Sonic the Hedgehog #249 (July 2013)

Pat Spaziante cover: With this cover composition, Spaz gives new meaning to “Sonic Rush.” As for Tails, who’s handling more of a payload than he’s used to, he’s probably wishing T-Pup had come along so he could have delegated this airlift to him.

”When Worlds Collide Part 6: Friends or Foes”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Thomas Mason; Lettering: F. R. Fiegel; Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Comic Book Man: Mike Pellerito; Video Game Licensing Drones: Capcom vs. Sega, featuring Anthony Gaccione, Cindy Chau and Brian Oliveira.

PREVIOUSLY: Last time Blue and Bluer overcame Kinko and the Genesis Has-Beens through “the super power of teamwork,” which didn’t prevent Wily and Eggman from obtaining all seven Chaos Emeralds and putting Dr. Light on ice.

“Such expert design!” “Such brilliant craftsmanship!” No, it’s not two gay guys from Greenwich Village enthusing over a Chippendale highboy at an antique mall. It’s Drs. Wily and Eggman singing the praises of each other’s robotic technology. As I said already, it appears that with this diabolical duo Archie had no shot of it being taken seriously so someone decided that the best that they can do is camp it up. “Do go on!” as Eggy says later.

We then get a formal introduction to the eight Robians acting as the guest stars: three Chaotix, plus Shadow, Amy Rose, Silver, Knuckles and Blaze.

“Enough!” Mega Man says after three pages of exposition and introduction, but Wily and Eggman pay him no heed and forge ahead with letting the good guys know that they have the Chaos Emeralds and that the RMs will now be targeting them. Which is pretty much what I learned from the “Previously” page, even though the same information just managed to eat up 4 pages of the story itself.

Blues, who dresses in red, decides that he needs to get out of this game and volunteers to scout on ahead. He ends up drawing the non-Chaotix after him, leaving a 3-on-3 match (Sonic, Mega and Tails vs. Chaotix) if you don’t count Rush.

In the midst of this fight comes another one of those improbable battlefield conversations. Mega states that it took a combo platter of one of his charge shots and whatever Sonic did (referred to as a Spin Dash Blast) to snap Tails out of being Tails Man. So the good guys fall back and Tails has to work to rewire Mega’s shooter while under fire and coming up to speed on his tech all at the same time. The kid should get hazardous duty pay for this story arc. It finally gets done, Vector reverts, and Mega gets Vector’s mojo. The story at this point could have been written in BASIC: :REPEAT Charmy, :REPEAT Espio.

Mega is now equipped with the mojos of Vector, Charmy and Espio, and a black-and-purple ensemble which I think is a really good look for him. After some more dialogue, they all head for the latest Death Egg while Eggman and Wily each throw a Shadow Man into the pot and Eggy throws Blaze and Silver on the discard pile. Still, being comic book villains, they decide to build “a ludicrously massive and over-powered vehicle of mayhem and destruction” as back-up even with the Chaos Emeralds in their possession. And they still have Dr. Light as a hole card (remember him?).

HEAD: Well, we’re at the halfway point and the story really hasn’t progressed all that much since the last installment except there are more characters to play with. And that’s not unusual.

Comic continuity and time progression come in two settings: on and off. Let’s take family-oriented comics as an example. At one end of the spectrum is “Family Circus” by Bil Keane (1922-2011) which debuted in 1960 and which is being continued as of this writing by Jeff Keane since his father Bil passed away. In all that time, there has been no change in the family; the four kids haven’t aged a day. Time has stood still.

At the other end is Lynn Johnston’s “For Better or For Worse” which debuted in 1979 and went into reruns in 2008. In that time the characters aged and changed, with Michael growing up to become a writer and Elizabeth becoming a teacher in a First Nations village. Other milestones in the series include the birth of a third child named April, the death of the family dog, Farley, and a story arc where one of Michael’s childhood friends, Lawrence, comes out of the closet, thus blazing the trail for Kevin Keller.

Even in a real-time continuity, time can be slowed for effect or when the story arc calls for it. Kiyohiko Azuma’s 4-frame comic strip, Azumanga Daioh, ran from 1999-2002, long enough to chronicle the three years of Japanese high school of Chiyo Mihama, a 10-year old genius who can handle the course work in high school but in other respects is in way over her pigtails. The strip follows Chiyo and her close friends through high school lessons, weird teachers, and enough personality quirks to populate a small village.

