Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[Cuz]

That's another one I could pull up a podcast for, but It was more to give Sally a way to rebound after the slap. While it had been a good while since that happened it was still kind of lingering in her background and there hadn't been a ton of follow up on it.  Especially from her perspective. They wanted to use Khan to build her back up, and move past the stigma left over from it. Personally I don't hate the pairing myself. 

 

edit: (Curse you top of the page!)

[SanPolo4389]

25 minutes ago, Cuz said:

That's another one I could pull up an podcast for, but It was more to give Sally a way to rebound after the slap. While it had been a good while since that happened it was still kind of lingering in her background and there hadn't been a ton of follow up on it. They wanted to use Khan to build her back up, and move past the stigma left over from it. Personally I don't hate the pairing myself. 

 

edit: (Curse you top of the page!)

Yeah that seems fair though I found it odd that it was in the background most of the arc (besides issue 207 where she talks to Bunnie about it.) although that probably was a blessing considering it would just end up with drama between characters. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

5 hours ago, Cuz said:

That's another one I could pull up a podcast for, but It was more to give Sally a way to rebound after the slap. While it had been a good while since that happened it was still kind of lingering in her background and there hadn't been a ton of follow up on it. They wanted to use Khan to build her back up, and move past the stigma left over from it. Personally I don't hate the pairing myself. 

 

edit: (Curse you top of the page!)

Well, when you put it that way, it makes a hell of a lot more sense.

...I still don’t exactly care for it, but I guess that was the plan to begin with.

[Paul-Agnew]

11 hours ago, SanPolo4389 said:

Yeah I’m wondering why did it have that shipping to begin with, I’m guessing to have development with Khan? 

It's been there since his very first appearance, when Khan literally swept a reluctant Sally off her feet.

 

[SBR2]

Unpopular opinion I know but...I think Sally should have stayed with Kahn. They had a really nice romance set up and honestly her going "Actually I want to see how things work out with Sonic" felt like backtracking to appease Sonally fans.

I genuinely think Sonally as a relationship should be something that doesn't last and if it does Sal should say screw my crown and become an adventurer with Sonic. 

[Cuz]

I wouldn't abandoned any of the long established ships over Sal/Khan anytime soon, but I wouldn't of minded the pairing lasting longer either. I get they were gonna go back to the original pairing sooner or later, but at least wait until they could come up with a better excuse to pull her away from Khan. xD

1 hour ago, SBR2 said:

I genuinely think Sonally as a relationship should be something that doesn't last and if it does Sal should say screw my crown and become an adventurer with Sonic. 

Eh, I like the Sonic/Sally pairing for how fiercely stubborn, and independent both of them are. If Sal were to abdicate her position it'd feel just as wrong for her as asking Sonic to settle down is. 

[E-122-Psi]

On 6/22/2021 at 11:41 PM, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

In all fairness, if an AI could hold a powerful-mage like Mammoth Mogul, why wouldn’t they be (over-)confident in whether it could stand against the Iron Dominion?

A reminder that even the techomage herself was as clueless to the idea as the heroes were until Snively pointed it out, it’s not like the Iron Queen was aware of how deeply ingrained into the city Nicole was to exploit it at that moment. And looking back, that was kind of the point, to gauge and build their new enemy against the heroes, especially since the Iron Queen took more than 70 issues to even make a comeback and had her abilities completely revamped to become a technomage instead of just a general sorceress like others prior to her return.

Like, I’m fully aware of the Iron Dominion arc’s flaws, especially with its pacing and the SallyXKhan thing that could have been done without, and I’m not gonna say it’s perfect (even though it’s one of my personal favorites of the early-Flynn era). But you’re issue is literally with the entire point of the story and the effects it was actually supposed to bring into the next upcoming arcs.

You might as well say Eggman was stupid for recruiting her again into his forces knowing full well she’s capable of turning his own tech against him the same way.

Well....he was a little really. The difference is that Eggman is a manic ax crazy goof who thinks everyone is a play thing beneath him no matter how many times he gets outsmarted, while Sally prides in being cautious, merticulous and sane.

Saying them being overconfident is the point of the whole plot is true, but it's still an idiot ball given how much they WANT them to look competent the rest of the time, and the fact it took Snively pointing out this fact to the Iron Queen in the first place is still kind of an idiot ball as well. It just kinda felt like they were padding time before Iron NICOLE happened. Yeah it's lampshaded, but I mean, Tails getting mad at Sonic over dating Fiona was intentional as well. It was still bad writing but it wasn't unintentional.

Again something that works fine in a work like Boom which can manage characters making stupid mistakes and make it part of the fun sometimes, but in a story that expects the characterisations to be viewed as tight and taken seriously.

And Sally/Khan was just bleh, like I've just always found the romantic angles in Archie bland and soap opera-ish, and these two just don't have anything to them, especially after Khan's temper cooled down to the point he had little personality left. The one time it COULD have got interesting, the role reversal where Sally loses her temper against Fiona, goes unnoticed in-universe, leaving Khan to feel ineffectual as a foil for Sally (I don't know how many plots or chemistries could flourish if the writers just accepted they instinctively  wrote Sally as a hypocrite, so many dynamics seem built on her being 'not so different' but they never call it out).

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

On 6/23/2021 at 8:35 PM, E-122-Psi said:

Well....he was a little really. The difference is that Eggman is a manic ax crazy goof who thinks everyone is a play thing beneath him no matter how many times he gets outsmarted, while Sally prides in being cautious, merticulous and sane.

Saying them being overconfident is the point of the whole plot is true, but it's still an idiot ball given how much they WANT them to look competent the rest of the time, and the fact it took Snively pointing out this fact to the Iron Queen in the first place is still kind of an idiot ball as well. It just kinda felt like they were padding time before Iron NICOLE happened. Yeah it's lampshaded, but I mean, Tails getting mad at Sonic over dating Fiona was intentional as well. It was still bad writing but it wasn't unintentional.

Again something that works fine in a work like Boom which can manage characters making stupid mistakes and make it part of the fun sometimes, but in a story that expects the characterisations to be viewed as tight and taken seriously.

Dude, if all parties involved didn’t know about the flaw, you can’t really call that an idiot ball—you’re expecting characters to know everything and not make a mistake, up to not noticing a flaw in themselves.

Tell me, where exactly do you see that story going otherwise? Even if we as the audience can see the flaws, there is a matter of context in-setting that allows these things to connect as a result of said flaws for the sake of generating conflict—otherwise we’d pick every mistake as a matter of an idiot ball instead of what it really was suppose to be: overconfidence.

The Heroes just came out of a victory against a global tyrant in which they believed was permanent, only to go up against a new threat in his place that they managed to repel when it came at their doorstep. I’m pretty sure there is reasonable context there for them to be confident until their Achilles Heel was exploited—indeed, the entire point of that arc was a lesson in overconfidence for both the heroes and the villains, that just because the heroes defeated one tyrant doesn’t mean another won’t rise in their place, and that just because the villain achieved victory in a battle doesn’t mean they’ve won the war yet, and pride went before a fall in both cases.

It also disregards the fact that Nicole’s entire job as the city’s AI is to keep the population safe, meaning she (like the rest of the Freedom Fighters) are required  to put themselves in harms way to protect others—the Iron Queen took advantage of that to not only to turn that against them, but to heighten the stakes of the narrative.

EDIT: And given how the annoyed were Eggman’s technology, Eggman could have been and done the exact same thing himself ages before Regina Ferrum came back into the picture.

[E-122-Psi]

11 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Dude, if all parties involved didn’t know about the flaw, you can’t really call that an idiot ball—you’re expecting characters to know everything and not make a mistake, up to not noticing a flaw in themselves.

Tell me, where exactly do you see that story going otherwise? Even if we as the audience can see the flaws, there is a matter of context in-setting that allows these things to connect as a result of said flaws for the sake of generating conflict—otherwise we’d pick every mistake as a matter of an idiot ball instead of what it really was suppose to be: overconfidence.

The Heroes just came out of a victory against a global tyrant in which they believed was permanent, only to go up against a new threat in his place that they managed to repel when it came at their doorstep. I’m pretty sure there is reasonable context there for them to be confident until their Achilles Heel was exploited—indeed, the entire point of that arc was a lesson in overconfidence for both the heroes and the villains, that just because the heroes defeated one tyrant doesn’t mean another won’t rise in their place, and that just because the villain achieved victory in a battle doesn’t mean they’ve won the war yet, and pride went before a fall in both cases.

It also disregards the fact that Nicole’s entire job as the city’s AI is to keep the population safe, meaning she (like the rest of the Freedom Fighters) are required  to put themselves in harms way to protect others—the Iron Queen took advantage of that to not only to turn that against them, but to heighten the stakes of the narrative.

EDIT: And given how the annoyed were Eggman’s technology, Eggman could have been and done the exact same thing himself ages before Regina Ferrum came back into the picture.

As I said earlier about Archie flawed moments vs light hearted work flawed moments, a parable about overconfidence has FAR greater weight here, because people suffered long term, getting MUTILATED by the Iron Queen's conquest. This isn't like say, a Boom parable about Sonic's ego where he usually only humiliates himself comically or has to deal with a cartoony threat from Eggman, his carelessness caused serious long term suffering and when the threat was over he was pretty unwilling to take responsibility for that fact and just wanted to go back to partying. It's even worse on Sally's end, who despite constantly being the one conveyed as being wary and unwilling to be unprepared and, you know, has chiding Sonic for being overconfident as her MAIN SCHTICK, acts EXACTLY the same as Sonic the entire time.

My point here is how Archie wants to give the sense that its takes on the characters have more weight, they are more responsible and know they have thousands of lives in their hands for what is a very serious and lethal threat, and yet they suffer the same aesop amnesia as the more cartoony episodic takes, which with genuine consequences, makes them look far stupider and apathetic than they are meant to be. It's stockpiled worse since the comics have strawmen who call out the Freedom Fighters for not always making the best decisions, but they are always treated as just that, strawmen. people the Freedom Fighters don't take seriously and act put upon for criticising how they do things (to the point Sally outright blackmailed the council to just shut up and deal with it, which looks far worse when she slacks off afterwards). The Freedom Fighters suffering a proper 'reality ensues' and being reminded this wasn't just about them learning a lesson about being more careful next time, people were TORTURED because of them, that could have had potential, but instead they leave that implication but then try to strawman it, making the Freedom Fighters actually kinda look rather unsympathetic. Robotocizing Sally straight afterwards almost felt like a big 'abort' button so they didn't have to deal with that complexity anymore.

As mentioned before, Sonic being a guy who only half heartedly learns his lesson and always goes right back to being reckless and egotistical has WAY worse implications in a work where being like that has serious consequences for other people all the time. And it's even worse for Sally doing the exact same despite being treated as being the opposite of that and always being careful and considerate of those she protects. Sure stuff like House of Cards tried to give repercussions to that, but naturally it can only be short term before Sonic goes right back to being an arrogant showboater again. So what if people get emotionally crippled or ROBOTICIZED because he wasn't taking the job seriously, he's so freaking awesome that he saves MOST of them.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 hours ago, E-122-Psi said:

As I said earlier about Archie flawed moments vs light hearted work flawed moments, a parable about overconfidence has FAR greater weight here, because people suffered long term, getting MUTILATED by the Iron Queen's conquest.

That’s kinda the point.

That the heroes overconfidence had a major consequence when they fell and even when they came back and won in the end.

2 hours ago, E-122-Psi said:

 

My point here is how Archie wants to give the sense that its takes on the characters have more weight, they are more responsible and know they have thousands of lives in their hands for what is a very serious and lethal threat, and yet they suffer the same aesop amnesia as the more cartoony episodic takes, which with genuine consequences, makes them look far stupider and apathetic than they are meant to be.

I’m gonna be blunt: no, it does not.

This is basically saying characters who forget something and make a mistake as a result of it are stupid and apathetic. That’s not how that works.

As I told you, there was plenty of context for the Freedom Fighters to be confident in defending against the Iron Queen before she proved them otherwise. Characters in the setting don’t look at things the same way you do as the audience/reader—it’s for this reason we have a suspension of disbelief even if we can see a problem coming that the heroes can’t.

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic X - Issue #34: Fool Party!

It’s a pool party and everyone’s been invited. It looks like a lot of fun. I can only imagine having so many friends and being in an environment like that. Sigh. Oh well. At least fantasy allows me to escape. Neat cover, though, it’s a pain in the ass finding a good image of it online for some reason. 

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: David Hutchison
Inks: Terry Austin and Nickerson
Colors: Jason Jensen
Letters: Phil Felix and Owsley
Editor & Managing editor: Mike Pellerito

We begin in media res which is something Ian likes to do a lot. Unlike the cover of this story, Sonic is much less enthusiastic about spending this quality time with Dr. Eggman at the pool.

As Dr. Eggman does a disastrous cannonball into the pool, we flash back to the day before where Sonic hunts down Chris and asks him about an ad he just found for a charity drive that Nelson Thorndyke is holding. Turns out whoever donates the most money will be taken to the mansion for a pool party.

That’s all well and good but the thing that Sonic takes issue with is the part where it says the pool party will happen WITH SONIC THE HEDGEHOG and there’s a picture of him standing there with his arms crossed and grinning. Chris just laughs and says he’s the star attraction, sitting with his legs crossed like he’s one of those evil bond villains. Sitting with your legs crossed definitely makes you look more rich, for sure.

Chris calls up his dad so Sonic can talk with him though. For some reason, YET AGAIN, when Sonic is observing himself in the paper with his tongue out, they took the time to draw a drip of drool hanging from it.

Can Sonic not stick his tongue out without slobbering like that? It’s weird. I just did it and drool didn’t start dripping out of my mouth like that.

Also, it’s a little funny that he apparently doesn’t like the way he looks. That slobbering look on his face could almost double as a punchline here.
When Sonic has Nelson on the line he wants to cancel on account of the fact that he can’t swim but Nelson tells him that he might want to actually attend since Dr. Eggman seems to be the one who’s going to win.

Eggman laughing maniacally because he donated the most money to charity is hilarious. 

I know he’s got more planned than that but strip this from it’s context and just imagine that the buck stops there. It’s great.

When leaving Nelson’s office, Bocoe and Decoe start to inquire as to what Eggman’s brilliant plan could be this time and they proceed to list off a bunch of examples that sound more like demises Sonic would face in a black comedy.

They have very charming imaginations.

No, though, Eggman’s plan is far more simple. Turns out it doesn’t have anything to do with Sonic at all. He proves this by holding out the article that Sonic was looking at earlier that was about … Sonic the Hedgehog. Bocoe points this out and Eggman has to clarify.

Nelson has apparently invented a new engine and he wants to steal it.

That’s it.

What is this engine? What’s it for? How does it work? I dunno and I don’t think Eggman does either.

However, Nelson is creating it, therefore he wants to steal it.

You know what? Fine. Eggman IS that petty and the pool party is the perfect backdrop for a plan this spontaneous and off the cuff.

When Eggman and his cohorts arrive, we get hands down the most epic stare down between good versus evil that has ever existed in the 30 years since Sonic the Hedgehog has been around.

Fucking.

Epic.

The only way this would be better is if Sonic and Tails were allowed to wear swim trunks. 

I swear to God, I wish we could have gotten the full pool garb stare down but this is still magnificent as is.

Mr. Tanaka interrupts the stare down of the century to tell them all that the pool is ready. As if a flip was just switched, Eggman goes marching off to have fun with his robo-buddies.

Sonic is kicking back and relaxing under an umbrella on a recliner while Amy and Cream play in the pool as if nothing weird is happening. Chuck and Eggman are floating on some weird hi-tech looking water lounge chairs or something.

Eggman decides to be the most unsubtle of chuckle-fucks and just asks Chuck where he would keep a super advanced engine, hypothetically. Chuck tells him he keeps all his inventions in the garage just like that.

However, before Eggman is able to go and get it, he gets smitten by the love bug.

Love between plump, old people is probably the sexiest of love in existence. 

Chuck's epic full-body cringe was great. I felt that.

I’m imagining something disgusting right now and I very much need this trail of thought to stop so on to the next scene.

Tails there walks right on by the floating Eggman, no doubt wondering how he’s doing that without two tails on his backside, and approaches Bocoe and Decoe, literally just to see how they’re doing because they look sad. Aww.

Bocoe and Decoe lament not being able to swim. Tails offers to teach them. Bocoe assures him it’s more so the fact that they’re not water proof so Tails, all excited and peppy, decides to drag them off to his workspace and make them pool ready.

They warn him that Eggman designed them with failsafes to prevent any modifications but Tails says he’ll be careful… then he immediately fucks up.

The next three pages are a montage of various things happening at the pool all while Tails is running from Bocoe and Decoe, screaming for help in the background.

The amount of times Tails screams for help in his word balloons increases more and more as the pages go by. 

I decided to count the amount of times Tails screams for help.

He shouts for help 28 times.

Not a single person reacts to it. 

That’s actually really funny.

He stops by the time he’s running past Sonic but Sonic is lounging with his eyes closed anyway. He’s woken up when Dr. Eggman looms over him with his ginormous shadow and challenges him to a diving contest.

He says it’s so that he can display his desirable prowess and it’s clear he means that he wants to impress Ella. In one of the scenes during the “Tails screaming for help in the background” montage, Eggman was asking Ella over and over again where the garage was and she would turn and point to it constantly.  I think he was only doing this because he liked the position she was in when she turned and pointed though. It’s very strange.

I guess he figures making an impressive enough dive will be just the ticket he needs to slap fat rolls with her or something.

Sonic initially says he doesn’t want to but Chris promises to fish him out of the pool if he can’t get out. Sonic agrees and even adds on as an aside to Chris that it might be worth it if Eggman leaves.

So, Eggman, after asking if Ella is watching, makes his glorious high dive butt bomb into the pool and… the entire thing practically explodes.

This is the first time I’ve ever shown you guys three straight pages of a Sonic comic before but it was necessary because the wind up and release of what happens here is all one big, giant scene. It’s amazing.

We finally see why this story began in media res here too. It started with Eggman doing that cannonball because this is where the entire thing ends.

Were this a Youtube video, the instant Eggman hit the water would be the part where they substitute the resulting splash with an explosion.

This is like what Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric did; only the pay off was way more worth it because there was an actual consequence. In the context of this story, the pool party has been ruined.

Chris’ parents ask Eggman to leave. Eggman, acting like a character from a fairy tale asking for a cup of sugar, asks if they can at least stay for an engine. Then he corrects himself and says “hot dog”.

