“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sonic The Hedgehog #50

“My hand is killing me. Imagine what it will do to you!”

Sonic The Hedgehog #50

Archie Comics Publications (September, 1997)

“Endgame” part 4: “The Big Goodbye”

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

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.

What they got right: Getting past creators to contribute to the 50th issue is a nice bit of tribute, though this is only #50 of the main series, as there was a miniseries first. Everything is wrapped up neatly without feeling forced.

What they got wrong: However, it was sped up. There’s a mostly unnecessary addition of Robotnik escaping the humans to be found by Charles and Sonic’s dad Julian that led to him being made King Acorn’s warlord. There isn’t enough time to show us the prison escape, and a lot of exposition is dropped near the end.

What I think overall: This really should have been double-sized, and apparently someone at Archie felt the same way. Issue #6 of the quarterly Sonic Super Special is an extended “director’s cut” version of this story. I’ll go over that in a Scanning My Collection article tonight just to get it over with.