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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Sonic Month: The Tails Adventure aka Trouble in Paradise (Sonic Universe 17-20) (Comissioned by Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy hedgehogs! Sonic Month enters its final week and I have THREE sonic reviews hot and fresh coming for you! First up we have our second of two character spotlights. Last week we set our hearts free true with knuckles this week we fly high with Tails into my faviorite sonic continuity, Archie Comics.

And lucky me, since Emma isn’t the most familiar with this continuity, I get to go on about it a bit for her and for those of you less familiar with archie.

So it was 1993 and Sonic The Hedgehog had , as scientests would say “blown the fuck up”, with Sonic 2 being a MASSIVE hit and everyone was lining up to get a piece. One of these pieces i’ve covered on this blog before was DiC animation who created two cartoons for it: The wacky and zany Adventures and the more serious SATAM. And since the games had a story as deep and complex as “The flash but blue and a woodland creature and his sidekick whose a flying fox because it looks neat battle a fat man who stuffs animals inside robots because the environement.”,

The comic naturally took cues from the cartoons.. BOTH OF THEM.

As a result Archie’s sonic started with the dark setting of satam.. but with the madcap humor and lack of seriousness of Adventures, complete with your boys scratch and grounder. If they are not..

The comics would evolve with time both under writer Micheal Gallager, who easily transitioned from the comedy stories to drama having worked at Marvel, and under two chaps by the names of Kent Taylor.. and Ken Penders

Yeah at first Ken was actually helpful, helping give Archie a mythlogy of it’s own alongside gallagher, giving knuckles his own rich history, and creating several fan faviorite characters. As the first 50 issues went on it evolved from a simple gag a day story to what it was born to be: a fun but still tense epic about our heroes fighting robotnik with tons of extra sized specials, one shots, and mini series to help expand the world and give the bigger characters (Tails, Knuckles and Sally) spotlight. It worked... then issue 50 hit. While Endgame itself is kind of a mess and I may talk about it here someday, issue 50 was a glorious climax to the series, with Robotnik outright DYING thanks to snively after an utterly awesome clash with sonic, easily the best they’ve had in any medium thus far and certainly the most tense as the two finally went hand to hand after 50 issues of robotnik mostly using evil schemes.

Then it all got flip turned upside down: see with no games for a LONG time, Sega really didn’t care about the comic: they still let it exist but they had no promotional need for it. Meanwhile Archie, as long as it sold well enough, also did’nt care as long as it made them money. So we got things like the magic sword Sally’s family has, already kinda nuts, gaining sapience, sonic and friends being forced to go to school, ENDLESS drama with Sally’s asshole dad, Knuckles going green and joining with his enemies, it being revealed

Sonic finding his lost parents who it turned out weren’t dead, Sally finding out her mother and brother were not dead, Tails finding out his parents were not dead, Knuckles finding out his entire race was not dead, Sonic finding out his childhood FRIEND was not dead, Tails finding out the robot he made out with was based on a real person, Sonci making out with said real person and tails running away dramatically, sonic dying, sonic returning from space, robotnik returning but as his robot self from an alternate timeline we saw before, Sally hitting sonic for not giving up bein ga hero, Antoine and Bunnie breaking up, scourge trying to make out with everyone, shadow being outright evil despite having not even been that in canon, antoine having turned out to be his evil doppleganger, 80 years spent 20 years in the future wasting a godo conccept and titan tails

The comic was a mess going into the mid 2000′s and with Karl Bollers leaving because Ken Penders was a moron and Ken Penders being fired for causing most of this, Archie was desperate for someone willing to fix this mess.

Thankfully this is where Ian Flynn comes in. Lifelong sonic fan, former fan comic writer, and general encylopedia of all versions of the characters, Ian is one of THE most decorated sonic writers, writing the comic for the next decade till it was closed because Archie, Sega and Ken Penders all sucked in some way. And i’ts easy to see why: Ian clearly took a page from most superhero comic writers, taking past bits of clunky continuity and using them to craft good stories, while taking characters writers misued or forgot about and polishing them up into straight up bangers. Anti-Sonic went from “sonic from earth 3 but in a jacket”, to the evil counterpart he was born to be, Scourge, Fiona went from a flat love intrest to an intresting traiotr, mammoth mogul became the badass he was always supposed to be, and MANY more. His run on sonic is one of my faviorite runs of all time and DEFINTELY somnething i’m going to cover some day, possibly soon given how much you guys have liked this retrospective.

