Dec 1, 2022
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that is NOT Tikal
It’s funny how these comics often have a decidedly un-Sonic-like fixation on American comic book superheroes just because the talent pool for the first decade of the comics was mostly superhero comics folks
(also yes that first panel is sick)
So here’s the big scene with Gamma and Amy, and... yeah, I’m really disappointed with how this was handled
First of all, Beta is missing ENTIRELY from Gamma’s storyline so far. Eggman doesn’t pit Gamma and Beta against each other to see which robot is stronger. The incredibly important scene where Gamma accidentally walks in on the disassembled Beta and realizes what Eggman does to robots who fail him is also missing entirely. All we get is the part where Eggman chews out the other E-series robots and teleports them away to who knows where, which just doesn’t carry the same emotional weight. This really makes Gamma’s distrust of Eggman ring hollow
Then, in this scene, Amy’s dialogue is cut! Instead of expanding upon her pivotal role in changing Gamma’s mind, one of the most important things she does in the game’s story, they greatly reduced it!! The implication of a connection between Gamma and the bird, which is obviously very important, is also completely absent. Instead, Gamma’s decision to rebel is depicted entirely through his internal monologue. It was something he was already thinking about, even though the most traumatic stuff he had gone through at this point in the game is largely cut, and he just decides to betray Eggman because Amy starts crying and he takes pity on her
Instead of this cool moment for both of these characters, it’s just one of Eggman’s grunts deciding to switch sides after a few pages
See? This is what I mean about Penders fucking up with the colonialism stuff! The Felidae are wary of the echidnas after literally being colonized by them and going to war with them in the past, and yet the Felidae are the ones who are depicted as needlessly violent. They’re also depicted as way more “savage” and animalistic than regular Mobians, literally saying they eat their young
I hate this so much
Okay, I’ve gotta post all of this together. I know folks have been DYING to know how Penders reconciled the Knuckles Clan lore in Sonic Adventure with his WILDLY different echidna lore from the comics. Conveniently for me, instead of setting her up as the disembodied tutorial voice and then slowly unraveling the story with Tikal and Chaos over the course of all the separate storylines, Penders just has her show up and dump all the exposition to Knuckles at once
First of all, the Knuckles Clan is still called the Knuckles Clan. I’m not sure if it’s said outright later, but Knuckles is presumed to be named after them. Knuckles’ name has always really stood out as odd compared to all the Penders echidna names, so here’s our justification
However, more important here is a key difference in how the Knuckles Clan is portrayed. If echidnas have always been so super high-tech in the comics, where did these guys come from? Well, they were the “warrior caste” from a group of echidnas who left the futuristic echidna homeland of Albion. Yes, the Knuckles Clan of the comics isn’t actually FROM the Mystic Ruins. And unlike in the games, this can’t be the place where Angel Island originally took off from, because Penders said it was a chunk of Downunda. So instead, the Mystic Ruins are located in Mysterious Cat Country, and the echidnas just claimed the Felidae’s land as their own and went to war with them. And so here we see yet another example of Penders’ echidnas being horrible violent colonizers!
This is a recurring theme with the echidnas in the comics and it really, REALLY bothers me. While the Knuckles Clan is obviously painted as violent and wrong here with their attack on the Chao, as they were in the game, they’re still painted as sympathetic in their quest to take someone else’s land. They “found themselves fighting for their lives,” and the Felidae are portrayed as the attackers. The echidnas were “defending their territory.” The Felidae aren’t even treated as Mobians, instead referred to as creatures. MAYBE this will go somewhere... but with the Knuckles comics’ track record so far on racism and colonialism, I’m not holding my breath
Also, while Tikal’s design is accurate enough early on in this flashback (if you just ignore her Sonic sneakers), Penders says that this is only how she looked when she was younger. And when she’s older, she looks like every other echidna girl in these comics. Sigh
I will give credit to Penders for one thing I’m very surprised by, though: He somehow knew that Chaos was a mutated Chao! That’s a detail that didn’t even make it into the English version of the game, and most people don’t seem to know that’s Chaos’s origin
The classic “Chaos, God of Destruction” line is wisely expanded upon from the game’s script here, but I’m more amazed by the fact that the victory screen is recreated in the first panel here. I love this
Hey look! It’s the first scene in Sonic Adventure, recreated quite faithfully! And the dialogue from the English version of the game is here without it being hastily edited in in Comic Sans! This issue came out in February 2000, so I guess at that point things were SLIGHTLY less frantic behind the scenes