Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[SanPolo4389]

Hope your ready for a saga that lasted for 3 years since it’s going to be a long one. And that’s also including Worlds unite. 

[jungle_penguins]

In a way, Eggman really did win, the universe wasn't shaped to his exact image, but he wiped out a lot of existences. Of course, this is just the author's way of saying the reboot is an absolute decision with no going back, but still.  

That is a fun takeaway from Shadow the Hedgehog. Forces has world ending stakes like Shadow's game, but the latter does a much better job at conveying the conflict, despite the maximum number of characters pretending to shoot each other on screen (system limitations) being much less than Forces' robots. GUN's implied ongoing conflict with the Eggman Empire being partly interrupted by the Black Arms, and all 3 factions + whatever Sonic's friends making sense of the chaos was nice. Also it helps that each stage in Shadow's game is slightly more substantial than each Forces' stage. Honestly I use any excuse to talk about this mess of a game. Would really like to see Flynn try an attempt at retelling the story but better.

If there's one immediate thing I don't like about Shadow Fall, it's the new designs shown. The GUN soldier designs, they fit the Sonic world more than the 2005 designs, and have about the same amount of originality (which is to say, pretty uninspired), but for me feel extremely off here. Black Death, looks a bit too odd even for the low standards of the Black Arms, same with Eclipse, but I like both of their characterizations.

The revived Black Doom and Mephiles sounds amazing [I swear I'm the only one who finds Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) to be good companion pieces to each other in regards to Shadow's character arc, both villains say the exact same thing to Shadow, one focused on the past, the other with the future] but am glad it was rejected in the end, because Black Death and Eclipse are much better for this kind of story.

I really like Shadow's very brief discussion with Omega here. Omega's response is unhelpful, but you can see Shadow still trying to figure things out about himself. If Team Dark really has to not be friends : ( then these brief snippets of talk are at least something.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

12 hours ago, QZX343 said:

I remember not caring much for the Black Arms back then because I found them boring and dull, but after reading this arc I actually found them interesting, mostly due to Eclipse and Black Death, to a lesser extent.

You too, huh?

I didn’t care for Eclipse than I did him serving as a counter to Shadow, and I was one who once thought it the Pre-Genesis Wave staying as far away from the Black Arms as possible was one of its better points. Come the way they were handled here after World’s Collide and I had less of a problem with them than expected—nowadays, I think they’d be better retooled into something else, but weirder things have happened.

[Razule]

Was the Genesis Wave juice shortage supposed to explain why Amy and Sally aren't phased at all by the family they lost?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

4 minutes ago, Razule said:

Was the Genesis Wave juice shortage supposed to explain why Amy and Sally aren't phased at all by the family they lost?

In a way, yes. 

A pretty anti-climactic, but it’s one of those things where it’s damned no matter how you would’ve done it given everything that lead up to it.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Alright, I think it's time for some catch-up, starting with finishing up @Dr. Detective Mike's Worlds Collide re-read. Thoughts:

Worlds Collide #6:

-As I said before, Tracy had a really weird effect where his Mega Man art styles off awful, and then progressively every issue, it got better and better, until it was pretty decent by the time we got to #8. I still think the colouring really hurts it though. I cannot understate just how much I cannot stand the colouring in this era, especially when Act 1 and Act 3's colouring is really on point.

-Can confirm that Wily was right to prioritise Proto Man, at least a bit - he's a character that tends to hide out in the background, perform stealth missions, unravel things from within, etc - Wily's learned from experience that Proto Man has a very big habit of leaving Rock to take his attention, then dismantle things when Wily doesn't expect it. Good attention to detail, it shows this time-jumped Wily is learning from mistakes and is determined not to have things get screwed.

-I have absolutely no idea if it's intentional or not - but when Sonic is being attacked by Espio, and he manages to get out the "fine, you can be sting--" - there actually is a Mega Man X boss called Sting Chameleon he's probably referencing there.

-In fairness to Vector...at least this went better than the next time he would see Charmy as a type of robot...

-I actually find Sonic calling Mega Man out here pretty ironic, given that Movie Sonic would then come along and have "i will use my power to save my friends!" as one of his character traits.

-I really still can't help but point out just how well Wily and Eggman are when they're together. Like it would've been really easy for them to just go with the tired shtick of "since they're both egocentric evil assholes, their alliance would be an extremely uneasy one" but they completely avoided that by realising the simple fact that Eggman and Wily are exactly the kind of people who would fall in love with themselves, so Eggman and Wily being similar in so many attributes would just help give them a really strong friendship, until their selfish sides and how far they'd go with their villainy begins to show. I could just see this song with the two:

-Having Snively locked up off panel was just a nice little visual touch, even if it's pretty lame this would be the last time we saw this particular plot point before the reboot would wash it away. If things weren't so game centric, it would've been fun to have him get busted out or something as a last send off before the game things kicked off. I wonder if he and Dr. Light talked while imprisoned lol.

Worlds Collide #7:

-The Tron vibes are not unintended - the cover is actually based off the cover to Mega Man 10:

At this point, part of the gag they were going for was leaning into obviously bad 80s game covers, so Tron was a huge inspiration for that as one of the big 80s sci-fi cyber movies.

-Interestingly (and i may be mistaken) - I'm fairly certain that Mega Man and Rush sprite on the variant cover is original. MM7 is the closest style to what's depicted there and it's still not exactly it.

-I'm not sure how I feel about Shadow's cold way of leaving. It seemed odd to me that he would just nope out of there, despite being transformed into a robot and forced to commit horrible acts ala Metal Sonic. It just feels a little OOC to me, although part of me can't help but feel he did it because he just felt stupid for getting captured, and couldn't take the hit to his pride.

-Was honestly surprised we got references to non-game stuff here. There's only two of them, if I recall - Mecha Sally, and later on, we see a redesigned Mecha Sonic conquering the world in Eggman's image.

-What's confusing about this scene though is Mega Man's 'memory flash'. He looks confused and such when it happens, but it doesn't make much sense. Sonic and Tails' make sense, because the world was drastically altered and they have no clue who 'Sally' is. Mega Man on the other hand recalls his battle with Break Man, which was his last encounter before the Genesis Wave, however...

...unlike Sonic's world, Mega Man's world wasn't actually altered reality-wise, instead Wily opted to push the timeline of the universe from between Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3, to post Mega Man 10. Which yeah, while odd that Mega Man would get a random memory from so long ago, it's not as if Rock shouldn't actually recall that happening, as it still did.

-Not gonna lie, while it's understandable they had to move things along, they did Blaze and Silver dirty. They're among the strongest of the entire cast and they're taken out in less time than the Chaotix. 

-I'm again unsure of if it's intentional or not, but Pogo Man might be a reference to Quint:

To cut a long story short - Quint is a Mega Man from the future, where Wily - through some time travel hijinks - went into the future, met his future self, and both teamed up to kidnap the Rock of that era to turn him into their new minion. Given what Proto Man is, I'd imagine that's what they're going for. 

-As a Mega Man fan, I didn't really notice about the Sonic characters, but I read the story out of order due to the (now closed) comic shop I was using at the time being dicks and charging stupid prices for '''imports''' plus getting them out of order, so I had Issue 7 and Issue 9 at the same time, where the Sonic crew are considerably more helpful.

Worlds Collide #8:

-The cracks showing in Eggman and Wily's facade is a thing of absolute beauty.  The way they laugh and interact with each other while scheming behind the others' backs is nothing short of gold. I find it interesting that despite Eggman comparatively being a dick, he's actually the one out of the two that seemingly has greater sadness about the idea of cutting him loose. Wily's just like "it was nice knowing you Eggy", while Eggman at least was willing to give him a continental carving in remembrance. 

-"We're not gonna beat those two with just our good looks!" - Don't speak too soon, Wily...

...don't speak too soon...

-Mega Man having difficulty with Rose Woman and Knuckles Man was actually a nice change of pace. It also reflects the games pretty well - each weapon has a different stat and has different levels of efficacy on a given robot master, so it's nice they showed Rock having to experiment a bit with this one.

-Admittedly, I might be misremembering, but like the Shadow example in Issue 7, the moment between Sonic, Knuckles and Amy just felt like a weird one off OOC moment. I certainly don't remember many moments of Amy being displayed as this over the top. Part of me feels like these were added to really really hammer home the point that this is the game continuity and not Archie. It feels a lot more like Adventure/Heroes, with Sonic calling Knuckles insults and jabbing like that, and Amy's over the top declaration of love.

-Amy huffing with Sonic is a pretty fun image, but it really doesn't make that much sense, and feels like it's only there to give a quick gag, when they could have easily just had Sonic search around the zone quickly. The fact it actually works is nothing short of insane.

-First Tikhaos, now Chaos Devil, Ian really liked having these Chaos perform the fusion dance. It's pretty horrifying assuming that's the actual Chaos in there, and not the artificial brand from the ARK. Chaos basically having a Yellow Devil core plopped into him that's forcing him to follow orders is pretty awful.

-Man, even while Tracy's Mega Man art improved, that Duo still looks a little off-model.

-On the discussion of Pre-Reboot Archie...I still find myself disagreeing with Ian a bit. Sonic was a bit of an asshole, that's true - but it really wasn't that black and white, and a lot of that comes down to Penders being a jackass himself when it came to his stupid image of Sonic as a 'player' - hell, he even uses the best example. 

He brings up Sonic Adventure and how Sonic wanted to save Chaos. How Pre-Reboot wouldn't wanna do that, how he'd wanna kick it's ass...except pre-reboot Sonic did want to save Chaos. Or at he did...when Bollers was writing him.

We literally see this effect perfectly there - Bollers ends his last issue of the arc with Sonic literally word for word talking about his motivation from Sonic Adventure, how just beating Chaos and sealing him away wouldn't work, that they need to help him fix his problem for good. 

Then the beginning of the next issue - the first one Penders mainly writes does a complete 180 and suddenly Sonic is like "HELL YEAH LETS KICK ITS ASS GOTTA DO IT TO IT!!!!!!!". Just feels weird to boil it down so simply to me.

Worlds Collide #9: 

-God, I cannot even begin to describe how insanely good Ben Bates' artwork is for the final part of this crossover. No disrespect to anyone else, but Ben absolutely fucking nails both Sonic and Mega Man to an absolute tee, and gives them such an absolutely wonderful amount of expressiveness too while he's at it, also enhanced by the fact the colours and inking are thankfully back up to par again.

-It's amazing that despite their friendship cracking at the seams and time being of the essence, Wily and Eggman still feel the need to fuck around with Light. Also amazing that Met and Motobug screw this up too (You didn't hear it from me, but I heard a nasty rumour that Motobug was streaming this epic competition online too...)

-Again, the expression work is so good. The way Eggman's face droops, Light's bewildered expression at the Motobug and Met fighting each other. The sheer comedic timing of the "Ra Moon" drop and Wily's subsequent face drop. There's a damn good reason that Wily face is a emote on Motobug. I can also tell you that Wily's utter horror at the mention of Ra Moon is incredibly well-deserved.

-I really like how Light overplayed his hand here. He knows Wily. Hell, he still believes Wily has a nugget of good in him. He knows he can call Wily out for this crap and he'd get nothing more than a scoff in return. But he doesn't know Eggman, and he forgets the part where Eggman has no history with him. While Wily angrily bemoans it as another of 'Papa Light's speeches', Eggman has immediately gleamed and figured Light out, and is already thinking of fun ways to make him pay for that.

-It's weird how Rouge Woman is barely used here. So much so that you barely get a clear shot of her design and have to look at concept art for it. It's clearly here because they wanted Rock to get an even ten weapons, but I feel they probably could've had her do a little more, especially compared to all the other Roboticised Masters.

-Quick Man getting dunked on is even more beautiful if you've read the Archie MM comics. Quick Man in his first arc and beyond is a cocky asshole who mocked and taunted Rock for his lack of speed, and consistently threated everything he cared about, essentially acting as the rival and final challenge for Mega Man prior to Wily. So having Sonic turn the tables on him is just fantastic lol.

-It's insane how they started this issue off with a wacky comedic scenario with the Motobug/Met fight, and then turned it on it's head with the sheer dread Eggman and Metal have in that one shadowed panel. Eggman is so utterly brutal here, and how they display Metal as so cold and willing to enact Eggman's every command compared to Bass' arrogance and his constant rebellion against Wily is such a cool contrast. This really does inact just how beyond all the egotism and the comedic bits to Eggman, he's a force to be reckoned with, and that he has zero problems crossing god knows how many lines in this book.

Worlds Collide #10:

-Aaaaand we're back to the bad colouring. Ben's art manages to still look good in spite of it, thankfully not falling prey to the butchering Tracy's art had, but...nah, this still sucks. The ridiculous light shade of blue on Sonic is so goddamn off looking here. I will say Ben's expression work does at least fit the style more, but I just do not like it. 

-Shadow popping in to save Light is awesome as hell. If there's one thing I can give the colouring, it at least works pretty well for light sources being emitted in the darkness - that shot of Light's tear is pretty nice.

-I really do love Wily's breakdown at Eggman. It's really incredible how they used this to both push forward his arc in the comic, and give us a believable reason for breaking up with Eggman. The fact this gives us a very clear line that Wily truly does see himself as being in the right, and as such, having lines that he absolutely refuses to cross, murder being one of them is great, and really helps to sell us on the idea that Wily still has a glimpse of hope that he could be redeemed, which the MM comic would use right after this arc for it's next plot push.

Eggman...I feel depends on the version. X, I definitely couldn't see it, as you say, but Archie, - or even the Games? Absolutely. This is the same guy who tried to blow up Station Square with everyone in it to pave over it. But it's also more complex in the games too, like with SA2, so it's hard to really say.

-It's just amazing to me that at the end of the day, what's going to screw over Eggman and Wily isn't Sonic and Mega Man. At least fully - it's going to be partly their own backstabbing nature and the fact they just couldn't help themselves this one time to not screw the other over. 

-The Launch Base Zone mention is neat, I wonder if it's supposed to be an explanation as to why Tails isn't playable in Sonic & Knuckles...

-Eeeeyup - Duo's arrival might've took awhile, but goddamn if it's not awesome. This is frankly one of the coolest goddamn things he's ever managed to do in the entire franchise after not doing much in Mega Man 8.

-Small side note, I really like how the comic depicts a cool highlights version of what it's like to traverse through a Wily Castle. There's Eggman aspects there, but this whole gauntlet with end bosses at each floor? Pure Wily Castle.

-Tails is still being an absolute chad by downplaying his injuries when he gets back to the battlefield, the man puts on a brave face for his friends.

Worlds Collide #11: 

-Oh thank god, the good colouring's back again. Excellent, given how this issue's art is so on point.

-I really like the subversion on display with this issue. They were completely going with the doppelganger rival fight for a reason, and the cliched answer in these crossovers is always the "we switch our opponents and insta-win, right?". So no - having it be made abundantly clear that Metal Sonic and Bass are not just 'their answer to Sonic/Mega Man' is great. They're the pinnacle of Eggman and Wily's robot design, they're their closest subordinates for a reason - and it's because they're built to deal with any situation, including their greatest rivals. Bass' curbstomp beatdown on Sonic is just a excellent reminder of that, especially given how Rock's fight with Sonic went earlier, and Bass has zero problems with going 100% from the word go.

-Small detail - I like how Sonic and Mega Man playing Rock Paper Scissors is a callback to Eggman and Wily doing the same thing in one of the early issues. They're going all in on the turnabout of Sonic/Mega Man's dynamic, compared to Eggman and Wily's, and it's great.

-God, I just have to say it - how Mega Man uses his weapons here is so absolutely awesome. I don't think there's another moment in Archie Mega Man where Rock literally switches between all of his weapons to deal with a single target like this, and how it's handled here, with the after-images of Sonic's friends performing the actions alongside Rock is great, it's a very nice way to make them still feel and tie into the main battle here, even when they're outside, still dealing with the Robot Masters. It does a great job of showing how far we've come. 

-The lack of Rouge and Blaze is weird as hell though. It makes it even odder why they felt the need to have Rouge Woman show up to be such an easily dealt with obstacle, if even her weapon doesn't see any usage in taking down Metal and Bass.

-The Skull Egg Machine X just so easily obliterating Sonic and Mega Man like they're chumps really did a damn good job of raising the stakes. Granted, they're also both exhausted so maybe if they were fully rested, it wouldn't have been a easy takedown, but still - props to the two, when the doctors collaborate, they make some really powerful machines.

-In fairness to Eggman here, he probably had every right to feel this cocky in leaving Sonic alive - he had more or less everything set dead to rights, and Sonic and Mega Man were both weakened, and unable to escape without help. If Proto Man and Knuckles weren't insisting on helping, Eggman would have won and Sonic would have been forced to witness it.

That said, I honestly wonder if Eggman really intended to wipe him from existence - he envisioned what he wants with the Super Genesis Wave just in the next issue as you said, and it's not just complete world domination - he still sees it as a game:

It's easy to mistake it as Metal Sonic, but you can clearly see it's a redesigned Mecha Sonic working in tantum with Mecha Sally - with Eggman's plan not being just instilling himself as the ruler - but instead giving himself just enough power to force his own enemies to do the conquest for him. I wonder if he changed his mind or was just keeping that tidbit from Wily for some reason.

-I'd be remiss not to mention the fact Ian originally wanted Bass and Metal Sonic to fuse in this issue, and SEGA nixed the idea. It's a shame, but at least we got a pretty funny off-panel out of it, and the fight still ended up awesome.

Worlds Collide #12: 

Huh, so we're finally here...

-I really like Tails having faith that Sonic and Mega Man would win no matter what. Reminds me of Amy insisting Sonic would save them from Dark Gaia in Unleashed.

-Ayyy my boys are here! The Mega Man 1 robot masters are great, really love how they gave them a really proper moment of badassery by having them do the biggest Big Damn Heroes moment here too. It's funny to me that they're arguably just as helpful as Duo, if not more so since their arrival is what ultimately allows them to free Sonic and Mega Man in time to fight the doctors.

-Mentioned it before, but yeah, seems like Eggman's keeping his schemes for his world hidden from Wily...

-Can confirm it is pretty much a new low for Wily. Wily's done some really despicable things, but the sheer idea of altering reality itself and causing so much untold damage? It's nuts how much of a jump that is from the doctor who blindly insists that everything he does is simply for the betterment of the world.

-Aaaaand this is exactly why you never leave Proto Man to his own devices.

-Yup, Super Adapter is from Mega Man 6, and is why Mega Man mentions Bass can fuse with Tremble (it's a stolen upgrade from Light). It was a really cool way to have him get a super form here too.

-Knuckles' face on top of the mech is just amazing. How else could you react from finding out your job is just so much easier because these two geniuses screwed each other over. Love how Eggman is snidely telling Knuckles to get him as well, as if this is just another one of his tricks on the echidna, only for it to bite him on the ass this time. It's great how neither of these two realise that having half of your mech destroyed and half of it's functionality gone would completely cripple their chances too, because they were just that hung up on the backstabbing.

-After all of the shit Eggman pulled, that face is about the most gratifying thing you can get. We had Wily's oh crap face a few issues ago, now here's Eggman's, good shit.

-I love Eggman treating this as if he got to a secret boss in a RPG and is just commentating over the boss. Wily is absolutely losing his mind, meanwhile Eggman's just like "don't you dare, don't you freaking do it, I'm this close!" 

-I love this moment between Eggman and Wily, because Wily is usually the one who takes defeat so utterly undignified that he has to beg for forgiveness everytime he goes down. There's a reason this exists:

I do think it's just a neat humbling moment. That this is arguably his greatest defeat, but Wily takes it like a champ, acknowledging how far and how hard they worked, all for it to come to nothing. It's a sobering moment that really helps this standout from the rest, and makes Eggman look all the more unhinged as a result. When even the king of undignified defeats has enough moment of clarity to do some self-reflection and acknowledge his failure in all this, it goes to show how nuts Eggman truly is. 

-I find it interesting as well - although this is head-canon - that it shows how much Eggman's fall to insanity really did a number on him. Even after willing himself back to sanity, this is his first MASSIVE defeat in the comics since #200. Even with his first failed Genesis Wave, he got Mecha Sally out of it and used that to start the downfall of the Freedom Fighters. Here, after everything is said and done, this is one of his biggest, most epic failures, and I don't think Eggman can even remotely handle the idea of Sonic winning at the eleventh hour yet again. He'd rather ram Sonic and utterly erase their universe if it just means he gets to say that he won over Sonic, rather than having to admit defeat once again.

-Random side note, maybe it's how chaotic the art has grown (in a good way), but I never realised Eggman managed to fire another blast at Sonic's Chaos Control.

-Oh good, now I get to share a personal anecdote. So, I've mentioned before - while I'd been keeping tabs on Archie Sonic and the like before Worlds Collide, Worlds Collide is actually the first time I found out about a comic shop (a bad one, but that's a story for another time) that could get me the comics physically. And when I finally got the last batch of comics consisting of #9, #10, and #12, I got to this cliffhanger.

So let me put this bluntly - I had no idea who or what a Ken Penders was back then. I didn't know about the lawsuit, I didn't know that a massive cast of characters were wiped out. I didn't know this would be the final time I'd ever see favourites like Mina, Scourge, Shard, and so on. 

This is legitimately the first comic cliffhanger I'd ever read that left me on the utter edge of my seat, as the comic ends with Eggman practically obliterating the universe, and Sonic crying out in horror at what the hell he had just done. After tracking down another comic shop online who did deliveries for non-stupid prices, and ordering myself a subscription for Archie Sonic starting from Issue 252, I sat for a full month, eagerly anticipating that issue to finally tell me just the full ramifications of what the hell Eggman had just done. It cemented how memorable this crossover already was. I will never forget re-reading this over and over again that month, eagerly awaiting the conclusion, as well as what happened on Mega Man's side (which Issue 28 of Mega Man also happens to be one of the best issues of that series too).

Just an insanely good ending to a fantastic crossover.

[NegaMix]

1 minute ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I have absolutely no idea if it's intentional or not - but when Sonic is being attacked by Espio, and he manages to get out the "fine, you can be sting--" - there actually is a Mega Man X boss called Sting Chameleon he's probably referencing there.

I'm like 99.9% certain it is, given Sonic also tries to nickname Charmy Man as "Blast--" before getting cut off, referencing Blast Hornet. They probably could've tried throwing in a Wheel Gator reference with Vector Man too, but... well, the better reference is right there in the name lol

3 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I'm not sure how I feel about Shadow's cold way of leaving. It seemed odd to me that he would just nope out of there, despite being transformed into a robot and forced to commit horrible acts ala Metal Sonic. It just feels a little OOC to me, although part of me can't help but feel he did it because he just felt stupid for getting captured, and couldn't take the hit to his pride.

In fairness, he probably also left to go get backup from Omega (and Rouge, assuming he didn't already know she was infiltrating the Wily Egg). Still cold of him to bail like that, but I suspect he had at least one reason other than broken pride.

4 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

What's confusing about this scene though is Mega Man's 'memory flash'. He looks confused and such when it happens, but it doesn't make much sense. Sonic and Tails' make sense, because the world was drastically altered and they have no clue who 'Sally' is. Mega Man on the other hand recalls his battle with Break Man, which was his last encounter before the Genesis Wave, however...

...unlike Sonic's world, Mega Man's world wasn't actually altered reality-wise, instead Wily opted to push the timeline of the universe from between Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3, to post Mega Man 10. Which yeah, while odd that Mega Man would get a random memory from so long ago, it's not as if Rock shouldn't actually recall that happening, as it still did.

In Rock's case, he specifically notes the distortion causing "a flood of memory errors," so him being a bit confused by the whole thing makes sense to me. I can only guess it's the equivalent of an internal clock in his head suddenly going back a few years, acting like that should be the present day, before reverting back to normal.

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic Universe - Issue #61: Shadow Fall - Part 3 of 4: A Matter of Trust

Interesting title for this part of the saga since Shadow was brainwashed. I’m guessing they’ll go more in-depth with the theme after he snaps out of it. My memory is not very reliable here after all. Nice enough cover though. I like how it depicts Eclipse as a creepy crawler with a love for pouncing. He’s just like Young Simba.

Spoiler

SEGA Variant

 

We’re back to the lazy SEGA variants. SEGA took a render of Shadow, added a glow effect around his body and pasted it against a photo-realistic image of the Earth and space. I’m sure no one would raise their eyebrows at having this suddenly be the cover for the third issue of Shadow Fall.

I mean, seriously, when it comes to stuff like this, why even bother?

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Yardley, Amash, and Herms
Variant Cover by SEGA

Shadow is about to try and gore Omega with a Chaos Spear. It’s not that tense a situation since Omega seems more concerned with letting Shadow know that if he doesn’t knock that shit off he’s gonna have to kill him.

Rouge kicks Shadow off of him and inquires as to what he means.

 

 

“Rouge, I don’t know if you understand this by now but I’m a murderous rage machine. Maiming is like a 3:00 snack to me.”

I also like that Omega vouches for honesty being the best policy when it comes to stuff like this.

Shadow is trying to clear his head but Death’s Eye tells him to destroy them and not ask any questions. So he does it.

However, Black Death himself is observing this and is making some rather interesting self-reflective comments on the situation.

 

Honestly, and I know how weird this is going to sound, but I can’t help but feel a little sorry for him and his kind here. 

Yes, I know, I’m being all strange about my sympathy for the villains of the day. Sue me. Still, the scenario at hand has my brain going in that direction regardless of the circumstances that led to this point due to the subdued nature of this guy’s disposition and the way he and Eclipse’s points of view have been illustrated thus far.

Setting aside the very big thing about the fact that the Black Arms started this fight, the situation their race finds themselves in now is so dower and honestly a little scary for anyone a part of it. They barely have any of their kind left. They sought revenge for their fallen leader and brothers and it’s not going well specifically because Eclipse convinced this man to let him follow the notion of some sort of brotherhood between him and Shadow.

Again, Shadow is the one responsible for Black Doom’s death yet Eclipse still desires a kinship with him… and Black Death was open minded enough to give him a chance to go for it.

It’s very interesting. It’s also a neat offshoot of what Black Doom was saying all throughout the original game about how his kind looks after one another while the humans are all about hatred and foolhardy civil war. Granted, that doesn’t make him better than humans. Their race’s response to them and to a lot of other races was to just consume them after all. Still, I can’t help but get flashbacks to how often Black Doom would go on and on, bigging up his army to Shadow any chance he could.

“These are our larva, Shadow. When they grow older, they’re going to be big and buff and strong! It’s gonna be sweet!” - Black Doom

Eclipse also shows care for his kind too when he manages to take out the human resistance and grips a hold of the Assholic Captain of the platoon.

Black Death is okay with Shadow either killing his friends or being killed by them. It doesn’t really matter to him. However, he needs that bomb and thankfully, for him, Eclipse has now successfully secured it and is on his way to the most secure part of the comet with it. 

Also, he’s told not to kill the humans because they’re more nutritious alive. That’s quite the alien thing to us humans. Eating most things raw is bad for us. 

There’s also a scene where the aliens start to remove a guy from a tank by ripping it open. I couldn’t help but imagine the terror of anticipation that must have happened with that guy. At least with the people Eclipse took out, he did it from behind and it was over quickly.

The secure place Eclipse takes them too is the Nursery for the Dark Arms. It’s basically his little baby room for cultivating new members of his family. No one is allowed in there except for him unless he’s around to supervise. 

The screaming human that was dragged out of the tank finally paralyzes from the gas they’ve been breathing in while panicking their butts off and the goop in this place hardened around his and the others bodies. 

After saying that “today is coming up aces” he marches off to go see how Shadow is doing.

Shadow is fighting his friends, that’s what.