In one story arc, Chiyo invites her friends and a couple teachers as chaperones to stay at her family’s summer house; yes, on top of her being terminally cute and a genius, her family is rich. And she knows how to cook. When they get there, her impulsive high-energy friend Tomo Takino tosses the house key into some tall grass. The story arc then takes 3 days to locate the key as time slows to a crawl. Once it’s found, the statuesque Sakaki puts Tomo in a full nelson to make sure she doesn’t pull that stunt again while Chiyo unlocks he door.

I mention this to demonstrate that there are times when time either stands still in a comic or it just feels that way. That’s certainly the vibe I get here. Despite the fight between the two teams of characters, it really doesn’t feel as if anything was accomplished in this installment. The good guys beat the bad guys, of course; in this comic, that’s such a routine call that it would be a major shock if Sonic or one of his friends ever came off the worse in a fight. And Wily and Eggman act like the hare in his race against the tortoise in the Aesop fable: they’re so self-confident that it never occurs to them to use the Chaos Emeralds to fire up … whatever is supposed to be fired up. No wonder the readers can’t take these two seriously.

We don’t get a hard-and-fast explanation of Mega’s mojo gathering rules, but Tails could probably supply that. In this story, he’s modifying Megs and making him compatible with Sonic’s spin despite its being a foreign technology. Why not? He is, after all, “kind of a genius” who does “a lot of research.” Archie should just change his name to Mary Sue and get it over with. This is the kind of sequence that reminds me of the fact that an Apple computer was perfectly capable of syncing in with the mother ship in “Independence Day.” Happens all the time. Head Score: 5.

EYE: Because the Robians take the stage along with the Mobians, Tracy Yardley!’s artwork doesn’t exactly break new ground. Rather, he has to keep everything loose and supple to accommodate the action sequence and the boring exposition parts. Eye Score:7.

HEART: In Sonic Universe 17-20’s “Trouble in Paradise,” we had Antoine and Bunnie taking a thoroughly interruptible and sexless honeymoon. As off as that entire set-up was, we have no real Heart factor here at all, which is even worse.

Heart, as you’ll recall, is the capacity of the story to make the readers care about what’s happening. And it’s pretty darn hard to care about a foregone conclusion. Sonic and Tails come through and are able to assist Mega in subduing the Guest Robians in this story, without even a failed beta test or a dry run. If things are going to be this easy, we may as well all sit back on our seats. It’s pretty clear that Ian isn’t working all that hard to keep us on the edge of them.

I really don’t care how much of a genius Tails is; his genius only seems to manifest itself when it’s convenient. And as I said there’s zero suspense in whether Tails can get the job done. Of course he can! He’s become a Mary Sue! And that doesn’t work any better in a legit comic book than it does in a fanfic.

The only thing worse is the use of Dr. Light as a glorified place-holder. There’s still no hint of whatever connection there is between him and Duo, but Archie seems to think just showing him isolated in a stasis chamber or whatever is enough to keep reader interest in the absence of anything even remotely resembling story development. It isn’t. It just isn’t. Heart Score: 3.

ATTENTION READERS: Move along. Nothing to see here. Keep moving. Move along.

OFF-PANEL: I’m a Mega Man noob so I have no idea who’s getting his last good nerve worked on by Marina. But this is either a joke without a punch line or else it’s a joke that’s all punch line. In any event, it’s a waste of space.

SONIC GRAMS: John R. wants to see a Sonic reader on Google Play, wants to know how the crossover idea came to be, demonstrates that for all his professed love of Eggman he missed out on the “Scrambled” story arc, and wants to see more Silver. Me, I want to see more Silver/Blaze. CJ wants to know if there’s an inexpensive way to catch up on back issues. I swear, Marketing has taken over the backside of the comic.

FAN ART: Kenny gives is Sonic vs. Mega with Metal as referee; Michaela does Sonic with pretty green eyes, Alexander draws a Mega and Sonic portrait, and Ajani from Jamaica gives us an irie Sonic with Chaos Emerald.