So i’m pleased as punch to cover a bit of it. Today’s tale comes from Sonic Universe. Ian had turned the comic around so well by this point he got a SECOND book, which he used to tell all kinds of stories: while two featured sonic (one dealing with the 25 years later future and the othe rbefore this handling some stuff for the main plot), most focused around his friends, enemies , and other denziens of his world, allowing ian to expland it and cover crucial plot points or just tell smaller stories he coudln’t tell in the main book.

Case in point this one, the fourth story and one of the funnest. So join me under the cut as I give out even MORE exposition

And dive into some fun in the sun as Tails takes Bunnie and Antoine on their honeymon and they all fight some birds. Because you know this is thier lives.

Tails, Antoine and Bunnie in Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog:

This is a VERY accessible story: you could pick it up with only some sonic knowledge and likely enjoy it, much like a marvel comic if your doing the job: you may have questions but they’ll only make you want to read more.

As i’m recapping this story though, it’s easier to just give you an idea who these three are from the top. Fun too.

So first up is our headliners: Tails in archie started out much like SATAM and Adventures: he was sonic’s doting kid sidekick who rarely went on missions and was there more “because game”, only taking part in things when they were direct attacks. Micheal Gallagher found a clever way to use this though, with tails slowly gaining confidence and competence... but everyone else, sally most of all, babying him.

This incident lead to tails first full solo adventure as thanks to an oil soaked seagull, he was able to power the seafox, fought an octobot underboss with the help of the forty fathom freedom fighters, and headed off for an island adventure where he smooched a robut, based on a real lif efox named fiona (the basis thing was a later retcon as the robot was unsuprisingly popular), and nearly got robtocized, beating robotink’s scheme on his own and ending up in mobius australia. So a normal week in this comic basically.

With this Tails soon got upgraded to full fledged freedom fighter, with his inventive aspects eventually being added from the games, and was also the chosen one in a convluted prophecy involving a mammoth and ..

Yeah so we’re glossing right over that. His primary role from here was mostly serving as sonic’s best friend and most trusted partner, the one he’d call on more than anyone. Then tragedy struck when everyone thought sonic was dead after some aliens who mutated Mobius back when it was earth attacked and he got warped away stopp ing them while knuckles came back much like jesus...

So Tails was left Grieving his best friend as they struggled along without him and things got all angsty. Sonic came back of course, he was just zipped across the universe and also found out tails parents were alive. This will be important in a moment. So tails was happy.. but the unvierse couldn’t have that so this happened.

Yup. The real fiona showed up but having aged a few years.. she wasn’t intrested in him the way he was with her... soooo

This has rightfullly gone down as one of the more infamous moments in the comics history, one I saw as a kid in scans, but as an adult thought “This might not be as bad as my memory made it out out to be. “ Nope, even worse. Whlie the IDEA isn’t terrible, sonic dates someone Tails has feelings for but is too old for him and it creates some issues in their freindship, the over the top half assed art, seriously tails angst makes sonic’s QUILLS blow back, and how utterly rushed the romance between Sonic and Fiona was made it fall flat. It comes out of nowhere and seems there JUST to give sonic someone to date other than bunnie after they decided to drop that storyline and get her and antoine back together.

We’ll get back to that in a moment. So instead we got this which no fan really liked as Fiona had no real character since coming back. Bringing her back itself wasn’t a bad idea, the execution was just flawed.

Thankfully 5 issues later Ian took over and spent a YEAR

Yes a year cleaning up the remaning storylines while slowly setting up his own stuff. And Fiona was one of his first orders of buisness, the other being a character she’d become entertwined with in both senses of the word: Scourge. Scrouge was originally anti-sonic, an evil greaser sonci from another dimension that sadly failed to be an actual threat, and who recently ahd made out with everyone in town while pretending to be sonic and then teamed up with Rogue. Ian saw an opportunity in this plot cul de sac and in his first issue anti turned green, got a wicked awesome scar from knuckles abusive dad and became scrouge, a TRUE evil counterpart to sonic who replaces sonics need for freedom with anarchy, his flrity nature with being a horndog jackass, and his caring nature with being a cruel destrecutive bastard. Naturally he was awesome.

