Sonic The Hedgehog #135 Review by Neo
COVER:
EH. Not so impressive, but a step above the boring #134. The slanted view is a nice touch and adds a lot of perspective and angle to the overall drawing. You can just tell this is entirely anime-inspired, mostly from the background with it's mutliple lines which many animes use when a character is usually shocked and surprised. It's still not the best cover since it doesn't "wowed" me, but impressive enough, nonetheless.
7/10

FRONTIPEICE:

Furries in a bar, Sonic from #52 (well, the outfit is very similiar to it) looks confused. Maybe because Axer made his face awkward and crooked and slightly off model. His nose seems to tilt one way while his eyes went the other. Nice use of shading and we get a pretty good frontipiece compare to the others of similiar background.
7/10

"The Tommy Trilogy, Part 1: Agent of K.N.O.T.H.O.L.E."
Writer: Romy Chacon
Penciler: Ron Lim
Inker: Nelson Ribeiro

A caped figure (like the one in the cover) enters, gives his password, and ends up in a bar which I'm pretty sure, in real life, a 16 year old wouldn't even be allowed. But hey, he's Sonic, everyone's favorite hero. It's ALWAYS an expectation with him...that and he's in disguise. Cut scene to Snively (who somehow turned back into a robot) chats with Eggman on their plan. A robot ready to be unleased, which we actually find out in the next issue (and one I'm not entirely too happy about, but I'll explain when I review #136).

Cut scene to Sonic meeting with Tommy, looking as happy as ever. Sonic enjoys playing spy while Tommy blindly smiles which somewhat frightens me. They sit together and chat of how the turtle manage to survive after that crazy explosion from #117. He makes the ultra lame excuse that he was thrown out of the window from the explosion and landed a mile away. He was then captured by Eggy and somehow escaped despite his feeble status (come on, nowhere in hell can he escape Eggman's quarters so easily, not for a guy like him, not unless he had a giant slingshot stuffed in his shell and used it to flung himself out of Eggman's base), then he sent a coded message to Sonic so they could chat, hedgehog to turtle.

Tommy speaks of how Eggy found a way to counter with the derobotization that the Bems manage to work on a few issues back. Of course, with him rerobotizing, he perfers to pick who gets to be robot and who dosn't instead of his usual plan to robotizatize everyone.

Then, before anything else happens, we got the robot buddies last seen in #117. So, what does our blue hedgehog do? He fights, naturally. And we get several pages of fight scenes (and one where Sonic eyes Tommy cornered by the robot dogs). He fights some more and more and when all is done, he sees Tommy left unscratched. Tommy explains he programmed Drago and Dawg to jump to the nearest lake. As the two walk off, we see the Drago bot underneath some rubbles indictating something is going on.

STORY:
Romy Chacon was an exceptionally good writer. Good in that she was brilliant with her character development. She can spend a lifetime doing 6 pages of character development on any random character in the comic and trust me, with like 2 bajillion characters in the book, she has plenty to do. Her Tommy Turtle story from #117 showed her in the the main story spotlight for the first time and it was good. A story I plainly thought would be hideously lame turned out massiely brilliant.

So, naturally, when I see Tommy Turtle walking again on the page, you can see my face was in shocked and pissed mode. And it was written by the same writer, too. Romy started to peak with her #139 "Space Race" story, but I easily forgave her, thinking it was a mere fluke, but now...we got this. A plot I don't care about, no matter how important it is. I don't care about rerobotizing, I don't care about the previous bots from #117, and I DON'T care about Tommy. He was better left dead as it was the greatestt impact of #117. By making this story even exist, it shows how useless #117 was. And if there's on thing I seriously do not like, it's cheap deaths. I'm greatly upset by these turn of fate.

Romy should go back to her 6 pages of random character development stories.
5/10

ART:

Ron Lim isn't my favorite artist. His furries are usually anoerix at best and their eyes a bit too wonky and huge. Off model as well, his only strength is his trememodusly good artworks with humans. So, naturally, it comes to my surprise when I see some GOOD work from him. Granted, it's still not impressive (like how he still makes Sonic's spine ridiciously long and Tommy looks a bit weird), but this looks like the start of some good artwork coming from this guy or at least above average at best.
7/10

"Anonymous"
Writer: Romy Chacon
Penciler: Art Mawhinney
Inker: Jim Amash

Eggman meets the bots from the previous story, talks with A.D.A.M, sees an image on who robotizie them, only clue being it's as tall as him, sits and ponders.

STORY:
*Yawn* It's basically Eggman knowing who he is dealing with which I'm pretty sure will come up in a future story. For the current time, it doesn't matter at all to me.
5/10

ART:

Art's poses with Eggman were my all time favorite when it came to the art. One scene shows him resting his head on his arms like he was napping. An exceptionally cute drawing, I must say. Another has him scratching his head, one where he places his hands on the comptuer table, his behind arching back, and his legs wide apart. The different movements of Eggman greatly helped with his speech, showing proof on how much Art is one of my fave artists in the comic.
10/10

"Mobius 25 Years Later: Dealing With the Devil"
Writer: Ken Penders
Penciler: Steven Butler
Inker: Jim Amash

Lien-Da yells/punishes his son because of his night out with Salma. Oh, and something about Dimitri and Eggman. Oh, yea, and Lien contacts her stepsis, Julie.

STORY:
I'm a fan of M25YL. Be it my obsession with Back to the Future and Sailor Moon R where the cast ends up in the future, I just love stories dealing with the cast in their past (speaking of which, I want more Sonic kids), and future. But there comes a time when the stories are just going too slow for our their good. Notably, this is the biggest flaw in M25YL. We know the world is ending or something and I'd rather much perfer if they just got into that part. Instead, we got Lien going postal on her son. What the flunk?

"Just get on with the plot", I would say. I mean, seriously, as much as I'm a huge fan of character development and that I'm fully aware of Mr. Penders "graphic novel" approach, he fails to see THIS comic is NOT a graphic novel. It's a simple 32 page something comic book. If you want to tell this, then make a graphic novel, return the Knuckles comic, or whatever alternative, because unless something happens (and it won't until like #150, I bet ya), this story IS indeed, taking up useless space. I LIKE M25YL, but I DON'T like how it's pacing. At this rate, no one's gonna care about the end of the world thing.
5/10

ART:

Steven Butler's art is good in so many levels, even if his females (majority of them) are too humanish for my taste, but not enough to irriated the heck outta me. I once read Dan's review on the pose of Lien-Da. How she always has her hands on her waist for most of the time and I do somewhat agree that it's a bit plain. Look at the story before and you see Eggman's movements. Not one even looks the same while Lien just has her hand to her waist. Luckily, she only does it for like half of the story and it doesn't matter that much. I do like how Lien's hair flows in front of her face. Butler's art is still proof enough to show he is a good Sonic artist.
9/10

EDITOR:

J.G. is leaving and Mike P. is taking over. WB has noted he does a fine job despite his bad letter answering skills, which annoys the heck outta me.
  

Chronos Cat

Miles "Per" Hour

Miss Puar

Sonic Rose