Sonic the Hedgehog #237 (July 2012)

Yardley!, Austin and Herms cover: See, this is what I was afraid of after last issue’s excellent cover. Here, Tracy Austin goes for the cheap effect of using an oversized full moon for backlighting. The trouble is, as anybody who’s tried taking a photograph against a light background can tell you, is that it darkens the subject in the foreground. Tails is especially darkened by this. And everybody has what looks like black clown make-up around their lips; what’s up with that? This cover tries for dramatic and just doesn’t work.

“Loyalty Part 1: The Right To Rule”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Steven Butler; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman; Assistan Editor: Vincent Lovallo; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Animal House Fraternity Guy: Mike Pellerito; Sega Licensing reps: Anthony Gaccione and Cindy Chau

Nothing like kicking some tail to start the day if you’re Eggman, and the butts he’s aiming at belong to Drago and Razorklaw. Their excuse is that the Wolf Pack and Felidae are getting along so well they can’t get any evil traction. Unfortunately, they wasted so much juice on the previous story arc the Death Egg is running on fumes. See, I just got the job done without resorting to 4 text boxes. Anyway, Eggman decides that Mecha Sally is more than just eye candy at this point and asks her for a plan. The plan: kidnap the leader of each group to get something started between them. Didn’t they do something like that the last time we were in this neck of the woods? Right, they stole some McGuffin instead which put dog and cat at each other’s throats.

So, for the next three pages, we get Mecha Sally kidnapping Lupe and the Cat queen. We then cut to Sonic, Tails and Amy arriving and getting an earful of exposition while some of the characters engage in really distracting bits of business. But it doesn’t take long for the gang to figure out what’s going on and to put together a rescue party.

The party makes its way into the jungle, where Amy Rose still speaks of Antoine as if he’s technically alive; frankly, I think that a warrior class such as the Felidae would appreciate it if Antoine had fallen in the line of battle. But while the group is on the hunt, the hunt catches up to them in the form of Razorklaw in pursuit of Queen Hathor who technically shed the office when she shed her regal swag. Once Razorbrain has been dismissed Hathor gets a page of exposition as to how Lupe helped her escape. The Felidae start pulling an attitude which could undo everything but Hathor is able to rally the troops, just not whole-heartedly.

Meanwhile, we get a basic cliffhanger ending where Eggman threatens to legionize/customize Lupe. And let’s face it, after what happened to Sally this is getting old.

HEAD: This is a pretty mixed bag with a very slow launch. In fact, Mecha Sally tells us what she’s going to do and then we watch her do it. With a little adroit rewriting, the page of Mecha Sally outlining the plan could have been used for something else. I’m not sure what, however. Maybe there could have been an expansion to two pages of the Lupe-Hathor flashback so that the gooey lumps of dialogue could have been spread out more. Despite the few silent sequences which are really quite effective, this is a really talkative story, the kind that makes me wonder whether Ian is being paid by the word.

I’ll be honest; the minor characters among the Wolf Pack have left such a faint impression that I don’t remember the names of anybody, be they canine or be they human. That’s not good. In the case of one character, one of the human girls, she was supposed to be a mute but the writers have never capitalized on that. That should have gone SOMEWHERE, given the artist(s) a chance to do some rudimentary American Sign Language in a panel or two. They never picked up on the possibility.

Even as the Archie flagship comic was pulling away from the dumb jock stereotype by explaining that Moose is dyslexic, the only thing that seems to have happened to Athena (whose name I had to look up on Sonic Wiki) is that Matt Herms changed her from a brunette to a ginger in this story. And they call this “character development” in Mamaroneck.

Compare what happened to Athena with a minor player in the animated Smurf series. Named Laconia, she’s a mute wood elf (if she were in the Disney Fairies stable, she’d be a Flower Fairy) who actually uses ASL in the two episodes where I know she had a role. Still, her mute status (even deaf-mute based on her appearance in the ep where she marries a wood elf) is part of her character and not something that was tossed off in the beginning and then dropped. It survived because the writers took it seriously.

