Sonic Universe #30 (September 2011)

Yardley!/Amash/Hunzeker cover: To the untrained eye, this looks like a typically pedestrian Archie comic cover: Scourge and the Destructix posing for their low-class photo. But after having dealt mostly with one-or two-character covers month in and month out, this month Tracy Yardley! gives me something I can work with. But it’s not the drawing per se, it’s the body language.

This is even sweeter because if you fast-forward to the Sonic Spin page you’ll find Yardley!’s rough draft for the group shot as well as a couple of boring Scourge-alone cover treatments. Aside from the placement of the Destructix members, the key motive of Fiona and Scourge is pretty much the same.

But on to the body language. The four Destructix members are standing isolated, apart from each other; in the case of Sgt. Simian, rather militantly so. Nothing touchy-feely about THIS crowd. As for Froggy, he’s horsing around so much he can be ignored.

Now check out the primary couple: Scourge and Fiona. Fiona is the one making contact with Scourge; in the rough draft cover, Fiona only does the tail curl and keeps her hands to herself. In the finished cover, her left hand is on Scourge’s shoulder. The only change in Scourge between the rough draft and the final cover is the upgrade of his facial expression to a self-satisfied smirk.

Remember that in the previous issue, Fiona felt the need to explain her ditching of Scourge back in S194. And having screwed over the Mobians as recently as the Journey to the East arc, she’s reaching out to the one character whom she could exploit and who can keep her butt from being kicked. But for Scourge, the feeling is definitely NOT mutual. If I were Fiona, I’d make sure my insurance premiums were up to date because Scourge is going to drop her like a bad habit the first chance he gets. That may or may not be the plot that Ian Flynn has in mind, but it sure fits the cover art!

“Inside Job Part 2: Any Port In A Storm”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Steve Downer; Lettering: Phil Felix; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick: Chain Gang Boss: Mike Pellerito: Sega Licensing reps: Cindy Chau and Jerry Chu.

Don’t worry if you don’t recognize any of the inmates literally pushing Scourge around on the initial splash page: the parade of extras has already become so exhausted there’s no real effort made here. One page over, we get Al and Cal doing their useless shtick until the guards come to escort Scourge to the Warden’s office.

Warden Zobotnik’s office has a view, judging from which he’s on the tenth floor at least. He may have a view but he doesn’t have a clue because he seems to think that it’s his “marvelous facility” that’s straightening out Scourge. But he does have something on his mind, as he screens footage from when Fiona and the Destructix were arrested; they did not go along quietly, as Dumbledore put it in “Order of the Phoenix.” Seems the warden is concerned that the Destructix will “break” Scourge, and I don’t think we’re talking physical damage here. Frankly, this scene is so non-committal and mealy-mouthed concerning what Zobotnik IS worried about that it never gels. But Scourge is the one earning a paycheck here, so he goes alone with whatever the Warden has on his mind.

Out in the yard, Fiona is engaged in conversation with the Anti-Abby. Please note: THIS is what a koala looks like, not the post-plastic surgery lab rat named Barby who’s been passed off as a koala. But Ian needs to do a retcon on Fiona in order to make her somewhat sympathetic. So we get a ¾-page flashback of Fiona’s hard-knock life and how she had to toughen up and look out for herself. That’s the intent of the script, anyway. The end result, however, is another cop-out that leaves more questions than answers unless you’ve read up on her biography in the Mobius Encyclopedia or Sonic Wiki and it does nothing to make the undeserving Fiona deserving of any reader sympathy. The Anti-Geoff wanders in, scopes out Fiona’s foxy tail, and disappears for the rest of the issue.

But now we settle in for another retcon, involving Sgt. Simian working out with clichés … excuse me, with weights in the yard. Scourge wanders into his field of vision, and we settle in for a five-page retcon which goes a little something like this:

Back in the day when Robotnik was making his move world domination-wise, the young Simon Simian (ugh, what a name!) comes down with an advanced case of Rambo’s Disease, in which he breaks out in camo and wants to fight somebody. His laid-back grandfather, who appears to be an out-of-the-closet Parrothead, would rather make banana daiquiris, not war. We then get two pages of Simian blowing up bots; he couldn’t blow up actual living beings because this IS an Archie comic. But just as he’s about to be sent to that big banana plantation in the sky…

We get a Mogul Ex Machina. Seems the pretentious pachyderm pulled the Sarge’s monkey balls out of the fire to make him a deal: more power in exchange for obedience. We then get TWO PAGES of … a stupid Lego martial arts system ad, followed by NO EXPLANATION WHATEVER as to how Sarge kept up his end of the bargain. We’re not even told how long his initial hitch was, only that he “served Mogul for a time.” Not very helpful. He only comes back to his home village to receive the perfunctory admiration of the other apes, and to hear his grandfather admit that he was wrong and to offer him the top slot in the local gorilla guerrilla group. Naturally, he blows everyone off.

But on to new business. On the strength of Scourge’s rep as conqueror of Moebius (an unearned rep, as we learned last issue), the Sarge is willing to enlist in Scourge’s outfit. Scourge is not about to disillusion the big ape.

Next in line is Predator Hawk. A former member of the Battle Bird Armada, he worked his way up through the ranks only to discover that his career path was a dead-ender so long as Speedy was tapped to be the XVIth Battle Lord. His attempt to cut Speedy down to size was, understandably, interrupted by the XVth Battle Lord. He did an unspecified amount of time in the BBA clink until he was sprung by the Babylon Rogues, whom he’d hunted in the past. Go figure. Anyway, he soon tired of the Rogue life and especially of Jet the Rogue leader. But who should walk into his life in what looks like Adobe City but Mammoth Mogul. “Mogul gave me purpose. Mogul gave me prey. Challenging prey,” we’re told. Of course the bigger challenge is to speak openly about what kind of prey he was up against, but this an Archie comic, so it’s just not gonna happen. Scourge makes his recruiting pitch just as the dinner bell sounds. The final two pages can be summed up as “Two down, two to go.” That not only describes the Scourge recruitment drive, but also this miserable story arc.

