The Complete Metal Virus Saga | Sonic Speed Reading

[Music] before we get into the actual story arc there are a couple of things we need to discuss that i have failed to mention previously that begins with these two rough and tumble they are your classic two man tag team of bully bad boys a proud tradition made famous by bebop and rocksteady of tmnt fame then glammed up by jesse and james of pokemon fame and this pairing's even been used a couple times in extended sonic media but unlike a lot of those other pairings these guys actually look like sonic characters certainly more than the first time they used a skunk in a sonic comic i don't really plan on doing a full episode on these two characters because you've probably seen this setup plenty of times before a couple of brutes who can give the heroes the business but never actually win they're just here to carry out orders and fill time with fights that usually end in a comedic defeat and i have a really hard time differentiating their personalities you know the big one has a missing tail and he's real sensitive about it but they are basically the same person between two different bodies not much below the surface but they are still fun every time they show up considering how new the idw universe is we haven't had a chance to have too many encounters with them but we already know the deal they're jerks and they love weapons first time they use wispins and then they got their tailless tuckus whoop by sonic and knuckles then they showed back up with some new weapons and again they got defeated they are a threat to normal civilians but obviously don't stand much of a chance against sonic and his crew and they wouldn't even have had a second chance to tackle sonic and his friends had they not been busted out of jail first and that's thanks to the third new villain we're gonna be discussing dr starline a brilliant yet self-absorbed scientist and a die-hard eggman fanboy think of snively just you know not sniveling and with actual smarts to back up all that ambition now i know this dude looks like he should be griefing scrooge mcduck and his nephews but nope this is a sonic character and he's not a duck he's a platypus a dastardly duck-filled pretentious platypus and what a fantastic fit for this franchise how have they not used one of these before they have hedgehogs and echidnas oh and speaking of did you know that these things are the only other mammal besides echidnas that lay eggs in their poisonous i completely forgot about that before gilly the kid randomly reminded me while we were talking about these odd little animals and shout out to gilly of course if you've not checked out his channel go do that you big dum dum don't you like good things look at his neck look how beautiful that neck is go watch his stuff dum-dum they lay eggs they got a duck bill a beaver tail spurred feet and they're poisonous how are jackalopes not a real thing but this is how is a psyduck the closest pokemon comparison i can make less weird than the actual animal also how do sonic and pokemon not have jackalope characters yet come on guys well starline doesn't have a beaver tail but he does have web gloves and spurs on his heeled boots i love those little details oh and he also has a warped topaz that's right kids we have yet another magical macguffin made from precious stone in the sonic universe and it does what the name implies warps you from one place to the other it's basically a portal gun which yes is uh is basically chaos control essentially making this like another stupid gem somewhat redundant i'll share more of my general opinion on the reliance of pretty rocks at the end of this arc's coverage but for now pay attention because this gem is important and thankfully unlike the phantom ruby the capabilities of the warp topaz are clearly laid out starline has spent his life studying this specific gem so he has a really good handle on how to use it and use it he does he can hop from one place to another in an instant or open a portal to use as a window to peer into other parts of the world if he were say in search of something or someone and needed to scour a large amount of land in a short amount of time and he can use this as a means to transport equipment or allies with ease or leave items in specific places without ever being detected all of that without having to hold it above his head and yell chaos control so yes it is a very useful gem but unlike the emeralds it is not a source of its own energy it needs outside assistance to make any of this possible thankfully for starline as he discovered it really doesn't take much to get this thing going as he puts it even the most passive of energy waves will get it to do all of those wonderful things i just listed i think that would make this the most battery efficient thing ever created by sega too bad it's fictional because seriously sega how do you have a device made in 2020 that runs on two double a batteries and still only lasts for a couple of hours i know the game gear micro is a throwback but you do understand like this was the one thing nobody wanted to come back right how is this thing 50 dollars four roms why don't why do i still want it what's wrong with me anyway while the warp topaz is energy efficient that energy needs to remain on the low side and it needs to remain controlled with years of research and practice as well as a custom-made glove the platypus is now the only person on the planet who can confidently use the topaz in an efficient and masterful way he even gives sonic and silver a hard time when he faces off against them in a later issue these three new villains were created to fill a specific role that had not yet been filled in this new canon and honestly i think they fit quite well be it more simple like the skunks or more complex like the platypus i quickly proved to like all of these characters they fit in well with sonic's world and even better with his nemesis eggman or as we last knew him when we last were with him mr tinker as i pointed out in the video covering the battle for angel island he had actually been kidnapped in a quick page between all the action with neo metal sonic well that's all thanks to starline and his pretty swirly marble the knot duck used his topaz to open windows all across the world to track down eggman after he was defeated in the war he managed to do what eggman's roaming badniks had failed to do for months he found eggman and then portaled out ruff and tumble from jail in exchange for capturing tinker to bring him to starline where he would begin the process of returning eggman to his old self but despite his best efforts he doesn't seem to be getting anywhere i mean it does look like tinker is taking more of an interest to eggman's old badniks but considering that he cuddles them this is clearly still tinker through and through also i just wanted to quickly point out how much i love the quick interaction between tinker and warbot and cubot they just don't know how to handle a kind robotnik he even asked if they'd feel better if he yelled at them or maybe gave him a list of eldritch monsters that he can resurrect and lose control over it's stuff like this that makes me stress that you really need to read the comics it's full of great little moments like this that a summary can't properly cover i also love the layout of the lab clearly reminiscent of the interior of sonic adventures egg carrier also that reminds me later on in the issue we see rouge chilling on a sunbathing chair and comments on eggman's surprising workout routine like there has to be a nod to those goofy pool chairs in the egg carrier right i know it's not the exact same design but i remember thinking it was hilarious that robotnik had an indoor pool and a ton of sunbathing chairs surrounding it in the game ah man whatever that's that's great but back to the lab the reason why we had to focus on the door in the first place is because somebody was coming through it and that somebody or something was metal sonic but now that we're all caught up with starline and tinker we do need to rewind a little bit as you might recall metal sonic had returned to normal after his defeat on angel island but sonic wasn't just going to let that robot run free no first he was going to have tails reactivate him make him functional again but of course make his weapons useless and then set him free i had a couple problems with this after i read this scene i mean it just seemed like the stupidest move to make but it is consistent with sonic's characterization in this comic and it would be addressed somewhat but we'll get to that in due time that and the series itself has set the precedence of some sort of robotic sentience in eggman's machines both orbot and cubot and this very issue are mentioned to have emotions programmed into them general and omega are both their own beings and when metal had a voice he too seemed to be his own person so i understand why sonic would treat him as a person and have the compassion to offer him another path outside of eggman's service since to him that's no longer an option but metal unsurprisingly tells sonic where he can stick his friendship in the silent miming way he knows how to do and then jets off tails who has rightfully been questioning sonic's choices yet been going along with them just fine ask sonic if it was a good idea to let this consistently dangerous robot off on his own and sonic's like you know it's fun and then two pages later metal shows up at the hidden lab where tinker is being held alright another thing before i go forward this was another glaring issue i had so neil metal's whole deal was taking eggman's place while he was simultaneously searching for the real deal once he went missing after the war he had badniks and the egg fleet at his disposal but couldn't find him all this time but now that he's a mute neutered robot with no resources he finds the guy in seemingly seconds is it because the base is letting off some sort of signal is it because sonic also clued metal into the fact that eggman was alive and well am i just missing the throwaway line here i mean it's not the biggest deal in the world but come on but whatever the case is metal's appearance is the final push needed to bring back dr ivo eggman robotnik and we can argue over what we call this guy all we want but one name that absolutely no longer fits is mr tinker i was genuinely surprised how much i enjoyed the tinker persona and how bummed i was to see it leave as inevitable as it was i had a good time with his scenes and ironically sonic seemed to get along best with eggman when he was dressed like a long-lost mario brother now well it was fun while it lasted toot toot tinker as sad as it was to say goodbye to the sunnier side of eggman the comic wastes no time in reestablishing how great of a character the real deal actually is i can just hear mike pollock in his lines it's fantastic eggman wastes no time assessing the scene before him and letting everybody in the room old and new know that he was in charge sending orb and cube to get him some more fitting clothes and metal onto a table so he can begin repairs also i love the relationship between these two in the comic it's the best it's ever been and i also love how quickly he becomes the shredder to rough and tumbles bebop and rocksteady and starline despite having gone through all of this trouble just to bring back the good doctor doesn't get so much as a thank you but starline's not done proving his worth he not only tracked down and brought back eggman and his own assistance both with his intelligence and the warp topaz and two lumbering lackeys who already hate sonic he also brought along all seven chaos emeralds oh boy a short while after eggman gets himself caught up on all of metal sonic's data he had collected as neo starline points out how close metal got to winning and with a few tweaks they could potentially take out sonic once and for all but eggie dismisses this plan's over and done with it's time to move on to something else starline is excited at the prospect and amazed how quickly eggman has a new scheme ready to go but also keep the scene in mind going forward the choices made by both sonic and eggman are going to be further explored as this story carries on now that he has his lackeys it's time to put them to work eggman sends him off on their missions while bringing out the plans for his big comeback declaring the world had made him suffer a major defeat and in turn he would make the world suffer and little did sonic the reader or even eggman himself know just how bad things were gonna get sonic is just chilling on the beach recapping to a flicky what had been happening in the series up to this point and since we have already done that in this show we're not gonna bother doing that but like most times sonic is chilling on the beach he's rudely interrupted by a new adventure this time being in the form of a panic tails who let sonic know that an invitation just randomly appeared in his workshop an invitation to celebrate the return of the world's most brilliant doctor and it seems pretty obvious that tinker has been returned to his eggman persona sonic does hope that that's not as simple as it seems but they won't really know for sure until they go to windmill village to check it out so the duo head off meanwhile eggman's chilling in his secret base while the platypus starline enters the room turns out he's the one who uses warp topaz to drop off the note entails workshop he then asks eggman why why even do this sonic doesn't know the eggman's back he doesn't need to know eggman's back they can sneakily get away with whatever plan they're up to without his knowledge eggman replies that just kind of the way he does things he wants to mess with sonic's head he wants to know that eggman is back and working on something but he doesn't want song to know exactly what he's working on starline goes along with it he is an eggman fanboy after all but this won't be the last time he questions the way the doctor runs things but what is the great doctor up to anyway well you find out as he pours a metallic ooze over a flower instantly transforming it into metal this is the first of the few experiments we're going to be seeing for the metal virus we jump back to sonic who has arrived at windmill village and finds the elder scruffy that's his name tied up to a tree branch and just put the pinata sign on him my god so brutal scruffy informed sonic that tinker had been kidnapped about a week ago and nobody could find sonic to inform him but before they can deal with that they have to deal with ruff and