He used said previous making out with everyone to explain Fiona and Sonic’s weird relationship.. from her side at least: Fiona was in love with SCOURGE, and really wasn’t happy being a straight edge freedom fighter. She tried dating sonic because they looke dthe same but it just didn’t work, with ian setting up not only her disastifaction but her defectoin, cleverly using all this past stuff to remake fiona from an entirely boring character to an intresting villainess and partner for scourge. Tails naturally didn’t get out of this unscathed now she didn’t have to play nice with the poor boy anymore

So as you can imagine he didn’t exactly take.. any of this well. He put on a face seeming to be okay... but he wasn’t, and an arc later we’d dig into that with the House of Cards two parter.

Since Ian had came on board , he’d brought Tails parents Amedeaus and Rosemary back from outer space via some teleporters and stuff. But their return, while happy at first, soon caused strife int he kingdom as Amedeaus, having both seen democracy work out in the stars and seen the monarchy of acorn fail time and time again.

He wanted to abollish it. The current king, Sally’s aformentioned long lost brother elias who, while an excellent character, is WAY too much to unpack, refused partly out of wanting to keep the kingdom’s tradition in tact.. and partly because of his daddy issues and not wanting to let down his asshole dad, aka the very reason I sided with the prowers on this one. He even arrested Amedeaus.. which lead to his wife and child breaking him out.. and naturally Nicole made the BRILLIANT decision to call sonic for this despite pointing out tails resentment earlier. It went.. as well as you’d expect

God that was cathartic. Ian did maybe TOO good a job showing just how ignorant sonic was of how much pain he was causing his best friend. So naturally next issue is full of punching as Tails lays out how he resents sonic: For not talking him along on missions earlier on, for not beliving Tails stories about his own adventures, and for locking his dad up. But as you can probably guess... while all of that’s bothered him.. most of this comes from exactly what you expected it to be.

Aside, Sonic’s apology is geninely heartfelt.

I REALLY need to cover this run in full at some point. So that’s where Tails leaves by this point: stronger, his relationship with sonic repaired and having slowly gone from kid sidekick to a full fleged freedom fighter and genius, with this arc FULLY showing off what that means.

Bunnie and Antoine

The Archie Versions of Bunnie and Antoine are easily some of my faviorite sonic characters and comic book characters period, living up to the potetial their satam counterparts had by way of character development.. even if like most characters it took till ian for them to really florish.

At the start the two were exactly what they were in SATAM: Bunnie was given a proper origin, ending up in a roboticzier and barely being saved by Sonic and Rotor, hence her being the way she is, as well as a shortlived dream of being a hairdresser once the war was over, but otherwise she was largely the same: a kind, badass cyborg who hated being half roboticized but still used it to her best to help her friends. While, much like SATAM she ended up sidelined a good bit during the 50 issue war, she still got to do much more and got spotlight stories once in a while, in general being treated like the big deal she shoudl’ve been anyway, with one of the most heartbrekaing being having a nightmare of her roboticization slowly finishing.. showing just what the poor woman fears most.

Antoine was largely the same: A comical coward who wasn’t really good for anything and you questioned why he was kept on the main team, especially once sally started training new recruits. He didn’t really change as a character to the point that while Bunnie got an utterly awesome showing in mecha madness, loosing to a roboticized sonic but at least putting up a decent fight first... Antoine.. put sonic on trial afterwords in one of the dumbest moments of the comic’s history.

Though he did get an intresting spotlight where, to prove a point, he did a solo mission... and Bunnie worried about him is shown, subtley at that, to have tagged along and made sure he didn’t die or get roboticized. And when going back to tails, Antoine not only admonishes himself for how stupid his actions was.. but once the child is gone he geninely thanks his savior

Yup this little backup is also where the comics best romance, with all due respect to sonic and sally and knuckles and julie su of course, begins, with a simple innocuous peck on the cheek that, seemingly was just a fun thing.. but come issue 46, just before endgame the writers picked it up in a great way.

