#Mobius is not some untouchable little angel

[mischiefprincess]

I have so many thoughts about Mobius, I absolutely HATE the way he treats Loki in various moments of s1, the way he tries to manipulate him and use him for the tva's mission, and he has the audacity to feel betrayed by Loki when he runs after sylvie and leaves him behind in s1e2???

Sir you KIDNAPPED LOKI AND ERASED HIS ENTIRE REALITY, MENTALLY TORTURED HIM WITH FOOTAGE FROM HIS TRAGIC FUTURE, COERCED HIM INTO WORKING FOR YOU UNDER THE THREAT OF BEING ERASED FROM REALITY IF HE DIDN'T COMPLY AND YOU REALLY THINK YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE MAD AT HIM FOR TRYING TO ESCAPE???

What he does after is even worse, I could NEVER accept him putting Loki into a torture loop to be kicked in the balls and to hear Sif telling him that he deserves to be alone and he always will be, the worse part imo is that a lot of lokius fans seem to think this is cute and a show of Mobius's feelings towards Loki, what the hell???

First off he doesn't have the right to be mad at Loki, second, torturing someone like that is absolutely fucking VILE and I don't care that people think it's cute or funny

BUT

I blame those disgusting actions more on the directing of s1 who was very keen in humiliating Loki at any given moment than in the character of Mobius itself, I ADORE Mobius in s2 bc he is sweet, caring and understanding of Loki, he truly is a good friend and I love their dynamic in it, I don't know what Kate Herron had against Loki but she truly tried her best to diminish and humiliate him whenever she could, every character is annoyed by Loki in s1 and he's treated like a fucking idiot, thankfully that was changed in s2 and he was finally treated with respect and dignity

Btw I should say that I appreciate lokius very much and I think they're cute together but pls stop with the crap, Mobius's "jealousy" isn't cute or funny, he literally abuses Loki just bc he can and Loki never gets a proper apology for that, Mobius apologizes to sylvie but never to Loki (KH when I find you...), again I blame this on the directing and writing of s1 and I don't think s2 Mobius would've done all that to Loki bc he's a different character in it

[mobius-prime]

34. Special - Sonic & Knuckles

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Is everyone ready for the Kenders-est issue yet? Not only did he have a hand in writing every story in this special, but he did the pencils for one of the stories for the first time. He's back to writing about his favorite character in the universe, Knuckles, and for the first time we're gonna be getting some backstory for him.

The issue begins with another intro page, characteristic of Penders-headed stories, which gives us a little more info on this canon's version of the Floating Island (not yet referred to as Angel Island). As mentioned before, the island is held aloft not by the Master Emerald but by a Chaos Emerald. The island is mentioned to be one of the very last places on Mobius to be untouched by the war raging below on the surface. The page also mentions that Knuckles' role as the island's guardian is passed down from generation to generation, a claim that I don't recall any other canons ever making (the games just refer to him as having this role with no knowledge of how he ended up with it), a detail which will be expanded upon later on, thanks to Kenders' neverending obsession with the echidnas.

Panic in the Sky!

Writers: Mike Kanterovich and Ken Penders Pencils: Art Mawhinney and Dave Manak Colors: Barry Grossman

The Floating Island, which apparently has always floated somewhere on the other side of the ocean, has started flying wildly off course, terrifying local Mobians and alerting the Freedom Fighters. No one has apparently ever heard of this thing before, but it's headed for Knothole, and considering all other massive things that head for Knothole tend to be deadly, that's not a good sign.

Of course, Sonic and Tails recognize this thing from their excursion onto it not that long ago, and fill everyone in, though why they didn't tell everyone all about their adventure and entanglement with Knuckles before now is beyond me (well, I know logically why - they needed an excuse to recap for the readers). Sonic and Tails decide to fly in to investigate, and thus we have our first showcase of Antoine being an accomplished pilot, which essentially makes half the entire cast pilots at this point. Also, the Floating Island has machine guns now!

Antoine flies them above the horizon line and out of danger, and they airdrop in only to immediately be attacked by several different bots, which the story is very unclear on whether they are from Robotnik or like, automated defense systems for the island or something. Sonic ends up going tumbling off a cliff, only for Knuckles to make his appearance and immediately try to murder him by stepping on his hand. What the hell, Knuckles?

Luckily, Tails is there to distract him, and after some brief fighting, Sonic is able to stop Knuckles from swinging his fists long enough to point out that the island has flown wildly off course, and that Knuckles is basically being a giant reactionary idiot. Seriously, Knuckles, how the hell did you somehow not notice your entire island being retrofitted into a giant fortress despite being its guardian? Talk about not doing your job.

Knuckles leads Sonic and Tails to the Chaos Chamber, where the Chaos Emerald sits. Interestingly, unlike the games where the Master Emerald need merely sit on the island to magically provide the lift to make it float, in the comics the Chaos Emerald actually provides literal power to a system that allows the island to defy gravity. However, an energy siphon has been installed to draw power towards Robotnik's guns and engines instead, so he can use the island as a method of obliterating Knothole. Again, despite being the island's guardian, Knuckles somehow noticed none of this. Robotnik's face appears and explains his plan to them over a screen, and then he makes an absolutely incredible facial expression on a backdrop of the ashes of civilization.

He doesn't even look like he's evilly laughing, he looks like he's taking an extremely painful dump or something. What the hell happened here, pencillers?

