Sonic the Hedgehog #262 (September 2014)

Ben Bates cover: Sonic suddenly remembers why he doesn’t do water in his games. The Lisa Frank Dayglo monsters are in on the action, but the air bubbles kind of get in the way. Less would definitely be more in this case.

“Waves of Change Part 3: Terror in the Deep”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Gabriel Cassata; Lettering: John E. Workman; Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Suits: Mike Pellerito and Jon Goldwater; Sega Licensing rep: Anthony Gaccione

Punching out bad guys; Sonic is back in his comic book element. But when Razor takes a stab at one of them it disappears in a cloud of dark Gaia. That sounds a lot better than calling it “gunk” but Sonic has to issue a spoiler alert for Amy when she tries to bring up the now-ancient plot point that Sonic has been exposed to the stuff before. Coral and Pearly then show up, with Coral auditioning for a new job as Prophet of Doom since she’s been sacked as priestess. Razor tries to inflate her self-esteem, but Sonic figures out that the gassy goons are attacking the city proper. Sonic and Rotor grab their air charms and leave.

Indeed, the beasties are overrunning the city when they show up. Sonic suggests to Striker that he send some troops to the shrine but Striker strikes that idea. Rotor and Sonic continue on until they run into a Boss-level beastie.

Back at the shrine, Coral is doing her best but nothing is happening. She decides to set her playlist to “shuffle.” I don’t think that’s going to help. As for Pearly, she almost gets creamed herself until Amy Rose makes the save. Turns out that assigning her to Chao-sit the Chao was a bad idea because they creep her out. Uh, srsly? Anyway, Amy gives her a pep scolding and Pearly leads the Chao in the Konrad Lorenz Imprint March.

After stopping another beastie, Amy learns from Pearly that the two air charms Sonic and Rotor took hadn’t been topped off. This is something Sonic and Rotor both realize a page later. They want to make a break for the surface but the boss beast is all “I don’t think so.” So while the beastie seems to have developed a taste for blubber, we finally, FINALLY, see Sonic go wolfhog. And that’s going to help him breathe underwater … how exactly?

HEAD: Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) was an Austrian zoologist and Nobel laureate. In the 1930s he formally documented the process of imprinting – that during their first days of life baby chicks (baby birds in general fascinated Lorenz ever since his own childhood) would recognize the first thing they saw as their parent. It didn’t even have to be a bird in Lorenz’s experiments; they could even imprint themselves onto colored balls or Lorenz himself. The drawing of Pearly leading the Chao line (as opposed to the chow line) is an indirect tribute to the work of Konrad Lorenz. I should also point out, before I forget, that Lorenz also theorized that creatures with large eyes are attractive to humans because infants have large eyes in relation to the rest of their head and seeing large-eyed creatures make us feel all parental and protective about them. This might also explain the appeal of manga and anime characters as well as the cast of “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.” Big eyes are also the norm in the Sonicverse but while imprinting may help explain the comic’s endurance, it’s not much help with the stories.

This installment suffers from a really glaring plot hole. Sonic, you’ll remember, huffed up a heaping helping of dark Gaia eight issues back, setting up his wolfhog transformation. The underwater beasties, however, disappear in a cloud of dark Gaia when attacked. That’s run into the ground on page [2]. The results: not so much as a hissy fit from those exposed to it. So either the reference to the dark Gaia was a classic red herring amongst all the other aquatic wildlife, or else Ian’s holding back something with which to goose up the comic a few issues from now.

We don’t get more than a panel’s worth of attention to this development, with Ian preferring to focus on sea bass-kicking. Twelve of the 15 pages of this story are devoted, in whole or in part, to fight scenes. The rest are taken up with fairly useless dialogue, with Coral’s attack of resolution, and Pearly’s freak-out over the Chao. By the time we get to Sonic’s deep-sea lycanthropy, it’s the end of the story and we’re ready to place short bets on how long the transformation will last. Last time Sonic started to transform it petered out after 2 panels. And even if Sonic were half-hedgehog and half water spaniel, it wouldn’t help him breathe underwater, so what’s the point? Head Score: 3.

EYE: Tracy Yardley (who’s dropped the “!” from the end of his name for unexplained reasons) takes up the artistic chores where Jennifer Hernandez left off. The art looks totally on-model but the feeling is off. Yardley has always been strong with page layouts during fight scenes, jazzing them up beyond the standard grid pattern to help induce a sense of tension, but since this story is pretty much one long series of fight scenes the technique works against him. The artistic result is like eating Capt. Crunch with chocolate milk (trust me, I’ve tried it and it’s not a good time – talk about setting your teeth on edge!). The one bit of page art that stands out is Pearly leading the Chao like a line of ducklings. It’s cute, and doesn’t get lost in the overcrowded fight scenes. Eye Score: 4.

HEART: The Chao are the Tamagotchi of the Sonicverse. They’re described as being childlike, they enjoying being held and petted, and they like playing with toys. They’re not too keen, however, about being tossed as projectiles; frankly, I don’t know anything that would.

