“Tails, you’re a bit taller than normal.”
Sonic The Hedgehog #107
Archie Comics Publications (April, 2002)
EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie
“Crouching Hedgehog, Hidden Dragon” part 2
WRITER: Karl Bollers
PENCILER: Ron Lim
INKERS: Pam Eklund & Andrew Pepoy
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
LETTERER: Jeff Powell, with Julie Liu
Knuckles The Echidna: “Reunification” part II
WRITER/LAYOUTS/INKS: Ken Penders
PENCILER: Dawn Best
COLORIST: Robbie O’Quinn
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
Both stories suffer from the same problem: it feels like both writers are trying to rush things through to get to the stories they want to be telling right now. For example, in Sonic’s latest adventure in Station Square (pun semi-intended) a bunch of soldiers are sent with the Freedom Fighters to deal with the dragons attacking the city, but there are only two. One of them is Zan, a rather angry dragon which you want to sympathise with when the dragons tell our heroes the humans want to use the island for tests…but then there’s the other dragon. Dulcy has moved here with Zan as her mate, but she’s being beaten by her mean mate. Sonic tries to keep the peace but both sides are jerks and the soldiers bury Zan, which should be good news for Dulcy as well as the station, plus for their help Sally gets the new home for the Overlanders.
I don’t know if this is bringing Dulcy back because I really don’t remember. I don’t understand why she had to be the dragon version of a battered wife. I don’t know why the military has to be using this for testing and disrupting the dragon’s lives, giving me nobody to root for except Dulcy and Sally. This is just a terrible end to this story, and one that feels rushed.
The Knuckles story is actually worse. Knuckles has succeeded in getting everybody back to normal reality, but our mystery time traveller turns out to be Knuckles daughter, a revelation given way too fast in the story. Lien-Da now sees Knuckles as a threat to be eliminated, but the important thing to Dimitri is convincing Constable Remmington that the Dark Legion simply want to rejoin echidna society. Also, it seems like no time passed for the previously trapped echidna or the Chaotix. So whatever happened in that previous story it becomes a mild inconvenience for everyone else, speed up a time-travel subplot (not the first time that’s happened), and comes off like both writers were bored with what they were doing and sped up where they want everyone to be. It doesn’t make for a very interesting story.
Overall this was not a good issue for that reason. Don’t be so excited for the next storyline that you rush the current situation through just to get there. When I’ve seen this happen it was because the comic or run was ending and they really wanted that story out, but this series still has a lot more issues to go before resetting the Archie Sonicverse around the 250s, so I don’t see the point. It kind of weakens the whole story.
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