Sonic #96 [June 2001]

Spaz/Harvo/J. D. Ray cover: Sonic and Mina reflected in a ShadowBot. Fairly impressive design even if the encounter takes place in the halls of Knothole High rather than in the Great Forest. Looks like another one of those covers where Spaz only got a handful of facts about the story and had to do his best.

"The Messenger"

Story: Karl Bollers; Art: Nelson Ribiero; Ink: Pam Eklund and Jim Amash; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editor: J. F. Gabrie, Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick; Editor-in-chief: Richard Goldwater.

One month after "Enemy Mine" we now know where Sonic dragged Kodos: to the improbably inconspicuous hospital in Knothole. There, Kodos is diagnosed as suffering from "radiation poisoning" while a couple floors below Sonic is getting fitted for a truss.

Ah, radiation. The bad writer's best friend. It induces mutations (Fantastic 4, Incredible Hulk), bestows super powers when administered with spider venom (Spiderman), makes things grow to incredible proportions (the 1950s motion pictures "Them" and "The Amazing Colossal Man"), and when the plot demands it has no effect at all (Mecha Madness special). It also apparently induces dementia.

I apologize for letting mere facts get in the way of my appreciation of a story, but there really IS such a thing as radiation sickness, specifically brought on by exposure to ionizing radiation (after all, a sunburn is brought on by exposure to radiation of a different kind). Symptoms range from moderate (headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite) to severe (sterility, leukemia or other cancers, cataracts, and hair loss - that last one would be pretty hard to miss in a Mobian).

It's a close call, but I'll give Karl a pass on this one. Radiation sickness doesn't lead to dementia per se, but it could have caused a brain tumor that got so bad it sent Kodos over the edge. Of course this begs the question as to the SOURCE of the aforementioned radiation, and why it doesn't seem to have affected Arachnis in the same way, if it affected her at all.

And yes, I'm well aware that IOACB [It's only a comic book]. I'm sorry, but I'm not giving Ken, Karl, or anyone else at Archie Comics a pass on that score anymore. It's too often become an excuse for sub-par work, thus lowering the readers' expectations about the medium. Unless comics can start raising readers' expectations and then meet them, comics as a whole will continue their unchecked freefall.

Enough with the screed ... for the time being. Back to the story.

Geoffrey wants to know how Kodos wound up in the hospital's waiting room, and Dr. Quack says "Whaddya think you're being paid to do, keep the Royal Family prisoner in their own castle while being a royal pain in Sonic's patoot for no particular reason?" "Yeah, that's right, Doc. I need to go harass Sonic some more."

Sonic, meanwhile, is chowing down on a bowl of cereal or marbles or something and a can of juice. He tells his robo parents that it kinda creeps him out to have them watch him eat. In reply they might well have quoted Nearly-Headless Nick, one of the ghosts from the Harry Potter books, on the subject of eating: "I haven't eaten for nearly four hundred years ... I don't need to, of course, but one does miss it."

The Knothole Gestapo, in the person of Geoffrey, then shows up and there follows an interrogation scene that is so ... well, it's reproduced here in full:

GEOFFREY: All right, boy, how did he get there?

SONIC: Uhhhh ... how did who get where?

GEOFFREY: Blast. [Exit GEOFFREY]

The year is not even 1/3 over and already we have a clear winner in the Worst Dialogue of the Year category, outdoing even last month's "You sure do hate [Robotnik], huh?" understatement. This is Geoff's idea of interrogation?

Meanwhile, in Robotropolis, a shadowy hedgehog kind of figure is seen mugging one of Robotnik's bots.

Geoff and Hershey report their lack of progress to Prince Elias without mentioning the fact that Geoff apparently couldn't interrogate a light bulb into a socket. They happen to walk past Sally, who's being fitted for a gown for some reason or other. Can't be a prom dress, because she's being home schooled. Geoff takes it upon himself to volunteer to escort Sally to visit Sonic, and Sally changes plans. She wonders to herself how to get out of the palace without being noticed; I was wondering who's in that coffin the lackeys are lugging around at the bottom of page 6. I'm sorry, but that's what it looks like!

Back at KHS, Mina (whose way of passing notes in class is as subtle as Geoffrey's interrogating skills are effective) wants Sonic to coach her in managing her still-unexplained speed. She just needs some pointers in the basics: stopping, starting, like that. Apparently the high school doesn't teach runner's ed.

And FINALLY, after way too long, it momentarily occurs to Sonic to wonder what happened to Tails! It would have been nice to know in "Enemy Mine" that the option existed of having Tails stay with Rotor and Antoine. Including it this late in the game makes it feel tacked on, like an afterthought.

