Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Issue 74
Publication Date: October 30th
In various places around the internet, both here and elsewhere, I've talked about the benefits and detriments of serialization in storytelling. In the modern age of comic books, serialization is the rule of the land. Few stories are allowed to stand alone and every comic connects to the next one. Telling a story across multiple issues is usually a good thing. It is certainly healthier for world-building and character development. However, sometimes you truly do feel the weight of someone Writing for the Trade doing a disservice to the monthly installments.
We see that keenly in issue #74 of IDW'S "Sonic the Hedgehog." The tangled mess of incidents and subplots that comprise the Clean Sweepstakes arc battle for dominance here. Amy, Tails, Belle, and the Chaotix fight with Clutch's forces deep within his ship. Charmy manages to get away from the fight and hand Nite a thumb drive full of incriminating evidence against Clutch and Clean Sweeps. He broadcast it to the public and Clutch, in desperation, looses his damn mind and decides to crash his massive flying fortress into the stands full of people. Sonic races off to save the day while everyone else argues among themselves. The issue then ends abruptly.
Do you see the problem here? This is not a satisfying comic book to read on its own. This is a graphic novel chopped up into chapters, ending at almost random points. I certainly don't expect this comic book to tell a whole story in each issue but it would be nice if so many of IDW's individual floppies didn't feel like advertisements for the next installment. #74 is made up entirely of connective tissue between story beats. We're transferring from the end of the second act to the third here and, boy, can we feel it. Rather than a natural evolution of the story so far, this plays like a prologue to the next episode, when the really exciting stuff is going to happen. It says a lot about how out-of-whack the pacing for this arc has been, when an issue full of as much action and dramatic reveals as this one still feels so narratively inert.
I know I ranted about this for most of the last review but the point still stands: Cutting back and forth between a bunch of different subplots does not a compelling story make. Evan does a slightly better job of juggling all these balls this time. Mostly because she focuses on one story strand for the majority of the issue. That would be the Chaotix and the others fighting Clutch and his eventual public exposing and breakdown. If the issue has been only about that, it probably would have made for a much more satisfying read. Instead, Stanley feels the need to check in on what everyone else is doing too. The race is seemingly called off but Jet refuses to let go of his petty rivalry with Sonic. Lanolin wants to bring Sonic to justice for his crimes as the Phantom Rider, while "Duo" reveals that Tangle and Whisper knew about it for a while. That happens solely so Mimic can cover his shifty ass, because the good guys still haven't noticed how obviously suspicious this dude is. Every time the story starts to build up a little momentum, it stops to give us a momentary update on some other thread.
The biggest example of how badly this effects the overall flow of the comic is that Surge and Kit get a showcase scene, to remind us they still exist, where they don't actually do anything. They banter ominously with Duo/Mimic before staying in place, commenting on the action as it happens. Considering Surge's slow embracing of her better nature after becoming a fan favorite has been the best thing about this arc, it's frustrating that Stanley devotes a scene to these two that does nothing meaningful to move their development along. You do not get extra points simply for putting the good characters on the page! They have to actually do something for their appearance to mean anything. We all know Surge is a bad bitch who doesn't care what anyone thinks about her. (Despite actually really caring a lot.) Her picking her teeth and sitting around on her hover-bike while Clutch attempts a Colony Drop on the spectators doesn't add anything. This scene did serve one purpose though: It reminded me that Surge and Kit know "Duo" is Mimic, which I had forgotten about with everything else going on. She does this by calling him the humiliating nickname "Tentacles." Aww, I love it when Surge bullies the other kids.
