Archie Sonic Issue #3

This cover has always made me laugh, but not for the reason that it wants, what with that lame "no smoking" gag up in the corner there. No, it's the insistence from these 2 goofballs that their comic is the absolute best on the rack that I find extremely funny. I just love to imagine some guy walking down the comic aisle when this issue was out, seeing it right next to stuff like The Killing Joke, or Watchmen, or any other of the big crazy comic events that were relatively new at the time, and he's like, "no, THIS is definitely the best comic here, no question". But then again, I'm the dork who's writing an entire blog about this series, so I guess I'm in no position to judge.

I wish I had even HALF the confidence in myself that the people marketing Sonic in the 90s had in their mascot to make jabs like this. The sheer audacity is truly something to behold.

To be fair, I suppose you could argue this issue is pretty important, given that we're finally going to be seeing Bunnie for the first time, so maybe the hype from Sonic and Tails here is mildly justified. For those who are unfamiliar or are coming onto this blog for the first time, Bunnie Rabbot is one of the core members of the Freedom Fighters in both the Archie Sonic comic and the SatAM TV series that the comic was primarily based on in its early years. However, because of what I assume to be some combination of her being created later in development and a lack of proper communication between branches of the larger franchise (good thing THAT will never happen again, oh boy), she hasn't made a proper appearance until this very issue.

On the positive side of things, this does lead to an interesting benefit where we actually get to see her origin properly play out, something that the SatAM continuity never really did at least to my knowledge. Given how unique her design and overall concept is compared to the rest of the cast, she's probably the character most deserving of a story like this. 

However, on the negative end of the spectrum, this does lead to an unfortunate side effect for a lot of this book's early run, where the writers seem to constantly forget that she exists in stories long after her debut. It's literally this exact meme format come to life:

I'll try not to make TOO big of a deal about it every time this happens, but there are some stories where her being involved would change things so drastically that it's almost impossible not to be upset by it at least a little bit, to the point where it practically becomes a running gag. 

Before we can get to Bunnie though, we have a whole other story to get through first... and oh boy is it a big pile of nothing:

"The Bomb Bugs Me!" *insert Michael Bay joke here*

OK, I could do the obvious bit here and say, "The Incredibles did this joke better", but I'll cut the team some slack because there are some fun details on this first page to make up for it. First, the way they wrote the editor-in-chief's name, "Richard Goldwater" with elemental symbols and said he "signs paychecks" is cute. Second, I like that the Freedom Fighters' monitor has all the zones from Sonic 2 listed. That's a pretty neat reference, even if I'm not entirely sure how you can have Sky Chase without a Death Egg or Egg Carrier in sight.

So, Sonic is coming in here to report that he was in Robotropolis and overheard a conversation between Robotnik and Crabmeat that the doctor apparently has a bomb ready to detonate, which would likely wipe out the Freedom Fighters in an instant should he succeed. Wow, those are some pretty high stakes out of the gate, I wonder how they'll handle such a serious-

*sigh*... yep, this is still the Gag Era, alright. Mike... I hate to have to explain this to someone who actually LIVED through the Cold War, but that's... NOT why it was called that. It was called the Cold War precisely because both sides were trying to AVOID detonating nuclear weapons. 

Now admittedly, the first step in the Freedom Fighters' plan to stop "The Bomb" does actually lead to a pretty solid punchline by Gallagher's standards:

As a lifelong Christian, that "Protestant" bit has always gotten me to smile a little, even if it does lead me to question how Christianity could possibly exist in a world full of talking animal creatures. That's going to get REAL awkward when the Ancient Walkers show up.

Anyway, this ridiculous demonstration turns out to be one giant distraction, as it turns out the Freedom Fighters Robotnik and his SWAT-Bots are charging after are a fake movie projection, leading Robotnik to slam straight into the wall and black out. Why was he even leading the charge to begin with? Isn't that literally what the whole point of having a standing robot army is, so that you DON'T have to get your hands dirty yourself?

But don't worry, if you thought THAT didn't make sense, it's about to get even dumber.

Yes, for the next stage of the plan, Rotor is disguising himself as Robotnik in order to trick Crabmeat into handing over "The Bomb". Why did they have a random costume of Robotnik just lying around Knothole somewhere? How does Rotor do such a good impression of the doctor's voice that supposedly no one will be able to tell the difference? Who the heck is James Cagney, and how do these fictional characters know of him?

*ahem*... Sorry about that. I don't know what came over me there. 

Despite their best efforts, Crabmeat ends up getting suspicious immediately thanks to Rotor accidentally saying "please" as Robotnik (OK fine, that's a half-decent joke), and believe it or not... this story gets DUMBER.

So... so Robotnik and Rotor... BOTH have costumes of each other... and a seemingly endless amount of them... and Robotnik decided to pull out his near-infinite supply of Rotor costumes because... because... um...

