#but the Scourge issue with Flynn is real

[phantom-fleetways]

Honestly, I wish I was insane enough to work on a Rewrite of Imposter Syndrome. But like nothing actually changes in my rewrite, just more exploration of Surge, Kit, and their relationships with Starline and one another.

Would be a massive net positive on Surge and Starline frankly. I need to know WHO Surge is. Because as much as I love her two main writers rn, there is a lot of "She wouldn't say that" coming from both sides of the house.

[toaarcan]

Okay, so I got linked a post questioning why people like to undo Fiona Fox's heel turn and make her into a protagonist again, stating that, from their perspective, her being evil and awful was what made her interesting, and insinuated that it's rather sexist to deny her agency in the turn she makes early in Ian Flynn's run.

I'm not gonna directly respond to that post or @ the person who made it, they probably won't even see this, but it made the cogs start turning and I want to go off.

Gonna get the sexism angle out of the way first. I don't buy it. This is a fictional character being written by a dude and her villainous incarnation exists almost entirely as an accessory to her male partner. Even when they're separated, all she's doing is building a team so she can get him back. She's a satellite to Scourge, and her own stated personality and morality are completely removed in order to get her there. She retains zero of the (admittedly thin and underutilised) traits she exhibited before her turn once she turns evil.

Onto the bigger things.

My problem with Fiona's heel turn is that it is an inherently broken story, and it is built on a prior inherently broken story. Ian Flynn's version of Fiona is built on Ken Penders' version of her from the Hell Run, whom is herself incompatible with Karl Bollers' version of her from around the same time.

Of all the characters in Archie, Fiona is the one who suffers the most from Bollers' plans being scrapped and the handover between three different writers. She was left in the lurch with nothing to do until Flynn showed up, and it means that a lot of people view her turn to villainy as a vast improvement over the previous white noise, and that's fair. In many ways, it's a microcosm of the Sonic fandom thinking that Ian Flynn is a writing genius, because their only frame of reference is Ken Penders or Pontaff, and he compares much less favourably to writers who are actually good.

Back on topic, none of those three writers were particularly interested in her as a character. They are far more interested in her as a love interest. For Sonic and kinda-sorta-Tails under Bollers and Penders' pens, and for Scourge under Flynn's, and her own traits are largely ignored in favour of making her a Sally Clone.

Don't believe me? Bollers outright stated in his plans that he brought her in to replace Sally as Sonic's mature and grounded love interest, whom he wanted to write out. Flynn writes her as straight-up the Sally to Scourge's Sonic, and her own traits barely come up. All the ones she had before her turn are gone. Her medical knowledge? Never referenced again. Her connections with the other members of the group? Non-existent. Her history as a treasure hunter? Irrelevant. Everything she has now is just a reflection of Sally.

Flynn's Fiona isn't driven by her anger at Sonic, she challenges him twice and little comes of it, because she's constantly hanging around one of Sonic's actual rivals, who gets the primary focus. Fiona trades barbs with Sally more often, and with more success, because she is framed as Sally's rival on account of dating the evil version of Sally's love interest.

Flynn's Fiona spends the vast majority of her existence glued to Scourge's arm and acting smug. And that's kinda it.

And it doesn't work out well for the other characters involved either.

Scourge absolutely comes off the worst, just because... well, it's rooted in Issue 150. That Flynn based so much of Scourge's early appearances on Issue 150 baffles me to this day, I'd have thought any sane person would distance themselves from that trashfire as much as possible, but nope, Flynn decided to make that sonofabitch load-bearing.

Because the Scourge/Fiona pairing, and thus Fiona's turn, are rooted in Issue 150, there's an inherently creepy aura to the whole thing. It started because Scourge was pretending to be the real Sonic in order to try and score, and she was just one of his potential victims.

The origins of their relationship were only ever told, and not shown, and I think that's because there's no way to write it in a way that doesn't come across as incredibly skeevy.

And going back to Fiona herself for a hot minute here, why does this work on her? Scourge is everything she accuses the real Sonic of being, and her first impression of him is dishonesty. That is a crimson flag, and a character with her specific trauma should be outright repulsed by this.

The heroes aren't looking too hot either. Getting Fiona to the point where she doesn't trust them anymore kinda requires them to act like dumb assholes for a hot minute.

Fiona's backstory not being revealed to the group until Flynn's run requires Sally to be titanically stupid about who gets to join the team that she leads. She is not only the leader of the most famous and effective Freedom Fighter unit on the planet, she is the de facto leader of the Freedom Fighter network as a whole, and the heir to the throne of the nation Eggman spends most of his time trying to conquer. And Flynn is asking us to believe that they don't do background checks. Eggman could hire/build an assassin and send them to "Join the Freedom Fighters", in order to get close to Sally and kill her, and it would actually have a chance of working.

The idea that Fiona could get on the team without Sally knowing who she is and where she came from is, frankly, intensely stupid. Especially when three of the four people who know her backstory already are already in the city and on the same team. Even if Fiona herself didn't spill, Sally should've been able to get at least some of that information from Sonic, Mighty, or Ray.

I honestly and firmly believe that Issue 130-159 were written under the assumption that the FF knew Fiona's deal already, and Flynn made Sally much stupider in order to break the heroes' trust in her.

Also, it's just never made any sense that "I was a small-time thief and I didn't tell you because I was afraid of not being trusted" is so horrible a secret when they have no issues at all trusting Rouge, who did all the same things (but was actually successful), did actually work with Eggman (which Fiona never did), and will eventually be willing to let Blaze's universe die rather than give up a Sol Emerald (Yes, that was also bad writing, but one shit story at a time please), and Shadow, who tried to destroy the world. Why is this a bridge too far for Sally? Oh, because Flynn needs Fiona to be on the rocks with the FF so she can turn evil.

And then there's Sonic himself. Sonic's already looking fairly dodgy before that point. He doesn't end Penders' run smelling of roses. But Flynn manages to make it worse.

We're told in Issue 172 that Fiona tried to find a spark with the real Sonic, but he was boring to her. And then in Issue 179, we find out why: He was never into her to begin with. On his end, their entire relationship, which lasted 17 issues IRL, was actually a harebrained scheme to try and force Tails to move on from his crush on her.

This is, in full honesty, the stupidest plan ever conceived by anyone in any Sonic story, ever. Plans concocted by Scratch and Grounder in AoStH are smarter than this idea. All of them. This is eight consecutive Natural 1s on an Intelligence check. He's making Scott Pilgrim look like a sensitive and mature person.

Hey, Sonic, have a look at your friend Amy and ask yourself whether "My crush is in a relationship with someone else" is actually an effective deterrent to crushing on that person.

Also, the person you are putting in this sham relationship has a history of not trusting you, and has unresolved trauma from the last time you (inadvertently) fucked her over. Maybe consider not using her affections for a harebrained scheme to help your friend, who neither asked for nor appreciated your 'help.'

Literally all Sonic manages to achieve from this plan is making two people angry at him instead of just one.

And that's a giant stumbling block for me, because I look at this story and I don't say "Sonic and Sally fucked up in how they treated Fiona and thus she turned on them," I say "But they wouldn't act like that."

The root cause of Fiona losing her faith in the FF is a "He would not fucking say that" for me, and if I can't retcon it, I'm gonna try and ignore it. It may have happened, but for the purposes of writing further, it does not exist.

The hand of the writer is blatantly fucking obvious in this particular story. Sonic is being an ass and Sally is being an idiot and Fiona's trauma applies only to her anger at Sonic and not to her reaction to Second, Even Shittier Sonic, and Scourge has appreciable qualities besides "Is a Sonic." None of these moving parts work, and said Hand of the Writer is looming so large that I have to fight every urge in me to not justify that Hand by actually making it a "Hand of This Villain with Something to Gain from the Outcome", who is somehow causing all of this OOC behaviour.

If I write a scene where Fiona goes off at Sonic about how he hurt her, then Sonic's response, his first response, is going to be to apologise to her, for all of it. Because yeah, it's really fucking weird that he hasn't already, so that's what he's gonna do.

And then what? If Fiona accepts it, she's not exactly a villain anymore. If she doesn't, then she's become fully one-dimensional. She got what she wanted and she's not accepting it because... reasons.

Furthermore, I have a hard time viewing Fiona's end-of-canon normal as an improvement on her situation from before. Yeah, Scourge accepts her shittier side. Great. He's also an egomaniacal nutbar with genocidal intentions bubbling under the surface, who has cheated on every partner he's ever had, and definitely verbally and probably physically abuses her. The best thing for her is to get the fuck out of there and find someone who won't decide to blow up the planet she's standing on just because he can. And yeah, she could go and live her best life as a villain, but... what is she going to do, what's she going to achieve, and how is that actually going to work? Flynn didn't give her any goals outside of being with Scourge, I don't have a lot to work with here!

If she decides she wants to get even with Sonic, she's going to win that immediately, as I said above. If she wants to beat him physically for it, that's only going to happen if he lets her, because he is much, much too fast for her to even land a hit.

The other thing is, to take an even more external perspective for a minute, I am never going to be in the position of writing for an ongoing comic that is designed to last forever. I will only ever be writing a story that is designed to end. Every villain in anything I write is going to eventually lose permanently, or at least, they'll be planned to do so. And I don't like leaving loose ends. So every last one of those villains is going to end up redeemed, imprisoned, or dead.

I'm a firm agreer with the "Banality of Evil" as a concept. Ain't nobody going to actually be able to live their best life by being a shit. Evil is unfulfilling, and villains do not prosper, because you can't build something great if all you do is destroy things.

And that's why I'm not going to write something where Fiona stays evil and still has a good time of things. It's just not happening. I can have her stay on the path Flynn put her on, which will only ever end badly, break away from that but stay antagonistic and fall because of it, or heal. And of those three, I find the latter the most interesting to explore with her. I already got a dozen villains who will fail and/or die because of the inherent self-destructiveness of their actions, I don't need another.

With characters like this, I'm more interested in healing than I am in stasis.

That's also not to say that Fiona can't be interesting as a hero. Someone with actual, legitimate grievances with the main protagonist, who has every reason to hate them, but finds a way not to? Fascinating stuff. I will loudly and proudly say that pre-evil Fiona is one of the most underutilised characters in Archie, in a way that post-evil Fiona just isn't. I want to know more about the character Bollers was writing after his original plan got scrapped, and before he got shoved out the door by Penders' bullshit. I can't say the same of Flynn's version, she's basic.

And heck, exploring a redemption arc for her can be fun too. Just because she's returned to the light, doesn't mean she's going to automatically get better. Especially if part of it involves seeing Scourge for what he really is, perhaps painfully so. There can still be a bitterness, an anger in her.

I didn't get particular far with it before the burnout hit, and I haven't done anything with my Sonic fic for like five years now, despite often saying that I want to go back to it, but my take on Fiona in that story was mending bridges with her old friends, finding common ground with Bunnie and Amy as former targets of Scourge, discovering a new connection with Sally through both of them escaping from abusive situations, albeit with deep scars in the process (because I had Sally finally acknowledge that her father was abusive), and most importantly, reconnecting with Nic, another character that Archie did dirty. She also has a building new friendship with Emerl, and is heavily involved in the efforts to resolve the mystery of the Gizoid's origin. I built that idea on an extrapolation from her backstory- my version of Fiona is kind of an amateur archaeology buff, she can read ancient languages, and she's familiar with the fall of the Fourth Great Civilisation, so she knows more about Emerl than most others.

And that's not to say that she's wholly good now. There's still a darkness in her, her amount of trauma has only increased and her first instinct is to lash out at the causes of it. Her newfound allies might be opposing that course of action, but that's only causing her to get sneaky about it. Sonic won't train her to fight someone with his abilities? That's fine, she can ask Emerl. And her less-heroic ideals aren't just lip-service either. The Mecha Sally saga changed things, and Sally's own recent heaped serving of trauma has pushed her in a less Lawful Good direction. Fiona's less-pure ideas have a seat at the table now, and I do plan to eventually address some of the bad writing that her villain stint was founded upon.

Of course, there's still a lot that I'd change about the parts I've already published, but that's old writing for you.

