Sonic the Hedgehog #265 (December 2014)

Yardley/Austin/Stanley cover: yeah, that’s what we’re talking about! Sonic going full wolfhog. I don’t remember it being so electric, but after so many teases I’ll take it.

“Control Part 2: Unleashed”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tyson Hesse; 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 reps: Tyler Ham and Anthony Gaccione.

Be careful what you work for: whether it was meant to or not, “Thunderbolt’s fiendish trap” tripped Sonic’s fuzz fuse and we swing into Action and More Action mode. Sonic pulls the fuse from one of the towers without bothering to look for the door to the fuse box. Thunderbolt can’t seem to motivate the troops to mix it up with the blue beastie, so she tries a direct attack in some sort of Egg suit that fails the Sonic test. Thunderbolt goes into rant mode about “this humiliation,” which could also apply to her character modeling. Yes, Thunderbolt is a female chinchilla despite her puffball shape and self-advertising fur collar. Sonic’s response is “RAAARGH!” which I’m pretty sure means “Shut up, already!” As Sonic takes off after the Pokemon reject, Mighty goes off after him.

Thunderbolt is carrying some kind of head-mounted Taser so she gets off a shot at Sonic but that only slows Sonic down a little. Sonic prepares to treat her like a tube of toothpaste until Mighty breaks Sonic’s hold, allowing Thunderbolt to run away and out of the story.

We’re then treated to an experiment in stereo storytelling where we see Mighty telling Sonic one thing and also Sonic’s more negative perception of it. The guys mix it up until Ray, Sally and Amy arrive. The girls turn peacemakers as they get in Sonic’s face and appeal to his better nature rather than to his way-past-coolness. It’s enough to bring him to a halt as the group walks him back to Moss’s place.

Somehow or other, the steps aren’t really clear here and we never actually see him take a sip of whatever libation Moss served him, but Sonic reverts to normal. Since Sally has her hands full with the Chaos Emerald, the SonAmy shippers win this one. But not for long. Sonic realizes that this sort of thing will happen again, so he tells everybody to head on home while he stays with Moss and takes the cure.

HEAD: I’ve seen plenty of wolfman movies, from 1935’s “Werewolf of London” to the 2010 “Wolfman” and a host of shaggy dog stories in between. I’ve even played Sonic Unleashed up to a point where the weakness of my game skills is only too evident. And I’ve seen the Sonic Unleashed anime where Sonic and Chip wander through a haunted house occupied by a ghost trio and Sonic has plenty of chances to go wolfhog. With all that background, I feel qualified to say that I have no idea where Ian was going with this one.

Admittedly I wasn’t a fan of the whole snorting Dark Gaia alternative to old school lunacy when it comes to werewolves. I still feel that way. And this story really rubs our faces in the transformation bit lifted from the Incredible Hulk: Sonic gets angry and loses control.

True to the Sonic Unleashed model, he also breaks with the classic wolfman mold with very elastic arms. It’s one of his moves that I’ve had trouble with in trying to play the game. And I have trouble with it in the context of this story as well. Instead of facilitating Sonic’s swinging from lamp posts and balconies, its appearance here is simply too reminiscent of Monkey D. Luffy’s gimmick from Eiichiro Oda’s long-running manga/anime “One Piece,” which had been around for 10 years when Sonic Unleashed was itself unleashed. I don’t want to say that that’s where Team Sonic got the idea but I have to wonder.

A lot of this sort of thing I can understand. This is first and foremost an Archie Comic, which means Sonic will never come close to inflicting the kind of body count Benicio del Toro racked up in “The Wolfman.” But Sonic is also the hero, the franchise.

So Ian comes up with one of the worst story-telling gimmicks ever to appear in this comic since “Endgame.” We experience Sonic seeing and hearing his friends and team mates in two different modes: normal and nightmare. The latter features versions of the characters with wild eyes, wilder fur, forked tongues, clawed hands, and trash talk. We know it’s trash talk because the panels featuring the psycho characters are side-by-side with the same characters in normal mode.

And that’s the problem. The redundancy is one thing, but are we supposed to believe that Sonic can see and hear both versions? We’re left with that impression by Sonic’s “everything came across wrong” remark when the action moves to Moss’s house. I’m sorry but that’s too much suspension of disbelief. Sonic should have been able to perceive only one version, the nightmare one. But the fact that he’s being subjected to both brings the tempo of the story to a halt and just kills any kind of suspense.

The whole idea of the werewolf, what makes it so frightening, is that a once-rational being has gone animal and reason no longer applies. Within the Harry Potter stories, Remus Lupin was only too aware of his condition and did all he could to keep from being a menace. In this he takes after the classic Hollywood wolfman played by Lon Chaney Jr. who longed for the death that the werewolf curse had denied him. On the flip side is Fenrir Greyback, a werewolf of a different color in the Potter continuity. This wolfman isn’t much of a human even when he’s human, and rather than being all angsty and broody about it he’s developed something of a sadistic streak when it comes to killing in the service of Voldemort.

Sonic doesn’t get angsty but he does take himself out of the game, another clear break with the Sega game plan. After all, the point of Sonic Unleashed is that the player alternates between Sonic running and Sonic fighting (a situation which cheesed off a lot of old school Sonic players). Unable to settle the control issues for Sonic, Ian now leaves him in Moss’s claws in an echo of Luke Skywalker taking basic Jedi training from Yoda.

