Sonic Universe: Issue 24

Sonic Universe: Issue 24
Publication Date: January 2011

After having a pretty weak year in 2010, “Sonic Universe” would bounce back quite a bit in 2011. Of the three storylines more-or-less completely published in that year, two of them are among the book's best. (With one of them being among the worst, because dems da brakes.) Before we could get on with that, though, we had to wrap up the “Treasure Team Tango” arc. The story line has been fumbling around pretty much from the beginning and clamored to a conclusion, finally, as 2011 dawned.

Part four is entitled “The Parada,” because Flynn paid damn good money for those tango lessons and he's going to use them, damn it! The comic picks up with the four opposing teams – Amy's Team Rose, Shadow's Team Dark, the Hooligans, and the Babylon Rogues – still battling for control of the Sol Gem. Rough alliances are made and thrown out within pages, as the gangs continue to fight each other over the magical MacGuffin. Eventually, Shadow realizes he's putting G.U.N.'s welfare over Blaze's entire dimension and decides to help out.

Despite the title, “Treasure Team Tango” has not been an orderly, practiced, and nuanced dance. Instead, its been a chaotic jumble, Flynn throwing in more random bullshit in order to extend a short premise to four whole damn issues. With this one, some of that chaos finally coheres into something solidly. Yes, there's still a lot of quasi-comic combat. Such as when Cream leaps on two separate character's heads on two separate occasions. However, there's a couple of satisfying moments. Such as when Blaze realizes she's ridiculously powerful, using her psychokinesis to defuse a bomb until it's in the center of the Hooligans and the Rogues. She then reactivates it. I don't know why Blaze didn't just burn everyone to a crisp much sooner, since she can apparently create fire just as easily as she can manipulate pre-existing flames.

“Treasure Team Tango” has essentially been a long series of underwhelming slapstick gags. I've found most of these shenanigans pretty exhausting. However, there's at least one or two funny moment in this issue. After Blaze defuses Bean's bomb, the duck falls into a deep depression. He bemoans the explosive's wasted potential. We see his pupil turn into a bomb while he blabbers out a few nicknames. It's a pretty funny bit. Later, after the same bomb goes off in his face, he amusingly states he can't feel his hands. There's also the reoccuring gag of Omega being weirdly attached to Cream and developing romantic feelings for Blaze, based on her ability to blow shit up real good.

Sadly, Flynn has a bad habit of taking a funny joke and running it into the ground. Take the joke about Bean being overly attached to just another bomb. That's four panels on one page. Which is funny... Flynn then stretches the gag out for another four panels, another whole page. Bean then goes even further, explaining how this is his fault, how he plans to give the bomb a honorable name. He then goes even further, saying the bomb should have a gender neutral name. “Like Jamie or Kendell?” This is a good example of a joke going too far, taking a funny premise and stretching it far past its amusing point.

Mostly, while reading “Treasure Team Tango,” I kept wondering what the point of this was. The story arc's structure essentially boils down to the characters trading the Sol Gem back and forth. This is present in this issue too, as there's a stretch of pages in the middle devoted to this very motion. Amy soon convinces Shadow that he shouldn't be fighting them, for pretty good reason. This just draws attention to how out-of-character Shadow has been acting this whole time. Furthermore, this points out how the Hooligans and the Rogues really have no need to be in the story either. In the end, Blaze grabs the gem and goes home, wrapping things up neatly, making the whole thing feel like a waste of time.

At the very least, Tracy Yardley seems to have had a good time drawing this issue. The artwork is energetic, goofy, and fun. There's a pretty cool two-page spread near the beginning, showing everyone fighting each other. There's some neat panel constructions here, like when Shadow teleports onto Jet's hover board. Those Bean panels I've mentioned above are framed in red, which is an eye-catching trick. Yardley's pencils are bright, expressive, and colorful, like always. So even if the writing is lacking, at least the comic is nice to look at.

I guess the “Treasure Team Tango” does have one real purpose. It does give Cream the Rabbit some character development and fully establishes her as a member of the “Sonic” cast. For those that actually care about that character, I suppose that makes this a prominent story arc. For the rest of us, this one has been a real downer, a story that goes in circles strictly for the novelty of seeing four unrelated teams trick and fight each other. [5/10]