TL;DR: Fiona's heel turn and motivations are rooted in a giant case of "They would not fucking say/do that" on the part of Sonic and Sally, and are shaky at best when it comes to Fiona herself and Scourge. I cannot appreciate it as a result, and even Flynn's version is more of an accessory for Scourge than a character, so I don't feel remotely obliged to honour it. I'm also much more interested in healing and I do not tend to have villains prosper in general, because I view evil as inherently self-destructive, and I also write with an ending in mind and don't like leaving loose ends, so "Riding off into the sunset to be evil another day" is not on the table.

For a less serious answer, stapling a new personality onto Fiona is something everybody that ever touched on her in canon did, who am I to break the trend?

[stachehand]

Poor Whisper. She's not a bad character. She's not a badly written character. She's not a bad idea for a character, even now. The girl's problem is having repetitive, discomforting and egregiously limiting stories and interactions written around her. That's the real flavour of the month, which Flynn and Stanley have refused to let pass, for reasons the world may never, ever know.

Surge, plus Kit, were promising characters for their introductory issues, then the stupid, gross cyborg reveal came along, their backgrounds got bloated for no reason, they devolved into bland, world-destroying monsters without eldritch designs, and all interest in their futures, along with any toleration in seeing them anymore, dropped like a rock. I miss Scourge.

I do think it says a lot how Whisper and Surge are such blatant flavor of the month characters who only keep showing up because they got surprisingly popular. That has to be the case because if the crew actually had any ideas or interest in them, they would not be the wastes of space we have now.

I honestly think they had the potential to become solid mainstays in the comics. They had distinct personalities that could bounce with multiple characters and interesting gimmicks (especially Tangle, who really could fit in a Sonic game).

It's not their fault that the writers conveniently flanderized them into The ADHD Idiot and The Angsty One :(

They're not even special in this regard. Flynn and Stanley are clearly running on fumes, if not the whole comic.

[gainaxvel3o]

Finished all of Archie Sonic. I have some feelings, so I’ll split my thoughts into three eras:

The original era, between #1-159: There were a few decent stories here, but so much of it was such a mess. You had goofy nonsensical Gallagher stories, Penders’ ill advised attempts at serious drama, with people like Bollers and others often scrambling and butting heads with weird ideas that often didn’t gel together. Quite a lot of it was boring, getting caught up in convoluted plots and insane melodrama that made reading it exhausting.

The Ian Flynn era, #160-247: The comic only started to get consistently great here. A few duds like House of Cards aside, Ian did a lot of work to fix the issues with the comics before that point; he jettisoned much of the love triangle nonsense, made Sally Acorn more proactive, reinvented villains like Scourge and Mogul to be more threatening, a greater balance of action and character stuff, plus tying a lot of threads and ideas to make a more cohesive setting. By the end of this run there was a real sense of momentum that was ultimately cut short by the lawsuit. Leading into...

The reboot era, #252-290: It reminds me a lot of the IDW comics, primarily in that the tone was far lighter and softer, basing itself more on the games than the previous Archie stories beforehand. There was plenty of promise shown in these issues, with several characters and ideas from multiple Sonic adaptations repurposed in cool new ways (especially with Breezie and Honey in the Champions Arc). The major failing of this era was that it started with a big world ending crisis so soon after it started, using Sonic Unleashed as an excuse to travel around the world. Ian tried to squeeze a lot of worldbuilding in almost a single year, instead of slowing down and letting the setting lay out more naturally. Still a shame to see it go ‘cause I was interested in the places it could have gone.

My final thoughts: Archie Sonic was a deeply flawed series. For a majority of it’s lifespan it was this weird mess of a comic that often sucked, getting life injected back in twice before circumstances beyond the creators control pulled a plug on the whole thing. Having seen the series in it’s totality, I’m a little less precious about Archie Sonic as I used to be. I’ll miss some of the ideas and concepts behind this continuity, but I’m not as sad over it’s death so much as pity the fact that neither version (pre and post reboot) didn’t get a proper resolution.

[glapplebloom]

Yeah, turns out he’s not Evil Sonic, he’s Reverse Sonic.

So why am I doing this? A certain person is being annoying about what he owns so I figured compare his supposedly original idea to others under the same umbrella. So we begin with Reverse Sonic that first appeared in Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog #11. Why am I calling him Reverse Sonic, you’ll see...

The comic begins with Robotnik making a huge mess of toxic waste. They’re calling for Sonic, who is across the planet. So Sonic figures he needs a shortcut to travel to the other side of Mobius. So what does he do?

Travel the Interdimensional Cosmic Interstate to get there. Later, you’re going to find out how stupid this is but for the immediate case of stupidity, Sonic gets lost. Wanting directions, he goes into the first dimension he can find. To his surprise, Dr. Robotnik is there...

But to his surprise, Dr. Robotnik is helping animals. Not wanting to fight little animals, Sonic escapes, still confused about what’s happening. That’s when he meets Reverse Sonic. And how does Ken Penders (alongside Mike Kanterovich) introduce such an important concept that he wants to copyright it for himself?

They randomly crash into each other. This is how he decided to introduce Reverse Sonic. So after a little tussle that Prime Sonic wins, Reverse Sonic explains to him, literally bringing up a white board, that he crossed the line where everyone good is bad and everyone bad is good. 

And when Reverse Sonic finished his explanation, he tells Sonic that he’s in the REVERSE UNIVERSE! That’s right, this isn’t Evil Sonic in the Evil Universe. This is Reverse Sonic from the Reverse Universe. And because he’s still a jerk, Reverse Sonic wants a race that Prime Sonic is ahead by a few steps. And this leads to why it was a bad idea to take the Cosmic Interstate.

They’re moving so fast, they’re zipping around the planet. Meaning Sonic could have just ran to there and reached it. Making up for his bonehead move, Sonic lures his Reverse Counterpart to Robotnik, who captured him. And thanks to Reverse Robotnik, he got a device that fixes the problem faster than the Machine can produce Toxic Waste. So that’s six pages of Reverse Sonic in a 24 paged comic.

The rest of the comic is about Coconuts wanting to last longer than 37 seconds against Sonic and Sonic having a nightmare about everyone being food. So what happened to Reverse Sonic after this comic?

Issue 19 he henches for a not as evil but still bad Robotnik (as the Prime Robotnik defeated him) and gets beaten easily. In Issue 24, him and the rest of the Reverse Freedom Fighters pretend to be the real ones, where they do better but ends up getting beaten by Tails. In Issue 44 he teams up with Reverse Knuckles, who doesn’t help when he sees the problem is not with Prime Knuckles and gets easily beaten. Issue 112 saw him getting beaten by Antoine. Issue 150-151 pretend to be Sonic, and beaten by a returning Sonic with Knuckles father. And that’s the last time Ken Penders writes for Reverse Sonic. For in 160, Ian Flynn took Reverse Sonic, gave him a taste of the Master Emerald, and turned him into a Real Scourge for Sonic. 

As for what Penders did for Reverse Sonic, its pretty lame. He’s really a no-note character whose biggest accomplishment is pretending to be Sonic and he does that twice. He has about as much personality as a newbie’s first evil character. The fact a judge saw this and let him have it is a joke. But sadly, Issue 151 does set up for Issue 160 and 161. And next time, We’ll be seeing #161 and the first proper appearance of Scourge the Hedgehog.

[mobius-prime]

260. Sonic the Hedgehog #191

Metal and Mettle (Part 1)

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Josh Ray

A few days after Scourge and the Suppression Squad have taken control of Freedom HQ, Miles alerts Scourge to an interesting and unexpected visitor - namely, Metal Sonic, through whom Eggman is speaking and watching.

Yeah, don't underestimate a fellow evildoer, Scourge. Meanwhile in New Mobotropolis, Sonic and Knuckles stand before the Council of Acorn to try to get permission to take the base back. Unfortunately for them, the council votes four to two to leave it for the time being, as they don't see Scourge as that big of a threat, and want to focus on taking New Megaopolis from Eggman before going after smaller holdings. Sonic, of course, does not take this well, and tries to talk to Knuckles about it once they exit the building.

Oh, Knuckles. You have to stop angsting about this, my dude. Sonic leaves the city on his own, musing as he races back to Freedom HQ about how despite their recent successes in battle, and many gains against Eggman and his forces, he can't help a strange feeling that overall they're losing ground. He hopes that kicking Scourge out of the base will cheer him up, but is brought up short by the sight of Scourge and Metal Sonic battling it out on the grass outside. Miles stands nearby watching, and not-so-subtly tests Scourge's leadership by asking if he wants help against Metal, as surely the others helping him would only be an insult since he conquered his planet on his own. Sonic, uninterested in any of the politics, merely barrels in to help, offering Scourge a truce to take Metal out, but Scourge angrily refuses, and both he and Metal turn on Sonic to attack. Meanwhile, Julie-Su finds Knuckles brooding on a bench in the park, and when she presses to know what's bothering him he snaps, yelling that he can't trust himself or anyone else, as no matter what he does, someone always ends up hurt, and he can't bear to face the few remaining members of his family. Julie-Su reaches for him, looking at first like she's going to comfort him, but then…

I mean, all things considered, Julie-Su, you make a fantastic point. Your family's loss has been largely glossed over until now - I don't think she was even given a single panel before now to mourn the deaths of her foster parents, despite how delighted she was to rediscover them before - and as you point out, it's not like Knuckles is suffering alone. Back at Freedom HQ, the fight continues, with Eggman telling Metal to hang in there as he's putting the "finishing touches" on some backup. Sonic and Scourge briefly wind up fighting each other without Metal's interference, during which Sonic criticizes Scourge for taking his advice to better himself to a brutal, negative extreme. Scourge merely mocks Sonic's restraint, pointing out how much more powerful he is as a king than as a hero.

Ooh, dramatic parallels to their prior talk! I love it! Metal interrupts before Sonic can respond, and as the fight continues once more we move this time to Angel Island, where Knuckles is having a talk with Archimedes while Charmy sits nearby.

So something that needs to be pointed out is that inexplicably, this is Archimedes' last appearance in the comic, ever. Unlike all the other characters who have disappeared from the comic, there's no reason given - no genocide, no dimensional portal to swallow him up, no deaths or sudden decisions to leave and find himself on another continent, nothing. He just… never shows up again. It's disappointing, as y'all know how much I like Archimedes, but again I really do think this stems from Ian's weird, irritating habit of erasing a lot of Kenders' contributions to this world. I know that he's trying to make the comic's world more like the games, and that in the games, Knuckles is the last echidna and isn't embroiled in all these politics, but dammit, there's nothing wrong with comic Knuckles being so different from game Knuckles! Personality-wise, he's still similar, still recognizable, it's just his circumstances that are different. Then again, maybe I shouldn't be blaming Ian for all of this - for all I know, Sega themselves ordered him to get rid of all of this stuff. I dunno, man, I'm just some random fan with a blog. Speaking of controversial decisions by Ian, though, it's nice to see him doing his best to treat Charmy's brain damage with respect here. He certainly acts more childlike than he once did, but he's doing his best, and isn't a punchline, still actively participating in missions and helping Knuckles sort his own problems out.

Anyway, Knuckles, encouraged by his mentor's words, uses his warp ring to head back to the city, where he and Julie-Su give a curt apology to each other with an agreement to sort things out more fully later, when he's had more time to work through his emotional distress. They consider heading to Freedom HQ to help Sonic, but Knuckles believes that Sonic can most likely handle the situation on his own. Of course, we know better - Sonic might be able to take on Scourge or Metal individually, but both at once is a real challenge. He kicks Metal aside, only to be startled by the sight of another robot coming to join the fray - a robot that looks exactly like Scourge. Wow, Eggman, you really didn't waste any time on that one, huh? How many Metal Sonics do you think he has lying around in his base just ready for a paint job and a new assignment?

Though there's another story in this issue, we won't be covering it. Why? Well, it's the first real installment of "In Another Time, In Another Place"! I've mentioned it before, but it's basically what Ian decided to do when it was clear he couldn't keep putting in half-adaptions of random games anymore, but still needed to do tie-ins for newly-released games. With the pattern we've been taking with these tie-ins lately, you'd think this one would be for Sonic '06, but nope! For whatever reason, Sonic '06 goes completely unacknowledged within the comic verse (at least for now), with the sole exception of Shadow joining up with GUN. However, as I've mentioned before, Ian did state somewhere along the way that Sonic '06 did in fact happen somewhere during the course of the comic's plotline - it's just that due to the very nature of the game's story, the events of the plot are entirely reset and erased from the timeline at the end, meaning an adaption doesn't even have to take place, as technically, even though those events did happen, they also… didn't.