Mr. Tanaka presents him with the hot dogs which were burned to charcoal earlier by Lindsay and Nelson and then washed down with pool water. Eggman just says “Oh” and realizes he’s not getting his engine today. Plus, Chuck just said earlier that the hurricane Eggman just caused likely ruined it so he probably should have checked out as soon as he heard that.

He hoists his robots over his shoulders (because apparently they’re SUPER LIGHT or something) and heads off while Bokkun munches on charcoal-dogs on their way out. He’s very weird.

Our story ends with Tails and Chuck trying to air-dry the engine to salvage it and Sonic contemplating how good of a day it ended up being with Amy.

Back with Eggman, Bocoe and Decoe are lamenting not having gotten the chance to actually swim despite ending up soaking wet anyway. They wonder if Eggman is in a bad mood too but Bokkun says their boss has probably never been happier.

We end on Eggman laying in his bed like a schoolgirl, staring at a collection of pictures of Ella he’s taped to his bed post.

Ah. Young love.

That totally ain’t what this is.

While not a ton happened here, the set-up and pay off for what this was is great just the way it is. You can get a lot of mileage out of treating these wacky situations with Sonic and the gang as just another typical fun adventure. It makes the epic staredown at the pool look like something that they’d totally take seriously despite it being extremely ridiculous on the outset. Eggman’s crush on Ella is a bit weird but I’m sure somebody out there finds it funny. I know Ian did. 

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #180: Preparations for War!

Sonic and Eggman… FRIENDS? No, obviously not. You can even tell that on the cover. It isn’t just Eggman crossing his fingers that gives it away but also the look of trepidation on Sonic’s face. When it comes to Dr. Eggman he’s very much not a fan. I am though and I can’t wait to re-witness his feats of passion in this story. This is the prologue before the four part story, Enerjak: Reborn and it’s going to be a doozy of a fun time. Why? Because I get to see all of that horrible, awful shit I had to suffer through concerning those terrible echidnas come home to roost. I’ve read and re-read this story before but back then I didn’t have the earlier context. My love for this story is going to be reborn now that I finally know all the details. 

Spoiler

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

We begin with Sonic and Eggman fighting one another just outside the city. This is a particularly funny scene because Eggman’s here to get revenge on Nicole because she stole his ultimate victory away from him. He flat out tells Sonic he’s going to use the tentacles of this robot he’s piloting to upload a virus that’ll delete her. It’s a wonderful thing for him to gloat at Sonic, as though that wouldn’t spur him to keep fighting instead of laying off like he told him to do, just because Sonic wasn’t his target today.

I like to imagine that Eggman just comes to the gates of this new city to scream at it with his arms out like a lunatic, only instead of his old flame coming back to him he wants that city to give him his ultimate victory back. Hold up a radio and play a song for the city Eggman. I’m sure you’ll get your victory back that way.

Anyway, the real reason Sonic is trying to be more chatty with Eggman here is that at the end of the last issue the floating disembodied head of Dimitri came to warn them that Enerjak is back and he’s on the Enerjak attack. 

This results in another of my favorite Sonic and Eggman moments from the book.

It’s always great whenever Eggman stops mid-tantrum to slouch over to Sonic and ask him what he knows about the next threat the two of them are going to have to reluctantly team up together to stop. It’s something I never get tired of seeing. 

In the next scene we get our first shot of the newly formed Council of Acorn, consisting of King Elias and a bunch of familiar faces like Rosemary, Rotor, Uncle Chuck, and those secondary Freedom Fighters from eons ago that are being made relevant now. Ian dug through the closest and dusted these fuckers off so that they could finally see some use. If you don’t remember Hamlin, you definitely will by the time the book gets rebooted.

I remember being so petty about Sally back in the day that I liked Hamlin simply because he didn’t like Sally. I didn’t even pay any attention to the politics happening or WHY they didn’t like each other. I promise to do so now of course but my brain was so laser focused on wanting to see Sonic characters go on adventures I guess my thoughts just turned into spilled milk anytime anything dealing with this kingdom was brought up. 

Anyway, Dimitri explains his backstory in a manner that should honestly be easy enough to understand but for whatever reason I never quite followed until now. Perhaps the images accompanying it threw me off or something? I for damn sure did not know what the context of that glowing sword being pointed at him was. I know now that it was the result of that really awesome moment where Mogul stole his powers but here I likely didn’t even allow it a spot in my mind, resigned in the belief that if I didn’t have the earlier context this was all going to go in one ear and out the other.

Reading this now I don’t even remember Dimitri explaining all this. This entire recap is really succinct and precise without diving too heavily into the confusing parts of the story.  

He was A BRILLIANT SCIENTIST who got arrogant and sucked in too much Chaos Emerald energy and became a God of sorts. Then his power got stolen and hundreds of years of aging caught up to him to the point where he had to be given a robot body to be kept alive.

The part I didn’t know was what he reveals right now where he teamed up with Finitevus to have himself disassembled so that he could find a new way to return to his former power.

Instead, he was left a floating head in a bubble.

It’s such a strange existence. Does he eat? Do we put fish food into his bubble like those celebrities from Futurama?

Sally ribs him for trusting Finitevus with his life like that but Dimitri has to spell it out for her that he was desperate and thought he was loyal to the Dark Legion. Looking at Dimitri now I couldn’t imagine why anyone would think he’d be desperate to return to the way he was though. Nuh-uh. It looks like fun being a floating bubble head. 

Say goodbye to your feet falling asleep forever.

Uncle Chuck asks who the new Enerjak is supposed to be and Dimitri says he doesn’t know. All he knows is that Finitevus betrayed him and he needs help to stop it from happening.

He then chides them for being so slow to act. I momentarily wondered if Dimitri was overstepping his bounds a bit but reading the next page kind of made me realize what he meant a bit.

I mean, hey, I guess I appreciate them having such heavy concern for the safety of their soldiers (for lack of a better term) but man. I’m a little worried that all the council scenes I read back in the day were just a bunch of scenes like this where they were just really indecisive about the best course of action to take.

I can’t be too hard on them at the moment of course. This is Enerjak we’re talking about. Even though he was portrayed as a massive idiot in the past because of his astounding arrogance, God-like power shouldn’t be trifled with. I can see the logic of worrying you’d just be sentencing the Freedom Fighters or the Chaotix to their doom. 

However, this is exactly why I tend to prefer Sonic stories where the heroes ARE the initiative and they just do whatever they want. Sally having to plead her case for why they don’t need protection wouldn’t be an issue in that sense. 

It’s why I’m glad the Chaotix here are free agents. Julie-Su here is probably at the absolute best she’s ever been in my eyes right now. Plus, having Charmy be their little spy is an adorable image in and of itself.

You’d think it’d be Espio but then they’d have to leave Espio behind instead of Charmy and Ian wasn’t going to do that.
Vector and Julie-Su’s relationship has also improved a lot as well. I’m still always going to be on the green one’s side but hey so long as they’re not fighting.

Do not get the wrong idea. I’m not upset with the council. Not yet anyway. I just need to see what all this discussion and caution is eventually going to lead to. Is something going to happen? Will they take the correct initiative or will we be stuck in a position where, yes, things are better because it’s a democracy, but also, politics inherently suck so there’s still shit that’s frustrating as fuck.

I’m guessing the latter because politics.

Meanwhile Sonic finishes his talk with Eggman. Deciding it best not to endanger his empire or risk someone else stealing his chance to get revenge on the heroes, Eggman decides to join forces with Sonic.

The eggster is many things but subtle he is not. 

Sonic reels Eggman in and demands he not backstab him this time. Eggman, hilariously, says that Sonic just insulted his honor but the fact of the matter is he’s betrayed them every time they’ve had to work together before. Except maybe the A.D.A.M situation. Tommy just so happened to be the threat that needed neutralizing.

I remember back in Issue 125 when Eggman betrayed them before they even got to the source of the problem. It was really funny how instantaneous it was. Granted, the heroes were kind of dumb for putting themselves in that much of a vulnerable position and making it super easy for him to do.

These team ups are kind of an area where I do prefer Game Eggman. I do like how Eggman in the games sticks with the truce until the problem is neutralized. I do also like the idea of Eggman turning the problem into a three-sided affair too though, like he tried to do throughout Shadow the Hedgehog until the Last Story. In that case, I’d rather there not be a truce at all though.

Sonic feels disgusted by that, reminding me that not all Sonic and Eggman dynamics are as playful as some others. As he rushes off he gets word from Nicole that there’s trouble at the AirField. When Sonic heads there he gasps in surprise at seeing that the trouble is the Chaotix. 

Oh dear. 

I hope this goes somewhere I can appreciate. 

We cut to Scourge and Fiona, who’s on her first evil job since turning heel. Scourge calls out an annoyed Dr. Creepy Von Evil and lays on him a report of the current state of the island.

Again, ALL of this flew over my head the first time reading it. I didn’t know who the Flame and Frost regions were. I didn’t know who Von Stryker was. I didn’t know what the Dingo army was. I didn’t even remember that the Destructix were currently protecting a small group of echidnas despite that story happening past the point I read.

All I knew was that Scourge was listing off the names of some groups of people and it sounded like there was going to be a big fight that included all of them. That got me excited and that was good enough for teenage me.

Fiona isn’t too jazzed about working with Finitevus. Scourge may be the dream bad boy she’s always wanted but Finitevus just looks like he’s one pebble in his shoe away from strangling a baby.

Scourge doesn’t give a shit though and when he’s given no standing orders he takes this as an opportunity to lounge around and watch the fireworks fly.

We cut back to Sonic and the Chaotix. Sonic begins to yammer on and on in an unintentionally funny scene where he’s constantly telling the Chaotix that they need to stop fighting, over and over again, while being shown as the only person fighting them until the last panel.

Were you to show this to anyone out of context, it’d look like Sonic was screaming “STOP RESISTING” while bullying these guys. It’s a fairly amusing image to me.

Julie-Su does eventually get shown throwing an attack or two of her own and tells Sonic to stuff it. Sonic doesn’t think it’s a good idea to go out there without a solid plan. Okay. That much I agree with him on but if the Council truly is taking a long time to come up with one then I can see why the Chaotix are being so antsy. 

Then Julie-Su basically becomes a good character with the next line she says.

Goddamn. It’s like I’m re-discovering the Archie Comics all over again. I haven’t felt this way since I bought Sonic Heroes on the Gamecube after having grown up with the PS2 version since I was a child. The look of wonder on my face when I discovered that the exploding robots came with an explosion sound-effect or that the red tubes in Grand Metropolis were supposed to be flowing liquid with actual texture was probably immaculate.

This scene probably rolled off my shoulders back when I first read it. I distinctly remember not even really understanding why they were fighting here. This period really did see me only focusing on the characters’ actions from a pure emotional standpoint because if I had actually understood any of the politics leading up to this point or had any of the context for how truly shitty the Acorn Kingdom was I probably would have felt even more vindicated at the time for deciding that I hated this place.

I’m sure there’s arguments to be had about who has the right to say and do whatever but I’m fully on the side of Julie-Su here. The fact that the characters in a Sonic the Hedgehog book, even Sonic himself, aren’t free to do anything without some authority figure’s say really eats.
Yes, things are better for the state of this city because of its shift to a democracy but that changes nothing as far as where Sonic and the supposed “Freedom” Fighters stand. 

Nicole is still tattling on her friends so that Sonic can rush off and go deal with them. Despite his pleas for them to stop fighting it’s really only in service of making sure they fall in line with what the kingdom decides they should do. I know Elias and Sonic are only concerned for them but man. I just can’t shake off that feeling of it being the antithesis of what Sonic’s all about.

I can sit here and agree that they need a solid plan all I want but that pure feeling of seeing the heroes be faced with a problem and watching them huddle together to decide a plan and taking action THEMSELVES is lost here. Instead it’s just them waiting around for a bunch of people who aren’t even going to fight to do it.

Like Sonic is talking about the importance of remaining calm, not fighting, and making a plan but he’s not… doing that. He’s not coming up with a plan like he and Tails would do in the games. He’s just playing the role of peace-officer until an entirely different group of people come up with a plan for him. 

I’m not a fan of the Freedom Fighters system but I can see why it’d be preferable compared to this. 

So it means quite a lot that Sonic, after the House of Cards incident, is taking a step back to recognize the feelings of the people he’s clashing with and standing down. These people are supposed to be his friends. It’s OKAY to try and see where they might be coming from, even if you don’t agree. He’s gotten some character development. 

Sally agrees with me on that too! She shows up and puts a hand on Sonic’s shoulder, telling him that what he just spoke was well said. Instead of fighting them while crying about not wanting to fight, they’re going to actually work out a fucking plan.

Sally begins explaining said plan and Julie-Su just freaks out over everything she says. Nicole sent a probe to Angel Island to see what’s happening and meanwhile Sally’s going to send Sonic and Tails on a search and rescue mission while the Chaotix hold down the fort here with the rest of them since they’re sure Enerjak will attack the most important places on Mobius. 

Why can Sally suddenly do this? Well, it wasn’t because she decided to come here on her own after saying “Fuck the Council” like I had hoped. It took a while but the council finally came through and decided to give Sally clearance to command the Freedom Fighters.

That’s all well and good but it really does feel like a strange unnecessary extra step. 

You know, instead of waiting for the council to not come up with a plan themselves and then give Sally clearance to use the Freedom Fighters so that she can then come up with a plan with the Chaotix… we could have just had Sally come to the Chaotix with this plan in the first place. That way we could have skipped the part where the Chaotix had to try and sneak away and fight off soldiers of the Acorn Kingdom.

Like a lot of time was just wasted for no reason in-universe. In the context of the book, it’s fine. This has been a great issue. I’m just observing how the council operates and realizing it’s not quite up to snuff.

Is it too late…?

KINDA! YEAH!

So while all that waiting around was going on, Enerjak arrived. 

Fucking whoops.

Granted, there was probably nothing the heroes could have done to stop this from happening. It’s still a little funny to think about how they took the long way towards doing something about it though.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #180: Sonic Rush Adventure: High Stakes on the High Seas

Written by: Ian Flynn
Penciled by: Tracy Yardley
Inked by: Jim Amash
Colored by: Stingray GW
Lettered by: Josh Ray
Editor: Mike Pellerito

Ah yes. I remember it like it was yesterday. The old SEGA forums were a buzz with people awaiting the next Sonic game and then finally one was announced. Sonic Rush Adventure was its name and back during the time where the characters were hated for their mere existence, a banner showing off Sonic, Tails, Blaze, and Marine was all that was needed to generate intense ire from them. 

I remember two specific lines from that old, dead forum. One of them being “Yay, new game. Boo, new character” and the other being “I’m not surprised by the new character. I knew they wouldn’t be able to help themselves”.

I remember thinking it very strange that the mere presence of a new character was a call for immediate dismissal of them. I guess we were on a bit of a train where each new character that was introduced in the series was someone you could play as but I loved that so I saw no reason to complain.

I was never going to purchase Sonic Rush Adventure because I’m not a handheld guy. To this day I still haven’t played it and doubt I ever will unless Iizuka makes good on his interest to release the rest of Sonic’s backlog onto newer consoles. 

What ended up resulting from this new character was Marine the Raccoon. 

Pictured here without her accent.

She didn’t do much but talk really. That’s it. I remember seeing the scenes from the story and I recall her also getting in the way and breaking things too. 

She was never playable and ever since Sonic Rush Adventure she hasn’t had an in-story appearance in a single Sonic game after it. The most she’s gotten is a costume in the Olympic Games and a sticker in Smash Bros. Brawl. The rest of her tenure has been reduced to comic appearances in Archie and in those neat Sonic Channel comics. Other than that, nothing. 

Ian has tried pushing for her to return in IDW, even having Mr. Needlemouse Sonic say that he got his new name from a little girl and later revealed by Flynn in his podcast that that was supposed to be Marine, but he’s been denied so far.

I’ve always been one to not really care too much one way or the other for her. It does sometimes behoove me whenever fans treat her as though she wasn’t just a one-off though. I’ll admit to raising an eyebrow when I see her in character compilation pictures that show the main cast and have text in it that says “Off to the next adventure” because at the back of my mind I’m like, “Marine never quite got to the next adventure though, did she?”

That’s not me judging anyone. People can do what they want. I’m just explaining why I probably wouldn’t do it. 

Maybe SEGA’s embarrassed by her. I dunno. From this story, she doesn’t seem that bad. She’s definitely a little pushy but perhaps that can be worked through…?

I love this scene here for example. Sonic is about to brush her call to adventure off but Tails is shown twiddling with his fingers, enticed by the idea of an adventure.

She tells the tale of a swashbuckling dandy named DAVY JONES… I mean, Captain Whisker!

I also recall this dude’s name being made fun of when he was revealed too. People kept getting it wrong and calling him “Captain Whiskers” like he was a cat. Mostly, people were also talking about how they hated the idea of more villains and how Eggman should be the ONLY villain in the Sonic series. Rogues Gallery? Fuck that. Eggman or bust.

It’s astounding. I’ve held the same opinions for pretty much my entire life as far as being a Sonic fan goes. I love Eggman but I also love the idea of Sonic having a Rogues Gallery. I love extra playable characters. I never freaked out when new characters showed up because I understood that sometimes it was necessary for the sake of telling a brand new narrative. Yes, it was ridiculous that each new character would be designated as playable but they chilled out on that after Silver hit the scene and it hasn’t been an issue since. To be fair, Rush Adventure came out at around that same space in time so the people worrying about that felt like they had a reason to be.

The reality that ended up happening was that the 3D games stopped allowing us to play as anyone after Black Knight in 2009 and didn’t allow it again, outside of a spin-off, until Forces in 2017 but you know…

Tails asks what the pirates could be after and Marine produces a Chaos Emerald. 

It gets snatched immediately.

One of the things I love about this story in particular is how well it’s colored. The colors in this story are something that I don’t feel hit as well as they did before. It really looks great.

Another thing I love about this story is just how adorable Tails is throughout it. First the finger twiddling and then the slow reach towards the emerald with a look of wonderment on his face as he tries to poke it.

The person who snatched it was a green robot. Some call him Johnny.

Others apparently call him the...Sultan of Speed. Huh.

This guy definitely looks like he knows what a Sultan is.

Well, they’ve got to recover that emerald from him if he’s a pirate. How do they do it? Go play “Sonic Rush 2 or Nintendo DS!” and find out.

