Sabrina the Teenage Witch 2000s Issues 38-57 Comic Reviews Newbie’s Perspective

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 38:

  The cover has the younger Sabrina say that she wonders what she’ll look like as a teenager, but, she WAS a teenager! Her birthday cake had 14 candles and her music teacher said he wanted to make her a teenage singing idol! Hilda tells Sabrina that the photographer just pulled up. Salem wants to look good for the historians and somehow thinks they want him to get the door after all of this time.

Sabrina’s told she looks lovely and she thanks Hilda, and she can’t wait to have her family portrait taken. AH! Hilda and Sabrina look AWFUL here! What’s the point of getting all dressed up for a family photo? It’s supposed to record how you looked at the time and normally she doesn’t look this way.

  Since when does a family have professional photographers go to their house to take a picture of them for a family photo? I went to school in the 2000s and kids had cell phones then. Wouldn’t they just have a photo taken with their phone? Couldn’t they have it taken with magic, or are they that into that anti-magic kick even with Quigley gone?

  For some reason something weird happens after their photo gets taken, and all of the witches in the room are aware of it. They’re all sent to the timestream – I HATE that it’s all in one panel! This is awful to look at! It’s impossible to take seriously! – And the photographers were Enchantra and Della in disguise, and Della asks why Enchantra didn’t simply send them without doing all of this. If the writer thought this, why did he write it anyway? It just wasted my time. Enchantra looks awful in this panel too. It’s hard adjusting to a new artist who doesn’t know how to draw the Animated Series.

  She says she needs to watch Alias, whatever that is, and there’s a situation that needs attention during Sabrina’s teenage years, as opposed to the most powerful witch handling it herself a lot better. Making Sabrina do it instead sounds irresponsible. So she’s using at as an excuse to accelerate them forward in time. But why wouldn’t she simply go forwards in time, and make the older and more experienced Sabrina handle it? That’d obviously be smarter and not totally forced.

  Instead the audience is off-put by how confusing and arbitrary the context is when we see Zelda’s excellent new design and Sabrina’s off-putting one which is in an Uncanny Valley, because she kinda looks like her 90s self, but has blue eyes for no reason. Why does she have colored-in eyes when no one else does? That looks wrong.

  There is no advantage to having them be aware of what’s going on when accelerated ahead in time. If she did that to them, then nothing they did up to this point would’ve happened anymore. From everyone else’s perspective, the entire Spellman family would’ve disappeared for years. Or if all she did was age them up and it’s the same year, then they didn’t actually get more experienced and nothing happened, so it was pointless. If she could do this, why didn’t she age Sabrina up BEFORE sending her to fight Repulsa?

  Salem has a terrible new design that amazingly STILL doesn’t give him his entirely black color scheme, even though he finally makes sense because he’s got no powers. It just makes me ask what took so long. It’s so confusing to not explain this in-universe. He must have done something terrible to deserve losing his powers. I know the meta reasons; it’s to conform to the sitcom, and make it actually logical, but Hilda doesn’t look like the sitcom one.

  She’s back to orange hair because she looked that way in all of the comics before this. Maybe Salem lost his powers because it’s a brand new alteration to how to deal with warlocks who tried to take over the world, but again, what changed their minds? I already saw all of these redesigns because I looked through some of the Betty and Veronica Double Digest issues trying to find Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Sabrina stories, and found what turned out to be some future stories in THIS comic.

  So I already saw the redesigns and when I first started reading this comic, I never would’ve imagined I would see this happen in IT, because I thought it was just there to be the Animated Series comic. I’m so glad it changed the status quo because I hate it so much. Now it can go back to Sabrina being allowed to use all the magic she WANTS, and Spookie and Gem and that bully no longer wasting my time!

But it’s obviously a baffling missed opportunity to not actually show us the day that Sabrina moved away from Greendale, and the day that Spookie and Gem left her life. Why did their journey through time get interrupted?

  Della can’t pinpoint their source with her computer and wonders if it’s a bug in the system. No excuse for that, there’s NO believability to them being sent to the cavemen days, by accident. So I’m not respecting the story as a result. If you wanna have a story about witches in cavemen times, just have Sabrina go back there herself because she wanted to experience it. Say that she was studying it in school or something.

   Zelda asks if they still have their powers, and Hilda says a little primitive. That’s ALSO forced. They’re on Earth, so, there REALLY IS no logic to it, because you COULD say there was less magic, earlier in time, but why would the place they’re in, affect how powerful their magic batteries are? And that HAS to be the case to force them to stay here AND not get what they want, as Hilda wants to zap them a fridge and microwave and dishwasher, and when she’s asked where they’re gonna plug in it, she says they’ll need a power plant and stuff.

  And somehow she gets overwhelmed, when she’s a witch, so she could EASILY just cast a spell to create everything she wants. They’re omnipotent, so if they want to live like modern people, they CAN. I’m insulted that I’m expected to believe otherwise. Salem gets followed by a saber tooth tiger and the three witches all zap it, and conveniently it whimpers and walks away.

But they did it in front of cavemen, so the cavemen decide to go chase after them with weapons instead of FLEEING. And somehow, these omnipotent witches think they’re in trouble, instead of just instantly casting a spell to make them decide not to bother them. They could at LEAST teleport their weapons away.

  Della can’t send them to the present because she was turned into an insect. Enchantra decides to move her forward in time herself. Why did she turn her into an insect, now? Della can’t warn her in time that she can’t add her power to the mix or it’ll cause a surge, and arbitrarily send the Spellmans into the future. Enchantra’s omnipotent. She’d just instantly warp them back to her, just by pointing. They obviously wouldn’t need this computer to do this. We saw the Spellmans warp back to the 60s and to Leonardo da Vinci without needing a machine.

  The double dose of energy causes them to get separated. That ALSO feels arbitrary. This story is STUPID. And going off of the rules from earlier, you’d think that if their powers are weaker in the cavemen days, as if the source of all magic is weaker or smaller, you’d think they’d be more powerful in a robot bar. So they’d know that and take advantage of that. So they SHOULD warp home right AWAY.

  Sabrina’s aunts get flirted with by a short man who gets called a troll, and he reveals he’s only part troll, and he calls them witches who has to come with him or they’ll be doomed. I guess the reason he knew they were witches was because she called him a troll too easily by force of habit. And he says to follow him because his helmet jams the detector, as he’s getting alcohol from a robot.

  Zelda looks at the time and is told somewhere else that it’s not safe to be supernatural these days. They were ten seconds away from being reported to the magicops. Then it’d be off to the Martian Muck Mines. So they’re gonna be taken underground. No witch would go to the mines. Unless the magicops can limit a witch’s power to easily evade them or defend herself, this is ridiculous. The witches would do the enslaving if anything. How are they such idiots? I guess the reason they were in trouble was, they warped to a bar in front of people. I guess only the troll saw them.

  Why would the magicops even bother?! It’s so obvious the witches would just instantly beat any mortal in a fight. Sabrina gets some exposition about history from a tourist data bank. At the end of the Enchantra Wars a thousand years into the future, this city began to rebuild. Supernatural sensors are everywhere protecting the population from magical beings.

  Only witches themselves would be able to MAKE magic sensors. So they must have forced one into it or bribed her. Apparently Enchantra got really reckless and irresponsible later on! This is the same woman who lectured Sabrina not to run for school president because she’s a witch, so it would be too easy for a witch to run a mortal world. What caused her to change?

  Sabrina gets handcuffed, when she didn’t even use magic, so then why didn’t this happen to her and her aunts, INSTANTLY after being sent here? The magicops go after her, and I have to just assume that she’s deprived of her powers at this point, because otherwise this would make no sense. Salem doesn’t get taken away with her, and he wants to call out Enchantra.

  He then gets warped to her and she asks him what he’s doing so far into the future. Then she vaguely remembers and she reveals that she has a Della computer that immediately sends all of the Sabrina family back to the right time period. Enchantra reveals that what she needed an older Sabrina to do was trim her awful hangnail. She could’ve gotten someone else to do that.

  That must have been an attempt at a joke. I thought she was gonna send her after someone to fight them with magic again. You’d think that after all the time Enchantra’s been alive, she’d know how to trim hangnails. She’d just point and magically get rid of the hangnail! She thanks Sabrina and tells her to enjoy her late teens. Is EVERY reboot forced?! Why can’t this just make sense? Sabrina doesn’t complain at all about missing out on years of her life, so I’m forced to just assume that she remembers the years she was accelerated past and they actually happened.

  Then there’s a comedy page by Bill Golliher where Sabrina’s being lovey-dovey with Harvey. It’s like nothing ever happened, so apparently, the Sabrina family was made to get older, but nobody noticed their absence from the timeline. It’s more like their consciousnesses were sent forwards in time to their older selves and everything in the past was still done.

He says that time seems to stand still as he’s acting uncharacteristically happy with her. Hilda looks mad, and Sabrina uses a spell nervously, and the grandfather clock makes ticking noises. Zelda says you can’t blame the girl for trying to make the evening last longer.

  In the next story, Salem says that with his family out of town, arbitrarily leaving him behind, he’ll have plenty of time to himself. Then a cat he finds beautiful sobs in front of him in the pet shop because she’s tired of waiting for someone to adopt her. How is she talking?! Why isn’t he questioning this?

I’m supposed to immediately assume that he can understand cat language because he was turned into one, when of course cats wouldn’t be smart enough to have their own language. This is the kind of Salem story that’s immediately off-putting, since Salem is supposed to be the only animal who can talk most of the time. And we’ve already seen SO many stories where Salem falls in love with a cat.

  She says that seeing him out there reminds her of how sweet freedom must be. He’s asked to free her and her friends. She doesn’t know he’s a warlock, so how would she know to ask this? She says the door is open. He FINALLY explains in his thoughts that he does know animal languages because he’s been turned into a cat. He’s had the time to learn all of them. This seems to imply that, ANYONE can learn all of them with enough time

  He sees the shop owner and hides. The owner is lonely enough to say goodbye to the pets. He spends some time freeing them, which should’ve been just one panel. He’s surprised that they wanna go stay at his place. The girl cat Princess flirts with him to get him to agree. Then we see the confusingly human pets arguing over the TV remote. Why are they acting like people when they aren’t transformed witches? This story is stupid too. Princess is the most expensive pet in the shop, and she complains that she misses her pillow and thinks his furniture is inferior.

  Realistically, the animals don’t like that there’s no food for them in particular to eat, and decide to go back to a place where they’ll get three square meals a day. I don’t think pets get fed three times a day. It is a nice surprise that they decide to leave on their own because of a realistic reason, instead of them leaving because the aunts came home and got mad at Salem. The story ends with Salem upset that now he has to clean up the house because they arbitrarily wrecked it.

  In the next story, Zelda’s sad before her big witch school reunion tonight. You’d think she’d be sad because she knows the witches would just make fun of her for not looking like a stereotypical witch, because she looked like one at the start of the 90s comic. And they referenced the 90s comic last issue, so it’s canon! Instead, Zelda’s sad that she’s single. Salem says his social calendar is free, and he has to just be joking because he knows he’s a cat.

  Zelda says that she wants a guy who’s handsome, sweet, attentive and loyal. Hilda says that’s a dream date, and Sabrina gets an idea and suspiciously runs upstairs saying she’ll be right back. Why is the witch school reunion of Hilda’s a century apart from Zelda’s? I guess they were born a century apart from each other. I always assumed they were just a few years apart because they’re close enough to live together.

  Zelda gets given a date with a guy who calls her beautiful, and Sabrina surprisingly outright tells her the truth, that he’s her old Ken doll brought to life. She should’ve expected that Zelda would dismiss this as ridiculous. Then when he flatters her, she changes her mind. He gets the door for her, but I find it hard to appreciate him being nice to her every time, because he’s only nice to her because Sabrina made him that way. He doesn’t even know who he is yet, let alone know who Zelda is.

  They drive down the cosmic interstate in his car, and it’s forced that someone at the reunion calls him a doll when he’s a guy. He greets Zelda’s friend nicely, impressing him and deciding to get them some punch. Zelda’s old friend says that her old boyfriend Wally is here and she bets Ken or Wally will be jealous.

  Then we see a woman with Wally, and Ken instantly recognizes her as a Barbie doll and kisses her, when he wasn’t programmed by Sabrina’s magic to love anyone but Zelda. And somehow their kiss makes them both disappear. Thankfully, instead of this just happening to make them sad in a Diabolus ex Machina, this just makes Zelda and Wally find each other relatable, because Wally’s niece was the one who turned the doll into a person. The doll wouldn’t kiss the Ken either.

He asks her to dance, and she asks why they ever broke up. Shockingly, the story doesn’t go on to explain that, just like it doesn’t go on to explain why the Enchantra Wars started and mortals found out about mages. Instead the story ends with Zelda coming home happily and saying a pun.

  The first story by Gallagher was really dumb. Enchantra only needed Sabrina’s help getting a hangnail trimmed. She would’ve just done it herself. With magic, even! How did she accidentally send them to the cavemen days by a glitch in a computer after she sent their minds ahead in time to their older selves? She obviously would’ve just talked to the older Sabrina without doing that, because she can time travel. Why would the cavemen days have their witchcraft be primitive?

  Why would Enchantra war with the mortal realm when she didn’t do it until that point? Mortals would’ve just had a memory erasing spell cast on them so they’d forget about magic existing. They certainly wouldn’t get the chance to make a ton of supernatural sensors and handcuffs that’d capture witches on sight after an inexcusable delay.

  Why did Enchantra wait so long to return Sabrina to the 90s comic? It’s a very welcome change of pace though. I’m SO GLAD that I had to deal with only a third of the amount of Animated Series stories that I expected, even if it is hard to push through these stories regardless because it’s weird seeing Sabrina with blue eyes in this art style, and Salem looks horrible. So It still feels like a dark age of the series.

But at least the writing is slightly better. It’s about TIME Salem stop making me ask why he still has his magic, it’s about TIME the series stop making me ask why Sabrina’s relying on Spookie and Salem for magic, but having him lose magic with NO in-universe explanation is just insulting and disappointing.

  Not so much in the Salem story, though, where I’m just confused that Salem can understand the languages of ALL animals just because he lived for a long time, even though normal animals clearly wouldn’t be intelligent enough to have their own fully fledged language at the same level as a human. We could’ve just had him vaguely understand what they want! It made more sense in Sonic the Comic where, Tails didn’t know what the Flicky was SAYING, he just had a vague telepathic idea of what he was talking about.

  We didn’t need there to be any dialogue from these pets. It just makes the story take longer to read. Salem finds a cat attractive because he’s in a cat body even though he used to be a human, so he frees her from the pet shop, along with the other pets because she insisted on it arbitrarily.

And the animals arbitrarily mess up Sabrina’s house, just to decide to go home because there’s no food for them here and the expensive cat misses her pillow. But Salem could’ve just told her, well, she wouldn’t believe him about witches. But he could’ve still told her, “ Hey, I know some people who could get you that pillow no problem! “

  After that off-putting tedium by Bill Golliher is a story by the same writer where Zelda has to go to her witch high school reunion, and she’s sad that she’s going there single, so Sabrina turns her Ken doll into a loving date for her. Then for no reason, seeing the living Barbie doll makes both dolls disappear. And fortunately this just makes Zelda’s ex more relatable to her and there’s a happy ending where she gets back together with him. I hope we see more of him. It’d be stupid to introduce him just to have him stick to one story with almost no development on his character.

  Thank goodness, a miracle HAPPENED, the best thing I could’ve possibly hoped for, and the 2000s comic changed back into the 90s comic. Now I can sort of look forward to the rest of the comic. I hope it was because fan reception to the Animated Series comic was negative and everyone begged them to do it. That’d make sense. And I’m so glad I still have some stories to go before she starts going to Gravestone Heights for no reason, or it gets that horrible art style shift I heard about. Still, ONE SPELL at best in each story and it backfired. Bad sign!

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 39:

  Hilda says her feet are killing her and asks why witches are doing shopping the mortal way, as they’re walking home holding bags of groceries. Zelda says they shouldn’t use their powers frivolously. I miss the 70s comic, AND the 90s comic, where she never had this stupid idea in her head. You’d think that they’d get rid of this stupid concept nobody liked, because they’re kind of back to the 90s comic art style! It’s just objectively more entertaining to see magic happen MORE, so how do the writers not know this?

She doesn’t want people to get suspicious because they’re using magic, but one memory erasing spell is all it would take to take care of that. And since I know they can drive, why didn’t one of them drive home with the groceries? Why did Hilda let Zelda boss her around instead of having the backbone she had in the 70s? She’d just warp.

  They see magic coming out of the chimney because someone’s using too much magic in the house. That doesn’t explain it. They go into the house and see some snacks flying towards the family room. The Animated Series is DONE, she’s not a kid anymore, so there’s absolutely NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER for her aunts STILL acting like she’s not allowed to use magic, and the story contriving a dumb excuse for them to act mad at her for it! They didn’t act like this in the 90s comic! She’d hate hearing all of her CDs at once, so why would she do it?

  She changes outfits a few time, y’know, like in the 70s show and sitcom. And she’s told she’s being frivolous with her powers, making me wish 70s Della was here to say that if you don’t use your magic, it’ll rust away. It’s so forced and arbitrary that apparently using magic too much in one house, causes magic exhaust to fly out of the chimney. That never happened in any story before, probably because the writers knew it’d be stupid.

  Zelda says Sabrina must use her magic wisely. There’s nothing unwise about what she was doing. It was only a mistake because the writer just FORCED that magical exhaust to be there. We didn’t NEED to SEE this scene. Salem says, “ use it or lose it, “ like Della would, and Hilda randomly brings up that he tried to take over the world with his powers, which makes it official that him being turned into a cat for that reason is still canon to this, even though it sort of has the 90s comic art style and takes place in ITS time period.

  Zelda thinks Sabrina would turn out like Salem for no reason at all, and decides to ground her for a week. I hate these characters SO MUCH. She won’t be able to go anywhere in town without their permission other than school. With the way they treat her, it’s a wonder this isn’t ALL the time. I’d imagine it’d always be like that.

I get wanting to make sure she won’t create magical exhaust out of the chimney, but couldn’t that be prevented by simply, zapping up something to keep stuff from getting out of the chimney? Why even have a chimney? Sabrina’s reading a book and she’s still bored after only a few hours trapped in her house. Play video games.

  Hilda talks to her condescendingly, and her aunts get to go out for dinner plans in the Other Realm while she has to stay here. I have a question. Wouldn’t it be more merciful to just use magic on Sabrina so that she KNOWS exactly how much magic is too much and stops? Sabrina wants to use the internet to chat with some friends and Salem says modern technology is wonderful, and says that she can even add an attachment to an email.

  Because he said that for no reason, she decides to turn her and Salem for no reason into computer files, attach them to an email and go to Hawaii. So she would just be warping to Hawaii. So at that point she wouldn’t need the computer. This is convoluted. Shouldn’t Sabrina be worried that her all-powerful aunts would be able to find out she went away and find out where she went? I’m just remembering the 70s cartoon where Hilda heard that she was gonna use magic for good and teleported to her to tell her not to.

Oh, how CONVENIENT. She actually DOES have a pen pal in Hawaii, who she calls, “ cyberpal, “ which is stilted dialogue. Somehow, they weren’t sent to Hawaii, because their email was rerouted due to an improper address  out of nowhere to a knight-filled empire of lost email that wouldn’t exist. Because they’re the first live attachments… somehow – how few witches are on Earth?! – these people that shouldn’t exist want to take her to their supreme leader. Salem tells Sabrina to use her powers to get them out of this loony bin. This STORY is a loony bin. She would’ve tried to go to Llandra instead.

  If the writer had common sense, he’d actually make her get them out of here in the very next panel. But instead, because he has no creativity, he forces her powers to be compressed in this digital form for no reason at all other than to pad out the story, when he could’ve easily just had her warp home, and written the story to continue from that point. Oh, it’s punishing her for not putting up with being grounded. Why WOULD SHE?! In all of their centuries of being witches, her aunts obviously would’ve encountered this problem BEFORE and made it so that magical exhaust couldn’t go through the chimney again.

  They get taken to the king who looks stupid and Salem somehow isn’t injured and bleeding after being hit with a spear when he satisfyingly tells him, “ With magic, you moron! “ Yeah, he should’ve known that. He wants to go to Sabrina’s world because he’s tired of just ruling a kingdom of lost email. Salem tells him that world domination isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but doesn’t explain why, but if he did, that wouldn’t convince him because he never GOT to rule a world. So he’s not able to tell him that, say, he’d have a much larger workload having to run more places.

  She says she’d never allow him to come back with her, stupidly saying this to his face, so go figure, she gets given prison time. She would’ve just told him her powers are weak in this form. Instantly, Hilda and Zelda show up, because when they got home, they saw that her email was still up and did the same thing she did… instead of warping her home from outside of the computer! Idiots!

  Sabrina says that her friend in Hawaii must have closed her account, which is what caused this plot. Why did she do that? Why didn’t she TELL her she was gonna close her account and give her the OTHER email? She must have decided she was tired of Sabrina. The 70s cartoon made me have to resist the urge to laugh because of how amusing it was to talk about.

  The king says that he has to take him with them, Hilda agrees, and Zelda winks at Sabrina while saying he doesn’t seem so bad. They all try to pool their weakened powers, and Sabrina says poor Greenville because she’s a complete idiot who somehow forgot about how powerful witches are normally. It’s immediately obvious they would just be able to instantly point at the bad guys and stop them as soon as they’d get home, even with compressed magic.

  Hilda DOES realistically send them back into the computer. Salem thanks the aunts for their quick thinking that Sabrina would’ve had instead of being honest. She says she’ll never disobey them again. I doubt that. If you wanna teach the lesson to obey your parents, you have to make the parents sympathetic, people we’d WANT to obey. And Zelda decides to take her flying vacuum too, just in case. She can still warp, can’t she? Why didn’t she simply warp to Hawaii, directly? This whole plot was forced and belongs in the garbage bin! I need a break.

  Morton says the holidays is a lot of fuss over nothing and is called a grouch because Salem can’t keep quiet, even around mortals, when he usually didn’t have that problem in the sitcom. Morton would wonder where he was hearing the clearly male voice from. Sabrina wants to figure out how to draw out Morton’s holiday spirit. Why would he have any? I don’t blame him. Not everyone has to get excited over a holiday, especially not when it seems like the only so-called loved one he HAS in life is a wife who doesn’t even like him.

  Sabrina creates a Christmas tree and expects to impress him with it. He says it’s just gonna drop needles everywhere. That’s why I always have fake trees for Christmas. He’s RIGHT. She does actually get humored, and he says it reminds him of his childhood. Later on, he throws it out because it had squirrels in it wrecking his house, because Sabrina zapped up a fresh tree. That wouldn’t happen. She would’ve just created a new one from scratch like I naturally assumed.

  He conveniently doesn’t hear Salem whispering. Sabrina says that Morton didn’t say no holiday items OUTSIDE his house. She magically decorates and tells him to plug something in for him. He complains about an intense brightness as I sense another Diabolus ex Machina. This story doesn’t even have a good message that not everyone has to love Christmas, because Morton’s being portrayed as just a grouch, not agreed with by anyone. Predictably something goes wrong.

  There’s a power overload and the power goes out across the whole neighborhood. Out of nowhere Morton invites everyone into his house because he’s got plenty of firewood, apparently, and the strangers want to pop popcorn over a fire and sing carols while he’d play the guitar. She gets asked for that tree again and the story ends with him suddenly enjoying Christmas. Uh, good thing there was a happy ending… I wouldn’t expect her grumpy neighbor to ever do this.

  In the next story, Sabrina asks Salem if he has any special plan for the holiday when it’s immediately obvious he wouldn’t because he’s a cat. How is she that dumb? And yet she knows a word that Hilda has to look up, somehow. He’s not interested in getting excited over the holidays, and Sabrina changes his form and shows him his reflection, revealing that she turned him into a reindeer because she won’t just accept Salem for who he is.

  This is the second story in a row telling you not to accept people who don’t care about Christmas for who they are. How does this writer feel about people who don’t even celebrate Christmas, who celebrate different holidays instead? Sabrina arbitrarily didn’t just brainwash him into loving Christmas, even though she said she would zap him into a form where he’d have to. He wouldn’t have to love it just because he was turned into a reindeer. She’s already not respecting who he is, why is she against brainwashing?

  Instead he destroys a couch, and Zelda says the house is no place for a reindeer and says goodbye. How does she NOT KNOW where she SENT HIM?! She’d have to imagine where he was sent, wouldn’t she? At least the 70s continuity explained that they get their powers from the mystic spirits and occasionally they ask the spirits for help in their spells, so I could assume the spirits got it wrong.

  Hilda says that from the intensity of her zap, she thinks Salem was sent downtown. Zelda says,
 “ Let him find his own way home then. “ So now she’s irresponsible. This just makes me hate her even MORE for being a strict fun-hating parental figure, because she’s a hypocrite too. Salem wouldn’t be able to find his way home, oh, lucky for him he knows this intersection. So he does know the way home.

  He sees a crying little girl, and asks her if he could help her. Luckily, she doesn’t freak out and run away screaming. I guess it’s because she’s a kid and he’s a reindeer. The store closed early for Christmas Eve when she came here with her list for Santa. And she came here ALONE, despite her age. Salem tells her to stuff the list in his collar and hop on so that he could take her to her family.

  She says, “ Cool! “ and asks why he’s not flying, and he says he’s conserving his energy for tonight. She thanks him, he goes home, and he risks Zelda or Sabrina using magic on him again when he calls her, “ Miss Zap Happy.  “ Salem explains the situation and Sabrina says she’ll have to fill the list. She goes to her house that night and sees that the items are under the tree already, because of Santa, because it’s a lame kids comic.

Santa already knew what gifts to give her and the kid thanks Salem anyways, and Sabrina says she’s one of Santa’s helpers. So much for Sabrina getting to use magic for good. And when the kid asks her to use magic to fly the reindeer to catch up, she uses magic to make Salem fly.

   The first story by Bill Golliher was TERRIBLE. For NO REASON, suddenly using too much magic causes magic exhaust to come out of the chimney, and Zelda’s scared of people finding out about magic, so she punishes Sabrina with grounding in the hopes that she won’t do it again, instead of erasing her neighbors’ memory of the magic exhaust. It’d be less cruel to just alter her mind so that she’ll know when the next spell will create magic exhaust and decide not to do it. But that’d be too much thinking for someone who’d rather just lash out at someone and punish them whenever she’s mad.

   I can’t even remember a time when the 70s Hilda grounded Sabrina, and she was a stereotypical evil witch! I THINK she did it ONCE, when she wanted her to do her homework. I know Sabrina made a mistake, but that doesn’t make it enjoyable to see her suffer for it, and then suffer even MORE because the writing FORCED her to get trapped in a bullshit civilization that wouldn’t exist just because she couldn’t email herself to her friend in Hawaii out of nowhere, and was too stupid to simply warp there like a normal witch.

  She stupidly doesn’t humor the king when he wants to go try to take over her world, so of course he puts her in the dungeon and her aunts have to do the thinking instead, and somehow their powers are weaker in this place for no reason other than to forcefully pad out the story with barely any plot material to it.

  The second story was about Sabrina not tolerating Morton’s lack of enthusiasm for Christmas, and instead using magic to give him a tree, which somehow has squirrels in it, and she turns on a bunch of Christmas decorations that glow, which creates a power outage in her entire neighborhood. Miraculously, he does a complete 180 and lets the strangers in his home because he has firewood and he starts enjoying his Christmas. Well, that’s good but confusing.

  And we have a third story where once again Sabrina doesn’t tolerate someone not being excited for Christmas, even though he’s trapped as a cat. He has every reason to not be very excited for his life. And Sabrina turns him into a reindeer, when it’d be less cruel to make him enjoy Christmas. Then when he tries to nap on the couch anyways, he destroys it and Zelda warps him downtown even though she could just magically replace the couch, and irresponsibly leaves him alone to find his way home himself in the cold. This could’ve very easily gotten him killed.

  And I bet if Sabrina did this, she’d get grounded. And she’d get grounded if she told Zelda what a frivolous use of magic that was. If this was the 70s comic she’d call out Hilda on what she did and warp Salem back and turn him back to normal. Somehow she didn’t know where she sent Salem, and she sent him so far away because she was mad! She would’ve simply sent him to the backyard!

At least he was shown to have a soft side when he felt sorry for a kid, but because she got her presents from Santa regardless, it was all just a WASTE of his TIME. So no wonder I was annoyed by the ending, that once again lies to children. Lucky for Sabrina, she wasn’t punished for turning him into a reindeer. She had Good Hilda and Zelda around this time. She had good Hilda and Zelda around this time. Now, why can’t it ALWAYS be like this?

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 40:

  Hilda wakes Sabrina up telling her that it’s her turn to zap up breakfast, uncharacteristically calling her ‘brina. At least she’s allowed to zap up breakfast. You’d think she’d dismiss THAT as too “ frivolous. “ She’s tired and instantly dresses herself with magic and does her hair, but somehow it’s only temporary with her hair. She’s asked for blueberry muffins for breakfast. I guess it makes sense because they’ve been alive for so long that they’re really bored, to the point where they’ll have snacks for breakfast. They hate the breakfast, and tell her that her spell posture is poor and she’ll have misshapen magic her whole life.

  So despite her constantly using magic in the previous issue implying she was if anything an expert, Zelda decides to send her to spelling school, an after-school witchcraft program in the Other Realm, based off just ONE measly day of her doing a half-assed job with magic when she was clearly really sleepy.

  You know, maybe she just didn’t visualize everything right because she was tired from JUST waking UP. Are they really too stupid to figure that out? Because it was obvious immediately. She’d TELL THEM THAT and avoid the arc! THAT’S the excuse for why she ends up going to spelling school? I knew about this ahead of time. It’s not TOTALLY contrived, but it’s still stupid. Enchantra sent her to a witch school before. It’d actually be better if Enchantra sent her to the spelling school because she did this before, so she’d do it again. She doesn’t KNOW her very well, so of course SHE thought she needed help with magic.

  Sabrina tells Harvey next afternoon that she has to go to spelling tutoring after school instead of hanging out at the pizza parlor with him. When he says she aced her vocabulary test this week, as if I’m supposed to think Sabrina’s smart now, she lies that her French spelling is the problem. He kisses her and says to meet him if she finishes, and she goes to the school and meets a guy with a ridiculously out of place blue haired anime design, and he asks her if this is the spelling class because he can’t read his own handwriting, somehow. Wow, he’s really dumb.

  And she immediately thinks he’s cute, but she won’t wanna date him right away, so she shouldn’t have been written to think that. It’s also very distracting and hard to take seriously that his name is Shinji. It just reminds me of a character from Evangelion. I never watched the show but I heard about it.

  Shinji says he’s impossibly bad at magic to an unbelievable extent. THAT’S supposed to be why he’s here? He’ll get a tack and not a cat? That’s forced. He tells her an anecdote revealing that he has parents around as a teenager. This means the later issues aren’t canon to this. She laughs and is told to stop by the teacher, who also looks silly, and I’m not immediately told that she’s an alien to explain why she’s out of place too.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, Sabrina says Salem will never be a wizard again. Um, male witches were ALWAYS called warlocks in this franchise. How did they make this mistake AGAIN? She advises him to make friends with other cats, and she gets called by him and it turns out he made friends with Josie and the Pussycats, who aren’t freaked out at his talking and standing upright. So, he must have explained everything to them.

  So the teacher uses magic to give the students their ugly yellow uniforms and even change Shinji’s hairstyle, not that she makes it a good hairstyle, when you’d think she would do that for the same reason she would make them change hairstyles in the first place. And HER hairstyle for Sabrina is horrible. Ugly uniforms, really? I thought this idea couldn’t get any worse.

  She wants them to pair up and he randomly says to her that his ponytail makes him irresistible, foreshadowing the fact that he’s into her, and she’s into him and yet she’s still gonna refuse to date him, so she’s only written to crush on him to cause drama, as a cheap way of getting the audience interested easily.

It’s not even like he does anything really impressive, and THAT’S the only reason she ends up having a crush on him! It’s not like he does something impressive that’d endear him to the audience! She literally just finds him attractive right away when he looks silly, and that feels cheap, lazy, even if it’s realistic.

  I remember her easily accepting a date from the school star quarterback, and trying to get a saxophone player impressed with her at school, but NOW she won’t admit that she has a crush on another guy. NOW she’s faithful, with no mention whatsoever to the fact that she used to crush on other guys.

  Harvey’s eating pizza alone, and we really don’t have to see them somehow failing to use magic. It’s not good writing because it’s not believable at all, so we should never be shown this again. It doesn’t take ANY writing talent at all to think up, “ let’s have a character screw up magic. “ You could pull random spells out of a hat! That doesn’t impress me with the story. They wouldn’t need to work together to create a frog. ALL witches are known for turning people into frogs! Sabrina summoned a mouse and a dodo just fine earlier on, as the Animated Series Sabrina, so why would her frog meow?!

  I know the fans of the sitcom hated when Sabrina and Harvey broke up and the show started Character Shilling Josh and Aaron as new love interests for her, so why would the comic writers do anything similar? It’s not like this is 70s Harvey where he’s intentionally a terrible love interest for her – and so him being The Chew Toy felt right instead of mean-spirited because it’s not like he’s the main character that the audience is supposed to relate to.

  So it’s not like he’s the type of character where I’d want her to date someone else, and even if that was the case, I’d just be frustrated and bored with how LONG it’s taking for her to dump him. Since when does Harvey call Sabrina to say goodnight to her? She’s asked by her aunts in the morning if she picked up any pointers after padding and the story ends with Salem fat from her muffins too quickly.

  In the next story, Ambrose warps to Salem and is asked what took him so long, and he asks Salem what’s the emergency and says he just got his email. I guess it’s NOT an emergency. He’s told that Sabrina and her aunts went shopping and before they get back, he needs Ambrose to pretend to be him in front of a girl who’s been Salem’s internet chatroom pal and wants to meet him. Salem was so flattered, he didn’t think before agreeing.

  Ambrose agrees and asks why the girl wanted to meet him at the zoo. This immediately made me wonder if the twist was that she’s a transformed witch, herself, and is doing the same thing, and I assumed that because I already saw a story where Salem had to face a girl as himself, just to find out she was turned into an animal too. It’s forced that Ambrose hopes she doesn’t have a goatee.

  It turns out she invited Salem to the zoo because she works there. She thanks Ambrose for complimenting her appearance and he compliments her outfit. The hat really helps. She says that she loves animals, and Ambrose has to lie that his CAT is named Ambrose, not Salem. Naturally, Salem’s mad because Ambrose is getting cozy with Lesley and he can’t, so he pokes Ambrose.

  She says that if he’s tired of sitting, they could have a walk. Why’d she say he’s tired of sitting? And she’s somehow not reacting at all to what just happened to him. She says she wanted to talk about the internet chat. She admits it wasn’t her, and Lesley was a gorilla who uses sign language all along. This shouldn’t have been so predictable. I didn’t expect a gorilla, but an animal was obvious.

  She’s even been taught to read and type. It needs to be explained that this is a transformed witch because how could a mere gorilla be smart enough in a chat room about WHATEVER probably HUMAN subject Salem was talking about, that he wouldn’t notice? Lesley looks disappointed at seeing Ambrose and wrote a message saying that she was hoping for someone hairier. Too bad the story ended there. It should’ve ended with Salem revealing that he can talk, and so he has something in common with her after all.

  In the next story, Hilda comes back home from the park. Why did she go there? Salem says that she brought home a sick squirrel one time, and Zelda says that Hilda’s always looking out for defenseless creatures. This is quite a contrast to 70s Hilda. They’re not animals, they’re pixies. Zelda says they’re fairies actually and she hasn’t seen any in ages. So, this comic has to be retconning away the existence of that story where Sabrina was enslaved by a pixie, or else she wouldn’t call them cute at all and they’d hate each other.

  They knew Zelda was a witch because they didn’t fly away. How convenient that they magically knew she was a witch. It’s not explained that they sensed their magical energy! Hilda says they don’t speak. I wonder if that’ll last. Hilda says she told them they could stay here because it’s freezing outside. Salem says fairies are forest folk, meaning they’d have ways of surviving the cold anyways, and Hilda thanks Zelda for humoring her and says they’d be perfect guests. Hilda hopes they’ll get to stay forever.

  Then the fairy, go figure, CAN talk and says she thought that annoying witch would never go to bed. If the fairies were gonna be the villains ANYWAYS, I hate that the characters were written to not remember the story where Sabrina was enslaved by one that explained that pixies are mortal enemies of witches, because it just has the characters act like ignorant idiots just to force this story to happen.

  Salem wakes Sabrina up because he hears tons of wings and she tells Salem it’s just his imagination, arbitrarily doubting the heightened senses of a magical cat. So the next morning, when they’re the first to wake up, they find out there’s a fairy infestation. Lemme guess, they won’t be able to simply zap them all away, like you’d expect. Her aunts show up and she frees a fairy who thanks her, because somehow, someone shut her in there without noticing.

  Hilda finds out that the fairy from last night is a queen, and when you invite the queen, you invite all her subjects, which is an official rule of the fairies, along with the rule that once they’re invited, they can stay forever. Go figure, Zelda isn’t able to warp the fairies away because the writer has no idea how to legitimately force the story to last longer. So the fairies are magically immune to magic just because they were invited here.

  So Zelda decides to leave the house with her family and retreat to the Other Realm and regroup, leaving Salem alone with fairies that wanna ride him. Then the fairies get vacuumed up by an Other Realm pest service. If this was the kind of thing fairies did, and there was a witch pest service for it, then the fairies wouldn’t have bothered, and Hilda wouldn’t have been ignorant enough to make the mistake that would cause this whole plot to happen. She would’ve read about this happening to other witches or been told about it.

  She would hate fairies. Instead, she cares about whether or not they’re okay, and they’re gonna be released into a Fairy Preserve, because we definitely sympathized with them. The story ends with it turning out that Salem was vacuumed up and he gets taken out and says a forced pun when Sabrina hugs him.

  The first story sucked. It’s by Holly G, an ARTIST who clearly did no research on Sabrina first. I can understand why Zelda would send Sabrina to a magic class for doing a half-assed job at spells, in ANOTHER COMIC, but how did NOBODY notice the fact that she was really sleepy in the morning? It’s not like any of them reference her screwing up magic a LOT MORE than THIS. You’d think they’d all realize that she only screwed up because she JUST woke up, which I thought was the case immediately.

  Zelda jumps at the chance to do this to Sabrina without waiting a day! The SAME PEOPLE who wanted to ground her for using magic frivolously, WHY would they encourage her to use magic by sending her to a magic school?! I didn’t expect THAT. It should’ve been Enchantra’s idea!

It’s not like she was great at magic this morning and they decided to send her anyways, but combine this with the fact that multiple people are okay with this, that even Salem didn’t tell them it was ridiculous, and it still feels like the writer FORCED it to happen, and that’s NOT remotely ACCEPTABLE and respectable when you’re having the concept last more than one issue! This is gonna be an ENTIRE story arc! And what kind of exciting, magical, CREATIVE thing is the comic focusing on for this arc? Oh, it’s just a typical love triangle. Never saw THAT before!

At least it does a better job creating suspense over which guy she’ll choose than Sally and Mina’s love triangle, because Sabrina immediately gets a crush on Shinji, while Sonic never showed any actual interest in Mina, and only dated Sally, making the writers’ preference way too obvious. Even when he tried to give a chance after she broke up with Ash for a bit, I felt like he was only resorting to her since Sally broke up with HIM, since it came out of nowhere.

  This seems less pointless and misleading than that, but Harvey in the 90s Comic isn’t completely opposite to Sabrina in personality and constantly disagreeing with her and arguing with her. Neither is Shinji, they’re BOTH equally bland characters, who are impossibly dumb. Is she gonna date BLUE-haired Harvey or real Harvey? Her dating Shinji won’t change anything other than, she’ll be able to use magic in front of him, which would cause her trouble if she used it too recklessly, so she’s actually safer dating Harvey.

  I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it turned out that the writers only wrote this love triangle because the editor forced them to because that was the case with Mina in Archie. But there’d be nothing to the plot without it. It’s just a dumb story where Sabrina is suddenly horrible at magic at magic class even though she went back in time by herself TWICE. There’s no plot there.

And the only thing interesting is something that a million other franchises have already done, and while this feels like the first time the franchise did it, it just seems like an admission that it ran out of good ideas! It’s PANDERING to teenage girls! I see right through this pandering crap! It’s sad because the series before this had the dignity to AVOID this, and appeal to all genders.

  The second story by Bill Golliher is about Salem going to meet his pen pal with Ambrose posing as him because he doesn’t wanna reveal that he’s a cat. I predicted that his pen pal would turn out to be an animal from the start, because I already read a story where he was worried about this, but at least the story threw me off for a minute by having a girl meet Ambrose and explain that she invited him to the zoo because she works there. That made it surprising that his pen pal was a gorilla, in particular, but still, the gorilla wouldn’t be entered in Salem’s chat room. I sure wish I knew what they were chatting ABOUT.

  The third story by Bill Golliher only happened because the writers ignored the fact that witches and pixies are sworn enemies, so Hilda wants some fairies to stay at her house, but they arbitrarily invite a whole bunch of other fairies to join their queen, when obviously they’d just get in trouble. And they get vacuumed up by a fairy pest service.

  Shouldn’t the fairies have been written to shapeshift to look like harmless cute little creatures instead of fairies? Hilda would’ve known better if this was a thing that could happen to witches and she’s lived for hundreds of years. She has witch relatives, so, surely one of THEM would’ve told her about this. She wouldn’t have any sympathy for the fairies. Why make the fairies villains again? I miss when the series was just about how witchcraft affects life among mortals, NOT mostly about supernatural creatures on Earth for NO REASON!

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 41:

  It starts out with Sabrina having to deal with Bad Hilda and Zelda this time, because they’re mad at her for coming home late. This is the kind of “ treat Sabrina like a child “ writing that just makes me wish she was an adult with no authority figures living with her. Is EVERY main story gonna SUCK? It’s bad ENOUGH the previous two main stories were awful with her aunts being mean. At least they’re mad at her for a justified reaosn. They have to go to Salem’s transformation hearing and Sabrina’s late. Why did she have to come with them? Why are her cousins here, and not her cousins’ parents?

  Enchantra and the Witches’ Council are gonna decide if Salem will stay a cat for another century. Why should I CARE about his story? It’s IMMEDIATELY predictable that they’ll decide to keep Salem as a cat, because that’s the status quo! I should just skip this story entirely. Sabrina says Harvey was walking her home and she got distracted. This CAN’T be their ENTIRE FAMILY. Witches are immortal!

  And Enchantra uses magic to see what’s taking them so long, and sees Sabrina’s family wasting time nagging her to not let her mortal side be a distraction and be serious about witch business.This never would’ve happened if these people who supposedly were mad at Sabrina for being late, instantly went to Enchantra as soon as she showed up at home, instead of keeping her waiting some MORE just to bitch her out for a while. That’s supposed to be why the entire plot HAPPENED?

  Sabrina gets told not to see Harvey so often. I wish Hilda said this instead so it’d be a callback to the good, 70s comic, instead of being Out of Character! She says she didn’t ask to be a part of this family and wishes she wasn’t sometimes. Considering how much trouble being part of a witch family causes her, no wonder she said this.

  Enchantra decides to grant her wish and have Sabrina out of her hair for good. So she warps her out of her house and Zelda treats her like a stranger and pushes her out of the house. What’s needlessly cruel and sadistic is that Enchantra doesn’t rewrite Sabrina’s memories and give her a new, loving mortal family. Granted, this gives her a chance to undo the wish, but still, she doesn’t have to make her suffer here. Is this only to punish her for making her wait for 15 minutes?! Why doesn’t anyone in the house ask why Sabrina knows Zelda’s a witch? They’d do that and then listen to her!

  Sabrina cries and a squirrel talks to her, knowing that she’s a witch because she’s levitating a park bench, which she somehow did by accident because she was so upset, even though she’d have to visualize it to make it happen. The squirrel used to be a witch too and says he’s just passing through the town. She tells the squirrel everything and he tells her what happened, so she gets told to go to the witches’ council and get this reversed. She could’ve impressed me by figuring out Enchantra did this on her own instead of having her conveniently meet a man who got turned into an animal who’d explain things to her.

  Go figure, Salem gets told he has to stay a cat for another hundred years. Sabrina shows up here with the squirrel, which Enchantra immediately remembers the name of just from hearing his voice, somehow when he hasn’t heard the squirrel for a long time. She was turned into a squirrel for beating Enchantra in the Miss Other Realm Pageant.

The squirrel calls out Enchantra and gets her to admit what she did. If it was that easy, Sabrina could’ve been written to call her out and say she sensed a powerful spell from her and get her to admit this herself, but at least the squirrel is a girl, so I can’t say it’s sexist. It is more interesting that the squirrel is in the story.

  The squirrel, who’s called Sandy which HAS to be an intentional reference to SpongeBob, tells Enchantra to check her witches’ rule book, which says that witches who grant a wish must also grant two more. That wouldn’t be made a rule. That’s irresponsible! That’s an arbitrary Deus ex Machina! You’d think Sabrina, who’s an omnipotent witch, would be able to reverse Enchantra’s spell by herself, immediately. Throughout the entire franchise Sabrina’s shown the ability to brainwash people! I guess it’s also a matter of, Enchantra rewrote history.

  So they end up remembering her and Hilda apologizes to her. Sabrina’s asked for another wish. Gee, I wonder if she WON’T decide to make Salem human? Instead she has Sandy get turned into a witch, even though Salem reminded Sabrina about the whole reason they’re here, and she just said she’d put family first from now on.

But to be fair, Salem was turned into a cat because he tried to take over the world. Sabrina’s only ever known Salem as her pet cat, so why would she be comfortable with him becoming a human from now on? Also, if she turned him into a human warlock, there’d be the risk that he’d just do something to get turned into a cat again.

  Meanwhile, if she gets Sandy turned back to normal, there’s no way she’d get turned into an animal again as long as she stays clear of Enchantra. So it’s a safer bet, more responsible and the right thing to do to reward Sandy for helping Sabrina. She thanks Sabrina , and fortunately when Sabrina and her family get home, Sabrina does immediately think to apologize to Salem, and she gets to explain herself.

  Sandy’s been a squirrel even longer than he’s been a cat. You know, she could’ve just kept it simple and explained that she was rewarding Sandy for helping her today. Lucky for Sabrina, Salem’s not mad at her because he’s so amazed by how pretty Sandy looks now, even though when she leaves, he won’t get to see her anymore, so logically he’d be mad at Sabrina afterwards.

  It sure is lucky for Sabrina that her family isn’t mad at her for betraying Salem. I’m glad she did indeed get written to help Sandy because it’s the right thing to do and NOT just because the writer was writing her to be an idiot. The story ends with Sandy deciding to go live in a tree-house somewhere, again, just like Sandy Cheeks.

  In the next story, Esmeralda thanks Sabrina for coming with her to the Other Realm to sell cookies for the junior witches’ league. That dialogue is stilted because she has too much to say. Sabrina says she missed out on this because she grew up on Earth, even though mortals sell cookies too. Her cousin says that eating the cookie casts a little spell that lasts a few minutes. Sabrina decides to eat one for some reason, and her cousin says that’s not a good idea.

  Sabrina says that if she’s selling them, she should sample one. At first she thinks it didn’t affect her. It must be Sabrina’s idea that they go to sell cookies to Shinji first. He agrees to buy a cookie and eats it right in front of them instead of immediately going back inside, which is unrealistic, and he turns into a cyclops. Why would that be one of the possible spells? No one would want that. Why doesn’t she try to undo it?

  The story doesn’t need this many panels for how predictable its plot is, especially since, the victims aren’t all people we hate. Go figure, the old lady turns into a monster, too. The cookie also triples some triplets. All of the cookies they were selling were stamped as reject. She’d have found this out PAGES ago. Esmeralda says she bought all these boxes at the spell cookie outlet because they’re seconds, so they cost way less per box and she pockets the difference. Sabrina stupidly asks what makes them rejects when she’d know they were rejects because their spells were awful. I guess an evil witch made them.

  The boxes say that the unpleasant effects of the cookies last for several weeks. They get chased by an angry mob and Sabrina gets to be competent for once by warping her and her cousin home to the Mortal Realm. She gets thanked and demands Esmeralda to apologize to the customers when they calm down and refund their money. The story ends with Sabrina having a tail. It would’ve been lazy and underwhelming if nothing happened to her when she ate a cookie.

  Why would the spells be guaranteed to last for weeks? Hard to digest or not, can’t they be teleported out of the body? Wouldn’t a witch be able to undo them right away, or a whole bunch of witches at once? I’m just glad we saw total STRANGERS suffer from the effects of the cookies instead of it being an entire story where Sabrina alone is made miserable, which would be mean-spirited.

  In the next story, suddenly Sabrina has a hairstyle like a little girl. Well, that’s off-putting. She says she’s sick of Amy showing off about her dance number for the talent show. Then Amy flirts with Harvey as I hope she’ll be tormented with magic in this story because there’s no point in using her otherwise. It’s just annoying the AUDIENCE.

  She tells Sabrina that she can’t dance while she can, even though, she proved she COULD dance in the Animated Series comic before this, and this prompts Sabrina to lie that she has a rock band instead of telling her she can dance since she’s an idiot, so she has to compete with Amy in the talent show with a rock band. At least she lampshades that she said a stupid thing. She sees her Cinderella book at home and realizes that she just has to zap up her band. She’d still have to use magic so that she could play an instrument or sing.

  She’s surprisingly smart enough to create robots to be her rock band-mates, and people assume they’re costumes, so that’s why she can get away with it. I’m glad that person said that. She’s expected to do too many encores, and the rock mates disappear in front of everyone. Sabrina thinks she forgot the midnight rule of the Cinderella spell. Why did she GO with a spell that had a midnight rule?! She’d have to intentionally give it that rule!

  And she naturally assumes that now the whole school knows about witchcraft, she DID look scared in front of the audience after they turned into rocks after all, but somehow they just cheer and she gets first prize, and someone assumes she did a computer generated stage show with hidden projectors. Good thing Sabrina won. I mean, magic is a talent too, so if someone with a talent that no one else in the school has can deserve to win, so would Sabrina. But it’s too bad Amy didn’t get punished with magic.

  The first story by Bill Golliher’s premise was never really given a chance because after Enchantra casts a spell on Sabrina for making her wait, Sabrina doesn’t get to see whether or not she’d be happier living with a mortal family instead of her actual one, and instead Enchantra makes her an orphan who REMEMBERS her old life.

  So OF COURSE she wants her family back and she conveniently gets it back because she conveniently met a transformed squirrel who called out Enchantra, and told her about a rule that wouldn’t exist that witches have to grant three wishes, not one. She didn’t actually get her wish granted, she clearly meant that she wanted a different family. I was given no reason to sympathize with her family in this story.

  The second story by Bill Golliher brought back Esmeralda’s evil side, having her sell evil magic cookies to people because they were cheaper. Previous story also had her be evil but she got away with it! And the third story by Holly Golightly is about Sabrina creating a rock band of robots and winning a talent show. I like that it just ended there with no consequences.

  I bet if this was the sitcom, she’d be written to give up the first prize if she even got to win it at ALL, or she’d have to reverse time to undo it all, and she has to learn a lesson at the end of every episode. She just beats Amy in the talent show using her magic and it’s fine, but I was still disappointed that Amy didn’t get embarrassed with magic directly. Good story for THIS comic, but not in general because of Amy!

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 42:

  Sabrina thanks Harvey for walking her home, and he says it’s totally his pleasure, being confusingly happy about it in his dialogue. He asks her if she’s gonna invite him in. I wonder if she won’t. She tries to and then tells him to leave because supposedly the house is messy, she kisses him at least  and sees a huge amount of paperwork near her aunts, because when you live several hundred years, it really stacks up.

  Hilda sees an old tin type of them with Lincoln, and Hilda says that she was the one who gave him theater tickets that they couldn’t use. That’s not good to write. This is a kids’ comic, and yet it was written that Sabrina’s aunts are indirectly responsible for Lincoln’s death. The tone of the comic’s already too dark for my liking because it’s depressing, I just feel SORRY for Sabrina. At least this is what Sabrina was saying , “ Oh my goodness! “ about and NOT Shinji being here.

  Salem points out an old scroll, a prenup that Zelda signed for a short marriage of hers to Metal Melborne, a classic rocker who happens to be a warlock, and apparently Sabrina knows about him. You’d think people would have done research on his life and know it was his life for a fact, because he’s a celebrity, so if this Not-Ozzy Ozborne was alive during the Middle Ages as a minstrel, I’d sure like to know how he covered up the fact that he never had a childhood at the same time as all the normal mortals.

  Zelda met him in the Middle Ages, and it sure is convenient that he thought to have her sign a prenup, because he was such a celebrity. He ended up being interested in some other woman, and that caused them to separate, and out of complete nowhere, Zelda thinks he might still love her and smiles, when she hated him before.

  Salem hates the music he plays now, and go FIGURE, there’s a special little clause in the scroll that’s gonna inconvenience Zelda, because we were TOLD about the scroll, so of course it’s gonna start a plot. It says that if Zelda’s not married 500 years after signing this, she’ll lose all of her powers forever. So she has to get back with him. She says she’d rather go powerless. She can’t mean that and she won’t. She warps him to her to call him out.

  Meanwhile, he’s thanked for performing on someone’s show and when he gets warped away, she just assumes it’s a cool special effect, probably assuming it was done with holograms or projectors. He gets warped to Zelda and he somehow immediately recognizes her. Wait a minute, she had green hair at the start of the 90s comic. Apparently, her having green hair in the past isn’t canon anymore, or she dyed it green later. I don’t know why they can’t just be three separate comics.

He acts like he’s still infatuated with her and still remembers her face after centuries, which I’m not sure is realistic. He assumes that she wants him back, even though she was clearly mad at him. He’s smug about this, but then Hilda says that the scroll doesn’t say who she has to be married to.

  I can’t even say that he wrote it that way to be generous to her and accepting of her marrying another man, because he just says that he guesses it could be interpreted that way. Zelda’s told she has a year to figure out who else she could marry.

Can’t she get around this by conjuring up a man or brainwashing a man into marrying her? He doesn’t even have to be kept around afterwards, it sounds harsh, but she could send him somewhere nice. At least this story’s engaging and good. Boring though with SLOW pacing, but I’m not furious at it.

  Metal zaps up his band to try to serenade Zelda. Hilda says he’s making a racket, of course because they’re playing electric guitars right in front of her. The doorbell rings and Harvey says he had her algebra notebook by mistake and wanted to return it. Then he sees Melborne, and at first, he lies that Zelda is his old lady. He must been doing this to embarrass her, or at least trick her into admitting that she’s his ex-wife, which she does.

  Hilda pushes Harvey out the door, Metal says he’d be more likely to win Zelda back if it was like the old days, and warps her back to the Middle Ages. Why didn’t he just conjure up a new Zelda to date a long time ago? I doubt he actually loved her enough because he had a “ wandering eye. “ And yet, he wouldn’t be happy enough unless it was the real Zelda. She says this sparks some pleasant memories and he serenades her, but then some girls fawn over him, and he says there’s plenty of him to go around, so she remembers why she divorced him.

  He surprisingly gets the hint and says he’ll split for now, but never mind, because he says he’ll be back. He offers to give her a kiss so that she can remember what she’s missing. She tells him to close his eyes. He wouldn’t be so stupid as to trust her. Go figure, she tricks him. She makes him kiss Salem, and somehow he doesn’t talk about the fact that the cat talked.

  He warps away while saying she’ll change her tune, and the story ends with her flirting with the waiter at the malt shop. How is Salem allowed there? Why does no one question why he’s drinking a smoothie or whatever? They must have brainwashed to let Salem be here.

And the textbox asks if Zelda will tie the knot, rather than ending it conclusively, which it could’ve easily done by showing her in the future, conjuring up a man to marry specifically to get around that loophole. Also, you’d think maybe she could take this prenup to a lawyer somewhere and get the clause laughed out of court. But she’s an idiot in this comic.

  In the next story, Salem’s coughing up a hairball, and says he has some medicine for this, so Zelda says she’ll get it, but then gets distracted by a phone call, because she’s seeing Sabrina’s history teacher out of nowhere. At least show us how they met and got together.

She gets invited to watch a video about history with him, and in her distracted state, she gives Salem something magical instead, and Zelda tells Hilda and Sabrina to go watch a movie to give her some privacy because she’s only got a few months to get a husband. You don’t need to remind us. Is it months or a YEAR? Zelda said she has a year to figure it out! Salem says he’s not going out until his cough clears up and will hang out upstairs.

  Zelda says Harold should love her new souffle and Salem’s coughing causes it to get ruined, and also summons clothing to Zelda that Harold appreciates because it’s old. He disappoints her with microwave popcorn, and because of Salem’s coughing, the microwave sends out too much popcorn. Why would someone EVER make a magic potion that would cause your coughing to cause random magical side-effects in your house? How would your magic even DECIDE what exactly to DO?

  The flood of popcorn sends her jumping into his arms, and he just says her microwave’s really effective, instead of freaking out about obvious magic, he asks her where the bathroom is, and Salem summons a knight costume to himself and falls down the stairs into Harold, which knocks him out. Zelda would be able to reverse this with magic right away.

Zelda figures out what’s been going on and gives Salem the real medicine. Harold wakes up on the couch with Zelda in normal clothes and says that the last thing he remembers, he was coming over to watch a video, and she says a little aspirin should clear up that headache, but no, the story ends with her giving him invisibility pills instead. Why does she have those?

  In the next story, a piece of paper warps to Sabrina and she’s told she won Teen Witch of the Month. Her essay on being a teen witch in the mortal world was great. When did she write such an essay? Such witches warp to her with pink hair. I guess it makes sense that witches would have weird hair colors if Zelda had green hair. But it’d still feel less out of place if they had green hair instead of just reminding me of anime, instead of being like EVERY other part of the franchise BEFORE this.

  They came here to interview Sabrina, and one of them has a photographer. They want to show their reads what it’s like being a witch in the mortal world. WHY is my time being wasted with Sabrina telling me stuff I already know about her background? None of it matters! She had to leave her mom on her 16th birthday to begin her magical training. No she DIDN’T. So Sabrina The Magic Within is a separate continuity. This is just making up new continuity, ignoring the first issue of the 90s comic entirely. This isn’t even a sitcom thing.

  What is the point of retconning elements of the sitcom into the comic, if it’s not even gonna have Zelda be a brilliant genius science teacher, which was usually the only thing I liked about her personality? Wouldn’t these people interviewing her ALREADY KNOW everything she’s telling them? They know that if she sees her mom again she’ll lose her powers.

  Since when is Zelda into rock and funky fashion? Why is Sabrina even saying funky? Since when is Zelda way into nature? And if she wanted to teach her about the fun in magic, she wouldn’t be bitching at her for using it! Hilda’s supposedly classy and loves doing girly things. Since when? Wearing a dress didn’t make her girly. It’d obviously be better to show off these character traits in an actual story instead of having Sabrina tell us them. When you do it like this, it’s not memorable.

  Salem wastes a lot of my time too asking for a photo of himself and gets zapped away. This story’s worthless trash. There’s nothing to say about it and it has no right to exist. I’m supposed to believe Sabrina’s aunts have taught her that hexing only gets her into trouble. I NEVER saw that even once. In fact, I’ve seen Zelda do hexing in the 90s comic, giving Amy some car trouble. The story ends with her being taken pictures of with a lot of different outfits on.

  Most of the stories in this issue were actually good by this comic’s standards. The first story by Bill Golliher reveals that Zelda’s ex-fiance put a clause in his prenup with her that if she’s not married in 500 years, she has to marry or lose her powers. But somehow he was too stupid to have it specify that she has to marry him. And why 500 years? Wouldn’t people know Melborne’s a witch because he’d be famous and they’d do research on him and find out he wasn’t a kid when he should’ve been?

  The second story by Bill Golliher’s about Zelda giving a potion to Salem instead of hairball medicine that inexplicably was designed to make random magical events happen during her date whenever he coughs. How would magic decide what to make happen? That story’s confusing, but engaging. I always wanted to know what would happen next and I’m glad it didn’t end with her date breaking up with her from the magic happening.

  And the third story by Holly G’s worthless trash where Sabrina recaps to some interviewers after winning teen witch of the year because of an essay on growing up on Earth. All it does is try to retcon the comic, so I don’t care about any of its continuity. It’s just telling us character traits about her aunts that don’t exist.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 43:

  At least it starts out with the talking fish acknowledging that we’re all here to see Sabrina instead of her. I’m here to see Sabrina using magic in a mortal life, NOT having to deal with another supernatural creature on Earth for no reason! But if the writer knew that this complaint would happen, why’d he write this anyways?

Having the story start with a character expositing her backstory to the audience just leaves me detached instead of taking it seriously. She used to be a mermaid, and it’s up to her to transform a human male into her merman mate with a kiss. So that’s what brings her to the carnival in a little goldfish bowl. And I’m supposed to assume nobody’s hearing this.

  Sabrina goes to the carnival with Harvey and is told to toss the ball into a bowl to win a goldfish. She uses magic to win easily, and thankfully, she immediately has the good sense to get this fish into a bigger tank because it looks cramped. Goldfish actually prefer bigger tanks. It turns out Zelda’s here on a date with Harold. This is BORING PADDING! Zelda explains that she met Harold at Sabrina’s open house. Whatever THAT is. Zelda’s called out on dating her teacher and tells her to just get over it, looking heartless and selfish. But Sabrina’s also selfish.

  After Harold shows an interest in riding the triple loops and so does Zelda, it cuts to Sabrina back home, and she thanks Harvey, and kisses him, which the fish doesn’t like. Salem says the fish is a midnight snack, and I wonder what happened to that pet fish Sabrina got in an earlier story. I guess Salem ate him and she forgave him.

  Sabrina uses magic to create a roomy tank, so the goldfish realizes she’s in a family of witches, and Zelda gets mad and says Harold didn’t believe her story about two barmaids starting the war of 1812. Apparently, Hilda and Zelda were the barmaids. HOW ridiculously DARK is it that Hilda and Zelda started a WAR?!

WHY would they write this?! This is a kids’ franchise, it doesn’t have any gore in it or anything! Why was this panel considered enjoyable to see? This is supposed to be a sympathetic character. How are they just cheerfully smiling about starting a war?! It’s not an Adult Swim cartoon! Zelda says those Brits should’ve kept their hands to themselves.

  Hilda tells Zelda to get some sleep and reassures her that things will seem better in the morning. It’s ironic to have Hilda be the cool-headed one and Zelda be the hothead. At night, the goldfish turns back into a mermaid to get a chance to stretch. I guess she’ll be handed the Villain Ball when she could’ve kissed ANY guy but Harvey.

  Salem can’t sleep and wants another look at the tasty fish. He could’ve easily zapped up a copy of that fish to eat. He sees she’s a mermaid and she says she can’t risk him passing on her plan to Sabrina, that she plans to turn Harvey into a merman. Why would she tell him that? That’s the only reason he, well, I guess witches know all about that part of mermaid lore in this comic, so he already knew. But he might not have known it was Harvey she was after if she didn’t tell him that. She reveals out of nowhere that she has some limited powers and turns him into a catfish who can’t talk.

  The next morning, Sabrina, somehow not noticing Salem’s absence by now because I guess they assume he’s sleeping somewhere, calls Zelda her Aunt Zee, out of nowhere. She says she’s running late for school. And yet her strict, overly responsible aunts didn’t make sure she’d wake up earlier, which is also confusing. She tells Sabrina to take these cookies to Harold because she’s desperate to get married, so she’ll forgive him easily. She zaps on clothes and decides to deliver them herself, being smart enough to realize that she’ll get more brownie points that way.

  The mermaid decides to go to school disguised as a human, and she can even zap up modern clothes for herself. Ariel couldn’t do this! It’s certainly engaging and interesting to see brand new lore made up for mermaids in this comic, but it still makes me feel like the writers ran out of ideas for normal Sabrina stories when they use other magical human beings than witches, because the 70s comic didn’t really do that and it had hundreds of stories! If this is based on actual mermaid lore, then it’s not creative because it’s just ripping off something ELSE. It’s interesting to see a mermaid look like a modern teenager.

  It cuts to Sabrina at school, where Harvey’s once again acting uncharacteristically lovey-dovey with Sabrina, staring at her, and he apologizes, but then someone shows up Sandy Shore to him and he’s suddenly infatuated with her. How was she able to just go to high school and immediately get registered as a new student without anyone confused about her lack of parents or legal guardians or legal place of residence?

Even the earlier 90s comic made more sense by having the new student supernatural being get told by the principal that she doesn’t have any records of her. Even the Animated Series comic made more sense because this plot hole was filled in by brainwashing. So there’s no excuse for this mistake now.

  There’s also no excuse for her eyes being drawn in a different, creepy way, because she’s already able to make a magical disguise, so she wouldn’t be obvious about it. But somehow, no one freaks out about her black bug eyes, so apparently, it only looks like that to the AUDIENCE. Or no one freaking out is part of her disguise spell. Because she told the students that she likes swimming, Harvey says she should go join the girls’ swim team, and apparently he’s on the guys’ swim team. She does great and impresses Harvey.

Why write him to be more lovey-dovey with Sabrina, when he’s ALSO fickle and easily impressed by other women, like the 70s Harvey? That sends confusing mixed messages. I WISH he looked like 70s Harvey! This guy looks like a generic forgettable guy!

  Sabrina tells Hilda that there’s something fishy about that new girl at school. WHY, when she doesn’t notice her eyes?! And meanwhile, no one in her family is wondering where Salem went and trying to get him back, or maybe they are, offscreen, but you’d think they’d all notice the brand new catfish in the tank, and get suspicious right away. Wouldn’t she have to remember to feed the fish every morning? So wouldn’t she have noticed there was a new catfish in it right away? Instead this is an Idiot Plot.

  The next day, Harvey says he won’t go on a date with Sabrina after school, apologizes and says he promised Sandy he’d do extra swimming practice with her. Why did it take until the next day for her aunts to notice Salem’s absence? They’re idiots. He’s so chatty!

They somehow don’t notice how strange the new catfish’s existence is, and instead Hilda decides to fly around the neighborhood on a vacuum. I guess now it’s retconned that she and Zelda are all about flying on those, even though they looked like the 70s versions of themselves at the start of the 90s comic, so I’d sure like to see what caused them to give flying vacuums a chance.

  Sandy asks Harvey to go to the movies with him and he agrees, because even the 90s comic Harvey can’t go without becoming a cheater and losing all credibility as a good boyfriend to Sabrina. And I bet fans still prefer Harvey over Shinji. He does have a better appearance and isn’t as new. Why did Sabrina only just now notice a new catfish? She assumes Hilda bought it to keep the aquarium clean. Oh, and I guess Hilda assumes Zelda bought it and Zelda assumed Hilda bought it.

  At least Harvey’s honest enough to call Sabrina and tell her that he’s going to the movies with Sandy tonight. But her being new is a lame excuse and he should know that. Even Wizards of Waverly Place made fun of the trope of a character parroting back dialogue when on the phone. Sabrina’s dialogue here is still.

  She refuses to come along, probably assuming she’ll have no chance. Maybe I’m supposed to assume that because, oh, her aunts tell her not to hex people apparently, that’s why she’s not gonna go to the date to hex Sandy and scare her away from Harvey, but she could easily just brainwash her into not wanting to date Harvey. The Sabrina I know from the 70s comic would go on that date and use her witchcraft to solve this problem.

  Hilda comes home and warns Sabrina that her goldfish is gone too. They wonder who bought the catfish and figure out it has to be Salem, so he’s turned back to normal. Even though Hilda’s heard that mermaids can take fish form already, she still needs to waste time reading a book to find out what her plan with Harvey is. And Sabrina’s somehow stupid enough to ask who she’s after. At least Salem lampshades, “ I thought you’d realize by now! “

  It’s a miracle that Sandy hasn’t kissed Harvey already, since they’re at the movies now, and he’s into her. Sabrina decides to warp to the theater, presumably not in front of anyone, or she erased memories if they saw her. But if she was gonna be that obvious about her magic by warping to the theater, she should’ve just warped Sandy to her while she was at it. It’d also be common sense to freeze time so she’d have all the time she’d need to get to Sandy. Out of nowhere, Harvey says to Sandy that he wishes Sabrina could’ve made it and Sabrina and him are involved. NOW he’s faithful?

  Salem whistles. But because that’s ALL he did, when he could’ve easily just jumped into her face, she has the time to kiss Harvey. It turns out that instead, she kissed the plexiglass Sabrina zapped between the two at the last second, so the reason Harvey groaned wasn’t that he was seen being kissed by another woman, it was that he bonked his head and doesn’t know what’s going on. Uh, he would know what’s going on because Sabrina blatantly said so right in front of him, and in front of every other moviegoer that’d hear this. At least we only see one other moviegoer and he’s snoring, but that’s unlikely.

  Hilda tells Sandy she’s coming with them. We don’t see the aunts go somewhere that they wouldn’t be seen before the mermaid looks like a mermaid again and Hilda says that she’s gonna get sent to the middle of the Arctic Ocean, where she’ll be too busy trying to keep warm to think about boys. She would die. But she DID do a terrible thing.

Still, that’s dark of her to do and makes me wonder why she’s insisting on trying to raise Sabrina to be a responsible goody-two-shoes who isn’t frivolous with her magic when she’s not pure good herself. She only seems to lecture her in this reboot when Sabrina inconvenienced her first or made excess magic come out of he chimney. Is all of this happening in front of mortals?

  I don’t think so because they aren’t reacting to it, but it’s so cheesy that the audience is even asking this question. There’s no indication of where they are, because the background artist got LAZY at the worst possible time. After the mermaid’s taken to her DEATH, Sabrina lies to Harvey that her aunts saw Sandy on a Most Wanted show and are turning Sandy in because she’s a notorious thief. The story ends with Sabrina happily kissing Harvey instead of still being resentful of him for being openly infatuated with another woman and even agreeing to a date with her at ALL.

  Then after we’re told the story ended, the mail shows up and Zelda says she prefers her mail to fly over to her, which freaks out the person in the mail truck. It’s nice to see her be obvious with magic and freak someone out though. It’s real 70s Sabrina of the comic for a change. In fact, it’s directly ripped from the 70s cartoon.

  Zelda zaps up a kitty carrier around Salem to have an excuse to visit the new vet. I guess there’s a dark reason for why they have to have a new vet, at the very least because he’s sick. Zelda asks to shake his other hand to see that he doesn’t have a wedding ring, which just confuses him. She makes it clear that she’s into him, and she uses magic to make him think Salem has a fever, so he decides to run hours’ worth of tests on Salem. He ends up saying that the thermometer was faulty. Zelda thanks him, and lucky for her, he actually does ask her out. Is the story gonna mention that she’s cheating?

  She goes home, and Salem decides to get revenge by calling Zelda’s ex-husband to tell him what she did. I called him her by accident because Metal has long hair. I mean, Zelda DID put him through hours of tedious tests he hated, when she already HAS a BOYFRIEND. He may be betraying her, but SHE betrayed HIM first. So she’s just getting a punishment for that. He even calls her out, “ I hear you abused poor Salem to get yourself a date! “ He turns Zelda into a dog, and sends her to the vet, and she hates the vet for making physical contact with her the way he is. Surprisingly, she goes to the lengths of biting him.

  The spell on her gets canceled, and he conveniently faints. Zelda says she learned her lesson, and to be fair, she did think that she realizes what she put Salem through. But she DIDN’T learn not to cheat on Harold. At least the vet won’t get her mad by not believing her about obscure history facts. Why does Melborne say that this should ruin their date plans? Obviously a witch would be able to just erase his memory of what happened.

I’m really glad she actually learned exactly what she put Salem through. Normally when one of the aunts does something wrong, she’s never called out on it, and never learns how it feels. I don’t feel SORRY for her as much as Sabrina. It’s one of the ways she’s a better protagonist than Sabrina in this comic.

  It’s too bad there’s only two stories this issue, because one of them didn’t have to last as long as it did with a premise like that. There’s no excuse for a Sabrina story lasting 15 pages. In this story by Bill Golliher, a goldfish sold on normal mortal Earth somehow turns out to be a mermaid that can turn men into mermen with a kiss in her human form, and conveniently turn Salem into a fish that Sabrina’s family members all assume someone ELSE bought until the next day.

You’d think if goldfish like this existed on Earth, there’d already be plenty of well-known rumors of goldfish disappearing for no reason, and a hidden camera would eventually catch the truth. We didn’t need the off-putting beginning part where the goldfish tells the audience her true nature, because we could’ve just found out when she turned into a human.

And it could’ve skipped from Harvey meeting her to him calling Sabrina and saying that he’s going to the movie with her. It’s better for there to be a lot more than just two stories in a Sabrina comic, because otherwise, you get a story that’s mostly boring because it’s needlessly padded out to last that long.

It’s frustrating how unfaithful Harvey’s acting and how clueless Sabrina’s family is. Hilda already heard that mermaids could take on fish form. Too bad she didn’t think to get into the habit of using a mermaid detector on any goldfish Sabrina would bring home.

  The second story by Bill Golliher is about Zelda, despite having a boyfriend, deciding to risk her relationship by spending a long time with her new vet and subjecting Salem to hours’ worth of tests after she makes him think he has a fever, so eventually, she does luck out and he asks her out, and thankfully, Salem contacts Zelda’s ex-husband and he turns her into a dog and makes her realize what she put Salem through. I’m really relieved that she got exact karma. The aunts never get that and are usually just portrayed as in the right. But you’d think she’d be called out on being a cheater, too.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 44:

  I’m not looking forward to another Sabrina story with a ghost in it, AND supernatural creatures! Harvey approaches a haunted house, wanting to see if it’s really haunted. What I can only guess is Betty thanks Harvey for giving permission to sleep here. Oh, it was Amy. She has the wrong shade of yellow for her hair. Harvey says her story for the school newspaper is bound to be an exclusive since they’re knocking down the old manor in a couple of days. Why is Amy the one who’s mentioned to be working for the school newspaper, and not Sabrina? Sabrina’s supposed to have an interest in that.

  Sabrina thinks this place gives her the creeps, when she hasn’t even been inside it yet. And the story’s already confusing enough because Sabrina’s coming here with not only Harvey, but also someone she hates and two people I don’t even recognize. Maybe one of them is the same character that Harvey talked to when Sabrina was kidnapped by a gorilla, but the artist isn’t drawing the characters like he should be, so it’s harder to get invested in the story because they’re less recognizable.

  Sabrina, as a witch who’s encountered ghosts before, is hopefully going here because she wants to protect her friends in case there really are ghosts. Also, Sabrina has a new hairstyle, because the artist was really bored of how she looked before, even though it doesn’t suit her personality at all. It suits her being afraid in THIS story, but she’s usually got no reason to be afraid, being a witch. Realistically, Amy complains that the old abandoned house is filthy.

  Thankfully Harvey snarks at her because she shouldn’t have had her hopes up, and Amy says they should split up to find the best place to camp out for the night and then meet back here in five minutes. Oh, sure, split up in a haunted house. And Sabrina probably doesn’t wanna get teased by her friends for believing in ghosts, which she would be if she just told her why that was a bad idea.

  Sabrina wonders why she feels so uneasy because she’s not a mortal. If the writer knew this was silly, why did he write it anyways? Sabrina HAS been given a LOT of trouble because of a poltergeist in the 90s comic. She could have to avoid something thrown at her any second now. But all she’d have to do after seeing a ghost is call up a ghost exterminator again.

  She sneezes, and in a twist, it turns out the ghost is a good person because he’s polite to her, and for some reason both ghosts wanna take credit for saying that. There’s no way that their parents would’ve named them Slim and Blob unless both of their parents HATED them. How convenient that they both know Sabrina’s a witch, when she hasn’t even used magic yet. I wish it was simply explained that they read her mind. But since when can ghosts do that? This is LAZY writing!

And it’s already off-putting enough that she has a different hairstyle for NO explained reason. This isn’t how I’d imagine a witch’s life on Earth to be so it’s bad for the escapism, especially since NOBODY would want to deal with all those supernatural creatures as much as her when wishing they were a witch. We needed to SEE her GET the new hairstyle at least. Predictably, the reason Sabrina got a funny feeling before coming here was that supernatural types can detect each other. How convenient.

  Sabrina’s STILL rude and intimidated, asking what they want of her, even though they clearly are acting polite. This is Out of Character. Even in the 90s comic itself, she was a badass when she got faced against a ghost when he was in that lighthouse. She just immediately turned herself into a ghost to scare him. Here, she’s acting just as wimpy as Animated Series Sabrina. Naturally, the ghosts wanna find another place to live with her help. How do they KNOW this place is going to be leveled like a pancake?

  The ghosts make it clear that they can’t wait to meet her friends. They’re polite enough to waste time saying bless you, but they can’t wait to scare some mortals? Can the writer make up his mind? She could zap up a force field around them and teleport the force field away, WITH them in it. FINALLY, Sabrina traps them in bottles before they could say boo. For SOME REASON, Harvey asks her why she’s talking to a bottle, when she CLEARLY called them poltergeists right in FRONT OF HIM!

And yet another panel is WASTED on AMY making fun of her, and she has to make up a lie. She could’ve easily not talked after bottling the ghosts. To be fair if she abused magic on Amy EVERY time she mistreated her, she would think she’s a jinx at least, and she’d act even more annoying by being scared of her and telling people she’s bad luck.

  It turns out they’ve found some place to sleep. The ghosts want revenge for being put in a bottle, which wouldn’t happen if Sabrina had the common sense to completely destroy them with a single point. They’re JERKS and they aren’t supposed to be still around anyways. Instead, as I expected, it’s a story where Sabrina’s written as incompetent to force the ghosts to be a problem, which is what I immediately hated about the story from the first panel, that I knew this would happen.

  A ghost wonders if her friends know that she’s a witch, and instead of pointing to brainwash them into niceness, she promises to help them if they leave her friends and her alone. She could’ve just said this in the first place. One of the ghosts says that she won’t hear much from them for the rest of the night, and she thanks them. I’m not bothering to call them by their names because their only personality is Jerk and there’s no point in having more than one of them. I’m guessing Sabrina’s just gonna be disappointed by them.

  Amy’s able to get away with being mean once again. This writer should know better. Amy’s only purpose is to be a character who’s mean to Sabrina for a bit so that Sabrina can abuse her magic on her and if she’s not even doing that, because NOW all of a sudden she’s worried about her friends figuring out she’s responsible for that stuff, then WHY the hell have Amy in the story?!

  Harvey leaves the house the next morning happy. Sabrina goes over to the ghosts and thanks them for surprisingly holding up their end of the bargain. She says she’ll talk to her aunts about finding them a new place. She gets thanked, and Sabrina says the ghosts were annoying and gets splashed by one. Oh yeah, that’ll prove she was wrong. Why would ghosts who take pride in being evil for no reason, take offense to being called annoying?

They decided to follow her home, and want to live with her. One of them flatters her aunts because of how they look. And one of them steals Salem’s TV remote, immediately knowing that there’s tons of channels to see, somehow knowing exactly how many of them there are.

  Gee, too bad these witches don’t immediately think to go to the woods and zap up a house for them. Instead, it cuts to the next morning, where Zelda runs out of the bathroom scared and the ghost says he wanted some privacy taking a shower that he must have only done for fun. They wonder what to do instead of just calling a ghost removal service like with the poltergeist.

Thankfully, right away Hilda says that the Other Realm has tons of ghost realtors for Zelda to contact. Good thing it was explained that one of the aunts thinks the ghosts are handsome, and they flattered her aunts, so there’s a reason for why they didn’t just do this RIGHT AWAY.

  So the ghost eating a sub is happy about the idea of haunting a beach house. They’re told to follow her through the inter-dimensional doorway, and Amy shows up and stupidly brags to Sabrina’s face that she plans on humiliating her in the school newspaper. So thankfully, she gets water dumped on her and screams about a ghost making a vase levitate. The ghost says that should make her think twice about embarrassing her. If only we’d find out for sure if that actually worked or not.

  I really thought it was Sabrina doing this to Amy to stand up for herself like a proactive female character. And it would’ve been interesting to see her aunts be totally happy with her abusing her magic on Amy after seeing it for the first time. It’s fortunately explained why the ghosts came back. They wanted to come back for the guy’s shower cap. And the story ends with Sabrina making a dumb lame pun. This story dragged on FOREVER!

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, where Hilda has a new hairstyle that looks nice for no reason and Sabrina has the hair she SHOULD’VE had earlier, Zelda’s expecting another telemarketer on the phone. She’s asked if she’s happy with her current phone service. She summons a monster to scare her through the phone into quitting, doing a good service to everyone else. She can find another job. Her looking more like the sitcom Zelda makes it all the more enjoyable and refreshing that she’s so casual about abusing her magic. I’d never see this on the show.

  In the next story, Salem looks especially weird in one panel where the family’s crying because a guy on a movie for TV isn’t going back to a woman. Sabrina zaps up another box of tissues for them and Salem asks if it’s bedtime yet. He complains that he’s stuck here with them. He’s asked why he won’t go somewhere else and sleep and says that his bed is HERE. He’s told to go to Hilda’s room, and it turns out the door is locked and needs to be zapped open.

  Salem demands his own room, and meanly refuses to go, and cries saying that just because he’s a cat now doesn’t mean he has any less need for privacy. Hilda admits he has a point. What took so long for this to happen? Other than the fact that someone who tried to take over the world can’t be trusted. I guess the reason they can’t simply zap up a new bedroom is that it’d make the house get bigger and make the neighbors suspicious. Salem says they should room together, and Hilda stays optimistic, saying that it’ll be like a big slumber party.

  Salem pushes Hilda out, and the next morning he knocks on their door, and pushes his luck telling Hilda here’s her stuff, and she’s upset that he magically redesigned her room. Oh right he has no powers. He must have used a magic charm. Why did he say he ordered the new furniture when he lives with witches that could do it for free? Then he pushes his luck again by throwing a monster party without permission. It sure is polite of these witches to not prevent the party from happening.

Sabrina wants to go to the library to do her homework. Zelda wishes that she had homework, looking like an idiot because there’s no reason she couldn’t come ALONG with her. Hilda’s Out of Character, saying that they can’t just break up Salem’s party. Zelda says they should join it, and Hilda immediately loves the idea of sabotaging it, which WOULD be breaking it up.

  They’re also clever enough to magically disguise themselves. Salem asks if he invited them, and he’s given the excuse that the party is the talk of an entire other universe. Well, he would be famous because he tried to take over the world. But that was CENTURIES ago, and tons of other witches would’ve tried that, so never mind. And Salem has a big enough ego to immediately believe them. People in the party probably think, “ It can’t be Enchantra, she wouldn’t go to this party, ad without dressed how she usually is, “ and that’s why no one cares that one of the aunts is disguised as her.

  So Zelda uses magic to sabotage the food and punch, making the guests wanna leave. They could’ve brainwashed the people into leaving without making them taste terrible punch and food. Why is one of the aunts totally casual about having an Enchantra hairstyle when they freaked out at Sabrina having an Enchantra costume earlier?

Hilda takes her room back, and rather than them building an add on, like even Salem expected, Salem wishes he had more privacy, because his room is the laundry room, so he has to hand Sabrina her clothes. This is the kind of story that wouldn’t be out of place in the Animated Series, so it doesn’t feel like this comic is in a better era here.

  In the next story, Sabrina’s dancing to the radio while holding a CD, and Salem complains about her loud music. She tells Harvey about the band she likes and he says they’re for girls, while he’s into a band with the word rap in it, so Sabrina thinks that he’s clueless. He invites her to a concert and dinner, and Sabrina agrees to it, even though she thinks Saran Rap is lame. I wish I was told why ahead of time. But she just can’t resist Harvey’s smile.

  Then at the spell school she clearly doesn’t need to go to, she’s congratulated on a duplicating potion she made. She already proved she could duplicate herself without a potion! She thanks Shinji, and conveniently he sees the CD that she arbitrarily put in her school backpack that’s sticking out of it, and he loves it and invites her to a concert. Good thing he knows about mortal things after all.

  Surprisingly, she stops to think for a second – Out of Character moment ruining the pacing – before saying yes to him anyways because he’s just her friend. Then she immediately thinks she should be ashamed anyways, and says she made a date with two boys in one night, when, if Shinji’s just a friend, that’s not a date and therefore nothing to really be ashamed of.

  We already SAW a story where she duplicated herself to get away with dating two guys. Go figure, she uses the potion. Why did she even consider it when she can do it without the potion? Sabrina thinks the rap concert is dumb. I feel really bad for her being here. The real Sabrina wouldn’t go here. She should’ve just agreed to dinner. It’s common courtesy for the writer to tell us which one is the real Sabrina, but no. That’d be care put into the writing. And this is already a lazy story as it is by blatantly stealing a plot.

  So because bullshit, both guys conveniently decide to take her to the same exact restaurant out of all of the other types of restaurants, ANOTHER cliché that we already saw in the 90s comic, even though they live in a sprawling metropolis where the chances of them being at the same restaurant are close to zilch! If it has to be contrived and forced to backfire on her this way, it’s not really teaching the lesson. Again, she’s not dating Shinji, so she shouldn’t be shamed in the first place.

  The two Sabrinas see each other without their dates seeing them, so Sabrina tells Harvey she has a headache, which she cleverly says is from the loud concert, and runs out of the restaurant not even getting to eat the sushi. That SUCKS. That’s not fair. Meanwhile Shinji doesn’t fall for it and knows what she’s up to because he’s a warlock too.

He’s impressed because she’s clever and great at magic. If she was clever she’d have told him the truth in the first place. She didn’t have to lie to him, because they weren’t dating. His design is bad. Why does he have colored eyes in an Archie comic? It’s too bad he’s a better fit for Sabrina when he looks like THIS!

  The story ends with her being unhappy that he says Harvey should watch out because he’s gonna have some competition. Oh. I thought she’d be happy that he likes her for who she is and she can be honest with him and she’d fall in love with him, but instead of a GENUINE love triangle, she doesn’t like him back so it’s just totally pointless and makes him look bad out of nowhere. Maybe the reason I wasn’t enjoying myself as much with this episode is that it’s not nearly as exciting to see a story where Sabrina barely ever uses magic. Didn’t she only use magic the one time to duplicate herself?

  The first story by Bill Golliher was about Sabrina being a total wimp around ghosts, and not just brainwashing them into leaving her alone, when they wanna find somewhere else to live, so that’s stupid. They’re JERKS! Then there’s a story by the same writer where Salem wants a new bedroom to himself, but is somehow stupid enough to do things that’ll push his luck, and obviously get the aunts mad at him, so, he has to deal with the laundry room being his new bedroom.

  And then there’s a really lazy one by Abby Denson that rips off a plot that we already saw before, where she dates both Harvey AND Shinji. So she duplicates herself, somehow needing a potion this time, when she’s older now, and she doesn’t get in trouble, which is a nice change of pace.

And for another twist ending, while Harvey doesn’t figure out what happened, after she depresses us by having to run out on her date with him, Shinji DOES figure out what happened, but is fine with it and impressed by her magic skill, which isn’t self-aware of the writing though because if she was REALLY good at magic, she wouldn’t need a potion.

  DEFINITELY by a NEW writer. The story stopping to have Sabrina uncharacteristically think before acting was PACE-BREAKING boredom, reminding me that I read that a novel had Sabrina do this way too long because of executive meddling forcing her to be a better role model.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 45:

  Sabrina goes home from school and wants to go to sleep, but she can’t because Hilda and Zelda wanna visit her new charm school, an intensive exclusive magical course that she was invited to apply to. Wasn’t she already in a spelling school?! Why would she be invited to this too? She went back in time herself twice. She wouldn’t need it. This seems like a lame excuse for the story.

Sabrina tells her aunts that she already has a lot on her plate, but Hilda’s completely selfish, so she just dismisses that entirely and says this is very important for an evolving witch. No it doesn’t, even Animated Series Sabrina could freeze someone in time. Just like in the Animated Series comic the aunts are always blissfully smiling when being jerks to her, like that’s supposed to fool me.

  How are they SO stupid and ignorant that they completely forgot that Sabrina was doing great as a witch in every way before she was put in the FIRST magic school? Zelda says it’s just one evening a week, at least. Hilda says that Hilda and Zelda had to make time for something like this themselves. If they had to deal with this too, there’s really no excuse for them doing this to Sabrina.

She hasn’t demonstrated to them that she’s gotten better at magic BECAUSE of the spelling school and so it’s worth it. I bet everything she was taught there she could’ve learned at home. I hate when she has no agency in the story and is just bossed around and her life’s made miserable by her own parental figures. There’s no charm in that kind of writing, it’s just annoying. If there’s gonna be conflict caused by her own aunts, I want it to be because they’re using magic, because at least that’s entertaining to see.

  They warp to the school and almost get flown into by the head witch’s daughter Lilith, and the headmaster isn’t as free to discipline her as other students because Lilith is the daughter of Enchantra. I never imagined Enchantra to have any children. She doesn’t seem like a good mother at all. So I don’t want to accept this as canon. It’s inexcusable how lazy and bleak this idea is!

  She’s a lazy character. If she was the opposite of Enchantra, THAT’D be interesting! It’s like the Babylon Rogues being the descendants of aliens and genies. I never imagine that to be the case. Maybe I would if we SAW their ancestors interact with the main characters. Lilith has no excuse for existing as a character if she’s just gonna be another cliché mean girl who just annoys the audience. And again, this story’s just annoying because there’s no real excuse for the plot. And nothing entertaining is going on BECAUSE of that.

  Zelda flirts with a guy and I’m getting officially annoyed at the characters reminding me of the fact that she has to get married soon to avoid losing her powers, EVERY single CHANCE they GET. Her aunts were ALREADY boy crazy, so I clearly don’t need to be reminded of this to understand why she’s acting this way! The more I’m reminded of this, the more I hate how she’s too stupid to instantly get out of this situation with magic.

She could brainwash her ex-husband into getting rid of that problem for her, for starters. She should’ve figured this out already! ‘Cause he was doing something wrong to her to BEGIN with, so how is it wrong to prevent something wrong from happening?

  Sabrina thinks this place is a gloomy downer. Then she sees someone and doesn’t recognize her until she makes herself bald, and then she recognizes her as Llandra from South America. Cool, I never thought I’d see her again. I actually missed her. Sabrina has stilted dialogue explaining where she’s from. It’s nice to see her hug Sabrina, but other than that, she’s just completely wasting the page on boredom. She goes to class and apologizes for being late.

  Lilith gets scolded for being a bad character and says that Llandra hasn’t even passed the entrance exam to be a student yet. WHY does a magic school for tutoring need an entrance exam? Everyone would fail it. I like that Llandra zaps up a T-shirt to Lilith to annoy her for bragging too much. And WHY is Shinji here? He goes to the spelling course, not this place. Why was he invited? He tells her to back off as I’m bored to death by the mundane plot with nothing but characters talking.

  It doesn’t matter that she lives in America now because she could always warp to Sabrina. Sabrina’s stopped being relatable because now she thinks this place that got forced on us is cool just because Llandra’s there. Lilith plans on making Llandra fail the test with a piece of devil’s food cake. She’d just cast a spell. Too bad she’s in the comic. I already hated Gem. I  don’t need a powerful Gem when I’m already annoyed enough with the comic as it is.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, Zelda says she has a date tonight because she joined an online dating service. Did Harold break up with her? She says he has so much in common with her, but then she sees that her date is Salem, because it was a prank of his. I assume she can’t marry HIM to keep her powers because he’s a transformed felon.

  Then the story continues as I’m desperate for it to end because Lilith is in it. She rearranges the answers on the scroll to ruin Sabrina’s exam and the headmaster gets thanked by Sabrina, and Sabrina finds out that she failed the entrance exam. Like Lilith would’ve, since she needed devil’s food cake. But sadly, she can reapply, in another 50 years though because they have many applicants to go through.

But I know this won’t be the end of this contrived storyline being shoved down by throat, ‘cause they don’t have enough IDEAS to NOT do this. I can tell because Sabrina was already at magic school twice in two different comics before this.

  Shinji brings Lilith to the Spellmans and she confesses to what she did just because, in a Deus ex Machina, she made the mistake of telling Shinji what she did, for no reason. It’s not even explained that he cast a truth spell on her! Y’know, that would’ve been awesome!We didn’t even see her tell him, which at least saves on comic space.

  It’s a relief that he came to the rescue since it makes Sabrina feel better. He’s more useful than Harvey who just cheats on her. I wish I SAW Enchantra be appalled instead of just being told that. She wouldn’t CARE and he’d know that. I guess she’s able to put the answers back where they were with magic reading Sabrina’s mind, but it sure is lucky that she doesn’t just put wrong answers there anyways and let them think Sabrina put them there.

Sabrina passes the entrance exam with a perfect score. So WHY is she being accepted? Doesn’t this mean she already knows too much about magic? Wouldn’t the whole point of the magic school be to tutor people who need magic help? Isn’t that like having to pass a math test with flying colors to get a math tutor?

  Llandra congratulates Sabrina, Sabrina casts a levitation spell in class, as I’m insanely bored by it because I’d rather see her use magic in a way that benefits her outside of magic school, benefiting her in everyday mortal life. Then she’s being an escapist character, not wasting my time. Lilith would brainwash her into getting herself expelled, so this arc with her in that school is FORCED.

Shinji compliments her, she thanks him, and he flatters her. Lilith has bad dialogue and Sabrina makes her fly without a vacuum and freaks her out. I just wish she was flown out of the COMIC. The final panel makes me wish she really was suspended.

  Sabrina arrives at the door and someone with balloons congratulates her and says she’s with the cat food company. She’s told she’s lucky with a cat like Salem, and shows her the lovely essay that Sabrina’s falsely assumed to have written that won their contest. The essay lies that he saved her life. It’s sweet to see the woman call Salem a cutie. She says he’ll be perfect for a commercial where Sabrina would accept a grand prize for her essay. Sabrina’s about to say she didn’t write the essay. What did Salem have to gain in doing this? He could tell her to zap UP the prize.

  He screams to interrupt Sabrina, and I wonder how the woman was so gullible that she thought he actually shielded puppies from a meteor shower. Sabrina humors her, and gets given an address for tomorrow. Zelda congratulates Salem at least. When her aunts find out Salem lied, Hilda says that while she doesn’t think it’s right, it’s between Sabrina and Salem. So now they’re minding their own business. Good to know they’re not intrusive. It’s still confusing though!

  Sabrina can’t call them and say that Salem doesn’t deserve the greatest cat award because they’ll think she’s being a jerk and they wouldn’t believe Salem wrote the essay. She decides to accept the award, and Salem can’t wait to win a lifetime supply of elite cat food, which he wouldn’t deserve because he lied to get it. How did he even write with cat paws anyways, is that plausible? I feel like there’s gotta be a reason Salem didn’t have stories like this in the sitcom.

  A woman says there was a cat who saved her kittens from a tornado, so naturally Sabrina doesn’t wanna admit she wrote that essay anymore. Of course she doesn’t get believed when she says that Salem wrote it. She should’ve said someone ELSE wrote it! She just assumes Sabrina has a good sense of humor and gives Salem the prize. You know, Sabrina could just brainwash this woman into changing her mind and humoring her instead of forgetting she’s a witch.

  It turns out the grand prize is a lifetime of vaccinations and vet visits. That’s completely impossible to believe. Even a character in the story had a better grasp on reality than the writer did. Of course he was expecting cat food. The camera would record Sabrina and Salem talking to each other! Even if the microphone didn’t pick up their whispers, the camera would record their mouths moving.

Salem sneezes later on, and ends up trapped in the kitty carrier and they plan to take him to the vet. At least he’s getting punished, and not a cat that actually is good. But again, it just seems like a writer cop-out that somehow the grand prize was terrible. It’d make more sense if he hated the taste of the cat food he got.

  In the next story, Sabrina’s aunts arrive home giggling and Sabrina asks if something happened at the charm school parent teacher meeting as she has a hairstyle like a little girl for no reason. It’s not even kept consistent so I could maybe get used to it. I’m not sure pigtails look good on blondes. It’s like the artist’s desperate to find a better hairstyle better than the bob but of course can’t find one.

Zelda’s happy because the headmaster asked her to go with him to the charm school reunion. Isn’t she still dating Harold? What about the vet? What if they all find out about each other? Hilda’s happy that the flying master asked her out too.

  Sabrina says it’s not gonna happen and magically shows them the calendar, and Zelda says she forgot that there’s an award ceremony for Greendale teachers on Friday and Sabrina’s history teacher is taking her. And Hilda’s supposed to go with his brother Max. Neither of them can remember not to cheat! Sabrina at least did learn her lesson from earlier and tells them to break one of their dates because she’s been there. The guys are in separate universes! It’d be fine and they’d know that. Zelda at least explains that she needs all her options. Hilda says that she wishes two people looking like them could go on dates.

  Sabrina for some reason opens her big mouth, which for all I know, is why Hilda and Zelda decided to try this plan. Zelda’s double snarks that they weren’t volunteering. Why are they trusting the doubles if they aren’t happy about following their orders, like Sabrina’s double? They should be more experienced than her. How did they turn Salem into a human for so long? The doubles are going to stay local, and Hilda’s double hopes Max won’t try anything at the award ceremony.

  “ Zelda “ reluctantly thanks someone for complimenting her appearance and says she’s better-looking than Hilda. It turns out Sabrina was actually disguised as Zelda to go on a date with Harold. Why in the world did this happen? It would be so easy to keep it simple and create doubles of themselves. Hilda’s called a bad dancer, and says she has cat-like movements, since she’s actually Salem.

The two guys look way too similar to each other. I’m having a hard time telling them apart. I hope we’re supposed to think they’re twins. Sabrina and Salem get fed up with the insults and decide to turn them into animals and bring them home to startle the aunts. That was an abrupt end to the story.

  The first story by Bill Golliher sucks, it has no excuse for happening and is REALLY boring. Sabrina’s being forced to go to a magic school AGAIN, when she clearly doesn’t need magic tutoring… and Enchantra’s daughter, when I wouldn’t expect Enchantra to HAVE a daughter, is a stereotypical mean girl, who tries to make sure Sabrina and Llandra won’t get into the school, but I didn’t WANT them to get into the school. So I’m actually disappointed that Shinji forced her to confess.

And it’s a lot more entertaining to see Sabrina use magic to benefit herself in a mundane life, because that’s easy to put yourself in her SHOES with. You have no reason to care about how well she does at a magic school because she’s awesome at magic either way!

  And the second story by Bill Golliher is about Salem lying that Sabrina wrote a greatest cat essay, and Sabrina gets interviewed… and eventually she ends up winning, because she didn’t just brainwash the person into deciding not to let her win after all, but it’s OKAY because the prize is something that a cat would hate! Why would they have the grand prize for the greatest cat contest, be something that everyone would know a cat would hate?! It should’ve just been terrible-tasting cat food!

  And the third story by Bill Golliher is a cliché plot where this time Sabrina’s AUNTS are the ones who have two dates at once, but for some reason they turn Sabrina and SALEM into their doubles, instead of creating doubles of themselves that would be completely loyal to them and not scratch their leg with their other leg, so Sabrina does something that they wouldn’t approve of because their boyfriends made fun of them for some reason, when I didn’t expect them to be such jerks!

This plot also wouldn’t have happened because it was already established that if Salem turns back into a human by magic, he’ll gradually turn back into a cat really quickly, and yet nothing like that happens here. Salem’s turned human by being turned into Hilda and nothing comes of it, as if the writer forgot or is new and didn’t do the research.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 46:

   Sabrina walks out of a plane and says she can’t believe she and her family are in Hawaii. She thanks someone for a flower necklace and Hilda decides on checking out the volcanoes after they’d get settled in their room. Hilda says while reading a book that legend has it that Pele the volcano goddess makes her home here.

I’m bored so far. Why am I expected to care about this? We ALREADY SAW them go to Hawaii in the 70s comic. Considering their tendency to demonize magic as a whole, it makes me wonder if they paid for the vacation. Somehow Sabrina thinks the rocky terrain is beautiful. She recklessly decides to look around on her own. She at least tells her aunts she’ll meet them at the car in an hour.

  She hears Pele crying behind a rock. ANOTHER ONE?! Why can’t it go even an issue without this nonsense?! Her presence in the story was spoiled by the cover. The giant Pele gets told Sabrina’s a witch and says she’s got boy trouble. Whenever she gets a lava flow going, the rain god rains on it and puts it out. So? Maybe he’s protecting people. Sometimes Pele wonders if he’s just teasing her because he can’t admit he’s in love with her. She really IS old-fashioned, or just dumb. She should know better than that. And Sabrina gives a bad message to the audience by acting like that’s even plausible.

  Pele says this whole thing is making her mad enough to wanna cover the whole island with lava. Then why am I expected to like her? It gets hot, as I wonder why Google Maps hasn’t taken a picture of this woman yet. I guess she’s invisible to non-witches. Sabrina, rather than pointing to magically brainwash her into not being angry anymore or at least freeze her in time, decides to call her aunts on the magic spell cell phone. Well, it does make some sense that a god would need the combined magic of multiple witches for a spell on her to work, because otherwise, why call it a god?

  They make her calm down and she’s mad at them for ruining her eruption. She can’t hear them, so she shrinks to mortal size to talk to them. In the sitcom Pele’s related to Sabrina somehow. This is more believable, but it’s confusing that this comic based on the sitcom forgot about that and only used Pele by coincidence. Conveniently, she IMMEDIATELY apologizes for losing her temper and Sabrina forgives her, and offers to talk a walk with her. Hilda naturally worries that she’ll get mad again, and Sabrina reassures her that they’ll be near water.

  She tries to make Pele feel better by saying that the rain god might be jealous of her powers or intimidated by her. She says that when his rain cools, her lava flows, and it creates beautiful land forms. She thinks Pele’s crushing on him, and says they should use their powers together. She wants to know if he likes her. He’s been raining on her lava. Why would she consider that? Why would she want that? I guess she thinks he’s attractive and is blinded by that.

  She mentions a fish with an overly long and repetitive name. I hope that’s a real fish name and it’s not the writer making fun of the Hawaiian language, because it seems like not the right place for a joke. Sabrina and her appreciate its appearance, and the fish turns into the rain god, and says he’s here to torment her as usual. Sabrina casts a truth spell on him, so he admits that he wants to be her boyfriend.

  This is what I was worried about. This really does tell the audience the bad message that if someone’s abusing you, it might be because he wants to date you. It should’ve shown an example of someone teasing someone of the opposite gender WITHOUT wanting to date them as WELL as this. He agrees to stop taunting her if she decides not to destroy the island. At least he’ll be a good influence on her, so this is a happy ending. The story ends with Salem wishing Sabrina would make more friends that could turn into fish, even though he shouldn’t care because he wouldn’t be allowed to eat the fish.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, it turns out Sabrina’s aunts gave Esmeralda a time-out, in outer space, presumably with an air bubble to keep her alive, and without her powers so that she won’t warp home. In the next story, Salem gets surprised by the price of Sabrina’s lipstick that she saw advertised on TV. It glows in the dark, so she’s hoping it’ll be practical by helping Harvey’s aim. Wouldn’t she just be mocked for wearing glow in the dark make-up? I never heard of that. If not, then that is smart.

  Hilda shows up home from her evening walk. Why does she do an evening walk? She even demonstrated to Sabrina that if she gains weight, she could just zap it away. She brought home a puppy that followed her home and doesn’t have a tag or identification. I wonder if he’ll turn out to be the villain of the story to excuse him not being in the stories after this, because it’s an episodic series.

She says she couldn’t leave him out in the rain and makes it rain. As scientists probably question why it’s raining, not that we see that, Hilda creates a dog bed where Salem’s gonna sleep, and Sabrina’s family continues to ignore the fact that Salem won’t like the new puppy. They should at least tell him to pet the puppy.

  So much for the story because it shapeshifts, Salem warns Hilda, but she didn’t show up in time, and it shapeshifts back into a griffin. It turns into a puppy to lure his way into unsuspecting homes. Why the hell was he on Earth? I’m done taking the story seriously now. ANOTHER ONE?! This is nonsense. His senses told him that the witches have accumulated quite a stash of gold and gems in the 500 years they’ve been alive, and it’s in a safe upstairs. Witches would’ve killed all the griffins then.

  Salem realizes that his senses are so keen, he can’t sneak up the stairs and warn them without him knowing. He decides to climb up the drain pipe outside the kitchen which leads up beside Hilda’s bedroom. If his senses are that keen, he’d hear that too. He gets Sabrina’s glowing lipstick because it could come in handy, and Hilda warps to the griffin just in time.

Then she stupidly makes the mistake of not instantly using magic against it and instead talks to him, wasting a couple of panels on fake tension. She turns him into a gold medal necklace to reward Salem with for giving her a silent warning with the glowing lipstick. I like how it actually became useful for something unexpected. He spelled out a message on the window.

  In the next story, Sabrina asks some woman what she thinks of this bikini, and she says, “ uh, “ before complimenting it, for some reason. It’d be intriguing if it was because she thought she was pretty, but I doubt they’d have that kind of guts. She says she likes her bikini too, but is too shy to come out because she’s never worn one in public before. She’s really relatable here. I’d be the same way.

She wonders whether she should get pizza or burgers at the food court and Sabrina recklessly casts a confidence spell on her, which she somehow doesn’t immediately realize would horribly backfire. This is the most obvious mistake she could possibly make with magic. Why did she have to be kneeling to cast the spell anyways?

  Some guys at the volleyball game challenge her and she’s confident, rubbing it in that she’s doing well. So Sabrina immediately regrets her decision and says she’s not even getting a chance. She says she forgot that she was actually good at volleyball.

  She gets asked to join the women’s volleyball league and agrees. It cuts to later that week, where Julie’s not wearing the bikini anymore because her mom tried it on and got affected by the confidence spell, and took off with Julie’s dad to a second honeymoon. Why didn’t Sabrina remove the spell on the bikini?! That was common sense!

  The first story by Abby Denson was another unbelievable plot about Sabrina meeting a Hawaiian goddess when on vacation who hopes the rain god likes her back even though he keeps mistreating her and enjoying it. Rather than her being taught a lesson for the audience about her bad taste in men, Sabrina uses a truth spell to reveal that he has a crush on her, which teaches the audience the bad message that if someone’s mistreating you, they might have a crush on you instead of just being a bully, which could have obvious bad consequences.

Other than the goddess threatening to destroy the island with lava, which had no chance of happening, it didn’t really matter that she was a goddess. The rain god taking the form of a fish was also pointless. This plot was so mundane and cliché that it could’ve been told with mortals instead, but that’d be more boring. At least it was a story where Sabrina got to use her magic just fine.

  The second story by Bill Golliher’s about an evil griffin that shapeshifted into a puppy to infiltrate Sabrina’s home attacking the place, so it’s yet another “ we ran out of ideas “ story where supernatural creatures are on Earth for NO reason for a plot. It’s hard enough to believe in witches, how would other creatures be allowed to live on Earth when they’re totally conspicuous? I liked that Salem used Sabrina’s glowing lipstick as a Chekhov’s Gun to write a message on the window warning her, but if the griffin had magically heightened senses, he would’ve heard Salem climbing up to her window anyways.

  And the third story by Abby Denson repeated the overdone plot where Sabrina casts a confidence spell on someone. I liked the shy girl she was friends with for the sake of the story though. She was relatable until the spell, and I loved that there was a happy ending for her mom because she somehow didn’t get rid of the bikini.

There are a lot worse issues out there. But there is no excuse for having two stories about forced supernatural creatures on Earth in a row, that really screams out of ideas. They should’ve had those stories be in a canon where Sabrina lives in the witch world, then it’d at least feel justified instead of stupid!

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 47:

   Sabrina’s not sure about being given horse-riding lessons, but as usual with this comic, her aunts ignore her complaining and try to control her anyways. Hilda says that she and Zelda really enjoyed it at her age, so at least they’re well-intentioned and not looking mean. She’s asked if she’s interested in riding horses English style, and Amy just has to show up, even though it’s not even her school. Amy doesn’t have faith in Sabrina, and says they’re looking for stable hands too.

  Thankfully, Sabrina gives her a punishment for that, making her horse move insanely fast, and she gets dizzy and sick. Sabrina’s shown a horse she likes, but he’s called unridable and wild. She’s told to stick with a different horse instead. Why is an unridable horse even here? Sabrina wants this horse because of the sad look in his eyes. She feels like she’s the only one who can help him.

The story cuts ahead to weeks later. She’s told she’s doing great and thanks her. She asks to ride the horse. She wishes the horse could tell her what’s bothering it. Why doesn’t she cast a spell to find the answer? Why didn’t she make it able to talk? Why didn’t she think to do that earlier? The 70s cartoon had her do that right away!

  The horse makes the shape of a witch’s hat in the hay. How would a horse know to do that? I wonder if it’s not a normal horse. She decides to go to Hilda for advice, and Hilda says it’s possible that Sabrina senses a bewitchment on Sentry. HOW convenient. Salem assumes that the horse is under a spell like Salem was. Sabrina casts a spell telling magic to return him to his original form. I guess her magic tapped into his brain to know what his original form WAS. Why did the spell only work halfway? That’s forced. Oh, good, that WAS his original form. What are the chances of ANOTHER supernatural creature?

  The centaur says that a powerful dark sorcerer – that’s redundant, all sorcerers are powerful – cursed him because his family and him refused to abandon their pasture so that he could build his castle on it. How convenient that he didn’t kill them instead. Wouldn’t the mortals know that their king was a witch? He wants to rejoin his fellow centaurs, and Sabrina thinks he might be the last one. Hilda tells her there’s a centaur preserve in the Other Realm. Then why didn’t she know about the centaur preserve earlier? Why wasn’t she told about it earlier by the woman in charge of her witch education?

  He asks what the Other Realm is, and out of complete nowhere Sabrina says that back in his day, the Mortal and Other Realm coexisted, but when mortals began suspicious of magical beings, a decision was made by the ministry of magic to shift the magical world. That does make more sense than another realm coincidentally developing human life, but never mind, what caused some of the humans on Earth to have witchcraft and not others? It makes more sense that the Other Realm Earth has a lot of magic in it to do that.

  You’d think that mortals would ALWAYS hate the magical beings, so this would never be the case. Hilda says that because Serene Stables thinks that the centaur is their property, if he disappears with them, they’ll be branded as horse thieves. Why is Hilda so stupid? It’s immediately obvious that she could just brainwash them into not remembering Sentry anymore. She apologizes and turns Sentry back into a horse and someone says she thought she heard a man’s voice.

  Hilda says it was her and she was a little hoarse. Then all of a sudden, the blonde gets orange hair, and says she sold Sentry and the new owner should be here to pick him up soon. Hilda decides to zap home and check with Zelda, having faith in her to have an idea they wouldn’t. Too bad their brains are too small to think to just brainwash the new owner into letting them have the horse for free.

  They warp to Zelda when she’s having a bath. I do like that a little because it’s realistic that sometimes, when someone’s warped to, they’ll be in the middle of something. Sabrina apologizes and explains the situation. Sabrina warps and wonders why her aunts didn’t follow her. She would’ve imagined them coming there. The new owner is going to take Sentry away, and Sabrina thinks she’s too late because she’s a complete idiot who’s too stupid to remember that she can brainwash.

  She finds out that her aunts disguised themselves in needlessly cringeworthy ways. Zelda wouldn’t do this. Her painful dialogue doesn’t encourage me to read it. She asks for the horse for a lot of money, and Hilda explains that they can afford it because of how much compound interest they’ve accumulated over the centuries. It couldn’t be from the BANK, because obviously the mortals involved would ask how that was possible. They’d have to withdraw all their money every couple of generations to get that interest. She SHOULD say, they have tons of valuables and accumulated cash from how long they’ve been alive.

  Since the sitcom explained that Sabrina’s aunts gave up their servants and rich lifestyle to raise Sabrina in a more humble way, it makes sense that she’s just learning about this now. The truck flies, confusing the guy, and the centaur shows up at the centaur preserve and coincidentally meets up with his own girlfriend we never heard of before as well as his family, which we also didn’t know about.

This gives him a happier ending than I expected. She calls him Sentry. HOW did the mortals who owned his horse form KNOW he was called Sentry? He thanks Sabrina, not knowing how to repay her. The story ends with her riding him, thanking her aunts for complimenting her on her riding skills.

  In the next story, Sabrina’s at the beach with both of her aunts at once, which is very rare. It also makes me wonder why this is happening because it’s so rare. Why would she go there with her aunts? They have boring predictable dialogue and Salem surprises them. He was supposed to stay at home, but he wanted a bite of their tuna sandwich, and ended up being carted off in the cooler.

He’s told he can stay if he behaves. It’d be a twist if he did. Sabrina’s relieved that he actually left them some sandwiches. Zelda offers Sabrina some sunscreen, and Sabrina says she doesn’t need any more freckles. Should any and more be one word there?

  She freaks out over the sunscreen being empty and thinks she’ll burn to a crisp because she’s a complete idiot. Why doesn’t she immediately realize she can just zap up MORE? Hilda asks her why she doesn’t conjure up more sunscreen, or a big beach hat? She creates one, no one seems to react, and the hotter it gets, the bigger the hat gets. Oh, that won’t get anyone suspicious at all. Nobody would cast that spell. What an idiot. Why’d she do that? How did it start growing out of control? Why are none of her spells stopping it? You’d think she’d at least warp it away.

  And all of this happened because Hilda somehow thought to tell her to zap up a beach hat. She attracts attention and Salem says he’ll find Zelda and she wakes up Hilda. How did she fall asleep and not hear the commotion? Zelda casts a spell to make the ocean melt it. This story’s stupid. The story ends with people wearing some big beach hats a week later, because she started a trend by herself, without being famous.

  In the next story, Sabrina says her aunts are on a Martian singles’ cruise for the next few days. So Llandra wants a party at Sabrina’s house, and a lot of the students want to go there right away. Salem says he doesn’t know if Sabrina’s aunts would approve. Since when would he care? She cleverly lies that she was planning on having a seafood buffet, and he changes his tune. I understand that she feels forced into this because she doesn’t wanna let people down, but she should’ve just said no.

  She answers the door and immediately Harvey kisses her. He says he was just named most valuable player of his softball league, and the gang’s celebrating tonight and he wanted to make sure she would come there. She says she can’t because she’s got to study. Thankfully he humors her, and she felt bad for lying to him. The students show up early to help set up the party with magic.

  Meanwhile, Harvey’s sad because Sabrina’s not with him, and apologizes to Amy for being glum. At least it’s Amy who decides to move the party to her house, and not Harvey like I thought. She’s still annoying though. She wants Harvey all to herself for the whole summer, somehow not getting that Sabrina would be mad at her once she’d find out she was why he moved the party to her house and not him.

  Sabrina says she feels guilty for lying to Harvey, and Shinji looks like a jealous snob saying, “ Oh, your mortal friend. “ Harvey and his friends show up and realize this wasn’t a study session. He asks angrily why she lied to him. Shinji uses magic, congratulates him saying his name, and he says that Harvey’s the guy the party was for, showing him a cake with his name on it. And everyone congratulates Harvey. I’m glad Shinji did something to be useful again. He’s a lot more useful than Harvey.

  He explains to him that they all go to Sabrina’s summer school, and naturally thinks to tell Amy that the reason Harvey didn’t know about this was that it was a surprise party. He lies that Amy was in on it the whole time and that’s why she suggested he show up. Harvey thankfully says he owes Sabrina an apology, and she says he doesn’t, and tells him to have a good time.

  It’s so ironic that even though Harvey went to a party full of witches, he didn’t get freaked out by witnessing magic. If this was the 70s series, that’d happen. It’s more realistic that they decided to humor Sabrina instead. The story ends with Amy being grabbed by a giant tentacle and screaming for help as Harvey’s nice to Sabrina. The minute she’d call for help, she’d attract everyone’s attention to this. We should’ve seen Sabrina erase everyone’s memory of this after undoing it.

  The first story by Bill Golliher’s about Sabrina getting forced to take horse-riding lessons just to find out weeks later than she should’ve that an unridable horse that’s luckily still being taken care of, out of pity, is actually a centaur who was turned into a horse as a punishment by an evil wizard with a castle. Hilda and Zelda need to pretend to be people wanting to buy the horse so they won’t be accused of stealing it.

I guess they’re ALSO doing this because it’s more moral than just brainwashing because they’re paying the people for the horse. And somehow he reunites with his girlfriend when he’s taken to a centaur preserve. Wouldn’t Sabrina have used magic to make the horse able to tell her what’s making it sad on the first day?

  In the second story by Abby Denson, when Sabrina runs out of sunscreen, for some reason one of her aunts suggests a beach hat, and she zaps one up instead of just getting more sunscreen, and for no reason the hat keeps on growing and she doesn’t instantly get it to stop with her magic. So that was confusing. Since when does she go to the beach with both of her aunts?

  In the third story by Bill Golliher, Harvey catches her at a party her magic school friends were having at her house when he thought she was busy studying and couldn’t spend time with him, and Shinji covers for her by saying it’s a surprise party for him, which surprised me because I thought he’d WANT Harvey to break up with her. Instead it turns out he really doesn’t want Sabrina to get upset. I’m glad I wasn’t somehow supposed to believe that he was oblivious to magic over and over again the whole time.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 48:

  Salem thanks Sabrina for bringing him along when she warps him to an Other Realm camp grounds for a vacation. Llandra’s glad they could make it, and Salem says there’s nothing cooler than a charm school camp-out, the writer trying to force this dumb unnecessary idea on us some more. Hasn’t she had to go to ENOUGH witch camps? This is lazy. They have to do target zapping. It’s just an activity for fun. Why should I care? Oh yeah I’m sure it was REALLY HARD for them to do this.

  Sabrina’s told that her aim was the most precise. Then she shouldn’t need magic tutoring anymore. Lilith gets mad and tries to show them her mark. Salem wastes time pushing her away and her hand touches the target after it absorbed so much magic, which shocks her. Why did he bother? She’s Enchantra’s daughter. A camp counselor says it might have been the end of her if it weren’t for Salem. I have a question. Why was a camp counselor allowed to put a lethal hazard in their camp?

   After Lilith and Salem get zapped to the school nurse for a quick check-up, out of nowhere we see Enchantra call Lilith her baby and ask her if she’s alright, and say that she got here as fast as she could. It’s not like her to act like she cares about anyone, so I’m wondering if she’s actually being sincere. She goes through the length of hugging her. That’s the exact opposite of what I expected. I assumed she was a distant mother who didn’t care about her at all and just bossed her around. Instead she’s a jerk because she’s spoiled and is just annoyed by her affection.

  Enchantra changes her mind about rewarding the person who saved her daughter because it’s Salem. Even though she’s the head witch, she says it’s out of her hands and offends Sabrina by rewarding him with a catnip mouse. So Sabrina’s an idiot by yelling at her. Surprisingly, Enchantra does decide to suspend the council’s spell on him temporarily. So she’s not always evil in the 2000s comic.

She says she’ll allow him to take his wizard form two days each year. I think having him be a mortal would be a lot more responsible, since that way he couldn’t try to take over the world with his magic, and if that’s all he was being punished for, all they really had to do was take away his powers.

  Salem thanks Enchantra, and greets Sabrina’s tired aunts in the morning as a human. I guess he left the house just to greet them at the door for effect. He zaps a coffee cup to Zelda, and he says he’s gonna live every minute to its fullest. He wants to visit some of his favorite old hangouts, magically gets them dressed and warps to the moon, where I have to assume they have magical air bubbles with warm air to keep them alive. He plays golf because it’s the easiest place to get a hole in one.

Then he goes to Mars to surf the canals with an alien that somehow wasn’t discovered by now. And then he wants to go to the Rings of Saturn for a ski trip. Mortals also didn’t discover THAT. I guess it’s not really the Mortal Realm’s Mars and Saturn, but it’s sloppy of the story to not explain that.

  We cut to Sabrina’s family playing cards, and they decide to check on Salem because he’s been missing for a while. He was taken away by the police because he didn’t know it’s now illegal to ski on the rings of Saturn because it’s dangerous. Logically, he would’ve just used magic to instantly get out of that situation. It’s sloppy of the story to not explain that they had witchcraft depowering handcuffs or tasers, or explain that they saw him in a crystal ball and warped him to them depowered. So It wouldn’t matter if he warped away.

He’s gonna be given a two day sentence in jail, so he’s sent home right after Enchantra’s spell wore off. And all of this happened because he inexplicably insisted on skiing there and not somewhere on Earth. I would’ve expected him to do all of his fun activities on Earth.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher Sabrina’s aunts are mad at Harvey for getting her home late because his car breaks down, and she says it’s not his fault he doesn’t have a reliable form of transportation for her. So he gets turned into a donkey. In the next story, Sabrina tries to zap up a new swimsuit for herself and ends up with a giant one, and asks her aunts what’s happening.

Hilda says that the present planetary alignment is affecting their magic so that everything comes out giant-size. This is gonna be a contrived story. It doesn’t require any talent to come with the idea that everything they’re creating is now bigger. Then Sabrina turns down Zelda’s bikini with no explanation and quickly decides to zap up a swimsuit for her doll, so it comes out big enough for her. Why would Zelda’s bikini be a small two piece Sabrina doesn’t want when she’s centuries old?

  I like how quickly she came up with a work-around. Why does she have to go to magic school again? Still, she was lucky this worked out for her and the swimsuit was her EXACT size. Realistically, she’d need to use math and measurements to work it out, find out how much bigger things turn out. When she tries to zap up a very small ice cream bar, then because bullshit,  she gets a giant one for NO REASON, so she gets asked where she got it.

Then a new planetary alignment happens to affect magic in a strange new way. This is so confusing. It could only happen if the planets were magical. Even then, wouldn’t witches have gotten rid of this phenomenon with their combined magic by now? I guess the planets are too magical for that.

  Sabrina says that was fun and sees a woman fishing up a fish that’s big enough to win the contest. The winner gets free dinners, and when the woman asks the guy to be her date to the victory dinner tonight, for some reason Sabrina forgets she has a boyfriend already and demands to enter the contest, even though it’d clearly be cheating.

  She gets punished in the most predictable way imaginable. She catches a really tiny fish. I was looking forward to whatever new way her magic was gonna be influenced, but it’s just the reverse of before. I didn’t think it’d be THAT predictable. Sabrina had to walk back home because she tried to zap up a broom and got a tiny one. That’s still stupid because she would’ve just warped home. You’d think if Harvey loved her, she could’ve just called him up for a ride.

  In the next story, Salem doesn’t get to watch his favorite reality show where he sadistically watches people eat bugs because Sabrina’s family is watching a show where someone pretends to understand what someone’s pets are saying, and somehow the people on her show didn’t stop trusting her when she started saying that the dogs want her sponsor’s flea powder on him.

You’d think witches would be more suspicious of this kind of thing. It always seems to be a girl who’s portrayed as believing in psychics, like Penny for example, which makes me wonder if it’s actually some stealth sexist joke because it’s never making fun of a guy.

  Salem reveals that the dog was actually asking for a belly-rub and reminds his family that he can understand animal languages just because he was turned into a cat. The woman says she’s gonna come to Sabrina’s town for the sake of the plot, so Salem decides to go to the show to expose her, but he does know he’s not allowed to reveal he can talk, right? Did he think this through?

Why does Sabrina still think she’s gonna tell everyone Salem’s deepest thoughts?! I feel like this story wouldn’t happen, either. Who ever heard of an “ animal psychic? “ Salem whispers to Sabrina in the audience, telling her that the fraud was wrong. Lucky for HIM, nobody on stage is looking at his mouth moving.

  Predictably, he wants to get a turn up there. Sabrina actually uses magic to guarantee that. Salem thanks Sabrina, and when the fraud lies about what he said, he says that’s not what he said and that stuff stinks. He calls her a quack, revealing that he can talk on live television. Isn’t anyone gonna explain that the Witches’ Council will punish him for revealing that he can talk? Thankfully, the woman believes Salem about the kid pulling that dog’s tail.

  Salem tells the pets to attack the fraud, so she says she hates animals, which she should know would only get herself in trouble, but she IS being ATTACKED by them. Then someone says that Sabrina was using a cat ventriloquist dummy to expose the animal psychic. She should’ve had to brainwash to get this result.

It’s weird that they thought he was a dummy in particular considering how he was moving around and considering how realistic his lip movements were. Salem’s clearly offended, the show gets canceled, and Zelda congratulates Salem. The story ends with Salem getting ordered an anchovy pizza after he makes an unfunny sarcastic joke.

  The first story by Bill Golliher was about Salem, having rescued Enchantra’s daughter, living it up as a warlock again as a reward. Instead of feeling remotely grounded in reality, this story has him surfing in Mars, so his scenes are a bit off-putting because it’s not explained why him and the other witches survived being on the moon or Mars and had aliens around them in the Mortal Realm that weren’t discovered yet.

  Since Salem can run around on two feet as a cat, there’s no reason he couldn’t have done everything in this story as a cat anyways, just with a smaller golf club Sabrina would summon. He tries to have fun on some planetary rings and gets held in jail for two days as a punishment for a crime he didn’t know he broke, so that’s depressing. Why would Enchantra let him have magic? There was already a story in the 90s comic where Salem was a human and I thought THAT was more awesome, and more grounded in reality.

  The second story by George Gladir was about the things summoned by witches being giant-sized for no good reason just because of a planetary alignment, even though magic comes from something inside them, so why would THAT create interference? At least she had fun eating that giant ice cream bar, but we had to just take her word for it.

It is good that Sabrina didn’t win the fishing contest because she didn’t deserve to if she was trying to cheat at it, but it went too far making it seem like just a depressing contrived story at the end because she thought she had to walk home. She probably assumed if she warped home, she’d end up tiny.

  And the final story by Bill Golliher has Salem expose someone who pretends she can read animals’ minds on TV as a fraud. He thinks he can get away with talking in front of mortals now, and we never see him get punished. It WAS actually a really awesome moment of his! But it would’ve been more awesome to experience for the first time if I was told that he won’t get punished for talking to people. And he gets away with it because they assume Sabrina was being a ventriloquist even though it’d be impossible to get a cat to move his mouth like a person with the right timing like that. And she even said, “ Huh? “

  This story just makes me annoyed that people are gullible enough to believe in pet psychics and worry that there’s people being fooled by that in real life when it’s the easiest thing to lie about ever. And while it was satisfying that the villain got exposed as a liar and doesn’t get to do that anymore, I’m not sure if the lying was hurting anyone, just wasting people’s time and making fools out of them.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 49:

  Sabrina brags that because of her powers, she doesn’t have to waste time on boring chores. I’m guessing the writer will punish her by removing her powers for a while, revealing his jealousy of her. It was mean of her to brag in front of Salem, but it’s not her fault she was born a witch. She should be punished for actually doing something wrong.

  She zaps up an ice cream sundae to try to cheer Salem up. Since he’s in a cat’s body, eating dairy like that would just give him a stomachache. She zaps up root beer for him too. I’m just feeling sorry for her because it’s so obviously telegraphing the sadistic and cruel plot point coming up next. If this was the 70s cartoon, I would think she’d be allowed to use magic all she wants, because that’s how it was.

Hilda jumps at the chance to bring her mood down, asking her if she’s been sitting around all day, and Salem tells her to let Sabrina live a little. She’s told to clean her room and uses magic. She zaps up cleaning stuff to her room, and uses magic to clean up and redecorate. Now, you’d think that witch aunts, would be proud of their niece for being so good at her magic.

  After Sabrina says she’s not worried about all the homework she’s been getting, we see her use magic to do her homework, play video games, and then get an A+ on her term paper because she started zapping it. It’s just history class. It’s not like she’ll get a job related to that subject, she’s forced to go through those classes to move onto college, so big deal.

Her doing GOOD with magic a lot is the ONLY thing MISSING to make this the perfect way to write the series. Still, I don’t trust this story because it’s going a long time without conflict where Sabrina’s happy and boring me. She’d have started zapping her homework years ago if it was that easy.

  She turns down being Harvey’s study partner, and then she’s given a pop quiz. She gets upset because when she zapped her homework, she didn’t learn any of the stuff she zapped about, which you’d think her aunts would’ve warned her about. It was immediately obvious that would be a problem. She can’t zap the quiz out of complete nowhere because she lost her powers.

  She goes to her aunts and she’s merely told that she’s out of magic, rather than her actually losing her powers as a punishment for cheating on her schoolwork, that, while realistic, would completely ruin the fun escapism of the series. I’d rather have an interesting story than something depressing where she gets punished.

Thank goodness her aunts don’t punish her for trying to zap her pop quiz. She’s been punished enough. I’m glad they learned to be nicer. It’s interesting that even this comic has this able to happen to her. I thought she could only run out of MP in the 70s comic, and this is a kind of believable way to balance things. I guess her magic battery runs out.

  She’s gonna be fixed up by the top witch doctor from the Other Realm. I like that her aunts cared enough to do that for her instead of jumping at the chance to be rude to her and punish her by saying, “ NO, you’re gonna live without your powers for a month for using magic too much! “ That’s what I’d expect from the Animated Series. This story has too many panels for the story it’s trying to tell.

After she sees that the magazines in the waiting room is from the 1800s, she somehow gets surprised at seeing the witch doctor look like a witch doctor. She’s eventually told in this slow-paced story to eat one of these enchanted apples a day for a week to get her magic back. She thanks the doctor as I wonder why this took so long to happen to her.

  She’s told to stop zapping her homework AND chores. Why can’t she zap her chores, though? There’s nothing wrong with THAT and that won’t use up too much magic. And she lives a mundane life, so if she’s not using magic for her chores, what ELSE would she use it for? If witches took her advice, most of them would barely use magic.

So she starts studying with Harvey, but obviously she’d be too distracted by him to really take in the information. The story seemed to be just an excuse to make Salem say that an apple a day keeps the witch doctor away. So I can see where the writer got this story idea from, or at least the resolution. It seems like a lazy plot. It was even done before in the 70s comics. You run out of magic points in RPGs too.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, the beach is crowded, so the aunts don’t know if they can find a decent spot. They end the story by attracting people’s attention floating a sleeping person on a cloth above them. The aunts and Salem are happy about being really obvious about their magic. I guess they’re not afraid of scaring people away from them on the beach.

  In the next story, Sabrina thinks a bake sale looks like fun. She decides to bake brownies with her own recipe instead of a cookbook’s recipe because she’s an idiot. So go figure, her brownies get burnt. Salem says he used to be a king’s personal baker, and brownies were his specialty. Did brownies even exist back in those days? No. I’m sure the witches would be able to invent ANYTHING with their magic, but brownies as we know they didn’t even exist in the 1800s.

  He makes brownies for Sabrina, and she has the sudden urge to clean her room after eating them, which is the do your best spell effect. Because he recklessly put that spell on all of the brownies for the bake sale, the people who eat it get affected by the spell that doesn’t make it clear that it cares whether your best is evil or not. At least the brownies raised a lot of money at the bake sale.

  Salem gets ambitious, and says they should start their own business, which is ALSO something he could’ve easily decided not to do. It’s so obvious that this is gonna go wrong. Sabrina asks someone to let her sell her brownies in his market. He loves them and wants ten cases. I have a feeling that it’s not this easy. It should be explained that he was brainwashed into agreeing, like, by the brownie. Then it turns out that Salem’s shedding because the seasons are changing, which also could’ve easily not happened if this happened at a different time. At least Sabrina explains why he started shedding.

  So because Salem was making the cookies, he gets cat hair in the brownies and THAT ruins Salem’s business, and NOT the spell that was on the brownies. You’d think it’d show off people doing a bunch of bad things because the brownies inspired them, but that’d be dark. AND it’d be creative because it’d require the writer to think up a whole bunch of different things that people were doing.

Sabrina says she at least got a few new outfits paid for by it, and the story ends with him looking ridiculous because he invented a full-body hairnet. This is another story that I could imagine would be in the Animated Series no problem. In fact when recording the script I’m imagining Salem as looking like that in my head, because it’s just like the cat food business story, he tries to establish a business selling cat stuff and it fails.

  In the next story, unfortunately Sabrina gets welcomed back to the magic school she clearly didn’t need. So that’s gonna waste my time. She thanks Shinji for complimenting her appearance and is told to pair up, and they’re told to just use potion ingredients for this next spell in a precise way. Somehow Shinji is a complete idiot and assumes the teacher was exaggerating and he isn’t using too much. This is terrible writing. Go FIGURE, it screws up. These two characters are impossible to relate to when they’re this brainless.

  He summons a dragon, and he decides to grab Sabrina’s hand and ride on the dragon for fun, when they could summon a dragon ANY time. Sabrina thinks she’s gonna get in trouble, making me wish she was kicked out of magic school so they could get back to plots that are creative and engaging. And they’re still able to do those plots, so, they should be ALL the time.

He tells her to live a little and she says it’s beautiful out here. I’m just wondering how he’s so stupid. They could’ve frozen time! Then they could’ve gotten away with doing this dragon ride no problem! They surprise some picnicking witches, and he decides to agree to head back to class.

  She thanks him, and they get told to stay after class and practice until they’d get the assignment done correctly. Who cares about the assignment? They don’t need to know how to do this. It’s not life or death and it won’t help Sabrina out in her normal life. It’s not like she’s planning to get a job that requires proficiency at magic. It’s not like we were told that she wants to go to magic school to become a magic teacher.

The story ends with them still not getting it done right. This is SABRINA we’re talking about! Well, that was a waste of time. At least it was an unexpected twist that they flew on a dragon during school hours, but that doesn’t require any creativity to come up with, either. Did How to Train your Dragon come out yet at this point? I don’t care enough to look it up.

  The first story by Abby Denson is about Sabrina running out of magic, after, it felt like a 70s style story because Sabrina got to use a WHOLE lot of magic benefiting herself and didn’t get punished for it. So that was nice until she ran out of magic, which was already used in the 70s, so that’s a lazy story idea. But at least it was NEW that she needed an apple a day from the witch doctor to get the magic back.

  In the second story by Bill Golliher, she tells Salem about a bake sale, and Salem cooks magic brownies – like, why do they have to be magical? It’s so obvious that could backfire! The brownies have a do your best spell on them, but it doesn’t specify whether do your best is going to lead to evil or not. But somehow THAT doesn’t lead to bad consequences that causes his business to fail, and instead it just so happened that he was doing the baking during shedding season.

So, he ended up losing his business, so, THAT was depressing. It could’ve required some creativity from the writer to show us a whole bunch of different things that people did because they had do your best brownies. Why did he have to fail? He was selling people delicious brownies!

  In the third story by Bill Golliher, Sabrina somehow screws up at potion class, and then Shinji summons a dragon, and then Shinji somehow decides to have a dragon ride to impress her, which at least shows off a new personality trait of his. It’s too bad none of these all-powerful witches thought to freeze time, or reverse time to undo the dragon ride during school hours. They could’ve easily decided to ride on a dragon for fun NOT during school hours. Too bad none of them could cast a perfect memory spell.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 50:

  Sabrina happily tells Salem she’s got a new job for the Other Realm’s hippest magazine. She gets a holographic message from a fairy who wrote in wanting her help. What if she got one of those messages when in the bathroom? It’d suck if they could happen at any time. That wouldn’t be allowed. Hopefully it’s only when she’s at the computer, or the story will be stupid.

She says she answers pop-up notes. The fairy’s got a crush on a wizard, and naturally, the difference in their sizes means he won’t consider dating her. If she had a brain, she’d immediately give up on this, or tell him to use magic. Otherwise she wouldn’t enjoy dating HIM, EITHER. She naturally advises her to become good friends with him first and hope that he’ll cast an enlargement spell on her.

  Sabrina gets thanked for the smart advice, that was actually obvious, and Salem gets thanked for congratulating her. Then a teen Frankenstein monster asks for her help. The alien’s called Frankie, just like one of the idiot Goolie characters in the 70s Sabrina cartoon. I wish that was an intentional reference. It’s not original. I thought this was a series about witches, not ugly monsters. This isn’t what I wanted.

He can’t find a date because he’s a mellow guy, and not because of his looks. Well there ARE plenty of weird-looking monsters in the Other Realm. She says she’ll invite interested girls to write in. He thanks her, and the next day she’s invited to Harvey’s Halloween party after he uncharacteristically calls her “ ‘Brina. “

  It turns out she really CAN be called in SCHOOL. Well, that’s unbelievable. Why am I expected to care about these strangers’ girl problems? He says he likes a sun goddess and he can’t go near the sun. She tells him she’ll get back to him on that one. He should just give up. He thanks her, and Sabrina’s overworked later. She decides to be a cat-girl for Halloween. Why should I care? And she’s affectionate to Salem.

  She goes to her computer to try to find a spell that’d allow Drac to be in the sunlight. First off, why isn’t she going to the magic book for this? Second, again, there was already a vampire named Drac in the 70s Sabrina cartoon. I guess this was also completely coincidental, because the name is just a really lazy name for a vampire. Also couldn’t she just have Hilda’s tanning potion that makes vampires immune to the sunlight? I assume the 70s comic isn’t canon to this.

More importantly I bet the writers never read that story. But, something like it! It’s an easy idea to come up with that a witch could make a vampire immune to the sunlight. I guess she has to go to a computer to FIND that… she wouldn’t have to go to the computer to find a SPELL!

  Then she’s asked for help with making a werewolf’s fur shiny and lustrous because he’s got split ends. She says she could get a good recipe for a conditioning potion. She gets asked for help from two different people at once. There’d be an insanely high turn-over rate on this job Sabrina has. They wouldn’t just let anyone call the person no matter how many people it is.

  Sabrina apologizes after padding, and then a woman with stupid-looking eyes calls her, interested in Frankie. He thanks Sabrina, and he doesn’t know how to ask her out because he’s nervous, even though she was interested. Why can’t SHE ask him out? I thought she WOULD, actually. Sabrina says that if you’re nervous about a date, it usually helps to meet in a group setting like a party. Why am I suddenly being expected to take Sabrina super seriously as a giver of smart romantic advice? She’s made so many stupid mistakes.

She says she can help them all with their problems if they come with her to Harvey’s party. At least she has the excuse that everyone will think they just have great costumes. But she should cast a spell on the people there to make SURE they’d think that, because you’d think their mouth movements would make people realize they’re not costumes.

  She creates a costume with magic and thanks Salem and Salem tells her to have fun at the party. Her costume is complimented at the party and Harvey compliments the so-called costumes of the monsters. She thanks him for deciding to get her some punch. She tells Drac to wear an enchanted ring and say some magic words that activate the spell letting him go into the sun. Putting sun lotion on him that’d make him immune to sunlight actually made more sense, because it’s like sunscreen. He thanks her, and says he’ll invite Sunny right now.

  She gives Wolfie some normal conditioner. We already saw her say that she’d give him conditioner. And he just happens to be named Wolfie, the same name as the werewolf from the 70s Sabrina cartoon, but he looks NOTHING like that guy, just like Drac. I don’t think Wolfie looked good in that cartoon, so it’s good to have a redesign, but I didn’t actually remember what his redesign looked like here when reading out the script, so it’s forgettable.

He says it makes his fur look great when I can’t see a difference based on the art. With that easy predictable ending where she hands out predictable MacGuffins, the story ends. I’d expect it to end with her quitting her job. I guess we’re supposed to assume that happened.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, Sabrina says Salem should get exercise from playing with cat friends. He stupidly says he won’t let a cat chase him around. He should know a witch would summon one up because he said that. Surprisingly she summons an outright tiger, which must be magically slow enough to let Salem run away from him. And she’d better have it be a part of the spell that the tiger won’t try to hurt or kill him when it’d actually catch up to him. Otherwise, that’d be uncharacteristically insane of her.

  In the next story, Salem can’t go on the annual visit to Aunt Hera’s place because she’s allergic to cats, so she gets a rash from them. I’m allergic to cats and that’s not what the allergic reaction is in my experience. A potion or spell would cure her allergy. He’s gonna be sent to a kennel because they’re smart enough to not trust him at home alone. Salem threatens to tell everyone his family is full of witches and he’s a warlock, and has to be told that he’d just wind up in a carnival sideshow.

  The pets worry that they’ll never see their owners again and Salem explains that they’ll be back. Then he talks jealously about the fact that their owners are living it up. He easily unlatches his cage with dexterity, and borrows paperwork from the humans who run this place to prove to the pets what their owners are doing.

Salem wastes a lot of time telling the animals the truth and getting them jealous. He says they should have a party, letting them out and getting expensive snacks from the lobby, and ordering pizza and soda. With WHAT money? I’m forced to assume he stole the money. Are there security cameras in a place like this on at night?

  Once again, for some reason the stories with Salem interacting with animals have the other animals be just as human as him and weird me out. The cat is eating pizza with no hint that there’ll be consequences. The ferrets are somehow able to have a limbo competition. Then the humans show up and find empty pizza boxes and pet food bags there, while the pets are all back in their cages.

  A pizza delivery boy shows up because he’s here to collect on a pizza order he delivered last night. Why did he wait until NOW to get the money?! That seems unrealistic. He mentions an expired credit card that Salem phoned in. Sabrina’s family show up because they were asked to because of the bill, which Zelda compares to a luxury hotel suite.

I guess I find this satisfying because, was there any reason for them to abandon Salem at the kennel? He’s still a person! Too bad they didn’t know any other family members of theirs that they’d love and trust enough to babysit Salem while they’re gone for FREE. Instead they just trapped him in a cage for weeks on end.

  Somehow he expects to be sent to this place again later. This whole plot could’ve easily been avoided if the witches were smart enough to simply cast a spell to freeze him in time for the entire duration of their time away from him, instead of sending him to a kennel. WHY didn’t they turn him into a non-cat animal? Or a statue? Then they could take him to their aunt named after a goddess without her getting allergic. Why was she named after a goddess anyways?

  In the next story, Sabrina gets left alone unsupervised while her aunts are gonna go to a single witch convention overnight. Isn’t it Out of Character for them at this point to trust Sabrina alone? Why would they think she wouldn’t throw a party? Zelda tells her to send them a message if they’re needed as they warp away.

  Out of nowhere, Esmeralda and her friends warp here for a sleepover. At least that’s less predictable than Sabrina throwing a party again. Rather than them being here to keep Sabrina too busy to have a party, instead they only agreed to this because they weren’t paying attention. They were looking over their convention brochures.

Esmeralda uses magic on the house because her sleepovers always have a theme and now it’s the great outdoors. And naturally she doesn’t actually wanna be outdoors because of bugs. She’s naturally not allowed to have a campfire in the house, and Sabrina says she’ll make them s’mores with the microwave. Too bad she’s too dumb to simply freeze all of them in time until her aunts would get back. This whole plot could’ve been avoided. She could brainwash them into leaving.

  The doorbell rings and Harvey shows up, confused about all of this, and Sabrina says it’s amazing what you can do with a trip to the home improvement store. Esmeralda says he’s cute, so she wants him to stay for the scary stories. Sabrina’s about to say he has to leave, only to let him try to tell a scary story. When he tells a story about a swamp monster, Esmeralda summons it to scare him away. I have to assume it’s out of boredom. After all, he did start the story in the most cliché way.

  Somehow he ran through the wall and kept going. That must have been part of the spell that summoned the swamp monster. WHY does Esmeralda keep bothering Sabrina? She has nothing to gain. She’d find her annoying because she’s an authority figure over her. She’s supposed to stay in HER immediate family, this made sense at first but it’s happened too many times to not feel contrived.

  The first story by Abby Denson is about Sabrina getting a job and getting pestered by strangers for romantic advice over and over again, which can somehow happen at ANY TIME. At least she manages to solve all of their problems. So it takes good advantage of her being a witch. But no one would take that job! In the second story by Bill Golliher, Salem gets taken to a kennel. What an ORIGINAL PLOT that really took a lot of effort to come up with. So he has a party and punishes his family for abandoning him by charging it to their credit card.

In the third story by Bill Golliher, Esmeralda and her friends have a sleep-over at Sabrina’s place instead of HERS for no reason other than spite, and Harvey gets scared out of the house. Well, I guess it was interesting enough to see the ways they changed the house for their sleep-over.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 51:

  Hilda tells Sabrina it’s almost time for school, Harvey’s about to pick her up and she can’t get this outfit right. But it looks perfect. It makes sense that she says a necklace might do it. A black one would be perfect. Hilda tells her to look in her jewelry box when she could’ve easily zapped up a necklace for her. That way, not only would she avoid the extremely predictable plot that anyone could come up with, not only would it be FASTER for Sabrina so it’d be common sense to do that, but Sabrina wouldn’t waste her magic on it. You’d think a witch would use magic from force of habit.

  Instead she recklessly tells Sabrina to look in a witch’s jewelry box, and while there’s nothing there, Sabrina considers borrowing one of Zelda’s necklaces instead. Gee, I wonder if it’ll turn out to be magical? Does Sabrina remember the events of the Animated Series comic? You’d think she’d remember it enough to KNOW better and check with her aunts to see if it has magical powers before. Maybe she could zap up a copy of the necklace for herself that has no magic in it.

  Harvey compliments her necklace and she thanks him. He asks her if she finished reading an old poem for English class and he talks about it. Zelda realizes her dreamstone necklace is gone, but assumes Hilda borrowed it again, which explains why she doesn’t think Sabrina has it. Sabrina reads a book in study hall.

No wonder she’s yawning, the story has the word “ mead “ in it. Too bad she’s too dumb to think to just magically make herself not sleepy anymore. I’m forced to just ASSUME that she was up too late last night. But without the story explaining that, her getting tired just seems annoyingly contrived just to have her sleep.

  Oh, maybe she fell asleep too easily because of the necklace, since it is about dreaming. Why is Harvey affected by it too? Why does he feel sleepy too? He wasn’t wearing it, and the necklace being designed to work like this is just gonna force witches to have to erase memories to cover it up. Salem asks how he got dragged into the story. Good question! Sabrina didn’t even TALK to him!

  Sabrina’s a princess and gets told that her father wants her around. She takes Salem with her, probably because she’s more attached to him and likes holding him. Her father warns her that there’s reports of a horrible creature in the kingdom, and his wife glares at her when he says that he’s not talking about his mother-in-law. That would’ve been more charming if he was speaking in normal English. Him, not her, his hair was too long.

At least it tried to have a character moment to wake me up, but it’s still very unimpressive that the writer ran out of ideas and plagiarized another person’s story to make up for it. It’s like how the modern Simpsons episodes rip off movies beat by beat sometimes.

  A guy comes into the room, Salem tells Sabrina that a mead hall is basically a soda shop, and he says that the monster attacked warriors, and wants to move into the hall. He’s having cable installed. Now it’s trying to be funny and clever. It’d suck if this was JUST a one panel gag and it was otherwise exactly like the plot.

  The king tells the guy with the unrealistic Viking helmet to gather an army to take the hall back. The warriors end up easily kicked out, and he’d told that a brave warrior just showed up in their land. The king agrees to meet him because he needs all the help he can get, which is good because he could’ve hated him from coming into his kingdom illegally and called him a spy.

Go figure, it’s Harvey, and he doesn’t ask what he’s doing here. So if Sabrina and Harvey aren’t self-aware of the fact that they’re not supposed to be here, what’s the point at this point? Why are they not aware of it like Salem is? How’d she not know what a mead hall was?

  The king wants a toast to him and he asks for milk. Harvey’s told that the monster left the mead hall because the pizza place wouldn’t deliver. Did they even have pizza delivery back then? At least this is more interesting.

Harvey says his men and him will occupy it for the night and he assumes for no reason that the monster that easily kicked the warriors earlier wouldn’t dare come back, because of his men and not because the pizza place didn’t deliver. Sabrina kisses Harvey’s cheek, and Hilda tells Zelda that she doesn’t have her necklace. Zelda decides to get to Sabrina’s school and check because the dreams are so real that it could be dangerous.

  She could just freeze time to make sure it won’t get to a dangerous part. I guess she won’t warp Sabrina to her or even the necklace to her because she doesn’t wanna freak someone out because they witnessed that, but I think someone assuming they just hallucinated something would be worth it if she saved her daughter figure faster. So, they were sent to a parallel universe, so that’s why if they died there they’d die for real. Their minds were sent to another universe.

  The monster breaks into the castle, asking the people there if they got his email. He wants to use Harvey as a pizza topping. Harvey was actually clever enough to pretend to still be asleep so he could grab the monster’s arm. I’m impressed, I thought he was just a deep sleeper somehow. Sabrina says something she doesn’t have to when she should just be frightened, so the monster pulls him upwards, thanking her for distracting him.

  I’m guessing she forgot who she is, as a part of the spell to keep her immersed, and that’s why she doesn’t instantly kill the monster with magic. But again, I should’ve been told that. The monster has Harvey knocked out and thinks Sabrina’s pretty enough to kidnap. Wouldn’t he only find women of his own species attractive? That’s usually how biology works. He wouldn’t have grown up in human society and learned to find human women beautiful. Salem attracts attention to himself stupidly, so he gets grabbed.

  Predictably, Zelda shows up. Good thing she took until it got exciting. She DOES remember who she is, and can zap up a shoe to kick him out after he lets go of Sabrina. Sabrina thanks her, lets Harvey think he defeated the monster, and Sabrina gets woken up by Zelda. Sabrina wakes up with Zelda holding the necklace. She thanks her, and has the sense to warn her to stay away from her earrings of mayhem the next time she wants jewelry. She says it’ll seem like a normal dream to Salem and Harvey.

Realistically, the coach insults Harvey for sleeping through his class. Since his body was sleeping, why does he feel like he ran a marathon? Especially since all he did was get knocked out. He tries to grab his books from his locker and he finds something in it for no reason. I think I liked that story. It was obvious everyone would survive, but it was still engaging.

  In the comedy page, Harvey stereotypically takes Sabrina to lookout point, for some stargazing this time. It’s getting late, so he wants to take her home, and she realizes that she has to go home now because Hilda wrote a message for her with the flying vacuum in the sky, which I have to assume only she can see, since Harvey doesn’t freak out about it, and Hilda isn’t even trying to hide magic from people here. But that’s entertaining compared to hating magic.

  In the next story, the aunts compliment Sabrina on her looks because of a witch beauty salon. Zelda assuming that Harvey will be impressed makes me wonder if he won’t be, just to surprise us. She wanted something new for the school dance. Then Salem gets jealous of her because he’s stuck in a cat body and can barely make himself look better. Why are there so many Salem stories?

He looks at Sabrina’s witch fashion magazine, and somehow thinks he’d find tips on fur conditioning there, even though it’s not a magazine for cats. Conveniently, there’s an ad for a pet salon there that tells people to ask about their special reconditioning. He decides to bug Sabrina about it tomorrow. He always wondered if he’d look nice with long hair. As we see, he’d look silly.

  Sabrina asks him why he thinks he needs her permission. He says he’s short on Other Realm cash. Why would he even have any? He can’t ask for money from her aunts anymore because catnip mice add up. They’d have summoned it for free. She gets guilted by him into paying for the expensive makeover for a felon cat. She hugs him and he thanks her. He gets warped there, and the woman isn’t surprised that he’s a cat because she gets plenty of transformed witches, and all of these makeovers are approved by the witches’ council, and it makes them look generous that he’s happy about them.

  Then the story takes a sharp turn for the STUPID and completely irredeemable. Why would Salem think he’d be allowed to keep a form as a dragon? He would barely be able to get around the house. Even though he has burn poof fire, he gets told her aunts wouldn’t like it, and has to get multiple do-overs. WHY doesn’t she go with him to make sure she’ll approve of the choice?! Why didn’t she go the FIRST time?!

  Why would he choose options like a shark that can survive above water, and a skunk or a chicken? I have to assume it doesn’t cost money every time he gets a do-over. He says he’s got blue eyes now, but the art doesn’t show it. It’s not lampshaded, and it’s not explained why only Sabrina has colored-in eyes. There’s no self-awareness here. He hugs Sabrina, saying that the cat body’s not so bad. Why did he even bother? This was the most predictable conclusion.

  Zelda says she likes sitting on the sofa after a busy day. How did she have a busy day? She’s a witch without a job. The doorbell rings from the interdimensional closet because Sabrina got a book delivered to her, on magic, when she’s already clearly an expert in it by now. AND she goes to a magic school! Hilda warns her that if you bought something from one of the zap marketers, that’ll put the family on the zap marketers’ easy mark list.

So a salesman warps to them to advertise stuff and so does another one. They’d know this would discourage customers. Why would this be legal? So many people would complain. Hilda would’ve warned Sabrina about this a long time ago. Their dialogue is meaningless.

  The house floods and a woman shows up to vacuum up the water, and Salem, so it gets switched to blow and Hilda’s hair is messed up. Why didn’t we see these witches abuse their magic on every salesman that showed up?They’d do that right away! The door to door salesmen stories in the 70s comic were worth it because I got to see Hilda use magic on them. Hilda tries to shower and gets handed shampoo that smells great by a stranger. She was desperate enough to do this HERE.

  Hilda decides to go give them a taste of their own medicine. Zelda agrees to it, thankfully. The aunts aren’t acting like they’re above abusing magic here. It makes them feel more human and relatable that they wanna get back at them instead of pretending they’re above this. But what took so long? It sure is miraculous that they know the address of the guy who tried to sell them a couch. How do they know any of their addresses? I have to assume they used magic to find out that information.

  Zelda makes the couch grab one person, sends a blizzard at another, and SADLY, the story actually has the nerve to CUT PAST them taking revenge on all of the other stops they made. They get scared by a phone call and Zelda gets relieved that it’s actually Harvey. He wants to come over early with tickets for the school’s sports fundraising banquet next week. He was gonna sell a couple of them to her aunts, and she warns him that it’s a bad time.

  The first story by Bill Golliher rips off an ancient story, because Sabrina was stupidly told to go to a witch’s jewelry box, instead of her aunt just zapping up jewelry for her, so she puts on a dreamstone necklace, and gets absorbed into a story, and I have to assume she’s so immersed in it that she forgets who she is and that’s why she doesn’t use magic. So Zelda has to save her. I suppose it was interesting, I liked that it had modern elements to it. That made it worth it. Too bad Harvey didn’t get to be useful.

  Then there’s a story by Holly G that wastes our time with Salem trying to get a better look, and he chooses looks that suck, for no reason. Then in a story by Bill Golliher, Sabrina buys a book she clearly wouldn’t need from a witch telemarketer. So they keep warping to her house, which would obviously be illegal, and the aunts take forever to get revenge on them! It was nice to see them do that.

But the old comics would’ve had them do that the whole time! And if we weren’t gonna see every single one of them get punished, then we should’ve seen the aunts use magic on every single one of them right away. Why would the story have a telemarketer talk to Hilda in the shower and not show her get punished?

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 52:

  Sabrina says the Crimson Enchantress wins again while holding a card. Harvey congratulates her, and she’s winning at Magic The Gathering over lunch. Amy calls the card game dorky and lampshades Harvey liking it, and he says it’s fun. Amy’s mistreatment of Sabrina wouldn’t feel forced and arbitrary and annoying if she knew Sabrina played Magic The Gathering from the beginning and that was the first time she met her.

  It’s annoying that hearts are drawn. I don’t need to see hearts to know that the characters are attracted to each other. They’ve always been intrusive. Sabrina says Harvey handled himself well, and her friend tells Sabrina that she should enter a tournament at the comic book shop because she’s really good at this game we never saw her play before. Gee, I WONDER if the story will be about D and D roles coming to life? There’s NO chance of the comic doing it better than Rick and Morty did. At least I won’t have to see Rick get humiliated this time. This is SO BORING! A NORMAL character could have this plot!

  The slanted view of the panel meant nothing, and Sabrina goes into the comic shop and gets told they’re playing the game at an advanced level. He looks unlikable right away, assuming she won’t be good at the game because she’s a girl I suppose, though I can’t blame him because girls aren’t known for playing that game.

Then after he gets hit by the woman there for being rude, he gets drawn as smug to annoy us some more. Is the story gonna get an actual plot? They just MENTION their characters. We don’t know what’s going on in the game. It just immediately cuts to her beating him at it. It would be hard to care about the game anyways because it’s JUST a game.

  Then Shinji sees her magic monster cards. Why would she bring them to spelling school? She should’ve just been written to mention them to him when asked what she did today. He asks her to join him in a game after class. What a coincidence, he likes Magic the Gathering too, because otherwise the plot wouldn’t go anywhere.

This is the first I’ve ever heard about this game in the comic and suddenly it’s super popular. It’s obvious Author Appeal. And the teacher’s somehow under the impression that Sabrina doesn’t know how to transmute properly. That word means shapeshift, and if she’s ever created anything before, she DOES know how because she’s turned air into the stuff she summoned. She has a better outfit though.

  She agrees to play the game and then he says this’ll be different than the mortal version, and magically gives her a new outfit. She’s told that they are the cards and she gets a flying unicorn. But won’t that mean the game is dangerous because it’ll actually be them fighting? I didn’t know Shinji was that reckless to the point of being casual about risking people’s lives. This was in-character for Rick, but this is a kids comic. Naturally, when told that this is her first time playing magic monsters in the Other Realm, Shinji’s friends think she’s gonna slow their game down.

  They face a dragon and Shinji protects her with a force field. It’s cool to see this since it’s so rare for the Sabrina series to have witches fight monsters with their powers, but it just drives home how shockingly careless Shinji’s being risking her life after all the time they’ve been friends. She says it’s dangerous, but immediately cheers up when he reassures her.

  She rides the unicorn and coincidentally sees some villagers being threatened by a giant monster right as they’re playing a role-playing game together. Wait, this is the Other Realm, wouldn’t the people be able to use magic to defeat it? I guess they’re monsters without magic. Even Shinji’s intimidated by its size, and Sabrina’s told to stay here because she’d just get in the way. To be fair, lives are at stake, so why wouldn’t these guys wanna be careful and protect her? They’re still unlikable though. Go figure, they get humbled. The writer didn’t give them any sympathetic moments, so they were just strawmen.

  His arrow does nothing, and Sabrina tries a siren’s song and tames him into dancing. And it’s on the last page of the story. Gee, I really wanted to see a lot of this. Shinji’s challenged to a tournament in the Mortal Realm and he’s scared of getting a paper-cut. He could just wear gloves, or maybe cast a spell to make himself immune to paper-cuts.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, Sabrina comes home with a trophy from the dance contest with Harvey. She tells Zelda that she helped him dance well with a spell. Zelda doesn’t irritate me by lecturing her about cheating at the contest with magic, and instead smiles without annoying us. After all, she’s a teenager who uses her magic at every opportunity, I doubt there’s much chance of Zelda’s nagging ACTUALLY changing her behavior permanently anyways.

She realizes she’s forgetting something and go figure, the story ends with Harvey still dancing, and I feel sorry for him because he’s told to go to bed and he can’t. Did he literally dance all the way home? Wouldn’t he have been the one who drove Sabrina home?

  In the next story, Sabrina throws a snowball at Harvey, and he’s unrealistically nice enough to compliment her on it. He hugs her, and they have fun in the snow and make snow angels. Sabrina decides to make hot cocoa and then we see a girl laugh evilly. I thought she was Lilith at first. She magically gets into the house and gets mistaken for Sabrina. She has nothing but text bubbles drawn in a way that imply that she has a menacing voice, which of course would cause suspicion. Salem says she must have been out in the snow for too long.

  She wants to eat ice cream, hears someone and decides to leave. She has no reason to keep laughing. Sabrina comes home and somehow doesn’t freak out as soon as she’s told that she just came in before. She finds out her ice cream was eaten and her clothes were gotten wet and left on the floor. At school the next day, a blue-haired Sabrina shows up at school to show off her new clothes. Harvey acts judgemental of her look, but at least tries to compliment it. She’s irritated with him, and he says that’s cold. Maybe she just picked up on his judgemental tone. Of course she gave him the cold shoulder.

  Sabrina asks him why he’s shivering, and when he says he just saw her, she decides to get to the bottom of this. I don’t know why the artist was bored enough to keep giving her these dumb childish new hairstyles just to do something new, when it’s obvious no one would like them. She’s dressed like a little girl more than ANY other Sabrina. She doesn’t get an answer and grabs her double and gets her home, telling her aunts what happened.

  I’m glad it cut past her recap. She’s told that this is what happens when witches make snow angels. It’s a snow sprite from magical residue. She would’ve been warned about this the first winter after she was told she was a witch. This plot never would’ve happened. I guess this concept is believable, but no, why doesn’t she create new life from all of the times she touched her own clothes or stepped on the floor too, if magic residue is so easily left behind? What about from reading books? What about imprints in the sand?

  If snow sprites are usually harmless, then it makes no sense that this one was evil. She says she just wanted to have some fun. Hilda offers her some hot tamales for dinner, and the girl starts melting because Zelda had Salem turn up the heat to 80 degrees. It’d be less expensive to use magic for that. The story ends with the aunts being totally casual about killing a sentient life form and not getting lectured for it. She did do some bad things and it would’ve been worse if she kept framing Sabrina for stuff. So it was the smart decision to make.

  She’d have a sad life if she were allowed to stay alive without impersonating Sabrina because she’d have no government records of her, no education, parents, so she’d just get arrested for being an illegal immigrant and have no chance of getting hired, so this could be seen as good because it’s a mercy for her.

I still feel bad for her though because she’s just a teenage girl like Sabrina who likes the same ice cream and clothes as her and she was never given a chance. Still, her aunts will seem like hypocrites from now on the next time they’ll lecture her about morality. They lecture her about zapping her homework done but they’d rather make a sentient being melt than put up with another mouth to feed.

  In the next story, Amy somehow thinks Harvey is talking to her when he compliments Sabrina, even though he’s talking to his girlfriend. Harvey just compliments her ring instead of wasting time correcting her. Amy thanks him and says it’s a good luck charm that her dad brought her from Europe. Gee, I WONDER if it’s magical?

  After she cares about something that doesn’t matter, Sabrina uses magic to get a smoothie to jump, but sadly, it hits Sabrina’s head instead of Amy’s, when it was obvious that the audience would want Amy to get punishment instead. Sabrina somehow asks what happened, instead of instantly figuring out that the good luck charm really works. Didn’t this kind of plot already happen in the 90s comic? Too bad nothing bad happens to Amy, and instead, she goes to her aunts, and Amy gives Sabrina her sweater back, though Harvey had to tell her to do that.

  Hilda sees Amy’s ring, and gets thanked for complimenting it. She doesn’t believe Hilda that her jewelry is an antique, I guess. Or she called her old. It’s awesome that even the aunts get in on punishing Amy. And I suppose it’s realistic that she wouldn’t instantly assume the good luck charm actually worked. Realistically most of them wouldn’t. It’s on Earth.

Hilda gets tape on her mouth and I seriously wonder why Amy is in this plot. Too bad she isn’t being given karma. Zelda somehow doesn’t figure out why this happened to her right away, and uses magic. Amy asks where Zelda went, and gets frightened into Sabrina’s arms by a snake. So the spell didn’t entirely backfire.

  She runs out of the home in fear and Sabrina asks what’s up with that. Man, these characters are slow! It was immediately obvious what was going on. Hilda looks up the ring in the magic book and says that it’s repelling their spells. Sabrina figures out how to convince her to part with the ring.

She comes here wearing a copy of the ring to trick Amy into thinking it’s unfashionable and commonplace. She needs an extra amount of karma to make up for this story. But unfortunately she’ll only get one mishap, as a smoothie finally lands on her head as a punishment for wanting her father to return the gift he bought his daughter.

  With the first story, by Abby Denson, it comes SO out of NOWHERE that Sabrina is a big fan of Magic The Gathering all of a sudden and so is Harvey! AND so is Shinji! It immediately comes off as Author Appeal, since only one of the people playing the game is a nerd. It does make sense that a witch would be a fan of D and D and stuff because they’re about magic, but it comes out of complete nowhere!

It’s predictable. Of COURSE people underestimate Sabrina and OF COURSE she’s needed to save the day when they OF COURSE use magic so that they’re playing D and D for REAL. Without the cards, it’s exactly like D and D. At least it was interesting that she brainwashed to save the day. It was cool to see a force field. But the story ended too early!

  Instead it continues onto a confusing story by Abby Denson where Sabrina’s creating a snow angel, causes a sentient being to come alive and try to take over her life. All she does is eat ice cream and get annoyed at someone. And her aunts decide to respond to this with murdering her, which IS pragmatic, but it’s very confusing for people who constantly lecture Sabrina on being good.

And they sent fairies to a fairy reserve! What about any snow sprite reserves?! I suppose there was almost no other option because the girl wouldn’t have government records so she wouldn’t be able to live a proper life anywhere. It was still pretty cruel though.

  And the third story by Bill Golliher, is just a lazy story that rips off a story from the 90s comic where Sabrina had a necklace from her pen pal, that made all of her magic screw up! This time AMY has it, and it’s a ring instead, as if THAT makes a difference, and everyone fails at using magic to punish her, which is just frustrating because we actually WANT HER to get bad luck! While it was cool to see her aunts try to punish her, it’s just a shame that the story ends with her only suffering ONCE, because she’s a really annoying character!

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 53:

  It starts by wasting our time with Zelda’s ex-husband reminding us about the prenup clause for an entire page. And since he tells Sabrina what he was reminding Hilda about in the span of ONE panel, there was no excuse for all the panels before this. He says that today is the deadline to remarry him before midnight, or she’ll lose her powers. Why doesn’t she just conjure up a man to marry or brainwash him into agreeing to it? She could let him go afterwards.

  He warps away and Zelda tells Hilda that she couldn’t find a loophole in the contract. She thanks Salem for showing pity for her, and then tells him to get out for asking for her room when he just assumes that she’ll move in with him instead of the other way around. Then after a wedding dress gets warped to Hilda after my time is wasted, Hilda says she’ll go to the court house to look for a loop hole. Why did they put this off until the last minute? Why is she asking Salem to come with her? After Zelda says she’ll eat to forget her problems, the doorbell rings and Sabrina greets Harvey with a kiss.

  Amy says that Harvey insisted on asking Sabrina to go to the mall. Why was Harvey headed to the mall with Amy at all? He’d hate her because she mistreats Sabrina and he’s acting in love with her now. They hear Zelda complaining and Sabrina lies that her aunt is sick and closes the door saying that it might be contagious. He calls her out for kissing him, then, and Amy says she’s riding in the back seat in case he’s infected. It’d already be too late, wouldn’t it?

  Then Shinji and his friends show up because Melbourne’s planned wedding is already in the Other Realm Headlines. The teacher called off the magic class for tonight, with no explanation that she’s calling it off to go to the wedding because she’s such a big fan of him. So it’s just a contrived excuse for them to go see the wedding. They could’ve gotten to see it because it wasn’t magic class today! And Sabrina is apparently too polite to burst their bubble by telling them that their idol is forcing a woman to marry him. What is he, Bowser?

  He could brainwash her into being happy about it, but that’d be even creepier. Here, I’m assuming he’s just hoping she’ll warm up to him because he thinks he’s so great. But it’s idiotic. He could just zap up a Zelda that likes him no matter what and leave her alone. Why does he need HER specifically if he’s not even faithful to one woman? Hilda finally found something in the contract that caught her attention and tells Salem to keep looking for any papers with Metal’s name on it. Maybe if she froze time, she wouldn’t be able to actually move any of the shelves or papers, so no wonder she doesn’t do that.

  Zelda puts her dress on and says it’s excellent. She gets warped to the chapel that even witches want to get married in. They’d at least call it something else. Why would anyone not realize Zelda’s a woman, and the bride? Sabrina apologizes to Zelda because her class invited themselves to the wedding. Too bad no one’s thinking to just brainwash Melbourne into changing his mind about this!

At least have Zelda explain that she won’t do it because she thinks brainwashing is wrong. Sabrina notices that her anti-hex teacher is here (how do you anti-hex?) and Hilda shows up right when the priestess for a change asks why they shouldn’t be married. Her timing is so fictiony.

   Hilda says the contract is void because Metal is already married to Ms. Hexworth. So it’s a complete underwhelming Writer Cop-Out, a Deus ex Machina. It’s unacceptable because her name is Ms. Hexworth, not Mrs. Hexworth. I don’t even recognize her. She should’ve been Professor le Chat instead. He can’t remember marrying her because he was hit in the head by a flying boot while fighting and had amnesia when he returned. You don’t actually get amnesia from a head injury.

  She says she never said a thing about it because she didn’t want him to feel like he HAD to be with her. I’m not sure that’s how wives actually react to that sort of thing. and Sabrina uses magic to hit him with a boot and somehow that alone restores all of his memories, making him wanna marry the other woman instead. Logically, he was just brainwashed. He’d have more problems than amnesia. And he definitely wouldn’t get any memories BACK from a head injury.

  I’m glad this plot point is finally being resolved, but they could’ve just conjured up a woman and brainwashed him into marrying her instead. Couldn’t she have cast a spell to return his memories? Couldn’t she have used a potion? This whole arc never would’ve happened! The story ends with the aunts being desperate again and Salem asks when they’ll learn to give up. At least they weren’t trying in the 70s series, which means I wasn’t getting irritated with them more the more they failed to make a relationship stick, because it was all just wasting my time.

  In the next story, Salem complains that he doesn’t get any respect around here. Hilda asks what he’s complaining about because he gets a good home and Sabrina wants them to hear him out. They treat him better in this comic than in the sitcom. He thanks Sabrina and says he’d love gourmet cat food and a luxury cat bed. He’s reminded that he was transformed as a punishment, and Salem says if he had known he’d be caught, he never would’ve tried controlling people’s will to do his own bidding.

  She comforts him with television and he gets shown a cat show. She tells him he should enter and once again he refuses to compete with all the snobby pampered cats. The 90s comic already DID a pet show story, but to be fair, it never got to the part where it actually started the show. The 2000s comic did this too, twice, where he begged to enter the contest! What changed?

  When he’s told the grand prize is a lifetime supply of gourmet cat food, cat toys, a great cat bed and condo, he wants to win, even though Hilda refused to give him that stuff, meaning that they might not let him keep that prize anyways if they wouldn’t even zap it up for him. If he simply asked Sabrina to zap him up that prize to avoid the cat show, like would make sense since he doesn’t wanna enter, that’d be smarter, but then we could see Hilda get rid of it because he’s a cat as a punishment.

  Sabrina uses magic to get dressed and have Salem’s papers. Salem relatably finds traveling in a cat carrier undignified, and thankfully, when he talks to the cat, it just says meow instead of confusing me. Somehow the owner of the cat assumes that Sabrina was the one expressing admiration of his cat even though Salem would have a male voice unmistakable for a girl’s. The guy wastes time bragging about his cat and says like a snob that he can’t just have his pet mixing with non-pure-bred show cats.

  So Salem easily wins the challenges, being obedient and wearing a witch’s hat with a broom below him. I like Sabrina’s subtle hint that she’s a witch. He says that was humiliating, AND Sabrina tells him that if he wins, he’ll get to spend time with that pure-bred cat that he probably shouldn’t wanna date because he’s got a human mind and she doesn’t. He easily goes through a ring of fire in the talent competition. I think there’s no way the ring of fire would be allowed. It’s too dangerous. He actually does win the competition.

  Oh good, he does get the prize, after the guy admits that he misjudged Salem and would be proud to let him be with his Princess. Salem already met a white cat named Princess! The story ends with them having the grand prize at home, and Hilda’s happy for them instead of wanting to get rid of that stuff.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, Salem thanks Hilda for letting him drive. Go figure, a cop sees him. Why did she even bother? She could’ve cast a spell so that people would see him as her and her as him. The cop says that cat had better have a license. She could just magic one up, and that’d make a better ending, because he could faint at seeing the photo, but instead she pointlessly says that he’s had all his shots. Wouldn’t she just brainwash the cop into letting them get away and forgetting about them?

  In the next story, Hilda tells Sabrina to shut her window before she falls asleep because she doesn’t want Jack Frost nipping at her nose. Lemme guess, Jack Frost will turn out to be a real god in this comic. Sabrina sarcastically says she’s funny and decides to ignore her because she’s impossibly stupid in this comic, just to force the plot to happen, even though Salem’s warning her not to, so there’s no excuse. I close the window before going to bed just fine. He’d say it’s not a fairy tale! She says that fresh air at night helps her sleep and she ignores Salem being cold. Why doesn’t she let him sleep in her bed?

  She wakes up the next day with blue skin because of this. The writers REALLY are stretching to think of ways to punish Sabrina for being a witch. Hilda freaks out about this instead of instantly using magic to undo it. At the very least she could reverse time! She explains that Jack Frost nipped her on the nose, and when he needs winter help, he’ll transform magical beings like her into frost elves like himself. I’m forced to just assume his spell is too powerful for her to undo it directly.

  So the idiot who didn’t think to tell Sabrina this lore about him a lot earlier creates a sun globe around her to chase away the winter blues. The bad guy shows up telling her to frost the day. He gets mad at what happened and then acts cowardly around Hilda and says he was just doing his job, a job that wouldn’t be needed. Science alone creates winter.

  He says he has this big storm coming up and is really overworked. Hilda says that he should’ve just asked her for help, and Sabrina naturally says that she’d love to create a snow storm because it means no school for her. Hilda says it was a great idea to warp to a Caribbean getaway, and it ends the story with Jack Frost there too, with an ice globe around him, which would defeat the purpose of sunbathing, and he’d attract attention with it too. So why did they do that? At least he thanked them, but why? That was easy.

  The first story by Bill Golliher is about Zelda getting out of marrying her ex-husband, because Hilda finds out that his ex-wife is here, and she’s actually still married to him, and somehow the plot happened instead of her using a potion to restore his memories of her. Not to mention there’s so many ways that Zelda could’ve used magic to get out of this.

In the second story by Abby Denson, Salem wants some luxury cat items, the writer gets lazy by once again having a pet show story, Salem wins… at least I can say that every pet show story goes a different way because Salem was dressed like a witch at one point. And there was somehow a ring of fire allowed. I assumed the writer would find some dumb excuse to cheat him out of the prize.

  And then there’s yet another story, by Holly G, that forces Sabrina to get punished for being a witch, by forcing supernatural beings to be on Earth for no reason when they aren’t inconspicuous like witches and thus believable. This time Jack Frost nipped Sabrina’s nose because she didn’t close her window on a winter night.

SOMEHOW she was dumb enough to do that despite being told not to! So she gets marked to be enslaved to create a snow storm, because he’s overworked, because somehow frost elves are needed to create snow storms. Science could do that without them, though. Why would there need to be more snow storms created?

At least there was a happy ending. It wasn’t as depressing as it could’ve been because Sabrina suddenly cheers up about creating a snow storm because she wants a snow day. So why did they have to have drama about her being hired by him? Why did they have to be opposed to it?

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 54:

  Llandra tells Sabrina it was a great idea to have a slumber party with their charm school friends. Llandra’s been boring. When she’s not in the jungle, taking advantage of the one thing that’s unique about her as a Sabrina character, it’s just boring and disappointing. She looked better bald than like this! She might as well be just a generic teenage girl. Combine that with the fact that she doesn’t have the same design as before and she doesn’t feel like Llandra.

  Sabrina thanks her, and zaps up Mortal Realm junk food, which they like. She gets thanked, and decides to do some magic makeovers, including on herself. There’s a chance they might exhaust their powers this way. After that took advantage of them being witches, it’s back to boredom again. They decide to talk about boys.

Medusa says that since any boy who looks at her turns to stone, making me have to assume she’s only allowed to be around girls and is sectioned off from the other students, she’s been working on anti-petrification spells. It’s confusing that she hasn’t succeeded at it yet. And her parents haven’t cast them yet. Wouldn’t she just have to read a spell from the magic book? There would be a potion for it wouldn’t there? Her friends say they’d help her with that and she thanks them. If there WAS a way to help her, why would mere charm school kids be able to cure it? Why wouldn’t it have been cured already?

  Then the story wastes my time doing Character Shilling of Shinji’s bad character design again, so they’re not as relatable. Llandra has a good point in only dating wizards. Her friends wanna come up with a way to see how Harvey would react if he found out Sabrina was a witch. All they’d have to do is have her use magic in front of him and then they could erase his memory if it goes wrong. You’d think that would’ve already been done, considering how bad Sabrina is at hiding it. So this plot would never happen.

  They wanna check the spell encyclopedia. I’d rather they call it the magic book because it’s easier to type, and has a lot more precedent. Sabrina shows morality by saying that mind reading is wrong, unlike the 70s comic Sabrina, who did it no problem, taking advantage of being a witch. She’s told she can transport herself into Harvey’s dream and communicate with him and see his reaction. It’s a foregone conclusion it won’t be good. He broke up with her for being a witch in the sitcom. I just have to ASSUME it was because she kept using magic on HIM.

  Sabrina’s told to close her eyes lying down and concentrate on Harvey. She goes into Harvey’s dream and is complimented on her appearance, and is asked if she wants to get some pizza with him and the guys. She says she wants to talk alone and reluctantly tells him that she’s a witch. He’s shocked rather than thinking that she’s just joking, which the 70s series would have him think. She reveals the truth, and he says it sounds like fun with a nervous smile, and says to show him a spell. She JUST did. That’s why she got a hat. I guess he means, “ another spell, “ and he just misspoke.

He goes on a ride with her on the vacuum. He says that was great, as I wonder if he’s only being so open-minded because he’s in a dreaming state. It doesn’t have to be just a dream. And this story would be pointless if it didn’t permanently change the status quo.

  She conjures up magical sundaes for him, and agrees to zap his homework so he can get straight A’s. She agrees immediately with no lecture, and agrees to zap the lawn so he won’t have to mow it. Predictably, he asks for too much, and the story ends with her changing her mind about telling him the truth, but still liking him, because who could blame him? The sitcom didn’t show him as like this. He was just wary about her witchcraft and didn’t really wanna get involved anymore.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, Sabrina tells Esmeralda to do her homework, but not in the same room as the TV she’ll be watching. She stupidly leaves her unsupervised for some reason. Esmeralda has to do a transformation spell and turns Salem into a dinosaur. She already DID a transformation spell on Salem for that EXACT same reason!

In the next story, Salem says that a cat from a sci-fi TV show is in town, and he looks just like him, and somehow he doesn’t see the resemblance. He assumes he’s an egomaniac, and decides to go through the alley and see if there’s any fish heads to eat from the fish market. That’d be convenient.

Predictably, he meets him. I WONDER if they’ll switch places, and then want their old lives back? Y’know, some people wouldn’t get the motivation to read a story if the plot was so predictable. Stormy says he just needs a little quiet because the book store is packed with adoring fans. How is he standing upright and gesturing like a normal person?! They all want his paw print on the new book that his human wrote. Predictably he wants to be a normal cat. Salem decides to trade places.

  Stormy gets the aunts irritated with him because he can’t talk to them, so they think he doesn’t like Hilda’s new dress. Salem’s told that a bubble bath will ruin his coat. Huh? Aren’t baths good for you? He’s told they’ll have to recondition his fur. He’s offered a salad because they can’t overdo it on the food. Aren’t cats carnivores? In fact, I remember reading on the Garfield TV Tropes page that cats aren’t meant to exclude meat from their diet. So this isn’t very good for him.

  Sabrina’s told what’s going on by her aunts and zaps up a comfy new bed and snack to try to cheer Salem up. You’d think Stormy would rub up against her legs or at least purr to thank her, so that Hilda wouldn’t complain as much. He burps, so he’s told to go outside until he’s ready to communicate, being called a smart-mouth. That was mean of her. He’s expected to spend the whole night outside. You’d think if Sabrina actually had a conscience, she’d get him inside for the night.

  Salem’s woken up at 5 AM. I wonder if it’s realistic that this human is talking to him so much as if he can understand him. So the cats reunite and go back to their normal lives. Salem unnecessarily insults Hilda’s dress as clown-like, so he gets picked up and she wants to be insulted again because they’re just happy to have him back to normal. So he thinks that they’re nuts.

  In the next story, Sabrina reads Esmeralda a bedtime story about Sleeping Beauty and she thinks it’s lame for having no evil trolls or giant spiders. Sabrina acts condescending, assuming that she’d keep her up with nightmares all night by reading her a story with action and excitement. Hilda says she’s right about the lame handsome prince thing because that never happened to her, and no one would wake Sleeping Beauty up today because there aren’t any princes.

She’s asked if that could really happen when she’d know it could, and says there’s a spell that sends a woman into a sleep that can only be broken by a kiss from a man who loves her. Why is that in the magic book? It wouldn’t be legal. I guess Enchantra’s enchanted to be immune to magic because someone could’ve used that on her.

  She refuses to read that spell out loud because it’d put HER to sleep, and not someone else. Lemme guess, that’d happen to someone. Somehow, some way, Hilda says the entire sleeping spell properly in her sleep, when obviously, people don’t speak that clearly in their sleep. Well, that was a stupid way to force the plot. I’m done taking the story seriously now. It would’ve been easier to buy if Enchantra did it to her out of spite, or at least some enemy of hers.

  Somehow Esmeralda thinks she can wake her with instruments. Sabrina says she has to find a man who loves her. But after a ton of men are invited, none of them wake her up, even after a thousand men kiss her. Isn’t it immediately obvious that they don’t love her? Somehow, they go through every single guy in the Other Realm. All of them got to kiss her while she was unconscious. This is kind of a dark story. At least she wasn’t aware of it. I can’t believe this happened in a kids’ comic. Ambrose naturally refuses to kiss his aunt on the lips.

  Sabrina decides to have a look at the spell book again. She could’ve done this while the guys were kissing her one by one. Conveniently, it doesn’t have to be romantic love, which is definitely a writer cop-out because that’s not how it was in Sleeping Beauty. If it’s meant to be a curse, why would it have ANY way of waking her up, let alone be so broad? So Salem has to kiss her, which he’s not happy about. She wakes up and says she owes him an apology, pets him, is asked if she’s okay by Ambrose, and somehow she immediately coughs up a hairball.

  The first story by Abby Denson’s a waste of time where go figure, Sabrina finds out that Harvey would take advantage of her if he found out she’s a witch. She was at least responsible enough to do it in his DREAM. And she got the idea during a sleep-over. Their magical makeovers were interesting.

Then after an uncreative story by Bill Golliher where Salem and a Salem lookalike switch places which rips off The Prince and the Pauper, and go figure he finds out the life of a celebrity is exhausting, there’s a story by Bill Golliher where Hilda becomes the victim of a sleeping beauty curse, because she somehow said it in her sleep! So, THAT was dumb.

We could’ve just had an enemy of hers curse her. That would’ve been easier to believe. And it’s pretty creepy that they had every guy in the Other Realm somehow, kiss her Why didn’t they try to have Salem kiss her immediately? Why did they take so long to find out there was a loophole and it didn’t have to be romantic love?

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 55:

  What a ratings trap lying cover. Even Kid Me would’ve hated this cover and wondered why they took the Sabrina series in this direction. Sabrina’s happy that, go figure she aced her charms exam, while Shinji didn’t. It’s boring to see her in school, I’m missing the 70s comic. I thought, “ Oh no, “ when I saw that I had to make more reviews of this. The textboxes reminding us of what the main characters waste EVERYONE’S time.

For some reason he decides not to go out with her for pizza, just because she got a great grade in something he didn’t. That’s bad social skills. Sabrina tells Professor the Cat what happened, and she says after too many boring panels that she could help tutor Shinji. I don’t care! Why should I care whether or not this new boring character gets good at magic? I don’t like him!

  The teacher says that they should keep this conversation to themselves because some young wizards are quite proud and she wouldn’t want him feeling like it wasn’t his idea. Why can I see what color eyes Sabrina has? I know they’re blue now, I should not know that. It hasn’t had the true Archie art style for a WHILE and I can’t understand why they did that.

Why are we seeing a pink and purple planet? If it looks like that, there’s no way it’d be inhabitable to regular humans unless it only looked that way because of magic. Sabrina plans on heading over to Shinji’s now, but Harvey calls her just fine when she’s on an alien planet and wants to hang out and play video games.

  She tells him that she promised she’d tutor Shinji, and he’s quiet out of jealousy. And apparently she introduced him to him as the guy from her prep course when I thought she introduced him as the guy from her summer school. He’s jealous and shows no communication skills by not explaining what his problem is and hanging up. Nothing like 70s Harvey! So Sabrina says that was weird because she’s an idiot who doesn’t instantly figure out the obvious. What’s the point of having a love triangle?

It’s blindingly predictable that Harvey’s gonna be considered the official love interest because he’s been around for longer. Nobody would expect her to choose Shinji because, that would be really weird because it wouldn’t appeal to the fans! So this just feels like a waste of my time. It’s not like Harvey is a guy who just got introduced! He’s been there since the 70s!

  Sabrina asks Shinji for a favor. It’s really distracting that he has a name like that for no reason. She says she’s gonna try out as a teacher’s aid at magic school but is nervous about it, so she asks to practice her lesson plans with him. She decides to start after magic school tomorrow as opposed to now. She gets called by Harvey at school later and a girl wonders who Harvey is. She assumes he’s a wizard and hopes that he’ll keep her busy and away from Shinji.

  She’s only drawn smirking in a cheap easy lazy shortcut way to make us hate her immediately when she hasn’t actually done anything wrong yet. She wastes time flirting with Shinji with dialogue too boring to bother with, and he says an excuse for why he won’t go out with her. So she plans on trying to take Harvey away from Sabrina.

She’d have to use a magic spell to find out where he lives. Even then, she should know that a witch could effortlessly deal with any opponent. She’d just cast a spell to change her mind about dating Harvey or make her look ugly to him. How stupid IS she?! What a waste of my time. What a mundane idea for a story.

  Sabrina gets called a great teacher and gets given a kiss on the cheek. She says he got the wrong idea. She says she has a boyfriend. So he doesn’t look very sympathetic then. Lilith pulls off having blue hair a lot better than he does, but even then I’m just resentful of her for looking so great when she’s an awful person. So, she used magic to find out where Harvey was? Why isn’t that explained?

  She eventually sees Harvey, and he shows he has no loyalty to Sabrina, saying that a beautiful girl like her should be left standing because his date is late again. To be fair, he does think Sabrina’s cheating on him right now. But it was 70s Harvey who was a cheat. This still comes out of nowhere for him. So 90s Comic Harvey doesn’t even have “ he’s a nice guy who stays faithful. “ He’s just Harvey but not nearly as interesting. 

  She asks him if he’s bored in the Mortal Realm, and he assumes she’s a Harry Potter fan and says that’s cute, not taking the obvious hint. She’s shocked and fascinated that he’s a mortal. I’m surprised that she wasn’t expecting that, considering where he IS. And why is my time wasted with this scene? Sabrina’s a witch, she’d be able to effortlessly undo any damage this girl does. She could just erase Harvey’s memory of her in an instant.

  The only reason she would have any trouble because of this is that the writer’s forcing her to be stupid to cause drama too easily, and that’s called cheap drama and I don’t take that seriously. But she IS up against ANOTHER witch who could just undo any spell Sabrina casts.

So she IS a threat, but it’s obvious the writers wouldn’t actually be on HER side, because the fans see Sabrina and Harvey as the Official Couple. And I’d hate to think they wouldn’t care about what the fans want! You know what I come to Sabrina stories for? Magic. Where’s a story where Sabrina uses a ton of magic? ‘Cause this could be in ANYTHING!

  Shinji fortunately apologizes to Sabrina and feels embarrassed. He at least explains to us that he assumed Sabrina wanted to date him, and then he realizes that she does care because she wanted to help him. Well, duh. Wow, he’s SLOW.

Sabrina finds out that Harvey’s not there and fortunately thinks it serves her right because she’s an hour late, and she finds it weird that his phone is turned off, and the story ends with her angsting that she can’t believe she let Shinji kiss her. You know what I’d like instead of this really easy to write, cliché generic love triangle plot? How about a story where the witch main character uses magic a lot to help people?

  There’s NO reason for that dog to be able to talk to Salem! A lot of the Salem stories suck. Dogs can’t kick! They don’t have the balance. And after how much the stupid “ gypsy cats “ story sucked, I have no faith in any of them anymore. I don’t care. I’m not invested in the story at all because there’s no reason this dog should be able to talk when Salem can only talk because he’s a transformed witch! He also looks awful. There’s no excuse for having this dog know martial arts. Whatever.

She wouldn’t use magic to get dogs hurt, but if she did instead of just giving him confidence, that’d make more sense! The story ends with dogs having bones after the dog hits away some animals. Who CARES? Salem looks awful. Then there’s a comedy page by Bill Golliher where Hilda and Zelda pack a picnic lunch for Sabrina and Harvey, then tag along in miniature form. There’s nothing to say.

  In the next story, with Sabrina having a hairstyle for a little girl and a pink and purple outfit like a little girl, Harvey shows off his crappy-looking car. He’s excited about it because it’s his first car, and it was dirt cheap. He says he’s gonna spend time fixing it up and then it’ll be great. Why should I trust him to do it right? Comic Harvey is always an idiot. I’m guessing the moral of the story will be that buying cheap cars leads to you spending so much money on fixing it up that it won’t be worth it. She gets given a ride and there’s smoke from the engine. At least he apologizes.

