Archie Sonic Reboot Reviews Sonic Comic Origins: Newbie’s Perspective

Sonic Free Comic Book Day 2014 Issue:

  The cover says that all will be revealed in Sonic Comic Origins. But since this is by an uncreative writer, how could this possibly be as interesting as it looks? If this was by Penders or any other writer before Flynn, you’d be thinking, “ This could be anything! “ And it turns out that’s a complete LIE anyways, as we’ll SEE. I didn’t even bother reading the second page. It’s just a redundant wall of text.

We start out with Sonic telling Sally to get down and preventing her from being hit by a laser from a Robotnik that clearly has black cyborg eyes. He’s at least reminding me of how Robotnik tends to look. So, what was that about there being a mandate against showing us what’s beneath Eggman’s sunglasses? Because, sure, this isn’t actually Eggman, but at this point, it looks like Flynn’s allowed to break all of them because he’s Flynn. So the list of mandates I talked about seems to have had me worried for nothing because even the reboot doesn’t seem to follow them. Maybe only IDW is heavily “ restricted. “ A textbox says that this is aboard the Sky Patrol in a training simulator, as some laughter plays. A simulation? And with no mention of nanobots? Nicole can do ANYTHING. New Powers as the Plot Demands is a Bad Writing Trope. And Sonic says to Nicole that this exercise wasn’t supposed to be mentally scarring.

And Sally thanks Sonic for the save, which is obviously redundant and useless if it’s just a computer simulation in a holo-deck. At least it better all be a simulation, or Nicole would’ve just uncharacteristically risked them being actually hurt. Why would she put real lasers there? So we’re not even past the first proper page and already we’ve got another Out of Character Moment, and an Idiot Ball all rolled into one. And why is the story called “ Sally The Exiled Leader? “ She’d never be exiled. Unless this is talking about the Mecha Sally bullshit that NEVER HAPPENED in this universe.

So far the only things I like are that I love Sally’s design. I mean, it looks like she has slightly long hair, which is great because it makes her look more like a girl, but then why the fuck wasn’t she looking this way in issue 256, which I read after this before checking the timeline? Why are they even still doing training simulations at this point? How long have they been Freedom Fighting? How many times am I gonna have to ask that before I get my answer?

Wouldn’t the heroine in training, Cream, be the only one who training would make sense for? I only know this because of Issue 257, which I read early. So already things feel forced. I don’t even know what their general time in the simulation was like, because we started out In Media Res. The only thing that happened was that apparently Sally almost got hit by a laser because she was looking somewhere else for some reason.

So this was here to set up Sally reflecting back to the time where there was peace, because she knows the heroes haven’t ALWAYS done this sort of thing all the time. Couldn’t we have just started out in the past with a textbox saying it was the past? It looks like the first page was completely wasted on what can barely even qualify as a plot. Also, this has to take place chronologically after the whole memories arc, like after 257, because here, Sally’s next to Sonic, so he’s already reunited with Sally, and she’s in the Sky Patrol, so she already discovered it exists, so why was this released after 257? I’d be confused if I had read this at the right time.

  Sally’s narration from her thoughts says that growing up, you’d never know Sally’s father was a king and they laughed and played for hours on end, and she was never lonely and afraid. First of all, you WOULD know that her father was a king, because she always wore a tiara back then! Hey, I have an idea, if you wanted to redesign Sally, why didn’t you make her wear a tiara? Not to mention a skirt. I think I like her redesign and only hate the stupid shorts. I’m just saying that giving her a tiara would’ve been such an easy way to make her look more appealing. Anyways, not only did she wear a tiara, not only did her father always wear a crown, but they were famous as their kingdom’s royalty. So everyone would know her father was a king on sight.

  Even ignoring that, her dialogue is implying that being a king means that in most circumstances, they WOULDN’T be super close. I, guess that’s realistic? What about being a king would mean he wouldn’t wanna spend a lot of time with his daughter? Well, that brings me to my next point. They were able to play for hours on end. I get that this is trying to be heartwarming, but this is the king we’re talking about, wouldn’t he be too busy running the country to do this all the time? I immediately flashed back to an issue in Archie Sonic, where he explained that he usually doesn’t have time for her when he visited The Floating Island with her. So far, this issue has been a confusing waste of time. It was nice to see a bit of the castle’s flower garden, and see that she chased her father around for fun. I mean, that’s good exercise.

  Then Sally’s narration explains that she had never expected to have to lead so early, as we see a flashback where her father was holding her when she was a kid on the castle balcony. I, guess he was addressing a crowd of people, but I can’t see any.

  Then we see another flashback panel where she wakes up in Rosie’s arms at night and she tells Sally to hush because they need to hurry. So it’s gonna retread the backstory of Satam instead of being creative, right? Well I’d much rather him repeat a story that was written well than try to have a different backstory of his own and fail at it, which would make the reboot look inferior. But I still can’t help but wonder what the point is of telling us the same story again. Oh I know, it’s because he’s only writing for the people who weren’t already familiar with the Satam backstory. Those are the only people he’s catering to.

 Why’d Rosie get to save Sally instead of being captured with the king, what was she DOING that ensured she was in the right place at the right time? That’s two pages that were wasted. The only thing original about this backstory so far is that Sally wasn’t awake when Robotnik was taking over and she woke up in Rosie’s arms as she was already running out of the castle with her. That’s a pointlessly minor change.

  We’re told that not only was the king betrayed by his advisor Eggman – WHY did he make Eggman his ADVISOR? I guess because he knew Eggman was a genius and didn’t care that he was a human because he’s not racist against humans. Aren’t the humans the enemies of his kingdom? What does it take to get hired as the advisor to royalty? I doubt Eggman was part of a noble family from HIS kingdom that would explain why he was trusted. I guess he just acted nice and that’s why he trusted him. Anyways, not only had HE been banished to another universe, but so had Ixis, who had been tricked TOO. (sighs)

  And it’s called the Special Zone instead of the actual name. Guys? This isn’t creative. He just pointlessly called it a different name just because he’s biased in favor of the games. To be fair, the name for the zone in Satam was so forgettable compared to The Zone of Silence that I actually forgot it and took a paragraph to remember it. The Void doesn’t tell you anything about what it’s like, but NEITHER does the Special Zone. If you’re gonna write a concept like the king being sent into the Special Zone, why aren’t we being shown the king going through special stages? Wouldn’t that be an amusing visual gag at least? Also, Sonic always exits the Special Zone after special stages, so if it was really the Special Zone we know, the king would’ve immediately gotten out of it after going through a special stage, so it would be harmless to him, so it doesn’t even make sense to call it the Special Zone because it’s not!

I wanna know why the castle conveniently had a portal to the Special Zone JUST for Eggman to send him and the wizard away. If it was for banishing criminals, why would it be in the most important and vulnerable place in the kingdom, the castle, where it was inevitable that anyone trying to usurp the royalty would throw the royalty into it because it’s right there?! Wouldn’t the portal be in a prison somewhere for the worst of criminals in lieu of the death penalty? Maybe it WAS, I’m not being TOLD these details, but that would make SENSE. That would be smart writing actually making a genius improvement. That would require creativity by changing things up so I’m gonna assume it’s just like SatAM.

I wanna know why Eggman was able to easily banish a freaking WIZARD who would’ve mopped the FLOOR with him. Maybe he put crushed sleeping pills in Ixis’ drink, and threw him into the not-Zone of Silence when he was asleep at night. That would make SENSE! I ALSO run into the plot hole of, why didn’t Ixis take over the kingdom long before Eggman could’ve if he’s a power hungry wizard? What was he waiting for? Wouldn’t he have prevented Eggman from rising to power, then? Why did he become their mere royal wizard and happily stay that way for a long time, just to, I guess change his mind about what job he wanted to have? I guess he only became their wizard for the sake of having a job to pay the rent? And he wasn’t qualified for anything else? I’m betting THAT’LL never be explained either because even Archie didn’t tell us.

This issue sure is skimping on the vital details for an “ origin story “ that, “ tells all! “ Basically all it’s doing is telling you stuff you already know. The only new information is that he renamed the Void because he’s biased and he made Ixis going there make more sense, at least in theory, because it made a lot more sense that he’d have been banished there like in Satam, than Archie’s explanation that he went in there himself FOR NO REASON. But I can understand why Archie did that because he’s a freaking WIZARD, who would be powerful enough to get away with banishing HIM?

Well, anyone could sneak up behind him when he was standing in front of an active portal and kick him into the portal. Eggman did that to Kodos. So we should’ve been SHOWN THIS. But even then, it’d still feel contrived to me without explaining why in the world he was standing in front of an active portal in the first place. Even in Satam, I have no idea why he even went into the Void in the first place and trusted Eggman not to trap him there after he kept tormenting him by shapeshifting his head. He should’ve kept his head shapeshifted until after he’d come back from the Void, give him an incentive to let him come back. So even in Satam, it was poorly written because it was his own idiotic fault.

   I think the reason Kodos was standing in front of the active portal was because he was telling Eggman about his plan to overthrow the king with him, and Eggman stupidly sent him away for the evils instead of working with him and overthrowing the king much faster, and then having him around to roboticize. Yeah, that WAS stupid actually. He really didn’t need to be the one who banished Kodos, instead of him being banished by soldiers for trying to overthrow the king, like I always assumed. But I guess it wasn’t forced that a jerk like Eggman just impulsively did a mean thing without thinking because he didn’t wanna share power with him for a second, without considering that he could keep him around and roboticize him anyways. Why’d he think he NEEDED to take Kodos’ place?! His robots would’ve beaten the king’s military anyways, even if he hadn’t convinced him to dismantle the military.

