SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #50 "The Big Goodbye" Archie Comics A Review By Roland Lowery ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WELCOME TO my very first review of the Sonic the Hedghog Comics. When I first started collecting the Archie StH comics, I started off with issue #25, so it's kind of fitting that my review debut starts with issue #50. Well, enough of my chatter! I'm dying to rip my claws into this one! THE GUILTY PARTIES ----------------------------------------------- Whoo boy, the credits on this one are long. It was supposed to be, as was said in Sonic-Grams for quite awhile, the biggest collection of everyone who had ever worked on the book. While they ultimately fell short of their goal, that didn't stop them from picking up as many as they could. Plot: Ken Penders Script: Ken Penders, Michael Gallagher, Karl Bollers, Kent Taylor Pencils: Patrick Spaziante, Manny Galan, Nelson Ortega, Sam Maxwell, Dave Manak, Ken Penders, Art Mawhinney Inks: Andrew Pepoy, Brian Thomas, Pam Eklund, Harvey Mercadoocasio, Jim Amash, Rich Koslowski, Ken Penders Letters: Jeff Powell Colors: Karl Bollers Editor: J. Freddy Gabrie Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick Editor-In-Chief: Richard Goldwater THE COVER -------------------------------------------------------- The comic starts off pretty good. The artwork is good, the new logo looks good, everything is good. Just wait until we open the cover, tho' . . . PAGES 1-3 -------------------------------------------------------- Writer: Penders Artists: Spaz & Pepoy The first panel starts out innocuously enough. A person who we are assume to be Dr. Robotnik (because he is called "Julian, Son of Ivo") is running from two humans on hovercycles. You can hardly tell WHO the fat man is, thanks to a pair of sunglasses (out during a stormy night, in the middle of the forest, no less) and a mustache that makes you think that Julian is suddenly going to say, "We don' need no steenkeng guns!" Now, as improbable as the prospect that the fat doctor is outrunning these two guys is that the doctor has somehow squeezed himself into a skintight gray uniform that has a pocket that is smashing a pencil and a pen into (don't look kiddies) Julian's chest so tight as to leave permenant marks on him. So, the doctor mumbles some stuff out miscalculating and falls, face first, into a puddle of mud. Somehow, the humans on the hovercycles pass right by him (believe me, they could have seen him if their lives were really on the line). Someone call Warner Brothers by the way, because they might have a lawsuit to deal out. The humans chasing Julian/Robotnik call each other by name, "Londo" and "Jakkar". I don't know how many of you out there watch Babylon 5, but Londo and G'kar are alien ambassadors that are normally at odds with each other. At least the Archie editors could have seen to it that either both names were spelled right, or spelled wrong! So, on to page 2, where it seems that even though the humans couldn't find the two or three feet of flabby body sticking up out of the mud, two Mobian hedgehogs just happen along and DO see the doctor. They help him out of the puddle and (somehow) into the sidecar of a Mobian sized (or, at least, one would like to THINK it was) motorcycle sidecar. They take the human to the King, where Julian starts spilling his guts (and quite a gut, too!) in the added precence of Warlord Kodos (who should have gotten a bigger part) and what looks to be a fourteen (plus/minus two) year old Geoffry St. John. The King automatically decides to trust this "Overlander" and even sets Julian up as Warlord over the Acorn Kingdom's troops. Charles and Jules, the two hedgehogs who helped Julian in the forest (and who look AWFULLY familiar, hint hint), appear to be fighting in the Great War as well, even though Chuck is primarily a scientist. Jules . . . well, we don't know what he does just yet. URK! What the hey is this? You know, for the longest time (and, as a matter of fact, it stands this way in the Sonic fiction I write myself), I believed that the Great War was a war between what I called the Greater and the Lesser Mobian Continents. Acorn Kingdom ruled the entire world benevolently, when there was an uprising on the Lesser Conitinent. Very simple idea, global war, Mobian against Mobian, fighting for domination. But what is the Great War instead? A friggin' RACE WAR! Furry vs. Human, Mobian vs. Overlander. That's it. There's no mention that they are fighting for dominance over land, or for money, or for revenge, or for any other thing that they could pick . . . but a race war! What kind of message is that going to get across to the children who read this comic? And, finally, a shot of Robotnik in his upright sleeping chamber. Seemingly, Robotnik has been dreaming all of this flashback, and according to a SWATbot, he's been enjoying it. If I were Robotnik, I don't think I