Archie Sonic Issue #14

 

What's this? Doth my eyes deceive me? Is this... a cover that's actually RELEVANT to the issue at hand? AND it's well drawn? So, it IS possible after all! WHY WAS KNUCKLES NOT ON THE LAST-

No, no. We're not reopening that wound while it's still fresh, let's just be happy we've only got one more of those "irrelevant gag" covers left to complain about before they're FINALLY dead and buried. And we're officially in countdown range of Spaz's introduction, so we've just got to hold out for a little longer...

Anyway yeah, our first story for this issue is indeed going to be another crack at a Tails-centric story, albeit without the framing of a solo adventure this time around. Which, honestly, after how his LAST "solo" adventure went in Issue 4 thanks to Gallagher, I appreciate our returning friend Angelo just being upfront here today and not trying to gaslight me with blatant false advertising. But does that mean this story will be good, and finally give my boy some much needed justice? Eh... well, you'll see. 

No earth-shattering behind-the-scenes revelations in the preamble this time around, so let's just jump right into:

"Tails' Taste of Power!"

Alright, good news, we've got Art Mawhinney on pencils again, he's always nice to have around... and whoa, what is this, some kind of Plant Kingdom?

I will only apologize for that joke if you promise to play this game, it is insanely underrated and genuinely more fun to me than every Classic Sonic game that currently exists.

No, it's just a greenhouse Rotor apparently set up in Knothole and left in Sonic's care... which turns out to have been an error in judgment on his part, because the second Tails shows up here, Sonic immediately seizes his opportunity to shove this duty onto his "little buddy" and ditch the place. Honestly, man, you should have known better, giving Sonic a task where he has to be slow and meticulous is just asking for trouble. Gotta go fast and all that.

OK all joking aside, this is actually a pretty decent opening scene. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I'm always a sucker for some good brotherly bonding between these two, and though I still think this era maybe emphasizes the "kid" aspect of Tails a little too much at times, seeing both his eagerness and insecurities over becoming a hero one day is just so wholesome. Alright, Angelo, not bad so far, let's see where this-

Uh, yeah, so... Tails eats a random piece of fruit that just so happened to be hanging from one of the trees in here, and when Sonic and Rotor come back, Tails has somehow managed to make every single plant grow to maximum size with a bunch of gibberish that I'm not even going to bother trying to make sense of (science was never my strong suit). Rotor explains to Sonic that Tails must have eaten the only fruit ever grown on the "Tree of Wisdom", which is said to make one incredibly intelligent, and thus Tails is now a super genius.

I can't be the only one who read "Tree of Wisdom" and immediately thought of this, right? Anyone?

Hoo boy... so many thoughts, where to begin?

Let's just look past the ridiculous contrivances surrounding this tree's existence to make this story happen for a minute and instead focus on our boy Tails here. Those of you who only know Tails from his more modern appearances may be incredibly puzzled at the idea that Tails is not ALREADY a genius, given how often he's depicted in the franchise inventing new tech that rivals even some of Eggman's best. However, in the early 90s, that particular aspect of Tails's character wasn't quite set in stone just yet. Sure, he flew the Tornado around for Sonic, but that was Sonic's plane to begin with, and being a good pilot doesn't necessarily translate to engineering prowess. It wouldn't be until Sonic Adventure, released in 1999, when Tails would have his first workshop and become the gadgeteer genius we're all familiar with nowadays.

Couldn't find an image online I really liked, so I took this screenshot myself. 

Given this game's camera, I'm shocked I managed to get Tails and his logo lined up this perfectly.

As I've already alluded to, the main focus of his characterization during THIS era was him being Sonic's "kid sidekick", and without his later credentials established just yet, that allowed for this little slip here, a phenomenon known as "Characterization Marches On", which is basically Early-Installment Weirdness but for character portrayals/personalities. Archie Sonic does eventually come around to genius Tails around the same time that the rest of the franchise does, but we're going to be dealing with some form of "kid sidekick" Tails for quite a while before that happens, to varying degrees of success in terms of being likeable at least in my opinion. 