  This story is so interesting that I wanted to talk about Archie and Satam instead. Maybe because they had more to them. They had a lot of actual information to go off of, as opposed to brief panels that barely tell you the basics. This story is for people too ignorant to know Satam’s backstory, apparently.

  I guess the excuse is that it’s from Sally’s perspective, so she only knows so much. But what’s the point of having it be only from her perspective and thus barely telling you anything?! It’d make more sense for Eggman to wanna work for Ixis, and not banish him, because then he’d have a wizard on his side. But why would Ixis put up with Eggman? Why would Ixis think he needs Eggman around? So that could be an explanation for why Eggman banished Ixis, because he knew Ixis would double-cross him, and Ixis thought they were working together, and that’s why he was surprised. But I thought Ixis was supposed to be against technology and therefore would be against Eggman. I just get the bare minimum of backstory and it just raises questions, so how is that satisfying?

  We’re shown Chuck, Rosie and Sally fleeing the castle in the night, while a textbox says that badniks took over the castle. Actual badniks? That all die in one hit? That Fleetway showed that even regular civilians can smash? Swatbots made a lot more sense because they were bipedal. So they could hold ray guns and shoot them while actually aiming in a direction other than just, immediately in front of them, because they could move their arms around. Plus, when it came to Satam, we never saw anyone easily destroying, smashing or fighting Swatbots, so it was implied that they were invincible because we weren’t shown Sonic spindashing through them. So that’s another reason why they’re much more dangerous than badniks. Why the hell weren’t we SHOWN the exact badniks that were used to overthrow the king? We could at least see Eggman earning his victory! We could at least get a proper explanation for why he earned it with mere Motobugs and Caterkillers!

  I guess he used his best badniks, like Shellcrackers and Slicers. I’m nitpicking here, ANY robots could intimidate and overthrow the royalty. I mean it’s not like we saw the royalty with guns or bodyguards with guns on them, and, we have to assume that all of Eggman’s robots are bulletproof. It’s just that robots that can stand up on two feet sound more intimidating than cute-looking robots based on animals that the king is taller than. Again, this is just Flynn’s game bias shining through because he had no logical reason to make them badniks and not the far less appealing Swatbots. I prefer badniks most of the time, but Swatbots make much more sense to use as soldiers in a legitimate ARMY.

  We’re told that they hid in the village of Knothole. So it already existed as a village at the point where they ran away from the castle. That makes more sense, actually. The people didn’t stand around having no place to actually live IN while Knothole was being built when they knew to go to a specific part of the woods in case the city was taken over. But what also makes sense is that the robots actually found Knothole when Sally was 5. Of COURSE they couldn’t hide forever.

Of course the robots would inevitably stumble into Knothole. It’s not like Knothole was hidden away from Eggman in another universe whose portal was made by a wizard. Put Knothole in The Void and have the king simply be roboticized. THERE! SIMPLER and more LOGICAL! If he was smart, he would’ve went with that! The king being sent into the void was a case of Satam trying too hard to do something surprising but it would’ve actually made sense if he was roboticized instead, but they wasted the other dimension on that NONSENSE.

  The story tries to be inspiring as Sally says that despite them all being orphans and runaways, they didn’t just give up and hide but that wouldn’t avenge the fallen, because apparently there were fallen, in a kids’ comic. And we cut ahead when she finishes up to them all being the age we know, so, fuck showing us what exact age they were when they started being heroes, apparently!

This was so pointless! If he’s telling us the backstories of the main characters, wouldn’t showing us exactly when they started Freedom Fighting be mandatory?! I’m assuming that the robots that found Knothole were destroyed by the military guarding the place. But, one, they should’ve spotted the robots long before they’d be seen just outside of Sally’s window. There would be soldiers patrolling the perimeter of Knothole constantly. If robots could get right up to a person’s window whenever they wanted, even the window of the princess, why wouldn’t everyone have gotten captured by now? Oh, they’re not gonna EXPLAIN THAT? You shouldn’t be pushing ahead explaining things that NEED to be explained right away, in an origin story! I wanted to see what happened next, but instead we pointlessly got shown the Freedom Fighters when they were older, when we already know they exist.

  Oh god, the narration says, “ We rescued my father… “ But do we actually SEE them rescuing her father? NO! Instead we see the heroes generically fighting robots and Eggman in the Eggmobile. Why did he risk his life personally confronting his enemies in the Eggmobile? He’s a dictator! Doesn’t he have a job to do? How could an origin story just casually skip PAST telling us how they saved her father in narration?! All it seems to tell us is pointless crap! We were SHOWN how they saved the king and restored their kingdom in Archie, even if it was a temporary victory because they just HAD to go back to the grim status quo for no reason. Which is only acceptable when the status quo was better. I’m assuming that we’ll be shown all this more in detail later, but why not show it NOW?

  It’s a free issue, so shouldn’t they assuming everyone would have it? So that’s not an excuse to be lazy! Why did Ixis take so long to imprison the king, to the point where Sonic just freed the king from Ixis in the first issue of the reboot? The only way it’d make sense is that they freed Ixis much later than the king, which would explain why Ixis waited for such a long time to overthrow the king, to the point where he only got taken out of the city in the first issue of the reboot.

  The narration says that the heroes foiled Eggman’s plans to conquer the world. I thought he WAS ruling the world! Most of it, anyways. She should’ve been written to say, “ the REST of the world! “ It’s not the games, can’t he remember that for two seconds?! Can’t there be an actual PLOT to keep me engaged and interested? Instead I’ve got literally nothing but plot holes and the same old shit to focus on. We’re three pages in, and a story still hasn’t actually started. Watching a bunch of flashbacks with one panel each with narration talking about it and a whole bunch of time skips in between is about as engaging as watching paint dry! Didn’t Issue 165 have the same problem?

  She at least says that she loves her life, but, doesn’t that contradict earlier? The whole reason that she started recapping all this was because she angsted about the fact that she used to live in a time of peace. She wouldn’t be angsting about a life she LOVES! He can’t even keep the continuity straight in the same issue, again. We see another flash-forward where she comes to beg her father to let her stay with the Freedom Fighters. So was this right after she rescued the king? Okay. Time skips really are narrative-damaging. You can’t be that invested in the story when it never lingers long enough on any particular “ scene. “ And when I’m not invested, I get bored.

  The king at least shows he’s a massive improvement by immediately agreeing to let Sally be a hero, because she honors her kingdom with her heroism, GO FIGURE. It’s better than him disbanding the Freedom Fighters because they’re too young again. But it did make logical SENSE that her parents were overprotective of her in Archie. She was their DAUGHTER, and the PRINCESS, and they had already been separated before.

  She really is lucky that he’s so open-minded this time and has faith in her, even after his wife DIED in this universe just because they can’t use the Penders concept of the king having a wife, but having Bunnie and Antoine dating again is A-Okay. They can’t simply create a new character to be the king’s wife who isn’t made by Penders, but they’ll create a new character to be the king just fine. From what I remember hearing, he doesn’t even have the same NAME, meaning he’s definitely not the same character. I guess because he wasn’t given a name in Satam and they can’t use preboot concepts and names anymore. Meanwhile, Lord Hood showed up JUST FINE. Maybe the name King Max was by Penders. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’ll be ready to bash his new name if it turns out to be awful. It is by a fanfiction writer, after all. It IS by a FANFICTION WRITER, after ALL.

  Well, it was nice to see Sally hug him while shedding a tear. It was more SYMPATHETIC of the king to make this decision, so it’s ultimately better writing to have him make the decision that’s sympathetic to the audience, instead of being an antagonist who proves that they never should’ve saved him from the Zone of Silence. I’m just not sure that it makes LOGICAL sense because obviously her team doesn’t NEED her to be WITH THEM. I mean, he could tell her that she can keep giving them orders from a safe distance where she couldn’t get hurt. He could have the princess protected AND let her keep being a Freedom Fighter.

  Even then, Rotor and Tails are geniuses, and even Sonic can make good plans, so she isn’t actually necessary to the team. The only thing that she was necessary for that only she was allowed to do in Satam, was be a love interest to Sonic, and she’s not allowed to do that anymore, so there goes HER unique gimmick. I mean, anybody can argue with Sonic. It wouldn’t actually matter if she at least stopped putting herself in danger. But he doesn’t even make her compromise like THAT.

  It IS better for Sally looking competent that she can keep being involved in the actual fights and danger so she could do things aside from just making plans. That would’ve been boring. Also, considering that she was JUST shown to be so close with her father that she played with him for hours, why did she feel the need to get down on one knee and bow to him here? And at the same time, she’s still calling him Daddy. She’s trying to be formal, but wouldn’t she know to call him Your Highness, then?

  Then we cut back to the present where Sally thinks that while peace was good, she’s found such great friends and wouldn’t trade it for anything. So, in the reboot universe, she only FOUND the Freedom Fighters as friends, BECAUSE she had to move to Knothole… That was what the first issue of Archie went with before it was retconned just to fit with Satam and make Sally have a closer bond with Sonic as her childhood friend. But I think they were childhood friends in the reboot anyways. We can see Antoine with her in the flashback. I did prefer the idea in Archie where they only became friends after Sally couldn’t be with the king anymore, because it makes more logical sense that she’d end up hanging out with commoners all the time only after she was forced out of the castle, considering that she had personal tutors, so she wouldn’t have had a reason to spend time with Sonic in a school or anything.

  Then she thinks that she’s found a great purpose, and she wouldn’t trade it for anything. Sonic asks Sally if she’s gonna coordinate the team, but I’m just confused again because, WHAT TEAM? I thought it was just THEM, in a training simulation. The background is extremely lazy, Jon Gray anime style art that doesn’t tell me where they are, THREE TIMES IN A ROW! Am I actually expected to take this seriously?!