would've enjoyed the part where I run through the forest wearing a gray jumpsuit, in the middle of the pouring rain, being shot at with lasers by two guys who faces we don't see and, by the way they talk about the Minister, we'll never see again unless they're mounted on the Minister's wall. Overall, these first three pages of the comic are a bunch of useless information. They had to cut the comic's size in the first place from fourty pages to its normal, every-month allotment, so why put in this flashback that has nothing to do with the EndGame arc? I liked the art (except for Julian, who obviously dyes his mustache from black to orange now), and the writing wasn't all that bad, but it could've waited until at least the next friggin' issue! As Dan Drazen put it in his review of this same comic, "The sequence served about as much purpose (in this context) as would a scene of Bunnie dropping her top and flashing her hoo-ha's: maybe it's something a number of fans would like to see, but what business doest it have HERE?" You da man, Dan. PAGES 4-6 -------------------------------------------------------- Writer: Gallagher Artists: Galan & Pepoy And finally, we get back to the EndGame plot. Sonic and St. John are both trying to get Knuckles to join their side. Knux naturally chooses against Sonic, even though to the best of my knowledge, Knux and St. John have never met before and the echidna would have no way to know if the skunk is lying or not. Of course, having Knuckles attack him gives Sonic the perfect chance to - - get caught?!? For some odd reason, Sonic doesn't continue to run away from them, but stops at a tree to taunt Knux and St. John! Espio reaches from his hiding place and grabs the hedgehog by the arms. BY THE ARMS, now. Sonic's feet are still free and in working order, so why doesn't he just blaze off with Espio in tow? Oh, well, it's a good thing then that Dulcy (who was knocked out in issue #49 by Knuckles, which begs the question, just how strong of a punch has he got?) jumps in to the rescue. She runs off some shpiel about how dragons can't lie and they can sense the truth in others and she can tell that Sonic speaks the truth. Just as quickly as Knuckles took St. John at his word, he does the same with Dulcy! St. John, too, takes the dragon's word as gospel and they decide to go take on their real enemy. What a bunch of fickle Freedom Fighters! *THWAM THWAM THWAM* Sorry, that was the sound of me beating my head up against my computer's screen. This page contains what HAS to be the absolute worst piece of writing in the entire book! In the last panel of page 6, Dulcy turns to Sonic and says (get this), "I don't think I'll fit in a plane, Sonic . . . " She's a dragon! FLY for Pete's sake! Knuckles didn't hit her wings when he punched her out earlier! She's fine; toss her off the edge and watch her flap! If she flew there, she can fly back, I'm sure! PAGES 7-9 -------------------------------------------------------- Writer: Gallagher Artists: Ortega & Thomas "We will take your biological and technological distinctiveness and make it our own. Resistance is futile." "You will all be roboticized. Escape is impossible." Heh, the attack of the ComBorg! Run! =] Actually, I don't know if Gallagher meant for it to sound this way, but after reading other stories written by him, I think he might just have. Okay, let's see, here we return to Knothole Village, with all of the Freedom Fighters being led to certain roboticization. Except . . . oops! Somewhere in the shuffle, the ComBots have lost Tails and Rotor . . . strange since they were among the very first few that were captured. But Tails says that "The Freedom Fighters have done the impossible before!", and it obviously holds true, especially when we aren't watching! And so, Tails and Rotor run for their water vehicles (the Sea Fox and the Bathysphere) only to find them smashed and Drago waiting with some ComBots. This page, overall seems to serve no purpose to furthering the story, and probably should have been cut to be replaced with an explanation for the prison camp uprising that is shown on the next page! Last issue, everything seemed to be running smoothly for CrocBot, then a rebellion without the benifit of an explanation as to who it was who escaped and let the rest of the prisoners free! Robotnik seems overly unimpressed by all of this, however. He only worries about the ore that is supposed to come in from Downunda, and after finding that it will make its way to him, he cackles on for a bit about his Ultimate Annihilator. Then, doh dee dum, it's off to the sleep chamber again for some well-deserved (yah, right) rest. Someone needs to get their 'bots straight. When Drago captured Rotor and Tails down in the underground caverns, he had a bunch of ComBots with him. However, he has now traded them off for some old clunker SWATbots! When was the decision to do this made? But, anyway, . . . Sonic, St. John, and