tumble they're the ones that have assaulted the elder and windmill village as a whole and it looks like they have brand new toys they didn't have before song takes note of this saying that they're not smart enough to come up with this tech on their own so they obviously know where eggman currently is we're not going to spend too much time on the fight so if you want to see how that plays out i recommend checking it out because the art is quite fantastic and frenetic we're instead going to go back to focus on eggman and his experiments he's moved on from vegetation to fauna pouring the virus over a little rabbit where pocky i guess in this world i keep forgetting all these little guys have stupid names these experiments are letting the reader know how the metal virus is going to work if you're dumped in the stuff you instantly transform into a zombie robot but if you're just touched by a zombie robot it will spread the infection but not instantaneously this page lets us know that these robots do obey the word of eggman but he also notes that the subject shows aggressive tendencies without direction he just sees this as a bonus but again this is foreshadowing of things to come the experiments continue with our little squirrel friend now taking up the metal flower and touching it to different objects to see if the virus will spread to anything else as it turns out it only works on organics but things that are processed or inorganic material remains unaffected meanwhile sonic and tails wrap things up with the two skunks and i gotta say i do love how these look like fun boss battles like i would love to take these guys on in a video game showing off tails calculations by ricocheting a tub of what i guess is skunk smell also i don't know how i've never realized that through all these years of sonic comics i've never once expected any of the skunks to actually stink up a place like this is the very first time i've even thought about it it's kind of genius it's used in this way anyway yeah they stink up one of the skunks and then they chop off the robotic tail of the other which just sends them into a deep depression he's just done he doesn't even feel like fighting anymore poor guy but before they can round these guys up and send them back to jail a portal just opens up under them and freaks out sonic and tails the skunks are gone and while sonic can confirm that tinker is no longer in windmill village and eggman is probably back he really hasn't gotten much further in uncovering this mystery that's fine because he's gonna now turn to silver to see if he's made any headway and whatever he's doing apparently some random dude just told silver where an eggman base was so the two hogs are gonna go follow up on it and sure enough they discover warp portals and some classic eggman baddies moving tech into it but before they can strike metal sonic appears and sends silver flying as you might recall just a couple of issues ago sonic decided to set this guy free but looks like he's back at full power so good job there sonic anyway a fight ensues and silver manages to get the drop on metal holding them in place with his telekinesis but just like the skunks metal is teleported out with a warp portal reappearing next to dr starline thus being sonic's first encounter with the platypus he makes a grand show of it excited to finally take on the hedgehog who has griefed the great doctor all these years the one being who can truly match his mentor he's excited to see how he fares against him all the while eggman is continuing his experiments with the metal virus this time showing that repeat exposure to the virus from an infected will speed up the process that's all the info he needs and he's ready to step into phase two but before he does ruff and tumble pop back into the base little ticked off that their new weaponry didn't work in taking down sonic and tails and they demand more weapons eggman knows just what to give them while all this is happening silver and sonic continue to take on starline and metal and those war portals are giving them a lot of trouble but no matter how far away starline throws sonic he eventually makes his way back pinning the platypus down and demanding some details on eggman starline tells him that everything's been secured in the vault and gives silver the access code and silver goes to check it out while sonic has the platypus in his grasp but the only thing starling will give up is that eggman is planning something breathtaking and that he also planted explosives inside the vault and he just gave his friend the detonation code sonic goes chasing after silver as the base explodes starline looks on proud of what he's managed to accomplish and sure the doctor will appreciate the defeat of his greatest foe but as he opens a portal back to the base eggman grabs starline by the throat and throws him against the glass that is containing his metal virus experiments furious that starline would attempt to take down sonic on his own starline doesn't understand though why wouldn't he want sonic out of the way he would just mess with his plans eggman retorts that the hedgehog is his to destroy he could carpet bomb him whenever he felt like but that's not the point actually he did try that in sonic 3 and that didn't work out too well anyway the point is eggman wants to take him down with his brilliance there's a certain way to vanquish a lifelong nemesis as he puts it starline apologizes and the eggman tells him don't let it happen again starline's a bit confused we're like i i don't think it could happen again like what are you talking about man but eggman knows how the hedgehog works and shows a live feed of the destroyed base sonic is alive and well eggman then follows up by asking why he wanted the junk out of that base anyway he hadn't used it in years all that stuff's obsolete but to starline they're treasured collectibles of eggman's legacy which i'm sure will be coming into play down the road for starline eggman waves it off and just asks him how his first encounter with the rodent felt starline tells him that the experience had put a lot of things into perspective for him and they certainly will as the story continues on back at restoration hq silver gets put to bed so he can recover from saving sonic from the blast and him and amy decide it might be best to go check out another eggman base one he's no longer using in an attempt to tap into his network to see what he's up to so the two speed off onto their next adventure now keep in mind this is 14 issues in at this point and we have a pretty good flow of things sonic usually teams up with one of his friends they stop some small skirmish while building up to the bigger baddie last year it was neo-metal sonic but it all played out like pretty standard sonic fare but going into issue 15 while things still seem to be par for the course things would take a drastic turn at the end of this issue sonic and amy end up at echo mod tell it's an eggman bass by uh well you know he's uh it's got a face on the side of a mountain so it's probably his the two chat back and forth given us a lot of needed exposition about the eggman war a lot of stuff we never really got from sonic forces sonic notes that it seems like there was a big battle here and amy replies that there was and they lost a lot of good people in it too they continued to talk for a bit sonic reassuring her that they eventually won the war and amy made sure those sacrifices mattered that they meant something navy replies well you did win the war for us and i mean that's that's also true i'm not going to get into my problems with that particular story again right now they continue to chat for a bit discussing what they plan on doing and what they're looking for in this base and they come across a set of computers and looks like they're in business meanwhile back at eggman's secret lab he begins to pour out some containers of a very specific silver liquid making them into what looks like backpack super soakers to hand off to ruff and tumble tells them that these are the backups to only use them as a last resort also showing them a brand new machine he wants them to take into the tunnels after sonic and back in those tunnels we see that amy has logged into the eggnet showing the files for a new ship one that looks a lot like the space colony arc but is actually a lot smaller with a lot of talk about payload distribution but before they can figure out what it's distributing the walls begin to shake and ruff and tumble come bursting through in a giant drill more playful banter is thrown back and forth between heroes and villains and another fun fight plays out as it has plenty of times before in the series sonic and amy team up get past the defenses of the drill and take it out of commission this is our third encounter with the two skunks and it's playing out exactly as you'd expect at this point that is until they reveal that they have a secret weapon on their backs and they've been saving the best for last activating them with a button on their chest but to their horror the backpacks unleash the metal goo onto the skunks themselves sonic and amy rough and tumble nobody has any idea what is happening and rough and tumble are quickly transformed into zombots there's no more banter there's no more tomfoolery and no matter how much sonic quips they don't respond our q heroes are kind of at a loss for what to do so they just keep dodging them until amy lands a massive blow of her hammer onto one of the skunks oh my god giving us some body horror action here as the skunk is mutilated his hand is sitting on the ground there i think it's here to imply that these characters have been completely transformed on a cellular level here as he quickly reforms as if nothing had happened sonic in turn goes on the offense of spin dashing hard into the bigger skunk leaving him another gory gooey mess but he as well reforms with zero issue and sonic realizes that strange metal goo has now latched on to him he warns amy not to touch the skunks now that he's already infected anyway he launches both of them into the ravine below sonic is out of quips and that cocky attitude seems to have faded as he quickly realizes he is in a lot of trouble whatever hit the two skunks is infectious and it's spreading on sonic fast when we last left sonic he was attacked by the newly infected rough and tumble and while they were defeated sonic was in turn infected himself would our beloved hero be turned into a mindless zombot would he be taken out of the picture right at the start of this story leaving our supporting cast to save the world without his help while that would be a very interesting premise nah he's just fine tangle pops by tails workshop and sees the hedgehog on a giant hamster wheel and i just need to say that i absolutely love when they write sonic doing actual hedgehog things he is so removed from actual hedgehogs as he should be so it's just adorable when they throw in jokes like this i also love how embarrassed tails looks the sonic's like you know whatever and tangles like so um is this uh what your boys get up to in your free time because i'm into it as we find out sonic isn't showing signs of the metal infection because his speed has seemingly burned it out of his system yeah two pages into the issue and we already have a solution what a shocker sonic speed can fix time so no reason it can't burn off a little shiny goo and the next couple pages are basically recap the back and forth between these characters is light and casual and still fun to read through but doesn't really further the plot it's just here to remind you of everything that's been happening so far so let's not give that any more focus because as the animal people are chatting away we turn our attention to eggman and starline and this is yet another page of setup but it's at least advancing the plot a bit and i do enjoy the little hints of world building that this page does being as ancient of a sonic boomer as i am it's nice to see some casual explanation as to how eggy can build a giant fortress as quickly as he does and that's because of his bad nicks starlin comments that he didn't think they were capable of such versatility and egg mcmuffin simply states that some are built for war and some are built for construction that's a fairly obvious explanation but i do appreciate an explanation at all however eggman also states that rounding up animals to power his bad knicks can be a bit tedious but that problem will soon be solved with the metal virus and from here he launches his face ship not the ark not the death egg the face ship and i also love that it's just blowing its nose out of the mountain and i also dig that thanos style throne for eggsy with a little chaos emeralds bedazzling the wall above it the next couple pages basically explain how the ship works so read the issue itself if you want the finer details but basically this ship both creates the viral goo and acts as a distributor and just to show how much of a jerk eggman is his first target for the metal virus payload is windmill village the same community that took him in as mr tinker this is the first of many many dark moments that are to come but can we just take a moment to appreciate how hilarious it looks when a giant face just vomits all over a town look how the virus drops out we see scruffy the kindly village elder do his best to shield a child from the metallic wave but to no avail as they quickly turn into zombots we see other civilians attempt to take refuge on a roof and try to help someone out of the liquid not realizing that they are sealing their own fates and they also need to point out here that this guy's already turning even though he's not completely covered this is a slight visual and continuity error i will point out later on in a different video next we see some actual destruction from the zombots themselves who tear through doors so they can touch people on the arm look i know it's a kid's comic but they do deflate the terror of a zombie horde when all they're really doing is using people as hand towels i recommend not thinking about it too deeply though because it will take the wind out of sales of later scenarios so let's keep going it really took no time at all to completely take over this little village eggman asks starline how he liked the show and just in case you thought there might be any redeeming quality to this platypus starline calls it a transcendent experience he is in awe of eggman he loved every second of this man what a duck head with his insta army now ready eggman commands them to spread the virus far and wide and