Sonic Universe #41 (August 2012)

Yardley!/Downer cover: “Enter: The Secret Freedom Fighters.” Just what this franchise needs: more characters to track. As a night scene, it’s an improvement over S237 and its misused moonlight cover. It’s actually really good at squeezing in seven characters while still allowing room for the title, blurb and other information. Any other facts will have to wait for the Sonic Spin column.

“Unsung Heroes Part 1: The Big Guns”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley!; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Steve Downer; Lettering: Jack Morelli; Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo; Editor: Paul Kaminski: Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Texas Hold ‘Em Coach: Mike Pellerito; Sega Licensing Reps: Anthony Gaccione and Cindy Chau

Let’s pass over the recap and the boilerplate opening page and start with the handy-dandy Moniker Conversion Table, the score card without which you can’t tell the players. It seems that Harry Who thought that the members of this spiffy new hero squad should use aliases to confuse the readers. Or the other side. Still works. And to avoid confusion I’m not going to use the “call signs” in these reviews. But in case you get confused at some point in this story arc, here’s the who’s who so you know what’s what:

Silver = Ace

Elias = King (Duh!)

Lyco Wolf = Queen of Hearts

Leeta Wolf = Queen of Diamonds

Shard = Jack

Larry Lynx = Joker

I think Ian came up with these names during an Atlantic City casino weekend. I haven’t seen this level of inspiration since the episode of “Gargoyles” where we learned that one of the henchmen of crime boss Tony Dracon, a guy who wears glasses, was nicknamed “Glasses.” Seriously. It must’ve taken Dracon a week to come up with that one. I mean, playing cards? They could just as easily have gone with colors-and-numbers as in Star Wars: Gold Leader, Red Three, Red Five. And anyone with a touch of the poet would have come up with the names of flowers or stars or constellations or birds, even mash-up bird names as in the Hunger Games trilogy.

The “call signs” do serve a tactical purpose: they’re meant to confuse the other side in case the bad guys are listening in on the radio or whatever. The problem is it can confuse the reader as well. I mean, why even bother with nicknames unless they knew Naugus or his cronies might be listening in to the ops’ banter? And being comic book characters, they can out-banter an RAF squadron any day of the week. Except for a couple action sequences where the characters know they have to shut up and get the job done.

Back to the story, which requires a little bit of back story. Harry tells the gathered ops that Geoff is making a run for the border. He wants Silver to tag him with a homing device. Silver, for his part, reminds Harv that the latter is supposed to be going over his intel trying to identify the traitor. This makes me like my theory that Harvey himself is the traitor even more; having the fox crunch the numbers on the henhouse, as it were.

And before you can say “Valley of the Wind,” which is not as prosaic as “Windy Valley” and is also associated with Hayao Miyazaki, we find Silver, Shard and Larry engaged in attaching a homing device to Geoff’s skyboard. Since that in itself didn’t take very long, Silver and Shard then debate how best to follow Geoff down the nearby hole. Larry takes the direct approach and falls in. Silver and Shard rescue him before he’s impaled on the stalagmites below. This leads to conversation and Larry’s back story which actually has one good line: “I tried to run for public office but my ballot box spontaneously combusted.” Anyway, we also see him meeting up with Harv and Uncle Chuck as they enlist him. Shard, meanwhile, rags on Silver’s tendency to “leap to conclusions in a single bound” WRT the identity of the Traitor. Meanwhile, they arrive at a death trap but Larry saves them the trouble of probing it by walking in and setting it off. Larry’s gift of misfortune affects the trap and there’s no harm done. The noise, however, alerts Geoff who’s up ahead getting his Christmas shopping done by stealing relics.

Our trio then arrives at a booby-trapped pit, which Shard disarms by harvesting the fruit from the vine, as it were. Before they move on to the next trap, we see Geoff keeping an eye on them.

The squad arrives in the crypt of a 4^th “elite” of Naugus, a bird named Vale. Since Naugus has recently been bedeviled by three of the elites, it becomes an open question as to whether a 4^th elite will make him sane, stupid powerful, or just plain stupid. Since Geoff has apparently taken a hike with Vale’s remains, Silver figures out how far back along the path he’s gone and aims a shot at where he is. I guess that skeet shooting is one of the diversions open to him in his future realm. Geoff still manages to get away and to mess up the underground before taking off on his bugged boogie board. As the trio pull themselves together and work on getting out of the hole…

Lyco, Leeta and Elias are running an underground maze of their own. The point is not to find someone but to avoid being found by what looks like Naugus doing him impression of the FiendFire from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

HEAD: This starts out like your basic Archie Sonic story: action and humor in equal amounts. It also contains a HUGE question mark: Who the heck is Shard and where did he come from?