Said issue is also where Antoine finally gets character development as well as an explination for why he sucks dirty ass in thunderstorms. For starters when local asshole and one of the worst characters in archie sonic, Geoffery St. John, wants to kill sonic both due to not liking him and being in his way to wooing sally (who by the way was a minor while Geoffery very much isn’t so...)

Antoine steps in and punches the asshole batman style

He also calls out Geoffery in a variety of ways, which is oh so statisfying after putting up with this prick. And look if your a fan of his: fine, your opinon is valid, i’m not knocking you. But I will knock this selfish, entitled, useless, egotistical, predatory, brownosing, faux-australian prick all I want. He spent all his screen time trying to woo a teenager, getting in the way of the guy who was doing most of the ACTUAL legwork for the war, and in general putting his dick measuring contest with a war hero over his actual duties, and that’s not even getting into the later retcon he was working for an evil wizard this whole time.

Story for another day. ... we were talking about antoine right? Anyways this confrontation also leads to bunnie , who he saved early in his career giving out his backstory... he WAS a good hero and freedom fighter when he started, wearing his father’s uniform to honor him.. but then

It’s a great character pivot showing WHY he was so hooked on sally... and that he never had a shot, and deconstructing it: he hopelessly chased a dream that had no chacne of becoming true, with Sally never once giving him the indication she was interested.. and had to watch as he lost it. It dosen’t make it OKAY he fell apart like this but given he’s only a teenager, it’s at least understandable. Thankfully.. he finds something better

And thus the romance began. So with robotnik beat soon after, surely there were some juicy developments with these two right? A first date, some fighting together something Right?

Yeah for some damn reason post issue 50, outside of the ocasoinal moment, most of the main cast ceased to be all that important. Antoine was only used as part of Sally’s dad’s attempts to force them to marry, yes really, and aside from a story in one of the specials where Bunnie had to upgrade her cybernetics in a way where she could NEVER get them undone, something Antoine supported her with the two were just kinda there and didn’t get to do a whole lot of note. The only exception I can think of is Antoine finding out his dad was still roboticized, and once his brainwashing was removed reuniting with the guy, who then made peace with his former arch enemy, amy’s robin hood themed cousin. Amy had a robin hood themed cousin btw.

This changed after sonic got shot up into space and was thought dead and we got a time skip out of the deal. And not for the better: The two broke up , with Bollers intending for Antione to do a heel turn, before his leaving meant that thankfully didn’t happen. Antoine also wore an eyepatch now because time skip. Bunnie ended up dating sonic breifly, that thankfully didn’t last, that unthankfully lead to the mess described above and no one liked it whatsoever. Thankfully it was undone just before Ian’s run: turns out Antoine was his evil twin from another dimension, the same one as anti sonic, patch. Who wears an eyepatch. Which antoine suspciously started wearing after suddenly changing in demeanour. You know guys maybe there’s a reason you never beat robotnik.

Patch poisoned the king, which sadly was not fatal, and sonic bringing elias back as well as finding antoine helped save it. The two happily reunited, and this farce finally ended.

With Ian’s run Ian not only treated the two like main characters again, but decided to deepen the relationship.. and it started with something Sad as Antoine’s dad passed, with Patch having also poisoned him because apparently poisoning old men is like pringles, you can’t just stop at one. But he told him he loved him and that he approved of his relationship.

So with that on his mind, and the fiasco with fiona clinching it.. antoine decided to do something bold

Yup. Just before the milestone 175th issue, Antoine popped the question and the two soon married after that, in one of the most heartwarming moments in the comics’ history and one that felt earned: while the twos romance hadn’t been focused on outside of the doppleganger incident, the two had remained steady, faithful and in love thorughout this war as it ended, rekindled and got so much worse. Ian took the two from merley a couple.. to a well written one with the marriage feeling meant to be and truly heartwarming. They were wed, Robotnik attacked and killed a bunch of people afterwords, as is their life, they also had to fight off an invasion... so while they were happy they didnt’ have a chance to really honeymoon,a nd tails, having both fought his best friend and then had to go overseas to help with the efforts against the iron dominon, longer story for later, all three could really use a break. which FINALLY brings us to today’s comic. Sometimes being a wordy bastard who can’t help but gush about things he likes sucks folks.

