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 15
Once again the Sonic
stories are all out of order, though this is the end of it and it’s actually
quite understandable this time. See Running Wild takes the comic into its next
era, the Trapped in the Special Zone Era, for around a year of our childhoods
Sonic (and thus the Sonic strip) was stuck in the Special Zone with the
Chaotix; it’s not my favourite era for reasons I will happily tell you about
when we get to the appropriate point. Thus at the end of Heroes & Villains
(issue 86) Sonic gets stuck in the Special Zone, but the readers couldn’t know
this – and sometimes I doubt if the editors or Lew Stringer knew, but I presume
they must – so while Running Wild and Heroes & Villains was running (pun
intended?) in Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic’s World
strips continued to tell stories starring Sonic set on Mobius, with no
real way to fit them in between the two aforementioned strips and it being
impossible for them to happen after (because Sonic’s blue ass is in the Special
Zone) they must happen before. They also dumped a filler story – Bubble Trouble
– in between Running Wild and Heroes & Villains for, I presume, practical
reasons. But as all the offending stories are covered in the issues we’re
looking at in this part (#s 80-87, roughly), I can review them for you in rough
chronological order, rather than publication order (for the third time) – yay
me.
Bubble Trouble (Sonic strip, issue 83) is a nice enough little story,
I personally really enjoy it when a writer uses an
Due to Mystery Villain
being mentioned in Future Shock; it seems that the Tails stories pre-issue 86
also take place before that story, and thus Running Wild. Mystery Villain (Tails strip, issue 83) is pretty
important to the overall narrative of the comic but it’s not the best story,
Tails is attacked in the Grim Zone by a powerful badnik who wants revenge, but Tails
had
never met it before, it turns out to contain Metamorphia, depowered and
disheartened with Robtonik, she then goes through one last change into a pretty
little bear (so she was always a bear? She looked like a cat to me) because
typical feminine beauty is the ultimate goal of all women (sorry, got a bit
Tumblr there, it’s just because I found Metamorphia attractive before the
change is all). Steve White colours Metamorphia completely wrong and Stringer
turns in some terrible dialogue – ‘I HATE Robtonik now’ ‘Wha-? I’m changing!’ -
it’s a bit painful and a sad end to a cool character that was frankly
mistreated by her creator half the time and turned into a bit of a joke in the
process, still we’ll always have Cybernik Strikes Back Metamorphia sweetie. Also
the unfortunate implications that Metamorphia suddenly turns good once she’s
pretty is just…well… what is nice though is that Mike Hadley, who drew her
debut, draws her finale, very fitting, and his creepiness is always welcome. Sneaker Seeker (Tails Strip,
issue 84) is complete throwaway garbage and makes Tails look like a shallow
idiot and Grimer look like Dick Dastardy; he tricks Tails into wearing some
killer trainers and everyone goes ga-ga for them, thinking Tails is so cool
because of his fucking shoes, then thinking he’s a dork when he changes back,
because shoes are that fucking important (I wonder if it wasn’t written around
the time there was a little media uproar about how kids were doing bad stuff
for posh sneakers, I think that may a have been a little later though). It’s
the sort of shit I expect from Mark Millar and should be skipped completely. 
Trooper Trouble (Tails strip, issues 85-86)
Quick Summary: Clive the Donkey, local buttmonkey for
the Wood Village Zone, is dressing up as a trooper and terrorising his
tormentors, taking extra taxes etc, a parody of George & Mildred1,
because of course all children in 1995 know who fucking George and Mildred are,
calls Tails in, Tails uncovers Clive’s ruse but they get caught by real
Troopers. Luckily Clive’s technical know-how, which got him bullied in the
first place, allows them to break free and wreck the Trooper’s transport they
were being carried to Robtonik in, so the village all think he’s keen now.
