“Can we talk about this over chili dogs?”
Sonic The Hedgehog #43
Archie Comic Publications (February, 1997)
“The Dream Zone”
WRITER: Ken Penders
PENCILER: Manny Galan & Pat Spaziante
INKER: Harvo
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
EDITOR: J. Freddy Gabrie
Dr. Quack (because he’s a duck, not because he’s a bad doctor) tries to use medical science to cure the King but he can’t even get the crystallization to stabilize. Meanwhile, the King is having flashbacks to Robotnik’s betrayal and sending him into the zone. Theorizing a connection, Quack sends Sonic into King Acorn’s dream to tell him where he really is and all of what he’s seeing now is just a dream. Sonic manages to reach him and while he isn’t cured, the condition finally stabilizes so he doesn’t further change.
This is my week for not using my review formula, isn’t it? Outside of Geoffrey St. John serving no purpose by his arrival there isn’t much to critique. This is basically a catch-up story, using the king’s condition and memories, plus Sonic telling him about the creation of the Freedom Fighters and Princess Sally, to let new readers know the backstory, including things that weren’t told in previous stories because the writers hadn’t thought of them. How much of this got screwed up by Pender’s later nonsense I really don’t know. His focus was what he did with the Echidnas more than the Sonic title but it did cause issues to the continuity as a whole since they rebooted it at the end of the Mega Man crossover, where I finally jumped ship because everything was a mess.
So what we have is a good jump-on point for new readers and an overdue filling of the gaps for more longtime readers and that’s not a bad idea. It serves a purpose there and was told well.
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