SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #50
			      "The Big Goodbye"
				Archie Comics

			  A Review By Roland Lowery
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	WELCOME TO my very first review of the Sonic the Hedghog Comics.
When I first started collecting the Archie StH comics, I started off with
issue #25, so it's kind of fitting that my review debut starts with issue
#50.
	Well, enough of my chatter!  I'm dying to rip my claws into this
one!

	THE GUILTY PARTIES -----------------------------------------------

	Whoo boy, the credits on this one are long.  It was supposed to
be, as was said in Sonic-Grams for quite awhile, the biggest collection of
everyone who had ever worked on the book.  While they ultimately fell
short of their goal, that didn't stop them from picking up as many as they
could.

	Plot:  Ken Penders
	Script:  Ken Penders, Michael Gallagher, Karl Bollers, Kent
Taylor
	Pencils:  Patrick Spaziante, Manny Galan, Nelson Ortega, Sam
Maxwell, Dave Manak, Ken Penders, Art Mawhinney
	Inks:  Andrew Pepoy, Brian Thomas, Pam Eklund, Harvey
Mercadoocasio, Jim Amash, Rich Koslowski, Ken Penders
	Letters:  Jeff Powell
	Colors:  Karl Bollers
	Editor:  J. Freddy Gabrie
	Managing Editor:  Victor Gorelick
	Editor-In-Chief:  Richard Goldwater

	THE COVER --------------------------------------------------------

	The comic starts off pretty good.  The artwork is good, the new
logo looks good, everything is good.  Just wait until we open the cover,
tho' . . .

	PAGES 1-3 --------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Penders	Artists:  Spaz & Pepoy

	The first panel starts out innocuously enough.  A person who we
are assume to be Dr. Robotnik (because he is called "Julian, Son of Ivo")
is running from two humans on hovercycles.  You can hardly tell WHO the
fat man is, thanks to a pair of sunglasses (out during a stormy night, in
the middle of the forest, no less) and a mustache that makes you think
that Julian is suddenly going to say, "We don' need no steenkeng guns!"
	Now, as improbable as the prospect that the fat doctor is
outrunning these two guys is that the doctor has somehow squeezed
himself into a skintight gray uniform that has a pocket that is smashing a
pencil and a pen into (don't look kiddies) Julian's chest so tight as to
leave permenant marks on him.
	So, the doctor mumbles some stuff out miscalculating and falls,
face first, into a puddle of mud.  Somehow, the humans on the hovercycles
pass right by him (believe me, they could have seen him if their lives
were really on the line).
	Someone call Warner Brothers by the way, because they might have a
lawsuit to deal out.  The humans chasing Julian/Robotnik call each other
by name, "Londo" and "Jakkar".  I don't know how many of you out there
watch Babylon 5, but Londo and G'kar are alien ambassadors that are
normally at odds with each other.  At least the Archie editors could have
seen to it that either both names were spelled right, or spelled wrong!
	So, on to page 2, where it seems that even though the humans
couldn't find the two or three feet of flabby body sticking up out of the
mud, two Mobian hedgehogs just happen along and DO see the doctor.  They
help him out of the puddle and (somehow) into the sidecar of a Mobian
sized (or, at least, one would like to THINK it was) motorcycle sidecar.
	They take the human to the King, where Julian starts spilling his
guts (and quite a gut, too!) in the added precence of Warlord Kodos (who
should have gotten a bigger part) and what looks to be a fourteen
(plus/minus two) year old Geoffry St. John.
	The King automatically decides to trust this "Overlander" and even
sets Julian up as Warlord over the Acorn Kingdom's troops.  Charles and
Jules, the two hedgehogs who helped Julian in the forest (and who look
AWFULLY familiar, hint hint), appear to be fighting in the Great War as
well, even though Chuck is primarily a scientist.  Jules . . . well, we
don't know what he does just yet.
	URK!  What the hey is this?  You know, for the longest time (and,
as a matter of fact, it stands this way in the Sonic fiction I write
myself), I believed that the Great War was a war between what I called the
Greater and the Lesser Mobian Continents.  Acorn Kingdom ruled the entire
world benevolently, when there was an uprising on the Lesser Conitinent.
Very simple idea, global war, Mobian against Mobian, fighting for
domination.  But what is the Great War instead?  A friggin' RACE WAR!
Furry vs. Human, Mobian vs. Overlander.  That's it.  There's no mention
that they are fighting for dominance over land, or for money, or for
revenge, or for any other thing that they could pick . . . but a race war!
What kind of message is that going to get across to the children who read
this comic?
	And, finally, a shot of Robotnik in his upright sleeping chamber.
Seemingly, Robotnik has been dreaming all of this flashback, and according
to a SWATbot, he's been enjoying it.  If I were Robotnik, I don't think
I would've enjoyed the part where I run through the forest wearing a gray
jumpsuit, in the middle of the pouring rain, being shot at with lasers by
two guys who faces we don't see and, by the way they talk about the
Minister, we'll never see again unless they're mounted on the Minister's
wall.
	Overall, these first three pages of the comic are a bunch of
useless information.  They had to cut the comic's size in the first place
from fourty pages to its normal, every-month allotment, so why put in this
flashback that has nothing to do with the EndGame arc?  I liked the art
(except for Julian, who obviously dyes his mustache from black to orange
now), and the writing wasn't all that bad, but it could've waited until at
least the next friggin' issue!  As Dan Drazen put it in his review of this
same comic, "The sequence served about as much purpose (in this context)
as would a scene of Bunnie dropping her top and flashing her hoo-ha's:
maybe it's something a number of fans would like to see, but what business
doest it have HERE?"
	You da man, Dan.