  She gets out of the car, and instead of being a witch, and making there be a point to reading a story about a witch, she somehow doesn’t instantly fix his problem with magic. Instead she leaves and fantasizes about going on all kinds of romantic trips with him. I’m just reminded of the 70s continuities where Harvey always had a car and it was no big deal.

  The net day he complains that he was up all night and the car’s still not fixed up yet. He doesn’t wanna grab some pizza with her after school because he’s too tired and wants to get the car fixed. A few days later, he has the same problem. She goes home slamming the door and tells Zelda what happened and hugs her.

  Zelda says that a similar thing happened to her a few years ago. A wizard she was dating was obsessed with souping up his flying motorcycle and would ignore her as he polished it. Why does she have blonde hair back then? She JUST got blonde hair. She started out the 90s comic looking like the 70s Zelda with green hair, implying that she looked that way for hundreds of years.

Once again this is showing a blatant disregard for quality control, even if she does look good. Zelda explains that what she did was show an interest in his bike, and they had a lot of fun together. Her advice sounds good, but this is coming from someone who’s not still dating that person.

  Instead of asking why their relationship fell apart, Sabrina JUST NOW gets the idea that she could help Harvey fix his car with magic. She couldn’t have just imagined that the car wasn’t sending smoke into the back seat anymore, oh no. She has to get given a magic mechanic book. There’s been plenty of times where magic was able to do something that would require knowledge that its user didn’t have in the franchise. Sabrina fixed Archie’s stalled car in the 70s cartoon, without even being near it!

  The next day, Sabrina asks to help fix Harvey’s car, and says she thinks she fixed the smoking problem. Lemme guess, she’ll screw up, because god forbid the writer have enough creativity to move onto a different plot after resolving this problem. You’d think an omnipotent witch could fix a car with a single spell. GO FIGURE, it DOES float. But surprisingly, it’s the end of the story and they’re both in a good mood.

  You’d think he’d immediately know that it was floating and freak out and it wouldn’t be a happy ending. But she could just instantly point and make it so that it’s not floating. That’s seriously the end of the story? Gee, it sure took a long time to get to this point. It was really mundane. I could review 70s Sabrina stories all day and be fine. Maybe the reason I’m ALREADY exhausted after just a couple of 2000s stories is that it’s BORING how mundane it’s being. And there’s so many plot holes that I’m there forever.

  The first story by Holly G is about Sabrina having a talk with her teacher and trying to think of a way to trick Shinji into letting her tutor him in magic. And it ends with him kissing her cheek because he assumes that she wanted that. He apologizes, so THAT’S a typical non-magical plot, ANYWAYS… there’s also a typical mundane sub-plot where Harvey cheats on her with Lilith because she’s trying to steal him from her. Never saw that before! So why did this have to have witches in it?

  And then there’s a bad Salem story by Bill Golliher where for no reason the normal dogs can talk like people with human intelligence, making fun of a small dog’s name. Why is the dog able to do martial arts? That story sucked! The third story by Abby Denson somehow managed to take DAYS for Sabrina to get the idea, “ You know, maybe I should fix Harvey’s car. “ Because she doesn’t get that idea immediately, like the 70s Sabrina would, we get a whole plot where he ignores her in favor of trying to fix up Sabrina’s car.

And we’ve seen witches in this comic use magic for things that they wouldn’t have the knowledge, so why would she need a magic mechanic book? She’s still able to zap up stuff like living things without knowing how they work!

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 56:

  Sabrina and her aunts warp to the Spellman Castle in Scotland, because they got a mysterious invitation to spend the night here, and so did Ambrose and Esmeralda. Why aren’t they suspicious, why didn’t they refuse to show up? It’s such a coincidence that not only is Quigley descended from someone who had a castle, but so are THEY! Ambrose broke a couple of dates for this and Esmeralda would rather be playing video games, which is relatable. But these two are idiots for coming here anyways, then. It’s immediately obvious to me that them coming here will backfire.

  Esmeralda complains about the dust, Salem calls dibs on the tower and Ambrose complains that he always calls it before he does. Zelda says that this place stopped being the home of the Spellmans when all the witch bashing began. What TOOK so long for it to begin? It would’ve always been that way! Their great-grandparents relocated to the Other Realm to protect their family.

Then why’d their family come back to Earth? I guess to feel like a big fish in a little pond, but that’s not immediately explained. I hate that this is bringing back the idea that the Other Realm used to be Earth.  How could witches have gotten their powers originally and not mortals then?

  The TV reception stinks in these stone walls. So Sabrina isn’t relatable because she doesn’t immediately change her mind about thinking this place is great after that. They have dinner and somehow Hilda can’t hear Sabrina say something, even though they all fit in the same small panel together. She uses magic to pass the potatoes, and a screeching sound wakes them all up and they eventually find a banshee. She starts screaming a lot, and somehow the omnipotent witches don’t instantly cast a spell to make her stop. It’s not creative to have a banshee, we already HAD a banshee in the Animated Series comic!

  Esmeralda says that banshees are a harbinger of death. The girl says she thought they’d never figure it out. She would’ve just told them that right away. Realistically, she says she needs a drink because her throat is killing her. That makes the use of a banshee worth it. She’s the one who summoned them here. If she doesn’t turn out to be a villain, that’d be a subversion.

  She thinks that one of them is gonna die, but I doubt the comic would have the guts to do that, so there’s no actual stakes here because the franchise hasn’t gone completely insane with the tone. Instead, I’m guessing she saw the future and was able to change the future through her action. She breaks Zelda’s glasses with her scream, and apologizes and says she’ll work on her pitch. It’s forced that she screams too much. If being a banshee magically compels her to do that, well, that sucks! Wouldn’t they have all been made extinct?

  Zelda assumes they’ll all be fine just because she hit a high note. The next morning, I’m reminded that suddenly Ambrose is a Casanova now, and he and Esmeralda consider changing their ways. I doubt that’ll stick.

Ambrose’s personality flaw was supposed to be that he’s a slacker, so he tried to marry Enchantra so that he could take it easy for a couple hundred years. Why suddenly ignore that and introduce a different main flaw? Zelda says she’s never climbed Mount Everest, even in all of her time of being alive, naturally because there’s a mortality rate for that. Well she is a witch. If she’s smart enough to use her powers then of course she’ll be fine.

  Hilda bores me by not explaining exactly what she’d like to do, and Sabrina says wah so I can’t take her seriously in this kind of situation. That was tone-breaking. Sabrina wants to see Harvey again and that’s all. The 70s Sabrina would want to do as MUCH GOOD as POSSIBLE! This is why I hate this selfish idiot. It’s not just because she’s stupid, because Sabrina always was, it’s because she’s stupid without constantly doing good deeds to make up for it. All this girl wants to do on her last day is something selfish.

  And they warp away to tie up loose ends. Harvey says that this is the best day they’ve spent together while covered in kisses that disappear in the next panel, where she warps away. And he wonders where she went. She returns home, and gets told that Zelda climbed Mount Everest, already. That was fast, but she IS omnipotent.

  Esmeralda says she made up all the good deeds she’s neglected. I wish I was shown that instead of Sabrina’s scene which was too predictable and short. SHE did more good than SABRINA! Hilda says she got a makeover, but she looks the same, so the writer really got lazy on her. It reaches midnight and the banshee returns to announce the death, but they’re all still here, contradicting her records.

  Hilda says that at that time, she got her hair cut and was just about to dye it. But she’s a natural redhead! It should’ve been Zelda! The banshee says she hates when that happens and she read the spirits wrong. They were predicting a dyeing in the family. They wouldn’t bother with that. That wouldn’t happen. She only dyed because of HER, so that shouldn’t have been predicted. Why would they say dyeing in the family instead of just saying that someone dyes their hair?

  They all get mad at her, Esmeralda annoys me by regretting doing good deeds, and the banshee runs away. At least this was an unexpected plot. I thought it’d be another plot where the heroes all go to a haunted castle and almost get killed in it, like in Sonic Underground, or the story where Sabrina went to a manor in the 70s comic.

  In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, Esmeralda doesn’t get her math homework. Since WHEN is someone expected to do SO MUCH babysitting of their kid cousin?! Sabrina magically floats a math book in front of her, and asks her a math question. How was she stuck on THAT? It was basic math! Esmeralda thanks her and says she’ll try that, and the story ends with a train appearing in front of her as she’s reciting a stereotypical math question.

  In the next story, Salem thanks some transformed witches for coming over and says he’ll see them next week. The aunts get thanked for leaving them alone during his weekly power game. He gets yelled at for the mess left behind and told that he can’t do the game at his place anymore. They decide to do the game at the park instead and the squirrel gets thanked for the idea. Then a photographer walks around near the woods, talking to himself unrealistically.

  He says that his boss at the paper wanted him to get nature shots for tomorrow’s edition. He takes a picture of Salem and his friends think they should leave or they’ll get in trouble. Hilda sees the photo in the newspaper, and of course, everyone assumes it was just set up by people. Amusingly, an elephant is one of the new players for the next poker game, and he drinks up some spilled soda.

Realistically, he would’ve sprayed it in his mouth afterwards if he wanted to actually drink it. And the goat wants to eat the can. At least this is taking advantage of which animal they are. Then it turns out that Zelda and Hilda turned themselves into these animals to join in on the game and keep the house clean. That was smart of them because it keeps that kind of thing from happening again and getting people to investigate.

  In the comedy page, Hilda says that ice skating looks like fun, and she says she forgot how tough it was as she immediately slides. Sabrina also slides and Zelda does a good job, but gets told that she’d be more convincing if her skates were actually touching the ice. The story ends as some mortals are shocked at this.

  In the next story, Sabrina’s excited at getting to see a meteor shower. Salem’s bored at having to wait. When the meteor heads towards the Earth, Sabrina uses magic to make it touch down safely. Wouldn’t an astronomer be observing it? Would they question this? At least her doing that actually justifies the UFO not being destroyed and its inhabitant actually surviving the stereotypical crash into the Earth, so that’s nice.

  The cover and title of the story already gave it away that it’d be an alien. And I’ve already seen aliens in every other Sabrina comic before, so I’m not gonna call it jumping the shark. No, the comic already did that when it introduced the charm school. Salem wishes it was a saucer of milk instead, and the alien greets in a friendly way, with no explanation for why she speaks English, and no one questions it either. As usual, I’m forced to assume that it’s because of magic.

  Salem lampshades that her name sucks, and she agrees to be called by a shorter nickname. She says she’s come to her planet to study her teenage culture in particular. She wants to trade places with an Earth girl as a part of her world’s intergalactic student exchange program. She knows she was supposed to land elsewhere though, and Sabrina’s too scared to tell her she’s a witch.

  Sabrina has to tell her that all she could show her would be the back of people’s heads as they’d run away from her. She must come from a planet where people are already used to other alien species. Sabrina isn’t considering the idea that everyone would assume she was just in a costume, until she talked. She was clever enough to bring a holographic camouflage device. I understand why Sabrina doesn’t wanna freak out the alien with showing her witchcraft, but it was entertaining and fun to see aliens get freaked out by magic in the 70s comic. At least now it’s doing something different.

  The alien assumes that a guy kissing a girl is gonna bite her and throws him with telekinesis. So Sabrina has to use magic to create water to cushion his landing and the girl asks where the wind came from. He asks where the pool came from, and somehow the alien doesn’t react to what they’re saying and just agrees to keep moving. Sabrina somehow waited until the page after that guy tried to kiss his girlfriend before she told Andie what he was trying to do.

  Very predictably, Andie likes Harvey and wants to kiss him. Sabrina is impressively not stupid, by warping her away to prevent her from doing that, and by not abusing her magic on her, which is less jealous than the 70s Sabrina. She assumes they stepped through a space warp without realizing it. Sabrina warns her that she should read up on teen practices before trying to experience them. She’s given some magazines, is thanked twice and decides to tell all of her friends about Earth.

The story ends with her friends showing up there, but sadly, that’s IT. I wish the story continued after that. Oh well. I’d rather see a story with aliens than Sabrina wasting her time in a magic school she very blatantly doesn’t need. I’d rather see the comic take a sci-fi direction and have as many aliens as the amount of supernatural creatures it used to force on us than turn into what it does later, where it becomes so boring that I couldn’t possibly read all of the dialogue.

  The first story by Bill Golliher was about Sabrina’s family going to a castle, because a banshee summoned them there because she thinks one of them’s gonna die. But after they do stuff that they always wanted to do, it turns out it was about a dyeing in the family, as in with hair dye, and she misread the spirits.

Why would the spirits phrase it like that so that she’d be wrong? At least it made proper use of the fact that she was a banshee because the banshees warn people about death, and her throat is sore from all the screaming. But the screaming wasted our time.

  Then there’s a story by Bill Golliher where Salem plays poker with transformed witches, in the Mortal Realm of all places. So they get spotted playing poker in the woods by some mortals, and because it’s put on the newspaper, her aunts come up with a pretty reasonable idea. They decide to join in on the poker game by transforming themselves into a goat and elephant. And I like that it takes advantage of what species they turned themselves into.

  And then there’s a story by Fernando Ruiz where an alien goes to Earth again, and this time, it wants to study teenage culture, and Sabrina helps her out. I like that she was smart enough to disguise herself as a human teenager. And it was surprising that she ended up doing stuff that Sabrina didn’t want her to do because of her ignorance. It was new that Sabrina didn’t reveal she was a witch to an alien.

Sabrina 2000s Comic Issue 57:

  Sabrina returns home holding an egg that she calls Junior. The writer ran out of ideas, and resorted to the cliché plot where a student has to take care of an object pretending it’s a baby. I never had to do this. Is this just an American thing? I’ve seen this in Ned’s School Survival Guide, the Invader Zim comic, I’m pretty much I saw it in Being Ian too. I don’t even know what school subject this pertains to!

Gee, I wonder if something will happen to it? Maybe it’ll almost get broken. She’s not responsible after all. She says she’ll put it to bed as I wonder why she won’t cast a protection spell on it. What’s the point of her being a witch otherwise?! Maybe she thinks that’d be cheating and is opposed to that.

  Her aunts lampshade that this is strange, and Salem thinks this whole thing gives him an idea for an awesome gag. But first he needs to do research on a book about dragons. ANOTHER ONE?! In the 90s comic he said he can’t open the door because of a lack of opposing thumbs. That stayed true to the sitcom where he couldn’t DO as much because he was a cat, which made it make sense that he was turned into a cat as a punishment. It makes me wonder what the point is of turning him into a cat if he can still cause mischief like this!

  It turns out that a dragon’s egg starts out the same size as a chicken egg, and continues to grow daily, because in the old days dragons were too busy being hunted by knights to give it the care it needed, so they would leave their eggs with chickens. But then the eggs would immediately be found by the chicken farmers. That’s the dumbest place to try to hide an egg! The chicken would continue to keep the growing egg warm until it hatched when the dragon would return.

  Dragons are extinct here, but not in the Other Realm, so Salem decides to needlessly stress out Sabrina. He comes out of the magic closet later, thankfully lampshading how lucky he was to spot a dragon dropping off an egg with a chicken. He switches the two eggs. So, if Sabrina’s egg is gonna be safe the whole time, that’s a subversion, but it also means there’s no actual stakes, not that I had a reason to care whether she did well in the one assignment to begin with, especially in an episodic comic. She would assume a spell was cast on that egg.

  The next day, a lot of panels are wasted on boredom. Amy says she has the football team taking turns protecting her egg, which is on a pillow. She’s weird. Logically, Sabrina’s teacher would accuse her of losing her actual egg and replacing it, so she’d fail the assignment unless she had the brain cells to simply replace it with a smaller egg before handing it in. Also, how the hell is the teacher supposed to know if the egg that the student has at the end of the assignment is the same ONE? This would make more sense if they had dolls instead of eggs.

  After her aunts warp to Australia for a summer sale, Salem ends up grabbed by a dragon in his house when he’s alone, because conveniently, the dragon was able to talk to the chicken, because the dragon counts as an animal too, and it’s using that stupid thing where somehow all of the animals understand each other just because it’s a cartoon.

  Not that I’m complaining about this happening but it’s so predictable that Amy’s egg ended up destroyed. The football players argued over whose turn it was to carry it for her, for some reason. She’d have a schedule. Logically, she would just easily get a new egg and not get in trouble. She decides to steal Sabrina’s egg to get a decent grade.

  She screams at seeing a baby dragon and decides to get the principal. Note that this is completely ignoring the lore established about dragons in the Animated Series comic. Sabrina’s smart enough to realize that someone pulled a switcheroo on her and the dragon bursts through the wall. Salem confesses. Sabrina has to explain to the dragon the OBVIOUS fact that the baby dragon is in good shape. Sabrina somehow thinks she’s got a problem because she doesn’t have an egg for class when it’s immediately obvious that she could just zap up her old one.

  Instead, she decides to borrow the dragon egg that was JUST hatched in front of her. Miraculously, the principal ACTUALLY went over to Sabrina because Amy told him the TRUTH. He wouldn’t have believed her. He finds an egg, and decides to tell it to the school counselor. Sabrina feels sorry for her, but thinks that’s what she gets for being so nosy.

Sabrina tells her teacher that she has to keep HER egg, and returns it to her dragon. She asks the dragon why the dragons don’t roost their eggs because they don’t have knights hunting them anymore. The dragon says that’s not a bad idea, being impressively open-minded for someone who stuck to tradition for no reason.

In the comedy page by Bill Golliher, Hilda says Ambrose is bringing over his girlfriend for dinner, and the story ends with him bringing home an invisible person. That wouldn’t happen. He wouldn’t bother giving her a chance.

  In the next story, my time’s wasted with thankfully only one panel of Sabrina and Harvey putting on a play. Someone considers cutting Harvey from the play because he’s not considered a convincing playboy, since she doesn’t know him well enough to know that he has expressed interest in other girls than Sabrina before.

This lampshades the fact that whenever he is like that, he seems Out of Character, because even though he would do that, he doesn’t seem like the type. Sabrina says it would crush him if he got fired from the play and there’s no one she’d rather kiss. He burps from the soda, forgets the name of the girl he’s practicing with, and Sabrina tells her aunt that her teacher expects her to improve Harvey.

  Zelda decides to use magic for the plot for a change instead of Sabrina, which is more fun than Bad Zelda. She casts a spell to make Harvey more like the role he’s playing, without even bothering to ask Sabrina what role he was playing. Why wouldn’t she just cast a spell to make him a good actor? That was obvious immediately. So Harvey gets brainwashed into flirting with another woman and not even hiding the fact that he’s a cheater anymore.

  A bunch of girls call him out, and Zelda tells Sabrina what she did through a painting. It’s convenient that she thought to check on how things are doing, when she was that reckless before. She gets called out and undoes the spell, and Harvey still does a great job acting anyways, without the story explaining that he was brainwashed to become a good actor, so he’s doing well on his OWN. In the comedy page, Sabrina has a cold and she gets given a potion for it, comparable to chicken soup. How was that supposed to be funny? That’s just competent.

  In the next story, where Sabrina’s drawn terribly, Zelda tells Sabrina that her favorite manga artist is going to be in town for a book signing. Since WHEN does Sabrina like manga? We never even saw her like comic books, she hates superhero comics! It coming out of nowhere makes it hard to take seriously. She likes Betty and Veronica! Granted you can like other things but still! It comes off as a blatant Author Appeal.

  Sabrina randomly wants to invite someone to come with her. She must be a social person. Then it turns out that Shinji likes the same manga artist, what a coincidence! So he’s shown to be more compatible with her than Harvey once again, as Harvey doesn’t know what manga is, somehow, in the age of the internet. It’s annoying that the one who’s more compatible with her is the one with a bad character design. It’s the Sonic and Mina situation all over again!

  Harvey decides to come along to spend time with Sabrina. HOW convenient, again! Shinji’s disappointed that he’s not interested in manga, and Sabrina thanks the artist, as I continue to be bored by the mundane story. Where’s the magic?! The artist says they should try to learn how to draw manga. Would he EVER say that? Most don’t have the patience! And Harvey says the manga looks pretty cool.

Surprisingly, all three of them start trying to do that, unrealistically. Y’know, you could have MORTALS do a mortal story! They just have WITCHES do the boring stuff because they know it’s more engaging because you’re just waiting for them to use magic.

  Shinji’s got a charmingly silly idea for one that combines a bunch of things, which is less boring than basketball. I think I’d like HIS manga more than Sabrina The Magic Within. Sabrina doesn’t wanna tell them what hers is about, and decides to go out with them for pizza. The story ends with us seeing the annoyingly cutesy cover of her comic. Sabrina has no creativity if her comic is just based on her life.

  It feels like the whole manga thing was shoved down my throat, because her interest in it comes out of complete nowhere in the same story that completely fixates on it for the entire time, without her casting a spell once, implying that the writer has absolutely no idea what we come to Sabrina for. It’s almost as if the writer isn’t even a fan of Sabrina in the first place! And, like, that would suck! She ISN’T!

  She had NO experience with Sabrina, no MENTION from her that she was a fan of ANY Sabrina in Sabrina’s Magic School PEP digital, which is a big problem since she’ll write a HUGE story ARC for it! I’d want George Gladir for that! It comes off as unprofessional! Wouldn’t be the first time she liked nerdy stuff, but, well… The TV Tropes page already warned me about the idea that a Sabrina comic would change to a manga art style that everybody hated, so I’ve been dreading seeing it because I already hate how Sabrina and Salem were redesigned as it is. I’d hate to see the art get even worse!

  The first story by Bill Golliher was a cliché plot where Sabrina has to protect an egg, because it’s simulating a baby. Thankfully there was a twist on it because Salem wanted to pull a prank on her for NO REASON, he’s just a jerk here, by replacing it with a dragon egg, so it continually grows because of magic.

But it’s still unrealistic that she doesn’t use magic to zap up a replacement egg, after figuring out there’s something magical about “ her “ egg. So the dragon eventually reunites with Sabrina and the egg… and everything’s fine! She doesn’t have to brainwash it into calming down or anything.

  In the second story by Bill Golliher, Zelda acts Out of Character from her responsible no fun self, in a way that bothers Sabrina, because Harvey’s rehearsing for a play but he’s terrible at it, so Zelda casts a spell so that he’ll become like the person he’s trying to act like. Isn’t it obvious she had to turn him into a good actor instead?! She also did no research on what his role in the play was gonna be, so that’s also impossibly dumb.

So he becomes a Casanova, and then that has to be undone. At least it had a happy ending because he became a good actor anyways. But it’d be more in-character for SABRINA to cast the spell. 2000s Zelda never does this, and SABRINA’S supposed to be the main character! Sabrina’s supposed to be impulsive, not thinking and being responsible, which is the exact opposite!

  And the third story by Tania del Rio’s an embarrassing, self-indulgent story, where the writer’s SO in love with MANGA, that she makes ALL the Sabrina characters in love with it TOO, with NO foreshadowing at all, and, NO magic happens! So, THAT was boring. At least it tries to… at least it gives Shinji another character trait, because he’s really creative, as you could tell by the way that he did his manga, but what was the POINT of that?!

  Well UNFORTUNATELY it was to lead into the story AFTER this… because THIS of ALL STORIES gets a follow-up in another issue! And it’s a story that causes the comic to jump the shark! The next cover has to be seen to be believed! MY EYES! How is she that hideous creature?! Why did the executives approve this art style?! Her lips and eyeballs are huge! She reminds me of a fish! Salem looks horrible! HOW did this art not lose ALL of their subscriptions? I’m not sure I’m gonna wanna make videos of the next comic, because I’ve read all of it, and I wasn’t too IMPRESSED with how BORING and CONTRIVED it was.

Every 70s Sabrina Comic Review: Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 1-72 & Archie Giant Series Newbie’s Perspective

This is every story aside from the Sabrina 70s comic in the 70s that I already reviewed. Archie’s TV Laugh-Out was a transition comic from the Archie’s Madhouse stories to Sabrina’s comic.

Archie’s TV Laugh-out Issue 1:

  Then we get to Archie’s TV Laugh-out Issue 1 starring Sabrina. It starts with Hilda and Ambrose from the later 70s comic. Hilda doesn’t like the idea of Sabrina throwing a party and invite a bunch of teenagers to her house that she thinks are just nothing kids and riffraff, probably just because they’re mortals because I see no other explanation. Why does Sabrina want her friends to meet her family? More like, why does she want them to meet Hilda?

  She says she doesn’t want to meet them because they’re just common everyday people with nothing special about them. I guess I can relate to that. She forbids the party. She doesn’t want anything to get broken in her house. Even then she could just easily fix it! She could easily just warp to a movie theater WHILE they’re at the party.

 Sabrina cries because she’ll never be like the other kids. Ambrose tells Hilda to humor Sabrina, saying that a young girl has to have friends her own age. Hilda must like Cousin Ambrose a lot because she immediately changes her mind.

  She says she might as well humor Sabrina because she’s so ugly, and says that she has to hang around other ugly kids because who else could stand looking at her and then Hilda’s mirror breaks! That’s a hilarious punchline. I didn’t expect that. I giggled at Hilda saying while Ambrose was trying not to laugh, “ I don’t know what it is? My good looks keep cracking these cheap mirrors! “ It’s pure cartoon logic that they break. What, did a witch’s curse do it? It’d make sense if it was Sabrina’s spell to get back at her.

  Hilda humors Sabrina and Sabrina hugs her, thanks her and calls her a doll. Hilda’s somehow surprised when Sabrina says that she wants her to promise her she won’t use witchcraft on her friends. I’m guessing she will anyways or the plot would be boring. If she had common sense, she would just tell Hilda to go to a movie.

  She laughs while saying she can’t turn one of them into a toad, and Sabrina says she wants her friends to think her family is just like everyone else, and Hilda’s offended instead of this always being the case for witches to avoid being persecuted by everyone. Isn’t it obvious that they’d never think her family was normal, because of how Hilda dresses?

 Ambrose reassures Sabrina that Hilda will behave, somehow believing that. You’d think he would follow her and supervise her. And Hilda somehow thinks the party will be creepy because of that, and Sabrina thanks Ambrose.

  So the Archie gang meets Sabrina’s family. She must be really new in town if this is the first time they’ve met Sabrina’s family. I guess masquerade party is what Halloween parties and costume parties were called back in the 60s, for no reason. And he even says that the whole place is decorated for Halloween.

 He asks if Hilda’s interior decorator is Dracula. Hilda takes offense to this instead of considering it a compliment at this point, probably because she knows he’s doing this to insult her. If Sabrina had a brain she wouldn’t have Reggie in her house at all. It never made sense that ANY of them let Reggie spend time with them.

  Ambrose casts a spell to keep Hilda from bothering Reggie. Hilda relatably complains that she can’t have any fun and there’s no period after the word fun in the Sabrina Complete Collection. I guess it was just a common thing for teenagers to refer to each other as kids back in the 60s, but it’s so weird. They start to eat and Hilda lampshades that she doesn’t know how she let Ambrose talk her into this. Ambrose says they’re nice kids that he likes. He should say, “ with the exception of Reggie. “

 Hilda calls out Jughead on eating too much. “ Doesn’t your mother feed you at home, Jughead? Did it ever occur to you that the other kids might want to eat too? “ Jughead just makes fun of her by saying that she’s funny. She’s just really unenthusiastic about having to point and replace the food that he ate.

  He asks her to put pretzels on top of his plate. She zaps the plate to the top of the pile right in front of him and all he says is that’ll do fine. OH. She put the plate of pretzels on top the normal way. She turns the pretzels into snakes, which scares Jughead into dropping all that food and wanting to run out of the house. It’d be nicer of Hilda to just zap the huge appetite OUT of him. But that’s not what she’s like.

  He tells Archie that Hilda gave him a bowl full of snakes and a live lobster nipped his nose. I thought he was getting out of here. Why did he suddenly get brave enough to stay just to tell Archie what happened? Sabrina undoes Hilda’s spell, and Archie says that the way Jughead eats, he’s liable to see anything.

  Reggie tells Sabrina to dance and wants to show her some fancy stepping, and his arrogance annoys Hilda. Hilda shouldn’t be the only one really annoyed with Reggie. I’m siding with her. Can’t she just kick out Reggie? She stands up to him by making him bounce on the floor on his butt. Archie laughs and makes ME laugh when he says, “ What do you call that step, Reggie, the can can? “ That’s a funny name for a dance.

  Betty says that’s a lovely dress Sabrina has on. Veronica’s a snob and says it looks like a copy of a Paris original she threw away rather than donating to charity. Is this whole story dedicated to showing what unlikable jerks most of the Archie gang are? I guess that’s good writing to make Hilda’s actions tolerable. They’d hear Hilda’s dialogue.

 Hilda’s still a worse person than any of them but she’s way more likable at times like this. Only Betty is someone I can actually buy Sabrina being friends with. The rest of them, I think Sabrina’s only friends with because they’re all hanging out with Betty, so she HAS to deal with them to be with her, and she wants to be part of their crowd.

  At first I wondered if Hilda would like Veronica for being a jerk like witches are told to be, but it makes sense that she calls her a creep because she’s insulting Sabrina on her. You’d think Veronica and the rest would HEAR Hilda call Veronica that. Hilda uses magic to turn Veronica’s dress into rags, and says, “ What did they do dearie, drag it all the way? “

 Even Betty laughs at her. So it’s not like Betty’s always a nice person either, like I imagined her to be. Sabrina’s nicer than she is. Betty just looks like a saint compared to the rest of her friends, and I don’t blame her for laughing at Veronica because Veronica’s a jerk. She probably has a lot of pent-up resentment of her.

  Sabrina uses magic to return Veronica’s dress to normal, but that just makes Veronica and Reggie suspicious of the house and they want to leave. They’d hear Sabrina talk when she was returning the dress to normal. Sabrina starts crying and tells Ambrose what’s going on, and he says he’ll fix everything.

 As Jughead’s about to leave, Ambrose zaps Hilda, causing her to have a guitar and offer to play some music for the party and sing. Hilda would be humiliated if she knew about this. Them not questioning her getting the new outfit and guitar must be part of the spell. I feel sorry for her, but I’m glad the party’s saved.

  So Sabrina’s friends cheer up and stay, and Veronica says they had a great time and thanks Sabrina for everything. Ambrose returns Hilda to normal for some reason, and Sabrina thanks her hugging her. Hilda doesn’t seem to remember what happened and is suspicious that a spell was cast on her.

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 234

 Sabrina starts hiccupping while reading a history book. For no reason, whenever she gets the hiccups, her witchcraft goes haywire. Harvey calls out for Sabrina and there’s a honk and crash. This annoys Hilda, and Zelda defends him as a nice boy Sabrina likes. Finally it’s confirmed that she doesn’t like Harvey because he’s not a witch.

  He wants to show Sabrina his new muffler, and Hilda zaps a cloth on his mouth to shut him up. Sabrina casts a spell to undo it and he asks what’s going on around here. She tells him to hurry up and drive them to school, and he says strange things always seem to happen to him when he’s near her house. Then why does he keep going? And why isn’t his memory erased every time they happen?!

  He agrees with Sabrina that it’s probably just his imagination. He’s actually smiling when he says, “ Do you remember the time I thought I saw a fire-breathing dragon when I opened your garage door? “ She hiccups and suddenly his car is in front of a sailboat. Harvey panics wondering how they got here and asks if they’ll sink. He considerately tells her not to look because it’s too scary, and she warps him to high school and says it’s not so bad.

  She confuses him and lets him stay confused instead of just erasing his memory of what happened. That’s way crueler. Lying to him and making him think he’s got a hallucination problem is a lot worse than erasing his memories. What if he went to a therapist and went on pills for it? He assumes his chop suey for breakfast is making him have bad dreams during the day, for some reason.

  She decides to send for Ambrose because he might have a cure for hiccups. Wouldn’t she already know that for sure? Wouldn’t she have used it last time then? I guess she thinks Ambrose is smart, if she’s going to HIM for help and not one of her aunts. I love that reality ensues and she summoned him while he was taking a bath. But it’s a miracle that he already had a towel around him. I guess he realized he was being warped away and quickly summoned a towel around himself.

  She apologizes and uses magic to make him properly dressed. He pities her and says this calls for the work of a doctor. Then a janitor in the broom closet gets scared by a witch doctor. And Sabrina says that’s not the right doctor. Ambrose calls her dear and warps the witch doctor away. Ambrose says this calls for an old sugar remedy he knows.

  She hiccups Ambrose away. Wouldn’t she have to imagine something for her magic to work?! This is stupid. It’s not like she caught it from a witch in the Other Realm, because she never goes there. He ends up trying to offer Ms. Grundy a spoonful of sugar instead and somehow doesn’t notice it’s her until the next panel because I guess his eyes were closed from tiredness.

 She thinks it’s romantic, and then asks where he went. Sabrina has a feeling she should go home. Wouldn’t she get in trouble? Then a balloon from a kid pops and startles her, which removes her hiccups, and she magically summons a whole bunch of balloons for the kid because she feels better. I like that it didn’t backfire on her or get undone.

 The first story by George Gladir was about Sabrina wanting to feel like the other kids so badly that she insists on having a party in HER house, and common sense would dictate that she would tell Ambrose to follow Hilda so that she wouldn’t use magic on her friends, or better yet, tell Hilda to go see the movies! Tell her to go somewhere else! The plot could’ve easily been avoided! The plot WAS worth it, so I’m not too mad that it could’ve easily never happened.

 Almost all of the people Hilda used magic against deserved it. I could relate to Hilda for wanting to use magic on Reggie, and Veronica. She DID overreact to Jughead though sine she could just zap up MORE food whenever she wants. Ambrose could’ve easily avoided this entire plot by casting the spell to make a nice easy-going party-goer, IMMEDIATELY.

  The second story was by George Gladir. This story doesn’t make any sense. I don’t care that she has the hiccups, it still doesn’t make any sense that magic would do stuff she doesn’t WANT, when she’s not imagining it to, just because she’s hiccuping. The story is about a bunch of stuff happening that doesn’t matter, until eventually, she gets scared out of her hiccups. Good thing for every time it tried to be different from that episode of the show.

Mad House Ma-ad Freak-Out Issue 72:

  Sabrina asks Hilda to teach her the broom flying trick. It’s a little late in her life to be asking that. She should be a kid. Hilda says that on a windy rainy night it takes a lot of skill to stay on the broom. Then she says she’ll break her in easy, and the story ends with Sabrina screaming unhappily as she’s on a rollercoaster, while Hilda enjoys it. Huh? That’s an unexpected turn.

  Then a girl asks Sabrina how she can swipe another girl’s boyfriend. Oh, she’s another witch. No wonder she just casually asked her an evil question. It’s interesting that she knows another teenage witch in her area. She has no problem with telling her that she has to walk around his house at midnight and then recite an incantation 3 times. Since when is a spell that complicated?

 She’d just have to say it once. The next day, Cora thanks Sabrina because it worked. What’s the twist? It turns out the girl stole Harvey from Sabrina, or whoever her boyfriend is, but it ends there. I guess it got undone.

  Then Harvey asks Sabrina to tell him his fortune. She wastes time and then says the star card is the worst of all because it tells her that he doesn’t have a dollar to pay her for this fortune. Then Harvey keeps throwing gutter balls. Sabrina casts a spell to help him and somehow she messed up. He got a great strike, but he was playing in the other alley. She wouldn’t imagine him as getting a strike in the wrong alley.

  Then Sabrina says to some random student at her class that a talisman protects her from the badly-named Nether World, and an amulet protects her against magnetic waves. A charm protects her against cosmic rays, but when she just casually tells her teacher that she was explaining witchcraft, she gets a detention, and is unhappy that she didn’t have a charm against that, except she could’ve pointed at her and magically brainwashed her into changing her mind.

  Why would Sabrina tell her students all of this?! This wouldn’t happen. I thought by this point in the comic she was keeping her witchcraft a secret. Then Sabrina asks a girl if she has all of the ingredients. She’s another witch. Despite them clearly mentioning witch ingredients, they’re only making a witches’ pizza, because brews are considered old-fashioned. I liked this issue, even if the last comedy page is the only good one. It was by George Gladir.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 2:

  Sabrina asks the Archie characters what’s wrong. A band called The Archies have to play for the school dance tonight and Veronica won’t be there. Fortunately it’s explained, as she’s come down with a cold. It’s so egotistical of Archie to name a band after himself.

 And I’d never imagine Archie the clumsy loser to be the type of character who’d have a band. It just feels like meta logic, like some executives had the idea because they wanted to make him look cool to sell more issues. It feels like the only reason they have a band is because they’re main characters of a comic.

  Sabrina asks if she can help and plays the harmonica badly. Oh, so Veronica’s actually supposed to be part of his band. So they wanted a replacement musician for it. I’d never imagine that Veronica would willingly be a part of Archie’s band because that’d require her to cooperate with him a lot, and she doesn’t even like him.

  Sabrina says a spell asking for her music to cause a trance and cause Reggie to dance. Predictably they can’t hear her and comment on it. It should be in a thought bubble, but it’s always a shouting bubble. Reggie starts dancing, confused at first so it’s not even like he’s unaware of what’s going on with him. Archie laughs at him. He says the music wasn’t good but he loved Reggie’s dancing, and Jughead and Betty find it funny too.

 I’m proud of Sabrina for not going the predictable route and using magic to make herself a great musician. That’d be cheating. Reggie doesn’t know that he was dancing anymore even though he was confused that he was at first. So the brainwashing took a second to kick in? Did she just wanna mess with Reggie because he’s a jerk?

  Jughead calls Reggie an idiot out of nowhere and gets him to call him needle nose, the comic finally lampshading his unrealistic nose. Sabrina’s the mediator, telling them to cool it because this isn’t solving their problem. I’ll take that any day over her just standing there while other characters get all the dialogue.

 She says they still need someone to play the electric piano organ. Wait, what? Then in the next panel Sabrina says, “ Piano organ? Why didn’t you say so? “ So it was too good to be true, Sabrina wasn’t being the mediator despite the text bubble clearly being connected to her. She says she’s taken lessons on the piano. Reggie doubts her for no reason.

  Archie agrees to humor her and says they have to be at the school in 30 minutes. Sabrina says they won’t be sorry and I assume he’s gonna be right about her having no talent for the sake of a predictable joke twist. Reggie AND Archie have no faith in her.

 But predictably, Reggie’s silly dancing is planned to come back as a Chekhov’s Gun, at least it seems like it right now because Archie says she won’t get them laughed out of school if Reggie starts dancing. Then he says that their amplifiers will drown out any mistakes. How? It’s so rude of Reggie to carry on like this right in front of Sabrina.

  Sabrina says a spell in front of the audience on stage, wanting people to start to swing when she plays the piano. So she plays well and gets the audience to actually dance and not just literally swing. Thankfully. Archie compliments her after the ball is over. Why is a high school dance called a ball? Sabrina thanks him and Reggie refuses to admit that she was a good player even though he said right in front of her that she CAN play.

  But I think she only played well because of the spell, since she felt the need to use magic to cheat. So for all we know, Reggie was right that she sucks at it and she just cheated to make him look wrong. Still, he shouldn’t have been mean to Sabrina and said he played loud to carry her. Archie tells Reggie to help Sabrina pack up the equipment so they could get going.

 Reggie’s confused that Sabrina was playing the electric organ all evening without it being plugged in. She should’ve said that she unplugged it when nobody was looking to mess with him. But to be fair, she couldn’t have actually had it plugged in, or when she’d hit a wrong note, it’d actually be heard.

 She was only pretending to play all along and the music happened by itself. That makes way more sense. That’s way easier to understand how she did it, way easier than her magically becoming a good piano player without the knowledge and muscle memory to draw from. Why isn’t Jughead reacting to what Reggie’s saying?!

  Sabrina’s told by her boyfriend in Lovers’ Lane that they’re out of gas. It makes sense that a sign needs to be hung on the tree saying that it’s called that, instead of the street’s actual name being that. Because they’re out of gas, Sabrina says that’s a shame and uses magic, which magically carries five gallons of gas to the car.

 And the guy shocks me by saying, “ Remind me never to date a witch again! “ So on the one hand it’s cool that he knows she’s a witch and is cool with it, and it’s odd that she’s not worried about that at all, but I hate that he’s ungrateful for what she’s doing for him. This was by George Gladir.

  In the next comedy page, by George Gladir, Hilda doesn’t want Sabrina’s boyfriends raiding the fridge. I guess she’s saying boyfriends to make fun of her and just means friends. She then uses magic to summon the food to the guys, who I don’t recognize. I guess they already know she’s a witch too.

 I thought the comic was done with having mortals know she’s a witch with no consequences somehow. It makes sense to relegate it to non-canon Off Panels instead. But it’s confusing to go back and forth on the rule, but I do appreciate that it increases the amount of story potential because she’s not as restricted this way.

  Jughead tells his dog to leave Salem alone, thinking of him as just a kitten, and apologizes to Sabrina. Sabrina says Salem can take care of herself, as Salem’s apparently a girl in this comic. Why did he call Salem a kitten? Why would she think Salem could handle it without magic? Well, Salem CAN use magic, as it turns out. So that’s what she was expecting. Salem’s usually a male character in the series, so I don’t take this nonsense seriously at all. It turns out he zapped the dog up the tree.

  Then I’m confused when I see regular dogs talking to each other. I wish there was a textbox saying that they’re speaking in dog language. Even then, dogs aren’t smart enough to have their own language. It’s confusing because I’d expect Earth, the mortal realm, to be completely normal. It’s the witches and everything to do with the Other Realm that’s supernatural.

  Somehow one of the dogs ALSO mentions David and Goliath like Sabrina did. That’s an impossible coincidence, especially since dogs wouldn’t know about that story. A dog doesn’t believe Hot Dog about Salem and thinks he’s just going senile.

 But then Salem uses magic to make the dogs look different, in a way that would give away the existence of the supernatural to any mortal that saw them. I guess a spy witch had to undo that. Or not, someone could assume some mean person put Mickey Mouse ears and a mustache on dogs for fun.

  Sabrina says that she can tell he’s been up to no good, but for some reason she doesn’t immediately plan to use magic to find out the truth about what he did, like using a mind reading spell, because she gets distracted upon seeing Harvey’s car. Why doesn’t she cast a spell on the cat to force it to not use magic anymore? Seriously, why? Pets are supposed to be well-behaved, and if they aren’t, they get trained into being obedient. THAT’S not dismissed as too cruel.

  Hilda tells Sabrina that Harvey’s waiting in the living room, and she randomly reveals that she used magic to make him look ugly because that’d look handsome to HER. He looks dazed, so that must also be  a part of the spell out of spite. Then she’s confused and surprised when Sabrina tells her to undo the spell. She wastes time complaining about Sabrina and makes a lot of noise that Harvey notices, using magic to have the household chores do themselves while she amusingly lies down and complains that she’s slaving away.

  Harvey offers to buy her a malt and he complains about wise guy Reggie because he might show off at his expense again. It’s satisfying to see him call Reggie out, even if behind his back. She uses magic to make their car really fast, while Reggie crashes his. They meet up with Archie and some girl named Ophella who’s being treated badly by a guy she has a crush on. What’s that got to do with Sabrina?

  That guy, Spencer, has a brand new diet that he’ll only go on after he finishes one last huge sundae. Ophella says that he’s always kidding himself and she wishes magic existed because she’d zap him with a spell to make everything he eats taste rotten. She wouldn’t say THAT, she’d want a spell that would make all the JUNK FOOD he eats taste rotten. Why would Sabrina grant a wish that would make him starve to death?

  She’s also making it really obvious that magic exists, making Ophella get accused of being a witch. So Spencer runs away from her panicking and makes her cry. SOMEHOW, Sabrina doesn’t immediately undo the whole situation with magic and just lets Harvey walk away her. Why does she think she was trying to do GOOD with that spell?

 So because Della found out what happened, her and Salem are proud of her, and the story ends with Hilda offering Della some bat wings that were fresh baked last year. Why would she brag about them being made LAST YEAR? This is based off an episode of the show.

  The first story that took forever to get to the magic is by George Gladir. The final story was by Dick Malmgren. This had three different plots to it that don’t really connect to each other. Salem causes mischief with his magic, bothering some dogs. Sadly Sabrina doesn’t undo that. Hilda turns Harvey ugly, and Sabrina turns him back to normal before he can freak out about it, so it ends up being pointless. And then Sabrina grants Ophella’s wish to make everything Spencer eats taste rotten.

 She somehow doesn’t realize that by implicating Ophella, by saying that what she said came true, OF COURSE she would get accused of being a witch and get in trouble and start crying. And somehow Sabrina doesn’t undo that with magic. So she ends the story being congratulated by Della. It was just sad to see that happen to her. The issue was boringly slow-paced.

Everything’s Archie Issue 7 Winter Wonderland:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 215

  Sabrina gets woken up being told it’s five minutes to 9, and she snaps her fingers as Salem looks gray, which is close to black at least. She warps to school on Saturday, with Salem for no reason. It’s at least realistic to forget which day of the week you’re waking up on.

 Archie asks where Sabrina is and Sabrina warps behind him dressed for winter. Archie agrees with his friends that nobody heard or saw Sabrina show up, and Salem zaps away a whole path to himself in the snow. When Sabrina mentions witchcraft, somehow none of her friends hears her.

  Veronica wants to challenge Betty and Sabrina to a race with her and Archie, and Veronica tells Archie that she waxed her runners and put resin on theirs so they won’t be able to move, which defeats the point of competing with them because she’s not proving herself. Jughead hears her because she told Archie this just to brag. Sabrina uses magic so that Archie’s sled bounces off a part of the ground where the snow is melted.

  Veronica just tells him he’s an idiot for not watching where he’s steering. Jughead wants a snow sculpture competition, and Sabrina recklessly insists on doing it near her house even though there’s very obvious witches in there because the drifts in her yard are huge. Sabrina asks Hilda for hot chocolate before they’d hit the snow again, and Veronica calls Hilda ugly behind her back. At least she says Sabrina’s cute. She’d know Hilda would hear her.

  Betty tells her off and Hilda uses magic to make Betty look ugly, considering that to be an improvement. Sabrina sees what happened and tells Hilda to undo the spell, and somehow Betty doesn’t hear their conversation. Hilda makes me smile even more saying that Sabrina was just jealous that she was prettier than her.

  After a page wasting my time, Jughead wants Hilda’s brew. He tells Hilda she’s an excellent chef, breathes fire with his burp, making me wonder why she made it like that, and somehow he still says it’s good. She says he’s handsome and has good taste. That’s sweet…

 So, we’re SUPPOSED to think he’s ugly. Betty says that Veronica and Archie’s castle is much better than their snowman and somehow nobody reacts to Sabrina saying she will not use witchcraft. Veronica has no faith in Jughead’s artistic know-how, but Hilda does a good deed and makes him create a snow Michelangelo.

  Sabrina actually POINTS OUT that Hilda did a good deed, although, like I was thinking, it has negative consequences, so it’s not purely good. Veronica’s mad at Archie, and says she goes for real winter sports, and runs after some guys she knows that showed up out of nowhere, as Hilda says she’s got a nice temper like a witch. It’s sweet how quickly she forgave Veronica for calling her ugly… but it’s also confusing.

  This story by Al Hartley was about Sabrina having fun in the snow with her friends, with Veronica challenging her friends to competitions and being mean to Archie, and Jughead’s nice to Hilda, complimenting her on the taste of her brew, so Hilda’s inspired to do something nice for him, making sure he wins the competition.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 3:

 There’s a comedy page by George Gladir I’ve never seen before called Never on Sundae. It’s got no dialogue to be done with faster; Sabrina recklessly zaps up some malts at the malt shop, merely putting her hand over Harvey’s eyes in a lame attempt to hide magic somehow, but because it was in front of Pop Tate, he makes Harvey do the dishes for him to pay off the bill. It was common sense of her to not do this.

  Archie says it was nice of Veronica’s father to let them have a picnic on his country property. Meanwhile Ethel chases Jughead in the recurring joke that hasn’t aged well. Somehow SHE’S the one who gets caught in her own rope trap, when she would know where it is, so he runs away.

 Betty somehow feels sorry for Ethel instead of Jughead. It’s hard NOT to pity her most of the time, but the more I see her act like this, the more of a villain she comes off as, because the more she acts like this, the more frustrated I get that she hasn’t given up. Jughead has the right to not date someone he’s not into.

  She doesn’t respect Jughead’s consent and somehow she screws up and makes Jughead a literal tiger, and he’s also brainwashed into loving Ethel. So, magic knew what she wanted… Shouldn’t she know better than to cast spells like that? Of COURSE he turned into a tiger when she said the word tiger. Even I don’t really know the slang she said, why would magic?

 At least it’s funny to see him look this way. But somehow, after she turns him back into a human, he wonders what he’s doing when he was just about to offer to kiss Ethel as a human. Sabrina only wanted him to turn back into a human, not stop being interested in Ethel! Somehow Sabrina wonders what she did wrong.

  Conveniently, Sabrina encounters Ambrose. At least he explains that he’s gathering toadstools for a potion, so it’s justified why he’s here. But he still doesn’t explain what the potion’s for, so it’s just a one panel Handwave when she could’ve easily just warped to Ambrose and asked him for help. That would be a bit more believable. He doesn’t scold her for casting a love spell on Ethel, and he checks the witches’ manual.

  Out of nowhere he says that before casting the love spell, she must first grasp the subject’s hand. I’m willing to bet that this contradicts earlier issues and that it’ll never be remembered again. Why can’t she just do this by pointing? I would find this rule interesting, but in an episodic series, why should I have faith in the comic to keep it going?

  She thanks him, and we see Ethel putting leaves on the ground, saying that there’s nothing like the camouflaged ditch trick. She hides behind a tree and thinks Jughead will be hers. Then Sabrina tells Jughead to come here a minute, and we see Ethel in the tree above her, and she jumps to the conclusion that Sabrina’s asking him out and somehow she doesn’t instantly get heard right behind them when she screams at them. She jumps until the branch breaks and falls out of the tree, and somehow she isn’t injured from that.

  For some reason Sabrina just asks him to hold her hand, instead of brainwashing him into doing that, when she’s fine with ignoring his consent with a love spell while she’s at it. I understand that she’s just naïve and well-intentioned, so she’s not a monster for this, but good grief. Ethel wastes time accusing Sabrina, and thankfully Ethel’s distracted because the hamburgers are ready.

 Why is she allowed to be here? Did they just invite her because they felt sorry for her? She’s not showing a close friendship with anyone here. I mean, I guess the reason Jughead never called the cops on her is LITERALLY the sad real life reason that they would just laugh him off because she’s a girl, or he thinks that’s the case.

  Ethel asks for a dozen burgers, but so does Sabrina. Archie just thinks the fresh air has given them some appetite, and Ethel puts a bunch of hamburgers in the bush and says it’s the old hamburger bush trick, which is amusing because nobody ever does that.

 She says that the minute he grabs a burger, he’ll pull the string which will ring the bell, and then she’ll shoot an arrow to cut the rope holding that bale of hay. She sure was prepared to have all of these trap materials here. It’s really predictable that Ethel will fail every time, because she’s preparing a trap and that reminds me of Wile E Coyote and Scratch and Grounder.

  He immediately sees through the trap. That’s a twist, I thought Sabrina would be the one to ruin her plan. Instead, somehow Moose falls for the trap. No one would. He can even get burgers from the place Archie’s getting them whenever he wants, so there’s no excuse. No one would think burgers grow in bushes, let alone trees. The hay falls on Moose, making me wonder if it’s realistic that he wouldn’t be injured from it. Sabrina assumes Ethel really did get Jughead with her trap.

  Somehow Sabrina thinks it’s Jughead’s hand and not Moose’s hand, and casts a love spell on what’s normally an awful character. About time he gets comedy against him that’s not just him being dumb or evil. And Ethel doesn’t appreciate him. I wish she explained that it’s because of his personality because she loved a bunch of guys other than Jughead going after her in the 70s comic.

 At least all I’m seeing him do is HUG her. That’s kinda sweet, and so is what he’s saying. The story ends with him chasing Ethel. Now I wish she was chased more often as karma. That’s a good ending to her stories. I didn’t want to hate her, either. Why can’t Sabrina just instantly undo the love spell on Moose?

  The plot of the first story in this that doesn’t get reprinted in the Sabrina comic, which is by Dick Malmgren was that Ethel was trying to capture Jughead so that she could kiss him, and Sabrina somehow rooted for Ethel, and tried to cast a love spell on Jughead, but somehow she fails at it. When I started watching the 70s cartoon, this exact same plot was done in the show. So I was pretty bored seeing the episode version of this. At least the comic doesn’t have annoying voices for all of the characters.

The Mad House Glads Issue 74 Strange Session:

  There’s a comedy page by George Gladir where a teacher admires Sabrina for staying after school to experiment, but then he sees that she put labels on the containers that said powdered bat wings and lizard blood. She wouldn’t bring them here because that’d be too suspicious.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 4:

  Ethel’s mad because Jughead ate all of her lunch on her when she only offered him half. It’s lampshaded that she should’ve expected that, and they just smile instead of caring. Ethel complains that the least he could’ve done was sit with her for a while. She cries and says he’s giving her an inferiority complex. Sabrina pities her and Harvey says that’s very nice.

  She tells Harvey to go find a spot and spread out the blanket on the beach, and Ethel tells Sabrina that he was just over there and now he’s not and is as quick as a fox. Sabrina sees Jughead hiding behind an umbrella, and inconveniences him using her magic to blow it away.

 Ethel runs after him wanting a kiss and borrows Archie’s tube and swims out to sea, and Sabrina casts a spell to make that tube float in the air in yet another of the stories where she’s clearly the bad guy. I wish when she cast spells, it was a thought bubble instead of a shouting text bubble making me wonder why no one hears her.

  Jughead asks what Ethel put in all those sandwiches and doubts this could be happening. But Archie would confirm it for him. Ethel grabs him, but he gets sent away from her because she put too much sun tan oil on and he slipped through her arms. Sabrina casts a spell to bury Jughead in the sand as I wish we’d see Della congratulate her for doing evil to drive the point home to her, because sure, she’s trying to help Ethel, but it’s still bothering Jughead.

 The story ends with her kissing him. I doubt he actually would never eat her pepperoni sandwiches again. And Harvey says that was a dumb way to try to avoid a girl, because from what he saw, Jughead chose to bury his head in the sand. I already reviewed Beddy Bye Time by George Gladir in the 70s comic.

 There’s a comedy page by George Gladir where Harvey admires a lot of women at the beach, and Sabrina zaps an empty flour bag onto his head. As usual she’s just mean when she does this. This is yet another story by George Gladir about Sabrina trying to help Ethel get Jughead which is not very nice to Jughead.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 5 I’ll Bite:

  We see a story where Archie plays the guitar singing a cheesy song and Sabrina and her friends are dancing, so Hilda doesn’t see why she thinks that’s fun and is worried about her. The Archies received a gold record for that song and Hilda hates it. Zelda says they’re great and Sabrina really loves Hilda, who calls Zelda too sensitive. I don’t think that’s the right word. Jughead tries to eat from her fridge, so she summons a lion to show up from it, and Reggie doesn’t believe him.

  Sabrina begs Zelda to tell Hilda to stop teasing her friends, and she does so, and tells her to help her make hot dogs for the kids. The kids WOULD get confused if they simply zapped them up. Sabrina shows Jughead that there’s only food in the fridge. I assume there’s a time skip, since the next panel immediately shows Zelda with hot dogs, which Sabrina thanks her for.

  Hilda thinks Jughead needs to be taught some table manners just because he’s enjoying some food. So she uses magic to make the frankfurter bite him. Reggie doesn’t believe him, and his friends laugh. Sabrina uses magic to make her friends forget the spell. They cheerfully plan on leaving the house, and Archie thanks Sabrina for everything.

 Sabrina tells Hilda she was mean and the story ends. Since when does it say fini at the end instead of end? I’m choosing not to mention when I get to stories in the Sabrina Complete Collection that I’ve already reviewed in the 70s comic. So after Hex Vex by George Gladir, the issue ends. This was by George Gladir.

Pep 248 Custom-Designed Cars for Archie and the Gang:

 Pep’s got one panel showing Sabrina’s ideal car, and there’s really nothing to say about it. It’s just a bunch of textboxes around a car. All I could say about it would be, reading off what the textboxes are saying. This was by George Gladir.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 6:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 230

  At first it’s pretty hard to get invested in this story because Hilda’s face is portrayed as stunningly ugly, which is in an uncanny valley because her hair is orange like it’s supposed to be. She says Harvey’s ugly and asks Sabrina why she doesn’t date someone ugly instead, since she’s a witch. Sabrina says Harvey IS cute and runs off because he’ll be here any minute.

  Hilda thinks that Grotesque would never be interested in someone looking like Sabrina anyways. She thinks that it’s impressive that Grotesque can turn himself into a bat, which is a heartwarmingly nice way of looking at a vampire, and opens the door for Harvey and he falls into the house. Harvey offers to straighten this rug, and says he wasn’t watching where he was going. Hilda thinks that with all his faults, she can’t imagine why Sabrina would feel anything for Harvey other than pity.

  Then she comes to the conclusion that she feels sorry for him because he can’t get any dates. She sees Betty and Veronica, and when she asks Harvey if he ever thought of dating other girls besides Sabrina, he refuses, a contrast from the 70s comic where he cheated on her a lot. But of course he’d lie to her aunt. He says Betty and Veronica only wanna go out with Archie.

  So Hilda uses magic to make them fall in love with Harvey, and he doesn’t look very happy when they start fighting over him, with Betty lampshading that Veronica HAS Archie most of the time. Sabrina sees what’s going on, drawn the way she was in that story called The Court Jester, which takes a little getting used to. Unfortunately, Harvey becomes flattered and arrogant, and says that he can only go out with one at a time. At least it’s more interesting than him being perfect and bland.

  Hilda tells Sabrina that she won’t have any need for Harvey now that her ugly friends are chasing him. I guess she’s hoping Sabrina won’t figure out that she cast a spell on them to make it this way.

 Of course, she does figure it out and brings them back to normal. They think they must have been daydreaming because they showed up here on their way to Pop Tate’s, and Harvey tells them that maybe they can work something out, being desperate. Sabrina’s not mad at Harvey at the end and just comforts him as the story ends, because she’s THAT attached to him.

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 234

  In the next story, Sabrina’s asked by a kid if she’s really a witch and she says she has powers that puzzle most people, and magically creates a pink giraffe. I guess she thinks it’s okay to reveal her magic to kids because they definitely won’t be believed and when they look back on it, they’ll just convince themselves they were just making it up.

  They’re impressed instead of scared, which is nice, and the kid says that the only magic he can do is the disappearing penny trick where you snap your fingers and it falls into your sleeve. The little girl says that any little kid could do that. Then the story ends with Sabrina telling Hilda that the penny vanished, and she asks Sabrina if she’s sure that he didn’t whisper any magic words, as if magic words are always needed for magic. And she’s snapping her fingers and HER coin just falls to the floor.

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 232

  In the next story, Harvey shows up in his car and asks for Sabrina, and this distraction causes Hilda to cut her prize rose by accident. He tells her to be more careful. She could just magically reverse what happened. He calls out for Sabrina again and she complains that he’s trying to puncture her eardrums. He apologizes, and she says maybe he’ll realize THIS and casts a spell, which he doesn’t react to, and he also doesn’t react to her suddenly going quiet either after she said he’ll realize this.

  She casts a spell to send out a jolt and knock him down, and the lightning beam hits the door he opened and somehow reflects it back at her, even though it hit the door, not a mirrored surface on it. She’s magically unharmed-looking after that, and walks into the house to yell at him, and slips on something. Harvey at least helps her up and apologizes.

 He says he was just showing Sabrina the new top he bought for his nephew to test it out. She throws it and says that if it bounces back, that means it’s good, and it’s amusing that Harvey says, “ What a strange way to test a top! “ It hits her, and Sabrina asks if she’s alright.

  Hilda asks what happened because everything went black and asks if they had an eclipse, because she’s dazed. Harvey tells her what really happened, and Sabrina advises him to go home. He says he wants to get the string for his top first. He trips her by accident because he didn’t know she was standing on it, and apologizes.

  He ends the story by going into the car, and Hilda tells Sabrina to tell her the next time he’s coming over so she can get out of town, and Sabrina just thinks she’s overreacting for some reason. It’d be nicer of her to humor her. Surprisingly to me, right after this story came out, the first issue of Sabrina’s own comic came out, and yet she still had a bunch of stories in Archie’s TV Laugh-Out, when most of its issues aren’t even on the site for me.

  The first story by Frank Doyle was really easy to come up with. Hilda makes Betty and Veronica fall in love with Harvey to try to get him away from Sabrina. And Sabrina figures it out immediately. And it was unfaithful of Harvey to even consider it! Then in the next story by George Gladir, Sabrina’s impressed by a magic trick that a little kid does. And then Hilda’s tormented by Harvey’s clumsiness in a story by Dick Malmgren.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 7:

  Someone reluctantly tells Sabrina’s friends that they won’t be allowed to use the park for their rock festival tomorrow, which was a last minute decision, because a group of women in town were protesting the whole idea, the women’s music culture and bird watchers society. One of the soccer moms shows up, coincidentally, and says she’s glad he told them this, and it’s almost election time.

  She’s the president of the group and says that the rock music would frighten the birds away, as she somehow thinks rock music is horrible because the comic is dated. I like that Reggie says that she’s one bird that he’d love to frighten away. I guess he was too quiet for her to hear him. She doesn’t want to let unsupervised teenagers run wild in the park, calling them kids even though they’re teenagers. She’s definitely a strawman. Archie says there isn’t enough time left to tell them that the festival was called off.

  The ugly character continues being unlikable, calling it a childish rowdy get-together. The mayor somehow thinks that she’ll agree to her group supervising the teenagers. She doesn’t want to be seen with a bunch of happy kids, but surprisingly, she says that the mayor left her with very little choice, when before, she had the authority to make him cancel a festival. She says that the festival will have to be done her way.

  Then we see the Archie gang tell Sabrina what happened, and since it was all summed up in a few panels, it makes me wish the beginning wasn’t dragged down with that boring scene full of talking, where Sabrina wasn’t in it, and she wasn’t in the title either. Archie says that the soccer mom group plays a couple of high brow recitals, and surprisingly they’re portrayed as having a bit of a point when Jughead complains that everyone has to take a bath and comb their hair.

  While her friends were worried about losing all of their fans, Sabrina reassures them and goes to the festival, where the ugly lady says that she wants them to turn their amplifiers down to avoid frightening the birds, and Archie asks how they’ll hear them way out there. Jughead complains that the woman must have had a terrible upbringing, and she wants to start the festival by showing the audience what good music sounds like.

  Reggie says she’s mean and some guy sings badly, so Sabrina uses magic to make the bad guys get attacked by birds and chased away. A teenager says that’s the coolest act yet, talking in too much slang. The bad guys jump into the water and Sabrina casts a spell to brainwash the soccer moms into talking in hippie slang and being in favor of The Archies, who play music, and then the old ladies play music and sing, which they’d be embarrassed to remember if they could later on.

  I guess it’s not completely obvious that it’s magic. I guess people could assume, the ladies realized they’re the bad guys, because they love birds and birds chased them away, so it changed their minds.

 Someone wants to take a picture of this, and after the festival ends, Sabrina decides to bring the old girls back to their senses, even though they’d be humiliated at being told how they acted last time, and they’re not nice people normally. The story ends with the woman wanting to leave town with her group the next time any kids wanna have a festival, and the other woman suggests leaving today.

  In the next story, it goes way too long without Sabrina getting to say anything. So I honestly find it too boring to talk about until that point. There’s nothing to comment on. After an eternity, Archie tells Sabrina that the instruments of The Archies and Pussycats were sabotaged.

 So they need someone to play for the crowd until they could get new instruments so that the day would be saved. See, why couldn’t the story have started here? Nobody needed to read a huge amount of pages where the two groups discovered what happened to their instruments.

  Sabrina says that Harvey’s here, and conveniently has a harmonica. The same guy that had bumped into Jughead earlier steals his harmonica, gets in the car and drives away. I guess he really doesn’t like the music that the two bands play or their fans. Archie says they’ll never catch up to him, and thinks he’ll have to refund the audience.

  Sabrina uses magic so that the bad guy’s car flies back to them. Reggie grabs him, and his beard falls off and he says he didn’t mean any harm and was just trying to do his thing for their town. He did this because he hates noise pollution. I feel like it’s unrealistic that someone would go to THIS LENGTH just because he hates rock music.

 Why take the risk of getting in trouble? But criminals do exist. The bands go on to play and the story ends with someone saying that the bad guy got a job selling earmuffs. Both of these stories are about rock music and Archie having a band… It’s just a huge amount of padding. The first story’s by Frank Doyle. The second Sabrina one’s by Dick Malmgren.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 8 A Sweet Tooth:

  We see people at a charity bazaar, where Veronica and Betty are selling desserts. Nobody’s buying Veronica’s cakes, and she says she won’t make a nickel for the orphanage. It’s a pleasant surprise that even Veronica cares enough to do this. She realizes she’s a bad cook and a bunch of time is wasted with her whining. Sabrina says she doesn’t eat sweets because it’s bad for her complexion.

 This entire conflict could’ve been avoided if she took cooking classes. But I guess she did and she’s unteachable, or she’s too stubborn to take them. She says that maybe they’re saving her cakes for last and wonders if a miracle could be arranged. Reggie makes fun of Veronica’s cooking and it turns out she heard that and starts crying.

  Too much time was wasted until finally Sabrina casts a spell to make people think her cakes were delicious and not find it suspicious at all. So they eat the hard burnt cakes and pies, and because they’re still commenting on what makes them bad, Veronica asks if they really like them or not. Sabrina’s actions really had consequences, because Jughead broke his tooth on a cookie. Veronica’s all sold out and decides to bake more, and the story ends with the guys being sick.

  You know, I thought Sabrina was gonna use magic to make her cakes actually good. If she could include “ make nobody suspicious “ as a part of her spell, then there was nothing stopping her from making her cakes good, as well as brainwashing them into eating it, but instead her actions had consequences. Maybe she can cast a spell on them to make them not sick anymore and fix Jughead’s broken tooth, and erase their memories of what happened. This was by Dick Malmgren.

Life with Archie 113 Sell-Out:

  This was released soon after Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 8. I’m including this because this is a story where Sabrina saves the day, but it takes forever to get to that part. There’s really nothing to talk about until the 8^th page. The Archies get ready to go to a concert, and Jughead finds out that the person who gave them a chance to play the concert left the hotel to skip town with all of the ticket money. Archie says he’ll tell his fans what happened and they run after his band in an angry mob, with the exception of Sabrina.

 Why does the narration call her pert and pugnosed? Why does she waste time saying to her cat that she knows Hilda would never approve of her deciding to help? He already knows. She casts a spell so that all of the signs will point to Riverdale. This causes someone in a vehicle to tell the thief that he got his gang turned around and he needs to watch where he’s going.

  The bus ends up turning around and heading back to Riverdale from the confusion, where they end up arrested and Jughead gets all of the money back. The guy that The Archies thought they were gonna be playing backup for apologized to Veronica’s father for the bad guy using his name to rob them and is flying up next week to give a free concert for Riverdale with The Archies playing.

 Then the story wastes our time with Hilda confusingly yelling at Sabrina for what she did. Why did the writer think we wanted to see this? The only way Hilda would know Sabrina did this is if she somehow felt like spying on her in her free time, because she wouldn’t have TOLD Hilda about it. Thankfully the last panel has Hilda say she’ll forgive her and Sabrina’s in a good mood again.

  This story by Frank Doyle’s about The Archies getting told they’re gonna get to have a concert just for someone to skip town with the ticket money. And Sabrina uses her magic to make sure he drives back to Riverdale and gets arrested. It takes a while to see Sabrina, and when she does show up, it’s the same scene where she uses magic, so it comes out of nowhere for an easy resolution. But the villain’s believable and clever.

Betty and Me 38 Luck be a Lady:

  This story was released after Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 8, but because it wasn’t on the issue checklist for Feature Sabrina, I missed it until it listed the reprint in Laugh Digest 54 that came at this time. It wasn’t even in Volume 2 of the Sabrina Complete Collection. Sabrina must be really new in town in this universe, because Archie has to ask if that’s Sabrina walking up to him.

 Betty says she and her friends are in for some luck because Sabrina is really lucky. This makes her look smart. Reggie says Sabrina’s a jinx because all he has to do is say Sabrina and something bad happens to him. A tree branch falls on him and he calls her rotten, and is smart enough to be suspicious of Salem as well.

  But because he was stupid enough to talk about it in front of them, of course Salem uses magic to make him trip. He should’ve known to keep quiet. Betty and Archie are smart enough to notice how strange that is, and to say that when Sabrina’s around, only good things happen to them. Archie kisses her and there’s no outright confirmation that Sabrina made that happen because we don’t see a zap, but he does wonder why he did that.

 Reggie wonders why he doesn’t get that kind of good luck, when it should be obvious. He thinks she’s a witch and so is her cat, and his friends think that’s funny even though they know that Sabrina’s really good luck. But they just assumed it was a coincidence every time.

  Then Reggie’s smart enough to wonder if Salem’s the jinx while Sabrina’s alright. He somehow thinks it’s a good idea to throw Salem when clearly he’d use magic against him afterwards, or Sabrina would in retaliation if she’s a witch like he says. Then out of nowhere Reggie wishes Sabrina would kiss him, when he should know she wouldn’t if people’s wishes were being granted because SHE willed it and he just threw her cat.

 There was only one Sabrina story where he showed any interest in Sabrina, The Opportunist, so this is barely in-character. It’s mostly confusing because there’s so many other girls that you’d think he’d find prettier than Sabrina, as in ones with longer hair.

  Reggie gets called superstitious and says that he knows wishes don’t come true for him. Salem throws a pot on his head, and for no apparent reason Archie says the evil eye is Reggie’s and Betty calls him out on his vanity, instead of either of them being more preoccupied with checking his head and taking him to a doctor, because they’ve wanted to insult him like this for a while. And Sabrina’s line is confusing because she would know it’s true, but she talks as if it isn’t when she’s out of earshot of her friends.

  This story by Frank Doyle was impressive because Betty and her friends are smart enough to acknowledge that Sabrina brings them good luck while Salem brings Reggie bad luck, as we see here. But what’s dumb is that Reggie should know better than to talk about Sabrina and Salem in an insulting way in front of them if he knows they’re witches.

 I know why this wasn’t on the Feature Sabrina timeline, it’s because for some reason its title has the title Betty and Me instead of Sabrina. I hate the comic’s title. I never understood who the “ me “ was supposed to be in comics like this. I read every Betty and Me issue after this that was before Issue 149, so I know there weren’t any Sabrina stories I missed.

Archie Giant Series 218 Handy Dandy:

  Sabrina uses a friendly, gas-like spirit from a bottle to help her wrap Christmas presents. I don’t know why Hilda thinks this is funny, but it’s better than her being mad at her for being lazy, and it’s creative how the spirit looks. I just don’t know why Sabrina got the idea to do this instead of simply pointing to wrap all the presents.

Archie’s Joke Book Magazine 180 Witch Pitch:

  Archie says Sabrina gave him a charm that can turn his enemies into frogs, which is Out of Character for her, and when he’s asked where Reggie is, he says he’s outside catching flies with his tongue. It’s Out of Character for HIM to just be casually smiling about this instead of freaked out.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 11:

  Betty tells Sabrina it’s nice of her to see The Archies leave for the next two weeks on a cruise, and the ship starts moving before Sabrina would have the chance to leave it. Wouldn’t people make sure that wouldn’t happen? I guess they don’t make sure visitors get supervised and would rather track down and punish stowaways.

 Sabrina says she’ll pay her fare and come along too because she always wanted to take a cruise. Oh so all she has to do is pay a fee, it’s not a big deal after all. I guess her friends only panicked because they didn’t know how rich Sabrina is from her aunts hoarding ancient stuff in their house.

  Jughead eats until he’s full and seasick, so Archie thinks Jughead wouldn’t be able to play the drums and Reggie asks Sabrina to sit in for him, totally having faith in her when she’s never played drums before. And yet he had no faith in her to do well in the band last time because she had no experience. It should’ve been Archie asking her this to be more in-character. Oh, unless he has faith in her here BECAUSE she was great at the piano organ, but that’s not the drums.

  Predictably, Sabrina uses magic to make herself a great drummer. Then the captain wants to see Archie. They wanna find a jewel thief on the ship, and they have no description of Fogarty, so they’ll have to watch everyone and The Archies are in a good position to observe, you know, despite having to focus on playing their instruments correctly.

 Is Sabrina gonna be falsely accused of being the jewel thief? And I think the only member of The Archies with jewelry to steal would be Veronica, so while this tries to add some drama, I don’t really care.

  Archie says they have to look for shifty eyes and I wonder if people will assume it’s Sabrina because of that. Because Jughead is hanging over the rail, he solved the case. He tells his friends to help him to a cabin and call the captain and he tells him Lady Pinkham had her butler send that cablegram and the jewels are hanging outside a porthole.

  She says she thought she could collect the insurance money. I’m glad she was written to explain why she did this to feel like a real person. I still feel sorry for her for getting in trouble. The story just ends there. I suppose the fact that the so-called international jewel thief had no description was some good foreshadowing to the fact that he was made up because surely if there was an international jewel thief, people might have some idea of what he looks like by now.

  In the next story, Sabrina’s looking for her old dolls and toys in the attic to give them away for Christmas to some kids. Hilda’s annoyed at that even though she was just incredulous at the idea that she’d be playing with them. The toys are handmade warlock toys that have been in the family for generations.

 Her saying warlock toys immediately makes it obvious that there might be a plot twist where the toys have magic in them that’ll activate by itself without the permission of a witch, for no reason even though that’d expose magic easier. If the toys are magical, Hilda has no reason not to tell Sabrina that immediately, although, she could always use her omnipotent powers to get rid of the magic in the toys, so while Hilda wouldn’t, Sabrina would, so that wouldn’t deter her. Maybe she knows that.

  Hilda wastes time telling Sabrina that witches are supposed to be scaring mortals, and Sabrina explains that she wanted to help some kids because their father’s out of work, so Santa’s not coming to their house this night. So this story’s in a parallel universe from any story with Santa in it. Because if Santa was real, then they’d get gifts from Santa regardless of whether their father was out of work.

  Hilda even talks as if Santa isn’t real. Sabrina had told the kids to wait outside, and she didn’t want to conjure up anything because she wanted to give people stuff like everyone else does. Hilda’s pretty unlikable in this story, wanting to shoo them away. She tells Sabrina that she’s not gonna weaken her with sniffling because she’s a strong witch and then Harvey gives Hilda a gift from his mother to her.

  Hilda lampshades that she doesn’t even know her mother, but Harvey told his mother what to make for her. Hilda always wanted a knitted shawl, so she gets suspicious and wonders what Harvey wants from her. Harvey says his mom wanted to reward her for being nice to her son.

 Hilda’s scared at hearing that. Harvey would have to have lied for his mom to think that. Hilda’s flattered because something so nice was done for her, and predictably gives the kids some toys. That at least makes more sense than the toys being magical, which would’ve been predictable and stupid.

  So the first story was about Sabrina going on a cruise with The Archies that supposedly has a jewel thief loose on it, and Jughead finds out there is no such thief and a woman just wanted the insurance money from pretending her jewels were stolen. Literally all Sabrina did in the story was use magic to play the drums, which was smart of her, but she didn’t even need to be there, because Jughead did everything that mattered.

 It was still an interesting story though, even if the pacing should’ve been a little bit faster instead of focusing so much on how they have no idea what the thief would look like, but I feel tricked into buying this issue because Sabrina was so meaningless to the plot.

  The second story wasted a lot of its time on Hilda being unlikable and not wanting Sabrina to give some kids toys for Christmas. It could’ve cut out a lot of panels and missed nothing because we already know what Hilda’s personality is.

 Eventually there’s a heartwarming but confusing part of the story where Harvey made sure that Hilda would get a wonderful gift from his mother even though Hilda treats him badly, so she had every reason to wonder what he wanted to gain from it because that would make more sense than him just doing this because it’s Christmas. Hilda softening up was a nice twist ending, but it was predictable the minute she saw the gift she got.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 12 Quit Stalling:

  Archie’s so stressed out that he kicks his car for being outdated and always letting him down. Sabrina expresses concern and he says the car always refuses to run when he needs it the most. I hate that he calls it a she, even when he’s mad, so he wouldn’t be that attached to it. He has a date with Veronica, but can’t take her out.

Sabrina asks him what’s wrong with the car and finds out. At least Archie’s smart enough to know what’s wrong with the car. Come to think of it, why doesn’t Veronica have a car instead of always expecting Archie with his bad car to do the driving? Wouldn’t she always be too embarrassed to be seen in the bad car? I guess because it’s the 70s and gender roles were stricter, and the 60s Jetsons had a whole episode joking about female drivers.

  But she should’ve bought a car with her endless money instead of taking it out on Archie when his car breaks down, and you’d think someone as bossy as Veronica would be fine with having more status and power in the relationship by being the one who drives him to dates. Oh yeah, not to mention the fact that if she’s such a heavy spender, why doesn’t she spend some of the money she wastes on clothes on a good car for Archie while she’s at it?

 It could be a birthday gift! If she actually loved him, she’d have done that. I assume her father would refuse to let her do that, and yet doesn’t put his foot down with her in any other way. So that’d seem arbitrary.

  Archie says that if he pays to get the car fixed, he won’t have the money to spend on Veronica, and she’ll get annoyed with him. And another thing, why does she insist on making Archie pay when she’s rich? It’s another strict blind adherence to gender roles and in retrospect, it just makes Veronica look like a selfish jerk when you start wondering this.

 It’s not like he’s dating someone who’s not rich, but every time it comes down to who’s paying for the date, it’s like the stories always forget that Veronica’s rich, and she dares to get annoyed with him. You’d think if she actually loved him, she would love to spend money on him. I guess these are aspects of Veronica and his relationship that haven’t aged well, but were accepted as normal at the time, instead of a kind of toxic relationship.

 Maybe Archie would find it embarrassing if Veronica drove him to dates and paid for stuff, but it’d be stupid of him to be so easily embarrassed instead of just enjoying that she can afford to spend more for a better date, and you’d think getting to kiss Veronica would make him feel better about it, while SHE certainly wouldn’t care whether she’s emasculating him, considering how she already treats him.

  Every bad date she has with Archie, she’s being unfair by complaining about it when he doesn’t choose to make the car malfunction and she could always improve the dates. She always tells him what to do and lashes out at him at every opportunity, so she’s already the one with all the power in the relationship.

 This is one thing I hope changed about Archie comics over the years because if she’s not spending anything on him and she just mistreats him, it looks like the only reason he dates her instead of Betty is her looks, and that’s why I had given up his comics.

  Archie says the car can’t run a whole day without conking on him. Why did his complaining go on for two pages with no plot progression? We KNOW his car sucks. Archie calls himself a loser for having bad luck, which is bad logic of his and unfair. Sabrina says he’s not a loser and says she could fix his car.

 He questions this because she’s a girl who doesn’t know anything about cars, and since she needs to ask him if this is the motor, he’s proven right. Sabrina uses magic as he justifiably laughs at her. At least she cheered him up into laughing when he was upset, so even that’s not so bad.

  Naturally he wonders how she got it running and she says a good mechanic never gives away her secrets. He says that it shouldn’t be running because the ignition isn’t even on since the key’s not in it and turned around. Sabrina tells him to just go out with Veronica and stop worrying about how she did it. He wisely drops it and says he can’t thank her enough. Then she’s actually Genre Savvy to hope there won’t be any repercussions from her spell.

  Veronica says she’s glad he had the car trouble BEFORE he picked her up because she’d be embarrassed if the car stalled with her in it in the middle of an intersection again. The whole time I’ve been waiting for his car to screw up anyways, and Sabrina did her best to give that away before it’d happen.

 Archie gets told to shut the car off because it’s parked now and he says he just did but it’s still running. People start staring at them because the car’s smoking so much. Too bad Sabrina didn’t have the common sense idea to have it be a part of her spell that Archie can turn the key to shut the car off. 

  A man tells him to shut the car off because he can’t hear himself think with all the noise. Archie apologizes and says he’s having trouble with it, and the man threatens him, not exactly looking sympathetic. Archie disconnects the wires and it’s still running, and another guy looks like an idiotic jerk by saying that he thought he told Archie to turn the car off, when it’s obvious that he can’t. So he looks completely unrealistically oblivious to what’s going on with Archie.

 So a man forces him to drive the car out of here and never come back, and the men wish Archie would pay for their food because it’s covered in soot, and so are their clothes. With the way they acted, I don’t care, because it’s clearly not someone’s fault if their car goes haywire, so while they’re justified in being upset, they’re not in being MAD at him.

  The car starts busting at the seams and Veronica leaves, and tells him he’s pulled some dumb stunts, but this tops them all, as if he’s responsible for the car sucking. To be fair I assume that he bought the cheapest car because of impatience and in that sense, he is responsible for whatever happens with it because he could’ve waited, OR ask HER for the money.

 Sabrina makes the car stop running, and the story ends with Sabrina being faced with the consequences of her actions and calling him ungrateful, which is out of character. I’m pretty sure normally she’s just sad about this kind of thing.

  This depressing story by Dick Malmgren is about Archie’s car being stuck running and annoying people into forcing him to leave because it’s making too much noise and sending out too much smoke, because Sabrina cast a spell to make it start running, but somehow didn’t include “ have it stop when Archie wants “ in the spell.

 I remember her effortlessly fixing cars with magic before. Didn’t she fix Harvey’s stalled car problem with magic, in either the show or the comic? Why would this have that effect? Maybe because his key wasn’t in the ignition and turned and Harvey’s was, but still.

  There was an episode of the 70s cartoon where Archie’s car was stalled and Sabrina wasn’t even next to him, she was on the phone with him, and the car wasn’t stalled anymore, and there were NO consequences whatsoever, she just fixed the car no problem, so YEAH, this is arbitrary.

  The story also caused me to realize what a stupid jerk Veronica is for not buying Archie a good car AND paying for all of the dates considering that she’s rich. This would’ve prevented the whole plot, but somehow no one points this out. I guess it’s supposed to make sense because she’s a bad selfish person, so the prospect of spending on Archie would make her mad in the short-term because she’d lose money.

 But she’d have a better time on all of her dates with him that’d make spending her own money a worthy investment, and if she really loved him she’d just be happy to be with him, so it would be worth it. And someone who runs up her father’s credit card bills on clothes doesn’t strike me as someone who would be cheap at the same time.

Archie Giant Series 190 Card Shark:

  Dilton hides in a drawer and tells Archie that some people don’t like the words in a Christmas card and some people don’t like the design. After all of that time, he says that everyone’s trying to find a card to express their own personal sentiments, but if you don’t have a printing press in the cellar, how can you get a card like that?

 And Sabrina overhears him and decides to use magic to give all of her friends the ability to create their own Christmas cards. Why should I care? She says to let the finished product express what’s in their hearts. Is this gonna backfire? Because I see Veronica, so it could backfire by the Christmas cards being brutally honest.

  Sadly the story’s boring after this. Who’d be as dumb as Archie here? The cards are based on the characters’ one-dimensional personalities, so Jughead’s card is edible. I don’t know what Betty’s card has to do with her though. It’s really RANDOM. Grundy and Weatherbee’s cards take too long to read and bore me. So it’s not a story anymore after this point.

 Eventually it ends with the janitor telling Moose to give up trying to spell Christmas, because he’s the forced stupidity character. ALL this story by Al Hartley was about was Sabrina making sure her friends can create their own Christmas cards.

Archie Giant Series 196:

  Sabrina tells Hilda that when she was little, she was never told about Santa Claus, according to THIS story anyways, and Hilda says she didn’t tell her about him because he isn’t real, but I’m guessing he is in this story, so I wish I knew the real reason for why she didn’t tell her about him. Witches would know Santa was real.

  Sabrina thinks there are a lot of questions about him that keep popping into her mind and there’s only one way to get the answers. I assume we’ll learn what those questions are, or else the writer’s lazy. I assume the questions are, like, how does Santa make sense? She casts a spell to go to the land of icicles. I assume that a part of her spell is that she doesn’t immediately freeze to death, or at least get hypothermia.

  Surprisingly instead of her meeting Santa right away, she sees a boy in trouble in the sea and saves him from a whale, and asks him to tell her where Santa lives, as the writer unrealistically has him talk in broken English just because he’s an “ eskimo. “ He says there is no Santa, and Sabrina thinks the magic of childhood is gone because he said that.

  She keeps being told Santa isn’t real, and I guess she cast a spell so that the guy flying for the Air Force would be calm enough to talk to her as if it was totally normal that she was flying. He apologizes, knowing her name, and says that they fly radar patrols all over the North Pole and never saw Santa.

 Sabrina says there’s only one possibility left, and she thinks for some reason that this’ll be her most dangerous adventure, and if she misuses her magic, she’ll never return. If she turns out to be wrong… then that’s just a cheap way of getting the audience excited.

  She gets dizzy for no reason and sees something through the haze, which, predictably because it’s a kids’ comic, is Santa’s workshop. I’m expected to believe that she’s the first person to ever see him. I know witches are portrayed as evil in this comic most of the time, but still, other witches would’ve discovered him before this point out of sheer curiosity.

  Sabrina asks why no one’s been allowed to see him before. He didn’t say no one was ALLOWED to. Santa irritates me saying that Christmas is based on faith, and if you can see something, it doesn’t take faith to believe it. Christmas was originally based on the Pagan holiday of Saturnalia. Even this issue has a page of text saying that it was a Pagan rite. And nowadays, it’s just a consumerist holiday about buying gifts. And it’s about appreciating your family, which has nothing to do with religion either.

  I’m expected to believe that a lack of faith has magically stopped all of the work here at the North Pole. Oh, great, is the writer a Christian? I’m seeing a lot of bias in the story. This is VERY out of place! There’s no logical reason for why Santa would have this problem. I’m pretty sure throughout most of history, only kids believed in Santa and most people didn’t. So I guess his workshop used to run off the kids’ belief in him, but that doesn’t make any sort of sense. SO many energy sources exist!

  He says that his workers have left in despair, so he has no one to build the toys. I guess the purpose of this plot is to lie to kids reading the comic that Santa exists, because I doubt the writer believes in him. It’s still not fair to treat the kids who don’t believe in him as if they’re the bad guys, because they have good smart reasons to not believe in him. Why would he live in the North Pole, instead of living with other magical people like him?

 There’s no sign of him anywhere. Kids are being portrayed as the bad guys for having sound reasoning skills. And it’s not explained that THAT’S why they don’t believe in him, because they’re the strawmen.

  Sabrina gives life to the toys he already has so that they can make more toys, when I thought she’d conjure up a bunch of elves to work for him who wouldn’t leave whenever they feel like it. You’d think the workers of his shop would’ve still wanted to work for him regardless of whether people believed in them because they’d just be happy they were making people happy with gifts at all, but apparently they’re just selfish and want attention. Too much of the story is wasted on seeing the results of Sabrina’s spell, when it was explained just fine in one panel.

  Sabrina gives Santa a pep talk. She says that when she looks in the physical world, she sees that when the rivers and oceans get low enough the tide changes, and that can happen in the spiritual world too. And somehow this complete non-sequitur has him realize he needs more faith too and the tide is changing, with no evidence. It’s not like Sabrina warped to some kids, video-taped them saying that they believe in Santa and showed it to him. That’d make more sense.

  He sets off and so does she, and the story ends with Sabrina saying nonsensically that believing is seeing. It’s only seeing in the sense that if you imagine something, you’re using your mind’s eye to see it, and you can do that with your eyes closed. It’s annoying that Hilda was portrayed as wrong here when she has a good point. We shouldn’t believe stuff just because we’re told to, because that logic leads to believing in conspiracy theories, with no real evidence!

  In the next story, Sabrina feels sorry for Jughead’s dog for missing all the fun and excitement of Christmas sleeping. She interferes with his life by making him a human for the holidays. But that’ll just freak him out. Apparently she just had him not being freaked out be a part of the spell.

 There’s no reason she’d have him look the way he does instead of actually making him look human. He asks for a chocolate soda from Pop Tate. Why can’t she say the people not realizing he’s a dog and Hot Dog is also part of the spell? This story’s needlessly confusing.

  Jughead finds him familiar, Ethel shows up right away because she already heard about the new guy in town SOMEHOW and wants the first crack at him. She somehow expects me to believe all the other girls already have boyfriends. How small is Riverdale?! It always looks like a CITY, not a VILLAGE, because people are always walking around and there’s roads in the background.

  After being unhappy because she thinks Hot Dog’s a hippie, she decides that he’s better than no date at all, and Sabrina decides to make Ethel’s Christmas brighter too, so she brainwashes Hot Dog into deciding to order something for her and flattering her, offering her a bunch of flowers. Sabrina WAS being nice to Hot Dog earlier, but brainwashing him like this instead of letting him live life the way he wants is crossing a line.

  Sabrina uses magic to make Pop Tate play the violin, but Hot Dog howls because the high pitch is too much for his ears, which were inexplicably not human ears, and she magically makes him vanish instead of brainwashing him into being okay with the music while she’s at it. Ethel cries about this and says she’ll never get him out of her mind.

  The story ends with Hot Dog in his normal form going towards her as she wonders if she’ll ever see him again. Sabrina should’ve erased her memory of what happened. Scientists proved that Sabrina’s wrong, it really isn’t better to have loved and lost because lifelong single people are happier than people who got broken up with. The comedy page by Al Hartley wastes an entire page on Hilda saying she uses creams on herself and then she eventually slides out of bed because of them.

  In the next story, Betty arrives at Sabrina’s house and says she’s gonna sing Christmas Carols tonight pointlessly in the hopes that it’ll spread peace and goodwill, and not bother people. And Sabrina has a lame idea of fun and wants to go with her. I don’t remember ever meeting Christmas carolers. I guess Della’s invisible to mortals here too, or they’d be asking why she’s dressed like that.

  Sabrina sees a zap when she’s trying to get her coat, and realizes that Della’s here. So she reluctantly turns her friends down and cries. Della nags her, which she did way more in the comics than in the show, and Hilda blames Sabrina’s friends for her goodness. Sabrina wouldn’t tell Della she’ll try to be good after apologizing.

  The writer makes a mistake and has Sabrina call her cousin Uncle Ambrose once again, so apparently this takes place in a parallel universe. He’s not only Sabrina’s cousin, he’s also Hilda’s cousin. An uncle is the brother of one of your parents, a cousin is the kid of one of your uncles, so how could he be both? He tells her that Harvey’s here and she thanks him. Harvey tells her she looks nice, which is surprisingly nice of him, and she thanks him.

  He wishes it would snow for some reason, and Sabrina thinks that because she’s a witch, she feels so left out on Christmas as Harvey’s singing. Harvey says nicely in a place where everyone looks poor that if he had a lot of money, he’d spread some Christmas joy here. Sabrina wishes that she was allowed to use magic to help them, and cries. She must have assumed one of the spy witches would see her help them.

  Then there’s a bank robbery, and Sabrina gets kidnapped by the robbers because with her in the car, the cops won’t shoot. So this idea’s older than I thought it was in Issue 46. The car goes into the sad neighborhood that Harvey went through, so she casts a spell on someone in the back seat to make him feel the urge to share the wealth.

  So he throws the marked bank notes at the people around him who might not be able to keep the money anyways because bank notes are marked, now anyways, so really, if Della finds out this happened, she’d also end up finding out that they wouldn’t get to keep the money anyways because the cops would track it down, and count their disappointment as a bad deed. Maybe we’re supposed to think this is a universe where bank notes AREN’T marked.

 And since the guy who threw the money gets fought with, that’s also a bad deed. The police show up, and complain that they can’t possibly recover the money now, forgetting that bank notes are marked. I guess the writer didn’t know that, or things weren’t like that in the 70s.

  So after Sabrina got some bank robbers arrested, which Della might see as a bad deed because they’d really hate prison, she tells Della that she made some men lose all their money at Christmas time and caused them to fight and get taken to jail. I love that the writer had the self-awareness to actually realize how her attempt at a good deed could be seen as evil. And Sabrina smiles at the end, so she was being clever and KNEW how they’d take it.

  There’s a comedy page by Al Hartley where Sabrina asks what Christmas means to you. So the Archie characters react in predictable ways you’d expect from their one-note characters. Nothing to really comment on here. Archie’s glad there’s no school. Weatherbee should really tell people what he actually wants for Christmas. And Ethel loves mistletoe even though nobody kisses her under it. But I still like her more than Betty! Did you know Christmas wasn’t actually his birthday?

  In the next story, Hilda says that there’s a cute little brewing pot, and people are throwing money into it. She says SHE’S gonna get in the act and uses magic, zapping up a cauldron in front of a mortal so that strangers could fill it up with money. Sabrina tells her that people aren’t gonna put money in HER pot, because they were putting money in that small pot for charity, for the poor and sick so that people can have a good Christmas.

 Hilda casts a spell to make her and Sabrina salvation sisters. She calls someone sister and she says that people are giving generously but the needs are great. Hilda says she’ll take care of that in front of her, and brainwashes people into wanting to give money more, even if they already did.

 I can immediately see a problem with this because what if they end up giving away the money they actually need, and end up unable to buy their gifts? No wonder Della isn’t stopping them.

 Someone says that they’ll be able to buy a lot with this, and the kids at the orphanage will love all these toys. This is one of those confusing stories where Hilda is written like Zelda, or Sabrina. I was waiting for her to not get the appeal of Christmas and do some hexing.

  Someone asks how they’re gonna prepare all this food. Hilda once again uses magic to summon a feast, and all she does is say that she doesn’t know how to thank them. She’s oddly calm about meeting a bunch of witches. I guess she already knew about them. Hilda talks about magic right in front of her, and the last page is completely wasted and out of place, clearly. This really dates the comic. No one explains how this squares with Sabrina’s witchcraft by the way! I guess this was written by Al Hartley.

  In the next story, Sabrina asks us if we ever wondered how Christmas was celebrated in the animal kingdom. She uses magic and says to the audience that they’re gonna visit some special friends.

 And we see some animals that look like Archie and Jughead in a cheap ploy to try to get me invested. But because Sabrina isn’t doing anything in the story, I still don’t care. It’s about the Archie characters acting exactly like you’d expect them to, and yet they’re animals of various species, and they’re all fine with being together.

  Yeah, I don’t care about describing this series of “ gag “ panels fully, because this story doesn’t care about making sense, so the plot is just pointless to experience. They wanna have a Christmas party and play some games.

 And it somehow expects me to take it seriously when Dilton the science guy of all people starts ranting that Christmas is what caused people to come together and love each other and everyone was just in the jungle fighting each other before that point, completely ignoring that other religions exist, people learned to like each other thousands of years before Christmas, and liked their families, and most people did NOT live in the jungle in BC times.

  But that’s just stating the obvious. Clearly there’s no reasoning with the person who wrote this if he believes this. I’m pretty his name was Al Hartley, because TV Tropes has an entry about Writer on Board for this comic and his Anvilicious religious messages are mentioned there. Bottom line is, why did Sabrina cause this story to happen? The whole story is just confusing. It could’ve easily been told without the characters looking like animals.

  Then there’s a series of gag panels by Al Hartley where Sabrina asks her friends what they’d wish for, and all of the answers are obvious because of the one-dimensional personalities of the characters. Reggie wants a twin brother so that he could admire his own appearance, completely unaware of the fact that clearly he’d just be desperate for attention from everyone even more if he had to constantly try to compete with his twin brother and stand out.

 Grundy wishes a janitor would notice her and Dilton hopes that man would stop asking how and start asking why. But, he likes science. Wouldn’t he want people to ask both how and why? He’s not a philosopher, he’s a scientist.

  Oh, and after this is A Tree Named Obadiah, which I actually have. Shockingly, that’s actually the last story that the “ Sabrina Complete Collection “ bothers to show me! Well, that’s pathetic! I thought it’d at least have every 70s story! You’d think they’d release a lot MORE complete collections. There’s a second volume out now, but what took so long?! They should’ve had them all out by now.

 So it’ll take forever to review every Sabrina story from the 70s, because most of the issues of Archie’s TV Laugh-Out weren’t on the site back then, and they’re not on another site I checked. And I’m not made of money. THAT wasn’t even close to “ complete! “ Every time I run outta money, I have to wait a month to order more.

 That wasn’t even close to “ complete. “ This issue sucked. The Anvilicious messages ruined it. It was mostly Sabrina’s Christmas Magic, but Frank Doyle wrote the story where Sabrina foiled a bank robbery.

  We start out with Veronica’s father telling Archie and his friends to be careful not to snap off the branches of a Christmas tree, and Chuck has the smart idea to fold those lower branches as they go in through the door. Sabrina’s immediately able to see a ghost in the tree, because that’s an ability inherent to all witches, I guess because of a widespread spell cast on all witches. Her interjection is forced and lame.

  Veronica asks Sabrina why she gasped at a tree, and the ghost in the tree is still able to use magic for NO REASON despite being trapped in it as a punishment, so he makes Mr. Lodge trip and causes slapstick against Archie and Betty, for no reason. I guess because he’s naturally desperate to lash out after being forced to stay trapped in a tree unable to do anything for fun.

  Veronica actually accuses them all of fooling around and tells them to get the tree up. Why is she that oblivious? Wouldn’t these people all turn on each other trying to figure out who caused all that pain? Sabrina makes an excuse to warp home, and Chuck sees it and comments on it. I guess it’s all fine because he’ll get his memory of that erased and won’t be believed anyways.

  Sabrina warns Hilda that Veronica has a Christmas tree with a built-in warlock. She knows he was a warlock because he used magic. But we’ve seen ghosts do crazy things without needing to be warlocks. They can shapeshift to look like regular civilians! Hilda immediately knows that the ghost is Obadiah specifically with no evidence.

 I guess she already got told about the idea of a warlock ghost in a Christmas tree and knew it could only be him, even though his life would’ve had nothing to do with hers, unless she VERY conveniently happened to live in the exact same town where he lived, or Della wasted time telling every literally witch about Obadiah’s story, for no reason.

  Why was a witch ghost kept trapped in a tree instead of being sent to the underworld like everyone else? I guess as a punishment, but why would he get a different punishment from everyone else who misbehaves? If Della wants witches to misbehave, wouldn’t she only trap warlock ghosts in trees to punish them for NOT misbehaving? She’d still send him to hell even if he bothered HER.

  Della teleports to Hilda because she heard her say Obadiah’s name. I guess a spy witch heard her and called Della, but that was a really fast response. Della just had nothing better to do than listen in on their conversation, specifically. She can’t listen in on ALL witches. Wouldn’t she be overwhelmed by a billion people talking at once and not be able to pick anything out of it? She’d never be able to hear herself think!

  It’d make more sense if Hilda called Della here on purpose for help, but even then, all of the witches have the same powers, and the whole story it’s been impossible to take seriously that these omnipotent witches are taking ANYONE seriously as a threat. Literally all Della would have to do is send a bunch of witches after a warlock to gang up on him and she’d effortlessly win. Why didn’t she do that and prevent the whole story? Della didn’t even need to be a part of this plot.

  Hilda says Obadiah is loose, even though he was clearly still trapped in the tree. At least this is a story with a premise I hadn’t seen before, but I’m too confused to respect it. At least the story cares enough to give Obadiah a backstory. He was a warlock from the 1600s who would brag about his witch powers like a stage magician, but right away, since Della even says that she’d like people to not believe in witches, and yet encourages witches to abuse their powers, the story falls apart.

 Della would’ve warped to Obadiah in the past the FIRST TIME he did this and punished him. She’s the same witch who told Hilda to knock it off when she made it summer around her home in the winter. She told Sabrina to levitate the garbage just above her hands instead of floating it out to the curb.

  Obadiah did this because he wanted recognition. This only caused people to start gathering firewood. The elders in the Witches’ Coven convened in a traditional nine foot circle. That’s overly complicated confusing dialogue. Sabrina fails as an audience surrogate because she immediately knows that that’s a top level meeting. Della says that the decision was to enclose him in a tree in the forest.

 The roots anchored firmly, beyond his powers to move. But why didn’t they just take away his powers? Della did that to Sabrina effortlessly in the first issue she showed up in. Doing THIS to him was just overkill! Obviously the whole point of the spell is, he can’t use his magic to get OUT of the tree. I’m sure he tried everything.

  So Hilda’s scared that Obadiah will blow the lid on all of the witches because his tree was cut loose from its roots, even though you’d think it’d be more likely for people to assume there’s a ghost and the house they were in is haunted, because they’re being attacked by an invisible presence. But it’s realistic for the witches keeping a secret to assume that people would figure out their secret because THEY know it.

  I have a question, why wasn’t the tree destroyed? Witches are too merciful for the death penalty? They’re encouraged to abuse their powers against mortals, but they have SOME standards! Forcing someone’s spirit to stay in a tree for hundreds of years while they’re conscious would clearly be a miserably boring fate worse than death leaving them wishing they WERE put to death, so if the punishment was meant to be sadistic to him rather than merciful, then in that sense, it succeeded.

 But they could’ve easily just turned into him in the tree itself, not to mention, taken away his powers! It would’ve actually made more sense if the story kept it simple and he WAS just a ghost, like I expected.

  Why does Sabrina take credit for Archie getting hit by something and hurt just because Della told her to? This is hard to watch. Sabrina hurts her own reputation lying that she’s the one who made Archie trip. She could’ve easily just frozen all of her friends in time or put them to sleep with a single spell and avoided this. She could’ve told Della about this plan.

  She’s told that she has to make her friends think it was all her fault and not supernatural to cover up the existence of witches, but it’s so obvious she could just erase their memories of all of the slapstick instead, or tell them that it’s because of ghosts. She could just tell Della that.

 I guess Della wants her to be upset as a punishment for being good, so she’s just sadistic, and Sabrina knows that not doing exactly what Della wants will just cause her to warp to her and punish her. But I could’ve easily done without this cringeworthy part of the story.

  Hilda shows up at Veronica’s house, and says that the decorated tree reminds her of some of the holiday traditions back in the old country. I wish I knew which old country she was talking about. That’s lazy. Zelda says they should show some of them off, and Ambrose says that he’ll draw the nine foot circle. Oh for fuck’s sake, you’d think Obadiah would immediately use magic on all of them to prevent them from doing this to him, since the same trick was used on him before and he’d remember it.

  He’d have plenty of time to interrupt them. It should’ve been explained that Ambrose pointed at Obadiah and froze him in time, but again, at that point, why bother doing this? I really hate that this was written when she could’ve easily not had to do this. It’s ridiculous to see them say an obvious witch’s chant in front of everyone.

 They just know that they can get away with it! I guess nobody HEARS Obadiah talk, either, except the witches. Archie at least points out that they don’t sound like Christmas carols. So they’re able to get suspicious.

  So Obadiah’s made gone and it’s sad that Sabrina’s called a female Reggie and a pest. Good thing the comic has no continuity! The story ends with Mr. Lodge punching a punching bag that has Obadiah trapped in it, but somehow, he’s able to hear him cry out in pain every time he hits it, which makes no sense because nobody could hear Obadiah talk when he was trapped in the tree. Why would things change now if Della wants to hide the existence of witches?

  Of course, he would assume a GHOST was in it, not a witch, but that would mean he wouldn’t be punching it for very long. So that wouldn’t last as a punishment. It was satisfying slapstick against him, but one panel isn’t enough after all of that. Why wasn’t he put in this the first time? You’d think witches would’ve been advanced enough to have invented punching bags first. They’d have plenty of time not having to do any farming.

  This story by Frank Doyle just made me feel sorry for Sabrina and doesn’t make any sense. You’d think Della wouldn’t let Obadiah keep his powers when he was trapped in a tree in the woods for revealing them to mortals. She’d just take them away, like she did to Sabrina one time. So the plot wouldn’t happen because he wouldn’t be causing any trouble.

 Instead, he does, and Hilda somehow knows it’s Obadiah just because Sabrina warns him about him, which causes Della to somehow hear her and warp to her, and the worst part is that she tells Sabrina to take credit for all of the times her friends were hurt by him.

  She should’ve been written to say that she wants this as a punishment to Sabrina for being good to mortals, because while that’d also be stupid of her and confusing, at least it’d be better than her looking like she and EVERYONE ELSE in the room were too stupid to think, “ maybe Sabrina should just freeze everyone in the room in time and erase their memories of all of the trouble he caused. Maybe she shouldn’t have to suffer for no reason and upset the audience. “

  And you’d think Obadiah would’ve easily zapped the witches and kept them from saying a spell to warp him into the punching bag, that they weren’t AWARE OF personally, if he was doing all of that slapstick no problem. It should’ve been explained that he was made unable to move by Ambrose pointing at him as soon as he’d see him.

 But at that point, if someone could do that to him, logically that would’ve happened in the first place and prevented the whole plot. For a Christmas story, this is really depressing and I couldn’t take it seriously that any of these omnipotent witches would see him as a threat.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 13 A New Broom:

  Sabrina tells Hilda to make her friends feel at home, and Hilda tells her angrily not to worry because they always act like they own the place. But she can use magic on them, so she’d know why she was so worried. Sabrina tells her not to cast any spells tonight for the party. I guess she will. Hilda’s honest with her that she can’t promise that, and says she’s already taken a few precautions.

  Because they tend to move things around and break them, she zapped everything to the floor. This seems Genre Savvy considering that her friends DO break stuff in her house in the 70s comic, but when Archie tells Jughead to help him move a chair and he can’t, Moose lifts some of the floorboards off with it when he lifts it. You’d think that he’d never be able to lift it, because it’s glued to the floor with magic. It wouldn’t matter HOW strong he is, her spell specifically stated that everything would be pinned to the floor.

  Sabrina says Hilda can’t blame them for that and it’s her own lack of trust. But why blame her for her lack of trust in people who break stuff in her house? Hilda was worried about that happening and it did, so she was right! Hilda says that every witch knows you can’t trust anyone under 175 years old.

 She threatens to use magic to chase the teenagers home, because she doesn’t wanna expend the effort of magically undoing any more damage they’d cause even if it’d only be a few seconds. She leaves and Sabrina gets told to join the party.

  Betty wonders what’s wrong because Sabrina’s uptight, being impressively considerate. Jughead brings them some punch, running over to them while the drinks are on a plate, and luckily they don’t all fall over and spill from that. Everyone hates the taste of the punch. Sabrina wonders where Jughead got it and it turns out he got it from the cauldron in the kitchen. So Sabrina’s friends start changing into frogs and Sabrina blames Hilda for it when they weren’t supposed to drink her brew.

  Hilda tells her not to be upset because some of the nicest frogs she knew used to be humans, and she laughs because she could always change them back. Sabrina wishes she could have parties like normal teenagers, calling Hilda out. She says that even if her noisy friends stay quiet, Hilda gets suspicious. She once again says Hilda turned them into frogs, when Jughead never told her that he got handed the drinks by Hilda.

  And Hilda fortunately looks sad when told that this isn’t how a family’s supposed to be. This keeps the story from being outright cruel to Sabrina; when her aunts make themselves look like the bad guys, they let her call them out on it and don’t punish her or reassert their authority. And the writer isn’t usually treating Sabrina like she’s in the wrong. Instead Hilda tries to look in the book for a situation like this.

 Sabrina says that her book definitely doesn’t have answers like that. It wouldn’t? Isn’t she looking in the magic book? Wouldn’t she know that it’d have a cure for the frog potion? And why would they need to use a cure instead of one of these omnipotent witches instantly returning everyone to normal just by pointing?

  I understand why Sabrina didn’t do that right away because she wanted to spend the time calling Hilda out first, which she wanted to do for a while, and Hilda doesn’t care. Hilda says she’s been raising her to be a good witch. I KNOW.

 Sabrina would rather be a good person and she’s randomly asked if she would turn her back on all her magical power, Unless she means to say that continuing to be good would inevitably get her powers taken away by Della, which would make me wonder what took her so long, then, Hilda’s response doesn’t make any sense.

  Hilda eventually cries and lies about it, and says out of nowhere that it was written a long time ago that a child should lead them, and out of nowhere, she says that Sabrina’s led her out of the darkness. That’s out of character for someone who spent the whole story complaining about Sabrina being good like a cartoon villain. And she better not have made a Bible reference. A witch wouldn’t do that, anyways! If she did, he wasn’t a child when he did anything resembling leading.

  She tells Hilda to go join her friends because they’ll be missing her. Sabrina thanks her for bringing them back to normal, and they have no memory of what happened. Archie says this is one of the best parties they ever had. Why? As far as they can remember, they JUST got here and nothing’s happened the whole time. Sabrina tells them while holding a guitar that they’ve got a lot to sing about.

  And Zelda wonders what’s gotten into Hilda as she dances, and says that she got silly and sentimental for a moment. Lampshading the confusing writing doesn’t make the problem go away.

 I do appreciate that Hilda has a soft side, it makes sense because she loves Sabrina, but it always seems confusing that someone who wants Sabrina to be an evil witch would ever agree with her and do the right thing. It’s just written to have a happy ending, but Sabrina could’ve turned them back to normal herself. She didn’t have to waste a bunch of pages nagging her into it, boring me.

  This was a typical Sabrina story by Al Hartley where Sabrina has the dumb idea of having her friends over for a party when of course she can’t trust magic not to happen there when Hilda’s home. She could’ve given her movie tickets. Instead Jughead mistakes potions in a cauldron for punch and gets her friends and him turned into frogs.

 Rather than Sabrina using magic to turn her friends back to normal instantly by pointing, she spends a long time telling Hilda that she’s tired of this kind of stuff happening and wants to be a good person and not a good witch. We know.

  I guess this was considered novel when the issue came out because this was a really early issue in the franchise, but she has this kind of argument with Hilda so much in the 70s comic that I’m bored of it. It’s a relief that Hilda gets convinced to admit that she was wrong and turn her friends back to normal, but it’s out of character that she cheers up and dances. This kind of plot ends up happening a lot as it is.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 14 The Ghouls of the House:

  Della teleports to Sabrina’s house because she was receiving disturbing interference on her TV witch control set and wanted to come down and investigate what caused it. Huh? Then Hilda complains that the trouble is that Sabrina wants to throw a party for her mortal friends. Why would that cause interference on Della’s TV?

 After too many panels, Della says she can have the party at a creepy house on a graveyard hill. And Sabrina’s apparently so DESPERATE for a place to throw a party that she doesn’t MIND that it’s a creepy house on a graveyard hill.

  After Sabrina hugs her for letting her have a party, EVENTUALLY, Sabrina leaves the house and Della explains that she’s gonna show Sabrina the proper way to throw a party for mortals, since she hates mortals. She teleports some people to her named Hugo and Igor, the servants of the party. Hilda thinks they’re beautiful. Della says that for the entertainment of the evening there’s gonna be a vampire and a werewolf to scare the mortals.

 Della thinks that when Sabrina sees the fun she’s missing, she won’t wanna be like mortals anymore. Hilda confuses me by saying she’s gonna recommend Della for a promotion when she’s already the head witch, and she doesn’t get told she was being silly because Della’s in a good mood.

  Hilda and Della spy on the outside of the house. Sabrina’s friends are scared of the house because it looks like a haunted house. They go in and Hilda hears screaming. Predictably, of course there’s a comedic twist where all of Sabrina’s friends are dancing. And I’d take a happy ending over a sad one any day. Veronica says she never thought Sabrina would have a spook party like this, and it turns out her friends think she hired actors to dress up like ghouls. So Sabrina thanks Della, who reveals that she thinks witches are immortal.

  This story was about Della letting Sabrina throw a party in an empty house because she wants to scare the mortals there with scary-looking people, and Della’s so used to liking scaring mortals that she assumes that Sabrina will be converted to sharing her opinion by seeing her friends get scared. But it fails because her friends either assume they’re people in costumes or Sabrina lied that they were.

  The pacing in this story was too slow, but at least the ghouls summoned by Della didn’t really have any dialogue wasting my time. They weren’t dumb comedy characters like the Goolies they reminded me of making the story feel unoriginal. At first I skipped this story by mistake because the GCD site was too lazy to give it a proper description or summary, and I was scrolling past all of the stories to see which ones were the Sabrina ones.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 16 When You Wish Upon a Star:

  Sabrina feels sorry for Archie and wonders what’s wrong. He complains that it’s the same thing as usual, that Veronica’s always mad at him because he never has the money to take her anywhere. She could date someone who DOES. I guess she’s too picky, so she’s pushed away every guy but Archie, who she insists on still dating.

 Maybe Reggie is the only sort of rich guy available for her who wants to date her in a high school. Archie wastes a page redundantly complaining that he’s broke and that wishing is pointless. So Sabrina decides to help him.

  She tells him to wish upon a star. At first he’s at least smart enough to doubt that’ll work. I’m glad Sabrina told him that if the wish isn’t too impractical, he’ll get it granted, because specifying that is smart to try to prevent him from getting too ambitious with his wishing. Too bad when Sabrina casts a spell, it’s not in a thought bubble, so I’m wondering why Archie doesn’t react to it.

  Archie wished his dad would give him some extra money. So he does, and he can afford it, because he had some good success at work thanks to the spell. It would’ve sucked if he gave it to him when he COULDN’T afford it, so I love the success at work part. Realistically Archie says it was just a coincidence. So Sabrina goads him into making another wish, that Ronnie would come here and make up with him so that he could take her out on another date. So she does.

  She apologizes to him for being mad at him. It shouldn’t take a spell for this to happen. So he takes her to an expensive restaurant as I’m waiting for something to go wrong for him. He says it’d be a better evening if there weren’t so many cars around. So he wishes they were stranded there by themselves. Too bad Sabrina didn’t have the sense to remove the spell when she wasn’t supervising him anymore.

 They notice that the cars are gone, who knows what happened to those people, and the car doesn’t start because the battery’s dead. And because he used up his third wish already, the car won’t start, and Veronica wishes she didn’t go out with him, even though going to the restaurant was worth it, and we aren’t told she could’ve gone there some other day with someone else.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was about Sabrina feeling sorry for Archie’s money problems after he takes up two pages complaining about it. She casts a spell so that he could wish on a star three times. So he has a great date with Veronica, but he wishes the cars around them away, wasting his third wish so that he can’t do anything about his car not starting.

 It was still surprisingly responsible of Sabrina to restrict him to only three wishes, I didn’t expect that, even if letting him have any wishes was still begging to backfire if he got too ambitious.

 I’d be happier if he was on a date with Betty instead because she wouldn’t mistreat him. I guess the writers figured that’d be too boring because there’d be no conflict unless they had Betty be unreasonably mean, or had Archie be unlucky, but I’d still prefer the latter though. It was still nice to see Sabrina get to do something good with her magic. I found this deep in Laugh Comics 1974 Issue 53. Good thing I can find out where the reprints of the Sabrina stories are with the GCD website.

Archie Giant Series 207:

  Archie’s going Christmas shopping with Sabrina, out of nowhere. Sabrina tells Archie he should let her buy something for Ronnie. Eventually, we see her open the gift and she sees a partridge in a pear tree. She loves it fortunately, and the next day, she gets two turtle doves, and she likes them. Over the next few days, she gets some more animals, and Archie tells Sabrina that her house looks like a bird sanctuary and he’s tired of it. But despite being a nice person, she just says Veronica’s gonna love the next gift, which is five gold rings.

  She hugs him grateful for the gift, and meanwhile Archie thinks this is putting him in debt, which is why he’s not okay with this and the other gifts she ends up getting. She eventually gets some people for gifts. It’s convenient that she always says the right things in a reference to the song. She refers to the milking ladies the way the song does. I guess that’s the spell, but you’d think that part of the spell would be that she wouldn’t get tired of the gifts when she starts seeing people show up.

  And yet she’s fed up, but Sabrina uses magic to make her keep opening. She sees some pipers and tells Archie to just buy her gloves next year. I guess she won’t actually appreciate that. I don’t know why Sabrina’s keeping this up. Veronica gets 12 drummers drumming and the story ends with Veronica struggling to be heard over them. That can be funny if you’re in the right mood.

  In the comedy page by George Gladir, a kid tries to throw a snowball at Archie and Sabrina makes it come back towards him, but he dodges and it hits Sabrina instead. You’d think she’d make the snowball move so fast that it wouldn’t be something he could dodge, but not so fast that it’d hurt too much.

  In the next story Ethel sees a mall Santa and tells Sabrina that she wishes guys would look at her the way they did the other girls. Sabrina casts a spell to make a guy call Ethel his favorite model, while she’s wearing an outfit. Sabrina clarifies in her thoughts that this is only happening in Ethel’s mind.

 Ethel gets told that she slinks, and says she wants to be a real woman and please real men, and Sabrina finally thinks to use magic to make Ethel look beautiful. If she feels like her molecules are shifting, wouldn’t the body transformation really hurt? Well, it IS MAGIC.

  So we see Ethel be a movie star. She wants to take the day off and have fun, and then some guys want to do stuff for her, so she tells them to stop. Out of nowhere, an actress that looks kinda weird tells her that she used to be the toast of Broadway and Hollywood. I don’t know why she has her face look like that.

 Then she shows Ethel a shocking newspaper headline that I’m surprised was allowed to be in a kids’ comic, but since Looney Tunes referenced this kind of thing too and it was a common joke back then as a character’s overreaction, I guess it was normal for the time. I guess the reason Ethel saw this woman in a world that Sabrina made up for her was that she wanted to convince Ethel that she didn’t want to be a popular beauty queen.

  Ethel, back in reality, says that you can’t be beautiful inside if you think you’re ugly. What kind of logic is that? That’s unfair to a lot of people. She says a cringeworthy line making me assume this story’s by Al Hartley again. Pretty sure that WAS what it meant. That’s what “ in someone’s image “ means, not “ man’s spirit, “ and if it meant something else, it wouldn’t have used that phrase.

 It wouldn’t have been translated with that phrase. Ethel states the obvious that what matters is who a person is. And the story ends with an old lady being nice to her and calling her beautiful, which wouldn’t happen. I bet this won’t be the end of Ethel wishing she was pretty. People do tend to fall back into their old habits a lot.

  Sabrina’s getting ready to open the Christmas present Harvey got for her and he’s surprisingly considerate, telling her that if she doesn’t like her present, he could always get her something else. She plans on changing her gift with magic if she doesn’t like it. But she’s a complete idiot because she changes the look of it and shows it to HARVEY right afterwards, so of course he says that’s not the gift he gave her. If she was remotely smart, she’d erase his memory of this and make it look normal again.

  Instead she lies that it’s definitely the right shirt. Wouldn’t she do what I suggested because it’d be less hard on him? Hilda gets a gift from Harvey too, which is surprising considering how badly she treats him. She doesn’t like the bracelet because she never wears them. Predictably, somehow even she makes Sabrina’s mistake, although SHE doesn’t even like Harvey, so it makes sense that she’d WANT to confuse him.

 At least she thanks him for the teapot, even if she just conjured it up. And like Sabrina, he lies to him. So he thinks he’s all mixed up. This could cause him to try to improve his memory and do a better job of remembering stuff in the future, so that’d make this all worth it.

  Zelda doesn’t like that she got a sweater because she has a ton of them. He could’ve just asked them to write down what they WANTED. Somehow even she makes Sabrina’s mistake and confuses Harvey even though she’s an experienced old witch who doesn’t hate Harvey. She uses magic to make it into snow boots. It’s smart of them to do, but not when he’s in the same room!

 Then Sabrina goes to give Ambrose his gift. Harvey knows what he actually got him, and gets confused by the gift Ambrose SAYS he got. An unfunny joke doesn’t get funny after the fourth time. Harvey asks him how he liked the snow muffler he got him, and because he only said muffler, Ambrose makes him unrealistically faint when he says that he really needed a new muffler for his CAR. I never heard anyone say snow muffler before.

 If Sabrina loves Harvey, why does she smile like she’s trying not to laugh when he falls over? At least nobody used magic right in front of his eyes. They all turned away from him first, at least. And then Sabrina gives Betty Archie for Christmas of course. Nothing to say there. This was written by George Gladir.

  The first story by Al Hartley’s about Sabrina somehow thinking it’s a good idea to make the partridge in a pear tree song come true, for Veronica, even though it’s obvious that nobody would want to get all those people as gifts, so it’s a story that makes fun of the song. But it also makes fun of SABRINA. She’s Out of Character here.

  In the second story by Al Hartley, Ethel becomes a beauty queen, but only in her mind, and she ends up being talked out of wanting that, after she doesn’t like that a whole bunch of men wanna do stuff for her. So she learns a predictable message, but it’s gonna be pointless if she goes on to keep complaining about her appearance, which we know she’ll do because that’s her whole character.

  The only thing this story has to do with Christmas is, she wished she was beautiful in response to seeing a mall Santa. But she didn’t need that as an excuse. And then there’s a story by Al Hartley where Sabrina’s family changes the gifts Harvey gave them, in the same ROOM as him, and lied to him that THOSE were the gifts he got them, without changing his memories. I can understand HILDA wanting him to be confused, but why the rest of them?

  In the next story, Sabrina sees a kid make fun of a bad Christmas tree extensively, wasting two pages insulting a poor kid before Sabrina uses magic to make it more like a normal Christmas tree. Wouldn’t the kids hear Sabrina say she was gonna teach that kid a lesson and react to it? Hilda wastes an entire page nagging Sabrina for using magic for good. At least the 70s Hilda nags her for a reason we’re SUPPOSED to disagree with and see as ridiculous instead of the comic expecting me to agree with her, like in the 2000s.

  Eventually, Hilda sees a kid say that someone’s a weirdo for believing that Santa made the tree bigger, not because Santa’s not known for having tree growing powers, but because she believes in Santa. The same lady who hates that Sabrina uses magic for good stands there and gets annoyed that the kid’s making fun of them for coming to what she KNOWS is the wrong conclusion, instead of turning the tree back to normal like she wanted Sabrina to do. So she starts to hate him.

  The little girl somehow wonders who could possibly bring all the presents other than Santa, and Hilda zaps up a Santa, who gives some of them presents but is a dick to the mean kid, not because he’d be on his naughty list but because he didn’t believe in him, even though that was smart of him, because Hilda’s the one who conjured this guy up. It’s another story where Hilda shows a soft side right after acting evil, the most confusing points for it to happen. That story was by Dick Malmgren.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 17 Love, Your Magic Spell is Everywhere – Well Almost:

  Jughead says Ethel’s eyes don’t match. That’d only make sense if she’s supposed to have eyes of two different colors like the GUN Commander. He just says this as a joke, and Reggie makes fun of Ethel’s appearance when she can hear him. Sabrina tries to comfort Ethel and lie to her that they don’t mean it and are just trying to be funny.

  Sabrina lies to Ethel again that she’s pretty, and at least Ethel’s smart enough to not believe her. Ethel sarcastically refers to the time she went to the zoo with her father as a kid as a date, and even he made her wear an oversized turtleneck that day. It doesn’t make sense that people would turn her down when she offers to pick up the tab because why would they want to pay for something if they don’t have to because of her?

  After Ethel complains that she’s ugly, Sabrina decides to cast a love spell on a medallion for her and thankfully has her spell constricted to a thought bubble this time. She tells the medallion to make everyone see Ethel’s inner beauty. How many times does Ethel have to complain that she’s ugly before Sabrina decides to actually make her look pretty instead of just constantly casting love spells, and not respecting people’s consent?

  Sabrina tells Ethel to wear a medallion and outright tells her it’s a love medallion. Ethel gets told it’s a luck charm, and thanks her, despite being wise enough to doubt that a medallion could help her most of the time. With the medallion on, she gets Pop Tate to call her a sweet person.

 At least he complimented her personality. If the guys were just complimenting THAT, it’d actually feel like it was getting them to see her inner beauty. Even then most of the time she’s only a character who complains or chases after Jughead, which isn’t “ sweet and charming. “

  Ethel thanks Pop Tate and Reggie apologizes to her for earlier. Too bad he’s too vague when he says she’s of great character. There’s a grammar mistake, “ except it in. “ Ethel finds out Jughead wants to be forgiven too. It’s sad that it requires a spell to get this to happen. Jughead’s brainwashed by the medallion into lying that the only reason he teases her is because he has a lot of love and respect for her. That has to be a lie because it doesn’t make sense.

  Then Ethel blabs to Reggie that she’s wearing a love medal. Sabrina could’ve not called it a love medal and she’d still have this problem because she’d still say that it’s a lucky charm, and show it to Reggie. Sabrina could’ve easily avoided this problem if she didn’t tell Ethel that the medallion was a lucky charm and instead just said it was a gift to her as a sign of their friendship, and she could brainwash her into wanting to keep wearing it. Instead Reggie wants to put it on to prove that the medallion doesn’t work.

  Out of nowhere it turns out that because the medallion was only made to work for Ethel, if someone else put it on, it’d work in reverse. That makes no sense. She wouldn’t imagine this to be the case because she wouldn’t want that. It’d make more sense if it just did NOTHING because it’s not FOR Reggie.

Sabrina says she doesn’t wanna watch as Reggie tells people to love him. Why wouldn’t she wanna watch, when as it turns out, she means that people are gonna hate REGGIE, not Ethel? Okay this is much better to see. I can’t get enough of THIS, even if there’s no reason this would be part of the spell either.

  Jughead says, “ I never liked your smug looking face Reggie! “ Doesn’t everyone already hate him, though? The necklace just makes people mad enough at him to say what they always felt. Reggie’s glad Jughead said this because it proves he was right about the medallion. We see a fist and a pow sound effect instead of his fist actually impacting Reggie, sadly. It takes some of the fun out of it that way. Pop Tate says, “ I could never stand this conceited little punk either! “ So we get to see him throw food on his face.

  Ethel gets to tell him off, “ You’ve always been picking on me and poking fun at me! Well now is my time to give you a few good pokes! “ She misses her punch sadly. Why’d she call her punch a poke? Archie’s right that Reggie deserves everything he gets, and he punches Reggie in the face. At least this time we see the impact, even if Reggie looks stupid from vibrating cartoonishly. So if the comic’s allowed to show the impact of punches, why doesn’t it always? It’s not funny not to.

  Somehow Ethel thinks the love medallion doesn’t work even though clearly it worked for HER. She gives Sabrina the medal back. At least she says thanks anyways instead of annoying me by being rude. At least Sabrina didn’t annoy me by making things go back to normal with magic when I can’t relate to sympathizing with Reggie. Ethel’s cheered up and says she has charms she never knew she had, and Archie asks Reggie if he’s okay, and Sabrina looks on the bright side.

  This story by Al Hartley did everything right. Instead of actually being yet another story where Sabrina makes people fall in love with Ethel, the love medallion has people say they love her personality. It’s a shame they don’t provide specific evidence of her being sweet and charming, because that’d develop on her character.

 While of course it’s shady of Sabrina to use a brainwashing medallion, it cheered Ethel up in the end, after she gave it up from seeing that for no reason at all, it made people hate Reggie when he wore it, when you’d think if it’s designed specifically for her, it’d do nothing when someone else wears it.

  I’m glad Sabrina didn’t undo the spell herself, even though there was no reason she wouldn’t since she felt sorry for Reggie, because I loved seeing Reggie get called out on for a couple of pages. Sabrina using a brainwashing medal and Jughead being made to look surprisingly mean with Reggie at the start of the story are the only things wrong with it. Otherwise it was a nice treat seeing Ethel be treated well and Reggie be punished.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 18 For the Birds:

  As Dilton tells his friends that a bird can eat its own weight in food every day because he finds it an interesting fast, and Jughead says he’d LOVE to be a bird BECAUSE of that, I hate that Sabrina’s just staring into space with her back to all of her friends. That makes her look creepy, and so does always having her eyes half-closed! I always hated that about this story. She’s being portrayed as creepy.

  Jughead at least says he’ll appreciate being a bird, so Sabrina has a reason to think she’ll be doing a good thing by turning him into one. He says that he wouldn’t be here freezing. He’d be down south for the winter, smelling flowers all day. Why did he think to say orange blossoms specifically? I guess his mother mentioned them today. So he wishes he was free as a bird.

 And Sabrina crosses the line by deciding to make Archie and his whole gang become birds when only Jughead asked for that. I’m sure it’ll be temporary, but it’s still criminally reckless of Sabrina because they could’ve gotten killed because of that, and it’s not even like she’s being shown supervising them the entire time.

  A lot of animals wanna eat birds! What if one of them got killed by a cat! At least it wasn’t forced that Jughead said all of this! It was in-character for Dilton to give them a random interesting fact. And Jughead said a bunch of positive things about being a bird, so Sabrina could’ve assumed that they’d appreciate all of that, so it does make sense that she did that, but it’s confusing because she NEVER does this to them. So the premise isn’t forced.

  But the story immediately gets stupid, because while Jughead shows awareness of his old life by saying that he’s a bird now, suddenly Archie already knows that they have school. Are they regular birds or not? We can’t have them not talk. That’d be a boring story. Sabrina apparently brainwashed Archie into knowing they have school.

 But what’s the point of having him get taught about birds by a weird-looking talking bird, that she should’ve been explained to have magically conjured up, since this is normal Earth! They’re obviously gonna have their memories of this erased anyways!

  I guess part of the spell is, they’ll remember everything they learned, but not remember being birds and how they found that stuff out. That should’ve been explained so there’d be a clear point to Sabrina doing this instead of the story becoming annoyingly forced. Archie says the world’s getting smaller, and they have to learn to live together with all kinds of birds. Why would this be a recent thing? Don’t birds stick to flying with their OWN species?

  Other species would just attack them, wanting to eat them or get rid of competition! I guess Jughead got brainwashed into not being able to question why there’s a magically talking bird that somehow has pictures of foreign birds. But that’s not explained either, when it should be because he said it happened, and he was turned into a bird, so he knows what his life is supposed to be like.

 So you’d think he’d just go on to freak out about being turned into a bird because for all he knows this is permanent, and he’ll never get to do anything he liked to do again, like eat burgers! Them not freaking out about this must be all part of the spell. But I hate how much we’re supposed to just assume without being told in this story!

  Meanwhile the only information we’re going to be told is a gigantic amount of exposition on what birds are like in real life. That’s the only point of this story! There’s no plot in this lecture. That’s bad form for a comic like this where being educational isn’t the point! It has some interesting information.

 But because that’s not what you come to the comic for, you have to be in the right mood to actually read it! I did, but a lot of readers must have skipped all of this out of boredom, because the plot came to a halt and revealed what its only purpose was.

  Sabrina gave no foreshadowing to the idea that she wanted her friends to learn about birds. She’s not Dilton. Her magic must have scanned Dilton’s mind to get all of this exposition about them, because no way Sabrina would know all of it. Surprisingly the lecture’s already over, after all he did was talk for two pages about how birds have different beaks and feet for a reason. That was the shortest class lecture ever.

  He says that some birds fly from the North Pole to the South Pole and back every year. This prompts Veronica to say that she always flies first-class with her father to brag. So she still remembers her human life. Again, this just makes me wish I was told that her being confident that she’ll get turned back to normal and not freaking out about this was all part of the spell. I’m just confused by her behavior. He flies with her to a fancy bird house that Sabrina also must have zapped up. I wish I saw that!

  Sabrina apparently wasted time zapping up a bird to tell Archie to take his wings off his daughter, when he’s not the same species as Veronica. How uncharacteristically mean of Sabrina and pointless. I can understand her turning them into birds, that was explained, but the fact that we aren’t shown that she caused all of the other unrealistic things to happen is confusing. It makes it impossible to stay invested in the story.

  At least the bird Mr. Lodge explains why he doesn’t want Archie dating Veronica and is going out of his way to keep them apart when he doesn’t in the earlier stories I’ve seen, but it’s for a terrible reason that came out of nowhere. He doesn’t approve of the awful rock songs that he whistles. If they were actually awful, I’d understand, but, it’s probably a reference to the fact that he plays in a rock band called The Archies. So it implies that he thinks all rock is awful. Also you can’t whistle a rock song.

  Why did Sabrina make this the case? I can’t blame her for not wanting Archie to date Veronica. She treats him badly. But she should explain that. I wouldn’t be focusing on trying to consider how this story makes sense if I was just reading casually. I wouldn’t be thinking about the story then, so I’d just be confused and annoyed. So this kinda story is the biggest shining proof that Sabrina stories are a lot more fun for me to review than just read casually.

  Archie wants water from the brand new Pop’s Bird Bath, another thing that shows up out of nowhere and confuses me. Jughead asks Archie what happened, and Jughead tells him that he shouldn’t fly through the park because it’s full of muggers. He would only care about that from remembering what it’s like to be a human. Birds wouldn’t have to worry about muggers. Archie says that he flew into a badminton game, and the players nearly killed him.

  And somehow Sabrina’s smiling at the end after hearing that, when if she was in-character, she’d be feeling guilty. She’d also be in-character if she wasn’t staring into space with her back to them with her eyes half-closed, which makes her look creepy. You’d think the story would’ve ended with her undoing the spell.

 And why was I supposed to think what happened to Archie was funny, when I didn’t get to see the slapstick against him? If they thought it was too violent to show, why did they think it would be funny to reference? I assumed he looked awful because Veronica’s father beat him up, because the last thing I saw was him getting told by him to leave Veronica alone.

  This confusing story was just an excuse to teach the audience about various birds, telling us why they have different beaks and feet from each other. That’s interesting, but since it’s just told to us and not taken advantage of in a plot by main characters, you have to be in the mood to actually read all of that. The plot happened because Dilton told his friends trivia about birds and Jughead wished he was a bird because he’d like to eat his weight in food too, which justified Sabrina thinking it was a good deed to turn him into a bird.

  But despite Jughead listing some OTHER positives about being a bird, it still wasn’t justified that she turned all of his friends into birds too, and some people that weren’t even there, like Pop Tate and Veronica’s dad. The story portrayed her as unnecessarily creepy because she kept staring into space with her back to them, and she didn’t feel guilty about the fact that Archie was mistaken for a ball and nearly killed. That was out of character.

  Most of this story was off-puttingly confusing because it wasn’t simply explained to us that Sabrina cast a spell to cause everything that was confusing about the story, like them being totally casual about being turned into birds instead of freaking out about it, and already knowing that they have to go to bird school where a bird teacher lives, and Veronica has a bird house with a father that’s way more mean to Archie than Mr. Lodge is. I can think up explanations for all of this; Sabrina did it.

  But when I’m casually reading the story, I won’t be thinking up those explanations. I’ll just be confused and annoyed instead from the story being arbitrary, and coming off as off-puttingly sloppily written.

 It’s a shame this story is so confusing and vilifies Sabrina, making her someone who can’t be trusted not to turn you into an animal when you could get eaten for all she knows, because if you’re in the right mood to read all the educational dialogue, you will read it because it’s in the middle of a Sabrina story, not in a wiki article you’d have to go out of your way to read.

 But it’d be better to have a plot where the characters encounter these birds in a story and have to take advantage of them. The info would be more memorable if, say, the characters were turned into these types of birds, and had to make use of their beaks and feet. This story just makes me ask, “ Why? Why did the writer make a story just to give us exposition on birds? “

  Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 19 Out of Sight only has a comedy page that I already reviewed from the 70s comic where Hilda smashed her alarm clock for waking her up, a story I already have. The description of the story on the website was so vague, “ Hilda’s not feeling very well, “ that I didn’t know that I already had and reviewed it. It also has a comedy page ” Time to Retire ” where Harvey hit a nail in his dune buggy, which I also saw in the 70s comic.

 So I wasted my money buying Laugh Comics 1974 Issue 167 to get it, all because the descriptions of the reprint stories were too vague on the website, so I didn’t know I already read that story. There isn’t anything to say about comedy pages anyways.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 20 Double your Pleasure:

  Ethel cries and says he just doesn’t like her, and Sabrina asks her why she’s crying when it’s always about the same old thing. She bought Jughead some food to get him to pay attention to her, and when he finished eating, he ran away. Why did she expect anything different? Sabrina says that rather than him being ashamed to be seen with her, he just had to go some place. It’s clearly not true, but it makes sense of someone idealistic and optimistic to assume.

  She assumes that Ethel’s exaggerating and goes to talk to Jughead, who hopes she doesn’t want to play Cupid like other girls. I love that line because it lampshades how often she literally does play Cupid, so if he knew she was a witch, it’d be calling her out. He tells her the predictable reason he ran away from Ethel and he thinks he WAS being nice to her because he gave her the honor of treating him. Sabrina says that he could take her out to make her happy.

  She’d be disappointed that he wouldn’t kiss her, so she should know the happiness wouldn’t last! She feels sorry for Ethel, and she wonders what harm there could be if she conjured up another Jughead for a little while to make Ethel happy. He’d be confused if anyone told him about him going on a date with Ethel. But she could make him forget that anyways.

  And thankfully, she has the common sense to immediately know to make this Jughead in love with Ethel, instead of being a complete idiot and just hoping he’ll make a different decision, and walking away. So any Ethel and Jughead shippers get the satisfaction of seeing Jughead call Ethel his love and kiss her hand. She’s naturally confused, but still appreciates it. He says he wants to always hold her in his arms. He kisses her arm and she suddenly tells him not to get sickening.

  Then Pop Tate tells her that her mother’s on the phone and wants to talk to her. He won’t let her go and that naturally annoys her, and Sabrina just stands there and does nothing instead of simply pointing and magically making it so that he agrees to whatever she tells him to do, which you’d think would be a part of any love spell. Since Ethel’s been desperate for affection, it makes sense that Sabrina overdid it. She says out loud that she’d better undo the spell and somehow Ethel doesn’t question her about it.

  She wonders where he went and then the impossible happens as the real Jughead admits that he doesn’t show Ethel the affection she really deserves and he’s gonna change. But he SAID he didn’t like girls. The story ends with her saying forget it because if she wants that much affection, she could get a big sloppy dog.

 This wouldn’t have happened if Sabrina erased her memory of the entire experience, which was common sense to do the minute the real Jughead showed up to keep her from telling him what happened. And Sabrina says, “ Don’t feel bad, Jug. I can’t figure out anything either. “

 At least the writing’s being honest and self-aware of how dumb she is, unlike in the Animated Series where you mostly feel alone in noticing how stupid she is for not using magic enough, or worse, doing stuff as dumb as trusting her sworn enemy. The EARLIER comics made her dumb in a CHARMING way.

  This story fortunately subverted the cliché and didn’t have Sabrina use a love spell on Jughead, and instead finally thought to summon a fake Jughead who was in love with Ethel, which fills in the potential plot hole because of course she can’t keep doing that, because he’s so infatuated with her that he won’t let her answer the phone. Why would the love spell be like that? You’d think it’d have him be willing to do anything she told him to do.

  If it was showing the realistic consequence of this spell, we’d see Jughead find out what happened, or, Ethel would be disappointed the next time she’d see the real Jughead and confused that he doesn’t remember their date, so Sabrina would have to keep erasing her memory and that would kind of make it pointless to do this for her.

 And I guess this won’t permanently make her get over Jughead and instead she’ll forgive him, even though that’d be good because it’d finally resolve the plot thread so that I’d stop wishing Jughead would change.

Archie’s Joke Book 187 Drag Gags:

  Hilda tells Sabrina she doesn’t want a souped up broom. This would only make sense if she assumes Sabrina’s so ignorant that she’d just damage the broom by trying to improve it. Why would she try to improve it in a hands-on way instead of using magic? I missed this page at first because it wasn’t on the list of Feature Sabrina stories and wasn’t in the Sabrina Complete Collections.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 21:

  There’s a comedy page where Ethel wishes she could make Jughead sit near her, and Sabrina casts a spell to bring the popcorn and soda and candy machines next to Ethel, which makes Jughead sit beside her. There’s another one where Hilda says at the picnic grounds that her potion fell out of the hole in her basket, and whoever drinks it turns into a pig. Why did she make it, then? So we see that Jughead drank it.

  Then Sabrina’s mad that a woman stole her boyfriend at the beach, so she casts a spell to make it rain, and cats and dogs fall from the sky, which she should’ve expected considering that cats and dogs were in the words of the spell. Then Sabrina casts a spell to double Ethel’s chances of catching Jughead. Don’t the writers ever get tired of this? The story ends with two Ethels running towards him. That’s funny.      

  Then Sabrina sees someone refuse to let Archie use his air pump at a place with a sign saying free air. Sabrina casts a spell on the pump telling it to give him more air. Somehow she doesn’t know how to make it stop, and it makes his car float. So, Issue 21 was just a bunch of comedy pages as far as Sabrina’s concerned.

 There’s not much to say as a result. It’s interesting that the writers found new ways for her to assist Ethel, even if she shouldn’t. I like that in the first comedy page, she gave Jughead an actually in-character reason to sit beside Ethel.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 22:

   In a comedy page by George Gladir, Sabrina thanks a genie for getting her robe and slippers. Hilda complains to the genie about Sabrina getting lazy instead of being grateful that she’s using her magic to the fullest, even though Hilda wants her to embrace being a witch. It should always be Zelda having these moments instead. Zelda tells the genie to make Sabrina do things for herself. They do have good intentions, it’s better for Sabrina not to be lazy, but they’re still not coming off as sympathetic.

  So when Sabrina tells the genie to give her milk, he brings her a cow and tells her to milk it herself. Why is he more loyal to Hilda than her? She looks shocked, but all she’d have to do is point to make milk come out of it. And why’d she even tell him to fetch her some milk instead of just summoning milk by pointing and imagining it? Too lazy to do that? Maybe her aunts had a point. She could’ve just warped her robe and slippers to her instead of summoning a genie.

  Then there’s a comedy page by George Gladir called Tragic Magic, the most common story title ever for some reason. Sabrina wishes she had paper, a pen and ink. She’s surprised when it shows up. Hilda goes over to her and says that because today’s her birthday, the head witch’s granting her any 3 wishes she wants, and Sabrina says, “ NOW you tell me. “ So Sabrina wasted her wishes.

 Why would Sabrina say, “ and some ink? “ When you wish you had a pen, the “ and it has ink “ part is implied. And she wouldn’t say any of that because she’d just point to zap the paper and pen to her. So this wouldn’t happen. Also, it’s out of character for Della the evil witch to care enough to grant her wishes at all.

Archie Giant Series 220:

  Sabrina uses magic to summon gifts for her friends. For once we see her doing the Christmas shopping the smart way, when I’m used to stories where she insists on the mortal way. Hilda’s not impressed that Sabrina’s celebrating a mortal holiday. Sabrina magically wraps the gifts, and decides to go outside and see what’s going on.

  She greets Veronica, who’s excited that she’s knitting a sweater for Archie, but hates how much work it is… There’s no indication that she sucks at knitting like the 70s cartoon implied. She walks away smiling as she says that she’s got to get back to her knitting. So, did she just go outside to take a break? Sabrina wonders why she’d be happy over so much work.

  She sees Jughead carrying heavy stuff and worries about him, wondering why he’s doing a job he hates. She wonders if he needs money that bad. Jughead says he needs money for a fishing rod for Archie he’s wanted all summer. Jughead needs more moments like this, where he cares about something other than food. I like him at times like this. You need a character to be about more than just one thing to actually care about them for long because then they feel like real people.

 Speaking of that, it’s good that Archie cares about fishing. It shows up so rarely that it’s not something you think about when you think of him, and it just makes Harvey even less original because Archie fishes too. I think the only things Harvey’s got going for him that’s completely unique about him with the Archie characters are that he’s a fan of science fiction and believes in aliens and vampires.

  Sabrina thinks it’s crazy what Jughead’s doing. It’s out of character because she’d know how it feels to want to help someone and give them a gift. She’s unhappy about all the phony cheer, and finds it refreshing that Archie looks sad because he’s being honest. He complains that Betty turned him down for a date, and wonders what’s wrong with him because she NEVER does that.

  Fortunately it’s explained. Betty had to take a babysitting job to get Veronica some gloves she admired that she’s rich enough to buy herself or get her father to buy without any trouble. Veronica doesn’t even treat her well a lot of the time.

 And why can’t she agree to the date anyways? Wouldn’t she be so desperate for a date that she’d tell Archie to help her babysit? Why wouldn’t she have told him why she was turning him down? I guess it’d be smart of her if that was an intentional ploy to get Archie to want her more. It seems like that’d be the kind of plot that a Betty and Veronica story would have.

  Sabrina’s naturally confused at Betty’s behavior and goes home to waste time telling Ambrose what we already know. She wonders what Veronica would need another pair of gloves for. Wouldn’t she know why Betty would buy her a gift, to show her friend that she cares and because it’s Christmas? Hilda’s the one who should be given this message. Hilda’s the one who should be confused. This is just portraying Sabrina as out of character.

  Ambrose says Sabrina seems to resent her friends’ happiness. She doesn’t respond to that for some reason. She wonders why she’s not giggling and grinning. He tells her the fun is in the sacrifices made to get those gifts. He explains that if you’re rich, what’s the big deal if you give a yacht away? It’d do nothing for you. Betty did a big sacrifice. I agree with Sabrina though. What he should be saying and is probably saying but not being clear enough about is that hard work makes you fulfilled.

  Ambrose tells Sabrina to get rid of the gifts she summoned up, and she agrees because she’ll try anything once. I knew it was too good to be true. I was hoping it’d last and be the norm because it’s really early in the series. Sabrina’s told to not tell Hilda he said all of this.

 So Hilda wonders why Sabrina’s knitting some socks for Jughead, and the story ends with Hilda wondering why Sabrina’s smiling. I’m not, but it’s clear that the end of the story is the only point where Sabrina was in-character. It should have been Zelda saying all of those things, not Ambrose. Even in the Little Sabrina stories, it’s clear that Zelda’s a nice witch who’s usually happy with how Sabrina is.

  In the next story, Sabrina loves all the excitement and shopping in a mall and Hilda complains that people are nuts trying to outdo each other with love, and says she loves mischief, jealous of their happiness. Hilda says this runaway sled is gonna scatter Christmas gifts from here to next week. She casts a spell on a sled. Or she summons it out of thin air. It turns out that’s what she did, actually.

  Then there’s a pop and zoom sound effect and a kid offers to carry someone’s bundles. Hilda wonders where that kid came from. Huh? The lady thanks the kid, and a cinder block’s seen in the air. Hilda says she zapped an empty sled to run into a fat person and she wonders who put a kid on that. I’d like to know, too. It wouldn’t kill the comic to explain that Santa or Sabrina did it. And why doesn’t this happen all the time?

  The lady says that someone up there likes her because if she hadn’t moved over to the kid’s sled, the cinder block out of nowhere would’ve hit her. A guy says that there’s a goodness to Christmas that dispels evil. Nonsense. Why do diseases still happen on Christmas, and accidents and other bad stuff? He said, “ evil, “ not, “ witchcraft. “ Why would it dispel ONLY witchcraft, at that point?

 This story makes no sense. It’s nice to see, but it’s insulting to expect me to believe that’s why it happened and not some other witch saving the day. Why wouldn’t Hilda blame Sabrina for the kid appearing right away?

  Hilda wastes a bunch of time and says that people think nothing bad can happen, and finally casts a spell to summon a purse with a hundred dollars in it and no identification. Sabrina says that’s wonderful and someone will be very happy. Hilda says two people are gonna find it at once and fight over it – one of them would still get money – and two women grab it saying it’s theirs. Luckily, the two people offer it to each other because it’s Christmas.

  Then a guy shows up telling them to look in the purse, and says it’s their Christmas double giveaway trip to Hawaii for two families. He somehow doesn’t comment on Hilda saying that wasn’t in her spell. Hilda says someone’s messing with her spell. Why in the world would this not be the case every day, then?

 Why only CARE enough to do it on Christmas? How could this be the case everywhere in the world at once when that’s too much territory for one person to spy on? Wouldn’t it get BORING spying on all of that territory?

  It fortunately cuts ahead in time without showing us Hilda telling Ambrose everything that happened again. Ambrose wonders if Hilda’s losing her touch, which wouldn’t make sense of him to think, and he wonders if she’s getting soft in her old age. He’s trying to make her think she’s worse than she is when he should know her better than that. I’m suspecting that he’s the one who ruined her spells. And that better be the explanation, which would be consistent with him being level-headed and good sometimes.

  Instead Ambrose decides to go out and see what HE can do. He doesn’t make sense as a person either, because he calls a mall Santa sleazy for collecting charity money and starts a fire on his money. He’s usually not just like Hilda. So this story’s lasted too long. We got it when HILDA was doing stuff.

 Predictably the story figures out a way for that to backfire. He had a bunch of pennies, and the fire melted them into a gold brick. That’s magical. If it was scientific, people would be making gold that way all the time. Why isn’t anyone accusing Sabrina of doing this?

  The story ends with Sabrina saying that the magic of Christmas is more powerful than anything witches could do. If that was always the case, then they’d have known about that already for centuries, instead of wondering if this is the end of them, when it’s only the case for a small part of the year, for no reason, that wasn’t even always celebrated!

 I can only assume that a witch cast a spell so that this was the case. It could be multiple witches at once to overpower one witch’s spells consistently… Even then, what took so long? I know what the story’s implying, but it makes no sense when you think about it.

  In Swift Gift by George Gladir, Betty says she missed the mail pick-up, and she wishes this Christmas card of hers would get to Archie’s on time. Why did she wait until the last minute? How was she that busy? She’s just a teenager. Sabrina says in front of her that she’ll grant Betty’s wish and somehow that isn’t questioned by her.

 She casts a spell and somehow a mailbox falls on Archie when he’s in his bed when that’s not what Sabrina would want. She’d want the letter to show up alone. Why would she trust spirits to interpret what she wants when she’s usually casting spells without trusting the task to spirits? He doesn’t look like he’s in pain, so I guess it’s just enough above the blankets to avoid crushing him, but he’d have a hard time getting out of the bed.

  In Fine and Dandy by Joe Edwards, Sabrina tells Harvey that the librarian told her to remind him that he still has a book of theirs. Harvey says he’s forgotten all about that book, fortunately showing some relatable regret. He wonders if he owes a big fine and Sabrina says they’re naming the new wing after him. I heard that overdue library book fees actually max out at a surprisingly low price.

 They don’t tell you that to incentivize you to return them, but I think that’s the wrong idea because it just causes people to avoid returning books that were overdue for a long time because they want to avoid a huge fine, which makes the books never come back and causes people to not come back to the library. It’d make more sense if Sabrina was just messing with him to get him to return the book. She could always zap up money for him, or better yet, gold.

  In Home Tome by George Gladir, someone tells Jughead’s dog to go back into the doghouse where he belongs, because Jughead’s mother doesn’t love the dog enough to let him stay in the house. Gee, if his mother’s like that, no wonder he started resorting to comfort food. I dunno, maybe she’s allergic to that dog, but couldn’t she take allergy medication?

  The dog wishes he could live in a nice big home. Sabrina sees him over the fence and assumes he’s wishing for a bone. She says that as a Christmas gift she’ll give him whatever he’s wishing for. Even though she didn’t know what he wanted, he gets a huge dog house that Jughead wants to tell his mother about instead of a bone. I guess her magic read the dog’s mind for her. Too bad the story ends there. I guess they’ll assume someone passed by and made the doghouse big the natural way without them noticing.

  In The Picture by George Gladir, Sabrina wonders what Harvey’s doing and he says he’s looking for a picture of an elephant in the library for his art class. She tells him to look in an encyclopedia and casts a spell telling the spirits who apparently surround this land to place an elephant in the book. So he gets scared at the result. Again, why did she trust the spirits to do this spell when she’s fully capable of using magic without directly asking them for help and hoping they’ll understand? She wouldn’t mess this up.

 But it was funny to see. I’d hate to think that he’d get in trouble for screaming though. This made my brother laugh. Why would the spirits surround this land that they’re not supposed to reveal their presence in, instead of living in the witch world, like I’d expect?

  In the next story, Hilda responds to Sabrina’s Christmas cheer by telling her if she sees that scar. A witch could just get rid of a scar, so why didn’t she? Because if a witch could summon anything, they could summon skin, so they could heal wounds! I suppose she kept it around as proof of what happened to her for when she’d tell the story about it, but why wouldn’t she just trust people to believe her anyways?

   She says that on Christmas Eve, in a blinding snowstorm that she could’ve used magic to get rid of, she ran her best broom into a couple of reindeer that she conveniently knew the names of. She tore her wrist on one of the jingle bells. She could heal the wrist and the broom immediately, but it’d still be a traumatic experience. But she could make herself forget about it, so why didn’t she? She wouldn’t still be hung up on it, then. She wouldn’t have told her.

  And somehow Hilda doesn’t know who Santa is. I bet she knew in previous stories. That’s annoying. She’s lived on Earth for her entire life, and for hundreds of years. But to be fair, she doesn’t get out much. We barely see her out of the house and Christmas as we know it is a relatively recent thing by witch standards. But you’d think she’d learn about it from TV.

 And Sabrina would’ve already known that she knew about Santa. She would’ve been with her when she’d see him on TV, so she wouldn’t buy it if Hilda was lying that she didn’t know who he was. This would only make sense in a parallel universe where the family JUST moved to Earth.

  Hilda says that obviously he’s a warlock. She denies it and she ends up mad about what Santa does and plans on reporting him so he’ll lose his “ card. “ She forgets his name, too. If he was a warlock, he’d have already been reported tons of times by now. She sees a mall Santa outside and tells him she’s putting him on her report for his good deeds and says his reindeer and him will be grounded, and then the sky will be safe for the rest of them.

  The guy yells at Hilda causing her to magically get blown away, somehow. Maybe he is a warlock. He says it’s tough enough being jolly in this weather without a nut like her and tells her to split. She’s love-struck because he was so forceful, and the story ends with her happily decorating the tree singing a song and somehow even Della doesn’t know Santa’s name, or pretends not to, and is somehow happy about this uncharacteristically. What a confusing story. Wouldn’t Hilda usually be mad at someone for being mean to her?

  In the next story, Sabrina hates how much snow there is around her and is glad she’s able to surround herself with a heat shield, or she’d look like someone who’s somehow completely covered in snow from head to toe and is just walking around not caring. He would’ve immediately gotten rid of the snow on his face. How can he breathe? Is he actually a weird creature?

  It’s actually Harvey, who of course wonders how Sabrina’s got no snow sticking to her. Sabrina would’ve been asked this so many times by now and given up on it. He’s not happy that she’s keeping secrets from him and she lies that she’s just hot-blooded. She knows it’s a ridiculous answer thankfully, but that’s all she can think of.

 And she’s smart enough to know it’s ridiculous and hugs Harvey, and fortunately thinks her spell instead of saying it. It’s sweet to see her hug him. If she hugged him constantly, that would take advantage of them being boyfriend and girlfriend.

  She has his snow melt and he says nobody’s gonna believe this. Then there’s no excuse for him trying to tell people about it. Sabrina tells him no, so there’s REALLY no excuse. Sure is convenient for Harvey that she doesn’t think to brainwash him into not blabbing about this. He goes into Pop Tate’s to tell them the news. Their friends don’t believe him, and Harvey tells his friends to go outside of Pop Tate’s and get snow on them.

  Sabrina tells him to drop it. I get him wanting her to help her friends by taking advantage of Sabrina. But shouldn’t he realize it’ll freak people out? Sabrina thinks that if she doesn’t perform, she’ll make a fool out of Harvey, and she fortunately does hug her friends to melt the snow on them. This is much nicer than her not using magic to gift-wrap gifts quickly and embarrassing Harvey as a result.

  Archie uncharacteristically calls her baby and Veronica says that Sabrina’s gonna make all of the other girls in this town an outcast. She’s paranoid. Wouldn’t she be confident enough in herself as a rich pretty girl that she wouldn’t despair this quickly? Is she secretly insecure and just hides it by being mean? Betty says Sabrina’s unfair competition. Sabrina could easily erase their memories.

  They know Archie only wants to date Veronica, right? Veronica says they’ve seen enough, and tells the boys to march because Sabrina’s a bad influence on them, when all they did was act thankful that she got the snow off them! I wouldn’t expect them to be so ungrateful. And Betty shouldn’t be acting just like Veronica here. That’s out of character, or at least it should be.

  Harvey says people just got jealous of her. He says she’s gonna be a sensation the whole winter, and wants to find more kids to demonstrate her power to. At least that’ll help kids. She tells him to just go home, and at least we don’t see him respond negatively to what she said here. But can’t she just tell him that she doesn’t want to be on the news?

 But she couldn’t tell him what she’s so concerned about without explaining that she’s a witch, who has to hide her power as a result. Couldn’t she just tell him that she doesn’t wanna get studied by scientists from news spreading? The story ends with Sabrina going home covered in snow and crying because she used enough spells for one day. This would only make sense if she actually ran out of magic.

  The first story by Dick Malmgren has Sabrina be completely Out of Character. She doesn’t get why her friends are working so hard to earn money to buy gifts for their friends, because she just zaps gifts up. Most of the time I’m used to her BUYING Christmas gifts. I guess it’s nice to see this as an origin story for why she started Christmas shopping the mortal way. And it explains why she starts taking babysitting jobs.

 I doubt this is canon to the 70s comic but still. It would’ve been a lot more in-character for Hilda instead of Sabrina. I KNEW it was too good to be true when she zapped up her Christmas gifts! So of course she was told to zap them away! But at least she wasn’t ORDERED to. She just agreed to it.

  In the second story by Dick Malmgren, Hilda acts like a nonsensical cartoon villain wanting to cause mischief at the mall on Christmas. So that’s confusing. It’s in-character but it never makes any sense. And every time she tries to do hexes, for NO apparent reason they get undone and turned into good deeds, and it wouldn’t have killed the comic to have Sabrina be the one responsible. It just doesn’t make any sense because WHY wouldn’t this be ALL year, if someone up there cares that much?

 Why would it only be around the time of Christmas, not even ON Christmas?! I’m pretty sure this isn’t Christmas because they wouldn’t be Christmas shopping on that particular day. Why would it be around this time when Christmas is just a modern version of Saturnalia? It’s not even something that’s historically significant, actually. Why do OTHER bad things still happen?

 And why are the witches acting like this is the first time this ever happened? Wouldn’t they already know? This would only make sense if this was a parallel universe where they just moved to Earth.

  And then there’s a story by Frank Doyle where Hilda doesn’t like Sabrina’s Christmas cheer, and she’s all hung up on something that she would’ve made herself forget about and gotten rid of the consequences of, and somehow Hilda doesn’t know who Santa is, which contradicts a lot of the previous stories. So she thinks Santa’s a warlock and yells at a mall Santa trying to collect charity money.

 But then she gets respect for Santa because he yells at her. But people hate people who are mean to them regardless of whether they want them to be mean. Good for her to get caught up in Christmas cheer.

  And then there’s a story by Frank Doyle that’s kinda like the story where Sabrina had a shield around her to protect her from snowballs. It wouldn’t make sense for her to bother surrounding herself with a heat shield so that she wouldn’t get snow stuck on her, unless she JUST moved to Earth, because she would’ve had this problem when she was a KID if she grew up on Earth.

 She would’ve learned the lesson that people would discover snow doesn’t stick to her and want her to melt the snow on them a long time ago. I feel sorry for her because she should have her magical solution, but, she can’t even get that. And she could’ve easily brainwashed Harvey into not wanting to blab about her secret and getting her to melt other people’s snow just to turn her friends against her.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 24 The Old Refrain:

  Sabrina tells Hilda she’s going out and Hilda says, “ Okay. “ Sabrina randomly asks if she even cares a little while shedding a tear, and asks if she cares what happens to her. Where’d that come from? The first panel seemed pretty normal. Naturally Hilda wants her to run that by her again and Sabrina explains that when other kids leave the house, their mothers don’t say, “ Okay. “

 She says that they say, “ be careful crossing streets, “ or, “ if you break a leg, don’t come running to me. “ Since when would a mother say that LAST sentence? That’s a dark joke. And “ Don’t get run over “ is pretty callous. So why would she want her to say that?

  Hilda says all of Sabrina’s friends have nutty mothers and Sabrina says their mothers are just concerned. Hilda points out that her friends don’t need to be told not to get hit by cars and Sabrina says that it’s just a mother’s way of showing she cares. Since Hilda’s a proudly evil witch, it makes a little sense that Sabrina would wonder if she cares about her. But this has gotten boring. Hilda naturally points out that if anything happens to Sabrina, she’s got the power to stop it.

  She tells Sabrina to run along and play with her friends, and Sabrina walks away and her friends see a car heading towards her, and they waste time saying what’s happening. If it was really too late for them to do anything, they wouldn’t have had the time to say all of that. Wouldn’t she have heard the car coming?

  Sabrina uses magic to make the car float, and Archie lies to Jughead that he didn’t see that, and Jughead says the same thing instead of properly reacting to the proof that Archie saw what he saw. And Archie doesn’t properly react to THAT. A kid hits a baseball with his bat near Sabrina and has the time to tell her to duck even though he’s too close to her. Sabrina uses magic to turn the ball into a bundle of soft feathers.

  This scares Archie and Jughead, and they get suspicious of her. Jughead says that nothing ever happens to her, and so does Veronica, as a kid hits a puck and Sabrina says she has to refrain to avoid suspicion. That’s stupid of her because she can erase memories, so she would just protect herself and then make her friends forget all of the times she avoided getting hurt. They’d question her saying she has to refrain, and how does she have the time for it?

 Usually the same few writers write all of the Sabrina stories, so I don’t see why the writer would forget the earlier stories where she uses magic to erase memories. And I was expecting her to instinctively protect herself with magic anyways, because that’s what happened in a 70s comic story with the exact same dilemma.

  Instead she gets hit in the head and her friends care enough to carry her home. So the next day, she’s got a bandage on her head, when Hilda and her could’ve just rewritten people’s memories to make them forget that Sabrina got hurt and then healed her injury. Hilda tells her not to get run over and says a bunch of other things related to staying safe too, and Sabrina hugs her, relieved that she loves her. Wait what’s with her saying not to get stolen by “ gypsies “? Hilda’s so old that she’s politically incorrect.

  This story was about Sabrina doubting that Hilda cares about her because she just says okay when she leaves the house instead of warning her to be careful even though she’s got a point that her powers can protect her. And because Archie sees her use magic to protect herself, and she didn’t just erase his memory of that, she lets herself get hurt to make him stop being suspicious even though she can erase memories to cover up her secret, and it’d be more believable if she instinctively saved herself anyways out of fear.

  Maybe this is so early in the series that it wasn’t established that she can erase memories yet, but I doubt it because witches have always been written under the assumption that they’re omnipotent in this series. And for all she knew, letting that puck hit her head would’ve killed her, and I don’t know if it was realistic how things turned out after that. I already reviewed Good Neighbor Sam from after this.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 26:

  There’s a bunch of comedy pages here. Hilda gives Sabrina a potion to drink and Sabrina says there’s a beetle in it, and Hilda’s only unhappy because there should be a lizard there instead. Why would she expect her to drink a potion with a lizard in it? Maybe she wanted her to freak out and it was a prank. This was written by George Gladir. Someone asks Sabrina if it’s true that she can use magic, implying that it’s a common rumor around her actually. Sabrina says yes even though she also says it’s a secret. That’s Out of Character.

  She gets asked if she could turn Ethel into a beauty queen and she says she only does magic, not miracles, which makes no sense, because she could do that. There’s not much she couldn’t do, and she relishes in causing miracles because she loves helping people. This was written by Dick Malmgren, as well as the next one.

 Sabrina says a recipe for upside-down cake looks too complicated, so she uses magic saying that she’ll make it with magic the easy way. Then she’s upside-down on the floor and wonders what went wrong. I’m wondering that too because she’s normally great at magic. She’d just imagine an upside-down cake and it’d get created.

  Then Grundy catches Harvey passing notes to Sabrina and says his grades are failing because he’s not paying attention in class. Harvey says he was just telling her to meet her at the malt shop, and Grundy says that’s not helping his grades any. Couldn’t he have told her to meet him there, AFTER class?

 He asks if there’s something he can still do to help his grades, and what he had in mind was begging. What did this have to do with magic? This could’ve been a comedy page focused on Archie for all it mattered. This was written by George Gladir. Well, that was a confusing issue.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 27 Power Play:

  Sabrina sneezes, so Hilda says she shouldn’t be going out, and summer colds are the worst kind and they’ll sap her strength. Sabrina goes outside and Harvey says the same thing Hilda did. Harvey’s so happy because it’s summer, even though it’d be really hot out, that he’d like to jump over a branch. You’d think the heat of the summer would sap his strength, not give him more energy. Sabrina says to go ahead and try, and says a spell out loud to help him.

  But somehow the spell fails and he gets hurt. And somehow her spell to save Harvey from getting hit by a baseball fails too. That’s dumb. She apologizes, and because an underground water pipe burst, the streets are wet. Sabrina still failed to learn her lesson, so she tells Harvey to jump over a puddle and casts a spell, and that fails too, so the story ends with her in bed before dinner.

  This story by George Gladir is about the idea that witches’ spells don’t work anymore when they get summer colds, which doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would they lose their powers because of that? They’d still have their magic there. So Harvey gets a bunch of slapstick because Sabrina’s spells keep failing and he wants to jump over stuff to celebrate the hot summer heat for some reason. This was just a confusing story.

Archie Giant Series 227 Minnesota Shorts:

  Archie Giant Series 227 has another story about a witch but this one isn’t Sabrina. It’s just that Jughead meets a guy when playing pool who turns out to be a warlock out of nowhere. Why does it start with a giant amount of boring narration? I never read that. Jughead warns people to be careful with an old pool table they’re bringing into the youth center, and the writer even cares enough to establish where the table came from, saying it was a gift from a school.

 Jughead spends time dusting it because he was on duty that day and nobody else was around, though I’m still feeling like it’s Out of Character for Jughead to be here without a bribe. Reggie, Veronica and him are selfish, so it’d only make sense for them to do charitable things if their friends were there with them.

  So Jughead sees a short guy who looks distractingly similar to Reggie, as the narration says Jughead uttered the magic words, even though all he did was think them. Somehow Jughead’s never gonna point out that he looks like Reggie. Instead the guy says he wants to play pool and he does so perfectly, and it’s fortunately explained right away. He’s a supernatural figure. He says he’s been playing pool for 900 years. Why would he bother telling him this, when witches aren’t allowed to reveal their secret to mortals and they wouldn’t be believed anyways? He’s just so desperate to be honest with someone.

  He explains that he’s a warlock who made a mistake by beating the chief warlock in the 11^th century, in a game of Snooker. I thought for a second that witches invented pool. He explains instead that because witches can see into the future they invented pool based off of mortals playing it in the future. The warlock says that because of a spell he’s chained to this table until he gets beat, so that means the reason he told a mortal his secret is that he’d rather get punished by the head witch than stay here forever. I guess the spy witches don’t care if a witch reveals her secret if no one believes her.

  Jughead’s friends show up and the predictable remarks are made by Reggie. The pacing is too slow here. Moose nicely holds up the warlock and somehow ignores him even though he’s told to put him down and he causes him to miss by accident. This means the warlock loses, and his celebration of this scares Jughead’s friends away, and then he tells Jughead that all of his 900 years of talent are HIS, and warps away.

 It’s satisfying to see him prove he was a witch! And this is why I reviewed this story. There’s plenty of other Archie stories that suddenly have witchcraft in them for some reason but this used it for good, and that’s worth seeing, not like a story where Jughead gets a magic book because all he does is cause trouble with it obliviously, which rips off what Harvey did.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 28 Grade Aid:

  Ms. Grundy tells Sabrina to hand out the report cards, and, for some reason she can immediately see the grades of someone. I remember report cards to be contained in folders and you have to take them out of them to see them. Was that not done in the 70s or is this unrealistic? So because of that lack of privacy, Sabrina sees Moose’s terrible report card. How does recess have a grade?

 She uses magic to give him a report card full of A’s, and he’s upset because he somehow assumes that the A’s stand for atrocious. I guess what he means is that he assumes they were given to him sarcastically and that they have the authority to do that because they’re authority figures. That’s really forced. He’d have heard about students getting A’s from Dilton and TV, so he’d know what an A means. This was written by George Gladir.

 And beside it, there’s a pin-up where Harvey says they shouldn’t let kids into the theater to see a monster movie, and Hilda shows up near some kids and Sabrina says that in Hilda’s case it should be the other way around. So the movie’s so scary, it even scares witches?

 Normally that’d be realistic, but this is a series where at this point the witches think ugly means beautiful, so wouldn’t Hilda think that the green-skinned woman was beautiful? I guess even they have limits because witches in this series don’t have green skin, so their standard of beauty wouldn’t include green skin as a part of beauty, or red eyes.

 The idea of Hilda being easily scared only makes sense in that she’s paranoid sometimes of mortals finding out about witches and going after her in a mob, that she can easily take. Hilda’s a surprisingly deep character at times like this, you just expect one thing of her, but she can always surprise you.

Archie Giant Series 231:

  Hilda shows up at her house and Sabrina and Ambrose wonder what happened to her because she looks awful. Hilda got run down by Santa’s sleigh. But, it doesn’t look like it’s dark out. Why would this happen to her in broad daylight?

 Hilda doesn’t know that it was Santa’s sleigh, so once again she somehow doesn’t know who Santa is, which would only make sense if this was a universe where she JUST moved to Earth. All she was doing was trying to take a flight to the store, and she didn’t make it because she broke her broom. Why didn’t she immediately fix it with magic?

  Luckily she has another broom to fly on, and tells Sabrina to stir the stew for her. Sabrina doesn’t simply use magic to make the stew stick stir itself, and Ambrose doesn’t even suggest it, somehow. Someone bangs on the door and Hilda complains that Santa did it again. She wastes time complaining, as I wonder why Santa’s sleigh was over her house AGAIN. And Sabrina wonders if it was her fault and Ambrose agrees because Hilda’s reckless. Hilda says that the last five people she hit were at fault. Somehow I doubt that.

  Hilda says no one’s gonna put her out of action. She thinks he was kind of cute though, because witch beauty standards are backwards, and then she finds a book in her bag about how to be irresistible to girls. She says that last accident, he had a bag of stuff too and they got some of the things mixed up. Then the doorbell rings and Harvey shows up being positive. He says only one of his gifts wasn’t great, and it was four ounces of chopped lizard tail.

  He says some people will do anything for a laugh, and Sabrina figures out that Harvey’s book was accidentally switched with the lizard tail meant for Hilda. So she offers Harvey the book in exchange, and Harvey thinks Hilda’s just joking when she wants to finish her stew with the lizard tail. Hilda’s told that Santa wanted to speak to her on the roof. Eventually, the story ends with Hilda in his sleigh because Santa figured it was safer having her where he could keep an eye on her.

Sabrina’s Christmas Magic PEP 122:

  In the next story, Harvey says Sabrina’s welcome to come along and one of the local organizations is throwing a party for poor kids. Sabrina approves of it and Harvey says they hired a Santa to give out gifts, but when Sabrina goes there with him, it’s running late and it’s made clear that the Santa he hired isn’t showing up. So Sabrina feels sorry for the kids, and after annoying me by reminding me that Della wouldn’t approve, she uses magic to look like Santa and make everyone happy.

  Then she takes the risk of using magic, impressing the kids who wanna see more. Harvey wonders why Santa is reminding him of Sabrina. He’s just being reminded of the times he saw Sabrina use magic and got made to forget it. Maybe he subconsciously finds it familiar that he’s using magic like she does. Harvey says they’ve never been able to afford gifts as great as this before, and is naturally confused when Sabrina warps away. He also wonders where Sabrina was when she comes back.

  The Santa that Harvey ordered shows up, and he decides to get him out of here before the kids would see him and stop believing in Santa. He explains that his truck broke down. I’m glad there was a proper justification for him being late instead of him just being a bad employee. Good thing Harvey was nice enough to pay him.

 Harvey says that the toys he showed up with are a lot more like what he usually sees for the kids and Sabrina makes them think the real Santa showed up. The third story’s one that I already reviewed in a Sabrina Holiday Spectacular released long after this, where Harvey’s too embarrassed to go into a lingerie store. It looked much better THERE.

  In Lap Flap by George Gladir, Sabrina can’t find Harvey on a ski slope and asks the spirits to place her in Harvey’s lap. Why have that kind of specific phrasing? For no reason she doesn’t actually get teleported to his lap. She does get forced to ski towards the lodge and ends up on his lap after crashing through the wall. Miraculously she looks uninjured, probably because of the spell.

Sabrina’s Christmas Magic PEP 122:

  In the next story, after Sabrina tells Hilda that she’s exhausted because the stores were mobbed with last minute shoppers, Hilda thinks Sabrina got tired because she conjured up all of the gifts she got, but instead Sabrina just bought them with babysitting money. I like that she explained how she had her money.

 Hilda’s got a good point complaining about her wasting money. Sabrina says it just wouldn’t be the same and that a gift should come from the heart. She’d do a better job explaining herself if she said, “ it comes from the heart if you cared enough TO waste money. “

  When Harvey kisses Sabrina under the mistletoe, Hilda’s annoyed at him, but fortunately not as much as she was in a different story. She gets a gift and immediately says it’s a beautiful shawl and cries because she found that so touching. I like how much faster the pacing is than in a much earlier story where he gave her a gift from his mother. It’s just one panel where she changes her mind instead of her wondering why she got the gift for a while.

  She leaves the room and Sabrina hears some noise and hopes Hilda’s not zapping up a present, even though clearly the noises she heard indicate that she‘s making the present. Why would she hope Hilda wouldn’t do a good deed? She tells her to hand her the broom and flies away and gives Harvey a gift that he thanks her for. Sabrina compliments her and says she loves her, and the story ends.

  Then there’s Zoom Broom by George Gladir where Sabrina wonders why Hilda goes skiing with a broom and gets told it’s her ski lift when there’s not one. Then there’s a depressing story by Dick Malmgren that I already reviewed in Sabrina Holiday Spectacular later on, where Harvey thinks Sabrina doesn’t want a gift because it’s too expensive and returns it. These stories look better in the Holiday Spectacular anyways. Of course, I’m not used to faded art from 70s comics.

  The first story by Frank Doyle’s confusing because it doesn’t make sense that Santa kept running into Hilda when it was daytime, not the night of Christmas Eve. Why would he go out sleighing during the daytime when people would be more likely to look up and see him?

 And of course it was Hilda’s own fault for not just teleporting to where she wants to go, and erasing the memory of anyone who witnesses it. But no, witches like to show off by flying in style. At least Santa made up for it by telling her to stay on his sleigh where it’s safe.

  The second story by Frank Doyle was about Harvey showing a soft side by throwing a party for some poor kids at Christmas where he hired a Santa to show up for it, but because his truck broke down on the way, Sabrina uses magic to disguise herself as Santa and give the kids better toys than they would’ve had otherwise.

 While at first I was bored at the idea of a main character substituting for Santa because it’s so cliché, I’m glad it happened in an original context instead of her having to put presents under everyone’s trees. It was a nice harmless story. Sabrina didn’t get in trouble for using magic for good and making it obvious in front of mortals, and even the hired Santa still got paid in the end. He did drive all the way here. Concrete Thinking by Dick Malmgren had Harvey be too mean.

  As for the story called Christmas Spirit by Dick Malmgren? There was really nothing to this story. Hilda goes from complaining about Sabrina celebrating Christmas the mortal way as usual to being touched that Harvey bought her a gift, to the point of giving him a gift in return. It’s a nice story, it just feels a bit redundant because there was already a story where Hilda gets a gift and does something nice, only it was from his mother last time.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 30 The Fruit Cake:

PEP Digital 122 Page 100

  Sabrina tells Harvey that she has a present for him under the tree. He thanks her for the shirt, and Sabrina says she loves his bracelet. I bet these gifts will never be seen again. Still nice, though. Harvey wishes it was made of diamonds, and Sabrina says nicely that she loves this because it comes from the heart. For some reason Harvey has a present for Hilda too, actually, and Hilda’s been sulking in the closet because Ambrose hated her fruit cake.

  He says she’s being silly in front of her, so of course she calls him out. Hilda says she’ll come out if Harvey eats her cake. He eats it and tells her to get back in the closet. With THAT expression he couldn’t lie convincingly, anyways. She throws something at him, and when she’s told that he got her a present, she’s actually honored. I wonder if it sucks, because she’s getting her hopes up.

 She apologizes to him for saying those nasty things, and gets a plunger, because the man at the store said it had tons of uses, and the story ends with it on his face. She could just zap it up whenever she wants.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was about Hilda having the famously boneheaded idea to give someone a fruitcake, when she should know they’re infamous for being awful, and she sulks about him not liking it. And then she gets comeuppance for being mean to Harvey.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 31 Tall Tale:

  Hilda tells Salem that she wants him to keep Sabrina out of mischief while she’s gone. SABRINA? Wouldn’t Hilda WANT her to cause mischief because that’s her character at this point in the franchise? At first I wanted to read it as her telling Sabrina to keep SALEM out of mischief because SALEM’S the one who’s known for mischief.

  Maybe what she means is that, to her, mischief is “ Sabrina doing good deeds with magic “ and that’s mischief because it’ll get Della to complain and maybe punish her family, and she assumes Salem’s familiar enough with her to know that’s what she meant. It’s very confusing though. Or it’s another universe where Sabrina’s mischievous? She doesn’t come off like that in this story.

 Also it’s lazy to not explain what Hilda’s gonna be doing while she’s gone. I have to assume she’s going grocery shopping, but why wouldn’t she just zap up everything she wants for free as an experienced witch?

 She gives Salem’s tail magical powers, which is also confusing if you’ve seen the 70s cartoon that this is supposed to be based on where Salem always has magic and it’s never said to be because of this. In this particular universe, Salem doesn’t have magic naturally. And this is the first time he’s ever had magic, based on his reaction.

  Salem decides to waste time testing it out and he creates a can of high quality tuna. He sees a dog barking at a cat up a tree and is offended at it, so he uses magic to turn the dog into a punching bag, and by that he meant that the dog would have a rope tied around him as he’s hanging from a tree. And again, he gets what he wants, which makes more sense than the magic interpreting him too literally.

  Then Salem goes too far when he tells the other cats to line up and punch him. Somehow the cats are all able to stand upright and hold their fists out. Sabrina conveniently thinks to look out the window, probably because Salem was outside for too long, and she reveals that realistically she heard Hilda say what she did.

 She walks saying she’d better free the dog before the neighbor sees this, and I guess the reason she frees it the normal way is that she doesn’t wanna scare it even more with even more magic or get witnessed. Salem’s aware that he’s living in the richest country in the world despite being a cat, and he feels sorry for hungry stray cats.

 So he tells them to follow him to the automatic milk machine, and uses magic to make it spray milk for them. While he did do it for the right reason, it was still wrong for cheating people out of money, and Sabrina’s right that he shouldn’t destroy other people’s property. He could’ve summoned milk instead of damaging a machine I’ve never heard of.

 At least she acknowledges that it was for a good cause instead of being oblivious to the fact that he was doing things for a good cause. She looks at a book for vending machine incantations specifically, and wonders where the chapter is on repairing milk machines. It can make sense because she’d need a diagram to show her what to imagine to imagine it as repaired.

  Then Salem evilly plans on giving every dog in the dog show the fleas. Thankfully Sabrina stops him. Too bad she has to knot his tail. I’ve heard that’s painful. I assume that when SHE does, it being painless is part of the spell, because she wouldn’t know it’s painful and isn’t sadistic. She says she’s exhausted and Hilda asks Salem if he kept Sabrina out of mischief, and Sabrina says he did, not even questioning that she was accused of being prone to mischief for no reason.

  This story by George Gladir was about Salem using magic after Hilda recklessly gives him powers out of the unexplained paranoia that Sabrina would cause mischief if Salem didn’t stop her, and Salem’s mean to dogs and is at least nice to cats. So Sabrina fixes the problems he causes, and I’m just confused that Hilda wanted Sabrina to stay out of mischief. It’d be in-character if she gave him magic so he’d cause mischief.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 32 Harvey’s Lucky Day:

  Harvey at least apologizes when he tells Sabrina he doesn’t have the money to take her to the dance tonight. Why would that require money? All they’d have to do is show up and dance. Wouldn’t they have their clothes from last dance? Sabrina’s broke too, and then Harvey finds a four leaf clover and wonders if this is his lucky day and he’ll be able to get some money. She doubts it, and so does Hilda, disproving it entirely. So Hilda uses magic to make him slip on a skate she just conjured up.

  He still believes in the clover out of desperation, I wonder how Sabrina CAN’T get rid of Hilda’s powers temporarily to avoid a LOT of these moments, and Hilda splashes Harvey with water. Sabrina calls her out and tells Harvey considerately that she’ll get him a towel. Hilda slips, somehow Harvey doesn’t hear what happened to Hilda and he keeps talking, and he throws the clover onto some money he didn’t see, no longer believing in it.

  This story by Dick Malmgren’s about Hilda trying to prove to Harvey that four leaf clovers don’t work by using magic to bother him for a while. It’s annoying because he didn’t do anything to deserve it and Sabrina could’ve used magic to make Hilda not wanna bother him the second time. Something did happen to Hilda but that was only once and not as bad, and Harvey didn’t even see it.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 33:

  Sabrina wonders if there’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, because her life as a witch is so fantastical that she’s got an unrealistic idea of reality. She levitates herself to the end and finds a note saying, “ you’re at the wrong end, dum dum. “  Then Sabrina’s biking behind someone who says that her dad is a pilot and gives flying lessons. Sabrina says that so does Hilda, and we see that she opened up a broom navigation school for apprentice witches. I wish this wasn’t just a one-off gag.

  Sabrina says she doesn’t want to miss this TV special. Hilda reminds her that she still has to write a composition for school, and the story ends with a pencil writing it for her because she used magic. I’m glad it ended before it could repeat the dull magic pencil joke. So I can assume that it actually worked out for her.

 Then someone says to Weatherbee that Sabrina’s very conscientious because she volunteered to do extra work in the chem lab. Sabrina’s wearing a shirt that says she’s American, but American is spelled the English way. And predictably, she only volunteered because she somehow thinks this is the best place in town to mix her potions, when she would think her HOUSE was the best place. She wouldn’t get caught there. She could zap up vials wherever she wants.

  Sabrina wishes Harvey were at the lockers because she misses him, and casts a spell, commanding Harvey to appear in the locker room. For some reason he doesn’t show up right away, when she would warp him to her instantly. She naturally assumes that her magic must not be working today, so she decides to go home. Predictably he does show up. The janitor finds him trapped in a locker.

  There’s a comedy page from Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 33 that’s also in a Sabrina story collection on Kindle called Sabrina’s Magic School. Sabrina says that getting ready for school can be a drag. She lampshades that she’s a fool and asks why she doesn’t use her magic to get to school on time. She would’ve gotten into the habit of doing this years ago, as soon as she found out she had powers.

  She says classroom, here I come, and warps to the class in her pajamas. Aside from them having polka dots, it doesn’t look that embarrassing. It’s a two piece outfit, and considering how different the fashion of the 70s was, it’d be nice if people didn’t bat an eye at this, and she could cast a spell to make that the case, so it’s too bad Sabrina says out loud that she’s in her pajamas so that everyone knows about it. This was written by George Gladir. This was just comedy pages, like one of them was Unforeseen Scene. I liked the first few…

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 34:

  This has a comedy page by George Gladir where Harvey can’t find a station with any gas left. Sabrina uses magic to create a gas container and says she just found it on the road, but SOMEHOW, it’s empty, and she thinks there’s an energy crisis in the hex world too. Or rather she says it out LOUD in front of him for some reason. She would just imagine that there’s gas in it, so this wouldn’t happen. How was this meant to be funny? If the spirits are magical, they’d be able to create as much gas as they need.

  Then in Bottle Battle by George Gladir, Harvey’s having trouble getting the ketchup out of a ketchup bottle. We didn’t need the panels before this. Sabrina uses magic to loosen it up for him. Somehow he decides to look at its cap wondering why it doesn’t come out, so the ketchup sprays on his face. I feel bad for him, but I can’t help but smile.

 So that was funny, but it wasn’t very likely. It’d be more likely that her spell would cause him to just keep doing what he had been doing and then send the ketchup out on the right thing because that’s what she’d have thought about.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 35 The Will to Chill:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest Issue 223

  Harvey tells Sabrina they should swim in Veronica’s pool while they’re at London. Sabrina naturally says it was nice of her family to leave an open invitation for teenagers to use the pool whenever they wanted to. She walks into her house and uses magic to get into her bathing suit right away, so Harvey comments on how fast she changed.

 Even the water is hot because it’s such a hot day. Jughead says that Betty’s treating him to ice cream, and Reggie acts annoyingly confident, telling them to think cool thoughts to feel less hot, and he splashes Sabrina when he jumps into the pool.

  He says that splashing people wouldn’t be fun if they didn’t hate it, and further provokes her by splashing her again and saying that if she could control her mind like he supposedly can, she could tell herself she liked it. I’m glad he was written to behave this way because she would’ve looked mean if she punished him right after splashing her the first time, because it’d look like she was just punishing him for an accident.

 Harvey calls him out on this and gets splashed as well. Reggie’s arrogance causes them to leave, and Sabrina uses magic to turn the pool into ice and him bouncing comically high off of it was also a part of the spell, I hope. He crashes into the tree and thinks that too much control over his mind can be dangerous.

  This story by George Gladir is about Reggie being a jerk in Veronica’s pool, and it eventually causes Sabrina to punish him by using magic, and you’d think he’d realize magic exists, instead of blaming himself. But it was a lot nicer of Veronica to let all of her friends use her pool instead of saying that only SHE can use the pool.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 36:

  Sadly the art is washed out. A woman says that Harvey will love the picnic lunch basket she prepared. Sabrina doesn’t want her to steal Harvey. Since this is a comedy page, I’m guessing she’ll fail at sabotaging this girl. She decides to change the contents of it into snails.

 That would work if they were still alive, but instead he’s excited over them, just like Donald was when she did this in that Madhouse story. This gag isn’t original, but its context is. What was Sabrina thinking? She would’ve just replaced the food with burnt food or garbage.

  Then Sabrina’s “ fairy witch mother “ who looks just like Hilda flies over to Sabrina’s classroom in a shrunken form holding her school report, saying that she forgot it at home. Since she shouted at her, you’d think that her classmates would hear this and look at her and freak out, but we don’t see their reactions. Sabrina thanks her, and Hilda says she broke her broom, and somehow wonders how she’ll ever get home now, when witches can teleport. Sabrina throws a paper airplane with her in it and she cheerfully waves goodbye.

  Surprisingly, Rosalind shows up again, and it’s in a 70s comedy page. Sabrina thinks that she’s gossiping about her again, so naturally, she hates her for it, and wants to put the worst curse imaginable on her. She says, “ May her princess phone never ring again. “

Archie Giant Series 243:

PEP Digital 122 page 55

  Sabrina uses magic to send the Christmas decorations swirling around the tree, unable to decide which way she likes it the best, and Hilda gets startled, and uncharacteristically calls her lazy for using her magic instead of encouraging her to be as much of a witch as possible, when Della herself said that if you don’t use magic, your powers get rusty.

  Sabrina says she just couldn’t make up her mind, and Ambrose says that who knows when a mortal might walk through the door. And the writer somehow seems on his side because he makes Harvey walk through the door and witness that magic, when it wasn’t very likely that he’d show up right then and there.

  Every witch in the story undoes the spell at once, and Harvey assumes they’ve got a ghost in the house, and wastes a bunch of time explaining what that is. He would’ve just said ghost, not poltergeist. Wow, a LOT of time is being wasted. He doubts that they’ll believe him about ghosts, and somehow Ambrose can’t even pronounce poltergeist.

  Harvey says he’ll run to the library and look up how to perform an exorcism for them. You know, they could’ve just immediately erased his memory of the magic and avoided this entire plot. That was BORING. I don’t need to be reminded what a ghost is. That’s not much of a plot. Then after they laugh it off, they get Christmas decorations thrown at them because the actual poltergeist in the house was offended that they didn’t believe in him, when they were given no reason to before.

Sabrina’s Christmas Magic PEP 122

  Sabrina goes into her house holding full bags and says everything’s slipping and she needs a hand. If she just teleported home with everything, she wouldn’t have this problem. She could’ve also driven home in a car at least, and only brought some of the bags inside at a time. Hilda somehow assumes Sabrina zapped up the food, even though she came into the house through the front door holding grocery bags.

  Sabrina somehow surprises her when she says that she bought the food to cook a holiday dinner for them. Hilda’s got a point, it’s not very smart to waste money buying food when you can just zap it up. Sabrina says she invited Harvey over for Christmas and bought a duck with nuts. Hilda’s right that it’s gonna take her hours to prepare all of this.

 Sabrina says it won’t take hours with Hilda’s help, even though she doesn’t have any proof that Hilda knows how to help her properly when she’s so used to using magic herself. She just naturally assumes she can cook because she’s older than her. Naturally Hilda uses magic to show how witches whip up a Christmas dinner.

