Sonic Universe #64 (July 2014)

Tracy Yardley! cover: yeah, this is more like it! It’s a very dramatic pose of Knuckles lit by a single match while electric eyeballs peer at him from the darkness. We’ve already had a partial reveal of the creatures in the “Waves of Change” story arc in the prime Sonic comic, and we’ll get another peek in this one. Still, showing only the eyes is a very effective design.

My one problem with this cover, which probably afflicts only me, is the presence of Bean. I’m guessing a sizable segment of the Sonic fan base likes him, but I am not one of that number. There’s always room in a comic book for comic relief, but a little of this bird goes a very long way for me. His presence on an otherwise impeccable cover is like the mole on Cindy Crawford’s face: it either adds something for you or it’s a turn-off.

“The Great Chaos Caper Part 2: The Usual Suspects”

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; Suits: Mike Pellerito and Jon Goldwater; Sega Character Licensing rep: Anthony Gaccione.

We open with the classic standoff: Knuckles and the Chaotix versus Nack, Bean and Bark dba the Hooligans. There follows a splash page of them mixing it up. Props to whoever thought to invert Bean’s word balloon, but it only sounds weird in print. The fight continues for another page and a half until Bean, righting his word balloons and acting as the voice of reason, lets it be known that neither group has the sought-after Chaos Emerald. So the first four pages of this issue get us absolutely nowhere. By the bottom of page 5, both Knuckles and Nack realize that they need to be looking underground in the Abandoned Mines for the Emerald, and the bad guys spend the next page making good their escape.

Knuckles is taking this pretty well despite the hooligan head start, because he knows his way around the mines better than they do. En route to Church Mountain, using a glide technique which we haven’t seen since I don’t know when, Knuckles goes all thought balloony providing the reader with exposition. He expresses the hope that the Master Emerald is OK, which in this comic is a bald-faced cue to …

Cut back to Angel Island where Relic and Fixit use up two pages with banter. There’s a lot of talk about how screwed up the old tech was even before Eggman’s major reset, and there’s a visual reference which only makes sense if you’re into editing the game code. About all their interlude brings to the party is the sense that there’s some kind of anomaly over by Mushroom Hill, and that could have been sold in less than 2 pages.

Down in the mines, there’s more banter as Knux tries to sense the moving Emerald. Charmy is dissuaded from touching one of those globular switches that control the water level, but not until wringing from Knuckles the concession that they were fun to play with. While they take the scenic route over a lava flow, we learn of woeful division in the hooligan ranks as Bark begins losing his taste for working for Eggman.

As for the Chaotix, Knuckles has to straighten them out when all the talk about ghosts start freaking out Charmy. Knuckles’s basic philosophy is that if it manifests itself then you can hit it. Meanwhile, we get the beastie tease.

More worrisome, the other Chaotix are beginning to doubt Knuckles’s leadership skills, which here translate into his ability to sense the Chaos Emerald. At this point, tempers flare. Before Knuckles can walk out of his own comic book, he senses the target heading for them. And by the final page they encounter the Emerald in the possession of … Chip.

HEAD: This entrance hardly does justice to Chip, but then this story arc doesn’t help matters. This is what happens when you try to write about a 6-year-old video game while avoiding a verbatim transcription of the gameplay. I have to admit that, while I haven’t gotten far into the game myself, I got far enough to cover the introduction of Chip, originally a nameless amnesiac who literally fell on Sonic’s head and into his life; that’s about as close as Archie Editorial would have ever come to a Meet Cute. Let’s see if Ian plays along with the amnesia angle or if Chip has been granted a measure of self-awareness. It was that disarming lostness of Chip’s, that Chaplinesque set-up, that helped make him an endearing figure to some extent. Looks like he’ll have to wait to come out of the closet as a chocoholic; after all, that’s how he picked up the name, from something you usually run across in a toll house cookie.

Of course there’s more to Chip than being small and cute. He’s also the embodiment of Light Gaia as opposed to the Dark Gaia plot device that threatens to turn Sonic feral but which hasn’t paid off in the comics yet. This marked the oriental origin of the game: the two sides of Gaia balance each other, yin and yang. Ian seems to be clinging to that interpretation, which probably won’t be spelled out until the story arc climaxes.

Aside from the fight at the beginning, which grinds to a halt when everyone realizes that neither group has the McGuffin in its possession, there’s an awful lot of exposition going on around here. Knuckles is a major talker who doesn’t even need another character since he can just as easily use a thought balloon. Relic continues her shtick with R2 .. excuse me, Fixit. And the good and bad guys talk amongst themselves.

But the question remains: how much of that exposition was really necessary? About a page worth of dialogue on [7] and [8] could have been cut. The two pages of Relic and Fixit bring nothing to the story, either; the Mushroom Hill foreshadowing was barely there. The Charmy shtick gets almost as tiresome as that involving Bean and tastes like warmed-over Sonic X stew. Even the dissention of the Chaotix gets a little tedious. In contrast, there should have been a measure of build-up before the final splash page and the Chip reveal. Again, this telling pales in comparison to the Chip intro in the game itself. Unfortunately, this is what happens when Sega tells you that you can only play with their toys. Head Score: 5.

EYE: Tracy Yardley! demonstrates once again why he’s the prime artist for the comics, though we’ve also seen good work lately by Evan Stanley, Jennifer Hernandez, and Jamal Peppers. He also does good work drawing Relic; her artwork is the best thing about her. Eye Score: 10.

HEART: True confession: I’ve been pushing myself like an old car to get this review finished. And honestly, I don’t care about this story. I really don’t.

Ian hasn’t given me much of a reason to care. The plot is that of Sonic Unleashed grafted onto the old Chaotix vs. Hooligans stuff, and the Hooligans aren’t even into hooliganism: rioting, bullying, vandalism and such. That would make this comic interesting, but it probably goes against Archie House Rules. Here, they’re just looking for a Chaos Emerald, and I’ve already read enough Emerald Keep-away stories to last me for what’s left of my lifetime. The best Ian seems to be able to do to make it more interesting is suggest disharmony on both teams caused by, oh I don’t know, Dark Gaia? Just because he stays just this side of saying it out loud it doesn’t make the foreshadowing any more effective. Man, I hope Ian proves me wrong; otherwise, this comic will have finally broken through and sunk to the level of television and movies with titles that end with “3.” Heart Score: Who cares?

FAN ART: Colin and Kendall draw Knuckles, Elina draws Knuckles with … I want to say Eclipse, Abel draws Knuckles and Sonic from back in the friendly rivals period, and Kate draws Chip.

OFF-PANEL: And this feature finally buries the needle on the Stupid Meter. I blame the presence of Bean.

FAN MAIL: Robert wants to see more of the other characters, especially Silver and Tails. Fortunately, those two are Sega property so they aren’t in danger of being banished to another dimension. Hunter faves Mighty and Chaos; me, I’d rather see Matilda back in the mix but she’s probably not Sega-approved.