Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[SBR2]

10 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Well, sure, but that issue is just an aspect that's gone unexplained. There's definitely blank spots in what happened that haven't been filled, for sure. In terms of the overall big picture, I don't personally find it that convoluted though. 

Even if I did, however, I'm not sure why that would mean he should only have appeared in his debut game. I don't know what those two things have to do with each other. Especially since the character put the past behind him. The only thing that should matter now is the emotion that drives him to do what he does based on those past experiences, not the fine details about when some diary entry was written.

Fair. I don't know I've just never really cared for Shadow all that much and honestly think that he's gotten more and more boring with each appearance and that it has nothing to do with Sega's demands for how he be portrayed now because honestly to me he was always the dull rival loner character standing off to the side with his arms crossed.

He served a point in SA2 and frankly I think that was all he was supposed to ever do. I really don't want to sound like I'm shitting on anyone's favorite character BTW I'm just saying why I personally don't care for him. I'm sure people can say similar stuff about my favorite character Rouge.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

14 hours ago, SBR2 said:

Either way I will take both of them over Iron Dominion which to me is Ian's weakest and most boring story.

Really? I saw it as the one that really changed the status quo before the reboot.

For all its problems, I prefer it to Worlds Unite and House of Cards.

[SBR2]

1 hour ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Really? I saw it as the one that really changed the status quo before the reboot.

For all its problems, I prefer it to Worlds Unite and House of Cards.

Honestly it's an example of Ian's worst trait as a writer to me. It could have been maybe 6 issues but it went on for 12 and honestly even though I liked the Iron King snd Queen as villains it just wasn't clicking with me. Even today it feels too long especially when you include Journey to the East which is honestly my least favorite Universe arc because frankly the political talk has always been the most boring part of the Archie continuity and that's 4 issues of it with like 6 Pages of action. 

[Cuz]

Funny, the length is one of the things I praise Iron Dominion for. I'm glad Ian got to tell a long form arc that wasn't thrown under the bus like Geoffrey and Metal Sally. It ran it's course with no meddling circumstances, and ran long enough to be considered a status quo. Not to knock the 3 or 4 part arc structure going on right now, but I do enjoy a slower burn. Gave me a twinge of the old days when when the story progressed more in mile stones. 

 

[SanPolo4389]

10 minutes ago, Cuz said:

Funny, the length is one of the things I praise Iron Dominion for. I'm glad Ian got to tell a long form arc that wasn't thrown under the bus like Geoffrey and Metal Sally. It ran it's course with no meddling circumstances, and ran long enough to be considered a status quo. Not to knock the 3 or 4 part arc structure going on right now, but I do enjoy a slower burn. 

 

Didn’t those arc end abruptly because of the things happening beyond his control?

38 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

Honestly it's an example of Ian's worst trait as a writer to me. It could have been maybe 6 issues but it went on for 12 and honestly even though I liked the Iron King snd Queen as villains it just wasn't clicking with me. Even today it feels too long especially when you include Journey to the East which is honestly my least favorite Universe arc because frankly the political talk has always been the most boring part of the Archie continuity and that's 4 issues of it with like 6 Pages of action. 

I’d count like one issue in those 12 that I’d say didn’t feel impactful which is issue 207 where the impactful thing that happen was Sally getting closer with Khan. Which was another issue I have the arc though it was more in the background than in the forefront and I remember a lot of people on deviantart complaining about that.  

[Cuz]

8 minutes ago, SanPolo4389 said:

Didn’t those arc end abruptly because of the things happening beyond his control?

Yeah, when I say thrown under the bus, that bus is lawsuit shaped. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 hours ago, SBR2 said:

Honestly it's an example of Ian's worst trait as a writer to me. It could have been maybe 6 issues but it went on for 12 and honestly even though I liked the Iron King snd Queen as villains it just wasn't clicking with me. Even today it feels too long especially when you include Journey to the East which is honestly my least favorite Universe arc because frankly the political talk has always been the most boring part of the Archie continuity and that's 4 issues of it with like 6 Pages of action. 

I feel like I’m one of the few people who finds the political intrigue interesting in Sonic due to its use in building and organizing the world among the characters. Probably doesn’t help that most people’s idea of “politics” tends to be viewed as “people sitting at a table over a boring topic” when it’s far more diverse and can be just as action packed—also probably didn’t help that Ian admittedly didn’t have the best pacing all the time.
 

I agree to an extent with the length tho. I think it would’ve been better without Ian trying to put that thread of romance between Sally and Khan. Would’ve trimmed the interactions to a manageable level so that they didn’t need to use the Universe Side Stories to complete the arc.

[Soniman]

Political intrigue in Archie under Ian's pen I gave more credit than most. I did enjoy the Iorn Dominion and Journey to the East arcs despite being a bit long in the tooth and all the stuff with Nagus and his various machinations to usurp the throne was a storyline I was VERY into so you can imagine how disappointed I was when that came to a abrupt unceremonious end with a Mega Man crossover and soft reebot 

[SBR2]

I don't know I'm not into Sonic for West Wing style political drama. I'm here because it's big fun and adventurous. 

[Cuz]

You get to explore Journey to the West land with ninja's what's not adventurous about that?  

Granted very little of the places introduced in World Tour were palatable to me when it was originally introduced around issues 60 or so, but it's another testament to these guys really finding the charm and potential in the margins of the books history and capitalizing on it.

The weakest political aspects for me are the bureaucracy stuff with the council introduced in Cards, or the dinner parties going on in 25 years later. Where as Iron Domination actually gave me some of what I was hoping for with House of Cards between the character betrayals and civil conflicts that didn't feel rushed and mired with mischaracterization. ^^;

[SBR2]

15 hours ago, Cuz said:

Granted very little of the places introduced in World Tour were palatable to me when it was originally introduced around issues 60 or so, but it's another testament to these guys really finding the charm and potential in the margins of the books history and capitalizing on it.

See nowI actually liked the world tour. At least it actually felt like Sonic.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #171: I Am

You only notice it when you see him put against the anthros, but Eggman is huge compared to everyone else. He’s not just fat but he’s fucking tall. You could literally and figuratively look up to him. Oh, also, Shadow’s trying to kill him I guess. 

I’m eager to re-read this one because, like I said before, I remember being underwhelmed by it before due to wanting a proper Shadow the Hedgehog adaptation and feeling like this single issue was an excuse to just vi-pass a comic depiction of the war. Now that I’m older and have more context for how convoluted the Shadow stuff was before, I see the importance of clarifying things a lot more, thankfully. Maybe I’ll appreciate it more now.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Artist: Tracy Yardley
Inker: Jim Amash
Letterer: John Workman
Colorist: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito

Every time I see Tracey’s art I get relieved. It’s like, “Damn, I’m really out of the Dark Ages. I’ve made it”. Even 11 issues in the relief is still there.

Usually, the covers embellish a little bit on what’s happening in the story but this issue begins with basically what’s on the cover, minus Sonic running in to stop him. Shadow’s got Eggman’s hulking frame over his head and is demanding Professor Gerald’s Diary. Eggman refuses to give it to him and commands Shadow to let him down so he just asks Snively where it is, having grabbed him by the last strands of hair on his head.

Snively caves immediately and tells him where it is, and Shadow, ever the jerk, rips the last hairs on Snively’s head out anyway. The monster.

He then tosses them aside and goes to get the info he needs, leaving the baldies to contemplate betrayal and being bald.

Eggman’s study actually looks shockingly normal. I was expecting him to have a library that still, somehow, looked like it belonged in a factory or had his face plastered everywhere but the best we get is a seat that’s shaped like an egg.

Also, for some reason, he keeps the disk of Gerald’s diary inside a book with a hole cut into it. 

I guess that’s an efficient way of hiding it, despite how weird it looks.

We cut back to our heroes where Sonic is entering Tails’ lab where, I guess, Knuckles is busy testing out one of the Extreme Gear since he’s got a board in hand and a pair of goggles on. It’s nice that there’s an actual in-story reason for Knuckles to be here with these guys and not stuck alone on the island with the Master Emerald. A more natural way of doing that in the future games would be very much welcome should it ever be necessary again.

Sonic has diarrhea of the mouth and is going off about how Fiona being missing has reached the point of ridiculousness. Each word he’s saying about her conduct is like a stab to Tails’ heart. You can see it all over his face. 

Eventually, it becomes too much when Sonic asks Tails where Fiona is and his reaction is extremely dramatic. You’d think Sonic would be a bit more concerned when he asks his buddy a question and his response is to instantly drop what he’s doing to fly himself out of the room. Instead he just looks kind of annoyed and talks about how he thought we’d “dealt” with Tails’ crush on Fiona.

I have no idea why Sonic thinks that it was sufficiently dealt with. They didn’t really have a proper chat about it at all. Sonic just kind of snagged her, knowing full well Tails had that crush, and just kind of held that open relationship on display. 

The more time goes by the less I’m able to remember why Sonic decided to stick with Fiona in the first place but I keep being reminded that it was actually in-part because of Tails and the other part, unfortunately, seems to be that she was his rebound after Sally dumped him.

Scourge is right. Sonic sucks when it comes to the dating scene. He should just give up and hook up with Silver when he shows up or something. Give boys a chance maybe.

Tails comes rushing back in seconds later. Sonic is about to say that Tails was coming around to him again but nope. Shadow’s here and he’s being chased by Eggman’s robots.

Sonic and Tails jump in to save him in the nick of time but not before one of the robot’s lasers damages Gerald’s diary.

Shadow gets super angry at them for not arriving sooner and Sonic sarcastically bemoans how they weren’t thanked for helping him.

Shadow… apologizes. 

It’s a move that shocks even Sonic.

Even weirder, he starts showing… emotions. Emotions other than anger and mild disgruntlement. 

You know what’s funny? I kind of thought this was a bit much for Shadow at the time. The expressions he’s wearing are so downtrodden that it’s hard to buy that it’s even him. This is even with me considering how important this information is for him. Of course he’d be at his most desperate here.

Nowadays, while my opinion on that hasn’t really changed, I do appreciate more the fact that he’s being allowed to express himself this way at all. Back in the 2000s, Shadow was allowed to be sad and crack jokes, even cheesy ones like “It’ll be a date to DIE for!” and then smirk as though he belted out a banger. 

I guess, today, other emotions aside from what memes on the internet dictated Shadow had are too complicated for SEGA.

They go into Tails’ lab and the fox warns Shadow that the data is so old, damaged, and corrupted that diving into it might corrupt the entire thing. Shadow says that he wishes to continue. Nicole chimes in at that moment, letting them know that she can have them interface with it physically. She can do that because she’s worked out how to do magic technology or something. It’s hologram stuff that she used to make her new body or whatever. 

Look, it’s fine. Nicole can do this stuff. I don’t need an explanation. It’s cool.

We get a shot of Snively’s hairs on the table as Sonic and Shadow beam into the diary. I guess that’s acting as our epic foreshadowing but all I’m wondering is why Shadow bothered taking them with him. 

When they beam into the diary, they’re on a holographic version of the Space Colony Ark. It starts deteriorating immediately because of their presence and Nicole says they need to be quick… but then Sonic turns and sees her in her animal form for the first time. She starts to explain how she’s been working on this new body of hers but Shadow hurries into the other room saying, “I thought you said we needed to be quick”.

Thankfully, they immediately run into who they need to see.

We cut back out to Tails and Knuckles, looking at an image of Maria Robotnik with her head not shown to the reader for dramatic effect. They don’t know her but Tails figures Shadow must. At that exact moment, an alert goes off. Tails sees that it’s Snively and he detects some kind of data-transfer. They’ve got a beacon from the bad guys here in the base! What could it possibly be?

Snivelys has his hairs individually tracked.

That’s phenomenal. It’s just fucking fantastic.

What an excellent reason for Tails to make that face.

Anyway, Knuckles darts out of the base and confronts Snively in his Egg Lobster.

My boy just said “No.”

I kind of wish he’d have stopped talking after that for the sake of my amusement but I do have to hand it to him here a little bit seeing as how the spiel he goes on directly mirrors his thoughts and feelings about not knowing… anything about his heritage.

Knuckles, for the longest time, was just drifting all by himself for virtually no reason. No one was around to talk to him or be his friend so he had to make some on his own. When he eventually found the civilization housing his people, no matter how many questions he’d ask, no one would explain anything to him. It took forever for him to get the answers he wanted and when he got them, they were all extremely unsatisfying. At least they were to me.

Either way, Knuckles absolutely didn’t deserve any of the bullshit he went through and to this day it stands to reason that it was all for literally nothing aside from perpetuating an awful tradition that’ll fester into something wicked and evil down the line due to the ignorance of a bunch of self-important, irrelevant, assholes.

That’s what Knuckles contemplates as he fights Snively in his giant lobster robot. What a world.

Back with Shadow, he’s holding hands with Maria and catching up. It’s a wonderful scene but eventually they realize that they need to get the history lesson quickly. Shadow speaks about how he’s been in the dark for 50 years and has basically forgotten his purpose. Not to worry though, Gerald is here to help his son.

It’s tough keeping this together because he remembers Maria and he remembers Gerald but the specifics seem to be lost on him. Maybe after this scene with Gerald, I’ll get the clarification on what he knew and didn’t know properly.

They’re short on time so Sonic asks for the abbreviated version and Gerald obliges.

It’s funny to think about Sonic the Hedgehog… speaking with Professor Gerald Robotnik, Eggman’s Grandfather, like this. Not to mention him also seeing Maria in the holographic-flesh too. It's wild man.

He was created with his love for the people of Mobius so that he may protect them eh? It’s a real shame all of those ideals disappeared from Gerald’s mind when he tried to blow up the planet after being betrayed by them. Going insane will do that to you.

Or, at least that’s what I think still happened. It had to, seeing as how this comic is still operating on the assumption that Sonic Adventure 2 happened. Even now, the decision to just do a single tie-in comic and then say “Go play the game” is biting us in the ass here. Shadow came back into this story because he survived the events of the end of that game, yet, the way this comic has gone it makes no sense to say that Adventure 2 happened in it with the characters that were present in that game. 

This is by far the most Herculean task Ian has in front of him in terms of getting the facts and logic of the situation straight. I’ve kind of turned around on my opinion on this issue because of it. I’m almost apologetic. 

I seriously had NO IDEA it was THIS bad when it came to getting shit straight concerning Shadow. I have no clue why the comic decided to be THAT fucking lazy about including him into the book aside from the fact that old Archie was always doing baffling things that were and still are hard to explain. 

Even though it’s impossible to clear up everything, it does seem like the angle Ian went for here is that the incident did damage his memory and made him confused about his purpose. We saw hints of that earlier, before Ian came aboard, however, no one REALLY ever clarified what Shadow did or didn’t know. There were times where it seemed like he knew stuff because he clearly remembered Maria and Gerald and there were other times where he seemed like a lost puppy.

So, it would seem, he remembers these people but the details about what he exists to do is the thing that’s tripping him up.

There’s also the Neuro-Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome or NIDS. This was the first time I was made aware of the disease’s name in any official media. The idea of creating the ultimate lifeform to find a cure sounds neat. Shadow could probably be the world’s most universal blood donor. Not only can he give blood but his blood can cure disease, probably.

Because this issue came out in 2007, we also get to see Black Doom for the first time, two years after the game he debuted and died in came out. I remember reading that panel of Sonic saying that they wouldn’t be coming because they were busy fighting the Xorda and reacting with a “Huh? Who are the Xorda? Well, that sucks…” or something like that. It was probably something dumb like that. I didn’t even remember that they literally saw this happening in the issue before, probably because I was so focused on the confusion I had about Tails’ parents being in space. I didn’t know why that was the case either.

True to his word, Gerald managed to give them all a lot of stuff to chew on in a short amount of time.

Then the floor disappears. They’re out of time. Everything is turning into white space and they have to leave. Shadow doesn’t want to because he still has more questions but Maria gives him self-assurance and support. 

He exists to protect everyone and he can do it by keeping her in his heart.

Oh my God. Shadow’s crying. I mean, he’s done that before, but he looks like a vulnerable child here. It’s so cute. 

Shadow will never be allowed to be cute again.

Anyway, the heroes pop out of the computer. The FIRST thing Sonic asks about is Fiona and Tails forgoes that to tell them that Knuckles is fighting off Snively in a lobster robot by himself because the insane bald man wants his individually tracked hairs back. That’s a thing that’s actually happening.

Shadow grabs them, slices the robot lobster in half with a single attack, and then tosses the hairs at Snively while giving his one and only “This is who I am” speech to close out this overly long part of his character arc.

FINALLY!

It wasn’t a perfect ride but he managed to make it here at long last.

I love the line “I am the union of ideals dark and benign but ultimately built in the name of love”. That’s actually genuinely poetic.

Funny though, the main concern on my mind when looking at this scene is wondering how Snively’s going to be able to pick up those hairs. Shadow just kind of tossed them at him so if he loses them in between the cracks of the seat of his robot, it’s going to be hell trying to find them. I guess he does have that tracker but like, how precise is it? Can it deduce where the hairs are down to the exact spot or is it just a general vicinity sort of deal? THESE ARE THE THINGS I CARE ABOUT MOST!

This story ends with Sonic saying that next on the agenda is finding out where the fuck his girlfriend is. 

Oh baby. We’re in for a real doozy of an issue, coming up next. The status quo is about to get flung into orbit yet again.

After that we get some data profiles for the Master Emerald, the Power Rings, and the Chaos Emeralds as they now stand within the book. The Chao and Flicky Birds get some as well, which is nice.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #171: Enforcers

Writer: Ian Flynn
Penciler: Tracy Yardley
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: John Workman
Colorist: Jason Jensen

Here’s a story I don’t remember at all but upon turning the page and seeing who’s involved, instantly garnered my interest.

I have a feeling that when I read this originally, I allowed it to soar entirely over my head because I didn’t know what the situation here was and barely knew who these characters were. Now, starting this story up and recognizing that Ian is about to confront a situation left at a stand still from Karl Bollers’ Return to Angel Island, I’m stoked to see what’s about to transpire!

The dingos, now designed to look a bit cuter despite also needing to get punched in the face, are terrorizing the island and attacking Knuckles’ people. The innocent ones, mind you. 

That is, until the Destructix, hired goons extraordinaire, show up and start beating the shit out of them.

Hilariously, Drago is still shown getting his face punched in, even as the others are fighting them off. Ian will never forget to always show Drago getting his shit pushed in. 

As this is happening, Locke is overlooking the scene on a giant mushroom, still doing nothing to help. He’s still concerned with finding the Brotherhood. Sigh.

At this point, the Brotherhood has been absent from the story for so long that it almost feels as though retribution has long since come. However, I personally won’t be satisfied until I hear exactly what happened to them and delight in imagining how painful and unceremonious the downfall was.

This is by far the story arc that’s been given the most build up to. It’s all going to work out really well in the end but looking back on it, I’m astonished by how well the set-up here is. I didn’t even remember this particular story happened after all.

Dr. Finitevus shows up, exiting through a warp ring, to confront Locke. He explains that, yes, he sent the Destructix here to help out the situation with the echidnas. He even outright states that he gathered these “former” rogues so that they can “do good deeds” specifically. It’s wonderful he can say lines like that looking the way he does.

Finitevus, being a former ranking Dark Legionnaire, and the Destructix, being former enforcers for Mammoth Mogul, aren’t winning Locke’s trust immediately. Finitevus, especially, is a bit of an enigma to him probably. I had actually forgotten that Finitevus’ origin was because of something that happened to a then background echidna getting blasted by Knuckles’ green apple energy from back in the day. Imagine being bleached white and your irises turning black because of a freak accident. Yeesh.

Dr. Finitevus is aware that trust needs to be earned so he brings in a helping hand. The Smash Bros. character reveal screen shows up and out comes Dimitri, now a floating head in a ball. He vouches for Finitevus, saying that the doctor saved him after what was left of the Dark Legion split in two. So now, he’s just a head. 

Dimitri apparently is okay with being alive still despite the fact that he’s stuck like this. Would I? It’s hard to fathom not wanting to die when you’ve been reduced to… that.

Dimitri’s appeal isn’t enough though. He may have been Locke’s ancestor but his descendants formed the Dark Legion so that’s a no-go. Finitevus asks what it could possibly take before instantly revealing what he knows it will take; information on the whereabouts of the Brotherhood.

Legit, that’s all Locke cares about it seems. I don’t know what his childhood was like but the man has to have been lowkey hypnotized by those fuckers to be this loyal to them. I mean, you know, it’s a tradition. Be shitty to your kid and then make sure that your word is the only word they have to follow. Make for damn sure that your direction is the only one they follow. Teach them to not be independent in their thinking while also abandoning them alone in the woods. Be an asshole who treats his wife like shit and his son like an experiment. 

That’s all that Locke knows how to do, which makes his quest to find the Brotherhood just another example of him pushing for that cycle he was brainwashed into to continue. These echidnas are horrible.

At least Dr. Finitevus wears it on his sleeve, though, apparently he’s charismatic enough to sway these two.

If anyone would be swayed by Finitevus’ words it’s a desperate deadbeat dad who’s currently ignoring the plight of his people to seek out a Brotherhood of emotionally abusive and manipulative assholes to fix the problem for him and a former tyrant who started off normal, ascended to Godhood, and has now been reduced to what basically amounts to a floating brain in a jar.

Finitevus is seriously using the “knowledge” within Locke that the Brotherhood is still alive to trick him into fully abandoning the place so that he can have the full run of the island with the Destructix. It’s people and the Master Emerald will be left in his “care” as Locke goes off to find them. 

The red flags should be going off hard right now. They should be literally flying out of cannons here… but his words are getting to him. The thing that Locke really gives a shit about is just out of reach and Finitevus knows this. 

Then he pushes the Knuckles button.

The look on Locke’s face as he flicks that ring over is perfection. I love it so much. Seeing Knuckles’ dad act like a pouty teenager is great.

Locke still doesn’t fully trust them but it doesn’t matter. His promise to frequently check up on them doesn’t mean shit when Finitevus can accomplish what he needs to much quicker than Locke expects.

The fact of the matter is, he gained enough trust to be left alone period and that’s what counts.

With one last look back to his people, Locke leaves… which grants Finitevus the okay to turn to the camera with a wonderful evil grin and proclaim how easy that was.

Look at how happy that baby on Simian’s shoulder is. So cute.

Also, turns out that Dimitri was reluctantly in on it. He wasn’t tricked. They struck up some kind of bargain.

When Finitevus says he’ll do whatever he was asked “in time” Dimitri just kind of freaks out and let’s out that the one who took his body apart was Finitevus himself and that this indignity nor his life can go on for much longer.

I’ll say. I’d float myself on over to the ocean and drown as the sea water filled up my bubble were I him, probably.

Finitevus warps them to the chamber where the Master Emerald is to close off the issue with yet another heart pounding promise of the sheer awesomeness that lies before us in the story that’s still too far off for my liking because I want to revisit it NOW goddammit.