  Surprisingly she creates a witchcraft cook computer, which is more creative. She dumps in the ingredients, saying she’ll let magic do the rest. She should know that Sabrina doesn’t want this though because she was clearly talking like she wanted to do Christmas the mortal way just for the sake of it. Sabrina says this, Hilda says she has to feed the recipe data into the computer as I wonder if this is gonna backfire on her, the food gets thrown at her and she gets knocked over.

  It’s pointed out that she should’ve taken the veggies out of the cans first. Hilda asks if they have bump remover. A witch should have some. Sabrina somehow says Hilda ruined their dinner, even though they’re witches who can just use magic to undo all of this. They could create new versions of the food.

 Hilda wants to zap up a Christmas dinner and Sabrina overreacts, sobbing. Hilda says with her hand in a sugar jar that she’s wrong about it not being in the true meaning of Christmas. She must have just changed her mind. So the story ends with Harvey and Sabrina having dinner at a fancy restaurant, and Hilda complains about the price.

  In the next story, Harvey’s nice by offering some people candy canes and Sabrina appreciates that. Hilda says he was just trying to make an impression on the two of them. Somehow Harvey doesn’t say anything to actually respond, and instead says he’d offer her some candy, but doesn’t have any, or any money.

  Hilda summons candy and he thanks her for it. So he decides to share it with his friends and Hilda starts laughing. I guess she couldn’t help but laugh, and at that point, she might as well tell Sabrina her plan. Either way, she’d wanna stop her. Hilda says she zapped the centers of the candies full of hot peppers. Sabrina calls her out and says that Harvey thinks that if people weren’t distrusting, the world would be better. She has plenty of time to undo Hilda’s mistake before he could give people any candies.

  Instead, her crying causes someone like Hilda to feel remorseful because she upset Sabrina, so she takes away the candy from Harvey, and stupidly decides to eat it all and has to use magic to merely make it so that she can drink from a fire hydrant, instead of her simply using magic so that she doesn’t have the taste of hot peppers in her mouth anymore.

 Conveniently Harvey doesn’t figure out what clearly happened to Hilda and just says she has some sweet tooth, so he doesn’t call her out on the candies he got given. Hilda could’ve just grabbed the bowl of candies, turned away from him with it and undone her spell on them to make them edible. I just have to assume that she WANTED to punish herself, out of guilt.

Sabrina Christmas Magic PEP 122

  A kid runs away from his mother behind Sabrina complaining that there is no Santa, and his mother tells him to stop and let her explain. He’s naturally not interested in hearing her lie to him. He used to love the idea of Santa until he saw two of them having lunch together in a cafeteria. Wouldn’t the malls forbid mall Santas from being so close together specifically to avoid this happening? Sabrina tells his mother to let her talk to him.

  She tells him that it’s possible to see more than one Santa in a day because magic exists, so Santa can be one or one hundred. Predictably she uses magic to clone herself a whole bunch, admits that she knows magic and gets rid of the clones. This convinces him into believing her and apologizing to his mom. The story ends with Santa thanking Sabrina instead of freaking out at her magic because he’s the real Santa. And I just have to assume he’s a warlock who already knows about witches.

  The first story by George Gladir wasted most of its time on Harvey telling Sabrina’s family what ghosts are after witnessing them use magic, which was boring and could’ve been avoided if they just erased his memory of it. The second story by Dick Malmgren wastes a lot of time on Hilda telling Sabrina that cooking Christmas dinner is a lot slower than just zapping it up. She’s well-meaning, but she should know she’s wasting her time reasoning with her.

  I liked that she used a magic computer and dumped the ingredients into it. That was creative, and so was the fact that the ingredients were flung into her because she didn’t take some of them out of the cans first because she was so distracted by Sabrina and barely uses the computer.

 Eventually I felt sorry for her when she wiped out her savings buying Harvey and Sabrina dinner at a restaurant, which somehow satisfied Sabrina as a proper Christmas dinner even though it’s still not adhering to Christmas tradition, because they’re not eating at home.

  The third story by Dick Malmgren’s about Hilda assuming that Harvey isn’t really a nice giving person on Christmas and just wanted to make Sabrina and her think he was, and she uses magic to give him hot pepper Christmas candies to give out, but when she laughs and tells Sabrina what she did, she’s called out on it and feels so bad from making Sabrina upset that she eats the pepper candies herself.

 I wish she outright said she thinks she deserves it, because otherwise, why would she eat them instead of just undoing the spell? We could’ve also seen her zap up another bowl of candy to replace the one she ate.

  The final story by Frank Doyle dragged on far too long for how little there was to its plot. A kid thinks Santa isn’t real because he sees a few mall Santas having lunch together at the mall, and Sabrina magically clones herself to get him to believe that Santa could do the same thing just because she said so, even though she didn’t prove Santa had those powers.

 And it’s good that the ending establishes that Santa is real, even if he’s not, but that should’ve been proven at the beginning of the story instead so I wouldn’t have been annoyed with the mother and Sabrina for encouraging someone to believe in a lie for no reason.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 37 Snogo:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 239

  Sabrina wakes up in the morning and levitates a clock over to her. Hilda asks her if she’s going to see Harvey this morning and says that they need someone with a strong back and weak mind to shovel the lane way. So she just wants to be mean to Harvey, naturally because he’s really clumsy, so that’s why she doesn’t zap the snow away.

 Sabrina uses magic to get rid of the snow, but someone asks her how she did that, and it’s nice that he’s just happy about it, but with all of the times that witchcraft is used in front of mortals and it’s just brushed off with them just thinking they hallucinated with the main characters acting like it never happened, it feels like forced tension to have it be made a big deal out of NOW.

  Hilda forces the tension by scolding Sabrina for being irresponsible and being paranoid of the civilian when both of them can erase memories. So obviously she’d just ask her to erase his memory of that, NOT waste an ENTIRE PAGE. Sabrina is seen talking to the civilian and Hilda thinks she’s liable to do something to make things worse, so she wants to warn her, rather than simply erasing his memory.

  Sabrina lies to him that he just imagined what he saw, and the walks aren’t clear. So she uses magic to get the snow back, and he runs away screaming in fear, which is Out of Character because before, he was just happy and impressed, not scared. Sabrina has a good point when she tells Hilda that nobody will believe his story.

  Hilda somehow thinks they WILL, after all of her experience with being a witch and getting away with people assuming that they just hallucinated. So after she uses magic to get rid of the snow, she tells Sabrina to leave the zapping to her. She says that she wants that snow here and now. She then summons snow in the house, because she forgot she was in the house.

 The story ends with Hilda uncharacteristically shoveling snow in the house, because she’s so scared of someone witnessing her zapping it away, even though she could just close the door first. And someone says that he’s had tons of hallucinations around this house, but he’s cheerful about it, instead of horrified, somehow.

  This story by Dick Malmgren sucked. Hilda wouldn’t freak out so much about a civilian witnessing Sabrina use magic to get rid of the snow in her lane-way because witches can just brainwash mortals and erase their memories at will. Sabrina wouldn’t freak out either. She’d just do that to him right away since she did it to Harvey. It’d be far more in-character for Della to freak out about this than Hilda.

 But Sabrina is much more likely to lie and make someone doubt their perception of reality, so it’s in-character for her to not do it immediately. Maybe she feels bad about memory erasing, so she saves it for a last resort, but still, this is a stupidly forced bit of conflict to waste the ENTIRE story on. I’m just glad it’s not a story about, say, Della yelling at Sabrina for causing a snow day, when she shouldn’t care. I had this story as a kid.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 38 Ice Folly:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 208 page 49

  Sabrina looks forward to ice skating with Harvey again and hopes she hasn’t forgotten how, because this is the first time the pond’s frozen in two years… She could’ve just frozen the pond HERSELF. Sabrina can skate fine and they see Hilda carrying skates. Somehow, she always said she was a good skater as a child. But were there any skates in the 1600s? Maybe she means, “ in the hex world. “

  She replies sarcastically that she’s posing for the cover of arctic allure, and complains about the cold herself. Some other people complain about it and Hilda zaps up some hot soup in a cauldron. It doesn’t seem like it’s evil magic potion to freak them out. It’s like it’s actual soup, so that’s oddly nice of her.  Hilda somehow thinks they used to have warmer winters. She’d be accurate if she meant colder winters, because global warming happened. Or she used to live somewhere warmer, like the Other Realm.

  Harvey asks her if she used to have warmer blood when she was young, and she gets mad enough to, not abuse her magic against him, but instead give herself a hot spell, which melts the ice, so she falls into the cold water and she has to be pulled out. They think she won’t last a minute in this cold air, so they take drastic measures and put her in the hot soup to thaw her out.

 This story by George Gladir is about Sabrina ice skating with Harvey, and apparently, Hilda’s trying to do that too, but she gets some really bad luck. Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 39 Horrible Harvey was in the 70s Sabrina comic, I reviewed it.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 40 I’ve Got a Ticket to Run:

Archie’s Pals ‘and ‘ n ‘ Gals Double Digest 85

  Hilda says she wanted to see a great stage play herself, but you can’t buy a ticket anywhere. Sabrina says Harvey was lucky to get two tickets for them, but in his haste to get here, he forgot to bring them. Lemme guess, he’s gonna lose them or they’re gonna get destroyed. Surprisingly, no, instead he splashes mud on his clothes on his way back.

  He tells her to wait here while he goes to change. Lemme guess… he’ll spend so much time telling her to wait that she won’t get to see the play. Then Harvey runs up to Sabrina without pants on, and Sabrina refuses to go with him until he puts pants on, instead of simply zapping pants on him while he’s still oblivious! He runs home embarrassed, and Sabrina tells him to hail a taxi, but he forgot his wallet. He runs away again.

  Hilda asks what’s keeping him this time, and tells Sabrina to go over to his house and find out what happened. She isn’t very surprised that he fainted and fell asleep after all of that running. It’s impressive that reality ensued. Surprisingly, Sabrina does get to watch the play, and Hilda watches it with her instead of him.

 That’s smart of them, but Sabrina could’ve used magic to make Harvey feel better, so that was kind of Out of Character of Sabrina. I’ve gotta commend the story on surprising me with so many twists, because it was already predictable that he’d keep running back and forth.

  This was a story where Harvey keeps trying to go to a play with Sabrina, but he keeps running back and forth because he keeps forgetting stuff. It was funny at ONE point. But eventually he passes out and for some reason Sabrina doesn’t heal him to wake him up. Well if there’s ONE bit of magic that I barely see witches do, it’s healing magic… It’s still been done, but it’s rare enough that I guess I should assume that they can’t do that, but if they can summon things, then they should be able to.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 41 Double Dummy:

Archie’s Pals and Gals Double Digest 85

  Harvey tells Sabrina at her house that he shouldn’t have to pay for a movie when they can see movies for free on TV. He’s right, and the point of a date is to spend time with someone you like, so it shouldn’t matter to her if it’s in a crowded movie theater or not. She’s got more expensive tastes and says that she’ll go out with someone else because of this.

  You’d think a date at home would be more enjoyable because you’d just be alone with that person instead of having to be in the same room as a bunch of strangers. It’d be less pressure that way. But all Sabrina wants is to go to the movies, and apparently it’s to the point where she’ll go Out of Character and arrange a date with Reggie to get that.

 Reggie’s a prankster who isn’t even above pranking HER, so she’d lecture him on that a lot even if he stopped mistreating HER. If Little Sabrina’s any indication, she can’t get him to stop. He’s also suspected her of being a witch before and tried to prove it, so he’s too smart for her. But that’s just me remembering how he is in Little Archie.

  I know Archie’s focused on Betty and Veronica and she wouldn’t wanna get the two of them mad at her, and Jughead’s not interested in dating, so Reggie’s the only option left in her group of friends, but I never understood why he was considered part of their group of friends in the first place. I guess it’s HIS idea to be with them.

 She’d know plenty of other guys because she’d be in the same class as them. I get that she’s trying to spite Harvey and try to change his mind, and who better to do that than Reggie, but there’s so many other guys she could call that she’d actually have a fun date with. Well, I guess the reason she doesn’t zap up another Harvey is that she doesn’t want word to spread and get caught, or she didn’t think of it.

  I AM excited to see this intriguing premise because she’s never dated Reggie before. I couldn’t wait to read this issue after I read its summary months ago, but it’s so silly. Sabrina gets called out on this, naturally because she’s cheating on Harvey and right in front of him.

 Normally the goody-two-shoes Sabrina would never do this, but that’s kinda something I love about 70s Sabrina, that she isn’t above shaking things up or doing something selfish like a realistic teenager, and that happens enough to make up for when you can’t relate to her because she’s too good.

 She’s not constantly about Honor before Reason and preaching about it, so I don’t get mad at her when she isn’t like that for not always being that way. Besides, she’s just trying to teach him a lesson, it’s not like she actually loves Reggie, so he’s not a real threat to their relationship as long as Harvey doesn’t break it off.

  She pushes him out the door wanting to get ready for her date, and Harvey actually cries. Wow, he does care about their relationship. He says he bets she wouldn’t act that way if he told her he was going with another girl to a drive-in, and then decides to use an inflatable doll from the novelty shop and his mom’s wig to make Sabrina change her tune. Isn’t it obvious she’d just get mad at him and not be in the mood to date him? At least I’m proud of him for not actually planning on going with another girl like I thought he would.

  He borrows a dress from his mom as well, and Sabrina sees Harvey in the drive-in. I’m pretty disappointed that the story just followed Harvey so far. It would be annoying to see Reggie be Reggie, but we didn’t need to see any of Harvey’s preparation for this because Sabrina was gonna find out it was just a doll anyways, so we’re just missing out on the dialogue between her and Reggie that I thought I was gonna see.

 I already saw a story in Little Sabrina where he asked her out on a date, and he just pranked her by expecting her to go fishing to get a fish dinner. Even then that was harmless compared to other pranks of his.

  Somehow Reggie’s confused that Sabrina wants to go tell Harvey off for cheating on her. She tries to hit him with the purse. Still abuse, even if she does think he’s cheating. She says, “ oops, “ when she hits the wig off the doll, and there’s a blam sound and a flash of light that keeps me from seeing what it is, and then there’s some yellow smoke where the doll’s head should be for some reason as she screams.

 I guess I’m supposed to believe that she hit the head off the doll, as we see in the next panel. And since Sabrina’s used to having an unrealistic life, it does make sense that she’d instinctively assume something unscientific happened and she hit harder than she actually could. She could be assuming her magic made her hit harder.

  Harvey tells her the truth, and Reggie snarks, “ A dummy? Now that’s what I call a matched set. “ Lucky for him, Sabrina AND Harvey are merciful enough to not call him out on his snarky remark, even though that’d be an easy opportunity for the story to remind us that Sabrina loves Harvey by getting her to stand up for him. But he IS being a dummy right now.

  And she’s right, he DID spend money to go to the drive-in anyways, and now it’s more insulting because he wasted the money going with a doll to teach her a lesson instead of going with her in the first place, when he really should’ve humored his girlfriend right away. Sabrina calls him out on scaring her and he says he just wanted attention to downplay it.

 She uses magic to make the dummy come to life and run after Harvey, and shockingly, the story just ends there, with Reggie wanting Sabrina to tell him he’s just hallucinating when in a LOT of stories, he knows she’s a witch, so he wouldn’t even react like that.

  Of course, it’s easy to figure out how Reggie would’ve been acting on the date. It would’ve been annoying to see him brag about himself and make up long stories, like in the 70s cartoon. I guess it would’ve been like that episode of the cartoon where she invited him to her house out of pity, only they’d be in a drive-in safe from Hilda.

  But I’m more annoyed by the missed opportunity than I would’ve been by reading the dialogue he was supposed to have, for even ONE measly panel, where we could’ve seen how the date was going. As far as we can see here, the date was going fine, as if she was dating anybody else.

 The fact that it was Reggie created false hype when it didn’t actually matter. I wouldn’t want to see him prank Sabrina again, either, I don’t like ANYTHING unique to his character in Archie, but one or two panels of him being Reggie were necessary to take advantage of a plot like this.

  In this story, Sabrina thinks Harvey’s too cheap to go out with her and goes out with Reggie of all people instead, without even explaining that Archie’s busy. You’d THINK the plot would follow HER, the main character of the series. I thought this story would be about what it’d be like if Sabrina went on a date with Reggie for a change.

 Ignoring the plot hole that there’d be tons of better guys out there than someone who can’t be trusted not to prank her, or at least not be annoying, and so she wouldn’t have considered him, I was still excited to see a comic about this. She could’ve gone out with ANYBODY and the plot would be the same.

  Instead the plot entirely follows Harvey, unnecessarily showing his preparations where he gets an inflatable doll to trick Sabrina at the drive-in, when she’s with Reggie to teach him a lesson about being cheap. HARVEY does the prank, not REGGIE. Because the story was wasted on showing how he got the doll when he could’ve just explained it after she saw it, we never got to see how Reggie and Sabrina interacted on the date itself.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 42 A Club Flub:

  I already reviewed Impede Deed by George Gladir in the 70s comic, it’s forced. Hilda tries to hit a golf ball and only manages to hit the grass, and Harvey asks, “ What’s your aunt trying to DO, weed the grass? “ which is amusing, but could provoke her. Eventually she gets mad at him and he brags that he could give her a few pointers on golf. So that’s another hobby he’s good at! And I guess she zapped up her hat with magic and he didn’t see it because his eyes were closed. It’s so sloppy that suddenly she gets her hat back and nobody reacts.

  Hilda stupidly bets him five dollars she can beat him at this game. And it sure is nice of her to not complain when he calls her Aunt Hilda. It’s also sweet of him to tell Sabrina that he won’t actually take her money and just wants to teach her a lesson. I’m forced to assume he whispered, or else Hilda would hear him and respond to that.

  Hilda hits the golf ball and it bounces off a tree and hits her. Harvey actually laughs at her. So inevitably, she uses magic and brings the ball to the green and says that Harvey went into the sand trap. Hilda then uses magic so that the ground conspicuously opens up and swallows that ball – I love how obvious she is about magic! The story ends with Harvey giving her the money she didn’t deserve, so that wasn’t satisfying, and assuming he has to get his eyes checked.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was about Hilda trying to golf, and because she sucks at it, and Harvey’s there, predictably it’s about her using magic to win the game and get money from him that she doesn’t deserve. It was intriguing that she tried something new, which makes sense because she wants to vary it up after all of her time alive. And eventually it got funny how over-the-top she is about magic.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 43 No Witch Way:

  Sabrina paints the floor, stubbornly doing it the mortal way to feel normal, I guess, and says that she finished it as she’s sitting in front of a small puddle of white paint. How is she finished? It’s not like the entire floor is one color. Harvey says she missed a spot and uncharacteristically laughs like he’s Reggie. Sabrina gets annoyed and he says it’s right here.

  Then it turns out he left footprints in the paint, and has lame dialogue unironically, and Sabrina uncharacteristically calls him a bean bag. Not only is that a weird insult, but I’d expect Hilda to be the one calling him an idiot, but it makes sense that she’d be mad at him. He suddenly goes from making fun of her to realizing he made a mistake.

  Sabrina lampshades that Harvey should’ve known better because he knew that was wet paint. I wish all of her text wasn’t italicized and in bold. He fortunately apologizes, and she says that her aunt is right about him. That seems Out of Character of her, even if it’s smart of her. And her text looking different really emphasizes how different it is of her. Then Hilda’s Out of Character too, saying that she shouldn’t be so hard on Harvey, stating the obvious that he didn’t do it on purpose.

  She at least explains that Sabrina’s always telling her not to get excited, so that’s why she’s acting like this. But of course she wouldn’t be mad at Harvey. She wasn’t the one whose job it was to paint the floor. At least it makes sense that Sabrina was doing it the mortal way because she’s already insisted on decorating her bedroom the mortal way, so when it comes to renovating the house, she insists on doing things the mortal way.

  I understand why Sabrina apologizes to Harvey. While it is sudden, it makes sense that she’d feel like the bad guy after even Hilda was nice and forgiving of Harvey. He immediately forgives her.

 After he asks to get a snack, he stupidly carries too many things at once, makes a mess, has the paper towel roll away from him under the table, crawls under the table and topples it over with the milk carton, and Hilda gets mad at him because she just cleaned the kitchen and it’s already a mess. She’s just that unenthusiastic about having to merely point and imagine the kitchen as clean again.

  After she threatens to turn Harvey into a donkey, Sabrina tells Hilda no, and pushes Harvey out of the room telling him to get a Coke with her, saying that the fresh air will do them good. The story ends with Harvey finally commenting on Hilda making it really obvious that she’s a witch, asking if she thinks she has magical powers, and Sabrina says a very forced line at the end quoting the story title as a failed attempt at a joke.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was weird because the beginning of it had all three of the characters be stunningly Out of Character at first. After Harvey leaves footprints in the newly painted floor, Sabrina has every reason to call him out on it, but she’s so over the top with it that she comes off as more like Hilda than Sabrina. Hilda tells HER to not be so hard on Harvey, but at least she says it’s because Sabrina keeps telling her to relax. It kinda makes sense.

  What’s more irritating is Harvey laughing at her for missing a spot, but maybe he just assumed SHE was the one who left the footprints in the paint at first. Then Hilda being forgiving of Harvey makes Sabrina realize she was in the wrong and apologize too quickly. But then Harvey’s really clumsy in the kitchen, which is only justified because he’s been clumsy in Hilda’s house in plenty of stories before this, and Sabrina has to save him from Hilda. I had this as a kid.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 44 Show and Tell:

Betty and Veronica Digest issue 89

  After a brief Pin-Up where Hilda summons monsters instead of boys for Sabrina which must have been just a prank, Harvey notices what time it is and says he should be at Sabrina’s house by now. Oh, just as I was thinking that I’d never know what he was doing, he says he shouldn’t have taken that nap. So I do know, and he admits that he made a mistake. He says he’d better hurry to be on time for that stage show. Why is he talking to himself?

  He falls on his head with his pants down, and finds out his car’s out of gas. Then he misses the bus. I find it entertaining just how bad his luck is. He takes a taxi, and I hope he kept true to his word that he’d give him a nice tip. He jumps over a fence to take a shortcut and rips his shirt. He barges into the house and the door hits Hilda, and he tells Sabrina he’s here.

 I wonder if the twist is that he doesn’t have to go to the stage show today. It’d be predictable if Hilda lashed out at him with magic, but I’d want more of a twist than that. She turns herself into a goat and rams him out of the house. I love how sudden and silly that was. I never thought she’d outright shapeshift.

  Harvey falls into a thorn bush, and somehow he ends up in a tree, as if falling into the bush bounced him like a trampoline. Predictably Sabrina says the play isn’t until tomorrow. At least he’s with her now. She says that while they’re here, they could go to the javelin throwing event, but Harvey’s not in the mood after everything he’s been through and says no because he doubts the rest of his day would be any better. That’s wise because he’d probably fail the competition too.

  If Sabrina didn’t get to do any magic in it, then it’s really a good thing Hilda was in the story. I wasn’t expecting a story mostly focusing on Harvey, so it’s a good thing he was entertaining with how many mishaps he got into trying to rush to Sabrina’s house. But if you ignore the part where Hilda rams him as a goat, this could’ve been a story starring Archie trying to go to Veronica and the plot would make just as much sense.

 So it really did a good job if it still entertained me even when it could’ve not been a Sabrina story at all, and I could’ve found it mean-spirited, but it did something right because I didn’t. I found this in Betty and Veronica Digest issue 89.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 45 Wheeler Dealer:

  Harvey tells Sabrina to watch this because he built a ramp to jump on a skateboard. Building a ramp impressed me, even if he, oh, he didn’t humiliate himself. He did a perfect landing. It’s great for a comedy to not always be predictable. So Ambrose asks to try it, and he predictably falls instead. Hilda laughs at him and confidently assumes she could do better even though a skateboard would be a weird newfangled contraption to her. Gee, I wonder if she’ll get humiliated too?

  How did she end up flipping over after going off the ramp? Somehow she tells Sabrina to get her some ice instead of just pointing to heal herself immediately. Sabrina gets her ice, and somehow Hilda still thinks she could run circles around Harvey, takes it from her as he’s surprisingly laughing at her, and at least cares enough to tell Sabrina to get another package of frozen food ready. I’m guessing she’ll use magic to get good at it this time. Good.

 The skateboard gets made to jump in the air unrealistically by magic and she hovers in a circle around him, intentionally revealing magic to mess with him. Sabrina lampshades this and Ambrose shows some nice chemistry with her by also finding it funny. Harvey would’ve HEARD Sabrina say that Hilda used magic, so he wouldn’t be saying that he must have not seen that, especially since he somehow says it couldn’t be imagined by him either.

  This story by Dick Malmgren’s about Hilda and Ambrose being bad at skateboarding when trying to show up Harvey, who, in a pleasant surprise, was good at it after building a ramp too. I like that it wasn’t predictable enough to have Harvey suck at it, and I liked seeing how Hilda flew around with the skateboard to get back at Harvey for being enough of a shocking jerk to laugh at the two of them.

Archie Giant Series 455:

  Yeah I thought it was weird too that it seemed to skip ahead 200 issues, but I’m following the… Sabrina stories as they were released in chronological order, and apparently this was released right after a Sabrina 70s comic issue and Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 45.

  Sabrina says she wants her family to throw a Christmas party for themselves and Zelda and Ambrose agree, while Ambrose is reading a newspaper called the Witchcraft Times. Sabrina says she’ll use magic to create a Christmas tree, and unlike Little Sabrina, she’s happy with that instead of her family having to buy her a tree to humor her, so that’s refreshingly smart of her. Ambrose says she did a great job and Zelda says the tree’s pretty.

  Sabrina says the family should zap up presents for each other too. That’s also pretty smart of her instead of her still going with the idea that if you do that instead of earning money to buy a gift, it’s not satisfying and doesn’t come from the heart. Zelda says they’ll all make a list of what they’d like, which is also refreshingly smart to avoid the tired gag of a character not liking a gift. Ambrose says he’ll play Santa and uses magic to make him look like him.

  Then Hilda predictably yells at them because Christmas is a mortal holiday. She’s stood up to and says there’s no such thing as Santa and uses magic to get rid of the Santa suit. So once again this takes place in a universe where she thinks Santa doesn’t exist when usually he does in Sabrina comics.

 Ambrose says she won’t stop them, but because he didn’t just remove Hilda’s powers and warp her to another room, she uses magic to ruin the eggnog and Christmas cookies, making her family spit it out and fortunately figure out immediately that Hilda sabotaged them.

  Hilda denies it, and when the doorbell rings, someone resembling Santa shows up at the door, which doesn’t make sense because he always went through the chimney. She uses magic to make a bunch of snow fall on him, and she finds out it wasn’t Ambrose she bothered. The story ends with Santa conveniently out of the snow right away, saying that some people don’t deserve nice things.

  In the next story, Harvey shows up at Sabrina’s house sad and says it’s gone on Christmas. Sabrina asks him if he got everything he wanted for Christmas and he says he did, but he lost his wallet with all of his money. Sabrina hopes someone would return it to him, which does actually happen and it gets reported on as good news sometimes. Harvey says that by then it’ll be too late for him to buy presents for the poor kid who delivers the paper.

  He overheard the kid telling someone that Santa won’t visit his house this year because his father lost his job. Sabrina immediately believes he won’t be able to have Christmas, then, instead of questioning why Santa would actually be a jerk like that because she believes him about this. In most Sabrina stories, Santa’s real and Sabrina knows it, so what’s with all the drama?

  Harvey complains that he had told that kid that Santa was gonna drop something off at his house. Sabrina says she has some extra presents in her room and goes upstairs. She says she’ll create some presents for Jimmy, and then Hilda tells her to get rid of them right now before Della finds out. I guess Della’s immune to magic so you can’t just erase her memory of something that happened after she warps her, or else none of the witches would take her seriously.

 If she could find out without being in the same room it’d mean they’re being spied on, so that’d mean it’s already too LATE to unzap the gifts. Can’t Sabrina just use magic to change Hilda’s mind about this? Why doesn’t she freeze Hilda in time until she gives the kid the gifts?

  And then Hilda decides to empty the boxes herself. So the kid gets sad when he sees the empty boxes and Harvey assumes this is Sabrina’s idea of a joke. Why do that, when Hilda’s laughing? We didn’t need things to be that depressing. Then the kid says it isn’t their fault Santa has nothing for him, and then offers Hilda a present, saying that he bought a little something for all of his customers on his paper route. So he gives her a pot holder. They’re cheap gifts, but wouldn’t they add up? Shouldn’t he have given his money to his father?

  Predictably, she says it’s beautiful and feels guilty, and uses magic to make sure he has some presents after all. I just wish the story didn’t waste SO many panels DWELLING on it when it was trying to make us think he wouldn’t get presents. It didn’t need more than one panel of Hilda yelling at Sabrina. Most of this story was just overly sad.

  In the next story, Sabrina smartly says she’s gonna zap up some Christmas candy and cookies because Harvey’s on his way over here. Hilda doesn’t want that and says she’s gonna make herself invisible. Sabrina tells her not to do that, and reveals that he’s coming here to give her a present. Being invisible wouldn’t stop Hilda from going to bother Harvey, and it’d just freak him out because he can’t see her. If she wanted to be able to get away with that plan, why did she tell Sabrina she’d do it first?

  Hilda assumes Harvey’s gift will suck, so I’m guessing it’ll be great, after all the times she loved getting a Christmas gift, even from him. She says she’ll fly out of here. Hilda gets pressured by her family into staying, with Zelda agreeing with Sabrina, and Hilda decides to humor them.

 Eventually, Harvey shows up, wastes a bunch of time and then hands her an animal who looks like he hates her and some cat food. I’m glad the story wasn’t extremely predictable with the typical sappy ending that she cries from how great his gifts are, because it would feel cheap if it was used too much.

  But it’s still sad to see her hate getting a cat that she could always use magic to make like her and some potted petunias that need water everyday that’s of a very specific temperature. Or she could cast a spell. Is it realistic that the water would have to be exactly 68 degrees for a flower? I assume this is a universe where Salem doesn’t exist because Harvey shouldn’t waste time giving them a second cat.

  Harvey says that if anyone deserves those gifts, it’s her, but he’s not saying that to annoy her on purpose after giving her bad gifts specifically as revenge. That’d be out of character anyways because he’s willing to give her a nice gift more often than not.

 The story ends with Hilda lying on the floor with her head in a bucket while her family’s proud of her for resisting the urge to punish Harvey. I guess we have to assume she didn’t go on to punish him afterwards so that this could actually be a happy ending, but that’s not believable.

  In the next story, Harvey rushes Sabrina so they’ll get to the Christmas pageant, which he thinks is the greatest show of the year. Why did he invite Hilda as well as Sabrina? He tells him they’re being too slow. Hilda can’t find her purse, but she must be making up an excuse to spite him because she could just use magic to get it. Sabrina thinks she needs her hair combed even though most people would’ve combed it in the morning and she’s got nothing important to do all day. Plus, she has short hair anyways.

  He yells at them, being more unlikable than usual, but it is relatable for someone to really not wanna miss a show he bought tickets for, and they should’ve been ready earlier. Still, I’m dreading the story only punishing Harvey for not bottling up his impatience with them, when the two of them are equally at fault for waiting until the last minute to get ready. He gets pushed out the door, and says it’s a good thing he’s organized and efficient, apparently, or they’d never get to any place on time.

  Hilda tells him he’s been hollering enough, and his car’s out of gas. Thankfully, he actually had some gas in the garage, and he looks all sheepish about still letting the car run out of gas, so we get to feel like he got some comeuppance. And he wasn’t so above it all, because he wasn’t entirely ready either, which is more in-character for the goofball he usually is.

 Then it turns out the car’s stuck on ice. He asks for a bucket of gravel. At least he’s polite about it, and Sabrina goes around to the back of the house and says she’ll zap up some gravel. Hilda asks her why she’d go to all that trouble.

  For no reason, Sabrina actually doesn’t zap up gravel regardless of what Hilda said, even though Hilda saying that would be in-character for her as someone who doesn’t like Harvey. Instead, Hilda tells Harvey to get in the car and give it the gun when she’ll say go. She says she’ll melt the ice by zapping it, and the car ends up crashing into her garage door.

 The story ends with Hilda saying that only a backwards dummy like Harvey would go forwards when backing out of a lane-way. I guess in this universe he’s new to driving. Who would make that mistake when they have their own car? It’d make more sense if Hilda used magic to make him do this out of spite, and then said this to cover it up. So, all of his rushing them was for nothing!

  The first story was a predictable one where Hilda got mad at her family for celebrating Christmas. Then there’s a story where a kid really needs some presents, and Sabrina eventually makes him some, and Hilda tries to stop her, because she’s just a cartoon witch, but thankfully she proves she’s more than that and makes sure he gets presents after all because, she gets a present.

 Then there’s a story where, after some build-up, it turns out Harvey’s gift for Hilda DOES suck, which at least puts more value on the times where he did give her a good gift. It’s a surprise but it’s also pretty sad. He could’ve easily asked Sabrina what gifts Hilda would like to get. Then Harvey really wants to get somewhere in time, and Hilda and Sabrina are being slow because they’re not ready yet, and when the car’s stuck on ice, Harvey ends up crashing into the garage door. So all of that rushing was for nothing.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 46 Sabrina of the Jungle:

  Sabrina tells Harvey she’s got his costume for the party, even though he told her already that he hates costume parties because he thinks they’re for silly kids. Somehow, Sabrina the good person expects him to try his costume on anyways for no reason. It’d make sense that she was being like this if it was to punish him for cheating on her recently.

  She’s somehow smiling when he says he’s not going, and Hilda says it sounds like fun. She thinks Harvey’s gorilla costume is funny, but then gets offended when he somehow makes the mistake of saying that it’s as bad as being dressed like a witch, in front of her. So she uses magic to turn him into a gorilla rather than get him in the costume. Luckily she makes him a nice obedient gorilla, explaining why she did this.

  Suddenly he has a leash on for Sabrina to hold, and she comes back home later and says that the party went great because she won first prize, but she’s just annoyed that Harvey didn’t talk to her all night and only talked like a gorilla. It’s funny that she tried to imitate his gorilla noises.

 Hilda turns Harvey back to normal, and somehow he suddenly has a craving for banana cream pie, so the story ends with Hilda saying that he always reminded her of a baboon, as Sabrina’s somehow mad at how he’s enjoying eating.

  This story’s about Sabrina somehow being inconsiderate enough to get Harvey to go to a costume party he doesn’t want to go to. So after he somehow decides to insult witch costumes in front of Hilda, Hilda turns him into a gorilla that’ll cause no trouble for Sabrina, smartly of her, so he wins Sabrina first prize offscreen.

 I’m relieved that the only problem he caused Sabrina at the party was saying gorilla noises the whole time. If he was an out of control gorilla, it would’ve been really annoying because Hilda would’ve had no reason to make him like that. It cuts down on annoying padding and makes more sense.

 The problem she had to deal with was already enough, giving her a punishment for being mean to Harvey without going overboard. The title’s misleading because Sabrina was never in a jungle, which could make the story disappointing.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 47 Go for Broke:

  Hilda tells Sabrina there’s something engraved on the inside of a vase and it says made in Taiwan. Because she’s a witch, she’s unfamiliar with it and just spells it out. Most people would just try to pronounce it though. Harvey rushes in expecting a surprise from Sabrina and hits her with the door, which causes the vase to get stuck on her head. Sabrina calls him out on barging in without knocking.

  Somehow Harvey thinks it’s a good idea to fill the vase with water from a hose, insisting that her head will just float out, and Sabrina says it’s a stupid idea. So after some hesitation out of respect for her property, he finally breaks the vase, which he wouldn’t have had to do if Sabrina simply used magic to get the vase off, and then made him forget that she had it on her head.

  Hilda tells him to get out and Sabrina explains that the big surprise was the vase that was supposed to be a birthday gift for Harvey’s mother. She closes the door and when Hilda hopes Harvey’s gone forever, Sabrina somehow assumes she doesn’t mean that. She raises some good points about Harvey’s good nature, and Hilda admits that she’s right that he’s done nice things for her. He has given her gifts.

 Then despite Sabrina closing the door on Harvey and saying he’d better leave, he doesn’t learn his lesson and runs into the house again anyways. He tries to replace the vase with an unbreakable vase he got, I guess from his own house, and he trips and it lands on Hilda’s head. All she’d have to do is point to get it off.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was about Hilda getting a vase stuck on her head because Harvey barged into her house and hit her with the door. Maybe she should make the door open the OTHER way.

 And after a confusingly dumb idea of his, he finally decides to break it to free her, which he wouldn’t have had to do if Sabrina used magic to free her and erased his memory of entering the house. And then Harvey runs back into the house to try to make it up to them with an unbreakable vase, and he trips and it ends up on Hilda’s head.

  While I feel bad for Hilda and Harvey, it could be worse. It’s better for the side characters to be the comedy characters who have the most suffering to go through and not Sabrina herself while they barely suffer at all. At least here I can understand why the writers would want to make them suffer because of their flaws, while Sabrina’s supposed to be the competent main character you look up to.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 48 Green-Eyed Monster:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 220

  Sabrina’s surprised to see Harvey show up at her door because she was expecting a friend of hers. He asks her who that is, looking annoyed. She says it’s a guy who was her friend where she used to live. Well, that’s interesting that she didn’t always live in the same place in this comic. Harvey’s annoyed because her friend Gary used to date her, and she talked about him with him before, and he noticed that she always had a love hungry look in her eyes when she did. He’s just insecure.

  He wonders if she just doesn’t want to go out with her and tells her to just say so already. He accuses her of wanting to embarrass him, even though Harvey wasn’t supposed to show up at her house in the first place. He’s being selfish. Sabrina just says he’s acting so childish that she doesn’t even want to discuss it, when it would be smarter to bother to try to communicate with him like a good girlfriend, although that does seem pointless right now. She could just tell him to leave, at least.

  When the doorbell rings, surprisingly HE gets to answer the door without Sabrina getting to be anywhere near it first. A guy shows up and gets prevented from saying who he is. Harvey kicks him out of the house saying he knows who he is and says that if he ever shows his face around here again, he’ll beat him up.

 Since he said he knows who he is, I wondered if the twist was that he wasn’t actually Gary, but instead, the twist was literally just something I already predicted the second she said that he lived where Sabrina used to live; he’s a warlock who turns Harvey into a frog.

  So, she used to live in the Other Realm, instead of with any mortal relative before her aunts, and that was back when she was old enough to want to date, which is confusing because she clearly sympathizes with mortals and believes in their traditions and would rather try to do a few things the mortal way, which comes off like someone who lived on Earth for her entire life. You’d think that she would use magic at every opportunity instead of forgetting to use it sometimes if she was born in and grew up in the Other Realm.

  And I guess a part of the spell that turned him into a frog was that instead of Harvey screaming and freaking out at being a frog, he just thinks Gary’s weird. I wish his text bubble was a thought bubble instead. The ribbit sound effects do make it clear enough that he’s actually only ribbiting, but they could’ve easily not made it look like Sabrina should’ve heard him talk at first glance.

  This was a very predictable story by Dick Malmgren where Sabrina tells Harvey she’s having a visit from her ex-boyfriend and Harvey gets really jealous and kicks him out. Of course, the cool twist is that Gary’s a warlock, which I predicted right away because he’s from where Sabrina “ used to live, “ and she didn’t make it clear where she used to live, even though there was no indication in any previous issue that she remembers living in the Other Realm when she was still old enough to date.

  So for a witch who grew up in the witch world, surrounded by witch culture, she SURE adjusted to thinking like a mortal FAST. It goes to show you how resilient her good nature was. Also, the fact that she’s ugly by witch standards would do a lot to sour her impression of witches regardless because they’d always be mistreating her there.

 So, she’s lucky that Gary doesn’t care what she looks like. I guess her aunts moved to Earth to get away from all the people making fun of her for her appearance, but if they cared enough to do that, what took them so long? Did she date Gary when she was a kid or preteen?

  The story was predictable the whole way through but at least Harvey got karma for misbehaving. But it could’ve had Harvey be wrong about which warlock he was talking to at the end for at least one surprise. It’d make more sense for witch families to raise their kids in the mortal world until they would be old enough to handle having magic properly, but to be fair they would never be old enough for that.

 But still you would think that she would be on the mortal planet, from the time she was 4 to, 10 or 16, because that way even if she CAUGHT her aunts using magic they would just erase her memory of it. It would be a lot easier for them to hide magic until she’s old enough to handle it if she was raised on Earth. But with a head witch like Della it makes sense that witches wouldn’t be focused on their kids being responsible with magic.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 49 Witch Hunt:

  The annual inspection tour is going on for the next few weeks. Sabrina complains about sneaky spies checking up on their witch activities. Wouldn’t they have been doing that every day, not just annually? It’s not like Della can’t afford to pay them to do that every day. She’s the head witch, she’d have plenty of money! She tells Sabrina’s family to behave in the true tradition of witchcraft, be careful who they talk to – not that she specifies who they can’t talk to, so that’s dumb of her.

  And she says she’s head witch of Coven 937. I thought she was every witch’s leader, not just the head witch of one coven, but to be fair that does make more sense. Logically there would be tons of witches. One person would not be nearly enough to lead every single one of them and boss all of them around. And this explains why, when some witches in the 70s comic decided not to punish Sabrina at the witches’ tribunal, Della had no say in the matter. She was only one of many head witches.

  ‘Cause if witches had magic from the cavemen days they wouldn’t have had to do farming, so they would’ve had time really early on to get to the industrial revolution, which means the Green Revolution which means there would be hundreds of billions of witches. Let me guess. Della will determine that Sabrina and her family are evil enough after all. That kinda twist seems obvious because Della wanted her to be on her worst behavior and Sabrina thinks that she’s too kind, and I’ve seen this kind of story before in the 70s comic.

  A kid complains that his cat is stuck up a tree. Sabrina hopes no witch inspector sees this. She could always make it rain at the same time, so that a bad deed would offset the good deed. But she’s just going by force of habit where she always does a good deed impulsively. When she saves the cat, the cat gets chased by a dog, and the kid calls Sabrina mean because the cat was safe up that tree, and he’s not questioning how she got the cat down. He just immediately accepts that she’s a witch apparently.

  And some guy that saw that calls Sabrina mean, when clearly she was just trying to help because she couldn’t have seen the dog coming. This is a sad, frustrating story. Why isn’t he asking how she did that? This kinda story has been done better, like Good and Bad, which was an Archie’s TV Laugh-Out story that got reprinted in the 70s comic. That was better because it didn’t have people calling Sabrina out.

  Somehow he doesn’t believe that she didn’t see the dog coming, when he couldn’t have either. So it’s really satisfying when she sends a pie at him to stand up for herself. Sabrina pointlessly lies to him about it with a smile, and splashes him with water from a fire hydrant, so he runs away from her calling her a jinx, and slips and falls into a sewer grate.

 Fortunately, Sabrina thinks that she should never let her temper get the better of her like that, so the writer was aware of the fact that she was behaving badly. And it turns out that the guy she bullied with her magic was in fact Della’s inspector, who plans on nominating her for witch of the year. Now I know why he wasn’t asking how she did that. Maybe the kid was just conjured up by him, or another witch inspector.

  This was a depressing story by Frank Doyle where go figure, Sabrina DOES get considered evil enough, because of accidents. But here it’s depressing because people call her out on it when it was still an accident instead of her being oblivious.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 50 The Hard Way:

Laugh Comics Digest the 1974 series Issue 65.

  Della shows up to Sabrina and yells at her for “ abusing “ her magic when I can’t even tell what she did. She infuriates me by calling her lazy and saying that magic is for important things, even though she thinks that it’s only for wasting it on mischief, and we never see her call out HILDA on all the constant casual magic!

 She interferes in her life for no reason, ordering her to take the garbage out the proper way. This is something I’d expect of Sabrina’s aunts in the 2000s comics because they’re against magic in general. Well, this is a terrible start so far. As if DELLA wouldn’t use magic to take out the garbage. This isn’t how you’d imagine having magic to be.

  If the writer knows that the head witch shouldn’t be wasting her time with this, why was she written to come here anyways if that clearly wouldn’t be fun to read about? I’m glad Sabrina snarked after she disappeared, “ So who asked YOU to bother with it? “ and there wasn’t any consequence. Sabrina wants the mail, but the mailman’s not gonna show up for another 15 minutes. So she uses magic to bring the mail to her. This freaks out the mailman and for no reason, Sabrina the good person doesn’t make him forget about this.

  Then for no reason Della is completely out of character by getting mad at Sabrina for scaring a mortal with her magic, which she always WANTS! She yells at her for making witchcraft too obvious.

 Then after Della disappears, and Sabrina’s relatably annoyed at her in her thoughts, Hilda asks Sabrina to dump the filthy dish water even though Hilda could’ve used magic to get rid of it herself right away, because she’s tired after scrubbing the floor for so long. There’s NO REASON she wouldn’t have instantly cleaned the whole floor with magic. That’s Out of Character for her!

  Sabrina thinks that as long as Della’s watching, she’ll carry out an empty pail, and then she’ll use magic to levitate the real dish water pail out the window. Why would she think Della wouldn’t instantly understand that THAT’S the pail with the dish water in it because she’d have no reason to do this with it otherwise?

 Why wouldn’t she think THIS would be considered blowing their cover too? Wouldn’t she be curious about the bucket? The story ends with Della wet from dirty dish water. I wish I SAW the moment where it splashed on her! The karma she got in the ending wasn’t enough for me because the ending implies that she’s gonna punish Sabrina!

  This was a terrible story where Della is completely out of character by nagging Sabrina for using magic for mundane things and forcing her to do it the mortal way, when she’s the same person who says that if you have the power you should use it, and she’d be NO different.

 There’s a 70s comic where she balked at the idea of being expected to do dishes the real way and she didn’t do it. I read these old stories to get a BREAK from the 2000s comic! And like in that, somehow Hilda scrubbed the floor the mortal way and wasted Sabrina’s time trying to dump the dirty dish water.

  But sadly we don’t get to see it land on Della. Instead it ends the story with her wet and wanting to punish her for it. WHY would Della be mad at a witch for scaring a mortal with magic when that’s been what she wanted witches to do since her FIRST appearance?!

 This makes more sense of a person, but it’s too late to make her like this now, and she shouldn’t care because she should know witches spying on the other witches will just erase his memory of the obvious witchcraft anyways, or brainwash him to think it was a hallucination, which he was thinking anyways, so why should she care?

 Otherwise magic would’ve been long since exposed. The fun of the series is seeing the main characters use their magic, so this plot goes completely against that. I can understand the writer being jealous of her for having magic powers. But the solution is to have her suffer realistically, not FORCE something bad to happen to her.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 51 Power Shortage:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 87 Issue 53

  Sabrina wakes up feeling great and wonders what to wear, and uses magic, wanting something simple but tasteful. She uses magic to get her shoes on, and makes her bed with magic to keep Hilda from being unhappy. Now THAT’S what I’d imagine a witch’s life to be like.

 Then Hilda complains that Sabrina doesn’t do anything for herself, which is irritating because she’s supposed to be encouraging her to use her magic to be a good witch, to avoid getting rusty. One point in the 70s comic she complained that Sabrina hadn’t used magic nearly ENOUGH. It seems like in the 70s, she only complained about her using too much magic in the stories where she could run out of magic.

  She’s right, she does do stuff for herself because she’s casting her own spells. She uses magic to pour herself a cup of coffee. For no reason, Hilda accuses her of not taking witchcraft seriously instead of complimenting her on being good at magic and smart enough to take advantage of it, taking it seriously enough that she learned how to do all of these things.

 At least she’s not living in a household where she’d get punished for using magic for these things, where she’d be too scared to do this in the first place. So Hilda’s nagging isn’t so bad when it’s just left at that.

  Sabrina is right that she’s good at magic, and says that one more slice of toast and she’s finished. She’s called lazy even though she’s still expending effort by imagining stuff correctly and using magic. She gets told to do the dishes and does them, and the supposedly proud stereotypical witch is somehow annoyed at her for it. It should’ve been Ambrose in this story if anyone, not Hilda the magic abuser.

 She calls her darling and Ambrose comforts Hilda that things work themselves out, because Sabrina will run out of magic for days. And how am I supposed to sympathize with them for smirking evilly at the idea? Sabrina had every reason to do that.

  Sabrina zaps up clothes and an umbrella in the rain, but for absolutely no reason whatsoever, the umbrella and raincoat disappear. And the story ends with Sabrina walking home in the rain and being forced to scrub the floor herself. She tells Hilda to have a heart and even points out that she could use magic to clean the whole house herself. Well, this sucked. It was better than the PREVIOUS issue because at least she gets to use magic a lot. Sabrina runs out of magic in the 70s comic a few times too.

   Again, you’d think witches would have a way to see how much magic they have left at all times, like a wrist-watch only they could see, and they could get into the habit of checking how much they have by simply looking at their wrist. Or better yet they could hear a beeping sound only they could hear when they’re low on magic. Then they could easily know when they can get away with using magic a lot and know when they have to conserve it.

  The story expects you to be jealous of Sabrina for getting to use magic to float stuff over to her all day, to the point where you’d be happy that she ran out of it for being reckless, but I’m not, because she’s a nice person who didn’t do anything evil here, and her punishments just make me feel sorry for her and reflect really badly on Hilda. The two of them are on opposite extremes. Normally you’d expect Hilda the typical witch to be the one to run out of magic.

 Maybe this story would’ve been better if she did and not Sabrina. For the most part I liked Sabrina’s magic but hated how Hilda was treating her off-setting it. It’s not fair to expect us to think of Sabrina as lazy for this because both the writer and audience should be well-aware that if they had magic, they’d be doing all of the same things Sabrina’s doing.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 52 Surf’s Up:

 Betty and Veronica Double Digest 203, Page 94

  The story starts out with a concept so familiar to me that at first I wondered if I already reviewed this story. Hilda wants to try one of Harvey’s hobbies, because even if he can do it, she HAS to be great at it. I already saw her try this with ice fishing, and golfing, and skateboarding, and ice skating, so that’s why I’m wondering if I read it before, but if I’m even wondering at all, I couldn’t have reviewed it. And I do like these types of stories because they show that Harvey has a new hobby and that makes him more fleshed out.

  At first Harvey tells her she’s too old to go surfing. And predictably, after she challenges him, the wave breaks too soon and she gets embarrassed. So of course, she uses magic. She has him riding on a shark or dolphin, and uses magic so that she’ll stick to the board. Harvey says she’s not even touching the water. Sabrina feels sorry for Harvey and uses magic so that Hilda’s moving a lot slower and Harvey passes her by.

  Surprisingly, after Harvey asks her what took so long, we see a literal turtle under the surf board. Harvey thanks Hilda for the soda as the story ends before we could see if the soda had anything wrong with it. If it doesn’t, that’s really nice of Hilda.

 This was written by Dick Malmgren. This is another one of the stories where Hilda tries to compete with Harvey in one of his hobbies. There’s a lot of stories like this and it always follows the same formula where Hilda ends up terrible at it and needs to use magic to show off, and this time it’s surfing. But it doesn’t get repetitive because I’m just glad to see that Harvey’s good at something and has another hobby.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 53 No Soap:

Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals Double Digest 116

  Sabrina goes home with Harvey behind her and finds out Hilda’s crying, and Hilda lies that she isn’t, but Sabrina confronts her anyways. Lucky for her, Hilda actually tells her why she was crying, and it was because of a soap opera. For some reason Harvey laughs about that. Hilda bores me by talking about the soap opera’s convoluted drama a lot more than necessary. She says one of the characters had a nervous breakdown. I don’t see why Harvey thinks that’s funny.

 Hilda finally calls him out on this. I like that she cares about these characters even though she’s a proudly stereotypical witch. That’s lucky. So she uses magic to make Harvey’s car roll down the street to make Harvey run out of the house, and Sabrina ends the story wondering how many weeks this show’s gonna go on for.

  This was written by Dick Malmgren. Right from the start I felt like this story was being redundant because I already saw a story where Hilda’s family caught her crying because of a soap opera, “ Ms. Softie, “ and I liked THAT story better.

 This one wastes too much time boring me by Hilda describing a soap opera instead of us seeing it illustrated at least, and Harvey laughs about it without even an explanation when he’s supposed to be a nice guy. It took her too long to do something about it.

 I suppose he thinks it’s melodramatic, but it should only be called melodramatic if it’s either a series that has no right to not be lighthearted, or it’s contrived and completely nonsensical, and she wasn’t describing either. It was a lot of bad stuff happening all at once, but that happens in real life too.

Madhouse 110:

  Hilda says she’s come up with a potion. It’s amazing that after all the centuries of witches existing, witches can STILL come up with brand new potions somehow. It’s a potion to quicken the pulse and tingle her blood, and Sabrina says that’s how a kiss from Harvey makes her feel.

 Then Sabrina offers her kid cousin a gift. I’m glad it’s a female kid cousin for a change of pace. So she flies around on the hobby horse, and Hilda reveals that kid witches are still called baby witches by people of her generation. This was written by George Gladir.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 54 The Uninvited:

Archie Andrews Where are you issue 57.

 Ambrose’s impatient and doesn’t want to miss the outing because of Sabrina and Hilda. Hilda justifies that they don’t want to forget anything. Sabrina hopes Harvey won’t find out about this because he’d be the only mortal there. Harvey’s upset that Sabrina didn’t invite him when he overhears Ambrose talking about it, so he drives to the picnic grounds that Ambrose conveniently gave away the location of, and surprises Sabrina. He at least acts nice to her when he shows up and has his arms out for a hug.

 Sadly he doesn’t get one and he lies that he’s just here by coincidence. Sabrina gets told she’s needed somewhere else, and for no reason, instead of her just using magic to brainwash him into going home, or warping him to bed and making him think he just had a dream, she recklessly leaves a mortal alone at a witch picnic, just assuming that he’ll be fine. Well, mortals witness magic all the time and there’s no consequences, but if she knows there won’t be consequences, why was she scared to see him?

  He hears some people talk about the witch’s food they’re eating, which ruins his appetite even though he assumes they were just joking. He sadly throws perfectly good food away. I know why he was grossed out at hearing about lizard’s tails and bat wings, but just because it sounds like it tastes bad doesn’t mean it does. He hears about a broom race, and sees some witches flying on brooms, including Hilda, so he avoids her just barely. He says he must have hallucinated.

  Then he sees the so-called spelling bee where a witch magically summons an alien. This scares Harvey, and then Ambrose compliments another witch on her transformation. So did the other witch transform into an alien? Sabrina finds Harvey passed out, and Ambrose decides to give him a spell that’ll take him home and erase his memory, except he still remembers it when he wakes up, even if he thinks it’s a dream.

 Why did he think it’d kill his memory if it didn’t? This is the exact spell I recommended Sabrina use. Why didn’t she do it right away? I love that Harvey wonders what he’s doing in bed in the daytime. It’s smarter than him not questioning it.

  This story by Frank Doyle’s about Harvey overhearing that Sabrina’s going to a picnic with her entire immediate family, and insisting on coming along because he thinks he should be invited to it, only to predictably freak out at seeing a bunch of witch stuff happen. I like that it wasn’t just Sabrina’s family that were witches, there were a bunch of them, and they called a magic contest a Spelling Bee. So for once we see that there’s a lot of other witches than Sabrina and her family in Riverdale.

 I guess that means it’s more believable now that her family felt like moving here. Her family doesn’t have to be the only witch one in town, but it is less inconspicuous that there’s even more people in Riverdale dressed like witches that have strange stuff happen around them and everyone still assumes they’re just mortals dressed up in Halloween costumes every day.

 Places like Riverdale would get a little more famous for having a lot of witch cosplayers in them for whatever reason. Only Hilda’s in full costume, which is the weird thing.

Archie Giant Series 467:

  Once again we see Hilda arriving at her door looking worse than usual because of an accident when she was flying, in the winter. Sabrina expresses concern and she says she smashed her best broom. She could just repair it with magic. Once again, Hilda got crashed into by Santa’s sleigh. This seems like a very redundant story so far, so it doesn’t get original until Hilda says it’s not Christmas Eve.

  Sabrina says it’s probably a time check of his to make sure he could get the whole job done on Christmas Eve. That’s brilliant. That’d help explain why he’d always succeed at it, because he does practice runs. Ambrose says they have to go buy and wrap gifts. Sabrina’s excited to go with him. For some reason Hilda was feeling good enough even after crashing into Santa’s sleigh that she uncharacteristically didn’t bother them by asking why they won’t just create gifts with magic, and asking why they’re even celebrating Christmas.

  Instead Hilda’s so glad Sabrina’s a good kid, and by that she must mean she’s glad she cares about her because she’s opposed to her actually being good, that she uses magic to zap up a Christmas tree to save her hours of work.

 But she should know that if Sabrina’s going to the trouble of wasting time buying gifts with Ambrose, then she won’t appreciate her doing this and creating gifts for them. At least she cared enough to do that, though. She looks through a gift catalogue that came in the mail before creating gifts, so at least she’s trying to come up with good gifts.

  She then zaps a wreath on the door. It’s better than her refusing to celebrate Christmas with them, but go figure, when Sabrina comes home, she cries, in an over-the-top cartoonish way where she says “ wah, “ and that usually happens to tell the audience that the character is being ridiculous and should be seen as a comedy figure.

  Ambrose lampshades that after all the centuries Hilda’s been around, she should know better than to take all the fun out of Christmas. Why would she cry about this? She could just zap away what Hilda created in SECONDS, so there’s no reason to care. Hilda reluctantly teleports it all away, and we see Sabrina happy again right away, thankfully.

  So we see Sabrina help Ambrose bring in the tree, and Hilda is nice enough to make Christmas cookies the hard way. Despite her hating that there’s pine needles all over the rug, and gift wrapping and ribbons everywhere, she still finds it more satisfying this way. It’s not because Christmas has its own kind of magic, it’s because it’s more satisfying to do something the harder way.

  In Memory Lane Refrain, Hilda sees a person dressed like Santa near a cauldron with the word give above it, and she says it reminds her of her youth. Somehow Sabrina thinks she’s talking about Santa when she wouldn’t be sentimental about that.

 She’s of course talking about the black pot, which reminds her of her first witches’ brew, I guess because it was made in one that looked exactly like this. Otherwise, why wouldn’t it just remind her of potions and cauldrons in general? It was lucky she was reminded of something THAT far back.

  In the next story, Harvey and Sabrina act really optimistic about Christmas while walking around, and what Harvey likes most about it is no school, which annoys Sabrina. She’s also annoyed that he talks about Christmas dinner too. Since when is she so easily annoyed for no reason? He’s being relatable here. What’s the problem?

 He even raves about Christmas cookies and candies. What else does she want? She should just be grateful he didn’t just say he liked the gifts. He finally says that the greatest thing about Christmas is the gifts. Then why didn’t he mention it until now? That’s what everyone would think right away.

  Sabrina’s completely unsympathetic and impossible to relate to, calling her boyfriend greedy when you can’t really blame him for looking forward to Christmas presents! And even someone who can zap up whatever she wants would appreciate presents because they come from the heart. So she’d look forward to them too. Instead she picks a fight with him over it. He admits that he’s greedy too. She should be admiring him for his honesty.

  She thinks he’s just selfish, and decides to be selfish herself by abusing her magic so that he’ll get flung around with it and almost hit some rocks, which could’ve killed him. Why is she such a monster in this story? You’d think she’d at least explain what she thought he was missing before this. I assume she means that she thought “ spending time with family “ was the real meaning of Christmas, but if his family isn’t that great to spend time with, that’s not his fault.

  Sabrina complains to Ambrose about greediness and Harvey. Ambrose says that Harvey’s a great kid to insist that all of his gifts be in cash to spend on toys for the kids at the children’s hospital. How would he know this when Sabrina doesn’t? Wouldn’t Harvey wanna tell Sabrina this to brag?

 Why would he refer to gifts that he’s greedy about as gifts instead of just explaining this to Sabrina right away when it was obvious just by looking at her that she was mad at him? It’d make more sense if he was lied to, but then why didn’t Harvey tell the same lie to Sabrina?

 Harvey apparently does this thing every year. This comes out of nowhere to make up an excuse for Sabrina to kiss him. That was a sweet ending, but not nearly enough to make up for the tedium I was just put through by Sabrina.

  In the next story, some kids tell Sabrina merry Christmas, she says it back and appreciates how respectful they are, and then she gets hit by a snowball for no reason. Lucky for them, she’s not in a bad enough mood to punish them with her magic this time. She fortunately smiles and thinks she’ll just have to be more careful the next time.

  Then a snow plow blows some snow onto her. Somehow the guy driving it doesn’t apologize even though he says merry Christmas to her. Luckily she doesn’t punish him for that either. While I couldn’t blame her too much, it’s important to have her not abuse her magic EVERY time someone wrongs her in order to make it clear that she’s supposed to be a nice good person.

  She zaps up an invisible shield in front of her, but somehow she didn’t make it tall enough, so she gets hit by snow anyways. This would’ve never happened to her if she wasn’t walking outside in the snow for NO reason. Why doesn’t she just warp home? I think this story had no reason to happen. At first she plans on getting revenge, but then she sees a friendly neighbor shoveling snow, and is nice enough to decide not to punish him because he didn’t even realize what he did.

  She doesn’t call him out on it to get an apology either, unfortunately, which is good of her, but I’d like to see him apologize. She considerately says Pop Tate might need some help, and he says there’s too much snow on his business’ roof and he hopes it won’t tear her awning. Sabrina thinks he’s the first person today who didn’t clobber her with snow. What, her aunts and Ambrose did it to her too? I guess they like throwing snowballs at her too, but that’s Out of Character for Zelda.

  It’s very predictable that when Sabrina uses magic to melt the snow too close to it, it splashes onto her. She could’ve easily just pointed to make the snow disappear instead. She finally gets the idea to go home and stay there. Never mind, she looks out the window at night and says merry Christmas to the world. So snow falls off her roof onto her.

  In the next story, we see one of Santa’s little helpers teleport to a house and he’s holding a note, and says he’ll see if Sabrina keeps her room clean and whatnot. Why is he talking out loud? He’s supposed to make sure no one sees him. Why would he not be invisible and inaudible when doing this?

 Ambrose sees him and gets upset, but thankfully it’s actually for a smart reason because he thinks Hilda gets mad at people and zaps them a lot. He assumes that this is a regular guy Hilda shrunk instead of knowing that it’s an elf of Santa’s on sight as a warlock. So he tries to use magic on him.

  But out of nowhere, even though the elf feels it and it hurts, nothing happens to him. I wish it was explained that Santa makes his elves and him immune to witchcraft in case a witch tries to hex them for intruding on their home because that’d make him look smart and justify this story. The elf is rude to Ambrose and he apologizes to the elf and explains what he was trying to do. It’s always been nice that the elf was in red instead of green for a change, at least, even if it doesn’t make as much sense to me.

  He hovers and says he’s happy with the way he is. Ambrose says he can’t go through life like that and uses magic on him again, which scares him into warping away. Somehow Ambrose thinks HE did that to him and his spells are working backwards, instead of simply assuming that the funny-dressed elf is a warlock.

 Thankfully, the elf does have a soft side. He tells Santa to be real nice to Sabrina because she has to put up with Ambrose. Too bad the story ends without us finding out what extra thing Santa was gonna do for her. That’d have been more effort to write.

  The first story made me feel sorry for Hilda for her Idiot Ball with Sabrina on Christmas, when she was being unusually nice. The second story by Frank Doyle has Sabrina be unreasonably mean to Harvey about the right thing to like Christmas for and then it turns out he’s really generous at Christmas, was too humble to tell her, and somehow Ambrose knows this out of nowhere, getting Sabrina to make it up to Harvey. So Sabrina was tedious.

 The third story has Sabrina get pelted with snow a lot, and I’m glad because I’m still mad at her for last story. The fourth story has Ambrose make a reasonable wrong assumption, but it’s confusing that the elf’s immune to his magic to help him because that’s not explained. The worst part is, it still hurts, so Ambrose ends up in the wrong.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 55 Trick or Treat:

  Hilda loves Sabrina’s cookie, and asks why she’s making so many. I guess she really finds it satisfying to cook the mortal way instead of immediately zapping stuff up. She’s cooking for the young Christmas carolers when they come around. I’ve never met one. Predictably Hilda disapproves, and says that witches don’t celebrate Christmas, they celebrate Halloween. Sabrina’s family celebrates Christmas all the time, so this is ignoring continuity for a second.

  Sabrina says Christmas is full of togetherness and joy and she has a stilted reply. Hilda wastes time reminding Sabrina to be an evil witch, and somehow Sabrina thinks that Della won’t find out she has a Christmas tree in the house. When Hilda asked if she’ll ever learn to act like a witch, I wondered if Sabrina actually would misbehave this story as a twist. Harvey tells Sabrina to see the Santa snowman he made out front. She calls it an original idea and says she’ll go get her coat.

  For no reason Hilda blames Harvey for the way Sabrina is, and not all the OTHER people she interacted with, and she zaps his Santa snowman to ruin it. Sabrina zaps up an iron pipe and tells him to build it again, but this time around with a reinforcement so that it won’t fall down. She lies to him that it was always there. It’s a shame she won’t just reverse time to restore the snowman.

 Harvey tells her to come outside again and Hilda plans on kicking it, so she ends up getting an injured foot. So the story ends with Harvey giving her a crutch with a bow on it. And all because Hilda wanted to kick it because she was so mad when she could’ve easily just melted it.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 56 The Joys of Toys:

  Harvey’s excited to shop at a toy shop with Sabrina for his nephew’s birthday. Sabrina shows good chemistry with him saying that she likes toy shops too for being nostalgic. He plays with a paddle ball, and then the store owner takes it from him and says he’s not allowed to play with his merchandise until after it’s paid for.

 He’s blatantly portrayed as an unlikable person, saying that in his store, his opinions count, so Sabrina says he shouldn’t be in the toy business and Harvey says he’s a grouch. Luckily no one responds to those remarks that he would’ve heard.

  Harvey plays with a hula hoop and wonders if that craze will come back. I remember seeing those, so I guess it did. The store owner says it’s used, now, and Harvey says that just because it was tried out once doesn’t mean it’s used. When EVEN HARVEY is smarter than you, there’s a problem. The store owner sarcastically recommends buying a kid something breakable because they break things all the time.

  Sabrina decides to leave, and thinks that if all those toys were hers, she’d do what she used to do as a kid. She does it now and makes the toys talk and freak him out, so they argue with each other, talking too much. Eventually, he finally runs out of there, somehow surviving crashing through a window without any injuries. The next day, Sabrina has a hunch that she should go back to the store, and it turns out it’s going out of business and having a great sale.

  This story by George Gladir was annoying because the owner of the toy store was too grumpy with Harvey for trying out the toys for free, and there was too much focus on his dialogue. Eventually Sabrina uses magic, but all that happens to give him comeuppance is that some toys talk too much and freak him out. It’s not like he got silly cartoon slapstick. He just stands there for a while and then survives running through a window somehow to have a huge sale in his store.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 57 It’s only Fitting:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 270

  Harvey tells Sabrina he loves the sweater she bought him, and then tells her she paid too much for it. After I saw the story where Sabrina told HIM he paid too much for something and he returned it, I can’t help but find it satisfying to see her on the other end of this. He also says it’s a little big on him, and shows some bad social skills by telling her she should bring back the gift for a refund.

 But at least he has good intentions. He wants her to get half her money back, and at the end of the day it’s better to have a companion that’s honest and looking out for your best interests. He plans on going to another store with her for a sweater that fits.

  Lucky for Harvey, instead of getting offended at him rejecting her gift and overreacting, like Veronica might do, Sabrina just agrees to the suggestion. She asks for a refund. The guy asks if they have a sales slip, which is fortunately in the box. Harvey was at least that smart. The guy tells her to take the slip over to Sweaters and have the sales person initial it. That sounds like more work than should be necessary.

 I guess the store will do literally anything to get people to give up on getting a refund. I hope it’s not this unfairly stupid today, as after Sabrina gets THAT done, she’s told to take it over to claims and adjustments for clearance because she can’t just do that right here. 

 Even Sabrina realizes what they’re trying to do here. She finds this embarrassing, and wishes Harvey wasn’t with her so that she could zap the sweater down to his size. She could do that and then use magic to make him think it ALWAYS fit him so that he wouldn’t be confused.

 I’m not sure whether to think it was good that the writer pointed out that she can do that, or bad because it made it obvious to everybody and made me realize how easily she could’ve avoided this plot. Sabrina’s told someone can’t clear it until it’s processed through central accounting.

  Sabrina gets asked if she has any proof that her name is Sabrina. She says Harvey knows it’s her and her name is even on her bracelet. The guy is deliberately difficult with her and says that she could be wearing someone else’s bracelet. Sabrina finally loses her temper and uses magic to summon some criminals out of thin air, who verify that her name’s Sabrina. One of them grabs the guy and tells him to give her the money.

  But reality ensues because he runs away calling for the police after he’s let down and the story ends with Harvey not having a refund. At least Sabrina foreshadows that she’s gonna use magic to make the sweater fit him, at least I HOPE that’s what is happening when she says he’s gonna grow into it someday. She could be saying that to make him more likely to think it’ll make sense when he tries it on the next time. And he’s clearly better off having an oversized sweater than an undersized one.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was an interesting plot to me about Harvey actually suggesting to Sabrina that she return his gift for a refund, and Sabrina’s the best girlfriend EVER because she agrees without complaint instead of getting openly offended, which is a relief because it’d be annoying otherwise, and the clothing store has them go to a huge amount of people just to try to get a refund. And then at the end of it, the guy has the gall to ask Sabrina for proof of her identity.

  Why couldn’t she just show him her driver’s license or her health card? It’d have her name AND photo on it and if she doesn’t have either, why not her library card? It sure is a shame that she didn’t come here with her purse because she was in a hurry. Instead Sabrina loses her temper before either of them could think of that and summons a criminal to threaten the jerk, but sadly we don’t see any slapstick and instead he just runs away without giving her a refund.

  So everything she went through was for nothing. She could’ve just told him to go home and hope he’ll grow into the sweater someday at the start of the story. I hope it’s not actually that hard to get a refund but I’ve never tried it at one of these stores, so I can’t really speak about whether it’s a big plot hole or not.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 58 The Kingpin:

  Harvey says he got to Sabrina’s house as fast as he could and she surprises him with concert tickets, but there’s a reason they’re for free. They’re for a flute recital. She says it’s an opportunity for him to widen his musical background, and he thinks it’s just a stuffed shirt concert and would rather go bowling. She says he could do that anytime and she’s bad at it. Wouldn’t she have gotten into the habit of using magic to look good at it? I remember that.

  He says he’ll teach her bowling, and she throws it the wrong way, so she has to use magic to make it so that the bowling ball won’t stop bouncing. It goes out into the street and he thinks she’s really strong. This is making me smile, so it must be funny. It bounces off a bus stop, and he runs into someone to avoid it as it hits him.

 The guy calls him crazy, not knowing the context, and the story ends with Harvey beaten up, and he says he’d like to see the concert. For some reason the people in the bowling alley just look angry instead of being realistically concerned about his black eyes.

  This story’s about Sabrina being relatable and showing a new side to her for a change that wants to go to a flute concert for once, and Harvey prefers rock concerts even though rock music would be too loud live, and he takes her bowling even though she’s bad at it.

 Then she makes the thrown bowling ball keep bouncing out the door. I have to assume that she did this just to punish him for taking her bowling, because there’s no other reason. At least it wasn’t predictable like making herself good at bowling, and it was funny to see him chase after it.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 59 Play Ball:

  We see the novel sight of 70s Sabrina playing baseball. She gives advice to Alice, and Harvey thinks it’s silly because he thinks the girls are never gonna be good at baseball, since they’re girls, which demonstrates why Sabrina was barely written as playing baseball back then. A girl says that this is softball. Other than her not having a pitcher’s mitt, I don’t see a difference.

  Harvey wastes time with rude comments and it distracts Sabrina so that she can’t hit the ball. So when Harvey says he’ll show them how it’s done, Sabrina thankfully uses magic to make sure he won’t do well, which is only good because he was being a jerk. It’s pretty obvious that magic exists when the ball moves around weirdly.

  Harvey just calls the pitcher a dummy, assuming that he made the ball move like that on purpose rather than questioning how that was even possible, as if he already knows about witches and casually assumes he’s a warlock.

 Harvey says to let him pitch and he throws it and doesn’t want the girls to see him being clumsy, and he and his friend run into each other. Sabrina wants to get back to practice and Alice is on her side, asking in a cool way, “ Shall we clear the field of the debris? “ She throws a ball at Sabrina and she hits it at the guys.

  This story was boring because it was just another of the trillions of stories out there with a message against sexism in sports. Harvey’s at least got the excuse that he’s supposed to be seen as an idiot, and he’s had this problem in the 70s comic a few times too, and it’s the 70s, so I can’t say that this is forced, but it is a very predictable story.

 It was satisfying seeing the jerks run into each other, and it’s good that Sabrina actually hit the baseball the real way instead of needing to use magic to be good at it, which wouldn’t have proven anything. But other than Sabrina making the guy’s baseball move weirdly, which wasn’t necessary or reacted to realistically anyways, this kind of story could’ve been in ANY franchise.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 60 How Do You Spell Luck:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 268

  Sabrina doesn’t look sympathetic at first thinking of this girl who says it’s nice to see her as a datenapper. Doris tells her that she’s a grand sport to not be upset that she has a date with Harvey. Who would say GRAND sport? She must be only saying she wasn’t upset to annoy her, because Sabrina looked annoyed in the first panel.

  Then she isn’t sure what Harvey’s name is, and Sabrina says that she just got lucky because Harvey plays hard to get. Since WHEN?! He’s always the first to get distracted by girls. She must be lying to her. Doris flatters herself about her own charm and air of mystery, and Sabrina calls that hot air leaking from a swelled head.

  The minute Harvey goes up to Sabrina, you’d think Sabrina would use magic to make him change his mind about dating Doris. Instead, Sabrina tediously wastes our time NOT doing that. She says Doris would have the fact that she has a date printed on a bumper sticker and says, “ With a bumper like she’s got, she could print the declaration of independence! “

 So Doris calls Sabrina bad, and Harvey looks relatable by telling them to stop arguing, but then smiles and says that there’s enough of him to go around. So it’s satisfying when Sabrina gets mad at him.

  So Sabrina decides to walk away and cast a spell to make Doris accident-prone. I guessed at the start that she would fail to ruin their date somehow, like in the Archie’s Madhouse stories with Rosalind. So I hope that doesn’t happen because we have no reason to sympathize with Doris, even if she looks great.

 She falls and Harvey helps her up, gets splashed with water by a car along with Harvey, and she smartly wonders where that puddle came from. Harvey says this hasn’t been a memorable date, even though I’d expect him to say the opposite, in a bad way.

  Doris recognizes the guy who delivers pizzas for a restaurant and greets him for no apparent reason. So Harvey gets hit with a pizza, and sadly the guy says that he could lose his job. Good thing the pizza being sent out of the box is explained as magic or it’d make no sense.

 Sabrina comes around the corner and Harvey says that Doris is a bad luck date. I’ve already SEEN a plot where Sabrina jinxed all of Harvey’s girlfriends when he tried to cheat on her. Sabrina says that Doris says there is no such thing as luck and so Doris is just bad, and Harvey agrees.

  This story by George Gladir was better than I thought it would be, but it was still tedious because of its beginning. It’s good writing that it establishes that Doris is a jerk who deserves Sabrina’s magic abuse instead of Sabrina looking too mean, but it didn’t have to go on for more than one page. Instead it wasted three entire pages at the start on tedium that Sabrina could’ve easily avoided by just using magic to brainwash Harvey into turning Doris down for that date.

 And it’s a relief that Sabrina DID succeed at ruining their date because I remembered the story where she tried to punish a mean girl and could only make her hair look better. It’s too bad she had to have Harvey suffer from the bad luck too. I didn’t expect that, but it makes sense to motivate him to get away from Doris, instead of just making him feel sorry for her.

Archie’s Joke Book 247:

  Hilda’s at a witch picnic and hits the ball with the baseball bat, and then a more regular-looking guy says he doesn’t care if she’s a witch, she has to run the bases like everyone else, as Hilda’s flying on a broom instead. If it’s a witch picnic, wouldn’t this be the norm? He looks like a normal guy, which is confusing at first.

  Sabrina says she put a spell on her typewriter to make it type up her school composition. But of course she fails. She says her spell doesn’t know how to spell. HOW? It’s able to access any knowledge it needs to have. If it can figure out how to write a composition like it’s got a mind of its own, it should be able to learn the right way to spell things even more easily. But she did say a sort of amusing pun.

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 212

  While sitting on a merry-go-round, Sabrina’s told by Hilda that they have to report to the witches’ convention right away. I wish I knew why. Sabrina thinks that a broom is uncomfortable for a long journey, so she flies past Hilda on a flying horse from the merry-go-round. And she says she’ll return it as soon as she gets back. Or she could use magic to create a duplicate of it on the merry-go-round to avoid suspicion. It’d be better if that happened after this.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 61 It’s a Buster:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 202 page 98

  Sabrina tells Harvey to stay away from Hilda today because she has a head cold. Gee, too bad she can’t just drink a potion or read out a spell to cure it. Harvey’s surprisingly smart enough to agree to not go in the house, and Sabrina says she’ll get her bowling ball and be right back. She considerately asks Hilda if she’s feeling better and Hilda wastes my time whining, with a problem that a witch probably wouldn’t have.

  Then some kids suddenly show up and ask Harvey to blow up their beach ball. I’m forced to assume neither of them have the lung capacity to do it themselves. Hilda says the pressure in her head is so bad that she feels like it’s gonna explode.

 So this builds up to a punchline where, when Harvey makes a banging sound, she freaks out and somehow believes that her head exploded, even though she’s clearly still alive. That was dumb, but it’s making me smile so much to see her say, “ My head exploded! “ with huge emphasized text.

  Harvey says it was the beach ball he blew up, and says that cold really affected her brain. It really did. Sabrina begs Hilda not to zap Harvey – who’d hear this right outside their open window – and reminds her that she even gave her her witches’ honor on that.

 But if bad is good with witches somehow, wouldn’t witches’ honor mean nothing? Hilda says a promise is a promise, but in spite of that, without any lampshading of the fact that she’s breaking her promise, she wastes a huge amount of panels casting a spell, which causes Harvey to hurt his back throwing the very first ball.

  This story by Dick Malmgren wasted a LOT of panels on padding because it had too little to its story. Hilda has a head cold, which you’d think an omnipotent witch would be able to cure. It leads up to an amusing joke where she freaks out over Harvey bursting a beach ball, and she casts a spell for an overly long time. That was it? Since when does Hilda need all those candles around her in a circle to cast a spell? I guess that was the joke, that, she did something so menacing, stereotypical and elaborate, and, THAT’S all that happened to him.

Archie’s Joke Book 248 Tree Glee:

  Sabrina sees a lumberjack cut down a tree. I guess she was on a walk home from school. Who knows why she’s here. She says she can’t stand to see trees get cut down and casts a spell to undo it, and writes that down as her good deed of the day, when she should know that the lumberjack would just cut it down again. Even if she warped him away, he’d come back. Even if she turned him into a statue, there’d be another one coming there. But I like that she cared about trees.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 62 Making the Scene:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 225 page 43 and Betty and Veronica Digest 225

  After Hilda complains that being at the beach isn’t fun because it’s crowded with mortals, which makes me wonder if I read this story before because I’ve already seen Hilda complain about the beach in the 70s comic, she’s reminded that she’s not allowed to use magic here and acts like she’ll keep that promise.

 She thinks that woman who just left forgot her purse, and wants to go catch her, because apparently, the same woman who hated that she was at a beach crowded with mortals and wanted to zap up an alligator to scare them, doesn’t want a mortal to leave her purse behind. I would say it should’ve been Sabrina, but this is more interesting.

  A woman thinks that somebody stole her purse. Sabrina could freeze the two in time and avoid this plot! Hilda thinks that a guy with long hair is a lady and says that he forgot the purse. He acts mean to her, saying that she’s trying to be cute, when he should know that it’s not her fault she thought he was a girl with a hairstyle like that. She wouldn’t mistake him for her. Wrong hairstyle and clothes, not to mention she should’ve been able to follow the woman.

  Luckily he says he doesn’t own the purse instead of accepting it to steal from it. For some bizarre reason, when Hilda asks whose purse it is, the owners of the purse RIGHT BEHIND HER didn’t HEAR her SAY this, and didn’t figure out what was actually going on. So the conflict is FORCED because these characters were arbitrarily written to have selective hearing. Yeah, this is a bad story.

  They wanna find a police officer, so naturally she’s upset and threatens to turn him into a toad so that he can crawl back under his rock. The officer shows up and she says she can explain. It was confusing that in the very next panel, he says to stay out of trouble, so, apparently she did get a chance to explain, and he believed her.

 So why is he talking like she’s a troublemaker? There should’ve been a textbox there to say “ after a few minutes. “ Sabrina complains that everyone’s staring at them, which makes sense, since she just said that she should’ve turned them into frogs. So she warps her and Sabrina to a kiddie pool in the woods right in front of everyone.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was about Hilda trying to return someone’s purse, and getting framed as the one who STOLE it. Thankfully the police officer believes her explanation, but it was unsatisfying that it cut past it, and he was still suspicious of her, and then she didn’t wanna be at the beach anymore. That was a depressing story. I guess it was trying to punish her for wanting to turn people into alligators, but she just SAID it, she didn’t DO it.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 63 Rubbed the Wrong Way:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 1987 series Issue 212

  Harvey finds a lamp in the trash outside and for no apparent reason he wonders if it’s an antique that’s worth a few bucks, so he wants to give it to Sabrina. Hilda, despite being a witch, is still level-headed enough to see a lamp and assume it’s just a dirty old gravy server and not a genie’s lamp. She makes fun of Harvey as cheap by sarcastically saying he’s a big spender.

 Harvey compares it to a lamp from the Arabian Nights and wants to polish it up, because she wouldn’t be laughing at him if it turned out to be a real genie’s lamp. I like that it wasn’t and Hilda casting a spell is the only reason it summoned a genie, because that’s more believable than what I expected.

  Also, the genie’s a beautiful lady dressed nothing like a genie, which is surprising, but makes sense because Hilda wants to break up his bad relationship with Sabrina. So for once I get to see what it’d be like if there was a pretty female genie. It’s pretty easy to think about what he’d want from her. So there isn’t MUCH creative to do with this, but it’s worth doing once. He lampshades her appearance and says she’s a knockout, and he tells her to go back into the lamp and surprise Hilda.

  Then he tells Sabrina to hurry over here. She tells him that she has to break off their rock concert date because she has a babysitting job. She really likes a challenge. She really wants to feel like she earns her money, to feel more satisfied with what she buys, when she could just zap up some gold.

 Harvey wastes a bunch of time telling Sabrina the truth instead of simply rubbing it right away, so an entire page is boring because it’s just telling me what I already know. At first I assumed that Hilda would cast a spell so that the genie wouldn’t be summoned the next time he rubbed the lamp and so she’d make him look like a liar and Sabrina would be mad at him.

  Sabrina’s smart enough to assume that Hilda is up to her old tricks because she gets told that the genie is a pretty girl. Harvey somehow thinks it’s smart to tell his girlfriend that he’s gonna get the genie to go to the concert with him, and call her sweetie before she’s come out of the lamp.

 So Sabrina uses magic to make the genie look horrible and Harvey throws the lamp away wanting to have his eyes checked. He could’ve easily assumed instead that the genie looks different or is a different genie every time the lamp gets rubbed, because genies are already magical to begin with.

  This story by Dick Malmgren’s about Hilda using magic to make an old gravy server that Harvey found in the trash spawn a genie lady that he wants to take out on a date. Right away I remembered the story in the 70s comic where Harvey found a lamp in the dumpster and thought it would have a genie, and Sabrina eventually made a genie show up. I’m glad it wasn’t exactly the same plot, and Hilda being needed to make the genie show up is more believable than it being a real genie lamp.

  But there’s no reason Harvey would tell Sabrina that the genie is a pretty lady he wants to date. Why did he even tell her about the genie at all? He’d just keep it to himself. Instead he’s written to be an idiot and doesn’t even get to use any wishes, and Sabrina makes the genie ugly. But he could’ve just, asked to get the genie to look the way she did before. But then Sabrina would cast the spell again, so Harvey would use up all his wishes. Maybe that should’ve been the ending, but that would take longer.

Pep 345 Carry Tarry:

  Harvey went all the way to Sabrina’s house to tell Hilda he wasn’t able to meet Sabrina after school today, and he says he hopes she didn’t mind him not being able to carry her books for her. He’s a surprisingly nice guy in this story.

 Of course, Sabrina was floating her books behind her, so she didn’t mind. That was smart of her. She would freak out any person who’d see it and she’d never know who would be watching, but she knows it doesn’t matter because people would assume they were hallucinating and that nobody would believe them. This was written by George Gladir.

Archie’s Joke Book Issue 252:

Page 17

  Completely randomly, Sabrina gets told by a talking frog that he’s really a handsome prince who needs her to kiss him to turn him back to normal. She kisses him and he turns into what looks like a human, but is apparently an ugly troll. Then he says cleverly that he’s gonna insult the mean witch again to become a frog again, because this is the only way he can get pretty girls to kiss him! That was a clever page.

 What if she doesn’t cast the same spell? It wasn’t likely that Sabrina would find a talking frog here on Earth that used to be a troll though. It’d make more sense if the evil witch was Hilda, and the troll was here because he came to one of Hilda’s parties with Other Realm people.

  Because there’s a mosquito in the house, Hilda scares Sabrina by trying to zap it over and over, even though this way she has to accurately aim a small beam of her magic at a small fast-moving thing, when she could send a bunch of teleportation smoke at it, and have her area of magic be larger.

 Sabrina decides to run out of the room instead of doing what I suggested or at least pointing at Hilda to change her mind, and Hilda says she proved she’s smarter than a mosquito as her house is full of damage that a witch could easily repair, and the mosquito’s just fine anyways.

Archie Giant Series 479:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 289

  It starts with one of Santa’s elves flying away in space, and he thinks that he had no way of knowing that was Santa’s coffee cup that he was mixing paint in. He gets strange vibrations because someone down there has power. So he homes in on Sabrina, and she somehow doesn’t immediately get that he’s one of Santa’s helpers.

 When she tells him she’s a witch, he says she’s kidding him, when he’s a supernatural being himself. Somehow his ancestors come from a different planet entirely from the witch world despite them both looking human. Sabrina uses magic to demonstrate to him, uncharacteristically pranking him.

 He gets mad at her, and uses magic on her to give her a long nose. Well, this story’s annoying. Why would anyone antagonize a witch?! Sabrina covers him in soot, and he does the worst possible thing he could and turns the comic upside-down. I don’t care enough to read it right away.

 Rather than depowering him or turning him into a powerless statue, she takes the stupid risk of challenging him to a magic contest, and she’s stupid enough to think of a prize for the winner, which could’ve given him that prize, a dozen DVDs of her choice if she wins and she agrees to work for him if he wins.

  She’s just being overconfident because she doesn’t know him. She doesn’t even know how long he’s been using magic. He clearly looks older than her! And he has no likability at all, and she doesn’t because she’s stupid here. At least there being only these characters with no likable character does speed up the pacing of a story I want to end. Both of these people could’ve left, instead of bothering each other.

  Sabrina decides that the winner of the contest is the one who can zap up the most balloons in 3 minutes. That’s a pretty creative idea. Witches can exhaust all of their magic in this comic though. She predictably loses because she’s the idiot protagonist. At least she’s still cheerful after that, so it’s not TOO depressing. She’s dressed like Santa, which is at least funny, and the story ends with Ambrose seeing a ton of balloons and saying that Sabrina must have had quite a party.

  In the next story, Sabrina’s happy to tell Hilda she got a dog from Harvey that she finds adorable, but Hilda wastes a whole lot of our time saying she doesn’t want a dog and accuses it of potentially having fleas, thinking that witches can’t have dogs for some reason. Right away this plot just reminds me of the time Harvey gave Sabrina a dog and it howled too much, and the other time she got a dog and it took over Hilda’s bed, so it doesn’t seem original enough so far.

  Sabrina reminds her what happens to dogs that aren’t claimed at the pound and when Hilda doesn’t act like she cares, Sabrina awesomely decides to use magic to stand up to her. She teleports her outside and causes a dog person from the city pound to chase her with a net. I guess this is all happening in Hilda’s head and Hilda can’t question why she’s not able to use magic, which could easily keep her from being put in the pound.

 Hilda wakes up sitting in a chair, and changes her mind and holds the dog, and miraculously says that the dog’s cute even though you’d think she’d be disgusted at it licking her face. I doubt she’ll have a dog in any of the later stories, so this was pointless. I guess this is an alternate universe where she gets to keep the dog, and she doesn’t have Salem, who isn’t even mentioned here.

  In the next story, Hilda tells a door-to-door salesman she doesn’t want any automatic cookie cutters. He’s persistent, so it takes an entire page for her to close the door. Then he goes into her house and says her back door was unlocked. I hope this is just a cartoonish misrepresentation and this doesn’t actually happen. It’d count as trespassing and breaking in because they aren’t wanted in the house. So she could call the police on him.

  She uses magic to summon a monster to scare him, but all he does is try to sell stuff to him. He keeps doing so after he gets grabbed and picked up. It’s sort of satisfying to see, but it’s also boring because it’s so overused. He gets thrown over the fence, and predictably he immediately comes back through the window.

  After a bunch of time is wasted, she casts a spell to summon a vampire. He still tries to sell him something, and then runs away and leaves the house. Predictably when he sees Sabrina, she buys stuff from him, which is just like the story where she bought a peach fuzz remover. But in this story, Hilda doesn’t use magic in the story to punish him for scamming her niece, and instead he ends the story smiling at us and talking to himself.

PEP Digital 122 on page 95

  Predictably, when Della’s excited that it’s Christmas, it’s only because she wants Sabrina’s family to make a mess of the holiday. After using gay to mean happy, she says she wants to mix up people’s gifts, change the cards around, all with no explanation for why she wants that.

 Somehow she doesn’t understand at first when Sabrina tells her that’s not the spirit of Christmas, and she thinks the spirit of Christmas is one of them. She thinks Sabrina’s trying to take all the fun out of the season for her after Sabrina has the guts to tell her that she was hoping she could lay off the witchcraft.

  Ambrose winks while saying that they must be themselves and give Della her gifts.  Predictably the gift sucks and blows up in her face. She says that would’ve been fine for Harvey. She gets mad at another gift, and Ambrose tells her that that’s the kind of Christmas Della wanted. Then she gets given what they really had for her, a new cape and her favorite perfume.

 I guess they got her those gifts just to suck up to her. She’s happy and says that nobody gave her a Christmas gift before. But how is that possible? If THEY gave her Christmas gifts to suck up to her because she’s the head witch, surely a lot of OTHER witch families would’ve. This must be a different universe where she’s very new at being the head witch.

   So she says that a change of pace once a year isn’t such a bad idea after all. I’m convinced that her being a woman is the only reason she keeps getting written to have stunning soft side moments just so that she can stop being mad at the main characters and wanting to punish them, that and the fact that it gets them out of trouble, because most of the time she’s pure evil for no reason. This is really convenient. 

  The first story by Frank Doyle was annoying. Why did the elf and Sabrina have to fight? But it WAS creative that they decided to prove which one was better at magic by zapping up balloons. The second story seems really pointless because, it’s just another story where Hilda gets a dog. So THANKFULLY, it’s NOT REALLY focused on that and instead it’s about Hilda being given a hallucination by Sabrina to show her how it would feel to be a dog who’s chased by a dog catcher and put in a pound.

  Then there’s yet another story about Hilda dealing with a door-to-door salesman. It feels like a rip-off of a story in the 70s comic where, a door-to-door salesman sold Sabrina a peach defuzzer, only this time, he’s selling Christmas stuff. So it was satisfying but also boring.

 I’ve already seen a LOT of stories where Hilda was dealing with a door-to-door salesman and this seems exactly like a plot I’ve already seen, with the only difference being that he’s selling Christmas stuff, and the monsters she summon look different. I like the next story by George Gladir though. While Della was annoying at first, I liked that she hated the gifts she got, and the characters didn’t get in trouble for it, because she ended up enjoying what Christmas REALLY was.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 64 Witch Hitch:

Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals Double Digest 116.

  In terms of new stories, Issue 64 by George Gladir only has a Sabrina’s Silly Single in it. In Witch Hitch, Sabrina sees that her high school football team’s losing, and uses magic to make the football disappear, which just confuses Hilda.

Archie’s Joke Book 253:

  This was released after Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 64, and it’s another issue that wasn’t on the timeline. Somehow I’m expected to believe that every witch in the world sent Sabrina a Christmas card.

 She’s not even the only witch that’s good, so you’d think that her being a good witch wouldn’t make her stand out so much that every witch would know her, and if they did send her these cards, they’d be booby-trapped to prank her with magic because witches in this series don’t approve of using magic for good. Also, the only reason she’d be surprised by this is if this was her FIRST year living on Earth. Why would this take until now to happen?

  Why would she think the Christmas cards are good and all they seem to be if they’re from witches and she’d know witches wouldn’t approve of her? Does every witch get a card from every witch on Earth? Then why doesn’t Hilda imply that this happens for her as well instead of acting like this is special for Sabrina?

 She uses magic and says she’ll send one giant card to the person most responsible for bringing her all of these cards. It’s the mailman, who needs hot water for his feet from his wife, so it’s nice that he appreciates it. He HAS to be already used to witches existing if he isn’t freaked out at seeing the card show up. He has to be a warlock himself then because it’s not legal to read someone else’s mail, so him being a mailman wouldn’t explain him knowing there are witches.

  Hilda says she’ll put up the Christmas decorations with magic. It’s surprising that Sabrina doesn’t get upset with her for it like in a different story where it made her cry. Hilda says that now they have nothing to do, and somehow they’re both on the same wavelength and want to magically take down the decorations, and put them up the boring way, even though Hilda’s usually nothing like Sabrina.  

  Hilda tells a dog and Salem to cut it out because the dog’s chasing Salem. Why is she talking as if both of them are equally guilty? I assume the reason she has a dog all of a sudden is Sabrina felt sorry for a stray, but it’s weird to not explain that, because most people would think it’s a bad idea to have both a dog and cat, especially Hilda.

  She says they’re always knocking ornaments off the Christmas tree, uses magic, and puts the tree on the ceiling upside-down. It’s too bad Sabrina would tell her to change things back to normal because she wants Christmas celebrated the normal way, because this would’ve been smart. I guess it makes sense that she bothered doing this when she’d know Sabrina wouldn’t approve, because she planned on undoing it as soon as she came home.

Archie’s Joke Book 254:

  Sabrina tells her aunts they were right that bobsledding is fun, as she has a surprisingly nice family moment bobsledding with all of them. She says they have to hurry home because it’s starting to snow heavily. There’s no reason for them not to just warp home. Instead Zelda says they only have one broom for all of them to share. Of course they can fly it home sharing it. Why did Zelda think they couldn’t do that?

 Then, after Hilda crashes into the tree without us getting to see the moment where she impacted it because of some dumb smoke, Sabrina says she should give up skiing because she cares about her. She decides to use flying brooms to ski instead, which is clever, even if it’d freak out mortals.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 65 A Bored Meeting:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 210 page 60

  Sabrina wants Hilda to get ready for the school’s PTA meeting tonight. Relatably, Hilda doesn’t care about it, and wants to stay home and read. Sabrina wants her to meet her teachers, even though she dresses like a witch and has the personality she has. She just really wants her to meet them because that’s what other people’s parents do.

 Relatably, Hilda can’t stand stuffy teachers who think they know everything and bore her. She wants her to meet her classmates’ parents, and Hilda thinks they would be snobby, too. She must be insecure. And it makes sense that she would think that, because a lot of people would make fun of her for her witch outfit, so she’d see them as snobs, so she’d expect THEM to be the same WAY.

  Sabrina doesn’t give up and pulls her up the stairs instead of simply warping her. She says she filled the tub for her, acting like a mother, and eventually zaps her into the bath to give her a bath. It’s amusing seeing her say, “ Let’s get your clothes on! “ while Hilda says, “ You don’t listen! “ Surprisingly, when Hilda says a team of horses couldn’t take her to school, Sabrina summons a skateboard below her shoe instead. That WOULD be less… conspicuous.

  And it turns out she has the wrong day and the PTA meeting is TOMORROW night. The story ends with Hilda saying she’s not going tomorrow night either, in the desperate hope that Sabrina will listen, even though she’s got magic. It’s pretty admirable compared to the Animated Series. Sabrina’s brave enough to take charge and use magic to force her aunt all the way to her school, and she gets away with it. I’d expect a witch to be that powerful.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was about Sabrina wanting to get Hilda to a PTA meeting, when it turns out it’s tomorrow night, and Hilda was pretty relatable in not wanting to go. The funniest part was when Sabrina was acting like her mother.

Archie’s Joke Book 255 The Big Apple:

Archie’s Pals and Gals Double Digest 74.

  Ambrose’s surprised that Sabrina has the opera on TV, and apparently Harvey wanted it on because he enjoys it, surprisingly. Ambrose says that Hilda was wrong about Harvey being an idiot, arbitrarily, and wants to have Hilda apologize, but Sabrina saves him the time by saying that won’t be necessary because the way the singer’s Adam’s apple bops up and down makes him giggle.

 That doesn’t make him an idiot, it just means he’s more easily amused, which is an advantage he has over most people who don’t get to enjoy their lives as much. Sure, it makes a bit of a fool out of him, but still. Ambrose was an idiot too for assuming that everyone who likes opera is smart. This was written by Dick Malmgren.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 66 Tacky Situation:      

  I found this in Archie Andrews Where are you 56. Harvey offers to go get Sabrina a pizza, and gets warned that Tony’s closes early today. Who knows why? So he runs out of the house in a hurry and causes Hilda to fall over. He clearly doesn’t care or he’d stop, which makes sense because she always mistreats him, and that’s what would happen if he stopped. And he’d notice running into her because he’d feel and hear it. Sabrina asks her if she’s alright and tells her she’ll get her a cup of tea.

  Harvey remembers that he left his wallet on the TV table. Lemme guess, he’ll run into Hilda again. She says she’s starting to get some feeling back into her legs, and then it happens again. Harvey acts like it never happened and runs out of the house again because he’s in a hurry. This never would’ve happened if she was dating a warlock because then she could just teleport Tony’s pizza to her or warp to right in front of it from the sofa.

  Sabrina stops Hilda from going after him for revenge, and is smart enough to teleport some stuff to her like a football helmet to make her feel more secure. Of course, she creates knight’s armor instead because she’s old-fashioned, and when Harvey opens the door on her, she can’t get off the wall and Sabrina tells Harvey to get a crowbar. So at least he gets a little comeuppance for being annoying because he has to do that instead of eat right away.

  This story’s about Harvey running into Hilda more than once because he’s in a hurry to get to the pizza restaurant before it closes. It’s predictable. Hilda gets some slapstick without doing anything in this story to deserve it and Sabrina’s considerate to her. But at least Harvey gets a little comeuppance afterwards.

Archie’s Joke Book 256 Work Quirk:

  Zelda looks at a want ad and says she’s not qualified to do any job and all she learned was how to create a fog and flashing lights. It’s very convenient that she happened to say only that, even though she’s good at TONS of different spells and also learned how to make brews, because Sabrina says in response that she knows the perfect job for her.

 She takes her to the disco to be a special effects person. This is one of the very rare times where disco was mentioned in 70s style Sabrina and it’s in an 80s story. This was released after Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 66, but I didn’t see it on the Feature Sabrina timeline.

Archie’s Joke Book 257 Tail Tale:

  Somehow Salem sees someone watching TV outside while Sabrina’s taking a walk with Harvey. He hears a commercial saying that dogs deserve the best and gets mad enough to use magic so that the TV breaks. That was depressing.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 67 There’ll be Some Changes Made:

  Sabrina isn’t happy to see a guy she thinks is a big gruesome hulk named “ Thurman, “ of all things and Harvey says he’s famously stupid right in front of him. And somehow, Thurman doesn’t respond to what was said in front of him. Instead he proves he’s an idiot by thinking that he’s not wasting his time telling Sabrina to dump Harvey for him.

 He threatens Harvey, but for no reason, he doesn’t immediately get punished by Sabrina’s magic for that, which is Out of Character. Instead he tells them to be quiet because he somehow noticed a bird, and aims a slingshot at it. I guess he pulled it out of his pocket.

  The bird flies away and he shoves Harvey blaming him for it. Why didn’t Sabrina use magic on him already? She can erase memories. Then for absolutely no reason, he merely threatens Harvey that next time he’ll get hit and then walks away, when he was dead set on hitting him earlier and he just made him mad. This story’s making no sense. Sabrina tells Harvey not to do anything stupid because he’s too dangerous for him.

 Harvey says he’ll have to go home and change anyways because his shirt’s dirty now. Sabrina doesn’t simply use magic to get rid of the stain and then erase his memory. Instead she lets him leave so that she’ll have an excuse to approach the bully herself.

  She tells him that he should be ashamed for picking on the smallest opponents. Then out of nowhere, Thurman screams and says he wants to catch a ladybug and brags about wanting to crush it. Sabrina says he won’t get to, insulting him, and I assume her being a lady is why he didn’t attack her for saving it. Then he wants to run the cat up a tree for being dumb.

  He succeeds and Sabrina lampshades that enough is enough. The writer didn’t need this much comic space to justify her using magic against him. We already hated him from the second panel, but I suppose it makes sense, because rather than her just making him fall over, she outright shrinks him, which could’ve gotten him killed.

 He screams at seeing the ladybug, but it’s not bigger than him, so it’s not as satisfying as it could be. Then he runs because of a bird, and says that if that’s an eye, imagine how big the rest of the animal must be.

  He screams at seeing the cat and Sabrina tells all three of the creatures not to bother him anymore since he passed out and should be able to see their point of view now. So she brainwashed those creatures into merely scaring him. I still don’t think it’s believable that this would cause him to talk to ants like they’re old friends from now on.

 She said in her spell that he’ll eat some humble pie once he’s become the little guy, so the only logical explanation is that he was forced to be like this after fainting as a part of the spell. May in that context could also mean will.

  This story by Frank Doyle spent a long time establishing a tough guy that reminded me of Moose right away as a bully to try to make it look like he deserved Sabrina shrinking him. That was to scare him into being nice to the little guy. The only reason they had to make a new character was that Moose is already dating Midge, so he wouldn’t have tried to hit on Sabrina. And being shrunken wouldn’t cause him to be nice to little things, it’d just scare him.

Archie’s Joke Book 258:

  Sabrina’s reading a book on ESP and somehow Hilda thinks Sabrina can’t learn how to read minds, even though she’s a witch who did that in the box supper story. She tells Hilda to think of a number and SOMEHOW she’s drawing a blank. Ambrose says she IS good to call Hilda an idiot, even though that’d obviously get her to use magic on him. Then Hilda gives Sabrina some food that all of the witches are talking about. It’s terrible and that’s what they say about it. So she only called it a special treat and had her eat it as a prank.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 68 Party Pooper:

  Harvey doesn’t wanna be late for a birthday party, so he tells Sabrina to hurry up and rushes her out the door. Sabrina says she forgot her coin purse and compact, – what does she need money for at a party? and unnecessarily tells him she left it all the way upstairs. She says she’ll get it, closes the door and uses magic to get it quickly. Luckily Harvey doesn’t question that.

  Then he notices a smudge on her blouse. So she goes inside again to magically get rid of it. Instead of being remotely subtle, somehow she decides to completely change outfits, even though that’d confuse Harvey because she was so fast. If she erased his memory of what she was wearing BEFORE, then that wouldn’t be a problem. He says she forgot her sweater and it’s chilly. It’s good that he cares more about her well-being than getting to the party in time. So she goes inside again, and magically brings a sweater to her.

  Then she remembers that she left her curling iron on in the bathroom, and runs inside to magically turn it off. She immediately runs outside after that and he somehow doesn’t question how she did that so fast. If she has magic, why does she even use a curling iron? She’s perfectly fine with using magic a whole bunch HERE. She doesn’t have her birthday gift either. Harvey must have been assuming she had a small birthday gift hidden in her clothes and that’s why he didn’t instantly tell her she didn’t have it.

  So she rushes back inside, with Harvey amusingly being mad about how many times this happened. She uses magic to get the gift, and at the party, Sabrina’s sitting on a chair because she’s exhausted from using so much magic. It’s confusing that Harvey says she was all zapped out, like it was actually a common phrase meant to mean tired back then and he was accidentally right.

  This story by Dick Malmgren’s about Harvey really wanting Sabrina to rush to a party, and I don’t even get to find out who it was for, and Sabrina keeps delaying him by forgetting things. At least she’s always competent enough to use magic to instantly take care of every problem, and it’s kept lighthearted as he doesn’t question for too long why she’s so fast and instead she gets away with it. And by the end, she’s physically exhausted, as if her magic battery is powered by the same food that gives energy to the rest of her body.

Archie’s Joke Book 259 Weighty Problem:

  Sabrina says that she doesn’t know why she bothers with the outdoor scale because it’s always so inaccurate. She uses magic on it so that it flatters her a lot praising her, before telling her how much she weighs, and she’s thankfully so flattered that she doesn’t mind.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 69 Hard Sell:

  A door-to-door salesman wonders if he could interest Sabrina in a cosmetic kit, and she’s insecure enough to think she needs it. She tells him to come inside while she’d get her purse, which is stupid because she just met this stranger and who knows if he’s trustworthy in her house.

 Unfortunately, Hilda just happens to be right next to the front door for some reason, and since he doesn’t just explain that Sabrina told him to wait inside, she says he can’t barge in here like that and magically summons a butler to kick him out, and realistically he is written to wonder where he came from.

  Sabrina goes outside and tells him to come on in. At least she’s a nice person. She says her purse must be downstairs somewhere, and Hilda summons the butler again on him and has him thrown out, confusing him again. Sabrina once again approaches him outside, but then finds out that she’s short on a quarter and will be right back. He knows he’s in for it and Hilda summons a scary animal to chase him up a tree.

  This was yet another story where Hilda deals with a door-to-door salesman. At least this time, he approached Sabrina first, and whenever Hilda kicks him out, he only goes back inside because Sabrina tells him to. It’s still on the surface an overused plot idea from the Sabrina comics. This salesman wasn’t even that bad, probably the most harmless one I’ve seen so far. It was just a story about the same repetitive joke done over and over again.

 There isn’t even a reason given for why Sabrina thought she needed beauty products. She already has a boyfriend who isn’t complaining about how she looks, and if he tries to leave her, she just uses magic, and I never thought of her as being vain or insecure about her looks.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 70 A Wrap Up:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest 265

  Hilda tells Ambrose to stop napping because today’s the day he promised to work outside. It’s Out of Character for him to nap and be lazy. He’s never done that before. I’d expect that of Hilda instead. She wants him to start mowing the lawn and he naturally asks why she doesn’t just zap it. She can’t, because, predictably, Harvey’s out there. Why doesn’t she just ask him to leave, or brainwash him into leaving?

 He naturally tells her to send him home, but she doesn’t provide a good counter-argument against that, even though normally she’d love to scare him away with a giant monster or something. She just wants an excuse to make him do something for her like he promised.

  She walks by him holding something as he thinks that it’s too hot for yard work. I guess the reason he doesn’t use magic to fix that is that people would notice the drop in temperature and Della would tell him off. He wants to lie in the shade until it gets cooler. He casts a spell thinking that he needs another tree for this hammock, even though Hilda told him that Harvey was right here. So of course, he asks where that tree came from.

  It’s kinda realistic that when he says that it was always here and he never noticed before, Harvey believes him. Of course he would’ve not stared at a tree much and memorized that it was there because it never did anything for him. So he’d convince himself that that was why he forgot about it. Ambrose pushes his luck by telling Hilda to not start that noisy lawnmower up, when she clearly told him to help out. He’s not that dumb. I guess he thinks brainwashing her into being fine with him not helping out would be too evil.

 Then he pushes his luck some more by asking Sabrina to bring him a cold glass of lemonade. I guess the reason he doesn’t zap it up is that he doesn’t want to risk Harvey noticing after he noticed the tree show up. He thanks Sabrina for the lemonade that she happily gave him with no catch.

  He pushes his luck again asking for a refill. I guess he really doesn’t wanna risk Harvey questioning him again. Hilda wisely tells Harvey to look over there, but stupidly says “ for a second, “ so it should’ve been obvious to him that she was just tricking him, because she doesn’t say WHY he should look over there.

 She steals his lemonade – him yelling, “ Hey! “ would make Harvey look at Hilda anyways – and then uses magic to tie him up with the hammock, and Harvey says that this is a strange place, as if he’s smart enough to suspect magic anyways.

  This was a confusing story by George Gladir where Ambrose was made an idiot the entire time, somehow thinking he could get away with pushing his luck and relaxing instead of mowing the lawn like Hilda wanted. It’s especially frustrating that when he tells Hilda she could just send Harvey home and zap the lawn, she refuses to, because it means the story could’ve easily not happened. It seems Out of Character for him to be lazy and it’s definitely Out of Character for Hilda to wait so long before asserting herself.

  She did keep telling him to get to work. Harvey being there was the only justification for why she waited so long to abuse her magic on him after he kept slacking off. Granted, his first appearance had him do something as goofy as bring Hilda a pet gorilla, but usually he’s got more sense than Hilda and Della by siding with Sabrina. So this story seemed to just make him uncharacteristically stupid just for the plot.

Archie’s Joke Book 261:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest Issue 214

  After Sabrina wants to play cupid just to somehow make people fall instead, and then hiccups and somehow makes the bowling ball move in a way she doesn’t want when she was using a spell to make it hit the pins, Sabrina compliments Harvey’s sandcastle, and when a wave destroys it, she magically brings it back. I assume she thinks she can get away with this because he’ll assume he just imagined the wave destroying it.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 71 Sun Struck:

  Harvey says that today looks like a perfect day for the beach because of all the women he’s seeing, and Sabrina’s at least smart enough to know why he SAID it’s a perfect day for the beach. He’s somehow stupid enough to say it’s outright gorgeous here, as if he wasn’t obvious enough. There’s some panels that seem to be pointless, where Sabrina wants to put on sun tan lotion and then she lies down for a while.

 Then she sarcastically says, “ Should I ask her to move over here so you can get burned on your right side, too? “ She tells him to go in the water to distract him, and he’s sort of smart by saying that he’ll join her in a second. He says he wants to inflate a beach ball.

  Out of nowhere, Harvey sees Sabrina’s face in the beach ball telling him that she’s waiting, when that’d only confuse him and she doesn’t want him to know she’s a witch. But she knew she would get away with it because he would just insist that he imagined it.

 He wants to talk to the woman and throws a ball as an excuse to apologize to her. Sabrina uses magic to make it so that he gets horrified by her looks. She hits him, Sabrina thankfully turns her back to normal, and Harvey agrees to go into the water because he assumes he’s got sun stroke.

  This story by Dick Malmgren was about Harvey getting really distracted by the pretty women at the beach, which bothers Sabrina. Combine that with him constantly getting threatened by beach bullies in the 70s comic, and she has no reason to go to the beach with him.

 You’d think this would happen every time he isn’t getting bullied here if he has that little self-control and common sense around her. So he gets the Idiot Ball and Sabrina uses magic to make a girl ugly to scare him into going for a swim because he thinks he got sun stroke, explaining why she thought she’d get away with her confusingly obvious magic.

Archie’s Joke Book 262 Pretty Crumby:

Page 17

  First Sabrina tells Hilda that a brat wants to apologize to her, but then she says that same kid is gonna forgive Hilda for ratting her out to her parents about playing hooky from school. She got punished, but baked Hilda a cake. I guess Hilda saw her at the grocery… since when does Hilda ever go outside of her house?

 Why did she see that kid? I guess she looked out the window and saw her? Hilda’s supposed to be cynical, so she’d assume the cake had something wrong with it. She wouldn’t even check it out. She opens the door of her house, and gets a cake thrown in her face for going out of her way to get the girl in trouble. This was written by George Gladir.

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out Issue 72:

  Sabrina’s happy that some bees just built a hive under her roof. Well, bees are good for the environment, and witches like her could easily protect themselves from them, so I guess she should be happy. Hilda’s more easily scared, so she tells her to zap the bees. Sabrina doesn’t want to do that, and says they should call a bee man to get it down, which is surprisingly wise of her.

 I thought she’d insist on the hive staying there, but this change of heart is good because the bees need protection from Hilda. And the bee man would know exactly where to take the hive. But she’d be lucky if Hilda humored her on this idea.

  Hilda’s right, that would be a waste of money when she could just magically zap it down. It’s obvious that she should zap it away instead of sending it DOWN and risking all of the bees going after the nearest person. Is that gonna happen to her? Because she should’ve simply destroyed it instead, logically, so that wouldn’t be justified. Sabrina reminds her that the bees are living creatures. Well, she COULD zap up more bees in the park to replace them. Out of nowhere Hilda says she’s only gonna move the hive.

  She wants to move the hive somewhere far away from here and Sabrina suggests the park. She zaps the hive down and naturally Sabrina wonders if she’s afraid of being stung. Hilda says stupidly that if you show bees that you’re not afraid, they won’t sting you. Sabrina’s smarter than her, saying that she should zap herself up some gloves and a head net. Hilda refuses out of arrogance. If Sabrina was really smart, she’d create those things around her anyways.

  Hilda holds the hive, and somehow it takes more than one panel for her to get swarmed by bees. And she panics and runs away and gets stung. I guess it makes sense that she’s too distracted by fear to imagine herself somewhere else and warp away, or imagine the bees as being disintegrated. You’d think that she’d be stung in the head instead, or the hands, not a part of her body that’s covered.

  This story by Dick Malmgren, about Hilda wanting to remove a bee’s hive from her roof, took too long to come to a very predictable conclusion where the bees go swarm her. It could’ve so easily been avoided if she just warped the hive to the park, but instead, the whole plot happens because she somehow got it in her head that the bees won’t hurt her, and she tries to prove it, when even Sabrina has the good sense to be scared for her.

To be fair she probably assumed that if she summoned a head net and gloves for Hilda, Hilda would stubbornly warp them away anyways, and that’s why she didn’t bother helping her, but she could’ve just summoned them again afterwards.

  Then there’s a comedy page by Dick Malmgren where Harvey complains that the fire in the grill went out again and they’re out of starter fluid. He says they can’t eat raw hamburgers. Hilda says she’ll solve the problem for her and creates a dragon to breathe fire on the grill, and I smile a lot as Harvey runs away, through a fence somehow, and Sabrina says, “ I don’t think Harvey appreciates your sense of humor! “ That’s a pretty subdued reaction from her instead of her just calling her mean.

Ghosts of the Future Sonic Fancomic Reviews Newbie’s Perspective:

Issues that are at least alright: Issue 8. That’s it, it’s got a 1/18 success rate, an abysmal 18.0 rating. This is just an overly dark confusing comic that constantly contradicts the games in bad ways despite insisting that the games as we know them happened in its past, like Secret Rings and Unleashed. For example, Sonic would’ve died from going Super at the end of Unleashed if it was going off of this comic’s lore, but it still uses Light and Dark Gaia. Instead, Generations reveals that going Super heals Sonic. Even the Sabrina 2000s comic had me rate it as better than it in every era.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 1:

  OK, this comic better be good because a lot of people think it is. The sheer fact that it has Silver and Shadow in it has me worried because Silver and Shadow are the worst examples of Forget About My Powers. It’s surprising that most of the first issue is colorless. It’s a better parallel with Other M than I thought, but at least here it looks good and is actually shaded properly, even if it’s too rushed to have color in it.

  Sonic says in front of the Master Emerald’s shrine that Eggman created the perfect weapon and beat him, and he looks injured. That’s pretty dark. The Other M Comic kinda started out on the status quo, with Sonic fighting Eggman, and it just happened that he won because of a Genre Savvy plan. And the only victory that Eggman had was sending him to another dimension. But here, it starts out In Media Res and we don’t even SEE how he achieved his victory.

  Sonic says that Eggman will never get the Chaos Emeralds, as there seems to be a Shadow Android in front of Eggman. If it’s supposed to mean that Metal Shadow is what beat the heroes in this timeline, while I’d normally compliment this as a moment of Reality Ensues, it’s really not because it’s not like Sonic, Tails and Knuckles have been teleported apart, it’s not like a portal was summoned in their bodies. They’re still intact, it’s not like they were smacked so hard that it’s like they were hit by a speeding train. It’s more like they got beat up by a normal guy.

Oh, his super speed let him win. What about SONIC’S super speed? Somehow telling Shadow to use his Chaos Control as a weapon didn’t even occur to him. This would be so much easier to actually be invested in if I saw the story from the beginning, instead of not knowing how he won. Because if he won with his super speed, I’m just wondering why that didn’t happen for SA2 Shadow. Eggman says they won’t win when they’re dead and tells Shadow to use Chaos Control. Or rather Sonic used it.

Something common sense and realistic that would have happened in SA2 if Eggman had been thinking properly, is Eggman would’ve told him to use Chaos Control. I don’t see any “ fire. “ Of course it’s confusing. There’s a light from Shadow and it’s black and white.

  I guess in SA2 he had the excuse where he just met Shadow and was really used to NOT using someone with teleportation power against his enemies, so he just wasn’t creative enough to figure out how broken that power would be when actually used as a direct attack. He’s still supposed to be a genius though. So this is more realistic.

  Anyways, we see narration saying that between the planes of reality, a separate plane exists, where nothing but the energy of the Chaos Emeralds and Master Emerald exist even though those Emeralds exist in physical reality in Sonic’s universe, so, what, does it mean that their energies extend to multiple different planes of existence? I guess so. It would explain how the echidna guardians that died were able to live on within the Chaos Force, I guess. Their souls went into it.

So this energy plane is the starting place of Chaos Control, another dimension entirely is that starting place. That seems unnecessary. I figured the starting place was, the actual plane of existence that Sonic was holding the Emerald IN.

  Anyways, Sonic transmits his consciousness to this sanctuary, and he’s too weak to go Super Sonic. That makes NO SENSE, whatsoever, especially not after I read the Metal Virus Saga where him turning Super Sonic got rid of his Metal Virus infection, and he could do it just fine even though he was literally passing out. Granted, this isn’t IDW, but even IDW made more sense. I figured Sonic would be able to go Super regardless of how tired he was.

  What about Sonic Generations where Sonic was crushed by a giant robot hand and going Super healed him up? If it was like this, that would have killed him. Sonic says he’ll die in the transformation. Yeah, that makes sense. We all know Super Sonic isn’t REALLY invincible! This sure is running off some strange new rules.

  Sure, it’s probably a different universe from the games. But it starts out on Angel Island with a shrine island identical to SA1. If it’s supposed to be seen as an alternate universe, then don’t have it be just like the games if the universe is supposed to be different. That’s just confusing. Wasn’t Sonic exhausted in Sonic Unleashed just before he turned Super? He was just lying on the floor, and he still turned Super. Sure, Sonic’s in much worse condition here, but STILL.

  Anyways, he has to use Chaos Control to send the Emeralds away from Eggman, to another dimension entirely, even if that’ll kill him as well. But Eggman would just take over the world anyways without the Emeralds. There’s not much of a point to doing this. He’s Eggman, if all he uses the Emeralds for, is batteries, then he could build a really great battery and not even need the Emeralds. Imagine if he could make a microverse battery.

  Then out of complete nowhere, Tikal interrupts him and doesn’t want to let him send the Emeralds away forever. But she doesn’t have any kind of logic in disagreeing. She doesn’t explain herself, not even like I did. She immediately goes on to say that she can remove the Emeralds for a time, so if they’re not necessary for the universe to survive, then why does she care? Why would she remove the Emeralds at all, why would she put the universe in danger?! Isn’t it obvious that all the Emeralds do is cause people to fight over them and abuse their powers?!

Why doesn’t she realize that Sonic has the right idea? She should say that maybe some future heroes might need the Emeralds, and maybe that’s her logic. She says that now that Knuckles is gone, Sonic has to take his place in this rite. Sure is dark that the comic STARTS OUT with Tails and Knuckles dead. And I thought Other M was dark. At least it never killed Tails. At least in the Other M Comic, Knuckles was actually used as a character in most of its issues, even if it was an alternate universe Knuckles. Same goes for Tails. This cares even less about Tails and Knuckles.

  Tikal says that Sonic’s soul has to be bound to the Chaos Emeralds to become a link between this world and the Emeralds, and eventually find the right person to bring the Emeralds back, and she has faith that he’ll know who. Why doesn’t she tell him who it is? He could be searching in all the wrong places and never find him thanks to her!

  So Shadow is told to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds, and just being near them causes the brainwashing device to get freed from him because of an explosion of chaos energy that goes through his body, when normally him being around the Emeralds doesn’t CAUSE explosions of chaos energy to go towards him. And because the Master Emerald looks like it does, I can only assume this is BECAUSE Tikal is making the Emeralds go away, and not just a Deus ex Machina from merely approaching a powerful gem. It’s still surprising though.

I’d expect that either he’d be killed from being shocked by chaos energy, or be powered up by it, if it’s willing to damage a DEVICE on him from sheer proximity. Why wouldn’t it damage him too? I never knew he was supposed to be just Shadow with a brainwashing device on him because it was all in black and white, so that’s an interesting twist. That was explained in the description. But that’s the confusion that happens when you don’t color the art. It comes out of nowhere as a convenience for him. Apparently this is a universe without roboticization.

So Shadow jumps onto Eggman and kills him as Eggman looks really weird. He should’ve said, “ Chaos Control, “ during that to explain why his face looked so weird. I won’t argue with his decision, I just wish we saw Eggman get punched and smacked around a lot for some cathartic humiliation. You’d think Shadow would be angry enough to want that after what he was forced to do. So Shadow despairs and cries because he was brainwashed into killing all of his friends. He actually acknowledged them as his friends, wow. I’d never see that in IDW.

  After Shadow sees Sonic approaching the Emerald, Silver wakes up because of an alarm clock and reveals that he’s kept dreaming about that very scene. How convenient. If Tikal is doing this to him, why wouldn’t she just go talk to him directly? She did that for people in SA1 all the time. In fact, if she did that, he would KNOW that it’s not just a dream and dismiss it as something he shouldn’t care about. What an idiot she is!

  So we see a scene that kinda humanizes Silver as he tries to get something to eat for breakfast in the morning. We don’t get to learn what exact kind of cereal he likes to eat, just that he eats cereal, so that’s a shame. And he’s not enthusiastic at eating old fried rice. I’m thinking of him as being in a college dorm at this point. Otherwise, why is he living alone?

Then Blaze knocks on his door and says he’s a half an hour late for his shift, and she says that he’s lucky that she’s the restaurant owner’s daughter, or he’d have been fired the first time he slept through his alarm. At least Blaze has some creativity with her.

  Suddenly, it turns out that Silver’s boss is Big the Cat in this universe. Or maybe he’s just his descendant. I’m just wondering how Big the Cat would be lucky enough to procreate. He just keeps to himself. No wonder I was confused at first. He says he can’t keep this place running without him, which at least explains why he hasn’t fired him, and he tells Silver to get back in the kitchen.

Blaze thanks her father, who has a sweet interaction with her, and Silver wishes his restaurant used paper plates instead because he hates doing the dishes. How would paper plates still be common knowledge 200 years into the future? They’d have been long abandoned.

  He’s told to clear a table for Blaze and Blaze gives take-out to Shadow, since Shadow’s immortal. And she’s so casual about it, like, you’d think Shadow would be famous, but no. I guess she got her, “ oh my god it’s you, “ out of the way, and we’re only seeing her later reaction. It humanizes him a little that he asks for one of the little soy sauce packets like he’s a normal person.

  Then Silver looks alarmed at seeing Shadow and Shadow politely thanks Blaze and says to keep the change, and he follows Shadow out of the restaurant. Shadow tells Sonic that it’s too dangerous and he’s been wrong before, somehow. THANKS, TIKAL! Now I’m just wishing I saw the time he was wrong. What happened to “ You’ll know when you see him. “ So why would he be wrong? Silver looks at him and says that it IS him, and the story ends with one final typo. I’m just relieved that it didn’t have Silver suck at using their powers yet.

  Since Shadow killed Eggman, there was no longer a reason for the Emeralds to be sent away because Shadow was broken free of brainwashing, and if Tikal was omniscient enough to know about Silver already, then she would and should’ve also known that Shadow would break free of brainwashing and kill Eggman, the only person Sonic was trying to hide the Emeralds from, so Tikal should’ve told Sonic the future if she knows enough about it to know about Silver, and not hidden the Emeralds away.

  Or, for this comic’s premise to be a little more feasible, she could’ve told Sonic that in the near future, villains other than Eggman would try to get the Emeralds and so it is fine to hide it, but come on, SHADOW would still be there to defend the Emeralds.

But naturally, she might think that if he can be brainwashed with a device at all, then maybe he can’t be trusted as their guardian, because what if another person capable of making such a device shows up? But that’s a pretty big what if in a world without Snively. What if someone with magic brainwashes him later? That’d be more likely for Tikal to worry about.

  This issue was by Evan Stanley, and was about Sonic dying to a brainwashed Shadow and telling Tikal to take away the Emeralds from the world for a couple hundred years, where he’ll wait for Silver to come around for him, and Silver gets humanized as he wakes up from a dream about that and goes to work at a restaurant like a normal person. So it’s explained how he makes a living, to live on his own. And Blaze is in a creative new position in life too. It started off surprisingly dark, though it would’ve been worse if we actually saw the fight that defeated the heroes.

  If only we saw Shadow beat up Eggman, but it does make sense that he was quick because that’s what he did in one of the endings of Shadow the Hedgehog, but in THAT ending he didn’t have a reason to be really furious with him and do this like here. I was shocked that the issue was in black and white like Other M. It was more of a parallel with it than I thought. The comic is actually in color for later issues. It being surprisingly dark with gore in it is another thing that surprised me. ‘Cause I assumed that this would be a later comic in the franchise.

But apparently the first issue came out in 2007, so it really was an old comic like Other M. I guess the story wasn’t really bad. It was too dark and disturbing, but hopefully it’s mostly not like that and just had to have a dark first issue to set up the premise.

It is good writing that Eggman won because of a surprisingly realistic outcome where he actually thought to use brainwashing on Shadow, rather than the dark thing happening because of forced writing, so this is better than Flynn writing. It’s creative and kind of makes sense. After all the times Eggman used brainwashing in the past, including AoStH and Boom, what took him so long to do this?

  The premise of the series was still forced though because the whole reason the comic happens is because Sonic didn’t turn Super because he thinks he’ll die from the transformation, even though turning Super un-intuitively heals him. So the whole reason the comic happens is that in this particular universe apparently, it changes the rules about how Super Sonic works, which has to mean Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations couldn’t have happened, because obviously Sonic would’ve died if that was the case.

  It’s not explained why the whole comic happened considering that Tikal could’ve just trusted Shadow to guard the Emeralds, instead of actually sending them away for 200 years, because if she knows that Silver is gonna be born, she’ll know that Shadow’s not always gonna be brainwashed either, and won’t be again.

  It’s not full of plot holes and frustrating characters, for the most part. It’s interesting enough. I just can’t enjoy it because of how dark the beginning was. It gives me a bad feeling when remembering it, making me want to just forget about it.

You’d think a fight where Shadow won against the heroes in a realistic outcome would be because he used Chaos Control as a weapon to teleport them apart or tele-frag them with the ground or something, but no, he just beat them up normally, so it didn’t feel like entirely the inevitable realistic result of Eggman having Shadow on his side. It should have been explained that Shadow froze time and THAT’S how he won against the heroes so easily. I just hate how it reminds me of Other M, being a gory, colorless comic.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 2:

  It starts out, after wasting pages, with Sonic telling Silver that this isn’t what it looks like. I don’t get it. Is that a bad joke? Then Shadow tells Silver that he’s been looking for him for a long time. Despite hearing this, Silver freaks out and says they were just a crazy dream and runs away, turning into a giant wuss, even though the fact that Shadow SAID THIS absolutely PROVES that it wasn’t just a dream and they need his help.

And the fact that his dream was a RECURRING DREAM that involved people he didn’t even see until now should also make things obvious. And again, Tikal would’ve prevented this if she told Silver what was up with this dream right away. He wasn’t this much of a wuss in that reboot Silver arc, but it does foreshadow how Wimpified and stupid he would be in it.

  Sonic stands in front of a crying Silver, and Silver’s hand hits Sonic’s fist, and some chaos energy shows up near Silver’s hand. I can only assume it’s because Sonic’s one with the Chaos Force right now and Silver’s glove usually has a special symbol that glows when he uses telekinesis. It’s still convoluted though. In all the times I’ve seen ghosts in fiction, this has never happened just because someone touched their hand.

  Then Silver’s so shocked at this that he faints. He’s not ANTOINE. Yeah, this really DOES foreshadow that stupid Silver arc, which was literally the worst writing of Silver in the history of the series. And I’ve seen pretty much ALL of it!

This is a long way from even 06, as bad as its plot was, at least it acknowledged how realistically powerful a person with telekinesis would be to some extent, because Silver repeatedly grabbed Sonic with telekinesis right away and the only time he was even remotely a wuss at all, was when he angsted that killing someone to save the world was wrong, but if he was as wussy as THIS Silver, he would’ve never had the guts to go try to kill Sonic, or even fight Iblis. He would’ve passed out the second he saw him.

  I’m guessing the justification for how pathetic he is, is that this version of Silver never had to fight Iblis, since his future seems harmless, with Blaze having a father and working at a restaurant. And Blaze is there, which can only be explained by the Sol Dimension simply being a parallel Mobius 200 years apart in time from it, and so of course Silver’s future would eventually have its own version of Blaze. So there is a logical explanation for Silver being a big baby lamer than Satam Antoine, but it making sense doesn’t change the fact that it’s a mis-aimed disservice to his character.

  I’m hoping the comic will make him toughen up, and it’ll be all the more satisfying to see him at his proper character that way, but I can’t imagine why the writer thought this was a good idea. Silver has never been a wimp. He just happened to have a voice that made him SOUND like a wimp and any true fan of Silver wouldn’t be unfair enough to hold that against him.

  I was shocked to read that Evan Stanley thinks she’s a huge fan of Silver, because it never came off like that in the reboot. If anything it seemed like the exact opposite and the writer was making a fool out of him. Even Ian Flynn wrote him with more respect, because at least he had Silver telekinetically grab everyone in the room in Hedgehog Havoc, making him look like a real threat.

  Why would someone become a fan of Silver at all if it ISN’T because of the obvious reason that he’s a telekinetic badass, which would mean he’d be written as such? What else is his appeal to her? And sure, he’s also a naïve dork and I love that about him, but this is taking that aspect of him, which was completely absent in 06 and Rivals and only showed up because of Flynn, it’s completely exaggerating his dorkiness, and I can only assume it’s to try to make him a relatable audience surrogate to a dorky Sonic fan.

I mean, who else is gonna fill that role and work? Chris Thorndyke? At least he’d make sense because he’s just a human boy. Wouldn’t it suck if Silver was just a self-insert character and that’s why he was so wimpy about all the danger?

  Anyways, Sonic and Shadow agree to take him back to the house. So, which house is it? They couldn’t know where Silver lives, so it’d have to be Shadow’s house, but it’d be better if there was a textbox saying where they are immediately. Sonic the Comic always had a textbox in the first panel of a new scene telling you where the characters were, and I loved that for review purposes. That would’ve been great for this comic because it’d be establishing where the characters are to create worldbuilding.

  Despite all the times we saw glimpses of Silver’s future, we never clearly saw, the future version of Emerald Hill Zone or, any kind of current location, other than Angel Island which was Onyx Island in the future. Even then there was no explanation of how things changed. Seeing more of THAT would make it actually feel more like Sonic’s future and not just another dimension I don’t have to care about.

  I’d care more about the comic if I knew where Silver and Shadow lived, like is this Emerald Hill Village, or Station Square? What music should I play? I guess it’ll just be whatever, then. But that’s a nitpick compared to how lame Silver is just as a quick shortcut to making him sympathetic, when he could be sympathetic without being lame.

  And Sonic continues the trend in the series of Silver being referred to as a kid when he’s always been a teenager like Sonic. And he’s living on his own at this point! He never seemed that much older than him. I assume Sonic knows he’s younger than him, but HOW?! Calling him a kid is just condescending. Silver asks him if he’s real and they introduce themselves to him. Shadow tells Silver that while he did kidnap him, if Silver doesn’t help them, “ if we don’t act soon, “ he says, the entire universe will be destroyed. That came out of nowhere.

  Sonic says that without the unique powers of the Chaos Emeralds, all forms of energy in their dimension will eventually stop circulating and reacting like they’re supposed to – WHAT TOOK SO LONG?! It’s been 200 years! Why would there be a 200 year delay? That’s ridiculous! Even the fact that the Emeralds are needed for these energies is ridiculous. It doesn’t seem like they’re needed for that in real life and there’s no evidence to us that Chaos Emeralds exist.

  It’s interesting that the Emeralds are needed for that. I always wondered if them being needed for existence was why simply destroying them so nobody would fight over them again couldn’t happen. Maybe people in ancient times and beyond KNEW THIS, so that’s why that simple solution wasn’t taken, so this has to be the case to fill in that plot hole in the franchise.

  The writer wrote herself into a corner here. I’m at a loss for words, all I wanna say is that it’s ridiculous. This is just as stupid as the apocalypse scenario in 25 Years Later being the result of things that Sonic did to save the world decades before it would end up causing the core of the planet to become world-threatening. Like in that, if that was the cause, why did it take longer than a second?

  It’d be much more logical if Sonic was actually WRONG here since if things haven’t been destroyed yet, they never will be, but that’d make sense, and be an underwhelming plot twist I suppose if it was revealed, meaning the whole tension here was fake, but it’s fake ANYWAYS because we know the writer would never actually have the universe destroyed in this comic. It’s just written to give Silver more incentive to help them, but WHY?!

  Silver was introduced to the franchise as a hero. He shouldn’t need an incentive like this. And guess what, he needed to be forced into being a hero and saving the universe in the reboot Silver arc too, so the writer hadn’t learned! Wouldn’t it be great if it turned out Sonic and Shadow were LYING? That’d make them look brilliant. But no, that can’t be it because that’d be good writing.

  Even the Other M Comic didn’t infuriate me into ranting this much this early. I didn’t get an issue that I outright hated with it until that story where the good version of Predator Hawk was killed off in a forced story arc because of stupidity from all of the characters. So, character incompetence.

Other than that the comic was interesting enough for me to forgive it for the bad art, especially because it right away had an interesting world with a new history from Archie Sonic. This is just the games universe. That’s lazy fanfiction writing. I’ve barely seen any glimpses of the new world that this comic has to offer.

  I loved seeing that Silver was working in a restaurant owned by Blaze’s father and had his own house. What job does Shadow have so that he can pay the mortgage on that house or pay for his groceries and taxes? We should be told that immediately because that’d be good writing! It made the effort to humanize him by giving him a house in the first place, so it shouldn’t be left half-finished.

  Maybe don’t have a boring and frustratingly arbitrary story if you want me to stay invested and keep going through the plot. I say it’s boring because it’s been nothing but TALKING so far and it doesn’t have to have such slow pacing, taking until the seventh page for Silver to be told something he should’ve been told from the start.

  Silver doesn’t think he’s the one who can bring the Emeralds back because he thinks he’s just a normal person. I can understand why the writer would want to show the first time Silver would have ever learned he had telekinesis, we never saw that before. But why hasn’t he discovered he had it already?

He’d have to think to imagine something as levitating in front of him while moving his hand to discover his telekinesis. That’s not very likely to happen in a world where he’s not fighting Iblis where he would be pushed to try that in desperation and discover his powers. But he discovered it in the reboot future without Iblis!

  So with his normal life, it can make sense that he doesn’t know about his powers yet since he never had a reason to try to use them. But first off it actually made more sense in the reboot where people were able to test people for magical powers. And yet his powers still weren’t found out about because then they wouldn’t have had a plot.

But the point is, you’d think the people of the future would have chaos energy detectors because they have Chaos Emerald radars in the present. So, you’d think Silver would’ve found out he had powers a lot earlier. Or at least found out he had chaos energy even if he doesn’t know what exact powers he had.

  If he’s at a point where even he doesn’t know about his powers, how is anyone supposed to find out about them? Trying every single possible superpower and hoping he has telekinesis, I guess. That would take forever! He’d be trying to throw fire and ice for example. He’d be trying every single elemental power he could think of first!

Tikal must be able to sense people with magical powers because she knew there was something special about him 200 years before he was even BORN. I know she’s outside of time and space, but STILL, she’s not an omniscient god, just the daughter of a chieftain.

  Sonic says he already knows where the first Chaos Emerald is and can make a Warp Ring, and he shows him it, and says that it can, to, where the Emerald is. I guess he was supposed to say “ can bring you to. “ So, how does he have the ability to make Warp Rings? He doesn’t have 50 Rings, does he? But even then, he’d only be able to get to the Special Zone. I guess it’s because he’s the guardian of the Emeralds now but we should have been told he’d get that power from that immediately.

  Even if he’s literally making a Warp Ring he’d only be able to get to the Special Zone. Why is he so confident he’ll lead him to the Emerald, why would he know where the first Emerald is? Considering that the world can survive the Emeralds being in another universe called the Special Zone, it’s necessary to explain that it can survive for some time without the Emeralds, but THAT MUCH TIME?!

  Anyways, Silver touching the convenient chaos portal activates the Warp Ring because of a brand new power he always had apparently, which is at least originality even if it’s a Deus ex Machina. Convenient that he can do this while the ultimate life form isn’t powerful enough that his mere contact would cause that AND Shadow can warp with Chaos Control, and the Warp Ring is ABOUT creating a portal to teleport people.

Shadow can teleport people. Odd that Silver needs to be there to activate it. He can’t just be needed because of his telekinesis, he also has to be The Chosen One! Shadow tells him not to touch it too late. If he had never thought to touch the Warp Ring, they would’ve been screwed!  

  The Warp Ring literally does just teleport them to the special zone, specifically the Blue Spheres mini-game, which hasn’t been how the special stages have been in a very long time since it’s Modern Sonic here. I guess the Special Zone cycles through the various special stages, so it’s back at the Blue Spheres mini-game. So if it’s as simple as going through a Warp Ring, why didn’t Shadow just go through Green Hill Zone to get 50 Rings to create a Warp Ring on his own and jump through it 200 years ago to get the next Emerald since it was just HERE the whole time?

  And it’s not like only Sonic can go to the Special Zone. In Sonic CD, the UFOs there are Eggman’s. Eggman put these purple things in the Special Zone. Issue 290 confirmed it. So other things and people than Sonic can enter the Special Zone. We saw Eggman steal an Emerald from Sonic if Sonic failed to get the Emerald in Sonic Blast. I know it’s just a Game Gear game so it’s probably non-canon, but so is this, so it can draw from whatever source it was.

  The Emeralds were seriously all in the Special Zone the whole time? Well no. It’s only the first Emerald in the Special Zone? Why? I assumed that since the Emeralds were stated to be hidden away and it was threatening Sonic’s universe, that meant they were much more genuinely separate from it than usual. I don’t know how long the Emeralds were in the Special Zone by the time Sonic 1 happened, but apparently it couldn’t have been over 200 years. Who used all the Emeralds and sent them into the Special Zone before Sonic first saw them?

  Anyways, Sonic says to just go for the Blue Spheres. Why waste too much time on this special stage area if it’s gonna involve the heroes doing literally the same thing that’s done in the game? So Silver’s in the special stage. Now, if I were to imagine how that would contribute to a story, I’d imagine Silver using telekinesis to make the Blue Spheres mini-game easier.

  If all he has to do is touch the Blue Spheres to get the Emerald, wouldn’t it cool to see him just telekinetically bring entire groups of them to him repeatedly? He can control ENERGY, too, that’s been shown in the Silver vs Enerjak Knuckles arc, and he even threw an energy ball in Sonic 06. He could also send the Red Spheres away from him. I can’t look forward to this happening if he doesn’t know about his powers.

  He better learn about his powers here because right now it looks like all the fun of Silver being in the special stage is going to be SQUANDERED because he doesn’t know he has powers at all. It’s about as fun as if SALLY went into the Blue Spheres game. The only appeal so far is that it’s a new person.

Then Sonic asks Silver where he got that new outfit. It lacks self-awareness here because he doesn’t have any clothes on at ALL, so by new outfit, he means new shoes, so he should’ve just said that. Why did he get a new outfit anyways just because he was in the special stage? That was NEVER a property of them, so why did it never happen to anyone else? That’s stupid.

And that’s why you shouldn’t go off the games universe. Chaos Control is teleportation, but Sonic didn’t have access to any new clothing options for Silver to warp to him. He’s never seen the so-called outfit Silver’s wearing in the Special Zone before, so he couldn’t have imagined it.

Silver continues the trend of only being a loser because he walks right into the Red Spheres even though they were in front of him, he didn’t exactly turn, and eyes are in the front of his head! Is this all because he had his eyes closed last panel? WHY were they closed? How did he fail such a simple task? If this is her image of how Silver is, I can’t imagine why she’d be a fan of him. We weren’t shown that he was surrounded by Red Spheres on all sides and so even trying to go left or right wouldn’t keep him from, well, he was told that he had to jump, so maybe he WAS surrounded if that was his only option.

  Anyways, he panics about being teleported out of this dimension, and uses his powers. Then we see some balls being sent away from him. But they already started the process of teleporting him out of the Special Zone. That was bad. I don’t see how that plot hole would be made. He could’ve easily just used his powers in desperation BEFORE he’d start to be warped away. Instead I can’t take it seriously that he avoided that fate and the rest of the plot’s gonna happen. How do you screw this up? If there’s one thing that’d never happen to Silver in a Blue Spheres game, it’s him failing it!

Anyways, the Emerald appears to them already, even though if they had collected all of the Blue Spheres, this would have happened before Silver would’ve gone into the Red Spheres. You’d think a Sonic fan writing a story would know how the Blue Spheres game worked. And this is the problem with adapting something from the games instead of doing something brand new that could work however you want without being questioned.

So Tikal speaks to Silver through the Emerald, thanking Sonic for finding Silver. It is cool that Tikal can speak through the Emeralds even if there was never any indication that she could. Then after Shadow thinks of Silver as a kid again, Sonic and Silver return to Shadow, who heartwarmingly smiles and thinks that Silver really does have what it takes. Why is Silver back to his old civilian outfit just because he left the Special Zone? Why do this when it just creates a plot hole? At least it’s NEW.

  I’m really glad I got to see Silver wearing a new outfit that makes him look sympathetic and lovable. He has a dark hoodie with long sleeves and strings on it. I wish the textbox was specific about how much time passed instead of just being lazy and saying “ much later. “

He’s overwhelmed by his new life, as I’m wondering why he’s back in his old apartment instead of staying with Sonic. Why doesn’t he just go into the Warp Ring again right away? Since Sonic can sense where the Emeralds are and go to them whenever he wants wherever they are, why doesn’t he just go into the Warp Ring six more times and get all of the Emeralds in a row? Since apparently no Rings are required. It’s the Feist Special Zone plot hole all over again. I have to assume the heroes have to wait until he collects 50 Rings again, and they’re invisible. That has to be explained!

Anyways, it turns out Blaze left a message at Silver’s house because she wants to know if Silver’s okay after following Shadow, but Silver naturally wonders how to explain it to her. It’s not worth risking her not believing him anyways. It makes sense that he doesn’t feel like dealing with being called a liar. But he can prove he has telekinesis to her easily. He can bring her to Shadow and Sonic easily. Maybe there’s no excuse for this frustrating writing then. So he decides that he’s too tired to think about her and plans on just going to bed, putting off telling her the truth.

This issue was by Evan Stanley. Well, this was hard to take seriously. Apparently those Emeralds that disappeared that Sonic made such a big deal about getting back? Oh they just went to the Special Zone. This gets less confusing later in the comic. So, Sonic makes a Warp Ring, and somehow only Silver, not even the ultimate life form, can touch it and go to the Special Zone. There was never any indication only Sonic could go to the Special Zone. Eggman’s robots got into the Special Zone in Sonic Rush. Why couldn’t they just go into the Special Zone the normal way from Sonic 1 or something?

  At least we eventually get to see Silver use telekinesis in the special stage, by sending Red Spheres away, but even then, after he somehow ran into them first, he obviously should’ve just been sent out of the special stage, and somehow he got the Emerald after that when he didn’t get all the Blue Spheres first. Huh? Didn’t Sonic establish that he had to get them even in that very issue? And if Sonic can create a Warp Ring at will, with no indication that he or Silver or Shadow need 50 Rings for it, then WHY did Silver go home instead of getting every single Emerald in a row?!

If you could just go into the Special Zones whenever you wanted in the games, that’s what you’d do. The next issue starts out a week later, and Silver still hasn’t found another Emerald! What’s stopping them?! This story made no sense.

  I hated that in the beginning Silver was such a wuss to the point where even SatAM Antoine would be ashamed of him. He actually refuses to accept Sonic and Shadow and run away from them despite what Shadow’s saying, and then passes out. I guess it makes sense that he’s a wuss since he never used his powers before because he never needed to try to use magic before in this world, and he wouldn’t have gotten the confidence boost and toughening up of learning that he can beat Iblis. So? I still hate seeing him like this, because this isn’t Silver.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 3:

  Oh yeah that COVER is what I wanna see. I’m REAL happy now. How has it been a WEEK since the first Emerald was gotten from the special stage if they can just go into a special stage at ANY TIME? And instead of explaining why they can’t just go get an Emerald at any time, the story is preoccupied with explaining why Silver had no pants in the special stage. It’s because Sonic subconsciously changed his outfit using Chaos Control when they used the Warp Ring. That’s a Hand Wave, why would Sonic want him to lose the pants?

At the time that he touched the Warp Ring, he was too busy panicking over the fact that he did it to think, “ Y’know, I don’t like the fact that he wears pants. “ He wasn’t focused on his fashion. Why does he want his pants gone? It’s not like he’s into Silver. The comic didn’t even imply that before. Remember, AoStH had Sonic kissing girls all the time, not to mention there’s the Sonic and Sally ship.

And before that special stage, Sonic had never seen Silver looking the way he’s supposed to before, in the continuity of this comic. I’m pretty sure, anyways because Shadow didn’t recognize Silver when he saw him and Silver was wearing civilian clothes. Sonic never saw Silver in that outfit before. So it was clearly only because of meta logic that Silver looked the way he did in the special stage, in that people expect him to look that way because of 06. It was there to appeal to fans, but I’d rather have actual logic than meta logic.

  Sonic outright explains that he doesn’t like pants. OK, that does make sense since he doesn’t wear them. Does he not like shirts either? Is that why he got rid of Silver’s shirt as well? It’s interesting to see that a Sonic who actively uses Chaos Control would casually abuse his power over it to get rid of Silver’s clothes because he doesn’t approve of his fashion sense. It takes the reckless troll part of his personality and takes advantage of it.

That’s more entertaining than how Shadow handles Chaos Control, and makes him seem even more skilled at it than Shadow because since when does Shadow even use Chaos Control subconsciously, let alone for a precise mundane thing?

  If Shadow used it subconsciously, he’d be much more effective. And we actually saw that in Issue 159 of Archie. All he did was, like, panic at seeing a bunch of Neo Metal Sonics and they were destroyed, because he used Chaos Control to tear them apart by warping apart parts of them.

  So now that a bunch of my time has been wasted because of that first page’s skewed priorities, Shadow tells them to just help him with the problem at hand, and it’s a good thing Sonic called these creatures around him “ chao “ because I couldn’t possibly figure that out based on the art. And I would’ve been able to appreciate it more for being original if the art was in color. But instead it just adds to the fact that they’re already Off Model because they’re not colored in.

They look more like dogs than anything, especially the one on the right there, because of their black noses. Since when do chao have noses at all? And if it was in color, I’d just think, “ OK, so that’s why chao look like in this universe. “

  Sonic says he had no idea that the Chaos Emerald would bring all these chao back with it. That’s arbitrary. It’s also creative. But again, it’s another time where the comic has something creative happen by breaking the rules of how the game universe works, which just makes it confusing. This comic started out showing us the emerald altar from Sonic Adventure, clearly establishing that it thinks it’s taking place in the games universe. But that was a mistake because now it makes every instance of the games canon being contradicted incredibly confusing.

  Because now I’m just wondering why it took so long for Sonic to accidentally summon a bunch of chao out of nowhere and bring them with him out of the Special Zone, after all of the times he’s gotten Chaos Emeralds in the past. There weren’t any chao around him last issue, so this doesn’t make any sense.

There weren’t any chao in the Special Zone, we saw that. You need to read the description to learn that the chao came back because they brought an Emerald back to the universe for the first time in a very long time. That convoluted new lore needed to be explained in-universe for me to take it seriously. Not everyone reads descriptions.

  This comic should have immediately established that, for example, Manic and Sally are characters in this universe, and they’re both royalty. That’d make it clear that it’s not the games and so things are gonna work however the writer wants. Instead of the Emerald Altar being outside in the open on Angel Island, it could’ve been in a different place. Station Square could’ve been a field with a pond in it, like a town that just happens to have a trains universe. It’s not hard to be a little creative.

  Even a little creativity like that could establish that it’s not the games universe so it can be different. You could have Antoine have psychokinesis instead of Silver. At least the wuss personality would fit Antoine. It’d be weird that he has telekinesis, but it’s less weird than Silver being a wuss. Because it’s like the games, but NOT like the games, I find it incredibly distracting that the writer is just making things up as things go along.

  Granted, I’ll take creativity over a lack of it ANY DAY. Aside from the fact that there’s gore in it, this is better than any comic Flynn’s ever written when it comes to that. But you can be creative without being confusing! For example, giving a character psychokinesis when he wouldn’t normally have it, would also be more confusing but it would lead to him being more competent and doing something he wouldn’t normally get to do, which is clearly a good story idea, while these chao do nothing but waste our time, and are confusing.

  Anyways, while Sonic thinks it’s cool that he chao are here and is happily carrying one, having a soft side and revealing that he can still physically touch things as a ghost, so he’s barely affected by being a ghost at all so he could resume his normal life perfectly fine. He could probably still spindash at things.

  Shadow is responsible by immediately saying that all he wants is to put these chao in a chao garden and get them out of his house. How does Silver not know what a chao garden is? Wouldn’t the internet have told him? What about TV? Was I always supposed to believe that chao are really rare? I figured chao were THE common household pets of the Sonic universe.

  But I guess that not being the case explains why we only ever see Cream with chao in actual canon stories. Maybe the way THIS universe works is that chao are literally only found in the Mystic Ruins Chao Garden and Station Square Chao Garden, and those two chao gardens are the only place Mobians can interact with them other than the chao world. There was a whole separate world for them in SA2! I guess that explain why there’s no chao system after the Adventure games. They’re rare.

But nobody ever acted like Cream having pet chao was a big deal, and said that she had a really rare pair of pets. So it seemed like chao were the puppies of the Sonic universe. If they’re beloved as pets because they’re cute and docile, they would’ve been bred a lot and sold in pet stores, so if anything you’d think there’d be a lot MORE chao in the FUTURE, and Silver isn’t asking what CHAO are, but you’d think he would know what a chao garden is if he knows chao exist. A chao garden is clearly a place where a bunch of chao live in the wild.

At the track our future is heading, where there’s more nature preserves being made and people are cutting down trees a lot less, and usually when lumberjacks cut down forests, they have to replant the trees, so the future is getting greener. So obviously Silver’s future would have MORE chao gardens if there’s more animal preserves. Maybe he’s being too literal-minded and wondering why chao would be able to have a garden or grow a garden. How does he not know that’s what a chao nature preserve would be called.

It’d make sense that he wouldn’t know what a chao garden is if this is a future where there are no wild chao and everyone has them as pets, which would be a logical direction for them. It’s not like there’s nature reserves for just cats or dogs.

  But Shadow still talks as if getting the chao to a chao garden is a possibility even in the future. He’s been on this planet in all this time. You’d think he’d find out if people stopped having chao gardens on the planet. So, while it could’ve been worldbuilding Silver’s future, it’s not, Silver’s just a complete idiot again! And no that’s not fine. Even the writer called Silver an idiot in the description of one of the previous pages for touching the Warp Ring, and that’s not making it funny.

  Shadow explains what a chao garden is, and says that they have unusually high levels of chaos energy, naturally because of all the magical chao there. Again, you’d think Silver would know about that. and Silver asks if they could just use a natural chaos energy radar of theirs to find a chao garden. He asks if Sonic could do that.

  Sonic says that he doesn’t know how, and explains that because the Emeralds have been absent for centuries, he hasn’t gotten the chance to practice finding chaos energy hot spots. If there are still chao gardens in the future and chao gardens and chao are chaos energy hot spots, he would’ve had 200 years to practice finding chaos energy hot spots by finding chao. So that’s a bullshit excuse. He had nothing to do for 200 years but hang around Shadow.

Geez, I hate how depressing that is! That’s NOT how I’d ever want his future to be! At least Penders had his 25 Years Later arc be mostly lighthearted, showing a HAPPY FUTURE for the characters for a kids’ series, so even he has more talent by comparison!

  Conveniently, Shadow looks over at a box of Sonic’s stuff which has survived 200 years, and picks up an Emerald radar with a picture of Tails’ tails on it. It just makes me sad that Tails isn’t in this comic. They could’ve had a different dimension Tails join them at some point permanently. Why not? He could be from a dimension where there’s no Eggman to fight.

It would’ve made Tails look like a real genius if after he died in the first issue, he came back because he had a Project Phoenix like Rick and his consciousness got teleported to another identical body of his, so he left a clone vat or woke up as a robot. Robo-Robotnik returned from the dead every time he died because he just got teleported to a back-up robot body, and that’s Project Phoenix with robots, so Tails could’ve done that and it’d still feel Sonic-like.

So Tails could’ve survived the fight with Shadow and proven how much of a genius he is, instead of Eggman and Shadow being permanently responsible for his demise. Isn’t that too dark?! And how did the ancient echidnas expect the Master Emerald to be guarded continuously for all time if Angel Island didn’t have a way to resurrect its guardian every time he died, like in STC Online? The comic could’ve brought Knuckles back with a type of Guardian Emerald. It could’ve had him in the future, at least wishing he could guard it.

I mean what was the point of the echidnas having Knuckles be the guardian of the Emerald if it was just gonna be for a small period of time 8000 years in the future and that’s it, when there’d obviously be villains past Eggman’s time?

  Eggman is a supervillain because he has access to technology. There’d be people who would be geniuses, have advanced technology and be evil with it after Eggman, like Eggman Nega. Well we better hope Knuckles has children so that his children can be the guardians later. Well, that’s kind of a risky gamble to hope for when Knuckles spent his entire life interacting with nobody and guarding the Master Emerald, and already lots of people never reproduce.

There was no one there in the games universe telling Knuckles, “ Part of the guardianship is that you have to make sure you have an heir at some point. “ We never see Knuckles trying to have a girlfriend outside of Archie.

  Sonic suddenly gets overprotective of his stuff and tells Shadow not to mess with it, even though clearly they need the Emerald radar right now, and Sonic can physically interact with stuff just fine. If he couldn’t, he’d be more justified in getting into the habit of telling Shadow not to mess with his stuff when he can’t because he wouldn’t want him to break it when there’d be nothing he could do to stop him with it.

  Shadow says that because their next destination is so close according to the radar, that’ll make the Chaos Control easier. Apparently the idea of it having a range limit was an idea before Flynn, but it was never implied in the games. He’s the ultimate life form. What does that mean then? Why would he need something to make his Chaos Control easier? It wouldn’t be annoying if the games clearly established the full limit of his powers.

  The radar glows and shows a hologram of Tails, which explains that the radar is voice-controlled and asks what Sonic wants him to do. Sonic’s upset, and uses Chaos Control to send away the chao. Sure is convenient that Tails inexplicably thought to make this hologram so that Sonic could use it better in the very slim chance that he wouldn’t be around, and yet Tails DIDN’T make a sort of resurrection Operation Phoenix for himself.

Remember when Robo-Robotnik was able to die and then wake up in another robot body no problem? Logically you’d think Tails would’ve been able to make that. It doesn’t matter if this is a world where there were no roboticizers. Anyone as smart as Tails could make a roboticizer. He could make that if he can make a fake Chaos Emerald.

  Sonic warps the chao to Green Hill Zone, so it’s new that IT’S a chao garden now. And he angsts because he failed to save Tails. Tails could’ve avoided this if he had made a robot that Sonic could activate that would basically replace him in the event that Sonic would outlive him, and Tails is the cautious type, so he should’ve prepared for the worst, but hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

It makes sense that he’d assume Sonic wouldn’t be happy with a replacement Tails anyways, but he should know that it’d be better than nothing. I mean Tails has a dangerous life, you’d think it’d occur to him at SOME point that he could die early.

 Then Tikal wastes our time visiting Sonic, saying that she can do that because there’s a Chaos Emerald in this dimension now. You’d think that Eggman Nega would’ve showed up at this dimension at some point. And wouldn’t he have brought Chaos Emeralds there just by passing by? He was a villain to Silver in Sonic Rivals. He’s constantly zone-hopping as Archie explained. He dropped a Sol Emerald. You’d think he would’ve come to this dimension. But I guess it didn’t. There are an infinite amount of dimensions that he could’ve come to after all.

  She says she can only visit for a short time, for no reason, having the same confusing forced plot hole as the reboot did with her. She’s ALREADY magical and omniscient. You’d think she wouldn’t have this kind of limitation! Couldn’t she just come back every time she’d be forced away? At which point the limitation would be so pointless, she wouldn’t even mention it. She says that she came to see the chao actually, and she tries to comfort Sonic, who can barely remember his friends’ faces anymore.

  Right from the start of this comic, I noticed that another similarity with the Other M Comic is that the comic has Sonic be sad and vulnerable a lot. Here, Sonic’s basically always like this at this point, but at least in Other M, he was usually in a good mood or trying to be, because he wasn’t depressed because he outlived all of his friends! Clearly a worse idea.

And just like in Other M, the premise is that Sonic was separated from his friends and he misses them. And the premise of this comic is much darker than Other M on paper because his friends were all killed. But it doesn’t seem as dark as Other M in most of the issues because there isn’t nearly as much gore, so it does a good job distracting you. But at least in Other M I didn’t have to put up with the garbage that Sonic is a ghost the whole time!

  Tikal reassures Sonic that it’s okay to cry because it’ll help, being in the role that Sonic was in with Elise at the end of 06. Both Sonic and Elise tend to avoid angsting if they can help it and would rather suppress it, and Sonic even says he was running away from his problems.

  This issue by Evan Stanley didn’t get much done. I think you could skip this issue and miss nothing. For no logical reason, Silver and Sonic returning from the Special Zone with an Emerald brought back a bunch of chao with him. And that’s the whole excuse for the issue! It’s really confusing that apparently it’s been a week since then because I’m just wondering why Sonic and Silver don’t get all of the Emeralds in a row in one day if they can just use the Warp Ring whenever they want, wherever they want.

And the fact that Shadow hates having all these chao in his house is even more confusing because why would he have them there for a week if he thinks they can’t survive there? It’d make more sense if it was taking place only seconds after the previous issue, not a week!

  So the story’s about Sonic using the Emerald radar that Tails had made to teleport the chao to Green Hill Zone, where there’s apparently a chao garden. Most of the story is wasted on Sonic angsting about Tails being gone in the future after a hologram of him was projected from the radar, which just rubs it in that he’s not in the comic.

  Did it really have to be written that Shadow was brainwashed into killing Tails? It wouldn’t be so bad if Tails was gone because, naturally, he wouldn’t be around in Silver’s future 200 years from now. I could understand that. We didn’t need it to be Shadow who killed Sonic, let alone Tails! They could’ve all died of natural causes! He could’ve been killed by something else and become the spirit of the Emerald.

  Yeah having it be in the future is too restrictive because barely any of the Sonic characters can still be around. At least that means the plot is what’s focused on and it keeps progressing. We don’t have our time wasted with the Chaotix bickering with each other, for example. I say that, but I don’t think the plot progressed in this issue. It had its own plot, that was complete padding. We already KNEW that Sonic missed his friends! But Other M had a larger main cast. It had the Freedom Fighters, a beloved idea.

  Right before the start of this issue, there was a link in the description to an extra comic, which makes me wish the whole comic was in color. We see Sonic confident on the wing of the tornado saying Eggman doesn’t stand a chance. Tails has no faith in him for no reason. At least he’s wearing glasses for a change, even if they’re ugly glasses.

 Sonic goes Super and flies off the plane, so I immediately predicted that it was gonna rip off Sonic 3. And it did, Knuckles punched the Emeralds out of him. Sonic’s dialogue is stilted after that. I’m not sure I’d even expect Scourge to say, “ Friggin’ ow, man! “ He tells him his cunning tricks won’t fool him, the art looks awful for a second and Tails says while flying that he’ll stay right up here.

  So what was the point of making that page? A fancomic can be about ANYTHING, there’s no excuse for just ripping off the start of Sonic 3, if you’re not even gonna have it make sense by explaining how Knuckles can punch the Emeralds out of Super Sonic. That was BORING. And Sonic looks awful in the final panel too. It also misspells goddammit, somehow. I’m given nothing to compliment about the story, so insulting stuff like this is all I have to do with it. The art is good but that just makes the uncreative, pointless plot even more disappointing as it was as fulfilling as reading nothing at all.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 4:

  Silver says that his mother sent her son reading assignments. Usually teachers do that. If his mother was a teacher, that’d be great because it’d mean she’d have a job that’s productive and an interest in a particular subject, which would already make her more of a character than Sonic’s parents who don’t have jobs.

So they don’t feel as much like real parents. If he’s just speaking metaphorically like I figured at first and she just sent him books to read because she likes them, that’d still develop on her character a little as a bookworm. If neither of those things were true, that’d mean her character hadn’t been developed and that’d be boring.

  It’s interesting to learn about Silver’s mother for once. It just makes the fact that Silver never has parents look arbitrary. Why don’t the canon continuities show us the parents of every playable Sonic character? I used to say that the reason they get to go on adventures is because they don’t have parents, but Sonic and Tails have parents in Archie and they still get to go on adventures. It’s just missing opportunities for creating new, interesting characters that could have nice interactions with them.

  After Silver floats a pencil or something, Sonic says he can feel the next Chaos Emerald like it’s right here for some reason, but just can’t get into a trance. Why would he need to get into a trance? Wouldn’t he be feeling the next Emerald because he’s sensing the chaos energy in Silver, and maybe himself? He should go away from Silver then.

Silver thinks Sonic’s too hyper to meditate. When was it ever implied that he needed to be in a trance and meditate to figure out where the next Chaos Emerald was? I guess in Issue 1 he did it OFFSCREEN. Knuckles never needed to meditate to search for the Master Emerald. No wonder I found that stupid.

  Silver tells Sonic that his mother sends him reading assignments as part of his home school curriculum. Oh, that’s interesting. Because we never see him like that. And he’s working at the restaurant of a friend of his dad’s, and his friend’s also a homeschooler, miraculously. That explains why he never gets to go to school. Good, but what about all of the OTHER Sonic characters? Who just happened to conveniently meet each other because of Eggman’s involvement in their lives. Sure would be convenient if all of them were homeschooled too.

  Well, so much for Silver’s mother having a character as an actual teacher. It’d be lame if I NEVER learned what her job was. Just as I was starting to wonder if the writer had suddenly made Silver AND Blaze a homeschooler out of nowhere because that’s how she was, the description of that page actually confirmed my suspicion. I knew someone like that once.

I liked Rosie being the teacher of Sonic, Tails and Rotor and teaching them when they were kids. So it was like them being homeschooled, but they weren’t taught by their parents. I could believe Rosie was actually a qualified teacher who fully knew all the things she tried to teach them.

  Shadow is shown snoring, and Sonic complains about it. Silver says he didn’t even know Shadow slept. Why wouldn’t he? And Sonic reveals that this is Shadow’s monthly sleep day, and he doesn’t need to rest or eat as much as a normal person, and eating day is where he binge eats. This is convoluted.

Shadow was made as the ultimate life form specifically so that he could be a cure for Maria’s NIDs, and his chaos powers were only thrown in there so that Gerald could make Black Doom believe that he was making him a useful living weapon for later, when really he wanted to use Shadow against the Black Arms.

  Considering why Shadow was made, why would Gerald have gone through the extra trouble of figuring out how to make a person that only has to sleep and eat one day a month? It’d make sense if he wanted to make everybody like that. He’d be the ultimate life form because he’d be the next step to everybody getting improved. But there was no indication of this in the games. What would Gerald have to gain from making Shadow an insomniac most of the time? Who would want this?

  I could understand him wanting to save money on paying for food for him up in the ARK, though if he looks like a hedgehog person on the outside, I can’t understand how his biology’s supposed to have him survive only eating once a month. This would only make sense if he was a biomass-eating robot that stored a TON of electricity from eating, but also stored energy from breathing, so eating wasn’t necessary, and he only looked organic on the outside. Maybe eating could only provide more energy than breathing would.

  So I can understand the eating day part, but Gerald would have nothing to gain from making Shadow be awake all night nearly every night with nothing to do, so that he might end up bothering people in their sleep out of boredom. Wouldn’t Shadow just sleep at night anyways out of boredom? Wouldn’t he wanna rest out of mental exhaustion? He’s not known to have any hobbies, so he wouldn’t do hobbies at night instead. I guess we’re supposed to assume he just watches TV in the living room all night, like Sonic’s father because he doesn’t have to sleep as a robot.

  Again, Shadow being like this would only make sense if he was a robot on the inside. He looks like he’s the same species as Silver, who does need to sleep. Computers need to be shut off every so often. Well I don’t know much about computers. I guess they would be able to handle going for a month without shutting off, at least way better than a human would. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea. There’s a reason I turn off my computers every night.

  This factoid about Shadow is interesting, but it was never implied in canon and that’s for a reason, because I’m just confused about it. So what if he’s the ultimate life form, what would that have to do with him being like this? You’d think the ultimate life form wouldn’t have to eat or sleep at ALL, then, like Silver assumed, if it’s supposed to mean that he’s outright the perfect life form. No wonder I was confused.

  But it’s a bit more grounded in reality that Shadow can’t be like that and this is as ultimate as it gets. We saw him buying food from a restaurant in the first issue and apparently it wasn’t eating day, and maybe according to this, now it’s supposed to be that he only bought from the restaurant so he could have the food in his fridge for eating day later. Why wouldn’t he just wait until eating day to buy from the restaurant? People prefer to eat fresh food! He wouldn’t have even met Silver! Maybe it’s not worth introducing a concept if I just end up ranting about it for multiple paragraphs.

  Also, I guess I’m forced to assume that if Shadow tries to eat on a day other than eating day, he’ll throw up, and he can’t have an appetite more than once a month, because otherwise you’d think he’d eat every day recreationally because he’d like the taste of various food, that keeps it SIMPLE! That’s what everyone would assume.

Him not being able to eat more than once a month at ALL sounds like a horrible curse to live with. That doesn’t make him superior, and Gerald was a good person when he made him, so he would have known that and not made him like that. Imagine if Sonic could only eat chili dogs once a month!

  To FORCE the plot, Silver just happens to be reading The Arabian Nights, out of all of the other books he could have been assigned. Well, that’s convenient! Coincidences do happen, but STILL, it’s flimsy to have a plot that could have so easily not happened. It was more likely that Sonic had that book, because I could assume he got it from a library or Tails. Why would a teenager be randomly assigned the Arabian Nights as a school book to read, of all the books he could’ve gotten, really?

He could’ve checked it out from a library and it would’ve made more sense. I think it would’ve made a less forced premise if Sonic actually did meditate properly, detected that the Emerald was in the book and decided to go in the book.

  Sonic wants to look at the book because of his past experiences with Sonic and the Secret Rings. Silver says he’s gotta read Harry Potter after this. See, that’s a book I was read in school, not that. Sonic finds out that the book is completely blank of its pages and is shocked at it, and then a voice calls one of them a legendary hedgehog and says that their tale has a new chapter. And they both get sucked into the book by magic.

  Sonic tells Silver he’s been in the Arabian Nights before, which is comforting at least. They wonder why they’re here and get greeted by a human Sonic never saw before who claims to be the creator of the book. Then why is she in here, instead of out here? Why did we not see her in Sonic and the Secret Rings if she’s in the business of personally greeting the new visitors? You’d think she’d have personally thanked Sonic at the end of the game. I guess she was busy that day, bowling or something.

  He thinks that she looks familiar despite never seeing her before. Was Shahra based off her? She says that the dark powers that Sonic once defeated are strong again. How? Sonic trapped Erazor Djinn in a lamp last time… They could get summoned to the book for the same reason they did in the game. Instead I’m wondering why this character wasn’t in Sonic and the Secret Rings’ start. I hate that Silver hopes that she won’t notice him! This would never happen.

  Silver and Sonic are given magical gifts and teleported, and for some reason Silver says he hates being teleported, because he’s a wimp in this comic. Even Morty Smith doesn’t say he hates being teleported! He got used to going through portals. Anyways, Sonic sheds a tear at the fact that he’s back to life now, noticing that he can feel his heartbeat and weight. Common sense would dictate that he would become like this permanently.

  Does anyone really like the idea that SONIC, the lighthearted main character of a kids’ series, is a ghost? Any character other than him could be a ghost. I think he wouldn’t wanna leave this parallel dimension if it had a version of Tails in it. But why would it still have him there? It’s been 200 years, surely the same amount of time would have passed in THIS dimension too. It’d have to be explained it’s slower in time. It’d be nice if every page was in color instead of just starting now.

After Sonic runs off, Silver realizes he’s in a skirt that’s the same color as his fur so that it blends in with it, and he blames Sonic’s Chaos Control for the skirt problem. That’s amusing. Then a piece of paper hits him in the face. It sucks up to Sonic, and then says that Silver has to use his gifts, mind and the Ring he has on his finger all of a sudden because the princess who created the Arabian Nights wanted it.

If she was literally a princess like the person who wrote the Arabian Nights was, if she was magical enough to create a universe, you’d think she wouldn’t have felt the need to tell the stories of the Arabian Nights to preserve her life and would’ve just used magic against the evil emperor who wanted to kill her and not even bothered telling the Arabian Nights story.

  I guess despite her ability to magically suck Sonic and Silver into an entire WORLD she CREATED and her ability to give them magical gifts like this, that brought Sonic back to life, we’re expected to believe this princess is still not powerful enough to defeat the dark forces of this place on her OWN. She just doesn’t have the right abilities for it. Even though she wrote the past of this universe, so she can just rewrite the past to kill off the bad guy. Couldn’t she just use a pen and scribble out the part where she wrote about the bad guy?

  So Silver has a Ring that summons Shahra, and she asks Silver what his wish is, and he says, “ A normal life, please. “ I guess she won’t be able to grant it. After all, even in the game itself, it seemed like the only wish she was actually able to grant was summoning tissues. Worst genie ever. And predictably Silver’s line leads to nothing. So it was just a bad joke. It would’ve been actually good writing to have Shahra explain why she doesn’t grant the wish in the story, which even Sonic and the Secret Rings did.

  Silver mentions Sonic in front of her and wishes he could find him because he ran off. So she summons a flying red carpet saying that the fastest way to find Sonic will be from the air. She really is a terrible genie because if she was really magical, she’d just cast a spell to immediately find out where Sonic is. Sabrina the Teenage Witch could do that. I bet she could make a Sonic detector. She could also freeze Sonic in time.

But according to the description she can only summon things. OK so why can’t she just summon a Sonic Detector then? Wow, this wasn’t thought through at ALL. And I thought this was gonna be the GOOD part of the comic because now it’s in color.

  Silver’s a wimp saying that this is getting too crazy for him and he doesn’t know what to do. Again, this isn’t Silver the Hedgehog to me. He never angsted about craziness in 06 or anything, all he worried about was saving his future and what he’d have to do to Sonic. It’s his character to be a worrywart in this comic, but it’d make a lot more sense for ANTOINE. And it would’ve been creative to have Antoine have psychokinesis for a change.

  That’s the problem when the writer THINKS they like a character and insists on using it. I think she only likes the design and powers of Silver, because she certainly doesn’t like his actual personality. I would know on this matter because I wrote fanfiction about Miles and Metal Sonic and I hate their personalities in the actual canon, so I made them more sympathetic instead.

  Shahra says that Sonic told her he’d make her smile, and Silver agrees to help her. Silver flies on the red carpet, at first being scared because it’s going too fast… is the red carpet just magically going in the direction Sonic’s going and just magically knows where he is? I guess it can’t go fast enough that it’d instantly catch up to Sonic because then Silver and Shahra would be sent flying off it and die. Because if Silver was the one in charge of where the carpet would go, he’d just go in the wrong direction.

  And then he asks Shahra if the skirt looks like a kilt to her. Why didn’t he take it off immediately if he hated it, then? And Shahra just says “ well, um, “ instead of saying that she has no idea what a kilt IS, since she lives in an ancient desert. Then she feels some strange magical energy. It’s certainly nice to see Silver alone with Shahra for a change.

  They suddenly get threatened by a magical being from behind, and Silver raises his hand, and says it’s not working, because, Diabolus ex Machina, I guess. That’s lame. Nobody would be that lame. He’d just telekinetically tear it apart by imagining that. This is easily the most embarrassingly written bad terrible story concept. It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t happen more than ONCE! Why in the hell does it happen more than once?! Why does anybody take this seriously?! But no amount of complaining about it makes reading it worth it.

  Sonic comes in and kicks the bad guy and lands on the red carpet. Shahra hugs Sonic, he immediately remembers that he said he’d make her smile and feels sorry for her, and she gives him a pinkie swear saying that she is smiling, though for some reason that isn’t in a text bubble. If Shahra wasn’t so slow to react and stupid you’d think she’d use her summoning powers to summon a weapon to kill the monster. Couldn’t she summon a wand to kill it with a laser? I guess she didn’t think of that because she didn’t have time and was scared. The point is, Shahra shouldn’t need saving, either.

Sonic says that the Djinn tend to attack in groups, so they’d better get moving, and he looks awkward at first because of Shahra. They flee to a Sand Oasis City and Silver says he doesn’t feel much safer here. Really, he shouldn’t need to worry about whether he’s safe or not when he has telekinesis, but whatever. This isn’t the REAL Silver. And he’s reassured by someone who inexplicably already knows his name, and that person is this dimension’s version of Amy, Morgianna, who says she’s seen the adventure awaiting Sonic in her cards.

   It makes sense that the tarot card reading hobby of hers was used again. Amy’s a better name, I’ll just call her that instead. Having her be a psychic was a stroke of genius. I know being able to interpret tarot cards doesn’t immediately translate to being a psychic, but fuck it! Common sense would dictate that anything that would make someone a more competent useful character, is a great idea.

And if someone like Somecallmejohnny says it’s stupid just because it’s not from the games, they’re the ones being stupid. It’s a different UNIVERSE. I guess chaos energy gave her a different power here. If not then this rant still applies to Other M Amy.

  This issue by Evan Stanley was about Silver and Sonic getting sucked into the book The Arabian Nights because Silver’s mother sent it to him as a reading assignment. If she’s still homeschooling him, why on earth is he living in an apartment alone? It can’t decide whether he’s a kid or adult. Sure is CONVENIENT that out of ALL the different potential books he could have gotten, he got THIS ONE. It’s very lucky for Princess S that she was able to get Sonic into her universe, then. You’d think with all her powers she would’ve warped them to it without needing them to have the book.

  Because she needs Sonic and Silver to fight against dark forces that regained their strength, for what should hopefully be a very logical reason considering that she created the universe, including the Erazor Djinn, she sends them into the book. There wasn’t much plot in this issue. They go to the Arabian Nights desert, Sonic runs off happily because he’s alive again magically, and then he conveniently lands on Silver’s flying carpet out of nowhere and they go to Amy in a city.

  It’s not creative to just reuse the ideas of Sonic and the Secret Rings. A fancomic can be about anything, so there’s no excuse for one just stealing the idea of a game for an ARC! It’s just lazy! It kinda defeats the whole point of reading a fancomic if it does that. Other M never did this! It was ALWAYS in comic settings, not this.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 5:

  Amy says to Shahra that she’s the Morgianna who tricked the 40 thieves. Why is Shahra asking this as if she’s unhappy about that? Thieves isn’t spelled right. Amy says she’ll explain more when they’re some place safer because there are some friends waiting for Sonic. Why does she think it isn’t safe here? And Sonic is freaked out and passes out because of the sheer shock of seeing a version of Amy that’s alive again. Amy says he passed out from exhaustion. Um, I guess she only psychically knows the future and not his past.

  Out of nowhere Silver paranoidly says they can’t trust Amy because he fainted because of her, even though they probably need any help they can get in this new world, clearly. He would have a point if he said that he assumes that because he fainted because of her, he has some really bad memories with her, so she can’t be trusted. So Shahra has to be the voice of reason and tell him that Amy’s a good guy. So after Silver was an out of character coward instead of the actual naïve Silver again, Shahra plans to get Sonic on the red carpet.

And thankfully, Silver tells Shahra to not call him master and says that they’re friends. Shahra says that Amy’s starting to go, so she wants to follow her. Why would she go without them? Don’t they need her help, her information at least?

  Silver uses his telekinesis to put Sonic on the carpet successfully, that’s good. Then a textbox says that the safe place for them is Ali Baba’s home, so we see the Knuckles and Tails of this universe, who say that Sonic’s backstory is pretty crazy. It makes sense that this is considered a safer place because Knuckles is there to defend them. But why is Silver a paranoid wuss now?

Sonic wakes up all groggy, having no pain tolerance after all that time as a ghost. I guess the reason he’s in pain is that he bruised his face when he landed on the floor, because it’s not actually like he was in a huge fight earlier. And Amy hands him a drink to get his strength back, I guess with magic.

  Amy says that from what she’s interpreted from her card readings, someone is summoning these low level djinn and magical barriers to effortlessly block her sight. She says block my sight, proving that she actually has psychic sight. This is another similarity with the Other M Comic. In that, Amy was a psychic big time.

Just like in that comic, Amy can see the future. So it’s the obvious idea to the point where two official writers for the Sonic series used it in their fancomics. At least here, she has a great design instead of a terrible hairstyle. At least she’s not constantly predicting character deaths and then they happen ANYWAYS.

  Tails says that all of the Djinn have been coming out of the old foundry near the primordial jungles, and with Silver and Sonic’s help, they might be able to do something. I guess Knuckles with his super strength is still not qualified enough to do something and they’re all smart enough to not be arrogant enough to believe that Knuckles on his own could do something.

So, from what I can gather, Djinn are just the monsters of this world, like the monsters you fight in an RPG. They’re just naturally occurring wildlife that attack people with magic. If they were called monsters, that’d be way less interesting, but that’s what they ARE. They’re not genies. Though in mythology genies are just as likely to kill you.

  Sonic looks forward to going to fight the evil sorcerer there, but Amy tells him that because he collapsed earlier, and she assumes it’s from exhaustion, he and the others are staying here tonight just in case. She also reveals that the thing she gave Sonic to drink had a sleeping pill in it. She won’t take advantage of him, but STILL, that’s off-putting. She’s called crazy and just sarcastically thanks Knuckles. So she lied and it didn’t give him his strength back.

  Then she tells Silver that he’s gonna get a good night’s sleep too after he’s paranoid of her and even Shahra doesn’t trust her. WHY don’t they trust someone who CLEARLY cares about their well-being? All she wants to do is make sure they’ll get enough rest. Then our time is wasted by Silver stating the obvious to Shahra. Eventually when he says that he’s friends with someone named Blaze, Sonic wakes up from that and imagines Blaze looking menacing for some reason, and says it was a bad dream.

  The next morning, Shahra thanks Amy for the hospitality and so does Silver, and Amy offers them some water for the desert. Sonic says he’s not gonna forgive Amy for knocking him out twice. Then Sonic can’t resist the temptation anymore and calls her Amy and says that he should’ve been there to save his own version of Amy, and then there’s a few lines thrown in there for fanservice where he says that maybe if he had enough time, he could’ve made it work with Amy. This would only happen in a fancomic or fanfiction, so I can’t take it very seriously.

Amy’s just confused, and the heroes all leave. And they head for Dinosaur Jungle, because it’s super creative to just reuse levels from a video game for a story and not distracting at all. Again, it’s a fancomic, I expect a setting NOT from the games.

  Silver reveals that he knows the exact name of a type of dinosaur. I have to assume the dinosaurs are magical so that they can still breathe in modern air. It’d actually be less confusing if they were literally just djinn who LOOK like dinosaurs. Sonic says they’re basically out of water, and Knuckles says they’re not gonna make it to the foundry by nightfall. I guess Sonic had to intentionally not run as fast as possible so that his friends could keep up with him.

  He could make it to the bad guy by himself, but he probably thinks he’d need his friends’ help to actually defeat him. And he doesn’t want to risk them getting killed by not being around them to protect them for even a couple of seconds. Shahra says it would be best to camp in this area tonight and proceed tomorrow.

  Sonic agrees, and then he yells at the Shadow of this universe saying that every time he meets a version of him, he tries to kill him. It’s explained that this Shadow is one of the higher Djinn not bound by servitude to Solomon, and he’s a wind genie, of course because he’s associated with fast speed. He’s angry at people ignoring him and says he has to speak with or kill Sonic. Why is he being so antagonistic?

  He says that he’s met with Sonic before and knows he’s the legendary hedgehog. No he HASN’T. He’s supposed to be Uhu, but how could he have met Sonic before when Uhu clearly doesn’t look like him?! And Sonic reacts as if he’s first meeting him, because this is the first time he’s seeing his Shadow form. Going off the games’ canon just makes it confusing when it contradicts it.

He tells Sonic to give him the seven world rings or else he’ll kill him. Sonic says he doesn’t have them, but Shadow can sense their energy in him. It’s probably just a false positive, since he says that’s a long story he doesn’t want to get into. Something to do with Issue 1, I guess.

  Silver throws something at Shadow’s back telekinetically, rather than simply grabbing Shadow himself with telekinesis and holding him still, which he was able to do JUST FINE in Sonic 06! So Sonic takes the risk of challenging Shadow to a race after a band-aid inexplicably appears on Shadow’s head out of nowhere. What is the APPEAL of Silver being here if he’s not portrayed like Silver? This isn’t Silver as I truly imagined him.

  And Shadow is competitive enough to agree, fortunately because I’d only expect him to want to kill him at this point, not care about a race! Why is he called Uhu? I get the reference but Uhu was a blue fairy, not him. But apparently I’m supposed to assume that the blue fairy was just an alternate form of his that he took, to fly I guess. Makes me wonder why he never showed his real form until now.

This comes off as a retcon, revealing a character was another character or something. Again, that’s why it’s better to just not have the games be canon to an alternate universe you’re writing. Other M was in Archie Sonic and a different zone. Lots of leeway and lore there! THIS is empty and confusing! It’d be so much simpler to NOT have him be Uhu all along.

Sonic races Shadow who’s a dick and has to remind him that he serves no one, and his attempt to swipe at Sonic with a sword causes Sonic to hit his head on something, all because he insisted on racing Shadow instead of doing the common sense thing of telling Silver to just telekinetically hold Shadow still like in 06 and maybe break his limbs.

Shadow says no more games, and then I’m really confused. There’s a crash sound effect, Sonic looks surprised and there’s some crumbling walls behind him and Knuckles looks like he just punched through something, and he says he’s here to help, and Sonic says that Shadow just got away. Why didn’t Shadow just kill Sonic with Chaos Control? Logically, I mean. For a so-called Djinn, he’s weak. He apparently doesn’t have Chaos Control. I hope, because that’s the only way him not using it would make sense. Why would he just get away instead of fighting Sonic like he wanted?!

Realistically, he doesn’t actually get away and instead they lost track of where he is. And it turns out he’s threatening Tails with a sword, wanting Sonic to do what he says. So naturally, after he lost Tails earlier, he gets absolutely pissed and goes Dark Super with the seven Rings that he apparently has. So, apparently he was just lying to Shadow about a long story and he really does have all of them. It didn’t come off that way. I don’t expect Sonic to be a perfect convincing lie.

So he goes behind Shadow and smacks him. WHY do we see a lame flash of light censoring it instead of seeing his fist actually IMPACT him?! That’s lame. He wants to kill Shadow, and I don’t blame him, especially after Issue 1, and suddenly Silver tells him not to use the secret rings. Shahra says that if he does, he’ll die.

The seven rings bind this story together, but to use them, their collector has to be sacrificed. Huh? They’re lame. Sonic didn’t die after going Super in Sonic and the Secret Rings. I guess that’s because, he went Super with only SOME of them, the negative Rings, and not the ones that Erazor went super with.

  He tells Shadow to tell him where to find the sorcerer who sent him. Why is he assuming that he was sent by someone when he was repeatedly told that he works for NO ONE? He’s just making a desperate assumption because he’s hoping he’ll find out where to go. Doesn’t he already know that the bad guy is in the foundry by now? Also, Shadow would totally deserve to be killed here for threatening Tails, but no. Silver wouldn’t do that in this comic, even though he tried to kill Sonic in his debut game twice.

  When I came back to read the script for this issue, I completely forgot Shadow had a fight with Sonic. So it could’ve been removed from the comic and nothing would have been lost. It would’ve just resulted in faster pacing for an unoriginal arc. Maybe the fight with Shadow and Sonic wasn’t really entertaining and interesting with a ton of different things happening. If it was just them RACING each other, then yeah, that’s very expendable.

  Thank goodness, there’s a twist. He’s not working for the Eggman of this universe, like I was wondering. It’d be so predictable if the sorcerer was him. Instead he’s working for a sorceress called Rouge, which makes sense because he’s usually allied with her in the games universe. It was only surprising because Shadow was a villain here, and yet not with Eggman, so he seemed more like he was a lone agent bad guy like in Sonic Boom. Plus he said he serves no one! So I believed him. I guess the writer changed her mind.

  Rouge can fly with wings that wouldn’t be able to support her weight, and the screw kick and Black Wave are pretty magical, especially the latter, so it makes sense that she’d be considered a sorceress in ancient times. I guess in this universe, her mother was in a place that had more chaos energy when she was pregnant with her, so Rouge ended up more magical. Anyways since it wasn’t addressed in the last issue, I guess this dimension has to have slower time, since Ali Baba and Sinbad and so on still exist even 200 years later.

  This issue by Evan Stanley was about the Arabian Nights Shadow trying to get the seven rings out of Sonic, as apparently he had them all along, and naturally after he threatens Tails, Sonic loses it and goes Dark Super. It makes so much more sense here, with Tails, than in Sonic X. And despite Shadow insisting that he works for no one, Sonic threatens him into saying that he’s working for Rouge, no problem. So whatever happened to “ I serve no one? “ Liar. It’s passionate for a lie.

  Maybe he’s just doing this because she’s his friend so he doesn’t consider it working for her out of pride. How inconvenient for Sonic that there’s still a recognizable version of Shadow in this universe where there wasn’t a Gerald Robotnik and Black Doom to create Shadow, the only way the ultimate life form would come to be. It just coincidentally happens that in this dimension, there was a powerful Djinn that happened to have a brain just like Shadow’s, and body, that’s the most confusing of ALL because he clearly looks absolutely nothing like a Djinn.

  Shadow wouldn’t be like this in this world. He’s not just another person who was made by two parents, who could exist in any reality. He was born from very special circumstances. It’d make more sense if he was made by a sorcerer version of Gerald Robotnik and Black Doom. But thank goodness he has a more interesting and creative role instead.

Well I say that, but it just steals the role of Uhu, which makes a lot less sense than what I said, because we saw Uhu in the game and he clearly didn’t look like Shadow, so he must have stuck with his blue fairy form because it had an advantage, so WHY’d he give it up?

  This comic really picked up in getting me to respect it, though it really helps that it’s in color now! About time. Now I’m taking it seriously instead of just being reminded of Other M. If all Shadow’s gonna do is race Sonic and nothing interesting or memorable happened, if we weren’t gonna constantly see Sonic hit him and see his fist impacting him, then no wonder I found this to be a forgettable part of the story. She shouldn’t have wasted an entire issue on this.

Considering he convinced Shadow to tell him who he was working for so easily, they could’ve easily not fought at all. The pacing of this arc could’ve been faster instead of wasting an entire issue on, Amy talking to them, and then Shadow arbitrarily picking a fight with them.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 6:

  After Sonic goes out of Dark Super form, Shahra talks about Arabian Nights Rouge, the sorceress of the Black Isle. Shadow says she’ll return more powerful than ever. He says that he didn’t want to do her bidding, but she has his partner, a Djinn known as Fouh. So that’s Maria, right, since Shadow’s connected to Maria and cares about her?

