Hey, it worked for the Muppets and Flintstones. Not so much the Jungle Book cast.
Sonic Super Special #5
Archie Comics Publications (1998)
INKER: Jim Amash
EDITOR: J. Freddy Gabrie
“When You And I Were Young, Sally”
WRITER: Mike Gallagher
PENCILER: Manny Galan
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
“Stop…Sonic Time!”
PLOT: Tom Rolston
SCRIPT: Karl Bollers
PENCILER: Art Mawhinney
COLORIST: Ken Penders
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
Tales From The Freedom Fighters: “Total Re-Genesis”
WRITER: Karl Bollers
PENCILERS: Nelson Rebeiro, Art Mawhinney, Sam Maxwell, & John Hebert
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
The summaries and reviews are going to be shorter than the credits. The first two stories feature adventures of a younger version of the Freedom Fighters while the third is present day. Let’s run through these. No, that wasn’t a pun attempt.
The first story almost seems like an re-introduction of the main Freedom Fighters, minus Bunnie Rabbot since she wasn’t with them at the time in Archie canon. (We saw her introduction early in the comics.) Our future heroes mess around outside and learn not only can Tails fly by spinning his tails but the future location of their secret headquarters. It’s not a bad origin backstory.
The framing device for the second story is Sonic telling a group of kids how he got Tails his sneakers, except the focus is on Robotnik creating a time-freezing ray to try to take over. Pretending to be frozen, Sonic is taken with other prisoners to be roboticized but manages to destroy the machine, unfreezing everyone. The sneakers came on the black market, secretly coming from Tails’ uncle. It’s a good adventure, though the kids apparently found it a good naptime story.
The final story is sadly one of those plots I never really enjoy. You know, where each of the characters tell their side of the story but clearly inflate their own role and downplay the others? In this case we have Sally, Sonic, and Antoine telling how they defeated a Combot, with Nicole uploading the actual recording of the battle. That last one doesn’t show up in these stories enough, but once I saw the type of story it was I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. Sorry, but I’m against the plot on concept, but it does use the different pencilers to give each character’s version a unique look.
Overall though, it was a rather enjoyable comic, and one of the ones I’ll hold on to since I am holding on to a select few comics from this run. The one-shot stories like this that does something different with the “Super Special” allowances are fine in general with me.
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