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Sonic Super Special #5: Sonic Kids "When You And I Were Young, Sally" 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.
I've been waiting for this one to come out. This issue will
be a true test of my abilities to evaluate the comic because I'm
going to try like crazy NOT to judge this issue by the standards I
have set for myself when writing fanfic about the Freedom Fighters
in their younger days. I gave a lot of thought as to where
everyone fits into the continuity, how old they were, etc. Let's
see how the boys from Mamaroneck did:
Spaz/Ario/Ray/Heroic Age cover: The two words guaranteed to
start a stampede anywhere in the world: "Class dismissed." I'll
bet the eyes of that character on the clock on the wall move back
and forth like those weird cat clocks. From left to right: Sally
with a gigapet, Antoine on a big wheel, Sonic with a yo-yo, Rotor
on in-line skates, Tails with a doll (which is probably a character
from some other video game, if I know Spaziante). Above are
transparent images of Sally and Tails, and also Sonic doing that
eye thing that creeps me out.
Contents page: Show of hands: who else thinks Spaz's drawing
of the young Tails exceeds the minimum daily requirement of cute?
The coloring book format was also a nice touch.
That title reference is a REALLY obscure one! Like the title
of the second story it's an allusion to a song, but we're talking
an old song. A VERY old song! How old? Try 1866. That's not a
typo: 1866 was the year "When You And I Were Young, Maggie" was
written by George Johnson and James Butterfield. About the only
people who are familiar with it nowadays are devotees of
barbershop-style singing (for the record, I sing tenor at the
Benton Harbor chapter of the Society for the Preservation and
Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America...but I
digress). "Let us dream of the days that are gone, Maggie/When you
and I were young...."
Rosie returns from the hairdresser with...green hair? She
must have tried one of those blue tints to cover her gray and
gotten it mixed up with some blond dye. Mixing yellow and blue
will do that. Anyway, she arrives to find that, like most kids,
Sonic and the gang have managed to forget the "No ball playing
indoors" rule. The kids must only have one ball to play with, and
it's apparently doing double-duty as a combination volleyball and
soccer ball. Trouble is, it's a basketball, so Antoine's headerhad to hurt.
As the kids move outside, Sally stops short as...
When I last heard from Frank ("Monkey Madness") Strom, he
informed me that Archie's method of bringing him up to speed was to
supply him with five issues of the comic and the "character bible."
Presumably he was then directed to the deep end of the pool. IMHO
this is NOT the best way for a newbie to get the flavor of the
Sonic characters and situations: I myself would also supply the
newcomer with a videocassette containing about a half-dozen eps of
the old SatAM series to get a TRUE feel for the characters and how
they interact. Sure, the show may no longer be on the air, but no
matter how good a writer is, nothing can adequately take the place
of hearing the voice work from the series by Jaleel White, Kath
Soucie, Christine Cavanaugh, Charlie Adler, et al. Besides, the
issues with which one is supplied may themselves be flawed; I pity
the newbie who's handed five issues of the Sonic comic and four of
them are the "Endgame" arc! That is the ONLY charitable
explanation for the fact that Manny Galan punted the drawing of
Julayla on page 2! He went with the drawing of Julayla that
appeared in "The Dream Zone" (#43), which I have always suspected
was supposed to have been a depiction of Sally's mother rather than
Julayla and which was altered at the last minute by Sega for some
reason. But, c'mon! It was right there in the freakin' editorial
box! Sonic #18, the story with the most extended appearance of
Julayla. She was a TABBY!! A CAT! A ginger....
Forget it. Archie is obviously going to play this however
they want. And that means breaking with their OWN continuity
instead of merely breaking with the SatAM continuity. Fine, have
it your way: Julayla's a shapeshifter, for crying out loud! Draw
her however you want! But I'm willing to bet money that Archie's
Sonic character bible is BADLY in need of revision. And I would
LOVE the chance to be the one to attack that document with a redpencil!
Man, I'm on page 2 of the first story and already I'm making
myself crazy! OK: relax, collect, move on.