Finitevus promises that the Dingo Regime will be crushed, the Legion will be unified, and the power and name of Enerjak will be known once more!

Ooooo~! SPICY!

I want more~!

Thankfully, I was right to contemplate that my opinion would change because it absolutely did. This issue stands out as a strange anomaly when read without the original context of what came before. It originally felt more like we were on a train and we jumped off to quickly go deal with Shadow’s business in a single issue before hopping back on. Now that I know about the bullshit that Ian had to fix and how convoluted everything was before he came onto the book, the spring cleaning aspect of what’s transpiring feels more like the point with almost every story we’ve gotten lately. Though, he also remembers to include new elements too, like Bean and Bark.

I have a lot more respect for this story now. It’s not perfect but it’s only because of the nature of how everything was handled before that it isn’t, really. It’s hard to blame Ian for it. The second story, honestly, I liked even more. Just watching Finitevus be the best of these originally created echidnas with how outwardly evil he is and yet still manage to be more likeable than a lot of the other ones feels great. The atmosphere on the island and the events taking place just feel right too. Something’s happening to severely shake up how all this is going to go down and by the end of this the echidnas (the ones who were assholes at least) are going to be served a heaping helping of humble pie. That pie is going to be humble as fuck.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #172: Truth of the Heart

Extree, extree, read all about it. Loads of spicy relationship drama is going to be exploited for cheesy tabloid fame beyond this cover. Embarrassingly enough, back in the day, it took me a while to figure out why this cover was constructed like this. I didn’t get that they were going for the look of those shitty magazines that flood the front page with a bunch of exaggerated stories and big letters for people with wandering eyes to catch so they can read a bunch of nonsense that doesn’t matter. I like that they do that here though. 

Enough about that though. It’s time for… well… it’s time. 

I’ve been saying this a lot lately but it really is true every time; I’ve really been wanting to get to this issue for a long while now.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Artist: Tracy Yardley
Inker: Jim Amash
Letterer: John Workman
Colorist: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito

Oh dear. There’s already so much I want to talk about and the issue hasn’t even started yet.

The beginning hits you over the head with it right off the bat, with Amy zipping out of Freedom HQ like the Road Runner and slamming her hammer down at Fiona because she just broke Sonic’s heart and his trust.

She KNOWS!

Gotta love how when Amy’s hammer makes contact with the ground it creates a puff of smoke shaped like a heart. Also, the dirt on the hammer when she lifts it up is a nice touch. Let’s you know how hard she slammed it down. She was trying to flatten this bitch.

I also appreciate that this is one of the few moments in fiction where a character says “Don’t play dumb with me” and the person they’re talking to actually is playing dumb. 

Amy recounts how she went out looking for Sonic and found Tails instead. The secret to why Tails keeps making weird faces and running off whenever Fiona is brought up is let out of the bag here. If you’ll recall, Sleuth blackmailed Fiona with something to get her to cooperate with him but the clever Doggy Dawg made sure that Tails heard it anyway.

Tails is reluctant to tell Sonic this, for obvious reasons. He still cares about Sonic’s well-being and junk even if he is mad at him for dating the girl he had a crush on right in front of him and not even bothering to have a chat with him about his feelings over the situation… but that doesn’t mean he can’t confide in someone else, like the love guru Amy Rose.

Oh, the scene where she realizes Fiona has been cheating on Sonic with Scourge is delightful. 

Look at that. My girl LITERALLY just got triggered.

There’s no question, whatsoever, that her love for Sonic is the genuine article. She’s way more angry at the fact that Sonic’s heart was played with and betrayed then she ever was of Sonic and Fiona being together. I don’t even think we were shown a single scene of Amy talking about them being an item. This might be the first time she’s reacting to it at all and it’s literally only because Sonic was done dirty.

Admittedly, it’s a little hard to feel that sorry for him considering the circumstances that led to this. 

Fiona’s response is even “It’s not like Sonic and I were seriously going out…” and Amy takes that as an admission of guilt. 

Fiona is clearly messing around with her while dodging all her hammer swings. She knows she’s correct in her assumption but keeps playing up the fact that the truth will only get people hurt. She makes sure to call Amy “Little girl” while doing so which honestly almost triggered ME.

I remember in middle school when sassy bitches who didn’t know jack shit about maturity would often refer to me as “little boy” for no other reason than knowing they could get away with allowing their hormones to puppet their bodies and make them be horrible to everyone around them. 

Thankfully, her assertion that Sonic would never believe her is undone by Sonic leaning against the door right that very second.

Hey, hey. Guess he finally found Fiona though.

Sonic’s comment about taking everything Amy says with a shaker of salt sounds a bit mean but it’s at least honest. Working out how best to write Sonic as sassy without him coming off as a jerk is a bit tough in some respects. It helps when he follows it up by comforting Amy and telling her that her efforts are appreciated and that he’ll handle it from here, which he does.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to Fiona, anyway. Thanks for looking out for me.” is a very sincere thing to say. Amy swoons over the way he looked at her while saying it while Sonic grabs Fiona by the hand and they head off to chat. 

Fiona looks rather unenthused by this. You can tell that the hand-holding does nothing for her and she’s more upset about the prospect of being interrogated than anything, which amuses me since she totally knows she’s guilty.

As they head into the forest, Tails is shown flying overhead. The emotions that have been swirling around in this poor kid’s head can’t be easy to deal with, for sure. 

As bad as I feel for him, he’s gonna have to learn that nothing good comes from these plots where a really young boy is in love with a much older female.

Sonic doesn’t mince words here. He immediately states that she’s been disappearing a lot lately and that’s been concerning for him because of her past. Fiona gets really upset by that and, under normal circumstances, I can totally see why. She points out that Sonic said he was cool with her past and she points out the fact that she helped in the situation with Bean and Bark and coughed up all the info on Rouge without question. 

Sonic’s main argument is that he’s cool with her past but he doesn’t want it to affect what’s happening in the now and what’s happening now is a whole lot of suspicious and dark undertones.

When Sonic lays out the evidence that’s been piling up, backed up by four separate people (Scourge, Sleuth, Amy, and Tails) Fiona doesn’t have much left to argue against. Sonic points out that the first two people could be lying but he trusts Amy and Tails. Fiona just crosses her arms and says “You trust a couple of kids over me, huh?”

The look on her face as she said it is what made her voice transition from the usual one I had in my head to that of a more evil, smug little bitch.

God, look at that. It’s such a great face. 

The big one is, of course, how Fiona never showed any interest in Sonic until after Scourge impersonated him. That’s quite a huge one.

Now, of course, originally, the only reason this was true at first was because Ken Penders was having Evil Sonic play the field and the girls were just horny Y-Chromosomes looking for that sexy blue hedgehog man-meat to suck on in his eyes. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Penders was treating these ladies as objects for Evil Sonic’s affections rather than actual characters.

Fiona having any interest in Sonic based on the little actual interaction they had before that point is baffling. They had history together but it wasn’t anything super magical. In fact, one could say she might hold a bit of resentment for being left behind so long ago, even though that technically wasn’t because of anything Sonic directly meant to do.

As this conversation continues, Fiona has clearly given up on keeping up pretenses. There’s literally no point anymore. So, instead, she starts to clarify that at least some of her actions were genuine. She really did try to do the hero thing and stuck it out for him… hoping to find some “middle ground”.

Sonic’s reaction by saying in a questioning voice, “Middle ground?” made me laugh.

“Middle ground”… what a fucking warped thing to say. It’s kind of hilarious to think about. Middle ground between being a hero and being like Scourge? I mean, I guess Sonic has a bit more of a mean streak to him than most heroes tend to but at the end of the day, despite all his snark, he ain’t no anti-hero. He’s not going to go for the “middle ground”.

Fiona seems to have realized this and as if on cue, the person who could provide her with what she wants, no “middle ground” required, arrives on scene.

Say hello again to Fiona’s real boyfriend, Scourge the Hedgehog. 

That’s right Sonic. You’ve just been cucked… by yourself from another dimension. 

Sonic’s face in that first top panel is perfect. Look at that. It’s like the weight of knowing just how much he fucking sucks when it comes to woman not only smashed onto his balls like an Acme anvil but Scourge is grinding his foot into it even deeper; just kicking him while he’s down.

I especially love how Scourge just trails off when he gets to Amy. Honestly, he makes it seem like she’s not even worth considering but ironically, he’d actually have the best outcome with her. She loves him unconditionally, no strings attached. She loves the fact that he’s a hero who puts himself out there to save everyone. She would never demand he stop doing that like Sally did and she sure as fuck wouldn’t betray him to hook up with someone who had the exact opposite ideals he did like Fiona. That’s kind of a part of the tragedy that Amy’s standing in these comics, and in the games, is of someone who can’t technically be with him.

I guess Game Sonic does have it way easier though, to be fair. He’s more suppressing and dishonest with his feelings there and the fact that there’s no other love interests in an official capacity makes it a much more palatable situation for him.

Here though… yeesh.

I’m just saying, you seem like the type that could go both ways Sonic. Search your feelings, it could be true.

Anyway, Tails takes this moment to interject. He didn’t before when it was normal Sonic, but Scourge is a step just a tad too far for his liking. His impassioned plea for her not to turn to the Dark Side falls on deaf ears. For you see, the dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural.

Like slapping the fuck out of crying children.

That’s one way to get rejected.

This is Tails’ “SLAP” moment and it’s a pretty powerful one. I liken this to the poor kid getting a double barrel Elmer Fudd shotgun blasted directly at the center of his heart. The look on Fiona’s face as she does it is one thing but I love that Scourge is laughing and pointing as it happens. It’s great.

Honestly, I find myself more happy that something this HUMILIATING happened to Tails than anything. I know how awful that sounds and even as I’m typing this I’m chuckling to myself along with Scourge there. I’m usually an extremely sensitive person so I shouldn’t take any kind of glee in this but… I dunno. For some reason this elicited a bit of a giggle fit from me.

I think this is one of those moments where I’m actually extremely happy the bad guys are winning out here. Like, I’ve spent so much time wanting character dynamics to change and for things to be interesting. I’ve wanted the status quo to have a significant shake up and I’ve been getting it in spades ever since we got to the era of Ian and Tracey. Tommy was killed off in a bad ass move that engraved his name into my heart forever while Fiona’s alignment has changed and it’s being done in a way that’s sharp and entertaining. 

The move she pulls here is SO deeply cutting and powerful and MEAN that I can’t help but love and admire it. It honestly feels really good witnessing her be such a mean bitch to Tails here. I know how messed up that sounds but I guess I’m coming from a place that’s excited about the story development more so than feeling sorry for this poor, delusional child. 

Also, to be fair, he needed a bit of a wake up call. Perhaps not one AS harsh as this but I guess there’s little chance he’ll regress back into thinking she can change if she lays it on THAT thick that she finds him worthless and annoying.

Case in point.

Look at those eyes. Look at that little angry gnashing of teeth that Tails is doing by the side of his mouth.

Yeah, point made. Loud and clear.

The fox boy has now given the okay to sick his big brother on those jerks.

Sonic doesn’t need anymore incentive. He bursts after Fiona ready to do who knows what to her before Scourge cuts him off from the side. She brings up how Sonic “left her imprisoned” from way back as her example of not being able to count on anyone but something tells me that the intentions of these two moments don’t exactly sync up.

Sonic and Scourge are fighting again, this time with even more things to chat about as the fight choreography doesn’t let up as usual. It’s always a hoot seeing how different these battles between them can go.

Scourge discusses with Sonic why he likes Fiona. Like, he ACTUALLY likes her and isn’t just on a fetch quest for some tail this time. All the girls from his dimension are bad from the get-go but she chooses to be that way and he finds that hot. Interesting take.

It would seem as though Scourge is under the impression that people from his dimension, including himself, are just born the way they are and are unable to change and be their own people.

He apparently thinks this is different for Sonic though. In a line that’s totally not a reference to the Killing Joke, Scourge makes it clear that in order for Sonic to be like him all it takes is ONE. BAD. DAY.

Sonic… plays the UNO Reverse card on him in response.

This is a really cool scene. So much is being talked about in an issue that literally could have just been “Oh, Fiona broke up with me” but no. This honestly is a good chance to see a part of what makes Scourge tick and planting that little seed of doubt in Scourge’s head about him JUST being this evil fuck who can’t change was a good move on Sonic’s part.

It ain’t the Fiona thing or the fact that Scourge somehow looks better than Sonic despite having the same face. He hates Scourge because Sonic knows Scourge can be just like him if he put in the effort and the fact that he CHOOSES not to grinds his gears.

Ah, it’s perfect.

Fiona kicks Sonic away, ruining the moment, unfortunately. I was honestly looking forward to seeing what this shaken up Scourge had to say in response, or if he really even had a comeback for that. Seeing him fumbling over his words to try and deny that he could be more virtuous if he gave it a try would have been cute.

Still, a villain’s gonna villain. Amy’s hammer cuts off Fiona and Tails swoops in to strike at Scourge. Sonic manages to smile, seeing as he’s got people to back him up despite the heavy betrayal. They don’t care that he’s Sonic the Hedgecuck now. He’s still their friend.

Well, Tails still has some demons to work through but we’ll get to that... 

Sunset is here suddenly. You could see it creep in a bit over the clouds on the horizon, which is always nice to see, though I'm always astonished by how fast it happens. It’s nice to look at the transition from panel to panel though. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was happening on literally the same day as the Shadow depocle from the last issue.

Scourge decides that enough is enough and he bolts with his girlfriend. When they leave through the warp ring, Amy makes sure to comment on how her bodysuit looked stupid.  THANK YOU.

Sonic is left to console Tails and is about to let Tails know that she’s wrong about the stuff she said about not being able to count on anyone but Tails cuts him off and says all that for him with a determined smile on his face.

Sonic says, “And nobody’s going to betray THAT kind of trust, especially not ME!”

Perhaps he’s unaware that he already has, in a sense.

It’s kind of funny that, immediately after Sonic says that line, Tails breaks down and has to run off to go find his mom. He’s clearly barely keeping it together. Reading this over again, I wonder if Tails was just barely holding it in but that last line Sonic had about him not betraying Tails’ trust just kind of pushed him over the edge and Tails was like, “I need to get away from Sonic right now… like RIGHT the fuck now!”

With a “Zut Alors” we end on Antoine coming upon the scene, arriving fashionably late. 

You know, I’ve said before that I don’t really care that much about the Freedom Fighters but I’ve gotta admit, I actually really, really like Antoine. Like a lot. I dunno why. For some reason he stands out above the rest as being the one I just really love to see show up.

I know exactly what he’s going to do and it’s funny that he says it’s something he should have done a long time ago because Penders, despite planning on having this proposal happening sooner, was planning to have the consequence to said proposal be something we had to wait for until Issue 200. It absolutely would not have been worth it.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #172: Worth the Effort

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tania del Rio
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: Teresa Davidson
Colors: Jason Jensen

So, this is a Julie-Su story with art that doesn’t really agree with me and as such my desire to read this is minimal. Perhaps something can still come from it.

Julie-Su goes to Amy Rose’s house and gets her out of there so they can do some training. Apparently she came to Julie-Su to ask for some help in that regard. 

Amy spends the first two pages sleepwalking through the routine. Everytime Julie-Su speaks to her, Amy responds by saying “Uh-huh” with her eyes closed.

Then she wanders into the river.

That wakes her up.

She does a lot of complaining about changing clothes and her boots so that she doesn’t get wet boot feet. That sounds uncomfortable so I’m instantly a bit sympathetic.

After they do some training on some wooden posts, they sit and chat about why Amy wants to do this. Obviously, she wants to run by Sonic’s side as the best Freedom Fighter ever. Amy also brings up how Julie-Su and Knuckles get along well as sparring partners and equals. Julie-Su thinks back on her time with Knuckles, conveniently leaving the parts where she did things like shoot a picture of Knuckles’ face because he ran off to go see his missing father. 

To her credit, she isn’t annoying or mean here. She’s just emotionally honest and open with Amy about this. She even reminds her calmly that it was Evil Sonic who showed interest in her a while back, not regular Sonic. She needs to do this for herself, first and foremost. Amy says she is… but then somehow has it loop back around to her being her best self meaning that she’ll be the only one good enough for Sonic anyway. 

Yeah, she’s definitely coming more into her own as the Amy we recognize alright. No more staying in the background being generic “girl” for her. I find it charming enough but your mileage may vary depending on what you like about her as a character.

Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles show up and they run off to their next adventure to stop Eggman.

Of course, Sonic has to comment on the wet boot feet.

This issue was another game changer and yet another one for the pile of successes in my book. I heard that there were some minor, easily ignorable complaints about the Fiona heel turn but as someone who can finally say they’ve read everything up to this point, it was definitely the correct decision to make. Fiona was barely a character before this development took place and now that she finally is one, it’s led to a new dynamic between the cast that’s actually interesting. She just works better as a villain. The stuff that happened to her in the past made her right for it and she was getting nothing out of the hero thing other than being a background ornament in a stupid looking bodysuit. I’m sure I don’t even need to go into how dumb Sonic and Fiona as a couple is as well. Glad to see that under Ian’s pen it led to Sonic making that wonderfully annoyed face. Sometimes that’s all one can ask for.

Their enemies are increasing in numbers ever more now and things are ramping up yet again. It’s great when a good build up to a game changing story can happen thanks to a bunch of individual stories that ALSO change the status quo too. That’s a massive flex of talent right there. I welcome Bad Guy Fiona with open arms. I wouldn’t mind it if a few other residents of this kingdom did the same, honestly.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #173: Round Up!

There goes Sonic the Hedgehog, running on the world’s most curvy stretch of road ever. He looks wonderful. I guess this issue doesn’t necessarily call for anything that fancy. Sometimes you get covers that just want to show our blue boy off and that’s okay. I have a feeling I know what this story is based on the title and it’s one that a revisit will hopefully change my mind on too since I remember it doing something I found disappointing originally as well. Having all this context is doing wonders for the standing of these issues I read a while back.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Jason Griffith
Editor: Mike Pellerito

This first page is a bit of a doozy. There’s a lot to talk about on it. For starters, Antoine has finally proposed to Bunnie. He managed to do it with there being a nice big sunset in the background too. 

The swiftness of Sonic’s takedown of Amy with the response of “Not a one, Amy” to what she was implying was impressive. He torpedoed that thought of hers with a cannon.

However, the other big thing is the fact that this is the first time the Archie Sonic comics have started to do that character bio thing. You know, that thing where they show the prominent players of the issue at the bottom of the first page with different designs for the logos they’re jumping out of depending on the kind of story being told? It’s a great practice and I kind of miss it. It doesn’t even need to be on the first page proper. Having it completely separate and off to the side would work fine. 

Sonic confronts Antoine about the fact that he needed him and Amy to be there for him in case this somehow went South. He was mustering up the courage for weeks. 

Meanwhile, Amy’s reacting as though she’s the one getting married.

“OHMYGHOSH, we’re going to be so GIRL!” sounds like something an overexcited girl would say in response to this. Broken english tends to happen to people a lot in real life when they’re flustered or excited. Just look at Amy with Sonic in that bottom panel though. Sonic’s so not having it. It really is kind of sad.

Bunnie wants to let her friends know and on cue we cut to them, namely Sally and Rotor as they’re chatting with Knuckles. The Chaotix have apparently been sent with Mina while she’s on tour, worried for her due to Nack’s old contract that said he’s out to kill her not being fulfilled.

By now they have to know he’s escaped of course. I’d like to see them stick him in those bars again, unaware of why they failed to hold him last time, just so he could escape again. Just keep giving the middle finger to the fact that they have a prison.

Also, Knuckles got word that Rouge stole the Master Emerald and is trying to sell it to the highest bidder. Rotor points out that this makes no sense. Rouge doesn’t want money. She wants the gem itself. Sally says that, regardless, it’s too powerful an item to just ignore the possibility.

As an aside, they’re contacting Sally through the hair extension on Julie-Su acting as a satellite dish.

It’s a little amusing I guess. It’s not as good as Cyborg Franky’s nipple lights though.

Sally asks if Locke contacted him about this but Knuckles says that he hasn’t. His reasoning is that they’re not on good terms right now and he’s right to think that’s a viable enough reason for him to not be in contact with him. We saw Locke’s reaction to Finitevus suggesting he contact Knuckles to watch the emerald ourselves. It was that of a pouty teenager who got scolded by his mom, so the idea that the Master Emerald was stolen and Locke would be super petty about their argument that he wouldn’t even tell Knuckles about it is accurate. 

Knuckles says he and the Chaotix will go find Rouge themselves after they make sure the next leg of Mina’s tour goes okay but Sally stops him, saying that they can stay where they are since the Freedom Fighters owe him one.

So there we are. The Freedom Fighters are going off on a mission together. It’s been a while hasn’t it?

They have the stake out at night. Sonic is hanging with Antoine and takes this opportunity to vent about Sally. Never thought I’d see the day he’d be genuinely upset by her conduct on his end and not just playfully snarky but here it is. Meanwhile, Antoine’s playing the voice of reason, seeing it from the other side to help ground Sonic a bit. 

It’s a very mature position for Antoine to take, especially as the one who this earlier news was about. 

Sonic’s right, of course, and Antoine’s not denying it but he’s also taking the time to recognize the other side of the argument which is something that wasn’t done back when the infamous slap happened. Our minds were all forced to be occupied with Sonic’s take on the situation and because his was the only point of view that was being given the spotlight, Sally ended up looking really awful back then.

Either way, she would have been wrong to do what she did and react that way but at the very least people would have been more in tune with why it happened.

Here, we actually cut to Sally and see her speaking with Bunnie about the situation. She wears her thoughts and feelings on her sleeve and admits to having taken the mission on as a bit of a selfish act on her part. 

Granted, I still think what Sally did here was the right move. Having to wait for Knuckles and the Chaotix to return from a mission they’re already on to send them on another one when the Freedom Fighters aren’t doing anything would have been pretty stupid. It’s not THAT selfish of her. However, at least she’s being upfront and honest with everyone about her feelings.

Though, deliberately splitting up the teams to both keep Bunnie away from the person she’s going to marry because she’s jealous and to keep herself away from Sonic because being with him is awkward is a bit harder to defend, I’ll admit.

It’s also great that the fact that Sally hasn’t really been A PART of the team for a really long time is being acknowledged. Like, there’s only so long you can go before it festers to the point of making people wonder why they’re keeping up the pretense that she’s a Freedom Fighter at all anymore.

It’s at this moment that our boy Nack the Weasel arrives, looking sharp with his bike and blaster at his side.

They start fighting, as you do. It’s a bit of a neat move, Nack pulled off there. Using his tail to spring himself off the ground and fire down at Bunnie was smart. 

Nack, by the way, is only here to do reconnaissance. So, he’s not technically after the Emerald but he’s a bad guy so he’s on their radar regardless. Perhaps their pride is also a bit hurt considering how easy it was for him to break out of their shitty jail.