The same holds true for Toph BeiFong, from “Avatar: The Last AirBender.” Even though she didn’t appear until the second season (which spared her the indignity of appearing in the misbegotten Avatar movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan), her personality more than made up for it, just as her major earthbending skills more than compensated for her blindness.

I have NO idea if Athena’s character can be retooled. She barely appears in this story at all, riding astride one of the Wolf Pack and grabbing her by the ears, a maneuver that San (the title character in Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke”) would never think of doing. Characters that poorly thought out and executed should never be brought into a story until their existence can be more completely justified by the writers. Since Ian can neither play nor trade her, it’s almost better to pretend she was never created.

As to the story itself, I don’t know why but it seems as if any time the story revolves around the Wolf Pack and the Felidae there’s a very high probability that it will turn into a no-brainer based on exploiting the ancient dog-cat dynamic. That’s probably the best you can expect from a comic book, but one of the reasons I’ve stayed with Sonic this long is that the continuity had enough interesting elements in it that I thought it could challenge, if not defy, expectation. Not gonna happen in THIS story.

The only real diversion is the complicating factor about the Felidae and the social role of clothing and dress. This gets trotted out in the course of the conversation between Sonic and Hathor. It adds a grand total of zip to the story itself but is useful when it comes to filling out the already-low page count. It’s a good thing this is a two-parter because when the soup is this thin to start with there’s no point in trying to extend it to three parts, never mind four. Head Score: 5.

EYE: Steven Butler’s artwork only gets a chance to breathe during the Sally sequences in the beginning and for the cliffhanger end. Once it gets deeper into the story, the artwork becomes nearly as impenetrable as the jungle. It’s good, I’m not saying that it isn’t, but it’s packed awfully tight in there. Eye Score: 7.

HEART: Effectively, there is no real Heart moment here, not even when Lupe’s daughter tells Amy Rose that her mother is missing. The fact that it doesn’t work tells you what kind of Heart poison exposition can be. Maybe they’ll figure it out in time for the conclusion. Heart Score: n/a

“Heart to Heart”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman

Nicole has company, in the form of Mina. But given the treatment she’s received lately, including exile to this location, she prefers to text Mina. And with lines such as “You got just what you wanted” and “I failed my friends” she gets the point across. Mina, for her part, thinks that the conversation is primarily about herself: this is reinforced with dialogue such as “This isn’t what I wanted” and “I got it so wrong” and “I failed as a freedom fighter.” Eventually Nicole rezzes in so they could have an actual conversation, unfocused though it may be. And just on the verge of a happy ending for this story, Who butts in at the last moment? You know the answer to that one.

HEAD: It may be some kind of rule, but it seems to me that the fewer characters a story has the more potential for being a cut above the norm. I’d have to go back and research that, but just comparing the two stories in this issue, it seems to hold up.

The plot itself is simple enough: Mina apologizes for turning the populace against Nicole at her concert back in S221. I know the results of her art, enhanced and amplified by Naugus are available for all to see: the Royals broken up, Antoine out of the picture, Bunnie in exile and Naugus and his mental cabinet large and in charge. Still, there’s a certain abrupt feeling to Mina’s apology because we didn’t get to see her put two and two together and come up with “Oops!” So her confession and repentance just look too arbitrary. It wouldn’t have killed Ian to put her in one panel in an earlier story asking herself “What have I done?” It would have gone a long way toward teeing up THIS story.

The only other character of importance is Nicole, and she plays it well. But how she plays it is best left to the Heart section.

That just leaves a last-moment appearance by Harry Who. As I believe I’ve made clear whenever he pulls this sort of thing, the more I see of him the more I distrust him. His showing up where and when he does is way too easy; in this case, he would have had to be either stalking Mina or else he thinks that hanging with a traumatized A.I. is a good time. It’s just too simple, too convenient and, as a result, too suspicious. If the floor is still open for nominations for Traitor you know Who’s getting my vote. Head: 5.

