Sonic #28 [Nov 1995]

Let's Do The Time Warp Again: Starting with S28, I'm making an effort to round out the Archives as much as possible by reviewing previous issues, specifically, Sonic #17-28. I may or may not impose the current rating system on every story, especially the two-page Gallagher-and-Manak throwaways. But it IS, as I say, an attempt. So, with a jump to the left and a step to the right...

Manak/D'Agostino cover: Sonic has laid waste to those within Knothole except for Antoine, who's taken shelter inside the corner box.

"Saturday Night's Alright For A Fight!"

Story: Ken Penders; Art: Art Mawhinney; Ink: Rich Koslowski; Lettering: Mindy Eisman; Color: Barry Grossman: Editor: Scott Fulop; Managing editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater.

To recap: In a bow to the plot from one of the SatAM second season eps ("No Brainer"), Sonic has lost his memory and is convinced that he and Robotnik are on the same side. Having implanted a bug on Sonic, Robotnik sends him back to Knothole where he manages to penetrate their defenses...

Sally tries talking Sonic down but Sonic is in favor of getting it on in the Mills Lane style, even though "Celebrity Deathmatch" won't premiere for a couple few Earth years yet. So, absent Nick Diamond and Johnny Gomez, yours truly will have to call the action from ringside.

Sonic isn't in the mood for any chin music. Instead he body-slams Rotor into a nearby computer console and bops his blubber a lot until the big guy goes down. Sonic then gets behind Sal and puts her in a headlock (which is STILL about as intimate as the management at Archie will let Sonic and Sally get) before Sally breaks the hold with an overhead toss. That implies a LOT of upper-body strength on Sally's part; dropping to one knee would have given her some leverage in the classic judo manner. Tails and Bunnie arrive just as Sonic charges Sal, who takes a flying leap and gets out of the way, finishing the move with a boot to Sonic's chin.

Bunnie tags herself into the match and puts Sonic in a bionic leg scissors. You'd think with the leg scissors alone, not to mention Sally and Tails hanging on to Sonic's arms, that he'd be properly immobilized. Instead, he goes into a spin which, through the magic of centrifugal force, sends his friends flying. That literally includes Tails, who manages to rev up and try to stay airborne, but Sonic curls up into Mad Ball mode and knocks him down.

Back at Celebrity Deathmatch central, Robotnik spends about a page doing the Villain's Exposition Ramble. Sonic, he declares, is "incapable of any serious independent thought," which would qualify him to work as an editor for Archie Comics. Robotnik's revels, however, are cut short when his TV reception goes out. That's what you get when you try to pirate a pay-per-view fight.

The mood switches to nice coloration by Barry Grossman where the characters are shown as black with red highlights, appropriate for the emergency lighting that kicked in. As nice as it is, though, it makes it hard to identify the characters. The Barely Discernable Players with Antoine are the freedom fighters who appeared with Sally in her ill-fated miniseries (you know, the one which was SUPPOSED to have introduced us to Sally's mom until Sega 86ed that idea; I suppose it's OK to talk about that now that the Queen's come around). They are (left to right): Penelope Platypus, Dylan Porcupine, Arlo Aardvark, and Hamlin Pig. I'm just guessing as to the last names, you understand.

The gang tries rushing Sonic, taking advantage of the darkness. Unfortunately, that cuts both ways and Sonic eludes them. Hamlin tries blind-siding Sonic solo in the dark and gets run over for his trouble, because he decided to announce his arrival. Whereupon Sonic gives Antoine a good taunting. This brings out 'Toine, with cutlass drawn. Sonic, however, eludes the blade and konks - excuse me, WONKs - Antoine on the head. Arlo tries a flying leap, but gets thrown at Penelope. If you think this is getting repetitious, you're right, so Dylan wraps up this bout by running into Sonic from behind, knocking him out. Good fight, and good night.

Sonic comes to in the infirmary and, in the classic tradition of the Amnesia Plot, can't remember any of the preceding action. Rotor discovers the bug in Sonic's skull and performs the delicate procedure of yanking it out with tweezers. Dr. Quack must still have been in med school. Before you can say "loose cannon," Sonic's got his sneakers laced up, the bug's in his hand, and he's headed out the door.

Sonic pops out of the tree-stump entrance, which re-establishes the link with Robotnik. As he and Snively send some "demolition tractors" in the general direction of the signal, Tails monitors the situation from above and Sally supervises some spade work down below. "Wouldn't you rather get through this with a little help from your friends?" she asks Sonic, lapsing into Ken's beloved Beatlespeak, but Archie won't let Sonic answer "I just need someone to love." Anyway, the tractors go over a cliff thanks to a misplaced bug.