So yeah, Tails isn't an established genius yet, and therefore this story is able to make him one as a gimmick. It may look really weird in hindsight, but it isn't TOO egregious on its own given what they had to work with back then... so let's focus on what IS problematic here, and circle back to-

WHY IS THERE A TREE OF WISDOM IN KNOTHOLE, AND WHY DID ROTOR TELL NO ONE ABOUT THIS UNTIL NOW!? Even if he's only managed to grow a single fruit on there so far, wouldn't you think that having the ability to increase someone's knowledge exponentially might be insanely useful considering, you know, the literal WAR going on with a tyrannical dictator trying to enslave the planet!?

Now granted, I've also read the Book of Genesis, so I know that eating fruit from trees of knowledge doesn't exactly tend to end well, but you could have at least MENTIONED this to somebody, if for no other reason than to avoid Tails just plucking it off the branch like any other fruit. Somebody like, you know, Sonic, the guy you asked to take care of your plants for you here in the first place!?

And once again, my love/hate relationship for the Gag Era is on full, ridiculous display for your reading pleasure. There is just SOMETHING about these goofy little plots that affects my brain in a way I can't entirely explain. It's like, when I stop and think about the absurdity of this stuff, I feel embarrassed at myself for being so invested in it... and yet at the same time, poking holes in this book's logic is just too much fun for me to pass up. It's weird, man.

MOVING ON, Antoine comes running in and says that Sally and Bunnie have been ambushed by a giant "shredbot" from Robotnik, which is exactly what it sounds like, and so Sonic rushes in to help... only for Tails to immediately outshine him, and also teach young readers some fun vocabulary along the way:

If you remember this series, your childhood was amazing.

This will NOT be the last time an editor has to do something like this, by the way. It's perfectly fine here given this story's goofy premise, but I can recall at least a couple of instances in the Knuckles series where Penders's obsession with making his dialogue needlessly complicated leads to the editor having to play translator. And at that point, I'm just like, "or, you know, since you're the EDITOR, you can maybe tell the man to cut it out!?" But that's a discussion for another day, let's get back on track before I catch myself on another wild tangent...

...And speaking of tangents, good grief. Once again, not even going to bother trying to sort through this gibberish, I'm sure someone more well-versed in this stuff can translate and tell me if it's scientifically sound or just pure nonsense. I will say that the visual gag of Sonic being literally crowded out by the word bubble is mildly amusing, but any positive vibes I could have gotten from this scene are completely erased by Tails's sudden, smug declaration right at the end there. 2 problems:

1. I've neglected to touch on this until now, but these earliest issues seem to be under the false impression that Sonic is the "leader" of the Freedom Fighters just because he's the main hero, but NO, that's Sally. She's the princess of the kingdom that's been overthrown, and she's trying to lead the Freedom Fighters to take that kingdom back in her father's absence. I get that there were probably some communication errors at the beginning, but SatAM is airing by now, so this should be clear at this point.

2. Hate to jump back on my Tails soapbox yet again, but COME ON, Angelo! You were doing so well before! Your earlier stories had just the right balance of "insecure, but trying his best", and now with this story we're jumping all the way to Lost World "let's waste an entire cutscene smugly bragging about my achievements for no reason" Tails! I guess I owe Gallagher an apology, turns out he isn't the only one who did that in this era after all. I think his and Angelo's stories just blended together in my head for whatever reason, and I must have subconsciously associated everything "bad" with Gallagher, considering I also falsely blamed him for that whole Christmas Carol fiasco. Sorry, Mike.

Yeah, that's- that's fair. 

After a couple more obnoxious pages of know-it-all Tails showing off, things eventually come to a head when he decides he's going to charge straight into Robotnik's lair and take him down singlehandedly. Unfortunately for him, but thankfully for my sanity, the effects of the Tree of Wisdom's fruit fully wear off just as he approaches Robotnik's doorstep.

I probably wouldn't have bothered showing you this page, but I felt an obligation to solely for Robotnik's "insurance salesman" joke at the top there. Not only is it funny just on its own, but it gives me an opportunity to share one of my favorite pieces of comic trivia. Did you know that in official DC canon, Santa Claus is able to successfully navigate through all of Darkseid's defenses every Christmas Eve to leave him a lump of coal? I swear I'm not making this up, look it up for yourself. It's HYSTERICAL.

