Sonic The Hedgehog #223 (May 2011)

Peppers/Austin/Herms cover: Sonic literally gets in Naugus’s face as he tells him to “Say it, don’t spray it!” Well done, if you’re into close-ups.

“Chaos and the Crown: Part 1: The Right To Rule”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Ben Bates; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; President: Mike Pellerito

The Forget-Me-Knots are setting up for their next gig “outside the civic center,” and once again Sonic and Sally are there, with some of the rest of the gang in reserve. Before things can get too “Where’s Waldo?” Mina starts to introduce the show, but then a mysterious figure rushes the stage. No it’s not Kanye West (and you’ll have to wait until next issue to see that joke retold), it’s Geoff. Before Sonic and his crew can rush the stage, however, Geoff turns the mike over to his main magician, Naugus. Getting in the spirit of a few issues back, Naugus tries to play on the crowd’s anti-Nicole sentiment but doesn’t waste any time trying to up the anxiety quotient. Nicole, however begs to differ and tries to encase him in what looks like pieces of sewer pipe. That proves to be an appropriately smelly idea because Naugus busts out easily enough. He then announces that he’s off to present his credentials to the Council. This time it’s Sonic’s turn to object, but his luck isn’t any better when it comes to stopping the wacko wizard. Worst of all, the guards take Geoff at his word when he says he’s on official business so they decide to follow standard procedure and stand around with their thumbs up their butts. So it looks like it’s up to Sonic’s crew.

Unfortunately, they’re way off their game and Geoff can anticipate their attacks and smack them around. And even when Nicole manages to trap him he uses the cheesy shadow-meld technique he’s picked up from Naugus to get out of it.

We then get a one-page interlude of Eggman and Lien-Da setting up the back story. Skippable waste of a page.

Meanwhile, Naugus has entered the castle and resorts to what looks a lot like earth-bending to bar the door to keep Sonic from following him, so Sonic has to find an alternate entrance. In the Council chamber, Naugus makes it simple: he offers them the option of letting him take over.

We then get a couple pages of Geoff mopping up the lawn with the Freedom Fighters accompanied by way too much talking for a fight … unless you’re a comic book character. He then ups the mood spoilage by dropping the following bomb with a straight face: “Hershey’s dead. She’s been dead for a while.”

[SFX: tires screeching]

OK, I’ll admit she hasn’t put in much of an appearance in this book in a while … OK, a LONG while. But I blame that on two factors not mentioned by Geoff: the fact that the writers never really figured out what to do with her (see also MORGAN, NATE), and that because she was married to Geoff they were doomed to being seriously underrepresented in a comic that has gone out of its way NOT to highlight the everyday behavior of married furries (with the major and practically sole exception of Sonic and Sally in the officially non-canonical Mobius 30 Years Later arc). Just wanted to get that off my chest for the moment, but I’ll have more to say about this development in the Head and Heart sections.

Of course, having raised a plot point THAT important, Ian thinks it best to abandon it for the rest of the story and rejoin the hot political action in Council chambers. Not that there’s that much story left to tell. Naugus is assuring the Council that they won’t be putting out of work (Yeah, right!) but by then Sonic has figured out how to put in an appearance, and Prince Elias hands off the Sword of Acorns. So much for this installment.

HEAD: I’ve heard fans wonder out loud if S225 will end up being like the infamous “Endgame” arc (S47-50). Ladies and gentlemen, Ian Flynn has just perpetrated an Endgame moment and we’re still two issues away.

In S47’s “Taking The Fall,” Sally “died” under circumstances involving Hershey mistaking Sally for Snively, a weird pair of glasses and a badly-fitting Sonic suit. And if you think it sounds stupid HERE you haven’t read the original Endgame plot. That act, however, emotionally trumped the subsequent Sonic Has To Prove His Innocence plot. Death, after all, is an emotionally engaging experience for those left behind, and only a comic book creative can just drop a character death into a story line and exploit it as a cliffhanger.

Granted that Hershey didn’t have a lot going for her in this comic. I blame the writers for not trying harder to integrate her. She did have an engaging role as abused girlfriend of Drago the wolf, and by issue #50 she turns around and kicks his tush severely. After that, she had nowhere to go but into the arms of Geoffrey as a love interest and eventual spouse

The online Mobius Encyclopedia article on Hershey hedges on the question of whether she’s really dead. After all, back in issue #219, Geoff himself hedged when the hedgehog asked him about Hershey. And for the moment all we have is Geoff’s word for it, and he hasn’t exactly been acting like what used to be called a straight shooter. And finally this IS an Archie comic, and the medium as a whole is more infamous for perpetrating death cheats than actual deaths.

There’s been some buzz concerning the motive for the death, with some weight given to the fact that she was a character created by Ken Penders, who has locked horns with the management over use of characters he created during his stewardship of the storyline. I’m not buying it, myself. There are plenty of other Penders-created characters who have found even a tenuous foothold in the continuity, from Drago and Geoff themselves to the anti-Sonic (since relaunched as Scourge since the introduction of Shadow derailed the original “evil Sonic” concept).

So why did Ian kill off Hershey? Don’t ask me; I think it’s a horrible idea myself. Unless somewhere in the course of the impending Genesis story arc he’ll undo the death of Hershey in the same way that the Genesis device undid the death of Spock in the second Star Trek movie.