Back with Sonic and Antoine, the sounds of a fight happening echo throughout the marsh and reach them just as they hear two more baddies head in on them from the side. This time, it’s Bean and Bark riding in on some Extreme Gear. Bean says he got them as “one of the perks of deserting the armada in a rush”.

That’s the second time the armada was brought up. The seeds being planted for them started so early. It’s actually super shocking that it was this far in advance.

These two are only here because their boss wanted them to scope it out secretly, so they technically don’t want the Master Emerald either… but they gotta fight anyway.

Sonic gives Bean a noogie while Antoine gets the badass scene of him ducking back and slicing Bark’s board in two.

The hell are “noogie germs”? Sometimes the stuff that Bean says that makes no sense just plain makes no sense.

It’s all a nice “start” to a fight but… I guess the issue isn’t really interested in having a whole entire one.

For some reason it opts to just make all these guys look like immediate chumps on the very next page. Like, Bunnie and Sally ride in with an unconscious Nack held up by his tail and his tongue out due to the results of a fight that we didn’t get to see and apparently Bark’s board being sliced in half means he’s done.

He just surrenders immediately.

Bean gets taken out in a way that’s actually amusing though it still leaves him looking a little pathetic.

I wonder which part of Bean was the off-button that Sonic had to hit.

Uhm, anyway… that’s been taken care of, I guess…

So… yeah, upon revisit, this part is STILL underwhelming to me unfortunately. Under normal circumstances I could forgive the round up of these villains being super fast if something here needed to be done for the sake of some house cleaning but these aren’t characters that were in need of that.

Bean and Bark were introduced in #160, when the Archie Comics salvation literally began. This is their second story appearance and they just got bodied in a single page without any real fanfare. It’s kind of lame.

Nack is also a little baffling to me. We had that scene of him escaping prison and… he’s just captured again… in a fight that happened off-screen. 

I know that based on what happens later, we need these characters to be in a certain place at a certain time but it still kind of stings that it happened this way and this quickly. Nack losing off-screen is so embarrassing it almost begs the question of why bother keeping him around?

We’re still not done though. Say hello to another set of villains who, power-wise, are a shadow of their former selves; Mammoth Mogul and Ixis Naugus.

We finally see where these two have been after such a long absence from the Egg Grapes scenario. They show up right before Rouge as she’s complaining that no one’s taking her up on her offer to pawn off the Master Emerald. Apparently, she didn’t expect HIM to show up though.

Mogul’s explanation of what happened is pretty interesting. I had actually forgotten that he had a Chaos Emerald imbedded in his fucking chest and all of those were taken by A.D.A.M. 

So now Mogul is basically power starved. The promise of a free Master Emerald would certainly be enticing enough to lure him in. The man has gotten so much power taken from him, it’s kind of incredible. Meanwhile, Naugus has been reduced to the status of the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil. His mind is virtually blank and animalistic thanks to Mogul using him for protection against the effects of the Egg Grapes. 

It’s all interesting stuff but sadly, the point is that they’re weak and they suck now so they need that Emerald. That’s when Sonic shows up.

Mogul is, for some reason, not deterred by this and even though he just finished a rant about how much he’s bone dry as far as power is concerned, he still takes this chance to prop up Naugus. His attempt to do this is kind of hilarious since he legit says the line “Naugus may have lost his mind and elemental magic, but he has SOMEHOW gained the power to shadow-meld, appearing anywhere before you can-!”

Then Bunnie immediately knocks his ass out by swinging her first backwards, once.

God, this is sad.

Mogul used to have Enerjak’s power and shortly after became a being that could crush entire universes in the palm of his hand. Now he’s been reduced to some dude in a suit waving a tiny staff wand about.

Sonic and Bunnie aren’t even taking this seriously. I understand it's well deserved karma but it’s still a little annoying, to be honest.

Mogul doesn’t even get to finish his speech. Sally just rides in on Nack’s bike and bonks him on the head with it to knock him out.

So yeah, all that talk about their enemies increasing was just tantamount to them complaining about them having a checklist of people with names to cross off; like they were going grocery shopping or something.

Weak.

I also used to take issue with the bottom panel of them turning to Rouge and daring to suggest they were going to attack her too. Obviously, they have reason to be suspicious but this is purely a case of personal bias clouding my better judgement. Rouge is great. Leave her alone you heathens!

Thankfully, she can take care of herself. 

Here’s your friendly reminder of the time this was written once again. Rouge being this open about feelings for Knuckles is such a thing of the past it may have just aged me by two years thinking about it.

I do like how sly she is though. She’s put them in a position where they’d definitely be in the wrong if they tried to do anything to her now. It’s great.

Well, whatever. They’ve rounded up all the villains in a single issue thanks to her. They get all sappy and talk about how much they love each other and junk.

Rouge is the best character on screen right now.

Sally and Sonic are also offered the position of Maid of Honor and Best Man for the wedding, in case that was something you were worried about.

After that, we finish on a scene of Eggman and Snively going over the big plans they have brewing for Sonic and the others. Here’s another scene where the stakes are going to be high for what’s to come next but, at the same time, the comic has dedicated a lot of time towards developing it within stories that also do their best to change things within the narrative individually. I still very much appreciate it.

Although, I gotta say, the red is not a good look for you Snively. The green worked so much better my dude.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #173: See Ya' Later Chao, Part 1

Writer: Ian Flynn
Penciler: Tracy Yardley
Inker/Letterer: Michael Higgins
Colorist: Jason Jensen

Oh yeah, that’s right. Chao have barely been touched on in this book haven’t they? You’d be forgiven for not even recalling a time where they even showed up but thanks to the awful Sonic Adventure adaptation, they did.

Otherwise, you’d be shit out of luck.

Sonic recounts the story for his mom about how a chao followed them home. Rotor was picking up an energy reading from the old grotto where the magic rings used to come out and it was strange seeing as how the place had been sucked dry by Eggman.

They go there and discover a Chao Garden. 

When Knuckles asks if they should report back, the three of them, especially Sonic, become smitten by their cuteness and decide to stay.

Look at that little Stoner Chao on the bottom, getting petted by Sonic. He gains super speed because of it too. Now he can enjoy his drugs at max velocity.

Interestingly enough, he goes into a little cocoon and comes out of it having transformed immediately.

He named it Chronic. It’s Chao and Sonic fused together. He also calls Tails’ Chao, “Chails” and Knuckles’ Chao, “Chuckles”. It’s funny.

The party is immediately stopped when Eggman arrives in what looks like a huge Egg Hawk with a drill attached to it on the bottom.

His line as he arrives is, “Arrivederci, chao”.

He’s really proud of that one I bet.

Yeah, I can’t help but still be a little disappointed by that. I understand the allure of Team Rocket-esque villains but, to be completely honest, Team Rocket could stand to have a little more of the “Best Wishes” treatment and be a bit more competent, especially if they’re going to be around for as long as they have, you know? For Nack especially it’s a bit of a shame. My dude can’t seem to catch a break, even when you think there might be one for him on the horizon. Because he’s a Sonic character with a Sonic-esque design his tenure as a bad guy feels like it should be a bit more equal than it is and back in the day, shockingly, it was. He was so much more effective back then compared to now. 

It doesn’t stop getting really sad and pathetic for him too, unfortunately. We’re entering the phase where he just kind of shows up to get beaten up and not much else. It’ll be a long while before he gets his chance to impress me again. I’m thinking in terms of the Reboot. Mogul and Naugus' downfall at least feels appropriate considering what they’ve been through but at the end of the day, no matter the in-universe reasons, it kind of took the wind out of my sails to see them all just be treated like they were essentially flesh and blood Scratch and Grounders. At least for Mogul it ends up going somewhere fucking brilliant. 

The second story was cute. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

My thoughts:

-It won't be revealed until much later (Ian knew how much of a fucking shitfest Shadow's backstory was in Archie, and wrote SU #2 specifically to address how SA2 happened in this canon), but the diary was recorded before Gerald went bonkers. That only happened after Shadow was sent to Earth, and Maria was killed. 

Nothing here really contradicts anything. Gerald did initially design Shadow as a saviour, he was supposed to be a saviour to Mobius, and to Maria. He's a hero. The diary can't really know that Gerald went nuts and tried to destroy everyone and everything, it can only really recount what information it has, which is why Shadow was designed, and who Gerald and Maria were as people. I mean at some point, it gets difficult to discuss because it's also a bunch of technobabble, but still.

-I had to say, it's so subtle, but I fucking adore the snide smirk Fini has when he's playing the Knuckles card. Like, it's a mixture of smugly knowing that Locke would refuse to bring Knuckles in after their squabble, and his plans for Knuckles. It's just an extra bit of dickery on his part to twist the knife further into Locke. Smugly pushing his luck because he knows he can get away with it.

-To be honest, Tails knowing about Fiona, but not telling Sonic doesn't jive with me whatsoever. I feel like, maybe when it happened, Fiona had used his crush against him, buttered him up and exploited him into not telling, it would've been more effective, but as is, it comes off a bit too selfish for my liking. Tails legitimately apparently knew this long that Fiona was not only two-timing Sonic, but she was a traitor who could easily give out Freedom Fighter secrets to Scourge, or exploit the FF's defences is pretty bad. 

It's also kind of bad on Tails' part. Like yeah, he was hurt by Sonic's dating of Fiona, but letting Fiona string his best friend along like that is pretty terrible, no matter the circumstances. Maybe it's to spare Sonic's feelings, but Tails should know that letting Sonic get riddled with self-doubt and worry over Fiona, as well as the potential security risks wasn't a good thing.

I think it would've just been more effective if Tails got suspicious after the hostage situation, didn't want to worry Sonic, and maybe recruited Amy into helping him figure out what was going down, leading to the same outcome. As is, it doesn't look particularly good on Tails here whatsoever.

-I think Tails' slap kind of works as a wake-up call, because it also kind of effectively says that Fiona's officially a villain and there's no going back, as well as saying - no - this love-triangle bullshit that was attached to Sonic, Tails, and Fiona for so long is out the door, and there's no going back. It's strangle-held this comic down long enough, and apart from one dumb thing in House of Cards, it's not coming back again.

-Interestingly - and we're not there yet - Scrouge's take on Fiona choosing to be bad both has merit, and doesn't at the same time. On the face, it does actually seem like Moebius is "type-casted" in a sense. The morality on characters are flipped, as is their personalities. Bold New Moebius and Hedgehog Havoc will showcase it better, but you have the likes of even Rosy the Rascal (Amy's anti counterpart) being a total psycho, as well as Tails being a backstabber who despises Scourge, and even the more "heroic" characters, like Jules' counterpart being shown to be more of an emotionally abusive, and egotistical dick that directly led to Scrouge's turn to darkness. 

But, ironically in Scourge's attempts to prove that the anti-universe isn't just evil clones, it's shown that the morality flipped characters can change their ways, if they try hard enough, given that Bunnie's counterpart - Buns - who we originally saw in #151 without her robotics - actually turned over a new leaf, donned a suit similar to Omega, and now works with Eggman's counterpart to help others. So ultimately, it comes down to Scourge using it as an excuse. It's pretty much exactly what Sonic says - if Scourge actually tried, and could muster even a little bit of decency and selflessness, he would be like Sonic. 

-Man, it's funny how I have so little to say about #173 that the only things I feel to point out is that the proposal is neat, the dumbass controversy from Ken Penders claiming Ian "stole his idea", that it's nice having some bridge-building with Sonic and Sally, and finally - that Snively's red outfit is a colouring error that was fixed in reprints IIRC.

-Fun fact - See You Later Chao is Ian's actual first story in Archie, it legitimately got held back this long during the usual Archie Back-Up story pile.

[Dr. Detective]

5 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

My thoughts:

-It won't be revealed until much later (Ian knew how much of a fucking shitfest Shadow's backstory was in Archie, and wrote SU #2 specifically to address how SA2 happened in this canon), but the diary was recorded before Gerald went bonkers. That only happened after Shadow was sent to Earth, and Maria was killed. 

Yeah, that's obvious. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. I think most people can just go ahead and assume that like I did. No one really needs to wait for it to be confirmed. 

If the reason you feel the need to explain this is because you thought I was accusing the diary scene specifically of not making sense then you misunderstood what I was getting at. I was just re-contextualizing why this issue had to happen and how I'm seeing the merit behind the reason why this issue had to be structured this way. 

5 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

To be honest, Tails knowing about Fiona, but not telling Sonic doesn't jive with me whatsoever. I feel like, maybe when it happened, Fiona had used his crush against him, buttered him up and exploited him into not telling, it would've been more effective, but as is, it comes off a bit too selfish for my liking. Tails legitimately apparently knew this long that Fiona was not only two-timing Sonic, but she was a traitor who could easily give out Freedom Fighter secrets to Scourge, or exploit the FF's defences is pretty bad. 

It's also kind of bad on Tails' part. Like yeah, he was hurt by Sonic's dating of Fiona, but letting Fiona string his best friend along like that is pretty terrible, no matter the circumstances. Maybe it's to spare Sonic's feelings, but Tails should know that letting Sonic get riddled with self-doubt and worry over Fiona, as well as the potential security risks wasn't a good thing.

I think it would've just been more effective if Tails got suspicious after the hostage situation, didn't want to worry Sonic, and maybe recruited Amy into helping him figure out what was going down, leading to the same outcome. As is, it doesn't look particularly good on Tails here whatsoever.

I dunno. I'm cool with it. 

At the very least, I can see why Tails didn't tell Sonic and he did cave when Amy directly asked him so I just chalk it up to him being an emotional mess and not really thinking through the consequences of it. You know, it's whatever.

It might also help that my opinion of Knothole's handling of security is already pretty pants. The fact that these villains literally just come and go as they please anyway makes thinking about it kind of funny.

5 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It's pretty much exactly what Sonic says - if Scourge actually tried, and could muster even a little bit of decency and selflessness, he would be like Sonic. 

It's wild isn't it? It's such a good story beat that I'm honestly finding it a huge shame that it can't be used in any official material anymore. Scourge was such a good, goddamn idea. Taking Penders' lame Evil Sonic and turning it into that ended up being quite the sick flex of skill on Ian's part.

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic X - Issue #32: Title Mismatch

This is one of my favorite covers in the series. It’s one thing to have Eggman here doing this shit but to have Sonic forced into doing the same and fighting crime alongside his mortal enemy is fantastic. Sonic being dressed in something like that is something he said he didn’t want and that’s exactly why it’s fantastic he’s in it. Customize this onto his bod in Colors Ultimate.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Jason Jensen
Letters: John Workman
Editor/Managing editor: Mike Pellerito

El Gran Gordo is sitting in the Thorndyke residence, drinking coffee as he recounts the story of how he ended up seeking the help of Sonic. This isn’t as weird as Darkseid sitting on Mary Marvel’s couch but it comes close, probably. Maybe.

He tells the tale of how after he beat Andes the Ginormous he decided that, you know what, he’s totally strong enough to go and defeat Dr. Eggman. So he ran towards Eggman’s base in an attempt to go do that but his defenses were too strong so he came here.

Chuck, Chris, and Ella all seem to buy that. Chuck goes to find something in his lab to help him, Chris runs off to get his scrapbook that’s all about El Gran Gordo, and Ella wants to find her yearbook because she’s sure they went to school together. 

Maybe she’s thinking of Gerald’s son, whoever that is. 

That was just a joke but it begs the question of who Eggman’s father is, honestly.

Anyway, they all leave except Sonic who stands there smiling before deciding it’s time to cut the bullshit.

So Eggman tells Sonic what actually happened, in a far less fantastical exposition dump. The scenes are basically the same except the motivations are different. Eggman did beat Andes but he was dead tired and he barely managed it. He just wanted to go home after that.

Truthfully, with how well he does keeping up with people like Sonic, Knuckles, and Bowser at the Olympics he might honestly be strong enough to defeat a regular Earth pro-wrestler. 

He headed home but had forgotten that he made Bokkun play the role of Eggman and he was branded an intruder since he hasn’t stopped playing the part. He came here to seek Sonic’s help.

Sonic is actually delighted to help, provided that Eggman no longer be El Gran Gordo if he does. Eggman says fine and then calls him an extortionist.

I agree. Sonic, El Gran Gordo is a hero. How dare you try to snuff him out. What is this? Some sort of childish screed to be the only “hero” on the block. You traitorous swine. 

Sonic gets appropriately punished for taking the name of El Gran Gordo and the profession of wrestling entirely in vain once it’s time to infiltrate the base. If they’re going to do it, they need to do it right after all.

I love that Eggman just has a grappling hook with him. Where the fuck did he get that outfit for Sonic too? Do they sell anthropomorphic hedgehog shaped wrestling get-ups on Earth now that Sonic is here, in the hopes that he’d buy them? Or is it just a goofy, silly comic that runs on cartoon logic? I can’t choose!

It’s also interesting that Sonic’s the one so resistant to being buddy buddy with Eggman here when Eggman is being as genuine as possible while in this get-up. Though, he IS still helping him. Just an intriguing observation.

Inside the base, “Eggman” is shown carrying around several pizza boxes and a whole ass cake while Bocoe and Decoe laze about playing video games. They’re aware that he’s Bokkun playing the role of Eggman but they love it since all he does is eat junk food. He makes a play at pretending to be the boss but all he really asks and says is “Are you working hard?” and when they say “Yes'' he'll say “Good, keep going.” even though they’re clearly just lounging about on some bean bag chairs.

Their little celebratory vacation is interrupted when they catch wind of El Gran Gordo’s return. They see him coming back and they decide they need to kick in the defenses because it’s their job to guard “Dr. Eggman”.

Something tells me this little loophole their exploiting would probably be harder to justify if Eggman wasn’t dressed as the great hero, El Gran Gordo, but… invading a mad scientist’s base dressed as luchadors makes more sense and is infinitely more fun so we’re going to stick with it.

Anyway, Eggman tries to charge through the laser blasts with an iARRRRRIBA!

Then his rope gets cut and he falls with an iCARAMBA!

Of course, Sonic gets crushed by the falling Gordo.

That might have been the most effective attack Eggman has ever landed. Crushing him with his big round egg-shaped posterior.

Sonic, or should I say Rapido Azule, gets an idea though. He presses both hands to Eggman’s hide and races him up to the main room of the building.

The two heroes crash through the window and land with El Gran Gordo landing in a dynamic Jojo pose and the newcomer and jobber Rapido Azule immediately out of breath.

I mean come on man. All you did was push a huge blob of man meat up a skyscraper sized base. Walk it off.

This is also starting to feel like Rapido Azule here is caught between Eggman and his goons in the middle of their playtime. Bocoe and Decoe are REALLY into this. They’re just super fucking evil now and going off on villain monologues about how they’re going to take out the luchadors.

They send the robot forces at their beck and call after the heroes and Eggman starts belly bumping them off. Meanwhile, Sonic keeps looking like the jobber dork he is.

Immediately after this, Eggman just turns to the two of them and tells them to cut that shit out.

So they do.

They call off the robot army and start begging for forgiveness once Eggman removes his mask and shouts, “It’s me DUMBASSES!”

He asks for where the fake Eggman is and they tell him he’s in the area where E-73 Egg Babylon is being completed. 

Sonic is happy to know there’s a robot for him to crush nearby and they rush off to greet it with Eggman a little less enthused. Sonic did say he would help so he’s seeing this to the end.

They reach the room where the fake Eggman is sitting in a large as hell tower. With a MREE-HEE-HEE he laughs at them, challenging them with his lasers of doom and shit.

That laugh is the exact same as the one the Iron Queen has, which is funny. This was a while before the Iron Dominion arc began and I doubt they remembered her laugh from waaaaay back when she first appeared at this time so this might just be a funny coincidence.

It’s a goofy as shit laugh though.

Anyway, Bokkun tries to kill these luchadors with his lasers. One of them actually gets Rapido Azule but all it does is destroy his fucking awesome, and humiliating, outfit.

Sonic keeps asking Eggman to spill the beans on how to beat the robot and eventually he tells him how to get to the main control area through the vents.

He then hugs his machine and apologizes to it for telling Sonic how to kill his latest unborn machine offspring.

Sonic, in a nicely paneled scene, zips through the tube and kicks the fake Eggy off his throne.

Throwing in a little Slim Shady reference there too.

With that done and Bokkun out of his Eggman outfit, Bokkun tries to quell the anger in the room by pointing out that he was asked to be him and that he didn’t realize he wanted him to stop. He even does the little pouty face.

Eggman just tells him to not be him anymore and Sonic, the jerk, makes sure to remind Eggman of his promise.

Look at that face.

Look at that SAD face!

You’re killing a hero Sonic! KILLING HIM!

Honestly, you should totally want Eggman to be more open to heroics. Why do you hate fun so much?!

Sonic races back home and Chris wakes up from a little nap, welcoming him back. Chris asks where El Gran Gordo is and Sonic just twiddles his fingers and makes up a lie about him having other adventures he needs to be on or some shit. 

Chris buys it because he’s smitten by the grand hero but makes sure to thank Sonic for helping him and with a fist bump, he reminds Sonic of how he thinks he’s the actual coolest too. 

Back in Eggman’s base, he’s making his goons do the work they didn’t do back when they were on their so-called vacation. His shouting even gets them to work faster.

However, the issue ends with Eggman musing to himself about the whimsy of escaping to a dreamlike world where he’s the great hero.

May I be the first to say, fuck Sonic. He can’t tell you what to do.

I swear by this glass of lukewarm prune juice with a raw egg in it; El Gran Gordo will rise again!

That was fun, if only so that I could see Sonic running around in that outfit. Sonic and Eggman teaming up is always a favorite scenario of mine. They work well off each other, seemingly almost immune to dysfunction no matter how different the interpretations of their characters are across different mediums. Plus, the pro-wrestling stuff is just fun. It was more superhero-ish this go around but the funny outfits were still there so it helps. I’m still all for seeing what Tails’ outfit would have been. He should have been a heel dammit. 

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Free Comic Book Day 2007: Unburying the Hatchet

What a snazzy cover. Eggman’s face looks like it’s blasting some intense heat at these heroes. I’ve actually never read any of these Free Comic Book day issues. I had no idea how Free Comic Book day even worked. I think I used to assume it was a day where all comics were free or something. I didn’t put it together that they made a comic to give away for free. I was an ignorant, young teenager at the time I guess.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracey Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Jason Jensen
Letters: John Workman
Editor: Mike Pellerito

I have a feeling this issue is going to be a little commentary on the status quo concerning Sonic and Eggman. It literally begins with Sonic chained to Eggman’s stargate and being gloated at by the doctor. Sonic gloats back, saying that he’ll be out of his chains in no time.

Wait… no.

Oh shit. 

I HAVE read this before.  

It just clicked the instant Eggman said he’s going to use Sonic instead. 

Oh this is gonna be fun.

We cut to Knothole where Sally has gathered the Freedom Fighters for the mission of going off to rescue Sonic. It’s a simple sounding one but she manages to give everyone specific roles to do, landing on having her and Tails being on the front lines to infiltrate and steal him back.

Very nice. I like that the two people who wouldn’t have been on the front lines in the Penders era are doing so under Ian’s pen. Here they come…

… Except, not really.

