“I think you broke it, Amy.”
Sonic The Hedgehog #79
Archie Comic Publications (February, 2000)
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
EDITOR/STORY OUTLINE: J.F. Gabrie
“Discovery”
WRITER: Karl Bollers
PENCILER: Fry
INKER: Andrew Pepoy
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
Knuckles: “The Chaos Factor”
WRITER: Ken Penders
PENCILER: Steve Butler
INKER: Pam Eklund
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
Tales Of The Great War: “Life Under-Ground”
WRITER: Ken Penders
PENCILER: Chris Allan
INKER: Jim Amash
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
The first two tales are to get this comic ready to adapt Sonic Adventure, the first game in the subseries, which was coming out around this time. On the Freedom Fighters’ side, Nate learns that Robo-Robotnik has uncovered the location of the “Hidden City Of The Ancients”, and the Freedom Fighters prepare to beat him there to protect the ancient lands. Amy Rose, who hasn’t had Tails’ experience as a Freedom Fighter (having been introduced to the series as a Sonic fangirl, trying to get the early game character in there somehow while they used the syndicated and SatAM cast), is told she is too young to go along. Meanwhile, Elias has learned that the Queen’s condition is getting worse, the King hiding this from his kids during this current crisis. Believing the magical Ring Of Acorns, which I must have missed or forgotten the introduction for, might help, but Amy has gotten to it first.
I know what’s coming and it makes Amy look bad and…we’ll get to it next issue. Like I said, I don’t remember this being introduced but there have been a lot of magic artifacts tossed in there since the sword and crown were introduced so it might have slipped my mind. This story is pure set-up as they try to reconcile the game’s story into the modified DIC inspired continuity that the Archie comics have been using. What Amy Rose is doing plays into that as well as Nate finding this ancient city, where from what I know of the games it was just a normal city in the Sonic Adventure continuity.
As for the Knuckles side of the story, Robo-Robotnik goes after his real target, a black crystal that contains the water monster Chaos, the threat from the game. He learns that he needs the Chaos Emerald shards to unlock it, and manages to take the Floating Island’s gem, learning about Enchidnaopolis, which his predecessor never learned about. Knuckles awakens to the Floating Island no longer floating, and since a normal island is usually attached to the underwater ground instead of floating on the water, it’s in trouble. This sets up Chaos and Knuckles’ role in the Sonic Adventure game, but I don’t know why this couldn’t have been done in his own comic…oh, that series is done? Did I miss the announcement in the last issue?
We step back for the final story in the “Tales Of The Great War” back-up, as original Robotnik uses Jules to roboticize Verne when she uncovers him and Snively testing their “new toy”. Later, Jules is restored to free will by Chuck, and later Verne joins them, and they agree to keep their restoration a secret from Sonic for the duration of the war with Robotnik. In the near-present, Jules has a disk that may tell more of the story, but without Chuck there may not be a way to decode it. It’s a decent end to this storyline, and makes it worse that the Penders fiasco will ruin so much of this continuity.
Overall, this is mostly setting up the adaptation, trying to reconcile two continuities to do so. They might have been better off with a miniseries or graphic novel set in the game’s actual continuity rather than play this game, but they’re trying to work with what they have and “a” for effort. We’ll see how that works in the upcoming issues.
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