That’s what the comic says. 

It doesn’t call it Sonic Rush Adventure at the end there despite doing so in the beginning. Weird.

Well, this issue was certainly an interesting first outing for the Council of Acorn. Taking all that time to not come up with a plan only to then come up with the brilliant plan of letting Sally do her thing the way she normally does feels like a good enough example of the problems that’ll probably be still plaguing the state of this kingdom and Sonic and his pals' interactions with it going forward. I remember not liking the council back in the day too but I think I’m about to get a much clearer picture as to why as I read along. 

It was really great seeing Sonic having that sobering moment where he realized he was being a bit dismissive again, though, nowhere near as extreme. It does kind of stand out just how the resolution just amounted to something that the Freedom Fighters could have done on their own back when there was no king or a council. It really does go to show that despite being in need of a plan, the presence of the council wasn’t exactly what was necessary to initiate that. If the authoritative side to this piece just chilled out they could have just worked together from the get go. 

Meanwhile, Eggman and the rest of the villains continue to be glorious highlights for me. Now that Enerjak has arrived things are going to get even spicier. 

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #181: Enerjak: Reborn, Chapter 1: Rising Evil

HERE IT IS FOLKS! This is the most nostalgic Sonic comic cover in existence for me. We’re finally at the legendary Issue #181, otherwise known as, my very first Sonic the Hedgehog comic. 

I bought this issue on a whim one day when my family was at the mall. I saw it on the rack at a bookstore and decided to purchase it because, hey, it was a Sonic comic book and despite being slightly worried I wasn’t going to understand what was going on (and I didn’t, though the ending of this issue made me REALLY wish I did) I could tell I was missing out on something wonderfully convoluted. Organized chaos is my absolute favorite thing in a story and this issue had that in spades.

Not only is this issue my first Sonic comic, it’s probably my first comic book period. I wasn’t an avid collector of comics and to this day I only own Sonic comics and a few Mega Man ones before that book was cancelled. It wasn’t a smart move to finally start reading Mega Man after World’s Unite, I’ll say that.

I don’t know why I didn’t decide to start collecting the issues monthly until #194. I remember being intimidated by the idea of following along with a monthly comic and freaking out over how devastated I’d be were I to get into it and miss the window for acquiring a book. I guess I got over that and probably started to think of it as a bit of a game or something. Who knows? Perhaps it was because I bought Sonic X Issue #25 too.

Either way, just like with Sonic X Issue #25, it doesn’t really matter what happens in this book because the nostalgia goggles are going to insist it’s a perfect 10 regardless. It’s a good thing I know for a fact that without that the story is still really damn good.

Spoiler

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

Already, I’m getting hit with a blast of nostalgia, looking at the first page of Sonic and Tails flying off in the tornado together. I remember using it as a good basis for whenever I wanted to try and draw the plane. It’s just an establishing shot of them trying to hurry to Angel Island to find Knuckles before Enerjak does; a mission they’re not aware is a futile one yet.

Dimiri and Julie-Su are freaking out back at the base. Sally is trying to get into contact with the people she’s sent warnings to but something is scrambling everything she’s sent out. The Downunda Freedom Fighters and Monkey Khan aren’t responding. 

I like this next scene of Dimitri yelling at Nicole about how fucked they are and how slow they were to act. Nicole looks really annoyed at him for this saying that they’ll be well prepared for him. I don’t yet know where her confidence that that’s true is coming from. Especially considering what happens next.

Julie-Su uses the probe that Nicole sent to see what’s happening on Angel Island and the Dingo City, Cavem Canus, is being attacked. 

Here we see Enerjak acting as though the echidnas were the complete and total righteous and just ones in the relationship between them and the dingos and he just declares them all guilty.

Enerjak just strips the dingos of all their weapons, possessions, and apparently their pride (though it looks more like he made them go half-naked) and then shoots them off to the desert where, apparently, he sent Von Stryker.

Kage doesn’t get that luxury though. He challenges Enerjak to a fight and instead of dignifying him with one, he just reduces Kage and the entire Dingo city down to atoms!

Apparently Kage was Von Styker’s son which I did not know. If it was said before I did not commit it to memory.

Uh, but no, this was awesome.

Back when I read this, I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening but I did think it was crazy actually witnessing someone just disintegrate like that. I’m even more taken by it now that I actually know who Kage is.

Plus, the notion that Enerjak seriously believes that the echidnas were the only ones suffering when it came to the nonsense going on between them is perfect. Ian is making it clear, right off the bat, that this guy’s angle as a villain is going to stem from his holier than thou attitude coupled with his desire to satiate the disgusting values that the idiots in the Brotherhood tried to uphold.

I’m not saying the dingos didn’t have things to answer for. Obviously they do. However, the fact that Enerjak doesn’t even suggest that the echidnas also have a lot of crimes to answer for is wonderful. Acknowledging that would make him something other than the clear and obvious villain he’s supposed to be. Loving this already.

Also, and I of course didn’t know this at the time, but the literal erasing of General Kage was another bit of house cleaning. I have a feeling that he and all the dingos weren’t exactly something Ian was too keen on utilizing and I understand why. Most of the literal point of the story surrounding the conflict between them and the echidnas is the fact that it goes in circles and never ends. 

So he’s pretty much ending it and where they end up is going to render both civilizations a massive wreck. It’s going to be beautiful. To the innocents that got caught up in the bullshit your two civilizations wrought, I apologize, but this needed to happen.

Sonic asks Nicole for a report, and despite her saying “Yo, we got this” earlier to Dimitri she straight up tells Sonic that things are going poorly. Yeah, it took the guy two swipes of his hand to completely reduce an entire city to atoms and send its inhabitants halfway across the planet. 

He does the exact opposite with the Flame and Frost Legions. Or, he feels that he does.

A brainwashed Remington, leading the Frost Legion tries to take him out because he “stole his birthright” but Enerjak, very casually and speaking to him as though he’s an old friend (Hmmmm…) just reminds him that he never wanted Enerjak’s power nor the cybernetic enhancements he has. With his magic he reduces Remington’s mind and body back to its original state.

How kind of him. 

No, really. That was a genuinely nice thing he did. 

He does the same to the Flame Legion and they’re not as receptive to it.

“Fine. Be mad at God for handing out blessings. See if I ever do it again, you jerks!”

So yeah, this is the other side to Enerjak. He’s the savior of the echidnas and ONLY the echidnas but just the ones that also agree with him that technology bad. The debate within echidna society about the merits behind relying on technology versus staying close to nature is baked within this character as well, only this time, instead of being held up as some kind of weird debate, Enerjak, as the villain, is taking the reigns and forcing his ideals upon the people with his power.

Then again, Echidna society did that too in that dumb story where they stole technology from their citizens and the hypocritical rich ones got to keep theirs. 

The Flame Legion aren’t good guys but the action Enerjak took just then could still be debated as being the wrong thing to do. I mean, it’s their bodies. They should be allowed to do with them as they please under normal circumstances. Now, there is the unfortunate part where they were using their technological enhancements to hurt people but that’s not the reason why he got rid of their cybernetics so it’s a moot point. He got rid of them because it’s technology, period. It doesn’t matter what they wished to do with it.

The way he feels the need to clarify that Remington’s new bod was coated in “unnatural” cybernetic parts gives that away immediately.

Speaking of Remington, this arc of his was stewing in the background for a while and sad to say it pretty much stayed there too. There was never really a moment where what was going on with him felt like something that I should and would be expected to casually remember.

This plot point obviously didn’t hit me at all the first time I read it and this go around I feel like I got lucky. I could easily have seen myself forgetting that Remington disappeared during the Battle for Angel Island because Finitiveus got to him. Originally, this was probably because Ian’s big reveal for him was going to be that Remington was to be Enerjak. I’m glad that didn’t end up being the case. 

I actually like Remington but I definitely would not have cared as much about him being Enerjak versus who it actually is.

Poor Remington really has had it rough though. He disappeared for a bit only to come back into the story as a almost crazed, smelly, Knuckles worshipper and then got brainwashed and his body remodeled with robot parts against his will. It really was quite the favor Enerjak did for him here.

Of course, that’s only true because Remington’s circumstances were different. Unlike the rest of the Dark Legion, the cybernetics weren’t a thing he particularly asked for. Now Enerjak’s all salty that Lien-Da here isn’t rejoicing that the things she wanted were taken from her. He’s going to send the ones who are thankful back to Albion which means he’s an OG God of rebalancing things.

He doesn’t just want them to return to nature, he wants them to return back to that original land of Bethlehem where Jesus walked across water to break bread or some shit. Imagine if some God just showed up and forced you to return to the original home of your ancestors. You’d want to tell him to fuck off probably but refusing his “blessing” would probably be a really scary thing to try and do.

On the flip side, maybe Enerjak could work that magic on Sonic’s dad. I don’t know if it would work but he’s got freaky magic or whatever right? It probably could. Maybe.

Back at Freedom H.Q, Dimitri and Julie-Su have lost their collective shit. Their patience is just gone now and Nicole’s non-answers really aren’t helping either of them to feel convinced about what’s going on.

Dimitri says “Fuck it. I tried the Hero side but they’re not giving me anything concrete to latch onto and they’re slow as fuck” so he flies off.

Julie-Su makes a painful looking angry face as she calls back to the olden days of Enerjak also reducing people to atoms. Their deus-ex-machina masks are no longer alive so if it happens again then there’s no way out of it this time. 

I like this a lot because I totally get why Dimitri is upset that Nicole keeps shooting him down and blowing him off about how under control things are, only to immediately give MORE bad news that also makes Julie-Su snap. It keeps him a bit more grounded rather than just some asshole screaming at them to do shit. 

Although, I’m not entirely sure why Nicole doesn’t want to devote the nanites to weaponry right now. She made it sound like she COULD do that but just didn’t want to…?

If that’s the case, I’m guessing it’s a moral thing? Like, what would the people think if they knew the city they were trapped inside of with an A.I that could pop up inside their homes at any given time could also use the nanites to create weapons… but then again… you know, it’s fucking Enerjak so…

I mean, this doesn’t matter anyway because whatever weapons she’d use wouldn’t work. 

Anyway, Sally manages to make contact with G.U.N and gets a surprise in-voice from Rouge. She delights in telling them that their best agent is in the area and that she’ll be sending him right over. The signal gets a bit lost after that but luckily for them, Sonic radios in to tell them… that Knuckles is NOT home. 

Well, shit.

They ran all this way and now they’ve gotta go search the village and ask them about him, all while missing Dr. Creepy Von Evil himself hiding behind the Master Emerald.

As Sonic and Tails head on their way we see a family of echidnas in the village they’re headed to doubling back in fear..! 

After skipping past the 8 page long comic about the Goldfish Cracker characters we see that Enerjak is here, saying “Do not fear the return of Enerjak”. 

DO NOT FEAR!

For he has come to end the years of pain and strife.

So he just sends all of them to Albion. All echidnas begin in Albion and all so end. The heart is no different. Behold, Kingdom Albion. Within it you’ll find not even the smallest glimmer of technology or dingos. 

Kingdom Albion, fill me with the power of chaos!

Also, that probe that Nicole was so proud of just gets destroyed and it hurts her when Enerjak does it.

It’s great because he no sells it like he knew they were spying on him the whole time and you wouldn’t be overstepping your bounds to think that them doing that might have been the deciding factor on him heading there next. Of course, it’s also natural to assume that he was just going to places based on what he thought were the biggest priorities on his list. 

So far the plan isn’t going very well. 

Sonic tries to spindash into Enerjak but he teleports at that exact moment and ends up right outside the city’s force field. So now, Sonic and Tails have to rush ALL the way the fuck back to the plane and then take that back to their home. 

Even back when I read this, I felt exhausted for them. That was a lot of running around for the sake of accomplishing pretty much nothing.

Though, it was cute seeing Sonic pick up Tails in the bridal carry.

I also like the little “Whoop” that Tails says when Sonic does it.

With them on their way back, Sally orders everyone to their places. Julie-Su is practically a wreck. She’s convinced that Knuckles is gone since Enerjak decimated Angel Island and Sonic and Tails couldn’t find him. That’s the only logical conclusion right?

Well, he’s here now. Don’t worry though. Nicole tells everyone the same thing she’s been saying this whole time. “Stay calm” for her nanite city can handle everything--!

--except for the things it can’t handle. But, you know, baby steps.

These two panels were quite funny to me. 

I know there’s realistically very little Nicole can do in this situation but stuff like this does retroactively make all the scenes of her in this issue trying to assure them that everything is fine look even more funny.

All this scene needed was a more traditional cartoon sound-effect to accompany him whipping open that dome with his magic. We don’t see Nicole in the next coming pages. I like to imagine she just sat on the ground and started making circles in the grass with her finger after Enerjak did that. Like an anime gag. 

Enerjak floats down in the Jesus pose. Once again, he claims to mean them no harm but Sally doesn’t buy it. Julie-Su straight up doesn’t give a fuck and is about to shoot a double barrel right between his eyes.

Enerjak floats the gun away, telling her to chill. He really means it when he says he would never hurt her. Also, he denies her claim that he destroyed Knuckles. For you see--!

Oh. I was gonna say because he IS Knuckles and he’s very much alive. That’s dumb what you just said Knuckles. You can totally destroy yourself. I do it everyday by purchasing copious amounts of candy and soda.

Back in the day, this was the ending of the issue for me. This final image of Knuckles taking off that helmet and confirming that he was Enerjak was such a powerful moment to me despite not having a clue what was going on. Who was this weird looking pink Knuckles with the gun? Who was that guy that Knuckles disintegrated? What even is going on? Literally, what is happening? 

I didn’t know. However, one thing was clear. This Enerjak was a very powerful bad guy and that bad guy was Knuckles. That’s really all I needed. 

I have no recollection of the story that follows this one at the back end of the book. It’s honestly kind of amazing how the entire rest of the issue I almost have a photographic memory of but this second story with what was then “some random ant” to me carried no weight.

I have a feeling it’s about to finally carry that weight though. I truly can not wait to see Archimedes lamenting the state of these affairs. Yessir.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #181: Undone

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Steven Butler
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Stingray G.W.'s Josh Ray

Archimedes begins this story by lamenting how much he sucks at being a mentor for the guardians. The last three he’s worked with haven’t turned out so hot, with this current one somehow ending up becoming the new Enerjak. How much more of a failure can you get?

That’s not all though. Apparently the situation on Angel Island was worse than I thought because even those overpowered ants were demolished. Yeah. Archimedes’ kingdom was crushed and his people were scattered.

As for Knuckles, he showed up and got his shit pushed in by The Destructix and Scourge. 

Meanwhile, Drago lays beaten up on the floor yet again because that’s the running joke with him now.

Knuckles gets dragged to the Chaos Chamber and tossed in like a bag of garbage in front of Finitevus, Remington, and Lien-Da. 

Finitevus cuts to the chase and basically tells Knuckles that thanks to him and the Brotherhood of So-Called Guardians, Ninety-percent of the echidnas are dead. 

That’s fantastic. 

No, that really is wonderful.

Not because all of them deserved it or anything like that. I’m sure there were plenty that didn’t. I can even name a few that don’t deserve a lot of the crap they’ve been through. However, it’s great that Finitevus is saying this because it’s the truth and it’s gone ignored for… a long time.

Like, this isn’t even counting all the shit that’s been happening on Angel Island with General Kage. Like, TONS of people died when Eggman finally discovered Angel Island during the events of the Adventure arc and it just got swept under the rug and the Brotherhood got to continue postering around like everything was going according to keikaku.

I’d imagine if their dumbasses didn’t get blown the hell away they’d still be around pretending they were the right people for the job. 

That job title of “Guardian” is a joke. It’s a fucking joke. It’s almost like it means the opposite of what it means now. The way the Jedi… I mean the echidna do this is so ass-backwards and mentally unhealthy that it destroys the minds of the people who are supposed to be doing the protecting and leads to situations where they get such a superiority complex that they let dangerous men like Eggman fester and grow like a virus out in the world thinking no harm will come to them because they’re just better than him and everyone out there suffering because of their lack of action. Sally comes to them for aid and they blow her off because of some bullshit and then a ton of their people die. Oh geez. What could have been done to stop that?

Meanwhile, your people have been constantly fighting in civil wars with each other over technology and actual wars with the dingos over nothing. Locke pissed his wife off so much that they divorced and she got remarried. His son meanwhile had to undergo intense mental pain and isolation for no reason while the people who could make it all better spied on him from their hidey holes determined to be dicks by ensuring he knew not why he had to suffer.

Spoiler alert, he didn’t have to suffer at all.

Knuckles is the only one here who truly wants to do what it takes to protect his people… and that’s precisely what Dr. Finitevus is counting on.

Knuckles rushes up to the Master Emerald and grabs it. Finitevus is definitely right that he’s the best person to use the Master Emerald. Maybe not necessarily with HIS guidance but that matters not. It’s a condition he has and he’s kind of the one with the plan so…

Anyway, Lien-Da feels betrayed. I understand considering she let him into the Dark Legion but the pale creepy guy just has more creepy von evil in him than you do. 

We end on his reciting his evil mantra to Knuckles. The hex he put on the emerald is overtaking Knuckles and now there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. It’s over.

They all died. The end.

Oh wait. The origin of Dr. Finitevus is next time? Cool. I kind of already know it thanks to the internet but it’ll be nice to finally understand that gobbledygook in Issue #182 proper this time. 

Yup. Still a legendary issue. No one can tell me otherwise. This was a fantastic introduction to the Archie comics. I wouldn’t have had my first Sonic comic be anything else. Having all of what I didn’t know back then recontextualized is an interesting feeling. A part of me kind of misses the era back when I was ignorant to what was going on seeing as how it made the past seem more majestic and almost like a folktale. Having read it, I know it wasn’t that which is honestly part of why I desire that ignorance back. However, I love and appreciate the hard work Ian put into setting things right even more now. It’s quite amazing how much mileage he’s getting and will continue to get out of how horrible Knuckles’ extended family of asshole grandpas were.

[SanPolo4389]

1 hour ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Pictured here without her accent

I'm guessing that either Sega didn't tell them alot about the game for them to do the tie-in or accent was added in later. Also apparently this story is canon to Archie universe which later other game tie-ins aren't going to be.

[SkyHorizon]

Well... what to say? Two legendary issues!
There's so much to talk about this, but you touched pretty much all of the points.

