Sonic the Hedgehog #256 (February 2014)

Ben Bates cover the 4^th: Sonic and his all-girl backup band take on Eggman and his bot duo. Good cover but the subject matter has been done to death.

“Countdown to Chaos Part Last: The Princess and the Hammer”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracey Yardley!; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Steve Downer; Lettering: John E. Workman; Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovalo; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Doomsday Prophet: Mike Pellerito; Sega Licensing reps: Anthony Gaccione and Cindy Chau

Backing up a little, we arrive at the last panel of the Pirate Plunder Panic arc where Amy Rose, Cream, Cheese, Bean and Bark are dropped off in Mobitropolis. Just as they get the conversation ball rolling, Sally and Metal Sonic show up to demonstrate Newton’s First Law of Motion: a body in motion (Sally’s escape pod) tends to remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force (Metal Sonic and the ground). She manages to cut her way out of the escape pod using a jazzy electric something on her wrist, which can also go offensive/defensive when Metal Sonic pops back in to fulfill his prime directive. Amy Rose decides that if Heaven won’t help the working girl she’ll take a swing at it herself. Bean and Bark decide that this isn’t going to be any fun so they run away (applause).

We then get three pages of two girls and a bot (Cream and Cheese are not that much of a factor) before the White Berets show up and demonstrate that they’re no better at containing Metal Sonic. So, it’s time for the one and only Sonic to get dropped into the story, landing on top of Metal. Sonic then goes into Catch Me If You Can mode and lures Metal out of the city where Tails bisects Metal with an air-to-badnik missile.

Sonic heads back to the city where his first order of business is a teary-eyed embrace of Sally, followed by some equal time for Amy to placate the SonAmy crowd. Then there’s a father-daughter reunion for Sally lasting all of one panel.

Then it’s back to Sky Patrol where Nicole suggests doing a three-way with Amy and Sally together, which leads up to a one-page recap for the sake of the girls and the noobs out in the audience. Sally actually thinks the alternate timeline explanation is logical and despite cautions from Bunnie and Sonic, determines to go ahead with the brain blast for the sake of Mobius and for Nicole. As does Amy.

Amy’s reaction is seriously understated while Sally has a major breakdown over what happened to her up to the point where Archie Editorial yelled “Abandon continuity!” and hid behind Mega Man for four months. Bunnie is there to comfort her but Nicole is now the one having a freak-out, telling Rotor to take off.

Finally resuming her out-of-computer form, Nicole declares that “the entire multiverse collapsed in upon itself.” Which means … what the frack does it mean? Let’s go to Eggman for the color commentary. “Every facet of reality fell in on itself and was recreated.” OK, that wasn’t very helpful, either. Near as I can tell this is Ian’s way of saying that, between the Genesis Wave and Super Sonic’s botched Chaos Control, enough energy was expended to change “reality” but got sponged up into the planet which isn’t capable of handling it. So according to both Nicole and Eggman, it’s the end of the world as they know it, whereupon Mobius obligingly starts coming apart.

HEAD: You’d think that a concept such as “end of the world” wouldn’t be this difficult to explain, but Ian is throwing around such vague terms as “mutilverse” and changing “molecular make-up.” There’s really no clear-cut explanation as to what’s going on here, nothing along the lines of “The core of the planet is overheating” or “Mobius was knocked out of orbit and is falling into the sun” or something tangible like that. Heck, they might as well have said “Dark Gaia is angry!” and let it go at that. If you’re going for the end of the world, you should take the trouble to make a good job of it, especially if it’s in the service of altering the story reality.

And there’s a lot to deal with. On the eve of When Worlds Collide, the condition of the comic’s continuity was pretty sad. Remember what we’re leaving behind: Sally roboticized, Antoine as good as dead (I still think he should have died in the explosion), Bunnie wandering off to who knows where, Geoff possessed by Naugus, Snively in suspended animation. It was pretty crazy stuff, but nothing IMO that couldn’t have been dealt with by some serious writing. It may have been wandering into wallbanger territory, which according to Ralph Hayes Jr. is when a writer loses control of their story and the thing starts bouncing off the walls, but it really didn’t require a Crisis on Infinite Earths-style continuity reset.