Let us step back and discuss another aspect of issue 74 though. From time to time, you see some jack-ass on social media claim that the "Sonic" franchise isn't politic. This is in defiance of the obvious environmental and anti authoritarian subtext that has been there since the first game. Evan Stanley, whether intentionally or not, does provide a big "fuck you" to that corner of the fandom with this scene. When the drive full of dirty laundry on Clutch and Clean Sweeps Inc. is revealed to the public, is it info about how Clutch is a former crime boss and has committed kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, and attempted murder within this issue alone? Not so much! Instead, the infodump focuses on Clean Sweep Inc. improperly dumping toxic waste, poisoning groundwater supplies and the air people breathe. Falsified records, extortion, and silencing whistleblowers, and using all their funds to manufacture weapons. In other words, it is revealed to the public at large that Clutch and his company have been participating not in comic book bad guy crimes but in regular, real world, corporate crime. That's right, kids. Clutch isn't a supervillain. He's something much worse: A capitalist! Maybe the Restoration should work on restoring some government agencies to provide regulations and laws that big companies are forced to follow...
I'm slightly surprised that a comic for little kids would go in this direction. I think it's great to teach children that corporations are not your friend. However, IDW "Sonic" isn't prepared to grapple with the real world ramifications of events such as these. If the post-Trump era has taught us anything, it's that a lot of people don't give a shit about corporations doing horrible things. Some people actually make excuses for such events! Clutch refers to this breaking news as a "smear campaign" and that the amount of money he makes justifies whatever crimes he's committed. That it is "good business" and that "nobody cares about a few sick kids." The comic has Clutch do this on-camera before a crowd, who boo him immediately. He sees the consequences of his criminal disregard for the safety of the world right away. Here in reality, when evidence that CEOs have committed serious crimes leak to the press, the execs lawyer up. Usually, they have enough cash to pay whatever fines exist for their infractions, meaning the bad guys see no consequences for their actions and the infrastructure that allows them to do these things never changes. This is a comic book for little kids. After being exposed, Stanley has Clutch loose his mind and immediately become homicidal. This is either the author realizing that corporate criminals like Clutch rarely pay for their actions, causing her to write him immediately doing something obviously and blatantly evil to remove any doubt in the public's mind... Or this is merely a funny book for grade-schoolers and that much thought was not put into it. Either way, Clutch's mental breakdown is probably the best moment in this issue.
Something else this issue got me thinking about... Isn't it funny how, when Lanolin was nothing but a background character, when we knew nothing about her, she was beloved by the fandom with multiple people demanding more appearances from her? Now that she has become a featured player and been gifted with an actual personality, she has quickly become one if the most loathed characters in the book? Almost as if deciding you like someone based solely on their outward appearance is shallow or something. Anyway, considering the production cycle for comic books, I assume Stanley was not aware of the fan reaction to Lanolin when she wrote the script for issue. At this point, however, it feels a bit like the writer is actively trying to make us dislike Lanolin. When Duo reveals that Tangle and Whisper knew Sonic was the Phantom Rider, the sheep gets extremely offended. She attempts to track down Sonic and arrest or something, I guess, when he's in the middle of saving the day. It's only after Tangle and Whisper talk her out of it that she changes her mind, deciding to put this debate on-hold until after the crisis is resolved. And so Lanolin is revealed to reside on the most annoying corner of the Character Alignment Chart: Lawful Neutral, the designation for people who think the law – or, at least, their personal interpretation of it as it aligns with their own morality – is an inflexible facet of the world and that any violation of it must be immediately and swiftly punished.
In effect, this accomplishes two things. First off, Tangle's defense – that Sonic was doing the wrong thing for the right reason and we should just trust the guy the comic book is named after – does not feel like a justifiable position. "He's my friend, my friends are good and would never do anything bad, therefore my friend doing a bad thing must be good" is not the ethical position you think it is, Tangle. Generally, the comic acting like Sonic can do whatever he wants and not face any consequences for it is, makes our hero look like an unaccountable vigilante who can do no wrong. And that's not compelling. More pressingly, all of this makes Lanolin look like a bitchy straw man. She has a good point.
We should hold those we have designated as our defenders to a strict set of rules! However, Lanolin reacting to this information in a moody, impulsive, and frankly illogical fashion makes her seem like, ya know, an idiot. Obviously saving the lives of thousands of innocent civilians is more important right now, lady. Which raises the question of if we are supposed to dislike Lanolin, of this is building towards some sort of growth or change for her. Or if we are heading towards a tedious courtroom arc where Sonic is put on trial for crimes that he will obviously be cleared of, because he's the default good guy of this universe. I don't know if that would be better or worse than the comic simply moving on past these events and hoping we forget they all happened.
