Sonic Universe #50 (May 2013)

Spaziante/Herms cover: Sonic manages to get in multiple images of himself as reflections on Metal Sonic, including Metal’s crotch. The cover looks a lot like it was taken from the Sonic anime. There are some patches of red foil, particularly as Metal’s eyes. You’ll be seeing more of Spaziante’s work later on in this issue.

“Forged in Fire”

Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Tracy Yardley; Ink: Jim Amash; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: Jack Morelli; Assistant Editor: Vincent Lovallo; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; Borg Queen: Mike Pellerito; Sega Licensing reps: Anthony Gaccione and Cindy Chau

A long time ago, in a comic book not so far away (about 6 issues ago of the flagship Sonic comic), a lot of mindless junk happened – see my review of Sonic #240. In the course of the mindless junk, Eggman unleashed Metal Sonic who is interrupted by Shard. This is their story, as they say on Law & Order.

The short tussle is all Shard’s as he blasts Metal Sonic to pieces. The end?

Hardly. We cut to Eggman watching game footage of that last fight and downloading information from the Power Gem that was installed in Metal Sonic. The bad news is, Eggman has to patch up Metal Sonic after every battle with Sonic. The good news is, the data from the battles is stored in the Power Gem. So now Metal Sonic goes after regular Sonic again, right?

Wrong! Eggman wants to send Metal Sonic after Shard again instead. Metal Sonic is too set in his ways to shift gears that easily, but Eggman unplugs Metal and plugs him back in again 30 seconds later. Well, now we know why we never see him blowing in a call to Tech Support.

Back at the Tornado, Sonic and Tails engage in a page full of back story and exposition for the benefit of confused newbies. And to kill a page.

Because on the next page it’s back to Shard as he plays Tech Wizard’s Chess with Nicole. This, too, is an excuse to exposit, since Nicole knows what it’s like to be on the outs with the locals the same way Shard has yet to establish hero cred with Sonic and his crew. Just then, a 911 call comes in so Shard goes offline in order to take the call.

It’s Metal Sonic, engaged in this comic book’s equivalent of kicking a puppy: he’s broken into Antoine’s hospital room and is getting ready to downgrade his condition from stable to hamburger. Shard tells him to pick on someone his own metallic content. Metal Sonic picks up on the throw-down and they leave as super-suit Rotor and Big arrive too late to apprehend them.

The match-up starts with an attempt to bond with Metal Sonic, but the latter acts like Editorial and wants to move right to the ass-kicking, which Tracy Yardley! documents in a 2-page splash. While Shard starts riffing, Metal Sonic starts playing back his archives and improvising, getting the better of Shard. Fortunately for Shard, Metal takes a chance to talk trash to Shard; in professional wrestling this is known as a rest hold, administered to give the other guy a chance to catch his breath and to give the illusion that something is still happening. For his part, Shard tries to talk him out of trashing him but Metal is in no mood to change his programming. This gives Shard a chance to do some damage, though in hindsight taking a drill to Metal’s power gem may not have been the smartest move since it allows Metal to blast Shard’s arm cannon, the equivalent of a Mega Buster. Mega Man, take note.

As an endgame, Shard latches onto Metal and the two of them go to pieces together. I’m not quite sure how Shard knew Metal was going to self-destruct, unless he’s been programmed to pick up on clichés. Shard is pretty beaten up by the close encounter but still blows in an OnStar call to Nicole.

Back at the Death Egg, Eggman reinvents the wheel, aka Metal Sonic, yet again, but he doesn’t sic him on Mobitropolis (that’s the job of the Terrorist Tails Doll) or go after Sonic. Instead he’s being lateraled over to another villain, and it doesn’t take an alleged genius to hazard the guess that his name begins with Dr. and ends with Wily.

HEAD: If Eggman is such a stinkin’ genius, why does he have to reinvent the wheel, or the heel, every time Metal Sonic loses? At least the Borg have the capability to adapt and self-correct on the fly. That’s actually interesting because they self-correct in real time, which makes them more formidable. Robotnik’s strategy just makes him look like Wile E. Coyote as he fails, goes into the fade to black, and is shown starting a new scheme as the next scene starts.

Aside from the bots taking turns kicking each other’s asses, we have the inevitable interludes for supplying exposition, and the temptation increases with every occurrence to skip each one. It’s not that I’m any fan of fight scenes, it’s just that the in-between stuff feels more and more routine and dashed off, as if even Ian doesn’t want to bother with them for any extended period of time.