Not a terrible plot, a
throwaway plot but not a terrible one – it’s the execution that’s not too good,
Carl Fucking Flint turns in a truly boring set of pages, going for silly when
he should be going for dramatic and giving us some weird ass Mobians and
Stringer fails at dialogue fairly regularly – and then has the cheek to
criticize the Troopers for always having corny dialogue! Anyway let’s move onto something far better
from Stringer:
 |
| Fuck you, donkey! |
Future Shock (Sonic’s World strip, issues 86-88)
Quick Summary: Sonic and the Freedom Fighters interrupt
at a Buzzbomber attack, while smashing them Sonic gets himself stuck in a swamp
only to be rescued by…Sonic the Hedgehog, from 50 years in the future! Yeah,
yeah we’ve been here before, it’s written by Lew Stringer too, so it’s probably
Metamorphia – except she was depowered, on screen no less – and Sonic has
clearly learned from having gone through this plot a 100 times, and takes his
newest doppelganger to a doctor loyal to the resistance but he only confirms
that the future Sonic is telling the truth – he IS Sonic the Hedgehog. Future Sonic says that he underestimated a
drill badnik in his past (the future) and got everyone killed, Sonic still
won’t believe him, but the Freedom Fighters agree to follow him to the factory
building the drill, it’s a trap, and Robotnik is waiting for him. Future Sonic
says he’s doing it to prevent his future, Eggman laughs at him. Turns out he IS
a clone, a crap one, he aged at an accelerated rate (and still is) so Eggman
improvised and implanted false memories in him, Future Sonic takes it well – he
smashes the place up and goes and gets Sonic, the two of them rescuing the Freedom Fighters, smashing Eggman’s
latest battlecraft just for good measure. Future Sonic then DIES, apologetic
and redeemed, turning into pure energy.
*Lip quivers* what a sad
story. This is another hidden gem in Sonic the Comic, Stringer takes a plot
we’ve all seen over and over, and one that this comic has used at least five
times, and surprises the readers with it, using one plot twist after another to
turn what could have been another boring imposter and making him to a tragic
figure who was, despite it all, doing the right thing, rather than laughing and
twirling his moustache behind the duped freedom fighters backs like all the
other importers. He genuinely believed working with Robotnik was the only way
to save the people he cared about and that came across completely. He also
genuinely died, holy shit, this comic is aimed at six year olds, since when was
Lew Stringer that ballsy? Well done sir. Rob Corona’s art is lovely for this
too, complimented nicely by Andy Pritchett’s painted colours.
To stop gushing I’ll move
onto a piece of trivia, Part 3’s fourth page was erroneously printed in issue
88, a mistake had it running with another page’s text, it was corrected in a
small image in the letters page but that wasn’t much use really was it?. When
the story was reprinted later on, they printed the page with the correct text
(any scan you’ll find will have the corrected page from that reprint), possibly
the only useful thing about the reprint era of the comic.
Running Wild (Sonic strip, issues 80-82)
At last. Quick-ish Summary: Sonic is visiting Porker
Lewis in the Emerald Chamber, having a nice chat, Porker says he misses
everyone, especially Amy, but Amy is driving Sonic up the wall this week; then
Sonic is surprised by the Guardian Robot and falls into the well below The
Floating Island’s Chaos Emeralds – which, remember, are twice as powerful as
regular Chaos Emeralds – and Mater Emerald – which remember can keep a
continent afloat. Porker shits himself though the Guardian robot can’t quite
understand the problem, but by now we can – Super Sonic has returned, and he
needs something to destroy, and the last thing on his mind was Amy Rose. Back
on Mobius Johnny is just too late relaying Porker’s message – the Chaos Demon
has arrived to kill Amy (for a cliffhanger). Super Sonic is more powerful than
ever, destroying whatever scenery he’s not chewing as he mocks Johnny, Amy and
Tails’ desperate attempts to avoid him, in doing so they cause him to destroy
their caravan and Bob Beaky’s Travelling Circus with it. SS shrugs off a rocky
outcropping collapsing on him but it seems the Freedom Fighters have used the
time to get away in the Tornado, until Sonic shoots it down, seemingly ending
his friends life. Laughing manically he becomes Sonic again and the gravity of
the situation sinks in. Weeks later Sonic is on the run, at a dive bar some
local thugs make the mistake of being threatening so Super Sonic wrecks the
place but The Freedom Fighters are here with a plan – huh? – yeah Amy used the
Kintobor Computer to auto-pilot the bi-plane, now they have a new plan – they
hook Kintobot up to their Star Post and he uses it to drain off Super Sonic’s
energy – it’ s a tight call and it looks as though the Chaos Demon might break
free but ultimately Sonic returns to normal – but there’s a catch, going by his
readings it seems that the Star Post didn’t send all that spare Chaos Energy to
the Special Zone, it sent Super Sonic, as an entity.