But that plot point is quickly shoved to the side as a group of panicked students run past Sonic and the gang. One of the students is a giraffe dressed as Archie Andrews; yes, I got the joke, Nelson. EVERYBODY got it! So what are they running from? Another earthquake? A couple students wearing trenchcoats and spraying the cafeteria with automatic weapons fire? The presence of "Many Hands"? No, it's a Shadowbot. After getting Nate out of harm's way, Sonic burrows down to the next floor below with the bot right behind him. Bunnie (whose hairdo in Nelson Ribiero's hands looks worse than ever) body-checks the bot to slow it down.

As Sonic prepares to confront it, the bot starts playing back a prerecorded message: "General Kenobi: Years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars...," then realizes it's playing back the wrong message. The real message is from Uncle Chuck, who tells Sonic that yes, the Sword really does unwind the minds of roboticized Mobians, no, Kodos doesn't have it anymore, Arachnis does, but before it can say anything else the bot is short-circuited by Geoffrey's archery. Geoff takes possession of the bot; I wonder why they felt they had to drape a sheet over it.

That evening, Sonic is holed up in his room and gets an idea as to how to check things out without being recognized. He gets his inspiration from a comic book. I doubt that it's from THIS comic.

HEAD: I had a strong sense of deja vu when I saw that interrogation scene. Then I remembered the source material:

"Eh, what's up, doc?"

"Have you seen a scwewy wabbit come thwough here?"

"Rabbit, rabbit ... let's see ... did he have long ears, like dis?"

"Yeah."

"And a short, fluffy tail, like dis?"

"Yeah! Heheheheheheh."

"And does he hop around, like dis?" [hops]

"That's him! That's the wabbit!!"

"Eh, sorry, doc. Haven't seen 'im." [Aside] "Whadda maroon!"

Unfortunately, I don't think Karl was TRYING to be funny. But he DID succeed in writing one of the stupidest scenes I've ever seen in the Sonic comic. I mean, it ranks right up there with the dirt-bridge scene from "Escape From The Floating Island" (S49), it's that bad!

Karl fared a little better with his version of the Interrupted Dying Utterance cliche. It advanced the plot and the message itself was worth listening to. Still, it doesn't change the fact that the routing has racked up serious mileage. My favorite variation on that chestnut was in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail":

[Reading]"'He who is valorous and pure of heart may find the Holy Grail in the ... aaaaarrrrrggghhh.'"

"What?"

"'the ... aaaaarrrrrggghhh.'"

"What's that?"

"He must have died while carving it."

"Oh, come ON!"

"That what it says!"

"But if he was dying he wouldn't have bothered to carve 'aaaaarrrrrggghhh.' He'd just say it!"

"It's down there carved in stone!"

"Perhaps he was dictating."

"Shut up!"

Having said all that, the writing this time around is better than expected. Unlike last month's story which was centered around Sonic battling Kodos and Kodos just generally going berserk, the center of this month's story is ... Geoffrey. We move from Geoff's harassment of Sonic to his unsolicited attention to Sally (in a situation still far from anything that could be called romance) to his untimely dispatch of the bot.

Unfortunately, we STILL don't know why Geoff is acting like a hemorrhoid. Perhaps Karl is relying too much on the memory of older readers who remember Geoff's resentment of Sonic horning in on what he considered "his" job in "Saving Nate Morgan" (S71). Perhaps he's relying too much on memories of the jealousy angle left over from "Brave New World" to color in the blanks WRT the Sonic-Sally relationship. More than likely Karl wanted to put something substantive forward by now concerning Geoff's motivation but had neither the space nor the time to do the job.

So the fans are left to guess and wait and speculate idly. Some have suggested that it was no accident that Geoff's hail of crossbow bolts interrupted Uncle Chuck's message, that Geoff had something to hide and that he was silencing the bot to protect himself somehow. Believe me, the way the character is written, I don't think he's that smart. Besides, what could he be concealing unless it's the fact that this isn't Geoffrey we're seeing, but YET ONE MORE BOT DOUBLE as in Endgame's replacement of King Max, Sally's replacement of herself in the Sally miniseries, Fiona in the "Growing Pains" story arc...

Nah. Couldn't be. If Archie tried running THAT cliche past the long-suffering readers one more time, I'm convinced they'd march on Mamaroneck en masse and burn Archie Comics down to the ground. Head Score: 6.5.

EYE: Nelson Ribiero's artwork hasn't been seen since "Running On Empty" in Sonic Special #8. Seeing it again reminds me of the old barbershop song, "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?"