The Tails Adventure! or Trouble in Paradise

As you can probably guess by the title, this arc’s a long overdue adaptation of Tails Adventure, a metroidvania style spinoff for the game gear. I.. have not played a ton of it as whilie a great concept in execution it’s a bit

Though it’s mostly just it’s age, having to clumisly enter and exit levels and guess as what to do next without a guide. I might give it another whirl after this honestly. It’s still not a bad game and with an eshop card you CAN still get it on the 2ds as of this writing until august and for only 6 dollry doos, so if your curious, there you go.

As for why it wasn’t adapted back in the comic’s heyday I WAS confused at first. Archie had a habit of adapting most sonic releases from the obvious ones, Sonic 3, Sonic and Knuckles, and Sonic CD, to others like Sonic Spinball, Sonic Triple Trouble and Knuckles Chaotix, the latter presumibly because they added more characters to play with. But weirdly depsite giving them a whole new villian faction in the battle Kuku’s and tails solo adventures and eventual mini showing fans wanted more of the little guy, it never happened. But after looking at the specials release dates, it became obvious: There just wasn’t room. In the year the game came out we also got the triple trouble and chaotix specails, with his mini coming out at the same time the chaotix special did. And while next year would still work... we then got Super Sonic vs Hyper Knuckles, which while tying into nothing and really not being necessary... was still pure sugar to any ten year old seeing it on the stands, and after that was the special finishing up mecha madness.. well kinda finishing it up. We had that moronic trial issue after but I can grouse about that some other day. So I get archies priorties being “finishign up the story of the year” and

Respectively. Why they didn’t during the years AFTER this.. is because Bollers and Penders prefered making their own characters. And archie DID have great characters like Mina, Julie Su, Lien-Da, Enerjak, the various branches of freedom fighters, Larry, Mammoth Mogul, Knick the weasel and more, a lot of whom needed ian to truly shine btu were still great in concept. The problem was a LOT of those characters got sidelined for whatever reason, and we got focus on characters like knuckles stupid abusive grandpas and dad, horse sean connery, a lost tribe of knuckles people who live in a utopia and do fuck all except their leader trying to kill knuckles that one time, spider ninja lady, tails wizard uncle, the dingoes, sluth doggy dog, that wolf jackass who kicked off endgame, robotnik’s non snively realtives with the exception of his niece, any other overlander and of course Kodos, aka the worst villian in archie’s history and again

I’ve probably even missed a few but the point is they can’t all be winners and the two were more obsessed with making things more convluted or in penders case making knuckles mythlogy EVEN MORE DENSE, than actually carring about the games. Even one the games did come back, the adventure adaptation ended up a huge mess thanks to said mythlogy, while the adventure 2 adaptation was a foot note with the versions of Rogue and Shadow we got not remotely resembling the ones on screen, which was fine for the genisis days given the stories were relegated entirely to manuals, but not so great when you had a FULL GAME telling you who these people were and had time to play it or at least read a synopsis by the time both became relevant.

Ian however did actually care: while he loved archie dearly and it showed, he also loves the games just as much, and as a result made sure to put as much of them that had been neglected in as he could: Rogue was quickly put in line with her game counterpart, as was Shadow as soon as he could, Gamma and Big both made come backs and Ian introduced Omega and as soon as he could cream (He coudln’t use her at first because Sega woudln’t let him.. because shut up), he consolidated the GIANT pile of chaos emeralds into 7 resembling the games that now had to be won via the specail zone, adapted most games that came out while he was writing in fully canon backups up until that stopped being fesable with unleashed, and even brought game characters that had been utterly underutlizied like Big and Gamma. Granted gamma died like.. right after, but it was in service of a story at least? I dunno. Point is it was clear Ian loved the games and while some fans chaffed at him adding so much of the games.. I think ti’s great. He didn’t overwrite the series own mythlogy and worked them in as much as he could, with aformetieond robotnik niece, hope JOINING team dark who were itegrated into statoin square , making it actually relevant and doing actual work with Big’s people.

