reformed former villain is there to offer her comfort.

Then Espio shows up and starts yelling and swinging his kunai around. Dimitri calls Espio out of hiding because he has limited access to the city’s network from where he is and could view both the concert and him coming through the door.

Well, that’s what you did so good job.

Espio is very upfront about not liking or trusting Dimitri but he also makes good on his reasoning for being here. He wants to comfort Nicole and also be in position for the sake of the ship that’s never going to sail.

But more importantly, we get some talk of Dimitri wondering what he’s going to do when Knuckles finds out he’s here.

An image of a huge spiked fist going through his head and exploding the brain inside this metal hull just crossed my mind.

Of course Knuckles wouldn’t do that but it’s interesting trying to think about what Knuckles’ reaction to Dimitri would be. I honestly don’t really know. SO much has happened and so much has changed that seeing this guy could stand to elicit a completely different reaction from whatever Dimitri expects. 

But hey, after Dimitri gives a very, VERY well-done speech that talks about how much of a failure he was and what his legacy has been reduced to and what Nicole needs to do to win back the love and affection of the city, Espio finally chills out. He agrees to his proposal to arrange a meeting with Knuckles.

It’s a shockingly sweet ending to an issue that was baked in so much evil.

Oh, what a glorious day for EVIL! MUWAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, no, I’m totally with Naugus. I want to see how high the fire can rise. It amuses me greatly to see them all turn on each other. This kingdom continues to lead by example of how to just be the worst. It’s astonishing this place is still standing but that’s, actually, literally only because of Nicole and they’re trying to kick her out. It’s so funny. XD

Despite that, I will admit that how Mina is written here does concern me a bit. There’s a part of me that worries about this being something she can fully recover from. Again, I don’t know how much of Naugus’ influence was affecting her but taken at face value… yeah, she was being a real bitch wasn’t she? Bitchiness does not look good on her. 

I guess it’s really left up to the readers to take in how much they feel her behavior is her own fault or the fault of Naugus. It’s undoubtedly the fault of both but how much it leans on either side will be what makes you happy or upset about how this panned out. 

Though, to be honest, I kind of like that.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #222: The World Can Wait

Oh God. Oh man. Oh God. Oh man. Oh God. Oh man. Oh God. Oh man. OH GOD!

It’s THIS issue. Holy gingerbread snaps, if you guys thought the last issue was controversial back in the day, say hello to Issue #222. The arguments online came into being as early as this cover. Yeah, it’s drawn really well. Sally looks the most like a Sonic character that she’s ever looked on here in fact. The problem everyone had is the image of Sonic carrying her while the crudely drawn Amy watches them run past in the background.

If you needed something that spotlighted how Amy’s tenure as a “love interest” in this book was going, there it was. People were already upset by the extremely weird scene where Cream was all like “I’m pretty sure he’s dating Princess Sally”. For the people who were bothered by that, the hits just kept coming.

I’ll admit, as someone who didn’t like Sally at the time and liked Amy more, despite not giving a shit about romance, I felt a little bit of the scorn some of those people were too. I’ll fully admit to that.

What do I think now though? Do I want to read a full issue where Sonic and Sally go on a date as someone who doesn’t care about their romance and would, honestly, find Sonic trying to navigate a date with Amy more funny and cute? Not really.

BUT THOU MUST!

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Steven Butler
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John E. Workman, Jr.
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

Yeah. That’s our opening page. It's Jon Gray and it looks nice. There are a couple of artists this issue but I don't point them all out. Apologies in advance.

This first picture a nice sentiment. Give the guy a break after all that’s happened. Why not? 

The more cynical and mean side of me wants to make jokes about how Sonic is deciding to go off and have a good ol’ fun time while Nicole is probably crying her eyes out somewhere in a bunker but I won’t make that joke. I don’t actually believe there’s anything wrong with him taking some time off at this juncture.

Hugs! Brother hugs! Hooray!

Get the fuck out of the way T-Pup, you’re ruining the scene.

I remember this scene being mocked on the SEGA forums as being a scene just put there to show that they were friends and they liked being together… and that was supposed to be a bad thing? I guess?

I understand that the complaint was that it was just a means to an end; something done to, I guess, trick you into believing they were close but like… this scene serves as its own evidence of that. They DO enjoy each other’s company and they like having fun together. 

I didn’t end up defending this scene at the time but it was an instant where I felt the cynicism towards the book was starting to reach a bit of a ridiculous level. 

After Sonic and Tails have a little chat about how Sonic is being way too obvious with how he’s playing capture the flag because he keeps putting it in places that he finds comfort in (like Uncle Chuck’s diner and under his racecar bed) Sonic brushes that concern off to will them into goofing off some more since they rarely ever get to. He pushes past Tails’ concerns about him getting ready for his date tonight because he’s got plenty of time.

Sally is in the Dragon Kingdom, where it’s night time, and is checking up on Ken about the state of the place. Everything is going well. We even get our semi-monthly check-up on Regina.

I seriously hope that bucket is her bathroom. The idea that it would be is hilarious to me.

Anyway, Khan wants to know why Sally is here. She didn’t come here to check up on the Dragon Kingdom. 

Sally then goes off about a bunch of super important stuff that she should care about way more than the actual thing she came here to talk about… but ironically this less important thing is the one thing she has trouble handling.

I do like how Khan puts it though. “You don’t run away from things like that”. It’s something that changes meaning depending on how you take it. I often chose to take it in a way that makes Sally look a bit silly but I do that for fun.

Every scene with these two just convinces me more that they’re kind of the better couple though.

He’s truly a changed man. I can’t help but want the best for him.

Sally gives a nice little rundown of her thoughts and feelings for Ken. She talks about how much has happened since she ruined everything back in #134 and how different they are today. It’s been an EXTREMELY long time. It’s issue #222. If there was a fan of Sonic and Sally out there that seriously believed there was a chance they wouldn’t be together, they were probably chomping at the bit for more of what this book was about to give them.

Ken, very nicely, reminds her that they’re on the other side of the world and it’s probably late afternoon by now. 

Sally lost track of time so she fumbles her way back to New Mobotropolis and is literally ran into by Sonic.

Instead of her bones turning to dust, she gets up and then heads off to get ready. 

Then we hear that Sonic totally did lose track of time. Tails says “I told you so.”

So yeah, they both fucked that one up. It’s kind of cute.

They also get two scenes of their parental figures providing commentary on the way they handle their nerves before the big night.

So far, things are going well.

Some complained that Sonic was speaking with Uncle Chuck instead of his mom or dad. I don't care. I think Uncle Chuck works just fine.

This is all pretty typical, standard, dating story flare at the moment.

It gets immediately dicey for me when they do finally reach the restaurant though.

Sonic tells Sally that he got them reservations at Creme De La Creme. This is a lie and while Sally is worrying about the date being serious when Sonic is just trying to make her night the best it can be, we see this… play out.

Ah yes. Nothing I like more than to see my favorite hero assert his authority over people so that he can steal a table at a restaurant. 

Yeah, this scene ain’t good. Especially not for the implications it sets coming from THIS particular Sonic. 

Then, uh, Sally gets cold feet a little because she notices that Ash and Mina are there tonight which immediately makes the air in the room a little awkward. 

Sally is about to express regret at the way she handled her talk with Mina that night, which is shockingly upright of her considering her reaction was honestly kind of justified all things considered, but Sonic tries to stop her.

He just wants her to sit, relax, and think about none of the problems going on. 

The waiter comes up and Sonic tries to order something… but instead of doing HIS FUCKING JOB the waiter decides he wants to be a comedian and give me the single biggest laugh I’ve had reading these books since the fucking Nazi rally speech from the Knuckles comic.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Fucking cough laughing shit right here.

Holy shit.

Yeah. This place lives up to its name alright. That was definitely the Creme De La Creme.

Fuckin’ A.

This is really funny. For both the reasons it’s supposed to be in that last panel and unintentionally too. It’s kind of perfect.

Looking at Mina here, she’s got the strut of a villain, I must say. She looks like she could be a minion of the Iron Queen herself here. 

This is quite the dark state of affairs for our pop star but… I gotta be honest, she’s excelling at being ignorant of how this whole “rallying the people” thing works. 

Again, she talked politics when she really didn’t know jack shit about how they worked. First rule of politics is always that nobody ever agrees on anything. Ever. Hell, that’s also kind of the first rule of Sonic discussion. That’s the first rule of discussion, period.

Did she seriously expect that people wouldn’t debate the issue a little more? When she put her message out there, did she think, there’d be no push back or consideration of what she was saying from the masses? 

Sounds like it. She clearly wasn’t prepared for it.

Sonic and Sally are just trying to have some alone time together so they eventually just leave the restaurant. It honestly is starting to look more and more like they decided to do this at the worst possible time they could.

Then this Amy scene happens.

Amy shows up to pound her hammer into the ground and then scream at the citizens trying to hound the heroes for immediate answers to the fear plaguing their minds.

Honestly, the more this issue goes on, the more I feel that this was an insanely ill-timed break. I know the heroes want and deserve one, kind of, but I do wonder if they stopped to consider how it would look if their biggest hero and their princess were just seen being ignorant of the masses and their concerns like this. I’m not saying that they are being ignorant of their concerns. I’m just saying that these townsfolk are so awful and jumpy and totally not worth saving that I could totally see them jumping to that conclusion.

Remember when the press was a big thing in this book? Well, imagine them being here tonight and how the paper next morning’s headline would read “Princess and local hero on a date and ignoring the cries of the people when fear is at an all time high?! Was Mina right?! Are they not listening to US?!”

God, this place sucks.

These people really are kind of terrible and kind of always have been.

Remember that Robian scare thing and that crowd of people who wanted to kill them because, even though their minds were back to normal, they had the nerve to still be afflicted with the then irreversible roboticization process? They were so eager to be racist to one another back then.

Then, you know, this scene happens.

Unsurprisingly, this also got people mad back in the day.

In fact, the reaction to this is the thing I remember being the most strong. This exact image was posted there and talked about with vitriol and hatred everywhere. It was… quite the time.

I don’t remember being that pissed off about it but I did actually agree with the sentiment of the dissenting masses. The sentence she ends on in the next page is her saying that “Right now, Sally makes him happy” which… just feels wrong.

I can’t read this without imagining her literally trying to steal Sonic from her or something one day. I also can’t help but wonder what she thinks is going to happen? Does she believe that Sonic is going to just, one day, at random, get tired of Sally and come running to her? How does she figure that’ll play out? 

The slap did a lot of damage, the likes of which even Phil Swift and his Flex Tape couldn’t immediately patch, but here, short of a hundred issues later they’re getting back on track. You just can’t help but be hyper aware of how UNAWARE Amy is of the status quo and how futile her affections are. Every time it gets brought up it just feels pathetic and that’s not her fault. It’s just how this book is structured. It can’t really function without that being the case with both Sally and Amy here as love interests. Either love has to exit the equation (like in the reboot) or... they all agree to polyamory of course.

Sonic and Sally just settle for having a nice walk by the meadow we saw in the opening page. They have a nice enough back and forth. Sally asks Sonic if he was waiting for her all that time and Sonic says no.

Obviously not, considering all the people he dated… then again, he DID strum his guitar in front of the moon while thinking about Sally that one time so maybe not.

Either way, he says he knows she would have wanted him to move on… plus, he’s Sonic. When something doesn’t work out, he just goes.

Then they bring up other people like Fiona, Khan, Geoffrey, and Mina… all of whom have been through the revolving door of romance for the two of them. One of those is considerably more gross than the others nowadays.

Either way, they decide to settle down while the character from that one really gross relationship looks on in jealousy.

Again, we didn't really know. I doubt even Ian did. Knowing now makes it harder to process, especially since this is the era of the book where I started really liking Geoffrey. It's pretty typical of me to not care that much about a character and then almost immediately flip that switch when it's revealed they're actually working for a villain. 

The thing that hits me the most about this scene is the part where Sonic says he can slow down for her. 

He can’t. That’s a lie. 

I refuse to believe otherwise. Dude couldn’t even slow down for Tails in Lost World.

Geoffrey sulks off and goes to his master who, in this art style, is looking super gross and super boiley.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #222: Second Impressions, Part Two

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: James Fry
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: John E. Workman, Jr.
Colors: Matt Herms

So, Espio and Nicole go up to Knuckles and try to lay it on as delicately as possible that they’ve got a little surprise for him.

Then that surprise is shown to Knuckles and I finally get to see the reaction I was interested in seeing just an issue before.

… You know, in hindsight, I should have expected that.

BUT I was taken a bit by surprise by what happens next.

Dimitri apologizes. He lays it all out on the table and actually seeks guidance from Knuckles. His pride as the first Enerjak is in tatters. It’s gone. He can see just how badly he fucked up.

Espio is about to jump to Dimitri’s defense but Knuckles stops him and asks for an update on his people.

Lien-Da is a massive idiot that led them into the clutches of Eggman. They’ve all got chips inside of them and she’s got a mind-control one that’ll have her the leader of the legion with them as her slaves… who are also double enslaved since they work under Eggman too.