they proceed to do just that with a little handprint on the tree reminding the reader just how serious this virus really is and after the year that was 2020 i don't think i need to remind anybody how serious a virus can be but when this book came out we certainly were not ready for how horrible things would become and the same can be said for sonic and friends because the bad news isn't done rolling in we return to sonic as he's finalizing the next course of action with tails and tangle he puts his hand up to high five tangle only to see a sparkling glint just below his glove he avoids making contact with tangle at just the last moment and thank goodness because as it turns out sonic is still infected with the virus his speed has only pushed it back it has not yet been cured so with that sonic rushes off but with a worried look on his face that incessant confidence wavering and while he's on the move he thinks to himself that he has been in somewhat similar circumstances before making references to unleashed and secret rings but he does note that this feels different and buddy you have no idea the issue ends with the virus slowly creeping up the side of a tree making contact with a sleeping flicky it awakens as a zombot and takes flight and the last page shows us that even the smallest infected can potentially cause massive damage as we see the little bird making its way towards a bustling city so that is issue 16 and i know i skipped through quite a few pages as a lot of it was recap but things really hit the fan in issue 17 going forward and i felt it was important to take a breather here to really emphasize everything that's being set up in this one issue just a bit of a critique first though i did have issue with the exhausting amount of time recounting things that had happened up to this issue which is normally fine here and there for a long running comic series but considering every issue has a recap page this did feel excessive just bringing tangle in to play audience surrogate and then in turn advertise her own mini story in the annual for a split second felt like a waste of a few pages but also it was good to remind readers that she does exist and her cheery mood really sets the tone for the scenes featuring sonic and pals she doesn't show up very much after this issue and for good reason because as we will see the book takes a decidedly darker tone going forward and tingles endless optimism just isn't the best fit here that's not to say she isn't in for some really amazing moments in this arc or that her character can't work in more serious moments as we've seen in her miniseries but i think keeping the focus off of her was the right call because the tone she helps set when she's talking with sunken tails juxtaposes brilliantly against eggman's assault on windmill village and even though we now understand the devastation that can be caused by the face ship and the virus and the looming threat it presents to sonic himself all of that is underplayed with tingle cheering our heroes on confident that the boys will get things sorted out we start off positive and upbeat sink into a cold terror with eggman and then come back up for air with tangle to bookend things her presence here is the last glimmer of positivity these characters are going to have for a long while with nobody be it the cast or the reader well even eggman himself truly understanding just how serious things are about to get and i also want to reiterate a point i made in my modern sonic video because i really like how ian writes eggman and i kind of want to compare him to robotnik from sad am and look archie fans i know that there's a lot of history worth untangling and sorting out with that version of robotnik slash robo robotnik eggman reboot eggman all in due time but while idw eggman certainly has the history of video game eggman this is essentially a fresh start for the character and even though the metal virus was originally intended for the archie reboot era this is also kind of a fresh start and reinterpretation of sat am's robotization in the old sad am universe robotnik had taken over the world and a large part of that was taking over not only the kingdom of acorn but the ability to roboticize mobians it was thanks to this in this weird giant warship of his that he was able to overthrow the king and in turn take over the world of mobius he was so overwhelmingly powerful that sonic and his freedom fighter pals would spend most of their time in hiding so you can see some parallels between that rendition of sonic and his story as opposed to the idw saga of the metal virus we certainly have a lot of hindsight to really refine this idea and make it something new but i still want to compare it to eggman's metal virus because like i said before if you take the modern team of sonic characters and plot them into the sad am world robotropolis would be gone by the end of the day i love the freedom fighters i've certainly spent a great deal of time talking about how great of a character sally is and i will get to the rest of them in due time but over the years sonic's abilities have greatly improved and even back then sat am left out a lot of abilities that sonic was capable of doing in the video games namely the super and hyper forms and that's also not including amy rose and her pico hammer or modern tales and his brilliance knuckles doesn't even exist in that world or shadow silver there are a lot of super powered buddies for sonic to bring along to take this dictator down so in turn to balance out that power you need a villain who can go as hard as dr eggman sure he hasn't quite taken over the world outside of that one time but when you compare robotization as opposed to the metal virus the metal virus is far more efficient and much faster acting this is just one of eggman's many many giant schemes he's just throwing this crap out all the time that's why sonic and eggman balance each other out so no one side has more overwhelming power than the other and that's how i see the metal virus i see it as a very extra version of robotization and i don't know about you but that is pretty cool and you have the extra added wrinkle of sonic having a very severe handicap that will come into play through this entire saga all the silver lining of sonic's silver spots is that he can keep it contained with his speed the book only alludes to what sonic himself is about to endure sure sonic runs fast but have you ever asked yourself for how long can he keep running so we know the infection has kicked into high gear with eggman dropping a goo load on his first town but we don't pick up this story with him or even with sonic we instead start off with a familiar setting we have not yet seen in this book the chaotix detective agency after watching their opening cut scene in sonic heroes so many times during november chaotix i have to admit this made me smile going with the bird's eye view shot and everything so yeah we see vector on the phone and for what might be the very first time we actually know who he's talking to on the other end tails has called him to give him the heads up about the metal virus and he in turn passes this information on to his team or to any reader who's randomly picking up his book charmy gets spooked and who can really blame the kid with a single touch you can get turned into a zombie robot it's creepy stuff vector reassures them that this world's a big place probably won't even reach them and just because this is the chaotix they punctuate that sentence with a zombot crashing through the front door bam leroy jenkins look if you're gonna go out at least do it on a perfectly timed comedic note you know looking over this page now really hits differently after living through 2020. this virus is all the way over on the other side of the world but then suddenly it's kicking down your front door you got marvel and dc desperately trying to keep up with trends and somehow sonic the hedgehog is the most topical book of the modern day what a time to be alive well our boys aren't going to be taken out on an ironic punchline they jump into action with no luck shurikens are no good and that idiot bug is just about to run into a zombie until vector grabs him and tells him no touchy who knew that sonic says segment would turn out so handy handy hands touching this is a really dangerous territory to joking so let's keep going they make their way outside to see their city in complete chaos and the face ship just really not a skyscraper i can't get over that stupid thing like maybe it's supposed to be intimidating but you're like you imagine going outside i just seen some stupid idiot face up in the sky drooling oh man i love it but yeah this is it guys this is the state of things going forward no more build-up the metal virus is here and it's taking no prisoners except for you know its entire army of conscripted robot slaves who are prisoners within their own body you know what i just wanted to throw a cliche cool line in there but i already ruined it so never mind well i gotta say i really love the dynamic of the chaotix and how it's written out here as silly as vector can get it's here in a time of crisis we see him look at a situation in front of him and immediately lay out a plan of action showing why he's such a capable leader and this won't be the only time in this story or this book in general and here we have espio calling out any potential weaknesses to help fine-tune things and vector without missing a beat responds in kind with his reasoning vector says they have to head to the docks espio says that they're gonna have the c to their backs so they're gonna be trapped vector responds saying like hey look there's nowhere on land that's gonna be safe and at least there we can bottleneck this situation and have a defensible location and that's it there's no bickering there's no arguments i really love how well these two work together so yeah vector gives them their orders they need to fan out gather survivors and bring them to the docks and even with zombies surrounding them they all huddle in to do a teen chaotic shout at man i am hype let's go boys we see these gents contain zombies and help out citizens only to have vectors swarmed on all sides but our glorious godly gator isn't gonna go out like a coward he puts up his dukes and is rescued at the last second by sonic the hedgehog kind of forgot you were a part of this book but uh you know welcome sonic or whatever yeah so sonic is here for the assist reminding vector and the reader that even though he's infected his speed keeps it at bay as long as he doesn't touch anybody they'll be fine and the two heroes part ways with vector telling sonic that the next time eggman loses his memory he's getting locked up and this will be the most mild of dress down sonic is going to get from his friends for being too lenient on tinker we then shift our attention back to espio and charmy leading people towards the docks until it's discovered that among the survivors is an infected this color variant tangle okay so it's not actually tangle she's not actually given a name but i'm gonna go ahead and call her karen because she's being selfish and putting the safety of everybody around her at risk she's got a silver booger that she can't wipe off her arm and it's grossing everybody out she begins to panic she doesn't want to be left behind and charming espio pause this is a very morally confusing situation they're not sure what to do but our boy vector comes in and makes an executive decision and slams down cars all around her to cut her off from the rest of the group and she's freaking out she's scared and who can blame her but she's gonna infect everybody else social distancing is a thing karen now you're stuck in a car cage charmy is real upset with victor because he's a stupid idiot baby bee maybe just listen to your reptile daddies on this one buddy we spend the next couple pages with sonic who points out the rescue shuttle has arrived and then just goes and runs off the infection this really eats up more panels than it probably should but it is here to let you know how much of a handicap sonic has in this situation outside of not being able to touch anybody and while yes normally that is no good his speed could rush survivors out of danger much quicker if he could just pick them up and get out of there that's not an option and outside of that he always needs to keep moving sure already being infected means he can make direct contact with zombots but as we will find out a little bit later the more contact he makes the faster his infection spreads and in turn he needs to stop and just zip off somewhere to run this stuff off but yeah i don't really think we needed three pages dedicated to just watching him run off somewhere but i guess his name's on the book so gotta hit that quote but that said i gotta take a moment to once again appreciate how smart this book is when it comes to writing a video game character i'm not about to tell you that song the hedgehog is the cream of the crop in terms of all of comic book storytelling but in terms of talking about a franchise based around a video game they do a pretty brilliant job here because they keep coming up with characters and concepts and situations where i would love to see interpreted in a video game we've talked about tango and whisper potential boss fights with these new bad guys and now when i read stuff like this i gotta say the sonic infection angle that would be really cool in a zombot video game it makes me think of trying to build up speed and sonic cd to travel through time i get that it might be an annoying gimmick for an entire game but kind of like majora's mask having to be under these very specific parameters can either make or break a game for you i feel like if done properly sonic having to run down his infection while keeping track of how many characters he's running into i think all that could play into a brilliant set of mechanics and we have seen this through literally every story of idw sonic so far it tells good stories that not only makes sense in sonic's universe or at least the little vague universe that we can be provided with thanks to the games at the same time incorporating their own ideas because these are fans and you can tell and i just appreciate that well that's enough of a distraction from me and from sonic as we turn our attention back to the chaotix who are guiding survivors into the docked shuttle charming has taken a head count and deciding that there just aren't enough people here decides that now that these people who are safe are where they need to be he's gonna go back