“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sonic The Hedgehog #86

Actually, that was Silver Sonic. This is Metal Sonic. Different guy.

Sonic The Hedgehog #86

Archie Comics Publications (September, 2000)

COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo

EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie

“Heart Of The Hedgehog” part 1: “Evil’s Return”

WRITER: Danny Fingeroth

PENICLER: Sam Maxwell

INKER: Saleem Crawford

LETTERER: Jeff Powell

Monkey Khan: “Against The Haunted Past”

WRITER/PENCILER: Frank Strom

INKER: Harvo

LETTERER: Vickie Williams

In our main story, Sonic and Tails are practice maneuvers when Metal Sonic kidnaps Tails. Now fitted with a Power Gem that increases his speed, Metal is now faster than Sonic, and taunts Sonic into racing after his friend…which he is not going to make easy.

Most of the story is just Metal showing off some gadgets and his speed, but it does a good job of showing just how in trouble Sonic is against an opponent faster than he is. Fingeroth plays off previous stories, but I’m not sure just how Metal Sonic was able to rebuild himself. That’s hard to do without hand or telekinesis or something. I’d do a normal review, but that’s all there is to discuss.

The back-up story begins with the origin of Monkey Khan, the only monkey in his village who liked fighting, since everyone else followed pacifism. That doesn’t keep them out of the war like he hoped, as the future Robotnik kidnaps his whole village to turn into a cyborg army, young Ken Khan being the only survivor. After a test involving taking down an overlander unit, Ken turns on Robotnik only to get shut down until he was released by Sonic and Sally. The story ends in the present, as Monkey Khan wakes up to Robo-Robotnik imprisoning him.

Monkey Khan has never really had a backstory, so it’s nice to see him finally get one. What is Robotnik 2’s plan? We’ll have to wait for the next issue to see.

Overall, while there isn’t much to write about because the main story is mostly action and the flashback is short, this was a good issue. These are names I’m not used to on this title (I did enjoy Fingeroth’s work on Darkhawk and it’s a shame later writers had to mess Chris Powell up so much) but they fit in pretty well, and I’ll be curious to see how these tales end.