Bunnie is particularly ill-served. Her revised head fur style (would you call it a "hare do"?) doesn't look moussed so much as it looks plastered. She reminds me of a cross between Alfalfa from the Our Gang comedies and Moe from the Three Stooges. Which probably means little or nothing to you GenXers reading this but trust me, it's a bad look for her.

Then there are the times when a character stands around with their mouths open as if to converse and there's no accompanying word balloon. Examples: Mina on page 8 panel 3, Hershey on page 6 panel 2. Even when there IS a word balloon, the visual sometimes spoils it: Mina on page [11] panel 4 looks like her word balloon should read, "Duh!" This must have been one of the stories that Fry couldn't get in on deadline and it was given to Ribiero instead. See what happens? Eye Score: 4.

HEART: Fans of the Sonic-Sally relationship can relax. In this installment, Archie proves how serious about re-pairing them with other love interests they really are: not very. By having Mina ask Sonic for running lessons, it's obvious that during one of those sessions Sally will see the two of them together and jump to the wrong conclusion about their relationship, thus introducing a misunderstanding of indefinite duration. Show of hands: who else can see this plot point coming down Broadway? I thought so. This is a far cry from turning Sonic into a player (also pronounced "playah"), even to the watered-down degree of, say, an Archie Andrews.

Likewise with the Sally-Geoffrey pairing. Despite the suggestion dropped by Sonic in "Enemy Mine", Geoff has been a total cold fish all this time, so I don't expect him to suddenly (and uncharacteristically) turn on the charm when he's around Sally....

What am I saying? In this comic the rules of coherent characterization simply don't apply. Which means we can expect an arbitrary, unheralded, heavy-handed change of character from Geoffrey any time now. What WAS I thinking? Silly me.

And in a quick bow to Sonic actually demonstrating a capacity to care about someone, Sonic's concern for Tails is brought up in one panel, only to be smothered in its cradle two panels later. It would appear that someone in the organization is extremely uncomfortable with this angle, don't ask me why. If not, they'd have played it up more in "Enemy Mine", along the lines I suggested in my last review. If I were writing this, it'd certainly make more sense to have Sonic disguise himself to look for Tails, not to "interfere with a royal investigation."

Or else Karl could have made it clearer that Sonic has the urge to enter Robotropolis to track down Uncle Chuck, but even THAT is too much emotion for the Powers That Be to swallow, so aside from page 13 panel 1 the subject is simply not brought up. How many times do I have to use the phrase "dead behind the eyes" before these people finally get a clue? Heart Score: 5.

"The Chosen One: [Part 2]"

Story: Ken Penders; Art: Ron Lim; Ink: Ken Penders; Color: Frank Gagliardo; Lettering: Vickie Williams; Editor: Justin Gabrie.

Tails sleeps through the first 5 pages of this 8-page story. To prevent the readers from doing the same, Ken serves up a conversation between Merlin Prower and Athair. Athair points out that Knuckles and Tails have interacted in the past and that Tails is the closest thing to a friend that the continuity can spare at the moment since Knuckles's original family and friends (Remember them?) got zapped into an alternate dimension in "Best of Times, Worst of Times" (SSS14). Ken drops one or two tantalizing plot points (that Merlin's brother was "lost" somehow because of ... something or other) in the hope that the readers will be sufficiently dazzled and distracted that they won't think to ask "Prophecies? Free will? What are these two TALKING about?!?"

Their conversation is interrupted by the voice of Knuckles who seems to have wandered in from ... wherever he was to ... wherever they are. He takes his cue from Tails and falls asleep. Before the readers can join them, Athair orders Merlin to "Call forth The Chosen One."

We then get to the audience participation part of the show: Ken provides a blank word balloon, with the disingenuous explanation that it would be too dangerous to publish Merlin's incantation. The reader is thus invited to think one up on their own which would appear in the mag.

In the Harry Potter books, J. K. Rowling tends to render spells and incantations in Latin, so I went to a Latin phrase book/dictionary for some ideas (if that's too low-tech for you, there's a Latin phrase Web site at http://members.ozemail.com.au/~enigman/latin.html). I found myself leaning toward something indicative of the situation at Archie Comics: "VIDEO MELIORA PROBOQUE DETERIORA SEQUOR" ["I see and approve of the better course, but I follow the worse," which roughly translates into, "Yeah, we know what constitutes good artwork and good writing but in this month's comic you'll just find the usual crap."]. Or alternatively I would have liked to see the simple, forceful, English-language incantation: "THIS SUCKS! CHANGE IT!" Based on the end results, however, the incantation in question appears to have been: "HEY, WAKE UP AND PUT ON A CAPE; YOU DON'T LOOK STUPID ENOUGH!"