That’s what this feels like, though I have no idea where they can take this. The whole End of The World thing is so overworked anyway that this comic really needed a better excuse to shake things up. Instead we sense that something is happening but it’s really on the vague side. I can only hope things clear up as our gang solves this problem of … whatever it is.

Beyond that we’re in cozily familiar territory; maybe too familiar. Sonic fights Metal Sonic; when haven’t we seen that? Eggman and two comic relief robots: bo-ring! Sonic caught between Sally and Amy Rose for the umpteenth time. The really big draw here is Sally, finally back in the pelt without any explanation whatsoever if you go back before When Worlds Collide. First she was a robot, then Sonic goes on vacation with Mega Man, now she’s not. And all the talk about realities and energies was no help at all in understanding what’s happening here. It’s like, “Never mind all that and now let’s focus on the latest crisis.” In the various Star Trek incarnations you can get an explanation that at least sounds convincing, even if you don’t know exactly what tachyon particles are supposed to do or how a warp shell operates. Here, the clearest explanation is Eggman’s line “I was rewriting reality,” which sounds like Ian’s orders from Archie Editorial. This story, which is more intent on teeing up the comic’s new incarnation than in taking care of old business, barely counts as story-telling. It’s all about throwing the characters into an arbitrary situation. And that’s not storytelling. Head Score: 4.

EYE: Tracy Yardley! is back and in form. He gets his jazzy layouts for the fight scenes right, and does justice to the two-page spread of Mobius going bye-bye at the end. I was disappointed that he didn’t pour himself into Sally’s freak-out, about which more below. Eye: 9.

HEART: I was sorely disappointed in Sally’s return, especially after Bunnie’s freak-out in the previous issue. She put in a full page, was not burdened by dialogue, and Antoine was there as emotional support. Sally IMO deserved at least as much consideration.

Instead, she starts monologueing about her past misdeeds, of which the fan base is only too familiar, except for the “war” part which will probably remain a tease for all eternity. The good news is someone steps in to comfort her; the not-so-good news is that it’s Bunnie and not Sonic. The worse news is nobody steps forward for Amy Rose’s sake.

Then again, check out the dynamic when Sonic and Sally finally reunite. It starts well enough but then turns into a typical Archie set-up. Just as Archie forever has his attentions divided between Betty and Veronica, Sonic finds himself between Sally and Amy Rose, literally at one point. This is writing dictated by Editorial and not by the story itself.

And whatever Heart the story generated up to this point is quickly shoved off-panel as the comic prepares for Mobius to come to an ambiguous end … maybe. It’s not yet clear exactly where this continuity is going, but as of this writing we know that Archie, in line with Sega’s overlordship, has several paths open. One is an impending Sonic Adventure 3 game, and the other is an impending animated series named Sonic Boom. I’ll hold off comment on these until they each rear their heads in the comic. Archie could also go with “None of the above” for the comic; we’ll have to wait and see on that as well. But it’s clear that whatever direction the comic takes, it won’t exactly be character-driven, which is the point of Heart. Heart Score: 6.

FAN ART: Hunter draws the franchise of Sonic Tails and Knuckles, Jeff draws Sonic, and Donald draws Super Sonic. But Arion’s drawing of Sonic engaged in battling badniks is pretty darn super in itself.

OFF PANEL: Sonic has Rotor retrofit an old Eggman devise to serve as a chilidog delivery system. And Evan Stanley makes Rotor look like an ewok in the third panel; I’m just saying.

SONIC-GRAMS: Only one letter from Jamie!, a self-proclaimed Scourge fan, who actually gets some practical advice on how to be a better artist. Maybe Editorial got to feeling bad that they stiffed Joey for asking pretty much the same question in last month’s column. They also get a chance to flog the reprints for those who don’t have the Sonic/Archie app. Not everybody feels the need to invest hundreds of dollars to buy a device on which to read a $3 comic book.