Anyway, the alleged heart of the story, the focus of the cover art, in fact, is Sonic versus Naugus, which so far has been a fairly by-the-numbers affair. After Geoff does for Naugus what Grima did for Saruman in “Lord of the Rings,” acting as his front man and general pimp, Naugus locks himself in the Council chamber and says “I’m in charge.” Of course Sonic eventually shows up and he’s all “Nuh-UH!” And Naugus is all “Uh-HUH!” and that’s where the story ends.

I thought that the exploitation of the Forget-Me-Knots in fostering an anti-Nicole mood a few issues back would have had more consequences before Naugus made his move. OK, I’m not a powerful psycho wizard, but if I were to manipulate the fears of the populace, I’d have seen to it that it bore some fruit, that some restrictions would be placed on Nicole before making a naked power grab. This just feels too half-baked. But I suppose Ian had to bow before the almighty rule of a major plot shake-up every 25 issues.

So we’ve got Geoff fighting the Freedom Fighters, Sonic about to rumble with Naugus, and Eggman up to something (see next story). But I came away from this story thinking only one thing: Ian owes us a damn good explanation as to what happened to Hershey. Head Score: 6.

EYE: Ben Bates handles the penciling chores here, and turns in good work. He doesn’t render Naugus as disgustingly detailed as Steven Butler, and he does a good job of making Geoff look appropriately snarky. He’s also able to finesse the act of Geoff smacking Bunnie upside the head. The CCA may be no more, but Archie DOES have standards. Eye Score: 9.

HEART: Perhaps I’m the wrong person at the wrong time to be reviewing this issue; having become a widower myself not quite two months ago may be clouding my perspective. However, I DID receive this issue in the mail before my wife died, and my feelings then were the same as they are now: using the ambiguous circumstances of a character death is just a cheap way to pique reader interest. That lesson should have been learned after Endgame, but it obviously has worn off.

The way that Geoff broke the news makes it all the more galling. He just drops the bomb, as I said, without any kind of feeling himself. Ordinarily, I’d say that this just proves my earlier contention that this is a faux Geoff. NO husband, no matter what kind of marriage it was, can speak of the death of his wife without SOME feeling! Here, Ian seems to go out of his way to have Geoff just toss off the news with no emotional echo whatsoever.

Once again, the comic has betrayed what I had hoped for it when I first became an avid reader. In S18’s “In The Still Of The Night,” Sally is in attendance as her old mentor, Julayla, is dying. That a comic book story went there AT ALL was news to me, and I have nursed a hope that maybe, just maybe, a door was opening here to a level of mature writing.

Of course, it hasn’t worked out that way. There have been several attempts to capture the same lightning in a bottle, notably with stories concerning the deaths of Antoine’s father and of Locke. There was a hint of the old magic in the closing graveside scene in “The Royal Signet,” but that’s been it. We’re now back in Endgame territory where a character death isn’t something to be felt, it’s to be exploited. If I did that in a story, I’d be ashamed of myself. Heart Score: 5.

“Special Zone House Call”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Jamal Peppers; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman.

How to Steal a Chaos Emerald From Feist:

1. Have your lackey accompany you in his own Egg Mobile into the Special Zone.

2. Confront Feist and take him up on his challenge of a race between yourself and your lackey; the winner gets a Chaos Emerald.

3. Beat the lackey in the race (lackeys are ALWAYS beatable) and claim the Emerald.

4. Lose the Emerald to Feist, who then challenges you to choose only one reward: the Emerald or the lackey.

5. Claim the Emerald and leave the lackey behind.

Once outside the zone, retrieve the lackey using … OK, I’m still working on how to do that. Eggman makes it look really easy, though.

HEAD: The more I think about this story, the more it seems way too easy for Eggman to have pulled this off. If he needed “every last watt from this ragged city to open the portal,” what made him so sure he had enough juice to bring Snively back? And how did he know that Feist would agree with a head-to-head race for the emerald instead of some other kind of contest? I’m sorry, this is just too simple; it’s an exercise in “Have Eggman take possession of a Chaos Emerald in five pages or less.” On that level, it works. But ONLY on that level. Head Score: 5.

EYE: Peppers is brought in as the resident expert on drawing Eggman and Snively, but he’s no slouch when it comes to Feist, either. Eye Score: 10.

HEART: Aside from anyone who feels sorry for Snively and his lot in life, I can’t imagine any kind of a Heart factor at work here. Heart Score: n/a.

Spin Zone/Fan Art: Both columns are taken up with the results of an art contest, “Sonic Vs. …” And Sonic appears to have made a LOT of enemies in his career to date: El Gran Gordo (Brittany C.), old school Dimitri, I think (Kimberly K.), something green (sorry, but I can’t tell what it is from the thumbnail) (Elizabeth R.), Scratch and Grounder (Carmen C.), Dr. Finn (Carlos A.), Regina in dragon mode (Brittany M.), and Scourge (Mike K.).

Off-Panel: Another nod to El Gran Gordo. Sure, it looks funny and weird, but it’s worth a look at any of a number of luchador movies to realize just HOW weird the source material was to begin with.

Sonic-Grams: J.R. gives a shout-out to Knuckles. Mary Lee shows love to Tracy Yardley! and is told that no, the comic won’t be bringing in the Sonia and Manic from “Sonic Underground;” yes, Tommy Turtle is dead; she’s told nothing about any kind of romantic relationship between Nicole and Espio (not even a “Not really, they’re just good friends”); and nothing about Amy Rose’s being AWOL from Mobius 30 Years Later. And Michael is told that Dulcy the dragon will be back (about time!) and so will Merlin Prower. He could’ve been some help in THIS issue.