How Pearly came to the conclusion that they were “creepy” I don’t know, unless it’s an ironic reference to the fact that she herself is a manta ray and they can be nasty-looking themselves. But there’s not much danger of that happening here given the makeover she’s undergone. Aside from an unfortunate resemblance to Mordred Hood, she’s small and friendly-looking herself.

So what was the point of Pearly being creeped out by the Chao? It adds nothing to the story and seems absurd on the face of it. As comic relief it’s a major fail. Humans, especially readers of this comic, would be in the Chao Are Cute camp. And since Coral’s job as Priestess had been to awaken a Chao from hibernation on a regular basis, Pearly is in the wrong line of work as Coral’s apprentice if Chao get to her. Yet she sucks it up when Amy makes her lead the Chao parade.

Beyond that, however, we get the same old fight scenes. At least the baddies have the decency to pop like balloons and to not leave any bodies behind; I’m sure that pleased both Archie Editorial and management. The fact that they give off dark Gaia should have an effect on the other characters, but it appears to have no effect at all. I knew fight stories tended to be lame, but beyond the fights themselves I don’t think it’s even trying. Heart Score: 3.

“The Light in the Dark: Part 3”

Story: Aleah Baker; Art: Evan Stanley; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Gabriel Cassata; Lettering: John E. Workman

Speaking of fight stories, this opens with Sally and the gang fighting their way out after having located the Chaos Emerald in the previous installment. It seems easy going at first until Nicole puts up a barrier of some sort, then slips back into her handheld as its power ring goes to pieces and an E-1000 bot shows up to do his Omega impersonation without the sparkling repartee. Sally delivers the coup de grace in the exchange. And that’s pretty much it for the fight sequence.

Back at Sky Patrol, as Bunnie and Antoine pitch verbal woo, Nicole thanks Sally for opening her eyes, or what pass for them in her case. Sally’s response is classic: “We all stumble sometimes. That’s why we have friends to pick us back up.” Twilight Sparkle couldn’t have put it better herself.

HEAD: While the plotline is straightforward, the fight itself is rather confusing. On the first page Antoine slashes at a bot which, in old school Sega fashion, appears to yield up a Mobian. I was disappointed when he served no further role in the story; the others could have used the help. What exactly happened to Nicole is also a bit vague. Fortunately the E-1000 isn’t really all that formidable, especially since Tails and Sally seem to be all that was needed to take it down.

The back half of the story is more straightforward, recapping the point that Nicole needed a refresher course in being more than just a computer projection. It’s sort of the Cliff’s Notes version of “Stargazing,” the story that introduced a sentient Nicole to the continuity. Simply because there was no fighting, it was way easier to follow. And that’s pretty much it for this 5-pager. Head Score: 6.

EYE: I honestly had to reread the story several times to catch onto the sequence of events on the second page where Nicole puts up the grid against the E-1000 then derezzes as the power ring runs out. The artwork for something like a fight scene shouldn’t be that tough to negotiate. I know these aren’t major details and the art on the final page more than makes up for it, but it’s a major misstep. Eye Score: 7.

HEART: That final page is something that the comic has left unsaid for quite some time: that Nicole is more than a voice chip or a fancy app.

Where the line still exists between different kinds of intelligence is a subject being given new relevance. It was one thing to think of HAL-9000 plotting the demise of the humans in “2001: A Space Odyssey” because he couldn’t trust their fallibility; HAL didn’t so much go berserk as it reached a coldly logical conclusion he couldn’t avoid.

Now, we’re seeing the topic being replayed in Ooma commercials and motion pictures such as “Her.” Nicole has actually blazed this trail thanks to Renae De Liz, who wondered if an OS like Nicole was capable of experiencing life on our terms. If Nicole hasn’t revisited the topic until now, it’s probably because it has been trapped in what the Archie suits may still believe in the back corners of their minds to be a boy’s comic. Old habits do die hard, especially at the level of upper management.

This is an important plot point, especially when contrasted with the fight fest that was “Terror In The Deep.” There’s still room in this comic, even after the most recent retcon, for something other than the fights and chases that supposedly define the pre-ado boy market. Maybe they can even do a story about what it’s like to be a Mobian newly deroboticized, something just hinted at in a lone panel of page [1]. That’s one of the things that have kept this comic going through retcons great and small, something based not in boardroom decisions but in imagination. Heart Score: 8.

FAN ART: Sonic in black-and-white by Erica, in color (mostly blue) by Jaeson, Bunnie by Robert and Pearly by Zoe.

OFF-PANEL: Yeah, Sonic, I have the same trouble with bubble shields myself when I’m playing.

SONIC GRAM: Kierra gushes, Robertson checks in as a SonAmy shipper who also wants to see more Ben Bates artwork and Chip, and we hear from the Zoey who contributed the Pearly drawing on the previous page. So we have something of a closed loop here.