Sonic Universe #70 (January 2015)

Yardley/Amash/Hunzeker cover: Spoiler Alert! But I guess when it happens on the cover it’s not much of a spoiler, is it? Knuckles relives Sonic Adventure 2 by smashing the Master Emerald as Snively, Relic, Rouge, Shadow, Omega and Eclipse look on.

“Total Eclipse Part 4: Last Resort”

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 Licensing reps: Tyler Ham and Anthony Gaccione.

Once out of the waters of Azure Lake (so much for that threat), Shadow and Knuckles get back to the business of pounding on each other until they sense a great disturbance in the Force, which Knuckles interprets as the Master Emerald being relocated. Shadow calls in but before Rouge can bring him up to speed she wants Omega to pop her dislocated shoulder back into place. Omega is no Baymax and doesn’t even ask “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?” before popping it back in place, a move which grosses Relic out of existence. Rouge uses the occasion to congratulate the two on screwing things up thanks to their Y chromosomes. She suggests that Shadow and Knuckles head them off at the pass; since this is Knuckles’s home turf, he knows where all the passes are. Knux tells the girls and bots to adjourn to the nearest control hub, where they home in on Eclipse in the Sandopolis Zone (not one of my favorites).

As Eclipse with his baby arms in tow relives the frustrating features of the Zone while avoiding the Small Room of Death, Knux and Shadow go underground, make a left turn at Albuquerque, and wind up at the Launch Base Zone ahead of the Eclipse party. Eclipse tells the kids to head into the SUV and buckle up, but his attempt to warp on board with the Master Emerald is thwarted by Shadow. The fight then becomes two-on-one as Knuckles joins it. Eclipse then calls back the three Arms we learned about from the previous installment and tries upgrading himself but Shadow thwarts him. Knuckles, meanwhile, goes into internal monologue mode, weighing the not very desirable alternatives: he’s not about to hand over the Master Emerald to either Eclipse or Shadow, both of whom are becoming too pooped to participate. So Knux launches into the Prayer of Tikal and like it shows on the cover smashes the Master Emerald into pieces. Eclipse then deploys the 4^th Arm Rhygenta whose power is … sonic cannon. BO-RING! But it’s enough to put Knuckles and Shadow on their backs while Eclipse makes good his escape in a shuttle.

“The Next Day,” it says in the text box, Snively shows up with a G.U.N. crew to pick up Eclipse’s crashed ride as a souvenir. Despite the retcon, Knuckles recognizes the little twerp hiding behind the Walter White whiskers and tells him to make tracks. Rouge compliments Knux on his busting up the Master Emerald before taking off, while Relic and Fixit-Not-Felix decide to stay on as a favor to Knuckles. So Knuckles now has a new/old job: collecting Master Emerald shards before the planet finishes its long-delayed falling apart (remember?). But first he needs to deliver Chip (remember?) and a Chaos Emerald to Sonic, whom he still doesn’t particularly like (remember?). And Eclipse and the kids get to spend a night in the crashed shuttle; too bad Eclipse never finished driver’s ed.

HEAD: Peter Arnett, an Associated Press reporter covering the American War in Vietnam, once quoted an unnamed American major concerning the decision by allied military commanders to bomb and shell the town of Ben Tre, capital of Ben Tre Province in what was at the time South Vietnam. This was done regardless of inflicting civilian casualties in order to rout Viet Cong forces in the town (The term “Viet Cong” was short for “Viet Nam cong san” or “Vietnam communists” though their technical name was the National Liberation Front). The military action, in the words of the major, became a metaphor for America’s involvement in Vietnam: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

That pretty much sums up what Knuckles did: destroying the Master Emerald to keep it from falling into the hands of either Eclipse or Shadow. The former would have used it to beef up his Arms and the latter would have handed it over to G.U.N. There were no really good choices from Knuckles’s point of view, so he rewound to Sonic Adventure 2 where Knuckles spent the better part of the game hunting shards to keep them from Rouge, who was also looking for them.

Despite several interludes involving Rouge and Relic, the story revolves around the trio of Shadow, Knuckles and Eclipse. Everyone else is basically a supporting character of one kind or another. That includes the Arms who did not surprise me with a non-weaponized power for Rhygenta. Again, it feels like a Mega Man retread.

The story does what it needs to do, but it crosses a lot of very familiar territory to do it. The busting of the Master Emerald was total déjà vu. When Knuckles and Shadow are through beating on each other, they go after Eclipse. Now that Snively has been outed as a villain, he’s got nowhere to go but deeper into the part.

In the same way that the story of Coral (S259-262) proved to be more interesting than Sonic’s participation in the story, again Eclipse’s adventure in babysitting eclipsed (sorry about that) the whole steal-the-Master-Emerald plot point for me. Yet that itself was undone by what’s become the pedestrian nature of his relationship with the baby arms. Head Score: 5.

EYE: Once more, the artwork trumps the story. My favorite moments: Rouge chewing out Shadow and Knuckles, the one-page quick tour of Sandopolis, and the page layout after Knuckles shatters the Master Emerald. Eye Score: 10.

HEART: Not this time. Ian danced around the possibility with Rouge’s dislocated shoulder, Relic’s inability to handle it, and Eclipse and his baby arms. But the first was dialed down (probably to keep it within Archie house standards), Relic’s expressions were reduced to comedic takes, and I’ve already said that the Eclipse/baby arms plot succumbed to being a Mega Man ripoff. Heart Score: n/a.

FAN ART: Lucas submits something that looks like an Impressionistic portrait of Silver, Karolina shows Sonic, Silver and Shadow against a field of emeralds, Jag S. and Juan R. submit a portrait of Espio, and Noah’s portrait of the major players is very reminiscent of the artwork of German expressionist Ernst Kirchner.

OFF PANEL: Knuckles is reduced to looking for needles in a haystack, Rouge discovers that Relic is a fangirl, and Chip’s artwork fails to impress Tikal.

FAN MAIL: “Tornado” asks if Eclipse is a fan chara (Srsly?), raves about the artwork, and is looking forward to the Sonic Boom adaptation. Jonathan N. wants to know if Tracy Yardley will be allowed to write any other stories (not for the foreseeable, since he’s toiling in the artistic mines), and if Relic is British based on her accent and dialogue. At least she’s not saying “Cheerio” and “Pip pip” every other panel.