Archie Sonic Issue #13

 

*sigh*... OK Dave... you are really testing my patience with this one. Yes, I suppose this cover is one of your more well-drawn so far artistically, but... where the heck is Knuckles? Are... are you kidding me? We can advertise SONIC SPINBALL just fine, but when it's time for a Sonic 3 adaptation, we can't show KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA on the cover of the book!? WHY!?

"Look, I've been nice, I praised your Flash of Two Worlds homage, analyzed EVERY SINGLE gag cover you've pushed at me, but THIS-"

Bleh. Whatever. At least it does have Knuckles's name along with the Sonic 3 tagline attached to it... even if it's shoved into the bottom right corner instead of, again, PROMINENTLY DISPLAYING IT because this is the issue's ENTIRE SELLING POINT, but... fine. You did the bare minimum of advertisement for my boy, I guess. (Spaz will be here soon, Spaz will be here soon...)

All that ranting to say, yes, this issue marks our second video game tie-in, with the release of Sonic 3, and the debut of one Knuckles the Echidna. Much like the Spinball adaptation back in Issue 6, the first story this issue will roughly cover the main events of the game, but incorporating them within the established Archie Sonic world, and the second story will be something entirely different. However, where the Spinball adaptation was a simple, one-off gag story with no legacy outside of the obscure Hip and Hop duo, THIS particular event will have MASSIVE implications for the comic moving forward, thanks to, you guessed it, Ken Penders.

You see, as Penders settled into this comic long-term in the next couple of years, he began to view it less as part of a pre-established brand and more of a blank canvas for him to do with as he pleased. As such, there were a LOT of different story and character ideas that he was ready to explore with the total freedom available to him. So he went to Sega, started pitching his crazy, unhinged lore for Sonic... and they immediately rejected it with zero hesitation.

No, that is not a joke. Despite all the complaining about "Sega mandates" being FAR more prevalent in IDW compared to Archie, what some people may not realize is that there were indeed times even in the Archie days where Sega put their foot down. This was one of those times... because Penders was trying to push all of these wild, insane ideas directly onto Sonic himself, and with the franchise in its early inception, Sega had a very clear vision for the type of character they wanted Sonic to be across the board, and Penders's concepts would have interfered with the consistency they were hoping to achieve. When Penders then turned right around and started pitching all of these ideas for Knuckles, the new popular rival character that they were far less concerned with... well, the rest is history.

I should mention that, like a lot of Penders's early history on the book, all of this information comes straight from the man himself, but once again, I've decided to trust him in this instance. I know some of you out there are probably dying for me to go full Cobra Kai, "strike first, strike hard, no mercy" on him, and trust me, it WILL come eventually, but this is another case where his version of events makes perfect sense to me. I can maybe see an argument for why he could have been deceitful about this but given everything I've read from other sources about the weird inconsistencies with how Sega have managed this franchise over the years, I can absolutely buy that they would somewhat protect Sonic from this maniac while not extending Knuckles the same courtesy. 

Of course, all of that is much further down the road, and right now Knuckles is simply the star of the hit new Sonic game, so let's just sit back, relax, and enjoy the calm before the storm in:

"This Island Hedgehog"

Alright, so a lot of thoughts already just looking on the surface here. 

First of all, we've got Dave Manak back on penciling duty once again and just like with the (still frustrating) cover, I have to say his work is looking a LOT more polished than usual, which I suppose I would have to at least partially attribute to the new inker, Jon D'Agostino. Dave's still no Art Mawhinney, but hey, I'll give him his due, this story ends up looking pretty solid for the most part.

Second, if you pay attention to Sonic and Tails's dialogue here, you'll notice some... interesting deviations from the source material. See, Sonic 3 in the games is meant to directly follow up on the events of Sonic 2, with Eggman trying to repair the Death Egg after his previous defeat. But this is the Archie world, and the Death Egg hasn't made any substantial appearance yet, so instead they're just chasing "a Robotnik hovercraft". Lame, I know, but compared to the other story changes we'll see in just a minute, this one's a lot more forgivable.

Third, and most importantly, we finally have our first proper appearance of the Tornado, with the logo and Sonic nametag and everything! I mean, sure, the colors are wrong, but unlike the Chaos Emerald debacle (same colorist, btw), this one isn't a huge deal and is promptly corrected in future issues. Very cool to see, and surprisingly on point with how Sonic 3 actually begins. And even though Sonic doesn't have the Emeralds to go super, we still have Knuckles here, ready to jump in and-

-Oh. OK then, never mind. Instead, he "rolls out the unwelcome mat" by... literally attaching a mat labeled "unwelcome" to a rocket and blasting their plane out of the sky with it. Another deviation from the source material, to be sure, but... I have to admit, that's actually kind of funny. Like, it's dumb, but it's just the right kind of dumb that Gallagher is often shooting for but just can't quite hit for me most of the time. I don't know if this was Penders's idea or Kanterovich's, but kudos to whoever it was, that was genuinely one of the better gags I've seen here in a while.