and help the rest starting with karen who is stuck between all those cars and he's doing this because he's a stupid idiot insect disobeying direct orders from vector charming rushes back to the pin karen and would you look at that she has turned into a zombot and then grabs charming who is then dragged down to be swarmed by zombots screaming for vector and espio to come rescue him you guys remember that one time i made a video about all the horrible ways charmies live life through all these different canons some of you in the comments were wondering where's idw charming are you going to talk about idw charming you seem to have missed out on idw charming well no folks that was intentional i didn't want to spoil it because we had not yet covered it in sonic's speed reading but we are now sure this isn't brain damage or losing his entire royal family but there's a new canon for charming to exist in and in turn there's a new chance to make him suffer he has now become the very first member of the core sonic game cast to become a victim of the zombots right as things were really kicking off he's just taken off the table that sucks man and like no he's not getting ripped apart but this is clearly a visual nod to those old gory zombie movies where you get swarmed and get torn apart it's just oh man and he's so scared and he's screaming for his reptile daddies and oh god the man this bug can't catch a break oh my goodness now one could argue that he's acting a little bit out of character to help further the plot along he's clearly seen the danger of the zombots and he flat out ignores vector to go run back into the action but it's not like we have that much to go off in terms of the games and they did build this up quite well through this issue so i didn't really think it was too egregious if at all thank goodness this is the only example i can think of of a character acting completely out of character to help push along this narrative the shuttle takes off with a distraught vector and espio forced to leave behind their bug and that's issue 17 and that is the tone we are setting for the rest of this tale so buckle up kids because we're in a rough transition into a global pandemic i also want to point out that they previewed a ninja turtle comic in this issue that features basically roboticized animal men so i i mean if sonic's not going to use it somebody oughta whatever let's carry right on into issue 18 where cream the rabbit makes her idw debut and what perfect timing to introduce the most innocent adorable child character of the sonic universe i'm sure we're in for a heartwarming little tale and don't worry all of her associated characters are here as well including vector's wabbit waifu cream's mother vanilla and the two chows cheese and chocolate and hey even generals here their village is being overrun and sonic is here to track down cream and her family to get them to safety eggy meanwhile is strategically dropping the virus in spots where sonic is gonna have to run through if he wants to hit up more populated areas to save people and he then decides to mess with sonic even more by instructing all of his zombots to swarm on the hedgehog's location but as it turns out the zombots are becoming less and less responsive to his commands as the virus spreads starline is a bit stressed at the prospect of losing control over their zombots but eggman isn't fussed it is a virus after all it was bound to mutate and they're safe up in their face ship virus is doing its job they'll sort it out later and while he goes off to find something to eat we get this really interesting little back and forth between orbot and starline the platypus confides that he has always looked up to eggman and has always assumed that sonic was only able to topple him because of sonic's overwhelming power but now that he has met his hero face to face this has shown him that a man seems to be his own worst enemy he doesn't ever plan for the long term he just lives in the moment and orbot's like yeah pretty much if it's not eggman himself it's sauna coming in to save the day they do their routine they do their song and dance and while the track lineup might change it's still basically the same set i also love that starline is venting to a sentient robot free to make its own decisions and judgments a robot created by eggman like seriously i don't think we appreciate how technically brilliant the creation of orbot and cubot actually are he's venting about eggman 2 and eggman creation that's super interesting and also i kind of feel like starling doesn't have anybody else to talk to so they got to use somebody no orbot and cubot are not getting their own video i don't actually care that much we then have a little bit of a tussle between sonic and general giving us a little more information while removing a potential out for sonic with this virus general detects the same infection in sonic as with all these zombots surrounding him so he's on the attack considering him an immediate threat since the virus has spread over half of sonic's body and jimmy's machine fusion technique is a no go here general can't control the virus so the only logical conclusion is that he needs to eliminate the threat including sonic and the other carriers but sonic did explain to him that running does keep it in check and leave it to a robot to be the voice of reason he can detect the level of infection within sonic and if it's true that running gets it under control then sonic needs to go and run and sonic tries to argue saying that he's being a real jerk and he's just trying to help out and general tells him to get lost and then arms his missiles i love this robot with sonic out of the way general proceeds to attack zombots until cream jumps in and kinda lays out for the robot that these are victims and gem gem is gonna have to protect cream without hurting anybody and while this next part might be a little over explained for some readers keep in mind that this is still a kid's book and this is a fairly good lesson i'm not sure when you can really apply it in the real world with zombies but still it's a good lesson for kids and it also provides us a little bit of background for these characters so it all mixes in fairly well basically cream tells general that these zombots aren't in control of themselves they're being forced to do this by eggman in general who is a creation of eggman was once forced to fight sonic and his friends and once tails got a hold of him and fixed him he's now their friend and these zombots in turn need a chance to be fixed as well and in this context general can understand cream's logic so he agrees to take a non-lethal route and starts putting some distance between the zombots and cream but at the same time the little rabbit hears her own mother scream from within their house and with general having his hands full in smokey the hedgehog teaching kids the importance of not starting forest fires in an attempt to quell zombie apocalypses she runs off to help her mother on her own i gotta say i didn't really like this weird scene where sonic runs by kids attempting to start a forest fire i'm not sure anybody was really asking the question why wouldn't they just set all the zombots on fire i think this is more here to explain to readers that while cream is a young girl she is still allowed to go on adventures with sonic because she's real cool i guess i don't know i always thought this was weird i don't know why you bring attention to it like if it's not ian it's evan in a later arc they try to explain why cream is hanging out with these older adventuring characters and i guess i kind of appreciate them trying to bring logic into this but we see through cream's actions in this book that she more than justifies that on her own terms i really don't need them to stop everything and explain that to the reader it's jarring and it's weird but anyway yeah back to cream herself she heads back into the house and vanilla is about to be swarmed by zombots but the chows come to the rescue and unfortunately we're not done infecting the cute flying characters of the sonic universe as cheese and chocolate get grabbed by a zombot yup very first issue we are introduced to these characters and they zombify the little chow sidekick as he waves goodbye to a crying cream who is being carried out of the house by her mother while sonic keeps the bots at bay and while the zombot stuff when you really think about it isn't too different from other zombifying or monster fine tropes we've seen countless times in other children's cartoons or comic books or just pop culture in general it's moments like this that i feel really resonated with readers and hit them on a really emotional level we'll get into greater detail when i discuss this in review as a whole when we get to the end of this entire storyline and i know ian's gone into greater detail and i think fairly recently in his podcast but even though they're not showing you blood and gore it's how these characters react to these situations that really hits us as hard as it does these are silly fun cartoon characters and we are given very rare opportunities to see them in completely stressful situations or witness these moments that really break their hearts and seeing cute little cream react to her best friend basically die in front of her eyes then have sonic talk a child through their grief so they can survive this situation that they're currently in that hits on a more human level than a book full of blood and gore you know that's why this book feels more violent than it actually is and it really humanizes these characters in ways that the games rarely tend to do especially for less important characters like cream the rabbit and at the same time in a situation like this it really shows why cream is a hero because she does compose herself and then gets her and her mother out of there on her giant flappy ears look i know we have helicopter tucuses and hairstyles that allow you to glide in this universe but seeing cream dumbo her way out of a zombie horde is still kind of hilarious to me oh man alright it's basically wrap up at this point sonic points general in the direction of the rabbits and contains the infected chow pointing out how problematic flying zombots could be the same time rouge gets in contact with him letting the hedgehog know that team dark is in route to sunset city so that's where he sets off as we see the chow break free from their elaborate jar prisons i mean have you seen what cheese can do in the advanced games did you really think that was gonna make a difference welcome back to sonic speed reading and welcome to crisis city also known as sunset city as rouge explains to sonic for some reason what a great name i think i'll steal that and use it for a podcast yeah i know this is just here to explain what this place is and give some weight to the importance of it for the reader and you know a little bit of world building here it's cute it's fine just i don't know why rouge is explaining this to sonic i also love at the end of the page we see some of the zombots climbing up the side of buildings and this shows us that nowhere is actually safe from these things like they can just crawl up the side of buildings with ease but they just look like they got distracted and just decided to go dink around somewhere else it looks funny to me i don't know anyway we waste no time with the action as we see sonic spinball his way through a horde he's trying to make his way through this mess to find survivors and also quickly remind the reader that the more he touches zombots the more his own virus spreads so he has to be careful and he does indeed find survivors on the upper floors of these buildings and as we just saw zombots can reach them so sonic can't waste any time he's gotta get him out of there but just as he's about to pave his way through some zombie boys a reign of gunfire impedes his movement turns out omega has shown up and if you don't know anything about omega he's a rogue eggman badnik who hates eggman and all of his badniks to omega these are all eggman robots and therefore must be eliminated sonic tries to explain that these are not the normal badniks these are innocent people that have been transformed by the metal virus and and then we see one of ian flynn's strengths when it comes to characters i love the way he writes omega because he just holds up one of these stupid zombots and just asks sonic is this a robot song's kind of stuttered around like yeah i mean i guess was this created by eggman well i mean technically well then it must be destroyed shouldn't it cut and dry i love the robots of this series [Laughter] but sonic's gonna leave him be because as it turns out omega's not actually doing anything to these guys at this point rouge makes contact with sonic directly and in turn they start directing survivors towards the trucks so they can get them out of town they meet up at grand gold flicky hotel oh i love that statue and here's sonic and rouge kind of catch each other up a little bit here rouge points out that this assault seems a little sloppy even for eggman standards and sonic points out that it's because that he's no longer controlling the zombots sonic asks about shadow's location and rouge responds that he's off to pick up a truck how sweet we then have some more survivors get to the barricade and again this is reminding readers that sonic can't touch anybody so he's got to get creative with how he deals with zombots in saving people's lives he runs into omega again asking him what he thinks he's doing he's got to keep zombots away from the hotel and omega tells him that there are too many targets the enemy's advancing from both directions because that's right there's a second wave of zombots coming in sonic's about ready to deal with them but then he notices a large mass making its way through the horde it's a semi of course it is and from it sepps shadow the hedgehog looking quite pissed sonic tries to sass him and shadow's not having any of it sonic tries to tell him to chill out because he was joking and again shadow is just not in the mood he points out that if he had destroyed eggman in windmill village none of this would be happening and then i guess sonic's trying to go for a pity because he's like hey i'm dealing with the infection too and shadow's like you get what you deserve bro i don't know what to tell you hey look how pissed sonic is he can't refute any of this and i can't really blame shadow for being ticked off with the guy and you would think from here we would get an interesting dynamic between the two but let's keep going