Archie Sonic Issue #8

Well great, thanks to that joke in the corner box, I'm probably going to have the Duck Tales theme stuck in my head for at least a few days. CURSE YOU, GALLAGHER!

For a show that I've never watched either version of, it's crazy how even just listening to its theme offhand a few times is all it takes for it to stick in your brain forever. This song is STUPID catchy.

That said, I suppose this cover is better than the last one. Not only is the orange background more visually pleasing, but we actually ARE going to be seeing some superhero related shenanigans in just a minute... even though most of the heroes teased here aren't the ones we actually see inside. It's better than nothing, I guess.

If you've been following these early issues with me, you should pretty much know the drill at this point. We've got 2 short, goofy stories as per usual, and for the first time since Issue 5, our buddy Angelo DeCesare is sitting this one out, which means Mike Gallagher is fully taking the helm once again. Prepare for puns, 4th-wall breaking, and endless exposition over every single panel.

However, this issue does mark a rather important milestone for the comic as a whole. Taking into account the 4-part miniseries, which began at the tail end of 1992 with some delays, and the ongoing book, which continued directly onward from May 1993 to December that same year, this issue marks the end of the first full year of Archie Sonic's publication history. While that may not mean much for this particular issue, it does demonstrate just how solid of a foundation this book has already established for itself, as well as the staying power it will have for years to come. Given how new the Sonic franchise was at the time, that's no small feat, especially since SatAM and AoSTH didn't begin until September of that year (in fact, as I was typing this up, I learned AoSTH was already OVER by this time, which is wild; I had no clue its production was that fast and short-lived). 

It's with that solid foundation that Archie Sonic will enter into its second year, where some major developments in the comic staff and the Sonic franchise as a whole will begin to shake up this silly status quo... especially once a certain infamous writer begins to emerge and make his presence known to all, for better and for worse. We're not quite there just yet...

With that ominous foreshadowing out of the way, let's get started with:

"Bot's All, Folks!"... so, we're also spoofing Looney Tunes, I guess. 

Hoo boy... where do I start here? Well for one, Hercules did this exact same joke 1,000x funnier, so there's that.

Putting that aside, how in the world do Sonic the Hedgehog comics even EXIST within the actual comic world itself? Is someone from Knothole publishing and selling these somewhere outside the village? Did Crabmeat walk into some shop set up on the outskirts of the Great Forest and buy them, or did he snatch them during a tangle with the Freedom Fighters? Also, why does every single comic in that stack look exactly the same? Did Crabmeat get tricked into buying multiple copies of the same issue, or did he do that on PURPOSE to corner the market and sell them for high prices like all those infuriating Pokémon card scalpers?

Aaaand now I've written an entire paragraph picking apart a singular joke on the first page. The things these early issues do to my brain, I swear.

Anyway, Robotnik is predictably furious at Crabmeat and ready to rip him apart, but Crabmeat explains that he was reading those comics because he thought it would be a good idea if Robotnik built robots based on other superheroes... or at least, that's what I've gathered based on where the rest of this story goes, because the dialogue here is REALLY clunky:

Seriously, what is the logical flow of this conversation?

"You were reading comic books based off my nemesis and broke my laws! TO THE SCRAP HEAP WITH YOU!"

"No, you don't understand! I was doing it because I thought 'wow, wouldn't it be cool if Robotnik had, like, BETTER robots?'"

"Yes, I see... I'll build robots based on these OTHER superhero comics! GENIUS!"

To be fair, I do like the bit here with the SWAT-Bot who was so eager to see Crabmeat get punished, only to end up getting taken apart right next to him. Karma at its finest.

We cut to Robotnik out in the Great Forest a few days later, proudly broadcasting himself about to turn a section of the Great Forest into a toxic waste dump to lure Sonic out. Sonic arrives in record time, and Robotnik immediately sends a signal into the sky with a dramatic dark logo to summon Sonic's first opponent. I bet you can guess where this is going.

Yes, our first opponent is a Batman robot named... Botman. I wish I was making this up.

Also, have to ask, wasn't the point of this to get SUPERPOWERED robots against Sonic? I know Batman is a famous superhero, but he also quite famously has zero powers whatsoever, so... what was the big idea here, Robotnik? Did you wait these few days because you bought into that "Batman with prep time" nonsense and hoped that would-

-OK, I stand corrected. Turns out Batman is physically incapable of ever losing a battle in ANY comic universe no matter the circumstances. The writers just love him that much, I guess.

Just kidding, of course. Sonic comes out on top, but the way he does so is... bizarre. Somehow, in that puff of smoke representing their brawl a moment ago, he managed to rip apart Botman's interior components, toss them aside, and then sat there under his foot pretending to be beaten to "drive Robotnik bonkers". Alright Angelo, you're off the hook slightly, I guess this officially makes 2 issues in a row now where Sonic moves faster than light, so it wasn't just a single random occurrence after all. I still call hacks in both instances, though.