Ian also didn’t bother working up a sweat trying to set up the second round of the fight. Instead he has Metal ready to beat up on someone who can’t fight back: the presumably comatose Antoine. This reminds me of how phony the whole Antoine Survives Getting Blown Up plot point really is. There’s simply no good reason to have had Metal Sonic focus on Ant instead of, say, Sonic’s ‘rents. That would have been just as cold-blooded and avoided parading out Antoine. I mean, what if, in spite of being under a doctor’s care, he’d have developed a life-threatening complication (an embolism, an aneurism) and died anyway? Is Metal really so smart that he can improvise what do to if he breaks into a hospital room and finds an empty bed?

I really don’t think he’s that smart; he’s too tied down by his previous programming and the need to prevent what happened before. If Metal was really living up to the Doc’s idea of obtaining “experience,” I’d expect him to give Eggman the robotic finger and go after Sonic on his own. Or would that make him too human?

Sorry to go off on a tangent like that, but really, this story is running on fumes. It’s another sigh that Ian is on the brink of segueing to the Mega Man arc and just wants this to be over and done with. I can relate, but I also can’t enjoy this pile of recycled plastic. Head Score: 3.

EYE: This is not a plum assignment for Tracy Yardley!. Most of his work went into two robots battling it out, one of which never changes his facial expression (guess which one). But he does well enough given what he has to work with. There’s not much he can do about the increasingly-boring stretches of exposition; Blobbo and Blockhead especially have gotten old. The chess game with Nicole should have ended up looking better than it did. Eye Score: 8.

HEART: Shard is a bot, just like Metal Sonic. That means no matter how many hit points he takes, he can always come back for more after spending some time in the shop, same as Metal. Which is another way of asking “Why should I care?”

It’s a question that Tracy Yardley! has yet to face and which he can’t continue to duck if Shard is here to stay. After all, in his initial appearance Shard dba Metal Sonic threw his own life away at a volcano. Frankly, that should have been the end of it.

Shard, however, has been brought in to up the robo factor and increase the snark content because, let’s face it, Sonic has become way too tame lately. Personally, I blame the Sega watchdogs for taming the Blue Blur’s tongue.

Of course we’re talking about the company that has smeared Sonic all over the highway trying to figure out what to do with him. He’s been a knight, a werehog, something out of a Final Fantasy game, and none of it has worked. Sega’s Licensing reps may have been brought in to protect Sonic’s reputation, but at this rate he may not have any reputation left. He’s gotten so safe that, for the motion picture “Wreck-It Ralph,” he gets major screen time giving a public service announcement to other video game characters. Doesn’t get safer than that.

But back to Shard. He’s been getting a good deal of back story to try to get some fan love, but so long as he’s still a bot the deck remains hopelessly stacked. In this issue he meets with Nicole as they compare notes on how the organic world has been treating them. That’s good for generating sympathy but doesn’t necessarily buy Shard a boatload of cred.

Let’s take a moment to remember how Nicole got to where she is. In Renae De Liz’s magnificent game-changer of a story, “Stargazing,” we meet Nicole while she’s still in beta and destined to “die,” so she makes the most of her friendship with Sally in the time she has. Later, the citizens of Mobius gang up on her under the promptings of Naugus and she goes into exile.

Shard, however, is relatively fresh off the showroom floor. He’s been given a lot of snarky lines and he’s gotten close but he really has yet to break through. Even here, after having been dinged by Metal Sonic, it’s like “So what?”

Ian has put a good deal of work into Shard to make him an addition to the comic cast. But he’s going to have to work harder for Shard to really break through. A lot harder. HEART SCORE: 5.

“Go Ahead … Mecha My Day” (Repeat)

Been there, done that, wrote the review which is posted at http://www.andrews.edu/~drazen/s25.txt .

Essentially, Editorial’s idea of goosing up a special issue is to go back and lift a dozen pages from an old story and repackage it. At least they avoided reprinting the earlier panel where Sally wonders aloud “I wonder if Princess Di has days like this?” Still too soon, I guess. But they included Sally parachuting out of Rotor’s plane as a little something for those of us going through Sally deprivation. Unlike Eggman, I refuse to reinvent the wheel by reviewing this story again. That’s why I included the link. Help yourselves.

FAN ART: Seth gives up bird’s eye views of various pieces of unreal real estate, Carolyn draws Knuckles and Sonic, Josh draws Shard, and Kez does a very nice drawing of Nicole that looks like Tracy Yardley!’s work. Very close.

OFF-PANEL: And Sonic didn’t just run rings around the cake and suck the air out to extinguish the candles because…? Has even Ian forgotten what Sonic is capable of doing?

Speaking of Sonic doing public service announcements, what appears to be a PSA is really just one more flog for the Sonic-Mega Man crossover. Sorry, I’ll wait until after I’ve read it before I “spread the word” about it. And here’s here I do my talking.