Sonic the Hedgehog #216 Review

The Worlds most way past crap comic!

There was once a little boy named Ned Coyle. From a very early age, he loved superheroes and monsters. Throughout the years he discovered the world of comic books, but was restricted by the News Agent's catalogue. Eventually he was finally able to go to a real comic book store and was finally able to buy an issue of this 'Madman' comic he heard so much about. Unfortunately Ned read several issues and soon discovered, much to his dismay, that Madman wasn't quite what he imagined, and that for every good comic book series, there will always be some tripe to counter it, turning him into the plastic sword waving nutjob you see before you.

Sonic the Hedgehog #216 is a perfect example of such tripe. Never before have I read a comic book so patronising, so mind numbingly stupid, that I had to explain my backstory to fully bring on the impact of how much I loathed it.

For those of you don't know, as in the ones of you who were born with cabbages instead of brains, Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most popular video game icons of all time. Originally created to compete with Nintendo's Mario and to replace SEGA's then current mascot 'Alex Kidd,' Sonic was about a blue hedgehog who could run really fast and fought an evil scientist shaped like an egg. Naturally the game was a smashing success that soon unleashed its pointy blue franchise upon the world, bringing us multiple cartoon shows, a straight to DVD movie, tons of other video games and yes, even comic books.

In recent years, Mario has finally beaten out Sonic as the worlds greatest video game icon due to a decrease in quality in Sonic's games, with his 06' title simple named 'Sonic the Hedgehog' being regarded as the worst game of the year. The new plans for another 2D Sonic game should bring back hope for the series. But we're not here to talk about the games, are we? This is a comic blog (usually).

The fact that this is issue 216 implies that SOMEONE is buying this series, and judging by the adds and lack of intense violence, I'm assuming its children. Now I do commend the series for being one of few comics still successfully appealing to kids, this particuler issue is unforgivable.

Let's talk about the cover. What a piece of sh*t. It's Sonic fighting with a cyborg Killer Whale. This is dumb on so many levels. First of all, Sonic can't swim! Water is infamously his Kryptonite, how can he be down there, letalone fight. Second, this fight dons't even happen in the comic, the characters never meet, that is false advertisement! Third, a Cyborg-Killer Whale? Whales are endangered! Your trying to suggest Dr. Eggman grabbed this whale and started prodding gears and wires into it? Why not just have him kick puppies and steal candy from babies while your at it?

Things start out with the fairly new character, Silver the Hedgehog, beating up on an older character, Rotor, a Walrus wearing a yellow power suit. Silver is looking for a traitor to the Freedom Fighters, an organisation of rebels towards the dominating Eggman. Why not look for some wolves, chameleons or snakes? You know they're all evil right? Rotor fights back but is unable to outfit Silver's psychic powers. If he's so psychic, why hasn't he found the traitor yet?

We move over to Sonic and the Arctic Freedom Fighters, which features a penguin, a polar bear and a seal. In a gang of rebels. A PENGUIN, A POLAR BEAR AND A SEAL.

Polar bears I can understand, but seals and peguins aren't intimidating! You could at least PRETEND you have some good ideas.

They have to destroy a tower belonging to Dr. Eggman, which is sending out a brainwashing signal that is controlling Rotor's herd. You see how original this plot is? Not very. Sonic and what I think are two foxes engages the raging Walruses...Walri, Walrusi, Wali...the Walrus herd, and the Freedom Fighters go underwater to infiltrate the tower. The underwater section is guarded by a horde of Killer Whales, but its fine the Penguin sums it up as 'What's so scary about Killer Whales?' How about this?

But I guess your right, Killer Whales are the ultimate pasnies of the ocean. Now, Penguins! They're bad ass!

Sonic and the Foxes do a good job of fighting the Wal...opposition, but Sonic is unable to lay a hand on Rotor's mother, instead opting to talk it out with her. How many times has this worked in fiction? I don't know, but it dosn't work here. Luckily the girl fox turns out to be a ninja and knocks the woman out while invisible.

