Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Sounds like the usual case of Sonic fans having a need to complain…

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic Universe - Issue #35: Babylon Rising - Part 3 of 4: Retribution

Goddamn. This is almost too exciting. It looks like the Battle Birds are about to make it rain on the Acorn Kingdom, Independence Day style. I can only imagine how intense it must be actually being there. That’s truly the sign of a good story; making me literally imagine myself in the middle of the intense action. The games used to be able to do that too.

Spoiler

Script & Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: Jack Morelli
Colors: Steve Downer
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

This Sonic Universe arc has now gone to where the main heroes live. They’ve just managed to survive a crisis that has left their city practically in tatters. You can still see the line of crystal that cuts through the ground and the giant stadium as we start on this opening page. 

At first I thought Nicole’s shield was broken or something too but I found out quickly on the next page that it was simply her forming the shield. 

Rotor asks her to repair the tornado with her techno stuff too and she does… but then breaks down crying in defeat. 

It’s like being out in the open at all is giving her a terrible existential crisis. It’s honestly a little hard to look at.

So, back inside, the Battle Lord asks Dr. Funk in the Trunk for a sitrep. He gives him a briefing of all the neat cool shit the heroes have on their side but the Battle Lord stops him to just ask if his latest invention will work.

The doctor gets almost shockingly cross with him considering his position, shouting “OF COURSE!” at the Battle Lord and saying he’d stake his life on it.

The Battle Lord stands up and says he is indeed doing just that.

The doctor looks concerned by this but all I can think of is how dense this man is to have seriously allowed those words to exit his mouth.

The Battle Lord asks if the Rogues are ready and they give a very obviously passive, collective “Yes sir”. 

Then the Battle Lord rings in to all his men and gives a glorious speech of… glory.

This is going to sound really random to those who don’t know what I’m talking about but every time the Battle Lord does his crazy COO COO laugh, the sound for it in my head is specifically that of Android 19 going HO HO HOOO in Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3. 

That exact noise when he launches an attack at you, specifically his second special. It’s a wonderful noise he makes and I can’t help but hear it whenever this crazy bird man speaks.

Wave flies out with Dr Kung-Fukorov’s device (that wasn’t me taking the piss out of his name again. She actually calls him that. Bravo.) and presses a button that just… downs Nicole’s shield.

The doctor may be incompetent but when he gets it right, he gets it right. 

I like imagining the timeline where this didn’t work and he just gets dragged off to be executed . Dark for a kid’s book? Maybe but they made me think about it first.

Elias freaks out when he sees that the shield is gone. He looks slightly off without his crown on to the point where I almost wondered if it was him.

Elias, still under the impression that the citizens of this place aren’t fucking awful and incredibly stupid in the head, orders people to get to their designated evacuation stations.

We’re then treated to the most appropriate Elias facepalm moment of the century.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself”, Sonic says.

Yeah, these people are just… terrible. 

It’s honestly really great. I don’t recall being frustrated with these idiots that much when I initially read it and reading it now I’m actually just really amused by it. They really do deserve kings like Max and Naugus if this is how they react to being ordered to evacuate by a rational authority figure, former one or otherwise. 

Why the fuck would they even care if he was in charge? They’re being invaded by an armada!

The Tornado almost gets smashed into by Jet as he speeds by. Sonic isn’t sure what the Babylon Rogues have to do with this so he dives down to go chat.

Jet refuses to offer any information so Sonic homing attacks the shit out of the three of them. It would seem as though he’s got enough spunk in him to do his usual pre-battle banter though. Sally being roboticized hasn’t completely turned him into a soulless, angry husk just yet but more is going to happen before we get there.

Amy jumps into the fray and starts bashing birds with her hammer before landing on the plane to keep fighting. Rotor is flying around in his battle suit to fight them off saying that these are some “Angry Birds” and wonders what Tails did to them.

Tails says “They STARTED it” which is great but he also adds that this attack is a little TOO petty for what he did so there’s probably more to it.

It’s also a bit late, I might add, but then again it might have taken them a bit to do all that research so who knows?

I wouldn’t put it past the Battle Lord XIV to be a little petty though.

Naugus also flies into battle, ready to “save his subjects” because he’s a “good” king. He has a chat with the three spirits haunting him about it too. They want to make sure he’s extra super sure of this and he totally is considering his earlier success against the Titan Metal Sonic.

Fair enough.

Sonic tries to ask why the Rogues are helping the Battle Birds. He thought they were the misunderstood loner types. Yeah, they kind of are. Although, this arc kind of shifts them a bit to being a bit more unambiguously villainous considering they still want the same thing the Battle Lord wants despite working with him against their will.

Sonic also says that while he hates to admit it, Naugus alone is going to be able to decimate their entire fleet.

What a glorious bit that never gets old. Getting the guy you’re fighting to punch themselves in the face will never not be a classic.

Jet is right about them being sharper than Sonic apparently… on more than one account.

When Naugus lands on the ship he starts to try to turn the vessel into crystal and it doesn’t even look like it’s managing to do much. He might still be weakened from his previous battle or perhaps he let his guard down but the Battle Lord rises from a very conveniently placed nearby spot on the floor to formally greet him as he does this.

Dude seems so polite.

This is quite the thing to think about though.

I can hardly believe there used to be a Sonic book where the main villain from Tails Adventure could have a physical altercation with a villain from Sonic SatAM, a old Sonic TV show from the 90s, and have it be in the Modern Sonic setting.

Comic books are weird man. That’s what’s so great about them though.

This dude just slugs Naugus in the fucking gut and gets him to drop his Chaos Emerald staff. It’s really impressive how instant shit just went down and it’s a glorious display of how Naugus’ pride can lead to his undoing. 

I don’t blame him for not feeling threatened by this stalky, posh motherfucker rising from beneath the ship and bowing before him while most likely talking like Maximillian J. Pegasus or something. It’s the perfect misdirect.

We cut to the forest where people are evacuating. Antoine is carrying his new flesh and blood wife to safety. She says she can walk but Antoine says she’s only just been made flesh and blood and is like ze delicat flower.

These two are great.

By their side, Elias is monitoring the evacuation still. We see Geoffrey carted off in cuffs, shouting at Elias to let him out of them so he can fight alongside them all. Elias just waves him off like he’s squawking or something with a “Not now St. John.”

Even though Elias isn’t king anymore and Geoffrey was literally the one who leapt into the fray to snatch the crown off his head and put it on Naugus the power dynamics have shifted a bit.

I remember when Geoffrey had Elias wrapped around his finger but look at him now.

Elias also has a small chat with Nicole. It’s yet another scene where someone is trying to talk with her about city defense stuff and she’s just barely responding to them. He asks her if she’s uploaded herself to Freedom HQ. Then, of course, the instant Elias tries to talk about his sister she vanishes.

It’s tough, definitely but I am finding myself wishing for a little bit more than that going forward if we’re going to keep cutting to sad Nicole scenes. 

Anyway, shit hits the fan. Like, immediately.

Speedy flies in and yanks Tails out of his plane, making it and Amy fall off course just as soon as they catch up to Naugus on the flight deck. Rotor has to go after Amy. I do like how Speedy apologizes to Tails for this though. 

Meanwhile, the Babylon Rogues say that their mission has been accomplished and they’ve kept Sonic busy long enough.

Sonic is surprised to hear that they’ve been stalling him and circles around to attack them but Jet uses the arc ring thing he now has to put Sonic in a bubble and they fly off.

As Tails and Speedy are fly-fighting and the Battle Lord is punting Naugus in the chin, the doctor radios in to tell the Battle Lord that they’re in firing position.

Literally, they’re hovering right over the goddamn Castle. Fuck yes! Destroy it please!

The Battle Lord then has a very eloquent speech.

The swagger on this gentleman is almost otherworldly. It can’t be possible to be this cool, can it?

He barely has to lift a finger to remain dominant and in charge of a situation, which makes the fact that he’s such a douche all the more better. He literally swats them off the ship with a backhand bitchslap.

Both of them at the same time!

Seeing Rotor be a selective hero was interesting. 

It’s weird, I don’t know how to react to him catching Tails and leaving Naugus to plummet to the ground like that. It’s kind of funny but not funny enough for me to laugh. I don’t blame Rotor for doing it but I also don’t know if it’s something he should have done necessarily. I dunno. He’s evil but he’s on your side right now. Then again, it'd be pretty weird if he did save him right?

Sonic is just… really taken aback by what he’s witnessing.

Thankfully, his bubble bursts and he’s able to go towards the city all so that he can be too late to do anything.

Man, it really is nice just having an entire page dedicated to Sonic’s reaction to this. That shift in his eyes just tells you that he’s really had it. 

They were JUST attacked by the Death Egg. Sally was JUST roboticized. Before that, Naugus stomped his way into the castle, dethroned Elias, and got the citizens all up in an even bigger tizzy. And before THAT, they were calling for Nicole to be unplugged. Not to mention Geoffrey’s betrayal.

Now these fucking birds have brought their millenias old ancient prophecy to their doorstep because they just so happen to have built New Mobotropolis directly on top of it in the world’s shittest case of “It’s Free Real Estate” that’s ever existed.

That would have been bad on a normal day but no. They had to finally resolve that age old mystery and conflict RIGHT THE HELL NOW while everything was already fucked.

Yeah, well, there’s nothing they can do. Sucks to suck.

The giant ass battleship is charging it’s cannon and it intends to blast a huge hole through the entire castle to reach the center of their nanite tootsie pop.

Everyone can only gaze in wonderment from a safe distance. 

King Max literally facepalms with a look on his face that reads “Goddammit. Am I really going to have to sit here and watch these fucking birds blow the fuck out of the Acorn Castle…”

Suffer bitch.

Naugus crawls out of a crater in the ground, looking like he’s got a splitting headache.

Nicole, with a “I’m SO done” expression on her face, uploads herself to Freedom HQ.

Then, the Battle Lord gives the order to fire.

They blow their load all over the castle and eviscerate it.

 It didn’t stand a chance.

This shit was sexy bro. I can’t gush about how awesome and cool everything that just happened is. I love the Battle Lord and how dominating he is. He talks the talk and walks the walk in a way that I could only dream of for some villains. I like how much of a powerful, visceral threat they all are too. It makes what happened in the Tails Adventure look very much like a surprise misstep on their part simply from having no information on the intruder they had on their hands. 

Seeing just how royally fucked the kingdom is continuing to get on top of all the emotional baggage everyone is already dealing with is just making me more excited, despite knowing I have some reservations with some of the content approaching. 

It just feels good when the villains get to look cool. 

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #36: Babylon Rising - Part 4 of 4: Resurrection

This is a really wonderful cover. I can’t help looking at it and appreciating what it means to have the Riders series and it’s lore represented in this comic after all this time. They’re racing games and yet they’ve managed to mean so much despite that. It’s the power of story-telling at work and it stands out as an example of why the series was so special to me back in the day. 

Anyone can make a racing game but to inject it with so much insane stuff and treat it like this grandiose adventure was something the Sonic series just loved to do. No special reason why. It just could so it did. 

Spoiler

Script and Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Cover: Tracy Yardley and Matt Herms
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: Jack Morelli
Colors: Steve Downer
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

The city has just gotten a hole blown through it. A large green laser is blasting across the ground and Naugus is almost eviscerated by it thanks to Rotor just letting him drop there.

I like to imagine Rotor was like “I can let him fall and the laser destroying him will technically mean I didn’t murder him. You know?”.

Or perhaps he doesn’t care. Either way, it’s funny to me that this happened this way. 

Naugus is fine. Sort of. He sees that he’s about to die so he melds with his shadow on the ground and the blast misses him.

The citizens are… mostly just really pissed off about this. Rotor and Elias are trying to have a civil conversation and the angry masses are just shitting on the A.I that built their fucking city and shouting “Brick and Mortar” again like tools.

There’s going to be people who side with the Acorn Kingdom after this and the idea that they will really makes me upset. I can say for certain that were I ever to do one of those Archie Sonic continuation things, it wouldn’t be a thing like some of the ones I’ve seen. 

There’d be a lot of rueing for this kingdom and some of its people. A lot of rueing.

The Babylon Rogues are delighted about the huge hole leading to their destiny and zip down it to go for the win. Of course, Jet has no intention of allowing the Battle Lord to get his hands on it but the Battle Lord is gloating on his ship about how all the Rogues need to do is unlock the secrets with the gravity ring and they win. This is all intercut with shots of Sonic running towards the action. There’s quite a few things Mr. Kuku here hasn’t considered, really.

Sonic leaps into the hole and attacks them. He manages to hit Storm and Wave but Jet jumps and Sonic zooms underneath him. He’s pretty quick. I can’t help but wonder how fast on his feet he actually would be if he weren’t so obsessed with the air.

Sonic is reciting back to the Rogues what they (well, the Battle Birds, really) did to him sarcastically and Jet’s response is kind of great. 

Nah, actually Sonic I think he got it just fine. He just threw it back in your face by going along with it. You’re 0 for 2 as far as this whole looking cool thing is concerned.

Honestly, he’s kind of been losing a lot lately. It’s kind of amazing and I’ll admit to really liking it a lot. I don’t quite know what my problem back in the day was with not being able to notice just how much he was totally not in control at this time. Nothing was going right for him at all here.

Maybe he can redeem himself a bit though.

Whoops. Nope. Made a fool of again. That’s 0 for 3. 

Haha. It’s almost too sad now… but I still really like it. I need the Babylon Rogues to stand out as more than those three characters that show up to race Sonic on hover boards every once in a while.

And by “every once in a while” I mean three times throughout the 2000s and no longer then that. It’s been about a decade now, actually. 

I love the All-Stars Racing games. I want those to stick around as the SEGA focused kart racer but if they truly do wish for a more Sonic centric one to exist, revamping the Riders series wouldn’t be a bad start. It really oozed style and differentiated itself rather nicely from a lot of racers at the time, to the point where I don’t even recall anyone comparing it to Mario Kart. They do that with the All-Stars Racing games but Riders just looks and feels too different. 

The Rogues make it down below and have some more wonderfully written banter. Most of it is courtesy of Storm. He sees Wave with a handheld thing and asks her if it’s a Gamebird Advance. When Wave tells him it’s a Omni Link Scanner that’s telling her that Babylon Garden is a vessel of some kind, Storm asks if “vessel” means that thing that appears on Jet’s head when he talks too much.

Literally, as he says that, we see a shot of Jet standing in front of Storm with a visible anime blood vessel of anger on his head. It’s pretty great.

They reach the chamber they want to reach and with it, they’ve finally achieved the glory they’ve sought. Jet puts the Gravity Ring inside the cube and it flies out of his hand and into the console where the robot attached to it resides.

This robot speaks up and thanks them for bringing the matrix back to him and says that his ignition matrix was removed a MILLENIA ago and now he can finally resume his previous navigational routine.

This robot isn’t given a name but I can only assume it’s meant to be the Archie version of SCR-HD, the main antagonist of Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity.

There it was a mediotech robot that was corrupted by the Arks of the Cosmos but here it seems to be a part of the Babylon Garden navigation system since the garden is actually a spaceship.

Wave is about to ask what it’s previous navigational mission was but Sonic zips in and beams into the three of them from behind. 

Sonic doesn’t know what this place is but still calls it a piece of junk and says it wasn’t worth blowing up his city for. Granted, I doubt he’d consider it worth blowing up his city even if he thought this place was worthwhile, but still.

Something I haven’t yet gone into is how much of a villain Jet actually is here though. It’s kind of interesting. Before now, it was kind of like what Sonic said. They were a band of misunderstood rogues or whatever. Here, Jet is just grinning with glee and outright tells Sonic to his face that blowing up Sonic’s town was just icing on the cake and then takes personal credit for accomplishing what no one else could.

Sonic’s reaction is to slam Jet into Wave and Storm and remind him that he needed those two… and that entire armada to reach this area.

It’s quite astonishing how villainous he is here. I’ve always considered the Rogues to be in the same vein as the kind of character Rouge is. Darker characters that are self-serving but not evil. Yet, interestingly enough, Rouge has had a similar problem in these books too.

Sonic has reached a point where he literally looks like he’s about to lose his goddamn mind. It’ll be him in the padded room with the straight jacket soon. Just look at his face.

Did everybody get that?

Nicole didn’t build the Nanite City. Your boy A.D.A.M did. 

HE was in the middle of an evil plot at the time and the reason he built the city where he did was because he wished to use the power of this robot to gather all the Chaos Emeralds across space to one location. Archie SCR-HD here is equipped with a wormhole generator that would have made that possible.

However, A.D.A.M couldn’t activate this guy without the Ignition Matrix that Jet and the Battle Lord had the two pieces of so he was shit out of luck. So that’s why A.D.A.M had to resort to capturing Tails and Shadow and use them as a weird beckon to make his plan work.

It feels like a neat consequence of Nicole just having a spare city under the ground after Eggman blew up their home. Yeah, they got someplace to live but it’s directly underneath Babylon Garden. She didn’t consider that A.D.A.M building his city here would lead to unforeseen complications. I can’t exactly blame her. I wouldn’t have guessed that A.D.A.M, despite being evil, would have built the city over top something like this either. 

Sonic is now officially an alien racist.

Were the Wisps to ever end up in Archie Sonic canon proper, they’d probably not be anywhere near as welcome as they are in IDW. 

SCR-HD also explains that the Matrix was removed by the Ancient Babylonians because a malfunction in their wormhole generator would create a huge blackhole if used. The Lightless Black as it’s referred to as in the games, if you will.

They decided they didn’t want to be responsible for the planet’s demise and settled on the planet instead. 

Wave figures out what this means but Sonic throws it in her face. “YOU guys are the alien losers!” he says… right before Storm grabs him with an intense bearhug from behind.

I’m hoping Sonic saying that means he amended his opinion on the Babylonians to just be about the Rogues because those alien losers decided to forego returning to their home planet in order to make sure they didn’t destroy your world by attempting to go home in a malfunctioning, blackhole creating ship.

Although, it sort of doesn’t matter because the Matrix was just reinserted so it says that it’s going to resume the wormhole jump it was trying to do a millenia ago. That means there’s going to be a big blackhole that’s going to kill everyone.

He politely suggests they evacuate the planet though.

Aww. What a considerate robot.

Babylon Garden rises out of the ground, making a bigger mess, and the Battle Lord demands that they latch anchors on it so that they can follow it.

The spectacle on display is breathtaking. There’s so many things at play right now. It’s doing such a good job of getting my heart racing. 

The Battle Lord doesn’t know where the island is going and why. He asks (shouts at) Dr. Fukurokov for an update from Jet and he’s told that there’s no communication coming in.

So NOW the Battle Lord realizes that Jet wants it for himself and sicks Speedy on them.

Speedy heads off to do the thing while wondering how many weeks in the brig he’ll get for saying “I told you so” to his father. Honestly, it might even be worth it were I him. This was quite the tremendous oversight.

Back on board the Babylon Garden, the Rogues and Sonic are in a spot of trouble. The ship is about to take off for Homeworld and leave a huge black hole where Mobius once was. They only have minutes to remove the matrix before it can happen.

Sonic breaks away from Storm to go do it but Jet is desperate and grabs on to Sonic to stop him. He tries to order it to stop, peacefully, so that he can still have a chance to learn more without things being ruined for him.

That’s not going to fly however.

I love that.

Jet is a Babylonian so it should work. However, literally, the only reason given for why it doesn’t is because he lacks sufficient security clearance.

Jet tries to ask Wave if it can be reprogrammed. That’s also a no-go, not because she can’t do it, but because they only have minutes to get that matrix out.

Sonic, still shaking off the pain from being slammed into the floor, offers to do it but gets bashed in the head yet again by Speedy. This also happens to the other Rogues too.

Everyone is here. It’s Sonic Riders Smash.

Speedy takes WAY too long to do what he’s actually here to do though. He gloats about how this search for destiny has made it so that everything is going to blow up in all their faces now. He’s going to remove the key and be the savior of Mobius…

But Sonic has it now. 

Cause he was talking too much. Oops.

Sonic is… very pissed off. 

He does something that I’ve never seen him do before in any of the media I’ve consumed with him in it; say that he really wishes he could let all of them die. 

He says if he weren’t the good guy, he’d totally do it.

Jet has no remorse for what ended up happening to New Mobotropolis. He’s not the one who DID it necessarily and he was definitely not on board with Mobius being destroyed even if he’d technically be safe taking off to Homeworld in the ship. Sonic doesn’t give a fuck about that though. Every one of them is in the same boat as far as he’s concerned despite their conflict with one another as well. 

He’s not in a position to give a fuck about why they want to do what they’re doing either. He tells them that he needs to leave to make sure his friends and family are okay and says that if anyone isn’t then they’d better hope they can run faster then him.

Then he opens the air lock and falls out of it.

None of them respond to what he said or are even a little bit scared of him. They just don’t care.