Knuckles does a face-palm at this and Dimitri pleads with him to not punch him in the face since that’s literally all he is now.

Instead of that, Knuckles tells Dimitri that he’s going to get plugged into Haven and he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to fix this mess, which Dimitri is more than happy to do.

It all goes really well for everyone here.

Hell yeah. That was as good as gravy.

Look at how happy Dimitri is there at the bottom panel. D’aaw!

This issue was not as bad or even as boring as I remember it being. There was some merit to the romantic fluff that happened in the beginning and the end, for sure. Even as someone who doesn’t really care, I can tell when it was done right.

However, I can also tell when it was done wrong and there was… quite a lot of interesting stuff in this issue that sent my sides into orbit. It’s hilariously out of sync with itself in places and while that does lower the writing quality it pretty much heightened the entertainment value. Where would we be without that fucking stupid ass waiter? 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

So when Sonic suggests it, he decides to play a game with him where he has to bounce on some yellow balls to freedom.

Yeah…you could not have phrased that anymore wrong.

[Dr. Detective]

30 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Yeah…you could not have phrased that anymore wrong.

I mean, hey, it's not my fault phrasing it the way it literally is makes it sound a certain way.

Ain't nothing wrong with Sonic bouncing on some beautiful golden balls.

[Razule]

What was the issue 220 back-up reference?

[Dr. Detective]

2 hours ago, Razule said:

What was the issue 220 back-up reference?

Eggman basically says a variation of the line "We can rebuild him. We have the technology" which is a reference to an old TV show called The Six Million Dollar Man. 

[SkyHorizon]

20 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

where I locked eyes with a young boy who was doing the same thing I was; putting his head down and plugging his ears.

  Some of the best relationships started this way 

 

 

20 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The idea behind her actions is sound but this is such an intensely flimsy argument. Sally is right about saying Mina needs to factor more responsibility into her lyrics because this is just straight up irresponsible of her. Why is she going on about politics that she doesn’t even understand? She didn’t even have the full picture of what happened when she went on this venture. 

 

Not to justify Mina (which I always thought was being an absolute ungrateful bitch here), I think is characterization was brilliant and perfectly believable. Singers often talk politics, so, honestly... why not?

 

20 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I didn’t end up defending this scene at the time but it was an instant where I felt the cynicism towards the book was starting to reach a bit of a ridiculous level. 

 

I don't think you could've said any better

 

20 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Does she believe that Sonic is going to just, one day, at random, get tired of Sally and come running to her? How does she figure that’ll play out? 

Uhm... relationships?

 

20 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I refuse to believe otherwise. Dude couldn’t even slow down for Tails in Lost World.

 

Ah, poor naive kid, Sally probably has something that Tails doesn't 

***

NOW, ABOUT NICOLE!

I've always found absolutely absurd how none ever pointed out that NICOLE CREATED THE CITY. People wanted to kick her out from her own creation. I mean, seriously??? They didn't like Nicole's presence, they just had to go out and build a city of their own. Whew, I said it, finally! The citizens of New Mobotropolis are SO FUCKING STUPID!

[Kuzu]

Oh man, I remember reading those old Sega Forum debates. I did the wise thing and just stayed the fuck out of it because people we're not trying to be rational at all. Shipping is rather infamous in fandoms due to how....passionate people can get, and this was no exception. It was straight up vicious. The redraws man...

But ignoring that, these were pretty ok issues. Nothing really major happened when you think about it, it was mostly characters talking. Which makes the vitriolic reaction they got all the more curious.

 

Hell, I was siding with Sonic and Sally there but that definitely was not the popular opinion. In hindsight, I think the fanbase's dissatisfaction with Sonally played a role there.

 

God, no wonder Ian just nixed all romance. Dude had enough of the harassment and possible death threats over a couple of furry anthros. And the sad part, he's probably still getting harassed by these people to this very day.

 

People suck man.

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic Universe - Issue #25: The Silver Saga - Part 1 of 4: Fractured Mirror, Part One: Through the Looking Glass

This next arc is what happens when an innocent young man gets wound up in a sea of negativity so thick that he eventually just joins the crowd. I’m not talking about Silver of course. I’m talking about me. I do not have very good history with this arc, opinion wise. Especially here. Years ago I shared my very old and very scattered thoughts on it and it was a very harsh, negative one that got people very upset with me. The internet’s usual desire to take someone down with corrections and “well, actually” were not in short supply for me that day. It’s not a happy memory.

As such, there’s a chance that even after re-reading this I may still view this arc with a bit of trepidation. I can’t exactly blame the arc itself on that though. I was frustrated and upset with it because of how confused I was by a lot that happened in it based on the fact that I had no prior knowledge of the events Ian was pulling from to make the story happen. That coupled with other minor frustrations concerning how easy the wrap-up felt to me and a then misunderstanding of Enerjak’s character and it just led to this being a jumble of negative opinions, thoughts, and feelings.

Some of them were probably fair but considering how little I didn’t realize back then, most of it probably wasn’t. I haven’t even started the arc up again and already I’m aware of things about it that I wasn’t aware of back when I first read it. I understand who this version of Lara-Su is now and why their future is like this. Hell, I didn’t even know that the Enerjak in this story was supposed to be Knuckles. I found that out several years later.

I like to consider this arc the first real example of how not knowing the established lore of the comic can truly fuck you over. That and how being stuck in a cesspool like the SEGA Forums can warp that perception further when your unchallenged opinions bounce off the walls of an echo chamber.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Ray Dillon
Letters: Phil Felix
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

Silver is sitting and training with old man Mogul in the future. It looks like they’re using the time stone as some sort of campfire to me but really, they’re just doing weird Yoda stuff. I don’t know exactly what’s happening but them sitting there with their eyes closed invokes the usual, expected imagery of mystical wizardry so… I’m pretty sure that’s all that they cared to get across. Something magical is happening.

Silver stops this when he senses that someone is here and Mogul senses in return that they have a visitor from another time or another dimension. Silver is momentarily surprised that people other than himself and his master can do that and Mogul says that he can’t think of anyone still alive who can.

Hearing this, Silver is ready to fucking go and beat the shit out of whoever arrived. He’s got a fire in his belly for sure, that scrappy kid. Of course, his desire to go and knock heads almost gives his master a heart attack and he has to see to it that he’s okay.

He’s so eager to be of use and to prove himself. It’s going to get him into so much trouble. The poor daddy mammoth can’t take it.

What happens next is a nice showcase of how naïve and childish Silver is and how much more room he has to grow. He’s set upon by something that has it’s eye on him and it fires a blast into his back. It does this right as Silver is contemplating that the visitor could be the traitor having followed him into the future. Optimism at a TIME like this? Wow, my boy. 

He even starts to take that it a step further by wondering if they’ll be friendly right before getting shot in the back.

He uses his powers to make a soft landing before demanding that the person attacking show themselves.

Oh but I do. 

That’s the Vector Android from the Shadow the Hedgehog 2-Player mode. 

… Right?

So anyway, it starts blasting.

I have to admire how giving a Vector shaped monstrosity with no mouth the power of Cyclops eyebeams looks cool but also, somehow, almost looks like it still has a mouth when you look at it a certain way.

Silver gets blasted about the place and they get into a fight. It eventually stops firing lasers and tries to crush him with debris which Silver uses to throw back at him, telling it that it should have stuck to lasers. 

After Silver crushes it with rocks, he starts throwing bad puns at it too.

Boo!

Then, it starts to run and Silver, so caught up in being what he thinks is awesome, admonishes it for running before remembering what he was initially trying to do, and chases after it trying to apologize.

These short scenes of Silver are really doing a lot for establishing who his character is supposed to be within this continuity. It’s nice to have a cool fight but I’m liking how these little moments are selling both the side of him that’s young, brash, and naïve.

He chases this thing into an alley and is almost jumped by it again but a THUNDER ARROW shouted and launched from off-screen hits it from behind. Silver than uses his powers to slam a dumpster into it to pin it to the wall.

He then says the cocky line of “Thought you could sneak up on me, did you?” to which, Edmund, the one who just saved his ass with that slick ass arrow, replies, “HE DID you twerp!”

Up until this point, Silver was excluding shades of a character that was far different from the one I did eventually fall in love with when Team Sonic Racing rolled around. However, this next bit shows flashes of it briefly just because of how much of a toddler he is here.

“B-But he started it!” he says, rubbing his tummy. 

It’s cute. 

It’s also a little funny just how much of a no-nonsense, old curmudgeon Edmund is. He’s not really giving Silver much chance to properly explain himself at first, even ignoring things that he literally just saw. The line “You should keep your friends in line if they want to rough house” is wonderful in how it ignores that he just saved Silver from being killed by that thing. 

He’s radiating too much “Get off my lawn” energy right now. Even after Silver explains that he came to find out what the disturbance in the force was, he still refers to what Silver did as tearing up his city. Silver says he was just protecting himself.

Edmund just goes on about how things back then were way tougher than they are now. He even says lasers are played out and wonders why no one can come up with anything better.

The answer is because lasers are awesome.

The Vector shaped terminator thing reboots and decides it’s gathered enough data and wishes to return from whence it came… so it does that.

Oh wow.

To just be able to summon a warp ring portal with the mere clap of your hands. It sounds cool and it looks cool but it’s also really intimidating. What a neat feature.

Warp rings sound like they’d be a super fun mechanic in a Sonic game to utilize like this. The Sonic games wouldn’t be what they were without constant, wasted potential though.

Silver is surprised that Edmund wants him to jump into the unknown. Well, he doesn’t WANT him to but Silver is the only one who can deal with whatever that thing is. The fact that it came to their world at all is concerning.

I don’t know the status of the people that live in Silver’s future so his desire to protect it does leave me open to wondering what’s at stake from time to time. As of right now, I’d be forgiven for thinking it was just him, Mogul, and Edmund who live here.

Silver has the time stone and he can use it to navigate through this portal to find his way back. So he jumps in and travels down a very evil and weird looking warp ring pathway.

He gets spat out in a somehow more evil and dilapidated and destroyed version of the future.

Seriously, somehow it looks way worse than the one Silver hails from. No matter how bad things are, things can always be worse.

He happens upon a large statue of Enerjak. 

Yup. We know who’s at fault for this now but in case you didn’t, we’ve got a badass final spread for you a bit later.

As of right now, Silver is going to get ambushed by the Chaotix… or rather, the terminators formerly known as the Chaotix.

Silver’s endless prattling for mercy while also pretending to have a leg up on the situation falls on deaf ears. Or rather, literally no ears. 

See? Lasers are cool. Look at that fucking Skittles blast they just did. Beautiful.

Anyway, Silver proceeds to literally get his ass kicked–

–before finally deciding to fight back.

After that, we cut to a scene where Enerjak has caught wind of the “rebels” acting up again and goes to look at his magic security camera screen… thing to witness what’s going on, only to see that it’s actually someone he’s never seen before with a strange power he’s never happened upon.

It looks like the person he’s talking to is Constable Remington, who is about to proclaim that he will be stopped right before his fucking soul is ripped from his chest.

We then pull back and see the horrifying image that, even back when I initially read it, I was really hyped looking at.

“Yes sir. We’re just gonna have Knuckles rip the souls out of the bodies of his friends and other beloved characters and have him string their horrific red-eyed corpses up along the walls. Any questions?”

“Nope. Approved.”

“Fantastic sir.”

I love it.

One thing that I always loved about this story, even back during my days of being a sourpuss, was how it was drawn and colored. The grainy look on everything really goes a long way to sell the disturbing atmosphere and the claustrophobic sense of the darkness wrapping itself around you, even in a big, empty, dark space like this. As someone who is a huge fan of melding horror troupes with the Sonic series, I should have loved this back in the day.

Today, as someone who absolutely adores this kind of thing and is now a huge fan of Silver (even if he is noticeably a bit different here) I can easily see this arc being one of the biggest turnarounds as far as my evolving opinions are concerned, probably ever. This first issue was fantastic. Maybe the strongest introductory issue Sonic Universe has had up to this point. It definitely bodes well for what’s in store. 

I’m really excited to revisit this one in its entirety now.

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #26: The Silver Saga - Part 2 of 4: Fractured Mirror, Part Two: Warped Reflections

I didn’t exactly mention it in the prelude to the previous issue but I wasn’t actually a fan of the style of the first cover. For some reason the painting homaging the Sonic 06 render of Silver didn’t do much for me there. It honestly is going to take a while before the more 3D looking art does anything for me. As such, I tend to prefer this cover more despite how simple it is. The images of all these characters just being turned into these weird creatures is very scary to me still and I love that. Whether they be prelates or zombots, just seeing it happen dials the tension up to eleven for me.

If time travel is good for anything, it’s for post apocalyptic futures.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Ray Dillon
Letters: Phil Felix
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

Silver is still fighting the prelates of the Chaotix. We finally get that as the term for these freaky looking mooks here. They start overpowering Silver while the poor boy is trying to get them to stop being mean to him. All the while, Enerjak narrates how interested he is in Silver and wants his visitation to be something fun for him.