EYE: One thing I can count on with Tracy Yardley! is dynamic layouts that generally are in sync with the action of the story. For whatever reason, things are in a jumble here, especially for the second and third pages. Granted there’s a huge difference between a character who can show emotion and a static vid screen with text on it, but until Nicole rezzes in herself it just feels weird. Of course Mina’s dialogue is so copious that it does serve to limit Tracy’s options.

Finally, there’s the art at the top of the last page. It just seems too self-congratulatory for a scene of reconciliation and forgiveness. Nicole’s expression in the third panel is all wrong for the moment; she looks like she’s just heard a really great joke. The moment when she talks about developing emotions demands more of a Data-esque sobriety. The art is good but in several respects it’s also wrong. Eye Score: 6.

HEART: This story works better if you cut past the obvious and get in touch with the sub-text. There’s a lot of Heart in this story even though it’s as closely held as a prisoner at Guantanamo.

Ian gets off a good opening shot with Mina’s self-talk: “Okay … you can do this … you can do this.” Not only does it speak to the timing and why it’s taken this long for Mina to get to “Oops!” but it also speaks to Mina’s own feelings about having to back down from her previous stance as well as to confront the person (yes, I know there’s probably a difference of opinion about that) whom she’s hurt. Anyone who’s worked the 9^th Step of the 12 -- Made direct amends to … people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others – would understand.

Here is one instance where the story structure and the unremitting use of exposition actually work for the Heart factor. It’s not enough for Mina to just show up and say “Sorry;” she ends up explaining herself to Nicole and the readers.

Of course Mina’s repentance isn’t exactly complete. On the final page she admits to working on new material and “I’m going to get the message right this time!” With Naugus capable of swaying the popular mood the way he did the first time, I can only say “Good luck with that.”

Speaking of Naugus, I believe we’ve come to the point in the narrative where he’s decided that he’s not letting Eggman have all the jollies. As a result, I wouldn’t be surprised if he sees to it that Mina disappears if she tries to revisit her message. Tactically, he’s had to refrain from taking out his enemies; that could change.

Still, this story has some serious Heart in spite of itself, even when the plotting and/or the art work against it. It finally succumbs to its forced ending where Ian throws away whatever emotional development he’s managed to generate so he can get back to the plot. Heart Score: 7.

Sonic Spin: “Calling all echidnas!” Remember back when this continuity was crawling with them? Of course, back then the Knuckles chores were handled by Ken Penders, or as they call him at Archie Comics these days, “He Who Must Not Be Named.”

Fan Art: It’s mainly Sonic this issue, with portraits by Matthew and Tuff, and thanks to Dorothy we get a sense of what’s been on his mind these days.

Fan Funnies: Spencer gives us Sonic about to roller skate his face into a barbershop pole.

Off-Panel: This is a pretty obvious hint as to what happens to characters whom are suddenly shoved off-page. That population may increase as the story continues to lurch toward S250.

Fan Mail: Hannah asks if the writers could try to make Silver a little more intelligent (THANK you!), but Editorial points to his alleged development since he landed here. She also wants to know how quickly Ian comes up with scripts, but Editorial isn’t saying. Hunter asks about the Time Stones as seen in “Super Sonic Magizine [sic].” He also guesses that Silver uses Chronos Control to time travel and that Sally could be the traitor.

I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that, although the comic still has a long way to go until S250, Archie put profit ahead of, well, every other consideration and at this year’s New York Comic Con they debuted Sally’s new very-much-deroboticized look. I suppose I always knew that Ian would pull her out of it in some cynical corner of my soul, but they went ahead and trashed about a year’s worth of development on their own. And people wonder why the medium isn’t taken seriously.