Sonic shows up immediately and says that the rescue mission won’t be necessary. Bunnie gets excited and looks about ready to hug him. Sonic decides that hugs are a sin and betrays them all, demolishing them with expertly timed homing attacks!

Everything about this is great. I love how Sally just accepts what’s happening with a response to Sonic that’s basically tantamount to “Well, I guess this is happening now.”

Meanwhile, Sonic’s taking being controlled by Eggman like a champ. You just gotta love how excited he is about relaying the info that his next target is the king. 

Elias is the king now so that’s a little less exciting but damn it would have been great seeing Sonic blast a homing attack right into old ass King Max. Dude has one foot in the grave already anyway. Let him die along with all his weird, old, fossilized traditions.

Sonic races off with Eggman scolding Sonic in his ear piece about giving away his plans. Sonic says that of course he’s going to do that. Eggman doesn’t have control over his mouth. Honestly, he should probably get to work on something like that. Like a device he can strap over Sonic’s mouth where every time he talks it comes out as something he wants Sonic to say about him.

Sonic comes across the Chaotix next; all of them, including Charmy and Saffron this time. They get to fighting with Sonic saying that they’re not strong enough or fast enough to beat him. He does make sure to add that old chestnut of “don’t get me wrong, you guys are awesome” so at least he’s aware he’s not sounding very cool right now.

Sonic probably realized that too because he does make a more sincere apology after smashing Vector and Espio’s heads together and then punching Julie-Su in the face.

It’s okay though. He leaves them in a dizzy cluster back there but gets punched in the face by the person Sally contacted to take him down.

I knew it was going to be Knuckles but, no joke, I made the Shadow joke in my head before it happened too. I’m glad he had the foresight to make that comment himself.

The two of them start fighting and chatting at the same time. Sonic comments that he did kind of expect Shadow because apparently Knuckles is good but not that good. Always with the “You could be better” comments eh? 

It’s funny because when Knuckles finds out that Eggman is controlling Sonic with a device in his ear (shouting orders constantly, which has to be loud and annoying) Knuckles says that enough blunt force trauma to the head might break it. Suddenly Sonic’s scared and really doesn’t want Knuckles to hit him that hard.

I don’t know Sonic. Maybe don’t talk shit next time.

Knuckles is super hyped to beat the shit out of Sonic. You can just tell he’s been waiting for an excuse. 

Meanwhile, at the offices of Sonic Team and SEGA--!

I mean, if the game needs a little more time in the oven then do that. Only so much leeway is going to be given to the story of Sonic betraying his friends if the gameplay and the controls aren’t right.

It’s wild seeing Snively get so up close and personal with Eggman about this. He’s fearless, arguing here where in the past he cowered in fear of his uncle on such a consistent basis. His desire to take this shit over has really made him more assertive over time. 

That said, Eggman’s plan here really isn’t a bad one. If he wanted to, he could force Sonic to finish the job on his friends instead of having him insist on targeting the king specifically. It would destroy a lot of their morale to lose even more of their friends now. They’re probably on more of a high since they very easily captured those villains last time.

Snively does throw his hands up and walks off, fed up with all of it. Eggman’s just glad that the backseat gamer is gone initially but Snively doesn’t leave the scene.

No, no. Instead, he goes off about how dumb his uncle is and how he’ll be able to do it better. He’s clearly waiting to take this shit over so he decides… why not do it now?

Yeah sure. Why the fuck not? Let’s do it now. Fuck it. He’s feeling frisky.

He goes up to Metal Sonic talking all this shit about how loyal he is and all that but, while he’s doing it, is about to insert something into Metal Sonic’s body.

It immediately fails while he’s in mid-conversation.

I’d imagine Metal Sonic’s got quite the grip on him.

This is what I love about the Eggman and Snively dynamic. Eggman’s methods are unorthodox as hell so from the outside looking in you’d wager you could take his shit over and do a better job of it yourself. However, the man’s got a tremendously powerful imagination. Even if he’s weird and unnatural it’s because of this that he’s able to be unpredictable and one up someone like Snively who’s thinking is more straightforward.

Yeah, all Eggman’s robots and devices here are programmed to watch you Snively. He knows you’re out to get him. I’d imagine he didn’t think Eggman was that on the ball concerning that because he was the one who invited him back into the Empire. That’s the thing though, he’s just the kind of weird motherfucker to do it knowing you’re trying to screw him. He told you that.

Look at that sad, puppy-dog look in Snively’s eyes. He’s crushed. 

He thought he was getting away with something but Eggman knew the whole time. Of course he knew the whole time. He’s Eggman.

Like Kylo Ren chasing the shadow of Darth Vader, you’ll never be as good as Eggman, Snively. Your thinking is too inside the box. Even if Eggman’s madness is tailor made to undo itself in the end it’s also the reason why he’s the world’s biggest and best threat. 

Sonic and Knuckles’ fight sees them crashing through the palace walls. The real fight, though, is the verbal argument going on between the two of them.

Sonic is so not on board with Knuckles’ campaign to beat the shit out of Sonic until the device in his ear breaks. Sonic keeps telling him “No!” over and over again but Knuckles isn’t having it. He REALLY wants to use this as his good excuse to hit Sonic as hard as he can and I’m over here like, “HELL YES! FUCKING DECK HIM!”

Sonic even brings up the possibility of it not being enough and Knuckles just says he’ll keep hitting him until it is enough. Sonic says no again, much preferring the idea of being restrained and having Rotor use science to fish it out.

Well tough shit because the other science nerd likes Knuckles’ plan better. Tails swoops in and kicks Sonic in the head from behind, making him see stars. Tails has reason to be upset with Sonic too so that probably felt cathartic. Not as cathartic as Knuckles when he finally gets that second hit in.

With his eyes rolling, Sonic’s plea for them to stop beating him up falls on deaf ears. Knuckles punches him so hard that his body folds over itself like it’s made of construction paper. His face eats the dirt off the red carpet everyone’s walked all over numerous times before. 

It’s a fantastic image.

Oh, and hey, it worked.

Sally almost played the party pooper there but thankfully the deed was already done so she couldn’t. I’m glad I got to see that.

Even better, I’m happy Sonic responded by shaking Knuckles’ hand and thanking him for almost punching his brain to jelly.

Again though, because Knothole’s security is absolute dog shit, Eggman and Metal Sonic are here. They’re just IN the castle. 

I know Sonic was busy but what about the city’s other defenses? What about Nicole? I guess I’m aware she’s working on something down the line but good God. The villains can just come and go as they please. It’s kind of funny so I’m not actually upset about it. I’d actually be delighted to see Knothole get burned to the ground (foreshadowing) but still.

Eggman goes on and on about how his plan is still active because now they’re all tired and because of that they’re gonna get demolished by his Metal Sonic and blah blahgggh. You know where this is going. 

That’s another destroyed Metal Sonic. I should have taken to starting a counter way back when but I didn’t think of it until just now.

It’s a shame because in recent years I’ve grown more appreciative of Metal Sonic as an actual character thanks to little things like the side-stories from the IDW comics and stuff like that one recent Sonic Channel story. The origin of what fuels his motivation was touched upon in Heroes but never again since in any real, tangible capacity as far as the games are concerned. It’s just been, “Oh hey, it’s time for the obligatory Metal Sonic fight. I wonder which version of Stardust Speedway Bad Future they’re gonna use this time.”

This cast is stronger than Sonic Team and SEGA knows and the proof is all around them. Even the fucking robot that can’t even fucking talk has all this untapped potential to him and they just ignore it. They’re somehow lost in a fucking forest and can’t spot a single goddamn tree. It’s ridiculous.

So, yeah, the constant stream of Metal Sonics just being blown up one after another isn’t something I’m a fan of. It’s an issue that does get fixed eventually, thank God, but for now pop goes the weasel.

Sonic then thanks everyone, once again, going down the line as Tails apologizes for hitting him first. Sonic waves that off and makes sure everyone knows how grateful he is for them and their desire to kick the shit out of him so that he can’t be a danger to them or himself, making note to point out how particularly excited Knuckles was to play his part.

Look at those eyes. Knuckles loves making those eyes whenever he’s being cute about being a jerk eh?

We finish things off back at Eggman’s base. After Metal Sonic got destroyed, he tried to threaten Sonic with a B.F.G (Big Fucking Gun) from his Egg-Mobile but then stowed it away and floated his ass out of there once he realized he was surrounded by Sonic and pals.

The good doctor is done with his games. It’s time for the main event. I guess he already knew that plan would fail despite his earlier argument with Snively that it was a good idea. Either that or he figured he just wanted to pass the time and thought there was a chance he might get lucky.

Nope. It’s time for Plan Z.

That was a really good, solid, legit issue of the comic for a Free Comic Book Day issue. That could easily have fit into the book as one of the main stories with a shorter one following up on it. I guess it’s technically a bit of a filler issue, if you ignore the stuff with Snively and Eggman which feels like it definitely should have been in the main book, but it was still enjoyable despite that. It definitely earns a spot in the book more than any of the shit Penders was doing when he took control, that’s for damn sure. Both Finitevus and Eggman have had something huge brewing for a long while now and it looks like Eggman’s up first. Let’s see how much devastation can reign when the empire strikes back, bitches.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #174: Union

Whoa, they’re having the wedding 26 issues before they were supposed to. How generous. No, but seriously, this is a very nice looking cover. It’s really well lit too. There’s a nice big heart with a question mark at the altar to hide who the bride and groom are. This was most likely because the solicits didn’t want to spoil anything but it’s still kind of funny.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito

We begin with Uncle Chuck helping Sonic get dressed for Antoine’s wedding. 

By “Get dressed” I, of course, mean “going pantsless” to Antoine’s wedding. It’s good to know that Sonic considers him his buddy now though. It’s also a nice gesture of him to recognize when a title actually would matter and in this case it’s not to be some special soldier for the kingdom but to be the right hand man of his friend at a wedding.

Of course, he’s still sizzling on the inside after the whole Fiona debacle. Tails comes to get him and they leave after Sonic’s parents say parent stuff to them. Sonic asks Tails if his parents do parent stuff to him and Tails says they’re worse and he loves them for it. It’s cute. 

The idea of parents having existed or being mentioned in the games is something I’m semi-okay with under certain circumstances. I will admit though I don’t like the idea of it being how it is in this book. I rather enjoy that most of these characters just live their own lives, flying solo, without adult supervision of any kind. Even the kind that admits to being unnecessary since Sonic obviously can take care of himself in this book and the book knows it.

This is one of those things that this book makes me think about in strange ways. It’s so different that it’s mind boggling. 

When Sonic and Tails make their way off together, Tails mentions that he too is hung up on the Fiona thing, obviously, when Sonic talks about the way Tails is dressed. I have no idea what possessed Sonic to lead in with a joke about Tails being dressed to catch someone’s eye. Tails goes along with the joke and reminds him that he’s dressed this way because he’s supposed to be but then sulks when he brings up Fiona. He says he was hoping he and Fiona would one day… and then he trails off.

One day what Tails? Get married? Wow. 

The delusion was strong with this one.

They reach Antoine who’s just… an extremely nervous wreck. It’s funny because I’m not entirely sure what he’s afraid of when I really think about it. I guess it’s just a generally nerve wracking, stressful situation but in my mind I’d like to imagine he’s worried it’ll be like the Spider-Man shit where Mary Jane just runs away from the guy she’s supposed to marry, like a bitch.

It’s strange imagining this version of Charmy as 16. I didn’t really have a problem doing it before because the book was so consistently awful looking but now that everyone looks like how they’re supposed to, who they are as characters with these designs is starting to do weird things to my perception of them in my brain. 

Sonic talks with Knuckles and finds out that Espio is on a solo mission. Knuckles doesn’t say what the mission is about or where he’s going, just that he’s on a mission. I’d like to say that he just didn’t know because it’d be really strange if they were aware that he was just infiltrating Eggman’s base on his own and were just… okay with that.

Sonic is bored of trying to mess with the groom so he goes to Bunnie’s room. He wants to be let in but Rosie won’t let him so she cruelly pushes Flower Girl Amy on him and the other two girls inside, Bunnie and Sally, start laughing. Rosie dusts off her hands with her eyes narrowed and they start having girl talk and are all bubbly and snide and… meeehhhhhgggghhh…

I don’t like this scene. I wish I had a way of properly articulating why I don’t like this scene. I just don’t. I wanna move on from this.

After a brief scene where Espio gets shocked by some battle armour he finds in Eggman’s base, we cut to the castle area where people are walking around. Sonic asks about Espio to Knuckles again and Knuckles just says he’s running out of time. 

Julie-Su shows up in a dress and is relatable to me for the first time in the history of these books when she thanks them for the comments about the way she looks but stresses that she hates dressing up. 

I do really like the comment the two of them make about not getting married when Sonic asks them about it. Julie-Su says the Dark Legion never had any such ceremony and Knuckles is perfectly fine with his word bonding them. 

That’s really good. Honestly, I appreciate that a lot. Let the people have their ceremonies if they want to while everyone else just says they’re married and can skip all the pomp and circumstance. I would envy that if I were someone who ever planned on getting married but I don’t and won’t.

Sonic races to the hall where all the royal people are and has a teasing session with Sally before it turns awkward at the end.

“Borderline treason” he says. BLEGH! I really don’t like these moments where Sonic reminds me that he’s worried about committing treason. The Sonic I grew up with would do it in a heartbeat if it meant doing the right thing. Granted, teasing Sally doesn’t fall under that preview but there’s going to come a time where the “right thing” and the “treasonous thing” are going to be something he’ll struggle over and it’ll be completely understandable and warranted for this version of Sonic… but I still won’t like it.

Sonic tries to ignore the awkward air by going “Oh, look! It’s Tails’ mom and dad! Hi Mr. and Mrs. Prower!” like something out of a Family Matters episode.

The two of them have indeed come onto the scene and Elias thanks Commander Prower for leading the honor guard for the ceremony and says it was an honor to perform this union.

Mr. Prower’s response is very cryptic and has a very steep, dark undertone to it.

Can you imagine the heartbreak if after all this time, Tails’ parents came back and they were just evil as shit? That’s what this scene kind of puts into your mind after all. I know better but damn, the drama would have been almost too much to handle.

Then again, knowing the fate of the book, they probably should have just done it in hindsight. If I could go back in time and warn them, I could maybe spare them worrying about the integrity of some of these characters and that might lead to even more deaths or drastic changes.

Anyway, that one guy missing from the attendance list is Espio. Dude has found out Eggman’s secret plans and is horrified by them. He runs off in a panic and I guess he forgot to turn invisible because he gets spotted by a flying Egg Zapper thing.

The juxtaposition with what’s going on with him and the marriage ceremony is working rather well.

This scene of Espio trying to escape from Eggman’s base while Antoine and Bunnie are getting married with that backdrop of Eggman’s silhouette looming over it all really sells the scene.

The heroes are none the wiser about what’s going on and what they’re about to experience. When the two Freedom Fighters seal the deal with a kiss, Espio is pinned to the wall with this weird green energy goop… stuff. He’s been captured. What he learned isn’t going to reach the heroes now and because of that, Eggman has a prisoner and they’ve got squat.

The fact that this is also a plan that’s been hinted at as something important for a really long time now does a lot to really get the blood pumping with anticipation.

Eggman assures us that we’re finally at the fated time and of the finality awaiting the standard of living for our heroes with a monstrously dynamic pose.

All hail the Eggman Empire.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #174: See Ya' Later Chao, Part 2

Writer: Ian Flynn
Penciler: Tracy Yardley
Inker/Letterer: Michael Higgins
Colorist: Jason Jensen

Oh yeah, before we get to that, we need to conclude the story of that one time Eggman attacked a chao garden.

Honestly, there’s not much to talk about. He came here thinking he was going to get some awesome goodies but Sonic and the others immediately rain on his parade by telling him that there’s jack shit here aside from some chao and their garden.

Eggman jumps the gun a lot so it’s nice to see him so deflated when he realizes he just got his dander up for the sake of some chao.

Then again, he likes chao in the games it would seem. Not here though. He’s about to plunge a giant drill into their lake for the Lulz.

Knuckles catches it and tries to set it down but rocket boosters make it stand up right again, which is pretty funny.

Tails then does the smart guy thing and sets up a nice plan for them all to work through. It’s… honestly a little hard to follow. 

Tails messes with the drill’s insides a bit, tells Sonic to rev up and rush at it, and tells Knuckles that when he feels Sonic hitting it to then toss the drill at the Egg Hawk. Tails makes it spin faster then it should I think and Sonic hitting it… I guess made it… spin again? I guess? Then Knuckles just tosses it into the Egg Hawk and it crashes both of the weapons.
I’m not entirely sure what the plan was but they did it.

Eggman says his tired defeated bad guy line that Sonic waves off. Sonic and Knuckles have a weird bro moment over the word “bad”. Then we find out that the Chao lake was destroyed anyway so Sonic finishes his story to his mom by telling her they just brought the Chao to the Lake of Rings just outside the castle.

It’s a fun little detail at the end to have Sonic’s dad spending so much time with a chao that his physical features rubbed off on it and made it Omochao. It may not work like that but it’s funny.

So yes, that was a set-up issue and as one of those it certainly did it’s job. I liked most of the scenes of everyone talking and junk. I’m usually a sucker for character conversations and stuff of that ilk. I didn’t like the scene with the girls but the other stuff worked out fine. Yeah. It was solid. The second story was also very cute and mercifully short. 

We’re on our way to bigger and better things now. One might say it’s one of the biggest and best things of the book… well, at least it was at the start.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Not a ton of thoughts this time around, but:

• It's interesting that this is arguably the point where Metal Sonic getting treated as a destructible badnik started getting pretty bad, but it's also the one time he gets his greatest win in the Archie continuity up until Issue #50 of Universe - even if it was off-panel, he managed to beat Sonic and hand-deliver him to Eggman. That's pretty neat, even if it would've been better to actually see it happen.
• Knuckles being so excited to knock Sonic clean out is one of the funniest things in this entire series tbh.
• I think you're both overreacting, and completely taking Sonic's words wrongly when he says it's "borderline treason". The context is it's just meant to be Sonic's snark as usual. Sally claims they weren't teasing each other, and Sonic just snarkily says he was, because it's treasonous to insult a princess otherwise. He's just taking the piss out of Sally by still disagreeing with her playfully, even now when Sally claims she was serious. I sincerely doubt Sonic actually gives that much of a crap about committing treason, especially given he's tangoed with that prospect before anyways, breaking several decrees from the Acorn Family, and doing whatever the hell he wanted (Especially during the High School issues and post Eggman revival). 
•  I do agree with the scene about the girl talk. Anytime I go through this arc, it always ends up rubbing me the wrong way, and I tend to skip it. I think Ian just leaned way too much into the generic "bubbly girl talk" nonsense. Probably doesn't help that Rosie just decided to sick Amy onto Sonic before beginning to discuss Sally's love life either. I like the idea of Sally and Bunnie talking about how far they've come and how they never imagined Ant and Bunnie tying the knot, but it's just so blatantly and weirdly done. 
• That is one badass shot of Eggman.
• I love Eggman's talk about what magicial mcguffin he and Sonic are after, to the point he can't even keep it straight which one he wants (The gems he created), and even asking about the magic rings twice. It reminds me of Boom Eggman and Sonic, of all things.
• It's pretty weird, and out of place funny to have the message about #175 and it's big bombastic fight with Sonic and Eggman at the end of a chao backup story. You can tell it was meant to be placed next to the foreboding shot of Eggman capturing Espio with his empire backing him, only for Archie's crappy back-up story policy cutting into it and cutting the suspense down big time as a result.

[Dr. Detective]

16 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

 

• I think you're both overreacting, and completely taking Sonic's words wrongly when he says it's "borderline treason". The context is it's just meant to be Sonic's snark as usual. Sally claims they weren't teasing each other, and Sonic just snarkily says he was, because it's treasonous to insult a princess otherwise. He's just taking the piss out of Sally by still disagreeing with her playfully, even now when Sally claims she was serious. I sincerely doubt Sonic actually gives that much of a crap about committing treason, especially given he's tangoed with that prospect before anyways, breaking several decrees from the Acorn Family, and doing whatever the hell he wanted (Especially during the High School issues and post Eggman revival).

You really didn't need to explain the context to me. I know that. I know what happens in the scene. I wasn't taking Sonic's words wrongly.

You can say I was overreacting if you want though. Him bringing it up at all, even in this playful context, says to me that he considers it an underlying concern personally. Plus, as I said, there's a moment way down the line where it becomes an issue for me. We'll get to it eventually.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

15 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

You really didn't need to explain the context to me. I know that. I know what happens in the scene. I wasn't taking Sonic's words wrongly.

You can say I was overreacting if you want though. Him bringing it up at all, even in this playful context, says to me that he considers it an underlying concern personally. Plus, as I said, there's a moment way down the line where it becomes an issue for me. We'll get to it eventually.

It clearly isn’t that much of a concern if Sonic’s risked treason multiple times before in the past. He’s defied direct orders and decrees from the Acorn Kingdom before to do what he feels is best. Him joking referencing committing treason doesn’t mean he’s actually afraid of it happening, otherwise he wouldn’t have risked it before.

If it was House of Cards you were talking about, in which Sonic is written further out of character, I would say you then have a point, but here, it really just comes off as a joke, and that’s it. Sonic isn’t afraid of telling the Acorn Family to piss off if he doesn’t agree with them. He did it with the decree that only Geoffrey was allowed to do missions against Eggman, he did it again during Eggman’s revival and return to power, and he did it once more when he flat out told Sally he wasn’t staying behind in Knothole, commanding people to do his dirty work when he’s the best chance to beat Eggman. If Sonic was so afraid, he probably wouldn’t have told Sally no in front of the entire kingdom, including her family, before getting into a further argument with her when pushed.

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It clearly isn’t that much of a concern if Sonic’s risked treason multiple times before in the past. He’s defied direct orders and decrees from the Acorn Kingdom before to do what he feels is best. Him joking referencing committing treason doesn’t mean he’s actually afraid of it happening, otherwise he wouldn’t have risked it before.

If it was House of Cards you were talking about, in which Sonic is written further out of character, I would say you then have a point, but here, it really just comes off as a joke, and that’s it. Sonic isn’t afraid of telling the Acorn Family to piss off if he doesn’t agree with them. He did it with the decree that only Geoffrey was allowed to do missions against Eggman, he did it again during Eggman’s revival and return to power, and he did it once more when he flat out told Sally he wasn’t staying behind in Knothole, commanding people to do his dirty work when he’s the best chance to beat Eggman. If Sonic was so afraid, he probably wouldn’t have told Sally no in front of the entire kingdom, including her family, before getting into a further argument with her when pushed.

Well, hey, if you're so convinced his character in these books isn't and shouldn't be concerned about it at all then you'll agree with my frustration regarding the scene I have an issue with when it happens. 

