“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sonic The Hedgehog #78

“Okay, we clearly sent out too many party invitations.”

Sonic The Hedgehog #78

Archie Comics Publications (January, 2000)

COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo

LETTERER: Jeff Powell

EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie

Sonic: “Changes”

WRITER: Karl Bollers

PENCILER: Fry

INKER: Andrew Pepoy

Tales Of The Great War: “What Really Happened”

WRITER: Ken Penders

PENCILER: Chris Allan

INKER: Jim Amash

In our main story, Sonic is knighted and the Freedom Fighters are restored, acting as guardians for the new Kingdom Of Knothole. Elias convinces his father to get the Secret Service and Freedom Fighters to work together, and wishes he could be part of the mission to save the kingdom. Rosie convinces Mina, a girl hedgehog that is one of the rescued refugees, to help take care of kids who also lost their families in the new wave of roboticizations. Meanwhile, two ships head for Mobius while Robo-Robotnik locates a new potential power source: Chaos!

As you can guess, this leads to an adaptation of Sonic Adventure but set on Archie’s version of Mobius. Basically that’s all this story is, set-up for that adaptation and for later events, as Mina will become an important character for a while in the series. The art is decent.

In the back-up story, Jules and Verne are still around the campfire with Jeremiah, Tails, Amy Rose, and Elias. (Also, I think Antoine is there, or some other fox.) They learn from the free Robians that when Jules was injured, Chuck tried his device on him only for the now roboticized hedgehog to lose his free will. Not knowing this was the future Robotnik’s doing thanks to all the distractions with the Overlander war, Chuck turns the role of chief scientist to him. Julian’s plan to have the Mobian and Overlander rulers take one or both of themselves out of the game fails when King Acorn shows mercy to the Overlander ruler.

As an origin for Jules’ roboticization and Uncle Chuck’s fall it works, but of course it’s hard to get into the stuff Penders did knowing that’s where the run goes all wrong. Again, not a whole lot happening, but since this isn’t completely set-up at least it feels like the backstory is pushing forward.

Overall, if you can get over hindsight and wanted a breather before the next storyline this issue is serviceable. That’s the best I can say for it.