ARCHIESONIC 101, MODULE 2: AN ONGOING NARRATIVE? IN MY SONIC COMICS?
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #23
TIMELINE: 3235 (1 YEAR AFTER SONIC #1)
Welcome back to ArchieSonic 101, my friends! One of the most fun relationships in the Sonic the Hedgehog mythos (in my opinion at least) is that of Sonic and Robotnik/Eggman. With the fierce rivalry and animosity between them, some of the most memorable moments across the franchise have been when the two of them were forced to team up against a greater threat. There’s the desperate rush to save the planet in Sonic Adventure 2, of course, as well as several team ups across the comics and games where they were trying to stop the Zeti from wiping out the planet. Much later in this very comic series Sonic and Eggman will call a truce to team up against Enerjak, and of course we had their team up just a few issues ago against Robo-Robotnik. So what incredibly powerful villain will they be joining forces against this time?
…ah. Interesting. Well, let’s have a look at the story, shall we?
I agree with Snively, that was a decent line from Robotnik. It would have been even if his aim didn’t suck.
Well that came out of nowhere!
Heh, “friends in high places.” I liked that one. Angelo’s on a roll with this story!
I believe this is the first appearance of aliens in this series? It certainly won’t be the last - even if you ignore the Black Arms and the Wisps, which are canon immigrants from the games, there are plenty of other alien races who will be popping up in future issues.
I like the detail of Robotnik having the exact same grin as on his book cover, just to prove that he was the writer and it’s a genuine, authentic product. If he really wanted a stamp of authenticity though, he should have gotten it approved by Oprah’s Book Club.
I think a lot of people in this situation would have said, “Oh, you want to kill the tyrannical dictator who enslaved our families and turned them into mindless robots? Awesome, can I buy you a beer?” Not these guys though. While I admire their compassion for others, I don’t know that it was the smart move here.
Well, there are worse places to be trapped, I guess. Unless you’re Robotnik, in which case this is like the ultimate nightmare.
Putting my amusement over the oath aside, Robotnik is accepted into the Freedom Fighters very easily. When other people sign up to join the Freedom Fighters, they have to go through a much more difficult training program. Amy Rose is an example of this - she wasn’t officially invited to become a Freedom Fighter until after proving herself in battle, and even after that she still underwent a lot of training. There’s another character who we haven’t met yet who also decided she wanted to be a Freedom Fighter, but after trying the training decided it wasn’t the right fit for her. And then of course at the time this issue came out, Princess Sally’s own mini series was in full swing. We’ll be getting to that after this issue, but without going into too much detail, several new characters are introduced in that mini-series who are also in training to become Freedom Fighters.
Anyway, I may have ranted a bit too long here. The point I’m getting at is that of all people, Dr. Robotnik is indoctrinated into the Freedom Fighters with no question of his loyalty and no testing of his capabilities. Now I know that Sonic was mostly just saying this as a joke and to get under Robotnik’s skin, and also potentially in the hopes of just getting Robotnik to cooperate with them so that they could stop worrying about him and concentrate on the main threat of Carheem. It’s a bit of a contrast between what was going on in Sally’s minis at the same time, but again, this is probably something I’m thinking too hard about.
Well it’s good to see that Sonic doesn’t just automatically trust Robotnik now that he’s supposedly a Freedom Fighter. Let’s be honest, they probably are expecting a double-cross, but it’s probably better to have Robotnik at least pretending to cooperate so that they can keep an eye on him.
Who Murdered Sonic the Hedgehog? Good thing we have ace detective Tails here to crack the case. If only famous investigative reporter Amy Rose was here too, but she hasn’t actually been introduced yet. She’s coming soon though!
Are you honestly telling me Rotor couldn’t have built this by himself? I see no reason why Robotnik had to be involved in its construction, aside from keeping up the charade of being a Freedom Fighter. For that matter, how did they manage to build this thing without Carheem noticing? I guess they must have waited until he’d fallen asleep or something.
Rotor is being entirely too modest - I bet he could figure out how to pilot this entire ship back to Mobius with no problems. He’d either direct his friends in pushing the right buttons or rig up a complicated pulley system to do it himself.
Also, the imagery of Snively being smothered by Tails is extremely funny to me.
I would say they have ants in their pants, but none of them actually wear pants…
The next few pages are just showing the winners of the contest from back in issue 14. Fun, but nothing that we really need to focus on.
Now we’re getting into the really good stuff. Angelo Decesare and Dave Manak pulled double duty on this issue, doing both the cover story and the backup story. And honestly? This one is probably my favourite Decesare story!
So at first glance this seems like a typical, “Haha, cowardly Antoine being funny comic relief,” story, but there’s a bit more than that here. Antoine is clearly terrified of the idea of going anywhere near Robotropolis, and yet he quickly puts that aside in favour of satisfying his own pride and ego, as well as impressing Tails. My God, could this be actual character development for Antoine? I think it might be!
Bunnie closing the door on Tails is pretty funny too. It reminds me of that episode of SatAM where Antoine was telling an exaggerated story of facing down Robotnik by himself to everyone, and everyone got so annoyed by his obviously fabricated exploits that they all just walked away one by one until his only remaining audience member was a captivated Tails.
Antoine’s character feels written just perfectly in this scene - I can practically hear Rob Paulsen’s voice saying these lines in my head!
It is extremely convenient that this ladder was here, running all the way up the side of the building.
Sooooo… how’s Antoine going to get back down?
Credit to Robotnik - a lot of other dictators would have just rolled over and gone back to sleep, but he hauled himself out of bed to make sure the job got done right. There was an episode of SatAM where he got out of bed to confront the Freedom Fighters too, and Sonic narrowly avoided getting roboticized that time.
I absolutely love this ending. During the entire story Antoine seemed like he had no idea he had a guardian angel watching over him, but clearly he’s smarter than we were led to believe. And what’s this, hints of a possible romance between him and Bunnie? This is adorable!
This was another fun issue - as I said earlier, I always enjoy it when Sonic and Robotnik have to work together even though Sonic knows Robotnik is likely to stab him in the back at the first opportunity. And the Antoine story was an absolute delight - the last time he got his own story was that hot air balloon one from issue 15, and that one didn’t leave an impact on me. This time it was great to see him get a win for once, considering he’s usually the designated buttmonkey/comic relief. It felt very authentic to the character as well, being (seemingly) oblivious to the danger around him.
Next time we’re going to take a little detour before we get to issue #24. It’s finally time to go back to the story we skipped in #20 and check out the prologue for the Princess Sally mini-series! Until then, class is dismissed!