In fact, as Speedy and Jet leave, Jet’s concern remains finding out more about his past and Speedy’s concern is more to do with his father.

Understandable situation or not, it is a little hard wrapping my head around or getting used to Sonic being this vindictive. 

I completely understand it. I don’t think I like it though.

Because Babylon Garden is crashing and the Battle Birds ship latched onto it, they end up crashing into a mountain along with it.

Oh. Dear.

He’s going to be fine, of course. Although, I believe this is the last we see of them Pre-Reboot.

They’ll be right as rain when the Archie Sonic Thanos Snap happens.

Sonic makes it to the others. He’s informed by Tails that everyone is safe. Naugus apparently showed up and started acting weird which Sonic isn’t concerned about.

He really probably should be though. Honestly. Why on Earth would you take chances after this humiliation conga that just went down on your city?

He instead decides to go off after the “alien losers” with Tails.

That leaves the Babylon Rogues to overlook the destruction in the mountains as Jet is left to let what he’s just learned sink in.

Goals.

He has ‘em.

Babylon Rising was awesome. This was such a neat and fun way to incorporate the elements from the Riders games into the Archie Sonic universe. I’m glad Sonic got to be a part of the proceedings as well. It feels more like a proper adaptation with him and Jet being connected in the conflict like this. I can only wonder what the Rogues had in store for themselves after this arc. The Battle Lord’s desire for vengeance was made pretty clear at the end of what happened in this book so their next escapade might have been something happening TO them rather than them going off in search of something. I have no way of knowing though.

I also really appreciate the stones it took to have this Sonic Universe arc just meld into the main story of the Archie comics. It really feels like the first Sonic Universe arc to really inject itself within the main plot like this. What’s happening is still largely disconnected from it, sure, but it matters still because the heroes have to deal with it. The castle and city are destroyed even more now than before. It also goes to help with showcasing Sonic’s state of mind and how relentless the constant bad things happening are wearing down whatever may be left in him that desires to stay positive. 

Most of all, though, it was just exciting as hell. I love stories where there are a bunch of moving parts and characters with different motivations clashing. It never fails to get the blood pumping my friends. You need a lover of organized chaos, I’m your man.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #233: The Trial of Geoffrey St. John

Here we are. I’ve been dreading this one for quite some time. Now that we’re here, the reaction to what I have to say about what’s about to be discussed here fills me with dread. This issue has got, quite possibly, my most hated moment from Sonic within its pages and it all has to do with personal perception regarding the situation at play. Which side you’re on here is going to come down to what values you feel are more important I guess.

Maybe I’m making a bigger deal about this than I need to though. Who knows? We’ll see. I might be. My memory has steered me wrong countless times now.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Steven Butler
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Cover: Ben Bates
Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

The first two pages are just Sonic and Tails overlooking the crash site of the Battle Birds. Because this is directly after the previous Sonic Universe arc, it’s an interesting start to one of these issues. I wouldn’t say Babylon Rising would be mandatory reading for this but it’s the closest a SU arc has gotten to being such.

Sonic can still joke around as shown when two of them show up and he says “I’ll take the one with the beak. You take the one with the feathers” and then he and Tails just decimate them. 

Because it’s Steven Butler’s art, Tails looks way longer than he usually does which always throws me off about his art. 

The two of them rush home with grins on their faces. Sonic is excited to see the trial of Geoffrey St. John. After having Sally turned into a robot, their city destroyed, Naugus made king, and the Battle Birds blowing up the castle, he REALLY wants to munch on those crumbs of pettiness he’ll get from watching Geoffrey sink at the trial.

Sonic says specifically that he doesn’t want to miss the trial for that “stinking traitor”.

Man, hearing Sonic the Hedgehog use the word “traitor” in this context is STILL really odd. Even this many issues in seeing him care so much about treason and traitors is super weird to me. 

So, at the trial proper we see the two judges, Hip and Hop, who are kangaroos for this literal Kangaroo Court, prociding. Antoine is the Miles Edgeworth while Geoffrey has elected to be his own defense. Naugus is slumped in his throne, watching because he has to. 

After some gentle ribbing from Antoine to Naugus about him not being opposed to justice he asks how Geoffrey pleads. 

Geoffrey pleads Not Guilty; literally the only plea he should have expected Geoffrey to plea in this situation.

Antoine says that Geoffrey led the Secret Service under King Maximillion Acorn. Geoffrey agrees. Antoine then says that he then helped Naugus get to the throne. Geoffrey agrees again. 

So then Antoine just shouts that this means he’s guilty and that it’s an open and shut case. Well, no, he says “Ze case is shut-and-opened”.

As much as Antoine would like to ignore the fine details to get this over with, Geoffrey has an actual story to tell so he tells it.

There’s already a lot to unpack here but I guess I’ll start with the basics. The tragic notion behind Ixis Naugus just manipulating a child into doing his bidding by utilizing the death of his father as an emotional knife to twist is wonderful in how fucked it is. Naugus is a great villain and I’d say Geoffrey plays the role of the manipulated sidekick rather well.

The other thing I’d like to mention is that, returning to this conflict with the Overlanders, I now have a new perspective for everything that’s gone on.

Naugus’ words do lend credence to the fact that both sides are to blame for the conflict that happened on multiple fronts. However, the issue that no one actually living in this kingdom ever feels the need to acknowledge (I guess aside from Tails’ parents) is that the monarchy sucks and has always been terrible.

King Max is unabashedly a terrible king. We can go on about how racist it might be to hate Overlanders for being Overlanders but the funny thing about it is that Naugus DID indeed turn out to be correct. Fucking Dr. Warlord Julian Robotnik Eggman of the House of Ivo turned out to be a monster of epic proportions. 

It wasn’t because he was an Overlander. It was because he was a terrible person. King Max is also a terrible person and he surrounded himself with terrible people. His old royal wizard was evil. His new Warlord was evil. The warlord BEFORE his new Warlord was evil. 

A place like this that gives rise to war and leads to people losing their fathers and mothers in conflicts like that can’t expect to not give rise to children who wish to change their situation or seek vengeance. Some of them did it by utilizing the system to their advantage and others just hated the system and said “Fuck it” probably.

Treason against the Acorn Kingdom means NOTHING to me. As far as I’m concerned, he should be awarded with a medal for doing it.

It gets even funnier when this little tidbit happens.

It’s funny because this actually happened.

Max actually did promise Naugus the throne and …here we are. I know Max’s head was going through some terrible shit at the time but I can’t really be that sympathetic to his plight when the whole reason he ended up where Naugus was is a direct result of his own actions backfiring on him. 

From there, Geoffrey did what he could to whip everything into shape while training on his own to learn Ixis Magic in secret.

Now, obviously, making a claim like “I’m king now. Give me the crown. Max said so” wouldn’t just BE accepted by the people in charge at the time. There was a lot of unforeseen issues that transpired as a result of trying to get everything to work. 

This is pretty good revisionist history, if only because of how wishy-washy and full of holes the original plots to these stories were. Making it work to Ian’s advantage wouldn’t be too hard.

I do love that Geoffrey’s explanation for why he didn’t side with Naugus when he came back is because “My master has NO CHILL!” and not much else. It’s true though. You can’t just barge into the kingdom, throw magic around, and demand the throne because Max said so. Whether or not it matters if he was or wasn’t in his right mind at the time is tough to come to a conclusion on for me.

Geoffrey also says he was right not to reveal himself then too because Sonic and Tails had their trip to the frozen tundra where Naugus got sealed away. A scene of Sonic and Tails fistpumping is shown to us. They look like plotting villains here. Also, Tails is exactly Sonic’s size in the scene shown too. He’s way too tall.

Antoine then rattles off the people in Geoffrey’s hand picked secret service. He doesn’t say them by name. He calls them two former badniks (the ones Sonic killed mercilessly when they were taken over by a villain), an unknown agent from Angel Island (Valdez, who got roboticized and destroyed in a fight with Espio), A foreign Freedom Fighter (Wombat Stu) and ze woman responsible for nearly killing Princess Sally (Hershey, whom was forced into helping the bad guys because of Drago the Domestic Abuser).

I’m not too huge a fan of the way Antoine put that but I’ll let it slide. His ultimate point, after all, is that they could have been unfairly framed for Geoffrey’s actions. Geoffrey even admits it’s devious but says he wasn’t too worried about that happening, especially for Valdez since he was so good at his job.

Antoine tries to make a play at Valdez’s death being Geoffrey’s fault and Geoffrey tells Antoine that he was a good man who died protecting the kingdom and to not belittle his sacrifice by blaming him.

Good response. It gets ignored as Antoine just continues outlining what happened in the past.

The time when Geoffrey manipulated Elias into doing what he said and getting him to leave the kingdom is brought up. At the time I read the stories where those events happened I talked about how it was brilliant set-up for the Geoffrey twist that happens here, only, it wasn’t actually something that the writers at the time were planning to do. Here, it makes complete sense now. To the point where you’d swear it was planned were you not aware of who was writing the book.

Geoffrey also points out that the authority of the prince and princess of Acorn was never legitimate but they were necessary to keep up good appearances.

I can see that if only because of Sally’s efforts in the Freedom Fighters conflict. I’d rather traverse through a valley of LEGO blocks barefoot, risking imminent death, then accept that it was because Max was the reason. 

Then again, considering how awful these people are, Max might have been who they wanted all along.

Antoine doesn’t stop here though. He presses the Hershey button. 

It’s a far more dangerous button to push than the Valdez button.

I know this is besides the point but I find it kind of hilarious that because he’s in handcuffs now, Geoffrey suddenly has stubble on his face.

I have to distract myself from the angry faces I’m seeing. I gotta keep telling myself that it’s understandable that some of them are just upset even though I personally only feel sympathy because of how badly this kingdom is at being a kingdom and how terrible a job Max did leading to all this happening.

He goes into how Hershey was his partner. She was the one who managed to succeed at everything he had to teach her. They got married at gunpoint for goodness sake, which is the kind of awesome that I can’t help but smile at.

To deny that he legitimately had feelings for her would be unfair. So instead most of these characters seem to just ignore it because the focus is on making sure he goes to jail for committing treason against their shitty kingd–

Nope. Sorry. I understand that this is a courtroom thing. Emotions and feelings aren’t the main thing to consider here… except it sort of is because they mostly want him arrested for treason because they want to feel good about punishing someone for Naugus becoming king. 

THIS TRIAL IS A FARCE!

I mean… uh… it’s completely legitimate. It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s cool. It makes sense. I’m just… too wrapped up in caring about emotional conflict rather than pragmatism. That’s all.

Ahem. 

So after Geoffrey and Hershey ended up splitting up on a mission, Geoffrey finds out from the Felidae that she apparently died while under cover. Geoffrey couldn’t find a trace of her. Convinced she died he decided to complete his mission.

Nobody ends up caring. They pronounce Geoffrey guilty.

Then Sonic does the thing that pissed me off REALLY BADLY back in the day and made me mark this entire issue down as one to hate. 

Looking at it again… no. I still hate it just as much as I did before.

I’m sorry. I’m not a fan of his conduct here. I, as the kind of reader I am, can’t sit through a tale like that of someone being fucked over by a kingdom that’s routinely been shown to be the absolute worst and then hear a story about how the person he fell in love with is most likely dead and then stomach Sonic whooping and cheering when that person gets declared guilty.

I keep saying I UNDERSTAND it. I do. I get it… I REALLY don’t like it. I’m sorry. 

My mind just keeps going back to how they all just heard Geoffrey recount a tale about how Hershey might be dead and seeing that followed up with Sonic going “WHOO HOOO!” is just… 

Mnnnnnghh…

BUT I UNDERSTAND. I DO. I GET IT. 

He’s a bad guy and he did bad guy things and therefore I’m not supposed to side with him. I have no choice but to side with the heroes because they’re the heroes and shit…

Fnnnnnghhhmmnn…

I just don’t… like it…

Sigh.

Naugus pardons Geoffrey with a shit-eating grin on his face utilizing the rules of this terrible kingdom to his advantage. It’s a society that lets people they don’t like get off scot free anyway so they should be used to it by now. I don’t even know if that prison they have has anyone inside of it right now. 

The last scene of this particular story is of Eggman putting a ring on it. 

I mean, he’s got a giant golden ring and he puts it on Mecha Sally to make sure she can’t regain her free will or something. I dunno. It’s evil, I’m sure.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #233: From the Shadows

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils and Colors: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: John Workman
Editor: Paul Kaminski

I remember being so worked up about the previous story back in the day that I know for a fact that I didn’t pay any attention to what was happening in this follow-up one. I really, probably should have because it’s likely going to be really important considering who’s here and what I recall Elias doing afterwards.

This side-story is actually pretty good and puts into perspective a lot of the things I was talking about above, thankfully.

It begins with Elias deciding to get his family to safety in Feral Forest but his parents won’t come.

Why? Because they’re fucking old nitwits that cling to old as shit virtues that don’t make any sense.

Max is a rambling, doddering old fool who can’t string a coherent sentence together. He’s clinging to his prestige and can’t stop rambling about the CROWN and how the CROWN BELONGS TO THE ACORNS!

He’s also going on about how he can’t understand why Geoffrey would betray him. It’s kind of fantastic, really. This man hasn’t put a single person into a position of power that hasn’t, in some way, ended up betraying him. The ones that don’t wish to betray him, he treats like dirt and then wonders how shit gets so ROYALLY fucked.

Meanwhile, this battered old woman who’s spent most of her time in a tube due to the aftermath of a pointless war isn’t seeing reason either. Elias, in a very charitable manner, says that his dad isn’t right in the head and that she should try and convince him to leave.

I love how Harvey Who dispenses with the tact later and just outright says Max has lost his marbles though. It’s great. He doesn’t feel any sympathy for him either. He's such a badass but we’ll get to him in a bit.

At the moment, check out Alicia’s reasoning for staying behind.

Uhm, excuse me, ma’am? Don’t lay splitting the family apart on Elias’ feet like that for trying to be rational and attempting to get you to safety. Elias beats himself up over it and hates how everything he tries to do is wrong but it’s totally not. Your family is just full of bastards.

After a pep talk from his loving wife, Elias goes off to seek help from Director Harvey Who. When he shows up at his door, he says that he came to him because he heard word from King Max that he was always there to watch his back.

This is where Harvey says that he must have lost more of his marbles than he thought. He left the director position when Geoffrey was put in charge of the Secret Service for a reason. 

He absolutely does not buy that Max truly believes he was an asset to him because he then outlines all the things he warned Max about that were just fucking ignored by his old, ignoramus ass. 

It’s like… it’s like he was put here in the comic to be my guardian angel. 

Harvey Who just kind of outlines what my frustrations are with this from the offset and does it in a fast, clear, and succinct way. It’s incredible. It’s impressive. It’s monumental.

It feels great.

Elias can’t just let that slide though. Obviously, despite how awful the kingdom is and was, Naugus can not be allowed to remain on the throne. His ambition will not stop at the crown. This is a bad thing, through and through. No question about it.

Harvey points out that conspiring with him will be treasonous against the king and Elias says “I’m your king. Naugus is just keeping my crown warm.”

Harvey opens his door all the way for him after hearing that. It means he won’t be like his dad since he can think outside the box. It’s also the exact kind of logic Geoffrey was using to get out of being declared guilty but we’ll ignore that for this tender moment.

Harvey Who is now the Nick Fury and he has an idea to get together a group of remarkable people to do the things the other chuckleheads in the kingdom can’t.

It’s about to get super spicy behind certain closed doors around here. If you know what I mean.

This was actually a really good issue. Don’t let my frustration with that one moment from Sonic take away from that. Honestly, everything that went down in this issue was extremely impressive. The explanations for how Geoffrey’s past lined up with where he was now had to have taken an extensive amount of work to get right, no doubt. Of course, as someone who values emotion and intention behind ones actions over adhering to a broken system in my fiction (which is why I adore a manga about pirates giving the middle finger to the Government so much) I found it difficult not to just side with Geoffrey and say that this entire court was a farce. Well, I DID say that but still.

None of what’s currently happened to the kingdom is actually the fault of Naugus shockingly enough. It’s kind of weird to think about but his evil hasn’t really had time to take off yet. It’s mostly just been outside threats fucking with the town. Obviously, the man needs to be stopped. As cathartic as it is seeing these people get what’s coming to them it doesn’t mean it’ll end up being worth it to see his evil machinations reach its zenith. 

I was mostly just frustrated by everyone’s conduct because it didn’t really feel like any of the problems that happened as a result of the old guard were going to be addressed or properly considered. It felt like it was all just going to be ignored because they desired to punish the one person they reasonably could punish in order to make themselves feel better about the state of their shitty kingdom. Boy howdy did it feel great to then see the side story where Harvey Who did that for me. It was a fantastic read. 

I’m all on board for seeing Elias regain his crown and lead the kingdom to prosperity. If the Acorns are going to remain in charge they need to finally show us how it can be done and I do feel like Elias is developing into someone who can be that person.

[SanPolo4389]

I've said this before with the first 2 parts but t bears repeating, the guy I followed from Deviantart really disliked the Bird Armada for being able to invade New Mobotroplis easily and didn't like Battle Lord easily knocking Naugus out for some reason. Also this is the last time the Babylon Rogues are seen in the comics until the IDW ones, since they never showed up once in that?

Also yeah seeing Sonic's reaction to Geoffrey getting arrested after he said his wife might of died does feel a bit dickish of him to do. 

[SkyHorizon]

1 hour ago, SanPolo4389 said:

Also yeah seeing Sonic's reaction to Geoffrey getting arrested after he said his wife might of died does feel a bit dickish of him to do. 

...man, seriously? Try to picture that situation in real life: someone responsible for committing all kind of crimes try to defend himself with: "eh, but my wife died... I guess". I mean, it's not even is an argument to bring to court.

[MetalSkulkBane]

1 hour ago, SanPolo4389 said:

I've said this before with the first 2 parts but t bears repeating, the guy I followed from Deviantart really disliked the Bird Armada for being able to invade New Mobotroplis easily and didn't like Battle Lord easily knocking Naugus out for some reason.

After his coronation, Naugus became string of failures, that kinda undermined him as villain. After stopping Eggman and Death Egg, now loosing to Battle Armada feels a bit pathetic.

(Yes, villains always loose. But at the end of the arc, not the middle.)

[Dr. Detective]

43 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

After his coronation, Naugus became string of failures, that kinda undermined him as villain. After stopping Eggman and Death Egg, now loosing to Battle Armada feels a bit pathetic.

(Yes, villains always loose. But at the end of the arc, not the middle.)

It's not like we don't know why though. It's clear that something's wrong with him. The plot was definitely attempting some sort of build up to something game changing with him. 

The problem was more how stretched out the Mecha Sally stuff ended up being. The book died before we really got a chance to see what the endgame for his standing as king would be. He definitely didn't lose in the middle or whatever.

[Kuzu]

That's what makes all of this pretty shitty in hindsight. There's no pay off for any of this at all.

[Sonictrainer]

Tracy Yardley recently redrew and recolored a panel from issue #175

[Rabbitearsblog]

48 minutes ago, Sonictrainer said:

Tracy Yardley recently redrew and recolored a panel from issue #175

That's pretty cool!  He did the artwork for the original scene, right?

[SanPolo4389]

1 hour ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

That's pretty cool!  He did the artwork for the original scene, right?

Yeah he did the art for that issue.

[Rabbitearsblog]

28 minutes ago, SanPolo4389 said:

Yeah he did the art for that issue.

Cool!

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

8 hours ago, Sonictrainer said:

Tracy Yardley recently redrew and recolored a panel from issue #175

Who says you can’t make improvements?

(I swear if you guys take that too seriously…)

[Guest]

 

On 2/18/2022 at 6:37 AM, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Who says you can’t make improvements?

(I swear if you guys take that too seriously…)

It really is cool seeing how artists improve and change over the years though.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #234: Unthinkable

I remember this issue quite well. I remember it rather fondly too. When I see this cover though, all I can think about is that one Deviantart post from the Anti-Archie Sonic guys where the Joker from the Dark Knight is holding up this cover in his hand like it’s a playing card. The caption said “Archie Sonic. It’s so dark, it’s Joker approved.”

Which is kind of funny. It’s not something you’d look at and necessarily think is supposed to be a dig at the comic but because of where it’s coming from, you know that it totally is. That said, the intense reaction this issue got is something I mostly avoided seeing. Like, I didn’t bother reading the comments to that meme picture I mentioned. Something was telling me not to. Ian talked about how intense the reaction to this was and it made waves in the initial plans going forward. That was probably for the best if I’m being honest.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Steven Butler
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Cover By: James Fry, Terry Austin, and Matt Herms

The way the internet views and talks about death in media is childish. I’m just going to start out by saying that upfront because it’s at the forefront of my mind and I’m struggling to wait until the big moment happens to speak up about it.

This is especially true when it comes to anime and manga fans. I watched a guy reacting to the openings of an anime and the constant thing he kept saying and noticing was that he was seeing a lot of the same main characters in the show and kept asking if anyone ever dies in it.

