Archie Sonic Issue #4

I don't want to start off overly harsh here, but this has to be the most baffling cover I've discussed yet. This is the issue debut of SUPER SONIC, one of the absolute coolest things to come out of the Classic Sonic games, and instead of prominently advertising that front and center, you waste your quite literally golden opportunity on a joke that I had to go over multiple times as a kid before it even made sense. Come on, guys.

Yes, much like last issue, while we're still firmly in the Gag Era of Archie Sonic, we're also seeing the introduction of several key characters and concepts to add to the ever-expanding world of Mobius. Issue 3 saw us rounding out our Freedom Fighter crew with the introduction of Bunnie, and in this issue, we get our very first taste of Sonic's transformation into Super Sonic. I will admit, as much as I don't love this era overall, I do have to give it credit for setting the foundation of this comic, shaky though it may have been. There's a certain novelty to seeing the origins of some of my favorite characters and the crazy world they inhabit that I can appreciate, even if the stories themselves typically leave a lot to be desired.

That being said, as I alluded to back when I was covering the original miniseries, this particular origin story is... a bit messy. While this issue does get the basics of Super Sonic down, the way it goes about doing so will unfortunately lead to a TON of problems moving forward regarding the Chaos Emeralds and how they're supposed to work. To say the Emeralds' lore gets confusing would be a massive understatement, especially around the time of Sonic Adventure, and while it does lead to some pretty interesting stories here and there, I will forever be grateful that Ian Flynn made sure to fix this nonsense not even a full year into his tenure as head writer. Trust me, it gets BONKERS.

Alright, with all of that out of the way, let's jump right in with our first story:

"The Lizard of Odd!"... my goodness, these titles.

So, uh... I'm already confused. Is Robotnik really so down on his luck on successfully roboticizing anyone that the fact that the SWAT-Bots actually hauled something in is considered a big deal? Didn't this guy take over most of the planet?

Also, come to think of it... why DOESN'T he use Robians against Sonic more often? Wouldn't it be much more effective to use troops that could make Sonic feel guilty about fighting, since they were once conscious living beings who have no choice in the matter? We've already seen that Uncle Chuck and Muttski are enough to make Sonic hesitate, but why stop there when you have an ARMY of them?  I know this is the Gag Era and all, but it still baffles me that Robotnik doesn't capitalize on this idea sooner, especially when considering several more serious stories down the line where this becomes a major moral dilemma and point of contention for a lot of people. 

Anyway, Robotnik's excitement over the potential of a new fearsome threat to oppose Sonic is quickly dashed when it's revealed that the container contains a puny salamander barely the size of the doctor's foot. (And kudos to Gallagher, the SWAT-BOTS' excuse for this blunder, that the salamander is "big for his age", actually got a decent laugh from me.) In typical villain fashion, Robotnik immediately disposes of his minions for dashing his hopes, but still decides to make do with what he has anyway...

... And of course, he can't even roboticize a puny salamander properly without it blowing up in his face. Why am I not surprised?

Doc, you've got to step up your game soon, I'm running out of facepalm images to use at this point.

We cut over to the Freedom Fighters as this... Universalamander... begins tearing his way towards Knothole to cause destruction. After Sonic makes the obligatory Jurassic Park joke (which actually doubles as cross-promotional advertising, because there was actually a Sega Genesis Jurassic Park game coming out at the time this issue dropped), he pops out to face it only to get more than he bargained for:

 

As a bit of an aside, I find it interesting to note Sonic referring to Robotnik's pod here as his "Egg-O-Matic". Contrary to what some diehard Western Sonic fans will tell you, the dividing line between "Robotnik" and "Eggman" in the 90s wasn't quite as extreme as you might think. While the name "Eggman" didn't exist over here in the U.S. until the Adventure games, there were still plenty of instances where the signature egg-name convention was used all throughout Classic Sonic, most notably with the Death Egg spanning across both Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Just thought I'd clear that up because I see a lot of people who get this information confused, and because the endless rabbit hole that is this franchise's lore is one that I find deeply fascinating.

The next couple of pages are pretty standard fare for a Gallagher story. There's a brief cliffhanger as Universalamander seemingly devours Sonic, then Sonic breaks out with cartoon logic, the Freedom Fighters all watch from the sidelines, bad puns rain down all over, you know the drill at this point. However, things take a turn when Sonic decides he can't defeat this robot on his own, so he needs to go Super... and here's where things officially get screwy...

To give this a fair shake, let's start with the positives here. First of all, props to Dave Manak for the art here, because this is a pretty solid recreation of the half-pipe Special Stage from Sonic 2, and the way that both the Power Rings and Chaos Emeralds are drawn is exactly right. Also, to give Gallagher his due, it IS technically true in the games that you need rings to maintain Sonic's super form even with all the Chaos Emeralds collected...