  Their duty was to watch over this land so that when the sorceress arrived, they’d attempt to confront her. But the only way she’d free Fouh when she captured her was if he gave her the seven world rings. Oh, so Shadow wasn’t evil, he was just being REALLY STUPID, to the point where he looked pure evil. That’s worse to read. He could’ve TOLD SONIC his predicament instead of putting his life at risk! He knows he’s the legendary hedgehog. Wasn’t it obvious that he would want to HELP him?

  Sonic lampshades Shadow’s stupidity, saying just what I was thinking about Shadow. But the writer knowing that’s a problem doesn’t make the problem go away. Shadow says he doesn’t have the power to teleport all of them by himself to get to Rouge. Bullshit. The rules sure are different in this wacky new universe, with this crazy new Shadow that somehow exists.

  If Shadow could warp Rouge AND Chris Thorndyke to the ARK, what’s the deal? Maybe only because he had an Emerald. He’s supposed to be the ultimate life form! This “ limited Chaos Control range “ thing was never stated to be a canon part of the games. Shahra says she could add her magic to the spell to help. If it’s that easy, then Shadow should have just been written to be powerful enough to BEGIN WITH instead of confusing us!

  Then after they warp to Rouge like Shadow wanted, all of a sudden Shadow says he didn’t mean to bring them here yet. Where DID he mean to bring them then? How did he screw up? Shadow could’ve just teleported everyone so that they’d appear in the physical location that Rouge is in, meaning that she’d die from a portal being created in her.

That’d be dark and anticlimactic though and I just wanna see this evil Rouge get what she deserves for a whole scene, not just one panel, but the fact remains that Shadow could’ve been smarter, and if Tails was actually a genius here, he’d have thought of doing that. I don’t think of him as smart here, or even having a personality at all.

  The most disappointing thing is, even Knuckles doesn’t have a personality here. Knuckles and Tails were sorely missing from this comic, but these guys don’t feel like them and they don’t seem to have any personality. Tails isn’t doing engineering. Knuckles is useless. And if Rouge is gonna be nothing like she’s usually like, she’s just a cameo too.

  Sonic thinks, “ Rouge? Figures. “ Why are you surprised? He was told she was Rouge earlier! She’s suspicious because it feels like she’s got one right here. Got an Emerald? Rouge says she’ll return Shadow’s partner from the jug, but she’s her Djinn now. So she releases Blaze.

That’s way less predictable than Fouh being Maria, and more badass since she has special powers, but having Blaze and Shadow be best friends is pretty random. But thank goodness it’s something new, and I always thought they were similar in personality, and Treasure Team Tango helped with that, so they would make a great team.

  Sonic says he’ll distract Rouge while his friends help Shadow. Then I look at Silver, and immediately wonder why he won’t just telekinetically break the limbs of Rouge to end the fight, or at LEAST hold her still, instead of just standing there. Sonic has horrible dialogue saying an interjection in his thoughts that he would never say.

  They waste an entire page angsting because Blaze looks like a friend of theirs and Silver eventually uses telekinesis to send an object at Rouge. If it’s gonna be that easy, there’s no reason he couldn’t have just grabbed HER DIRECTLY. He grabbed SONIC in 06 with it, you’d think the writer would remember that really well, because that boss fight was infamous. This character has a Story Breaker power, and he has to be written like an idiot here because of it. This is exactly why I had reservations about this fancomic specifically because he was in it!

  Predictably, Rouge DOESN’T get attacked. She instead telekinetically holds Sonic in place over her shoulder without even seeing him, and says that Sonic yelled out his plan while running in a giant circle, so that blatantly telegraphed it to her. Yeah, well I’m not taking this fight seriously because obviously Silver would’ve just ended the fight already, so.

  She says that the rings are slowly burning away the lives of Silver and Sonic and wants to speed up the process. Then they use Chaos Control, and it’s explained that a separate dimension exists, where the goddess of the world, the writer, creates it, and Sonic teleports his consciousness to this sanctuary called the Lost Prologue.

  So he meets with the writer with the unpronounceable name, who says that she hasn’t written the ending to the story yet, and tells Sonic that he can either take on his role as the Chaos Emerald guardian again and return to his world to fulfill his duty there and depress us by being a ghost who doesn’t get to be with his friends from the games, or he can use the World Rings, and stay in the Arabian Nights forever, alive, but Silver would have to return home alone.

Oh let me guess, Sonic wouldn’t do that even though he really wants to, because he’s needed to save Silver’s universe. I’m thinking of this girl as a bad guy right now. Why’d she even write a villain like Rouge? Why not just give Sonic and Silver what they want if she has all this power?!

  Rouge says that with the seven Rings, she’ll be able to control an Emerald to do something evil. I guess they’re gonna power her up so that she can do that. I guess she’s too weak to do something like use Chaos Control on her own. She’s not a sorceress then. She realizes Silver stole her Emerald. Sonic comes back in his spirit form because that was the whole gimmick of the comic, and Rouge complains that she had destroyed him earlier.

  Sonic says he talked to the creator of this universe and managed to get, um, the urn that kept Blaze in it, I guess? He just calls it “ this “ and she calls it “ that. “ Why is she asking how he got that? He just said he talked to the goddess of the universe, it’s not that hard to understand. It’s not a plot hole, she’s just that powerful.

  So Rouge goes Super with the seven secret Rings, having no eyes because dark and edginess. That’s cringeworthy to look at. Why did the creator of Arabian Nights want to make her like this? Sonic wants to capture her in a vessel and she refuses to let that happen. Too bad we’ll never know why this Rouge is so evil, which defeats the point of making her look like Rouge then, if personality-wise, and even ability-wise, she’s nothing like Rouge at all. She’s not showing us what Rouge would be like if she turned out evil and why.

Where’s the Black Wave attack? She’s just a generic bad guy witch character who only looks like Rouge because of laziness. Then right after she said he couldn’t capture her, he effortlessly captures her.

  So Sonic’s in the Emerald, and apparently they can’t help the Blaze of this world, when it’d be more uplifting writing for a kids’ series if Rouge being defeated caused the spell on Blaze to cease to exist. Like how in STC, the defeat of The Dark One caused the fox kings to turn back to normal, so there’s precedent. Sonic says he used a spell to change Rouge into the genie of the vase, and she’s staying in that indestructible vase, a fate worse than death. How does she know no one would ever get her out of there?

  Blaze was also bound to that vase, though. What a shame. So since Blaze never showed a personality, she only looked like Blaze to make Silver and Sonic miserable. The writer didn’t have to write that. Shadow says that the spell on her has no power anymore because Rouge is gone. She screams and thanks Shadow and says that he’s helped her so much.

  Then she tells him to kill her, as if she magically knows what’s going to happen to her if he doesn’t. She’s unhappy as things are melodramatic. She says she can’t resist the binding much longer. Why are all the text bubbles yellow instead of the right color? Anyways, Blaze magically knows about the Blaze of Silver’s world and that he loves her, because let’s make things even more confusing. Apparently Blaze in this world is a psychic mind reader because she’s such a powerful Djinn, but it’s off-putting if it comes out of nowhere.

She tells Silver to go back to his world and tell Blaze that he loves her while he still can. How are there genies that look like Mobians AND genies that look like floating monsters? Shahra says the day’s been saved and Sinbad and Ali Baba can take the vase back to the Sand Oasis, where Amy can look after it. She says that she’ll return to her Ring until she’s needed again. Then Silver uses Chaos Control to go home with the Emerald… It’s pretty sad that Sonic can’t just stay here with still living versions of his friends, just because he still needs to save Silver’s universe.

  And the only reason he NEEDS TO is because it apparently will be destroyed if he doesn’t get all of the Emeralds to it from the Special Zone. And he can’t warp to an Emerald when he’s not in his ghost form. Sonic only has to leave because he’s forced to by the confusing premise of the comic where Silver’s future is in danger because bullshit, so that seems unfair. You’d think if Tikal was powerful enough to send the Emeralds and Master Emerald away from the universe, she’d also be able to reverse the spell and bring them all back.

  So they teleport back to the Shadow of Silver’s dimension holding an Emerald, the second time Shadow was completely useless in their gaining of an Emerald. I have a question. Why did the Emerald go into the Arabian Nights world? I thought they were all in the Special Zone and that made more sense because they’re associated with that place and usually go there. So the first one being there was just confusing. It just went there for no reason?

  I naturally assumed that all of the Emeralds were sent to the SAME dimension. That would be common sense of Tikal to do to make it easy for Silver to retrieve them all to SAVE HIS UNIVERSE from destruction! Why would she have them scattered so that they’d go to random planets?! She’s SUCH an IDIOT and her being an idiot is the whole justification for the comic taking so long.

  Tikal was an idiot in SA1 for never getting a clue that she can’t reason with her warmonger father and giving up, so she got trampled. So, her being an idiot is in-character, but it’s still frustrating. She was in charge of where the Emeralds were put, why didn’t she put them all in one little convenient place for Sonic to retrieve them?! This would only make sense if she wanted them to take forever with this, like a bad guy who WANTS Silver’s future to be destroyed.

   So Silver goes to Blaze, and she arbitrarily interrupts him when he clearly has something he needs to tell her, as he said. She just says he was gone for two days. (I Am All of Me plays) Then melodrama kicks in out of nowhere and she gets mad at him because he didn’t bother to tell her what’s been going on with him, because she wasn’t trusted. She’s being brutally unfair to him. Blaze, he was forced to go on those adventures, you bitch.

Well, he could’ve easily just brought her to Shadow and explained things, and they were supposed to be friends, so that was the obvious thing he had to do to avoid worrying her when he kept disappearing.

  Silver wouldn’t do this to her. This is forced, bad writing. It especially sucks because this wasn’t the heartwarming ending that was built up to. ‘Cause he was told to tell Blaze that he loves her. She’s mad at him because he didn’t tell her something. You’d think she’d be like, oh, finally, what do you have to tell me?

  She says that his parents called the other day wanting him home for the winter break and she doesn’t want him here anymore. That’s really bad melodrama. What a shitty ending. Silver’s supposed to be a nice guy, he obviously would’ve told Blaze what was going on in his life and avoided this crap. It’s just pulling a Flynn on you where it has a dark thing in the story happen because the writing got forced and a character was an idiot.

It’s because the writer wanted it to happen, and I can’t take it seriously then, because I’m just wondering why on earth the writer wanted to write this. It’s always upsetting to read. Even the writer said this writing sucked in the description on Page 19.

  This issue by Evan Stanley was about Sonic using Chaos Control to go to the dimension where the goddess of the Arabian Nights is from The Lost Prologue, and she gives him the power to seal away the evil Rouge in a jug, while Sonic has to go back to his spirit form. And things are depressing because the Blaze of this world dies and the Blaze of Silver’s world hates him because he didn’t tell her about Sonic’s mission with him, when he could’ve brought her to Shadow at any point. Where’s the FUN? What’s with all of this melodrama?

  So there’s a shitty melodramatic ending that ruins your mood where she hates him all of a sudden because Silver was forced by the writer to be pathetically Out of Character past the point of recognizability and piss her off. Yeah that could’ve easily not happened. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Silver wasn’t told to tell Blaze he loved her. It’s just there to make things even more melodramatic, like why even have the fanservice for the shippers just to abuse it to make them miserable? That’s an unlikable ending.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 7:

  Silver goes to his parents’ house, and Shadow says he’ll be able to pick him up on his motorcycle when the break’s over. Silver tells Sonic to stop following him, because he doesn’t want to explain to his parents why he’s friends with him. But it’s not like he’d get in trouble with them because he’s doing something wrong! Why doesn’t Sonic correct him on inexplicably thinking he’s 12 years old? He’s supposed to be 15. There’s no excuse for this mistake.

  Then as Sonic says goodbye, someone’s really happy Silver’s home and hugs him. It doesn’t help with the first impressions that in Vennie’s first panel, all of that text she says isn’t even contained in a text bubble, it’s in giant text that doesn’t even keep to a consistent color, and it doesn’t even spell gosh right! It’s like it’s trying to portray her as annoying on purpose.

  That stupid facial expression with her gaping open mouth doesn’t help with endearing her to me either, and neither does the hair on the top of her head sticking straight up like that. If she’s supposed to be his excited little sister and that’s her appeal, why is she wearing pants instead of a skirt? Why does she have a boring brown tank top instead of a pink shirt or something?

  Someone other than her tells him to let go, snarking that Vennie might end up suffocating Silver before he’d make it inside. As if I needed any more reason to not like Vennie, she just had to have such a suffocating hug that Silver’s coughing afterwards, when normally a potential appeal to him having a sibling would be that he’d get to ENJOY a hug from them.

  It turns out that awful looking blonde character is Silver’s sibling, Vennie. Why does Silver have siblings? He only needed to have parents, that was it. I feel like completely skipping all of the scenes with them. I’ve lost interest just from seeing them. I had to force myself to go back to this issue a second time to write my full impressions on these two characters, because they’re so clearly unnecessary that my interest is sapped at seeing them.

  All I thought on the first read of this was, why did the writer have so little common sense that all of the personality was given to siblings Silver didn’t need to have instead of parents that needed to exist for him to be born?! His parents are gonna be generic blocks of wood, why do his sisters get all this favoritism?

  The worst part is, they just look like horrible amateurish fan characters. I think the comic ruined itself by changing the setting to Silver’s house. I don’t care anymore. Maybe have characters that look GOOD if you want me to care about forcing myself to read all of the dialogue. All they’re doing is talking!

  Why in the world do neither of them have the same fur color as Silver? It doesn’t make them feel like they’re actually his siblings. It’d b e common sense not to do this! And learning that one of them was originally meant to look like Silver just pissed me off because that design was rejected. Vennie’s an outright blonde.

  At least Sicily is blue in a way that’s closer to silver color. They both look so unlike Silver that they feel more like random Sonic OCs plopped into his life that just remind me that it’s a fancomic. They could be adopted and it’d make more sense. Even their names are embarrassing because they can’t just have normal names, they have to have special snowflake names like Vennie and Sicily. Sicily’s personality is easy to tolerate right away because she’s deadpan and snarky like me.

  Out of nowhere, Vennie insists on quoting Macbeth, asking when her family will meet again, in thunder lightning or rain, because apparently she wasn’t overly wacky ENOUGH. She acted like a younger girl and now she’s talking about a play that’s only talked about in high school. This personality would only work for a little girl! She says she’s a shoe in for her drama club. At least that tries to give her a hobby. It’s good to give characters hobbies. It makes it seem like they actually have a life outside of being related to Silver. They’re not just Satellite Characters.

  Vennie’s asked if she did her weekend chores because she was supposed to get them done before Silver got home, and apparently Sicily cares enough to ask that. Vennie wants to put them off until the last minute, which is the first time she’s been relatable, instead of off-putting, and she says her parents are coming home tonight. They couldn’t even be there to greet their son the minute he showed up at their house? Why is it written this way?

They’re the ones who insisted on Silver coming back! If there was anybody that people would have been looking forward to meeting in Silver’s family, it’d obviously be Silver’s parents, not siblings that he never had before! Instead all they cared about was visiting old friends and won’t bother coming home until tomorrow.

  Sicily pressures Vennie to do her chores, as she’s been put in charge. I guess she doesn’t wanna get in trouble with her parents for not getting her to do her chores. What ARE those chores, though? Who KNOWS, that’d be effort to establish. And Vennie annoys me again by pointlessly misquoting Macbeth again as she leaves, as that’s totally realistic. It would’ve made more sense if Sicily was Silver’s mom so there’d be more actual appeal to her existing. It would’ve suited her level-headed personality more, but no.

  Silver’s tired and says he’ll be in his room, and Sicily ruffles his hair as he looks annoyed, because once again, god forbid we get made to feel like Silver having siblings is a good thing, by him actually appreciating affection from them. She says she’ll be in the garage. So that’s gonna be HER personality. Shadow’s drawn horribly as he thinks about Sonic taking his time. I don’t know why he was drawn that way, since it’s such an obvious bad idea.

  After he considers going home without Sonic, with his swearing being censored when this is the same comic that had a needlessly gory first page so make up your mind, Sonic says he has a big favor to ask of him, and then a bunch of comic space and time is wasted on us because Shadow’s silent and asks what’s in it for him and Sonic says he’ll let him have the TV remote all weekend and will give him two more favors later, and he says he’ll give him three more favors on a contract.

He says he’ll do whatever he wants because he really needs his help. They don’t come off like people who have been FRIENDS for 200 years! Why the hell didn’t he just tell him what he needed help with IMMEDIATELY?! This story was boring enough!

  Sonic says that he just remembered something important that Tikal told him about a couple of weeks ago. Because of the Chaos Emeralds Silver and him found the balance of power that sustains Dark Gaia is getting out of whack, because Dark Gaia needs to be sustained with a balance of power, now. Suddenly Dark Gaia is a being that controls the world’s energy, as opposed to just being in the Earth’s core for no reason, like in the game.

And it’s getting really mad in the Earth’s core. Why though? It’s supposed to be asleep for thousands of years. Isn’t that why it didn’t instantly break out of the planet? If it was awake the whole time, it would go insane from boredom! How would it know that anything changed after it was sealed away?

  The fact that Sonic just remembered this thing he was told about OFFSCREEN only makes it feel even more arbitrary, and if it’s arbitrary, I’m not gonna be able to take it seriously. Dark Gaia’s supposed to be unconscious right now. Sonic has to tell Shadow who Dark Gaia even is, implying that this universe didn’t have Sonic Unleashed happen in it.

  Sonic’s upset at having to give Shadow a month of TV control rights. I know Shadow’s an anti-hero, but why does he have to be written to demand huge favors from what’s been his best and only friend for centuries in exchange for him helping to save the WORLD, which Maria would obviously have wanted him to do? He didn’t demand a bunch of favors in exchange for saving the world in SA2! Apparently he’s just that selfish now.

  Sonic says that according to Tikal, he needs to give Dark Gaia a ritual sacrifice, or it’ll shatter the planet. SINCE WHEN does Dark Gaia accept ritual sacrifices? He’s an evil final boss that Sonic has to seal away by attacking him with Super Sonic’s power, not by doing a ritual. And tonight is the last night that it’s possible to do the ritual. So did she read his mind, so she’d know exactly when it’s gonna be too late?

  This just seems silly. Maybe if it was a brand new god invented on the spot, or even a Fleetway reference like The Dark One or Vichama, it’d feel less out of place because then, with a new character, you could do whatever you wanted with him. He could be in the core with Dark Gaia. I get that Dark Gaia is technically a god, so this is here to treat him like one, but all it’s there for is, to be a Sonic Unleashed final boss. It was dealt with!

  I have a question. Why didn’t Tikal do the ritual? Why did she leave it up to Sonic? Sonic can do it when he’s a ghost, so why not her? She would’ve cared about the world and saved it long before he’d need to do it. She’d know he didn’t do the ritual yet. Vennie wastes my time talking to herself annoying the fuck out of me by quoting Shakespearean plays for no reason other than to be wacky, when she’s worried about Silver being mopey. And EVENTUALLY she wants to snap Silver out of it.

  Meanwhile, Sicily looks at Shadow’s motorcycle and reveals in her thoughts that she knows all about it and thinks it’s a paragon of engineering to the point where she can’t focus. That’s a surprise. Thank goodness Sicily knows a lot about motorcycles and technology in general, because it gives her another personality trait and tries to make her potentially useful.

She’d be boring if she was just the serious level-headed character. She wants to get a better look at it. But what’ll be the point of showing us that? She’ll just bore us to death with techno babble. We already GOT that she knew a lot about technology from THIS page.

  But there’s no way you can replace Tails with her. She’s an OC. If you wanted to have an engineer character in the future, it would’ve been less forced to have a preexisting character instead of a new character made as an apology and work-around for the fact that it’s taking place in Silver’s future. Tails could be here instead and he could be an alternate dimension Tails.

I had to force myself to give this a second chance for the sake of the video, and it looks like only Sicily’s worth giving a chance. Vennie’s even more annoying when I’m paying attention to her! If I wanted to read about a female engineer Sonic character I’d rather read about Wave the Swallow or even a more competent Marine, because at least they’re from the games.

  When I first read this issue, I skipped almost all of the dialogue of Silver’s sisters and took several issues to bother paying attention to them. They only mattered to me when they started DOING stuff. That’s how bad-looking and clearly unnecessary they are on the first impression. But I’ll admit, they did grow on me, because the writer at least tried to give them memorable personalities. Even Vennie ends up becoming useful.

  But it’s immediately obvious that Sicily should’ve been Silver’s mother. Vennie could’ve been a guy, Vennie should’ve been his father. Speaking as someone who read most of the comic, I did end up warming up to these characters. But it’ll always be shocking how much focus they have, because this isn’t just some fanfiction writer, this is one who went on to write an official Sonic comic. You’d think she would know that it’s an off-putting taboo to have a huge focus on OCs in a fanfiction! This is rule number one that you’re not allowed to do!

  Silver’s sister knows a lot about motorcycles to the point where she scolds Shadow for letting his motorcycle go because it could break at any moment, and she says that she’s not letting him leave until she has a good look at it. She says she wants to check the Chaos Drive, and apparently, it needs to be replaced every two years, and she has a spare that’ll fit. And Shadow’s pretty attached to and overprotective of his motorcycle, asking if he can watch. She thinks this is the Chaos Drive she needs to complete her project, and it’s old and has to be recharged, and she can’t wait to see its eyes.

  Sonic tells Silver that the world’s gonna try to destroy them. As if the universe being in danger of destruction just because the Emeralds weren’t in it wasn’t bad enough. I can’t take this seriously. Sonic fortunately asks Silver if he’s okay, and Silver, who was introduced to the franchise as someone desperate to save the FUTURE, completely ignores Sonic when he talks about an apocalypse scenario and says that he can’t handle any weirdness right now, just because Blaze is mad at him. This is not Silver.

And Sonic apologizes. This is just an OC who just happens to have Silver’s powers. At least then it’d be honest. Sonic hopes he can get something for the sacrifice. I hope it’s Vennie. You know you’ve fucked up when you have the audience hoping that with what’s supposed to be a sympathetic character. It’s not like she’s going out of her way to be useful.

Silver hears something making a lot of noise in the backyard, annoys me by thinking of his powers as powers that don’t work which NOBODY thinks of Silver’s powers as, and he yells at his friends for doing a ritual saying stuff to summon Gaia outside of the house, and then a monster gets summoned. I’m so bored. This comes out of nowhere just to have a story about it, and it’s not even a new idea to justify it! Why did Sonic know all of those words to say for the ritual? I guess Tikal told him. I guess he had to go to the Tikal dimension to learn the words to say, a minute ago.

  What’s even happening here? It’s so dark. Shadow smacks Sonic to snap him out of it because for some reason he has to be snapped out of it. And he says that that thing is a Dark Gaia monster, because why come up with your OWN creative ideas when you can steal them from Sonic Unleashed instead? Everyone LOVED the plot elements of that game! It wasn’t weird at all! Well, I already read the reboot. I had enough of Sonic Unleashed!

At least the Other M comic doesn’t get lazy enough to steal plot points from the latest Sonic games. It stayed in the settings of the Archie comic the whole time, which made it feel like it was part of an actual world all on its own, instead of always getting distracted by the latest Sonic games!

  Doing this just takes me out of it, making me think that these Unleashed and Secret Rings plot points only showed up because the games just came out at that point and the writer was lazy. It makes even Flynn look more talented because he didn’t need to fall back on Sonic Unleashed and Secret Rings as a crutch in Other M! He just had the characters stay in Echidnaopolis and focus on their freedom fighting!

  The Unleashed and Secret Rings plot points only seem to show up centuries after they happened because of meta logic. I’d rather a comic take place in its own universe instead of being able to steal stuff from the game at the drop of a hat with no foreshadowing when it’s not supposed to be in the same universe as the games, because it’s not canon to it anyways. It’s just confusing me.

  Sonic apologizes for using the backyard for the summoning and says the ritual worked. Shadow says that the ice cream offering’s not going to cut it because it’s on the ground over there. It turns out that Dark Gaia monsters want to go for the nearest object of power, and that would be the Chaos Emerald. So Dark Gaia’s power contaminates the Emerald and Sonic.

  So he looks more like the werehog, which makes less sense because that’s his soul, there’s no body for Dark Gaia energy to mutate into the werehog this time. There’s no DNA to mutate. He tells Silver to hurry and get a new offering while he’ll distract the monster. Why would any offering entice it more than an Emerald if it somehow thinks an Emerald it’s never gonna use for anything will be enticing in the first place? It’s not like he wants to take over the world!

   He goes werehog and grabs the monster, and Silver relatably hopes he won’t break anything. It IS kinda funny that Shadow and Silver are seriously going to offer to the monster some ice cream. It’s creative. And it makes sense because they don’t have any other option. Shadow takes it completely seriously, saying that they’ll need more flavors, better toppings, and hot fudge. But it’s surprising that the comic’s trying to be lighthearted at this point when even the writer called it a dark drama comic. It just makes me wish the entire comic was this tone.

At least being lighthearted is HARMLESS, while if you’re trying to be dark, it’s gonna be horribly frustrating and tedious if it only goes down that road because of forced writing. The comic space gets wasted as they talk with each other even MORE about how exactly they should go about making the best possible ice cream for him. Why would the monster accept ice cream that he’ll just eat and immediately lose it over a Chaos Emerald? He’d obviously eat it and then go back to wanting the Emerald!

I’m really not interested in this issue if I don’t care about really talking about the dialogue. I wasn’t this apathetic to some other comics. Silver ends up knowing more about scooping ice cream than Shadow, and says that they need dairy for a sundae, not sorbet, which anyone should know. The monster says chocolate chip cream Sunday supreme, reminding me of Chip because of the whole ice cream thing. At least that makes Dark Gaia feel like a proper parallel to Light Gaia. Is he gonna turn into Chip? Yep.

At least he disappears without saying anything. So, he was Light Gaia corrupted by DARK Gaia? Or he was Light Gaia corrupted in the first place? Why didn’t he just ask for ice cream in the first place if he knew it well enough to know exactly what the type of ice cream was called, somehow when he’s never experienced human society before?!

  Back to normal, Sonic thanks Shadow, Silver’s upset that the house was messed up, and he whines that he can’t do anything right because he sucks in this comic. Who would ever imagine Silver to be like this?! This is ruining the character for me! At least Sonic was nice to him and reassured him. He says they’ll get the place cleaned up in a second.

  But fuck logic apparently because Shadow says they’ll be more help if they leave and warps away with Chaos Control, when obviously he had a duty to clean up the mess he made and not get Silver in trouble with his family and ruin his life because Silver would be blamed for it because he wouldn’t just tell his family what was going on. This isn’t good writing at all. How is this fun?

  He never explains why he won’t just tell people what Sonic’s doing with him even though he could just show Sonic to people and immediately they’d believe him. It’s not fun to see a character with no communication skills. It’s not like Sonic’s invisible to most people. At least his siblings decide to help him clean up the mess, and Silver thanks them as Vennie has her hand on his shoulder.

  This issue was by Evan Stanley and was easily the least enjoyable one yet, I do NOT CARE about these unnecessary fan characters of self-indulgence. It’s not like they were first introduced in an action scene where they were doing a lot of useful and cool things! The writer clearly needed to have them be Silver’s parents so I’d actually have a reason to care about them. Silver never needed to have siblings.

They look terrible, so I have even less reason to read their dialogue. It’s just an eyesore. This is really testing my patience more than anything else has. The plot is too out of nowhere for me to take seriously. Sonic just now remembers something that Tikal told him weeks ago, offscreen.

  He needs to do a ritual to appease Dark Gaia or he’ll shatter the planet, all because the Emeralds aren’t on the planet, and, I guess it’s because they just got a few Emeralds. Huh? So Sonic has to fight with the monster he summoned, and makes a mess in Silver’s house, and eventually, Silver makes a great ice cream dish and appeases it and it turns into Chip. How’d it know English?! Too bad Sonic and Shadow warp away instead of cleaning up the mess with super speed. It’s just frustrating that Silver is so dedicated to not letting anyone know about his business with Sonic. He never explains why.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 8:

  The story starts out with Silver’s sister Sicily being seen by a newly awakened robot, who knows that his motor functions are disabled. Why in the world would the vision of any robot be tinted red? That wouldn’t be beneficial. She says she finally found a power source compatible with him. Why would a power source not be? The robot starts restoring motor functions on its own, as apparently it can do that. Or try to anyways because there’s a system failure and it gives up from program damage.

  Sicily’s asked if she’s doing evil science again. Why does Vennie bother? If Sicily was literally not allowed to do stuff like this, then she wouldn’t be allowed in the garage or anything. But she manages to do this stuff anyways, and there’s clearly no changing her mind on it. Then we see Nicole from the back staring at her from behind computer screens. Because she was seen from the back, I couldn’t tell what she was supposed to be at first.

  Then the comic bothers me by reminding me of the melodrama where Blaze hates Silver now, and he could EASILY end it by just showing him Sonic and Shadow. It just makes me pissed off that the drama is only there because of someone’s stupidity. He’s been back working at the restaurant for a week and Blaze still hates him. It was common sense not to write this! So much for the only originality I loved about this comic. Now THAT’S something I just wanna skip, too. If this keeps up, I won’t wanna read ANY of it.

  Blaze’s father talks WAY too much, saying stuff we already know and tells Silver that he needs to get his priorities straight or he won’t have a chance with his daughter. Why does he want a wuss like him to have a chance with his daughter? Normally I’d expect the overprotective parent trope. Does he not know why Blaze is mad at Silver? She would’ve told him. He’s told to take a break and then Sonic shows up in front of him and says he hates rain.

  Sonic says that it’s been a while since last issue and nothing earth shattering has happened, so he was thinking they should look for the next Emerald. WHY didn’t they try to get them all in a row?! Why is gathering the Emeralds SO unimportant to him when the universe will die without them?! Sonic says that it would take thousands of years for the universe to die without the Emeralds. That seems to come out of nowhere. I thought there was a stricter time limit.

  Then Silver’s uncharacteristically nihilistic, saying there’s no big rush in getting the Emeralds. The guy who was introduced to the franchise as someone who wants to save the future more than anything is portrayed as the opposite right now. Out of complete nowhere, Silver says that he’s a hybrid, and lots of people have markings like him, apparently.

He says he’s only different because Sonic made him this way, implying the confusing idea that Silver only has telekinesis because of Sonic when that’s never the case. I don’t like this idea. When I looked it up on the trivia page, I absolutely hated the bad fanfiction explanation for how hybrids showed up.

  He chooses to angst instead of save the freaking UNIVERSE. So he doesn’t care if the universe dies, is that what he’s saying? Why is this whiny loser the protagonist? Even Other M didn’t get me this apathetic and irritated merely 8 issues in! Silver quits because he wants to live his life, because this writer doesn’t understand Silver at all. He’s a HERO, first and FOREMOST. Even 06 knew that. Silver from 06 would be absolutely disgusted with this selfish wimp.

  Vennie sneaks into her sister’s lab to see what’s under a tarp, which she wouldn’t have done if Sicily had told her what would’ve been under it, which she probably would’ve done if her family didn’t dismiss her hobby as just evil science. Probably because of a bunch of incidents offscreen which seem like they’d be more interesting than the actual comic. I mean most of this plot has been pretty bleh and unappealing so far.

Blaze hating Silver, and there’s some drama about Silver not wanting to get the Emeralds anymore when that’s the whole premise of the comic, so of course it’s not gonna have him give up on them permanently.

  Metal Sonic gets reactivated, and there’s text saying there’s a system failure and restoration is aborted, and then some text says external override activated. So does that literally mean he’s being overrided? For what purpose though? He somehow thinks of Vennie as a threat when she’s clearly not trying to hurt him and just looks scared. This is just evil for the sake of evil which is just lazy writing. Then she falls over and there’s some gore.

  It looks like Metal Sonic killed Silver’s sister, because apparently someone who was smart enough to know all about motorcycles and do this to reactivate it, was inexplicably too dumb to reprogram Metal Sonic to be a good guy before reactivating him and go over his programming to make sure nothing in it could override him to do this. Reprogramming Metal Sonic was such an obvious idea that I assumed it was the case. Why would she find a robot and not look over every single part of it first?

  We’re told later on that he really was just taken over by someone else, but the only way that would make sense is if that someone else was in his programming to begin with, like an AI, and obviously Sicily would’ve found that someone else if she had combed through all of his programming on her computer first. Why would she reactivate a robot without doing that just in case? This is no better than Metal Sonic not being reprogrammed in IDW! She’d obviously have gone over all of his programming first before waking him up, out of curiosity to see what it was like at least.

What was she even planning to do with him? If it’s to be a lab assistant, she could just build a robot to do that. I’m thankful that the writer had the wisdom to get rid of this character who was just embarrassing the comic with her annoyingness, but it would’ve been much better writing to have cartoon slapstick. I just can’t help it! I don’t like this character!

After all the annoyance she gave me with her quoting Shakespeare and suffocating Silver, I needed a bunch of silly slapstick like in AoStH, not just some brief gore that’s out of place in the Sonic series. Why have this character exist then, to just annoy us for a bit and then get rid of her an issue later?

  According to a trivia page, the writer originally planned to actually kill Vennie off, which would make actual sense because that’s all this LOOKS like, but was talked out of it later on. She also planned to make Sicily go ax crazy, so I guess when she was accused of doing evil science, we were supposed take that literally, even though she still cares about her family.

  Anyways, Silver calls Blaze who’s a complete jerk to him at first refusing to talk to him at all… so then why did she COME HERE?! Plot hole! And then he says that he’s been messing up his life and now he wants to take charge and be with her. She thankfully forgives him. Even though he didn’t tell her about his business with Sonic. So she should still be mad at him for getting her worried about him for days on end. She’s such a mood swinger, how can I trust her? She’s furious at him and makes him agonize over it for days on end and then she suddenly is nice to him again.

  Then Silver gets a call from his still absent mother, who says that his sister’s in the hospital after an accident. WHY did Metal Sonic leave her ALIVE? She was “ terminated “ wasn’t she? Why would he even attack her at all, let alone do it non-lethally? At least we learn what job Shadow has. He works as a Meteotech security guard. Makes sense for a living weapon. He says that when he’s at work, Sonic always makes fun of his hat.

  Sonic has a sweet moment where he asks Shadow if they’re friends and hopes he doesn’t just stick around with him out of obligation… What took him so long to ask him this? I mean it’s been 200 years! He’d already know the answer to this. Shadow has no social skills and asks what he’s talking about instead of just saying “ yes. “ So it drags things out and they see Metal Sonic breaking the glass of Meteotech for some reason. Shadow says he doesn’t know what’s going on in the building and is only paid to guard it, and he says he’s starting to get curious.

  And then he uses his Chaos Control to teleport Metal Sonic to him and break him apart. No that wouldn’t happen, that’d require a break. Instead he uses his Chaos Control to freeze time so that he can easily catch up to Metal Sonic, AND Metal Sonic won’t be a threat to him at all. NO, that would ALSO make sense! So he has to be written like he doesn’t have it at all. Even Sonic can use Chaos Control in this comic! The story ends with them going into the building in curiosity.

  This issue by Evan Stanley had Silver finally patch things up with Blaze, though somehow not in the common sense way where he’d tell her what business he had with Sonic to make her so upset with his disappearance. No that’d be logical. And somehow Silver’s sister actually survived being attacked by Metal Sonic.

I don’t know why she didn’t look over his programming and design to the fullest extent, which would’ve caused her to spot anything that would override his programming and avoid all of this. She lost ALL of my respect. I thought she was supposed to be a super competent engineer who could do anything. Who knows what she would add to the comic?!

Ghosts of the Future Issue 9:

  The story starts with Shadow saying, “ the ARK, “ and Sonic asks why it’s on earth. The background of the ARK there, last issue and this one, really does look like a photograph or something of the actual game level put into a comic book that clearly has a different art style than it, and it sticks out even worse than when Penders’ stories occasionally did something like that.

  Metal Sonic sees Sonic and Sonic wants to fight him to settle a score, even though it’d be smarter to let Shadow use Chaos Control to teleport him apart. AT LEAST tell him to freeze him in time first, but no, then Metal Sonic wouldn’t be in pain during it. Shadow shouldn’t even be in this comic because all he does is make me ask why he doesn’t use Chaos Control. I don’t think he even accomplishes anything.

He’s like, “ DUH, I’m gonna point a handgun at him instead of using my special abilities! “ I really don’t like Metal Sonic’s design here. His spines are pointed more upwards and he has this white circle above his eyes, which makes him harder to recognize.

  Out of nowhere, Sonic gets trapped in a yellow tube that no form of chaos energy can escape from. Metal Sonic suddenly apologizes for his appearance, saying that it’s not very ladylike, and says that this poor robot’s brain is fried and without a proper AI he’s useless, so he gave him help. How doesn’t he have the proper AI? Wouldn’t that have been brought out?

  Why does he want the robot to be ladylike when he then turns around and says that we Robotniks are few and far between? Why would that be written if it’s not Robotnik? Oh, ‘cause Gerald Robotnik made her. It was confusing because she’s not biologically related to him, and still acts like an evil AI anyways.

  Then we see what looks like Nicole from Archie beside Metal Sonic, smirking, so we’ll finally get to see what Nicole would’ve been like as a villain for more than two seconds and it’s unsettling, immediately making me glad she’s normally good. And she talks as if she’s Robotnik. I’m so confused.

Shadow is scared and says they left Nicole on the ARK for some reason, and she let them in and let Maria die. Why? So she says that his memory has gotten worse than she thought, so she wants to deal with that immediately, and clanging is heard near a gun as she reminds him of what she’s capable of. Wouldn’t the heroes have met Nicole on the ARK in SA2? So this is an alternate history of the games universe. Because they would’ve met her and the story would’ve gone a different way.

  That should have been established immediately to have it make more sense that going Super would kill Sonic if he was too weakened. And thankfully the description says that the writer actually loves Nicole, and just happens to show admiration of characters by making them really suffer, like Sonic for example. Wait, Nicole’s not suffering! She’s badass! No horrible thing’s happening to Nicole!

  Nicole tells Shadow about nanites and Shadow coughs, and says they can improve strength and stamina, even in a genetically optimized creature like Shadow, and repair cell damage to slow the aging process to nothing. I guess Rick did that. She says that she was the one who gave Shadow these gifts, and she can take them away. That’s interesting, actually trying to make the ultimate life form make sense, but couldn’t literally anyone be given those gifts if they’re just nanites?

So that’d mean he actually isn’t ultimate at all. Maybe he IS and it’s just that the nanites only give him the specific gifts she’s talking about. He still has blood that can cure disease and special magical powers and only eats once a month.

Since Shadow tried to kill her, it makes sense that she depowered him a little to defend herself. She tells Sonic that she’s been watching him for ages and she doesn’t like mysteries. Wait, how was she watching him? Sonic never even met Sicily, let alone the robot. She says that she’s gonna make Sonic the new brain of Metal Sonic. OK, shouldn’t Sonic be grateful because he’d finally get to have a body again?

  Metal Sonic gets the AI he needs and she’ll be able to study him under more controlled conditions. Why does she have to study him? Can’t she study him by being his friend, and helping him get all the Emeralds back? Why can’t anyone say that to her? Why can’t he just tell her he needs to help Silver get all the Emeralds back so the universe won’t be destroyed? Of course he’s not in a position to bargain, but still. Shadow should say that for him, instead of being useless.

  She tells Sonic that as it is, he’s no more than a copied program already, a copy of a long dead man’s brain. I can understand why she says this. She should be explaining that the reason she thinks this is that Sonic had a functional brain when he was a person and so this form of him has a redundant, second brain. I mean if someone were to bring his body back to life and heal it, then there’d be no scientific reason why it wouldn’t be just as functional in the brain department. So there’d be two Sonics.

The only thing that makes him not a copy is that his body’s not functional. She does have a point in that a brain is a biological computer. I love science, especially because it results in things like air conditioning and indoor plumbing and the asthma inhalers I need.

  Of course Sonic is the original consciousness of Sonic, I’m just saying that if his body was brought back, it would develop a brand new consciousness separate from the original and be its own person. And then how would you be able to tell who was the copy, the original or him? I don’t see why his soul would be dragged back to him just because his body was brought back. How is she saying the soul is a myth when she’s clearly staring right at a soul, a ghost? She’s just trying to spite him and freak him out. He could be seen as a chaos energy program, but that’s functionally the same thing.

She says that Sonic somehow got embedded in the fabric of the universe endlessly emulated in chaos, and she wants to find out how. And then what? I guess she wants to be the same way. But what’s the point? She starts the process and Tikal CONVENIENTLY finds out that something is wrong immediately… and yet she doesn’t know where Sonic is! She’s such a Deus ex Machina. Sonic doesn’t really need her help, does he? Can’t he just take off in Metal Sonic’s body and then continue trying to find the Emeralds?

  He could do a paint job to look like his old self. There’s no reason he wouldn’t be able to leave at any time he wants because he’s a ghost. It’s not like the Metal Sonic body is the Fenton Thermos. We never saw her put the same tech that trapped Sonic in the Metal Sonic body. Can’t she find Wave the Swallow’s descendant? He doesn’t have to be a ghost. Why does he have to be a ghost to create the rings to find the Emeralds? Can’t he find them the normal way?

Oh yeah, of course he’s brainwashed when he’s in Metal Sonic. So Sonic asks what his orders are. I guess the AI isn’t fried after all! She says that it’s to collect their other investments. I hate how vague that is. How is he supposed to know what that means? I think of investments and imagine financial investments. It’s so sloppy that we still aren’t being told why Nicole’s evil.

I can accept it because it’s a different universe, but some wouldn’t. It makes no sense not to explain why she was programmed to be the way she is. She was made by Gerald Robotnik, but he would’ve made her when he was GOOD, so THAT doesn’t explain it.

Then Nicole reminds me that Shadow’s still in the room. I’ve been assuming Shadow can’t use Chaos Control without his nanites. If he can, why didn’t he use Chaos Control to protect Sonic? Why didn’t he warp Nicole away, warp her apart, freeze time… warp apart the tube that was trapping Sonic? In fact, he could’ve done that long before he’d lose his nanites!

  Instead he tried to shoot her with a gun, and I don’t know why he even bothers with a gun, because he has Chaos Control and super speed and Chaos Spears! Silver goes to the hospital and tries to get a cola, it looks like he’s using telekinesis on the soda machine, and then Metal Sonic shows up through the window.

  This issue by Evan Stanley was about Sonic getting captured by an alternate universe Nicole with no morality and put in Metal Sonic’s body to be her slave. He’s brainwashed because of Metal Sonic’s “ fried “ programming. “ So, he can’t decide to escape the body because his mind is being changed with rewriting. At least he could be programmed out of the brainwashing and returned to his old self. Common sense would dictate that Sicily would do that. She’d get to redeem herself a bit, and then yay, he’s got a body again.

  It’d be interesting to see Metal Sonic be useful for that. You’d think Silver’s future would have deroboticizers. So he could get a body again by deroboticizing Metal Sonic after changing the body so that he’s a robot version of a person. Because if he deroboticized him as it is, the jet engine wouldn’t turn into a normal chest. And Shadow reveals that she let in the soldiers that killed Maria. Why? And she says his memory’s defective.

 I finally got to see what an Evil Nicole would be like. Too bad it doesn’t make any sense!… She was evil even before Maria was killed? Why would Gerald make her without morality when he had Shadow have morality? Why would he make Nicole, why would he think he needs her, after he already put the nanites in Shadow? Wouldn’t he have put her to sleep? Gerald didn’t need to give Shadow the nanite advantages. He just wanted to cure Maria and beat the Black Arms. If that was why he had them, he would’ve never been given them.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 10:

  Metal Sonic tells Silver that he’s here to collect him. The only way that he’d actually work for Nicole is if she put nanites in him that she could then tell him would kill him if he didn’t do what she said. But I wanna know that that’s her plan, because otherwise she’d have no reason to think he’d work for her, because you’d think he’d tear her apart with telekinesis before she’d get a CHANCE to put nanites in him. But if the writer thought of that there’d be good writing so that can’t be it. Instead he’s like, “ DUH, I’m not using my psychokinesis because I’m brainless! “ It’s not like she has a roboticizer.

  At least he tells him to not resist, instead of wanting him to so he’d get hurt and then hurting him right away. Metal grabs him and Blaze sees it. Metal Sonic realizes she’s a threat because of her high chaos energy level. What took Silver so long to use telekinesis, if his wrists being held did NOT keep him from using it? Why didn’t he tear Metal Sonic apart? Why is Silver using telekinesis to do something OTHER than hold Metal Sonic STILL? There’s no way Metal would’ve gotten to attack Blaze here.

  It sucks to see her get hurt, but at least she doesn’t completely avoid any bad things happening to her after she treated Silver like garbage and put me through that melodrama. I really hate the red vision of Metal Sonic because there’s no way he’d have vision that useless.

  Blaze sends fire at Metal Sonic, and then her and Metal Sonic get magically frozen by Tikal, because she gets all the new abilities. New Powers as the Plot Demands! That’s a Bad Writing Trope! So why didn’t she do that to Eggman?! Why didn’t she prevent the events of this comic?! She’s no better than Aurora in Archie!

She actually asks him if he’s Silver. Meanwhile in Issue 1 she already knew Silver would help Sonic get the Emeralds before he was even born, so is she an omniscient psychic or not? How would she not know what Silver looks like? Sonic would’ve described what Silver looked like to her! How would she not know what he looks like while knowing 200 years in the past that he would be necessary?!

  Silver refuses to help Tikal, saying that Sonic never told him about her. Why didn’t he? You’d think that would’ve been basic conversation when they were getting to know each other. He looks at Blaze, and then realizes that he did something wrong by keeping secrets from HER, and thankfully admits that he’s pathetic. But Tikal says he’s not… as if the writer doesn’t agree! Of course Tikal would, because she’s nice, but he really IS.

How pathetic is it that a version of Silver is refusing the call to be a hero when you compare him to every other Silver the Hedgehog? Imagine if Silver refused to fight Iblis or save his future. STC Online didn’t have Silver like this, and that was by fans, too! So there’s no excuse!

Then Tikal screams and has to cast the spell again, and says that she can’t hold people still for long because there’s something wrong with chaos energy, SOMEHOW. She says Sonic is missing. So she knows the future enough that she knew Silver would be born ahead of time but she SOMEHOW doesn’t know that Sonic was gonna be put in Metal Sonic? She just knew something was wrong instead! That’s stupid! He says his sister’s too hurt for him to go with her. Always with the excuses. At least Scourge didn’t need any convincing or do any refusals before he saved that hot dog salesman.

Tikal gets some new powers as the plot demands again because now she says she’s able to heal, but as she’s trying, she screams, and she lost control of chaos energy, because Diabolus ex Machina, so while Silver’s sister is safe and the bleeding’s stopped, she’ll never walk again without more help because of her spine. So, why doesn’t she start healing her again? Her time freezing spell was interrupted and all she had to do was cast it again!

  So not only is there now no excuse for her not healing her spine – I don’t even remember her spine GETTING hurt, all that happens was that she was cut in one area – but this is Silver’s FUTURE. And so far, the concept of this being the future and not just a different place is not being taken advantage of at all. It doesn’t seem like the future, it seems like modern day.

  You’d think 200 years ahead in the future, they’d have the technology to let her walk again effortlessly AND it’d be affordable by now. What about those exoskeleton leg suits, what about cybernetics? Not to mention with all of the characters with inexplicable magical powers in the Sonic universe, that any SANE PERSON would assume is because Mobius itself is so magical that some people get naturally enhanced by magic, surely there’d be more people than just Tikal who have healing magic. You’d think they’d be searched for and employed at hospitals. This is forced drama.

She tells Silver that she needs another Chaos Emerald, as everything’s slipping. Metal Sonic sends Blaze through the window. Logically she’d get tons of glass in her and Tikal should need to heal her too, or else she’d be guaranteed to die. She says this is the last one and tells Silver to go. So Silver uses the Warp Ring that Sonic gave him a long time ago to travel to the next Emerald. If it was so easy, again, no excuse for him taking so long.

He gets scared at seeing what he thinks is a giant fish that’s gonna eat him. Again, Silver is NOT a WIMP. He would’ve just used telekinesis on it and been fine. Name one time in the entirety of any of the games Silver appeared in that Silver had wimpy moments like this. If there’s one character you HAVE to get right, it’s the protagonist. I hope I never see Silver again. Thanks, Evan, you ruined him for me.

Also I can barely even see what’s going on in this page because of the art. It’s just blue and pink. How does Silver think this place is all one big Emerald? I’m not seeing anything but space and pink light. He says there’s gotta be a nexus where it all comes together. How does he think that? Why is he in a different outfit when Sonic’s not able to do that for him?

He almost falls into lava. This is a guy who can fly! He’d know he can fly because it’s so obvious if you had telekinesis, you could use it on yourself! He thinks he can’t reach the Emerald way out there. Telekinetically pull it towards you, moron! He flies towards it and then there’s a swipe sound effect and he falls towards the lava and has to save himself and start flying.

Why is he such a failure in this comic?! He’s NEVER BEEN like that, EVER! That’s NEVER been his character! Sure, he failed to save his future in 06 but only because he was given the wrong information about why it ended up the way it did, not because it was his fault.

Then I’m confused as instead of Silver simply making HIMSELF fly, like he does in 06 perfectly fine, he’s being possessed by Sonic and that’s saving him from the lava, even though Sonic is trapped in Metal Sonic right now. But apparently the writer forgot! He’d have known he could fly immediately because using telekinesis on himself would’ve been the obvious idea.

Then after some really shitty, cringeworthy pages that make NO SENSE, they finally get back to Tikal. That was humiliating to the issue. Read Scourge Eternal Blackout instead. Anyways, Tikal can’t stay any longer, for some reason, even though she should be able to just come back right afterwards… Do you SEE why I’m fed up with this comic now?! So much forced drama!

  Metal Sonic has every reason to think it’s impossible that Sonic’s here, because he was clearly put in Metal Sonic. All I can gather is that this Sonic is a copy that was generated when Silver went into the Special Zone. So the real Sonic is in Metal Sonic now, permanently. And that’s never gonna be addressed, the ghost with Silver is always gonna be treated like Sonic and no one’s gonna notice or care. This writing SUCKS! There’s no self-awareness at all.

Why is Sonic in pain? He’s a ghost! Instead of Tikal being written to simply heal Blaze and the other person, like in a kids’ series like Sonic, Sonic just leaves and Silver’s parents are upset at seeing him. Wouldn’t this mean that Silver would be blamed for hurting Blaze? And all because Sonic didn’t stick around to explain things. I REALLY HATE when characters have no communication skills just for the sake of cheap drama. That’s the definition of cheap drama! That’s like a soap opera, isn’t it?!

  This issue was by Evan Stanley. Ugh, it really didn’t try to make sense, this issue sucked. The writer thinks she explained it, but she didn’t. So Tikal magically figures out that something’s wrong and that Sonic’s missing but doesn’t know where he is, somehow, so she goes to Silver and he refuses to help because he’s Out of Character, and she doesn’t easily heal his sister and Blaze even though she has healing magic to begin with. So they’re still hurt by the end, and Silver goes into the Special Zone to get an Emerald. Why didn’t he get one much earlier? He just went into a magical void place!

  And then the writer completely embarrassed the comic and then he went out of it. It’s too bad that according to the next issue’s cover, instead of never showing that character ever again, the next issue’s gonna be even MORE absolute embarrassment and humiliation annoying me to no end and I’ll have to skip a lot of stuff out of sheer disgust and apathy.

  In Archie Sonic, Scourge wasn’t constantly bragging about himself when he was fighting Sonic. I remember him annoying me by calling Sonic a goody-two-shoes, and missing all of his punches, but he never complimented himself. Anyone who read Archie Sonic all the way would know that Scourge wasn’t as evil as he could’ve been and there were dozens of times he proved that. He went to Knothole SO many times and he never destroyed it, he didn’t even try! Why didn’t he run into Kintobor’s tower with a bomb and blow it up a long time ago? It’s because he wasn’t TRYING.

  So it goes without saying that writing him as pure evil completely misinterprets his character. That’s what someone would write him as if they never actually read Archie Sonic. They’d just go, “ Oh, he’s an Evil Sonic, so make him look and act evil. ” You might as well write any other Archie Sonic villain for the role that he’s having in this comic, like Sleuth Dog, or Drago, and it’d make a lot more sense.

  MAKE A NEW CHARACTER, instead of RUINING the old ones! I think he was being controlled? Don’t care. I remember he was working for The Second Devourer. He was still talking like he was just a rival to Sonic who was inexplicably arrogant now and he still knew his name, so whatever. I just don’t wanna see this. I’m just so sick of Scourge as Sonic’s enemy. It’s just always the same thing. He’ll never win and it’s just BORING!

  Other M was definitely better than this. I don’t care about art, I care about the fact that I could actually get through most of the comic without being pissed off at it and wanting to give up most of the time. I never felt total apathy for it, I just kept writing reviews of it all day and got it done. I didn’t have to force myself to review it at any point! There are barely any issues that I absolutely hated. But this issue is really testing my resolve.

  I think I remember learning that the main reason Evan thought it was okay to make Nicole evil was a lack of familiarity with her series, so she thought, “ Why not make Nicole evil? “ So she’s not even an Archie comic fan. If you read ahead in the comic, it has a really disappointing and depressing ending for Archie Sonic’s future, like, EVERYBODY including the good main characters got turned into a STATUE! And I thought the end of the Freedom Fighters arc was dark!

And this is what Evan Stanley wanted to write without restrictions from Sega! Why did she want to write all of the main characters of Archie being turned to stone including Fiona?! He was just a rival to Sonic, a try-hard, not someone who’d try to destroy Mobius and all of his enemies!

Ghosts of the Future Issue 11:

  The story starts out with a flashback to the very beginning of the comic, showing what happened after Shadow saw Sonic again. Sonic vanishes in front of him, Shadow sees some GUN helicopters showing up, and then he doesn’t want them to catch him and jumps into the water, and Omega is reluctant to try to capture him.

Rouge says that while they’ve got their orders, she has her own plan. Considering how dark the beginning of the comic was, I’m surprised that he didn’t kill Rouge and Omega too, because he angsted about being brainwashed into killing his friends, and they’re his friends before anyone else.

  Too bad the flashback gets interrupted by returning to the present. Silver lies to his parents that what happened was that guys in masks attacked out of nowhere. He’s told that GUN’s on their way to investigate, and Silver is told to stay here while his parents are going to the safe-house. After I skip some terrible pages, we see Silver with Sonic, and he says this is the third time they’ve been down this way and there’s still no blips on the radar.

  Sonic says that Shadow’s out here somewhere and they must have missed something. Silver messes with Sonic by saying that it looks like it’s gonna rain and then says psyche. But it’s clearly cloudy above him. Sonic says he doesn’t remember anything from the night Shadow went missing, and then he says he’d know that deadly bolt of lightning anywhere. And EVENTUALLY, they reunite with Shadow and Metal Sonic bothers them for a bit, and Sonic’s told to let him go because they’ll see him again soon enough.

Shadow doesn’t remember what happened either, and then Silver uses Chaos Control and warps them to a house of his distant relative that his parents are looking after. Back at Shadow’s place, Shadow doesn’t want to watch a rerun of a show he loves, saying it’d be a waste of energy. So his mind was messed with by Nicole and he’s more depressing now, but what did she have to GAIN? This comic just fills me with APATHY, especially when it has absolutely no clue how to handle and portray a character.

  Shadow in the past sees Sonic in the mirror for no reason, when usually Sonic is just with him outside of mirrors, because this comic doesn’t care at all about making sense. So he gets scared and then the Chaotix find him, and say that they’re on his side and a friend of his sent them. Meanwhile, Tikal tries to get Sonic to meditate in her dimension, and he’s distracted by his angst over everything, like how Silver’s sister wasn’t healed right, and he calls Tikal sweet. The story ends with Silver calling Sonic to his relief and telling him that the mansion he’s in is haunted.

  This issue by Evan Stanley didn’t really have anything happen in it of note. It’s all just filler I hate. Eventually, Sonic gets called by Silver and told that the mansion he’s staying at is haunted. There’s also some ultimately redundant flashbacks to Shadow’s past after what happened to Sonic, which end up not answering anything.

You’d think he would just talk to Rouge and she’d see that he didn’t have the brainwashing device on his head anymore and then she could just tell GUN not to hunt him down anymore, but that’d be good writing. And if there was good writing, I’d actually enjoy the issue enough to pay full attention to it. I WOULD’VE PREFERRED an original fan character in cases like this. Scourgesbestbuddy is a much better writer.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 12:

  It starts out in the past, where a GUN airship is heading for Angel Island. We see Rouge and a screen says database download. It’s way too vague for me to really know what’s going on. Rouge gets approached by Evil Nicole, who says she had to let Rouge’s superior officer go and she’ll be reporting to her now. She makes fun of Rouge for failing to capture Shadow. It’s too bad it doesn’t take place entirely in the past, where it belongs, because I’m completely apathetic to Sonic’s sub-plot.

There’s just nothing for me to talk about with this other than I HATE seeing this character’s portrayal. There’s no PLOT here, anyways! Meanwhile, after Silver’s sister angsts about the fact that her fixing Metal Sonic was a mistake, since she actually knew he’d be dangerous, Metal Sonic innocently calls for help from her. And I’m at the point where I’m actually much more interested in reading about HER as opposed to the other garbage. At least she’s a scientist!

  In the past, Team Dark and Team Chaotix meet up, with some much needed levity because Espio’s invisibility startles Vector and it’s lampshaded that Omega being a big walking tank isn’t very discreet. Then when Omega asks where Shadow is, Charmy screams and flies over to them and says that Shadow started talking, and he’s clearly traumatized.

It’s pretty sweet that Omega cares about him so much that he says, “ I would like to incinerate the one responsible for this NOW. “ He was like this when the Chaotix finally caught up to him, and Rouge says she’s got their next lead here, GUN’s comm records, and this case might be a whole lot bigger than they thought.

  Skipping all of this because it’s not real plot and I hate it, seriously they could’ve had a Sonic recolor that wasn’t an established character or had the ghost look like an actual ghost and then I would’ve cared about the plot. The dialogue’s probably extremely predictable anyways, so why read it? Bad guy taunts the heroes, the end. Anyways, Silver was led to the vault by a light he saw outside. They see Silver’s sister in a light form, which is blamed on Tikal when clearly if she has healing magic she would do a better job than this.

And Sonic tells her to remember what it feels like to be alive, and she says she’s her again. I’m too confused by this. Since when can Sonic do this for anyone? She says she’s been following them for weeks and she hasn’t seen anything that she hasn’t seen a million times. And yet she’s not questioning the fact that Sonic’s here? Sonic then uses brute force instead of hacking the computer to get them into the vault with the electronic lock.

Considering that he had centuries with nothing to do, if he did learn how to hack computers, that would’ve impressed me and made some sense, while this just confuses me and makes it seem too convenient that they got in the vault.

  They see a pre-recorded message by Rouge meant for some recruits. She says that no doubt Team Dark is off on a dangerous mission for the cause, but she’s entertainingly happy about it. She says this is the headquarters of the New Chaotix. Her organization is dedicated to collecting every shred of evidence pertaining to the life of the life of Sonic, because his legacy is the key to uncovering the secrets guarded by GUN. That sounds like convoluted writing coming up.

GUN’s become too powerful and corrupt and Rouge and her agents intend to stop them. That could’ve easily not been written, but okay, fine, it’s interesting and it has an origin for it because GUN did get Maria killed. So it wasn’t always good. But it comes out of nowhere.

  Silver asks how everything they know always comes down to Sonic, and Sonic says unhappily, “ I guess I’m just that awesome? “ They see Silver’s parents, who should’ve had the characterizations that his siblings had instead of being cardboard blocks of wood. They’re pretty high up and Silver’s sister accidentally pushes him off.

  Metal Sonic is asked by Silver’s sister how he found her and he says in the past, she had taken him here when she was troubled. Then when he’s told that he hurt her sister, he’s really offended and says that he would never do that and he wasn’t in control. He says there’s too many memories, and he doesn’t know what’s him, because vague writing to push the goalposts on us. Then he inconveniently gets taken over again. He tells her to run, but you’d think someone as fast as him would catch up to her and kill her immediately. What did he have to gain in hurting any of Silver’s relatives?

   In the past, Rouge goes to a Mystic Ruins base because of files she stole from GUN, and she wants to find evidence and get out. Then she sees Big, and for some reason he introduces himself to Rouge when she’d already know him from Sonic Heroes and Generations. He says he just wanted snack cakes. It’s said that there’s little danger here and Omega is sad and says, “ I would have liked to smash at least a few badniks. “ And Rouge is suspicious. How does Espio or whatever sense danger? I guess the same magic that lets him go invisible.

  Then all the bad guys catch up with Silver’s family and the story ends there. Whatever. It doesn’t matter what generic bad guy does, he’ll never do anything that matters.

I’m not sure anything of note really happened in this issue. Only the past flashbacks are worth reading. It basically says that Rouge turned on GUN. What, is GUN responsible for what Shadow did? It’s supposed to be Eggman!

Ghosts of the Future Issue 13:

  Rouge in the past is looking for something to clear Shadow’s name. Why does she have to clear his name? Wasn’t it immediately obvious he was forced to work for Eggman by the obvious thing he was wearing on his head? This plot is stupid. GUN would have to know Shadow was innocent and it’d only make sense if they were just playing dumb so they could have an excuse to get rid of someone as dangerous as Shadow, since without Eggman, he’s the most threatening person left.

  For some reason, Rouge sees Shadow’s fashion accessories, as Omega puts it, in a place like THIS. Rouge says Shadow’s rings siphon off his extra chaos energy, and she’s not risking it because in his current state, she doesn’t know what they’ll do to him. I don’t get her logic. His current state is that he’s traumatized. Vector finds security logs, which conveniently record Eggman talking to Nicole.

  GUN is pleased with Eggman’s latest weapons shipment, and he wants a special payment. So we see Nicole brainwash Shadow for Eggman. Why would GUN do this to Shadow, logically, when GUN knows Eggman’s a bad guy and that Sonic needs to be kept around? This is an alternate universe, clearly, and that’s why making an alternate universe too much like the games is just confusing when it contradicts them. Eggman tells Nicole to get back to GUN and make sure they stay out of his way. So GUN does hate him? Why’d they give Eggman a special payment?

  And in the present in the mansion, Shadow gets re-brainwashed. I don’t care about this sub-plot though. Then out of nowhere, Silver’s family is revealed to be secret agents serving the legacy of Sonic and bringing Gun down, and then Silver’s mother has evil black eyes and text bubbles but still is opposed to Nicole’s puppets. That’s needlessly confusing. Silver uses his powers and his boss compliments him, saying he apparently knew about his powers, and that’s why he recruited his parents. He also knew about Blaze’s fire.

  I don’t care about this fight scene! It has a badly written character in it. I’m sure the heroes will all survive, so nothing matters. I really don’t care about this story, I mean there’s nothing to say about it. Silver’s sister ghost goes back into her old body. Blaze asks to help the heroes and her father tells her to do her thing and hugs her. At some point Sonic possesses Shadow to save the day. More Ron the Death Eater writing ensues with no real logic, meanwhile the Chaotix are upset about GUN working with Eggman. But Eggman said he wanted Nicole to make sure GUN stayed AWAY from him.

  They get threatened by GUN’s forces and Rouge calls out for Shadow, and Omega says amusingly, “ Things have gone south. Excellent. “ He is the only fantastic character in this comic. He gets damaged and asks for more explosives on the floor. Rouge says they can’t fight this many. Why is there so many pages of them fighting the robots or whatever? It’s in black and white, so it’s harder to tell what’s going on.

And the story ends with, I guess Silver and Sonic being sent to another dimension, rather than killed for some reason.

The only thing of value that happened in this story was that it turns out Silver’s family are a group of heroes and Team Dark turns against GUN.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 14:

  In the past, Evil Nicole tells the Chaotix what Shadow had been brainwashed to do and says she’s only here to make sure he’s dealt with. Then Shadow magically breaks free of the rubble to try to save his friends. Meanwhile in the present, after Silver recaps what happened last time for me, he tells off his sister Sicily for hugging a deactivated Metal Sonic, and she says sorry. There’s an earthquake and flood, and Sonic says they should head uphill. He possesses Shadow to make sure he runs with them. Sonic wishes that Shadow was wearing the old rocket boots, and he trips.

Metal Sonic asks him to help Sicily, and he does and he thanks him. I guess he’s good now, like Shard, freaking FINALLY. Then the ground breaks off and Sonic falls into the water, and Silver uses telekinesis to fly down to Shadow to try to save him. Shadow gets out of the water himself and uses his powers to get Sonic in an Emerald. They get greeted by Tikal, and after some badly written pages, Tikal greets Silver when he wakes up and says that she’s the other universe equivalent of Tikal, called Antique, and she just MAGICALLY knows that Silver’s Tikal is called that.

  She says his friends have nothing to fear as I don’t trust the writer to write the Reverse Universe properly for good reason. I’m still calling her Tikal because her character seems no different than hers, which is just confusing considering the world they’re in. She tells Silver to rest up and that they’ll speak more tonight.

  He thanks her, and then Blaze suddenly turns her on her melodrama again, saying that he lied to her and closed her off and look what happened. I’m pretty sure all of this would have happened regardless of whether he was honest with her or not. And when did he actually lie to her anyways? He tells her that he thought she wanted him gone, and all of a sudden she mood swings to not being mad at him anymore and they promise not to keep secrets from each other anymore. I really hate when Blaze treats him like this.

  Sonic wants Shadow to stop giving him the silent treatment and Shadow reminds him of when they came to, after something. They were running from GUN, and he says that Nicole’s found them again. He says she found and destroyed them and he watched her tear him apart. Sonic doesn’t remember that, so I have to wonder if Nicole gave him fake memories because I read Issue 1. He says that he doesn’t know how Sonic’s back, and Nicole had reached into his head and changed him. He refuses to let Sonic comfort him either, because that would’ve been good to see.

Tikal tells Sonic to leave Shadow alone. Then there’s more pages that are worthless garbage. I don’t care, I’m here to give my opinion and that’s how I feel. Couldn’t be more apathetic to this. On the bright side, I like that Silver’s sister has her hand on Metal Sonic’s head. She’s still willing to give him a chance and be nice to him. He’s also considerate enough to tell her that they won’t forgive her until she lets him go, and she doesn’t.

  Then we see a past flashback where in Eggman’s hidden base, Shadow returns to Nicole and is told to get rid of those loose ends. Apparently the nanites aren’t gonna work on him, purely because Sonic’s possessing him a bit. That makes no sense. She then expects me to believe that Shadow doesn’t have his chaos powers purely because the Emeralds are gone.

  He threatens her with Sonic’s help, but sadly it cuts back to the present time where the writing’s needlessly dark and edgy by revealing that Blaze accidentally killed her mom with her fire powers when she was four. At least her dad never blamed her for the mistake, but times like this really make me wonder why this writer is so popular. This is dark and edgy fan writer writing, not anything professional. Not just this, but a combination of SO many different things in this comic.

  As bad as the art of Other M could be, at least it made me care enough about it to read all of it. Just because Blaze has fire powers doesn’t mean she has to have angst over it where she became a danger to people because she lost her temper. Firebenders don’t have that problem. The story ends with me being completely apathetic to the comic again. Read Scourge Eternal Blackout instead, any of its pages beats the shit out of how this comic is portraying him. This makes me too apathetic to even write a summary, let alone read most of his garbage dialogue.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 15:

  I really can’t care about reading this story. It’s so obvious this unlikable green character should’ve been some new original character and that would’ve made his personality actually tolerable. He’s a bad guy the end, BLAH BLAH BLAH. I’m not reading his stupid predictable dialogue. The heroes will survive all of this anyways. I like that Silver’s sister created a bubble around her.

She says that so-called Scourge isn’t gonna DO anything and that they can get him away from the evil cloud jerk that’s in control of his Anarchy Beryl, and get him to a place where it can’t control him, and if they work together, they can find everyone and get the Emerald back to go home. The writing would be pretty terrible and frustrating if he didn’t agree to what she said and HELP HIMSELF.

  He at least does agree, but it’s really pathetic of the comic to censor out any swearing at this point. It’s really confusing considering that it’s willing to go way too dark all it wants, and even Sonic the Continuation has the guts to have swearing in it like it’s absolutely nothing. This on the other hand just pollutes the text bubbles by keeping him from understanding it properly.

  Meanwhile, after Sicily’s boot gets petrified and Shadow says his Chaos Spears don’t do that, so they’d better get out of here, the heroes see a bunch of statues and some terribly written, clueless pages happen that shouldn’t be taken seriously at all because the writer doesn’t know how to write this character or write tone properly. It’s hypocritical to hate Shadow the Hedgehog for being too dark and then love dark writing like this. Meanwhile, the Metal Sonic head being held is talking like Sonic, and he says that his head is clearer away from Nicole. So Shadow sees some statues of Rouge and Omega.

  Then finally we get another past flashback, in Club Rouge. Sonic greeted Team Dark and Chaotix and awkwardly says that he should say boo. Shadow says that he’s glad he could save them in time, and he says that GUN isn’t going to stop going after them, so if they stay, they’ll be in danger, and he has to go. Yeah, obviously it’s not very enjoyable to have GUN be evil since it means that the heroes of the games aren’t safe no matter where they go and GUN will always be after them.

Rouge angrily tells Shadow that after one year of his little crusade, she wants him back here, and she wants him to keep coming back until she says stop. She then kisses him so that he won’t forget, another fanservicey moment all of a sudden. Why does he want to leave for a year anyways? This writing’s too vague. They’ll be in danger regardless!

  Shadow leaves with Sonic, and it turns out Rouge didn’t give him back his special rings. Doesn’t he need to have his special rings on at all times, or else he’ll get burnt out and exhausted? How can anyone not realize that when writing them? There would be consequences to him not having them on. Then the past flashback shows that when Shadow returned a year later, he saw that Rouge was turned into a statue. So what did he do without her, what was he doing during his crusade?

  Shadow wants to stay here because he thinks this is where he belongs, even if the clouds are coming. Metal Sonic’s upset with him for wanting to leave the whole universe to fend for itself without the Emeralds. Eventually Sicily manages to fix his jet engine and cause him to fly with her and Shadow. Then I get to the later pages and I’m not really sure what’s going on, other than they have to deal with some powerful bad guy. Some crystals get Silver and Blaze stuck.

  Then Antique says that she’s going to save “ our world “ with this Emerald. She wants to take back the power over Anarchy Beryl that he traded away and rid his planet of the bad guy. She tells him that he has no idea what he’s fighting for, and she says she can make someone the monster he was meant to be, while it looks like she’s looking at Sonic. Huh? I’m more confused than anything and desperate to get past all of this quickly.

  Then Metal Sonic shows up, Shadow gets Sonic back in some rings to save him, and Silver warns his friends that this smoke stuff turns whatever it touches into stone. So So-called Scourge says he’s done working for his master and, uh, I guess Silver’s sister helped out? And then he’s free. So he tells her happily to keep it up.

  He tells Antique to give the heroes their old Emerald because his leash is cut and she doesn’t have to settle for scraps for chaos, when she can have all of Anarchy. Would that mean he has all of the Anarchy Beryls in him? I don’t get it. But I get him being lonely. Silver tells him to tell them when he’s done and then they’ll drop the shield. It’s implied that he’s gonna help save her world. He tells them to get out of here because he’s got this and can’t run this time, so the heroes get teleported out of that dimension.

  So, did Scourge get actually written right for a few seconds? I mean, he got sick of working for someone so obviously evil that he had no reason to bother with him. I guess he defeated him. I dunno, the way he was written in this comic made me so apathetic to it that I really didn’t wanna spend more time on it than I had to. At least he got to be happy with a girl, but I don’t know why that girl wanted to turn Sonic into a monster, that made no sense. 

Ghosts of the Future Issue 16:

  It starts out with a past flashback taking place in Mexico, and Sonic tells Shadow that he can’t stay in here forever and should go out for a bit to take his mind off things. You’d think they would go hide in Canada, not, a place where they don’t know the language! GUN turned on Shadow in the past because bullshit, so it makes sense that they’d go to another COUNTRY, but definitely not THAT one!

  He says that he’s really bored, but he doesn’t want to go because he can only talk to himself for so long. Shadow sees a party and doesn’t want to go, angsting about how bad his life has been. So he forces Shadow to go to the party, and he tells Shadow that they should set up memorials because he’d rather be remembered with happiness, and he’s sick of Shadow beating himself up for something that isn’t his fault.

  Thankfully, Shadow apologizes and says he’s been selfish. He says he can’t change instantly but can start trying tonight, but he won’t dance. That would’ve been heartwarming, but, the way that they interact in the present, while it’s not like they’re enemies, they’re not super close friends either. So this meant nothing! Then Sonic says they should bring Rouge and the Chaotix along next year.

  Back in the present, Silver says in the narration that it’s been a few months with all of them living in the New Chaotix mansion. He doesn’t get to see the others much. Blaze is usually training with her magic alone. You’d think she’d be great at it already and not need to. For some reason his sister is in a wheelchair, when Tikal has healing powers. That’s still stupid, especially when they have 4 Emeralds now. The whole reason she was having trouble healing her was because there weren’t enough Emeralds in the universe, but there’s more now!

Silver explains that he used to wish his sister was quieter, but not now. He doesn’t know what’s up with Sonic as usual, and while Sicily was forbidden from spending time with Metal Sonic, she still does, so the people in the comic are annoying me by refusing to recognize that he’s actually a good person who simply got taken over by an evil Nicole, so they’re still hating him for something he was brainwashed into doing.

  All they’d have to do is have ONE conversation with him and they’d realize he isn’t evil anymore, though I can understand them all being reluctant to try. That’s no better than how Flynn wrote the people of Mobotropolis to hate Nicole for being brainwashed by the Iron Queen. But no, have only ONE CHARACTER realize how stupid that is. All I want is to see a version of Shard that isn’t hated by most of the characters!

  After Silver sees Shadow steal a candle, he says a needlessly edgy line because he’s mad at some people as he goes into the kitchen, and he’s nice and considerate to Blaze, and after Silver sees that his redundant younger sister was trying to complete her next year’s Halloween costume, she astral-projects to go into her ghost form, being interested in doing that whenever it benefits her.

At least she has a special power, which puts her on the level of characters like Silver and Blaze, but I still don’t want her around, because I still have a hard time forgiving her design, annoying first impression, and the fact that Silver doesn’t need to have a sister. Her ghost form is redundant with Sonic around, who’s able to do the same things she’d be able to do anyways.

  Silver and Blaze go outside and see Tikal, who didn’t want to get in their way for months after so many mistakes. Vennie thanks her for trying to heal her at the hospital anyways. Tikal thanks her for not hating her. Why isn’t she trying to heal her AGAIN?! They could’ve had this conversation months ago, but that’d be good communication skills instead of romcom levels of “ why aren’t these characters talking to each other, “ which Silver and Sonic both suffered from since Issue 2.

Tikal came here looking for Sonic, who’s been quiet with her recently, which is cause for alarm, and yesterday he didn’t show up at all. Eventually, they find Sonic and Shadow, who’ve learned some Spanish from when they were in Mexico. Sonic wants to have a party in remembrance of his friends, and he says he got nostalgic from seeing old photos in the new Chaotix archives.

Tikal gets excited because the festival that Sonic’s talking about reminds her of the festival for ancestors that her own tribe had, and it was the only thing her father did that she agreed with. So they have a party and enjoy it.

  This whole issue has just been pointless filler. There’s no plot. It’s just a bunch of little scenes that have nothing to do with each other. There’s nothing worth summarizing. At least the characters are nice to each other in it. Silver told his sister to tell him any time she feels bad.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 17:

  It starts out with the ghost form of Sonic in a special stage searching for Emeralds, with Silver and Blaze too. Silver says to him that the radar’s getting all beep happy. They’re right on top of it. So, again, why weren’t all of the Emeralds in the special zone? I’ve read all of this comic by this point, and I still don’t know why some of them are just in completely separate dimensions from each other for no reason. The floor breaks beneath Silver and Blaze, but they’re not hurt, just caught by something sticky out of complete nowhere.

  Then they see some bees being held captive by robots. Sonic destroys the badniks furiously, but for some reason, Tikal tells him to stop, and accuses him of letting his anger blind him, saying that innocents are in danger – yeah and he was DEFENDING THEM. He’s doing what he normally does against badniks. She accuses him of wanting to turn that anger on his friends. That came out of nowhere. He wouldn’t do that.

  Anyways, the radar says the Emerald’s headed east. Wouldn’t Sonic have just destroyed the robot that had the Emerald and gotten it already? I thought it was really nearby. They see a big metal dome and Sonic goes in, and Silver uses telekinesis to get a way in a few minutes later. Why would it take more than a second?

  Then a textbox says meanwhile, nearby, and we see the Fleetway version of Sonic, which is made clear as soon as we see that it’s the Omni-Viewer talking to him. Pretty sure Vector made a device for Sonic to get to the Special Zone without the Omni-Viewer. Sonic says this is the best shot he’s had at getting Kintobor back from Robotnik. Omni asks what Robotnik’s doing out here when the Egg Fortress has been abandoned for years. He says that if he gives him a minute, he could pick up the rest of the team.

But Sonic says confidently that he can handle this himself. He would’ve looked sympathetic if he said that he doesn’t want to risk getting his friends hurt, and if he said it was because of what happened to Johnny, it’d also take more advantage of him being the Fleetway Sonic. But no, he’s JUST a smug idiot jerk in this crossover.

  Somewhere deep in the fortress, we see a more unhappy Dr. Zachary holding a coffee cup, and he’s warned about hull failure, and warns Robotnik about a priority one situation as Silver and Blaze are running by animal capsules. I’m just forced to assume that the Fleetway universe has time at a different speed than Silver’s future so that this makes sense. One has a slower chrontron field than the others, if the Rick and Morty comics told me anything.

  Blaze says that the mansion of Silver’s family has a badnik vault full of old weapons and robots. Silver uses his magic against some robots, and a bee Mobian tells Blaze to forget the Emerald after thanking her, saying that it’s crazy to go up against Robotnik.

  Meanwhile, Sonic angsts saying that it can’t be him, and Tikal hugs him from behind and puts her hands on his shoulders saying that it’ll never happen again. Since I read the first issue of this fancomic, I know that she’s probably talking about the time Shadow was brainwashed to kill him in the first place. She holds his hand as they fly and she admits that she needs him too. It’s not like their personalities are that similar to each other, but at least they make each other feel better. It’d certainly be easier for them to enjoy all of eternity if they kiss each other a lot.

  We see the Kintobor computer, still opposed to Eggman. Am I supposed to believe he was too advanced for Robotnik to reprogram to his side? There’s a reason I used to assume that had happened to him. He hears Tikal and says that if anyone can hear him, he needs help because he’s held here against his will. Sonic sees two of their Chaos Emeralds. How does he know that they’re HIS? Kintobor says he’s being forced to build an infernal machine for Robotnik. He’s freaked out at seeing Sonic, and then Fleetway Sonic shows up and casually greets Kintobor and meets Sonic.

  Meanwhile, it turns out that the reason Sonic’s escapades with Robotnik weren’t in the history books and were in the New Chaotix archives instead, is that GUN covered it up because of the Evil Nicole pulling their strings. Blaze says that she doesn’t know why SHE cares though. Then that better be explained at some point if it’s lampshaded, because in this comic, Nicole was made by Eggman, so why would she be asking why she cares? I don’t like that GUN covered it all up. They reach a dead end, and say something’s coming, and we see a Metallix.

  Meanwhile, Fleetway Sonic inexplicably assumes that the ghost Sonic is something Robotnik put together and says he’ll deal with him in a bit, and offends him by ignoring him. Lame. He’s just an idiot in this crossover! REALLY?! That’s the crossover?! He’s supposed to be smart! That’s too disappointing to be worth reading.

  Kintobor says that Robotnik’s forcing him to build him a new ROCC with the two foreign Emeralds inside. Why? Why would Robotnik, while he’s still evil, make a machine to remove all of the world’s evil from the world? The writer must have had to LOOK UP the issue to know what the acronym stood for, and STILL didn’t know what it DID! Why would Robotnik make a device that can only have a harmless result? Then they get threatened by Zachary, some harmless badniks and Eggman in his Eggmobile.

  And it’s absolutely RIDICULOUS that Silver merely throws stuff at Metallix with his telekinesis instead of grabbing him directly and defeating him easily. This is just STUPID! He was a lot more competent against Sonic in his fight with him in 06 than this! So Metal Sonic immediately, magically knows how to deal with him by grabbing and hurting his palms, when he just met him. Sure his palms glow, but he obviously wouldn’t have survived trying to get this up close to Silver! All this Wimpification of Silver just to give Blaze some time to attack Metal Sonic instead.

  Blaze says she’ll get Silver out of here, and it turns out Robotnik made a spectral shielding just for Sonic after he observed his world. How is he able to make that with science?! That’s not fair. Tikal tries to go after the Emeralds, and she screams for some reason, and Zachary says that the ROCC can wait and he can work with this because she’s an echidna spirit. Wouldn’t he recognize Tikal? He’s from the ancient past too. She tells Sonic that she needs help because she’s trapped in this machine. Convenient that this is something that science can do!

  Sonic flies past Fleetway Sonic, who doesn’t want him to risk going Super. For some reason Sonic’s still lying on the floor when Eggman confronts Tikal and Silver. So Tikal takes the wrong Sonic through the Warp Ring in a hurry, with Eggman agreeing to let them pass, since they could get rid of Sonic for him.

  In the next issue I’m supposed to believe that Shadow thinks Sonic’s possessing Sonic. Why would Ghost Sonic stay in Sonic after going through him, when he wanted to pass by him to save Tikal? Why would he decide to stay in and possess him instead? There’s no sign of him here. It just seems like he vanished. That’s what’s so confusing. Every time he possessed someone other than this, the person doesn’t faint! Like Shadow didn’t. And he was immediately able to control him just fine! This isn’t like every other time, so it doesn’t come off as what it is. It’s just needlessly confusing.

I guess with all the crazy stuff that happens in their lives, including Sonic being brought back to life in Arabian Nights, it makes sense that they’d assume that Fleetway Sonic is Sonic. I’m just not sure why Fleetway Sonic conveniently passes out so that he can get taken to Silver’s universe. Eggman says to Zachary that they know where they went, they can pursue them with the fortress and his fleet and badnik horde are ready.

  This story by Evan Stanley was about Fleetway Sonic finding Kintobor in the Special Zone and apparently he’s being forced to build a new ROCC of all things, which was supposed to suck out all the world’s evil, and yet Robotnik’s still evil. At that point it would’ve made more sense to just go simplistic and uncreative and just have him build another Death Egg. And he gives Tikal and Silver a running start and plans to follow them when they take Fleetway Sonic to their dimension.

It makes sense that Silver and his friends met them while searching for a Chaos Emerald in the Special Zone, ‘cause that’s a place that both of them would wanna go to. The next issue of Ghosts of the Future isn’t even done yet. Oh well. It has a demonized Scourge in its past issues. All of his dialogue was unbearable. So I DON’T CARE.

Ghosts of the Future Issue 18:

  It starts out with Sonic wondering how long he was out, as apparently a ghost can be knocked unconscious, and he’s told he’s not him and doesn’t belong here, wherever he is. I’m too confused about where he is to be invested. Sonic tries to be nice and introduce himself and impress him by showing off that he can create a small ball of blue fire. He’s yelled at to get out by someone in a cave. I’m too confused about what’s even going on to care and that makes it really annoying that the story cuts to Silver’s house.

  Silver is sucking at his powers for no good reason and Blaze says it’ll come back to him. No excuse for writing that whatsoever. And Silver’s unnecessary sister is using astral projection to tell him that Silver’s mother is being overprotective of him and lost faith in him because he came home with injured palms, never mind that he has telekinesis, AND she’s in a resistance group of heroes, so she should still be supportive of him for being a hero. So she’s not gonna un-ground her kids ever. Well, that’s real sympathetic. Why the hell are any pages being wasted on her?

  Anyways, in the vaults below the mansion, we see Fleetway Sonic angrily putting his shoes back on, mad at them being taken off. At least we get to see his socks for once and it’s interesting that they have green on them instead of just being white. He wants to find out where he is, and there’s a needlessly confusing reflection in the mirror, which he doesn’t notice. He goes to an underground base. Shadow says that he sees that he’s trapped and he can feel his chaos energy’s aura, and he’ll get him out. I don’t know why Shadow is saying this.

Sonic accuses Shadow of being a brooding teenager working for Eggman, naturally suspicious of all the robots. It makes no sense that he speaks in Spanish here. He calls him an imposter and Sonic attacks him. This could have been EASILY written PROPERLY. Why do they have to fight? Shadow could’ve easily just explained things to him properly instead of provoking him. No one would be this stupid.

Blaze says that the badniks down here are inactive, but there’s no guarantee they’ll stay that way. Then WHY THE HELL haven’t they been reprogrammed to be good or destroyed in 200 YEARS?! That’s so stupid. If the badniks get reactivated and attack the good guys, that’ll be their stupid faults, then.

  Sonic goes over to Sicily who’s told to plug him in now, and he wants to attack the robot, and then since the robot was turned into Shard the Metal Sonic, Shard tells him to slow his roll and calls him buddy. I’m surprised that the pages are in black and white now. It makes it harder for me to be invested. Why would it lazy out in a crossover? I can barely tell where Fleetway Sonic is. I GUESS Shard is holding him still, but why would he be made giant? I guess to hold him still properly.

  He makes fun of Shadow not explaining anything and Shadow at least justifies that Sonic was being rude, and Shard jokes that Sonic was right to make fun of his hair. Shadow finally explains things to Sonic, saying that he thinks the ghost Sonic is possessing him. Shard says they’re on the same side and lets him go.

  Meanwhile, we see the Egg Fortress show up over San Francisco bay. Shockingly, that was the last page. It was made in January 2021. I assumed the crossover would have been FINISHED by now since Sonic the Continuation has Sonic come back to it. And it’s October 2021 by the time I’m typing this, so, that’s lame. I might as well talk about what’s been written so far now that I’m finally done with this comic.

  This issue by Evan Stanley had Fleetway Sonic wake up in the mansion of Silver’s family and go to the underground base and because Shadow didn’t explain everything to him right away, like the fact that he assumes his Sonic is possessing him for NO REASON, he and Sonic had a feud with each other, which was really annoying as that could’ve easily not happened. And I don’t know where the ghost Sonic is and why that person freaked out at him when he was being nice, so, overall, that was stupid.

  The only thing I like about this issue is that Shard was here, being the calm, good voice of reason. Fleetway Sonic could have easily not been taken to this dimension and had this issue happen because it was so obvious that he WASN’T their Sonic. I thought that reading these issues would tell me why Eggman was in such a sorry state at the start of Sonic the Continuation Issue 15’s prologue but I guess I’ll never know.

Most of Ghosts of the Future Plot Holes:

1: Issue 1: Sonic and his friends were beaten by a brainwashed Shadow, but he’s still intact, it’s not like they were smacked so hard that it’s like they were hit by a speeding train. It’s more like they got beat up by a normal guy. Oh, his super speed let him win, right? What about SONIC’S super speed? Shadow was up against Tails and Knuckles as well as Sonic, and it’s not like he warped them apart with Chaos Control, the only advantage he could use that would guarantee that he’d win no matter what.

2: He’s too weak to go Super Sonic without dying. That makes NO SENSE. Whatsoever. What about Sonic Generations where Sonic was crushed by a giant robot hand and going Super healed him up? If it was like this, that would have killed him.

3: Why would she remove the Emeralds at all, why would she put the universe in danger?! Tikal knows Silver will be born so if she knows the future, she’d know Shadow would break free of brainwashing, and kill Eggman, so the Emeralds don’t need to be removed from the world. She’d know that and the comic wouldn’t happen. She’d know that Shadow’s not always gonna be brainwashed either, and won’t be again.

4: Shadow’s brainwashing device is destroyed just because he went up to the Emeralds. A Deus ex Machina from merely approaching a powerful gem.

5: If Tikal is giving Silver a dream about what happened to Sonic, why? Why wouldn’t she just go talk to him directly? She did that for people in SA1 all the time. In fact, if she did that, he would KNOW that it’s not just a dream and dismiss it as something he shouldn’t care about. What an idiot she is!

6: Silver wishes his restaurant used paper plates instead because he hates doing the dishes. How would paper plates still be common knowledge 200 years into the future? They’d have been long abandoned.

7: Shadow tells Sonic that it’s too dangerous and he’s been wrong before, somehow. THANKS, TIKAL! Now I’m just wishing I saw the time he was wrong. What happened to “ You’ll know when you see him “? So why would he be wrong? Wouldn’t he just be told who he’ll need to get help from right away instead of Tikal being vague?

8: Issue 2: Shadow tells Silver that he’s been looking for him for a long time. Despite hearing this, Silver freaks out and says they were just a crazy dream and runs away, turning into a giant wuss, even though the fact that Shadow SAID THIS absolutely PROVES that it wasn’t just a dream and they need his help. And the fact that his dream was a RECURRING DREAM that involved people he didn’t even see until now should also make things obvious.

9: Silver faints just because his hands glowed. HE’S NOT ANTOINE!

10: Sonic says that without the unique powers of the Chaos Emeralds, all forms of energy in their dimension will eventually stop circulating and reacting like they’re supposed to – WHAT TOOK SO LONG?! It’s been 200 years! Why would there be a 200 year delay? That’s ridiculous! Even the fact that the Emeralds are needed for these energies is ridiculous.

11: Silver was introduced to the franchise as a hero. He shouldn’t need an incentive to save the universe. He would’ve agreed right away, not run away like a coward.

12: How would Chaos Control from Sonic subconsciously summon a new outfit for Silver, as in, removing his clothes? Chaos Control is teleportation, but Sonic didn’t have access to any new clothing options for Silver to warp to him. He’s never seen the so-called outfit Silver’s wearing in the Special Zone before, so he couldn’t have imagined it. Why did he get a new outfit anyways just because he was in the special stage? That was NEVER a property of them, so why did it never happen to anyone else?

13: Silver continues the trend of only being a loser because he walks right into the Red Spheres even though they were in front of him, he didn’t exactly turn, and eyes are in the front of his head! Is this all because he had his eyes closed last panel? WHY were they closed? How did he fail such a simple task?

14: He panics about being teleported out of this dimension, and uses his powers. Then we see some balls being sent away from him. But they already started the process of teleporting him out of the Special Zone. That was bad. I don’t see how that plot hole would be made. He could’ve easily just used his powers in desperation BEFORE he’d start to be warped away. Instead I can’t take it seriously that he avoided that fate and the rest of the plot’s gonna happen.

15: Somehow he got the Emerald after that when he didn’t get all the Blue Spheres first. Huh? Didn’t Sonic establish that he had to get them even in that very issue?

16: It is cool that Tikal can speak through the Emeralds now, but there was never any indication that she could.

17: Why is Silver back to his old civilian outfit just because he left the Special Zone?

18: I’m wondering why he’s back in his old apartment instead of staying with Sonic. Why doesn’t he just go into the Warp Ring again right away? Since Sonic can sense where the Emeralds are and go to them whenever he wants wherever they are, why doesn’t he just go into the Warp Ring six more times and get all of the Emeralds in a row? Since apparently no Rings are required. It’s the Feist Special Zone plot hole all over again. I have to assume the heroes have to wait until he collects 50 Rings again, and they’re invisible. That has to be explained!

19: Blaze left a message at Silver’s house because she wants to know if Silver’s okay after following Shadow, but Silver naturally wonders how to explain it to her and doesn’t. But he can prove he has telekinesis to her easily. He can bring her to Shadow and Sonic easily. Maybe there’s no excuse for this frustrating writing then.

20: Sonic makes a Warp Ring, and somehow only Silver, not even the ultimate life form, can touch it and go to the Special Zone. There was never any indication only Sonic could go to the Special Zone. Eggman’s robots got into the Special Zone in Sonic Rush. Why couldn’t they just go into the Special Zone the normal way from Sonic 1 or something? Wouldn’t Shadow have found all the Emeralds 200 years ago instead of thinking he needed Silver for them NOW?!

21: Issue 3: How has it been a WEEK since the first Emerald was gotten from the special stage if they can just go into a special stage at ANY TIME?

22: Instead the story is preoccupied with explaining why Silver had no pants in the special stage. It’s because Sonic subconsciously changed his outfit using Chaos Control when they used the Warp Ring. That’s a Hand Wave, why would Sonic want him to lose the pants? At the time that he touched the Warp Ring, he was too busy panicking over the fact that he did it to think, “ Y’know, I don’t like the fact that he wears pants. “ He wasn’t focused on his fashion.

23: There being chao around Shadow and Sonic just because they left the Special Zone with an Emerald doesn’t make sense. There weren’t any chao around Sonic last issue. There weren’t any chao in the Special Zone, we saw that.

24: How does Silver not know what a chao garden is? Wouldn’t the internet have told him? What about TV? Was I always supposed to believe that chao are really rare? I figured chao were THE common household pets of the Sonic universe.

25: Tikal says she can only visit for a short time, for no reason, having the same confusing forced plot hole as the reboot did with her. She’s ALREADY magical and omniscient. You’d think she wouldn’t have this kind of limitation! Couldn’t she just come back every time she’d be forced away? At which point the limitation would be so pointless, she wouldn’t even mention it.

26: Silver thinks Sonic’s too hyper to meditate. When was it ever implied that he needed to be in a trance and meditate to figure out where the next Chaos Emerald was? I guess in Issue 1 he did it OFFSCREEN. Knuckles never needed to meditate to search for the Master Emerald. No wonder I found that stupid.

27: Considering why Shadow was made, why would Gerald have gone through the extra trouble of figuring out how to make a person that only has to sleep and eat one day a month?

28: Him not being able to eat more than once a month at ALL sounds like a horrible curse to live with. That doesn’t make him superior, and Gerald was a good person when he made him, so he would have known that and not made him like that.

29: To FORCE the plot, Silver just happens to be reading The Arabian Nights, out of all of the other books he could have been assigned. Well, that’s convenient! Coincidences do happen, but STILL, it’s flimsy to have a plot that could have so easily not happened. It was more likely that Sonic had that book, because I could assume he got it from a library or Tails. Why would a teenager be randomly assigned the Arabian Nights as a school book to read, of all the books he could’ve gotten, really?

30: Where was the creator of the Arabian Nights in Secret Rings if she’s the type to personally greet them when they get into the book and tell them their mission?

31: If she was literally a princess like the person who wrote the Arabian Nights was, if she was magical enough to create a universe, you’d think she wouldn’t have felt the need to tell the stories of the Arabian Nights to preserve her life and would’ve just used magic against the evil emperor who wanted to kill her and not even bothered telling the Arabian Nights story.

I guess despite her ability to magically suck Sonic and Silver into an entire WORLD she CREATED and her ability to give them magical gifts like this, that brought Sonic back to life, we’re expected to believe this princess is still not powerful enough to defeat the dark forces of this place on her OWN. She just doesn’t have the right abilities for it, even though she wrote the past of this universe, so she can just rewrite the past to kill off the bad guy. Couldn’t she just use a pen and scribble out the part where she wrote about the bad guy?

32: Why doesn’t Shahra summon a Sonic Detector? Silver mentions Sonic in front of her and wishes he could find him because he ran off. So she summons a flying red carpet saying that the fastest way to find Sonic will be from the air. She really is a terrible genie because if she was really magical, she’d just cast a spell to immediately find out where Sonic is. According to the description she can only summon things. OK so why can’t she just summon a Sonic Detector then?

33: He asks Shahra if the skirt looks like a kilt to her. Why didn’t he take it off immediately if he hated it, then? And Shahra just says “ well, um, “ instead of saying that she has no idea what a kilt IS, since she lives in an ancient desert.

34: Why would he even bother asking a genie from an ancient desert that when of course she wouldn’t know what a kilt is? Even in the so-called time period of Braveheart people weren’t wearing kilts yet.

35: Sonic comes in and kicks the bad guy and lands on the red carpet. Shahra hugs Sonic, he immediately remembers that he said he’d make her smile and feels sorry for her, and she gives him a pinkie swear saying that she is smiling, though for some reason that isn’t in a text bubble.

36: If Shahra wasn’t so slow to react and stupid you’d think she’d use her summoning powers to summon a weapon to kill the monster.

37: Issues 5 and 6: Silver paranoidly says they can’t trust Amy because he fainted because of her, even though they probably need any help they can get in this new world, clearly. He’s naïve enough to trust Mephiles, not cynical and paranoid.

38: Silver throws something at Shadow’s back telekinetically, rather than simply grabbing Shadow himself with telekinesis and holding him still, which he was able to do JUST FINE in Sonic 06! So Sonic takes the risk of challenging Shadow to a race after a band-aid inexplicably appears on Shadow’s head out of nowhere. What is the APPEAL of Silver being here if he’s not portrayed like Silver? This isn’t Silver as I truly imagined him.

39: No one tells Silver to do this either.

40: Why didn’t Shadow just kill Sonic with Chaos Control? Logically, I mean. For a so-called Djinn, he’s weak. He apparently doesn’t have Chaos Control. I hope, because that’s the only way him not using it would make sense.

41: Why didn’t Shadow just kill Sonic with Chaos Control? He uses it next issue.

42: We saw Uhu in the game and he clearly didn’t look like Shadow, so he must have stuck with his blue fairy form because it had an advantage, so WHY’d he give it up?

43: Why did Shadow insist on fighting/racing Sonic? Next issue reveals that he didn’t really want to work with Rouge. He should’ve just told Sonic the truth right away instead of jumping straight to trying to murder him and an innocent fox, if he has a sympathetic reason for working for Rouge because he’s trying to protect his friend from her. It’s confused.

44: After they warp to Rouge like Shadow wanted, all of a sudden Shadow says he didn’t mean to bring them here yet. Where DID he mean to bring them then? How did he screw up? Shadow could’ve just teleported everyone so that they’d appear in the physical location that Rouge is in, meaning that she’d die from a portal being created in her.

45: Sonic says he’ll distract Rouge while his friends help Shadow, and then I look at Silver, and immediately wonder why he won’t just telekinetically break the limbs of Rouge to end the fight, or at LEAST hold her still, instead of just standing there. Silver eventually just uses telekinesis to send an object at Rouge. If it’s gonna be that easy, there’s no reason he couldn’t have just grabbed HER DIRECTLY.

I naturally assumed that all of the Emeralds were sent to the SAME dimension. That would be common sense of Tikal to do to make it easy for Silver to retrieve them all to SAVE HIS UNIVERSE from destruction! Why would she have them scattered so that they’d go to random planets?! She’s SUCH an IDIOT and her being an idiot is the whole justification for the comic taking so long.

46: Sonic has horrible dialogue saying an interjection in his thoughts that he would never say.

47: Silver goes to Blaze, and she arbitrarily interrupts him when he clearly has something he needs to tell her, as he said. She’d just be like, “ Oh, finally, I’ve been waiting for an explanation. What do you wanna tell me? “

48: Blaze’s a heartless bitch to Silver saying that she never wants to see him again out of nowhere, all because Silver was forced by the writer to not just bring Blaze to Shadow and Sonic to tell her why he’s been disappearing for days at a time and just worried her with it instead because he didn’t wanna tell her. He wouldn’t be that selfish and idiotic. Making a character stupid to force a melodramatic thing to happen is just frustrating and makes me hate both characters!

49: Issue 7: There’s no excuse for Silver saying that Sonic was 12 years old when he died. Why doesn’t Sonic correct him? He’s supposed to be 15. There’s no excuse for this mistake.

50: Sonic asks Shadow for help and Shadow demands a huge reward, but instead of Sonic instantly explaining to him that he needs his help SAVING THE WORLD, Sonic immediately caves into his demand for TV privileges for a month. Apparently Shadow, who saved the world in SA2 and Shadow, needs to be bribed to save the world again, even though he’s been helping Sonic save the world already by trying to get the Chaos Emeralds.

51: Suddenly Sonic needs to give Dark Gaia a ritual sacrifice, or it’ll shatter the planet. SINCE WHEN does Dark Gaia actually accept ritual sacrifices? He’s an evil final boss that Sonic has to seal away by attacking him with Super Sonic’s power, not by doing a ritual.

52: Silver, who was introduced to the franchise as someone desperate to save the FUTURE, completely ignores Sonic when he talks about an apocalypse scenario and says that he can’t handle any weirdness right now, just because Blaze is mad at him. This is not Silver.

53: Shadow smacks Sonic to snap him out of it because for some reason he has to be snapped out of it. And he says that that thing is a Dark Gaia monster.

54: Sonic doesn’t clean up Silver’s house instantly with sonic speed, like how he cleaned up a malt shop in seconds in the Sonic X Comic. Instead he lets Shadow say they’ll somehow help by LEAVING and he stands there like a pushover while Shadow uses Chaos Control, forcing Silver and his siblings to clean the house themselves.

55: Issue 8: Why in the world would the vision of any robot be tinted red?

56: Silver’s uncharacteristically nihilistic, saying there’s no big rush in getting the Emeralds. The guy who was introduced to the franchise as someone who wants to save the future more than anything is portrayed as the opposite right now.

57: There’s no reason Metal Sonic would’ve injured Vennie. She wasn’t threatening to hurt it.

58: We’re told later on that he really was just taken over by someone else, but the only way that would make sense is if that someone else was in his programming to begin with, like an AI, and obviously Sicily would’ve found that someone else if she had combed through all of his programming on her computer first. Why would she reactivate a robot without doing that just in case?

59: Silver calls Blaze who’s a complete jerk to him at first refusing to talk to him at all… so then why did she COME HERE?! Plot hole!

60: And then he says that he’s been messing up his life and now he wants to take charge and be with her. She thankfully forgives him. Even though he didn’t tell her about his business with Sonic. So she should still be mad at him for getting her worried about him for days on end.

61: Sonic has a sweet moment where he asks Shadow if they’re friends and hopes he doesn’t just stick around with him out of obligation… What took him so long to ask him this? I mean it’s been 200 years! He’d already know the answer to this. Shadow has no social skills and asks what he’s talking about instead of just saying “ yes. “

62: Shadow doesn’t freeze time with Chaos Control to easily get to Metal Sonic and use Chaos Control to warp it apart.

63: Isn’t it weird to have a Metal Sonic like robot still around 200 years later? He obviously would’ve been found and scrapped by now, either that or he’d be used by GUN. We needed to know how Sicily found him, 200 years later and no one else did, because that really sticks out as being an arbitrary part of the story that just happens to have a story about it.

64: Metal Sonic sees Sonic and Sonic wants to fight him to settle a score, even though it’d be smarter to let Shadow use Chaos Control to teleport him apart. Instead Shadows like, “ DUH, I’m gonna point a handgun at him instead of using my special abilities! “

65: They left Nicole on the ARK for some reason instead of reprogramming her. They could’ve used an EMP on her at least.

66: She tells Sonic that she’s been watching him for ages and she doesn’t like mysteries. Wait, how was she watching him? Sonic never even met Sicily, let alone the robot, which was non-functional until Sicily found it recently and repaired it.

67: Why did Nicole let in the soldiers and let Maria die? Why doesn’t she have morality when Gerald made Shadow have morality? Gerald made her as a good guy too. Nicole being evil seems forced if she’s made by HIM.

68: She says that Sonic somehow got embedded in the fabric of the universe endlessly emulated in chaos, and she wants to find out how. And then what? I guess she wants to be the same way. But what’s the point?

69: She starts the process and Tikal CONVENIENTLY finds out that something is wrong immediately… and yet she doesn’t know where Sonic is!

70: He’s brainwashed when he’s in Metal Sonic. So Sonic asks what his orders are. I guess the AI isn’t fried after all!

71: I’ve been assuming Shadow can’t use Chaos Control without his nanites. If he can, why didn’t he use Chaos Control to protect Sonic? Why didn’t he warp Nicole away, warp her apart, freeze time… warp apart the tube that was trapping Sonic? In fact, he could’ve done that long before he’d lose his nanites! Instead he tried to shoot her with a gun, and I don’t know why he even bothers with a gun, because he has Chaos Control and super speed and Chaos Spears!

72: What took Silver so long to use telekinesis, if his wrists being held did NOT keep him from using it? Why didn’t he tear Metal Sonic apart? Why is Silver using telekinesis to do something OTHER than hold Metal Sonic STILL? There’s no way Metal would’ve gotten to attack Blaze here.

73: If Tikal can magically freeze people, and back in the past that wouldn’t have been interrupted by anything, why didn’t she just take down Eggman?

74: She actually asks him if he’s Silver. Meanwhile in Issue 1 she already knew Silver would help Sonic get the Emeralds before he was even born, so is she an omniscient psychic or not? How would she not know what Silver looks like? Sonic would’ve described what Silver looked like to her! How would she not know what he looks like while knowing 200 years in the past that he would be necessary?!

75: Silver refuses to help Tikal, saying that Sonic never told him about her. Why didn’t he? You’d think that would’ve been basic conversation when they were getting to know each other.

76: So she knows the future enough that she knew Silver would be born ahead of time but she SOMEHOW doesn’t know that Sonic was gonna be put in Metal Sonic? She just thinks Sonic’s missing. She just knew something was wrong instead! That’s stupid!

77: Tikal gets some new powers as the plot demands again because now she says she’s able to heal, but as she’s trying, she screams, and she lost control of chaos energy, because Diabolus ex Machina, so while Silver’s sister is safe and the bleeding’s stopped, she’ll never walk again without more help because of her spine. So, why doesn’t she start healing her again? Her time freezing spell was interrupted and all she had to do was cast it again!

78: You’d think 200 years ahead in the future, they’d have the technology to let her walk again effortlessly AND it’d be affordable by now. What about those exoskeleton leg suits, what about cybernetics? Not to mention with all of the characters with inexplicable magical powers in the Sonic universe, surely there’d be more people than just Tikal who have healing magic. You’d think they’d be searched for and employed at hospitals.

79: Metal Sonic sends Blaze through the window. Logically she’d get tons of glass in her and Tikal should need to heal her too, or else she’d be guaranteed to die.

80: He gets scared at seeing what he thinks is a giant fish that’s gonna eat him. Again, Silver is NOT a WIMP. He would’ve just used telekinesis on it and been fine. Name one time in the entirety of any of the games Silver appeared in that Silver had wimpy moments like this.

81: How does Silver think this place is all one big Emerald? I’m not seeing anything but space and pink light.

82: He says there’s gotta be a nexus where it all comes together. How does he think that?

83: Why is he in a different outfit when Sonic’s not able to do that for him?

84: He almost falls into lava. This is a guy who can fly! He’d know he can fly because it’s so obvious if you had telekinesis, you could use it on yourself!

85: He thinks he can’t reach the Emerald way out there. Telekinetically pull it towards you, moron!

86: Instead of Silver simply making HIMSELF fly, like he does in 06 perfectly fine, he’s being possessed by Sonic and that’s saving him from the lava, even though Sonic is trapped in Metal Sonic right now. But apparently the writer forgot! And I’ll NEVER understand why this happened. Sonic being trapped in Metal Sonic will NEVER be referenced again and yet Metal Sonic is still functional.

87: Even Sonic doesn’t remember being put in him. Why?!

88: Tikal can’t stay any longer, for some reason, even though she should be able to just come back right afterwards… Do you SEE why I’m fed up with this comic now?! So much forced drama!

89: Why is Sonic in pain? He’s a ghost! Instead of Tikal being written to simply heal Blaze and the other person, like in a kids’ series like Sonic, Sonic just leaves and Silver’s parents are upset at seeing him.

Issue 17: Sonic destroys the badniks furiously, but for some reason, Tikal tells him to stop and accuses him of letting his anger blind him, saying that innocents are in danger – yeah and he was DEFENDING THEM. She accuses him of wanting to turn that anger on his friends. That came out of nowhere! He wouldn’t do that.

The radar says the Emerald’s headed east. Wouldn’t Sonic have just destroyed the robot that had the Emerald and gotten it already? I thought it was really nearby.

They see a big metal dome and Sonic goes in, and Silver uses telekinesis to get a way in a few minutes later. Why would it take more than a second?

Why would Robotnik try to make another device that’s meant to suck all the evil out of the world, when he’s evil? Why would he make another ROCC?

And it’s absolutely RIDICULOUS that Silver merely throws stuff at Metallix with his telekinesis instead of grabbing him directly and defeating him easily. This is just STUPID! He was a lot more competent against Sonic in his fight with him in 06 than this! So Metal Sonic immediately, magically knows how to deal with him by grabbing and hurting his palms, when he just met him. Sure his palms glow, but he obviously wouldn’t have survived trying to get this up close to Silver! All this Wimpification of Silver just to give Blaze some time to attack Metal Sonic instead.

It turns out Robotnik made a spectral shielding just for Sonic after he observed his world. How is he able to make that with science?!

Tikal tells Sonic that she needs help because she’s trapped in this machine. Convenient that this is something that science can do!

Why did Fleetway Sonic pass out when Ghost Sonic clearly successfully passed through him? Why would he suddenly go to being trapped in Sonic’s subconscious mind world, when he was shown passing by him successfully? Every time he possessed someone before this, like Shadow, the person didn’t fall over and pass out.

Issue 18: How is Fleetway Sonic STILL so STUPID?! In STC, he’s actually surprisingly smart to the point where he knows stuff and figures stuff out that I’m surprised he does!

How is Shadow so stupid?!

Children’s Play:

  This is a comic I read casually a few times, but I must have been pretty fond of it because I decided to review on a whim and I couldn’t wait to do so. It starts out with Sonic’s mother Bernadette wondering what Sonic’s doing. The art here is fantastic, I look at this and realize that I missed her. Jules says Sonic’s just going to send Silver back to his world. I guess he just misspoke and Bernie didn’t feel like correcting him, and he KNEW that Silver’s from the future, not another world. Unless this is taking place in a dimension where Silver IS from another world.

Shadow’s going with Sonic, and for some reason Bernie is worried about Sonic because he’s with Shadow. To be fair Shadow did try to get the world destroyed and looks intimidating. It’s realistic that most people wouldn’t have stopped being scared of him just because Sonic forgave him. He puts his hand on her shoulder reassuring her that they won’t harm their son.

  Bernie reminds him that there were times when not just Shadow, but also Silver nearly got Sonic killed. After she’s protective of Sonic, saying that they’d have to get through her to get to Sonic even though she should know that she’d never have any chance of fending them off, Chuck and Nicole go up to them. So, why did Sonic leave with Shadow? Why’d he even accompany Silver on his way back to the future anyways? I need to know this since it’s necessary for the premise of the comic.

  Nicole says to Sonic’s family that Sally wants them all to go to Freedom HQ, and bring a plate of chili dogs. Then we see Sally sitting down telling some boys to come out from where they’re hiding, and the most confusing problem with the comic begins, as we see that Sonic, Silver and Shadow were all de-aged into little kids.

  In all the times I’ve read this comic, I don’t remember ever getting an explanation for this, and it’s always bothered me, because the whole time I just wanted that mystery to be resolved and it was really distracting. I can only assume a wizard did this to them. But that’d be so easy to explain, so why not explain it right away so that everyone can focus on the actual point of the comic, and fully enjoy it?I know it’s not other dimension versions of them, either, because the comic explicitly stated that Sonic, Shadow and Silver went to Silver’s world together, and the heroes contacted GUN about this.

  It’s even more confusing that they’re all scared of Sally and Tails, when they don’t look scary at all. I can only assume that the same spell that de-aged them, also turned them all into cowards to the point where they seem like people who are really used to being abused to the point where they assume Sally would do the same thing to them. That would’ve made more sense to explain their behavior, but that’s not it. What’s most confusing of all is that they’re not all the same age. Why did the wizard who de-aged them have Silver be the youngest one?

  Shadow says he doesn’t know Sally and Tails and asks how they know their names. Sonic says they just wanna go home, confusing me. Tails says to Sally that this might not be the Sonic they know, because he never whimpered, even when they were kids. And Tails points out their shoes, which have never been seen before. So they ARE other dimension versions of them.

  That makes more sense considering their personalities are wussified. Why were they switched with the Prime versions of them? I still don’t know the answer. I’m fine with them being scaredy cats here because they’re other universe versions of the characters who are little kids and there’s a very understandable reason for why this was written.

It’s a successful attempt at making them cuter to the audience. It works great for Sonic. There’s no way they’re all literally brothers, though, even if they were raised together. Otherwise they would have been actual brothers in every universe, which is never the case in any continuity.

  Sally says they’re not gonna hurt them as I think that I always hated the way she was drawn in this comic, even long before I started reviewing anything, and I really wish I knew why Shadow is suspicious of them.

  It’d be interesting if the reason for his suspicion was that in his zone, Sally and Tails are evil. Sally asks how they want them to prove it. Shadow says they just want to go home to their parents. Again, they have to all be adopted, and even then, they were born in separate time periods from each other. This makes no sense. They couldn’t be actually brothers. Shadow was created 50 years ago. Silver is from 200 years in the future.

  The only way them all being a family like this could possibly make sense, is if it was thanks to another version of Sonic’s uncle Chuck. After watching Rick and Morty and seeing just how capable a mad scientist at his fullest potential could really be, it’s easy for me to imagine how capable Chuck could’ve been if he hadn’t given up on science for a while. He’s a brilliant scientist, I’m sure he could create a Project Shadow, and he could time travel or zone-hop and find a Silver the Hedgehog and make another version of him no problem.

  He could do it for the money or to give Mobius 3 really powerful heroes. Or maybe that’s not actually the explanation because I had better common sense than the writer did. It turns out that the real explanation is a fanfictiony retcon. Hey writer maybe you should have explained that retcon backstory in this fancomic instead of getting people who only read this one to speculate, and come up with a better explanation that just leaves the actual one disappointing by comparison.

  What’s the point of making them look like Sonic and Silver if they aren’t gonna have their personalities at all? It’s just there so we can enjoy their familiar character designs instead of having to contend with OCs. You’d think the point of the comic would be showing Sonic and Silver as kids because the whole point of the comic is showing us what Sonic’s parents would have treated their son like, if they had gotten to be there for him when he was a kid.

  After Sonic asks what chili dogs are, Sonic’s family shows up, Bernie wastes my time going on for a while, and the rest of Sonic’s friends aren’t here yet, which kinda exhausts me. It sure has spent a lot of time on this scene. Sonic gets given a chili dog to earn his trust and he says it tastes just like a hot bun. I don’t like that we don’t see a tail connecting his text bubble to him.

His text bubble’s shaped all cloudy like a thought bubble, but he’s not thinking, he’s talking. I love the expressions on Sonic’s parents here as they look down at them. See, if they were afraid of Jules and he was there from the start, that’d make sense, because he has black and red eyes, so he looks menacing. Not Sally and Tails.

  Shadow tugs at Bernie’s dress and asks if she could give Silver some milk, being a responsible big brother. It’s surreal to see how much better a person Shadow could have turned out to be. Speaking of that, he says that when Sonic’s done eating, then he’ll eat. He’s called a sweet boy and smiles. Shadow asks where his parents are. Why would he think they’d know?

  He says Trails’ mirror pulled them into it, so that’s why they came here. Who’s Trails? I can only assume he’s a wizard. Maybe it got stolen from a wizard by the same Uncle Chuck that created this Sonic and Shadow for Silver’s mom to look after. Maybe Chuck spiked the drink of a wizard at a party to steal his mirror and then Silver’s mom bought it off him or he left it with her by accident. Hell, maybe he was dating her and that’s why he was with her.

  Jules says he’ll take care of these three with his wife and pinkie-swears with Shadow, who instantly thought to do that. It’s odd that nobody is questioning how these three people who can’t be biologically related were all raised together as a family at the same time, and nobody will EVER do so and try to figure it out.

  You’d think a genius like Chuck would notice how confusing this is. Obviously if they were related, they’d LOOK related, not have different colors. How could Sonic be biologically Silver’s brother when they look nothing alike? Gerald Robotnik would only need to make Shadow.

  Jules stares at Sonic’s necklace, and I’m confused about what it’s supposed to mean. Is it a magic necklace? How would he know about it? Why are we seeing half of him as looking organic? I don’t get it. Why would it be connected to his past? It’s from another dimension. I like plot holes to be filled in right away, especially in a deviantart comic that might never be finished.

  I like that Bernie calls Jules honey. It reminds us she loves him, explaining why she’s still with him. Oh good, I like Bunnie’s design here. Antoine has a bandage on his arm, and I can only assume it’s because he woke up from the coma recently, so that makes it nicer to see him. There’s some repetition for nothing, and I don’t really like the ending. It basically implies that the Sonic of this zone was found as a baby by Jules when he was organic, and that doesn’t explain how that Sonic got back to his own zone. Good thing this is just a fancomic so I don’t have to care what it establishes.

  After reading one of the comments in this fancomic, it turns out the fancomic’s universe has it that these three actually are related to each other and just got made to forget they were and got sent to various different time periods from each other because of Black Doom. And they had different parents than Sonic’s parents at that, somehow, even though Sonic’s parents looked like Sonic at first, so they clearly were meant to be Sonic’s parents. That’s really silly. They’re all from a castle as well. So it just rips off Sonic Underground, it’s not even creative enough to be worth it.

It’s just Sonic Underground where they were separated at birth but on a larger scale because they were separated across time periods, which is a bit extreme, isn’t it? And it’s not even established what these characters’ origins are in THIS particular fancomic. It’s established in some other fancomic by the same writer called the three musketeers. A lot of people like me would’ve read this comic without reading that one and been very confused by this.

I like my explanation better than that retconny nonsense. It actually respects the canon of the Sonic franchise by remembering that these three aren’t related, of course they aren’t because none of them are the same color as any of one of each other.

  This particular issue isn’t too great. It’s just padding, really, where Sonic, Silver and Shadow are scared of people who don’t look scary for no good reason, instead of it immediately cutting to them being at Jules’ house. And its ending is disrespectful to Jules by trying to invalidate his character making it so that he just found Sonic in the woods instead of being his father. Why do these three characters have to have a stupid backstory and, maybe actually be the Prime Sonic, Shadow and Silver? It detracts from the point of the comic.

  It’s really the second issue that’s what’s really worth reading this fancomic for. That’s what I really want to talk about. The point of this comic is that we finally get to see Sonic’s parents in the limelight as parents. We get to see how they’d interact with Sonic when he was a kid. Though we could’ve assumed that she’d have treated them this way, especially since it’s just them being very typical parents doing typical mundane parent stuff. And we didn’t need there to be anyone but Sonic here.

  Bernie tells Sonic it’s time for bed as he’s jumping on it saying that he’s not tired. She says if they settle down, she’ll tell them a story about, Sonic, of course, so that bores me, AND we don’t see all of it, which is good since that means the story cuts ahead. It’s implied that she thought the Mecha Sally arc was a good bedtime story here, and they were fine with it. She tells them they need their sleep and kisses their heads as Sonic says she sounds like mom. Too bad the writer didn’t intend him to be right because no, that’d be common sense.

  Silver needs a lullaby to get to sleep which somehow Shadow’s able to sing to him just fine. He goes out of his room because he’s not very sleepy and Jules offers to get him some warm milk, and he thanks him and takes his hand, and gets called Master for no reason and carried to the kitchen. We see Silver’s mother in a flashback singing to Silver, and Jules says that he can’t feel things in a robot body, which makes absolutely NO sense.

  I refuse to buy that as canon because a robot without a sense of touch wouldn’t be able to do things correctly. It’d be clumsy, it’d hold things too tightly or not tightly enough. He’d have tactile sensors just fine. Why would roboticization remove the body’s natural touch receptors instead of just turning them into metal?

  Even if that was the case, obviously Chuck would’ve given him a way to feel things again in all of this time, since he was fine with trying to experiment on him in an attempt to deroboticize him after all. This is trying for drama but I’m just annoyed at the lack of logic in it. You’d think Sonic would have this moment with him instead, but it IS at least more creative to have Shadow do it. Shadow sweetly says sorry and says he didn’t know he was sick, he gets his hair ruffled, and Jules asks where Sonic’s necklace came from. Shadow tells him that his grandpa gave him that.

  He gave Shadow this ring, but it’s too big to fit him right, so he keeps it on his neck, and Silver’s bracelet is from grandpa too. Since when do grandfathers give all three of their grandsons specific jewelry? Shadow says they’re very special, the only ones in the world. He picks Shadow up as I think about how unlikely it’d be, logically, that the heroes would be able to get these three home because they have no idea which exact dimension they’re from. That’d be impossible.

  Jules is told that he sounds like his papa who says to always keep your promises, and Jules pauses before calling him son. Is he his father or NOT? I read that there’s this stupid backstory where their parents are called Kaze and Sapphire because it’s by a fanfiction writer that got too excited instead of respecting Archie canon like a normal person. It’s harder to respect lore from a story you only heard about. So why does it have to be a thing in THIS comic? It just taints it.

  Any real Sonic fan would question how he could be the father of the ultimate life form, created specifically for Maria and fighting Black Arms aliens under very specific circumstances 50 years ago. Forget the parents of Silver and Sonic, NO ONE could be Shadow’s father, in the traditional sense, because he is the way he is because he was artificially created by Gerald Robotnik with Black Doom’s blood. This was canon to Archie Sonic. Shadow even remembers it in that comic.

So this comic trying to claim it’s going off Archie canon is confusing then if it’s claiming Shadow has a different backstory after all. If this was a different universe entirely, it could be kind of understandable to have a Shadow with a different backstory who really is just someone’s son and has his abilities naturally. He just got fake memories later that he was made by Gerald. But that’s not the case in Archie.

  Jules says in the morning that he has to go somewhere and he’ll be back after lunch and it’s important. Chuck has a brain, so he actually does get suspicious and insist on coming along. After all the bad Sonic stories I read, it’s always a refreshing surprise to see characters actually have smart moments when they’re supposed to be smart.

Chuck says that if Jules is going THERE, he’s coming along, so he knows too. This wouldn’t be the FIRST time he was shady by keeping a secret from Sonic. It creates a surreal feeling in the next page when all of a sudden the background and coloring gets really lazy and black and white. Where’d the effort go?

  Anyways, Bernie says she’ll be going to Vanilla’s home to get something for Silver, and then do some shopping. So she’s arranged for babysitters to take care of them, in the form of Antoine and Bunnie. And that’s the final page so far. Oh well. It was kinda touching to see Sonic’s parents be regular parents to some kids for a change. It took great advantage of their characters.

I just find that the whole stupid backstory with the three hedgehogs tainted the story when I found out about it. It’s a convolution that wastes panels distracting from the entire point and appeal of the comic, which could’ve been achieved by simply having the kids be de-aged versions of Antoine and Bunnie or something instead.

  There’s no reason the comic shouldn’t have kept things simple and either had them all be de-aged versions of the Prime versions of them, or just had them be other zone versions of them. Instead it had this confusing mystery going on and had this disrespectful and clearly unnecessary implication that, Sonic’s parents aren’t his parents. Good thing it’s just a fancomic because that’s dumb. That’s like a soap opera twist, isn’t it? It wouldn’t surprise me. Shadow can’t have normal biological parents, he’s the ultimate lifeform.

  It irritates me how the writer claimed in the description of one of the pages that he hasn’t forgotten about Sonic’s parents even if the reboot has when at the exact same time he’s going as far as to portray Sonic’s family as not related to him at all, going against the whole point of their characters. Even the reboot never outright confirmed that Sonic’s family member wasn’t really his family. It’s supposed to be a comic to give these characters some time to shine and it ends up just being lip service. The art is good to look at, but that’s it.

Maria’s First Christmas:

  Here’s a fancomic I wanted to read for a long time. It’s about time Shadow get Maria back. Maybe if this happened in the games, he would stop being an asshole. Surprisingly, it starts out with Maria already in the body of a hedgehog instead of starting out by showing how the heroes saved her from the soldiers 50 years ago, and therefore would’ve prevented all of SA2 from happening.

  I tried to read Return of Maria Robotnik, but it was barely a comic. Most of it was just being told in fanfiction form in the descriptions of the comic pages, which doesn’t entice me to read it at all. The gist of it that I got is that somehow Eggman is responsible for Maria, because of a clone machine, because he wanted an heir. And Sonic’s the DNA donor that made her, since she’s a hedgehog. This is SO convoluted.

First off, you’d think Eggman, after almost dying, would instead either make a robot like himself, and either tell his henchmen to only activate it after he dies, or he’d make tons of robot Eggmen and make it so he can send his data into one of them upon death, like Robo-Robotnik.

  So he could live forever. He wouldn’t make a biological heir without altering its brain so that he could guarantee that the heir would think like Eggman and therefore run the world how he wants. There’d be no point in making the heir then! Even AoStH made more sense because Junior at least looked like Eggman and was made based off him. Why on earth would Eggman make his heir based off Sonic’s DNA in any way? How would a clone made from Sonic’s DNA not actually be related to Sonic anyways? That’s another thing the fanfiction claims. This writer just doesn’t know how to write properly.

  My assumption of how things work is better than what the writer came up with. Obviously it’d be better writing to have Tails bring Maria back. A good guy should earn that victory for Shadow, and what is the point of having a story about Maria “ being back “ if it’s not the real her, and was just made from Eggman and Sonic, so it’s not even slightly her.

The writer writes with no common sense. He’s fine with plots, but anything related to establishing lore is just completely garbage, which is why he has it that Sonic isn’t related to his parents and uncle when their character designs make it extremely obvious that they are. You’d have to be dense to assume these blue hedgehogs aren’t related to him.

  Sally shows her a mirror and tells her to look at herself, and she says this is perfect. You’d think a human would want a human body. That’s something that always confused me, she’s only a hedgehog because the writer wanted her to be because Shadow is. I’m pleasantly surprised Sally’s in this comic. Maria thanks her a lot, as if Sally was somehow responsible for her new body. Since Nicole was sent to Sally through a trans-time portal that was there for no reason in the future, I guess it could make sense that the heroes went through one of those to achieve this. It could have been a different one.  

  I’ve finally figured out Nicole’s backstory, the reason the heroes survived up to the point of the good future without her is that they weren’t without her. Rotor would’ve created Nicole anyways on his own. It’s just that Future Sally sent Nicole back in time to a point before she’d actually be necessary, just so that Sally could have a friend for longer. She was sent back in time to be a friend, after all. Rotor made her in the first place, or maybe Eggman did and she defected from him.

  Predictably, Maria says she never had a real Christmas before because of her NIDS. At least the writer explains in the description that he’s bad at English grammar. It’s still a bit distracting though since in the story, it makes the characters come off like they’re new to English sometimes. “ Every this time of year. “ Maria reiterates that Shadow was her first friend and we see that she hugged him and she says she made her life much better. Sally hopes she’ll see that side of Shadow this year.

  At least Nicole’s wearing a different outfit for a change, but I can’t say she looks good in green. She was misnamed “ Nichole “ in Flynn’s fanfiction a few times, too. Nicole says that Tails helped her with the hat and dress because he made a small accessory program for her. Really? She couldn’t just put on a new outfit?

  Realistically, Maria’s not used to big crowds, so she’s still nervous about this. Gee, I hope the comic doesn’t forget to explain how Maria’s back. Never expected that. But I can forgive it because it’s easy to explain how it happened; they found a trans-time portal somewhere or used a magic charm, used the roboticizer to turn Maria into a free-willed robot in the nanite city, and uploaded her data to a clone you’re seeing now. It’s nice of Sally to put her hand on her shoulder and say that they could play games, have Christmas dinner and see decorations.

  Shadow’s sitting there bored in Freedom HQ, and Sonic naturally tells him to quit moping and be productive by helping them decorate the tree. Why is Silver here? Sally’s here, so it’s Archie, and she’s deroboticized, so shouldn’t he have gone back to his time? Maybe he’s staying there on purpose to make sure the future doesn’t end up bad anyways. It’d make sense, but it should be explained because it’s confusing. Silver says something’s wrong with Shadow.

  Sonic agrees since he’s been sitting there for an hour. After Shadow tells him off for calling him by a stupid nickname, he wastes my time refusing to tell Sonic what’s bothering him. Sonic reminds him that he’s stubborn, and I’m disappointed when Shadow says that Maria and him have been together for almost a year now. You mean the comic’s not gonna start out when Maria was first put into a hedgehog? Really? Isn’t that better to get the audience invested right away? I thought he was angsty because he’s not the one who brought Maria back.

  Suddenly Sonia and Manic show up and Sonic’s happy to see them, and Manic calls Sonic their little bro. Well, since it’s got Sally in it, I have to assume that these aren’t really his siblings and are still from an alternate universe from him. He sure is nice to acknowledge them as his siblings anyways. Remember, there was no hint of them in any of the historybuilding of Archie, like the Tales of the Great War stories.

  I’m happy to see them, but then Sonia tells Shadow after 15 minutes of explanation that he’s too cute to be Sonic’s elder brother. Oh. This is by the writer of Children’s Play, the writer that had the inane idea that Sonic’s parents somehow aren’t his parents despite clearly looking like it, and that Shadow, despite canonically being designed by Gerald Robotnik 50 years ago as the ultimate lifeform, is somehow Sonic’s brother sent back in time. You’d think the heroes would’ve found out Sonic was also designed by Gerald or something, I dunno.

  I’d understand if a writer went with the idea that Shadow is Sonic’s great-uncle, because him having all the same powers as Sonic and being a hedgehog could easily be explained as him being created with DNA from one of Sonic’s relatives back then. Anyways, how would Manic still consider Sonic to be his little brother then if he was apparently from the future?

  This line just confuses anybody who wasn’t reading the one fancomic where this dumb idea was introduced, again. Shadow uncharacteristically threatens Sonia with a Chaos Spear for flirting with him. The writer goes with the weird idea that Manic and Sonia aren’t even related to Sonic, even though we clearly saw them all as babies together in Sonic Underground and they wouldn’t all be heirs to the throne if they weren’t all related. It’s just distracting to have this clearly unnecessary nonsense with no respect for the actual canon of the series.

I shouldn’t need to explain how convoluted and stupid it’d be to have someone who was created 50 years ago be the older brother of Sonic. That speaks for itself. His parents would have to be 70 years old to have any chance of being the ones who gave their DNA away to create Shadow back then.

  Anyways, Shadow’s stunned when he sees the new red dress Maria picked out for him. That’s another thing, I don’t see why the writer has Maria dating Shadow. It’s not horrible, but I just don’t understand. She used to be a human. People were opposed to Elise being in love with Sonic. They were just friends. She’s spent her whole life as a human, so the chances are very slim that she’d find a hedgehog guy attractive. Oh yeah, and wasn’t she a child in the ARK? Too bad her wiki doesn’t say how old she is. She looked tall enough to be a teenager.

It just seems unnecessary, like you don’t have to make Shadow literally date her to have it be clear that he’s glad she’s back. He’s still his same, angsty, aloof self even a year later. It’s just not how I’d imagine it to be like, that they’d be dating.

  Sally goes between them and tells her to go to Chuck’s place to pick up a Christmas decoration. Shadow says to just get this over with. Why would Sally just ask Maria to do that? Shadow has super speed. He’d run there and back in seconds. Maria’s just gonna slow him down. Shadow’s annoyed that she’s gonna have Maria doing an errand on her first Christmas, but notices that she’s excited, and picks her up and carries her.

  Maria compliments the ice sculptures at his restaurant for tonight’s Christmas exhibition in the town square. She tells him that she was sent to get a decoration from him and he walks away to get it himself. You’d think he’d just tell Shadow where it is and he’d rush off to get it in seconds, but that’d be common sense to write. Chuck’s supposed to be a genius. Shadow says it’s too bad it’s not gonna be a white Christmas. I’m not sure he’d care about that. You’d think Maria would care more because it’s her first real Christmas and she wants to experience something as genuine as possible.

  Then Shadow wastes my time with inane bullshit that didn’t need to be written. Why would he be able to see the future in a dream and isn’t it stupid enough that he’s Sonic’s brother somehow, let alone would have a big sister who has ice powers? Isn’t this like Ken Penders style writing where the writer goes overboard giving a main character too many relatives just because he’s a main character? Knuckles had six billion grandfathers and now Sonic has a bunch of siblings for no reason.

  Somehow Maria expects me to believe that it took a while for Shadow to fully remember HER. OH, is she talking about when he had amnesia? Because she wasn’t there for that. It wouldn’t be so confusing if we saw her being told about that. They try to kiss, I remember that in the writer’s fanfiction about the return of Maria, she’s a clone who was just created by Eggman and so she was artificially aged up to be this age, meaning that she’s, what, literally a year old right now?

  But to be fair, maybe that’s how old Shadow is too, from his perspective. He was made 50 years ago but he was only personally experiencing life for, more than a week. He lived a week on the ARK and who knows how much time passed after SA2 happened. So they’re both surprisingly young. Still, teenage bodies or not, you’d think they wouldn’t be interested in dating yet after living through so little of their lives. Amy didn’t act like a teenager just because she became one in Archie. She still had the mind of a child.

Shadow was created as a teenager, but Maria was created as a baby. Isn’t she a bit young? Chuck asks if he missed something and that was the end of his scene. That’s it. He was a dumbass and that was it. They get back with the decoration. Sonic says it took them long enough and Maria says they were talking and got a bit distracted. Sonic says Maria could make some of her famous hot cocoa, and Shadow gets violent with him and says he’s dead meat if he makes her do one more thing.

If anything, Maria being back is making him act worse, at least when it comes to her specifically. Too bad she MAGICALLY doesn’t HEAR him and call him out on his behavior, which would be actually realistic instead of her being deaf to it from a few feet away, and just saying that the decoration looks pretty.

  Of course they want her to put the star on the tree, and Shadow agrees to help. She says something stupid and he uses Chaos Control to get her to the top of the tree. So at least the writer thinks to have him be smart about using his Chaos Control resourcefully. But come to think of it, he still wasn’t smart enough to just use Chaos Control to warp to Chuck instead of having to run to him, AND warp home.

So never mind, the writer still forgets he has it. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was explained that Shadow is always recharging his energy and using Chaos Control completely exhausts it, so he has to wait for a while before he can use it again. It seems like he could use it at any time. He used it constantly in the final battle with Sonic in SA2, so that’s how it is.

  Maria’s briefly annoyed with Shadow because he’s not enjoying the party. He says this is how he does it. Then she’s happy because he knitted a scarf for her, and he thought it was fun. That gives him a little depth. She had depth by being able to be annoyed with him for once. Too bad it’s by a writer who thinks he’s Sonic’s brother, so I don’t really wanna show any story by him off in videos because that’d be condoning that nonsense. Predictably there’s a sappy moment with Shadow and Maria where she says Christmas is about love.

He guides her out of the house with her saying that she doesn’t care if his gift is made of space trash. She offers him a seashell, the one they found on their first day to the beach. This would mean more to me if I saw them at the beach before this point instead of it coming out of nowhere, but it’s still sweet. She says she loves it and will treasure it forever and gives him a hug. And that was basically the end of the comic.

  Good riddance. It was mostly alright, I guess, with good art and a sweet plot, but unfortunately it was bogged down by it having some stupid nonsensical lore that got me mad at it the whole time because it reveals that the writer is too dumb to think with common sense. Why have Shadow be Sonic’s older brother, seriously? It contributes nothing and just confuses people. I can’t respect a writer who writes like that. Why miss the point of Sonia and Manic by having them not be related to Sonic, which even the story itself doesn’t clarify for you?

  The story needed to explain at the start of it that this is the actual Maria and her data was sent into a clone made by Tails to help Shadow out. Instead you have to read a fanfiction separate from this to get the disappointingly nonsensical out of left field excuse for why she’s around. Who would think that Eggman would make a Maria to be his heir? That’s dumb.

  And speaking of dumb, why did Sally tell Maria alone to get the Christmas star when Shadow has super speed, and why didn’t Chuck just tell Shadow where it was so he’d instantly run to it and get it? It wouldn’t take more than a few seconds for Shadow to retrieve anything. Why bother having Chuck in this story if that’s all he’s gonna do?! That’s the only problem with the story’s writing by itself, scene-wise. Most of what sucks is just the writer’s inability to make lore that makes sense.

  Sure, time travel is possible in some continuities of the Sonic series, like in AoStH, 06, and 25 Years Later of Archie, so it could be possible that Sonic’s mother would get a prophecy and scatter her kids across multiple time periods to protect them. But it ignores the fact that we know Shadow was created by Gerald Robotnik as the ultimate lifeform. He clearly can’t be anybody’s sibling! He was made to cure Maria. We’re not idiots!

  Maybe I could accept Silver being Sonic’s sibling with that excuse, but not Shadow, THAT’S JUST DUMB. It’s not even like the writer has it that Gerald made all three hedgehogs. That would at least explain Sonic and Silver’s magical powers and Sonic’s similarity to Shadow, and Sonic’s lack of a backstory and family in the games because he was put to sleep for 50 years too.

It’s not like HE sent two of them to other time periods to protect them because no, they somehow have biological parents they’re all related to, from the future, who are royalty, but NOT the royal couple from Sonic Underground! Because I guess the writer hates Aleena that much. WHY have Sonic be royalty but not be related to Aleena?!

  That’s just overly convoluted, intentionally skipping over the simple resolution to have too much to it. It’s not impossible, but it’s still dumb because Shadow doesn’t work in this. Maybe Silver and Sonic, but even then, they don’t have the same fur color, and Silver was introduced as from the future, so the idea of him being Sonic’s brother would always be too weird, in a meta sense if nothing else. At least the green color of Manic is close to the blue color of Sonic. And it makes you think of stuff like Ashura the glitch, Scourge, and even Eco Sonic. It’s easier to accept him as Sonic’s brother as a result.

At least Sonia being pink is justified because she’s a girl and Amy’s pink too. Even Chuck or Jules being Sonic’s sibling would make more sense than Shadow being his sibling! At least they’re the same color as Sonic and could’ve actually been born to a mother. I could believe that someone time traveled to make it possible.

  Shadow had to be created in a lab for a very specific purpose and having him be in the same story as Maria while Sonia’s calling him Sonic’s brother just makes this even more confusing. It’s possible that a time traveler could’ve given the DNA of Sonic’s supposed actual parents to Gerald in the first place so he’d create Shadow. But oh, he never did at all! OK, then did the plot of Shadow the Hedgehog not happen in this universe?

How would Shadow be black and red when he’s only that way because he was partly made from Black Arms blood BECAUSE Black Doom wanted him made to be his soldier later on for an invasion? He HAD to be created by Gerald. If he was just sent back in time already made, he’d have no reason to be black and red or be obligated to work for Black Doom or be trusted to be a cure for Maria. Gerald would just ask what he’s doing there.

No Zone Archives Issue 1:

   It’s a nice touch that it tells you the exact, overly long name of the zone it starts out in. I’m pretty sure Archie Sonic didn’t actually have the zones start out with letters like Rick and Morty and it was just a small amount of numbers, but I can accept this if there’s a lot of universes. It’d be more interesting to know when this took place. Zonic, Zespio and Zector are on the look-out for a fugitive on top of the most wanted list.

I wonder if there’s people that even the zone cops don’t bother to deal with, and so normally they should be on top of it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They refuse to go arrest Robo-Robotnik, when he should be at the top of the wanted list. All Scourge really is is a minor nuisance to Sonic.

  They see a chao, subverting our expectations that it’d be Scourge, and Zails snuck along with them and wants to help them, when he’s supposed to be at the academy. I already saw a page a long time after this part of the story where he was injured, so I don’t have any faith in him when he says he thinks he can take him, but it would’ve been predictable anyways that it’s tougher than it looks because why else would it be at the top of the most wanted list? I don’t know what it’s DONE, though.

Zails naturally explains that the academy is boring and he’d rather get experience out on the field, and he’s told to follow instructions. Tails tells the chao to wake up because he’s under arrest, and it turns into a monster and gets mad at being bothered. He doesn’t look just like Chaos, but at least the textbox explains that he’s from the Giant Monster Zone. This is great, it’s like Rick and Morty but without the obnoxious gore and vulgarity. There’s so many universes and the writer could do anything with them. I’m willing to bet this’ll be better executed than Sonic Prime.  

  So why doesn’t Zails just instantly press a button to create a portal to send it away, like Zonic sent away Tuxedo Knuckles? I guess because he didn’t have a portal generator, but then I look at Zonic and his friends, who are pointing with mere guns, so they have no excuse. I’m guessing this entire comic is gonna conveniently ignore the fact that Zonic can do that, because otherwise there’d be no plot with the people he’s trying to arrest, but then it’s not a real representation of what his adventures are like. He has to be made incompetent for every plot.

I hope it’ll be worth it. It could at least be explained that the technology that creates a giant portal to send fugitives away hasn’t been invented yet, or it’s on the fritz for every zone cop because someone hacked or hexed them.

  So the monster called Chedder turns out to be immune to lasers and smacks the zone cops into a wall. How do they expect to deal with giant monsters and stuff like that just in case when they don’t always have weapons that could do more than just lasers? Couldn’t any of them have a freeze ray or an anti-gravity ray?

  I thought this would lead to a fight scene full of slapstick, but surprisingly it cuts to them all being bandaged in the hospital. Apparently they didn’t stock up on Rings before they went on the mission. Why?! Sonic would last a lot longer than that. I guess Zails is really trying to convince them to let him keep going with them by acting optimistic when there’s no reason to be.

To be fair, if these guys were so ill-prepared for a fugitive from Giant Monster Zone that they merely had lasers, which you’d think they would’ve been warned it’s immune to by intelligence gatherers that called it a fugitive in the first place, they would’ve been beaten up with or without Zails, no matter what their original plan was. They had no way to attack it.

  Even though there was a textbox showing a new log, the story continues onto WASTING our TIME with them in the hospital when clearly the audience only wanted to see them trying to go after zone-hoppers. Zails says his arm doesn’t even hurt anymore. Then Zails is told that the reason he can’t use the med-plasma like Zonic did to heal faster is that it’s not exactly cheap, which is a much better excuse than “ because that’s for elite zone cops only. “ I was about to call serious bullshit on him.

  Then when Zonic asks for someone to look after him, Ziona is called in to assist him. I remember this. She scares him with needles, and is evil even though she volunteered to be a nurse! I could understand her giving him a needle to help him because she has to, but she’s written to be sadistic, and that’s not funny, it’s just continuing the same tired confusing trend that Flynn started.

  She just HAS to be written as evil JUST because she’s based off Fiona even though anyone who actually read the whole comic would know that she wasn’t a villain for her entire history as a character. I wouldn’t really say she was a villain when she was traveling with Nicolette the bounty hunter. She didn’t like that Mighty didn’t rescue her, but who wouldn’t be mad? I actually didn’t bother reading any of these pages when typing this. It’s all predictable dialogue anyways with the pictures being more than enough.

Let’s just get to the POINT instead of reading a hackneyed scene. Didn’t the description say that it originally planned to have the nurse be Vanilla? That’d have been better writing. At least it’d be something new instead of throwing away a chance to have a good Fiona.

  Later on, someone wants to see Zonic and his partners immediately, and most of them just wanna call in sick. Zonic calls them out on being scared, but then since Chief Zamy isn’t here, he shrugs it off and wants to leave. I’m guessing she’ll be here anyways. She shows up holding a coffee mug and being a stern boss, which suits her pretty well. She’s mad at them for failing to capture Cheddar again. There was a last time?

  How can she blame them for failing, if apparently they don’t have the ability to simply press a button to summon a portal to send it away? If they could, and she called him out on THAT, while she’d be justified, it’d also make it make no sense that they didn’t do that. She asks them where Cheddar escaped to and yells at them after swinging a hammer that looks more badass than the lame Piko Piko hammer. Why couldn’t IDW give Amy a different-looking hammer? That’d have been SO easy to do for even the most basic of creativity and intrigue.

She says she thought assigning Zonic with these two people she doesn’t take seriously would get her results. She says that someone must be giving Cheddar and Dr. Cowell some technology to zone-hop and she wants them brought in for questioning. Then she naturally throws out Zector for hoping he’ll get a promotion, since he’s usually incompetent. I’m not sure why we were shown all of this instead of the story cutting to another time the zone cops were trying to capture a zone-hopper. It could’ve easily been a comic about nothing but shorts where the zone cops try to capture zone-hoppers.

  Then we see Zally, the No Zone Attorney. That makes sense because we saw Sally as a lawyer in Litigopolis. She looks fantastic. It makes me wish she had glasses more often. She’s happy to see Zonic show up, and he says he misplaced one of his subpar warp rings and is being asked to fill out some kind of data report. She says she can help and just needs to find the right file. It makes sense that someone cautious would wanna stay safe by having a boring desk job.

  She can’t seem to find it here and he sees a folder named Zonic Fan Fic, which embarrasses her. She laughs and says it’s nothing, as not even an alternate universe version of Sally can get away with sparing us the Sonic and Sally ship tease. Alternate universes are the perfect opportunity to spice things up, instead of sticking to the status quo. You could have Sonic date Rouge for all it matters.

  Zally says she has to get a data disk with the new files on it. I guess it feels worth it to see this scene because it’s introducing her. And I’d rather see a scene like this than a scene where the zone cops are forced to be completely incompetent in a dangerous situation because them simply summoning a portal in one button press would be too fast. Then she remembers that the disc is on top of a huge bookshelf. She’d have needed to be able to fly or have a ladder to get it on there. Predictably she falls when climbing the bookshelf.

She arbitrarily slipped on a banana peel, and falls on Zonic’s back. I guess he had Rings. She asks if he’s okay and he asks about her and she says thanks. Oh, conveniently she DID get the disc for him. She says she can help him fill out the report and he thanks her, and while she’s asking him to buy her a cup of coffee, with me wondering why she doesn’t date someone that’s more like her, Zonic’s called that he’s needed in another zone and he leaves.

  Then it cuts to them surrounded by Metallix that at least have unique-looking muzzles. Zespio and Zector are out of ammo, and amusingly, Dr. Cowell turns out to be a steampunk Eggman who says, “ You’re no match for my steam-powered Metal Sonics! “ I assumed that Dr. Cowell was a brand new, original character, which would require a bit more creativity than just having another Eggman.

It is realistic though that in another universe, Eggman could end up with a different family name. What is the likelihood that every one of the infinite versions of an individual would be given the exact same full name? It’s absolutely nothing. Sonic only makes sense because he could be named after a Sonic Chao.

  At least he has a good design. It seems like only aesthetics are changed by the whole steampunk thing, but it’s still interesting enough that it makes me wish this happened in IDW. Maybe I’d be able to tolerate Eggman a little bit better if the writing wasn’t too afraid to change him up all the time. Then Zlaze shows up from the Warp Ring, even though Blaze is known for being from another universe from Sonic. It sure is convenient that in the zone cop’s home planet, she and her family line happened to have come into being at the same time period as Sonic, instead of 200 years apart from him.

So, why are all of the Metallix just standing there doing nothing and listening to everyone talk? Wouldn’t they be programmed to go attack Eggman’s enemies as soon as they’d see them and not stop for a second?

  Zlaze shoots fire at the Metallix and acts refreshingly competent for a zone cop, back-flipping and shooting some more. I’m not sure if they’re literally called Metallix, but I call it as I see it. They’re a whole bunch of Metal Sonics. Too bad they’re unrealistically incompetent. I have to guess that Zlaze is a bit faster than Sonic, and that’s why she dodged the attack so easily. Good thing for her that we aren’t seeing all of these Metallix dog-piling her, rushing at her all at once, or at least a few at a time so they wouldn’t bump into each other.

Normally Metal Sonic made me wonder why he didn’t just spend the whole time moving at sonic speed and easily kill all of the heroes when he was fighting someone other than Sonic, but these guys just stood around. Maybe steam power isn’t enough to power them.

  Zlaze says she has another victory to add to her perfect record and she’s saved Vector’s life a lot, and is no longer taking orders from Zonic, and yet somehow he’s still trying to lecture her. Lemme guess, the fact that he’s still trying to lecture her means that she’s in the wrong and the bad guy’s getting away. Yep. And he runs into a Warp Ring easily, because Zlaze stopped to brag to people she knows instead of immediately focusing on knocking out the main bad guy here. Oh, AT LEAST she manages to run after him into the Warp Ring.

  But if it’s literally a Warp Ring, doesn’t that mean it has to be Finitevus who’s supplying the villains with this warp technology? Well, not NECESSARILY. It’s a big multiverse after all. If one individual can make zone-hopping technology that happens to have this aesthetic, any genius could. But maybe the meta logic is, it has to be Finitevus because he was associated with this before.

  At least Zonic’s given some more actual personality because when Zector says she’s the best zone cop he’s ever seen, saying “ da “ instead of “ the, “ to be a bit more interesting, Zector says that she’s still not as good as Zonic. Okay, I guess NOW the comic’s getting good. I still have a hard time taking it seriously when the zone cops aren’t warping the villains away in a button press, though.

In fact, even Other M had Zonic do that, even if it took him forever to try. But if I ignore that, I’d still like this to be canon. This is why I’m reading this, it’s given MUCH needed personality and development to the zone cop world.

  But what is the likelihood that only one world would be a zone cop planet? Wouldn’t a planet have people decide to be zone cops much earlier, before theirs did? Wouldn’t their planet deserve to be called the Prime zone because it’d be the most important one? I guess there are MULTIPLE zone cop worlds after all in an infinite amount of universes and they find each other and team up.

  You’d think with all the universes out there, there’d be more than one Zonic, for example, but if Sonic really was able to team up with every Sonic earlier, there’d have to be a finite amount, unless Sonic was simply LIED to, so he wouldn’t waste his time spending eternity looking for Sonics to team up with. Really, he was just told to find only a specific amount of Sonics.

  Then it cuts to a story about a precarious professor who says Zonic has a small mutation. I love that we’re constantly seeing him without the helmet on. That humanizes him. Then, whoa, instead of the professor being an eccentric “ Kintobor, “ it’s another version of Finitevus. I hope he’s a good guy and it’s not just being lazy writing throwing away the chance to redeem a character this time. That’d be common sense and seems to be implied with him having normal-looking eyes.

I like him already, although it’s odd that he’s wearing red eye shadow. Finitevus wasn’t always white-colored, he was made that way BY the same thing that turned him evil. I guess this guy dyed his hair or had an albino mutation from birth.

  He says Zonic got a parasite picked up from the Amazonian Zone, and Zonic complains amusingly, “ I knew an all female paradise sounded too good to be true! “ I guess the people there reproduce with science and test tubes, or magic. Zonic asks if there’s a way to get rid of this thing. I’m guessing if they simply shot it with a laser, the convection of the heat melting the parasite would travel to Zonic himself and hurt him too, so they can’t just do that, but can’t someone hit it with a freeze ray and then shatter it with a hammer? Well, it’s covering his WHOLE ARM, that’d be hurt too.

  He says that he should be able to remove the parasite easily with a small amount of chaos radiation to extract it. I hope he doesn’t get turned evil. That’d be lame because it’d just reuse an idea I didn’t really like in the first place. Flynn could’ve made a new villain wanna destroy the world. And making him evil like Ziona is no more of a twist than Marxio in STC turning out to really be working for Eggman after all, where it’s only a twist because you had faith in the writing to not be too predictable.

  There’s lightning as he says this is science, so there’s still some crazy in him, but he goes back to being calm fortunately, and the parasite gets bigger, which isn’t the result a brilliant scientist was expecting. I guess he didn’t know anything about the parasite, so he didn’t know that chaos energy makes it grow bigger from absorption of it. He wants to cut a small sample for further testing. Zonic wonders if this might hurt.

  Then with a zone cop on top of Scourge, I guess because he suddenly showed up and ambushed him, Zilver shows up and grabs Zonic telekinetically to let Scourge escape for the greater good. I’m glad Zilver said that. So this comic actually has enough faith in Scourge to admit that he COULD do good. I like this. Zilver says he’s from the future and in his time, the crime is up 200%, and each zone is ridden with criminals hopping from one reality to another, and capturing that culprit would’ve started a chain reaction to that future. How? I mean, wouldn’t not capturing cause that?

  He says letting Vex escape was the right thing to do. Oh for the LOVE of, so the writer did a subversion that let me down again. Why on earth would he confuse Scourge with someone else? Why does he have to be a dumb goofball just because that was already done with Silver’s character? Alternate universes are the perfect excuse to do DIFFERENT things with a character. You’re under NO obligation to do the same thing again! NONE! They could have a completely different life!

And just because this was a case of mistaken identity doesn’t mean that Scourge couldn’t have gone on to do anything good, even if to save his OWN life. What if he had to stop someone from making a giant bomb explode on him later? Or he could want to spite someone a lot eviller than he’s portrayed as.

  When Zonic points out the plot hole and asks Zilver to just travel back in time and stop Scourge from escaping, Zilver says that’s not how it works and there are rules he has to follow. I guess this just barely makes sense. It could mean that, he’d get punished for traveling back in time AGAIN. But this still comes off as a lazy hand wave and this scene just feels like padding. I’d actually prefer it if it didn’t make a joke at his expense and he was RIGHT.

It’d be the perfect explanation for why the hell the zone cops won’t easily capture Scourge the minute he went to sleep. Logically one of them would’ve generated a portal below him at midnight right away. They must have their reasons for not doing that.

  They generate portals for THEMSELVES to go through, they could generate a portal anywhere, including where Scourge is. Maybe they must have their reasons, maybe a psychic or time traveler told them that he wasn’t worth capturing again. It’d certainly be a better excuse than the excuse for them not capturing Robo-Robotnik. What could HE be destined to do that’s worth keeping him around? He roboticized Sally!

  Then after a few tedious plotless pages where Scourge’s gang bothers Zonic, Fiona implies that there’s still good in her because she complains about them wasting time bothering him, and then Scourge gets grabbed by Zilver telekinetically. At least he’s written to be good with his powers. Zilver somehow mistakes Scourge for someone else AGAIN.

And Zonic grabs Zilver and lets Scourge escape though a portal. Why on earth would he do that?! Maybe because not only is he THAT against killing in general, but he’s wondering if it really IS for the greater good that Scourge get allowed to live. Because if he just let Zilver kill him, he wouldn’t get in trouble.

  You’d think Zilver would’ve just killed him or broken his limbs IMMEDIATELY instead of making a speech first, but I guess he was stalling because he wasn’t really okay with doing it. That has to be why Silver didn’t kill Sonic right away in 06, so it makes sense. Zilver’s confused and doesn’t recognize Zonic. He says that there was damage in the weak time space reality, saying techno babble for a bad attempt at a joke. Whichever Zilver Zonic’s met before probably caused a rift in time, changing the outcome to his future and him. It happens a lot.

  Zilver’s told they don’t execute people, when Zilver was just following orders. Zonic’s an idiot and tells Zilver to leave through a portal. I really would be happier if he just said that maybe he could go on to do some good things later on, even if for a selfish reason or by complete accident, like by betraying someone evil later after getting sick of him. Instead he’s just being stubborn and dumb.

  Later on, Zonic reaches for donuts and sees a Zilver he never met before hovering nearby. Zilver doesn’t recognize him, but still thinks he looks kinda familiar. Maybe he’s familiar with a descendant of his. He realizes that Zonic’s the guy he was told about in his future.

Wouldn’t Zonic be the Sonic with a destiny to be the greatest hero of the multiverse, because he’s the one constantly traveling to other zones already? Why would Prime Sonic be expected to take his place eventually? Is THAT it? Because even 30 years later, he doesn’t do that and by that point he’s old and tired just from trying to fight a giant monster.

  Zilver says he’s staying here until he can fix the future. They mentioned something about a traitor named Negative, but he doesn’t remember all the vague details, and he puts his hand on Zonic’s shoulder saying that they’ll figure it out. Then Zally’s nervous because she’s never had to face someone in court before who’s almost never lost a case and plays dirty all the time. It’s Zhadow.

  Why would a defense attorney get to wear goggles on his head? At least it’s refreshing that he’s acting completely differently from a boring, normal Shadow who’s grumpy and serious all the time. Instead he’s smirking and teasing him like Sonic. Their roles are completely reversed. Zonic’s still upset with him over an undefined last time and he shakes Zally’s hand finally meeting her.

  Then we see Dr. Cowell say he was just trying to find his way back to his own world and he’s innocent, but Zally says he traveled to four different dimensions during pursuit, and she claims that no one hops from one zone to another by mistake. She also reminds him that he did a lot of damage and mayhem to those zones on the way. Why on earth would any version of Shadow want to be a defense attorney for someone like this, or anyone? I guess he never met Maria! Why was he created then?

The only other reason would be to be a weapon for the military. He wouldn’t be made otherwise because who Shadow IS, is a living weapon, the ultimate life form, not someone who would go on to waste those powers and talents like this.

  Wait, huh? Why is the judge another version of Chuck? He was even trying to sleep on the job. Why didn’t he quit a long time ago? This is completely forced writing. You’d think he’d have gone on to have a job he likes instead of just being made a fool out of for no reason! Anyways, Zhadow calls Zonic to the stand as I’m just frustrated at him for defending a Robotnik. You’d think the zone cops would just throw a Robotnik in jail IMMEDIATELY without a trial. If they were really smart, they’d just fire a laser at him!

  Zhadow asks Zonic where Dr. Cowell obtained a Warp Ring. The Warp Ring was registered to Zonic. What does that have to do with whether he illegally zone-hopped or not, which is illegal no matter what? Zhadow accuses Zonic of giving it to him, when it should be obvious that he would’ve stolen it from Zonic instead. Zonic admits that he lost the Ring, and that was his plan all along, to make him look careless. Zhadow insists that while Cowell found the Warp Ring, he was unaware of its transdimensional capabilities.

  Zhadow says that Cowell’s on trial for zone hopping, not property damage. True. I’m guessing his point is that he used it by accident because he was hoping he’d go to another place, so it activated because of that, and he didn’t know that would happen. Okay, so I guess he’s right. Does he have to be written to smirk though? That’s such a lazy way to make a character look like the bad guy.

Seriously you’d think a Chuck would be engineering, not boring himself to death reminding me of the piss poor plot point that he was on the Council of Acorns. I’d rather he actually help people instead of have a redundant position that could replace him in an hour.

  But anyways, Dr. Cowell is voted not guilty. Still you’d think the zone cops would be smart enough to imprison him anyways because he’s a Robotnik. They’d kill him. Zonic has a feeling someone’s behind this and it turns out It’s Eggman Nega, the culprit I assumed gave him the Warp Ring from the very start. If Zhadow had been right, that’d have been a twist for subversive writing. You can have that and it’d still be good if it makes sense. Zonic could’ve had the Warp Ring slip out of his hands.

I had assumed Eggman Nega gave Cowell a Warp Ring immediately, but I suppose Eggman Nega could’ve created a little portal to send Zonic’s Warp Ring to Cowell just for fun. The issue ends with him smirking and having an ultimate master plan, and we see images behind him of Zilver looking mad and hurt, Cheddar, and I guess a Metal Sonic.

Why even pretend that it’s split up into issues as if it’s an actual comic if the issues consist of 50 pages? Even Sonic Universe doesn’t have that many pages. I think it should’ve gone into issue 2 a lot earlier, with the same plots of course. As it stands, that was a LOT of events to remember for one issue.

   This issue was by Chauvels. It’s a promising comic, giving much needed development on the zone cops and their organization, but I noticed a repetitive trend where I was hoping for a subversion and got disappointed by the writing going the predictable route, sometimes for the sake of a bad joke. The beginning parts insisted on making a fool out of another version of Tails and going with the so-called twist that the nurse Fiona’s a sadist, when I was hoping for something different. That wasn’t funny, it was lame.

  Why did it have to be Eggman Nega who got Zonic’s Warp Ring to Steampunk Eggman instead of it keeping it simple and having him just give him a new Warp Ring? That’d spare us the tedium of a court scene where a smug Shadow makes Zonic look careless, though Zonic does kinda deserve humiliation because I remember him being annoying in Archie, like when he made a very dumb excuse for not arresting Robo-Robotnik.

  I hated that Chuck was somehow the judge. I wish he was written to say that he was sleeping because he thought his job was simply boring, that’d make him relatable instead of the writer mean-spiritedly giving him a tired old man joke when he’s actually supposed to be pretty competent. I’d like to see him be awesome, not embarrassed in a role that any character could fill.

  Why did Zilver have to be wrong? You’d think he’d know what his target looks like and not have a case of mistaken identity, TWICE. His scenes shouldn’t have even been written. At least he was smart enough to grab someone telekinetically, but it should’ve been outright stated that he was stalling because he didn’t actually want to kill him, because he would’ve just done it otherwise. So far, it seems like this issue mostly annoys me. At least Scourge got away. Maybe the comic will get better in later issues. Honestly I’m just happy to see these characters doing stuff.

I liked the Zally scene, even if it was mundane and pointless, because she was in it and not being annoying and nagging him. The most prominent plot hole’s gonna be that the zone cops won’t just press a button to send a portal to send their enemies away like Zonic did to the magic female Robotina. It is a twist that the entire issue isn’t a series of shorts where the zone cops go after enemies of theirs and have that plot hole every time. I prefer NOT seeing the zone cops somehow be incompetent in fights just to justify them failing every time.

Why did the Metallix just stand around and be barely competent when they have super speed? I wish it was outright explained that it’s because they’re powered by steam and it’s not good enough for them. I know the zone cops can be competent, I saw that in the Robotina story, so it’s not in-character for them to be so incompetent that t hey fail to arrest EVERY single target they go after.

Can’t the writer just write new villains every time instead of letting old ones get away? He made a villain out of a chao. He can be creative! Still, I can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen next. The comic was canceled after this issue, so I might as well continue onto the next one.

No Zone Archives Issue 2:

  It starts out with Zonic’s visor being hit with a laser, getting him to fall over, and suddenly the writer’s too lazy to give the zone he’s in a name, but has a textbox saying “ zone “ so you know you’re missing something. In Media Res is annoying. It’s harder to get invested that way. He aims his ray gun at a robot who refuses to tell him anything and says he’ll never find all of them and they’ll always be one step ahead of him, and the entire no zone is done for as the robot self-terminates. Good thing it’s not taking place in the Prime universe. Is it Zonic or Zespio?

So he was facing a fake robot Zonic. It’s harder to tell who Zespio is with that helmet. It flashes back in time, I guess, as Zonic’s having a meeting with his partners in the janitorial closet. Zector says, “ If this is about the last donut, I didn’t take it. “ But for some reason zone cops call them zonuts, but don’t put a z at the beginning of every word, or even most words, while they’re at it. Zonic suspiciously asks what the secret code for his department is. So I’m guessing he’s a robot at this point. I wouldn’t have assumed that if the beginning didn’t spoil it for me.

It turns out Zespio and Zector are so incompetent that neither of them know the code, which works out in the good guys’ favor. It’s fortunately explained why Zector doesn’t know the code. He slept through the meeting. Zector says that Zespio was the one dozing off. Zespio says that Zector only thinks the code is red avocado because he had one for lunch. Zector says he had anchovies instead. Zonic says that they’re both wrong, but because of the way they argue, it’s obvious they’re the real deal. Wouldn’t their fakes be programmed to act like them anyways?

  He really is Zonic, either that or he’s still a fake robot and he’s gonna tell them about the imposters to scare them in the first place. After all, who better to know about imposters first than an imposter? This is reminding me of the Council of Ricks issue. Isn’t this gonna be just a lazy rip-off of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Blade Runner instead of something original?

  Zonic says that somehow the imposters were able to get past the security measures. I guess the writer intentionally didn’t specify what they were so it’d work. Zonic says the copy that attacked him was made of a weird metal, and he warns them that they can’t bring it to the professor because he might be an imposter. So he makes a plan to investigate everyone in this department, and report it back to him if they see anything out of the ordinary.

So this is just happening as an excuse to show us the No Zone versions of the other main characters. Okay, but they better not all be too similar to their Prime counterparts, because otherwise showing them would be completely pointless. At least Sally was an attorney.

  We see Zilver sleeping while floating, Zally being splashed with ink while her machine malfunctions in the fax room, and Zector’s suspicious of Zamy, the one room where nothing out of the ordinary is happening and he gets suspicious because she’s pouring creamer in her coffee. She could just have a change of taste. Zespio says that Zector’s intuition is usually never wrong. Zector says that when he fumbled that Slime Zone mission a year back, the chief put him on coffee duty for a month, and she was strict about having her coffee black.

I’m guessing they’re all under the assumption that the imposter robots can eat and drink like normal people. They’d HAVE to, or they wouldn’t make very good imposters. But at that point, wouldn’t they be given the same favorite foods and drinks as the originals to blend in properly?

  Zonic says this isn’t much to go by, but they have searched the entire department and found nothing. Oh, so that was all offscreen, never mind. He decides to bring his boss in for questioning, after all. It’s not even that new for Amy to be Sonic’s leader because I saw it in IDW. It’s a shame this is the last issue, I guess, when this was the first issue to seem actually good, even if it was just a lazy rip-off of a plot that was already done with a twist that spoiled itself at the start.

  But with the way the writing in Issue 1 constantly disappointed me, maybe it’s for the best that it stopped. I don’t want another comic where Fiona’s portrayed as a sadist or characters are too incompetent and if it wasn’t gonna show the zone cops as pressing a button to portal away the bad guys, then it wasn’t a real representation of their adventures ANYWAYS. I feel like this comic is too uncreative and disappointing to be worthy of being showed off in a video. Go figure, it’s bad, it’s a deviantart comic. I want to show off good ones.

A Sly Encounter Review Sonic Fancomic Newbie’s Perspective Pages 1-101

  It starts out with us being reminded of what happened just before Sally got herself roboticized to keep the rest of the world from getting the same fate. Then after the Death Egg gets damaged, she notices a white void despite having her eyes closed and wonders if she’s dead. She realizes she’s in pain and hurt for some reason.

  She asks Nicole what’s going on and screams, and it seems like there’s a robot in front of her, and I also see a blue Emerald. I don’t remember that from Archie Sonic. If that’s Metal Sonic, it should look like him, instead of just confusing me, meaning nothing. Huh?

Then she wakes up on the Death Egg near a blue Emerald, and asks what all that nonsense with the Emerald zipping her was. It zipped her? Huh? It doesn’t do that either. Then she sees Sonic being held in the grip of Mecha Sally, despite being Sally. Why didn’t this happen in Archie, then?

Already I’m so confused that I’m detached from what’s going on and no longer taking the story seriously. This shouldn’t be using the Mecha Sally idea and trying to go off the Archie continuity specifically, if it’s not gonna actually stay true to its canon. Then what’s the point?

  Thank goodness she explains that the Chaos Emerald made it so that instead of getting destroyed, the roboticizer turned into a Mecha Sally. The roboticizer turned ITSELF into a roboticized person, while keeping the person intact? I’m so confused. She inverted the roboticization beam! That’s why only SHE got the problem, instead of everybody! At least it’s trying to make sense by having her explain this. It’s supposed to be because of the Chaos Emerald. To be fair, it’s the blue Emerald. In Archie, we were supposed to believe the blue Emerald was the one that got teleported away because of a glitch in the Genesis Wave. I have no idea why that glitch happened.

   So it’s going off the logic that it would make just as much sense for the Emerald to have been warped to Sally, and conveniently saved her out of nowhere, as it would for it to show up on the bottom of the ocean, like was originally planned for it. But why did this happen instead? Was it literally completely random where it’d show up? If so, Sally’s extremely lucky. If it could have shown up anywhere, like, a different planet, she could have easily not gotten so lucky and had the whole comic happen. But to be fair, lucky coincidences do happen in real life. It’s better for it to feel forced because of that than because of a character being way too dumb.

  I’m just confused because the Chaos Emerald has NEVER shown this property before. I can maybe understand the idea of her not being roboticized because of its presence. Rings are just weaker Chaos Emeralds, and Sonic prevented himself from being roboticized in Satam by delaying it with Rings, which make sense because Rings protect him. But then it leaps from that effect, to the roboticizer itself being turned into a Mecha Sally. What does that have to do with invincibility? Why would the Chaos Emerald want that to happen? Roboticization turns ORGANIC material into a robot. How could it turn non-organic material like roboticizers into a robot?

  Before Sally can turn an already done plot in an intriguing new direction by showing us Sally go up to Sonic at this point and reveal to him that she’s fine, so drama averted and arc averted, out of nowhere the Chaos Emerald creates a portal below her and sucks her into it. Why? How?

This is just full of things happening out of nowhere. How many times have I said that I’m confused? At least this is interesting me. I’d rather be confused and desperate to read more than confused and bored out of my mind.

  It’s the type of weird writing I remember Penders having in really early stories of his like the one with the melting clocks. That story was confusing, but it was also new, and weird, so I’m glad I read it. It was a new experience, to add to the franchise. This story starts out as a retread when it’s supposed to be a fancomic, so it could do ANYTHING.

But at least now it’s getting interesting. But you don’t have to make no sense to be interesting. I’d like a plot development to make sense! But at this point, I’ll take Penders style confusing writing over Flynn’s any day. At least this is interesting and engaging, as Sally goes into a void and we see screens with various different game franchises behind her, and she actually acknowledges their presence, wondering what these windows are.

  She starts falling. She sure is talkative this story. She was doing a lot of talking last page too. I gave the story the benefit of the doubt and assumed she was talking too quietly for Mecha Sally and Sonic to hear her so that them not noticing her would make sense. She was thinking, actually. She should’ve had a real thought bubble then to make that immediately clear.

  My point is, when she says she’s being sucked into a portal, that seems stilted to me. It’s like early Mike Gallagher writing where the characters say what’s obviously happening on the screen so the audience will understand things better. Though it is better than having detached narration do it, as if it’s a novel. It’s just that I’d expect her to just be screaming, not narrating.

  I can’t take this story seriously right now because it’s so contrived that a Chaos Emerald sent her into another universe. It would actually be easier to buy if the portal showed up for no apparent reason, because that happened in Issue 11 and that was why Sonic met Scourge and it happened earlier and Sonic met Al and Cal. I don’t know why Zonic would create this portal, but at least that would be AN explanation instead of a series continuity error with the Emerald. It’d be better if it was a teleport stone!

   I could’ve believed that the portal showed up because the barriers between zones are that weak and Mobius is that magical. It makes no sense that the constant portal generation was just temporary, but the comic had it that it was. but it’d still feel arbitrary if she didn’t say that because it’s been FOREVER since a portal to another universe showed up for no reason in Archie. That hasn’t been a thing since, Sonic Super Special 9.

  But at least this is giving me a feeling like one of those issues. It’s reminding me of when Archie was actually interesting. Even if it’s not really creative like coming up with something completely new on your own, because it’s having her fall into Sly Cooper’s universe.

That’s more a fancomic thing. Not only would the franchises never cross over, because Sly Cooper’s dead, but using another franchise’s basic elements isn’t creative because it’s not coming up with something new.

  Meanwhile, Sly Cooper thinks that even though he defeated his enemy, he still feels like he lost. He thinks that he hasn’t seen Bentley in days because he stays in his workshop all day and night and Murray just wanders around the city, blaming himself for what happened to Bentley. Good thing I watched the SGB let’s plays of the Sly Cooper games a while ago, or I’d have no attachment to this franchise.

   Although even if I didn’t already know these characters, and learned to hate Sly 4’s plot with a passion, I’d still feel like Sly Cooper fits as someone who could meet Sally right away because his art style fits in with the Sonic characters perfectly.

He’s an anthro animal, he’s not in the Sonic art style exactly because he has a neck and his eyes aren’t big enough, but he doesn’t look like a deviantart Sonic OC at least, and he looks a lot more like a Sonic character than the Fleetway civilians did. So I totally get why he’s crossing over with Sonic’s series here. That’s why when I first found out about this comic, I thought it was a surprisingly brilliant idea.

  Sly hopes that something will pop up to give him a good distraction from how depressing his life has been. There’s a lot of panels here with him doing nothing and just talking to himself. It overwhelmed and bored me right away. I’m also always wishing that the text in the text bubbles was bigger, since I’m nearsighted after all.

  Finally, he notices a glow and weird noise. He has the common sense to think that it could lead to trouble if he investigated it, but then he decides to look at it anyways because he has nothing better to do. I like his adventurous spirit.

We see Sally on the ground and some silhouetted bad guy grabs the Emerald. I guess she got knocked out from falling from a high height. I find it annoying that the bad guy’s in silhouette. Why can’t it just let me see what he looks like? It’s a shame this has to happen to Sally for the premise of the comic, because we’re supposed to think of her as a competent Freedom Fighter who constantly succeeds.

  Anyways, Sly feels sorry for Sally right away, being a gentleman. Although it’s hard to take him seriously when he says she’s beat up because she doesn’t look hurt at ALL. She’s lying there, so he has every reason to assume she was, but she’s not bruised.

He picks her up and decides to take her back to his place. It’s good to immediately establish that he’s got some good in him. I know he’s a thief from the games, and that’s gotta require some apathetic selective morality from him, where he’s a polite person but he’s completely apathetic to stealing, so it’s a miracle he cares about Sally. Like, why did he become a thief if he’s this nice, anyways? I forget. No, ancestry doesn’t make it okay.

  Then we see a page where for some reason Sally’s seeing the overly depressing scene where Antoine ended up put in a coma by Metal Sonic, so we get to see her perspective on the whole thing. BUNNIE TOO?! That didn’t happen in Archie! I didn’t feel like looking at the same scene again that I hated so much, so I missed this! So later on it’s gonna be said that she had been caught in an explosion, and that’ll confuse me. How did Sally see and react to Mecha Sally when she was seeing all of this from her perspective?

  After her bland, polite non-reaction to Ixis being king in Archie Sonic Online, I find it cathartic to read her shocked reaction to it here. But I don’t know why she saw him actually because Mecha Sally didn’t see him there. It’s better that Bunnie had a ray gun and used a sword against Metal Sonic. But it’s still not good enough. She should’ve had a nanite suit. She would’ve. That was my point. Realistically, she would’ve avoided Antoine’s injury.

  FINALLY she wakes up on the couch and it turns out it was just a dream. So can anyone explain to me why she was having a psychic dream that told her what was happening to her friend, when apparently she doesn’t have these all the time? I assume it’s the Chaos Emerald. But it’s really confusing to just keep giving it powers it never had before. I know it’s called the CHAOS Emerald, so there’s a thin excuse, but why didn’t it do this for anyone earlier? There’s been hundreds of issues of Archie, so it’s gonna be weird to establish it has this power now. Is there a point to her being able to see what was going on with her friends from another dimension? It’s just wasting a page.

  She wakes up without her vest on, and Sly tells her to relax and says she’s safe here. Good thing he tells her that to have a good first impression. I can imagine Sally would be really judgemental of a thief. I don’t really care right now myself. It’s not like we’ve seen him steal from an innocent person who’s begging him not to. I like getting to see her wearing the blanket as a toga. Then there’s a slip sound effect below her, and she’s hovering over the floor when she was just on the couch. Oh, SHE slipped. Okay. She slipped and fell back on the couch. I think that could’ve been drawn better.

  She says there’s something wrong with her and her center of gravity is messed up. She randomly asks Sly what Freedom Fighter branch he’s a part of. I don’t think she’d be so wrapped up in it that she’d just assume that about him.

  And it’s also dumb of her to talk about stuff like the Death Egg and Chaos Emerald when she KNOWS that she was sent to another universe. To be fair whenever Sonic was sent to other zones, he still saw people like his friends and Chaos Emeralds there, so she has every reason to assume she’s on another Mobius. But did Sonic ever tell Sally about his adventures in other zones? We never saw that.

  Sly says charmingly, “ Slow down! Relax that pretty little head of yours. “ He tells her that if she needs him to find an Emerald, he’ll help, as she has her arms crossed. Sally wonders how he could not know about the Emeralds even though she’s clearly in another dimension. That is satisfying to see because I was wondering that about Fang for the longest time. That’s what I asked about him when he first showed up.

  She says she doesn’t have time for smooth talking because she’s naturally focused on the fact that her friends are in danger and at war. She says that he might not understand what it’s like when a good friend of his gets hurt in battle. I’m glad she said that so that he could relate to her. The more they relate to each other, the better. It takes advantage of the crossover.

  He says that rushing around and being angry isn’t the way to handle the pain of that kind of situation, as I realize how badly I’ve missed seeing Sally interact with people in new stories I’m experiencing for the first time. Especially since she quickly gets out of frustrated nag mode and apologizes and says that he’s right.

  She could be drawn better on this page, but at least she’s being surprisingly polite, which is the thing I was always noticing about her when I was experiencing most of her stories for the first time, and that was what caused me to feel like I liked Sally in the first place. I like her when she’s like this. It helps distract me for a while from the fact that she’s had her bad moments. But it’d be lame if she was usually drawn this horribly.

  Sly tells her not to worry about it, and sadly they suddenly get all short and Chibi, because that’s not unprofessional at all. How do you not keep the same art style in the span of one page?! Why would they do this? Even my dad agreed with me there. Anyways, Sly tells her that he can grab her some clothes and she can explain her situation over some brunch with him, and she agrees and thanks him while smiling. Awesome. I like his interaction with her already.

  There’s a time skip and he says he’s gathered all of their spare clothes here while her old clothes are being patched up by a friend of his, and he says he’ll give her privacy to change her clothes in peace. It’s ironic, oh, then Sally questions why she’d need privacy. I was just about to snark about the fact that she’s always without clothes in Season 1 of Satam, and it’s not like she changed after having a vest for so long in Archie because she wasn’t embarrassed having no vest on in front of her brother.

  Anyways, after that nice touch showing us one of the differences between their two worlds, I LOVE seeing a black jacket on her. Wow, I LOVE that outfit of hers. She’s got a blue shirt, her chest is covered. Good, I was being reminded of how she was drawn before Issue 160 by some of the artists who were way too focused on Sally’s chest. Blue and black go really well together. I’m SO GLAD she’s got a different outfit for a change. Though it’s weird to see her hands being the same color as her fur instead of skin-colored when she’s wearing fingerless gloves. At first Sally thinks she’s looking in a circus mirror that stretches things out, but then she realizes it’s not that way, because she does have a brain.

  She realizes she’s got a larger curvier body, more muscular limbs instead of noodle limbs with smaller hands and feet, and a smaller head, and she screams at looking different. So, for the first time ever, a character being sent to another zone has also changed their appearance to fit its art style. I didn’t think that I had to think she had a different art style in this way until she pointed it out, because I knew I was reading a deviantart comic, so it couldn’t look exactly like the Archie Sonic comics anyways. So it didn’t have to.

  But apparently I was supposed to care that her appearance changed. Was it really necessary to have her body changed? If this was pointed out, then the artist didn’t have to do this and it could have been helped. I thought she and Sly had basically the same art style. She would’ve fit in just fine the normal way! This is the biggest problem with the comic. She looks fine now, but she’s gonna get worse.

  Sly runs over to her gallantly trying to save her because he heard screaming, and then he says he’ll leave because she doesn’t have any pants. She says, “ Huh? Since when did a lack of clothes matter? Plus you’re not wearing any pants either. Are there sexist laws around here or something? “ I love that one of the first things Sally does to interact with Sly, is not to judge him for being a thief like I’d expect, and instead it’s this, outright pointing out how the two franchises are different in a minor way I would never have noticed.

He tells Sally that there’s no laws and it’s just a norm. He fortunately says that she’s free to dress as she likes, but she should expect to turn a few heads. Sally explains with a cute smile that where she’s from, clothing is like any other optional accessory, like jewelry or makeup. I wish she had her normal art style like a Sonic character, though. But she still kinda looks good aesthetically. I just don’t see the point of doing this and trying to make her look more human like it’s Other M where the characters have necks. There’s a reason I thought only Other M would do something like that. It’s BEEN a while!

  Then Sly realizes that Murray doesn’t wear any pants either despite not being covered in fur. Okay, why is this the first time he’s had a problem with this with Murray and realized this? Him thinking this just has it make less sense that he had this argument with Sally! Anyways, he says she wins.

  I’m glad the story skipped past a lot of her explaining her world to Sly. That would just tell us stuff we already know. I’m not sure Sly would’ve had that interesting a reaction to it anyways other than thinking, “ Wow, Eggman’s awful. “ She says in shock that even though there’s no Overlanders here, his planet is still polluted and industrialized, because she has such faith in Mobians, that she thinks it’s ridiculous that even they would industrialize a planet. She says that it makes sense that if there’s alternate realities, there would be ones that are nothing like Mobius. Then she asks what in the world is Sly wearing. He looks ridiculous. He’s at least making me smile though, so this is humorous.

  He explains that he makes his career out of… I mean, “ of out of, “ stealing from criminals. So he has to wear a disguise when in public. I hope he does proper research so that he knows it’s a criminal every time. For some reason Sally says he’s just a common thief, even though he just said that he only steals from criminals but to be fair he also said other big game. That could easily be interpreted as “ and rich people. “ I’m glad she’s casually sipping something while saying that to him instead of glaring at him as if he’s Fiona. I hope Sly mostly just steals from criminals. It’d be ideal if it was 100% of the time. He says he’s not common.

  Then we see the cop who usually chases him, and she’s right across the street from them, by coincidence. He at least justifies that she has a knack for popping up wherever he goes. This would be explained if he said that she has a tracking device on him. But then she’d find his hideout and arrest him in his sleep, so she’s just getting lucky over and over again. Why does Sally think that she seems friendly? She’s being a horrible judge of character.

   Also, I just realized how ridiculous it is that she’s a cop with no police uniform. Why is she allowed to wear a top that shows the cleavage and has nothing covering her belly? She’s not dressed like a cop at all. Do they think she wouldn’t be pretty enough if she did? Also, wouldn’t she have to have hair that’s a bit shorter than that, so that the hair couldn’t be grabbed and pulled? The point is, it sure is lucky for Sly that apparently in his universe, that’s just what the female cop uniform looks like. They’re allowed to dress in a way that makes it almost impossible to tell that they’re cops, even when they’re arresting someone. Maybe it’s the necklace that’s her uniform. But it’s pretty small. And she changes into a miniskirt later! I guess the uniform changed.

  But yeah it’s forced that Sally thinks she’s friendly without even hearing her talk yet. I don’t remember her being friendly. I remember her being vengeful, completely obsessed with arresting Sly. That’s more like an antagonist, like a Hero Antagonist like Dib where he IS trying to do the right thing but is being an unlikable jerk in the process. So I’m conflicted on whether I like or hate her. I’m pretty sure I hate her.

  She finds an article, and seems to look crazy because she’s talking to herself while Sally and Sly are sneaking away from her. She says with a newspaper that she has a good idea of where Sly’s gonna go next.

  Sly reminds me of Sonic when he says all adventures need danger and he says that it allowed him to glance an article about this, a museum with a banner over it saying to come see the famous gemstones of the world. There would be SO many gemstones in the world, that there would be so many museums with gems in it. It could be in a different museum! But this is the closest one to Sally, so of course it’s the most likely place that a Chaos Emerald would be put. It’s opening in a week.

  Sally doesn’t want to wait a week just to find out if the Emerald is there or not.  And she’s smart enough to realize that she can’t just walk up to these guys and tell them it belongs to her. I love when characters aren’t idiots. Sly reassures her that she’ll have her Emerald by tomorrow. Why not by today? Why not hurry? He doesn’t need her help. I guess he really wants to spend more time with her. He tells her he’ll get her geared up for tonight.

  He says that normally he likes to get to know a place first, but he’s been to this museum tons of times already. And yet later on he’ll say that robbing a normal museum just isn’t his style. He asks Sally considerately if she’s SURE that she doesn’t want to stay back and feed him information where it’s safe. I don’t like how Sally looks here.

She says a huge chunk of her life was dedicated to breaking into high security areas with robotic guards that would shoot first and ask questions later. I love that she’s written to point that out and relate to Sly. And she was never the type to sit back where it was safe and let others do the dirty work for her, surprisingly for someone so cautious. There’s a limit to how cautious she is. I’m glad she’s on good terms with him even though he’s a thief. Makes me wonder about her glaring at Fiona so much though since she was a former thief at the time, and a Freedom Fighter. She doesn’t point out that the reason she’s okay with Sly is that he only steals from criminals.

  Anyways, he’s confident as they slowly go down to the floor, and Sly’s surprised that they remodeled the room a lot since he was last here. He says this is why he scopes places out first, and decides that they should split up to cover both hallways. It’s gonna be hard to look at Sally like this. If this was someone’s first page, they’d never know it was her.

  She eventually finds the Emerald under a cloth, and then light appears around her hand and a bag shows up around it, because the cop has that magical power when she shoots at people. That’s interesting. It must be a bit more futuristic than our world. It’s also creative that the first person she antagonizes is Sally, not Sly. I still can’t help but hate her for antagonizing a good guy though. Meanwhile, Sly wastes our time avoiding a guard, who thinks he’s just seeing another empty barrel. So, why is a barrel in a museum? Does that make sense?

Anyways, Sally’s told that she’ll have plenty of time to explain her sob story back at the station. She’s so spiteful to criminals no matter how polite they are, that it seems like she just does this for stress relief as a Knight Templar. And she throws some light grenade at her to get away while apologizing.

  Sally explains herself properly while thinking she’s in pain, but is given no sympathy and she kicks the gun out of her hand while apologizing. Sally thankfully angsts thinking that she’s fighting a good guy, which contrasts her from Sly. She wants to knock her out, and she decides to let her hit her and knock her out once she lets her guard down. What makes her think this won’t go wrong for her? She thankfully DOES succeed in her plan and knocks her out with a device.

  There’s a surprising twist because the thing under the sheet ISN’T the Chaos Emerald and she gets tackled. I guess she was just pretending to be unconscious. It’d be nice if I was reminded of her name. I have an idea of what it is though. It starts with a C. She realizes from the handcuffs that Sally has to be working for Sly. She realizes the emerald is gone. Why is she calling it that if it’s purple?

  Sally tells Sly to put the jewel back, since it wasn’t the one she wanted. Sly, after being upset, suddenly says that it’s not his style to rob a normal museum without reason anyways. It ISN’T? Huh? Why did he even hesitate at the idea of returning it then? The female cop gets some sympathy points finally when she says that it’s gonna take her years to pay off that stolen gem.

Then she finds it, and there’s a note explaining, “ As I said before, this isn’t the emerald I was looking for. Please take it back and sorry for all the trouble. “ She thinks that she should’ve known Sally and Sly were working together because they both don’t wear pants, and then she imagines them talking to each other as she wonders if their relationship goes beyond just being in the same gang.

She imagines Sly insulting her behind her back, and then remembers him kissing her. At first I thought she was wishing he would do that. It didn’t look like a flashback. It just naturally led onto that from her Imagine Spot. Why is my time being wasted with her? Finally we see Sally again.

  Sly apologizes to her fortunately and says that’s the last time he plan a heist around a random floating newspaper in the wind. He’s smarter than I expected. Normally one of his friends conducts research and plans out the missions for him. I don’t think he was too stupid there because it seemed like a reasonable idea at the time.

  Sally tells him not to worry and says that she knows that he’s trying to help. They’re still on good terms, and she thanks him. What was the point of us seeing Bentley if he wasn’t gonna do anything? What, does he have the Chaos Emerald? Sally has another bad dream that just rips off Archie Sonic again. I didn’t even read it this time. Nobody WANTS to be reminded of that story arc! And the last time we saw a dream like that, it apparently wasn’t exactly the same, but I don’t even like anything similar to it!

  The next morning, Sly fortunately says good morning to Sally and reassures her, and Sally finally reveals that in her dreams, she had been seeing things from Mecha Sally’s perspective… even though she clearly saw her and reacted to her. So, does that mean the entire Sly Cooper universe adventure was just a dream? No, that would’ve made sense instead of her only being here because the Chaos Emerald of all things warped her here.

  Sally thankfully explains that she thinks when the Emerald zapped her, it took a piece of her and put it in that robot. Now every time she loses consciousness here, that piece of her wakes up over there. Sure is convenient that THAT’S how it works instead of her having two consciousnesses, which would lead to both of them being too distracted by the other to do anything.

  Sly’s told that these reports were here when she got here. He says that Bentley made the reports, which say that immense energy readings foreign to their world have been recorded a few miles out of town. And this proves to Sly that Sally’s different dimension story is real. Well, DUH! Why didn’t he believe it was real? That’s the whole reason she doesn’t wear pants! Although it is easier to believe that she’s just got a quirk. But why would she lie to him about all of THAT?

  Sly thanks Bentley for the information, and Bentley apologizes from text on a computer screen and says the gang needs a few more days to get prepared for another heist, and he tells Sly to scout out a place listed in the report in the meantime. Sally reassures a disappointed Sly that his gang will be willing to help soon enough, and he calls her the voice of reason and logic, rubbing it in that Sally’s in-character here, and apologizes.

  They arrive there in a rental van that has a huge Sly Cooper logo on it. What’s the point of Sly’s disguise then? You know maybe nobody would get suspicious of the van on sight if he didn’t have that logo on it. They better hope nobody sees it. It’s kinda surprising he has a van at all. He has it in the game, but I never imagined that Sly had a van at all. He’s a wanted criminal. I guess he could’ve rented it in a disguise just fine though. I just imagine him walking around.

