“Come on, we’ll get these poster makers to do a real cover yet!”
Sonic X #4
Archie Comic Publications (February, 2006)
“Boisterous Bot Battle!”
WRITER: Joe Edkin
PENCILER: Tim Smith III
INKER: Andrew Peopy
COLORIST: John Ray
COVER ART: Pat “Spaz” Spaziante
COVER COLORIST: Ben Hunzeker
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
EDITOR: Mike Pellerito
Sonic, Tails, and Amy learn from Rouge that their friends are inside the robots, making it hard to attack them, even with Knuckles, Uncle Chuck, Cream, and Cheese coming to help. Eventually Tails manages to get the remote away from Eggman and Sonic frees his friends, but not before Chris fights Eggman’s control and takes over his own robot to join the heroes in the fight. Eggman escapes but everyone is safe.
What they got right: This is the first issue that felt like it could be an episode from the show. Not a very good episode mind you but in four issues I’ll accept it. The idea of using Sonic’s friends to serve as the robots’ brains isn’t a bad idea and the art still matches up with the style of the anime.
What they got wrong: Except I don’t think the robots were thought out very well. Chris’s robot has a bunch of weapons on it, Topaz (as the “long arm of the law”) has extending arms, and from there it falls apart. The President’s robots just talks a lot of political jargon and I don’t even know which ones were Sam’s and Mr. Stewart’s, not that they do a whole lot anyway. It’s like they had an idea but didn’t take time to really work with it.
What did I think overall: Points for feeling like a Sonic X type story for a change, but only on the surface. It doesn’t feel like enough thought was put into it and ultimately it’s not very good.
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