But all that aside, the tie-in in today's issue is actually for the little-remembered DS title, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which was an RPG developed by Bioware of all companies (and yes, they did include one of their trademark Bioware romance sidequests, though it's probably of little interest to anyone who doesn't ship Sonamy). While again, we're not covering it due to it being non-canon, it's an important thing to note regardless. For one, these In Another Time, In Another Place installments became pretty commonplace throughout the comic as new games were released, but perhaps more importantly, this was the game that apparently really got under Kenders' skin. The problem is that after all he'd done to develop the world of the echidnas and all the political and military factions thereof, this game's plot ended up heavily centering around a band of echidnas in dark armor emerging from a parallel dimension where time moves more slowly, with an intent to take the Master Emerald and use it to cement their place of power in the real world once more, though one female echidna realizes the error of her people's ways and abandons her army to side with Knuckles against her megalomaniacal and powerful male leader. Gee, sound familiar? While I don't believe that Bioware or Sega actually copied Kenders' ideas outright - the way I've described it makes it sound similar, but there's a ton of differences in the plot and presentation that definitely indicate they're two different ideas by different people - Kenders certainly seems to think it's a rip-off, and this was from what I understand at the core of all his problems with Sega that led to his eventual lawsuit that forced the reboot of the comic. It sucks, too, because even aside from losing all the years of history in the preboot, the plot of Sonic Chronicles was actually quite fascinating and it ended on a cliffhanger, which will never, ever be resolved because Sega doesn't even want to touch that can of worms after everything that happened. I think the game has actually been quietly stricken from canon, too, because the cliffhanger literally involved Eggman having taken over the world while everyone was away, and there's just no way to solve something like that offscreen. Just a bad time all around, folks. As they say in the fandom - thanks, Ken Penders. Still, though, we have quite a ways to go before we hit the preboot's end, so let's forget about the negative stuff and keep trucking on.

[gravityfissure]

[meta] What, if any, games, movies, books, tv shows, etc. have you drawn influence from for your character?

Okay so round 2, much in the same vein for Arthur there are... A lot. Possibly even more things that influence and inspire where Otto’s muse and views comes from. That said in writing this there are also a LOT of similarities between the characters I can pick out certain attributes and to be honest there’s a lot of crossover with the traits and characterisations highlighted.

Namely: playful and proactive, self-serving yet loyal to those that meet his criteria as to who is deserving of it. A grifter by nature that will approach almost any situation if he feels he’ll get something out of it while equally hoping that one day someone might actually bother to ask him (and maybe give him a true reason) to stay.

Dorian - Dragon Age: Inquisition

Uh, the heir of a famous magical dynasty? A flair of magical talent that made him the envy of his peers? Studied at one of the best colleges for the magical arts before being kicked out and privately tutored before eventually vanishing and being found by Magister Gereon Alexius who offered to take him as his apprentice eventually becoming a fully-ranked enchanter. A pariah for opposing every fault his homeland is renowned for?

It’s been years since I’ve played DA:I and Dorian always was one of my favourite characters but tbh I completely forgot his background and it’s only in revisiting it now I actually realise the similarities in the framework of their characters/development/story line. Not to mention the fact they both enjoy playful flirtation and witty banter and oppose the things they don’t fit into their view of the world. They will probably do the right thing, but that doesn’t mean they might not take their sweet ass time in actually getting into a situation.

Isabela - Dragon Age II and Inquisition 

AND AGAIN. Isabela’s a great character - a pirate scourge of coastlines and nations around the world who values fun, freedom and getting ahead in life. They both value solving situations in clever and devious ways and getting ahead even if it means being somewhat selfish when they’re dealing with other people, example: Otto conning Deirdre out of $28k when she tried to cover for Regan or those plans he has to try and record a banshee scream? They’re both always down for trying to squeeze that little bit extra out of a person. If it one ups them in life and people are gullible enough to fall for it well... They really did it to themselves didn’t they?

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t depths to that hardened persona they both present. There are actual feelings and things hidden behind the wall and appearance they both present to the world. And underneath it all they’re both afraid of being left behind, but figure it’s best to push people away before they decide to leave of their own volition. At least that way they can say they have some control over the situation.. 

Sera - Dragon Age: Inquisition

Apparently this is a DA characters list but you know what sue me. x) So NEXT on the list is Sera, an elven archer who is incredibly impulsive and reactionary. She takes pure delight in humbling the established authority she views as arrogant and selfish. It’s less about what’s right in the grand scheme of things but more about what’s right in that very moment. She doesn’t believe in actions taken for a greater good, instead viewing it as just another excuse to hurt others undeserving of such treatment because it’s easier than making the truly hard choices in life. 

Felix Dawkins - Orphan Black

Look Felix is one of the many fascinating characters on Orphan Black. Don’t get me wrong there are SO many and it’s a great show. But Felix is a character whose very existence proves that you can have a very effeminate, boisterous, loud, witty gay character and not have him be limited to the perpetuation of the sassy gay friend stereotype. Why? Because he has a whole complex personality beyond just that aspect of his life. He’s got to deal with real life issues on top of all the drama clone club brings into his life and he deals and he survives and he cOPES.

Not to mention he’s a positive representation of foster children being happy, positive representation of LGBTQ+ characters and gives positive representation of sex workers. Not to mention on top of all that representation you see how he’s smart as hell, the only person who knows Sarah well enough to keep her on track. The BEST uncle to Kira and one of the most supportive characters on the show. 

Sarah - Orphan Black

Felix’s foster-sister, another character that shows the positive and complex dynamic that foster families tend to have while also demonstrating the fascinating found-family dynamic with clone club. Sarah’s interesting because she’s a natural chameleon, she’s street-smart and tough, a born outsider living on the fringes by her wits while in possession of a dark sense of humour that sees her by.

Sarah and Otto have a rather morally ambiguous compass, they’re both characters who swing between being very self-serving and selfish and acting for the greater good when they decide it’s needed. Not to mention the act as if they don’t care about other people’s issues (see clone club) when actually it transpires they both might just care a little more than they actually let on.

Garcia Flynn - Timeless

Unfortunately Garcia fits the my favourite character type: tall, dark, snarky, sassy antihero motivated fiercely by love and willing to do things of questionable morality against a greater evil, self-aware and doesn’t make excuses for his behaviour, but isn’t wringing his hands over it either.  A character who so dearly loves the people in his life (see revenge for his wife and daughter) so much so he’s still fighting for them 5 years later just to be alive and not even to have anything to do with him again because he knows the things he’s done are enough the he could never go back to being that person for them. The man who loved his mum and went on a trip just to make her happy and save his brother. When he truly cares for someone he does EVERYTHING for them while somehow having none of the toxic jealous possessive business, despite his  well-attested Garbage Drama in other departments, and just generally being a mature adult and an essentially good person who has gone down some really dark places and is finally rediscovering what he’s buried and lost. Look man, I’m a suuuuuuuuuuuuucker for found family, enemies to lovers, and villain becomes weird family member. And he covers all of those, so yes. 

There’s a lot of that I’m planning and drawing on for Otto, this weird currently antagonistic little self-serving shit who is out for his own ends but maybe along the way finds some semblence of a conscious and maybe has a fair few moral dilemmas and self-questioning moments along the way? Who maybe finds friends (and even love?) Who has to deal with FEELINGS and things he’s repressed for years because of the things he’s done just to survive the life he fell into? Uh, yes give me give me give me.

Jesse Custer - Preacher

Okay, so this one’s kind of another given. Jesse’s another character I’m fascinated with because before Genesis’ arrival he was a down upon his luck preacher. A man who was trying so hard to fit into his dad’s ideal and not let the life he had before affect his day to day. Except it all goes to hell in a handbasket because of course it does.

Jesse essentially gains the ability to make anyone do anything he says. And that power? It’s addictive, and we see the struggle he goes through to learn how to control and manipulate it to his own end. To begin with he tries to right wrongs, to tell people to stop doing the bad things they’re doing in their lives and fix them so they’re better people but with each act that power and god-complex grows. It goes to his head until we meet the moronic messiah Humperdoo and Jesse eventually agrees to take his place. The messiah-complex and power corruption is complete, and the repercussions of his choices are devastating especially with how they impact Cassidy or Tulip and the repercussions in Angelville.

Much like Otto’s own magic, the more its used the more enticing it is to carry on using it for more and more things. At first it was small deeds, little acts of good until Otto in kind started to realise that good deeds weren’t enough to make a change. They weren’t enough for other people around him and with each act it grew and grew - and it continues to grow. The question is to what level? And if it ever got out of control, would he ever know how to stop it?

Crowley - Good Omens

An overall non-threatening demon, who tries to be “evil” in his own way to fit into the role his society (other demons) expect of him. Crowley wants to save the world (for his own reasons) and can be rather self-serving in certain moments. There’s plenty of times he tried to convince Aziraphale to run away with him and let everything else forgive the irony but for lack of a better term “go to hell” but he always comes around in the end (typically to a Queen track) to help when it really counts for something.

 Not to mention his flare for the dramatic, very rarely thinking things through, with many of his own plans backfiring on him.  

Sound familiar?

Wrench - Watch Dogs 2

Part-hacker and full-fledged anarchist who wears a freaky mask with LED displays capable of bizarre emoticons. He's vulgar, crude, entertaining and an absolute adrenaline junkie who lives on the edge. He's jokingly called the wrench because he's the wrench you throw into somebody's gears to grind them to a halt.

The final one on the list, because it’s a side I haven’t yet played into so much but I’m curious to given means and opportunity to. Otto does have some inclination towards an anarchistic nature, if a system doesn’t seem to work he isn’t afraid to speak out or more likely act out against it. Whether it’s in the greater good or not isn’t so much relevant rather that he would happily take a torch and burn something to the ground if it meant starting again with something new and better in its place. It’s definitely something I want to explore more down the line.

I also find it interesting the whole concept of “hiding behind a mask” which is something wrench quite literally does. Both have built personas to defend themselves from people breaking through and seeing that what actually exists on the other side is a rather shy and awkward person who tries to “act out” and be “dramatic” in an attempt to get attention from a world in which there’s so much noise how could anyone ever feel like their voice mattered let alone be heard unless they started shouting “HEY, LOOK AT ME” at the top of his lungs?  

[rachelbethhines]

The Antoine and Bunnie Retrospective - 142

“Courage and Honor” - Sonic the Hedgehog #168 

Yeah....... It’s been a while hasn’t it. Lots of things went down these past couple of months both for myself personally and the fandom. I finally got a day off to myself to finish this review but I can’t promise any solid schedule for posting, I’m sorry to say. 

You see these reviews take hours to type up. I have to think about what I’m going to write, write a first draft, read it, re-read it, and then re type it several times, track down, cut, edit, and paste pictures/visuals, and then constantly fix typos and spelling errors.  All while hoping no technical issues will make me lose my work. I need a good three to five hours by myself to focus and to mentally prepare myself to spend that much time on one task. 

And this particular review was quite daunting to me because of it’s importance. So strap yourselves in for a long ride.  

We open up with Antoine cleaning up the mess his evil double made. 

This actually is an important insight into Patch’s mind set. It wasn’t enough for him to gain power. It wasn’t enough to merely ruin Antoine’s relationships. He actually took the time to physically destroy anything that belonged to his double. From sentimental keepsakes to petty useless stuff like furniture. Why? Why dedicate so much effort and time into something so pointless? Even Scourge didn’t bother to trash Sonic’s things.  

Well I have a working theory, all of the evil doubles are jealous of their counterparts. It’s obvious in the case of Scourge, but even then it’s not hard to assume that life in anti-mobius is actually harder then in Sonic’s world. Meanwhile Patch is the only member of the suppression squad to see how his other half lives. Antoine has family, genuine friendships, a woman who loves him unconditionally, respect ect. ect. all things that Patch doesn’t have himself and probably never will. 

Perhaps, even more so then Scourge, Patch is the villain most motivated by petty revenge. He will to anything, I mean literally anything, to make Ant suffer. And will see this more sadistic side of him later in the series. 

Bunnie comes over to help clean up and she asks pretty much the same question as my self. Antoine gives this answer and a rare insight into the trauma he’s gone through. 

