Archie Sonic Issue #2 (Original Miniseries)

 

Where last issue's cover was easily my favorite of this miniseries, this one was always the weakest to me. Which isn't to say it's BAD, necessarily, but I don't know, this one just always bored me for whatever reason. It's a lot less dynamic than most of Scott Shaw's art, and the actual scene being depicted just seems really generic. It also doesn't help that this is where we officially start the trend of "covers that have nothing to do with the stories inside", which will be a consistent annoyance for the next dozen or so issues. 

As I dive into this issue, there's one thing to note immediately that makes it stand out not just within this miniseries, but much of the early book as a whole. Rather than dividing its page count between 2 short, simple stories, we have our very first full-length story!... sort of. 

Yeah, something I've been neglecting to mention up until now is that, in addition to the main stories, this early "gag era" of the book also contains a lot of simple, one-off stories straight out of a newspaper comic strip, which Gallagher apparently wrote plenty of in his career. If you're wondering why I've been ignoring them, there are 2 basic reasons:

1. They don't really affect anything. With a single exception (which I'll discuss when I get to it several issues from now), they're just one-off gag strips, never referenced again for the rest of the book's history, so they can largely be considered non-canon.

2. They're extremely unfunny, even more so than Gallagher's output in the main stories. To give you an idea, here's an example from last issue:

Do you get it? The joke is that Sonic is fast, and so he runs away before the camera can catch him. Wow, what an original concept, I'm sure no one has ever thought of that one before.

Anyway, there's still an entire issue to cover here, so let's get into our "full-length" story:

"A Crowning Achievement!" 

You know, while we're on the subject of quirks about this era I've neglected to comment on until now, this first page of Sally calling for Sonic has another one that, even as a kid, always bugged me: the insistence on constantly starting each new part of any given story by having some character, in-universe, address Sonic by his full name for the sake of getting that logo on top of the page. This one's at least a SLIGHTLY reasonable example, but there are a bunch later on that just sound so unnatural when you read them out loud. Can you just imagine someone in real life insisting on doing that in every conversation?

Sonic, being the show-off that he is, decides to use this as an opportunity to test out his ability to run faster than the speed of sound and- WAIT A MINUTE. Sorry, I know I'm pausing a lot here at the start, but this is HUGE! Let me go check something really quick...

OK so, unless my 5-minute Google search is misleading me somehow, I think this is the very first instance in the entire franchise of Sonic's "faster than the speed of sound" tagline! This issue came out in April 1993, which means SatAM and Adventures still weren't out yet, and the games don't mention it until Sonic Jam in 1997! That's... actually incredible. I feel like I'm discovering history right now.

Alright, enough detours, back to the comic. 

So, Sally was calling Sonic over to show him a chest apparently owned by her father, King Acorn, containing a magic crown powered by the so-called "Freedom Emeralds". Not to be confused with the Chaos Emeralds, these emeralds have the power to, as Sonic puts it, "keep Robotnik's reign of terror at bay". With King Acorn still missing, she's decided she's going to wear it in his stead in order to use their power to find and free him Before I can ask the incredibly obvious question of "why haven't you been doing that already if it's so important?", Sonic opens the chest to find that the crown is missing. Because much like any useful item in life, it's always readily available until you actually need it for something, which is when it promptly decides to vanish into the shadow realm out of sheer spite. 

No, of course, Robotnik is behind it as usual, with Sonic and Sally heading over to Antoine's royal guard and quickly deducing that there has to be a robot spy among them who stole the crown for Robotnik.  Honestly, that's a pretty reasonable conclusion to make given the circumstances, especially compared to "we sprung a leak because the trees are crying, OBVIOUSLY!" from Issue 0 (and no, I will never be over that, so don't ask). 

Sonic uses his speed to trigger Knothole's sprinkler system in order to see which robot short-circuits, which I'll go ahead and say was a pretty clever move. But is it just me, or is the artwork in this issue a little... off? I can't put my finger on it, because I think Scott Shaw's pencils are still on point, but something just feels a bit... I don't know, unpolished? Maybe it's just the panel on the bottom where Sonic's arms are blue that's bothering me. After all, we all know that's a cardinal sin in this fandom.