Silver tries to escape but gets knocked the hell back down against his will. He can’t catch his breath and he’s outnumbered. It’s looking pretty bad which obviously means it’s time to meet our hero group for this story. 

They are an assortment of characters with designs taken from characters we know like Rotor, Antoine, Bunnie, Bean, Bark, and Fiona. The walrus is Dagger. The bear is Blockbuster. The fox is Payback. The Antoine look-alike with the scars on his body is Cutlass Depardieu. The serious Bean kid is Demo Duck. This future Bunnie off-spring is Scarlette Rabbot.

A lot of these names are ridiculous but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s also funny how, no matter what, Antoine and Bunnie always have two kids that look like them in the future, even in one that looks like this. The idea of Bean procreating is interesting to me though. 

The main person to care about here is Lara-Su… or rather, Jani-Ca.

Silver almost calls her Lara-Su, happy to see her, and gets his head almost sliced off for it. 

This is clearly a different person entirely. 

I find it funny that Blockbuster’s reaction to this is to facepalm before calmly telling her not to kill the man for saying the wrong name.

Back in the day, I had no clue what was going on here or why we were following the exploits of another, different Lara-Su. I didn’t really think that her character would be so interesting as to warrant such a thing. 

Sadly, this was another case of me being uninformed of the history regarding this comic at the time. Now that I’ve read everything, I’m aware of the continuity hiccup that Penders created with his two Lara-Su's.  This one is actually the first one we saw and the one that isn’t from the dreaded Mobius 25 Years Later story that Penders subjected me to afterwards. 

Of course, THAT Lara-Su has her own weird timey-whimey bullshit to deal with due to it being reset when Sonic did some nonsense but I digress.

This one appeared once and then left before showing up here at this very instant in the book's history. A lot has happened and she’s not playing around with this kid.

Silver explains his whole situation too and it's kind of amazing how complicated this already is since Archie Sonic has been trying to navigate through three different futures now.

Battle-Scarred Cutlass thinks his story sounds ridiculous but Jani-Ca instantly believes him and brings him along.

It feels kind of weird but also kind of awesome how she’s so hardened and referring to Silver as a kid. 

Also, when Jani-Ca asks Silver from WHEN he came, Silver says about 170 years into the future, which, I guess means that this place is the past. I initially wasn't able to tell but even our new narrator, Enerjak, ends up saying “From the future? You continue to intrigue me, traveler!”

Although, this is a different Lara-Su so that would mean that this is the alternate future of the future from 30 Years Later. 

Yeah, that makes sense. It took a bit of brain-power but I got there.

The city they’re in is called Nekronopolis, which took a while to get rolling off the tongue and even then sounds just a bit too edgy. At least if you get the reference in the name, I suppose.

So, it’s Jani-Ca’s turn to explain things. In this place, the bad future version of the 30 Years Later world, Jani-Ca’s father, Knuckles, and the previous guardian actually did the evil thing in this world. Yeah, he became Enerjak, took over and demolished the Dark Legion, the Freedom Fighters, and stole all the Chaos Emeralds.

All the heroes have been reduced to cores. Those little Tikal orbs are taken from people’s bodies and shaped into prelates that fight for Enerjak. When they’re destroyed, like Pac-Man ghosts, they get returned to sender so that they can be re-used all over again.

When they get to the hideout, Silver asks why she took the time traveling thing as the truth so easily. It’s here where we get the explanation for which version of Lara-Su she is, as well as a nice parallel to Silver’s very embarrassing situation too.

She also says that their plan to stop Enerjak is to use the Sword of Acorns which, in this timeline, is still magic and still of use, luckily enough.

Yup. Literally all of this flew over my head upon initial reading of this arc. I didn’t know what the fuck the Sword of Acorns significance really was and despite reading Darkest Storm and enjoying it a lot at the time, the details about it alluded me there as well. On top of that, I had not read issues #106-109 so my knowledge of Jani-Ca here was just completely moot.

Despite really enjoying and appreciating all this now, I am starting to see why I held this arc in so much contempt back in the day. There’s so much that’s being explained here that, while it makes sense within the established lore of the comic, makes a lot of those earlier books so essential that it became one of the few cases of it destroying the enjoyment I had for the tale.

That’s not necessarily the book’s fault. While an argument can be made for how far back you should try and stretch your references for the sake of newcomers, what’s being done here is still ultimately for the sake of making sure the comic is a more coherent story.

I do admire the attempts to address the problems of the past and make them work for stories of the future. However, this arc was one of those times where my knowledge was SO lacking that I wasn’t able to see that these were references or fixes to things from the past. Usually I was probably able to piece that together a lot better but here I wasn’t even registering that this material might also be fixing or utilizing things from past stories.

That’s why, as a result, a lot of what ends up happening either confused me or felt like an anti-climax. A good example of that is what eventually happens with the Sword of Acorns here. Jani-Ca is even explaining what it does here but despite the explanation, my frame of reference for it wasn’t there. It just sounded like she was talking about some random "fix everything" item. By the time the fourth issue rolled around, I had completely forgotten about it and had no idea why it could do the thing it did.

Lore is a very tantalizing thing and I absolutely love it to death but I think my past experiences, especially with this arc, are a good example of what can happen when a newcomer climbs aboard and is faced with a bunch of stuff that is answering for things they’ve never experienced. It can be overwhelming, or confusing, or in my case from that time, anger inducing. 

There was one other problem I remember having but that one had nothing to do with the lore… and it also happens in the 4th issue so I’ll save it for when I talk about it. 

As of right now, I feel happy finally knowing the full story behind this arc. It really does kind of amaze me that when I read this for the first time, I didn’t actually have all the tidbits in mind to fully understand it. It felt so disconnected from everything that I never would have guessed.

Anyway, Enerjak shows up and lifts up their entire base. Jani-Ca is pissed that he “found” them but as his narration of the events as they happen told us before he did, he’s always known where they were.

Silver tries to fly them out with his powers but can’t promise to protect them from falling debris so Demo kicks a bomb out ahead of them and blows the blockage apart so that they can get away… but Enerjak grabs them with his power.

Then… Silver bursts out of it with HIS power.

As an aside, I really would have loved to have seen a four issue arc dedicated to Enerjak’s conquest. The image of G.U.N’s fleets lying at the bottom of the sea is great but giving this it’s own Star Wars Prequel treatment where he just Order 66s the planet sounds like a fun time. 

Anyway, he summons back the cores he stole and launches them at them to create prelates of their friends. It’s just the Chaotix again but it makes more sense why it’s continuously just them now. It’s because they have a connection to Jani-Ca and her mother, Julie-Su, who was also a pseudo Chaotix member.

Speaking of which, the dastardly villain decides to be horrible for the sake of being horrible here.

I mean, imagine being a father and tormenting your daughter with a stolen, soul puppet of her mother like this. 

Silver tries to do something he thinks is clever. He throws a bunch of rocks at Enerjak, which he turns to punch apart, revealing Silver underneath which stalls him enough for Silver to catch him with his power.

But Silver is overpowered of course so he breaks out of it and just yeets Silver to the ground, sending him bouncing off his butt and skidding along the gravel road.

Enerjak then goes on about how he’s going to initiate his final victory over everyone.

For you see, he’s been pulling a Pre-Issue #175 Eggman this whole time. This one lone Freedom Fighter group has been kept alive all this time for the sake of entertaining Enerjak. This reveal also pissed me off back in the day because I felt like it damaged the mystique I thought Enerjak had due to being so enamored with the way he was spoken about with such reverence in the books I owned. Not to mention, how solid his return was handled in my first Archie Sonic story, Enerjak: Reborn.

However, this was, again, a reaction I had due to my own lack of knowledge. I didn’t really know Enerjak’s actual personality. The cockiness, the pompousness, and the way his overconfidence out does him are staples of his personality. Had I known about him losing his power to Mogul or the earlier stories where he gets tricked into being launched into space… or the fact that he was supposed to be Knuckles in THIS story, I probably would have thought him doing this was fine.

This second issue explained quite a lot and, unfortunately for the me of yesteryear, the explanation flew over my head harder and faster than a pitch even Drax himself wouldn’t have been able to catch. This is a really interesting experience for me because I feel like this is the first time where I’m going into the arc… honestly knowing I’m going to come out of it liking it a lot now.

Every time I’ve thought back over what I recall from this arc, I remember thinking that a re-read was inevitable and necessary… but, as it turns out, doing it the normal way where I start at Issue #160 and go from there wouldn’t have been viable. I didn’t actually know when I started to do these reviews that this arc would do a 180 flip for me once I finally had all the context because I didn’t even know I NEEDED the context. That’s how lost on me the details of this arc initially were and why I felt my anger was justified at the time. 

This arc is a pretty intriguing example of how your perception of the reality of a situation can affect your reaction to a really good story. 

Sonic Universe - Issue #27: The Silver Saga - Part 3 of 4: Fractured Mirror, Part Three: Shattered

This is a good cover. In lue of just having them face off (which is being saved for the final cover) we have these two facing off but in a way that utilizes the perspective a bit more. Enerjak has Silver in his sights because he’s interesting and fun. His mind is so warped with pride that he doesn’t even seem interested in taking this new unknown entity as a threat. Like Super Vegeta, the allure of a Perfect Cell is too cool to not face down and overpower with your clearly superior might.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Ray Dillon
Letters: Phil Felix
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

So Silver and Enerjak are having fun.

We get a nice opener where all the prelates and our collection of Bad Future Freedom Fighters are all fighting one another. It’s funny to think about how, even if they manage to win the day and get everyone in that cave back to normal, the world will still be fucked.

Maybe not as fucked as Silver’s or Future Trunks’ worlds due to having slightly more main characters still alive but still pretty bleak.

It’s admirable whenever I see people in a world like this still trying to fight for the sake of it. 

Enerjak doesn’t care though. He’s just happy to have a new best friend in Silver. It was so boring here. He knew where the Freedom Fighters were all along but kept them around because he wanted some entertainment.

Honestly, that checks out.

No, really, it does. 

If I were as powerful as Enerjak and I got a little too crazy with my powers that I devastated the world THIS much a part of me would also be like, “... But what’s even the point if there’s no one left to lord this power over?”

Seriously, there’s no point in ruling over or even existing within a world where there’s no one around. He’s not like Kid Buu who’s feral and doesn’t give a shit. 

So seeing Silver here, he’s able to have some fun.

Silver reacts to the word “FUN” the same way Spongebob reacts to Patrick saying “OVERTIME” in Rock-a-Bye Bivalve. 

His power comes from the same place Sniper Island hails from.

In his heart.

Anyway, Jani-Ca is happy to have a chance to face off against her mother’s prelate so that she can prove she can go the distance or whatever.

Silver stops it himself though and right as she’s about to yell at him that he’s got no right to butt in, Silver tells her to cool her jets and think about how much more important it is to rescue her friends in this situation.

She, thankfully, agrees rather quickly and they head off to wipe out the other prelates. This time, Silver has a plan though.

Each time they destroy a prelate, he uses his power to gather together the cores.

It’s a good plan if not a little simple and slightly obvious but it’s nice that he can be so useful… while still being that awkward dork I’ve grown to love so much.

Silver and I have been on quite the journey. It took a while, until his showing in Team Sonic Racing, but I finally did manage to really come around to just loving the guy. They really should have leaned into that adorkable side of him more often but, to be fair, it’s not as though he was showering us with story appearances before that point. He kept appearing in every spin-off as a playable character but that does very little to advance your personality.

There’s one core left, according to Jani-Ca, and she marches up to Enerjak who has the fucking hutzpah to ask why she resists him. 

He also remarks on how much she’s grown, which kind of hints a bit at the lingering dad energy in there. Hearing it makes Silver feel the need to apologize to Jani-Ca, saying that this all must be hard for her. She says not to be since this means they’re one step closer to saving them all.

Dagger actually asks if they should even bring them back to a world like this. Silver immediately goes off on him.

The state of this world looks darker and more bleak but the situation is actually better, believe it or not. Silver says they don’t realize it but they’re lucky. They actually know what the problem is and they have a way to solve it. He doesn’t.

He even continues onto the next page and Dagger has to tell him to calm down and that he gets it.

Their relationship with Enerjak is kind of interesting too.

They all notice him just floating there, watching. He’s actually talked about how he sent his prelates into other zones in search of more fun to have so I have a feeling I know what he’s thinking.

Jani-Ca says that he sometimes just floats and broods for a bit before letting them go for another day. She thinks that they should just go but eventually, he floats down while clapping his hands and saying that they all did good.

Silver starts to egg him on, calling him “Ener-Joke” in a move that makes him look more like a subdued Sonic more than ever.

Honestly, that might be part of why this Silver was never fully enough to get me on board with him just yet. He’s very different from the cinnamon roll I’m used to. He’s got that brash, young upstart quality to him. It’s a flavor of something that feels more like a prototype of Sonic. Something in between Tails and Sonic really. 