They manage to do a maneuver that gives Omega a chance to pin him to the ground but in this instant, Rouge is left to recall the memory of what the Commander specifically told just Rouge and Omega back in the first issue.

This is a great scene.

I love how straight-forward the Commander is being with the two of them. He starts the conversation by being blunt about the danger Shadow poses to the mission by calling him a liability. Rouge takes immediate offense to that, saying that he’s a hero as though that wouldn’t mean he’s a liability still. The anger is understandable and it’s expected that it would lead to someone saying irrational things. Although, Omega’s comments about bullets were remarkable.

Still, despite how cross they’re being with him (and threatening in Omega’s case) he keeps a cool head and fully explains himself to them. It’s also great to see that his having made peace with Shadow is being acknowledged in some capacity outside of Shadow the Hedgehog’s Hard Mode.

A couple of the lines in there really shouldn’t have been relegated to the Hard Mode. Eggman’s line about Shadow being the real Shadow definitely shouldn’t have been stuck ten minutes into the Devil Doom fight. I came across that line by chance when I hit my first round of endlessly dying to him. It was a cool moment but one I was concerned would be too obscure. Thankfully, word gets around. Everyone treats and thinks of this Shadow as the same one from Sonic Adventure 2 so no worries there.

Rouge snaps out of her flashback and marches up to Shadow to deliver the best “I know you’re in there” speech ever. Instead of a pleading tone, she takes a stern “I’m sick of this shit. Don’t make me press the Maria button” tone with him.

For a moment it looks like Shadow responds to that by attacking her but he’s actually attacking the Death Eye above them. Omega turns to rain fire on it and it flies off, leaving Team Dark to express a level of comradery that is… surreal in how opposite it is from the vision of Team Dark that exists today.

Honestly, I thought this was a bit much for them back in the day. Them being so open about how much they care about each other felt a bit strange. I always imagined they’d do this in a bit more of a subdued, snappier way where they don’t need to SAY it but you can tell by how they interact that they’re totally friends.

Nowadays, however, it’s probably necessary to say it because SEGA and Sonic Team need to hear it as often and as loudly as possible.

Team Dark are friends. Full stop. 

I don’t care if Omega doesn’t give a fuck about Sonic or the others. I don’t care if Shadow does either. Rouge’s mileage varies between the others. She’s either annoying Knuckles, teasing Tails, or having a flirt-off with Sonic when they interact.

But when it comes to Team Dark, the three of them are buds. 

Anyway, Shadow says he’s going to murder Black Death.

He doesn’t SAY murder. He says “eliminate” but make no mistake, his intention is murder.

Rouge is about to protest, saying that leaving him alone last time led to… well, what just happened. Shadow gets his way when he flashes some chaos energy of anger that almost blinds her. She says “Fuck it. Do what you want” and they head off to take care of business.

Rouge and Omega head off to find the Spider Troupe. Shadow heads off to go commit some murder. His connection with Black Death’s hypnosis has made it so that he has a deeper understanding of the hive mind and the area of the comet.

As per Shadow’s instructions, Rouge and Omega make it to the soldiers and rescue them. She finds out from the captain that Eclipse made off with the nuke. After asking Shadow who the fuck Eclipse even is, he tells them that he’s extremely dangerous and that they should take him out.

Omega is excited about this. They’re off to get the nuke and by proxy will have to face Eclipse.

Rouge tells the soldiers to leave since they’ll likely prioritize the nuke and with Shadow facing down their leader at the same time, focusing on some fleeing soldiers likely won’t be of their concern. The captain thanks Rouge for saving them and wobbles his now defunct ass out of there, stage left.

We’ve reached a crossroads of excitement now. Everything is coming down to the wire for both sides and the villains being on the ropes has me more on edge than anything.

There’s something really scary about this scenario, as it is from the viewpoint of the villains. Black Death just told the remaining soldiers to prioritize loading the babies in the nursery onto a vessel so that they can escape. Eclipse is worried about his nursery but lucked out on them being unharmed which has to be a shockingly close call for him. Meanwhile, the guy saying all this to them has someone on their way to literally kill him.

He has to get these instructions out as fast as he can before he dies. It’s super tense. Maybe not for the reason it’s supposed to be for me since I’m a weirdo but I tend to put myself in the shoes of the side that seems the most put upon in scenarios like this. I can’t help it. It makes it more exciting.

Black Death tries one last time to get through to Shadow using his eye, even saying that the only reason he exerted his control is because he wasn’t sure he would listen… which, of course, he wouldn’t have.

Shadow keeps blowing him off until Black Death’s Eye screams at him that he’s dooming them to extinction.

To this, he slams the eye into a wall and says he CAN and he WILL.

Unlike in the game where you have to make sure you hit the right switch, Shadow just fucking punches the door and shatters that shit.

Either he’s gotten stronger or this comet really was their B-Team’s less impressive ride.

Anyway, this shot is really cool. It makes them both look kind of awesome, really. 

It’s a little weird that our heroic moment is predicated on the hero saying he’s here to make sure an entire race of beings goes extinct. No matter what, that’ll always feel a little odd but it’s not something I have any actual problem with, characterization wise.

Like I said, this is Team DARK. This is how they would go about saving the world. It gets dark, it gets unforgiving, and it stands as the reason why stipulating that Team Dark aren’t friends is a dumb, bullshit way to differenciate them from Team Sonic.

This is a pretty viable way to do that.

Shadow is here to murder this man.

The plot point of Shadow being mind controlled, as underwhelming as it was, had a strong resolution to it if only because the way it was resolved was a refreshing take on the same old way of handling it. Plus, the book definitely is aware of how flimsy the idea of it is and is utilizing that within the narrative to help perpetuate how desperate the Black Arms are in this situation. They’re not defenseless, of course, but they’re in danger of completely dying out. It’s interesting because the idea of them having died out when I played Shadow’s game wasn’t something I thought too hard about. The feeling behind what that meant was there but fully exploring and talking about it like this really makes things hit different. Shadow will talk more about it in the next issue and that one, I remember, was really tough to take in. It's a doozy.

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #62: Shadow Fall - Part 4 of 4: A Matter of Survival

Honestly, this cover isn’t quite what I would have expected for the final issue of this story. It’s a very good image, for sure, but were I to be asked which arc involving Shadow this was a cover for I’d probably say “The Shadow Saga” since that one is the most blanket collection of stories involving his character that would have a cover of him running at the reader, ready to maim them, like this. There’s nothing about this that’s strictly “Shadow Fall” about it really. That said, it’s nicely drawn and colored of course. It’s certainly not bad but something a little more bombastic or somber or harsh might have fit better for what’s within the pages of this issue.

Spoiler

Eclipse Variant

Obviously, Eclipse has no 3D render to just copy and paste onto a background so this had to be made. It looks pretty good. It was done by Rafa Knight whose stuff I’ve never been a huge fan of but I’ll admit to it having its place as a cool way of making some of these guys look like they could be in or from a game.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Tracy Yardley and Steve Downer
Variant Cover by Rafa Knight

A clash of ideals is happening between our main hero and our main villain. It was one that threw me for a loop as far as what to think and feel about the ideals being put on display here.

It’s always a good thing when a book can elicit that kind of feeling from me, even when I may find myself not fully landing on the position either side is expositing here. Witnessing this and seeing the conclusions these characters would naturally come to is a treat.

I do like the gratification that comes with even more clarification about Black Doom’s actual role in Shadow’s creation. If it somehow wasn’t already explicit enough, Black Doom is no scientist. Gerald is the one who created him and Black Doom provided the fuel. That’s it.

This pep talk goes about as well as it did with Mephiles. Shadow doesn’t remember that but he doesn’t have to. After the events of Shadow the Hedgehog, he became a character who had a clear and concise purpose. He will never look back.

Black Doom got to him during a time where he was confused about his place in the world and thus a lot more vulnerable. That isn’t the case here so everything Black Death is saying is being no sold by Shadow.

This leads to Shadow providing the explanation for why he believes their entire race needs to be killed.

Again, it naturally feels a lot different when put within this context. In the game, the Black Arms all dying seemed like the natural result of being at war and defending yourself for the sake of salvation. That’s still technically true here but the context behind the situation is so different and the focus on actually talking about and addressing the act of mass extinction on Shadow’s part definitely lends itself to a bit of a different air.

The mood feels a lot more tense in a sort of somber way as a result. Shadow decision basically boils down to the entire race of the Black Arms being a lost cause and needing to be eradicated. The comment about Black Death feeling self righteous because he wishes to protect a thousand mindless monsters versus rendering the billions of …mostly not-monsters on the planet below can easily be read as a numbers game or a dismissal of the Black Arms right to life due to the supposedly primitive nature of the state of their minds.

Or it can be read as him simply hating the shit out of them and wanting to kill them.

Back when I first read this, I found this a lot tougher to parse because I read it more as Shadow saying the Black Arms were at fault for being a race that needed to consume humans and other sentient beings in order to survive. Reading it again, he phrases it more like it’s a conscious choice on their part. That them viewing everyone and everything as food is them taking it a step too far along with their claims to survival being a need to just kill everyone.

Now that stands as a much more understandable, viable reason.

I suppose the one real hang up I have about this is that, even though this is science-fiction, there’s a part of me that can’t completely accept the idea that an ENTIRE race of beings is just like this with no deviation or variation. Then again, I suppose that’s where the HIVE MIND concept comes in. 

If the Black Arms are mostly a hive mind led by a few sentient tyrants then it becomes a lot more understandable. Who could blame Shadow for just viewing them as monsters being led by a couple of space Hitlers in that case?

It’s a very interesting thought experiment. I don’t exactly know how else to mull over what’s going through my mind as I read this though. All I can say is that it’s doing a good job of making me think.

… The hive mind idea feels like the most stable of arguments but then the next scene happens and it starts to feel like it doesn’t matter.

After Captain Andrews returns to his men and is led to the ship, we cut to Rouge and Omega who come across the nuke and are prepared for an ambush due to it being left out in the open. Eclipse comes riding in on a Black Arms trooper and… and…

… I know, I’m being a big ol’ softie but… I mean look at him. He’s so sad!

I love Omega and I love that he does this but seeing him just kill it mercilessly still caught me way the fuck off guard. It’s allowed in this book because they’re essentially considered monsters but damn if it still isn’t recognizable for what it is.

It’s just death. The thing that I’m realizing is that because it’s a Sonic book it’s actually hitting way harder than it would were this just any other series that regularly did stuff like this.

Again, I have to stress, you were doing the same thing in the game. The context and the focus being different is what’s making this tough to see. I never saw one of them reach down and cradle the head of one of their fallen comrades in that game with a sad, resentful look on their face.

He starts grappling with Omega, going on about how things were supposed to be different and how they were supposed to thrive and what not. Omega does not care. He says Eclipse is weak and that were he to lead them they’d die out all over again. He tells Eclipse to surprise him.

Rouge tells Omega to stop toying with “it” and wishes to set the bomb so they can blow away all of these aliens and leave.

That sets Eclipse off and he gives Omega what he wants.

I can’t help it. I miss Dr. Insaneo.

Rouge asks for the activation code on the nuke so that she can set the timer for ten minutes. She tells them to leave in that time with or without them.

Eclipse then continues his ranting about how they’ve consumed countless worlds and now that the chickens have come home to roost, it’s a slight against him and his race for things to end this way.

Honestly, Eclipse’s little rant here feels like it serves Shadow’s argument even better due to it coming straight from the horse’s mouth. It can’t exactly be left up to interpretation what he’s talking about here.

Eclipse’s form doesn’t last very long. It uses too much energy and he’s unable to maintain it so he reverts back to normal shortly after. Rouge somehow guessed this would be the case which is surprising considering she doesn’t have much to go on for observing the nature of his transformation.

She was correct though. Omega wants to keep fighting but there’s no reason to and they’re on a time crunch. 

Poor Eclipse crawls up and sees that they’ve activated the nuke but isn’t sure how to handle it.

Both Black Death and Shadow need to stop to inform the ones they need to inform of what to do in these last crucial minutes to ensure the survival of as many as they can.

They both give each other a stare-down before doing it at the same time.

It’s tough to witness but it’s a good parallel of what’s at stake coming to a head all at once.

Shadow has to convince Rouge to leave him behind so he can finish with Black Death. She argues with him but Shadow is adamant about finishing this up in about eight minutes or less. After all, Black Death controls the hive mind. If he goes down, so do the others which means there will be no chance for them to stop the nuke.

Meanwhile Black Death sends his eye to go and grab Eclipse so that he can take the larva and get the fuck out of dodge. Eclipse is wracked with regret for ever wanting to spare Shadow and have him as his brother. 

His desperate plea to be tossed back so that he can stop the bomb and save his master’s life is very heartfelt. I can’t help but love him for it.

Even more depressing is how his regret is steeped in what would normally be considered a positive thing. Shadow’s actions have wrung out the desire he had to be humane and familial in his approach to handling his “brother”. It’s SO bittersweet. 

Actually, it’s pretty much just bitter.

The only levity within this scene is that image of Death’s Eye piloting a ship. It’s adorable and also a little funny to look at.

With that done, Black Death faces Shadow again, stating that he’s made his peace and outright says that he knows Shadow is going to kill him. He’s determined not to die like him though.

Shadow agrees. 

His death is far more quick and somehow more brutal.

This shocked the hell out of me when I read it back then.

It’s not like death is foreign to this comic or anything but witnessing one of our heroes just nuke the life out of someone like this gave me such a strong feeling of visceral grittiness. 

Shadow was literally talking to that guy mere seconds ago like he was an actual person and not a lump of dust and smoking flesh on the ground with no lucid thoughts.

…And now he’s just a lump of dust and smoking flesh on the ground with no lucid thoughts. He’s committed the act of turning an alive and aware being into an inanimate object. 

This must have made all the Shadow fans screech with excitement when they read it. 

Eclipse takes it the worst. One could argue he’s feeling “some type of way”.

He cradles the husk of that eye tightly while crying that his dad is dead. The desire to be brothers with the person he allowed to live that led to this outcome is gone. That remains the saddest thing about this.

Shadow is on his way out now. He races back through the comet and escapes through a hole into space, along with the corpses of the Black Arms as they float out into space along with him.

This shit is dark, yo.

The comet explodes.

It’s a very cool explosion.

Rouge thinks he didn’t make it for about a literal blip in time but that’s undone when he shows up right behind them a split second later.

Apparently Shadow can’t breathe in space in the Archie Comics. I guess.

The ending here isn’t anything profound or bombastic that reflects on the death and destruction that just took place. It’s just Rouge being annoyed at Shadow and Shadow being cautious and weary that there’s one more alien he didn’t get to kill.

Team Dark don’t give a fuck about any of the emotional conflict between Eclipse and Black Death. It’s easy to see why Eclipse would view them as villains in his eyes.

The comic ends with Knuckles overlooking the sky and seeing what he thinks might be a shooting star overhead. It’s actually Eclipse’s ship.

Knuckles says it better not land on his island.

It’s totally gonna land on his island. 

So that was Shadow Fall and it left me feeling contemplative about life. Just another one of those kinds of stories. I think my opinion on this arc back in the day was a bit of an unsure one. The feel of the book and the resolution being so “--and we’re done” left me feeling odd. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Today, I feel more secure in saying that this very much felt like the beginning of a character’s story. That character being Eclipse. It stands as his sad backstory and what pushes him to be what he’ll be in the coming arcs down the line. As such, the atmosphere remains at an even level of dower throughout it. It manages to feel ingrained into Shadow’s character but the development is more of a declaration of who he is rather than where he’s going. That’s fine though. This story didn’t need to do much but establish who and what Team Dark are now that this new continuity is here. They are the team that exists to fucking kill you when the heroes cannot.

The plot being extremely simple was made up for by the great characterization and the heavy atmosphere. As a story arc in and of itself, I can’t say it’s the best handled but I do feel like it’s an improvement over Shadow’s first saga and I do have more of a secure feeling about it today. I like it but it makes me feel weird is basically what I’m saying. It did what it had to do and it did it well enough for what it was and that’s cool. I enjoyed it overall.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #257: Damage Control

Despite acknowledging that it can be cool to some, for me, I’m not really a fan of the Rafa Knight covers. Looking at them always makes things feel a bit off to me. Like they’re emulating sort of stiff, incomplete 3D renders of things. It looks just wrong enough for it to bother me. I’m certain other people aren’t bothered by it like I am though. Also, Amy’s not on this cover. Why?

Spoiler

Station Square Rescue Variant

I think I’d like this cover more than the first one if a few things were changed. One, I’m not sure if this is because of the image I grabbed but the colors are extremely saturated. Matt Herms did the colors for it so I’m thinking it’s probably just the image I grabbed. I hope that’s the case. The second issue is that Sonic’s positioning is doing things to my brain as far as the perspective is concerned. It looks like he might be positioned correctly but for some reason him holding out his hand to grab that other hand looks odd to me. I know it’s not actually a huge hand he’s grabbing. It’s a matter of perspective. He’s holding his hand out to the screen and grabbing someone else’s. It’s probably just a me thing. My eyes need to adjust better.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Steve Downer
Letters: John Workman
Cover by Rafa Knight
Variant Cover by Lamar Wells, Terry Austin, John Workman, and Matt Herms

The Sky Patrol is shown flying over the city of Station Square. The destruction on display is really neat and impressive looking… but apparently they’re not only still recovering from Perfect Chaos’ attack but they’re on a fault line.

It’s cool seeing Station Square rendered in a comic that isn’t Batman this time.

Also, I was a little surprised to read the line about them not recovering from Perfect Chaos’ attack. One, I didn’t expect something so long ago in the game’s timeline to be brought up in a story so recent. Two, I almost wondered if this was a good way to gauge how much time had passed… before I realized that this was impossible to gauge anyway.

The Sonic series can either run on cartoon logic and say that the city’s recovery happened really quickly or it can take things more realistic and say that the recovery is taking a while. Honestly, if we were to revisit Station Square in a new game and caught a glimpse of them still recovering from their entire city being flooded, that would be cool as shit. A part of me wonders if it’s even really possible for a real life city to recover from what Perfect Chaos did to it.

God, Chaos flooding the city is still cool as shit. The atmosphere of something like that or the Final Hazard falling from space is hard to come by these days. Usually we’re just fighting “in the sky” or in some sort of mundane, nebulous area.

When the Freedom Fighters dive out of the Sky Patrol to go save people, Sally is shown to still be on the ship, directing them with cameras provided by Tails’ weird robot dog thing and Omochao. Cream, Cheese, and Nicole are also still on board.

Sally says that Team Freedom’s job will be to get the environment under control while Team Fighters will save as many lives as they can. Which is Team Freedom and which is Team Fighters? I’m sure we’ll find out on a later page.

Cream actually begs Sally to let her go down there and help. Her caption is “Heroine-in-training” which I don’t personally have a big issue with… but a lot of other people do and I get that as well. It’s the same issue I had with the whole thing where they wouldn’t let Amy be a Freedom Fighter for the longest time despite her showing up and being relatively competent at what she was doing whenever she did (the Adventure arc not-withstanding).

It’s also part of the reason why I’m not a fan of the Freedom Fighters/Sky Patrol system. This whole thing where they have a designated leader, are acting like some sort of business/rescue force like it’s some kind of army or police squad feels wrong to me no matter what. The caveats it comes with is having Cream being told “I need you here for support” as a means of not letting her just do what she does in Advance 2 and Heroes and be a hero.

If you can fight then you should be able to do what you can. I know she’s young but this is a fantasy series. They’re all young and they all have special abilities. That can do what they want. 

This hang-up is something being pushed a bit by SEGA too though. They didn’t see her as much of a fighter which is why this hang-up doesn’t exist for Tails or Charmy. Granted, I understand that too. Cream doesn’t strike me as someone who delights in beating people up but she can rescue people. It’s whatever.

Cream also asks if everyone is going to be okay out there considering the visions that they got from the memory thing. We then cut to a scene of Team Fighters having a bit of a conversation about that.

Memories of the old world are fading from their minds now but what is there is only serving to distract them. I guess in universe it was still worth it for the sake of restoring Nicole. Had that plot point not existed though, it would have seemed like they just handicapped themselves for no real reason. This is going to remain a weird part of this story, for sure, but as far as its integration goes, it could be worse.

Team Freedom is, meanwhile, shown to be rescuing people who are trapped inside Twinkle Park. Rotor gets the elevator going and Big fishes for people out of the water and then chucks the cars stuck in the entryway of the elevator over the horizon.

I’m waiting for the crash sound and the Wilhelm scream to follow it.

There is a lot of coordination and talking happening and I’m unsurprised that I don’t remember any of it because it’s easy for all of it to blur into a haze in my mind.

I’m kind of grateful for the scene that we get afterward of Sally freaking out and almost losing her marbles over being given a bunch of bad news over and over and over again.

Not for nothing, this issue is doing a good job on selling me what Sally’s role actually IS amongst this team now. I’d argue it’s already done that better than the pre-reboot with this single page even.

The set-up for how these rescues work by having them split into two teams where Sally is following them on the cameras and directing them where to go and what they need to do next works so much better as a selling point for her being a leader.

It also sells the stress of the matter a lot better too. 

I’ll admit, I did initially chuckle a little when I first opened this book and saw Sally just standing on the ship with a “And I’m helping too!” demeanor about her but witnessing this, I can actually see how this is supposed to work now.

All that said, I love that Nicole here cuts the bullshit and gets on Sally’s ass for the pity party she’s about to throw herself over something that’s decidedly irrelevant.

Oh God.

That scene of Cream standing there with her serious business face on with her finger raised is the best thing ever. I know this page was supposed to be about Sally catching her bearings so that she could do it but I kind of want Sky Patrol Director Cream now.

Anyway, Cream assures Sally that the real asshole in this situation is Dr. Eggman.

She’s right. It’s always Eggman’s fault in some way or another… except for all the times it’s not, of course.

We cut to the doctor in his room illuminated by the evil color red where he’s having a delightful conversation with Orbot and Cubot.

Basically it’s just them talking about how bad the world is and how all the Egg Bosses are reporting damages. It’s very bad.

Eggman says that he’s confirmed that there’s no way to undo the reality shift. Orbot is about to remind Eggman yet again that if he didn’t interrupt Super Sonic this wouldn’t have happened but Eggman snaps and tells him that if he brings it up again he’ll hollow him out into a pair of matching soup and salad bowls.

Despite quivering in fear over this Orbot still cheekily says “Like you’d eat soup or a salad…”

Man, Orbot is just… wow.

This was likely still during the time where he was just being actively defiant against Eggman to the point of it being distracting. SA-55 was funny in Unleashed but its bluntness could be overlooked a lot easier at the time. Continuing on with him being exactly like this would have made me wonder why he built him to be this way and why he’s keeping him around.

Thankfully, probably in part due to Sonic Boom, Orbot has adopted a much softer, butler like demeanor where Eggman comes off more like the tyrant to him then the put upon one. Although, his relationship with Orbot and Cubot still doesn’t hold a candle to his relationship with Bocoe and Decoe to me. That dysfunctional family thing just feels more fun.

Eggman uses his computer to whittle down the results of what he can use to get this crisis under control and happens upon the only relevant article he can find.

That’s right folks. The baby from Rugrats grew up and became a historical anthropologist. Now the Eggman has his sights on him. Oh ho ho!

Seriously, Dillon Pickle eh? I appreciate the desire to give all these characters clear and concise names at least. I also like puns but man… Dillon Pickle…

Back with Sonic, he’s trying to save people but he’s running out of rooftop and he’s got no one else around to help him at the moment.

He calls for assistance multiple times and starts to get a little fed up to the point where the monster in him leaks out a bit.

Luckily, before he can transform and go to town on those fools that dare ignore his call for help, Amy swoops down on her Extreme Gear and helps airlift Sonic to another rooftop where all the people are.

The gravity of this situation is honestly something I undersold a bit when we first started but things are really being billed as REALLY bad all over the world and it’s selling me on it feeling like the fucking world is coming to an end.

The Freedom Fighters are doing all they can but they’re running out of space to put the people they’re saving. Sally asks Rotor if the Sky Patrol can carry people to safety but he says it was designed to carry about two dozen people since it’s a base and not a ferry. They’re low on resources and Sally isn’t really able to give them viable enough direction to fix this.

Sonic is about ready to dive into the city and save everyone single handedly if that’s what it takes but a booming voice from a call intercepted by Omochao tells him that this won’t be necessary.

Help has arrived in the form of G.U.N’s really awesome looking flying craft.

It’s a sweet moment. I like this lady already. Interesting how her last name is Tower too. The Commander mentioned becoming a grandfather in the Hard Mode for Shadow the Hedgehog so this could be his daughter.

Nothing is explicitly said about that though. I’d imagine this was one of those things that could easily be implied by them having the same name but so long as it isn’t outright said, it’s fine.

So now the day is saved. Sonic is tired. They report to the king about how well it all went. The king says that Westside Island was spared the most. Apparently that’s relevant? Cream and Vanilla say they love each other and Cream almost cries. I guess because she was worried about her.

Sally has a weird moment where she brings up all the scientifically illogical things about the planet as though this isn’t a fantasy series with talking animal people in it.

Then Tails almost collapses in exhaustion.

We get a moment where they reflect on the weirdness of the fading memories and how it pretty much just feels like a vivid dream now so it’s hard to care. Sonic tries to play off the worry about losing the old memories but makes a face that seems as though he’s a little less okay with it happening.

It’s probably the toughest on him since he came into this new reality with all his memories from the old world already in-tact thanks to being at the epic-center of the disaster that caused this to happen. The fact that it’s just going to fade away is likely not a happy thing to consider but pretty soon it won’t matter how he feels because he simply won’t remember. 

Functionally, the old Sonic will basically be dead. That’s it.

We don’t dwell on that for much longer though. Sonic wants to be patched through to Uncle Chuck because he did a smartie-thing with his brain.

Get this boy a lollipop.

Anyway, he gets put through to the Mutt, Muttski, and our boy is panicked and stuttering like he’s pre-reboot Ray. It’s only because he’s spooked though. Both the researchers there, Chuck and Professor Pickle, were kidnapped by Eggman.

It’s funny because this is the result of both Sonic and Eggman having the same idea to fix the crisis at a very close proximity of time to each other. However, Eggman had the idea first because he was smarter and he acted on it quicker because he’s a bastard that has no time for rescuing people.

Finally, the inciting incident from Unleashed where Professor the Pickle has been kidnapped by A WHOLE PACK OF ROBOTS is here!

This issue had more going for it then I expected it would. I recalled a lot of talking and a lot of confusing coordination tactics going on, which is totally what happened, but because I can actually sit down and pay attention to the words being said better it all came across a lot clearer despite it still being chaotic. It was intentionally chaotic though. The world is a mess and it feels like everything’s barely managing to stay together. 

Not sure how I feel about Sally going on about wondering why they can still breathe or why the oceans haven’t caved in on each other and other real world junk. Sonic wished to chalk it up to magic and I’m okay with that. I’m more okay with just not mentioning it. Who cares? It’s Sonic. It’s a fucking weird and wacky goddamn world. 

[Kuzu]

I remember feeling Shadow Fall was essentially a much more streamlined and concise spiritual successor to the game its a sequel to. It essentially touches upon similar plot points; Aliens related to Shadow invade and the entire plot is centered on where Shadow's allegiances align before he ultimatley makes the choice to move forward. Black Death is basically just a stand in for Black Doom, etc etc. 

Eclipse is really the only new addition, and I feel he's mostly there to give Shadow an evil counterpart of his own to bounce off after this story arc has ended. 

And its funny, because of everything I mentioned, it gives you an idea how much better Shadow's game could have been just with some proper care; actually focusing on characters close to Shadow in Rouge and Omega? Check. The story is darker than usual, but without being tryhard about it with the use of profanity or realistic firearms but instead focusing on the fact that the main characters are essentially comitting an entire race to genocide, and one of the major villains essentially having to live with the fact he played a role in said genocide. And reaffirming Shadow's character development without invalditating what came before.