I agree that its a joke but my perception of Sonic in these books doesn't lead me to believe that's it. I believe he's got a more flexible concern that allows him to bend the rules a lot but I do definitely think it's still a concern of his.

I never used the word "afraid" of course. That's a bit of a different thing.

Trying to articulate how Sonic works with regards to this kingdom and zeroing in on a definitive outline of his character that we can ALL agree on is going to be tough considering he's been written by multiple writers at this point. Perhaps I should keep that in mind as well.

Edit: @Ryannumber1gamer If it makes you feel better, I do conciede that you are correct when it comes to saying I was overreacting. Looking over my wording again, I made it seem as though he's never defied the kingdom before when the examples you gave prove that he did. I should have kept my criticism zeroed in on the specific future moment that was on my mind rather than conflate it with how Sonic has always been in these books. Because his character writings between all these writers hasn't been 100% consistent so doing so isn't completely fair of me.

Being a reviewer is tough. You never know which comment is going to rub someone the wrong way.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #175: Eggman Empire

Here we are folks. Another big one. THIS issue might actually be one of the best issues in the entire series in my opinion. The story as a whole suffers from coming and going way too quickly in order for me to bask in the afterglow of what happens, unfortunately. It also doesn’t help that I’m the type that prefers longer story arcs from the get-go. Despite that, it can’t be understated how big of an impact this issue had on it’s own. This cover alone does well to sell you on it too. Great choice to just have Eggman standing in the darkness with the light illuminating only what he’s done. Beautiful.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito

I have a feeling I’m going to have a lot to say about this one so I guess I’d better just dive in. 

We begin as ominously as we possibly can, with a shot of the Egg Fleet hovering directly over where the city of Knothole is.

Truthfully, we’re about to find out just how easy it is for Eggman to launch his attack and how shit their preparations for such a thing were. I know Snively says they never saw it coming but… they maybe, kind of should have just a tiny bit. I mean, they know the Egg Fleet exists. Sonic and Tails saw it vaporize Tommy. 

Oh well. They’re playing video games in the little underground hidey hole of theirs. Knuckles has a bad feeling and really wants to search for Espio, taking it immensely serious that he’s so late. Julie-Su tries to get him off of that line of thinking but Rouge, smartly, grabs onto Knuckles and says to never doubt a guardian’s intuition and on top of that, suggests that they go out and look for Espio together.

She does this while also pushing Julie-Su the fuck away. 

It’s glorious.

What a way to cut in on her territory. Recognizing that Knuckles was upset and concerned for his friend and validating those feelings by saying he may have a point and then offering to go with him. Nice.

I’ll also admit to being a bit happy that my favorite female character is messing with my least favorite character and doing a damn good job at it. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s petty.

Sonic and Sally are slowly but surely becoming a lot more comfortable being around one another again. Sonic’s got his red guitar with him but he doesn’t seem to be strumming a solo song out to the moon for her with it. He looks kind of tired and more contemplating playing something than anything.

The conversation that he shares with Sally is a very emotionally ironic one considering what’s about to happen but it’s also got a twinge of truth to it. Knothole is a booming city now. They’ve got a nice home away from home in Freedom HQ, most of the villains they were worried about several issues before were very easily rounded up and tossed into prison. 

A lot of their circumstances seem ideal which makes it all the more interesting how it gets flipped on its head later in the issue.

Sonic trails off in this conversation by saying “We’re just shy of perfect. If only Tails…”

Sally asks, “What about Tails?” and Sonic just says he’s got the feeling that he’s keeping something from him… which he is.

We see in Tails’ conversation with Rotor that he’s doing a damn good job of hiding it too.

Tails was checking up on Nicole because she was running slow. His attention was on something else entirely and the conversation had to be put on his feelings in order for him to talk about them. That right there shows that he’s trying his best not to let it get to him in his day to day life of course.

That said, his friends are still noticing something is up even if you can’t exactly tell by looking at his normal day to day face. His face does soften up with more of a saddened expression here but the subject matter calls for it considering what Rotor is asking about.
You know, the recent deaths of their comrades is a fairly big thing to have to deal with. Then there was the thing with Fiona. It’s quite a lot. 

That ending line Tails has where he says “Nevermind Sonic” with a smile on his face is a little telling though. 

Then Nicole ends the scene with a hilarious “Diagnosis complete. WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”

Literally on cue, Snively rips off the roof of their base and seemingly vaporizes Rotor.

Then he does the same to Rouge, Julie-Su and Vector. 

Knuckles with that swift dive though. Fantastic.

Bunnie charges in and gets got by Snively while he blasts away Sally (while she’s in the middle of giving Sonic an order), Antoine, Ray, Charmy, and Saffron.

Now, remember, Sonic thinks they’re being VAPORIZED at this point so not only is the look on his face of sheer shock and terror something that has to sink in a bit to realize what he must be going through witnessing this but… it’s also really funny to imagine the last thing he sees and hears before Sally dies in front of him is her about to bark an order at him.

I mean come on.

It’s pretty funny.

Mighty is not amused though. He goes ballisk when he sees Ray get dissolved before his eyes. He charges in, rips off one of Snively’s robot’s arms and starts to attack him with it.

Sonic tells the remaining characters to stay back while Mighty’s on his rampage so they don’t get caught in the middle of it but it ends pretty quickly when Snively finally gets in a shot on Mighty.

He said to Bunnie that it apparently burns A LOT when it happens too. I’ll have to take his word for it.

Poor Tails though. He just got out of a conversation about his mental health and now, unprovoked, he witnesses all his friends get (what he thinks is) vaporized in front of him.

Hell, even if it’s not true the image itself would probably still linger in his mind. Eggman probably should have just done that if he could do it so quickly and efficiently but he’s always been eccentric. Turning them all into fuel for his Egg Grapes is exactly what he would do and I honestly can’t even blame him for it. That sounds so poetic and appropriate that I can’t even fight him on that one.

Still, the terror in Tails’ eyes is great. Meanwhile, Knuckles is just pissed.

“Let me at em, let me at em. Here, hold my tail.” 

Anyway, once Mighty is dead, Sonic then decides to race in.

Back when I read this I found this scene interesting for sure, though, this was during that point in time where I was still hating Mighty really hard. It was another situation where I didn’t get why he was so popular and why people wanted him to come back and when I got to the comics I saw him getting so much more focus than the Chaotix members I cared about. The first Chaotix arc in particular having the three I liked on the covers but being a story that was actually about Mighty when it came out didn’t do much to quell that opinion.

Over the years I’ve tried to will myself to chilling out on stuff like that. It’s not fair, obviously, to blame Mighty for the way I felt the Chaotix were being treated. Sometimes a target to dump all your anger onto comes from rationalizations you’ve built up in your head, you know? Of course, it didn’t help that Charmy in particular is easily the worst treated character in Archie. The pitfalls of being a huge Modern Chaotix fan are many. 

It’s a shame because Mighty’s easily got the most emotionally visceral reaction to seeing this happen over everyone. His relationship with Ray, at this point, isn’t really something that’s been given the most focus in the world or anything which is probably why, even after being shown all the context, it was hard to 100% feel that along with him. Honestly, it’s hard to remember when Ray even came onto the scene. Mighty’s been with the Chaotix since damn near the book’s infancy but Ray almost feels like he crept in through the back door.

Sonic bum rushes Snively but Snively does the incredibly cool maneuver of ejecting in an escape pod and blowing the robot up as soon as Sonic gets near it.

Thankfully, Sonic is extremely durable so this only rattles him. It’s just Tails, Amy, and Knuckles left and they’re apparently safe under some collapsing rocks, or so Tails says. Sonic takes that chance to go off and try to save their families.

Now, an interesting tidbit about the people who are left is that it’s just the four main characters from the games. Ian said in an old as hell interview (or perhaps it was a Bumblekast) that this was intentional. He was trying to pull a scare tactic on the Archie Comic reading audience by having the four main game characters be the only ones left and have them think he was getting rid of the Freedom Fighters or something.

He also laments that this didn’t work. No one fell for it and to be honest it’s not hard to see why. Like, obviously they weren’t just going to go out that quickly without any fanfare. Second though, those same blasts also got rid of OTHER game characters Ian. We saw Rouge, Vector, and Charmy go too. If there was a chance people would think that, it was demolished when you showed game characters going away via the same method.

Like, apparently, back in the day, people seriously believed Espio died at the end of #174. I guess I can see that being a fear a child reading this would have, maybe, but not with the follow-up being something so quick.

Coming up is a wonderful as hell set of pages. It’s probably some of my favorite stuff in the history of this book.

CONFLICT!

CONSEQUENCES!

THE CHANGE IN THE STATUS QUO!

A DESTROYED CITY!

A DEVASTATED SONIC!

A BADASS EGGMAN WALKING THROUGH THE FIRE!

THIS IS PERFECT!

Yes, I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a destruction and situational drama nut. I love shit like this. I know you can’t have Knothole blowing up ALL the time obviously. Something like that happening would make this moment harder to take seriously which makes it all the better that I can’t recall something this devastating happening before. 

We’ve seen them lose Mobotropolis and we’ve seen Eggman’s city get destroyed NUMEROUS times to the point where it’s constant name changes made it comical but Knothole?

The castle? The Lake of Rings? Uncle Chuck’s diner? SONIC’S HOUSE?!

It’s all gone, bathing in a sea of fire with Eggman stomping his way towards his nemesis amongst the flames. All this was something Sonic witnessed after seeing his friends “vaporized” before him and now he thinks all the people who lived here are probably dead and gone too.

Eggman really should have kept his mouth shut here. He tells Sonic that they were taken to his Egg Grapes and it’s THERE where they will meet their end. Now, despite what follows being a glorious scene of Eggman still managing to mess with Sonic’s mind and emotionally manipulate him regardless, it would have had an even stronger punch had he not let the blue boy know the others were still alive at that time. 

Yeah, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’d love to see this kingdom get destroyed permanently. It’s not even really because of anything personal (mostly). I just love stories like that. I love stories that go for the jugular and make it so that the characters are out of their comfort zone and have to be forced into a new situation. Something other than, “We’ll just rebuild the city immediately” too. 

That’s a fantasy for a fan comic of some sort though. Back to the matter at hand, things are REALLY damn cool right now as well. I don’t mean to sell this moment short.

Sonic finds out that Eggman told Snively to leave Sonic for him and fires a shit ton of missiles out at him. He then starts to talk, doing emotional manipulation on our blue boy as he literally surfs on Eggman’s missiles in an attempt to reach him.

Eggman, of course, brings up the deaths of Tommy and Sir Connery. He talks about how someone else had to eventually de-roboticize all his family and friends and even then his dad is still a robot. Oh, and his shit awful love life. Sally, Mina, and even Fiona. Sheesh. 

Sonic’s response to Eggman’s taunts is shocking because it’s not witty at all. He just yells at him to shut up. Eggman admonishes him for this, naturally.

Sonic is clearly shaken by this. Being bombarded with so much unbridled truth about how much of a colossal failure you’ve been does that to a person.

This is the part where the optimism Sally was talking up earlier gets flipped on its head. Yeah, there was a bright side to look at but here comes Eggman to reminds them all of the dark shit that can literally come out of nowhere and change things on a dime for them.

The thing about this back and forth between the heroes and villains of this tale is that, while it’s true that Eggman doesn’t fully beat them and suffers set backs against them, it’s also true that these heroes can never fully beat the bad guy either. Yeah, the heroes have to always win… but Eggman always has to come back. 

And if Eggman always has to come back, can they truly say they’ll ever be able to win?

Eggman is like a natural disaster. It comes around to devastate you every once in a while before it goes away, only to come right the hell back when the next disaster season rolls around. He’s just even more unpredictable since he can come and go as he pleases.

Eggman talks about how the world fell to him so quickly and so easily that he was left with nothing to do. He claims he allowed the Freedom Fighters to exist so that he may entertain himself. 

It’s interesting hearing him say this because I absolutely believe it concerning this Eggman. With him originally having been from another dimension where he conquered his world, that mindset is easy to see. Even though the dialogue is written as though the two of them have personally known each other all their lives, it’s understandable since they’ve known a version of Sonic and a version of Eggman for such a long time. To them it’s probably not even comparing apples and oranges. It’s literally just two apples.

This is a fight between Sonic and Eggman. That’s all they see it as. 

Sonic points out that Eggman has tried and failed to beat them in the past and Eggman doesn’t deny that. He also points out that it doesn’t seem like it matters. Mobius isn’t really any more free than it was years ago. His threat is still looming over everyone. The fact that there’s still multiple groups of Freedom Fighters out there fighting for said freedom makes it a little hard to defend. 

There’s also the slightly noticeable thing of the entire city of Knothole being on fire right now.

Eggman continues, saying that King Max’s attempt to rally support failed. Sonic tries to say that they’d have called them if they needed help but Eggman just says that they didn’t because they knew Sonic and his buddies were powerless to stop this. He emphasizes this by whacking him with his wrecking ball on a chain.

It’s great how this robot has decked itself out with some classic Sonic iconography. Not just in a way where it’s like, “Here’s the wrecking ball on a chain again. Remember that?” 

The spikes and the shield bumpers are also a nice touch. 

However, the clear and obvious joy I get from this scene is just from the fact that I get to watch Eggman just be a complete and total dominant monster towards Sonic.

Sonic gets his ass whooped expertly here and it’s in a way that hasn’t been this visceral or complete before or since. Like, not even the scene where those bad guys played hacky sack with Sonic’s body in the opening of Forces comes close to this. 

It’s happening all the while Sonic is being bombarded with Eggman’s taunts and jeers, none of which Sonic is capable of thinking of quick witted replies to here.

I like the idea that Eggman made this suit specifically to match Sonic’s strength and speed. He’s calculated everything he knows about the rodent into this suit, including some stuff I’ve forgotten like the situation concerning those rings he collected. That random issue where he got his Billionth ring is putting in work still.

The way this fight choreography goes hard is expertly done as well. This page illustrates that perfectly. Sonic sees the wrecking ball headed his way so he leaps over it to dodge but that just puts him in the line of fire for Eggman’s laser and he gets zapped.

Then, when Sonic is stunned, he swings the wrecking ball into Sonic’s body, ensuring he gets hit with it anyway. It’s really well done and it’s definitely up there with some of the best fights in the history of Sonic comics. Most of them tend to do a lot better when they’re given proper time and dedication and aren’t just shuffled to the front or back of an issue for a quick little scuffle. 

Sonic has never been so dry as far as comebacks. He tells the doc to “Keep talking” when he knows he wants him to shut up and he says “He’s not done yet” and proceeds to get beaten on more.

Then while he’s down, Eggman presses the “limit” button. 

In this infamous scene, Sonic loses his goddamn mind. I can almost parallel it to what ends up happening to Eggman in Issue #200. Only, Sonic manages to hold onto just enough of his sanity to not completely lose it.

Still, it doesn’t look like much of it’s left when he bolts all the way to the East Coast.

“HAHA! MY HOME HAS BEEN DESTROYED! EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE I KNOW AND LOVE MAY ALREADY BE GONE FOREVER! IT’S FINE THOUGH! I’M FINE! I’VE GOT ALL THE SANITY STILL!”

He’s moving faster than Eggman calculated he could, which is concerning for him. Snively has to chart out where his location is for Eggman and then when Sonic blasts his way back to the doctor at the highest speed he can go, Eggman looks like he’s about to gaze into Heaven itself.

That’s such a fantastic line. 

The fact that you can take the phrase “stars and garters” and switch the starting letters and sounds around to “gears and starters” in order to make it relevant to Eggman and his love of machines is truly elegant.

Oh, and Sonic is coming in hard and fast with a ZEEEEEE. He’s moving so quickly that the motion blur he’s leaving behind stretches far off the page.

Then the impact hits and the verdict is rendered immediately.

“All that for a drop of blood dented shield.”

I like how Sonic is holding his head and stuttering there. Like, what he just did must have hurt… A LOT but he’s also trying his best to gloat about it because it was really cool and awesome… but not awesome enough, I’m afraid. 

When Eggman can no sell it by just complaining that the shield he had was dented, it just makes what he said and did in response to the cool thing you did look that much cooler. I’m sorry Sonic but Eggman is just cooler than you now.

This Egg Jock proceeds to beat up this hedgehog nerd. He does so relentlessly and this time Sonic can’t even fight back or dodge properly. He’s completely at Eggman’s mercy.

He gets his ass kicked the likes of which Sonic has never gotten his ass kicked before and as I said earlier, it’s a beating that still hasn’t been replicated.

At the end of the love tap session, Sonic looks absolutely demolished. He’s been destroyed and turned into a pathetic ball of clay.

Eggman grabs his body and starts to lay into him.

It’s a great speech. 

The only outlier is what Eggman says in the bottom panel. He sure would love it if Sonic would just run to go find another Freedom Fighter group to rally together to save everyone and for Sonic to be too late in doing so.

However, he made a big mistake in not snapping Sonic’s legs so that they broke before he left, just in case.

Like, I’m not even saying to kill him because if I were Eggman I’d want him to remain alive so he can live with the sorrow of how badly he failed too but you need a little more insurance other than hoping that Sonic’s spirit is broken.

Granted, I can’t blame Eggman for thinking he might have finally done it with all he’s accomplished today and the look on Sonic’s face when he drops him.

Roll credits.

No, seriously. How great would it be if that was it? This world was just another one that the former Robo-Robotnik managed to conquer and the next one he tried to take over was like… I don’t know, the Archie reboot series? IDW? Who knows?

It’d be a more satisfying end to these comics if Eggman just won than the ending the Archie comics will end up having, honestly. At least that’s something definitive. All this time we were reading the comic, we had no idea the heroes we were following we going to fucking fail. How’s that for a Thanos twist?

Tails rushes up to Sonic, crying from his eyes, and tries to help his buddy. Tails is more accepting of the defeat but Sonic, being Sonic, isn’t.

I mean, of course he isn’t.

It’s a wonder Eggman’s biggest miscalculation here was forgetting that this was Sonic he was dealing with.

Eggman, you gave Sonic a sliver of hope. You shouldn’t have done that.

Sonic’s not going to give up, EVER, unless MAYBE it was already confirmed that all his friends and family were dead. Even then, I doubt he’d stop fighting. He’d probably take a long time to recover but I could totally see him turning into a brooding sad sack that still, with all his might, tried to fight back against Eggman and died trying.

That’s why he should have, at least, broke his legs. 

Like, just drop Sonic in the dirt like you did before and stomp on them with those huge robot feet of yours. Use the rocket boosters in them to heat the metal up when you do it. He’ll probably go into shock from the pain. 

I’m not a monster.

Anyway, that’s the actual end of the issue. There’s no back-up story to get in the way of that thrilling conclusion. Not this time. It just lingers on the hopelessness of the situation and leaves the reader wondering what’s going to happen now that the city is destroyed, all his friends and family are about to be turned into fuel, and Eggman has a Sonic-Proof robot at his disposal.

Well, turns out the solution to this problem is going to be shockingly a lot easier than anticipated.

It won’t be EASY-easy but I recall it leaving a lot to be desired when I first read this story arc. 

I just finished reading one of the best issues in the history of Archie Sonic but there’s a reason why I tend not to put this arc in the top echelon of arcs in Archie Sonic alongside Enerjak Reborn, Eggman’s Dozen, and Order From Chaos. 

Ian Flynn talked about how this arc concludes and it put into perspective the fact that this phenomenal issue’s existence is owed entirely to Ian and his team’s persistence in wanting to at least get this one part of the story approved.

They pitched a story where Eggman basically won but HAD to assure SEGA that it would be immediately reversed. It’s a fairly well known rule that what happened here can’t happen.

Oh, Sonic can get his ass kicked. That’s fine. It happens at the start of Forces. He can be defeated, sure, but the merit behind Eggman’s win here wasn’t going to be resolved in an immediate manner like in that game. Not only that but it was a much different time and SEGA/Sonic Team tends to change the rules and their decisions a lot regarding what they are and aren’t okay with.

Omega could be banned from the book one day and be okayed the next. Why? Who knows?

As such, the stipulation that they had to settle on for getting this story made was the promise that they were going to immediately reverse it. What happens next is basically just a series of scenes showcasing how the heroes immediately win. 

Granted, it takes two more issues to get through so perhaps I’m not giving it enough credit. Maybe a re-visit will help put things into a little more perspective for me. 

I have my doubts. I’m someone who, again, enjoys a longer story and marinating in the thoughts and feelings of the characters suffering through a dramatic problem for as long as I can get it. I remember some of that definitely happening in the next issue but I also remember it not happening for too long. 

I’d probably be super okay with just getting an entire issue of the characters reflecting on their loss and trying not to argue with one another. I wouldn’t show a single scene of what Eggman was doing at his base or where the family and friends were, just to heighten the tension of whether or not they were too late in gathering the stuff they needed to mount a proper rescue.

As is, we’ll see.

Oh yeah, and speaking of Omega, he was apparently supposed to make his debut here as the one raiding Knothole instead of Snively. That sounds like a much more badass entrance for him than the one he got. He was also supposed to kill Tommy but uh… I can see why that may not have been the best idea.

Omega was barred from appearing in the comics in general for an extremely long time regardless. It’s just another one of those examples of SEGA having one rule and then changing their mind the next day because someone asked for something at the right time.

There you have it. One of the best issues in all of Archie Sonic was about Eggman completely flexing on Sonic. It’s a very special occasion and the book knows it. It’s not something you’d see too much of in any Sonic story out there, let alone portrayed as harshly and as violently as this was. I’m forever grateful I got that chance to feel something similar again with the Zombot stuff and I look forward to more wallowing in misery before the eventual, satisfactory turn around that leads to the happy ending. It’s just a shame that after this point, the atmosphere built up by this issue dissipates far too quickly for the sake of pleasing the Sonic Team Gods. 

Who can say though? Their whims change from day to day. Maybe they’d be okay with a story that allowed Sonic to stay beaten for just a little bit longer. You could argue the Metal Virus arc was kind of like that. I’d wish I had a comprehensive list of what Sonic Team is thinking if I weren’t certain that list would be outdated the next day. They’re so weird.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #176: Cracking the Empire

This is a really good cover. Goddamn. Look at that fire burn. It’s funny that it took me until just now to realize that Sonic wasn’t holding a random red scarf. He was holding the Acorn flag. For some reason, whenever I glance at this cover I gloss over the fine details with my shitty eyes. As such, the image of the acorn on green blends in with the grass a little and looks like a hole in the red cloth showing off some grass and a weirdly shaped rock. You can kind of see it if you squint a bit. 

Either way, I’m excited to get into this one. I remember the first part being neat drama stuff but I recall very little of where certain events take place. I’m thinking this entire issue might be the immediate resolution and the next one is some aftermath stuff and some cleanup involving the Sonic-Proof robot but… gosh, I hope not.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito

This issue begins exactly the way I wanted it to. 

There’s intense confusion after the massive carpet bombing that Eggman did to Knothole. Even Freedom HQ has been destroyed. Tails is glancing around, looking highly unamused by what he’s seeing too. However, I think the best thing is the character introduction page.