  I’m just saying it’s a bit surprising that criminals having a really inconspicuous logo on their van. That’s totally unrealistic. But so are Sly’s time slowing powers from the game. But that’s not referenced here because that’d be too broken. I’m glad it’s not referenced here because that’d make him look like an idiot for not using it at every opportunity and easily breaking all the tension.

  Anyways, Sly says Bentley set up a monitor station in the back of the van that Sally can use to help guide him and feed him information while he infiltrates the place, and he also has a camera thing that’ll let her see what he sees in the field. Sally agrees and bores me with a bunch of dialogue while nothing’s happening. Bentley was able to map out the one-story building, but there were three blank areas that had security he couldn’t hack into overnight, so the Emerald might be there. Sly calls her a natural leader and she thanks him.

  Sly finds a hall full of drilling equipment for a research facility. He questions the regular guards getting replaced by strange looking goons when they get to the blind spots. Sally sees the people in cages and says this place is starting to give her flashbacks of home. She wishes she could help them, but is rational enough to know that without the full story, they could cause more harm than good. She could mean that releasing the caged people could end up releasing monsters to the world instead, like people brainwashed to be evil sleeper agents. She should say that, though, to be less confusing.

  They find the Emerald, and a one-dimensional horrible-looking scientist bad guy is experimenting with a laser powered up with it. This guy makes me appreciate mad scientists like Rick, because at least HE has an interesting personality that would take multiple scenes to establish. This guy just makes science look bad and the story look unimpressive.

He sees Carmelita show up, and geez, he talks way too much. He’s really boring me. He says to let the cop in and sound the alarm. Sally tells Sly that he should get out of there because it’s too heavily guarded for him alone. Sly says there’s no fun in that and he’ll give it a try, but as soon as the alarm goes off, he wisely decides to retreat. He tells her to start the car for a quick get-away.

  Carmelita, finally reminding me of her unintuitive name, learns that the Emerald is here, and says that unless the bad guy has proof of ownership, she’ll have to confiscate that Emerald for a case she’s working on. So the writer’s going with the realistic thing, where a random person isn’t allowed to have an Emerald just because he found it. That’s more realistic than Breezie being allowed to offer an Emerald for a prize in the reboot.

  He suspiciously agrees, probably planning something. Since she made it clear to him that her main goal is catching Sly, since he knows it’s here, she’s told it would be smarter to leave the Emerald here and ambush Sly when he comes back.

She actually agrees, even though you’d think it would be illegal for her to not confiscate the Emerald he has no proof he owns immediately. I thought she’d be a by the books cop considering that she absolutely hates Sly no matter how polite he is. But it makes sense that she’d do literally anything it takes to catch Sly. But you’d think that she’d take the Emerald anyways because how is Sly expected to know that the Emerald wouldn’t be here anymore after she’d take it? She just impulsively agreed to his idea without thinking it through.

  Sally reassures Sly back at home that they made some real progress today, even though they did nothing but confirm what they already knew, that an Emerald was there. They could’ve not gone there and they would’ve gone there tomorrow and found it anyways. So that was all just a waste of time. He gets reassured anyways and decides to tell Bentley he was right.

  Sally embarrasses him a little by telling Bentley about Sly’s plot based on a newspaper in the wind, and Bentley snarks about that a little, finally acting like a long-time companion of his again. At least he’s not constantly acting like an arrogant Insufferable Genius, like most of what I’ve seen of him in Sly 1. He’s tolerable here. He warns them not to scratch the rental van.

  Sly says that they had lost their actual van, and thought that remodeling a van to look like it would make them feel better, but it didn’t. In the end Bentley kept having trouble and locked himself in his room as soon as the job was done.

  Sally says he just needs time to readjust to things and thinks he and Bentley will reconcile and be good as new once he’s ready for their mission, as apparently, Sally’s optimistic now. She tells him good night. Wasn’t it just morning? It seems like the days go by extremely quickly with Sly. We’re never told what she does all day while she’s waiting for night. I have to assume she just watches TV, but that would be so easy to explain. How do wanted criminals have TV? I guess they pirate cable to get TV. Maybe she just reads books. That was my first thought.

  Sally goes to bed, has a really bad headache, and out of nowhere, her dream has something brand new happen in it, hooray. Mecha Sally somehow made it all the way to the nanite city, instead of being grabbed and held still by Silver’s telekinesis and never let go, which is obviously what would happen, since Silver went to the Death Egg.

  Anyways after that impossibility, Ixis finally decides to try to be useful and crystallize her, though I wish he didn’t call her traitorous. He says that if he releases her, she’ll rampage again. Sonic says that if that happens, he can stop her.

Ixis openly says that if he releases her, maybe he’ll be able to get Sonic court-martialed or banished for this. It’s oddly refreshing to see him be outright honest with Sonic to his face about his evil plan against him. That’s kinda humorous actually. He’s being self-aware.

  He says “ again “ and then Sonic sees Reboot Sally in front of him, who asks who she is and where she is. Even though you’d think she would remember being Mecha Sally and think she was still her. Especially since the reason Sally remembered everything she did as Mecha Sally after being deroboticized was that she still had free will and just wasn’t able to disobey Eggman. So why doesn’t she remember being Mecha Sally now if she had more free will than most Robians?

  So Mecha Sally got deroboticized, and somehow Ixis made it happen by accident, which I guess makes sense to happen by accident because he accidentally deroboticized Bunnie too because of his confusing wizards in his head illness, even though none of the wizards in his head would want that. And maybe that’s why he’s saying “ again. “ In retrospect, I don’t like that Ixis did it instead of Sonic getting to EARN a major victory by attacking her and throwing her into the deroboticizer.

 While it makes sense that Ixis’ deroboticization power would be used again, as a Chekhov’s Gun… well I don’t remember that in actual Archie Sonic we were told that the heroes were working on a deroboticizer at home. All I remember is seeing Rotor’s team defending the city. But yeah I’d rather the heroes earn a major victory. But I can respect this because this is realistic too.

  And when she’s deroboticized, she looks like Reboot Sally because that’s what Flynn wanted. So ironically this comic is for once more loyal to Flynn than Archie Sonic Online, which returned Sally to what she looked like before she was deroboticized which makes more sense there because of the bioanalyzer thing. And her being successfully deroboticized instead of dying from it because her heart wasn’t there and was replaced with a Ring, makes sense because it was just a wizard here who deroboticized her. So it makes sense for the same reason Bunnie’s limbs being deroboticized made sense when they weren’t her original limbs to begin with. It’s magic.

  I’m just saying it’s lucky for her that the deroboticization spell decided to give her clothes that she never actually wore before. Realistically you’d think she wouldn’t have any clothes right now, because she just turned organic. How would the deroboticization chemicals know to summon clothes, like know what to turn into clothes? Well the dark blue part of the chest area of Mecha Sally does seem to be more in front of her torso than the grey part of her body.

  I guess if there’s extra metal protruding from her body, it gets turned into clothing from having no roboticized skin cells on it with DNA. Like obviously the clothes would be roboticized too by a roboticizer. That’s always how it worked. So the deroboticizer accounts for that. Because obviously, some clothes are made of organic material too, just not skin material. Like yarn and cloth come from sheep. So that makes sense. If it’s metal that doesn’t have any roboticized skin cells at the subatomic level and is literally just normal metal, then it gets turned into cloth, because it’s got no DNA in it. So maybe a deroboticized Robian that had maintenance done on him would have clothing where the altered metal used to be. Why would that be lethal?

  So Reboot Sally is confused and says she can see flashes of images, but it’s like seeing memories of a stranger. If she can see flashes of ANY images… so, she can remember SOME THINGS, but not EVERYTHING about being Mecha Sally? Huh? That makes even LESS SENSE.

  Sonic hugs her as they both look sweet and he says he’ll be happy to get her memories back. She thanks Sonic, and somehow Sally’s still horrified when she wakes up. She insists on calling that harmless girl an it and says it’s stealing her life, and cries about it, even though she’s gonna go home in days anyways.

  Well, for all she knows, Mecha Sally was just playing dumb and having an act so that she could catch Sonic off guard later. It doesn’t make sense that just because she was turned organic, she’s free of Eggman’s programming, because Ixis doesn’t even like her, so why would his magic turn her good as well? She was always in favor of Eggman, because she was never Sally, she was a roboticizer turned into Mecha Sally.

  The spell turned her back to normal in the process of uncrystallizing her, but that was never normal for her. Deroboticization always conveniently gets rid of the Eggman obedience brainwashing chip that must exist to force the new programming into Robians. Somehow that’s always an extra effect of it. There must be some physical device in the Robians generating the programming to overwrite and suppress the old mind with a new one. If the roboticization literally just turned organic material into metal and didn’t do THAT too then it wouldn’t change the person’s personality at all.

  It’s just confusing because she seems completely innocent, so I’d expect Sally to just be happy that her friends don’t have to be miserable about her being a robot anymore. That’s why I thought this was good. At least she corrected herself and did call Mecha a she.

  Meanwhile, Carmelita can’t get reception, and gets grabbed by a big goon and says that she was right that Dr. M wasn’t trustworthy. So she was actually smart enough to not trust him! She smacks the goon with a fire extinguisher and easily knocks him out and escapes his grip.

Then she passes out because it turns out some invisible gas was knocking her out the whole time. That was clever of him. How’d she measure her weight beforehand so he’d know how much was too much and how little was too little?

  So the bad guy says to take her to the party room while she’s asleep and thinks that she’ll be lucky if she even remembers anything that happened today. And he wants to keep working on his gift for when the guests arrive. Did he send a goon after her earlier to follow her until she’d eventually – fortunately for him – stand on a scale, and the guy made sure to look at the scale up close without her seeing him so that he’d know what her weight was, without her seeing him because he had an invisibility cloak, or did they get access somehow to her medical records from her doctor? Because too much sleeping gas would’ve killed her.

  And he’s just a one-dimensional bad guy. But if he killed her, the cops would know where she last went and go after him. It would make more sense if he sent nanites into her that could fly and they would go into her brain and knock her out. He’s already a mad scientist. That would be more believable than MAGICAL sleeping gas. That’s really convenient for him.

  Sly asks Sally why she’s in her thief outfit and packing up all her gear. She says she’s out of time and has to get that Emerald today. She’s naturally scared that if she comes back home too late, her friends might not even believe she’s the real Sally and wouldn’t take her back. It would suck if she was accused of being a robot, and put in prison. Eggman has made robots that look just like regular people after all. So that would be easier to believe than believing she was the real Sally, especially since it’s so confusing that she wasn’t roboticized.

  Sly finally hugs her. He says he knows what it’s like to watch helplessly as bad things happen to his loved ones, and reassures her that they can go today. She finally hugs back. I’m always so surprised that she’s on good terms with him. She gets along better with a thief than with Sonic. That’s something I always thought about when they were interacting with each other. They make a better couple!

  Sly at least warned Bentley that they were going early, but they’ve got no backup for this. Sally feels refreshed and ready for anything and Sly can’t even see any patrol guards here. Sally wonders if this is a trap, and they see Carmelita passed out in front of the Emerald.

The door closes and despite Sly showing concern for her, she wants to arrest him when she wakes up in his arms. He fortunately lampshades her behavior. It’s not like he’s a murderer. It’s not like her parents were killed by thieves. No, that would make her behavior make sense.

  And then the Emerald sinks beneath the floor. The floor opens up. Sly then gets horrified at seeing someone and says that it can’t be. But it’s not Penelope or anything. It’s right after Sly 2. So instead he’s just reacting to seeing some bad guy whose only personality is that he’s a bad guy. So I don’t care about him. I have no idea why he has this much dialogue. He’s not a person.

  He threatens them with a giant robot and Sally says that it’s finally starting to feel like home. Sly’s upset and asks what precious thing the bad guy’s gonna take away from him this time. Sally has to push him out of the way of a laser.

  Sly’s upset that Clockwerk’s back already. Sally snaps him out of it by headbutting him. That’s kind of extreme. Her head would HURT. Completely ignoring that, she talks a lot to him to remotivate him while I’m just wondering why they aren’t being attacked by the robot, and instead it’s politely waiting for her to finish giving him a pep talk. I thought it would be more dangerous than THAT. I get why he’d be upset at seeing him again, but it’s so boring. Sally says she knows how it feels to think you’ve beaten your greatest enemy and then turn out to be wrong, but says he needs to protect his loved ones.

  She’s technically wrong though because Robo-Robotnik isn’t the same person as Robotnik Prime, who Snively defeated, not her. But she did think she had beaten Eggman when he went insane just to turn out to be wrong. But it was really Sonic who beat him. So she only knows how it feels indirectly. She doesn’t know how it feels the way Sly does.

  Sly admits Sally’s right and apologizes about that shameful display, his words, and Carmelita says Clockwerk’s started charging up for another attack, so they need a plan. We should have been told that it started charging up again the second Sly was pushed away from the laser. Then it would make sense that he’s been doing nothing the whole time. Even then you’d think the robot would be trying to fly into them to hit them physically, not just attack with a laser. Is it REALLY so lame that it can’t move at all? ‘Cause it CAN FLY.

   I wish Sly was written to just whisper the plan and then we could see it happen. Instead he bores me to death with dialogue while nothing’s happening. It was smart of him to have Sally have a cane she could use to attack with just in case. It’s hard for me to be interested in this fight scene, I mean, I doubt any of the characters will even get injured. So Carmelita acts as bait for the laser and dodges it, and says that it’s being fired in shorter intervals as time goes on. Why wasn’t it ALWAYS doing that?

I guess Sly has super strength if he thinks that bashing a robot with a cane would damage it. He realizes there’s a beak laser that the robot has now, and Sally realizes that he can’t dodge that when he’s in the air. She saves him again and he thanks her, and she thanks him for the cane, which she had creatively used to fling herself over to him.

  The robot starts flying, I guess using the magic of the Emerald to defy gravity despite its high weight, and it’s said that they’ll have to use the pipes and scenery to reach him. EVENTUALLY, they get on top of the robot and take out key gears in his wings so he can’t flap them anymore. Maybe the flapping powers a supermagnet antigravity generator. And they jump off, and Sly grabs Sally and saves her while hanging from a rope.

  Sally wants to get the Emerald dug out from that junk heap, and Carmelita says that to celebrate the victory, she won’t try to arrest them today. That’s very surprising for her. The bad guy gets feedback from his mental link with his robot.

And, because of the Emerald somehow, and it reacting to Clockwerk’s hate, he loses any personality he had and ends up only being able to say he wants to kill Cooper. I wish he was always like this because then he wouldn’t be talking so much and boring the hell out of me. This portrayal of him on the other hand is much more concise and self-aware.

  Sally thinks it’s getting hopeless because the robot’s now firing hundreds of lasers at once and flying, and they can’t reach him because everything’s been turned into rubble, and Carmelita’s gun was destroyed as if she could hurt it anyways. It’s a shame Bentley never invented jet boots for Sly that would let him fly whenever he wanted. Them praying for a miracle immediately gives away that they’re gonna get it.

  Finally Murray and Bentley come to save them. I WAS confused earlier that they let Sly go into a dangerous building without backing him up, so it’s a good thing they prove they ARE his friends still. And it wouldn’t be much of a crossover if they never helped them.

There’s a rope and he’s told to climb up and get out of here. Why won’t one of the many lasers hit the rope, though? That’d make more sense. I guess it’s plausible because it’s such a small target. Bentley says that they were trying to figure out how to get in when a huge hole got blasted in the roof. So why couldn’t they have just gone in the way Sly did? Well the door did slam shut. Too bad Bentley didn’t just have a ray gun to destroy the door. I like that the hole really was what saved them after Sally complained about it letting in a draft. And because Sly said they were supposed to be his backup tomorrow, it makes sense that they save him, like they’re a Chekhov’s Gun. It’s TWO Chekhov’s Guns.

  He says he’s sorry that he got a little too preoccupied with building his wheelchair for the last few days and hopes Sly didn’t think he was avoiding him. Finally Sally thinks that Bentley reminds her of Tommy Turtle, though she somehow doesn’t think of his exact name.

  Murray picks up something saying he won’t let him hurt his family anymore, and they all escape. I can’t take it seriously that he calls them his family since none of them are the same species as him. I guess he’s surprisingly sentimental and touchy feely despite looking like a tough guy. It’s surprising. Sally hugs Murray and thanks him for the rescue.

  The van ended up vaporized by one of the stray lasers. Not the rope they needed to escape though! Bentley says Sly had one job and they won’t get their deposit back. Bentley could’ve said that Sly could’ve parked the van further away than he did and they could’ve walked to the building more. Because Sly could’ve easily avoided the van getting vaporized. Sally’s holding the Emerald now, and she wonders what she’ll do with it. She was hoping that once she touched it, she’d get to go home. It makes sense because it did warp her at the drop of a hat.

  Bentley says that he should be able to replicate the conditions to put the Emerald in the state it was in earlier and get her home. I guess he’ll have Sally tell him what that state WAS. He says that the best he could do is build a prototype and hope it works.

Wait, Dr. M’s still alive? I guess he’s a very important villain in the Sly series so he has Joker Immunity, or they somehow thought it’d be too dark to get rid of this jerk. Doesn’t Sly have TONS of villains? He’s also back to talking normally. I don’t get that either.

  He’s yelled at because the hideout’s been destroyed, and tells his goon to wipe out all of the information and data about their dummy corporation and move everything to the island. Why do these guys have to still be alive? Half the victory is gone. I don’t know why they survived the hideout being demolished.

  Sally says back at the hideout that the Chaos Emerald did a Super Chaos Control earlier. The Genesis Wave happened BEFORE Sally was roboticized. Sonic was busy fighting Silver Sonic when it happened. How did Sally know what Super Chaos Control was called? I guess she called it that after making up the new name herself by coincidence.

  Bentley says that there’s a chance he might end up blowing the whole place up if he fails at bringing her home, but apparently she doesn’t care. Bentley says that he got her clothes patched up, and there were large holes, so they had to be creative with making it look as good as new, and he tossed in some extra clothing as a sign of apology. I hope this means shorts or pants.

  I’ve been trying not to mention it since someone who likes Sally being pantless might take issue with it but seriously, why doesn’t her tail cover her butt? It usually does but not in Sly’s world. She’s 15, remember. Combine that with her outfit and she wasn’t drawn very well, and that’s gonna make it hard to remember this part of the comic fondly.

If I hadn’t watched Let’s Plays of Sly’s games, it would’ve been a lot harder to push through all of this. I better not be the only one thinking that the artist puts too much focus on her rear. It’s every chance he gets. And I don’t get why they decided to do that when she’s a chipmunk and teenager. She thanks him for fixing her clothes and thinks that the modifications look familiar. It’s been harder to think of her as Sally because she wasn’t even in the right art style. It almost misses the point.

  Sly says it was a pleasure helping her out, and she hugs him and thanks him, and says that she got to experience a different ideology and way of life which will open her mind. Yeah right. That’d be nice. She says this is the portal that brought her home in the first place, and thanks them.

Murray thinks that a trip is what he needs, Bentley thinks that even time travel should be possible with these notes. I like that it’s trying to tie into one of the games. And Carmelita puts her hand on Sly’s shoulder and asks to get a bite to eat with him.

  FINALLY! Sally’s back to her normal form. Though still pantless, I love the black outfit she’s wearing. She says these clothes don’t fit her anymore and wants to put on her patched up new ones. She realizes Sly snuck that double sided staff into her backpack, so while he might not be here, he’s here in spirit. I love that. She has proof of what happened to her, kinda. I mean, someone could say that she just bought that.

  Mecha says that thanks to Sonic, she’s regained more memories, but they still feel like the memories of someone else. How was she able to regain memories that weren’t hers, so they were never in her brain to begin with? The whole reason she had amnesia was that she was never Sally to begin with. And even then she should’ve still remembered being Mecha Sally. But yeah, her line eventually reminded me of the memories arc at the start of the reboot. So I guess it was a Take That. Sonic says he’ll be there to protect her as I hate the pose Mecha has with her arm behind her head. It makes her look like a stupid ditz.

And Sally calls her faker. Um, Sally, you might wanna try to act friendly and speak in a nice tone if you want Sonic to realize you’re the good guy. At least she does say sorry, and explains that she’s had a hard couple of days.

But then the Emerald starts becoming a confusing Diabolus ex Machina again. It kinda makes her look stupid that she was still holding it. I get not wanting the bad guys to get it, but she should’ve thrown it out of her hands to keep it from doing anything bad.

  It shoots her with a laser and then shoots Mecha, and Mecha turns into a robot. Sally realizes she actually blacked out that time instead of seeing things through the other person’s eyes, so their link got severed.

I’m so confused. Nothing about this Emerald is making sense. I wish it was just a magical gem component of the world roboticizer. So it would have its own special new powers. THAT, I could understand. Mecha says she’s discovered large quantities of new data and is analyzing and uploading.

  She calls Sonic annoying and tells him to get lost. It doesn’t strike me as something that she would say as Mecha Sally. Wasn’t she more formal? Sonic stands in front of her clearly wasting time and Sally pushes Sonic away, and it took me out of it that at a time like this, she says, “ You’ve fought her how many times and you still never remember her brain laser?! “ Granted I thought that in Archie too, but now’s not the time for her to snark at him. Now that I think about it, that kind of shocking behavior reminds me of how she was in SatAM.

  Sonic calls out for Sally and ignores the actual one, so Sally has to snap him out of it and slaps him, though the only way you’d know it was because of the word slap and the cartoonish mark on him, which probably won’t realistically stay there, because it doesn’t show her hand hit him, not that I’d want it to but still. I’m not sure I’d wanna keep seeing the mark either, but how did it magically disappear?

  She fortunately explains that she can’t capture her without him, and it makes light of the last time she slapped him because he just smiles and says that he’d recognize that anywhere, even though a slap from any girl would feel the same. How would that convince him that it’s HER? Sure is convenient that he’s in a good mood and believes she’s really her. She says, “ Ha ha, way to bring back old wounds. “ Even Flynn handled this kind of thing better. She naturally wouldn’t wanna headbutt twice in one day, it’d hurt, so no wonder she says she’s out of headbutts today.

  At least the description says that normally Sally would be diplomatic and calm, but they don’t have the time to talk things out. I’m just really confused that she’s back to being a robot because that’s not what the comic was leading up to naturally at all. She would’ve just stayed organic and then they could send her to a different group of Freedom Fighters, maybe in a parallel dimension that needed a Sally. And she could visit her parents if she wanted to. Why does it have to be depressing?

  Sonic says sorry, and doesn’t want to destroy Mecha like a regular robot, and fortunately despite the way she talked about her earlier, Sally says they’re gonna catch her so they can return her to being organic, and she’s actually smart enough to consider getting Naugus to deroboticize someone again. And then Sonic agrees, runs over to New Mobotropolis, and picks up and carries Ixis all the way here to immediately get him to deroboticize her.

NO, that would be GOOD writing. That would LOGICALLY follow her plan, so of course that doesn’t happen in a deviantart comic. It’s odd that nobody ever thought to tell Naugus to come with them on the way to saving Mecha Sally, since he could’ve deroboticized her on sight. You’d think he’d have no choice but to agree or everyone would hate him, because it’d prove that he cares more about being there ruling over a city than saving the princess.

The very idea that he’s able to deroboticize makes it unbelievable that he tried to get all of the Robians killed instead of deroboticizing them all. I have to assume he didn’t know he was able to do that until it happened. Mecha lampshades that it’s kinda pathetic that she’s trying to fight her with a cane.

Mecha tries to manipulate Sonic against Sally, saying that he said he’d protect her no matter what. She tries to make Sonic think that Sally’s the imposter, when obviously all that matters is that one’s an evil robot right now and one isn’t.

  Sally says that she’s just trying to manipulate Sonic and somehow has faith in him that he knows what to do to save her, when every time he’s fought Mecha Sally, he just harmlessly held her hands like a dumbass. How is that supposed to damage her at all, let alone knock her out? I know she’s his girlfriend, but come on, there’s a time and place for everything. He should’ve been spindashing at her or at least punching her using strong melee attacks. Sure, he could’ve damaged her, but she was a robot! It should’ve been obvious that any damage to her would be fixable anyways. As long as he hit below her HEAD, she’d clearly be fine.

  Sonic kicks her calling it tough love, and fortunately says, “ Don’t worry, Sally. We have to rough you up now but you’ll be thanking us later! “ I thought this comic would always have Sly and Sally in the same universe as soon as she met him.

Sally says they don’t want to have to fight her and Sonic spindashes her into a granite wall. Mecha hits Sonic and at least has a charming line, “ Let me express my gratitude with a knuckle sandwich! “ Although, she was talking in a way that struck me as out of character from how Mecha Sally would’ve actually talked.

  Sally tells Sonic they need to double team and target her blind spots when she focuses on one of them. Mecha Sally uses her head laser saying she’s gonna have to blow Sonic away. I guess her laser hit the ground and not him directly so that’s why he’ll survive.

Mecha says that she knows Sally is at her limit, and cuts her. Mecha says that after everything she did, he still thinks she can be redeemed, and she easily tricks Sonic into hugging her so she can fly away upwards carrying him, planning to kill him.

She WOULD HAVE been guaranteed to win, but instead she decides to head back down and line up the laser blast to take out him and Sally at the same time. She doesn’t actually have to do that. It’s not like she only has two laser blasts and it’s better to conserve ammo. It’s not like she has very little energy. She’s just being arrogant and trying to show off. That’s more like Sonic or Eggman. Good thing for Sonic that a Sally had a derp moment, because it would be more natural writing for her to just stay in her previous trajectory.

  After Sally bandages her chest, and says her vision is blurry, she makes a desperation play and throws the cane at Mecha. That could have very easily just hit Sonic or not hit either of them, especially since her vision was blurry and they were a moving target, but fortunately it hits Mecha in the head and causes a bit of an explosion.

It turns out a self-destruction is imminent for her because Archie Sonic Online did that to her – I mean because Eggman put a high powdered explosive weapon directly next to her key components. It’s not literally that she has a bomb in it, but functionally, it might as well be doing the Archie Sonic Online thing again. It just seems a bit too cruel for her to almost blow up again. And Mecha is able to call Eggman criminally incompetent for it. Wait, incompetent, how? He could blow up Sonic this way. Maybe he did this on purpose. Maybe he didn’t care if Sally would blow up. No wonder I was confused by her calling him incompetent because of this. She still wants to take him down though.

  Surprisingly, though, she ends up becoming a good person anyways, which I guess was foreshadowed by her being able to insult Eggman, and which I guess can be justified because her head was damaged, but then you’d think she would’ve been worse for wear, with brain damage.

She says the AI kept her trapped in her own mind, but with it damaged, she got control back, and read all of its stored data, so now she knows who she is. Yeah, she’s Mecha Sally. She says she can’t be saved and drops Sonic because she knows he can survive the fall, somehow. His Ring energy? She thought of that?

And she explodes. Archie Sonic Online is better. This is depressing, even if it ISN’T the real Sally. But she said data upload complete. Wouldn’t it be nice if that meant she transferred her brain somewhere safe? If that IS what it means, how would she not know that and tell Sonic that, instead of saying goodbye as if she would definitely never see him again? That’s dumb.

   SOMEHOW, the ring blades survived the explosion. Okay, Mecha threw them at the tree for Sally to get before the explosion happened, and she was lucky they were thrown early enough that the explosion wasn’t big enough to destroy them anyways.

Sally says she’ll start using the ring blades in her honor. Or Rotor could’ve made some new ones for her. I’d like that a lot better than her getting them because a bullshit plot point happened that’s too confusing for me to actually care about, again. I wish that Emerald was never in the comic.

  Sonic’s upset, and is ashamed that he failed to save Mecha. He wants to play this off with a joke and grin, but can’t, and he wonders if this is how she felt when he’d come back from space just to rush off and nearly die again. It’s satisfying to see him admit she had a point back then.

Sally says she’s the one who should be apologizing for the day they broke up. Yeah, this does this kind of conversation about that day better than Flynn did in The World Can Wait. She apologizes and says that every day she saw him after she hurt him, she was reminded of how stupid she had been that night. And I guess she’s saying she was too immature to just apologize.

  They forgive each other, and then someone with green boots runs over to them saying that it’s an emergency involving The Baron, and then asks what happened here. It’s Julie-Su. She says she was in the area on a mission apparently, when Nicole contacted her of all people to get them, since they’re out of her range. Her of all people?

  Sally hugs her, happy that she’s okay. Why did she think Julie wouldn’t be? I share her sentiment in wanting to hug her though. Too bad Julie doesn’t appreciate it. Sally’s confused, because she thought something bad happened to her, but can’t seem to remember much anymore.

  Julie says that when he heard what happened to Bunnie, he came over with his gang and offered to legionize her, and when he was refused, he kidnapped her and Antoine. Huh? That’s not what happened in Archie. She clearly came to him. I liked that she recognized she was better off as a cyborg. Though it was only Archie Sonic Online that showed her willingly come to him. Why would The Baron have kidnapped her to legionize her? That’s Out of Character. That’s Ron the Death Eatering him. That’s villlification.

Meanwhile Sally thinks that the adrenaline is wearing off, hits the ground, and Eggman gets a message from Mecha Sally. What took so long? I don’t get it. Mecha was destroyed. He would’ve gotten that message the  minute she blew up if it was because she uploaded her data. Why isn’t Sally telling Sonic to pick her up and carry her and run with her? Getting to their destination would clearly be a lot faster that way. And if she had a brain she’d know she should get to the hospital fast.

  Then in the next page, after the end of Sly 3, Dr. M gets greeted by Eggman, and we see Sally looking like her old Sly Cooper self in the background as if she’s with him. I’m so confused. At least the description says that because time doesn’t flow at the same rate between dimensions, a battle in Sally’s dimension is a full adventure for Sly.

  Eggman tells the bad guy that it’s an honor to meet him, and he found his merger of genetic manipulation and machinery to be inspiring. How did he know he existed from another universe? As soon as he learned about him because he reviewed the memory files sent to him, oh, I guess from Mecha Sally, he binge-watched the whole thing in one night. Oh, so that explains how he knows about Dr. M. It’s because bullshit. Because somehow Mecha Sally even GOT Sally’s memories, because the blue Emerald was doing things it wouldn’t do! He didn’t earn it! The start of Worlds Collide was forced too, he wouldn’t have met Wily and he wouldn’t have met HIM.

  It also included his research on dimensional travel, probably from Sally reading his reports even if she couldn’t understand them. Except he would’ve already known about how to do dimensional travel. Even if he wasn’t Robotnik Prime who went to Scourge’s world, he went to Sonic’s world from his own world, so he already knows dimensional travel by this point. For a different Eggman, this might make sense. The writer said this is an alternate timeline. Hence why Julie’s there. But that wasn’t explained in the story instantly, so who’d know? Still, Eggman’s smarter than this.

  So he was able to replicate them and come to his reality. How would Dr. M know his exact dimension so that he’d know how to go to his dimension from his own? The location of it, the NAME. I mean Dr. M never went to Sonic’s dimension. Well, whatever. Maybe M’s notes noted the atomic vibrational frequency of his dimension, so Eggman could tune into that to come here.

I guess I’m supposed to believe Dr. M slapped Eggman to interrupt him, because HE thinks that HE talks too much. It’d be self-aware if it was pointed out that Dr. M is the chatty one. He asks what happened to his vault. Why couldn’t we see his hand impact his face?!

  Eggman doesn’t punish a guy for slapping him or anything. What is this, AoStH? He REALLY, really wants to work with him! You’d think an arrogant guy like Eggman would know that he doesn’t NEED Dr. M because they’re both inventors, so Dr. M is worthless to him. You’d think he’d think he could be capable of anything Dr. M would be! You’d think he’d legionize him. Or at least put explosive nanites in him, or roboticize him since some people still aren’t immune. He’d wanna do something to guarantee his loyalty.

  He says that another time jump happened and Dr. M’s been declared dead, and the turtle and Penelope own the vault now. Now, considering how infamous Penelope’s mishandling in Sly 4 was among the fanbase, which was worse than Fiona’s betrayal writing if you can believe it, I hope the writer will have common sense and keep Penelope the nice girl she was clearly nothing but. Dr. M says that they’ve stolen his life’s work. Eggman says that if they team up, not only could he get his vault back, but they could be the rulers of both worlds.

Surprisingly, Dr. M says he doesn’t care about world domination, when he’s a generic evil mad scientist villain. It would’ve been more interesting if he explained why – like saying that it’d be way too much work running a planet – instead of suddenly revealing that if he can end the Cooper lineage and get his vault back, Eggman can burn both worlds for all he cares. I guess he wants to die, since if Eggman burned his world he’d die.

As long as he ends the Cooper lineage he doesn’t care if he dies. At least it’s interesting that they have different end goals. I never expected that. But he has even less to contribute than Wily, doesn’t he? At least Wily had his Robot Masters. I don’t even know what Dr. M can do that Eggman couldn’t.

  One night later, Eggman finds Dr. M again and says that he knows he wanted to know more about his reality before they begin, but asks if he got a good start last night. Dr. M says he finished analyzing Eggman’s world history hours ago because he’s been looking through Eggman’s database to see his own resources now. It’s definitely more interesting to see Eggman interact with him instead of Wily because Wily’s a carbon copy of Eggman in personality, only he’s more manipulating, but this guy is at odds with him.

He downloaded the available data he gave him with his helmet and analyzed it. He read Eggman’s world history even though he had to access top secret password protected files to do so. So he got to one-up Eggman right away. Wow. Then he looked through some of the files he wasn’t supposed to, and flatters Eggman about the fascinating things he’s worked on.

He says that the reconstruction of one of them is about to be finished, so he wants to go see the results. It’s Mecha Sally, right? It would make sense that she’d be sent to safety, since it said data uploaded, but it’s a bit confusing because she told Sonic goodbye.

  Mecha’s back to being a robot, but Eggman didn’t reprogram her to be on his side again, probably not realizing he had to. If she was smart, she’d play along and pretend to be on his side until she could escape safely. Eggman sweetly says, “ Rise and shine, my shining star! “ and then he goes on to say that thanks to her sending him that data, he was able to learn about this reality.

  Instead of playing it smart, Mecha makes it clear to Eggman that she’s really confused. She says that Sonic said that she’s Sally, and she can’t remember anything starting with when she got turned back into a robot by the Blue Emerald. Eggman’s mad at the organic mind being installed over his programming.

  Despite him blatantly saying that in front of Sally, Dr. M still thinks he can get away with lying to Mecha that she was a robot from the start that Sonic and Sally wanted to destroy. She would’ve HEARD what Eggman SAID!

Thankfully she’s smart enough to slap him and say he’s lying, although again, we don’t get to see her hand hit him, even though he’s a JERK, and sadly, she only thinks they’re lying because the bad guys, never mind what Eggman said about “ the organic mind. “

  Mecha gets shown surveillance footage of Sonic kissing Sally, and she clenches her fist as her blue eye turns red for some reason. Does this mean that Eggman’s programming took her over because of just that? I’m confused. I mean she had to have assumed that Sonic would go on to date the real Sally after she died!

  She thinks they killed her, and wonders what reason she has to exist if even the one sworn to protect her ended up betraying her. Wouldn’t it be obvious to her that they did what they had to do to survive? Maybe they killed her by accident for all she knows. Although it doesn’t look like it, since they’re happy. Why would they be happily kissing when they’re mourning for her? I mean they did get over it pretty fast. Of course she’d be mad about it.

  She’s opposed to the idea of getting revenge on them. Then the red eye thing meant nothing? It would’ve actually made more sense if she did get rebrainwashed from that heartbreak. She could’ve been reprogrammed that way by Dr. M. It does make sense that she’d be upset that Sonic isn’t dating her anymore. But what did she expect?

After making it obvious that he’s evil, and she’s opposed to the revenge he suggests, Dr. M then acts polite to her saying that she’ll be allowed to rest and move forwards later. Eggman doesn’t get how this all happened.

Dr. M explains that while Eggman was asleep, he installed her organic mind, remodeled her body so they’d use her for her mind over her combat ability, and also removed her memory files of the whole fight, and fortunately at least tries to EXPLAIN that she’ll be a much more useful tool to them if she wants them dead as much as they do. She did LAST time.

  He tells off Eggman that after he roboticized the most brilliant tactician of the enemy, he went on to completely ignore her mind, instead grafting swords onto her arms and sending her out on failed missions like a petty grunt. Huh, he has kind of a point, but he’s exaggerating. He did use her mind when he took her advice to, rather than carpet-bomb Lupe’s country, divide and conquer instead. She suggested kidnapping the leaders. That might have been the only time he took her advice though.

She did use her mind when she tried to manipulate Amy by telling her that if she died, she’d get Sonic all to herself. It’s not like her mind was never used by Flynn. It’s surprising that Eggman will keep putting up with him after he went behind his back and did that. It’s obvious Mecha’s not evil at this point, so it would be smarter to just have her programmed to be loyal to Eggman. I mean surely she would’ve gotten attached to more than just Sonic. So she was sad that Sonic broke up with her. You’d think she wouldn’t have betrayed the rest of his friends too. They didn’t betray her.

  Then Dr. M tells Eggman to not let Mecha know about the bomb he was smart enough to put in her body because he’d rather her know only after he’s detonated it. Maybe his logic is that if she knew about the bomb she would go to Rotor to remove it.

  Then they see a robot, who’s apparently known Dr. M for some time. Eggman says that the guy’s new body has finally been completed. He says that he said Dr. M was the first organic transfer but not the first entirely.

  Then surprisingly, it cuts ahead to 30 years into the future on Mobius. Oh but sadly it goes off of what Flynn wrote instead of resolving that confusing cliffhanger where Sonic traveled into the past and Lara-Su vanished for no reason. We’re not being told why she vanished, so that destroys the appeal. Rotor says their dimension is being threatened with destruction by entities from another dimension entering it. Just from that happening? That’s stupid.

Again just like in 25 Years Later, if that alone could destroy a dimension, a lot of dimensions would’ve been destroyed already a long time ago, including Sonic’s, like the zone cops for example probably do the MAJORITY of it. The No Zone would’ve been destroyed a LONG time ago. Rotor says that if his dimension collapses, all of the other dimensions could too. That’s dumb.

Sonic wants to travel back in time even though he’d lose his family again, and after that stupidity, Lara-Su wants to be the one to fix things this time. Maybe she should’ve done that in the first place instead of Sonic. But I can understand Knuckles being protective of his daughter. What would be the point of raising a brand new guardian daughter just to send her back in time?

  We see Sly question Carmelita on the fact that she’s wearing a new outfit, and she doesn’t really tell him why. He’s pretending to have amnesia and working with her as a fellow cop, while somehow none of the other cops are gonna arrest him for his past, just because Carmelita doesn’t want to.

  We see Sally at the hospital because she was hurt earlier, and he’s told that she’ll need a few days of sleeping a lot to finally heal up. Then it turns out his leg is hurt too. That would make sense because of the fall he took, but he was standing up perfectly fine to kiss her before. He never acted like his leg was in pain. When Sonic’s leg was injured in Sonic Boom, he wasn’t able to hide it at all.

  Dr. M asks Eggman why some of his robots are nearly invincible except for select areas that even Eggman labels as weak points. Eggman doesn’t get a chance to respond, as he’s told that his robots often reveal their power sources in order to attack, which I can only think of the Tails Doll’s giant form doing.

  Eggman says the necessary Hand Wave that it’s all part of the game, because it’d be too easy to beat Sonic if he went all out. So bad robot designs let him have more fun with him. It IS preposterous of him, but at least it’s AN explanation to explain something very important. He’s a genius, but genius can easily get overruled by emotion-based decision-making like that, like really BAD emotion-based decision-making. If he really wanted to have a challenge, he could just play video games.

  I like that Mecha is called Metal Sally. She’s asked what she thinks of this and says nervously that it’s nice to give the enemy a fighting chance. I’m still wondering why she’s staying with the bad guys instead of slipping out and going to New Mobotropolis. But she has every reason to think people would try to kill her the first time they’d see her.

  Eggman says Mecha Sally proved more useful. Then Snively shows up. Why isn’t he trapped in the animal capsule for months? We need to be told the explanation up front right away. Otherwise it looks like the writer forgot or is deliberately retconning it. This is taking place post-Mecha Sally arc. Or is he a clone? Or a robot? Why would you not explain why you’re pushing the reset button on him? It’s explained that he was checking out strange energy readings in the middle of nowhere and it turns out it was nothing. It’d be really confusing if it was nothing, because why would the energy readings even show up?

  Eggman says he’s glad to see Snively, because at least he’s capable of answering basic questions, and Snively says he can make Metal Sally’s education his top priority from now on. We should see that. Anyways, Sonic’s relatably upset at learning that he got hurt and says that Sonic the Hedgehog doesn’t get lame things like fractured ankles.

  You know, if his uncle Chuck was really smart, you’d think he’d temporarily roboticize his ankle and fix the damage to it and then deroboticize it. As long as the repaired leg is made of chemically identical materials to the damaged leg, there’s no scientific reason why deroboticization wouldn’t just result in an organic fixed leg.

  I guess the logic is that regular metal doesn’t have the roboticized skin cells in it. It’s not shaped in that way. But it could be shaped in that way, couldn’t it? Like with nanomachines. I liked that in Other M Snively was smart and clever enough to bring Bean back from drowning by simply roboticizing and repairing him. But no, I guess Chuck would find it too squicky to bother doing this for Sonic, just because he’s his nephew. So screw logic.

  Dr. Quack reminds Sonic that he heals faster than other people, so he’ll be fine in a few days. Well how convenient. He should remind us that it’s because of his Rings. That’s implied to be the case in the issue where Knothole was destroyed. He says that he should be able to heal and then get to the vilified Baron at roughly the same time as him.

  Dr. Quack tells Sonic that if he doesn’t let himself heal properly, his ankle could require surgery or never heal back to full power again. Sonic fortunately says he’ll take this seriously and is told that he can give Sally moral support while he’s recovering.

  Why is Sly’s girlfriend hoping that visiting Moreau Inc again will stimulate his memory? She wants him to have amnesia so that he can keep wanting to be a cop and date her. Too bad he’s deceiving her the whole time. Why did it have to be written that he didn’t really have amnesia?

That just made him look creepy, because he was deceiving her into sleeping with him, which is something a bad guy would do, not someone usually polite. But I’ve been willing to look past it because it makes them happy with each other, at least for now, which is a welcome break from her hating him. Then Clockwerk flies towards them, with Sly revealing that he knows his name and using what she said earlier as a cover story.

Meanwhile, Sally wakes up getting to see Nicole again. Why doesn’t Sally have an oxygen mask on breathing for her if she’s been asleep for days? Even Archie made more sense. And Nicole expects me to believe that despite constantly being at her side and having a nap right now, Sonic hasn’t been getting much sleep.

  Meanwhile, after Sly says his goofy-looking gun isn’t even denting the robot, their car is flipped over, and sadly we don’t see Nicole hug Sally, although she was hurt in the chest, so if she’s sore, that makes sense, but I’d still prefer for her to be a lot more happy to see her.

Archie Sonic Online was a lot more realistic and heartwarming with how she reacted when she finally reunited with her. Nicole says that after hearing what she’s been through, they decided to make her awakening more pleasant. And yet she isn’t hugging her. She sees that her cane was fixed.

  Then Sally sees a new version of Nicole’s handheld, which is just a prototype at the moment, but means that Nicole will be able to keep going on adventures. She hugs Nicole and thanks her. Meanwhile, after it turns out Sly and Carmelita are miraculously not dead after the car flipped over and she only has a concussion, so they manage to get out of the car before it blows up like a Pinto, she snarks that the car was only one day from retirement. I guess that was funny. And some bad guy walks out of the robot’s mouth. Who cares, they’re gonna survive no matter what. Although the Sonic characters’ plot is pretty dull.

  Meanwhile, with Sally wearing a great black top, she doesn’t wanna stay in bed anymore because she was told that not only are her friends missing, but other bases have gone silent with their warp rings no longer working. Why would multiple people’s warp rings no longer be working, is it possible to remotely hack them? Why would they be connected to the internet? That’s the only thing that would result from that.

  It should be explained right away that this is Finitevus’ doing because he invented the Warp Rings, so maybe he made it so that he could turn them ALL off. Then I’d like a character to figure it out and explain it right away. I didn’t figure that out right away because that’d require Finitevus to think ahead. Finitevus would expect to keep all of his Warp Rings, or at least have all of them either be with himself or with people working for him.

  He would have to plan ahead for the possibility that someone working for him with a Warp Ring would take it and leave him if he was on his team, like Scourge. He would have to take into account that slim possibility from the start when he’s an arrogant nut that wouldn’t think that would happen, but it is smart of him to plan for the possibility that his workers would ditch him. But he’s so arrogant.

Part of the reason it’s confusing that they can be deactivated is that, I’m used to thinking of them as magical because that’s how they are in the game. They’re just technology that Finitevus invented here. Sly takes the dumb risk of saying that this is the fourth time Clockwerk has come back right in front of Carmelita, whose gun gets destroyed. There’s no reason for him to say that out loud.

And now the bad guy is gonna blab and blab and not shut up. I’m not sure I care how he survived. I know the meta reason already. He’s not gonna die because he’s a game character and this is a kids’ series. Surprisingly Dr. Quack says that Sally and Sonic are both healed enough for them to be released, that was fast, just for him to say that Sally should try not to rip open her stitches.

Even Sally was able to use a fraction of Sonic’s quickness to heal faster simply by being near his aura. How convenient. That doesn’t get used very often. Wouldn’t Mina, who heals quickly, have the same power or something? It seems a little like a Deus ex Machina that Sonic has healing powers, without even TRYING, that’s the REALLY confusing thing. It should be explained that it’s because of all the Rings he’s absorbed over the years from running all over the planet with his speed. I’m not gonna humor Clockwerk by reading all of his detached narration. He’s a bad guy who doesn’t deserve to come back, the end. Eggman brought him back. That’s all we needed to be told.

  Sally says they’re going to the Patrol Center so that they can see who they can still reach for assistance. Sonic says that they were in that hospital for a few days, apparently, and nobody stopped by for visiting hours. So he asks where Amy and the others are, then, and Nicole says she’ll get Julie and meet them at the patrol center so they can all catch up together. You’d think they would call one of their friends on their cell phone. Did they get captured?

  Meanwhile, for some reason we see Drago again. I remember reading that the reason Flynn kept using Drago was that he wanted him to get punched, when fans didn’t wanna see him get punched, they didn’t wanna see him again at ALL. And yet he comes back in a fancomic? Whatever. He’s got the same personality as every other bad guy in this comic Dr. M says he’s gonna be experimented on, and says that he has the ability to activate the bombs in his cybernetic limbs too.

The experiments will hurt, but because it’ll increase his power, he’s happy to agree. So much for satisfaction against him. So much for karma against him. Snively says he’s done his little talk with Metal Sally, and since he put it in air quotes, maybe she’s been reprogrammed into evilness. That would make more sense.

If she was literally talked into it, which would be confusing since she still has Sally’s personality, you’d think we’d be shown the conversation because it’d be necessary to have this make sense. Instead it’s just really confusing.

If she has Sally’s personality, she’s clearly got her morality. She’s against revenge. And yet she’s able to be manipulated into being evil? She wanted the heroes dead just as much as Eggman did when she was under his control too! They could still use her mind, she was free-thinking before. She just wasn’t able to disobey Eggman.

  I’m not sure what’s going on with Sly. Anyways, Sally says they’re unable to contact any other bases, and Julie says Knuckles and the Chaotix had suddenly gone missing. They decide to go save Bunnie and Antoine.

I really hope the whole deactivated Warp Rings thing is properly explained and fast, because this just seems too stupid to take seriously. If it retroactively explains why Knuckles couldn’t follow Thrash through his Warp Ring, that’d be better. Maybe Finitevus used magic to do that.

  Meanwhile, after it turns out Sly and Carmelita have fallen through a portal, which I can’t take seriously because it seems to happen for no good reason, Geoffrey’s mad at Ixis when Ixis conveniently says out loud to himself that he had tipped off Robotnik to try to kill Elias earlier. Why didn’t he just keep it in his head? Why isn’t Ixis possessing Geoffrey right now, like he had to in Archie Sonic? Either be a continuation or don’t be. It makes it confusing and pointless to use concepts from late Archie Sonic, just to not be exactly like it.

  Ixis wants to finally finish his brainwashing incantation to rule people he calls peasants, as if he had a rich upbringing. Again, he didn’t need a fancy brainwashing incantation that he couldn’t just do right away when he was possessing the king. He just instantly brainwashed all of the soldiers there. Too bad THIS writer won’t reference that and have that make actual sense. And he calls the Freedom Fighters the heroes, for some reason, when he hates them.

  Meanwhile, since Sly is in Sonic’s universe, he’s shorter and looks like a child. I don’t think that was necessary. The only thing they’d have to fix is making his neck really short to the point of not being visible. I think the difference between Sly and Sonic’s art styles isn’t noticeable enough that Sly would stick out if he looked like he always did here.

They get surrounded by green bubbles because of Lara-Su, who calls them illegal inter-dimensional aliens and wants a chat with them. What’s the point of showing them interacting with her instead of Sally? Well, Sally would have Sly accidentally give away that he has amnesia, which would be too depressing.

  Sonic’s running across the desert while Julie’s riding on him and he’s carrying Sally, and he’s fine with the extra weight, and I don’t know why Carmelita thinks she can threaten Lara when she’s trapped. Lara says that conveniently, their instruments locked on to them the second they got here.

I wish she didn’t say instruments. It makes me think of musical instruments. She’s told they fell into a hole to get here, and she says that they did damage to reality, and she traveled all the way from the future to get information out of them.

Then she trails off, and Julie-Su goes up to her and asks Sly if there’s a problem. Good, Sly does reunite with Sally. Sly says they’re lost. I like that Lara-Su calls herself Jani-Ca, but what are the chances that she’d coincidentally go by the same fake name that someone she never met before went by? She says she’s on a secret GUN mission.

Somehow Julie says that she remembers Remington mentioning the name Jani-Ca before, and it took me a while to remember what she meant, because Remington recently doesn’t look like he’s supposed to, so it took a couple of seconds for me to remember that of course, she’s talking about Constable Remington, who did meet someone calling herself Jani-Ca. It must have been so long ago since he mentioned that name to Julie-Su, though. Good thing she remembered it. It’s just hard for me to think of recent Remington as the same character as Constable Remington because he isn’t wearing the same outfit. There’s just no good reason for him not wearing his old outfit anymore. I’m sure they could fashion a new version of it on Albion.

  Sly once again forgets to pretend he has amnesia and hugs Sally adorably. I feel like Lara-Su’s effort to save her future is completely hopeless because if the reason she came here was because Sly coming here somehow doomed the future to destruction, well, it’s already happened, she’s too late. So maybe the thing that’s supposed to destroy her future is Sly’s enemies doing zone-hopping.

Why would Lara-Su look familiar to Julie if she’s never seen her before? If it’s because she resembles Knuckles, she would’ve known that was why immediately, and she’s an echidna, so a lot of them resemble him anyways if they’re red. So she wouldn’t think that’s a big deal. Sly lies to a fortunately suspicious Carmelita that Sally’s helping to stimulate his memories.

Why doesn’t Sonic trust Sly? Well to be fair, it’s obvious he’s lying to Carmelita right now. Lara looks at Julie and thinks, “ Wait, is that how Mom dressed and acted back then? And she has the nerve to tell ME to get more feminine. “ Why isn’t Mom capitalized?

  The Baron fortunately calls Bunnie sweetheart and says she was badly injured and is gonna be patched up, but wasn’t supposed to wake up until after the legionization. I guess we’re supposed to assume SHE was in a coma along with Antoine, because they’d have to suck at anesthesia for her to wake up early.

  Meanwhile, Sally asks everyone here to save her friends, and Sly and Sonic shake hands. Meanwhile, The Baron says happily that they’ve brought Antoine for legionization as well, saying, “ We do everything for family, after all. “

If it wakes him up from the coma early it’ll be worth it, especially if the heroes get the bombs in him dismantled by sending nanites at him. Logically, yeah, it would be that easy. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. Good for him, he’ll get useful super strength cyborg limbs and not be a pointless normal guy anymore. If the heroes weren’t idiots, they would realize this and they would make a plan to just humor The Baron and then Nicole would use her nanites to remove the bombs, instead of them just having knee-jerk panicked reactions. I still can’t get over how weird it is that The Baron’s being portrayed this way.

He didn’t want Bunnie to legionize herself at all in Archie Sonic Online, BECAUSE she’d get bombs in her. Because in THAT comic, the characters are written as smarter than this.

  There’s not much motivation for me to even give reading the next page a chance because the characters obviously look awful. I don’t know what was going through the writer’s head when he decided to accept this guest art, let alone think it turned out awesomely! Bunnie’s uncle explains she was going to lose all four of her limbs to an explosion and is only able to stand right now because of painkillers. Her arms look bandaged. This is like Other M territory art!

  We see a horrible-looking Lara-Su hitting Legionnaires while wishing she didn’t have to hide her chaos powers. A badly drawn Sonic eventually reunites with Bunnie, going to her by just pushing aside a curtain. That was fast. While Sonic was searching, Sly had found a UFO to fly in. It’s weird that it doesn’t have a dome over it to protect the people inside in case it crashes. Rick’s UFO makes more sense. Sonic’s impressed by Sly and says he might have to change his opinion of him that he didn’t show and mistreat him earlier.

  Bunnie tells her uncle that they’re not family anymore because he wanted to remove her limbs, even though he clearly told her that an explosion made them so injured that she’d need amputation anyways. He was clearly well-intentioned. I hate how sad this is.

  Sonic gets to do a lot of talking while standing still and carrying Bunnie with nobody trying to stop him. The Baron tells his Legionnaires to let them go. So now he ISN’T a cartoon villain. Why’d he kidnap her then? I can understand him legionizing her to make her able to fight Eggman again, but he should’ve been written to say that. Then he’d be a well-intentioned extremist. He could give them the idea to remove her bombs with nanites at the city, instead of just freaking her out here.

  Sally gets threatened by a Legionnaire and uses her ring-blades as a shield. Thankfully she’s apologetic when she notices that apparently someone got caught in an explosion. Her survival can only be explained by her having Rings and makes me have to assume Bunnie and Antoine didn’t have any back then.

She gets grabbed by someone and headbutts him, and then says ow and asks just how legionized the guy is. Wouldn’t the headbutt knock her out? He’s a robot, so yeah. He says he set up an energy field to disable the laser blades of hers. It sure took a while to activate.

He threatens to break her spine and roboticize Bunnie completely. She thanks him for telling her that he’s a robot. Because he just had to brag about it, she’s able to kill him with a cane with no guilt. Sure is fortunate that apparently just now there are robots like him in the DEL units. Usually it’s nothing but Legionnaires. So I’m not sure this would happen. Sly’s cane gives her the ability to magically pull it out of Hammerspace. She even says Hammerspace. So I’m glad it’s kinda explained why she got to use it.

  Someone cries in front of her asking her to not kill her. She reminds me of Cream. Sally says that he was just a bad guy robot, talking in sorta baby talk, and she hugs her and says she’s a cute person she doesn’t wanna hurt. A very good moment for Sally.

So because she was distracted, she gets threatened with a gun. She would just run, not stand there with her hands up. She’s facing ONE GUY, who acts like she did something wrong for no reason. If she ran away, she’d be fine.

  But then the Legionnaires act like actual people who were actually forced to serve Eggman, for a change, and not just goons who make me wish they were Robians because that’d make better sense, and at least Robians don’t talk as much, and at least they don’t talk like arrogant jerks. One of them tells Sally to just get out of here already because he never wanted to fight to begin with. It makes sense that they’d sympathize with Sally because she was being so nice.

It’s funny that one of the Legionnaires offscreen is named Ted, of all things. It sounds harmless. So Sly flies the UFO, as I wonder why he’s so good at it on the first try. Lara says to keep it steady since they have two patients hidden on board.

Sonic paces back and forth asking where they are, and Sally fortunately reminds him that since he carried the girls here, of course they got home early. She says they should be back any minute. Geoffrey shows up and says that Nicole updated them on the situation and he brought help for their friends.

I just wish he was possessed by Ixis so I wouldn’t be torn out of the story being reminded that this isn’t a continuation of Archie Sonic all the way. And yet I’m still reminded of the elements of the Mecha Sally Arc. There’s a LOT of elements of it that I didn’t like! Naugus has been requesting their presence.

Sally says they’ll only do it after delivering their friends back to the hospital. And Antoine’s face is COMPLETELY bandaged, which wasn’t the case in Archie for a reason. How would he be able to breathe? That’s dumb. Where’s the oxygen mask? He comes off as dead this way.

  Sally asks Julie-Su to take Sly and Carmelita on a tour of the castle for new clothes while she helps her friends. She says she’s made them honorary Secret Service members, just like that, so she can just ask for those uniforms. That’s easy. Finally her being the princess is being taken advantage of. She gets special privileges after all.

  Lara-Su says she knows the castle like the back of her hand from blueprints. Really it’s from baby photos. I feel sorry for Sticks here, telling people they’re being spied on as she speaks through a megaphone, because she’s embarrassing herself. It’d make more sense if she said that during the whole hysteria with Nicole, who was able to hear all of the criticism people gave her for being brainwashed by the Iron Queen earlier. Of course Sticks would still be paranoid of Nicole.

  Anyways, Carmelita lampshades in her head that the people of the city aren’t wearing enough clothes, and then realizes that being a tomboy over here means wearing less clothing, like Julie. I really wish I knew why she was asking Lara-Su how she could’ve possibly known what she knows.

Too bad the proposition that Geoffrey had for Sally was completely skipped past. I’m just confused now. Bunnie’s told that all four of her limbs have shattered bones, so she’s looking at a very long and painful rehabilitation with amputation still being a high possibility. Why isn’t he just immediately saying, “ Just get Chuck to partially roboticize them. “ I mean, come on. Why aren’t they thinking with logic instead of dumb emotion? It’s not like she’s immune to roboticization. She wasn’t deroboticized by the Bem.

  Bunnie insists that her days as a Freedom Fighter are over, and she’s told she’ll always be a part of the team. So, she’s NOT legionized? Her not being legionized after all isn’t Archie Sonic. It’s not going off what it was going to do. A natural continuation would be her being legionized and Sonic carrying her to the city, where then they would remove her bombs. What’s the point if she’s just injured from an injury she never got, instead? She wore the poncho specifically because they didn’t have her legionized design finalized yet.

  I’m glad it’s TRYING to go off its continuity a little but it’s only doing so to humor us with wrapping up plot threads. It’s still an alternate universe, not a believable continuation. This way of wrapping things up won’t be taken seriously anyways. Instead of resolving the plot thread with Bunnie, the comic lies to us that it never happened in the first place.

  Rotor accidentally breaks down the door when going into the room and says that he’s still getting used to his new strength. He looks more muscular, like Reboot Rotor. At least his head is shaped kinda right instead of looking awful. I always hated how his head was shaped in late Archie.

Carmelita thanks someone for delivering her uniforms. Why do they have multiple different options to choose from? I guess they’re just different size options. Julie asks why she has to leave so they can change. Julie then punches the wall and cracks it for no reason. I didn’t know she was that strong. She’s badass as she asks her if she’s from the future. That doesn’t mean she has to be mean to her.

  Suddenly it cuts to detached narration from Rotor. After he saw what happened to Bunnie, he goes into a long train of thought he had, which makes him seem like a person who’s smart enough to think a lot. At first he was thinking of building new robot parts for Bunnie, no duh, but then he remembered how he had built a nanite suit for his injured back.

  He changed his focus into nanites only to get distracted AGAIN when he realized that the robotic nanites wouldn’t be able to fix their broken bodies. What makes him think that again? He should’ve explained himself. Can’t Nicole summon any material with the nanites? She can create castles. Surely she could create new bones to replace the shattered bone and new flesh with Bunnie’s DNA. But no, that’d require him to think outside the box.

  Though it was thinking outside the box that he even considered using nanites in the first place. Already this is more creativity and intelligence than the actual comic would have. Still, it’d be obvious that nanites could speed up the natural healing process, like speeding up the healing of broken bones.

Instead he had a breakthrough, modifying a batch of nanites that could work as synthetic organic material. He wouldn’t have to modify them. They could not only support the body, but insert themselves into the body to replace it as well. They, they could’ve done that earlier. He first had to test it and chose himself and his bad back as a guinea pig. I hope Archie Sonic Online fixes his bad back. It’d try to fix some of the damage Flynn did to the comic if he didn’t have a bad back anymore. A lighter tone is very refreshing after that arc. This is what’ll make the comic look great, a whole string of resolutions like this. It is braver and nicer of him to test it on himself and not someone else. In his haste he only gave the instructions of fixing himself. Why would that be a mistake?

It fixed his back, but much more, making himself into muscular Reboot Rotor, but without the stupid googles. Flynn said that the reboot only pushed the fast forward button on what he planned to do to Archie anyways. So it makes sense that the comic would get reboot elements if they were going to be in the comic anyways, like the ring blades. I love seeing this plot development for Rotor. Not only does it make him more competent, but it’s an explanation for how preboot Rotor was supposed to naturally progress into being muscular.

  The nanites have fused into his body as a part of him. And somehow you can’t tell the difference between the nanites and non-nanites anymore. And they can’t change shape anymore, but made him more strong and durable. He was a walrus, so I always thought it was weird that he WASN’T a tough guy. So this is long overdue. It’s still gonna be hard to get used to, though. I assumed Rotor already had super strength before I started reading Archie from the beginning. He was always a big walrus. So this is intuitive. He’s finally as strong as he should’ve been.

  He says that while the change was extreme in his case, he could use the nanites to heal Bunnie and Antoine over time. That’s better than using a machine on Antoine’s head that would make him go crazy like the king did. I really hope they find a good excuse to not have him go crazy. Well, crazy is an exaggeration, but STILL!

  Meanwhile, Julie-Su had an easy time figuring out that Lara’s from the future, because she already knows Silver exists, and she showed up looking for Sally’s friends immediately, and knows intimate details she shouldn’t. Such AS? She’s also a terrible liar.

She also has the common sense to realize that when she looks at her face, and, “ our eyes, “ her gut tells her that she’s trying to do good, and while she has certain theories, she won’t pry. So she knows she’s her daughter? I mean she is red and pink and knows Sally’s friends apparently. Who else would she be?

But I’d rather her have a thought bubble confirming that. She could reflect on the fact that Lara clearly almost calls her Mom. And she said “ our eyes. “ She says that she should come clean to the others so they can help her with her real mission, and she almost calls Julie-Su mom right there.

  I’m glad Sonic tells Rotor, “ If the nanites buffed up your body what’s with the glasses? “ Yeah. Why does Chuck wear glasses anyways? You’d think someone smart enough to invent a roboticizer like it was nothing could’ve perfected his vision.

But I can understand Chuck not caring enough to do so, if he’s too happy and busy with building useful Freedom Fighter things. He doesn’t need to waste time with vanity projects instead, he’s not that insecure. Rotor says that the glasses are just a plastic decoration and he got used to wearing the glasses, so he doesn’t wanna lose them. He says the nanites gave him perfect vision anyways.

I don’t know why Carmelita won’t insist on wearing pants anyways, just because the uniform doesn’t have any. I’m glad Sly looks more like his old self again, with the blue hat. What’s the point of having Johnny and Tekno show up if they’re just gonna be silent cameos?! Tekno was in Issue 134, and there was the same problem! Either use the character or don’t. It’s not fair Sticks gets dialogue and not them. And Tekno looked better in STC with the skirt on her.

  It’s pretty dark that Bunnie finds the process painful. It was already bad enough that it looked creepy that the green nanites were going into him in the first place. Why are they green and not gray, light projection?

Rotor says that he passed out from the pain when he did it to himself. Wait, if he knows it’ll be painful, why didn’t he hire a guy to give her proper anesthesia? Wasn’t that common sense? Anyways, Geoffrey goes to Sly and says that Sally agreed to their plan, which she’ll need them for. Wasn’t she incredulous at the plan?

  Bunnie wakes up, wondering why her hand has a glove on it. I’m wondering that too because the only reason the Satam characters all have gloves in the reboot was that they decided to change their designs to be more Sonic-like. They don’t have to do that in a fancomic. Obviously her wearing gloves all the time is kinda bad for her because you can’t feel things as well through gloves, so life would be harder with gloves.

  Her limbs are now encased in nanites linked to her mind, and she has to keep a clear and collected mind to make sure they operate correctly because dark and edgy bullshit. Real limbs don’t do that and nanobots are supposed to be superior. It does something lighthearted, and it would be cool that she’s made competent again, but it doesn’t feel as much like an upgrade if it immediately tries to offset that with some stupid bullshit. It just looks like she got her regular cyborg limbs back. She looks cool. I’m so glad she has a cowboy hat and long hair like this. She doesn’t look exactly like reboot Bunnie.

  As if it wasn’t creepy enough, Rotor says that she’s limited on what she can wear, because they don’t want the nanites touching clothing and trying to merge them into her fur. By that logic, wouldn’t they try to merge with Antoine or whatever if they touched her robotic limbs at all? Isn’t Nicole’s hologram form made of nanites? Nobody has that problem when they touch her pseudo-organic form. It’s just offsetting what would normally be an awesome lighthearted development for Bunnie, so it doesn’t as much feel like she’s back and better than ever.

  Bunnie flies out of the window saying it’s good to be back as I look forward to seeing her like this in Archie Sonic Online, because she wouldn’t have to contend with THESE problems. Rotor says he had lessons ready to go for using the nanites and everything, but no, Bunnie crashes into a tree, so she’s not a natural. Why?! She just started flying just like she always did. Why would the instructions be different? She took her mind off the thrusters for one second and they went out of control. That’s dumb. Couldn’t this get her killed? Rotor would be more talented than that.

And if ALL of her limbs had broken bones and needed fixing, her having an arm that looks organic is confusing. If it only looks organic, why didn’t Rotor have all of her limbs look that way? He knows she doesn’t want to look like a cyborg because of the social stigma.

  It turns out they’ve infused and wrapped Antoine in nanite bandages, which will fix his body over time, but the coma is another matter because nonsensical dark and edgy writing. Wouldn’t it be common sense that if his body is fixed, his coma would be fixed and he’d be woken up because his brain is a part of his body too?

  Sally reassures Bunnie, who thanks her, and Geoffrey apologizes about interrupting the touching moment, but the pieces are gathered and they can’t keep Ixis waiting. It was satisfying that she said, “ Give us a minute! “

Geoffrey arrives at Ixis’ side with the princess, and he can sense Sonic isn’t nearby thanks to the magic tracker on him. Since when was there ever a magic tracker? He tells Geoffrey to put trackers on his friends as well. I guess Ixis would be able to sense if there wasn’t a magic tracker on them because he wouldn’t be able to sense where they were. The regular Tails Doll being here is confusing since it’s supposed to have attacked the city by now. I guess that’s all a part of being a different universe where Snively wasn’t imprisoned in an animal capsule.

He whispers to Sally that Ixis’ back is to the door, so the rest is up to her. Hopefully he’s plotting against Ixis. Sally closes the door. Ixis then raises his Emerald and Sally panics for some reason and asks Ixis to turn her back now. He says that he just wanted to make sure their conversation was private. He didn’t want Nicole to listen in.

He invited her here to thank her because she’s loosely the reason he ended up being king. So now he’s gonna go on for a bit, and recap. Why does he think he had to brainwash the king into trying to murder all the Robians in an attempt to claim power? He already had power. He was possessing the king anyways.

It made him seem like a confusing cowardly fradey cat that he was a powerful wizard, and he’s still scared of the Robians and Nicole anyways, just because they’re technology. He could crystallize them easily anyways. You’d think he would’ve just crystallized them all himself instead of bothering with civil war or something, if that was something he could do with technology, but it makes sense because he thinks of reacting with spite and fear first, not compassion. Why is he talking as if SALLY thwarted his plan in Return of the King when it was Sonic who confronted him and Sonic talked as if HE figured him out on his own? Somehow Ixis thought from that that SALLY’S existence was detrimental to his future.

  He says that Sally removed herself from the equation and annoys me by calling her a traitor, when he would know she isn’t. And he says that manipulating everyone became easy without a voice of reason to keep everyone calm. Sonic was TRYING to be a voice of reason. It’s not that there was no voice of reason, it’s that the writing was forced!

  Why is he telling her this? What’s the point of him gloating to her about all of his evil plans? If Sally has a listening device on her to ruin Ixis, then, while that would be common sense, it’d rely on Ixis being an idiot.

There’s a reason he never told anyone but Geoffrey all of this. He has HIM to gloat to, he doesn’t need to tell anyone else. I’d rather have a villain defeated in a satisfying fight where he gets beaten up a whole bunch, not because he conveniently got an Idiot Ball out of nowhere. But I guess it’s realistic that he’d be a jerk and brag because he’s always like that.

At least Ixis lampshades that the council caused the heroes more trouble than him. And apparently this really is an alternate universe because the picture shows Mina’s mom on the council when Elias crowned Ixis king, when she didn’t come into the picture until much later. She’s a better choice than Chuck there.

  Ixis says that nobody will ever believe Sally about everything he told her, because she’s the princess of the dishonored Acorn family. He says he would just deny it and say she’s just trying to get power back to the royalty.

Sally says the nanites recorded what he just said, but the whole room has been crystallized. Ixis crystallized the whole room as soon as it was given to him, and he just used illusion magic to make everything normal. Merlin does that. I don’t remember Ixis ever doing that before. Actually, you’d think if he could use illusion magic, he would’ve used it against Sonic in his last fight with him, all the time. Like, what does illusion magic have to do with elemental powers? He’s called the Master of the Elements. He’s had new powers a LOT, the problem is really that, why didn’t he use this a lot earlier?

  Why didn’t she just have a regular listening bug or at least a camera phone turned on in her clothing? Why would she rely entirely on the convoluted “ nanites “ to record his gloating instead of recording him the way a normal person would?

Well, to be fair it would be cheap to have Ixis’ ousting only happen because he had a huge Idiot Ball and gloated. Him gloating about his plan to Sally just makes me wonder why he didn’t gloat to the other Freedom Fighters before this point, even if it was justified by him having her to thank and her being the princess giving her less credibility.

Then Sly shows up from behind the flower pots, asking if new pieces were added to the board.

He’s been carrying Nicole, and says, “ Thanks for the villainous ‘ back to the door ‘ cliché by the way. It made it easy to sneak in and hide behind here when your skunk friend left. “

He’s been recording Ixis’ speech with the handheld Nicole, who’s broadcasted his entire conversation to the whole kingdom. Live. Good thing it was live. Or else he would’ve wrecked Nicole’s plan the minute he saw her so quickly because the heroes bragged to his face before leaving the room.

  It’s kinda satisfying to see this, Hamlin stomps the floor angrily as Rosemary says that so much adds up now. I wish she said what she meant by that. I want to see her show a hell of a lot more regret than that. I want strong emotion from her, not just this. Not just dull surprise and resentment, when SHE’S the one who said that the constitution didn’t say that the king couldn’t be Ixis, it didn’t say who the king had to be. It was her suggestion for him to be in power, basically. I want her to react differently than this. I want her to cry and get mad at this. I want her to list what adds up, what her problems with him WAS, because I never felt like she had ANY problems with him, when she’s the reason he got in power because she said that!

   Surprisingly, the people of the city were completely unaware that Ixis had told the king to try to murder all of the Robians. Isn’t it obvious that everyone would’ve been told that was Ixis’ idea so that they wouldn’t hold it against King Acorn?! He would have been overthrown, or at least had a riot against him, if the heroes didn’t explain that he was possessed into it. That would’ve ruined his reputation. I guess it has to be explained that he didn’t know what he did back then, because them electing him the king, when he tried to get all the Robians killed, was a plot hole all by itself.

  It does make more sense that they would elect him as king and think he could be trustworthy, if they didn’t KNOW that he had tried to get the Robians killed, but of COURSE it was him who was doing that. Why WOULDN’T they have been told he was doing that? The king would have been overthrown and rioted against a lot earlier for that, if the civilians are turning on IXIS for that. At least it’s satisfying to finally see the citizens turn on Ixis. If Archie Sonic Online got its issues out faster, I would’ve already seen this. This is the best part of the comic, because this is the part where I get to see, basically a flash forward into Archie Sonic Online’s future.

  Of course he jumps away from Sly’s girlfriend when she tries to shoot at him. Her name is SO forgettable. I can’t help but keep forgetting it. And I feel bad too because she’s actually sympathetic at this point, now that she’s not hunting down Sly.

He says none of this will matter soon, but he gets hit by thrown tomatoes. How do the citizens already have those? I can only assume that they were put there by the heroes ahead of time specifically in the hopes that this will happen. Then that should be explained because that’d be clever and funny, instead of taking this cartoon cliché completely seriously, where, there’s conveniently rotten tomatoes just because people wanna throw them.

  Ixis gets hit in the back by a laser from Bunnie. Wouldn’t the laser just go through him and kill him immediately? If a laser blasts through you, you’re dead, regardless. I can only assume that because Bunnie doesn’t wanna kill anyone, and Rotor doesn’t want anyone killed either, the lasers are programmed to not go through people. It just burned him, but it stopped right there apparently. It’s able to be stopped by skin, or the stuff he’s wearing if it didn’t burn a hole in it. I wish she just kicked him instead. Yeah, that would be better writing because it’d be more satisfying to see her just kick him, like Kodos who worked for him once, so that’s a callback.

  And Sally naturally asks her parents what they’re doing here. Yeah, they’re supposed to be safe in Furville, not risking their lives here! Oh right, they always stayed in New Mobotropolis, I remember Ixis trying to possess the king again, but the same logic for Elias and his wife and kid leaving the city would also apply to Sally’s parents! Why weren’t they staying in Furville? Oh yeah, because the king insisted on staying in New Mobotropolis out of attachment to it. Which would’ve been a dumb move if Ixis killed them.

  Ixis blinds everyone with his Emerald staff and says that this victory requires sacrifice. We see the former king, and Sally says she can’t dodge, and she creates a shield in front of her with her ring blades, saying that the homing blast is small enough that she can block it. Or Alicia could wheel him OUT of the WAY, if the blast is gonna be that small. She should’ve been written to say the blast would be LARGE. The shield doesn’t even conceal all of her hands! Everyone’s being given the Idiot Ball just to force the plot.

  Sally’s father doesn’t have faith in her to be fine taking this risk, and it makes even more sense when she says that she’s not sure if they can block black magic because she never tried it before. So he pulls Sally out of the way and gets vaporized by a laser himself.

I thought only Sonic Retold would do this. At least I don’t have to be made sad by him anymore, but again, he’s supposed to be alive in the future. It was clearly stated that Nicole was sent through a trans-time portal, so yes, she is from the future, not another dimension, which would be a blatant retcon. And Sonic is a kids’ series, so obviously this isn’t what’s meant to happen. He’s supposed to be cured of his bad portrayal and go back to being cheerful. But I’m looking on the bright side here. At least it was a Heroic Sacrifice! If you’re gonna get rid of a character, that’s the best possible way to do it.

  Sally asks why won’t it cut as she’s hitting some crystals. Wait, is she hitting her father after he’s in crystal? Is he gonna get turned back to normal? I thought he’d just get incinerated, I thought he did. Rotor even SAYS that it makes no sense. Why write it if you know it won’t make sense?

” Only non-organic material was affected in the past, so why is Max trapped in it? ” Uh, is he a robot? Or are nanites in him as well? Kodos and Arachnis got crystallized! And of course, they were organic. Sonic expected me to believe only in-organic material gets affected by his magic in that issue too, but you’d think if only non-organic material could be crystallized, they wouldn’t be affected, and neither would the king, who spent like forever being half-crystal! How could Rotor and Sonic be so stupid? If Max could be fully crystallized here, it should have been all of Bunnie who was crystallized by Ixis if that’s how it works, not just her cybernetics.

  Sally sniffles and has some tears as Sonic comforts her. Good thing she and her mother are clearly shown to care about Max. Main characters clearly caring about each other is a very good thing to make YOU care about them and the comic.

Geoffrey’s with Ixis, despite the fact that he made a plan with Sally against him. He says he’s almost finished and puts the crown and staff in the center. Penelope finds it exhilarating as she bursts into the room along with Sally and Hamlin, some Character Rerailment from her after SHE was the one who said that the people elected the council to govern and threatened to charge Hamlin with dereliction of duty for trying to fight as Freedom Fighters. It makes sense that a situation like this where everyone’s against Ixis would motivate her to go back on that. The Council voted to overthrow Ixis.

But Ixis says that his newly developed magic circle, powered up by the crown which never had magical power before and the Chaos Emerald will eventually rob all of them of their free will and turn them into his mindless slaves. Why is there a magic circle now? I guess this makes logical sense instead of being a Diabolus ex Machina, I guess he was developing his magic circle the entire time that he was offscreen. He had plenty of time to do it. I guess he actually has the Crown of Acorns here because it’s another universe, the same reason Snively’s not in an animal capsule.

  You’d think he would’ve simply done this instead of his “ get Geoffrey to find magical wizard bones and take multiple days to do it “ brainwashing plan. But I guess him preparing for this was taking a hell of a lot longer than we see, longer than the Sonic Universe plan. It’s just confusing for him to have a different, third brainwashing plan than he did before.

Sonic tells Geoffrey that he didn’t mention anything about this. Does the writer know that Geoffrey was opposed to Ixis’ brainwashing? He was before. Because Geoffrey’s smirking and telling Sonic thanks for the distraction.

  Good, Ixis gets foiled. This is a bind and drain spell. He wanted to make sure Ixis stayed put for the return spell to ” return us “ to your location a few years ago. Why would HE wanna go with him? I like magical stuff being used against Ixis, that’s ironic. But it’s cheating the heroes out of their major victory against Ixis when Geoffrey’s the one to defeat him by himself instead of them. I’d rather see the heroes satisfyingly punch and kick him a bunch. Bunnie could kick him into a portal to the Zone of Silence. Instead Bunnie fired one laser at him and Geoffrey did the only important thing.

Ixis says a simple return spell wouldn’t have the power to open up a rift to The Void. They barely ever call it The Void. But this is justified because this takes place in a different zone from the Prime one, hence why Bunnie and Antoine were caught in an explosion by Metal Sonic and not just Antoine.

  Geoffrey says he needed to gain the power of the Emerald and crown to heighten the power of the spell, and needed the time to make sure Ixis wouldn’t notice the modifications to the magic circle that he made. Sally wasn’t aware of this part of the plan.

He says that if he simply removed Ixis from power, the disillusioned loyal citizens might have rebelled against the council and ruling family, so he had to make sure to destroy Ixis’ credibility and reputation before they left to fully fix his mistakes. And yet Hamlin says he was just using them. Why is Geoffrey being treated like the bad guy? He’s being a hero. Ixis even calls him a traitor.

  Out of nowhere he says that he was the one who gave Geoffrey his powers. I can understand why the writer wrote this. What’s confusing is, there was never any indication that Ixis the master of the elements could give someone else powers. How could anyone give someone ELSE powers? That would be like generating magic out of NOTHING. I guess what he did was activate the power in him. He could say that, “ it was in your DNA all along, you could always do it. You could always use the Chaos Force. I’m just telling you you can. “ Like how Mogul said he saw Mina’s potential and enhanced her natural prowess.

  What does, modifying a person’s DNA so they could have a strong connection to the Chaos Force, what does that have to do with elemental magic? But again he’s shown New Powers as the Plot Demands that have nothing to do with the elements or his actual powers before, ever since Flynn. He can augment people’s negative emotions. It’s literally a Bad Writing Trope to have New Powers as the Plot Demands, but you can kinda get away with it for a wizard. Sabrina does it.

  I can understand why the writer did that. What’s the point of having a wizard if you’re not gonna take full advantage of it? At least it’s creative to come up with a new power for him. I’d rather he have new powers than Sonic. I’d rather he confuse me with new powers than by being an ineffectual wuss. It’s just confusing to reveal this when it was never implied in Archie.

  This revelation doesn’t fix the fact that Flynn showed us that Geoffrey was practicing wind magic when Ixis was trapped in the Zone of Silence, and Ixis was telling Geoffrey how to do it. Ixis being the one who gave Geoffrey his powers doesn’t remove the continuity error of the question, “ Why didn’t Geoffrey use his powers all along? “ when if it did, I would love this idea. He had them when he was in the Void!

  I know why this is stupid! If Ixis can just give someone powers, why didn’t he just give a whole bunch of people powers?! Granted, they might have to have the potential in them, I dunno, but if Amadeus Prower could just rile up an army against the king, realistically Ixis would have when Sonic was 5! If there are people like Drago and Sleuth who would agree to work for Eggman for power, Ixis could’ve had a whole army to himself just by telling them, “ I’ll give you powers. “ Some people would agree because why wouldn’t you wanna get magical powers? Especially with the idea in your head that you could use it against him and not actually stick with him. But combine that with the fact that he can brainwash people! Three different ways!

  He effortlessly brainwashed the soldiers into trying to kill the Robians, and the Mobians into tearing apart half the town to try to kill the Robians! No mention of wizard bones and a brainwashing chamber, no mention of a magic circle with the crown and Chaos Emerald. He could have easily done that, and had an army of mages on his side. So he can’t have the ability to give people powers, because it makes him look like an unbelievable idiot, for not having an army of mages and taking over the world that way!

  But the same could apply to Mammoth Mogul because suddenly according to Flynn he gave magical powers to people like Mina and Mighty and, apparently gave invincibility to the soldier ape guy, which doesn’t explain why he bothered sending him away in pain saying that he can handle the likes of him if he made him invincible. The invincibility was hardly noticeable since every Sonic character is Made of Iron anyways.

So why didn’t Mogul take over the world with an army of mages instead of just having the Destructix? I always figured he thought that he was powerful enough alone that he didn’t need an entire army and just wanted four. But he could’ve had an entire town’s worth of people! Both him and Mogul look like IDIOTS with the ability to give people powers!

  Well he’s such an idiot! He’s been an idiot the entire comic! It makes sense that he didn’t think to give anyone but Geoffrey powers because only Geoffrey wanted him in power in the first place. And I guess it also makes sense that he thinks that, he doesn’t need a whole army, he thinks that he ALONE can take back the throne. It’s why Mogul discarded the Destructix and all of Sonic’s friends when he was Super and thought merely Sonic, Tails and Knuckles would be enough of an unstoppable army for him.

  If he can give Geoffrey elemental powers, why didn’t he do that for his crystal army, like Kodos and Arachnis? Those were people who agreed to work for him like Geoffrey did, and he didn’t think of that? He could still control them, he could still crystallize them. They were still under his control. I guess he wanted to be the only wizard. He naturally only made Geoffrey a wizard because Geoffrey is so much SHORTER than him that he doesn’t see him as a threat.

  And Kodos is his old enemy who he fled to another universe just to avoid, so of course he wouldn’t like him enough to… Kodos is his old enemy, so of course he wouldn’t trust him with powers like Geoffrey has when he already has a lot of bulk over him. But he can BRAINWASH people! Mogul can too! Overloading us with new powers of his got distracting, clearly, when we were supposed to just be happy that Ixis was defeated, but when you think about it, it just made me ask why he didn’t use them more often.

  Geoffrey’s banishing himself along WITH Ixis. I prefer Archie Sonic Online where he got to see Hershey again. Here, he’s gonna doom himself to a fate worse than death because he hates himself and is completely succumbing to that. That’s a darker tone than I would’ve wanted. How does he think he’ll live forever in the void? Ixis says he’ll strip him of his powers.

I have to assume he can only strip people of powers if they only have them because HE gave them powers, because otherwise, if he could strip anyone of their powers, he would’ve depowered Sonic, a long time ago, not to mention Tails.

He says he’ll kill him as soon as he loses those chains. Are the chains gonna disappear after a while? Why is that a part of the spell? Geoffrey warns him that he’d be lonely in the void by himself. Yeah he would, he’d go insane from solitary confinement. But considering how stupid Ixis has been… even before the Mecha Sally Arc because he decided to go to the Zone of Silence to hide from Kodos, when he could’ve just killed Kodos with his magical power.

Ixis has always been an idiot. He decided to leave the body of the king when Sonic confronted him when he could’ve just used his magic against Sonic and won, because he’s a wizard. He could’ve frozen Sonic’s feet. So considering how dumb he is, I guess he was planning to kill Geoffrey. And then he’d go insane from solitary confinement because Geoffrey wouldn’t be with him.

  So Geoffrey vanishes along with Ixis. Well I would find it cringeworthy to see him be treated like garbage after he turned on Ixis, so this is a smaller amount of pain than that. But come on, that’s not how it’s supposed to go. But I doubt GUN would let him go back to working for them. I guess it’s less suffering for him to get killed by Ixis than it is for him to get treated badly by all of the heroes. I don’t wanna see him deal with that.

  For some reason Geoffrey questions why he’s still here. Good, he’s here. He asks a Dark Legion member why he was pulled onto the roof when the binding spell wore off. That Legion member followed the heroes on a motorcycle in the desert. That’s a good Rewatch Bonus for me now that I finally know who that was.

  He says the banishing was supposed to be his punishment for everything he did wrong. He gets hit, and Hershey tells him that all he did was apply a band-aid and try to run off like a coward. Why would she hit her husband? I miss Archie Sonic Online where she was really nice and understanding to him, because she’s his wife, so she’s supposed to love him, but this is realistic.

  He says that he’s just grateful she’s alive, legionized arm and all. I LOVE that she blushes, because she knows how sweet it is that she knows he would like her even if she was a cyborg. So it makes sense that she’d change her tune about being mad at him after that.

  She says they’re just props, fakes for her mission. A costume? That’s better writing than that not being the case. Archie Sonic Online didn’t show her as having any cybernetics, fake or otherwise. I guess she’s wearing a fake cybernetic arm costume over her real one. That’s how she can fake having cybernetics. But that should’ve been explained. She says that she was playing the part of a legionized Mobian with amnesia to try and gather intel. I love the amnesia part. It tries to explain why they didn’t find out that she was Hershey the Cat and do something with that.

  She thankfully hugs him, and says that if he hadn’t learned from his mistakes and tried to fix them, they’d be having a very different conversation right now. His reaction was sweet. I liked the line he has. “ (sniffs) O-Okay. I’d like that. “ It was sympathetic.I wish he had explained to her why he put Ixis in power. It would be more natural writing. He would’ve explained to her that he was hoping he could change Ixis, that the responsibility of actually being the king would cause him to care about the people and shape up. I don’t buy that he wouldn’t try to explain himself at all. It makes it harder to buy that she forgives him when she doesn’t even know why he did that.

I’m still confused that she managed to save him from being sent into the Void. He was clearly chained up and vanished in a flash of light. I didn’t think she was in the same room as him. This is a retcon, but a good one. There was a hook on him in the last panel he was in but the light was too blinding to notice. She says he’s not gonna be alone and kisses him.

  Sally’s told to come here, and Dr. Quack says that Max will be fine. His vitals still seem to be stable, and quite good in fact. Wouldn’t he have suffocated in the crystal though? How does he have any vitals? I guess there’s still air in the crystals.

The cracking started when Geoffrey finished his speech and the light faded away. I guess it started cracking because Ixis isn’t in the same universe as him keeping the spell intact anymore. Why’d the crystal shatter? If it shattered because Ixis got sealed away, it should’ve shattered apart IMMEDIATELY after he was sealed away, not taken a while.

  Okay I get him breaking out of the crystal and I get why the writer wanted him to be healed, but it’s ridiculous to change his design. Now he doesn’t feel like the same character anymore, so what’s the point of healing him then? He doesn’t have to look younger. Nobody liked his reboot design, and at least it’s not literally that, but still. A lot of the lighthearted plot resolutions in this comic come with a lame price that doesn’t seem worth it. I’m hoping Archie Sonic Online will do the good and not the bad.

Why was Max healed up and back in the prime of his life after the crystal he was in shattered? Even right before he was sent into the Void, he still had white eyebrows, so this wasn’t his original state before he made a pact with Ixis. I guess it was in the new universe. This is why being in a new universe and not explaining that right away is just confusing.

  I’m confused that this happened because why would Ixis intend to do this for him, and why would the wizards in his head make this happen either? How would this happen by accident? He’d have to imagine it for it to happen! I guess his magic is like a malfunctioning computer at this point and there doesn’t have to be rhyme or reason to it because it’s just a glitchy AI. But what kind of poorly written programming would cause this to happen? If his magic is like glitchy code, that should be explained because I’m just off-put and confused that something happened that Ixis didn’t want.

  It’d make more sense for Merlin to heal him with a healing potion of his! I know he ascended to a different plane of existence with Aurora, but I have no idea why he did. I have no idea why she chose a neglectful uncle like him. Why did she take so long to choose him, if she even thought he was worthy? My point is, Merlin’s a wizard. Of course he should be able to come back whenever he feels like it and heals the king. But I’d still wonder why he doesn’t visit Tails more often if he can come back whenever he wants. Couldn’t an alternate universe Merlin do it? I’m just off-put and confused that something happened that Ixis didn’t want.

  But to be fair, I couldn’t imagine Max getting back to normal being anything other than “ a wizard did it. “ But how could Ixis do this by accident? It’d make more sense for him to do this on purpose as a failed attempt to get the public back on his side. It’d take advantage of him being manipulating.

He says to his wife that he can hold her in his arms again. Couldn’t he have done it earlier? Didn’t he do that earlier, when he thanked her for getting Ixis to leave him alone when he was trying to possess him? But he can stand up and hold her this time.

  Since Sally’s holding a crown, a civilian asks if he’s becoming king again, jumping the gun there. Then someone says the king is back to return them to better days. It would be just what the council deserves, to be associated entirely with hiring Ixis Naugus.

  Hamlin says that Max can’t become king again. There’s a council now, and nobody can become king unless they allow it. Rosemary says, “ Read the room, Hamlin. “ Okay, but she’s been no better than him in constantly supporting Ixis and stuff. It’s weird for her to suddenly be portrayed as the level-headed down to earth woman. It’s better than her old portrayal, but she’s still not deep and interesting and regretful enough to make up for being a boring cliché. She isn’t one to talk on lampshading how unlikable a council member is.

  I’m so glad Hamlin got hit by a tomato, this is too good to be true. I hope this happens in Archie Sonic Online. But I thought Elias was supposed to be the king now. “ Get him! First he put Naugus in power and now he’s trying to stop Max from returning! Down with the council! Traitor! “ Awesome.

  It’s weird that the comic’s forgetting that the Secret Freedom Fighters exist though. Elias isn’t dead, Chuck isn’t dead, but the comic would make you think he is. And Sally’s obviously a better leader, but she’s busy being a Freedom Fighter right now. I really wish that the text bubbles were actually connected to specific people in the crowd. It’d make it easier to stay invested in what’s going on.

  The king says, “ It seems now more than ever, the city needs strong and unified leadership. I shall take that responsibility for the time being. However, since my son created the council, I wish it keep it together in an advisory role. “

While his dialogue was stilted, it’s so nice of him to tell the council that while they voted Naugus in, they kept him in check the best they could. I feel like he’s been brainwashed into being a better person here. It wouldn’t be like him to approve of the council at all, especially not after they voted Naugus in. The very idea of the council made him wheel away from Elias sadly when it first got started. I guess it makes sense that he keeps the council around because he thinks that’s what his son would’ve wanted.

  Still, I love this. Lighthearted is better than dark drama nonsense, even if it’s contrived. I’d take a Deus ex Machina over a Diabolus ex Machina any day. I just wish this was in Archie Sonic Online, but I would understand if they won’t ever do this because it’s too confusing to have the king return to his proper character because of an ACCIDENT of Ixis’. Can’t a good wizard do it? Like a good version of Ixis or a Merlin Prower?

  Sticks says to Tangle in the background that the king looks and acts exactly like he did before he was sent into the Void, when she idolized him as a kid. Why would someone paranoid idolize a king? I guess she wasn’t always paranoid and crazy. Max thanks everyone and tells them to please return to their daily lives. I mean it does kinda make sense that Elias isn’t the king because he only got given the throne because the king was incapacitated. He never wanted it anyways.

  Then after Tangle says excitedly that she wants to be a Freedom Fighter, and I doubt the comic will have the guts to do that since she’s an IDW which has a COMPLETELY different audience, we see that the Secret Freedom Fighters are here too, and they’re hiding in red cloaks.

Elias is worried that if he reveals himself to his dad right now, he might destabilize things even further by risking the council having a civil war over which king should retake the throne. He says they should wait until tomorrow, after he’s officially king again. He should also say that he never wanted to be king anyways. That’d be less confusing.

  Then a plot thread is resolved as soon as it began because Sonic spots Hershey and Geoffrey. Hershey has an urgent report for the king, while Geoffrey is really sympathetic saying, “ Believe me, this is quite awkward for me too, but I’m here thanks to Hershey. “ Hershey says that she’s come back from her undercover mission to report critical information for their very survival.

  Hamlin calls Geoffrey a traitor who needs to pay for his crimes. He’s really unlikable here. The Council put Ixis in power, and he’s not taking any responsibility! I hope the writer’s writing Hamlin like this because he realized how awful Hamlin was in the comic, so he’s lampshading and parodying it by putting it on full display. Couldn’t someone have a middle ground here and say, okay, he should be punished, but just have him do community service for a long time. Geoffrey should say that. He’s already been punished enough. He feels guilty about working for Ixis and everyone hates him. It’s totally understandable for Hamlin to feel this way, but still.

  She says, “ Are you kidding me?! I just said we don’t have time for this! Do us a favor and just shut up for a minute! “ I’d love if Hamlin got kicked out of town. Honestly, I hate him more than Drago. At least Drago’s a bad guy and everyone acknowledges him as a bad guy. So we’re not alone! Hamlin’s a bureaucrat, so everyone thinks he’s a good guy most of the time and he’s acting in the law. It’s Hamlin who gets me riled up just on sight. At least the worst thing Drago ever did was a REALLY LONG TIME ago, in the endgame saga.

  Hershey warns the king that Eggman’s allied with two new dangerous villains. Too bad they’re probably Sly Cooper villains, which isn’t exactly conducive to making this feel like a real continuation of the comic. I mean STC Online got away with having Sticks in it, and, Dave the Intern. I was perfectly fine with that. I still felt like it was the perfect continuation of the comic. But Dr. M is a villain from a different, dead franchise. I’m just saying that I wish I’d get to see an arc after all these plot thread resolutions that actually felt like something that would have happened in Archie Sonic. But it wouldn’t be so bad if it would be a plot where you could mentally replace the Sly Cooper characters with other villains and it’d be just as logical. Eggman could’ve made a robot like Clockwerk.

  The king warns her to wait, because he doesn’t want the citizens to hear this and cause another panic. That’s kinda smart. Hershey says that the bad guys have critical information about their bases. I hope that’s why the Warp Rings stopped working because I still can’t take that seriously. If it was Finitevus, what took him so long? It’d be harder for a story or comic to sink in if practically every new plot development was, too confusing to take seriously. And a lot of them HAVE BEEN because of that stupid the Emerald.

  Then the story cuts to Rosemary at the desk in the council room. I wish there was a textbox saying minutes later or something because that was abrupt. Predictably she says that the council almost unanimously decided to place King Max back into the role of the king. Then the king wants to pass judgment on Geoffrey, calling him a criminal.

  Penelope wastes time recapping everything Geoffrey did when we already know that, so that’s really boring, but I guess it was necessary to show this to get the plot moving along. Why is he deemed an accomplice to Ixis leaking information to Robotnik? Ixis did that without his knowledge and he was mad at him once he found out about it.

  Geoffrey pleads guilty instead of saying that he was unaware Ixis tried to get Elias and his family killed until Ixis admitted it in front of him. He’s at least able to try to explain himself before the verdict is passed. He says that at the time he was traumatized over his wife’s apparent death and wasn’t sure what to do with his life, and the kingdom had a new king with little experience and a council made of civilians, so at the time, Naugus felt like an obvious choice. Explain better than THAT, genius. He’s an evil wizard. He should be saying that he was hoping he could change to become a good person. If he WAS a good person, THEN he’d be an obvious choice.

  Geoffrey says that things changed, and after learning about his attempt on Elias’ life and his plan to mind control the city, he turned against him. He did in Archie Sonic too! Is this comic going with an alternate universe where Ixis only tried to make a plan to mind control the entire city ONCE? I mean twice? He was against him from THAT, he didn’t only turn against him after learning about his attempt on Elias’ life. Ixis tried to kill Elias in the Sonic Universe arc where he tried to brainwash the city, too. He even tried to leave Ixis to DIE, so it’s not like he didn’t try, he just didn’t think trying was safe.

  It doesn’t feel as much like a real conclusion of Geoffrey’s sub-plot if he doesn’t go off the same continuity. It’s just a pointless what-if scenario, even if it is a superior scenario. Didn’t he start regretting working for Ixis as soon as he saw him brainwashing people to hate Nicole? He would mention THAT. He would make a much better case for himself!

  He says that is no excuse and he has deep regret for what he did, and accepts any punishment he’ll get. The king smiles because he said he has deep regret for it, and says he knows his sentence after hearing the advice of the council, which I wish I actually knew about, and I wish I got to read that instead of a bunch of recap.

  He sentences Geoffrey to life. He wouldn’t say that when he’s about to say that he sentences him to a life dedicated to protecting the kingdom and people within it. The only reason he’d say he’s sentencing him to life in the first place is that he’s intentionally making a joke and trying to fake him out. Which doesn’t seem in-character, because that clearly wouldn’t be funny and this isn’t the time for that kind of joke.

Hamlin’s mad at him for trying to pardon him. I understand how he feels, but still, it’s so obvious that getting Geoffrey to do good is a smarter way to punish him, instead of wasting his potential in prison. The king says that if Geoffrey hadn’t tried to sacrifice his life to thwart Ixis, he would have gotten life in prison. He wouldn’t be able to do that in Archie Sonic Online, because he was possessed, but he still wouldn’t deserve life in prison!

The king says that he always believed that it was critical for a king to have no regrets. But, he’s done plenty of things he SHOULD regret, like hiring Eggman. I’m pretty sure it’s critical for a king TO have regrets so he knows what he’s failed at and can improve. Hopefully this is where he’s going with this. He says that every decision carries heavy weight, and fixating on the past could lead to wasting time wallowing in self-doubt. He DID fixate on the past. Like when he tried to get Sally to marry Antoine because the Source of All wants that. And he won’t just say that right away. He says that he always believed that all of his decisions were the best ones.

  He says that even this morning he was assured that all of his decisions had been correct in his life. Somehow, even though he had hired Robotnik, who proceeded to betray him. I don’t buy that exaggeration. He reminds them that he saw Sally about to be hit by an attack and tried to sacrifice his life to save hers, which caused his life to flash before his eyes. After seeing his life up to now, he knows for a fact that he does have regrets. And this surprised him?

  Hamlin had a reason to not respect him until he finally said this because if he had stayed arrogant and not learning his lesson, I would have been just as annoyed with him as Hamlin. It’s interesting to see that Hamlin would get mad at and question even HIM. It’s surprising, with the way he was given the utmost respect for the entire comic by everyone in the kingdom but Sonic. Now Hamlin’s arguing with HIM and he’s finally the guy no one likes in the council instead of the one that most of them are siding with. It’s realistic that he wouldn’t be in favor of Max because it’s been forever since he was the king and everyone liked him.

  Max is just trying to explain in an overly long-winded way that, as someone who made stupid decisions himself, he’s not one to talk on what Geoffrey did. He put Robotnik in a position of power by making him warlord and science advisor. It was his fault he became a tyrant so early in the first place, and it was Geoffrey’s fault that Ixis became a tyrant.

  And that’s the final page so far. It’s weird that the comic wasn’t divided up into issues, which would make it feel like a real comic. When I’m reading it, it feels like a good comic, because it does a lot to try and fix the damage to Archie by lightening it up and resolving all the depressing plot threads it could, even if it’s not a pure continuation because it pretends Sally was never Mecha Sally and Bunnie was never legionized at all and Geoffrey was never possessed, which makes me wonder what the point is of still using those stupid Mecha Sally Arc elements anyways, because we’re not seeing what it would be like if it actually got resolved. We’re seeing what it would be like if some bad elements of it were retconned away.

  Flynn really left his mark on Archie Sonic because there doesn’t seem to be a single fancomic afterwards that isn’t touched by what he did to it. I’d rather read a comic that COMPLETELY ignores that story arc than one that only kind of does, without removing the fact that Antoine, Sally and Bunnie were put out of commission and Geoffrey was made a traitor, and Ixis was made king. I don’t like ANY of those plot ideas. That is a more frustrating mess than the previous writers left behind because they didn’t leave the comic on a huge depressing story arc like that. ALL of the fancomics I’ve read are choosing to be stuck trying to clean up that mess when they could just ignore it and start out from the end of the Iron Queen arc at worst.

  Anyways, I could never take it seriously how the whole crossover with Sly Cooper only happened because the Chaos Emerald appeared next to Sally and warped her there for NO REASON, when it never does that. Good thing the comic tried to make itself worthwhile by trying to resolve Archie’s plot threads after Sally came home. I was constantly pleasantly surprised that Sally was almost nothing but polite and happy with Sly instead of hating him for being a thief. That’s not what I imagined at all, but it reminds me of how I felt about her in Archie. Sonic never had any drama with Sly either, despite being jealous of him and Sally’s time together. He was meaner to Knuckles at first.

  This is great for showing me what Archie Sonic Online could be like years into the future. It’ll be different from this of course, and I hope it’ll be less confusing. I don’t need King Max to have a different design, that was just ridiculous, and I’d prefer the heroes to earn their victory there, maybe bring him to an alternate universe Merlin Prower. Or Scourge’s version of Ixis, who could be a good guy.

  It made sense that nanites could easily return Bunnie to normal. Just add “ they removed the bombs in her cybernetics “ to the mix and that’s a proper resolution for her. There wasn’t one for Sally because she was never roboticized to begin with here. Antoine’s still asleep. At least Rotor got stronger. But that’s what Bunnie’s supposed to be for.

Sonic Underground’s Finale Review: Sonic Universe Issue 50

Sonic Universe Issue 50:

Alright, I hope this is good. It starts out in Robotropolis, and just like in the show, we have Sonic’s mother narrating. She says all things must come to an end. And as I expected, Robotnik’s egg-shaped base looks perfectly intact, instead of destroyed or severely damaged from when the heroes piloted planes into it, and caused a gigantic explosion on it. I guess I’ll NEVER learn how Robotnik survived that.

  I always expected there wouldn’t be an answer to that question, ‘cause that’d be too good to be true, and instead, I guess I’m supposed to assume that Robotnik was in a room where he wouldn’t get killed or injured when that was happening, and the base was repaired after the planes flew into it. I’d like at least a REFERENCE to the fact that this happened to the base last time we saw it! Oh well. I expected that. It’s not a very popular show. So it’s a miracle this issue’s even out.

  Dingo says that he thinks Robotnik likes having him and Sleet around. Sleet calls him an idiot for it, naturally. Robotnik doesn’t like anybody. But he’s missing his point here. I like that the textboxes are color-coded so I know who’s talking.

Dingo asks why they’re leaving NOW, and what makes today any different from yesterday. Sleet says, “ What use does he have for us when he has them? “ Okay, so he’s just assuming Eggman won’t wanna hunt down and kill them for abandoning him. Considering that Sleet discovered how fun blowing up his SWATbots was in the show, it is inevitable that he would eventually get sick of Eggman and would leave him. He was forced to work for him anyways.

  Something shoots something and an explosion happens, and a ship crashes in flames, and a somehow surviving Sleet looks dazed, and says he refuses to be his obedient mutt again. It’s surprising that Sleet would decide to leave Eggman again without stealing a Chaos Emerald from him for an advantage.

But the only reason I’m thinking that this would never happen in the show is that of course the show is mostly just episodic with no continuity. It is plausible that this would happen in the final episode. So Eggman says that he wants the traitors roboticized. This was the moment when everything came to a head.

  And finally, NOW, Sonic’s mother decided that her children needed her, as we see Sonic and his siblings hanging from a wall in chains. I hope I’ll learn how they got to this point. I was never a fan of non-chronological storytelling.

It doesn’t feel like Eggman earned his victory over them, because I don’t know how he succeeded. Apparently the reason Sleet said, “ What use does he have for us when he has them? “ he was talking about THESE guys. So, it makes even more sense that he left Eggman now, because they can’t do their job anymore. Still he should’ve known that Eggman would’ve found a different use for Sleet and Dingo after that.

  There’s predictable dialogue where Robotnik taunts the heroes and Sonic has faith in his mother to save them, naturally since she’s saved them so many other times. Why was an ENTIRE PAGE WASTED on this? There wasn’t any plot progression! You know what would have been better? If this page was spent on showing us how he CAPTURED them INSTEAD.

  Eggman smartly tells his robot that he wants this door under lock until he gets back, and he says, “ Adieu, “ meaning “ goodbye forever. “ If he’s planning to roboticize them, he’s planning on seeing them again, even if they’ll be roboticized, unless he plans on sending them away so he’ll never see them again, but I doubt it. So no, it’s NOT goodbye forever. But like in SA1, it makes sense that someone who’s not French would get Adieu wrong.

  Then Manic actually doubts that his mother will come to save them, despite all the times she came to save them in the past. He says he can’t even remember her face, despite seeing it in, like, the third episode. But it’s been a WHILE since then. He barely ever sees her face. He asks, “ Haven’t we needed her before? “ The only times they’ve actually needed her help, is when she came to save them.

  There’s a purple light in the room, and Aleena shows up, and says satisfyingly, “ I too wish I could have been with you sooner. “ This is nice and all, but I still wanna know how Robotnik captured the heroes. What took him so long?! I feel like if this was the show, we’d be shown how they got captured. This feels like right before the climax of the episode, not the beginning.

I’m thinking he used the footprint tracking technology that he used to capture Sonic and Manic at one point. It makes him look pretty stupid for not using that in the episodes after Sonia’s Choice though. She points her staff at them, and a light comes out of it, and suddenly they’re free from the chains, and can hug her.

She says the royal scepter has many powers, including teleportation, but only for the holder. That explains EVERYTHING. So it’s not like she herself has those powers, which would have been cool of her. But it’d also make me wonder why her children didn’t inherit those powers, from genetics, so that explains her mysterious abilities without being confusing anymore.

  She says the time has come to finally defeat Robotnik. I guess she stared into a crystal ball, or listened into people with bugs put in Robotnik’s base. Or more likely the oracle’s prophecy told her, “ hey, on this specific date, the heroes are gonna be captured and put in this specific room, so you need to go there when that happens, “ because we don’t know why she knows to come here.

So did she need to wait until Sleet and Dingo had left Robotnik because then they wouldn’t be helping him and he’d be at a huge disadvantage? I guess so. He’s without bounty hunters. But he’s got the heroes captured. Well he’d need them to try to recapture them after they’d escape from him. Too bad she didn’t think to use the royal scepter to teleport Sleet and Dingo away and have Robotnik just as disadvantaged so we could get to the finale much faster. She could’ve teleported Robotnik away.

I guess she was morally opposed to telefragging all of the villains with the ground by warping them underground since that’d be killing, and her children have morality too, so she would too. And maybe there’s a teleport range limit so she couldn’t send them to the sun or another dimension, but that should all be explained.

  She asks for their medallions. Then she smartly says that she can’t go into detail because Robotnik is surely listening in on their conversation. He JUST LEFT. But he could still have the room bugged. That robot could be listening and he could probably phone him. Sonic says, “ Prepared for WHAT? “ impatient to learn the plan when she just said she couldn’t tell them the plan yet. It would make more sense if Manic said this since he doubted Aleena earlier.

  I love that Manic says, “ Ma, you will be back, right? “ It kinda calls her out on not spending enough time with them and having to abandon them. It’s cathartic that, realistically, at least one of them would have trust issues with her, and of course it would be Manic, the one with the most harsh upbringing as a thief on the streets.

It’s sweet that she puts her hands on his back and face and smiles as she calls him, “ my dear Manic, “ and says that nothing will keep them apart ever again. She says she loves them and warps away as they look sad.

 I dunno, she spent so much time away from them with them being sad that she won’t spend time with them, I think I need to see her do a whole bunch of mother children activities with them for me to actually forgive her. I still see her as the mother who doesn’t spend enough time with them to feel like their mother.

  Sonic says he has “ getting out of this room “ covered. I guess she teleported their chains away with the staff, so that’s why they vanished. It’s confusing ‘cause the light didn’t reach their chains. Sonia makes the plan. I LOVE that. She’s the girl, so she’s the Sally of their team, complete with her wanting them to be careful and stay focused, so she should be the leader.

  She tells Manic to mess with Robotnik’s security so they can get out of the building. She should be whispering the plan, since their mother clearly thought the room was bugged, although I’m sure Robotnik’s bug or robot could reasonably be advanced enough to hear whispering. She wants to try to locate anything that might help their mother’s plan, basically navigating blind. Sonic’s gonna be the decoy and cause chaos, of course, with his super speed.

  So Sonic spindashes through robots, and Manic gets to a keyboard. But it seems like his arms have been grabbed from behind. I have to assume the person with black gloves who snuck up on him was really quiet, and in a way that would make sense. Otherwise, why didn’t he hear him coming? But there’s room for the imagination here because we just saw one panel of him. So I guess he tip-toed over to him.

  Meanwhile, in Mobodoon, Aleena warps there and is asked what she’s doing here. She needs to use the Power Stone to charge her children’s medallions. It’s a Chekhov’s Gun! For some reason the mayor has a problem with this, because apparently, that’ll cause a power surge. Never mind taking down Robotnik!

Aleena says, “ Not when I do it. “ I hope it’ll make sense that she didn’t just do this a long time ago, because as it stands, it seems like she could’ve gotten the medallions from her kids and come here in the first episode.

  Sonia says this place is so big that she can’t find Robotnik anywhere. I really love that the writer remembered the pendant she got in the Emerald Peninsula. If you didn’t watch the show, you wouldn’t know about that. She says she can only use it safely one more time. She’s convinced that because today’s the big day, it’s now or never. She shouldn’t have needed to be told that.

  So she uses it, though I still wonder if she’s using it too early. She sees Manic being held still by a big guy in front of Robotnik and the roboticizer. The monitor says what room it is. Sonia gives Sonic the directions.

So after something depressing happens and they’re faced with their adoptive parents with terrible “ Robian “ designs, someone sneaks up behind Sonic and hits him in the head. Luckily it doesn’t knock him out or give him brain damage or anything.

  And Sonic miraculously recognizes him as Sleet. I guess he looked at him to see him properly after what we see in this panel where he’s not actually facing him. I guess he recognizes him because of his outfit, because his head doesn’t look like Sleet. There’s never any excuse for not having the Robians look just like they normally would, but made of metal, or at least looking like cyborgs since I guess Underground Robotnik wants to save money on metal.

  The heroes seem to need rescuing, surrounded by Robians, never mind the fact that Sonic has a spindash and can run past and barrel into anything, so you’d think he’d be guaranteed to pick her up and run to safety anyways. I guess they’re literally surrounded.

Aleena shows up to save them and says that it’s too dangerous to use the medallions without Manic here, even though they’d be less powerful, so there’d be less of a power surge. She says SHE’LL take care of this as there’s a cool badass close-up of her face.

And she sings into a microphone she just has now, which I guess got summoned with magic. She sings and all of the Robians look stunned, like they just woke up, though it’d be made more clear if some of them asked, “ Where are we? “ but Sonia’s adoptive mother holding her head makes that understandable anyways. And I’m still contending with Chuck’s horrible design here. They couldn’t have just had him have the same coloration as he’s supposed to in Underground at least. They couldn’t have just had him have BOTH of his eyes look normal. And everyone has steam coming off of them. Good thing they can take it, being part robot.

  Sleet’s still evil though, and takes Sonia’s pendant. He wants the hedgehogs out of the way and plans on defeating Robotnik. An evil goal AND a noble goal. Sonia warns him that using the pendant again will be too dangerous.

He doesn’t listen to her. To be fair, would you? For all he knows, she’s lying to get him to not use it. I guess she assumes that if Sleet uses it, then SHE’LL get hurt as well as him, and that’s why she cares. He gets scared and sucked into a portal or something.

  And then we cut to Robotnik monologuing to Manic that he’ll be roboticized instead of immediately doing so, and monologuing to him afterwards, I guess because he’d find it anticlimactic and boring if he immediately roboticized him. He could at least make the bragging really quick, like, “ Ha! I got you! “ But instead he’s an idiot, and that’s really the whole reason he’s gonna lose?! But at least it’s completely in-character for a Robotnik. But I’m still not over how lucky Manic was to not already be roboticized by now if he was captured so long ago!

  Robotnik says that soon Manic will join his father as his servant. But I don’t recognize his father here as that Robian at all. I know that there’s a statue of King Max in the first episode of Sonic Underground. So that’s what I would expect him to look like. If Robotnik meant father as in Manic’s adoptive father, that’s confusing.

  I love that Manic calls Robotnik out, even if in a stunningly cruel way. But he IS a cynical thief. He says, “ You’re just mad because unlike me, you don’t have a dad. Or a family. Or friends. Or anyone. “ I don’t think Robotnik would care. He does apparently, since he shouts, “ I have you! “ and has him thrown in the roboticizer angrily. I guess he’s only mad at his insolence.

  And Manic is somehow able to remain cheerful and say, “ I don’t do Mondays. “ I feel like the show would portray him as scared here. Wasn’t he scared the LAST time he was in a roboticizer? It goes without saying but the art is fantastic. I’m looking at characters like Sonia and Manic, and I’m actually hearing their voices from the show in my head!

  Anyways, we see Knuckles punch away a metal part of the wall, here to save the day because Aleena teleported to him and told him to go here after she met him on Angel Island. I forgot that they knew each other because that was so confusing. We never SAW them meet. I wish that we had seen ONE PANEL of Aleena warping to Knuckles first, and saying that she was gonna gather a whole bunch of people.

  Instead this is just a surprise, more of a Deus ex Machina than a Big Damn Heroes Moment. At least in SatAM we saw Sally make a plan with the Wolf Pack in the final episode first. It’s not like in SatAM, the Wolf Pack and various other Freedom Fighters that Sally met, randomly showed up and tried to fight Robotnik in the final attack on his base. Instead we actually saw Sally talk to them first and send them on a mission, which felt more epic and engaging than this. I love that Knuckles’ dinosaur was brought back! They really cared. The last time a dinosaur showed up in the show, a dinosaur was nowhere to be found.

  Cyrus looks too short and Chibi and harmless though. You’d think the guy who was the heroes’ engineer, the heroes’ Rotor, you’d think he’d have a ray gun, to demonstrate that he’s useful because of his technology. Instead he somehow doesn’t have ANYTHING in his hands, so I don’t see how he could be useful. We see that pilot guy Trevor too. He looked like a robot to me at first. Is he?

  A whole bunch of Sonic’s allies from earlier episodes overwhelm Robotnik, which is exactly what I’d imagine the ideal finale to be like. Naturally, Aleena got them all together, because of her teleportation power. I’m not sure why she had to wait so long to do this though. She really needed ALL of them here. Sleet and Dingo have been complete non-entities in the story. But that was probably necessary and why she waited so long. She had to wait so long to get so many different allies of the heroes to overwhelm Robotnik. Well, Robotnik could still have Sleet’s shapeshifting ray and use it himself, so, he shouldn’t need Sleet.

  Manic says, “ Thanks for the save, “ and Robotnik presses a button and calls for his SWATbots, calling all of them to the control room immediately. He would’ve easily been prevented from saying all of this if the people surrounding him had the common sense to PUNCH him, and just keep punching him, like would ACTUALLY happen.

But fine. It makes sense to write it so that they have to at least fight a bunch of robots for the climax to earn the victory, even if they’re just robots that are easily killed in one hit. It’s satisfying to see Robotnik scared. But all Mindy does is just stand there. We’ll never know why she was in any way helpful when she was freedom fighting.

  I guess the reason Robotnik isn’t using Sleet’s shapeshifting ray, is because technically that would deroboticize Dingo, because then Dingo wouldn’t be a Robian anymore. But couldn’t there be a Robian setting on it? He could’ve modified that ray to be a portable roboticizer a long time ago! So yeah, if you were using Dingo, you’d think that you’d have him be shapeshifted and try to fight one of them. I guess the logic is that if he was, none of the heroes would’ve had a chance, so it had to be this way? He’d have to suck at the fight to have their victory happen.

  Instead, Dingo’s been doing nothing. And Robotnik waited until now to tell him to get in there and do something, which just makes me wonder why he didn’t do something. I guess Aleena’s song really did free the will of EVERY single Robian, so Dingo’s acting like he would normally, and just hiding it by not talking?

Robotnik, who’s only in this predicament because he was too stupid to learn from Sleet and use the shapeshifting ray on Dingo to make him fight, and instead expected him to fight as he was, and was too stupid to shapeshift HIMSELF for an epic final form… it really should be explained that the shapeshifting ray got destroyed when Sleet’s airship got crashed. That’d make sense. The idiotic Robotnik explains that as a mutant, Dingo can’t even be roboticized right. A mutant? Huh?… How could he not be roboticized right? I never imagined Dingo to not fight for him when roboticized.

He plans on telling Dingo to self-destruct. And then it’s satisfying when Dingo actually grabs him and says, “ Shut it. “ So he DOES have free will again! I was right after all! And he was just in a Tranquil Fury earlier.

  He throws Robotnik into the roboticizer, slamming his back against its wall. Robotnik has two cyborg arms, and Sonic Underground established that trying to roboticize metal causes an explosion, I guess from a chemical reaction, although Archie only ever said that it was caused from the subject already being a robot. It was only Flynn who went with the idea that metal in general would cause an explosion.

  Eggman screams no and is surrounded by blue light. It’s shockingly dark. But it makes perfect sense that someone who was normally considered a villain would be the one to do this and take down Robotnik for real. He was needed, because of course none of the heroes would have the guts to do this! They’d just have him imprisoned and he’d escape or be broken out. It is stealing Sonic’s victory over him though. Sonic did literally nothing but beat robots on the way here. But Sonic couldn’t be portrayed as killing Robotnik or anything, so it can’t be helped at the end of the day.

  It’s weird that Robotnik is surrounded by light, and isn’t covered in an explosion like he’s supposed to be. Is this foreshadowing that something else is gonna happen to him, like he’ll have a dangerous robotic final form to fight with?

After all, being a Robian means you can’t do anything but what Robotnik would want you to do. If Robotnik had that applied to him, well, he’s already Robotnik, so he’d keep doing what Robotnik would want him to do. What would be the difference? When Robo-Robotnik roboticized himself, HE kept his free will just fine.

But I guess Robo-Robotnik had to specifically program the roboticizer to keep his independent thought and free will. So, no wonder the victory had to take so long! Not only did Sonia have to have her pendant, but they had to wait for Robotnik to roboticize Dingo first, so he could catch Robotnik off guard in his room and kill him.

And I guess he wouldn’t have spent enough time with him to be fed up with him enough to kill him, if Robotnik had roboticized him the first time he threatened to, like would be realistic, because he thought Robotnik liked having him and Sleet around at the start of this issue, as if he wanted him to like them and have good in him. Then he saw the sheer magnitude of how hated Robotnik really is, and realized he could beat him in the commotion.

  Sonia asks about the Floating Island, as Knuckles is holding two Emeralds. And he says it’s worth the island being grounded for what’s about to happen. Why does she care whether the island’s grounded or not? It’s not like it being grounded for too long would destroy the world.

  Aleena tells Manic to come here, and explains that since Robotnik’s coup, she’s scoured Mobius to find the seven Chaos Emeralds. Why didn’t I see that coming? Probably because it’s the easiest possible explanation to come with for what she was really doing. Finding the Emeralds is a video game thing. And Sonic Underground isn’t anything like the games. If she told her kids she was doing this, Robotnik’s side might find out and try to look for the Emeralds too. What if her kids did and Robotnik’s side got a hold of them from them? That’s why she didn’t tell them why she was staying separate from them.

  And she didn’t wanna be captured WITH them so that she wouldn’t be able to rescue them. That would seal their fate. THAT’S why she was avoiding them. I thought she was just doing random freedom fighting missions on a whim to sabotage Eggman.

But she could have been doing that on the way. So now it makes sense that the heroes had to travel all over Mobius trying to find their mother. It’s not like she was going to the ends of the earth to avoid her children. She was doing it to find the Emeralds. And since there are just seven Emeralds the size of basketballs on a huge planet, it makes sense that she would take so long to find them.

  I have to assume that this planet doesn’t have Chaos Emerald radars. If it did, Robotnik would’ve discovered them and the Floating Island a long time ago. But instead he seemed to find out about the existence of Emeralds for the first time in THAT episode. I guess Robotnik never knew about their existence until it was too late, or else him and the heroes would’ve known about them.

  I never knew there were seven Emeralds in Sonic Underground, too, because we never saw or heard of all seven before. I thought it was more interesting and unique for there to NOT be seven. But it makes sense to reveal that there were more because there’s seven like in the games, and it’s still not exactly like the games, and still being true to Sonic Underground, because all of the Emeralds are green, like an emerald is supposed to look, like in Archie.

  The Emeralds are said to be able to work miracles. A pretty broad vague statement about their power capability. It’s the same kind of thing that was used to justify the Emeralds bringing Sonic back to life in 06, so it makes sense that they’d be able to do what they’re supposed to do here too. The heroes get given the Emeralds.

  All of them go Super, even! I was surprised because they didn’t have anything to fight. But that’s even more creative. I was surprised that they didn’t all turn golden. It’s creative to have their Super forms look like THIS instead. Giving them all Super forms for the first time is a good way to have the finale make more of a lasting impression on you.

Why does Sonia have two separate hair colors? I guess they inverted the colors on them. I mean, she usually has two different hair colors because she’s red and pink, but my point is, red and pink are a lot closer in color than this. They look confident as they pull their instruments out. I still wish Sonia looked the way she normally looked though instead of blue and gray.

  They play music, and a SWATbot explodes. I never thought there’d be a song in this issue because it’s a comic book and nobody liked the songs. But it makes sense to me that they thought it wouldn’t be Sonic Underground without a song in it.

The song brings back the free will of every Robian on earth. It doesn’t deroboticize them though. At least they get to keep the benefits of being Robians, like, having tougher skin that’s harder to damage. And the medallions never deroboticize anyone on their own.

So it makes sense that even at their most powerful, the heroes still couldn’t magic Deus ex Machina away roboticization. Good because that’s not what I would imagine. There still being a lot of work to do feels like a realistic, inevitable thing they’d have to deal with even after Robotnik’s defeat. I even talked about that earlier. Taking down Robotnik is just the FIRST step. They’d still have to deal with roboticization.

But Chuck not looking terrible anymore was one of the things everyone looked forward to from the first episode, so it’d be a shame if we never got to see him returned to normal. The heroes hug their mother, with the Oracle showing up at the very end after everything was said and done. He didn’t bother doing anything to help them this issue.

Oh, good, we see Chuck in a group hug with Sonic and Sonic’s adoptive parents, even if he’s just holding Sonic’s hand and hugging her instead of him. We see that everyone who got roboticized got returned to normal. Sonia and Manic are hugging THEIR adoptive parents and Cyrus is with his father, and even the desert guy is back to normal.

 This is all after the Council of 4 was formed. Who knows what the heroes did to get deroboticization technology going, without the DNA of anyone on the planet? I guess they went to a parallel universe to get their DNA from their counterparts. It just completely skipped past all of that. It completely skipped past any kind of process. I guess Cyrus helped a lot. He never did in the show. At least in SatAM this was foreshadowed because we saw the heroes trying and failing to get deroboticization to work.

  Chuck’s darker blue than in the show. Somehow deroboticization de-aged him, or he dyed it. He’s even darker than Sonic. But yeah I’m glad Chuck’s back to normal. Too bad we’ll never get a LINE from him because it’s all narration by the stupid oracle as if we’re supposed to like him! But it makes sense to Book End it by having narration in the ending too.

  The aristocracy was restructured, with those that had been loyal to Robotnik stripped of their noble bearing, though they were promised that with hard work ethic they could still be accepted into society. How were the heroes supposed to know which parts of the aristocracy were actually loyal to Robotnik? I can imagine most of them would’ve hated him, and only been loyal reluctantly to avoid being roboticized!

  Shockingly, we see Dingo happily frying hot dogs, as a textbox says that Robotnik and his minions are making up for past mistakes. Wait, even Robotnik? That’s supposed to be Robotnik?! Wait, Robotnik was actually roboticized instead of completely blown up? His arms were made of metal, remember? Not even his metal arms and hands were blown up?

We should have seen that if they were. It’s good that Robotnik’s been reprogrammed to be a nice helper robot. It’s a bit shady of the heroes to be fine with reprogramming someone. But it’s shockingly loving and merciful of them to have Robotnik be still around instead of in a prison. I thought he was vaporized in the roboticizer.

 I love that the hot dogs that Dingo’s selling are called Dingo Dogs. Like he really made them his own! This issue actually gets me to LIKE Dingo! It’s interesting that Robotnik’s serving chili dogs, Sonic’s favorite food, AND we don’t see Sonic eating them. I can’t help but smile at seeing this. But I’d rather see Sonic and Chuck palling around instead of one measly panel of him holding hands with Sonic. We never see him talk to Sonic again! That’s not what I’d imagine and look forward to. Instead of seeing a scene where he finally talks to him again for the first time in years, he’s more like a cameo!

  It turns out Sleet was trapped in the pendant, in a pocket dimension. I guess they have to put food in there. How does he not starve to death? I’ve been giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming there’s tons of food and water and breathable atmosphere in there. It’s more like the portal to a green planet with nobody in it, I guess.

I thought he was killed or could never be talked to again. He stubbornly refuses to help Dingo sell chili dogs, because all he wanted was probably to replace Robotnik. He thinks that all he deserves to be in life is someone actually important, not a chili dog salesman. The narration says that many more adventures will happen. I don’t see HOW though. Their adventures are obviously over! They don’t have any more villains to fight!

  Well, that was awesome. This issue was by Enigma. I really wish I knew how Robotnik managed to capture all three of the hedgehogs! That’s the WHOLE reason this story STARTED, and we NEVER find out the answer! I can only ASSUME it makes sense! I mean, he managed to get Sonic and Manic captured in Sonia’s Choice. So he is competent enough to get it done.

But COME ON! How did he GET to that point?! It feels like the story started out in the climax of the episode when the actual episode would’ve showed us how Robotnik captured them! Maybe it would’ve been a two parter. Did he give Sleet and Dingo the Sonic Tonic again? I guess he tracked their footprints again!

  Well as long as I ignore how much I hate that it starts In Media Res, it was still a good story. I was perfectly calm throughout it, just casually going through it instead of having to constantly stop to point out problems with it and ways it was disappointing. It had a coherent plot I could actually follow instead of EVERY plot point being confusing, like a deviantart comic.

  What happened was, it turns out that the reason it had to take so long for the finale to happen in-universe was that not only did Sonia need that pendant for direction, but according to the prophecy Aleena knew about, I guess, she had to wait until Sleet finally got fed up with working for Robotnik again, which was foreshadowed, because he loved blowing up SWATbots in the show, so him abandoning him was inevitable with such a bad boss.

So Robotnik got Sleet and Dingo roboticized. And this backfired on him big-time. If he had Sleet’s shapeshifting ray with him, he could have gotten Dingo to fight instead of just having weak SWATbots. It’s finally explained that the royal scepter is why Aleena could teleport. It’s not that she was training under a wizard like the oracle to unlock her own powers. At least that’s simple and explains why the HEROES don’t have those powers. So she teleports away the heroes’ chains, and goes back to Mobodoon to power up their medallions with the Power Stone. It’s always great to have Continuity Nods in the finale.

  And we have them in spades because thanks to Aleena, all of the allies that the heroes got across the show, overwhelm Robotnik in his main room when he’s about to roboticize Manic, and trash his SWATbots when he somehow gets the chance to summon them. Well, they’ve gotta be written to do SOMETHING instead of just intimidating Robotnik into doing nothing by standing in a crowd, after the sheer surprise of them barging into the room made Eggman hesitate enough to not just roboticize him in a single motion.

  So that’s all they did after all those episodes? One page of them trashing SWATbots? After one panel of seeing how they got to this point? Well, I guess that was all they could’ve done. They were just fighters. And there was only so much comic space. So it would’ve wasted comic space to show them trying to get to this point. Better than SatAM where the heroes’ extra allies were useless and just got captured, so meeting the Wolf Pack was a waste of time. And SWATbots can be kicked down by Sonia. So why not have them get kicked down by everyone else too?

  So the heroes needed to have met all of those allies to have overwhelmed Robotnik and intimidated him into standing still for a while, and then getting Dingo fed up with him by insulting him for not helping out and trying to get him to destroy himself, because he had grabbed the Idiot Ball and didn’t just use Sleet’s shapeshifting ray on him. But even then Dingo would have just been one person fighting along with the SWATbots.

Dingo needed to have worked for him for a long time to have felt like betraying him and getting him roboticized. So these things explain why the finale took so long to happen. So they basically did everything perfectly.

  While yes, Robotnik logically would’ve roboticized Sleet and Dingo much earlier, the first time he threatened to, the heroes still needed to go through all those episodes to recruit enough allies that they could all defeat the SWATbots with sheer number and get Dingo to beat Robotnik when he thought he was on his side.

  But he wasn’t, because Aleena used the powered up medallions to bring the Robians back their free will with the power of her voice. Of course it was her voice because the heroes were in a rock band, and she should contrast the heroes by NOT having an instrument, because she’s already the adult of the group.

  Even the pendant was brought back, even if instead of hurting or defeating Robotnik, it just trapped Sleet in it when he tried to be a threat to them. But it also made sure the heroes knew Manic was kidnapped and where he was, which is why they tried to go find him, and why Aleena knew where to go find them and save them. I guess she knew where they were because of the prophecy’s instructions. So if it weren’t for the pendant, Manic would’ve been roboticized.

  Dingo finally turning on Robotnik and doing something Sonic wouldn’t have the guts to do is much more satisfying than a pendant Sonia just found out of nowhere magically defeating Robotnik. Instead it was used creatively, which is more tolerable for something she’s very lucky she even managed to get. I was surprised that we actually got to see what would happen if someone used it when it wasn’t safe to.

  We finally got to see Sonic’s uncle brought back to normal. It’s still not good enough though because he doesn’t have any dialogue. We don’t see a scene where he was like, “ Sonic? “ and then they’d hug. It’s just happening as the stupid oracle is narrating over it as if we’d want him to talk again. It’d feel better to see the adoptive parents back to normal if they actually got to talk, and be used as characters. Instead their interaction with the heroes is entirely constrained to one panel, with no dialogue to get you invested in it. And then they stop being characters forever.

  I love that even Dingo got a happy ending. He’s serving chili dogs to people and happy about it. I’m not so sure about Robotnik doing that though. At least he’s making up for things, but I’m pretty sure he was supposed to explode in the roboticizer. Maybe his metal arms did explode but the organic parts of him didn’t, naturally. His arms do look different from how they normally do here.

  It was a creative twist that instead of being sent to another dimension like in SatAM or killed like in Archie, he got to make up for his mistakes, even if he had to be reprogrammed to do so. He got the PERFECT ironic punishment, being turned into a robot himself and losing his free will. It’s surprising that the heroes didn’t get too self-righteous and refuse to do that to him. I wouldn’t expect him to still be alive! I guess his organic parts were still roboticized just fine, and were just damaged by the metal parts exploding on him. And then he got repaired.

  We never did see a cyborg being roboticized would turn out, just a robot, so it can work. I’d just expect the explosion of the metal parts to be so huge and hot that even the roboticized organic parts would be destroyed, along with the entire roboticizer. But it can make sense that the explosion wasn’t that big if only a small part of him was made of metal compared to the rest of his body. But that’s just one panel of it being not how I expect.

  If the whole idea was to have Dingo make up for his mistakes, the first thing I would think of is, they’d be at a charity, like at a soup kitchen, not serving chili dogs which any random guy could do. It’s kinda weird that they just have a normal guy job to make up for their mistakes, when it’s a job they could get replaced in, anyways. I’d expect them to be charity workers but, it makes sense because Sonic really loves chili dogs.

  The entire issue was great. For the most part, it was exactly what I wanted in a finale, and there were even some creative surprises in it. I should’ve known Aleena was collecting the Chaos Emeralds. I just figured there were only a few because we only ever saw a few. I guess she warped to Angel Island and had any Emeralds she found hidden there. That’s why we never saw her hold any.

  So she had the heroes go Super with them, and the power of the medallions combined with the Emeralds ended up bringing back the mind of every Robian permanently. The medallions can return free will temporarily on their own, so this was foreshadowed. And they were even powered up by the Power Stone as WELL as the Super forms, putting the extra effort to have it make sense, just in case someone would wonder how the Emeralds alone would let them do this, since the Emeralds aren’t known for having powers like this.

  And it seems like the writer even liked Sonic Underground, averting what I was worried about the whole time. Considering that Sonic Universe Issue 51 came out BEFORE this, I was worried we’d either never get this issue out at all, or it’d be put off until Antoine and Bunnie got back, because it’s Sonic Underground. We’re lucky this issue even exists. There’s obviously more fan demand for Antoine and Bunnie to get back.

  I was fine with this story. As usual Archie Sonic Online is fantastic and stuns me with how not bad it usually is. All of these pages and my only huge gripes with the issue were confined to TWO pages. I hate that we don’t know how Robotnik captured the heroes, that was rushed and underwhelming. I hate that Chuck didn’t get to say anything after being returned to normal after ALL of that WAITING! And as I expected, they never explained why Robotnik survived the heroes sending planes to crash into his base at the end of the previous episode, and just pushed the Reset Button lazily. So I hated that it ignored that.

  But I can always assume that Robotnik pulled a SatAM Snively and escaped to safety in an escape pod, and the base got reconstructed before the finale. Maybe the base was made of some really special stuff, like carbon nanotubes. And Manic was just a kidnapping victim. But he did tons of stuff in the show itself.

  So that’s not too bad. At least it wasn’t Sonia who got kidnapped. At least it made sense that it happened to him. And Aleena got to hug the heroes a bunch of times. So she was trying to make up for things. She said that she wished she could’ve reunited with them a lot sooner. And Manic didn’t even trust her at first, so it kinda calls her out on being absent so much.

Everything Good about Sonic Retold Issues 1-4

1: Issue 1 by glitcher: Remington punches out some Dark Legionnaires to save a kid.

2: Lien-Da complains about Albion being just a site for more pointless bloodshed and wants to save what’s left of her kind.

3: Lara calls Lien-Da out on working for Eggman.

4: When Lien-Da taunts Sonic that Eggman’s good at weaponizing Mobians like her, and Sally, Sonic spindashes at her chest and sends her flying away.

5: Sonic saves Lara-Le.

6: Lara thanks Sonic.

7: Amy, Sonic and Tails feel sorry for Remington, after the most memorable part of this fancomic.

8: It’s polite of Orbot to ask Lien-Da if she had a nice day.

9: Lien-Da’s horrified by Eggman’s plan to use the Genesis Wave to recreate the world so he’ll be a god. 9.

10: Issue 2 by glitcher: Wyn and Lara-Le hug.

11: Sonic says that while Knuckles can be a jerk, he’d do anything to help the echidnas if he knew they needed it.

12: Sonic stays calm around Remington and doesn’t get mad at him to the point of them trading blows when Remington wants to unite the echidna race and is putting the captured Legionnaires to work.

13: He’s even wise enough to consider getting someone to supervise Remington.

14: Silver’s smart enough to decide to go to the Krudzu for a deroboticizing agent alone, since if it’s still active, it could infect Shard, so he tells Shard not to come with him.

15: Julie-Su holds Knuckles’ hand and says it’s important that he keep fighting for the Brotherhood’s legacy, saying that they were dedicated to protecting echidnas.

16: Dimitri relates to knuckles saying he knows how it feels to be separated from your family.

17: Knuckles says sweetly that if a guardian can become friends with two defected Dark Legionnaires, anything is possible.

18: It’s surprisingly smart of Sonic to end the message to Knuckles about Albion right after making it so that he can’t argue against going there.

19: After Safron’s told to guard the Master Emerald, it cuts to night and she says she needs to go to the little girl’s room. My dad chuckled at that.

20: Amy cares enough about Tails to tell him to get some beauty sleep,

21: and it was kinda charming that she showed vanity there.

22: It is properly menacing and interesting that the Tails Doll was used to spy on Elias and Sonic’s conversation for Eggman, like it did in the reboot later. He has an antenna, so him being a spy makes sense.

23: It’s moral of the queen to think that helping the Wolf Nation will remind Max of everything good the Acorn Kingdom stands for.

24: We finally get to see Sonic’s reaction to Mina’s mom being on the Council of Acorns. “ Score one for the good guys! “

25: It’s cute to see Tails riding piggy-back on Amy asleep. Amy cares enough to do that for him.

26: Cream says she always dreamed of being a princess with a castle, which gives her a charming girly little girl moment for once instead of her just being a polite girl.

27: Meg at least explains that she couldn’t stay In Feral Forest after Eggman attacked it twice with his robots.

28: Cream calls Rosie “ Ms. Woodchuck. “ She has a last name after all.

29: It’s kinda sweet to see Dr. Quack with his wife and kids again. It humanizes him that he’s dressed like a father for once.

30: Ixis does make a good point saying that he did save the town from Eggman while Elias was powerless and ended up running away from it, so he thinks he earned being the king. I understand him for a change.

31: Compared to A Sly Encounter, it’s great that Ixis is possessing Geoffrey here because it makes it a proper continuation of Archie Sonic, an actual attempt at a replacement.

32: Geoffrey calls out Ixis on trying to threaten Elias when possessing him, saying that Elias could’ve killed him.

33: It’s charming to see an Off Panel where Cream’s having a tea party with tons of villains. Because she thinks tea parties could solve all the world’s problems, we see the sheer novelty value of that.

34: Mammoth Mogul compliments how sweet the tea is.

35: Eggman asks why he even showed up, looking confused.

36: Cream sweetly asks Metal Sonic if he wants some more sugar with his tea.

37: Finitevus adds to his character, by saying that he prefers coffee.

38: Dimitri tells Knuckles he’ll do anything to prove his sincerity about wanting to make up for things. 29.

39: Issue 3 by glitcher: Lien-Da’s smart enough to figure out that Eggman’s probably gonna wipe the echidnas out with the Genesis Wave.

40: Gae-Na warns Lien-Da that if Eggman finds out they wanna do an unauthorized attack on Albion, they’ll be in trouble, so she’s smart here.

41: Lien-Da justifies the risk, saying they need to strike Albion fast and liberate someone powerful enough to turn things in their favor, because Eggman wants to activate the Genesis Wave. It’s intriguing that she wants to do some independent goal against Eggman.

42: At least we’re seeing stuff happening during Lien-Da’s monologue about how someone who could destroy the echidna race is being held captive in Albion. We see Lara-Le get water from a well.

43: At least it’s memorably whimsical and demented of Eggman to give Lien-Da orders from the bathtub while Mecha Sally is bathing him with a sponge. It makes sure you remember how evil Eggman really is in a creative way, at least. It’s more creative to show Eggman use Mecha Sally for more than just combat. There’s more variety.

44: For once Lien-Da is relatable because she’s horrified and unhappy the whole time that she’s in there.

45: It was nice of Eggman to think of Sally as glorious and perfected after she flies away, instead of refusing to acknowledge anything good about her at all.

46: It’s interesting to see Eggman in a white sleeveless shirt for a change,

47: and it shows his muscles, making him more intimidating than usual.

48: It’s good that he has more of a round Classic Eggman shape this way, while still managing to be intimidating, complete with wearing goggles while welding.

49: It is more respectful to Sally that it’s made clear that she’s stressed out at Eggman welding her, unlike in Archie Sonic. There’s some beeping showing how she’s feeling, while Eggman says he doesn’t hear her complaining anyways. It’s not like she’s being treated just like any old robot Eggman’s improving like in Archie Sonic, which doesn’t take it quite as seriously, like when he replaced her heart with a Ring.

50: It’s realistic that Sonic says it’s chilly up in the sky on the wing of the Tornado. For once that’s addressed.

51: Sonic and Amy are wearing brown jackets for once, dressed for the cold temperature.

52: The Tornado is thankfully blue and yellow.

53: Sonic thanks Amy for being supportive of him and Sally,

54: and Tails smiles at their friendship moment.

55: At least now we know one of the hobbies of Lyco and Leeta. They play cards and Lyco gets excited when they play.

56: Sally’s mom thanks Lupe for the hospitality.

57: Lupe explains that the former king and queen are offering them financial aid.

58: It’s compassionate of the former queen to apologize for Mecha Sally’s attack and want to fix things.

59: Cream wisens up and realizes that the Tails Doll’s constant disappearances align with the nanite malfunctions, and warns Rotor.

60: Geoffrey’s sad while saying that he’d hate if Dr. Quack knew the pain of losing a loved one, since he does.

61: It makes Vanilla look more like a responsible mother that not only did she tell Cream to brush her teeth later,

62: but Cream had to lie to her that she was having a sleepover with Team Freedom when she was gonna go fight the Tails Doll with them.

63: Vanilla also calls her sweetie.

64: It’s satisfying to see the heroes instantly attack the Tails Doll. That’s common sense instead of what Flynn wrote. Immediately Rotor tackles it and throws it for Nicole to trap it in a bubble.

65: At least Big and Rotor have a dynamic. Because Big was actually dressed for a sleepover, Rotor gets mad at him because it was clearly just a cover story.

66: It’s sweet to see an Off Panel where Nicole used nanites to let Cream be a princess with a little pink castle. While Rotor thinks it’s a waste, Nicole says, “ She deserves to have a little fun. Plus she promised I could be princess tomorrow. “ 28.

67: Issue 4 by glitcher: Nicole uses a force field shield from nanites to protect herself from the Tails Doll’s laser.

68: It’s kinda satisfying to see Cream jump on Tails Doll hitting it and call it out, “ You tricked me and tried to hurt my friends! “

69: It’s creative that the way Tails Doll gets defeated is that when Big throws Froggy at it, it laughs, and that reveals its weak spot and the crystal gets destroyed,

70: by Rotor after he throws Bomb at the crystal.

71: It’s at least smart to keep the Tails Doll fight fast-paced, since Archie Sonic Online and the reboot already had a giant Tails Doll fight. Although considering how I felt about the Silver fight later, maybe it should’ve lasted longer and happened in place of the Silver fight, which logically would’ve been avoided with his telekinesis.

72: Rotor is smart enough to stop Nicole from completely destroying the Tails Doll because if its memory banks are intact, they can be used to let them find out what information it sent to Eggman. Because he said this, the heroes were able to know to send help to the Wolf Nation.

73: Silver throws the dumb rabbit girl to the ground with telekinesis, which punishes her for accusing him of working for Eggman like an idiot.

74: Robin calls out his so-called friends on fighting Silver and threatens Bow into leaving him alone.

75: Bow doesn’t argue with Robin. He says he didn’t know he knew Silver.

76: At least one of them tries to make it up to Silver a little bit, using his gnashers to get him the Krudzu.

77: I’m glad Silver thinks, “ Idiots, “ when he flies away with the Krudzu in hand, considering how enraging the Mercians were to Silver here.

78: At least for once we see a scene where Alicia makes it clear how much she loves Max. She tells a story about him having to stop his horse in front of her and getting sent off it and saying that Aurora sent him an angel, and eventually there was a point where he looked at her eyes back then to see the stars in her eyes. And Max in the present actually says, “ so I could see the stars in your eyes. “ Not to mention they were sharing a sleeping bag the whole time. For once they actually feel like husband and wife, not just Sally’s overprotective parents.

79: Eventually Alicia kisses his forehead.

80: It’s surprisingly competent of Heavy to be able to fly to Freedom HQ to get Elias a Warp Ring.

81: The human girls Lupe adopted call her Mom,

82: and throw rocks at Mecha Sally to save her from her head laser, being brave, and it doesn’t backfire on them.

83: When Knuckles returns to Albion, he hugs his mother and apologizes for not being there. 17.

Every Plot Hole in Sonic Retold:

1: Issue 1 by glitcher: Why would someone powerful enough to win the war be imprisoned in Albion instead of used to take down Eggman? He came out of nowhere.

2: Sonic jumps way too high just to get to Lien-Da when she’s on the roof, which isn’t a believable enough way for him to progress to that point to be satisfying. It’s not Sonic X or Boom where he can jump super high normally. He gets a Deus ex Machina power just to get to Lien-Da and cause her to retreat.

3: Why was Komi-Ko singled out and taken to the infirmary for the experimental legionization method? Why her in particular? Why nobody else?

4: Why would the Dark Legionnaires have even considered trying that new legionization method when the old one worked fine? Why would they bother taking the risk of trying to have someone survive this kind of thing when of course they couldn’t, and she was reduced to a head with metal below it? This wouldn’t happen. So it’s a Diabolus ex Machina Deus Angst Machina. The only reason this overly dark thing happened was that a character got the Idiot Ball, which is Flynn style writing, because she only died because the Legion was too stupid.

5: It’s completely forced that Knuckles didn’t show up in Albion this issue when Archie Sonic clearly showed Nicole giving Knuckles the message to go save Albion, and in fact, we saw that TWICE!

6: Issue 2 by glitcher: It seems Out of Character for Constable Remington to suddenly want to conquer the Dark Legion and unite the echidna race. He’s just supposed to be a constable. He even thinks Sonic will support that when he should know that a Freedom Fighter would hate even the word “ conquer. “

7: NOBODY realizes that the Dark Legionnaires having bombs in their cybernetics means that eventually Eggman’s gonna blow them up when he realizes they’re gone, or Lien-Da herself would. Everyone thinks that forcing them to help rebuild Albion will be a good idea and won’t just result in Eggman using them as bombs against them. Sonic knows about the bombs because he saw Lien-Da get blown up by them, and he doesn’t warn Remington about this. Logic would dictate that they would remove the bombs in the captured Legionnaires first but that’s not mentioned.

8: Julie-Su despairs and thinks they’ll never fix Haven because she and Knuckles haven’t yet even though she should know that Knuckles could get the help of some brilliant engineer he’s friends with like Rotor, so rather than despairing, she would’ve told him to get Rotor or Chuck’s help fixing it weeks ago. If they’re too busy, she should tell Knuckles they’d do it for them later. She would stay calm and relaxed because she’d know that Haven would get fixed eventually.

The minute after she told Knuckles it was probably hopeless, she went on to tell Knuckles they’re not giving up after he ranted about how important it was to him. Rotor was able to build a portal to The Void and The Reverse Universe in his lab. So I’m sure he could make a portal to the Twilight Zone for him to rescue the Brotherhood in a minute, and yet neither of them thought to go to him.

9: Would Julie-Su really be so mean to Dimitri, being mad that he’s even there? She’s a reformed Legionnaire, she should just be happy that he left Eggman and the Dark Legion and went to help Knuckles just like she did.

10: Why would Knuckles and his friends trust merely Safron with guarding the Master Emerald?! She doesn’t have any weapons! They’d obviously give her weapons at least!

11: Tails somehow didn’t trust the engineers of Albion with his plane and stayed up all night because he thought he needed to make sure they wouldn’t take his plane apart. What is wrong with him?

12: You’d think Sonic would check up on home by calling anyone EXCEPT Elias. I’d expect that of SALLY. If he wants to check up on home, you’d think he’d check up on his own home, on his family. Why’d he even think to call Elias, when he goes on to ask him why he’s back in the city in this very scene? So he didn’t even know he was in the city yet.

13: The king and queen traveled to another nation on their own, with no bodyguards at all. Meanwhile in Issue 134, when they considered going to all sorts of different nations on a vacation to tell them to go fight Eggman, they at least had “ Antoine “ and Chuck with them. And they’re going to the wolf pack nation not only to give it some aid after Sally’s attack on it, but also to ensure cooperation with their kingdom against Eggman, when that was already ensured. Sally already visited Lupe and became an honorary member of the Wolf Pack.

14: T-Pup tries to bite Amy’s hand for petting him. Tails isn’t evil, so he wouldn’t have programmed that.

15: Elias’ family decides to return to a city that Ixis is ruling over when the whole reason they left the city was to avoid Ixis trying to kill them to make sure that the crown wouldn’t go to his family. Why would Nicole even agree to them coming back, why would she ever think that they would be safer here, when she KNOWS about the malfunctioning nanites problem that destroyed a stage of a concert earlier?!

Meg didn’t wanna stay In Feral Forest just because Eggman attacked it twice, but that’s still her HOME, and she should know that it was only attacked because it was on the way to the North Pole when Death Egg was passing by and it’s long since left the forest behind. It’s not gonna come back to that place for a while. She would’ve waited until Ixis was dethroned before returning to the city obviously.

16: Cream isn’t supposed to be stupid enough to consider writing Eggman a letter begging him to be gentle with Mecha Sally.

17: Elias is shockingly stupid enough to demand his crown back openly when he left the city and went into hiding for good REASON. He doesn’t have any special powers! He may not be aware that Ixis is possessing Geoffrey and therefore could kill him with magic right now, but STILL, he should’ve known that “ Geoffrey “ would say that he’s gonna have him thrown in the dungeon. Elias wouldn’t get himself in trouble publicly demanding his throne back. If he was the type to do this, he would’ve done this a long time ago. He’s such a dumbass here. The only reason he got off scot-free was that the Tails Doll collapsed the castle and caused Ixis to run away, and,

18: despite the fact that the story ends with Ixis going into a portal planning on killing Elias, he never does. The next issue has Elias safe and with the heroes and Ixis is only occupied with an appointment with Dr. Quack. It’s like he forgot.

19: Somehow possessing Geoffrey did cure Ixis’ sickness. Ixis in Archie Sonic got a magical problem where the Genesis Wave is causing his body to mutate randomly and his magic to malfunction because he had become the way he did by fusing with other wizards. Considering that it’s a problem with his mind and his own magic, why in the world is it that in this comic, him possessing Geoffrey is actually stopping the mutations?

Somehow this is making Ixis stronger and healing him. Archie Sonic Online made more sense. Of course being in Geoffrey’s body didn’t stop the mutations because the wizards in his head were going to be in his head and bother him and he was going to have his own defective magic regardless of whether he was possessing Geoffrey or not.

20: Issue 3 by glitcher: How was Dr. Quack’s medication doing anything to help Ixis with his MAGICAL problem? He says this should ease the pain as long as he doesn’t stress himself. Why would Ixis be in pain at a time where he isn’t being mutated?

21: It’s an Idiot Ball for Dr. Quack to think Ixis would agree to let Elias do the work for him and rest when he’s sick.

22: It’s a much bigger Idiot Ball of Dr. Quack to think he could get away with refusing to treat a powerful evil wizard. Of COURSE Ixis threatened his family to get him to keep treating him, even if he doesn’t cooperate with his doctor’s advice.

23: When Nicole traps Tails Doll in a nanite bubble, she doesn’t instantly crush it to death by causing the bubble to shrink. She could’ve not had the head of it be crushed, so the heroes could still salvage data from its CPU to find out what info Eggman got out of it.

24: How did Tails Doll expand to a giant form inside the nanite bubble and break it? It looked like a force field, how could it break it that way? It would just be destroyed by expanding inside of it. If she could make a whole castle, why couldn’t she make a giant force field around the giant form of the Tails Doll and crush it immediately? She would’ve crushed it in all the time it was saying its self-repair was complete. There wouldn’t have been a whole fight scene with it in the first place, because NICOLE was there.

25: Issue 4 by glitcher: How can Nicole know that the energy core is in Tails’ Doll’s head right away when she didn’t detect it in the city in all this time?

26: Why did Big think throwing Froggy at a giant robot would be a good idea? No one would be dumb enough to think that, one, it would damage the robot enough, when even if he threw it with his super strength the frog would still only go through or dent a very small part of the robot, and two, he wouldn’t think Froggy would survive this. And he had to have this Idiot Ball to get the Tails Doll to start laughing at him.

27: The Tails Doll was programmed to laugh at his enemies when doing so would expose his weak spot and guarantee his defeat. The heroes didn’t entirely earn their victory because they just got really lucky from two dumbass moments. That’s not how I’d wanna picture their fight.

28: When the Mercian Freedom Fighters pick a fight with Silver, he doesn’t just immediately held them all still with telekinesis. He did that to everyone in the room in Hedgehog Havoc! So he would’ve done that. There is NO way on earth that these guys would have the chance to get a bunch of hits in on Silver and even have him thrown up in the air! A telekinetic who can fly would never be thrown around like a rag doll and humiliated like this as I’m infuriated with them for accusing him knee-jerk of working for Eggman.

29: Why would they think he’s on Eggman’s side just because he was talking to Shard the robot? Obviously if he was working for him, he would have cybernetics like the Legionnaires, and he doesn’t even have a black robe. The only reason they fought him was that they all grasped the idiot ball and conflict ball. Silver would’ve flown upwards with his telekinesis or grabbed them all directly. He would’ve thought to do that immediately. It’s called fight or flight response and he is capable of flight.

30: Silver would’ve just used telekinesis to get the Krudzu by getting the metal out of the way. He wouldn’t have ever thought he needed one of the Mercian Freedom Fighters to use their gnashers. He would’ve just telekinetically brought the Krudzu to him, and then flew away with it avoiding the entire fight scene.

31: For some reason the king and queen aren’t captured by Eggman’s forces in the wolf pack nation the night after Eggman had Mecha Sally sent to kill them. They would’ve been captured so they could be held in one place where no one could go defend them from Mecha Sally. They wouldn’t have even had a chance, since they took until that night to discover from the Tails Doll that Mecha Sally was sent after their parents.

32: According to this comic, Alicia first met her husband as a girl when he almost rode his horse into her and was thrown off the horse. But that’s not true. They knew each other when they were 11 and were already bethrothed back then because it was a marriage arranged by the Source of All. They wouldn’t have had a romantic first meeting where he would’ve been riding the horse.

33: When Shard objected to the order from Rotor to go protect Sally’s parents, on the basis that the wolf girls needed protection right here, Rotor simply flew away saying, “ Shard, the convoy! “ and went away to do who knows what, when obviously he would’ve stuck around and told him to follow his ORDER, instead, and made sure he carried it out. Max’s death would’ve obviously never happened. Was it even in-character for Shard to do this, to not realize that he should be protecting Sally’s parents since he’s really fast and able to fly?

Wasn’t it obvious to him that Sally’s parents were of a higher priority to protect than some wolf girls? Max’s death only happened because of Idiot Balls on the parts of Shard and Rotor. Who knows what Rotor went off to do. Why would he think whatever he was gonna do with his nanite suit was more important than assisting Shard in protecting Sally’s parents? Having drama happen because of Idiot Balls is a Flynn problem, and this comic has the gall to do it too.

34: Eggman wouldn’t say that now it’s over and order Mecha Sally to fly away. Nobody capable of beating up Mecha Sally and rescuing her was there at the time. So even Eggman would’ve known that he could’ve just told Mecha Sally to finish off Elias and his mother right there. Neither of them were able to fight Mecha Sally. So he gets an Idiot Ball.

35: Somehow Mecha Sally was still functional after she got struck by lightning even though metal conducts electricity. She was still able to fly back to the Death Egg just fine.

36: How is the robotic Mecha Sally able to cry real tears?

37: She was able to refuse to kill Max and force Eggman to override her free will with a switch, well, but how is that possible? The entire way she’s been reprogrammed is that she has free will until the point where she’d want to disobey Eggman. Why would Eggman make an override switch instead of having its programming just be in Sally to begin with?

Rick and Morty Comic Reviews: Books 6-8 Issues 36-60

Issue 36: A Jerry Bad Day

  Jerry starts out the story driving while asking how a business center for copy and print doesn’t have a specific type of paper because he needs to get a stand-out resumé with it. It was confusing at first glance because he didn’t seem to be talking to anyone. At ten miles from his destination, he says that if he has to drive an hour to get the right paper, he’s going to, and then he desperately hopes they’ll be really impressed by his effort and hire him on the spot because they might know the city’s out of ivory paper. That’s dumb.

  Then he sees a sign that’s using his slogan from the show for pears instead. He gets mad enough to yell at the GPS for telling him to drive where he’s supposed to. He gets made fun of as a freak for getting mad, and the girl gets mad at HIM when it should be obvious to them that he’s yelling at his GPS, not them. HE’S LOOKING AT IT! He’s even explaining himself!

  Instead, he gets thrown out of the car, because he happened to have his window open, and gets attacked. At least it was sweet of the couple to show they love each other because the guy was like, “ Gosh, I love doing stuff with you so much. “ Then Jerry gets caught in a bear trap in the city and says this doesn’t even make sense. I laughed right away at him asking just what I was gonna. “ Why would there even be a bear trap here? “ So it was just there to be funny and it worked, so fine. Maybe a Rick dropped it here through a portal, and he pressed the button for the wrong dimension by accident.

  He asks a woman to help him back to her car. It’s unrealistic that she just says she doesn’t have change when he’s clearly saying he’s bleeding. And because she says, “ Car, “ with a smile, it immediately gives away that she wants to steal his car. But he has no choice but to trust her because he’s desperate. It makes sense that he’d open up to her because it’s better than an awkward silence on the way home.

  It’s interesting that he actually told her he was upset about his slogan being stolen and she reacted to it. She brings him to her hotel and actually takes his bear trap off. Then her entitled boyfriend kicks open the door and accuses her of cheating on him. Why does he think that helping him out of a bear trap was a euphemism when the bear trap’s right there? He threatens him with a knife and she says that Jerry has a car. He complains that he told her they’d just steal a car, and she asks if he even knows how.

  He shows he has something in common with Jerry by complaining that his girlfriend’s emasculating him. She acts nice to him as he appreciates the gesture, saying that they can’t rob the bank on foot. Jerry says he could just rent them a car, naturally not wanting his car implicated, and the girl just slaps him and he’s called a sissy. Why didn’t they rent a car? I guess they’re that poor. They can’t let him go because he might tell the cops.

  Then reality ensues because the door gets knocked on by the police because some of their neighbors said it sounded like there was a domestic incident in here. Wintergreen tells Jerry to put something in his pants. The cop blames them for Jerry being hurt and says he’ll have to arrest them. The cop gets bribed and says he’s as human as the next guy. I like that there was a silence first where he thought about this to make it feel more justified because there was a transition to this. I thought he’d be a normal cop.

  He says he won’t take them in if Jerry does a dance for him, or else he shoots all of them. The cop enjoys it and tells him to take his shirt off and spin it around as he humorously smirks. Well I like that the cop looks like just any normal guy and isn’t a TOTAL stereotype. He’s just the stereotypical cop instead. Jerry complains in a hilariously whiny line, “ I just wanted a new resume! “ and the cop gets knocked out by Wintergreen while he’s distracted. She says they’ve gotta get out of here and meet Wintergreen’s cousin in the car.

  Jerry’s made to be their driver on top of everything else. He gets smacked in the back of the head and is told off for having so much hand lotion. Well he was made a little too unlikable in the comic, he’ll even suggest replacing Summer with a clone, so I don’t feel like getting mad at the writer here. I can understand why with this character. So it just makes an interesting plot.

  Jerry’s threatened that the bank robber will find him if he drives away, and he’ll kill him and his whole family. Jerry says after they run off, “ Well that’s not as much a threat as you think it is, “ smirking with a cool expression, but surprisingly, he still didn’t drive off. So what was the point of that? I guess to remind us that he deserves this a bit. I mean how are they supposed to find him after he’d run off anyways? These idiots don’t know that bank notes are marked anyways.

  They run back into the car with one of them injured, and it turns out that one of them dropped the money, and that person has hand lotion all over them. And impressively, it’s explained why they wanted to rob a bank instead of the writer just leaving it at, “ they’re bad guys so hate them. “ They had to try to do this to pay for their grandma’s dialysis, since they don’t live in Canada.

  The bank robbers complain because someone lost their cool at the first sign of a gun, and the lady says, “ I told you your cousin didn’t have the stones for this. “ Wintergreen surprisingly says that his girlfriend isn’t his, she’s no one’s possession. That’s better than him being a domestic abuser like I immediately assumed when he kicked open the door. But it comes out of nowhere.

The cousin complains that there was a screw-up because there was more than one guard in there. Why did he think there wouldn’t be more than one guard in there? Was one of the guards on break when he checked?

  The cousin’s insulted for leaving the bag behind, and when Jerry’s car hits a bump on the road, the rifle gets sent falling and shoots, killing everyone in the car except Jerry, conveniently. And because the windows are stained, of course the cop pulls him over. But it turns out it’s the same cop from earlier.

  And he assumes Jerry assaulted him, when he was hit on the BACK of the head, and Jerry was in FRONT of him. He should have remembered he was in front of him because he was in front of him for quite a long time because he told him to start dancing. That’s forced. It would’ve made sense if they went with what they were going for before, where he got pulled over because of the mess.

  Then out of nowhere a bear in the middle of the CITY kills the cop. I guess the bear was an escaped exotic pet. So THAT’S why the bear trap was there! It was actually explained! That’s how great the comic is. Then to add insult to injury, when Jerry shows up at the business, he’s told that they’re all sold out of the paper he wanted. I guess he had to use Rick’s portal gun to get rid of the bank robbers from his car.

  This is by Kyle Starks. This managed to still be an interesting enough plot even though it just involved Jerry and had no sci-fi stuff in it at all. I wish it didn’t have such gore in it, though. The whole story is about humiliating Jerry, which gives him comeuppance for being too unlikable sometimes, so I wasn’t upset about it, because the plot had enough happen in it to be interesting.

Jerry just wants to get some paper for a resume, and because he finds out that the advertising company used his slogan anyways, he gets really mad, and then he yells at his GPS in front of people for telling him to get back on track.

  Somehow this causes the couple to think he’s talking to them and beat him up when they should’ve seen him looking at the car instead! So he gets thrown out of his car because he happened to have the window open. I guess he really likes the wind on his hair. And that’s the whole reason the entire plot happened.

  A girl brings him home, but it turns out she was part of a group of bank robbers, who realistically just want money to pay a hospital bill instead of being pure evil. It’s a twist that she wants to do that instead of literally just wanting to drive away with his car. A cop who was called on them for all the noise gets knocked out from behind, the bank robbery’s foiled because one of the robbers dropped the money in a panic, and when the car’s tire hits a bump, they all get killed by their own gun, and then after all of that, Jerry can’t even get the paper he wants.

  You know it’s a story that had a lot of effort put into coming up with it by the writer when it had so many different things happen in it for the plot. It was five long sentences! At least it was focused on a different main character for a change, and was still good. I’d much rather have the summary be mostly about describing what happened in the plot than have it be all about describing just how much problematic the basic one sentence plot was. But ultimately, it was too mean and gory to be good.

Issue 37: Let the Rick One In: Part 1

  I prefer how the show kept Coach Feratu’s death to offscreen, because it gave us a discretion shot , and apparently, it was obvious how he was gonna die anyways because all Summer did was take a stake to him, so we didn’t need to see it. Because it wasn’t like we missed an actual action scene. Summer says, “ Who throws like a girl now? “ and Morty’s equally cheerful, being fine with what he just did instead of being horrified anyways, like you might expect since the coach still looked human if he blended in and he used to think he was just a normal guy.

  It seems Out of Character of him to be fine with this. But, I guess it’s supposed to make sense because he’s used to it because he was with Rick for so long. But he gets horrified by killing in a later issue. Anyways, Rick in his Tiny Rick form says that he was great at killing vampires, and this gives Morty a confidence boost as he says it’s like he trained his whole life and it’s like it’s his destiny. Their dialogue’s super perky considering what they just did, which has the self-awareness to lampshade how creepy vampire slaying would look. The stain isn’t on Summer’s right eye anymore.

  Then the story cuts to a year later, which is a relief because it was a bit off-putting that we were seeing a past flashback that’s meant to take place in the continuity of the show when the comic isn’t canon to it. Morty complains that Summer’s making him leave the dance so she can use the bathroom, and Summer’s inexplicably portrayed as silly for refusing to use public restrooms even though the ones in America are infamously dirty. And Morty should know that.

  She tells the trench-coat people she’s not looking at them and they reveal themselves to be vampires. Normally you’d expect fantasy creatures like vampires to be out of place in something sci-fi but they’re probably just aliens. So it can easily be explained. So I wish we were told, specifically which planet they’re from. I don’t remember if they were aliens in the show. There is a universe where magic exists so I guess they’re from that.

  We see Morty and Summer get forcibly brought to some vampires that are all dressed like emo teenagers, realistically being affected by a recent trend in the world instead of always being old-fashioned, just because vampires are an old idea. So why did it take the vampires a year to find and kidnap them for this? They look modern so wouldn’t they have the internet?

Wouldn’t they just be able to look Summer and Morty up and find out where they live immediately? I guess they don’t have the internet. How did they find out about emo culture then? I love that we’re seeing the consequences of an episode.

  The head vampire tries to guilt them for killing Coach Feratu, saying that he has a son that he treated really well. None of the vampires explain that Feratu wasn’t doing anything wrong. There was no indication he WAS. But I guess he was planning on doing what vampires normally do. But if he was doing anything wrong how did he not get fired in all of that time? I guess he was JUST hired.

  The head vampire tells them that as revenge, they’re gonna embrace them into their night coven of the damned and they’ll hate it, as the head vampire speaks like a young teenager, saying, “ you guys. “ Morty’s scared, but Summer doesn’t take him seriously. I’m glad they’re not EXACTLY like stereotypical vampires and are being played more for comedy, that’s creative and at least kinda tries to make up for how dark and serious vampires are.

The vampires wanna know where Rick is because they didn’t kidnap him too. The head vampire insults them for being too focused on the new things and tells his guard to take Morty and Summer away. I giggled at his line, “ You are horrible Draculas! “ as he had his hands over his eyes.

  Morty says he’s got ENOUGH problems without being a vampire and doesn’t wanna become a bad guy, but then when he sees the beautiful women on a bed saying they crave him, he immediately agrees to it, taking off his shirt saying that his body is ready, which is a use of the line that actually makes sense.

  Meanwhile, Summer pointlessly asks to leave the room, and complains that the place has a realistic stink to it. The vampires tell her that they’re gonna torture her until she begs to become a vampire, I guess to humiliate her further because they REALLY wanna punish her for Coach Feratu’s death.

  She says no, and out of nowhere, one of the vampires tells his friend that biting girls on the neck without consent makes them no better than football preps. So, realistically, some of the vampires have gotten influenced by modern culture and it’s for the better here. Summer then uses her knowledge of how relatable they are to manipulate them, saying that they can’t just do dumb stuff and have to consider how to really piss off their parents.

  I couldn’t help but giggle when Rick said, “ Beth, have you seen Morty? I dropped something pretty insignificant and can’t be bothered to bend over and pick it up. “ That’s so him. Beth explains that Morty’s been in his room for days without coming out. And it took her until NOW to comment on it? Wouldn’t she be wondering how he was going to the bathroom?

Wouldn’t she have barged into his room much earlier? Wouldn’t she have insisted on giving him breakfast and supper? It’s at least kinda explained why she didn’t barge in there, because she didn’t wanna interrupt him being Morty. But you’d think she’d knock and say, “ Your breakfast is ready! “ “ Your supper’s ready! “

  She stupidly asks what he would look at for days on end, and I could hear Rick’s voice in my head just fine when he said, “ Crap! What if he finally got past the parental controls?! “ So they were smart enough to give his computer parental controls and keep them on. But shouldn’t he have found out how to do that immediately just from doing a single google search?

  It’s amusing that Beth panics about this. “ NO! You said he’d never figure it out! “ Rick talks seriously and barges into the room holding a cleaning spray, and sees Morty being held upside-down by vampire women. They didn’t have to come live with him, but they did, and I guess that’s how much they like him as a person. And it’s needlessly inconvenient that the text bubble is upside-down too. I’d only expect that in a Sonic comic. The dialogue doesn’t matter anyways, it’s just confusing. He calls him mortal talking like he’s evil for no reason.

  Rick figures out what happened to Morty, being deadpan about it because he’s seen it all. And he fortunately fills in a plot hole before I could get to it, explaining that of course he’s been too distracted by girls in his room to eat her. Why would, vampires don’t eat their victims, they just turn them into vampires and take their blood. Or is that different in this series? But that’d make things even more hard for vampires.

  Rick asks Beth if he noticed that Summer’s been missing too and she hadn’t. She says that she just assumed she’d been finding herself and Rick calls her out. The two of them didn’t have to be missing for days. The joke was worth it, but they could’ve been missing for just one day and that would’ve made more sense.

He says that the vampires haven’t turned Summer yet since she’s not here yet, but he still assumes that she’s not safe where she is. Then I’m just confused when Jerry walks in and says that even when his children were born, he thought he’d have to kill them one day, and he smiles and tells Beth that’s every parent’s natural instinct. He’s way worse a person in the comic.

  Rick seems pretty Out of Character when he acts as if he’s actually planning on killing Morty, when even he considers himself to be too attached to Morty. I learned that in the Toxic Rick episode. He should have a thought bubble explaining, “ I could always replace him with Spare Parts and then erase my memory of losing him so I won’t miss him. “

  He doesn’t have an antidote for vampirism after all his life, and he tells Beth that if she lets one vampire live with her, she’d end up with a whole house full and wouldn’t like having to feed them, and would just get in trouble. Rick could clone a vagrant every day to supply vampires with blood infinitely. He just wants to lash out at Morty.

  Then Rick explains that they won’t drink dog blood even if they’re lied to about it. Different scent or taste? Then Rick explains that he’s got a half-built Robot Morty here somewhere and she won’t even notice the difference. Why is it only half-built after all this time? And why doesn’t he consider using Spare Parts? I mean, he laughed at that final panel he was in, so it’s not like he was really mad at him. And he could say that the reason she won’t notice a difference is that he’ll erase her memory of losing Morty. Otherwise he’s being stupid.

  At least him being so casual and quick to give up on Morty can kinda make sense because we know he abandoned his family with no complaints when he ruined a version of Earth by Cronenberging it, and he was so casual about it that it was as if he had done it before, meaning that this isn’t even his original Morty. I’m not the only one who suspects him either. I guess his original family was killed before he could save them.

  If it was the first time he had to leave them, he wouldn’t have left them, he would’ve tried to get them to come with him. Maybe he assumed Morty was the only one who was still alive and so there was no point in trying to go back for Summer and Beth. Chances are, he’s switched Mortys before, so he knows he can still handle life after doing it again, and he IS being pragmatic here. He thinks he doesn’t have a choice.

  Rick went out of his way to save Morty from drug dealers earlier in the comic. And he’ll go out of his way to save Morty in the final arc of the comic! Why does he have to be talked into saving him again? Summer asks the vampires how many even still have parents, and is told that all their parents are long dead, so they’re just trying to piss off parents in general. Summer says sadly that without actual parents to rebel against, they’re just going through the motions and lost their way.

  She impresses them, saying with a smirk that to truly piss off parents, they have to really get to know them, stalk them and memorize their insecurities. She references someone catcalling her and walking into a door. She says that if she’s gonna let a guy bite her, he’d better be threatening, not an un-intimidating goth nerd. The vampires are impressed by how brave she is from her experiences with Rick, and one of them really likes her.

  Rick reveals he has a serum that’ll diminish Morty’s tendencies enough that he’ll lead them to wherever Summer is. So he has a serum for THAT, but he can’t make a vampire ANTIDOTE? He HASN’T made one? He thought ahead enough to make a serum just in case but not an antidote!

He said he could build ANYTHING in the show, so thank god it turns out he WAS kidding himself and he DOES have realistic limits. I guess he just didn’t care enough to try to make an antidote for vampirism, even though he met Coach Feratu. So you’d think he would’ve made one by now. I guess he took a decade to make it.

  It made me giggle when it turns out Jerry’s holding a running hose because he thinks vampires can’t cross running water. Rick says amusing, “ Ugh, you are criminally unprepared for this, “ even though Jerry knows an obscure bit of vampire trivia and Beth says amusingly relatably, “ You’re replacing these carpets. “ And Jerry says, “ I know. “

  Rick kicks the door open and tells Morty that it’s time to take his medicine. Jerry’s hose doesn’t work and Beth complains about him not using the stake right as a joke’s made about it. One of them tries to fly away as a bat with a vampire head for once, and Jerry’s hose is used as a Chekhov’s Gun because Rick puts a stake in it and pops it out at the vampire. That’s creative! Jerry’s told to shut up instead of being thanked for being responsible for their victory.

  Rick uses the serum to weaken Morty, who still insists on just hissing like a monster when NONE of the vampires we saw talked like that. The FIRST ones we saw hissed, but they were nothing like the emo vampires later. It’s like there’s two vampire species and he’s a combo between the two of them. It’s not even trying to keep vampires consistent.

  If they can talk like people, why did he have to be portrayed as a monster? Why did the first ones get portrayed as just monsters? That doesn’t make any sense. How were the original vampires seen as people that could be hired to do a specific job if they weren’t smart enough to talk? How did they know to do that specific job?

  I guess he was only hissing to try to look intimidating in a desperate attempt to be allowed to stay a vampire and keep having girlfriends. I say this, but he keeps doing nothing but hissing after losing them! But yeah he has multiple girlfriends. I guess vampires are okay with polygamy, different culture after all. Jerry lampshades that it was easier than he expected, and Rick’s excited to fight some more vampires.

  So this story by Kyle Starks and Tina Howard was about Morty and Summer realistically getting consequences at long last for killing Coach Feratu, while the show somehow didn’t have any consequences. Any time the comic does this, it really gives itself some value by basically adding to the show.

And the head vampire acts like the coach was doing nothing wrong, but he did have a son, and while Summer impresses the vampires by being too badass and snarky to be afraid of them and telling them how to be rebellious, though I wish she had a thought bubble explaining that she assumes Rick has a vampire antidote, so of course she wouldn’t be scared, Morty volunteered to become a vampire so he’d get to have girlfriends for the first time, which makes perfect sense for his character at this point. I didn’t blame him at all.

  Plus the vampires were mostly different than normal because they were realistically influenced by the new Internet age, so it’s not that alien and hard to get used to. Despite having something as grim horror dark as vampires in it making it harder for me to watch, it at least tries to make up for it by doing this in a way only Rick and Morty would, being interesting and creative. Only Rick and Morty would have the stake get fired from a hose, because it’s using technology.

  The one thing I always hated about this arc was that Morty was made to only speak in hissing, when the other vampires don’t do that. He can say “ geez “ just fine! Him looking like a vampire wasn’t off-putting enough? Also I kinda feel sorry for Morty because all of his bed partners got killed, when he was probably pretty attached to them. But I guess the serum prevents him from missing them. I guess that’s why he’s not crying the whole arc after this. Maybe he won’t even remember being a vampire. So that’s why he won’t ask Rick to bring them back as robots.

  They look different from the original ladies he was with when Rick discovers them. It’s like they’re completely different girls from the ones that turned him into a vampire. It would’ve made sense if the original girls came home with him instead of these new ones.

Issue 38: Let the Rick one in Part 2:

  We start out with Rick, Beth and Jerry looking up at a stereotypical dark castle with lightning striking nearby for the atmosphere, as Morty’s led along by Beth with  a leash, because he led them to the castle. And it’s smart of Rick to wear a sash full of stakes and already have one in his hand, and he’s wearing a garlic necklace. People can have allergies to all sorts of things, so vampires being hurt by garlic could make sense as a universal allergic reaction.

  Beth and Jerry sure are great parents if they love Summer enough that they’ll risk their lives to go save her from them. They probably figure that Rick needs strength in numbers right now. Jerry’s the only one who’s realistically scared while Beth looks just as determined as Rick. Jerry proves he’s no better than Rick by asking Rick if he could just clone a new Summer out of cowardice, and Rick just hypocritically calls him out on not being a hero when he just said that about Morty.

  Out of complete nowhere, Rick reveals that if you kill the “ vampdaddy, “ they revert, and somehow he says everyone knows this, so Morty and Summer will be back to normal. Well, that’s a convenient Deus ex Machina! That doesn’t make any sense! Rick really SHOULD’VE just had an antidote, then. He had a cure for tuberculosis just fine! He had to come here to save Summer, so they already had an idea for another issue for the arc, and he could’ve already cured Morty by this point and the plot wouldn’t be that different here.

  Those vampires have to literally be magical beings. You’d think if there were vampires in a mostly sci-fi show, vampirism would be made more like a relatable scientific thing like a parasite or virus. If it’s that easy that’s the wimpiest virus ever evolved.

  We see Summer sitting on a bed looking un-intimidated of the vampires, being asked to tell them again of the god of the daytime. She says she’s empty, and asks for diet nectar, and she wastes a page talking about pop culture references I don’t get, which bores me. It’s interesting how she’s able to stall them turning her by giving them new information. It reminded me of the Arabian Nights story framing device.

  Morty coughs and Jerry gets concerned, and Rick says that he’s gone too long without feeding and became weak. Jerry takes it to heart that the family’s been talking about killing a father, and takes it to heart more justifiably when Beth says she’ll take care of it because she’s used to being preyed on by parasites. Jerry’s just concerned about being insulted instead of realistically being upset at Morty using her arm. I said they were great parents earlier but they’re really not. I just want to give credit where credit’s due. They’re still acting like great parents by even being here in the first place.

  Suddenly they all get threatened by vampires at once, and I guess they dodged them just in time when they tried dogpiling them from right above them. Rick throws something that vaporizes most of them in a flash, and I didn’t like the needlessly gory panel afterwards. Some of them are still alive, so he has to try more to earn his victory properly.

  So he realizes his light saber’s low on battery and just punches instead. I guess he really wanted to feel the satisfaction of his fist colliding with a vampire because he would’ve been better off just shooting with a ray gun and completely vaporizing his enemy. It’s realistic that there would be a battery.

One of them jumps on his back and he presses a button on his wrist gadget, which summons metal around his neck to protect it that breaks the vampire’s fang. Exactly how I would expect the smartest mad scientist to deal with a vampire. But why wasn’t that collar on him in the first place? His garlic necklace was.

  He continues to impress me as he summons weapons just by moving his wrists and shoots stakes out of them. I really hate how gory this is. Rick’s face is clean when it was stained last panel. Jerry brags about beating a vampire and is told that he just killed a bat, and I guess the writer was intentionally trying for hypocritical humor to call out how RICK is being too heartless by calling Jerry the sociopath, when Jerry’s clearly crying about what he did and said, “ What? No! “

  Beth says that Summer has to be in Steven’s room because it’s a dumb teenage boy’s room, which would be a siren call to her, showing how well she knows her for once. Though if she’s going by that logic, you’d think she’d assume Summer was already turned into a vampire by sleeping with that teenager because why else would she think that a teenage boy’s room would be a siren call to her? So she didn’t really know Summer. Because Summer’s not like Morty.

  Rick tells Beth to find Summer, and I guess I’m forced to assume the vampires only showed up behind him right as he finished what he said, because it’d be ridiculous if they didn’t bite him in ALL the time he was saying all that. Were they running up to him the whole time? Why is Rick stupidly facing away from them the whole time he’s saying all this when he could just keep shooting at them with his ray gun the whole time? At least he was smart enough to have a ray gun after all.

  He tells Jerry he needs him to feed the ammo into this gun, calling Jerry a dumpster fire which explains why he’s okay with risking his life. Jerry says he can’t do this because of his beliefs. That came out of nowhere.

  Rick calls out, “ First of all Jerry, if your belief system was even PARTIALLY accurate to what that book suggests, you would’ve voted differently in the last election and visit fewer torrent sites. “ Torrent sites? Because of thou shalt not steal? I’m pretty sure that commandment wasn’t written with piracy in mind. Torrenting means you’re still not literally depriving someone of something they own, which is what stealing actually is. Jerry justifies that things are expensive, and Rick says that the fact that he believes it at all is why HE’S loading the gun and he’s not.

  So he tells Jerry to shove the Bible into the gun to be shot out of it. OH, THAT’S why they were having this conversation. I didn’t know he was talking about that book. I thought he was complaining about killing someone all of a sudden. So it gets shot at vampires and destroyed. They keep THAT to offscreen but nothing else! I guess all the stakes are too stuck in stuff to be shot out of it instead but I really expected him to just have a ray gun, instead. But yeah this fight scene’s written great because there’s variety in what’s going on.

  It was sweet what Beth said to Morty. Even in a situation like this, she still finds a reason to love him. “ It’s sort of like you’re a weird little toddler again. It’s kind of cute. “ All because he wasn’t able to talk, for SOME reason. He talked when he was in bed with those women! I guess the serum removes his ability to talk!

  She says that she used to have to put a leash on him after she opened a bottle of wine or he’d run off, and she justifies that Jerry cared too much about model trains to look after him. She enjoys being able to talk to him without interruptions, so much that she says while petting his head, “ You know, maybe it would be better if you stayed this way. Stayed my little boy for forever. Then you would never grow up, eventually moving out, leaving me alone with your father. “ That’s an interesting moment for her.

  Then Jerry shows appreciation for Rick, saying that he brought a holy water grenade. Why would vampires be allergic to water anyways? That makes no sense, but at least here it’s explained to be a grenade. You’d think they’d explain what the hell makes the water holy scientifically. What makes it chemically different from all the other water? It HAS to be chemically different from water or it’d be just like all the other water. Because this is a sci-fi show and there’s no explanation for why there’s holy water that Rick somehow has! I hate that it’s even referenced at all.

  Jerry gets fed up with being insulted for being realistically afraid, and Jerry says he’ll find Beth on his own and earn her respect. Rick snarks that he couldn’t even find the door out of here without his help. He needs his help for the same thing again, and find Beth and Morty trapped in coffins that mercifully still show their faces in them. The heroes get threatened by bats, and Rick doesn’t even remember Coach Feratu, probably because he’s killed so many people already.

  He asks Jerry to get his flask out so he can pull it, and then after he’s taunted by the head vampire with generic dialogue, that his grandson’s already lost, Rick says, “ Are you serious, that’s a revenge? Look how cool you made him! “ Rick really loves his grandson more than even he knows, not only did he save him after all, which he should’ve thought of trying right away if this was an option, but I guess he was all talk, but he even appreciates him like this!

  The vampires walk into the room because Summer’s phone charger needs to be used. He made me giggle, as he said so seriously, “ I forgot her phone charger! Summer requires it so her phone may feed! “ and Feratu Jr isn’t lectured for letting Summer take advantage of him all this time, when he was called a horrible Dracula for liking new things.

Instead he’s told to kill when he’s more concerned with that, and Jerry kills him, and brags about being a hero. “ That wasn’t a bat, now was it? It was a ding-dang vampire and who’s the hero now, huh? “ I like that he said ding-dang, because that’s so him. Beth fortunately relates to how I couldn’t help but feel, saying that he was just a kid. A kid who agreed to kill them! He still saved his family!

  And Summer cries because she wanted to go to the mall with him during a weekday. Jerry complains that his family’s sending him mixed messages about when you can kill something, the head vampire threatens to enslave Summer, making me wonder why he didn’t do that a lot earlier because he had nothing to do for days – you’d think he would’ve checked on Summer to make sure the “ horrible Draculas “ would’ve actually turned her. But I guess he naturally assumed that it was so easy that even they wouldn’t have screwed that task up.

And Summer throws Morty at his head, using him as a Chekhov’s Gunman again. She suddenly gives a heartwarming speech explaining why she respects her daughter. “ I get it, my daughter seems like magic to you. You know why? Because she is. She’s smart and she doesn’t give a shit, and that’s terrifying to mortals too. You’re all fascinated with her because she scares you. She should. Fuck him up, sweetie. “ She trusts Summer to kill him. I guess he was being held still.

  And it’s lampshaded how needlessly horrifying vampire killing looks for the heroes to do, there’s a reason I never gave Buffy a chance! Jerry says, “ No one’s upset with Summer for killing THAT guy? “ And Beth justifies that he threatened his daughter and asks what’s wrong with him.

  Some vampires hug Summer, with one of them thanking her for teaching her so much while being nice enough to not hate her for defending herself. One of the vampires bought a skateboard and the other one’s gonna try pastels. I wish we’d see that instead of the last few panels… At this point it seems uncharacteristically nice of the heroes not to… I guess they really only care about killing the vampires that were trying to kill THEM.

  As usual, this story by Kyle Starks and Tini Howard was too gory for its own good, making it hard for me to look back on it fondly. It’s just the typical problem with showing vampires NOT disappearing in a puff of smoke after they’re killed, instantly afterwards, and instead showing the blood. I like that Rick shot stakes from a gun, that was creative at least, and the neck collar was smart, but otherwise, it’s all just what you’d expect.

  The story doesn’t even show us Morty go back to normal! Didn’t the head vampire get killed? Isn’t that supposed to revert him? How would it make sense for there to be a delay? But it can be commended for a few of its sweet moments where Rick and Beth still appreciate Morty for what he is, with Beth reminding us that she can be a loving mother after all, even if she’s selfish at the same time.

  And at least Summer had a positive influence on the vampires that were spared. At least this arc is only two issues long. It’s not like Sonic Universe where every arc insists on being the same, overly long amount of issues. They could’ve easily had a padding issue where they ran into trouble when Morty was leading them to the castle.

Issue 39: Rick Air

  Morty asks what the big deal is about wafer snacks and Rick snarks at his intelligence sarcastically. Morty thinks all old people like wafer snacks and doesn’t know why and Rick says he was just trying to share his special snack with him, which was sweet. This is a pretty relatable human moment of theirs, and it’s good to have those to remind us why Morty still puts up with him.

  Rick says that he doesn’t want Morty eating these because they’re all that’s left of the original batch, because they changed the formula for the newest one. OH, I know what this is a reference to! It was that episode in the show, and the formula’s made from the joy from a kidnapped Rick’s nostalgic memory. Somehow! It’s Simple Rick’s.

  All of a sudden they get threatened by a spaceship, and an announcement tells them they’re under arrest for the transport of psychotropic substances. So they finally caught up to Rick for drug dealing? Or were they literally after the wafer snacks? Who would arrest you for eating wafer snacks? No wonder I didn’t get that immediately. How were those discovered and outlawed?

  I guess they were transmitting the sound to him through a radio in his own spaceship because there’s no sound in space. Rick doesn’t even remember what he’s being arrested for, and they get arrested. So, is this a common thing of Rick’s where just because he’s in his spaceship, he’s dumb enough not to keep his portal gun with him? What makes him think it’s not worth keeping it in his coat ALL THE TIME?! Does it smell bad, is it THAT heavy?

  So Rick gets forced onto the spaceship handcuffed with Morty. I guess Morty’s arrested because they just assume he was his accomplice. Rick snarks, “ Every alien crowd is the same potpourri of generic archetypes, like some hack wrote it. “ Most of the time I think that wouldn’t be the case. He only said that because the writer forced him to for the sake of a snark about sci-fi.

  Then they’re offered a hot towel and Morty thinks him. He’s told to stop mouthing off to the prisoners when he was clearly being nice. One of them is stressed out because they’re transporting party dog’s top lieutenants. Rick admires Party Dog because he doesn’t care about anything. Then Morty’s Genre Savvy by asking if he’s actually a dog or dog person.

  Lawrence explains that he wouldn’t call it a prison. Ever since the Galactic Federation was broken up in the show, the privatized prison industry’s been too backed up, so this is more of an execution mission. Wait, if they’re just gonna wipe their brains, then why didn’t all of these prisoners get immediately shot to death instead of being brought to an executioner first? They could have the executioner IN the spaceship!

Rick and Morty were very lucky they didn’t do that. I guess they’re gonna be brought to jail first so that they can be held there before a trial that’ll prove they actually did what they did first, but Rick’s been expecting to be brought to a prison, when everyone knows jail comes FIRST and is a separate thing. So if they’re gonna ignore jail, then…

  After Rick makes a creepy plan they can’t do because he forgot he already made Morty use a butt bomb, suddenly the criminals are free of their handcuffs, making me wonder what took so long, and they get rid of people and it’s fortunately explained that Party Dog gave them anti-cuff tech. What took so long for them to get free then? We could’ve avoided a lot of padding. Rick admires Party Dog for this as I wonder why someone as smart as him didn’t have anti-cuff tech, even IF he didn’t know he’d be arrested. There’s no reason NOT to keep it with him.

 Morty’s upset that the criminals are gonna kill the only person here who was nice to them. He can only convince Rick to help because he says this is like a movie. Rick says that the criminals are gonna need a hostage to protect them and a pilot. Everyone assumes the robot can pilot it for good reason, but he just says that’s racist, saying amusingly, “ You know all I can do is smash. Why is that never good enough? “ ‘Cause you can download information into your brain? It’s funny that the lighting darkens as he lowers his head, making it melodramatic. The background changes from blue to dark purple.

  Out of nowhere, Morty’s taken as a hostage, and the criminal explains that they don’t need any funny business from him, so he has to get them to Party Dog’s hideout or they’ll kill him and Morty. But if they knew better, they would’ve known that he would’ve helped them with that anyways, and if anything, this is just Bullying the Dragon, tempting him to get revenge on them. He was HELPING THEM, so why was that guy so dumb?!