In general, it's another very frustrating issue. I've already pointed out how frequently any tension or momentum the script builds up is immediately undermined by switching focus to something else happening, usually via slow dialogue scenes. We see this in the action sequences too. The opening rumble between Clutch's goons and the Chaotix is decently executed, mostly thanks to Aaron Hammerstrom's bad-ass pencils. However, there is a moment that bugs me. Clutch grabs Charmy, puts his cane-gun to his head, and demands the Chaotix hand and the thumb drive get back in their cage. At this point, I would imagine Clutch would simply kill these guys – which he was attempting to do only a few panels earlier – rather than imprison them again. But, okay, whatever, this is a G-rated comic book. What happens instead is much more depressing. Vector pretends to concede, only for Espio to toss a shuriken into the debate and Charmy to sting his way out of Rough's grasp. What was the point of this moment? We already know that Clutch has no qualms about hurting children, as he's already tried to shoot Charmy. It adds no suspense to the sequence, as the situation is immediately resolved without any stakes being raised. This sequence simply makes the heroes look like they can easily wiggle their way out of any dilemma or makes Rough look like a bigger joke than he already is for forgetting that bees have stingers.
I'm not convinced that this beat wasn't inserted strictly to make the comic book longer, in order to guarantee that this arc wraps up in the big anniversary issue next time. The awkward, stop-and-start feeling this entire arc has had makes me suspect that is the case. That action scene wraps up with Clutch running after Charmy as he flees the room and, right as he leaves, the villain perfectly shoots the control panel. Which means a not-small portion of the sprawling cast are, once again, stuck in a fucking boiler room. Throughout this storyline, Stanley has become obsessed with inventing these contrived reasons to keep the teams apart. Before, it was Tails and Amy being stuck on the other ship, looking for Belle. Maybe this story shouldn't have had twenty-one central characters? You don't have to include everybody in the team in every story, Evan. You don't need four or five dramatic things happening at once. "Urban Warfare" had this same problem, this need to shove in as many of the beloved cast members as possible and march each of them through constant action scenes and contrived subplots. That's not how you write an epic. It's how you write a shitty epic. Wasn't this storyline supposed to be about hoverboard racing???
People seem to like this on-going story, so I guess that problem must be with me. Still, I've seen this comic book, this exact same writing, do things in a much smoother and far more satisfying manner. In her Archie days, Stanley would shove in random events without setting them up. Now, she feels compelled to create these elaborate and unbalanced soap operas that weave through far too many characters and shove in far too much unconvincing action scenes. All of which ignores Stanley's strengths, which are in character interaction. A little aside here where Amy points out that both her and Don have a hammer for a weapon, and he cracks a joke about the boots she's wearing, will stick in my memory far longer than any of the other bullshit that happens in this issue. That's the benefit of having a big group of characters to draw from, seeing these different personalities bounce off each other, not insisting that every single one of them must participate in this meandering narrative.
A simple two or three issue race story line, focused on Surge learning to be loved, would have been a great idea. A three issue plot focused on the Chaotix exposing Clutch's crimes to the public probably would've been fun. Giving Jet some much needed character development by centering in on his obsessive desire to beat Sonic would have made for a solid one-off. Even Sonic cosplaying as a Psycho-Ranger or melodramatic in-fighting among the Diamond Cutters, by far the least interesting part of this saga, could have been redeemed. Instead, all of these ideas were rammed together and the result has been, unsurprisingly, a mess. At least it'll be over next month, right? Sorry to be so negative, as I know some folks have been enjoying this one. I swear, I never set out to be a humorless, pretentious old man that hates everything because he holds a book for little kids to too high of a standard. What do you expect this middle-aged man to do, not review the "Sonic the Hedgehog" comic book? Anyway, I'm really looking forward to this series moving on to something else soon. [5/10]