sonic realizing that this isn't the time where plays to get into it with shadow tells him that he's gonna go take care of his infection thanks him for bringing the truck and tells him not to let the zombots touch him shadow says i know and sonic says if it happens you should be fast enough to run it off like me to which shadow responds cowards run i win yeah that seems about on point for shadow let's keep going shadow touches based with omega giving him some orders to how to contain the situation leaving shadow to take on the zombot horde himself which he shoots some lights at him and kicks him with his shoes and flips around i guess i don't really know what he's actually accomplishing but you know whatever we get back to rouge who's directing survivors towards the truck notices that shadow's making a mess within the middle of the horde points out that he's being reckless as we know shadow to be nothing wrong here nothing whatsoever and then we get back to shadow who is just fighting zombots pointing out that they're quite resilient oh man you straight up curb stomps a zombie with those sweet kicks of his and gets up with a picasso face being impressed shadow decides to show off his sick break dancing skills and also points out that the metal virus can't infect the ultimate life form i don't know where he got the data for that but sure this is all on the up and up so far no problems whatsoever we then get back to sonic who is running around on the outskirts of town and pointing out something we i don't think have ever seen in the comics unless i'm mistaken he's actually getting winded he takes a quick second to reflect on everything he's lost and wonders if it's his own fault and then quickly points out to himself that no he can't be blamed for the actions of others and then zips back into town cut back to shadow who is zipping his way through the zombots again and then just just grabs one i guess i don't know why he just decides i'm gonna touch this one and throw it into other ones and once you know it he's got some icky goo all over him anyway shadow now has the infection and rouge tells him run she and omega will hold things down from here and shadow says i don't run and begins to just straight up punch zombots totally in line with everything we know about shadow so far no problems here omega can't provide backup for shadow because there are just way too many of them for him to take care of and well once you know it shadow gets overtaken by the horde sonic makes his way back into the middle of town and rouge tells sonic to handle shadow in sonic's like handle i think you're the only one he listens to which he clearly didn't but as sonic finds out what rouge actually meant was that he had to take care of zombot shadow yeah totally fine no problems here okay so before we break down everything we just witnessed let's carry on through issue 20 first we're gonna spend most of our time with sonic versus zombot shadow sonic quickly overpowers shadow pointing out that a healthy shadow would have seen that move coming and countered it but now he has to deal with shadow on top of a bajillion zombots they fight for a little bit and sonic sends him off into a crowd of zombots and sonic's quickly getting tuckered out the situation has become completely uncontrollable so sonic just tells rouge to take off and he'll hold off the zombot's best he can at this point omega jumps into the fray to help out or well that's what sonic assumes anyway omega's actually here because eggman robots remain and this must be corrected violently again read this book for yourself the way they write omega is just fantastic but while they're dealing with all these zombots sonic notice that shadow isn't there and then notices the donut says he's chasing after the truck just look at this he just looks like a distracted dog chasing down a car like if they've done it from the perspective of a truck or like closer to shadow like making it really seem scary and dangerous but it's all in the background i don't know but it's just me he just looks ridiculous oh my god oh that's great sonic does his best to redirect shadow back into the party but as he quickly learns shadow is not a normal zombot and chuck sonic to the side omega and sonic are quickly losing ground here and omega points out that sonic's infection is getting worse and he should run off sonic's telling him that he's not going to abandon a friend it'll make a response that we're not friends you're in the way of my massacre i love this robot sonic points out the obvious that omega's ammo isn't actually getting anything done so how about they just get out of there while they still have energy and omega just flat out refuses and then grabs shadow by the face and just smothers his face into the ground like the bad dog he is gotta rub his nose in it sonic points out wait that's shadow and omega's like nope he's another robot don't care and shadow responds in kind by just ripping apart omega oh my goodness sonic tries to reason with shadow zombot and it's not going well at all and quickly omega is getting torn apart and sonic is being overpowered by shadow and the other zombots but thankfully at the last moment he's saved by the return of silver as you might recall he was taken out of commission when they first took on starline but looks like he's fully recovered and tails is with him as well with his telekinetic abilities he gets all the zombots floating around him and clears away so sonic can get out of there tails in turn picks up the head of omega the only thing that remains but thankfully that sass is still intact but shadow's not having any of it as he leaps off the side of the building and almost makes contact with silver thankfully he doesn't and the two fly boys get right the hell out of there so sonic has gotten the survivors out of there but at the cost of a couple allies they meet up at restoration hq and at this point it's really sonic just touching base with all the other surviving main cast characters starting off with cream who seems to be in decent spirits despite the fact that she recently lost her to chow she catches sonic up with what's happening at restoration hq point out that there are a lot of refugees and not a lot of room for them and everyone's kind of in a bummer mood but she's doing her best with snacks and candies and doing her best to remain happy so in turn everybody else will be happy as well she guides sonic over to amy rose's office and general points out that sonic is still infected therefore he's denied axis until cream scolds him and they let him on through amy who's been recently made charge of restoration is clearly in over her head and she's doing her best sonic heads over to rouge who asks him about shadow sonic responds sorry he's gone now that amy's off the phone her and sonic catch up but the reunion is short-lived as she goes back to the radio and i guess echo 3 echo 13 and echo 11 went down on turtle shell island oh man i should have named my podcast turtle shell island i want to go to turtle shell island oh anyway yeah sonic leaves cause he's all bummed out turns out everything's going pretty garbagey for the entire world he then runs into vector and espio who have just woken up from their naps they in turn ask him how he's doing and sonic points out that he's taking little naps here and there but he can't really do much else than that otherwise the infection is going to take hold of him they part ways off to find charmy as they still don't know what happened to him even though we know what did the clearly exhausted sonic then touches base with tails and silver and now that silver's awake there's something sonic's been wanting to discuss namely why he's come back from the future again sonic points out that silver had mentioned that his world was all metallic and lifeless and wonders if this was because of the metal virus silver is confident that that is the case but sonic doesn't remember silver mentioning any zombots silva responds that it's because he didn't see any and he's hoping that that won't be a mystery they have to solve song then sees how omega is doing who's just being a violent head so he's fine tails points out that he can rebuild him but it's going to take some time because eggman tech is notoriously weird but now we get to the actual point of why sonic is here bothering his best bud tales today was a close call it was probably the worst that sonic has dealt with in terms of the zombie virus so far and we have to know if tails is any closer to finding a cure for this entire mess unfortunately tails just doesn't have enough data but he might have a means to collect more tails points out that sonic speed is somehow combating the metal virus it isn't completely but it is consistently holding it back so he built a nice little biometric sensor that sonic can wear on his wrist so basically a fitbit long and short of it tails is gonna take readings from sonic while he's running out and about in the world to see if they can find some sort of solution from him so while everything seems to be going to pot we might still yet have a chance to beat this thing which is all the hope sonic really needs right now he's kind of desperate for it he looks really tuckered out but we end things with dr starline who we haven't seen for the last couple issues he sits by himself somewhat dejected having to admit to himself that eggman has no plan to control the virus they've got some tests scheduled for tomorrow but starline still feels like eggman's overlooked or forgotten one of his many many assets so he digs through his files to see if there's anything that can help get this virus in check and comes across the lost world project well i wonder if anything's going to come from that and i wonder if we're going to see the return of a fan favorite villain but that is where we are going to end things in terms of coverage for today but we're not going to wrap up the episode just yet i did say at the front that i wanted to wait till the end of the zombot virus saga before i kind of give my general thoughts on the story altogether that said i also pointed out that we would stop at some point to really pick apart and analyze one specific subject and that subject is shadow because this has been a hot topic for fans for quite a while and i can't just flat out ignore it so let's get into it okay so to anyone looking from the outside in you might be wondering what exactly is the big deal here if you don't know any better you just see this guy as another dark mirror villain it's a well-worn trope at this point hell even an expectation if you have a protagonist you need to have an evil version of them running around somewhere and shadow looks to be just that or at least that's what your average person would assume just by taking in his design and in terms of story almost everything makes sense here especially through the lens of trophy zombie fiction but for long time sonic fans shadow fans specifically this felt very out of character shadow's actions in this comic goes against a lot of what has been established back in the adventure era of the games because let's be real if you love those games you probably love shadow the hedgehog because the narrative through line was shadow we get to know what makes him tick uncover his origins and purpose and most importantly we get to see him grow as a character more so than anyone else in those stretch of games those are sometimes called the dark ages of the sonic franchise and while not a fan of that term you could take it quite literally because all of those games revolve around the dark hedgehog even when he's just a part of the ensemble cast his narrative is usually the most interesting portion of the game's story he was the badass new bad guy who turned out to have a lot more going on under that moody exterior and i've gone on record saying i'm not the biggest fan of the stories told in those games but i like them well enough to certainly understand why people attached to those projects as passionately as they did we were in a brave new era of video game storytelling and for a lot of kids of the day this was their first taste of more complex characters plots and motivations it's honestly no wonder there are so many fans of this era despite them being as notorious as they were in the wider gaming world and adventure fans generally focus a lot more on the story than fans of the earlier classic games or later boost games because the story was a major focus of the adventure games so it's not much of a surprise many of them would turn to the comics for a more compelling narrative especially in a time when many of those adventure fans have not been too happy with some more recent game scripts and that's kind of the point of all these comics you can't play a comic you're here because you love these characters and you want to spend a little more time with them in their world but that only works when those characters are staying true to well their character and here we have shadow acting arrogant and reckless easily one of the most powerful characters in the cast and he's taken out by grabbing a sombot he ignores sonic he ignores his teammates and he ignores a lot of his own history in terms of tackling desperate situations such as this so yeah i get why a lot of fans are really upset with this issue under all of that dark fur lies the heart of a hero loyal to a fault cunning and tactical yet here he is getting taken out from his own sloppiness so yeah you can understand the frustration but at the same time i also get why he was taken out like this there's a frustrating truth the early 2000s fans are going to have to accept shadow has undergone something of a soft reboot all of these characters have there's a reason he went from sounding like this if the world chooses to become my enemy [Music] i see no villains just some fools whose only ability is wasting time nothing against the voice actor here but there's an obvious direction sega is trying to take this character and i hate to tell you guys i kind of understand why like i said if you did not know any better you can make certain assumptions about shadow's personality from his design and as a kid's property i'd get why you'd want to easily identify shadow and his place in the sonic cast the sonic franchise revolves around the sonic that might sound weird but if you go back to the adventure era i'd argue that those games largely revolve around shadow but nowadays they rely more on sonic than ever before it's no longer about shadow's backstory and character arc it's now back to sonic and well he's got to play the part of the cool charming