Kunckles come gliding in to the rescue via parachutes and dreadlocks. They came just in time, too, for - PAGES 10-11 ------------------------------------------------------ Writer: Bollers Artists: Maxwell & Eklund - the absolute worst work I've ever seen from Maxwell! Let's see, to the chant of "FIGHT! FREEDOM!", we have: Tails having a hernia from lifting a smiling turtle that is surely no bigger than the fox himself, and who has been saved by the other Freedom Fighters about a hundred times before, anyway. Sonic jumping out of the way of . . . . of something. I can only guess it's a cloaked ComBot that we can't see. I tell you one thing, the drawing of that invisible ComBot is the best art in this entire panel! Knuckles smashing a *perfectly round hole* in the middle of a SWATbot. I guess Robotnik has recently started buying gag break-away SWATbots or something. St. John swinging his parachute (which, like the hole in the SWATbot, is perfectly round) around a ComBot, who has ripped a whole SIDEWAYS through the 'chute. And Fleming, led by a Tasmanian Devil, try to see if he can fly. Alright, bad art . . . no problem, right? There's certainly some good writing to make up for it, right? Wrong. For some reason, Sonic picks Drago out of the crowd and runs after the wolf. There is no way that Sonic could have known that Drago was the traitor, unless St. John told him, and St. John didn't know it himself! PAGES 12-13 ------------------------------------------------------ Writer: Bollers Artists: Manak & Eklund "Oh, no! He's catching up! He catching--" Try putting a very large DUH right after this sentence, and then go back and put one after everthing else Drago has said before this! It's fun! Jeez, of COURSE he's cathing up, Drago, you dimbulb! He can run faster than sound and even something better than the speed of light at times! Did you think he WASN'T going to catch you eventually? But, then again, ol' blue boy didn't HAVE to catch up. Hershey (who throws straighter than any baseball pitcher I've seen), lands a rock across the back of Drago's noggin. So, after a few teary-eyed scenes with Hershey and Sonic, the hedgehog lets the cat off with a "You never mind that". Agh! Even if she was not truly guilty of Sally's death, she should at least be locked up for a month for the crime of criminal stupidity! How in the world did Drago persuade her that Snively was the one out on that rope? Snively lived in the city, for Pete's sake, if he wanted to go to the bottom floor, he'd take the elevator! Plus the fact that he convinced her to wear that doofy looking Sonic suit! What was she thinking? Or better yet, was she thinking at all? Ah, jeez, it's amazing that they finally crank up the coolness factor on Robotnik (he gets a lot of snazzy lines in the EndGame arc, like a few of them on this page), just so he can get killed in just a few pages. He's the guy you love to hate, and he should've had lines like this a long time ago, so I grudginly say that I'd like the fat boy back, if they'd only continue to write him as a complete smart ass. This page also features one of the few panels that are drawn well in this issue. The last panel of page 13 has only one problem (his nose is slightly off-center), but otherwise it is an excellent close up of Robotnik. I've always liked it when his eyes are drawn black with red mottles instead of the usual black eyeball with red pupils. PAGES 14-15 ------------------------------------------------------ Writer: Bollers Artists: Penders & Eklund Bunnie says that she and Antoine were smuggled out of Downunda . . . and that's about all the explanation we get for what they're doing back in Robotropolis. Last I remember, they were stuck up on a wall, and Bunnie had a contraption on that kept her from using her robotic limbs because it would set off an explosive collar on Antoine! Why go to all this trouble if they're just going to end up back where they started in the next issue with only a one panel explanation of why? Robotnik takes a seat in his command chair (which is, by the way, a nice translation of his command chair from the cancelled Saturday morning Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon that used to show on ABC), and Snively tells him that Sonic is approaching. "After all we've done, he STILL won't give up!" says Snively. Well, actually, Sonic fixed what they'd done to him (framed him for Sally's death and taken over Knothole Village), excepting Sally's death itself, and that would probably drive him even more to destroy Robotnik (which it does)! So, what does Robotnik do? He shoots missles at Sonic. Did dreaming up and making the Ultimate Annihilator totally drain ol' fat boy's imagination? Surely he could have figured out something a LITTLE more exciting (and original) (and effective) than just shooting some missles at the hedgehog! Sonic thinks to himself, "If I modulate the frequency of my speed while I run real