Also, don't think I didn't notice Antoine saying, "arrest that swine", Mike. I KNOW you made the pig the culprit just to make that joke, and no, I'm not impressed. Although I will say it's pretty funny in hindsight, given a certain pig in this book who will prove to be quite the annoying hazard to deal with, but that's WAY down the road from here so let's move on before I go off track again.

Having now been caught, Robotnik's spy does what any good robot spy does when caught, immediately activating his self-destruct sequence to blow Knothole to kingdom come. Sonic uses his speed to race it out to the open just in time before the explosion. He then makes sure to drag out his return to base just long enough for Sally to assume he's dead and start confessing her feelings for him, which is seriously messed up when you think about it.

While Sonic is toying with his loved one's emotions like the hero he is, Robotnik, having discovered the location of Knothole through his robot spy, immediately invades, swarming the Freedom Fighters with Badniks until they're wiped out, and the comic ends. 

...Or at least, that's what SHOULD happen, but apparently Robotnik is the most unbelievably stupid villain in existence, because not only did his spy not transmit the location of the village during that self-destruct sequence, it also didn't do anything to give it to him while it was in the process of STEALING A CROWN STRAIGHT FROM THEIR TREASURY AND HAND DELIVERING IT TO HIM! Antoine straight up says IN THIS STORY that Robotnik should know where Knothole is now, and yet he somehow never follows up on this information! WHY!?

Robotnik... I don't even know what to say to you, man. You had ultimate victory practically GIFT WRAPPED to you, and the fact that you didn't take it is absurd. Forget being evil, you deserve to lose solely for how dumb that was.

Moving past that embarrassing display, Sonic tells Sally that he spotted a blimp while he was above ground, and Sally sends him and Antoine out to retrieve the Emeralds together. To bring some positive energy back into this, I'll go ahead and admit that joke at the bottom about the hot air balloon was actually pretty solid. Not only did it actually get a small laugh out of me, it's also a nice demonstration of Antoine's pompous attitude that Sonic loves to ridicule, which up until now was pretty "tell, don't show". I suppose I could be really nitpicky about the fact that these characters are all children who never went to college, but I'm just going to let Gallagher have this one because I'm nice like that. (There's almost no way he could have known that for sure this early in the game anyway.)

We then get a short sequence of Sonic and Antoine battling the Badniks in the air, with Sonic doing a nice chaining together of attacks straight out of the classic games while Antoine provides support, and yeah, this is pretty fun too. I have to say, these 2 are cooperating with each other a lot more than I remember them doing in these early days, and I'm here for it. Interpersonal conflicts can provide for some interesting storytelling, but it's also nice to just see people getting along every once in a while.

Credit where it's due, this SWAT-Bot did his best to follow the sage advice of the great Al Yankovic: he had his tray table up, and his seat back in a full up-right position. Sadly, it could not save him in this instance, but I'll give him an A for effort....

...Except I have to immediately revoke it because not only did his failure cost Robotnik one of the Emeralds, but he also decides to use his final moments to fully relay Robotnik's plan. Out loud. To no one in particular. For what's supposed to be the first "truly epic adventure" in this comic, I have to say Robotnik and his crew are putting in a pretty lackluster performance so far. Said plan involves scattering each of the 4 Emeralds across "air, land, sea, and underground". Having covered the first, "air", Sonic sends Antoine back to Knothole with the Emerald while he goes to tackle the other 3.

First up is "water", which gives us a nice call-back to last issue as Sonic returns to the same underwater cavern from before and has another encounter with Jaws. Still don't know how everyone is talking underwater so freely, but I'll forgive it because seeing Sonic and Tails being bros makes me happy. There is one bit of absurdity here that I do have to comment on, which involves how they outwit Jaws here:

No, it isn't the fact that Tails magically summoned a marker through cartoon logic, or the fact that said marker could not only draw him and Sonic but also perfectly match their color schemes through, again, cartoon logic. It's the comment Jaws makes here about how he "should have noticed they only had 4 fingers". Believe it or not, the random fact about Sonic and Tails having 5 fingers on their hands is going to actually be a relevant point of worldbuilding way down the line when it comes to distinguishing between the various different groups of living beings on Mobius, including 2 completely distinct branches of humanity that pop up in different places. I'm telling you, this comic is WEIRD.