• The Council of Acorn: I personally think these guys are bad. Knowing Flynn, I was sure that he was portraying them in such a bad way ("bad" in a good way, if you know what I mean...) just to surprise us with an interesting plot twist. Just before the reboot I was considering the Council some kind of enemy (and the story seemed to be going in that direction, but we'll get later to that...). Anyway, the Chaotix were totally right wanting to go and Sonic was totally right letting them go. They're not prisoners, man!
• Enerjak: I always considered continuity Flynn's strongest point. He got the occasion of eliminating a bunch of useless characters, getting Knuckles (by the end of the arc) closer to his game incarnation, and, best of all, he did it by showing what an absolute beast Enerjak is. I mean, Enerjak under Penders was: "Look at me, I can do anything" while he did pretty much nothing. Here, he doesn't say much, but HE ACTS.
• Archimedes: Surprisingly, I never hated the ant, but I understand why you couldn't stand it :P. Here I think it's the perfect character to tell what really leads to the rise of Enerjak and clarify a couple of points, like Lien-Da and Remington's wherabouts. It gets better later in the arc.
• Nicole and Dimitri: While I wasn't wild about Nicole in this issue, I totally could see while she was pretty much totally unprepared for something like Enerjak. I mean, just look at the Silver Saga to see what an Enerjak left unchecked could do if left free to do as he fit... Dimitri, on the other side, started to become one of my favorite character in this issue: the way he acts, his pragmatism, his ways, everything was perfect about it. Someone could say that he barely looks like his original incarnation, but Flynn had a perfect explanation for that too (will be revealed later).

Just a little detail: I think that when Finitevus says 90% of the echidnas have been eliminated, he's referring to the backup story of the next issue, where it's revealed that Finitevus gave Eggman Albion's coordinates.

Anyway, excellent review, guess you really are happy with Sonic starting to (timidly) rebelling against the autority, uh?

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Thoughts once more:

• This is partly the reason I really disliked the council from the start. Sally says that she's got a team ready and rearing to go into Angel Island, and when it's pointed out the Chaotix could go, the Council step in and shut it down, with Elias directly speaking for the Chaotix and instilling their wills instead of just letting them do what the Chaotix want. Even as bad as things were with Max, at least that was one roadblock that either gave permission or took it away. With the Council, it's a stalemate most of the time, and even when they agree on something, it tends to be the worst decision possible, as you'll later see. They had no right to just say the Chaotix couldn't go without asking them.
• I don't really mind Eggman being implied to backstab them here, he's done that before in Lost World (He faked his death so Sonic and the Zeti would either take each other out or they'd take either one out while Eggman sneaks past to the generator and powers himself up). It's not that out of character for him IMO.
• I just wanna take a moment to gush over how clever that 181 cover is. I love how it initially looks like just Sonic and Tails discovering who Enerjak is because they're the two main characters, but you then see the reveal and realise "oh shit, it's all of Team Sonic on there!" 
• Enerjak's initial rampage really does just make it clear how he's a villain of the Brotherhood's failings, and just how utterly fucking flawed it was from the beginning.
• I think it's interesting to mention too that Enerjak's liberation starts off on good terms. What was done to Remington was fucked up, he got brainwashed and forcefully turned into someone else for Fini's scheme. Enerjak did a good thing by returning him to normal. The issue was he did it for the wrong reasons, and that led him to do something worse - he thought technology had brainwashed Remington (and the Dark Legion), not that Fini had brainwashed Remington and the Dark Legion were acting of their own accord.
• I think the reason why Nicole refused to do so was because Sonic, Tails and Knuckles were still on Angel Island, and Dimitri was basically telling her to leave the citizens of the city completely and utterly defenceless while she basically killed her friends in an attack that would do diddly dick against a being of Enerjak's scale. It's understandable why Dimitri left, but he wasn't being fully reasonable with his demands either.
• In my eyes, Enerjak knew that the drone was always there, he let it follow and witness what he was doing as a show of his power, to show the heroes how quickly and effectively he was able to clean up Angel Island's problems. He comes back and expects the inhabitants of Mobius to respect him, his power, and submit willingly - in a deluded way, he thought he was showing them both how meaningless it is to fight back, and how they needn't worry about this little war any longer.
• Seeing actual zones from the games be in Angel Island is a godsend.
• Knuckles as Enerjak is just such a great twist, IMO. It's a great fulfilment of everything wrong that Penders did, and that's really why it works so well. It's finally acknowledgement that no - Locke and the brotherhood was wrong, Knuckles was always right, and now Knuckles has been enslaved by the Brotherhood's selfishness and turned against the echidnas as a weapon because someone smarted was able to take advantage of them all, just excellent.

[Dr. Detective]

2 hours ago, SkyHorizon said:

Archimedes: Surprisingly, I never hated the ant, but I understand why you couldn't stand it :P. Here I think it's the perfect character to tell what really leads to the rise of Enerjak and clarify a couple of points, like Lien-Da and Remington's wherabouts. It gets better later in the arc.

I don't hate Archimedes. I did when he first showed up. He was pretty insufferable at the start with his haughtier than thou attitude but he's mellowed and humbled himself a bit since, unlike Locke. I really just delight in seeing him lament how bad he was at this shit more so because of the vindication I feel for being so frustrated with the guardian nonsense at the start.

2 hours ago, SkyHorizon said:

Anyway, excellent review, guess you really are happy with Sonic starting to (timidly) rebelling against the autority, uh?

It's strange how the council used to be this thing that when I would read their dialogue, it'd go in one ear and out the other. Now that I'm actually paying attention to it, how Sonic reacts to them will probably be even more important to me, which doesn't bode well for a specific moment where "treason" gets brought up again, down the line.

42 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

 I don't really mind Eggman being implied to backstab them here, he's done that before in Lost World (He faked his death so Sonic and the Zeti would either take each other out or they'd take either one out while Eggman sneaks past to the generator and powers himself up). It's not that out of character for him IMO.

Didn't say it was out of character. It's perfectly in character as far as this Eggman is concerned as I talked about with the #125 situation.

Setting aside the fact that I hated that he did that in Lost World (more so because it made the ending feel lazy), I did consider his actions there too when I wrote all that and decided it didn't count. He upheld his end of the bargain and shut the generator down like he said he would once the Zeti were taken care of. I fully expect him to turn on them once the job is done.

On top of that, I wasn't making some judgment call about Eggman being in or out of character. He isn't even consistently written in the games. I was just talking about which traits I prefer he have as far as this situation goes. There are situations in the games where I wish he'd act more like his Archie/IDW self.

I would never harp on such a minute detail and claim it was "out of character". I haven't even done that with Sonic. I talk a lot about why this version of Sonic is one I don't like but I still recognize that he's just a different version. I doubt you'll find me ever using the phrase "out of character" if you go back through my stuff. It's not a term I like to use and I've never felt confident in using it.

So instead I talk about how I prefer characters be written. That way it stays purely opinionated.

[SkyHorizon]

8 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It's strange how the council used to be this thing that when I would read their dialogue, it'd go in one ear and out the other. Now that I'm actually paying attention to it, how Sonic reacts to them will probably be even more important to me, which doesn't bode well for a specific moment where "treason" gets brought up again, down the line.

Let me guess... Issue 224?

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #182: Fallen Angel

What a gnarly cover. It gives off the feel of cover that says confidently that we’re in the middle of an arc too. The Enerjak, Sonic, Finitevus, Shadow, and Egg Fleet decorating it just oozes chaos in a way that’d be wonderful to witness again one day. Although, if you somehow didn’t figure out who the agent Rouge is sending over, here it is on the cover. He’s overflowing with power that glows so brightly his eyes and mouth go pure white. It’s very scary.

Spoiler

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

Enerjak Knuckles stands before his former friends and immediately does his presidential speech for them all, only it’s under the pretense that he’s already been elected and they have no choice in the matter and also that they should be grateful for this heavy handed self-appointment to leader of everything.

He promises a lot of things here but the one thing I’m not down with is the bit where he says the world is going to be free of technology. Boy, you better step off. Most of my friends are on the internet dude. A lot of relationships are formed through it too. Also, how are we supposed to make long distance calls? We can’t all use telepathy, you privileged God with your God-like powers. 

Sally seemingly manages to shake off the shock rather fast and says that Knuckles is doing quite the no-no. Nicole pleads her case for technology since it’s what gave her a chance at life. Julie-Su just tries to appeal to the fact that he’s not Enerjak and his previous run-ins with this kind of power didn’t go well before.

All while this is happening, Knuckles is making the best faces at them. He looks genuinely confused by their refusal to immediately upend all their lives for the sake of this Godly purge he’s doing. He seems so puzzled by the fact that Nicole, a character who literally only exists because of technology, wouldn’t be down for the technology rapture that’s about to go down. 

He doesn’t even register their arguments, just the fact that they’re disagreeing with him.

This dismissive reaction to the arguments and acknowledgement only of the fact that they’re not in agreement with him could be taken as some sort of commentary on something but that’d just be me forcing a bit rather than getting on with it.

I love that shadowy look of disgust on his face though. I like to imagine that in his head he’s just put off that Nicole would want to exist. He’s like, “Eww, gross. Technology gave you a chance at life? Well then that life is unnatural!”

Then again, he doesn’t seem to be treating Nicole any different from them. A part of me wonders if he’d be surprised if she disappeared after his technology banishment from how puzzled he is by her objection. 

The actual Knuckles not being too fond of technology is an interesting thing to think about. It was hoarded by the Brotherhood of Assholes and used to spy on him and kept an entire city of his people hidden from him all his life. I doubt he’d blame the technology itself for that though. Knuckles was very adamant about blaming the people using it when all the stuff that was uselessly being kept secret from him was revealed. This is most definitely a result of the hypnosis spell he’s under, for sure.

That said, it’s interesting that the others don’t know that and their reactions to thinking this is Knuckles on his own says a lot about who they are as characters.

Of course, as he’s speaking, the tornado is flying in from behind. Sonic, having missed the part where Enerjak took off his helmet, dives down and bashes Enerjak on the head and takes Julie-Su from him right before he’s about to remove her technological enhancements. To be honest, that didn’t seem like that horrifying a thing but I guess it helps make her unique.

Sonic, as usual, is way too fast for his own good and won’t let people talk before he charges at something blindly. 

“Wait! I think that thing in Eggman’s hand is--!”
“GONE!”

Shadow shows up to punch Enerjak in his face too.

So here he is, introducing himself as an agent of G.U.N. We’re in that era of Shadow’s life now, as far as the comics are concerned. This already feels like something from a long time ago as of today. I have no clue what Shadow or even Team Dark in general is even supposed to be nowadays thanks to the weird whims of those at the top wanting to fuck around with them for no reason. I guess “fixing” one of the few things that wasn’t broken is their M.O nowadays.

I know there are people out there who take issue with Shadow being a G.U.N agent because of their past together but I don’t. If Shadow did indeed put the past behind him and joining G.U.N is an efficient way of ensuring that he protects the planet and supervises their actions then I’m all for it. The one thing I wish they had done was show the heart to heart Shadow had with the Commander. The two of them have too much in common for it to be relegated to one line in the Hard Mode of Shadow the Hedgehog. It does legitimately bug me.

This is fine though. Now both Sonic and Shadow can get hopelessly whooped by Enerjak. Honestly, the only thing Sonic seems to be successfully striking is his ego.

Sonic gets tossed through a library after this.

Yeah, I’m kind of with Enerjak on this. Sonic’s taunts are a little lame but then again, that’s kind of the charm of our boy isn’t it? He’s like Tony Stark if Tony wasn’t good at quipping but still tried his damndest anyway. Plus, all that really matters is if it annoys the bad guy. 

Then again, in this situation, it might just be a case of risking being killed faster.

Shadow quickly assesses that he’s going to need to go full blown nuclear on this bitch and he does in one of the most memorable Shadow attack panels to date for me.

He fires off a really gnarly looking Chaos Blast. The star shaped energy beams are one thing but it really leaves an impression seeing a Chaos Blast that can direct itself towards an enemy like this instead of being just one big circular explosion. 

Sally is less than enthused by this though, cursing Shadow because the battle is destroying the city. One has to wonder if she thought a fight with Enerjak inside the city would only result in a few dust particles floating about the place.

Nicole continues to be having a bad day. She looks like she can barely stay in the vicinity with her as she re-routes her power towards keeping the city intact… but mentions that she doesn’t have enough energy to produce the energy shield in case Eggman decides to attack.

Oh-ho! 

So everything rides on our boy Eggman does it? How spicy.

I need to stop at this point to take the time to say that I fucking love this. 

This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about when I mention loving organized chaos. There aren’t enough stories out there that take enough advantage of having multiple entities with their own agendas duking it out with one another. It’ll always be a bit of a shame that no one ever truly saw the value of Eggman being a wildcard back in the Adventure era of the 2000s, not even SEGA. There was always this idea about the presence of a new villain meaning that Eggman had to be useless and undermined because of it.

Not true. The presence of a new villain just creates more opportunities for Eggman to be like how he was in Adventure 2. They just need to take more chances. What a power play it would be to have Eggman just using this new threat to his advantage like the ultimate chess master? 

Eggman in THIS comic, for instance, works to the tune of his own drum. He isn’t going to take advantage of Enerjak being here by using it as a chance to just wipe them out, even though he could easily do that. No, instead, he’s going to try and use Enerjak to power the project he’s already working on. 

Yes, tactically it makes no sense, but that’s Archie Eggman. He’s insane and driven by pure ego. As he’s watching Shadow use his Chaos Blast on the monitor in his base, all he can say is “Whoa-ho-ho-ho there Shadow! That’s MY city to destroy!” like he’s watching a baseball game.

He’s not fond of taking the direct approach. He’s always gotta be flashy and showy and he’s gotta win by using what’s at his disposal to make it his ultimate victory. It can’t be an attack he launches while the city is vulnerable from some other threat. No, he’s gotta capture that threat and then use its power for himself so that HE can do it alone.

Because he’s cool like that.

He takes off to go “assist” his new allies while Snively happily finishes the modifications on the Egg Grapes for their new friend. 

Meanwhile, Shadow is getting his ass kicked.

It’s kind of amazing how stunningly useless his attacks are.

Sonic is teasing the both of them now because of it, calling Shadow the “Ultimate Light Show” after his Chaos Blast goes off and does nothing. He then takes the time to knock Enerjak’s helmet off his head from behind while he’s focused on Shadow and here’s where he finally sees that it’s Knuckles.

Sonic is shocked, of course, and Shadow tells Sonic not to lose his resolve. Sonic says he won’t because a threat is a threat BUT…

Then Sally just screams for everyone to charge so they do.

Enerjak Knuckles just freezes them all in place with a mere blink of his eye.

He’s unnaturally powerful. I’m astonished this was something Dr. Finitevus managed to pull off. It couldn’t have been easy.

Knuckles goes on this rant about how everybody betray him and how he’s fed up with this world.

Instead of eating his gun he’s going to burn it all to the ground though. He also says that he was planning on being gentle with the city and its inhabitants but them not being receptive to the generous offer he’s made to completely upend their entire lives has made it so that he’s not going to spare them either. 

Oh, how generous. Agree or die. What a kind, benevolent God you are.

Then again, I guess “kind and benevolent” aren’t exactly phrases one typically associates with Gods. The Gods seem to think so though. 

Sonic tries to sway him. Now that he knows it’s Knuckles, he’s not too keen on taunting this enemy anymore. It doesn’t go well.

Alas. Who should come to save the day but our true benevolent leader, the great Dr. Eggman of the glorious Eggman Empire!

Eggman, using a spiffy microphone, announces his arrival in the greatest big damn hero moment of the century. This was always one of my favorite moments of the arc too.

Eggman’s just so goddamn charismatic, you know? He’s the fucking best. Like seriously. There is no better villain in existence. I’m sorry.

He zaps Enerjak into his Egg Grapes using his special lasers and then beams a hologram of himself onto the field to wave at the citizens of Knothole (it looks like he’s waving at the fourth wall) to thank them for being the best decoys an evil genius could ask for.

Sonic tries to bark at Eggman that “kidnapping Knuckles wasn’t part of the deal” to which I would probably respond with, “the fact that this was Knuckles wasn’t something you knew about a couple of literal seconds ago and expecting Eggman to react any differently despite the deal you two made back when the circumstances were much different then they are now is a little strange.”

That said, Eggman doesn’t care. He DID uphold his end of the bargain. He saved their city, he captured the villain (and is going to use him as a battery to power his next big project to destroy them, sure), and now he’s leaving with a generous bow, outright telling them to hurry up and rebuild.

Honestly, I’m kind of with Eggman here as far as whether or not he stayed true to the deal. 

Now, OF COURSE, they still need to save Knuckles but I do really like Sonic’s acknowledgement that Eggman didn’t directly double-cross them.

Nice.

I like this a lot. Wouldn’t change a thing about how that went down.

Anyway, Sonic, without missing a beat, asks about the plan to rescue Knuckles to Sally, decidedly NOT referring to him as Enerjak anymore.

Sally, very reluctantly, says she isn’t sure if they should. Sonic is very upset to hear those words come out of her mouth but Sally raises her hands and admits to it sounding terrible, saying that if they did rescue him, they’d risk unleashing Enerjak on the world again.

So she’s referring to him as Enerjak here which prompts Sonic to raise his hands in protest and shout, “But he’s not Enerjak!” 

Sally responds by saying “He is and he isn’t” and admits that leaving him captured isn’t an option but…

Before she can continue, a warp ring opens up and two hands reach out that pull Sonic and Julie-Su specifically inside.

Now that conversation between Sonic and Sally was also interesting. I like how immediate Sonic’s brain switched from “Enerjak” to “Knuckles” when he knocked that helmet off and his thoughts literally only consisted of thinking about how to save him. It was cute how he just assumed Sally would want to do the same too but, as we’ve seen, Sally’s response was more tactical.

She’s thinking about this from a pure logical standpoint and not an emotional one which I totally get. I can see anyone easily taking either side of the argument here. I’m more inclined to take Sonic’s side since I tend to prefer searching for solutions while taking into account the more emotional side of things but that’s me.

Also, Sally saying that she knows leaving him captured isn’t an option is interesting because I’d like to know what the alternative to rescuing him is. Eggman’s going to use him as a battery and leave him a dried up husk which ALSO isn’t a good thing for the heroes. 

So when Sally says in response to Sonic asking what the plan to rescue Knuckles is by saying “Sonic… I don’t know. I’m not even sure if we should” what exactly is the alternative she’s mulling over in her head?

