Sonic must really be thirsty. Didn’t work well for the frog.
Sonic The Hedgehog #82
Archie Comics Publications (May, 2000)
WRITER: Karl Bollers
CO-PLOTTER: Ken Penders
PENCILER: Nelson Ribeiro
INKERS: Andrew Pepoy & Jim Amash
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie
I had to research the first names because all they had in the credits were last names. I though I had all the pre-Sonic Adventure set-ups but I didn’t. This is the last one before Sonic Super Special #13, with three tales. I’ll go through them quick, but at least all the credits are for all three stories.
Night Of Chaos: Sonic is running around Station Square at night, getting use to this new place and feeling like some of his favorite comic book heroes (The Rush, Dark Bat, and Super Surfer…guess who they’re based on, though it’s pretty obvious in the panels) when he spots the police battling a water monster. Sonic manages to chase it off. It’s the shortest story, but it’s just a long fight. The story ends with Robotnik having observed the battle, calling the monster Chaos. The other stories are lead-ins and fill in lore gaps.
Door To The Past: Knuckles is exploring the ruins when he comes up on the spirit of Tikal, an Echidna from a lost tribe who once had a war with the cat people from earlier. Even Knuckles clan, annoyingly called the Knuckles Clan (even if that’s from the game or the comic, someone named the clan after the character, meaning Knuckles is just using the name of the clan…rather lazy of Locke), wasn’t enough. Tikal finds a group of creatures she can understand, calling them Chao. One of the mutated Chao tries to protect his bird relatives when Tikal’s people try to use their chaos emeralds to fight the cat people. It…ends poorly as the mutant Chao goes insane and the Echidna were forced to trap him in the diamond Robotnik got him out of. Meanwhile, Locke confronts the cats. This is the longest of the three stories.
Double-Crossed Circuits: The final story takes place during that one. E-102, the robot that grabbed Froggy, is sent into target practice against images of the Freedom Fighters, but after he witnesses the other E-100 series robots smashed by Robotnik after their failure to find emeralds in the previous story, he takes pity on Amy and the Flicky bird, and sets them free. I’m not sure why “Gamma” goes sentient here. There’s talk about forgotten memories and stuff but for the most part nothing about this is explained here. Maybe in the adaptation?
This has me still believing this would have better off with the Super Special being an adaptation of events in another zone, since the previous Sonic Super Special re-established the concept of zones as alternate universes apart from how zones are depicted in the games as just other locations. This could have been an out-of-continuity adaptation and I don’t think anyone would have minded, seeing as it would mean no attempts to bring the game into the SatAM-inspired Archie continuity. At least some of this sounds like it’s setting up the game more than reconciling the continuities outside of Locke and the Chaotix meeting with the cat kingdom. Next time we check in with Sonic we’ll see if it all worked out.
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