Also, Tails's quip at the bottom right there sounds very... familiar...

Wow, SA2 really just went and ripped Archie Sonic off like that? Maybe Ken should sue for that one next.

The next couple of pages are... fine, but also weird. In another surprising bit of game accuracy, Sonic and Tails run across a robot who's beginning to torch the place much like what happens in Angel Island Act 1, and there's a brief, bizarre moment where Sonic uses the insta-shield mechanic, only... he... doesn't do it on purpose? And this ability is never brought up again?

But whatever, they dive into the water to evade the robot, and briefly enter the second zone of Sonic 3, whose name is perhaps the single most trivial, ridiculous controversy in the entire Sonic community, which... OK, at the risk of looking ridiculous myself, let me just come right out and say it: IT'S HYDRO. CITY. IT IS A CITY. THAT IS UNDERWATER, AKA, HYDRO. THEREFORE, IT IS HYDRO CITY. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION.

"But, but, the original game didn't have a gap between 'Hydro' and 'City', so maybe it IS just one word-"

Feraligatr. Try again.

"But, but Megamind said 'Metrocity', maybe-"

The ENTIRE JOKE is that Megamind is WRONG. He literally gets caught by Tighten, who's so oblivious that he didn't think England had a monarch, because LITERALLY EVERYONE knows Megamind is WRONG ABOUT THIS!

It is Hydro City. That is clearly what the developers intended, and it is what the name is. Case. CLOSED. (All joking aside, if you just like the way "Hydrocity" sounds, then fine, I'm not going to harass you about it. You do you, this is just how I feel.)

Anyway, Sonic and Tails fall unconscious and wake up tied down in a dark room somewhere, when finally, after a whole 5 pages of dramatic buildup (TOTALLY worth keeping him off the cover for that, Dave!), we are finally introduced to the man, the myth, the legend, Knuckles the Echidna, Guardian of the... Chaos Emerald? On the... FLOATING Island?

Yeah, so... remember back when I covered the Spinball adaptation, when I said Sega had a bad habit of just... NOT giving Archie the full details of whatever game they were supposed to be working with on these sorts of things? Well, here we have a rather MAJOR instance of this occurrence that creates some rather ridiculous consequences for a lot of early Knuckles stories for the foreseeable future. Rather than guarding the mystical, one-of-a-kind Master Emerald, with the power to neutralize the Chaos Emeralds, Knuckles is instead guarding... a single, Green Chaos Emerald, indistinguishable from any others. Pair this with the Chaos Emerald coloring error in Issue 4, and we have now officially established Mobius as a world with a near endless supply of Green Chaos Emeralds rather than 7 distinctly colored Emeralds. Both of these issues, along with the Angel Island name debacle, WILL get fixed at certain points down the road, but not before some truly absurd shenanigans take place, all thanks to Sega's negligence here. Again, love this comic to death, wish we could have distinct universes like it again, but there are indeed some negatives that can come from a complete lack of executive oversight.

But enough about that, because AHHH KNUCKLES! HE'S FINALLY HERE, LET'S GOOOO!!!

Actually, on the topic of Knuckles here, since I've already made my stance on the Hydro City debate clear, I may as well address the whole "Knuckles being tricked by Robotnik/Eggman" thing, because it's an error in his judgment that has plagued public perception of his character for literal decades for no good reason whatsoever and I want to set the record straight on this.

Let's... let's just look through this logically, OK? Put yourself in Knuckles's Lego brick shoes for a second. Imagine you have been living alone on an island in the sky your entire life, the very last of your kind, with the singular task of protecting said island and the mystical gemstone on top of it from invaders. You have never ventured away from that duty, and have zero knowledge of the larger conflict on the world around you. You with me so far?

Alright, now within that context, imagine one day a space station crash lands onto your island purely on accident. Naturally, you run to check on that as is your duty as Guardian, and you see a lone human scientist crawl himself out of the wreckage, looking like THIS:

He introduces himself, apologizes for the sudden intrusion on your homeland, and explains that his station was brought down by a savage hedgehog with unnatural super speed, and his 2-tailed fox freak of a sidekick. The scientist then notices the gemstone you've sworn to protect and mentions how these monsters have acquired the 7 Chaos Emeralds and are almost certainly after the Master Emerald next to achieve ultimate power. Given all of the information available to you in this moment, from the first person you've had any meaningful dialogue with in who knows how long, whose design was literally inspired by Theodore Roosevelt (not making that up, Google it!) ... OF COURSE YOU WOULD TRUST HIM! Literally everything you've sworn to protect is in danger! It would be BEYOND IRRESPONSIBLE not to hear this guy out! 