HEAD: There’s an interesting story in here somewhere, but the fact that it’s running in an Archie comic makes it untellable because of Archie’s in-house standards. We’re talking about, among other things, killing, explosive ordnance, and in the case of Fiona, dungeons and abandonment issues. This is heavy stuff; too heavy to be dealt with in an Archie comic, as it turns out.

Ian has made it clear that the Archie comics are about action and more action, but said action has to be qualified. In the various flashbacks/retcons we get violence against robots, theft, and gunplay. It SOUNDS impressive but frankly looks way too tame in print.

And let’s not forget the fact that this is all self-justification from the villains. As we saw in the very first page of the first installment, Scourge’s memory was rather selective when he described his going super against Sonic. It ended badly for Scourge, but you didn’t hear that from HIM! In fact, the readers don’t get very much of anything worthwhile in this story: just a lot of self-serving back story and pulled punches.

The scene with Warden Zobotnik needs to be translated into English to make it more comprehensible. There seem to be some key nouns missing from his spiel. There’s talk of “breaking” and “remolding” but nothing comes into focus. Aside from standing back and watching Scourge get pummeled by uninhibited inhibitor collar-wearing prisoners, we never know what exactly the Warden’s rehab program entails. Ian might as well not have brought it up at all.

This is the second part of a 4-parter. That means it’s supposed to be heavy on development either of the plot or the characters. Since the plot pretty much goes nowhere in this issue, the focus ought to be on the characters. But they’re not really developed, either. We get watered-down explanations as to why Sarge and Hawk are such badasses but it all feels like filler; Fiona I’ll deal with in the Heart section. I’m really beginning to hate this story arc and just wish it was over. Head Score: 3.

EYE: Tracy Yardley! doesn’t get a chance to cut loose here and jazz with the page frame layouts as he’s done in the past. Even during Simian’s flashback the layouts are fairly restrained. Otherwise, he hasn’t lost any steps. Eye Score: 9.

HEART: So here’s how it works: Sgt. Simian gets 5 pages of retcon, and Predator Hawk gets 4. That’s understandable; as VERY minor characters, they need more than a shot of back story. But Fiona has been with this comic in one form or another since issue S29 (if you count her automaton version) and she doesn’t even rate an entire page. What’s up with that?

Let’s hop skip and jump over Fiona’s resume, i.e., her work in this comic to date. For starters, noobs may not know that when she breaks out of the dungeon when she was a kid, it wasn’t because her parents had tossed her in there for breaking curfew. It was because she had been working pretty much as a slave for Robotnik.

Her line “I had to look out for myself” is the short version. Before teaming up with the Destructix, she’s been allied with Bean, Bark and Nac’s sister, Nic, and had even thrown in with the Freedom Fighters at some point while we were focusing on Sonic during the Tossed In Space arc 100 issues or so ago (S126-130).

So what’s the bottom line here? That Ian can’t or won’t take the time to examine the ONE psychologically interesting character in this story, one with a complex, ginormous back story that’s news to the noobs unless they look it up on the Internet. In practice, that means she’s reduced to doing what she does because the script needs her to do them.

This happens a lot in comic books, of course, and she’s not the only one. For instance, the fact that the Babylon Rogues sprang Predator Hawk from the clutches of the Battle Bird Armada and drafted him into their gang without so much as an intake interview doesn’t really make a lot of sense, and Ian doesn’t pause to fix that. We’re supposed to accept this state of affairs with no further explanation beyond Predator Hawk’s “Almost ironic” observation.

Of course, Ian may simply NEED Fiona to be a one-dimensional character who, we are told by a gratuitous text box, “likes the bad boys.” Except when she didn’t.

I thought the least of this story’s problems was the pedestrian jail setting. The longer it goes on, though, the more its story and characters appear to be in a terminal nosedive. Whether Scourge gets out of jail or not, my gut tells me this is not going to end either well or satisfying. Heart Score: 3.

Sonic Spin: OK, really, Paul, “Folson Prison Blues”? Next time you and Ian get together, do your “batting around” in a batting cage. And while back story can help a villain stand out from the herd, an INTERESTING back story helps even more.

Fan Art: Nice renderings of Scourge by Tiffany and Donny, though the latter makes me think that Scourge is auditioning for Sonic Unleashed Again. And Marsha has the replay of the Silver v. Enerjak brawl.

Fan Funnies: Mitch realizes that Silver has a marketable skill if and when his comic book career fizzles out. This was actually kind of funny. Unlike…

Off-Panel: joke by Ian Flynn; Art by Jamal Peppers, Gary Martin, Paul Kaminski, and the office copier. The Genndy Tartakovsky reference is to the “TV Puppet Pals” show-within-a-show that was part of the Justice Friends rip on superheroes from “Dexter’s Laboratory.” And yeah, this is pretty much Al and Cal’s shtick.

Letters: Mark is all fanboy about this story arc, and G. Scott surmises that Silver’s quarry in his hunt for the Mobian traitor was … Scales from “The Original Freedom Fighters” (S142). And he’d like to see a Rotor arc and see Nicole in action, which leads to this qualified by Editorial: “presuming the world returns to normal.” And the last time the Sonicverse was normal was … when exactly?