Sonic Universe No. 26 (May 2011)

Yardley!/Amash/Hunzeker cover: You know the old cliché of “I’d hate to meet him in a dark alley”? Silver gets a taste of that from the Loona-Chaotix. Nice neon effect from them as Silver turns off the dark.

“Fractured Mirror Part 2: Warped Reflections”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Ray Dillon; Lettering: Phil Felix; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; President: Mike Pellerito; Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu

Silver is slowing down, since it takes him two pages to break free from the … well, we learn a page later that they’re called “Prelates,” which is the name of an ecclesiastical officer. These guys, however, play way too rough for that sort of thing. But as it turns out, Silver can take a break because the Prelates come under attack by … THE RECOLORS. Well, that may as well be their collective name since they’re all variations, in one way or another, on long-established Sonic characters. The faux Lara-Su, however, insists on being called “Jani-Ca,” but she buys into Silver’s time travel explanation.

Silver then gets 4 pages of exposition along with the dime tour of “Nekronopolis,” the former Dark Legion capitol. In the middle of all the usual standard dystopian blah-blah about how the forces of not-niceness took over, we learn that the Prelates are actually “Cores” or balls of “concentrated life force.” Enerjak uses the Cores to construct the Prelates. And since the Cores are immortal, they’re not only reusable but well within the “No deaths in comic books” guidelines. Anyway, Jani-Ca’s plan for changing things is to use the Sword of Acorns to leach the Chaos energy from Enerjak and to restore the Cores to being mortal Mobians again. She also almost drops the hint that Knuckles is this world’s Enerjak when You Know Who uncovers their hiding place.

To Silver, this seems like a really good Kumbaya moment, so he has everyone join hands so he can airlift them to safety, safety being a relative term in this case since Enerjak breaks up the group. Enerjak recalls the Chaotix Cores/Prelates, throwing in the Core/Prelate for Julie-Su for good measure. The Recolors square off with the Prelates and Silver with Enerjak. Pretty routine stuff.

HEAD: Only in a comic book can a writer get away with Recolors; anywhere else on the Internet they’d get laughed at or run out of town (go to http://anti-sonic-recolors.deviantart.com/ ). Since this is an alt-Mobius story, that barely justifies the existence of the Recolors. Barely. And then only because Ian needs to justify the fact that everybody stands for somebody else (heck, even Silver is an alt-Sonic in this case) so he doesn’t have to really make the case that these are OCs (that’s “Original Characters” for those of you just joining us).

There are good points and bad points about being a Recolor. For one thing, it makes character design way easy, allowing for only minor variations if you’re not going to dye their fur. In the case of the Antoine Recolor here, dubbed, “Cutlass,” he’s bare-chested, the better to show off his numerous scars. In some cases they remain true to type (Bean’s Recolor “Demo Duck”), in others they play against type (Bark Recolor “Blockbuster Polar Bear” is a voice of reason and is an advisor to Jani-Ca ).

But even when resorting to Recolors, there are so many of them here (seven, counting Jani-Ca) that it’s reached the You Can’t Tell The Players Without A Scorecard stage. Mercifully, Payback Fox, the Fiona Recolor, hasn’t been given that much of a speaking part. It makes me wonder whether she wasn’t just thrown in as a warm body to use against a random Prelate in the fight scenes.

Honestly, was it really that much easier for Ian and Tracy to resort to Recolors instead of, oh I don’t know, coming up with some original character designs? I know the book is put together under deadline pressures and given the dystopian backdrop the fans probably need some cozy and familiar characters so they don’t have to work too hard.

OK, I’m probably being too hard on the creative here. Still, this is drifting into the Familiarity Breeds Contempt zone.

There’s an interesting naming convention at work here. The Loona-Chaotix are properly called “Prelates,” which is a really odd choice for a name. The term may be archaic enough that few if any of the core audience would get it, but you’d think that they could come up with something, oh I don’t know, a little more martial. Unless all the good names have been taken.

