Scanning My Collection: Sonic Super Special #6 (#50 Director’s Cut)

Nowadays comic companies seem to be afraid of letting a comic series get too high in numbers. Where #1000 was originally seen as a badge of honor for a title we have creators and editors who seem to think the larger number chases off new readers despite this never being the case. I could probably go into a host of reasons why this nonsense is going on but that would go off-topic. I only bring it up because I’m currently reviewing a comic that went past #50, and there are two versions of that issue.

As I noted in today’s review of Sonic The Hedgehog #50, the comic is way too short. It’s a milestone issue with every available writer and artist getting to do something for the issue (building off of Ken Penders’ plot) and they tried to stuff it into a regular sized issue. You can even tell while reading the story that scenes were removed and it’s kind of jarring. Why wouldn’t you release this as a double-sized issue? We’d have to wait about a year for an issue of Sonic Super Special, usually a quarterly comic with extra pages and usually a stand-alone story, to finally see the full version and it turns out we missed a lot. I already did the review of the story so what I’m doing here is simply highlighting the parts that were added back in and why they shouldn’t have been removed in the first place.

I don’t think shoving all these characters in there really worked. George Peréz clearly didn’t do this one.

Sonic Super Special #6

(Sonic The Hedgehog #50 director’s cut)

Archie Comics Publications (1998)

“Endgame” part 4: “The Big Goodbye”

Already he have a change. In this comic, and listed in the Grand Comics Database, the issue title is “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. Personally I like the original one better. Sonic even says the line during the story and it is a big goodbye of someone.

PLOT: Ken Penders

WRITERS: Ken Penders, Michael Gallagher, Karl Bollers, & Kent Taylor

PENCILERS: Patrick Spaziante, Manny Galan, Nelson Ortega, Sam Maxwell, Dave Manak, Ken Penders, & Art Mawhinney

INKERS: Andrew Pepoy, Brian Thomas, Pam Eklund, Harvey Mercadoocasio, Jim Amash, Rich Koslowski, and Ken Penders

COLORIST: Karl Bollers and surprisingly not Ken Penders

LETTERER: Jeff Powell and also not Ken Penders

EDITOR: J. Freddy Gabrie

Here’s the summary from the original review:

Dulcy finally convinces our heroes they’ve been duped, so Sonic, Knuckles, and Geoffrey decide to work together to free Knothole. The Downunda Freedom Fighters manage to cause a prison uprising while helping Antoine and Bunnie sneak aboard a shipment of ore Robotnik needs to power his “Ultimate Annihilator” to be rid of Knothole once and for all, not knowing Snively has altered the machine to only destroy his uncle. Our trio manage to save Tails and Rotor from Drago and take the traitor in before Sonic confronts Robotnik. Between Snively’s sabotage and Antoine and Bunnie’s sabotage the Annihilator takes out Robotnik. With all that sorted out (except for the escaped Snively), Quack reveals that Sally is only in a coma and the coffin was actually a status chamber so she could heal. Sonic awakens Sally, but Robotnik’s device did manage to shift Knothole three hours into the future. Otherwise, all is back to normal as our heroes prepare for their new lives.

So what was removed? Well, we start with a part I only mentioned in the review section, Robonik in a sleeping tube (rather than a bed) remembering how he was running from the Overlanders (the Mobius term for humans), and found by Sonic’s dad Jules and Sonic’s Uncle Chuck before being roboticized. They bring him back to Mobotropolis where he begins spilling secrets of his people, who he clearly is on the outs with. This gets him promoted to warlord as the Overlanders and Mobians are currently at war.

“It’s fine. The readers didn’t suspect you existed.”

Nothing is changed here but in this book we see Robotnik waking up to be introduced to his test subject, an Overlander. I’m pretty sure this comic was the first appearance of humans in the comic, though I don’t have every issue. Sonic games didn’t introduce humans until years later with one of the Sonic Adventure games outside of Robotnik/Eggman, although that may also be wrong as I’m not well verse in Sonic games. I was an Atari and Nintendo kid. Also CD-I but that turned out to be a disappointment…though I maintain there are still some good games on that system and I’m going off-topic again. Robotnik tests his Ultimate Annihilator on the Overlander, who was surprised that Julian Kintobar was Ivo Robotnik. That might be a story worth telling, just how Kintobar became Robotnik and why the Overlanders wanted to kill him. If the Archie comics told that story after this I may get there unless it happened during a gap in my collection.