Yes, people die in these shows. However, I don’t understand this obsession with wanting to see it all the time. If it happens, it happens. Let it happen when it’s appropriate and let it be for a reason if it does… or, I should say, if it’s done well it’ll be. There are deaths that happen for no other reason than to make the audience feel like shit, like in Hunter X Hunter. That seems to be that show’s M.O and it’s one of my personal pet peeves about it despite it being very good in the long run.

The way people hand wave it off like it’s no big deal kind of irks me. A lot of the time people talk like it’s super necessary for them to feel stakes but at the same time it never really feels like they take into account how shows can sometimes trivialize it if it does it too much to the point where it’s not even treated like a big deal anymore. 

I don’t just mean stuff like DBZ where characters literally wait to go back after they’re killed. Sometimes it comes about when you have your guard dog eat two intruders down to their literal bleached white skeletons and the next scene is the groundskeeper talking with a child in the same room where he put those two skeletons in the fucking trash can next to him. It’s too weirdly dismissive.

Other people just seem SO eager to see it or call it out that they attempt to head canon it being there where it’s not or where it’s unclear if it is. Examples of that include the Metal Virus arc in IDW. 

None of the people who were being infected were dying and the book never let on that they were but a lot of the discussion I saw kept bringing up their “deaths” as though it were true. It was so weird seeing people occasionally say that the characters were dying all the time. Like, read the fucking book.

Another one that I’m iffy about is the Jackal Squad in Forces. The line I recall being there was that they were “taken out” but when I heard that I just assumed they were beaten up and taken out of commission. Literally the entire rest of the internet just assumed Shadow murdered them all which… I don’t know. Maybe he did. It’s too unclear for it to be talked as though it’s an assured thing in my opinion though. If it’s ever revealed that he did, I’d probably accept that, although, it’d come with the caveat of wanting that explored more. It’s definitely true that Shadow’s been shown to go the extra mile where Sonic isn’t, not just in IDW but Archie and Sonic X as well. So, it’s plausible but the willingness to jump to a certain conclusion I thought was strange.

Now, this isn’t me saying this is true in all cases. There are stories out there where constant death is largely part of the point but those can run into the same issues if special care isn’t taken as well. The act of there being a lot of death isn’t the problem, it’s making sure you know how to handle it.

That was a long spiel but to bring it full circle, moments where you’ve decided to kill off a character, I feel, have to be handled with the utmost care and respect as possible. However, even if you do that… it’s also important to recognize that doing it at all just might not be necessary.

This issue begins with Antoine’s journal and it’s a running theme throughout the book that we get his insight into things while he’s not there. Antoine’s been a big player in this arc up to this point. Most of his contributions have resulted in him being either extremely passionate or extremely angry so he’s honestly the perfect guy to get this kind of focus.

Though, the irony of the former coward being the one to jump into the fray only to potentially lose his life and thus proving his old cowardly self correct about his former conduct does strike me as particularly sad.

As an aside, in the character introduction boxes, Mecha Sally is grayed out and there are question marks over her. 

I don’t know why.

I mean, I guess she’s been modified a bit but we know it’s her. Also, the character introduction box only shows her head and yet the only thing that’s really changed about her is literally the entire rest of her body, aside from her head. It’s an odd choice.

Anyway, Antoine’s journal narrates for us that he and the Freedom Fighters are leading an escort out of the city for Elias and his family to reach Feral Forest safely. He talks about how the turn out for Elias’ departure is expected to be huge and questions why they accept Naugus as king if they love him so much and promises to investigate that later.

That sounds more like something a psychology expert could clue you into. I for one didn’t assume that wanting Naugus as king didn’t mean they hated Elias but with these people you never know.

As soon as they head off to begin the escort, the Death Egg hovers over the horizon to launch an attack. How Eggman predicted they’d do this, I’ve no clue but then again he probably doesn’t need a reason to attack them.

Some short scenes of Sonic attacking the next Egg Pawns and Bunnie fighting with… what looks like NO weapons for some reason?

I understand what this scene is going for but it’s still a little strange to me. This only really makes sense if the entire day they were planning to do this, she thought she still had the arm cannon and until just this literal second didn’t realize she didn’t.

I say this because if she had remembered beforehand then she would have brought a weapon or something, right? Did no one tell her she should have one or is there going to be a later scene where she pulls one out of a hammer space?

Well, the fight is going well for the heroes and Snively starts to whine about it but then Eggman does what he always does and goes for the heart by sending out his “Act Two”.

Not for nothing, this is quite the horrifying image. 

It is kind of fun that Mecha Sally and Metal Sonic are diving into battle against the heroes together like this. It’s almost like an image from a parallel universe or something… except it’s real.

The thing that really gets me the most is Elias’ face, spotting it from his side-view mirror. That’s his sister and that mad man just literally tore her body apart and replaced it with new body parts. It’s really not cool to think too hard about.

I also really love Tails’ cringing face. Like, the cringe hit him REALLY hard here. Look at that.

Between Tails cringing himself stiff and Amy being reluctant to fight her it’s no wonder the tornado gets destroyed… again.

I’m starting to think that this thing is in need of an upgrade, perhaps.

Sonic and Bunnie don’t fare that much better either.

That is the look of someone who just got rammed in the wrong spot by a metal appendage.

Bunnie jumps in and tries to fight him off with her bare hands and is just beaten back by Mecha Sally. She gets roughed up and claims she’s not going to stop fighting but Mecha Sally punts her face into the dirt, saying that she’s no longer a threat because her cybernetics are gone.

You know what could help fix things? Maybe a weapon? Like a manual arm cannon instead of one that has to be grafted onto her actual arm? I dunno. I feel like there’s a very obvious path to a solution here that they’re not taking steps to walk down here.

Anyway, their primary target, Elias, is unprotected now and they have a clear shot so the Death Egg’s lasers start raining down on them. Unfortunately, Elias’ weird looking transport is equipped with a targeting scrambler so their shots all miss. They’ll only hit it with dumb luck.

Eggman gets pissed and decides to send Metal Sonic after it so that it can latch on and explode. That’s actually not a bad idea but Snively argues against it anyway because that’s just what he does now.

I’ve noticed that lately Snively’s arguments against Eggman have been considerably weaker. Snively’s argument is that Sonic is still out there and that he JUST rebuilt Metal Sonic from last time.

Eggman seriously has to remind him, spit flinging from his mouth, that he’s rebuilt the fucking Metal Sonic a bajillion times already and he can do it again. Also, it doesn’t matter if Sonic is still out there if their primary target is Elias. If this is something that can get the job done and Sonic is preoccupied with Mecha Sally, then who cares? 

Yeah, I’m with Eggman on this one. Do it.

When Metal Sonic goes after Elias’ transport, Sonic seriously tries the “Fight it, Sal” thing again. I love Mecha Sally’s response.

“Where were you when they were handing the brains out” is such a derpy statement. It’s so strange but it’s also really funny. Either Eggman programmed sass into her or this Mecha Sally is just operating on regular Sally’s tendencies but just IS evil while doing it. Both seem like they’d make sense to me, really. 

Apparently this line is a reference to an old episode of SatAM I think. That’s why I don’t recognize it and… it’s also probably why it sounds so goofy.

The only one still within range to handle what Metal Sonic is about to do is Antoine so he speeds in on his Extreme Gear and grabs Metal Sonic before yanking him off of Elias’ car, saying that he’s doing this to serve his king and country!

Lien-Da informs Eggman that Metal Sonic got tangled on a Freedom Fighter like that’s bad news to a man who just intended to have the robot self-destruct on one of his enemies to take him out. 

Nah. He’s going to cut his losses and nab what he can.

Yeesh. That look on his face. 

I wonder if the characters can see the dark shading in universe. That’d be terrifying if they could.

I also wonder what Snively was going to argue now. That they’d miss their chance to get Elias if they did it to Antoine? I mean, I guess that’s a more proper concern considering Elias was their target but cutting their losses with one of the original Freedom Fighters sounds like an excellent consolation prize.

So… Eggman gives the order to detonate and it does just that.

The next scene is… very gruesome and visceral looking despite the absence of any blood. It looks really intense.

… I’ve never had an explosion go off on me but I’d imagine I’d be not only dead but chunks on the floor if I did. So, for what it’s worth, this is rather impressive. Their bodies must be made of chewy adamantium or something.

Also, Ash got exploded once too and he’s not even a fighter. Come on, walk it off Antoine.

I really should have thought to start a “Metal Sonic Blows Up” counter long ago as well.

So yeah, this is how it happens.

This is how the Antoine (almost) died.

Regardless of the fact that he never really recovered after this moment, it was pretty clear to me that he totally would recover eventually. I DID let myself wonder a bit if he was dead the exact instant he died but seeing all the stuff afterward where Sonic had to rush him to the hospital on a cliffhanger made me doubt that this would stick. That’s how good the execution for this was though. It even made me doubt for a split-second. 

Granted, I probably shouldn’t have been so sure of myself that they wouldn’t kill him off because that was the original intention. Or at the very least, that was the idea. They were testing the waters with this and the waters got very stormy, very quickly.

The response to seeing this happen was apparently so huge that whatever plans for a permanent demise they were experimenting with was on the horizon was scrapped.

Thank goodness too. The Freedom Fighters are all sorts of messed up right now. Sally’s a robot. Bunnie got her wish but is unable to adjust to being normal again and thus can’t fight as well. Rotor’s back is out and he can’t keep cheesing his way into fights with his weird scuba diving fight suit. Nicole has been kicked out of the city. Now Antoine’s gone and exploded.

I was going to add that Tails keeps crashing his plane but let’s be honest, that’s nothing new for him.

I think the goal that Ian wished to achieve by having them all be at their lowest of lows was being well and truly accomplished by this point. There really was no need to go the extra mile and kill him off. Removing your ability to tell future stories for a character is a hard sell for me, personally. I can see it happening if it’s both telegraphed well enough and that character is in a position where their death would undoubtedly make for a stronger narrative. I didn’t see that here though.

Also, yeah, sometimes it’s fine to just kill random characters off to heighten the stakes. I still wouldn’t say it’s necessary to do it all the time without remorse. There’s a balance that I’d prefer most media hit unless, of course, you’re telling a story where death and violence is the literal point. Like, obviously something like Berserk is going to have a ton of that. That’s part of the point. I’m speaking more in terms of a regular action-adventure series like Sonic.

Eggman seems to agree with me… I think.

Snively, this isn’t going to work, whatever it is you’re going to do. You should know it’s not going to work too but you don’t because you’ve convinced yourself that being tactically smarter than Eggman is all it takes to beat him.

The actions of this man who reigns above you comes from a place of thinking waaaaay outside the box. Sometimes it leads to him doing things that make no sense but because he’s more wild and crazy then you he’s not only a lot more creative but he also takes more risks.

Not to mention, there’s that thing I mentioned before about how he’s an insane monster that doesn’t let affection cloud his judgment. It’s a very mean thing to consider, sure, but it’s true. Eggman can just DO more because he lacks a tendency to care about any of the people, places, or things around him.

Although, I do have to wonder why Eggman keeps thinking “their spirits will be crushed” is a good thing to rely on. That didn’t happen when you had your big gambit back in #175 so he must really have a lot of faith that he can do it. Then again, we know he’s got really cruel methods for how to achieve it.

That’ll be explored more in Scrambled, probably. Right now, Mecha Sally has been given the order to return home. The heroes just crowd around Antoine’s body in despair.

Well, you kind of have to let him go because if you don’t he really will die.

Yeah, he’s still alive and Sonic knows this because he’s still breathing… how he can tell that when he’s not that close to him or touching him, I honestly don’t know. His chest is pressed into Bunnie super tightly so he can’t see it rising and falling.

Stopping myself and just looking at the scene of her holding him close and crying, allowing myself to be in that moment as someone engrossed in the story and not someone doing a review for it, I did start to feel the weight of the tragedy hit home…

It wasn’t a happy feeling but it’s one I appreciated having. My thoughts on how and when to do something like this are a bit scattered and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone misunderstood what I said along the way but let it be known that I definitely do appreciate a good, well-handled demise. This isn’t going to be that, of course, but the moment sells itself well. 

So, there we have it. Sonic rushes off with Antoine in his arms to go see Dr. Quack.

I like the little zoom in on his hand flopping out and showing off the ring on his finger. You know, if I had really paid attention to what that could mean, I’d probably have found myself thinking he was going to die again. Two signs in media of a character actually dying are the hand flopping out thing and the ever more popular, head tilting to the side as they close their eyes thing.

I almost missed Antoine’s last journal entry. It doesn’t say anything we didn’t already know about him but it’s a pretty poignant last note for this version of the character.

Yeah, as far as I recall, the pre-reboot ends before Antoine wakes up so… this is the last time we see him, I think.

In fact, I’m sure one of the opening issues of the reboot has Sonic and Tails almost glomp Antoine to actual death when they see him not wrapped in bandages in a hospital bed.

Oh my God… that was the last thing Pre-Reboot Antoine ever said.

Well, shit. It’s even sadder now.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #234: Dark Hearts

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Ben Bates
Inks: Terry Austin

So, I was right to not be too judgmental about wondering how Eggman knew this operation was going to happen. Naugus clued Eggman in on it.

Naugus contacts Eggman through his purple Chaos Emerald and tells Eggman when Elias is about to head for the Feral Forest. The info doesn’t come for free. He wants information about what the current Eggman remembers about himself.

This is actually pretty intriguing because Eggman as an entity in this comic is still, sadly, a little confusing to me. The man has been through so many in-universe changes and isn’t even the original version of himself yet is being treated as though he totally is.

Like, he has the same memories as the original one for reasons that I’ve long since forgotten or were probably never explained.

He went to the Zone of Silence to research it, I guess, and was happened upon by Naugus’ then minion Feist and was tormented constantly by the people he threw in there under Naugus’ control.

This is a very cute little tale, despite its subject matter. I recall King Max looking really odd in that get-up back in the initial comic where he attacked everyone but he makes it work here in an art-style that’s actually good.

The reminiscing eventually devolves into the two of them shooting the shit about the past. Eggman remembers everything. He even recalls building something to contact Snively so that he can get him out of the Zone of Silence. He even remarks about how those were the more innocent days where he could trust the guy.

Eggman talks a lot about how he loves playing “the game” with Snively but there probably is a small part of him that liked having him just be his unquestionable toady. There is something to say for minions that’ll just do whatever you want, no questions asked.

They really are charming in how they talk to one another here though. 

I know they’d turn on each other on a dime but having this scene be written like they’re professional villains about to play cards with one another over the time they almost got Batman is fun.

Eggman even shifts back into yelling and threatening Naugus when they’re done talking but then Naugus just tells him to chill out and offers up the information about the Elias escort. Eggman then laughs with delight and asks Naugus if he should gloat on his behalf when he attacks to give him his fair share of the credit and Naugus says “Nah bro. I got an image to keep” and Eggman agrees before leaving.

It’s beautiful.

Geoffrey walks in at that last second because Naugus asked him to report when they were making preparations to leave, though, he doesn’t know why. He sees Naugus in the darkness with his emerald flopped onto the table and asks him what he was doing. Naugus just says “His Kingly duties” which made me chuckle a bit.

Then they head off to bid Elias a farewell.

How diabolical.

Yeah, we’ve had pretty much nothing but bangers for a while now. I know the comic is going to reach a point where it’s going to get significantly less good for a little bit but that hasn’t happened yet. I’m savoring the issues we have where it can still be really intense and cool, like this one. Antoine’s passing may have been avoided, technically, but as far as his character pre-reboot… this really is it for him. There’s nothing left and as such, this issue is his Swan Song. It’s a good thing it was so good too because the note he left on could have been a lot sadder if other characters were any indication.

I will probably never let go of the fact that I never got to see the conclusion of Naugus and Geoffrey’s character arcs. I swear, it’s going to haunt me for the remainder of my days unless Ian can finally release the Lost Hedgehog Tales. 

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #37: Scrambled - Part 1 of 4: The Man in Charge

Who do we have left to give a Sonic Universe arc? I know! How about the man with the master plan himself, our villain, Dr. Eggman! This is Scrambled and it’ll be one of two Eggman focused Sonic Universe arcs. This one is a fun little romp with a really fucked up ending while the other one, Eggman’s Dozen, is one of the greatest Sonic stories to ever see print. That’s not an opinion. It’s an objective fact and I’ll explain why when we get to it. For now, it’s time for Eggman and Snively to play Road Runner and Coyote with one another.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: Jack Morelli
Colors: Steve Downer
Cover: Jamal Peppers, Jim Amash, and Matt Herms
Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

This story begins with Eggman staring down a screen that’s blasting him a full warning lock-down sequence. He’s been locked out of his network and a loud as hell alarm is blaring.

Because he can’t do anything, he decides to bring out his emergency lackeys. 

Say hello again to Orbot and Cubot.

This isn’t their first foray into the Archie Comics. That would be the Colors adaptation. However, this is their first foray into the Archie Sonic canon proper. I recalled that Eggman just sort of… summoned them from nowhere by slamming his fist against a wall and they just kind of shot out of what looks like a garbage chute and then BAM, they’re suddenly in the book now.

I just didn’t remember WHICH issue that was. It’s interesting that they were introduced in Sonic Universe. I don’t know why you’d only be reading the main book but if you were, these two would just be there now. 

It’s not like they need much of an explanation to show up though. They are just robot lackeys. They exist to bounce off of Eggman so that he isn’t just talking to himself. It was something the cartoons all figured out long before the games did and while I’d argue some of those actually did it better, I can’t imagine a new game without these two now.

I’m happy they’re finally here, though, it always amuses me that this version of Eggman is working with Orbot and Cubot now since he’s very much a harsher, meaner, nastier slave driver. Granted, he takes glee from abusing the two of them in Sonic Boom as well and he’s intentionally not as villainous there. 

We also see that Cubot’s voice chip is messed up which… you know. I guess it had to be there for his first appearance since Cubot with a messed up voice chip was a large part of our first impression of the character. Wally Wingert’s regular voice for the guy is great and it's kind of funny we didn’t get to really hear it properly until Sonic Lost World, three years after Sonic Colors came out in 2010. 

It’s such a strange first impression to give your new character but it worked out in the end.

The next scene is of Snively rushing to the elevator to head off while giving a spiel to himself about his own plan. He’s talking out loud to no one, which, I guess he would have to in order for us to get a good read on what it is he’s trying to do.

Although, his lines here were a bit tough to read due to how he interrupts himself to give vocal commands. It was very strange when I first read it. I had to re-read it over again and sound out the words and then figure out why he was saying them.

“Once I win Hope over – override sigma-tau-eta- eight – then it’s off to the Dragon Kingdom to pick up that lovely piece of old world technology I found–!” he says and then he says “Override sigma- tau-eta-eight” again in the next statement where he’s going off about saving Regina and how the Eggman Empire is going to be in ruins.

He gloats about knowing everything about him and junk right as we cut back to Eggman who’s angry and wanting to fix what’s wrong. Cubot chooses that time to show Eggman a video of Snively disbanding all the Dark Egg Legion chapters.

He’s being overdramatic for certain but I’ll bet it was more than enough to convince those who REALLY wanted to believe this was the truth.

Eggman has a lot he needs to fix and so suddenly as well. He does wonder why Snively is being so blunt and snappy about this since it isn’t his usual style.

Well, we cut to Snively and we see that the new and improved Egg Pawns are stomping after him with him as their new priority. He rushes off… but it looks like he’s been captured.

Oh dear! Scrambled was short but fun for the five pages it lasted. 

Snively decides to end it all in the only way he knows how.

He goes out with a bang.

I love that line. “It appears he exploded, sir.”

Beautiful.

After witnessing this we get Cubot looking through the different areas of the base and reporting sightings of Snivelys everywhere.

But how can this be? How can he be in so many places at once?

Well, it turns out, Snively has resurrected the Infiltrator series.

… What’s the Infiltrator series? Well, you all would still probably know better than me but thankfully this is something I actually DO remember. I believe it was first seen back in the Return to Angel Island arc by Karl Bollers. 

It’s actually been talked about a number of times on here but to see it used so brazenly for a purpose this quick and unexpected before poofing out of the book’s life once more is kind of astounding.

The intrigue and scariness of seeing the Metal Snively being constructed in the background pages of one of those issues has actually stuck with me. I did kind of like the fact that we never saw what the end game for that was so seeing them return as just regular Robot Snively’s that all exploded did kind of feel like a bit of a shame… although, the face they make of elated happiness for the sweet embrace of death as they blow themselves up is really creepy.

I do ultimately think it was a clever use of them. 

Now Eggman has fully realized what’s going on and congratulates Snively on a well-done gamble. He decides he now wishes to call all of the Grandmasters at once and teleport them immediately into the conference room.