Ian got that the primary demographcis were kids and hardcore sonic fans, most of whom probably DID enjoy getting to see these characters adapated at a time when the only other adaptatoin was sonic x. To see how they fit into archie and what ian would do with them, given how much great stuff he was doing with the Archie cast. It’s not a crime for an adaptatoin to actually resemble the source materail.

And it wasn’t just modern stuff as this adaptation and his AWESOME versions of bean and bark (which have carried over to idw’s classic continuity), show. Ian loves all of sonic, to the point the reboot continuity, while heavily games based, still kept the freedom fighters and compensated for all the original stuf lost by cramming in as much stuff from the shows as he could. Ian is the greatest sonic fan and no one loves this franchise more than he does or cares about it the way he does and yes i’m VERY much included sega.

Anyways 80 years later we’re onto the actual comic which opens with Tails taking Bunnie and Antoine to his private island via the sea fox so the two can have their long overdue honeymoon, since it’s been several arcs since their wedding and the day after wedding involved mass kidnapping and mass murder from robotnik. So buisness as usual

Also yes tails has a private island now

Ian does his best to explain WHY tails suddenly seems to know about an out of the way island that would’ve been relaly useful a long time ago not long into the issue: He found Cocoa Island, and the two island surrounding it on his way back from his mini series. As for why he never brought up you know, a whole freaking island they could use as a base or something, my guess is, while not so far Tails can’t get there from knothole and later new mobotropolis and back on one can of fuel, it’s still far enough that it’s not relaly conveint to use as a base, as robotnik would likely just create shark bots or pirahnatrons or sic a giant telepathic whale on them like he does later. It’s good as a worst case scenario backup, and they were VERY close to worst case recently. It’s still weird to suddenly patch this in and it would’ve made more sense to be discovered at the same time Tails is said to have really used the island: when sonic was thought dead for a year. I told you I had a reason for all of this. That way it’s more recent in the comics memory and makes more sense why it hadn’t come up in a strory till now. Still that little bit of continuity with the death is why I love ian’s writing on this: again like any great comic book writer, he takes history and uses it to give something as simple as “why tails has a workshop out here and mapped this whole place”, weight: it was his refuge during the worst time in his life and thus a place of comfort, and it also shows how he’s grown: he’s gone form using this as an escape to doing that.. but letting his friends do the same, no longer holding in his old resitments and truly growing.

So the plan is for them to split up gang: Tails is going to work in his workshop and get some private time, while Bunnie and Antoine also get some.. if in a diffrent way

I just want to take a minute to acknowledge that Sally not only knew these three were taking this trip, but that her, sonic , rotor , amy and anyone else knew they were singing off on two young newlyweds getting into some werid shit on a child’s prviate island. I get why alternate future tails dosen’t talk to sonci much anymore.

The trio are watched by Junior of the battle kuku empire and two stooges, with Junior not moved to do anything.. till he notices tails flying and has murder in his eyes.

We do get a nice montage though of the D’Colette-Rabbots enjoying their honeymoon and Tails enjoying his solo time as he builds his sidekick t-pup. T-pup is okay.. it’s neat he has a little robot buddy btu the design has never wowed me and the fact he later outright joins the freedom fighter annoys me. I don’t think robots can’t, Shard is one of the best there ever was, i’m more saying that maybe tiny robot dog foxes with little sapience shoudln’t. I don’t hate him but I never really warmed to the little guy either.

We then get a fantastic scene with the happy couple where Antoine asks Bunnie if she thinks they married too early. And after teasing him, she admits she gets it: that many will say they married way too young.. but offers a valid reason why: the two have been through war together, their still going through it technically. They’ve had to grow up fast and that’s how antoine felt too.. he just wanted to be sure she was happy.. which she is

I do love this couple: while as I said there wasn’t really a lot done with them as a couple till now, they come off as a real one with real chemistry: she helped him get out of his shell and self loathing and he helped her accept who she is. Their better together than they were alone and that’s all you can ask from a couple.