As I’ve stated else where, this is an Antoine who is harder, angrier, and more world weary then before. An Antoine with an edge to him. We’ll never know for sure what horrors he faced in Anti-Mobius but the consequences are clear. Gone is the gentle Twan who jumped at shadows. Gone is the pragmatic voice of reason, and mediator, who once told Sonic that fighting isn’t always the answer. This is an Antoine who would cut you in two without hesitation if he believed you to be a threat.   

And this scares Bunnie. She’s one of the few to glimpse this darker side of him. One of the few to notice and acknowledge the differences since he’s came back. For the most part Ant plays it cool and can slip back into his old self with ease. Only when Bunnie or someone else he cares about is in danger does his more aggressive nature show.   And most of his friends never seem to notice or comment on this change, chalking it up to “maturity” or “personal growth”. Only Bunnie seems to show concern, fearing his new found anger could lead him down a darker path. It’s a worry of hers that she’ll come express from time to time.     

But enough doom and gloom! Lets talk about something happy....Like engagement rings for example? 

Welp, that lasted all of 2 seconds. Now back to our regularly scheduled angst fest. Better grab yourself some tissues.  

Sonic’s come to inform Antoine that his dad has taken a turn for the worst and he and Bunnie rush to the hospital. 

Even after all this time, after all of his accomplishments, after all of the battles he’s fought, both psychical and psychological, he still blames himself for his past “short comings”.  

Fortunately his father is here to finally set him straight.  

Armand also gives his blessings and advise to the happy couple because he is best dad. 

There is no denying the perfection that is Buntawn. And the less said abut Scourge the better. 

And then if you’re not sitting a puddle of tears by now, the comic gives it’s final blow. 

I told you would need tissues.

The passing of Armand is perhaps the most effecting death in the whole comic. Unlike most other deaths, Armand doesn’t get a heroic outing but instead has his final moments in bed sounded by those he loves. And unlike Juliana before him, the audience already knows him and his established relationships. There’s  something real and raw in this story and it shows. At the end we get a dedication to Jane Flynn, someone of importance to Ian Flynn no doubt, and you can tell the writer drew upon experience to show some genuine emotion.       

But most importantly this marks the final end for Antoine’s character development, coming to terms with his past. From now on Antoine will be a fairly static character but the weight of his experiences will hold more meaning in his future stories. 

So that’s it for this review and hopefully it won’t be a full month until the next one. 

[toaarcan]

Yeah, you’re not wrong about that, though given that the only real differences between this Fiona and the robot in terms of design are maybe a couple of inches in height, she does not look like she’s in the same bracket as her friends from the prison here. In fact this tracks pretty closely with the way her backstory is relayed in KTE#28: The Auto-Automaton is created when she’s ten, and she spends two years digging herself out, making her twelve in this issue. And looking at the art, that makes sense to me. If you told me this character was 12, I’d believe you. If you told me she was 15, I’d say she looks younger than that, comparing to characters like Sally and Nic, even as drawn in this particular style.

Later issues in the Flynn era will complicate this, the art for her flashbacks when she reveals her past to the FF depicts her more like a teenager during this period, and the art for her flashbacks in the Scourge arc of Sonic Universe even shows her in her third FF design while she’s in the prison, roughly four years before the earliest point she could’ve got it.

Really this only speaks to the wider problem with characters’ ages in the comic. Sonic is directly stated to be 17 around the point of the Home arc, albeit only chronologically due to the time-skip fuckery, and has two or three birthday issues (I forget whether there are more than that) over the course of the comic’s run, and most of the other characters are bumped up to match that, but Tails and Amy both only age one year from their first appearances to the end of the comic. Fiona is one of the more egregious cases, jumping four years from this issue to issue 130.

Added, the idea that Robotnik created Auto-Fiona from stored records doesn’t add up. The story is told as Robotnik taking Fiona with him after Mighty went berserk and destroyed the facility, creating Auto-Fiona (Which is what he was trying to do when Sonic and co. attempted to save her), and then ditching her. It wasn’t a meticulous process, and Robotnik Prime’s AoStH-esque mannerisms certainly don’t fit the idea of him being this thorough.

Even if we put in a time gap between Robotnik abducting her and the creation of the robot, to allow for Auto-Sally’s parts to be used in her creation, it doesn’t quite add up. 

If the Auto-Sally parts are used in Auto-Fiona’s build, then Auto-Fiona has to be built after the events of the Sally miniseries at the earliest, and Fiona has to be young enough to resemble Auto-Fiona at a point where Sally is 15-16.

If we ignore that, then the rough timeline that Fiona herself gives of her life translates to her being about 12 in this story, then around 14 by the time she becomes a regular cast member post-time skip.

This is what happens when you give your series a wonky and poorly-defined calendar, and then leave the audience to judge the ages of the cast entirely in relation to the main protagonist’s birthday issues, while still operating the Comic Book Time trope. Everyone ends up out of sync.

Oh hey, look who finally showed up! It’s one of the more beloved members of Archie Sonic’s rogues gallery, Fiona Fox!

We technically first met Fiona ages and ages ago, way back in Sonic #28, when what turned out to be her robot doppelganger was used by Robotnik to creepily hit on and distract Tails. I’m assuming we’re now dealing with the real Fiona

[toaarcan]

If you read the final few issues of the original Archie Sonic universe, it becomes very apparent that the initial plan to deal with the Pendering was to just kill off all of his characters and try and continue on without it.

Most obviously the Echidnas and Saffron are sent to Turbohell by Thrash (we don’t know exactly where it was that he sent them, but it likely wasn’t pretty), but we also see Elias and several other members of the Secret Freedom Fighters caught in a cave-in that could’ve easily been made fatal, and Shard sustained massive damage from his battle with Metal Sonic, with most of his body destroyed and his life-giving Power Gem cracked.

There’s also Hershey’s ‘death’, which was meant to be fake but then defaulted to being real due to the legal disputes.

Certainly, the Super Genesis Wave probably still would’ve been used to remove certain characters. The SGW was coming regardless of legal matters, because it was the start of Worlds Collide. And there are some characters that Ian just wasn’t able to kill.

Whether they were too deeply wrapped up in the plot, like Geoffrey, not important enough to be depicted at all, or just not conceivably in any danger. There’s also the matter of Sonic and Tails’ parents, whom were not allowed to exist by SEGA mandate, but also weren’t allowed to die (and thus give the two a massive, status-quo-shaking loss), so they just kept awkwardly existing for a year or so before the SGW deleted them, and their fate in this hypothetical situation probably would’ve been the same.

If it hadn’t become apparent that every past writer could do what Penders did and succeed if they wanted to, Archie’s original continuity may have seen all the plot-relevant lost characters explicitly killed off, and the others quietly deleted via retcon wave.

And while it certainly would’ve been bleak as all hell- Sally definitely didn’t need to be deroboticized just to find that her only surviving relative was her senile, abusive father- it could’ve been an interesting shift to the status quo.

Quite a few of the lost characters were Eggman Empire Grandmasters, so Eggman would’ve taken a hefty loss. All of the FF would be down family members except Bunnie and Nicole. Fiona would be the only surviving member of the Destructix- Penders explicitly called her a Gallagher creation, but claimed Scourge, Simian, Frog, Predator and Lightning. Max would probably have miraculously recovered just to make sure Sally stayed Princess Sally rather than becoming queen. He might also have miraculously stopped being a shitty person, given how Nigel was portrayed in the reboot and Flynn’s general unwillingness to have Max get what he earned.

It could be interesting to explore... but also very sad.

Realistically, I think the reboot was the smartest option available to Archie.

[mobius-prime]

257. Sonic the Hedgehog #188

Beating the House

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Matt Herms Colors: Josh Ray

Sonic finds himself coming to in the back of the Destructix's van, trying to remember how he got here. When he remembers his final moments before he was knocked out he realizes that Sally must be stranded alone with Nack right now and tries to break free of his shackles, but they refuse to give, and Sgt. Simian encourages him to simply sit back and enjoy the ride as he's not about to get free. Meanwhile, Sally runs for her life as Nack counts down from ten, determined to get to Freedom HQ before he can fire at her.

Man, it's so weird how much the entrance to the Great Oak Slide has changed over the years of the comic, isn't it? Its appearance, its location, even the part of Knothole it leads into have all been different depending on the comic's era and whatever the current plot needs. Anyway, Sally slides into the base to find Amy awaiting her, and Amy, after learning of the situation, explains that everyone else is back at New Mobotropolis. Without anyone else to back them up, they team up to fight Nack together.

Poor, poor Nack. He just can't win, can he? After Amy knocks him through the remains of the front door and into next Tuesday, she and Sally race to the comms room and contact Nicole, explaining what's going on. They ask her to call the rest of the available Freedom Fighters over to re-arrest Nack, while the two of them go after the Destructix's van to rescue Sonic. The hedgehog in question has by now been transported to the Casino Night club, where he's being guarded in a back room and more irritated than anything at the badniks constantly poking fun at him for getting captured.

Well, that's certainly an interesting comment. Remember, the very first time we saw these guys was all the way back in StH#2, and yet here, he implies that he was only eight years old when that encounter happened. We do know that the stories in the second era and onward took place when Sonic was fourteen and older, and I've gone over my theory before that the stories in the first era were mostly that - stories - and didn't happen exactly as we were told, being much less goofy and much more serious and life-threatening than portrayed. But this adds a new detail on top of all of that - some of those earliest stories definitely happened when Sonic was barely more than a kid. In fact, I'm sure the events that most of those early stories were based on began shortly after he and the others initially formed the Freedom Fighters to begin with, as that indeed happened when they were young children, right after the Original Freedom Fighters were killed. Just another interesting little tidbit that adds more depth to those old slapstick issues that we've almost forgotten about by now.

Anyway, Drago insists he wants his money for bringing back Sonic, and Coconuts tells him he'll have to wait as Mogul is still busy with casino business currently. Sleuth irritably warns Coconuts not to be so blasé about having Sonic as their prisoner, due to Sonic's reputation for breaking out of confinement and his friends' reputations for arriving on the scene far too quickly for comfort. Meanwhile, Sally and Amy enter the establishment, quickly running into Geoffrey, whom they learn is working as an informant here.

Due to their snooping, Geoffrey and Rouge have a good idea of where he's being held, so the four of them break into the back room, though Rouge declines to participate in the fight due to not wanting to ruin her dress. Geoffrey sets Sonic free of his shackles with a few well-placed crossbow shots, and he happily joins them in trashing the place and knocking around his former captors. While the fight is going on, Rouge pulls Drago aside and reveals the real reason why she ducked out of the fight, telling him that she's actually not technically on either side - Mogul has paid her to pass on some information to him, and after that, she's out. As she passes on this mysterious message, Sonic and his friends clean up the rest of the trash, and then head out to the main room, shouting for Mogul to come and face them. Mogul appears, but he seems angry to see Sonic at all, "reminding" him that he'd told him before their business was concluded. He pretends not to know what they're talking about when they claim he arranged for Sonic's kidnapping, and calls on Sleuth to explain why he had Sonic held up in the back room.

Mogul orders the heroes to leave his casino, and they angrily do, knowing they've been had. Drago doesn't know what the hell Sleuth was even "confessing" to in the first place seeing as they were hired by Mogul in the first place, but Sleuth explains that it was part of Mogul's plan all along, that the entire thing was a setup merely to humiliate Sonic. I suppose this is what he was referring to with the whole "I can't beat you but you'll never rest easily again" thing, huh? Not a bad plan, all things considered, especially if the Freedom Fighters winning was factored into the equation from the start. However, as Sonic and the others travel back to New Mobotropolis, Sonic seems mostly unperturbed, merely congratulating the others on being the ones to rescue him for once. Bunnie contacts Sally, and informs her that while Freedom HQ has been secured, Nack was gone by the time they got there, meaning he's once again escaped their custody. Everyone tries to look on the bright side, that at the very least things can't get any worse today…

Now what the heck is going on here? The Freedom Fighters of the reverse zone are hard at work on some kind of project, and Fiona seems to have gotten herself a nice high ranking within them very quickly, which irritates Anti-Sally to no end. Fiona reports back on the progress to Scourge… calling him "Your Majesty" as he sits atop a throne, wearing some kind of crown. Oh, boy, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into now…

[mobius-prime]

264. Sonic the Hedgehog #195

Hedgehog Havoc! (Part 1)

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Matt Herms

Before we get started, I want to point out our new colorist, Matt Herms! He pencilled for a couple previous issues, but his real talents lie in his colors. I pointed out before when Jason Jensen joined the team that his colors were much more dynamic and detailed than those of his predecessors, but Matt's colors are even more rich and deep than Jason's. My favorite effect, personally, is when he blurs the backgrounds in some panels that are centered around dialogue, giving an impression of a camera focusing on the characters. Anyway, onto the story: Jules and Bernie, concerned for Sonic's wellbeing, have gone to Chuck to find out where he's gone. Nicole shows up too and helps explain the situation with the star posts and the trip to Moebius, somewhat glossing over the fact that he's currently been stranded there by the actions of the Suppression Squad. While Nicole reassures the two that Sonic likely has the whole situation under control, in actuality he, Amy, and Scourge are all facing the insane wrath of Rosy, who's mostly focused her murderous intentions onto Scourge for now. Sonic asks Amy to check on Buns, stuck inside her wrecked Omega suit after losing her fight against Rosy from before.