	PAGES 4-6 --------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Gallagher	Artists:  Galan & Pepoy

	And finally, we get back to the EndGame plot.  Sonic and St. John
are both trying to get Knuckles to join their side.  Knux naturally
chooses against Sonic, even though to the best of my knowledge, Knux and
St. John have never met before and the echidna would have no way to know
if the skunk is lying or not.  Of course, having Knuckles attack him gives
Sonic the perfect chance to -
	- get caught?!?  For some odd reason, Sonic doesn't continue to
run away from them, but stops at a tree to taunt Knux and St. John!  Espio
reaches from his hiding place and grabs the hedgehog by the arms.  BY THE
ARMS, now.  Sonic's feet are still free and in working order, so why
doesn't he just blaze off with Espio in tow?
	Oh, well, it's a good thing then that Dulcy (who was knocked out
in issue #49 by Knuckles, which begs the question, just how strong of a
punch has he got?) jumps in to the rescue.  She runs off some shpiel about
how dragons can't lie and they can sense the truth in others and she can
tell that Sonic speaks the truth.  Just as quickly as Knuckles took St.
John at his word, he does the same with Dulcy!  St. John, too, takes the
dragon's word as gospel and they decide to go take on their real enemy.
What a bunch of fickle Freedom Fighters!
	*THWAM THWAM THWAM*  Sorry, that was the sound of me beating my
head up against my computer's screen.  This page contains what HAS to be
the absolute worst piece of writing in the entire book!  In the last panel
of page 6, Dulcy turns to Sonic and says (get this), "I don't think I'll
fit in a plane, Sonic . . . "  She's a dragon!  FLY for Pete's sake!
Knuckles didn't hit her wings when he punched her out earlier!  She's
fine; toss her off the edge and watch her flap!  If she flew there, she
can fly back, I'm sure!

	PAGES 7-9 --------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Gallagher	Artists:  Ortega & Thomas

	"We will take your biological and technological distinctiveness
and make it our own.  Resistance is futile."
	"You will all be roboticized.  Escape is impossible."
	Heh, the attack of the ComBorg!  Run!  =]  Actually, I don't know
if Gallagher meant for it to sound this way, but after reading other
stories written by him, I think he might just have.
	Okay, let's see, here we return to Knothole Village, with all of
the Freedom Fighters being led to certain roboticization.  Except . . .
oops!  Somewhere in the shuffle, the ComBots have lost Tails and Rotor . .
. strange since they were among the very first few that were captured.
But Tails says that "The Freedom Fighters have done the impossible
before!", and it obviously holds true, especially when we aren't watching!
	And so, Tails and Rotor run for their water vehicles (the Sea Fox
and the Bathysphere) only to find them smashed and Drago waiting with some
ComBots.
	This page, overall seems to serve no purpose to furthering the
story, and probably should have been cut to be replaced with an
explanation for the prison camp uprising that is shown on the next page!
Last issue, everything seemed to be running smoothly for CrocBot, then a
rebellion without the benifit of an explanation as to who it was who
escaped and let the rest of the prisoners free!
	Robotnik seems overly unimpressed by all of this, however.  He
only worries about the ore that is supposed to come in from Downunda, and
after finding that it will make its way to him, he cackles on for a bit
about his Ultimate Annihilator.  Then, doh dee dum, it's off to the sleep
chamber again for some well-deserved (yah, right) rest.
	Someone needs to get their 'bots straight.  When Drago captured
Rotor and Tails down in the underground caverns, he had a bunch of ComBots
with him.  However, he has now traded them off for some old clunker
SWATbots!  When was the decision to do this made?
	But, anyway, . . . Sonic, St. John, and Kunckles come gliding in
to the rescue via parachutes and dreadlocks.  They came just in time, too,
for -