It’s not a bad take but I like the way he is nowadays a lot more.

Enerjak blasts through Silver and easily gets his cores back in a single move, by the way.

He also has his Professor Triple Extra Large claw-hand clamped around Scarlette’s neck.

Demo goes fucking insane and charges at him in a rage and Scarlette tells her "darlin" to stop. This gave off the sense that they were together which is an interesting pairing to be sure. 

Doesn’t seem like it matters much because the others try to scatter before Enerjak does to them what he did to Downunda.

Silver momentarily thinks that they had a city called Downunda but Jani-Ca corrects him and says that it was an entire continent. Fucking scary.

So, when he makes quick, off-screen work of Scarlette and Demo, like a horror film he bursts through the alleyway only to strike Silver with a looney-tunes hammer gag before he can finish admonishing him.

It’s pretty funny and it continues to be a little amusing watching Silver try and focus with his head slammed in the dirt like a potted plant.

It doesn’t really off-set how dark and disturbing Enerjak’s actions of attacking everyone and turning them into prelates is though.

Silver just keeps telling himself to focus over and over again while Enerjak, very easily just wipes out the resistance.

Yeah, he wasn’t lying and we were given no reason to think he was lying either. He could have done this at any time. He’s doing it now because he’s got a brand new toy and he can turn these old ones into new ones now.

He takes out Blockbuster and then grabs Jani-Ca, delighting in saving her for last so he can get some fatherly gloating in.

He makes her tear up just a tiny bit when he talks about planning to build a dynasty with her and her mother and how her rebelling used to make him sad. Used to.

He even recalls how she went back in time to try and save him but she went to the wrong timeline. 

This really is a fascinating development. Ian’s talent to take the mistakes and bullshit of the past and utilize it to his advantage can not be understated. It’s a shame that, in this case, it ended up being a hindrance to my initial enjoyment of the story since I knew so little. Being able to actually appreciate what he did here feels really good. 

Now THIS is the future where all of Knuckles’ terrible upbringing made him into a monster. It wouldn’t have worked to do that with our regular Knuckles but bad future timelines exist to explore these what-ifs without destroying the characters we know and love.

Everyone has the potential in them to do bad after all. 

It makes it all the more worthwhile when someone, in the face of something this bleak, just decides to stand up and take action at the injustice of it all.

It helps to look really badass doing it too.

I mean Jesus Christ. Look at that.

Those colors are otherworldly. I feel like I can only dream of achieving something as beautiful as that.

Silver charges in and asks if Jani-Ca still has her fancy sword that can stop his power. Jani-Ca says that she does and Silver says that she can use it after he beats him into submission.

Enerjak ended up tossing Jani-Ca away when he saw Silver attack him. He was so happy and excited it happened. As he charges at him now, he exclaims that Silver is giving this world the send-off it truly deserves.

Then, they clash!

To be this epic takes AGES!

This is the best Sonic Universe arc so far. It’s not even over yet and I recall having some issues with how this resolves but my expectations for what I found to be an issue with this arc have dissolved almost entirely upon re-read so far. I can’t imagine it’ll drop trou in the finale, even if it ends up being a little rushed. It’s not even as though a whole lot has happened in comparison to other arcs. It’s all been mostly one huge collection of fights but it all just works. I don’t mean to Todd Howard it up here but it’s true. This atmosphere, this darkness, this bleakness; all in service of following the exploits of someone who isn’t a broody piece of shit is just the kind of stuff I love to death. I can’t help it. 

[SkyHorizon]

An interesting thing I noticed: I assumed that the Dark Mobius Freedom Fighters were the actual Knothole FF (+ Bean and Bark), just older and, for some reasons, with new names. I see here that you assumed they were descendant of the original, why did you think that?

Also, this Arc is (loosely) based on Ian "Other M" fancomic which he wrote before rising to lead writer of the series. Some of the similarities are:

- The FF in Other M were the same as in this Arc (except for Jani-Ca)

- Bunnie was not roboticized, Bean had lost an eye, Bark had a metal body, Fiona could absorb and release lasers from her hands, Rotor and Antoine were a lot more "rough" than their Prime counterpart

- Bunnie and Bean were a couple

- Bark was some kind of "mentor" figure (it is hinted here in a coupe of pages)

- Knuckles was the "big bad guy"

- The Chaotix were named "Prelates"

- The Sword of Acorn played a pretty big role in there

...and that's it, pretty much. Really interesting read if you've never had the occasion to read it. A bit too dark, edgy and sometimes excessively disturbing, but an interesting reading no less

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

It’s interesting when it comes to how the Metal android skins had different uses.
 

In Archie, they were mystic soul soldiers enslaved by a god called Prelates; in IDW it gets reused as a Zombie plague induced by a virus called Zombots. The funny part is, I didn’t see that last one coming.

Also, can we all just appreciate how badass Knuckles is here? I mean, yeah, he’s a Demi-god and such, but we wouldn’t have had this again until the Sonic 2 movie trailer dropped.

As far as the arc went, I was also out of the loop on Lara-Su arriving in previous issues. Tho, I did have the (mis-)fortune of reading Penders’ 30 YL arc, so I did have an idea of who she was, just that I had no clue she came at an earlier point than that. Tho, I wasn’t that interested in her and her FF group than I was in Demi-god Knuckles vs Silver, so they nor the context were really a bother.

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic Universe - Issue #28: The Silver Saga - Part 4 of 4: Fractured Mirror, The Finale: Picking Up the Pieces

Enerjak’s green lightning almost acts as a slant separating these two on the cover. It’s a very nicely drawn image. There’s no noticeable flourishes that I feel most covers should take in order to stand out but sometimes an image of your hero and villain going at it is all you really need.

It’s time to wrap this up and see what I think of this resolution now that I’m full of that context I needed. It also helps that I actually like Silver a lot nowadays.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Steve Downer
Letters: Phil Felix
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

The person responsible for the colors in the previous issues was Ray Dillion. However, for this last issue, the colors are being done by a Steve Downer. While the atmosphere is still plenty dark, it feels like it takes a noticeable hit with this change. Everything feels just a touch lighter and the shading isn’t as intense. 

I suppose, thematically, this would make sense since we’re about to get a nice beckon of hope for these people. However, I’ll admit to still preferring how the colors were before. 

Jani-Ca lines up the corpses of her friends and apologizes to them. They will be missed… at least until she can get their cores back.

Silver and Enerjak have a battle of proportions that reminds me of Gurren Lagann’s finale a bit. It’s definitely not on the scale of throwing universes at each other but the scale is still pretty huge. 

Silver tosses a building cut into Jenga pieces at Enerjak.

Meanwhile, Enerjak actually hits Silver with the island.

Just swings it upward. It’s pretty funny. The weight of an entire island hitting you probably wouldn’t be felt FULLY unless it was dropped on top of him. Shooting it up like that probably felt more like the pavement was trying to eat him. Enerjak was most likely just trying to be a dick.

Also, Silver sent him through his statue a bit before that. Enerjak calmly remarks that he liked that statue. Who’s he going to get to build another one? I guess the prelates. He has enough of them right?

Looks like it. Hopefully he downloaded carpentry into their systems.

I’m not even going to try and count the assortment of familiar faces that are here. I’m not even entirely sure these are all who I think they are. That floating dragon could be Dulcy but it could just as well be her son or whatever.

Geez. Now I’m wondering what a 30 year old Charmy would look like. Would he even have a son?

Anyway, Enerjak brings out a shit ton of prelates of all different sizes and characters. Silver is attacked by them all but Jani-Ca cuts into one before it attacks him. Silver almost starts to waste her time with talks of feelings regarding fighting them but she has to remind him that they literally don’t think, feel, or live and the pressing matter of the second coming of Echidna Zeus is more important. 

Silver is pretty pissed about Enerjak hitting him with that island anyway. So, he flies up to him and does a huge, over the top, attack that drags Enerjak through the gravel ground, through dense forests, through a mountain, through the ocean, and then slams him into another island like a hammer.

Silver was so out of it when he did that that he’s stuck in a bit of a crazed frenzy once he’s done. He looks really manic here. But then the fact that he’s Silver creeps back in and he starts going on about how he went too far. He can’t help being a good boy deep down but it’s nice seeing this book present him as someone whose emotions just kind of flip. 

Witnessing him forgetting his original intentions before snapping back to a more composed and less hot-headed guy is a very interesting way to go about handling him. Again, it’s not quite what I like about how he is in the games and IDW nowadays but I can see why Ian felt it necessary to tool around with him. He’s had it pretty rough as far as initial reactions to his character are concerned. I feel like the critics outside the fanbase will largely never forgive him for debuting in Sonic 06. Poor guy.

Then again, I stopped reading or watching reviews from critical outlets back in 2011 so I wouldn’t know.

Anyway, crazy Silver who’s had a taste for blood and death calms his ass down before monologuing about how bad it feels to kill people actually. 

Then Enerjak admonishes him for the real crime he did.

You ain’t all that kid. 

Enerjak floats down and starts firing chaos energy at Silver. The poor boy can barely muster a shield to protect himself. Enerjak then starts going on and on about his ultimate power and how he’s going to make more worlds fall. 

It’s funny because he could have done this at any time when it came to the conquest of other worlds but I guess playing with this ONE group of Freedom Fighters was just that funny to him. He probably found it really odd that they were so gung-ho about fighting him even after he sank all of G.U.N’s ships, turned all their friends into cores, and absorbed Androids 17 and 18.

Of course, all this talking from Enerjak leads to his undoing because it gives Silver time to think. 

The naggy old people appear in his brain again as he recalls all the things they said, proving once and for all that despite his hot head, he’s definitely a good boy who listens to his elders.

This realization hits upon the big thing that I remember being pissed about and ranted about back when I first read the arc.

I didn’t like the conclusion Silver ends up coming up with here at the time.

I think I said some bullshit about how powerful Enerjak was and how his power should be able to override Silver’s unless Silver was in his Super form.

I think the reason I thought this was because Super Sonic had to go toe to toe with Enerjak back in Enerjak: Reborn so I must have felt a similar concept had to be viable with Silver here.

This ignores the fact that Silver had been dragging Enerjak all over the place already of course.

The solution, of course, comes with Silver realizing that he shouldn’t be attacking Enerjak with debris and tossing him all over the place. Instead he should be using the main move he uses in the games where he captures the enemy’s attacks and sends them right back at them.

Compartmentalizing in my head exactly HOW powerful Silver should be in order for him to do this was silly on my part. Not only did I not have enough information about either character’s powers to make that call but I also got WAY too angry about it.

Like, I was REALLY mad when I saw this and I’ll be honest, it’s kind of embarrassing to think about because it really isn’t that big of a deal. This doesn’t even turn out to be the thing that defeats Enerjak, though, the thing that actually does I ALSO got pissed off about but THAT time it was because I didn’t know anything about the Sword of Acorns.

The thing that also bugs me about the way I perceived this back in the day is that, nowadays especially, I fucking HATE conversations about power levels. Sometimes they’re viable. Obviously Master Roshi shouldn’t be beating the shit out of Tien  but for the most part I tend to find worrying about stuff like that to be extremely obnoxious. Fanbases that care that deeply about it to the point of dismissing other, sometimes more interesting characters because they’re not as strong (or they’re perceived as not as strong) is part of why I stopped bothering with discourse on anime and manga on the internet.

I especially hate it when people try to do this for characters that don’t even exist within the same series or universe. There was an idiot on the SEGA Forums that said he didn’t want to get into One Piece purely because he thought Luffy was weak. His comparison was all the characters in Dragon Ball and it’s like… sure? You’re going to have a hard time getting into anything if you’re measuring stick is people who can blow up planets with a single ball of light.

What about the more important stuff like characters, story, world-building, and comedy?

Imagine passing on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood because Edward Elric wasn’t as strong as Goku. Why would anyone with a brain GIVE a fuck?!

It’s why I also can’t stand that Death Battle shit and why people take it so seriously. 

Me caring at all whether or not Super Silver or regular Silver should have been able to handle Enerjak’s energy feels dumb in hindsight… but I can’t ignore the fact that there is a part of me that DOES still see it as an understandable enough thing to assume since I did witness Super Sonic fighting Enerjak first.

The comic lampshades that here though by even having Enerjak bring up his fight with Super Sonic.

These instances where Silver starts acting like Sonic are becoming harder to let slip by. I don’t know. I’m clearly exaggerating when I say this but the Silver of today feels like the kind of guy who would cry if he accidentally stepped on a flower. 

But yeah, he talks about how super powered beings were just wailing on each other with their power. Silver is just redirecting it back at him. 

I guess this means that regular Silver can hold and toss Super Sonic as well? 

Yeah, I can definitely see where the me from the past was coming from at least. It’s not something I feel was worth as much anger and vitriol as I gave it but there is still a part of me that wonders if the limitation on what Silver can toss should end at super powered beings that can tackle Super Sonic. 