I think that’s the one thing missing from this scene. I want to see what Sally’s counter-plan to Sonic’s plan is so I can have a clearer view of where each side stands. She never gets a chance to say her counter-plan (if she even has one) because Sonic and Julie-Su get snatched by everyone’s favorite Father-In-Name-Only, Locke.

At this point, Locke and Sonic are still on good terms with each other. Sonic says he’s glad to see him and tells him that he needs to do something about his son.

Trouble is, Locke needs the two of them to help him out with that. He can’t use the Master Emerald because Finitevus used a literal parental block on it. As such, he can’t undo Finitevus’ spell. 

Not to worry though. Big Brain Locke’s got the ultimate plan. He’s going to fix everything by ending this charade he’s been playing at (being Knuckles’ father) and has hatched a plan to just fucking kill his son.

Whoo-hoo! Dad’s gonna murder his boy. What a wonderful world.

I know this situation correlates mostly to something that Dr. Finitevus did but Dr. Finitevus wouldn’t even exist had Green Apple Knuckles not blasted a normal dude with his powers. Knuckles only GOT those powers because Locke microwaved his egg without his wife’s consent because he had a bad dream once. So you’re responsible for Finitevus’ existence too, and as such, partly responsible for Enerjak coming back as well.

Now he plans to “take responsibility” by killing the problem. This is one of the reasons why I usually tend to like approaches where the emotional side is taken into account. If things are done tactically in the story without any consideration for personal attachments, you get shit like this where Locke and his Brotherhood of Assholes just do things for the sake of what they consider to be efficiency.

Just like the Jedi, they don’t take into account that the people they’re manipulating aren’t literal chess pieces. They have emotions. They have wants. They have needs. You DO NOT treat your child like this. 

They didn’t understand that. They didn’t see that what they were doing was always in danger of failing because they couldn’t comprehend the idea of someone’s emotional state causing people to act out and take them off the path of WHATEVER grand design they thought they had.

Even with all the evidence out there that made it clear they were destroying themselves because of how awful they were at handling emotions they just refused to change and it led to the destruction of echidna society.

It’s amazing! It really is. This story of people who thought they were holier than thou just self-destructing themselves because they didn’t factor in common decency.

Now it reaches this point, where they’ve corrupted Locke past the point of no return and he’s here gallivanting about a plan to fix what he’s wrought by killing his own son.

It’s infuriating but there’s also a teensy bit of tragedy to it. Thank goodness Knuckles managed to avoid this. He had his friends and the people he met to wean him out of the line of succession that he was barrowed down to avoid this.

This version of Enerjak is a representation of what Knuckles would have been had that not happened and Locke is going to need an extremely heavy push to finally get it.

So yeah. This is an excellently written story. Oh, but we’re not done yet.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #182: Albion's Shameful Secret

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: Patrick Owsley
Colors: Jason Jensen

This story begins in a way that I found extremely cathartic.

Hell yeah it is!

That’s it Ian! Good, good! Use your aggressive feelings! Destroy it ALL!
Again, this was one of the most confusing stories I had yet to read in this book back in the day. Despite reading and re-reading it to get the gist of what was being said, it just never clicked because I was missing the essential context to what was being said here. It just wasn’t going to work without that.

Now that I have that, THIS IS THE JUICIEST THING EVER! GOD, I’M SO HAPPY!

I remember when the Jesus-Allegory land of Albion was introduced. I remember actually being more on board with the group of echidnas that wanted to find it because they wanted to get away from the ridiculous feuding that was going on at Angel Island. I even remember liking Gala-Na a tiny bit when she first showed up.

Then, when we went back there, all of a sudden Penders decided he didn’t want her to actually be a decent person and was suddenly writing her to be this huge, monstrous bitch. It was a very sobering moment where I realized “Oh, I guess he just doesn’t want me to like any of them eh?”

Because of that story, someone got nuked and Green Apple Knuckles almost got unfairly ostracized because he couldn’t control the power that was granted to him against his will by his dad. I still remember him crying about how much pain he was in and thinking about how much his dad fucked him over. It’s still not a positive memory.

Now Albion is fucked and in this hologram, Gala-Na’s clothes are all tattered. There were decent people living there too, which is the fucked up part about my glee in having seen the chickens come home to roost for these echidnas, but man I can’t help it. 

A clearer picture of what happened way back in Issue #94 gets laid out for us. That one random dude who got his ass blasted when Green Apple Knuckles lost control ended up becoming Dr. Finitevus.

The idea of Finitevus being a photo-negative of Knuckles is pretty neat. It helps that he was an actual person who just got corrupted by sucking in too much of his Green Apple Juice. If he was literally just a photo-negative of Knuckles, that would be a little lame and kind of redundant considering that the concept of anti-versions of these characters already exists.

This is far more creative though. I love how Ian destroying these old echidna civilizations is also acting as a boon for him to create NEW lore and new characters that are far more interesting and cool. Finitevus was always an excellent villain in my previous readings of these books but now he feels like a true masterpiece of a character; a true work of art. 

It’s also no wonder this explanation never made sense to me. The arrow connecting Knuckles and Finitevus with the positive and negative symbols really didn’t help. I was confused by whether or not the book was trying to tell me if they were the same person or not and the fact that Knuckles was green REALLY made it worse. I just threw up my hands and decided on him just being an evil echidna with a weird origin.

He did us all a big favor by helping to demolish everything too. He sabotaged Albion’s defense forces and led the Eggman Empire inside of the place to help destroy everything. It’s nice to know he helped out with that percentage of how many echidna were lost.

Gala-Na no doubt was added to that number too. 

Often, it feels more ominous knowing that someone was done away with off-screen and never seeing or hearing from them again then it does seeing their deaths. It really does scare me more when I see the feed get cut off right as you hear the sound of a door being broken down. Your imagination can do SO much worse than whatever the comic was going to show. Hell, you don’t even need to imagine anything. That feeling of dread right before being cut off from a clear picture of finality is all you need.

The feed ends there and Locke, who was watching all that, hands the device back to Remington. They’re standing amongst the ruins of Albion and he asks Remington if they can manage living here. Remington confirms that they can, as the remnants of the Dark Legion and Echinaopolis are probably so defeated that they can’t help but suck it up and work together.

Thus began Locke’s glorious journey to fix his mistakes by murdering his son.

Fantastic! Even better than when I read it originally. It feels really good seeing Ian utilize his powers as the head writer for good by purging the book of all the fucking gross nonsense that plagued it earlier. Enerjak being a by-product of the echidnas in charge making the wrong decisions all the goddamn time was such a great way to do this. Albion is gone because of its hubris and Angel Island is in ruins for similar reasons. Dr. Finitevus and Enerjak are by products of echidna society’s terrible decision making from upon Angel Island all the way down to Albion. They’re answering for all the shit that they and their high horses couldn’t see coming and it feels really good. Now that Order 66 has commenced, the Jedi are going extinct and it is glorious.

Plus, this issue had one of the best Eggman moments ever in it too. Bowing as he makes off with his battery by abiding by the deal he made is the best. It’s all so wonderful.

 

Sonic X - Issue #35: Cracking the Eggman!

I remember this one. Sort of. This one is going to have a lot of Eggmen in it. Ho’boy. Some of these outfits he’s been seen wearing in the comic before. Some of them, like that weird Mario 3D Land cat suit he’s got on, I’m pretty sure are new. Either way, we’re in the home stretch now. 

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: James Fry
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor & Managing editor: Mike Pellerito

Scarlet Garcia reports in on a bunch of strange looking mustached men wreaking havoc all over the place. They all look exactly like Eggman and yet, for some reason, it’s a huge mystery as to who or what this could be.

Granted, it is a little strange that they ALL look like Eggman and are all wearing a bunch of different disguises. Perhaps he figured he could throw off his scent by dressing up perhaps… even though it would still obviously look like him?

Well, the Chaotix are on the case, thank God. As per usual, Charmy’s the one who knows what’s up and therefore comes to the most sound conclusion out of them all.

Although, I do like Espio’s theory that it’s a misguided career counselor. What a bizarre idea.

Sonic is watching the Chaotix argue on the TV and lands on Charmy’s idea sounding the most plausible but decides to race off and check himself. A hands-on approach has always been better for solving mysteries like this than not. 

Sonic manages to come across Eggman and finds him doing his best Viking cosplay. However, the method of his madness is something Sonic, despite his best efforts to play this off as normal, can’t navigate past.

This scene is great and it ends brilliantly.

“What?”

That’s great.

Sonic comes across Pirate Eggman next. He guesses his sword is still rubber and it probably is. We don’t get to see him use it because when Pirate Eggman puts his boat in the water, Sonic demolishes it.

Then Eggman puts himself into the cannon and fires himself out of it, saying that the cannon is now captain and therefore it must go down with the ship. Nice moment. Even inanimate objects aren’t safe from taking Eggman’s responsibilities when he no longer wants to own up to them.

He reaches Eggman’s base and finds Ninja Eggman next. He gets attacked by his rubber katana and Sonic responds by literally kicking Ninja Eggman’s ass.

It’s times like these where you really get a good glimpse of how huge Eggman is. 

Like, he’s really freaking fat. It’s crazy. I’d imagine that felt like kicking a water balloon full of tartar sauce to Sonic.

Eventually, Sonic goes inside and comes across a cowering Bocoe, Decoe, and Bokkun. He proudly proclaims that he’s here to stop Dr. Eggman.

They take it well.

No, really. 

Despite how wholesome it is, seeing Eggman’s lackeys give Sonic a group hug, we’re in need of an explanation.

The explanation is just as looney as what’s happening at the moment. Apparently this plot line with Bokkun and his sweets and taking over as Eggman just does not have an end. Eggman apparently ate a super sweet treat that put him on a sugar-rush that’s got him switching personalities at the drop of a hat.

Bokkun says he didn’t mean for it to happen. He just wants to go back to his evil personality again. The one where he was the overlord that made those decrees against fun-sized candies. You know the one.

Bocoe and Decoe surmise that his sugar rush should be about done in two days but Sonic says “Fuck that” and goes off to stop him right the hell now.

They try to warn him that fighting him while he’s in that state is impossible but Sonic, hilariously enough NOT denying this, says he isn’t going to fight. He’s got a plan.

Then he runs out and immediately comes across the Gallant Egg Knight of ye old Eggmanland.

It was only a matter of time before he found a sword that wasn’t rubber Sonic. You should have known that karma wasn’t going to allow you to keep taunting him about that without consequence.

Sonic bursts out of the window and Eggman does too… and then he literally just falls off his base and smashes onto the ground before getting up like it didn’t even happen.

Sonic’s plan seems to be to wear him out by having him tire himself out with constant costume changes. So we get a two page montage of him doing just that.

The next page has even more, with one of them being the El Gran Gordo costume. Sonic gets mad when he sees it, saying that he thought he told Eggman to get rid of that one. 

I gotta say Sonic, your desire to see Eggman NOT be a heroic luchador is concerning. It’s almost as if you hate fun.

Eggman keeps running back and forth to change costumes and Bocoe and Decoe ask what I’m wondering about how and why he has so many. The last two we see on this upcoming page are pointed out as disturbing, for clear and different reasons.

Yeah, I think I can deal with not knowing why Eggman has a Chris Thorndyke cosplay at the ready, complete with a perfectly matching wig.
Eventually, Eggman is shown wearing a huge amalgamation of nonsense and just collapses on the ground.

Then he’s instantly back to normal. Sonic asks if he remembers today at all and Eggman says “unfortunately”. Then Sonic shifts into “Sonic Says” mode.

He even gives him a pat on the head with his now spontaneously blue colored arm.

Good looking out. Just two frenemies enjoying the fallout of their latest, weird adventure.

The Chaotix show back up here and see Eggman, saying that because Eggman was fighting Sonic all day he couldn’t be the culprit. Then Charmy apologizes and says it looks like he was wrong. Vector says that the important thing is that he tried. Then they leave, which prompts Sonic to shrug at the camera.

I would have chased them down and told them the truth, if only to keep Charmy in high spirits about how 100% correct he was though.

Sonic rushes home for a popsicle and we end on the best line of the issue.

I need this on a T-Shirt.

Just Eggman wearing a chef’s hat, cooking food, with a caption that reads “I want the five food groups conquered by dinner!”

This was less of a story and more of an excuse to have Eggman running around wearing funny outfits. As excuses to make an issue of a comic, especially a goofy one like Sonic X, you could do worse. It was certainly still entertaining though. Plus, any excuse I get to see the Chaotix just show up and do stuff is something I’ll happily take, regardless of the substance. Yeah, this a really relaxing book. It’s a nice breather in-between the stuff where I have to go super in-depth all the time.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #183: Desperate Times

This is a very effective cover all on it’s own too. Just seeing the grayed out Eggman and Shadow defeated in the background with Enerjak holding up the struggling Sonic makes for a nice visual. The pure white background is effective enough to sell the image too. They probably could have done something with more menacing colors but I can see why it wasn’t deemed necessary.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: John E. Workman, Jr.
Editor/Managing Editor: Mike Pellerito

We begin with Julie-Su shouting at Locke for saying he was going to kill his son with that very mean look on his face. Locke is on the side of calling him “Enerjak”, obviously. If he acknowledged that this was Knuckles then he’d have to acknowledge that he was killing his own son and the instant he does that is the instant he might be in danger of doing something decent.

You know, it really is starting to hit me that Locke has lasted for a really long time in Ian’s run. One could even see what happens here as a situation where he saved the best bit of spring cleaning for last. There’s still more he fixes in the narrative after this but as far as sanctioning off the last bits of the old status quo, what happens here is definitely the last of the big, BIG things he does for a while.

That was a long winded way of me saying “I’m surprised he isn’t dead yet but I’m grateful he waited as long as he did to get rid of him”. 

Locke explains that the Brotherhood of Dry Fruitcakes created a weapon that would destroy Enerjak should he return. How they could do this, I’m not sure. But they can. They’ve got magic and spells and shit at their disposal or something.

As Julie-Su and Locke argue, you can see the wheels turning in Sonic’s head in the background and the decision he ultimately makes is written all over his face.

Locke can’t see it since he figures Sonic is just agreeing with him and decides to make just as smug a look in return when he tosses the warp ring to head for where the weapon is stationed. It’s his “I can’t wait to murder my son” face. 

I also love the panel next to that one where Julie-Su, also clueless to Sonic’s motives, is angry at him and saying a line you’d say to a villain while Sonic is responding with a wink and a smile. He has to do this to spell out his intention for her but the thought that she’d miss the wink through her cloud of anger makes me laugh.

Anyway, here are the Destructix.

As explained earlier they were left to guard the place while Finitevus was off being evil. 

This group is going to grow and shrink in members before reaching a fine equilibrium one day. 

Meanwhile, back with Eggman, we see the good doctor sucking away Enerjak’s power in his reserve Egg Grapes. The last of the ones he has left are doing an efficient job of sucking out the power but then Snively comes along with a little stowaway from New Mobotropolis.

He’s got Dimitri in hand who graciously re-introduces himself to Eggman after Eggman makes it clear that he’s got no clue who he is.

Dimitri’s a very efficient person as well and despite how much more open he is about his emotions, he can still land himself in spots that probably aren’t the best places to be. Case in point; he’s here with Eggman now.

He tries to offer his assistance to Eggman, saying that he can de-power Enerjak before his disorientation wears off. Eggman doesn’t consider this disorientation though. He’s fully convinced that his Egg Grapes have Enerjak fully under his control.

This is proven, very quickly, to be another case of Eggman overestimating himself, as he’s known to do.

There goes the last of his Egg Grapes… as well as a huge chunk of his city, whatever it’s called now. New Megaopolis or whatever.

I love Dimitri’s “I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU!” at the end there. I couldn’t imagine having any patience left within me after having been reduced to THAT.

Snively’s got the right idea. Do whatever Eggman orders him to do next then high-tail it to the bunker. 

Eggman’s next order of business is the opposite of that though. He’s got an entire Egg Fleet at his disposal and he’s going to use it. Were he more keen to listen to Dimitri, he might have been able to keep his toys but as we all know by this point, if you have Eggman choose between betting on an overpowered chaos God or one of his inventions… he’s going to bet on Eggman. Always.

Back with the fight against the Destructix, things aren’t going so well. 

I love this scene where Sonic insists that the Destructix are a joke right before he gets his ass fucking whacked.

When Julie-Su says they’ve beaten them before, Fiona asks if there was ever a time when they weren’t outnumbered or ordered to let them win.

Honestly, I don’t know. I pay so little attention to the Destructix’s exploits that it’s a wonder I remember anything at all about them. That’ll be fixed later but for now it’s a little rough.

There’s this really great conversation between Julie-Su and Locke that happens here too. Julie-Su asks if he can use his freaky Chaos Powers to stop them but Locke says that Finitevus blocked his link to the Master Emerald and he can’t pull from the Chaos Force like Knuckles.

Then Julie-Su asks the very good question of how that creep got close to the Master Emerald at all.

That’s a great comeback. Yeah, Locke, you had to find your Forefathers apparently and that’s why you abandoned the Master Emerald to Creepy Von Evil. Sure. Checks out.

Except, who the fuck cares about them aside from you? You’ve been brainwashed by this legion of underground echidna assholes to the point where you can’t see reason. You don’t even really understand why you want to find them versus guarding the Master Emerald. For all accounts, it shouldn’t make sense to you.

Locke blames Knuckles for not doing his duty and thus being the one to put him in the position of having to look for those old fucks instead of staying guard by the Master Emerald but Knuckles did a similar thing to what you did, only, he had a much more compelling reason.

He didn’t go back to Angel Island because the problem was and always has been Dr. Eggman. He needs to be with the Freedom Fighters to help them devastate his forces in a manner that’s meaningful so that the crap that’s befallen Angel island doesn’t see a part two… not that it matters because Locke and the guardians’ hubris has already led their people to near extinction.

He also figured that Locke would do his job and guard the emerald. However, instead, when Locke couldn’t get Knuckles to do it Locke just… stopped doing it eventually and decided he needed to find his forefathers first. It makes no sense for him to blame Knuckles for this. He should have kept his ass seated right the fuck where he was. 

Why would you leave? It’s pretty clear now that the only reason he wanted Knuckles back was so he could have an excuse to go look for them. He was all about protecting the Master Emerald during the Rouge and Scourge situation but when the Brotherhood took forever to come back, eventually, Locke just said “Fuck the Master Emerald. I need Knuckles here to be my convenient excuse to go look for them.”