She asks him since when did he ever wait for her to make a plan first. And Sonic lampshades her taking so long to come up with one. So the writer knew it was Out of Character for her to start daydreaming about the past, and did it anyways. She tells him to start dodging attacks, hypocritically accusing HIM of dodging questions when SHE did it, and she tells him to cover her while she links up with Antoine and Bunnie.

  Sonic says it’s time to squash that giant bug, and I wonder why Nicole wasn’t written to respond when Sonic had told her not to make their training simulation mentally scarring. I also remember being shocked that the words mentally scarring were in a Sonic comic that was trying to be for kids. If Sonic bothered trying to talk to Nicole, that would be because he was thinking she could hear him, so why didn’t she apologize? Is anything not forced?

  Sonic runs away from a flying machine with Robotnik’s face on it shaped like a bug as the title then changes to “ ROTOR, Exiled Inventor. “ First off, I wasn’t told why Sally was exiled, and second, Rotor was NEVER separated from Sonic! I could understand the exiled part for Sally because it’s a meta reference to the fact that she was separated from Sonic in Archie by being roboticized, and she felt bad about that in the reboot even though that wasn’t her, so it could be saying she feels bad about it, but it doesn’t reference the idea that she remembers Archie here. But Rotor was never separated from Sonic to the extent that Sally, Bunnie, and Antoine were. And he doesn’t literally get exiled by somebody in this issue. This is a stupid name theme that’s impossible to take seriously and I don’t know why they thought it was a great idea. Actually the titles are pretty ironic when you consider they were exiled from IDW, and yet Archie was where the titles were.

 Tails tells Rotor what’s clearly happening, so Rotor says that Sally must have a plan if she’s regrouping with Antoine. Why didn’t Rotor ever make an EMP device to knock out any robot or machine in one hit? Well, come to think of it, that’d affect Nicole too if she was nearby, not to mention Bunnie, so never mind. Instead he wants to get a cannon working, because a cannon was conveniently right there. Huh. That doesn’t really prepare the heroes, Nicole. I guess the legs of the machine is made of such tough metal that Sonic couldn’t damage or destroy it with spindashing at sonic speed. So they put him in a training simulation where he could do literally nothing, except save Sally because she was staring off into space and needed rescuing.

  Then Rotor thinks that while fighting badniks is tough, he’s faced tougher. Badniks? That’s not a badnik, that’s too big AND has Robotnik’s face on it. How do you get that wrong? Anyways, Rotor angsts because of his new dark and gritty backstory. He thinks that when he was little, he didn’t have much, meaning I guess he was poor because the writer doesn’t like him. And thinks that just because he’s from one of the poles, EVERYONE THERE is POOR! So he wanted to make the most of what he had, and we see him using a screwdriver even as a kid… A-Are we gonna learn how he even found out how to tinker with machines up here? No?

  And then we see his dad smack his machine away for NO REASON, even though it should be obvious to anybody that a machine would be useful and he’s lucky to have a kid who could do this, SO this writing’s forced as hell. This is worse than when Dulcy was in an abusive relationship, because Dulcy’s at least a side-character and she wasn’t related to Zan. Okay, I already heard he had an awful dad, and I came into this expecting to be more okay with it than I was because I thought it’d be interesting to see how that’d affect his personality. This is just shockingly mean-spirited and sick. This is a kid’s comic. At first I saw the panel as him literally slapping ROTOR. And it’s not like you’re giving an origin story to a villain, like Scourge or Miles, where an abusive backstory would feel NECESSARY to explain why he turned so bitter.

  This just isn’t enjoyable. Instead of giving him a loving mother like Archie had, he suddenly has a complete monster for a father, with no loving parent in sight. If this was just a way to get the audience’s sympathy and that was the only reason it was written – yeah right – then that was a very easy, cheap way to do that and wasn’t necessary, shouldn’t the writer have known that we already sympathize with Rotor? Does he not? It’s very obvious that the only reason this is suddenly the case for Rotor is because of meta logic; Flynn the fanfiction writer doesn’t like him, and even the person who created Rotor as a character grew to hate him, so in the meta sense, “ the father of Rotor “ hates him in both cases.

  I can understand why he would dislike Rotor because I’ve never been that impressed with him, EITHER, since he’s just a boring bland “ nice brave hero “ just like the rest of them, so he has basically no personality at all. He doesn’t have a gimmick. The only thing that tries to contrast him from Tails who’s already a genius inventor is that he’s a walrus who’s older than him. He’s long since outlived his usefulness because Tails is an engineer in the reboot from the start, while his purpose to begin with was to be the team engineer and now he doesn’t even have that.

  I never found him funny when they tried to make him comedic, and just made him make stupid puns or be an oblivious moron. Neither of that made sense. It makes more sense for him to be a tough guy because he’s a walrus. So that’s what Flynn’s Other M Comic went with. And the minute we saw him in the reboot, he was fighting badniks with his FIST. How is that not a tough guy that his father would be proud of? I guess he wasn’t always like that, though, and that’s why his father didn’t like him?

  The problem is, what about him showing him a machine makes him a wuss? It’d be more understandable if he had him hate him for sucking at sports. ‘Cause I thought it was gonna go with the obvious cliché, “ strong dad hates his wuss son. “ Even then, there’s never been any indication he sucked at sports, like when he played hockey in Archie, and we even saw him LIFT A BARBELL OVER HIS HEAD. Things sure changed! I can understand not LIKING Rotor, because he’s the definition of redundant. But hating Rotor is a completely different story.

  It’s just that you look at this panel and it’s so jarring for a kid’s comic that this is happening for one of the main heroes of the comic. OF COURSE this was written by Flynn, the same fan who wrote a gory fancomic for Sonic where Rotor got drowned by Chaos out of NOWHERE, not to mention held a knife to Sonic’s throat. It’s so obvious to me that this would never fly in the earlier continuities, that no writer from before Flynn would ever want to do this.

  I don’t like Rotor either, but that doesn’t mean I would’ve wanted to make even his own parents hate him, because it’d be common sense to me that his parents would be proud of him for being a genius. It takes a really spiteful writer to go with spite over actual logic. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were given proper context and an explanation instead of us only seeing two panels without any dialogue and no actual PLOT. There’s no catharsis in seeing a character suffer without doing something to deserve it in the story, even if he’s as annoying as Spongebob.

  If I was writing Scourge’s parents, I would explain that the REASON for why they were jerks to him was that he was an accident, so they saw him as just an inconvenience, while all they wanted to focus on was their JOBS. So that’s actually TWO reasons. And a third reason would be that he wasn’t perfect, like he wouldn’t have gotten perfect grades, so he couldn’t make up for being born to them. I effortlessly thought of 3 different excuses for abusive parents, and all of those reasons could’ve been applied to Rotor’s father. But here, he’s just a close-minded monster to cause drama for no reason. Rotor must be JUST a NICKNAME because no way HIS DAD would’ve named him that. So by definition from the very beginning, Rotor had to have always had parents who loved him and wanted him to be an engineer, because they named him Rotor.

 All we’re told is that his father didn’t like new or different things, and we see that he had an old-fashioned lance – what, just because he grew up in one of the poles? Like an old-fashioned Inuit? You do realize that most Native Americans nowadays are just as modern as everyone else, right? And this has to be taking place in modern times because Rotor can make machines and always had access to them. But just because his father’s an Inuit, he’s old-fashioned now? I can’t even remember any walruses having lances before.

  I have a question, why did Rotor EVER have any machines around in his house that would spark his interest if his father was old-fashioned from living in an old-fashioned place? Wouldn’t he have never found any machines? But apparently they were a part of his father’s daily life, which makes it confusing that suddenly ROTOR trying to make them better made him mad, when he was fine with having a toaster or whatever on its own.

  At least Rotor says that he didn’t always make machines BETTER, just different, so of course his family would be mad at him for being a bumbling inventor because it would screw up the machines they BOUGHT. And it’s realistic that he’d have gone through trial and error trying to be a good inventor as a kid. We should’ve been shown him screwing up their machines a bunch of times, and SHOWN him being weak and unathletic, not even being good at hunting, which I’m sure his father does with that lance. Maybe the reason he’d suck at hunting would be that he was too good-natured and squeamish to agree to it. Show, Don’t Tell! This is the big problem that makes this issue suck! It needed to exist, but it needed to do better than this! It’s trying to cram two characters’ backstories into one issue!

  So we’re told that Rotor left on his own, and it was really hard going on his own. I doubt it was just because he was attached to his father and hated having to leave him, so what this is trying to say instead is that his JOURNEY was hard. At first I thought Rotor had a black eye, but I guess it was just a tear. A black eye would’ve suited this situation. Are we gonna see all of his epic journey on his own? Are we gonna learn how the hell he managed to get ALL THE WAY TO MOBOTROPOLIS ALONE, as a child? NOPE! That’d require effort and creativity! This writer has left so many unanswered questions, WHY would I assume that he would ever explain this?

  Realistically, he would’ve starved to death or dehydrated long before getting to his destination. Satam’s better than this. We aren’t told that he ran away with his father’s money or credit card, and if he had, the police would’ve been sent after him and he would’ve been caught and put in jail. Did he do a bunch of odd jobs to financially support himself? First off, child labor laws would probably forbid that, but maybe people did let him mow their lawns for money, I dunno. Except how could anyone do that?

