Sonic the Hedgehog #258 (May 2014)

Tyson Hesse cover: I’m going to step back and let the artist have his say, as he did when he posted this drawing on his deviantArt page:

“This year I got to fulfill a childhood fantasy and do a cover for Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comic series.  Growing up it was one of the only comics I read and spent much of my youth looking up to many of the featured artists and their different styles.  I can easily say that the book is better than it’s ever been now with a dedicated team of artists and writers that really put forth their best efforts every month.
So yes, I felt a little pressure going into this.  But I hope you like the end result.” It works for me as an unspecific study of the characters. I especially liked the Antoine-Bunnie expressions.

“The Chase: Part 1”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Evan Stanley; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Steve Downer; Lettering: John E. Workman; Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Disappearing Railroad Blues Brother: Mike Pellerito; Archie’s Executioner: Jonathan Goldwater; Sega Licensing rep: Anthony Gaccione.

Sonic has a train to catch. So do the rest of the Freedom Fighters, plus Amy Rose. While Amy is riding on the wing of Antoine’s plane (not very chivalrous of him, if you ask me), and Sonic and Tails take the Tornado, Sally and Rotor are riding hoverboards known as “Extreme Gear.” It beats walking. Bunnie is going solo. Their target is one of those devil trains from Sonic Heroes en route from Spagonia to “Bullet Station in Rail Canyon Zone.” So it’s pretty clear that Sega has laid out the itinerary for this trip. Their motivation is that Uncle Chuck and Prof. Pickle are on board.

Bunnie tries blasting through the access hatch on the roof of the engine but the results are rather meager. For Bunnie’s sake I hope Antoine doesn’t have the same problem. HELLO! I think this is the first time I’ve made an off-color joke in the course of writing these reviews since I wrote the “Top 10 Knuckles The Echidna Pick-Up Lines.”

But Sally isn’t a leader for nothing so she comes up with a Plan B: the hole may be too small for any of the furries to slip through but not for Nicole, who registers her displeasure with this assignment with a D: . Before Nicole can hack into the automated engine, the security system, an E-106 robot, tries to hack her. Into pieces. Sonic and Amy Rose then start doing a car-by-car search of the train. The bot smashes the controls and the train starts accelerating, a fact not lost on Pickle and Chuck who exchange witticisms and exposition.

Again, Sally picks up the ball after Sonic and Amy Rose drop it, but she asks Nicole to reach up her hand. Nicole then tosses the handheld up to Sally and manages to derez before getting stomped by the E-106 (frankly, Evan Stanley’s art at this point is a little jumbled) but she still manages to survive. The new plan is to do a car-by-car search, made difficult by the fact that the only way into any of the cars appears to be through the access hatches on the roof.

First off, Amy looks behind door number 1 and discovers that knocking the hatch into the car dented the side of some missiles. Had it landed on the warhead (assuming that Eggman is crazy enough to transport armed weapons), that would have been a major Oopsie.

Amy catches up with Bunnie and sugarcoats what just happened. Together they open door number 2 only to discover fuel and “supplies,” which is about as generic as you can get.

Sally and Rotor open door number 3 and discover they’ve broken into a reefer (a refrigerator car) hauling Eggman’s stash of munchies.

Sonic then opens door number 4 and uncovers the ultimate zonk: assorted badniks which have also been packed away without being put in standby mode, which is illogical though it sure spices up the plot. For better or worse, the badniks are attracted by the Tornado and Antoine’s plane the Twister, so Bunnie is sent upstairs to swat some flies while Sally, Rotor and Amy go old school on the Skorps turning them into baby chickies.

Remember how the train was accelerating a few pages back? It’s now time to do something with that plot point as the train hits a curve without slowing down. Sally and Rotor materialize their airboards but Sonic again goes old school and beats feet and gets an armful of Amy Rose. But how does he get her back on a moving train? Sega to the rescue! Sonic manages to repeat the log-hopping maneuver seen in a number of the platform games (e.g., the Angel Island Zone from Sonic 3), only using the airboards as stepping stones.

Finally, Sonic gets to the car that contains Uncle Chuck and Prof. Pickles, the latter’s dialogue being the kind of Brit Twit stuff that used to be spoken by clueless bobbies on the verge of becoming wolfman chow. As Uncle Chuck hints that Pickles’s researches point to something bigger than the fracturing of the planet (SRSLY?), the E-106 crashes the party. Welcome to the Boss Level.

HEAD: Well, Ian certainly gives value for money in this story. Even though the main plot driver is locating Uncle Chuck, we also get a runaway train and a rampaging robot. Just another day in the Sonicverse.

I get the impression that some members of the fandom were really impressed by the appearance of the Gear in this story. I have to admit that I’m underwhelmed by this development. To me, a Sonic story giving undue attention to the airboards means about as a much as a James Bond story that fixates on his car or his sidearm. They’re part of the Bond persona but they’re not who Bond is. In this case, the boards are only a sidebar, something for Sonic to take advantage of as the plot requires. That’s about as far as they ought to go in the comic.

Likewise, there’s the board-hopping sequence when Sonic rescues Amy Rose. I recognized it from the games as it happened. It reminded me of the Roger Ebert line about a film offering all the excitement of playing a video game without actually having to play a video game. Here’s hoping that Sega’s input into the comic doesn’t go beyond this level.

I haven’t been able to get very far into Sonic Unleashed, but from the few cut scenes I’ve seen of Dr. Pickle, he’s nowhere near the twit that Ian makes him out to be. I know this is supposed to be a comic book (emphasis on “comic”), but is it really necessary to dumb him down like this? Aside from the few other logic lapses for the sake of the plot, such as shipping badniks in operational mode, this one actually felt like an insult.

So this is the first story arc of the reset. Ian is certainly giving his Action and More Action credo a workout. I sense he would be perfectly happy if he could maintain this pitch issue after issue until further notice. I have my doubts that it would lead to decent story-telling, but we’ll see. Head Score: 7.

EYE: Evan Stanley keeps pace with the story and keeps the relatively new cast of characters on model. Her layouts were a little haphazard especially when Nicole has to avoid the E-106. Steve Downer’s color palette is perfect for the new Sega game-heavy visual style. Eye Score: 9.

HEART: Aside from the meet-up between Sonic and Uncle Chuck, which was in a hurry to get to the Brit Twit comic relief and a helping of exposition, there wasn’t really anything like a Heart moment in this story. Any concern for the welfare of Uncle Chuck was subordinate to the runaway train story and further buffered by the Brit Twit stylings of Prof. Pickle. Actually, the biggest Heart moment in this book is on the Fan Art page. I hope this anemic Heart situation does not become the new normal. Heart Score: 2.

SONIC-GRAMS: Only one letter, in part because of the appearance of the annual Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation. Brittney is told that Betty and Veronica … er, Sally and Amy … will be working together and that Sonic will maybe go full-blown werehog. Like they haven’t hinted at that already! She also hopes Honey the Cat from Sonic Fighters will become part of the comic. That should be interesting; she’s Sega-approved but someone from a fight game doesn’t really need personality, do they?

FAN ART: Chris brings the kind of Heart-moment reunion this comic could always use. Otherwise, we get some cute drawings of Nicole by Lord Biscuit, Sally by Mary, and Sonic and Tails by Desi-Rae.

OFF-PANEL: Jon Gray gives us a throwback to Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog as we see Eggman in a dress and a pickle suit. Forget the rationale, it’s Eggman in a dress and a pickle suit.