Sonic the Hedgehog #266 (January 2015)

Lamar Wells/Terry Austin/Ben Hunzeker cover: the overriding motif, literally, is Sonic Unleashed and Sonic leashed, as it were. That’s not a surprise; if anything, it’s a signature cliché until Sonic gets over his condition. Then we have, from left to right, Moss, Eggman, Antoine, Sally and Bunnie. I’m sorry but the gears just don’t mesh on this cover. I know what they were trying to accomplish; after running two stories per issue the comic has integrated them. I can only hope they did a better job editorially in uniting them than they did artistically on the cover. It gets the point across but with no real sense of harmony.

“Ambushed!: Part 1”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Jamal Peppers; 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

We start with two pages of Sonic vs. Moss, who’s still in fortune cookie mode as he relies on momentum and knowledge of the terrain rather than speed to come in a close second to Sonic. Sonic should consider himself lucky to have come in first, under the Whose Comic Book Is This Anyway rule, as Mighty and Ray act as Moss’s back-up singers. Moss diagnoses Sonic’s problem as an excess of liberty; he’s too good at resisting control. In a classic case of lycanthropy the victim has no control over his condition whatever, but in an Archie Comic they have to settle for lycanthropy lite.

Eggman, meanwhile, tries to indulge in the Internet meme “FFFFFFFFFFFF…” but settles on “FAILED!” as he chews out Thunderbolt for being bested by Sonic the Wolfhog. She tries to assure him that she can get past that level of the game but Eggman just wants her to secure a Gaia temple or else. After he hangs up on her, Orbot and Cubot tell him that his position is better than he thinks; Thunderbolt has found easy pickings when it comes to hostile takeovers and G.U.N. has been slow to adapt to the planet coming apart. As far as energy is concerned, the availability of Dark Gaia is off the charts while power rings are a distant second, and even alternative fuels such as wind and solar are better positioned than coal and natural gas. Obviously, the Koch Brothers don’t exist in this retcon. This leads Eggman to do a lot of thinking out-loud about harnessing all that Dark Gaia while stealing the Chaos Emeralds and destroying Sonic and friends. The guy just doesn’t know how to pace himself.

Back at Sky Patrol, Sally dishes out heaping helpings of exposition as the air is thick with explanatory text boxes. After they kick it around a bit, they decide to go after a blue Emerald even though the potential of this being a trap is seriously high.

We cut back to the jungle as Sonic goes through a page of run-and-gun maneuvers and sticks the landing. Moss thinks it was “most impressive” even though Sonic only got a 6.5 from the Russian judge. Moss also takes the credit for teaching Sonic about his “passive progression” philosophy. I’m sure the programmers at Team Sonic would like a word with Moss on the subject. As the conversation drifts toward Mighty attending one of Moss’s leadership seminars, Sonic’s attention turns toward the setting sun. Moss goes into fortune cookie mode and tells him “Do not fight it – for you cannot fight yourself. It is not a beast, for it is you.” Has he even looked at Sonic lately? Anyway, with the setting of the sun and the sprouting of the fur and fangs, Sonic suddenly lapses into James Brown mode: “I FEEL GOOD!” and wants a rematch with Moss.

While they do that, Thunderbolt and her troops scope them out. T-bolt then lapses into ranting villain mode. I’ll spare you the details.

Sally, Bunnie and Antoine close in on the bait … er, Emerald, and the trap is sprung. Seems Eggman brought three E-series bots to the party so nobody would feel lonely. That’s probably the last thing the three of them are feeling at the moment.

HEAD: OK, I’ll admit that even Sega didn’t let Sonic get a taste of full-blown lycanthropy. The wolfhog gimmick was just that, and it only came out when the Sonic Unleashed game changed from run and gun mode to punch and stretch mode. Ian Flynn has not only worked to turn Sonic into the Incredible Hulk, but has rushed in where Stan Lee feared to tread by having Sonic not exactly cured of his wolfhogism but managing his symptoms through the use of New Age philosophy.

I look at that last sentence and all I can think is: is this some kind of joke? Imagine Bruce Banner going to a New Age gasbag to control the fury within him. That sounds more like the premise for a Mad Magazine goof on the Hulk than a plot fit for the comic itself. If it ever ran, and the comic has been around long enough to test-fly some hare-brained ideas, I’m guessing it featured a jokey script and made zero impact on the comic continuity. Yet here it is with absolute sincerity and no hint of an apology to the big boys at Marvel. This is the Hulk recolored midnight purple.