Speaking of the “Cores,” that’s another interesting choice. Each Core has a separate identity, which is seriously overplayed by the sound effect for each one. Since their basic role is as high-tech soldier/zombies in the service of Enerjak, that probably explains why Ian didn’t do with the most obvious name available: “Souls.” Now THAT’S an ecclesiastical name! But maybe that would have been too cosmic, I don’t know.

There’s been chatter about the impending non-canon story arc over at Sonic 225-228, with some fans wondering whether this is going to turn into another “Endgame.” Me, I’d be more concerned that this won’t turn into fodder for a “Crisis On Infinite Mobiuses” somewhere down the line. And this story doesn’t help matters. Here is ANOTHER Mobian variation, under the control of ANOTHER Enerjak, with ANOTHER scratch team of Freedom Fighters led by ANOTHER Sonic Recolor. You do this often enough, and not even the best wiki can help you sort it all out.

This has been a long-standing gripe of mine with this comic: that there’s enough potential variety on Mobius itself that inventing alt-worlds is just compounding confusion. Heaven knows Ian made a stab at it in the Journey To The East story arc, where he managed to bring a somewhat exotic Asian flavor to the locale … sometimes. Other times he just cheaped it out and sent out for some ninjas.

It doesn’t help that we’re smack dab in the Development phase of the story, where we get exposition and more fight scenes because that’s what happens in the Development phase. It has to get better from here on. Head Score: 6.

EYE: Ray Dillon’s coloring seems to be missing something in this issue. I thought that, since the population of characters has exploded, we don’t get to see the background as one of the stars of the story, and Ray’s Purple Rain color scheme for Nekronopolis gets diluted and obscured by the crowd of Recolors in the foreground. But that’s a minor quibble, as the Yardley!/Amash/Dillon team turns in solid work. Eye Score: 9.

HEART: There are two Heart points here: Jani-Ca’s issues with Julie-Su, and the Core/Prelate concept.

Unfortunately, a comic book is the wrong place to examine the Heart potential of the latter. Yes, it’s a great set-up to have to fight friends and relations being puppet-mastered by Enerjak, but since fight scenes are the life’s blood of comic books there isn’t a whole lot of moral ambiguity on display. Easily fifteen pages of this issue are taken up with fighting, either the Prelates against Silver, the Prelates against the Recolors, or Silver and the Recolors against Enerjak and the Prelates. And while Jani-Ca brings up the subject during the considerable hunk of exposition that makes up the middle of the story, it lasts for all of one panel at the bottom of page [10]. Then it’s on to new business.

The Jani-Ca/Julie-Su angle likewise gets only a slight nod. The unveiling of the Julie-Su Core segues right back into the fight and “Leave her to me!” With the plug effectively pulled on the moral ambiguity of fighting someone who’s not themselves, the Heart potential takes a direct hit. Heart Score: 5.

Sonic Spin: Meet the Recolors! Recolors, alt-Freedom Fighters, same thing.

Fan Art: Silver by Brenda, Sonic Colors by Devin, and a symphony of Sally by William. I look at that and think that Archie would have to be out of their minds to kill off a character who can inspire that level of fan love.

Fan Funnies: Matthew wonders just how long the Sonic/Shadow feud has been going on.

Off-Panel: Ian looks at the two manifestations of Lara-Su: the babysitter and the butt-kicker.

Letters: Max is told that SU1 is the point at which Shadow first hooked up with Blaze, and after some gushing about Blaze and Silver he’s told that PhotoShop submissions are a no-no. Paul is NOT told who or what will be featured in the next arc in SU29-32, he IS told that Baron Rabbot and Matilda Armadillo will be back (presumably she may either connect with her brother Mighty, or it’s going to be a recurring tease), and the Chaos Emeralds will be the McGuffins in the Sonic comic. And Vivianne from Alaska wants to work in comics, and she’s invited to submit her stuff. But please, no Mama Grizzlies.