Sonic Universe: Issue 61

Sonic Universe: Issue 61
Publication Date: February 2014

It could not be more obvious that Ian Flynn had high hopes for Eclispe the Darkling. He has a prominent placement in issue 61’s cover, doing a weird lunge thing over Team Dark’s shoulder. The next issue would devote its variant cover entirely to Eclispe, giving him one of those cool Rafa Knight digital renders. And I can certainly understand the desire to give Shadow the Hedgehog, one of this franchise’s star characters no matter how I feel about it, his own archenemy. Yet I wish he had come up with something more inspired than what looks like an alien-ized pallet swipe of Shadow, who has yet to display much in the way of personality. But I guessed it worked because Eclipse seems to be fairly popular among the “preboot Archie Sonic was never good” crowd.

Part three of “Shadow Fall” is subtitled “A Matter of Trust,” because an arc full of machine guns and man-eating aliens was just crying out for a Billy Joel reference. The issue begins with the still brainwashed Shadow fighting with the other team members of Team Dark. They quickly undo his mind-control and revert him to normal. Meanwhile, Eclispe successfully subdues and captures the remaining members of Spider Troupe. Team Dark heads deeper into the Comet to rescue the soldiers and stop the Black Arms once and for all.

The main thrust of “A Matter Of Trust” involves Shadow overcoming his brainwashing with the help of his friends. This plays out in an underwhelming fashion. After rumbling with him for a while, Omega and Rouge pin Shadow down. The bat essentially nags at him until he gets better, just the suggestion of mentioning Maria apparently being enough to knock Shadow out of his evil-influenced stupor. This not only suggests that Black Death’s mind control is ludicrously weak, it also draws attention to how artificial the entire plot point of Shadow being forced to fight his teammates was.

However, I’ll give issue 61 this much: After wrapping that sequence up, Team Dark gets down to the business of taking out the Black Comet. Shadow’s renewed connection with the aliens allows him to navigate the comet more effectively. With all the inter-team bickering and evil manipulation out of the way, the comic’s plot can finally start actually moving. While I know some people are invested in this aliens bullshit, I imagine most readers were drawn to this arc because they want to see Team Dark working together and kicking ass. Issue 61 finally delivers on that.

Of course, the alien stuff still takes up a large portion of this comic book. Part three of “Shadow Fall” really draws attention to how much the Black Arms kind of suck at their job. Eclipse uses his teleportation to easily disarm the reminder of the space marines. He’s going to kill them but Black Death instructs him not too. He tells them to save the humans as food for the next generation of aliens, who are hanging out in knock-off xenomorph eggs. It seems to me that eliminating the threat to the eggs is more pertinent than feeding them, especially since they haven’t even hatched yet. Why not let Eclipse kill the intruders and throw the nuke out the nearest air lock? Once they land on Earth, the Black Arms will have plenty of food anyway.

Of course, we all know the real reason the space marines are left alive. This is still a kids book, no matter how faux-tough and gritty it wants to appear. Showing the bad guy just killing everybody, even if that makes the most sense, would be beyond the pale. Flynn’s methods just draws attention to how contrived Black Death’s reasoning is. The story has to continue towards its inevitable showdown, even if there are half-a-dozen points before then where things could have been resolved. This whole story arc has been hampered by clumsy plotting like that.

Also clumsy: A flashback where Abraham Tower tells Rouge and Omega to take Shadow out, that his connection to the Black Arms is too great, that he’s too dangerous to have around. That’s another obviously artificially engineered bit of tension, since we know Shadow’s friends aren’t going to kill him. At least that leads to plenty of scenes of Rogue and Omega interacting. As always, the giant robot’s often stated desire to blow everything up is frequently amusing. He’s also given some more frankly hilarious sound effects, though I’m not sure if those were suppose to make me laugh.

So part three of “Shadow Fall” is slightly better than the two parts before it. But only slightly. The plot is still full of contrivances and other bullshit like that. At least the story actually feels like it’s starting to go somewhere now, one whole issue away from the end. Mostly, I’m still just waiting for this thing to end. (Which it won’t actually do for another nine issues, since this arc was merely the first half of the “Dark Trilogy.” Ugggggh.) [5/10]