...But that also immediately leads us to some of our problems here. If Sonic already gathered 50 Rings WITH the Chaos Emeralds, he shouldn't need to grab 50 more, that doesn't make sense. Also, while you do collect Rings in the Special Stages (which are indeed accessed through the Star Posts), you do so in order to obtain the Chaos Emeralds, which Sonic has clearly already done. So no matter how you slice it, him entering the Special Stage here just doesn't work.

However, moving past the questionable logistics here, there's one major issue that I'm sure even a casual Sonic fan would have spotted IMMEDIATELY from just a quick glance: The Chaos Emeralds are not all supposed to be green! Even in Sonic 1, when they had only 6 Chaos Emeralds, they had distinct colors, and both it and Sonic 2 were both out at this time so you can't make the argument that the team "couldn't have known any better". So, the question must be asked: WHO is the culprit behind this egregious error? THE GAME IS ON, NOWWWW!

As much as Sonic fans tend to lay any lore problems at the feet of the writer, I actually don't think Gallagher is the one at fault for the coloring mishap. I've read somewhere that he actually did play the games to give himself an idea of them. The confusion between Rings and Emeralds that I already talked about doesn't help his case, but I think his recreation of the Special Stages here (plus his Labyrinth Zone homage in the mini-series) does show that he was paying SOME amount of attention, and I don't think he would have missed such an obvious detail like that. My guess would be that the colorist for this issue, Barry Grossman, was probably unfamiliar with the games, heard the term "Chaos Emerald" and decided they should all be green because that is how emeralds look in the real world. A pretty reasonable error, but unfortunately for him this is the Sonic franchise, and thus any and all lore mistakes are crimes akin to treason. Take him away, boys!

                                                              Why does this video exist

All joking aside, the fallout that results from this tiny little error with the Chaos Emeralds cannot be understated. As new writers with even less game familiarity than Gallagher will be coming onto the book soon, this will begin a major downward spiral of lore confusion that would take the comic YEARS to recover from. Because rather than there simply being 7 distinctly colored Chaos Emeralds that are the only ones in existence, there will now be a near-INFINITE amount of Green Chaos Emeralds scattered all across Mobius instead, with some being given arbitrary importance over others with no rhyme or reason. ALL of that, because of a simple coloring mistake on this single page of Issue 4. Early Archie Sonic is a TRIP.

Now, as for the rest of THIS story-

Oh, it's already over. Well, that was anti-climactic.

OK, in all fairness, I actually do kind of like how Gallagher wraps this story up. In a nice use of continuity from last issue, Sonic runs and grabs the "reduce/enlarge component" from the roboticizer that they hauled back after rescuing Bunnie from her own half-roboticization and uses it to render Universalamander completely harmless, just like Robotnik originally thought he would be. As much as I would have loved to just see Super Sonic go to town here, I have to admit, that's actually a pretty clever solution that ties back to the start of this whole mess in a roundabout way. Not bad, Mike.

Now, we do have another story to cover here, but before we do that, I have to fulfill an obligation I made a while ago. In a previous post, I mentioned that these early issues are filled with a lot of one-off gag strips, and that I wouldn't be covering them... with a single exception, which just so happens to be in this very issue. So here you go:

Yes, it's the return of our... fan-favorite?... Al and Cal duo... playing baseball in a dimension with no concept of physics. Riveting. 

Now you may wonder, why is this relevant? Well, unlike pretty much all the other strips like this, there actually will be a direct reference made to this in a future story with these guys down the road, which I guess does technically make this canon in the loosest sense possible. So, it may not seem important now, but trust me, in about 55 main series issues, it will all make perfect sense! I'm not addicted to this comic! I can quit ANY TIME I WANT!

...OK I'm calm now, I promise. Let's see what this next story is all about, I'm sure it won't be anything too crazy-

"Tails' Little Tale"? My boy Tails in his very first solo story? LET'S GO!!!

... Wait a minute. This is still Gallagher Tails we're dealing with here...

Well, this will certainly be a fun and not at all infuriating experience, I'm sure.