  He had hope because he had heard about Mobotropolis being the greatest city in the world because it’s a Mary Suetopia all over again. Just because it’s the city we know about doesn’t mean it has to be “ the greatest city ever. “ And by the time he got there, he found out it was conquered, and I guess it was literally JUST conquered because it still looked like a castle, just with an Eggman flag. It wasn’t all gray and metallic and egg-shaped. What are the ODDS? He ran away at this specific time instead of earlier.

Anyways, he SURE was lucky that he thought to go run through the nearest forest and search for a village that he never knew was supposed to exist. So he just coincidentally stumbled into Knothole, when Eggman failed to find that place for 5 years straight in Satam.

  Also, how did he manage to get jobs to earn the money to support himself after Eggman had conquered the castle and started trying to roboticize everyone, wouldn’t everyone who could help him already be a robot and wanna get HIM captured? I guess that’s WHY in the reboot, Eggman didn’t have the roboticizer right away when he overthrew the king. If he did, Rotor wouldn’t have had a chance. He obviously would’ve been captured and roboticized during his solo trek to Knothole. If Rotor didn’t get paid for mowing people’s lawns and stuff, then he must have stolen stuff like food and water to make it through the journey. Also, I guess he used either books or the internet to find out how to even get to Mobotropolis exactly.

  The flashback completely cuts past the only part of Rotor’s new backstory that was both interesting AND made us want to see MORE of it. This is the whole problem with the issue. Instead, it cuts ahead to him meeting Sally, JUST when those Motobugs from earlier showed up.

So, I can only assume he pressed a button and that’s how it died. Because, it CUT PAST showing us how he killed those robots! Not to mention it cut past what he said when he first met Sally! Wouldn’t Sonic destroying them have been simpler? At least the writer TRIED for once, because this IS original, but it’s BAD original, so it’s a downgrade from Satam that clearly didn’t need to be the case.

  The fact that it was not just a new backstory, but a new dark and gritty backstory, was just shameful because it was so obvious that it only happened from the writer’s own bias. It’d actually make more sense if ANTOINE was the one with the awful father, because Antoine was a very hated character in Satam, a complete failure, and naturally his father would be embarrassed of having a cowardly wuss for a son, and we already saw in Archie that Antoine wanted his father to be proud of him and looked sad when he said Sonic’s father must be proud of him. That’s part of why this is so confusing. Why Rotor? Rotor’s the least offensive of them all. I can’t imagine that anyone would outright hate Rotor, while Sally and Antoine are controversial. So the fact that he wants to… the fact that he wants to have the most bland, inoffensive of them all, to have even HIM have this kind of treatment, that’s really confusing.

  It’d be like making Bunnie have an abusive parent, because she’s just as non-hated, AND she’s the most universally loved of them all, so, no reason he’d think he could get away with that. Except when he established that she had an uncle, she said that she didn’t want things to end in another fight and the fact that they were forced to be on opposite sides caused friction between them and made him yell at her, so it was implied that even BUNNIE had a difficult parental figure relationship. Bunnie was implied to have run away from home because of a family member she didn’t like, long before Rotor. H-He couldn’t resist doing this again! And it was just as confusing and unnecessary with her. It just wasn’t this obvious and jarring.

  Why is Sally the one who has the really loving parent when she’s got the most haters next to Antoine and this is the same writer who killed her off twice and roboticized her? We’re lucky he made her father so nice to her. So is it really that he’s being mean to Rotor because he hates him? Because I think the Satam freedom fighter he’d have to hate the most, other than Sally, would be Antoine. Not only did he put Antoine in a coma, but his original plan was to kill him, and he only spared him because he was surprised by the fan outcry when Sally was temporarily killed off. It goes to show you how he couldn’t have possibly LIKED Sally if he was actually SURPRISED that there was fan outcry. Like he couldn’t have imagined that she was still popular. So maybe it’s not just out of dislike for Rotor because then the same thing would’ve happened to Antoine.

  Maybe he thinks he couldn’t get away with demonizing SALLY’S parent because he already got backlash for that in the preboot, at least I HOPE he did, so making the king nice was an easy cheap Author’s Saving Throw for him for easy brownie points, and then he called it a day apparently. And even he learned that Sally has a lot of genuine fans. So he knew he couldn’t get away with it for Sally. But he also knew that he could get away with it for Rotor. Maybe Rotor has so few vocal fans that he thought he could get away with this with him.

Maybe he didn’t think he could get away with it for the most hated main hero in Satam because of all the fan outcry when Antoine was put into a coma proving that even he has fans. But I haven’t seen Antoine’s PARENTS in the reboot YET… It’d make sense if we saw Antoine’s mother in the reboot because the excuse for Rotor not having a mother in the reboot has to be that he had a mother in the preboot. Antoine had a father in the preboot but not a mother. It would be the obvious idea to give Antoine a mother, but that would be nice to him, but it’d be a lot more spiteful to have that mother be mean to him.

  By the way, Rotor’s thoughts say that ALL of the survivors were hiding in Knothole. So, did Eggman have a roboticizer back then or not? If so, then they should’ve told us that because that’s a REALLY important part of Satam, and he’s aping Satam’s backstory anyways. If not, then that implies that literally everyone who didn’t escape Mobotropolis to Knothole, was KILLED. Because they’re called SURVIVORS. What’s more dark and edgy, being killed, or roboticized with the hope of eventually being brought back to normal? Yeah, obviously not better than Satam. I assume this was just bad dialogue creating a misunderstanding.

  I always assumed that when we would’ve found out how Rotor’s father was to him, it would’ve made SENSE, and it would’ve been in an actual plot where he had DIALOGUE that could explain himself to the CHARACTERS, a NATURAL WAY to introduce him, and that would be the first time we’d meet him with Sonic seeing him at the pole. What I got was much more simplistic and lazy. In Avatar, Toph got her dad’s respect back in the comic when she did reunite with him. If that won’t even happen for Rotor, that’ll make this comic suck compared to Avatar.

  An entire PAGE is WASTED on telling us stuff we already know. Tails says he’s got the wiring sorted out, getting Rotor to stop arbitrarily reflecting back on his past when Sally JUST DID on the same HOUR. What a coincidence. Having this same framing device for all of the characters just makes it contrived, the fact that they’re actually thinking back, in-universe, ALL in the exact same scene. Wouldn’t it make more sense if they were at least reminiscing to each other out loud, during a campfire or something? So they’d have a reason to be all talking about their pasts at once. I think what I expected was that they’d be telling us their new backstories while they were still able to remember ARCHIE SONIC! So they’d have a reason to reminisce because they’d be discussing their feelings on their new memories!

  So Rotor destroys the machine in the simulation with one laser shot as Sonic had done basically nothing the whole time. And Sally had done LITERALLY nothing. I have a question. Why did Nicole put Sally in the simulation? I get Sonic because he was necessary to keep the machine focused on trying to attack HIM instead of Rotor and Tails, so he was just the distraction. And he’s fast enough to avoid getting hit. Were we told that Sally was here to fight robots? Why would she be actually needed? There’d have to be something for everyone in the simulation to do, because it’s a training simulation. OH, she’s here to coordinate the team. One panel’s worth of dialogue.

  Tails says they’re ready to move onto Gate 2. Then a textbox says that the origin of the Freedom Fighters will continue in upcoming issues of a Sonic Super Special Magazine and the Sonic Super Digest. Yeah, because they wasted so many panels and pages on padding, like the worthless unnecessary training simulation that only existed to be an unnecessary framing device. Archie didn’t waste tons of its first couple stories on backstories for each main character, making it have a really slow beginning. The reboot would be better off being more episodic because it’d have more actual stories. What are the chances both Rotor and Sally would be reflecting on their childhoods at the same time? I already summarized Sally’s part of the story.

  This issue sucked because it suffered from a case of telling instead of showing. It constantly frustrated me by not explaining enough, and leaving plot holes in the process. We didn’t need them to be wasting their time training! This was the best he could come up with for an excuse to have a framing device? We didn’t actually need a framing device wasting pages on us! Those pages could’ve been spent elaborating on the backstory we got so that we’d actually take it seriously! Instead it’s just confusing! It’s too similar to Satam and what it DOES change is so minor most of the time that it seems pointless to change it. All I can remember is that it makes more sense that Ixis was BANISHED to another zone. It certainly made more sense in SatAM, because Eggman had a reason to REALLY hate Ixis because Ixis was treating him like dirt, so it was obvious that keeping him on his side wasn’t worth it. And I remember the stupidity of the fact that robots were in the habit of finding people’s houses in Knothole and yet everyone there wasn’t roboticized, which even Satam didn’t do.

  Also, how do you talk about the backstory of Satam again and not mention roboticization?! Again, it’s his game bias showing. There’s no reason to exclude that. He didn’t hate roboticization because it was dark because he goes on to write the Metal Virus arc, so he only shunned it because it was from SatAM. I can’t help but feel like this origin story would have a LOT more VALUE if it was something original and really GOOD. I would’ve been invested and interested in something unique because I was experiencing something NEW, and it’d look like the writer was really trying. Excluding roboticization isn’t new, tons of Sonic continuities already do that.

  I at least vastly prefer the idea that Sally WILL take the throne someday instead of having an older brother steal her role as heir to the throne for no actual reason just to cause drama. Seriously, Elias never needed to exist. He was a nice guy but he should’ve been her YOUNGER brother. But we already saw in the future of Archie Sonic that Sally was going to end up being the queen anyways, with no Elias to be found.

Rotor was given a needlessly dark and gritty backstory because his father hated him for an arbitrary, forced reason. It doesn’t bother to explain it, so I’m just left wondering why he made him have an abusive parent out of nowhere, when he’s not a villain that you need to explain why he turned bitter to excuse evil actions, he’s a hero anyways! So that was pointless! And we know he had a loving family in Archie, so this was an obvious downgrade, it’s not like he’s shown to have a loving MOTHER, which would’ve felt less forced, and having drama for no reason.

