Super Comics: Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) – #26

Sonic the Hedgehog (the comic book series) and all the images you see in this recap are owned by IDW and SEGA of America

Are we still in the Zombot story arc?  Yup!  Do we now have to fight the Zeti who are showing up at the last minute?  Yup!  Do I still not particularly care about this story; especially since we’ve been dealing with it for so long now?  YUP!!  Is it better than the Sonic movie?  Well… we’ll have to see about that.  Let’s get started!!

The issue begins with Eggman and Tails using their Smart Brain powers to cobble together a multi-teleportation device using the Warp Topaz that they… “borrowed” from Dr. Starline who is shall we say… temporally displaced at the moment.  The master plan here, which I can only assume (and hope) is the final confrontation of this arc, is to battle with the Zeti to get back the chaos emeralds so that Sonic can go SUPER SONIC which will wipe out the Zombot virus… somehow.  I don’t know, they’re the Chaos Emeralds!  You could tell me they can bake a perfect soufflé and it’d be far from the least believable or most outlandish power we’ve seen them have!  Speaking of which, why doesn’t Knuckles protect them as well as the Master Emerald?  What, keeping an eye on the BIG rock takes up so much time and energy that he can’t look after the little ones too!?

The plan that they’ve come up with (which will conveniently stretch this story out for another two to three issues at least) is to send all the secondary characters through the portals to hit all the Zeti at the same time and take their Chaos Emeralds, which MAY sound like a recent movie that came out where all the secondary characters went through portals to steal the Infinity Stones but assure you they are quite different!  These panels with through TIME and space which is nothing like what’s going on here!  Anyway, Tails and Amy are after Zomom, Espio is after Zazz, Silver and Whisper are after Zor, Gemerl the robot is after Zeena (we’ll get to why THAT’S a bad idea soon enough), The Babylon Rogues are after Zik, and Rouge is on Eggman’s Faceship which is currently being captained by Zavok who has the last two Emeralds.  Now if none of these names mean anything to you, don’t worry!  I have more Sonic knowledge than any one man should and even I think this is nonsensical overkill, but whatever it takes to get this arc over with and start doing something else!  I’ll give the issue this.  There is one decent scene in here where Sonic and Eggman are left alone only for the latter to start gloating at the downfall of the former; once again reminding Sonic that the zombot apocalypse is PRETTY much his fault.  It ALSO somewhat tacitly confirms that Eggman should have been thrown in jail for the rest of his life and possibly faces the death penalty for his crimes against all living creatures, but I won’t get into this planet’s criminal justice system just yet.  We’ll have to see what shakes out on that front when the virus is cured and Eggman faces the wrath of the rest of the world.  This is decent and I like that they bring up how he let Metal Sonic go as well (that’s TWO world shattering mistakes right there), but the problem is that we’ve seen this already; not just in Sonic’s own internal monologues but he ACTUALLY confronted Eggman himself back in issue 23!  Speaking of that issue, you know what would have made this latest confrontation a lot more interesting?  Dr. Starline!  Too bad we chucked him through a portal to who knows where!

Back on the Faceship, Zavok is still trying to locate Eggman and Starline so he can shove his big red fist down their much smaller throats, but through the secretive machinations of a few of Eggman’s loyal robots, he still hasn’t found Angel Island though he’s getting very close.  This is also the part where we get Rogue’s magically changing knew high to thigh high boots, and some… interesting posing.

The plan finally gets underway… and it’s a spit-show right off the bat.  NO one seems to know what they’re doing and they get overtaken by the Zeti almost immediately.  Tails and Amy incur the wrath of Zomom, Espio is IMMEDIATELY found despite being straight up invisible, Cream gets in Gemerl’s way and alerts Zeena to their presence.  That last one in particular is quite galling considering the ONE THING we know about the Zeti is that they can control robots and Zeena does just that, so either they were REALLY certain that Germyl was going to get a killing blow on a sneak attack, or our heroes just didn’t think of this possible outcome when coming up with this BRILIANT plan.  Oh, and The Babylon Rouges are about as threatening as the BMX Bandits, but did you honestly expect anything better?

Honestly the only crew that seems to have a handle on the situation is Silver and Whisper with the former intentionally running face first into danger so the latter can line up a decent shot.  Other than that it all looks bleak for our heroes… again, as zombots start to swarm… again, and the bad guys are a cackling in triumph… again.

This whole ENDGAME (nyuk-nyuk-nyuk) to the story arc is an utter mess, but it’s one that they brough upon themselves.  Every step of the way the writers kept asking themselves if there’s MORE they could stick in and they always found yet another angle to expand upon or another character in the endless pile of them to bring to the forefront.  The novelty of Sonic in Zombieland wore off a long time ago, and these extraneous storylines could have worked on their own further down the road (the Zeti could have shown up later and tried to take over the Eggman army for example), but everything is just bloated now and it doggedly refuses to end.  It WILL end however, one way or the other, and I just hope that they have ideas after this to build future stories off of considering just how many ideas they haphazardly put into this one.  Who knows?  Maybe this ONE arc had to have all the bad ideas and bad callbacks just to get them out of the way so the future can be bright and uncluttered.  I sure hope that’s the case, but I wouldn’t place a bet on it.