Orbot and Cubot give reasons as to why that might not be such a good idea but Eggman just snaps that he doesn’t care. HE’S the top priority, always!

“When I say “jump”, they ask “how high” ON THE WAY UP!”

Jesus, man! What a fucking baller ass line. That’s so goddamn cool. I’m so glad Ian Flynn is writing for Frontiers.

Orbot and Cubot watch him stomp off but they find solace in the fact that they now have a job.

Yeah, it took me a bit to get what they meant but ultimately, yes, they’re lackeys to Eggman now because Snively’s gone and renounced his position. They’re essentially his replacements. It’s wild, ain’t it?

We then cut around to all the other Grandmasters and watch how their fleeting moments of happiness at being given the great news that Eggman is apparently gone are transpiring. It’s a moment of elation that’ll be ripped from them like someone yanking a heart out of their chest. 

Each flash that happens of the Grandmasters getting teleported away might as well beam a bright message of light that just has the phrase “LOLNOPE!” written out. Or something to that effect.

LOLNOPE!

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

THINK AGAIN, FUCKO!

MAD MAX FURRY ROAD REDACTED!

BITCH, YOU THOUGHT–!

Holy shit, Conquering Storm has been legionized! What scary eyes she has now!

Honestly, at the point where I read this, initially, I didn’t even really know what Legionization was. So when she appeared again with these eyes, it freaked me out because they both looked horrific and also, I had no clue why they were like that now.

However, it’s clear she’s gone all in on the Eggman Empire and the strength of her clan has been boosted tremendously. The fallout from being under the wing of the Iron Dominion did not set her back at all. This is a woman with monstrous, terrifying goals.

We also see Akhlut, Hugo Brass, and some guy named The Foreman get teleported too.

So, remember when I talked about how I was confused by who the Grandmasters were back when I read Scrambled and doing this re-read, I was eager to learn who they were and see where they were all supposed to be introduced?

Then, upon venturing through the issues after the Iron Dominion we got to know some of them and thus I learned that, actually, those stories I read WERE the introductions to those Dark Egg Legion Grandmasters and I had just assumed they were all characters that had appeared before in stories I hadn’t read?

I think most of my confusion probably stemmed from this scene, most likely. I don’t know how but for some reason I was even more confused by the mechanical orca despite having seen it already in a previous story. I guess, for some reason, it was a much stranger image to me than all the rest of these guys back then.

Then there’s Hugo Brass. I struggled hard with just trying to remember if I remembered this guy. That’s like DOUBLE the attempt to jog your memory.

Eventually, I gave up and looked him up. I cannot imagine that a dude with this design and is touted as a brainwashed, former commander (something I do remember from my first reading of this) was someone who was just appearing for the first time right now.

He HAS appeared before… LONG ago during the time of the SA2 arc stuff. He was a generic military commander and former commander of G.U.N. It’s not shocking at all that I don’t remember him. I don’t even recall SEEING the former commander of G.U.N, let alone this guy.

I remember Mayor Inappropriate-Reference-to-Rudy-Giuliani from the SA1 arc though. How could I forget him?

Diesel, the biker bear dude is also someone that I know I’m seeing for the first time. This dude was probably someone who was going to have his whole thing touched upon and explored later. He mentions Mazuri by name which is interesting. I wonder how all the Unleashed locations were going to originally fit into the Archie Sonic world.

Also, because he rides a bike and is in charge of a biker gang that rampages across Mazuri, I’m thinking his character got remodeled into Axel of the Eggman’s Dozen from the reboot. 

Lord Hood from Snottingham Castle (PFFT!) is the Mercian Grandmaster and he looks a little more… adorable in his first appearance here. Again, I have no frame of reference for who or what he’s supposed to BE in this universe but I’m also sure that was something we’d have touched upon at a later date.

The last one that I don’t know is The Foreman, the Nerb grandmaster. 

He’s got a… very strange design. He looks like someone from something that I feel I’ve seen before… but I don’t know quite-HOLY SHIT! HE’S THE GUY FROM ROCKO’S MODERN LIFE WHO’S NAUSEOUS ALL THE TIME!

Anyway, they all get poofed into Eggman’s council room.

It’s a great image. I love seeing them all just appear at once around the round table. He even has Ahklut appear in a fish tank behind them. 

Lien-Da is here too. She’s just listed as “Grandmaster” because she has no territory to reign over. However, her position seems to be directly under Eggman since she’s seen with him and Snively so often. Eggman, in his upcoming speech to them, even says “You will serve the Dark Egg Legion AND the Eggman Empire until the day you die!”

Still, it will never not be funny to me that Eggman has basically just adopted the term “Grandmaster” for his group of 11 misfits. It goes against what Ken Penders said about how his shitty Dark Legion could defeat the Eggman Empire so much. The fact that the Dark Legion is basically some small dregs of cloaked echidnas that not only work directly for Eggman now but share the same name and title across multiple groups and species of Grandmasters around the world that also all work for Eggman is beautiful.

It’s obvious this was the only plausible result too. No fucking way the Dark Legion could ever measure up. It also serves as a reminder of how un-grandiose the title of Grandmaster is now that it literally just means “Sub-Boss for some other guy who’s actually in charge” now. 

Speaking of which, Eggman goes on this fucking wonderful, marvelous rant about how he’s in charge and how their lives belong to him.

Drago the Fuckwit seriously tries to get smart with him and Eggman hovers over him radiating chad energy while shooting him down.

I’ve always remembered this moment. I’ve even found myself quoting it sometimes whenever I think over writing for Eggman myself. That “Sit. Down.” at the end is a great piece of dialogue to mimic.

Dude then just goes around the horn with his hands behind his back, asking why they didn’t answer his signal to reply. They all chose to disobey him because they thought he was dead, Uncle Beau says.

Eggman gets really pissed off about this, shouting that they aren’t free even in the wake of his death. They’ll only be free in the wake of their OWN deaths. He owns them until the day they die.

Everyone looks scared of him. Uncle Beau flinches when Eggman shouts at him about how he can’t believe that he believed Snively when he said he was dead. Ahklut tries to talk down Eggman because he can’t control his subordinate and Eggman threatens to open the hatch and let him “fly” back to the fucking ocean.

Then he puts his hand on Bill’s shoulder in a moment that terrified me when I first read this all those years ago.

You can SEE him sitting there, doing his best not to be seen by Eggman because he doesn’t want any attention on him. This is a defense mechanism I would often do in the wake of someone being angry at a group of people that I just so happened to be a part of due to undesirable circumstances. Like school. On top of that, he’s a spy for the Freedom Fighters who’s been legionized and is REALLY in the shit here. Especially since all Eggman has to do is give a voice command and he’s dead.

So that look on his face when Eggman just lays a hand on his shoulder while saying they’re all replaceable is probably one of the scariest moments of his life. 

Then it gets brought back to being semi-humorous again when the background detail of Orbot and Cubot handing out snacks and tea to their guests, apparently NOT at Eggman’s behest, is pointed out by the doctor as he’s congratulating Lien-Da for not betraying him during the lockout. He screams at them and demands to know what they’re doing and when Cubot responds that it’s just simple hospitality he calms down and tells them to carry on like it’s actually no big deal.

The many shades of Eggman are fun to look at and experience.

After he gives Lien-Da her reward of choosing whichever legion chapter she wants, he gives them all the task of recovering the Blue Chaos Emerald that got lost when the Death Egg’s Genesis Wave happened.

He tells them that if they find it quickly, they’ll be rewarded.

If they try to keep it for themselves then their punishment will be “legendary”.

He’s got SUCH a fucking great way with words.

Their punishment will be legendary, he says. 

Fuck man. He’s written too well here. It’s going to make me cry, thinking about being deprived of this Eggman from the games for as long as we all were.

Conquering Storm tries to tell him that summoning them all here at random like this will make it hard for them to do the jobs the way he wants them too. Eggman says that he knows that and reveals the Ace up his sleeve.

Behold, the Metal Series…!

Mixed feelings on the Metal Series here. 

On the one hand, it’s a… expected idea, I should say. One that hasn’t been attempted before but one you’d think would be before now. 

I’d say it kind of takes away from the special nature of Metal Sonic by there just being a bunch of other robot versions of the other characters around but that doesn’t mean anything. Metal Sonic isn’t special in this book. He gets blown up a countless number of times and is absolutely not treated like a character, at all.

From this book’s point of view, who cares if there’s more metal versions of the others? 

It also feels a bit weird that there’s a Metal Tails here when I know Tails Doll is already in the Acorn Kingdom right now. Tails having two things built to mimic his image like this feels strange, especially considering how dismissive of the fox boy Eggman usually is. It makes sense that he’d just reduce his role to that of a plushie.

I guess it’s cool to see Metal Knuckles again for those who care.

The real big thing here, though, is that the sledgehammer of Eggman’s cruelty smashing into whatever hope someone like Uncle Beau or Bill may have had left when they see Princess Sally roboticized. 

It couldn’t be more cruel. They were both about to write something about how happy they were that Eggman was gone and then get gutpunched with news that basically says “Actually, it’s WORSE than you thought it was. Fuck off now.”

And then Eggman sends them home with a “GET BACK TO WORK!”

He’s such a monster. 

It’s fantastic.

With that, he leaves Lien-Da in charge and then heads off to find Snively with Orbot and Cubot. They ponder why he left his tracker on. Eggman says it’s either an oversight or he’s baiting him. Either way, he’s heading straight there and he plans to win.

I don’t know who to root for so I’m just gonna watch the villain fireworks fly.

This issue felt like it was made specifically for me. I love villain groups and I love seeing villain groups interacting with one another. Eggman is a literal force of nature, the likes of which will blow your house down, circle around, and then stomp on the wreckage for no other reason than he felt like it. Then he’ll demand the house rebuild itself so that he can tear it down again. The unrepentant nature of his sheer capacity for evil is magically delicious. My two favorite things about this franchise are those wacky detectives I want to see more of and the maniacal genius that’s stood as such a fantastic villain in this franchise for three decades now. That’s why they’re both represented in my username. I can’t choose between my love for them and getting great stories that make them shine like this just reinvigorates that passion. I want more Eggman stories and I want them now, please.

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #38: Scrambled - Part 2 of 4: Family

This is a really nice cover. I like it a lot. Robots are underrated a bit in this series. Looking at something like this reminds you of how cool they can be. Although, the fact that I’m not a huge fan of Archie Omega and Archie Metal Sonic does kind of set it back a bit. However, this image is still really cool. I love the idea that this is just Eggman sitting back and enjoying the show. He’s active in the plot but he’s so cool he spiritually is just kind of strutting through all this.

I believe Team Dark as a whole was finished for the Pre-Reboot back in Treasure Team Tango but Omega has one last appearance to get to before he leaves. 

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Steve Downer
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover: Jamal Peppers, Jim Amash, and Matt Herms
Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

We begin this issue with Eggman in the middle of doing what he loves. 

Dramatic irony.

He’s attacking Central City, a capitol of the United Federation, with his robots. A G.U.N soldier on the ground level is trying to help the citizens escape while Eggman is up in his flying ship, the Egg Camel, bragging to the brainwashed, legionized, former commander of G.U.N, Hugo Brass.

It’s a perfect set up. The former G.U.N commander is in the ship that’s attacking the thing he used to protect. Eggman is trying to let Hugo know just how delicious this all is. 

But all Hugo can say is “Yes sir.”

He did his job a little too well. 

It’s one of those times where Eggman’s cruelty kind of backfired on him a bit. Replacing him with robotic parts and having him be completely brainwashed like this has left him unable to have the reaction he wants. There’s something to say about free will after all. Without free will, they can’t despair when you’ve put them in an ironic tragedy.

Anyway, Eggman continues to wonder why Snively is here and talks about how what he’s doing doesn’t fit his usual pattern of backstabbery. I wish he’d elaborate more on this pattern but if I were to guess I think he just means that Snively usually doesn’t go all over the place like this and make such huge, out in the open plays like before.

Orbot and Cubot gear up to attack and they do. Cubot’s voice chip joke is here in full force and he’s talking like he’s an old New York stereotype. The voice chip thing was amusing at times in Colors but for some reason it’s super not funny here. Probably because my brain knows the only reason it’s here is because it’s just the thing we associated with Cubot at the time. It’s an unfortunate issue with his first running joke being how he was imparted on to us as a character.

In Lost World, the joke with him was that his body got blown up and his head kept getting attached to different things. Forces didn’t try when it came to much of what it did so the two of them are barely an entity in that game. No running joke there.

First impressions can be rough.

As this happens, we catch a glimpse of the Commander’s room as the orders are being given out. Two out of three members of Team Dark have been sent to the President due to his insistence. Obviously, the one who stayed here is Omega.

Seeing Omega lead a platoon of G.U.N soldiers and robots almost gave me heartburn when I first read it all those years ago. Telling myself that it was a different continuity didn’t help. 

Oh well. It really doesn’t matter now. If anything, at best, this just serves as a weird little time capsule of where his character was in the eyes of the people at the time this was written. Not hated but not beloved and thus more liberties were taken with him. 

We cut to a scene of Snively having confronted Hope back at the G.U.N base as she’s trying to build something to help the soldiers out. 

Hope sees him when he drops his cloaking device and she runs to hit the big red alert button that’s just on the wall. Snively manages to grab her by the leg and begs for her to let him talk things out.

She relents when he explains that he doesn’t have anything to do with the current invasion that’s happening… and he also reminds her that he warned her about the invasion that happened back in #175.

During this time, Snively actually explains to her that he’s run away from Eggman and wants to rescue his girlfriend and live with both her and his younger sister Hope. 

Hope is surprised by all of this, especially the part about him having a girlfriend. However, she wonders if their relation is really strong enough for him to call her younger sister… but he reveals that he took a strand of her hair and did a DNA test and found out that they’re actually brother and sister. Hope previously thought that Snively’s dad married her mom after her REAL dad passed away… but according to Snively, his dad was also her real dad and she was lied to.

Because Snively’s dad was also a dick.

Like, a huge dick.

Hearing this is strange though. Snively may not be as old as he looks but he still looks super old. Imagining them as siblings is hard, even if the gap in years is still possible between brother and sister. Eggman’s family tree is eternally weird, I must say.

We cut away to see Eggman’s reaction to finding out what happened to Omega. It goes by just as quickly as it did in Heroes, which is honestly how it should be. He sees he’s been betrayed and doesn’t feel a thing about immediately trying to destroy him for it.

He sends down a group of legionized G.U.N soldiers and banks on him being allies with G.U.N as a reason he won’t attack them. 

Regular Omega wouldn’t give a shit but Archie Omega does slightly. He hesitates which gives them the opening to attack. Thankfully, Omega wouldn’t be Omega in any capacity if he just took that lying down so he does eventually fight back.

It looks pretty rough. Omega clamping his huge ass hands around the heads of those two guys and tossing them back or just shoving them through the concrete is pretty cool.

Of course, then Mecha Sally attacks and he is faced with a dilemma of sorts.

Naturally, he says “All Eggman robots regardless of origin must be destroyed” and starts doing the Hulk smash on Mecha Sally like she was Loki from the Avengers.

No, of course not. I have a few years to wait before we get that Omega. This one is really concerned with what the kinder option would be but I’m glad he’s at least “Team Dark” enough to consider destroying her. That works.

Eggman also really likes showing off that he has Princess Sally, doesn’t he? It’s weird how all the characters instantly recognize it as her but don’t consider it to be a Metal Sonic situation where Eggman just built a robot Sally.

He’s never really done that for anyone outside of Sonic though… until last issue where he just unveiled a bunch of them but no one knows about those yet.

Look, what I’m trying to say is my main take away from this page is the fact that the double laser blast against Omega looks cool.

It’s pretty awesome.

We cut back to Snively and Hope where Snively is still trying to convince Hope to come with him. He wants to go with her and Regina and start over. Hope, having listened to his whole story, isn’t sure. She doesn’t want to abandon the people who’ve helped her again. Snively keeps pushing for it though.

Hope looks like she’s about to break and go for it.

But then–!

Oof.

The look of sheer, disgruntled, disappointment on her face when Snively comes in with that lariat from the side and just whiffs it right over her head.

This little leg of Snively’s journey was pretty hopeless and it’s a prime example, yet again, of why he’ll never beat Eggman. 

The first leg of his race was pretty good but then he just went to the United Federation’s base to pick up someone he had a familial connection with for the sake of having this big happy family… while also trying to stick to his ambition for world domination and–!

You can’t have your cake and eat it too! You have to choose one or the other, man.

Eggman is following you wherever you go and is leaving devastation in his wake without any remorse and he doesn’t have to worry about someone he cares about getting in the way because there’s no one he gives a shit about.

I would never say wanting to have a family and to be happy with the relationships you’ve fostered is a bad thing but trying to mold it haphazardly into this life where you rule the world and share continents amongst your dictatorship family isn’t going to work when other members of your family have normal, human decency driving them.

The fact that you risked so much and did such a sloppy job here and are going to come away from it with nothing is quite the huge boon to what you were planning. I know Hope was intelligent in the technical sense but she’s also a good person. You really should have known how she was going to react to you saying all this shit to her.

Snively is crying along with her, of course. He really wants her in his life but he can’t stop being who he is. He’s a little gremlin that seeks world domination and, for some reason, believes that he, Hope, and Regina will be enough to kick Eggman off his throne after he’s recovered from whatever little damage Snively has caused. 

This man chastises Eggman a lot for his decision making skills but when it comes down to it, the Eggman really does have a lockdown on what it means to have the big picture in your sites.

Our last encounter with Hope and Snively shows her summoning the Fire Shield around her.

Yup. She invented it. I remember when I got to use those in 3D Sonic games. That stopped after a while though. It wasn’t as fun as the ring drawing electric shield though. Good times.

Snively manages to get away despite Hope finally sounding the alarm. The G.U.N Commander sends his troops after Snively’s craft as it flies away with Snively inside and having officially accomplished nothing.

Eggman decides to leave and go after Snively too. Cubot asks if that’s a good idea since they’re clearly winning and they could just take out the G.U.N geeks right now.

Just like that, too. It wouldn’t even be hard.

Eggman retorts with his usual rhetoric, something Snively would scoff at but it’s something that manages to hold true.

You see, Eggman allows people to scamper off into the night because he knows he can. He’s the big boss in charge of everything. Despite what happened to him in #175 and #200… he still views all of this as a game.

When something in the game doesn’t make sense towards his grand design, he’ll go a bit crazier than usual but once he regains his lucidity it’ll be because he found a way to make it work within his grand design.

The only thing that matters is what he thinks and what he wants. If G.U.N comes back stronger, will they win? Who knows? It’s all part of the game. Either way, he’ll handle it. It’s like he knows he’s a force of fucking nature. 

With that the enemies are gone.

Omega isn’t done with them but they’re done with him. 

Hope is curled up, crying on the floor as Omega comes back. She seeks comfort from him and because this is a cartoon comic he can actually be of some comfort for her even though I’d imagine that he’d feel REALLY uncomfortable lying against.

Snively is crying too as he heads off to find his girlfriend. Eggman is going after him.

Eggman’s confusion as to what Snively’s “pattern” is here is really starting to make sense to me now. Snively is just doing things based on pure emotion and not much in lue of tactics against Eggman himself. It’s no wonder he can’t figure out what the endgame here is.

It’s interesting how little of this arc I remember. I recall Omega fighting here a little bit and I remember the scene between Snively and Hope but I didn’t recall what the overall plot of this issue was. Turns out, it wasn’t much aside from Snively just using Eggman’s bombardment to his advantage to have a futile conversation with Hope and that’s it. I think that’s why Scrambled doesn’t occupy a lot of my mind in comparison to Eggman’s Dozen. Snively’s character development is interesting but the sequence of events was hard to keep in mind. Still, this was a good issue. Despite it amounting to nothing in terms of advancing Snively’s plan, it said a lot about Eggman and Snively’s characters and how their actions and desires bounce off the world around them. 

[Razule]

1 hour ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

There really was no need to go the extra mile and kill him off. Removing your ability to tell future stories for a character is a hard sell for me, personally.

Ian said if Antoine did die there would have been a story where they brought him to life somehow. At that point though.. yeah, he might as well just be in a coma. Not that that stopped people from still being upset about it as if he did die or was never going to wake up. 

[Kuzu]

Fun Fact: This is Feist's last on-panel appearance in the series and obviously he's not gonna be in the reboot. 

[Dr. Detective]

Sonic Universe - Issue #39: Scrambled - Part 3 of 4: Line in the Sand

This is one of those covers where just looking at it for the first time I couldn’t help but conclude that it was perfect. This is literal perfection in terms of art and composition. It’s hard to even explain how it just illustrates what Eggman is all about without sounding like I’m struggling for pretty things to say. It speaks for itself too well. Seriously, this is definitely up there with some of my favorite covers in the entire Archie catalog. 