Meanwhile inside the Eggdome, Eggman is working on his latest project, which is… yet another Metal Sonic. But of course. As you might expect, Snively is not impressed.

Pssh, still using email in the future, Snively? C'mon, the Eggnet has instant messaging capabilities, why not chat with "her" that way? Eggman gets Metal Sonic working, and Metal immediately determines that Sonic isn't on this planet before teleporting away in a flash to check other likely zones. Eggman, angry that Metal didn’t even wait for orders, begins once again erratically grumbling to himself, and Snively, clearly fed up, declares he'll return to his workstation, which of course we now know means he's about to go chat with his new online girlfriend. Meanwhile in Mercia, Rob informs Silver of where Sonic resides, and Silver pulls out a warp ring which he uses to take himself and Rob to Freedom HQ, where Sally is currently angrily calling the Suppression Squad out for trapping Sonic and Amy in Moebius. They're startled out of their argument by the arrival of the two other hedgehogs, who, after learning of Sonic's whereabouts, set up the warp ring once more.

But wait, it gets better! As Sonic and Scourge get ready to smash into one another in Moebius, suddenly a flash of light between them resolves itself into the figure of Shadow the Hedgehog, who is surprised to find himself here and not the Special Zone. Sonic explains the situation and then casually invites him to help kick Scourge's ass since he's already here, and Shadow, having nothing better to do, agrees. Then, Metal Sonic pops in to say hello, and finally, Rob and Silver arrive through the warp ring, just as Amy and Rosy run back to the quickly-growing group. What does all this mean, you ask? Well, the title should have given you a hint already - it's a grand battle of the hedgehogs, minus Silver, who has no goddamn idea what's going on!

This has got to be easily one of my favorite pages in the entire comic, I swear to god. Silver timidly tries asking various combatants about Sonic's whereabouts, not actually knowing what Sonic looks like, but they're all too busy beating each other's brains out to answer him. Finally, he gets fed up, and uses his psychokinetic powers to freeze them all in place, demanding they tell him which one of them is Sonic.

Rob immediately steps in to Sonic's defense, demanding Silver explain himself, and while Silver tries to tell Rob he'll thank him later, the fight starts back up anew. Silver explains that his future fell to ruins right around this time period due to the actions of a traitor within the Freedom Fighters, and that he'd figured the traitor was Sonic, since no one else really has the raw power that would let them destroy the world. Rob points out that making a guess like that based on very little evidence is kind of ridiculous, and that Sonic is renowned for being a hero far more than he's known for his power. Scourge then interrupts by punching the both of them into the ground while insulting them, including outright telling Rob his Moebius counterpart was murdered by his own brother some time ago, which is… pretty harsh, man. Sonic, battling Metal alongside Shadow, decides that enough is enough and the battle is going nowhere, so he yells for everyone to stop and proposes a new truce.

Oh, c'mon Scourge, you've hardly done anything to endear yourself to any one of these individuals. Scourge takes off running for the throne room, and manages to get his butt in the throne with Sonic and Shadow in hot pursuit. Sonic tries to force him to surrender as he's outnumbered, but Scourge arrogantly announces that that doesn't mean he's outgunned, as his throne is stocked full of… Anarchy Beryl. Sonic quickly puts together that this is this zone's version of Chaos Emeralds, and sure enough, Scourge takes on a dark purple hue with a black glow, having achieved his Super form and ready to win this fight single-handedly… But wait a second, just what do you mean, "Anarchy Beryl"? Hasn't it been established in previous issues that Moebius' main source of godlike power is also Chaos Emeralds? StH#44 comes to mind right off the bat, as O'Nux's Sunken Island was kept safe by the power of not just one, but six Chaos Emeralds, which seemed to be identical to Mobius' emeralds in pretty much every way from what we'd seen. I guess the most likely explanation is that Scourge, ever-determined to make Moebius into its own unique zone separate from that of Mobius, simply renamed the emeralds to "Anarchy Beryl" himself, but still, not even a cursory explanation, Ian? I suppose he must just be relying on older readers either forgetting or not caring about that little slice of continuity, despite his penchant for bringing back really old characters and concepts for use in new plotlines.

[mobius-prime]

233. Sonic the Hedgehog #165

Look! Look! It's that eye thing again! Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante, stop this madness!

Leak

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

This issue is honestly a fantastic one. There's so many great character interactions that as a writer myself, I live for. We begin by learning that Rouge arrived at Knothole about an hour ago, and in light of her most recent actions in the town, she's been taken into custody, with Knuckles, Julie-Su, and Vector in charge of her interrogation. Vector takes to his role with gusto, clicking on a lightbulb above her head and generally trying to play bad cop, but Rouge seems mostly amused by the proceedings, taking a particular interest in Knuckles and speaking to him directly. She arrived via warp ring, and seeing as that's technology unique to Angel Island (…dunno when that was ever established, but okay), they're very interested to know where she acquired it. When she acts flippant, Vector threatens to just throw her in jail, and when she protests that she's innocent of any wrongdoing Vector reveals that mere minutes after she arrived, the other members of the Chaotix went to Fiona for dirt on her. Fiona was shy and reluctant about sharing any information, obviously embarrassed of her shady past, but with Sonic's encouragement she opened up, explaining just how skilled Rouge is as an operative, as well as how she's not above getting her hands dirty to accomplish her objectives.

Irritated at being called out, Rouge agrees to explain what happened in between her last visit and now. She was uncertain about allying with Finitevus, but stuck with him for the first part of his plan, which involved breaking Eggman's most recent prisoners out of the Egg Grapes. Many of them were already dead, but Finitevus managed to save the Destructix, and took them to the same base where Shadow met Isaac. This is where we learn that Isaac was heavily malfunctioning all along, as the ancient, pre-Xorda Robotnik in cryostasis has apparently been dead for a long time, though Isaac still thinks he's alive and giving him orders. Finitevus planned to use the large store of nuclear missiles in the base for some unknown purpose, and when Rouge found out, her moral side kicked in and she destroyed them, which naturally pissed Finitevus off. She stole a warp ring to escape, and now here she is, looking for protection from Knothole - though she adds that she was likely followed. Sure enough, while Sonic and Fiona are walking out of their own interrogation room, they spot Tails looking incredibly nervous next to a tree. When they approach, Sleuth Dawg steps out from behind the tree, holding a gun to Tails' head.

Of course he's back! Scourge and Sonic immediately take off running, leaving Fiona behind to try to talk down Sleuth, who says he's here for the "traitor." Fiona calls him a hypocrite given his betrayal of the Freedom Fighters in the past, but Sleuth slyly insinuates that it's ironic for Fiona herself to be calling anyone else a traitor. Well that's suspicious… While they fight, Sonic asks Scourge why he's here, and of course first on his list of reasons is revenge. However, apparently that's not all.

Things are getting a little spicy, aren't they? They end up back near the others, and Fiona tells them to stop fighting as she's negotiated a deal - the crooks will give Tails back and leave if Rouge returns the stolen warp ring. Sonic immediately zips away and comes back with it, and satisfied, Sleuth and Scourge leave, with the latter giving Fiona a wink as he disappears through the ring.

You know what, Sonic? I don't think it is. Something is definitely fishy here. With the crisis averted, Rouge is free to go, but Julie-Su has one last word for her. I'm gonna let these last two pages speak for themselves, because this is exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned great character interaction.

Damn, even Kenders wasn't edgy enough for the almost-swear. I love this, though. Granted, I'm not actually much of a fan of the interpretation that Rouge is into Knuckles, but I can see her as the type to want to steal something - or in this case, someone - just to prove she can. Certainly, this version of Rouge is a little more ruthless and less morally-centered compared to her counterpart in the games, particularly with how she's characterized in Heroes and beyond. As for Julie-Su, her explanation of her relationship with Knuckles right here is why I think the Soultouch was never a necessary thing to begin with. It's such a weird thing to include - I mean, most of the time in fiction when there's some kind of deus ex machina plot device that mandates that two characters fall in love with each other, the characters really don't feel like they have any real chemistry to begin with, hence the necessity of such a plot device. It's a forced love story, if you will. But Knuckles and Julie-Su? They already had that chemistry, from the beginning. They're alike in many ways, including their rough upbringings and their hot tempers, and those things they have in common often bring them together, as they understand each other more than others can. There was simply no need for a magical soulmate-bond-thingy to explain their falling for each other - Julie-Su's little speech up there is proof enough of that.

Call of Duty

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jason Jensen

Speaking of Knuckles and Echidna Matters, later that day Rotor calls Knuckles to his lab, baffled at getting a call from Locke despite the call not having any signal he can recognize. Knuckles is unfazed, knowing that his father is using the mystical energies of the Master Emerald to contact him, and steps up. Locke doesn't waste time, ordering him to come back to the island immediately. Knuckles refuses, continuing to insist as before that the only way to properly protect Angel Island is to defeat Eggman first, but Locke informs him that things haven't been going very smoothly on the island since Echidnaopolis was retaken.

Well, that's interesting. Another new villain, perhaps? Knuckles is surprised that his father hasn't figured out who the new guy is yet, but Locke says he's been too busy looking for the missing members of the Brotherhood. Knuckles asks if he's bothering to look for Charmy's family as hard as he is his own, but Locke evades the question, instead insisting that he needs Knuckles to come back to help him look. Knuckles, quite angry by now, repeats that he won't, and when Locke tries to go all "What did you just say to me, young man?" on him, Knuckles calls back to the very training Locke gave him as a child that taught him to always go for the source of a problem, and again reiterates that he plans to stay in Knothole to help fight Eggman.

SMASH! Knuckles punches the screen, instantly shattering it and ending the connection, and stands there panting furiously, unable to believe that his father would even think of threatening to let his family be hurt. He collects himself after a moment and curtly apologizes for breaking Rotor's equipment and begins to leave, though everyone is mostly just concerned for his wellbeing. Tails tries to follow him, and tells him that he thinks he's doing the right thing, that he's essentially graduated from protecting one island to protecting the whole planet. Knuckles is still upset though, and leaves to go talk to Julie-Su to clear his head, though he quietly promises to himself that he will return someday, when all this is over.

Now, I absolutely love this. Because under Ian's writership, Locke is no longer treated as this wholly sympathetic, infallible being. Locke and Knuckles got along while Knuckles was still content to merely go along with his father's various plans, but now that he's starting to assert himself and go in a different direction than Locke intends, their relationship is starting to show its cracks. As we've seen before, Locke is someone who really doesn't hesitate to go all in on his plans, even if doing so will end up hurting someone. He created his own son to be a superpowered mutant, just because of a premonition he had. I mentioned before how Locke would have been so much more interesting as the well-intentioned extremist type of antagonist, rather than as the bland "father knows best" character he was under Penders, and I think Ian has finally started to steer the character in that direction. Unfortunately by now it's a little too late to make him truly interesting and complex, but Ian still does an admirable job with what he's been handed to work with.