Then again, we’ve never been given a reference for what Silver can’t toss. I assumed Super Silver’s point was that he could grab and toss back attacks from God-like beings with him being in a matching, powerful form but I guess that isn’t true here.

Super Silver never shows up in the Archie Comics so it ends up not mattering of course.

What also doesn’t end up mattering, really, is wondering about whether he should be able to do this or not. Silver was just supposed to provide a distraction and that’s what he did. So, the instant Enerjak lunges at Silver in a rage, having realized that he really should have just killed him the instant he showed up, it becomes the exact instant where he loses.

Enerjak, dude, you’re hubris out does you again. 

You laid the foundation for your defeat and you didn’t get rid of it before they managed to capitalize on it.

This must REALLY suck for you. Being the instrument of your own downfall has got to be the worst feeling in the world.

After yet, another, revised version of the Chaos Emerald chant, this one signifying how the severs are fucking gone, we see a flash of light and the power that was taken has been returned to the heroes.

Her Enerjak form is pretty gaudy and funny to look at.  

Well, either way, she’s got all the power now.

Again, I’m not sure how this all works. She says she’ll never let her father have this power again and smashes the sword when he tries to do this clear and obvious lie about her having taken too much from him and him needing a bit more to help her rebuild. He also says that the madness or whatever left him and blah blah blah.

She smashes the fucking thing right in front of him and his cry of “NO!” really hits you hard. Dude really did just fuck himself.

She still has the power though. I guess what she smashed was what was left over in the sword and most of it is inside her now…?

I really don’t get it entirely but I, at the very least, know that this was what the Sword of Acorns was supposed to do now. I have that frame of reference so I understand why this wasn’t a lazy cop out. 

It does make all the difference because here and now it doesn’t feel all that unsatisfying that things shook out this way. Really, if anything feels rushed, it’s the very very ending where Silver and Jani-Ca say their goodbyes but it’s not like they were super-duper besties or anything.

Although, Jani-Ca is totally feeling like a peppy, happy, different person now that she literally has the power to save everyone and restore the world. She even makes mention of possibly saving her father too. It’s a nice sentiment.

I will make note that this story actually has never directly addressed Enerjak as Knuckles. The narrative makes it clear that’s who he is but they’re very coy about it and I can’t help but wonder if it was done that way to help get the story approved. Perhaps the conditions of Knuckles’ turn to evil was different enough (and not his fault enough) back in Enerjak: Reborn for it to pass whereas here, Knuckles just makes the decision himself to be evil. That might not have gone over well. 

Who’s to say? I don’t know how well they snuck things like that by. They definitely wouldn’t be able to do that nowadays. 

Silver returns to his future, hilariously, one second after he left in the eyes of Edmund. The offer for Jani-Ca to help fix his world is left on the wayside due to the factors of Silver not even knowing what caused his future to turn to ruin and Jani-Ca already having her hands full. Instead, he walks off with Edmund to ask if he can teach him more stuff, freely admitting that he’s got more to learn.

Because what he did learn came in super clutch.

We then end our story on a prelude to the next Sonic Universe arc and the final one involving our favorite green bastard, Scourge the Hedgehog.

I hate these zone cops and their entire thing so much. It’s going to feel cathartic as hell watching their shit get wrecked. 

Still, I’m glad they’ve got prisoners on board that need their attention. I have a feeling they’re going to come in handy. 

Hey, that was the Silver Arc and I’m happy to report I don’t hate it anymore. It’s a great arc. Is it the best one so far like I claimed it was earlier? It might be, honestly. The Tails Adventure and Knuckles: The Return give it a bit of a run for its money but the one special thing about this arc that might allow bias to factor in is how heavy and dark the atmosphere is for most of it. I’m just a sucker for that kind of shit, you know? Even despite the change in the colorist, it never looked bad. I love this style and the way the bleakness was off-set by Silver’s naïve personality. He works wonders for it in a way that he was literally tailor made to navigate through.

I do, admittedly, still finding myself wondering about Silver’s powers and wanting to know what, if any, limitations they may have. 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #223: Chaos and the Crown, Part, One: The Right to Rule

Uh-oh. Mommy and daddy are fighting on the cover which means it’s time to get ye royal divorce proceedings underway. As well drawn as this is, I can’t help but draw attention to just how much slobber and drool is in Naugus’ mouth. Sonic better close his mouth before the projectile spit lands somewhere he doesn’t want it to. Then he’ll catch some sort of horrible Ixis disease or something.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencil: Ben Bates
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

We open on Sonic and Sally just talking outside the civic center about hoping things will get better but then they immediately get worse.

Mina is on stage giving her thanks to everyone when Geoffrey bum rushes the stage and hilariously tosses his cloak into Mina’s face while saying the Forget-Me-Knots have woken “us” up.

Nicole is evil and I’ve got the cure everybody! 

The Freedom Fighters try to bum rush him while he’s making his great sales pitch. His profile even has the shit eating grin of one of those door to door salesmen.

This is a wonderful image.

Anyway, the product he’s trying to pitch is Ixis Naugus, who he claims is the true king of this fucking place anyway. Sally and Sonic are understandably shocked since they thought he was Mogul’s drooling pet at a casino somewhere.

Nicole instantly attacks him while he’s busy calling Nicole a threat and a monster. He demonstrates that her abilities won’t work on him thus, in a way, proving that he’s right about being able to stop her from committing her villainous, evil misdeeds. 

What truly gets me is how he says he’ll speak to the council after this to help bring them peace and security. 

I mean, sure, I guess you can try. Might as well, right? The council is the most wishy-washy, unreliable means of trying to acquire security in this city though.

Sally doesn’t really care about any of what he’s saying and sicks Sonic on him.

He could be doing better, we’ll say.

As the cool Sonic fighting stuff is happening, we then transition to the… very unintentionally funny (but perhaps not?) scene where this kingdom’s broken, weird as fuck system keeps them from doing the obvious right thing.

I’d blame the guards more for this but I find it hard to blame them for being confused. I often forget Elias is supposed to be king sometimes.

But then, Geoffrey here says “Who said anything about Elias?” so I guess that should be a no-brainer… 

The guards are confused. I get it. It doesn’t help their image that they’re so useless and come across as dumb to the reader despite that though. 

At the moment, Geoffrey’s words shouldn’t mean anything because they don’t consider Naugus the king. The Freedom Fighters have to take care of it now.

Antoine already doesn’t like Geoffrey. I believe these two had it rough a while back and even brings up that he stole the idea of a rebel underground from his father.

Geoffrey knees Antoine in the gut then does a DBZ instant transmission karate chop to Bunnie’s face, it looks like.

He tries to figure out the plan Sally has when Amy and Tails try to pull a pincer move and ends up kicking the air like a dope because he expected Sally to ambush him. 

Nicole instead just traps him in a bubble now that he’s stopped moving.

Geoffrey’s response to this is “Whoops!”

It’s pretty great.

The others aren’t really paying attention to how nonchalant he was about that and seriously think they’re just going to regroup so they can handle Naugus. 

Nope. ‘Fraid not.

I gotta say, even back in the day when I barely knew Geoffrey and didn’t know much of anything about Ixis Naugus or Ixis magic, this still surprised me. It was clear based on the art and the horrified reactions from Amy and Tails that he was being revealed as some sort of scary monster guy.

He’s a dude with magic powers, really, but the image of him Majin Buu steaming his way out of that ball is pretty intense.

We cut to Eggman suddenly, surprisingly enough (if you didn’t see the cover of #224) and he screams at Snively to be ready for the launch of something in 10 minutes before Lien-Da shows up to confirm that everything is a-go as well. I wonder what could be happening?! OOOO~! Suspense!

Well, I already know, but I’m still more excited for it than I was back then at least.

Meanwhile, Sonic really wants Naugus to hand over the cheat sheet that’ll allow him to beat him.

He is denied.

The council is about ready to deliberate and what to do about the “Nicole situation” and then Naugus does the Vince McMahon strut into the proceedings and shouts “KING ME, BITCH!” like it's the world’s goofiest game of checkers.

Sally and Geoffrey are fighting now and they’re calling each other names and what not.

Geoffrey says he’s always been loyal to the king and the kingdom, they just didn’t specify which king. Sally says he’s not making any sense and Geoffrey says she just doesn’t want him to and that she knows what he’s talking about.

At the time of my reading this back in the day, I had no clue what he meant.  

Sally changes the subject before I can get clarification and asks what Hershey would think of this. 

Geoffrey says “Not much” because she’s dead.

Bomb shell.

I know what the original plan for this was and I do find it incredibly unfortunate that this never came to fruition. Everything about what’s happening with Geoffrey here was, at the time, the most interesting thing I’d read in the comics for a while by that point. I really wanted to know more and see this thing to its natural conclusion. 

Instead, we don’t get a conclusion at all.

Inside the council building, Naugus is having a nice chat with everyone at the elevated table. 

All his words, honestly, make a great deal of sense. If he didn’t have the scary, drooling, monster face he’d probably be a lot more convincing. 

He brings up that Max swore the kingdom to him and thus the kingdom is his. Okay.

Again, I had no idea this had happened since at the point I originally read this, what happened before #142 was an enigma. I also didn’t see SatAM so… yeah, this was all lost on me.

But I liked the development. I wanted to see Naugus become the king because it feels like a cathartic way to see this place get the smattering it deserves.

Most of the council is surprised. Rotor and Hamlin are fucking pissed, which is great. They don’t like each other much but it makes sense that both of their reactions would just be total intolerance for this, at least initially.

Naugus continues talking and is somehow even more convincing. He says that Geoffrey told him everything that happened and that he doesn’t plan on overriding the will of the people or getting rid of the council. He also doesn’t hold a grudge against the Acorn line for keeping his seat warm… I mean, doing what they had to in these trying times.

I kind of wish he had said “in these uncertain times” just to parrot all of those embarrassing corporate commercials that are being made during this pandemic. This was years and years before that but damn it would have been funny.

Despite Naugus being (on the surface) really reasonable here, Elias refuses because of what he did to his shitty dad. The same shitty dad that treated him like shit, mind you, but you know… it’s still HIS shitty dad.

It is kind of funny how everything Naugus is saying here is the exact opposite of what Max was saying. Max rolled his ass away from Elias when he saw the council and yet Naugus is saying he doesn’t wish to disband it or go against the will of the people.

Naugus is also saying he doesn’t hold a grudge against the Acorn line while Max was ready to throw half the city in jail because they had a peaceful protest that one time.

Here’s the thing, I KNOW Naugus is evil and gets his kicks by basking in negative energy and all that jazz but it IS true that the things he’s saying and intending to do, upfront, are more appealing on the surface.

Were I someone looking for a better example of a king in comparison and I didn’t know Naugus was an evil wizard with a scary monster face I’d probably seriously consider him.

… That said, the dude is OBVIOUSLY evil. He absolutely should not be taking the throne.

Sonic bursts in and bonks him on the head, saying that Naugus forgot to crystalize the windows. He then says with a smile on his face that Geoffrey’s a confirmed traitor now and now they know why and he also asks for a magic sword to fight Naugus with so he can vi-pass his weird elements voodoo.

I’ll admit to there being a twinge of annoyance generated here with Sonic, AGAIN, going on about treason again. Even if, in this situation, it’s more outwardly understandable, I can’t separate myself from the part of me that just hates the idea of Sonic being concerned with it at all.

He’s the hero and he’ll do things heroes do for the sake of doing what’s right in my eyes. Both him and Elias are, thankfully, on the same page and he tosses his magic sword to Sonic so he can take care of him.

I’ll admit… I didn’t remember where this magic sword came from. I didn’t believe it’s the Sword of Acorns 2.0 or anything so I looked it up and saw that it was actually the Sword of Revealing Light, given to Elias by Sir Connery before he turned to dust.

So, with the last remaining memento of Sir Connery in hand, Sonic goes to fight the evil bad guy.

Hamlin is so excited for this. He really wanted to be a freedom fighter, you can tell.

I’ll have… opinions on how this shakes out next issue, most definitely. I remember what happening there pissing me off the most I’d ever been pissed off following the comics from month to month.

Not the most pissed off I EVER was. No, that was still House of Cards, but… I remember it being a pretty huge “conversation” on those shitty SEGA forums and a point of personal hatred on my part. 

Don't underestimate my ability to change my mind though. It's happening so often here that it's kind of astonishing.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #223: Special Zone House Call

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman

Eggman has always been one for taking gambles but man is he ever taking a huge one with this.

Dude uses every last watt of energy left over in the city to open a portal to the Special Zone and heads inside with Snively. He says they’ve only got one try at this which delighted me because it gave me Adventure 2 flashbacks.

They go inside and Feist offers his challenge to get the emerald. Eggman is happy to accept and shouts, “You’re on!”

Snively has to think about it and eventually does shout “You’re on!” too. 

It’s a pretty adorable scene if you ignore the bit just before it where Snively only accepted because he figured that if he won he could leave Eggman stranded here and go off to save Regina.