With the second emerald down, Sonic sends Tails back to Knothole while he goes after the other 2. You know, as much as I ragged on Robotnik earlier, I have to say this story is getting pretty creative, I wonder what they're going to do for these last 2-

Oh... Sonic just... snatches the "land" Emerald from a random SWAT-Bot... and then accidentally falls down a trap door, where a Burrobot is waiting with the "underground" one...

Hey Robotnik... wasn't the entire point of this plan to make sure the Emeralds were as far away from each other as possible?  Did you really have THAT much faith that a SINGLE Burrobot getting the drop on Sonic would be enough to kill him, enough that you put those 2 Emeralds right on top of each other, completely defeating your original goal? How many times are you going to shoot yourself in the foot like this!?

Sonic and the Burrobot chase each other around for a little while before Sonic inevitably comes out on top, taking the Emeralds and trying to find his way through the catacombs back to Knothole, but much like any first-time Sonic Adventure 2 player entering Death Chamber, he gets lost pretty fast. Unlike Death Chamber, however, Sonic has an incredibly easy shortcut, owing to the fact that he's a speedy blue hedgehog and the fact that we're running out of pages and need to wrap it up really quickly:

Yes, he literally just spin dashes through the underground and happens to wind up EXACTLY where everybody is waiting for him in Knothole. I would also point out that the crown housing the Emeralds was taken and we never saw anyone retrieve it, but maybe the Emeralds are what matters and Rotor just put together a replacement crown, who really knows at this point?

So, the Emeralds are all sitting on the crown once again, the Freedom Fighters have won the day... and then just before we wrap up on that nice little note, Robotnik randomly blasts straight through the 4th wall to end us on what amounts to the 90s comic book equivalent of a social media rant about his role in the story:

As amusing as this is, I have to once again point out the fact that Robotnik displayed next level incompetence throughout every stage of his scheme in this issue, so he has zero room to complain about how "humiliating" this was. Here's a polite suggestion: if you really want to have a more epic role in the story, maybe the next time you send someone to infiltrate your enemy's hidden base, you'll actually try to CAPITALIZE on that instead of throwing it away for literally no reason. 

That said, despite my frustrations with Robotnik's incredible lack of foresight or initiative, I have to say this issue overall was a definitive improvement from the last one. The art from Scott Shaw was still pretty solid, give or take a few panels that felt slightly off for reasons I still can't quite articulate. The story, while still not coming anywhere near the high stakes of later eras, was still a step up in the action department, and even had a few decent jokes that made me laugh. I liked the creative use of different environments, with unique Badniks for each location, and the continuity nod with Jaws. Lastly, the character interactions were a lot more pleasant, especially the fun teamwork with Sonic and Antoine and then Sonic and Tails. There's a solid case to be made that this is the best issue so far.

Too bad it's not canon.

Yeah, that's the sad twist here at the end of the day... despite this issue setting up the concepts of "Emeralds" and a "Crown of Acorns" as incredibly important magical artifacts, the way these concepts are expanded on in later stories effectively renders this one null and void. The Freedom Emeralds are literally never brought up again, presumably because someone handed the Archie staff some notes about Chaos Emeralds after this issue dropped, and so they decided to scrap the Freedom Emeralds to avoid confusion. Not that this entirely fixed things, because as we'll see down the road, they still got incredibly mixed up on how exactly the Chaos Emeralds worked, which led to a whole host of problems, but that's a story for another time. As for the Crown of Acorns... oh boy, is THAT going to be a wild ride when we get to it. 

For now, though, we're still firmly in the gag era, and we've got a miniseries to wrap up. Tune in next time for Issue 3, and then it's on to the main Archie Sonic comic!