Back down below, the Freedom Fighters curb stomp the Killer Whales. Now this I've really gotta shake my head at. They're Killer Whales! You are telling me that a penguin of all creatures can make a bad ass fighting machine, but all Killer Whales are wussies? I can understand the Polar Bear, but a FRIGGIN PENGUIN!?!?!?! Oh well, the cyborg whale shows up and beats the ever loving shit out of them. I guess cybernetics are good for you.

Before we continue, may I just ask one thing? WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE GAMES?!

Silver, who is from a post apocolyptic future I might mention, and Rotor fly up to the Tower and blast it open and find a mind control device inside. Since Silver has telekenisis, the solution is obvious. But no, Silver dosn't think he can do that because his specialty is moving things around. Yeah, and throwing Sonic into the wall so he can't get up or move while he pounds crate after crate into his skull! F*ck you Sonic the Hedgehog 2006!
Rotor points out that if Eggman, a human without any powers could do it, aan actual telepath should definatley be able to do it. Yeah, except Eggman has an IQ of over 300, idiots.

So anyway, Silver uses the thingy and snaps ther herd out of it and knock out the Cyber-Whale, meaning that the cover lied and Sonic won't be fighting it...Well that was frickin' easy! Sonic contributed NOTHING to this issue!

Everyone goes over to a congratulatory dinner where they say congratulations and hammer away how great Rotor is. WE GET IT! They are also kind enough to mention that the psychic wave scared off the whales. Oh really? I was so confident that the penguin would take care of them. Oh, and just to make sure future writers on this book can't rehash this most brilliant ofstories, Silver mentions that thanks to him, the Walthings can never be brainwashed again. Well TV is gonna be pretty boring from now on.

And so the gang walks off celebrating and everything is fine and dandy. Thanks for nothing you Blue Freak. Oh, but wait! We've gotta get go back to the city of Idontknoworcare to meet back with the the women of Sonic, Sally, Amy, Bunny, Tails and Antoine. Okay, if you know much about Sonic, you'd know that Antoine and Tails aren't women...but they're close enough. Tails, Antoine and Bunny are just arriving back from a recent Mini-Series that Tails shamelessly plugs. You're a whore in the Furry Fandom, and your a shameless sellout! That Blue Weasel has corrupted the youth of the fox community! And then we get some set up for next time where Sally needs Bunny for a special mission...wow, that dosn't sound like it will involve Sonic at all...you have like three different Sonic comics out at the same time and he's not even the star of his own book! Has your career sunk so low Sonic?

Oh, but the fun STILL isn't over yet folks, some demonic entity possessed one of the writers and made an epilogue. GOOD! GOD! Just leave it you bastards! Silver returns to the future and meets an Echidna. I may mention that the Echidna's in Sonic the Hedgehog look more like spiky dogs. In fact, I wonder if the artists have ever seen an echidna in their lives. He talks about how he hasn't discovered the traitor who will cause the end of the world, but is making progress. Good god I hope this is better than Sonic 2006 where the end was a massive ass cop out.

Silver's master telepathically berates him for failing to find the traitor yet again, but seems to be somewhat understanding and is pretty polite about it. Dude, he failed to save the world from horrific devestation and essentially let billions of people die! You fail as a mentor! But who is he exactly? Why, he's Mammoth Mogul of course...Who the hell is that? I'm going to assume he's a major villain or something from the comic, but to HELL if I know.

Now, the comic is finally over. How does it stand up? This comic is a hundred times worse than Lady Deadpool! If I got to erase one comic from existance, I would choose Sonic The Hedgehog #216 and from then on worship the works of Joe Quesada, which now look like Comic Book Masterpieces by comparison.