Anyway, Sonic arrives just in time to rescue Tails by claiming that the medal he fashioned for himself is secretly a bomb ready to blow Robotropolis to kingdom come and threatens to drop it if Robotnik doesn't let the kid go. And speaking of DC, now I'm just picturing that excellent scene from Joker's Favor with Charlie Collins pulling the exact same stunt:

"This is how it ends, Ivo. No big schemes. No grand fight to the finish with the Blue Blur. Tomorrow, ALL the papers will say is that the great Robotnik was found BLOWN TO BITS in an alley, next to a miserable little nobody."

As you can imagine, Robotnik isn't thrilled at this prospect, and agrees to release Tails without a fight. And thankfully, we do at least get Tails acknowledging the fact that he was being a jerk before, so this isn't AS bad as Lost World, which straight up ENDORSED his smug attitude. That said, I can't help but feel like the message here is a bit messy given the fact that Tails was actually doing incredibly well until the fruit's effects wore off. That kind of implies that if he had stayed in his "smart" form, he might have actually WON against Robotnik, so... 

But whatever, we're finally done with that one. The Tree of Wisdom never comes up again past this point in the comic itself, but before we move on, there is one mild retcon regarding this event that I have to give Ian Flynn some SERIOUS props for. In the Archie Sonic Encyclopedia, which pretty much serves as a giant summary of all the preboot Archie lore, there are a lot of little tidbits Ian added in to explain away certain plot holes or discrepancies that he felt were in need of addressing, and the aforementioned problem with Tails's early characterization was one of them. So, Ian looked back on this story and basically wrote that while the rapid increase in intelligence was indeed a one-off occurrence, there were some lingering aftereffects that slowly built Tails into the gadgeteer genius he would later become. So, while this story is still incredibly annoying to read, thanks to Ian, it's not COMPLETELY disposable, either. The wonders of the preboot Flynn era, I'm telling you.

Next up, we have something... really bizarre. In lieu of an actual story, Sonic talks to the reader directly and informs them that Kanterovich and Penders are taking a small vacation and left him to fill in the script. He gives the reader a few pages of Dave Manak art and empty speech bubbles to work with and asks for them to submit by a certain deadline in order to win a prize, with the Top 3 winners all being announced in Issue 23. It really was a different world of Sonic comics back then, huh?

I've thought about doing this myself (heh) for the sake of having a little bit of extra fun here, but I'm not sure that I have the creativity to pull it off. Maybe if I get enough feedback encouraging me to try it out and I can find a good place to edit it all together, I'll have something out for you around the next recap/awards ceremony. For now, though, let's move forward to our last story, which I'm sure will be perfectly-

Oh no. Oh nonononononononononono.

IT'S A PENDERS STORY WITH THE FEMALE CAST!

*sigh*...

So, remember back when I said that the Sonic's Christmas Carol story was the only story from this era that I regularly skipped over back in the day? Yeah, I forgot all about THIS cringefest when I said that, as well as a couple other random stories down the road that were just the usual Gag Era weirdness. So, my bad, sorry for the confusion there.

But yeah, this story. I... REALLY don't want to talk about it, given the current state of online discourse about just about everything social or political right now, but... I said, "every issue gets a review", and I meant it. Let's... let's just try to get through this without killing each other. I'd rather not be cancelled this early into the blog if I can avoid it. 

So... so Robotnik is playing with dolls of Sally and Bunnie, which spout phrases like "math is hard" and "my place is in the kitchen"... when Snively and Crabmeat come in, asking the incredibly valid question of why he is playing with toys. Robotnik quickly puts them away and explains that he's cooking up a scheme that involves "dividing and conquering" the Freedom Fighters, specifically singling out the "weakling", "token" heroes. To that end, he sets up a fake shopping mall to lure Sally and Bunnie out and subdue them with ease. I... trust you understand the implications here. 

