Story: Kent Taylor; Art: John Hebert (p1-18), Manny Galan (p19-22); Ink: Harvo (p1-18), Jim Amash (p19-22); Color: Karl Bollers; Lettering: Jeff Powell; Editorial: G-Force
     One of the pluses of writing the reviews for the Archie Comics Website is getting advanced photocopies of the black-and-white pages of the comics.  One of the DISadvantages is that they ARE in black-and-white with no hint as to what the colors might be.  So I'm in the awkward position of being able to review everything BUT Spaz's covers which I can't even see until they hit my local newsstand.  But let's get down to business.
     When the story title sounds like something you find on a slip of paper inside a cookie at a Chinese restaurant, you know you're going to have problems.  We catch up with Sonic, Knuckles and Tails (or, as Sega likes to refer to them, "the franchise") stranded on some kind of asteroid to which Mammoth Mogul banished them at the conclusion of "Twilight of the Titans" (Knuckles #9).  The asteroid, which appears to have a life of its own, decides to enact a severely restrictive immigration policy by attacking Tails.  Tails, by the way, is either fast approaching puberty or else is very off-model.  According to the promo for this story that ran in Knuckles #9, the lead-off artist, John Hebert, had worked on the "X-Men Adventures" comics.  Why am I NOT impressed?  Sonic tries his hand at fighting the asteroid at the risk of sending all three hopelessly adrift.  But quicker than you can say "Houston, we've got a problem," Athair shows up for no particular reason.  This isn't in the same league as the deus-ex-machina in Knuckles #9 because Athair just sorta floats there expecting our heroes to come to him.  Sonic then decides to counteract the erratic gravity of the zone by resorting to Mike Gallagher's First Law of Physics: If it sounds stupid, it's bound to work!  "I bet if I try my famous figure eight in reverse...this zone's mondo weirdo gravity [will give] me just enough reverse momentum to head for him."  Escaping from the asteroid by running in a clockwise figure-8 instead of a counterclockwise figure-8 sounds at least as improbable as the chances of getting any meaningful traction while trying to run on a handful of dirt tossed into the air (see "Escape From The Floating Island," Sonic #49) so OF COURSE it works!  Athair then disappears into a black hole and our three heroes follow.  If you had trouble following the action on these, the FIRST THREE PAGES, you might want to rest up before plunging into the rest of the story.  It WILL get more complicated!
     Back now to Mammoth Mogul, who has trapped Bunnie, Antoine, Geoffrey, Mighty, Constable Remington and (I assume, because he's so off-model) General Buzzcut.  Or, as Sega likes to call them, "Who?".  In a bad fashion move, MM sheds his cream-colored suit to reveal that he's wearing some kind of armour that makes him look like a fugitive from a gladiator movie.  He spells out his plans (the way ALL villians enjoy shooting their mouthes off) thusly: "The three who may have posed a threat have been banished, hopelessly lost until I retrieve them...making use of their unique abilities as the elite strike force of my new world order!" I've gone over that sentence several times.  I can't see how I could edit it down so that it's shorter and more forceful, yet it still FEELS badly overwritten.  Get used to it, though, there's a lot more of this purple prose to come.
     MM comments on how everyone else is "cowering in the shadows" even though it appears he's the one who scattered them in the first place.  Rotor (or a reasonable silhouette thereof) says: "Our friends may have proven too anxious by attempting to face Mammoth directly...."  OK, two problems here.  First, if Rotor's talking about "the franchise", they never saw MM coming and got zapped to the asteroid before the Wooly Bully materialized.  They never expressed any anxiousness to go face the face in the first place; they never even knew Mammoth Mogul was a player!
     In the second place, I know Rotor is a back-up character who doesn't appear on a regular basis, but somehow this line just doesn't fit him.  And not just because the Treknobabble content is low.  Kent Taylor has the character saying the right things and yet half the dialogue simply FEELS wrong, as in the Mammoth Mogul dialogue mentioned above.  Maybe it's just a question of style, I don't know, but this whole story reads like someone trying to write Sonic fanfic after viewing only one episode of the Saturday morning series.  He may get the words right (as when Sonic later talks about giving MM "the medieval upheaval") but the tune is somehow off.  I remember feeling this way about a jazz mass I performed with my high school choir.