	PAGES 10-11 ------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Bollers	Artists:  Maxwell & Eklund

	- the absolute worst work I've ever seen from Maxwell!  Let's see,
to the chant of "FIGHT!  FREEDOM!", we have:
	Tails having a hernia from lifting a smiling turtle that is surely
no bigger than the fox himself, and who has been saved by the other
Freedom Fighters about a hundred times before, anyway.
	Sonic jumping out of the way of . . . . of something.  I can only
guess it's a cloaked ComBot that we can't see.  I tell you one thing, the
drawing of that invisible ComBot is the best art in this entire panel!
	Knuckles smashing a *perfectly round hole* in the middle of a
SWATbot.  I guess Robotnik has recently started buying gag break-away
SWATbots or something.
	St. John swinging his parachute (which, like the hole in the
SWATbot, is perfectly round) around a ComBot, who has ripped a whole
SIDEWAYS through the 'chute.
	And Fleming, led by a Tasmanian Devil, try to see if he can fly.
	Alright, bad art . . . no problem, right?  There's certainly some
good writing to make up for it, right?
	Wrong.  For some reason, Sonic picks Drago out of the crowd and
runs after the wolf.  There is no way that Sonic could have known that
Drago was the traitor, unless St. John told him, and St. John didn't know
it himself!

	PAGES 12-13 ------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Bollers	Artists:  Manak & Eklund

	"Oh, no!  He's catching up!  He catching--"  Try putting a very
large DUH right after this sentence, and then go back and put one after
everthing else Drago has said before this!  It's fun!
	Jeez, of COURSE he's cathing up, Drago, you dimbulb!  He can run
faster than sound and even something better than the speed of light at
times!  Did you think he WASN'T going to catch you eventually?
	But, then again, ol' blue boy didn't HAVE to catch up.  Hershey
(who throws straighter than any baseball pitcher I've seen), lands a rock
across the back of Drago's noggin.
	So, after a few teary-eyed scenes with Hershey and Sonic, the
hedgehog lets the cat off with a "You never mind that".  Agh!  Even if she
was not truly guilty of Sally's death, she should at least be locked up
for a month for the crime of criminal stupidity!  How in the world did
Drago persuade her that Snively was the one out on that rope?  Snively
lived in the city, for Pete's sake, if he wanted to go to the bottom
floor, he'd take the elevator!  Plus the fact that he convinced her to
wear that doofy looking Sonic suit!  What was she thinking?  Or better
yet, was she thinking at all?
	Ah, jeez, it's amazing that they finally crank up the coolness
factor on Robotnik (he gets a lot of snazzy lines in the EndGame arc, like
a few of them on this page), just so he can get killed in just a few
pages.  He's the guy you love to hate, and he should've had lines like
this a long time ago, so I grudginly say that I'd like the fat boy back,
if they'd only continue to write him as a complete smart ass.
	This page also features one of the few panels that are drawn well
in this issue.  The last panel of page 13 has only one problem (his nose
is slightly off-center), but otherwise it is an excellent close up of
Robotnik.  I've always liked it when his eyes are drawn black with red
mottles instead of the usual black eyeball with red pupils.

	PAGES 14-15 ------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Bollers	Artists:  Penders & Eklund

	Bunnie says that she and Antoine were smuggled out of Downunda . .
. and that's about all the explanation we get for what they're doing back
in Robotropolis.  Last I remember, they were stuck up on a wall, and
Bunnie had a contraption on that kept her from using her robotic limbs
because it would set off an explosive collar on Antoine!  Why go to all
this trouble if they're just going to end up back where they started in
the next issue with only a one panel explanation of why?
	Robotnik takes a seat in his command chair (which is, by the way,
a nice translation of his command chair from the cancelled Saturday
morning Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon that used to show on ABC), and Snively
tells him that Sonic is approaching.  "After all we've done, he STILL
won't give up!" says Snively.  Well, actually, Sonic fixed what they'd
done to him (framed him for Sally's death and taken over Knothole
Village), excepting Sally's death itself, and that would probably drive
him even more to destroy Robotnik (which it does)!
	So, what does Robotnik do?  He shoots missles at Sonic.  Did
dreaming up and making the Ultimate Annihilator totally drain ol' fat
boy's imagination?  Surely he could have figured out something a LITTLE
more exciting (and original) (and effective) than just shooting some
missles at the hedgehog!
	Sonic thinks to himself, "If I modulate the frequency of my speed
while I run real fast . . . I should be able to create after-images of
myself!"  The missles are fooled and chase after the after-images.  Nice
plan, and it worked and all, . . . but why doesn't Sonic just OUT-RUN the
missles?  He could just speed in between two of them (surely they can't
turn fast enough to hit him) then make them follow him until they crash
into Robotnik's command tower.