 

The whole thing just kind of leaves me melancholc because its kind of a peak into another timeline where things could have been different and Shadow's game isn't just used as a punchline whenever someone makes fun of him or the franchise as a whole.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #258: The Chase, Part One

Ah, this is an excellent cover. I remember when this one was initially revealed. The person who made it was really happy to get this art-piece they did on an official cover for the comic they enjoyed as a kid. It’s Tyson Hesse. It’s a fantastic looking one with a great concept. I couldn’t imagine not being proud of it.

Spoiler

The Return of Princess Sally Variant

It took me a bit but I did eventually realize that this cover was an homage to the cover where Sally was turned into Mecha Sally, which is why its title is “Return of Princess Sally”. It’s a nice idea in concept. I’m still not a fan of these types of covers but that isn’t to say it’s a bad one.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Steve Downer
Letters: John Workman
Cover by Tyson Hesse
Variant Cover by Rafa Knight (after Ben Bates)

A lot of familiar Sonic zones and locations get tossed around on the very first page of this issue.

We start off in Soleanna Forest Zone and get a monologue from, I presume, Sally due to the acorn symbol in the text boxes about how Eggman and his WHOLE PACK OF ROBOTS raided Spagonia University for science notes and two scientists, Uncle Chuck and Professor Pickle. Now the news she’s got says they’re being transported to the Bullet Station in Rail Canyon Zone.

So we’re in a location from Sonic 06 to stop a train from Sonic Heroes from reaching a location in Sonic Heroes carrying supplies and presumed victims stolen from a location in Sonic Unleashed.

The two teams are doing what they can to break into or stop the train. Sonic is cracking jokes about how uber fast he is on the Tornado while Antoine is flying a plane called the Twister. Meanwhile, the other half of the team is trying to break into the train properly. Bunnie fires a beam at the hatch and manages to barely make a hole into it.

So, Sally decides to drop the only person who can fit inside of it. 

The computer emojis here are adorable and funny.

It’s too bad that Nicole’s infiltration is immediately interrupted. 

Before she can properly hack into the Egg-OS (funny name) she’s attacked by the latest in the E-Series…?

Or… wait no… the PREVIOUS latest in the E-Series?

I kind of had to stop myself and think this over a bit since E-123 Omega is the last of the E-Series robots.

So either Eggman’s had Eta here around for a while or he’s been touched up to be more in line with what he can do today.

Or it’s just supposed to be a cool homage to the E-Series of robots. Honestly, it’s fine if it is but I guess it becomes a little confusing when you try to play the numbers game.

Sonic, for some reason, decides that this needs to be done car by car before all the others decide that. I’m not entirely sure why. He just says “something’s happened” and he and Amy immediately get to work on trying to pry the train open car by car.

The professors ARE on board though and it’s here we get a taste of that luscious pickle.

A playable Professor Pickle in the official games continues to elude us I’m afraid. The mods have us covered though. Thank goodness.

Here he’s friends with Uncle Chuck and not Tails which… I guess makes more sense but I did lowkey find it amusing that the opposite spectrum of friends that Tails makes that aren’t like Sonic are old university professors.

Nicole is being attacked by Eta and has to toss herself to Sally to get saved. She tells her that the controls are busted thanks to the robot not giving a FUCK about the train they’re on for the sake of killing intruders. However, she has confirmed that the professors are on board. Accessing the info on which car they’re on isn’t really possible now.

This is when Sally also says they have to do this car by car. Again, I’m a little lost on why Sonic came to this conclusion before Sally did but it was the right choice. Bunnie, Rotor, and Sally get to work trying to pry open the tops of the cars of the train. Apparently the tops are a bit weaker than the doors between cars. Given how Bunnie was able to blast into the car she was in, that might have been a bit of a given, even if the hole she made wasn’t that big.

The train is out of control now that Eta smashed the controls so they need to do this quickly.

The next couple of pages are just them bursting into each car and not finding what they’re looking for, with the first one being Amy smashing a door against some stationary missiles and reflecting on how she almost blew everyone up.

I’ll always love the “Open Says Me” turn of phrase. I have no idea why.

Then Bunnie gets annoyed and is about to blow the car (and everyone else, probably) away when Amy runs up to say HEY maybe wanton blasts at a train carrying EGGMAN TECH isn’t a good idea. Of course, this train is carrying dangerous shit.

The car they open has nothing in it.

The car Sally and Rotor open has nothing important in it, though Rotor does make a point to grab the door before it flies off. He specifically notes that he doesn’t want it beaming anyone in the head when it flies away at terminal velocity of ramming into one their planes.

That’s usually the kind of thing fiction ignores. Good on you Rotor.

Sonic bursts into a car that has a bunch of sleeping badniks in it and he embarrassingly just kind of makes things a bit worse.

Yeah, they fly out the window and start attacking both the bi-planes so Sally has to send Bunnie in to help. Whoops.

There’s a cute moment where Sally calls out for Amy to help her and Rotor fight off some badniks but because she’s yelling on top of a moving train at such a high speed, Amy shouts back “WHAT?!”

Then Rotor and Sally have a conversation about building proper communication devices before Amy rushes in and destroys the badniks for them before asking, “Now what did you want?”

I like that. Really good writing right there.

Suddenly, the train does a really harsh swerve that knocks all the badniks and the heroes off of it. However, Rotor and Sally are fine because they came on their Extreme Gear but Amy jumped off from one of the bi-planes so she has to be rescued by Sonic.

Seeing Amy in Sonic’s arms is fun but seeing Amy in Sally’s arms is just funny.

After this happens and they decide to try to bust open this next car, they hear some really loud crunching noises happening from a few cars down.

They’re unsure of what it is and guess the wrong thing about the train just breaking apart naturally.

It’s equivalent to guessing “Oh, it’s just the wind”. 

Us, as the readers, know it’s probably worse.

Sonic prays for this car to be the right one and low and behold it is!

He rams his way in and Professor Pickle gives Sonic a stern talking to about how lousy of a porter he is and DEMANDS his cucumber sandwich.

Sonic and Chuck share an annoyed glance.

Yes, he’s senile. Hohoho.

Anyway, he’s also actually a genius so Chuck tries to inform Sonic that Pickle’s findings are clued into some intense shit happening to the planet. Sonic is annoyed with even more complications in the world ending nonsense but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it.

The lunch cart has arrived!

The loud crunching they were hearing was actually, and this is REALLY badass, E-106 Eta bursting through the super enforced doors of the train to get to the car where the professors were to head them off at the pass.

Not only is that a really smart move on Eta’s part but those doors were avoided by the Freedom Fighters specifically because they were so heavily reinforced that trying to hack the roofs open instead was the better option. And they still had trouble doing that properly. It was taking them forever.

In other words, this robot ain’t no joke.

That was a fairly fast and easy read. Honestly, a part of me was ready to criticize the section where they’re just breaking into random cars and finding nothing but honestly, having completed the issue, I feel it enhances the feel of the mission and what it is they’re trying to accomplish a lot better. It definitely was not in service of wasting time. The issue itself was just a simple showcase of the Freedom Fighters on a fairly simple mission. We get to see what they’re like in action on something that doesn’t directly feel like they’re up against the end of the world and it’s pretty fun. It’s straight-forward and it’s nice. 

I also like how Ian is just going for it in terms of utilizing a bunch of different locations, concepts, and items from the games. A full two issue arc trying to stop one of the Bullet Trains from Heroes from making off with the professor from Sonic Unleashed guarded by a robot inspired by the E-Series from Sonic Adventure within an area from Sonic 06… it’s pretty inspired.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #259: The Chase, Part Two

It’s a nice enough cover concept but I’ve always personally had a tough time getting into art where there’s no visible or noticeable outlines for some reason. I wish I had an explanation as to why. It looks intense though.

Spoiler

SEGA Variant

This, however, elicits no sympathy from me. Begone lazy train. Take your cheap Sonic render with you.

---

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencil Layouts: Tracy Yardley
Pencil Finishes: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Steve Downer
Letters: John Workman
Cover by Tracy Yardley
Variant Cover Art provided by SEGA w/Vincent Lovallo

The credits are placed at the end of the book again for this issue, randomly. I don’t like it. Please stop.

Sonic is still fighting the horde commander E-106 Eta and is having a bit of a rough time of it in this enclosed space. He can’t get enough momentum to do a seriously good hit, both the professors are here as collateral, and Eta does not give a FUCK about what he has to destroy in order to demolish Sonic.

What follows feels like it could honestly double as an Off-Panel. Especially because of Amy’s friggin face.

The train swerves again and everyone topples over on themselves. They realize that if it happens again they’re probably going to turn into pie sauce.

Bunnie is blowing up badniks while riding on the Tornado. She’s tired. Poor her.

The train does another powerful swerve and this time it seems to slam the two professors into the special glass case they’re in. Professor Pickle is fine but it seems Charles was knocked out.

This enrages Sonic and he gets another scary pre-werehog face.

It doesn’t just go away immediately either. Amy swoops in through the roof to help bat Eta away while Sonic momentarily has to compose himself.

I love it whenever the robots make sad faces. It’s always hilarious.

Rotor manages to get the glass open and the two doctors are rescued. It seems Chuck has woken up. He’s fine. It looked a bit serious there since even Professor Pickle snapped out of his aloofness to recognize that he was in danger.

Though, he snapped out of that when Sally rescued him, saying that she was providing courteous service. I guess he’s still talking about lunch.

I’ll admit, I think they overdid Professor Pickle’s aloof nature here a bit. The constant talk about sandwiches and proper lunch service seems a bit different. It’s most likely because he’s only just now acknowledged that something serious is happening.

Like, the context for his introductory scene in Unleashed was that he WAS being served lunch and he was analyzing it because of how lousy it was. Like a grumpy old man he wanted to stomp off and complain about it too after he was rescued, which was fun. 

Here, it just kind of feels like he’s going on and on about it because that’s what he did in the game. He’s not been served lunch so him talking about it, let alone THIS much, feels a bit overbearing. Just a tad.

He’s still entertaining though, at least.

With everyone here, they’re all rescued and they manage to escape. Amy gets swept off her feet and swats Eta away for daring to almost ruin the moment.

Sonic then does a running leap with Amy in his arms off the train and on the wings of a bi-plane.

Amy closes her eyes when the jump happens, claiming that it’s too much for her but then can’t explain herself when Sonic points out that she’s just fine standing on the wings of a plane.

The day is saved. The train has a robot on it with no doctors headed to nowhere. 

Everything’s good except it’s not.

Sonic can’t HANDLE the elderly.

I’ll admit, this page confused me momentarily. I even had to double back to the previous issue to check but they did mention that all the research notes were taken as well with the professors. I know that the professors didn’t SAY they were on the same bullet train as them but one would think that the research notes were stolen at the exact same time the professors were and thus they would likely be on the same train headed towards the same destination… right?

Even the mission debriefing mentioned it. I had actually assumed that’s what they were raiding the train for until I saw that it was literally carrying the professors. It feels a bit odd that this is news to them.

Well, whatever. It’s fine. I guess we can chalk it up to them just assuming the research notes were… on a different train…? Or… something?

It also feels weird seeing Sonic mad at jolly ol’ Professor Pickle. That ain’t right man.

My man goes on to explain the Gaia Temples research himself since he is the man what did it.

Ah. Look at that. That’s an adorable little cave drawing of good ol’ Light Gaia right there.

Anyway, as an aside, the concept of these Gaia Temples always intrigued me. It’s rare we get tantalizing bits of lore in the games nowadays but I recall feeling like this was a pretty big deal at the time. Not only is it a vicious cycle concerning the state of the planet itself but the existence of these Gaia Temples and their connection to the Chaos Emeralds introduces some interesting parallels to the Master Emerald.

The Master Emerald sits on a shrine on a floating island in the sky whereas the Chaos Emeralds each have their own individual temples that when placed there recover their energy. It’s really hard not to think about.

A part of me is also happy to not have answers to these mysteries. I love the idea behind bits of lore about the Chaos Emeralds existing but not really being addressed. It’s quite possibly one of the few times where I’d accept that. I like the idea behind these bobbles being forever shrouded in mystery. Tidbits to the answer that we have to examine and conclude things about ourselves is nice but I wouldn’t find it too fun to just be given the straight facts about it.

If we ever do, I hope it’s not the lame shit the Pre-Reboot did though.

Unfortunately, Professor Pickle wasn’t able to verify the locations he found and he doesn’t know why Eggman would want his research. Charles does though.

Yes, it would seem that Uncle Chuck is still the one responsible for the roboticizer in this continuity. Makes sense to keep that around, though, I can see it having a little less flare to it without the heavy nature of just how badly it screwed things up and who within the immediate family was fucked over not being present anymore.

Since the professor’s notes only mentioned two locations Eggman doesn’t have THAT much of a head start and the heroes know what they need to do. So they get excited and start to head off but then Uncle Chuck mentions the “sickness” seeping out of the planet.

Professor Pickle explains that it’s probably tied to the notes he had about a Dark Gaia. It’s supposed to be a malevolent deity that instigates corruption and the supposed destruction of the world.

Uncle Chuck lays it on even thicker by talking about how that gas was some NASTY stuff and how it was highly dangerous and corruptive. He even leans in towards Sonic and says “We’re talking the possibility of total cellular re-write”. 

Sonic has to roll his eyes back and say that he’s fine. Even now, he’s being scolded by his uncle like an actual uncle, blood relation be damned.

Sally asks Sonic if he’s leaving her out of the loop on something and he denies it because they’ve got a lot on their plate and he doesn’t want to worry her. Bad move.

She leads Professor Pickle out of the room, saying that she’ll arrange his escort back to Spagonia. Chuck is still not convinced and wants to know, full stop, if Sonic’s fine. Again.

He’s NOT fine and he flashes back to all the freak-out, near-werehog moments he’s had when Chuck asks if he’s been feeling off lately… and still denies it.

Again, not good. I get that he doesn’t want to add more on their plate but uh… he’s gonna whether he wants to or not so might as well have everyone on standby in case it happens. 

Of course he won’t do that though.

Meanwhile, the train headed for Dr. Eggman has arrived. 

This is the one page that always stuck in my mind when it came to this little arc. I remember that panel of Eta shaking its dented arm in anger as Eggman just looks on with a mildly sad face. It’s really great.

They head inside and despite Orbot’s report that everything’s been fucked up, Eggman is fine. Why? Cause he got the important bits.

Meanwhile Cubot gets attacked by an evil mop due to him cleaning up Dark Gaia juice. It’s fantastic. 

Oh and at the very last page of the book we see this hyped up “AFTER THE CREDITS” ending where it’s just a single page of Axel the Water Buffalo getting a call on the phone from Eggman. He goes “Uh-huh. Sure. I understand. Completely understand. Uh-huh. Sure.” then tosses the phone back to his lackey, unsure of what the deal was. They’re guarding a Gaia temple.

Wow. Worth the extra banner at the bottom of the issue advertising the “AFTER THE CREDITS”. Stay till the end to see 1 of 2 ALTERNATE ENDINGS! WHOOO!

Hey, let me ask you what comes to mind when you hear that. Do you naturally think of an actual ALTERNATE way the end of the events in the actual book could have turned out… OR do you think “The focus of the last page is a different thing”.

If it was the first one, what’s the matter with you? That would have been worth your time. It makes more sense to advertise Axel the Water Buffalo talking on the phone in a conversation with Eggman that we don’t even see the full context of. 

Sheesh. It’s no wonder I didn’t remember these “alternate endings” being a thing. It’s because they’re not. Archie was beginning to lose its mind around this point.

That was a very radical bullet train arc. I’m glad it wasn’t too long. I’m glad it was mostly action. It was pretty easy to read and it got the job done as a minor little mission for our heroes to go on to kick off the Unleashed stuff proper. Granted, I can see the argument for this being where the slow pacing of the saga that follows comes into play. It’s not so bad right now but there’s going to be a couple of arcs that make up this whole that won’t really feel like they leave too huge of an impact at the end of it all even if they’re mostly fine for what they are. Right now though, this was fun.

Of course, it’s about to get even more fun for me as I finally get to experience the new and rebooted Team Chaotix. No more Downunda, Constant Vigil, and LSD poisonings for these boys. No sir.

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #63: The Great Chaos Caper - Part 1 of 4: On the Hunt

Fuck. Yes! 

It really is the boys and they’re back in town baby! Ah, the excitement I had when I saw Charmy smoking that bubble pipe. That image was my avatar for a while before I drew my own. Of course, Knuckles being here is meant to invoke the feeling of Knuckles’ Chaotix rather than have it be something that’s explicitly done to offshoot from it. Obviously, that’s what I’ve always preferred but even then the original Archie stories pre-reboot did not do a good job handling them as a unit. Getting a handle on who they were supposed to be was an impossibility. Even the book didn’t know, which is why they were randomly once referred to as detectives and then never again. It was very odd. They did eventually settle on them just being a weirdly named Freedom Fighter group but man it didn’t feel as special to me.

I could go on forever. You all know how I am when it comes to my boys.

Spoiler

Chibi Variant

It’s cute. There’s not much else to say about it aside from that. It does look like Espio almost killed Bean there for a split second I suppose. Never seen the poor guy so scared.

---

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Tracy Yardley
Variant Cover by Ryan Jampole

I know for a fact that when this arc was announced it was originally called “The Great Chaotix Caper” instead of “The Great Chaos Caper”. Looking back through this thread even shows the original solicits where the name was different. I thought I was going crazy when I got the book and it said “The Great Chaos Caper” all of a sudden. 

I’m honestly not sure why the name was changed. “Chaotix Caper” seems like it would make more sense. Chaos shows up at the start of this story but it’s not like he plays a big part. So unless they’re talking about general chaos as a concept then I don’t know if I would have gone for the name change myself.

We open on Knuckles, the Guardian of the Master Emerald, on his island as it’s breaking apart around him. The world is collapsing around him and he doesn’t know why. 

Even stranger is that Chaos, the God of Destruction, just bloop-blorped his way off the island to go into the oceans below. Also, a mysterious voice, that’s obviously Tikal using the context clues now, is telling Knuckles that the world breaking apart isn’t unnatural but a spirit is usually supposed to be guiding the planet to its rebirth.

That spirit is weak and this isn’t even how this whole thing is or was originally supposed to go down so Knuckles is tasked with finding it so that he can fix this shit. Of course, that means he needs to find someone to help guard it while he’s off.

Chaos just dipped and Tikal is a ghostly voice so he can’t exactly rely on them. Luckily, in this continuity, Knuckles has some new friends to rely on.

Relic the Pica and Fixit, an ancient robot based on the mysterious Gizoids from a Sonic game I haven’t played.

We just started and already things are so different. 

Of course, anything would have been better than the mess that the pre-reboot saddled Knuckles with. As cathartic as it was witnessing Ian try and untangle that Gordian knot of bullshit and purge the book of the rest of it, having a Knuckles that just doesn’t have anything to do with that nonsense feels just as good, if not a bit better to me.

There are things that I miss. Obviously, I miss Dr. Finitevus. He was a stellar way of taking what was wrought by the echidnas and turning it into a positive antagonistic force for the book. Also, he wasn’t a Nazi, so that was nice. 

I liked Knuckles’ mom and Wyn. I liked that he had a baby brother named Kneecaps. It does sound goofy but it IS true that Knuckles is another appendage on the body so… why not? Locke and the brotherhood of old, creepy peeping toms being technically purged a second time in a row feels good at least.

Lien-Da was an excellent villain and Dimitri was an excellent expy of the kind of character who could come back from being what Lien-Da was turning into. Yet, at the same time, the Dark Legion was horrible and also full of Nazis.

Enerjak was lame until he wasn’t but again that came with the territory that was ushered in through acquiring Ian Flynn.

There was a significant amount of good that came with the bad but already it feels like a massive weight off my chest no longer needing to remember who the fuck Kragok or whoever the fuck else is. Remember Green Apple Knuckles? Remember when Knuckles died and went to Echidna Heaven? Remember when Knuckles’ dad put his baby in the microwave and set that shit on high?

Never happened. It’s just him, some spirits, and an archaeologist who uncovered an ancient robot.

Tikal’s standing in the Sonic series is a little confusing, to be certain. It’s still not entirely clear what happened to her and Chaos at the end of Adventure to me but seeing as how Chaos returns in Sonic Battle and, I guess, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood the idea that he’s still around persists. He’s appeared in other stuff but it’s mostly been in ways where he shows up without actually showing up. 

In Sonic Generations he was from the past. In Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics he was a boss battle in Dream Figure Skating. In Sonic Forces he was a fake. 

He’s there but he’s not all there.

Meanwhile, Tikal remains an anomaly. She’s clearly a ghost so having it be that she can show up to Knuckles as a spirit makes sense. It’s just hard to pin down whether she can or does it when she isn’t around to do that in anything. It’d be simple enough to do but you know how Sonic Team is with providing answers to simple questions.

As for Relic and Fixit here, the idea is interesting. I feel like it works fine jumping into the relationship already having been formed so as not to dwell on anything too unnecessary and to better kickstart the plot. Plus, and we didn’t know this at the time, but this book is on borrowed time so it’s best we didn’t spend too much time establishing this.

What’s going on here is fairly simple too. That helps. She’s an archaeologist and she found Fixit and thinks exploring and discovering the secrets about Angel Island is neat.

There is going to naturally be a bit of a lingering wonder as to how they got to this point. Why is Knuckles okay with letting this character watch the Master Emerald who, to us, is a complete stranger? She seems harmless enough but Knuckles isn’t the most trust-worthy son of bitch out there when it comes to his rock candy. He’s gullible and can easily jump to wishing to see the best in people but that just puts the idea that she could be manipulating him in our minds.

It’s best not to think too hard about it though. You can tell by their rapport and by her behavior that she means well and that’s all that REALLY matters but I can see people finding the sudden inclusion and the in media res look into their relationship as a bit jarring.

Also, it’s not a romantic relationship. I feel like that shouldn’t even need to be said but she’s a female so sadly it does according to the internet. 

Oh yeah, that bitch with the gun that I hated is gone too. It’s weird how I’m more apathetic about that than happy. Overtime, as the stench of her irrelevancy has become more clear to me, I think I feel less angry about her and just more “Who cares?” when it comes to her. Oh well. It was fun chronicling how much she sucked while it lasted.

Knuckles goes down to Pumpkin Hill to find the lost spirit. He doesn’t know if it’s there. Apparently he can’t sense it in his feet.

He laments being away from his island for so long but monsters burst from under the ground under the graves he’s standing in front of and attack him.

It’s here where we finally see the Dark Gaia Spawn!

Knuckles tries to take them all on but can’t and is rescued by THE BOYS!

And the crowd within my heart goes wild!

Charmy’s little chant there at the beginning only has four “das” so it’s not quite the Scrappy Doo entrance but it’s also the only thing I can think of.

They defeat the monsters together. It looks like eternal sunset here on Pumpkin Hill but I’m guessing both sunset and night count as the same thing anyway. That was kind of true of Adabat, sort of. The freaks come out at night but what constitutes night doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of all sunlight. 

The flow of the conversation is really good here. The dynamic of the Chaotix being what it is normally does help what they’re saying come off as a lot more fun to me. I can actually appreciate the antics here knowing that one of them isn’t only saying some of this stuff because they’re brain-damaged. Vector’s reactions are funnier because of it too.

You don’t want to be a cop, Charmy. Trust me. Donuts come to everyone eventually.

I also like the exchange between Espio and Knuckles a bit before this where Espio says they’ve beaten “whatever those things are” and Knuckles says “Monsters, obviously!” which prompts Espio to roll his eyes and be all “Oh really, dipshit. No foolin’?” here in the top panel.

Knuckles isn’t dumb but he’s very simple-minded so witnessing banter like that is amusing in it’s own right, especially when a scene like what happens between Charmy and Vector follows immediately after.

So, what are the Chaotix in the new continuity? They’re actually detectives now! Only, there are a few caveats. One is that they are aware of Mighty and Ray and the dialogue between Knuckles and Espio seems to suggest that they’ve worked together with each other before.

Due to this Post-Reboot world molding both Classic and Modern elements into it, this is most likely an acknowledgement that Knuckles’ Chaotix is a factor within these books. Mighty and Ray aren’t members of the Chaotix but that adventure did actually happen and they seem to have come across each other often enough for them to be familiar with each other since.

I like this a lot more, obviously. My favorite versions of the Chaotix will always be how they were in the period of the early 2000s where they had an effect on the plot of the games but did so by fault of their own agency and not because they were actually among Sonic’s normal clique. In Heroes they don’t even meet Sonic until it’s time to fight the final boss and in Shadow the Hedgehog, they have their own important side-plot that also does not require them to see or come in contact with Sonic or any of his friends.

Then, of course, there was Sonic X where they had their own ship and weren’t a part of the main crew. They were kind of on their own adventure in space, getting lost, setting up a bar, and eventually giving Shadow a ride to the final battle with the Metarex before just deciding to stick around and help because it might be fun. 

It’s why I fell in love with them. Rouge too. I like characters that have their own thing going on that can affect the plot without needing to be tied to what the main cast is doing. It’s part of why seeing everyone so lazily glued together in Forces stuck out as the height of not giving a shit to me. 

As for their mission, well, Vector lays it on thick.

They’ve been hired to find the Chaos Emeralds!

That’s a shockingly important task. Granted, Vector does say “help” track down the emeralds so they’re not the only ones being told to do so. The “mayo on his reward sandwich” is quite the sick burn though. Geez.

Espio is the straight-man of the three stooges so he manages to have an actual conversation with Knuckles and agrees for his boss that they should work together. After all, Knuckles is a treasure hunter with a built in emerald tracker in his brain… or something.

Knuckles agrees since he figures a deity might also be where a gem of ultimate power is. Most likely. It’s honestly not a bad hunch and it’s also the only thing he has to go on so why not?

Knuckles says that he’s got a lock on the Emerald but that it’s on the move.

All of a fucking suddenly, all three of them get super serious.

Vector grabs Knuckles and asks him which way. He tells them the direction and Charmy passes out the rings from Knuckles’ Chaotix so that they can jump off the mountain and fly towards their destination.

Knuckles has noticed the shift in their attitudes and asks what the deal is. Apparently, Eggman’s forces are spread too thin dealing with the crisis on hand so he hired a bunch of mercenaries to get him the emeralds. Mercenaries whose identity has been spoiled by the variant cover.

Of course, while flying through the canyon, we get some nice banter about the ghosts that get leery down in Pumpkin Hill and it freaks Charmy out so much that he almost grants Espio and Vector a traditional bottomless pit death from Heroes.

Funnily enough, this leads into Vector complaining about the Sling Rings they’re using first and foremost. Espio defends their use, highlighting that flying via Charmy’s legs would be less efficient.

True, especially if they have to go a terribly long distance. Still, I love that Charmy canonically can do that. His strength is otherworldly for a six year old. Same goes for Cream. And Rouge being able to lift Omega is like… the real big thing there. I get winded just imagining attempting to.

That said, these rings don’t look very safe either. Relying on these sparkles being the only thing to connect you feels weird. Like, I wouldn’t want magic sparkles to be the thing I relied on when hovering over a canyon. There’s too many gaps in the air around them for that to stall my nerves.

There’s a weird moment where Vector suggests abandoning Charmy and Espio has to explain to him how cruel and dangerous it would be to do that. We get a single panel of him contemplating this before deciding that he’s not sharing his reward sandwich with him instead. Oh that’s… quite the upgrade in punishments I guess.

Vector then goes off on Knuckles for scaring him with ghost stories but Knuckles reiterates again that he’s not lying. 