     Back to the story.  M-Squared starts dishing out more nastiness to the Mobians and Floating Islanders when some spatio-temporal portal opens up back behind his shoulder and Sonic and Knuckles emerge festooned with power rings or, as MM calls them "your favored talismans."  See what I mean about the purple prose?  Mammoth then gives the two a jolt of Chaos Emerald energy that's supposed to finish them off.  However, he failed to do a count of the number of rings and the Chaos energy transforms Sonic and Knuckles into Super-Sonic and Hyper-Knuckles.  They then combine to punch Mammoth through several panels, and I DO want to give Kent Taylor credit for coming up with a clever sound effect: "KRAKA-DOOM". Unfortunately, even now MM can't help running his mouth: "I was always cognizant of their ultimate forms--without actual Chaos emeralds it should be impossible!"  C'mon, don't you think that a little TOO much dialogue?  Mammoth then spots...Athair, whom he blames for the rescue of Sonic and Knuckles.  "Your interference enabled their metamorphosis!  You have always been the unknown probability factor in my plans ... unfathomable ... uncontrollable ....but ultimately not unconquerable!"  And Justin wanted ME to dial back MY vocabulary when writing my reviews for the Website!  Anyway, Mammoth tries jolting Athair with the Chaos emerald in the head of his cane but it doesn't work.  When MM starts in on another speech about THAT, SS and HK punch him out in an attempt to get him to finally stop flappin' his lips.  That doesn't work, for MM's armour breastplate crumbles to reveal...
     Once again, I DO want to give Kent Taylor credit where it's due: he's come up with a nicely gross plot turn here.  Seems when MM was initially exposed to the burst of a Chaos Emerald (as detailed during his origins exposition back in "Don't Let The Island Hit You On The Way Down," Mecha Madness Special) he left out the detail that a portion of Chaos Emerald ended up EMBEDDED in his pachy dermis!  Nice touch, though it affords yet one more excuse for MM to make a speech.  Realizing that this might put Super- Sonic, Hyper-Knuckles and the readers to sleep, Mammoth shakes things up literally and tosses the two heroes aside.  As he again
threatens to finish them off, someone interrupts him.  Hmmm, it CAN'T be Athair because the old guy hasn't said word one the whole story.  Instead, it's a cloaked figure also festooned with power rings.  Mammoth apparently didn't watch the Oprah show about life lessons and hasn't caught on that the same behaviors yield the same results.  He gives the figure a jolt and we learns that it's...
     Time for the Fan Art and Find Your Name pages!  Katie Williamson does an excellent rendering of Lupe, and Tony Nguyen's group shot shows very strong modeling.  Anyway, it's...
     TURBO-TAILS.  Interesting side note: in my review copy (which is a black-and-white photostat of the page art before colorization), there's a marginal note next to the first panel that says: "Add balloon."  Tails isn't saying anything in that panel.  "I didn't know the kid had it in him!" Knuckles says; neither did I, to tell you the truth.  Is that a game character or was it made up for this story?  Anyay, Turbo-Tails starts beating on Mammoth, who tells Athair (who's STILL standing around doing nothing) not to gloat yet because even though Tails may be the "Chosen One" as foretold way back in "Southern Crossover" #3, he demonstrates his own god-like status by giving Sonic and Knuckles yet ANOTHER jolt of Chaos energy.
     OK, I looked at page 14 until my eyes ached.  And I have one question: WHERE DID TAILS COME UP WITH THE CHAOS SYPHON?  You remember the Chaos Syphon?  Invented by Dimitri, it was the doohickey that went haywire and turned him into Enerjak.  So where did Tails get it?  All of a sudden he's holding the thing with no clue as to its source!  Was it tucked in a pocket of his cape?  Was it materialized by Athair?  A delivery from Deus-Ex-Machina Express?  Mammoth blames the Ancient Walkers who also seem to be hanging around and saying nothing.
     As a free-for-all apparently breaks out in the middle of page 15.
     Huh?
     Yeah, I know, the page layout is one of the most confusing I've seen since Spaziante's fight sequences between Sonic and Robotnik in "The Big Goodbye" (Sonic #50).  And it doesn't help matters when we pull back to see the fight as something being watched by...
     Locke and Colonel Klink.  And even Locke can't say whether what's going on was planned by Athair or the Ancient Walkers.  He's not the only one, I got lost a couple panels back.  It was about at this point that I began to feel the way I did while watching the anime "Akira."  You get to a point where you want the thing to just END already!  But the writer has other ideas.
     Mammoth Mogul decides to act like Mammoth Mole and head underground.  Destination: the Chaos Chamber and the Chaos Emerald (with a spare) that hold up the Floating Island.  Before Turbo-Tails can use the Syphon again, he's hit with a "KRA-KOW" which should go over big with the Poles in the audience.