Anyway, Knuckles, ashamed by his failure, takes the emerald and shatters it, removing both Robotnik's power source and the source of the power keeping the island afloat. Robotnik chooses to abort rather than fall with it, thinking that he may still win the day after all.

I have to halt everything for a moment to discuss his claim right here, that the island is eight miles high. Now perhaps this is just a reference to the song Eight Miles High (I wasn't aware of it before now, but it popped up a lot while I was Googling information for this), but let's take him at his word and assume that the Floating Island really does hover at an altitude of eight miles (that's about thirteen kilometers for my non-American readers). That's approximately 42,000 feet in the air, which is the absolute maximum limit for modern commercial aircraft before the engines are no longer able to maintain lift. At that altitude, our planet's atmosphere is far too thin to breathe, and most people will suffer from hypoxia within seconds, and probably suffocate within a few minutes at most (for reference, Mt. Everest's peak is 29,000 feet above sea level, and even trained and prepared mountain climbers have to bring bottled oxygen and are at great risk of hypoxia and death at that kind of altitude). Now if we assume that Mobians have similar oxygen requirements to humans, and that Mobius' atmospheric conditions are similar to Earth's (two assumptions that are reasonable to make as later issues will reveal), absolutely no life should even exist on the Floating Island at all. Sonic and Tails would have suffocated within seconds of ever setting foot on it, and Knuckles wouldn't even be alive to watch them die, let alone attack them.

But whatever, it's a comic. We are dealing with a world where portals to alternate universes open and close on the regular, after all. Knuckles, once he's sure that Robotnik is gone, pulls out… another Chaos Emerald! Turns out he simply made a switch with a fake to fool Robotnik and then destroyed the fake, and thus replaces the real, unharmed emerald to halt the island's descent. Another quick bit of math - if we assume that the island's terminal velocity takes a little longer to reach than a human's (I have no idea how to calculate how fast something of that much mass would be able to fall, so I'm working on a lot of assumptions here) then we can say it would probably have taken nearly three and a half minutes to crash to earth had it been allowed to fall, yet the next panel shows it halting at what seems like a mere few hundred feet above the village - again, probably just for the dramatic effect, but I find it amusing that Knuckles might have waited almost three minutes playing chicken with Robotnik until he bailed, before replacing the real emerald.

With the day saved, Knuckles rejects Sonic's offer to join the Freedom Fighters, because he needs to pretend to be a lone wolf for a little while longer. Sonic and Tails return to tell the others what happened, and wonder what Knuckles will do in the future…

Fire Drill

Writer/Pencils: Ken Penders Colors: Freddy Mendez

…luckily, we don't need to wait long to find out, because every story in this issue is about Knuckles! This is the first story penciled by Penders himself, which is noteworthy, especially as he becomes a more frequent artist in later issues. Also to note is that Barry Grossman no longer has a monopoly on the coloring - we finally have someone new for the first time since the third freaking issue! Welcome to the party, Freddy!

While there's not a lot of plot to this story, it does contain some interesting tidbits. Knuckles is chilling on his island as normal, when a loud explosion startles him. He traces the explosion from the beach and follows footprints into the Sandopolis Zone ruins, believing the troublemaker to be Sonic and ready to throw hands once more. He faces several traps within the ruins, such as falling rocks, a tripwire-activated axe, and a sand trap, but things don't really get interesting until these few panels:

He mentions family for the first time - a father - which not even the games hint at. The way he speaks, we can assume his father hasn't been around for some time. However, this seems to follow what the intro page said about this duty being passed on between generations - clearly, his father was a guardian before him, but for whatever reason, he and the rest of the echidnas have disappeared…

Anyway, after facing a few more traps and trials, Knuckles emerges from the ruins to find that the footprints seem to lead off the edge of the island, and assumes that Sonic has had his fun and vacated the island. However, we the readers can see that that's not the case - a mysterious silhouette is the real troublemaker, and apparently, they were the one testing Knuckles… but why?

Lord of the Floating Island

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Harvey Mercadoocasio Colors: Freddy Mendez

This is really just a plot meant to establish what exactly Knuckles tends to do on an average day on his island. Knuckles is flying around - because he can just do that in the comics, I know he can usually glide in other media but he just straight up flies here - when the wind buffets him around and he spots a young kangaroo hopping around in fear. Unlike in other canons, the Floating Island is actually quite populated - Knuckles isn't alone there but acts as guardian of not only the Chaos Emerald, but all the island's Mobian inhabitants. He swoops down to pick the kangaroo up to protect it, and while they wait out the storm they spot what's causing it - a solar eclipse, because that's how eclipses work.

Interestingly, Knuckles refers to "the moon" rather than "one of the moons." I can't remember at this point whether Mobius having one hundred moons was retconned in later issues, but either this issue acts as the retcon, or else Knuckles is merely referring to only one moon that regularly causes the eclipse or something. In addition, we get to see the first appearance of the dingoes, which become regulars in later issues but for now are treated like some kind of mindless stampeding mob, despite them clearly being Mobians as well with shoes and gloves.

Anyway, in the end, the eclipse ends, the winds die down, and the kangaroo's mother finds him again, thanking Knuckles for his role as guardian. It really kind of acts like he's a one-man police force for the entire island, which I suppose isn't entirely inaccurate for this canon.