Sonic the Hedgehog: Issue 245

Sonic the Hedgehog: Issue 245
Publication Date: January 2013

Let’s jump right into the plot synopsis. Part three of “Endangered Species,” which has the very odd subtitle of “Restoration Efforts,” begins with Knuckles and Team Fighter locked in mortal combat with Thrash the Tasmanian Devil. As the battle rages on, Knuckles learns more about his new enemy’s motivations. Meanwhile, Metal Knuckles is brought back into the fight when the Krudzu Hybrid Hydra takes over its mechanical body. Sonic, Tails, and Amy stay behind to fight the robot - with some unexpected help - while Knuckles pursues Thrash.

Once again, the last minute revisions to the “Endangered Species” arc are all too obvious. You can easily find Yardley’s first cover to this issue online and see that the Krudzu tentacles ensnaring Sonic were originally intended to be Lien-Da’s whips. The solicitation that was sent out to comic shops even said Lien-Da and the Dark Legion were going to be featured in this issue. The ramifications of Penders’ lawsuit are evident inside as well. Last issue ended with a stray piece of the Krudzu Hybrid Hydra infecting Metal Knuckles’ empty shell. This issue begins with a Krudzu-controlled Crabmeat scuttling into land, coming across Metal Knuckles’ vacant shell, and then taking it over. This itself is a sloppy retcon of the robo-weed’s last appearance, which showed it falling to its doom inside the body of a Titan Metal Sonic. Considering how tight Flynn’s continuity usually is, it is very clear that nobody expected the lawsuit to play out the way it did.

This issue, better than the one that proceeded it, is primarily driven by Knuckles’ rage. And that’s a powerful factor. Considering he’s been in a real funk since the Enerjak episode five years ago, it’s nice to see Knuckles really cut loose. He’s confused, grieved, but mostly extremely pissed off at Thrash. The reader is feeling the same thing, though for much more metatextual reasons, so we really relate with Knuckles here. That emotion makes this issue far more compelling than it probably would’ve been otherwise. (Though the issue does, confusingly, treat Julie-Su and the Albion echidnas as if they’re dead one minute and then like they’ve merely been kidnapped the next. This is presumably a side-effect of Flynn genuinely not knowing if he’d ever be able to use them again.)

No matter how powerful the emotions in the issue are, this is primarily another action driven issue. Knuckles is fighting with Thrash. Sonic and Team Fighter fight with Thrash’s devil dog siblings. When the Krudzu shows up, he has to fight everyone too. I guess some action is warranted, since the last issue was primarily devoted to set-up. Yet focusing on combat to the exclusion of everything else has the effect of making this feel like the first act, when the arc is almost over by this point.

Flynn does sneak in some cute moments though. During the fight with devil dogs, Sonic asks Tails and Amy to do the “spin-y thing.” It takes him a few panels to explain that he means some sort of tornado attack. When Amy doubts she can pull off such a maneuver, Sonic blatantly banks on her affection for him to convince her otherwise. This leads up to a pretty cool action beat of Sonic corralling the devil dogs in a kennel made from torn-up fence post. Comic relief like that should probably seem out of place in such a grim story but, I don't know, somehow Flynn makes it work.

Oh yeah, we also learn exactly what Thrash's deal is. If you read the Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia, you already knew that he's pissed at all echidnas everywhere for genetically modifying his race into unintelligent beasts thousand of years ago. Like his fellow purple comic book villain Thanos, he commits genocide in the name of balance. Now, there's only one Tasmanian Devil and only one echidna. As far as villainous motivations go, it's pretty vanilla. If I had to guess, I'd say this entire plot-line came about because Flynn was annoyed that there were no Tasmanian Devil Mobians, only the mobini devil dogs. (I don't know what his feelings about humans and chimpanzee existing together are.) Post-reboot, Flynn would completely resolve this Goofy/Pluto paradox by making every cartoon animal on Mobius an anthromorphized humanoid, even the fish and dogs.

Of course, a big problem with this issue is that there’s really no reason for the Krudzu to be involved. The machine is blindly following Robotnik’s orders, determined to destroy Sonic because that’s what it’s programmed to do. (Though personal revenge seems to be motivating it as well. Because, yes, this comic book exist in a world where a plant can plot revenge.) The robot/vine hybrid is just another thing for the heroes to fight. It doesn’t feed into the story’s plot or themes in any way. The surprise guest appearance at the end - Shard showing up, seemingly because of popular demand and because Flynn had no better ideas - is a similarly sweaty attempt to pad out a compromised story. Flynn has admitted that neither of these characters played any role in his original scripts. The guy was doing what he could but, boy, is it obvious that all of this was a last minute choice.

The “Endangered Species” arc continues to be deeply troubled by factors totally out of the writers/artists' hands. However, issue 245 manages to work okay despite these huge problems. Allowing the reader to get involved in Knuckles' rage and some deftly deployed comic relief keeps things afloat, even if no satisfying conclusion to this story is ever going to come. [7/10]