This comic is stupid, cliched, poorly written, and would be exactly the same if the title character was removed. I hated this more than shitty fan fiction and RoboCop 3 combined! I guess you've gotta expect shit like this when you consider it was published by Archie Comics, and you all remember the bashing I gave that bag of balls they dare call a company! YOU ARE EPIC FAIL SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #216! That is why I am only granting this Paper Puke a 7/10! This is ThatKidWithTheSideburns, sideburning off.








FAIL!

Archie Comics.

Superheroes dominate the comic book inustry. Even now as it is considered a dying industry superheroes are still the Top Players. But let's rewind the clock back a few decades. Superhero Comics are struggling and much to the superhero fans dismay, a series focussing on a good natured red headed teenager named Archie Andrews was dominating sales.

I'll tell you right now, this series has nothing for me. I pick up a comic hoping for action. Okay that's putting it pretty broad, I actually do care about other stuff such as good artwork, interesting stories and likeable characters, I just really like the action aspect of it surrounding the heroes. Take for example the film version of Hellboy, specifically the second one. Ron Perlman slips into the role like a glove, as does most of the other actors, and while most of the action is great, I can honestly say I get as much entertainment from them talking. Archie Comics have stepped into the realm of superheroes, but this dosn't usually work out very well and it usually vanishes again for a while.

Now Archie Comics is actually kind of strange. Marvel and DC have a universe of characters who have the entire world to run around in, punching each other. In Archie, we have about eight main characters in one small town. Hurray simplicity?

But just for the heck of it, I decided I'd pick up an issue for this month's trip to the Comic Store. Specifically, an issue of Jughead comics, which brings me to an odd point. I know Archie isn't affected too much by continuity, since the whole thing has been going on for just under seventy freaking years, but there are so many publications I don't really know what's happening. There's Archie Comics, Betty and Veronica, Archie Digest, Betty's Diary, Betty, good god it never ends. If I actually wanted to follow any of the storylines, which one do I pick up?

The comic was split up into about three stories, all focusing on Jughead. The first one deals with a group of girls getting sick of Jughead's slacker attitude, and employing a school trickster to reverse this with psychology (which creepily enough, actually made a lot of sense). The second dealt with Archie trying to prove to Archie that Veronica thinks he's a loser, with HIGH-larity ensuing. Finally the issue finished with a story about a girl who caused an ice age in Riverdale because Jughead refuses to kiss her. HIGH-larious.

What surprised me was how much I enjoyed them. It didn't take much to for me to realise why though. In superhero books, someone is always in danger, there's always something bad that could happen, and in today's books issues tend to connect with each other. A lighthearted single issue was a refreshing breath of fresh air.

This also shows a good point about storytelling. Many good series, not limited to comics, have ended because they had 'run out' of stories and the current ones were lackluser. Take for example, Spongebob Squarepants, and before you say anything, no I don't regularly watch it, and yes I do still think it's funny. I saw a grown man laughing his ass off at it not too recently for crying out loud. But while old episodes featured stories such as Spongebob struggling with his already established addiction to karate, or his bosses Arch Nemesis trying to steal the secret recipe to their burgers. Newer episodes have featured storylines like...Plankton forgets how to blink...I am dead serious here.
But Archie Comics have been going for decades, and are still pretty good.

But I have a few questions. Question number one, does Jughead have eyes?
I know this is one frame, but his face is like this one EVERY PANEL!

Also, what voice do you imagine him with? I like to give the characters voices in my head so the story sticks better, for example Archie sounds like a toned down Robin from Teen Titans. With Jughead I tried a few different ones but...I just kept coming back to Linkara's Superboy Prime. I don't want to give him that voice because he isn't whiny or annoying, but it just fits, but it also makes me see the character as atupider than he really is.

But nonetheless, Archie Comics are okay in my opinion, and deserve the place their in now. Oh I can imagine an Archie movie coming out soon. Good god, I bet you anything they'd screw it up.

And YES, that Archie meets Punisher comic is real, and by what I've heard, much to the surprise of everyone, it's apparently pretty good.