2016 is Sonic the Hedgehog’s 25th Anniversary and I’ve been around since (almost) the start, in celebration of Sonic lasting so long I’m going to be posting a Long Look At Sonic the Comic issues 1 to 100, my favourite time period on one of my favourite comics and one of my favourite things about one of my favourite things – that’d be the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise- and this is that Long Look At.
< Part 12
Right, no fuckin’ about
with pithy intros, the first of these stories started during Project Brutus but
didn’t end until mid-way through The Return of Chaotix, the rest began and
ended during Return of Chaotix because it was so bloody long, if I had to guess
I’d say that they all happened after Brutus but before Return (which only
happens in 1 night) with the exception of The Odour Zone - let’s go.
The Cybernik Strikes Back (Sonic’s World strip, issues 63-67)
Bollocks, Carl fucking
Flint’s back and he’s brought the art style he’ll use for the rest of the book,
shit, still at least he’s still drawing his own backgrounds here. Quick Summary: Shortfuse saves some
prisoners in transit, turns out it wasn’t a random act of heroism, he wants one
of them – a girl canary called Tekno – to build him a bomb. Pissed off Robotnik
decides to send Metamorphia after the traitor, because that always works well. A trip to Tekno’s secret workshop yields a
bomb (that has ‘bomb’ written on it) and an upgrade for Shortfuze, now he’s
stripy. They plant the bomb in the Chemical Plant Zone and set the timer, but
before they can shove off Metamoprhia arrives, grows into a ‘battle mode’ and
grabs Shorty. Now Shorty has to beat Metamophia in under four minutes and
shockingly…he doesn’t manage it! Metamorphia actually uses her shape-shifting
tactically to counter all of his ideas, the bomb explodes, leaving Shorty
trapped under debris in water…Mega Mack…liquid of some kind, and Tekno
prisoner. At Citadel Robotnik Eggman is not pleased Metamoprhia let his
Chemical Plant get half blown up and takes away her powers, Shorty meanwhile
uses his brain and jet boosters to dig a trench and slip out from under the
debris. Shortfuse assaults Citadel Robotnik, Tekno for her part finds out
Metamorphia (who’s holding her captive) has no powers judo throws the bitch,
Eggman says ‘just shoot me’, Shorty gives some bullshit about why he won’t
because the status quo needs to stay the same for a while, and flies off, he
declines Tekno’s offer to use her lab as a base.
At last! Metamorphia uses
her powers for something other than a paper-thin disguise she’ll discard at the
first moment anyway! At last! A Shortfuse Story that is undeniably good! At
last I can bitch about Carl fucking Flint! I hate Flint’s art, he’s not the
worst artist the book’ll have but he’s still fucking terrible. In theory he
should be a great fit for the series, he has a big, bold round style with a big
bold inking style to match, it’s just he draws everything horrible – he hates
backgrounds, if he draws them early on it will be simplistic colouring-book
style backgrounds but later he’ll adopt this technique of pasting down black
and white copied photographs ala 1970s Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko but his
copies are always way to dark and with the contrast turned right up, meaning
they don’t look psychedelic or experimental, they just look ugly and confusing,
and lazy. He has a horrible habit of drawing characters in weird poses with
random fingers sticking out like they’re making obscure gang signs, his
relationship with perspective and proportion is… distant at best and his
relationship with layouts isn’t much better, in other words, he sucks and he’s
gonna be around for a while. Luckily the colourists can help him out, John
Burns does the colours here and he has quite a shiny look, which helps add some
much need depth to Flint’s work.
Anyway backing away from my
comic art snobbery, Stringer’s writing obviously (because it features Shorty)
and he’s actually on top form, I think there’s one clunky word balloon, maybe
two. He finally gives us a Metamorphia story that has a different formula/plot
and Metamorphia looks all the better for it, in fact she looks damn cool,
outmanoeuvring Shorty at every turn for a whole strip – so Stringer goes and
depowers her, she’ll only appear once more in the whole comic! He finally shows
us how cool she can be, then takes her away – dick. And then there’s Tekno, you
may not think it for a while but Tekno is going to be big recurring character
in the series, even more so than Shortfuse, and one half of my favourite Sonic
the Comic fan theory, but talk about Early Instalment Weirdness (TV Tropes WILL
ruin your vocabulary), later on she’ll be the sensible one of the Amy/Tekno
partnership, so it’s weird to see her full of so much attitude (and drawn by
Carl Flint, did he or Lew design her? Stringer can draw so I guess it was him?)
she’ll always have spunk but here she’s almost Sonic-level, I wonder if an
editor by the name of Tate was involved any of that?
