#david finish manak | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thankskenpenders · 2 years

Text

TKP Addendums: Sonic #2

In our second look back at an early Archie Sonic issue that I mostly skimmed over in my original coverage, it's time to answer the burning question: are Verti-Cal and Horizont-Al really that bad?

The first story of the issue starts out extremely similar to issue #1, except this time Coconuts shows up to murder poor Crabmeat. Yes, this is an AoStH-themed story! One of surprisingly few, considering the early comics were modeled after that show

Coconuts, of course, fights Sonic and Tails, and they trick him into getting blown up by his own bomb by playing monkey in the middle with him (har har). And then... Sonic delivers Coconuts' severed head to Robotnik in a box

So this is where David Fincher got the idea for Se7en

After this, Robotnik naturally calls in Scratch and Grounder. Their introductory scene truly feels right out of the show. Whether that's a good or bad thing will depend on your feelings on that show and/or old YouTube poops. I'm fond of both of those things, so I enjoy this

Antics ensue, Sonic outsmarts the duo by making them bicker with each other, and Robotnik says the line

But now... here we go. The backup story

Cal and Al

Sonic is magically transported to Cal and Al's realm by collecting a bunch of rings, which makes it seem like it MIGHT be a play on the special stages from the game. Except in two issues we're gonna see the actual half-pipe stage, so...? I dunno

And then, of course, THEY show up. So, are Verti-Cal and Horizont-Al really as bad as I thought they were back in 2014? The answer is, of course, no. I didn't truly understand the depths this series would sink to in the late '90s and early '00s. But I still don't like them

Here's a comparison I failed to make the first time around. There's a decent chance that Cal and Al were inspired by DC's Mister Mxyzptlk. For those unfamiliar, he's a funny little guy in a bowler hat with the power to bend reality who's been occasionally messing with Superman since the '40s. (Viewers of the '90s cartoon will remember him for being voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.) Visually, he's usually as out of place in Superman's world as Cal and Al are in Sonic's world, but he's basically a mercurial trickster deity. An all-powerful interdimensional prankster. And that's a fun character archetype! Q, Bill Cipher, arguably Bugs Bunny, My Little Pony's Discord (before they "redeemed" him and he--god no don't get me started on Discord). And who doesn't love Duck Amuck, or that one episode of Ed Edd n Eddy where they broke reality?

The problem is that, as far as these types of story go, Gallagher and Manak seem to have had an extremely limited imagination with this one. Cal and Al's antics only amount to stuff like this for a few pages

They live in a world made of abstract colorful backgrounds. They stand on the edges of the panels. They finish each other's sentences. They mess with the gravity. They make holes for Sonic to fall through. One panel loses its color. (Or perhaps their home zone does these things on its own, and they're simply unfazed by all of it? It's unclear.) And that's it! That's really it. It's four pages of Sonic tumbling around this abstract void as the gravity keeps shifting while Cal and Al mock his plight. The fun of these cartoon logic trickster characters like Mister Mxyzptlk and Bill Cipher and whatnot is that you never know what they're gonna do next, but Cal and Al only really have one trick and it gets boring fast. And yeah, manipulating gravity CAN be a really fun ability, but not when you're only doing it in a featureless void

The other thing, of course, is that this is only issue #2 (or #6, if you count the pilot miniseries). Believe it or not, these two were the first real Archie-exclusive Sonic characters! Ever! Think about that. These two were even introduced before Bunnie. It's SO bizarre. It's like we're only on the second issue of the full series and Gallagher is already out of ideas for what to do with the actual Sonic elements, so he's just throwing in other random things that amuse him. And he wanted these two to stick around! Sonic tries to invite them to join the Freedom Fighters, and they break the fourth wall at the end to ask the readers to write in if they want to see more. Can you imagine a version of this series where these two are regular characters?

But, again, they're not the worst thing ever. They're just kinda lame, and a weird inclusion. I WOULD say that maybe this was just a random story Gallagher put together to meet a quota, and the editor just happened to like it enough to put it in the second issue. It wouldn't be the last time something like that happened in this series. Except... they returned in a one-pager two months later, where they thanked the kids who wrote in about them. So no, it really does seem like there was a concerted effort to push Cal and Al early on

Among the bonus features we also got a short story compiling fan theories about why Tails has two tails, a question I'm still shocked the lore-obsessed Archie comics never attempted to answer. (Seriously - Penders gave us the baby microwave to explain why Knuckles has his knuckles, but Tails was spared? I can't believe it.) The suggestions here are, of course, mostly silly references

The most interesting thing to me here is that Tails suggests getting his own three-issue miniseries, and asks fans to write in if they want to see it. Yes, they were thinking about expanding Archie Sonic into a multi-book franchise this early! In the second issue of the full series!! Before Tails had even been developed as his own character! It felt ill-advised to give Tails his own book even when they actually did it over two years later, so to see this suggestion this early is truly wild to me. They were really eager to cash in on that Genesis era hype while it lasted

Also that joke with Sonic is good

Last but not least, here's somebody talking shit about "the Marios" in the Sonic-Grams

Next issue: Bunnie's debut! And some other stuff I don't care about

#StH 2 #tkp post #tkp addendums

111 notes · View notes