fast . . . I should be able to create after-images of myself!" The missles are fooled and chase after the after-images. Nice plan, and it worked and all, . . . but why doesn't Sonic just OUT-RUN the missles? He could just speed in between two of them (surely they can't turn fast enough to hit him) then make them follow him until they crash into Robotnik's command tower. PAGES 16-18 ------------------------------------------------------ Writer: Taylor Artists: Maxwell & Mercadoocasio Sonic bursts into the command tower with cables wrapped around him attached to two robot hands that he's dragging along behind him. Where did these hands come from, you ask? Good question. All that I can figure is that the fight that Sonic severed these hands in was part of the story that got cut when the page allotment was cut. Instead of cutting this fight, however, they SHOULD have cut the beginning dream sequence so we'd understand exactly WHERE these hands came from. The story would not have lost anything, and would have, in fact, GAINED a little bit of coherence. Sonic drags on until he meets up with Snively (in his brand new battle suit, natch) and gives him a good thrashing with the robot hands and with his feet. After kicking Snively into what I must assume is either a garbage chute or the hole in the plot, Sonic runs into Bunnie and Antoine who tell him they have planted a bomb in the Ultimate Annihilator. Sonic, being the good little comic book hero that he is, sends them off to Knothole and bravely (or stupidly, I can't really tell which) runs in to face Robotnik (or Julian, since Sonic calls him that) with immenint destruction coming from A) the Ultimate Annihilator, B) the bomb in the Ultimate Annihilator, and C) Robotnik himself. Does anyone else see a problem here? Ah . . . but when they face off, Robotnik tells Sonic that he has already nullified his "friends' vain attempt", meaning that Bunnie and Antoine's prescence there really served no purpose, just as their prescence in Downunda served no purpose! Were these scenes just added in to make sure those two got some time in the story arc at ALL? Robotnik threatens Sonic, and Sonic snaps back with this witty rejoiner: "It's not going to happen -- it's just NOT going to happen!" Maybe he needs to go back to witty repartee school, because this is NOT the Sonic and Hedgehog we all know and love. They've been doing this gradual darkening of Sonic's character for a while, and I don't really like it that much. Sure, Sonic has gone through some rough times, and sure he can be in a mood every once in a while, but he's still going to jump into a fight with a witty remark on his lips and a grin on his face! Hurm . . . then Robotnik says that "this relatively confined space prevents you from making optimum use of your SPEED--", but in the next few pages, it would appear that he uses his speed quite a lot! Obiviously, there wasn't that much communication not only from writer to writer and artist to artist, but from writer to artist, either! Well, on to the fight scene . . . PAGES 19-21 ------------------------------------------------------ Writer: Taylor Artists: Spaziante & Mercadoocasio Robotnik slaps Sonic away and tells him that he has made a strategic error that costs the lives of everyone in Knothole Village. Er, how? Robuttnik was going to kill them all anyway! Sonic attacking him had nothing to do with it! But this doesn't matter to Sonic, who cracks Robotnik a good one across the jaw. As Robo-breath pulls himself from the wreckage, the computer informs them that the Ultimate Annihilator will release a flash of energy that will destroy the war room. The two combantants feel they have nothing left to lose, so they get into a bunch of confusing and not very well drawn fight scenes. The only actual well drawn scene (and, suprisingly, what I think is the best in the entire book) is the very last one on page 21, where Sonic is standing on Robotnik's stomach and preparing to knock those silly little robotic ears off. Overall, this part of the book makes the least sense. Bad drawing coupled with bad rationalizations of what the two of them are doing is not made up for by a couple of good panels and lines. I really expected more from Spaz and Harvo . . . . PAGES 22-26 ----------------------------------------------------- Writer: Penders Artists: Mawhinney & Koslowski What looks like a Power Ring surrounds Sonic and pulls him through the Annihilator's energy unscathed. It's said later that the beam had been reset to only affect Robotnik's organic pattern, but it looks more like Sonic's billionth ring is what pulled him through this one (they should probably use the Power Ring aura thing more, I think). He then passes out, and is found by the Freedom Fighters later. He wakes up in a hospital bed (well, *A* bed, anyway . . . the Knothole hospital seems to have gone under radical reconstructive surgery since issue #43). Sonic sits up