“Will someone turn off the sprinklers?”
Sonic The Hedgehog #70
Archie Comic Publications (May, 1999)
EDITOR: J. F. Gabrie
“Saving Nate Morgan”
WRITER: Karl Bollers
PENCILER: Steven Butler
INKER: Pam Eklund
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
“Statue Of Limitations”
WRITER: Paul Castigua
ARTISTS: Chris Allan & Jim Amash
COLORIST: Vickie Williams
LETTERER: Barry Grossman
Recovering from the attack, Sonic and the Freedom Fighters tell the king what’s happened. However, King Acorn officially disbands the Freedom Fighters, assigning Geoffrey St. John to Nate’s rescue. Of course Sonic gets there first in his biplane, and Elias hides among the soldiers, which is a good thing since Geoffrey and Sonic start arguing. Together they come up with a plan to free Nate and take out the fighters, but some of the bad guys get away after the mysterious satellite activator brings a cybernetic squid out to attack the heroes and capture Snively, who is rescued by Bomb. Unfortunately for Sonic, the bad guys that managed to escape get away in Sonic’s plane, which still has Crocbot’s remains aboard.
What they got right: Geoffrey is less of a jerk than he has been before, but still enough of one that this feels like the same guy. Elias is a voice of reason, and there’s some good action. Of course Sonic isn’t missing out. It’s the main story in his title, not the backup.
What they got wrong: Geoffrey, I hope you aren’t that much older than Sonic, or all those times you hit on Sally is just really creepy.
The back-up is Sonic having a dream about being surrounded by fans, but it reminds him of leaving the Sandblast Freedom Fighters and Sandblast City to the Robians still under domination in order to escape Jack and his brood. It’s nice that they remember that, but this still feels more like space filler than anything else.
What I think overall: Not a bad issue, and we’ll see where this takes the story going forward. There are clearly changes ahead for the gang…ones that led me to drop the series for a while.
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