So as this first page shows, Sonic is taking a nap after fighting the Universalamander in the last story, and Tails is eager to fill in for him and prove himself as a hero. Alright fair enough, not a bad set-up. And once again, we have a nice thread of continuity here, directly connecting back to the previous story in the issue. We even see Robotnik and his minions gathering for a meeting on the next page celebrating their triumphant return now that Universalamander is gone, which... I don't know how Robotnik evacuated himself and his entire city of minions only to reassemble them all in the same day, but whatever. Tails, being the ever observant and brilliant hero that he is, somehow has his back turned for this entire meeting, and gets ambushed faster than you can say "Idiot Plot":

Listen, I get that it's meant to be funny and show that he's inexperienced, but the kid was literally standing with his back turned on a cliff DIRECTLY ABOVE where this meeting was happening. You expect me to believe he somehow didn't hear Robotnik's grand speech or any of his DOZENS of minions all setting out to wreak havoc at the same time? Sorry, I ain't buying it.

Also, why does Robotnik want his minions to jaywalk? The only city anywhere nearby is Robotropolis. Wouldn't that just inconvenience HIM more than anyone else?

As much as I want to give Gallagher credit for that nice little display of Tails's abilities above, the attitude he gives Tails right afterwards ruins the mood almost immediately. After defeating 2 entire Badniks, he suddenly decides that he is more than capable of charging straight at Robotnik's headquarters without calling for any backup whatsoever. Gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

And again, I can already see you saying "wait, isn't that the point, to show that he's a naive kid in need of a reality check?", to which I would reply yes, but I still don't like it. I've talked about this a couple of times before, but generally speaking I really don't like it when Tails is characterized with a massively oversized ego. That's SONIC'S personality, and it works to make Sonic endearing because he can generally back up his trash talking with his genuinely impressive speed and power. TAILS, on the other hand, is the sidekick who tries to become a hero in his own right but constantly struggles with his self-confidence because he feels like he can't measure up to Sonic's greatness.  

In my view, the litmus test for understanding whether Tails is being characterized correctly is how well a writer balances Tails's confidence. He needs to be reasonably self-assured so that he can be capable of greatness without always needing to rely on Sonic, but also humble enough to where there can be cause for conflict and we get to see him adapt to whatever crazy circumstances he finds himself wrapped up in. Not too pitiful and weak, but also not too arrogant and unreasonably overpowered.

You go too far in making him a coward when he reasonably wouldn't be, and you get garbage like Forces where he freaks out at the sight of Chaos 0 despite years of experience fighting enemies far more dangerous, and that just makes him look unrealistically wimpy. You go too far in the OTHER direction, and you get Lost World Tails refusing to shut up about how much of a genius he is and bickering back and forth with Sonic for "not trusting him enough". Gallagher's Tails falls more into the second category; while he does genuinely admire Sonic and want to be like him, he's also SO sure of his capabilities that he'll charge head-on with reckless abandon and then acts with extreme bitterness when he's put in the back seat for it. Granted, the Freedom Fighters DO take it too far with him later on, but he's not exactly making a great case for himself right now.

Hope that all made sense. I'll try not to step onto this soapbox every time Tails comes up, but I figured I'd lay my cards out on the table because he's a character I've really come to connect with over the years, and seeing his constant mistreatment from various writers frustrates me to no end. Let's get back to the story and wrap this up.

Swinging back to the positive end of things, I do kind of like the fact that Tails's plan was thwarted by the fact that the silhouette he was charging towards was just a SWAT-Bot's shadow puppet. That's a pretty cute joke, and honestly, I feel for these guys. If I had to stand around keeping guard in a factory all day on the off chance that a Freedom Fighter did a suicide charge into the place, I'd be bored out of my mind too.

Sadly though, I must deduct points for Gallagher's blatant false advertising. He promised me a Tails solo story, and here I am watching Sonic have to bail him out because, again, he charged directly to Robotnik without thinking! If you were going to write this way, couldn't you at the very least have let it be another Freedom Fighter this time around? That would have at least softened the blow a little and let someone other than Sonic be the hero for once.

Oh well. The SWAT-Bots panic and decide to self-destruct, Sonic races himself and Tails out of there just in time, and we end with Tails promising to "look before he leaps" and immediately jumping straight into a hole in the ground. So he learned absolutely nothing from that life-threatening experience he just endured, great.

So that's Issue 4, and WOW what a rollercoaster we just went on. On the one hand, Mike Gallagher definitely made a considerable effort to step up his game this time around. We got the introduction of Super Sonic, and our first attempt (albeit a flimsy one) at giving Tails some spotlight. There was some solid action, a surprising level of continuity compared to previous issues, and a few more actually decent jokes than normal. On the other hand, Robotnik is still a complete goof, the handling of the Chaos Emeralds was shaky at best, the other Freedom Fighters had nothing to do, and Tails still doesn't feel quite right. Still, I had a lot more to say about it than I thought I would, so I guess one could argue it's about the most substantive issue I've covered so far. 

Next time, it's off to the Olympics!