HEAD: I hate to think of 1995 as "the good old days" of anything, but this story arc is something of an improvement over story arcs to come. For instance, compare this with "Icon" (S62-63). That had its share of action as well, but it was...well, a little on the incoherent side. It was never established WHY the Sandblast Citizens were fighting off a horde of roboticized Mobians, or why those Mobians hadn't regained control of their free will and reason with the destruction of Robotnik in "Endgame," or what the motivation of the Sandblasters was for keeping Sonic and Tails prisoner in the first place. Here, everything's simple and straightforward: Sonic's turned, his friends try to stop him, he eventually comes to his senses and the threat is averted. It ain't Shakespeare, as they say, but it sure works, even if it WAS basically a fight story for the most part. Head Score: 8.

EYE: One good thing about going back over these older issues is reminding myself just how good Art Mawhinney's work was back in the days. He was the definitive Sonic artist, and in some ways nobody's been able to improve upon his drawings since. I don't know who got the idea for the red light sequence, but it was extremely effective and set a nice, tense mood. One or two coloring glitches I'm willing to overlook. Eye Score: 9.

HEART: The operative (if understated) emotion here is forgiveness: Sally doesn't hold a grudge against Sonic after his little rampage. Plus Sonic is appropriately contrite without running the risk of violating Sega standards. Heart Score: 8.

Fan Art: Staci George draws Sally in the Mawhinney mode, and Chris Torell makes Snively look like a Dalek.

"Growing Pains, Part I"

Story: Mike Gallagher; Art: Dave Manak; Ink: Harvo.

Unlike Sally in the previous story, Tails isn't in a very forgiving mood. Looks like his pride got wounded along with his bod, and the old resentments from "Submersible Rehearsal" (Triple Trouble special) are revived, along with an accompanying plot point. Properly lubed up, Tails "runs" away from home. Robotnik, meanwhile, puts a trap together rather too quickly for my liking, but it moves the story along. Answering a distress call, Tails discovers "a gorgeous young female fox in distress" just as his hormones start kicking in. He rescues Fiona, we get some close-ups of body parts (no, not THOSE parts, you perv!), and we get a one-page "Blue Lagoon" interlude. I don't know about you, but it was easy for me to imagine Stevie Wonder singing "Overjoyed" in the background as I looked at this page.

Robotnik, however, is prepared to provide the inspiration for yet another discussion of motion picture terminology. In this case: The Maguffin.

A term coined by Alfred Hitchcock, the Maguffin (or "Mcguffin") is an object with little or no intrinsic value aside from its ability to move the plot along. Examples from Hitch's films are the two caged lovebirds in "The Birds" and the $40,000 Janet Leigh steals from her employer in "Psycho." In this case, Gallagher doesn't get it quite right. Judging from fan reaction to this story, Fiona's appearance was FAR from being of little or no intrinsic value. In fact, a lot of fans were hoping she'd turn and join Tails...but I'm getting ahead of the story.

After I don't know how long of an interlude, we find that the answer to the question "Your place or mine?" is pretty easy when you're on a desert island. Tails, however, is trapped by Robotnik in the front-end of a rather low-tech roboticizer. Fiona pulls what looks like the lever on a slot machine; next month, unfortunately, the story comes up three lemons.

HEAD: Man, this started out so good! Unlike some back stories, which feel like they belong to a different continuity, this one just naturally flowed from "Saturday Night...." Tails's motivation was perfect for where his character was in the book at that time; too bad not much has happened to him since then. And we REALLY hoped Fiona would be a keeper! Head Score: 8.

EYE: If you're used to Manak's style, this didn't feel all that overblown, though there were some things I could have lived without: the butt-ugly cherub on page 5 in particular. The first panel on page 7, on the other hand, is marvelous. Eye Score: 7.

HEART: Like I say, the fans were primed for this one. We WANTED to see Tails and Fiona as a couple! Which was one of the reasons why the "return" of Fiona in the Mighty Armadillo story arc (K26-28) was such a bringdown, never mind that Ken simply decided to play her as disagreeable to the point of being downright bitchy. The point is, Gallagher had the Tails fans right where he wanted us, and that made the disappointment that was Part 2 all the keener. Heart Score: 9.

Sonic-Grams: I don't know what they called it, and I don't know who drew it (whether it was Dan DeCarlo or not) and I don't care: this precursor to "Off-Panel" was an ego trip and I don't miss it a bit. In this installment, Freddie Mendez gets out while the getting is good, and all Scott Fulop cares about is superficialities. And is the picture of someone named Dawn BONKing into a tree supposed to be funny?

The big news is the upcoming Tails miniseries. Letters: Robert Brannon asks Sally how to enlist. Nothing unusual there; J. K. Rowling gets letters asking how to get into Hogwarts. For the record, "Sally" says it takes courage, skill, wisdom, and heart to be a Freedom Fighter. But fear not: if you lack these heroic qualities, you can probably still find a job editing comic books.