So as tends to happen to our heroes, their peace is interupted by a bunch of assholes with robots, with Antoine and Bunnie fighting some basic troops quite easily as you’d expect. The Battle Kuku’s have mech walkers. Tails likewise springs into action even getting a truly badass moment as he muses on just how far he’s come

The issue wins with Bunnie and antoine getting suckered by a giant mech set up for the finale of the arc, and Tails , while doing well against grunts, finding himself up against Speedy, son of the grand battle kuku, hot head and speedster and master flier, making a character whose design has him looking like he wears a diaper (it’s supposed to be an egg but like.. look at him)

Geninely terrifying. Granted I have no idea WHY Ian left the diaper on his design but still props to making it work.

As you can see by the next one tails simply stalls long enough for t pup to bite his backside and to super run away, as i’ts clear speedy has him beat in speed and power. Tails only barely hides away and ONLY gets to hide because Speedy’s dad recalls him. We also get a nice moment having him contrast sonic: Tails points out his best buddy would barge in, save Bunnie and Antoine (who speedy revealed had been captured), and go full speed.. but that’s not who tails is. He’s a thinker, he’s tired and he needs a second, and trusts that his friends will be okay long enough for him to do something.

Speaking of the happy couple, Bunnie is soon grabbed by the kuku’s from her cell while Antoine swipes a key to escape. Bunnie also lucks out as it turns out the battle lord thinks she’s with the dark egg legion. This.. is going to take some explaning.. yes even more. See Knuckles arch enemies were the Dark Egg legion, a group of echidnas who split off from the rest due to favoring the high tech they used to have and thus were all cyborgs. This came to an end when Knuckles was tricked into becoming a mad god for a while, and stripped them of their cybernetics. Horrified and desperatley wanting that part of them back, the Legion’s leader Lien Da struck a bargin with Eggman: restore their cybernetics and they work fo rhim. So now robotniks been setting up chapters all over with new bosses, and naturally put bombs in the cybernetics so if someone turns on him he can just blow them the fuck up. Bunnie uses this and finds out some valuable intel about their new foes: the battle bird armada is a centuries old empire that simply wants to rule the skies and is only eggman empire adjacent: they aren’t fully part of it but the two live in mutual agreement not to kill each other, likely since eggman has no intrest in the skies of this world and the empire is more intrestied in finding the ancient weapons of their past. We also find out in this continuity the Bablyon Rogues, those birds on hoverboards what showed up in the riders games, are former members who broke off. This would get elaborated more on in a future arc of universe following up on this one, and is a clever bit of world building, tying two groups of brids together. Ian would do this AGAIN later with th eformerly unrelated character predator hawk, because three’s the magic number I guess

Anyways, while Bunnie schmoozes, Tails awakens and amos u p, getting his bombs from the game to help take back the t-sub as the battle kukus stupidly left his workshop unguarded. He heads for the third island nearbye, one that wasn’t on his maps and is naturally the kuku’s base. He soon end sup in an underwater dog fight though and adorably geeks out over the kuku’s stealth tech. While i’m not bringing it up a lot I do like how ian found a way to integrate bit sections of the game: the fire to start us off, the underwate rportion the bombs, all while makign it feel seamless.

Meanwhile Antoine breaks out.. but Speedy finds him

And he improvises an escape once Bunnie comes back, seemingly mistaking her for a trailer and dramatically diving to his death, ending part 2. Oh there’s also a nice little nod to the margrine gag from satam when Antoine escapes. Ian REALLY loves his mythlogy gags and their always hilarous

Bunnie is naturally upset but notices something that makes her smile and bluffs speedy when he points out how upset she was about her supposedly fake deep cover husabnd dying by noting all that work is gone.. it dosen’t work, but props to her for recovering.

Ant is of course fine, having landed on the sea fox, and reunited with tails. Not only that we see juts how much trust the two have in one another: I wasn’t kitting abotu the feint: Antoine picked up Bunnie was pulling a deep cover infiiltration and was simply playing along confident they’ll reunite later. Awww.

Having found some tunnels last issue and with the sea fox not suited for underwater, Tails burrows them into said tunnels and they disembark on the island. Granted he’s not much help as while having grown a lot ant is still very capable of making someone want to strangle him with only a few words and the sound of his voice

So while they go into a tunnel, and Antoine asks the understandable question of “why are we going underground to fight birds”, Speedy visits doctor Fukruov... which people keep misprouncing in unfunny way. Let a pro show you how it’s done Ian. So doctor Fuck Right Off is mad Speedy’s invading his perosnal bubble but allows him to use his computer, with Speedy finding out Bunnie is a freedom fighter and deciding to handle this using the spooky mech we saw earlier, aka the final boss of tails adventure.