Tails appears to Knuckles and tries to talk him down, but the Guardian senses a disturbance in the Force and it gets his paranoid going. Athair's spectral head and Merlin appear, with Athair explaining that he thought maybe Knuckles should be subjected to all of them at once and get it over with. But before Merlin can say "OK, maybe this isn't a good time for you,..." Knuckles gets ready to do a slash-and-burn on the old charlatan's windpipe until Tails punches him out. The hit must have rattled Knuckles's brain because he lapses into the same kind of atrocious dialogue that characterized "The Best-Laid Plans"(S94): "Any mug who decks me sure ain't a friend, so you'd better get ready to rumble!!!" Eeeesh.

HEAD: In a rare lapse, the Freditor neglected to put editorial boxes on page [2] explaining that the scene of Knuckles riding in the Sea Fox's sidecar is from "Knuckles' Quest" (S42) and the battle against Mammoth Mogul took place in the infamous "Immortality Is Infinite..." (S56). The latter took place well over three years ago, while the former more like four-and-a-half years ago. Unfortunately, this points up one of the major flaws of loose continuity as practiced in the comic.

Ken explained the rationale in a recent post on his message board:

"LOOSE CONTINUITY - This is a battle that will be continue to be fought until the end of time. While I believe in continuity for the overall sake of stability in a series, there are always going to be contradictions somewhere along the way for a variety of reasons. Lapses of memory, production deadlines and a variety of writers are but some of the reasons, but there are others as well. To use KNUCKLES as an example, while I may have planned out a 100 issues worth of stories in the generic sense, I by no means planned out each issue, or even anything past two or three issues from the current one I'd be working on at any given time.

"When working on a story, I always leave room for the unexpected. I may come up with something that wasn't so obvious when I first began planning the story, such as the KNUCKLES segment of SONIC #100. I kept wracking my brain trying to figure out what I needed to do to make that story just a bit more special to justify using 10 pages instead of 8. It wasn't until Justin was screaming that I absolutely, positively had to have the script in the next day that I had my answer, and ended up resolving one plot point left hanging since the KNUCKLES series was canceled. In resolving that plot point, however, it opened the door to another, one I hadn't counted on, which in turn gave me the inspiration for the follow-up story."

Fair enough. But that's the theory. The practice is that the longer a story element lies around unutilized, the shorter its shelf-life becomes. The Day of Fury, the rigged Echidnaopolis election, Sally's mission to the Brotherhood and even the fate of the hunter dude are all cases in point from the work of Ken Penders. Ken says he wants to bring new members into the book's readership. Don't you think that deserves a passing visit to the echidnas, wherever they are, to generate reader sympathy for their plight instead of exclusively focusing on Knuckles acting like he's got his brains in his barbs? Otherwise when we DO finally get around to those characters the readers will be all "Who are they? And why should we care?"

Especially if Knuckles is doomed to spend the next year being the Ultimate Villain and being hated and hunted by Sonic for taking Uncle Chuck offline?

That's my latest theory: that in issue #100 Knuckles will be revealed as the Ultimate Villain by acting the part of what Bob Repas called a "walking electromagnetic pulse generator" and frying all of Uncle Chuck's circuits, thus "killing" him and setting up a tedious enmity plot designed to turn off potential readers.

Let's skip ahead to this month's "Off-Panel" by Gallagher and Aragones ... er, Manak. Well, the artwork sure LOOKS like Sergio Aragones! Anyway, the theme of this month's strip is one you'll find on a bumper sticker for sale at just about any comic con: "When reality lets you down, there's nothing like a good fantasy." And the way it's been run lately, "Sonic the Hedgehog" is NOTHING like a good fantasy! The Management is planning to strain the relationship of Sonic and Sally to what some would like to see as the breaking point, to turn Knuckles into the Incredible Hulk, to "lose one of Knothole's own" (to paraphrase the hype for S100 in the preview media), to possibly submit Sally to the dubious charms of Geoffrey St. John, to leave Knuckles's friends and family in limbo, and Heaven only knows what else. There's nothing here that constitutes a feel-good for the long-suffering fans, let alone the newbies. And while I don't want to see a steady diet of happy endings (which Alfred Hitchcock once called "a sell-out to commercialism"), it WOULD be nice to see the kids triumphing over Robotnik on a quasi-regular basis. A little reassurance, some measure of satisfaction, is all the fans ask. As this month's "Off-Panel" suggests, we don't need to read the Sonic comic to be subjected to cold suspicion, random violence, intrigue, mistrust, corruption, breakdowns in communication and alienation. We've got real life for that, 'kay? Head Score: 4.