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Jim Amash
Colors: Steve Downer
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover Art: Peppers, Amash, and Downer
Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick

It would seem like a lot of what this story is really trying to do is expand upon who and what Eggman is and how he operates within this world now. We’ve always heard it called the Eggman Empire but this is well and truly being treated like an Empire, without question. 

It’s interesting how little of it we’ve seen in-depth up to this point but that can honestly be attributed to there being very little focus on it before Ian got onto the book. Most of the structure of Eggman’s effect on the world was based in one huge city, which, while intimidating doesn’t necessary give off the feel of an empire spanning the globe. That might have been true back then but because there was so little time dedicated to fleshing it out, it didn’t feel like it.

Most of the time we were just focusing on Eggman doing his weird body hopping and city hopping stuff or the various mystical villains that came about through other happenstances. 

We cut away from Eggman’s time dealing with Snively to showcase him interacting with Conquering Storm of the Raiju Clan. The way he treats her and her clan is very straightforward and to the point. 

Saying it’s harsh in an extremely blunt way almost sounds redundant at this point but it continues to be hard to stress just how much of a wonderful monster Eggman is. 

Conquering Storm tries her best to be reasonable and convince the man not to turn her clan into half-robots by using herself as a representative example for them and Eggman is having none of it.

He doesn’t care about their clan’s ways or their pride. His ways and his pride are the only thing that matters in the Eggman Empire. They belong to him so they do what he says or he’ll wipe them off the map. He then just says that things are settled without waiting for a reply from her, most likely because he already knows what it’ll be. 

He asks if Jun Kun has returned and Conquering Storm says no. He hasn’t been seen since that incident in New Mobotropolis and will never be seen again as far as this book is concerned.

He then asks if Snively is here. She shares a look with one of her men before answering, "Not presently".

Eggman is slightly disappointed since the tracker said that he landed here and trots off to leave the ninjas to their ninja-ing. 

Then Conquering Storm reveals her slight of hand when her minion says that Snively was allowed to take the ancient golem a while ago and she responses by saying “That was in the PAST”.

Oh ho. Tricked by semantics. The deadliest of all petty weapons.

We cut to where Regina, the Iron Queen is. She still sits at the bottom of a well and is about to be fed by Liu Fang, her vindictive food giver before he’s knocked unconscious by a surprise guest from behind.

It’s Snively, riding down the well to rescue his lady. He’s trying to be romantic about it but his stature makes it hard for him to pull off. He’s so small that he can fit in the bucket they were lowering down so he rides it while holding the tray of tea for the two of them to share. 

He’s trying to play things off like they’re okay but Regina just kicks the tray away from him, angry at the little sausage for abandoning her. Regardless of the very good argument he could have about it having been the only way to ensure ONE of them avoided this fate so he could find the chance to rescue her later, there IS still something to say about the obvious, underlying fact that he acted in sheer cowardice back there. 

Regina brings up good points as to what he could have done as well after all.

What’s great about this is that you can tell that despite how angry she is, it’s obvious that she still wants this to work between the two of them. She’s definitely more heartbroken rather than genuinely hating him.

This relationship continues to be one of the more interesting ones. We saw how she acted at the height of her power and the more success she saw the more constant set-backs saw her snapping at Snively and being a lot more mean and vindictive towards him. 

On the flip side, when shit went South, Snively ran away and went back to release Eggman so he could ensure he was safe. 

It’s this weird fusion of rage and cowardice that makes the core of who they both are, yet, there are conflicting, genuine feelings they both have for one another. Their villainous sides are clashing with the sides of them that want to be together in a genuine relationship. It’s kind of heart-wrenching from the point of view of these diabolical war mongering bad guys.

Snively crawls out of the well and spots Eggman’s ship in the distance, dropping capsules full of his new and improved Egg Pawns onto the region. He’s managed to catch up quickly.

Snively, seeing this, decides NOT to run away though. He gathers up his courage and shoves down the part of him that would have run away under normal circumstances, determined to do this for the sake of his girl.

The people of the kingdom are in a frenzy. Li Moon is pleading with Li Yuen to not face down a horde of robots he has no chance of defeating when Monkey Khan, King of the Free People and man who somehow has gotten more mature than Sonic, shows up to take care of them himself.

Orbot and Cubot report in that a lot of their forces are being demolished. Eggman wants to know who has that kind of power around here.

Orbot points to the Monkey riding around on a cloud in the sky.

His reaction is “Monkey Khan? He’s HERE?!”

Ken turns to see Eggman and goes “Eggman? He’s HERE?!”

He then grins with the desire to enact revenge on the man creeping into his mind. 

The two of them actually haven’t confronted each other… at all in this comic despite their history together. It’s only been talked about. Ken had a run in with Eggman when he was crazy but he never spoke to him and even if he had, his mind was gone. It wouldn’t have even counted as him confronting the man.

So this meeting means a lot to him. Orbot goes into his files and, I guess, his dating life is downloaded into his circuits. He tells Eggman that he’s got a thing for Princess Sally so Eggman takes that knowledge to heart as yet another excuse to show off his new favorite toy.

To be fair, Sonic’s been dealing with a lot. I doubt it crossed his mind to phone the Dragon Kingdom and let his love rival know that the girl they both love was turned into a robot.

I do like how Ken is stammering to say that she’s been roboticized and Mecha Sally’s response is just “affirmative”.

Yes, that is what happened to me, fool.

The two of them begin to fight. Ken tries the “Fight it Sal” thing as well. It doesn’t work. He says he doesn’t want to destroy her. Yada yada. You know the drill.

Eggman is here though so he’s determined to make things as fun and as funny as possible.

Pro-tip for your fucked up little games Eggman; don’t make the object they have to give up someone they all fucking hate.

Yes, it’s also wonderful that he sings his theme song as he trots up to the villagers he’s going to ruin the lives of. 

I can only imagine he said to burn down the village in an intensely hand-wavy, annoyed fashion.

He then heads on over to the well and does what he does best, even in the midst of one of his own invasions, have a nice little villain chat with his fellow evil doers. The way he balances showing respect for their evil ways while at the same time being vindictive of how they screwed him over is a wonderful thing to witness. He’s got more layers than a wedding cake.

The way the doctor speaks here is magnanimous and brilliant. His preference for Overlander kind over Mobians is on display but his intolerance for magic over machinery is put up front and center as well. 

It’s also great how he’s not being as harsh to her as he could be. He’s completely taking the whole thing where she usurped him in stride, like a true boss who knows he’s a force of nature that would have returned regardless of what had transpired after he lost his mind.

He asks Regina if Snively came by. She says he’s not here, which Eggman points out, isn’t what he asked. She then says she’s not telling him anything to which Eggman takes to mean “Yes, Snively was here”.

He then points out how strange it is that he would go through all the nonsense he went through and come all this way to pick up Regina… and then just run away again. He adds on that he was actually starting to think that Snively really DID love her, which Regina can’t help but take notice of.

Yeah, what seems to be happening here is… character development. At least that’s my interpretation of it.

Eggman straight up told Snively to his face that he was a little monster gremlin that didn’t actually love Regina and that when push came to shove he’d abandon her to save himself… which he did BUT he hasn’t been able to get her out of his mind since.

Now, Snively’s gone through hell and back and outright put himself in quite possibly the most dangerous position he could be in to rescue her. Maybe it was for his own peace of mind and happiness or maybe it truly was for her… but I am starting to believe it was actually for Regina now myself.

Ken wins the fight against Mecha Sally but Eggman wins the war.

Ken drains Mecha Sally of her power during their fight and flies over to him, tears in his eyes, wanting to know from the doctor what’s wrong with her. Eggman said their scuffle drained her of her power and that she’s essentially dead. 

Ken says that he should change her batteries and Eggman tells him that she doesn’t run on batteries. Most likely that’s because she was a real organic being that turned into a robot.

The only way to save her is with a power ring. Ken, despite saying he’d have to destroy her, knows he’s full of it on that front and immediately uses his ring to save her life instead. He can’t let her die. 

If anything, this story continues to be about how a villain with no love or affection for anyone or anything is managing to score constant wins by exploiting the love and affection other people around him all have. It’s dark as hell but in a Sonic Universe arc starring the man himself, seeing how evil can gain victory is an opportunity I’m glad we’ve gotten the privilege of witnessing first hand.

Also, yeah, I can’t help but feel really sorry for Ken. He tries so hard and all he wants is to love and be loved in return. The woman whom he loves that absolutely isn’t going to choose him over her has been roboticized and is attacking his homeland and he doesn’t hesitate to risk his free will to make sure she lives. It’s adorable and also really sad, honestly.

Of course, with his power ring in Mecha Sally, Eggman takes this time to put his own mind control ring on Ken’s head to replace it while the person whose life he saved tries to choke him out.

However, a loud stomping sound is heard in the distance. Eggman confides in Orbot and Cubot what this could be. When the prospect of ancient tech is brought up, Eggman realizes that Snively is still unaccounted for and almost gets killed dodging the massive fucking punchline headed his way.

First thing Snively does when he cuts through the forest is swat the two robots aside with two trees and then pluck the well-designed well from the ground to set Regina free!

He probably could have gone right after Eggman and smushed him then and there but his priorities lie with her.

He’s truly chosen to be with her over staying with Eggman in an annoyed, blanket of submissive semi-security.

It’s probably for the best anyway. Eggman probably wouldn’t have given up a lackey like Snively but he did say that his constant affinity for betrayal is a part of the game he likes to play. If Snively just sat around and did nothing there probably could have been a chance he’d get bored of him and something… less than desirable might have happened. That’s only a small thought though. In reality, I think Eggman would have been perfectly fine keeping Snively under his thumb without much push back. He even reminisces about the time when Snively used to be a loyal subject of his once. Plus, he’s been with him for so long and practically considers him his property to mess around with at this point.

It’s gotten to the point with THIS arc, however, that he can’t really take that chance. This game is headed for a finite conclusion as far as the doctor is concerned. 

It’s here where Eggman also gets to bear witness to the truth.

THIS is what all the fuss is about? 

Yes. It is.

Eggman truly cannot believe it.

It really does hit home more and more just how inhumane he is. All of this lovey-dovey stuff exists as a tool for him to exploit. He doesn’t understand it. He wants nothing to do with it. Snively, his former lackey, going through THIS much trouble for the sake of it is flabbergasting to him.

He’s not even afraid. He’s just confused and disappointed.

Of course, Regina isn’t. The pact she’s made with Snively has finally reformed and the two share a kiss that seals their love for one another once again. They even vow not to fight each other anymore, which, I hope they manage to do for longer than a month at the very least.

Of course, she asks for one last thing for him to take care of in the name of their union.

As if scrambling the Eggman was something he wouldn’t want to do.

Fear not, ladies and gentlemen. The hero of this story has a trick up his sleeve to ensure victory.

Phew. For a second I was worried that the tyrannical maniac who willingly stomps on the livelihoods of countless civilizations was in danger. 

Go get ‘em Eggman, you wonderful fucked up bastard.

Saying that this was the best issue of this arc feels a bit weird to me as someone who lives and breathes issues where you get to see villain groups come together and be intimidated by the big boss himself… but so much about this issue was just done wonderfully well that I can’t help but wrestle with whether or not to pick this one over the first one. This is such an insanely good story. I’m doing it again but yeah I’m going to say that thing I always say about Sonic Universe just improving with each arc that happens. It IS the best of the two Sonic books, without question. You just knew that Eggman getting his own arc was going to be some fine art and it’s proving to be true with each passing issue. He’s too good at being bad.

 

Sonic Universe - Issue #40: Scrambled - Part 4 of 4: In the Name of Love!

What a shitty character select. Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be an homage to Sonic the Fighters and during that time it was slim pickings as far as our lovely current roster was concerned but man oh man, look at that. Who’s going to choose the Iron Oni on a regular basis unless they know Snively’s piloting it and are huge fans of SatAM or the comic?

All jokes aside, “In the Name of Love” is a really demented title for this final issue considering what happens at the end. I’m so eager to get into it so let’s get started.

Spoiler

Script: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Jamal Peppers
Inks: Jim Amash
Letters: Jack Morelli
Colors: Steve Downer
Cover: Peppers, Amash, and Downer
Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

Eggman asks if he’s supposed to be impressed by this to start the issue off. He’s just standing there with his arms crossed, looking up at the robot in front of him without any real way to fight back but not scared in the slightest. It’s a pretty boss power move but Snively rightly points out that he’s got nothing to actually fight back with and Orbot agrees.

So, Eggman just tells Orbot to go and get him his robot while he stalls Snively. I wondered briefly if that would work but then I remembered that Snively has a bit of a complex when it comes to Eggman accepting him. He can’t handle the idea that his former boss would still try to undermine him or hold sway over him in any manner. 

He especially can’t handle being told he’s incapable of love.

Eggman starts off by trying to deny that Snively came up with the plan. Snively says that he did and adds on that he sent Eggman on a wild goose chase while his D.E.L chapters were in disarray. Eggman claims he managed to fix all that in under an hour and Snively was just running scared since.

Snively freaks out about the inaccuracy of that notion but Regina calms him down with a loving clasp of his hand. It’s really wonderful seeing these two together.

However, Eggman lays it on thick once again that they’re just manipulative monsters that are using each other. Before, I was willing to say that Eggman was more right about this then wrong but over the course of Snively’s escapades since the end of the Iron Dominion and BOTH Regina and Snively’s reactions to seeing one another again during this arc, it’s clear that Eggman is wrong.

Also, no, he literally can’t comprehend that. 

It’s pretty telling how Eggman has no response to what Snively said there because the only one would be to acknowledge that Snively… HAS the capacity for love. He wants to love and be loved in return. Who could ever love a beast? Why his beauty, of course! 

Regina was genuinely heartbroken by the idea that Snively would have left him behind but came back to him once she saw that his desire to rescue and be with her was genuine. Everything Snively says here is true. If he were truly as heartless or as loveless as Eggman claims he is he wouldn’t have done any of this in the manner that he did.

All those scenes where Eggman couldn’t understand what Snively’s pattern for betrayal this time was were all due to the fact that he legit wasn’t considering that Snively was doing this for the sake of having other people he cared about in his life. He’s even boasting here that he still considers Hope someone he loves despite what happened.

“What is love?” really does cut to the core of Eggman’s character here. He has no capacity for it. He doesn’t understand it. He sure as hell can’t recognize it. Now that it’s presenting itself before him like it is now, he refuses to acknowledge it.

Instead he calls the brainwashed Kenny boy over to fight against the Oni in his stead. 

He calls this Plan A “Throw the Monkey at them”.

Also, we can see a little tear in Ken’s skin, exposing the metal on his arm underneath. It’s kind of sad.

What’s even sadder is how he’s just being passed around like a hot potato between these two people. As soon as Ken arrives to fight for Eggman, Regina uses her magic to take control of him. 

Eggman foresaw that though and now that Mecha Sally is back, he enacts Plan B “Throw a Roboticized Chipmunk at the Monkey.”

Out of context these assuredly sound strange as hell.

Of course, the two of them fighting means Eggman is left with nothing left to protect himself with again so… off he goes.

Orbot and Cubot take a really long time to pick out a robot for Eggman. Cubot just thinks any old robot will do and Orbot reminds him that the doctor has a flair for the dramatic that they need to aspire to.

Eggman doesn’t really give that much of a shit about that when he finally catches up to them though. He tells them they should obviously just send the one that makes the most sense to send in this situation and so they do.

As this happens, Snively is cutting through all the Egg Pawns in their way while having a lovely conversation with his girl. They go into why the Iron Oni was something he procured and how. It’s all very nice stuff though you can’t help but realize that their lovey dovey stuff is kind of setting them back a ways from demolishing Eggman and his forces.

It’s because of this that Eggman manages to enact Plan C “Get a Load of This!”

Regina can be a bit rough but to be fair that was a pretty dumb question Snively.

You’re in a giant Iron Oni. Beat his ass!

So, yeah, the two of them go at it in a knockout, drag-out brawl to what I assume is supposed to be to the death for Snively. For Eggman it’s probably just a really life-threatening anomaly.

He eventually gets Snively’s Iron Oni in a clutch that blocks the cockpit. Eggman gets out of his and calls for Orbot and Cubot to bring his Omni-Tool so that he can do Plan D!

He doesn’t name this one, probably because Plan C had the best name.

He puts a weird looking gauntlet on his arm and tells Orbot and Cubot to get out of dodge before Regina uses her powers on them. Regina instead tries to call Ken back to her but Mecha Sally has him pinned and he’s unable to go to his mistress.

Eggman then goes through the confines of the Iron Oni and messes with its old world technology. He acknowledges that it’s pretty fascinating, to the point where he almost doesn’t want to destroy it, but destroys it anyway.

Plan E is “Apply Pressure to the Newly-Sabotaged Robot and–!”

He smacks the Iron Oni over the head, the pressure that’s been built up in the robot is too much and the fucking thing explodes, taking out both Snively and Regina.

That final panel of Eggman looking down on Snively is something to behold. 

What is he thinking and feeling at this moment? Is it disappointment? Is it silent rage? Is he contemplating the last words Snively said to him before the fight began? My money is on the first one, considering the kind of person Eggman is.

Orbot and Cubot have a pretty funny line that doubles as some really messed up dark humor. It works for them.

Ken and Sally are still fighting. Ken is again about to destroy Mecha Sally despite her having his Power Ring inside of her. She tries to use the fact that he loves her against him to keep herself alive but Ken just says that love is for the weak and that he fights for his Queen… before he snaps out of it now that Regina is down.

He cradles Mecha Sally in his arms once she goes into Stand-by mode thanks to the threat being gone.

That’s when Eggman shows up to taunt him and BOY, is it quite the emasculating, humiliating taunt too.

Poor Ken.

He tries so, so hard and it’s never enough. 

Why? Why turn him into such a wholesome, matured young man and then just dunk on him like this all the time? Almost all his ambitions are things he isn’t going to achieve. Eggman’s genuine hysterical laughter at the prospect that he’d be the one to take him down is a far cry from the genuine ferocity he tends to show Sonic. My poor boy.

Eggman doesn’t necessarily look down on him considering he was so adamant about Ken belonging to him. Then again, that could just be another “No one touches my things” or “No one sets my slaves free” thing rather than an acknowledgement of Ken’s strength. 

It’s very sad. 

Time for things to get even more insanely fucked up.

Regina wakes up and sees that she’s inside a capsule in Eggman’s base. 

Eggman says to her that he’s realized he could have avoided all this nonsense if he’d just acknowledged their romance sooner so this time he’s going to let them be together.

In comes, with a hop and a skip, Snively!

He runs to her and they embrace. Regina is the happiest she’s ever looked as she’s surprised he’s showing them mercy.

Oh no! Hugo! My beloved! You’ve been demoted!

NOOOOOO! Don’t worry! We’ll get through this… TOGETHER!

Anyway, this all seems like a pretty happy outcome for the two of them, for sure. It also feels like we have the reveal of what Eggman was contemplating in that last panel where he overlooked the downed Snively.

It was him realizing that, yes, they do love each other and if he’d just realized and acknowledged it earlier this whole mess could have been avoided.

So he’s sparring them and giving them their own Dark Egg Legion chapter, resulting in poor Hugo’s demotion. 

He also says that he fully expects them to continue playing “the game” but wishes for them to play it better, like Lien-Da.

He REALLY has a lot of respect for Lien-Da. A shockingly high amount.

That seems like something the doctor might genuinely do. Have these two be under his thumb while also adding on that it’s not necessarily for the sake of being merciful but for the means of having them under his thumb again and a chance to play the game in a more effective manner. Seems legit.

Regina is over the moon about this. Of course, as soon as Eggman is out of the room, she goes on about how he just handed her the keys to his empire because of her technomagic powers being something she can easily use to manipulate his robots.

The thought doesn’t even cross her mind that Eggman might have accounted for this, despite them losing because he accounted for her magic.

As she uses her powers to take control of Hugo, we see that behind her, the same runes used to control robots are now floating around Snively’s head too…

…Uh-oh.

So that was the first ending. You know, when you play a video game and you unlock chapter 5 out of 5 and the game is over.

However, we turn the page and we’re granted access to the secret ending. Ending 6 out of 5 if you will. It’s the dark secret hidden in the midst of Gotham City where Batman has to go beyond the ending to find the true story of Amadeus Arkham’s misdeeds. 

You see… Eggman isn’t that merciful. Surprise, surprise. That crack about Snively being with Regina is punishment enough sounds like something he’d definitely say and mean but he knows that underneath the jokey jokes there’s a real storm brewing that he needs to quell.

The loser of this game gets a permanent right off this time. He didn’t play it well enough to get another chance, though Regina has enough power and moxy to be of more significant use.

Yeah, with her on board and with that board meeting from before, he’s successfully strengthened his Dark Egg Legion. That’s not all though. He literally runs down all the net positives that Snively’s love escapade ended up granting him.

Everything ended up coming up Eggman. Fucking everything. 