hero and the voice of reason and the guy making all of the plans and yes that is a bigger topic for another time wait till the end of all of this but my point is that we are reading a story with the current interpretations of these characters and unfortunately the writers of this licensed property have to work within those guidelines these are not ian flynn's characters and it's entirely up to sega whether or not they stay true to the pre-established stories or if they take shadow in a new direction i only bring this up because i see a lot of people use this issue to yell about ian flynn not understanding these characters when we have seen him write shadow perfectly fine with an archie cannon yes every rider is going to have a slightly different spin on this franchise but at the end of the day it's up to sega to determine the overall direction flynn's been upfront about this and no i don't think he's lying because that probably wouldn't do well for sega if he was lying about the company giving him the paychecks but that does not excuse this book from criticism even with these guidelines in place there's definitely some weak points worth discussing you're telling me that shadow didn't jump into the situation without a game plan doesn't coordinate with the rest of team dark wasn't updated on sonic's situation and how he's keeping it in check i mean i get we get these little scenes with sonic talking with shadow and rouge and it seems like this is the first time they got the information that him running this stuff off is what's keeping it in check but it's also kind of inconsistent with the way shadow reacts to them telling him to run and i also think it's weird that tails would call the chaotix and give him the heads up but he wouldn't call team dark first rouge contacted sonic through a headset and gave him the heads up on sunset city so there's clearly been some coordination between all these different factions so why on earth would they not know about sonic's infection and how he's handling it prior to him interacting with them and then shadow gets infected by grabbing a zombot so do his gloves count as organic material why wasn't he infected when he was spinballing through him and yes i know all of this is nitpicking all right i know but if you're gonna spend so much time establishing the rules then you need to follow your own rules and i get the point of this shadow is too powerful of a character to leave unchecked so you need to take him off the board if you want to keep raising the stakes for sonic but when you're making it blatantly obvious that you're making these situations happen in service to the plot then you have a little bit of a problem with the script these are overall just tiny hiccups here and there but they add up quickly like for real rouge new shadow was infected completely and then asked sonic about shadow later on in headquarters like she didn't see him turn she told sonic to go take care of shadow did we forget all of that just so we could see this reaction from rouge it's not like he was going to save him or something so yes the issue done goof because we know that shadow is a powerful character and we know we have to get him out of the way and honestly when i first read through it i just rolled with it because i've read so many stories like this and i knew where they were going with it but i also have a problem with zombot shadow because yeah i was expecting shadow to get infected and i was expecting a zombot shadow fight and i'll give him this he was more dangerous of a zombot than the regular ones and sonic probably would have lost if it wasn't for a last minute save from silver but i don't know i kind of felt like there could have been a little bit more done in terms of making shadow a particularly dangerous type of zombot like yes we are constantly worried about sonic turning into a zombot but this book is very clearly keeping most of the focus from sonic's perspective and even without rocket boots this would have been a great chance to show how dangerous things could get if sonic were to turn they just escaped sunset city which is fine they didn't actually win that battle but i kind of feel like shadow should be treated like a next level type of threat this is the zombie apocalypse of the sonic universe the story and the threat itself shouldn't revolve entirely around shadow i'm not saying that but shadow should be something that sonic's crew constantly have to worry about like they either need to constantly stay on the move because he just covers ground way too quickly or they are forced into a situation where they have to contain him because shadow is spreading the virus as quickly as an entire town of zombots would all on his own and i'm sure scheduling was tight again the focus is not on shadow it's on the zombot arc but i don't know reading through these last two issues i kind of felt like the pacing was a little bit off and we might have spent a little bit too much time reconnecting with all the characters and what they were doing when we could have done that in these next upcoming issues the storyline does drag quite a bit and there are definitely some weak spots in these shadow centric stories but if i gotta be honest with you guys i overall did not have much of a problem with this whatsoever i've become somewhat used to this interpretation of shadow and it's not like he's just gonna be a zombot forever and honestly i don't even think he's gonna be this cranky forever also this probably didn't bother me a whole lot because this is name of the worst we've seen of the character i am shadow android the ultimate battle life form created by eggman you may have created me doctor but i will now lead this empire and androids will rule this is who i am what it sucks when one of your favorite characters is being reinterpreted in a way that doesn't work for you especially when they do soft reboots yet still expect you to keep everything that happened before as canon but that's kind of what happens with long-running franchises i'm not saying you just have to grin and bear it i think it's important to express your frustrations and your criticisms but i also think it's important where you're expressing them too the influent is more than aware that you were not happy with the way shadow was interpreted and again i keep telling you guys take a listen to the bumblecast because he has gone on record multiple times saying that he's not too happy with what he's supposed to do with shadow that doesn't excuse these scripts if you don't like them you don't like them and that is fine i know there are some plans that have shadow take off his containment rings and just go nuts like he did with all the methodist copies in sonico6 but yeah ultimately that didn't happen i've been mulling over this particular topic for quite a while there's a reason why i did the super shadow video when i did just to kind of point out to you guys that i'd like to think i understand what makes this character so special to everybody just so when i finally covered this i won't sound completely off base when i told you i wasn't bothered that much by this story no i'm not the biggest fan of this interpretation of shadow but at the same time i also don't want him to be quite as much of a hero as he was in the adventure era as well i kind of like a shadow who is a proper rival to sonic i kinda like a little vegeta in that mix cause i kind of like vegeta i'm sorry but i think there's a middle ground we have not yet struck with this character and despite all the bashing everyone's done with sonic forces i think it's important to look at how shadow was interpreted in that game again not quite as well as he was back in the adventure era but i definitely think we're moving closer to something that everyone can be happy with sega tends to overcorrect when it comes to their games and i'm hoping that the little more shadow we're seeing from forces and from the comics and from the reaction to how shadow handled this situation because yes they do address it i think all of this is pointing towards the signs that hopefully sooner rather than later we're going to have a shadow that can be sonic's dark rival and at the same time can be his own person one that we are compelled to follow and enjoy and doesn't feel like an idiot when he's in the middle of a situation like this i think my actual issue with all of this is just how sonic is interpreted in the more modern age like i said he's got to be the hero on every level for everybody it really feels like this entire world revolves around him as opposed to him existing in this larger grander world which i kind of miss about the archie series i kind of miss sonic being a little bit of a dick or being a little flippant or rushing too quickly into a situation i kind of wanted a story that i thought i would get when i saw the cover of this comic book where we see team dark trying to get survivors away from zombots and shadow looks pissed because sonic doesn't look like he's taking a situation seriously i mean there's like a hundred different ways you could have shadow get infected that would have been fine for people i don't even think he needed to take off his rings maybe he's really honestly pissed with sonic because technically his inaction helped enable this situation i think that is a great way to have these two characters come at odds with each other and i would have liked to see more of that play out i would love to see that expanded upon and when shadow finally turns i don't know you could have had sonic accidentally bump into him or shadow going out of his way to stop sonic from going fully converted because he knows how dangerous sonic would be as a zombie i don't know i'm just spitting off the top of my head i'm not sitting in front of this and i'm just using hindsight but my point is there was a lot of potential story worth telling between these two characters and a lot of decent excuses to have them be at odds with each other without it sacrificing the core ideals of shadow that we know so far but again i haven't seen sega's notes i have no idea what's been said to ian about the direction of the character and ultimately at the end of the day shadow is not the most important character in this storyline and he has whether you like it or not stayed pretty consistent for his characterization in the idw canon yes it's spun off from the main core game canon but this is still its own story and shadow's been a little bit crankier for this past decade whether you like it or not so while i'm not the happiest i could be with it and while i do think there could have been better ways to get to the end goal they were going for i'm still overall okay with it it was still a fun crazy chaotic mess and this is where the book really feels like things are about to get really bad because we're starting to see sonic get tired and worried and stressed and i think that would make a bigger impact if he was a lot more flippant and foolish prior to this point like trying to hold back his own guilt for the situation by being brash and arrogant and all this other stuff we've known sonic to be in the past i don't know i'm sure ian flynn has his own hundreds of different ways he would have liked to do this particular story but again when you're writing a licensed property you don't have as many options as you would like it's a bigger challenge than people give it credit for critique this issue make of it what you will and yes if there are ways the writers could have improved even within their own given guidelines then yeah i don't think it's too much to ask him to step the game up just understand there are guidelines in place but yeah that's just gonna wrap up all my thoughts about this notorious moment in idw sonic history i get why it's there and i hope i picked it apart well enough that i can validate those frustrations and explain them away but at the same time like i said at the start when i first read through this i didn't even blink an eye i thought shadow kind of went out like a but i also kind of expected him to go out so he got some cool hits in he did some cool extra stuff as a zombot and i would have liked more and i would like some stuff done a little bit differently but at the same time the overall pressing issue of the zombot threat is far more interesting to me and i'm sure that this is just going to be a weak point in the history of shadow the hedgehog this character isn't going anywhere and whether or not you like a current interpretation of him just remember that's not always going to be the case express your frustrations express your criticisms help the writers and the ip holders and everybody else guide these characters in a way that facilitates the fan base because there's a reason you fell in love with these characters and honestly if those reasons shine through there's no reason they can't build that fan base but at the same time don't let it ruin your day don't let this silly moment ruin an entire storyline or comic series for you if this was literally all it took to make you swear off idw sonic well i'm sorry you're missing out on a lot of great stories here and while it might not be true to what games have interpreted shadow like literally almost 20 years ago it still works well enough within the canon provided by the comic books so far so yeah not my favorite thing in the world but ain't gonna ruin my day now these next few issues all take place at the same time but that doesn't mean they're just spinning their wheels each issue actually follows the offense from a different character's perspective and they all pertain to some very important events and well you'll see okay as you might see from this cover they are indeed using a chow to show off a scary zombie image i just oh who would have thought we'd see this my goodness and yeah as you can see the first story is going to revolve around tails as he attempts to come up with a cure for the virus we go back in time just a little bit to central city as it was first being invaded by eggman yes only an hour has passed after everything else we've covered that's how quickly this whole mess spread now we see tails with tangle and whisper long and short of it tango whisper tell tales to get to work on the virus they're gonna handle things outside and we see tails doing his best to remain undetected in his workshop which might be hard if all his machines are making all these vp noises as one of them is as sonic gives him a call and sonic tells him he's right outside of barricade town just checking in we'll tell some of the data from bioscanner you know that fitbit tails gave him so they could track