Vector and Espio share a look of concern and Knuckles doubles down on saying that he’s just here to help and not do everything himself so they’d best hurry and get over it. He also points out that they dealt with ghosts back in Heroes.

They still look concerned. 

I love the weird way Espio is ninja tromping up the side of the mountain here. 

Because Espio is more Chaotix-y then he lets on, he does stand out as a bit goofier than before in some respects. At the very least, it’s easier to see him having more subtle comedic moments than it was before. Plus, he’s not been relegated to super serious ninja clan man who’s been thrust into a strange, out of nowhere relationship for shits and giggles.

Knuckles asks Espio why he’s afraid of ghosts since he’s a ninja and Espio says he never said he was afraid and accuses Knuckles of “projecting” which Knuckles just repeats back with a question mark since it makes almost no sense as a response.

They then find Charmy whimpering inside a jack-o-lantern.

Fittingly it’s a very sad one too.

D’aww. My poor boy.

He’s a-scared.

Never fear though. Knuckles is here to give him the pep talk he needs to shoot out of that sad-lantern and realize just how good he actually is.

It’s a very nice moment.

I especially like that last line from Knuckles. It’s never treated as anything special within the games he’s appeared in because it’s easy to see him as just blending in with the crowd but he did help fight against all that stuff. It’s true. It’s nice to have it acknowledged and to see him ever so slightly proud of him for it.

Also, I like seeing Charmy go in for a hug on Vector like that. He likes to either sit on Vector’s head or give him a big ol’ hug.

This child is witnessing someone’s death at this very moment.

Vector plucks Charmy off of him and asks Knuckles if he can still sense the emerald. Knuckles can and discovers that it is now heading down.

Vector asks why they would be heading down if they have the emerald. 

Charmy says “Because they’re low-lifes”.

Vector is in mid-cringe at the very punny joke Charmy just made and Charmy is in mid-doubling over with laughter at his intentionally bad joke causing Vector to cringe as hard as he did when they’re attacked by loads of bombs and lasers.

The scene almost makes it look like the pumpkins themselves are being tossed with bombs inside of them. That would make them literal pumpkin bombs if that were true.

It’s not though. They’re just being sent flying by regular bombs, courtesy of one Bean the Dynamite and his companions, Bark the Polar Bear and boss, Fang the Sniper.

Although, I guess they’re still going by Nack here. 

Things haven’t totally shifted to how they are currently within the state of the books just yet. 

Tune in next time to see what Chuckles and the Moronix do in retaliation against these hooligans!

Good first issue. Not a ton was accomplished when all is said and done but I managed to get a lot out of it by the interactions alone. Plus, with a lot of this being set-up for the new continuity, analyzing and seeing what the characters are now that the baggage has been thrown into the Oil Ocean was a sweet enough treat for me. It’s time for some good, cool, honest fun with some of my favorite groups of characters. This is going to be sweet.

[SanPolo4389]

19 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Sheesh. It’s no wonder I didn’t remember these “alternate endings” being a thing. It’s because they’re not. Archie was beginning to lose its mind around this point.

No we're not at Worlds Untie yet, that's where I think it all went badly.
This just reeks of just a marketing stunt to sell variant covers

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic Universe - Issue #64: The Great Chaos Caper - Part 2 of 4: The Usual Suspect

The covers for this arc are all good but none of them ever reach that insane level of good or creative that would land them amongst my favorites. You’d think I’d cheese it and put some of them at the front because some of them have the Chaotix on the cover but that’s not true honestly. Still, they’re pretty fun to look at. This one, while not my favorite of the four, is probably the most inspired of the ones for this arc. I especially love the glowing arc of light that’s acting as the bridge between the title and the image for this issue. The glowing eyes of the Dark Gaia monsters make for some neat patterns.

Spoiler

SEGA Variant

Lazy SEGA variant number seventy-three. Also, starring not even one of the better renders of Knuckles, in my opinion. That background looks extra bad this time too. It’s super weird lookin’.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Tracy Yardley
Variant Cover by SEGA

We rejoin our two groups of fools in… Pumpkin Hill Zone, the book says.

Ah man. It would seem the book really is going to refer to these places as zones now. That’s going to feel a bit strange as someone who feels it’s more natural just to refer to an area without “zone” in it. Unless it’s an area that sounds better with “zone” in it like… Metropolis Zone. It’d just be “Metropolis” without the zone and that would make it that place from Forces. Sort of. 

Seriously, what if the rap said “Down in Pumpkin Hill Zone I’ve got to find my lost piece” instead? That just doesn’t flow.

Anyway, they start fighting. Well, most of them do. Charmy tries to fight Bean but uh…

Just in case anyone was wondering which of these two was weirder. When Charmy’s making the “WTF” face at you then you’ve skedaddled past cartoonishly looney and have just gone into insane territory. 

The fights that do happen are fun to look at though. The dialogue helps make it even more fun too. 

Like, I already like this more than what we got in Treasure Team Tango… though poor Vector having his long face appendage used against him like that makes me feel for the guy. 

Then, of course, Bean has to fix his speech bubbles and the instant he does he says a thing that catches all the non-insane people off guard.

It’s interesting how Bean works.

He’s got enough autonomy to function but when he does he’s still speaking like he’s barely got all cogs working… but what he’s saying will still stand on its own as something relatively normal to think about sometimes. 

I guess that’s all a part of how cartoon logic works.

Fang gets a little frustrated and calls a quick truce to figure this out. In a pretty hilarious moment, he and Knuckles start to work through the logic of where it can be together and once they realize what they’re doing, Fang just boots him the fuck away and tells Bean to get them out of there.

Bean throws his bombs and shouts “NINJA VANISH!” as everything explodes around them.

I’d say it was a solid 10 but Espio wishes to file a complaint to their manager.

I love how Espio is way more Espio in this universe than the other one already. I’ve said this before but it’s already standing out so much and it’s only been issue two of this, the Chaotix’s first appearance in the reboot.

Like, yeah, he’s the straight-man of the Chaotix but he’s still a member of the Chaotix. He does and says goofy shit too. He’s just more serious about it.

Vector is a bit annoyed that the Hooligans left knowing where to go but Knuckles reassures them that he’s still a better tracker than what’s on Fang’s bike. Because the comics have been rebooted and Sonic Adventure 2 actually happened properly that means Knuckles has been through Pumpkin Hill before. Plus, he can treasure hunt for magic rocks naturally.

They’ve still got a chance. I love all of Charmy’s lines here.

I love the image of him doing the super peel-out but the line “We can still pretend to be number one” shows a level of self-awareness that Vector has trouble admitting to. He’ll tease Vector about how much of an underdog he is but he’s aware that he’s one too. We all suck as a team. How humbling.

So, they take off with the freaky Knuckles’ Chaotix rings again. Vector warns Charmy not to drop them again and Charmy tells Vector to not freak him out with spooky shit and he won’t. Knuckles, meanwhile, is contemplating the fact that this is distracting him from his actual mission. He doesn’t mind helping the Chaotix out and their mission is important but he came here to find a spirit and he’s leaving his giant mass of rock candy unguarded right now. It won’t leave his mind.

Even when he has someone that he trusts looking over it, he can’t help himself. It sounds like such a troubling existence. This boy needs a vacation from his island. 

Speaking of which, the two people he tasked with guarding his island, Relic and Fixit, are in the middle of something right now. Well, Relic is. Fixit is just trying to figure out what she’s trying to do so he can help.

They’re in the Launch Base Zone right now and she’s trying to connect to the old technology the echidnas used to see if she can get communication systems up and running. Why she wants to do this, I’ve no clue. However, Fixit inserts a huge thing into his chest and gets juiced up with sweet, sweet electricity.

He then tells Relic that the high he just experienced allowed him to see everything and he detected something ALIEN in the Mushroom Hill Zone. They decide they need to go investigate it since they were put in charge of watching over things. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be one of those weak as shit aliens from Signs they’ll be running into.

Back with the Chaotix, they’ve taken a dive into Aquatic Mine. 

Fun fact, the most recent Bumblekast saw Ian and Kyle talking about this exact arc and how everything they did lined up with the lyrics of Pumpkin Hill. Like the sad pumpkin in the alley was the sad Jack-O-Lantern that Charmy was hiding inside of. Ian talked to Tracy and asked him if he did this on purpose and he said no. It was just a funny visual because Charmy was sad so he put him in a sad pumpkin.

Then the stuff for this issue with Aquatic Mine was happening and Ian was reading through the notes and realized that it was also synching up with the lyrics of that one too. He noticed something missing and called up Tracy to add on that one thing in his art for it to be perfect.

I haven’t linked my reading of this up with the music yet but that’ll be a fun experiment later.

Boy, if I had a nickel for the amount of times Ian released a Bumblekast talking about something during an arc of the comics I was currently reviewing I’d have two nickels. 

Which isn’t a lot but yada yada.

Knuckles is still sensing the emerald and the feeling has gotten stronger. Charmy asks him how he’s able to do this and Knuckles says he just can. Treasure Hunters have an innate ability to feel when treasure is near.

Instead of asking if this means being born with a radar in your body means you're destined to be a treasure hunter, Charmy just asks how he can be one if he’s guarding the Master Emerald all the time. Knuckles counters this by saying he can have hobbies too.

Apparently not since your restrictions have gotten even more airtight as far as the IDW series is concerned. Granted, I’m glad they’ve finally listened and want to keep Knuckles remembering his duty but one can’t help but wonder if we’ve gone too far in the other direction now.

Knuckles asks why they keep him around and Espio asks if he’d leave Charmy to fend for himself. This is like the third time this exchange, or something like it, has happened since the Mega Man crossover. They ask why Charmy is here and Espio throws a backhanded answer in response. 

Although, this time it at least ends with an actual joke where Vector says that he uses Charmy as a tax write off every tax season. As an adult now I get that joke.

I would be lying if I said this sort of conversation coming up so often with little variation wasn’t a little irritating. I think the perfect way Ian writes the Chaotix happens in IDW for me, personally, but the way they are here is still miles better than what we were getting before. Plus, it’s definitely still a lot of fun.

Like, on the next page, Charmy plays the “Why game” with Knuckles. 

I played this game all the time when I was his age.

Come to think of it, Charmy’s gotten the most focus out of the Chaotix since this arc began. I guess Ian is just stretching his writing muscles with him a bit since this is kind of the first time he’s gotten a chance to write him as himself.

Like, his ACTUAL self.

Knuckles asks the Chaotix where they were when the world broke apart and they relay that their place basically SHOOK. They weren’t on a fault line but it was a global event so everyone was affected. You could say that Unleashed being about going around the world might have been a great way to show everyone at different locations aside from just Amy and Tails but I digress.

The world is at stake. This is no longer about just a paycheck. This prompts Espio to wonder about how the Hooligans can live with themselves and… we cut to said Hooligans who have someone with a bit of a dissenting opinion amongst them.

When making the 30th Anniversary comic centered around the Classic universe and its characters, Ian talked about how the directive he got from SEGA was to portray Bark as though he was a nice guy that just hangs out with a bad crowd.

Now… Ian spoke as though this was news to him and that he was going along with it but this comic was released well before that issue, obviously… so a part of me thinks it’s likely that they observed their portrayal here and just told him to do it like he did it here and he just didn’t remember this scene.

After all, he spoke about how they had no issues with his portrayal of the Hooligans in the Anniversary special. Bean especially surprised him. They were cool with it. Perhaps they’ve decided that the personalities he gave them just ARE how they are. If so, then I’d consider that a huge honor. Especially when it comes to Bean. He should be proud of how he made that character come into his own. He really is something special.

This is speculation, of course, but it all lines up well for me.

Meanwhile, Vector is being mean to Charmy again. 

He sees an image of a ghost on the wall and points to it, telling Charmy that the people who made this place may have put those images here and fucking died and now haunt this place as well. It scares Charmy and Espio tells Vector to knock it off… but then Knuckles tells Espio that, no, he might actually need to watch out for ghosts since they’re definitely here.

This causes all three of the Chaotix to stop and make concerned looks. Well, Charmy is mostly just frozen in fear.

When it comes to Vector and Charmy, they like to tease each other and when they have one over on the other they’ll take advantage of it for sure. It’s fun. Still, the way Knuckles just puts them all on that even playing field without realizing it is also amusing.

Like, I can’t stress how great it is that all three of the Chaotix are bothered by there being ghosts here. It was even pointed out that they’ve dealt with ghosts back in Heroes. I believe the reaction to them was singing followed by confusion.

Charmy sings “I see where you are~!” and then Vector goes “What are you singing about?”

Well, that interaction might have just been the one that stuck out to me. It’s hard recalling specific lines of them being scared I guess. 

Knuckles being more used to ghosts then them does at least make sense though, considering he’s dealt with more of them by far. 

This next scene is golden though. I couldn’t help but grin my whole way through it.

The Chaotix are great and the way Knuckles can’t help but get sucked into their style of shenanigans is also great. Just look at those bright, smiling faces!

Of course, at the end of the day, Knuckles is still on a mission and the deeper they go into these mines and the more the Chaotix keep pestering him about a mission that isn’t his own the more annoyed he gets.

Espio suggests they might have gone the wrong way which causes Knuckles to growl in anger and say that they’d probably be there faster if he didn’t have to keep stopping to assure them of things being okay.

Then Vector complains about there only being a bunch of wet rocks everywhere. Then Charmy freaks out over the fact that the emerald is still somehow moving and suggests the Hooligans got it first. Then Vector… starts to use him like a medal detector on the fucking beach…!

It’s an amusing image but I wonder if Vector would actually do this? I’m having trouble discerning whether or not he would.

Well, regardless, him doing this is the last straw.

Knuckles jumps up with extreme anger and screams at the croc, shouting that he didn’t come here to do their mission for them or babysit them through ghost stories. He’s done. 

Vector tries to apologize but Knuckles just says “NO MORE!” 

Vector then says “Fine” and tells him to point them in the right direction and they’ll just go their separate ways. 

I guess that’s what happens when you abuse your emerald radar. Oh well.

Fortunately, it’s actually right around the corner.

You’ve found… a Dear Friend.

That emerald is making quite the impressive glow.

… Also, HOLY SHIT, it’s CHIP!

He’s here ladies and gentlemen! 

I remember when I first saw him finally appear in the books. It always gave off a neat little feeling in the pit of my stomach, seeing a character from a game I liked appear in the book. He probably won’t ever appear in a comic again so I have to savor as much of this as possible. SEGA prefers Ian not to go too far into the past after all and Unleashed came out in 2008 if you can believe it.

That was a fun issue all the way through. I had to stop myself from just posting the entire comic because there was so much to look at and observe as far as dialogue and facial expressions. If you’re not a fan of these characters, you might be left a little cold here since this entire issue was mostly back and forth conversations through Pumpkin Hill and Aquatic Mine at the end of the day but it’s hard to really notice or care with personalities this strong and fun. Not just with the Chaotix but with Knuckles and the Hooligans as well. These are just really good characters and it’s great hanging out with them.

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #65: The Great Chaos Caper - Part 3 of 4: Chip Off the Ol’ Emerald!

I think this might be my favorite of the covers for this arc. Maybe. I think the first cover might catch up to this one in my mind a few times literally just for that image of Charmy with the bubble pipe. Chaotic covers are fun. I don’t typically like covers with just a plain white background but I understand that it works better for something like this. Interesting how they’re all going after Chip when the bad guys here just want the emerald. 

Terrible title though. Doesn’t even make any sense. We needed a pun that had the word chip in it so we shoehorned that old chestnut in there. These emeralds can’t be chipped motherfucker.

Spoiler

SEGA Variant

Yeah, it’s a picture of the Chaotix renders on a comic cover. If this were the cover for like an encyclopedia or something I’d be excited but as a cover for a comic it’s… pleasant to look at and not much else.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley!
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Yardley, Amash, Morelli, & Herms
Variant Cover art provided by SEGA

They all happen upon Chip with the red Chaos Emerald. 

Vector asks if he’s a winged chihuahua which… good question. There is no official answer as far as I know.

We don’t necessarily need an answer. He’s a god or spirit of some sort. It’s fine to say that Dark Gaia is just some kind of monster that has vague reptilian features to him.

Charmy says it’s adorable which… hey, I guess I approve of him valuing things that are cute. Still not sure I like it when these comics have him say that he himself is cute though. Doesn’t seem right that he would do that still. Him liking flowers and cute things is fine. It’s adorable.

Knuckles, lastly, realizes pretty fast that this is the spirit he’s been looking for. Charmy points out that he’s got the emerald and this prompts Chip to fly off SCREAMING his head off in fear. 

The Chaotix have no chill. Vector rushes after him, claiming he’s carrying three months worth of rent which… man, being an adult makes him so much more relatable, eh? I already liked Vector a lot but damn.

Charmy, meanwhile, just wants Vector to not hurt him because he’s too cute to injure which doesn’t fall in line with my M.O. I tend to find it hilarious when cute things get hurt even though I’m also a fan of things that are adorable.

What follows is a series of Chaotix Fails with Vector slamming into a minecart, Espio falling down a hole, and after Espio tells Charmy that he has to go after him and Charmy says “You can count on me” the literal next panel is Charmy immediately slamming his face into an iron bar.

God, I wish this were animated. The comedic timing from “You can count on me” to an immediate DONK to the face would have sent my sides into orbit.

When someone’s wearing a helmet, aim for the face.

Anyway, they corner him and the threatening aura of the Chaotix hovers over the poor spirit.

Look at em. So scary. 

Knuckles digs through a wall and tells them that, hey, maybe they should chill the eff out.

This spirit is under Knuckles’ protection, which is an interesting direction to go. 

Knuckles explains to Chip that they’re here to protect him and that they need the emerald to save the world. The poor, seemingly stressed creature, actually tears up upon hearing this and exclaims in excitement about how happy he is that they want it for that reason.

Our boys are a bit confused by this though. They don’t know why Chip doesn’t know what the thing he’s protecting is for and he tells them that he’s got a bad case of ambrosia.

No, he’s got amnesia. 

He doesn’t remember who he is or what he’s supposed to do. He just remembers weird bits and pieces. He knows that he needs the emerald and he knows that it’s important but the why and how are lost to the poor boy.

Vector is happy that Knuckles is getting what he wants but he really wants that emerald so that they can afford groceries now. Knuckles tells him to fucking wait.

He then makes a deal with Chip to protect him so that they can go on their journey together. Now that the mystery of why Chip wasn’t doing his duty is solved we can finally properly name him to line ourselves up with Unleashed proper… sort of.

A ton of thought wasn’t actually put into Sonic naming Chip in Unleashed and yet, despite that, it feels a lot less happenstance there then it does here. This is for a couple of reasons.

One, there’s a pause between Sonic suddenly calling Chip by his new name and it’s actually dwelled on a bit. Chip literally stops when he hears it before he gets excited about having a name.

The other reason is because it, naturally, feels like it happened here because it sort of had to. Like, this is another universe and Chip being called Chip could have very easily not happened or he could have been named a different thing. 

Chip’s the one who throws out the weird analogy about cookies missing their chocolate chips which… how does he even know what those are? Charmy then decides that’s his new name and then it’s settled.

I don’t have a problem with Charmy being the one to name him or even that the first of the heroes he comes across to form a relationship with is Knuckles and the Chaotix. It’s just naturally a bit less special here than in the game. 

The crux of Unleashed was Sonic and Chip’s friendship obviously. When Knuckles and the Chaotix found him I do remember there being a lot of push back against it not happening the same way it did in the game or the fact that it’s going to take a long time still for him to meet Sonic.

As this is a different universe I can compartmentalize that a bit better personally BUT I can’t say that it doesn’t bother me a tad. It’d be like Sonic and Tails taking forever to be friends or something. Yeah, it’s a different universe but you still want the character dynamics you liked from the material these comics are based on to still be present. 

There’s so much that’s going on though. It never was going to be the same.

Before they can even get too far, the Hooligans show up and snatch Chip out of the air, with Fang saying that they’ll hand him over if they get the emerald. They need both so this isn’t a fair or good deal at all but I doubt he cares.

We cut back to Relic and Fixit who happen upon a creepy, red and blue colored… plant thing that’s stuck in the ground in Mushroom Hill Zone. The area around this thing has had the life and nutrients sucked out of it.

Relic wishes to study for the sake of making sure it won’t cause trouble for Knux and has Fixit gather up some samples. Whether or not the systems Eggman left behind on Angel Island will work towards helping to do this is left up in the air.

What isn’t left up in the air is whose at fault for this monstrosity. We just end this scene on a scary, dark zoom in on Eclipse’s alien face as he growls at the people he is spying on, messing with his mighty tree.

The Chaotix are now fighting the Hooligans. Chip says “Yay, I’m helping!” when he pulls Bark’s hat over his face so Knuckles can punch him in the gut. It’s a cute moment. Especially since Knuckles’ response to that is, “Sure are.”

Bean tosses some bombs indiscriminately which causes the walls to burst apart and the water from the Aquatic Mine to flow in. Everyone is tripping over everyone else, just like on the front cover, to try and get Chip… who HAS the emerald here.

Knuckles tells Chip to take himself and the emerald out of there. When he gets to the surface he’s supposed to fly straight up to a floating island to seek assistance from a nice lady named Relic. Chip doesn’t want to go but Knuckles tells him that he has to and he rushes off to do what “Mr. Knuckles” says reluctantly.

Then their rush into the fray is interrupted by someone who doesn’t respect anyone’s personal right to property.

“Doesn’t care who the bike belongs to” is the best introductory caption for a character ever.

I also like how The Marvelous Queen always gets introduced. Like, always.

Bean and Bark are about to rush in and help the Chaotix fight the Dark Gaia Titan but Fang says they can let the heroes do that while they snag the emerald. He grabs Chip out of the air and shakes him like a salt shaker in an attempt to get him to let the emerald go.

Doesn’t work.

So instead he decides to kidnap him along with it.

Ironically, despite not knowing how important Chip is, that would have given Eggman quite the big boost to his plan from the get go.

Now that they have what they want, Fang tells Bean to blow up everything around them except for a one way exit just for them. Then he tells him to blow up the exit once they escape.

He shoots, he scores.

Bean is just living his best life. He’s not thinking too hard about the implications behind what they’re doing but I love that I can tell that Bark is thanks to his facial expressions.

The Hooligans are performing really well here though. Not only did they grab the emerald and Chip but they trapped our heroes inside with the Dark Gaia Titan and have successfully made it so that the mine has begun flooding.

If I were a betting man who didn’t know this was a fantasy story, I’d say they were fucked.

One thing I gotta mention is how all the fonts and boxes stacked on top of each other here on the final page is kind of ruining things a bit. Archie is going to get more and more into unnecessary clutter the more we go on but this already looks ridiculous.

They found Chip! Our bread and butter of the Unleashed video game is finally here. He’s great, he’s fun, and as Charmy said, he’s adorable. This issue was also a lot of fun too. This arc is relying heavily on its characters to carry it through and that’s working wonders for it. Because everyone is so animated and the dialogue is so much fun it doesn’t even matter that what’s happening here is so simple. In fact, it’s to its benefit. I remember liking the arc before but I think it might work just a bit better nowadays for me. This is just a nice little adventure with my favorite detective boys & Knuckles.

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #66: The Great Chaos Caper - Part 4 of 4: Water Way to Go!

Again, awful title. I think this one might be worse than that other one. Water sounding vaguely like “what are” never works right when said aloud. Yuck. The cover is okay. It’s just Knuckles leaping at the Dark Gaia Titan to fight it… I think. I mean, obviously that’s what it’s supposed to be but the angle of this image has always been fucking weird. You can tell that he’s looking at the titan but the way his body is angled makes it look like he shouldn’t be.

Spoiler

Sonic Vs. Knuckles Variant

This is a cool concept and I appreciate that it’s an actual image and not an arts and crafts project sent in by SEGA this time. However, I’m not a fan of the style here. I’m also not too jazzed about its focus being on Knuckles fighting Sonic. Not for this particular arc at least.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley!
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Tracy Yardley, Jim Amash, & Matt Herms
Versus Variant Cover by Brent McCarthy

Vector seems to be the only one having fun here, riding on the arm of the Dark Gaia Titan. The others seem more worried about all this.

Fang is really happy that they pulled this job off without a hitch though. Bean is apparently disappointed that everything went well. Bark is silent. 

Anyway, the Chaotix are about to drown with a monster that’s trying to kill them. Vector gets thrown from the monster's hand and lands beside the Aquatic Mine switch and gets a brilliant idea.

He pokes the monster’s leg and makes it look in a different direction like he’s in a Looney Tunes cartoon before telling everyone to gather around the long tunnel under the water before he presses the switch. Knuckles thinks this’ll drown them faster but Vector just tells them to hold their breaths and goes for it.

Our Detective Vector has had his detective moment and it’s great.

I should also note that Charmy flew in to hug Vector again. He can’t help himself.

They even do this in the nick of time for their heroism to overcome the villains at the opportune time. 

By that I mean, the water flows out of the wall and washes into the Hooligans. 

Fang, the poor bastard, is distraught as fuck.

I don’t know what to tell him. He’s not a hero so he can’t win. Find the author and do something about it I guess.

I don’t know why Fang is all “We finally won” though. He has to have won plenty in order for him to be a reliable contact. I can’t assume he only ever goes against the Chaotix and no one else… right?

Well, turns out they also washed the Dark Gaia Titan away with them which puts it right where they are.

It starts attacking everyone now. Chip takes this time to run back to Mister Knuckles, who is just the well nurturing and kind big brother figure. He tells him that he’s done good with a nice warm smile on his face. It’s all very adorable.

Fang is dangling over the edge of a huge drop and Bean is refusing to help or make any sense with his reasoning for why he won’t help him. It’s one of the few times where Bean’s randomness felt random if that makes any sense.

Back with Relic and Fixit, the two of them are analyzing the sample of the weird alien looking tree they took from Mushroom Hill over in Flying Battery Zone. It works as a research station as well as a former flying death machine, you see.

Turns out it’s turning up nothing.

This makes Relic shudder to consider that whatever this thing is… it’s not from their world.

We see Eclipse in full force now. He’s dragging what looks like alien eggs with him but he tells his Dark Arms to eat them so maybe they’re not.

6.

You were my brother Shadow. 

I loved you.

Back with our heroes again, Detective Vector, whose suddenly being the boss in this final issue like I’ve always wanted, has another plan.

Problem is that Titan isn’t going to let them speak so Charmy, whose been a genius this whole arc, executes Order 6

In hindsight it should have been obvious that Happy-Go-Lucky Bean’s trigger would have been his bombs being called shit. 

Like Amy’s hammer, he summons them from a hammer space (bomb space) to wreck everyone in his way with an endless barrage of blasts. It’s always weird thinking about how Bean works. In this world are you just born with abilities like this? Did he wake up one day and realize he could summon bombs?

Is it like Undead Unluck where God is an asshole and makes it so that your powers manifest in a way that gives your life a heavy tragedy? When his bomb powers activated did he kill his parents? Is that why he’s insane?

Rambling. I know.

Anyway, Fang gets all reflective to Bark and annoyed by the fact that Bean didn’t do this during their job back in Empire City or in a job where they were trying to get into a vault or something. 

So they DO do more jobs. Hmm.

Fang then stops talking to Bark once he remembers that Bark can’t bark back and they speed the Marvelous Queen over to Knuckles so that they can pin him down and demand the emerald. Fang is about to blow his brains out when Charmy tells him that it’s gone. He says this right over a shrugging Vector who clearly has something in his mouth.

What the Hooligans don’t know is that while they were talking Espio turned invisible and messed with Fang’s bike. He just tapped on it like three times or something and now their tracker is messed up.

So when Charmy says the emerald is gone, Fang believes him when he looks at the radar and they grab Bean and leave. Bean says he feels spiritually cleansed. Good for him.