Alright, let's just rip the band-aid off. Penders has gone on record on numerous occasions when talking about his Archie work to call himself a "feminist", which stories like this one are meant to reflect. On the surface, looking at this one in particular, I can see why he would THINK that he's doing something incredibly bold and positive, but there's 2 BIG problems with that assessment of his writing:

1. Every time he does a story like this (yes, he does this on multiple occasions, and this is one of his LEAST cringeworthy attempts), it's done in an incredibly preachy, on-the-nose manner that honestly comes across as just as sexist as the people it's intending to mock.

2. Whenever he ISN'T doing a story like this, his treatment of the female cast, PARTICULARLY Sally, is... uncomfortable, to say the least. Not only did he try to have Sally killed off at one point, but when that didn't work, he then went out of his way for the REST OF HIS CAREER to have her undermined by her father (and a certain skunk we'll be seeing here before too terribly long) at every possible turn. With that in mind, whatever words he has on the matter are unfortunately proven disturbingly insincere by his actions. 

Believe me, I would LOVE to simply dismiss this story as "a product of its time" and just be glad to see Sally getting to actually do something for a change, but I sadly can't. Not only because I know what Penders does later, but... at the risk of getting absolutely slaughtered, I would argue this kind of "feminist" writing has actually gotten WORSE in some circles since this issue came out.

Like, take Disney for example. At the time of this issue's release, they were right in the middle of the Renaissance, which had a lot of incredibly strong female characters who are still widely regarded to this day. Just a couple years before this issue's release, Aladdin dropped in theaters, and featured Jasmine, who delivered a powerful message about how women should be allowed to choose who they wish to marry without society forcing any expectations on them. It wasn't exactly SUBTLE, because it was still a family movie at the end of the day (I refuse the term "kids movie", this is WAY too well-written and mature to be hit with that label), but the message was well delivered and didn't feel the need to beat you over the head.

Fast forward a couple of decades to the live-action remake of Aladdin, and apparently THAT wasn't enough, no no no. Because that was a silly little kid's cartoon, and our company has come SO FAR from those embarrassing days. So right in the middle of the dramatic climax, when Jafar has just taken the Genie's lamp and become sultan, that would be a GREAT TIME to drop a completely unnecessary, pretentious musical number from Jasmine about how she "won't be silenced!", which is sung entirely inside of her own mind, brings the pacing of this already slow and monotonous movie to a SCREECHING halt, and doesn't even affect the plot moving forward. Because this is the mature, nuanced Disney!

Look, I recognize that I'm a man saying all of this, so I understand that I'm not the end-all be-all authority on this subject. But I vividly remember when my mother and sister managed to trap me into giving this movie a try, and PHYSICALLY SQUIRMING in my seat when it got to this part. It was genuinely exhausting, and I'm amazed I was able to endure it even once. It's REALLY bad.

Apologies for the tangent, but like I said when I started this blog, this is a place where I'm hoping to share not just my obsession with this comic, but also some of my own worldview and personal experiences along the way. If this got a little too serious for your liking, or what I said here upset anyone, I fully understand. But this is a problem that's been bothering me for a LONG time, and I just felt like getting it off my chest here.

*exhales*

OK, let's get back into it and hopefully wrap this up without any more-

No. There's no way. There's no shot he actually used the term "politically correct" in an all-ages comic. He didn't. I refuse. I-I-I-

Alright that does it, bring up the UPWC, let's see what the damages are.

OK... +1 point for the pretentious tone of an otherwise well-meaning message that becomes incredibly hypocritical in hindsight, +1 point for the creepy, uncanny dolls, and +1 final bonus point for "politically correct". I think that's a reasonable assessment. 

UNHINGED PENDERS WRITING COUNTER: 4

And I think that just about wraps it up... and oh BOY this issue was a mess. I forgot just how bad it was, to the point where it's probably the first real contender to Issue 6's crown in terms of both frustration and cringe. I still think 6 wins out, mostly because we at least had Art Mawhinney to enjoy here, but this was a SERIOUS downgrade from last issue, which seemed like we were finally starting to get somewhere.

Oh right, uh, teaser for next time... uh, frog, I guess. That's all you're getting. This one was rough.