It’s a pretty short race but Eggman manages to handedly beat Snively and snag the emerald.

Then Feist tries to play emotional puppet master with Eggman of all people.

“BITCH! I came for the Chaos Emerald! Why would I leave it behind?! DO YOU LOGIC MUCH????!”

We don’t even see the scene where Feist hands the emerald to Eggman after being demanded he give it to him. We just cut to Eggman leaving with it in his possession, which is way funnier.

Then he does the best thing ever (amongst a ton of best things he’s ever done) and simply presses a button to bring Snively back since “No one denies Dr. Eggman anything”.

Bitch-Made Feist. That should be his new nickname.

I don’t envy the poor fucker who tries to go in there for another emerald after THIS. Holy shit, that has to be the worst one for him.

That final panel is of Snively just lying there, soaking in the fact that he not only lost to Eggman again but also had to suffer the crushing fear of being trapped in that place himself and ON TOP OF THAT was SAVED by Eggman too!

Jesus. That’s like a 3-Point Combo Breaker in the span of not very many pages. He might as well have shot him in the nose while he was on the fucking floor.

I’d love to see Sonic and Tails in this same exact situation. Tails doesn’t get the urge to prank Sonic often I’d assume but if he beat Sonic in that pod race and said “THE EMERALD OBVIOUSLY!” the look on Sonic’s face as he left him behind only to be brought back a second later by the zappy thing Eggman did probably would have been worth it.

He wouldn’t be so cruel but I’d get a kick out of it.

This was a great prelude to the disaster that’s about to come. Honestly, I found myself getting really excited for all the bits where they got to start talking this time. This is the part of the story where every conversation these characters start to have will begin to function as something more meaningful. It’s a great way to gauge just how strong the motivations driving the actions of some of these people truly are… and in some cases, what you find out may disappoint you. Or it may excite you. Depends on who you are and what you appreciate about these characters, really.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #224: Chaos and the Crown, Part Two: Total Authority

This cover is epic. It’s hard to make an Eggman centric cover and have it not be epic, of course, but holy moly does it not do a well done job of getting you excited? Well, from what I recall happening in this issue, I can’t say that I’m eager to see what’s in store since I’ll probably break into a controversial rant against our heroes here. Hopefully not. 

Oh boy. I’m actually a bit nervous. I hope having not read this in well over a decade changes my mind. Let’s do it then.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Ben Bates
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

Naugus tells Sonic to fuck off and Sonic responds by saying that he won’t because he’s ugly and he’s evil. Even though only one of those things matter, it’s enough for Naugus to get pissed and shoot fire at Sonic, claiming that the sword he has is fake and that he saw the real one get destroyed.

It doesn’t work because it’s the Sword of Light and it wards off magic.

The way the dialogue is done here is weird, admittedly. Sonic says he’s got the Sword of Acorns on the first page, prompting Naugus to say he saw it destroyed and that it’s a fake. When Sonic blocks the attack, then he amends his statement to say that Elias promoted the Sword of Light.

I didn’t quite know why it was said like that. Sonic doesn’t have the Sword of Acorns in his hands so why not call it the Sword of Light, I thought.

It took me a minute to realize that when Sonic said the Sword of Light was “promoted” he means it was dubbed the new Sword of Acorns.

That makes more sense. I just wish it were clarified a bit better because I recognize these two swords as different things. If Elias dubbed it the new Sword of Acorns after Sir Connery’s death then I don’t remember that. It was so long ago at this point.

Regardless, it doesn’t really matter because the fight these two are about to have is going to amount to nothing in a bit.

We cut back to Geoffrey who’s got this whole situation on lockdown really. Sally tells him that they still gave him the benefit of the doubt and Geoffrey says they’re too kind. Nice way to brush that off.

He then says that Naugus is going to meet with the council and make sure the people are finally safe.

So, by this point, Geoffrey has been pretty concise and made his intentions clear. He wishes to keep the people safe and all that jazz, he’s just going about it the wrong way. It’s a story we’ve seen before but done well you can get a lot of mileage out of it.

Uhm, so Sally kind of just ignores the subtext there and seriously tries to claim Geoffrey is a murderer. 

Geoffrey is understandably shocked by the accusation and the crazed look on Sally’s face with the sharp teeth doesn’t help.

Sally’s response that Geoffrey said so himself by just saying “Hershey’s dead” honestly, truly, legitimately made me really upset. Like it did back then it kind of does now too.

I mean, I get that she feels betrayed because Geoffrey wants to make the kingdom safe using underhanded means and the help of an evil wizard. I get that but there’s a big pitfall of logic she needed to leap over to come to the conclusion that Geoffrey voluntarily offering up the information that Hershey was dead meant he was actually saying he killed her.

It’s fucking weird. If he was truly evil enough to murder her, why wouldn’t he just ACTUALLY say that he killed her instead? I guess she was just overcome by the emotional turmoil of the situation but man it really does sting despite that.

He also has no reason to lie about this. He’s already betraying you guys in your eyes right? 

Geoffrey also informs them that she died fighting the Eggman Empire and that they’re currently belittling her sacrifice. 

I know what the arguments in favor of what Sally is saying here are going to be but it's extremely hard to care. I still don’t like that she jumped to that conclusion. Lacking in information or not, it just feels really scummy and cruel in a manner that Geoffrey himself hasn’t enacted just yet despite this situation.

As this is happening, Eggman plugs his Sonic-Blue Chaos Emerald into the core of his, now, mysterious device and immediately gets a strong power generating from it.

Things are going well for them. I’m so happy they’re having fun.

We then cut back to Sonic who is currently in the middle of a deep, philosophical and political debate with Ixis Naugus.

Can’t argue with that. 

Sonic tells Naugus that because he’s an evil wizard, no amount of “playing nice” is going to get them to listen to him. 

Naugus tells Sonic to butt out since it’s not up to him, launching him and the sword away… which is promptly grabbed by Elias and swung at Naugus in a few panels displaying how cool he can be himself!

The mention of Naugus having a family makes me wonder what Mama Naugus looks like. 

Of course, we know he’s only getting on one knee, holding out his hand, and offering to “PLEASE STOP THE FIGHTING” because he knows it won’t look good if he invades the castle and gores the King with his magic crystals.

That’s something that our dear friend Amadeus should have realized back in House of Cards. I still can’t get over how fucking shit that plan of his was.

Anyway, it’s now an appropriate time to talk about the fact that despite his position and use in the story amongst the council in the past, I’ve always liked Hamlin as a character.

I appreciated that there was just a member on the council who was there to serve the purpose of clear and obvious push-back to overcome in a manner that felt more “You’re SUPPOSED to hate this guy” as opposed to how the others collectively operated where it just felt like they were getting in the way with the excuse of being diplomatic.

I also really liked Dylan a lot because he seemed like the one who was always unsure of the bad shit the council tended to get up to. He didn’t really falter when it was time to make a good decision. I appreciated and empathized with it.

I also really like Rotor a lot. His standing as a Freedom Fighter did, unfortunately, get to a point where it felt redundant and thus, his new standing as a council member does tend to help elevate his status in the book a bit. 

Despite appreciating that the council has a mixture of people who should want to be help us out like Rotor and Uncle Chuck, those who teeter on the edge sometimes like Dylan, wildcards like Rosemary, and those who just want to be a fucking dick like Hamlin… I never really SAW them as something that felt like it was being capitalized on correctly.

As a collective, they were just in the fucking way.

However, we’ve reached a point where they’re intentionally being written as in the way not for the sake of slowing the plot to a crawl and making a situation concerning the main plot harder to get to… but to actually ADVANCE the main plot.

This IS the main plot. As such, when grape-flavored duck lady does this shit…

… it’s like, holy hell, that’s really interesting despite it being a very annoying thing to have happen for the heroes. 

Now, I should clarify… it’s interesting because she’s wrong, in my opinion.

I don’t think Dylan, Hamlin, and Rotor should have been stopped from charging in to defend the city because it matches what I’ve been saying this entire time about how I prefer my Sonic Heroes to operate.

They see a bad guy, they take him down; that’s it.  Fuck the council, fuck authority, and fuck the law. That’s how Sonic (and yes, even Tails, especially in SA2 when he fucked up G.U.N’s fleet of robots on Prison Island to break his friend out of prison) operate.

They didn’t consider due process or whatever. Who cares? “There’s always a lot of police around when you don’t need ‘em” Sonic says.

However, the fact that there’s an obstacle here to stop that from happening generates conflict in a way that’s beneficial to this politically charged plot. It wouldn’t generate conflict for a plot about Enerjak returning and destroying everything. All sitting and waiting for the council to give Sally the okay to go out with her team did for that story was waste time.

What’s even better is that when Duck lady tells Hamlin that she’ll bring him up on charges for doing this, Hamlin gets mad at for this and she has to remind him that he set up the precedent with Sally back in #197. It’s hilarious because it does lend credence to the fact that he was clearly more concerned with giving Sally a hard time back then if he’s willing to do this himself to protect the kingdom… but at the same time I sort of, kind of admire him for it. XD

Honestly, this whole PAGE delighted the fuck out of me! 

I HAD SO MUCH FUN READING THIS PAGE YOU GUYS! YOU HAVE NO IDEA!

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT FIGHT! FIGHT!

SOMEBODY THROW IN THE STEEL CHAIR!

I absolutely lost my shit when Rosemary was like “Weeeeelllll… the constitution doesn’t specify WHO has to be king” and Rotor flips the fuck out with the anime intensity of a 1000 suns, popping up beside her.

It’s so great!

Now, to be fair, I did notice that glowing emerald stick and the bad juju emanating from it in Naugus’ hand. He’s no doubt using his powers to bring their negative aspirations to the surface here. 

However, the fact of the matter is (and this is what I love about Naugus’ powers here) is that he doesn’t create feelings that weren’t there. This is all stuff that’s under the surface already. How much of this is his fault, I don’t exactly know and that’s wonderful.

Look at how steamed Uncle Chuck is. Look at how Rosemary narrows her eyes as she responds to what he has to say. It’s so great that a person like this is Tails’ mom too. This is so fascinating. I’m in love with this issue so far.

Eggman asks what stage one for the launch is at and is told 15%. Eggman says to begin the countdown now. Snively is about to ask if they should wait until stage one is at a higher percentage but Eggman the Impatient is too excited and tells him to shut up. They begin the countdown and we see it happening on the next couple of pages.

Geoffrey is outside jobbing Tails and putting him into a chokehold. Sally tells Geoffrey to stop because if he says he’s innocent and that Naugus is in the right then he should stand down and let justice take its course.

Geoffrey… agrees and stops fighting. Nice.

Sally then goes over to Nicole who is scooping up the crystal that is scattered along the ground and laments at the fact that these nanites are fucking dead.

Yeah, Naugus’ magic is some freaky shit. Normally they can be rebuilt but he straight up changed these ones. She can’t fix these. 

Scary.

Even scarier is how the citizens witness this and start talking about how Naugus COULD actually protect them because his magic can destroy the nanites.

Nicole is just shell-shocked man. It’s hard not to feel sorry for her.

Also, that conversation at the bottom panel is interesting. Someone asks if Geoffrey’s a hero and someone else points out that he worked for Max so maybe he’s right?

It is funny that they’re saying that Geoffrey working for Max means he’s trustworthy which… it doesn’t. It would mean the exact opposite as far as I’m concerned. However, the citizens aren’t that in the know about the King’s machinations so it makes sense that they’d consider that to be a plus in a sense. 

What's also hilarious is how no one thinks it's odd that Geoffrey, despite working for King Max, is firmly on the side of Naugus being the king and not Max's son Elias. God, I feel so sorry for Elias as well.

We then cut back to the council scene where Sonic is getting in on the arguing too. He’s stopped fighting to complain about the fact that they’ve stopped fighting which is the kind of irony that I can only appreciate with a chef’s kiss.

Hamlin, despite being all for doing what Sonic did earlier, can’t fucking handle the idea that his authority is being challenged again and thus his ideals to protect the kingdom are overridden by personal vendettas yet again. Never change.

However, the absolute BEST part is the bottom panel where Naugus is just standing by Elias, smiling, and saying “Hey now, doesn’t anyone think poor baby Elias should have a say in what happens to the crown?”

Meanwhile, Elias is standing there looking all sad. It’s almost like those clothes on him double as a baby romper or something.

By now Elias’ authority has been undermined so much that a scene like this with Naugus reminding everyone fighting over the seat of power that Elias is technically the king feels so deliciously appropriate. Naugus might be a literal troll but he’s the best one ever made. 

Sonic begs Elias to not consider it but Elias asks Naugus if he will honor the council if he steps down. Naugus already said that he would directly to Elias’ face but he replies that he seeks only the crown. He will honor the council and the will of the people… and then slyly says, “Just like SOME Freedom Fighters should.”

That look of “That’s right! I’m SO much better than you right now. Who’s the cock of the walk in this room? Not fucking you, bitch!”