     Page 18 builds like a bad headache as we see the action on Haven monitors and listen to Locke and Klink doing color commentary.  "For the good of our people we act NOW!" Locke (I think) says, and with a mighty ZOOGE...
     No!...change of artists!...having an "Endgame" flashback! ....must stay calm....
     I'm OK, I'm OK.  Whew!
     We cut to an ending of sorts celebrating "a victory of sorts."  But what we see is everyone arguing about what the heck just happened.  I can relate.  What really interests me is that in all the arguing the name "Athair" never comes up.  We saw him, Mammoth Mogul saw him, I KNOW Sonic and Knuckles and Tails (now back to normal) saw him in the Zone at the beginning of the story.  So how come NOBODY mentions his name and they think the solution is some big mystery?  Well, there you have it: Kent Taylor has proven that he can master the Idiot Plot.  But like the aforementioned "Akira," it ain't over yet.
     An EST fuctionary dashes in from stage left carrying The Sword of Acorns, which MM had been using and which he'd swiped during "Battle Royal."  Knux presents it to Sally so that the Accounting Department can FINALLY close the books on "Knuckles' Quest" and segue to the "Return of the King" special.  The end?  Don't be silly.
     Mammoth Mogul may be out of the picture, but it seems Sonic and Knuckles have come down with his case of verbal diarrhea.  In some VERY wordy passages, Knuckles and Sonic talk...and talk and talk and talk...before Sonic gets on a big ol' jet airliner with the rest of the cast.  Sonic has apparently forgotten what he went through in "Running To Stand Still" (#54) and goes on about living for "the action and thrill of being on the edge" and how he wants his job description to read "Trasher of Mad Dictators."  Knuckles explains (at GREAT leangth) that his life has gotten more complicated with the changes that have come to the Island.  He also reveals that the story climaxed with the Island's Chaos Emerald, the spare, and Mammoth Mogul having become fused into one really really huge organic Chaos Emerald with Mogul (once again in a suit!) in suspended animation.  Or something.  So he takes a pass on adventuring with Sonic.  Tails, however, is willing to stick with Sonic and, in Sonic's uncharacteristic words, "grow into your mantle of savior" by embarking on "solo adventures" as a duo.
     This is NOT what I consider a happy ending, but it's about the only one Archie could seem to scrape together.  To put this turn of events in perspective, keep in mind Ken Penders' original vision for the Sonic continuity, which he was kind enough to share with the class on Archie's Website recently.  His original intent by this point was to "strike out on territory it could claim as its own."  His main point was "to turn Sonic more into a loner" (I believe at one point on the Net he compared Sonic with Luke Skywalker going off to become a Jedi knight) and having "the beautiful heroine [meet] a tragic fate" was part of the equation.  I WON'T go over THAT ground again, but it seems that "Justin...felt we needed a happy ending for Sonic #50" so the real Sally was revived (and not the replicant in Ken's original vision).  So this appears to be the point where the Sonic continuity strikes out.  Or was that a poor choice of words?
     But what REALLY makes this a tragedy is that the seeds sown earlier in "Reality Bytes" (#51) are beginning to bear fruit.  Sonic is all up for continuing to bust heads and seems to want to do so AWAY from those who had been like a family to him ever since Robotnik began his reign of terror.  All this talk of having adventures seems at odds with what happened to Sonic in "Running To Stand Still" (#54) where Rosie convinced him to "make a difference."  Apparently Sonic's ready to plead temporary maturity, and plans to make tracks instead.  As #57 will make abundantly clear, Sonic is suffering from an advanced case of the Peter Pan Syndrome.  Remember, Peter Pan was also known as "the boy who wouldn't grow up."  It's better than Sonic turning into the Mobian equivalent of The Dark Knight or a clone of one of a hundred other comic book loners (with sidekick), but make no mistake, the Saturday morning continuity is dead as far as the crowd at Archie is concerned.
     Letters: "Return of the King" and "Endgame: The Lost Episode"; Sonic #57; NiGHTS Into Dreams #2; Knuckles #10.  Letters: a fan from Karachi, Pakistan(!), asks how the King got the way he did; "Sonic" tells Nicole Foglia that he think's Sally's sweet on him (so naturally he's going to make himself scarce--you know how guys are about making commitments); Justin (or whoever wrote these replies) drops the ball big-time by saying that both Rosie AND the exceedingly feline Julayla were woodchucks--what, they don't have archival copies of the comic at the Mamaroneck office that he could check?  It's in #18, Fredster--check it out if you don't believe me.