Sonic #83 [June 2K]

Spaz/Harvo/Ray cover: Sonic and Tails, tails to the viewer, get an eyeful of the latest in urban blight: Perfect Chaos. The presence of the Big Ben-like clock reminds me of a blast from my past: the 1961 movie "Gorgo," Britain's entry into the giant-monster-terrorizes-major-world-capital genre. Godzilla didn't lose any sleep over it, but it wasn't too shabby. "Reptilicus," AFAIK the only monster movie ever made in Denmark, was by far the worst of the Godzila wanna-bes. Question: if all this cover action is still taking place inside of a mountain, where's the shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds coming from?

"Menace To Society"

Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Steve Butler; Ink: Pam Eklund; Lettering: Frank Powell; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Editorial: G-Force.

By this stage of the game the six regular playables (Sonic, Tails, Amy Rose, Big, Knuckles and Gamma) have been played out, the Egg Carrier has gone down in flames, Robotnik has tried to detonate a missile in the heart of Station Square just for spite (but Tails disarms it), Birdie has been reunited with his/her family, and the Master Emerald has been reconstructed and the Floating Island is back in place. OK, except for that last part, the adaptation is sticking to the plot. But having run through the playables, the game offers a mystery character to play with, and it's here that the final chapter of the story begins:

Upon returning to the "Ruins" from the fun and games of Special #13, Knuckles encounters...Robotnik taking a much-needed beauty sleep. This presents an interesting moral dilemma for the Guardian, but Knuckles doesn't have time to act upon it before being ambushed by Chaos.

Back in the city, Sonic realizes that Tails's plane is lost, and they're going to need some physical evidence so they can file an insurance claim. Nate then supplies Sonic with a tracing do-hickey, explaining: "When I designed out foxy friend's aircraft, I had the foresight to install a tracer." Wonder if he installs car alarms, too. The franchise (Sonic and Tails) then head out for the ruins, which are accessible by public transportation in the game but how dramatic is that? They find a knocked-out Knuckles and Robotnik making his exit. Knux then reveals that it was Chaos who clobbered him.

Dashing to the Mysterious Cat Country, they find the not-so-mysterious Big climbing out of the plane's wreckage which is then reclaimed by Chaos in the form of a land-based water spout that grabs the emerald from the plane. I can only assume that this is one of the seven mentioned in "Sonic Adventure" (SSS13). Frankly, I lost track a while ago.

Back in the city, we see a sign that the Knothole crowd had better decline any dinner invitations if they know what's good for them. Especially from anybody named "Jimbo." As for the Mayor, he's showing them around the power plant where "six super emeralds" are functioning as the power source. These are six of the seven emeralds referred to in the last story. I think. Frankly, the whole emerald business is all over the highway by this point and I'm not about to work up a sweat caring about it.

Just as the Mayor is showing off the emeralds which appear to be floating in a liquid of some sort, Chaos seeps in through a ceiling tile. "The display chamber...it's filling with water!" Sally observes. Gee, what HAD it been filled with, Kool-Aid? Anyway, the emeralds are absorbed and we FINALLY get the three-page set-piece that opens the game: Perfect Chaos on the rampage. And once again, Karl Bollers needed only HALF of the text boxes on display; Steve Butler did a great job of adapting the screen sequence to 2-D, and they were eloquent enough.

The Knothole gang then engages in an activity totally glossed over in the game: trying to help the hyoomon populace escape the wrath of Chaos. In the American game that I saw they were totally forgotten about, and considering that they were little more than set decoration in the game to begin with that's not such a stretch. I guess when you live in a city like Tokyo that's been flattered countless times by Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Ghidra, et al., your attitude is one of: "So you're being attacked by a giant monster. Deal with it." Nate even gets to help out by picking on someone his own size.

By this point, Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, Big and Froggy show up on the scene, as does Dr. Robotnik in the Egg Carrier II. His first order of business is to get Chaos back under his opposable thumb. This, however, turns into one of the comic's great "Oh $#!+" moments as Chaos blows him out of the sky just as the Doc realizes what he's gotten himself into. It's not all good news, though, as Sonic is saddled (courtesy of the Phantom Letterer) with one of the stupidest lines of dialogue ever to appear in a Sonic comic: "Look! Something is breaking through the fake sky!"

Now is a fine time for Sonic to go on "a snooze cruise" as he puts it in the game; i.e., he gets a Tikal-induced flashback. Only Sonic took a different trip during the game itself. In SA Sonic witnessed the destruction of the echidna civilization by Chaos and Chaos's imprisonment in the Master Emerald by Tikal; here, we get a revisionist version of Chaos's origin once again disconnected from the imperialism of the echidnas and their running roughshod over Tikal and the Chao babies. But seeing as how Ken and Karl were relying on Spaz's game-play of the Japanese version without recourse to the American version or even a crummy translation, they can be forgiven. What CAN'T be forgiven is the fact that, in true Archie fashion, the story gets a good swift kick in the continuity by misspelling her name "Tical" instead of "Tikal."

"So what?" I hear some of you cry. "One lousy letter. What difference could it possibly make?"

