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Sonic Super Special #4: Retrurn Of The King "Return Of The King" Spaz/Harvo cover: Sonic standing like Luke Skywalker in the
old "Star Wars" posters, holding aloft the Sword of Acorns. In the
background are Uncle Chuck and King Acorn.
Spaz/Harvo frontispiece: in the words of the Firesign
Theater's Peter Bergman: "Now I'm going to repeat that again for
those of you on drugs": Sonic standing like Luke Skywalker in the
old "Star Wars" posters, holding aloft the Sword of Acorns. In the
background are Uncle Chuck and King Acorn. Actually, there's a
little more to THIS version, but not much, and it's mostly around
the edges and in the background. But why use a modified
enlargement of the frontispiece art for the cover? "Deadline
pressures" is the best explanation I can come up with; certainly,
it's the most charitable.
"Pippin looked out from the shelter of Gandalf's cloak."
Oops; right title, wrong story....
"Dusk." Not a bad opening, really. "Mobotropolis'
anthropomorphic citizenry" watch as "the Royal Skyship" (which
looks a little like it's on loan from Bruce Wayne) lands under the
watchful eye of King Acorn. "And what does this all mean?" For
one thing, it means that the Knothole crowd changed planes
somewhere between Sonic #56 and this installment; they were last
seen getting on what looked like a Boeing 757 at the end of
"Immortality is Forever and I Am He and You Are Me and We Are All
Together." True Fact: I recently received an e-mail from Art
Mawhinney (I'm not worthy!!!) who said that it's tough doing art
for a story after you haven't worked on a few installments -- the
continuity is miles ahead of you. So we'll let that pass. I'm
feeling so generous I won't even beat up on Sam Maxwell for BLOWING
a plot point on Page 3. I won't beat up on him YET, anyway.
Kingie greets the troops, saying that he's "fully recovered."
Gee, that green, faceted complexion could've fooled me. But he
makes it clear that he's talking about his attitude, because he
then announces that he's called off the dismantling that he ordered
during "Rise of the Robians" (Sonic #55). This prompts question
marks to start floating above the heads of the characters, who
suddenly start playing hardball devil's advocate and accusing the
roboticized Mobians of planning a surprise attack....
OK, at this point, I had question marks floating above MY
head! This struck me as such a break of character I actually
started reading the story over again. And it only got worse as
Sonic bad-mouths Uncle Chuck AND his parents! This apparently is
enough to push the Mad Monarch over the brink into total
crystallization and a complete reversal of his reversal as he
issues the dismantling order yet again! Looks like the cover art
isn't the only example of deja vu on display here.
We then cut to "several hours later" as what reminds me of
Thunderbird #2 is coming in for a landing carrying...the Knothole
gang? This is turning out to be a bumpy ride, for them AND thereader.
Our heroes appear to have landed (quite roughly) in the middle
of a police action, with the "guards" (several Mobians of
undetermined species) so intent on what they're doing they ignore
Sally and the others. Sonic gets the attention of one guard, who
informs them that the dismantling is going on but the roboticized
Mobians (sorry, I don't like the term "Robians") aren't going along
with it. And Antoine asks the same question I had: how could the
Knothole crowd be in two places at once? The explosion of their
airship (which has been burning merrily away in the background all
this time) puts a stop to that line of questioning as everyone
takes cover in that most basic of plot devices, an abandonedbuilding.
OK, so it's NOT abandoned: Uncle Chuck and some other armed
roboticized Mobians are inside. The overwhelming sentiment is to
ventilate the furries, but Sonic does an admirable two-step: first
he disarms the unfriendlies, then he pleads with Uncle Chuck (to
the extent that he's allowed to emote) to believe him: "I've never
lied to you and I'm not gonna start now! Lies were what kept us
apart...." This concept seems to have eluded the Floating Island's
Guardians, for whom secrecy and covert operation appear to be
abiding principles. Just as Sonic and Uncle Chuck appear to be on
the verge of turning to the same page of the hymnal, Uncle Chuck
takes a direct hit from a blaster.
I'd like to report that there's not a dry eye in the house as
Sonic's uncle meets his maker, but this IS a Sonic comic we're
talking about so there isn't an eye in the house that ISN'T dry.
Not that Sam Maxwell doesn't try for some emotional impact in the
second and third panels on Page 15 (I THINK it's Page 15 -- they're
unnumbered for whatever reason) where Sonic COULD be crying if you
used your imagination. Anyway, the guard who did the nasty trips
over the duffle bag containing the Sword of Acorns which Sonic is
about to use to skewer the guy when who shows up to try to talk
Sonic down but...his parents. Sonic relents, the Sword goes FWAASH
(great, a sword with a speech impediment!), and it's migraines all
around. Not only is everyone momentarily blinded, but Uncle Chuck
is resurrected. It appears that the Sword does a lot more than
leach energy from Chaos Emeralds, especially When Used for Good
Instead of Evil. The guard then tells Sally he doesn't know what's
going on. Show of hands: who can relate? He claims he's suffered
a blackout since their arrival at the Castle...yeah, but WHICH
arrival? I counted two! When in doubt blame it on magic, and
thanks to Sam Maxwell's broad hint back on Page 3 panel 2, the
number of suspects is conveniently narrowed down to one.