Moss barely registers in this story; he pours Sonic a drink and spouts an aphorism. He hasn’t really introduced himself and we don’t know the full extent of his abilities. Contrast this with Yoda’s insertion into the Star Wars saga. We start off with just a name of a Jedi master, then we meet a funky alien with weird diction and bad manners and it’s like Jedi Knight and day comparing him to Obi-wan Kenobi. And then we begin to see his mad Jedi skillz.

So far, all we know about Moss is that he’s been instructing Mighty; otherwise, he comes off like a lame guidance counselor at Riverdale High. He’s definitely a minor character in the new continuity.

The same can be said for Thunderbolt. From a character design which offers no hint as to her gender, to her penchant for overacting, she’s an embarrassment. Small wonder she ran away at the first opportunity. Editorial should not be in a hurry to bring her back.

As I said earlier, the action all takes place in the front half of the story. When Sally and Amy confront Sonic, the action pretty much dies and we’re asked to believe that Sonic is seeing two simultaneous versions of reality. Then Sonic snaps out of it in a manner that’s vague at best. I don’t want to say I’m looking forward to the next installment, but I’m beginning to wonder how much further this story arc can fall before the foreordained conclusion. Head Score: 3.

EYE: Tyson Hesse hits the ground running in the front half of the story yet also does justice to the point where Amy and Sally put their lives on the line to stop Sonic’s rampage. Unfortunately, the character modeling of Thunderbolt makes it look like she was modeled on a tennis ball, and Sonic’s long-arm punch sequences can’t help but look like Sonic’s been chewing gum-gum fruit. Gabriel Cassata’s coloring work helps the mood as well, especially in the final panel. Eye Score: 8.

HEART: Back when going to the movies was a public and communal act and you were part of an audience, I attended a showing of the Disney animated feature “The Fox and the Hound.” The audience for the screening I attended applauded twice during the picture: once when Amos Slade got caught in one of his own leg-hold traps, and again when Copper the hound solemnly placed himself between his one-time friend Todd the fox and the barrels of Slade’s shotgun.

I got the same vibe when Amy Rose and Sally stood up to Sonic in mid-rampage. It also reminded me of Princess Nausicaa standing up to a herd/swarm of charging ohmu in “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.” Since they’re like ten-foot-tall pill bugs she gets the worst of the encounter.

Ironically, that singular moment registered with more force than the crazed action in the beginning of the story. Ray and Mighty are late to the party, but this is a moment for girl power to come to the fore in this comic.

It makes for an interesting counterpoint to the ranting and raving of Thunderbolt. Like her name, she’s all sound and fury signifying another lame Eggman flunky. Even her built-in Taser can’t take down Sonic in wolfhog mode.

I suppose it was this moment that was supposed to help set up Sonic’s decision to cut himself off from his friends and take the cure from Moss. I’d feel better about this moment if Moss weren’t such a nonentity. Here’s hoping that he’s more than a hippie-dippy throwback; Guru Emu of the Downunda Freedom Fighters used to have that job and I don’t think he made it past the retcon. Heart Score: 9.

“The Grand Tour”

Story: Eric Esquivel; Art: James Fry; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Gabriel Cassata; Lettering: John E. Workman

Page 1: Rotor starts giving everybody a tour of the Sky Patrol. Page 2: “everyone” includes Eggman watching the tour through means we never learn about. Page 3: The tour continues but is interrupted by … Page 4: Eggman attacks with a Rotor mecha with a giant pipe wrench … Page 5: which is easily dispatched because the Sky Patrol also carries a stupid level of armaments.

HEAD: As grist for a trivia contest, this story fits the bill. It also takes up 5 pages. Beyond that, there’s not much else to recommend it. We never do learn how Eggman was able to look in on Rotor and the gang; that kind of plot hole is reminiscent of the old Mike Gallagher days of the comic (not to be confused with the talk radio host named Mike Gallagher). The same goes for the overall jokey script. This story feels like a piece of candy thrown to the little newbies in the audience, especially since Editorial had to include a text box explaining that this story doesn’t mesh with the continuity of the lead story. Basically, this is filler. Head Score: 3.

EYE: Fry does a good job with the initial panel on page [2] of a brooding Eggman lit by vid screens. I can’t say the same about Eggman’s War Walrus or the Sky Patrol weaponry, and I pretty much checked out when Rotor was showing off the on-board toilet. “Are you kidding me right now?” I wish you were. Eye Score: 6.

HEART: Are you kidding me right now? Heart Score: N/A.

FAN ART: McKinley draws Mighty with an emphasis on his hands; Seth draws Sonic, Tails, Eggman and the less-than-dynamic duo; Rebecca draws Sally; and Victoria draws Team Sonic.

OFF-PANEL: Thunderbolt gets saddled with a Chao battlesuit and background art more fitting for an episode of the Care Bears.

SONIC GRAMS: Joey crushes on Yardley/Hunzeker artwork, which Editorial echoes, and also expresses approval of Tyson Hesse’s artwork. Aiden wants to see more Silver (he’ll have to check the Sonic Universe comic), also Mighty and Stick. The latter will be limited to the Sonic Boom comic. And Emily is as tired as I was of the wolfhog teasing in this comic. I hope she liked the actual development. As an antidote maybe I’ll watch Mamoru Hosoda’s “Wolf Children” anime, which asks "Why are wolves always the bad guys? Everyone hates him and he gets killed at the end.” Why indeed?