That’s my only complaint
though; the art is the pinnacle of Richard Elson’s work on the series and more
so his colouring on the series, it’s
something that doesn’t get brought up enough but Elson was a damn good
colourist, he often coloured his own work and for a long time did this by hand
(his switch to digital colouring was, well…pathetic at first but he got better)
and this is just him at his best, with each panel being excellently lit and
appropriately hued. We also get I think the only instance of him drawing
Guardian Robots until the Sonic Adventure arc, just for trivia fans. The story
is also plotted perfectly – one part to build up Super Sonic (including him
casually destroying a whole Trooper vehicle); one part to show him off and one
part to defeat him – with a good fake out. Beyond that, on the writing side,
while Super Sonic’s loquaciousness (thanks Con Air!) did distract Kitching and
the editors need a shitload of praise for being so open about death, SS uses
variants of ‘kill’ ‘death’ and ‘die’ in most of his speech balloons, and then
there’s Kitching’s handling of Amy.
The pretty well known (in
the Sonic fandom) behind-the-scenes story for StC is that Co-Editor-in-Chief pushed for Amy to be more ‘girl power’, to be a positive role model
for female readers to the point of being flawless, while Kitching and Stringer
always planned to make her more competent Kitching bucked against what he saw
as a kind of reverse-sexism and just didn’t use Amy very often (so it always
seems like a treat to me when she turns up in a Kitching script2J). Reading this is order I can see the clear
progression of Amy becoming more and more useful and skilful, though there’re
strips that smell of existing solely to show off how she’s as good as the boys,
if not better (Badnik Bridge, Snow Business, Plasma…) the lads have been pretty
slow about it, building up her new place as female badass, and this is the end
of that build, with this story, frankly, Amy becomes as good a leader and as
good a character as Sonic – and despite editorial meddling it feels really
natural. Throughout Parts 2 and 3 Amy is leading the Freedom Fighters in
Sonic’s absence and it’s totally out of necessity and completely understated,
Amy reacts to the threat and orders the others around because Sonic isn’t here
to do it, at no point does she say ‘I must take charge’ or does Tails or Johnny
say ‘wow, you’re actually a really great leader Amy’, Kitching just has her
doing it because it needs to be done and actually being good at it, in part 3
she’s heading the team and running the show. If Tate had a problem with how Amy
was being handled after this she is just unpleasable and thinks children –
especially female children it seems – are thick as shit3.
Heroes & Villains (Sonic strip, issues 84-86)
Quick Summary: Sonic arrives in the Special Zone via
Omni-Viewer to tell the Chaotix Crew about Super Sonic being loose in their
zone, they’re not that bothered, they’re The Chaotix bitches, they can deal
with it. Anyway there’s trouble on Planet Meridian – yeah, turns out there’s a
lot more to the Special Zone than the weirdness of the games’ Bonus Stages,
there’s planets and everything – on Planet Parody
Meridian superheroes and supervillains are having a fight, after some Superhero tropes and clichés the cops arrive and Sonic is
nicked (why doesn’t he run away? take the gun apart? Eh he’s a pretty law
abiding guy when he’s not being a terrorist so I’ll buy it). Sonic is bailed
out from Lieutenant Furor’s custody by Lord Sidewinder, a local ‘legitimate
businessman’ with a gang of three supervillains – Lightmare (who makes
nightmares real), Mr Fry (Jekyll & Hyde) and Bio-Hazard (a robot full of
pollutants) – and he’s working with Super Sonic. Super Sonic blows up
Sidewinder’s mansion in a moment of genuinely well timed comedy and then sets
about bashing fuck out of everyone; as long as Sonic is around there’s a chance
SS will become part of him again and the Chaos Demon won’t have that, the
Chaotix arrive, having tracked police scanners, but get wrapped up in a battle
with their old enemies (Sidewinder & Co) leaving Sonic to figure out how to
defeat his worser half. He tricks him into Omni-Viewer and wants Omni to send
Super Sonic far away, but Omni says no, wherever he goes Super Sonic will kill
and destroy, so instead stops time within himself, freezing Super Sonic but
also becoming frozen too, trapping Super Sonic and trapping Sonic in the
Special Zone. A week later Charmy notices that Super Sonic has moved slightly...