The last thing to take care of now that they’re gone is the Dark Gaia Titan which Knuckles does in a very small panel at the bottom of the page.

I know it wasn’t necessarily a big deal but the final blow against the big bad of this final issue feels like it should be, at least, a little bigger than this.

It’s fine though. When the villains are gone, everyone shows what they’ve done to sell us on how big of a success this was for them and how they’ve outsmarted their enemies.

It’s great. They all look good and everyone helped.

Vector putting Chip in his mouth when he doesn’t know where he’s been was unfortunate.

Also, Chip doesn’t know what a bath is but he knows what cookies with chocolate chips are. Okay.

I will say that Espio managing to do that to their tracker in that short amount of time is an interesting solution. I know Espio… typed on a computer that one time at the end of Shadow the Hedgehog and before the Mad Matrix level but I don’t quite know if he can do something like that.

It’s not a huge deal or anything but it feels like things here kind of wrapped up a little fast at the tail end here. Just a tiny bit.

Also, and I know I said this before, but I really don’t like the decision to put zone at the end of everything. Like, I can see Pumpkin Hill Zone, I guess, but when that caption said “Meanwhile, back in Aquatic Mine Zone” I was like… no. 

I’m sorry but that doesn’t work. At least not to me.

Chip says “Hello Mr. Sun” when they make it out of there. It’s cute.

Knuckles also tells Vector that he should give the emerald to him for now which is funny considering how often Vector kept going on about how many months worth of rent and groceries it was worth.

Alls well that ends well.

It’s always a sad day whenever the Chaotix have to take their leave but I understand that it’s important for all the characters to have their time in the sun,

Things will change when they finally make that Chaotix anime series I’ve always wanted though. And the Ace Attorney styled Chaotix Detective Agency video game.

You’ll see. YOU’LL ALL SEE!

Anyway, Knuckles goes back to the island. Apparently he had to catch a huge updraft in order to do it which makes it sound like his means of getting back to his own island is a bit tougher than you’d think.

It’s also here where we get the full body reveal of the spirit who sent him on this mission. It’s Tikal.

She’s here and she’s transparent but she can see and talk to Knuckles. So yeah, apparently Knuckles isn’t entirely alone on the island and he won’t go crazy from self-imposed isolation.

At least in this continuity. 

She can even be touched as we see with Relic when she happens upon what seems like her first ghost.

I’m glad the Relic subplot happened. They interjected tiny bits and pieces appropriately to set up Relic finding out this mystery so that she could appropriately relay the news to Knuckles here at the end and have him properly able to react to what’s going to happen next.

Plus, it did a lot to world build Angel Island and it was just a nice way to show her off. She’s a good character and it’s really a bit of a shame she ends up leaving before she could really, truly make a good impact.

As for Tikal, I do sort of like the way she’s being portrayed and handled here. It’s interesting to imagine that she’s still just a ghost tethered to the Master Emerald and can talk to Knuckles whenever she wants. At the very least it allows for her to remain within the story without her needing to be a character that needs to be pushed for appearances. Same with Chaos, though, to a lesser extent seeing as how he’s not dead.

In the games, it’s too vague. I really wish we’d get a TailsTube explaining what Tikal and Chaos’ deal is now, officially.

Anyway, after Relic does the “Aliens” meme from the history channel, we cut to the Hooligans who have ALREADY figured out that they’ve been duped and are standing in front of Eggman to communicate their failure.

They try to blame it on the Dark Gaia monsters and Eggman almost looks like he’s about to be understanding about it but nope.

Instead, he shouts that they’re getting him a goddamn emerald and this time they’re doing it for free. 

I mean that’s just a morale killer Eggman. You have to know that the Hooligans would do better work if there’s a reward at the end of it for them. I suppose he considers the reward “no further punishment” but I dunno. Sounds like a happiness killer to me.

Still, what Eggman presents to them as the thing that’ll get him that emerald immediately excites me.

It’s the Sonic the Fighters arc, aka, Champions, aka, one of the best arcs in all of Archie Sonic!

GET EXCITED!

I mean, we still have a ways to go until it happens but STILL!

So that was The Great Chaos Caper and it was a barrel of fun. I remember thinking this arc was mostly good but not an enthusiastic kind of good back when I first read it years and years ago. Re-reading it again, I understand why but I certainly enjoy it even more now. It’s the Chaotix and the Hooligans just smearing the page with how fun and cool they are. How is that going to turn in a bad arc? Well, it probably could have were it the Pre-Reboot Chaotix, maybe, but this had success written all over it. I still wouldn’t say it elicits an enthusiastic, hype generating emotion from me as it’s still a pretty simple story arc when all is said and done but it’s very good. 

Next time, we’ve got some funky things to look at on this list. It’s going to get a bit weird.

[SanPolo4389]

46 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It’s the Sonic the Fighters arc, aka, Champions, aka, one of the best arcs in all of Archie Sonic!

Or it being not very good by like 1 or 2 people on the internet.

[babsiwuff]

On 6/5/2022 at 6:58 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It’s interesting how both Marine and Bean are standing out as opposite ways to handle the kind of character that generates conflict. Bean is actually funny and when he messes with the flow of the narrative it’s usually for the better because it makes things more exciting. Because he’s so chaotic and a bad guy, generally, it is also a lot more expected and easier to accept. Conflict is just generally more fun than a boring story where everything goes right and Blaze just defeats the enemy by being better, faster, stronger than everyone.

That said, Marine seems to stand as an example of how that kind of character can fail. She’s on the side of the heroes but her attitude sucks. She’s bossy and mean to the people around her and doesn’t listen to anyone because she considers herself an authority for some reason. She’s ignorant to her surroundings and because she can’t really fight, she’s useless in battle as well. Traits like that aren’t a deal breaker but if it’s only in service of making the heroes have to babysit her or deal with the fallout of her deciding to mess things up, like a crucial rescue plan, then it feels like she only exists to be hated. Amy and the caption she has at the start of the book basically say as much too. 

I have questions about Marine the Raccoon.  Someone on another thread mentioned that Sega limits her use.  What's that about?  Is she really that problematic a character?  I saw her as aggravating and bossy, but honestly it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed with more development and care.  Is she retired now or is there more to this?

[Rabbitearsblog]

3 hours ago, babsiwuff said:

I have questions about Marine the Raccoon.  Someone on another thread mentioned that Sega limits her use.  What's that about?  Is she really that problematic a character?  I saw her as aggravating and bossy, but honestly it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed with more development and care.  Is she retired now or is there more to this?

I'm honestly not sure if Marine the Raccoon was introduced in Sonic Rush or in the Archie Comics, but SEGA has a nasty habit of not using a lot of new characters in future games.

[Razule]

Ian wanted to introduce her at the end of the Metal Sonic arc and SEGA said they shouldn't introduce a new character at the end of an arc.

[Dr. Detective]

4 hours ago, babsiwuff said:

I have questions about Marine the Raccoon.  Someone on another thread mentioned that Sega limits her use.  What's that about?  Is she really that problematic a character?  I saw her as aggravating and bossy, but honestly it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed with more development and care.  Is she retired now or is there more to this?

Marine is a character who has appeared, canonically within the games, only one time; Sonic Rush Adventure, which is the game she debuted in. Nothing else.

She has various cameo appearances in comics or meaningless nods like a mention in Colors DS or a costume in the Olympic Games but that's about it. 

She's a character that's basically a one-off that the fanbase, for some odd reason, treats as though she's a part of the core cast that's being ignored or being forgotten about when, honestly, I really do think that Rush Adventure was just meant to be her one appearance and that's it. We've had tons of characters like that before. Perhaps Marine occupies a space a little more easy to slot into the cast because of her connection to Blaze but in actuality she's more on the level of someone like Chip, Caliburn, and other game centric one-offs. I'd personally put both those characters above her just because they're more important to the games they're in as well. And I like them more, to be fair.

Her being that kind of character isn't necessarily a bad thing nor is it something that should keep her from appearing more often but it's far from a situation where a character that should be around is being shafted or slighted in any way. At least not in my opinion.

[babsiwuff]

Thanks for your replies folks!   Things make more sense.  Honestly, Marine reminds me of every time they try to introduce a young female character and then they aze it and make a new one.  Like, Cream happened, then Marine, then Sticks.  I'm mildly surprised Cream had staying power, but they really built on her more.  She had Cheese the Chao tagging along, but she also had her mother Vanilla, and that part surprised me, since outside of the comics, I've never seen a Sonic game character older than like 17.  They're all kids.  Granted Sonic Boom changed that somewhat, however.

As for Marine herself, however, I'm a little disappointed she's a one-off, because I liked her design, and I think raccoons are nifty little critters!   I'm glad she's not being shafted or anything.  I honestly would like to see more of her.  Is she in IDW at all?

Edited July 16, 2022 by babsiwuff

[Rabbitearsblog]

5 hours ago, babsiwuff said:

As for Marine herself, however, I'm a little disappointed she's a one-off, because I liked her design, and I think raccoons are nifty little critters!   I'm glad she's not being shafted or anything.  I honestly would like to see more of her.  Is she in IDW at all?

So far, Marine hasn't shown up in the IDW comics.

[Dr. Detective]

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Free Comic Book Day 2014

I said this week was going to be a bit weird. It’s a free comic book day issue and one that I actually own this time. I definitely did not get this one when it initially came out though. This was something I most definitely picked up on a whim at my new preferred comic shop. I didn’t discover that place until the IDW series came out though. I remember it being pretty beefy as far as information went for both of the series represented here.

Spoiler

So basically what happened here is that the comic needed a better way to establish who these Freedom Fighters were now that everything has been rebooted so we’ve got two origin stories covered here for them. It doesn’t really matter too much to me but it’s something that could reasonably be seen as a way of staving off confusion for those who are more into having the worlds they inhabit feel as complete as possible.

That likely would have been something they would have focused on naturally, going forward, but I also understand the need to get something out there as quickly as you can considering the circumstances by the abrupt chance. 

Also, despite this, they still didn’t manage to get it all out quick enough because the book ended smack dab in the middle of an origin story. 

The origins for this issue are just Sally and Rotor. That’s fine. Honestly, they seem like the ones who would be the easiest to explain away fast enough now that everything’s been reset. Original Pre-Genesis Wave Sally had way too much going on around her, on her, and through her. Meanwhile, Rotor just had this one constant story where his family kept being hypnotized over and over again in a sloppy plot point that no one, not even the writers, cared about until Ian Flynn fixed it by writing in the stuff about the orcas. It’s too noticeable as a fix but it’s something. He can’t help the crappy hand they dealt him.

 

Sonic Comic Origins: Sally – The Exiled Leader

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Lamar Wells
Inks: Gary Martin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Tracy Yardley!

This story begins in media res, as Ian loves doing, where Sonic and Sally are in the middle of a simulated training regime held forth by Nicole. Sonic has to save her from… presumably almost getting blown up.

He calls out to Nicole that this is a bit much but there’s no response so… I guess she disagrees.

Anyway, Sonic talking about how they do this all the time is enough to get Sally to fret about how they didn’t used to have to. She remembers the times of peace and the days of her being a happy, bouncy little kid on her daddy’s shoulder.

I do think it’s sweet that King Acorn is just a kind, caring father in this continuity, even if I do have a few misgivings about the design. It just feels like it’s missing something for some reason. Maybe it’s the mustache.

That said, I do always have to remind myself that the problem with the old King Max wasn’t even that he was an unapologetically horrible asshole and a terrible king. It’s that the story often didn’t know or treat him like he was. 

Ian got to play around with treating Max within the narrative as he should be treated during House of Cards by being that awful devil on Elias’ shoulder during the conflict going on there but it kind of remained the only example of something like that. By the time Naugus took over, he was so senile and had a foot so firmly set in the grave that it barely felt worth it dealing with him.

Having Ian wheel Max out of his coffin so that he could execute another story arc that dealt with how shitty he was just wasn’t necessary anymore. 

I can’t deny that the idea of him just being a bad king is far more interesting. That said, there is a lot of respectful merit to having him just be a nice Nigel Thornberry type dude as well. It’s more fun and there’s plenty of other areas we could shift our attention to when it comes to possible political intrigue I guess.

The rest of this main story for Sally goes about the way I heard it from the cartoon. I only watched two episodes of SatAM (well, one I watched rewinded on a VHS tape that only could play the episode in reverse and that left it without sound or proper pacing, obviously). It was the Blast to the Past two-parter where they rescued Rosy accidentally at the end of it. I feel like the details here are also basically a truncated version of what the pre-reboot did too.

Yeah, both Max and the royal wizard, Naugus, got sent away. One was evil and the other wasn’t. There were no Kodos either but no one cares and no one should.

Also, it’s just Naugus. As stated before, I don’t recall the specifics behind the Ixis moniker but if it’s no longer relevant than whatever.

We get a scene of Sally saying that they fought back against Eggman, rescued her dad, and took back the city. She goes up to her dad to ask if she can still be a Freedom Fighter but her dad is a reasonable sort and raises his hand before she can finish to tell her that she absolutely can. He’ll watch the throne while she protects the world. 

Again, it’s cute. It’s a nice example of a wonderful, wholesome, actually healthy father-daughter relationship.

Sally does remark when she’s done flashbacking that she’ll one day take the throne but for now she’s perfectly happy leading the Freedom Fighters. At least we know she wants the throne. I always get a little bothered by hearing about stories where someone is born into royalty and is thus expected to have responsibilities that they might not want foisted upon them by status and whatever. So, I guess that’s good.

Her story ends with Sonic and Sally rushing off to continue the simulation.

 

Sonic Comic Origins: Rotor – The Exiled Inventor

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Lamar Wells
Inks: Rick Bryant
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli

When I read the title of the first story I thought that the phrase “exiled” was going to mean a lot more to Sally’s personal story then it did but it was actually just referring to the Freedom Fighters as a whole which makes sense but is a little less head turning.

Still, that doesn’t stop this story from being interesting. It’s kind of more interesting than Sally’s by default since hers was just the basic plot of the whole Freedom Fighters shtick from the cartoon (and the pre-reboot but with fewer variables). 

This story begins right after Sonic and Sally break away from one another in the simulation. The robot Eggman device that Nicole set up for them is chasing Sonic and it’s up to the two inventors, Tails and Rotor, to fashion together a device that’ll help beat it.

The lead in to Rotor’s flashback isn’t the best. It honestly comes off as a little whiny and random but the actual story told here is one I like quite a whole lot.

Rotor’s dad is the asshole in this new continuity rather than Sally’s. Granted, Rotor’s dad in the other continuity didn’t even have a character… nor do I believe was ever seen or mentioned if I recall. I remember him having a mom and a brother so I guess, by default, the safest option with him was to give him a dad and not mention a mom or a brother this go around.

This father character, Tundra, is someone we’ve already seen at this point. The “official” reveal hasn’t happened yet but I know it’s him already and he didn’t need to do much to stand out as an interesting character right off the bat. 

As for poor Rotor here, it’s hard imagining actually running away from home and worse still making it, by some miracle, to the city you were headed to alone only to see it taken over by Eggman. That’s got to be the equivalent to a nightmare for him.

Still, he managed to find Knothole in Wood Zone and sought shelter with them. There he made a name for himself with his new and different ideas. 

He looks a bit too into his vicious murder of this one motobug here though. Also, there appears to be a Babyish Tails here in the bottom panel.

Babyish Tails there looks really odd but it might just be the angle he’s drawn at. His existence in this form wouldn’t be possible at all nowadays though, that’s for sure. I don’t really mind that they don’t want to do stuff like this anymore but that’s probably because I do mostly prefer focusing on the present… for the MOST part. The past has its place. I wouldn’t go too far with it but I also wouldn’t completely shy away from it. It’s complicated. 

There’s a balance that needs to be hit, I guess I should say.

Creepy Jigsaw Kid Rotor there is freaking me out though. Just replace that motobug with one of those kids from the Pre-Reboot and you’ve got yourself a nice psychopath in the making. No wonder his dad didn’t like him.

Rotor then goes on about how great it was joining the Freedom Fighters and is especially taken with how great it felt to BUILD things. Even as someone who isn’t an inventor, I can always feel the passion of an inventor leap off the page whenever they talk about stuff like that. I don’t know why but for some reason, the passion of a fictional inventor is one of the easiest troupes to instantly empathize with, despite me personally not wanting anything to do with it.

It might even be because I’m a bit jealous. Who knows?

Anyway, Tails finishes his big gun and blows something away alongside Rotor. Sonic congratulates the two of them as Rotor surmises that he’s far from his birthplace but here with the Freedom Fighters, he’s home.

It’s very good.

His story definitely resonated with me a lot more, if only because of the sentimental, underdog nature to the hook. Sally’s story felt more like everyone’s story and, unlike her pre-reboot self, she’s doing pretty good for herself all things considered.

The next two pages after are a very, very truncated summary of the story of the Archie Sonic comics. It has a very simple, loose explanation of the general plot of the SatAM inspired origin of the comic’s story. It says Eggman was an evil bad man that took everything over and roboticized people but the Freedom Fighters stood against him. It mentions that the Eggman Empire has had many styles and many names but none of them are mentioned because of legal stuff.

It basically goes “Yada yada yada, some things happened and then reality shattered and now the new reality is breaking apart.”

It really might as well not even be here but we needed to fill up space, I guess. The next story is pretty beefy though so it’s not like the book is going to be starved for content.

We keep turning the pages until we get a nice two-page spread of our boys Mega Man and X together. The last image I spotted was a very creepy image of OG Mega Man’s helmet being discovered in a ditch with cracks on it and a spider-web stuck to it. Seeing as how X takes place in the far future, the image is more than a little sad and unsettling. Especially knowing how much of a cinnamon roll our boy Rock is.

 

Mega Man X - Free Comic Book Day 2014

Ignore the part at the bottom where it says “Not Final Cover”. It totally is the final cover. On my copy, it has a big white patch on it that says “From your pals ‘n gals at Archie Comics and the best comic store in the world”.

 

I’ll agree with the part about the place I bought this being from a really goddamn great comic store. No mistaking that.

It’s also cool that this is an entirely different story when flipped upside down and read backwards. What counts as the back of the book is entirely up to which fandom you have more of an affinity for really. Though, I hope whichever one you liked more was properly displayed on the shelf when this was coming out, otherwise you might have missed it if you weren’t a fan of the other half of the book.

It doesn’t really matter to me though. I’ve always had an interest in Mega Man, more so the OG series than X BUT I’ve dipped A toe in X’s stuff once or twice too. Sort of.

As in, years and years and YEARS ago I saw my uncles playing X on their TV for about a minute or however long my memory says it was. I had to have been a toddler or at least an eight-year-old or something.

I also have memory of one of them starting some kind of Rayman game and when Rayman was separated from his buddy Globox, he went out calling for him and… that was it. I think it was just left at the start up screen and I never saw anything past that. Whoever was playing it was out of the room and I certainly wasn’t going to touch the controller. It was sad thinking he’d never see his friend Globox again though.

Anyway, Mega Man X is what this story is about. I’ve read this story once before and it’s insanely interesting to me. 

 

 

The X Factor - Part 1 and Part 2

Writer: Ian Flynn
Line Art: Patrick Spaziante
Inks: Rick Bryant
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Cover by T. Rex

This issue starts with some dude who looks like Dr. Wily but set 100 years in the future. It starts on April 8th, 21XX and the excerpts of this guy highlight the journal of a Doctor Cain, who is an archaeologist. 

Eventually, on April 10th he discovers the remains of an old laboratory belonging to Doctor Light and his old notes referring to that of something called “THE CAPSULE”.

Already this is sad but just from the notion of it being the future and the people from the OG series being dead. That’s an inevitability but it can’t stop the feels from being there regardless.

On April 13th, he finds the capsule and the warning it came with from Doctor Light tells him that he created “X” a robot that can think, feel, and make decisions on its own. He gives a warning about how dangerous he could potentially be if he ever breaks the first law of robotics about a robot harming a human. He also says that he won’t be ready for another 30 years, which Light says he won’t be around to see.

This is all really intriguing to both me and Doctor Cain. The part about X thinking, feeling, and making decisions of his own is a bit odd to me since I’m certain that was a thing before X. Just reading the Mega Man crossover made that feel apparent to me. I don’t have enough clues as to what he could mean to fully go into any concrete thoughts about it though.

Doctor Cain says that it’s been far longer than 30 years, which is also a good point. It’s been 100 years and this laboratory was under the fucking ground. Whatever happened here really impeded Doctor Light’s plan. It might never have seen the light of day if it weren’t for Doctor Cain here, which is really sad to think about too.

Cain marinates on whether he should open it or not before, on the 14th, deciding he should do it and out comes Mega Man X.

The two of them seem to really hit it off.

Working together, he uses the notes left behind by Doctor Light to make more robots like X called Reploids. He even marvels at how they function and even how he got into his first argument with one. It truly does sound magnificent.

Mass production of these Reploids happens and soon Light’s dream is deemed as having been realized by Cain and he states how proud he is to have played a part in making it come true. Robots and humans are working and living together.

X observes all this and thinks over how neat this seems… at first.

However, he starts to wonder if they’re moving too fast.

It’s true. Hitting upon your first success and then jumping into immediate mass production of these things sounds like a dream but one that could go astray if it isn’t navigated with a ton of care.

They get integrated into society and you already feel tense, knowing that somewhere, somehow, something is going to go wrong.

It does. 

X catches wind of a news story Doctor Cain sends him about a Maverick incident. The word Maverick is a term used for Reploids that have gone fucking insane… or rather, are exhibiting irregular behavior.

Just like that, Doctor Cain is summoned to a hearing about someone needing to answer for the incident that took place where a bunch of humans and reploids died due to the reploids losing their shit in a way that currently can’t be explained.

Granted, the hearing itself isn’t a slam on Doctor Cain the whole way through. The person leading the hearing says that he’s the one who brought them into the world and asks if he has any details. When he points out that there’s only been three maverick incidents so far and is responded to with “three too many!” he AGREES and lays out a couple of various unknown issues that could be the cause. The people discussing things talk about the possibility of halting production but one of them says that three incidents isn’t enough to completely halt production entirely. This is still new technology so something has to be done to iron out the kinks.

Doctor Cain suggests an idea…

… Cut to fucking SIGMA leading a group called the Maverick Hunters!

Ho’ boy. 

I know of a Sigma and the name Maverick Hunters rings a bell too. All I really know about Sigma is what I gleamed of him from Worlds Unite and how many people keep complaining about how “It’s ALWAYS Sigma” and how he never stays dead.

But clearly he’s a villain.

THIS is insanely interesting to me. I had no idea things played out this way or even if this is wholly accurate to how it played out in the games.

Sigma is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to policing the streets to protect people from the Mavericks. That said, X has gotten more and more interested in the way Sigma has been handling things and keeps showing up to watch him do his thing.

At first, Sigma wonders if X is thinking about joining his Hunters but X says that he’s really just wondering if Sigma is doing the right thing. Sigma surmises that X thinks he’s attacking the symptoms and not the disease. X says “Something like that.”

Sigma than gives X a reassuring pat on the shoulder and tells him that he’ll probably one day be the robot that can lead mankind and robots into peace and prosperity with one another for sure… but until then HE’LL be keeping people safe.

X watches Sigma leave with a smile on his face. Meanwhile Sigma himself… well, we don’t see his face as he walks away but I imagine it’s very shadowy and evil looking.

My word. It’s still really cool and just as interesting a second time.

I know this is supposed to be me covering the Archie Sonic comics but I honestly feel like I got way more out of the Mega Man X story than the Sonic one. The two sides don’t really compare as far as what they have to offer and how interesting and cool they are. Sally and Rotor’s stories were fine but everything about that Mega Man X story was just… insanely thought provoking and kind of otherworldly in a slightly somber sense if you can believe it. I wish to know more.

At first, I was unable to find the full X comic online. Try as I might, I could only happen upon scattered pages of the comic here and there. The one site I did manage to find this free comic book day issue only had the Sonic part and it cut out the Mega Man X story. Why the fuck they did that, I haven’t a goddamn clue. The art is fantastic and the story itself is a marvel. You should want to keep it intact alone just for history’s sake seeing as how I’m pretty sure we never got an X book. I did eventually figure out, thanks to searching the Mega Man wiki, that this story was in Mega Man #34 and #35, separated by two parts. That was a major relief to me.

I was also lucky enough to have purchased a physical copy of this. Honestly, if it was just the Sonic side that were lost to time I wouldn’t care all that much but it really is a shame that Mega Man and Mega Man X aren’t getting more time to shine in the sun if their shit can be THIS intriguing and cool with only 10 pages to tell a story.

Sonic Super Digest - Issue #8

Over 100 Pages eh? Guess I’m in for a rough time. So this is my first time covering a Sonic Super Digest. I was unsure of what I was going to do when I eventually got to these because I had zero idea of what the contents were and how important or relevant what was inside was going to be. I do not own this book and the story within, just looking at the pages, is one I haven’t read before. So let’s finally read it. As for the cover, it’s good. Still not a fan of these kinds of covers but it works.

Spoiler

Sonic Comic Origins: Little Lost Soldiers

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Lamar Wells
Inks: Rick Bryant
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Rafa Knight

I did always think it was strange that the Sonic Comic Origins only covered Sally and Rotor even though what it had to cover was so basic and bare bones. I always figured that the unreleased (and eventually remastered by the fans) story about Antoine that was supposed to happen after the game origin arc that never finished was supposed to be the official start to the explanation behind what his deal was but it turns out that there was a Sonic Comic Origins story for Antoine in a book I didn’t even know existed.

That doesn’t give me much hope for its relevance but it doesn’t have to be relevant to be fun. 

Starting this story off, I immediately find myself feeling very sorry for Antoine right off the bat. What he explains is the issue with him here is just instantly pitiable.

You can tell that he’s still really young here so the idea of him coming to this place with the mindset of being a brave, valiant soldier to fight for a cause he has no clue about and is only doing because he was to understand it as a great honor is really sad.

It’s like seeing those commercials on TV telling you how great it is to sign up for the army or whatever. It’s a big honor apparently. 

Then when Eggman invades he’s reasonably scared but stands by the princess’ side to protect her anyway. He’s being brave despite being scared, which is admirable, but the really sad thing truly is seeing the juxtaposition between him in the top panel and him in the bottom one. It’s honestly more sad that it’s being positioned as him having the intention of being a strong, brave soldier man and him struggling to actually be that with the portrayal of him in his early days seemingly almost the exact opposite.

Even sadder is how completely understandable it is but how it’s likely him viewing himself as a coward when that’s honestly not true at all. His actions here are relatable.

The story goes on to be what I picked up on it being from what little I saw of SatAM and the beginning of this comic. He’s loud and brash, putting on what he thinks is a brave face for everyone. He falls in love with the princess and tries to court her and it doesn’t work out because she’s not interested. Sonic is effortlessly cool and always shows him up.

Antoine feels pathetic but then comes across a scene of Bunnie struggling to stand up when he walks by a window out alone in the rain.

The story that follows is the tale of how they fell in love, with the last line being almost verbatim what I was about to say about what bravery actually is.

It’s a line from Professor Utonium from the Powerpuff Girls that I recall often when it comes to talking about this. He said that bravery isn’t about not being scared. It’s about doing things you’re afraid to do. 

Being scared is fine. You just gotta push down the fear and do what you gotta do. It’s something I’ve still not been able to fully learn to do myself. I can only hope that one day I will.

Maybe that’s why Antoine is my favorite of the Freedom Fighters.

I made a comment about these being 100 pages long but the rest of the stories in this book are all stories I’ve read and covered before.