Bit of a side tangent, but something that's always confused me about the Gag Era is the nature of how Crabmeat and the other Badniks are treated as characters. We literally saw Robotnik take Crabmeat apart earlier this issue, but then right here we see another Crabmeat being treated as though he's the exact same one... and yet there are other issues that show entire ARMIES of Crabmeats, so like... what are the rules? Are they all one entity? Are they clones sharing a single consciousness? Which is it?

Anyway, Robotnik prepares to send in his next robot, clearly meant to be inspired by Wolverine (and don't think I didn't notice that awful "Marvel" pun, Mike), but this backfires on him in about the weirdest way imaginable:

I'm just picturing Gallagher sitting at his desk, wracking his brain on what would be the most out-of-pocket meta joke he could make, and then he's like, "Ah-ha! A Jaleel White reference! BRILLIANT!" In fairness, I suppose it DID throw me off guard a bit, but less in the "ha ha funny" way, and more in the "how in the world did Robotnik's computer not catch such an obvious typo like 'Wolvurkel'?" way. 

While I'm still processing THAT, Robotnik then moves onto his third robot, "Spawnmower"... based on Spawn from Image Comics... as a giant lawnmower. Again, you just can't make this stuff up. Here's the craziest part, though: what if I told you this ISN'T the last time that Arhie Sonic makes reference to this dark, definitely not kid-friendly superhero? What if I told you that Archie Sonic actually has a full-on CROSSOVER with Image Comics, where he interacts with Spawn for a single, random, out-of-nowhere cameo page?

YUP. This is REAL! Hoo boy, I cannot WAIT to talk about that one down the road, it's BONKERS. Man, I love this stupid comic.

As for Sonic's fight with Spawnmower here, that also lasts for a single page because this robot apparently has the bright idea of stopping to make a dramatic pose, giving Sonic the opening to deactivate it and send it tumbling to its doom before it even has a chance to launch a single attack. Truly a formidable and worthy adversary.

But don't you worry, if you thought THAT was anticlimactic, just get a load of this next page:

In the span of 3 panels, with literally nothing but a plain white background, some smoke, and a bunch of sound effects, Sonic defeats the entire rest of Robotnik's superpowered robots with seemingly zero effort whatsoever. Once again, I can't help but feel like this is one of those instances where splitting up each issue into 2 separate stories really hurts Gallagher's pacing. We started off OK with Botman, but now we've devolved to the point where we don't even get to SEE the action because we ran out of pages too quickly. It's extremely lame.

Sonic prepares to go for Robotnik next, but he accidentally slips on the pile of rubble he just accumulated, giving the doctor the chance to escape. This leads to Sonic remembering the golden rule of comics: "the bad guy always gets away in the end". Kind of ironic in hindsight given a certain Endgame in the not-too-distant future, but hey, it's still better than most of the awful meta jokes from the 2010s era of Sonic games, so I'll take it.

How anyone ever considered these cutscenes better than Black Knight is beyond me.

So that story was... meh. Despite the incredibly promising premise of a tangle between Sonic and evil robotic versions of famous superheroes, with all of the action and meta comic book humor that could provide, the humor was pretty much the same as usual, and literally all of Sonic's opponents went out like total punks. It's pretty disposable at the end of the day, which is extremely disappointing.

Oh well. Let's see if Mike can bounce back with the second story:

"A Little Sonic Goes a Long Way"

Speaking of Mike Gallagher doubling up on previous ludicrous demonstrations of Sonic's speed, we now have our second instance of Sonic being faster than the speed of sound. I'll give the man his due, he was definitely ahead of his time on that one. Bonus points for this also being the first demonstration of Sonic playing a guitar outside of SatAM before Underground was a thing. 2 solid lore drops in 1 page, not bad.

This show does not deserve a theme song this good, why is it fire?

Oh, this is cool! Mike not only remembered Bunnie's existence again, but this story is actually going to be our first proper time seeing the whole squad in action after the Spinball story ripped that rug out from under us. Not sure how I feel about Bunnie joining in with the others on bullying Antoine, but hey, I'll take it if it means she actually gets to DO something for once.

That said, as we cut over to Robotnik hearing Sonic's guitar and throwing a temper tantrum, I have to say, I'm not sure how I feel about this sudden concept of Robotnik "hating music". Banning other people from having fun, sure, that's totally in line with him being a tyrannical bully and whatnot. But hating music entirely? In THIS franchise of all places? Someone get this man a Crush 40 playlist STAT, he doesn't know what he's missing out on.

But enough about that. It's time for the debut of one of the greatest, most spectacular, most CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED Sonic villains of all time. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the incomparable Snively Robotnik!

Honestly, what a perfect way to round out our first year of Archie Sonic. The last missing puzzle piece from SatAM is finally put into place, and with Bunnie making her first substantial appearance since her debut, the gang's all here! Let's GOOOO!!!