After a pause for some exposition, Sally joins the others. As
Sonic gives new meaning to the term "one-on-one," and Gallagher
gives Rotor and Antoine some genuinely funny dialogue, Sally finds
herself consoling Miles: "I'm just sad because I'll never be as
fast or as cool as Sonic is." That's a pretty complex sentence for
someone who, judging from the illustrations so far, I'd have
thought to be a mere toddler. Sonic, however, takes it upon
himself to get Miles off the ground. Having started, though, he
doesn't know how to stop and Miles flies off into the forest.
Rotor (who, in a bow to the old continuity, is called
"Boomer") then demonstrates his "remarkable ability with machinery"
by slapping together a sextant out of twigs and vines. How that's
supposed to help them locate Tails isn't spelled out, nor was it
really necessary as Sally's ears worked a lot better at finding the
lad. In a nice 3-panel gag, the rest of the kids soon discover
that Miles has joined the underground, and so have they.
The lot of them have fallen through the surface to an
"underground limestone cavern" complete with aquifer. It must be
a reference to the early days of the comic when Knothole was an
underground location rather than being located in the Great Forest.
Check the last panel on page 5 of "Back To Basics" (Sonic #57) to
get an idea of what they were trying for. Sally then launches into
take-charge mode, pretty much organizing her friends into the
Freedom Fighters and saving herself a lot of exposition by saying
she's "not at liberty to discuss everything I've learned from
Julayla." Sounds like something from a Ken Penders story. Job
one: get the heck out of that hole. Guess who comes up with the
following plan: "I'm pretty sure I can control my flying
ability...I'll go up and out through that tree trunk and drop down
a strong vine so you can all climb out." Like I said, Tails may
still be working on his motor skills but his language skills are
right up there. And so "Miles" becomes "Tails" and Rotor will be
stuck with being called "Boomer" until issue #6.
Rating: Despite several unconscionable lapses (the depiction of
Julayla being especially galling), this wasn't a bad story. In
fact, this is one of Gallagher's strongest pieces to date, lacking
a dependence on mere joking and relying more on character.
Miles/Tails and Sally get to take the spotlight, which is as it
should be: I think most fans are at least as interested in these
two as they are in Sonic. It's too bad we weren't let in on the
relationship between Sally and Julayla to a greater extent: exactly
what she's been learning about her family, her history, and her
responsibilities would have made a great story, but Mike Gallagher
only had 8 pages. I also wish they had clarified how old the
characters were supposed to be. If most of the kids were (let's
say for the sake of argument) 10 years old, which is close to the
age of core audience readers, Miles/Tails should have been more
like a preschooler: think Jeffy from "Family Circus." And one of
these days the story of how Tails got to Knothole (he wasn't part
of King Max's flashback in "The Living Crown" in Sonic #58) should
be told as well. And despite Galan's gaffe, he succeeded in making
the characters look younger and more appealing, Tails especially.
It needed some work, but it was a good first attempt at depicting
the characters outside of their usual milieu. So let's see what
the next attempt is like:
Story #2 - Stop!...Sonic Time: We're almost back in the present, apparently somewhere between
the defeat of Robotnik in "The Big Goodbye" (#50) and Sonic's
bugging out of Knothole in "Back To Basics." Sonic is burdened
with a bunch of Mobian younguns who are all hero worshippers, and
of course he's the hero. One tyke comes up with what must qualify
as a Frequently Asked Question on the Sonic-Grams page: "Where can
I get shoes like yours?" With that, we get two REALLY wordy
balloons where Sonic gives the explanation usually found in the
Sonic-Grams whenever the subject comes up. Then, to general
acclaim, he launches into the story of how Tails supposedly got HISsneaks:
We flash back to "a few years ago." Tails has outgrown the
cute and cuddly phase and is starting to look positively gangly, so
I'd say that he's about 6 or 7 years old in this story (which, if
you take the six year age gap between Tails and Sonic into account
from the SatAM series, means that Sonic, Sally and the other kids
have just about hit puberty). Another clue to his age is that he's
begun what passed in Knothole for "formal education" and everyone
is fussing over him because "he had gotten straight A's on his
report card." Somehow, I have a hard time picturing the grown-ups
being concerned enough about grades while practically in exile to
issue report cards, but that's just me. And Art Mawhinney, oddly
enough, seems to have had a hard time picturing Rosie in this
story. She looks...off...somehow, and her buck teeth are
conspicuous by their absence. Anyway, while everyone is pouring on
the positive reinforcement and generally building up the big guy's
self-esteem, Tails is wondering where Sonic is.