his biometrics to see if there's any connection between sonic's speed and a cure for the virus he says that the information is coming through to tails workshop perfectly so he has everything he needs to get to work on a cure on his end of things he just has to remain again undetected by the zombots tales also reminds sonic that regardless of what eggman is doing he needs that speed data that ultimately is going to be the key to stop whatever else eggman is doing if they can find a cure for the virus they can stop whatever other attack he's coming up with and as tales hangs up with sonic he's startled by a crash as the zombot tumbles over some trash outside then he then calls amy to see how she's doing with restoration hq and long and short of it amy is checking in to see if they need to send over any shuttles tails isn't sure so he's gonna check in with tinkling whisper to see what kind of resources they might need from restoration hq then we come back to the duo having some fun creative action against the zombots always a fun time to see and yeah as we already know from the chaotics into things this is gonna be where they send everybody down to the docks all that fun stuff we don't need to focus on that the main story we have to focus on is tails and how he is going to come up with a cure and showing off tails brilliance he flips over to a hologram that shows basically what we saw when eggman first showed off the metal virus tails has kind of figured it out he understands the basic structure explaining that it looks and acts like a real live virus speaking out loud so the reader understands what he's thinking and you know maybe this is just how he problem solves just talking out loud he points out that he knows sonic speed deteriorates the virus structure and how does he apply that to everything else happening here they can't risk a vaccine that's too weak or only partially effective they got to get this right on the first go and to test out some more experiments he's gonna need a bit of the virus itself so he takes a power glove and heads on outside again trying to remain undetected by zombots he freezes for a second as flickies fly overhead but thankfully they don't notice him he grabs a sample of the stuff and gives himself a nice cheer as we see a couple of chow over the horizon of his face shaped workshop the comic then cuts over to zetty castle which you might recall from sonic lost world and this is here to help establish these characters as even if you are familiar with who they are from that game this is the first time they've appeared in the comics and they are going to be very important to the third act of this story as you might recall starline dug up some information about the whole lost world situation and has decided that he is going to meet with the zetty to concoct a plan to control the zombots as we know that the more the virus spreads the less control eggman has over the entire thing and starline is doing his best to circumvent any future issues by using these guys who can control robots now if you might remember everything kinda went to in lost world between the zetty eggman and sonic so this is a tense moment for starlin but he tries to muster up as much bravado as possible says that this is an opportunity to make amends with eggman command incredible power and destroy sonic the hedgehog and zavoc the big red bowser dude right here is surprisingly agreeable with this plan of action if you're familiar with the sonic franchise at all you already know that starline and all of the zetty are all garbage trash creatures so this polite garbage is clearly just a ruse for the other and yeah as soon as both of them part ways they both start talking trash about the other behind their back with the savvy explaining that yeah no we're we're gonna capitalize on their foolishness we're gonna basically take over the world and starline's basically gonna say the same thing at the end of this issue so let's not waste our time there they're both planning to double cross each other no no shocker there we then spend a little more time with tingle and whisper again attacking some more zombots having a good time we don't need to focus on that go read the comic for yourself if you want to see this stuff it's a lot of fun all this actions here is just to show that the rest of the cast outside of sonic are hard at work to combat the virus however they can and also a quick little note here just in case fans would ask because you know they would ask turns out the wisps are immune to the virus since they are made of pure energy we also see silver in action by himself over in some isolated ice world so that explains where he is during all of this craziness we're not gonna spend a lot of time talking about any of this stuff because again this is not super important what is important is that while all of this is happening it looks like tails has come up with a cure he says that by applying sonic's biometric data to a fresh sample of the virus he grabbed outside he can apply the data in real time to test models for immunization and even reversal of conductation basically he's saying that he combined data of sonic speed with the virus and i guess it came up with the cure they don't really go into any further detail than that we don't actually know why sonic speed is combating this stuff long and short of it tails has figured it out he says he's just gonna go upload it to the server at restoration hq he's gonna head on out to meet up with tangle and whisper but an alarm goes off and it turns out that the two metal virused up chow are wrecking up his wires meaning he won't be able to upload the data but tails being the smart boy he is doesn't panic he's instead just gonna grab the server blade and plug it in manually to restoration hq there's still a chance to get this all set up so they can cure the world but unfortunately at the same time a zombot crashes through startles tails who then drops the blade destroying the data tails looking defeated runs on over to one of those zipline things i love that they brought those in from the games oh and he doesn't spin dash like this is a really dark moment but i love these little game details here and we're not done with it yet because he brings out his walker from sonic adventure 2 and tails is gonna go hard with tears in his eyes and fury in his face he quietly whispers to himself i had it i was so close and i can't blame you he understands that they are victims but man i gotta tell you if that was eggman right in front of him i would be worried because we know how hard tails goes when he is pissed in that mech nothing can stop him and yeah we see tails bust on out of his workshop combating the zombots as best as he can and yeah this just had to be a great little moment for sonic adventure 2 fans even though this is a miserable time for the entire cast here and yeah look at tegel she is just geeking out there she's just fangirling it up who can blame her man it's good to see that stupid robot again as much as i hate playing it yeah long and short of it all that really matters at this point is to get the rest of the survivors over to the shuttle and while we don't have any casualties of the cast we have a casualty all the same because just as we got to geek out over the return of his walker the zombots tear it apart and you know your boy tails loves his machines so tear rolls down his face thanking it for all of its hard work saying it deserved better and i'm sure a lot of sa2 fans have been feeling that way for quite a long time but those tears only last for a panel as tails gets a dope action shot flying away from his exploding walker oh man and just bringing in the sa2 walker is signed enough that even if you're mad about what happened with shadow this is still a reminder to the readers that yo we know we get it we love these characters too we're not drawing the tales from sonic forces this is tails from sonic adventure 2. this is a hero and despite everything that just happened he doesn't give up like a so yeah everything sucks they literally had the cure in hand but man it was good to see tails go off he flies on up to the shuttle that's already taken off and catches up with amy and tails is a little confused where are the other shuttles didn't have that many survivors but amy interrupts him we're on the only one that made it out tails like what what are you saying well got some more bad news turns out restoration hq has fallen and almost everyone with it and now we're gonna dial back the clock and figure out exactly how that happened as the next issue follows amy and the restoration hq as everything was going on and we kicked things off with amy explaining that sonic's running around getting data for tails and tails is doing the research at central city silver's there vector zips jay over there it doesn't doesn't matter they're catching people up if you have just spent a month away we have not so let's keep going long and short of it amy is trying her best to allocate the resources and heroes at her disposal to combat this insane virus and the poor girl is super overwhelmed then we have the cheerful cream hopping in saying it's break time and this is a wonderful interaction between these often overlooked characters amy asks cream how do you do it and cream responds adorably like it's my mother's recipe and she learned it from her mother she's like he's like i mean like staying upbeat and sunny and well cream gets a little real here she says it isn't easy still can't sleep very well i dream of cheese and chocolate and what happened and with tears in her eyes cream says that but she knows that her mother's afraid too and she sees everyone hiding here is scared and that fear spreads like the metal virus so to combat that she's gonna put the biggest smile on her face and share it with everyone and it's corny and it's cheesy and it is so very very important to have that kind of a mindset when you're in a dire situation like this cream is showing us yet again why the rest of sonic's cast respects her as much as they do even though she's just a little kid now we have a very sweet hug and they're all chatting and then tails calls and interrupts everything because it sounds like some crap is going down but we again cut over to the zetty and this is where the reader meets the rest of the deadly six and despite how much i despise their designs you can kinda tell what these guys are all about with their design which is kind of the point of the characters and also establishing the aggressive leadership of zavic as he explains to his team that hey we're taking up starline's offer and then we're gonna double cross him and the green one i don't know her name sarcastically responds you know unless this is another trap and where eggman slaves again and zavik not one for criticism raises his hand showing that he clearly beats the crap out of her and everybody else on his team real angry dude for having long turquoise fingernails you know what i mean but this is him saying that we're gonna take our revenge we're gonna get back at sonic eggman and the entire world below us and we're just gonna wreck their but again that's the only page of those characters we're gonna get in this issue it's just again here to tell us they're coming whether you like it or not they're coming we cut back to amy and cream and i don't really know what happened with that tails call he looked very distressed but i don't know maybe i missed in the last issue it doesn't really matter point is cream heads on back out to the survivors and as we can see they are in tight quarters they are very crammed they're very stressed out and everybody is miserable and to make things worse espio and vector come on in with an infected charmy in an item bubble with general trying to stop him and being a cold logical robot he points out that they brought in a zomba and he's a pathogenic threat to my little rabbit you gotta get him out of here and victor is showing his loyalty to his crew saying yo the chaotix do not abandon their own but victor i feel like you're being kind of a hypocrite after you made a car jail for somebody else back in central city but yes basically he's just arguing with the robot on whether or not they should keep charming in there and cream jumps on in to intervene and tells general to calm down and general just i mean he's gonna go along with it because he listens to cream but points out that this is a logical and self-destructive and this is a very very stupid idea espio's reasoning is that vector has a solid plan they'll securely store charmy in tail's lab alongside omega and once tails is found a cure charmy will be immediately accessible that's not a good plan i'm just that's a horrible plan that's just putting him in the front of the line and if he gets out the first people are gonna be infected are the people working on the cure this is a stupid dumb stupid dumb plan we then cut on over to some of the survivors who are chatting amongst each other and there's a monkey that's all sweaty and in a blanket and you know he's infected and we'll look at that if i end the page he's infected yeah he just he didn't want to be alone so he thought he'd come in and just infect everybody i hate people stupid god this makes me much angrier after 2020. yeah i don't know how he slipped on through without anybody noticing but yeah he immediately transitions over into a zombot and that's been a problem for me because it seems like the infection rate of these things is very very inconsistent but whatever point is there's now a metal monkey and everyone's freaking out about it they start running all over the place general immediately grabs cream and gets her out of the way and through all the rumbling and shaking oh would you look at that charmy breaks out oh goody goody full of great ideas happening god this is everyone's stupid espio sets off the alarm and amy runs over to the radio and tells the pilots to prep for shuttles they're going to be taken off immediately restoration hq has been compromised it's time to bail just then general is pushed through the door with the angry metal monkey on top and amy kindly responds with a hammer to its stupid monkey face amy sets general off with some orders to save who they can get the priorities in order and then jumps into the middle of all the zombots and starts wailing on them this girl is hardcore she's trying to find cream who is fine overhead watching her mother get infected by the zombots while she begs amy to get her little girl to safety and amy does just that she launches herself up with her pico hammer and i love that they bring that