But no, apparently Knuckles is an idiot, because I, the player who has the benefit of observing this story through an omniscient 3rd-person perspective, can obviously tell you that Eggman is bad, and therefore Knuckles should know better and shall be condemned as a moron for all eternity. Just ignore the fact that the INSTANT he's betrayed, he not only quite literally jumps at the chance to stop Eggman, but also transports Sonic and Tails straight up to Sky Sanctuary so they can correct this mistake for him.

Look, I'm not suggesting that Knuckles is some super genius, or that he isn't capable of bone-headed mistakes. I have much less of a defense in cases like Sonic Adventure for instance, where he clearly should have known better by now and not gone straight to punching Sonic's lights out without at least TALKING to him. But my goodness, the way that both fans and official Sega properties have treated Knuckles over the years for what are quite honestly pretty mild errors at the end of the day just IRRITATES me to no end. I've come around to the fact that Sonic Boom can be funny, but I will never forgive that show for reinforcing the caricature of a dumb jock that people have falsely labeled him as all across the board.

Now granted, in this specific rendition of the story, the argument that he should trust Robotnik holds a bit less water, mostly due to how much more obviously evil his design is here compared to Classic Eggman, but hey, if I can forgive Ezra Bridger trusting "formerly Darth, now just Maul" in Twilight of the Apprentice, then I'm clearly capable of looking past these sorts of things.

Alright, rant over. Back to the comic.

So just like in Sonic 3, Knuckles believes that Sonic and Tails are after the Chaos Emerald, and he decides to give them 10 minutes to get off the island before he comes after them again, a reference to the time limit found in every Classic Sonic game. He does this because "we echidnas are firm, but fair" which... oh, Knuckles. Oh, you sweet summer child. The fact that you actually believe that about your kind, given everything I know in the future... I mean really, it's just ADORABLE. How I desperately wish I could shield you from everything that's about to happen...

Robotnik is of course ticked off about this, but it doesn't really matter to him anyways since both Knuckles and his enemies are distracted in their little game of cat and mouse, allowing him to snatch up the Chaos Emerald with zero resistance. He then gives a mildly amusing spoof on Spider-Man's classic tagline, saying that "with great evil comes great power!", and prepares to make off with his prize... only, he didn't count on Knuckles, again, being FAR smarter than people give him credit for:

Yes, Knuckles has the skill and the foresight to have a secret passageway straight to the Chaos Emerald at a moment's notice for situations JUST like this. And yeah, I could make fun of the fact that the Emerald's spot is literally just a random pile of rocks out in the open, but this does get corrected in future issues, so chalk it up to Early-Installment Weirdness/it's the Gag Era, don't think too hard about it.

When Sonic and Tails arrive just after this, Knuckles immediately realizes that there's no logical way they could have stolen the Emerald since they just got here, and the 3 of them unite to take down Robotnik immediately. Wow, Team Sonic in their first battle together while Robotnik has a Chaos Emerald in his possession, I bet this is going to be EPIC-

Seriously, that's it? I guess I shouldn't be TOO surprised by this, given how formidable these 3 are when united like this, and how non-threatening SWAT-Bots have been thus far, but like... you couldn't have at least shown us a decent action shot or 2 of them smashing robots together? You really just put in the puff of smoke and called it a day? 

Oh well. Robotnik retreats, the Chaos Emerald is returned to its rightful place, and Sonic and Tails leave after a brief moment to repair the Tornado. Knuckles waves them off, saying that's he's got a "funny feeling" he hasn't seen the last of these guys...

Hm. Yes. Funny. Amusing, one could say. Hilarious, even.

OK, I'll try to tone it down with the aggressive echidna apocalypse foreshadowing... but like, come on, I had to use this clip at SOME point, it's just too good to pass up.

And so ends Knuckle's debut. And it's... actually pretty enjoyable at the end of the day. In terms of properly adapting material from Sonic 3, it's DEFINITELY messy and all over the place, what with all of the lore mishaps, the fact that we only vaguely adapted the first 2 zones before giving up completely, and the fact that Knuckles siding with Sonic didn't even technically happen until Sonic and Knuckles... but honestly, in terms of simply introducing Knuckles as a character, and going through the whole "tricked by entirely reasonable circumstances outside of his control" motions, it gets the job done. It's not like the original game was some secret hidden masterpiece of storytelling or anything, so yeah, OK job all around.

Surprisingly, it's actually going to be a while before we see him again, with his next appearance taking place in a special one-off issue just after the big milestone 25, so we'll have to say goodbye to our boy for now. But the next time we see him, that's when the Penders shenanigans will TRULY begin, and things will get much more interesting, for better and for worse.

Alright, we've still got one more story to get through after all that, but compared to the frontrunner here, this one is far less impactful or long-reaching, so this will probably go by much quicker. Next up:

"Space in Yo' Face!"