Unfortunately, we’re given not so much as a text box answering these questions. We’re only told that he’s a “reformed Metal Sonic” as opposed to being an orthodox Metal Sonic I suppose. He also has a rapid-fire personality and enough wit to stand up to Silver, who can be what the British call a “dull dog.” He’s actually the best character in the arc so far, but it feels like he was cobbled together by Ian and air-dropped into the story the way Arnold and his playmates were dropped into the jungle in “Predator.” And once again, we have the doctrine of loose continuity to thank for this.

Larry is an old character, i.e., he’s been around doing the same shtick of causing survivable mishaps for a while. A true jinx of Larry’s caliber wouldn’t walk away from a death trap with minor cuts and bruises. Also, it’s possible that a jinxed death trap would do … nothing at all. But there’s not a lot of Action And More Action in that.

Geoff’s escape was something of a muddle. I thought that seeing him surrounded by a blue whatever meant that he was frozen or something. Apparently that didn’t work out so good.

This is a good story, even when it bogs down and becomes a routine story. Silver does his thing, Larry does his, Geoff does his. We’ve seen this before. That’s what makes Shard so interesting, and so frustrating when you’re left asking “Where the heck did he come from?” Let’s see where this goes. Head Score: 7.

EYE: the final panel is easily the most impressive. Sure, you’ve got the death trap sequence and Larry’s vertical fall, and the layouts are vintage Yardley!, but the FiendFire at the end is a real stand-out. Eye Score: 10.

HEART: “Vale” is one of those multiple pronunciation names. Obviously there’s Vale that’s pronounced like “veil,” and there’s the Latinized pronunciation which would be “Wah-lay.” But it’s the concept of the fourth elite that is interesting.

In Jim Henson’s “The Dark Crystal,” we were set up to see the Mystics as the good guys and the Skeksis as the bad guys in yet another epic fantasy. The healing of the titular crystal was the McGuffin which drove the plot and gave work to the two main characters: the Gelflings Jen and Kira. The conclusion, however, featured not the vanquishing of the Skeksis but their physical union with the Mystics, “the two made one” as it said in the inevitable prophecy.

I’m holding back from looking at the other 3 parts of this story arc because I want to see whether Vale is going to be a game changer who will alter Naugus or just an amplifier who will only make him moreso than he is to date. I sincerely hope for the former; the psycho Naugus with the Schizoid Tabernacle Choir living in his head is more interesting than most comic book villains, but he hasn’t been getting anything of a full workout lately. And so far the Secret Freedom Fighters are something of a disappointment. It’s sad when a Metal Sonic variation is the most interesting character in the bunch. Silver and Geoff are the same old same old, and at this point Larry is just weapons-grade buffoonery. It’s a passable comic book story, which is pretty sad because that bar has always been set pretty low. Heart Score: 2.

Sonic Spin: “This issue makes Sonic Universe the longest running Sonic spinoff title ever,” inching past the Sonic X and Knuckles titles. And to show you how tardy I’ve been, much of the rest of the page/column plugs the San Diego Comic Con.

Fan Art: Jaelen gives us Sonic, Metal Sonic and a minimalist Robotnik, and Shandarrah draws Silver. And Reggie gives us Bivalve for his/its fans. I don’t know if the coloring was enhanced, but it’s not bad.

Fan Funnies: the basis of the joke is that nobody can keep their hands on a Chaos Emerald. In this case it goes from Sonic to Mecha Sally to Fiona to Scourge to Geoff, who realizes that now they’re all after him. Unfortunately, “Blimey” isn’t the best Britishism to use at this moment. There are others that work better but they tend to be obscene.

Off-Panel: Larry basically does his impersonation of a pinball between bumpers. I still think a more realistic demonstration would be for Larry to keep shorting out the set and undoing repair so that it’s like “Take 35.”

Fan Mail: Jada wants to get up close and personal with Tracy Yardley!. John gets reassured that Sonic Universe isn’t slated for extinction. And a newbie wants to know why the old Sally and Tails miniseries haven’t been reissued. You mean Editorial has passed up a chance to make money off the fans? Shocking! But the situation, we are told, shall be corrected.