No, that’s supposed to be “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive”.
Sonic The Hedgehog #31
Archie Comics Publications (February, 1998)
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
LETTERER: Mindy Eisman
EDITOR: Scott Fulop
“Robot Rides The Rails”
WRITER/PENCILER: Ken Penders
INKER: Jon D’Agostino
Knuckles: “Lost…And Found” part 1
WRITERS: Mike Kanterovich & Ken Penders
PENCILER: Ken Penders
INKER: John D’Agostino
Rotor: “Tundra Road” part 1
WRITER: Mike Gallagher
PENCILER: Art Mawhinney
INKER: Rick Koslowski
In the main story, Sally sneaks aboard a train carrying Robotnik’s newest killer robot, which can reconfigure for a given situation. She’s joined by Geoffrey St. John, whose commando unit is on a mission to destroy the robot. Later joined by Sonic the trio has to work together to bring it down. I don’t like Geoffrey St. John. He main exists to be a rival for Sally (I’m sure he’s a skunk on purpose, or that could just be my personal bias) and I only stopped hating him when he end up with someone else years later. He’s kind of obnoxious but not in the fun way this version of Sonic can be. Sadly we haven’t see the last of him but luckily his being here doesn’t mess up the story too bad. The length does that.
The Knuckles story is hardly anything. It’s two pages of recapping what happened in the previous story as the Chaotix goes missing while Archimedes watches from a secret location…and apparently can read his thoughts because Knuckles’ recap is just in thought balloons. They either should have continued this story and dropped the final tale or dropped this section period as it offers very little to the search for the Chaotix.
My choice would be the former, as while this story has promise it should have waited to be the next back-up feature. Rotor gets a call from help from his mother and little brother, and must journey home alone to investigate. Why does he have to go alone? Beats me, they don’t even try to explain it beyond “it’s something he has to do alone” without any real reason. Robotnik has turned the walruses of the frozen tundra into his hypnotised slave and after a Waterworld joke because it’s still Mike Gallagher orders them to start freezing the whole planet, killing off all non-robots. Rotor is spotted in the crowd and one of the themed Swatbots throws a club and hits him in the head, knocking him into the water. Again, this could be an interesting story with a better reason to go alone and not blocking the Chaotix storyline from continuing.
The back-up story I’d rather they do is barely utilized, the one they have has a flaw in it, and the main story makes me suffer my least favorite Freedom Fighter, not counting the odd traitor. Overall this isn’t that great an issue.
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