Sonic snatches the sword from Elias’ hand and is adamant about shoving it right through Naugus’ neck.

Elias tries to stop Sonic because (and thankfully Elias has a more understandable point than the other council members here) he just wants the conflict to end peacefully.

Fact of the matter is, they can’t really risk having yet another cataclysmic event happen on their doorstep with the people so restless. It’s understandable that Elias would prefer Sonic just chill out and wait for him to think of a plan to remove him without riling up the ire of the people… especially if Naugus is intending to at least play at honoring the council and the will of the people (for now). 

Elias doesn’t realize how right he is either because there’s a countdown to ANOTHER cataclysmic event that’s about to happen ANYWAY that he isn’t aware of.

Sonic is completely certain of what he wishes to do… I think? He wastes a lot of time talking about it instead of just doing it which gives Naugus enough time to play the “BUT YOU’RE COMMITTING TREASON” card!

I hated this SO much back in the day. 

I couldn’t tell you how vitriolic and angry I was reading this part. I didn’t care that the council and the king were open to it. I just cared that Sonic gave a shit about the fact that he’d be committing treason to do this.

Again, I was used to the version of Sonic that would just do what he thought was right and damn the consequences if people didn’t like it. It makes sense that this version of Sonic, who has been shown to care more about his standing among the people, would be worried about being called a traitor for fighting this hard to go against the uh… “will” of the council and the kingdom.

But that was my opinion back then. What do I think of this moment now?

Well, truthfully, I still don’t like it really… but I understand it a bit more at the very least. It’s not making me frothing mad like it did back in the day. I pointed out that despite all of Sonic’s chatter and talk about the fact that he was totally going to fight Naugus off… he didn’t really do it. I mean, he did AT FIRST. They totally were just fighting, which I appreciate, but then he stopped when he realized other people didn’t agree. My opinion back in the day was that he shouldn’t care if other people agreed and just do the thing anyway. 

After all, this was a guy who shrugged at kicking a king off his throne and said “I can’t be the good guy all the time” in Black Knight. I had seen this situation before done the exact opposite way in the games so compartmentalizing the fact that these were two different Sonics was a lot tougher for me.

I remember that being a point of contention not just among me either. We were kind of annoyed on those old forums that he was wasting time trying to talk people down instead of just immediately doing the hero thing. Even when he grabs the sword from Elias he just points it at Naugus and keeps talking.

However, on the flip side, Naugus isn’t TRYING to fight. That’s the first thing to consider here. In fact, he didn’t attack anyone. Every time he’s landed a hit on someone it’s been an act of self-defense. Both Sonic and Elias attacked him first and he keeps insisting that’s not what he’s here to do. One could argue that it was appropriate for them to do so since he broke into the castle to say all this but it’s still important to think about it. 

So yeah, Sonic insisting that’s what HE wants to do CAN come off a bit like he’s being an asshole.  Especially after Elias tried to give him a rational reason for why they should at least play along for now. 

I’m more open to the idea of this being a story beat because it’s interesting. While it’s hard to push down the part of myself that expects Sonic to just beat Naugus up with all the things the others are saying not registering it’s also important to note that Sonic doesn’t ever fully back down here either.

Yes, it’s true, he’s not doing the thing BUT he’s still resisting. I think that’s the thing that me and a lot of the other people who got angry at this didn’t consider hard enough. 

There were people who were pissed at the council too but I don't really remember those arguments. Hating the council was just a given so there was nothing special to pay attention to at the time.

As Eggman’s latest monstrosity takes flight, Sonic ironically says that if it were Eggman standing here they wouldn’t be giving him such a hard time.

Naugus chimes in by saying that Julian is his enemy too. Sonic gets angry at him and tells him to shut up in three different ways.

Elias tries to grab the sword from Sonic and begs him to please let the government handle this government matter. Sonic is resistant to it. He’s not even letting Elias, the king, take his sword back. 

Yeah, you got to give Sonic that at least. It definitely was not as bad as we were making it out to be. 

Before they can finish their squabbling, the ground shakes.

Sonic, thinking it was a magically generated earthquake, blames it on Naugus but Naugus says it wasn’t him.

These two are great. They’ll make quite the splash when they finally get married.

Anyway, they head outside and we get a bunch of shots of the people within the city looking on in horror as the latest in Eggman’s evil machinations rises over the horizon.

Say hello to the new, actually egg-shaped, DEATH EGG.

It’s smaller and sleeker and has a very cool redesign. 

Although, I must say that because of what I perceived it’s size to be here it felt a little less intimidating as a result. I still have that feeling now as a matter of fact but perhaps I’ll feel differently as things move along. Lord knows I’ve been surprised by the changes to my thoughts on a lot of these things so far.

THIS was an excellent issue. I love how entertained I was by that. There is nothing I love more (when it’s done right at least) than witnessing a bunch of people who are supposed to be on the same side arguing amongst one another while our villain stands off to the side with the best shit eating grin he can muster on his face to either watch or chime in with the occasional snide comment every once in a while. It was great. It hit all the buttons it needed to for me and made perfect utilization of the council. That’s only happened… once before for me and that was the issue that was referenced in this issue with #197.

I love it when the council makes conflict happen for the story in a way that feels more organic and not in ways that just slow things to a crawl or make things needlessly complicated in ways that aren’t fun. I love complications in the plot but not when it’s pointless. This was a fantastic way of going about it. 

On top of that, the looming, oncoming threat of Eggman as exemplified by the countdown in the background just made the tension spike. Nothing better than to be in the thick of something bad only to know at the back of your mind that something worse is on it’s way. 

It’s great. As I keep saying, I didn’t expect my opinion to flip-flop so much on these once hated developments of mine but ten years and knowledge of what the book was like before really does do a lot to transform your state of mind. I still have my reservations on Sonic but even then I didn’t recall him putting up that much of a fight. That was probably due to my own opinion on what he should have done making the reality of what he actually did worse when it wasn’t necessary. 

This has been a fascinating experience. I’m so glad I did this, you guys.

[Kuzu]

Guys, kino is happening really soon...oh man, you have to read Genesis again...

[Rienasketch]

On 12/5/2021 at 1:54 PM, SkyHorizon said:

Agree 100% with you here. Really interesting concept. Citizens are ungrateful assholes but, hey, that's what happens in real life.

 

 

Its not simply a matter of being grateful or not. I dont think NICOLE should have been cut off, but Frankly, giving her that much control of the city when she can't adequately protect it from attack was stupid and irresponsible. If you had to worry about your own city attacking you and your government not doing anything because the system was their friend you'd be pissed too.

Also, NICOLE having too much access to people's privacy was also unsettling.

I feel like the writing kind of flopped a little at this point. Because rather than push legislature to protect both the citizens and NICOLE, the protagonists reaction is to just.... ignore the problem? That the citizens are scared and NICOLE is suffering for it? Aren't these the people your protecting and isn't NICOLE your friend, guys? If NICOLE couldnt protect the city on her own why not.... just push for others to help her pick up the slack and make the city less nanite-dependent so she wouldnt be pressed do as much on her own?  It was such a simple solution that I felt was ignored for the plot convenience of telling a story the author deemed more interesting.

  

On 12/13/2021 at 5:43 PM, SkyHorizon said:

 

Not to justify Mina (which I always thought was being an absolute ungrateful bitch here), I think is characterization was brilliant and perfectly believable. Singers often talk politics, so, honestly... why not?

 

Well for starters how was Mina being ungrateful? She wasn't asking for NICOLE to be put offline just that there needed to be more done about protecting the city. And if you read earlier in the issue where she's talking to Ash about her feelings she told him she TRIED talking to Sonic about it and NOT making the issue public, but that he brushed her off. So what was she supposed to do if she tried to keep it classy and the people who could make changes, didn't want to listen?

 

  

On 12/13/2021 at 5:43 PM, SkyHorizon said:

 

NOW, ABOUT NICOLE!

I've always found absolutely absurd how none ever pointed out that NICOLE CREATED THE CITY. People wanted to kick her out from her own creation. I mean, seriously??? They didn't like Nicole's presence, they just had to go out and build a city of their own. Whew, I said it, finally! The citizens of New Mobotropolis are SO FUCKING STUPID!

 

If you're going by that logic, its only going to open a can of bigger worms. For example, yes NICOLE created the city, but Eggman was the one who created the nanites which also made the city. Does that mean people should let him take over and reign hell over said city because they're using his nanites to operate it? Does that also not make the Freedom Fighters 'selfish and ungrateful' because they're keeping him out of HIS creation?

....Y'see where this is getting?

Furthermore its not like people didn't initially want to let NICOLE run the city. Its the fact her inability to control herself or the nanites under certain situations made her a security threat not just to everyone else but again, herself. Whats the point in trying to claim she should have the right to own the city if someone else can easily just strip her of her own autonomy and take it away from her? This is also why I'm side-eyeing the hell out of the Freedom Fighters as well. Forget the citizens for a second, because as their friend they should have been working to do more to protect her. Like, ya'll saw that Khan's ring could protect him against the Iron Queen and didn't think to try and get NICOLE that protection as well because you care for her safety? Lets be real, the Freedom Fighters weren't very smart in that regard either. All of this could have been avoided if they hadn't made such blatantly stupid mistakes tbh.

 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

8 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

That look of “That’s right! I’m SO much better than you right now. Who’s the cock of the walk in this room? Not fucking you, bitch!”

I’m stealing that for my next work…

[SkyHorizon]

11 hours ago, Rienasketch said:

If you had to worry about your own city attacking you and your government not doing anything because the system was their friend you'd be pissed too.

Yeah... except that it wouldn't really be "my" city. New Mobotropolis citizens are more like "guests" to Nicole who rightfully owns the city. Man, she built it, keep it going, not to say that she saved the life of all of the citizens.

Your reasoning would be right if the citizens had built their own city and THEN an AI had been built in it. That's not the case.

11 hours ago, Rienasketch said:

Also, NICOLE having too much access to people's privacy was also unsettling.

 

Nothing to object, here. Then again, if people didn't like it they were free to relocate.

11 hours ago, Rienasketch said:

Well for starters how was Mina being ungrateful? She wasn't asking for NICOLE to be put offline just that there needed to be more done about protecting the city.

Nicole saved her life, offered her a new home. Mina, instead of talking to her, she publicly portrayed her as a monster WHILE she was there. The brutality in what she did to her is astounding. You really think that if she would've talked about it directly with her she would have shut her down?

 

11 hours ago, Rienasketch said:

And if you read earlier in the issue where she's talking to Ash about her feelings she told him she TRIED talking to Sonic about it and NOT making the issue public, but that he brushed her off.

I re-read the entire Issue 219 and... no, you must misremember because she NEVER said anything like that. She never tried to talk about it with Sonic.

11 hours ago, Rienasketch said:

For example, yes NICOLE created the city, but Eggman was the one who created the nanites which also made the city.

That was a stupid objection:

1. Eggman is a criminal, the city could be TAKEN from him without even needing to discuss about it as a "criminal requisition".

2. Eggman (or better ADAM) abandoned it. When you abandon something, you legally lost right to it.

So... no, your objection doesn't make any sense. It's like saying that when you arrest criminals you can't take away their weapons because they belong to them 

 

...That said, I don't think that Mina is wrong in her concerns. She was just wrong in:

1. The way she approached the matter (as a total bitch)

2. The fact that she forgot that she owned her life to Nicole and that she is a GUEST to her.

Nicole is such a good character that she would be the first to be ok with trying to find something to limit her control. But in the case she wasn't, she had every right to say: "you don't like my city? go build another one!"

[Rienasketch]

9 minutes ago, SkyHorizon said:

Yeah... except that it wouldn't really be "my" city. New Mobotropolis citizens are more like "guests" to Nicole who rightfully owns the city. Man, she built it, keep it going, not to say that she saved the life of all of the citizens.

 

If NICOLE wanted to have her own place, even under that logic it would still be unethical to invite people in under the pretense they have certain rights they don't actually have. Thats like saying it was ok for Eggman to try and pressure the Overlander citizens into roboticization because it was acknowledged by everyone he "owned" the city. Or that because a business owner creates an establishment its ok to treat people in a way that was opposite of what was advertised and agreed upon. Seriously who the hell would want to live in a place where the trees and your homes could grab and kill you at any moment? NICOLE made the choice not to own the city. She chose to abide by certain rules when helping create it so she has to deal with the consequences of endangering others AND HERSELF when she can't control herself anymore. I'm not saying I agree with the notion that NICOLE be essentially killed -- I found that extreme but for the Freedom Fighters not to care enough to do ANYTHING? Not even just to protect their friend? I feel like this issue goes even beyond just Mina, the citizens or even NICOLE. Thats not to say the FF are bad people but if you're going to argue Mina mishandled things and was a "bitch" for it, they weren't any better than she or the citizens were.

 

 

27 minutes ago, SkyHorizon said:

Nicole saved her life, offered her a new home. Mina, instead of talking to her, she publicly portrayed her as a monster WHILE she was there. The brutality in what she did to her is astounding. You really think that if she would've talked about it directly with her she would have shut her down?