Turns out he's somewhere in Robotropolis, rendezvousing with
a mysterious cloaked figure. In what's supposed to be a
transaction on the Mobian black market, he turns over a bag of
rocks in exchange for Tails's trademark sneaks and heads back to
Knothole. Only then do we learn that the figure making the one-
page cameo is...Merlin Prower, uncle of Miles/Tails and last seen
as the Charlatan in "Knuckles' Quest #2" (Sonic Live special).
Sliding past a two-page attempt to get kids to eat more junk
food by bribing them with merchandise, we zoom in on something
tall, round and sinister. And I don't mean the building. Yes, for
all you Robotnik junkies who've been missing the fat boy since his
departure in "The Big Goodbye," here's your chance to get a fix.
He orders Cluck (in a rare allusion to the SatAM show's first
season) to fire the "time immobilizing ray," a narrow-focus beam
that is supposed to cover "as much of the forest as possible" but
still manages to just miss Sonic on his way back from shopping. By
the time he arrives at Knothole he realized that the ray that
(conveniently) missed him has hit Knothole and everyone there has
been "frozen." Back in the early '60s when I was growing up, the
technical term for this condition was "scrooched." Just as Sonic
realizes this, a transport arrives and SWATbots begin loading up
the frozen furries in a nearby meadow. Sonic then hides Tails's
sneaks and (reasoning that he himself was the intended target)
plays a very serious round of "Statues" so that he gets loaded onto
the transport.
Back in Robotropolis, Robotnik displays Sonic like a piece of
statuary, and then we get three panels of The Villain Blabbing His
Head Off Concerning His Plans, in this case for roboticization and
intergalactic conquest. Taking that as his cue, Sonic un-freezes
and begins messing with Robotnik's control panel. We haven't seen
this kind of random button-mashing since "The Last Game Cartridge
Hero" (Sonic Live special) but once again it's sheer dumb idiot
luck to the rescue as the scrooched Mobians get mobile and Snively
(who is with the transport in the forest) gets scrooched. Sonic
escapes Robotnik's fortress, barrels past Snively (whose condition
seems to have been only momentary) and returns to Knothole where
Princess Sally is suffering from an after-effect of being frozen:
her normally auburn hair has temporarily turned candy apple red.
When I think of redheads I usually picture something along the
lines of Rita Hayworth; this reminds me more of Cyndi Lauper.
Unlike the infamous Death Egg #2 where several pages ended up with
color oversaturation, Sally's hair is the only color anomaly on
display. Anyway, Sonic shows up and bestows the sneaks upon Tails
as Sally's hair goes back to normal and Sonic winds up his
narrative to discover that his fan club has fallen asleep on him. Tough room.
Rating: This was a good basic Sonic story, but more important it is
also the first Sonic story I have come across where there are
separate credits for story and for script, and I think I can guess
why (and keep in mind that this IS only a guess). In the
promotional copy for the special, Tom Rolston had been given the
story credit. Here in its final form, Karl Bollers had a credit as
well, possibly as the comic book equivalent of a "script doctor."
And it appears that his idea of doctoring the original story was to
add one-page bumpers front and back so that what could have stood
on its own as a simple 14-page Sonic Kids story ended up as a 16-
page story being told BY Sonic.
Unfortunately, like the Ultimate Annihilator, this device
failed. Things happen in the story that Sonic should never have
known about if he were simply relating what had happened to
himself. He wouldn't have known about what was happening in
Knothole while he was shoe-shopping, he wouldn't have known about
Merlin Prower (who never even MET any of the Knothole crew to date,
only Knuckles!), and he wouldn't have known what went on between
Robotnik and Snively. Nor is there any sign of the narrative form
throughout the story, no caption boxes with phrases like
"Meanwhile, ol' Buttnik was cooking up a surprise of his own, and
it was NASTY!" or "While I was juicin' back to Knothole I noticed
something mondo WEIRD!". And finally there's the business with
Sally's fire engine red hair on page 14, which suggests to me that
the color separation for that page took place apart from much of
the rest of the story.