EYE: Once again, Ron Lim's artwork is steady but not spectacular. The only thing I really liked was the flashback pic of Tails, Knuckles and the Sea Fox. Eye Score: 4.

HEART: Thanks a boatload, Locke. Having perfected the "artificial means" by which Knuckles is becoming a heel, it's too bad he can't even see what his genetic engineering has produced. Gala-Na gets partial credit for hooking Knuckles up to the Chaos Syphon for no good reason aside from her own paranoia. And Knuckles? Too bad that his pugnacious personality is so, well, one-dimensional. It's an unfortunate throwback to the days of the "friendly nemesis." Now if Knuckles had his lucid moments when he could see and regret his actions (and not just fall asleep), maybe this story development would be worthwhile. As it is, it's going to take all the goodwill the readers can muster to carry them through the next dozen issues or so until the Guardian's fate is resolved. And it CAN be resolved with style and truth if Ken does right by it.

I make this observation after having viewed in its entirety the final ep of "Tenchi in Tokyo." For me, the character of Yugi was nothing short of a revelation. Now I know there are others out there, diehard "Tenchi Muyo!" fans in other respects, who have no use at all for Yugi. But hear me out:

The key moment was when Tenchi was approaching her with the sword. Yugi didn't have the smug, self-assured superiority of your typical supervillain (e.g., Cell on "Dragonball Z"), nor did she do anything more to stop Tenchi. She was in too much of a panic! And as I listened to her practically screaming in terror on the soundtrack, something in me connected with what she was going through.

Yugi, like Knuckles, was a product of genetic engineering; in this case, by the brain trust on Jurai. When her evil deeds were halted by the authorities and she was essentially given the longest time out in the history of the universe, that isolation got to her. She may have been a conniving supervillain when she decided to mess with Tokyo, but I could also recognize the extent to which (beneath her powers) she was still a child - a psychologically damaged child. And Tenchi was able to recognize that as well and to treat her in a gentle, reassuring manner. It kept the ending from being a cliched fight story and I was frankly surprised at the script's level of psychological insight. Why? Because the climax of the story was character-driven, not just a repetition of an overworked plot. And once more I have to declare my belief (to paraphrase the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) that characters will get you through times of no plot better than plot will get you through times of no characters.

I can only hope Ken Penders surprises me. If he can manage to grant Knuckles some measure of self-awareness, recognition of his plight and regret at some of his actions, maybe I can stand to stick around and watch Knuckles acting like a butthead the rest of the time. Heart Score: 3.

Off-Panel: Been there, done that.

This Just In: Ken tells us that "for years" they've been "discussing putting together" a list of character bios, place descriptions, and other background material. Thank you, Ken, for confirming one of my worst fears: that the creatives and editorial have spent almost the first 100 issues trying to put out the comic without being able to refer to a character bible, which I'd thought would have been a necessity for ANY comic with an ongoing continuity. I read that and thought: "Holy Mother of Disney, they really HAVE been making it up as they go along!!!" I'm not one to merely criticize, however. I'm willing to do my part, goodness knows. I have every issue of the comic back to Sonic #17 (well, I AM missing S21, only because I thought the issue was lame and didn't buy it at the time), all the Knuckles books, the miniseries and specials back to In Your Face, and Pro-Cite indexing software. Say the word, Ken, and I can start creating an index for you.

Letters: Meghan Taylor voices one of my concerns about the comic exactly: the pacing of the stories is shot. Ken gives the equivalent of a "No comment" to Tommy G's question about "Knuckles: 20 Years Later." And my guess is that the chances of that story running in the Sonic comic have just dropped from Slim to None. Because what Ken neglected to tell us in his editorial was that those two pages per month that will be devoted to people, places and things in the Sonic comic will be coming out of the back story's page allotment. What do you think, they were going to stop bombarding us with ads for the Josie and the Pussycats movie? That means that Ken can only write 18-page back stories from now on, divisible into 3 six-page installments. That's barely longer than a single cover story! What kind of justice do you think Ken can do to K:20YL with that small a page budget? Unless he can get a dispensation from Gabrie, Gorlick and Goldwater to run it in more than three issues, I'm willing to bet cash money that K:20YL will never see the light of day. Not in any form worth reading, anyway. So all you Lara-Su fans can color her any ol' way you want to. Maybe Ken will address this prospect in the next editorial or chat session, I don't know. But it's not a good sign that I've stopped anticipating developments in the comic and instead spend my time hoping I'll be proven wrong.