Then, when Knuckles didn’t come he was like, “Well, I’m going anyway.”

Now he has no excuse so he’s just going “Well, if Knuckles had said yes, I wouldn’t have done that really stupid thing I did.”

His reluctance to look at himself and see where the blame for all this truly lies is astounding. He can’t because he’s deluded himself into thinking he’s doing the right thing. All the time. That’s all he knows how to do. He never entertains the idea that he may have been wrong. 

Meanwhile, Sonic is getting his ass kicked by the group he just called a joke earlier and they all have to get saved by the huge wall of fire initiated by one Archimedes, coming in clutch to save everyone’s asses.

Contrary to what you’d think, this actually isn’t his big damn hero moment.

No, that moment comes after they get to safety, and he tells Locke exactly what he should have been told eons ago.

This page is perfect.

The look of relief on Locke’s face coupled with Archimedes’ look of fed up disgust and how Locke’s look shifts to one of shock and then of a childish, angry glare off to the side when he FINALLY gets his ass told off is fantastic.

A part of me wishes he still looked like he did during those old Penders stories so I could get the well and true effect of this being the dressing down of that heinous looking creature that microwaved his baby, treated his wife like shit, ostracized his son from society, tossed the entire world on his shoulders, told him to bare it, and is now trying to kill him for not doing that. 

“Hello Old Friend. Is the weapon safe?” He asks.

How about, “Can we save my son?” 

Archimedes just goes right into it without any hesitation. It’s truly a beautiful cascade of words. 

“Knuckles’ transformation is our fault. Not his. It was your genetic and chaos energy experiments that gave Knuckles his powers. We put the world on his shoulders and told him to bear it. We’re as guilty for creating this New Enerjak as Dr. Finitevus.”

Fucking A+.

I love that he’s got enough good sense to graciously take his share of the blame too. Despite not being the one who directly instigated all this, he took a heavy part in it as well. His character was always written so that it seemed like he’d be more open to realizing this too, which is why it makes sense that he’d realize this and have to spell it out for Locke, who, judging by his look there, remains clueless and is just mad that no one seems to be going along with his bullshit anymore.

It’s like a writer who values basic human decency has taken over or something. Locke’s no doubt planning to find and kill this writer person.

Not if he kills you first.

Anyway, Sonic’s found the weapon.

Then, the Destructix finds Sonic.

This also plays out brilliantly.

I must have been speed-reading the hell out of this when I was younger because I barely registered what was happening at the time of me reading this. I had no idea what Archimedes was talking about when he was dressing Locke down nor why Sonic destroying his “Son-Murdering Device” was such a big deal.

It hits you like a freight train now, having experienced all that toxic, gross shit leading up to this moment. 

It’s true. I think my hatred for the Brotherhood of Guardians has long since outstripped my hatred of Locke. Like, I really want it confirmed just how horrible and painful their deaths were. That’s a scene I want to see in pure, explicit detail. Locke, however, does remain on my shit list despite being a by-product of their horseshit. 

Obviously, there’s a lot of people to blame and a lot of the people at blame wouldn’t exist without the influence of other people. That’s true of Dr. Finitevus. That’s true of Locke. That’s true of Enerjak. 

There’s only so much sympathy you can have for someone who makes it their mission to do awful things to people without a hint of self-reflection though. Seeing Sonic rub it in extra and leaving Locke to, what looks like, cry in his hands is great.

Everything Ian is doing here is eliciting such an insane amount of pleasure. It can’t be overstated how awful a person Locke is and how his comeuppance couldn’t have come sooner. The part of me that feels the need to recognize the tragedy of this situation hasn’t quieted down though. That’s where it’s understandable to accuse me of being too sensitive but hey, that’s just how I am. I can’t help but zero in on the angle that elicits sympathy if there is one because at the end of the day, above wanting to see Locke get his just desserts, I ultimately wish he had just been a good dad.

That’s honestly the feeling I’m left with here. That’s the thing I wish could have happened the most. 

Back with Eggman, his troops are being vaporized and destroyed with a flick of Enerjak’s arm. Snively, who is NOT at the bunker, is hovering in his Egg Mobile alongside Eggman and Dimitri, giving the play-by play of what’s happening.

… So yeah, basically, Eggman’s lost another city.

Really, that’s kind of what it comes down to. Most of the city is gone as are 90% of his ground troops. They’ve lost.

Eggman says “Nuh-uh” and sends in the Egg Fleet.

NOW, they’ve lost.

Should have gone to that bunker man. At least then, you’d have gotten to keep your glorious Egg Fleet. 

I wonder if he’s made the Final Fortress yet. Probably not.

Utterly whooping Eggman’s ass has rendered Knuckles tired and drained. That and the Egg Grapes sucking out all that energy did too. He returns to Finitevus and asks for more power. Finitevus obliges, reciting his revised mantra.

That is until Sonic zips in and bashes into Finitevus’ stomach to knock that shit off.

He also manages to reach the top of the Master Emerald and uses it the same way Scourge does. I don’t know if SEGA would allow this to happen the same way nowadays but we’re in the “Throw caution to the wind” Archie days where that really old contract just let whatever shit they wanted waft by.

Finitevus is willing to let it go too, saying this might be just what he needs, whatever that means.

Then we’ve got it. It’s here once again.

Super Sonic  is here to do to Knuckles what he did to Perfect Chaos.

God, he still looks weird without his golden aura.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #183: Ashes and Dust

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Jason Jensen
Letters: Jay Dubb

We cut back to a few hours earlier where Scourge is making his warp ring and the Master Emerald kiss. Then Finitevus walks in, making Scourge look like a lost child who got caught doing something naughty.

No, he’s just charging his warp ring. I wasn’t even aware they needed to be charged. 

Dr. Finitevus takes the precaution that Scourge is making just in case his plan goes south rather well and instead uses it as an excuse to go off on a history lesson.

Finitevus goes down a basic history course detailing all that shit I read way back when I first started this retrospective. Honestly, even now, this single page of him explaining things nice and concisely is still the most complicated thing I’ve read this entire issue.

Angel Island was landlocked and facing decimation from a meteor so they used chaos emeralds to make it float but then, for some reason, there was debate about returning it to the ground and then the two brothers, who were also scientists, that wanted to do it were vetoed but one backed down and the other didn’t and became Enerjak when he absorbed the power of the emeralds and their sons went against each other and then that gave rise to the Brotherhood of Guardians and the first Grandmaster of the Dark Legion…! SHEESH!

Dr. Finitevus basically echoes my sentiments with the conclusion he’s reached here.

The word “convoluted” was a very deliberate choice of words. 

I love that he renders all this conflict down to mere squabbling too. That’s exactly what I’ve done as well. It’s just a bunch of assholes who split themselves into groups so they can argue and fight about shit that either doesn’t matter or has very easily handled solutions. But no. They’re stuck in their ivory towers with their asses glued to their high horses, all convinced that they’re right about what they’re doing, as their actions lead to their people’s extinction.

Now here comes Dr. Finitevus who stands in the middle of it all. His origin as just ANOTHER ONE of these easily ignorable and useless echidnas was warped by the actions of Locke thanks to him pumping that Chaos Energy into Knuckles. It led to the situation where he managed to break out of that and come into his own as his own person.

He stands above all of that garbage and by this story’s end, whether his plan works or not, he’ll have made his mark as the one who “unifies the chaos” as it were by completely demolishing both sides of the argument for the sake of his grand vision.

“Seventeen generations of Guardians and five Grandmasters have resulted in NOTHING.” he says. 

Scourge even says, “I thought you were with the Dark Legion?” 

At this point, it should be obvious that he’s not. 

He just joined them to do research on how the bloodline could channel Chaos Energies. It’s here where we see a familiar name, Moritori Rex…

...and that’s all that his name was. Familiar.

I had to look him up to get the gist of what happened to him. I knew there was a story dealing with him where he was a spy for the Dark Legion that disguised himself as some echidna but I had forgotten.

Tobor was the guy he was pretending to be. Yeah, I remember now…!

Anyway, he’s gone. Is he dead? I dunno. I imagine Dr. Finitevus wasn’t very careful with his experimentation on him. He tossed his ass into the Twilight Zone.

… Along with the OTHER experimented on old men from the Brotherhood!

YES! YEAH! WHOOOOOOOOOO~!

Cue the Evil Morty theme everybody!

That’s it! Their asses got tossed out of the story just like that. Finitevus experimented on them, learned what he could, and then trapped them into some far off zone that they can’t ever escape from. 

Hopefully, if they’re not dead, they’ll be left to float in there and starve to death at a quarter of the time it takes to do so for the centuries of waiting for it they have ahead of them. I know that the Dark Legion could survive a really long time in there but hopefully they’ll have to stay for even longer. I’ve got… literally zero sympathy for them.

If they never get discovered or removed from there, I can’t help but be happy as it truly is a fate worse than instant death. 

Thank you, Dr. Finitevus. 

You ended their lives not with a bang but with a whimper and that’s still somehow more than they deserved.

The only thing that bugs me about this is the fact that, despite being exceedingly difficult to escape from, there’s always a minor hint of a possibility that someone could get them out as miniscule and as improbable as that is. 

However, that’s still too much. I need that probability to be at 0%. Float there for all eternity with no hope of escaping please. Fuck you very much, yes?

Finitevus also talks about how he ran down the candidates to make into the new Enerjak. Lien-Da was a willing candidate but was too hard to control. So he took Remington and set about molding him into what he wanted but that didn’t pan out. 

Why? Because Knuckles has the strongest link to the Chaos Force. Plus, Dr. Finitevus likes to think in the George Lucas, “It’s like poetry, it rhymes” manner. He tossed the useless Brotherhood of Animated corpses into the Twilight Zone because it ironically served as a prison for the Dark Legion for so long. He’s using Enerjak as the one who’ll cleanse the Earth because this nonsense began with Enerjak.

He then caresses the Master Emerald while muttering to himself about how everything will be cleansed. It’s not just the echidnas who are at fault but the humans, technology, and the dumbass Mobians who thought Max was a good person to keep as a king for so long.

Scourge just walks off with his ring, looking back with a face that’s hard to read.

If I were to wager a guess, he’s keeping that ring close (and figured he’d charge it at all) because it’s looking likely that having an out from this doctor’s insanity might be more necessary than he initially thought.

Or maybe he’s plotting something else like the caption below suggests.

Not only has the main story been fire but these side-stories have been excellent too. There’s little for me to rant and rave about because there’s so much pure vindication on display here. Archimedes and Finitevus are literally saying all the shit that I’ve been complaining about in my long arduous journey to reach this point and it’s a fantastic as hell feeling. 

This story is a motherfucking masterpiece. I’ve never seen such a professional display of using the garbage from before to your advantage to create something as mind blowing and as awesome as this. It’s so much cooler than raving about bullshit you don’t know about on twitter. 

Next time; the grand, epic conclusion.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Almost makes you appreciate what Penders made so we can watch it get torn down and made into something better.

[VO.SUPER]

If the previous writing wasn't so sickeningly genuine, you'd almost consider it good writing with pathos. As is, this story is "the proper response".

[SkyHorizon]

Wow! The Enerjak Reborn Arc at its strongest! I'm with you on pretty much anything you said.

Locke: Well, I'm going to be more lenient towards him, the fact that he wants to destroy Enerjak doesn't mean he is a bad father. I mean, he is for a lot of other reasons, but in this case, I simply see his actions as those of someone who do what he must do, because, let's be honest here, the right thing to do was to eliminate as quickly as possible a threat this big and out of control. Which brings me to the second point... more on that later. Anyway, Archimedes scolding was pure gold, even if what JS will say in the next issue will probably strike harder. It's amazing how Ian could take such an awful character like Locke and make him work perfectly in a story like this one.

The attitudes towards Enerjak: Well, frankly, Sally and Locke are technically right: Enerjak needed to be eliminated. Despite this (which is objectively the best thing to do), I like better Sonic's (and Archimedes') attitude, struggling to the very end to find a way to save him. Irrational but comforting . Sonic would be a great friend, but a terrible leader.

Julie-Su: The first time I read this issue, I never really understood why JS was so scared to lose her mechanical...things. I mean, she left the DL, why would she want to keep those things? It wasn't until the third time (yeah, I've read those old comics a lot...) that I realized it. Until then, I've always thought: "yea, she keeps those 'cause she can't get rid of those". Flynn did something better: he used this concept to create a whole new layer of humanity to those characters. And it will be explored more later, even if never in depth (what with the legionnaire crying in a couple of issues when Lien-Da sell the Legion to the Eggman Empire). Anyway, all that aside, I totally love how she is portrayed here, totally loyal to Knuckles and not the psycho-bitch she somehow was in the Pre-Flynn era.

Enerjak: Well, what to say? Amazing characterization. Here we see an Enerjak that actually does stuff, differently from the Penders one that was all talk and no substance. Also, the thunder arrow from SA2 was great.

Shadow: I also don't have a problem with Shadow working for GUN. Also, I think this is the first time Shadow's inhibitor rings are referred as such.

All in all, two amazing stories! And two great backstories too. Flynn at his best!

[SBR2]

Sorry I haven't been doing my replies lately. I find it hard to comment on Ian's stuff because generally I don't have much in the way of factoids and I'm too much of a fanboy. XD

I do want to bring up how in Fool Party in Sonic X the joke with Eggman pointing isn't that he's trying to eye up Ella he's supposed to be flexing his non existent muscles.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #184: Chaos Angel

The covers for this arc are so good that two of them are undoubtedly in my Top 10 favorite ones as far as the Archie comics are concerned. This is a classic one and it still looks phenomenal to this day. The clash of the gods, the swirling power of the Master Emerald as it splits between the two echidnas who currently hold the most influence over Knuckle's life. Both have ended up the way they are due to the terrible nonsense their society has wrought and it led to this. In the end, both will escape from it too. One does so by separating himself from the rest and attempting to cleanse and purge everything left in his wake. The other will do so simply by realizing in the end what his true duty was and always should have been. 

Fuck, this is a fantastic cover and this is a fantastic story. It’s time we ended this.

Spoiler

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

People can see the clash happening all the way from Albion. In particular we see Remington, Lara-Le, Wyn, and little baby Kneecaps are watching from a distance. The residents of New Mobotropolis are catching sight of it too. Locke and Julie-Su are in the thick of it so the light show is practically blinding them.

Super Sonic and Enerjak start to have their mighty clash. Super Sonic has gone back to taunting Knuckles. I guess I should have assumed it wouldn’t have lasted forever. He breaks his staff and gets blasted by a wave of energy that he merely shakes off because he’s invulnerable.

He also makes a reference to Hyper Knuckles and how pink it was. Seeing Hyper Knuckles again wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world but I’ll admit, I do kind of like seeing how they’ll handle conflicts without everyone needing a Super form. This couldn’t be helped though. Enerjak is immensely overpowered still and despite Julie-Su being surprised that Sonic survived a full on blast from him, Locke assures her that he won’t last forever and that Sonic was a fool for destroying his son-murdering weapon.

Julie-Su doesn’t take this response well, as expected.

What’s funny about this scene is I actually totally believe Locke when he says he doesn’t hate Knuckles. The man is so delusional and warped that he can’t see past putting his “duty” ahead of his family. It’s how he’s operated his entire life. It’s the thing that gave him the huspa to microwave his baby against the wishes of his wife in the first place. Despite that leading to his divorce, he still maintained this, “Fuck you, I’m right” attitude and he’s still doing it now.

Granted, I can see why the hopelessness is here. This clash of Gods isn’t an instant-fix. Super Sonic comes with a time-limit and being able to tangle with Enerjak isn’t the same as being able to stop him. But hey, all the more reason to look for another way to stop him.

I mean, the fact that the Brotherhood could create a weapon to take out Enerjak but apparently couldn’t devise a way to do so without killing the guy seems a bit off. Enerjak is a god-like being, correct? You can kill a god-like being with that weapon but you can’t go one step below that and take away his powers? Something about the way they go about efficiently handling threats makes me raise my brow a bit. I can only speculate since I don’t know enough about Echidna Magic to say more. Maybe, because of their nature, it can only kill and destroy and literally nothing else.

It’s mostly cathartic hearing Julie-Su and Archimedes talk to Locke like this. No more letting him run his mouth about all the awful shit he’s done and waving it off like it’s just a thing he’s doing. No. He’s terrible and what he’s done can’t be allowed to just be buried like a bad mistake. Everything that’s happening right now literally is only happening because of his experiments. Knuckles can only be Enerjak right now because of the power Locke injected into him against his will. Dr. Finitevus exists because that power caused a freak accident against an unsuspecting echidna scientist. This isn’t up for debate.

I think the thing that really stings about this for Julie-Su and Archimedes is that he jumped right towards the part where he tried to kill him and didn’t have or consider any alternatives. I guess because Enerjak is a huge enough threat to him but even now that his precious weapon is gone, he’s not resorting to looking for another way out. It’s honestly more like he really was just going for the most destructive and quick option because that’s his nature.

Their words, probably for the first time in his life, spur him to get off his ass and actually do something about the trouble he’s wrought.

Meanwhile, the Destructix are watching the God-fight that’s happening and go “Ehhhhh…”

Sleuth and the rest bail because Finitevus only paid them to destroy the weapon and it’s gone so they’re done here. Scourge and Fiona split off from them here with Scourge recounting what happened back with Sonic earlier. He’s been mulling over who he is and how he can be a better version of himself… not in the way that Sonic meant, but it is interesting seeing the conclusion he comes to.

He apparently took the notion that one good day was all it took for him to be more like Sonic as a threat and is about to double down. I only know this because I know what happens next. Fiona accompanies him on his journey, of course.

Ah. There go Anthro Bonnie and Clyde. 

Anyway, the fight between Super Sonic and Enerjak continues. The passage of time thing that the comic has been doing a lot more of recently is hitting the mark. Last page, it was sunset. Now it’s decidedly a lot darker.

Super Sonic rips off Enerjak’s mask so that he can look more like Knuckles. Enerjak keeps trying to hit him with his power and it doesn’t work, so he sends him to the center of the Earth.

That doesn’t work either.

It’s amusing that as Super Sonic, he can just blast his way out of the planet’s core and shout “DOOFUS” to the person who put him there.

Though, Sonic mentioning that he’s a burying species all the time is weird. He’s not stuck to the traits of an actual hedgehog. Between the two of them, Knuckles is known for burying way more than he is. When has Sonic ever dug for anything?