If the Tom Rolston original had fallen a couple pages short of
the 16-page quota, it strikes me that it might have been easier to
simply pad out the story: stretch the "shopping" interlude by one
page to show Sonic collecting the rocks he ended up giving to
Merlin (which would have meant losing Sonic's thought balloon on
page 4 panel 2 but that shouldn't have been that big a problem--
it's not like Spaziante has never stepped in and re-inked a panel
or two), and lengthening the opening sequence by another page to
show what gifts Tails got from Sally and Rotor. I don't think this
would have been as noticable as sandwiching the story between a
prologue and epilogue that basically messed up the story structure.
I don't know the history of "Stop...Sonic Time!" but I have to
wonder if THIS wasn't supposed to be the main story (it goes for
the full 16-page maximum and follows the "Sonic Kids" theme, and
the promotional copy certainly leaves that impression) but my
spider sense tells me that it ran into trouble somewhere along the
way. If anyone from Archie Comics wishes to enlighten me on the
subject, I'd appreciate it.
Story #3 - Total Re-Genesis: "Rashomon" (pronounced RAH-SHOW-MON, no accent) is Akira
Kurosawa's famous 1951 film set in medieval Japan. A bandit
attacks a nobleman in a forest, and of the four persons involved
each tells their own version of what happened, including the ghost
of the person who was killed. It's a meditation on self-interest,
on the slippery nature of Truth and Reality, and it fits in with
the Oriental notion that life is something of an illusion. It's an
extremely servicable plot device, and I've seen versions of it in
(among other places) episodes of "All In The Family" and "Rocko's
Modern Life." So it's time to recap:
Premier Sally artist Art Mawhinney, appropriately enough,
illustrates Sally's version of events: the three Freedom Fighters
come upon the reactivated Combot, the lower half of which had been
blown away [insert Lorena Bobbitt joke here]. It fires a couple of
missiles that knock out Sonic and Antoine, whom Sally drags to
safety. Acting as a diversion, she lures the Combot away from her
fallen comrades and under a nearby cliff where she blasts off a
chunk of rock which falls and crushes the Combot.
Quick switch to Sam Maxwell illustrating Antoine's take on
what happened: according to him, it looked more like a fight scene
from a samurai _manga_ complete with sunbursts and sound effects.
In this version, Sonic and Sally are out cold and Antoine had to
fight against the Combot (which still had its legs) even after the
bot had cloaked itself.
John Hebert then steps in to show Sonic's side of the story:
while Antoine ducks and covers and Sally implores him to save their
hides, Sonic goes one-on-one with the bot, easily getting the upper
hand while setting a new record for the number of times he uses the
word "cool" in a story.
In the end, thanks to an uplink from Nicole to Uncle Chuck's
"prototype spy satellite," lead-off artist Nelson Rebeiro (using
nice neon-style graphics) illustrates the REAL account of what
happened: Sonic buzzed the Combot's legs off as Antoine tried to
slice at the Combot's exposed wiring and Sally ended up rocking the
Combot to sleep with a real rock. Uncle Chuck credits the trio
with "grasping the concept of teamwork" before the humbled Freedom
Fighters can apologize.
Rating: As much as I've bemoaned the changing of artists in midstream
in "The Big Goodbye," the gimmick actually WORKS in the context of
this story. Each of the different styles conveys the action well,
though I thought Nelson Rebeiro's depiction of Uncle Chuck was a
little weird, especially that Pez dispenser of a mouth. And Karl
Bollers came through where it counted in that he displayed a firm
grasp of the characters involved in their narratives: Sally was
cool and efficient, Antoine was grandiose and self-important, Sonic
was all speed and ego. In a special issue titled "Sonic Kids,"
it's ironic that this was the most successful story of the bunch.
Overall, this issue worked pretty well. "When You and I Were
Young, Sally" could have used a little tweaking, though the
tweaking bestowed upon "Stop...Sonic Time!" hurt rather than helped
the narrative. The main thing is that the theme of the Freedom
Fighters as children (however ill-defined their ages) managed to
survive relatively intact. I can see maybe one Sonic special per
year or two given over to Sonic Kids stories. And I'd STILL like
to get a crack at proofreading the Sonic character bible. Classdismissed.
Overall Rating: |