  There’s no dialogue associated with this revelation to get you invested in the story by explaining both sides of the story and having an actual plot. In fact, most of the story is constant time skips not lingering enough on the scenes you want elaboration on, so you can’t get truly invested without being pulled out of it and still having plot holes. This story could’ve bothered to TELL us how Rotor got to Mobotropolis all on his own as a CHILD, but instead it leaves a big plot hole gaping wide open. I didn’t know it was possible to fuck up an issue about elaborating on the backstories of the main characters when we could’ve easily not had backstories for that extra bit of creative effort, so it seemed like a great idea on paper. But there was almost no effort put into it, and the one time he did try, his effort came from spite.

  Why Rotor and not Antoine? Why even the least offensive Freedom Fighter of them all? Even HE gets treated like this? It comes off as clueless and misaimed when it punishes the wrong person entirely. What’d Rotor do to deserve this? Amy and Tails don’t suffer this much under Flynn. Proof of bias there. Did Tails get put in a coma? Did Amy get roboticized in the preboot? Antoine was the worst part of Satam, where’s HIS karma? And we all know what controversial things Sally’s done. But she got the best parent of them all? At least if it was Sally, it’d explain why she was so angsty and insecure. So there would be a purpose in-universe by explaining something.

  But Rotor doesn’t seem actually affected by his past, other than thinking it was tough, because he’s still just as confident as ever, if more so. So if he’s not even gonna angst about it, then there REALLY IS no point and it could’ve easily not been written because it’s not even there to make you sympathize with him a lot of times by him angsting over it. He just has that one panel where you’re made to feel bad for him, and then it’s right back to normal anyways. He seems like the most confident Rotor of them all! You don’t just have dark elements, you have to USE dark elements.

  It’s like when STC ruined Sonic’s reputation for an arc. It didn’t cause him to have a sympathetic moment of vulnerability where he broke down crying and hugged Tails, which would’ve been actually relatable instead of jarringly taking us out of it with how much of a thick skin he had about it. He only shed a tear about it ONCE and I didn’t even notice it at first. And most of the arc, he was just ANNOYED, and so the audience was too… And Sally’s backstory was almost the same, so what was the POINT?

Sonic Super Digest 8:

  Yes, this is named just as poorly as Sonic Super Special, because you instinctively wanna read it as Super Sonic Digest, but it’s the other way around instead. So I wanted to call it that, but no. OH BOY, Antoine’s on the cover, we all know he’s gonna have such a CREATIVE NEW backstory. This seems so pointless. I heard it was just “ I used to be a coward, now I’m not anymore. “ And 100 pages of this shit?! This better be good.

We start out where the previous issue left off in a simulation of Nicole, because Nicole can do literally anything with no explanation. Sheesh, at least in the preboot, it was explained that she had nanobots. Antoine looks at the defeated Robotnik machine in Nicole’s simulation. He says that Sally’s on the way to helping them. And if the textbox writer knew that you have to know who Sonic is, why’d he bother giving him a name tag anyways? How condescending is it that we get name tags for the main characters, in EVERY ISSUE? Well I forget if it’s THAT frequent but Archie didn’t do this. It just wastes comic space.

  Finally they give up the “ exiled “ name theming for the stories. Antoine then has a stupid line where he thinks that fighting these nightmarish robots is not what he signed up for. He’s a FREEDOM FIGHTER! Fighting robots is mandatory! I’d also like to point out that for a comic that’s so focused on giving everyone name tags too much to try to cater to the 1% of people who don’t know who these characters are when they got the comic, it’s pretty skewed priorities to not also remind us that they’re in Nicole’s simulation. I think that’s a bit more important. What if someone bought this issue but didn’t get the free comic book day one? What if they read this issue FIRST because there’s no indication of which one to read first on the cover?

  And Antoine’s recapping about himself comes a bit more out of nowhere than Sally’s and Rotor’s, but not by much. Still, it’s even more unlikely that ANTOINE would start reflecting on his life in the exact same area and time that all of his other friends did, excluding the game characters. It’d be more natural if they were all talking about their memories at a campfire, because why would they be thinking all this instead of saying it?

Antoine says he came to Mobotropolis on the apprentice exchange program. Uh… is that a realistic thing for royalty to do, I mean, isn’t the king worried about spies or something? I dunno. He says that his father told him to be brave before he sent him to another country without coming WITH HIM. How old was he? Isn’t that parental abandonment? I assume he was just a teenager. So, one, that’s illegal of his father to do. He’s not 18 yet, I assume. And I assume his father didn’t hate him, so huh? There was no reason for him not to come with him. And two, Archie made more sense than this because of course Antoine wasn’t a real soldier because he was too YOUNG! Even Ken Penders made more sense! This is just condescending! I think there’s a reason I thought Antoine didn’t deserve to be in charge of a bunch of training royal guards and telling them what to do in Sonic Miniseries 2.

  Also, you know who introduced Antoine’s father as a concept? Penders. I’m pretty sure he was the first writer to mention him, so even referencing the character, you’d think that would be forbidden, even more forbidden than referencing Eggman Nega! I assumed, because I have common sense and know how the rules work, that Antoine would if anything have a MOTHER and not a father again. It looks like Flynn didn’t care and wasted the creative potential of that, unless he DOES show his mother later. But it’d be twice as unlikely that his mother would send him away TOO. This would actually make more sense if Antoine was an unruly troublemaker, and then his parents would want to send him to the military to toughen him up and send him away from them.

He swore to protect the country, and then we see another panel showing that Antoine had to run away when Eggman took over the castle, and he angsts about it in the narration even though he should know he had no choice in the matter. So if this is supposed to be a catalyst for him feeling guilty about being a coward, that was forced.

  Also, I could’ve sworn I saw a clearly young-looking Antoine alongside Sally JUST AN ISSUE AGO in this exact same flashback. Let’s see. Antoine looks noticeably shorter than Rosie in the last issue, and looks even younger than Mutt, and there’s zero indication that he’s dressed like a soldier like now. He doesn’t look 5 just because he has a hat that doesn’t hide his hair and is therefore barely noticeable. THIS issue has it look like Antoine is much older than Sally because he’s not short enough and he’s close to the camera in THIS panel. So he looks like he was a teenager when she was five. Which would make him lusting after Sally forced and creepy. But he was just as tall as her her last issue, so he is five.

There’s a good reason why Satam had Sally look so different when she was five years old. If you’re gonna have Younger Antoine look exactly the same, that’s confusing. At least he’s shorter than the king, but only by a HEAD, he still looks identical! That doesn’t look like a five-year-old! In Sonic Underground, in the pilot, we saw a kid Sonic being a head shorter than Uncle Chuck, which told us that Chuck was the adult.

  We’re told that he stayed by Sally’s side to protect her and was too scared to leave Knothole on his own. Again, that was SMART of him. EVERYONE was too scared to do that. When Rosie left Knothole for a little bit in the past of Satam, she had gotten roboticized for it! In Archie, the sword never sliced robots aside from the one time it had a Ring, so maybe Antoine is right to assume his sword couldn’t slice through metal robots. For fuck’s sake, the Archie comic knew to have Antoine be the same age as Sally. Satam did too. Here, I’m either supposed to believe that Antoine was a teenager when Sally was five all of a sudden, or, that he got hired as a SOLDIER for the king at FIVE YEARS OLD. What five year old would have a sword?! No wonder I assumed he was a teenager here at first!

  On the bright side, he was called an APPRENTICE, but STILL, five years old is a little young to be an apprentice, and TEENAGERS can’t join the military! That’s why Reese had to lie about his age in Malcolm in the Middle! I highly doubt teenagers would be allowed to join an apprenticeship program, let alone for becoming a soldier, right? Does that even EXIST? Wouldn’t that be redundant, what could that teach you and make you go through that soldiers learning to be soldiers wouldn’t go through already in boot camp?

It’s hard enough to believe the king would accept foreigners who literally just came to his country as loyal soldiers, when he’s a medieval old-fashioned king. Yep, we’re told that Antoine was in love with Sally. HOW OLD IS HE at this point?! He looks young in the one panel above this paragraph but he looks the same age as usual in the surrounding ones. What kind of backstory doesn’t even tell you the exact ages of the characters?! At least he explains that he liked her for her personality AS WELL as her looks.

And it’s so predictable that she rejected him. Because Flynn knew it would humor the fans to have him with Bunnie instead because they were already used to that, even though Antoine is much closer to Sally in personality than Bunnie or Sonic. They’re both cautious people who fight Eggman and they even have a similar color scheme. Also since when does a kid wanna court and give someone a bouquet at FIVE years old?! Kids at that age don’t know what attraction is! They just decide they like someone and who knows if it’s that or not. Did he have to keep this in his backstory if it was gonna be pointless and just irritate me?

And I remember seeing this picture of Antoine before, and I never thought he wasn’t a teenager, again probably because he had a sword, and I didn’t remember seeing Sally in it. Out of context, it’d look like Antoine as a teenager tried to court a five-year-old Sally. His narration says that it took a long time for him to understand why he was rejected. Why wouldn’t Sally have EXPLAINED HERSELF? That’s what PEOPLE do! That’s what good honest people do!

  Then it goes on AGAIN about how he was ashamed of his own cowardice, when most of the village would be just as scared of Eggman and his robots as HIM, and he doesn’t have any special powers or talents that not just anybody could do. I don’t know why his textboxes have a wig on it, that’s not funny. Archie didn’t do that. It at least explains that he was being loud and self-assured to hide his insecurity over cowardice. As if we couldn’t figure that out on our OWN.