	PAGES 16-18 ------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Taylor		Artists:  Maxwell & Mercadoocasio

	Sonic bursts into the command tower with cables wrapped around him
attached to two robot hands that he's dragging along behind him.  Where
did these hands come from, you ask?  Good question.  All that I can figure
is that the fight that Sonic severed these hands in was part of the story
that got cut when the page allotment was cut.  Instead of cutting this
fight, however, they SHOULD have cut the beginning dream sequence so we'd
understand exactly WHERE these hands came from.  The story would not have
lost anything, and would have, in fact, GAINED a little bit of coherence.
	Sonic drags on until he meets up with Snively (in his brand new
battle suit, natch) and gives him a good thrashing with the robot hands
and with his feet.  After kicking Snively into what I must assume is
either a garbage chute or the hole in the plot, Sonic runs into Bunnie and
Antoine who tell him they have planted a bomb in the Ultimate Annihilator.
	Sonic, being the good little comic book hero that he is, sends
them off to Knothole and bravely (or stupidly, I can't really tell which)
runs in to face Robotnik (or Julian, since Sonic calls him that) with
immenint destruction coming from A) the Ultimate Annihilator, B) the bomb
in the Ultimate Annihilator, and C) Robotnik himself.  Does anyone else
see a problem here?
	Ah . . . but when they face off, Robotnik tells Sonic that he has
already nullified his "friends' vain attempt", meaning that Bunnie and
Antoine's prescence there really served no purpose, just as their
prescence in Downunda served no purpose!  Were these scenes just added in
to make sure those two got some time in the story arc at ALL?
	Robotnik threatens Sonic, and Sonic snaps back with this witty
rejoiner:  "It's not going to happen -- it's just NOT going to happen!"
Maybe he needs to go back to witty repartee school, because this is NOT
the Sonic and Hedgehog we all know and love.  They've been doing this
gradual darkening of Sonic's character for a while, and I don't really
like it that much.  Sure, Sonic has gone through some rough times, and
sure he can be in a mood every once in a while, but he's still going to
jump into a fight with a witty remark on his lips and a grin on his face!
	Hurm . . . then Robotnik says that "this relatively confined space
prevents you from making optimum use of your SPEED--", but in the next few
pages, it would appear that he uses his speed quite a lot!  Obiviously,
there wasn't that much communication not only from writer to writer and
artist to artist, but from writer to artist, either!
	Well, on to the fight scene . . . 

	PAGES 19-21 ------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Taylor		Artists:  Spaziante & Mercadoocasio

	Robotnik slaps Sonic away and tells him that he has made a
strategic error that costs the lives of everyone in Knothole Village.  Er,
how?  Robuttnik was going to kill them all anyway!  Sonic attacking him
had nothing to do with it!
	But this doesn't matter to Sonic, who cracks Robotnik a good one
across the jaw.  As Robo-breath pulls himself from the wreckage, the
computer informs them that the Ultimate Annihilator will release a flash
of energy that will destroy the war room.  The two combantants feel they
have nothing left to lose, so they get into a bunch of confusing and not
very well drawn fight scenes.  The only actual well drawn scene (and,
suprisingly, what I think is the best in the entire book) is the very last
one on page 21, where Sonic is standing on Robotnik's stomach and
preparing to knock those silly little robotic ears off.
	Overall, this part of the book makes the least sense.  Bad drawing
coupled with bad rationalizations of what the two of them are doing is not
made up for by a couple of good panels and lines.  I really expected more
from Spaz and Harvo . . . .