Well, they continue to fight and Super Sonic eventually gets what he wants, which is for Knuckles to actually fight like Knuckles and punch him in the gut. So he does that.

He’s getting closer to the Knuckles we know and love but it’s not enough. Super Sonic happily kicks Knuckles down, exclaiming “That’s more like it” but puts on his serious face in order to ponder about why his positive energy isn’t negating the negative energy all the way yet. He can sense that it’s working but it’s taking too long.

It was here where you can see that the Sonic-like taunts are more of a mechanism he’s using as he’s fighting. Underneath them all, he’s still taking this extremely seriously. Just in case there was any doubt.

Julie-Su and Archimedes warp to Angel Island and accuse Finitevus of being the one to warp Knuckles’ mind and demand he stop it.

So basically it’s like they went up to him and shouted, “Surrender!” and he went “No.” 

I do recall the Thanks, Ken Penders blog saying something about finding it unfortunate that this was the result of Finitevus using a magic spell to warp Knuckles’ mind since the treatment of Knuckles by Locke and the echidnas was what naturally should have led to Knuckles wanting to be a godlike being that turned evil and tried to cleanse the Earth. The reason cited as to why it wasn’t written that way is because he’s Knuckles and he needs to remain a hero.

I can’t say I agree with that. Yes, Knuckles’ upbringing was awful and it COULD have warped his mind towards thinking this way genuinely but we literally saw that it didn’t. Even in Ken Penders’ era, despite Knuckles constantly making excuses for his dad’s shitty behavior, we saw that he still had problems with the way his life was going. 

I saw how he reacted to getting his powers. He wasn’t having fun. He didn’t like them nor did he revel in being a God. I saw how he reacted when he found out the Brotherhood was lying to him and keeping secrets from him. He wasn’t happy about it. He wasn’t like, “Ah. I see. Very well then. It was all for the greater good.”

Knuckles has always shown constant resistance to a lot of this bullshit throughout the run of the book and, unlike Locke, he had people like Sally, Vector, Charmy, Espio, Mighty, and yes, even Julie-Su and Sonic to interact with in ways that steered him off of that path. That’s why it was so believable in the first place that Knuckles wouldn’t comply with Locke’s insistence that he come back to Angel Island. His experiences with people that weren’t shitty echidnas gave him a heavier appreciation for the importance of looking after the world below and caring about it’s inhabitants.

I’m sorry but if Knuckles just naturally decided to be Enerjak, it’d be bad writing. As much as a fuck up as Ken Penders was, one thing I remain surprised about the way he wrote Knuckles is in how he didn’t have him falling in love with the shit the echidnas were doing.

Granted, he was way more accepting of it then he probably should have been and the way he kept excusing his father’s actions and looking up to him despite his horrible treatment of him was sickening to witness. I know Penders created Locke as a self-insert father figure thing and as a coping mechanism for himself, which may also be why Knuckles shows a bit of resistance despite landing on the opinion that his dad was right in the end and that you should always blindly listen to authority or whatever.

Still, Knuckles’ relationship with his dad and the Brotherhood was shaky and loose enough that it was totally believable that he would eventually come to the conclusion that he couldn’t see eye to eye with them. Knuckles was NOT HAPPY about being lied to all his life and he blatantly disregarded a lot of the things he was told by them to do. When he died and was given the ultimatum of ascending to a higher plane of existence and godhood or saving his friends, he chose to save his friends. He didn’t even consider the other option. Not even a little, tiny bit. 

Yet here, as Enerjak, he’s threatening to purge the world and destroy his friends for simply not agreeing with his ideals. That’s not Knuckles. It makes more sense that this is the result of a hex that Finitevus created.

Julie-Su just… IS a better character now. 

Literally, the instant Finitevus says that someone needs to give up their life, she’s just like, “Fine. Thanks. Coming right up.” It’s kind of badass.

Finitevus’ look of “Wait, what the fuck?” is priceless.

Then Archiemedes then stops her and says he’s gotta do it because he’s a failure as a teacher and the students still have their whole lives ahead of them. 

But nope, a third person comes from the shadows with the ring in hand that got him here. 

It’s Locke.

Here he is, finally acknowledging that he’s the one that turned Knuckles into that terror and referring to him AS his son and AS Knuckles and not as Enerjak.

He’s made the decision to give up his life to save his son instead of murdering him to bury the mistake he made. It’s a heavy turnaround but not an unwarranted one.

It’s also something that, despite my hatred of Locke up till now, I CAN actually see him doing. Locke is a by-product of this whole, awful echidna system and despite how heavily indoctrinated into it he is, I do recall there being moments where he resisted it a little as well… and was chastised by the Brotherhood of Assholes for it because they’re a bunch of massive c-words.

Locke’s character is a very interesting one now as he basically feels like a metaphor for that kind of old and out of touch dad realizing at the end of his life that the new age that’s more accepting of people changing their bodies and identifying as whoever and whatever they want isn’t something to be feared or rebelled against. The Brotherhood stood as the unshakable wall that was set in thinking that the old and fossilized way of doing things was the right way to do it for all time.

They were somehow convinced of this despite the fact that none of what they did ever worked and it all just led to a bunch of endless fighting that went nowhere and literally only saw them becoming irrelevant and their people being reduced to 10% of what they once were.

Finitevus, feeling like shit for blabbing that one of them would have to die to stop this, jumps down and attacks them all. I guess he didn’t foresee them willing to sacrifice their lives to save Knuckles. Only a true villain wouldn’t.

He’s got the drop on them pretty well until Archimedes does his thing.

Archimedes is cool, actually.

So is Dr. Finitevus’ warp ring fighting though. That’s some really cool tactical prowess. I’d love to see his move-set in a fighting game. It looks like so much fun.

Either way, they know that Finitevus won’t be gone for too long so Lock stomps his way up to the Master Emerald and gets ready to do the deed. 

He does this while making excuses for the Brotherhood’s actions one last time. Or, if not make excuses, he’s trying to at least reassure Julie-Su that their intentions were good. 

That’s a very fleeting sentiment though. It doesn’t mean jack shit that their intentions were good. 90% of Echidna society is gone because of what the old generation did and because of their insistence to pass it down to the next generation, Enerjak was born anew.

I’m actually not upset at Locke for saying this in the moment though. Instead, I’m stricken with a realization of just how fucking tragic this is. Not because he’s dying but because of how warped his mind is and how, even in his final moments of realizing that the “duty” means jackshit in comparison to making sure he saves his fucking son, he’s still been baked in that old echidna society way of thinking. 

The priority shouldn’t be killing the threat. It should be saving lives.

Like, he can’t completely denounce the Brotherhood for what they’ve done despite it leading to all this. Despite him literally mentioning the old generation raising the new one a certain way, he can’t look past that and find the connection between his situation with his son and his situation with the Brotherhood. 

He’s too far gone and that’s one of the reasons why his death is so important. It’s the biggest, grandest gesture someone like him could possibly make to showcase that there COULD HAVE BEEN something to wean him out of it. He definitely is not the kind of person he should have been, even with his sacrifice, but there was a spark. 

Again, I have to reiterate, here at the end, the main thing I wanted out of Locke really was just a desire to see him be a good father to Knuckles. My anger and hatred of the man really does stem just from that. 

The Brotherhood I want to see die and starve and perish and suffer for all eternity. Fuck them. No mercy.

This is good though. Even if he can never be fully redeemed, I do like seeing how him exposing that tiny little spark of decency that was within him here at the very end.

“Give him his own life to lead!” is the most woke thing he’s ever said. It’s his last line in the book and it’s also his best line. It’s literally a line that goes against what he and the Brotherhood were doing to Knuckles for so long and him sacrificing his life to break the hex that allowed the fight to finish properly was cathartic.

There is a tiny part of me that wonders if, after all this, he could have developed into someone who went along the path Knuckles did but it’s definitely for the best that he just exited the book on this high note. I can see someone insisting that it’s more than he deserved.

However, I land in the camp that really appreciates the acknowledgement of tragedy behind what led to this and how it was usurped at the very end. Someone indoctrinated in the nonsense of echidna society actually coming around just enough at the very end to do some fucking good just feels more appropriate.

There was a spark. It existed within him even if it was buried under a mountain of bullshit and I find that more compelling from a story-telling angle at the end of the day.

Julie-Su cries to Knuckles and Finitevus comes back when it’s all over and is pissed. He laments the loss of the hex as well as the idea that Knuckles might remember some of this. 

Knuckles corrects him by insisting that he remembers--!

Then after manipulating everything and being the thing that saw to his dad’s death, Finitevus exits the story like a boss. 

“Catch you on the flip-side.”

Knuckles, understandably, is very angry and does not take his father’s death well at all.

We’ve finally hit that point. Knuckles is the last guardian. He’s not the literal last echidna but close enough. However, the sting of defeat he’s no doubt feeling and the loss of his dad and a shit ton of other echidnas as a result of what Finitevus has done has left him feeling as though his decision to stay in Knothole to help fight against Eggman was a mistake.

It wasn’t, obviously. We know the real issue is Locke abandoning his post to go find the other guardians but Knuckles isn’t in the mood to entertain thoughts like that right now. The last thing you want to do to someone after their dad dies is go up to them and be like “Well, your dad kind of fucked up though”. 

Maybe let him simmer down just a tad first.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #184: Anything

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Stingray Grafik Wurks

Echidna society is going places now that the Enerjak Reborn fallout is happening. This includes the Dark Legion of course.

Lien-Da and the rest of the remaining Dark Legionnaires meet with someone to discuss the fact that they had nowhere to turn to as well as the history of how they ended up the way they did.

It’s another history lesson but just like all the others, it’s incredibly necessary and very much appreciated. This one is a lot more succinct than the others since it’s mostly just about the Dark Legion’s allegiance to technology and how they were treated. It’s a pretty straight forward tale of banishment and retaliation.

Lien-Da and the rest of them truly believe that their devotion to technological enhancements made them superior and being stuck in flesh like bodies is gross and discomforting to them.

It’s a very interesting line of thinking that’s honestly a little scary. Someone’s even shown crying about it. 

They’re on their knees crying because they’re trapped in their normal, squishy, flesh and blood bodies. 

I mean, hey, people can be in whatever body they want to be after all. If they feel that they need to be enhanced by technology to truly be happy then who am I to say they shouldn’t or judge them for it? I'll judge them by their actions instead.

It’s just a shame that despite this, they can’t seem to shake off the Dark in the Dark Legion and are attempting to rectify this by teaming up with the Eggman.

Thus begins the Dark Legions affiliation with the Eggman Empire.

This also sets in stone one of the most memorable personal stories concerning Lien-Da; her endless desire to be promoted from Kommissar to Grandmaster of the Dark Legion… and how it constantly alludes her.

She makes this deal under the condition that she gets to be grandmaster, saying that her time has long since come… but it doesn’t matter because she finds out that Dimitri called dibs.

Despite all the development and progress Dimitri has made, he still isn’t at the point where he needs to be to understand the folly of teaming up with someone like Eggman. Anyone who seriously believes that Eggman is the answer to their prayers concerning the survival of a specific way of life that doesn’t conform directly to his own would have to be incredibly desperate.

Luckily, that’s exactly what the Dark Legion is so it all works out.

This story is a masterpiece. It remains one of the biggest and brightest examples of how really well crafted and expertly handled writing can take even the biggest of disasters and mold them into something akin to a miracle. The way this story took heavy advantage of all the garbage and bullshit wrought by Penders and his obsession with these echidnas and their self-destructive way of thinking while raising their children and showed what would actually happen when their nonsense finally caught up to them was something beyond cathartic. 

It ends on an extremely powerful moment for all involved and despite the ACTUAL “biggest threat they’ve yet faced” being dealt with, in its wake are the uprooted lives of an entire civilization of people that can never go back to the way things were before. Changes are being made and the consequences of the path the Brotherhood of fucking deadbeat losers are being dealt with finally. It can’t be overstated just how much of a miracle this story’s existence is after having to sit through all that garbage from before. At the end of the day, Enerjak truly was a godsend. 

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #185: Mogul Rising, Part One: Needful Things

Fairly basic cover. Anything’s going to seem underwhelming after literally one of the best covers in existence but hey, there’s some neat stuff here. The cloudy visages of the goon squad in the back looks nice and more importantly, Mina has returned. She’s going to finally be drawn to look good too so that’ll be fun.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Layouts: Tracy Yardley
Pencils: Matt Herms
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Josh Ray
Letters: John Workman
Editor & Managing Editor: Mike Pellerito

Mina, with her inexplicable speed, rushes out of her tour… plane and gives Sonic a hug. She hasn’t been around for a long time and missed the trauma of #175 which I’m just realizing was 10 issues ago at this point. Jesus Christ. Time is flying by.

First thing’s first though. My boy Ash has something to say to Sonic.

Look at Sonic. He seems like he’s not sure what to say or do right now. It’s interesting seeing Ash drawn in this style too. I’m so used to him being drawn all weird, lanky, and odd. Those old books loved making him look like he was made out of silly string or something.

As stated before, Ash and Mina ended up being one of the few couples I cared about while reading through this book and seeing them still together and happier in Ian’s run is nice. It’s good that he saw it fit to keep them around and just improve on Ash’s attitude a little bit for those who felt he was in need of it.

Me, I’m just glad I get to see more stuff like this.

D’AAAAAAAW! IS SO CUTE! WOOK AT EM GUYS!

The thing I also appreciate, probably even more, is Sonic saying not to sweat it and him admitting to being a jerk too. Ash says “No joke” and Mina gets on him about being nice.

He’s right though. Sonic’s been a massive jerk and unlike Ash I actually got to see him be that jerk to way more than one person. It’s nice that Sonic’s in a position where he’s more open to acknowledging that and backing down. House of Cards may not have had the proper execution but the fallout from it is at least leaving a positive impression. That’s what Ian wanted at least so here’s hoping he keeps it up. I’m sure Sonic will end up driving me up the wall again later of course.

Ash, now comfortable with leaving Sonic with Mina, says he’ll leave him to her while he goes to get the band settled. Sonic seems oddly unsure about it again. His facial expressions read like someone who’s worried about… something. Perhaps he’s still got an inkling within him that still kind of has a tiny interest in Mina and he doesn’t feel comfortable being left with her? Or maybe Ash being nice to him has him shaken up and confused beyond belief.

Mina says she can see the new city anytime. She wants to see everything else. Sonic and her rush through what’s left of Knothole. It’s just a bunch of ash and dirt. Everything is gone except the Great Forest and the currently being rebuilt Freedom HQ.

After Mina laments not knowing how best to rally the troops with her music, Sonic cheers her up and they check out how the repairs are going in their old childhood base.

Inside, Mighty is holding up a support beam and a little grammar dad joke happens. Then Mina asks about Knuckles and the Chaotix and a hush falls on the room. They explain that, oh yeah, after Eggman burned their city to the ground Knuckles turned into a God and tried to cleanse the planet and the fallout of that saw his dad dying and now he’s isolating himself on his island.

Tails flies in and gives Sonic a high five while saying hey to Mina. At that moment, Mina muses that she left on ONE tour and the entire world back home completely upended itself. It’s then that we’re reminded that, OH YEAH, Tails’ dad tried to do a rallying effort thing and the kingdom is now a democracy.

That’s a beautiful lampshade you’ve got there. I’ll take eight.

No, really. Lovely scene. It really is hitting me just how much shit has happened. The book has completely flipped itself on its head. All of it has been for the better (with, again, some questionable execution here and there) but my God, it really puts things into perspective. Imagine leaving for a bit and coming back to find all these changes. It’d make your head spin.

The rebuilding of this old place is almost done and Tails shows off that he can give them a direct line to New Mobotropolis where we see Nicole’s smiling face greeting Mina. It’s here where Nicole tells Sonic that someone wants to see him!

Oh boy! Who is it? Who could it be? 

Oh shit, it’s Mammoth Mogul.

His best friend!

Sonic actually heads on over to the Detention Center, praying that he has a sore throat because he’s got plans today. That’s kind of funny.

Mogul means business though. As the man who, whenever he graces us with his presence, manages to shake things up in an interesting way he’s come to bargain. Or rather, he’s made Sonic come to him so that they can bargain.

Nack, for his part, is in “I’m so done with this” mode and looks like he’s practically given up. All he can do is snark with his eyes half open.

Mogul, hilariously, tells Sonic to surrender in the most unnecessary flowery way imaginable.

As silly as this Thesaurus Mammoth is, I can’t help but love it.

What’s wild is that Sonic understood that too. Both he and I are amused by Mogul’s use of the word “stalemate” considering he’s locked in a cell, but I know something Sonic doesn’t so the humor has a bit of an extra layer for me.

Sonic doesn’t take the order to surrender seriously and then laughs when Mogul says he’s gonna send his new Fearsome Foursome after him, guessing that he means all the guys who are already locked up, before he laughs his way out of the room. 

He’s not very smart.

Even if he thought the threat was empty, he probably should at least take into consideration why a smart dude like Mogul would randomly choose today to summon Sonic to him in person and make this ultimatum. Sonic is a very cocky boy and Nack calls him out on it, wanting him taken down a peg.

He’s going to really enjoy the show then, because what’s about to follow is one of the best showcases of truly impressive mastermind villainy that’s ever been conceived.

Nack is continuing to rib Mogul for apparently being full of shit and Mogul is just like, “Bro, I’m on some next level 5-D Chess shit over here!”

He’s intelligent beyond his years and always comes with contingency plans. He’s taken it upon himself to mark various people he’s come across in his journeys and it’s here where we learn some interesting history about Mina and Mighty.

Everything covered with Tails was known and witnessed within the book already but back when I originally read this, everything Mogul was saying was all chicken scratch to me. 

Most of it concerning Mighty probably still would be had I not read ahead and learned a bit more about his past and it’s ability to take an arc that was advertised with the three Chaotix from Heroes on the covers and center itself around Mighty instead. 

This was, I think, the first mention of Mighty’s sister. She’s got a red shell here but we’ll find out later that it’ll be decidedly green when it’s time for her to actually be a character. His parents were imprisoned and Mogul gave him his monstrous strength so that he could save them. 

He failed.

Then Mighty wandered around looking for a place to exile himself and found Angel Island where he became a member of the Chaotix.

Well, that’s sad...

As for Mina… I feel like this might be the answer to how she got her speed from out of nowhere, which was something I was going to make a joke about at the top of the page but seeing it addressed here feels surreal. 

