Can’t you read the sign? No fictional guns allowed.
Knuckles The Echidna #31
Archie Comic Publications (December, 1999)
WRITER: Ken Penders
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie
“King Of The Hill” part 2, “The Thrill Of The Hunt”
PENCILER: Ken Penders
INKER: Harvey Mercadoocasio
Espio The Chameleon: “The Best Of Friends”
PENCILER: Colleen Doran
INKER: Jim Amash
In the main story, the Overlander reveals himself, but not his name. The captions call him “the Hunter”, and that’s what we’re going with. He takes Knuckles and Monk prisoner. The Hunter has been learning all he can about Knuckles and the Guardians, setting up a device that interferes with their external sensors. Threatening to go after Julie-Su if he doesn’t cooperate, he forces Knuckles to put collars on himself and Monk. If they go too far apart they’ll shock both of them. He then sets them loose so the hunt can begin.
What they got right: The Hunter is doing another “most dangerous game” scenario but that doesn’t mean the story itself can’t be interesting. He has studied his prey, so seeing how our hero gets out of this alive could prove interesting.
What they got wrong: He must be scared if he’s using Monk to handicap the hero, but did he know Monk was going to return? What was his plan before? Monk just feels like an unnecessary adversary not only this late in Knuckles’ character development but to the overall threat of the hunt.
In the back-up, Valdez tells a warped view of how he became roboticized (either through Robotnik’s messing around, being totally wrong, or somewhere inbetween–it’s not clear). The chameleon who told Espio about Valdez knew it was a trap but falsely believed that Espio could reach his friend, but now is being roboticized when she realizes her mistake. Valdez uses the threat of doing the same to the other chameleons to force Espio into revealing everything he knows about the Chaos Emerald and the Echidna, who robo-Valdez believes to be an evil in his master’s way.
So two stories in a row where the hero is threatened with innocents being hurt to push their cause. It’s a shame to see Valdez ruined like this, but he does make a good threat to our hero. Both stories also suffer from the characters looking way too long and thin, especially the first one. You’d think they’d know how to draw Sega and DIC’s style by now.
What I think overall: My final view of this story will depend on the final chapter of both adventures. There’s some strong potential but we’ll see how it finishes.
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