He strengthened his army. Weakened G.U.N’s army. Found out where Hope is and put a target on her to fuck even more with Snively’s peace of mind (or lack thereof) and got to have FUN terrorizing random innocents on top of that. 

He rubs all of this in Snively’s face as he peers over the lone capsule he’s been put in far off from anyone else. 

Yeah. Eggman found a use for that old Snively program finally. He’s using one of the Snively bots to trick Regina. He acknowledges that she’ll figure it out eventually but I’m sure he’s eagerly anticipating what’ll happen when she does.

As for Pre-Reboot Snively… his life is over. Aside from a barely there cameo of his capsule next to Dr. Light’s, this is the last we see of him in Archie Sonic.

It’s… really fucked up. 

No one knows he’s here. He’s either betrayed or upset all the people who formed connections with him. The one person who does love and care for him thinks he’s already with him. It’s hopeless. There’s no way out. That’s it. Done.

Snively is no longer Eggman’s favorite toy. He’s an old game cartridge that’s lost its ability to function.

Game Over.

This is seriously one of the most dark, depressing, mean, wicked, and vile things I’ve ever witnessed the doctor do and it’s fantastic. This story was already a good story in my eyes but this revisit has skyrocketed it to a level hither to undreamt of. Yes, I said the Doctor Strange line. It’s that good folks.

We’ve reached another point where it’s time to say goodbye to another Pre-Reboot mainstay, Snively. My word. What can even be said about the trajectory and the ups and downs of THIS character. It’s too much to put into words here but the roller coaster he and Eggman have been on since he used the Ultimate Annihilator to kill the first Robotnik, to his journey into becoming a robot alongside him, to his joining the Freedom Fighters, to his coming back to Eggman, to his take over of the Empire in Iron Dominion, to his fallout with Hope to THIS… 

If anything, Snively’s tale is truly one about the despair that comes with just being a hopeless inferior villain to the big man upstairs. He looks down on the doctor putting his flair for the dramatic over proper business and elegant strategy but can’t ever defeat him. Fact of the matter is, he is smarter, he is scarier, and he’s got a heavier influence. Also, once again, he’s not tied down by the desire for love and connections. The ambition that Snively has can never be achieved so long as he clings to the idea that he can have it both ways. 

Now it’s too late. His life, as far as we know, is over. That’s it. 

This is how you make me feel bad for a character. You don’t have him weirdly change sides and then have him miraculously give up his life for the heroes so that Sonic can turn into General Patton. You tell a good goddamn story that utilizes what his actual character traits are, builds on them, and then have the doctor exploit them to better himself and come out on top, literally better than he was before. 

It’s brutal. It’s cruel. It’s wonderful. 

Scrambled gets an A+.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #235: Remember the Fallen

Every time I start a new Sonic Universe arc I become smitten with how fucking good it is. However, every time I come back to the main series, my reaction is always “Oh no. Here we go. It’s THIS issue…! The controversy is coming back!” 

If I’m right about what this issue is going to be then it has a scene in it that is, without a shadow of a doubt, responsible for making me the angriest I’ve ever been at Sonic before. I feel like I've said that before but this time it's true... well, until Issue #247 where it gets even worse. Reading it in real time saw me get into a number of heated arguments about it back in the day when it initially came out. I was fully on the train of “Not My Sonic” and “What an Asshole. I hate him so much”. Even acknowledging that I understood why he was angry didn’t calm my ass down, partly because I didn’t care at all about the stuff Sonic cared about so it was hard for me to be sympathetic towards him.

Again, as I often say here, that was the me from over ten years ago… and while I seriously doubt I’ll change my mind about what goes down here being really hard to witness, there is a chance my opinion on why it’s hard to witness will change. 

I have a feeling this revisit is going to lead to a lot of soul searching and a lot of words as I desperately find the right way to explain how I feel about it and clarify as hard as I can what I actually mean when I say something so that no one could feasibly get me wrong… even though there’s a chance it’ll happen anyway, despite that. 

Fuck me. Here we go, I guess.

I’m doing it…!

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Cover: Yardley, Austin, and Herms
Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

Opening the issue and seeing Silver’s face is making it hard for me to not just immediately jump into saying what I want to say.

Seriously. I’ve got literal butterflies in my stomach. I’m actually really nervous about having to talk about this again. It was such a big deal back in the day and the memories of the venom I helped spew on the forums were not pleasant.

This issue is called “Remember the Fallen” and in a little rose decorated character box we see Antoine which would normally signify death if he were actually going to die. He was but he’s not anymore. Thankfully.

No one in the character box screen is happy except Naugus, because of course he is.

We open on Silver, in the future, looking through some old, dusty hidden room for info on who the traitor is. Edmund tries to do the smart, responsible thing of telling Silver that he shouldn’t expect to just discover a hidden room and happen upon all the answers he seeks.

Naive, dumbass Silver just ignores it because he’s found Antoine’s journal, somehow still probably legible enough to be useful, and says that he knows who the traitor is.

What could possibly be in there that has led him to that conclusion? Perhaps Patch added some notes to it that we didn’t see? I dunno. Either way, Silver’s convinced himself again based on very little once again and it’s… not really all that endearing anymore.

I recall by this point people being really fed up with Silver playing traitor hot-potato. The manner in which it happens in this issue was the most egregious example of it happening due to the fact that Antoine is bedridden from having gotten himself blown up.

Bunnie, in the present, is sitting at his bedside talking to Antoine about how sorry she is for not being able to properly help him when she needed him most.

Bunnie has made a decision. What that decision is, I dunno. She leaves a note for her friends and marches off.

Apparently, it's speculated that the plan was to have her go back to her Uncle so she can be legionized to be helpful again. If that's true, I don't like that. I've already explained why so let's move on.

Back to the future, Silver runs to his Master Mogul with his findings claiming he’s found the traitor, at last!

Mogul, of course, points out that he’s been wrong about this numerous times but Silver insists on continuing and asks for Mogul to reiterate what he remembers of the past.

Things are hazy though. Partly because of old age I’d imagine but also because every time Silver uses the time stone, their memories get warped a bit.

Look, there’s a lot that I’m willing to forgive and a lot I’m willing to set aside for the sake of understanding the position someone is in but the general audience reading this is a lot less patient and merciful than I usually tend to be. I can see why Silver’s behavior here was just genuinely starting to annoy people despite the horrible predicament he’s in. 

The interesting bit in that top page is the one screenshot showing Naugus with a staff that had three Chaos Emeralds grafted to it now. Somehow, his plans led to that being the future state of his staff eh? It looks really ridiculous though. It’s not quite an infinity gauntlet. Sooner or later, he’s going to need to find a different way to handle that thing if he wants to carry all seven around on it.

But yeah, it’s hard to imagine but this future exists because the Freedom Fighters were all wiped out. They were just killed and Mogul was put out of commission and woke up too late to do anything about it. What caused this change of heart? Who even knows?

It’s really interesting to think about though. With this story having been left uncompleted everything feels so up in the air anyway. A lot of people were in some intensely bad positions where we left off.

Silver continues to show off his proof.

You know, his “proof” that Antoine is the traitor. Mogul admits that it’s the most solid lead he’s got but does point out that those missing words are lost to time. Silver doesn’t know the context for the words written there and is navigating his mind to find the solution he wants.

These words are all disconnected and Silver just kind of forces them to be connected as if there’s nothing missing in between them. It’s really easy to read the line “faith in Naugus” and just assume that the person who wrote it is talking about themselves.

Of course, he does another logical leap when he brings up an old Newspaper that, again, doesn’t show the actual person Sonic's fighting. 

It’s very compelling stuff. I don’t wish to insinuate that Silver doesn’t have a strong lead or a good argument for this to be the truth. He kind of does in a sense… but only enough for it to be a strong hypothesis. 

Mogul stops Silver’s ranting to tell him that all the time jumping he’s doing is seriously harshing his mellow and making the memories of the old people he hangs out with even worse. He only gets one more good go at it. Mogul has officially cut Silver off from the Time Stone. Instead, he tells Silver that if he decides to chase this tenuous lead then he’s going to have to do it without taking the Time Stone with him. Mogul sends him to the past himself and leaves him instructions on a piece of paper on how to come back.

It’s probably some sort of spell incantation or whatever. I don’t know.

We then get a really good scene with Tails.

It’s time for our yearly reminder that Tails is in fact just a child.

When Silver beams onto the scene in the present, no one around notices him so he goes off in search of Antoine. Amy is there and she’s standing right behind Amadeus who is standing right outside of Tails’ workshop… just looking at it.

Amy has to urge him to go inside it. Obviously, he’s worried about his son but is hesitant to go in, unsure if he’s the right person to speak with him most likely. Of course he is though. Definitely more so than Sonic in his current state of mind. 

T-Pup is whining at Tails as he tries to fix the bi-plane. He looks a bit tired from the lines around his eyes but insists that he’s fine. His dad shows up and surprises him, telling Tails that he hasn’t been home for a few days and that they’ve been worried about him.

Tails tries to keep up a good front and probably would have succeeded if his wrench didn’t slip out of his hand and smack against his foot, summoning the tears against his will.

It’s a really good scene and it’s one of the few where we actually get to see my boy Tails being a son to his dad. Amadeus talks about how Rosemary wishes she could be here with him too but she’s on the council so she has to deal with the dirty business of Nicole’s exile from the city.

At the meeting in question, Naugus is all drooling grins, as he pushes for this motion to pass. When the question of whether it’s even possible to banish Nicole from the city is brought up, Nicole explains that the nanites are basically little simpletons that can function without her. She isn’t literally made of the city. She would need to be around for operating the defenses and repairs though.

Naugus says he protects his city and that the citizens can build whatever they need. Point one I agree with. Point two sounds like the loss of a really good and handy privilege that would be necessary in a constant struggle for peace against a tyrant like Eggman but I suppose it’s technically true. 

Anyway, the motion to vote is given.

Dylan’s vote is “... Yea.” 

Begrudging sadness.

Hamlin’s vote is “Grr… Yea.”

Subdued anger.

Rosemary’s vote is “Yea–WHOA!”

Which… well, she wasn’t really paying attention. She was obviously thinking about Tails so she most likely just heard someone say “give me a vote” and she just said something. Even if she had said Nay it wouldn’t have mattered though.

Naugus’ vote is “Yea!”

Enthusiastic.

Penelope’s vote is “...Yea?”

Unsure and mildly disgruntled.

Chuck’s vote is “Sigh. Yea.”

Reluctance.

Rotor’s vote is “WHAT?! NAY! NAY!!!”

He just outright refuses to do it. 

It’s a fucking awesome scene. 

It really does go to show that there’s still a ton you can do with a character despite having them take more of a backseat from the action. They’re not even immune to awesome moments.

Chuck, of course, tries to be rational about this. Rotor, however, says fuck that and refuses to play ball. When Rotor leaves, Chuck says “Good for you, Rotor” with a smile on his face. Naugus just says that he assumes they’ll need to hold an emergency election to find a replacement.

Outside, Nicole tries to convince Rotor to go back in but he refuses. The city and the council just betrayed a Freedom Fighter and a citizen as far as he’s concerned. 

He’s right. 

No argument. He’s just right. That is… factually what just happened. Yup.

Nicole and Rotor embrace…

...and then fucking Espio, who was in an earlier panel standing by Amy for no reason, just waltzes up onto the scene to be there too because this is how you set up a ship right? You just have the object of affection just BE in the scene with the person you're trying to ship them with randomly.

That’s really how it’s been with him aside from that one side story with Dimitri. It’s really weird. I didn’t even know this was a thing back when I initially read this and for good reason. It makes no sense and I was given no reason to accurately believe it was even happening. Espio just SHOWS UP. It’s distracting!

It’s also funny how Silver is in the bushes, witnessing this, and apologizing to “Boomer” for suspecting him while simultaneously saying in the same breath he’ll make it up to him by stopping Antoine. 

Never fear Rotor. Silver is here to save you from the bed ridden friend who saved the former king’s life by doing the equivalent of falling on a bomb for him.

Yes, Silver doesn’t know that but he’s about to find out in an extremely painful way.

Meanwhile, we cut to the outside of Sonic’s house that has a mailbox with his face on it and windows shaped like the Sonic Genesis games logo he sticks his head out of. Inside the house, Amy is trying to get Sonic to come out of his room.

He can’t. He’s busy strumming on his guitar in melancholy silence.

All the things I just listed about Sonic right there are so strange. 

Amy sits down with Sonic’s parents and talks about all the people she’s helped and how strong she’s trying to be… but then immediately the PTSD hits all at once and she breaks down. 

The way her eyes are drawn and the way the letters are spaced to show that she’s stuttering honestly made me giggle a bit. I’m sorry but it was so sudden it was hard not to laugh.

I DO like how the bottom of the panel, over Amy’s crying, is Sonic thinking back on the way he treated Antoine.

It's also hard not to giggle at the speech bubbles just saying "SOB!" and "SOB!" like that. It's not supposed to be funny but it kind of is.

As for Sonic's little scene there, a moment like this has been a long time coming for me. I really do like and appreciate that Sonic finally just acknowledged how much of a butt he’s been to Antoine. It’s a shame it took him blowing up for that to happen but whatever it takes right?

Yeah, you can be a real jerk and that’s actually not about to change… but, at the very least it can be argued that you’ll have better reasons for it. This day and age is the absolute worse time to push his buttons so I sure hope he doesn’t notice someone outside his window off to do something stupid and then subsequently trigger him into immediate violence.

Oh hey, here comes Silver.

We’re finally at this moment and I’m still at a loss for what to expect or what to say… my feelings on this upcoming moment are, without a doubt, the most complicated feelings I’ve ever had towards a moment in any of these books and I’ve been dreading reaching this point ever since I started this whole thing.

I’m going to try my best to rip the Band-Aid off… here it comes…

Okay. So far it’s about as bad as I remember… for multiple reasons.

If anyone expects me to take a side here I’m just… not. I’m not going to. 

Sonic opens the window to see Silver and Silver says he’s still looking for the traitor. Sonic closes the window, now completely fed up with talk of a traitor. 

Of course he would be. The absolute worst things imaginable keep happening to his friends and it keeps getting worse. All of them are going through a lot right now.

So, when someone who doesn’t know the plight they’ve been through walks by with a mission to save their ruined future from an inevitable demise it makes… sense that he’d call him crazy and dismiss it completely…?

… Wait, no it doesn’t. I mean… sort of?

Augh. My thoughts are already so jumbled.

In order to get my thoughts together, we’re going to have to split my issues with this upcoming scene into two sides… neither of which I wish to take.

SIDE A: SONIC IS AN ASSHOLE

Yes. Silver comes from a future in ruins. In his timeline, the records show that there WAS a traitor in the original Freedom Fighters and the FACT of the matter is that all the Freedom Fighters perished as a result of it. This is a fact.

Sonic dismissing this because he believes in his friends isn’t… technically the logical thing to do but it is the emotionally satisfying thing to do. At least, for those who care about what he’s going through (which I did not back in the day). 

So, him being upset at Silver makes complete sense. 

Now the real question is, does it make sense for him to not just attack him but to attack him so hard that it blows a hole through his own house and then violently drag him skidding along the road to the hospital so that he can smash his face against Antoine’s hospital bed?

Well, here’s the thing. I think the reason this moment bothered me so much goes back to the usual thing I talk about all the time about how hard it truly is to keep this version of Sonic and the one I’m used to separate in my head. 

My brain hungers and desires for a different Sonic. One that isn’t usually this angry, or vindictive, or mean, or rough… but the fact of the matter is, the answer is yes.

Yes, it does make sense that this Sonic would do that.

Attacking Silver and doing all that shit to him upon simply hearing Antoine’s name being brought up in a bad light as a result of what happened to him is totally something this Sonic would do. Definitely.

It makes sense. 

Yet, when I saw this I didn’t care. 

I just really hated that Sonic did this. I didn’t like it at all. 

At the time, despite understanding why, I didn’t care about what he was going through hard enough and just saw it as another showcase of him being an asshole. I didn’t even really consider that literally a scene before he was thinking about how badly he treated Antoine and how apologetic he was for it. This Sonic is a major jerk, sure, but he does have his kind and wholesome moments.

Those kind and wholesome moments were easy for me to ignore though. I was too focused on being upset about all the times he was just a jerk and couldn’t give credit where it was due.

However, there’s another reason why this scene bothered me and got me really frustrated with Sonic. I hinted at it above when I talked about how it’s a fact that Silver’s future is in ruins but I’ll need to go into it deeper here…

Uh… okay so... I don’t know if you all have heard but… this traitor plot-line SUCKS.

It’s AWFUL.

It’s redundant and stupid. The stories that have been told with Silver have honestly all been pretty good but the underlying plot line, the thread connecting them, is terrible.

Why?

Because it’s OBVIOUS who the traitor is.

It was made OBVIOUS four issues ago. The die has been cast. The mystery is over. It doesn't exist. There is no mystery anymore.

I REMEMBER talking with people on the forums about how I was just like “So is no one in this FUCKING BOOK going to realize that Sally is one of the original Freedom Fighters and she was just turned into a weapon of mass destruction that’s bent on destroying the Freedom Fighters and THAT might be the reason why Silver thinks one of the original Freedom Fighters is a traitor?”

I remember being really interested in the traitor subplot when it started, however, almost exactly when Sally turned into Mecha Sally my brain clicked and it was like “OH…! So THAT’S what happened.”

I was not prepared for the book to pussyfoot around the obvious for THIS long. It had gotten to the point where I sincerely fucking hoped that the traitor was literally anyone other than Sally because if it was, it’d mean that the answer was right in front of their faces this WHOLE time and NO ONE even bothered to try and acknowledge it!

The reason I’m mostly peeved with Sonic here is because he’s being THIS dismissive of it when there’s so much more he needs to be concerned about. I know he wants to be in his room and sulk and I understand his friendship circle is falling apart around him… but that’s exactly WHY Silver being here should be acknowledged as something to worry about! He’s literally saying the team dies and the future gets ruined. He’s TELLING you that shit’s going to get worse and you call him crazy and close the window on him? I mean, okay. I get that you're upset but that doesn't make things any less bad.

It’s because of that dismissal that he’s not confronting the obvious conclusion that “Hey…! MAYBE he’s talking about Sally? MAYBE the evil Mecha robot girl who’s currently acting in a treasonous manner is the thing that makes the puzzle pieces fit!”

It’s… REALLY frustrating. 

The last thing that was bothering me (and by far my weakest point) was just the fact that I didn’t like seeing Sonic attack people with good intentions and especially not someone who didn’t have any way of knowing Antoine was currently hospitalized. That’s a bit of a moot point though because of Side B.

SIDE B: SILVER IS AN ASSHOLE

Again, I’m refusing to take a side here because no matter which one I’d take, I’d feel like a dipshit for doing so. 

Especially after THIS fucking scene.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but I HAVE to say this because it’s true… Silver is a bigger dick in this scene than Sonic. 

And that’s weird.

Again, I know that at around the time of this comic coming out, 2011 or so, Silver was like… 5 years old? Like, relatively new to the point where the anger and hatred he was getting on a daily basis was still fresh and hot out of the oven. Just like with Omega, liberties were being taken with him to make him more of a beloved character.

Apparently, this particular issue, they just decided to forgo making him likable. At least his escapades before could be excused as him actually being naïve and in need of a lesson to learn about jumping the gun and stuff. Fine. Whatever.

Here, it cannot be excused. There’s just no way to excuse Silver being shown Antoine in a hospital bed and NOT dialing it down just a fucking little BIT. To right after, literally hear Sonic say to him that Bunnie just left everyone behind and tactlessly, with a dumb, stupid smile on his face, say “OOOOH! MAYBE IT’S HER! SHE’S THE TRAITOR! BETTER GET MY TRAITOR CHOW!” is beyond anything I’d expect to reasonably let slide, regardless of my misgivings about Sonic in this scene.

Silver has also tried to kill Sonic’s friends before. You could actually argue he’s had this coming for a while.

It’s strange because in Sonic 06, Silver was tricked into thinking Sonic was going to kill everyone and went after him the entire game while slowly coming to realize that he was wrong and then teamed up with him in the end. It was a little annoying because of how contrived it was that this inky, goopy motherfucker who you’ve NEVER SEEN BEFORE and has the ability to TIME TRAVEL (SO WHY DIDN’T HE JUST GO BACK AND KILL SONIC HIMSELF?!) comes up to you and says a bunch of bullshit and you just buy it immediately, no questions asked and with no actual interference by the purple blank sheet of paper next to him that’s supposedly not naïve and way smarter than him.

Whatever. 

In this book, however, that happens in like one issue and then it’s over… but no, it’s not. It comes back with Rotor. Then again here with Antoine. He was about to just jump to Bunnie too. 

The plan for this, I guess, for some reason, was to do the plot from 06 that nobody liked… but like… four times?! Why?!