Eggman is in the center as though he’s the main character. Sonic’s off to the side, looking pissed off and extremely irritated. Tails is disgruntled as hell. You can tell he’s trying not to lose his cool but he’s not happy. It’s more of a building of silent rage. Knuckles is just RAGE though. Amy looks devastated. Nicole is a Nintendo DS.

They’ve all got completely different reactions on their faces and it’s brilliantly done. Sonic feels like a horrendous, epic failure and looks like he’s about ready to run towards the nearest living thing and kill it himself. Meanwhile, Tails seems to be trying to keep some level of composure but when pitted against Sonic’s irritation, he grows more and more irritated himself.

Couple this with the fact that Tails already has beef with Sonic that he’s been suppressing this whole time. Now he’s got to deal with the fact that their homes are gone and their friends and families may be turning into fuel as they speak while ALSO trying to talk to this person he’s got beef with.

Even worse is that the person he’s got beef with is now refusing to listen to his rational suggestions because he’s embarrassed and irritated, which is just going to make Tails even more upset too.

Sonic tells them all what happened to their friends but quickly tries to get them to stay behind, saying that he’ll handle it himself.

Literally anyone who saw that fight last issue should just immediately know that’s a horrible idea. I love that we don’t even need to be explained as to why either. It’s easier to question why he might need his friends in some of these games because Sonic is always treated as the win button and is the only playable character now.

The perspectives of the others seldom matter at all and as such all the obstacles fall on Sonic because he’s the only one who’s perspective we have to follow. So he solves all the conflicts for us.

He can’t do that here and his stubborn desire to get revenge and save face from the massive humiliating failure he just suffered is just going to ensure Eggman wins in the end. 

Tails has had it with Sonic at this point and completely shuts down his attempt to undermine his help.

Sonic and Tails reacting this way to one another was unheard of to me around the time I read this. I honestly found it hard to believe but I wanted more of it.

Unfortunately, Nicole does the smart thing and chimes in by saying the in-fighting needs to wait and that she has a plan.

From what I gather, her plan kind of amounts to just doing what Tails was suggesting they do but with the usual Nicole flair of sticking her into some sort of socket to override some sort of machine.

Same plan as usual.

The Sonic and Tails fighting would be followed up on in a much, much, much worse story a bit later and in Sonic Lost World. Lost World has a better story than House of Cards but mostly by virtue of not having a lot to say and thus having a lot less it can screw up. 

I still welcome another story where Sonic and Tails have a fight that isn’t over something stupid like “You stole my pretend girlfriend” or “You trust Eggman more than me because I randomly decided that after a scene where we both agreed to let Eggman come along.”

We cut to the Egg Vineyard (great name) where Eggman is actually thanking all the people he's captured for providing him so much entertainment up to this point. You can see the outlines of the people within their Egg Grapes and, if your eyes are good enough, might even be able to tell who is who amongst all the similar looking Acorns and Prowers.

The time he’s taking to do this probably isn’t directly lining up with the scenes shown at the bottom of each panel of what Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Nicole are doing. If so, then Eggman’s speech here is SO long winded that it took them constructing a hovercraft, leaving the ruins of Knothole, flying to New Megaopolis, destroying his defenses, and breaking into the Egg Vineyard for it to be complete.

He goes to the Freedom Fighters and talks about how they were the most amusing but the most annoying. He talks about how dumb the Chaotix were for throwing their lot in with the resistance. I still don’t know what the Chaotix identify as in these comics. They’re basically another Freedom Fighter group but they have this seemingly arbitrary name attached.

Within the Egg Grapes, you can catch some neat details. Antoine and Bunnie are looking into each other’s eyes with Bunnie’s having some cracks on hers from her trying to punch her way out. Mighty has two cracks on his from doing the same. Ray has just… given up and accepted his fate with him hugging himself and laying down. Espio is meditating. 

As Eggman is speeching, we see that our surviving heroes are on their way, looking over the devastation that Eggman hath wrought.

 

Tails’ face is my favorite. He’s so done with this shit. Stuff kept piling on and piling on and now he looks almost numb to it. Sonic looks like he’d rather keep his head down and eyes shut then glance at all this stuff too. Knuckles must also feel pretty bad, considering he stayed off his island so that he could prevent stuff like this from happening. This IS pretty solid proof that Knuckles made the right decision though. At the end of the day, Eggman is stationed on Mobius and it’s where he can do the most damage. It’s where he just DID a ton of damage.

The guy needs the fight taken directly to him. 

Then Eggman starts to chastise the Acorns, which I’m all for. He lays into Max, which is great. Max is hunched over and looks like he couldn’t give less of a shit.

He’s so over this crap. I doubt he can even muster up the strength to pretend he cares about his family. It’s great.

I momentarily got excited when Eggman mentioned never seeing a king as weak as him… only to realize that he was talking about my good boy, Elias. Instantly I went “Aww… that’s not fun.”

If Elias is a weak king it’s only because he didn’t want to be anyway. He just came back and took the position for… reasons. 

Yeah, there was going to be a passing of the torch so he had to do it to make sure that any assassination attempts would fall on him rather than his sister. Yeah sure. Whatever. It’s really convenient that this never came up until that exact story when Patch was trying to kill Sally.

Eggman’s taunting, once again, is taking a REALLY long time. Either that or the speeder that the heroes are riding on is just REALLY fast. They’re already on the outskirts of New Megaopolis by the time Eggman finishes admonishing the Acorn Kingdom for being inarguably terrible.

I was still having fun witnessing Eggman’s feats of fury and the heroes at his mercy until the next scene started. Immediately, I recalled what was to happen and prepared for disappointment.

So… Eggman decides he wants to demonstrate for his captives what’s about to happen to them to sufficiently terrify them before the end.

The person he chooses as his guinea pig is, hey, wouldn’t you know it; Charmy Bee.

Strong, bold, wonderful words coming from our canonically teenage bee. 

It will be the last time he says anything remotely resembling this from here on in. This includes Post-Reboot but that’s understandable considering he’s how he’s supposed to be in the games from the get-go there. Here, he’s supposed to be older, wiser, and more mature…

...However, this issue came out in June 2007. Sonic Heroes was but 4 years ago. Charmy had been inducted back into the games for a considerable amount of time now. Vector and Espio were basically fine the way they were but Charmy just wasn’t acting like his game counterpart.

Of course he wasn’t. Why would he when he was a teenager? 

Well, that’s the rub ain’t it? Charmy in Heroes is 6, not 16 like the Knuckles’ Chaotix US manuel stated. Interestingly enough, the Chaotix manuel in Japan never listed Charmy’s age so he may have always been 6 and they just didn’t give a shit what the US manuel said. I can see that since they were a lot more loose when it came to America changing shit up back then. Their main villain literally had a completely different name for fuck’s sake.

However, at some point, the concern that came with making sure the Sonic series didn’t have a different set of rules and regulations depending on which country you were in started to show up more often. 

Archie Sonic could still get away with a lot of the weird stuff they were doing thanks to that insanely old contract that allowed them to do so but there were situations where they had no choice but to acquiesce to what SEGA wanted. That included not including Omega until they said so. That included not including Cream until they said so. That included not including Eggman Nega… ever.

Then there were situations that were just the result of fixing the confusion that was bound to happen when new readers got into the comic. Like me, for example.

I was insanely confused by Charmy’s standing in the comic when I got into them. Hell, I didn’t even know WHAT the Chaotix were even supposed to be and still don’t. They’re not detectives. They don’t refer to themselves as Freedom Fighters. So what are they? 

Knuckles is apparently one so does that mean they’re following Knuckles’ Chaotix to the letter? I guessed that was it and eventually I was able to line up Charmy being 16 in the US manual for the Chaotix with this. It took a bit but I eventually got there.

Despite my ramblings about SEGA trying to keep things clean and consistent with what they wanted I’ll admit, it doesn’t really matter because I don’t actually know if this was because SEGA asked for it to happen or not.

It probably happened because Ian himself wanted to clear up the confusion for new readers somehow and decided he needed to do something about it. 

If that’s the case… that’s still not a good thing because there are a multitude of ways to do this. Even if he made up some bullshit about the Egg Grapes reducing Charmy to fuel but only being half way done and thus he got de-aged in body and mind to a six year old or something… that would have been better than what actually happens.

The four surviving heroes burst through the wall and immediately start smashing things up. The rescue just happens.

Eggman is almost comically out done here, spouting off a line that sounds insane and ridiculous when you read it out loud. It was forgivable in the previous issue but him being this shocked that Sonic came back to save his friends and the fact that he only gets away because Charmy got his brian fried almost makes it look like his competence meter went down to zero.

I do like that when Sonic burst in he’s immediately distraught when he sees Charmy getting zapped, thinking that he was probably too late yet again. 

Technically, he definitely is too.

I do like that scene of Eggman and Snively running away together. It’s true. Snively did a good job considering the number of people he was supposed to capture. Missing just three of them ain’t half bad.
Of course, the important stuff here is Sonic tending to Charmy and Tails ripping off the console to the computer so Nicole can hack it.

What happened to Charmy here isn’t revealed until the next issue so I’ll save most of my ramblings about it for that but it’s… 

...I’m just…

… God, this poor kid.

I mean, good God. This poor, relentlessly tortured kid. It’s almost a godsend that the reboot happened if only to ensure that this version of Charmy got erased from existence. I’d rather they had addressed what was wrong with him properly and fixed it but the subject matter was so uncomfortable that he was just ignored ever since this happened and rendered a meaningless background element until the day Saffron was also taken away from him.

Everyone gathers around Charmy to see if he’s okay but Dr. Quack says he’s stable which gives Amy the cue she needs to cheer, “WE DID IT!”

As for Nicole’s plan, well, the usual plan of “break in and stick a thing into a thing to make a different thing happen” is going well. Sally gets into leader mode, posing in a way that emphasizing how naked she is, before the wind is taken out of her sails as Sonic let’s her know that they’ve already got a plan.

Sally isn’t immediately trusting of it and when Eggman’s Anti-Sonic bot comes down she’s in full on panic mode, which gets worse the more Eggman zaps everyone away. She thinks they’re all going back into the Egg Grapes, which makes Sonic’s reluctance to say anything specific about the plan all the more hilarious.

Obviously, he can’t because Eggman will hear it but Sonic’s calm demeanor isn’t doing anything, ANYTHING to get Sally to chill. She gets blasted thinking Sonic has lost his mind even though he’s honestly made it pretty clear, multiple times, that this is kind of part of the plan.

Imagine if that were her being vaporized though. Sonic just stood there and smirked as it happened.

Then gave a thumbs up as he got blasted to.

Then the other shoe drops.

Despite how disappointed I am by how quick the resolution to this all was, this scene was always funny. That lone panel of Eggman standing there doing and saying nothing before going after them is wonderful.

Where ARE they though? Why, they’re in their new home.

Yup. New home.

It looks like the nanite city but it’s more than that. 

Welcome to New Mobotropolis.

Everyone is happy. All their homes have been rebuilt, the Lake of Rings is back, though the question of whether or not it can produce rings is asked twice and goes unanswered both times, and King Max cries tears of joy because he sees the Castle of Acorn as it was back in the days of the old city.

Bleurgh. King Max is happy? No. Fuck that. This truly is a bad thing that Nicole did. Bad, bad, bad.

In all seriousness though, I remember being… REALLY upset when I read this back in the day. It was such an insane cop out to me. I know Nicole said she was working on it this whole time and we do have reason to believe she would do something like this given that her physical form here was already a pet project of hers from a while back; not to mention what we learn next issue with the nanites.

I… I gotta be honest, even knowing what Nicole can do this still feels a little hard to just accept. At least when it first happens. The story will do it’s best to ease me into feeling more okay with it but it takes a while. I don’t know if that’s because I’m having trouble buying it OR if it’s literally just my disappointment at how quickly the destruction of Knothole was swept under the rug.

Either way, it doesn’t really matter if there’s a proper underlying explanation for this because we weren’t privy to this information when Eggman was doing his awesome conquest. As such, it just feels a lot more futile looking back on it. Like what he did was for nothing because the consequences for what Eggman did were just skipped over. Like someone pressed the fast forward button on the DVD of life and skipped to the part where everything was okay again.

No coming to terms with Knothole being gone. No trying to build up the courage to continue on. No coping with their failure and pushing themselves to continue the fight. 

It’s just immediately fixed.

Good explanation or not, that wasn’t satisfying to me. Yeah, the status quo has been upended still but not in the way I found the most interesting. The bells and whistles that come with this new city will indeed be relevant. The relevancy of the status quo change I wanted was just entirely different.

However, there’s still time left. Let’s see how well the rest of the story does to mke me more okay with it.

Eggman didn’t take long to figure out what happened and is now on his way to Knothole with his Egg Fleet in tow. 

This is a good ending to the issue and it gave me hope that we were in for a neat little mini war of some kind. If this were Sonic Universe, this would have been the part where the third issue was next and then the fourth one concluded it.

Instead, the next issue is the last one and hopefully it uses it’s time wisely because I need to be sold on this.

So that was the second part of this story. It’s definitely not as good as the milestone issue that was 175 but it had a lot of that drama I wanted at the start as well as Eggman being a delightful ham. It goes downhill the instant he does the infamous thing to Charmy though. There were a few amusing things that took place from that point on but it wasn’t enough to salvage the disappointment I felt from the instant reversal that happened concerning the state of their home and what will end up being the fallout from Charmy’s little scuffle with the Egg Grapes. 

This in-between issue suffers from me anticipating what the true ending to the conflict is going to be and hoping that what happened in #175 wasn’t entirely worthless. Fingers crossed I’ll feel better about this at the end of #177. 

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #177: Home, New Home

Here we are. This is the final issue of this particular story and it’s got a fairly normal and simple cover. It’s easily the weakest cover of this set which is appropriate since I remember this being the weakest issue of this set. I can hardly wait to see if my mind has changed after all these years though. Let’s do it.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito

I think this might be the first story where Ian’s problem with endings rears its ugly head. It’s not too egregious in that department because the way the ending goes feels a lot better paced. You can tell that the way this plays out was definitely the plan despite the fact that it was only made like this because they needed to reverse what happened immediately. That’s still impressive. I’ve gotta give him his props here, despite what my personal preferences are.

Like, not for nothing, a lot of stuff does happen in this issue. 

We begin with Nicole’s explanation for how all this worked. Even though we never saw her do this it does make sense that this is something she could accomplish with the nanites. She took control of the Nanite City and changed it to give everyone a New Mobotropolis and herself a new body. 

It’s a really clever solution to the plan and another example of Ian utilizing Ken Penders’ left overs for the greater good. Honestly, I don’t even know how else this could have been extended so that the heroes had to marinate in the loss of their city for a bit longer when you had this really good idea in your backpocket. I suppose Nicole could have, somehow, been indisposed and then when they got her back online she could have surprised them with this new city.

My problem with this isn’t the concepts and ideas on display here. It’s just going too quickly for my liking. Again, I’m one of those weirdos that prefers longer arcs so I can wallow in the misery of the horrible stuff the heroes are going through for as long as I can before the happy ending hits. It makes the relief so much better that way.

Nicole is also aware that she spared the lives of five convicts; Mogul, Naugus, Fang, Bean, and Bark. 

I momentarily forgot that the Destructix were somewhere else. Keeping track of these characters is a task and a half.

Anyway, these losers who lost are free now but not really. Mogul, hilariously enough, tries to scare them with this huge speech but gets transported into a cell mid-monologue.

I love how Mogul’s got his hands to his head as this happens. It’s like, “Surrender now or I’ll-OH NO! I’M AN IDIOT!”

I do agree with Nack here though. I too am also getting tired of seeing him thrown in a cell. It helps that Bean’s insane and doesn’t give a fuck. He thinks it’s cool how it happened. Thankfully, that close up on Mogul’s face is going to lead to a very, very awesome plan. It’s so good that I wish I had come up with it myself.

I’ll spare you another rant about how much I hate seeing these guys arrest people and how problematic this new system might be when under the control of the Acorn Kingdom to instead focus on Nicole here. Her body is turning into code again but not because she’s dying. She needs to keep all her power on the shields because Eggman’s Egg Fleet is bombarding the city and trying to break through.

You can see the huge lasers just raining down on it in the background. This place is like Wakanda now.

As Nicole’s body dissipates, Sally sheds tears for her as she’s giving so much just to keep them all safe. 

I gotta say, back in the day, I never quite got Nicole. Her whole thing was kind of hard for me to grasp and I just kind of let it skate by. Whenever a story came up that was about her, I’d read it and go “Okay. Cool.” and then move on.

I feel like I’m starting to have a heavier appreciation for the kind of character she is now. It’s really going in on this idea of artificial intelligence being the same as real intelligence and how robots and computers can indeed have consciousness and heart to them. We technically explored this with Gamma and it’d be ridiculous to suggest that Omega doesn’t have an assload of desire in him but these comics are really diving in as far as Nicole is concerned.

There’s this barrier between me and the Archie comics that I’ve never been able to fully push through, even now, that prevents me from fully investing myself in the plight of the Freedom Fighters and the heroes. Even now that I have IDW, something about the status quo of the Archie comics and the way the characters are written is keeping me from fully appreciating a lot of the hard work that goes into characters like Nicole.

Even recognizing that her and Sally have a really well-written relationship, the feelings within me remain neutral. It sucks because I want to do more than just recognize that this is good. I want to feel what they’re feeling but I guess that’s just how personal bias works. For some reason I care more about characters like Elias and Antoine than I do Sally and Nicole. 

At least I’m not doing that thing where I’m like “ONLY GAME CHARACTERS OR BUST!” 

No. A lot of these villains I wish were in the fucking games. Scourge, Finitevus, and Mogul especially.

Sonic says he’s out of plans so NOW he’s turning to Sally for assistance. Sally and Elias don’t really have one. Despite their new city, everyone’s still rattled from the invasion earlier so Elias proposes that they focus on keeping their mental states healthy by visiting their new homes and spending time with their families. 

He says this in that infamous scene where Jason Jenson mistakenly colored in Sonic’s mom as Amy.

Yeah. I mean, her design isn’t that great so it’s hard for me to be upset by this personally. Though it is still hilarious that it happened. Especially since she’s right next to Sonic’s dad. It makes you wonder how this could have happened at all. Like, her hair isn’t even the same shape. It looks so weird.

Sonic is double ordered by the king and the princess to seek medical attention. They’re definitely right to do so because his bones should be as soft as jello right now. Still, there’s that evil part of me underneath that’s just like “Defy their orders Sonic! Go out there and break more of your bones like an idiot!”

I apologize if it annoys anyone whenever I constantly point out whenever Sonic obeys orders and stuff by the way. I’ve just got this massive chip on my shoulder about Sonic’s relationship with this kingdom that won’t go away so I tend to make a lot of jokes about it to keep myself grounded. I’m aware that he’s doing it because he’s friends with these people and he respects them, not because he was ordered to. I understand that in moments like these, it's not that serious. Trust me, I know. I mostly point it out to entertain myself. I like making jokes about Sonic being their whipping boy even when he isn't.

Blame the next story arc for this. It left a pretty huge scar when it comes to these thoughts of mine. 

In the next scene, we get a couple of things established here.

The first thing is Rotor.

I had no idea this story arc was where this happens. A lot of this feels like aftermath stuff but Eggman’s literally bombarding the shield with his lasers as this happens.

So yeah, I didn’t mention it last time but to be fair I probably should have because it felt really deliberate when it happened. Rotor pushed Tails out of the way of some falling debris and it shattered his back. 

As a result of this, he stops being a field member for the Freedom Fighters.

Now, as I said before, my first Archie Comic issue was #181 and then I skipped a few and started to actually read the book month to month from #194 onward. As such I had no context for why Rotor was being treated as some dude off to the side in most of those stories. Despite never having watched SatAM in its entirety I was aware that he was one of the Freedom Fighters as well as a tech guy.

Rotor’s back injury is something that I always considered a bit of a mystery. Ironically, even having read all these issues before I had no idea where it originated from. My attention span truly was complete ASS back in the day because it’s literally being spelled out for me here. 

I guess I was either more concerned with Charmy or I just shrugged at this scene, thinking it was just a regular old injury that would heal itself. I must not have expected this to be a permanent thing.

It is though. Rotor gets put into the backseat and remains the stay at home tech guy before eventually finding himself on the Acorn Kingdom’s Council, which doesn’t exist yet.

This is… not too surprising of a move. It’s easy to figure out why this happened even without eventually hearing Ian Flynn explain it on his podcast. It was because of the trouble of finding a proper role for Rotor to fit into due to them already having a new tech guy in Tails.

This is a conversation that’s been kicked up on here a couple of times. Some people find the presence of two tech guys on the hero’s side redundant. Others don’t see anything wrong with it. I can see the argument both ways, which is why I don’t have a problem with either decision. Rotor being hoisted into a new role works for me. However, were he to stay on as yet another tech guy I’d probably be cool with that too.

Granted, I do have a bit more sympathy for Ian’s predicament seeing as how he wants to make them all stand out individually. There’s not much separating Rotor from Tails in this department aside from how much older than Tails he is. I guess it could lead to a more mentor-student relationship but Tails hasn’t shown to be in any real need of that. Not when it comes to building tech anyway. So I guess they could just be partners but even then that does little to make Rotor stand out on his own. He’s just another tech guy in that sense.

It also wouldn’t be such a big deal if his personality were more unique but he’s just kind of the general nice dude which is also kind of what Tails is, in a sense. Tails kind of has a lot more going for him in that department though because his development and relationship with a lot of these characters is way more fleshed out. Plus, with him being a lot younger, there’s more to take advantage of with the differences in character dynamics.

I don’t want to go on for too long about this because it ultimately doesn’t matter to me. I’m cool with it either way. I’m just acknowledging that I can see both sides of the argument which is why it isn’t surprising to me that there’s never a definitive position people land on whenever this conversation gets brought up.

Granted, that’s true of most arguments so what are you gonna do?

No, obviously, the big thing that really caught my attention was the Charmy situation. If I wasn’t aware of what was happening when he got zapped in those Egg Grapes I definitely was when we got here.

Kay.

So…

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone here that Charmy’s my favorite Sonic character. If you somehow didn’t know that, now you do. Hi. Hello there. I’m Dr. Detective Mike. Nice meeting you.

The exchange at the bottom panel always confused me. I have no idea why Charmy asks if Espio used to be purple when he currently is purple. His eyesight didn't go away did it? Also, Espio's response being "I'm a chameleon" doesn't make sense either. What's that got to do with you being purple?

Uuuuuuhmmm…

Interestingly enough, Charmy was actually in that character introduction box at the beginning of the issue. It’s going to be a really long time before that happens again because it wasn’t realized how huge of a mistake this was until it was too late to fix it.

Charmy basically has brain damage. He was stricken with heavy memory loss, the extent of which no one knows and seemingly will NEVER know, and his behavior and mental state has been reduced to that of a 6-year-old child. 