[mobius-prime]

235. Sonic the Hedgehog #167

Mobius 25 Years Later (Part Two): Tempus Aeternus

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley Colors: Jason Jensen

Lien-Da is incredibly happy with herself on this fine evening, sipping a glass of wine and bragging about how she and King Shadow orchestrated the arrests of Tails, Lara-Su and Sonic, and how as a result she's had a hand in "bringing down the line of Edmund." Rutan watches silently from the nearby stairs, looking conflicted and upset, while Dimitri (still confined to being a head in a bubble) coldly remarks at how ashamed he is to be related to her due to her behavior, even more ashamed than when he in the past worked with Dr. Finitevus. Wait, what?! That hasn't happened yet! A hint of what is to come in the main comic, perhaps…? After all, though Lien-Da implied that Dimitri was dead during the Return to Angel Island arc, we know he can't actually be if he appears in this future. In the dungeons beneath the castle, Sonic, Tails, and Lara-Su have been chained up next to a despondent Rotor. He is frustrated that the three of them don't seem to be taking their position seriously, as the first two mostly joke around about this "bringing back memories" while Lara-Su complains that Rutan will make fun of her for all this. At that moment, Knuckles walks in, looking very stern.

What, did you think Knuckles was gonna be the villain of this piece? Nah, he has way too heroic of a spirit to end up like that! (I mean, so does Shadow, but we already saw how that's being ignored in this arc, so.) Apparently, he was even counting on Lara-Su to overhear his conversation with Tails, precisely so that she would rebel and allow him to set up a coup like this without Shadow realizing that his head enforcer wasn't loyal. Tails says that he'll hack the castle's security systems to allow the others to get a clear path to the throne room, and Knuckles says he'll keep Queen Sally safe while Sonic battles Shadow. Lara-Su wants to come along, but Knuckles convinces her that now the best way for her to help is to get the injured Rotor to a hospital, which she reluctantly agrees to. Sonic and Knuckles race along the hallways to the throne room, where Sally quickly follows Knuckles to safety. Apparently, she too seems to know about the other timeline, surprised that her husband does as well. With Sally safe, Sonic tries to attack Shadow, but his punch has barely any force behind it.

Ouch. I mean, yeah, saw it coming, but ouch. Things are looking bad, until suddenly Lara-Su bursts in, ready to continue the fight on her own terms. Shadow becomes irritated at her smack-talk, and reminds her that he wields Chaos powers, only for her fist to glow as she smugly invites him to "join the club." Shadow tries to fire off some Chaos Spears in her direction, but she merely dodges them while reciting Tikal's prayer (you know, the "Chaos is power enriched by the heart" one) and performs a Chaos Control, freezing Shadow in place.

Bit of an ignoble ending to Shadow's story, don't you think? I said it last issue, but again, I'm really not okay with how this AU just wants to turn Shadow into this brutal villain. I mean, especially considering his whole character arc in the games - the only times he ever acts truly violent and uncaring of others' wellbeing is when he's being manipulated by an actual villain or otherwise brainwashed, and once he discovers who he truly is he's never anything less than a goddamn hero. I just think that turning Shadow the Hedgehog into Shadow the Evil Dictator is doing a huge disservice to him as a character, and not even bothering to try to work in an ending where he realizes the error of his ways is at this point just spitting in his face.

Meh, whatever. Knuckles comes running back in, concerned, but Lara-Su just excitedly informs him of how she defeated Shadow. She then says a seemingly nonsensical line about how she "already took care of him" that only makes sense if you assume that Knuckles asked her something along the lines of "But I thought you were taking Rotor to the hospital," so I can only guess that they forgot to include that dialogue bubble. Sally and Sonic walk into the next room, and she tells Sonic how Knuckles explained all the timeline shenaningans to her, and how she always felt that something wasn't right all these years. She then awkwardly explains that she never married Shadow for love, but only to try to bring stability to her kingdom. Frankly, I find that to be a pile of crap. Sally Acorn, the lifelong ringleader of the rebellion against not one but two different Robotniks, passively married an evil autocrat who likes to use torture on his enemies? Not fricking likely. Sally would have been at the head of the resistance against Shadow from the very start. It seems that even under a different writer, Mobius 25 Years Later is doomed to have every member of its cast acting completely out of character.

Wow, it's that easy to get back together after twenty-five years apart? *sigh* Look, I think the reason this two-part arc fails is because it's ultimately working off an already-flawed base. I understand that some closure needed to be brought to the tangled mess that Kenders set up at the beginning of this era, but hell, I think it could have been done a lot better. Some people do like the whole King Shadow and dystopian future thing, but personally, I think it's just as inexplicable and out of character as everything in Kenders' version of events. I'm just glad to be done with it, as next issue we actually get to go back to the normal, interesting stuff.

Hedgehog Day

Writer: R. Chacon Pencils: Dave Manak Colors: Josh Ray

Well, we do have this little story before that happens. Apparently everyone in Knothole has decided to put together a second birthday celebration for Sonic several days after the previous one, the one Scourge crashed. Sonic wakes up at 10am on the morning of the make-up party, and begins his morning routine as his alarm clock informs him that Mina's latest hit "Soldier Boy" has just finished playing (note that this issue came out one year before "Soulja Boy" was released, so it's not a reference), that it's going to be in the mid-70s (Fahrenheit) today, and that many important people will be at the celebration such as the king and queen and Mina herself. However, the announcer on the radio then says that everyone is wondering where Sonic is as the party has already started, which wakes Sonic up out of his sleepy daze. He realizes that he accidentally set his alarm for the time the party was to start rather than when he actually wanted to wake up, and rushes to get ready, racing out the door and nearly barreling into a bunch of reporters looking for him.

Ouch! Well, at least there's always tomorrow, right? The next morning, Sonic wakes up at 10am on the morning of the make-up party, and begins his morning routine as his alarm clock informs him that Mina's latest hit "Soldier Boy" has just finished playing, that it's going to be in the mid-70s today, and that many important people will be at the celebration such as the king and queen and Mina herself. However, the announcer on the radio then says that everyone is wondering where Sonic is as the party has already started, which wakes Sonic up out of his sleepy daze. He realizes that he accidentally set his alarm for the time the party was to start rather than when he actually wanted to wake up, and rushes to get ready. However, he hesitates before he races out the front door, struck by a strange suspicion that there's reporters outside waiting for him.

Hmm, something's a bit fishy here… The next next morning, Sonic wakes up and shuts off his alarm, a bit disappointed that he didn't wake up in time to listen to "Soldier Boy." He asks the alarm clock if it's going to be in the 70s for his party today, and the announcer dutifully reports that it will be, repeating the same spiel from the past two mornings.

I mean, maybe if you walked instead of ran, you might make it there in one piece, bro. But then again, this is Sonic we're talking about. He buries himself back under the covers to avoid the prying eyes of reporters looking in through his windows, but that doesn't stop them. They start looking for another entrance, ultimately climbing on top of his roof, which buckles and collapses under their weight. This time, Sonic isn't the only one stuck in the hospital, as all the reporters are injured from their fall as well. Finally, the next next next morning, Sonic has had enough and wakes up three hours before his celebration, making his way there and sitting in one of the folding chairs as everyone sets up around him, confident that now, there's no way he can miss the party!

Though the title of the story is a parody on the movie Groundhog Day, I do find it kind of funny that despite this clearly seeming like another fantastical and silly plot device, stuff like this actually does happen to people. They're called false awakenings, and consist of dreaming that you wake up and perform your morning routine, only to then "wake up" into another similar dream, and this repeats until you finally do regain consciousness for real. They can also be paired with stress dreams, meaning that you might wake up in a panic that you're late for school or work, only to wake up into the same situation again and again in a bizarre loop. So, in a way, this story is actually one of the most realistic in the entire comic! I'm sure that wasn't the intention, but the point still stands!

[mobius-prime]

229. Sonic the Hedgehog #161

Eugh, I'm really not a fan of that weird… eye thing going on up there. For whatever reason Spaz did that on a couple subsequent cover pages as well, and it just looks… bizarre. Like, they have actual eyelids for a reason, man! Use 'em!

Birthday Bash! (Part Two): Birthday Boys

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

So right off the bat, we're hit with some classic Ian Flynn humor (which we'll be seeing a lot more of) as well as his acknowledgement that, yes, Croctobot is pretty ridiculous.

Tails ends up having to drag a hysterical Sonic out of harm's way as Croctobot swipes at them, while Fiona watches the battle, impressed at Sonic's fighting skills once he's gotten his act together. Bark and Bean casually leave the scene while everyone is occupied, and Bean happily invites Fiona along to "have some fun like the old days." She hesitates and insists she can't, as she's a Freedom Fighter now, but Bean seems unconvinced and just tells her to say hi to Nic if she runs into her again. Meanwhile in the Chaos Chamber, Rouge seems pleased with Evil Sonic's new transformation into Scourge, but Locke strangely doesn't seem as into it, charging forward to attack once again. The newly-powered-up Scourge proceeds to savagely beat him into unconsciousness, which alarms Rouge greatly.

So, yeah. Just to establish what kind of person we're dealing with here - someone who will kill an unconscious guy just doing his job for fun. Immediately makes Scourge seem like a much bigger threat than he's been in the past, don't it? Scourge uses the Master Emerald to teleport himself and Rouge to Knothole immediately, as he wants to test out his newfound strength against Sonic himself, and shows up right at the tail end of the Freedom Fighters' fight against Croctobot. He smugly introduces his new self, explaining that he's done being merely an evil twin, and Sonic isn't too happy to hear he stole the Master Emerald's power and beat up Locke for it. However, Croctobot becomes infuriated at being ignored, and grabs both of them as well as Shadow, claiming it still has some fight left in it.

Well, that's what you get for being arrogant, Croctobot. Scourge immediately lands a cheap shot on Sonic as he's celebrating their victory, and they begin to race at top speed around the outskirts of Knothole, knocking into each other along the way like pinballs while everyone watches. Scourge ultimately wins the scuffle, knocking Sonic into the dirt, but Shadow interrupts, wanting to ask Scourge something (presumably, why he's such a jackass).

Grave mistake indeed, Scourge. You really don't want to antagonize Shadow of all people. He and Shadow start to fight as well in a similar manner (remember, Shadow is almost as fast as Sonic), and this time it actually wears Scourge out a bit, leaving him open to being knocked down by a combined blow from both Sonic and Shadow.  The rest of the Freedom fighters, deciding they've stood by and watched long enough, all run in to help, targeting the nearby Rouge as well. Rouge doesn't like being caught up in a fight, nor did she particularly want to come here in the first place, so she immediately orders Scourge to retreat with her. She tells him to teleport them back to Angel Island as they race away with Shadow in hot pursuit, but he reminds her he needs an emerald to do that. However, a magical golden ring portal appears out of nowhere in front of them, and Rouge tells him not to question it, leading them inside the ring, which disappears just before a furious Shadow can get to it. Back outside the old base, everyone apologizes to Sonic for his birthday being ruined, but Sonic is completely unconcerned, telling Rotor that his plans for the base to act as a separate target to draw away from the innocents of Knothole worked like a charm, and that he's hardly upset about getting to fight some baddies on his birthday. As everyone cheers up due to his pep talk, Scourge and Rouge come out of the ring portal into a mysterious location…

Well well, Dr. Finitevus! How interesting to see you again, considering you were supposed to have died during the last battle on Angel Island! I suspect there's more to you than meets the eye…

Sonic Rush (Part Two of Two)

Writer/Pencils: Tania Del Rio Colors: Ben Hunzeker

So remember how Blaze has been having these weird dreams about Sonic helping her protect the Sol Emeralds? Yeah, apparently all that's gone out the window now, because she immediately starts attacking Sonic while he's on the ground. He dodges, and they begin to fight, with Sonic wondering briefly if she's one of Eggman's minions before deciding she's too skilled a fighter for that (burn, Eggman!). He tries to carry the fight into a more open area where he can use his speed, and Blaze follows him, flaring up her flames even more. Seriously, Blaze, why are you even attacking him?! He didn't do anything to you!

Well, serves you right for being so reactionary. Sonic stops as soon as Blaze starts to pass out from being unable to breathe, and offers her a hand, as well as a truce to at least learn each others' names. She introduces herself, and then reveals how she's been looking for him, which obviously surprises him seeing as how she was trying to burn him alive not ten seconds ago. She slyly promises to "haunt your dreams the way you have haunted mine," before immediately teleporting away (…somehow) in a flash of flame. Blaze, are you… are you coming onto him?