The Homecoming (Knuckles strip, issues 65-68)
Quick Summary: Knuckles traces a disturbance to
Megapolis, the capital city of the Floating Island, where a large headed robot
digging around, Knuckles thinks he might recognise it but decides to smash it
anyway, fails, then cracks the earth with a punch and lets it fall in. But what
was it looking for? Out of the rubble comes an old, white echidna named Dr Finitevus Dr Zachary, the first of his
people to return! An excited Knuckles shows Zachary the emerald chamber,
because Knuckles is a gullible twat in every universe. Zachary claims the robot
is chasing him and has been for some time, but goes off to bed before telling
Knuckles anything useful. Unable to sleep Knuckles researches the robot and
finds it’s a Floating Island guardian robot, so why is it after a Floating
Islander? As if to answer that question it breaks in and kicks Knuckles arse
some more, then it splits the Master Emerald – which was way more dramatic
then, before it happened every other game – Rad Red gets blasted and thinking
he’s dead Zachary exploits how he’s really a bastard controlling the robot, a
bastard who wants revenge, and to destroy things because he can. He flies off
to wipe out the Mobians, because he can, but Knuckles isn’t really dead and
shoots out of a zoom tube (oh yeah, sorry, there’s Zoom Tubes on the Floating
Island, the same as the Zoot Shoots in Archie, they turned up really early (Enter Knuckles maybe?) I just
haven’t mentioned them yet) and takes out one of the Guardian Robot’s wings. taking
the battle back to the Floating Island’s surface, An island that’s now falling,
and wedges itself on top of a mountain. Knuckles rips the head off of the robot
and knocks Zachary out but a tremor knocks him from the Island. Seeing the
Robot’s head sparking with Chaos Energy, which it absorbed during the breaking
of the Master Emerald, Knuckles use sit as a temporary solution to keep the
island in the air.
My summarising skills suck
today.
It’s begun! the best run on
the book! Nigel Kitching and Nigel Dobyn on Knuckles! Every time these two work
on a Knuckles strip, and they’ll pretty much work on them exclusively from now
on, a great story with great art is produced (even though Richard Elson was
meant to draw this strip, and actually came up with the basic plot), it takes
Dobyn the first issue to get to grips with Knuckles but he’s got his way of
drawing him (and Zachary) down in part 2 and then it’s good shit all the way
(well he’s still have some issues with random Mobians, that’ll be fixed soon).
Kitching is on fine form too, using thought bubbles to assist the story and
give an insight into character rather than to tell us what we can already see
is happening - amazeballs! Someone tell Lew Stringer (I kid, I kid, the
dialogue in Cybernik Strikes Back was fine). Now it’s obvious that Zachary was
going to be a villain, but as a kid I bought it completely, I thought surely
they couldn’t have the first echidna to return be a bastard, TV Tropes didn’t
exist then alright? (and nor, it seems, did my knowledge of obvious plot
twists). What’s really weird about
this strip is how much it predicts/predates the Japanese and American stories –
A returning echidna (The Dark Legion) who’s an albino sociopath who wants to
destroy everything (Dr Zachary), the breaking of the Master Emerald (Sonic
Adventure, Adventure 2, ever other game thereafter), the old Echidnas having
guardian robots (Gizoids), hell the Guardian Robots even look like Emerl, look:
Spooky shit.
Oh just a thing, we’ll
never find out what happened to Knuckles’ race or where Zachary came from, but
the plan was that they had been turned into slaves of the Drakons (who we
haven’t met yet) and were spread out across the universe(s).
Issue 68 has a one-and-done
Christmas strip, Snow Business (Amy strip, issue 68) by Stringer and Carl fucking
Flint, she lets a snowman badnik free; she tricks it off a cliff, all over
bloody mistletoe. It’s… mostly inoffensive, Amy’s temporary return to pushy
would-be girlfriend aside, in fact I’d almost go so far as to say that Flint’s
art is better than normal, almost, read it once, never bother again.
Graveyard (Knuckles strip, issues 69-72)
Quick Summary: Knuckles heads down to the Valley of
Kohenyu, an elephant’s graveyard for Kohenyu dinosaurs by an Emerald Mine; he
wants a new Emerald to absorb the old one’s Chaos Energy. A rock slide drops
him on his arse and he gets poisoned, having lost his gass mask, by a local
plant. Pretty much straight after The Spirit of the Herd comes to him, a
floating Kohenyu head who sicks the bones of her herd onto Knuckles. They
overwhelm him but when it looks like the poison will do for him and the
Spirits’ vengeance will be denied they pull back. Knux wakes up in a cage in
the Emerald Mine and the Spirit tells him what happened – Echidnas hunted them
to extinction, though they were only hunting them for food the herd had only 20
males, who were the slowest and were all killed. Knuckles digs out of the cage
and goes on the run from the Herd, trying to dig out an emerald, and chances
upon the Soul Crystal, which the Spirit of the Herd needs to survive, givne the
choice to smash it and save himself he does, saying he knows how the Spirit
feels, being all alone. Impressed the Spirit lets him take an emerald; he does,
before she changes her mind.