I’m trying to accept Moss as a credible character but it isn’t happening. It doesn’t help that we’ve been down this road before in the fandom; in the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, the episode “Slowwww Going” featured a slow-talking sloth named Rocket. Ian is definitely not trying to relate Moss to Rocket, but his New Age guru shtick is classic one-note writing.

It’s getting to the point where it’s easy to forget how Yoda was introduced to the Star Wars continuity. After the quiet nobility of Ben Kenobi we were expecting something from a Jedi master. When Luke meets Yoda, however, he and we learn that the Jedi master is short, green, speaks with what’s become his trademark syntax, and is more than a little obnoxious. It was only after audience members had written him off as kind of a jerk that we got to see his mad Jedi skillz. Four years later, we’d see the same sort of character introduction with Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi in “The Karate Kid.”

Moss isn’t a slow-mo but he is laid back. That may not sound very complex but that’s the best the comic is going to do. Yes, Sonic has been guilty of recklessness in the past, but it’s usually been the job of (guess who?) Sally to keep a cool head. Archie, however, is so deep into the retcon that they’re trying to walk away from the Sonic/Sally ship. Guys, it’s not gonna happen.

Thunderbolt would still be a useless character even if Jamal Peppers did something, anything, to give a hint as to her femininity. Instead, Ian has her doing an Oprah impression: “YOU get attacked by an E-series robot, YOU get attacked by an E-series robot, YOU get attacked by an E-series robot, E-series robot attacks for EVERYBODY!!”

The Sky Patrol plot goes seven pages instead of the usual 5 so, in what’s a counterintuitive move for this comic, the two stories actually get folded together. That qualifies as a development in this title. But it’s also a heavy-handed giveaway that Sally and Bunnie (and Antoine) have been cast in the damsels-in-distress role and Guess Who is going to rescue them. I may be wrong but I’m not betting the house on it.

I’m really making an effort to finish this review. Today is June 8, and I uploaded my last review on April 23. I’ll be honest with you; even though I’ve had a few changes in my life (disruptive moving of my office at work, my twin brother moving in with me), it’s been a long time since I enjoyed reading the Sonic comics. I’ve had to work to ignore the sense that nothing matters because there’s only one way this story will end and Sega told that story in “Sonic Unleashed.” But we persevere. Head Score: 3.

EYE: Jamal Peppers’s artwork is good, and he can’t exactly be blamed for Thunderbolt’s design. But considering that this book once featured a “koala” that looked like a sexed-up lab rat, I suppose we should be thankful for small favors. Gabriel Cassata’s coloring is the real visual factor here, especially on the pages where the sun goes down and the atmosphere shifts from day to night. Eye Score: 8.

HEART: I really wanted to bail when I got to the bottom of page 3 with Sonic grousing about Moss’s verbal jiu jitsu. And by the time I got to the Sky Patrol interior, which is usually a lift for me because Ian takes a break from making this a boy’s comic, I’d already given up.

That the story is pretty much foreordained by Sega I’ve already mentioned. But now I definitely sense that Ian’s running out of gas trying to keep the story alive. Increasingly it feels like he’s going through the motions. The physical training with Moss, the trap, Orbot and Cubot doing their shtick; noting in this story comes close to being a surprise, and I’m afraid that the next installment will be just as routine. This story is like going to a baseball game but you end up watching batting practice while they wait to determine whether the game should be called on account of rain. Heart Score: n/a.

FAN ART: Jessenia draws Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Shadow, Dashiell shows that both Sonic and Tails know dental hygiene, Mindy puts some menace into Sonic-as-wolfhog, and I want to say that Xander shows wolfhog Sonic having run over Tails turning him into a cartoon pancake. Archie really needs to put fan art on their Web site.

OFF PANEL: We take a break from this Moment of Zen to go get lunch.

SONIC GRAMS: James wants to know why Eggman got out of the roboticizing business, why the old school reversion of robots to little animals makes them look like plushies, why did the planet split up, why does the comic engage in shameless self-promotion, and what’s an Egg Boss. Can you say “noobie”? Jacob wants to know if Chip is coming back and if Sonic will go wolfhog every night. For the latter question, Editorial answers with “so it would seem.” And the correct answer is: “Whenever the story needs goosing up.”