“You’re right, man. This is totally a rush.”
Super Sonic vs. Hyper Knuckles
Archie Comics Publications, Inc (1996)
COVER & TABLE OF CONTENTS ART: Patrick Spaziante
COVER INKER: Harvo
COVER COLORIST: Heroic Age
EDITOR: Scott Fulop
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
“Crash Of The Titans”
WRITER: Mike Gallagher
PENCILER: Art Mawhinney
INKER: Rich Koslowski
“Fathers & Sons”
WRITERS: Mike Kanterovich & Ken Penders
PENCILER: Ken Penders
INKER: Harvo
I thought the main story would at least follow the usual format but despite being four chapters…not really. I should have read this before last week’s comic since it takes place first. After seeing a Chaos Emerald cut in half, Knuckles is worried the one that keeps the Floating Island…well, floating could be damaged as well. Thinking the lake where Sonic gets his boosting rings may have one he decides to check it out. Of course Sonic immediately goes into fight mode just seeing him and then end up uncovering a zone with numerous rings and emeralds. After getting supercharged into Super Sonic and Hyper Knuckles their battle ends up destroying the zone. We saw in last week’s comic this has negatively affected the lake’s dispersal of Sonic’s rings.
Otherwise this is just Sonic and Knuckles fighting, then Sonic and Knuckles fighting while supercharged. Knuckles does manage to get a Chaos Emerald but at the cost of Sonic’s advantage, taken from the Sat AM show. Plus Gallagher can’t stop himself from breaking the fourth wall twice in this story.
Yep, I screwed up the pacing because this story takes place before Sonic The Hedgehog #34 and Knuckles finding the Chaotix. While continuing his search in our back-up story, Knuckles remembers his father showing him the location of the Chaos Emerald (with the “Zoot Chute” marked, which seems like a bad idea given that it leads to the chamber) before departing through a wall of energy in the “forbidden zone”. Knuckles thinks there may be a connection to Archimedes and his father since they use similar words. It’s a lot of exposition as Penders invents his own lore for the echidnas, which will lead to a lot of trouble later when he tries to take it all with him when he leave Archie.
Overall there’s not a lot happening in this story, either a big long fight or a bunch of exposition. Mostly you’re getting this for the complete story of the Archie continuity.
BW Media Spotlight 
Eh back in the days when archie Sonic was getting me into comics this was a pretty “hype” issue. I still think mecha sonic vs robo knuckles (spotty on exact title) was slightly better written but this was a blast for a kid’s first “hero brawl” comic. I can kind of see why Marvel would do it repeatedly over the years.
I think this is also pretty clearly the line (or at least, one of several making up said line) where archie Sonic moved from gag comic to more serious storytelling. As you pointed out there’s several single panel jokes in this issue that make no real sense from story logic but such won’t be around much longer.
Fun times.
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Sonic and Knuckles: Mecha Madness. I reviewed it recently.
The problem for me is that I’ve never been a fan of Michael Gallagher’s form of comedy. Check out my reviews of the ALF comics he did. Somehow it didn’t bother me as much with Mighty Mouse because it was based on the Bakshi show but with a bit more DC parody (published by Marvel) but even then I wasn’t as into it as I would have liked. Otherwise he’s a good writer but mixing the more “Looney Tunes” style humor of the weekday series and more serious elements of the SatAM series comes off with the same disjointed problem as the Weadon cut of Justice League. They just don’t work together.
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