  Oh, then he reveals that it didn’t help matters when Sonic “ showed up. “ … Fuck you! Why wasn’t he living with his uncle?! So let me get this straight. He dedicates entire ISSUES to establishing redundant backstories for the Satam characters, but Sonic, the most important character, GETS NOTHING! He just popped up out of NOWHERE! That’s jarring and immersion-breaking as hell! He didn’t used to live in Mobotropolis. He didn’t always live in Knothole where it was always safe.

  HOW did he not get roboticized or captured as a kid? There’s a reason that Satam and Archie had him living in Mobotropolis with the rest of his friends since he was born! This is so STUPID! He just popped up out of thin air?! Why did he CHOOSE to go to Knothole?! Chuck fled from Mobotropolis! And there’s no indication of Sonic’s parents. Did they just die? You’d think Sonic would be living in Mobotropolis too because Chuck was there! He just magically stumbled into the place for no reason? What took him so long?

  It brings up tons of questions that are begging to be answered. This is a stupid change and a Voodoo Shark. I am NOT ACCEPTING this. It’s like, he’s only doing this because he wants to keep the game characters and the Satam characters not canon to the games SEPARATE in his head. So of course they’re separate because they are in a meta sense. That wasn’t necessary! This issue sucks!

  He reveals that seeing Sonic made him realize how false his boasting was – why did he need to realize that because of the Creator’s Pet main character from the games instead of, wouldn’t he have KNOWN all along that he was lying?! That he was afraid like everyone else? I’m not seeing him be scared of things that most people aren’t, like, he’s not screaming at a spider or a shadow on the wall. Even Satam was better at portraying his cowardice than this. This is just, “ take our word for it, he was a coward, even though you’d be scared of these things too! “ He’s so bad at characterization that he can’t even get “ Antoine’s a coward “ right, which was most of his personality!

  We see that already, Antoine was inspired by seeing Bunnie, who was inexplicably having a hard time walking and got up from a wheelchair even though she has cybernetic limbs. There was never any indication in the canon that anyone would have to learn to walk again with brand new cyborg legs, which they’d already instinctively know how to use because they know how to use normal legs. Archie Sonic Contradictions: 4. The Genesis Wave would not change this fact by rewriting the past alone. And these legs have super strength, at least her arm does, so, if anything, they would always be STRONGER, not weaker.

  She wouldn’t need to build up strength in them gradually because they’re not organic limbs. This was just an unnecessarily dark and edgy change to the lore for the reboot, as another thinly veiled excuse to torment a Satam character. Why don’t the ROBIANS have trouble walking at first, then? They’re also people who were trying to get used to having new metal limbs! Because that’d be just as stupid. There was no reason to change her backstory.

  In Bunnie’s first introduction to Archie, she showed no signs of this. She was immediately able to move just fine after being half-roboticized. Go figure! You don’t need to be trying too hard to make it realistic! This is a world with roboticization in it! And cybernetic limbs no problem! I’m sure if technology has advanced to the point of that, it would be advanced enough that she wouldn’t be having trouble walking again!

  He calls her beautiful in the narration? This is when he first met her! I feel like it’s tacky to have him immediately fall in love with Bunnie the first time he saw her, and purely because of her appearance, because of course Flynn couldn’t think of anything else for him to compliment, when, sure, Bunnie liked his appearance when she first showed up in Archie, but she also flirted with Sonic. This was right off the heels of him crushing on Sally, who’s smarter than Bunnie is, and now he’s immediately eager to settle for her? In Archie this was done much more naturally, not glossed over in time skip heavy montages in one issue explaining why they got together after the fact. He spent a long time being friends with Bunnie first, so he got to know her, and they only started dating when she said that she cares about him when he felt like no one else did and that she admires his courage. And then she gave him a kiss.

  And before that, Antoine gave her a bunch of kisses for saving him so many times in Robotropolis. Even Ken Penders is less tacky about romantic build-up than this, at least with Antoine and Bunnie. Hell, even with Julie-Su and Knuckles, he had the tact to make a story arc about it and that was after they had already been friends for a long time to the point where it felt weird that they weren’t dating yet. Here it’s like Flynn didn’t care. He was just rushing it because he only did it to appease the fans. The FIRST PANEL where Antoine’s talking about Bunnie, and already his narration’s talking about how beautiful she was back then. And we didn’t see how Antoine felt about her back THEN.

  It’s not like we’re told RIGHT AWAY that him learning to crush on Bunnie was just a gradual process. How am I supposed to know one way or the other? Love at first sight does happen, but he was just trying to get over Sally. That wouldn’t be real love, at that point, he’d just be trying to distract himself from Sally, like Sonic used Fiona for. It’s just as sudden and underwhelming as that. We weren’t told how long it’s been since he gave up on SALLY, like years. In Satam, Bunnie was childhood friends with Sonic and Sally. What gives?

  Antoine’s narration says that they had joined the Freedom Fighters together and fought for so long. HOW long? Exactly my point earlier. AGAIN, HOW OLD WERE THEY?! How lazy is the writer that he doesn’t even care enough to give us a NUMBER?! He had plenty of opportunities! This is a minor thing and he doesn’t even do that right. I can only assume that the reason Antoine insisted on going on these missions was to try to prove himself to his friends, and they were so desperate to toughen him up that they recklessly and irresponsibly let him go on missions where he can’t do anything unique and really useful and is in constant danger the whole time.

  At least Bunnie can make a force field in front of her. Why didn’t Rotor give Antoine a ray gun to attack from a distance if he was such a coward? I have a question, why doesn’t he have a SHIELD? If he’s about SWORDS, well swords and shields go hand in hand for a reason! Also, why doesn’t he have knight’s armor too, if he’s so scared, and he joined a kingdom where the soldiers just have swords instead of guns?\

  Antoine has a beard like Patch did for xsome reason. Antoine is shown telling Bunnie that he’s not brave and is simply too scared to run away. This is just one personality trait and that’s all that’s being focused on for multiple pages. This does make him relatable, but this trait goes away, for the most part. Bunnie told him that him fighting despite being brave is courageous. Just like in Archie. Penders Concepts: 3.

  At least it IS explained that they were friends for a long time before he dated her, because of course he needed to build up the courage to ask, and it’d be more rushed to have Bunnie ask him right away. But this is just ripping off how Penders did it in an inferior way, because it’s not at night, you can’t even see any background behind Bunnie when she’s telling him this again, and it’s not her comforting him and saying that she does care about him after he angsted that other people didn’t.

  And again, Bunnie having this talk with him, let alone dating him, is a Penders concept. So if they’re allowed to use Penders concepts, where’s Geoffrey? Penders said on Twitter that he has no control over whether they use his characters or not. What prompted Antoine to confess to Bunnie that he’s a coward? Did he make it really obvious just a moment ago? That’s also lazy. Everything about flashback panels with time skips is lazy. It’s the laziest way to tell a story. Also, the French tend to use the indefinite article the same way that we do. Antoine wouldn’t say he’s THE coward here. If you don’t know how a French speaker speaks English, do some research. I think even French people learning to speak English would be embarrassed by him.

Also, we once again run into the plot hole of, why is Antoine having trouble speaking English when he grew up around English speakers? His father had to SEND him to Mobotropolis instead of being the flag waver for the king before he was born this time, so does that mean he DID live in France with his father? That doesn’t change the fact that he spent years with nothing but English around him. Anyone would get good at a language after years of that. By now he’d be much worse at FRENCH because he barely got to speak it. And if this is supposed to be his backstory, we should’ve seen the country he used to live in for some worldbuilding.

  Also, speaking of inferior, rushed and rip-offs, we see Antoine proposing to Bunnie in a DIALOGUELESS FLASHBACK PANEL! And of course, Amy is the only one to witness it because Flynn loves Amy, even though Sonic’s the main character. Anyways, wasn’t it common sense to have him have DIALOGUE HERE? This is supposed to be an important scene for their characters! This is so lazy and half-assed with no care at all! I was underwhelmed by his proposal in Archie because he just said one text bubble where he asked her to marry him. He didn’t explain what he loved about her and say that, “ You make me happier than I’ve ever been, and if you’d let me, I wanna spend the rest of my life making you feel the exact same way, “ you know, which even Friends had Chandler Bing say. HIS proposal was much better.

  Sonic isn’t about romance, so the scene shouldn’t go on TOO long, but I’d rather it last a decent length for main characters that we and the writer are supposed to care about! I didn’t think he could get any lazier than Archie. I always assumed that we would see him propose in an actual real-time scene after remembering that Antoine was married to Bunnie in the preboot, and so I was expecting him to plan on marrying her again, and we’d see the characters at their wedding. Instead, he married her in a flashback. So, her wedding ring in one of the memories arc issues really was there and we will forever be cheated out of properly seeing him propose to her. It’s common sense that when you have a second chance to do something much better, you take it.

  Antoine thinks that he DID sign up for this – so how’d he not immediately know that? And, good he got the French right this time. And Bunnie has long hair behind her again. Can’t she have her cowgirl suit back? Some people would say she looks like a hooker with that shirt. Because it’s SO low-cut and sleeveless and pink, like Rouge’s outfit. At least the cowgirl suit took advantage of her southern accent.

Then Sally sneaks up behind him and startles him, in the present day. So, he HASN’T gotten over being a coward. But the narration was trying to, imply… he’s not anymore. “ My boasting did not make me brave. So what did? “ At no point did this issue tell the audience that they were in a simulation of Nicole’s the whole time. The audience would be pretty confused about what they were doing and totally detached not seeing why they’re bothering and what their goal is, other than, I guess killing all the robots.