We next see Sonic back at the palace calling out Naugus, who
has taken up residence in the King's corpus. It appears that Sonic
is about to be ambushed by palace guards (I say "appears" because
the layout is a little confusing) but once more the Sword
neutralizes the spell the guards were under. Sonic then pursues
the King to the roof where the mineralized monarch threatens to
jump. Sonic calls Naugus' bluff, the King goes bungee jumping
without a cord, Sonic dives after him with sword in hand, there's
another FWAASH, and we see both of them on the ground apparently
shaken but otherwise unharmed. The King credits the deus ex
machina (Sword) with having saved them, but goes on to say that
though he isn't possessed by Naugus anymore, he's stuck with being
crystallized. Sally responds with a heartfelt: "Oh, Dad! I don't
care! I love you crystallized or not!" Which would have made a
great moment if it hadn't been shrunk to the size of a postage
stamp and tucked into the corner of another panel where we see
several Mobians do their best to give themselves hernias while
trying to dislodge the Sword from a stone in which it has embedded
itself. Yeah, the old King Arthur bit. The King steps up to the
plate, extracts the Sword, it gives off yet another FWAASH and...
We are now on the last page of the story, and the captions on
this page deserve to be quoted in their entirety:
And when the light given off from the magical relic fades, the
ruler stands restored, a creature of flesh and blood. On his head
rests the real Crown of Acorns...restored from the "Hall of Limbo!"
A place that was never too far from the King--for the "Hall of
Limbo" was in his own mind all along! The End.
Rating: I've seen abrupt endings, I've seen ambiguous endings, I've
seen trick endings, but my immediate reaction was that this was a
STUPID ending! Maybe not on a par with the ending of "Altered
States" but still pretty stupid! As a way of pulling together the
story from its origin back in Sonic #42, it works. But by blithely
stating that the "Hall of Limbo" was all in the King's head Karl
Bollers drains the whole "Knuckles' Quest" arc of any real
significance. Not that I was ever able to take its dimestore
mumbo-jumbo and patently phoney characters all that seriously, but
to dismiss it so freely is a little disconcerting. It reminded me
of several things, neither of them complimentary to Karl Bollers as
a writer: I was reminded of the ending of "Through The Looking
Glass" where Alice wonders aloud whether the foregoing was her
dream or her kitten's. It also reminded me of the handcuff bit
from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?": "You mean to tell me you could
have gotten out of those cuffs at any time!?" "No, not ANY time;
only when it was funny!"
OK, maybe the King also needed the Royal Toad Sticker to make
the transformation work, and the solution WAS, I'll admit,
something of a surprise, but the narrative rhythm (already undercut
by the beginning interlude which must have taken place within the
King's subjective reality) came to a screeching halt at the end.
There was no sense of resolution, except in the last panel of the
last page. The ending felt like: "Let's wrap this thing up and get
out of here!" Karl Bollers is a good writer, though his talent
comes through here only in small moments such as when Sonic bends
over his fallen Uncle Chuck. The narrative should have been a LOT
more satisfying than this, and might have been with a less-abruptending.
Sam Maxwell's art is becoming more solid, and this script
gives him a chance to work with a wider emotional range (the
dictates of Sega notwithstanding). It half-worked: Sonic's face
showed more variety but Sally wore the same exact expression half
the time. Maxwell's use of character silhouettes is becoming
something of a stylistic trademark. Sometimes it works; in the
last panel, actually showing the character's faces as they react to
the King's restoration might have made the sequence too
melodramatic. Sometimes it doesn't, as in the infamous panel on
page 3 where he throws in Naugus's shadow as a tease. And he
shouldn't be afraid of using actual animal species for his models--
I had no idea what kind of animal several of the supporting players
were supposed to be, especially the guard who blasted the
(temporary) hole in Uncle Chuck. The story is a turning-point in
the Sonic continuity, but it feels like they took the corner toosharply.
And while we're busy cleaning out the Sonic closet...
Backup Story: Moments later there's an explosion, and the Com-Bot standing
guard outside their cell assumes that Antoine's collar got too
tight all of a sudden. Entering the cell expecting to find some
crispy critters, he's jumped by the four prisoners who then beat up
on some more Combots and release the other Downunda Freedom
Fighters. Meanwhile at the loading dock Crocbot demonstrates the
ongoing lack of honor among villains by instructing a Com-Bot to
install a "miniature thermo-nuclear timebomb" in Robotnik's war
room. What IS this with Gallagher and nuclear weaponry? (c.f.
"Mecha Madness"). Just then, the Downundas jump the Com-bots while
Crocbot gets the call from Robotnik that established the one solid
link between this story and the Endgame arc.
Bunnie and Antoine, meanwhile, have slipped aboard the
transport and find themselves "in the communication nerve center"
where they JUST HAPPEN to access Robotnik blabbing his head off
about the Ultimate Annihilator without his specifying exactly HOW
it's supposed to wipe Knothole out of existence. Bunnie does some
channel-surfing and also JUST HAPPENS to discover that one of the
Combots is carrying a nuclear device. They get the device, Antoine
announces their plan to install it in the war room, they jump ship;
that's about it, really.
Rating: I counted THREE separate explanations of what happened to
Robotnik and his mad scheme in the climax of "The Big Goodbye":
1. There was a bomb in the War Room and it went off,
destroying the Ultimate Annihilator (page 18, panel 2);
2. The wires on the Ultimate Annihilator got crossed and it
blew up (page 19, panel 5);
3. The Ultimate Annihilator worked as advertised, but only
annihilated Robotnik because Snively reprogrammed it (page 24,panel 4).
THIS story alters NONE of the confusion left over from Sonic
#50 while throwing its weight behind Theory #1, but despite that it
still proves to be a pretty standard Escape from the Heavily-armed
Fortress story. I sort of like Nelson Ortega's almond-eyed Bunnie,
but everything else was routine. And of course this story begs the
question of why Archie didn't run this story (or what had been
planned for it) SIX MONTHS AGO when "Endgame" wrapped up. Still,
this is probably as close to "Endgame: The Director's Cut" as we're
going to get. It serves as a reminder of how coherent the story
arc COULD have been.
Overall Rating: |