He’s hit upon every last Freedom Fighter except the one it obviously is. It feels so contrived. Granted, he doesn’t know about Mecha Sally right now but Sonic didn’t tell him. Why would he? He believes in his friends so no one would betray him. Not even unwillingly, like what’s happening with Mecha Sally RIGHT NOW!

So with all that on my mind, when I see the next page I can’t help but feel extremely conflicted.

I don’t like Sonic’s conduct or his face in this scene but I also can’t take Silver’s side because he was also being an asshole. So I’m just left with this feeling of not wanting to look at this at all. 

Above all else it just kind of sucks that THIS is the relationship that Sonic and Silver have in the Archie comics. Like, this isn’t just a moment where two characters who are friends are fighting. I LOVE stuff like that. No, these two aren’t friends. Sonic fucking hates him and Silver just walks off all sad and pathetic, stuck in the past with no way to go back unless he solves this thing he’s living proof of the existence of. 

It’s just really depressing and unlike a lot of the other instances that led up to this moment, the substance and sequence of events don’t feel right. It just makes me hate the characters in this scene.

I don’t even know how I’d have changed it. I’m not sure I’d want it cut. I can see what they were going for here. There had to be a way to satisfy me with this right?

I do thankfully get some satisfaction when Geoffrey shows up. Shockingly, he’s the only one on this page who I have any sympathy for. The book wants me to be more conflicted about him and thus it’s doing its job correctly. I don’t know if the book wants me to be conflicted about Silver. Do I feel bad for him? Do I side with Sonic? Does the book want me to HATE Silver? That seems weird.

Or perhaps it just wants me to see this as an unfortunate moment where two characters have a falling out… but in order for that to work, it’d need to feel a bit more like an unfortunate happenstance between them rather than just Sonic reiterating how much he fucking hates Silver and Silver sulking away all sad. Like, I want to feel bad for Silver in this moment ultimately… but I can’t because he’s being a reckless, insensitive dumbass too!

I love that big, fucking salute Geoffrey gives Antoine as he stands over his bed so much. Antoine has done nothing but hate on Geoffrey and yell and scream at him and do everything in his power to get this guy jailed… and Geoffrey takes no pleasure in seeing him like this. He just goes to the hospital room to pay his respects.

How can I not like him after that? Especially after Silver was just like ”OOOOH! IT’S GOTTA BE BUNNIE NOW! SHE’S DA TRAITOROUS BITCH!” right in front of Antoine’s hospital bed?!

Thankfully, despite my ranting, Sonic DOES swing the pendulum of sympathy a bit more to his side here with his final scene in this issue.

HEY! BUT… BUT I THOUGHT DA MANDATES SAID DAT SONIC CAN’T CRY! ISN’T THAT WHAT THE SPOOKY SCARY MANDATES SAID?!

Sigh.

I do hope it comes through that despite all my griping and all my annoyances with how Sonic is often portrayed in these books that I do desperately want to like him more than I do. Unlike how I was back in the past, I’m actually acknowledging and even cherishing moments like this.

The fact of the matter is, he does have every right to be as upset about all this as he is. There are… definitely a LOT of things he could be doing to fix it or COULD have done to prevent this that he and the others just didn’t, of course.

I still maintain that the way they handled the Nicole situation wasn’t the best. I still maintain that having it just be Sonic and Sally diving into Eggman’s newly created Death Egg alone was fucking stupid. I will forever be annoyed that he and the other Freedom Fighters remain oblivious to the fact that Mecha Sally is obviously the “traitor” in this scenario. It’s not even a tiny leap in logic or something that the characters wouldn’t be able to figure out because they’re in a story. In universe it makes no sense that he’s not even considering this.

However, I appreciate all the hard work that goes into what’s happening here all the same. I get frustrated and upset but nowadays it’s really coming from a place of love and respect. The fact that these books exist in their current form at all is nothing short of a miracle. 

I’m not going to mince words, the existence of the Archie Comics and how long they went on for in the state that they were in before the Pendering happened was unprecedented and out of the ordinary. There’s a lot to be celebrated here. 

We don’t end there though.

Silver is sitting on a bench outside, with nothing he can do but to wait for doomsday to happen now that Sonic refuses to listen and he’s out of suspects. It’s a good thing he chooses to express his plight out loud because Harvey Who just so happens to be walking by as he says all this stuff to himself and immediately offers him a job.

At least he attempted to reflect on his conduct. This issue doesn’t end with both of them looking as bad as the earlier scene made them look but the aftertaste still lingers.

This is a set-up for the Secret Freedom Sonic Universe Arc. I barely remember it so it’ll be an interesting revisit. 

My reaction to this issue all those years ago was of intense, vitriolic, burning, passionate anger and most of it was directed at just Sonic for reasons that I freely acknowledge were only giving credence to one side of the conflict. It was unfair but I do feel as if the feelings I had did come from a place that couldn't genuinely be dismissed as well. Especially now that I’ve re-read it again, this issue does truly hit upon what can happen when you can’t allow yourself to completely get in the headspace of the portrayal of certain characters from a different continuity of a series you like. Understanding and acknowledging that things are different is a lot different from being okay with that. 

However, maturity is a wondrous thing. It does make understanding a lot easier to do. Acknowledging the other side ironically just led to me concluding that I didn’t want to take either side but it was still worth it in the end to come back to this moment and try and give it a fair shake again. It also helps that the rest of the scenes in this issue were genuinely great.

[Kuzu]

I suppose this is the annoying part about writing for licensed characters who have multiple incarnations. Characterization and personality traits aren't always going to be consistent.

What's "in-character" for someone can be seen as "out-of-character" for another, and the fact that neither side is technically wrong makes it all the more annoying to discuss. 

God, now I know how Marvel and DC fans feel when I see them rage online about the constant changes in writing and those comics have far more inconsistent writing than Sonic ever will.

 

 

It doesn't help that this this comic is an adaptation of a video game series, where characterization kind of takes a backseat to gameplay. Silver in particular is pretty in-line with his game portrayal...except because he appears so little in the games, there was really not much to go on for him. This issue came out in April 2012, at this point Silver was....doing nothing of any importance really.  So I can't completely blame Flynn; trying to adapt a character like Silver into this setting with so little about him is a tough sell. It says something when Silver's own arcs either: A) Have elements that are original to this book (Silver saga and the upcoming Secret Freedom Fighters) or are completely new material altogether (his post‐reboot arc). So Silver only has 06 for any type of context to his character and role, and given how controversial said role was, having it be repeated like this is just gonna grate on anyone unless they're diehard Silver stans.

Sonic's been 100% super mega nice guy for much longer than he's retained his "attitude", so the jarring between those two extremes is never going to go.

 

I notice this with both Archie and IDW, but I find their original elements much more tolerable than when they have to write around the game elements and characters. That usually comes with the caveat of said original elements feeling completely at odds or alienated from said game stuff however.

 

Licensed product man...

[QZX343]

15 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

As for Snively… his life is over. Aside from a barely there cameo of his capsule next to Dr. Light’s, this is the last we see of him in Archie Sonic and… in the franchise as a whole.

Don't we see Snively again in Post-Reboot working for GUN? Just wondering as its been a while since I have read them.

[SanPolo4389]

39 minutes ago, QZX343 said:

Don't we see Snively again in Post-Reboot working for GUN? Just wondering as its been a while since I have read them.

Yeah he's in the Post-Reboot.

[Dr. Detective]

25 minutes ago, SanPolo4389 said:

Yeah he's in the Post-Reboot.

I thought I was clarifying that I was talking about Pre-Reboot Snively but I guess not. Don't worry. I didn't forget about 'Other' Snively with the facial hair. I shouldn't have mentioned the 'franchise' though. That's incorrect.

[SanPolo4389]

19 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Above all else it just kind of sucks that THIS is the relationship that Sonic and Silver have in the Archie comics.

Well in the Pre reboot anyways since I don’t remember him being hateful to him when they meet in the post reboot. 

[Dr. Detective]

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #236: Cry Freedom

This propaganda poster for Sonic’s call for freedom is the beginning of what I recall being a really long slump in interesting content for the main book. For a while now, the main book has been a deluge of controversial memories for me, mostly, but I remember that finally chilling out here and being replaced with a bunch of stories that I recall just sort of… happening. I’ll be honest, despite this being more recent material in this book’s life I feel like I’ll be unable to recall a lot of the upcoming events.

Hopefully, that’ll mean that these stories actually had more going for them then I remember. My memory hasn’t been the most reliable thing after all. That said, I really feel confident that the next story about the fucking cat country was an abject waste of time. We’ll see though. 

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley!
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Cover: Tracy Yardley!
Assistant Editor: Vincent 
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

We begin with Eggman speaking over a microphone on the Death Egg to the citizens of Furville, a city he’s attacking with his new Egg Pawns. He makes a very evil, grand speech about how they’re going to be roboticized, or if they have that pesky immunity, legionized (which is arguably worse) to serve under his empire.

Looking at this opening scene, you really do get a sense of just how much terror he’s inciting. It somehow continues to sink in more and more just how scary this man is. The Eggman from the games or something like X at least feels approachable but the Eggman here makes me wonder if I might die just standing in his presence for too long. 

It’s gotten to the point where it’s unsettling just looking at him sometimes. Really well done job on making me fear this man, I must say.

The conversation he has with Orbot and Cubot is a very elongated one with so many call backs that the number of “reminder asterisks” they keep inserting in the bubbles reaches what has to be a record breaking five on a single page. 

Some of these references are old and some are new. I actually had to look up Issue #119 when he was talking about how Furville survived an attack from him once and he couldn’t let that stand.

It was the issue where a giant Caterkiller was going to destroy the village and Sonic and Tails saved them. Unfortunately, as this terror is happening now, Sonic and the others aren’t here so Furville is fucked.

It’s like that scene at the end of the Broly movie where after Goku just lets Freeze get away he just goes and attacks a planet. Could have prevented a lot of deaths but… nope.

Then again, this situation is far different. For one, the heroes don’t currently know it’s happening (because we're cutting between past and present) and two, they’re not exactly in a comfy position themselves. Sonic is at the absolute lowest he’s ever been right now.

Oh, what a scene to take out of context and post in a blog on Deviantart. Perhaps on an Anti-Archie Sonic webpage for instance? Yeah, that sounds like something we should do.

This page is interesting though. You see Sonic lounging on the couch thinking about how Scourge was talking about how they’re not so different, he and him. It’s definitely true though. In this comic, especially, it’s been made clear on more than one occasion that Sonic is a lot rougher than a lot of the other versions of him. Ian Flynn did talk about this on his podcast once, relating it back to Sonic’s origins in this book being more hampered by constant child soldiering and devastation. He’s got more of a cynical, mean, rough edge to him as a result which is something to think about, for certain.

I could see an Injustice story happening where Sonic did turn out like Scourge but it’d take quite a whole lot for that to happen. Despite the laundry list of problems Tails just listed there, all of what he said is stuff that can be fixed. 

So, when Sonic starts to speak like he’s maybe given up you probably would be genuinely surprised. Shockingly, Tails and Amy’s reactions are to just be really angry and shouty before he can even finish his complete thought.

I’ll admit, it’s definitely a personal thing of mine that everyone’s reaction to people being in an understandable slump is to just yell and scream in anger at them. I don’t take it very well but here it works a lot better if only because Sonic actually wasn’t THAT far gone. 

I can see, in this instance, why Amy and Tails would be this way too seeing as how they’re going through similar stuff and they’re raring to get things fixed. Granted, different people react to different things by the nature of being built different but Sonic should reasonably have more of an iron will than Tails, for sure.

That all said, the fucking crazy eyes thing Amy keeps doing is still kind of bothering me. It’s probably just a me thing again though. I still kind of wish they’d dial it back just a bit.

Rotor shows up to be the bearer of bad news. He informs the three of them that he quit the council in active protest and the council has voted to eject Nicole from the city.

Amy is upset of course but the shocked look on Tails’ face when he realizes that his mom voted for that is great. Although, the motion passing doesn’t mean she DID vote on it since it’s determined by majority. Also, while she did vote yea she was kind of half-there due to thinking about you, buddy. It’s kind of a cruel, emotional irony thing.

Back in Furville, everything’s going to shit. A well-designed NPC character tries to rally everyone to get to safety but it doesn’t really work. 

It’s nice that they have someone there who can at least play at being a hero. He really does look like he could be his own character too. It almost makes me wonder if he’s some sort of self-insert thing for a fan or something.

Currently, the town is being demolished. People are being herded into capsules. Everything is going to shit. It's all just awful, awful, awful.

Back in New Mobotropolis, earlier in the day, Sonic and Rotor are shown giving a rundown of what their plan is. They will separate into two teams. Rotor is going to stay on the home field to protect people with a team chosen from some sort of selection thing and coyly drops hints that two “retired” (unceremoniously and unfairly destroyed) Chaotix members are going to be joining them again. His team will be called Team Freedom.

The council votes to pass this idea. Naugus doesn’t want to because he wants to protect his city but Tails’ mom Rosemary slyly tells him that they do things by majority vote. So they all say YEA! Even Hamlin happily agrees to do so, making note of how great it is that Sonic went through the proper channels this time.

Uncle Chuck asks Sonic about his team but it’s shown on his face that he pretty much already knows what it is.

We cut back to the present where the city is being attacked still and who should show up but the glorious Team Fighters!

Here they come to save the day!

All of a sudden it’s nothing like that scene at the end of Broly. Hurray!

To seal the deal on the new order of things, Eggman is given a strong, stirring speech by Sonic.

Hmm. Coincidentally, this was also ignored on the Anti-Archie post that talked about how angry they were that Sonic was giving up. Very peculiar.

I don’t want to accuse anyone of cherry picking certain things about a book and posting them out of context to fabricate an inadequate argument for the sake of feeling secure about their dissenting opinions. After all, if you have to make stuff up in order to support your argument, you’d have to be very weak people with very weak, brittle arguments. Surely, that can’t be the case. No sir.

I also continue to find it funny how the doctor just refuses to believe that there isn’t a way to crush Sonic’s spirit and make him not fight. I’m sure he’ll continue to believe there is a way for him to do that after this. Eggman just needs to try harder. Going for the fox might be a good bet.

Of course, after Sonic’s rousing speech, Mecha Sally shows up and he has to fight her. He does so and even has time to throw in a jab about when this happened to him, saying he was a cooler looking robot.

He’s trying to be himself again, despite the situation. That’s cute.

Orbot reports that they’re fucking losing badly now. The citizens start to rally and fight back as well. Eggman has no choice but the retreat and inadvertently releases Cubot from his captivity as a coaster for his drink tray.

This was supposed to be a smooth ride, dammit.

Get in, torment some innocent villagers, ruin their lives forever, get out.

Why can’t the good doctor just enjoy a normal Tuesday anymore?

It’s good seeing the Freedom Fighters actually inspire people to fight back like this though. It’s been a while since we’ve been presented with something like that, for sure.

Of course, Mecha Sally is called to retreat and Sonic absolutely doesn’t want that to happen so he tries to go after her but is grabbed by one of the Egg Pawns.

He tells Tails to do it instead but Mecha Sally calls in a squad of lasers to fire in his path to keep it from happening.

She gets away as a result of this but on the bright side, Tails doesn’t crash his plane again. For now.

Thankfully, they did manage to catch where they were headed so they decide the best course of action is to clean up while they’re here and give chase.

And maybe even TRY to have some fun while they’re at it too.

This was an issue that was about re-establishing what the new order of things is going to be now that the team is a bit broken. That’s fine though. Things haven’t been normal for a long while now and the old formula of how the Freedom Fighters worked wasn’t seeing results anyway.

Plus, this is a good opportunity to give some of our other characters from the games a chance to be of note.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #236: Leader of the Band

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley!
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman

Rotor is looking mighty evil here as he introduces his Team Freedom members.

That alone is funny enough but the word bubble suffers from an unfortunate problem brought upon by the font they’re using for this book. At least it did for me.

When I first read that dialogue box, it looked like it said “Call two of them)” but then I noticed the second half of the parentheses in the middle of the statement and went searching for the first one. I couldn’t find it at first until I re-read it and realized it was saying “(All two of them)”.

We get a small scene of Rosie talking with Vanilla about how surprised she is that she let this happen since she was certain she wasn’t too happy about how Cream’s last little adventure went. To be fair, neither was I.

Vanilla is slightly less chill in the book than in the newer one or X so it’s understandable but her reasoning is sound. With her on Team Freedom she’ll be a lot safer since it’s based at home and she can start off small to build on her potential for being a great hero one day. Rosie did raise those child soldiers well after all.

Not literally so that they could BE child soldiers or anything like that but… you know what I mean.

Anyway, Naugus needs to remind everyone that he sucks so he struts his way onto the scene to gloat and set himself up to look like a fool by denouncing Rotor’s team.

This scene is very amusing, for a number of reasons honestly.

Naugus looks like he’s some heckler from an audience going up to disrupt a comedian on stage. He also looks like he’s bombing hard in his attempt to do so. His interaction with Big is great though.

I can’t help but notice the artists always feel the need to draw Naugus constantly drooling. Like he’s perpetually always hungry and just can’t control his goddamn saliva.

It’s also funny how, on the outset, he’s kind of right to be skeptical of this team if only because of how strange it looks. The idea that Big was one of the volunteers makes me smile. It’s just funny imagining him writing his name on the ballot and submitting it and being literally one of TWO people who did so. 

Anyway, you can see the set-up for this coming a mile away. As Rotor and Naugus argue about how dumb it was to eject Nicole from the city, the Tails Doll in Vanilla’s hands beeps and then a part of the wall is just…gone.

It’s funny to me that Cream picked it up because she thought someone lost their doll but even funnier that upon not finding out who’s doll it was is just keeping it. On top of that, her mother is holding it for her and no one noticed it’s little antenna beeping red right before that building was blown into.

The place is about to collapse and Naugus immediately, right then and there, gets a mental attack from the people inside his brain. He can’t do anything once again.

That means it’s up to our heroes. Rotor puts on his suit and gives all the orders. Heavy and Big try to hold the civic center together. Cream flies people to safety. Cheese tosses Bomb at the rubble and it blows it back long enough for Rotor to blast it away with his lasers.

One, two, three, everyone is saved and Naugus did nothing. 

Rotor lands and says he’ll do what he can to stabilize the nanites. Naugus manages to regain control of his mind long enough to try and proclaim that Nicole’s nanites betrayed them again… but Rotor says that Nicole isn’t here and that, if anything, if she were she’d have been able to prevent that collapse before it happened.

Granted, they’re both wrong here. That wasn’t a glitch. The Tails Doll did some freaky voodoo and the building broke but the point is that Naugus is the only one who looks wrong here.

Naugus does manage to salvage some dignity by going along with it and proclaiming he’ll personally investigate what happened… but only really because he’s got an evil plan.

Ah. It’s finally time for Naugus to start murdering folks. Yes sir. We in there boys!

I definitely recall this issue. I had wondered if there was more to it then what I remembered but no. This whole thing actually was just as simple as I remember it being. It was just an issue done to re-establish what the status quo is going to be moving forward and it’s going to serve as a proper build up to getting everything back on track for the heroes. 

After this point is where things truly got muddled for me. I remember being okay with this issue since what it’s point was kind of felt obvious. Although, the cynical, younger me wanted to see Sonic bask in more misery at the time but I think we’ve gotten enough of that. It’s time we evened things out a bit. On to our next… adventure.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #237: Loyalty, Part One: The Right to Rule

Fairly simple looking cover. Attacking under a huge ass moon with dark shading. It’s an effective way to make a cool image. It’s funny that I don’t get much from it though. Probably because I’m not too excited about the actual content of this issue. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Steven Butler
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Cover by: Yardley, Austin, and Herms
Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

The issue begins with Eggman screaming at two of his grandmasters, Drago and Razorklaw. Their base is behind schedule and Eggman is pissed about it. Their excuse is that the previously feuding Felidae and Wolf Pack have teamed up to go against them. 

Oh? Some progress is being made on their story finally? If so, that'd be really neat considering the fate of this continuity… 

Sure do hope this all doesn’t end up being a massive waste of time.

Eggman gets even more pissed at them because he gave them lasers and tanks and therefore they should be winning. He’s about to tell them what he’ll do to them if they don’t have a better excuse when he lands but Orbot cuts the power at that moment.

Eggman is a bit upset by this but Orbot explains what Snively was letting on before he defected that they’re running on reserve power here. The Death Egg is really low on power and it was either cut the feed or the oxygen supply, which is kind of funny to me. My house doesn’t have an oxygen feed so I can only imagine the Death Egg needs one either because it’s so compact or because it can go into space. I’m no scientist though.

Eggman blames Snively for this since he had to chase him all over the place but Orbot and Cubot just casually lay the blame at Eggman’s feet for ignoring all the warnings and continuously attacking New Mobotropolis, or going to the Dragon Kingdom, or attacking Furville and losing a bunch of forces there, pointlessly.