And… that's where that situation ends! That's all we get. This is what I was saying about not finishing adaptions - the biggest problem with Sonic Adventure 2 was that they only showed the beginning of the story and didn't bother to tell us how it all played out, something which ended up leaving a bizarre gap in the story due to how different the situations were between the games and the comics universes. This is much of the same, with the added problem that this hardly even counts as an adaption. Blaze actually doesn't even properly meet Sonic until quite a ways into the Sonic Rush game, and certainly wasn't having dreams about him helping her save the Sol Emeralds, so we have no real inkling as to how the rest of this story even goes. Because of that, you might be tempted to assume it's noncanon, but not so! Future stories in the comics assume that both Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure (where Sonic and Tails end up in Blaze's dimension) happened at some point within the larger plot, as events relating to both of them are mentioned and built upon later on. This is one of my biggest criticisms of Ian, as this isn't even the last time he pulls this - yes, I'm aware that this story wasn't written by Ian, but considering he's the head writer it's a bit negligent of him to let this slip by more than once, when he could have made a point of writing actual conclusions to these stories. Honestly, I think his reason for doing it was to bring more characters and plot threads from the games into the comics, since it means more toys to play with after all, but I find the implementation to be lazy, since it doesn't actually bother to give us an ending to any of said plot threads. At the very least, I can appreciate the want to bring the world of the comics a little more in line with that of the games, given how far they had started to stray from what was going on in the games world at the time. Luckily, Ian did eventually get a clue and stop doing this, although I suppose to a degree he had to, given how the plotlines of subsequent games just started getting bigger and more dramatic - it's hard to have a story about the world splitting into seven pieces and Sonic turning into a werehog happen offscreen.

This issue ends with a couple of character files - hey, haven't had those in a while! - on Scourge and Finitevus. The one about Scourge doesn't really tell us anything we didn't know - it simply recaps his change in appearance, turning green from the Master Emerald's energies and gaining two large scars on his chest courtesy of Locke. Interestingly, it does imply that Scourge really is a "twin" of Sonic's instead of being the direct inverse, sharing his arrogance but lacking the "moral restraint" that keeps Sonic honest. It also covers some of his abilities, such as the spin dash and super transformation, but given that he's, well, an alternate version of Sonic most of these abilities are things we already know. As for Finitevus, it gives us a bit of a clue into just how weird this guy is - suffice to say, he's not a normal echidna. For one, the patterning on his chest is noted to be the "birthmark of a Guardian in black," rather than a normal set of fur markings, yet there's no place in the genetic line for a rogue Guardian (that we know of). Furthermore, no one really knows the extent of his abilities, with them being noted only as being "some magical or science based powers." It's clear there's a lot more to him than we yet know, not to mention that he seems to have some serious plans going forward and is recruiting shady characters to the cause…

[toaarcan]

Scourge the Hedgehog: The Bad Fanfic Apotheosis

Y’all are gonna hate me for this one.

This is something of a followup to my previous post, Fiona Fox: Depth vs. Prominence, and inspired directly by the discussion I had with a friend in the comments section of the DA upload of it.

Part 1: Fanfic vs. Canon- Genesis of the Recolour Elements of the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic have long been compared to a bad fanfiction, particularly the parts of the story written by Ken Penders, though other writers like Bollers, Chacon, and Flynn have drawn that label too. I'm one of the people that's done it, and that's largely because I hold fanfic and official material to very different standards. There are certain things you can do in fanfic that you can't do in official material, especially with franchises like Sonic, and especially with more niche parts of said franchise, like a comic series. Of course, there are also certain things you can do in both, but you probably shouldn't. And Scourge is one of them. What exactly the process behind Scourge's creation was is something that's been debated. For a lot of people, he's considered to be a parody of the then-rampant "Sonic Recolour" fad, wherein fans would take screenshots of Sonic X, and other official artwork, and then edit it in Microsoft Paint, or another similar program, to create their own characters and stories. Now, this was long decried by other fans, myself included, as incredibly lacking in creativity and originality. It also had an "Ew, cringe" reaction, due to the often-shoddy editing, text-to-speech voices, and usually some top-tier mid-2000s Nu Metal for the music. These days, it's much easier to look back and say "These were mostly made by kids who were just having fun, and it's completely harmless", and it becomes apparent that a lot of the people that were making fun of them and criticising them were grown men, at which point you kinda realise that this "internet fad" was basically just bullying a bunch of children for not being up to the creative standards of some adults. Everybody was looking for the next Chris-Chan, but Chris-Chan is a near-unique entity, as only one other person alive has ever managed to combine that sheer void of talent with a monumentally repulsive personality, and that person is Ken Penders. But Sonichu is the least interesting thing about Chris, and Chris became the laughingstock that he is because of his inability to avoid posting his entire life on the Internet, which was something of a rarity in those halcyon days before the rise of modern social media. Sonichu was a gateway to the actually interesting content also on his channels, whereas these recolour-creators didn't have anything like that, just endless Windows Movie Maker slideshows. And, like, Chris was in his 20s when he became the Internet's punching bag for the first time, and while he's a horrible person, so were the people that dedicated their time and effort to trolling him- His story is fascinating, but it has no heroes. And into this collective cocktail of grown men shitting on preteens, so Ian Flynn introduced Scourge the Hedgehog. Is Scourge a parody of Sonic recolours? I sincerely hope not. The reason for that is twofold, and I'll discuss how his portrayal generally doesn't seem to be mocking those tropes further down the page, but the second issue with the idea that he is a parody is best explained by Sir Terry.