Apparently Mogul just went around to a bunch of people, pretended to want to help them, marked them, then wiped their memories of the incident until he had use of them. At least, that’s what I’m gathering from this.

If so, his cruelty is deliciously wonderful. I have a lot of respect for a man who’s got his evil priorities straight, as far as being an entertaining villain is concerned.

When Tails gets called upon by Mogul he, hilariously, just whacks away a picture of his parents and then rips apart a picture of Sonic that’s on his wall. Meanwhile, Ash is watching Mina stomp off with him looking on in confusion like “What the fuck is going on?”

All this in an insanely wonderful looking splash page of villainy, capped off by the fucking Majin symbol from DBZ.

I know it’s not literally that but it might as well be. The same shit is happening here, except, Mogul is literally speaking through them.

Sonic, asleep in his racecar bed (dork) is woken up when his door is literally kicked off its hinges so hard it breaks through the wall. He’s then dragged out of bed and tossed outside naked in the dead of night to be taunted at by Mogul.

Yes, I said he’s naked. Ash wears clothes. It’s a thing in this universe. A lot of the boys are just naked.

Welp, anyway, Sonic was warned and now he’s gonna pay for being a dismissive dick yet again.

Here comes the general! Rise up! Here comes the general! Rise up! Here comes the general…!

...And his right hand men! BOOM!

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #185: The Misfit Badniks Salty, Soggy Sequel

Writer: Mike Gallagher
Pencils: Dave Manak
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Aimee Ray
Letters: John Workman
Editor: Mike Pellerito

Old man Gallagher is back for one last… hurrah?

If you wanna call it that?

So, remember the Island of Misfit Badniks and how that whole thing ended on a cliffhanger of their island being dunked into the sea and Pseudo-Sonic being strapped to a table like Darth Vader to get repairs done?

Well, in typical Gallagher fashion there’s a lot of exposition to catch us up to speed on what happened afterward. 

Does anyone care? Did anyone seriously think that little side story needed a part two? I suppose so since they decided to end on a cliff-hanger but that begs the question of why end on a cliffhanger when you could have just… ended the story?

Here he is, bringing back these old badniks and using them to tell a story about these underwater Forty Fathom Freedom Fighters from WAAAAAAAY back seeing these badniks and wrecking their shit with ease.

Also, Pseudo-Sonic grew big because of some bullshit that was in his chest, I think?

...Uhm… remember Bottlenose the Dolphin? I do. He was from a story so absurd that when I inevitably forgot him I remembered him instantly upon seeing him and reading his name. That’s amazing for a guy like me.

Oh, and Bivalve and P.B Jellyfish are back! The gang’s all here! A bunch of… realistic looking animal characters that can talk but are also drawn like cartoons are here to make dad jokes and easily beat up all the badniks and… meh…

This… really isn’t worth covering seriously and I’ve zero desire to.

A big whale shows up and easily flattens Pseudo-Sonic. Then they humiliate the beaten badniks further by dumping them into a pile and crushing them into a cube.

It’s so embarrassing and mean.

The final panel is a very painful page where Gallagher, realizing his end is nigh, just has these characters you don’t care about and don’t want to see again spewing out as many dad jokes as they can before they rip him away from the book forever.

I mean, I’m just…

...It’s like…

… and he does that thing again where he’s like “Wanna see these assholes again? Send in your postcards or whatever and we’ll bring em back. Whooooa!” 

I could barely understand why they’d think these guys would want to be seen again back then. This issue came out in 2008. Sonic Unleashed is about to come out soon and Silver still hasn’t made his debut in the book since appearing back in 2006. You think people are going to write in asking to see more of the Meatward Jellyfish say shit like “That’ll be enough PUNder water humor! NYUK NYUK NYUK NYUK!”

I actually made myself laugh typing that. 

Goodbye Gallagher you weird old codger, you.

Honestly, if there were any issues with the continuity concerning what Mogul said and did here then it doesn’t matter. Literally, none of it matters. Who gives a shit?  Maybe he came to Mina via astral projection. I dunno. This is a neat set-up for a very interesting story and the stuff before #160 only exists at this point to feed into the storytelling for all the issues happening after it. Mogul is finally getting a chance to truly flaunt how powerful his mind is and I couldn’t be happier for it.

You know, considering Ian was given the option to 86 the old continuity when he first got on the book and decided not to, it’s not much of a surprise he was able to terraform the book so quickly. This was ultimately the better way to go, for sure.

 

Sonic X - Issue #36: Petastrophe

Seeing Sonic and Eggman get hounded by a bunch of photo-realistic animals is a very unsettling thing indeed. It definitely does a good job of making me wonder what animal themed nonsense is going to transpire. 

Spoiler

Writer: Joe Edkin
Pencils: James Fry
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: John Workman
Colors: Jason Jensen
Editor: Mike Pellerito
Managing editor: Mike Pellerito

Oh GOD! No! 

Fuck no. Flashbacks from school are coming back again; only this was on the goddamn school bus. Some weird angry bitch came up to my seat and started clicking her mouth and going “UHMMM!” at me because I took the open seat because she was known for sitting there with her other bitchy friend. When her excessive screaming at me to get up didn’t work, the rest kind of blurs in my mind a bit.

She’s probably the kind of bitch who would look at Helen and demand she’d stand up too. Fuck. 

Helen’s hair is the wrong color by the way. I guess we’ll let that go.

Ugh. I’m so glad I don’t ever have to set foot in a school again. It will always be the worst time in my life. I’m certain of that. I think I’d prefer withering to dust then going back and having to deal with the emotional and mental stress that came with being treated like cattle and forced to mingle with a bunch of insane, cruel weirdos.

Now this bitch is here to remind me of why I hated that shit. Her name is Milan Ramada and she’s rich, just like Chris. However, she’s got that silver spoon RAMMED right up her ass to the point where she’ll go up to a table where another rich boy, a girl in a wheelchair, and Sonic the Hedgehog are sitting and call them all losers.

What’s worse is that I can totally see it happening in real life.

Holy fuck.

Just… die.

The kids give various responses to her about this pettiness. After she ignores Helen, Chris says she can have the table when they’re done but then she’s like “But muh schedule!” so then Danny says to get a different table and she threatens to have her dad open up an ice-cream shop next to this one and get this place run out of business so that no one can get the table.

So they get up and leave because fuck this.

Sonic asks who that insufferable bitch was and they explain that Ramada is just as rich as Chris, if not richer, depending on what the stocks say. Only she just… is… made of literal toxic poison.

Eggman attacks as soon as they exit the door and I start praying a stray missile will blow the bitch up.

Instead he goes after her dad’s limo. In order to keep Sonic busy, he fires off a bunch of random missiles in all directions saying they’ll explode on impact. Sonic races around and grabs them all while Eggman makes off with the limo.

Milan yells at Sonic for this, not because people might be in danger, but because she’ll be late to her appointment to get her nails done.
Later, at the mall, Sonic says to the others that he looked all around for it but couldn’t find it. Then the bitch shows up again to whine about how she had to take the bus, pinning the blame on Sonic and not the mad-man who tried to blow up innocent civilians.

Even in the worst of times, I usually find it trite to wish death upon characters in fiction. Especially when it comes to kids. Up to this point, the Brotherhood of Assholes was kind of the only one I felt that way with but good lord. I’ve known this piss-colored brat for a mere seven pages and I’m overwhelmed by the urge to see her explode.

No, wait. That’s too merciful. A truly fitting punishment would be to have her end up like Gerome Wise.

Sonic actually puts up his fists like he’s about to fight her but Chris rushes in to defend Sonic himself, reminding her that people were going to die if he just let those missiles strike.

She goes on about how her special dog needs to get it’s nails done because they’re entering a pet show where the grand prize is a special collar outfitted with a Chaos Emerald.

… So that little tidbit is back again. Apparently, Joe Edkin just doesn’t give a fuck about where the Chaos Emeralds are in relation to the show anymore. One just ends up inside of a meteor and another is being given as a gift in a dog show?

A fucking DOG SHOW????!!!

Who the hell--? Why the fu--?

So Piss-Haired Rich Bitch just whines at them some more, saying that she wants to win that special collar. When Francis asks her why her rich daddy won’t just give her the collar, she says she wants to win fair and square to prove that she’s the best. As she leaves, Francis points out that buying an expensive breed of dog with your privileged connections isn’t fair and square at all…

Oh yeah, and also, that limo was a special limo created using special tech or whatever. That’s why Eggman wanted it.

You know what? Sure. Every five issues of this book someone’s got some new invention that Eggman wants to steal for himself.

I’ve been mostly waving it off as just the petty whims of the Eggster but at this point it feels really off. Like, they make a huge point of saying that Eggman’s tech far outstrips the tech of the people on this planet in the anime proper. Why are there so many issues where Eggman wants the Earth tech?

This is so painfully contrived. This book usually revels in the ridiculous, which makes it easier to forgive whenever it oversteps its bounds here and there but the gymnastics they’re doing to have an excuse for this Pet Show plot is wild. 

I mean, at least he stated that he only stole it because he wanted an excuse to be lazy. I… guess that’s something.

Despite my grumblings about that, the premise they have here is a nice one if the goal is just to have an excuse for more shenanigans. I perked up when I heard Eggman say that going there to steal it would be too predictable so he’s going to enter the contest and win fair and square by cheating.

Both the heroes and the villains' ideas are hilarious.

So Eggman is entering Bokkun dressed up as a cat (which they’re totally going to fall for and it’s going to be glorious) while Danny, making the best “I’m so DONE with this” face ever suggests that they throw all caution to the wind and just enter Sonic on a technicality.

Sonic happily accepts, saying he’ll never back down from a challenge.

They probably could have tried to enter Cheese but entering Sonic into a pet show just sounds funnier.

Now that the pet show plot that the book was actually interested in has started, things have suddenly become a million times better.

Sonic gets to the show and has a nice scene where he meets an actual Earth hedgehog.

He asks that as though they can’t come off.

… They can come off right? I know his shoes have to at the very least.

Cream is there too, with Cheese, and she asks Helen why all these animals are in cages and on leashes. Everytime she sees them she gets worried that the humans are going to put her and her friends in cages too. 

Helen has to explain to her that these animals are different. They’re pets. She also asks if Cheese is Cream’s pet and Cream explains that he’s her friend, not a pet.

Reminds me, of course, of the scene in Sonic X where Chuck got Cream a pet license for Cheese and she got all offended. She apparently also clarifies that in their world the animals here would most likely just be free.

Interesting. Back when the worlds weren’t separate (as far as we knew) realistic animals were a thing in games like 06 and Unleashed mingling with the humans. I guess if it was just always supposed to be that way then technically there’s no contradiction here.

Then again, that two worlds thing is one big contradiction if you think about it for longer than a single minute so maybe not.

What’s funny is that in Sonic Boom there is a precedent for normal animals being kept as pets because of the episode “Buster”. It’s very strange but Boom is it’s own thing and easy to ignore.

Honestly, I don’t have a problem with the idea of Sonic’s world having humans, normal animals, and anthropomorphic animals. Why would it matter when all three could easily lend themselves to being weird in their own ways?

It’s not like Eggman is a normal human. His proportions are impossible and super genius intellect is considered a superpower. If I saw a realistic looking dog in Sonic’s world, there would be no way to tell if it couldn’t vomit anthrax and use telekinesis to fly or something.

It’s literally pointless keeping the species separate when all of them have the potential to be designed weird and given weird as fuck powers.

Speaking of Eggman, he shows up with his pet in tow after Milan arrives and calls Sonic a “thing”. 

She sees through the Bokkun disguise immediately. Not helping is the fact that Bokkun doesn’t know what a cat actually sounds like.

When Francis gets all up in Milan’s grill to inquire yet again as to how buying an expensive breed of dog for a normal ass dog show isn’t cheating, Milan says that at least her dog is from this planet… which means nothing, honestly.

Bokkun tries to prove he’s a real cat by juggling bombs in front of her.

Then there’s a brief scene where everyone is yelling and Tails has to reign them in so that they can actually put on the show.

The actual pet show goes better than you’d expect despite still being pretty funny to witness.

These jokes are pretty golden. 

Unfortunately for Eggman he really is tied up now so Bokkun has to try and pry him loose. Milan tries to get him disqualified when he’s shown doing this but that’s interrupted by him yanking on the rope so hard he crashes into Sonic, which causes him to crash into the animal cages, letting them all loose.

That’s when what’s on the cover ends up happening all about the Pet show. We see Chris actually try and pry a giant snake off of some poor woman. Geez. The guts to just… grab a huge snake like that. God.

Cream and Cheese dive in to save one of the judges from an attacking round of dogs.

Sonic eventually rounds up all the pets and returns them to their owners… but uses that opportunity to say this means he should get best in show. Eggman and Milan try to argue that he’s not being fair but it doesn’t matter since the judges decide that all three of them are disqualified for squabbling.

The Chaos Emerald is given to Cream for the work her “pet” Cheese did. Despite not seeing Cheese as a pet, Cream acquiesces and accepts the reward, deciding to donate the emerald to a charity that’ll help find pets good homes to go to.

Milan is a bitch to them one last time and the story ends with Eggman sulking away with a storm cloud overhead.

It’s Bokkie. The Bokkie and the BRAIN, BRAIN, BRAIN, BRAIN, BRAIN!

Fin.

Shaky start but thankfully it ended up being worth it, if only for the Pinky and the Brain reference in the end and the pet show shenanigans in the middle. I can’t stand Milan and I doubt she’ll appear again so I’m going to choose to say that my personal headcanon is that after she lost the pet show, she accidentally walked directly into traffic and was rammed straight into the sun. 

No one noticed. No one cared.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

• I'm gonna go ahead and agree that Knuckles being under a hex was the best call here. I honestly couldn't buy even Archie Knuckles being convinced to do a heel-face turn and decide to burn the world down. The story already did what it had to by not making it just bog-standard mind-control, it's still Knuckles under that armour, it's just as Fini said - he's twisted Knuckles' will to want to fulfill his ambitions. Thus, Knuckles is under Fini's control, but he still has his own mind, his own justifications - that have been bent in order to fit Fini's narrative, which is how the Brotherhood's goals slot in there. It's even seen in the story showing how Knuckles transformed, where Fini had to convince him that becoming Enerjak and using his chaos powers would allow him to finally save the world and fulfill his duty as guardian.
• I can't really get down with Penders having an clue about Knuckles, because he was always incredibly wishy-washy about it. He would have Knuckles being jerked around by these dickbags and initially he might react with annoyance, but he would always come around. To the point it was attempted to be normalised where Locke and Knuckles sat and talked around about love literally a issue after Knuckles found Locke, as if it was some dumbass sitcom. Bollers was the only one who imo got close to how I expect Knuckles react to some of this stuff, and Ian's story where Knuckles angrily calls Locke out is the one and only time I felt like Knuckles was finally in character properly about all of this.
• Well, there goes Locke and I can't say I'll particularly miss him. Ian managed to redeem him a little towards the end, but that IMO doesn't justify any of his horrible actions, and even attempting to justify the Brotherhood near the end was pretty bleh too. Still, at least he finally went out doing something decent for once.
• Fini getting punched in the face has to be one of the most satisfying things in the series until this point.
• Not much to say on part 1 of Mogul Rising, but it's a good arc IMO. I like seeing Mina back (properly written again at that, thankfully) and I think it's neat how they integrate Mogul into giving powers to others.
• Gallagher leaving with garbage-fire puns and another awful attempt at shilling his characters to random Sonic fans who could probably give less of a fuck is the most appropriate ending for him, honestly. Can't say I'll miss him either.

[VO.SUPER]

Anyone get the impression that Locke would be sound like Kenneth Mars (King Triton) if he was animated?

 

12 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

•  
• I can't really get down with Penders having an clue about Knuckles, because he was always incredibly wishy-washy about it. He would have Knuckles being jerked around by these dickbags and initially he might react with annoyance, but he would always come around. To the point it was attempted to be normalised where Locke and Knuckles sat and talked around about love literally a issue after Knuckles found Locke, as if it was some dumbass sitcom. Bollers was the only one who imo got close to how I expect Knuckles react to some of this stuff, and Ian's story where Knuckles angrily calls Locke out is the one and only time I felt like Knuckles was finally in character properly about all of this.

The only reason I'd say Pender's got close to Knuckles is by pure accident rather than channeling him. Whenever Knuckles had to work with the brotherhood elements and his dad, I feel like there's a bit more of Pender's in Knuckles reluctant admittance of things. It feels like it can fit under the circumstances, and lead fairly organically into this story.

But again, purely accidental.

[SkyHorizon]

...and the end of the Enerjak Arc.

Locke: I agree with Detective Mike: while he clearly is behind absolution, this arc actually managed to make him look... kinda decent I guess. AND without making him look OOC, props for that. It's funny because Ian actually made most of Penders characters look at least decent after he took over, if you ask people: "what do you like about, I don't know, Geoffrey St. John?" the answer will probably be: "his arc with Naugus". If Penders was a decent (or just smart) person, he would have thanked Flynn for making his characters into decent (Locke, Geoffrey, ...) or even good (Scourge, ...) ones.

Locke's death: I remember while reading this story the first time comparing it with the other story about Locke's death, and I was like: this! This is the right way to make a character dying in a Sonic book! I mean, a pancreatic carcinoma from (chaos) radiation in a Sonic comic??? What was Penders thinking??? The rest of my thoughts about his have already been covered by Detective Mike andRyannumber and.... yeah, I agree with them: Locke is gone, none will miss him 

Mina and Ash: Until this number, I just couldn't stand Ash. He was literally insufferable! Flynn, in just a couple of pages, made him look cool without making him OOC (that "no joke" is perfect). As for Mina... eh, I've always found her an interesting character with a lot of potential, but sadly she was used just for shitty romance drama until now. Here, she doesn't do a lot more (she'll be used way more effectively later), but she's cute/nice enough.

Mogul: Ah! The main protagonist, the master chess player is here! Flynn write Mogul in such a great way that I love to read it, what with his over-archaic vocabulary and calm demeanor. I'll discuss more about him later, for now I will just say that Mogul is great and the idea of using characters with names starting for "M" (Mighty, Mina, Miles) was great. Did you know that, originally, instead of the diamond-shaped-thing on the front of his victims had to be a "M" but got changed when he became too complicated to draw? (font: one of the original "Ask Ian")

...and, as usual, you're doing a great job with your reviews. Keep going!