Sonic The Hedgehog #56 Review by Zifei Wu
"Immortality Is Forever...Life Is Finite..."
Kent Taylor(W)
John Hebert And Manny Galán(A)
Cover: Look! It's Flubber! No, seriously, it's Mammoth Mogul doing a David Copperfield trick with his cane. Then there come Super Sonic and Hyper Knuckles. All in all, this cover is excellently drawn and colored. I wonder why Tails wasn't on the cover...no more room for one more "hero"?

Text Page (formerly known as the Splash Page): I can't believe it, but I actually read the text! The text stated what happened in Knuckles #9, Mogul used the Sword of Acorns to absorb all of Enerjak's chaos energy and now holds the energy of 12 chaos emeralds inside him. The art was by Sam Maxwell, not bad, looking forward to his penciling in Sonic Super Special #4: Return of the King.

You know, for a first time Sonic artist, John Hebert isn't that bad. In fact his pretty good, but he's overshadowed by Manny Galan's art at the end. Patrick Spaziante also drew a few here and there.

Page1-3: The story start out with this..."Agh! your spines are jabbing my head!" "Ugh! Big deal! Your claws are jabbing my spine!" "Yecch! Both of you get your dirty feet outta my face!"...and we get a pan down view of Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails stranded on an asteroid in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly the rock became alive and trapped Sonic, he tried his drill move which left Knuckles and Tails adrift. Then the "ol'weirdo" Athair showed up and helped the three out of the zone.

Page4-11: We jump back to Echidnapolis and witness the all powerful Mogul whip the Freedom Fighters, the echidna security team, and the dingoes. Then out of nowhere came Sonic and Knuckles with 50 power rings each. Mogul zapped them with chaos energy, but instead of leaving the mortal plane, they turned into...SUPER SONIC and HYPER KNUCKLES. A BIG battle unfolded, Mogul somehow created a Floating Island quake and was about to jump on Sonic and Knuckleswhen...

Page12-16: A phantom stranger showed up, Mogul beamed the stranger some chaos energy and...

Now we stop for fan art and name page. Man, there sure are a lot of Sonic artists out there. Tony Nguyen's Freedom Fighters and Katie Williamson's Lupe are both very good drawings.

...the stranger turned into TURBO TAILS. Now wait a minute, Turbo Tails? How did this name slip by the Sega watchdogs? I mean shouldn't it be Super Tails like in the games. Oh well, Mogul revealed that Tails is THE CHOSEN ONE, and is going to be one of this era's greatest champions along with Sonic and Knuckles. Now wait a minute again, how come Tails is the Chosen One and not Sonic?!? Isn't the name of this comic Sonic The Hedgehog and not Tails the Fox! Anyway, Mogul decided it's time for more power, so he blasted his way toward the Chaos Chamber. All the while, Locke and his dad watched from Haven deciding when to interfere.

Page17-18: Mogul got to the chamber an went for the two emeralds that's there. Just as he was about to touch the emeralds, Locke and his father interfered and created a explosion. Now there's one huge Master Emerald in the chamber with Mogul trapped in it.

Page19-22: Down settled over the once magnificent city of Echidnapolis which now looks like the former Robotropolis. The echidnas and Freedom Fighters had a meeting and decided that the out side forces' interference helped them win the battle. Then Sir Knuckles handed the real Sword of Acorns over to Princess Sally. Later Sonic and Knuckles had a talk. Sonic asked Knuckles to join him on his upcoming adventures, Knuckles declined saying his place is on the Floating Island. Well, Sonic then asked Tails, and he agreed happily. So up for some Sonic solo adventures?

Rating: Rings

After reading this issue, I was a little depressed. I'm not so sure which way the comic is headed anymore. Its a bit of a mixed bag. Mammoth Mogul is TOO WORDY. You couldn't read the book without a thesaurus! On the other hand we finally get a plotline closed - namely the Sword Of Acorns. Its about time. Would the people at Archie Comics break off Tails from Sonic and make a comic of his own? Who's the hooded hedgehog on the cover of #58 and Knuckles #12? Is Sonic ever going to rejoin the Freedom Fighters? Many questions are raised here, I'm sure the answers will pop up sometime in the future. But for right now, this story was WAY too wordy and just kinda flubbed. Sad thing too - especially since it was the return of Super Sonic.

Sonic-Grams: SSS#4: Return of the King is shipping on January 7, it should be a very good issue. Also there's some info about the next issue, Art Mawhinney will pencil it, should be a look-back issue. And Knuckles #10 will ship December 31...a little early, eh.