   Anyways, he has tedious dialogue and Sally uncharacteristically humors him and asks where Bunnie is, I guess ‘cause she’s in a hurry, and she’s told that she’s scouting on the other side, and Sally wants to link up with her and end this. The panel says that the Sonic Comic Origins will sadly continue in Sonic Super Digest 9. I thought this would be 100 pages of hand cramps. At least Sally apologized for scaring him. In fact, I just checked and there’s 120 PAGES!

  Wait, what? The next panel is showing me an older story of Archie’s. At least it’s not a Penders one, but, if they’re not allowed to use preboot concepts anymore, well this is showing off preboot concepts, AND it would be confusing to a more ignorant audience who doesn’t understand that they’re separate continuities. How is a kid supposed to immediately know that this isn’t canon to the reboot he’s reading? Didn’t I hear that Archie got into trouble for reprinting issues of preboot Archie? If they can do this, why couldn’t they have just continued preboot Archie? They were still making money off preboot stories. How did they ever decide which stories to show off?!

  I hope this means that the rest of the issue is this and so I can quit now. That “ over 100 pages “ thing is more of a lie than I thought. Keep your reprints to reprint stories! Just have entire books dedicated to reprints, like, the Sonic Graphic Novel series! Granted these stories are a million times better than anything IN the reboot, or at least a few of them are, but they’re not canon to it, so this is a gigantic waste of comic space that could’ve gone towards new reboot stories, which is what I naturally assumed would be the case instead. I bet this is the only comic that puts pre-reboot stories in its reboot issues, because only Sonic could fail this bad.

  Bottom line, this issue sucked. It tells me that Antoine’s dad cruelly sent him AWAY from him to another city for no apparent reason to be a soldier, instead of him being a soldier in his OWN country, and there’s no explanation about what age he was. I’m sure he was a teenager, but then we see that he crushed on Sally when she was a five-year-old. He couldn’t be implying that on purpose, could he? Well he wasn’t. And we clearly saw him look way younger than Rosie last issue in that flashback. So it was the artist failing, not the writer APPARENTLY.

  It’s just repeating the same thing over and over that he was ashamed of being afraid when he was only afraid of what EVERYONE ELSE in Knothole was. And apparently he didn’t get over it because Sally startles him in the present.  I thought he’d at least get Character Development right! It may be a basic plot, but that doesn’t let me off the hook, because if the writing’s full of plot holes, I’m gonna be at it forever anyways.

 The story makes no attempt at reminding the audience that it’s taking place in Nicole’s simulation and you’ll be completely detached from what the heroes are doing in the present because nothing really happens. We didn’t need this framing device wasting comic space that conveniently has ALL of the Satam heroes reflecting on their past at the SAME general time and place. All this did was give him a needlessly confusing unnecessary backstory.

  The really enraging part of the issue was that apparently Sonic just SHOWED UP in Knothole and that was the first time Antoine ever saw him. Where was he EARLIER? Why’d he come HERE? He’s JUST separate from them now because he’s a game character and Flynn’s biased in favor of the games. To the point where his UNCLE ran out of Mobotropolis, but he didn’t. Who was raising him, then?! And there’s no way Bunnie would have trouble walking. That immediately reminded me of that issue of Archie Sonic Online where, her new cybernetics would require her to go through months or weeks of recovery! So it’s bad fanfiction writer writing! Go figure, basically all of these rebooted backstories have been downgrades so far. That’s what happens when you don’t hire a professional.

  Wait, what? There’s a new page? There’s a repeat of the Sonic Riders prologue from Archie’s preboot, but there’s a new page, where Eggman has Jet captured in his base and tells him that Jet thought he could steal his vapor accelerator to upgrade his air board. First off, how did Jet know about that thing so he could go try to steal it? We’ll never learn the answer, will we? Second, it still makes no sense that he could be easily captured by a robot when he was speeding ahead on his air board, where he bragged he was faster than Sonic. You’d think he’d have noticed the robot in front of him because we have eyes in the front of our heads! So I’m guessing NONE of this will ever be explained, so Jet’s capture will be arbitrary to force the plot. He could’ve explained his capture as, “ he was snuck up on when he was sleeping, “ at least. Jet expects me to believe times have been tough since he quit the armada even though he’s a thief with a fast air board, I’d expect him to be getting a ton of cash and treasure all the time.

  Wait, what the fuck? Flynn has Eggman say that he KNEW Jet was going as fast as Sonic on that air board. And yet he STILL had the robot somehow knock Jet out after coming out of nowhere. Jet would’ve seen it and avoided it. Why’d he go anywhere NEAR the robot? Like he doesn’t have to air board fly over the roads. And also, Jet doesn’t know who Sonic is, even though Sonic is like the only person on the planet who can run at the speed of sound and makes himself known for fighting Eggman. I can only assume that Jet never watched the news or anything and is totally ignorant about pop culture, even though I’m sure a thief could steal a TV just fine, and everyone gets tired after a day of hard work. But I guess THAT’LL never be explained either.

  And Jet annoys me by thinking that Sonic’s a fraud right away and saying that he’s the fastest guy around even though he’s only fast because of his air board. Eggman likes his attitude and recruits him to rough up Sonic, saying that he won’t kill Jet if he agrees. I-Is he that desperate for workers? He could just send his robots after Sonic! He should explain that Sonic holds back against organic beings, so he knows it’s smarter to send organics after him.

  So, if he was planning to kill Jet BEFORE, and this is a point in time where he somehow can’t roboticize anyone, AND was too stupid to think to put cybernetics with bombs in people instead, then why didn’t he just kill him immediately?… He would’ve never gotten to this point! How did the giant robot even know to keep Jet alive?! Why did he order the robot to keep him alive?! It’s like every time I go back to a Flynn issue, it just gets more forced! And he’s happy about working for Eggman for some reason, when I’m sure HE would’ve gotten roboticized too and only gotten freed because of the Bem. This story sucks! Even the games are written better! The characters may be one-note jokes, but they’re not complete idiots!

  I don’t know if this was part of the original story and just wasn’t included on the site for the original issue, or if they added this new page in for the reboot. I guess it was there all along, because it’d take extra effort to make a new page, but I had been better off without it. An illogical explanation is even worse than none at all. I was actually better off not seeing him interact with Eggman because the revelation that he wasn’t specifically captured to be hired by Eggman from the very beginning, just makes it stupider. I ASSUMED his whole reason for capturing him was to recruit him because that’d be keeping it simple!

  Also, most of the stories that are reprinted in this issue from the preboot, are by Flynn, as if he couldn’t show any MORE bias. It’s a MIRACLE he brought himself to put ‘Twan with the Wind there.  Not to mention Antoine’s Vain Refrain. Why would you choose THAT story of all things? One of the stories wasting comic space on crap is “ Fragile, “ which says that it’s by Scott Tipton and David Tipton, not Flynn. I forget if I said it was by Flynn in the review, but you can’t blame me for assuming that because Flynn somehow was allowed to write nearly every story. But yeah this story sucked. Overly basic plot, predictable, and made no sense when it did try to change things. A five-year-old apprentice, am I getting that right?

Sonic Super Digest 9:

  It took forever for me to even read this story because it wasn’t on the timeline. It starts out with Bunnie seeing Sonic deal with a machine in a training simulation of Nicole’s, not that you’d know that if you were new to this story arc because there’s not a TEXTBOX telling you about it. It was hard enough to believe that during this exact same simulation, both Antoine and Rotor would be thinking back to their lives before this, but now Bunnie’s gonna do it TOO, instead of being a discussion over a campfire. So, nothing we didn’t already know, Bunnie wanted to be a hairstylist, and then, things get INCREDIBLY dark and edgy.

  In THIS comic Bunnie was caught in an explosion when Eggman took over Mobotropolis, which actually blew up her arm and legs. This is a kids’ comic, isn’t it? Isn’t that always the defense in Sonic? Well, throw that all the window because kids would be scared by this. I’ve read his Other M Comic, and the exact same thing happened to MULTIPLE of the main characters in that, where they got injured by an explosion and had to get cybernetics to fix it. There, a good Robotnik gave them the cybernetics, which was INTERESTING.

  Why does it have to be only Bunnie? She’s the ONLY ONE who had to get half-roboticized because of this? This is pointlessly depressing of a change compared to her simply being half-roboticized. If he really wanted to improve on things, he would’ve done the same backstory as Archie, but had Sonic NOT be responsible for what happened to her because he was sitting there and talking and took forever to save her. Instead he just shows up just in time. I’m surprised that Bunnie was the FIRST patient of Chuck’s prototype roboticizer.

  This is ESPECIALLY confusing because she needed this AFTER Eggman took over Mobotropolis! You’d think that since the Archie comic was BASED on Satam, he’d have taken over the city so easily while knowing how to use and build a roboticizer. Instead he hadn’t roboticized a single person at that point. So why’d anyone stay in Mobotropolis? There wasn’t a wall around it. I guess the robots. Well, at least this is creative by being different, very different.

  But there is absolutely NO REASON that Bunnie would have a hard time walking with her new limbs! I knew this was coming a long time ago. EVEN TODAY, we have emerging robot limb technology which lets people FEEL with them JUST fine! Even in 2015, an artificial prosthetic leg was invented which let someone feel at the bottom of the foot. People can feel stuff in fake robot hands now. And we haven’t invented free-willed AI yet. We’re 100 years before that point. And EVEN WE have better robot limbs than Bunnie!