And HE DOES because he sets the coordinates of the spaceship for the sun. I wish he said, “ THIS is for my grandson! “ That’d explain why he did this when he’s a big fan of Party Dog. If anything the story had been leading to him joining Party Dog. He could’ve immediately asked to join them, like would make sense, and then he wouldn’t have seen the need to threaten Morty.

  Then Rick puts his hand on Morty’s face and Morty asks if this is another body modification that he said he’d never do again, and his spaceship turns on the light. Rick clearly said in an earlier issue that he’s not cool with messing with his grandson’s body, when Morty was asking for him to do that and wasn’t accusing him of doing that to him.

I guess he changed his mind about body modification, even though he hated that Morty was muscular and playing basketball and must have hated having to remove the alien eggs from him. Also, in the show, Rick made Morty able to turn into a car. So he was definitely lying about not being okay with body modification, but maybe THAT was a different universe Rick.

  It’s explained that Rick knocks Morty out to give him cybernetic abilities, and Morty’s upset at that because it was without his permission, even though him being a cyborg is cool, making him way more useful, letting him achieve his true potential. Imagine how much cooler Morty’s gonna end up being when he’s older if he keeps giving him upgrades, or even figures out how to upgrade himself.

And because we’re TOLD he’s an idiot, it would make sense for HIM to angst about being a cyborg, especially after his own grandpa made him it against his will. At least he was given cybernetic upgrades when he was UNCONSCIOUS. Bunnie didn’t have that luxury.

  Rick’s told to turn this spaceship around or else, and Rick says, “ Or else what? You’ll kill me? Then the ship definitely won’t get turned around and you’ll definitely burn up inside a sun. “ Then his own spaceship crashes through the wall, totally un-destroyed, because as I expected, it WAS programmed to move afterwards. I like that, logically, it IS damaged, but still, it’s the best spaceship ever to still be functional after this. You’d think it’d just explode after crashing into a spaceship.

  Rick says awesomely as a retort, “ I think of everything! “ and he punches the butthead guy in the chest to send him upwards and the bad guy loses his gun, and because Rick naturally hears the robot come up behind him, Rick kicks the robot into electric goo. That’s because this writing makes sense, while Tails’ father didn’t hear a robot walk up behind him because he wasn’t allowed to defeat it. Still, it’d be more satisfying if we saw Rick kick it.

  Rick rubs the head of the other alien against an alien’s head, and he says he’s gotta ask first, which distracts him enough for Rick to smack him in the head. Then he tells Laurence to get in the spaceship. Morty bravely grabs the Klingon from behind and is told to rub his ridges, which distracts him by making him happy. Morty immediately thinks that’s gross. I’d rather think that he’s happy from being rubbed like how a dog loves its belly being rubbed, and Morty just misinterpreted his reaction.

  Rick leaves in the spaceship by making it move down out of the hole and the last lieutenant dies, with us once again seeing the distractingly unrealistic X’s in their eyes, but it’s okay for Rick and Morty because that franchise is too dark anyways, so it needs SOMETHING to lighten it up. We were already told that Party Dog would want revenge on Rick! But fortunately the reason this is worth seeing is that we learn how he KNEW it was Rick. His goons accessed Smashbot’s servers and got an image of Rick from it.

  This issue by Kyle Starks was about Rick finally getting put in a prisoner’s spaceship, even if it was for a stupid reason, and then after the criminals break free because of their gang leader’s foresight to give them anti-cuff tech, Rick convinces them that they need him as a pilot. So he sets the spaceship’s coordinates to the sun, and is even more brilliant because he had the forethought to make Morty’s face able to bring his spaceship near him.

Good thing it knew exactly where to park every time so that they’d be able to get on it instead of it crashing into them. I guess it’s programmed to not go closer to them than a certain distance. So he was this prepared, but he didn’t think to bring his portal gun, which could’ve let him go home right away. Then he could summon a portal to bring his spaceship home, not to mention HE should have had anti-cuff tech. He could’ve at least used a shrink ray against himself to get out of them.

Instead he had to make an enemy out of Party Dog, which happened because the bad guys all got sucked into space by a hole instead of actually being sent into the sun, so Party Dog was able to find out about Rick from the robot’s servers. Wait, Smashbot’s a robot, couldn’t he be repaired from anything? He could be returned to functionality, he’s still intact, just electrocuted.

Issue 40: Battle Rickale

  We start out with Morty running through the woods in different clothes for a change with a backpack at night, running from a swordsman trying to kill him. Then he sees Plumbus Rick, which looks like an orange cross between an orange and a woman mannequin head. Rick tells Morty to pull a rope that causes a spike trap to come up below him, and since it’s not Sonic, there’s a gruesome result. Rick says, “ Plumbus Rick! “ really proudly when all he did was serve as a distraction

  Morty says that he can’t stand all the killing anymore and lost track of his own count. As if this is the first time he’s ever killed anyone. He cries as we see an alien say that Rick and Morty did another great kill on Survival Arena Murder Time. He says that there’s only 62 more to go and they might have their first Earthling champions.

I have to wonder, I guess Rick doesn’t take Summer instead because she’s a girl, so he underestimates her. It’s a shame because he’s admitted that she’s tough! She’s badass enough to handle adventures while Morty’s barely coping. I know he needs Morty around as a stealth device, but it’d make sense for Summer to be here too and doing this.

  The alien says they’re getting prize orbs by the handful with their hilarious antics. Rick complains that they only got one orb. Rick says that whenever they do something particularly entertaining, they get an orb. How are they supposed to figure out what to do for that? That’s subjective and there’s so many things that could be entertaining. Good thing they’ve got a genius on their team to figure it out.

  As someone sneaks up behind Rick, Rick strangles him with his arm, and I wonder why the killing tournament is legal and then conclude that it’s because all the participants aren’t of the same species as the green alien, so it’s racism. Rick explains that the reward for this tournament is a free vacation, but because he can warp anywhere to get a vacation whenever he wants, obviously the real reason he’s doing this is just for fun. Actually, we’re gonna LEARN why he’s doing this, because the comic’s just that good!

  He then realizes he’s being watched on camera as he’s killing in a boring way, and I like his nervous smile when he says his catchphrase while shrugging. Morty’s asked what his catchphrase is and says it by accident, and says that they need a bunch of orbs for a vacation to a moon that’s the most exclusive getaway ever, with the best food and drinks – that’s subjective, so great food and drinks could be found anywhere – and they’d be waited on – when Rick could build robots to wait on him – and wine and dine with the social elite which Rick wouldn’t like ANYWAYS.

It’s weird that they named the vacation that. I guess in-universe it’s just a joke too. Morty finally asks why they don’t just use the portal gun to go there, and Rick says that you have to earn that, and he reminds Morty of the last time they went some place fancy and says that Morty loved it. Somehow I doubt that. But Morty and Rick enjoy the snacks, and I guess the reason all those people look annoyed with them is because of the vulgar way they’re talking, with Rick burping and everything. And Morty DID enjoy himself there.

  Morty’s told to get out the transformation because someone’s coming. He doesn’t get the point of them even though Rick JUST explained that they need things to be entertaining for them to get enough orbs. I wish he explained that the reason he doesn’t transform into another human or whatever alien he needs to turn into to make plots a lot easier is that he needs to always have Morty around him for his Morty Waves to hide him.

So he can’t disguise himself as anybody he wants because people might question why he has Morty with him anyways. And the person he’s disguised as might not be known for having anyone ELSE with him all the time that he could disguise Morty as. Having Morty around makes disguises a bit too complicated.

  Rick says that the transformations are funny, which gives them orbs. Morty says something I’ve always agreed with here, which is probably coming from the writer’s own opinion, “ They’re not that funny, though, Rick. Comedically, it’s real low-hanging fruit. I mean, all you do is turn into something, then yell what it is and then you add your name. It’s pretty basic. “ It’s good to have Morty say something smart sometimes. Usually he’s of average intelligence, but not Boom Knuckles stupid, which is why I never thought of him as an idiot.

  He says that the humor’s just playing to the lowest common denominator, and Rick asks if he’s not getting the subtle references he’s making, so the writer really is making fun of the Pickle Rick joke by making Rick look like a moron. Good. Morty says, “ Yeah I don’t think that’s it, “ and I don’t blame Morty for trying to make another suggestion from his. He asks him why he won’t just turn himself into a monster to kill easier. Did he not hear what he just said?

  Rick explains that he can only turn himself into innocuous things to be funny. Again, they need to be entertaining for orbs, and Morty should know this. Morty wants to be turned into a banana, saying they need to switch it up. Yeah, the same joke over and over gets stale after a while, so he’s right. Rick says that he wants Morty to be the bait.

  Morty then asks why the game show’s letting them compete as a duo while everyone else is on their own. They didn’t have to write it that everyone else is on their own. Rick doesn’t know the answer and just calls it an inane question.

It could EASILY be explained that Rick and Morty are just the exception because the people in charge of the competition saw them interact and thought they’d make a good duo, or at the very least Rick explained to them that he needs the Morty Waves to hide him. It could be explained that this happens all the time. Oh that wasn’t so bad for Morty. He just put the needle in his cheek.

  I couldn’t help but smile at seeing Skillet, Cactus, and Corndog Rick. Banana Rick’s just a peel, though, so that’s not how I’d imagine a banana to look. He should’ve been called Banana Peel Rick. He turns himself into a butter churn and even a Weeble Wobble, where he dares the killer to try to push him over. Okay, THAT was amusing to look at, because a butter churn is ancient technology that Rick wouldn’t like and a Weeble Wobble is just silly in general. These are way more amusing than a pickle.

  Houseplant Rick is amusing to see too, but seriously, you’d think that realistically, this technique would stop getting them orbs because people would get bored of the stale joke. It was amusing that we see Morty apologize to Rick as Rick looks damaged as a paddle ball, and Rick says, “ Just because I’m Paddle Ball Rick doesn’t mean I want balls bounced off my face, Morty. “ It would’ve been funnier if we actually saw that happen to him, though. Pretty POOR excuse for a paddle-ball if using it damages it. He wouldn’t make it that way.

  Then we’re told that Rick is one orb shy of the vacation trip. Morty doesn’t wanna kill because he thinks that doing so one more time would completely change him, after all the times he’s done so. He doesn’t wanna do it again because the contestant’s innocent and cutesy, complete with a balloon. Rick has to tell him that it’s him or them and remind Morty of all the things he’d love at the vacation.

I wonder if the kid was sent here because his parents hate him. I wish it was explained why he’s here because this is just ridiculously cruel. Morty’s asked for a hug, as I wonder if the kid was sent here because his parents hate him, and Morty cries while he defeats him. I don’t see how this would earn them an orb because it’s too sad, so it can’t be entertaining.

  Then we actually see Morty and Rick at the vacation place, and Morty says that it feels like a healing space. Rick reassures him that he’ll be good as new in no time and the pizarian back rub offers a happy ending for him. Morty says that sounds good, and Rick bumps a guy he met before who doesn’t like him, after that guy showed racism against immigrants.

  Rick destroys the guy just by showing him something small, making a “ Psh “ sound with it, and because he’s in trouble for it, he rushes Morty out of here without even letting him get what he wanted, because this was all so Rick could revenge that guy for bumping into him. Why didn’t he just ray gun him to death when he bumped into him the FIRST TIME if he’s fine with the consequences of THIS? It makes sense that there’s no consequences like Morty being traumatized by this plot after this story because Rick can erase memories.

  This story by Kyle Starks was about Rick being the distraction as he’s transformed into amusing-looking things as Morty has to kill a bunch of contestants at a fighting tournament, where the prize is a vacation, which Rick only wanted so he could kill someone for bumping into him, and fortunately they have something memorable about this story in the form of Morty making fun of the Pickle Rick joke. That was the only thing I still remembered about it going back to this. I guess that’s a problem with a basic, repetitive plot.

  And Morty reminds us that he’s supposed to be a good person by being upset over what he’s forced to do. I don’t like gore, so this isn’t gonna be one of my favorite stories. It’s a good thing there was so much creative variety in what Rick was turned into, including Jar of Spit Rick, but it sucks that Rick had to get his revenge so early instead of letting Morty enjoy himself longer. He could’ve waited until the last second when that guy was about to leave!

Issue 41: Rick Revenge Squad Part 1

  We start out at Party Dog’s criminal party planet. Party Dog’s told he’s gotten richer, and that people searched the universe for dangerous enemies of Rick, and they expect to have him killed in a day. Well I hope these villains are gonna be really entertaining, because I know Rick’s gonna survive their revenge. They could still torture him, though.

  The only way I can recognize Peacock Jones is, well aside from his third person speech, he has three eyes. He’s told off by one of the prisoners that he kidnapped and knocked up his niece, stole all her money and disappeared. He calls him an emotional nitwit and explains that he left her for becoming stupid and boring, but he uses more fancy words than that, and somehow talks as if he disagrees with what he said.

  He’s told off because his niece was young, not that we’d know how young. He’s threatened with being beaten up, and it turns out he was being protected by the Mister Meeseeks he was with, who’s all muscular now and calls himself Mister Sick, and doesn’t want to be looked at. It’s interesting to see this.

It makes sense, using the Mister Meeseeks concept to its fullest potential. It’s pretty convenient for Jones that Mister Meeseeks actually became his friend instead of realistically not caring about protecting him because he’s in constant pain and not everyone becomes best friends with their cell mate. I guess they were just that lonely.

  Suddenly, a guy resembling Michael gives him the key to his space capsule courtesy of Party Dog. All he has to do is press a button on the key and he summons his spaceship, which flies him and Mr. Sick out of the prison.

  They’re greeted by Prince Detrar of another dimension’s Mars. So, how did they meet him? I guess the spaceship was pre-programmed to take them to HIM. He says that it’s mostly Party Dog who saved them, and he recruits him against Rick. Detrar says they’ll need to pick up one more colleague before going to Earth, and he says he knows where he is because he has an inside man.

  Then we see Rick and Morty going out of a portal from Blips and Chitz. Morty says he wasn’t ready for the survival horror game, which has a title that sounds like it’s only survival horror for an exaggerated, overly cynical joke. I talk about video games just fine. I think the writer is literally only familiar with Anita Sarkassian as a girl who talks about video games and no one else.

  Then we see Jerry smirking, and he tells Rick that today’s the day he’ll pay the price for forcing his way into his life. I can’t help but sympathize with Jerry here because Rick does treat him like crap, and it would definitely suck to be in HIS position in this house. Rick accuses Jerry of trying to rip a big one and tells Beth. Of course Rick would humiliate him right away when he tries to be intimidating. He can’t even have this.

  Then Jerry introduces him to his Rick Revenge Squad. So, how did they get a hold of each other? Rick doesn’t recognize any of them because it’s been so long. Prince Detrar explains that his sister died under their watch, and Morty just says, “ oh, “ instead of saying that he was upset about it too and it wasn’t really their fault. It’s not like THEY killed her.

He also doesn’t call Rick out on the fact that, “ you know, you could’ve just cloned her sister and made a new one for him. You could’ve made a new sister for him and avoided this entirely, “ and he’d say, “ You’re not helping Morty. “ I guess it’s too late to clone him a new sister because they’ve long since gotten rid of the remains of her. Wouldn’t he have that in his lab? I guess if they tried to clone a new sister for him, her DNA would’ve long since been mixed up with the spider monster. Not all of her remains would’ve been.

  Rick says that he thinks they want him dead because he’s smarter than them or he hurt their feelings. It’s amusing how callously he brushes them off, but it also explains perfectly why they don’t like him. Beth’s realistically upset about this and insults Jerry, who actually gets to make a good point here instead of the writer demonizing him, because this is a GOOD comic book. “ Listen, honey, what has he ever done for you? Abandoned you? Caused friction in the family? Put your children and us in serious danger every day? “ Then he looks too petty.

  Then out of complete nowhere, Jones reveals that the Rick revenge squad plans on killing everyone here, not just Rick, even though Rick is the only one they have a grudge against, and you’d think they’d like Jerry because he doesn’t like Rick either! That doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t see why EVERYONE here, including the prince, would be okay with it.

The prince has the most sympathetic motivation. His sister clearly wouldn’t want this! But despite doing this for his sister, he’s still a monster? So if they’re all murderous psychopaths, then why on earth were they waiting so long and letting these guys talk, instead of immediately starting to fight them? They would’ve shot them all to death while they were talking to each other and ignoring them.

  Rick says that he wants to go to the dimension where ice cream is free and wait them out, somehow expecting that to work, when he’s telegraphing his plan, and he has to be TOLD that they can hear him, and he talks way too much bragging instead of just using the portal gun already. Because sometimes even when you have a smart character, the writer writes himself into a corner and has to make him stupid too just for the plot.

  The portal gun gets shot and destroyed, because, he made his freaking portal gun out of flimsy material. Or maybe it’s just that the shot is REALLY powerful. Even if he didn’t talk too much, as is fortunately lampshaded by Krombopulos Mike’s girlfriend, Rick or his portal gun would’ve been shot ANYWAYS when he was trying to use it. This would’ve been justified a lot better if his portal gun ran out of battery, and then got shot.

  He tells Krombopulos Amy that MORTY killed Mike and he almost gets shot by a laser and climbs over a fence. Mr. Sick punches Rick saying “ Can do! “ and smacks him into the wall. Jones wants to find Summer again. Beth’s hesitation makes it obvious that she’s lying when she says Summer’s at a friend’s house, when really she’s listening to headphones in her room. It’s more interesting that Morty has to separate from Rick for the plot because there’s more variety in the settings.

  He sees a swing set get set on fire by Amy, and the prince actually decides to DO something instead of standing around, wanting to go ahead and just kill Beth and Jerry now because he doesn’t wanna waste the whole day. Again, why didn’t this happen a lot earlier, logically? Rick goes between them and presses a button on his wrist to surround himself and his family in a force field bubble, talking like a Tsundere saying “ Once again I have to save you idiots. “ He thinks Beth is smart, so he’s just talking this way to try to downplay what he’s doing.

  It’s fortunately explained right away why he waited so long to use the force field though. It gets slammed into the wall and gets stuck, so they’re not going anywhere. Still, if Rick was smart instead of getting caught up in bragging, he would’ve used the force field and THEN used his portal gun. But just like Eggman, no matter how smart and capable he is, he’s not safe from his own personality. So this just barely makes sense. Jones tells the prince to start firing his blaster at the force field, and the story ends. The recap pages are tedious by the way. This is not a kids’ comic.

  This issue by Kyle Starks was about Peacock Jones, an alien prince and Mr. Sick going after Rick to try to kill him because Party Dog got most of them free from prison, because his goons tried to research the most dangerous enemies of Rick, and Rick is a well-known person in the universe who has enemies everywhere, so that makes sense. I really wish it was explained how anyone found Jones’ key, and even HE questions it.

  Rick cares more about bragging than escaping them as fast as possible, which is why his portal gun gets destroyed and he has to protect himself and his family in a force field bubble, proving that he cares about them because he didn’t have to do that, though he could’ve turned on the force field right after seeing them.

  Meanwhile, Morty gets chased down by Krombopulos Amy, facing the consequences of what he did in the show one time. So, this means that Peacock Jones, the alien prince and Mr. Sick are all from the show universe and not C-132, apparently. C-132 is such a hard to remember name that doesn’t tell you anything about the dimension. So if I called it C-135 at one point, don’t blame me because it’s just numbers anyways, and C-135 is closer to C-137 in number, so it’s easier to remember.

Issue 42: Rick Revenge Squad Part 2

  I love that we learn that cell phone signals don’t get out of force fields, that’s interesting. I was just thinking that Beth couldn’t reach Summer because she was wearing headphones, so of course she couldn’t hear her. Jerry just cares about his own safety and Rick thinks it’s more likely that they’ll all starve to death than the force field being destroyed.

  So Jerry panics and runs into it trying to get out of here, and manages to use the force field as a hamster ball running over the prince, which reminded me of when Sonic did this with a bubble made of glass in Sonic the Comic, so it’s not surprising that this happened. It’s always great when even Jerry gets to be vitally useful.

  Beth wants to go save Summer while Jerry wants to hide in the hedges, but inexplicably keeps standing there just because Rick’s yelling at him. Rick foolishly looks away from Mr. Sick the whole time, but miraculously avoids getting hit anyways, and throws stuff at Mr. Sick, when he should KNOW he’s invincible. It’s annoying that Prince is reminding us of what a Mister Meeseeks is when we already know. How many times has this happened? The story would’ve told us what a Mister Meeseeks was anyways.

  Because Rick told Jerry to do what someone did to him when he was a kid, Jerry pulls down the prince’s pants saying that he smells like poor people, though he should’ve known to say the prince’s name instead of HIS, but it was funny enough. I guess he was just trying too hard to imitate his memory and didn’t even remember the prince’s name. He figured he wouldn’t have the confidence to do this if he wasn’t accurate enough, which makes sense.

  Then Rick picks up a portal gun and summons a portal. Wait, so his portal gun wasn’t broken? Or maybe he FINALLY wisened up and thought to have a spare one! I think he found it in his shelf. Mr. Sick goes through the portal to some family’s house, and finally manages to deliver his drugs. However, it’s been years since then, so the guy’s wife gets mad at him and accuses him of delivering them, demanding a divorce. I hope that doesn’t happen, that’s not fair.

  Beth flashes Jones to distract him so that Summer can punch him, which was very heroic of Beth showing how much she loves her daughter. She’d be a much more lovable character if she was a great mother more often. But usually she’s just there to insult Jerry and we already KNOW that Jerry’s a loser. I still have a hard time believing that Summer knew to look at Jones when music was blasting in her ears from headphones. I guess she happened to hear Beth calling out for her when she was between songs, or her song was in a quiet part.

  I actually laughed when Summer actually saw Beth’s bosom and yelled, “ Mom! Cover yourself! “ Of course that happened. And it could have easily not happened so that’s why I was surprised. Although it’s always embarrassingly unrealistic when Summer says, “ OMG, “ or, “ OMFG. “ I’m pretty sure no teenager says that. I guess it’s only done because she’s a parody of them, but it’s too tired and out of touch a joke to be funny.

  They run away as Jones is still awake and a spaceship heads towards the earth, and Beth’s proven wrong about her lack of faith in Jerry, as we see Jerry giving the prince purple nurples, which is therapeutic for him. It doesn’t make him much better than his old bully, making him look creepy, but to be fair the prince WAS planning on killing EVERYONE in the house, so he was way worse than Jerry’s bully and he needs to do this to save everyone.

  Beth and Summer run into the room and Beth snarks at him treating him like a pervert instead of being grateful that he’s being unexpectedly useful. Rick walks into a portal and dodges a laser hitting a tree, and Morty fortunately calls him out on telling Amy what he did. If everyone wasn’t used to Rick being a jerk, it’d be seen as a pretty big betrayal of Morty. Rick has a good point too, though, saying, “ Oh, like I’m supposed to eat a bullet because you hit someone with the ship? “ After all, he’s still coming to save Morty, so he DOES care about him. He just did what he had to DO earlier.

  Rick asks Amy, “ Do you think killing a kid is going to make you feel better? “ He says that Mike was inevitably gonna die doing what he loved, and asks her if she could imagine a better death for him personally. Then Rick says, “ And to be honest, I’m not even sure if this is the same Morty. I go through them at a pretty brisk clip. “ And it looks like he’s being SERIOUS. Sure he stutters, but he always does that.

Morty didn’t question Rick when he said Morty hit someone with the ship so he remembers doing that, so either he was the Morty, or he’s a clone with the memory of hitting a guy with the ship beause he didn’t ask for it to be removed.

  Since when does Rick make a speech like this? She cries and Rick says that she doesn’t love killing, she loved Michael. He hugs her, an Out of Character alert that foreshadows the fact that he wants her killed. Surprisingly, though, he doesn’t snap her neck, and instead, he was silently hinting at Morty to shoot her with the ray gun. But fortunately, he doesn’t. At least I’m gonna assume he doesn’t. I don’t remember if she’ll survive. But if we never see her again, well, there’s no proof that she WAS killed.

  Peacock Jones is smart enough to call it quits, taking off in his space capsule so he can survive. Then Beth and Jerry get threatened at gunpoint by Party Dog’s goons, who all look silly enough to make up for how dark and serious it is. There’s even a baby here. Maybe he just LOOKS like a baby. I mean this IS an ALIEN.

  Party Dog complains about this not being over already. I like that Morty was right and he IS a dog. The prince gets vaporized after barely doing anything evil and having the most sympathetic motive of all. Rick goes through a portal as Morty looks equally brave and he zaps the goons with multiple lasers in one shot, which is officially the most impressive-looking ray gun EVE, though I’m not sure how that’s POSSIBLE. That’s magical.

If Rick was really smart you’d think he would’ve had that scattershot ray gun in his lab right away just in case. That’s the only ray gun he’d ever need actually but I guess it can only be fired once or something for balance. It’s Amy’s gun, but still, he should have one of those.

  Beth says that killing Party Dog is against her vet oath, and Rick says he’s not gonna kill a dog, even though it’s a talking alien dog, which doesn’t really count. MORTY of all people says this exact thing, when I’d expect Rick to be the one saying this, because he just wants to get on with this. This helps show that Rick’s still got a soft side to try to make up for all the bad things he’s done, and Morty’s allowed to say this because he’s not as bad as him, which he reminds us of when he’s just as opposed to killing Party Dog.

  It sure is miraculous that in all the time they’re talking about killing him, Party Dog doesn’t take off or kill them. It’s not like he’s being held still the entire time. Party Dog even lampshades that they’re idiots who should’ve killed him. He says that he’s one of the most powerful dangerous beings in the universe and is obsessed with destroying those who wronged him.

  Summer bravely snarks at him, and Jerry actually asks if Beth could simply neuter Party Dog, snarking a great line, “ I mean it really took the fight out of me when she took MY balls. “ “ Is this really the right time for that, Jerry? “ I chuckled.

  Jerry yells at her, “ It’s never the right time to talk about my balls, is it?! “ and Rick comes back through the portal he went through with Snowflake, not that we see Party Dog get attacked because a dust cloud shows up out of nowhere, but I’m fine with that because I don’t wanna see that anyways.

  The story ends with an intimidating page where Rick stupidly says that this revenge squad would never happen again because he’s pretty sure that was everyone who hates him, as we see a whole bunch of people, including a female supervillain that I know died.

  This epic issue by Kyle Starks was about Rick and his family surviving the Rick Revenge Squad, which ends with Rick shooting a bunch with the scattershot ray gun, and eventually summoning the dog in a mecha to beat up Party Dog for it. Beth saves Summer’s life heroically distracting Jones, Rick saves Morty by realistically talking Amy OUT of it and fortunately she survives afterwards. Morty doesn’t have to kill her and he clearly didn’t want to, so he didn’t. This wouldn’t be the first time he disobeyed Rick, that’s the whole reason she ended up turning on Morty in the first place.

  Jerry keeps the prince distracted being like his old bully, after he saved the day by using Rick’s force field as a hamster ball and saved everyone. It’s always great when an unexpected main character’s really useful, and in a way that’s unique too instead of just swinging a sword at a badnik all the time. So for the most part they did the best possible job they could writing it, aside from the ridiculous use of Talking is a Free Action, like with Party Dog which gave them more than enough time to stop him.

The cover of Book 6 is misleading, because it shows Morty trying to gladly shoot Party Dog, so I don’t know why that happened. Comic covers tend to lie a lot in this comic anyways. There was an issue cover where vampire Morty was trying to threaten Jessica in her bed and she never showed up in the story.

Issue 43: Dick and Farty

  Beth stares into the window holding a coffee pot and Summer considerately asks if she’s okay. Beth’s been thinking about how grand everything’s been lately, and says that they’re all getting along with no world-ending threats or disasters. I wonder if that’ll last. Summer’s noticed something different about Rick and Morty, somehow commenting on it like it just happened, and Beth says that the thing she’s learned with Rick is to just roll with it.

  Then we see a different version of Rick and Morty here, which call themselves by different names. Like they’re not even trying to hide it. I have to wonder why Morty would agree to have that name though, and he’s still in a good mood because he’s happy about Beth’s famous pancakes. Then Dick asks Jerry if he’s ready to hit up the clubs again tonight, and Jerry’s happy about it, and says he’s his wingman. Dick says that no woman in their right mind would date Jerry right in front of Jerry. And yet he’s still nice to Jerry and Jerry still likes him.

  Beth ruffles Farty’s hair and hugs him from behind saying that she loves her fuzzy son. Because I’m not being shown how this all started and their reaction, I’m wondering why the family thinks this is THEIR Rick and Morty. What took Summer so long to comment on it? Is Beth deluding herself into thinking this IS her Morty? Well she could’ve said Morty was just shapeshifted and Rick changed his fashion preference. And I can’t blame them for wanting a nicer Rick.

  Dick offers to turn him and Jerry into bananas for some shenanigans, and Jerry says that he’s learned the past couple weeks that he knows how to have a good time. OH, Farty’s supposed to be a skunk. Geoffrey looks way more like a skunk than that, so no wonder I was confused about what he was supposed to be.

  Then a portal shows up and the real Rick and Morty fall out without clothes, and Morty asks if they were gone for weeks and says he thought they were gonna die in there. They were trapped in a prison, and Rick says that he was able to seduce the guard, and then he’s a good grandpa by telling Morty a valuable lesson about what not to take pictures of.

It’s certainly been a challenge for me to review this comic while still sounding classy when there’s topics like this. Rick explains that all people want to see is that Morty’s a capable provider and emotionally available. Then Morty reminds Rick that Bathorvians don’t even have genders. I guess Rick really thinks Morty’s an idiot if he thinks he needs this lesson. If he’s really hammering it into his skull, I wonder if he’s made this mistake in the past.

  Then Rick grabs a ray gun and plans to kill some people, rather than simply kicking them into a portal. I can understand killing a Rick, but not a Morty. I mean the only real reason they’d hop dimensions and stay there is if their own dimension’s planet is either ruined outright, probably because of a Rick or just absent of their family, and it’d be hypocritical of Rick to demonize them for doing what HE himself did, so he should really just send them into a portal, open a portal beneath them.

And knowing Rick Sanchezes, they’re really likely to not have the portal gun with them at all times. He should know which dimension to pick. But because Rick insists on handling this by force instead of telling Dick which exact dimension he could fit in just fine, he shoots at him and his laser’s blocked by Dick’s force field, as Dick calls him the imposter for some reason. The rest of the family run out of the house.

  Then Dick finally calls Rick out that RICK isn’t even supposed to be here because this dimension’s Rick and Morty died when an ion device exploded in their garage, so this dimension’s considered fair game. That doesn’t make any sense because either way there’s still a Rick and Morty living here. Even the Council of Ricks has no idea that C-137 Rick died from the ion explosion. So how would Dick know?

  Dick probably wants to stay here because he’s now used to THIS dimension, and same goes for Rick. And he doesn’t know if he could find a dimension where he could easily fit in. If the Council of Ricks can easily find out about a Rickcide, then he knows he’d get prosecuted for one.

Rick presses a button sending a satellite laser at a place across the street just to intimidate him, so he says he’s not right in the head, and gets punished for potentially accidentally killing someone because Dick hits Rick with Dr. Octopus arms. It is possible that no one was in the area when it was blasted. Maybe they were working late.

  Dick even points out that these people like him better and HE appreciates them, and doesn’t treat them like an inconvenience. Yeah, sadly I can’t help but root for him. That’s the inevitable problem with having a main character who’s an anti-hero at best. Sometimes you’re against him. But Rick proves he really is selfish and cuts off his robot limb with a light saber.

  Then we see Morty ask Farty if his Rick turned him INTO a skunk, and he’s laughed at and told he’s a “ replacement Morty. “ Morty asks what that is when it should be obvious because he’s in denial and doesn’t wanna believe it. I guess the Citadel of Ricks intentionally clones brand new, unique Mortys to make up for all the ones that get killed. Why would they make a Morty that doesn’t look anything like a Morty, so he couldn’t go to school in a Morty’s place? For the science, sure, but that’s a pretty bad excuse for a Morty because he was picked up by a non-skunk Rick.

  Rick hates the gas that Farty creates which smells like a chemical, and asks his “ boss “ if he’s okay. Rick reveals he’s got a gas mask on because he took it out of his lab coat. So he’ll remember to keep THAT in it at all times, but forgets his portal gun. Even if a Rick doesn’t have a pocket in the lab coat that’s big enough to hold the portal gun and it would fall out of it, you’d think he would be able to make a pocket that big.

  He calls them idiots and despite wasting time insulting them, he’s still able to shoot a portal below them no problem. I guess it’s justified because he only said a few words and probably said them quickly. He sends them into the ocean. I guess he doesn’t value Farty’s life because he’s just a replacement Morty who doesn’t actually belong anywhere, AND is loyal to Dick even after he made a nasty joke at his expense.

And since they’re replacement Mortys I guess they can be made by the dozens, so there’s way too many of them as it is, I guess is Rick’s logic? Dick takes off his hat and gets out a ray gun to shoot a monster behind them.

  Then Dick and Farty fall into the kitchen through a portal sending water out of it, and Rick’s also prepared enough to press a button that magnetically attracts his portal gun away from him. Sure is lucky for Dick that HE thought to keep his portal gun with him. It turns out Dick has a laser-shooter in his hat which he can activate with his mind as the hat disintegrates, making me wonder why Rick doesn’t have a hat, then if he can keep stuff in it. It’s stupid of him not to!

It makes me wonder why he doesn’t have a hat. Rick dodges the laser and hits him and Farty with another portal, to a prison just like the one Rick escaped from. So why didn’t he just send them there in the FIRST place?

  Beth says nervously that Rick goes on a lot of adventures, so his whole family figured eventually he’d die. Summer then puts her hand over her mouth and reassures Rick that they were just playing along until he could save them, and knew that he’d come for them. But the fact that she’s got her hand over Beth’s mouth should make it immediately obvious to Rick that she’s keeping Beth from contradicting her, and thus she’s lying. It doesn’t just take a genius to know that, it’d take ANYONE who ever saw someone’s mouth get covered with a hand to know that.

Rick looks skeptical, and then says, “ Whatever. “ So he DOES know Summer’s lying, and knows he shouldn’t care. Whatever helps his family MOVE ON after him. He tells Morty that they need to wash the prison gunk off before they either geolocate them somehow, or weaponize it into acid. Morty then complains that he could’ve warned him to wash it off a lot earlier, and the story ends with Jerry asking if he was the only one who was rooting for the other Rick.

  This issue by Kyle Starks was about Rick and Morty being replaced because they were trapped in a prison for weeks. Well, Morty sure is lucky no Rick replaced his when his Rick was trapped in a prison of his own devising at the START of the COMIC. Y’know, Clackspire Labyrinth? Eventually Rick wins because he catches Dick off guard sending him into a portal below him.

He could’ve just done that in the first place instead of shooting a laser while TALKING and therefore warning him to activate his force field. He could’ve been more careful about it, and it’s frustrating when I know the smarter way than Rick, but I get that Rick had to make a mistake so we could get an awesome action scene.

  I don’t get why this dimension’s considered fair game though. In the show no one but our Rick and Morty know about the ion device explosion killing that dimension’s Rick and Morty. How would anyone other than Rick and Morty know that THEIR Rick and Morty died to that exact thing? For the Council of Ricks to know that, they would’ve had to have someone spying on their garage at that exact point. And it’s called C-137 even though Rick isn’t native to it and yet the Council of Ricks still call him C-137! So how would Dick know if they don’t?

  Is every Rick garage under constant surveillance, like by an invisible camera? How could that camera always follow Rick and Morty? I guess the way they USUALLY catch Rick and Morty deaths to find a fair game world is by seeing if the world’s Rick goes way too long without being in the garage, and Ricks are able to heal themselves super fast with technology, so an injury or sickness might not be enough for a replacement to show up.

  I guess portal gun technology always has a way to look at them and learn which dimension is free THE SECOND after it becomes free, because in the show, RIGHT after that ion device exploded, Rick and Morty got to replace them. It’s a good thing Season 4 introduced death crystals because the only way Rick could’ve known that the ion device was about to explode is if he looked through a death crystal that worked for someone other than the holder, and even then he had a lucky guess first.

Issue 44: The Origin of the Vindicators

  I got excited to see the story from the title alone. It seems too good to be true to have a third story with the Vindicators. We start out in the past, with Vance and her on a damaged planet thanks to Worldender, who wants to destroy the universe – I hope we learn why – and is heading for Vance’s hometown.

  He wants to compile a team of Earth’s mightiest heroes to stop Worldender, saying that no one’s better at destroying than Earthlings. But Earthlings aren’t known for advanced technology. You’d think ANY other race would be known for destroying better because they have better lasers and stuff.

  A spaceship shows up on Earth in front of Rick, who asks Morty amusingly, “ Ugh, go get my thing, Morty, the thing I use to kill planet-level terrors. The blue one, not the red one, Morty. “ I wish I knew why he specified the blue one. He says he’s got an hour before his favorite show comes on, and to develop on him more, we actually learn what that show’s like. It’s an intergalactic version of the afternoon shows like Jerry Springer.

  Then the Vindicators show up to ask for Rick’s help. How do they know him? Rick asks if there’s a comic cosplay contest, lampshading their appearances. I guess they know about him for the same reason Rick’s famous in general, and they’re willing to look past his shady past. Morty’s excited at seeing superheroes, who want their help, and Rick says that he’s a loner like Batman, and he gets his name wrong, and Morty explains that Rick thinks that if he acts like he doesn’t know someone’s name, he’ll seem cooler than them.

  Morty asks for superpowers, like invisibility, and Rick calls him out in front of all of them, “ Oh SURE, you’d be VERY heroic, wouldn’t you, Morty? The champion of the lady’s locker room, defender of the women’s restroom. “ And the show proved him right! I wonder if this was released after that episode in the show and the writer’s mocking that. That’d be awesome.

  Vance puts his hand on his shoulder and says that all he needs to do to be a hero is see people in trouble and be willing to help. Rick jokingly calls Million Ants “ Ground Beef Man. “ His expression is what really makes it funny. Then Vance says the team name and Rick satisfyingly calls out, “ Oh, I thought that V stood for vainglorious, “ which insults Vance for his arrogance.

  Rick complains, that the cyborg lizard, “ looks like someone just read the idiot’s guide to cyber-organisms. Who’s his creator, Doctor Fartenstein? “ Just like Million Ants, the lizard tries to politely give exposition to Rick instead of being realistically offended at his insult. I love these snarks too! “ Don’t get me wrong, I-I-I’m sort of curious, you know, to see what other bad ideas that guy put together. Like a robot rock, or I don’t know, a wooden fireplace. “

I wish Rick explained why he thinks his creator did a bad job though, aside from the fact that, it seems like he has just one, mostly organic arm, and his torso has no reason to benefit from being metallized aside from being made tougher.

  I guess his torso was injured so it HAD to be metallized. Bunnie’s a way better cyborg because of her extendible robot arms and legs with super strength, but aside from a camera eye, what does this guy have? I guess that’s supposed to be WHY Rick insulted him and he didn’t explain why because it was obvious and that would be explaining the joke, but how is he supposed to learn if he doesn’t tell him?

  He asks someone if he was hit by a radioactive train, satisfyingly making fun of how stupid the backstories of superhero comics are, especially how they seem to use radioactive as a synonym for magical. He says that after his parents died in a train accident, he gained the ability to summon ghost trains. Wouldn’t you have had your magical ability from birth? He wouldn’t have gained it, he’d have thought about trains from that and discovered he could do this all along.

  Rick naturally asks what ghost train means, wondering if trains have souls. Alan just says he doesn’t have to explain himself to him, even though he was fine with explaining himself to him a second ago. And Rick satisfyingly says, “ But I feel like you should be able to explain it to someone. “ Yeah!

 Alan says they don’t need someone with an attitude like this. Then Vance asks if he knows what he thinks, with Alan very predictably planning on callously refusing to let Rick help SAVE THE WORLD because he was hurting the feelings of a few people, and yet he’s trying to present himself as the good guy just because he’s polite. I don’t even see what Vance has to offer.

It makes sense that a group of experienced superheroes wouldn’t think they’d need Rick to save the world, but if they really cared about saving the world, they wouldn’t take the slightest bit of risk and would make sure Rick would help them just in case, their feelings be them. This foreshadows what selfish people they really are in the show.

  He asks if Rick knows what HE thinks and Rick snarks, “ Yeah, you think, ‘ I hope I don’t look like an idiot in this suit. “ Vance tells him that Rick would be a hero if he knew that those with power should help those who don’t. He HAS done that BEFORE. He saved an alien king after he was wrongfully imprisoned by his evil wife. Rick refuses to admit he’s right and just arbitrarily calls Vance’s truth a dumb idea.

  Worldender’s forces land to start a battle, as we see a spaceship shoos lasers at some tall buildings. Somehow Morty’s still happy instead of disappointed in Rick, though I guess he knew Rick would be like this all along and is just happy to see the heroes. Rick gets tossed a uniform in case he changes his mind about actually being useful to a lot of people. I wonder if there’s a version of Rick that did join the Vindicators.

  He asks why they’re acting like that vest is a uniform, when only Vance wears it. If that’s a problem in any superhero comics, then that’s a pretty embarrassing, jarring problem. And there was actually backlash against the Vindicators episode? Rick was right! It’s satisfying to see a character finally call this genre out on things. It seems like the superhero genre sticks with a lot of traditions even when they don’t make any sense. It’s bad enough when a plot hole appears once but it’s even worse when it appears a million times.

  We see the Vindicators fighting bad guys. The first panel of it is so dark, and there’s so many people in it at once, so I can’t really get invested in the panel because I’m too overwhelmed by things to look at all at once. It involves too many people.

  Morty asks why they’re not helping the good guys and Rick just says that good and evil are human constructs trying to put order to people’s simple universe. I guess he means universe as in “ life “ because the universe isn’t simple. And he should know that. Why doesn’t he say, “ They’re saving the world, so I don’t have to. “ Because he tried to save a universe before! That’s why they went into the head of a Rick! And it’d be so much faster for him to just tell Morty that “ these guys are fighting so why should I? “

  Morty asks why Worldender’s trying to destroy worlds if he’s not evil. Then Rick shows that reality is more complicated than that as he holds something. “ Maybe this is how he gets his sustenance, or maybe Mister or Missus Worldender is a real pain in the ass, and this is how he works out his aggression. “ The last thing doesn’t mean he’s not evil.

  Morty says that maybe what really matters is what you can live with, and he can’t live with everything dying, so he decides to team up with the heroes, who are at least trying and are their best chance. He’s got no reason to think he could help, though. He’s not taking one of Rick’s ray guns with him like he did in Season 5 just fine. He’d just distract them because one of them would have to protect him.

I wish it was explained that he’s only going there to lure Rick to him so that he could help them. I assume that’s his plan because that’s the only way he would be helpful to them. Rick asks why he thinks they’re their best chance, even though there’s more than one of THEM and they’re experienced fighters.

  Jerry asks Rick if he has a bomb shelter or panic room, and Rick’s arrogant, too arrogant to prepare for failure. But, hasn’t he prepared for failure before? He has to have. He prepared for failure by making a prison in case he’d get trapped in it so he could escape it. He prepared for a failure to keep his own portal gun from being stolen because the portal gun got an alarm in it.

He prepared for failure because he has house security lasers just in case intruders get in the house. He does this way more often than not. I get “ I don’t panic, “ but why wouldn’t he make a bomb shelter if he made a prison for the time cops? Not to mention he had a basement he had an alien trapped in, in the show. You’d think he would have made the basement like a tornado shelter. Why not?

  A bad guy hits the Vindicators away, and I guess he’s either too occupied with fighting someone ELSE, or is politely letting them flirt with each other. Which is hopefully there to make fun of unnecessary shipping. I say that because their flirting with each other comes out of nowhere.

  Oh, I just noticed there’s some Vindicators here that I never saw before, like one of them that’s getting sent away. Those ones didn’t even get the chance to talk. I wonder what THAT’S supposed to satirize? I guess the reason that even all of the city buildings are red is because Worldender did it with his magic? It’s annoying seeing everything in a red tint.

  Rick runs up to Morty with big fists that block stuff, telling Morty that HE’S his best chance, and explains humorously, “ My show comes ON in 20 minutes. There’s no way I can enjoy it with all this racket going on! “

  Worldender keeps getting hit by lasers and stuff, and Rick tells everyone to focus their powers here. Then he gets greeted by a few of the silent Vindicators. I love the designs of them. Rick asks them, “ What’s the deal? They just keep you in the BACK, or WHAT? “ Yep. So Worldender gets hit by a freeze ray in the worst spot, and then Rick hits him with a laser, making me wonder why he didn’t just do that in the first place if it’s so easy, but I guess he needed to make sure the laser wouldn’t miss.

  Then the story ends with Morty kinda betraying Rick by telling the news that the Vindicators saved the day and NOT Rick as well. I guess it’s to spite Rick for not immediately agreeing to help the Vindicators. I wish there was a thought bubble explaining that. Why isn’t Rick holding his ray gun here? He could easily point at the ray gun and say that HE saved the day, and people would be more likely to believe HIM because Morty’s younger and Rick’s way more well-known, probably, than the Vindicators from another planet.

  Then we see Noob-Noob, because the Vindicators needed an intern to handle non-essential superhero jobs like coffee, mail, and dangling live chickens over the lizardman’s head for him to eat. Why does he have a robot CLAW arm instead of both arms that are simply made of metal with good hands? Rick was right about him! I hope there aren’t any superhero comics that are that stupid about cyborg designs because Satam is a kids’ show and even it gets cyborgs mostly right. Morty’s given a communicator, and told very strictly, “ Don’t call us. “ Well, yeah, Morty didn’t even do anything.

  This issue by Kyle Starks was about the Vindicators having to fight Worldender on Earth, of ALL PLANETS, and after a satisfying scene where Rick calls the superheroes out on how illogical and stupid writing of superhero comics tends to be, Rick defeats Worldender with two lasers. I guess his second laser was a one-time deal and the first laser wasn’t able to kill him on its own, so he needed to stun Worldender first. It was funny that Rick only went to fight the Worldender because his show comes on in 20 minutes and he couldn’t hear it, and that’s why he was more entertaining than the Vindicators.

  And Morty had a reason to say the Vindicators saved the day because Rick said that the Vindicators should combine their powers against this guy. So he thought they were just as important as him. Still I’d expect Rick to be able to make lasers so good that he could destroy this guy without needing the Vindicators’ help. Well that was a fun story.

Issue 45: Look who’s Cronenberging Now

  I was excited to see this story title too! Once again, the comic gets to show consequences to the events of the episodic TV show, because here, we see the dimension that the show Rick ruined, as hideous-looking Cronenberg monsters crawl around because humans were all turned into them. One of them gets killed by a thrown spear because of Summer, the first Summer seen in the show. She celebrates, calling it an ugly freak, and Jerry’s dialogue is unintelligible.

  Summer translates what he said into, “ Never go in to the city after dark. “ And she snarks, “ I don’t know why talking normally had to die with humanity. “ If the writer knows it’s stupid, he shouldn’t write it. Jerry makes me wonder why he waited until NOW to tell Summer how to filter the water, explaining that one day, she’ll be alone and have to do this herself. Her being unhappy about that is foreshadowing.

  Then Jerry calls her attention to another Cronenberg, and Summer’s spear just avoids Cronenberg Morty, an alternate dimension version of Morty, who Summer recognizes when he says, “ Aw, gee. “ Somehow Jerry DOESN’T, and just insults Summer, only to not bother going after him himself.

  Jerry impresses Beth by bringing home some food he brought her, and they start passionately kissing in front of Summer, after Jerry brought Beth home some hunted animal for food, which implies that if they lived in the cavemen days, they would’ve gotten along great. Jerry actually thrives better as a CAVEMAN than anything. Was that a stealth insult? Because all I’m noticing is how badass he is and that things are actually going well for him now, good for him. Summer then asks her family nervously if they ever wonder what happened to their Rick and Morty anymore.

  Jerry reminds her angrily that they don’t speak of them, naturally because he must have blamed THEM for their planet’s ruin. Jerry says that all he cares about is keeping this family safe, and Rick and Morty only ever put them in danger. He says that the whole family agrees that they’re happier because life is easier, less complicated. It’s certainly a more nuanced view, showing their post-apocalyptic life as ironically happier.

Summer doesn’t have to worry about getting good grades, getting a college that would accept her and trying to figure out which job to get, and Jerry isn’t nagged about not having a job because there are no jobs, so there’s only one option for him and he can just go and do it. And Jerry has a good point. He says that if Rick and Morty were turned into monsters, they’d try to kill them all anyways, and Summer says she misses Morty.

  Out alone at night, Summer says she’s so happy Morty’s alive. C. Morty explains that he comes from a Cronenberg world that Rick goofed up and made everyone normal humans, who he calls “ monsters “ because this is better written dialogue than in the show, where he said, “ normal humans “ in his hilariously expository dialogue, which I hope was written stiltedly on purpose just to be funny at least. Realistically, they hated it here because everyone here is a mindless savage just LIKE the humans Rick made.

  Then it’s explained that they didn’t come find Summer because they assumed that her family wouldn’t have survived at all. Summer says that’s fair, and C Morty explains that he needs her help because his Rick is up to something bad. Being here in a world full of monsters he doesn’t have to practice being polite to, has made his Rick even darker, to the point where he’s called a meeting of all the evillest Ricks in the observatory. Summer says that ALL the Ricks are bad.

  Then we see C Rick say that in two hours, they’ll free the most powerful evil Rick from his prison to raze the multiverse and granted them unlimited power. One of the Ricks with him is a black magic Rick, who you’d think would already feel like he HAS unlimited power. And another is the inevitable sci-fi politician Rick. Then they all hail an “ old god Rick. “ So that Rick turned himself into an old god? Why? Why didn’t every Rick do that then?

  C Morty says that he found something that could stop them. Summer definitely looks better with her hair down, but not by much. C Morty says that the neutrino bomb from the spaceship of Summer’s grandpa will destroy them all. Wouldn’t it destroy more than that? That neutrino bomb was meant to destroy all of humanity! How do they expect to weaken it? A bomb weakener that Rick would, only use to protect himself, in one very specific rare situation?

  C Morty says that he couldn’t fit in the spaceship, and Summer gets led towards a bunch of monsters. She should be attacking them at least! She’s not a wuss. Instead Jerry has to save her! Jerry says he told her never to come over here, immediately grabs her hand to save her rather than being too mad at her, and then when he hears C Morty, he shows that he still misses Morty, saying, “ Morty? My boy? I’m coming, son! “ So he was just trying too hard to look badass earlier. He runs around attacking various monsters. I’m really glad their blood is blue instead of red. That’s way better.

  Morty calls him dad as he’s about to mistake him for another monster to kill. He sheds tears at seeing Morty, and I wonder how long it would take, realistically, before Morty would get killed anyways for being mistaken for a monster. I guess it’d never happen because his adopted family would keep him in the HOUSE, out of the fighting. And they can get all the food they WANT. So it’s not like he’d be too much of a drain on their resources. All of the monsters are gigantic, so they have plenty of food.

  Summer tells Jerry why she needs Morty’s help. She gets the bomb out of the spaceship for him and C Morty explains that all Ricks get sad drunk and become melodramatic about it, resulting in them making a bomb, so he’s just as used to defusing them as the show Morty. He’s only saying all Ricks as an exaggeration generalization because he doesn’t know about Doofus Rick who would never do that, so he thinks all Ricks are evil. He says that they have four minutes before the bomb goes off, as he’s figured out how to work the bomb perfectly.

  I always wondered, why does Morty know how to defuse that bomb on his own? And if he can do that, why doesn’t he try to engineer anything? Doesn’t this mean he’s smart like Rick? Doesn’t he have the same potential to become an engineer? I mean an engineer isn’t the same thing as a bomb defuser but still, he knows what the neutrino bomb’s internal components do. He knows how to get technology to work and not work. So he has potential, I’m surprised the show won’t do more with that.

  Jerry wants to be shown how to fly the spaceship quick, and he’s attacked, and Summer flies it over the ground, explaining sadly, “ I’ve been thinking about it, and like, there’s NO future for me here. I’m not like you. I don’t have Mom. I don’t have someone to hold me, and love me. “ She says she’ll never be a mother or wife, calls Jerry her hero, and says that now it’s time to be his hero. So she flies the spaceship towards the Ricks with seconds left to destroy them. You know, C Morty said that they’d have four minutes before the bomb would go off.

  Next thing we knew, they had seconds. Maybe if the heroes didn’t talk so much and instead flew the spaceship away with the bomb RIGHT AWAY like would be intelligent, Summer would’ve had the time to fly it to the Rick hideout, place the bomb there, and fly away without being blown up in a spaceship which immediately reminded me of the death of that lady in Sonic X Season 3. I guess she waited until the last minute on purpose to get herself killed.

  The story ends with Jerry adopting C Morty, but we don’t get to see him reunite with Beth. Hopefully she’ll react to him just like Jerry did instead of killing him instantly. Adopting a monster like that could be what would put the strain in their marriage back. So this would only be a happy ending if we saw Beth be happy with him too.

  This depressing issue by Kyle Starks was about the aftermath of what happened in a Cronenberged world. An alternate universe Cronenberg Morty runs away from his Rick to get Summer’s help in flying a neutrino bomb to destroy the most evil Ricks in the universe, who were trying to take over the universe by razing it, I guess by scaring everyone that way into making them the leaders.

It’d be simpler if they were just having the same sentiment as Rick when he wants to use the neutrino bomb, instead of wanting to rule after destroying people. Ricks can make brainwashing chips. We saw that in the Pocket Mortys arc. If they wanna take over the world, they can just do that. If Rick thinks nothing matters, why would he have the motivation to run countries, then? Nothing he would DO would matter.

  So Summer sacrifices herself in the explosion because the heroes wasted all their time talking first. If Summer hadn’t made a big dramatic speech in case she’d get killed, she would’ve survived, but based on what she was saying, she got herself killed on purpose, which made this story non-canon because the show contradicts it. Good thing we got to see her family adopt Cronenberg Morty.

  I guess the reason there was a world that was always Cronenbergs when they became that way because of a love potion Rick made for Morty that combined with the flu, is that a Rick time traveled to the past and then used the potion on his Morty there. And it was used so long ago that the people there didn’t have any records of what life was like on Earth before Cronenbergs.

But part of the love potion flu combo’s problem was that it made them mindless savages. How would the Cronenberg Rick and Morty not be like that? It’s not like they were all Cronenberged by a nuclear bomb that anyone could make, it was something only a Rick could do to them.

  A Rick would have to intentionally make a modified version of the potion so that it would NOT make them mindless savages, but still make them Cronenbergs, maybe so they could all be his intimidating army. And then he died before he could use them, so long ago that they think their world was always full of Cronenbergs.

  Anyways, it’s a good thing the issue tries to make up for the sad ending by having Jerry adopt a new Morty. Jerry and Summer sure do love him if they’re gonna still want him around no matter how hard he is to look at. Doesn’t Morty have every reason to come to the same conclusion as Summer though?

Bonus Shorts for Book 6:

  We start out with Rick Salon by Josh Trujillo. We see an alternate Rick go into a place with a Rick and Morty living in it. He says he has an appointment. Somehow he’s asked for his name when he should assume it’s Rick and Rick lampshades it.

He’s told to get in the chair, and selfishly told not to tip the Morty. Morty says he’s just looking for his hair to be cleaned up, but not too much, and asks what being a hairstylist is like anyways. He’s speaking in very relatable dialogue. The Morty sees a phone fall out and runs away with it, staring at a picture of Jessica and he looks down at a Rick in green liquid, and says that someday he and him are gonna get out of here.

  Then his Rick reminds Morty that he collects Morty hair for his experiments, and that he ordered him not to name his Project, let alone name it Barbra. Then he accuses him of stealing from their donors, and says he’s crossed him too much. His Morty gets grabbed by a green thing and dragged into the solution as I wonder if he’s not HIS original Morty, and that’s why he doesn’t care.

  The story ends with Rick saying that this is the last time he goes to a Rick Salon because his hair is singeing. Issue 46 was a lot more memorable than this. This is just a story I completely forgot about, probably because I never learned what the Morty hair was being collected for, specifically, so it was all just pointless.

  Then we see a story called Extra Jerry by Josh Trujillo. And Jerry says the newspaper is saying they’re looking for MOVIE extras, and he wants a job. Rick asks if he wants to stand around all day getting browbeat, being filler for someone else’s job as an insignificant character.

He says to Morty that they’re gonna go be useful and important, which is weird coming from someone willingly jobless who usually doesn’t do heroic things and just does stuff for himself, like to earn money. Is he gonna go be useful and important THIS time? So Jerry goes to be a sci-fi extra, and is told to not actually drink the drink because it’ll mess up the continuity of the scene, in case the actors have to do multiple takes of various lines of dialogue.

  Then the producer says that someone’s needed to hand the actor the news sphere, and asks Jerry if he wants a bigger part. He gets excited about it and calls Beth about it, but then he’s shown from only a first person view on TV, and he’s heartbroken that only his hand was shown in the shot. Morty says he has a lot of questions about how that alien society functions, and the story ends with some bad guy at a meeting wanting to find that hand, but nothing will ever come of this.

  Then we see Morty Cast by Josh Trujillo. Morty’s listening to Radio Morty, who says that they just found out that their longtime co-host Handsy Morty has received accusations and has been suspended from the podcast. So they’re gonna get 90s Zoo Crew Morty instead, and he presses a button that generates the phrase “ show me the money, “ and then another one, and Radio Morty isn’t very happy about this, but politely thanks him for coming here. “ Yeah, um, thanks for coming. “

Suddenly we see the Morty that was listening to the podcast get attacked by an alien spider and dragged away instead of killed immediately. Then a mattress ad is played starring Handsy Morty, who says he loves how soft it is, and Radio Morty apologizes because this was an old ad starring him, and then after he has annoying dialogue, he’s punished for it because Raunchy Radio Rick shows up through a portal, saying that he just bought a controlling stake in his pathetic network, which ends the story.

Well, there was nothing for me to say about that either, other than repeating what the plot was. Not enough happened. This story was too mean and the podcast was boring nothing. It didn’t lead to anything.

  Then the next story, Jerry’s Right by Josh Trujillo, starts out with Beth pointlessly practicing her speech against Jerry in front of a mirror where she plans on kicking out Jerry even though she says she loves him because she thinks he’s a bad father, giving their kids an unstable environment. It’d make more sense for Rick than Jerry.

  Then, Beth is told that these Hollywood types saw Jerry’s hand in the sci-fi movie and wanna make him rich. I never expected a bonus short to reference another one without the same name as it. Beth’s not happy about this, and Jerry’s told that Streem wants the rights to program exclusive content featuring his right hand, because it’s devoid of character and interest. He’s told to move in to a new condo and sign a new contract, where he’ll be holding signs in 24 languages and 7 continents and opening doors. But that’d change the status quo, so what’s gonna ruin things for him?

   He’s told he’ll live with other unremarkable people like him. Beth asks what about his family. Jerry is told that the algorithm doesn’t understand or respect family bonds and only knows subscriptions and user-generated data, and Beth says that Jerry is HERS and hugs him, saying that he’s coming home.

  Jerry is incredibly thankful that she said that and says her love is coming from an honest place. This made me assume the worst because he said honest. You’d think she’d appreciate him saying this and change her tune.

  He says this’ll change things between them in the car, and Beth tells him bitterly that when this marriage ends, it will be on HER terms, so he’s not getting off the hook that easily. Well that’s at least more self-aware of how their marriage usually is than their romantic moments in the show. But she’s so unlikable. Why didn’t she divorce him right there then? Those guys looked evil, she probably saved him. One of them had blue goggles on hiding their eyes.

  Then there’s Morty Court by Josh Trujillo, where we see a Judge Morty presiding over a case of Rick versus Fancy Rick. Rick snarks in the court because Fancy said, “ oui, “ and Judge Morty tells them both to either behave, or Summer will cart them to prison. He probably has to deal with Ricks every day in the Citadel of Ricks, so I don’t blame him for being less willing to stand them now. I guess Summer’s an orphan and that’s why she’s here in the Citadel, or she’s a clone.

  A Morty testifies that Fancy started shaving his head without permission. Fancy has an objection when he’s not a lawyer and expects his experiments to be seen as noble and pure. Rick asks what he’d need Morty hair for, figures it out, and then is interrupted by Fancy throwing something at him to hurt him. Rick still tells Morty not to run off instead of focusing on himself. Fancy runs away, and then the Morty with cut hair finds the project, which made me giggle at how stupid it looked. The project with a terrible name is made of Rick with a little Morty DNA.

Ricks tend to be surprisingly attached to Mortys, even willing to sacrifice himself for one in the show, so it kinda makes sense that despite all their insults against Mortys, one would still make a project like this, if only out of scientific curiosity, just to see what it’d be like in person. Wouldn’t a Rick that’s more like Morty just be a good Rick, because Morty is his Morality Pet? So a Rick would just think that would cramp his style and not see him as having unlimited potential.

  Fancy says that with their unlimited potential and this coat, he can seek something, but then he gets killed from behind by a falling object to the back coming out of a portal with Rick, who’s not even hurt anymore somehow. I guess he used healing technology.

  He says that it was hard for him to find giant scissors and wishes there was a store for it. I guess he warped to a Rick garage to find them, or used a Big Ray on normal scissors, but that’d make more sense. Then we cut to Rick and Morty in the spaceship. It turns out that Rick saved the project, which looks like an octopus monster, and he’s thrown into the ocean to be free, and Rick doesn’t care if it’ll be happy, supposedly even though he cared enough to go save him.

   I was impressed that this story continued where a previous short not immediately before it ended off. I really do have nothing to say about this story other than summarizing the plot. Fancy the barber gets sued for a Morty’s hair being stolen without his permission, and then the project of his is thrown into the ocean by Rick after Fancy attacked him and started running away, I guess separated from his portal gun by the smart court the whole time so he wouldn’t just effortlessly hide. It was amusing that Fancy said, “ and this coat. “

Rick and Morty Comic Adventures in the Public Domain:

  And now for Adventures in the Public Domain. Too bad it’s drawn by an inferior artist. It seems lazy to do stories like this, but anything with Rick and Morty in it has to be interesting. Rick and Morty walk out of a portal back to the garage with Rick holding a mongoose called Rikki Tikki Tavi, and he read a story about it when he was a kid.

  Rick says that because he’s in the public domain, he’s allowed to kill him with the microwave just because he can, making Morty shout, “ Why?! “ You’d think if he wanted to relieve stress, he would’ve just beaten Tavi up with his fists. Then he tosses a sock with Tavi’s DNA on it into a contribution, and creates Franken-Dracula, now with Rikki Tikki Tavi, for extra snake wrestling. I guess he just said “ hint “ in French to sound smart.

  Rick says that Frankenstein, Dracula, Black Beauty and The Little Women, are free for them to use and improve upon. Why does he call The Little Women some of the deadliest creatures in human imagining? It was a joke, but it wasn’t a good joke. It’d be boring to see Frankenstein and Dracula because those are the OBVIOUS ones. I’ve seen Frankenstein in Sabrina the Teenage Witch and we’ve all seen Dracula get referenced, like Nosferatu appeared in SpongeBob one time.

   Rick says that there’s nothing he can do to Sherlock Holmes that the Internet hasn’t already, and brings Morty into the portal. I’ll just continue onto the next part of the story arc, because there wasn’t enough of a plot in THIS one. It was just confusingly mean-spirited. Maybe I’d like it more if I knew who Tavi was and thought he was really annoying because then I’d understand why Rick would hate him? Nah. I mean that didn’t really do anything with the concept, not enough that I knew what the reference was. I don’t know anything about Tavi.

  Rick and Morty teleport to the Sherlock Holmes universe because Rick wants to get him. I wish he explained why. Also, I hope there’s more than one universe where these fictional characters are real in this series, so that Rick isn’t killing the only versions of them ever for no reason. Of course, there’d have to be more than one, because if there’s an infinite amount of universes there’d be an infinite amount of THESE universes. But it’d feel better if Rick emphasized that.

  Rick throws an electric net over a bird guy that somehow exists on Earth, saying that a ray gun would be too anachronistic when this is too. He says that these monsters were made by Lovecraft and came over here on boats. I thought they were in Sherlock Holmes’ universe. Can’t they decide what they want? Why did he go to a combination unique? I guess for convenience so he could get more characters.

  Of course, Rick can deal with these monsters easily, so easily that having them around is pointless when you could just have aliens. So he throws a bomb at one, and Morty asks why Rick won’t use THESE monsters to add to their other monster, because they’re way more deadly than Sherlock.

  Rick uses a very weak excuse, asking if he’s read Lovecraft and saying that these monsters are super racist. Wasn’t it that, their APPEARANCES were? I mean their descriptions in the story. Every character would be too because it was ancient times back then but wouldn’t that apply to to Sherlock then? He’s using bombs and an electric net and those are anachronistic. I guess we’re supposed to notice that and his hypocrisy is the whole joke.

  I mean every character would probably be too because it was ancient times back then, but then shouldn’t he just as opposed to Sherlock? Then out of nowhere, the story ends with them getting grabbed by the tentacle of a Lovecraftian Horror Sherlock Holmes. I guess this is an alternate universe Morty since he has a huge vocabulary at the final panel. So, what was the point of that? Nothing really happened. There’s no mystery.

  In the third story, we see Rick and Morty in cowboy outfits having a boring conversation in the Wild West. I don’t know why Morty thinks this isn’t public domain enough. Rick says that a property has to be really boring not to be bought in America and says that they only managed to get Lovecraft monster DNA on them by accident last time. Why weren’t we shown how they got out of that situation?!

  He tells Morty to pick out some corn-fed “ chuds “ and get their DNA in tubes to make a monster. Rick must be really bored. Can’t he just use a bomb or ray gun instead of making a monster as a weapon that he’d have to keep alive afterwards? Monsters are pretty impractical. He could summon a Mister Meeseeks army instead of doing all this.

  Then Tom Sawyer tells Morty to paint a fence. I liked his design in Fairly Odd Parents way better. Morty’s Genre Savvy and says no, but he agrees to do it for him because it’ll get him away from Rick. Rick shoots Tom Sawyer and tells Morty to clean it up with a cloth. Morty’s upset and insists that Tom’s his friend, as Rick says amusingly, “ I know it’s a very small cloth, but you just have to try it! “

Rick lampshades Morty crying about it as he says that Tom is not a good dude. He’s still a normal guy, though. His DNA wouldn’t make a good mindless monster. It’s not taking advantage of the concept of Tom if it just uses the famous part of it. I saw this in Fairly Odd Parents already and at least in that, Tom stole a fairy wand and tried to use it for evil. Then Morty decides to go to a dimension full of rainbows with a pink castle just to spite Rick, because he’ll have the upper hand there.

  So in the next story, they fall on a bunch of soft puffballs, and Morty doesn’t like what they turn out to be. He wonders how he’s gonna get out of the rain, and sees a white flying dog go from a tower to him, already knowing his name somehow and saying that he’s here to help him, AND he knows to tell him to hush because he knows that the tale from Earth that he’s based on is NOT in the public domain. Is he omniscient? Then he should be miserable from always being aware of everyone’s dirty thoughts.

Morty says happily that most of the time, everyone respects him here, aside from the start of the story. But I never saw that. Then he sees an alternate universe Wizard Rick, who’s been expecting him and has so much to ask him.

Morty says relatably that this makes sense because mad science and being a wizard are kinda the same thing. Yeah, and being able to do anything with magic makes way more sense than with science. Too bad he’ll just be a one-time thing. He tells Morty that Morty is the chosen one who’ll get to defeat the darkness coming close to their land, and expects Morty’s heart to be pure. It’s NOT.

  JUST THEN, Rick catches up to him and snarks that his heart isn’t pure because he’s seen his internet history. You’d think if Wizard Rick knew that Morty would show up already, he’d also know this. Wizard Rick says he won’t let Rick hurt him. Rick asks him his name, and he reveals his name to be Merlin, whose nice personality is Rick’s before he became cynical. I guess he never met Diane.

  So Rick uses a device to freeze Wizard Rick, as I wonder why he didn’t know THIS would happen too, if he’s a wizard who was psychic enough to know Rick is CYNICAL right away and became that way with time. Rick can do anything like a wizard and his only limit is his attachment to Morty keeping him from being as evil as he could be. So Wizard Rick, who is not even around a Morty, would have no limitations on himself at all.

  Oh good, Rick explains that he PLANTED that prophecy, knowing that Merlin would kidnap a magical prophecy boy at all costs, so he knew right where to find him. But he said he was waiting for an eternity. Rick hates time travel in the show, but he loves Morty more, so I guess he fell on a time travel stone and used it to plant the prophecy centuries ago. So Morty gets made to cry by Rick for the second time this story arc and again he doesn’t even react to it.

   So that was the end of that story. What was the point? It was clever that Rick just made up that prophecy because the chosen one prophecy is such an overused cliché that I just found it annoying. But Wizard Rick didn’t even get to show off his powers. He could’ve looked like anything for all it mattered. The fairies could’ve looked like anything for all it mattered.

  If the story wasn’t gonna USE Merlin and have him DO stuff, then it wasn’t worth using one of the most overused predictable public domain things. The Sabrina the Teenage Witch comic handled Merlin better than this, basing an entire story around a unique interpretation and appearance of him.

  In the final story, Rick tells Morty that he needs to hurry up and get to the DNA Collector machine, and warns him that because there’s infinite realities, there are timelines where even Rick and Morty are public domain fictional characters, so that has to mean that lesser versions of them from all over will want them dead, and they’re called the Knockoffs.

  Right away, multiple of them show up through a portal and Rick blasts a laser at them, as they somehow keep smiling. Rick says that they’re put the DNA in, and tells Morty to hit the button to upgrade their public domain mega monster. It was nice and relatable of Morty to say, “ Hey there, I’m gonna change what you are now, is that okay? Uh, I’m gonna pretend you didn’t give me a really human look just then. “

  So their oddly human-shaped monster gets released, and Rick says that he can time travel, and knew the knockoffs would be on their way soon. I guess this is a different universe Rick from the show since he’s fine with time travel. I’m glad it was explained better than just lucky guess why he knew they would show up.

  Then Morty says that if they can time travel, then they could’ve taken their time to eat lunch. And then Rick kills the monster with the press of a button, and Morty says that he’s never read any of those books they visited, and Rick says that he hasn’t either and wants to watch TV, which was trying to be a heartwarming family moment between the two, and point out that everyone’s like that.

  That sure was a nothing story. It’s by Tini Howard. Rick releases a monster against some bad guys that he knew would show up, because he happened to time travel into the future for no reason at all. I think because all the focus was away from the monster’s fight, I didn’t even see why he would’ve needed to make the monster out of public domain characters in the first place.

  He could’ve just sent a Mister Meeseeks after the knockoffs instead of going through all that trouble, when he’s supposed to be lazy. He glorified time travel a lot, so I guess he’s a different universe Rick who doesn’t know about the Mister Meeseeks box. Because the beings involved in the fight are all organic, I wouldn’t wanna see the gore of it anyways. If only the knockoffs were robots. Barely anything was done with each of the public domain universes, so what was the point?

  There was really nothing to say about that arc. Pretty underwhelming. The Rick and Morty show has a lot of times where it bases its stories off sci-fi stuff that has already been done before, like the story that was apparently based off Jurassic Park, but it was taking place inside of a person’s body instead.

So apparently it was using the same plot, but it changed the whole aesthetic, so it still felt like it was trying to be original and interesting. So my problem with this is that I know for a fact that Rick and Morty can use public domain stuff better than this, because it uses stuff that isn’t public domain a lot better.

Issue 46: Rickworld

  The story starts out with Rick insulting Morty at length for almost getting him killed earlier, and somehow Morty’s still happy and doesn’t care, and says that the queen started it and he’s a man of great passion. Rick lands the spaceship somewhere because he needs a 24 hour break from him, right now. Morty asks why he doesn’t just leave him at home and portal somewhere. So Rick once again didn’t think to have his portal gun with him, and that’s the whole reason Morty’s with him.

  Rick takes him to a place called Rickworld, where Ricks go to really cut loose and reboot. It’s by the same Rick that made the Jerry Daycare. There’s a bunch of women here that flirt with Rick because everyone here’s a robot designed to play out some illusionary world or fulfill an impulse. Morty’s really happy to see a world where everyone would just do whatever he wants, though that’s probably just a smile from the fact that he’s seeing pretty women.

  And Rick says he can do whatever he wants to THEM. There’s a bunch of Jerrys here, and one of them asks how punch-able his face looks today. You’d think they wouldn’t be programmed to act cheerful, but I guess Rick’s disgusted at Jerry’s cowardice, so he wouldn’t want him scared of him. Plus if they were programmed to act scared, well, they could be also be programmed to not run away, though.

Rick kicks him a lot in the weakest spot, and there’s a sign saying that it’s been 23 days since the last robot malfunction murder rebellion. So whoever programmed these robots is much worse at controlling them than Robians who have no free will. Rick’s checking in a Rick and Morty for an overnight, and the woman asks if that’ll be for one room or two, and Rick hates that she even has to ask. Rick’s shown that they’re currently running a special on the world tour package of his old rock band, and he has a platinum membership with a discount.

  Morty asks why all of the ladies here are redheads. Was Diane a redhead? No. Because this isn’t a place for Morty, and unless Rick is a natural blond, Diane would have to be the blonde to make Beth blonde, and Rick’s had light blue hair in childhood too. Rick hates that he has to specify that he wants separate beds for him and Morty. Hopefully this means a lot of Ricks cuddle with their Mortys because they’re his grandson and he loves them. Rick’s told that he needs to mark his Morty because it’s a new park policy and they’ve had a series of mix-ups. I dunno why this wasn’t always the park policy.

  Rather than having a wristband system, they’ve been having their patrons physically mark their Morties with a permanent marker. But he’s not always gonna be marked for the rest of the comic, so it’s not REALLY permanent marker if it can be removed, just, slightly less temporary marker. Rick’s told that he might wanna not draw the obvious thing because tons of other Ricks did that.

  So he draws an L and Rick says he’s gonna get some ladies and blow up some stuff while Morty stays in Mortyland out of his way, where there’s a ton of Mortys at a kiddie playground. Morty thinks it’s lame because it’s for kids even though it’s got a slide. Rick then reminds us why he thinks Morty deserves this. Morty put his hands all over the queen when it was explicitly stated to be a surefire death sentence for him and Rick.

  A Morty tells Morty that of course it’s not so bad here. There’s some decent sandwiches and tablet games. Then Morty sees some other Mortys making a plan, and they claim that they’re the bad Morty gang who all got left behind by Ricks who forgot them, even though obviously the Ricks would be told to just go back and find Morty by their Beths and Jerrys. SO they wouldn’t be able to get away with leaving them behind. Good thing there’s an explanation for this.

  They all run to Rick’s room and stab pillows under the sheets that were meant to trick them, and Rick punches one of them, having anticipated that one of them would show up. They would’ve woken him up the minute they burst into his room and that’d be ample warning anyways. One of them gets him with a knife, and somehow he smiles and says he got him good.

  Then he starts shooting with his ray gun. We barely got to see Rick punch them at all. And Morty’s walking around the hallway just outside the place, which is completely forced. Wouldn’t he be forced to stay in Mortyland? Even if not, because that wasn’t how the Jerry Daycare was, why would he walk around here? He almost got hit by those lasers. Why were these revenge-planning Morties in the Morty daycare with Morty, considering that all of them were robots?

  After Morty’s upset with Rick who calls him a moron, he’s told that Rick ordered a game where he kills a bunch of Robot Morties. He says he does this every three months so he can stand being around him. Good thing the story established that Morty really screwed up at the start, so we can understand Rick better, because normally this would seem weird because it stands in contrast to the bond they’ve usually shown to have together.

Even then Morty only screwed up because he was too stupid, but at least it was kinda in-character because we know how desperate he is and how bad he is about his lust for women. Rick fortunately admits that it’s messed up and Morty says that after all the dark stuff Rick’s done, him not killing real Morties feels like a Morty win. That would be Stockholm Syndrome, but Rick IS actually nice to him at times, so he’s not literally JUST interpreting his not being as evil as possible as kindness.

In fact he ends the story by putting his arm around Morty and smiling and calling him a little scamp, even though Morty’s asking for a game where a Morty can kill some Ricks. So him being nice to him reaffirms that they DO have a bond together and he does love him. Morty just annoys him sometimes.

  In the second story that’s not in Book 6 or 7, called Big Penpin’, some Penps in shirts fly towards a metal door being told to enter in an alien language. A guy with wings says their message said they had a new substance for sale, which is a prototype that their scientists concluded that when harvested from the one they requested, would produce an addictive euphoria. Of all the stories in the comic to reference again, why this one?

  I don’t like that one of the Penps says that it’ll also make the winged guy and then says a bunch of gibberish and he somehow thinks that’s what humans say. Rick shows up and says happily that the winged guy’s grunt said he had good shit for him, and then we see a star in his eye for some reason and there’s a sound effect and he falls over, as just now the Penps speak English just to insult him. It turns out I was expected to know they hit him with a shovel. That was badly drawn.

  Oh, so it was worth referencing that Penp arc, because Rick’s getting exactly what he deserves. One of them says, “ Yeah! How do YOU like it? “ And the other says, “ Shovels to the head feel great! Right, Rick Sanchez? “ Miraculously, Rick’s awake in a chair right after that with no sign of an injury. And they decided that was enough for them and stopped… That’s how you do slapstick wrong. He’s supposed to be hurt or at least dazed.

  He’s asked where Morty is, since they’re mad at him too. Rick tells them right away that Morty wanted a rematch on the Roy game, trying to be cool this time, and he keeps telling him that rock stars never live past age 27 unless they suck. That’s not always true. Maybe it is in the Roy game. Why would he tell them where he is no problem? I guess for his own self-preservation, but I still don’t like him getting Morty in danger so casually.

  Sure, he can just go to the Citadel of Ricks to buy a new Morty, sure he can just clone another Morty and age him up and even give him some memories to give him experience whenever he wants, but if he didn’t feel attached to Morty, he wouldn’t sacrifice himself for him in the show or do stuff like go to Blips and Chitz with him.

But of course, if he cared about his grandson as much as he should, he’d go on the dangerous adventures with a clone of Morty and only take the actual Morty to Blips and Chitz and stuff. Now I wish I could see a Rick like that. That might have made more sense.

  Anyways, Rick asks the winged guy, named Cthonnelly, what HIS angle in this is. He tells Rick that the Penps have offered the most lucrative drug this sector ever saw in exchange for Rick, and he asks if he finds the thing he harvested Penp Juice with familiar, and these Penps have dedicated their lives to making sure he feels every inch of their pain.

  I wish the cops that wanted to go after Rick in the Penp Juice arc, were talking Penps like THESE. At least it’d make sense that the Penps themselves wanted to get revenge on him, not Gromflomites. It’s confusing, the Penps weren’t able to TALK in that arc. Apparently Rick went after some wild dumb Penps that can’t talk.

  It turns out that the Penps that Summer returned to their own planet rebuilt their civilization, and the Penps studied the devices and genetic material that Rick left behind. Even though I thought they were just dumb animals that couldn’t talk, because they never did and they had to be dumb enough to get close to Morty to get hit with his shovel on the ground in the first place. Oh FINALLY, it’s addressed that they didn’t talk. Why didn’t Rick question it earlier?

  The guy says, “ We didn’t even talk, we communicated with a sophisticated system of exquisite aromas! Do you know how PAINFUL this is? We had to manipulate our esophageal chambers AND learn all the languages of the universe! “ ALL of them? That’s ridiculous. They’d only learn a few they NEED. Somehow they find it undignified, I guess because they’re so proud of the interesting way that THEY communicate.

 Their every resource went to recreating Rick’s experiments, and they refined a way to use his rare human gasses to create a substance so stimulating that every dealer of narcotics in the universe will demand them. That’s impossible and stupid. Rick is shocked that the Penps think his gasses are rare. Penp says, “ Obviously. Why else would you go to such efforts to harvest ours and conceal your own? “ It’s interesting and refreshing to see a character be wrong when it’s understandable why they’d BE wrong. They’re alien and don’t know any better.

  Rick cheers up saying they just hit the motherlode and unbuckles his belt, and says to get him a bucket of jellies and wants to get rich. Wait, so he expects them to let HIM get money from that too when they dedicated their life to getting revenge on him? Well, that sure was merciful. He sure cheered up quick.

  The Penp near him later on says that while he had his doubts, he was right, and retribution for his planet DOES pale in comparison to the stacks of money he’d get from Rick. So, the story was SO merciful that it actually let Rick make it UP to the Penps! And the story is self-aware that it’s not COMPLETELY making it up to EVERYONE because one of them still misses his wife and kid. With that, the story ends.

  I assume some of the money went to Penps as well as Rick, since he said, “ let’s “ so at least he got to make it up to the Penps a little, which I never expected to happen, and I’m so glad he got confronted with what he did to them, and had to deal with the same thing, even if not nearly as MUCH. But them speaking in an alien language at the start was off-putting on that first page. It could’ve easily not had those first few panels. This was by Karla Pacheco.

  This issue by Kyle Starks was about Rick going to Rickworld to blow off some steam by killing Mortybots after Morty nearly got him KILLED, and them being robots explained why he anticipated that they’d show up. And it does make sense that they were programmed to wanna fight Rick because he’d feel guilty if they were scared and didn’t want him to fight them as would be in-character, and Rick likes a challenge. He said, “ Ha ha ha! Let’s DO this! “ and even after he got stabbed he just smirked and was impressed and continued the fight.

  As Morty points out, it’s way better than him killing real Mortys, which we were initially led to believe, which made it seem not so bad after we found out they were robots. That’s better writing than it could’ve had for a story where Rick has a stunning moment where he wants to kill Mortybots for stress, despite the fact that he cares about his own Morty and is nicer to him than he has to be. It’s because they’re just robots and he’d rather lash out at THEM than his own Morty.

He’s really just doing this to protect Morty! This story was pretty memorable. But it doesn’t make sense that the Mortybots were in Mortyland and able to interact with Morty, but it didn’t matter because Morty didn’t come with them for revenge on a Rick, but what if he did? There’s no way Morty would’ve wandered out in the hall and spotted Rick doing that.

He would’ve just stayed in Mortyland with the tablet. He was lucky Rick didn’t kill him! He was already so used to fighting Mortys at that point that it took him a second to remember that having the L on his forehead meant that he was HIS.

  But it was sweet of the Ricks to have things to keep the Mortys there entertained, ‘cause they could’ve just had them in a room with nothing to do in it and locked the door. But yeah, Rick was too unlikable here, I’ll admit that.

Issue 47: Interdimensional Cable Trouble

  We start out with Summer probably overreacting to something because she’s a typical teenage girl, saying that there’s no justice in the world and she wants to die. Rick of course says she’s right that there’s usually no justice. Morty shows surprisingly great chemistry with him by not scolding him for being a downer, and instead says that if you want justice you have to go to the mall.

  Summer’s upset because they cancelled her favorite show. Why doesn’t she just ask to see the next season in a parallel universe with interdimensional cable? I probably thought of this right away because I’ve read this comic before and remembered it actually happening. I like that she tries to explain why she liked that show, which was extra effort of the writer. Her show was inclusive, funny, and all the characters wanted to kiss each other.

  Beth lampshades that Summer was being whiny about something not that tragic and warns her that one of these days her histrionics are gonna be for something truly tragic, and she’s not gonna feel like putting down her bottle of wine and sudoku book to run up to her. Summer ignores her mother’s lack of pity and just continues complaining about what happened. At least we got to learn that Beth plays sudoku. So that’s a hobby she has.

  Rick of course says that nothing good lasts on TV longer than a season or two because most people are idiots, and only lukewarm boring garbage gets long episode runs. At least he’s sympathizing with her in the sense that he assumes her show was good. Why doesn’t Rick immediately offer to show her another season of her show from another universe? I know I’d look for those if I had interdimensional cable, if only to see another season of Satam or Korra.

  Jerry tries to come up with a smart idea for a change, because when Summer keeps whining, he asks Rick to give her a pill or potion. Rick, surprisingly doesn’t call him morally shady for suggesting this, and instead says that Beth has a whole cabinet full of calm down pills, and suggests that as a solution even though obviously you shouldn’t take other people’s medication because it’s not meant for your body in particular. You’d think a genius would know this.

Jerry says he wants a permanent solution, and he says he doesn’t want Summer lobotomized, but something like it. Rick says he’ll only do it if he lets him cannon-shoot him into a volcano. Hopefully because he’d want revenge against him for telling him to lobomotize her.

  After Rick rants that his time is too valuable to do what Jerry wants, Morty excites him by turning on interdimensional cable. Morty’s smart enough to come up with the idea that there has to be a dimension where Summer’s show wasn’t cancelled. It’s good that Summer appreciates this.

  And it’s nice that Morty gets to be the one with the smart idea, but how did he come up with this and carry it out and not Rick? But it shows how considerate he can be, and he’d be more sympathetic if he had more moments like this. Maybe Rick did come up with the idea but didn’t care enough to say it. Beth fortunately says that was thoughtful, and he’s bashful about it.

  We see a blue alien say that he hopes the red one is ready for the main event because it could be the most physical bloody fight in the history of the BFC. I love that weird-looking aliens like this have names like John, that’s just silly. But with the multiverse being so big, it’s not impossible.

  He asks him to list their competitors, and it’s revealed that the competitors are babies. Rick’s the only one who likes the fight, while everyone else is horrified. So, wouldn’t people in the Sonic universe find Chao Karate to be just as horrifying? I know Rick’s a jerk but I still find it hard to believe Rick likes this. Beth begs Morty to change the channel. I guess he waited so long because he didn’t want to get Rick mad.

  Summer says she thinks she’s gonna be sick, probably because the baby called Bone Breaker lived up to his name. I guess the reason this kind of show was legal was that, well one, it’s actually just a work of fiction in-universe and is a Crosses the Line Twice adult show, not a real competition with real people. Maybe the competitors are all CGI.

  Or, it’s legal because the babies are the offspring of prisoners and that’s the legal punishment to them. It’s on an alien planet, there’s tons of different ways crimes could be punished. Or the competitors are all of an alien species that gets discriminated against. And the comic’s good enough that I feel like suspending my disbelief with stuff like this. I mean I’m 8 pages in and I’ve mostly been complimenting it!

  They change the channel and look at some identical aliens staring at each other on chairs. Summer finally complains that this isn’t her show, which she should’ve complained earlier, but I guess she was just as curious about the show as everyone else. Rick says that he wants to see where this is going.

  Then one of the aliens gets yellow eyes and turns to the camera, and says they’ve been waiting for Rick Sanchez. So, how? The TV would only be able to tune into fictional shows. How was he able to… was their TV signal intercepted by these aliens?

  Anyways, Rick says it’s a trap, there’s a flash of light from the TV, and he reminds us how smart he is because he thought to be prepared for home invaders. He tells the house to execute a security protocol Tartarus. I like the Greek name. The brief flash of light deactivated his security measures. HOW? The lights in the HOUSE are still ON, and Rick isn’t dead, so it wasn’t an EMP!

  In all the time that the alien was taking with telling Rick this, Rick could’ve shot the alien with the ray gun. He does do that in the next panel, though. But they activate force fields. So never mind. They would’ve activated the force field if Rick reached into his pocket even if he was trying to interrupt one of them.

  Rick keeps shooting the force field, I guess out of desperation. He shows racism against the Xepthurians, saying that they’re famous for being bloodthirsty monsters. Okay but wouldn’t humans be just as bad? There’s plenty of humans that are like that. How could these aliens possibly be worse? For all we know, the only Xepthurians that became famous outside of their planet were evil. Rick’s called out on being a jerk too.

  Then he gets forcibly floated upwards and shouts out in pain as I’m waiting for the aliens to explain what problem they have with him in particular, because there’s a lot of bad things he’s done, and these guys came out of nowhere. Most of his family gets made to stay still, and it turns out these guys just want his time travel technology. Uh, wouldn’t they start by looking in his garage? Why did they even talk to him at all?

  I guess they only managed to locate his house by somehow tracking his TV signal when he tuned into their live show, so they have to materialize in his living room. But you’d think they’d look in his garage immediately just in case. Maybe it makes sense that they all assumed his time travel technology was hidden somewhere no one could find it or access it, rather than just being in a box in his garage, in the same place as everything else he makes.

  He plays dumb about having time travel technology when we know he does, though I guess the box of time travel stuff is really JUST a meta reference to the writers mostly keeping time travel ideas on the SHELF and it doesn’t actually have time travel stuff in it. They still used the time travel concept once, though.

  Rick says he won’t do anything he doesn’t want to do. Never MIND that his family’s in danger. And this could get them killed along WITH HIM, though maybe he doesn’t care if he can just wake up in a clone body and go replace them with another family anyways, or make clones of THEM. But still, he always cares about Morty.

  Somehow Morty remains chipper at this and says that one time he asked Rick to pass the salt and he told him to get longer arms. He really has faith in Rick to save them. Rick would have a better justification if he said that he doesn’t trust these aliens not to horribly abuse time travel technology and so for the greater good, it’s better for them all to die, but they’d find it in his garage eventually, so that’d be a stupid sacrifice even if he did think that.

  Morty gets grabbed to be used as leverage, and Rick pretends he doesn’t care, saying that he’s got three more Morties he’s been keeping on backup, just in case something happens to this one. And we actually see he’s not bluffing. He’s keeping 3 identical Morties in a basement and they’re playing cards with each other. Well, it’s better than them fighting like in the Pocket Mortys arc. I guess he’s in charge of keeping them fed, maybe with an automatic feeding machine that generates food, but you’d think Morty would’ve seen them use the bathroom eventually.

  Maybe there’s a bathroom in the basement? I assume they’re Pocket Morties, or clone Morties, which would make more sense. So that’s why they’re going along with this boring depressing life. Still, I don’t like this because it came out of nowhere and is depressing.

More importantly, I don’t like this because logically he’d just keep the backup Morties in clone vats, not have to put up with keeping them fed and entertained because they’re awake. Why would he give them such a horrible life instead of keeping them unconscious? He has a Spare Parts Morty, wouldn’t he be kept in a clone vat unconscious the whole time? Was one of those “ Spare Parts? “

  The alien says that there are other ways of getting Rick to do what he wants. But if he had the ability to control his mind, he’d have done so by now. Rick says he can’t be tortured into it because his entire life is pain, and then he explains that he can’t be threatened because he’s got everything backed up and a dozen clones of his that his mind would be uploaded into, and they all have better knees.

  Maybe this isn’t the Show Rick because Rick in the show completely gave up on Project Phoenix because of the Tiny Rick fiasco. Yet another reason the Rick Identity Crisis story was completely pointless. You’re going to have stories about alternate Ricks anyways. Then he says in front of his family that he’d be able to get another family if he wants.

This story’s about showing what a badass Rick is, because it sure is dedicating a long time to showing that Rick can’t be made to do what he doesn’t want. Why didn’t he go on that whole spiel about the fact that it doesn’t matter if he “ dies “ when he was kidnapped by the Penps?

  Then Rick gets telekinetically thrown into various walls and a hole in the garage is created. He still speaks about himself confidently after this and remains determined, and fortunately someone lampshades him using a gibberish word. Oh, I thought Morty was gonna GIVE them the time travel stuff. Instead he turns the box around, loyal to the end, but sadly one of the aliens was looking at him.

  Wait a minute, just as I was wondering why Rick didn’t just give them a fake box of time travel stuff, I started to wonder if the reason these aliens getting his time travel stuff won’t have any consequences is that it’s not really stuff that works. It’s a decoy box. I have to wonder why the box was facing them in the first place though, ‘cause you’d think something as valuable and abusable as time travel stuff wouldn’t have its label facing people.

It would be turned around to begin with, because that’s just begging for Jerry to use it to try to undo a mistake he did. Why didn’t he? I always assumed the time travel stuff was just a bunch of parts not put together because it says stuff, not machine, so Jerry wouldn’t know how to put it together.

  Rick just says it’s definitely bad while smiling, instead of immediately telling us the truth. It makes sense that he can’t just give them a box of time travel stuff right away, not only because he’d look like a coward in front of his family, but because the aliens would think it’s too easy and realize it’s not the real deal. Plus, his family would whine about the fact that he gave something like time travel technology to a bunch of aliens he just called bloodthirsty monsters, and Jerry might ask for it too because, “ well if you’re giving it to them, why can’t I get it too? “ It would set a precedent.

  We see an alien king say that these aliens have saved their people. The king says they’ll be able to undo all of the terrible mistakes they’ve made as a society; bad elections, ecosystem destroying commerce, bad health care system. He thinks they’ll be able to end up as an elevated and thoughtful society and spread love throughout the universe. Huh? That sure is a nice and idealistic king. Like, for a guy who’s completely all-powerful he sure is not corrupt.

 What makes him think the mistakes wouldn’t be made just because people would show up to the past and warn people not to make them? They’d just be ignored anyways, maybe not even believed about it. The same people would be elected because there would be the same amount of people who would be blindly loyal to their particular political party and would vote for them regardless. And companies would still wanna make money, so they’d hurt the ecosystem regardless.

  They open the box and see a hologram of Rick insulting them for taking his stuff, and then they all get blown up. Maybe it doesn’t have time travel stuff in it and is literally just a bomb. I would wonder why Rick doesn’t make his portal gun blow up when people take it, but the people most likely to steal his portal gun would be the people he lives with.

  Then we see Summer glad that her show got cancelled because a character in it is literally saying “ fart joke. “ Why isn’t she assuming that this is only one possibility and there’s plenty of GOOD versions of that season? She just picked the wrong universe. Also, it would be more likely if the character was only being made to say fart joke because it was the writing being sarcastic, and it wasn’t trying to be funny, it was just like, “ we’re being lazy on purpose, “ because if the show really got bad, then it would actually show a fart joke and not have someone just say it.

  It seems more like the show is making fun of the fact that those jokes are being used in the first place by having someone say that. It makes more sense that a character would say that because he doesn’t have any ideas for jokes and just says that. We haven’t seen enough of her show to understand why she thinks it sucks now.

  Morty, meanwhile, is surprised to learn that this happens to Rick all the time. Wait, does that mean that Rick erased his memory of the other times that happened? Either that or most of the time the aliens try to get time travel stuff from him, his family isn’t in the house at the time. I guess it makes sense that he did that to him, and his family, every time, because it would prevent them from remembering him say that they’re replaceable and suffering the consequences, and I’ve seen in Morty’s Mindblowers that he can erase and store memories.

  Rick says that people are always coming here looking for a science gadget and usually it’s the time travel stuff. In which case, it’s a good thing he’s famous for making that because it’s the one thing people are always looking for. It draws attention away from the other stuff that would be stolen. So maybe that’s the reason he made it. If he can ensure that people are always looking for one particular thing, then he won’t have to worry about a whole bunch of other gadgets being stolen that he actually cares about and therefore is way more likely to actually use instead of just keeping it lying around.

  Why isn’t Morty asking why he doesn’t remember this happening before? Rick reveals that any of his actual time travel stuff is kept hidden in Morty’s underwear drawer. That’s even smarter, except, he shouldn’t tell Morty where he hid the actual time travel stuff because he’s risking him trying to use it. I guess he erased Morty’s memory after this.

  This story by Kyle Starks was about some aliens trying to steal the time travel stuff from Rick by threatening him and his family. You’d think one of them would just go for the garage right away and the plot would’ve been over a lot faster. So the reason the story went on for so long aside from them probably assuming it couldn’t be THAT SIMPLE was that the point was to show just how badass Rick really is.

  It’s just about Rick telling them at length that they can’t make him do something he doesn’t want to do, and they throw him telekinetically through a wall, somehow not killing or visibly injuring him with that, and find a fake box of time travel stuff that really has a bomb in it.

I guess Rick has the box or bomb specifically programmed so that it only goes off if it’s brought too far away from his house, AND touched by people who aren’t a part of his family, because otherwise, it would blow up if Jerry or Morty touched it, which would be inevitable. How would they resist the temptation to use a box called time travel stuff?

  It was brilliant that the issue was a subversion. It started out seeming to be another interdimensional cable story where I’d have to force myself to talk about it because all of the shows are about unfamiliar characters, but then it went in a different direction, though I’m still wondering how they found Rick from him happening to tune into their TV channel. How’d they know? Rick didn’t hear an alarm go off that would alert THEM. How long were they sitting there hoping he’d tune into their channel? Are they paid to sit there all day? They didn’t even have a Game Boy in front of them.

  If they know about Rick to the point of knowing his full name, why didn’t they know where he lived and just warp there? They have warp technology with a portal resembling Rick’s portals. I guess they beat up a Rick to get it. And yet they can only warp to his location if he tunes into their TV channel. You’d think if space and time were part of the same fabric, they’d just have to make the portal become a wormhole to make it a time travel portal, changing it from warping them through space, to warping them through space and time. But I guess that’s much harder than it sounds.

Issue 48 Hit Me Space Baby One More Time:

  We start out with Morty trying to sleep and hearing Rick’s voice saying, “ space, “ but for some reason it’s in green text without being in a text bubble. He turns the lamp on, and Beth says he’s a sleepyhead and it’s almost dinner time, wait, instead of breakfast time? He woke UP. She asks him to help her make space at the table and calls him baby. That combined with her freaky wide smile is getting me suspicious of her, not to mention the second panel AND the COVER.

  Morty says that she’s not supposed to cook at wine o’clock as I wonder why he’s not questioning why he’s getting turkey for breakfast. I guess he was just having a NAP. He says that when Beth put rags and a carton of butter in the oven, the house smelled for a week. Beth, instead of being offended, somehow just laughs and says he’s silly for thinking she’d have wine on a weekday. Is this a parallel universe Beth? Or somehow Rick? Is it all a dream of Morty’s that Rick’s making him have? Because even in the dream, she still drinks, just not on weekdays. She doesn’t say she’d never have wine ever.

  Beth reveals that Jerry worked hard to get them a turkey and Morty’s confused that Jerry now has a job. She puts her hand on his forehead and asks if he has a fever, while uncharacteristically calling him sprout. Then Jerry happily comes home wearing a fancy suit and Summer hugs him calling him daddy, and it turns out he’s the world’s best marketing exec in this universe. If this was a simulation of Rick’s, then Jerry would be the most pathetic loser ever. So it can’t be.

  Jerry appreciates that Beth made turkey, and she calls him the best husband ever. Morty swears in confusion and Beth scolds him and Summer’s shocked at it. Jerry reassures her that he’s just worked up from teen hormones, and Jessica’s coming over later. Summer teases him that he and Jessica are in love. Why would a teenager joke about that instead of just being used to it and bored, or congratulating him?

Everyone else is portrayed as being at their ideal state, but Summer’s being portrayed as having the mind of a little girl, but she’s happy, so that’s all that matters. I guess this has to do with the fact that Morty liked Summer more when she was a kid. So his ideal version of her is her when she was a kid. But she’s not a kid while she’s at it.

  His family somehow doesn’t question why he’s confused that they know he’s dating Jessica, and Beth says there’s no secrets in this family. Jerry says they might need to throw a ball around together to work off his energy. Then Snuffles the dog shows up, and he says, “ Space, “ while his eyes and the background look the same.

I like the intriguing mystery going on, and because I know it’s a good comic, I have every reason to trust the comic to explain it in a satisfying way instead of just being mad that it’s not filling in a plot hole right away that makes the whole plot impossible. Anything is possible in a series with the premise that there’s a mad scientist who can create anything.

  Morty then asks where he is and what’s happening, as he’s in an alien planet with Rick behind him. He sees a crystal as Rick gets sent away by light and knocked over in front of some spear-wielding knights. The crystal looks like a flower all of a sudden. Then all of a sudden, Morty’s back to the ideal universe, and asks where Rick is.

  Jerry lampshades that he’s on a first name basis with his grandfather and it turns out that in this universe, Rick is just staring blankly while sitting on a chair. He was taking Morty to the boy scouts – him and not Jerry for some reason, I guess because Jerry was too busy with work – and he put his body out to protect Morty from a milk truck, but took a bump. He’ll never be the same again. So how is he HERE instead of at the hospital as a coma patient?

  Morty can’t believe he sacrificed himself for him, and Beth tells him that he’d do anything for him and loved his whole family and was so unselfish and giving. That stands out in huge contrast to last issue where he said his family was replaceable. But if this whole universe was just a simulation of Rick’s to try to get Morty to think better of him, he would’ve made Jerry even more pathetic, not better. What does this mean?

  Morty thinks Rick being smart isn’t worth it, or not worth dealing with. Although you’d think he’d keep him smart because Doofus Rick’s nice AND smart. But even Doofus Rick’s technology could backfire and do more harm than good, like when Jerry was upside-down with a malfunctioning jet-pack one time, and he has every reason to resent Rick and want him to get what he deserves instead of getting to keep living like he wants.

  Morty says that he thinks he’s in the wrong dimension or someone’s goofed with reality, but finally, he’s smart enough to admit that it might be for the best because he might like it here. Unbelievable at this point because he was creeped out by this place the whole time. This would be the happiest ending to the comic ever.

  Then we cut to Jessica and Morty together. She tells him to give him a little space, and she’s glad he asked her to go steady and he’s made her the happiest, luckiest girl in town. Then for no apparent reason, her chest is replaced with Rick’s face, telling Morty “ Wake up you little shitstain, we’re all about to die! “

  Morty wakes up, and Rick explains that they did a bunch of treasure-hunting in space and found a flower that would grant divine power to whoever claims its fruit, but bad guys found it by the time they got there, and before they could kill them, Morty drank the flower instead of Rick since Rick was occupied with fighting. Why does Rick think he doesn’t know all of this? He just assumes that Morty forgot all of this? Did he know for a fact ahead of time that forgetting what happened recently is a flower side-effect? I guess Morty thought the events right before his fantasy were a dream at first.

  He became a cosmic entity and stopped them, but then his weak little mind retreated into a fantasy world… But, he’ll need to be told what he’s capable of later, so it’s not like he instinctively knew he could do anything he wanted and thus chose to give himself a fantasy world. I guess he was in that dream because he passed out from fear. He never does that. More like from exhaustion, and because he’s so powerful now, he tried to give himself a good dream.

How did he know he was in a fantasy world? I guess he was sleep-talking, but sleep-talking is just people saying gibberish. And Rick has no idea what his actual dream was, aside from him having a vague idea that’s right about what he JUST experienced.

  Rick says he doesn’t really wanna know about his fantasy. I can’t blame Morty for retreating into a fantasy world because he’d rather have a happier life. He earned it at this point. But you’d think he’d just change his actual reality if he became all-powerful, and make sure that he can’t remember his old reality once he’s in it. And he’d make Rick nice and willing to HELP him, not a vegetable, unless deep down he’s that spiteful and resentful of him.

  He tells Morty that he can beat the bad guys with his omnipotence. And at first he assumes he means to say impotence. I didn’t know Morty wanted to have babies, but it does make sense because after he raised that alien baby in the show, he’d want another shot at it to do it right. The minute it showed up even though it was unplanned, he immediately wanted to raise it, so he WOULD want babies. So the fact that Morty didn’t know that he was omnipotent perfectly explains why he didn’t change his actual reality and make sure he didn’t remember his old reality.

  If Morty became omnipotent, wouldn’t he just make Rick a nice person? I guess he’s SO GOOD of a person, despite the series proving he’s not incorruptible, that he’s opposed to this because it’d be brainwashing Rick and he thinks brainwashing of any kind is wrong. More likely even if he did make Rick good, he’d just feel off-put because he’d know he only became good because he forced him to be, and so it’d be just hollow. And he’d know that was coming so he wouldn’t do it.

  What I mean is that he could rewrite reality so that… even if he tried to rewrite reality so that Rick was always a nice person, he would’ve changed history so that Rick would’ve never led Morty to the thing that made him powerful in the first place. But I guess it would create another timeline, so that’s why it wouldn’t make it so that he never became omnipotent. Then it would have created another universe, so it wouldn’t actually rewrite the past of the old reality anyways.

  Morty’s acting in the moment and is afraid of what could happen to Rick, so it makes sense that he’s impulsive and just doing what Rick tells him to. I love that he says, “ Aw, gee, “ and we actually see some letters show up spelling that out and they fall right in front of the bad guys in their vehicles. And they actually crush them.

  It makes sense that this would be the first spell Morty would cast if he has no experience with using magic confidently, because he’d say some words, and subconsciously think about them as letters, so he could just use the letters as weapons. But it’d be a lot nicer if he just brainwashed all the bad guys into being generous charity workers instead. But again, he didn’t have any time to think about this. He’s so scared and has no time to think that he could just freeze time and give himself all the time to think that he wants. He’s so used to fighting bad guys that he didn’t think of a non-violent solution.

  Some missiles get fired at them and Morty sends some tennis balls to stop them. Apparently Rick recognizes a planet destroyer of theirs on SIGHT. He destroys it and then summons some more letters to destroy the vehicles. Rick says that he could’ve just snapped his fingers to immediately erase them all from existence, and Morty reveals he didn’t think of that and says that’d be too anticlimactic. Since when does he care about that?

  And again he had no time to think. Whenever he remembers bad guys being fought, he thinks about destruction. Rick would’ve looked smarter if he just said he could’ve brainwashed them into being good guys, instead of saying that he SAVED him wrong when he still saved him either way. But I guess he wouldn’t wanna lead Morty into a train of thought that would lead to him brainwashing HIM. So it would be better if he thought it, instead.

  Then we see Morty back to normal with NO explanation and it turns out that Jerry’s turkey used to be either a hull or some alien zealot. He’s smart enough to not care because it’s still free turkey. Morty says that he realized with total knowledge that no one man should be responsible for so much power, so he released it back into the cosmos.

Wait, wouldn’t anyone who happens to pass by that little region of the cosmos get the ultimate power? Where did he release it to? He should’ve said, he destroyed that power. It sure was unselfish of him to NOT use his power to make the ideal fantasy world real and make himself think he was always a regular person living in it. That was the obvious idea.

  Beth says that Morty could’ve done so much good with that amount of power, like cured disease, erased world hunger, or cured equine influenza. Summer’s of course selfish, saying that he could’ve made them rich. Rick calls him stupid, and Morty says that he didn’t think of that. Well it’s a very good thing he made his decision because I know he’s not above being corrupted. Remember the TWO dictator Mortys?

He’s not evil like them but still. If he had more time to think he might have made himself the leader of the world to make it like he wanted. Remember the episode based on The Purge? But that was because he had a really stressful day. Morty on a bad day is scary. Like in the death crystals episode.

  Oh, realistically it turns out that he did do something else with that power. He conjured up a robot girlfriend. He did want a robot girlfriend in one of the episodes. It’s impossible to believe that he didn’t make that girlfriend look exactly like Jessica. Or even have the ability to shapeshift to look like someone else to prevent Jessica from eventually finding out and being creeped out with him.

  Rick made a gun to turn himself into a pickle, and tons of other things in one issue to the point where it’s doubtful he’d have made a different device for every different form of his, so couldn’t Morty use THAT device on Gwendolyn to make her look like Jessica? He wouldn’t make the robot look so terrible. It would just look like Jessica. Or at least Gwendolyn. Why did they not make the reference? You’d think he’d at least make the robot look good, but it doesn’t, so it wasn’t worth being different.

 She tells him to take his pants off in front of his family. I guess he didn’t have time to think about her much, so that’s all he made her able to say, and he didn’t have the time to think to make it unable to embarrass him in front of his family. I love that Jerry throws back in Beth’s face that she told him that these types of devices weren’t anything for him to be concerned about.

She says it’s not the same thing. The only way it’s different from Gwendolyn is that she can walk and say one thing. And somehow the story ends there. So we’ll never know why this thing disappeared. I guess it got randomly destroyed because of Rick’s antics, like he was running away from an alien and its laser hit her.

  This story by Kyle Starks was about Morty retreating into a fantasy world with an ideal version of his parents and sister after he fell asleep. And I guess his hidden resentment for Rick really manifested hard because why else would his ideal universe involve Rick as someone unable to talk or move because he sacrificed himself for him? Since he’s not in a coma like lying down. I guess he just got brain damage but can still walk around and eat. His ideal version of Rick is one with almost no brain power at all? That’s a weird cosmic flower.

  I love the intriguing mystery going on at the start. It turns out he became all-powerful because he drank a cosmic flower Rick was after, and eventually Rick wakes him up. Sure was convenient he did that successfully. How many attempts to wake him up did he make? And then Morty uses his powers in a creative way to defeat all of the bad guys, crushing them with letters made out of what he says.

  And he reminds us what a good person he’s supposed to be, by giving up all of that power because no one person should have all of that power. It’s odd because usually when he has moments of “ what you are in the dark “ it reflects badly on him, like the episode where he had a save button. But here, it was very different.

  And it makes sense that he didn’t think things through and use his powers in a smarter way, because that’s just who he is. He didn’t have ANY time to think about it. So he went with his impulse, which is apparently to be responsible because he’s too insecure to think he should have all that power. It sure was nice of Rick to not tell him to use the power how he wanted, but I guess he has whatever he wanted, so he wouldn’t hope Morty would do whatever he said after all the trouble he put him through.

  I said that Rick already has everything he wants, and that’s because, if I tried to think about the ideal universe for Rick, well aside from Jerry being divorced from Beth, I can’t imagine it would be any different from the show. He needs Morty to be the way he is so that his Morty Waves could hide him from his enemies. I guess Rick’s ideal universe would have it so that he wouldn’t need Morty Waves. He wouldn’t have any enemies.

But I know for a fact that he doesn’t want Morty to be a smart genius because he knows it wouldn’t be worth it. So Morty would be the same. Maybe he’d be unable to question him. But if he really wanted that, he’d have already brainwashed him, like, made a chip, like the Pocket Mortys have.

  He really loves his grandson if he didn’t do that, like, make him unable to get mad at him and betray him. That’s very nice of him. He’s better than Robotnik. But Beth would be the same. Summer would be the same. And I doubt Rick doesn’t want any challenge in his life, so he’d still have antagonists to deal with.

Maybe the obvious difference in his ideal universe would be that Diane would still be married to him and would love him for who he is instead of telling him not to go on adventures, when if she was actually still alive, she wouldn’t approve of the way he is now. I guess it’s been so long since Diane that Rick might not immediately think of bringing her back. But what else would he do with all that power?

  Now that I know his backstory in Season 5, he still might not bring his original family back because he’s too lazy and selfish to wanna raise a three-year-old Beth with Diane at this point, the way he is now, and that’s what he’d be expected to do if he brought them back from the dead or time traveled to save them. Even then, they might have gotten killed by a different Rick sent to kill them anyways afterwards.

Maybe that’s why he hates time travel, he tried to use it to save his family and just saw that nothing he could do would keep them safe. He could’ve tried putting them in Froopyland and they would’ve just wanted out, so that wouldn’t have worked.

Issue 49 Ricktroactive:

  Rick wakes up from an uncomfortable position because of some beeping and Morty tells him that the spaceship is crashing. Rick complains that he can’t leave him alone for a second, and Morty says that he doesn’t know why he’s being blamed because Rick was the one who was trying to show off, by building a spaceship out of literal garbage in the garage.

Oh, I thought he was gonna say that the spaceship ran into a meteorite, but it makes sense that it’d have a malfunction eventually. He’d have to actually TRY to get it hit by a meteor or asteroid or comet, because space is mostly just empty space. If the spaceship’s lasted this long, and it didn’t get destroyed from crashing through a spaceship earlier, it doesn’t matter that it was built out of garbage, it’s still the best spaceship ever.

  Rick lands the spaceship just fine despite its malfunctioning, so I guess its malfunction wasn’t really that bad. Huh? Then Morty alerts his attention to dead versions of Rick and Morty that crashed their OWN spaceship here and got a fate that was actually REALISTIC. While Rick doesn’t care, Morty’s realistically upset and wants to bury them out of respect, or at least cover them with a sheet.

  Rick says that they just didn’t account for the orbit of planets when they jumped here, and he says that this happens all the time. He doesn’t want to find out what happened to them. I mean, he already made it clear. It’s obvious what HAPPENED. He naturally wants to leave and never think of this again, and says that this has been a giant waste of a day.

  Out of complete nowhere, Rick wakes up from another beeping and the same thing was happening again, the spaceship malfunctioning with Morty trusted behind the wheel. I guess it’s only smart of him to try to teach Morty how to drive the spaceship, and he was driving it enough times that Rick fell asleep because he trusted him so much.

  Rick says that two crashes in the span of two days is impressive and Morty is confused, and says that he thinks he was just having a dream. WHY does RICK remember and not HIM? The Groundhog Day loop is an interesting story idea, but it’s always frustrating that it’s not justified properly. This kind of story idea has happened so often, that there was no reason for me to have faith that there would be an explanation. This should be explained right NOW.

  They crash on the SAME planet, again miraculously surviving with no injuries. How is the spaceship still able to fly them off the planet? Then Rick is woken up again, and… why did he ask how he got into the driver’s seat? I assumed he was letting him drive.

  Rick realizes that he’s in a Groundhog Day loop. He gets excited because there’s so much stuff they could get done or learn. Morty has a good point by saying, “ In a single day, Rick? Not a lot. “ Yeah, Rick should have known better than to say, “ get done, “ because you can barely get ANYTHING done. Anything you’d do would be undone, so what’s the point? You’d have to stretch your definition of “ do. “ You could watch every TV show ever, at least. But you couldn’t go to a second day of a music lesson.

   I guess the reason Morty doesn’t wanna take advantage of this like Rick is because he wants to have a normal life, so he wants to break the Groundhog Day loop as soon as possible, and since he’s not an adult yet, he won’t have the freedom to take full advantage of it anyways. Morty says that he’s gonna look around and see if he can figure out what’s going on. I wonder if the planet itself has a magical spell that creates this Groundhog Day loop. The problem is, this is Rick and Morty. But it HAS to be magical!

  8 hours later, Morty comes back, inexplicably having tears on his shirt and bruises. Maybe he fell and rolled down a rocky hill. But you’d think he would be more hurt than that.Maybe Rick could’ve made sure he was still paying attention to where he was going. Rick says he finally got to binge that show Morty was going on about. Aw, it’s sweet of him to binge that show of all things just because he thought of him. The FIRST thing he thought to do with the loop was something related to Morty.

  Of course, because he’s Rick, he thinks the show was only okay, and he’s glad he didn’t waste a meaningful day on it. It’s too bad he didn’t say what he liked about it. I mean this IS his grandson. It’s so polite of Morty to just say that it’s not for everyone. Rick says that everyone should’ve said they liked the show instead of saying how good it is. I can relate to feeling Hype Backlash myself, but still, be a little nicer to Morty. Rick says he’s gonna binge Season 2. He still cares about seeing what Morty likes even at that point.

  The Groundhog Day loop starts again, and since he immediately remembers what’s going on this time, he’s in a good mood right away, laughing and landing on the planet and confusing Morty. Rick teleports himself to a spa to have a relaxing day. I guess he’s so easily annoyed by Morty that he didn’t care about bringing him to the spa.

  Then he says that instead of fixing the ship, he’s gonna try to play every single video game. That would mean a lot of games that SUCK. Would he have the patience for that? I guess if he’s determined enough, he’ll do anything. Then we see Groundhog Day loops where he wasted time playing poker. What’s the point if he can’t keep the money? I guess he has a personal grudge against that guy and just wants to see him lose.

  Then we see him reading some books at the library. Too bad the names of the books are blurry. I think the first one is about physics, which he should already know all of the contents of, and the second book is about how to juggle. How could a mere book teach that? You’d have to learn from example and from seeing someone do it. I don’t know what the second book is about. What’s “ Ivanhoe? “

  Then we see him proudly juggle knives in front of Morty to show off while blindfolded, and Morty hilariously says, “ Gee, Rick, you’re acting super weird, today. “ I laughed at his reaction. Couldn’t he do all of these things without needing a Groundhog Day loop? I mean his clone project means he’s basically immortal.

The show Rick said he gave up Project Phoenix, but I guess the show Rick changed his mind about that after all the trouble it put him through in Season 4. Rick plays a VR game of changing someone’s mind on the internet. What’s the point, how is that fun? In ANY WAY? He just wants to try every arcade game, I guess.

  He’s enjoying life more than he EVER HAS. Why doesn’t he always live life like this? I wish that was explained. Then after Morty thinks he’s drinking too much because there’s no hangovers in the next day, Rick reveals that he trained the animals of the planet to sing a song to impress Morty. It took him a month to figure out they had different pitches, somehow, and another month to figure out how to train them to respond, and another month to figure out the song. But how could he train them to respond in just a single day?

  Morty’s just bored, because he’s used to Rick being capable of ANYTHING and so Rick shouldn’t expect him to be possible to impress at this point. He could’ve impressed Beth with this instead, but I guess Morty means a lot more to him. It turns out he trained them to do a song that’s a pop culture reference, which like Morty, I’ve never heard of. He complains that Morty has no appreciation for art.

  It turns out Rick’s run out of things to do, or at least run out of things he cares enough to do. Because Rick’s insanely bored, he decides to start taking his frustrations out on Morty and Jerry. He rolls a boulder towards Morty and we thankfully don’t have to see the grim result. Either that or he missed.

  Then we FINALLY learn the context behind Rick abandoning Morty to a bunch of monsters in the show’s intro while jumping through a portal. He was bored because he was stuck in a Groundhog Day loop too long. And Morty did aggravate him saying that only boring people get bored, so it kinda makes sense that he’d wanna lash out at him. And he knows there’s no consequences. He also ties up Jerry and sends a buzzsaw at him.

  I guess he felt guilty after that, because he spends the next two loops killing himself. You’d think he’d have given up after the first attempt didn’t work, but that’s how guilty he feels. Then we see Rick with bags under his eyes, SOMEHOW when he wasn’t like that earlier. It would take too long for the bags to show up. The loop would’ve restarted first.

It makes sense that he’s not playing video games instead, because even though there’d be an infinite amount of video games, there’s only so far you can get in a video game in one day, and again if there’s an infinite amount, he surely gave up on trying to play every game by now.

  After Rick rants for an overly long time that he’s done everything and gone years on this planet, it turns out that the ONE thing he hasn’t bothered to DO yet, was come take a walk with Morty and try to figure this planet out, which is the thing he’d normally do. I still wanna know why RICK was the one aware of the Groundhog Day loop and no one else. It’s not like it would’ve made a difference if Morty was aware of it.

  Morty finds a crystal. I figured it was a crystal causing the loop. Maybe it’s because I remembered it because I read the comic before, but that was months ago. Plus, magic gemstones are a very common cliché. He says this is a fracture quantum anomaly crystal.

He shoots the crystal with a laser, but the ending SUCKS, because when he wakes up again, he asks what’s happening and Morty says he just woke himself up with a fart. Either it was ALL just a dream, or he DID fix the loop. But that doesn’t explain to me why another loop happened because the crystal was destroyed! Maybe he destroyed it RIGHT as it was beginning to start another loop. It’d make more sense if there was no loop after this.

  This is by Kyle Starks. This was easily the best Groundhog Day story I’ve ever seen. Whenever it happened to Sonic, he didn’t really take advantage of it at all, it almost never explained how it happened, and literally the SAME few things happened over and over again, just a FEW times and he stopped it. I’m talking about Archie, but Sonic Boom did it too, but Eggman didn’t take advantage of it as much as Rick. I love that this story explained what caused the loop, but I wish I knew how it caused another one after it was destroyed. You’d think that Rick would’ve gone with Morty earlier, though.

  It makes sense that he took advantage of the loop to kill Jerry. But you’d think he’d be pretty bored with life after all of this because he’s done everything. But we wouldn’t notice a difference in him anyways because he’s always jaded. Maybe he couldn’t have made every invention he’d ever wanna make in the loop because it realistically takes longer than a day to make inventions. Not to mention you can’t progress far in a lot of games in just one day, so he couldn’t literally do everything.

Issue 50 Morty’s Mindblowers:

  We start out with Rick telling Morty to get him a gadget that looks like a toaster from the sub-basement, while Morty’s busy playing on a Switch. I hope Rick’s being sarcastic when he says he hopes he knows what yellow looks like. Morty’s surprisingly irritated with him, and Rick tells him that the last time, Morty brought him the wrong gadget and killed all the tapirs on Earth.

  And Morty says it’s weird that no one’s noticed yet. Huh? First off, Rick would’ve looked at the gadget after he was given it and immediately recognized that it was the wrong one. Second, how would his gadget kill tapirs, in particular? Tapirs aren’t even a thing in his country, so that’s SOME RANGE. And third, I wish I knew how long it’s been since they were made extinct, because if it’s too long, scientists WOULD notice.

  Then Morty panics about seeing all the tubes in the sub-sub-basement, and jumps to a nasty conclusion about it, probably based on the shape of the tubes. Why did Morty go to the sub-sub basement and disobey his instructions? Why doesn’t he go down here EVERY time he’s sent down to the sub-basement then? So why would Rick even bother sending him down to the sub-basement anymore instead of getting stuff himself?

  Erasing Morty’s memory of this place, after spending hours here, would obviously be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s not explained how much work Morty had to put into getting here, and it’s not explained how he actually discovered this place. You’d think the door to it would’ve been locked, so he’d just assume it had gadgets in it and ignore it.

  I’d rather have a good explanation for why he got here. Even something as sadistic as, he’s brought here to relive his memories as a PUNISHMENT. After all, this whole story’s gonna be like a punishment to him anyways.

That being said I remember loving Morty’s Mindblowers in the show, and I was happy to see an issue about the same concept, and I’m excited to see what memories Morty’s gonna remember, even if they’re gonna be cruel to him. They HAVE to be, or else Rick would have no reason to make him forget them. For the most part, aside from some of the red tubes.

  Rick says that these are memory tubes, full of memories that MORTY had him remove. So is he lying about Morty asking for it? I know he’s lying about the RED tubes. You’d think a lot of the stories in this very comic would be ones he’d beg him to erase his memory of, like the time he saw Ugly Morty reconcile with his sister just to die. So this could be an opportunity for at least ONE Continuity Nod.

But I’d rather not have comic space be wasted. Morty somehow asks why he’d want to have a memory removed. Shouldn’t that be obvious? He also somehow asks why there’s so many, when he knows him! Rick explains that the memories have to GO somewhere. Apparently, his brain isn’t a computer desktop and he can’t just drag stuff into the trash can. But the tubes WOULD be the trash can. If his analogy worked, they’d have to stay in his brain. And his reference was dated because he’d mean “ the Recycle Bin. “ Unless Macs still USE the trash bin, and he uses Macs.

  Rick then puts a helmet on him to show him his bad memories for apparently no reason. I remember that the show did this better. I think he explained that he’s just doing this to speed things up because when he lied about what the tubes were, he always snuck in and re-experienced them anyways, and even if he just left it at, “ they’re bad memories, “ he’d still insist on re-experiencing them because curiosity killed the cat. So this just saves everyone some time.

But I’m still wondering why Rick’s enthusiastic about doing this. I guess he’s forcing himself to act happy. ‘Cause it’s pretty sadistic to do this instead of just erasing his memory of the room by holding something in front of his face, and then things could go back to normal.

  I love seeing a whole bunch of shorts like this, because it means we get a lot more insights into his daily life than just the two insights we see in each issue. In the first memory, Rick’s pouring liquid from a vial and then Morty asks what he’s working on over there. Rick spills it all and gets mad at him because Morty distracted him by startling him from behind. Somehow Morty doesn’t take responsibility for it when it was clearly his fault. I guess he does feel bad about it, but is frustrated at having to and lashes out because of it.

  Rick’s called clumsy and says that he never drops ANYTHING and has plate spinner’s hands. Then after Morty’s confused, Rick stares at the orange liquid and sees bumps, and tells Morty to get the microscope goggles for the both of them. It turns out an entirely new microscopic life form has been created and they’re evolving ridiculously fast. Rick fortunately points out how lucky they got.

  Rick says that they’ve evolved into a culture based entirely on mutual respect and love and it’s a perfect utopia. How could he call it a “ utopia “ and a “ culture “ if obviously their fast evolution means fast death rates? How could they get the time to FORM a culture and society if they die so ridiculously fast? This is ridiculous. But it was sweet that Rick liked seeing how nice they were to each other, even though he’s a nihilistic cynic. He’s not actually opposed to nice people. He’s not acting suspicious of them.

  Morty thinks it’s sweet, and he reaches for his soda without looking at it because his goggles killed his peripheral vision and he’s reckless. So he spills it over them and starts to cry. They were dissolved, not drowned. That’d take longer. Rick should say dissolved instead. It would’ve made sense if he still accidentally killed a culture of nice people but they weren’t micro-organisms that instantly evolved into people, they were just another race of aliens instead. But this IS more interesting, at least, so it’s worth it.

  Still, an infinite amount of universes means that there would be infinite amounts of universes where they WEREN’T killed and were sent to another planet to have a whole world to themselves. So no wonder Rick didn’t react like Morty. And it’d take FOREVER to find a universe where those MICROSCOPIC organisms exist, and show Morty them. And it wouldn’t erase his guilt.

  Rick doesn’t help when he tells Morty he’s a genocider. He was already feeling guilty. Why is he smiling when telling him that there’s even more bad memories? Is he really still that mad about when Morty called him a boring person last issue? I guess so. And, logically, WHY is he keeping all of these tubes around?

Well, maybe they’re hazardous waste that couldn’t be- this is Rick, he’d be fine with teleporting them to outer space and ditching them there, even if they were dangerous. Apparently, he enjoys this, which is the only explanation I can think of for why he doesn’t simply get rid of all of the tubes after he stores the memories.

  He’s letting his emotions get in the way of doing the smartest thing. He claimed he wasn’t a grudge holder in an earlier issue but apparently that was just a load of bullshit. He WAS petty enough to vaporize someone just for bumping into him earlier, so, maybe he really is just doing this because of a petty grudge against Morty. He does give him a lot of reasons to be annoyed with him so I guess they all eventually built up to something and he snapped.

  Morty says he needs to take responsibility by knowing what else he did. Rick lampshades the bad idea and says that he shouldn’t follow any impulse because he’s not smart and doesn’t have good ideas. I’m sure he HAS had good ideas. Maybe they don’t always work out, like Summer saw a lame new season of her show. But it reassured her that it being cancelled wasn’t so bad! Rick’s exaggerating because he’s annoyed with him. Morty tells him, “ Just stick it IN me, Rick! “ and Rick snarked, “ GEEZ. PHRASING, Morty. “ That was a clever joke. Hopefully the next memory will make sense.

  We see an episode of the poorly named Ball Fondlers. The tough guy says they’re gonna land in the jungle, fight their way through a bunch of henchmen, and reach a lair to do even more killing. I guess Morty and Rick are here because otherwise, unless the episode sucks THIS MUCH, what would this have to do with them?

Of course, they ARE here. What, did they get a different artist for this? That was a bad idea. Why change artists in the same issue? It’s not like it’s a fancomic and so they had no other choice. Morty thinks this is cool and Rick fortunately reveals that Morty was using his Morty Adventure for this. I say fortunately because it proves he’s still using his Morty Adventure idea.

  The other guys jump out parachuting, and Rick snarks that parachuting is the least efficient way to stage a siege, and he could’ve just portaled them all down. WHY didn’t he SAY THAT to them and get them to DO that? I hope he was just THAT respectful of them that he humored them and didn’t wanna offend them because he loved the show so much.

  Morty says to not embarrass him here and just let the adventure be the adventure. So they parachute anyways, and someone tells them to watch out for trees. Some shooting starts, and the cute one says, “ Nice work, “ and he’s asked who’s flying the plane if HE’S here. Logically, he wouldn’t be here.

  There’s an explosion and some building gets set on fire. Rick asks where Morty is and it turns out he got caught in some vines when he fell into the tree and his rear was exposed to all of those characters he liked. No wonder he’d wanna forget that. It’d ruin the show for him. I guess it’s merciful to him that he didn’t do anything evil that time. It’s a good thing for US that we’re getting to see the whole story from Rick’s perspective instead of only seeing Morty’s, because realistically Morty wouldn’t have seen all that shooting. But without it, we could’ve had room for more stories.

  I don’t want this to END. It’s not like this is TOO cruel. Even with the last one, those micro-organisms existed for such little time and none of them were deep interesting characters, so we had no time to get attached to them before they died. It’d be worse if Beth was the one who was killed. I’m guessing there won’t be nearly enough memories because it’s a comic. Well I say that but I don’t know how long it would take to read all of this. Maybe it’d only take a half an hour?

  Realistically, Rick wants to stop here. It makes sense because the whole time, he’s just been standing there bored. I don’t know if he was actually watching. Morty begs for more, fortunately lampshading that he can’t explain it and something’s just compelling him.

  I wish there wasn’t a different, bad artist for the third memory. WHY isn’t it just the good artist the whole time? Morty says that Summer’s gonna be mad at him if he doesn’t find her iPhone charger and he’ll die before he uses the knockoff one ever again.

Then after he opens his mom’s bedroom door asking where the charger is, it turns out he caught them together in bed, and somehow Beth wanted Jerry to wear an unflattering chicken mask the whole time. You’d think she wouldn’t want that, no matter how ugly she thinks he looks. At least HER outfit’s nice. They’re fully clothed, so I’m not sure why this is so traumatizing to Morty.

  At least Jerry explains that someone told him if they wear their masks, they can reveal their true selves. This is all their faults for insisting on doing this during the day instead of at night. Since when does that happen? I guess she really couldn’t wait, so it makes sense, but this is the most generic thing for a kid to be traumatized by EVER, and the cosplay doesn’t make it interesting. But it was bound to happen sooner or later.

  Then it turns out that at this point, they were divorced, and Beth was just tired of striking out on Tinder and called Jerry for a quickie. It’s implied that Beth KNOWS Rick can erase his memories because she says to go get Rick because Morty’s traumatized. If she didn’t know about that, she’d have no reason to think that Rick would make him feel better, especially with his traumatizing adventures. But this explains EVERYTHING.

  The reason she’s okay with Morty going on adventures with Rick, is that not only does she think Rick can protect him, but she knows Rick can erase his memories to keep him from being too traumatized. It still doesn’t explain why she’s fine with his LIFE being risked, but I guess she just has a lot of FAITH in them. And she knows they’re technically replaceable.

  Rick’s curious about why Beth’s asking and she and Jerry lie to him about it. HOW is Rick supposed to know which memory to get rid of, if he’s not being told the truth? Would he be able to program it right then? We don’t see him typing in this scene so he’s not manually programming it every time. It just knows which memory he’s being traumatized by and gets rid of it. But it can work on memories that aren’t traumatizing too! So it has to be manual. Beth says Morty can’t sleep.

  Rick figures out the truth on his own, and is mad enough to shoot Jerry with a ray gun out of nowhere. Oh good, it’s explained that all he did was neuter him. While, knocking him over and covering his ENTIRE BODY in light? So what took him so long? He really loves Morty if he was driven to do this to punish Jerry for traumatizing him. And he really loves Beth because he didn’t do that to HER.

  It’s confusing that after Morty’s memory is erased, he wakes up IN the sub-sub-basement. Logically, you’d think that’d never happen because he’d immediately ask what all those tubes were and get a Morty’s Mindblowers episode and this would always happen. He says he wants to get back to cataloging unused sports equipment.

  Morty says he can’t remember how he got here. Then Rick asks him if he knows where his hockey equipment is. Morty says that he thought he saw it, and realizes that a little bit ago he was upstairs looking for something. I guess this caused him to remember the event all over again, or not. Rick panics while holding the pink tube, and selfishly puts it back in the helmet just to find out where his hockey stick is. Since when does he care about hockey? I guess he JUST started looking for the hockey stick because he would’ve looked in every closet if he really cared.

  So why is Morty being walked out of the room? He would’ve erased his memory anyways and he did because Morty was able to remember this only when he was given that tube. How do his eyes vanish? How do they always come back? Why? Realistically, Rick’s not done with Jerry for what he did to Morty. I was WONDERING why he had a hockey stick because he’s not Canadian, but it turns out the writer thought that too and Rick says he doesn’t even know how to ice skate.

  So he gives Jerry some awful memory back. It makes perfect sense that he’d keep JERRY’S memories stored so he could torture him with a whole bunch of them whenever he wants. I guess Morty’s not experiencing this? Either that or Rick spliced in his own memory with Morty’s, but why?

  In the fourth story, sadly with bad art, Summer asks why they’re at the library. Wouldn’t they have had this conversation before they went, because Morty would need to convince her to come with him? I guess she forgot because she was too busy looking at her phone. Morty says he needs a book for his book report. She points out that he could read books online. Then he reveals a pop-up book of demons.

  Then it turns out that he can pull out a demon that looks like him. Is that another Replacement Morty? I guess the reason this book is in a normal library is that another Rick made it and disposed of it here because he’s evil. He could’ve easily warped it to outer space. But maybe if he made a portal to outer space it’d suck him into it from sucking up the air.

You’d think he’d warp it to another planet, not a library. This is stupid. Did Rick put this book here as a prank? He doesn’t act like it later. Summer tells him he should put it back but he’s idealistic enough not to listen because he’s a Morty. So he says they’re gonna become the best of friends, even though the demon’s hissing for no reason.

  Surprisingly, he does let Morty have ice cream with him and swing him on a swing and look through photos of him. They even share a bed together, though the demon looks more demonic for no reason and smirks for no reason afterwards. You’d think this would make him the opposite because someone was NICE to him.

He gets woken up and screams because the demon was intimidating him for NO reason at all. I don’t care if he’s called a “ demon “ he was still nice enough to spend quality time with Morty instead of doing this right away! But this was foreshadowed. But then the foreshadowing was contradicted.

  Rick then kills him with the thrown book. That’s creative. He lampshades Morty’s stupidity and says that the demon was going to engulf his soul. But, why? What would he have to gain in that? Morty says sadly that they scrapbooked together, but apparently that meant nothing. If it DID, and he was just waiting for a good opportunity to do that to him, then why didn’t he wait a lot LONGER before trying to kill him? Then Rick would’ve killed him before he did anything, and Morty would have even more reason to be traumatized.

  In the next memory, Morty’s happy at seeing a bunch of unicorns, which are even smiling. Rick doesn’t care and is waiting for some people impatiently. Logically, unicorns would be scary because they’d use their horns for hunting, or at least protection. Like rhinos. They wouldn’t evolve horns for nothing. It makes sense that they’d exist somewhere. They’re just horses with horns.

  Morty wants to name two of them. It’s interesting that even a guy’s getting excited about unicorns, and it makes sense because anyone would be excited at seeing that a supposedly fictional thing is real. Rick complains that this never goes well after he names them, and Morty takes a ride on one. He wants to take them home as pets, and then Rick says it’s showtime.

  He wants to trade money for crystals. I guess he’s cheating them and the crystals are worth more than that money, either that or he needs the crystals for science. One of the aliens grabs Rick and wants to take him out, and reveals that he’s wanted to get him for a long time. I guess because he did something wrong that he knew about? After he mocks him for having no back-up, other than his grandson who he knows is an idiot already, Rick activates devices in the unicorns to make them into a dangerous army. At least the gore is in green and not red, but it’s still hard to look at.

  Rick points out, “ You think unicorns have giant pointy horns on their head for decoration, Morty? They’re for protection and defense. “ He wishes Rick would’ve just used a vaporizer or shield. Rick naturally complains, “ I hacked into a supposedly mythological creature’s brain and all you can ask is why didn’t I build a giant microwave? Where’s the art in vaporizers, Morty? “ I guess even he gets bored of those. And it’d be too inconvenient and cumbersome to bring an entire army with him every time and Morty wouldn’t approve.

  It turns out this was all for NOTHING, and Morty says he killed half his unicorn friends for nothing. Why did the unicorns die exactly? They were attacking fine, I don’t see why they would be killed. Of course, this has happened before. Why did Rick ever convince himself that the next time would be different? And he HAS to have Morty with him every time he hide himself with his Morty brain waves.

  He has the best amnesia ray EVER if he’s able to not only erase his memory, but also erase any negative association the unicorns would have. Even someone with amnesia would still, say, be wary about shaking hands with someone who had a tack on their hand the last time they did it. So he’d be scared of unicorns the next time he saw them. He just wouldn’t know why.

But if he still had the negative associations and found things familiar, he’d just remember the bad memories on his own anyways, so Rick must have found a way to prevent that. He just reset his brain to before that happened.

  Then in the next memory, Morty says behind a laptop that the Internet is hilarious with its streamers, filmed antics and collections of fake ghost videos. Someone screams for help, and it must have been pretty loud if he still heard Summer even with headphones on. I guess no sound was playing at that point. She says someone’s killing her and she’s gonna die.

  He runs into the room in a panic with a ray gun and kills Tinkles. It turns out they were having a tickle fight. I guess she comes from a universe where she’s actually real and not an imaginary friend. Morty fortunately explains that because he had his headphones on, that explains why he couldn’t recognize the tone as a playful and joyful one. It was her fault for saying those two sentences. She could’ve avoided this if she told him about Tinkles beforehand.

  Summer tells him to get Rick before it’s too late and I immediately wonder how she could’ve actually been imaginary at first and then made real. I guess Rick did it. Why didn’t he do it again? Did she make her real with the machine that makes real people out of the imagination so that couples can see their marital problems, from that episode where Beth and Jerry went to space marriage counseling?

  In the next memory, Morty says near the spaceship holding something that’s shaped like a gray hammer that Rick wants him to stay here, track movement, and bring him the hammer if he asks for it. He expects me to believe he has better things to do. Rick snarks at this and says that if what he thinks is in there is legit, it’ll mean better science for him, which is better for everyone. Oh, apparently he is benefiting humanity with his science. That’s good. He even says he’s doing the universe a favor. I wish he was more specific instead of making me wonder if he’s lying.

  Morty relatably says he wants to be in on it, not just waiting around. Hence why he keeps getting in danger in his adventures, then! Even if Rick tried to keep him safe by telling him to stay where it’s safe, he’d follow him into danger anyways, and that’d be more frustrating because he’d be an idiot for it.

  Rick says this cave is filled with monsters he doesn’t want to wake up, and he’ll be in and out. Of course something goes wrong. He goes down with a rope and wishes he had silent hoverboots and then drops his portal gun. He wouldn’t have dropped it if he kept it securely in his lab coat’s pocket, right? It seems like this could’ve easily prevented.

So Morty brings him the hammer, I guess talking to him through the detector because Rick would have something in his jacket. Morty doesn’t want to use the hammer on the monsters because they look like happy babies. He complains that this is why he didn’t bring him and they’re about to tear him apart.

   So Morty recognizes what’s really important and saves Rick while crying and having his eyes closed, which you’d think might cause him to hurt Rick, but I guess Rick stayed out of the way. It seems like while this issue IS needlessly cruel to Morty, maybe the reason I don’t hate it is because all of the stories are INTERESTING enough to make up for that, and it’s not like the plots are all because the characters were complete idiots.

Rick complains that this is a rip-off and he needs better intel, and he got three more of these just like this at home. So this was all for nothing. In the next memory, Rick says they need to find out how to get a note to Birdman and Squanchy or even get his portal gun back, as he’s standing behind stupid energy bars and a soldier in armor with Morty having a backpack that has something in it, saying that now it’s his time to shine. Light bars are STUPID. I guess the prison designers were idiots because if a power outage happened, all the cells would be unlocked, so they should’ve just used regular bars.

  The butter robot from the show’s finally back. After Morty won his science fair with it, he started building him up and they’re good friends now. Oh, so this is gonna finally explain what happened to this guy. Rick says amusingly, “ What is HE going to do, Morty? Do you think these guards are one pat of butter away from a heart attack? “

  The robot says that Morty taught him he could be whatever he wanted. Rick’s snarking at him, and it turns out the robot’s been training in akido. What a dumb robot if he thinks this’ll work. I mean, they’re even saying all of this right in front of the guard, warning him about the plan.

  So of course the guard smashes it, though I don’t, I guess the guard’s of an alien race with super strength and that’s why he can effortlessly smash a ROBOT with his mere foot. So THAT was dumb. Morty had no reason to think this idea would work out, the guard’s GIGANTIC compared to that measly butter robot. It’s a shame we never got to see how they escaped. I guess Squanchy and Birdman blew a hole in the prison and beat up the guards. I’m just wishing I knew how they got in this situation.

  In the next memory, after Morty seems to put in a red tube for some reason, it turns out Morty’s playing a video game near him, and Rick makes an overly long-winded cynical speech about the overly cutesy-looking game, where nothing’s happening the whole time. He’s snarky about it because it lazily crosses over tons of copyrighted characters with each other.

Why is he leaving it with Rick instead of walking away with it? Logically, why’d he even play that game near him and tell him what it was at all? It’s so predictable that Rick ended up playing the game anyways, probably because it was a red tube. So he learns from the game that friendship and family are what truly matter.

  So how is Morty seeing all of this when it’s from Rick’s perspective? Did Rick add his own memory to this? Why? It’s an embarrassing memory of Rick’s. I don’t even know why he didn’t destroy the red tubes. I don’t even know why he let him play the memory. He realizes he was wrong and wants to make it up to Morty, so he searches for great cosplay for the game.

  Then he ends up startling Morty in his bed, and because he’s so excited about the game, he freaks Morty out and this causes him to wipe his memory. I feel so bad for Rick here. I guess this was necessary because Rick put him through a lot in this issue. So we have to see him get embarrassed. But I’m so baffled that Rick let him put a red tube in, which just embarrassed Rick. It made more sense in the show where he had to distract Rick to get the red tube in.

  Then we see Rick enjoying himself as he shows Morty a memory of his family laughing because his head looks like a chicken. Since Morty didn’t accept and appreciate his grandpa for getting into his favorite game after he mocked him for liking it, it kinda makes sense that he’s happy because he’s punishing Morty for really hurting his feelings. We see Morty get scared by a bunch of evil puppets, and then Morty says he can’t take this anymore and asks what they’ve done.

  Rick’s hopefully being sarcastic when he says, “ You sure you want to stop? We never even got to the section of the ‘ times your family accidentally admitted in front of you that they don’t really love you. ‘ “ So THAT’S why they’re letting Rick go on adventures with him! That explains everything. But Beth acts like she loves him sometimes. Maybe it’s all Freudian Slips letting their subconscious frustrations with Morty’s flaws come out too strong. As in, he’s a wimp.

  Morty cries and naturally asks why Rick would let him watch all of these. Rick explains that it’s because he does this all the time. He finds this room and there’s no stopping him. He’s tried talking him out of it, locking him out, but he always gets in here and re-watches memories to mess himself up again, so it’s just easier at this point if he lets him do it and erases him again when it’s over.

  But it’d be even EASIER if he just GOT RID OF the MEMORIES! He could warp the tubes to another planet, so that’s not the whole story! I think he wants to punish Morty, too, like for being a wimp or bothering him a lot, but I guess we don’t need Rick to explain this and be even more unsympathetic. Morty begs him for help and Rick smiles and says sweetly, “ You know I got you! “

  If he was REALLY sadistic and evil, he’d never erase ANY of his memories. But I guess he has no choice because Beth and Jerry would nag and pressure him into doing this regardless, not to mention he’d be useless in his adventures if he stayed traumatized. So maybe THEY were the ones who got him to start in the first place.

  Summer wanders down here. I wish I knew why, because she’s completely focused on her phone. Why didn’t she stay in the living room? Maybe she wanted them for something and couldn’t find them, so she ended up here. She asks Rick if he needs her to get the Morty Reboot Tube and asks him to remember what happened last time. Rick says they’ve got it under control, and she walks away while telling THEM to watch where they’re walking.

  It was nice of Rick to tell her to watch where SHE’S going. Rick says that Summer’s brain blasters are brutal even for him. HOW? She almost never goes on adventures! I guess she does and it’s offscreen, but both the show AND the Mr. P story arc implied that it’s always Rick and MORTY, which makes sense because Summer Waves aren’t useful to him and Summer wouldn’t do literally anything he wants.

  I guess she gets those bad memories because she steals his portal gun to have some fun, and he has to go after her, and she got into trouble on alien planets, or an alien went to Rick’s house and bothered her. And maybe the writers assume that Summer’s more popular than Morty, so they knew it wouldn’t be funny to see Summer’s brain blasters, when you could see someone wimpy suffer instead. It’d obviously be more creative to see Summer’s brain blasters instead of the same exact premise, reference to the show or not.

Morty is smart enough to ask if reloading and deleting memories is hurting his brain. He wonders, “ Maybe your memory eraser isn’t working right? Like, maybe I keep coming back in here because I don’t entirely forget about it? Or I subconsciously recognize parts of my memory are missing and am trying to complete myself or something? “

With the first part, that’s why it’s so stupid that Rick has him wake up in this room after erasing his memories! Of course he comes back here, he remembers it! You’d think this would trap him in an infinite loop of reliving his memories and then forgetting about them.

  Rick realizes he’s right, and erases his memory, and opens up something and is ridiculously reckless by throwing a yellow tube to catch it. Then he trips and breaks it, and he calls out for Summer. But why? What’s the yellow tube? Why is it isolated? Why would he wanna forget his memory of THIS, that’s so petty.

  So many different memories were in this issue, it would be hard for me to remember them all for the summary. I loved this story because nearly all of the memories were interesting enough to make up for the fact that they were cruel to Morty, which was unavoidable because why else would they get erased? I have no idea why Rick gave him a red tube, though, and embarrassed HIMSELF.

It was especially interesting that at one point he put a memory back in right after removing it just to find out where his hockey gear was. And it turns out that he didn’t even play hockey, and he just wanted an excuse to get Beth out of the room so he could make Jerry relive his own memories for what he did to Morty. Too bad there’s not a Jerry’s mindblowers episode.

  This is by Kyle Starks, Tini Howard, Sarah Graley, Marc Ellerby, Benjamin Dewey, and Josh Trujillo. Sure, this issue was based on an episode of the show, but that doesn’t make it lazy because it’s not like the entire plot was the same. It wasn’t even SIMILAR to it, like the comic Pickle Rick, that was much lazier. All of the stories were original and most of them weren’t forced, MOST of them. I can’t imagine why Morty thought the butter robot could fight a guard. I wouldn’t mind having another issue with this kind of plot.

And it didn’t have the same dark ending as the episode of the show, instead Morty just wants to forget everything and things go back to normal. I feel like there were only a few stories that were outright great. A lot of them were underwhelming, right up to the unicorns part.

  The only big problem I have with the issue is that it should’ve been explained that the reason Rick stores Morty’s memories instead of just getting rid of the tubes is because he wants an excuse to punish him with them. He uses them to punish Jerry. Without that, there’s NO explanation for him keeping the tubes around. I can only give the story the benefit of the doubt by assuming that IS why. He certainly seemed sadistic when he was inexplicably smiling.

  If he REALLY wanted to keep him out of that room, he would’ve had that room be on a different PLANET entirely, but instead it’s so easy to stumble into that he gets there just by trying to fetch him a gadget from the sub-basement, and he SOMEHOW wanders into the wrong basement. Why doesn’t he go down here EVERY time he goes to the sub-basement, then?

Bonus Shorts for Book 7:

  The first story, U-To Brute by Karla Pacheco, is off-putting to me right away because we aren’t told who’s talking in the narration textboxes that cover the first page, and the panel just shows a box in Rick’s garage with science stuff. The textbox says that when someone’s great-grandfather started a company, he had barely anything, bringing everything that people owned from one house to the next with a wheelbarrow.

  He hated it and rented them the wheelbarrow instead. Then we see a guy with the word U-To on his orange shirt saying that 50 years later the U-To Empire was his. He says that customers leave stuff in the back of the truck all the time, and usually they get it back to them, but the Smith guy was a jerk about getting his deposit back because the truck only sat in the driveway for an hour, and we see Rick’s portal gun. Is this another universe, then?

  There’s a scream and the guy narrating says that in hindsight, he should’ve given the device back. His entire world began shifting around him – AROUND him, why? – as if the device was connected to a terrible person holding a similar device who was using it to cause chaos across the universe. And we see the guy and his moving truck in a dimension with a Cronenberg Rick and Morty, a long time ago. The narration says that the people in the moving van found themselves in places they couldn’t understand.

  Wouldn’t they have to use the portal gun on PURPOSE to go to those universes, meaning it’s their fault? If this was a security measure where it automatically brought the thief of the portal gun to plenty of different universes to scare them after a while, then that would just make it a lot harder for Rick to get back, because it wouldn’t be on Earth enough.

  I’m still waiting to see how this teleporting to other universes started. Maybe it should’ve not been in narration. Maybe we should’ve seen how it started and what’s going on. Instead we just get montages of the moving truck people in other worlds. At least they LOOK interesting, but how the worlds look isn’t factoring into the plot, so I don’t have to mention it.

  Then, the moving van guy asks what the portal gun does and says that it wouldn’t hurt to push the button. But he’s saying this while Gwendolyn the alien robot’s in the room with him, meaning that he’s already traveled to other dimensions. How did he do that without using the portal gun?! What was going on? If Rick could be tracked by his portal gun, why would he bother with the Morty Waves anymore? We see that this guy was shocked at the place he went to and wanted to search for a place he could call his own.

  It turns out that he ends up with an alien daughter, who somehow thinks that one day all of the city will be hers, when he still has no idea what’s going on, just like the audience here, and this is the only place they can sell this stuff.

He says that it turns out all the alien science crap that some jerks keep dumping in the truck somehow is really valuable, and this place doesn’t blink out of existence every five minutes. How does THAT happen? “ Kept dumping in the truck? “ What’s going on? Was his portal gun damaged in the move? I don’t get it. The portal gun runs out of battery quickly. He would’ve ran out of portal gun juice.

  Then we see Rick talk for a long time in front of the moving truck guy with Morty, saying happily that this looks just like the first portal gun he ever made, but he just says he’s gotta get himself one of those. He’s talking as if this one looks really different from HIS portal gun. He hasn’t been able to find his since that time Jerry tried to kick him out of the house, and he dismisses it as a coincidence that this thing that’s clearly his portal gun, has his initials on it too. And that’s the end of the story.

That was too confusing. That’s all there really is to say. I could understand if this guy was using the portal gun to go to other universes on purpose, but he wasn’t. The world shifted around him. If Rick could anticipate that someone stole his portal gun and press a button to make the world shift around him, then he would’ve known someone stole his portal gun, not dismissed the idea entirely! And this didn’t happen to SUMMER.

  In 48’s story by Karla Pacheco, “ Teenage Wasteland, “ Summer tells her mother with a weird facial expression that she’s going to the mall after school with her friend so she can make fun of someone for having to work at the food court only poor people like, well that’s confusingly mean, and so she’s gonna be late.

  Then all of a sudden she asks what her ex-husband Hemorrhage is doing here. He says nervously that he wanted to drive her to school. He explains that when she left in the show, he was devastated, until Rick returned to his world in search of more of the big glowing rock, and he offered to take him anywhere in the universe in exchange. Summer gets impatient at the flashback and tells him to just take her to school already while having an ugly exaggerated expression. She didn’t tell him to stop talking until he was already basically done.

  Hemorrhage kinda has my sympathy with how awkward he’s being. I love that he’s being brought back, so we’re seeing the consequences of one of the episodes. She tells him to shut up and drop her off behind the dumpsters so no one sees her with him. Then she tells him off for following her when she told him not to. He shouldn’t have followed her then.

  Then Summer’s friend reveals that she loves the way he looks, and he embarrasses Summer with his dramatic and blunt answer. Then the principal somehow convinces himself that the green rocks he’s been yelling about are drugs, and takes his helmet off, causing everyone to laugh at him for his creepy mustache.

  Then some weird kids ask him where he got is green rock and he nervously lies that he found it in his backyard, for good reason. One of them asks him to be another player in their weekly gaming session since their cleric went out for gymnastics because he was tired of people making fun of him.

  The story thankfully cuts past two weeks of them bonding, since it was boring. I don’t know why these people kept wanting to hang out with him. Do they need a cleric so bad? Then they ask him to join their jazz trio that was asked to play at the school assembly next week for no reason. I don’t remember that happening at my school, so is that realistic? Then it turns out that he assumed people would stop making fun of these guys just because he was with them, when obviously it got worse.

  One of them points out that the way he talks is exactly why everyone thinks he’s creepy, and it makes me wonder why Summer married him too. One of the kids says that he just wants to go somewhere that he can be who he is. Hem explains that he found his true tribe with them, and they all go to Blips and Chitz where they make a lot of money at a casino game.

But it’s Galactibucks, so there’s nothing they can do with that on Earth. I guess they used it for more games at Blips and Chitz. This story was kinda boring. There was a lot of dialogue that I just didn’t care about. Hemorrhage goes to Summer’s world, she rejects him and he hangs out with some weirdo teenagers because they think he’s selling drugs.

  Hopefully the next story by Karla Pacheco will be better. “ Don’t Tell Rick the Jerrysitter’s Dead. “ We start out with Jerry saying that he doesn’t wanna go to the daycare AGAIN. Rick tells him, “ Then don’t fall asleep in the back of my car like a feral raccoon, Jerry. “ Can’t he just portal him back home? Why doesn’t he keep his portal gun in his lab coat just because he’s in the spaceship? Jerry says he was looking for snacks. That’s a pretty flimsy excuse for him being in the spaceship, and falling ASLEEP.

  It made more sense last time, where Beth told him he had to sleep there as a punishment. He should’ve looked for snacks in the kitchen and then given up when he didn’t find any. Rick says that comparing him to a raccoon was insulting to raccoons because at least they can feed themselves and support their families.

  Rick and Morty walk away, planning on playing a virtual reality game against each other. I’m not sure how they can play that virtual reality game against each other though. And Jerry greets the woman working at the daycare by name. It’s relatable that Jerry doesn’t wanna be here and sighs.

  We see Pear-Shaped Jerry say that the batteries won’t work if you line it up like that. It turns out they’re talking about something with a non-indicative name that Rick bought to shut him up, and by coincidence, both of them recognize it, and somehow have the long, nonsensical name of it memorized. The Jerrys haven’t been able to get it to work.

  One of the Jerrys says that he had one of these as a kid and his dad and him put it together. So Jerry makes the toy helicopter fly and is congratulated, and then it flies into Esmeralda when she’s bringing them snacks, and Jerry lies. Pear Jerry reveals that he sabotaged it because he hates this place and all of the other Jerrys for mocking his ridiculous appearance.

  At least he has an excuse. He explains that his planet has a bad climate and is prone to crop shortages, so his hips are a genetic advantage. I guess his planet’s pretty backwards if it didn’t get the green revolution with agricultural techniques already. We got PAST this. The two get into a fight that’s completely cut past, and Rick shows up at the daycare with some fire around and Jerry says that they’re all dead.

Rick says, “ What, the staff? The Rick who built this place deliberately hired war criminals on the run to keep costs down. “ So he says he shouldn’t feel too bad about it as he keeps smiling and tells him to get in. If he REALLY wanted to keep costs down, he would’ve had all of the staff be robots like in Rick World. He could afford to have them be robots THERE.

  Well, this story was needlessly disturbing, and stupid. The entire point of the Jerry Daycare was that it was a safe place, because Ricks can’t be bothered to explain it to Beth if her husband disappears. If this kind of thing could happen in a place that was specifically built to be safe, then, what’s the point, who would bother using it? And this is it because Issue 50 didn’t waste time with a side-story. None of these stories seemed familiar to me, like I forgot all of them after the first time, and that’s for a reason.

Rick and Morty Presents: Jerry

  Huh? Why is there an entire issue of this devoted to a main character? I thought this was the Sonic Universe of this comic. Well, the cover’s intimidating so I’m looking forward to the plot. We see Jerry walking around shirtless in his kitchen as music notes follow behind him, and we can only assume that this means he’s singing. I’d rather the writer have written lyrics for his singing instead of not feeling like it.

  Then Beth seems exhausted as she, mows the lawn. Why is she waving to him like she likes him when she thinks he’s a weirdo? She’s NEVER subtle with him. Jerry tries to motivate himself that he can improve his marriage and act confident. Then he gets panicked when Beth asks him to pass her some lemonade. So Beth naturally lampshades how weird he’s acting.

  He’s too nervous and awkward to impress her and just puts her off. Beth hurts his feelings and fortunately tries to make him feel better, saying that she DOES like what he’s got, and it’s more like they JUST got back together, and she needs some time, apparently even though when she got back together with him in the show, she was happy with him.

  Jerry fortunately explains that when they were separated, food was his biggest comfort. The biggest thing I always liked about Jerry that made him feel refreshing enough for me to make me kinda forgive his flaws is that he’s not fat like Homer or Peter Griffin, so he doesn’t’ feel like a cliché. Even if he’s still the typical bumbling dad and husband, the focus is on him being a loser, not a fat idiot, so he’s not nearly as much of a cliché as Peter and Homer.

  Beth says that it has nothing to do with him physically and it’s just that they haven’t been kissing in a while, so she wants to feel close to him, burning embers of love, and doesn’t want to be just the woman he lives with whose job it is to stop him from spiraling into insecurity.

  Then after he accuses her of cheating on him, she naturally walks away complaining that he’s not listening to what she’s saying. Well she didn’t explain herself quite clearly enough. The story was boring at this point. It’s not sci-fi at all. Them having a dysfunctional marriage has been done to death and made really obvious by the first time.

  After Jerry angsts with food again, we see Morty with a helmet on his head connected to a pigeon. Rick says that he KNOWS it’s not safe, but he does the experiment anyways. Well, he can just replace Morty with a clone or a robot whenever he wants, but he still goes out of his way to protect him, so that’s weird. I don’t know why he doesn’t perform such experiments on a CLONE Morty instead of risking him.

  He wants to put his consciousness into a pigeon. Why doesn’t he use the Project Phoenix consciousness transferring chip on Morty and make it so that he can transfer his mind to the pigeon with the press of a button, without actually killing him? He already has the technology for this. He says that once he does this to Morty, he’ll finally answer the generations old question of what birds even are, because you can’t trust a bird. I wish he said he was planning on making money off it by selling it scientists that study birds, because he doesn’t have anything to gain out of this.

  Then Jerry comes into the garage and demands them to get out with the science stuff because he’s already in a bad mood and needs the room. He wants to put in an exercise space to get muscular, like he got muscular in the Cronenberged universe. Good thing Jerry showed up because he actually saved Morty from the experiment.

  It’s surprising to me that Rick’s actually humoring Jerry on this, especially since he tells him he’s an easily manipulated idiot for getting all this exercise equipment. He says he has a new invention that can make Jerry more of a man, and he was gonna test it out on Morty’s hamster, but he’d rather not because he likes him. Aw. I always figured the reason he didn’t make Jerry manly was because he didn’t want Jerry to be a threat to him. Because Jerry doesn’t want him in his house.

  Why does Rick tell Morty that his father’s dead when he was insistent it would work and it DOES? I guess Rick only wanted Jerry to THINK he didn’t know if the machine would work, but he’s a genius, so it had no excuse for it NOT working.

  We cut to Jerry having dinner with Beth at a restaurant, and he says that she really deserves it and he loves being seen with her, and showing off. She says that he’s never been this nice to her before and he looks amazing. Why is she asking how this is possible when it’s obvious Rick did it because he became like this so quickly? She says that she never thought Jerry could be confident, and the way he’s looking at her makes her feel like she could open up to him again and they could support each other. But Jerry gets bored and interrupts her to ask if he could lift a car.

  Then Jerry gets mad at a waiter for calling his wife beautiful, even though he’s already married to her and she doesn’t show interest in the waiter at all, because even when his body is changed, he can’t hide from his own personality. So he’s insecure that she’d leave him for him. His dialogue sucks here. It’s cringeworthy seeing Jerry be like this, but I can at least say it’s in-character for him because he’s always an idiot.

He asks what happened and says he blacked out for a minute, and asks if Beth’s okay, when she’s really embarrassed. It’d make sense if Rick intentionally made sure that this would happen. After all, he mentioned brain waves when he was explaining what the experiment would do to him, so that’d mean he’d affect his brain. It wasn’t a side-effect.

  When Morty is smart enough to ask why Rick doesn’t do proper testing of his machines first, Rick ignores the fact that he’s clearly right and isn’t honest enough to just admit that he doesn’t care, especially not about Jerry, because he’s smart enough to realize that would just make Morty mad at him, and yet he’s fine with turning the hamster into a monster and killing him right in front of Morty? That’s dumb of him.

  Even if he erases Morty’s memory of this, he’ll still NOTICE the hamster’s gone the next time he’ll look for it and blame Rick anyways. At least Rick explains that hamsters have SUCH short lifespans, but it makes it seem pointless that Rick was written to say he kinda likes that hamster, if he was fine with doing this to it and not a clone of it. Why doesn’t he have a thought bubble explaining that he’s gonna replace the hamster with a clone and erase Morty’s memory to get away with this?

  He says that just as he thought, the Metamorphatron turned the hamster into a butthead. The machine tapped into the brain’s masculinity and gave it control of the physical body, so Jerry’s gone bro. I guess Rick’s only pretending to look worried to humor Morty.

It’d make him look unsympathetic if he confirmed that, in fact, he WAS doing this to Jerry on purpose as a prank, so I guess it’s better that it isn’t written, but it’s not able to be as cathartic if the character makes another character suffer unintentionally instead of doing it on purpose, and actually explaining why he deserves it. You can’t live vicariously through him here if he’s only doing this to Jerry by accident.

  Rick shows up at the restaurant, I can only assume because Morty told him where Jerry was, or because he tracked Jerry down because he located his phone. Inexplicably, Rick does a TERRIBLE job describing Jerry to the restaurant staff instead of simply saying “ he’s a muscular guy with a dorky face, “ or holding up his photo, and it’s good that Jerry apologizes to the beat up waiter, and that the waiter isn’t gory in how he was beaten up. I know he’s calling Jerry an American pig dog.

  When Rick says they need to go home, Jerry stands up to Rick, who just lets him when he insults Rick like this all the time, and Beth is stunned that Jerry stood up to him and wishes he could be like that but not a hulk, never mind that she’s never impressed all of the OTHER times Jerry stands up to Rick. In fact she hates when he does that. When he said “ it’s him or me, “ she divorced him! Jerry’s told Rick stuff like this before, even if it’s usually not with horrible timing like this. They need to go home right now!

  “ I let you live in my house. I’ll be paying for your funeral. I’m tired of your put downs and lack of support. “ Aside from the funeral part, he’s said this to him before. Morty warns Jerry that he’s gonna try to kill him and Rick, and after he rants, he fortunately admits that maybe he SHOULD be checked on because he feels weird. That’s a subversion. I thought he’d try to fight Rick here. I guess the writer’s saving the action climax for later.

  Morty apologizes to his hamster and Rick reveals that Jerry’s been too busy flexing to be examined properly, and fortunately Jerry explains that he’s literally forced to do it. Rick explains that this is what Jerry’s masculinity thinks is ideal, and says that his machine reads Jerry’s mind, and says that JERRY mucks everything up even though he’s the one who zapped him. I hate seeing a face on Jerry’s back.

Rick says that cutting it off won’t fix the problem because Dilfagog is HIM, the small part of his brain that’s his masculinity. Beth asks him to put him back in the machine, and Rick agrees. So the machine DOES have a way to reverse the process. That makes sense.

  Rick says fine but only for science, and somehow the face is still able to talk and is on his chest now. It’s tedious that he keeps talking for even more than a panel. After Jerry tries to attack the monster, he gets carried out of his house by him as he expands to be his entire body except for his HEAD, CONVENIENTLY enough.

Again, this effect of the experiment would only make sense if Rick did this on purpose, but he acts like it’s an inconvenience to him that he has to deal with. But I guess he can do it on purpose and still regret having to put up with that dialogue. Rick’s smart, so he’s smart enough to be subtle about the fact that he did this on purpose.

  After Rick confusingly compliments Jerry on his gumption, he humors Morty and agrees to try to separate them, showing reluctance to do so. I wish Morty’s text bubble was to the left of Rick’s in the lab so I would’ve read it first. Rick insists that time reversers AND brain transmografiers are made up and says he’s looking for his death ray. Morty begs Rick not to kill him and is smart enough to think that he could take him to a medical planet, and asks him to let him talk to him. I don’t see how he could talk him out of it.

  Rick says that he’ll let him do this, but tells him that if it were that easy they wouldn’t be in this situation. He says inner strength doesn’t exist and doesn’t see what character trait Jerry could have that would make Dilfagog disappear. Morty says he doesn’t care because that’s still his dad, and I have to assume Morty begged Rick to leave his death ray in the garage.

  Rick says that Dilfagog could be anywhere, so he needs to lure him out here with his most desired items. How would he KNOW that they’re in that particular place and go to it? It’d make more sense if he was lured to a place because of a strong scent that attracted him. And oh, he lied and he DOES have his death ray with him. Does he not know that Morty would be mad at him and never forgive him? Even if he erased his and Beth’s memory of what happened to Jerry, he’d still assume Rick killed him if he woke up and he wasn’t there anymore. He’d have to replace him with a clone.

  After they look around town, Morty has a smart idea again about where Jerry might have been taken, going to an arcade he wants to guilt Jerry into taking him back to. It’s kinda ironic that the masculinity went there to an arcade instead of to a sports stadium. How is that what Jerry thinks is the most manly thing ever?

  Rick says that Morty was orphaned and then turns around and says he’s not, and points out Jerry’s head. I guess the monster isn’t outright violent because that’s the only reason it’d let Morty try to talk Jerry out of it. It’s not Jerry who’s doing this, it’s the monster who clearly wouldn’t have a reason to be moved by his speech. He tells Jerry to not let this jerk win. Then Rick shoots the monster with a laser, but not with a ray that would completely vaporize his whole body, because that’d upset Morty.

  Jerry tells him to get it over with and show Morty how to be a real man. You’d think Rick would be the last person he’d trust to get Morty to man up considering how evil he is. Rick realizes he can’t do it because Beth would kill him and he hates the sound of Morty’s crying, and wonders if there’s one last option. He tells Jerry that it’s Jerry’s responsibility to confront the insecurity and fear that created Dilfagog in the first place. No wonder they had this plot with Jerry. They were using his personality.

  But then he suddenly turns around and tells him to EAT Dilfagog, because apparently his flesh is just THAT easy to get. I wish there weren’t so many panels of this and it just cut to the two weeks later panel. I have no idea how Rick had the motivation to say ALL of THAT boring, redundant dialogue.

  Then after Rick plans on turning air into cheese, Jerry thanks them for helping him. What took so long? It’s been weeks. He says that his digestive system is destroyed – he’d be dead then – and he’s facing criminal charges and fines near the millions. Okay, this story isn’t canon. Either that, or this whole story took place in a parallel universe, and that’s why it won’t have any consequences past this issue. He’d be in jail then, not at home.

  He says that pricks aren’t confident. Some are. He thanks them for letting him figure out what it means to be Jerry. Rick sarcastically encourages him and Jerry tells Rick to keep doing his science stuff, which is totally out of character especially after the whole story, just to have a forced saccharine moment.

  The story ends with Rick seeing an eye on the back of Jerry, and him telling Morty to never end up like Jerry. And he fortunately proves he’s self-aware enough to realize that he’s a lost cause himself, when Morty’s somehow naïve enough to say that it’s a good thing he has Rick to look up to instead, even after he killed his hamster and threatened to kill his father. They’ve got an unbreakable bond. Tails would never let Sonic get away with all that stuff.

  Ugh, so this story by Ryan Ferrier was about Jerry being consumed by a monster because of an experiment of Rick’s, and the only way that can possibly make sense is that Rick did this to him on purpose and is just pretending otherwise. It’s all there to make fun of bro behavior by demonizing it with a monster, which is at least a bit better than how Sonic Boom did it, complete with the monster having different-looking text to look evil. A lot of this story was tedious because of its dialogue, though, which I skimmed through at best because it was so unappealing and LONG-WINDED.

  Rick should’ve at least had a thought bubble at some point explaining that he made sure the experiment would backfire on Jerry because he hates him, and doesn’t want him to be strong enough to beat him out of the house, which would make more sense than him seeming to try to make him muscular with no strings attached or ulterior motive. It doesn’t make any sense that the monster didn’t just smack Jerry’s head and kill him and do that repeatedly when he was biting him apart. The fear of that happening to him must have been why Jerry didn’t do this as soon as possible.

  But it was the only way he could’ve defeated the monster because the writer wrote himself into a corner, Rick didn’t have the time to make a real antidote and supposedly didn’t know this would happen, and was mostly just looking for an excuse to kill him until it finally dawned on him that he couldn’t get away with it.

Rick and Morty Presents Mr. Meeseeks:

  We start out seeing Summer talk on the phone, probably with one of her friends, saying boring stuff. She’s making a 6-hour chili recipe, probably to impress a guy who wants a domestic girl, and she quickly gets bored with cooking and sends out a Mr. Meeseeks. I love that she’s smart enough to interrupt him in his predictable dialogue.

She tells him to make sure this chili gets stirred every 20 minutes for the next 6 hours. He’s told, “ You know we Meeseeks literally live for this kind of thing! “ Even though Summer already met Meeseeks in the show, and so she already knows this, she still feels the need to say that that’s sad.

  She says that life’s too short for meaningless tasks and it’s rich and full of good surprises. It seems out of character for Summer to not be cynical when she’s so negative all the time, but she’s been naïve and easily tricked multiple times, so apparently she’s a negative idealist. She shouldn’t be mistreating him by saying she feels sad for him when he’s willing to help her.

  She watches TV, telling it what to do with a voice command, and Meeseeks wishes he understood how people find meaning in life, since he was interacted with like this. So he recklessly summons a Meeseeks of his own, asking what the meaning in life is. He’s told that there IS no meaning of life and it’s all just chaos and pain. Well, that’s probably true, if you’re going by pure logic.

  He asks why he hasn’t disappeared. Yeah, why hasn’t he? The Meeseeks would be programmed to agree with this nihilistic idea because they were programmed by Rick, and sure, the pain part would make sense for a Meeseeks to say because they’re always in pain. But as for chaos, they’ve never experienced any chaos before. They just got created.

  So why HASN’T he disappeared? Other people than Rick’s family use Meeseeks, so I’m not sure if a Rick made Meeseeks actually. I know an alien at an arcade has a Meeseeks. Maybe another Rick made the Meeseeks. He seemed confident in what he said, so it’s not like he knew he was wrong and not completing his task. I guess whether a Meeseeks accomplished his task is determined by the brain of the person he’s working for.

  So Mr. Meeseeks says that humans seem to find some meaning in being alive regardless, so there’s probably something to being alive. The other Meeseeks with hair is pissed that he has to figure that out for him. Couldn’t Mr. Meeseeks have asked Summer how she finds meaning in life? He probably assumes she can’t figure it out and assumes that since Rick made the Meeseeks programming, that would know if anyone.

How does he expect another Meeseeks to know something he doesn’t? He should’ve waited for Rick to come home and ask him because he’s smart, but I guess he doesn’t know Rick exists yet, programming or not.

  I wish the textbox said something less vague than soon. We see the chili Meeseeks wearing a chef’s hat. I’m glad because it helps distinguish him from the other guy better at a first glance and lets me give him an actual NAME to refer to; Chef Meeseeks. We see the Meeseeks in front of a laptop, trying to tell him the answer to his question.

  He says an idiom that life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain. That sounds like it means, “ life’s about having fun, you should have fun. “ So that’s what Morty said to Summer in the show, the Anti-Nihilist approach. Life sucks, no one’s special, so let’s watch TV. Summer could’ve told him THAT. She was doing that. Somehow he dismisses all of the idioms as terrible, probably because he’s too literal-minded to understand. He says that he thinks he isn’t even trying.

  Meeseeks says that these are from a tab on Jerry’s computer marked inspirations. He says that humanity is chaotic and miserable, so how does anyone find purpose in the world? Is he just programmed by Rick to think this? Because he just showed up. How’d he already figure this out just by reading inspirational quotes and being totally isolated?

How does he know how to read? Though it makes sense because trust is something people have to LEARN, and if someone was isolated their whole life, he wouldn’t learn trust, so it makes sense that a Meeseeks would assume people can’t be trusted.

  They get told that the butter-passing robot knows his purpose, and it’s to pass the butter. And he knows it’s unfulfilling. It was amusing seeing the expression of Meeseeks because of that. This helps the chili guy who has a purpose, but it doesn’t help the Meeseeks who was given an impossible task.

  The butter robot gets thrown to the floor, probably out of jealousy, and Meeseeks says HE gets it and complains about his job in front of Rick and how he doesn’t have much time to complete it. It’s funny how LONG he goes ON about it. “ I have to give another Meeseeks a reason to live! ‘ A question no one in our species has ever answered! “Rick tells him with a smile that life HAS no meaning. But most sentient beings find the raw chaos of existence too terrifying, so they try to make themselves feel better and not think about it.

  Meeseeks thanks him at least, and says that he already tried to TELL Chef this and he doesn’t accept it. Rick says it sucks to be him and tells him to use anything he needs from the garage because he’ll need it. At least that’s responsible in a sense because he’s trying to make sure they have help fulfilling their task, because he knows how murderous a Meeseeks can end up being if he lives too long. But he’d be smarter if he just teleported the Meeseeks away with his portal gun.

  Meeseeks summons another Meeseeks to do Chef’s task, which upsets him, and Rick completely ignores what’s going on and tries to fix up butter robot, who doesn’t want that at all. Why are there two, oh, that’s supposed to be the same exact pair of Meeseeks behind them. It’s trying to illustrate the same UFO moving, but it shouldn’t be all in one panel because that’s confusing.

  Chef admits that he was being silly. That should make Meeseeks disappear just fine. The Meeseeks would be programmed to disappear whenever the person WANTS. But Rick really wanted to make sure they would be motivated to complete their task. You’d think the Meeseeks box would’ve been reprogrammed.

  Chef says that Meeseeks aren’t born fumbling for meaning like humans, they’re created to serve one purpose. Meeseeks says that he was right the first time and their lives don’t have meaning, but feeling driven to end it isn’t the same thing as having purpose in life. Never mind that Chef just told him that his purpose is to stir chili.

  Meeseeks says that helping people is what Meeseeks are drawn to, so they should keep doing that. That IS the strongest, best argument. Someone sees them flying the spaceship, and he’s a homeless man, so the Meeseeks go to see him. He admits that he’ll own up to his mistakes, but he doesn’t have any feet. He says that a vengeful pickle lasered him off and left him for dead. So Pickle Rick did it to him?

  He says that his insurance wouldn’t cover his disability because what happened to him was too ridiculous. Why would he say that psychiatrists say he has PPTSD when that isn’t a term that exists? It only happened to HIM. That’s a terrible joke. He’s scared at seeing the Meeseeks eat a pickle, and the Meeseeks offers to give him some new clothes.

We see Chef running away carrying some stolen clothes, which the homeless guy doesn’t want because he’s trying to turn his life around, yeah and he might be blamed and arrested for wearing them. One failed attempt by them at helping someone doesn’t disprove that helping people provides meaning in life. Of course they failed, they act outside the law.

  I guess the Meeseeks looked it up on the internet and that’s how he knows, already, that every year tons of clothes are destroyed by their own retailers, which he says as a justification. Chef says that Meeseeks don’t care about morality, and Meeseeks says that since the insurance company cheated the homeless guy out of his house after years of payments, they should steal a car, and they’ll be the ones to foot the bill. He asks how he knows that car is insured by the same company. He doesn’t, realistically, and just urges him to get into the hot-wired car or else he’ll get arrested.

  The story cuts ahead of the car chase to them being in the desert, and Meeseeks says he hopes a near-death experience would make Chef appreciate being alive, but Chef says he’d rather be stirring chili. Of course it wasn’t a real near-death experience! Meeseeks can’t die until they do their task. So he wouldn’t have called it that.

  When he tells the homeless guy that they were helping him to make him feel better, calling him a charity case, the homeless guy gets offended by the truth and calls them selfish like the rest of them. Chef says that Meeseeks live to help.

The homeless guy lampshades that their catchphrase, “ Look at me, “ makes it sound like everything’s about them. That’s self-aware of the writer to say. Meeseeks explains it as a call for their summoners to stay focused on them so that they’ll get assigned their task right away “ and greet death sooner. “ It’s redundant though. It’s more like a catchphrase their programmer believes in for some reason.

  The homeless guy doesn’t get it right away and instead says that “ Look at me “ is the subtext of people who will never be happy and fill the hole inside, but there’s more to life than that. He says that what makes life worth living is good times. There’s two pages where they’re doing something happy, and it’s not properly explained what’s going on. I just see them hugging a horse with some woman nearby.

  Then they have to bury someone, and the homeless guy says that pleasure can’t last and this all wasn’t worth it. Whatever happened, it seems like a Diabolus ex Machina. Maybe they got high on psychedelic drugs. How? With what money? And of course a Meeseeks who doesn’t believe in law would jump to that for pleasure. There’s a billion different other ways to have pleasure. So again, it’s not handling the argument perfectly, but they ARE Mr. Meeseeks, after all.

  He’s so full of despair that he thinks he shouldn’t have turned his back on church, and Meeseeks sees a giant sign saying that real meaning comes from above and asks if he knows many people who find fulfillment in religion. The sign says to come visit Mount Rushmore, and when they go to the building, someone says that he knew he’d find aliens eventually.

  The Meeseeks are mistaken for aliens by a bunch of people who are dressed the same, as if they’re in a cult. The guy says they’ve been awaiting them and are prepared to receive the great mysteries of the universe, and they want to livestream this. Instead of being told the truth, the Meeseeks says that he wants to know how they came to find meaning and happiness in their beliefs. I’m SO relieved that they’re talking to these more unique, if weird religious people. That was a twist.

The cult leader says that they aren’t happy, and have been denying themselves pleasure in order to earn their way into an afterlife where they will be happy. He asks if that’s how the universe works. “ That IS how the universe works, right? “

  Chef says that the Meeseeks can read the universe on a scale the likes of which humans can’t fathom. Wait, so Meeseeks can learn anything they want from anywhere? I guess the Akashic Records really are real in Rick and Morty and Hippie Rick wasn’t just kidding. Or they just tap into the Internet from anywhere. But that WOULD be something humans could fathom.

 Chef tells these guys that there’s no sign of any afterlife, and the universe is only proven to be a meaningless accident. So the cult can’t handle the truth and want to unlock the poisonous Kool-Aid. The idea that that one cult in real life drank it willingly was a myth, they were just forced into it at gunpoint. If the cult was really listening to him, they would’ve gone on to have happy lives instead of getting themselves killed as soon as possible, which would only make sense if they believed in an afterlife they would go to.

  So after they kill themselves, Meeseeks says, “ OK, so, scratch religion. What’s next? “ They get thrown in jail, presumably because they’re refraining from fighting so they can stay with the homeless guy. Chef lampshades that he should’ve just stayed with the chili. What was the Meeseeks holding? How did he get a prison card and unlock the jail cell without the card owner noticing?

We should’ve seen him get it. The Meeseeks walk out of the jail cell while leaving the homeless guy to die. I don’t see why the prison guard would grab him and ask if he’s trying to escape and attack him when he’s clearly just staying behind there and has no legs.

  Chef says that Meeseeks clearly doesn’t believe life is worth living and is just trying to complete his task so he can die too. Meeseeks lies, and is told that he’s only arguing for meaning because he was asked to, and Meeseeks have no free will. Meeseeks says that’s not true, and Meeseeks can make all kinds of choices. Meeseeks presses the button to unlock every cell door. So they’re in outright prison, not jail? That would take months to get to. These Meeseeks would be really unhinged by now.

  I hope the prison guard turning around and being scared means that he’s gonna get what he deserves. And the whole time the Meeseeks are ignoring the violence around them to talk to each other. Meeseeks says he hopes he’ll see the beauty in life even if he fails. Someone says to tell his wife he loves her. So Meeseeks says, “ That’s it, “ and kisses Chef. It was funny that Chef was grossed out and asked, “ I’m Mr. Meeseeks and what the fuck was that?! “

  Meeseeks wonders if the romantic family unit bonding love is the true source of meaning and happiness, asking why it took so long for him to realize this. You’d get meaning from that by being relied on as someone providing money to your family and relied on as someone to love and be an emotional crutch. Why don’t they cut out the middleman and just say that meaning in life is having a job? Why are the code black rushers completely ignoring them?

  Chef pushes him back saying he’s insane, and that two people can’t bring each other meaning if they lack it themselves, and it would be foolish and cruel to pin one’s happiness on another flawed incomplete person. But literally EVERYONE’s flawed, and incomplete. Then Chef says that half of marriages end in divorce and half of relationships experience cheating. Again I guess he’s in contact with the Akashic Records that MAGIC is in contact with, because he was JUST BORN. He wouldn’t know anything yet. They argue that it’s not very likely that a relationship would last.

  Meeseeks says that people can’t have a true relationship if they get into it for different reasons or there’s a power imbalance. Chef asks how likely is it that two people would be and stay totally in balance with each other for a lifetime. Chef asks why he should build his whole sense of value around one person who could just die and leave you alone and no longer whole? That’s the risk you have to take. That wasn’t as compelling as the rest of his argument. I think Rick’s bias against his ex-wife Diane found his way into his programming there. Because that’s an opinion of his.

  So that argues against relationship love, not family love. Chef points out that Meeseeks don’t even have family, and they’ve never been whole. It’s convenient that they’re able to hear each other over the prison riot around them. And that they aren’t getting hurt. Meeseeks asks Chef if he could have a new life with a family who cared for him, where he does belong.

Chef says they have no way of knowing and discovering those answers before their minds deteriorate as an incentive to do tasks faster. Meeseeks whistles and summons the UFO just like that. They fly over to Blips and Chitz, and Meeseeks says that the Roy virtual life game is the answer to their problem because they can discover what human life is like for themselves. I hate what he says about gamers about the idea that video games provide meaning in life. Hey, writers, married gamers do exist. FTA and Mat Pat are married.

  I guess the page is split in half between the character that Chef is controlling and the character Meeseeks is. I don’t know who’s who. The girl character says that she needs to go make a boy fall in love with her so that they can have meaning before they die. Her life jumps ahead, and she wonders if she’ll never find a guy, and her cynical mother doesn’t believe in love at all, since her husband cheated on her. The girls around the girl want to see the guy that was gonna be her type play football, and he gets hurt when doing so.

  Meanwhile we see what’s probably the virtual father of Chef complain about chili for dinner again, and the wife says that when HE volunteers to cook, he can pick what they have. So Chef ends up getting hurt at football. They end up becoming friends in the game, going to a carnival, kissing in the car, going to the dance, as I don’t know what their personalities are like. Then we see the girl complain that this is her dad and his intern all over again as someone’s holding a cell phone.

  Then she cries over someone in the hospital. We see some small text on the phone revealing that Chef had cheated on her and the text message apologizes that he just felt scared at the idea of being defined by one relationship until he’d die. It turns out that Chef, who’s on crutches, is told that it was an athletic scholarship and his grades certainly don’t qualify him to stay here. Meanwhile the girl graduates while HE ends up holding a sign. The girl says that the pay is great but it doesn’t feel like what she’s supposed to do. And she’s upset at being given paperwork.

  And Chef’s unemployed. He ends up in AA and says he’s been sober for one year. He’s reunited with by Meeseeks’ girl character, and didn’t order the chili because things change. She says that real love is grown when two caring people share a connection and understanding. Wouldn’t they have gotten that in their relationship earlier? They felt like they had plenty of time to talk!

  She says people who work to support each other and cultivate a shared path. Then out of nowhere, some bullshit in the game happens where something falls from the ceiling and kills her, and the Meeseeks Chef gets excited and tries to die in the game over and over again and has to be pulled away.

  They go home, and the replacement Meeseeks confuses me by saying that enough water boiled off that he had to start stirring every 10 minutes instead of 20. I don’t get it, he’s not doing his task correctly because that means he’s not obeying his order exactly. Wouldn’t this be against his programming? Wouldn’t this doom him to never disappearing? Somehow Chef doesn’t get this, and says that he thought about that at one point and wanted to call him, but couldn’t get to a phone because he was sniff-searched by prison dogs.

  Meeseeks hopes that he could find what’s fulfilling for HIM unlike humans, and hopes he can past all the pointless noise in the moment and try enough different things to find something he might not expect. Chef says that he was so fixated on the idea of a singular truth, that it never occurred to him that each individual might be able to find unique meaning in their own life. That, that was obvious from the start.

And thankfully the writer does have Meeseeks disappear, and before he could be told the answer of how. Chef feels sorry for him for disappearing too early to learn the answer and wants to honor his sacrifice and find a unique meaning for himself. That can’t last.

  The new chef says that he’s perfectly happy to just fulfill his task. Chef says that he’s just scared that pursuing real fulfillment and meaning might be heartbreaking or impossible. Um, he’s pursuing real fulfillment now. He’s happy and he’s doing what he was told to help someone. I guess it makes sense that Chef is trying to pull this guy into it because it ended up teaching him the truth after all, no matter how much he went through.

  But he should have the compassion as someone who wants to help to know that Meeseeks are made to get miserable and be in constant pain the longer they live, and so he’s only gonna cause harm by dragging Meeseeks away from their real task to explore life. All he’d end up doing is create an army of furious murderous Meeseeks with deteriorated minds and bodies. And you’d think the new chef would’ve heard the revelation of the Meeseeks and learned the meaning of life too. THANKFULLY, after Summer says this chili is perfect, Chef disappears.

Then she thanks the other one, who disappears as well. Then we see someone say that the brownies are delicious and it’s too bad they’re out because he’s hungry. He asks if anyone tried that bean soup, like Jeremy. Jeremy says he didn’t try the chili because it’s mom food. He says that he’s into prison chicks now, not domesticated girls. So he’s fickle. Summer dumps the chili in the garbage without even trying it herself! And with that the story ends.

  This story by James Asmus and Jim Festante was about two Mr. Meeseeks trying to find out what gives life meaning. Naturally, it didn’t involve much sci-fi or action because it was mostly just a philosophical discussion between the characters, but it was almost interesting enough to not bore me because it moved on from one argument to the next at a fast enough pace. I love that they tried out the Roy human simulation game.

  The whole story happened because Summer just had to, uncharacteristically, say that a Meeseeks’ existence is sad to his face. And that spurred him on to ask a Meeseeks a hard question, and because he’s naïve and new to the world, it took the whole story to occur to him that the meaning of life is defined differently for every individual. No duh. Everyone has their hobbies.

  It was obvious from the beginning that Chef already had meaning in his life and he was dragged away from it. The Meeseeks know their purpose. And I love that the writer was self-aware of the Meeseeks, explaining why they say “ Look at me “ and deconstructing them. That’s how smart the writer is. And because it’s a dark comedy, the chili Summer asked for didn’t even achieve what she wanted and impress that guy.

  Maybe she should have asked him what he’d like to eat first, like a smart person. I assumed the only reason she picked “ chili “ was that she knew he LIKED chili. But it’s so likely that someone won’t like chili because it’s spicy, so why would she pick that of all things?! She should’ve picked chocolate cake.

Rick and Morty Presents The Flesh Curtains:

  We start out with Rick telling Morty surprisingly honestly that he’s wallowing in the past. Morty cares about him enough to feel sorry for him right away and ask, “ Oh geez, Rick. How come? “ Rick has a smart, no shit and really general response instead of complaining about what specifically is wrong with his life and Morty sweetly offers him some of the cheese balls they picked up on their last adventure. Aw. He refuses to eat them because of what they actually are, and what they actually are is needlessly gross.

But Morty’s open-minded enough to eat them anyways because if he’s calling them cheese balls, they probably taste just like them, so he just likes how they taste. I’d expect Rick to be the one to eat weird alien stuff while Morty would be the simpleton getting caught up in the superficial, but it’s cute to see him like that, enjoying something he wouldn’t have if it weren’t for meeting Rick. And for once it doesn’t backfire.

  Morty asks what something is and Rick says it’s a tablet with a documentary on it about his old band. Sadly Morty doesn’t lampshade how terrible the name of his band was. That’s pretty polite. He is his grandson so he’s nice to him, and says that’s cool and asks if he can watch it. I guess he’ll say no because he’s a downer.

  Surprisingly he agrees instead of just watching it himself, and says he’s just maxed out on nostalgia anyways and is gonna sit here and drink himself to death. Morty just, uh, smiles and says okay, implying that he doesn’t believe that’ll actually happen, logically since he’s known Rick for a long time and Rick seems to be immune to alcohol poisoning. Probably because of a cybernetic liver. But he was surprised to learn he had cybernetics in the show.

  Rick says that he should’ve told Morty that it’s not really a documentary, just a collection of fixed wormholes leading into the actual past, and that interacting with those wormholes could rupture the fabric of space-time. That sounds convoluted and unnecessary. If the fate of the universe is at stake, it doesn’t make sense that he’d dumb it down for him. But he doesn’t care, he’s drunk.