Oh, well, actually it wasn’t pointless to Eggman. It was for a petty ego-driven one. They got away once and therefore they’re time has come again was his reason. It’s like he’s death from Final Destination or something. 

After Eggman screams at them for daring to make good points about the execution of his plans, he asks Mecha Sally for advice on how to handle this region. Mecha Sally says that their union only exists by the nature of their leaders making the call. Remove their leaders and cast suspicion on either side and they’ll start fighting again.

Hurray! We’re back on this continent again and we’re going to do… I guess the same plot as last time but differently. 

Neat.

So Lupe is sitting alone in the meeting room, preparing hours ahead of schedule when a really scary looking, menacing robot Sally just attacks her.

The explicit detail on Mecha Sally here is great. Again, this is the kind of stuff where Steven Butler shines. 

It’s funny how Lupe’s attack is more of the menacing variety. Meanwhile, Bitchy Cat Lady gets taken out in a moment that’s almost comedic.

Anyway, Sonic, Tails, and Amy arrive with complimentary feathers on their heads and approach the hut where Lobo is having his meeting inside with the other Wolf Pack leaders. Outside, Lupe’s children, including the two Mobian kids (which I love) are there to stop them and warn them that things are kind of fucked right now.

We also see the two twins that are eventually going to join the Secret Freedom Fighters here. I forget their names but they’re going to go on this excursion with us so we can get to know them a bit better beforehand. A decision is made not to tell the angry wolf pack leaders about why Lupe has gone missing because they’re looking for an excuse to attack the Felidae. Pretty fucked up if that’s true but, sadly, plenty of societies do often tend to do that. 

Sonic suggests that they just go and rescue them before shit hits the fan so that they can pretend that everything is hunky dory. So they go do that.

The two wolf twins talk about heading to New Mobotropolis to maybe join Rotor’s Team Freedom because of how boring guard duty is and how they crave adventure.

Their adventure comes in the form of the attacking Razorklaw who charges in wearing an Eggman outfit. 

I love the aesthetic of Eggman’s outfit so it’s nice to know it can work on anyone.

Turns out the person he’s attacking is Queen Hathor… or rather, Emissary Hathor.

When Amy, very easily, just takes out Razorklaw from behind with her hammer after a successful surprise attack from the heroes, Sonic goes up to the “former” queen and asks her what the deal is.

She’s acting extremely differently here though. She’s less angry and more welcoming and responsive to what’s she’s being asked because she’s been disrobed and their culture dictates that without her rope she isn’t the Queen.

That would be all well and good, I guess, but it is a bit funny how that’s treated as her being a completely different person literally. 

Perhaps it's insensitive for me to think that way but I can’t really help how I feel.

Like, this is definitely a weird scene, no doubt. 

Also, Sonic calls those white cuffs his socks which we’ve been repeatedly been told from official word from those who designed him are actually a part of his shoes. They’re more like Santa Claus boots which makes sense as a part of his design origin but I do still like imagining he wears socks under his shoes. Those annoying tiny ones that curl up under your feet when you wear them, probably.

Anyway, Hathor explains that Lupe and “The Queen” were captured and in their cell Lupe explained to her what roboticization is and what happened to the princess. Hathor actually isn’t jazzed about the idea that the people might blame the wolves and attack them over this because of how little honor there is in a conflict constructed over a misunderstanding. So Lupe offers to help her up to the vent and allow her to escape while she stays behind to risk facing roboticization again.

It’s seen as a double sacrifice since Queeeny can’t fit through there with her robes on so she has to leave them behind and thus we now have docile Hathor.

Some Felidae show up and actually point their weapons at Hathor calling her someone who teams up with wolves and outlanders. I almost read that as Overlanders and thought he was talking about Lupe’s children for a second. That would have been the pettiest of all petty bullshit though.

Hathor gets them to stand down when she says that they’re all allies right now and they’ll leave as soon as the problem gets resolved. The Felidae soldiers back down but warn her that if the wolves come, misunderstanding or not, they’re just going to kill them.

Classy. Wonderful. Can’t imagine why Razorklaw and Big defected from you guys. No, this is great. Truly a well functioning society.

Hathor laments that the queen isn’t truly here and Amy, playing along with it, tells her that she’s here in spirit. Then Sonic rallies everyone to go save everyone.

We then cut to Eggman observing Lupe’s life history on his huge ass screens while she’s strapped to a table. He comes to the conclusion that roboticization won’t work on her most likely because of the immunity. 

I guess the immunity works in such a way where if you were already roboticized it can’t happen again? That’s what I’m assuming. I don’t recall the explanation being that clear, or if it was, it passed me by.

Either way, he has another solution for that problem.

God, Legionization sounds SO much worse. At least it does to me. I’d rather just get zapped into a robot then have parts of my body taken away and then replaced. It looks painful and it feels way more permanent too. 

It just looks like such a bad time. Blegh.

 

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #237: Heart to Heart

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley!
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman

It’s shocking how I don’t remember this story at all because it’s really pivotal to the development of both Mina and Nicole. I don’t recall disliking either of these two characters back in the day either. It may have just been a result of me being on autopilot due to the story of this issue being really lackluster though.

This is the better of the two tales though and it’s really just a simple conversation.

Good Ol’ Mina Mongoose has found her way into Freedom HQ and asks for Nicole to show herself. The screen comes on and Mina immediately apologizes for what happened back at the concert.

Long story short, and pretty much confirmation of what was already pretty obvious, Mina had good intentions but her lack of knowledge when it came to politics screwed her over. Very poor messaging and very evasive maneuvering saw her going down a really bad path.

It wouldn’t be hard for me to understand why someone would refuse to fully forgive her at the moment. For one, it’s been a really long while in real time since that issue happened. It might not have been with regards to the time in the narrative itself but it’s still a significant enough length of time to make someone wonder why it took so long.

Mina does go down every bullet point that a dissenter of her earlier decision making would likely bring up, including how long it took for her to apologize. There’s also the fact that she’s coming into this at the time where it’s clear the city is in need of her a bit.

Granted, a point in Mina’s favor on that front is that it’s not literally at the point where shit has hit the fan. In fact, it’s a bit after something was done to help improve the situation a bit with the creation of Team Freedom and Team Fighters last issue. I can see how someone would take that as a selfish motivation but, again, to Mina’s credit she brings that up too.

Nicole goes on about all the stuff she’s failed at and Mina fires back with her laundry list of failures too but she makes sure to use the rallying the Freedom Fighters are doing to spur her into action. She finally shows herself to Mina.

I’m glad this was another example of the book showcasing how not jumping to immediate yelling and screaming but still standing firm and telling it like it is can get the desired effect.

It’s a complicated wheelhouse of emotion and navigating through this isn’t a simple affair. I can see why it’d take time to fully heal this in the eyes of people who aren’t me and just recognize intention for what it is and jump at the chance to resolve conflicts.

All that said… I completely understand why someone wouldn’t find this resolution all that satisfying. It’s resolving a conflict that was very much a catalyst for a lot of what happened leading up to Naugus’ takeover and it’s just been tucked away here at the back end of a fairly forgettable issue. It doesn’t surprise me that I didn’t remember it and I can’t help but imagine a lot of other people may have forgotten it too.

Not to mention, it’s a hard sell when you have someone act as brashly and as mean as Mina was coming off, despite her intentions, and then have her show no real remorse for it until the exact story where they’re supposed to patch things up, right this instant. I can see how that would feel a little rushed. 

The important thing is they patched things up at all though. Also, we’ve yet another set-up for the upcoming Sonic Universe arc.

I’m shocked I haven’t made a “I want to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative” joke yet. Probably too easy.

Yeah, that issue happened alright. The Felidae and the Wolf Pack have never been an interesting tidbit of the comic and this issue didn’t do much to advance that aside from witnessing Hathor be so strangely cooperative and vulnerable without her robes. The most this issue has to offer is the severe importance behind the development that happens in the back-up story but what happens there didn’t need a lot of time dedicated to it for it to work so it shakes out as a bit lacking overall.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #238: Loyalty, Part Two: Dire Choices

It’s a fight in the woods and Drago’s getting hit on the cover for the sake of the running gag again. Also Amy is attacking Eggman and he’s all scared of it. Hitting all the tropes here. 

Uhm. What else? Mecha Sally is colored well here. I guess that’s it. Not really that intriguing of a cover really.

Spoiler

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Steven Butler
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman
Cover by: Yardley, Austin, and Herms
Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Editor-In-Chief: Victor Gorelick

Eggman still has Lupe strapped to her table and asks if she has any last words, as villains are one to do. She says she doesn’t have anything civil to say but she doesn’t say them. 

Eggman is about to do the deed when an alarm goes off and EGAD, it’s Sonic! He contacts Orbot and asks him what the fuck they can do to get out of this quicker and Orbot is like, “Sorry man. We like real low on power still, bro” so Eggman stomps off to go take care of this and sends someone in to watch Lupe.

Sonic, meanwhile, is actually LEADING the charge with action commands and all that junk. Wow. He’s doing a good job of it too. He even says this leadership thing is fun.

It looks good on him. We don’t even need Sally back no–uhm. I mean. Good for you, Sonic. I’m sure Sally would be proud. Yeah.

Razorklaw shows up and talks about how he’s lost twice and how he’s got pride and honor and demands a rematch and yada yada. Sonic says that fighting lynxes in battles of honor is an occupational hazard to him now which is a bit of a low blow to my dear heart. Poor Lightning.

Also, honestly, I can’t help but feel sorry for Razorklaw still. His backstory is pretty unfair and it being a result of the Felidae’s awful traditions about losing duels is one thing but the fact that he keeps losing has got to be the worst. It’s like literally pouring salt directly into the wound.

Anyway, the person put in charge of guarding Lupe is Drago. He sucks so let’s talk down to him some more. Why not?

Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-You’re w-w-w-w-wrong, B-B-BAKA!

I gotta say, the idea of Eggman playing games with his Dark Egg Legion like this and not just waiting for them to play the game with him was something I hadn’t really thought about but it makes a lot of sense. It also sounds amazing. I’d have loved to have seen what Lupe is talking about here actually play out.

The idea that when she’s legionized he’d make her a Grandmaster because as the former head of the Wolf Pack she has more influence and thus would be able to keep the feud going with more people in support of her is a great tactical power play. It would also make Drago functionally useless to him. 

Drago is right about one thing. Eggman does value him. It’s as a plaything though. Seeing him squirm would be incredibly entertaining, even I’ve got to admit that.

It’s funny that I don’t hate Drago as much as this comic wants me to though. I don’t even really have a reason why I don't. I absolutely should considering his abuse to Hershey. I guess I’m mostly just indifferent to him. Punching bag villain characters just existing to be pitiful also don’t entertain me that much unless they're genuinely funny characters. Drago's never been all that fun or funny.

It’s hard because I like that he’s in the story and a Grandmaster but his shtick feels a bit weird to me, I guess.

Whatever though. He gets his ass beat. 

Terrible queen or not, he made that robe work for him.

Hathor recovers her robes and instead of putting them on immediately, folds them up and waits for the right time… which isn’t too long from now to be honest.

Outside, Tails is busy inserting a tracker into the Death Egg so that they can find it no matter what now.

Wow. Eggman really fucked himself here. I guess Snively was right about putting a bigger priority on making sure that thing had proper power and defenses. Then again, literally anyone could have told him that. I've probably said this before but it’s great how the doctor is often the fault of his own demise as it does well to explain how a genius like him can lose to these kids so often. 

I don’t say that to undermine the heroes, of course, it’s just a great detail to keep in mind. The doctor’s ego is so huge that he often puts his own interest in keeping his pride in tact or the chances to have these cruel games here ahead of practicality. Now the Death Egg is so weak and vulnerable that Tails was able to insert something like this into it.

Well, at least for a bit. Mecha Sally flies in and attacks him.

Tails attacks back which shocks and stuns Mecha Sally. She can’t believe Tails would actually hit her.

Tails continues to attack though, having now found the resolve to do whatever it takes to save her, even if it means demolishing her in battle. Figuratively speaking. Maybe.

Lupe and the others show up to stand with agreement to Tails. Mecha Sally gives them an ultimatum though.

It’s great how Mecha Sally pretty much is just Sally but with her alignments switched and a lot more blunt. She retains all her memories and she knows how much these people mean to her which is why she’s so ready and able to exploit their feelings. It’s great.

This image of Tails fighting back with such intense furiosity is a great panel too. Steven Butler’s action is always so dynamic and powerful. Still, it really bugs me how tall and lanky everyone always is. Especially Tails. Tails just can’t stop having a torso triple his original size whenever he’s drawing him. 

They have to go though and Tails does leave Mecha Sally behind, promising to save her. Mecha Sally says “I don’t need no savin’ bitch!” as they leave.

Sonic is still fighting Razorklaw when they all come out of the temple… then Queen Hathor speaks up, wearing her robes again, and demands Sonic take her some place. Sonic bounces off Razorklaw and goes to carry the Queen off.

Well, at least Razorklaw didn’t technically lose again, I guess. Really, some of these Grandmasters probably do just exist to have designated, recognizable villains in certain locations rather than to be a threat of any real significance. That’s fine for the most part but it can be a bit of a boon when stories tend to feel like they’re happening for the sake of just having something happen. 

Anyway, after this, the story just kind of stops for all parties involved. 

Mecha Sally returns to Eggman and says that Sonic is in “full retreat” which isn’t true and Eggman knows it isn’t true. He’s pretty pissed because the whole point of this trip was to stop, restock, and refuel but Sonic’s keeping up the pressure on him so now he can’t deal with Drago and Razorklaw or restock and refuel OR fend off Sonic.

Eggman really put himself in a terrible position here. This new Death Egg project needs to get some life injected into it, pronto.

Thankfully, Mecha Sally has an idea.

I love that buffering symbol over Eggman’s head. He was so taken by surprise by that comment it momentarily stunned him. 

It’s a good idea though. Having Mecha Sally be sent off to do something that Team Fighters can’t ignore would give Eggman the time he needs to properly restock and refuel like he wants to.

As for the heroes, when Tails and Amy’s group manage to catch up to Sonic and the Queen they witness both sides of the conflict there, willing to stand and fight together. 

Apparently they were more willing to listen then we thought. Oh, hurray!

Oh, and Tails planted a tracker on the Death Egg! HURRAAAAAAY!

Anyway, while the warriors from both parties head off to drive away the traitors, Lupe and Queen Bitch have a handshake of…I don’t want to say reconciliation. I guess, begrudging acceptance?

You can feel the power in that grip. Yeesh.

With things literally back to the way they were, the question of what the point of this two-part side-story is likely would have entered your minds here as it did for me and a lot of other people back in the day.

The answer to that is…

I don’t know. Unlike Moebius, with the enticing, unanswered question of "How high up IS young Miles" that’s forever left to hang in limbo, it’s not really been all that long since we last left the Felidae and the Wolf Pack. I know taking a random jump to witnessing what was going on in Moebius wasn’t possible, of course. I’m just talking all bitter-like because it’s something I wanted to see resolved. 

I can’t help but compare that to this where… I mean, I guess this is fine. As a random little adventure story it’s …actually, I can’t even say it’s harmless because it does take up two issues of time that could have been better spent resolving the Mecha Sally conflict a bit faster. 

This isn’t like the Metal Virus to me where there was a clear and concise manner in which the danger and devastation was ramping up from issue to issue now. That was true before Issue #236 but from that issue onward we’re pretty much in the phrase where they’re fighting back. Thus, the resolution is upon us but… it’s also being stretched out. 

Unlike the build-up where the stepping stones of bad things happening kept accumulating from here on we’re mostly just having little adventures, high tailing it after the Death Egg while Eggman tries to refuel it.

It’s not really that exciting of a through line. Add on top of that the fact that this little adventure didn’t lead to anything advancing for any of the parties here makes it a little annoying.

Like, the heroes came to warn them about Sally and they did that I guess. That’s not something that would have necessitated and entire two-story arc though. The heroes got nothing out of this.

The Felidae and the Wolf Pack still feel like they’re right back where they were at the start of this. If Lupe saving Queeny’s robe for her isn’t enough to flip the script then this might be a bit of a loss cause anyway, honestly. Best to stick with the reluctant, “Don’t fucking bother me and we won’t bother you unless we can think up a REALLY good reason to” position they’re in. However, it’s true that neither side of these tribes changed or got anything out of this.

As for Eggman, he came here to refuel and restock and the heroes kept him from doing that so now he has to fly off and go do that somewhere else, making this a wasted trip. He didn’t even get to punish Razorklaw and Drago. 

We end on one of the few changes being made for the status quo though. The twins REALLY want to go off and make a difference out there in New Mobotropolis and Lupe has an in with someone who can help them do that.

Archie Sonic the Hedgehog - Issue #238: Foundation Work

Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Evan Stanley
Inks: Terry Austin
Colors: Matt Herms
Letters: John Workman

We cut to Owl Nick Fury in a robe, right on cue here. He’s talking with Nicole about how awesome the new base she’s made for him is. Apparently it was an old Iron Dominion thing that she just touched up a little bit.

We also cut to grumpy Charles in the corner, fixing up a recovered Metal Sonic using parts from a Metal Scourge and the old Metal Sonic Troopers. 

This scene of Shard being built took me by surprise a bit. I didn’t recall this at all. My memory told me he first showed up in Secret Freedom proper but I guess that’s yet another side-effect of these two issues not occupying much space in my mind.

What he says here happened so long ago that I absolutely had no choice but to go back and revisit Issue #87 to even recall what the hell they were talking about.

Talk about a deep pull. I’d be impressed by people being able to just remember these callbacks without aid if I weren’t such a freak when it came to doing that with certain long-running manga.

Although, Uncle Chuck here says that he remembers Shard here trying to kill his nephew but the story I read didn’t involve him so he must have been told off screen.

I must have talked about how reminiscent it was of the OVA at the time. I’m more interested in that weird face he’s making as he’s pointing at Sonic and Tails in that flashback panel though. 

Harvey Who also tells Chuck that when it comes to treason he didn’t exactly refuse to work with him when he made the offer. Chuck then gets all nostalgic for the days of him helping out the Freedom Fighters with his Spy Network back when he was roboticized…

… Actually, “nostalgic” might not be the right word for him. 

Still, Uncle Chuck is worried about getting caught because if that happens he loses his position, Nicole gets found out about what she’s doing behind the scenes here, and then Naugus will rain wizardry on them. 

Harvey Who then says that the thing they need to do in that case is to not get caught.

Then they immediately get caught.

Larry Lynx just falls through a tube and lands smack dab in the center of their operation.

Unlike Issue #87 with the Metal Sonic story, I actually DO remember Larry Lynx and the creation of the Substitute Freedom Fighters team.

Him saying that no one remembers that might double as an in-universe gag as well as the fact that the writers just never mentioned it again after the team was formed. It happened SO fucking long ago that pretending it was still active during all that time without any kind of check-up or utilization of his team wouldn’t have made any sense. It just wouldn’t have been believable.

Having it be a thing that got disbanded off-screen and having him return to be a part of a Freedom Fighter team that works undercover but with an expected demotion in the rankings, while unfortunate in one way, works a lot better for his character.

Back when the Substitute Freedom Fighter thing happened there were so few characters to actually pull from and now we’ve got seven thousand of them. It wouldn’t make any sense to have Larry leading the official back up Freedom Fighters team. Especially with so many different ones out there.

I like Larry though. I’m glad he’s here.

That Drago scene and the scene where Tails fought Mecha Sally were great. I loved both of those scenes a lot. I don’t know if they were enough to make these two stories feel worth it though. At the very least, I didn’t end up hating this story arc but knowing this book’s fate it’s hard not to look back over this and think to yourself, “Man, we could have been dealing with wrapping up the Mecha Sally thing a lot faster if this side-story wasn’t here”.

It’s inoffensive and fairly straight-forward and simple. That’s really all there is to say about it. The side stories of these issues were of more significance and were more interesting for a number of reasons in comparison. The setting that the Felidae and the Wolf Pack occupy just isn’t that interesting and their feud isn’t something I care to see continue or to go back to without a really damn good reason. However, since nothing was accomplished for any of the parties involved here it ended up just being a random excursion that we had with a very forgettable string of events. We’re just going to go after Mecha Sally yet again and not advance anything with her fate yet again.

It’s the “Follow Mecha Sally and the Death Egg all over the place and wait for something significant to happen” hype train folks. I hope you’re all aboard because this train already left the station this week. Or maybe not. Once again, this section up until Thrash shows up, I have very little memory of.

[Cuz]

Seems like you're flying through these now. Already passed the Trial and first Genesis Wave. The pre-reboot is wrapping up faster than I would of hoped, but man, sticking it out with these reviews as long as you have is something. 

[SBR2]

Guess whose back? Back again! Anyway yeah I got a new phone several months ago and just never bothered signing back in so I will try to comment on future updates (I'm sure you've all missed that ) I should...maybe go through the backlog too but y'know without the commentary.