Right, despite the moaning I
will do, I do genuinely like the Special Zone cast – Sidewinder’s gang are
awesome, Elson gives them unique and memorable designs despite their fairly
simple concepts and Kitching always writes them as legitimate threats, even
when they’re appearing in one-and-done strips or comedy stuff like Captain
Plunder and we’ll see that Lightmare and Fry actually have more to them than
just being super-henchmen. And I LOVE the Chaotix, I always latch on to b-listers but I think in this case it’s because
they’re always entertaining – either in their roles of comedy relief that they
don’t know they’re being like here or SegaSonic or as legitimate heroes in
Archie – and frankly they all have cool looks and cool powers (well except
Vector), my favourite’s always been Mighty, either as ‘The Raphael’ here or as
the nice guy in Archie he’s just a sort of character I like, and his design is
great, this abstracted armadillo-Sonic in black and red, lovely. I even like
Lieutenant Furor – a dog version Nick Fury as a hard boiled cop.
With that out the way this
is an alright story, I have a lot of nostalgia for it but reading it ‘unbiased’
it’s still good – the whole superhero critique thing is silly, it takes two
pages to say ‘hurr, superheroes fight for no reason, that’s dumb, our
characters fight for a good reason’ as well as not being true (well, a lot of
the time), Sonic & The Freedom Fighters will become pretty much all-purpose
superheroes post issue-100, so it’s silly and hypocritical (although they
didn’t know it was hypocritical yet I guess). Buuuut it doesn’t really slow the
story down, the fight is what gets Sonic arrested which is what gets him into
Sidewinder’s clutches which is what gets him to battle Super Sonic, but it is
plotting part of a story around mocking something in an ill-informed way and
that’s crap. To make that worse, Elson gives us some really cool designs for
the Justice Brigade and the Discriminators:
I want action figures of
all of those. Maybe you shouldn’t make your characters so cool looking if you
want to use them to illustrate how dumb those sort of characters are, y’know
like what Mark Millar does, it kind of undermines your point. However thanks to a comment on Part 15 from Nigel Kiching himself (about the Fundamental Four) a lot of the critique of superheroes may be my reading and not intended, oops, Sorry Nige. I would also have
liked a little bit more of a battle between Sonic and Super Sonic, it’s not
bad, and Super Sonic looks awesome marching through the Sidewinder gang but a)
we don’t know them well enough to see how powerful this makes him and b) I want
to see Sonic fight his evil self, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. So
overall – it’s pretty good.
I waffled on a lot
about those last two stories, so I’ll end things here and do the Knuckles strips
next time.
Next Time: Sonic dicks about on Planet Meridian a lot,
Knuckles takes the long way home, Shortfuse hooks up with the Freedom Fighters
and Amy hooks up with Tekno. Ignore all that shit, next time I write about
all the stuff I forgot to write about this section and the one before.
1
George & Mildred Roper were supporting characters in the 1970s sit-com Man About the House, who then got their
own show George & Mildred – which
was pretty much just Keeping Up Appearances before Keeping up Appearances,
Mildred was a horrible social climber, George was a nice but lazy unemployable.
Their sitcom was pretty lame, but occasionally funny, Man About the House was
better. Oh, they had a cool motorbike and sidecar.
2
Although I don’t know exactly when Kitching said “fuck it, let Lew use her
then, he’ll do what you want Debs”, I would suggest it’s around this time, as
Sonic’s moving into the Special Zone thus she won’t appear at all in the Sonic
strips and post-issue 100 Lew will handle pretty much all her appearances.
3
this is hypothetical, I don’t know when/if Tate eased off on the whole ‘maek
Amy Grrl Powah!’ thing and she might be lovely and might have been really
chuffed with Amy in this story.
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