   Rick falls asleep, and Morty lampshades that it’s hard to believe Rick was in a band, and then justifies that elderly people have done a lot in life we don’t know. In the documentary, after I see that the lyrics to their song is perfectly in-character for Rick to come up with, which helps make up for the whole padding and cliché feeling of him being in a band at all, they’re told they suck, and Rick just says the people around them don’t know about rock and roll. Rick compliments Squanchy on his drum solo. At least he’s being nice.

  Birdperson wants to confront him about his songs, and Squanchy says that he’s not getting what he wants out of being in this band. Birdperson says there are more appealing songs they could be playing if others in the band were allowed to contribute to the songwriting. So he wants to go more mainstream. It’s just an unfortunate coincidence that the place they were playing the song at didn’t like emo music. Plenty of people DO. It’d be unrealistic to pretend that only Rick would. My problem is that I can’t imagine Birdperson to have a good singing voice.

  Morty hopes that the internal pressures among the band members won’t cause them to break up before they’d achieve success. I hope this is the writer lampshading how painfully cliché this kind of plot is. It doesn’t help that I’ve already seen this kind of plot done in the Sabrina the Teenage Witch sitcom, where the band feuded with each other because of acquired situational narcissism that was at least justified by a magical potion, while other plots doing that cliché have NO EXCUSE for annoying us with that.

There was an episode of Family Guy where Meg sung in a band. There was an episode of The Simpsons where Homer sang in an acapella band. It’s been done to death and it’s always the same plot points. I hope this becomes sci-fi enough to actually add something.

  At least it’s kind of amusing how blunt the neon sign is, saying, “ shithole apartments for rent, “ though I can’t imagine why a comic based on an Adult Swim show would censor a swear. It shows gore just fine.

After Rick wants to get revenge on his friends defensively for not liking his songs, he tells them that he’s invented a songwriting machine – wouldn’t it just be biased to like what songs HE likes and that’s it? He says it scans brain patterns to determine exactly the right music and lyrics to make anyone who hears them happy, and writes the catchiest possible songs to appeal to the widest possible audience.

  Then he says that it beams the music and lyrics directly into their brains so they won’t even have to bother practicing – how would it mean they wouldn’t have to bother practicing? If they’re playing their own music anyways at the concerts then how would people hear the music being beamed directly into their heads over the music played right in front of them?

And predictably, the machine just plays a song that’s already been done before instead of making up a new one. So that obviously can’t work for their band because they’d be playing copyrighted music they don’t own, but I guess they’ll do it in dimensions where nobody owns the songs.

  Rick happily expects Birdperson to apologize, and Birdperson says he’s written a song that expresses his feelings about his home planet. Rick tells him to forget it because the machine’s gonna give them all the hits they could ever want. You mean, by beaming a different song into every audience member? Wouldn’t they be confused and off-put that the lipsynching of the band and the instruments won’t match? Rick should’ve let him play it once in a no-risk situation at the bar. Big mistake, jerk.

  Since I actually read the Birdperson story before this, I can’t help but feel sorry for Birdperson here because I know he had it rough. It’s nice of Morty to enjoy the song he’s hearing, which is All Star. That’s interesting because you’d expect Rick’s favorite song to be an emo song at this point, and he’s old so it can’t have nostalgia for him.

  Predictably, his machine works and makes Squanchy happy. I liked whenever I could figure out what the word squanch meant in context. It’s kind of a fun game. Rick says that he’s opening for one of the biggest singer-songwriters in twelve systems. Rick meets a singer for a band he looks up to, and they play a new song of theirs, and he hates it because it’s too mainstream and isn’t about something.

Naturally this humiliates Rick, who I guess didn’t have the courage to properly explain himself to him in time. He’s too busy to agree to listen to a second song, I guess. Then Birdperson sings some touching lyrics about his home, and it’s sweet of Morty to tear up at it, but Rick just says they should get rich and famous since he doesn’t have much in the way of morals and is already THERE.

And of course, an alien compliments his machine, so it’s not like we’re expected to believe everyone’s oblivious to his machine, which would’ve been stupid. The alien agrees to front him the money he needs, but threatens to kill him and everyone he knows multiple times if he disappoints him.

  Rick plans on becoming the most popular band in the multiverse. He says he rented out this stadium and a bunch of magical multidimensional cameras, and engaged in a lot of payola to get their songs on radio stations in a hundred different realities, and casually tells Birdperson that he got all the money for this by borrowing from a dangerous gangster. Couldn’t he just create a portal in his face?

He’d only be a threat if he caught him by surprise and made him start running from him. Otherwise Rick could just shoot him. I’m guessing he’s gonna completely blow it. At least there’s some justification for it. The guy with wings shows up again and wants to hear Birdperson’s song, which he heard from backstage at his show. How convenient for HIM, and not for Rick. I thought he was already on his way to do something else. So Rick recklessly decides to let Birdperson play HIS song, and he’s embarrassed when Birdperson says that there’s good in him after all.

  I’m guessing this will, yep, the people in the audience are all portrayed as complete idiots who hate the song on the first text bubble because it isn’t appealing to them. The first idiot says the song contains depths of nuance and subtlety he’s never experienced, as an insult, which would never happen. This wouldn’t be so painful if they didn’t drag it out with dialogue from the audience. It seems unrealistic that Birdperson’s song would be hated from just the first text bubble without them waiting for him to get past the chorus.

  Only the guy with wings stays and claps to it, because all of Rick’s audience members were idiots. Every single one of them, all at the same time, somehow. You know, you don’t have to be an idiot who can’t appreciate a touching song to appreciate a machine like Rick’s. Anyone would. Then an alien shows up to Rick with a gun, and there’s two other aliens at his side who also have guns so even if Rick shot the first one, he’d get shot anyways.

  Rick desperately wastes time asking if they want a beer. The guy with wings runs away in fear, and the bad guy threatens Rick. Then Morty says he wishes he didn’t eat all those cheese balls, and ends up getting sick, and that goes through a hole in space-time and lands on the bad guys, which lets Rick and his friends get away safely. So now we’ll never know how he actually survived this. They get into a spaceship to fly away, because I guess Rick didn’t think to have his portal gun with him so he could easily escape this situation. I’d expect him to be crazy prepared.

  Rick tells Birdperson to take the wheel while he plays the gangster the best song he’s ever heard, because he’s still got Narlog’s brain pattern stored in the machine, I guess because he was at one of his concerts and his brain was scanned. But I didn’t know that until now.

Then after Rick plays the most beautiful music Narlog ever heard and it kills him somehow, because Deus ex Machina, Birdperson says he can’t go back to rehearsing because singing his song made him realize how much he misses the nests of his homeworld, so he wants to return there for now, and Squanchy says he needs to go to rehab, which was foreshadowed by him revealing he was doing drugs earlier.

  Birdperson asks Rick what he’ll do, he says he’ll have a grandson someday, and the story ends with Morty thanking the thankfully asleep Rick. Good thing for Morty that his tearing space-time did nothing but help. The way Rick talked it, he made it sound like the whole universe could be threatened. The line did a good job creating a lot of tension when it first showed up, though, but it ended up just being a Chekhov’s Gun.

  This story by Lilah Sturges was about explaining why Rick and his old friends decided to part ways; they started a band together which led to Squanchy needing to go to rehab and Birdperson becoming homesick after writing a song about it. The show showing why he and Birdperson parted ways makes this cliche story lose its value because it’s non-canon.

At least there was some sci-fi in it that mattered because Rick made a machine that makes everyone around him hear music that caters to them and writes lyrics for him, and the punishment he gets for cheating like this is that when he’s motivated to let Birdperson play the song HE wants to try to impress his idol, the entitled audience he ended up with hates it right away because it’s not their favorite songs.

You’d think that a lot of them would realistically stay. It’d make sense if the song was one of Rick’s original songs. Instead every single one of them got a refund, after hearing a touching song about homesickness instead of an emo song calling back to what Rick originally wanted to play, which ends up being completely cast away. So a gangster wants to kill Rick. I mean, sure it missed the appeal and gimmick of the band, but you’d think most of them would at least stay until the second verse is done out of curiosity to see what all the lyrics are.

The story has way too low an opinion of most music listeners and it seems close-minded. I guess it was trying to make a joke at their expense but it came off as too bitter. So Rick got a gangster to pay for renting out the stadium and broadcasting the song to tons of people, and when he inevitably disappointed him, because he’s not in a band anymore in the present, the gangster ends up going after them in a spaceship of his own and getting killed by a Deus ex Machina, I mean Rick’s machine.

So instead of the story being about punishing Rick for making the machine, he saves the day because he does use it after getting punished for not using it. It’s too bad they established the thing where Morty could interact with the documentary because now we’ll never know how Rick actually escaped the gangsters, which he MUST have done or he wouldn’t have survived up to now. I hate Stable Time Loops. I love how sweet Morty was this issue. He got Rick to smile by singing to him.

Rick and Morty Presents Unity

  We start out seeing an airport in Washington, and the pilot says they’re gonna get everyone off the flight in just a minute, but the jet brigade crew is saying that there’s something in their way on the tarmac. And it’s a beautiful blue woman. I like that one of them says she’s hot. Then she possesses someone in the way she did in the show. I HATE how awful looks! Then someone says someone can’t come up here and says to get off him, and we see Unity with an oxygen mask on in the chair greeting people and saying that this is gonna be over real soon.

  She possesses the people she took over and gets them to take over other people themselves, like a zombie plague without making the zombies look unappealing, so much better than that. So what convinced her to start doing this again? Is she biologically compelled to as a Hive Mind being? Then we see text all over the place asking where Rick Sanchez is.

  Then we see Rick being asked when to wash your hands by some human. He says they’re his community service interns and seems to be a surgeon right now. He asks what he was doing here, and he’s told that he’d hidden some sci-fi thing inside Beth because it was the one place some alien battalion wouldn’t look and now he has to get it out.

  Rick needs to be refreshed on this because he fell asleep. Since when does he have narcolepsy? That was a forced excuse for exposition on this. Morty’s naturally upset at seeing this and Rick has the guts to act casual and tell him to hold these clamps because he’s gotta answer that. Then Morty turns around and says he’s holding the light. Rick says that because his lab is so advanced, he has voice-activated lights.

  He gets a text message from Unity, who tells him that she’s in town and to call her when he’s got time to hang out. I’ve been reading this under the assumption that this takes place in an alternate universe from the show. In the show, she reconnected with Rick after he got grandkids and then broke up with him because she realized he was a horrible influence on her and was using her. She wouldn’t get back with him after that.

  Rick wonders what her text message pictures actually mean. Unity is upset that Rick hasn’t responded yet, and she takes the phone away and says that it’s time to deploy the heavy artillery and they should let something else do the talking. Rick finally responds and says that while there’s been a lot of good talk about whether or not you should send people photos like that without asking first, in this instance, it worked out in her favor.

  She says that she’s just tracking his location, and she somehow thinks that she needs to keep him on the phone long enough to do that. That stopped being a thing in the 80s. And she’s got advanced technology, so she’d just find out where he is instantly. She’s even on the same planet as him.

  Because she was dumb enough to warn him first, he puts up his force field to protect his house from a laser. Rick tells Unity not to assimilate kids anymore, since it makes him real uncomfortable because Unity is his ex-girlfriend. Unity says that she’s doing this to get his guard down, and the kids shoot at him. Why? She got him interested, so can’t she just ask him to date her again and he’d do it?

  He creates clones of himself with a cybernetic implant in him that come from eggs, and they get assimilated. He finally lampshades that she doesn’t have to do this because he’s always loved her anyways. Unity admits that while he’s right, they’re BOTH addicted to chasing bad ideas, and Rick’s smiling as she’s standing on him. If she KNOWS it’s a bad idea, why does she do it anyways, why was she WRITTEN to? That’s a lot of effort she didn’t need to expend.

  She suddenly turns out to be in front of him and standing on him, and he asks if he can get her anything. He gets knocked out, I guess? She should’ve been shown injecting him. Lucky for her she knows his exact weight, and was trained as an anesthesiologist!

  He wakes up trapped against a wall along with some people of different species from him, and he’s smart enough to get himself free, saying “ little robots, “ and I guess that activates voice-activated robots to get them to leave his lab coat and free him. He really is the smartest character ever. Too bad even he has Idiot Balls sometimes. He’d be a lot more competent if he relied on nanobots too like Nicole.

  He frees them, and asks how these guys know his name and is told that they listen. Rick says that it’s weird that Unity never mentioned them before, and is told that she did on the recording. Rick’s told about Unity’s previous boyfriends and told that she’s always spoken freely of those she’s loved before. I would talk about the pizza guy’s backstory, but I guess it’s pointless to the plot anyways.

Rick figures out that they’re ALL dating Unity, and says that while he’s not a jealous man, yeah right, and it’ll take some of the pressure off him on birthdays and stuff, he’s always wanted to wrestle another man for a woman’s heart.

 Unity says that she’s in need of one more and then her experiment can begin. The room around them looks like space all of a sudden, I guess because its walls became transparent, and Unity says there’s a whole galaxy of people looking for their other half. She says that none of them are her other half. How does she know? Jerk.

She thinks she works best on her own and she’s ALL of her. So, Shadow’s “ I am all of me, “ theme song is supposed to be saying that he works best on his own, never mind the fact that the only reason he got as far as he did in his evil plan in SA2, and in Heroes, was because he was working with other people.

  Unity doesn’t want people to get in her way and limit her and says she’s good at finding what’s best in someone and constantly using it until she runs it into the ground. She’s being a creepy villain. Good thing her design is so awesome that you spend the whole story admiring it. She wants to use them like a bad ex would, so she plans on strip-mining each one of them for their best qualities, and combining their consciousnesses into a world-ending boyfriend singularity drive. Why world-ending? She’s not about destroying worlds.

  She says that she doesn’t wanna spend time with any of them anymore, as for one, they don’t shower enough, but their support for her is a valuable resource she doesn’t want to go to waste. She could say that she’s lonely. That’d immediately make sense and be relatable. I don’t remember her being this cartoonishly unrealistically evil in the show. Good thing this show is all about parallel universes, so I can immediately imagine that this isn’t the one we know after all. After all, if they didn’t bother to make the Birdperson issue canon to Season 5, this could be an alternate universe too!

  Rick says that HE knows how it works because he invented that technology. She accuses him of lying because they FOUND it on a date, and he was using it to combine the minds of all the pigeons he could while drunk. She really can’t stop talking. She just keeps boring me to death when she gets to talking about an “ Ava “ supportive partner, that she expects Rick to get back for her. She asks why she thinks they’re gonna do anything for her.

She says that it’s because none of them can resist a chance to make her happy. Rick says that if anyone asks, they all have bombs in them and are forced to do this. It’d have been common sense of her to go to that length.

  We see them in a spaceship heading for the place where Ava is. Rick wants to stay behind after the boring plan talk, and he changes his mind and says that he just wanted to hear them say he’s needed. He kicks them into a portal and goes in with them. One of them ends up killed by Rick by accident because he fell into a puddle of acid that Rick didn’t know was there. He’s called out on it and throws something at some soldiers that wanna shoot him and puts on a force field to protect himself from the explosion.

  Rick doesn’t care about ruining Unity’s plan of course and proudly says, “ Good thing I’m a terrible boyfriend and I don’t care, “ a funny and memorable line. And they wonder if they can get out of here after getting the Ava intelligence for themselves. Why did he come to that conclusion? Is it a teleporter? Why’d they assume that?

  After Rick tries a more cruel way to find out where Ava is, asking someone for it when they don’t know, the trunk person says he was just able to access maps as he’s looking at his hologram-generating wrist watch and it looks like there’s a massive server room up on the top floor with blown out stairs. The pizza guy gets killed too as he buys time for them to go into the building.

  Rick casually tells Ava that he’s just here for his own interest in whatever IT is and casually says her plan is a bust. He asks why she sent those who would die. Rick says that liking someone causes us to ignore obvious flaws in them, like being a slice of pizza. Then Rick’s told that Unity’s a bad girlfriend, and somehow he denies it when he was clearly mad at her before, asking why she’d think he’d help her, so I thought he turned on her.

And she made a gigantic villainous monologue out of complete NOWHERE that she wanted a combination boyfriend. She was never doing this in the show! Might as well have not used Unity at all and just had a different girl hive mind.

  Ava says that he knows what’s going on because Unity and him used to date, and Unity didn’t anticipate that he would say no to her whole plan. Ava says that rather than being programmed for this, he was programmed for interstellar diplomacy, but now he just talks people out of bad relationships. I guess that’s less inherently futile. ‘Cause even if he talks countries into not warring, they’re gonna war again anyways.

  Rick says he’s gonna get him out of here and he thankfully says thanks. He’s transferred into the hard drive, and then Rick kills him, saying that he doesn’t (laughs) saying that he doesn’t need that kind of character commentary in his life. He didn’t have to kill him! Heh. He could’ve warped him to another universe at least. This is how you do black comedy right. He gets warped to Unity, and she says that the trunkie ran off with one of the soldiers.

  Rick explains that they’re both terrible selfish people and Unity at least explains that Catboy had TOLD HER that he was immortal, and she can be too trusting. Rick says he understands screwing up like that, and torturing the idiots all over the place wouldn’t make them better people. It seems like he’s being really nice to her out of nowhere after he was pissed off at her before.

I’d understand him effortlessly forgiving Morty for betraying and annoying him all the time but I never felt like he loved HER unconditionally because I never saw what she did to earn it. I wonder if he’s planning against her, because sometimes when he’s really nice out of nowhere, it’s just a lie unless it’s to Morty.

  Instead, the story cuts ahead to two weeks later, implying that really all they did was kiss. Two weeks later, he’s in the bathroom and Unity can’t open the door when it’s being knocked on because she can’t answer the door and assimilate the delivery guy. She’s pretty mean. Why can’t she just answer the door without assimilating?

  Rick comes back to Morty after weeks and I’m expected to believe, oh good, Morty says that it’s been only a few hours HERE. So Rick was in a place where time magically passed differently relative to Morty, because MAGIC. I wish that was explained earlier. Later on in the D and D issues, we’re gonna learn about dimensions with slower chronotron fields. Good thing I respect this franchise because I actually felt like humoring it and thinking it was believable.

It helps that it mentioned the name of a type of time particle to try to make it science. I didn’t feel like it humoring the story for the Zone of Silence. But fine. It’s probably magic so it can do anything. And while he thinks his hands have been in his mother’s chest cavity the whole time, actually it’s just been a clone, which actually makes WAY more sense than it being the real Beth. I was thinking it was out of character for Rick to be so callous to Beth, so of course it was a clone.

  I just wasn’t used to assuming the writing made sense and something confusing about it was gonna have an explanation after all of the bad Sonic comics I read where it wasn’t like that. Rick says he left the sci-fi thing in a different clone anyways, having inconveniently taken until now to remember that. Why would there be more than one?

Morty magically figures out Rick was with Unity. Oh good, even that’s explained because this comic is that good, even for an issue that disappointed me. Morty says that he knows because Rick talks about everything because he has no shame, until it comes to Unity and then he clams up, because he’s ashamed of how much he likes her every time she breaks his heart.

  Okay, but that doesn’t explain why he knows he was with Unity BEFORE Rick said none of your business. That was a lucky guess considering that he was inside the garage away from Unity the whole time. I thought she was gonna take over the minds of all of humanity, and she just had the story in a different planet instead. I guess she literally only took over the minds of the humans around her so one person could give her a cell phone to call Rick. You’d think she’d just take over one human.

  So this issue by Tini Howard was apparently about a different universe version of Unity from the show’s one. That’s the only explanation aside from Character Derailment for why she was a monologuing villain in this story, who suddenly wanted a boyfriend that was a combination of a bunch of other people. So she kidnaps Rick, with no attempt at an explanation for how she did that, and all of the boyfriends other than Rick end up killed on the way to the final one she wanted to kidnap. At least most of them weren’t killed by Rick.

  And then after Rick tries to live with Unity without Morty around, without worrying that he’ll be tracked down by the Galactic Federation for having no Morty waves to hide him, he ends up having to go home because Unity’s really selfish and controlling. I know that her being a control freak makes sense because she’s a Hive Mind. But not THIS. She wasn’t like this in the show.

  The story would’ve had more value if it bothered to explain her origin, or at least try to explain why she started assimilating, even in one line. Aside from Beta, she seems to be the only Hive Mind type ever. There couldn’t be a whole species. So how are they like that?! I guess a spell? What’s the point of showing her on Earth if she’s only there for a few seconds to kidnap Rick? So we don’t get to see how she’d rule Earth. I wouldn’t want her getting all of humanity drunk while partying with Rick, anyways.

Issue 51: 

  We start out with Morty bringing a bald friend of his named Nestor home. I think I remember that there’s a reason he’s so weird. He also has a crow as a pet and casually brings it into Morty’s house. Beth says that his friends are always welcome here, while Summer’s friends are messy and obnoxious. We’ve seen her let her friends come to the house anyways. Apparently she changed her mind. Nester’s nice to her, and compliments Jerry on caring about his toy because it makes him happy. I can’t be the only one who still doesn’t like him because he looks so ridiculous. He’s supposed to be a teenager?

  Then Rick asks what Nestor’s doing here and tells him to leave, and explains that he’s the one who’s been distracting Morty from his adventure responsibilities for a month, and it turns out Nestor isn’t from Earth, and Beth has a no aliens policy. Nestor looks like a bald adult when he’s supposedly a teenager, and they assumed he WASN’T an alien?

  Rick says that his evidence for Nestor being an alien is that he happened to do a specific dance with Morty. Beth tells him to go there and apologize because Morty needs a normal friend. Rick says he sincerely doesn’t want the opinion of someone who just glued his hands together, and apparently, Rick doesn’t already know that he’s mad because Morty’s spending time with someone other than him and not because he might be an alien. Wasn’t it obvious? He’s used to aliens, so why would he have a problem with him being an alien? And yet he doesn’t believe Summer at first.

  Nestor tells Morty while they’re playing video games that he’s watched enough Lifetime movies to get Rick’s deal and it’s a sad deal. He relates to Morty that both of their dads stay at home. Then after his dad shows some hospitality to Rick, Rick amusingly says, “ I only came over to apologize to your son for throwing him out so that my family will leave me alone. “

  Morty explains what Rick did and says that he just wants to sabotage anything that makes anyone else happy, rather than just saying he wants to use him as a slave on his adventures more often. Since Nestor’s father looks normal, of course it’s his wife that’s the alien, but it’s weird that I’m supposed to believe that Nestor, is human. Why is he bald then? A strange choice.

Barely anything interesting has happened in this slow story. The dad says that back in the 90s he was a hacker who somehow hacked himself into a wormhole and found himself on a world of sentient computer-like creatures. This is stupid. This is the kind of nonsensical writing that’s really out of place in Rick and Morty. It feels more like a 2000s Sabrina comic. The robots were obsessed with his human biology and he was interested in them, so he fell in love with one of those computers. How?

  How was he able to get a son out of that? The computer wouldn’t have DNA to contribute. Nestor would have to be a clone of him, and at that point, he’s HIS son, but not hers. Biological reproduction was a crime on their planet somehow even though he was literally the first biological organism to show up and they were fascinated by him, not angry. So wouldn’t he have been executed?

   He says that his lover took his biological specimen and made a child from it. HIS. It doesn’t say HERS. He and his wife were about to be put to death when they escaped to Earth, I guess through a REALLY CONVENIENT portal. If they took a spaceship, they’d be followed. His wife disguised herself as the bird instead of a human that could actually be compatible with him and they started a new life.

  Morty says that because Nestor’s life is so weird, now he can tell him about all the unbelievable adventures he’s been on. Yeah but Rick has an invested interest in keeping those adventures secret because they’re so traumatic and evil. He’d wanna call the cops on him. Morty should know that. He’s looking on the bright side when it comes to adventures, apparently. He’s really not thinking ahead.

  He trails off, but not because Rick kills Nestor. Instead it’s because Nestor’s mom wants to kill him and Rick to keep their secret safe. Morty shouldn’t have been written to be cheerful and say all this, then, it makes this forced. Nestor begs her to keep Morty alive, but she still wants to kill Rick. The father’s still smiling somehow, and he says that she’s the entire house, which impresses him because he married that.

  Instead of just using a portal gun to escape immediately, Rick grabs the Idiot Ball by asking what a house is gonna do to him. How about crush him with its walls? He asks, “ What is a house going to do? Make the AC uncomfortable? Creak? Have a leaky foundation? “ If she was confident that she could kill him, he should’ve taken her seriously.

  He gets smacked by a sofa. I guess all of the house is covered in nanobots. The fire from the fireplace burns off some of his lab coat and conveniently doesn’t spread to the rest of it, because I guess it’s made out of material that’s like that. He grabs onto the fan and makes it fall onto the floor, and for some reason that makes her scream in pain.

  Rick wastes time talking instead of warping out of the house, because he really wants revenge at this point, even though this whole scenario is putting Morty at risk too. Seriously why was I supposed to believe that Nestor was the human? Him being the alien is more memorable than this nonsensical plot twist.

  He dodges a toilet and activates a force field or something with his wrist gadget. I guess it’s an EMP, and he even says so. It’s a low grade EMP that destroys all electronics. Okay, and it goes OUT from his body, which is why it doesn’t affect him. Wouldn’t it hurt Morty because he has a few cybernetic implants in him, like the ability to get turned into a car or send the spaceship over to him if his face is pressed? I guess that proves that he asks Rick to remove them.

  Nestor’s father and him are portrayed really sympathetically here, with Nestor’s father saying, “ Why did you even come here? We weren’t bothering you! “ Rick clearly said why he came here. And Nestor’s father didn’t have to admit his wife was an alien. It’s his fault. Thankfully for Nestor, his homicidal mother reboots.

She says that if she rebooted, she accessed the cloud on their planet, meaning that they’ll know where she is and she’s not safe on Earth anymore, so they have to leave immediately. So Rick and Morty are sent out of the house by the fridge and the house rockets away, and what’s even more mean is that Nestor is told that any form of contact with Morty would reveal his location. Not caring about Morty’s disappointment, Rick’s just glad he was right about something, when Nestor wasn’t really an alien just a clone, so he was wrong.

  He says he’s gonna rub this in Jerry’s face, and the story ends with him telling Morty that he’s got some business on a planet that’s got mind-blowing candy. Wait is that a hint that he plans on erasing Morty’s memory of this, like “ Morty’s mind-blowers? “ I mean he might have done that later, but I doubt he was trying to hint at it and risk him remembering.

  Anyways, while he’s acting like he doesn’t care, it’s real sweet that he’s gonna take him to a place with candy after that. Morty’s acting like HE ruins everything, but Beth was the one who told him to go apologize, and she’s not getting any of the blame. While Rick could’ve easily not gone to that house, he only went there because of Beth.

In fact, it was Morty who said that Rick thinks Nestor’s an alien and got his dad to spill the beans. It’s Nestor’s mom’s fault that she tried to fight with Rick. You’d think Nestor would wear a wig because the high school students would tease him to the point where he’d realize he has to wear a wig.

  In the next story, we start out seeing Morty, Rick and Jerry running away while Jerry complains that this is why he doesn’t like letting Rick handle household problems, as all they needed was a new water heater. Either this is a different dimension or I guess he changed his mind after he wanted him to fix his weed-eater. Rick says that he thought it’d be better to have hot water that makes you immune to every known disease, so he assumed Jerry would want that. I guess it’s MAGIC water.

  He says he’s working on an encryption, and then we see Jerry get shot by a laser, and Jerry annoys the Grim Reaper into bringing him back to life by asking him too many questions at once after he’s told that he somehow knows everything, and Jerry asks him if he’s sure multiple times.

He keeps asking questions without giving the Grim Reaper a chance to answer them, but this is all justified in the end because it turns out he’s annoying him on PURPOSE so he’ll bring him back to life, and he’s done it before. The only reason HE had the courage to do this is that he’s used to weird scary stuff from Rick, so I guess that’s why most people don’t do this simple thing to get out of death.

Still, it’s too overpowered for me to accept. The Grim Reaper throws him off a cliff and he wakes up in the car, and Rick says that HE brought him back. Jerry reveals that he remembers what he did and it works every time. So, he’s immune to dying? It’s too bad we didn’t get to see how Rick got out of that situation, let alone what he did that he thought brought him back.

  The first story by Kyle Starks was mostly slow with almost nothing happening until Rick went to Nestor’s house to apologize for throwing Nestor out, just because Beth wanted him to. He didn’t like that Morty got a new friend at school who was occupying his time, and because Morty told Nestor’s family about what Rick was going on about out of spite, Nestor’s dad tells them all that his wife is a robot alien, that he had no logical reason to have met.

If it’s supposed to be a secret, to the point where his wife wants to kill Rick because he knows it, then why did Nestor’s dad tell him the truth in the first place? Did he WANT them dead? Considering how he was smiling when he said she’s the whole house when she was about to kill someone, I guess he’s just as psychotic as her.

So Nestor ends up having to leave the planet because it’s not safe anymore for his family to hide in, because for some reason they have to hide from their alien planet for being an organic and non-organic couple. Weren’t the robots supposed to be really logical? Logically, they wouldn’t want them put to death, they’d just shrug it off and leave them alone. Rick’s treated like the only bad guy, but these two were happy to get him killed.

The story was marred by two things, the fact that Nestor’s dad even meeting his wife was ridiculous and Nestor himself should’ve just been an alien to explain his dumb appearance, and the fact that it’s slow and boring until he gets to Nestor’s house. That was disappointing.

  And the second story by Magdalene Visaggio and Ian McGinty was about Jerry annoying the Grim Reaper into bringing him back to life by asking too many questions without giving him the chance to answer. SURE WAS convenient for him that he was omniscient, and told him that again because he didn’t actually know that Jerry would remember his time with him despite being disappointed. I’m just disappointed that we didn’t get to see how Rick got out of that dangerous situation.

Issue 52:

  We start out with a green ball crashing onto a pretty-looking planet, which didn’t need to waste an entire page on us. Morty falls out of the ball and says that he told Rick they have to stay away from Death Stars because they’re always blowing up. How does Morty know that a spherical space station makes no sense from an engineering standpoint? I guess Rick’s intelligence is actually rubbing off on him. He might have heard enough from him to know this. I guess he means because it doesn’t have the shape of a satellite or airplane. But a lot of people don’t question this.

  Morty says that he’ll have to wait here until Rick meets up with him. So I guess he and Rick took different escape pods because they were both one-person only. I guess because it’s already expensive enough to make shuttles. Morty says it’s sweet of an alien to offer him something to eat. Uh, for all he knows, it’s poisonous, and either the alien knows that, or doesn’t.

  The alien wants to invite him to his village. So NOW we meet an alien that can’t speak English? Or any language. For once the creator of the multiverse didn’t lazy out. Morty calls them a sweet bunch of little guys, and then he sees one get kidnapped by a flying monster, and more flying monsters show up and Morty gets knocked downhill. It’s not like Morty could’ve always stayed in his escape pod because this would’ve happened eventually, so there’s no way he could’ve prevented this from happening to him.

One of them smacks the escape pod as destruction is caused and Morty says sorry, because the escape pod was only there because of him. He says they’re the best because they’re not mad at him. They run away and wade through a swamp, and eventually the monster gets shot by a laser from an alien, who handcuffs Morty and enslaves all of them.

Morty enjoys the taste of the green liquid he has to drink, and the others don’t want it because it’s coming out of a slug in front of them, and yet their idiotic captors still expect them to ingest it after that. That’s dumb. It’s illogical of them not to wanna drink it because milk comes from a cow’s udders and you might not wanna drink milk right after seeing where it came from, but it is believable of them.

  Then Morty tells the aliens to do the plan. Wait, why would he be able to give them instructions if they can’t speak English? I guess they do understand it, and just lack the ability to speak. Morty jumps at one of the captors and kills him with the wire between his handcuffs, as the enslaved aliens run away, realistically not being perfectly good people after they were too good to be true before.

  Morty’s about to be killed, but just in time, his captor gets shot by the little aliens from earlier, and then they get grabbed and killed by the monster birds. I hate that Morty’s face was stained. The artist could’ve easily drawn it so that the captor was vaporized when he was shot instead of creating a mess. He could’ve just been turned into ashes.

Morty reaches out for the axe as he’s pinned down by the captor and uses it to free himself, offscreen thankfully. I hate that he’s stained so much. Good thing Rick can erase his memories. Somehow despite that appearance, a bunch of warrior women wanna copulate with him instead of being afraid of a supposed serial killer.

Considering how much he suffered so far, I’m happy with a Deus ex Machina. Maybe they assume he’s covered in red paint instead because what are the odds that it’s anything else? He’s only 14. She explains that 20 years ago, the last of their men mysteriously passed away, and their religion made up a prophecy about a red-faced man who would come from the desert to repopulate their land. Morty’s naturally suspicious of his good luck, accusing them of wanting to eat him like a mantis, which don’t do that in real life, and ends up living like a king.

  The woman asks if he’s comfortable and happy because they need him at full strength, oh, so he can do some fighting? ‘Cause he wouldn’t need that much strength. Then Rick shows up at the worst moment and says that Morty was shipwrecked on a backwoods secluded planet, and it was really hard to track him down. Wait, he doesn’t have a Morty Tracker? That was dumb of him. Morty could interrupt him at ANY TIME and tell him that he wants to stay for a while.

I guess this was taking place before he invented his Morty Tracker, but still you’d think he’d have invented that earlier than this. Rick says that he wouldn’t even have to waste all this time looking for Morty if he never jumped in that escape pod. Morty says that he thought the space station was gonna explode because the alarm was going off.

  Rick says that was just a fire alarm, and he thought it was hilarious at first that he left. Morty should’ve just told him what this sweet deal here WAS, which should be obvious anyways because of how he’s dressed. Like, why would he care if Morty has a few days off? He can do some inventing. Rick says that Beth finally noticed he was missing and made him find him because she loves him and he has school. Why can’t Morty tell him to at least send him back for a few hours every day? He can still live on Earth and just come here to make himself happy. He could come here on the weekends.

  Morty gets shocked and forced to come home, and sadly the story ends there, and I have to hope for Morty’s sake that he later found out the location of this planet by checking the previous location on Rick’s portal gun, wrote it down, and made a habit out of taking the portal gun to do what they want for a few hours. If Jerry can get away with that to visit Doofus Rick every month, Morty can do that too.

  Couldn’t Morty wait until Rick’s asleep? I refuse to believe that Rick couldn’t be bothered to look for Morty until after Beth noticed he was gone, because he needed Morty around for his adventures and hiding him from the Galactic Federation, which has the same name as the one in Metroid, by the way. I guess they got away with it because it’s such a generic-sounding name.

  The second story by Kyle Starks and Marc Ellerby starts with Jerry asking Rick and Morty about all the gnomes in the lab. Rick says them being everywhere is why he’s looking for their queen, which is identical to all of the others in every way, except the bottoms of her feet are different colors. Morty says the gnomes are out of control as one of them’s on his head, and he can’t get them to do anything. Are they all aliens? Why is he expected to control them successfully?

  Rick says he’s gotta show some authority and show them he’s the leader to keep them from bothering him. Rick says he’s gotta get something from the lab real quick while they keep looking. Then he gets startled by a janitor alien who was told to clean the lab, who wonders if he could interest him in an opportunity. Rick tells him not to ask him about apps.

Somehow he still thinks Rick has an interest, and tells him his dating app idea even though those already exist. He should tell him that, at least. He tells him to get back to sweeping, and the story cuts back to Morty. Well, that scene was a complete waste of time.

  Rick says he got some gloves, and sadly the story ends without a conclusive ending, as Jerry suffered for trying to help them. We’ll never know why all those gnomes were in his lab. Too bad, because we could’ve found out instead of that scene wasting space. It just repeated the same joke the show had with him.

  This sad story by Kyle Starks was about Morty taking an escape pod out of a Death Star and getting stranded on a planet alone for a long time, where he gets chased out of a village by evil birds, gets enslaved, and has to resort to desperate measures with an axe to get out from under one of the slave drivers after he’s defeated, and eventually, some alien women want him to repopulate their people even though they should know he’s an alien. So he wouldn’t be able to do that for them. I guess because they lack modern knowledge, it makes sense that they don’t know that yet, but still.

The prophecy just makes them THINK he could repopulate their people. I wish that after Rick forced him to come home, we were told that Morty managed to get back here and sneaks over here every so often. He deserves it after everything he’s been through.

  The fact that there was gore in the story was a problem for me, making it hard to remember it fondly as a great story, but it was because it showed Morty able to make it out of a tough alien situation on his OWN, and it wasn’t with a Deus ex Machina, either. I say that because it makes SENSE that characters have weird prophecies and religions because that’s in real life. And the second story’s not really worth talking about. Rick wants to find the queen gnome among gnomes in his lab and they never do find her.

Issue 53:

  We start out with Rick knowing he’s in danger as his spaceship’s flying away from some spaceships shooting lasers, with a sound effect word being drawn on the panel even though there’s no noise in space. He complains that the spaceship isn’t going fast enough and he doesn’t wanna go back to prison. Why wasn’t he smart enough to have his portal gun with him? He could’ve saved himself easily. Isn’t he confident enough to think he could easily avoid people getting his portal gun?

  He says that he’s never again gonna sacrifice aerodynamics for the appealing aesthetic of a flying saucer. There’s a countdown to the saucer actually being at light speed, and then Summer calls him on the saucer’s videophone, and escapes his enemies. He’s told he has one new message.

  Summer complains that she can’t find her laptop. The last place she had it was in the kitchen, but she can’t remember where she put it next because that was the day he kept making Summer and Morty relive the same two hours, probably because he wanted THEM to know how it felt to be stuck in a groundhog day loop. She says that she’s borrowing his laptop.

  Rick says that’s not his laptop, and he’s glad she didn’t because he doesn’t need that kind of stress. Why does he think that’s not his laptop? All Summer has to do is use it and she gets an alien advertisement about a multi-dimensional sales opportunity where she could supposedly make money from home. She’s smart enough to close the laptop because it sounds too good to be true and after Jerry brags that he’s got a job, Summer says she wants to check her email.

  Predictably from the moment Jerry showed up, he fell for the advertisement and became a global manager with other alien professionals. Summer asks him who gave him the job and what did they ask for in exchange, and it turns out that he sold her laptop. Why does she interrupt herself from calling him a piece of shit for that? Father or not, that’s unforgivable. Why does he think they could get it back?

He says that he needed some investment capital first. Summer reveals that Jerry and Beth are divorced in the comic now because apparently the show was in Season 3 at that point. That was pointless. The comic’s not canon to the show, so that’s just confusing. She complains jealously that he wasted his custody day on this while her mother took Morty to the movies. He asks her for help making thousands of bucks a week, and asks her to turn Rick’s teleporter pad on.

  She does so, and a bunch of aliens show up in it right away expecting a party, and even Morty’s teacher showed up. The aliens are shown the advertisement that sounds like something you’d read in a comment section by a spambot, and even Morty’s teacher is smart enough to want to leave, and he at least explains that the reason he came here was to get cheese cubes. He’s also smart enough to call this thing a pyramid scheme right away. Summer asks what they’re even selling.

Everything she’s seen so far is just pictures of water skis and people rolling in money, and she calls that unsanitary, naturally because money can carry diseases on it. Meanwhile, Rick wastes our time at Blips and Chitz with some aliens trying to get money with gambling. You’d think he’d be smart enough not to gamble, but he can get money any time he wants.

Isn’t it kinda out of character for him to go to space without Morty there to hide his brain waves from his enemies? He’d at least have a clone with him. He gets a phone call, and more of our time is wasted because an alien pressures him not to answer it, thinking it’d be impolite, and Rick answers the phone expecting Summer, which causes his location to get tracked, and the ceiling instantly gets smashed.

That was fast. It sure was lucky for the Grumboflexes that they happened to be right next to this place at the time. I guess they beat up a Rick in order to take his portal gun. It turns out they think he’s the acting global manager because Jerry signed up for it under HIS name. And upon logging in, his picture was taken, so you’d think these aliens would be aware that he can’t possibly be Rick because they would’ve been looking for Jerry.

I’m supposed to believe that the aliens didn’t know the difference between Jerry and Rick because they can’t tell humans apart, but it was still really easy to tell the difference between of their different hair colors and eye colors, not to mention skin tone, and age. And these aliens don’t look that different from humans ANYWAYS!

  The alien tells Rick that someone owes their every sixth month payment, so Jerry has to turn in 89 globros of sold product, and Rick’s told that if he hasn’t had time to do that, he can order the product himself. The alien’s surprised that Rick’s disappointed in one of his own family members and Rick reveals that the Grumbloflexes reproduce asexually. This story’s boring at this point. This scene is really dragging out. It could’ve ended one page ago when we saw Jerry’s photo. Jaguar did that! It turns out that Jerry didn’t even pass the basic credit check.

  Jerry gets confronted with the aliens and gets nervous. The alien keeps on smiling and asks him to throw another party, and even suggests withholding food until she signs up under duress, which is encouraged in training videos, and Summer’s grabbed by the arm. It’d be illegal on Earth, but this IS an alien culture. She tells them to back off and wants to go to an alien Starbucks with her laptop, and has an empty threat to never go back home.

  The reason they’re already going after Jerry after a few days is that in their alien language, month is a homophone for disappointment, so I guess they used the wrong English word in their translated site, and Jerry’s already disappointed them six times this week. Jerry’s told that if he can’t sell 89 units, he’ll be burned for fuel. Again, they’re aliens. It makes sense that Rick called them the cheerful mafia then.

  Rick teases Jerry when he’s scared and calls him out that normally someone would get killed for stealing his identity, and when Jerry wants the aliens to leave, Rick has a badass moment where he presses a button on his wrist that activates ceiling lasers to destroy them all, and somehow Jerry’s opposed to this because they were executives, not just because of morality concerns.

Good thing they don’t have red blood. Oh, it was surprisingly polite of Rick to say please to Summer. He’s politely asking her to come do this adventure with him for once, complaining that people get uncomfortable when he gets mean. Summer explains that she remembered she can check her email on her phone, although the plot would’ve happened anyways even if she did remember.

  Rick says they’re going to settle Jerry’s debt, and Jerry stupidly corrects him that it’s Rick’s debt, so he gets threatened with a laser as a joke. Summer asks where they’re going, and Rick says they’re signing Summer up. Summer calls him out on it, and finally explains why she wanted to check her email; it was for a college, which rejected her. Surprisingly, the main story ends there, to be continued in the next issue.

  In the next story, it starts out with someone bringing royalty the prisoners that were ordered, and Rick is accused of crimes against some aliens. Then it turns out that a Morty is the king of those aliens, and he was elected it. He says he has no desire for his execution, but has to exile him from this world.

It was so nice of him not to desire his execution, when that wouldn’t guarantee he’d never bother anyone again. Kinda dumb for a king who’s afraid of a Rick.Then something happens and Rick escapes the handcuffs and runs away, and King Morty asks for his guards looking realistically scared. Rick, probably holding a guard’s weapon, fires lasers through it. It looks pretty cool.

He defeats all the guards, and then talks as if this really IS his Morty, and says, ‘ Don’t look so horrified, Morty. It’s like you’ve never seen me do this before, and we both know that’s not true. “ Then he asks Morty to help him up.

  Morty wants Rick to explain, and Rick says that he needed to get into the throne room, but he needed a man on the inside because it’s extremely secure. Why can’t he just portal into the throne room? I guess because all of the guards would see and kill him and there’s ALWAYS guards there, even at night. So he rigged some computers and got Morty elected as king.

  Morty asks Rick what he’s doing, and Rick says that as usual, he’s a thousand steps behind. This makes me wonder if the reason Rick doesn’t always tell his family important things ahead of time is that he wants to feel smarter than them because they didn’t figure it out on their own. It’s a dumb risk though since he could probably benefit from them knowing stuff that would be important later. The artist doesn’t know how to draw these characters.

  Rick says that this gem is the only reason Morty got to sit on that throne. It extends infinitely into spatial dimensions he can’t see, and is the most complex natural structure, able to conduct energy in loops. Then he looks at it more closely, and gets upset that it’s not that at all. He throws it over his shoulder, and says, “ Can’t win ‘em all. What do you think this is, TV? “

This makes it clear that it’s good writing, because it’s realistic for him to fail sometimes. I guess he heard a rumor that the substance was that and the rumor turned out to be false. Maybe he had to believe in the mythology of the alien planet and it turned out to be false.

  Morty naturally asks him how he got out a jet-pack. Rick just tells him not to worry about it. I guess the jet-pack was shrunken a lot and hidden in his lab coat pocket and he did something to make it grow into this size, like press a button. Or it was made from the carbon in the air. He blasts away and some explosions happen, and when he’s asked if he set off a bomb, he gets offended at being considered that cruel, and explains that polyvector or not, the remaining crystals aren’t stable on their own and could explode at any second.

  Morty complains that he just wanted to be a good king. That’s sweet, and I assumed he wanted that from the start. Rick tells him to let that be a lesson to him, saying that worrying about other people just makes you feel bad when they die and everyone dies. Well duh. From Rick’s perspective, this is him trying to give him a well-intentioned speech to spare him some emotional pain later and make him better, so it’s kinda sweet, even if it shows off what a bad influence he is.

  The first story by Tini Howard got boring because it had no business being as slow-paced as it was and it was too heavy on the dialogue, as opposed to things actually happening, which was in the nature of a plot like this. It’s great to have a story about a pyramid scheme to try to educate people who don’t know what makes something a pyramid scheme, so for that, it was a pretty valuable plot, but the story started really dragging out when Rick was confronted by those aliens who somehow thought he was Jerry.

We could’ve not seen that scene at all and then the story would end further ahead in the arc and we’d be spared redundant boredom. Jerry was desperate and greedy enough to agree to try to convince people to join the Grumboplex team for potential money, when he doesn’t know what they’re selling, and he’s threatened with death if he disappoints them too much instead of selling enough.

What does he expect to spend the galacticabucks ON when he’s always on Earth? Rick would never convert them into actual money. So this story wouldn’t have happened. I guess Jerry assumed Rick WOULD convert them into actual money, but wasn’t it obvious that he wouldn’t give it to Jerry?

  But at least it was interesting that Rick wanted to go on the adventure with Summer instead of Morty for once, so Morty got to have a break, and Jerry’s being taken with them despite the likelihood of a Jerry to die after leaving Earth, because that’s his revenge for signing up with Rick’s name.

He was talking as if he WASN’T going with Summer bust because he had no other choice but to go on the adventure with Summer. And Jerry’s being taken with them despite the high likelihood of a Jerry to die after leaving Earth, because that’s his revenge. If that was his idea of revenge you’d think he’d have died in space a long time ago because he’d be taking him on adventures all the time. I guess it’s a parallel universe.

  The second story by Magdalene Visaggio and Ian McGinty’s about Rick trying to get a special crystal that conducts energy for no explained reason, I guess either for science or money, and he ends up with a lame crystal instead and throws it away instead of selling it anyways and lying that it’s a real one.

He rigged the computers to get Morty elected the king so he could get into a room with that crystal and got Morty to arrest him to get him there, and realistically he can’t always win, so it was all for nothing. That was still a lot more interesting than the main story, even if the characters looked worse. I don’t know why Morty felt so confused.

Issue 54:

  We start out with Beth being a bad mother, because when Morty’s excitedly discussing the movie they saw, she says that she doesn’t wanna listen to his thoughts on it afterwards, and asks him to go on the internet to talk movies like most friendless kids his age. Wow. I’d hate her if she was always like this, but thankfully she’s nice to him more often than not. I’m so glad Morty says, “ Geez, it’s like you don’t even have to start DRINKING to sound like Grandpa anymore. “ Too bad he’s not drawn to have an appropriate expression because this is the same panel where he’s smiling eating a cheese cube.

  Then they get threatened with ceiling lasers because since Rick owes the Grumboflexes some money because of Jerry, everything in Rick’s house is theirs. Beth shows faith in Rick because at first she assumes the lasers aren’t Rick’s and then she figures out that they’re just there to deter intruders.

I love that the alien says, “ Our compliments to the designer, “ so even they wanna compliment Rick for how cool he is. But why do they have to force Morty not to eat that cheese cube? At least he ate one. Then comic space is wasted on us seeing another of Grumboflexes ads for their pyramid scheme, where it says that an alien died in their name after giving up a rich life.

  Jerry tells Summer not to say douche. I like that actually because he’s acting like a realistic father, not the stereotypical bumbling cartoon dad just because it’s animated. Rick then mocks him telling HIM not to say douche, since he swears all the time. Most of this page is also a complete waste of time, where Summer recaps to the audience what happened in the last issue. It’s not Archie Sonic, Usually the comic doesn’t waste our time like this.

  But at least the recap is justified in-universe because Summer and Rick wanna make fun of Jerry and call him out as the villain. So they wanna explain to him that he screwed up. And somehow Jerry thinks it’s a good idea to put sunglasses on and say he’s cool, so naturally Rick lashes out saying that he hopes the ship crashes and kills him. He’s not that much better than Rick if he thinks being the villain makes him cool.

  Then we see some aliens we don’t know at an office, in a setting relatable to a lot of people where they’re gonna get cake for someone’s baby shower. It’s interesting that one of them says he doesn’t want Carol to think he approves of her “ replicating “ again. Then he says that she ATE her last four kids, so a baby shower isn’t appropriate. Wait, how is that legal?

What a weird alien society, they would’ve gone extinct by now! Maybe it’s legal as a form of population control, and it’s not like nobody disapproves of it. They can replicate literally any time they want, can’t they? It’s not restricted? Then I guess it makes sense that they’d have less value for life than other species. They’d still think of that as cannibalism.

   Then after these guys are humanized in a boring page, as I wonder how she kept her job, Rick’s spaceship crashes through the wall, and Rick sees what weapons he has under the seats. Oh, that’s impressive that he actually thought to do that. He says there’s a whole galactic interchange where he can’t be seen right now and that has to do with a game of death duel and the exact definition of brunette, so they’ll have to take a detour to get back outta here.

  I hate the lack of a discretion shot with Jerry getting sick, but it tries to be realistic since the spaceship did crash, even though none of them have whiplash or anything, regardless… So you’d think the spaceship’s interior would activate a stasis field to lock them all in place whenever the spaceship was crashing, and then deactivate it, which was why Summer was in a different position. Why didn’t she have her seat-belt on? My point is, the same logic behind why they’re not injured any time the spaceship crashes should apply to Jerry not being motion sick. I guess he’s just THAT scared.

  Then Rick actually shows some human regret because he realizes that all of these aliens are literally just sitting here working, and says, “ Suddenly, I really regret this. Man, I don’t wanna shoot these people. Ugh. “ This is why he’s still a good protagonist. He does some bad things but they go out of their way to make him sympathetic sometimes. He says that they could’ve probably just hacked instead of doing this. Then a bunch of aliens threaten him with ray guns, scaring them all away.

  The woman assumes Rick and his family were new recruits looking for a hard to find parking garage. And she wanted the worst salesmen to block the first volley with their bodies. It’s interesting how the Grumboflexes in this scheme go out of their way to be outlandishly bad employers. And the scheme’s illegal anyways, so of course they’re like this while they’re at it.

Rick snarks that they shouldn’t go back to the old arc, lampshading that he’s been a jerk for a while recently, and should use his powers for good before he gets unsympathetic. This line would’ve made a lot more sense if he said this right after that arc where he was a drug dealer. He’s speaking more meta-like, which is confusing, but he’s seen a lot of TV, so fine.

  He says they’re gonna break this place down from the top and free everyone here. He wants Summer to go somewhere else while Jerry and him fight their way from the bottom to the top of the building. You’d think he’d trust Summer more since she’s a badass so she’d fight better instead of being a wuss. I guess it’s because he values Summer’s life more than Jerry’s of course, so he’d rather keep her safe.

  Since he basically repeats himself three times here and gets excited about fighting past a hundred guys, I’m wondering if he’s actually not gonna have to fight much at all as a twist, because when you try too hard to build something up happening, sometimes it looks more like it’s telegraphing a twist because why else would that dialogue be there?

  Rick says Summer’s the new hire, so she has to go upstairs and get sorted into a house. Summer wishes she could go fight stuff instead, being relatably mad. If all she’s gonna have to do here is sit, why am I even seeing this scene for more than one panel? This is way too repetitive. The only possible reason could be that the writer thinks it’s funny. The previous issue already told us that people are selling stuff when nobody knows what they’re selling.

  The only thing she’s seen is a really detailed leadership structure with a lot of vague promises of authority. She asks, “ Why not just spend that start-up fee money on cookie ingredients and hold a bake sale? “ She’s in orientation, and by standing out and questioning things, she’s not doing a good job.

I totally get why she’d want this catharsis, though. But she’s just attracting attention and putting herself in danger. Meanwhile, as Jerry and Rick are walking down the stairs, Rick says that Jerry’s holding a weapon wrong, and calls him out that when he talks like he really wants to shoot after he’s been kicked enough, it’s more terrifying than inspiring.

Also, Summer’s somehow mistaken for a boy and threatened with demotion, when it seems like the Grumboflexes have the same female hairstyles. They look a lot like humans themselves, so why do they have a hard time telling the difference between humans? They’re just red humans. But I guess she’s mistaken for a boy because of her head and the fact that sometimes men do wear ponytails, like samurai, and she’s unfamiliar with humans and from another planet.

  As Jerry and Rick still aren’t fighting, Jerry says, “ I don’t get who works here. I thought the whole point was to work from home. “ And he says he didn’t read the fine print when he signed up under Rick’s name and just scrolled to the bottom and clicked the box, like a lot of people. Rick tells Jerry that when they get down there, they should just pretend they fought a bunch of guys.

  Meanwhile, the female alien’s really annoying me because she said she read the wiki about human culture, and yet somehow still thinks she called Summer the right thing, even though she has a human correcting her, and she calls Summer rude when she was the one who made a mistake, obviously.

  Summer’s even wearing PINK. But I guess pink isn’t a female color exclusively on this planet. Even in human culture, pink wasn’t always considered just a girl’s color. Rick kicks the door open, lying, and Summer says catharticly, “ Oh, finally! “  and she even stabs the annoyance in the neck with a pen, and I like that she has blue blood so it’s not that bad to look at.

  The pen makes her turn white as Rick is shocked that Summer just stabbed her. He at least doesn’t judge, I guess, because that’d be really hypocritical. He just says, “ Wow. “ You’d think he’d know she’s a badass by now after the Death Stalkers episode.

So the awful woman turns into a pyramid of white light and flies away leading the heroes to the top of a literal pyramid, which is great for making the issue memorable as a PSA about not trusting pyramid schemes.

  Rick, after looking creeped out mentioning the neck stab and saying that that gets you on the pyramid, smirks while trying to do the same to Jerry. Actually this had me relieved because his reaction to Summer earlier, made me realize that he’d be a lot more annoying being a judgemental self-righteous hypocrite. Instead he’s right back to being the Rick we know rather than trying to pretend he’s a good guy. “ Wow, Summer, you just stabbed her? “

  Summer stops him, and says that it won’t work anyways because the debt is in Rick’s name, so HE has to approach it. He does so and says he’s not scared of it because he’s gotten pointier shapes. As I wonder why a neck stab got the woman to this point, she says that the product is not important, and she refuses to tell him what the product is. So, there IS none. I guess the writer wants to keep it subtle by not firmly establishing that, but that’s a mistake.

I love that he says, “ Is this a riddle? Is the answer ‘ time? ‘ It’s always time. You can’t keep making it TIME. It doesn’t actually DO all those things. Riddles can’t be metaphors, that’s so lazy. If the answer is something like love I’m gonna freak out. “ I guess he’s referencing pop culture and that’s why he’s getting so mad about this and he’s misdirecting his anger from that.

  The information on what the product is gets saved only for those who gain entry to their true home. Translation, there IS no product because if there was, it’d be advertised right away for the best marketing. It’s wild that even in this form, she’s still too scared and stubborn to tell Rick the truth.

  The thing tells him that the mean boss lady turned into this because she worked hard and sold a lot of product and was rewarded in Valhalla, and her identity is no more. Rick asks how he could settle his debts and know what the product is. I love that he really wants to know because it fits perfectly with him being a scientist. Of course he’s the most curious, even when he’s mad. He’s asked to join them. Summer calls out to Rick hoping he’s not being tempted by the promise of power.

It makes sense that she wouldn’t trust him because he’s evil, but he’s already basically an omnipotent scientist, he created a whole micro-universe in the show. Pretty sure the promise of more power wouldn’t impress him at that point.

  The crystal praises Rick because he’s so hard-working. I guess because he made it all the way here himself, because how would she know about Rick personally? She somehow expects him to be tempted when told that it’d only take a few years of regular orders to work within her, where they’d obliterate the ego in search of the common good.

The idea of his ego being obliterated convinces him to press a button that FINALLY gets the thing destroyed. To be fair, if his ego was obliterated, he’d wanna kill himself out of guilt. He surrounds him and his family with force field air bubbles and I think he makes the whole planet explode, preventing anyone else from being fooled by a pyramid scheme from that planet again. He says that he only said he was on a hero arc while he was leaving tiny nano-charges everywhere they went. Well, still, nothing forced him to say that, so that’s still a narrative cheat.

Each one opens a tiny portal to several quintillions of explosive francium. And he calls Summer gullible. So it makes more sense that he was lying earlier, because I did notice that as Out of Character for him, but this comic’s so consistently well-written that I had faith in the writing and took it seriously, instead of immediately calling it out as an Out of Character Moment, and he’s had TONS of times where he was nicer than he had to be to Morty. Summer calls him out on not saving all those people.

Jerry says that at least they didn’t want him to fail, and Summer explains, “ Yes they do! Specifically these people want you to fail. They’re taking advantage of you. “ Then after Jerry gets kicked towards a portal, we see Morty hugging Beth for once, and he says he has to go to the bathroom as he’s crying. She says, “ It’s okay, sweetie. “

She hesitates and then tells him to just go if he has to go because he can’t risk his life by moving when these lasers are pointed at them. So she tries to be a really good mother after that last time she wasn’t. I don’t know why they aren’t allowed to go to the bathroom and eat, that doesn’t make any sense. I can understand them being held hostage to control Rick, but that’s ridiculous.

  Conveniently, they get an automatic message that’s a reminder in case of the leadership group’s total destruction, which says that debt only has meaning in relation to the lender and the lenders are dust now. Did we need that? Because it was very confusing that they even thought to have that automatic message. How does it only play when the lenders are destroyed?

  Too bad Rick didn’t get home quite early enough. He’s disappointed that Beth didn’t start dinner and just sat there all day, and Summer wonders if this is her punishment for spending time with her dad. It makes them look rude, but how were they supposed to know the truth without being told? And while Beth looks really rude for shoving Morty, she had every reason to at this point.

  In the next story, the spaceship crashes, and some alien brags to Rick that he told him it was all real, as Rick and Morty look awful. Rick insults the alien for finding a dead planet and hopes this was worth dragging Vaklas back there out of graduate school. The alien says that this planet is the home of all of life itself. Really, I doubt that unless literal magic is involved. Only specific life would be able to originate from this specific planet. How could it be the origin of ALL life?

  He says that he’ll show you his faith is justified. Rick says this isn’t scientific if you have to have faith. I love that the other alien doesn’t think Dr. Samzar is right. Rick’s here to gloat if HE’s right. I love that Morty looks annoyed here. “ Rick’s favorite thing is being right. Well, gloating about being right. “

  Rick tells the alien, “ Science is empirical OBSERVATION and falsifiability. You deal in FANTASIES. “ I’m guessing the twist will be that Rick is somehow wrong. Someone that looks like Rick eventually calls them his children who are the first to find him and after Rick pretends to react like you’d expect, it turns out he just made a clone of himself to trick the alien and hi-fives him. I guess it was all hologram trickery. I mean, they haven’t searched literally the entire planet yet, so I don’t know why this faith-obsessed guy would give up on finding the creator so fast.

  Realistically, since he wasn’t told how Rick faked this, and wasn’t told the light show was all holograms, he says, “ Look at them, Morty. The creators of the universe. Maybe nobody will believe me, but I’ll know. “ And why is Morty talking like he totally BELIEVES this alien’s wild assumption? Wasn’t it obvious Rick used a hologram device and cloned himself so he’d be able to gloat that he was right without having to climb through EVERY INCH of the planet and finding nothing?

  To be fair, it is POSSIBLE that Rick time traveled to the past to create the Big Bang, after all he simulated the Big Bang to create a microverse to fuel his car battery, but he canonically HATES time travel and calls it garbage science. He literally only time travelled in the show because he was FORCED to.

  He ends the story saying that he’s gotta figure out how the smug Rick did it because nobody’s better than him. So it’s NOT supposed to mean that? Maybe this story is saying that his one universe in particular, had its Big Bang induced by another Rick, who of course either wasn’t opposed to time travel or was born long before him. So Rick totally buys into it too?

He doesn’t realize it’s another Rick fooling him? If you don’t define a god as someone who has to be immortal because of magic in particular and has to pass down magic to his kids, well, Rick can create a universe and he’s immortal. He has the ability to generate a Big Bang that would create a universe, like a god, and with his Project Phoenix, he can’t actually die because he’ll wake up in a clone body in another universe at worst, which is probably just like a literal god.

  He doesn’t actually count on all levels because he doesn’t have magical powers, but he’s able to make any kind of invention and give himself cybernetic enhancements, so functionally that can look like magic powers. He’s not a god, which is why this bothers me as it could’ve easily just been a joke about the alien being wrong. But it does make sense somewhat because technically, he did make himself qualify for most of the characteristics of one. It’s just that obviously someone’s not a god if they weren’t born as one and can’t pass it down. That’s not as special.

  The first story by Tini Howard was about Rick destroying the planet of the pyramid scheme to get out of debt, which saves his family as well, not that they thank him for it unfortunately. I remembered this arc as lasting 3 issues, not just two, and maybe that’s because it being so dialogue-heavy with barely any action made it feel like it really dragged out. It is realistic that there’s no fighting. They’re all office workers, but STILL.

  At least the second story by Magdalene Visaggio and Ian McGinty was interesting. It’s possible to figure it out since Rick can generate a Big Bang and is immortal, so he’d at least be kind of a god. But “ kind of “ wouldn’t be enough for this to happen for magical reasons just because of a technicality. So it has to be bullshit.

The other Rick could easily just be A LYING alternate universe Rick who’s just using holograms to pretend he’s the kind of person he’s claiming to be, but everyone just believes it. He even said psyche when he first showed up. With that and the story having a religious person, it’s not good.

Issue 55:

  We start out with Beth and Jerry in bad art not getting along, as Beth asks how many Jerrys it takes to screw in a lightbulb. Jerry says, “ Only one, if his wife hasn’t nagged him to death already! “ He then looks for a bulb in Rick’s garage, which is just asking for trouble. Why doesn’t he keep the light bulbs somewhere else?

  Summer tells him that she HAS to leave right now because it’s career day and she doesn’t want Beth to talk about her job yet again, and Morty says that he can’t be late for school because late kids are easy targets for new bullies. Summer yells at Jerry, and he bumps his head under the table and sends some stuff on the desk upwards SOMEHOW, and then a laser almost fires at him, somehow.

  Then we see Summer and Morty with Rick’s heads, saying forced dialogue, and fortunately Beth points out that they look that way, so I’m immediately told that it’s not another body-switching situation where they keep their heads so the audience won’t be confused. Summer says that it appears to be a backup system for Rick’s consciousness packaged with a transformation ray.

Morty says that it looks like Rick had to leave for some appointment before he could make a full copy of himself, which explains why his intelligence increased and he got apathetic but didn’t get his memories or alcoholism. I assume this isn’t the same dimension as the one in the show.

  The Rick from the show abandoned his Project Phoenix because he didn’t trust his clones anymore after he went into the Tiny Rick body and started to lose sight of who he was, so by that same logic, he wouldn’t have made a device like this either, because he wouldn’t trust any clone he’d make… though never mind because he was fine with making a device that would transfer his consciousness to another actual Rick, and in the Toxic Rick episode, Rick was FINE with transferring his mind to a clone after death.

And yet he didn’t have his own Project Phoenix in Season 4 then. He doesn’t have that because he doesn’t trust his clones, even though it was only the Tiny Rick clone that sucked. But we’re supposed to believe C-137 Rick made this?

  Beth’s told that there’s no reason there would be a reverse or undo button. And when Beth asks Summer why she can’t use her new super smarts to fix this, she doesn’t see why she’d want to because she can understand everything and fear nothing, and feels like her life is an open highway of possibilities. Why doesn’t she proceed to make herself look like Summer then? I guess she knows it’d take more time to make that device than she has right now before it might be undone.

She’s staying positive because she knows she could make a device to make herself look like her old self, anyways. But somehow she doesn’t wanna do it immediately. And her being positive while Rick usually isn’t is justified since she’s only a half-clone. Already they don’t share his alcoholism or memories, and their actual Rick didn’t get transferred into them because he’s still alive.

Beth’s called out on thinking she and Jerry could fix the device, but they ARE desperate and don’t have any other option right now by themselves, and Beth really wants to prove herself sometimes. Predictably, Summer’s got Rick’s opinion that schools are for dumb people, so she’s skipping school. Morty wants to go to school anyways because he’s got nothing better to do, so he’s not inspired like Summer is.

And he doesn’t wanna go looking like this, of course. It turns out that the bullies at school are all fighting each other for some unknown reason because they were all turned against each other by Morty, who’s pretending to be a new kid at school with the name Martin. This story’s interesting enough to make up for the art now. I love Morty’s outfit, though wanting to be called M-Smooth was so try-hard it should’ve been embarrassing for him.

  Meanwhile Summer finally figures out a formula. I assume it’s something that SHE would want to do. She takes a selfie and gets a lot of likes and comments somehow with that horrible picture that doesn’t even reflect real life, but doesn’t look like her either.

Beth asks how they’re supposed to know if they fixed it. I have faith in Beth to have the same potential as Rick. She just didn’t try hard enough and he wasn’t around to teach her how to make stuff, but if he was around her whole life, she would’ve ended up as even worse than him. Rick’s only been around Morty a few months and already he’s severely corrupting him.

  Jerry’s smart enough to suggest testing out the “ fixed “ device on mice. Beth’s not comfortable with it, and Jerry points out that she seems to be okay with Rick having these animals here in the first place when clearly they’re here to be experimented on. Jerry tries to do something right by praising her for her job and showing faith in her for once instead of belittling it, but Beth says that she’s a horse surgeon, not a vet. She didn’t correct the coffee shop worker when SHE called her a vet, she just said she was supposed to called doctor, but it’s Jerry, so she feels like being more pedantic with him.

They use the laser to make the rat have a Rick head, and then they plan on testing the device on him again, with Jerry’s dialogue implying that they’ll fail. Reality Ensues because Morty’s teacher tells him he’s not allowed to wear his sunglasses in class. He COULD lie that he has glaucoma. That’s why one celebrity always wears sunglasses. But that’d detract from him looking cool in front of teenagers, so he can’t. Morty asks why that rule exists and the teacher can’t explain it, of course.

I was waiting for him to get detention or get bitched at by the teacher after that, because that’s what they do after getting corrected even once, but he’s not an English teacher, so he at least HAS emotional maturity.

  The teenagers think he’s cool for outsmarting the teacher. Even Jessica does. Beth walks into Summer’s room carrying presents and says that a bunch of very expensive packages were just delivered while calling her honey for once, and she says that she realized she never warned Summer about the unexpected problem of a sugar daddy.

Summer says those are just freebies sent to her by thirsty businesses who are desperate for her to promote their brands. This is forced because she looked like Rick in her selfie, and if she could photoshop lipstick on herself, she would’ve made herself look like a girl, too.

  She figured out the best angle for a selfie with math and became the hottest influencer on the Internet, despite her Rick appearance… A lot of the 50s issues suck. She’s converting all her ad revenue and fanbase into money to start a make-up line, which will hypnotically transmit the essence of powerful female animals on its viewers, and pre-orders are out the window. And she says she hired an assistant.

Beth shows faith in her and we see Jerry being threatened by giant muscular rats. I found it funny that his only reaction was to say, “ Well, THAT isn’t right. “ I guess he’s used to surviving danger, so. A student says that Morty hacked the vending machine to give out free snacks. It’s awful sweet to see Morty using his Rick intelligence for GOOD. That’s all he wants to do with it right now. So I’d rather see more of Morty, not Summer WASTING my time. I already KNOW what her plan is.

And she’s somehow already put her plan into motion, so even if she loses her Rick powers, she should still get the money from this and end up rich. It should at least go into a college fund for her, not get taken away.

  Meanwhile, Morty’s being carried by the students and praised because he already led them to state finals despite not being on the team nor the game, and Morty says that it’s all math, and it’s easy if you know the angles. The coach says that he made this school a bunch of money winning that championship. That’s another good deed he did. I love how uplifting this is. Just because he has Rick’s intelligence doesn’t automatically mean a Morty would abuse that and be evil.

  He may have learned in the show that sometimes you have to be an asshole to get what you want, but if he doesn’t HAVE to be, he’ll be nice, even if he’s stuck being apathetic and not caring about anything. Jessica says that seeing him use his mind to do good really impresses her, encouraging him to be at his best. Morty says he’s really liking that eye makeup too. If he literally doesn’t care about anything right now, he wouldn’t be so nice because he wouldn’t care about becoming popular and making the school money. He has Rick’s lack of fear, but he’s not a sociopath.

  Meanwhile, Jerry blames Beth for what’s happening, and fortunately the potential plot hole I would’ve noticed if I was hating the story is filled in, as Beth asks him why he kept shooting the mice if the first one turned muscular, and Jerry says, “ I didn’t! That one took the gun from me and shot the others! “ I love that this was explained. This comic’s amazing. Speaking of filling in plot holes that I would’ve noticed if I wasn’t so impressed, Jerry asks why Beth doesn’t call Rick to come fix this.

  It was obvious the whole time that Rick was needed to fix this, but Beth explains that he doesn’t have a cell phone, which can make sense for the same reason that Sonic X Sonic refused to have a cell phone, though Sonic didn’t explain his reasoning and just ran away from Amy, but it’s easy to figure out that Rick doesn’t wanna be tied down and feel the constant stress that at any moment his train of thought and peace could be disturbed by someone calling him.

  He still has a videophone on his spaceship that Summer can call him on at any time, though. But Summer’s not willing to get back to normal and Morty’s in school, and probably just as unwilling to get back to normal, and I guess Beth and Jerry don’t know how to contact his spaceship. Plus, if Rick went to an appointment, he’d be on Earth, not in the spaceship.

If he literally did go to an appointment, then I love that because it’s realistic for once, humanizing him. Of course he’d go for a check-up every so often too. Jerry asks who doesn’t have a cell phone in 2019. I don’t. Jerry asks, “ What if you need to get a hold of him? “ and Beth says, “ That’s why he doesn’t have a phone! He doesn’t need us, we need him. “ She didn’t do as good a job explaining his lack of a phone as I did. If they need him, why doesn’t he have a phone? He does care about his family!

  Then we see Morty wasting his time giving the principal advice, even though if he was smart, he’d know that a student isn’t allowed to make decisions on the school, and even the principal probably doesn’t have that kind of power. He has to do what the school board wants. Even the student body president wouldn’t have the power to make any important changes. Morty’s just so desperate to do good that he convinces himself that the principal will choose to take his suggestion when he doesn’t have to AND be able to carry it out.

  He says that with a new infrastructure, not only will the facilities of the school get an upgrade but everyone will have 100% health insurance coverage too. The principal tells him he can’t take over like this even if it’s for the better. I’m glad he admits that it’s for the better. He says the schools have been run the same way for decades.

  Morty says, “ And that’s the problem. The people teaching kids should be the smartest and most capable, not the ones who had C averages and their only notable characteristic is, can go a long time without killing children. “ He should’ve known he’d get this outcome, but he had to at least try. He’s told he’s creating chaos and he says that he’s been thinking too small. Oh so this is when he’ll suddenly become a villain, but at least everything’s been establishing that he’d be a well-intentioned villain.

He says that if he wants to fix a school, he’d have to fix ALL the schools and then all the governments. He wants to fix the world and put humans before commerce, not wanting to be selfish with his brain. But technically he is gonna be kind of selfish by trying to overthrow governments because it’ll bother the people running the governments. I can see now why there were multiple dictator Mortys. Especially if they got access to a device that could transfer Rick’s intelligence to them.

To be fair Morty’s still able to make mistakes even like this, since Rick is. Rick comes back through a portal. I KNEW, just as I was complimenting him going to an appointment, that it wasn’t one on Earth, just to undo my compliment. Whatever. He says that he had spent weeks training this rat to break into the game store to get a game before its release. Jerry idealistically says that it WAS like a pet. You’d think it would be Beth saying this for no reason instead.

He immediately kills it with a light saber instead of just shooting it with an antidote ray, and complains catharticly that he’ll have to spend hours waiting in line now, and wonders what nonsense the kids got into with half his brain. Only half? I didn’t notice that. I guess he only means half his brain power.

  Rick says that Jerry’s accident could’ve set off a beam that would disintegrate the house. Rick says that luckily he has a failsafe. Summer was wrong, he DID have an antidote, because there’s only room for one Rick on the planet. He admits that it would’ve been nice to have an intelligent conversation with his grandkids for once, though.

  Jerry says there was an undo button all along, and gets the great burn, “ I wish I could undo YOU, Jerry. “ Just pressing a button, without even having to be in front of Summer and Morty and hitting them accurately, robs them of their Rick intelligence. Her whole sub-plot should have been cut.

  Rick fortunately explains where he was earlier. Rather than being at an appointment, since I guess Beth made the wrong assumption or was lied to, he went to a universe where the Vindicators were fictional characters with a new movie about them coming out, so he went to go binge the other ones before it hit the theater. Luckily for them, he forgot about it and was almost late, so he couldn’t do a full download to his rectifier. He says, “ Otherwise we’d probably be worshipping high priestess Summer and Norway would be Morty’s brothel country, or who knows. “

  Rick explains that the movies he saw all stunk. Summer cries and says that she chose the giraffe at random and her company went under and her brand is ruined. It’d be dumb of her to invest literally all of her money! She wouldn’t have chosen ANYTHING! I love that Beth knows about Morty waves. Rick loved her enough to tell her about that.

  Rick explains why he didn’t need to take Morty with him. “ You think smart people go see superhero movies, Beth? Trust me, plenty of Morty waves in there. I was completely invisible. “ There’s lots of plot holes in superhero fiction, so that’s completely justified.

So the only reason he doesn’t take Jerry instead of Morty to his horrifying adventures is that Jerrys are annoying losers that die too much and that’s why the Jerry Daycare is needed. Beth catharticly points out, “ Well, it’s too bad you didn’t take Morty with you. That sounds like an adventure he would’ve actually liked to have gone on for once. “ She KNOWS he hates his adventures. So why DIDN’T he take Morty?

He never cares that he has school! Morty loses his Rick intelligence and white hair, and is asked if he mugged Martin for his clothes or killed him. Why do they think a wimp like Morty could mug someone without a gun? The kids immediately start rumors about what he did to Martin.

To be fair Morty’s done bad things too, like transform Ethan horribly, so he would get jealous of a cool new kid and might abuse Rick’s technology on him if he’s pushed too far. Morty even POINTS OUT that he and Martin look almost exactly the same. Yeah they only have a different hair color and hairstyle to set themselves apart. This isn’t Superman! People have better facial recognition than that!

But no, even Jessica assumes he’s a bathroom pervert, which is Out of Character. And everyone mistreats him and he cries because teenagers are so insecure that they’re desperate to think the worst of others at every opportunity to prop themselves up as better than them, hence why they’re bullies in the first place.

  We didn’t need to see this. Morty could’ve gone back to normal on his way HOME, ALONE. We’re supposed to believe this serves him right for wanting to take over the world, but he was being charitable the whole story.

  In the next story, we see a Rick in a mecha faced off with a Tammy. I remember this story. She says it’s the end of the road and he snarks, “ Really, Tammy, you think? You’re gonna get quippy about the end of the road in the last half hour before time and space collapse? “ The only way it would collapse is if Rick caused it. It’s not destined to collapse. There’s not enough matter in the universe for there to be a destined end to it. The whole heat death of the universe idea was debunked.

  She says that she’s amazed he can get through an entire sentence without burping. He says that beer hasn’t existed for a few hundred trillion years and he doesn’t have a stomach or kidneys anymore because he mostly roboticized himself. I guess his addiction and love of alcohol is the only reason he waited so long because obviously this body has advantages. Still, a Rick wouldn’t have this problem. He’d just constantly clone himself, and make his own beer. This is stupid.

  He shoots a laser and she’s sent into the sky and starts flying with epic black and red wings, which would need magic to support her weight. He collapses because of a spike she sent at him, and she says he’s finally got pay for his crimes. He was the most dangerous man in the universe for most of existence.

  He still is in the mood to snark, “ You know what’s really funny? It’s that you even BOTHERED. “As she doesn’t shoot him out of sheer curiosity at everything he’s gonna say next, I assume, he explains that there’s an infinite number of Tammies, with tons of different jobs. There’s worlds where she choked on a dildo and died from a murder attempt I guess and there’s worlds where she cured diseases.

  He says, “ And every single one of them had a better life than you. You wasted literally trillions of years on what? “ I guess she kept transferring her consciousness into a younger clone to avoid dying of old age. He says that she did this for a revenge quest, a smug sense of duty and resentful completionism.

He taunts her that he’s not even gonna get killed by her anyways because he wasted her time and time and space collapses before she can win. Why would it collapse again? You’d think they’d be dead by the start of the story if time and space was close to collapse.

  The first story by Kyle Starks was about showing off what Summer and Morty would do with Rick’s intelligence after they were blasted with a half-finished device by, accident somehow that gave them half of Rick’s mind, while Rick himself is still fine. Why would he bother MAKING this, he knows how to make Rick clones! Why would he trust them? This has to be another universe from the show because Rick gave up on clones of himself after Tiny Rick.

Morty does nothing but good the whole story as he’s the most popular kid in school. That was really sweet, this was a treat to see. Summer bores us. It’s total bullshit that she managed to get popular when she looks like Rick.

  It’s kinda interesting that she bases her make-up line off animals to make people irresistible but it was SO dialogue-heavy and I got it after the FIRST panel. So that just wasted and ate up space in the story. And we didn’t need to see Morty and Summer with Rick’s heads. We could understand that they were smart without that. You’d think if they had only half of Rick’s brain, they’d have only half of Rick’s face.

Rick ends up coming home from the movies eventually and reveals that there really is an antidote button, ruining their plans. At least Beth and Jerry TRIED to fix things. You’d think that even with half of Rick’s intelligence, they’d be smart enough to anticipate that Rick would’ve made an antidote, because of course he wouldn’t wanna risk there being multiple Ricks.

  And the second story by Magdalene Visaggio and Ian McGinty’s a waste of time where Tammy from the show is revealed to have wasted trillions of years trying to kill a Rick and then existence collapsed before she could after she finally got lucky. It wouldn’t take her THAT LONG and why did it collapse anyways? Probably because of a Rick, but I don’t like that either way.

Issue 56:

  We start out with an alien asking Peacock Jones at a bar what’s going on, since usually when he’s in here, he’s got a couple of women and are talking big talk to lie to people. Peacock says that he’s spent time in jail, lost the only friend he ever had and is on the run from Party Dog’s criminal empire because they assume he betrayed them when a guy killed Party Dog and his whole crew.

  He shows a hologram of Rick, and it turns out everyone in the bar already hates him for good reason. It’s interesting to see that for the main character of a series. Someone says that every intelligent species has a story about him messing something up. Because he collapsed the Galactic Federation, this guy had to work in a Plumbus factory to feed his family. So?

We don’t know if the conditions there are awful, and we don’t know if that was literally his only choice. Tons of people have to have terrible jobs and it’s usually not Rick’s fault.I guess his point is that he used to work for the Federation and was paid more, and its temporary collapse made him have to get another job in the meantime. But he could’ve had a line that would have actual impact.

  Someone says Rick destroyed his armada, so the Red Breath would love to get his hands on him. Then the bartender says amusingly, “ That guy drank up my entire bar and then did a monologue on why he shouldn’t have to tip. “ Wow, that’s inexcusable. At the same time, it’s kinda heartwarming to see that the second Peacock complains about this guy who ruined his life, he gets an ENTIRE support group for it. Sure he’s a monster, but still! Most people don’t have that kind of luck.

  So how does Jones conveniently have a hologram generator that can generate Rick’s head? I guess he made it. After all who else but him could have made his spaceship earlier? I always assumed he bought it from somewhere. He never struck me as intelligent. Summer compared him to Rick, but if he was REALLY so smart he would’ve built robot women as companions to stick around as his girlfriend, not have to get female companions and hope they wouldn’t ditch him.

  He tells them that he can take them to Rick and their combined forces might easily destroy him. They don’t believe him because Rick’s known for being untraceable, even though he just said he knows where Rick lives. After some people laugh him off, some guy who’s arbitrarily hiding his face wearing a hood asks why he doesn’t get his revenge, since what value is a life that’s marred? Peacock says he tried with some others and failed. He reluctantly admits that Rick’s smarter than him and more dangerous.

  The guy tells him to get smarter because he has an edge over everyone else. He says that his people have studied Rick for a long time, and tells Jones that if he separates Rick from his Morty, he’ll be vulnerable. This has to be a human based on what little we see of him and the only human we ever see in space is Rick. Is this a Rick?

The only people we know to have studied Rick are, well one, the Galactic Federation wants him, but he’d say he’s part of it. And there’s also the Council of Ricks. If this was a Rick, logically, Peacock would immediately recognize Rick’s voice. So he would tell everyone in the bar that it was Rick and sic everyone on him right now. He’d start a fight with him right here. Am I supposed to assume he doesn’t remember Rick’s voice? It’s really distinctive, although a Rick could disguise his voice, like with a device.

There’s no indication of that. But that’d have to be happening for the whole plot to happen. Of course, it could also be a Jerry who stole Rick’s portal gun. A Jerry would have way more of a logical motivation to plan against a Rick and he wouldn’t have a recognizable voice to him. Also, while Peacock could just put his hood down, he probably assumes that he wouldn’t get away with trying to do that to someone who, on a lucky break for him, is actually trying to help him.

  He probably assumes that he’d stop him from putting his hood down with his hands, and he has his hood up for a reason, like, he might assume his hood is there to hide the fact that his face looks horrible and he wouldn’t wanna see that. Still, he clearly looks like a human and what would a human other than Rick be doing in that alien bar?

  He’d at least wanna ask him who he IS. All he seemed to do for Jones was give him advice. Once he gave him that advice, he outlived his usefulness. It would’ve been an amusing gag if right after he got that advice we saw Jones try to put his hood down out of curiosity and then get punched, and then the cloaked guy would calmly walk away as he’s lying on the floor and leave.

  Meanwhile, Rick and Morty go through a portal with only Morty looking inconvenienced, with his clothes in tatters. He says that he can’t do this again because every single time he almost dies, and accuses Rick of being on a mission to get him killed. It makes sense that Rick wouldn’t take this seriously from him because one, he can erase memories, so every time Morty legitimately gets fed up with him, he’s probably erased that particular memory to return things to normal. And two, he already said “ that’s the last time, “ at the start of the story arc where Rick ended up meeting Peacock.

So oh, this is a callback to that. Rick says he’s on a mission to get the recipe for the best Cola in the galaxy, and they did it. Morty asks why they were so bloodthirsty and he had to fight an alien tiger. Rick says it’s the best kept secret in the universe, and he had to fight that thing because there had to be a distraction while Rick did smart things to get the recipe.

So for once, it’s justified that he made Morty fight something instead of the guy who can wake up in a clone body any time he dies. To be fair, if Rick died on a mission instead of Morty, Morty would be in a lot more danger than he would normally be on a mission because Rick wouldn’t be there to protect him.

He’d have to hope he can get his portal gun, and if that’s impossible and he gets destroyed or something, he’d be completely screwed and left stranded on a planet and have to wait for the reborn Rick to track him down, after which he might not have lived. So it’s actually better that Morty do the fighting and dangerous stuff because Morty couldn’t afford to lose Rick on a mission.

  And while Rick honestly does love his grandson, even he knows that if he loses Morty, he could just make a clone of him, and give him Morty’s memories if he could, and erase his own memory of the fact that it’s just a clone, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences for long anyways.

I had to go on this whole diatribe because Morty had such a good point that I was starting to turn on Rick, like why does the wimp Morty have to do all the fighting and Rick isn’t even scratched, but it’s because Morty can’t AFFORD to lose Rick. And clearly Morty can survive it. He’s tougher than he thinks he is if he can survive beating that alien cat. I wish I SAW how he did it.

  Rick gives Morty a taste of the soda by splashing him with it, and he says, “ Aw, geez, it’s friggin’ delicious. Okay, so THAT adventure was worth it. “ He asks if there’s a way to keep him safe, because he goes into every adventure completely defenseless. Yeah, duh! That’s something people would be wondering about from the FIRST EPISODE. So finally this is being addressed. Why didn’t he ask for this as soon as possible? Rick admits that Morty’s right that it doesn’t make sense and immediately gives him a personal force field projector.

  He proves to him that it works by carrying him by the shirt through a dangerous situation while Morty’s instinctively still screaming at it, and the force field blocks the lasers from hitting him. Rick goes home, and after he says, “ We should’ve done this years ago, Morty! That worked great. Like a gosh dang dream, Morty, “ which was funny because he didn’t swear, Morty complains because he completely took his AGENCY away, and he didn’t want to be made into a human shield. Rick has ridiculous dialogue, saying that any shield is a human shield.

  So it’s a really good thing that this issue exists because this issue explains why Rick doesn’t always have a force field projector for Morty. Morty wouldn’t appreciate it for good reason if he’s actually AROUND Rick. Now, if he wasn’t literally right by Rick, that’d be different. So this is filling in what would normally appear to be one of the fundamental plot holes of the franchise from the start.

  And it’s not like there could be any other Rick that would be doing this all the time because any Morty would get fed up with this after the first time, so he’d have to go through the trouble of erasing his memory afterwards every time and presenting the force field projector to him as if it’s a new thing at the start of every mission.

I guess a Rick would be fine with that because all he has to do to erase a Morty’s memory is point a memory erasing gun at him for a second. So maybe there are Ricks always doing this. Morty says that was their tenth mission and cashes his ticket in, and says he wants Rick to take him somewhere that he can get actual protection, some place that can actually gear him up. The reason Rick doesn’t have that stuff is probably because he already has a personal force field generator, so he’s fine.

And he’s really arrogant so he thinks that’ll be enough even though someone could punch his force field and send him into a wall. He brings him to the other dimension and tells him to not touch anything there. Then Jones sneaks into his lab. Why wasn’t the lab window LOCKED so Jones couldn’t sneak into it? And we see Rick at Brick and Mortary store, which is probably at the Citadel of Ricks.

  The other Rick wonders if Rick wants to upgrade his spaceship. While he could do that himself, I get that some Ricks would leave it up to someone else because they’re lazy. He’s shocked to learn that he’s just here for his Morty, while he’s holding a shirt that says “ I’m with stupid. “ Why does this comic bleep out the F word while everything ELSE is okay, including head shots and the word asshole?

  Morty gets shown a whole bunch of Gwendolyn robots that are unused by the smooth-talking Morty. He says, “ That’s probably coolest thing I’ve ever seen. “ If the robots didn’t suck inexcusably, then THESE robots wouldn’t be programmed to try to conceive an alien baby. Morty was truly desperate to have settled for one of these robots without at least putting a long wig on its hair to make it look like a woman, instead of something with a dumb helmet that doesn’t even show its eyes. Why would that design be approved?

Morty requests some way to keep him safe on adventures. Apparently that’s a pretty rare request Morty wants some armor. It’s one part advanced tech, one part mystic enchantment. Logically you’d think a ton of Rick’s stuff would be that way to explain the inventions of his that seem scientifically impossible, like the microverse he invented complete with actual people living in it. That’d be such an easy way to make the series make sense.

This armor was a one of a kind creation for some reason, by a cold war arms race wizard Rick. I like that the writer cared enough to explain this. It could’ve easily been that Rick invented this and we could’ve had this not be here, but it’s interesting enough to see that it’s worth it. Morty’s told that the armor is literally unbeatable.

  The Rick says, “ Wait. You’re not serious about this, are you? I thought we were just playing a classic Morty prank. Who cares what happens to a Morty? People don’t put dog turds in safes. “ It’s mean of him to say, but maybe he can make a clone of a Morty whenever he needs a replacement, and doesn’t care, which would explain why a Rick would say this despite his canonical “ irrational attachment “ to Morty.

  Just as I was saying he could clone a Morty, he literally shows Rick a huge amount of clone Mortys, who look like they lead a sad existence because they’re all together and sad and one of them’s even crying. They don’t even have Gameboys to entertain themselves with. You’d think they’d be unconscious in pods. He says, “ If anything ever happens to your Morty, just come and see me. I got the best selection in town. “ And they need Mortys to hide them with Morty waves. Good thing that was explained.

  Morty says that he’s worth it because he’s been doing these adventures for a long time. So he’s got a ton of experience from all of his memories. Rick’s told that because it’s the greatest weapon in any dimension, he’s gonna have to give him something of real value. So he gives him his entire wallet. He could just make this armor himself, but that’d take forever, when he could always get the money again. I wish they explained that, but usually the comic’s good enough that I can assume that the logical explanation is supposed to be the canon one.

It turns out one of the things in the wallet, was a picture of a younger version of Rick holding a happy-looking Morty on his first birthday. Then Morty says that he can even go in the bathroom in that armor. Rick lampshades that being the first thing he does in there. Sonic the Comic actually cared enough to explain what happens to that stuff. When Shortfuse is asked what happens when he needs to go, he says that there’s a filtration system in it. So it’s recycled or something. This doesn’t even explain that, but to be fair, maybe there’s literally a portal in it that opens up.

But, that battery would drain fast, because the portal gun’s battery does. So I guess it IS a filtration system. But, he’s got his CLOTHES ON in the armor! How is there no consequence to this? Rick takes Morty on several adventures where we only see one panel from them each, where he bravely fights some giant aliens. At one point Rick looks horrified and disgusted while there’s red stains on his spaceship and Morty only looks smug while caring some crystals and flying, and then Rick looks bored, just sitting there while Morty destroys the aliens outside of his spaceship.

  This is the other reason why this issue is really valuable. It fills in the fundamental plot hole of why he doesn’t make Morty invincible. Not only would Rick and Morty’s adventures be boring if they were too easy, to the point where the writer felt the need to only show one panel from them all to spare us the boredom, but Rick would have NOTHING to do and just stand there and watch Morty do all the work, having all the spotlight and fun while he just stands there. Turns out part of the reason he goes on adventures is the thrills.

  Even if Rick got this kind of armor for himself TOO, the fact remains that his adventures would be too easy because he’d never be in any real danger of failing them and having to go wake up in a clone body somewhere, so they wouldn’t be challenging anymore, he wouldn’t care anymore. And it’s the nature of a lot of people to want a challenge instead of doing something really easy. Him always having things like this would be like playing all of his games with Action Replay with all of the codes on.

  Sure, Rick and Morty are at their maximum competence potential here, so you’d think at first that this would be the smartest thing for them to do for all of their adventures. But there’s a reason why every Rick and Morty doesn’t do this and now we finally know why, though it’d be obvious if we thought about it anyways.

  “ I’m going to shoot straight with you, Morty. This armor has sort of RUINED the adventures for me. It’s no fun when it’s so easy. “ He says, “ I think I’m going to take some time off, you know, reevaluate my life. Probably update a bunch of online encyclopedias for my favorite shows that idiots have messed up with their stupid fan theories and desperate shipping. “ Yeah and then everything he added would just end up DELETED with no fucking explanation for why. So there’s NO POINT in trying to do that anyways.

  Even something as inherently harmless as adding a proper summary for the episodes of a show when its wiki barely even tried to summarize their plots, even THAT would all end up deleted on the whim of some idiot because tons of other people can edit it too. Rick doesn’t have much time to think about this here if he’s even considering this. Of course it’s gonna be a complete waste of his time. Because if anyone can edit a wiki then anyone can delete stuff from a wiki. You’d think a nihilist would’ve already known that.

  Morty looks somewhat disappointed, and says that he’ll just get into some adventures of his own and live it up, and Rick apathetically tells him to get at it. Morty immediately gives up and leaves the armor, and admits, “ It feels like I’ve been playing with cheat codes or on god mod and the thrill is gone, you know. “ He has great chemistry with him here. For once they’re on the same wavelength.

  Rick’s still shocked that he’s gonna give it up, probably because usually Morty’s a wimp who’s terrified of getting hurt in his adventures. He admits that it doesn’t feel fair, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it on his own anyways. He doesn’t have the motivation for the adventures, Rick does.

  This is the kind of plot resolution that makes this story better than a fanfiction. Up to this point, this could’ve easily been the fanfiction of someone who noticed a fundamental plot hole in the series and tried to make the series make sense, but this is the writer thinking even this through and realizing, there’s a REASON that the franchise isn’t this way. It’s taking it one step further ahead. It’s not actually smarter for them to use this armor all the time because they wouldn’t ENJOY their adventures anymore.

  Rick says that if he could squeeze his body into that armor, he’d screw EVERYTHING up. He tells Morty that the real problem with him is that he’s dumb. This whole reaction from him is confusing. First he was complaining because the armor was making his adventures too EASY. Now he’s complaining because he wants to use the armor, when obviously it’d make his adventures too easy. Does he want thrills or not?

  Couldn’t Rick just put himself in a smaller clone body to fit in the thing just fine? Or better yet, shrink himself a bit with a shrink ray? Logically, if he still had this armor after this, he’d just take control of the armor by doing that, but then HE’D get bored of the armor too and store it away for the worst of emergencies.

That’s what we’d see if the plot fully resolved itself, but that was obvious anyways. Rick’s the one being dumb because he clearly already learned that the armor would make things too easy and then he suddenly goes BACK to being jealous of Morty for having it and thinks he’d want it anyways.

  Morty’s smart enough to know it’d be pointless to argue with him and uses the portal gun to warp to another dimension. Surprisingly, considering how long it’s been since he went there, he warped to the Megaseed dimension. He actually wants to take Rick’s advice and solve the problem with him that Rick was complaining about.

  Unfortunately for him, the minute he tries to use the Megaseed to get smarter, it turns out Peacock Jones was there. How the hell does Morty know exactly which dimension is the Megaseed one on the portal gun? Did he look at its screen, and the screen had an extra bit of dialogue that Rick typed in for that dimension that said, “ Megaseed dimension? “ Or if not typed in, he could’ve told it to type in it, and it’d do so because of voice recognition.

  That’d make sense because it’d be smart of Rick to not only have a Bookmarks list for his most visited dimensions, but also be able to distinguish the dimensions from each other with something other than their meaningless names. So that means, realistically, Morty would be able to find out which dimension was the Megaseed one and choose that one on his own, provided that Rick was dumb enough to not anticipate that Morty would want to go there with his portal gun and try to become smarter, after he insults him every day.

  I mean, Morty was JUST as smart as Rick like an issue ago. Of course he’d wanna go back to that, so actually, this is forced because Rick should’ve anticipated that he’d wanna do this. You’d think Rick would delete the line in the portal gun that says Megaseed Dimension to prevent this.

  The problem is, Morty only became a genius with the Megaseed for just a few seconds, when it was in a real uncomfortable place, and then he immediately fell over and lost all motor control of his body. He has no way whatsoever of knowing how to make that geniusness permanent. And of course Rick would never help him.

Rick took away his genius to keep him from taking over the world. Morty would have to figure out how to do research on the Megaseed all on his OWN to find out how to become a genius with them for more than a second.

  As far as he knows, it could only ever be temporary and then not be worth it a couple seconds later. He would have to have made a DESPERATE ASSUMPTION to think he could come here and get the Megaseed and make himself a genius from it permanently, or at least last a really long time. So, he wasn’t thinking this through at all.

Realistically, even if Peacock Jones hadn’t been here, as a comic exclusive character that wouldn’t be added in to stop him if this was the SHOW, even if he hadn’t been here to yank the dog’s chain like this, Morty would’ve failed in his plan anyways because all he could do with the Megaseed is keep it in his room.

  ALSO, Rick has an alarm on his phone that tells him when his portal gun’s been stolen and used and it tells him exactly which dimension the thief went to. Jerry can attest to that. He would know where Morty is and get him back. Somehow it doesn’t have Rick interrupt Morty when he’s saying he’ll make himself smarter with the Megaseed, which would actually happen.

The dialogue from Rick ranting about Morty in the narration textboxes was just Morty remembering him saying that to him after the fact so it could’ve taken place an hour later for all we know. It doesn’t look that way though at first because we aren’t told with a textbox, “ An hour later! “

  And again Rick has a portal gun alarm on his phone. I guess he was in the bathroom. It was entirely HIS fault Morty got captured, because he somehow didn’t bring the phone or portal gun with him everywhere he went. He didn’t keep it in his lab coat when he left the garage, for NO reason. I have no idea how he keeps making this mistake and not learning from it after the first time, throughout the entire franchise.

He’s supposed to be a genius and the most common plot hole of the series, is supposed to be what JUSTIFIES the entire arc that ends the comic! If they were gonna have a plot hole be the justification for it being a whole arc, they could’ve at least had it be a different one instead of the one that keeps happening with no good excuse for it.

  So, if Morty had just RUN through the portal, grabbed a Megaseed and then immediately turned around and run back into the portal, would he have gotten kidnapped? Would he have been kidnapped if he hadn’t STOOD THERE TALKING to himself? Sure, he thought he was alone and safe, but he wasn’t safe the LAST time he went here. He got chased by a giant alien that RICK was scared of. If I were him, sneaking off on my own to do something like this, I’d wanna be as FAST as POSSIBLE.

  Wouldn’t someone like him be scared that if he had even a second’s delay in all of this, he’d end up getting caught, or killed? And apparently, he’s more likely to take the phone with him everywhere than the portal gun, so he would find out from the bathroom, even.

  Wait a minute, last issue Beth said that Rick doesn’t HAVE a phone! Apparently she was mistaken. He does have a phone. Also, it could be a phone that HE invented, so he wouldn’t have a phone NUMBER that they could call and bother him whenever they wanted.

  If Rick passed out after getting black-out drunk, then it’d be justified that Morty would think Rick would sleep through his phone’s alarm going off warning him that the portal gun was taken. So we should’ve seen that. But why would that happen to him? More simply, Morty could’ve waited until midnight when he would know that Rick was asleep. Best of all he could hide his phone on him.

  So if he waited until Rick was actually asleep and hid his phone, then he’d be justified in thinking that he wouldn’t have Rick running after him through the portal behind him if he didn’t do this as fast as possible. But even THEN, I’d still have been going as fast as I could if I were him. I don’t care how dumb Rick expects me to believe Morty is. Morty’s still had his moments and he KNOWS that this planet’s full of dangerous aliens. And the portal’s in a wall.

  Morty would’ve realistically looked left and right while walking ahead of that wall. Wouldn’t he have SEEN Peacock Jones while he was walking through that portal? How the hell did he get snuck up on  by him? I guess Jones was hiding behind one of the tree trunks, but the problem is, he looks wider than all of the trunks.

  Maybe what happened was, he made himself smarter, and shrunk himself a little so that he COULD hide behind a tree, and unshrunk himself, so he’d be able to sneak up on Morty with a gun that he could fire at any second.

So Morty would be discouraged from trying to shoot his portal gun to save himself because at any sudden movement he could be shot for it, and Jones has no actual reason to keep Morty alive anyways. He knows that a Rick needs a Morty so if he has an opportunity to permanently debilitate Rick, he’d do that. Maybe he knows Rick can replace Morty anyways after getting himself smarter.

So he knows that if he kidnaps him, he can lure Rick to a trap on his quest to save him. The problem is, as I was thinking at the very start, Peacock would be better off not even trying to get Rick Sanchez on a revenge quest after him, even if he had the smartest plan in the world and got himself smarter.

  He thinks he can win because he’s arrogant and desperate enough to let himself have faith that he would succeed, but his enemy is Rick. If he REALLY got smarter, he’d have the common sense to not even attempt revenge on Rick, especially not by personally getting involved in the plan. He could get away with recruiting other people to do all the dangerous work for him and just hide away until it’s hopefully done.

And best of all, he could erase the memories of the people he recruited in the sense that they wouldn’t remember HE was behind all of this, just that they were told to set the plan up. He never has to face Rick directly.

   Sure, anyone could kidnap Morty with a gun, but for all he knows, Rick is just about to go after Morty. There’s no indication that Morty didn’t leave the portal open for Rick to run through. Rick would’ve run through the portal and immediately caught up with Morty and KILLED Jones instantly after this. But he HAS to be asleep. Morty wouldn’t be dumb enough to try to go here because he’d inevitably get followed right away and Rick would snatch the Megaseed away from him.

  By the way, if it weren’t for Jones suddenly being here, Morty getting the Megaseed like this would be extremely easy, to the point where now I have to wonder why the pilot episode had him in such danger trying to get these seeds if Rick could’ve put the portal right here. Why was there an ENTIRE EPISODE devoted to GETTING these things?

I guess the idea was, Rick knew the Megaseeds were on this planet from a rumor, and he knew the general area, but if he literally knew exactly where they were, he would’ve just portaled to them and brought them home himself in two seconds, but he was gonna search an entire region for them, so he needed Morty along as a stealth device the whole time. Of course Morty can portal directly to them now because Rick knows where they are now.

  Maybe, while Rick is of course able to see where the portal would actually show up before it would by looking at the portal gun screen, so he could keep moving where the potential portal would appear and search the entire planet that way, it would take an insanely long amount of time to see the whole planet that way, so he’d much rather go there himself and run through it and be able to look around every direction when he’s there because it’d be faster. He could even summon a vehicle for himself to search even faster.

  Rick COULD portal directly to his destination every time, but trying to find his exact destination with the portal gun screen would take way longer than just going to where he generally has to go because there’d be SO much ground to cover when he’s scrolling ahead. And if he makes the potential portal move ahead too fast, it’d go past what he wants it to stay at if he even happens to see it in time. He might not. But this kinda thing worked for Starline when he was looking for Eggman. It was faster than running around for him.

  I thought about that because that’d be like how you can see any screen in the overworld in Harvest Moon DS and push on an arrow to scroll through the whole thing from the comfort of your own home, so you don’t NEED to walk through the overworld yourself to explore it all and tick down the time limit, but, the screen scrolls at the speed of MOLASSES.

It’s much faster to ride a horse through the entire overworld yourself, and there’s always inevitably gonna be stuff to forage, so you don’t need to look for it on the map first and check, and if you ended up wasting time because the exact thing you wanted isn’t there, it’s not like it’d waste TOO much time.

  Anyways, we see the cloaked person say that he loves that bar and he can almost always find some two-bit criminal running their mouth about exactly who or what you’re looking for. He’s asked if the plan’s in place and he’s found the one he seeks. It’s so obvious that he’s only still in disguise because the artist wants to keep his identity a secret from the audience until he feels like revealing it. It was always obvious. They have no in-universe reason to not put their hoods down at this point so that they’d be able to have peripheral vision. They’re alone together in a cave right now.

   The minute I saw a bunch of other humans in cloaks here with him, I assumed that this was a bunch of Ricks. It could also be Jerries, but that’d be better writing, and also, I REMEMBER the ending of this comic. At first I forgot that these guys were the ones who hired and spurred Jones in the first place though, probably because it’s completely superfluous, because Jones could’ve simply stumbled into the Megaseeds by accident and not met that guy.

   One of them says they’ve searched a long time for this Rick, and this Rick is particular bad according to them, so he’s truly deserving of his demise. What about all of THEM? They put their hoods down and all reveal themselves to be Ricks. I’m sure they’re all just as evil as Rick in this comic. So, they’re all being hypocrites by persecuting Rick for his evil deeds when they’ve probably done tons of evil things too. You can tell because a few are even smirking.

  But to be fair we don’t know anything about them personally. Good guys can smirk too, like Sonic. Maybe they are good guys, if only in the sense that they might go after bad guys, exclusively. One of them said, “ THIS Rick, “ and they’ve searched a long time for him. It makes me wonder if they’ve tried to kill Ricks before for being evil.

  They think that once this Rick would get killed, they’d be doing the entire multiverse a favor, and some Ricks that look like Doofus Rick serve them tea, and the story ends with the revelation that this group is called the Illumirick. It could easily have been the Council of Ricks or at least the shadow council that replaced them if this was released in Season 3. That’d be simpler than a new smaller group of Ricks.

These don’t have to actually BE Doofus Ricks by the way. They could just as easily be normal Ricks that are disguised as the one Doofus Rick or forced to have those hairstyles as a way of humiliating them as their servants. They could be just acting.

  In the next story, where the art looks terrible, Rick walks in while his family’s playing a phone game together where Summer trapped and killed a weirdly named monster giving it a chocolate first. Beth says that Rick thinks he’s too cool for the game. Summer says that being too cool for something because everyone loves it isn’t a personality. You can hate something for good reasons, not just because it’s popular and you keep meeting people raving about it.

  If anything, the fact that something popular has good reasons to hate it just makes the flaws even more frustrating because it’s popular, because it seems overrated. It’s also easy to dislike something popular if you haven’t exposed yourself to what makes it good yet and people can easily be seen by you to be overrating it because of that. Also, Rick has tons of personality traits, so he still has a personality.

  Rick says sarcastically that Summer’s enlightened in her worldview. Morty says that she’s impressing HIM with her skill at the game. Rick insults him because he’s using a bunch of silly-sounding words. Rick calls them pathetic and says that their phones are overworked and hot. He tells them to put them down and play with one of those predictably designed Japanese muppet failures in real life if they have to.

  Morty’s happy to learn that he can MAKE them some of these. Rick expects me to believe he made a device while he slept one time. He’d have to use a device to magically make him able to sleepwalk and therefore make devices in his sleep for that to be possible.

  Rick’s family begs him to make him a Doot. I guess this is a reference to Pokemon and they’re playing a rip-off of Pokemon Go. He uses a device to make some not-Pokemon. I guess something’s gonna go wrong. I mean he DID not really wanna go through the trouble of doing this. He could make it go wrong on purpose out of spite and that’d make more sense than his own brilliant device screwing up by accident.

  He doesn’t want them to not think about what science could do for them before choosing to give up on living their life like a Jerry. But if he wants them to keep doing this, why’d he make these Pokemon bite Morty and transform into giant monsters? Rick complains that his family said they were SUPPOSED to transform. Morty says not this fast, and he overdid it and when they reach their final forms, they start breeding. Wasn’t it obvious that his family wouldn’t want them if they would ever grow giant?

  The story ends with the words “ the end “ and a question mark while Rick’s still fighting the monsters. Actually it would make some sense that he’d intentionally make them end up like this so that he could quickly get back to the status quo instead of always having them around the house, distracting his family from him because of his own creations.

He knows he can defend his family if he makes them go wrong. But he did act genuinely offended that they were complaining that they transformed because he was making them transform for THEM, but he could just be acting. He’s seemed sincere and turned out to not be more than once.

  The first story by Kyle Starks was about explaining why Rick doesn’t use his technology to keep Morty invincible the whole time he’s on adventures with him. While he could do that, it’d make the adventures so easy that they’d be boring and even Rick and Morty would end up getting bored of them. And Rick couldn’t simply give him a force field generator of his own, because then he’d carry him around all mission as a human shield and Morty would hate it. And making the armor himself would be work, so he preferred to go get it from a Rick store instead.

  So this issue was really valuable in explaining why the franchise is the way it is, by filling in what only seems to be a plot hole from the beginning, because it’s all about making the SHOW make more sense, not just about comic stuff, it kinda makes it more annoying than it has to be, that Morty ends up kidnapped by a comic exclusive character just because it’s the last arc in the comic. He should’ve been kidnapped in the NEXT issue after this plot was over, because this wouldn’t have happened in the show. So it feels like it could’ve easily NOT happened.

  And that’s ALSO true because he wouldn’t have gotten kidnapped in the FIRST PLACE. Wouldn’t he have tried to get that Megaseed and get home with it as quickly as possible, because he’s doing something he’s not allowed to be doing? So he wouldn’t have been kidnapped, he’d have run to the Megaseed, grabbed it and run back into the portal. Although Jones could’ve been smart enough to aim at where Morty was GOING to be and hit him with a shot anyways. So that might have gone WORSE for him if he did the realistic thing.

  Even if things did progress the way it did, which is kinda justified because Morty figured he’d be alone and safe in this dimension and Rick was probably far enough away or asleep that he wouldn’t have to hurry too much with this, why didn’t Morty shoot Jones with the portal gun? Maybe Jones shot him with something to debilitate him enough that he could get kidnapped RIGHT AFTER he finished speaking to him, because it’d take a second for Morty to turn around and shoot Jones and Jones already had a ray gun thing pointed at his back.

So Morty probably figured that the safest option was to humor him, staying still to seem harmless, and even using the portal gun when not facing him could cause him to shoot him anyways, and possibly take it from him. All Jones said was, “ What’cha got there? “ and it would barely take any time to say that.

  So by the time Morty would be finished processing the fact that he heard someone talk behind him menacingly, he’d be out of time to turn around and shoot him if Jones already made himself smarter enough to anticipate that and shoot him right away, although if Jones was really that smart he would’ve just shot him without wasting even that small amount of time talking.

What if Morty had been startled and jumped from him even STARTING to talk behind him and shot huim with the portal gun before he could finish saying even that? Maybe Morty could’ve shot him with the portal gun before he’d even pull the trigger on him. Instead he was too slow to react. I guess that makes sense.

  When someone startles you from behind, you would turn around right away after moving upwards a little, but you might not have the composure to shoot them with a portal gun right afterwards even if you’re holding it. But Morty’s been threatened by so many different aliens! If he’s startled by someone speaking in a menacing tone right behind him, his first instinct should be to turn around and shoot! But no, we’re supposed to believe he really IS that much of an idiot. More likely, it’s because he’s a wimp, so he was so startled that he froze up and gave up hope, and ran out of time.

  I wouldn’t have had to go on this long train of thought trying to make sense of and analyze this scene if the comic bothered to show me, one, what happened right after Jones confronted Morty, and two, that after Rick called Morty dumb, he went to go to the bathroom and that left Morty alone with his portal gun, and then Morty went here.

  We should’ve SEEN Morty get kidnapped. Why was the artist not willing to show us that when it’s really important? We didn’t NEED to see that the Illumirick were a thing, INSTEAD, when it’s not the next issue yet.

  Even if Jones didn’t exist, since Rick would know he stole his portal gun from his phone app, he’d get suspicious if Morty was already home by the time he started searching for him, and immediately assume with no other alternative that he came to another dimension to GET something. So he’d wanna know what he came to get and if he couldn’t find it on Morty because he’d have had the time to hide it from him first, he’d search the house to try to find it.

  To succeed in his plan, Morty would’ve had to anticipate that Rick would figure out he went to another dimension to GET something and want to take it from him, even if Rick hadn’t SEEN what he did, so he’d have to plan around that, and this seemed to be just an impulsive whim of Morty’s, not a whole calculated plan, but who knows how long he’s had to think of this plan? There’s been a time skip!

  Of course, if Morty could get a hold of a shapeshifting device, like the one that Rick used to turn into a whole bunch of things in one story, like a Plumbus Rick he could make the Megaseed he found look like something completely innocent, like snacks, as soon as he’d get home, to trick Rick into thinking that he only used his portal gun to go get snacks, a commonplace mundane thing nobody would question someone wanting to get.

  After all Morty’s just a typical teenage boy who wants to use Rick’s devices to improve his life, so him getting a mundane thing like a snack could be plausible after Jerry tried to do the same thing. Morty could’ve used the shrink ray to shrink the Megaseed away, but Rick would still know he got SOMETHING even if he didn’t find anything ON him. So he’d have to have SOMETHING.

And if he brought home a little bit of dirt, Rick would know that even HE wouldn’t think it was worthwhile, so he’d know it was a decoy. And he couldn’t risk going to the Megaseed and portaling home with a bag of chips, unless that bag was on Earth. He wouldn’t wanna use up the portal fluid.

  The smartest thing to do would be for Morty to not only bring home a Megaseed, but also some random thing on the planet as well that he could use as a decoy when inevitably confronted, like those blue fruits over there. He could say that THAT’S all he went to get and he assumed they were valuable for Rick to have. That would work. Morty could say he wanted to make his grandpa feel better by getting him it. Who cares if the fruit are too high up? He could get to it with the portal gun, create a portal to it and reach his hand through it.

  Morty could’ve used the portal gun to immediately hide the Megaseed in some other dimension, and then access the portal gun’s browser history, so to speak, to delete its record of the fact that he chose that particular dimension to send the Megaseed to or shrink it. He could always lie to Rick that he went to another dimension to get something to eat, but if Rick wouldn’t believe him, there’d be the risk that he’d try to access his memories with a device to find out what he really did, and of course Morty would have to anticipate that Rick would do this to be able to plan around that.

  So that’s why he’d need a decoy. He’d have to write down on a note he’d hide in his bedroom that he went to get a Megaseed, and the dimension he’d have sent it to would’ve been written on it. He could warp the Megaseed to a part of Earth other than Rick’s house, like Jessica’s house.

  I got inspired to think of how his plan could WORK, because that could make an interesting story, and instead the plot took a twist and Morty had to be kidnapped, so it seemed like it wasted a plot. Realistically Morty wouldn’t have given up on his Megaseed idea and he would’ve kept trying to get it. If he somehow convinced himself he COULD become a genius with them for more than a couple seconds, which had to happen for the plot, then why didn’t he think of trying to do this in the show? Wouldn’t he wanna get smart in the show?

  I can assume that the assumption that he’d want that is exactly why Jones decided to go here. You can assume the reason he didn’t try to get a Megaseed for himself in the show was BECAUSE of the reason I mentioned, so he magically stopped being deterred from trying this out of sheer desperation to get smart like Rick, when for all he knows, he could only ever have one result from using the Megaseed on himself in the one uncomfortable way he knows about, and that wouldn’t give him what he wants.

What’s Morty supposed to do, eat it? The pilot wouldn’t have made it seem edible when it made him lose motor control. And if you could simply find out how to become a genius with that seed by googling it on Rick’s laptop, then wouldn’t EVERYBODY be doing it? Wouldn’t way more people have become geniuses? If Jones could simply eat the seed and become a genius, Morty would’ve done it if he hadn’t been stopped and we already saw what’d happen from that anyways, but also WAY more people would be eating Megaseeds then, and there’d be a whole farm dedicated to them.

  They wouldn’t be left ALONE, they’d be a whole orchard after people would eventually discover them. There was an orchard of them in the episode where Evil Morty became president. They’d be guarded by a strict, obvious security system by the people who were made smarter by the Megaseeds.

How did Rick find out that a Megaseed could make someone a genius if this hadn’t happened yet? Maybe it happened in a different DIMENSION, and Rick went to a dimension where it didn’t happen yet because nobody discovered them yet, because it didn’t look like any people were living on that planet. So of course it’d take time for people to discover them.

  Or Rick found out about the Megaseed’s effects by researching it out of curiosity to see if it was more valuable than it looked, from finding it himself the first time, and experimenting with it, using it on a human after wondering what its secret was. He could’ve used it on a clone of Jerry and then blasted him with a laser.

  It sure was convenient for the Illumirick that Jones happened to come to this EXACT bar out of all of the other bars in existence, AND that exact bar was what the Rick happened to choose out of all of the other bars. It’s not impossible, but it so easily could’ve not happened. It’d actually make more sense if he went out of his way to look for Jones after he saw him approach Rick in his garage through a spybot in it.

  After all, they’ve been studying Rick for a long time. So presumably that’d require them to be spying on him. They could’ve had their spybot go after Jones because he knew where Rick lived, so he could still be useful. Okay, but if they were spying on his HOUSE, THEY’D know where he lived too and couldn’t the Illumirick destroy his house in his sleep, then? They don’t have to hire Jones for this convoluted, grand plan.

  So, they’ve been studying Rick, but they don’t know where he lives. I guess they just hear about what he’s done in this universe and go off that because they’d be very lucky to actually catch him on camera anywhere in just this universe, when he could be ANYWHERE, not to mention there’s no PROOF that it’s always the same Rick who’s bothering this universe of his. Rick travels dimensions plenty of times, he doesn’t just go to other planets in his.

  They’d have to ASSUME that C-137 Rick was responsible for all of or most of the things he’s known for in this universe. But how could they tell who it was? It could be a clone, worst case scenario. They’re supposed to be SMART, why would they insist on a convoluted plan that takes longer than just blowing up Rick’s house in his sleep?

  Ricks are lazy sometimes. That’s why Rick bought armor with a photo he cared about instead of building it himself. It seems like every time we see Rick’s house in the show or comic, it always looks the same no matter the dimension, SOMEHOW, so the Ricks could find out where Rick lives by looking at every house in America until eventually they’d find him, with Google Maps helping out, but that would take forever compared to hiring Jones.

  But the amount of time they probably had to wait to luckily stumble into someone who knew Rick’s address, was probably way more time than it’d have taken to find Rick’s house manually, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much work on their part, so, that makes sense of them. It makes sense of a Rick I guess. They don’t care more about killing him as fast as possible than they do about not going through a ton of tedious effort on their part, and they know they could do it either way, so, they’re in no hurry.

  The problem is, we know for a fact that the Council of Ricks knows where Rick’s exact house is. They went there in the show and they went there in the Doofus Jerry arc. The Illumirick aren’t the Council, but I’d assume the reason these Ricks all met was that they met AT the Citadel of Ricks. Don’t they realize they could go find out where he lives from asking the council? I guess as much as the Citadel of Rick government hates their least favorite Rick, there’d still be a rule against any Rick but them finding out where Rick lives. Otherwise he’d have had to move by now from all the attempts on his life.

  Why don’t they get the job of one of those Ricks that arrested Doofus Jerry? They got to his house just fine. But I guess there’s still, mercifully, a rule against those Ricks going to his house if it’s not for a very good reason. Couldn’t they switch Beths or Jerrys on Rick as an excuse to go to Rick’s house to arrest one of them? And what are the chances they’d be caught on camera switching them?

 I guess the Citadel of Ricks has those arresting Ricks tracked and recorded. So even if they went rogue and killed a Rick they were sent to without permission, they’d immediately be tracked and they wouldn’t even know they had a tracking device on them or were being recorded. That, and since it’s explained that portal guns are illegal in the Citadel, I guess Ricks there are only allowed to use it if they’re doing so for a mission like arresting and they’re ALWAYS supervised when using the portal gun, so they might be supervised by someone who’d wanna oppose their plan against Rick.

  I guess despite their hatred of C-137 Rick, the Ricks in the Citadel government still think they’re too good for going to kill him, or are too lazy when that’d probably fail. So that explains why Rick’s not always being threatened by Ricks if this Illumirick group is a thing that can happen. I assume it’s a very rare occurrence. I had to go on this long train of thought because otherwise I would’ve actually found a huge plot hole in the series, but no, he’s fine.

  For once the bureaucracy and laws of the Citadel actually work out for him, to protect him from being arrested or assassinated without just cause. Obviously, that has to have been the case or we wouldn’t have had a show. He would’ve been defeated by a Rick in his sleep.

And the second story by Terry Blas is about Rick making Pokemon that his family hate. I guess he did it on purpose.

Issue 57:

  The story starts out with Rick trying and failing to find Morty, even in a bunch of crazy, magical dimensions like one where everyone resembles Jessica. I bet the Rick of that universe was responsible, using a device for Morty. Then Rick fails to find Morty just outside the house of, I think it’s the girl from that purge episode that he wanted to kill at one point, and she says that’s where she usually finds him. He sure is lonely. I hope he took the opportunity to apologize to her for trying to kill her.

  Rick finds the place Morty was just at with Peacock Jones’ hat there and burns all over the forest, implying that he didn’t kidnap Morty without some effort. I guess Morty was running all over the place, but you’d think that if he thought he could escape him without getting shot, he would’ve just used the portal gun to escape or shot HIM with it while he was at it. If he tried to run ahead, Jones would’ve shot him. If he created a portal, then Jones would’ve shot him, or he’d have run into the portal with him, and the fight would’ve taken place somewhere else.

  Rick runs into Beth’s room telling her what happened to Morty last issue, and apparently Beth and Jerry were asleep when he ran into the room because somehow Beth doesn’t know what he said. I guess he spoke too fast but you’d think the word kidnapped would’ve jumped out at her. And Jerry wastes our time being annoying, complaining about Rick charging into their room even though it’s clearly an emergency and being forced to sleep on the floor because of Beth. Rick throws his clothes at him and tells him to grab his stuff because they’re going to rescue Morty.

  It makes sense that he’d make Jerry come with him even though Jerry’s an idiot because, based on what Rick said earlier, Morty waves can come from anyone stupid, so he doesn’t JUST want the extra help no matter how minor it is. Or he can get something similar enough to Morty Waves from Jerry. And he doesn’t bring Beth with him because he actually cares about HER well-being.

  Jerry calls him out on portaling him to a cosplay convention when he wasn’t that dressed yet and Rick explains away that the crowd of people don’t care and just think he’s getting into costume, never mind that they’d still stare at him and question why he waited until NOW to get into costume. And it turns out Rick brought him to a place where Rick and Morty is a fictional franchise and there’s conventions of it.

  Then he gives Jerry a scanner that’ll play a song if it detects Morty. His last Morty Detector didn’t do that. In fact, he used it to find out exactly where he was and that was in the arc where Jones was introduced. I feel like a ton of this scene at the convention is complete padding. We got it as soon as we saw the cosplayers and yet they keep dwelling on it. I like that we finally find out where Jerry got his iconic shirt. His mom got it for him. And apparently it was a really long time ago because he has to say, “ I think. “

  Finally Rick explains why he came here of all places. The cosplayers all register on devices as the real Rick and Morty. That’s completely RIDICULOUS. The only way Morty and Rick trackers would work is by detecting brains that are similar enough to them, or at the very least, detecting a transmitting device on the person, and THESE people wouldn’t have transmitting devices on them.

Obviously those devices wouldn’t be fooled by people dressing up! He really shouldn’t have said that. You’d think they’d have better facial recognition than that! There’s a reason I forgot that. It already makes sense leaving it at the idea that it’s hard to find Morty here because everyone’s dressed like him.

  Rick says that if they don’t find Morty before Jones and Morty leave this dimension, he’ll never be found, even though Rick clearly said that MULTIPLE universes have a Rick and Morty show because his life is that fascinating. Jerry wouldn’t call that Rick a little girl! She’s not one. It turns out there’s a Rick of THIS planet and she’s a girl. Realistically 50% of Ricks WOULD be girls, so how is this the only one we’ve ever seen. And her hair makes it more obvious that it’s just dyed blue because of the shade, while Rick’s hair is at least somewhat passable for old man hair.

  Fortunately, she knows it’s a real Rick and Jerry on sight in this place and already has some badges to give Rick full VIP access to go anywhere without attracting attention. It turns out Rick already met with her and asked her for help before he went to get Jerry and go here, which is confusing considering his reaction when he ran into Jerry’s room. I’d expect that to be right after he found out Morty was kidnapped and then did all the searching.

It makes sense that he went to the Megaseed dimension so quickly because of course he’d figure that Morty would wanna get smarter, especially after he called him stupid last issue and Morty just had Rick’s intelligence recently, and I guess it was realistic that it wasn’t the first dimension he visited.

  It turns out Female Rick has a skirt. I’d expect pants from a Rick, regardless, but it takes advantage of the concept. Female Rick is faster to say than Rule 63 Cosplay Rick. It’s nice of Rick to compliment her skirt so much that he jokes that he’d have to try it out, and it’s nice of her to call him bud. Jerry says that she’s a little young to have a grandson.

She could’ve easily been as old as Rick. This also makes me wonder why we’ve almost NEVER seen a Rick that’s not an old man before in the franchise, which would be insanely unlikely. It’d be insanely unlikely for almost ALL of the Ricks to be old when there’s an infinite amount of them.

  Rick says that her Morty is a dog, and seems to be jealous because of it. How is that possible? Was her Morty turned into a dog? He couldn’t be a Morty if he’s nothing like Morty. Peacock Jones gets accused of being an OC, getting some karma for trying to kidnap Morty and saying plebes unironically, as he’s called a weird Morty slaver.

  Then there’s a page where the comic writers show their righteous indignant frustration at how they aren’t nearly as popular as the show’s staff for no good reason. There’s somehow not even a single person in line. Pretty ridiculous since this is literally the best comic I’ve ever read and makes me laugh all the time, more than the show itself. I’d think there’d be some people in line. I guess it’s a universe where the comic sucks.

  Why is Rick trusting Jerry to shoot Peacock Jones? Seriously?! He has a good argument to Jerry about why Jerry would be rewarded for shooting Jones though, and Jerry’s upset that the fans are joking around insulting him, and asks if the show portrays him as a bad guy and insists that he’s a good guy.

  Jerry cares more about his ego than Morty, so he wants to go watch the show and see what a solid great guy he really is. Why would he think he’d see that at this point? And Rick cathartically calls him out, “ Jerry, we’re supposed to be SAVING your SON! “ Rick cares more about Morty than he does. And that’s the guy who could replace Morty with a clone at any time.

  If he really didn’t care, he’d just replace him with Spare Parts and ignore Jones, and erase memories so he wouldn’t know the truth. But it makes sense that even if he didn’t care about Morty, he’d be doing this to spite Jones because nobody should try to inconvenience him with this and get away with it. I still don’t know why Jones hasn’t killed Morty instead of just kidnapping him. Thankfully this WILL be explained.

  Then, unexpectedly, Jones shows up right behind Rick and is completely casual, when obviously that’ll just get him into a fight. Rick grabs him holding him up in the air and is told that he put Morty where he’d never find him. He accuses Jones of being a pervert repeatedly and punches him, and lies that he doesn’t care about MORTY, he just hates white van creepery. Meanwhile, the fans and writers assume that they’re just two cosplayers doing a bit, and wants to let them have their fun.

  Then Jones reveals that the way he got super smart was by DRINKING Megaseed juice. So, if it’s that easy, one, how the fuck isn’t there a ton of people who have done the same thing as HIM? Wouldn’t everyone in the vicinity of the Megaseed planet be geniuses? I guess I explained it well enough LAST time. That universe is in a universe where nobody discovered the Megaseed powers, but there’s another universe where they did. And two, if it’s that easy, Morty WOULD be able to get just as smart as Rick if he simply got himself Megaseeds and drank juice of it.

  That’d be the first thing he’d try and it’d work. And then he could just make a device to make himself as smart as Rick, assuming that Rick COULD do that. So it wouldn’t matter that his new intelligence would be temporary because he could make a device to make that permanent if he’s that smart.

  But since Rick has an alarm that goes off when people steal his portal gun now, that’d make doing so much harder to get to the point of before he’s caught up with, but I don’t remember if the SHOW has that alarm established, so as for the show, it makes me wonder why Morty hasn’t done the same thing as Jones, aside form the meta logic of, that’d change the status quo too much so he can’t.

I guess he thinks if he got as smart as Rick, he’d become about as unlikable as he is at times, like he’d become nihilistic, so he doesn’t want that. The comic Morty doesn’t have that excuse because he KNOWS what it’s like to be as smart as Rick now, or at least half as smart, and he loved it, so he’d want to go back to that.

  Rick grabs Jones’ ray gun and makes sure the strings on the giant Pickle Rick thing get cut, and the writer of the comic makes a joke out of the fact that it ends up crushing the people who write the show to death, because one of them somehow says that he KNEW it’d end this way, and the other says he thought he’d die from something else, and they’re both somehow completely calm and not even trying to get out of the way, as if they want to die.

I get why the comic staff made this happen because they’re irritated that the comic isn’t nearly as popular as the show, so they have every right to vent with yet another dark joke in the franchise. I want it to be 99% as popular as the show. At least the comics don’t have commercials.

  We see Jerry sitting on a chair watching the show, and he complains, “ Well, this is taking forever. Who has time to watch all of this? “ It would also take a long time to read all of the comics, and it makes sense that he’s bored already because Rick and Morty are the focus, not him.

If I were him I’d buy the DVDs of the show to watch them at home and go right back to looking for Morty, if he can find them at a convention, I dunno. I’ve never been to a convention before. Then he happily goes up to some Jerry cosplayers, and even they say that Jerry sucks, but in a funny way, calling him a desperate coward.

  Jerry has to talk himself into pulling the trigger on Jones to prove he’s not cowardly, and he just frustrates me. If Rick had been the one with the ray gun, he would’ve shot Jones immediately. But I guess Rick’s logic was, if HE had the gun, Jones would’ve eventually knocked it out of his hand and taken it from him when they inevitably got into a fist fight together, so he had to trust Jerry with it. And he really wanted to be the one to fight Jones himself and he couldn’t trust Jerry to do that well.

  He ends up shooting the comic staff because they get in Jones’ way, which is pretty dark, but I think it’s the comic staff trying to make up for the fact that they killed off a version of the show’s writers out of jealousy because they did it to themselves too. They also made fun of themselves by showing the comic staff as suggesting having more fart jokes, when the comic’s a lot more than that. If I had to list the strengths of this series, these things wouldn’t even be in the running to be mentioned. The series is good because it’s interesting.

  Jerry looks remorseful, fortunately, and someone says they need all the Morties in one place, so Rick tries to fight Jones in the crowd and Jones gets away. Eventually, after Jerry’s told that he should be able to recognize his own son, Rick finds what looks like the kidnapped Morty, and he says, “ This isn’t our Morty, he’s from the A. designation to their universe, Jerry. “ So it’s almost exactly like Rick’s universe but slightly different.

  Jerry asks what the difference is and Rick says that it’s just slightly less funny. Is he talking about the show Morty? Why would HE be gagged and bound? That doesn’t make any sense. Was he sent here by his crueler Rick as a prank? Rick is surprisingly nice enough to return him to his universe anyways. If he was really evil, he’d just settle for this Morty and do some memory rewriting to get away with it.

  Then, thankfully, Female Rick shows up again as a Chekhov’s Gunman. Good, I wasn’t expecting that. She says that she saw Peacock Jones take Morty through this portal, and she’s been holding it open. Rick looks through the portal and takes his ship seriously when he sees it. He JUST NOW realizes that Jones was leading him into a trap, and it wasn’t just him leading them on a chase.

  In the second story, Morty asks Rick to tell him again why he made him leave home and go in his spaceship for what hardly sounds like an adventure. Rick says it’s necessary work so they can have more adventures. They’re surprised to find out Summer’s in the spaceship too, because she needed a place to text in peace when her dad was annoying her. I guess she was too lazy to go around the block.

  Summer asks what that is and is told that it’s space krill, a magical being that uses magic to survive space, apparently. Rick’s asked how fast the spaceship is going because that thing’s guts are everywhere. Rick says he’s trying to catch up to a vuleen, a big space whale that eats the krill. Wouldn’t his spaceship be faster than this? Wouldn’t he make it as fast as he can? He can go at light speed!

  Morty’s annoyed and Rick says he’s gonna kill the whale because the supply of blubber can be converted into oil that helps keep this spaceship nice and shiny, and magically makes it go faster. This was an explanation we didn’t actually need if the story wasn’t gonna explain how there even can be space whales. It’d be fine if it was explained that this is the universe where magic exists, or the whales and krill are immigrants from a magic universe. I’ll accept this story by assuming that.

  It makes sense that something as supernatural as a UFO would need special oil, but I assumed Rick INVENTED it to earn it better. He SAID that he built his UFO out of things he found in the garage! He says he should be able to blast the whale without damaging some of its vital organs which he can use too.

Why is he taking his grandkids on this mission, shouldn’t he have known they’d whine about it because the whales are living beings? Can’t he make his spaceship nice and shiny without doing this, by doing what people do for cars? He just likes it because it’s an overly complicated plan only he could do.

  Summer, after looking sad, says that’s freaking awesome, which must be Out of Character because that’s always surprising. And Morty’s shocked and upset with her when he thought she’d be sad. Well she clearly looks sad HERE. So without any other explanation, I have to assume that she WAS sad for the whale at first. Maybe she changed her mind when she started to consider Rick’s side of the story.

  She says that thing’s an endless supply of space adventures inside a sweet shiny ride. I like that it’s a blue whale with four eyes. Rick shoots it and destroys it in one shot and Morty reacts appropriately, and Summer asks how Rick’s collecting it when it’s everywhere. He says there’s two spacesuits in the back and tells his grandkids to suit up. But doesn’t he usually do this on his own? But he wants less work this time, and realized it’d be worth upsetting them over it after the first time. This is the first time they’ve ever had to DO this so I guess he just got tired of doing this on his own after a while.

  Rick says, “ Sounds like you’re forgetting the time I created pocket dimensions your closets full of every toy you ever lost. “ He tells them that they can either do this or every one of their new adventures will have all the excitement that sitting in the living room with their parents can bring them.

  So they immediately believe his bluff even though he’d hate those adventures and needs Morty on his adventures, and get to work. It was really nice of Rick to actually find out and remember what every one of their childhood toys looked like back then, and think to make a copy of them all just in case they’d get lost. HUH? The story ends with Morty and Summer using giant toothpicks to collect the goods while Rick has his hands behind his head and smiles.

  The first story by Kyle Starks was about Rick bringing Jerry to a universe with a convention of Rick and Morty in it because it’s the most likely place Peacock Jones would hide Morty in with Morty cosplayers everywhere, and it’s so effective that Jones goes back to his ship with the stolen portal gun before he could stop him. I don’t know why we never got to see Morty GET kidnapped.

It’s kind of a vital part of the plot that we missed out on, which would’ve made the story make more sense, and the convention kinda lasted too long, with the fans being portrayed in a cringey way. Rick brought Jerry with him so that Jerry could shoot Jones by surprise, but of course Jerry ruins things with his cowardice, taking too long to pull the trigger and missing.

  It’s weird because not too long ago, he was acting eager and desperate to shoot somebody and was disappointed at never getting to. And now his son’s life is on the line, and he’s less eager. And it ends with Jones leading them into a trap where his ship is. I wish it was explained why his ship was bigger on the inside, like, he found a magic crystal, like the death crystals. They were clearly magical so there ARE magical crystals.

  And the second story by Terry Blas is about Rick getting Summer and Morty to collect the guts of a destroyed, MAGICAL space whale so that he can make oil to make his spaceship shiny and go faster. It’s more interesting that he gets it from THIS than from just inventing the oil in his lab from various chemicals. But it’s clearly not necessary, or worth it because it didn’t make any sense. It took a while to get to the point because there was some padding where they talked at the beginning. But at least it doesn’t make fun of the fans as being overly eager, shouting Pickle Rick for no reason.

Issue 58:

  After a pointless recap page I skipped, we see Peacock Jones in a background that tells us nothing telling someone to kill Rick. Even Jerry’s smart enough to say that they need a plan. Jerry stupidly asks, “ What about we open the door and just drop a neutron bomb or whatever kind of bomb you make in there? “ Isn’t it obvious that that would kill Morty? Who knows how close he is to the door? Even if Rick just uses a bomb with a small explosion, which Jerry probably means, he doesn’t know if Morty would be close to the door and get killed from it.

  Instead of pointing this out right away, Rick actually shows appreciation for Jerry, liking him for who he is for once, even if it’s because he appreciates him being a jerk. “ I gotta tell you, this is sort of a refreshing change from having Morty around. He’s always trying to make sure I don’t kill anyone and do the right thing, but you’re all like, let’s burn it to the ground. “

Jerry says he only sees simple solutions, and doesn’t bother taking the time thinking out pros or cons. Just like Rick, then. Rick finally explains that that simple plan would kill Morty. So if he knew this all along, it was surprisingly sweet of him to go for complimenting Jerry FIRST.

  Then we see Jones say to someone offscreen to kill Rick, again. Lemme guess. He’s made a Mister Meeseeks box of his own and is giving the orders to them. OR he’s just using the Mr Meeseeks box we saw him steal. After all, they’re people who would be guaranteed to actually follow his orders. And all the people at the bar laughed him off, so it’s not like he could get THEM to try to kill Rick. Couldn’t he summon a ton of Meeseeks at once and give them one order? I KNOW that’s how it works, I’ve seen that with Morty and Rick.

  So if he’s so smart, why does he think he has to summon them one by one and give them a new order individually? You’d think he’d have at least given it a shot. I don’t remember the arc that well, but us being shown this panel a second time just risks giving away what’s probably the twist, because this is the second time he’s said this. And he’s expected to have some enemies to fight Rick right away, so it’s not like he could be calling people one by one and telling them to kill Rick because they’d still have to take time to get here.

  Jerry asks Rick if he could make an army. Somehow, instead of Rick saying he could send a Mister Meeseeks army at them, he turns down the idea because while he can make an army of hard-light Rick holograms with this bracelet, they’re weak. They’re made out of light. Yeah, “ hard light. “ Or is that name sarcastic? How can light be solid anyways? Why doesn’t JERRY suggest the Mister Meeseeks box? I’m sure that meta logic-wise, neither of them are allowed to do this because it’d be too EASY.

  And it’s so easy to screw up by giving a Mister Meeseeks an order he couldn’t succeed at or be prevented from succeeding at, and if he took the box with him everywhere he went, he’d always risk that if he gave one an order. And it’d be better to have a ray gun instead, because shooting it would be faster than standing there and summoning a Mister Meeseeks and giving him an order, vulnerable the whole time, so it makes sense that he didn’t bring the box with him.

  But, hold on. The reason I thought of Mister Meeseeks army right away is because the Vindicators special issue is fresh on my mind, and in that, ALL he had to do to get his Meeseeks box, was create a portal and reach through it. And SURE, HIS Mr Meeseeks box is gone, but once he’d find that out, all he’d have to do is create a portal to a different Rick’s garage and borrow HIS. So literally nothing is stopping him from doing that again here. It’s just bad luck that neither of them are happening to come to this conclusion right away.

  After a bunch of time is wasted where they argue and Rick admits that he needs help, Rick says that he knows just the guys. Okay, does he mean the Mister Meeseeks, finally? In that case, he’d be saying this jokingly because he doesn’t know them YET, he hasn’t created them.

  It’s explained that ten years ago, the government discovered an Einstein-Rosen bridge portal and put together a crack commando unit from different dimensions, and we see the badly named group that an issue was dedicated to, with Attila, Fulgora, Loggins and Benjamin. REALLY?! Rick came to THIS conclusion right away and not his own Mister Meeseeks? Ten years later, that crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. That sounds like it was an incredibly frustrating plot to sit through. Hopefully it was just a backstory thing and not an episode.

  They promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles Underground – how? I guess we’ll never know. I read that this group was a parody of the A-Team. Is this lack of an explanation supposed to be a jab at how it’s not explained for them, either? Because that’s not better than filling in the plot hole. It’d already be insanely lucky that ONE person would escape a maximum security prison, let alone ALL of them at the same general time. Still wanted, they survive as soldiers of fortune. At least we’re finally learning their backstory.

  The textbox says that if you have a problem, and if you can find them, you can hire them. How could you find them? I guess people get lucky and run into them. I guess if Jones’ army is a Meeseeks army, since he already proved he could make ray guns like Rick did, the only reason Rick isn’t coming up with sending Meeseeks after him is that, meta logic-wise, other than wanting to bring back the Not A-Team, the writer knows that the Meeseeks would never be able to kill other Meeseeks because they can only die when their task is completed.

So if Rick sent his Meeseeks after Jones’, they’d be there literally FOREVER fighting them, which would at least keep them occupied and away from him, but what if Morty gets hurt in the crossfire of that eternal fight?

  If a Meeseeks can’t die until it’s done its task, that’d mean he’d survive the sun expanding into him and the potential death of the universe. Rick agrees with Jerry that they might need one more, and Jaguar flies up to him with a suit that lets him glide, and agrees to help for no apparent reason. I guess he likes a fight. I guess he’s another version of Jaguar. In the Jaguar story of Rick and Morty Presents he’s in a group of his own. So that must take place in a separate universe.

  The dialogue of these characters is all, “ we’re not scared and we’re ready to fight, “ and it’s really boring, going on way too long with one of them. They all run into the place, and fight a bunch of robots, which get killed in one hit, like badniks. Why did Jones even bother with these, then? I guess they’re literally just there to buy him time to get the real army ready.

It would be cool that Jerry was shooting a ray gun, but he makes silly cartoonish gun noises while he’s doing so, and Rick goes out of his way to insult him for it, although he doesn’t need a distraction annoying him right now, so that’s okay. Why does he think he needs to make those noises when the noise it’s making already would be good enough? I guess he’s just trying to have fun.

  Jerry says he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and reassures him by lying that that’s okay. All he has to do is point the ray gun and pull the trigger, that’s really easy. He has no reason to be insecure here. He should be enjoying himself a LITTLE. The heroes walk around lampshading that this was too easy and Rick wonders what the catch is. I wish them fighting robots wasn’t even put there.

  If it was that easy and the robots didn’t even have charming designs like badniks do, with nothing really interesting being done in the fight, then that page was just padding. But I can understand the writer wanting them to fight something extra before the Meeseeks show up. Yep, there’s an army of Mister Meeseeks. I must have remembered this a little. Oh, crap. Except I know Rick has to survive this. But the group here doesn’t have to and I’m not sure I’m looking forward to that.

  Why aren’t the Meeseeks attacking them all instead of letting Rick talk?! Rick explains that the Meeseeks aren’t flesh and blood, they’re strong and weak fields, cosmic forces of nature, and them being the perfect assassins is why they’re actually banned in nearly every universe.

I’m glad he said nearly because we clearly saw a first Meeseeks just there like it was nothing, in the first issue in that crowd, and we saw a Mister Meeseeks real estate agent on a Mars. Lucky for them, they weren’t banned in those two universes. Not to mention we saw a Meeseeks help an alien win an arcade game in the show.

  The group goes to valiantly protect Rick anyways, and Rick explains that he doesn’t have enough portal juice to portal them all away. Good, that’s explained before I could even think of it. So that’s why he doesn’t do this all the time. His portal gun has some actual LIMITS, which is part of what makes Rick better than Shadow. This goes to show you how Story Breaking Shadow actually is, because his Chaos Control doesn’t have that limit, so he could’ve easily warped them all away if this was Sonic.

  Rick says that while him not bringing enough portal juice could be seen as stupid because he underestimated Jones, it’s just proof of his confidence in himself. How does that prove he’s not incompetent here? Both are true. He could’ve warped home and gotten more portal juice and then come back here prepared. I guess he doesn’t know which dimension this is. But he could just leave his portal open so he doesn’t need to know that.

  Jaguar says they’re too many of them, and Rick says they just need more people, so he presses a button on his wrist to summon those Rick holograms that he mentioned earlier, so he really WILL use them as a Chekhov’s Gun. Surprisingly they’re all colored just like Rick is instead of actually looking like holograms of light, which explains why they can fool the Mister Meeseeks. That, and the Mister Meeseeks were literally JUST born.

  How were they supposed to know that all of these holograms didn’t qualify as a Rick Sanchez and therefore couldn’t technically count as him? Peacock Jones wasn’t very specific with them. Sure, he’s supposed to be really smart now, but how was he supposed to know that Rick had a way to project a bunch of realistic holograms of himself on hand, that the Meeseeks would settle for killing somehow?

  I mean he summoned the holograms RIGHT in FRONT of them, it’s not like he went to hide and it’s not like each one is only seeing one. They’d know these weren’t the original Rick they saw. But again, they were just born, so maybe it makes sense because for all THEY KNOW, since they don’t know how ANYTHING works yet, they could assume that Rick Sanchez is an entire species of identical-looking individuals.

But according to the Mister Meeseeks issue, they apparently know a whole BUNCH of things about how the world works the minute they’re summoned, and can read the universe on a scale others can’t fathom. If the Presents stories aren’t canon, why in the world are they included in the hardcover Books with the regular comic issues?

  They were told to kill Rick, not A Rick. Clearly Jones meant, the Rick they’d first see, not a bunch of obvious decoys. Also, how would one of them disappear just because he killed Rick’s video game character that doesn’t look anything like him in a Gameboy game, just because Rick said, “ You killed me “?

  All of the other Meeseeks were fighting what looked like Rick, right in front of him, and disappeared, so this guy would KNOW that this video game character isn’t Rick. Wouldn’t Jones have shown them all what Rick looked like right away so they’d recognize him on sight? Which they did? This plot resolution just barely makes sense.

  Rick was smart enough to figure out technicalities to get them to accept completing their task. I guess it makes sense that they’d be desperate to accept a loophole so they could die faster. But the fact remains, Jones told them to kill him. For all they know, they were actually other Ricks, not holograms, and killing alternate universe Ricks would technically mean killing Rick Sanchez. But Jones clearly meant THIS one.

At that point, maybe Rick SHOULD HAVE been written to have just portaled them all away because at least that’d make total sense, and the writer even thought of that. But I do like seeing THIS a lot better. It takes advantage of them being Mister Meeseeks. When else would I get to see this?

  I remember this. By the time they got to Peacock Jones, Beth and Summer had already killed him with the chains they had around their wrists. I didn’t think it’d be this soon because I never actually SAW him kidnap Beth and Summer. Which means that I had no way of knowing that he actually did.

I wasn’t even under the impression they were kidnapped, let alone by Mister Meeseeks, and it would’ve added more stakes to the story if I had known the whole time that they were kidnapped too. Of course I shouldn’t have SEEN them get kidnapped because it’d ruin the surprise and it made a better effect that we saw the Meeseeks here, after all that build up, but still.

  I remembered what happened to Jones, and I guess it was predictable that he couldn’t get another fight with Rick before this point or Rick would’ve killed him, but he could’ve hit him in the weak spot and run into a portal again. I’m really glad that Beth says, “ The Megaseeds must have worn off or something because he gave us both the chains and the necessary slack to, well, you know. “ I’m so glad she explains that him doing a stupid decision was BECAUSE the Megaseeds wore off. I didn’t remember that, and it would’ve been bad writing otherwise, which is what I remembered.

  It’d be much more memorable that we’re supposed to think the Megaseeds wore off ALREADY, if he said or did something stupid before this. Instead it’s just an assumption that Beth came to, so for all we know, she was wrong. So he got what he deserved at the hands of Summer, who he literally tried to rape. So that’s poetic justice, much better than Rick killing him actually.

  It just seems anticlimactic since we’re only being told about this after the fact. Anyways, how much Megaseed juice did he drink? It couldn’t have been THAT MUCH if it wore off already. It hasn’t even been a day, because Rick hasn’t slept yet. I always imagined that he had drank literally as much Megaseed juice as he could’ve possibly drank at once without it being lethal. Why wouldn’t he have?

So that means that if Morty tried this, it’d all wear off after the same amount of time. So the Megaseeds aren’t a reliable means of getting him as smart as Rick from now on, so he would’ve failed anyways because he’d have to keep coming back to the Megaseed planet. Apparently it’d all wear off in not even a day.

  Rick shows concern for Morty’s well-being and asks if he has to get his memory erased, and Morty says nothing happened and he just told him to stay in here and watch cartoons, like a little latchkey house being asked to stay out of the way. Somehow Morty doesn’t even question what he means by Morty’s mindblowers, for some reason, when he’s not supposed to remember that.

I’m proud of the comic for not having the heroes that went with them get killed off in this story. It seems like things are too happy, because Rick’s lucky that Morty’s still alive. Is this not the real Morty, or does he have a bomb with him or what?

  Rick says with his hand on his shoulder that it’s been a long couple of days and he needs a very long bender and blackout. COUPLE OF DAYS? It seemed like just a couple of hours. I guess I was supposed to know the entire time that Rick spent a couple of days on looking for Morty in various dimensions. I thought I was shown ALL of it last issue. Maybe I should’ve been shown a textbox on the panel where he found the Megaseed planet where it said, “ Days later. “ So it takes days for the Megaseed juice to run out, not hours.

  Then one of the heroes brought with Rick, who conveniently stayed behind on the planet where they had nothing to do for no reason, directs their attention to the message on the TV screen. Every so often, it goes to static and has a clear message telling Morty to kill Rick.

To be fair, while subliminal messages have been proven to not actually work, because the brain doesn’t commit to long term memory things that it isn’t consciously aware of, Morty has every reason to wanna kill Rick at this point. He’s really lucky that he hasn’t. He even tried to in the show once.

  I don’t think this is a subliminal message if it could be consciously seen and caught by this guy, without him explaining that he can see in slow motion and that’s the only reason he can see it. So Morty would’ve consciously seen the message, but he would’ve ended up watching the cartoon anyways because he had NOTHING ELSE to do with his time.

It makes way more sense that Morty was trained as a sleeper agent instead of JUST being given the chance to watch cartoons. If Jones was really smart at that point, of course he’d have a back-up plan in case his first plan failed. This is good writing filling in a potential plot hole.

  Jaguar wonders if he should warn Rick. If he had his phone number and could call him, he’d warn him immediately. One of the so-called heroes with Jaguar says that they shouldn’t warn Rick, not because he’s evil, but because he only paid the team for ONE mission. So, it’s because they’re assholes, only there for the money. Wow, I didn’t expect THAT.

  The story ends with the overly easily manipulated Morty considering using the invincibility armor to kill Rick. If he had a brain, he’d do it when Rick was asleep, like after he’d black-out like he clearly foreshadowed. It’d be dumb of him to do it any other time than midnight, like in the middle of the day when he’d be able to protect himself with his force field and portal away. I guess part of the effect of the brainwashing is that he’s just that stupid, because he’s compelled to try to kill Rick the SECOND he’d see something that could kill him.

  In the next story, Morty tells Rick that Beth said to come in for pizza, as Rick’s reading something with an alien looking over his shoulder. The art here sucks. Morty asks if Rick’s okay and says that he’s acting like the oppressed species they liberated yesterday didn’t reward him with a pet that cleans his face because it lives off it.

  Rick complains that there’s a reason there aren’t a lot of stories about geniuses, because nobody wants to watch someone who isn’t challenged and can’t grow. Why is THAT what’s bothering him? He’s challenged all the time, so why would he think this? The challenge comes from the dangerous adventures he goes on. As for, can’t grow, that’s every main Sonic character now.

  Morty says, “ You’re the smartest person in the universe, but that doesn’t you’re, never mind. “ Naturally, Rick wants to know what he’s gonna say, and claim that he can do anything because he’s so smart. Morty asks how he hasn’t figured out how to be happy. It’s cathartic seeing him call him out. Even he can stump Rick. He asks him if sitting in the garage flipping through a magazine’s latest issue is fun.

  Rick insists that it is fun because there’s quizzes and tips. Then he admits that it does suck. It sure was nice of him to admit that to him and be honest with him. He asks what he wants from him. Morty tells him to challenge himself, make something new, and stop being unproductive and sad. He asks if he’s ever created something like a feeling, like happiness. Well, couldn’t he make happy pills, like, a drug to make himself happy all the time? Why hasn’t he? If he thinks nothing matters, wouldn’t he not care if his happiness is fake?

  Instead Morty’s train of thought gets derailed and Morty challenges him to make something so weird that it defies logic. You mean like everything he makes, ever? Whatever happened to him being productive? Doofus Rick cured cancer, I’m sure he could do something and if he hasn’t by now, it’s because he’ll never care.

  Rick’s challenged to make a hybrid plant monster, that loves him unconditionally of its own free will. Rick confidently agrees, and says that if he wins, Morty gives up his right to choose any adventures for a month. Morty says that if he wins, Rick has to give up booze for only a week.

  Rick says five mere minutes later, not even five DAYS, that Julio’s kind of into him, so Morty loses. Into him. So he took a loophole and just interpreted love as attraction. That’s obviously not what Morty meant. Of COURSE he could make a being that’s programmed to find him attractive, which wouldn’t be free will. The family’s smart enough to say that if he’s been around for only five minutes, he couldn’t really love Rick yet because he doesn’t even know him. And Julio’s offended at being called a thing.

  Rick’s attempt at a comeback is to ask who Morty is to define who love is, when Morty wasn’t the only one saying that. Morty says that if Rick programmed its brain to love him, he lost the bet because Julio didn’t grow to love him on his own and didn’t experience the world and seen what it has to offer, and doesn’t even know who HE is.

  Julio asks if he’s right, and it’s decided that Rick lost the bet. He sent Julio through a portal to some monster-infested hell world just to spite Morty, so he’d hate life and think Rick was right. How would he think Rick was right because of this? Obviously this would just turn him against Rick for doing this. Too bad. He’s a nice guy. But realistically he’d get killed.

  And Rick guilts Morty a few days later that this alien’s dying because of Morty making him go booze-free. The story ends with a sad ending where Julio looks at a heart locket and cries as a bunch of cute harmless animals are nice to him, showing that Rick didn’t actually have the heart to send him to a dangerous place.

When Morty challenged Rick to do this, I pictured him talking about a cute little pet, not a person. Like, Rick could’ve made a cute little puppy or a chao or something, so I don’t know how he wasn’t smart enough to think to do that. But he would’ve lost the bet anyways because he would’ve had him love him because he was programmed to.

  The first story by Kyle Starks was about Rick, Jerry, and a badly named hero team defending Rick from Mister Meeseeks of Jones’ for a bit, before Rick defeats the Meeseeks by satisfying them with technicalities that miraculously were accepted, as opposed to simply killing HIM, which was obviously the only thing Jones could’ve meant. He didn’t say “ Kill a Rick Sanchez. “

Also, if he was so smart, though maybe the Megaseeds wore off by this point, but even Morty did this, why didn’t he tell ALL of the Meeseeks he summoned at once to kill Rick, and then elaborate that he means THIS Rick because he ruined his life? Then it’d be obvious that he meant, not any Rick but him. Apparently even beating Rick in a video game was enough for one of them to vanish. The writer wrote himself into a corner there, even if it was entertaining to see.

  I like that it wasn’t gory to see those Rick holograms get defeated, and Rick referenced that he could make them long before he did, so they were a Chekhov’s Gun. Maybe it would’ve been convincing AND taken advantage of the concept if Rick had just summoned a bunch of other universe Ricks and sent him to their deaths. But again he said he didn’t have enough portal juice.

  The council of Ricks is overthrown by now, so they wouldn’t go after him for it. If Rick just portaled all of them away, the story would’ve made sense. This was a point where they had to sacrifice logic for it being interesting-looking.

He saves Morty, and Beth and Summer who were apparently kidnapped too, and were badass enough to save themselves, not that we cared because we JUST found out, and Summer was the one who defeated Jones, who was smart enough to manipulate Morty into being a sleeper agent with a TV show message.

And the second story by Terry Blas is about Morty challenging Rick to make something that’d love him and Rick loses the bet because Julio was only programmed to love him, so he ditches him. Too sad.

Issue 59:

  While it’s a pretty obvious ratings stunt having Rick and Morty finally fight, it’s a pretty justified one because Rick’s had this coming for a long time with the things he’s put Morty through, and Morty needed to be brainwashed into this. For all the things he’s put Morty through it’s not like he ever physically abused him. Oh right, he slapped him one time in the show to snap him out of a freak-out. So he could be worse, but he still had this coming. So let’s see if the writing will get forced at any point to force Rick surviving, because Morty has invincible armor, come on.

  We start out, after a skippable recap page, that some Ricks went to the Brick and Mortary shop from earlier. They’re here to get the universe bombs that Cold Wars Arms Race Wizard Rick made, that could wipe out an entire universe. Why’d he make those? Were we told that those existed earlier? If not, then having it come out of complete nowhere is lame. I don’t buy that these Ricks wouldn’t be able to make this bomb THEMSELVES. I guess because they’re not wizards, but, Ricks can make ANYTHING. It coming out of nowhere wouldn’t be noticeable if it just showed up because they just made it.

  There’s a reason I remembered THAT being the case, because that makes more sense than them conveniently getting this kind of bomb from a shop. Even for a shop run by a Rick, it’s impossible to buy that he would sell universe bombs.

He even says that he should be worried about what these guys are doing, especially since this isn’t even the first time they’ve bought one of them. It would make more sense for him to only sell them as a trap, because it would make more sense for a Rick to wanna lure someone who’d wanna destroy a universe TO him, and then shoot him, because he likes killing evil people anyways, and he could keep their money, so he doesn’t have to let ‘em keep them!

  And it seems ridiculously extreme that anyone would wanna destroy the entire universe Rick’s in, not just Rick himself, when they only have a beef with HIM. It’d still be over-the-top evil if they sent a bomb with him that destroyed just the city block he was on, because that’d take innocent people with him too. But that’d be more understandable than trying to take out an entire universe.

Why do they hate this particular Rick so much more, why aren’t they focusing on all of the other Ricks too? How do they think HE’S the worst? It completely forgets the Well-Intentioned Extremist aspect of them if the writer’s just making them pure evil.

  If there’s no reason for them to find this bomb here, it seems more like a Diabolus ex Machina than something that could be taken seriously for the end of comic arc, even though they could make it themselves, so it’s not totally illogical. It’d be more epic like it’s trying to be if it didn’t come out of nowhere. It could be said to be a neutrino bomb, though mere science shouldn’t be able to make a universe bomb.

  I mean considering how big the universe is, it would take forever to destroy. I don’t think there would be enough materials on one planet for that. So, yeah, considering that the bombs were made by a Wizard Rick, it WAS mandatory for him to have made them for their existence to make sense. They’re literally magical. But again, these Ricks should’ve had to take them from the wizard Rick’s lab, not just easily bought it from a shop that would’ve been shut down by the Council of Ricks for this. We could’ve heard about that Rick, and then SEEN him!

  The Morty here complains that these Ricks should consider reverse-engineering these bombs, because then they wouldn’t have had to buy all their stock. This must be an evil Morty because he cares less about them buying this bomb and more that his shop lost all of its stock of one item, never mind how much money the store got from them in the process. If anything, the Rick at the shop is more moral than the Morty here. He’s more worried than he is about them.

One of the Ricks says that reverse-engineering Rick died trying to reverse engineer one of these bombs, and that dream died with him. Wouldn’t he not be in a separate universe from them so ALL of them would’ve died by now?! Every Rick would know how to reverse-engineer, not just one who has that as his specialty, because they’re supposed to be geniuses!

   And it’s revealed that Cold War Arms Race Wizard Rick used to be with the Illumirick, and was the best inventor of all of them. That Rick sure was humble to admit this. Oh, maybe he just means “ of all the Ricks. “ The cost is gonna be pretty high for the last one. It’s oddly nice of these universe-destroying Ricks to even CONSIDER PAYING for these bombs. Wouldn’t they have just killed the store owners and gotten all of them at once? And why are they asking for more than one?

Don’t they only wanna kill one specific Rick? I guess they ARE trying to hypocritically go after the other Ricks for being evil. How do they have “ this Rick is too evil “ as their justification when they’re clearly more evil than them because they wanna destroy the entire universe he’s in?!

  It really would’ve made more sense if it was the Council of Ricks back for more instead of these guys, because THEY have a reason to hate Rick, but not them. If anything they’d think Rick was too soft for NOT doing this. They offer the store owner a birthday card from a Morty to his Rick on his Rick’s birthday, which says, “ I love you, papaw, “ inside. Considering how evil these Ricks are, I have to wonder if they got this card from a different Rick instead of any of them owning it.

It’s sweet that the Rick store owner appreciates this, or maybe most Ricks do and not him and that’s why he sees this as valuable. But why would a Rick wanna buy or WANT a sentimental object from some different Morty to a different Rick entirely? It’s meaningless to them personally.

  Then one of the Ricks is allowed to get a portal-blocking generator too. Why are we seeing this padding instead of the story instantly starting out with Rick and Morty’s fight? I’m sure a ton of people skipped this and read it later. Aren’t we gonna see the results of what the Illumirick bought, anyways? We don’t need to see them buying it. It would’ve made more sense to us if we didn’t see this because we could’ve assumed that they simply built it! The storeowner warns them that the thing has a five second delay, which was planned on.

  Beth says it’s real sweet that Rick went through all that trouble to save Morty. They ignore Jerry as he warns them about a humming, and Rick implies that he isn’t even aware that he cares about Morty because his reaction to her seems too genuine. But he IS aware. I don’t know why he would pretend he doesn’t care. He knows he cares because Toxic Rick has a huge attachment to Toxic Morty, specifically because Rick knows that he thinks of his attachment to Morty as a flaw.

  Morty’s armor bursts through the wall, and fortunately Morty’s saying, “ Kill Rick Sanchez, “ repeatedly, I say fortunately because it’s probably clueing them all into the fact that he was only brainwashed. Maybe there was no way for Jones to avoid him saying this, because if he was really smart, he’d have made sure Morty stayed silent if he could. Instead, Rick instantly figures out that Jones brainwashed him because of the uninspired catchphrase and single-minded desire.

  So, Morty hits away Rick, not that we even get to SEE him impact him. Then he stands there doing nothing the whole time Beth asks him why he’d wanna kill Rick because she loves Rick, instead of him still trying to attack Rick at this point. Then Rick presses a button on the wall making some armor get revealed in it. WHAT was STOPPING Morty from trying to attack him in all the time that Rick was talking? He just pushed Beth aside, so it’s not like SHE was holding him back.

  If Rick was prepared enough to have made an emergency button to give him access to an invincibility suit, he should’ve also been prepared enough to have had a button on the wall that would keep Morty from moving in his armor, like an antigravity ray. Instead, the action scene’s stopped making sense ALREADY and it’s only the first page of it. It’s SO OBVIOUS that Rick never would’ve had the time to get into his armor.

  He insists he’s the smartest man in the universe, but if he was smart, he would’ve pressed the button on the wall and gotten into the armor WHILE explaining all of that. If he needed to get into his armor just to use antigravity on Morty’s armor and make him float with it, then one, that should’ve been written to be another part of the house defense system activated with the press of a button on the wall FAST ENOUGH to be BELIEVABLE. Or better yet, activated by Rick saying something, like Protocol Tartarus!

After last page, the only thing you’d expect would be that Morty would just keep hitting Rick with the arm of the armor. And Rick would have to tell SOMEBODY ELSE to press the button on the wall, like, Beth. SHE should’ve been written to have gotten into that armor and fire at him.

Normally this franchise can be trusted to be great, in the sense that it’s charming and funny and epic enough to make up for the inevitable plot holes and being too dark and edgy. But I was still cynical enough to assume that such an awesome, looked forward to concept like Morty fighting Rick would be screwed up by bad writing and I was right. It was too good an idea to be done well.

  Rick then opens up a portal, which is clearly not necessary when Morty’s armor is being held still, not to mention he’s just brainwashed so it’s not even his fault, and sends Morty in his armor into some lava, and acts happy about it. This writer hates Rick. Beth calls him out on it and Rick is surprised and has to be glared at into getting Morty back. That seems really Out of Character, TOO. Rick sacrificed himself to save Morty’s life in the show at one point and he was lucky he managed to survive it.

If anything, he’d be more likely to humor Morty. He could just warp to another dimension! IN FACT, in the alien parasites episode, Rick told Morty to just go ahead and shoot him, because he was tired of the whole episode. He wasn’t trying to kill Morty there. I guess I’m supposed to believe that Morty could only be held still for so long.

  And to be fair to Rick, he has no idea how to unbrainwash Morty if he didn’t try to do it already, and Morty’s in invincible armor right now. It doesn’t COME OFF like he has a way to unbrainwash Morty because he’s able to hold him still so you’d think he’d bring his un-brainwashing way to him. If Morty WAS permanently brainwashed to try to kill him, Rick’s uncharacteristic solution would’ve been the only smart option and only way to deal with that when he’s in invincible armor. If he wasn’t in it, he could at least be tranquilized and knocked out.

Then Morty comes back on his own, when Rick was gonna go get him back anyways, and Rick even questions why someone would ever give the armor itself portal technology. Why not? It’s the obvious idea, just in case you run out of portal gun battery or the gun is broken.

   Also, how is Morty not attacking him in all the time that Rick’s saying these three sentences? The only way this could be happening is if Morty’s moving extremely slowly. That’s what I’m picturing! And I doubt the armor is as slow as a snail. He obviously would’ve interrupted Rick by hitting him right away. Instead, Rick was able to activate a force field in front of himself because Morty presumably just stood there and did NOTHING the entire time after he portaled back home. I guess he can’t send a portal out, or he could send it at Rick and turn him into a portal.

  The easiest way to ruin an action scene beyond censorship is to play Talking is a Free Action completely straight. In a series as self-aware as this, it’s supposed to know better than that. This is a cliché that should be made fun of. It makes me wish this was in the show because maybe they would’ve avoided these problems because it’d be in motion. Also, why isn’t lava from the volcano coming out of the portal? Never mind, I guess Morty flew out of the lava first.

But wouldn’t the lava still be dripping from the bottom of the armor because he just got out of the lava? Wouldn’t it ON it? And overheat the room from convection alone? No, instead the lava’s already gone. I guess the lava got washed off by another of the armor’s unknown functions. It WAS made by a Rick after all so that could make sense.

  The armor gets destroyed with a single punch along WITH the force field, because Morty’s armor is just that strong. Okay, if that could happen, we shouldn’t have even SEEN Rick get into the armor if he barely got to use it. This could’ve and should’ve been REMOVED from the story entirely. He couldn’t have gotten into it in time anyways. Beth could’ve gotten into it no problem and Morty would ignore Beth because he doesn’t wanna hurt HER, and so she’d be the best person to fight him with Rick’s tech right now.

And once again, we don’t actually get to see the arm of Morty’s armor COLLIDE with Rick. We just see Rick get sent into a bookshelf as there’s a little metaphorical flash of light. This isn’t a series without guts, this isn’t a series for kids and it shows gore all the time, so why on earth is it choosing NOW to not show impact in the fight? This is the WORST timing for this. It loses some of the satisfaction and fun that it could’ve had this way.

Morty’s been put through a lot because of Rick’s adventures, so even if that’s not why he’s fighting him, some of the enjoyment in this whole scene is supposed to be that Morty’s getting to hit him after everything he put him through. I just wish I could see it.

Somehow Rick cares more about wiping his mouth than getting out of the way of him right away, when usually he isn’t like that. The Jaguar issue had him keep stains on him for a while. SO it was miracle that he dodged the beam in time. Rick runs over to his lab now that the wall’s broken so he can get into it.

  Gee, good thing Morty didn’t break any load-bearing walls and collapse the whole house right away. That’s realistic, right? I guess Rick made his own improvements to make sure that wouldn’t happen just because a few holes got created in a few walls of his house. But I should be told that. It does make sense that he’d anticipate that someone would damage the walls of his house, like, when trying to go after his time travel technology.

Rick then picks up a tool, and when he gets hit with the beam and it gets destroyed, he, still looks like he’s got some burns on him and a bunch of his clothes have tears in them. If you want us to believe that the tool made him invincible, you can’t have his clothes get damaged anyways. Maybe that’s fine, but you can’t have him burned.

  And the burns magically disappear in the next panel, which is worse than in Sonic! I guess his face and hair are self-healing. But we should’ve been told that. And the armor’s invincible so it couldn’t get destroyed from him summoning his personal force field and reflecting the beam back at it, and he doesn’t want Beth to get upset at losing Morty, so even if he could get rid of the armor by reflecting the beam at it, that might kill Morty WITH the armor, and plus, Rick would be taking a risk by hoping that his force field would reflect the beam instead of being broken by it.

His armor’s force field got broken by a single punch, so if he used his personal force field, the same thing might probably happen. It shouldn’t have been written that he was hit with the beam at all then if we’re somehow supposed to believe that it only gave him a few burns and tears on his clothes. He’s not a Sonic character. There’s no Rings in this universe.

  The tool could’ve just made him invincible for a brief moment and sacrifice itself as balance, but it didn’t even do that simple thing. I’ll just have to believe that it did. It’s simpler that way. Are we supposed to totally buy that this is a Rick that doesn’t have a Project Phoenix to wake up in a clone after getting killed?

He could be beamed and then wake up in the clone, that’s fine. There’s no point in the comic pretending that this is the C-137 Rick from the show and not a comic exclusive one that would have a Project Phoenix. Oh no, if this wasn’t that Rick, it wouldn’t be epic enough. I’d prefer if it was C-132 Rick.

  Was this issue released before Season 4, where it was revealed that even if Rick dies, he’ll just wake up in the clone of a Rick from another universe entirely, and so he CAN’T actually die? Because knowing that, Rick’s only protecting himself and not letting Morty just kill him, because he doesn’t wanna go through all the trouble of going through various fascist universes where he’s wanted dead right away for not being fascist. For all he knows Morty will kill Beth while waiting for him, or be snapped out of the brainwashing because he thinks he killed Rick.

I think he just got unlucky last time and it wouldn’t happen again. But he got back home eventually. He could do that again. He just doesn’t wanna bother with it. The point is there’s no stakes here because he can’t actually die. Even if he did “ die “ it wouldn’t matter because it’d be temporary.

  So Rick presses a button on the wall and sends a ton of tiny Mortys out that cover him in an armor. Huh? How’s this supposed to protect him? Rick’s face is visible, so it’s still obvious that it’s HIM. Then Rick presses a button that summons a hologram of Jessica who’s programmed to flirt with him and tell him to look at her eyes. She says that he’s free to choose and do what he wants, and tells him to free himself. At least we’re seeing swirly eyes on her, so she’s brainwashing him out of it. That’s better than him being somehow talked out of brainwashing. That’d piss me off. This isn’t a dumb Sonic story.

But why is Morty’s vision being obscured by anything? So Morty gets talked into getting out of the armor. Why didn’t Rick, if he had this prepared long in advance, just do this in the first place? Why didn’t he telekinetically carry him HERE instead of just putting him in the portal, if there was always a way to unbrainwash him? I guess he just lost his temper and forgot all about this solution until now, fine. It makes sense that he would lose his temper that badly when someone was trying to kill him that he REALLY didn’t want to.

  So why are there so many Mortys around Rick that are tiny anyways? I guess him using Mortys as a human shield is why Morty finally slapped Rick, of his own free will. But we should’ve seen his hand IMPACT HIM! It’s weird, I was looking forward to him hugging Rick and apologizing because he got brainwashed into trying to kill him.

But fine I guess his rant about him seeing Mortys as expendable is BECAUSE he’s seeing all those pointless tiny Mortys being used as human shields… that, shouldn’t have even worked. We’re not told why he did summon them. It’s not like it was explained that they’re made of carbon nanotubes. He cathartically points out just what I was thinking earlier. “ You could’ve just unwashed my brain from the beginning, but you tried to kill me a bunch before you could be bothered! “

  Exactly! That was Out of Character, and that was supposed to be justifying him finally snapping at Rick? Really? That kind of writing reminds me of House of Cards in Archie. You don’t have to have something forced and uncharacteristic happen to justify a character snapping when it’s been a long time coming. All you need to do is have the extreme straw that breaks the camel’s back. It has to be EXTREME but not unbelievable.

  “ You treat us all worse than dog poop, Rick! You are always putting us in danger and you don’t care! And I’m tired of it, Rick! I’m through! We’re all expendable to you! “ But if he really cared about getting revenge, he would’ve just shot Rick by now, or at least kept slapping him. He got his point across really quick. Then he throws Rick’s nihilism right back at him, saying, “ You’re expendable too! There are millions of old-dried up pieces of crap JUST like you in the multiverse too. “

  Rick says confusingly, “ None of these specific versions of you have died on my watch! “ Where’d that come from? Is he talking about the little Mortys there? It’s sweet that Jerry says he appreciates that Rick went out of his way to keep him alive too. Still, it makes sense that this doesn’t make Morty feel better, because that’s just basic common decency of Rick to do. Like, that’s a STARTING point.

Morty says that maybe once he puts Rick down, he’ll go find the Rick that loves his family and wants to be with them. Rick says he’d have a better chance of finding a Rick down with that than harming a single hair on his own head. Doofus Rick is a thing, can’t he hang out with him? I’ve always assumed that he thinks Doofus Rick is just as lame as Rick thinks he is.

  Morty somehow accuses Rick of being all talk when HE’S clearly all talk since he could’ve easily shot him by now. Instead he just wants to hit him a bunch, and drops the weapon entirely. Rick and Morty just have a slap fight at each other. At least NOW we see actual impact, even if it’s not that satisfying. It makes sense because of course he would feel like this is more satisfying because his actual hand is hitting him, which wouldn’t be the case if he shot him. Morty says he hates him and ruined his life, and ruined the life of every Morty. True.

  Rick somehow says Morty ruins anyone’s life because he’s a walking bummer. Because of Rick. Rick could easily just erase a Morty’s memory every time he goes on an adventure so he wouldn’t have to suffer with all these memories of him that would eventually make him explode against him, but apparently Rick’s too lazy to do that, and I always assumed he wanted a Morty experienced with remembering all those adventures to be more competent.

If he had to remember an earlier adventure, it’d make his reaction times faster in response to a more familiar thing. Morty punches Rick in the weakest possible spot. Well if we’re gonna see him punch Rick, and only once ever, this is the best way to do that.

  Then Beth hits Rick with a shoe, and Beth rants at them that while they don’t have to like each other, maybe they could take one minute to think about someone other than themselves, yeah right. She says that if they keep trying to kill each other, it’d make Beth incredibly sad, and Jerry and Summer would miss them both. Jerry contradicts her even now. Beth asks them both to be considerate of someone else’s feelings just once. Rick is capable of that because otherwise he would’ve killed Jerry the day he met him, and most Jerrys would’ve been gotten killed.

And then Rick could rewrite Beth’s memory to make her think Jerry never married her. So he’s not nearly as evil as he could be. Thankfully the next page is about something else instead of Beth immediately being disappointed, which a dark comedy would have you expect.

  Logically, there’s no reason for the Illumirick to be going over their plan again with each other after it was already carried out. It’s just for the audience. There’s no reason for them to have existed. The Illumirick got Jones to brainwash Morty so that when they drop the universe bomb in, he’s not gonna be ready for it and won’t be able to beat the five-second delay on the anti-portal field, so he won’t be able to get away. They could’ve just sent a robot to brainwash Morty.

I guess not having to build a robot was less effort, but, how long did it take them to meet Jones? And they brag about another perfect plan executing, erasing Rick out of existence for being worse than, universe-erasing Ricks. Why isn’t Evil Morty doing this instead? HE’S the one who’s implied to have a big grudge against this Rick in particular, why else did he have HIM captured and talk to him specifically instead of killing him like all the other Ricks?

  Maybe I could’ve accepted this stupid ending to the comic more if they were Evil Morty, instead because that’d be foreshadowed by the show, instead of these comic villains coming out of nowhere, not even being remotely likable, and not even getting their bomb believably. So one of them drops the bomb into their universe through a portal. That’s what happens when the writer of a comic has no restraint.

This has to have been written because the staff of this comic got really angry and spiteful about the fact that the comic got canceled on them. I can’t think of any other explanation, because this isn’t how you end a comic. If the writer wants to give Rick what he deserves, he could just end it with him being put in a prison.

  The story ends with Rick swearing at seeing something get dropped into his universe, and he instantly recognizes it. It could’ve blown up right away at this point. Logically, it would’ve. I see no reason why it’s on a timer whatsoever, and there was no foreshadowing to that. If Rick was the type to act like this in response to seeing that, even when he wasn’t being distracted with an actual fight, he would’ve been doomed even without Morty’s fight with him happening.

  You’d think if Rick was so cool and smart, like he’s shown in the show as a lot, he would’ve just portaled it away immediately, or at least portaled it away before five whole seconds. He would’ve just said holy shit, not ALL of THIS swearing. I guess he didn’t have his portal gun in his lab coat, because apparently he never does.

I have a question. What’s the proof that Peacock Jones and his revenge squad from the last arc he was in and Mister Sick, aren’t all from a dimension other than C-137 and hate a different Rick entirely, which would disprove the idea that this IS C-137 Rick? If all possibilities have happened in places an infinite amount of times, then that would mean there’s an infinite amount of Mister Sicks and Jones that have met a Rick. So this doesn’t have to be a dimension we’re familiar with.

  In the second story, someone at the school screams why, Summer texts Rick in huge letters that she needs help, and he warps to her. He expects an actual emergency after being nice enough to show up at all RIGHT away, and she points to a bunch of girls who posted a picture of her when she fell asleep during English, and it’s somehow got 20,000 Likes.

Rick asks what he’s expected to do, not caring about her public humiliation because it wasn’t life-threatening to her. She proves she’s no better than Rick by wanting him to turn them into bugs, liquify them or send them to an awful planet. He’s been a pretty bad influence on her.

  Surprisingly, Rick doesn’t encourage her to do what he’d do and tries to change her mind. Well, he did say he wanted Morty to be a better man than him in the show one time, so maybe the same thing applies to Summer.

He says that social media is making her anxious and insecure, and that HAS been scientifically proven to be a phenomenon with people, and he tells her to get off her phone because only she can free herself from the control of Likes and companies. Never mind the fact that people who see the picture will keep making fun of her whether she uses social media herself or not. So HE’S missing the point. But how did a genius miss the point?

  She calls him old and asks what good is it having a mad scientist for a grandpa if she has to fight her own battles. Then reality ensues as the girls tease Summer for hanging out with Rick, calling him her creepy best friend who smells like barf, and one of them condescendingly defends Summer by saying that Rick’s the only friend she can make and it’s not her fault that he stinks. Doesn’t Summer have friends in the show? Like one of them that had a crush on Jerry?

You’d think these girls would know that, but either her friends ditched her by this point for being mean or this is another universe. I guess the girls provoking Rick will get him to want revenge on them because he doesn’t have any self-control when you get right down to it. Being a badass, he says, “ I changed my mind, Summer, I’m in. Stand back. “

  He shoots them with a ray gun and Summer cheers, “ Yes, yes, yes! “ This changes them into monsters so they could get the same degree of public humiliation, not to mention look just as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside. I expected him to kill them. Oh god, I remember the ending. Somehow they end up getting popular because of this, which is NOT how it WORKS! How is THIS considered a good enough ending?

  Sure, people would be interested in them and they’d get famous, but it wouldn’t be a GOOD famous! One of them immediately gets a message asking her to do sponsored posts… even though they look like monsters, so nobody would wanna look at them. Like, Christian groups would be going CRAZY hating them! And yet one of them gets a million followers. Summer gives Rick her phone saying that she gives up and is over it, and tells him to take it away from her.

  She’s known for her phone addiction, so that logically shouldn’t last. Then after Rick congratulates her for being free, she at least admits that at least now they’re not focused on HER anymore. Okay, okay, so it’s still a happy ending for Summer, it’s just a bittersweet one because of some kinda unrealistic bullshit. They’d be studied by scientists! Though I guess since they’re still people, the scientists would wanna pay them. Wouldn’t the government insist on studying them?

Why does every device Rick makes have to backfire? Technically it is a happier ending to have the girls see this as a blessing, so Rick doesn’t look as unsympathetic as he could for targeting human teenagers, but the girls clearly don’t deserve a positive outcome. They’d still hate the way they look. Their parents would!

  The first story by Kyle Starks was about Morty and Rick fighting until Rick uses a hologram of Jessica to literally brainwash Morty out of the brainwashing, which he should’ve done in the first place instead of losing his temper and trying to warp him into lava, a complete Out of Character moment purely done because the writer thought if he did something bad to him that WAS in-character, Morty would be too used to it to wanna kill him for real.

Despite the hype, the fight itself sucked because it was plagued with Talking is a Free Action, which if translated to motion, would only result in Morty being as slow as a snail. And the beginning of it could’ve been cut out because Rick’s armor was destroyed in one hit anyways.

  But it did get cathartic when Morty called him out for real, because the whole series has been building up to this, and it made sense that Beth would be the one to talk them out of it. And while they did just slap-fight like wusses, it made perfect sense that they would ultimately hold back like that because they still love each other at the end of the day, so they were uncomfortable with it, and besides, punching damages your knuckles, anyways. Slapping is much smarter, so of course Rick would do it.

  The second story by Terry Blas was about Summer’s attempt to humiliate bullies by getting them turned into monsters failing, because somehow they thought getting famous from it would be worth it, but technically the plan didn’t fail because people weren’t talking about Summer anymore. Still, it seems like the writer got jealous of her and Rick.

Issue 60:

  I wish the cover artist WROTE the damn story. After a tedious recap page, Rick shouts no a lot at the universe bomb and pushes Morty into a portal, immediately thinking to try to save his life. A lot more than five seconds PASSED, and yet he can still DO this. And Summer reveals that HE dived into the portal with him. If Rick was really smart, if cruel, he’d never come back to this universe and easily survive the bomb. In fact, I don’t know why the hell the Illumirick thought he WOULD come back and try to save this universe, if the whole reason they’re trying to kill him is because they think he’s so evil.

  The show Rick ditched his planet after ruining humanity, and he was completely deadpan and apathetic about doing so, not trying to save his family. If it was in-character for Rick to go back and risk his life to save a universe, he would’ve gone out of his way to un-Cronenberg the universe of the pilot. But I guess the logic is, the comic’s C-137 Rick does feel guilty about abandoning a Cronenberged planet and really doesn’t wanna ditch a planet to be ruined AGAIN after he got another family.

  Meanwhile, Beth and Jerry get distracted arguing over something forced and stupid. Jerry asks if Rick left a surprise for them, and Beth lampshades his stupidity because Rick ran away in a panic shouting no. And a portal was created above him! He says that BETH did that before and it was because Jerry threw a surprise party for her when she was getting out of the shower, which was totally forced, unless he literally did it just to spite her. He IS smiling when saying this, so he DID do it to spite her, to PRANK her, and he doesn’t seem to care that he got the pastor’s wife killed in the process. That was dumb.

  After the Illumirick look forward to succeeding, Rick and Morty warp over to them, and one of them asks how he’d know to come here. Yeah, HOW DID HE KNOW? How would he know about the Illumirick? If the writer knows it doesn’t make ANY kind of sense, he shouldn’t written it anyways! Rick presses a button on his wrist and kills nearly all of the Illumiricks in a way that’s too messy to be satisfying as karma. Rick explains that the reason he knew to come here was that he MADE the Illumirick.

  He knows what he is and that because of that, it’s only a matter of time before someone like-minded would organize a murder group to take him out, so why not be the one to put it all together at that point? But wouldn’t there be more murder groups than just this one? So all he did was make one more. Since there’s infinite universes, there’s no way that him being the one to organize ONE of these groups, made sure that nobody else would organize any other groups that he WOULDN’T be able to deal with easily, because a lot more people than these guys would want to kill him.

  He made sure that the worst Ricks were being dealt with before they messed with him, and when it was his time, he’d be the first to know about it. That sure was convenient. At least this comic TRIED to have him come here make sense, so this comic is good enough that when I ask that earlier question, I kinda wanna take back what I said about it not making sense.

  Rick then says he wasn’t expecting a universe bomb hooked to an anti-portal generator with a five-second delay, and confusingly compliments him that it was a nice touch, instead of hating him. So, he founded the Illumirick, but naturally because he wasn’t with them when they got the universe bomb and put their plan together, he wasn’t aware of their exact plan, rather than it always being the same plan.

  So other than him knowing to come here and get revenge on them, what was the point of forming the group? It does make sense because they kept talking about and reiterating their plan, so that means it was a new plan, not one that Rick would’ve told them to come up with. He says that this Rick is pretty smart already and figured out the cloak pins were murder devices and deactivated his, his little failsafe.

  The Rick says that he’d have to be stupid not to look at the cloak pins just in case. That shows how dumb those Ricks were. Well it’s in-character for a Rick to be so irresponsible, willing to dismiss what might be an obvious problem in the making because they’re too lazy to wanna take measures against it, that he looks stupid, and that’s why his planet got Cronenberged.

  He tells him to tell him how to defuse the bomb. Well, now Rick’s stopped being smart because he’s deluding himself into thinking he could get him to tell him the truth, when he doesn’t have a device that would force him to tell the truth at the press of a button, even though I KNOW that’s possible from the comic itself. How’d Rick expect to be actually told how to defuse the universe bomb?!

  Rick says he knows when a Rick is lying and how to torture the truth out of anyone. If he was really smart, he’d know that it’s been conclusively proven that torture doesn’t work for interrogation because the tortured person would just LIE. He would keep lying over and over and the bomb would go off. And Rick himself said that even if someone tortured him, it wouldn’t make a difference anyways because his entire life is pain.

  The Rick smirks at him anyways, and Rick says to have it his way. Oh, he IS gonna try to torture him anyways instead of learning his lesson, because he tells Morty to grab him Baby Rick’s pacifier, that multidimensional scanner, and take Morty’s pants off. Again, if Rick was really as smart as he needs to be here, he would’ve already invented a mind scanner or truth forcing device like a version of Morty had.

  He would’ve grabbed it off the desk and brought it with him and forced him to give him the truth. And he’s just thinking he can defuse the bomb out of desperation to believe it. Then the Rick changes his mind and says that all they told him was that it would take Rick’s heart to turn it off. Rick says it’s a riddle, and kills him in his rant that would’ve been more satisfying if he was actually being specific.

  How would Rick’s heart defuse a bomb? Why would it be expected to? That sounds like a ridiculous cheesy Deus ex Machina, not something a Rick would do, and while Ricks could make anything and therefore make a bomb that could be defused by detecting Rick’s heart, metaphorically or literally, and it would go with the idea that they’re killing Rick for being evil and so it’s made to not blow up if he’s actually not so bad, it wouldn’t be in-character for Ricks to think the bomb should immediately forgive their enemy just because he was nice one time.

This makes no sense, and it makes me sad to say that the writer was fully aware of this. For once I would’ve appreciated it if this was Sonic comic writing where a Deus ex Machina saved the day because there were no other alternatives.

  Rick explains to Beth that they may have less than 3 hours before the universe ends, and while it’s a long time, the guy who made this thing up wanted a lot of time for the person to suffer before the bomb would go off. If they wanted a lot of time, why is it only 3 hours? I guess it was at the maximum POSSIBLE time. And after Jerry wisely suggests sending it to another universe where everyone’s made of STDs, Rick says there’s an anti-portal generator on it, so now that he’s here, he can’t make another portal.

  Rick came back to show that he’s smart enough to stop the bomb. Moron. Even a genius can end up defeated by his own personality. Eggman gets defeated because of his arrogance even after becoming omnipotent, so I can believe that it’s in-character for a Rick to come here, not just to come back for his replacement family, but because he got too arrogant because he can invent anything and didn’t wanna admit he could be beat.

  But he just didn’t accept the fact that it was way more likely he was just lied to, by someone who had no reason to tell the truth. He could’ve lied to him and warped away to avoid torture, and he knew that because Rick wasn’t gonna keep him with him just in case he’d have turned out to have lied, and he made sure of that because he provoked him into killing him. So, he’s screwed.

  Rick warns his family that they probably have hours to live, so Summer grabs a ray gun saying that she’s taking it. Gee, I wonder if she’s gonna use it against her enemies. Yep, she does. That’s dark, and sadly it’s not out of character for her. This comic really emphasized how, she can be a jerk, because Rick is a very bad influence. Good thing she’s not a genius like him. But when she WAS, she used her genius for nothing but good.

  Beth wants to die doing what she loves and doing good, even though it’d be pointless to save those horses when they’re gonna die anyways. Then he hands Morty a huge wad of cash and an invisibility cloak, and he explains that while he knew he always wanted one, even HE couldn’t stomach what Morty would do with it.

  Morty says he’s going to stay because he knows what his purpose is. Beth really talked him out of it. Then he laughs off Rick’s joke and says they should get to work. It makes sense that he stuck with him anyways because the whole franchise has had a recurring theme where no matter how many times and how much Morty gets sick of Rick, he’ll always keep coming back to be his sidekick.

  Then Jerry runs over to Beth, and says, “ Listen, I know I’ve not always been the best husband… But Beth, I’ve only ever been good at one thing in this godforsaken world, and that’s loving you with all my heart. And if today’s the end of the world, I want to die with you in my arms. “ I figured something nasty was coming, and it’s that Beth uncharacteristically chose the worst place to sit down to kiss him. She’d get fired for this, but they know they’re gonna die anyways.

  Predictably, Rick tries to use an actual, clone Rick’s heart to stop the bomb, and Morty says that he thinks they made it so it would be impossible to defuse the bomb. He’s right. There’s tons of times when he’s on the right track, even if he second-guesses himself. Maybe there was another version of Rick and Peacockl Jones, and they had similarities to the C-137 Rick by sheer coincidence.

I don’t care if Morty made a reference to the pilot episode in the arc where Jones first appeared. Realistically an infinite amount of Mortys would’ve gone through that because there’s infinite dimensions. This is a different Rick, as far as I want to believe. (Endless Mine in Sonic 3 plays)

  Rick says that what the Rick meant by him getting the worst thing for a Rick was that he got attached. “ You even went and got a- “That was in his rant about how evil Rick is, so I call bullshit. Why would he think that was evil of Rick? He just lied about what the Rick meant. He says that he’s attached to this specific Morty and family, and he’s at least written to lampshade that he could’ve left this universe and never come back. So the writer thought of that.