From there things progress the same. Dulcy convinces everyone that Sonic is innocent because dragons don’t like and can sense purity in others, including Sonic. So Sonic, Geoffrey, and Knuckles agree to work together. Meanwhile Tails and Rotor head to the Sea Fox to escape but somehow Drago found out about it and has a group of Com-Bots waiting for them. The next addition happens in Downunda, as Antoine and Bunnie manage to find a way to set off one of the explosive collars without wearing it (I assume because they aren’t blown to bits), then after being presumed blown to bits rescue the other Downudas. Together they launch an attack on Crocbot, which doubles as cover for Antoine and Bunnie to escape on the shuttle to return to their part of the world. It is a nice addition as when Robotnik calls Crocbot in the next scene we see the uprising in action.

Again things continue like in the regular issue. Our trio drop in on Drago and they free Tails and Rotor, who joins in the battle to the questionable battlecry “Fight! Freedom!”, which sounds like they’re fighting freedom if you “hear” that wrong, as Drago runs off. Then we get the worst of the omissions. Not the part where Bunnie and Antoine tap into the cargo ship’s files and learn about the Ultimate Annihilator, making me wonder why he would have that information easily accessible on the train.

Apparently Drago had to learn the hard way what happens when you mess with a cat.

No, this is back with Drago, or rather Hershey the cat. (Yes, she’s a black cat.) In the original issue we get Hershey tossing a rock at the fleeing Drago, knocking him out. Here though? She tricks him into thinking she’s switching sides to slow him down, thinking he has an escape. THEN HERSHEY BEATS THE LIVING, DEAD, AND UNDEAD SNOT OUT OF DRAGO!!! She scratches him, kicks him, flying kicks him, wales on him so fast the colorist accidentally colors her arm to his fur color, and even tries to kill him with one of those rocks. Given what he’s put her through and tricked her into doing (everyone still believes Sally is dead) it is such a cathartic moment to see him get more than a flying rock to the back of the head. It’s a beautiful moment and its absence from the original printing of this story is a mistake! Easily my favorite moment in this whole story. She needed this and it makes her redemption arc that much more satisfying. He used her love to trick her into doing an unthinkable act and paid for it. Going to the Devil’s Gulag may be the only justified punishment.

Back to what was kept: Hershey explains what happened to Sonic, who forgives her because she was duped, then heads for Robotnik. He busts through Snively…which reminds me of something. In the original comic there was a part where Snively was secretly doing a bit of sabotage to Robotnik’s new playtoy but I can’t find that scene in here. They actually took a part out, but frankly it isn’t necessary. Sonic then runs into, literally, Bunnie and Antoine, who tell Sonic about the bomb they’re planting but they don’t get a chance to explain about the Annihilator, a word I have not spelled right once this whole review–bless you, spellcheck–and unless I missed a page we get another omission. Robotnik is set to activate that word I can’t spell when Sonic breaks in…after it’s already charged. He is amazingly NOT in time to stop Knothole from being blasted but Bunnie and Antoine’s bomb causes a feedback during Sonic and Robotnik’s fight. There’s even a bit of a pause before Sonic and Robotnik have their final battle, which is a great moment and another disappointing omission from the comic we originally got.

Their world ends with them fighting. Sounds about right.

The fight continues as normal, including this really way past cool (see what I did there?) black and white drawing of Sonic and Robotnik at each other’s throats as the Annihilator blasts them. There’s also an added all white page to show how everything just went bye-bye. (I said “The Big Goodbye” was the better title.) However, Sonic manages to reform by popping out of a ring-shaped portal, making me wonder if Sonic’s ring thing somehow saved his life in this version. He recovers at Knothole and learns that due to the incomplete blast Knothole is only three hours in the future and other zones have appeared all over the planet in case there’s another game adaptation to do down the line. After learning that Quack was forced to fake the King’s recovery and Sally’s death to protect his family he rushes to the “coffin” stasis chamber and awakens Sally with a kiss in true Snow White fashion (when written properly). Our final addition, and I’m not sure if it was an omission or something they added in now that they’re a couple when this Super Special came out if memory serves, is when Sally awakens she and Sonic actually share a passionate kiss, though Sonic still tries to spin “I love you” into “I’m glad you’re okay”. This was the perfect place to finally ditch the “will they/won’t they” and just make them a couple.

The last page is still the last page here. Quack and Hershey were exonerated due to their circumstances, Drago’s going to be spending a long time in a small room, Geoffrey’s back to being secret service commander, the King is still half-crystal, and Snively is still out there because we aren’t ready to end this series and still need a villain until we come up with something better.

My review hasn’t changed from this afternoon. The original publication needed to be bonus sized for the event, the story they had, and all the contributors involved. This re-release proves that. It’s a great finale now that it’s not rushed, makes up for my personal issues with the previous issues based on personal taste, and this is the version you should be getting. Unless you want the full collection I’d just skip issue #50 and put this issue in its spot. It’s the issue #50 the conclusion to this storyline deserved.

At least he’s not kissing a human girl. Not high enough on the anthro scale. Sorry, I mean Overlander girl.