I’m sure this won’t turn into a storyline that lasted so long I got bored waiting and then the universe was rebooted thanks to legal nonsense and YES I’M STILL BITTER!
Sonic The Hedgehog #29
Archie Comics (December, 1995)
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
LETTERER: Mindy Eisman
EDITOR: Scott Fulop
“Steel-Belted Sally”
WRITER: Angelo Decsare
PENCILER: Art Mawhinney
INKER: Rich Koslowski
Tails: “Growing Pains” part 2
WRITER: Mike Gallagher
PENCILER: Dave Manak
INKER: Harvo
The main story introduces Dulcy the dragon, a character from the ABC Saturday Morning Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon. While on patrol with Sonic, the pair force a hovercraft to crash and find a de-roboticizer with enough juice for one use. Bunnie comes up with a plan to have one of them get roboticized to infiltrate Robotnik’s base, and Sally volunteers herself. However, a device that would protect her mind gets lost and she ends up in Robotnik’s control, trapping the whole gang except Dulcy, who uses the device to restore Sally to flesh and fur so our heroes can escape.
What they got right: As a debut for Dulcy in this continuity it does quite well, showing off her abilities and her use to the team. Plus she gets to save the day. Dulcy was a good character on the show (voiced by Cree Summer) and it’s nice to see her here. It’s also interesting that the one page introduction uses the show’s backstory for Dulcy and the art style is closer to the DiC style than the usual pretty close but more cartoonish version used in the story (like one of the episodes where you know they had to have one of the back-up teams take over to meet quota).
What they got wrong: However, this isn’t a tie-in to the TV show despite so many of the SatAM cast part of this show. Beyond the debut the story itself holds no real drama. Unlike the years later storyline I mentioned in the caption for the cover scan there aren’t any real stakes on display, more inferred based on the course of events. It requires too much to get this story to happen just so Dulcy can put on a good debut. Bunnie’s plan, executed by Sally, is a dumb plan and it backfires almost immediately. While a good debut for Dulcy it’s not a very good story overall.
In the Tails back-up Tails manages to escape the roboticizer and has to fight the robot Fiona until she hits water and shorts out. Tails finds plans for a satellite operation and still wanting to prove himself to the team heads off to his miniseries.
I don’t know if Fiona is supposed to be crying or just having water drip off of her. To my knowledge (I have a huge gap in the collection when the post-war stories started getting boring or at least not to my interest) the only other Fiona we get is a real life fox girl who is actually one of the other baddies on Mobius so I don’t think we ever really find out. (Again, huge gap in the collection and it’s been years since I’ve re-read this series.) It’s odd seeing Tails apart from the gang in the main story when in this story he’s still mad at them and striking out on his own, and I think this disconnect continues while Tails has his solo miniseries. Otherwise it’s a great outing for my favorite Sonic series character. Also strange that Robotnik doesn’t waterproof his robot minions. This comic uses a hybrid of the two versions of DiC’s takes on Robotnik but even the syndicated Adventures version is smarter than that unless the plot says so.
What I think overall: It’s a good debut for Dulcy in a weak story and Tails doesn’t fare a lot better. Good for the worldbuilding and not much else.
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