Alright, so we're back with our good friend Angelo DeCesare writing, and Art Mawhinney on pencils once again. Normally, I would complain about the fact that Art wasn't used for the first story, especially with how monumentally important this issue in particular ends up being, but Manak did a better job than usual, so I'll look past it this time. More importantly, Sonic is being nice to Antoine for a change and GUYS BUNNIE IS ACTUALLY IN A STORY DOING THINGS! I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL! MR. YUJI NAKA IS ALRIGHT!

(If you understood that reference without outside help, you win my undying respect and admiration.)

Anyway, just as Sonic is finishing Antoine's statue, Sally and Rotor interrupt his concentration, leading to the head coming off and Sonic INSTANTLY taking the opportunity to insult Antoine just as they were starting to act like real friends. 1 step forward, 2 steps back, I guess.

They explain that Robotnik has built a brand-new spaceship called "Robo Storm" with the ability to roboticize any living being within a hundred-meter radius... and also set every single TV in the area to only informercials. Maybe it's just my frustration with Hulu and Pluto TV talking here, but I personally find that second part to be a much nastier form of evil, and I fully endorse them putting a stop to this treachery. 

After a brief moment of inspecting the thing, with Bunnie making a comment about how much Robotnik loves putting his face on everything (put a pin in that for later), Sonic successfully distracts all the nearby SWAT-Bots just long enough for the Freedom Fighters to begin sabotaging the place. Unfortunately for them, Robotnik and Snively immediately catch wind of this, so they are forced to launch into outer space, with the doctor giving chase...

OK, so a few things here:

1. The fact that Robotnik can't stand destroying something with his face on it, whereas future backstabber Snively has no such problem, is comedy GOLD.

2. Shout-out to Angelo for once again making Robotnik into a credible and competent threat, actually having a contingency plan lined up for the Freedom Fighters stealing his prized weapon like this by draining (most) of the ship's fuel.

3. I know this is another Early-Installment Weirdness thing, but the fact that Mobius has 100 moons orbiting around it in this story despite the future SA2 storyline and the whole "post-apocalyptic Earth" reveal really bothers me. I understand it's the nature of the beast with comics to switch things up like this, but I'm someone who appreciates consistency and this kind of thing just gets under my skin. 

Anyway, the Freedom Fighters manage to use the very last of Robo Storm's fuel to land on a moon called... Muckury (ugh), which is exactly what it sounds like, a moon covered in muck. Lovely. Robotnik of course continues his pursuit, and once again proves just how much cooler he is when Angelo is the one writing by having his ship TRANSFORM INTO A GIANT ROBOT!

I mean, sure, the fact that it doesn't have arms is a LITTLE goofy, but still, this might genuinely be the most effective villainy we've seen from the doctor yet. He's actually got them completely on the ropes for a change! I don't want it to sound like I'm rooting for him here, but it's just way more fun when the main villain is actually a CHALLENGE every once in a while, you know?

However, just as it looks like Robotnik is about to win, Sonic recalls what Bunnie said in Part One of the story (yes, he literally references Part One, this is the Gag Era after all) and uses the muck around him to create a giant monument of Robotnik. Being the egomaniac that he is, the doctor can't help but gaze upon such glorious perfection, and the statue immediately collapses on top of him. 

Now, you might think this would be the part where I start complaining, because wow we were doing so well, you're an idiot Doc, face palm, etc. But I'll be honest... I actually kinda like this? Like, yeah, it's kinda dumb, but pride has ALWAYS been the doctor's main vice in just about every corner of the franchise, so I can totally get behind a goofier interpretation of him falling for something like this. It certainly helps that he was actually being pretty smart in this story up until now, so it comes across as an actual fatal flaw rather than just a lazy deus ex machina.

Then the Freedom Fighters escape, Snively desperately tries to dig Robotnik out with a spoon, Robo Storm is disposed of, and that's a wrap on this issue... which, call me crazy, but... I actually think this was my favorite issue so far?

I know, color me surprised, but like... that was actually a pretty fun time. It's not AMAZING or anything, but I think we're starting to reach the sweet spot where the comic has built a pretty solid foundation, and Penders hasn't gone completely off the rails just yet. The early Gag Era really bugs me in a lot of ways, but the transitional phase we're about to undergo between it and the more serialized narrative down the road is an incredibly fascinating period in the book's history. Looking at the issues ahead, I think things will be mostly uphill for a while, give or take a few slips along the way.

Join me next time for our next major Tails story, in which our favorite kid sidekick gets his first "taste" of knowledge and wisdom... and gives me a few headaches in the process. Oh, and also Sally and Bunnie go shopping, I guess.

                         Why is this one of the most beautiful video game themes to EVER EXIST?