#stc issue 55

[samobservessonic]

I’m so sad they went with “bus-y”! They don’t know what kind of meme mileage they could’ve gotten decades later if they’d used the other spelling But anyway, not only is the SEGA Bus back for more, but Knuckles is on it now as well

[samobservessonic]

We’re back to multi-parters, with Kitching taking the reins on the main story again and Rob Corona bringing us the art. Now, we’ve seen Corona’s art before in the last Zonerunner story, but this issue in particular made me go “Ohh you did the art for a lot of the Amy stories, didn’t you?” I’ve always enjoyed Corona’s art in StC, so I’m looking forward to seeing it become more frequent soon enough

Anyway, we open with an establishing shot of Robotnik’s newest base, as two troopers are being shown in to see him

I mean, at least these two troopers have more unique designs than the ones that are usually being trotted out as special super powerful badniks of the day. Also, I guess this is how Robotnik learns that Sonic’s managed to one-up him lol

Robotnik takes this news as well as you’d expect and I assume we’ll never see those guys again. Also, look who it is! Fan fave robot Receptionik!

Elsewhere, the Freedom Fighters have left the Floating Island and returned to their travelling caravan and disguises on the surface of Mobius, where they’re tricking their way past the guards

Sonic, of course, can’t wait to bust out of his Bob Beaky disguise to get in on the action

Huh, that’s probably the most annoyed I’ve seen Porker look so far. Anyway, we get one look at Clown Tails and Fortune-Teller Amy, before they all shed their disguises to break into this badnik processing plant, where they hope to rescue some of the remaining Emerald Hill folk who weren’t around during the evacuation

We get introduced to this evil lizard guy, who seems to be running the plant. I was about to make a joke about how vacant the stares of those badniks look. But, well…

…turns out that the Freedom Fighters ditched one disguise for another one. We’ll see how that works out for them in the next issue

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Speedlines to see us out and these two were conveniently next to each other, so I’ve included them both. We’ve got what looks like a green Sonic with vampire teeth throwing Tails and another glammed up Megadroid. I love how there’s often fan art of Megadroid in these

I want to include this lovely letter about someone who wrote to Elson about drawing advice and got a kind response from him, because that’s just nice to see

[samobservessonic]

For me, this big draw in this issue is getting to see Knuckles and the Chaotix. With their truce established, a new threat is bursting through the Omni-Viewer and Vector trying to push them back isn’t making much difference

…Wait no, I’ve been a bit muddled about what’s going on here. At first I thought the Metallixes were trying to get through Omni to where the others are and Vector was trying to push them back, but it turns out they’re at another location and were trying to steal Omni, which they’ve successfully done. This is not going to be good news for the heroes

Here we get our first dialogue from Nack, who doesn’t trust Knuckles and isn’t afraid to say so. Now, I’d like to say that Nack’s inclusion here was probably confusing to anyone who knew he wasn’t in Knuckles Chaotix and were wondering what the guy from Sonic Drift is doing here. But Imma be real with you - when I was a kid, most of the kids I knew just had Mega Drives and not any of the other SEGA consoles. So while some people probably did smell a rat at Nack’s presence, many kids might’ve accepted him as part of the group and not seen his eventual betrayal coming

This shot I’m just including because it’s cool

Oh, and look who it is! We certainly have a storm coming!

Aww, you can’t silence my sassy friend the Omni-Viewer…!

In StC, Mighty is certainly not the calm warrior that he’s known to be in other adaptations. He’s not shy about his strength here and I’m sure it won’t be long before his rivalry with Espio becomes a focal point, either. But for now, he’s made it so they won’t be sneaking in. And while that might be bad for the group, it’ll be good for all the kids who want to see lots of action sequences in the next issue

[samobservessonic]

One of the last of the dwindling non-Sonic covers. I feel like this is one of those series I hear people talk about from time to time, but I don’t actually know anything about it. Looks like that SEGA Bus was still running when this came out as well

ALSO, a little note here about a slight change to my reading order: Originally, I had written down that after issue 55 I’d be reading Sonic Holiday Special 1, however, both of the stories in this issue are multi-parters that don’t conclude and I figured it’d be a bit jarring to stop in the middle of them. Given how many multi-parters running at different speeds to each other StC has, it’s hard to marry the reading order of the specials at points where all of them are concluded, but in this case, I figured that I could at least do issue 56 first and if at least one of these stories concludes, then I’ll jump across to do the holiday special after that