Tails and Antoine storm the gate, stealthily taking out some troops before using their own bombs to blast their way in and wrekcing up the place. And I do like how this shows just HOW skilled our heroes are. Against robotnik it usually dosen’t show as while their good, he’s used to them. He’s fought them for years and in his home reality outright beat them. But the Battle Kuku’s have ZERO idea , so their far less effective, as they have no way to counter them and our heroes have fought way better. IT nicely scales them as a threat: they aren’t NOT one, i’ve seen many media make that mistake such as warden wrath with owl house or wapol and hody jones with one piece, but they also just simply arent ready for our heroes, so they aren’t doing as good as someone whose not only killed them before but spent a decade fighting them before that and years after that doing it now.

Bunnie naturally joins the fracas as the emproro, of course, sent her righ tto them, and the happy couple reunite, with bunnie having grabbed her husband a gift

As usual their adorable.. btu something I hadn’t conciously thought about that makes Ant even more badass: the fact he’s been fighting BARE HANDED. Keep in mind his specialty is swordplay and he dosen’t have any powers like most of the freedom fighters. This sabre is also notable as it’s the one ant would use till his tragic comaing towards the end of this continuity, and looks dope. So our heroes regroup, with tails finding out thanks to bunnie snagging him some data that this entire island is a battle ship, and just where to go to wreck up the place, heading there with an awesome team shot

Tails has truly arrived, going from kid sidekick, to leading his own former mentors and big sibling figures in the freedom fight. It’s another strength of ians: taking years of unrelated and sometimes downright bad storeis and makign them FEEL like they were all building to this. If this man wasn’t already happily married i’d propose to him right now. His wife is also kick ass at writing sonic comics by the way, just saying.

Anyways, our heroes face their final boss: the mole mech which makes short work of them once they get into the inner workings of things, with doctor forget-me-not bragging about it as we enter the final issue.

This one isn’t much to recap but it’s utterly awesome, most of it being a long actoin scene as tails SOLOS the mole mech in a truly awesome fight while the d’colette-rabbots hit the weak points in the airship. The fight is crisply drawn, and shows off tails smarts: he uses his brain to beat the thing simply having it either hit itself or having had t-pup fire on it just right, letting it beat itself so by the time it does get a hit in .. it shorts out right after, leaving doctor fuck this is hard to refrence princess bride. Also turns out speedy was inside and he refuses help like any good villian while our heroes are forced to flee as things go straight to hell. Our heroes cleverly escape out the bottom since the fortress is taking off

So it’s time for the wrap up. the grand battle kuku betrates speedy becuase he’s not good at his job, and has the doctor get to repairs.. while the babylon rogues prepare for their arc and to take advantage of the armada flagship being barely operational, while Tails and the honeyooners head back to his cabin, the three toasting their vacation and finally getting their well earned respitel

The Tails Adventure or Trouble in Paradise is a REALLY fun arc. It shows off not only ian’s love of the games, giving us a fun adaptation of tails adventure, but his masterful storytelling: he ties it into the main plot, not only giving us a new threat but one giving a past one context for being in this unvierse now, while also debuting tails getting his own sidekick and giving antoine a sword. Nothing EARTHSHATTERINGLY huge to the future of the comic, but still intresting little things to add to the overall continuity. And he ties it all in their history, from Bunnie and Antoine getting a honeymoon after it beign delayed for a ton of arcs, to Tails showing just how far he’s come. It’s a fun arc and evne if you haven’t read a ton of archie you can really enjoy it and I HIGHLY recommend seeking out ian’s run however you can.

Next Time: MORE ARCHIE.. thankfully this time without an 80 year history lesson as we visit the first group of freedom fighters! Thanks for reading!

#miles tails prower #antoine d'coolette #bunnie rabbot #ian flyn #archie sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic universe #battle kuku #speedy #tails adventure #game gear #comics #adaptatoin s #tie-in #sonic month

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