	PAGES 22-26 -----------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Penders	Artists:  Mawhinney & Koslowski

	What looks like a Power Ring surrounds Sonic and pulls him through
the Annihilator's energy unscathed.  It's said later that the beam had
been reset to only affect Robotnik's organic pattern, but it looks more
like Sonic's billionth ring is what pulled him through this one (they
should probably use the Power Ring aura thing more, I think).
	He then passes out, and is found by the Freedom Fighters later.
He wakes up in a hospital bed (well, *A* bed, anyway . . . the Knothole
hospital seems to have gone under radical reconstructive surgery since
issue #43).  Sonic sits up and screams "But I SAW Knothole DESTROYED!"
Er, funny thing, but *I* didn't see it?  Did any of you?  The Annihilator
had been destroyed in an internalized explosion of energy, so just how did
it manage to get a shot off at Knothole?
	Don't worry, though . . . Rotor will be able to explain it to us!
Right?  Er, nope, doesn't look like it.  All he does is rattle off some
techno-babble about how Knothole Village was displaced three hours into
the future, but he gives no explanation as to WHY or HOW.  He does mention
that lots of zones were created by Robotnik's device (a side effect that
Robotnik should have looked into long before he actually tried to use his
machine), so that ought to keep the writers busy for a while before they
actually come up with an explanation for everything that's happened in
this issue.
	Doctor Quack then goes into the reasons why he betrayed king,
crown, and country.  It seems that Robotnik detected the Neutron Chip
located in his Dream Watcher (as seen in issue #43) and followed it
directly to Quack's doorstep.  His family is taken hostage and Quack is
forced to work on the Ultimate Annihilator and to do all the other mean
and nasty stuff he does (fake Sally's death, pretend that the fake King is
the real one, etc.).  While working on the Annihilator, Quack sees Snively
working on the Neutron Eradicator (the same thing?  Ya got me), setting it
to only affect Robotnik's organic pattern.  Dr. Quack kept his bill shut,
hoping that Robotnik would be Annihilated (or Eradicated, whatever).
	He then tells Sonic that Sally is (gasp!) alive!  He's been
keeping her in a stasis chamber disguised as her memorial grave.  Sonic
immediately rushes out to the chamber and opens it.  In an scene that
seemed to make the biggest effort I've ever seen NOT to move its readers
to tears, Sonic lightly pecks Sally on the cheek and says, "I love you,
Sally!  Please come back."  Lo and Behold, Sally rises from the dead after
that lukewarm kiss and asks Sonic to repeat himself.
	ARGH!  What was all of this?  Sally's "death" seems to have just
been a reason to get Sonic framed and all riled up!  They could have done
ANY NUMBER OF THINGS to do this!  But, since they went ahead with it, they
could have at least made her waking scene a LITTLE bit better than that!
	Okay, okay . . . calm down . . . I realize that the people at
SEGA! Enterprises are the ones that slapped any attempt that Ken made to
do this scene right down, so I fully blame them!  Jeez, even the people at
Disney allowed the big kissing scene at the end of Snow White (which the
scene in the comic seems to have been lifted almost entirely from).  And,
striking even closer to home, the makers of the Saturday morning StH
cartoon on ABC were allowed to have Sonic and Sally do a big tonsil
wrestling scene at the end of the "Doomsday" episode!  What's the
difference if one is a comic book and the other is a cartoon?

	PAGE 27 ----------------------------------------------------------

	Writer:  Penders	Artists:  Spaziante & Penders

	Speaking of lukewarm love, the way that Sonic and Sally are
holding each other at arm's length makes me wonder where the chaperone is
hiding.
	This page is dedicated to showing all of the loose ends which were
tied up (pfft, yah, right) and let's us sit and wonder for thirty more
days what happened to Snively.  My guess:  he crawls out of the hole in
the plot that Sonic shoved him through, brushes himself off, and says,
"Mymymy, that was horrid.  Well, off to Disneyland, then . . . I hear they
have a job open for whining evil sidekicks."

	PARTING SHOTS ----------------------------------------------------

	Er . . . I think they should've scrapped the EndGame project
half-way through, given everyone who had bought an EndGame book a full
refund, and started fresh from somewhere around issue #44 or so.  This
story arc has been filled with nothing but incoherencies (both in the
writing AND in the artistry) from start to finish, and it's probably set
up a lot more to come on down the road.
	But, of course, we won't be seeing any refunds anytime soon, I
expect.  The almighty SEGA! spoke to Archie, then the almost almighty
Archie spoke to Ken Penders.  Ken's creative style was probably hampered
by their decisions (like cutting the page allotment, making him downgrade
the Princess's waking scene, etc.), and it's really a shame.  Well, maybe
things can only go up from here . . . personally I'd really like to see
the old style of Sonic stories (each comic being its own stand alone
story) instead of these expansive story lines with confusing (and often
not resolved) sub-plots that pop up and disappear faster than the bubble
messages on Pop-Up Video on VH-1.
	Will those days ever return?  I sure hope so, for the sake of
Archie and of Sonic fandom everywhere.

	Well, that's it . . . my first review of a Sonic comic.  Any
feedback should be sent to me at  . . . and remember,
I like to hear from people who can spell!  =]

		Roland Lowery (a.k.a. Jim Doe>
			

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