Parody can never punch down, and as a then-24 year old man writing official canon for a franchise, mocking a bunch of 10 year olds on the Internet for making bad stories would definitely be punching down. And, as I said, nothing about the way Scourge is written is in any way poking fun at the tropes of these fancharacters and stories. It's pretty much all played completely straight. So not only do I hope Ian wasn't trying to mock these fancharacters, but there's also little reason to believe that he actually was.   He's not a parody, he is a send-up. And on the one hand, it's kinda nice to throw a bone to those kids. But on the other hand... is Scourge really the character you want to represent your part of the fandom in official material? A cruel, violent, abusive, vicious monster that spends his time palling around with a girlfriend that the writer reforged to be the most unlikable character in the entire comic? Yeah, can't say that's what I'd want if I were one of those people, but he seems to be popular enough, so maybe I'm in the minority there. But now we get to the meat of the problem. You see, the way Scourge is written is one of those things that you can do in fanfic, but you shouldn't do in canon. Part 2: What is a Mary-Sue? The term "Mary-Sue" gets thrown around a lot these days. It's gradually lost all meaning, and has slowly become a term for "Female character that I don't like," mainly used by whiny, easily-offended Broflake Youtubers, who get all pissy that Star Wars films aren't specifically catering to them, to the point that you only have to make a girl be good at something in a movie and these pissbabies lose their shit. I liked Episode VII and VIII more than I, II, or VI, get fucked. But what, then, is a Mary-Sue? And why is it relevant to Scourge? The answer to that first question is a lot more complicated than it might seem. Not just because there are now several different varieties of the trope, but also because the trope itself evolved as it began to be applied to non-fanworks, and additionally because the name itself is somewhat non-indicative. A male Mary-Sue can exist, though these are normally referred to as "Marty-Stue" or "Gary-Stue", or more cynically "The Protagonist". Check out the average Batman comic these days and you'll see what I mean. Originally, the term applied only to a self-insert character in a fanfic, that was an overly-idealised version of the author, dramatically overpowered, hugely popular, normally dating whichever member of the cast the author wanted to bone, or sometimes multiple partners at the same time, along with a few other traits. It's actually pre-Internet term, originating in a Star Trek fanzine when "Mary-Sue" was created as a parody of other fans' similar characters. Over time, the trope evolved to the point that, while the "author avatar" feature is still a pretty big indicator, it's not really necessary. So while there are probably plenty of people out there who want to be Batman, not every character that is a Mary-Sue is someone for the author to project themselves onto, and not every author avatar is a Mary-Sue. Generally, the important features of a Mary-Sue are now: 1) Receives a great deal of favouritism from the author 2) More powerful than the rest of the cast, often to the point of absurdity 3) Faces zero consequences for their actions. 4) Liked by characters that have no reason to do so 5) In a relationship with a character that has no reason to date them, previous relationships be damned. 6) Most importantly, the story will bend over backwards to give them easy wins, even in situations where they logically should struggle. You're probably starting to get where I'm going with this, and if you're not... Part 3: Creator's Pet Scourge is a Creator's Pet. He gets shown a fair bit of favouritism from Ian Flynn, primarily the guise of how much focus he gets. Scourge is the most prolific villain in Ian's run, aside from Eggman himself. While other, better villains like Mogul and Naugus were being imprisoned repeatedly until one retired and the other became a dog, and a huge chunk of the comic's remaining antagonists were being subsumed into the Eggman Empire, Scourge was only moving up, not only being the villain of Ian's first two issues on the book, but continuing to make sporadic appearances for the next twenty issues, before appearing as the new leader of the Destructix under Finitevus in the Enerjak Reborn arc, followed swiftly by a stint as the Big Bad in Bold New Moebius. Does he actually deserve this level of importance? You be the judge, but personally, I don't think so. Even within those stories, Scourge gets special treatment, the biggest and most obvious being Metal Scourge. Now, personally, I think Metal Scourge was a better character than Scourge himself, but the fact that, of all people, Scourge got a Metal counterpart before anyone else, including Knuckles, who had such a counterpart in the games for over a decade by that point.  Especially since, well... Metal and Mettle is a fun story, but it doesn't really do anything for Bold New Moebius as a whole, does it? It's basically pure filler, only really serving to add another dead Metal Sonic to Ian's list and stall the plot out for a bit longer. And, of course, the most clear indicator of Scourge's favouritism is that he was he first Archie character to receive his own Sonic Universe arc, and the only one to do so without needing two or three SEGA characters also making up the rest of the lead cast. "Lockdown" isn't a particularly good story, but its existence speaks to not just the insane popularity that such an unworthy character received, but also Archie's willingness to indulge that. Sonic Universe was largely intended to tell stories revolving around the members of the SEGA cast that, for whatever reason, weren't able to regularly appear in the main book. This... frequently got broken, with Sonic, Tails, Sally, Bunnie, Antoine, and Amy all taking centre-stage in the book before obvious candidates like the Chaotix got a look in, some of them twice over, but Scourge was the only time they were willing to try a story based entirely around one of their characters, and they gave it to the already extremely prominent Scourge. It's pretty clear that Ian loved using this character, and did so as much as possible. YMMV on whether that's good or not. Part 4: Scourge OP plz nerf Let's be real, he's overpowered as fuck. Now, overpowered characters aren't necessarily bad, but it's significantly harder to write an OP character than an on-average one, and Scourge didn't work out so well. From the moment he turns green, he's basically unstoppable. The one time he actually seems to remotely struggle is actually in 161, where he looks ever-so-slightly winded after curbstomping Sonic and Shadow at the same time. From then on, while he does start to slowly even out with Sonic, he also continues to utterly demolish basically everyone else, especially his easy conquest of Moebius. It's been suggested that conquering Moebius should be easy, because the big threats are all good, kind people there, but that somewhat ignores that there are anti-versions of the heroes kicking about too. All the (Mostly) benevolent rulers of the Primeverse should be tyrannical despots there, and there are excessively powerful entities like the Anti-versions of Merlin and the Guardians, not to mention whatever horrors Anti-Gerald would've unleashed on the world, and that's without the Suppression Squad themselves. While the comic has generally treated Sonic as being able to stomp the entire rest of the FF, well, who says it has to be a fight? Why the fuck doesn't Patch just poison him? I mean, the obvious answer is "Because then Bold New Moebius won't have a main villain", and sometimes contractual villain immortality has to be a thing, but a good writer should be able to avoid putting the characters in that position. Following on from that, Scourge gets to fight basically the entire FF and Suppression Squad at the same time, (Sonic and Amy are absent and Fiona is on his side), and he's winning until Sonic shows up. Then directly after that is the hedgehog brawl, and despite Sonic managing to get everyone against Scourge, he easily manages to escape and break out his Super form. Even after spending his time in the No-Zone completely powerless, Scourge manages to break out the moment he gets his powers back, despite the prison being full of characters who should be equally or more powerful than him, and the police force that caught them all, basically unchallenged. Scourge never faces an actual challenge in the comic. He never struggles, and the one time he actually loses? Ian makes up some new lore on the spot, which is contradictory to SEGA lore from the same year, and then uses that to have Sonic trick Scourge into depowering himself. Not only does Scourge never struggle with anything, but he also never actually loses a fight. Part 5: When will you learn, that your actions have consequences?! Probably never, because Scourge's actions never have consequences. Throughout his entire run, Scourge gets to go wherever he wants, do what he wants, with or to whomever he wants, and he never has to deal with the fallout of the decisions he makes. Absorbs the energy of a matter world into his antimatter body? He's better than fine, it only made him stronger. Turns up in Knothole with his secret girlfriend's hated arch rival by his side? Never mentioned again. Blows Fiona's connection to him, costing Finitevus' operation a potential spy in Knothole, where Knuckles is? Not even considered a factor. Ditches Finitevus to go and make Moebius into an egopolis? Finitevus isn't bothered, and supports Fiona's efforts to rescue him later down the line after than plan backfired on him. Blinds Patch in one eye out of jealousy/spite? The guy that poisoned Armand and Max, took a torch to Antoine's personal life, took advantage of Sally's frayed mental state, emotionally damaged Bunnie, and tried to assassinate Elias to get what he wanted lets him get away with it. Openly announces that he's going to destroy both worlds? Conveniently does it when he's alone with Sonic so nobody can tell Fiona what she's letting herself in for. He eventually does get sent to jail, but he breaks out with ease the next time he turns up. Because, y'know, that's just what we want to see. Villains never having to deal with karma. Part 6: What does anyone see in him? Scourge doesn't quite get the "everyone loves him" treatment, but he still gets a whole lot more respect than he's ever earned. Both Sonic and Zobotnik are portrayed arbitrarily deciding that maybe there's a shred of good in this monster, and this is the part where I stress that he's abusive again. Maybe if I repeat that enough it'll sink in. Despite knowing full-well the sort of person Scourge is, Sonic's response to Scourge's crappy cribbing of the "One Bad Day" speech is to try and turn it around and claim that Scourge only needs a tiny bit of decency to be a good person, and this is outright untrue, and given what we see of Scourge later, I'm frankly disgusted that Ian tried to pull this with a character he'll pretty much unambiguously portray as an abuser. Zobotnik's case is even more baffling. We're introduced to the guy in the Lockdown arc, and it's implied that he's effectively a tyrannical warden, ruling over the No-Zone with an iron fist, taking an almost sadistic delight in punishing the inmates. But yet, for whatever reason, he decides that it's a good idea to try and rehabilitate Scourge, for no adequately established reason. Even on the other side of the morality line, we have Finitevus, who apparently respects Scourge enough to not just make him leader of the Destructix during the Enerjak Reborn arc, despite him very clearly not being a leader, and not being liked by any of his comrades except Fiona, but then when he promptly ditches the whole plan toward the end, Finitevus apparently decides that he not only wants to get him back, but is willing to go to great lengths and risk losing the only team of mercenaries dumb enough to work for a guy who is quite open about his intentions to "purify the world with Chaos fire" in order to do it. And speaking of, the most egregious case of this comes again in Lockdown, where the Destructix all end up siding with Scourge. Across the second half of the arc, Scourge learns his new team's backstories, and despite them clearly showing traits and beliefs that should make them respect him less, this somehow works in his favour, and he manages to wrest leadership of the team from Fiona. Especially galling is that it appears that Fiona loses their respect early on because of her faith in Scourge, who to them, looks pathetic, but then they end up supporting him anyway, despite doing nothing to earn it. But wait, one's missing... Looks like it's that time again. Part 7: Oh right, he's an abuser. It's time to talk about Fiona. Fiona's heel turn is really, really effective at selling you on the idea that Fiona is a vile, cruel, and selfish person. It's a dramatic, "big bang" moment that, in basically a single panel, got an entire fandom to hate a character. Now for some it was more of a "Love to hate" thing, but there are plenty of people out there who just really hate Fiona for this single moment. And when you're introducing a new major villain, maybe that's what you want to accomplish. What it doesn't do, however, is sell you on her motives for taking that course of action. Fiona, for the rest of her existence, mainly antagonises Sally, whom she has no worthwhile connection to on either side of her turn, other than being the evil  Sally to Scourge's Evil Sonic, and stands around or clings to Scourge's arm, looking smug about her abusive relationship. And yes, it is abusive, verbal abuse is still abuse, and the implications that he's physically abusive are present too. I know this is something that Scourge's fans don't really want to accept, but it's true, and we're going to get into that later. For now, what matters is that this character's run as a villain mainly consists of: Fiona: "Hey Sugar-Queen, look at how much my boyfriend yells at me and insults me, and probably beats me when he's angry. I make smart decisions and you suck." We never come to understand why this character, who is so motivated by her belief that everyone will eventually double-cross her that she has decided to start lashing out at people before they can turn on her, is willing to put her faith 100% in someone so repeatedly deceptive that he first approached her by pretending to be someone else. Like, in terms of bad first impressions, that's up there with arriving at a job interview in full clown regalia. The comic makes no effort to show why these characters like each other. Scourge allegedly likes her because she chooses to turn evil and join him, rather than being born evil, but this clashes with not only the fact that Fiona is a genuinely good person before this, who makes a solid effort to stay loyal to her friends first, and is lured into villainy by him, but also the fact that she blames everyone but herself for her current situation, but especially with the fact that all of the foreshadowing for Fiona turning evil consists of people not trusting her because she has a shady history. Scourge claims to appreciate that Fiona is a good person that chooses to be evil, but the narrative has a clear message of "If you started evil, it doesn't matter if you try to become good, you will always revert to type." Which isn't exactly a good message, Ian. In return, all we get from Fiona's side is that Scourge "has no expectations of her and just wants to have fun", which clashes entirely with how we see them interact in subsequent arcs, where Fiona frequently looks disturbed or apprehensive, or just bored, while Scourge yells at her and threatens her for not meeting his standards. Seriously, why do people ship this? But okay, okay. Scourge is a good liar, and Fiona's established paranoia and history do make her vulnerable to manipulators like him, so maybe she falls for his lies and gets taken for a ride. That could happen, sure. Doesn't really explain why she becomes a horrendous person all of a sudden, but whatever. Maybe he convinced her to do it as a sort of hazing, and a means of ensuring she couldn't go back. That fits with his abusive nature (You might also notice that this the explanation I used in Revival). But why does she stay? And why does she refuse every out she's given? Why, after everything that pulled her to his side has turned out to be bullshit, does she remain devoted to him? Now, you can argue that due to the abuse and the manipulation she's suffered, she believes she has to stay with him, and that's a fair shout, but her appearance in Journey to the East is kind of a stumbling block for that theory, because we're shown a Fiona who is fully capable of functioning without him, and even after making efforts to establish herself... the next time we see her she's gone back for him. And now... well, it's time to talk about that "A" word I've been bringing up a lot in this section. Scourge is abusive. I've frequently referenced that he verbally abuses Fiona every time she displeases him across the book, but the most telling scene is this one from Issue 190.

"You do not want to be sent back with me." Translation: "If I get sent back, and you're sent back too, I'm going to beat the shit out of you." Fiona (With her invisible left arm) isn't excluded from this threat. Fiona isn't surprised by this threat either. Nor does she not take the threat seriously. She looks like she's expecting to be struck. He beats her. And please, nobody say that "he's just angry", that's apologism. Now, I dunno if this was in the script, or if Fiona's face was something Yardley did on his own, but given that this arc ends with Super Scourge announcing his intention to destroy both Mobius and Moebius, simply because he can, regardless of the collateral, I'm willing to bet that this relationship wasn't a happy, stable one. But, unfortunately, this element was never made clear enough. Now, your mileage may vary on whether you think Sonic the Hedgehog comics are the appropriate place to discuss abusive relationships or not, but we've got one now, and Ian dropped the ball. This wasn't a Joker/Harley, where the pairing was clearly abusive but also sold DC/Warner millions of dollars worth of merch, this wasn't a RWBY, where Adam took three years to show up and had already won a huge number of fans from his admittedly cool design and powers, so people already liked him before they even knew what his personality was like. Ian had full control over this, no merch to worry about, and Scourge's prolific appearances gave him plenty of opportunity to make it clear that this was an ugly, repulsive thing that Fiona needed to get out of ASAP. And he didn't. Because panels like this, and all the yelling, clearly weren't enough for the fandom. No, you point this detail out to them and they'll make excuses, try to pretend it didn't happen, or just get offended, or worst of all, outright say they don't care and still ship it. We have fanartists who became real official artists creating stories where this garbage-fire pairing is used for sad feels, not because Fiona got stuck in a relationship with a controlling, violent monster, but because oh no they really loved each other and now Fiona's dead isn't it tragic don't you feel sorry for Scourge? No. No I don't. I feel sorry for the thousands of teenagers who support an abusive relationship because Ian was too cowardly to make it clear that the relationship in question was just that. Now, do I think that Ian is an intentional abuse apologist? No. Do I think he wimped out of taking the necessary steps to make it clear that this was bad because he didn't want people to dislike his shitty pet villain? Oh yeah, I do. Scourge's reputation was more important to Flynn than appropriately and sensitively portraying a destructive, damaging relationship between a woman and her monstrous partner. Well, I say "Woman", let's not forget that Fiona was meant to be sixteen, and realistically if you take her timeline into account she's more likely to be about fourteen. Real fucking classy. Part 8: Effort? What effort? So, now we get to our final criteria. And frankly, it's the easiest one to cover. From the moment, Scourge turns green, his life becomes a cakewalk. Everything he ever wants is handed to him with zero actual struggle on his part. Wants to be stronger than Sonic? He is. Zero side-effects to using a Chaos energy form from a mirror universe, or having a Super transformation interrupted, he just seemingly gets to be half-Super forever. Wants another leg-up on Sonic? Here's Fiona, sans personality. Sonic says he's just a lame ripoff of himself? He conquered a planet in a week, look at how cool he is. Also his team all roll over and make him their leader even though they hate him and they could easily kill him. He gets to walk through the entire FF/Squad teamup, and the Hedgehog teamup, and then when he gets to the No-Zone, Zobotnik, who has kept far smarter and more dangerous characters locked up for decades arbitrarily decides to reform him and gets completely suckered by him. The Destructix fully throw in with him, despite him never actually earning their respect. He never loses a fight where he wasn't depowered first. You know what the irony of this is? Ian has a character whom he is contractually obligated to never have lose for longer than an issue or two. And honestly, he wasn't awful at disguising that. Sonic gets a few wins that feel too easy, but for the most part, the issues with this rule mainly manifest in Sonic's limp responses to the tragedies happening around him, and a sprinkling of minor failures and pyrrhic victories ensure that the rule looks more like shoddy writing in a few places unless you're explicitly told about it. And even then, he still manages to make it look like Sonic struggles to attain those victories, that he has to actually put his back into it every time. He is challenged. Scourge isn't allowed to be challenged. That's the irony. Ian has a protagonist who he is not allowed to have lose, and Sonic still manages to be avoid looking like a boring invincible hero, while Scourge just never faces anything that can actually pose a threat to him. Powerful opponents crumple before him. Characters' personalities and development shift to suit his needs. The plot warps to benefit him. Because heaven forbid Scourge actually have to work for his wins. Who needs stakes when you can have the writer on your side! Part 9: In summation... I think you should've all twigged where this is going by now, so let's wrap up. 1) Does Scourge receive a great deal of favouritism from the author? Yes. 2) Is Scourge more powerful than the rest of the cast, often to the point of absurdity? Yes. 3) Does Scourge face zero consequences for his actions? Yes. 4) Is Scourge liked or respected by characters that have no reason to do so? Yes. 5) Is Scourge in a relationship with a character that has no reason to date him? Yes. 6) Most importantly, does the story will bend over backwards to give Scourge easy wins, even in situations where he logically should struggle? Yes. According to these criteria, Scourge the Hedgehog is almost a textbook example of a Mary-Sue. Which is probably why something as disgusting as him got away with so much. I guess, then, that his role in Revival, and a lot of the stuff before that, is the unfortunate reality of a Mary-Sue who suddenly has to deal with the fact that they're no longer getting that special treatment from the writer. That now their actions have consequences, that now the universe doesn't shape itself to their desires.