So that whole thing about Charmy being 16 in the US manual for Knuckles’ Chaotix and eventually, when Sonic Heroes came out, his age was 6? Well, in a bid to stave off confusion for people coming from the games to the comics, this was the course of action taken to get Charmy more in line with his game counterpart.

He was given a mental condition that makes him act like he’s six.

Now… what’s baffling about this is that he’s STILL 16. 

This doesn’t… REALLY fix anything. All around all it did was make the situation far, far worse. He’s 16 but now he acts like he’s 6. His girlfriend has to basically take care of him and his memories of the Chaotix are… I don’t even know. He remembers Saffron but how far back does he know Saffron? Or maybe he remembers who he’s allied with but, like, thinks they’re with him in the time from when he was a kid who was going to grow up and be a king?

The nature of what this memory loss entails is confusing and you’d hope it’d be cleared up soon or eventually but you’re going to have to settle for NEVER.

Ironically, this terrible decision made it impossible to utilize Charmy in the way that he was intended to be utilized. The entire point of doing this became the reason Ian didn’t feel comfortable using him anymore after this. It's an extremely painful irony, the likes of which blew a hole in my heart when I realized it.

Charmy’s character and behavior in the games being the result of a mental condition makes it so that having Charmy crack these weird jokes and say all this random stuff isn’t funny. It’s just sad and painful. You can’t laugh at his antics anymore. They’re never going to be funny because he’s only saying this stuff as a result of his brain getting fried. You’d essentially be laughing at the mentally disabled. 

Were Ian to use Charmy in the way he was used in the games, he’d also be writing jokes about a mentally disabled person now. 

It’s… shocking that this wasn’t realized and stopped in the planning phases for it. Everything about this works against what the goal is supposed to be here. I know aging up Amy was a bit lazy and hokey but Ian’s a lot smarter and more clever than the people who were in charge of writing for the book at that time. He could have thought of something better than this if he truly felt it was necessary for Charmy to act how he did in the games.

Hell, one could even argue it wasn’t necessary for him to act like how he was in the games in the first place. He’s been like this for years and years at this point in the comic’s run and a simple story beat re-establishing who Charmy was and where he was now might have been able to catch new readers up to speed on him. There’s just some things, nay a TON of things, about these Archie Comics that the new readers aren’t going to get.

That was true of me when I started reading them. I was mostly able to follow the stories. I didn’t necessarily NEED to know that the Iron Queen was a pre-existing character to follow the Iron Dominion Arc. It helps knowing that but the focus of the arc wasn’t on where she was, it was about where she was going and what she was doing now.

I get why this was a fear of his but this was not well thought out in the slightest. It couldn’t have been.

I’m not mad at Ian for this, by the way. He’s apologized for this multiple times and has owned up to his mistake regarding this. I definitely have zero interest in being upset at him or even holding it against him. 

I’m upset that this happened at all and I’m disappointed that it led to Charmy’s already meager standing in the comics being reduced even more. Ian definitely recognized that this was a terrible idea fairly quickly. That’s the reason why Charmy’s role gets so reduced after this. He was uncomfortable using him. The thing he did so that he could use him better ended up being the thing that made him unable to use him at all. 

I wish he had jumped on fixing it a lot quicker instead of pushing him to the back and hoping to keep it out of people’s minds. The next time I even recall his mental state being brought up is in Issue #212. They pay it some lip-service, say “He needs even MORE time” and then they never mention it again until Saffron gets yeeted out of existence too before the Archie Reboot happens.

If the story had continued as it was then Charmy would have lost his best friend, his family, his home, his memory, and then lost his girlfriend and caretaker. Aside from the Chaotix, all the people closest to him would have been dead or gone and he’d be alone with a mental condition and vaguely scattered memories.
A lot of these problems are just circumstantial issues piling on, one after another. Out of all the characters, Charmy just so happened to have that age discrepancy amongst the Chaotix. Out of all the characters, Charmy’s girlfriend just happened to have been one of Penders’ creations and thus needed to be taken away when the lawsuit hit. It’s all just a bunch of things that happened one after the other due to outside forces concerning this one character that rendered his life a tragedy.

Forget Knuckles. Forget Sally. Charmy, somehow, easily ended up getting the absolute cruelest treatment out of anyone in these books and it’s just depressing.

There’s almost NO silver lining to any of it. That’s the real big thing here. I love tragedy and marinating in dark concepts and the like but I do make a point of saying that it’s for the purpose of that happy ending being all the more sweet when it arrives.

It’s not satisfying to just relentlessly beat down on one of your heroes and turn their lives into a horror show for NO reason. 

It’s really telling that when the reboot happened, Charmy all of a sudden had way more time dedicated to him then he ever had before it. Even before the memory loss happened, he wasn’t paid much attention to. There were times where Penders would even forget to include him in the story and have characters lampshade it by saying “We’d never forget about you Charmy” only for the guy to write this fucked up story about his friend dying from LSD as an excuse to write him out of the book. 

I don’t get it. He wasn’t even brought back in Heroes yet when that story was written so it’s not like he formed an opinion on him based on that. Why was he being singled out like that by Penders? I truly do not understand.

Well, what’s done is done.

This boy’s life is a tragedy but I take solace in the fact that he’s still around. At the very least, things did eventually get better for him.

That was a long rant and I knew it was going to be. How could it not? Still, I must move on.

We get a scene of Finitevus making love to the Master Emerald and reading it it's favorite poem. Scourge tries to inform him that Dimitri has (figuratively speaking) made a run for it but Finitevus is delighted by the news since that’s apparently what he wanted to happen. His plan is coming together smoothly and soon Enerjak will be… reborn, you could say.

Next we get a cute scene of Sally, Bunnie, and Antoine overlooking the city while sitting in a tree. Sally is reminiscing about how the city looks like the Old Mobotropolis and remembers the time when they thought they were all orphans, fighting it out in the forest. Bunnie doesn’t remember the Old Mobotropolis because she wasn’t a part of them at that time but she brings the scene together when it comes to Antoine here. My boy is very worried considering Eggman is still blasting the shield but Bunnie pulls him in and gets the loving side of him to come out. 

It’s really heart-warming seeing these two together. I love seeing that worried look on Antoine’s face just melt away and turn into a smile as he embraces his wife. It’s fantastic.

This is also where Ian gets to work on fixing up Sally too.

Her reminiscing about the old times isn’t here for the sake of being emotional for no reason. No, this is an establishing moment for how her character is going to shift going forward.

She talks about how it was back when she led them, back when she wasn’t the acting monarch, or the heir-apparent, or had to get married, or had to deal with all that other horseshit Penders was writing for her.

This scene just takes a massive dump on all of that. 

She asks Bunnie if she remembers wanting to be her royal hair-dresser and asks her for a favor once she recalls it. 

She’s getting a hairdo change. It’s not that hard to guess what’s about to happen.

In the next scene, Snively is lounging in Eggman’s chair, having full control of the Egg Fleet while Eggman rearms his Anti-Sonic Egg Mech. However, as he’s busy whining about being barked at by his uncle, Hope flies in and starts screaming at Snively over the intercom about how he betrayed her trust.

Yes, she’s back, and she managed to avoid being captured by the Egg Grapes. She took Snively’s advice and headed to the United Federation to see if it was right for her but when she came back to Knothole she found it destroyed. The fact that Snively did this to spare her specifically isn’t even brought up because of how distraught she is over the betrayal. She doesn’t even think that she can face the Mobians anymore now so instead she decides to head back to the Overlanders in the hopes of being a chief engineer that’ll take down Eggman and Snively.

The line about maybe having their family name be worth something really got to me there. It’s like if Maria had Eggman’s smarts. 

Then, when she flies off, despite the robots having her in their line of fire, Snively doesn’t give the command to do so. He just stands there and watches with tears in his eyes.

Snively is a small, wicked little man with delusions of grandeur. He’ll never be able to measure up to his uncle in talent or the amount of relentlessness it takes to be truly cold-hearted. 

That’s why Hope’s words end up getting to him here. That’s why he tries sparing her life. That’s also why he sought refuge with the Freedom Fighters for a bit (or it is now that Ian is using that plot point to his advantage). 

This scene always got me and it’s still kind of heart-breaking. The tragedy of Snively’s character, unlike Charmy, is something that’s going to be utilized HEAVILY as this book goes on and seeing how his arc plays out is a massive treat. I always end up feeling sorry for the guy and end up rooting for him, even though him not succeeding is the point.

Where his story is left off before the reboot kind of feels like the inevitable end. It’s a sad end but it’s also probably the only one that he realistically could have gotten. It’s so poignant and strong and it really makes you realize just how good a writer Ian is.

That’s in the future though. Right now, the Egg Fleet is STILL attacking everyone.

Amadeus decides to speak up about another reason why what happened in #175 lasting a bit longer would have helped to make some of the future stories even stronger.

I mean, Jesus. He’s just letting it all out there isn’t he?

It’s right over the horizon too. Ah man.

Eggman knocks those thoughts away a bit when he flies in with his suit and punches the shield, demanding they come out and face him.

He’s pissed. Understandably.

He talks about how he conquered and destroyed their first city and toyed with them as they built their new one in the forest before deciding to just burn it to the ground today. He was under the impression that the game was over but they’re here robbing him of his final victory because of an unforeseen circumstance. The Nanite City was taken from him.

As he’s screaming, Sonic gets his attention and starts mocking him about how he’s throwing a tantrum and unable to get past the shield. 

This thing is ultra-mega powerful. 

What I love about this scene is how Eggman’s confidence shoots right the hell back up when he sees Sonic and he goes to fight him again, reminding him that his battle suit was made specifically to beat him and how it’s impossible for him to overcome it. What’s even better is that Sonic agrees with that.

Yeah. He admits it. Eggman built a robot that Sonic can’t defeat. 

That’s really cool.

Not only does it retain how impressive Eggman is but it’s an incredibly humbling thing for Sonic to say. 

Of course, the obvious solution to this is to send in the cavalry!

The Freedom Fighters and the Chaotix bumrush the robot and demolish it.

Bunnie almost obliterates it and Eggman with her arm cannon alone.

How Eggman survives this continues to baffle me.

Then the second line of defense moves in as they start taking the robot apart bit by bit from below.

All of this happens while Sonic is giving his speech. 

It’s a complete 180 of what he said before to Tails about handling it himself. Now he’s acknowledging that there will be times when he can’t do something and when those situations crop up, he’s got his friends to help him overcome it.

Now, all of a sudden, Eggman’s the one breathed of witty comebacks. The frustrated grunt followed by simply shouting at the person who’s winning to “Shut up” is a clear sign that you’ve lost.

Sonic cinches it with his closing line about Eggman finding all of this to be a game.

If it wasn’t clear to Eggman that treating this like a game was a mistake, it has to be now. He deliberately kept them all alive and around so that he could toy with them and have fun. He didn’t launch this attack until just now because he decided it was finally time for the game to end.

The exterminator never once thought that the ants he was about to crush would rise up and take him down a peg. 

This experience has to be insanely eye-opening for the mad doctor. These aren’t people you can just play around with anymore. This is serious. Him losing when he thought he was playing with them this whole time has to be one of the contributing factors to what happens to him in #200. 

Ah man. If I start to notice this deterioration and it’s set-up sooner than I did before, I may end up appreciating what happens in #200 more upon revisit. That’d be nice. I’d like to appreciate these stories more and change my mind about some of them. That’s part of the point of revisiting these.

Eggman tells his Egg Fleet to fire on them. 

Even though he’s literally right there. 

Nicole uses the outerwall of the city to wrap itself over the heroes and protects them all from the explosion so it’s all good. Nicole even shows up in a hologram to tell Eggman that he’s actually being shown a strange amount of mercy considering what he’s done and is told once again to go the fuck away.

She basically saved his life too. I know it was a moment of desperation but Eggman, you almost killed yourself dude. Did you think those missiles were going to explode into just Sonic and his friends and leave you completely fine? Are those Magic Non-Eggman Harming Missiles or something?

Well, at least he took my advice. He’s treating this as an actual war now.

Although, this does beg the question of why the hell they didn’t just arrest Eggman then and there. Most likely because they wouldn’t have been able to get the Egg Fleet to leave if they did. It’d be constantly bombarding their city in an attempt to get him back and the conflict would just stretch on and on… 

Still, it feels weird when read this way. It stands out a lot that they saw fit to throw those other villains in prison but just let Eggman go. The comic should probably put more emphasis on why he’s being allowed to run.

Oh yeah, Sally’s got a new hairdo. It’s no big deal. Just something to symbolically show that she’s got her head in the game again. 

That’s code for, “All the terrible shit Penders did to my character is evaporating away”. 

We end on a glorious shot of Vector beginning to breakdance, Ray thrusting at the sky, and Charmy and Saffron showing up after the fight is over because that’s what they do now; nothing. 

Despite all my misgivings about how fast the resolution was before, this was actually paced rather well and works as an ending to a story a lot better than I originally gave it credit for. That said, there’s always going to be some lingering disappointment after Issue #175 got me so hyped to see the adventures of a defeated Sonic clawing his way back to a well-earned victory. If it had to happen two issues later though, it could have been done a lot worse.

You know what’s interesting about this? I think this issue works a lot better in hindsight than it does reading it for the first time.

Back when I originally read this story, it was read in a row and on the same day. One second, everything was destroyed and Sonic was beaten, the next, everything was fixed and Eggman was beaten.

Despite that, this issue was actually really good as an aftermath story to a tale that I personally felt could have gotten so much more out of being longer. It establishes a lot about what’s going to be the new status quo for certain characters going forward (good and bad) while also setting up future story arcs that are about to happen (good and bad). It’s really well done for what it is and I can’t deny that. I think my disappointment at seeing the devastation that was wrought in #175 be so quickly reversed has indeed chilled out just a tiny bit. However, I still find myself not loving it. Especially knowing what happens in Issue #200 and how easy the resolution there is too.

It just feels like what happened in #175 would have been better served as a backdrop for the upcoming arcs (Enerjak Reborn, House of Cards, etc.) that helped lead up to a retaliation against Eggman in issue #200. Reversing what Eggman did right here kind of robbed me of the catharsis I think I would have felt once Sonic and others fought their way to Eggman and beat him there. I recall being really disappointed by how that all went down…

However, I am merely drawing from memory and that can be a dangerous practice. Perhaps I’ll feel differently about #200 once I get there again. After all, these last two issues actually weren’t as bad or as disappointing as I remember them being. Despite still wishing what happened in #175 could have carried over into the upcoming story arcs (imagine House of Cards happening amongst the wreckage of Knothole and how much more powerful Amadeus’ feud with the standing of the kingdom would have felt there) I do feel like I can try and make peace with it. I know this only happened because Ian Flynn promised SEGA that Eggman’s win would be immediately reversed. It sucks but that’s the nature of the beast. 

There’s still a lot of awesome conflicts ahead and this was by no means BAD so I’ll keep my chin up and look forward to revisiting what’s next. 

… Oh shit. House of Cards is next…

...Welp. It’s been a good run everyone. Bye forever.

*Jumps off a cliff*

[Ryannumber1gamer]

My thoughts:

• I don't really have much to say, you've essentially captured my thoughts on #175. The only thing I'd disagree on is the idea of Eggman winning being the end of the series. Finding out it all didn't matter and just transferring to another universe IMO would just be a blah and sour ending. It'd make a statement, sure, but it wouldn't be very fulfilling for everyone following the series. Tbh, I think #200's callback to this issue ends up making it work far, far better in context with Sonic's win.
• A neat thing I like about Mighty's rampage is that Mighty and Ray IMO reflects Sonic & Tails. If Sonic just witnessed Tails being vaporised like this, part of me likes to think it might just be the one thing that would cause him to snap and start spin-dash buzz-sawing through everything.
• Boy, who in the right mind would want this arc? We could've had Antoine purposing and then tons of relationship drama for another 25 issues! How could Ian now see the genius of Penders' arc plans?! 
• Spoiler

   

   

• I'm going to defend Eggman's leaving of Sonic - solely because it's Eggman's flaw, right up to Worlds Collide, and he shares it with Wily. It's not enough for Eggman to just effortlessly win, he has to crush his superiority into his foes. He has to break them not only physically, but mentally and willfully to the point that they turn around to see he was right all along. Eggman's a egotistical control freak, and he gets his jollies by making others feel stupid and weak. Leaving Sonic in the dirt is just another part of the show. Eggman destroyed him, to the point Sonic's best could do diddly dick against him. He could break Sonic's legs, sure - but why? 

Eggman just proved his superiority! He just proved that in a fair 1 on 1 fight, he could effortlessly destroy Sonic, and the only reason Sonic is alive is because Eggman felt merciful (or rather - spiteful enough) to make Sonic wallow in defeat. Breaking Sonic's legs would force Eggman to admit to both himself and Sonic that despite his overwhelming victory, he was still frightened that Sonic would turn the tables, and beat him again. Breaking Sonic's legs and making it so Sonic couldn't even attempt a comeback would be Eggman - despite a fair and clear win here - basically admitting he still needs to handicap Sonic to ensure his victory.

Eggman claims it's serious time, sure - but he still treats it as a game, he just thinks he's hitting the win button now, but he still doesn't want to 'cheat' it. It'd be like admitting you couldn't beat the final boss of a game when it was at 1/4 of it's health, and deciding to use a infinite health code, doing something to stop Sonic even having a chance to comeback would be an admittance that Eggman isn't as fearless and cocky as he's pretending to be, and we all know Eggman's ego wouldn't allow that.

Furthermore, #176 more or less confirms another thing - Eggman left Sonic in the dirt because he specifically thought he was the last remaining 'hero'. He believed Snively had specifically entrapped everyone, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy included - and Eggman had scrambled all of the communications, stopping any other Freedom Fighters joining Sonic's rescue plan. Eggman had the mech there too, so he probably was hoping Sonic would come after him, if only to kick the shit out of him one more time and force him to witness his ultimate victory.

Eggman got cocky because he (reasonably so) thought he had Sonic cornered. He thought all of the FF, Chaotix, and everyone else was captured. His mech was designed to easily take care of Sonic. Tails even foreshadows it when calls Sonic out for his idiotic plan of "you guys chill here, I'll handle things" - Sonic would've had to go through all of Eggman's mechs, the Egg-Pawns/badniks, the defences, and Eggman's ultimate armour, and without Knuckles and Amy handling the heavy lifting for break-outs, it was also possible Sonic might not have even pulled off busting many out. Sonic only really got to pull off his 'comeback' because Snively was careless enough to leave Tails, Knuckles and Amy around, as well as both Eggman and Snively forgetting about Nicole. #177 empathises it further by Sonic realising he can't take Eggman on, but Eggman treated everyone else as such a non-threat that they can easily dispatch of his armour, because it's not fine-tuned to counter them like it is Sonic.

• Charmy's situation is...ech. Ian feeling regretful of it is enough to say how bad it was. I get why he felt it needed to happen, but I feel like there was a lot of other things they could've done here. Hell, why not just give Charmy his regular personality, but keep him with a tinge of seriousness? There's plenty of teenagers who still act like light-hearted and air-headed goofballs. Charmy's barely been in the comic as is, and yeah - it might be a little silly to show him being a bit more goofy after all of the earlier nonsense with his colony, but it could've still been about Charmy persevering and trying to keep a light-hearted attitude to help Sharron and the Chaotix get a bit of levity when needed. Hell, it could've raised the stakes a bit higher when Charmy's light-heartedness does crack, and he needs comfort from his teammates.

Is it perfect? No, but it would've at least been a hell of a lot better than the brain damage bullshit we got here. I don't hold it against Ian, it's a mistake, he acknowledged it's a mistake, he acknowledged how much he truly regrets it, but it was still a horrible thing.

• Sonic and Eggman's whole bit with the teleportation beam is one of my favourite "funny" moments. How unintentionally dickish Sonic looks to his friends, Eggman being so deep into his ego that he can't realise what's happening, and Sonic's comments.

-What I find truly interesting is that I think how Ian resolved Eggman's 'first' defeat is actually really damn good. Eggman sees Sonic as a thug, a rebellious upstart - but nothing else. Eggman naturally assumes he's much more intelligent than Sonic, that Sonic couldn't hope to even remotely compare to his genius. In Eggman's mind, he had to match Sonic's speed and strength, and his sharp wit in order to defeat him, which he does in #175.

But what works for me is that Sonic doesn't just get some power-up or some "new reason" to fight harder - no he throws his max at Eggman and still fails. When he wants to try that plan again, he gets called out for how dumb it is. No, how Eggman is defeated is when Sonic pulls the one thing Eggman wouldn't expect - outsmarting him. Technically, Nicole and Tails are the ones to set up the plan against Eggman, but Eggman doesn't expect that. He expects Sonic's plan - he expected Sonic's 'rescue' to be some brutish smash-up through the Egg Vineyard, and when he "eliminates" Tails, Knuckles, and Amy - he expects the same thing to happen again.

Sonic uses Eggman's ego and expectations of Sonic against Eggman - tricking Eggman into thinking he was outsmarting Sonic again when Sonic had a plan that literally relied on playing Eggman's ego enough to look past Snively's warnings. It's such a neat detail that Sonic can't pull off any kind of physical win. No, Eggman has him outmatched there, so Sonic instead has to (with Nicole's help) - outsmart him, and later with his friends' help - then beat him.

• Nicole admittedly is one of my favourite Archie characters because of her development. Still think it's lame how we never got to see a proper resolution to her arc pre-reboot.
• An unrelated side note since I already spoke on Charmy - I have never understood that "Didn't you use to be purple" comment from Charmy. Like, never. Was it meant to be a joke about Espio's classic design being a darker shade of purple? I don't understand Espio not correcting him with "I am purple" either.
• I feel the need to mention just how good Ian's Snively arc is, especially by the time it gets to #200 and Scrambled. It's honestly kind of nuts how we were this close to getting a dumbass last minute OOC redemption for Snively, randomly deciding to sacrifice himself to save his sworn enemies, despite the fact he's both been a selfish backstabber for so long, and even his initial joining with the Freedom Fighters was setting him up to backstab them.
• I more or less buy that Eggman would launch missiles, even if it meant taking himself out with them. Keep in mind, Worlds Collide featured Eggman having a failure on this kind of magnitude, and his response there was to angrily exclaim if he can't reshape Sonic's reality, then no one can have it, before knocking into Sonic in a last ditch attempt to ruin his Chaos Control. Eggman's just that kind of petty dick that if it's a big enough failure, and he's riled up enough, he'd take any chance to kill Sonic.
• House of Car-...oh lord, here we go...

[SBR2]

Spoiler

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The story as a whole suffers from coming and going way too quickly in order for me to bask in the afterglow of what happens, unfortunately. It also doesn’t help that I’m the type that prefers longer story arcs from the get-go.