  Too many of these background images don’t have anything to do with proving Rick cares about Morty. It’s just Morty horribly suffering. So it wastes comic space. He says that he likes this universe and hates that he does, and if the solution was Rick caring, that he would’ve already defused the bomb. Morty says he might need to care about everyone. That’d be unlike him, and the series. Regardless, Rick says that everyone in the universe is like someone in his family.

  Rick makes a long speech that’s trying to be heartwarming and just ends up being too boring for me to wanna reiterate, stating stuff we already know about various main characters. He compliments Morty a lot, but if it’s only to defuse a bomb, I don’t feel like it really counts if it could all be lying. He’s not lying, we’ve seen proof of that, but he shouldn’t have to be threatened into admitting he loves him.

It’s sweet that he’s wiping away a tear while having his hand on Morty’s shoulder. He talks as if he’s proud of Morty for always trying to show people the right thing. “ Maybe you’re flawed and weak, but at least you never stop trying. I’m your grandpa, and I love you Morty. I always have and I always will. “ Good thing he admits that he loves him again in a later IDW comic.

  We’re shown that of course, reality ensues because the bomb blows up anyways. Of course there was no way to defuse the bomb. That’s what I meant by, “ worst ending ever, “ and it’d be fine if it was explained that this was some random dimension we never saw before.

And we’re somehow supposed to believe that a bunch of Doofus Ricks took over the Illumiricki decades ago. To be fair they could just make themselves LOOK like the good, Doofus Rick to be underestimated. They clearly were never actually good if they thought blowing up a universe was okay.

  One of them says that the Ricks that make fun of them are the worst Ricks, and get what they deserve. That doesn’t justify destroying an entire universe though. And one of them says they’ll have to replace the puppet Ricks to keep them safe behind the scenes, and they brag that Ricks are gullible when their ego is played to. One of them asks who is the next Rick for them to take out. The other one says, “ The one that destroyed the Council of Ricks and the Galactic Federation all at once. The worst of us all. He’s just the  next universe over from the last one. “

  So on the one hand, out of nowhere, NO, this story really WASN’T the C-137 universe, but, the story ends with the implication that the same thing’s gonna happen to it, anyways. I wish we were told as soon as the arc started that this took place in a different dimension. So yeah, worst ending ever. But I can understand them waiting until now to reveal this because it’s the final arc in the comic and we’d wonder why we’re supposed to care about if it was taking place in a dimension we never saw before.

  To be fair, just because it’s implied that the same thing will happen doesn’t mean it will. If the show Rick casually ditched his universe instead of uncronberging its people and even bringing his family with him, then it’d be uncharacteristic of him to ever come back to a universe with a universe bomb in it. And since HE isn’t the Rick that founded the Illumirick, he wouldn’t know it was a universe bomb on sight.

Maybe he would, but he wouldn’t know to go here and try to find out a lie about how to defuse it, so he’d just ditch the universe after all because he’d have no reason to use his portal opportunity to warp here and then warp back home. All of these Ricks might die of alcohol poisoning before they’d have a chance to drop a universe bomb on another planet.

  In the next story, which probably takes place in another universe entirely, Jerry complains about being sick on the couch, and says he can’t sit here anymore and has watched every single one of the interdimensional cable channels that Rick put on TV. He asks Rick to cure him. Rick says it IS easy for him, and he’s just not usually inclined to help.

So if that’s the case, why is he helping now? It should’ve been written that Jerry flattered him first. Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to not help and lie that he is? And Rick’s inventions usually backfire for the sake of the plot, and since this is a SHORT story, it HAS to backfire because he did something significant at the START of it as its whole premise.

  He uses a needle to extract the virus from Jerry and combines it with a liquid so it could be easy to contain, and he holds it in golem form in his hand. Then it grows and greets them happily, when it has no reason to know English or anything. Viruses aren’t alive. How did this happen by accident? Rick acts like this was an unfortunate accident, not something he’s doing to spite Jerry. Morty shakes his hand when it’s outstretched and gets sick. I guess he assumed it was another alien.

  Morty’s told that he has to snot-rocket the virus out of his nose and Jerry couldn’t do that because it wasn’t sentient yet. The only way this could happen is if somehow Rick’s sentience ray was combined with this device. Did a Rick go to his lab and do that as a prank to him when he never even met him before? I guess so, a Rick would be that petty.

Jerry then grabs it to help Morty and gets sick, (laughs) okay I guess this is silly enough to be funny, and the story ends with Rick saying he’s getting the hazmat suit, instead of deciding not to help them at all, which he foreshadowed by complaining, “ You have no idea what it’s like living with you people. “ Well it got me to SMILE, so I guess it was worth it!

  The first story by Kyle Starks was about an alternate universe than C-137 getting destroyed by a Rick group, after its founder was tricked into thinking he could defuse it, making himself think he wasn’t lied to, and it’s at least lampshaded that he was gullible by thinking that because he’s gullible when his ego is played to. It’s fortunately lampshaded that he could’ve easily avoided getting blown up.

The reason he stayed is that he got attached to his new family. At least he went out after admitting he loves Morty, even if it felt a bit hollow that he had to be forced into it and only said it because he was forced into having to do it to defuse the bomb.

I hate the ending, and it’s obvious that it was only written because the comic writers got too mad about being forced to cancel the comic. I know he did a lot of bad things, but, why did he have to be blown up as a punishment for caring about his family?

  And the second story by Terry Blas sucks because it doesn’t even bother explaining how in the world Rick’s virus extracting device made the virus sentient by accident. What, was it nanomachines? But it did look silly enough to be worth it, even if the art sucked. There’s still reviews of this comic after this. There’s a Rick and Morty Dungeons and Dragons arc, there’s a second one, there’s a Worlds Apart series. I’ve still got plenty of stories to go.

Sonic Retold Reviews Newbie’s Perspective

Sonic Retold Issue 1:

  Unfortunately it starts out with a rewriting of the Endangered Species arc, I say unfortunately because Archie Sonic Online proceeded to do an issue on that PERFECTLY. I guess this will have the advantage of actually finishing it, but it won’t make a difference if it’s not as good.

So Albion is damaged and an echidna kid trips and someone calls him sonny saying that he’s out late. But it’s not Uncle Chuck though. It’s boring when it starts out with someone I’ve never seen before instead of a main character. The Dark Legionnaires tell him that it’s past his bedtime, which would normally just be well-meaning advice, but one of them seems to be ready to knock him out. So Remington beats up the bad guys, doing what he’s gotten into the habit of and saving the villagers. We didn’t need an entire page on this, just the one panel where he was being told where the others were.

  Meanwhile, Lien-Da shows morality for once, or maybe it’s just to try to manipulate Lara-Le to her favor. She complains about Albion now being just a site for more pointless war, and tells Lara-Le that they’re better off joining forces to save what’s left of their kind. But this kind of cliché trope of “ we can rule together “ ALWAYS goes the same way with the hero saying no, so it shouldn’t be written anymore. It just wastes our time. So that’s a LOT of panels WASTED with nothing happening.

  Lara complains at her, saying stuff she should already know. Anyways, finally Lien-Da says that one of her captives confessed that Lara-Le secretly locked away someone on the island whose powers could win a war. That’s confusing, coming out of nowhere. Why would he be locked away instead of used to take down Eggman if he’s powerful? He could have bombs in him that would go off unless he’d do what they wanted or at least shock him. He just sounds like a Deus ex Machina person. After she threatens to legionize her people, predictably, finally Lien-Da is alerted to Remington.

  And THEN we see Sonic, Amy and Tails, with Sonic boasting that he fought her army just fine. So, there wasn’t much point to the first seven pages, was there? You could’ve just skipped to here and missed nothing. Something I never missed about Archie was its poor pacing. That’s a lot of dialogue to read through for nothing.

  Remington says to get the civilians out of the prison eggs, and Sonic agrees, and tells Tails to take out the turrets. I can’t take the name prison egg seriously, but it makes sense that in their situation after dealing with them so many times, even they would. I can already tell I prefer how Archie Sonic Online handled this because it started out right away with the heroes getting believably knocked out and captured, which was far better pacing.

Tails is fine with throwing someone off a roof, and with the army knocked out, Lien-Da says to activate the security grid, which summons electricity in the entire courtyard. But less realistically, this doesn’t knock the heroes out or even zap them. Sonic’s told by Remington to get to Lien-Da first, while he’ll try to rescue his girlfriend Komi-Ko.

  Lara’s right that Eggman might be more merciful if Lien-Da saved her remaining troops and retreated, but she just acts prideful. She should be saying that she thinks Eggman would blow her up if she retreated. So, after most of the page is wasted, Sonic finally jumps onto the roof next to Lien-Da, satisfyingly scaring her, as he’s conveniently able to jump really high now. THAT’S believable, right?

Yeah I prefer him being taken into the room with her, and having to spindash around handcuffed after being rescued. That was way more realistic. After he defeats some Legionnaires, Lien-Da summons an electrical whip from her hand, while having electricity in front of her eyes, which should make her unable to see past the electricity so that’s dumb.

  Sonic spindashes at her and interrogates her, desperate enough to think she’d help him, and she kicks over Lara to force Sonic to jump down and catch her, and of course when he lands on his feet after jumping off a roof, he isn’t injured from the fall at ALL. That’s totally more believable than Archie Sonic Online, right? Not even an explanation that his Rings healed his feet. I’m forced to assume that wasn’t that big of a fall.

Lara thanks him, and Sonic already complains that Lien-Da got away. You’d think he’d be able to run off at sonic speed and keep running around and find her in seconds, since he’s already demonstrated he can run across the whole planet in ten seconds in Archie Sonic.

  After some Legionnaires hope that the grandmaster would finally recognize their skills for using prisoners as hostages to escape, Remington knocks one of them out with a gun and intimidates the other into opening the door to the cell. But because bullshit, she somehow isn’t here and was taken to the infirmary.

He’s told that they heard screams all night and then it went quiet, even though logic would dictate that she would be put to sleep during any kind of procedure, at the very least because her screaming would hurt the ears of the people around her, sadism or not. They’d at least put duct tape on her mouth.

  Speaking of sadism, here’s the most memorable part of this fancomic. And that’s not a good thing. I didn’t remember anything else about this plot going back to this! Komi-Ko was reduced to just a head. It doesn’t make any sense that she would be singled out, and I don’t see why they would bother with a new legionization process when legionization worked just fine before, and clearly this wouldn’t work anyways. I think it’s really obvious looking at this that the writer had no empathy whatsoever for Komi-Ko.

Archie Sonic Online kept her alive, like you’d expect for a kids’ series. Because I had read this melodrama, I complimented it on keeping her safe. This is some clearly unnecessary melodrama that’s darker and edgier than anything the official series would be allowed to do.

  Archie Sonic Online’s issue actually feels like something that would’ve been written in Archie Sonic. This just makes Remington cry for the sake of it. I honestly don’t see why someone would have a problem with Komi-Ko because she had a cool design and while she didn’t have a personality, that’s better than a lot of awful characters.

  And then our time is wasted with a villain scene between Lien-Da and Eggman, where nothing happens. At least it’s polite of Orbot to ask Lien-Da if she had a nice day. But it’s irritating that Cubot calls the echidnas meddling pincushions who need a lesson in manners.

Eggman tells her not to bother with a counterstrike because none of that will matter soon. He brags that he’ll use the Genesis Wave to create a new version of the world where he’ll be a god, and naturally Lien-Da’s scared at this, since it would change the status quo for her. So, that was it? Not even 25 pages?

  Well, this sucked. This issue by glitcher from deviantart, wasn’t nearly as believable and epic as how Archie Sonic Online handled the Endangered Species arc, and had no variety in what happened in it, even if I can at least compliment it on resolving the arc in one issue. In this story, Sonic and his friends and Remington rescue the civilians by battling Dark Legionnaires in a typical way, Sonic even jumps up to the roof where Lien-Da is somehow and somehow avoids breaking his feet when he jumps off the roof to catch Lara-Le. The city is freed in the most predictable way imaginable, so predictable that I would imagine the story would be more interesting than this.

  But Remington’s girlfriend was literally reduced to a head. That’s totally unnecessary and obviously wouldn’t be done in the official comic for good reason. So what is the point of writing it?! It was needlessly dark and edgy, the comic makes NO attempt at explaining why SHE was singled out for this new legionization attempt and not anyone else. Their legionization was working just fine as it was. Komi-Ko wasn’t a character with an awful personality, and her design was really cool, so I can’t imagine why the writer was so heartless to her, other than the fact that she’s an echidna, but that’d be a bad excuse. I guess it’s also to torture Remington, but he doesn’t deserve this, and he was portrayed as a badass in this issue, so I don’t get it!

  I prefer Archie Sonic Online’s rewriting of the arc, where the heroes got captured in a realistic scene, giving Julie-Su and Charmy’s girlfriend a chance to shine, which I’m pretty sure was even how Flynn originally planned it to be. Even he showed the Penders characters more respect! Saffron got to be memorably useful by taking advantage of her flight to survey what was below and tell her friends about it! Julie disguised herself and used a ray gun, so they each had a unique thing going on and even Knuckles helped save the day, which made sense since Albion is the homeland of HIS people so he should be the main one saving them.

It was clearly shown that Knuckles went off to go save Albion in Archie Sonic because of Julie, so there was no excuse for him not showing up here. He also dealt with Metal Knuckles, even if he was defeated really quickly, which makes sense because he was in Archie Sonic’s Endangered Species arc. He doesn’t even show up here.

  Also, while Archie Sonic Online had that evil purple guy who hates echidnas show up with his devil dogs for an intriguing cliffhanger, this issue somehow completely ignores him, not even trying to show off what the actual issue would’ve been like. So that’s not as professional as the alternative. Obviously the art was good and it was intriguing to read because it was based on Archie Sonic. But you can say the same thing about Archie Sonic Online, and it’s got fantastic writing that blew me away. I went from 247 to 248 and it was NIGHT and DAY. Characters were respectable and it wasn’t nearly as confusing!

  When I first read this comic, I read it all at once, so it’s interesting, but when actually trying to think about the story and how it could’ve been improved, I see that it’s nothing impressive. Go FIGURE, the characters beat up the Dark Legionnaires with their fists. That’s the only plot. That’s kinda boring isn’t it? Like, no variety at all?

  Archie Sonic Online even did a way better scene where Lara-Le got called out on working for Eggman. She was told that not one person in the room didn’t lose a loved one to Eggman, and that affected her. It was also revealed to the people there that she had bombs in her cybernetics, and that upset her, like embarrassed her and she had to lie about it. It was more effective than her just being spit at, that’s for sure.

  The only good thing I can really say about this issue is that it resolved the arc in one issue, so we get to see what it’d be like if it actually ended, while with Archie Sonic Online, I’m gonna have to wait YEARS to see Endangered Species get resolved because they take an entire year to finish an issue, and they keep switching around! But THIS, is just anticlimactic, underwhelming, there’s clearly something missing from it if in a story about Albion, the echidna hater never even shows up.

Sonic Retold Issue 2:

  It starts out in Albion, even though I thought the last issue was supposed to resolve all that. So this is just a pointless epilogue apparently instead of immediately moving onto the next thing. So Wyn and Lara reunite and hug. Well, that’s good. I didn’t see that in Archie Sonic Online.

But the second page seems to be a complete waste of space where they talk about recap and nothing happens. Surprisingly, Remington gets mad and says Knuckles doesn’t belong in Haven, because it’s a tomb for a forgotten guild and the Brotherhood is lost. He has a right to be mad that Knuckles abandoned his own people, as a member of that people, but somehow he’s completely forgetting that he has to guard the Master Emerald. If he said that he could just get a giant robot to do it, THEN he’d be right. At least Sonic admits that Knuckles can be kind of a jerk but still wants to help them anyways. But he wouldn’t be complaining about Knuckles being in Haven in Archie Sonic because he’s supposed to be in Albion right now!

Sonic tells Tails to contact Nicole and find out what frequency was used, since Julie once contacted them with her built in antenna and should be with Knuckles. Remington says that his local engineers will start work on repairing Tails’ plane. And another entire page is wasted, boring us with nothing happening.

Why is he telling Sonic all this stuff that Sonic already knows?! Remington says that with Sonic’s help, the struggling echidnas can conquer the Dark Legion somehow, and unite the echidna race. Sonic says that conquer isn’t one of his favorite buzzwords, as I’m starting to get worried that Remington is gonna get a sudden Ron the Death Eater status, fanfiction writer style, after Julie and Safron were snubbed their time in the limelight for being Penders characters.

  It’s understandable what Remington wants to do, though. He’s supposed to be a good guy, but it makes sense that the bad situation of his people would make him desperate and bitter. But look at Chuck, the people of Mobotropolis were put in a desperate situation at the start of the comic and he didn’t turn bitter and go to extremes. Sonic asks what Remington will do with the resulting prisoners, as I’m wondering why Remington thinks a softie like Sonic would happily help out with his vengeful plan. I guess he HAS seen nothing but a cocky guy who beats people up in Sonic so far, of course he wouldn’t know Sonic as well as his friends do.

  We see the Dark Legionnaires surrounded by people as Remington says that they need a new home as beautiful as Echidnaopolis, and thanks to Sonic, they now have a huge supply of workers to rebuild Albion and a few months of hard labor should take the fight out of them. That’s harsh but pragmatic, way smarter than simply executing the Dark Legionnaires, since they need all the workforce they can get, provided that they won’t be able to escape their situation and plan against them again. Hopefully all the work the Dark Legionnaires will do to help them will be worth keeping them around. It’s worth rebuilding as fast as possible.

  The Legionnaires get to make up for what they did, even if it means they have to be forced into it. Hey wait a minute, when Eggman finds out which ones were left behind on Albion, won’t he just press a button to blow them all up? These guys are ticking time bombs. Sure, Eggman thinks the failure on Albion doesn’t matter because he’ll do the Genesis Wave, but that’s gonna FAIL, and then he WILL care about it.

  Sonic tells him to make sure it’s not too hard or he might be fighting them again soon, doesn’t mention the fact that there’s bombs in the Legionnaires, and he wisely plans on sending Knuckles here to come and supervise. Okay, but who’s gonna be guarding the Master Emerald? Vector? I’m glad this conversation didn’t lead to Sonic blowing up at Remington and them trading blows, because they’re supposed to be on the same side.

  Anyways, Shard wonders how Sally could be the one he’s looking for. I’m wondering that too. And then it cuts away to Secret HQ for what looks like another entire page that’s wasted, on nothing but Silver sitting around. Sonic the Continuation has a lot more emphasis on things happening, action, in every scene, not just people talking.

  Silver wonders how Mecha Sally is supposed to be responsible for a future worldwide calamity, and asks for Future Mammoth Mogul’s help in his mind, wanting to see through the veil of time. How would he think he could do this?! What a Deus ex Machina. That turns out to be a waste of time.

So he gets called by Shard and told where the Freedom Fighters are. There’s a LOT of pages in this issue that could’ve been skipped no problem, and think about how long it took the artist to make them. Imagine how far ahead he’d be in the comic if he didn’t.

  Silver says that the Krudzu are the weeds that can control machines, though they never controlled machines in Issue 1 and were just robot weeds, and based on that, he asks if it’d be possible to engineer the Krudzu of all things to act as a deroboticizing agent. Because it infected Titan Metal Sonic and especially Metal Knuckles. So I guess he thinks they could reprogram a Krudzu to have Sally’s real personality and infect Mecha Sally with it to artificially return her mind to normal, which he should be saying since obviously a Krudzu could never have Sally’s DNA and therefore literally deroboticize her. That’s certainly more interesting and maybe more brilliant than her being deroboticized with a bio-analyzer that shouldn’t still be around.

But from what I remember of this comic, it never even gets to the point where that DOES happen to her, so Silver might as well not have brought it up, because it’s not gonna be used anyways. And of course Sally’s still a robot, look at how slow the pacing is. Silver’s told that the last location of the Krudzu is in a forest pond south of Snottingham now. I thought the last of the Krudzu was defeated with the Metal Knuckles fight.

And he’s smart enough to tell Shard to stay away from it because it could infect him too. That’s smarter than when Gemerl was sent after an electromage who could control him in IDW. If only all the characters were this smart. Then it would be a great trend! But should Shard even need to be told this?

  Then the story cuts to Haven, where Knuckles and Julie are trying to repair it. It’s unusual, since I wouldn’t expect either of them to know how to do that. But all of the engineer characters we know are too busy. They try initiating the computer system and Knuckles just gets burned, and despairs.

Dimitri may be a genius, so he could fix Haven, but only after he’d get a robot body so he wouldn’t just be a head, and again, everyone who could do that for him is busy. I’m sure Chuck and Rotor are busy working on a deroboticizer. These two should realize that they’re gonna get Haven fixed eventually and they just have to wait for Tails to not be busy anymore. They just want something to do.

  Knuckles finally justifies why he’s trying to fix Haven properly. Since the Brotherhood are lost in another zone, if they finish repairs here, he’s hoping he could use Haven’s systems to find a way there. Uh, oh yeah, because Haven’s totally well known for having an interdimensional portal or the blueprints for it, right? No. Even then, Knuckles would obviously have better luck going to Rotor because Rotor has a portal to the Zone of Silence and the Reverse Universe in his base.

It could send someone anywhere. And even then, they’re never gonna know which exact dimension the Brotherhood were sent to. I’m guessing the Twilight Cage is the most likely place since it’s associated with echidnas, and it’d be an ironic punishment for the Brotherhood which of course Finitevus would want the most, but what if there’s an infinite amount of Twilight Cages?

  If Finitevus was smart, he’d send them to a different one than the Prime one because no one would guess it, and the heroes would never know how to find them. If there were an infinite amount of universes in Sonic, there’d be an infinite amount where the Brotherhood were trapped in the Twilight Cage. Although I have a suspicion that there’s a finite amount of universes in Archie Sonic, because Mammoth Mogul was able to make all of Zonic’s screens turn black, so if he’s able to destroy most of the universes but a few so quickly, then there would be a finite amount.

  So Julie says there’s no way they can get Haven operational again after all these weeks, let alone modify their Warp Ring to access different zones. She does realize that Knuckles has supergenius engineers for friends, right? Was she not told about Rotor being able to make an Anti-Mobius portal? If you can make a portal to the Zone of Silence, you can modify a Warp Ring to do the same thing. Would she really despair like that?

She at least says she’s not giving up and that Knuckles should keep fighting for his family’s legacy. She changed her mind pretty fast. Again, Knuckles is supposed to be in Albion right now. He got the signal and decided to go there. We saw it TWICE in Archie Sonic actually! This comic isn’t even trying to portray how the actual issue would’ve been like.

  Just as they make up, they get interrupted by Dimitri, and Julie’s pretty rude to him for just being HERE, even though he was being polite by hoping he wasn’t interrupting anything, and she should’ve been told that the whole reason he’s here is to make it UP to them. And she was IN that position where she left the Dark Legion and joined Knuckles. She knows how he feels, kind of! She has no right to judge.

Dimitri relates to Knuckles that he knows how it feels to be separated from his family – so does Julie – and he wants the Dark Legionnaire echidnas to be freed from Eggman. That’s an ambitious heroic goal when he should know that none of the people here can do that. Knuckles gets some hope, because if a guardian can end up being friends with two Legion defectors, who knows what could happen?

  Then they get a Freedom Fighter signal. The scene should’ve started HERE. We could have figured they were like that in their lives. Julie plugs it into the monitor, and Sonic tells Knuckles what he did in Albion. At least D.E.L. sounds more dignified than Dark Egg Legion. Sonic already SAID that he was gonna get Knuckles to supervise the place. We didn’t need to SEE him tell him to. It was at least surprisingly smart of Sonic to end the message right after telling him to do that to avoid giving Knuckles time to argue with him.

  Knuckles says that first he’s gonna scavenge for supplies in the ruins of New Megaopolis, and it should only take a few days to get what he needs. But Sonic told him to go to Albion pronto. I think Knuckles is just stalling to avoid facing his people. He doesn’t say what exact supplies he’s looking for to justify him wasting DAYS on this.

And really, they’re putting Safron alone in charge of guarding the Emerald? She doesn’t even have any weapons! And realistically she has to go to the bathroom later, which makes me wonder how Knuckles does it. It would’ve made sense if there was a hidden toilet nearby. It’s an island with Haven on it.

  As if our time wasn’t wasted enough in this issue, Sonic has a brief nightmare about losing Sally to Robotnik. We already knew he was upset about what happened. We see him and Amy in the desert and while they reference that they ate something, we don’t know exactly what it is, because that’d be effort. So much for us knowing what kinds of hors d’oeuvres Albion serves. Tails comes back to them and says that he stayed up all night because he didn’t trust any engineer but him with his plane, as suddenly he has trust issues and an ego to the point where he calls the engineers grease monkeys and had to make sure they weren’t dismantling his plane.

  He tells Amy that T-Pup and him were locating the Death Egg with the tracker he planted on it in issue 238, which tells them that Eggman’s in the Northern Tundra. Did we need to see THIS scene, either? The audience already knew that the heroes had a tracker on the Death Egg and went to the North Pole from original Archie Sonic. Though I did need the reminder that he had a tracker on it in the first place. I just picture them as following it really closely with their plane.

Sonic says they’ll leave after lunch because he wants to call Elias and check up on home. They wanna rescue Sally, don’t they? Why aren’t they in a hurry? The plane got fixed! Then we see Elias in a call with Sonic on his computer. You’d think Sonic would be calling anyone but Elias, like his own family. If he wants to check up on home, his family is at home. I’d expect Sally to wanna contact Elias above anyone else. I didn’t know they were such close friends. They barely talk to each other.

Sonic has redundant recap to him and says he’s gonna take down Eggman at the north pole. I guess he’s just SAYING that, to mean that he’s just gonna fight Eggman, or else he’s pretty confident. All he wants to do is rescue Sally right now. I’m not sure how the heroes even plan on doing that without Silver though because at no point in the story arc did they mention that they had the Robian neutralizer that Antoine wanted to use on his father, because that would’ve been common sense.

So that’s why they needed Silver to save them in Archie Sonic because they rushed into a fight with Mecha Sally with NO MEANS of neutralizing her right away, with basically no plan! So they had no reason to think they’d do better against her in the next fight! I just got distracted into ranting about that out of sheer boredom because NOTHING is happening. These two are just discussing recap with each other.

Elias says that his parents are traveling to the Wolf Pack’s nation to provide support and aid after Sally’s last attack. That is the prime example of how ridiculously bad the pacing is in this fancomic. One of the only things I think about when I remember it, is that we actually see Elias’ parents in the Wolf Pack Nation. There’s no reason to!

They wanna ensure cooperation between the nations against Eggman. It was already ensured. And as Sonic should’ve known, it was Elias’ mother’s decision, as Elias reminds us about how Flynn ruined the character of Sally’s father out of spite. It would’ve been less spiteful to just not write king Max at all at that point and keep him asleep.

  Tails Doll spies on Elias while he tells Sonic that they’ve taken security precautions to make sure his parents’ trip goes undetected. I don’t know why Nicole can’t sense Tails Doll, when she was able to sense Miles and Lightning Lynx in her city and magically knew that Tails was breaking into the prison to get his dad out of it. I didn’t miss that aggravating plot hole with her. Elias’ mother wanted to remind her husband of everything good the Acorn Kingdom stands for by helping the Wolf Pack, which tries to justify it, but I don’t know how they PLAN to help. So I don’t take it seriously that they’re going there. It’s so weird that they’re going there without any of the heroes as bodyguards. At least in Issue 134, the royalty planned on doing something similar, yes, but at least they planned on having what they thought was Antoine with them as a bodyguard, not to mention Chuck!

  Sonic asks Elias why he’s back in the nanite city and Elias says he can’t hide in the forest while Ixis rules his kingdom, and after he’s naturally upset about that, immediately Sonic tells him to relax. And Elias forgets all about the secret part of the Secret Freedom Fighters, which doesn’t strike me as something that would happen in Archie Sonic. You’d think if he was okay with this, he would’ve told Sonic about his team right away. But it makes sense that he trusts Sonic with it, he’s the main hero of the world.

I hate that T-Pup was drawn almost biting Amy’s hand just for petting him. Tails wouldn’t have programmed that. I hate that Amy’s eyeballs aren’t there. So Elias recaps to Sonic about Ixis. There’s a reason this time-wasting wasn’t in Archie Sonic. It’s at least cute to see Amy walking away with Tails riding piggyback on her because he’s asleep. But I just feel bad for her because he’d be heavy.

Nicole tells Elias that the ceremony is about to start, and Elias says he can’t stay here and promised he’d meet up with his family somewhere else in the city, and Nicole says that his family will be much safer here. WHY would she SAY that when she knows about the city’s malfunctioning nanites situation?! A concert stage collapsed! This Idiot Ball didn’t happen in Archie Sonic! This is even dumber writing just for the sake of causing drama later on, which is the kind of writing that Flynn had, but if it’s only gonna happen because the heroes made a bad decision, it just makes me angry at them, not filled with dread over the drama. We all know all the characters have to survive anyways. You could have conflict without making the characters stupid for it!

  Then we see even MORE wasted time with Cream and Big looking at the city’s brand new castle. I like that Cream says that she always dreamed of being a princess with a castle on her own, giving her a girly little girl moment for once. Cream’s then made stupid enough to consider writing Eggman a letter begging him to be gentle with Sally.

Idealistic or not, she’s not dumb enough to think that would have any effect on Eggman. Rotor at least reassures her. But it’s annoying that he calls Sonic’s uncle Uncle Chuck like it’s the reboot and he’s not Sonic’s uncle. So, another entire page wasted. I HATE how Rotor’s face is drawn here.

  And now there’s gonna be a third page wasted where we see a freaking chapel in a Sonic comic of all things. We clearly didn’t need to see Elias talking to his wife. She at least explains that she didn’t wanna stay in Feral Forest after Eggman attacked it. But that’s still her home. He only sent his robots at it because he was on the way to the North Pole and it happened to be on the way there.

At least it’s interesting that Cream reveals that Rosie’s last name is Woodchuck when she asks where her Tails Doll is. Nicole tells Elias that Geoffrey is inaugurating the castle in Ixis’ place. Meg then has the bright idea that Elias should announce the return of his family, even though obviously the whole reason they LEFT the city was that they didn’t feel safe there when Ixis was in charge of it.

They left to avoid being assassinated. How does the writer not remember that? How does Elias even consider this idea? Elias even told Sonic in this issue that he fears for the safety of anyone Ixis sees as a threat to his rule. She tells him that Elias should show everyone here that the castle doesn’t belong to Ixis.

Then our time is wasted even more. Although it is kinda sweet to see Dr. Quack with his kids and wife again. It humanizes him that he’s shown dressed like a father instead of a doctor as usual. Geoffrey possessed by Ixis wastes our time with a boring speech. And then Elias grabs the Idiot Ball and openly storms out saying that Ixis is no king in front of Ixis’ assistant and a huge crowd of his supporters, when the whole reason his family left the city was to protect themselves from Ixis. HE doesn’t have any special powers – I shouldn’t even have to explain myself here! This is one of the main things I always thought about when I remembered this fancomic. Even when I first read it, I was shocked by how stupid Elias was being here. That is not him. There’s a reason that never happened in Archie Sonic.

  Archie Sonic Online is more respectable by having Elias and the Secret Freedom Fighters recognize that they have to stay secret, even if Elias didn’t like hiding while his sister was attacking the city. It was smart of them to hide because they were supposed to be a secret. Why does Elias think challenging the new king is a good idea? He’s obviously just gonna get put in prison like Tails’ father was. The sad thing is, I bet the writer thought he was writing an awesome moment and making Elias be awesome but that’d be immature to think because he’s so obviously just being a DUMBASS!

  At least Ixis does have a point in that he did save the people and city from Eggman while Elias was powerless. In that sense, he has a reason to think he earned being the ruler, while all Elias did to get his position as the prince was be born to the king and queen, and he spent most of his life not even with them. He’s still the good guy compared to Ixis though.

  Predictably Ixis says that the dungeon awaits him and plans on using magic against him. And then Tails Doll makes the castle collapse. It’s SAD that the original Archie Sonic version of this scene was actually a whole lot better. That was from Issue 247, which I absolutely HATED for how stupid the characters were in it, but at least THAT didn’t have Elias be a complete dunderhead.

  What’s the point of writing this when everyone already read Issue 247 anyways? It’d make more sense to just skip past this and have the characters reference that it happened. All that time could be spent drawing something else! For some reason after Nicole stabilizes the castle and says she needs it fixed, and yet doesn’t just fix it completely when she’s that omnipotent, she says she needs to shut down and recover. She’s usually so overpowered that whenever she claims to have a limit, it feels arbitrary.

  And for some reason Ixis goes into the woods and leaves Geoffrey’s body. I remember being very confused by this. While Archie Sonic Online revealed that being in Geoffrey’s body doesn’t cure Ixis’ mutation illness, THIS comic goes the opposite direction. He feels strong again. I don’t get why he thinks that he’ll be able to ward off the illness indefinitely. The whole reason he has to deal with it is that the wizards he fused with to become Ixis Naugus are now able to taunt him in his head because of the Genesis Wave, SOMEHOW. It’s a magical thing, how would Dr. Quack be able to stop a SPELL like it?

  It’s so obvious that even if possessing Geoffrey was warding off the illness, he’d have to keep doing it, forever. Archie Sonic Online makes way more sense. OF COURSE being in Geoffrey’s body wouldn’t solve his problem because the problem is in his MIND, the fact that the wizards can bother him in his mind. That wouldn’t go away no matter which body he was in! If they could mutate Ixis’ body with their magic, they could cast a spell to do that to Geoffrey’s body too.

  Geoffrey complains that Elias could’ve killed him. Ixis says it was merely to cloud Elias’ judgement, that doesn’t explain the risk away, and pulls Geoffrey into a portal, planning on stopping Elias’ interference permanently. I can barely remember a time that Ixis ever went into a portal. I only remember him teleporting in the arc where he faced off with and joined Mammoth Mogul, and that was by the writer who had hundreds of continuity errors, so take that with a grain of salt. What does creating portals have to do with the four elements of nature? He’s master of the elements. But whatever.

  Why should I talk about Off Panels when they’re not canon to the issue? The sad thing is, I bet the Off Panels are way better than the actual story, if it’s anything like post-Flynn Archie, where I PREFERRED the Off Panels. Oh, why not then? Someone I don’t recognize tells Cream that tea parties are great enough to solve all the world’s problems. I can’t help but like seeing Cream having a tea party with Mammoth Mogul, Eggman, Metal Sonic and Finitevus for once because of the sheer novelty value.

  Eggman’s at least written to lampshade the fact that he agreed to this. Mogul compliments how sweet the tea is. It makes sense that someone would enjoy a tasty drink, so they have some reason for being here. Finitevus adds to his character a little because he says he prefers coffee. Cream sweetly asks, “ Would you like some sugar, Mr. Metal? “ and I’m wondering if Metal Sonic can even drink it. That’d be a pretty advanced robot if he could, one of those biomass-eating robots.

  There’s an Off Panel where Dimitri tells Knuckles he’ll do anything to make things up to him and prove his sincerity, and he says that’s not what he had in mind when we cut to Knuckles and Julie lying on beach chairs with Julie trying to sun-tan with shades on and Knuckles… I guess sipping lemonade with a hat on. It’s very hard to tell what’s going on with Dimitri. I think we’re supposed to see ice cubes in his dome. It’s not a very big panel and I’m only able to zoom in on the pages so much. There’s nothing to say about the other Off Panels, I’m just really confused at seeing them.

  This issue by glitcher, had practically nothing happen in it, which made it boring to read through all that dialogue. Most of it was just characters redundantly recapping to each other in front of us for some reason, and the only actually memorable and important parts of the issue were Idiot Balls that didn’t happen in Archie Sonic for good reason. If you’re gonna have writing that wouldn’t happen in Archie for a reason, at least go all out and be gutsy with it! Sonic the Continuation had like Sonic X characters show up in it.

  The king and queen wouldn’t go back to New Mobotropolis! The whole reason they left the city was to prevent Ixis from killing them! Why on earth would he be stupid enough to challenge a wizard who has the support of everyone in the city? If I was gonna write that, I would have him discover that HE has magical powers too. So he could have competence to back his confidence up and make the scene actually cool. Why not go all out if you’re being that ridiculous? Most of the story is just characters talking. The pacing in this comic is godawful.

  It’s a shame that the comic is so problematic that I’m unhappy about its issues because I know the art is great and it’s great seeing Archie Sonic characters in it. It LOOKS like it should be fantastic. It looks as good as the actual comic. In theory, I always loved the idea of the comic existing and what it was trying to do. But what’s so great about it trying to rewrite Archie Sonic if it does an inferior job, when I didn’t even think that was POSSIBLE?

  The Endangered Species rewrite was a great idea for its time but Archie Sonic Online completely one-upped it, and now this. Instead of having the drama of Archie Sonic Online where it made sense and Ixis naturally LOST IT from his sheer desperation to recover from his mutating, and it caused him to have a scary new form and threaten the whole city, this comic has him plan to threaten Elias in his normal form because Elias lost all his IQ points just to come here for the plot.

 I don’t know why possessing and unpossessing Geoffrey staves off the wizards illness that the Genesis Wave gave Ixis, when obviously if they were magical enough to mutate his body trying to take control of it for themselves, then they would be able to do that to him in Geoffrey’s body too. They’re not going off science! What a boring issue. It’d be idiotic to call it good with all of that padding. If anyone were to rate it with stars, it would be 2 stars at best.

Sonic Retold Issue 3:

  It starts out with a villain scene, so it’ll probably be pointless and that’s not a good first impression. In the Death Egg, someone reports to Lien-Da about how the preparations are coming along. But why should I care about this? They’re the bad guys! Two thirds of their saucers are operational.

Lien-Da freaks out about how few Legionnaires are combat-ready. She apparently thinks they can’t launch a siege with 80 troops. So she wants double shifts until the mission starts. The girl reminds her that they’re in danger because Eggman might get mad at them for conducting an unauthorized attack on Albion. He’d really have to be a control freak to be mad at them for doing the kind of conquering that’s always in their JOB DESCRIPTION anyways just because it was unauthorized, and at that point, why are we expected to believe he’s happy with his sub-bosses having free will then?

Lien-Da justifies her taking a surprisingly dumb risk by saying that they need to strike fast because Eggman wants to activate the Genesis Wave and erase everything on Mobius, including them. I can only assume that the reason she thinks they won’t be spared is that they’re echidnas and so Eggman would wanna spite Knuckles. And this is in-character for her since this is the same character who tried to fight the Iron Queen and forgot all about the bombs in her cybernetics she could set off. Her independence streak is stronger than her risk awareness. Still, why should we be shown her preparations? We should only see them actually carrying their mission OUT, but instead entire pages are wasted.

  At least we’re seeing stuff happening while Lien-Da’s monologuing narration is going on. She elaborates on the out of nowhere fact that someone is held captive in Albion who could restore the might of the echidna race. It sounds like another Enerjak, and that would only make sense if you considered that Dimitri wasn’t called Enerjak until he appeared in the Knuckles Miniseries, and only then was he suddenly dressed like Enerjak, as if he was imitating a great evil Enerjak BEFORE him, because he looked like a green echidna before that.

  Lien-Da thinks Lara-Le would cry out her secret to save her family from legionization, as we see her getting water from a well the old-fashioned way because the echidnas have fallen really far from their advanced Echidnapolis days. Lien-Da plans on using that prisoner to shape the world for the Dark Legion. This IS interesting, more than one person wanting to use the Genesis Wave to do that. Lien-Da has an independent goal.

She tells someone to disable the alarms so that her legion can slip away undetected, and then Eggman tells her to report to him at once. Lien-Da goes to, surprisingly, the bathroom, because Eggman called her from the bathtub. And I guess she wandered around until she found that he was there, since he didn’t say where he was.

It’s creative that he can do that and was whimsical enough to just do it without caring how disturbed she and Sally would be, and he’s just casually smiling about it as Sally’s made to wash him with a sponge. He could make Orbot do this, but he’s sadistic to his lifelong enemy.

  Eggman’s listening to some music from the radio and asks her how the Genesis Wave is coming along. Eggman says that his device will be ready this time tomorrow. Lien-Da’s surprised because they don’t have enough robots, and he says that he’s pulling her engineers from repairs to complete the job quicker.

  Lien-Da then shows Eggman the report from Tails Doll about the fact that Elias’ mother and father are visiting the wolf pack nation which should really have an actual name and not just consist of three whole words to type. It’s just lazy. It never felt like a real nation. It never felt like a real nation name. We see Eggman drying himself with the towel in one panel like it’s nothing, which is a fan disservice moment that clearly shouldn’t have been drawn, and would have never happened in official Sonic for a REASON. This is a villain scene. It could’ve been completely cut out and we’d lose nothing because it was already obvious that the king and queen were gonna get bothered by Eggman.

  Eggman tells Sally to assemble a squadron because she’s about to be reunited with her parents, as he has the towel on top of her. It makes logical sense that the writer would want to do more to show off how Eggman cruelly took advantage of Sally, showing off a larger variety of things which comes off as more creative than him purely using her to fight things like she was just any old robot and he didn’t even need her, but it’s still crueler to Sally than Flynn was. I’d much rather have writing that’s got none of Flynn’s problems than writing that’s a slightly exaggerated mirror of all of them, complete with the slow pacing and mistake-prone main characters. On the bright side, I remember the plots making sense so far. At least it was nice of Eggman to think of Sally as glorious instead of not wanting to acknowledge any compliments about her at all.

  Then, as if our time wasn’t wasted with padding enough, the story cuts to him interacting with the newly made Mecha Sally four months ago. I immediately wish that Mecha Sally always had this as her torso design which actually looks like HER, instead of her looking like her head was put on a different robot’s body. That had made the story arc twice as painful.

Eggman’s boasting is a predictable waste of time. FINALLY, he says that his new weapon needs some tune-up. It’s new that we see Eggman in a white shirt for a change. It looks like one of his arms is muscular, which makes him more intimidating and manly than usual.

  But I already KNEW that he used his engineering skills to make Sally more effective at fighting, so there’s no point to SHOWING this, especially since we didn’t literally see him make contact with her aside from the one panel where he’s welding her arm for no reason. What’s the point? What padding.

Snively’s dialogue implies that Sally’s stressed out because the “ core pulse is elevated. “ Go figure. Snively thinks it would be easier for Eggman to build a NEW robot, when it makes no sense that he thinks going through all that trouble of making a robot would be LESS EFFORT than this, on, in his eyes, improving on a robot he already has.

  He says that it would be difficult to reconfigure her sensory pathways. Why would they want to reconfigure them? They aren’t damaged. Why would he want to disable them first? I guess what he should be saying is, “ You should make her unable to feel and see this. “ But he doesn’t care about her. It would make sense for him to say that if he cared about her, but he doesn’t, so why does he say this?

  Eggman says he shouldn’t bother since he doesn’t hear her complaining though, as opera music plays that apparently, in its translation, matches how unhappy Sally would be at this. Didn’t we already see that Eggman did something like this to her in Archie Sonic? Of course she was stressed out. There’s repeating something for emphasis and then there’s just being redundant and wasting time. But I do think some of this should’ve been shown INSTEAD of Archie Sonic’s really casual showing of him putting the Ring in her or replacing her heart or whatever, where it was portrayed like he was just repairing any old robot, like the writer didn’t really care about her.

  It’s so needlessly dark that we see the roboticized Sally as just a head with Eggman saying that he got all the junk removed, that it doesn’t come off as something that the official Sonic series would be allowed to do, for good reason. Like I said, exaggeration of Flynn, it’s cruel and we didn’t need to see it. Thank goodness even the writer said he hated drawing her like this. Why’d he do it then?!

  Snively thinks this is a waste of resources, especially since he’s using one of their last remaining Rings that are keeping the Death Egg airborne. Once again, he just comes off as nagging for the sake of wanting something to nag about, which at least makes sense because why wouldn’t he hate Eggman? He thinks they should change course to the Dragon Kingdom and use the Raiju clan for repairing.

  Eggman intimidates Snively, immediately figuring out that he plans on freeing the Iron Queen and leaving him. We already saw him intimidate him about his plan in Archie Sonic, so THIS is redundant too! Snively’s told that because he only came back to Eggman after Regina was defeated, he’s always sided with someone stronger than him and he’s a leech because of it.

  He tells Snively to start energizing the arm blades before he’d kill him, and then we cut to the present day where Eggman tells Snively that he had said he would dispose of him earlier, and yet somehow won’t do it, as we see Snively captured in an animal capsule for trying to betray him.

Eggman says he had thought a few months in solitary confinement would make Snively more receptive. All of Eggman’s dialogue with him is a predictable redundant waste of our time. Eggman says love blinds people. It’s not like HE was ever in love. It made more sense for Rick Sanchez because he WAS in love, he did have a wife, and then he lost her. And so he talks about love dismissively to try to cope with how he misses his wife. Eggman only says this because he’s just a bad guy.

  We see Sonic running around alone. Sally calls out for him casually and he sees a bed with a bunch of drawings of Eggman’s face on the walls. So it’s a nightmare. Again. MORE wasted TIME. I already KNEW that Sonic was upset about the Mecha Sally situation. Get a MOVE ON!

He sees Sally asleep and then she turns into Mecha Sally and attacks him, and then he wakes up and Amy comforts him. It feels like ALL of this issue has been aimless padding so far. The writer has absolutely no concept of what good pacing is, of what’s worth showing the audience.

I mean this is a comic that’s been canceled for a while and Archie Sonic Online takes forever to release anything, so if I was making a fancomic like this, I wouldn’t feel right about wasting ANY time. Priorities! Obviously there’s some things that should be done first! The things the audience is looking forward to the most are the things that should obviously be done first! Nobody wants to see any of this stuff!

  At least I can compliment how realistic it is that Sonic says it’s chilly when they’re up in the air on the Tornado, which is thankfully blue and yellow. The characters never point out how cold it would be to be up on the Tornado since they’re so high up. And it’s nice to see Sonic wearing that brown jacket for once, and so is Amy. It makes sense that they’d be dressed more warmly for the occasion. It also makes sense that T-Pup is piloting the plane because Tails needs to sleep, though it should really be explained HOW a four-legged dog-like robot knows how to pilot the plane. This is the same robot that was dumb enough to think that uncharacteristically biting Amy for petting it was a good idea.

Amy wastes a bunch of time saying very redundantly that she supports Sonic being happy with Sally and is loyal to him. No shit, Amy, you were in love with Sonic. Then Sonic kisses her cheek and lets her sleep on his lap to make her feel better. It’s too confusing for me to find it sweet.

It’s so obvious this would only happen in a fancomic. Context or not, it’s Out of Character. At least he thanks her, and it’s nice that Tails smiles at this, but this scene was a waste of time. I already ASSUMED Sonic was upset about losing Sally in Archie Sonic! We don’t need to be reminded of it so much to understand that. We’re not DUMB!

  Imagine how far ahead the comic would be in the plot by now if the writer didn’t waste time drawing all those pages that could be skipped without confusion. I’m bored from the lack of stimulation from all these pages not mattering. And here’s another one of the most memorable moments of this fancomic. I still remember this and that’s again not a compliment. WHY are we being shown the former king and queen alone with each other in Soumerca?

It’s not like they’re action heroes, so they’re never gonna do anything! Her husband just depresses me saying nothing and not looking at her. The worst part is that he talks delusionally, asking for Sally back. I don’t know why he was written to be like this by Flynn in a kids’ series, this is angstier than Shadow ever was and it doesn’t work because he’s not angsting out of shame for awful things he DID.

He’s not ashamed that he failed his kingdom by hiring Robotnik! He’s just pouting because the royalty has less power now, pre-Mecha Sally Arc anyways. If the evil King Maxx started acting like this, out of guilt, then that would be better. The writer’s wrong, this wasn’t sorely lacking in Archie Sonic! We already knew her parents missed her, and we were OBVIOUSLY BETTER OFF WITHOUT this depressing padding! As if things couldn’t get any worse, at first he says that he thinks the wolf people are savages. Sure, he’s old, but still! Why have writing that’s just needlessly sad, especially in the Sonic series? How is making him delusional enjoyable to anyone? At least in Archie Sonic Online, he’s not really like that.

  Then the wolf twins waste our time as well. It’s said that Lyco always gets excited playing cards. At least now we know one of their hobbies. She asks what they were doing in New Mobotropolis, when I’m just wondering why they’re back here. So after that completely pointless scene, the former king and queen show up in Soumerca and Aerial says that her mute sister kept kicking her ball through Lupe’s window. That’s annoying.

When is this gonna get to the PLOT? Even the original comic had lightning fast pacing in comparison. The castle collapsing was last issue, and meanwhile, in Archie Sonic, the issue where that happened was the same issue where immediately the heroes were shown in the North Pole. There’s no excuse for this.

  It’s nice of Alicia to thank Lupe for the hospitality. I hate calling her Alicia since that’s also the new name of Evil Sally, even if the queen being called that came first. But constantly calling her the queen would be archaic since she’s not that anymore and constantly calling the former queen would be kind of rubbing it in. Lupe says that their generous aid will help the families of those whose lives were lost in Eggman’s last attack. When did something like that happen? Did we really need to be told about that in a Sonic comic? It’s compassionate of Alicia to apologize for what happened to them and offer to fix things. Can I just see her help instead? Man, padding is boring.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Quack tells Ixis that this should ease the pain for now as long as he doesn’t stress himself. WHAT eases the pain? I’d rather know what he DID. It’s not like Ixis got injured. I can only assume he gave him pain pills. He tells Ixis it would help if he told him more about his symptoms or went to the hospital so he could diagnose his illness.

Ixis is definitely flawed here, being so stubborn that he’s stupid. It is realistic that someone who’s a proud wizard like him would hide an illness of his. He says he should be recovering in bed and Dr. Quack suggests letting Elias share some of his workload. Ixis refuses because he’s much more spiteful than intelligent.

  Dr. Quack walks away saying that if he won’t accept his advice, he can’t keep treating him, but then Ixis tells him to give his family his best wishes, which I can only assume means that he’s threatening his family. It took me a bit to get that. Why wouldn’t he just be immediately direct about the fact that he’s threatening them?

He’s alone with him. The Endgame arc already did this plot point! Get on with it already. Then as if there wasn’t ENOUGH padding, the comic depresses us by showing Rotor wasting his time visiting Antoine when he’s not able to hear him. Nothing but predictable dialogue while the story content gives me a PIT in my STOMACH. Just LOOKING at this makes me seriously question the intelligence of anyone who says that the Mecha Sally arc isn’t dark and asks what comic people were reading. What the hell comic were THEY reading? Look at this! This isn’t for KIDS. What kid’s comic would have a coma patient, let alone several? They lost their minds!

  The ONLY good thing I can say about this garbage, is something that, already happened in Archie Sonic and happened in the castle collapsing scene. Cream wisens up and realizes that the Tails Doll’s constant disappearances align perfectly with the nanite malfunctioning. In Archie Sonic the pacing was much faster and she realized this when the castle collapsed, there’s no excuse for making her take an entire other issue to tell Rotor this! Her finding it in the same place where the castle collapsed at the same time made it make more sense that she made the connection.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Quack goes home and sees Geoffrey and some guards in front of his house, and he says they’ve taken good care of his family. He says they’re safe inside and Ixis only wants to ensure their well-being. He says that after the recent nanite accidents, Ixis recommends that his family remain in the house under guard.

He makes it clear that he HAS to keep treating Ixis and at least says he doesn’t want him to lose a loved one while he looks sad. So this is actually Geoffrey. Was this whole sub-plot with the doctor and Ixis necessary? No, of course not. There’s a REASON Archie Sonic Online didn’t show this. Isn’t that an Idiot Ball of Dr. Quack? Why would he think an evil wizard wouldn’t do anything it takes to get him to continue treating him? Of course he can’t threaten Ixis!

  So we pointlessly see Cream telling her mother that she’s gonna have a sleepover with Team Freedom, since when would she do that, and she runs outside wearing a raincoat and holding an umbrella for once as it’s at least rainy to have a better atmosphere. But how is this next scene at the power plant gonna be in ANY WAY WORTH it?

I already saw that enraging piece of shit in Archie Sonic. I’m guessing this is gonna be the exact same plot for the sake of it, so it’s gonna have the same unforgivable plot hole where the heroes just inexplicably talk to Tails Doll, instead of Nicole instantly using her nanites to crush Tails Doll to death. At least the story had the sense to cut past Cream fully explaining to Rotor what was bad about the Tails Doll this time, but after all the clueless padding in this issue, it’s hard to care about ONE time-saver.

  Okay, Rotor instantly flies into Tails Doll with his suit grabbing it and throws it… wait, why did he throw it instead of continuing to hold it still? Nicole then traps it in a bubble, just like I would’ve wanted. OK while it was common sense that this would be written instead of what Flynn wrote, it won’t matter as much if the comic will go on to have a giant Tails Doll ANYWAYS. How the hell is it supposed to survive this?

  Big is dressed for a sleepover because he didn’t know it was just a lie. Why isn’t Nicole just crushing the Tails Doll by shrinking the bubble surrounding it? She’s still being an idiot, even if the heroes all displayed common sense at FIRST by attacking a robot right away, a level of intelligence they should always have. Having her in that scene completely broke the believability just to force there to be a climatic fight with a giant Tails Doll. You know what would be better writing? If it was shown powering up at the power plant without the heroes even there to stop it yet. Nicole could’ve been incapacitated at the time.

  What Nicole did was meaningless because Tails Doll breaks out of the bubble anyways. And I can only assume it’s possible because it expanded to giant form inside the bubble and broke it open, but how? The bubble is a force field, not solid matter, why would it be matter, let alone breakable matter? Why wouldn’t she have just crushed him BEFORE this could happen?

Also, I’m probably gonna be left to assume that it would simply be too much effort for her to create a giant bubble around it and crush it that way because it’d be too big. But not explaining that when she’s usually omnipotent just makes things irritating. I mean she’s able to make pretty big things. She recreated a whole city. She made a whole castle. And yet she can’t make a giant force field big enough to crush the Tails Doll? I guess she made the big things little by little over a long period of time. You’d think she’d have crushed it in the bubble in all the time it was saying that its self-repair was complete and that it planned on destroying the power generators.

  At this point I’m glad to see the Off Panels. Lien-Da’s in the psychiatry office of the DEL because after all the wars, seeing Eggman coming out of the bathtub is the worst. Why show the audience that again? Then there’s an Off Panel where Amy falls off the biplane. Anyways, there’s another one that’s just confusing, as somehow Satam Sally from the pilot sees Mecha Sally in the picture as the stationary Nicole says “ does not compute, “ and then she says she’ll switch to a handheld device. Huh? How was that even funny?

At least we got to see Nicole using her nanites to make Cream a princess in a castle. Rotor’s a jerk though by calling it a waste of resources. He’s not Reboot Rotor. He didn’t have an abusive father. I mean how many resources are being wasted? Couldn’t she just infinitely recycle the materials she creates with the nanobots? It’s amusing that Nicole says, “ She promised I could be princess tomorrow. “

  This issue was by glitcher. Okay, so that was a complete waste of time. It’s shocking, 99% of it is obvious PADDING. You could skip most of this issue and miss nothing. You wouldn’t be confused, and the tone is so dark throughout that there’s no reason to read the pointless pages even for “ fun. “ The only plot progression is the comic catching up to original Archie Sonic, having Cream warn Rotor about the Tails Doll, and seeing it grow gigantic, which happened in the same issue as the castle’s collapse in Archie Sonic for good reason. WHY would it be delayed? How can the pacing be that bad? This issue is just boring because the pacing is terribly slow. It doesn’t feel rewarding to read a scene when you know that it’s a complete waste of time.

  It’s such a shame this comic insists on retreading Archie Sonic even when that gets redundant instead of just, finishing Endangered Species and THEN moving onto brand new stories, being episodic. That’d be adding something to the franchise, actually continuing the comic. Why does it have to even try to show off a Tails Doll fight? Isn’t it obvious that it could never do it better than Archie Sonic Online did? That’s so redundant. Even the reboot showed off a giant Tails Doll fight. You could skip this entire issue and not be confused at all if you already read Archie Sonic.

Oh, I do love that Rotor dove in and grabbed Tails Doll right away and Nicole trapped it in a bubble instead of talking to it and expecting to change its mind. That was epic, but who cares when it just grew anyways? She was still an idiot for not crushing it immediately.

Sonic Retold Issue 4:

  The Tails Doll wants to attack in the crowded power plant room and Nicole says the energy core is in the creature’s head, being able to detect that, when she didn’t detect the Tails Doll in all this time, and warns her friends to aim for it as she creates a force field in front of her. Just in front of her, though, not around her because that’d be too smart.

It’s kinda satisfying to see Cream jump on Tails Doll and call it out. “ You tricked me and tried to hurt my friends! I’ll never forgive you! “ Sadly she’s grabbed, and Cheese needs to bite it and save her. She thanks him as I wonder just how supernaturally great its bite was to hurt a robot.

  Big throws Froggy itself at the Tails Doll. I’m not sure how he thought that was acceptable to do since that’d hurt Froggy and a frog wouldn’t hurt that much, but at least it’s more creative that he did THIS to get it to open its mouth and reveal its crystal, but the fact that it was closed in the first place makes it unbelievable that it ever revealed the crystal at all just to laugh at them.

It would make sense if the only reason the crystal got exposed was because the Tails Doll was simply DAMAGED. Though it is interesting that its laughing screws it over, but it wouldn’t be dumb enough to expose its weak point like it’s a boss in a video game.

  Rotor throws Bomb at the crystal thanking him and Heavy thanks Bomb, and I wonder if Tails Doll has ALREADY been defeated. It’s just the third paragraph. That’s anticlimactic compared to the much longer, epic fight of Archie Sonic Online, but thank goodness the issue’s got fast pacing now. Unless this is a fake-out death scene. Because it WOULD be common sense to have a very short fight scene with this thing since we already saw the giant Tails Doll fight TWICE.

  After Nicole briefly wants to dispose of Tails Doll, Rotor at least has a good point when he stops her. He says that if its memory is intact, he needs to find out if it gathered any sensitive information. So he naturally wants it brought to his workshop and wants Elias alerted just in case. So that’ll mean Elias’ parents will get help. I hadn’t thought of that earlier. So Nicole shouldn’t have crushed ALL of it, but she could’ve created a bubble around it and crushed every part of it except for its head and crushed every part of it EXCEPT for its memory.

  Meanwhile, Silver makes it to Deerwood Forest and thinks it took a while and wonders if he should’ve borrowed a Warp Ring instead. The writer shouldn’t have had him point that out because now I’m mad at Silver for being forced to be too stupid to think of that, when he arrived back in time with a Warp Ring in the first place. He’s here because Titan Metal Sonic fell somewhere around here and the Krudzu might save the future. Hopefully ‘cause he’s planning on having a programmer like Rotor reprogram the Krudzu specifically to return Sally to her normal brain, because otherwise, if literally all he’s gonna do is put the Krudzu on Sally, it would obviously just take her over and have her be just as evil, so that’d be braindead to write, so I hope that’s not the case.

  Silver thinks that his vision of the future had a world of robots spliced with Mobius, and Sally surrounded by Rings at its center. The whole world of robots thing is either a result of Eggman’s Genesis Wave going how he WANTS, causing a complete waste of time Worlds Collide arc instead of Sally being returned to normal right AWAY, or a reference to the Metal Virus arc that was originally planned to start in Issue 300 of Archie Sonic. Now that I know that, Finitevus’ vision of the future where everyone turned against each other in Mobius Legends makes actual sense. He was seeing the Metal Virus arc.

  He uses his telekinesis to get an opening and get to the Krudzu, and it’s so buried in there that he doubts he could get it out without damaging it. Then he screams and the Mercian Freedom Fighters show up all of a sudden and say that the forest and its spoils belong to them. I’m sensing PADDING coming up that’ll be unacceptable.

  Can’t Silver just tell them why he needs the Krudzu? Wouldn’t they immediately leave him alone after that? Why wouldn’t he just use telekinesis to hold them all still, and explain? He held everyone still with telekinesis in Hedgehog Havoc, don’t tell me that he can’t do it! Why in the world would this hood guy be stupid enough to think that Silver is working for Eggman? He’s clearly not a cyborg!

  This page shouldn’t have existed! I thought Silver would just get the Krudzu and GO. He has telekinesis, he can just tear the thing apart and get the Krudzu! But no, I expected things to be kept simple and fast-paced with smart characters when I’m reading a Flynn style story. The drooling idiot rabbit says that Silver’s a liar just because he was seen with Eggman’s robot. I already saw Carrotia be an idiot rabbit. I don’t get why she’d say that. Wouldn’t he either be seen fighting them or, she’d only say robot because she’d only see Shard?

He throws her away with telekinesis, but I just wish the panel was a lot larger so I’d really see the impact of her painful thud with the ground, or rather water. If they’re gonna aggravate me this much, their slapstick needs to be a lot worse than this. Then Silver gets smacked from behind. These characters are villains right now. You’d think heroes wouldn’t be the type to fight first and ignore any reason.

  Silver sends him away too and then a bard smacks him, I guess. I can’t see anything there but a flash of light, so whatever. It never made sense to me that he was happy enough to sing while fighting. I wish he was still roboticized. Then a monk shows up and says to forgive their rustic ways. Oh, so HE has a brain? Never mind. He sends Silver upwards as I’m just baffled that Silver didn’t use telekinesis on all of them at once immediately. . Can he just die?

  He clearly proved he could use telekinesis on multiple objects at once in the gameplay of 06, the fights with Iblis, the fight with Solaris, and the boss fight in Sonic Generations, and didn’t he throw multiple tables at Sonic at once? There’s no excuse for him being so Wimpified. A so-called monk is fine with Silver potentially dying. Even if he couldn’t think to grab them all instantly, couldn’t he have just flown upwards immediately? That’s the flight part of fight or flight response.

  Finally, Robin shows up to defend Silver. A guy who can fly shouldn’t really need DEFENDING. Couldn’t it have EASILY been WRITTEN that Rob O Hedge would be WITH THEM IMMEDIATELY?! After all, they’re supposed to be his friends. And Robin was originally meant to be with them in the Sonic Universe arc and only wasn’t because of Penders and Archie.

If he’s gone because he left, why’d he even come back? How convenient that he showed up now. He helps Silver up as I’m incensed at the fact that the comic took literally any excuse to have needlessly slow pacing. So they waste time talking with redundant dialogue.

  Someone says he’ll show what these gnashers can gnaw, and does something unclear and then Silver gets access to what he wants. OK, why couldn’t he have just been written to use telekinesis to get the stuff surrounding it out of the way in one panel? What was so hard about not writing these characters to show up? I hate them all more than ever now. They don’t even have the decency to apologize. They don’t even get PUNISHED. I love that Silver thinks, “ Idiots. “ Thank you! I just wanna smack these idiots!

  My time is wasted some more, as it’s already night time in the wolf nation, making me wonder how the hell the heroes are taking more time to get to the north pole than Archie Sonic. Max was made an honorary wolf pack member and he didn’t like all the noisy howling. If our time was gonna be wasted on this, we clearly should’ve seen the ritual happen instead of Alicia talking about it in bed afterwards.

Anyways, Rotor tells Nicole to run the Tails Doll’s directory through the database. I’m wondering why, even by NIGHTFALL, Eggman still hadn’t sent anything after the former king and queen to kill them. I mean he has but why haven’t they reached him yet? You’d think he’d just contact the troops he has near the Wolf nation already.

I know he wants to send Mecha Sally after this, but they would’ve been captured by the robots and troops HERE a long time ago and then it’d just be a matter of waiting. It’d already be too late if the heroes took this long to get to this point in the workshop, somehow. I don’t know if Rotor’s workshop is so far away that they’d take so long to get to it.

  We don’t need a new subplot where the former king and queen went to the wolf nation and need the heroes to spend time rescuing them. What we need is to see Sally get rescued, which is obvious since people wanted that the minute she got roboticized, AND IT’S BEEN YEARS.

  This sub-plot feels intrusive because of its positioning. Instead of being shown AFTER all of the Satam characters would be brought back to the team in full force, the writer has skewed priorities and puts this before even Sally is rescued, which just wastes time and gets in the way. No, just be mean to Sally instead of having her get rescued already. Nicole says she has a transmission from the Death Egg. Do we really need to see this?

  Alicia talks about her first meeting with the former king. First off, obviously it’d be better if we actually SAW IT, instead of narration while nothing was happening. So I have to picture it on my own. What you imagine is better than what’s actually drawn. Second, it contradicts the canon. We were clearly told that the Source of All arranged their future marriage when they were children. They certainly didn’t first meet as adults when the king almost ran over her with a horse.

Also, while it’s tense that we see Mecha Sally attack Soumerca, we only see one panel of it, so it tells us nothing, and I already got told she was SENT THERE. There is a sincerely romantic moment as the former queen finishes explaining how they fell for each other and Max actually finishes her sentence, saying that he wanted to see the stars in her eyes. But then Elias calls her and apparently gets cut off as she’s threatened.

  Rotor says that he doesn’t have a Warp Ring at his workshop, because he’s an idiot. You’d think they’d have made as many Warp Rings as they could. How is Elias supposed to save his parents in time, then? He tells Heavy to fly to Freedom HQ. He can DO that? At least that’s competent of him.

It makes sense that a robot could be upgraded to do new things, but he doesn’t look like he can fly. And why would he waste time talking? Wouldn’t he at least talk gallantly WHILE RUNNING? Elias tells Nicole to get Shard here on the double. Eggman attacks the wolf pack village with lasers causing fire everywhere.

Someone says the Egg Swats are heading for somewhere and tells archers to cover fire. The wolf girls want to buy time for the Acorns to escape. Sally’s mother sees her, though it’s hard to tell it’s Sally from so far away. Eggman says he wants Lupe dead, apparently being so vengeful that he’s done with the idea of legionizing her, even though Lupe herself knew that it would’ve been strategically helpful.

Sally attacks her. Good thing Lupe has a shield. She knocks Lupe down anyways. It’s hard to tell what’s going on though. Sally gets something thrown at her head because Aerial and Athena showed up to protect Lupe from a lethal head laser. So it was worth them disobeying her.

Elias shows up because of the Warp Ring, thankfully with Rotor, Shard and Heavy and Bomb to do some fighting. Still, what’s HE supposed to do? Get hurt? Lemme guess, Sally won’t be rescued HERE because that’d be different from Archie Sonic and involve someone other than SONIC saving her, god forbid there be a creative new direction that justifies this comic’s existence alongside Archie Sonic Online. No, that’d feel anticlimactic. So this is just some pointless extra fluff in the way of Sally’s fight with Sonic on the Death Egg. Some other robot could’ve fought Lupe in her place to no difference.

  Shard’s told to go protect Elias’ parents. He helps out the wolf girls first, since there’s already damsels in distress right here. He should at least be written to say, “ I’m sure they’ll be fine, “ because naturally someone cocky would assume they’d be fine without him for now. It’s satisfying to see Shard fighting alongside Rotor. He’s not a secret anymore and that helps Rotor out, so that’s common sense. An explosion happens behind Elias’ parents.

  Apparently things weren’t considered depressing ENOUGH, so after THAT, it’s pointless anyways because Sally catches up with her. Predictably Elias goes to save his mother, though it takes too long. Like, I GET IT, it’s DARK. I didn’t know until the next page that Mecha Sally flew away carrying Max because all I saw at first was a blue light blur going up to the sky with Elias saying no.

  After he talks to Sally, Lien-Da says that Mecha Sally’s stalled. Eggman complains about a glitch in her programming. I don’t see how she’s able to choose to stall. She never stalled when attacking Sonic! He wants to override her, making me wonder why it’s not ALWAYS on override if that’s a thing.

Then they both get struck by lightning. To be fair it is actually possible to survive that. A baseball player got hit by it and was unconscious for a few minutes and then just got back up. So it’s not unbelievable that Max would survive. She also attacked him, though. But as harsh as it is to say, if he didn’t, it would be putting him out of his misery and we wouldn’t have to put up with the constant annoying Tearjerkers of seeing him like that anymore! I can’t stand how he’s portrayed in this comic. So it would be a smart decision to write that if only so that we won’t have to deal with him being depressingly delusional anymore. But obviously writing him to be cured of his problem and be happy would be better.

Lemme remind the writer that in In Your Face, the narration in the future clearly stated that there was a trans-time portal, so Nicole is canonically from the FUTURE of Sally’s dimension, where the king is happy and alive. You can’t contradict the future by having him get killed off. It’s not another dimension or it would’ve been called a regular portal. Surprisingly Sally is still able to fly just fine after being hit by lightning. That was dumber than I expected. Metal conducts electricity. She’d be worse off than him.

She drops him, and out of nowhere, Eggman says that now it’s over and tells Mecha Sally to fly away. He should at least explain that he doesn’t wanna risk Mecha Sally being attacked and rescued. But who would do that? Eggman’s an idiot here, he could’ve easily gotten her to kill other people too. So, why didn’t Rotor protect the king? He knew Shard wasn’t going to. What he did instead was barely noticeable. He flew away. But I don’t think he did anything. This wouldn’t happen. He said, “ Shard, the convoy! “ He should’ve known better.

  Shard comes back to see the former king, and Rotor looks at him annoyed, because he was supposed to protect him and prevent this from happening. As if Shard didn’t have ENOUGH melodrama around him, NOW people are mad at him! He couldn’t just be loved and accepted by the good guys, couldn’t he? No, that’d be lighthearted. At LEAST Rotor merely looks ANNOYED with him instead of furious. He looks more like someone gave him the wrong order at McDonalds or stunk up his car.

  Eggman greets Sally and asks what’s wrong with her eyes and Orbot says it’s superficial damage, a love tap from the grand chief’s brats. Eggman says to repair and report in two hours when the Genesis Wave will be ready. And he says to patch up the leaks to have Sally look her best for his next sponge bath. I’m not sure how it’s possible for a roboticized person to cry actual tears. Doesn’t the writer realize she’s suffered enough? Whatever. There’s NOTHING to say about the Off Panels.

  This issue by glitcher was about Mecha Sally being sent after her parents by Eggman because they left the safety of their hiding place because of a forced Idiot Ball and that seems to get her father killed, and Shard is blamed because he prioritized helping some pointless wolf girls over the royalty, which was another Idiot Ball, but is kind of understandable because he’s cocky and assumed they’d be fine while he would take some time helping out where he was. You’d think he’d be told to actually follow his orders until he did them, though. So Rotor was stupid too, and yet he wasn’t glared at!

  It just had to be Sally who did this to Max, didn’t it? It couldn’t have been some other robot. Flynn already got me sick of drama happening because of character stupidity. It makes it impossible to respect the fact that it’s written, when it clearly wouldn’t have happened! It makes it harder to respect the characters when they’re just being idiots. This whole sub-plot could’ve been put AFTER Sally was rescued. Archie Sonic Online clearly cares about Sally a lot more than this writer because it had her rescue be its first priority. The plot would be easier to accept after the entire Freedom Fighting team would be back in full force, because it’d not make us have to wait longer for THAT, so I’d appreciate that it’s a new story, at least.

  I’ll just briefly talk about the 5^th issue because it hasn’t been finished yet. I’m confused about the cover. It’d make no sense if it actually killed off Sally because that’d clearly upset the fans. Anyways, it starts out wasting our time with Knuckles going through a portal to Albion at last. We clearly didn’t need to see this, ever. We already saw Sonic telling Knuckles to go there to supervise. Nothing worth reading would HAPPEN here.

Oh, other than the fact that Knuckles’ mother and him are happy to see each other again and hug. Aw. She says she was worried because he was gone from her life for so long. He says sorry, and Remington is mad at Knuckles, causing drama that I won’t wanna see.

You’d think these echidnas would be mad at seeing Dimitri, not Knuckles. And that’s it. What a wonderful use of the comic space. Well, that sucks. Sure, his computer’s dead, but it’s been a month. When I lost my computer, I bought a new one in a day. And there’s just a few days between every new page being uploaded. So that’s a lame ending to Sonic Retold so far.

  Basically NO plot progression in Archie Sonic at all beyond Sally’s father seemingly dying to her. Well, that was totally worth the read. It was written like Flynn wrote, but worse. It was just Issue 247 but with tons of padding added, so it was like reading nothing at all. Ridiculously slow pacing makes for a consistently boring, overrated comic.

  And the only thing that’s respectable is that, Rotor and Nicole attacked Tails Doll immediately and Silver plans on using the Krudzu to reprogram Mecha Sally. That way, while she doesn’t literally return to normal, she’ll get to keep the advantages of being a robot AND get to work for the heroes again, so that’s cool. Or it’ll program her to stay still so she can be deroboticized. I really hope Archie Sonic Online gives Sally a way to use the attacks she had as Mecha Sally with devices, like she could have a way to fire a laser or use energy blades, and she could have rocket boots to fly. So she wouldn’t be losing anything just because she got brought back to normal.

  It’s sad that the only memorable things about this comic, are padding, and times where it got ridiculously dark. Like, treating Sally even worse than she was in the comic. I do pity him for his computer problem though, I mean, GEEZ! And that’s why you should always just buy new PCs instead of trying repairs!

Rick and Morty Comic Reviews Book 5 Issues 31-35

Issue 31: National Rickpoon’s Family Vacation

  We start out with someone in Jerry’s car snarking that that was the worst family vacation ever, and Rick snarks, “ Yeah, it’s hard to believe the world’s biggest ball of twine wasn’t a back-burner of a great vacation idea, huh, Jerry? “ Yeah, can’t you just look at a picture of it on the Internet and call it a day? What’s the point to going to see stuff in person? It’s just a waste of money.

  Summer lampshades that they should’ve just gone to the beach like a normal family. I don’t remember ever going to the beach, but I’ll take her word for it. Beth says that she can’t believe she missed work for this and Jerry complains cleverly, “ Oh, you missed work? Because you were on your phone the whole time. “ At least this is a relatable down-to-earth parent dynamic.

  Morty says, “ Who needs to go to the beach when you’re going to act like one all the time, Summer? “ which was unprovoked, and Rick says, “ Burn! “ and she complains, “ Bad wordplay? Really, Morty, really? “ which were enough to make me smile and find it funny. Beth says that she had an obligation to the horses that kept getting sick and Jerry says that if her family were a bunch of horses, then she’d care about them.

  They both have good points, it’s a realistic argument. Beth says, “ If my family was horses then they’d have grace and compassion and not be a bunch of selfish monsters that can’t pick a sock off of the floor. “ A horse wouldn’t do that either. It doesn’t have fingers. She idealizes horses.

  Morty cathartically lampshades that Summer used to be cool because when they went to Magic Mountain as kids they rode all the rides TOGETHER, and now she just wants to stare at her phone and be a jerk. Summer fortunately tries to explain that Morty was a cute kid back then, but now he’s just a creep moron who goes through her underwear drawer. He really needs a girlfriend. And of course, Rick would never build her a robot girlfriend because she would be distracting him from his adventure duties.

  It turns out they have five more hours in the car, and Rick snarks amusingly, “ Gosh, Jerry, it’s really too bad we don’t have a flying car or a teleportation gun to really speed this up, huh? Gosh, it’s too bad someone insisted that I not bring any of that stuff. “

  It’s Out of Character for him to be here at all, so I’m glad there’s a memorable explanation for it later, since this is a well-WRITTEN franchise. Jerry says irrationally that his inventions always cause more trouble than they’re worth. Rick was still right. Beth complains that with his portal gun they could’ve gone home days ago.

  Jerry has a clever snark insulting Beth for siding with Rick all the time and she somehow doesn’t think his snark makes sense. She tells him to get a job and he finally tells her to get a new insult. “ You know what?! Get a new insult! “ Morty complains that all anyone does is fight and Summer relatably hates all the noise that she can hear even with the earbuds on and says that this family’s a prison. I like her!

  Then FINALLY something exciting happens because she sees something and Rick hits his head on the ceiling of the car as red light goes around it and the car’s picked up by a UFO, which is also picking up a cow with its tractor beam. I giggled a little at how random this is. Of course this happens in this series. I guess the reason only Rick hit his head on the ceiling is that he’s the tallest one.

  Beth asks her family if they’re okay and there’s a fake-out where they think Rick’s dead, and Beth somehow says that if only she had studied human medicine, she could’ve maybe saved him. She needed the maybe there because obviously she’d be too late anyways. Jerry lampshades, “ Are you only just now regretting that decision? Really? “

  Morty wanders out of the car and sees very stereotypical aliens that can’t speak English. JUST NOW?! It’s weird because almost all of the aliens speak English. But it’s here to create the right effect. A cow’s floated away and Jerry wants to hide, and Beth satisfyingly calls him out on his line, and he says that at least he got to die on a family vacation. Summer says that she’s gonna get so many tattoos. Then Rick starts beeping with his eyes looking weird and he gets back up.

  Beth hugs him with him smiling heartwarmingly, and he explains that this is just a robot avatar, so when these guys went off planet he lost contact with it and had to reboot. He says that he was smart enough to not go on a single vacation with them because he knows that the secret to not hating this family is to never spend a bunch of time with them. At least he’s admitting that he doesn’t hate them.

  He says that the aliens are planning on probing, and when Beth asks the relatable question of what they could learn from that, he explains that they of course can’t learn anything from it and are just a bunch of perverts. He says that he just controls the avatar’s movements, he doesn’t know where it is, so it’s gonna take a while to track it down and help them. I don’t know why Morty thought he could open up a portal when it was clearly stated that he didn’t have his portal gun. I guess the way he hid until now that he was just an avatar was that he supposedly spend most of the family vacation sleeping.

  Jerry somehow thinks that it doesn’t seem like it’d be that bad, and Rick actually tells Jerry not to because it’s the worst thing ever. He shows racism against that particular alien species. I doubt ALL of them are like that at once, or their society wouldn’t have progressed past the stone age.

  Some gas gets sent out of the robot avatar to make the aliens miserable, but somehow the humans are all fine, and he tells his family to go because he has his robot avatar’s weapon limbs. So, wasn’t he still experiencing the whole vacation anyways, just through a robot? Otherwise he would’ve been caught a long time ago because they’d know he was silent and not doing anything and keep questioning it. Maybe they didn’t because Jerry and Beth were the distraction because they’re always arguing. And he wouldn’t answer their question anyways, he’d be “ napping. “

  They get surrounded, and it’s sweet that when Morty gets threatened, Summer remembers when she was a kid and Morty said that he’s lucky to have the best drawer as a sister. So she shoots the alien with lasers and Jerry remembers pushing her on the swing while she says she loves him, and he shoots the alien. I like this, they could’ve easily not had this.

  Morty remembers Jerry ruffling his hair on the couch with him and he saves Jerry, and then Beth looks at Jerry and only remembers catching him with a dirty magazine and being obviously lied to and called a shrew. I can’t help but think that he’s not entirely to blame for this, though. She drives him to it! So we see him tell a monster to take her and not him. Fortunately she DOES remember a nice moment where he told Beth that she’s his best friend and he doesn’t love anything like he loves her. She’s ALL he’s got as a friend, poor guy. She’s right about her insults but STILL.

  Oh, finally, we see what Rick’s actually doing, as he’s telling a guy at a restaurant to give him the bill when he gets the chance as he has an earpiece. It’s heartwarming that Beth admits she forgets sometimes how much of a man Jerry can be and they make a great team. And Jerry says that he forgot how good she is with a gun. I like that the writing’s self-aware that they’re only happy with each other because of the context, as Morty says he’s grateful for having a sister who can fight their enemies.

  Summer says Morty’s alright too, and Beth says she loves her children all so much. Jerry says he’ll hold them off for as long as he can, and finally Rick shows up through a portal, and actually joins in with a group hug, saying, “ Get in here, you little scamps. “ I like that he’s not always opposed to him having a hug.

  Jerry asks if Rick could take them anywhere with his portal gun because he has an idea, and we see the car and a ticking timer going down in it. So the UFO explodes, because Rick was smart enough to think to have a bomb in the robot avatar just in case, and the story ends with them all at the beach of an alien planet with a lovely pink sky at sunset, while Summer and Morty are playing volleyball together. We finally see that his inventions don’t always backfire on him.

  This was a great story! It’s a shame the only memorable thing about it months later was that Rick had a robot avatar of himself in the car to avoid a family vacation, and that’s probably because them getting kidnapped by the most stereotypical of aliens ever for the most stereotypical reason, was too cliché, which was forgettable and lazy.

  At least Rick gives logic to them, and it’s interesting that the heroes use his robot’s arms and gets weapons for themselves to escape, while he has to take some time to triangulate their new location to warp to them. But by far the best thing about this story was that they remembered the good times they had together and were close as a family because they all got to work together on something. THAT was the real family vacation.

It’s all the more satisfying considering how badly they got along at the start. It’s so much easier for me to go review a comic like this where the summary of a story can be almost nothing but compliments, where I can just go through it!

Issue 32 Summer’s Eve:

  We start out at the end of an episode of Rick and Morty, where we get to see the results of Rick giving Summer her own spaceship. I like that this story exists because of this alone. I remember this plot. She asks a guy, “ Wanna go make out and be irresponsible? “ I love how self-aware she is. Then she calls him weird at the dock and asks why he’s kissing her like it matters. And she gets away with it. She’s not nagged and not able to do it, meaning it’s good escapist fiction.

  He says that he met this girl and it wasn’t supposed to get serious, but she’s also moving to Amsterdam and she gets him. She complains that she was gone one day, flies off and listens to some parody of a break-up song, and then a guy in a car throws a shake at her window. She presses a button and the spaceship says, “ I’m here if you need to talk, “ which is the standard greeting on that alien planet with the women and men separated. Usually the alien names are too weird to be memorable.

  The screen says it’s initiating female comfort, and suddenly she has a pink fluffy sweater and a bunch of cats around her. Teleportation? Then she’s asked to complete a personality quiz with the questions being such complete non-sequiter nonsense, that I DON’T SEE how its answers would tell you anything about the person.

  Then she sees custom adventure mode, and asks where she’s going. She sees a planet with rings around it, drives in a race and sees a sunset. She wishes she could see that again, and the spaceship flies around the planet to grant her wish. Then, I guess it turns off the gravity in the spaceship for her.

  She parks the spaceship in the garage and goes to bed and she screams at someone saying that it’s all bullshit, as Rick somehow thought to tell her that it’s a program, a code, and doesn’t love her. He somehow expected Summer to fall in love with a spaceship. A spaceship that he’s never interacted with before!

  Summer naturally says that she’s not that much of an idiot and says she’s gonna get a lock for her bedroom door. Rick somehow guesses correctly that the car showed her the sunset twice, and even took him to re-enact key moments of her childhood fantasies on Planet Japanese Footloose. Did this happen to HIM, too? Because before that episode in the show, he had never been to that planet with the women before, or else he would’ve been recognized. Is that why he was so quick to give the car away? Also, I never got why he always referred to his spaceship as a car.

  She asks him what’s all over his face and he says that he got bored and went through her creams. Summer says that she doesn’t have any creams, but does have her science project on equine genetics. Rick doesn’t freak out about that, and just says that he’s channeling this knowledge to further fuel his current state of emotional disgust, and tells her that her romance will only get worse until she kills it.

I don’t think the story should’ve had these two pages. Rick had no apparent reason to know about this ahead of time. It’s just providing clumsy foreshadowing to spoil the plot twist while nothing actually happens. I’d rather a character be too smart than too stupid though!

  The next time she’s in the spaceship, she finally complains about how it only has one sentence to say, being smart. Then she puts a screwdriver in her mouth holding off a square tile from the spaceship that had the screen on it, which is connected to it by wires. Then it reboots, and starts talking to her properly. I’m SO CONFUSED. HOW?! That shouldn’t be so easy! The spaceship says that Summer gave her voice and is competent with tools and intellect, and their banter will remain positive and play to the top of her ego.

  Suddenly it turns out they were on an alien planet being threatened by thugs, and Summer already knows who these sexist criminals are because she’s been to a Halloween party before. She’s asked which scenario would bring her joy and she says it’s the one that ends with their screams. So the spaceship roof opens up and she’s told to rip out their eyelashes, and she’s happy about it.

  Then out of nowhere, she’s seen in a pool with the spaceship for no reason. The spaceship says, “ It must be nice to have skin. “ She says that it is. How? Has Summer never had to take care of acne before? Has she never had a rash or a cut before? A spaceship doesn’t have to deal with all that! It’d never get sunburns either. I guess she’s just that proud of her appearance. But honestly, the spaceship looks better than her. She goes through a world full of giant chocolate pretzels and ice cream cones. I guess witches are responsible for it. Then she sees some fireworks, and says, “ Oh no. “

  She locks the garage door with a padlock, and the next morning, it turns out the spaceship’s broke past the garage door with the chains on the floor. She sees a rose and a note asking where she is. Of course she’s at home, where else would she be? It’d make more sense for SUMMER to ask that.

  Then Rick questions her, and Beth and Jerry suddenly tell her that they approve. Jerry says that they always knew she’d find her own path to love and couldn’t be more supportive, and Beth thinks this’ll knock them out on Facebook having next level unconditional parenting. That’s really nice of parents.

  Summer goes to fly the spaceship, which tells her that she can love her better because her mother told her everything about her. Why is the spaceship programmed to be like this? Why would it ever be able to fall in love with her, or with ANYONE? This is just a forced confusing excuse for why the spaceship doesn’t ever show up again.

  Summer gets creeped out, and the spaceship suggests killing her family and running away together. Again, why would it be programmed to be like this, by the peaceful female aliens? Was one of them a witch who placed a curse on the spaceship? She drives the flattering spaceship into the ocean, even though all it ever did was make her happy until suddenly she got scared.

  Then it turns out Rick was waiting right at the dock, and he comforts her, saying that it’s hard to let go when you find someone who loves you past where you can understand. Then it explodes because Rick put a bomb in there last night in case she pussed out, and when Summer asks what if she’d been IN THERE, he says that he was pretty sure he was gonna get her out in time.

I chuckled at how irresponsible he was. So is he near his spaceship right now? The story ends with Summer shooting an alien near Rick, just to see the spaceship flying above her and blushing. HUH? That has to be a different one, though!

  This story was just confusing. It’d have made sense if it simply got destroyed by aliens. Instead it had to be destroyed because the spaceship of Summer’s creeped her out with endless flattery. Really, I think Rick psyched her out and made her think she fell in love with it. All it really did was make her happy.

  The story falls apart because there’s no explanation for why it’s programmed to be like this, how it was reprogrammed so easily, or why Rick’s been through the same thing apparently since we saw his first and only experience with its origin alien planet, and at no point in that episode did he get an experience with a spaceship like that. The story literally picks up right where the episode left off!

Issue 33: One Experimental Summer:

  After we see that Summer has no Facebook friends and some other girl has too many, Summer sits on the couch and then she gets a text from her mother complaining that the vacation she went on to save her marriage is a failure because Jerry’s confusingly whiny and has a weak stomach. Summer snarks that her mom isn’t really laughing about it, feeling patronized.

  Then she watches TV, and sees an advertisement about a sitcom where Bigfoot and a vegan live together with a “ vapeist. “ I don’t get the joke. And it’s lazy that the art doesn’t SHOW us the TV. If the joke is just supposed to be that it’s weird, that’s not funny. She then changes the channel and she’s told that photos from the summit of the president throwing up into the prime minister’s hat have gone viral, proving that America loves that, apparently.

  Then Summer asks Morty where the interdimensional cable remote is so she could watch the show from the dimension where boys take off their shirts when they’re confused. I guess she hasn’t seen a show where they never wear shirts. She goes into the door that says knock first on it without doing so for some dumb reason.

  Then she relatably says that she’s gonna snoop around because no one told her not to today. She sees a picture saying C-4499 portal transport configuration on the laptop and snarks, “ Cool, backwards walking. Don’t get WILD, Morty. “

  Then she presses a button, I guess from sheer curiosity though I’m not sure how she knows which one to press, and it says processing Smith F, and for no reason, she conveniently discovers an alternate universe where she’s popular. She’s assuming this based on the fact that she’s friends with some girl. But why?

  I remembered this story but I didn’t remember its justification being as confusingly arbitrary as this. It would’ve made sense if she went on an adventure with Rick and just happened to find out that the dimension was like that there. I GUESS what happened was, Morty was looking up other versions of himself. Wouldn’t that just be traumatic for him? Summer uses the portal gun to get herself a better life, which makes sense.

  Then we see Rick and Morty shooting lasers at giant versions of themselves attacking city buildings and I giggled a little just from seeing Morty’s panicked dialogue and the giant Rick’s expression. He says that he didn’t know they were gonna be giant versions of them that butt-ate stuff. I thought it would be Rick who was saying that, never mind.

  Then all of a sudden some beeping happens and warns Rick with his phone that his granddaughter broke into his lab, which gives him a hint about what she’s done. I guess it makes sense that he’d be smart enough to have a warning system for his lab, especially considering the disastrous consequences in two different universes from Jerry messing with his perfect toast toaster. It’d make no sense if he DIDN’T have a warning system.

  And since he wants Morty in his lab so much because he’s with him all the time, he wouldn’t put a security system keeping people from going into his lab that he doesn’t want to because something like a retinal scan might just slow things down too much. Never mind, no it WOULDN’T. They’d just stand in front of it for a SECOND.

  So how did Summer even get into the lab if he’s that prepared? Why didn’t he lock the lab door? Also, how’d Summer have access to his portal gun if he’s in another dimension? I guess he made another one and kept it at home, just in case he lost his and needed to call someone at home to save him.

  Summer goes to another universe and is competent enough to actually knock her out with an arm hold around her neck. She’s happily greeted by a girl who says that she looks amazing and she hugs her calling her perfect. Summer’s happy at getting to be with some other friends of hers that are eager to buy fraps, since she’s lonely. After a quick montage of them being together, we see her grab Summer’s arm happily and then ask to talk to her for a minute.

  Summer agrees saying that she’s her best friend. Then she panics because she assumes that she got figured out from paranoia at keeping a secret, and she thinks that she’ll have to kill her and reassures herself thanks to Rick that it’s all meaningless because there’s thousands of other versions of that girl.

  Then the girl asks since when are they just friends, and reveals that she thought they really had something last weekend, and reveals that the other Summer had kissed her. I’m impressed that they had the guts to reference this, I like this character. I like that she’s not an extremely obvious tomboy. And she held her arm and said she looked amazing for NO reason, so there was foreshadowing to this.

  Anyways, Morty tells Rick that it’s a good thing they left the portal open, and he asks Rick why he didn’t take the portal gun with him. Rick says that he didn’t need to because he was leaving the portal open. I guess Rick cared more about killing the giant version of him to save a city from him than what I expected he’d do right away, which would be, going to find Summer, after he got a notification that someone used the portal gun while he was gone. He really cared about saving that planet! He says amusingly that this portal gun app also tells him when donuts are hot, so they’re gonna make a detour.

  They go into the portal, and we see Summer come to the insane conclusion that the other version of her is popular because she’s gay instead of, in spite of it. Like, wouldn’t the obvious conclusion immediately to her be that she’s hiding it? She’s in HIGH SCHOOL, most highschoolers are, awfully intolerant of anyone different. Wasn’t it obvious that she became friends with the popular girl and THEN later on the crush happened?

  Summer is jealous of her other self, thinking that she doesn’t care what anyone thinks, and she says that it’s nice to feel wanted, and if this is a world where she’s the happiest, then she can accept that. She’s lonely, so I understand.

  Then it turns out she was saying all of this self-reflective stuff to someone she was buying ice cream from, (laughs) who says in confusion that he’s happy for her. I guess because this is some random ice cream vendor who doesn’t know her personally, (chuckles) so she thinks it’s not dangerous if HE knows, especially since he’d never be believed about it.

  She offers her ice cream and apologizes for earlier. Her friend reassures her with a hug that she’ll keep things a secret and respect her boundaries. She kisses her, and she says wow, which explains why her other self was like that. It turns out that Summer’s got that potential in every universe, or at least the comic Summer has it. I guess Summer Smith is bi in most of existence.

  Rick then runs up to her yelling at her for stealing the portal gun, and when the other Summer confronts her, she desperately jumps at her, and Rick grabs our Summer’s arm to hold her still. The other Summer naturally reveals that this has happened to her BEFORE. It was relatively nice of Summer to have not killed her so that she’d never confront her. She sure is lucky that that other Summer didn’t kill her either. You’d think that in a dark comedy, it wouldn’t be too afraid to have that other Summer killed.

  Then it’s revealed with a phone app of Rick’s that in THIS universe, Beth’s allergic to red wine and thus can’t be a drunk, so she was actually a good mom. So she showed up to all of her recitals, giving her the confidence to be herself, which makes her popular. I usually didn’t get the impression that the Summer we’re used to doesn’t have the confidence to be herself.

  I don’t see how other her would be popular, just happier. Maybe her being happier means she’s less bitter and snarky and therefore more popular because she has nothing to ever complain about. I guess the first alcohol Beth ever tried was red wine and the allergic reaction permanently scared her away from trying alcohol, because irrational fear. Rick then explains that Morty doesn’t exist in this universe because a sober Beth was smart enough to only let Jerry hook up with her the one time.

  So this memorable story started out predictable with Summer replacing a version of herself to have a better life, which is just what Scourge did. So it’s interesting to see a good, MAIN CHARACTER do that. And then it turns out that the other version of her had a girlfriend, and Rick stops Summer pretty quickly because his phone app warned him that his portal gun was being stolen after he very recklessly left it in his lab for NO REASON, with the lab door UNLOCKED! Aside from how contrived it was that she knew to come to this dimension in the first place, and Summer’s selfishness, that’s the only problem with the story.

  It would’ve been less contrived if he had a spare portal gun, but instead he uncharacteristically left a portal open for the entirety of a battle and left his portal gun at HOME, even after the whole Doofus Jerry story arc so he hasn’t learned his lesson well enough. So the whole plot only happened because of a dumb mistake of Rick’s, and because Summer got extremely lucky. But it had a sweet message and it was fascinating to learn WHY the other Summer was popular; because she had a GOOD mother, so she was happier.

Issue 34: The Life and Times of Krombopulos Michael:

  We start out seeing an alien of Krombopulos Michael the sniper’s species saying that they’ve gathered the best of the best here, and the Galactic Federation spared no expense putting together the best strike force for this mission, and he tells them all to state their names and expertise, which isn’t interesting me because practically none of them will probably go on to be really used characters. It’s confusing to me that the guy who looks like Michael from the show calls someone ELSE Michael, and he compliments them all on being scary or useful.

  Finally we see Michael, the cheerful sniper who just LOVES killing. The guy of his species just says relatably that they can’t have TWO Michaels and they need to distinguish the two. So this is a good way of justifying his name right away. He’s from Krombopulos, so he got the nickname Krombopulos Michael. It’s great writing to immediately think to justify the most confusing thing about a character being adapted.

  The leader says that this mission’s gonna require coordination and organization. The target’s deep inside a heavily guarded stronghold and they’ll need to work together with clockwork precision, and for the rest of the night they’re gonna go over the plan until it’s memorized front and back until they’d strike in the morning. This scene’s boringly slow-paced so far, nothing’s really happening.

  The leader tells them to make their peace with their loved ones before tomorrow, and Michael says he doesn’t have any because there’s not enough room in his heart for anything besides his love of killing. He meditates, and the next morning, after he’s briefly seen as a deserter of the team, we see him call them sleepyheads and say that he went ahead and knocked out all the killing, and there were zero survivors. We’ll never know how, damn it.

He sheepishly apologizes because he did it all himself, and doesn’t wanna share any of it from now on. This is why he’s such a humorous character. Perfect example of crossing the line twice. He’s just so outlandish. Realistically his leader’s terrified of him, saying, “ What the fuck are you?! “

  Then we cut to Rick in his younger days with his friend Birdperson, who says he’s not sure about this choice of venue as Rick’s holding a guitar for a band. Rick says he’s gotta meet a guy real quick and Birdperson says he’ll pick nits from his feathers until he returns. Michael says near Rick that he used to work for the government, but being in the private sector is a lot more profitable.

  Rick asks to get three of everything from the bar, and it turns out Mike already knows Rick and says it’s great to finally meet him in person, and Rick knows him. He asks if he’s got the thing and is told yes, and asks how Rick knows if this is gonna work, whatever that is. A purple guy asks who’s playing tonight and then insults the band indirectly, oh I guess that was the name of RICK’s band. I wasn’t used to the idea that he was in a band. That is such a forgettable idea that I actually learned it all over again when I got to the later issue “ The Flesh Curtains “ that was a whole story about it.

  Rick shoots him to death with the ray gun, though it’s not so bad considering how he looked before, being like a liquid alien. The bartender just reacts with annoyance saying “ Hey, you can’t be killing people in here, “ as if he’s already used to this somehow. Rick tries to justify his misdeed, saying, “ You know I just did you a favor, homey. You know those guys are hell on a bathroom. “  And Michael respects him as Rick DOESN’T get three of everything.

  We cut to him thanking Rick for the weapon and paying for it, I guess out of the kindness of his heart because he’s enabling him, and he asks Rick if he’s okay because he looks different. Rick says he met someone and he thinks he’s in love. Rick tells him that he should open up his heart and one day he’ll know how he feels, being more happy back then, and Michael just thinks that sounds dumb.

  It’s satisfying to see the “ show me what you’ve got “ Cromulon get destroyed by Michael after the episode he caused. Wouldn’t saving a planet guarantee Mike wouldn’t go to hell? He saved BILLIONS, if not trillions since this Cromulon guy would’ve gone on to destroy a lot more planets. I have to assume these are MAGICAL beings and that’s why they can survive in space and make technology. They’re probably artificial life forms who don’t need to breathe and use telekinesis.

  Michael likes the nostalgia of revisiting his home planet, and after fleeing a successful hit, he jumps and grabs onto a pipe against the wall of a city building and bumps into what would be his girlfriend, and apologizes and she brushes it off laughing at his clumsiness. Lucky for her a killer is polite enough to bother apologizing for bumping into her. At first you’d think it’s pointless for the story to give him a girlfriend when we already saw enough of his backstory really early on, but she does come back later in the comic, so it’s worth it.

  We see a montage showing that she married him even after finding out about his job, because love is blind, and then there’s some redundant panels if you already saw the episode he appeared in, when all we really needed to see was Morty crashing the spaceship through the wall behind him, and his girlfriend being called about his death.

  And it turns out that Rick was blamed, I guess because it’s HIS spaceship. No one would think it was likely that Morty had been driving it. But how’d anyone know it was HIS spaceship while NOT knowing who was driving it? I guess his spaceship is the only one that looks like that. Wouldn’t Morty have been caught on surveillance? She cries over his loss, and decides to take up his job, saying, “ Here I go killing now. “

  This story was about giving a backstory to the fan favorite sniper from the show who “ just loves killing. “ His ridiculously cheerful and innocent personality, while probably unrealistic, was the whole thing that made him humorous, so it was nice to see a story about him, even if the endless repetition of his ONE joke personality trait threatened to run the joke into the ground.

There’s a reason he was only a brief one-episode character. Normally the Comic Rick and Morty are different universe versions, so it sure would be a big coincidence if the Comic Morty killed this Michael in the SAME exact situation.

What’s worth it about this story is that it finally justifies why Michael has his confusing nickname, which would normally make as much sense as Rick being called “ Earth Rick, “ and explains that he used to work for the government, and it’s revealed he has a girlfriend, which only matters because she gets to show up later in the comic, although since she explains herself in that issue, we didn’t really need to see this. This just tried to get us attached to her.

Issue 35: Mesozorick Park

  Rick welcomes Summer and Morty to his rip-off of Jurassic Park, and FORTUNATELY it immediately has Summer lampshade that this is too copy-catty. Summer just gets told off for hypocrisy because she gets her fall look from grocery store magazines. Fall look? She always wears the same thing.

She says that at least she has a look, which is stupid since she’s talking to someone who must intentionally look like a stereotypical mad scientist. And yet Rick insists he doesn’t care about his appearance even though he does have a look. Then he brags that his look really works out for him, in a way that we usually don’t see any proof of.

He goes up to a dinosaur guarding its eggs while waving some leaves telling it to get back, and he expects that to work out, and he says that someone with a curious appetite is willing to pay him a lot of money for it to cover his less critical costs for a year. I guess Rick finds it too boring to simply steal money from people’s wallets with his portal gun, and maybe he feels better about making money by selling people stuff because at least they’re happy about it. But it’s still a weak excuse for his plan of the week when there’s a million other alternatives.

  A giant dinosaur approaches Rick as I’m still unimpressed by how the plot is so derivative, especially considering that an episode of the show was already inspired by Jurassic Park and was way less obvious about it instead of instantly reminding you of Jurassic Park the whole time. It let you stay invested in the story as its own thing because it took place inside a hobo’s body, in a theme park of Rick’s that was meant to show off diseases instead of dinosaurs. So naturally I didn’t see the connection.

Summer’s too scared to bring Rick his bag, and predictably the dinosaurs turn out to be friendly to Rick, as one hi-fives him, because unlike some OTHER characters, he’s not an IDIOT, which explains why the dinosaur he stole an egg from didn’t kill him for it despite looking annoyed with him.

Rick explains why he’s so much smarter than the people who made Jurassic Park because everything on this island is subservient to his appearance and scent. Now it’s kinda worth it. He was inspired by the movie but didn’t make the same mistake as it. So it’s better written than the movie. See, THAT’S the point of making a story that’s already been done.

  Rick wants to get out of here because he got what he needed, and predictably Morty and Summer wanna see the rest of the park. Morty says the park’s decrepit and Rick explains that that’s because the park never got off the ground. A lot of businessmen and investors backed out concerned about health insurance coverage and animal rights. That’s also realistic.

  He shows resentment for those people, and then we see some people cooking dinosaur meat over a bonfire, with one of them relatably concerned about the meat being burned, and then they yell at Rick and want revenge because he left them to die here 20 years ago. But why? He has a portal gun. Wouldn’t it be smarter for him to at least charge them for the privilege of getting portaled home?

Also, how do the dinosaurs stay alive? The dinosaurs in ancient times stayed alive because there was a lot more oxygen in the atmosphere. So I guess Rick genetically engineered the dinosaurs or used cyborg enhancements to make them stay alive in Earth’s normal atmosphere.

  It makes sense that Rick doesn’t have a ray gun to shoot them all right away because it’s 3 against one and he didn’t expect anybody to attack him on this island, and he didn’t bring his lab coat since it was holding the dinosaur eggs for him. He’s reckless in general. He must have also left his portal gun behind too, which was reckless of him, especially in a park where any dinosaur might step on it. It’s hard for the comic to balance sometimes that, he’s reckless but also really smart, which go completely against each other.

  He spits alcohol on the fire and then after Rick lies to Morty when he’s called out, one of the guys says that when he shut the power off on the island to steal embryos, he left them to die. I don’t like the guy with the hat because his dialogue sucks. They have big guns, but they’d be long out of bullets by now.

  Summer tells Rick to offer them a way home, somehow thinking they can be reasoned with when they’re that mad. They’re so mad that I guess it makes sense that money won’t help. And Rick uncharacteristically follows that advice with a smile. And when he gets hit in the neck by a tranquilizer dart, he says that they can’t take him down with just one, saying unrealistically that he uses them for eye-drops. Well it makes sense that someone who did so many bad things would have a hard time getting to sleep, but you’d think it’d be lethal to use them as eye-drops.

  He then gets shot by a bunch of them at once and passes out because he wasted time talking to them to vent, getting defeated by his own personality, so Morty and Summer make the rational if disloyal decision to run away from Rick and crawl through a duct to escape the park instead.

  Then Summer’s disgusted at seeing dinosaurs interact in a way that they couldn’t have in the movies, another thing that makes this original, but then they have to run from dinosaurs. Good thing they can outrun them. I guess they were bio-engineered to be slower than humans, and also bio-engineered to not have feathers like real dinosaurs did because that’s how they looked in the movies.

  Morty shows some hidden depths by immediately knowing the name of one of the dinosaurs because he researched dinosaurs, probably from learning about the movies. I wish Morty had more moments like this, that show that curiosity for learning runs in the family and he could be smart like Rick some day. Being a slow learner doesn’t mean he can’t memorize information. Naturally Summer tells Morty to shut up, being mad at how he thought now was a good time to correct her on science. That makes up for the tone-breaking earlier.

  Then, they’re saved in a realistic lucky break because the dinosaurs that threatened them get eaten by a larger one. I wonder if THAT ever happened in the movies instead of it JUST being about dinosaurs chasing humans, who would provide less meat from being so small.

  They hide, and Morty, despite being told to shush, makes an amusing joke, “ You know what kind of dinosaur that was, Summer? Rick told me. It was an I don’t think they saurus. “ It’s amusing because it’s a surprise, as I expected him to tell me the actual name of it like before, but instead he makes a pun at a time like this.

  He’s so experienced with dealing with Rick’s danger that he tries to feel better about it with ill-timed levity, showing some realistic character development getting used to it. Summer still takes it seriously, because she’s not used to it. She tells him, “ Do you really think it’s the right time for puns, Morty? “ Morty says, “ I dino, summer, you tell me. ” I wasn’t expecting another one. This is better than the puns in the Sonic comics because it’s lampshaded. 

  Summer, hopefully joking, says that she has a plan, but it involves them eating him while she runs away. That wouldn’t really work because the other dinosaurs who aren’t eating him would still go after her, and he’s not even a big meal to a dinosaur. Also, she cares about him, so she’s just bluffing obviously.

  Morty’s so used to Rick being a jerk that he doesn’t take it to heart, I guess just being used to the sibling rivalry, and says sarcastically that she’s real funny and says that she’s a life-ruining drinking habit and lab coat away from being Rick. Minus the genius part. This gives Summer an idea.

  And it turns out the guys just kidnapped Rick and want him to get them off the island. This justifies his survival, but is confusing since one of them clearly wanted to kill him. Rick’s spiteful enough to say that if they were actually tough they’d have gotten THEMSELVES off the island, and says he’ll just wait for his grandkids to save him. I like that one of them constantly shows morality.

  It turns out what they’re seeing is Summer wearing Rick’s lab coat awesomely riding on top of a dinosaur, saying, “ You’re about to get jurasskicked! “ But it’s okay because it was kind of a badass one-liner, with her hands in the air like Rick, AND it shows her bond with Morty because even she joins in on the puns. Jurasskicked kind of sounds lame, but it’s what’s happening that makes it cool.

  And this is a dark enough and self-aware enough series that puns can be forgiven, while in the Sonic comics, they genuinely seemed to only exist because the writers thought puns on their own were gonna make the audience laugh.

 So of course, the dinosaurs kill the ones who kidnapped Rick. SOMEHOW Summer is surprised at this because she didn’t know that would happen. What did she THINK would happen?! Rick says good work for saving him a ton of workplace lawsuits, and says, “ You wanna see some real bloodthirsty carnivores? Get tied up with some labor attorneys. “

  Realistically, they’re traumatized, and Summer shows that she’s a better person than Rick as a result. Rick just says she’s a clever girl as he figures out her plan. She had tricked the dinosaurs into thinking she was Rick with the scent from his coat and a similar hairstyle. I guess Rick intentionally made sure the dinosaurs’ visions sucked. I hate that I’m not gonna be able to hide the red stains in these panels. There’s only so much I can do to have this look presentable when I have to show off the dialogue and characters.

  This memorable story started out as ripping off Jurassic Park, but fortunately it had an original story and the park itself was the only familiar set-piece. Rick made the park, and made all the dinosaurs subservient to his appearance and scent to avoid the obvious problem with it. And realistically, the park never got off the ground because the investors and businessmen had brains, which makes the movies seem even more forced because they only happened because of Idiot Balls.

  But Rick was smart, which makes more sense of someone smart enough to bring back dinosaurs in the first place. And it turns out after he got an egg for some money, justifying why they’re even here, he ends up kidnapped by people he left to die when he shut off the power to steal some embryos. I don’t know why they say steal, they were HIS dinosaurs.

  And the day is saved when Summer uses a Chekhov’s Gun with inspiration from Morty; she makes the dinosaur that saved her wanna help save Rick by dressing up like him, so their scent programmed them to like her. And the fact that she was horrified by the dinosaurs killing the kidnappers just makes it forced that she was ever happy about carrying out the plan at all. OF COURSE that happened, what did she and Morty EXPECT, that the dinosaur would simply scare the kidnappers and hold them still, gently nudge them?

  At least Rick showed his appreciation for them instead of being embarrassed at having to be rescued by them. I bet nothing will come of Summer’s guilt, though, like her being charitable and volunteering to make up for it, because this is an episodic series, but I guess the writer thought it’d be too depressing to see her still upset about this after this issue. Plus, Rick can erase people’s memories.

The Rick Identity:

  We start out seeing Beth at a candlelit dinner with Jerry, saying that she doesn’t know what it is, but the last few months, he’s changed, being attentive, and connecting again with her, and he even feels different, like a new man. I think I remember this. I also remember that in all of the issues in this book before this, Beth and Jerry had exactly as bad of a marriage as in the show. So this came out of NOWHERE.  Am I expected to know that it’s been a few months since the previous story, where everyone was acting the same?

  Beth wants to recommit to him, but then Jerry sweats being scared and runs away. He goes up to Rick dragging Morty along asking what Rick’s done. He says that Rick did something because he was having a romantic dinner with his wife and suddenly realized he was able to be with his own mother. Why would he realize that at all if he was thinking she was his wife in the first place? That’s the big question. What took so long? He tells him to undo whatever he did, and Rick reveals that he might have switched their minds and left them there.

  This is what I was talking about in that issue where Summer and Jerry switched bodies. In that story, they were able to get back to their bodies with NO effort on ANYBODY’S part. Literally all that happened was, Rick and Morty returned to the spaceship and suddenly Jerry and Summer teleported to them back in their own bodies. And they switched bodies because Jerry pressed a button on the spaceship. Also, in the show, we saw that Rick is able to transfer his consciousness to a different body, which he did multiple times to escape a prison and sabotage the Council of Ricks.

  Not to mention he can do this to survive death and wake up in a clone body. So with all this in mind, it’s absolutely impossible to believe that he would be INCAPABLE of returning Morty and Jerry to their original bodies, when he made a body-switching button, and can transfer HIS consciousness just fine. So the only logical explanation is that, NO, there AREN’T basic incompatibilities that make switching them back dangerous. That’s total bullshit.

  This is the kind of nonsense that happens when all of the writers of a comic don’t read the stories not by them. You get a serious continuity error. Rick is lying and he IS capable of returning them to normal. He would be really embarrassed of being unable to achieve something. He’d work hard so that he could! He insisted in the show that he can make ANYTHING. The only way they’d stay each other so long is if Rick wanted them to. And I can’t imagine why. This story wouldn’t feel so TERRIBLE if it was explained right away, that all he’s doing is pulling a practical joke on them.

  Basically, he invented a machine that made Morty and Jerry forget they had switched bodies, by switching their memories. He says that he actually came up with the fix a while ago, but bringing it up would’ve had them mad at him for switching their minds without asking. Except he could’ve done it when they were asleep or knocked out. I was wondering if he just used that same machine again when he used a machine to fix things. After all, he JUST SAID there were basic incompatibilities.

  And then Rick acts suspicious when “ Morty “ asks how he’s supposed to know it worked. And he calls Morty Summer. Summer says, “ Aw, man, “ but then in the next page, he talks as if he hasn’t figured it all out for sure from that.

  Instead he says that he doesn’t know what’s wrong because every time he looks in the mirror, it feels wrong, like he was supposed to be a girl. He hugs a lab coat that’s being supportive of whatever he’d decide, and then it turns out he was hugging a big mannequin with flippers that was wearing a lab coat.

  Rick starts lampshading how he was stupid enough to think that was him since that thing is so fat. If the writer knows that was too stupid of him, he shouldn’t have written it. But it was funny how long he went on about how stupid Morty was, saying that if he needs to explain this, he needs to reconsider who he’s taking on adventures. Rick tells him to kill this thing already, wanting to assassinate the star queen of Aphaxia.

  Then all of a sudden the “ queen “ that looks nothing like a girl, tells Morty that he’s lying. I guess it makes sense that “ Morty “ believes him right away, considering what he just said. I really don’t understand why Rick switched Summer and Morty. It’s just a giant Villain Ball for him that always stood out to me as something even the show’s Rick would never do.

  Morty points a ray gun at him, and says that thanks to his mind-switcher ray, anybody could be anybody. And this kind of situation is exactly why Rick shouldn’t have made this ray. Is he not confident enough to think he can achieve something without switching bodies with someone? I’m just wondering why Rick didn’t erase Morty’s memory of spending six months as his own dad, and erase Jerry’s memory, because in the show, he was constantly erasing Morty’s memories, and making him relive them was the whole point of Morty’s Mindblowers.

  So if Rick has that kind of technology, there’s no reason Morty would remember being Jerry. So this whole plot couldn’t have happened. Also, I know this is Summer in Morty’s body right now, but fuck it. I’m gonna inevitably call the person by what they look like anyways, so I might as well be consistent, you know who it really is.

  The manatee’s talking nothing like Rick, being nothing but nice, while Rick’s body has always been talking like Rick. It’s such an Idiot Ball for Morty since the manatee would clearly have a different voice and personality. I couldn’t imagine Rick being that consistently nice just to pretend he’s someone else. Honestly, if I was Morty, I’d shoot Rick, not the manatee who’s being nothing but nice to him.

He shoots Rick indeed, but the laser goes right through him, and Rick is just fine. I guess it only went through a hologram? Then Rick reveals that you have to turn off the safety to use the ray gun. And so the laser is harmless otherwise. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense if there was no laser at ALL if the safety was on? Rick blasts the manatee, and says that if he keeps this up, he’ll leave him in that body permanently.

  Morty’s upset at the idea that he’s still Summer, after that ridiculous Kick the Dog moment, and I’m guessing he’s just that good of a person and only shot Rick on a confused whim, because the safety’s off by now and Rick just threw him a ray gun, while threatening him. He must have a lot of faith in Summer’s morality to assume she won’t shoot him right now.

  This comes off like it was written by somebody who never watched an episode of the show in their lives, and takes Rick being evil sometimes way too seriously and therefore thinks that Rick is just a complete monster to ANYBODY and so it’d make sense for him to start doing something like this.

  Then we see Summer in Morty’s body aiming a ray gun at Morty in bed saying to come with him and set things right. Again, I’m just gonna call it how I see it, you know what I really mean. Summer asks Rick what he did as she’s tied to him, and Rick says the bullshit lie that he switched everyone’s minds and never figured out how to switch everyone back. Bullshit.

  Rick says that all he did was make everybody happy again. Rick keeps calling Summer Morty regardless, almost like he DIDN’T switch their minds and actually just changed their memories, and so, he’s right. All Rick’s fault for not erasing Summer’s memory. This wouldn’t happen in the SHOW! He didn’t have to tell Summer he was Morty last story, either.

  Rick says that all we are is emergent memory systems and wave patterns, and all he did was delete a bunch of data to make Summer Morty. Summer knows he can switch them. So HE CAN and somehow doesn’t, which is why this story arc sucks! At least this is memorable, but it’s such a jarring silly story. Rick actually needs to remind Summer that shooting him won’t matter because he’d just wake up in a clone body.

He says he has a BUNCH of back-up clones, while the Rick from the show doesn’t have any in his own universe. So we know this is Comic Rick right away. “ I have a bunch of backup clones that all have my memories… “

  Rick tells him that identity is an illusion as Summer says that all he is is data and it doesn’t matter who is using that data. Then Morty gets hit in the face by yellow light and knocked out and the ray gun gets picked up by Rick. It turns out these are all clone Ricks that Rick wants to get back in the nutrient sludge baths. It would actually make sense if, rather than turning on Rick for no reason at all, they were programmed to pull a joke on him, or reprogrammed.

  One of the Ricks blasts Comic Rick apart for NO explained reason. It could still be a prank if he came back in a clone body just fine after this. But this isn’t undone, which is why I hate this arc so much. And all of the clones are conscious, so there’s no way he’d wake up as one of them. But the show established that even if there’s no clone Ricks in his own universe, SOMEHOW he’d teleport to another universe and wake up in the clone of THAT Rick.

So Comic Rick isn’t really dead. In the show, even after that happened, Rick still ended up getting back to his universe. So Comic Rick would inevitably do the same thing. So what’s the point of writing this? Spite?!

  One of the clones says that he doesn’t know why they’re upset since they’re all Grandpa Rick. See, when I remembered this, THIS is WHY I was tempted to call it just a practical joke, because they were all smiling at this point. Either I call it a prank, or call it ridiculously bad character derailment. This doesn’t even feel like the same character as Rick. He’s just smirking at Morty and incompetent.

  Summer in Morty’s body backs away from them holding a baseball bat and tells his family to get away from him as Rick smirks and the rest of them stare into space instead of at him, as if they’re clone Ricks who for NO REASON at all switched bodies with them, when they like themselves, not someone else’s identity.

The ending ruins this. I could forgive this if it was just a prank for a little bit, but it gets taken too far. Are they just trying to freak him out on purpose? I don’t get it. This is suicidally incompetent of Rick. This is the easiest way to, if there is one thing that’s guaranteed to turn Morty on him for real, this would be it.

  And this is Summer in Morty’s body. I don’t even know where Morty is because the Summer body is trying to creep him out, and the last time I saw “ Summer, “ she was tied to Rick on a chair, and now she’s gone. And if Rick really wanted “ Morty “ to let it go, he’d erase his memory! This kind of thing is PRIME Morty’s Mindblowers material. He’s erased his memory for a lot less! He made Morty forget when he said “ taken for granite! “

Morty says that they’re not his family, just a bunch of clones. Rick says that a clone is just as good if it has all the same memories. Never MIND that it’s a different personality! He wouldn’t think this. Rick says that Morty’s original family wasn’t going to let him just live his life. They wanted the old Rick back, and it was super off-putting. Never mind that he could’ve erased their memories of the fact that he told them he was just a clone of their RICK. Never mind that the clone Rick is supposed to be a genius, not stupid enough to TELL them that he’s a clone who killed Rick.

He says that he replaced his family and is fine with that. I don’t buy that Rick would do that to Beth. A Rick in Beth’s body wouldn’t act like Beth, so he’d miss her. This story arc would only be forgivable if it was explained to be all just a dream, but the writer doesn’t have the tact and talent to do that. Instead he’s a complete amateur.

  Morty grabs the portal gun, saying that he doesn’t buy for a second that it doesn’t matter who we are, and if Rick believed it, he wouldn’t CARE. He shoots Rick with the portal gun, which destroys him as he inexplicably says his catchphrase. How is Morty alive anyways? He looks like he’s fused with him when he goes into the portal.

  He warps to the show’s Earth, and immediately, Rick blasts him to death, with Morty asking what that was. This must be before he found out there were Mortys other than him around. This must be a prequel to a lot of the episodes in the show. Rick says that it’s one of his clones probably or a Morty looking to take over his life. To be fair, maybe that Morty WAS planning on doing that, because there’s no other place he could fill than a Morty’s place. He’d have no other house that would accept him right away than a Morty’s house.

  But I think that would be uncharacteristically evil of him to do. He does evil stuff, but it’s usually if he has something to GAIN, like money or self-preservation. Rick shouldn’t have assumed he’d wanna do that.

Instead of talking to him and asking what was going on, he just killed him immediately, in a rushed way for the writer to wrap up the comic taking place in a different universe from the show, which turned out to be a terrible decision because the final issue of the comic, spoiler alert, ends with the biggest downer ending you could possibly imagine. Yes, worse than this. So that can’t be accepted as canon to the show or that’d be the worst finale ever.

  This “ immediate shoot to kill “ mentality is even contradicted in an earlier issue; in the Ugly Morty arc, when an alternate Morty warps to Rick and Morty through a portal, he doesn’t immediately get killed, he actually brought him to a bed and found out what he was coming to him for help with. And I know that was C-137 Rick, because he said that the Council of Ricks were a bunch of idiots, and only one Rick had been established to hate the Council.

  The show’s Rick was defined as always being the rogue one who doesn’t like the Council, and so he was the first one suspected of wrongdoing, because he was the only one like that. THIS panel has Rick calling other Mortys worse than cockroaches, and Morty’s got no compassion for other Mortys at all, like that Ugly Morty arc never happened, and says he’d never be comfortable with other hims. Meanwhile, both of the Pocket Morty stories had Morty in a yellow shirt caring about other hims and even wanting freedom for them, and the same goes for Morty in the Evil Morty episode.

  This has gotta be the worst-written story in the comic. This is written as badly as a terrible Sonic story, and I’d know. It’s like a Hate Fic fanfiction. With no foreshadowing at all, it turns out that Comic Rick switched the brains of main characters and made them forget about it because he was somehow incapable of switching them back, which we know is bullshit from even the show. None of this ever COULD happen in the show. It’s just arbitrary. This story isn’t canon to me. It acts like a previous main story arc in the comic never happened, so it literally isn’t canon.

  Even this very issue makes use of the fact that he has backup clones he wakes up as, so he could clearly apply that technology towards returning his family to their normal bodies. No, he switched their brains to make a point about how identity is an illusion. But why? He cares about identity himself, and that’s why he cares enough about his reputation to not look like a softie and try to be good most of the time. What did he have to gain from any of this? He even said at one point that he wouldn’t do some evil deed because, “ How would that profit me? “

  How did the clone Ricks expect the real Rick to never come back and inevitably kill one of them? Well I guess they naturally don’t know that Rick can wake up in a different universe as a clone Rick he didn’t even make. Still, we should’ve seen the story conclusively end the comic universe, with Comic Rick inevitably returning and killing the Rick who replaced him, and then effortlessly returning his family to their normal bodies, using the clone Ricks who probably switched minds with them.

  Too bad he’d never get his Morty back, but we could see him use Spare Parts instead, and erase his memory of the fact that this isn’t the real Morty. There was no hint that he died. By not seeing this – oh yeah, he could’ve gotten his original Morty back to  his body by just body-switching him with Spare Parts.

  By not seeing this, this wasn’t a proper ending to the comic dimension and completely misses the narrative point of why it was a separate dimension. Why on earth does the writer care enough to do this? The comic is episodic anyways! It’s not like it’s so bogged down by continuity. I’m sure most of its stories could’ve taken place in the show just fine.

  I really wanna know why the clone Ricks got free of their tubes. Someone would have to let them out on purpose. Or a bunch of Ricks without native Operation Phoenixes died and coincidentally all woke up in this dimension, but that needed to be explained to feel less arbitrary. Rick would have a back-up generator for the clones, EVEN IF the power went out, so since we didn’t see a giant EMP wave go off, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

  That’s just a Diabolus ex Machina, combined with a Rick uncharacteristically switching Beth with a clone Rick, to scare Morty into traveling to another universe after turning him into a portal. He should’ve KNOWN Morty would turn on him! This is the biggest Villain Ball that Rick has ever been given. And then it’s immediately followed up with by ANOTHER one.

  The Show Rick uncharacteristically kills Comic Morty the minute he shows up, when he could’ve easily talked with him and sent him to a world without a Morty, like, oh, I DUNNO, the one where Summer doesn’t have a Morty? This is such obvious meta logic. Like the only explanation I can think of for this because it doesn’t make any LOGICAL sense, is that it was obviously only written because this particular writer, somehow didn’t like that the comic Rick and Morty weren’t the show ones.

Talk about something that doesn’t matter, even though obviously the comic’s never gonna be canon to the show because they know it’d be bad marketing to confuse the people who only watch the SHOW, by going off comic continuity.

  So what is the point of saying it’s the show Rick and Morty when the comic will always be its own separate canon ignored by the show? This just gave me Ian Flynn flashbacks. He suddenly made the Archie Sonic comic just like the games and vice versa, as if he wanted it to be canon to the games and vice versa, when it was never meant to be that way and never will be, all because the games are the most well-known continuity. He also turned characters into ashes a lot, and that happened to Morty.

  This story isn’t canon to me. I made a collage with the Snipping Tool gathering every picture of every time Rick was nicer to Morty than he has to be. I’ve gathered over 100 pictures! There’s been plenty of times Rick showed he cares about Morty. There’s no reason he would do this to him.

Rick and Morty Presents The Vindicators:

  I’ve been looking forward to this one. Morty sees a portal show up and the Vindicator superheroes from the show show up, for the second time considering Rick’s dialogue. They tell Rick and Morty that the multiverse needs their help, and Rick calls them posers and tells them to go away. Morty’s happy though because he wants Rick to be a hero and they seem like what he wants Rick to be. Rick calls them hackneyed heroes for no apparent reason and Morty compliments Vanice’s new hairstyle.

  Morty compliments them and then Rick snarks, “ Pouches? Really? Because a half-crocodile half-robot dude needs lip balm and hand sanitizer on every mission! “ Then he asks one of the other guys, “ Or are you not in costume because it’s laundry day? “ And he expects me to believe this is his costume.

  Rick asks Vanice to ditch them and drink. I have no idea why he prefers Vanice so much and it’s not funny either. And when he’s told he doesn’t drink, he asks, “ Since when? “ Vanice says that he’s half-Filipino and blushes when he consumes alcohol, and is embarrassed about it for no reason. Huh?

  Rick’s dialogue implies that they’ve already been with the Vindicators twice before this. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to show their FIRST adventure? The woman with evil-looking eyes says that they’re amassing an army to help save the multiverse. Worlds Unite did that too. I wonder if this is a cliché in comic books and that’s why the comic did it, to make fun of it. Rick says, “ Let’s play a drinking game. When someone says multiverse, drink! “

  The woman, I think Supernova, says that this being is small but has grown into a big problem for the Vindicators, whose name is Boon. Morty somehow mishears her as Boom, and Rick says that was a horrible name for a bad guy. Vanice says that Boon used to be one of them, and yet is now threatening the entire multiverse, so why did he hang out with them again?

That makes me satisfied that Rick says, “ Oh, so clever! And what an original plot! It’s like a cliché and a trope made a baby and called it M Night. “ I think there’s so many superhero comics out there that it’s inevitable that a lot of their stories and plot points will become overdone clichés, and since so many of them are like that, I guess a lot of them CAN’T possibly never be done again.

  Boon used to be weak, but then he learned about the infinity balls. Oh, like the Infinity Gauntlet? Even I know about that. There’s a humorous line taking advantage of the name of the convenient MacGuffin. A BUNCH of them actually. Boon was so desperate to get the Infinity Balls that he grabbed whatever looked like they could be them, but soon he consumed too much power and the power controlled him, as if THAT makes any sense. Now mad with power, he’ll stop at nothing until he possesses all the Infinity Balls. If he’s mad with power, why can’t he just teleport all of them to him?

  How does he notice a difference with an increase in power after a certain point? And now we’re told that he wants to bedazzle his infinity glove, totally not the Gauntlet, and turn the entire multiverse into one big ball pit to play in. Why? Why not just go to a ball pit himself that’s already there? If the entire multiverse was one ball pit, there’d be no HOSPITALS, no DOCTORS to help him, no FOOD!

I guess we’re supposed to question this because it’s intentionally a well-deserved parody. But why doesn’t Rick make fun of it? I guess because that would be explaining the joke. He can’t make fun of literally everything silly. I’m SO glad this story exists.

  I have to wonder why Morty’s even being asked to come help them, oh right, because the show revealed that he’s just there to make them look good as a Tag-along Kid. Realistic because there’s no other explanation. It makes me sad that Rick’s being portrayed as bad because The Complainer is Always Wrong, because he’s right about everything he’s saying here. These are legitimate criticisms so they should be talked about, whether it makes sense or not. It couldn’t make sense. This is on purpose, this is exactly the kind of “ anything can happen “ bad writing you find in comic books.

  Rick says that they don’t wanna go with them, saying satisfyingly, “ It’s called event fatigue! Everyone’s tired of crossovers and forced team-ups and interconnected shared universes! It’s not about adventure! It’s not about story. It’s just one big cash-grab! “ You hear that, Archie Sonic? And yet they made crossovers ANYWAYS. Morty tells Rick that he has no choice and the powers that be compel him. Translation, the plot demands it.

  Rick admits that he’s right because it’s like climate change. He’s so nihilistic that he thinks mankind has done irreparable damage to the planet, and yet he still recycles. How does that dialogue make sense? Rick of all people should know that the potential power of technology is limitless. There’s no way we’ve done irreparable damage to the planet.

Technology will keep getting better and fix all of that. They’re working on carbon sinks much better than trees. Already the ozone layer hole is better than it was before. Hell, HE could reverse climate change HIMSELF, if he REALLY cared, so why does he talk like this? He recycles because he’s got a soft side, or wants to feel superior to those who don’t.

  They go to another planet, and somehow he immediately knows where they are in the next panel and panics when I’m sure tons of planets have places with deserts just like this. Vanice says that they came to trade with the Death Stalkers; diesel fuel and cans of spray paint in exchange for a team of their best fighters.

  Rick says that they’ll never help them. Of course he’s right, partially because the Death Stalkers want revenge on him for stealing their power supply in the show and returning them to a post-apocalyptic lifestyle. So Million Ants immediately has to get himself injured to protect Rick.

  Rick doesn’t actually answer Vanice’s question and explain what he did to them in the show, though. So if someone were to read this comic without watching the show, they’d be confused a lot by the comic going off the show. But what are the chances of that happening? Even if someone only experienced the comic at first, the comic is the best advertisement for the show EVER, and we’re at Book 5 now.

  Anyways, Morty’s told that of course Million Ants will survive, because he’s just a million ants. And Rick asks what the point is of more superheroes. Well, duh. There’s like trillions of them at this point. In all this time the characters are talking, I’m wondering why the Death Stalkers have been polite enough to not kill them and interrupt them. I, guess they were still shooting at Million Ants, but they wanna kill Rick. Wouldn’t they ignore him and go to Rick?

  Morty says that he just wants to go home, out of nowhere, because he doesn’t want to help the Vindicators recruit heroes just to watch them die, and he’s done watching that happen. Rick says that they’ll all probably die today anyways and says, “ All of this has happened before and it will all happen again. “ He says that it’s from Peter Pan who also said dying would be an adventure, so he motivates him to keep the adventure going, but the reason he’s okay with this, is because now they’re gonna do things HIS way.

  So now he wants to recruit some lovable anti-heroes. Lightning happens indoors for no apparent reason and we see a clone Pickle Rick wake up. I guess Rick is just making up everything he’s saying to Supernova to confuse her, because there’s no way the lightning would be a manifestation of “ sour force, “ and he ends it by saying, “ something something convoluted plot something. “

So he is just making this up to make fun of convoluted and silly superhero plots. I’ve reviewed so many Sonic comic issues. I know Rick’s right, they aren’t written perfectly. I’m left to assume the real answer is that he just cloned himself and turned that clone into a pickle for a situation like this.

  He says that while he’s passed out, he’s gonna need Vance to smash this tube open. Then Alan needs to put Pickle Rick in a jar. The tube doesn’t get shot fast enough, because for no reason Vanice waited through Rick’s redundant clarification where he was literal-minded with Vance’s, “ Say what? “

  So Pickle Rick wakes up in time because of Vanice’s incompetence, and immediately kills Crocubot for no reason at all. If Rick made a clone of himself that’s a magically walking pickle, it must be because he thought it would benefit him, so why would it have the free will to do something he doesn’t want instead of just being an obedient servant?

  So that plan failed, so they warp to the hospital, and Rick reassures Morty with refreshing Genre Savviness for these guys that Crocubot will inevitably come back from the dead. Vanice is sick of Rick being a know-it-all who knows how everything is gonna go down. You should kinda be grateful, you’re in danger a lot.

  And Rick accurately predicts that Supernova’s gonna get between them and yell at them to work together. This is awesome. He’s asked why they brought them here and why they’re in the cancer ward, and apparently Vanice recognizes Scary Terry. It turns out he doesn’t give everyone nightmares anymore.

  Scary Terry lampshades the reformed villain trope from superhero comics, or rather how it can go horribly wrong, by saying that being a good guy now allows people to look past the violent things he did in the past, and enjoy the violent things he does now.

  He also says that he’s hilarious specializing in insults and pop culture references. Then he wants to be called Scarepool, like Deadpool, and Rick says that name means as little as that eye-patch. He immediately asks Rick who he wants him to kill. So it’s supposed to be not taken seriously that he’s good now.

  Supernova asks to avoid recruiting people who are going through medical treatments. Why? She should say that it’s because she thinks he’s too weak for it. He’s clearly not. Rick says, “ Well, I’m sorry that not all superheroes look like supermodels. “ That satisfyingly calls out superhero movies on always hiring conventionally attractive actors to play superheroes. Realistically not all of them would look that way, especially if there’s so many of them. But apparently they all conveniently have the power that, in addition to their superpowers, they also have the superpower of “ looking good. “

  Supernova says that’s not it, not wanting to admit any kind of flaw in herself EVER, and arbitrarily calls him a hateful ignorant ass. But why? If anything, he was showing morality there, more than her. She just wants to think she’s better than him as a person, which might be the point. Getting between them as a mediator reminded me of Sally. She says that she’s so tempted to open a portal to the wasteland and let the Death Stalkers at him. She can do that? Vance asks for Pickle Rick.

  They hope that Boon won’t find them, and then Noob-Noob shows up and Rick happily greets him because he reminds him of Morty, according to the show. He guesses that he’s been rebooted to appeal more to a middle-American audience, and Vanice says very unhelpfully that there’s something he doesn’t know about Noob-Noob. Why doesn’t he just say immediately that he’s Boon? That gave it away immediately.

  Rick uncharacteristically falls to his knees and acts melodramatic about the revelation shouting no, so Morty asks him if he’s okay, and then he starts laughing and says, “ I can’t believe that you thought I didn’t know that Boon was Noob-Noob all along! I mean, Boon is Noob spelled backwards for fuck’s sake! “

And Boon’s such a stupid name that there had to be a reason for it. So of course he would think, “ That’s a stupid name. I wonder why he’s called that. What could be the logic behind it. “ Although to be fair to Morty, it’s not like he’s called Boon-Boon, which would make things more clear, and there’s tons of stupid names out there.

  In a superhero comic where anything can happen regardless of logic, because the writing could be that silly, you actually wouldn’t be dense if you assumed this wasn’t Noob-Noob because they COULD have it just be a guy named Boon for no reason, and it’d be another example of a missed opportunity in a comic book. Or it could be an intentional Red Herring to mislead the audience, by being too obvious. I’m not used to a name of a character meaning something.

  I have to wonder why Noob-Noob can be the ultimate villain here when this is a PREQUEL to the TV episode where the Vindicators all get killed off by Drunk Rick, because in that episode, Noob-Noob was still with the team just fine. He was even their janitor and Rick still liked him. It’s almost as if the comic isn’t canon to the show, but it’s almost as if this is clearly a separate dimension from the show because it CAN’T be a prequel to an episode.

  Either that, or, he’s either an identical twin, or maybe he erased their memories of what he did. This is why it’s stupid to have the comic dimension from the first issue be ditched forever. Fans are inevitably gonna have to assume it’s a separate dimension anyways to account for continuity errors. So if anything you have everything to lose if it IS the same dimension, because there could be a continuity error.

  Vanice asks Rick why he didn’t say anything about Noob-Noob being evil earlier. Rick says it’s for the same reason HE didn’t say anything. Supernova says that THEY didn’t warn Rick because they knew he was fond of Noob-Noob and might refuse to help them. Rick says that that’s a good reason too, and he was gonna say that he didn’t wanna ruin the big reveal. In-universe, he’d be ruining it for Morty, and no one else. So that’s nice of him, I guess. Although I guess it might be nicer to warn Morty ahead of time so that he wouldn’t be so shocked that maybe he could get attacked.

  So Noob-Noob grows into a giant in front of them and says, “ This is Boon’s House! “ when there is no house there. The fact that he looks way too silly to be multiversal threat material is probably supposed to be the joke. I have to point ALL these things out so I can fully explain what makes this story great. Otherwise I’d just be summarizing the plot, and who the hell wants that in a comic review? Anybody could read a comic story.

  I love that Noob-Noob explains WHY he’s gotten resentful, which is better than Fiona Fox. He was treated like he was only good for cleaning and errands, so he was insecure, and got the Infinity Glove to get better. That doesn’t explain why he became evil though. Wouldn’t that excuse also potentially lead to him just wanting to be a better hero with them? I guess he was brainwashed here. It’d be better writing if that was explained.

  Out of complete nowhere, Vanice challenges him to a dance off, and explains that before he was a superhero, he was a break-dancer. At least we know his backstory. This is so stupid that even in a parody it seems too hard to believe. He gets blasted to death as Noob-Noob tells us that that was funny, and I immediately wonder why he waited so long to blast him.

  And somehow Morty thinks they settle things with dances instead of violence on the streets. I guess he’s just forced to say this as a joke by the writer at how comics being unrealistic could create a distorted perception of reality. After all this wouldn’t be the only time I saw something unbelievably stupid in a comic book, so this could happen.

But that was too exaggerated to make the point properly. It comes off as more a problem with the story than all comic books, because what comic book would be stupid enough  to have a superhero with a backstory as a break-dancer who thinks he can dance a problem like this away?

  Him thinking that (giggles) now I’m just thinking of Arrested Development where Tobias thought he could convince a bunch of troubled youth to settle a gang war with a dance! That could’ve been funnier here if there were multiple dancers instead of just one that get blasted. It’d be realistic if they got attacked, even without a laser.

  Supernova tells the Vindicators to take off, and they all separate and run away. Rick explains that he just needed to put some space between them and Big Bad Boon over there. Supernova gave him an idea earlier. He actually admits that the Vindicators were right. They really did need to recruit an army, and he really insults Noob-Noob, which actually makes sense since he insults Morty too. He blasts his portal gun.

  Pickle Rick gets eaten by Noob-Noob. Why did he stop killing after he was brought with the heroes after he killed Crocubot? Scary Terry then stupidly alerts him to his presence by threatening him, and since he looked really close to him when he was flying towards him last panel, I’m really confused at how he could be a little further AWAY in the next panel instead of having since landed on his shoulder. If he was smart, he would’ve just immediately killed him like he does in dreams perfectly fine tons of times. Scary Morty was more competent.

  He gets smacked away and the reason he’s covered in a green light is that he was caught with telekinesis. Wait, telekinesis like Silver. I guess he thinks he’s too moral to completely tear him apart with telekinesis, or tear off his legs and arms, which would make him bleed to death if he did that.

Still, he could hold Boon STILL with his telekinesis, and we’re not being told he can’t hold the entire Boon up in the air. I didn’t think about this problem right away as I was reading in it because the writing in general was so good that I was invested enough to not think about that problem. Telekinesis is a really overpowered power to have. But of course I would rather see Rick defeat him, so that’s better writing.

   Then he and Scary Terry get threatened with being crushed by Boon’s giant foot, and Vance thinks it’s a good idea to just stay still and ask who’s got his back instead of them both running away in all the time he was saying that.

  The Death Stalkers go through a portal, still hating Rick so there’s SOME logic. Then Rick summons Seal Team Ricks, the Zigerions from the show who made a simulation, and some interdimensional customs agents, who are somehow Ricks. And he happily says that all of them hate Rick. He tells them to come after him as I think about how convenient it is that he knew exactly where to quickly summon those portals so that they’d appear right in front of them.

He must do some hardcore memorization to remember, on the spot, which exact dimension everyone is, like, where exactly in the dimension to put the portal every time. The Ricks could’ve been anywhere, right? I guess he gave himself a perfect memory for that with a device. But he couldn’t have photographic memory in general.

  Also, in the show, Rick blew up the Zigerions that went against him. I guess there were more, and they were the loved ones of the ones Rick blew up because otherwise they’d have no reason to hold a grudge against him. Well I’m saying this thinking of the Zigerions as the ones that tried to make a fake simulation world to get Rick’s portal gun recipe. Or they’re different universe versions of the Zigerions that didn’t get killed, but planned against him before.

  There’s a subversion because it turns out Rails WAS crushed by the foot when he was waiting for someone to save him out of comic drama tradition, like Mina did. Supernova asks if they can just talk this through, when it was revealed earlier that the Infinity Glove had brainwashed him and he’s not in control of his own actions.

  Then he blasts HER to death. Again, this can’t really be a prequel to the show’s episode, then, since they’re probably never gonna even try to explain how she got brought back to life and we’re supposed to assume it happened because comic books do that. Rick has no reason to bring them back to life…

  Well I guess he was really feeling generous and made clones of them just to make Morty happy. He has done really nice things for Morty for no reason. Why didn’t we ever see that? They will get brought back to normal later, because comic books. But I’d rather writing be good than intentionally bad when it’s not funny enough to be worth it. Usually it’s charming enough because this is a GOOD comic. But this isn’t, because obviously the one thing a prequel’s not supposed to do is kill off the characters that star in the sequel.

  I do like Boon saying, “ Get yer own coffee! “ Vance still has the drive to help Rick and Morty despite calling them old man and kid, which shows how heroic he really is. So he whistles to summon the ghost train for Rick. He tells the guys who hate him that if they can take out Noob-Noob, he’ll surrender to them peacefully. He had no reason to think they’d believe that blatant lie.

But it makes sense that they tried to fight him anyways because how could they catch up with the ghost train and how could they not think of this guy as a big threat? They get killed and Morty asks why this always has to happen with him. Rick says that dying is a brilliant idea and asks why he didn’t think of this earlier. (chuckles) Well he did. But it’s surprising he says this right in front of Morty.

  He then accidentally summons a little cute creature because wrong dimension. And he pushes them back into the portal, and says that just because a franchise can crossover with another, doesn’t mean it should. It’s about time he picked the wrong dimension by mistake, after how long. I don’t see how his examples are valid, though.

Wouldn’t any crossover be interesting, as long as the protagonists had actual personalities and did stuff? As long as the plot is good it doesn’t really matter to me which franchises it is, although it would be a problem if the franchises crossing over with each other had a story that couldn’t play to each other’s strengths. It would be pretty boring if Sonic had a crossover with Ace Attorney and they had to sit through a trial.

  Rick shows Morty the Meeseeks Box and says that he’ll summon hundreds of them to defeat Boon, because they can’t die until they accomplish their one mission, as Morty wastes our time recapping to us. Maybe the writer did this out of nowhere on purpose to satisfyingly mock comics for having recap dialogue when it makes no sense, treating the audience like idiots. This all makes me realize that sometimes Archie Sonic has been guilty of these same problems, despite not literally being a superhero comic, because there’s no costumes and secret identities.

  The story ends with Morty being happy that they saved the multiverse, with no explanation at all about how Noob-Noob will be back with the team in the show. Good thing this series has parallel universes used so much because if this was a Sonic comic, I’d really mock this.

  Rick then references the fact that someone could come along and reset everything in a superhero crossover. That happened in Archie too. And why is he written to say that comic book writers who can’t draw are unnecessary? I thought that usually, they COULDN’T, and that’s what artists are for. Like, if you look at a Sabrina comic for example, the pencil guy’s not the same guy who wrote the story.

Not many writers could specialize in both. The only comic writer that I can think of who can draw is Penders. I guess his skills got worse though. The backgrounds in the Lara-Su Chronicles look fine, but not the characters. I suppose I take that back, a ton of Archie writers did both well like Dexter Taylor, and Dan Parent.

  This story was about the Vindicators getting Rick’s help in stopping a multiversal threat in the form of their former janitor Noob-Noob, who got his hands on a convenient MacGuffin with no explanation for its existence because, I guess that was the point, they’re making fun of how often this happens in comic books. A lot of the bad writing was probably intentional to call out superhero comics.

Superhero fiction has a ton of problems, and they’re inevitably gonna have problems because there’s so many of them, so any problem’s gonna be done a trillion times, so it’s awesome that we have Rick and Morty to call them out on it. It’s good that Rick says that comic heroes never stay dead because that at least kind of explains why the hell the Vindicators are back to being alive in the show when they all die here and they need a Meeseeks army to save the multiverse.

Rick and Morty Presents: Krombopulos Michael

  We start out with Krombopulos Michael waking up being told, “ Good morning, Krombopulos Michael. It’s a great day to be awake and killing things. “ I guess HE recorded himself saying that and put the recording in the alarm clock so it’d wake him up with that. That’s the only explanation.

  Then there’s some dark humor as his narration says relatably that one of his favorite things about the morning is having that first cup of coffee, and also it’s the part of the day where he gets to start killing people, and he LOVES doing that. But I hope more than just him doing that happens for the sake of variety because that’d be redundant and is never good to SEE.

  He wants someone to put a tracking device on his business card, because this way people can find and hire him faster so he can kill even more, and he says confidently that if someone tries to use this card to find and kill him, he can kill them. And I can’t stop smiling as he says cheerfully that if they DO find and kill him, so much the better, killing’s killing after all. He’s happy no matter what. It’s just amusing how unrealistically cheerful he is.

  And of course, we see him applied to a character we know, as of course he says, “ It sounds as though most of your problems would be solved if someone were to kill this Jerry. “ Rick says that he thinks things are fine the way things are between them; he sells him guns, and he doesn’t have to wear a suit to a funeral, or help his daughter figure out when is too soon to get an online dating profile. So this panel is pretty helpful for explaining why he doesn’t simply do that. He doesn’t wanna be bothered with any kind of consequences for it.

  Rick says that he would say something wrong and Beth would start crying. Or it’d be something else, like he’d pick up the kind of detergent Jerry used to buy, and then all the sheets would smell like his detergent and then he’d have to wash all the sheets again, and he thinks he doesn’t have time to wash his own sheets, much less Beth’s.

And naturally he doesn’t want Beth killed either. This is good for showing off that Rick’s not as evil as he could be. We see him as a good guy for once. And I giggle at the text message he gives Rick because there’s SUCH a contrast between “ killing “ and the smile emoticons.

  The next thing that’s interesting happen when he asks Rick if he could ever have a gun that could un-kill someone so that he could kill them again. Rick says that doesn’t exist. Well, he kinda invented a save and reload device for Morty in the show, so that COULD be possible for him in a round-about way. Then he’d do the same thing over and over all day, but he wouldn’t be a threat to anyone but that one person. So it would actually be better for everyone else. He could have a device clone someone after they’re killed.

  Rick jumps and shoots his gun and the portal gun as he says that he doesn’t WANT to do this again while he looks serious, and I wonder why he’s joining in in the first place, then. This shows he has some morality, at least. But it’s confusing. Maybe he literally just doesn’t wanna do something again because it’d be a boring waste of his time.

  It’s amusing seeing the person who’s reading his business card back to him look judgemental of him for it. He was like, “ You’re worried that people aren’t clear on how much you enjoy killing. But you REALLY enjoy killing. “ Then I end up giggling some more at the silly humor where we see that he did that in the PLAYGROUND and the only reaction a kid had was, “ You’re weird, Michael. “ As if his hobby is something else!

  Then we see his teacher say, “ That’s enough about killing for one day, Krombopulos Michael. This class isn’t advanced placement killing. It’s advanced placement killing and non-euclidean geometry. “ Like, HOW would that class exist?! No wonder he turned out this way. But, he was just told off for this by another member of his species. So it’s not acceptable, but it IS?  Apparently his parents loved him enough to humor him to the point where they put him in a school for this. Either that or he threatened them until they put him in it.

  Also, we were clearly told earlier that there’s a reason he has his nickname, but then he gets called that by a member of his own species as a KID. THAT doesn’t make sense, he’s from that planet TOO! I giggle again at seeing his paper where he just write the same thing over and over again. This is prime Crosses the Line Twice humor, where, sure, it’s terrible of him, but it’s also so ridiculous that it’s funny, and it’s meant to be.

  We see that someone leaves him because she thinks he doesn’t love her, just the killing, while he thinks she’s wrong, and then he’s depressed and goes a while without doing that, and he goes to a therapist, and subverts the therapist’s hope because he concludes that, no, he really does just love killing.

  Then after he leaves the place, we see an alien run after Rick with a gun, and Rick is somehow allowed to go on a long-winded speech to Mike instead of just giving him the gun immediately because he wants him to shoot a gun. So why didn’t the aliens easily kill Rick in ALL THAT TIME? Is this when he first met Rick? If not, it was needlessly confusing to show the last time they were talking before this.

  Mike asks to keep the weapon, and Rick tells him to take credit for the whole thing. I guess we’ll NEVER learn what the context behind what Rick was doing was, which is a shame because it means they only wrote half the story. And then Rick leaves him HIS business card! Too bad we don’t know what it says below Rick S.

  After he does what he usually does, where the only thing interesting is that he throws some people off something and he kills someone who knew him being like, “ You remembered! “ then we see Rick creeped out at listening to a ton of long-winded messages from Mike, where he says, “ Anyhow, I wasn’t sure if it was SUPPOSED to bend time like that or if it was just because I’d overloaded the energy circuits, so just to be on the safe side I’ve only been firing it BEHIND me. ”

  Then he asks him for a lot more guns, and compliments his business card. Rick’s scared at seeing a flying spaceship outside his garage and runs, and Mike cheerfully greets him from in the lab as he runs out, saying cheerfully that he killed everybody he could see with the gun he gave him, and then says innocently that he doesn’t know how this works and asks if he should meet his family before he can get another one. Why would he think that? He would know that killing is disapproved of.

  I like seeing Rick’s reaction here. Of course that’d happen. Maybe he’s kinda regretting this. Especially since if he killed everyone he could see with it, that means he didn’t kill people who deserved it. At least with him being hired to kill people, you could make yourself feel better by pretending/assuming that all of those people were horrible jerks to the point where someone got hired to kill them.

  He meets up with him in the spaceship saying judgmentally, “ Uh-huh, sure, “ after he’s nice enough to thank Rick, and call him his best friend. He reveals he has a suitcase, and compliments his weapons a lot, and Rick says this is an obviously unhinged friendship and tells him not to come to his house again. I dunno where Mike’s voice is coming from in the next scene where he’s saying that since Morty’s not doing anything to help Rick against the aliens, if he were to kill Morty, then he and him could kill the rest more easily. How would it be more easy? It’s not like Morty’s being a nuisance. Where IS Mike?

  Rick throws a weapon that freezes the aliens like an ice bomb that were after him for no explained reason, since that’d be effort. He carries Morty into the spaceship as he’s dazed and passing out for no reason, and Rick is clearly creeped out by him. This is trying to make up for the episode he appeared in where Morty called Rick out on selling him weapons, because, relatably, he doesn’t like him, either. But aside from killing Mike himself, which would mean he wouldn’t get money from him anymore, Rick can’t get out of this situation.

  He throws away the note he got and poured cereal into the milk that coincidentally just so HAPPENS to spell out Mike’s catchphrase. That’s impossible. It’s the most memorable part of the story but it’s impossible! Maybe the cereal just fell that way to spell out his catchphrase by coincidence, though it’s a really unlikely coincidence.

  He then gets intimidated by Mike later, but also he does is give Rick a birthday cupcake, because I guess he did research on him to find out his birthday. I also don’t get how Mike was in Morty’s room saying that he’s not allowed to kill him, when Morty killed him on the same day he met him in the show. So how is he alive hours later at night?

  Clearly this is an alternate universe version of him, because otherwise he wouldn’t have been alive to tell him he was just having a dream and leave a note stupidly, which Morty could’ve given to Rick and gotten him in trouble! The scene with him in Morty’s bed couldn’t have taken place before the episode where Morty first met him, because THAT was where he first met him. Morty wouldn’t have reacted like he just met him in the show if he first saw him here.

  I guess when he’s on the armchair with the TV remote in his hand, he’s just listening to a pre-recorded message he recorded, either that, or he’s hearing something that’s not real. And the story ends with a Book Ends thing as he hates sleeping because it means he can’t keep doing what he’s known for.

  This story used both sides of Mike; it made me smile with his dark humor being explored in a creative variety of ways, showing how tons of people react to him, but by the end, it started just showing how creepy he really is, even scaring Rick by desperately wanting him to hire him. I didn’t like that part of the story as much. It dragged out too long when I got it the first time I saw him. And again, this story has the risk of running his one joke trait into the ground, but I still kept finding it amusing, because it was creative with how it repeated the joke.

Rick and Morty Presents: Sleepy Gary

  We start out with Rick telling Morty in the lab that he’s done the gene reconstruction and now it’s just the memories, and we see Sleepy Gary from the show having some false memories of stuff like holding baby Morty and marrying Beth, and hanging out with Jerry. Rick explains that these memories are self-restoring, and it’s a complex gene memory structure, and then we see Sleepy Gary in a tube unconscious, with Rick telling Morty that it’s not a person, it’s an alien parasite. Aw, Morty’s sweet, he says, “ Good morning! “ to it.

  WHY did he revive him? Seriously? That’s such a dumb risk! After all the trouble those aliens caused him in the show, where they took over his whole house replicating themselves so much, he, what, grows a new Sleepy Gary for, SCIENCE?

He could say it’s because he likes the satisfaction of keeping him away from Jerry, so he could keep him trapped in a tube to spite him. It’s not explained that this is an alternate universe Sleepy Gary and he kidnapped him. But he has to have because where else could he have gotten him? This could have taken place in an alternate universe from the show and this could be the first time Gary ever bothered Jerry!

  Then we see narration from Sleepy Gary who realizes that he’s in the garage, and he genuinely believes that it’s his garage and Rick is his father in law. So, the alien parasites actually believe in the lie that they brainwash other people into believing. He thinks that Rick found out that he was cheating on his daughter with Jerry and performed experiments on him in retribution, which would be why his memories were so hard to find. Why ARE they hard to find? Is it that all Rick knew about him were the memories of him pretending to be Sleepy Gary, so that’s all the memories he could give him?

  He hits the glass of the tube he’s trapped in, and that must be the weakest glass ever, for NO reason at all, because somehow he breaks out. It’d make more sense if he died from the shards of glass going into him right after that but that’d make sense.

If it weren’t for the fact that Rick and Morty is such an interesting and charming series all the time, I’d be snarky and bitter right away because right now there’s TWO things that makes this entire plot disappointingly forced, like it’s a Sonic story. I DON’T understand how this story is happening. But I know that the story is gonna be interesting enough to make up for it. And I’m glad to see Sleepy Gary again because he always had this story potential.

  He calls out for Jerry and coughs, and he clothes himself with the spare lab coat and steals the portal gun looking for Jerry. It’s amusing that Rick says to Morty on the way to the lab, “ Do you detonate an atomic bomb to kill a fly? “ Then he sees what happens, and Sleepy Gary goes into a building and brainwashes the guy who says he can’t come into the building barely clothed.

  It’s interesting to see a villain with such an overpowered ability, and he doesn’t wanna take over the world or anything that high-stakes. Of course, his ultimate goal CAN’T be achieved ANYWAYS because god forbid, that would change the status quo, make Jerry at least think that he’s happy, and upset the main characters. So there’s no actual tension regardless. My point is, he’ll get to do a wide variety of brainwashing. So it’s interesting to see HOW he convinces people to humor him.

  He makes a fake memory of him at an office party being pelted with water balloons, saying that he’s gonna have to go get the lab coat he keeps in his car. It’s amusing because really, nobody’s questioning that he has a lab coat when he’s an office worker?! I guess they assume he just has it for fun. Good thing brainwashing can explain away his bad lying. I think he’s brainwashing people to believe the memories as well as giving them memories because if all he has is that one memory, he’d question why he has only the one memory of him.

  If he was working in that office he’d have a lot more memories of him than just one. So he’d just wonder what’s going on. The guy laughs and says sorry, which is nice of him, and he says that Gary can’t have a ten year workiversary every day, and lets him in. It’s nice of Gary to thank him and call him buddy, but I guess he just thinks he HAS to. I guess the brainwashing and memory creation have to be in tandem with each other.

  He goes into the elevator with uncomfortable people, and we see Jerry at work playing a computer game involving skiing. Apparently, he got a job again! Good. Either that or this is trying to take place earlier in the continuity when he had a job, because he had a job in the parasite episode. But that’s confusing considering how long ago this was.

  He greets Jerry and confuses him, and tricks him by implanting fake memories, so let’s see what those are. Beth caught them together, she told Rick, and Rick turned Gary into a parasite out of revenge and rewrote Jerry’s memories.

  Gary says they can run away together to the only safe place I know. It’s amusing that when someone asks where Jerry is and someone says what happened, he’s like, “ Again? “ How did that happen twice? Oh, I guess he’s referring to Rick. Since when does he think he needs Jerry’s help instead of just getting Morty to help him? The reason he uses Morty in particular is that he needs him as a stealth device to hide his brain waves from the Galactic Federation, and prefers him over Jerry. He’s always fine with interrupting whatever Morty’s doing to take him on adventures.

  Then we see Rick and Morty wearing special helmets along with the Council of Ricks and a few Mortys, because even Rick acknowledges that he needs their help. Then Rick uses camera footage to find out that Jerry already got taken to a safe place, but I have to wonder how Rick will ever figure out where he decided to take Jerry because he didn’t say that in the office. He could’ve taken him anymore?

They go into it a scary-looking alien-shaped spaceship to Mars, and Rick complains that he missed them and doesn’t have his portal gun. He says interestingly that it would’ve been easy to just find a reality where they hadn’t taken off yet so they could take THAT Jerry. But he really wants to humor Morty, so he doesn’t.

  Then they go to New Mars City. I guess Rick terraformed Mars to make it inhabitable in this universe, which is proven by them buying an apartment with a Mister Meeseeks real estate agent. They have a bakery together and adopt a baby alien, and it turns out it took Jerry all day to get the baby to sleep and he was just about to start dinner. Even though he makes Beth do all the dinners.

  Gary wants to complain that Mars-Co is run by idiots, but he’s interrupted because he might complain too loud and wake up the baby. Somehow they thought adopting a baby with flesh-dissolving acids was a good idea. I guess because they felt sorry for it because nobody else would ever adopt it. Gary’s unhappy at the meal he’s gonna be expected to eat and it turns out canned spaghetti is the only thing Jerry knows how to cook, and Jerry asks how this has never come up before. Can’t he be told to google how to cook and follow a recipe book?

  And Gary can’t make him a great cook with fake memories, and I wish it was explained that it’s because Gary himself doesn’t know how to cook, which is why he doesn’t do the cooking or teach Jerry how to cook. He can’t give people skills that he doesn’t have because he has no way of imagining someone doing something as complex as cooking wonderfully. He doesn’t know anything about cooking.

  Even if he gave Jerry a memory of him cooking, Jerry still wouldn’t be able to cook, so it’d just make him question why he can’t cook now. He’d realize that and stop himself. So he accepts it and is nice to him, and then an explosion in the wall happens behind them. Or Gary chose NOT to make Jerry remember that he could cook. That’d be more interesting, and go with the fact that after this, he acts accepting of Jerry.

  Then Rick proceeds to waste a bunch of our time because he won’t just immediately kill the brain parasite. So instead there’s gonna be tons of dialogue wasting our time for no reason. Good thing it’s explained that these two have brain-protecting helmets, though Jerry has a good point. He just wants to be happy and this is making him happy. He thinks he’s been with Gary for years when he’s really been with him for only 27 hours.

The creepiest thing about this is that Gary’s been brainwashing and lying to him the entire time and is perfectly fine with it, even though he thinks he loves Jerry and actually has the history he’s lying about. Somehow he’s not questioning that he can make memories? Well he thinks Rick made him a parasite in the first place. He thinks he’s just making things the way they’re supposed to be again.

  The problem is, he could’ve just been completely honest with him from the start and maybe he would’ve given him a chance anyways because he liked the fake memories he had with him and just wants to be happy. I guess it makes sense that it’s instinctive for parasites to use their power because it’s easier. So as a result, he’s the bad guy and Jerry’s being kidnapped and manipulated.

  Because Rick kept talking, like an idiot, Jerry had time to push Rick and punch him. But we can’t see his fist impact him so there’s no satisfaction. Morty finally asks why the parasite ran off with his dad instead of breeding and making more parasites like last time. Rick’s smart enough to lampshade that they should chase them instead since they’re getting away.

  Rick explains as he’s chasing them that if you could rewrite the memories of everyone around you to make the world you need, you’d need to change your memories to match them, or you’d just be navigating blind, so Gary really does think he’s in love with Jerry. It’s interesting to see the parasites as not JUST wanting to multiply and freeload for no reason. This makes more sense.

  Rick pursues them in his spaceship as they’re on a scooter and gives a panicked Morty the controls to his spaceship. Jerry’s knocked out of the scooter and Rick somehow  jumps off walls of a building. A portal gets created below Rick and Morty pulls him out as they get away, and Rick says that it must have been a dimension somehow made up entirely of concussive energy because it felt like he was being hit by thousands of high speed ping pong balls. Gary got lucky, since the helmet would keep him from reading his memory, right?

  Gary makes a plan to jump off the cliff with Jerry, oh and fake their deaths and warp to another universe, okay. Then Rick confronts them and again I wonder why he’s not instantly killing him, but at least he made an interesting insult that because gravity is the weakest force, Gary’s so weak that he can’t even stand up to gravity. Their fear of jumping off the cliff is the only excuse for them not jumping in all this time. Gary has no reason to give up.

  You know, Rick’s never wanted Jerry to be with Beth anyways. I guess he’s doing this all for Morty, because Morty wouldn’t want the status quo to be changed because Jerry started living with a parasite. So the story’s kinda sweet in that sense because if Rick was just selfish, he wouldn’t bother.

  Gary naturally tells him that they aren’t hurting anybody. Maybe if Rick hadn’t clearly telegraphed his attack, Gary wouldn’t have been able to dodge the laser and punch him. Morty tells Jerry the truth, and says that he can’t say Gary doesn’t love him, but he’s a fantasy taking him away from real life and he shouldn’t let him make choices for him. Gary gets beaten, and he says he has a gift for Jerry, and is gonna take it away.

  So he gives him a fake memory that he kidnapped Jerry at gunpoint just as he dies, which makes sure Jerry won’t miss him. And we’re never gonna know why he was able to make a bad memory… The whole reason the parasites got defeated in that episode of the show was that Morty realized they can’t make bad memories. But apparently Sleepy Gary was the one parasite that had the genetic mutation that let him make bad memories. I wish that was addressed and that was the explanation. It can easily be explained, but it does come off as kinda confusing and contradictory. But whatever.

  Maybe the reason I didn’t realize it and get confused by it at first and only realized the problem when reviewing it, was that it doesn’t make any sort of sense that the parasites in the show can only create positive memories. They already have the magical ability to create memories. Why on earth would they only be restricted to making positive ones?

I could understand them choosing to only create positive ones because they’d think that if they created negative ones, then the people living with them wouldn’t want them around, and so they’re scared of the consequences. So they never happened to make bad memories. Would YOU?

  It’s not that they can’t make bad memories, it’s that they were never smart enough to think that they needed to do that. If you think about it, Sleepy Gary did give Jerry a bad memory when he made him think he was going through the stress of keeping from Beth that he was sleeping with her husband. That’s not a good memory. He was shown with good memories, but there was still an underlying problem with them the whole time. It wasn’t completely ideal. It’s not like they were always together in the memory.

  Rick’s narration says that the parasites are so dangerous that quarantine doesn’t work. But WHY didn’t he know that obvious fact from the start? He says he needs a precautionary measure and can’t risk them getting into his head again. So he pulls out a needle device and puts it in the parasite, thinking that he’s better than Jerry and wants to keep being in control. Huh?

We see him put some red liquid tube in the nutrient tube, and he initiates attempt number 9. 9? What, did this whole story happen 9 times? But you’d think he would’ve given up right away! Like, a smart person would’ve learned his lesson the first time! How stupid would he have to be? What does he have to gain?!

  This story logically never would’ve happened, there was NO reason for a Sleepy Gary to be still alive and break out of the tube in Rick’s lab. It would actually make more sense if he was from an alternate dimension and simply stole a portal gun to come to THIS one. So of course it was written by the same writer who wrote Rick as body-switching the main characters for months and somehow being unable to switch them back and then had Morty killed for no reason.

Although I could have been fine with that story arc if it was explained right from the start that it was a dimension we’d never seen before, that it wasn’t supposed to be the dimension that the comic started out in, just some random throwaway dimension. Then I would’ve been more fine with it because it’s just showing off an alternate universe Rick that’s just that evil, so it wouldn’t feel like it was contradicting every time that he was nice to Morty, ever.

  At least the story was interesting to see, if creepy. Gary running away with Jerry was an obvious idea, so they’re using the story potential of him, and exploring how the alien parasites think. They rewrite their own memories and end up believing in the fake identity they give themselves. I still don’t understand why the parasite didn’t multiply though, because if that’s the case, the other parasites had no reason to multiply.

They wouldn’t even know they WERE parasites! So this just contradicts the show. If they didn’t know they were parasites because Sleepy Gary didn’t, wouldn’t they never choose to multiply because they’d have no reason to, and wouldn’t know they were parasites?

  And there were two different times where Rick, if he was actually smart, would’ve instantly shot Gary and instead talked a whole bunch, which gave people the chance to fight him. That didn’t make THEM look admirable because Rick had to be made an idiot for that to happen.

  Well, it was surprisingly nice of Gary to make his death easier on Jerry. But in retrospect, it didn’t make sense that he was able to give him a bad memory, because it completely contradicted the show. But again, the comic isn’t canon to the show. This could just be an alternate universe Gary. This whole story could be taking place in an alternate universe where they can make bad memories.

  It was Morty who came to the idea that they couldn’t make them. It makes more logical sense that they always could create bad memories and just didn’t choose to because they think that if someone had bad memories of the parasite, he wouldn’t want them around.

Rick and Morty Presents Pickle Rick:

  We start out seeing Morty comb his hair while wearing something different for once, finally! He asks Rick if this is a joke because he sounds weird, and asks if he’s in the toilet, or inside him. It made me giggle that he put his hand on his chest and had that expression. Rick talks to him from behind a door, and Morty asks if he sent him a message from another universe to bring him a Tums again. That made me giggle too. I don’t know what a Tums is, though.

  Then Rick tells Morty proudly that he was smart enough to turn himself into a pickle. Morty doesn’t care because he’s used to Rick, and that was useless, and when he says that pickles are vegetables, Rick says that pickles are made of cucumbers, and cucumbers are fruit, which you can tell because they contain seeds. If vegetables didn’t have any seeds, how would people be able to grow them? You plant vegetable seeds in Harvest Moon. So I don’t think he explained it very well.

  Then he naturally says, “ Don’t you dare eat a pickle while talking to me, you oedipal dork! “ and Beth goes up to Morty asking where Rick is because it’s time for therapy. That’s disappointing, that already happened in the show. Well at least this’ll give me a chance to kinda review the episode of the show. Not literally because it’s not the same exact story thankfully, but it’ll still get my feelings about the episode out there.

  Morty immediately says with no expression at all that Rick did this to himself to avoid family counseling. Again, I don’t even understand why Rick thought this would work, because logically, Beth should’ve just picked him up and carried him to the therapist’s office ANYWAYS! Plus, it would prove that she wasn’t crazy and lying about how Rick is.

  Rick crafts an elaborate lie that he built a fruit gun so that a gun will turn gun nuts into bananas, and Morty has way too much faith in him, and then Morty figures out that this syringe is rigged to squirt all over him in seven minutes when they’ll already be at therapy. This whole thing bored me and I kinda had to force myself to read the dialogue because I’ve already seen this exact same plot in the show.

And that’s why being derivative sucks. Sonic has the same problem when its comics are too much like the games. I’m glad there’s different dialogue here, but dialogue has a hard time making up for a lack of creativity, no matter how good the franchise is. But it is helping. That’s why I never hated the stories that were based off the show much more because they’re still interesting and entertaining stories, not boring ones.

  Rick lies that the syringe is the cure for cancer and Beth takes it. And, again, just like in the show, WHY are they leaving Rick in the garage alone instead of bringing him to therapy, which he clearly wanted to avoid?! What are they thinking? They’re giving him what he wants! His plan worked! Also, anyone would question why they left the window open.

  So of course something threatens him. So a woodpecker gets called a trumped up dinosaur with a headbanging addiction and bad hair, and then it picks up Rick and flies away with him. I’m just wondering why it doesn’t eat him immediately instead of flying away with him. Because it’s so slippery in the bird’s beck, he drops him, and Rick is unlucky enough to get dropped down a sewer hole, when he’d be more likely to have been dropped somewhere else. He would be saying “ Oh shit! “ not saying what he is when he’s falling.

  Also, I wonder if it makes sense that he even survived falling that far instead of the pickle being clearly damaged. Instead it’s invincible. I can only assume that Rick made himself into a ghost or separated his soul from his body, so he can possess whatever he wants with his consciousness, and that’s why he’s living despite having no internal organs like a brain. ‘Cause when a ghost is possessing a keyboard or something, it doesn’t matter that there’s no brain in it.

  A bug goes over to him, and he says that he’s going to poke his tongue in its mind and use it to build a super suit out of roaches and rat bones. That’s gruesome and never made sense to me. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t like the episode.

  Because he isn’t using his tongue on its mind HERE lying down on it, and is instead standing up, there’s still no explanation for how he’s moving the limbs he attached to himself, because he’s not still on the bug he killed with his teeth which you’d think would’ve simply killed him with its much greater range of movement.

  I guess he made sure that when he got turned into a pickle, the tongue would be able to send sparks of electricity out, just in CASE he’d need to do that, so it’s not literally exactly like a pickle. But if he thought that far ahead, again, why didn’t he make the pickle capable of telekinesis just in case? How would the sparks of electricity be seen as necessary, if he only turned himself into a pickle for a few minutes to avoid therapy? We should’ve been told he’s just possessing the pickle like a ghost and so his soul limbs can operate any limbs he makes.

  How could these animal parts act like wires and a battery for a mecha suit? They’re not made of metal and battery chemicals. How’d he charge the battery, in a sewer? How would he operate the mecha without arms and his mouth not full! He doesn’t always have a hat on!

  Otherwise, I have to wonder how a pickle, with no nervous system, could move those limbs. This makes no sense, and is probably the least logical plot point in the series. He says that that got dark because that baby turtle’s gonna wear on his conscience, and thinks that only a monster would flush that cute little guy.

  Then it turns out he made a jet pack too, you know, with no materials and tools. Totally believable. Mythbusters disproved jet-packs. And if he really cared about the baby turtle he would go find it again later and clone it. He gets out of the toilet, but then it cuts away from him to show the family at therapy. At least that’ll make actual sense.

  Summer and Morty don’t trust the new therapist, and Beth says that he was the first one on Craigslist who answered the phone and she’s desperate. And it’s forced that the principal just assumes they were going to therapy for the exact same crazy reason as him. It’s not like he has a family. This is a FAMILY therapist.

  Anyways, finally they go into the therapist office and Morty’s in trouble for a problem that’s so common for boys his age that he shouldn’t really be here, and Summer’s been writing letters to convicts. Well, she was idealistic enough to appreciate working for Satan in the show. It makes sense that the therapist guesses that Beth has daddy issues because her father couldn’t even show up. But Beth’s too proud to admit she has them.

  Morty’s literal-minded after the therapist says that this sounds like a book deal. Yeah, a therapist can totally violate the rule of patient confidentiality like that. I guess he would get away with it if he changed all of the names. I said he because of the short hair, but it’s probably a she like in the show. Maybe she’s fine with losing her job to write a book.

  Beth says that Morty knocked a potted plant off his history teacher’s desk by accident and the therapist has arbitrarily assumed something stupid about Beth because of the way a pickle is shaped. I guess he assumes Beth was lying and got suspicious because of what a pickle looks like, but this is a problem she wouldn’t have had if she brought Rick WITH HER. I can’t blame Beth for wanting to get the therapist focused on her kids but she’s still being mean.

  Summer says that at least her prisoner pen pal listens to her, proving that she just wants someone to listen to her for a change and that’s her family’s fault. They’re making her lonely. I like her! This is interesting to me because I like psychology, but it took until NOW to get not BORING because now the writer’s showing creativity by introducing new things.

  And it’s always good to develop on the main characters, making them more human. It’s sad that I even have to say this because it’s so OBVIOUS! I’d rather a main character, who I have to see all the time, be developed on than be someone I see as uninteresting and one-dimensional, which is just annoying. I care more about them because of stuff like this. Maybe Sonic could benefit from having a therapy story like this that develops the dynamics between the main characters in an interesting way.

  The therapist has to point out the obvious to Beth that the traumas parents inflict on their kids can echo down to their own children, and she asks what the real reason is for why Rick isn’t here today. Beth’s too stubborn and defensive though and just says that she’s sure there’s a very good reason for why he’s a pickle instead of being honest with her. Does she want progress or not? She just thinks she’s perfect.

  Rick complains about being in a corporate wasteland. It really looked like he just emerged from the toilet in his OWN house, and that would’ve made sense because it didn’t look like the bird got to carry him far at all before it dropped him into the sewers. Instead he’s all the way here just to have a story about this.

  So we see the dogs in mechas from an episode of the show enslaving a guy who wants to see his daughter again. Obviously this has to take place in another dimension because nobody’s talking as if Rick turned himself into a pickle BEFORE. When reading out the script, I didn’t remember these dogs coming back at all and that’s the whole subplot.

Maybe it’s not memorable because it’s just taking something from the show that doesn’t belong in this story, that’s a reference to a completely different episode. They could have very easily had it be creative. But at least they’re having this concept be fully utilized instead of it only being one episode.

  The human’s told that their leader’s watching him through the camera, as I wonder how the robodogs are back. Rick says that this is further proof that Jerry should be denied anything he desires. That’s not quite enough to explain this. The dogs with intelligence mechas all went to their own planet, and they decided to leave Earth alone for a good reason! It’d only make sense fi their good leader died. I guess their good leader died. Also, Rick vacationed on another planet’s beach on the suggestion of a Jerry, but I guess he views that as the exception that proves the rule.

  Then one of the dogs smells Rick and wants to chase and eat him, and do worse than that and his dialogue has Rick snark that dogs would sound like psychopaths if they could talk. That’s a memorably funny joke. Why in the world is Rick revealing himself to the dogs and pretending to be a normal guy? If he built a ray gun, why didn’t he just fire it at them right away? And how does he power a ray gun when he doesn’t have access to his super powerful lab materials?

Then we see that Morty’s dog IS back, as their leader, so WHY did he return to Earth and start enslaving again? Why did Rick repeat the same mistake as in the show? The therapist immediately understands Morty and gives him some compassionate advice to just look away from girls and think about politics, and tells Summer that she prefers unavailable men, that her parents would hate. She tells her that that’s not unusual, probably because tons of other people are like that too.

  She then figures out Beth perfectly, accusing her of loving unavailable men, thanks to Rick, and hating available ones, like Jerry. So of course she missed him because he wasn’t there when she divorced him. So it triggered her feelings of abandonment all over again.

  She then acts unprofessional by insulting Beth as not nearly as smart as Rick, saying that she’s like a toddler with a crayon watching her father paint the Sistine chapel. No therapist would do this. Beth insults her and complains that this isn’t about her, it’s about fixing her KIDS. Summer’s problem is just totally invented for the sake of the plot, just like in the show.

  But at least it makes sense, but it’s hard to take a Compressed Vice seriously. I can tell because I take Morty’s problem more seriously since it IS in-character for him. At least in the show, Summer was said to like getting high off jar fumes in class in this episode and she actually does get high again with Morty in a later episode, so it technically comes back, just not in the same episode as before.

  The therapist asks Beth how SHE feels. Actually, this is my favorite part of the story, probably because it’s not as forced and confusing as the Rick part. I probably sound bored, but at least it’s not contrived. Beth says that she’s annoyed with the therapist and says SHE’S the one obsessed with pickles here, and reveals that Jerry is her ex-husband in this story, out of nowhere. That wasn’t the case in the main Rick and Morty comic. Alternate universe. See, this is why the original comic Morty died for NOTHING!

  The therapist reassures Beth that, of course, they’re here to support her, not attack her, and she tells her children that she should reinforce family ties by hugging Beth and saying they love her. Naturally they’re too scared of her right now, and Summer says that she’s like the possum that eats their garbage and beats up the cat. They don’t have a cat. It really IS an alternate universe if they do. It confused me at first that she said that because she doesn’t look anything like a possum.

  Beth then looks over at what the therapist has been writing down, and somehow she doesn’t KNOW that she has abandonment issues, either that or is lying to cover for her own flaw. The rest of it is ridiculous, though.

  An entire page is wasted, and then Rick tells the dog leader that he’s got the human held hostage. I guess he wants to lure the threats to him so he can get rid of them here, but you’d think he’d just leave the building, say, “ Not my problem. “ But they DID try to take over the entire world he’s living in, or at least they wanted to, last time, so it makes sense that he thinks he has to do something.

  The dog explains that they didn’t take his daughter, they hired her as the assistant for their startup. With her help, they plan to crumble the dog biscuit industry. Wait, by making more dog biscuits, or literally get rid of dog biscuits entirely, which would be dumb of them? It’d be inconsiderate. I guess they wanna make the best dog biscuits possible, and of course they would know what the best dog biscuits are because they’re dogs.

So they plan to crumble it by outcompeting it. Why would dog biscuits literally wanna crumble the dog biscuit industry? Can’t they make dog biscuits themselves on THEIR planet? Them wanting to take over the world again would actually make more sense than this, or at least the city. This plan of theirs isn’t memorable.

  His daughter doesn’t wanna lose her first job because of her dad and Rick’s told that she’s making 70% of what a man does and would get no benefits, only exposure and experience. Rick calls them monsters for it, showing morality. I’m just wondering how such obvious gender wage discrimination is legal.

I thought it wasn’t real anymore and the gender disparity was just because women tend to work jobs in general that pay less than men’s jobs, like they don’t usually work in construction working and STEM jobs. Like if it was on an individual basis that they were paid less, it sounds like it’d be illegal, a lawsuit waiting to happen, unless it’s an actress. I guess this is intentionally outdated to really emphasize how bad her working conditions are, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense. Why would dogs be worse?

  I giggle at the human saying that pit bulls are noble and misunderstood so they should be like half-dachshund half-chihuahua when the doorbell rings. That’s true. He’s shocked by his collar and told to go back into his crate until 5 PM. The dogs really want revenge with their hyper intelligence. Then I’m immediately confused because Rick shoots the prisoner for no reason at all. FINALLY that confusing, padded out boredom’s over.

  Beth finally says that she feels angry that they’re still talking about her when Summer has a hand-carved shiv in her push-up bra. Summer is known for being a badass in the show, like she worked with the Death Stalkers at some point, so this is in-character. Although obviously it’d make more sense for her to have pepper spray instead, which wouldn’t get her kicked out of school.

  She develops on her character some MORE instead of JUST being a stereotypical teenage girl, saying that she hates that every time she tries to be creative, it gets shut down. Huh? Well, she did get insulted for having a toothpick in her mouth because she was that desperate for a thing. But that’s not creative, she talked like other people did it too and she was just following a fad.

But I guess her point was that she was trying to stand out from her family. Since when does she EVER try to be creative? Was that the “ do something with turquoise “ thing?  I guess she means “ coming up with new ideas. “ I do remember that she wanted to turn Morty’s room into something and Beth turned her down.

  She complains that she wasn’t complimented for her shiv and FINALLY points out that Morty is not the first guy in high school to have this problem, and focusing on it is just gonna make him even weirder. Yeah, because he’ll think that he’s a creep and try to accept it to feel better. Although I guess he IS kind of a pervert. It’s sweet of her to bother trying to defend Morty. And she hopes that her mother will stop pretending she’s happy and healthy and get help.

  Morty says what you’d expect of him, and after a silence, it’s sweet that the therapist says, “ I have patients who would literally kill for your problem. “ It’s sweet of her to reassure them so easily. She’s actually being a better mother than Beth right now.

  It’s sweet of Beth to say that she’s angry at her father doing this because she knows he needs therapy more than her or any of them and is furious that she’s thought of as too stupid to notice. It’s obvious Rick would never play along in therapy though and just be rebellious and defensive because he’s so embarrassed.

It should be obvious that trying to get him into group therapy wouldn’t work because he thinks he has to save face in front of the people he sees every day. If he’s even a little smart, he already KNOWS everything that’s wrong with him. Of course he’d think therapy is a waste of time. He’s a nihilist.

  And while I’m sure he could make an invention to fix all of his mental problems, doing that would mean changing his personality. He’d think of that as brainwashing, so of course he wouldn’t wanna do that because he accepts himself for who he is. She was really desperate to think Rick would ever even get helped by therapy let alone go to it. He’d just be complaining the whole time and keep the mood brought down. He’d just be insulting her profession over and over again.

  Her crying makes me feel really sorry for her. She says she’s embarrassed by her kids’ problems and scared that she will follow in her footsteps. And she’s anxious to lord this syringe over her father as he lays there on the counter helpless for once, saying, “ But there must be some limit to his genius. “ Rick shouts memorably, “ There is no limit to my genius! “

Even the character in the story had a more logical assumption of how the plot went than the writer did. It’s always distracting when this happens because it shows that the writer actually thought of how the plot could’ve gone in a logical way and didn’t write it anyways. She hopes that there is SOME limit to his genius, as Summer and Morty feel sorry for her, proving that they love her.

  How could anyone hate this?! This makes me care about the characters more because it develops on them and makes me feel sorry for them. They feel like a REAL family, a real dysfunctional family but still. Mr. Enter was wrong, I think that the show developing on its characters is part of what made it fantastic to me instead of just another good show. The characters could easily have not been cared about by the writers this much, but they were, and it’s what made me invested in them.

  So Beth isn’t JUST the angry wife here, Summer isn’t JUST the Valley Girl annoying me, and Morty isn’t JUST an annoying wuss who gets mad at Rick sometimes. The writers cared enough to think about these characters more and actually add to them, and deconstruct them. I’d take this over lazy writing, although the therapy sections are kind of boring and tedious, but I’ve been through a hell of a lot worse when it comes to boring and tedious.

  Rick frees the human from the shock collar by effortlessly turning him into a banana, again, without access to the tools and materials of his lab. No logic at all. Can you TELL why I prefer the therapy sessions?! There’s a reason most stuff is made out of the materials that it is! It’s amusing that he snarks, “ If I had hands, I would clap, but slowly and sarcastically. And if I had legs, I would climb up there and kill you. “ He’s not even freaking out.

  He offers to give him limbs and weapons so he can rescue his daughter. I guess his fruit gun, a Chekhov’s Gun from his lie earlier, is making HIM a ghost who possesses, so that even he can move anything around that looks like limbs because his brain waves are sending signals to move limbs, and somehow the signals can activate the limbs when they aren’t even organic.

So it has to be because of magical ghost possession because there’s no human nervous system in the banana. I HAVE to try to make sense of this story because that’s what I DO. It’s more interesting than just talking about the plot, when you can READ! So I hate stories that make figuring them out impossible! I’d rather have a plot that I can accept.

  The father complains that her daughter has to park far away and has the worst lunch time when she was top of her class, and this is her first time away from home. As they go down from an air vent, Rick tells her to let her live her life, or she’s gonna live a stunted life with no agency. The father is exaggerating when he says that Rick is advocating neglect. No, she’s an adult, not like kid Beth. So how would he figure Rick out just from this standard advice he probably heard all the time?

  Rick tells him that he’s only doing this plan so he won’t kill any innocent dogs. That’s sweet. But he was smirking when he fired a laser at the earlier ones! So, I guess he was hiding his horrible inner turmoil. Because now he isn’t okay with attacking dogs. This IS gonna be a consistent character trait because it comes up again later.

  So he wants to distract Snowball while he gets his daughter. Why is Rick standing there doing nothing while the dog talks instead of immediately shooting the ray gun to destroy the mecha? Like shooting its weapons pointed at him? At least he shoots the mecha in the next panel, removing the dog’s intelligence and aw, it’s sweet that he gives him a belly rub. He didn’t have to do that.

  It turns out Rick was smart enough to make his weapons not work because he really did care about the dogs, so he turned them back to normal too. So Jaguar tells his daughter to be home before dark and tells her not to bring home those dogs for some selfish reason. I guess he still holds a grudge against them. I’m glad we got to see him actually interact with his daughter in this universe. And it’s interesting that she has a uni-brow. I just noticed that, and I think it kinda works with the way she looks in general. She’s still pretty enough. She has long hair.

  Then Rick shows up, and aw, he was sweet enough to give Morty his dog back!… But it’s never gonna show up again. I guess it got sent back to the dog mecha planet anyways. He reassures him that he’s just lonely because high school is a boring hell that makes everyone aware of their flaws and also because women, and it’s so in-character that he tries to sound reluctant to off-set how he’s being unusually nice to him, like, “ Here’s your fucking dog. “

  Then he’s honest again. I love this ending a lot more than the show’s episode. He tells Beth, “ Beth, I love you, but I hate therapy okay? Summer, you just want male attention, so here I am. Let’s, I dunno, go back to that planet where they liked your dumb shirt. “ Then he tells the therapist to go focus on Jaguar, who was working with him earlier because apparently he was smart enough to bring him here as a Chekhov’s Gunman. Good. Gee, good thing he agreed to come here with him instead of wanting to kill him for disappointing him.

  It’s certainly convenient that he’s like this here, but it’s way better because it’s not nearly as depressing and it makes sense that he’d end up feeling guilty after… what he did, because the fact that he had to go through everything he did after turning himself into a pickle, maybe he saw that as something he deserves, so, it caused him to feel guilty and wanna make it up to them. He did say that if he believed in karma he’d question the direction his day has taken.

  Beth complains instead of complimenting Rick for this! She says that she should break this syringe and he has no idea how hard her day’s been. Good, it’s pointed out how Rick looks, and then he satisfyingly shoots her with the fruit gun saying, “ Now you can see how hard my day has been. All of you. Genius isn’t easy. “ This is SUCH a better ending! This is like if they rewrote the episode to have a better ending because the writer was slightly better than THAT one! I want more like this!

  Oh come on, what are the chances that Mr. P’s showing up here? He doesn’t have any problems! He tells them he’s not the problem here, and lectures them to think about who they’ve become and the hurt they cause, and the shells they develop.

  Then the story ends with him randomly advertising something, and we see a Morty and Rick on the couch watching this with fruits for heads. Rick complains that he can’t believe this was all one long commercial. I’m gonna pretend this last page isn’t even canon, and is instead showing off a different parallel universe entirely from the previous pages, because this threatens to ruin the awesome ending. I don’t wanna think that the whole story’s non-canon just because of this.

Maybe they’re just watching this parallel universe from interdimensional cable. It doesn’t mean it’s not true, it just means that someone’s spying on these two, and the commercial was added at the end. I say this because I’d rather THIS issue be canon, not the show’s episode.

  This story consists of two different plots. The therapy sections were easily my favorite part, Beth aside, because they were developing on the main characters making me care about them more and impressing me with how the writer was creative enough to think up their problems, and smart enough to have the therapist point them out. And she was nice to the kids. Beth was annoying the whole story though. But at least the therapy was simple and made sense as a story.

  Nothing about the Pickle Rick story works. The story in general is inspired by the Pickle Rick episode, and is way too faithful to it. I’m thankful for any originality it had, but why get excited by the same basic thing? It’s just Pickle Rick going through an office building again instead of simply heading home! You’d expect him to be back home when he went through that toilet.

  At least this time, it’s the smart dogs in mechas instead of innocent people, but their plan is too vague. And it’s completely forgettable. And I remembered this as a Pickle Rick story, so it’s not memorable that these things from another episode showed up.

At least we get to see how Jaguar treats his daughter, and the ending is awesome, with Rick finally being honest with his family and trying to cheer his grandchildren up. Aw. And I LOVED that he was nice to the dogs and spared them and didn’t like having to kill a baby turtle. And he turned people into fruit at the end so it’s not like he was actually written Out of Character.

  But the problem is that the entire premise of the story is frustratingly forced. It’s never explained how the hell he can move as a pickle. Pickles don’t have human nervous systems, and sure, he’d have his brain in the pickle, I guess it was shrunk to fit in it, so, I guess he DID have a human nervous system in there. At which point it’s not a pickle, just a pickle with a nervous system. But how’d he modify those limbs so they’d let the nerve signals travel through them properly?

  The whole time he had no tools or proper materials because he didn’t have access to his lab! How could he operate a mecha made of animal parts without his mouth full of something that could let him operate it and without always having a hat over his head? Like, the dog mecha was more realistic than what he’s having! Like it’s not like he always had a hat over his head transmitting his thoughts so that the new arms and legs would move! ‘Cause he doesn’t always have the hat on!

  And obviously Beth would’ve just brought him to the therapist’s office ANYWAYS pickle or not, and Rick had no reason to think she wouldn’t, so why’d he even try this? How’d he get away with this! She told the therapist he turned himself into a pickle anyways! So there wasn’t a masquerade! No wonder I always thought that it would’ve worked fine if he DID just turn himself into a pickle to prove he could. That’d be simpler and make more sense.

The whole reason that he turned himself into a pickle instead of just warping to another dimension was that he was trying to come up with a lie as to why he couldn’t go to therapy. If they just couldn’t find him, they would know he was trying to skip therapy and confront him on it later. He didn’t even try to hide the syringe! Not to mention it’s not really a pickle if he can still talk and has eyes. If he really turned himself into a pickle he wouldn’t have eyes or a mouth anymore. He would’ve been better off making himself an animal that could use tools, like a monkey.