“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sonic Super Special #12

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Sonic Super Special #12

Archie Comics Publications (2000)

COLORISTS: Josh & Aimee Ray

EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie

“Turnabout Heroes”

WRITERS: Ken Penders & Karl Bollers

ARTISTS: James Fry & Andrew Pepoy

LETTERER: Jeff Powell

“Zone Wars: Giant Robotno”

PLOT: Dan Slott

WRITER: Karl Bollers

ARTISTS: James Fry & Nelson Ribeiro

INKER: Jim Amash

LETTERER: Vickie Williams

The first story has to be read sideways, but it isn’t the Zone Cop story. I’m not even sure it’s in continuity, though it clearly plays off it. For reasons never explained Sonic and Knuckles have ended up in each other’s bodies thanks to the team up of Robotnik and Dimitri. This could have been an interesting story but outside of Knuckles failing to glide in Sonic’s body we don’t really get to see them struggle in each other’s bodies with each other’s powers before the Chaos Emerald shifts them back to their proper bods. Robotnik is a robot (because Robo-Robotnik hadn’t shown up in the comics yet) and blows himself up after Dimitri escapes. It was a good idea, but they didn’t really do anything proper with the overused plot.

The second story, read the normal way outside of one panel, does a bit better. The Zone Cop shows up with an evil version of Sally from a Sentai universe and Sonic’s not evil friends do their take on Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (which admittedly does take a few cues from sentai as well as Western superheroes, so any points gained get taken away again) show up in his universe. The cop then recruits Sonic to another Japan-inspired universe, where his friends were accidentally mutated by a good but misguided version of Kintobar. Using a robot that resembles a cross between Eggman and Ultraman, Sonic travels to the mutated Knothole Island to find a piece of the Chaos Emerald to power their protector after using his own powers to stop a mutated Bunnie. This means fighting a version of his father, and leaving before seeing his “mother’s” reaction, since both of them have the two halves fuzed to his chest. Sonic get mad at the Zone Cop when he shows that he does understand his situation…because he is also a version of Sonic, the Zone Cop Zonic.

This is a bit more of what a multiverse story should be for. Instead of replacing something in the core dimension of a story (if not the dimension itself), it takes ideas from the main universe and tries to re-contextualize them in a new way for fun or to take a different look at characters we know. Unfortunately, that’s as far as the story goes. It’s actually kind of bland in execution, but it does make better use of the concept than the first story. It’s just the tale itself that feels like going through motions even while trying to make the concept work.

Overall it’s kind of a disappointment. It takes two almost obligatory ideas for this genre and doesn’t really get their full potential out of them. Outside of Zonic’s reveal there isn’t much here to really get invested in or feels like it will affect the series as a whole.