Oh, man. I feel like the words "I disagree" are about to pop up a lot here. XD

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Rouge. I love ya you're my favorite character but um...what the fuck are you doing here? I guess she must only be here so Shadow can get to Ne Mobotropolis later on because it's not like she does much in this arc.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Normally I'd lump Tails in with characters who I'd say I don't really take their given ages seriously (Because like he's an 8 year old genius prodigy pilot building mech suits and transforming bi-planes) but like a lot of characters in Archie since their ages are actually important and not just a factoid I appreciate that Tails sounds like a kid here. A kid would blame himself like this for something he had no control over.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Bunnie charges in and gets got by Snively while he blasts away Sally (while she’s in the middle of giving Sonic an order), Antoine, Ray, Charmy, and Saffron.

Vaporizing newlyweds while they were off separated from everyone else totally not doing what newlyweds do after the wedding? Not cool Snivley. Seriously I always love the little adult things Ian sometimes slips in. I always get a great deal of joy out Julie-Su's "She'll DO anything" earlier.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Back when I read this I found this scene interesting for sure, though, this was during that point in time where I was still hating Mighty really hard. It was another situation where I didn’t get why he was so popular and why people wanted him to come back and when I got to the comics I saw him getting so much more focus than the Chaotix members I cared about. The first Chaotix arc in particular having the three I liked on the covers but being a story that was actually about Mighty when it came out didn’t do much to quell that opinion.

Over the years I’ve tried to will myself to chilling out on stuff like that. It’s not fair, obviously, to blame Mighty for the way I felt the Chaotix were being treated. Sometimes a target to dump all your anger onto comes from rationalizations you’ve built up in your head, you know? Of course, it didn’t help that Charmy in particular is easily the worst treated character in Archie. The pitfalls of being a huge Modern Chaotix fan are many. 

It's weird because I was introduced to the Chaotix through Heroes but when I read the comics I never really had any problems with the idea they were a team with more members and not detectives. I don't know I've always been somebody who is fascinated by vastly different interpretations of characters across varying media. It's why I'm a TMNT and Transformers fan.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Now, an interesting tidbit about the people who are left is that it’s just the four main characters from the games. Ian said in an old as hell interview (or perhaps it was a Bumblekast) that this was intentional. He was trying to pull a scare tactic on the Archie Comic reading audience by having the four main game characters be the only ones left and have them think he was getting rid of the Freedom Fighters or something.

He also laments that this didn’t work. No one fell for it and to be honest it’s not hard to see why. Like, obviously they weren’t just going to go out that quickly without any fanfare. Second though, those same blasts also got rid of OTHER game characters Ian. We saw Rouge, Vector, and Charmy go too. If there was a chance people would think that, it was demolished when you showed game characters going away via the same method.

I remember that. I think it was on his forum because he used to do a thing called "Ask Ian" where forum members could ask him questions. But yeah it'd maybe would have been more affective if it was just the Freedom Fighters...and it was because holy shit the reactions to everything that happened in the Mecha Sally arc!

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

.

Goddamn this still hits.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

This is a fight between Sonic and Eggman. That’s all they see it as. 

As it should be. Some people hated that Ian barely ever touched on Eggman's backstory but he didn't need to. It shouldn't matter that he's a Roboticized Alternate Universe version. Let's just keep it simple. He's Eggman. He had the same life up until it diverged at Endgame and then he came back.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It’s great how this robot has decked itself out with some classic Sonic iconography. Not just in a way where it’s like, “Here’s the wrecking ball on a chain again. Remember that?” 

The spikes and the shield bumpers are also a nice touch. 

Also the Egg Beater itself looks pretty close to the Egg Emperor from Heroes.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

A lot of people wish we'd get stuff like this more often. I respectfully disagree. Seeing Sonic lose his shit here is a special moment that if done too many times would wear out it's impact.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Roll credits.

No, seriously. How great would it be if that was it? This world was just another one that the former Robo-Robotnik managed to conquer

Ok I feel like I need to acknowledge this. Robo-Robotnik didn't really conquer anything. He lived his life like Robotnik Prime did but instead of Endgame he did...something that crumbled his empire and forced him to roboticize himself and hide away in a space station for 25 years until Robotnik Prime talked him out oif his depression and he nuked the fuck out of the kingdom and planet. Eggman's not really more clever or vicious than his predecessor and hell future issues make it clear a lot of what he says here is pure bullshit.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It’d be a more satisfying end to these comics if Eggman just won than the ending the Archie comics will end up having, honestly. At least that’s something definitive. All this time we were reading the comic, we had no idea the heroes we were following we going to fucking fail. How’s that for a Thanos twist?

I massively disagree. If that was the ending I'd be pissed off. I fucking hate stories where it's like "Thanks for reading/watching all this was meaningless". Call me a sap but I kinda like stories where the odds grow and the heroes still find a way.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Bobby from ThanksKenPenders reads this as Sonic putting ion a brave face for Tails. And fine that's her read but I for one can't get down with the idea that Sonic actually would have given up here if Tails didn't run up. That's not Sonic. Sonic would have tuned out all of that and been like "Ok. that's round one to you doc." and that's what I love about this character.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Well, turns out the solution to this problem is going to be shockingly a lot easier than anticipated.

Personally I like the solution because to me it's a very Eggman style miscalculation IMHO.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

They pitched a story where Eggman basically won but HAD to assure SEGA that it would be immediately reversed. It’s a fairly well known rule that what happened here can’t happen.

I mean to me it's a pretty understandable rule and Sega seems cool with similar kinds of things later on. I will always argue the rule means Sonic has to win in the end. It's just basic storytelling.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I have my doubts. I’m someone who, again, enjoys a longer story and marinating in the thoughts and feelings of the characters suffering through a dramatic problem for as long as I can get it. I remember some of that definitely happening in the next issue but I also remember it not happening for too long. 

Personally I'm fine with it being three issues. I feel like any longer and it would have gotten dull and miserable. And yet I defend the "Downward Spiral" portion of the Mecha Sally Arc but honestly even that didn't overstay it's welcome. 6 issues of building tension and then "We need to build new teams and track Sally down." Nice even pacing. Just enough to build up the stakes and make you think "Wait. Is Sonic actually giving up!? Was Scourge right about his Killing Joke speech!?" Before going "No Sonic isn't going to do that and even if he was his friends won't let him." I like more optimistic stories what can I say?

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

You could argue the Metal Virus arc was kind of like that.

I would argue that. Hell it's my main example of my reading of the "Can't lose" mandate. I would not call a lot of what Sonic was doing in that arc "winning" personally.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

God I would love to hear any Sonic and Tails VA's recite this scene. Probably Era specific Jason and Amy. Though as much as I like Amy Palant's Tails voice I do think it'd run the risk of being the same as the "LISTEN UP YOU LOSERS" scene from the Sonic X dub.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The Sonic and Tails fighting would be followed up on in a much, much, much worse story a bit later and in Sonic Lost World. Lost World has a better story than House of Cards but mostly by virtue of not having a lot to say and thus having a lot less it can screw up. 

I'd honestly argue Lost World is generally a really good story myself but hey I know that's unpopular. And as for House of Cards...I'll save my thoughts for next week.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The time he’s taking to do this probably isn’t directly lining up with the scenes shown at the bottom of each panel of what Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Nicole are doing. If so, then Eggman’s speech here is SO long winded that it took them constructing a hovercraft, leaving the ruins of Knothole, flying to New Megaopolis, destroying his defenses, and breaking into the Egg Vineyard for it to be complete.

There's always a part of me that wonders if this and a similar sequence in Worlds Collide were inspired by the Leonardo Microseries issue in the Mirage TMNT comics? In that comic the top panels were Leo running around New York and fighting the Foot while the bottom panel was the rest of the Turtles, Splinter and April preparing for Christmas blissfully unaware of what Leo was doing until they literally crash together at the end. I'm sure other comics have done this kind of simultaneous storytelling but that's always what I think of.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I still don’t know what the Chaotix identify as in these comics. They’re basically another Freedom Fighter group but they have this seemingly arbitrary name attached.

I mean I guess technically they're a Freedom Fighter Group. I like to think of it like how different Superhero Teams in comics have different names.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

That included not including Eggman Nega… ever.

I feel like not using Nega is a missed opportunity. He could have been turned into a grander scope villain which wouldn't have been out of place considering Rivals 2 has him just casually hoping dimensions to fuck shit up. Ian had a very interesting thing going on with him in the background where he was trying to conquer the multiverse and I honestly wish Sega would have picked up on that. There's so much potential to make him a cool almost cosmic threat.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Despite my ramblings about SEGA trying to keep things clean and consistent with what they wanted I’ll admit, it doesn’t really matter because I don’t actually know if this was because SEGA asked for it to happen or not.

Yeah I don't really know either. Considering Sega never had any qualms with Sonic having a hometown or anything I don't think they would have cared. Near as I can tell this was Ian's call and hoo boy do I wish he hadn't. TBF he wishes he hadn't either.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

I love that exchange. It really does show why Eggman didn't do as you said and just break his legs. He thought this would be enough to just absolutely destroy Sonic. He's researched him and knows everything about him yet he knows absolutely nothing about who Sonic is.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

What happened to Charmy here isn’t revealed until the next issue so I’ll save most of my ramblings about it for that but it’s… 

...I’m just…

… God, this poor kid.

I mean, good God. This poor, relentlessly tortured kid.

It's like I always like to say. Being Archie Charmy is suffering. I guess it's better than being Boom Charmy where had the show gone on he simply wouldn't exist because Greg Hahn hated Charmy and didn't want him to ever appear.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

That panel of Eggman standing there always makes me laugh. You know he is fuming in there.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Despite how disappointed I am by how quick the resolution to this all was,

IDK to me I feel this is pretty evenly paced. It's the middle of a three act structure.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

. It’s just going too quickly for my liking.

As I said IDK I feel like it's pacing is fine. Then again I also don't really understand what's exactly wrong with how Ian ends his stories either. I tend to mostly feel satisfied with his endings.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Nack watch your language! This is a kids book.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I feel like I’m starting to have a heavier appreciation for the kind of character she is now. It’s really going in on this idea of artificial intelligence being the same as real intelligence and how robots and computers can indeed have consciousness and heart to them.

It's this kind of stuff I think Ian exceeds at. It's the reason that as much as I love Sonic and the stuff he did on the book I honestly think Mega Man is a much better book. Ian delves into these concepts that you just never think about with Classic Mega Man and makes it work so well alongside adapting the games and crafting an Epic Space Opera with the various space robots in that series. Archie Mega was so good and I wish it wasn't cancelled. Either way my point is Ian is a really good Sci-Fi writer when you get down to it.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

At least I’m not doing that thing where I’m like “ONLY GAME CHARACTERS OR BUST!” 

I will say that for you man. I see so many detractors of the comics go "LOL Not Canon!" But you at least have given a reason behind things you don't like or agree with in these comics.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

He says this in that infamous scene where Jason Jenson mistakenly colored in Sonic’s mom as Amy.

HA HA Classic. Once again this was a gig and nothing more to him.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

apologize if it annoys anyone whenever I constantly point out whenever Sonic obeys orders and stuff by the way. I’ve just got this massive chip on my shoulder about Sonic’s relationship with this kingdom that won’t go away so I tend to make a lot of jokes about it to keep myself grounded. I’m aware that he’s doing it because he’s friends with these people and he respects them, not because he was ordered to. I understand that in moments like these, it's not that serious. Trust me, I know. I mostly point it out to entertain myself. I like making jokes about Sonic being their whipping boy even when he isn't.

Trust me I get it. Even as someone who likes these comics I do have to admit seeing Sonic so grounded is weird. It's why I prefer the dynamic in the post-reboot Continuity more. Where Sonic can and does run off and do his own thing most of the time but will help the FF when he's around.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

This is a conversation that’s been kicked up on here a couple of times. Some people find the presence of two tech guys on the hero’s side redundant. Others don’t see anything wrong with it. I can see the argument both ways, which is why I don’t have a problem with either decision. Rotor being hoisted into a new role works for me. However, were he to stay on as yet another tech guy I’d probably be cool with that too.

Personally I'm on the "It's redundant" side of things. I actually prefer Post-Reboot Rotor's pragmatic action scientist thing more. At least he has a character there.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The exchange at the bottom panel always confused me. I have no idea why Charmy asks if Espio used to be purple when he currently is purple. His eyesight didn't go away did it? Also, Espio's response being "I'm a chameleon" doesn't make sense either. What's that got to do with you being purple?

Ian actually did clear this up once. It was supposed to be a joke on how Espio was a lighter shade of Purple from Heroes on but the Archie Comics never really colored him any shade other than his Classic design a the joke sadly didn't land.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Yes, she’s back, and she managed to avoid being captured by the Egg Grapes.

Despite what art depicting her in the Egg Grapes last issue might have led you to believe.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Of course, the obvious solution to this is to send in the cavalry!

The Freedom Fighters and the Chaotix bumrush the robot and demolish it.

Again I really like this. Eggman was so laser focused on Sonic in particular he forgot to account for all his friends with gadgets, super strength, magic hammers, cyborg super cannons. Eggman has an IQ of 300 but that doesn't mean he's not short sighted. Hell I'd argue that's his defining characteristic.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Calling him Robuttnik was a nice touch.

 

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2021 at 7:41 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Back when I originally read this story, it was read in a row and on the same day.

See there's the problem. I read this monthly as it was coming out. There's a real difference in letting an issue soak in and giving it a moth before the next part than going through them all

 

[Dr. Detective]

Thank you guys for the replies. I was getting a tad worried there. XD

Reading the responses and the "I disagree good sir" comments from you all remains interesting and I'm incredibly grateful for it.

21 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I'm going to defend Eggman's leaving of Sonic - solely because it's Eggman's flaw, right up to Worlds Collide, and he shares it with Wily. It's not enough for Eggman to just effortlessly win, he has to crush his superiority into his foes. He has to break them not only physically, but mentally and willfully to the point that they turn around to see he was right all along. Eggman's a egotistical control freak, and he gets his jollies by making others feel stupid and weak. Leaving Sonic in the dirt is just another part of the show. Eggman destroyed him, to the point Sonic's best could do diddly dick against him. He could break Sonic's legs, sure - but why? 

Eggman just proved his superiority! He just proved that in a fair 1 on 1 fight, he could effortlessly destroy Sonic, and the only reason Sonic is alive is because Eggman felt merciful (or rather - spiteful enough) to make Sonic wallow in defeat. Breaking Sonic's legs would force Eggman to admit to both himself and Sonic that despite his overwhelming victory, he was still frightened that Sonic would turn the tables, and beat him again. Breaking Sonic's legs and making it so Sonic couldn't even attempt a comeback would be Eggman - despite a fair and clear win here - basically admitting he still needs to handicap Sonic to ensure his victory.

Eggman claims it's serious time, sure - but he still treats it as a game, he just thinks he's hitting the win button now, but he still doesn't want to 'cheat' it. It'd be like admitting you couldn't beat the final boss of a game when it was at 1/4 of it's health, and deciding to use a infinite health code, doing something to stop Sonic even having a chance to comeback would be an admittance that Eggman isn't as fearless and cocky as he's pretending to be, and we all know Eggman's ego wouldn't allow that.

Furthermore, #176 more or less confirms another thing - Eggman left Sonic in the dirt because he specifically thought he was the last remaining 'hero'. He believed Snively had specifically entrapped everyone, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy included - and Eggman had scrambled all of the communications, stopping any other Freedom Fighters joining Sonic's rescue plan. Eggman had the mech there too, so he probably was hoping Sonic would come after him, if only to kick the shit out of him one more time and force him to witness his ultimate victory.

Eggman got cocky because he (reasonably so) thought he had Sonic cornered. He thought all of the FF, Chaotix, and everyone else was captured. His mech was designed to easily take care of Sonic. Tails even foreshadows it when calls Sonic out for his idiotic plan of "you guys chill here, I'll handle things" - Sonic would've had to go through all of Eggman's mechs, the Egg-Pawns/badniks, the defences, and Eggman's ultimate armour, and without Knuckles and Amy handling the heavy lifting for break-outs, it was also possible Sonic might not have even pulled off busting many out. Sonic only really got to pull off his 'comeback' because Snively was careless enough to leave Tails, Knuckles and Amy around, as well as both Eggman and Snively forgetting about Nicole. #177 empathises it further by Sonic realising he can't take Eggman on, but Eggman treated everyone else as such a non-threat that they can easily dispatch of his armour, because it's not fine-tuned to counter them like it is Sonic.

• Charmy's situation is...ech. Ian feeling regretful of it is enough to say how bad it was. I get why he felt it needed to happen, but I feel like there was a lot of other things they could've done here. Hell, why not just give Charmy his regular personality, but keep him with a tinge of seriousness? There's plenty of teenagers who still act like light-hearted and air-headed goofballs. Charmy's barely been in the comic as is, and yeah - it might be a little silly to show him being a bit more goofy after all of the earlier nonsense with his colony, but it could've still been about Charmy persevering and trying to keep a light-hearted attitude to help Sharron and the Chaotix get a bit of levity when needed. Hell, it could've raised the stakes a bit higher when Charmy's light-heartedness does crack, and he needs comfort from his teammates.

Is it perfect? No, but it would've at least been a hell of a lot better than the brain damage bullshit we got here. I don't hold it against Ian, it's a mistake, he acknowledged it's a mistake, he acknowledged how much he truly regrets it, but it was still a horrible thing.

• Sonic and Eggman's whole bit with the teleportation beam is one of my favourite "funny" moments. How unintentionally dickish Sonic looks to his friends, Eggman being so deep into his ego that he can't realise what's happening, and Sonic's comments.

-What I find truly interesting is that I think how Ian resolved Eggman's 'first' defeat is actually really damn good. Eggman sees Sonic as a thug, a rebellious upstart - but nothing else. Eggman naturally assumes he's much more intelligent than Sonic, that Sonic couldn't hope to even remotely compare to his genius. In Eggman's mind, he had to match Sonic's speed and strength, and his sharp wit in order to defeat him, which he does in #175.

But what works for me is that Sonic doesn't just get some power-up or some "new reason" to fight harder - no he throws his max at Eggman and still fails. When he wants to try that plan again, he gets called out for how dumb it is. No, how Eggman is defeated is when Sonic pulls the one thing Eggman wouldn't expect - outsmarting him. Technically, Nicole and Tails are the ones to set up the plan against Eggman, but Eggman doesn't expect that. He expects Sonic's plan - he expected Sonic's 'rescue' to be some brutish smash-up through the Egg Vineyard, and when he "eliminates" Tails, Knuckles, and Amy - he expects the same thing to happen again.

Sonic uses Eggman's ego and expectations of Sonic against Eggman - tricking Eggman into thinking he was outsmarting Sonic again when Sonic had a plan that literally relied on playing Eggman's ego enough to look past Snively's warnings. It's such a neat detail that Sonic can't pull off any kind of physical win. No, Eggman has him outmatched there, so Sonic instead has to (with Nicole's help) - outsmart him, and later with his friends' help - then beat him.

Bravo. This is a well founded counter-point. While I think I did sufficiently acknowledge that Eggman leaving Sonic behind was something he would totally do, I can see this addendum towards why he wouldn't break his legs on top of that working towards that same ego driven position. Personally, I see it more as an extension of what he was already doing. He was beating the shit out of Sonic and I doubt he could have guaranteed those hits he was landing wouldn't have done something permanent to him already no matter how much research he's done. So the only way to look at it that way would be if he was deliberately holding back a bit. If that's the case, and he still won, than that robot is really impressive.

He oughta make more of those. After this defeat, he probably should make ones for the other characters too but I guess that would dive into Eggman acknowledging that the rest of them are indeed a threat. Then again he DID say it was war now so having that be a precaution of his could be plausible.

It's interesting because I don't think there's necessarily a right or wrong way to look at this depending on how you view Eggman's viewpoint on these characters shifting after this experience. 

7 hours ago, SBR2 said:

I massively disagree. If that was the ending I'd be pissed off. I fucking hate stories where it's like "Thanks for reading/watching all this was meaningless". Call me a sap but I kinda like stories where the odds grow and the heroes still find a way.

I should clarify, I'm being purposefully hyperbolic.

I only suggest this because I'm the kind of person who likes having access to the bad endings with regards to Sonic material. It's why Shadow the Hedgehog is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me and why I was so eager to just let the Metal Virus go on and on. I can see the story being open-ended and still feeling as though it has meaning versus an ending where the villains won. Not for nothing, it's a mandate that the heroes must win for a reason. No matter how much the hardcore whiners on the internet who feel they're being clever by pointing out that "Heroes always win in stories" complain, the fact of the matter is almost all of them wouldn't feel much satisfaction from a story where the characters they followed just died in the end. 

7 hours ago, SBR2 said:

Bobby from ThanksKenPenders reads this as Sonic putting ion a brave face for Tails. And fine that's her read but I for one can't get down with the idea that Sonic actually would have given up here if Tails didn't run up. That's not Sonic. Sonic would have tuned out all of that and been like "Ok. that's round one to you doc." and that's what I love about this character.

I agree.

7 hours ago, SBR2 said:

I mean to me it's a pretty understandable rule and Sega seems cool with similar kinds of things later on. I will always argue the rule means Sonic has to win in the end. It's just basic storytelling.

It's not the rule that I have a problem with. How it lead to the way this story panned out was my issue here. Despite my hardcore ramblings about Eggman winning (which I do ALL the time by the way) I do still want the heroes to win in the end. I just REALLY like seeing them struggle for their happy ending. 

To me this ending just felt like it happened way too fast. I love #175 in a bubble but because it gets reversed so quickly, there's always going to be a part of me that feels like it was kind of meaningless. At least as far as the heroes are concerned. It certainly wasn't meaningless to Eggman. 

As I even explain in the end, I like the final two issues more than I originally did. I think they're fine issues for what they are but I seriously do believe that they happened too quickly. I don't think I'll ever fully appreciate their city just being back and better than ever literally in the next issue. That's just not satisfying to me, no matter how plausible the explanation for it is.

I also think it shouldn't really matter that I read it in a row. Not entirely. Yes, it has an affect but I have a feeling that if I had waited that month just to see things reversed when I saw the next issue I would have felt that my anticipation for seeing what happens next would have faltered there too. 

We just have different positions when it comes to how the hero's journey can be it's most thrilling I guess. I prefer the slow burn and the long, painful crawl to victory versus the more fast paced stuff that a lot of people seem to crave.

[QuantumEdge]

Reading your recap makes me realise how much I like this story not for its premise and pacing (which are both great nonetheless), but for its peering into Eggman and Sonic's inner psyches.  It's sort of deconstructive and meta with the way Ian went about writing this one and kinda explores the motivations and train of thought they have running.  It's the perfect shot in the arm for both Sonic and Eggman and just takes their characters to better places in the future.  And all of that is something Sonic Team wouldn't even dream up in the first place, which makes me love this story more lol

Don't apologise for being ticked about Sonic taking orders though, you're not alone

[Dr. Detective]

E3 week AND the daily Sonic drawings I'm doing are going to make getting the House of Cards review out a bit tougher than usual. I can't half-ass that one since there's A LOT to say about my most hated Archie story from before I discovered all the Penders shit.