 Granted, the news articles I found about those breakthroughs are dated at like 2019, and this issue came out, what, 2013? Even then, he should’ve known better than to assume that even 100 years of technological advancement from now, robot limbs would still lack a sense of touch! Which is the only reason she’d be clumsy in them. Even with a prototype roboticizer, this is too ridiculous! What about turning her legs into metal would make them like this? Chuck’s a do anything scientist, he invented a ROBOTICIZER in the first place, so Flynn should’ve known not to make even Uncle Chuck’s cybernetics be this limited, when the technology on his world is way more advanced than just a few years.

  So if he was trying to be realistic, well, that’s a dumb excuse because it’s NOT realistic anymore, so either he severely underestimated how long it’d take for science to march on and thought it’d take a century and not a couple years, OR, he didn’t really like Bunnie. He wasn’t really okay with her, so he had no problem whatsoever with making her suffer. And I know why. She doesn’t have an interesting and entertaining personality, so I’ve never been crazy about her. Same goes with Nicole. It’s easier to want to write what you find to be an uninteresting character to go through darker stuff.

But even I find it baffling that he would go out of his way to give her a tragic dark and edgy backstory. REAL LIFE has better robot limbs than this, and Chuck is supposed to be a brilliant inventor. And he lives in a world with Eggman’s robots in it! She wouldn’t be clumsy. And they wouldn’t BE HURTING! Because there’s no reason for it, they’re not damaged, so why would they be programmed to cause her pain?! That was just an extra layer of spite! There’s no way he was trying to be realistic with THAT. Because I don’t see where that comes from! If it’s because they’re still explosion damaged, why were they EVER able to let her walk at all, why would they ever RECOVER on their OWN if they’re just robot legs?

  Flash back to early Archie when she was first half roboticized. IMMEDIATELY she was able to run around, pick up Sally’s throne and she was GRATEFUL to have that awesome super strength! That’s pretty awesome of her! It drove home the fact that she was meant to be CHEERFUL, not bring us down. Right away she wanted to use her newfound strength to be a Freedom Fighter. I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating! I found it weird that she wasn’t upset about how she looked, but still, her being able to move around just fine made more sense than this. Of course she’d still be able to feel in those limbs, they’re just her old limbs but made of metal now.

  How would being metallized result in the touch receptors that were there before magically disappearing?! Even if the explosion in the reboot destroyed her original limbs’ touch receptors, I still have to wonder why they wouldn’t have been simulated in the mechanical limbs with some adjustments. It just makes Chuck look like an incompetent amateur at making robot limbs considering how far we’ve come.

  Also, she says “ my new friends. “ So, another bit of originality is that she wasn’t friends with Sally and the others until after Eggman attacked, when that wasn’t the case in Satam. Maybe Antoine was only Sally’s friend because he was a royal soldier apprentice. But it does make sense that only special circumstances would cause her to be able to be friends with the princess.

  But it makes a bit less sense that Bunnie is from the same city as everyone else in her group of friends because she has a Texas accent, and didn’t stop having it from lifelong exposure to other people without it, so, I could understand the logic behind her being originally from Sandblast City where people had her accent. And if she’s from the same city, why not just make her Sally’s childhood friend at that point? She’s cut off from their group, like she didn’t live close enough to them, and yet still lived in their city? I don’t like that it’s almost at both ideas and doesn’t just go with one or the other. This backstory isn’t very creative. It’s just Other M Comic Fiona’s backstory, but a different person injured and more so than her.

  Why hasn’t the story ended already? All of the plot has been told, everything after this is nothing new and the comic space could’ve been used on literally anything else. Like telling us where SONIC lived before he knew about Knothole! How am I expected to believe it makes sense that Bunnie had to be made unconscious first before some upgrades on her cybernetics could be done? That’s dumb and never happened before. Her arms were upgraded in Penders’ SSS11, another Penders concept there, but I don’t remember her needing to be knocked out for it.

  And that’s a SECOND TIME that Flynn skipped out on showing us what Antoine SAID to her when proposing to her. I’d rather have this entire page spent on THAT, instead. This is just a reusing of the same panel we saw last time. Anyways, in the present, Bunnie blasts a laser and the others attack stuff with their weapons. Wait are you serious? Their mission didn’t END with that? With all those explosions? Instead she says they have to go help Team Rose. The rest of the issue is reprints, so I’m ignoring it.

  This issue is by Ian Flynn and had exactly the problems I always heard it would have. Most of it was really boring. Bunnie’s new backstory is that she came from Mobotropolis but inconveniently wasn’t friends with Antoine and Sally yet. Anyways she got her LIMBS BLOWN UP because of Eggman when he was taking over the city. That surprised me, I thought it would’ve happened while Sally was a Freedom Fighter. Well they were “ mangled “ and burned not blown off, but that’s still too dark. I guess I assumed that because you’d expect an explosion to blow a limb OFF, realistically.

  This overly dark and edgy change is directly from his gory Other M comic where tons of the main characters had this happen to them to justify their cybernetics. It’s just needlessly mean. It goes to show you that he hasn’t changed a bit if he finds this suitable. Ironically, Bunnie DIDN’T have cybernetics in that fancomic, just chargeable gloves that could shoot lasers. He wanted to make up for lost time apparently. My biggest problem with this frustratingly mean story is that I’m expected to believe she was clumsy with her new limbs at first and they even HURT, which makes absolutely NO SENSE even with our most modern technology today and makes Chuck look like an amateur.

Sonic Super Digest 11:

  We start out with Amy, Cream and Big about to start their training exercise. At least this time, the issue starts out by reminding the audience it’s taking place in Nicole’s training exercise. It’s sad that Cream is so underutilized as a Freedom Fighter that it was actually refreshing to see her do this. I don’t know what Amy means when she says the training exercise is too intense right here, though. She’s just whiny. All I see is a few flying badniks in front of her. And she hasn’t had to do anything until now and she’ll barely have to do anything after this. She might be talking about the things surrounded by electricity in front of her which sorta look like animals being shocked, but the animals are just silhouettes, so I didn’t register them as people, or anything really, so the art doesn’t make you empathize with the characters in the panel. Nicole tells her to stop making her break character, saying that as far as Amy’s supposed to know, her handheld form is plugged in elsewhere while she hacks the system.

  Nicole thinks that she knows her friends trust her to push them without going too far. Her doing that would’ve been interesting and the little story arc was building up to that, but nah. And then she depresses me by thinking that it took some time to build that trust. That reminds me of how Sonic at first wanted Sally to get rid of Nicole in the In Your Face Special and didn’t trust her, and he bickered with her every chance he got, but at the same time, him having that rivalry with her was interesting compared to, him never doing that again. It’s already stretched my disbelief that more than one of the Freedom Fighters at a time was reflecting back on their entire life while in the training simulation where they’re supposed to be BUSY. Now Nicole’s coincidentally doing it, too. I’m not sure we needed to HAVE a framing device at all. It’s just distracting and wastes comic panels that could go towards a more expanded backstory.

  Also, I’ve been confused that this story even got released, because I know that her backstory gets revealed in Spark of Life, but that comes right AFTER this. Isn’t this gonna be really redundant with it? What’s the point? She thinks that it was hard living with her friends and being unable to share in their laughter and tears, partly from blindness, as we see Rotor imitating Eggman with a fake mustache and Antoine crying because he’s told that his parents had passed, BOTH at the SAME TIME apparently, and the writer was too lazy to explain how it even happened.

I didn’t think Flynn would go the extra mile and be THAT cruel. Isn’t it mean-spirited enough that he killed off his father in Archie when he didn’t have to? I thought he’d at least keep them alive in the reboot, even if keep them offscreen. That was unnecessary.

  The next page mostly bores the fuck out of me, telling me stuff I already know. At least it was interesting to see that Antoine can’t cook and Nicole and Sally play chess together. These are the kinds of easy, quick character building panels that the evil twins should’ve had! It’s nice seeing her put a blanket over Rotor when he’s sleeping on his book, but I’d still rather see him in a proper bed.

  We see Cheese in the training simulation fly into a hole and Cream says “ now “ and then an explosion happens. And Sonic says that they didn’t need them after all. What did Cheese DO? Cream didn’t do ANYTHING but say two words! Come ON! Big had his fishing line on something and Amy had cracked something. Who cares? THAT’S the end of the simulation? One explosion that would’ve been much better justified by simply seeing a bomb be thrown or Sonic spindashing. That was boring, what took so long then?

  So Nicole says that Eggman’s facility has been destroyed. Again, why do the heroes ever see the point of doing that to actual facilities when they should be smart enough to know Eggman will just rebuild them, and probably has so many of them that destroying one of them is worthless? It’s just mindless destruction to make themselves feel better. I’d much rather see them save civilians, help actual people.

It’s good that Nicole says “ well done. “ And the story ends with Nicole being sappy and cheesy. She should know that her friends already KNOW that they’re her inspirations and friends so what provoked her to say it? Everything after this is just a reprint. I honestly don’t understand why they waste comic space on any reprints instead of having original stories the whole time, other than writer laziness. It’s a waste of page money. Finally the story ends.

  This issue was by Ian Flynn and was an extremely redundant, boring waste of time. I don’t know why this story exists. It’s not an ” origin ” story. IT’S JUST telling you the obvious. It’s like it was written by Omochao. There were a few heartwarming panels, though. It wasn’t outright terrible, I guess. It was probably the best-written issue he ever wrote because there’s no room for bad writing in a story like this, because there’s no room for more than one plot hole in a story like this. But I don’t care, it can’t be GOOD if it’s gonna be so boring that it’s not worth reading. It shouldn’t have existed if it was gonna be this pointless. I’m just told stuff I would’ve assumed. I would’ve rather seen panels of Cream in action so I could see what she’d be like as a Freedom Fighter, but even then I couldn’t imagine her doing stuff that Tails couldn’t already do.