I wondered about that myself until I entered both spellings, "Tikal" and "Tical," into the campus's default Web search engine (in this case, snap.com). The term "Tikal" brought up a number of sites all having to do with a city in Guatemala named Tikal, the location of some very impressive Mayan ruins. At one well-designed site, you can take a 360-degree gander at the ruins around you from certain key locations.

The spelling "Tical," however, yielded far fewer sites and they all had something to do with a hip-hop artist called Method Man. I've got nothing against hip-hop, and I know it's too late for Archie to do anything about it now. But unless they plan to depict her wearing Kangols, a fubu sweatshirt, a telephone pager, and a collection of rings and chains and other jewelry roughly equal in value to the Gross Domestic Product of a Third World country, I'm going to resort to the spelling "Tikal," thank you very much.

OK, page 18 is more than a little freaky. It's also inaccurate in that in the game Tikal didn't use any mystical hand jive to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds; after Chaos had leached the power out of them they fell to the ground as bits of gray glass. Even more interesting is the fact that key dialogue on pages 18 and 19 float around unattributed, or are attributed by assumption to Tikal. Yet in the American version the lines "How will that help? It won't change how he feels inside, will it? His heart will still remain in turmoil and his anger just won't vanish! He'll just be trapped forever!" were spoken by Sonic, and the lines "Chaos only used the negative power of the Emeralds. Sonic, you should be able to harness their real power. Negative forces aren't the only way to empower the emeralds! Our positive feelings toward each other can make them work. Our hearts together form an awesome power" belonged to Tails! Again, the creatives may have only gotten access to the dialogue at the last possible moment, but I still find it interesting that the dialogue shouldn't be attributed to either Sonic or Tails, considering the fact that Sega, SEGA ITSELF, had no qualms about doing so in the game. It also points up the fact that unless you're clear on the motivation of Chaos (and Ken has admitted that they weren't), you may not be certain what the heck they're talking about!

So anyway, the action charges ahead as the emeralds are recharged with positive emotional energy, the same stuff Queen Beryl was forever trying to steal from unwary humans during the first season of "Sailor Moon." Come to think of it, it's the same power that won over the four sisters working for Rubius in a later season. Anyway, this all comes together as Sonic morphs into Super Sonic. And the battle begins.

HEAD: Like the Station Squares after Chaos came to town, the best that Karl can do without access to a script is to tread water. What was Sega thinking? I know from experience that the novelizations of motion pictures sometimes read differently from the action on the screen because the writer had the rough cut to work from and some scenes might have gotten lost in the final editing. I distinctly remember that a scene in the novelization of Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal" contained a scene that didn't make it into the final version of the movie: a scene where Jen gets freaked by the black water. But with only the action from the Japanese game play to go on and no translation, it's a little like writing a novelization of a movie by watching it with the sound off. Not the best working conditions. So some of the continuity blunders (the misattribution of dialogue, the revisionist explanation about Chaos) are sort of understandable. Head Score: 6.

EYE: Very good work by Steve Butler in the face of adversity. With the writers at a loss as to what was going on, small wonder page 18 ended up something of a muddle in terms of layout. And why has Bunnie suddenly gotten taller than Antoine? She's like that throughout the story! Maybe she couldn't retract her legs all the way from "Sonic Adventure" (SSS13), I don't know, but he's starting to take on Tails's proportions. Eye Score: 7.

HEART: I have to give Archie credit: when I first heard that line about how "our hearts together form awesome power," it reminded me of something I'd seen in a Care Bears movie. I also thought for sure that if that bit of dialogue ever tried to get past the front door in Mamaroneck that someone from Editorial would take it out back and beat it to death with a rolled-up Archie Digest. But they did the next best (worst?) thing by letting it just hang there vaguely attributed to nobody, or possibly to Tikal. Once more, the American dialogue had to be a late add, but I can't avoid the creepy feeling that someone in editorial thought the dialogue simply too wussy to attribute to Sonic or Tails. Given Archie's track record in the past on these matters, it's a natural enough conclusion to draw IMHO. Heart Score: 5

Off-Panel: So it appears that Justin Gabrie has gone bicoastal on us. Now that he's working in the belly of the beast, just maybe he'll cut the creatives some slack when it comes to writing and artwork. I'm wondering who'll be taking the reins at Mamaroneck eventually. Justin makes it sound like an interim thing -- far from a permanent gig. I also want to know what Freddie has in mind for Sonic #100.

Sonic-Grams: Several letters explain that Knuckles's presence in the comic from now on is something of a consolation prize after the Knuckles title was canceled. And in reply to "Nax" from Oklahoma City, it appears that Queen Alicia will be returning to the story line some time after this one plays out.

Find Your Name page: Congrats to Rina Cat of Malaysia for making the page. If you want to examine a sample of her work, she's working on a fan comic adaptation of some fanfic or other over at www.teamartail.com.

Fan Art: Angel Perez had a little help with the drawing of Sonic and Tails: it was downloaded from the Archie Comics Web site, specifically the Coloring book subsection of the Sonic section.

Pro-Art by Frank Strom, whose work (complete with Monkey Khan) is scheduled to reappear in the comic once the SA adaptation ends. Bet ya can't wait.