This story is fucking
amazing, playing to Dobbyn’s strengths Nigel gives us a story set in a desert
with giant things for Knuckles to smash, and Dobbyn’s painted art gives the
ghost story the atmosphere it needs, as well as giving the Spirit an ethereal
quality that the other artists and colourers wouldn’t have been able to pull
off. Plot wise there’s no bad, except maybe the poison bit, it feels like a
plot element that wasn’t really needed but I think the idea was to give
Knuckles and the readers a reason to doubt if things were real or not, the
implication is that it IS real but there is an air of ambiguity about it that
just makes it a better ghost story. Y’know what, just read this.
Brute Force (Sonic’s World strip, issues 69-72)
Quick Summary: Commander Brutus is stock piling
captives. After Grimer completes a portable version of Brain Scanner Robotnik
used to give the ultimate trooper his A.I. Brutus knocks him out and copies his
brain, now with all of Grimer’s knowledge and ability he builds ugly as shit
Carl Flint designed Badniks of his own. Johnny Lightfoot is in the Cotton Field
Zone where Eggman has slaves working in a factory, Brutus attacks him, Johnny
uses the badnik army to his advantage and destroys the factory, but is
ultimately overpowered and Brutus copies his brainwaves too. Now Brutus know
everything Johnny knows, he knows about Bob Beaky’s Travelling Circus, worse he
knows where the Emerald Hill Folk are, but just as his Troopers are plotting a
course for the Floating Island, Brutus…destroys them? The copy of Johnny
Lightfoot’s brainwaves are affecting him, making him fight his own army.
Desperate he wipes the copy and destroys the portable brain scanners, Johnny
flees while this is going on.
 |
| stupid hand signals |
Do I even need to say this
is the weakest part of the Brutus Trilogy? To be reserved: this story isn’t
very good. Firstly Carl fucking Flint’s turning in his usual brand of weird
poses and horrible perspective, Brutus goes from stern to camp to dancing and
it ruins the intimidating presence Elson and Stringer had given him in Project
Brutus, lord knows why they thought it’d be suitable for this story. Second
Stringer isn’t even sitting close to whatever muse he was banging when he wrote
Cybernik Strikes Back and Project Brutus, I will begrudgingly admit the dialogue’s not too terrible though there
are more ‘clunky panels’ than the aforementioned pair of stories, but the plot…
how does Johnny destroying a factory help the sheep exactly? They’ll just be
moved to a different factory, or worse turned into Badniks; Brutus deleting the
copy of Johnny’s brain deletes all of the knowledge for no good reason other than
Kitching doesn’t want the Floating Island attacked just yet; the sheep are
being made to make egg cosies and socks for Eggman, egg cosies and socks; and of
course he destroys the mind scanners – WHY?!?!
 |
| Stupid. Hand. Signals |
On the other hand: having
Brutus ‘turn good’ and hating it is such a cliché but it’s actually well done,
rather than him becoming ‘good’ he seems rather to inherit the same opinions
and intentions of Johnny Lightfoot, compelling him to destroy Badniks and
occasionally speak the same as Johnny, just as with Eggman, and Brutus’
reaction is more one of stunned confusion than comical revulsion, which goes
some way to make up for how laughable Flint is making him look.
 |
| STUPID. FUCKING. HAND. SIGNALS! |
Finally we have Odour Zone (Double Sonic strip, issue 72),
which has to be an inventory story, it’s written by Mark Millar for a start,
but Mike Hadley’s art (which is great, especially his colouring) looks a lot
older than what he’d recently turned in, closer to around the time of ‘Metamorphia’. The story is weird; a giant Skunk from the
titular Odour Zone has been turned into a giant badnik that despite being
talked up throughout the story Sonic defeats by… getting a good run up. The
skunks range from giant to tiny for no good reason and all speak in a really
offensive stereotypical French accent and personality, you thought Antione was
bad? These are worse, but then what do you expect, it’s Mark ‘do you think this
A stands for France’ Millar, a man who agrees with the political views of Frank
Millar, of course he’s going to throw in racist stereotypes for no good reason.
There’s also a fat joke on page one at the expense of Poker Lewis, typical
Millar, but…Porker Lewis isn’t fat, he is
a pig, but he’s still not fat, in fact he’s more muscular than Johnny, “maybe
he was when this was written?” Not really, he had a round body but then so does
Sonic, he’s not fat. Fuck Mark Millar, urrrrgh he’s writing the next Sonic
story too isn’t he?
Actually that story, Spinball
Wizard, begins a short run of stand-alone stories for the Sonic strip, as such
the next part will be defined by the
back-ups, we have the last Tails strip of any worth for a while, his strips
will now transition from epic fantasy to mostly pointless filler and stay that
way more or less. Less depressingly next part also brings the Knuckles World Tour
arc by Kitching and Dobbyn, so looking forward to that! We also have the last Sonic Holiday Special
and the Knuckles Knock-Out Special too.