 

NICOLE may have saved her life and offered her a home, that doesnt make it okay to abuse citizens. And I'm not saying NICOLE would do that willingly but what good is claiming NICOLE saved her life when the Iron Queen can just take that away from her and everyone else? Nobody agreed to come on the premise she could use those nanites willy nilly to harm people. And whats worse, is that because of this now Eggman has even MORE legionized grunts he can utilize.

And I'm sorry but if NICOLE is everywhere and has access to everything, she already knew Mina's sentiments and the feelings of the citizens. Before the concert even started NICOLE was in a disguise because she already KNEW how people felt and decided not to engage the public about it. That was her choice. If she willfully ignored it along with the Freedom Fighters, how do you expect MOST PEOPLE to take that? That they don't care, even if that isn't true. And judging from character's like Sonic's reaction when NICOLE is TELLING him these things to his face, he really didn't care. He blew NICOLE's concerns off when SHE tried to talk to him about it! Honestly, he became one of my least favorite characters in this arc because he showed no sense of perspective, empathy or emotional connection with average people at all. And then trivialized not just their problems but NICOLE's concerns even when she tried to open up.

 

42 minutes ago, SkyHorizon said:

I re-read the entire Issue 220 and... no, you must misremember because she NEVER said anything like that. She never tried to talk about it with Sonic.

 

 

Mina essentially says Sonic was aware of what was going on and how people felt. I guess you can argue that maybe she didn't speak to him specifically but if this was his and the FF's attitude when other people approached him on the subject or made their feelings clear what difference would it make? EVEN NICOLE tried talking to Sonic about it and he brushed HER off.

 

50 minutes ago, SkyHorizon said:

That was a stupid objection:

1. Eggman is a criminal, the city could be TAKEN from him without even needing to discuss about it as a "criminal requisition".

2. Eggman (or better ADAM) abandoned it. When you abandon something, you legally lost right to it.

So... no, your objection doesn't make any sense. It's like saying that when you arrest criminals you can't take away their weapons because they belong to them 

 

A criminal by the Kingdom of Acorn's standards but not his own.  We can argue this on a moral level, but as far as the Acorns and Eggman are concerned they're both criminals of one another's territories.

Also are you saying that when NICOLE is engaging in criminal activity -- even if its not by her own will, people can't take away her 'weapons' when she agreed to abide by the rules...?

 

1 hour ago, SkyHorizon said:

2. The fact that she forgot that she owned her life to Nicole and that she is a GUEST to her.

Nicole is such a good character that she would be the first to be ok with trying to find something to limit her control. But in the case she wasn't, she had every right to say: "you don't like my city? go build another one!"

 

NICOLE DOES NOT OWN the city. She made the choice to give that up when she agreed to abide by the Kingdom of Acorn -- and by extension the council's rules. She made the choice for people to enter on conditions they had rights. Furthermore this is like saying that a construction worker or someone who helped physically build a city has the right to treat people like shit or who gets to live safely because they had a hand in its creation and thereby own everyone in it.

[SkyHorizon]

3 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

it would still be unethical to invite people in under the pretense they have certain rights they don't actually have.

Can you quote the issue when Nicole said that "they have certain rights"?

 

4 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

NICOLE made the choice not to own the city.

Again, can you quote the Issue when she took that decision?

 

5 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

if you're going to argue Mina mishandled things and was a "bitch" for it, they weren't any better than she or the citizens were.

I already explained why Mina was a bitch. It's something else entirely, here's a copy-paste of my reasoning:

 

...That said, I don't think that Mina is wrong in her concerns. She was just wrong in:

1. The way she approached the matter (as a total bitch)

2. The fact that she forgot that she owned her life to Nicole and that she is a GUEST to her.

 

6 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

NICOLE may have saved her life and offered her a home, that doesnt make it okay to abuse citizens.

I agree. Too bad she never made something like that...  

8 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

And judging from character's like Sonic's reaction when NICOLE is TELLING him these things to his face, he really didn't care.

..or he simply underestimated the situation?

10 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

Mina essentially says Sonic was aware of what was going on and how people felt

I like how you read: "Sonic says Nicole is back to normal" (he announced it in Issue 211) and you interpreted it as: "Sonic was aware of what was going on". Lol

11 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

EVEN NICOLE tried talking to Sonic about it and he brushed HER off.

THIS ONE is a valid objection. But again, at the time I just took it as "Sonic underestimated the situation".

 

12 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

A criminal by the Kingdom of Acorn's standards but not his own.

...are you serious? 

Aside from you actually involuntarily trying to justify the actions of "Robo-Hitler"... New Mobotropolis fall under the rule of the Acorn Kingdom so... the reasoning still applies.

15 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

engaging in criminal activity -- even if its not by her own will

That's precisely the difference between Nicole and a criminal... and why she is not.

16 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

She made the choice to give that up

Again, can you quote the Issue where this was stated? I'm not trying to pestering you, I just think you have taken some assumptions that are nowhere to be found in the book.

18 minutes ago, Rienasketch said:

this is like saying that a construction worker or someone who helped physically build a city has the right to treat people like shit or who gets to live safely because they had a hand in its creation and thereby owns everyone in it

This is bs, sorry. You're mixing up the builder and the owner. Nicole ALSO builded it, but mainly she is the owner. That and:

1. She never treated anyone like shit

2. She never "owned" anyone in it.

***

That said, I'm sorry if I'm being too harsh sometimes, I just like to discuss with someone who doesn't share my same POV, it's stimulating . In the end I think we agree on most of the stuff behind, meaning that in my opinion Mina's concern is right, that it was a real problem, that the Council (not the FF, not their role) underestimated and that it needed to be discussed.

My main concern is that Mina got to the problem in the CRUELEST AND WORST POSSIBLE WAY. 

...well, and then I still think that the city belongs to Nicole, but I also think that it was more then rightful to actually discuss the matter directly with her. More like: "would you agree to have some limitations on your abilities" instead of "BANISHMENT!"

[SanPolo4389]

Oh boy......we're coming up to that arc, where shit hits the fan hard......siiiiiiiigh this is going to be a bumpy ride

.

[Rienasketch]

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

Can you quote the issue when Nicole said that "they have certain rights"?

 

The fact the kingdom of Acorn and the council was allowed to both exist and have its election and democratic process is an omission to those rules. Sorry but NICOLE had every opportunity to join the council, assert her position as a ruler of her "own city" or say she didn't agree with it if she wanted to have a voice in government and was interested in making social changes. Unlike Sally, she's a complex A.I system that could be in two places at once. So there's really no excuse. She's literally all over the city at the same time the Freedom Fighters are going on missions.

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

1. The way she approached the matter (as a total bitch)

2. The fact that she forgot that she owned her life to Nicole and that she is a GUEST to her.

 

1) I'm not understanding how she was being a bitch when none of the other characters seemed like they wanted to do anything about NICOLE being a danger to others and herself and unintentionally aiding Eggman by sacrificing to him their citizens.

 

2) Owing her life to NICOLE doesnt mean anything if NICOLE herself no longer has a life of her own because someone else is controlling her and making her a danger to everyone else. Thats like saying, if someone rescues you they have the right to harm you, whether they mean it or not. Also, again, NICOLE made the choice to let other people govern the kingdom and stay out of politics.

 

3) And lastly, while the Freedom Fighters were off getting support from outside the city, it was MINA who was left cleaning up after NICOLE, trying to rescue as many citizens from legionization as possible. She was one of the only people Freedom Fighting within the city.  Considering the work she had to put in to potentially risk her own life, that "debt" is more than paid.

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

I like how you read: "Sonic says Nicole is back to normal" (he announced it in Issue 211) and you interpreted it as: "Sonic was aware of what was going on". Lol

 

Sonic never publicly announced anything. So its pretty much implied Mina spoke to him about it off panel. Also, why would he have to reassure people she's back to normal if he wasn't aware on some level they were scared of her?

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

THIS ONE is a valid objection. But again, at the time I just took it as "Sonic underestimated the situation".

 

 

I really don't care if he underestimated the situation. The fact he could easily shrug people's trauma off like and even brush NICOLE off when she's TELLING him she's afraid was extremely insensitive. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't have minded it as much if it were written to be an intentional flaw in Sonic's character that could have interestingly tied into Scourge's observations of him. It would have been good opportunity to showcase Sonic's development as a character and potentially his need to branch out a little more from the Freedom Fighters. And give Sonic perhaps the understanding that not everyone can cope with problems the same ways he does. But they kept trying to validate how he was acting and making like the citizens were completely in the wrong for how they were feeling. So I guess its not so much how Sonic acted that got to me, but how it was handled.

 

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

...are you serious? 

Aside from you actually involuntarily trying to justify the actions of "Robo-Hitler"... New Mobotropolis fall under the rule of the Acorn Kingdom so... the reasoning still applies.

 

 

I'm not validating anyone. I'm just saying from an objective standpoint, Eggman's the owner of his territory and that within it that would make Sonic and anyone affiliated with him criminals under "his" rules. Thats not to say we have to like the fact he's the owner or agree with his rules but that no, the Freedom Fighters couldn't just take Eggman's land (even if they wanted to argue the Acorns owned it first) without serious consequences. Especially since Eggman himself has allies throughout the world as well they would have to contend with.

Also you're missing the point. I was saying it WASN'T okay for Eggman to lure people into a city and then try and trick people into being Roboticized. Even if he made the city from scratch or not.

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

That's precisely the difference between Nicole and a criminal... and why she is not.

I never said NICOLE was a criminal. There is a difference in NICOLE being forced to engage in criminal activity and someone actually being a criminal themselves. My point was, just because she isn't a criminal doesn't mean people should ignore the dangerous activities she may be forced to engage in again if they don't think of something to protect the city.

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

This is bs, sorry. You're mixing up the builder and the owner. Nicole ALSO builded it, but mainly she is the owner.

 

Thats like saying because you made something and gave the copyright away to someone you can still control what you technically made despite agreeing that you didn't anymore. Furthermore, you JUST said that if someone abandons creative control over something its within another person's right to take ownership of it. Thats exactly what the Kingdom of Acorn and the Council did when NICOLE stepped away from taking part in the government.

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

1. She never treated anyone like shit

2. She never "owned" anyone in it.

 

She never treated anyone like shit or acted like she owned them "willingly". But if she were to be taken control of again that could easily become the case, even if NICOLE herself doesn't want to do those things.

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:14 PM, SkyHorizon said:

That said, I'm sorry if I'm being too harsh sometimes, I just like to discuss with someone who doesn't share my same POV, it's stimulating . In the end I think we agree on most of the stuff behind, meaning that in my opinion Mina's concern is right, that it was a real problem, that the Council (not the FF, not their role) underestimated and that it needed to be discussed.
 

 

Its ok I'm not mad. But to address some things you said, the the council knew what was going on but wasnt doing anything, and wasn't going to act unless there was a strong demand for them to do so. Furthermore most of these characters are affiliated with NICOLE. Why would she think their response would be any different from the Freedom Fighters when they made no prior moves to pass any laws?

Also, Mina spoke to Sonic because she didn't have access to the council like he did, since this situation happened before her mother joined it. Sonic was the closest person she knew who could talk to them and NICOLE about the situation or give her any idea as to how those in power were thinking. But he chose to do nothing. So I get annoyed when people like Sally tell Mina she needs to "take responsibility" when none of them did, even with NICOLE expressing concern. And on that note, NICOLE willfully ignored Mina practicing to make a concert about her where she could see her, and did not not think to intervene, talk to Mina herself, or tell Sonic and Sally, The Council or a Freedom Fighter what was about to happen. The concert could have been avoided entirely if NICOLE just spoke up about it, because there's no way she couldn't have known about it or what Mina was saying about her. Mina did more due diligence to address the issue where others like Sonic, Sally and even NICOLE failed who just thought they could get away with willfully ignoring everything until it "died down".

But to be fair, I think the fact NICOLE didn't tell Sonic or Sally, or anyone what Mina was planning to do when she had no problem warning Sonic an co. about what Amadeus was doing to speaks volumes about the number of plotholes in this arc. And on that end I feel like to a degree NICOLE was written OOC for the sake of the plot and to amp up drama that probably wouldn't have naturally existed. As well as to a degree Sally. Because I also couldn't see her not looking for a way for both NICOLE and her citizens to be protected. I mean, she was just in a relationship with Khan and it didn't occur to her to maybe.... ask him about the ring he used to protect himself so they could give that to NICOLE..? Why was Sally's intelligence scaled down so dramatically? And another glaring example of how ham-fisted this plot was, was... How did Naugus even get INTO the city without NICOLE even realizing he was there? Why not utilize a disguise? And how did Naugus and Geoffrey know exactly when the concert was taking place and what it would even be about? It made no sense.

So I can only be but so annoyed with the characters when a good portion of them were written OOC to spur drama that wouldn't have naturally happened.