Also, a lot of the ones chosen feel really random. I don’t quite know the thought process behind why some of these were picked. I guessed that it was supposed to be an Antoine centric issue which is why the second of the stories is a really old one about him saving everyone by messing with Robotnik in a flying hot air balloon. The fourth story were two full issues from The Tails Adventure, which confused me until I remembered Antoine had a big part to play in that one as well.

However, the third story after the hot air balloon one is the one where Sonic first meets and gets humiliated by the Babylon Rogues and Tails makes the Extreme Gear so that they can match wits with them. That’s got nothing to do with Antoine and happened quite a long time ago so I don’t know why that one is here.

It also has a pin-up page of the third cover of the Babylon Rising arc, which isn’t the arc this story is from. Granted, the story where they meet the Rogues is a side-story for the two issues it appears in so they probably just wanted a cover image? It’s weird.

The rest are an assortment of Antoine and Antoine adjacent tales. One was the one about Bunnie having a nightmare about becoming a full robot followed by Antoine comforting Bunnie about the fact that she’s full flesh and blood again in a story that happened WAY later, one where I think they share their first kiss, one where Snively is dressed like a weed plant, and it ends on the story where Sonic’s birthday is repeating over and over after he keeps getting horribly injured.

Random ending to the Antoine issue but whatever.

I’m not entirely sure I understand the point of these. I understand collecting stories into trades and even the occasional book where a bunch of stories with a common theme are collected and sold. IDW did something like that recently with the Best Friends Forever book sold before the second Sonic movie where it was just a collection of issues where Sonic and Tails were the focus. However, I’m not sure I get it when it’s done this way. A collection of Antoine stories would have been fine but there’s a good chunk of these that are the beginning of a story that just gets cut off and others that are just… not about Antoine at all. Maybe that’s why both him and Sonic are on the cover so that they can share the spotlight? But even then, why the Babylon Rogues meeting story? If it's just because they have a small connection to the Battle Birds Armada from the Tails Adventure than that's insanely flimsy. It’s so random.

The actual new story itself was nice and sadly, fairly relatable. There’s not much else to talk about with it though.

Sonic Super Digest - Issue #9

Despite it being a more simple cover I actually really like this cover a lot more. It’s just an adorable image of Sonic bouncing off a spring. Aww.

Anyway, I didn’t exactly expect this week to be Sonic Comic Origins week. I knew about the Sally and Rotor stories because I owned the Free Comic Book day issue those were in but I had no idea these other ones existed. Putting them in the Digests is a very… interesting tactic. I feel like having actual, new material in them is a sort of skevy way to entice sales of these things but I can’t help but wonder how affective that is when the new stories are so short that you could easily pick them up, read them on the wrack, and then put it back when you’ve realized that’s all it had to offer that was new. I certainly wouldn’t have bought a collection of random stories I already own because it had the origin of one of the Freedom Fighters in it. 

Who knows though? Maybe these were successful enough to warrant… 16 of them being made. I guess?

Spoiler

Sonic Comic Origins: The Belle in the Machine

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Lamar Wells
Inks: Rick Bryant
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Tracy Yardley!

This story begins the exact same way the Antoine one did. Sonic is calling a destroyed training drone of an Eggman robot gruesome as he leaves it destroyed in his wake and we cut to Bunnie reminiscing about the past this time.

It’s a very strange thing that everyone is deciding to think about their pasts during this random training exercise. I suppose it works fine as a framing device but it’s quite the odd coincidence. Some of the reasons they start thinking about their backstories are pretty sloppy. Rotor’s entry point into thinking about it was by far the silliest. 

Here, they don’t really try for much of a lead-in. Bunnie just starts thinking about her past.

It’s… noticeably different from what I experienced before and to be honest, I kind of laughed when I saw it.

Because Bunnie is shown to be wearing the same outfit when the Buzz Bombers, of all things, attack the castle it just looks like she was having a tea party with some friends of hers and then suddenly these Buzz Bombers were like “FUCK YOUR TEA PARTY!” and blew them up!

The idea of Uncle Chuck bringing Bunnie to her lab to roboticize her limbs being referred to as SMUGGLING is weird but the change that it was an intentional process to save her life rather than a thing that happened when she was saved from a roboticization process under Eggman is… a change they made.

Yeah, honestly, I don’t see the point behind the change. I guess making it be something that happened to her when she was younger makes it easier for the coping process she had to go through to be something that’s already well and truly finished. That makes it easier to start her character off having already gone through all the hardships of getting used to being the Rabbot. 

Normally, that’d seem like a wasted opportunity but here it’s understandable. This is something that’s already been explored both in SatAM and the early stages of THIS very comic. I can see the need to go past it for the sake of not wishing to be redundant, even if this is a new continuity.

One could argue that because it’s a new continuity, they could have still done it in a different way. Perhaps they might have been able to do it in an even better way seeing as how the early stages of the comic were more Saturday Morning goofy rather than… “Buzz Bombers blowing up little girls” intense.

I don’t really care one way or the other. Bunnie is fine to me as a character. Her plight is interesting in theory but it’s never been something I’ve found myself too invested in. At least not on its own. There have been stories involving her that have succeeded in making me more interested though and that’s a feat that can't be brushed off as meaningless. There probably is some merit to exploring more of this and who’s to say they couldn’t have still tried had this comic gone on longer?

The rest of this doesn’t go into it any deeper than that, really. It’s the same stuff Antoine talked about only through the perspective of the person who went through it. She talks about how her friends made her feel good and how Antoine is the love of her life who helped mend her soul. It’s sweet.

They finish that leg of the training exercise and come together to rush off to help Team Rose. Help Team Rose do what? I don’t know.

Judging by the way this ends I had assumed the Sonic Origins thing might have been over but no. There’s still one more and I’m eager to see which character that one is about. It could be Tails because he’s Sonic’s best friend and is also in this training thing too but they also just mentioned Team Rose so… it could be Amy.

However, thinking it over, it's probably Nicole since Sonic hasn't had one either and it seems like these are being special made for the non-game characters.

The rest of this digest is the second half of the Tails Adventure and some of the Shattered World Crisis issues. Not very Bunnie focused except for the Oil Ocean story at the very end but the cover didn’t make it seem like it was going to be so… I don’t really know what to make of it.

There were also some articles explaining what some of the new concepts for the new continuity are and it’s super basic stuff. They did a countdown of their new favorite things about the new continuity and it’s just kind of embarrassing. The greatness of the new continuity can and will speak for itself. It’s good. Don’t worry… well, yes, worry because the book is going to be canceled but that’s mostly Archie’s fault.

So that was the Bunnie story of the Sonic Super Digest and it was fine. It didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know past the first page of the flashback part. The changes they made to her backstory are just small enough for this to easily be something you could miss and read the rest of the comic just fine though. I am glad I did read it though. Something does truly feel like it’s missing when you’re lacking the full context behind the backstories of your main cast, even if you technically already know what it is. Although, it does hit harder now that the memories of the old continuity have well and truly just been obliterated. 

Next week we still have some weirdness to cover before going back to the main book proper. These were thankfully a lot shorter so the stress on my fingers didn’t take as much of a toll. That was nice.

 

[Mangoaxe5]

I like how Ian recycled Jules backstory for Bunnie.

Nicole's new backstory is my favorite. I'm just glad that Nicole's no longer a time loop paradox.

Snively's new backstory is good too(though I wish that he was still related to Robotnik).

[Dr. Detective]

 

Sonic Boom - Issue #1: Getting a Little Boulder Part One of... er... One

Is it time already?! It feels like it was just yesterday when I finished up Sonic X (well, not really) and here we are at Sonic Boom! Fortunately, for those of you who don’t care (or unfortunately if you really liked this comic) this one does not last anywhere near as long as Sonic X did. It doesn’t even make it halfway to the amount of issues Sonic X had. Not only that but three of its issues are tied to the second Sonic and Mega Man crossover that’s coming up way sooner than it should have. So it did officially last for 11 issues but only 8 of them are Sonic Boom proper. 

As for Sonic Boom itself, it remains probably the weirdest footnote in Sonic’s history to date. There are things to like about it, including this comic, but on the whole it never entirely felt worth the hit the franchise took as a result of its existence to me. The era this came about was already heading down a path for Modern Sonic where it started to care less and less about it’s narrative and more about holding up the “Please laugh” sign to the audience. Not in a way that relied much on physical comedy either. That would require movement. No, it was mostly the standing around, talking kind of thing. 

The Sonic Boom TV show seemed like the culmination of that new directive at the time with people ACTUALLY afraid that it was going to replace Modern Sonic at the time. Yes, that was an actual fear people had. Does anyone remember that? It sounds so ludacris now. However, what Sonic Boom actually was didn’t really see as much standing around and talking like in the Modern games. There was a lot of snappy movement and physical things happening but it wasn’t always in service of just comedy. Sometimes it was in service of action and adventure too. How much action and adventure varied depending on the version of Sonic Boom you got though.

Rise of Lyric seemed to be less focused on comedy and more focused on taking itself seriously with the action-adventure vibe. The show felt mostly like an action-sitcom. While this comic seems mostly geared towards being like an AoSth, full-on cartoon-cartoon. The tone and direction of the Boom franchise was so hard to get a read on that no one really knew what it was or what it was trying to do. Then it just died when none of it really worked. Well, some of it worked but no one saw fit to continue it anyway. I guess we’ll go more into why later. 

Man, revisiting this stuff is going to feel odd.

Spoiler

Variant Covers

Already we’ve got something fucking weird here. In a very strange take on the variant cover thing, we have four extra variants that all make up a single image for our first issue. There’s no real point in talking about them individually because of this. It can’t really be ignored how shitty a tactic it is to have the variants of one issue be an entire connecting cover. That’s something you do for the next issue variants normally. I get that this is the first issue of a new book and as a result it’s going to have a ton of variants but being done in a way that makes it feel more essential to have them all isn’t a fun way to go about it. 

I do admire the way the image looks and how it all flows into each other. The thrown weapons zooming into the next cover over works to sell the movement. As an aside I love how on the first non-variant cover of the issue you can see Eggman pointing and shouting “ATTACK!” the exact same way he did in the first released teaser for the Boom TV show. 

I remember being really excited for it because it was the first full length Sonic show we’d gotten since Sonic X. The only real issue was the fact that the designs were different and the setting was different and… everything was different. But different didn’t have to mean bad and for what it is I did end up enjoying the show but at the end of the day I can’t say I wouldn’t have preferred just a regular Sonic show set in Sonic’s world to it.

Also, Burn Bot is getting highlighted a lot. It makes sense since it seems to be a common thing to highlight the first enemy you see in a new series like this. The same thing happened with Zazz from Lost World. Aside from Zavok he shows up the most out of the Deadly Six most likely because he’s the first one you have any real encounter with. Him on that giant yellow moon in the second coming of Green Hill but with wind at the start of the game is a recognizable image. Burn Bot in that teaser kind of works the same.

—

Writer-Guy: Ian Flynn
Penciller-Gal: Evan Stanley
Inker-Dude: Rick Bryant
Colorin’-Fella: Matt Herms
Letterer-Man: Jack Morelli
Cover-er: Patrick Spaziante
Variant Cover-Peoples: Stanley, Bryant & Herms

Right off the bat, before even reading the first page, you can tell that the tone of the book is noticeably more… juvenile, you could say. That sounds a bit mean but the way the writing for the tiles and the credits are feels like the kind of thing done for the sake of getting a certain tone across rather than an actual attempt to tell any kind of joke. Like, there’s a lot of ellipses and kiddy-speak in what’s being written in the credits and title here.

The titles for the normal Archie Sonic comics are already no stranger to using weird and silly puns so to up the ante, Sonic Boom would probably need to do something like call their first issue “Part One of… er… one” to set itself apart. 

I remember a point of contention with these first couple issues being that Ian Flynn’s handling of the Boom versions of these characters wasn’t exactly the best. The guy has admitted to not being super great at comedy for one but another issue I recall later was just how mean some of the characterization for Amy was. The dumb take on Knuckles wasn’t appreciated at all, despite how funny he was in the show. It’s just hard to see him as his own different version of Knuckles and have it not occupy your mind that in order for this version of Knuckles to even exist, SEGA or someone way up high had to approve it because in some way they thought this was appropriate for a version of Knuckles to be like. 

Thankfully, the dialogue on the first two pages is pretty solid. The banter between Sonic and Eggman still feels like something that would happen between their normal selves, with Sonic taking the “The bigger they are–” turn of phrase and shifting it to be about himself.

The design of Eggman in Boom was always very cool, which is another thing that ironically throws me off, because the Boom version of Eggman is very decidedly uncool. I guess that can work to an advantage of some sort, where this cool design is being used for the sake of looking as ridiculous as possible. 

Also interesting how Sonic left two disgusting dirt prints on Eggman’s windshield like that. It’s a small detail but this more rustic, backwater version of the location that he resides kind of makes him look more dirty by default.

I actually like the scarf. It gives off a bit of a nomad feel. He’s like an adventurer who travels the wasteland in search of the most he can get out of his life. The sports tape never bothered me either. I was a bit confused as to why they had it and the explanations from people online about how it’s a real thing that people who do a lot of sports action use didn’t really sell me on why this specific series was utilizing it but there really doesn’t NEED to be a reason other than it makes for a distinct, interesting design choice.

The thing I will always never like about Boom Sonic’s design is the length of his limbs and, yes, I do still think the colored arms look bad. Aesthetically, I do think the tan arms work better for him. It’s been a really long time since 2014 and I still can’t completely get on board with how off the blue arms make him look. The same is true for his movie design unfortunately. 

His limbs, however, were always the biggest issue. He’s way too goddamn tall. His legs look so unsuited for running that whenever I saw him try to do it in the show it looked like the model’s legs should have snapped in half like pretzels. It’s thankfully a lot less noticeable in the art style of this book however. He’s allowed to curve and swerve a lot more thanks to its more cartoony nature so it doesn’t look as stiff.

When Sonic jumps off Eggman’s latest robot he gets grabbed by his best friend Tails. Although, because we’re in the middle of our introductions, he says his full name in a big fancy logo.

The cuteness and the passion that Boom Tails always had for tinkering and inventions was always extremely charming. For a long time since Boom came out I did always maintain that he got the best deal out of all the characters. He’s still one of my favorite versions of Tails and at the time of Lost World he was definitely the best one we had.

I love his design. I love the cool goggles. I love the sash and the belt. I love the more doctor-esque looking gloves. I did often imagine he’d look really good just having this design in the games, if only because giving him some goggles and a belt for some of his tools wouldn’t be too out of place, at least for when he was working on stuff.

His personality is on open display here where he would nerd out or get excited over one of the inventions he’d see or the ones he would be trying to build. “Translate This” is an episode of Sonic Boom written by Dave Polsky that I love to highlight as one of the best showcases of how you can portray him as an actual tactician while still keeping him as innocent and adorable. It’s all really good stuff.

Then there’s Knuckles.

Surprisingly, even here in 2022, it remains hard to form a solid, confident opinion on Boom Knuckles. 

Like, I want to say “I like Boom Knuckles because he’s funny and charming but only really because he’s relegated to Boom and nothing else” but that sounds strangely backhanded.

It can’t be overstated how much of a drastic change Knuckles had. Like, the day when all this Sonic Boom stuff was being revealed to the public, Sonic Boom and Knuckles were trending separately from one another. This was before we even saw a hint of his actual personality.

The big dumb brute gimmick isn’t a particular clever or interesting or creative angle to go with. It’s something the Sonic series proper had largely avoided as well. I guess Storm the Albatross falls into that category but he definitely has a bit of a different feel from Boom Knuckles, who is literally just that troupe to a T.

Big doesn’t fall into that category at all. Big is just a simple-minded fisherman who talks slowly. Vector is a detective. He’s quirky and goofy sometimes but he’s also the smartest member of his team. Zomom is a villain and his flavor of big dumb brute is also different but it’s just as lazy. He’s more of the FAT guy troupe. The big dumb talker that loves eating rather than working out.

I don’t typically like the weird association with big strong guys who work out being likened to idiocy either. It’s very strange.

The original Knuckles was way more interesting and creative of a character. He was strong and was recognizably strong because of his name, his abilities, and yes, even his design but his personality saw him more as a serious loner. He took his job seriously but he was also gullible and a bit of a himbo when it came to the outside world, which made sense because he was isolated for most of his life. He wasn’t dumb because he was strong.

Contrary to what people will tell you online, it is in character for Knuckles to say and do dumb things but what separates the two are most definitely the cadence they’re done in (and the frequency in which they’re done).

As a result, this Knuckles wasn’t received all that well at first. Nowadays, the Boom TV show is looked back on with a lot of reverence and respect, which is nice. Boom Knuckles is largely appreciated for what he is rather than what he could have been. Of course, what he COULD have been was the new direction they were just going to take Knuckles as a concept. That would have been unforgivable and hard to recover from.

Despite how lazy the idea that Knuckles’ muscle mass shrunk the size of his brain somehow, the writing did a lot to make up for this specific troupe being used in the show. 

I will always find it silly that the reason for changing Knuckles’ design was to make him look like a strong man. I get the idea behind that when it comes to basic design philosophy but the original Knuckles managed to carry that idea across just fine for two decades before Boom because his original design was just that good at telling you what you needed to know. You saw those huge fists and you got it instantly.

Oh God. I’m getting flashbacks to Stephen Frost. Anyone remember him? Fucking hell…

Anyway, Amy’s the only one left.

She’s fine.

I think she kind of ushered in a new staple of her character in a way that did sort of carry over to the games. That’s not a bad thing by any means though. There is a bit of a balancing act that I think they still need to do where her cheery, peppy, lovey-dovey side can be paired with the side of her that’s strong and forthright. It makes her strong but it doesn’t do it in a way that also makes her boring, which is a trap a lot of folks fall into when trying to write “strong, female characters” as it were.

My ideal version of Amy Rose was in IDW Issue 2. Ian Flynn agrees with me on that too. Getting across the how and why she loves Sonic and having that be on open display but in a way that feels like she’s an actual friend of Sonic just works a lot more. The way she carries herself in the rest of the book is good too. I just miss seeing those further hints of her attraction, of course. 

It really does feel a lot better to me. Amy and Sonic’s relationship nowadays just feels a lot more healthy and it’s a lot easier to see them as actual friends now. The shtick where whenever Amy shows up Sonic would always be repulsed by her and want to run away had its time and place and it was the past. I think it works a lot better to just see this as an avenue of maturity for her. Plus, it’s nice that she isn’t a hair trigger away from screaming and smashing people with her hammer either. 

She’s a little too serious in Boom proper for me though. Her thing there was more of a Team Mom sort of thing and it’s not that fun an idea. Not as fun as she will become in comics later down the line. As for her design, I did actually like her clothes and the look of her hammer but I find that nowadays my opinion has shifted back to preferring her traditional red dress. I guess I just like how simple it is.

With all of them here, and with the jokes about the logos out of the way (for now), they gear up and take down this robot together.

The heroes surf to shore and Tails reports with a sneer on his face that it looks like Eggman is doing the backstroke back to his evil lair.

That’s when someone I actually, legitimately, completely, 100% forgot about shows up.

Sticks the Badger.

THIS IS A LIE.

So, Sticks the Badger is a character.

It’s weird but there’s strangely a lot I could say but a lot I don’t feel is necessary to say about her, honestly. When she was first introduced by all the press release stuff that was coming out from Sonic Boom, it was hard to get a handle on what she was supposed to be really. That wasn’t helped by how she was handled in Rise of Lyric or the show. 

It’s one of the biggest examples of people either just straight up lying in the lead up to a new product or just not having their story straight because even they didn’t truly know what they were trying to do. 

Sticks, being an originally created character for Sonic Boom, kind of exemplifies the sloppiness of how the Boom franchise was handled on this front. The people in charge of telling us what she was about told us her backstory in press releases and interviews and stuff. She was a loner who apparently made friends with Amy, specifically, and the two of them were supposed to have some kind of deep connection that integrated her within the rest of the group more naturally.

If that sounds strange to you then that’s because none of that came through in either the show or the games. 

In the show the two of them are friends and they did have a couple of instances and episodes where they got to hang together as besties but the show proper never really made a big deal about the two of them being super-duper friends with her in general. It was always portrayed as a group connection. The show also never went into her backstory.

Rise of Lyric was touted as a prequel to the show, specifically, so you’d think that would be where they’d go into that but no. She shows up in Rise of Lyric as a side-quest character. She speaks in really broken English too. Like it’s noticeably more primitive than it is on the show or at least it was to me.

The confusion runs a bit deeper there because Shattered Crystal was also a thing and … I think it was ALSO supposed to act as a prequel to the show but there Sticks is an actual playable character and she talks just fine. However, Shattered Crystal and Rise of Lyric ALSO for SOME fucking dumb reason, have two completely different stories. One ends with Lyric being restrained and the button he had that controlled all the robots in the game was grabbed by Eggman and put on his wrist. That explains… the origin of the button on Eggman’s wrist and nothing else. 

Meanwhile, the end of Shattered Crystal just has Lyric tossed out the airlock of a ship I think and then Sticks gives this really unfunny, drawn out speech about how they didn’t do anything because Shadow was the one who finished him off there. Or something.

God, this whole thing really was a huge fucking mess. The games were prequels to the show but the games and the show have completely different tones from the show and nothing in the games is necessary AT ALL to understand the show but also the two games have two completely different plots and events that play out between THEM and… it’s like… why?!

Why did this need to be a weird multi-media franchise thing right out of the gate? Here’s what you do. You make the TV show and you release that and if it’s successful and warrants more merchandise being made from it then make your games, toys, shirts, keychains, and whatever else. Just going “BWAAAH!” like some guy who won the lottery and shoving everything out there all at once was an incredibly shocking and dangerous plan that was not worth the risk at all. What a fucking useless waste of money. It continues to baffle me to this day.

Even the cover of this issue makes it seem like they expected this to work somehow. I remember it being pointed out how the cover says “Based on the new hit video game and TV series” even though this book had literally no way of knowing if either of those things were going to be a hit at the time this came out.

Clearly this happened because they realized they needed something to push for Sonic but instead of getting their act together with the main series they just tried to branch it off into three sections with Classic, Modern, and Boom, hoping that one or all of them would be the boon they needed for success… I guess? 

There were a lot of people who said that Sonic was in a better place in the last decade then he was in the decade before it but I couldn’t disagree more. 2010 through 2018 was the most confusing the series has ever been to me about what direction they wanted to go in and sometimes it often felt like they didn’t want to do anything with it at all anymore.

It really does feel like things have only gotten better since then though. Even though things aren’t perfect, what they’re doing on the multimedia front for Sonic is a lot more desired and preferred. 

Sticks was a character that I always felt was doomed. Whether I liked her or not, the fact that she was tied to Sonic Boom meant that when the product inevitably failed, she’d go down with the ship with it. We weren’t in for a Harley Quinn situation with her and the push to get her back isn’t anywhere near as strong as it still is for characters like Sally and the Freedom Fighters in comparison. 

As a character, she’s fine. I like her fine enough.

Anyway, Sticks comes running out of the forest screaming that an emergency is happening. She says that Tails’ house has been robbed. 

Tails naturally freaks out and worries about what stuff was stolen, even mentioning that he has a collection of Nuclear Rubber Bands which… how is he not dead?

But no, what she means is that Tails’ house itself was stolen. Well, she doesn’t use the word stolen, which Amy has to grammar nazi her on…

Tails seems to be the only one truly pissed off about his house being gone, though, it’s expected that he’d have the roughest reaction. Sticks seems more concerned with WHAT made off with it then the fact that it was taken.

The looks her friends give her when she says it’s a rock golem does highlight another issue with her character that a lot of people have pointed out. She’s supposed to be a conspiracy theorist nut that says ridiculous things that no one believes… but her theories always turn out to be true. It never really feels like the intended joke with her is that she’s supposed to always be right about it either because it just makes the other characters look dumb for doubting her.

It feels like she’s intentionally supposed to come off as crazy and weird in comparison to the others so emphasizing that the others are in the wrong more often would feel counterintuitive with the way they’ve set this up.

Not only that but it’s REALLY hard to have this kind of character be a mainstay amongst your core cast of characters when the world that Sonic occupies is rithe with stuff that she sees.

It’s weird that anyone would look at her like she’s crazy when she says a Rock Golem stole Tails’ house when this series has had Sonic fight a rock golem inside a pyramid base before. 

Knuckles has fought ghosts. Sonic and Shadow fought a giant lizard in space. The normal, every adventure occurrences that befall Sonic and the gang are all crazy and insane things. I know Boom is supposed to be a new continuity but it’s hard to divorce it from that. At the very least, most of Boom’s focus as enemies seem to just be robots. Maybe in their world aliens would be a strange anomaly. The Boom world isn’t as interesting as Sonic’s normal world after all. It’s missing a lot of elements that make it what it is, for sure.

However, it’s just one of those things that’s hard to parse in my head. 

Sonic lays out a straightforward plan to get Tails’ house back and defeat the rock golem. The fear of wrecking Tails’ house is the thing that Amy has issues with when it comes to that plan though. For some reason, I guess to set up a comedy routine, Sonic asks Knuckles if he has any ideas.

Knuckles asks if rocks can even be a cyborg, which causes everyone to facepalm for some reason.

I initially had no idea why because, again, it’s not hard to imagine a robot made out of rocks. It would just need a rock-like exterior and a metal interior. Instead Amy lays it out with her hands that the actual fact of the matter is that something came over, scooped up Tails’ house, and made off with it. How she knows this for a fact, I’ve no clue. I just assumed an actual rock themed robot grabbed Tails’ house and made off with it but she seems convinced it scooped it up underneath itself and headed off with it that way.

She turns out to be right too so I guess it was more obvious to them then it was to me or Knuckles.

Knuckles says he gets it but also understands none of what Amy said and asks for a re-explanation, prompting Amy to want to smash him with her hammer in a way that has everyone holding her back.

It’s a cute moment, I suppose, but I do think the lead in to showing Knuckles off as an idiot could have been written better there. Also, this is the start to Amy and Knuckles not having the best relationship. She kind of immediately takes another jab at him on the very next page and instead of being a cute funny scene, as an addendum to the previous scene, it just comes off petty and annoying.

Meanwhile, Sticks starts sniffing the grass and Sonic and Tails comment on how her nose makes her a good tracker. However, Sticks reveals that she just thought the grass smelled nice and was actually following the huge robot footprints.

Tails flies towards it and sees that everything is intact. We get another scene of Knuckles saying something dumb and Amy getting steamed about it. That’s three pages in a row and it’s already gotten old.

Sonic rushes off to confront the robot. He taunts it and tells it when it misses its initial attack against him that he can’t keep up with SONIC THE HEDGEHOG in a second logo and he shouts about how he did a double logo for the win.

The logo thing is also not funny and Sonic’s lie that they’ll go back to regular lettering next month is already starting to sting.

Sticks climbs to the top of Tails’ house to check his gutters and Tails asks her why she’s doing that. She says it’s to check for wire-taping from… them. Who is THEM. She doesn’t say. I’m guessing THE MAN or something but Tails just sighs and tells her to go back down.

Amy and Knuckles have another argumentative scene together. Amy gets really mean here in a very unflattering manner too. However, Knuckles’ questions are understandably frustrating as well. Seeing her have to explain and re-explain very basic shit to him is incredibly annoying.

He asks why the two of them are away from the action. Amy says Sonic is bringing the action to them and tells him to stand opposite from her so they can beat the Rock Golem. Knuckles pointlessly tries to ask if she means the rock cyborg and she says yes. Then Knuckles just re-asks the same question and Amy gives him the same answer but in a different way.

I don’t know. On the show Knuckles’ stupidity could be charming and it hardly ever resulted in scenes like this where he’d beat around the bush for so long. It's tough reading this because it just reminds me of people online who can’t stop asking and saying the same things over and over, demanding answers to questions you’ve already given the answer to. I can’t help but be a bit on Amy’s side here despite people finding her attitude terrible when this came out.