But wait, you might be asking. Didn't Snively ALREADY make an appearance back in Sonic's Christmas Carol in Issue 6? To which I reply:

1. I already addressed this when I covered that garbage. The character we saw there was Jacob Snarley, totally different. Any resemblance to Snivelys living or dead is purely coincidental.

2. That story never happened. It's completely non-canon, and we should all just pretend that it doesn't exist so I can sleep better at night.

No but seriously, I'm actually SO excited that I finally get to talk about this guy, even if just for a little bit. The villainous dynamic he has with both this Robotnik and especially the future Eggman is SO, SO good. Where his uncle is this dominant, imposing, completely unhinged force of absolute evil, Snively has so much more going on; he's pragmatic, yet cowardly; cunning, yet with a small heart underneath his blackened surface. It takes a while before most of these elements of his character come to light, but from the moment when he first begins his schemes to take over Robotnik's empire, we're going to have an absolute BANGER of a side villain on our hands here. 

I could genuinely talk about this wonderful little gremlin all day, but we've still got a story to get through, so let's not delay any further. 

In another instance for this issue of oddly clunky dialogue between Robotnik and his subordinates, Snively says that he's made a "discovery", and then on literally the same page explains that he has "invented" a device that can shrink things to miniature size. How the editor didn't catch the massive contradiction between building a shrinking device and merely finding it lying on the ground somewhere, I have no idea, but it doesn't make much difference either way. What matters is that it's a new opportunity for Robotnik to destroy Sonic, and he's eager to test it out. Snively does warn him that the effects only last for one hour, but the doctor insists that's more than enough time to work with. Because when has THAT attitude ever backfired on someone in this franchise?

Luckily for Robotnik, Sonic and the Freedom Fighters just so happen to be leaving the safety of Knothole that very same day looking for more instruments in the abandoned "Mobius Concert Hall", giving him the perfect opening to shrink them all down... and once again, my biggest pet peeve with Gallagher rears its ugly head:

It would be one thing if he just committed the same crime as that Colors clip I showed earlier and explained his own joke with that "short circuit" panel. But the fact that he felt the need to have 4 different lines of dialogue in the span of a single page that boil down to "the Freedom Fighters are small now" is just overkill. I know I've probably beaten this horse to death at this point, but it just bothers me that he refuses to put any faith in his readers to understand what's going on at any given moment. 

The next few pages are pretty standard Gallagher fare. Robotnik chases Sonic around with his roboticizing vacuum for a few pages, the other Freedom Fighters watch from the sidelines, puns and shenanigans ensue, you know the drill. Eventually, Sonic gets Robotnik to crash, and it looks like things are over...

... but in a surprise twist, for seemingly the first time under Gallagher's pen, Robotnik actually had the foresight to have a backup plan! Alright, not bad... though I do have to dock a couple of points for the artwork on that top panel. I've been trying not to rag on Dave Manak too much for a while now, especially since I'm not much of an artist myself and the task of drawing all these brand-new characters at the time does admittedly sound pretty daunting, but something about the perception here is just off. It looks like Sonic is already back to normal size, even standing OVER Robotnik, but then the next very panel shows him being tiny again. It's a minor grievance, but man is it distracting.

Thankfully, in another rare Gallagher treat, we then get a brief, but really fun scene where the other Freedom Fighters actually get to pitch in and help Sonic out for once. Not sure what I like more here: Sally taking charge like the leader she's supposed to be, or Tails having his cute little "determined" glare while he hugs Rotor. Pretty neat moment overall.

The effects of the shrink ray then wear off despite the fact there's almost no way a full hour passed in these last few pages, and Sonic breaks out of Robotnik's machine while growing back because that's totally how those physics would work and he definitely wouldn't be in excruciating pain whatsoever. Robotnik is then sent packing when the Freedom Fighters... play music at him (still weird), and just when an army of his robots is about to arrive, they find Snively's shrink ray and decide to give the doctor a taste of his own medicine.

I have absolutely no idea how or why all of those robots ended up in Robotnik's office like this, but the image of Snively scooping them up and rushing them out the door is admittedly pretty amusing, so I'll give it a pass.

And just like that, the first year of Archie Sonic comes to a close... and I'll admit, that was actually a pretty decent story to end on. Not quite sure if it's the best one we've had so far, but it was certainly better than the lame superhero one right before it. It had a simple but fun premise, introduced us to the absolute peak of villainous character writing that is Snively, and actually had the whole Freedom Fighter squad present and active for a change. I actually had an OK time with this one... it's just a shame it had to be partnered up with such a disappointing frontrunner, because that really dragged the whole issue down to mediocrity.

Oh well. Tune in next time as we enter the second year of Archie Sonic with our first robotic Sonic doppelganger... and lots and lots of tree puns.