Yeah, not even 3 issues into the main book, and my brain is already melting trying to comprehend what I'm reading. Someone get me to the Ian Flynn era stat, I'm going to lose my mind.

Thankfully, Sonic is about as fed up with this nonsense as I am, quickly zooming past them both so that ALL their disguises come off at once, and I'm so ready to be done with this that I'm not even going to question it. They then return to Knothole only to find out that "The Bomb" wasn't actually a real bomb, but just a disinfectant to get rid of bugs in Robotnik's office, so everything we just went through was pointless and a complete waste of time. Wow, what a great story.

Seriously, for an issue that's meant to debut an exciting new character who will go on to be one of the most important in the comic's run, I have no idea why you would choose to put THIS story on the front instead. The management of Archie Sonic in these early years was something else, man. 

Thankfully, now that we've cleared our way through that mess, we can finally move on to the main event, with the appropriately titled:

"Rabbot Deployment!"

Hey uh, didn't we literally just open the last story with these exact characters and this exact situation- oh forget it.

The setup for this story is that Rotor found photo evidence showing Robotnik making a move through the southern parts of Mobius, and so Sonic and Rotor quickly head off to stop whatever he might be doing. When they arrive, we see the SWAT-Bots already in motion, and we finally meet our star of the issue:

OK... none of the jokes on this page are even remotely funny to me, but... the fact that Sonic being randomly tied up by Rotor here so the guy could keep up with him on the way over here is what leads to Bunnie's halfway transformation is so insanely messed up that I HAVE to laugh a little, albeit in extremely awkward pain while doing so. I know it's not Gallagher's fault, because he had no way of knowing how serious this book would get down the road, but looking back on this in hindsight with all of the future trauma Bunnie endures from having to come to terms with her half-robotic existence, the fact that it all stems from this random goof on Sonic's part is the absolute peak of cruel humor.

That being said, this is still the Gag Era we're talking about, so after a quick rescue operation in which they find Bunnie halfway roboticized and bring her back to Knothole, she reacts to this life changing transformation by... getting accustomed to it immediately and not having any further questions about her new existence whatsoever.

Granted, if I suddenly had the ability to lift heavy objects with one arm and perform lightning-fast karate kicks with no prior training, I would probably just roll with it too. 

In all seriousness, I do want to give credit where it's due here, because this is actually a pretty solid introduction to Bunnie's character. In just a couple short pages, we have a nice handle on her personality (including her iconic stereotypical Southern accent), her hero worship of Sally, and her incredibly cool design and skillset. And serious props to Dave Manak's art here; I imagine Bunnie being an absolute pain to draw compared to the other Freedom Fighters, but he incorporates her into his goofy style pretty seamlessly and I have no real complaints.

I DO have to dock a couple points for that brief panel of her flirting with Sonic though. I mean, can you even imagine a romantic plotline between them? That would be ridiculous!

Speaking of Bunnie's love life, Antoine arrives on the scene to report that a massive Burro-Bot is currently tearing its way through the Great Forest, with Sonic and Bunnie both racing out together to fight it off. Rather interestingly, both Bunnie AND Antoine seem to immediately show some interest in each other, almost like Gallagher had superhuman foresight and was planting the seeds of their relationship right from the word go, even though I know for a fact that's not the case. It's kind of like when you're rewatching A New Hope and you SWEAR that George Lucas had to have planned "I am your father" from the very start, because all of the conversations about Anakin fit so well that it couldn't possibly have been improvised... but it was. 

(There is one mild detail here about their relationship that does get retconned later, in that Bunnie actually HAS met Antoine before this, but that's a story for another time.)

Anyway, the rest of this story plays out about how you'd expect. Sonic gives the Burro-Bot the run around for a while, then there comes a point where he gets caught off guard and Bunnie has to step in so we can see just how cool she is. And to be fair, what she does IS pretty dang cool:

I would give bonus points for the added fun detail of Burro-Bot's upside-down dialogue, but I unfortunately have to revoke them immediately due to Sonic getting a case of the "tell, don't show" that continues to be a bad habit in Gallagher's writing.

 After this, Sonic quickly finishes the Burro-Bot off, Bunnie is welcomed to the Freedom Fighters, and we close out Issue 3 on a much more solid note than we started.

No really, Bunnie absolutely SAVED this issue after that incredibly disposable first story. Her introduction might honestly be my favorite of the stories I've covered here so far. A lot of the humor still falls flat like with most of this era for me, and there are some things down the road that make this one a bit more odd in retrospect, but as far as setting up iconic Archie Sonic characters goes and being a fun little story in its own right, it gets the job done. Not bad.

However, even with our full Freedom Fighter cast fully established, we're still not quite done introducing iconic series staples just yet. Come back next time for Issue 4, where we get our first taste of the sheer awesomeness that is...Super Sonic.