I get it. It’s supposed to set up the next story that’s to happen here but there’s so little time to get it across that it just feels weird. Like, this is the first issue of the book and our introduction to these characters is them immediately having a falling out. It just looks like they hate each other.

They defeat the rock golem though and it looks cool.

For some reason, the sound-effects in this comic always have the “Ker-” prefix in front of it. 

It’s always a ker-smash or a ker-bash or a ker-boom. It’s hard not to notice and to be honest, it being a pattern at all is a little baffling.

The action here was great though. This comic is drawn really well. The way the scene looks really sells you on the fun little romp that this is. It naturally seems to do a better job at simulating action here than the show ever did.

The show was good for animating expressions and it had some fluid movement from time to time but a lot of the time, I just recall the action being very strangely stiff looking, especially on the more low-budget episodes of the show. I happen to think that low budget CG looks worse than low budget 2D stuff personally but that’s probably a more situational thing. After all, a lot of the low budget shots from Sonic X stand as a lot more weird and goofy looking whereas with Boom, the rendering just looking incomplete makes the entire thing feel off rather than just there being a random weird looking shot. 

Also, Boom could NOT for the life of it animate water or other liquids AT ALL.

Tails’ house crashes down, still in-tact enough for it to just need a bit of sprucing up. We see that, at the very least, Sonic and Tails’ dynamic is still strong and healthy.

Aww, that’s adorable. I love it.

Best friends forever.

The same seemingly can’t be said for the dynamic of Amy and Knuckles. They were never best friends but here Knuckles seems to have really taken to not liking her and has gone out of his way to visit Sheev in his throne room to ask for help.

Dun dun dun…!

Except… I dunno. It’s weird. 

This is a very weird thing to do on your first issue. Again, it feels like it’s relying a lot on us already knowing who these characters are when this is one of the few Sonic comics that could reasonably assume that we DON’T know who they are. So starting it with a story where Knuckles immediately teams up with Eggman sets a strange precedent. 

As for why that rock golem made off with Tails' house?

I dunno.

The final page is the Off-Panel where the characters talk about how great it is to have their own book and how they’ve all got new looks. They’re all wearing scarfs, which Sonic is mad at them for. Tails makes the good point of scarfs looking good on pilots and Sticks has one made of tinfoil which hurts me just thinking about it.

Also, there’s a joke where she says it’s so people can’t hear her thoughts before she says them which… doesn’t really translate well in a comic format… or maybe it does? I guess we’re technically reading her thoughts before she says them except no we’re not because we’re reading them AS she’s saying them.

I don’t know. Here’s the joke. Can you make sense of it for me?

Everytime I think I get it, what I think it means stops making sense.

Please explain the joke to me like the Joker didn’t want Harley Quinn to do.

Alright, that was the first issue of Sonic Boom. It was good except for the parts of it that weren’t good. The parts that weren’t good were frustrating and annoying. Ian’s in a new ballpark with this new series so naturally there were some kinks to iron out on his end here. Granted, he doesn’t stay as the lead writer on this book for long, probably because of the disconnect he had at first, but I do know that he does get a handle on the Boom universe a lot better due to him writing that really great episode where Sonic and Tails have a bet and do the Wil E. Coyote and Road Runner thing with each other.

Here, the personalities are in the establishing phases, which makes some of the choices and direction here a little strange. It’s not unlike Boom to be confusing like this though. That was basically it’s M.O when it first got off the ground. The way it was handled being dished out to the masses made for such a confusing introduction that people really didn’t know what was what or how to take it. We now live in a world where it no longer exists and as such it doesn’t matter anymore but going back and trying to examine what it did will make for a fun time anyway, more or less. There isn’t a whole lot of it to look back through, making Sonic’s plea for fan art and fan comments at the end there a little sad.

Sonic Super Digest - Issue #11

The cover is a picture of Sonic’s face. It’s a really good drawing of Sonic’s face but I’ve seen Spaz draw Sonic’s face before so… there’s not much to talk about here unfortunately. Let’s see what the Super-Sized Digest has in store for us this week. 

Spoiler

Sonic Comic Origins: Nicole

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Lamar Wells
Inks: Rick Bryant
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover by Patrick “Spaz” Spaziante

We begin with what was promised last issue of Team Rose getting into the action. It’s the expected team of Amy, Big, Omochao, a regular chao, a Dark Chao, and a Light Chao. Obviously.

No, it’s the one from Sonic Heroes. Now there’s a Team Fighters, a Team Freedom, and a Team Rose. It’s pretty neat.

They’re training as well but Amy breaks character and asks if Nicole had to make the training here so hard, just like Sonic mentioned last time. Nicole has to break character as well and tells Amy to stop complaining basically. She says it in a much nicer, stern way though.

It’s her turn to suddenly start reminiscing on the past. Again, as someone who has yet to properly watch SatAM I can’t have much to say about Nicole’s portrayal and how it stacks up to that. She remains the biggest mystery to me out of the Freedom Fighters because she’s the one who is the least straight forward. Or at least she most definitely was back in the early Archie days.

I had completely forgotten about the weird time travel shenanigans that happened with her and Rotor. It was so strange and weird.

Thankfully, I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot simpler here. It’s not too complicated of an idea, that being of an A.I that lived amongst these people and wished to share in their good and bad times on an emotional level rather than just being there physically. The examples given of what she means are pretty good.

It actually stumped me seeing that last panel. I couldn’t imagine just getting a message like that on my phone. I’d probably have no one around to immediately comfort me either. 

I’m also a little surprised to see this here. You’d think this would be brought up in the Antoine story but I don’t recall seeing this mentioned and I just read it last week. Actually, the more I see of these side stories the more surprised I am that I haven’t read a single panel of these until now. 

I guess they aren’t essential to the main book but little tidbits like this do help re-contextualize the characters quite a bit. A scene like this can go a long way. 

This time in Archie Sonic’s life is starting to go back to those days of having a lot of stuff to chew on through different books again. Not in quite the same way of course. Sonic Universe is in no way a chore to read through like the old Knuckles book was and these Free Comic Book Day issues and Digests aren’t as hit or miss as those awful Sonic Super Specials were but it still feels a little disjointed.

I fear trying to inform anyone of how to properly read through this series. There’s going to be so much jumping from book to book happening.

Anyway, there really isn’t much to this Nicole story at all. She just talks about how when she became able to live amongst them that’s when they became true friends.

Then the simulation ends with Team Rose winning right when Sonic arrives to discover he didn’t need to help them. Happy ending for all.

So yeah, it’s still nothing essential. There’s nothing here that really NEEDS to be read up on in order to gleam anything SUPER-duper important that you couldn’t do without just reading the main book but it still feels weird how split apart all this was.

Because, again, I knew of the Sally and Rotor story but I had no idea all these other ones existed. That’s because the Sally and Rotor story was in a Free Comic Book Day Issue and the rest of these were in the Super Sonic Digests. And because they’re all connected and telling one complete story via the framework of this battle sim Nicole is putting on, the beginning of each story could come off as strange if you haven’t read the previous part.

If it were me, I’d have probably just collected all these stories together and put them out as a single special issue. I don’t see why not. There have been Free Comic Book days from Archie that have had a ton more meat to it then these origin stories. 

Still though, I’m not complaining. It was neat to see new material in the section of the book that I’ve read before. You thought you read all of it but it turns out you didn’t! That’s always a nice feeling somehow.

The rest of the stories in this digest are all from stories that I actually have yet to cover. Pretty much all of them are. There’s even the second issue of Sonic Boom in here. The only one that isn’t is an issue of Treasure Team Tango which was… kind of random but okay.

Hey, it’s another short one. After that mountain I wrote for the Sonic Boom issue, it was nice having this as a breather. Nicole got her time to shine and it was cute. It’s nice to know that she’s not got this super complicated thing going for her (for now) and we can just enjoy her for what she is at the moment. I’ll admit, I don’t remember Spark of Life being anything to write home about as far as the intrigue it had to offer but I also don’t remember understanding what was even happening in that arc so, maybe I’ll be surprised. Until then, it’s time to finally move on to the next mainline issue of the main book.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #260: Waves of Change, Part One: First Ripples

Look out indeed, Sonic. It’s a shark boy who’s gotten his fin pierced. Seaside Hill is looking a little more dangerous than I remember. What happened to the good ol’ days of collecting hermit crabs eh? Man, my kingdom for a competent Sonic Heroes remake.

Also, I can’t help imagining the scenario for this image is Sonic finally giving the water a bit of a chance and just immediately getting attacked. Shouldn’t have let your guard down. The water is awful and it wants you dead!

Spoiler

Versus Variant

In the variant, we just get to straight up see what was about to attack him. It’s some fairly good art. Not my favorite image from Evan though. It reminds me a bit too much of the way Sonic was drawn on certain covers before #160 where he looked a little too bulbous in my opinion. One could see this as a bit of an aftermath image to the main cover proper. It attacked and dragged him under so it could shank him. Bad day at the beach indeed.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Penciler: Jennifer Hernandez
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Gabriel Cassata
Letters: John Workman
Cover by Ben Bates
Variant Cover by Evan Stanley

Holy shit, it’s Jennifer Hernandez! Have we had her in the comic yet? I don’t think we actually have.

God, I really love her style. It always feels really good whenever you get a new artist that really knows how to sell the look of Sonic and his friends in a nice, cartoony style that can still have them be taken seriously. I remember the expressions on display being top notch, especially for when we get around to Champions.

The colors from Gabriel Cassata are pretty good. They’re not my favorite of course as I really do think Matt Herms is just the absolute best when it comes to how he gets the coloring of the characters down. There are instances amongst the cast in this issue that feels like the colors chosen might have leaned a little too close to the bright side. It’s not too bad though.

The first page is Sonic seeing and reacting to the Dark Gaia Spawn for the first time. Nicole is showing him and the Freedom Fighters aboard the Sky Patrol footage from Westopolis of them attacking after dark. It’s hard to even imagine these creatures in Westopolis. In my head, the styles of the two games can’t not clash.

The gang starts to talk about the possibility of those monsters being people who transformed due to being exposed to that evil Gaia energy because of Professor Pickle’s notes. This gets Sonic really worried so he rushes over to convince them (more so himself) that everything is fine. They just need to find the Chaos Emeralds, plug them into the Gaia Temples, and that’ll save the world.

So they break off into teams. Sonic, Rotor, and Amy are tasked with going on an adventure together where they’re combing a beach for a Gaia Temple. In a scene of Sonic being treated like the little kid, all his childish banter leads to him getting a noogie from Rotor.

Of course, the real focal point of the image is Amy because she either hears or feels something in the distance. It might be both.

She asks if Rotor and Sonic can as well and they can’t. Amy seems to be special in this regard.

She leads them to a hole with music coming out of it and she seems to realize that someone down there is playing a song. A voice overhears her and asks if she’s Sonic the Hedgehog. Amy says she isn’t but he’s with her and in response to that, the voice sends someone up to fetch them.

Fifteen minutes later, and with a sunset on our hands, we’re introduced to Razor the Shark and Crusher the Chao. I keep almost wanting to call him Chomper because he likes to jump and snap at you.

If there’s one thing I did recall about Waves of Change is how beefed up Sonic’s ego was for this arc. He’s already bragged about how awesome he is multiple times in the span of just a couple of pages and not really in a way that’s been too funny or endearing just yet. 

It is nice seeing him get immediately humbled a little when they have to go through the water. Razor here tells them to wear air charms to help them breathe underwater and they go on their merry way to Razor’s kingdom. He doesn’t claim to know anything about Gaia Temples but there’s a type of temple there, for sure. 

Always a good thing when your tour guide jokes about how the thing keeping you alive might not even work.

Man, I tell ya, it’ll be a laugh riot the next time I board a plane and the pilot tells me that it’s been years since it’s had any maintenance done on it. 

Sonic looks like a panicky little child here though. It is fun to witness. Meanwhile, Razor here is all smiles. When he first shows up, he doesn’t seem like the type but you can tell by how he talks that what brings out the best in him is his love for his city. It’s called Meropis.

They get on land and Sonic hugs a rock.

Then a tiny little girl in a yellow dress comes out to guide Razor back to where the priestess is doing some sort of ritual. This little girl, Reverse-Fish-Cream, leads them to a room where the priestess is performing a Mystic Melody onto a Chao Egg.

Yeah, the charms and the Mystic Melody are here. It’s a Sonic Adventure 2 item showcase. 

Of course, when we get to the room quite a lot of stuff is thrown at you all at once. The characters here just spill the exposition from their mouths and it’s honestly a little overwhelming, even for me.

Holy halibut and hold the tartar sauce Batman. I can hardly process this all at once.

My memory of this arc is very fuzzy honestly. I mostly just remember it for Sonic’s behavior and the reveal of why the ocean’s haven’t been collapsing in on each other. Also, my mind keeps a mental record of which Dark Gaia boss encounter they come across with each arc too.

Coral the Betta is a priestess who’s trying to help Aquarius, their super special important chao, reincarnate like it’s supposed to for generations on end. Pearly the Manta Ray is, as I said, Fish-Cream but in reverse. You’ll see what I mean later.

Also, apparently, this is not only their first visit to an underwater settlement but according to Amy they didn’t even really know those existed? That’s interesting. I’m surprised they were so gung-ho about just coming here all willy nilly but I guess Razor DID say there was a kind of temple here and that’s what they’re looking for, I guess.

On top of that, there’s talk of spirits now. They apparently told Coral here Sonic’s name and he’s supposed to be here to help in their time of need. Rotor’s about to dismiss their problem to circle back around to the reason they want to be here but Amy jabs his stomach and says that they’re Freedom Fighters so they’re obligated to stay and help.

That provides Coral with very little comfort because they all seem confused by her talk of spirits and she ends up scampering off, very worried that she might have gotten something wrong. 

Razor tells Pearly to get their magical air charms recharged (recharged with what? I don’t know honestly. Maybe the Mystic Melody juice like Coral talks about later, perhaps) and says the three of them can stay the night. They kind of have no choice since the sun is down now and the oceans are swarming with those monsters so… tough shit.

They get free room and board here so that’s nice. I keep forgetting there’s no money in Sonic’s world apparently so people can sleep in each other’s houses without paying. Hurray.

Amy is talking with Sally about the place they’ve… DISCOVERED basically. It’s a very casual conversation about having just come across an entirely new culture underwater. With the world having been reset, it’s a strange feeling to witness them come across an entirely new culture like this. I can see them visiting a city they’ve never been to before but it’s kind of wild that they’ve never heard of underwater settlements like this until just now. 

Amy and Sally’s conversation shifts to being about Sonic. They’re concerned about how he got a big ol’ whiff of that Dark Gaia energy. There’s a cute scene of Sonic playing with some chao that gets showcased over it. 

It’s pretty adorable.

It’s also funny how in the background on the next page, Crusher tries to bite at Sonic again. 

Amy spots Coral curled up on the ground when she leaves her little house and goes to have a chat with her. Coral is very upset about screwing up her first chance to play priestess with Aquarius. She’s also doubting the stuff about the spirits because some strangers don’t know what she’s talking about. She has very little faith in herself and the span of the conversation she has with Amy leads Amy to believe that she’s sort of like herself back in the day; in need of rescue and unsure of how good a contributor to the team she could be.

We get shots of the various adventures from the games. It’s curious to imagine the games happening the same way in these comics though. It always was but I still can’t help but chuckle at the idea that the Freedom Fighters just took a vacation or something each time a pivotal Sonic the Hedgehog game story happened.

I know the idea is that your mind is supposed to compartmentalize the two and provide imaginary roles for the Freedom Fighters to play within the conflicts yourself or something but I tend to think it’s funnier if the narrative just suddenly pretends that the kingdoms and the Freedom Fighters don’t exist for a weird span of time before they suddenly exist again. It’s just a funny idea in my head.

“Hey Sally, where were you when I was taken to Prison Island for a crime I didn’t commit? Only Tails and Amy came to get me!”

It tickles me.

The next morning, Sonic and Rotor scope out the old temple Razor was talking about.

Rotor discovers that it is definitely… old.

That’s about it. There’s nothing that definitively says it’s a Gaia Temple and Sonic did not find a slot to plug in a Chaos Emerald. 

It’s here where we see Amy and Razor having a conversation about the names of Cream’s chao. They’re named after foods and that’s funny. Apparently Crusher is named Crusher because it makes him feel important.

Also, we find out that Pearly is Reverse-Cream because she’s scared of Chao. She thinks they’re creepy.

It’s a very interesting trait to give to a little girl character like her. It’s quite honestly pretty essential for her too, otherwise she just would not stand out at all.

Then they hear screaming from the shrine. Razor rushes off and just… does a very real thing here.

It’s that thing where someone sees someone they know in a compromising position and they immediately blame the person who happens to be there for it. No questions asked. They just attack and demand to know what you did to them.

What you did was try to help because you were the first to notice this person was in need of assistance.

It’s happened to me once before and t I’ve heard a story or too about it happening to others. It sucks to say but it can be hard gathering up the nerve to help people when being seen with the distressed party makes you suspect number one. 

That’s why so few people help whenever they see a lone child in the mall or something. They think people will think they’re the ones who made off with the kid or something. Everyone’s super suspicious of each other and conclusion jumping tends to happen a lot.

Bit of a tangent, sure, but seeing Razor do that felt super real.

Anyway, these goons show up.

One of them is going to have a fun time with some detectives in a later arc.

I never liked the design of the guy with the golden claw. I dunno. Something about it felt incomplete and not in an intentional way either. 

So this was Waves of Change. It’s a serviceable introductory arc. I’ll admit, the ocean setting isn’t often one of my favorites in media. It’s never been one I hated. The underwater kingdom troupe can definitely work towards my advantage in a lot of ways if the design is just right but it’s never been one I’ve clamored for. Same goes with snowy regions. 

My favorite kind of settings are the horror/haunted/Halloween ones or the cyberpunk looking city ones for sure. 

It’ll largely not matter if the adventure over the horizon is fun. I hope it is because, again, I have a lot of trouble recalling what happens in this arc and it goes on for four issues.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #260: The Light in the Dark

Script: Aleah Baker
Pencils: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman

We have a script by Aleah Baker! She’s here!

You might also know her from that one episode of the Bumblekast where she just goes all in on Ken Penders and his shitty story telling for well over an hour on one Q&A question. I reposted that with time-stamps on here once. It was quite the refreshing episode.

Anyway, we’ve got a secondary story for an issue here. It’s been an extremely long time since that’s happened but I guess there wasn’t a TON going on in Waves of Change to warrant stretching it out even more.

This story follows what the rest of the Freedom Fighters on the Sky Patrol are doing the following morning. Sally tells them, based on what she stole from the Death Egg, that before the world shattered, the Egg Army was trying to excavate for a Chaos Emerald.

The excavation was stalled when everything went to shit but it’s going to start up again soon so they need to jump in, nab it, and get out so that the Egg Army will be officially wasting their time digging for something that isn’t there.

Sally tells Big, Bunnie, and Cream to stay behind. This is a Sally, Nicole, Tails, and Antoine adventure.

Why? I dunno. It kind of feels like she picked them at random a bit. It’s another reason why prefer the Sonic characters just be free agents that do whatever they want, whenever they want. It keeps me from thinking about stuff like this. Also, it staves off mental images of them having a set time they get up in the morning to sit at the round table of the Hall of Justice. 

Too much for me. It feels too much like what fictional cops would do.

They arrive outside Eggman’s base and stick Nicole’s R2-D2 port into a thing and she determines that she’ll only be able to override Eggman’s impressive and clearly superior egg-tech for about seventy-two minutes.

So basically a little over an hour.

Seventy-two minutes is very specific but I can’t even make fun of that. I would have picked a random number like that as well. It helps it feel more authentic.

They get inside and Antoine is shown worrying about a bunch of hypothetical, dangerous reasons why the Egg Army stopped digging here but they all reassure him that it’s cool.

Tails is about to ask Sally about Sonic and the obvious danger he’s in, what with all the talk of poison gas in the air, but they happen upon the door they were looking for so he stops asking.

The build up to this werehog is being done well enough but instances like this do help to make it feel like it’s perhaps taking a tad too long. I wouldn’t have necessarily had the transformation happen now or anything but we are starting to tread a bit of water here with the constant “Are you okay, Sonic?” and “Are you SURE you’re okay, Sonic?” and the “Is Sonic REALLY okay?” that’s going on and on and on here.

Anyway, they open that big ol’ door and see what’s in the Room Where it Happens.

Tails having one eye twitching here elicits the thought that he’s witnessing something really gross.

I was thinking of Eggman pole dancing but come on.

We all know that would be angelic.

Waves of Change has officially begun. I hope you like this setting and it’s characters because we’ve got three more full issues with them until the end. The story will showcase and develop them as best it can in that time and I commend them for it. I think they’re all generally fine. None of them stretch beyond that for me in my mind. The one with the most promise to me is Razor but even then I don’t tend to think about him much when he’s not directly on screen so it is what it is.

I don’t think we’re in for anything boring. My trouble recalling what happens in this arc could honestly stem from there just being a lot of info to retain and my brain just wasn’t up to the task all those years ago. I’m here to make sure it is this time. Come on, Ariel, it’s time to have some finny fun.

 

[Dr. Detective]

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #261: Waves of Change, Part Two: Current Events

This is the part where I want to ask you guys for your opinion if you wish to provide it. What is your take on not only Waves of Change but the decision to use the Unleashed arc as a means of world building this new continuity? Obviously, we know that it all went to waste because of Archie canceling the book but as an idea, in and of itself, was it the right move? 

I’m looking at this awesome cover and I’m thinking to myself how great it is that all these ideas were at the helm and the merit behind setting things up with stories that establish new zones and new characters could have made for some really exciting things down the line, especially with the Metal Virus idea Ian had brewing. I actually think it was a solid idea.

Sonic looks cool here but I can’t help but wonder if him stretching his legs like this hurts in any way.

Spoiler

Variant Cover

Despite how much more awesome, and cool, and relevant the actual main cover is, I can’t help but dig this one more. It’s Tracy Yardley showing off the doctor having a good old time at the beach. I love Sonic raising his glasses to take a gander at him as if he’s being stumped by how much cooler the doctor looks than him right now. Even better is how he seems to be stumbling directly into the ocean with a radio, parasol, and a full cooler. That snorkeling equipment on his face and the thumbs up seem to indicate that he’s got no problem doing that either. Why? I dunno. He’s the Eggman. He’s got… some kind of a master plan, I’m sure.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jennifer Hernandez
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Gabriel Cassata
Letters: John Workman
Cover by Ben Bates
Variant Cover by Tracy Yardley and Matt Herms

I’m really starting to get used to and love the colors by Gabriel Cassata here. Yeah, it looks different but it looks really nice. Also, for some reason, in this issue it doesn’t look as bright as before. 

Anyway, Captain Striker is the name of the red guy with the claw who showed up last issue and as Sonic approaches to ask if there’s a problem, he says that depends seeing as how the priestess has allowed people to enter their holy ground without royal permission.

That’s a bit of a big deal. I guess they didn’t hear about the mysterious ghost voice either. 

Turns out there is no such thing as free room and board after all. Oh well.

Razor gets all up in Striker’s face saying that Coral has more authority to say who gets to be here than the king or queen. That’s… quite the bold thing to say. Striker basically accuses him of failing his duty and Rotor has to hold him back.

Coral then comes out and explains that these guys visit every morning because the power rings produced here power the city. Striker also asks if Aquarius has resurrected yet and she says no. When Striker points out that it only takes minutes Coral throws out an excuse about Aquarius being ancient or whatever. I dunno. Striker doesn’t buy it and intends to bring her and the visitors along forcefully to the king and queen.

Sonic is incredibly smooth here though.

He basically says he’s okay with going along but if Striker doesn’t calm his tits then it’ll be a lot rougher than it has to be. 

They eventually work something out where Pearly and Rotor are staying behind with Echo the Dolphin Soldier while the rest are taken by Striker to see the king and queen.

On their way there they get passing looks from the citizens and think that it’s because they’re foreigners. In actuality, they’re angry with Coral.

The water is murkier and the citizens are grumpier and it’s apparently all her fault.

Sonic is confident he can explain this away because royalty is always reasonable.

Yeah, so, King LemonGrab here and Queen Who-Gives-A-Fuck are all pissed off about the state of affairs here. It becomes pretty clear here what’s happening and I immediately hate them because of it.

I mean, we’ll ignore the fact that the king (probably intentionally) looks like a whiny little brat and the Queen just IS a bitch but the civilization itself is starting to look even less good now that their obtuse ways are starting to generate conflict where there shouldn’t be any. Before it was just weird but here you can imagine how frustrating it is for Sonic to witness the delusions of this populace make the life of this poor priestess hard for no reason.

We get an explanation juxtaposed between the Queen and Pearly back with Rotor about how all the earthquakes, polluted water, lowered magic shield, monsters, and the slow rebirth of Aquarius have been plaguing their city and they have no clue why. The blame is falling on Coral because they just think she’s a bad priestess.

Sonic has the actual explanation and gives it to them straight.

Yeah, because what these guys believe is so much more believable, obviously.

It’s here where it becomes obvious just how out of the way and backwater this water city really is. She doesn’t believe that the Earth would break apart because the oceans would have drained if that were true. Sonic claims to not have all the answers even though it could easily be written off as an after-effect of the magic of the creature that was unleashed but whatever.

The point is that their customs are incredibly strange and it would seem like they’re doing that expected religious reaction to things where anything outside their purview is seen as ridiculous. There must not be any mirrors down here.

On top of that, they’re aware of Dr. Eggman and the fact that he’s a monster. She did mention that Akhlut and his gang tend to terrorize the Great Blue Realm where they are. They must not have had any direct dealings with Eggman himself because when Amy mentions that they’ve seen the world breaking apart because they’ve flown over it, Queen Bitch laughs at the notion as well.

Oh my God. There’s nothing worse than when someone is not only confidently wrong but snarky and bitchy about how wrong they are in a manner that’s not immediately disprovable due to being in a position where you can’t outright show them how fucking stupid they are.

Ignorance is more than bliss. In some cases it’s extremely frustrating and dangerous.

So now they have to continue enduring Striker calling Coral a fucking fraud and these two goobers overreacting to their precious chao not coming back to life. Or maybe it IS a proper reaction but their anger is most definitely being directed at the wrong person. That’s for certain.

Then the two leaders get super fucking smart and decide to fire their priestess.

I love the way Sonic has his hands out in the first panel. It reminds me of the Spongebob meme where he’s showing Patrick how bad of a dad he was being to that scallop they were taking care of. He’s just going “HMMM!” with his hands and silently desiring them to be reasonable.

Unfortunately, like the pre-reboot King Max before them, authority figures like them are a dime a dozen and they make the absolute worst decision by firing her and kicking her out. They then start to bitch and moan about how their princess is abroad and could probably have done it but had to make due with HER instead. I’ve known these people for five pages and they’re already the most hated characters in the reboot for me. Fantastic work, seeing how that was most likely the intention.

I honestly don’t even remember this. I remember these two designs but the conversation they were having and the situation at play must have flown over my head. Not only is this really interesting but it’s done a great job of getting me invested. Nothing like a good show of unfair and ill treatment of an innocent to make someone desire intense retribution.

Amy is so mad about it that she slams her hammer against a tree when they get back which leads to a cute scene where coconuts fall and the chao gather around to grab them with hearts over their heads.

Rotor expresses his condolences for the situation but not enough to forgo the mission. He’s always been one of the more interesting Freedom Fighters for his willingness to favor practicality over being traditionally sympathetic. An example of that is his insistence that it’d be better to just let Naugus die then save him. Or that time he grabbed Tails out of the sky but let Naugus plummet to his near death without a second thought. This, of course, leads to him and Sonic clashing.