and screams "But I SAW Knothole DESTROYED!" Er, funny thing, but *I* didn't see it? Did any of you? The Annihilator had been destroyed in an internalized explosion of energy, so just how did it manage to get a shot off at Knothole? Don't worry, though . . . Rotor will be able to explain it to us! Right? Er, nope, doesn't look like it. All he does is rattle off some techno-babble about how Knothole Village was displaced three hours into the future, but he gives no explanation as to WHY or HOW. He does mention that lots of zones were created by Robotnik's device (a side effect that Robotnik should have looked into long before he actually tried to use his machine), so that ought to keep the writers busy for a while before they actually come up with an explanation for everything that's happened in this issue. Doctor Quack then goes into the reasons why he betrayed king, crown, and country. It seems that Robotnik detected the Neutron Chip located in his Dream Watcher (as seen in issue #43) and followed it directly to Quack's doorstep. His family is taken hostage and Quack is forced to work on the Ultimate Annihilator and to do all the other mean and nasty stuff he does (fake Sally's death, pretend that the fake King is the real one, etc.). While working on the Annihilator, Quack sees Snively working on the Neutron Eradicator (the same thing? Ya got me), setting it to only affect Robotnik's organic pattern. Dr. Quack kept his bill shut, hoping that Robotnik would be Annihilated (or Eradicated, whatever). He then tells Sonic that Sally is (gasp!) alive! He's been keeping her in a stasis chamber disguised as her memorial grave. Sonic immediately rushes out to the chamber and opens it. In an scene that seemed to make the biggest effort I've ever seen NOT to move its readers to tears, Sonic lightly pecks Sally on the cheek and says, "I love you, Sally! Please come back." Lo and Behold, Sally rises from the dead after that lukewarm kiss and asks Sonic to repeat himself. ARGH! What was all of this? Sally's "death" seems to have just been a reason to get Sonic framed and all riled up! They could have done ANY NUMBER OF THINGS to do this! But, since they went ahead with it, they could have at least made her waking scene a LITTLE bit better than that! Okay, okay . . . calm down . . . I realize that the people at SEGA! Enterprises are the ones that slapped any attempt that Ken made to do this scene right down, so I fully blame them! Jeez, even the people at Disney allowed the big kissing scene at the end of Snow White (which the scene in the comic seems to have been lifted almost entirely from). And, striking even closer to home, the makers of the Saturday morning StH cartoon on ABC were allowed to have Sonic and Sally do a big tonsil wrestling scene at the end of the "Doomsday" episode! What's the difference if one is a comic book and the other is a cartoon? PAGE 27 ---------------------------------------------------------- Writer: Penders Artists: Spaziante & Penders Speaking of lukewarm love, the way that Sonic and Sally are holding each other at arm's length makes me wonder where the chaperone is hiding. This page is dedicated to showing all of the loose ends which were tied up (pfft, yah, right) and let's us sit and wonder for thirty more days what happened to Snively. My guess: he crawls out of the hole in the plot that Sonic shoved him through, brushes himself off, and says, "Mymymy, that was horrid. Well, off to Disneyland, then . . . I hear they have a job open for whining evil sidekicks." PARTING SHOTS ---------------------------------------------------- Er . . . I think they should've scrapped the EndGame project half-way through, given everyone who had bought an EndGame book a full refund, and started fresh from somewhere around issue #44 or so. This story arc has been filled with nothing but incoherencies (both in the writing AND in the artistry) from start to finish, and it's probably set up a lot more to come on down the road. But, of course, we won't be seeing any refunds anytime soon, I expect. The almighty SEGA! spoke to Archie, then the almost almighty Archie spoke to Ken Penders. Ken's creative style was probably hampered by their decisions (like cutting the page allotment, making him downgrade the Princess's waking scene, etc.), and it's really a shame. Well, maybe things can only go up from here . . . personally I'd really like to see the old style of Sonic stories (each comic being its own stand alone story) instead of these expansive story lines with confusing (and often not resolved) sub-plots that pop up and disappear faster than the bubble messages on Pop-Up Video on VH-1. Will those days ever return? I sure hope so, for the sake of Archie and of Sonic fandom everywhere. Well, that's it . . . my first review of a Sonic comic. Any feedback should be sent to me at . . . and remember, I like to hear from people who can spell! =] Roland Lowery (a.k.a. Jim Doe>