It’s a good little character moment for them, though, I will admit that Sonic’s petty “Yeah you are” almost made me switch sides then and there. I AM on Sonic’s side in this debate though but I’ve never liked it when someone apologizes and instead of apologizing for doing the same thing back, the other party doubles down on their bad behavior.

That said, I do side with Sonic’s desire to help Coral here. I, like him, can’t witness an injustice like that and just leave it be. The suggestion that there’s room on the Sky Patrol for her comes up and Pearly rushes over to Coral and Razor to tell them the good news. However, Razor says they’re not looking to exile themselves and Pearly offers to stay behind and do the rites in her stead in order to keep the temple from being unattended. That gets vetoed too since it would just leave her alone to eventually be kicked out when they get a new priestess.

Apparently priestesses grow on trees down here too. Either that or there’s a breeding ground for them. Or they’re taken from their families like the younglings.

At night, talk of whether they should go or not happens again. Razor seems a lot more open to it but ultimately is only going to go if Coral goes.

I don’t recall Razor being this adorable when I first read this but here we are.

We see a scene of Coral attempting to do the rites and it’s literally just not working at all now. Nothing’s happening. The shield is failing. Aquarius isn’t coming back. 

Coral is in hysterics. She’s crying, blaming herself, scared, and eventually she just falls to her knees in defeat. Amy tries to get her to boost her confidence but it’s not working. She’s done.

Amy then, in a cool but seemingly futile attempt, asks Pearly to tell HER how to do it. Pearly says she’s been trying and doesn’t know how.

The shield is down and the Dark Gaia monsters start flowing in!

They’re attacking the citizens and Striker’s comment when he spots the destruction is to go into battle mode… but not before throwing one more insult Coral’s way.

You guys fired your priestess.

Honestly, expecting her to continue helping to put up the shield after that was bold of you. Perhaps you thought she would out of fear of her own life from the monsters and from the kingdom but if you think she’s bad at her job anyway then perhaps you should have seen this coming?

Well, either way, shits hit the fan. The night raid is happening.

That’s not the Dark Moray by the way. That’s a regular old, Dark Eel. The Dark Moray has a much more in-depth, scarier design and a giant glowing green “beat me here” light on its body. 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #261: The Light in the Dark, Part Two

Script: Aleah Baker
Pencils: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: John Workman

Meanwhile, the other Freedom Fighters are hard at work doing something else. It’s nice to still see Tails in these issues.

I know the Freedom Fighters are like… ten people now so splitting up happens more often but I’ll always love and prefer the dynamic duo of Sonic and Tails going out on adventures together. Obviously they don’t need to be together all the time but like a parent who’s worried for his kids, it's hard not to notice whenever they’re apart.

Anyway, that’s enough of me being an old grandpa. We check in on them to witness what they witnessed at the end of the side story last issue and it’s… a giant Geode!

No Chaos Emeralds but endless fucking Geodudes.

None of them are Shiny Geodudes though.

They go in pretty far but stop when they happen upon a huge drop with some demolished Grounder type Eggman robots. The ground gave way so they were made useless. Tails is sent flying ahead with Nicole while Sally and Antoine stay behind.

There’s a somber moment where the two of them observe how pretty it is and Antoine makes a comment about how if Eggman didn’t send in the wrong robots for the job they wouldn’t have been able to see any of it. 

That gets Sally pretty sad and we end that page on a panel of her hugging her knees before we cut to Tails’ adventure in the sparkling, geode cave.

The back and forth between Tails and Nicole here is interesting. She can’t really see what Tails is seeing but she’s analyzing it and reacts as though it’s nothing too special. Tails’ cute, naive manner of interacting with her is making the back and forth slightly one-sided as far as taking in the wonder of the place they’re in.

He’s a bright young lad but he’s still very much a young lad.

Also, he found the purple Chaos Emerald. 

Again, every time I see a Chaos Emerald there’s a bit of me that gets a little worried it’s gonna go haywire. Thank Sonic X for that. That show really did a good job of emphasizing the CHAOS of the Chaos Emeralds.

Tails flies it back without it frying his brain or anything though.

They congratulate him and this gives Sally time to express her regret at the initial plan they came here with. See, the original plan was to nab the emerald and have Eggman waste his time searching for it when they left undiscovered.

However, the natural wonder and beauty of this place has made Sally feel responsible for it’s impending destruction and thus she doesn’t want to go through with it.

Nicole pops up on her Nintendo D.S and is basically about to call Sally fucking bonkers for putting the mission at risk because of some worthless mineral deposits.

That is until they put the ring on top of the D.S and Nicole is brought out to see how pretty it looks.

Yeah, it gets her to change her mind.

So now the plan is… to make sure Eggman KNOWS they took the emerald.

Now… on the surface this SOUNDS like a fucking stupid plan… and it kind of is BUT there is probably a way they could gain an advantage out of this.

For instance, gloating directly to Eggman that they stole this emerald could lead to the doctor thinking that they’re trying to bait him and thus make him overthink the situation. That could lead to him trying to retaliate in a way that the heroes weren’t prepared for and thus put them in more dange… wait no.

Or he could see through the supposed bait and attack the cavern anyway, thus rendering their plan pointle–... hmm…

Or he could shift his efforts to finding other emeralds before they do but he was already doing that in the first place since he’s got an entire army stationed around the world looking for them…

… Hmm… you know this might actually just be a stupid plan.

I like that they’re doing it though.

The second issue of Waves of Change was very good. It was a showcase of world building done in a really interesting way by utilizing the story troupe of someone being treated like shit by an authority figure and wanting to see them taken down a peg. Bonus points for utilizing the fact that they’re dumbasses that don’t know shit outside of their backwater plain of existence too. It really does get the drive to see what happens when you know that the people in the wrong need to answer for what they’ve done in some way, shape, or form. 

The second story was mostly fine. I can understand someone being frustrated by the eco-friendly message at the end there. The Freedom Fighters are caught in situations where their drive to stop and help everyone and everything they come across could naturally impende a bit on how fast they get shit done but I do ultimately fall on the side of preferring heroes that take things like this into account as opposed to ones that just view things from a purely practical stance. I know the internet tends to disagree but that’s really just how I like my heroes.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #262: Waves of Change, Part Three: Terror in the Deep

A very abstract way to visualize Sonic drowning amongst a sea of horrible monsters, this is. 

Marvel at how he’s getting the life choked out of him as he’s dragged under. It’s quite the miraculous feat, isn’t it?

Spoiler

Movie Poster Variant Cover

This is quite the inspired idea. I like the idea of doing more movie poster themed covers. Preferably with more Sonic characters to show off. This one gets the job done with the creep factor but it’s weird how distracted I am by that render of Sonic in the background. Oh well..

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Gabriel Cassata
Letters: John Workman
Cover by Ben Bates
Movie Poster Variant Cover by T. Rex

We’ve switched on over to Tracy Yardley for pencils this time. I’m so familiar with everyone’s art that I could immediately just tell, too.

Anyway, the cliffhanger we were left on last time, at least as far as our immediate heroes, turns out to not have been much of a thing. They make quick work of them in about a single page.

However, Razor is confused by how they seem to explode into purple gas when they’re destroyed and Sonic suggests they might be made of that stuff seeping from the planet. This freaks Amy out a bit and we get yet another scene of Sonic doing whatever he can to dismiss the legitimate concerns brought up by his friends.

I do admit to being a bit bothered by them constantly bringing it up too Sonic but to be completely fair, they wouldn’t have to if you’d at least acknowledge their position on this. 

It was also here where I did kind of see the benefit of doing this impending transformation for Sonic the same way as it was done in Unleashed. If merely breathing in this smog can elicit a dark transformation like what happens later than they’re getting face fulls of it every time they destroy one of these fuckers.

Perhaps it can be explained away but it mostly just reminds me that no matter what, there’s always an avenue for people to nitpick the way you’ve chosen to tell your story.

I’m also wondering if I should have started a tally for how often a scene like this is going to happen but I digress.

Coral says that shit is still fucked and starts blaming herself for everything that’s happened. Razor, however, tells her that the assholes in Meropis are at fault for laying all the blame and responsibility for everything on her and stressing her out to the point where she’s lost focus. There’s that but also the fact that I feel like Dark Gaia’s essence would just naturally be stronger than whatever this water temple stuff is doing.

Realizing that the main city is likely being attacked by these same baddies, Sonic and Rotor head off to go deal with that while Amy and Razor stay behind to protect Coral.

They come across Captain Striker as he’s doing his best to stave off the monsters and protect the citizens. It’s here where I do recall Striker standing out as a lot more reasonable than first impressions gave off. The first thing that happens when Rotor saves him from a monster from behind and after Sonic asks if he’s still upset they came, he says that, yes, he’s still upset about that but that he’s grateful for their help.

Then a conversation happens where both sides… well, both have a point. There’s not really any definitive position I can land on here, which is impressive.

Sonic says Striker is a hard guy to read but he did save Sonic’s hide back there so, at the very least, we know his frustrations land on his desire to see people protected.

Whether or not that means he’ll play a game of chance to decide which area is worth protecting more is up in the air. 

Back with Amy’s group, a fight is still brewing but the chao need to be rescued. Who should be put in charge of doing that but our Reverse-Cream?

It’s such an interesting trait she has. It’s also very daring to give any character the trait that they don’t like chao and find them creepy. However, that might clash with the fanbase’s desire to fawn over adorable young girl characters so I can see why they took the risk. It probably balances out.

Coral is trying to play the Mystic Melody to get Aquarius to wake the fuck up or to raise the shield and it’s not working. She steels herself and keeps trying though. It’s nice seeing her resolve come through now.

After a short scene where Amy smashes another Dark Gaia monster before it can reach Coral, Pearly runs back to Amy and tells her that two air charms are missing.

Yes. Sonic and Rotor took them. It’s no big deal.

Except it totally is because they took the wrong ones. The ones they grabbed weren’t fully charged.

Also, Sonic and Rotor came across the Dark Guardian and are now fighting it.

He’s the guy with the hammer that you fight in Shamar. Here he’s at the water level which… okay.

That’s an interesting choice considering water world is the exact opposite of the desert but I guess it can work. What can’t work is breathing underwater though and the air for Sonic and Rotor runs the fuck out while they’re trying to fight it.

That position Sonic is in reminds me of this really pathetic website called “Save Sonic” where the point was to go on a crusade to get Ryan Drummond back as the voice of Sonic. Their header image was a drawing of Sonic pawing at his throat while saying that he’d lost his voice. You know, because Jason Griffith had taken over as Sonic and thus Sonic was dying. A mission statement talking about a character’s voice was more than just a voice but their soul and without it he was on Death’s door and…

Sonic had a couple of people who had voiced him before Ryan Drummond up until that point. Nevermind his Japanese Seiyu Jun'ichi Kanemaru voicing Sonic in Japan at the same time and still doing so to this day but I guess other languages don’t count.

You guys… if you thought reactions to different voice actors playing these characters was at all bad now you REALLY need to look through your crystal ball back to how it was when the first major voice acting shift happened in the early 2000s. Twitter complaining about a Big Oof had nothing on some of the cosmically embarrassing shit people did back then.

Anyway, Sonic looks like a scared child now that he realizes the air charm is low on air. There’s a close-up shot of it for some reason. I can’t ascertain how it’s supposed to show me that it’s low on air but I assume that’s what it’s trying to show me.

It doesn’t matter though. Rotor tries to swim the frightened Sonic to the surface. He’s taken by the hand like he’s relying on his big brother to save him.

Unfortunately, the Dark Guardian is a boss from the game and as such, needs to show its stuff. 

It leaps into the air and grabs both of them before slamming them down to the bottom of the water again.

Rotor tries to fight it off but he cannot.

And as he does this… SONIC tries to fight off HIMSELF…

… and he also cannot.

I don’t remember how all this ended up shaking out in the end but I don’t recall this being the point where the transformation finally happened.

If it isn’t then I gotta say, this is probably one of the more unforgivable teases they’ve done yet. It’s already taken so long but ending the story for this issue on this page and not delivering next time would probably have been… kind of annoying.

I’m starting to wonder how many months of waiting this must have taken. That’s not a good sign.

I’m covering it weakly and I feel like I’m pushing for it a lot. Perhaps that’s just me being too used to how immediate the transformation was in the game though. When you shift to the exact opposite of that, the adjustment period can feel a little weird.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #262: The Light in the Dark, Part Three

Script: Aleah Baker
Pencils: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Gabriel Cassata
Letters: John Workman

We cut back to our adventure of the other Freedom Fighters and their attempt to save a cavern of beautiful glowy rocks.

Now that the plan is to make sure Eggman knows they’ve stolen the emerald, Tails is pulling a Charmy and blowing a raspberry directly into Eggman’s spy camera while pointing at the purple emerald in his hand.  

They try to make their way out of there but then Nicole has to put up a firewall to save them from an enemy that, initially, you can’t see.

However, a lazy blasts through her digital eye and Antoine has to toss her handheld to Sally so that they can properly deal with the threat.

It’s an E-1000 model. Or rather, a Chaos Gamma. 

Or both.

I think?

Well, either way, they FUCK it up!

It just gets its shit wrecked. Absolutely.

They get out of there and return to the Sky Patrol with the Chaos Emerald in hand.

Cream is absolutely smitten with it and Tails lets her hold it with quite a very confident smile on his face. 

Meanwhile, Big is scolding Froggy in the background, telling him not to touch the Chaos Emerald, which is pretty funny.

Our final page is just Nicole and Sally shooting the shit and recontextualizing that earlier scene of Nicole saying “WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT SOME GEODES?!” for us… in case you either didn’t get it or forgot.

The point would probably be so that we could live in peace and not be under the tyrannical rule of a madman but I see what you mean.

Also, as I said, I do prefer my heroes that attempt to save everyone and everything they can. It’s just the kind of thing I prefer. So I like this when all is said and done. 

Not a ton happened in comparison to the last issue. The fight was just taken to the city of Meropis and the Dark Guardian came to wreck some fools. It’s nice seeing these boss fights show up so much. I think I may have done that stupid power leveling nonsense with the Dark Gaia Titan and the Dark Guardian by comparing how quickly they were defeated or something but it’s a comic. Liberties are going to be taken and it was never a huge deal anyway. It’s not like they also need to push blocks to summon energy that defeats it too. Who cares?

The second story ran out of steam pretty quickly but that’s not surprising. There wasn’t much to it. This all felt like a transitional issue. Nothing was bad about it but the final one is the one you really want to see so let’s get to it.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #263: Waves of Change, Part Four: Divine Waters

The best cover of the four. Easily. It’s got the best colors, it’s got the best strokes and swirls, it’s even got Sonic surfing on Chaos’ arm. If he can’t grind off Sephiroth's sword in the swordsman’s reveal trailer he’s gonna do some goofy shit in his own damn book instead. 

Spoiler

Chao Variant

Hmmm… you know, maybe Pearly has a point. These Chao are creepy. The Sonic one especially. I also just noticed the caption at the bottom translating what he’s said. Oh dear.

—

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Ryan Jampole
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Gabriel Cassata
Letters: John Workman
Cover by Ben Bates
Chao Variant Cover by Evan Stanley

Ah, I remember now.

So yeah, Sonic is in a bit of a mid-transformation state and is about to go ham while shouting “IF I’M GOING DOWN THEN I’M TAKING YOU WITH ME!” or something.

But then the Dark Guardian slams him into Rotor so nothing happens.

It’s fine. I’m not actually bothered by it.

Oh yeah, Sonic and Rotor are dead though. 

How unfortunate.

Amy and Razor can’t do shit since they’re getting swarmed.

Then we check in with Coral who is still praying. Nothing is happening… until it does.

Yeah, turns out Aquarius was on hold thanks to Dark Gaia’s bad juju making the call super staticy. 

Then Sonic and Rotor are provided air bubbles courtesy of an old friend, kind of.

The Dark Guardian tries to fend off our guest but gets punched into the sand via Chaos controlling the ocean.

Yup, he punches him with the ocean. He knew nothing! The fool! It’s CHAOS! THE GOD OF DESTRUCTION!

Rotor geeks out about this and says the still, in my opinion, supremely unnecessary line about how the reason the oceans aren’t draining is because Chaos is controlling it all.

It makes sense. Chaos is a God. Godly duties might be strong enough to pertain to keeping the ocean safe. Dare I say, our world could use one of those for the sake of clearing up pollution.

I just think the high fantasy concept of the world breaking into a jigsaw puzzle doesn’t need to be scrutinized that much. Personally.

Captain Striker sees this and is shocked. He knows Chaos. He’s apparently a big fan. Chaos is the protector of the Chao and he’s surprised that Sonic knows him. Sonic takes this time to gloat a bit about how good Coral is.

Amy and Razor are still getting swarmed but then Echo the Dolphin Warrior shows up with the soldiers sent by Captain Styker to help clear out the monsters from the temple.

Yeah, turns out Striker DID send a group to help them as it would have been wrong to leave the temple to its fate. Amy momentarily thinks this is a good opportunity to go off and help Sonic but the suggestion that she’d be ripped into confetti before she made it there gets her to stop. They can’t spare her an escort so she’ll just have to trust that Sonic can handle it. Which he can now that he can breath, probably.

We cut back to the scene with Coral and it’s revealed that the reason the rebirth took so long is because she’s better than she thought she was. 

The liberal use of this character is something that I can’t help but find strange. I’m not complaining though. It’s very interesting.

Given how Tikal was in the previous continuity, I can see why she wasn’t used for anything like this before. I do wonder if it fits for her to be a spirit that’s like… the queen of solving everyone’s spiritual problems or if there are more spirits out there. 

Probably not. I’m most likely just overthinking a fan-service cameo.

Coral runs out and asks for Razor to deliver Pearly to her so that they can do the rites together. Razor does what he calls a “Squirt Delivery” and rushes back to help fight. 

Pearly is a bit worried she’ll mess up but Coral puts the kibosh on that, saying that self-doubt is for the birds, not the fish. They then do the Mystic Melody with Tikal and… everything just fixes itself. 

The Dark Guardian gets hit with a magic beam and then Rotor and Sonic make it explode.

Yeah, when I played Sonic Adventure 2, I never imagined the Mystic Melody would be used to generate a hyper beam that would shoot through the ocean and obliterate a horde of Dark Gaia Monsters.

The man who came up with this has quite the imagination. Wink.

Also, here’s Sonic, trying to use the cool celebrity he knows to get in good with the authoritative assholes.

It works.

Pfft. I love Striker, standing there at attention with such dedication. 

So like comic book authority figures, when proven wrong they own up to it and apologize. Well, the queen does. Puffer Fish Baby King just looks confused.

Coral resumes her post and Chaos grants them his forgiveness as well. She thinks.

Also, an interesting tidbit is that the pollution wasn’t from Dark Gaia but from the two crashed Egg Carriers from Sonic Adventure?

I guess that pull is here because Chaos and Tikal are also Sonic Adventure adjacent. Still, a very weird revelation. How close to Station Square are they that it swept them both straight here? I’m surprised there was even enough left of the second one for it to drift anywhere.

Granted, we didn’t see most of the wreckage of the second one. It’s not like the Death Star that blew up in a way where it’s literally impossible for there to have been wreckage of it on a planet somewhere.

God. If only we had a magical space dagger. Problem would have been solved like that.

Later, Tikal is floating beside one of those mystical thingies from Adventure 2 that look like miniature shrines you’d probably see on Angel Island and explaining her deal. She can only appear at points of magical power and even then, with the world like this, it’s a struggle.

I can already hear SEGA groaning at the word “magical” there. 

Ghosts and Spirits are just things that exist. It’s not magic… which I prefer to be honest. I actually don’t have a problem with there being no magic other than the Chaos Emeralds in Sonic’s world. Having everything just be a sci-fi element that exists on Sonic’s planet just feels kind of cool to me. 

Were I in charge of keeping these rules around, some of them I probably would. I’d offer explanations as to why though. Keeping people in the dark as to why, at the moment, seems foolish.

Tikal leaves after saying that all this dark energy is the fault of Dark Gaia and we need Light Gaia to drive it back. Knuckles was sent to go get him. Sonic is surprised that Knuckles actually came off his floating rock willingly.

Also, apparently, Amy was the one who summoned Tikal for this particular conversation. She just happened to learn the Mystic Melody really fast.

Sure, why not?

Rotor is also delighted to learn that the Chao pond they have here is a lake of rings. Razor lets them stock up on them, saying that rings are no big deal to find. Hoho!

Then they say their goodbyes after going through what it is they actually accomplished here. There was no Gaia Temple but Tikal told them a bunch of info. Amy learning the Mystic Melody means that they can narrow down their search for the temples and… they know that underwater civilizations exist now.

After that amusing scene of Sonic getting verbally owned, we cut to the last image of the book where it seems we’ve finally reached, what I remember, to be the true apex of story progression regarding what’s happening with Sonic.

Or rather, the beginning of it.

We cut to a green sloth man, named Moss, as he speaks to someone he just helped get over some apparent anger management. I think. Also, he’s got on fingerless gloves.

Yes, yes, Mighty is back. He and Ray survived the snap. Sure. But the most important thing is that he’s got tan fingers to match his arms and we can see them thanks to the fingerless gloves!

Also, Mighty’s boots are quite thrilling to look at. Look at that swift, Modern design.

I know people like to talk about Mighty as though he’s like a missing member of the Chaotix because of Knuckles’ Chaotix, a game I’m always skeptical of people saying they have nostalgia for knowing the 32X’s history (but I don’t claim to dismiss the notion either) but I do think that it’s perfectly fine to have Mighty and Ray just be who they are together. The SegaSonic the Hedgehog thing also works as a viable connection after all. Why not?

We’ll see what their deal is later. Now that his sister is dead he’s got to find a new purpose.

Hahaha! Morbid jokes.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #263: Consequences

Script: Aleah Baker
Pencils: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Gabriel Cassata
Letters: John Workman

Technically this is the fourth part to the side-story that concluded last issue but it doesn’t really fit with it due to it also technically being its own story.

It’s the aftermath to what happened after the Freedom Fighters decided to allow the sparkling cave to live. Here we get introduced to some, what I assume were, fan favorite characters; Cassia and Clove.

My concept of an Egg Boss was not very good back when I initially read this. It wasn’t until Eggman’s Dozen when all this was put into perspective for me. Yeah, I read the words but I never truly absorbed them.

The two of them search the entryway. Little sister with the cybernetics angrily kicks the dead motobug on the ground, proclaiming that she should have stayed here. Big sister Egg Boss says no to that, not desiring for her to end up in pieces.

Gruesome.

After a cute back and forth where the little sister says that her cybernetics have made her strong and big sister looks all worried about that, they discover that the security footage was compromised and then, for some reason, reactivated.

Cassia gets all shocked to see the CLOWNS on the screen. 

Namely, the REALLY intense looking clown here.

That is one INSANELY obnoxious looking face Tails is pulling off there. I’m almost proud. It’s inevitable that some of Sonic was going to rub off on him one way or another.

Also, based on this conversation, the Freedom Fighters’ plan worked. Eggman tells them to abandon the worthless hole in the ground. No Chaos Emerald means no interest to him. 

Fair enough. It’s not like he had any reason to suspect they let him know he took it on purpose. I mean, did you SEE that Tails face? It’s a pretty convincing teasing look.

Also, Eggman most likely wishes to marinate on the fact that Sally invaded his Death Egg and breached the security. 

He screams at Orbot and Cubot about this for a bit before he decides to get Egg Boss Thunderbolt on the line.

And so it begins… the simping for Dr. Eggman!

I do it all the time so I’m sure we could Bartolomeo it up for the man together though.

That was Waves of Change and it’s interesting. I think the second issue was the best of the bunch simply because of the political nonsense that made me want to see Coral get her due. The rest of it was your typical fight to save the dare affair. Nothing really special happened aside from the very ending with the return of our Adventure alumni. It had a distinct setting and some nice new characters. It was a pretty well-done, typical adventure.

Now, what it means for the grand scheme of the Unleashed Saga probably won’t feel like it’ll amount to much in the long run. Despite the fact that they DID accomplish some things here, what was accomplished were minor steps towards narrowing down a search for things that we had a more natural progression towards finding thanks to Professor Pickle. I also love how Unleashed was structured. They didn’t send you to a location and tell you to do a day stage and a night stage. It was all mixed up for the sake of storytelling, which is something that I’ll always appreciate. Even in a game like Forces, the idea of doing that was appreciated even if it didn’t mean anything in that game half the time. I still have no idea why Eggman was fucking around in Green Hill so often when he had a Death Egg, a Metropolis, and a Fortress. 

Either way, on its own, the story is paced well for what it is, but I can see why those hankering for more of an Unleashed adaptation might have felt that the pacing over the overarching narrative feels like a snail race a tad. It hasn’t been egregious or anything for me personally. I’ve been enjoying myself. However, putting it back into the perspective of it being a monthly release makes it all the more understandable. As an overarching plot it’s longer than the Metal Virus and not nearly as dread inducing with each issue due to the consistent loss of our favorite characters. It’s a saga of a bunch of mini-arcs and adventures that combine to make one big adventure whose ultimate goal is to use the game’s story as a backdrop for worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding that, once it’s complete, will immediately follow the book’s cancellation.

Yes, I don’t blame Ian for not wanting to focus too much on it any more. I can only imagine what going through an abrupt reboot and an abrupt cancellation SO soon after does to a guy. Maybe Evan can still do it if she so desires though. It’s happened in bits and pieces already.

 

[andrewtuell1991]

Y'know reading thru the previous page something dawned on me.

There's a fraction of chance that the Freedom Fighters could re-appear in the IDW comics but I'm almost 100% sure that this is Julian's swansong of not only the comics but the franchise itself.  Sega seems adamant in making sure the characters are portrayed a certain way and I don't ever see them greenlighting something so radically different from the current image of Eggman.  In fact, you could extent this to all the pre-Adventure western Robotniks: the Milton Knight Robotnik, black-eyed Ivo from the western cover art along with lesser known beady-eyed counterpart.  Even though I never cared much for how "Robotnik" was portrayed in that era, there's an odd feeling of finality in knowing a character will probably never appear in a long-running franchise again.

 

Sorry for being late to the party.  I couldn't remember my password for the longest time.

[Dr. Detective]

11 hours ago, andrewtuell1991 said:

Y'know reading thru the previous page something dawned on me.

There's a fraction of chance that the Freedom Fighters could re-appear in the IDW comics but I'm almost 100% sure that this is Julian's swansong of not only the comics but the franchise itself.  Sega seems adamant in making sure the characters are portrayed a certain way and I don't ever see them greenlighting something so radically different from the current image of Eggman.  In fact, you could extent this to all the pre-Adventure western Robotniks: the Milton Knight Robotnik, black-eyed Ivo from the western cover art along with lesser known beady-eyed counterpart.  Even though I never cared much for how "Robotnik" was portrayed in that era, there's an odd feeling of finality in knowing a character will probably never appear in a long-running franchise again.

Sorry for being late to the party.  I couldn't remember my password for the longest time.

As someone who's connection to the whole "Julian" part of the Robotnik character has been minor intrigue followed by marveling mostly at the strange and surprisingly complicated origins of the way it was handled, I feel a bit odder about it's loss. It's not something I mourn exactly. It's just something that feels rather cosmic and strange. Even directly confronting it with these reviews hasn't changed that feeling of disconnect I have with it. Like it's some lost fantasy that I'll never be able to experience even though I literally just did.

It's hard to explain. The way the Julian thing was done was so weird and obtuse in the long run that it's left me not with feelings of hatred or even melancholy. It all feels strangely mystical. It's hard to put my finger on it.