element in from the games i actually kind of miss that thing and gets cream out of there as she no longer can save her mother and she's just gonna get infected herself vanilla says thank you weekly a scream screams for her mother as amy keeps cream on hold so she doesn't rush back in general and vector begin to close the doors on the zombots man that poor girl's been through a lot amy guides her over to the shuttle and she asks where the other pilots are well it turns out only one of them made it out of all the chaos but hey they got some survivors out this is pretty rough but worse of it is over or so we think general gives one last scan inside the room to make sure that there are no survivors in there and confirms that everybody left in there is infected to some degree so unfortunately they're just gonna have to lock it up but before they do charmy ever the troublemaker flies on out leaving vector no choice but to pin him down and unfortunately the virus begins to spread to vector general is barely holding back the zombot horde saying that vector is compromised immediate quarantine is required infector like a boss just shoves general aside holding charming under his arm saying yeah i guess this is what i get i'll beat him back just close the door behind me and then turns around with a wink in the middle of a zombot horde infected himself saying hey espio your lead detective now and the doors shut closed are gator boy having the coolest send-off of everybody so far sorry shadow our heroes stand in stunned silence even general is taken aback but quickly reminds everybody that they've got to get going vector is very strong and as a zombot it won't be long before he breaks down the door amy collects herself and then picks up spo and they take off and that is where we meet up with tails yet again their stories now converge but now we get a little more information from there now that everybody is collected tails is finally allowed to freak out justifiably so now that he has lost everything in central city and now he has just found out that restoration hq has fallen because even if the upload was incomplete he still could have done something with that data in that lab there is only one hope left and that's if sonic comes back with a data analyzer intact they're at a rough spot but they can figure something out as long as they have that data and golly wouldn't you know it the next story takes place finally from the view of sonic the hedgehog and i bet everything's just gonna go swimmingly don't you think again we turn back the clock to that initial conversation between everyone this time from the perspective of sonic as he zips through some fields asking how tails is doing sayings right outside of barricade town blah blah blah blah blah we know this stuff and i love that while they don't immediately say it they've said it in past issues you can see that sonic is clearly worn out with rings under his eyes he's uh he's been going for quite a while to keep his own virus in check and we return to barricade town that spot where our two skunk boys first attacked all the way back in issue three with a thunderstorm overcast and the barricade of barricade town toppled over clearly things have uh not gone great we see a quick moment of doubt in the ever confidence sonic the hedgehog who questions to himself if he should check for survivors and then do what smart guy he can't carry them to safety and he could potentially risk a hit on this data analyzer that tails gave him and questions what is right maybe saving one person or keep running to save everyone that's an obvious answer sonic just keep running none of this infection is going to matter as long as you keep running and get the data necessary to provide a cure obviously but while he stands there pondering he notices a very familiar egg shape over the wall of barricade town we then flip on over to the perspective of doctors starline and eggman who are trying out different frequencies as has been established already eggman has lost control over his zombots and as the virus spreads they are less and less responsive so they're basically trying out different frequencies to see if they can bring them back in and nothing seems to be working and eggman is not the type to sit around and just do boring things pointed out they should have rigged an automated version of play from the face ship and starline growing ever more frustrated by his hero points out that wideband broadcasts have had no effect he agreed on a tight band localized attempt because this was the obvious next step an eggman responds don't get a passive aggressive with me if you're gonna write my coattails you better have my back and starline through gritted teeth all i'm saying sir is that in hindsight it would have been smart to have a failsafe for the metal virus mutating beyond your control and yeah this is where we finally see a proper argument between these two characters starline's grown completely disillusioned with the tactics of eggman who sees the mutations as his creations exceeding his own expectations and says hey why don't we try that special gemstone of yours which is the warped topaz and here we finally get a little more information on this magical gem that just casually dropped into this universe turns out that starline found this warped topaz a long time ago and explained some of its properties he says that it responded strongly to even the most passive of energy waves and in his early experiments anything beyond a light controlled charge resulted in extreme reality alteration which is weird that doesn't sound like teleportation that sounds like phantom ruby nonsense but who can keep any of this crap in check anyway whatever point is as he points out that this can be a useful tool when used properly but what eggman is proposing is incredibly dangerous and again as starline points out eggman is anything but cautious he's absolutely not going to hand over the warped topaz and also points out that they get to be inoculated for the metal virus where the eggman response shows what you know there is no fantasy oh my god i love this character starling doesn't know how to handle this how are we going to be protected from the infection i think it just says we're just not going to touch zombots obviously what if there was a spill on the faceship or a mishap in the field or if it mutates and becomes airborne and eggman's just like i i'm done with it bored with this conversation just shut up yeah it's a lot of fun having another scientist here that will challenge eggman in his chaotic ways i love this interaction but before the fight can continue any further it's interrupted by sonic now it's also important to note while eggman and sonic technically have met before in this comic this is the first time he's met him in his eggman persona not like for their first time ever they're using a lot of game cannon here but the only other time we've seen these two interact in this particular comic series was when eggman was mr tinker but flynn gets right back into the classic eggman sonic back and forth with eggman talking saying look who it is patient zero have you enjoyed watching my unbeatable plan unfold and sonic's just like he's not having it today dude he's tired he's pissed off he's like you know what i'm not we're not doing this we're not doing this today i need you to tell me why the hell you're doing this man and again aggie just does not provide any kind of logic whatsoever like dog i've been trying to take over the world for years you know that sounds like no man like why did you go back to this mad scientist i mean sure doctor fashion disaster over there gave you back your memories and i love that sudden little bit of art there starlight mess with his collar but sonic desperate to reach out to any kind of kindness in eggman's heart wants to know why did he go back to his old ways what was wrong with being like mr tinker negan just simply says that's not who i am song's like well why don't you just be like him and aggie's like what do what do you want me to be a charitable goodie two shoes who fixes doorknobs and builds toys and he looks back down at the city below him saying living on grateful smiles listening to children's laughter day in and day out making things people need and use and for a moment it looks like he might actually miss being a decent dude but quickly turns back saying yeah that was a relaxing life but i'm gonna do something better he's bringing peace and unity to the world by providing it with his brilliant guidance that's about as far as that particular conversation was going to go and of course i had to jointly shove in a bit of crush 40 lyrics with eggman saying we're not that different you and i we both have our own styles and we won't change i don't know if that would have read a little bit more naturally if i didn't hear that song a thousand times but it was a little distracting for me it's fine and it's also on point sonic's just he's had enough of it it's out of patience tells eggman you're going to reverse this metal virus or else an egg is like or else what and song's like or i'll kick your ass or else what he's like all right dog one last battle before you're a stupid-ass zombie let's roll so they go out of classic sonic and eggman style and we take this time to look at this from starline's perspective and it's a very interesting critique of the relationship between these long time foes starling says that he's been dreaming of seeing this scene play out in front of him for as long as he can remember but now that it is all he can feel is apathy he looks back on the plan of neo-metal sonic who nearly succeeded in reviving the eggman empire but starline thought he acted far too brashly starline was under the impression that neo only failed because he was designed to be a counter to sonic a ballistic missile with a built-in grudge but now that he's looking at this neometal sonic didn't fail because he was copying sonic he failed because he was copying eggman this is the exact same brute force strategy he's seen play out before basically don't meet your heroes starline has completely lost faith in eggman's ability to carry out this plan and we will see how that plays out in just a little while going back to the perspective of eggman and sonic they keep trying to talk to each other with eggman saying that you can't run forever you're gonna be tired eventually and then you're gonna turn into a zombot and sonic's like cool if you love it so much why don't you have some and eggy completely freaks out and topples over his egg mobile and falls into the village below i love sonic here sure it'd be nice if you had a cure handy huh and eggy's starting to freak out in front of his own creations he panickedly screams get back and then all the zombots completely ignore him and begin to attack sonic and eggy is very confused that worked we cut back to starline up in the air still looking pissed saying no i just found an effective command symbol and while he is frustrated he does also point out that well maybe he doesn't need to roll out his other plan now that they have a frequency that works but if that's the case what will eggman learn from this but eggy cheers him on saying excellent work now upload that frequency to the faceship so i can command the rest of the zombots around the world and sonic completely sworn by zombots freaks out he knows he can't let that happen and blasts on through the horde and up through the egg mobile destroying eggman's ability to upload the frequency to control all the zombots but also destroying the data analyzer necessary for tails to concoct a cure eggy and starline fly on off bickering the entire time a bit i just love these two they are fantastic starline opens a portal back to the face ship and is still pretty pissed aggie quite used to these failures just as whatever who cares starline's saying that with all the commotion he didn't get to memorize the working frequency but he does recall the range so they could start from there but eggman says why why bother starline understandably asks excuse me and eggman points out that it's too risky to use it at such a close range besides the metal virus is most likely already adapting to resist it and i'm not gonna go through all of that again just for something that's not gonna work which to be fair is sound reasoning and starline finally seems to agree but follows up by asking well what are we gonna do next the neg man's basically like i don't know i'll think of something don't worry about it well with starline's look on his face you can tell uh he's kind of made up his mind about enacting another plan but we cut back over to sonic who has become much shinier since we last saw him he is beyond exhausted and full of regret as he sees zombots begin to swarm around him he finally notices that his data analyzer is destroyed and his guilt overtakes him as the metal virus begins to as well he wasn't able to protect the data analyzer he hasn't been able to protect his friends he put the faith in the idea that everyone has a little good in them and eggman has made him pay for it every day as he turns we see his eyes begin to turn red but sonic being sonic is not about to give up and blasts on out of the town we see flakes of the virus begin to shave off him as he once again shoots off through a field seeing that he can't give up he's got to find a way to protect his friends and keep him safe he screwed up a lot but he still has time to make things right and again we're seeing something we've rarely ever seen sonic media he's run to the point of exhaustion i love this line look he feels like he's going to collapse is this what everyone else feels like after a run and at this point amy makes contact with him catches him up with everything that's been going on while he's been away restoration hq has fallen tail's lab has been destroyed and now they're on their way to spiral hill village to help evacuate it and poor exhausted sonic says to himself man oh man i guess the good news is things officially can't get any worse [Music] so now all of our characters are all caught up in their particular stories and now we're gonna carry on forward as sonic arrives at spiral hill village saying that the first time he was here it was under attack by eggman and it doesn't look like things have changed the little hints of the metal virus on the surrounding vegetation shows us that it's already hit the town and since we already covered that annual we know that was the case as well sonic blasts on through some zombots noticing that restoration hq is already here and uh they all look a little uh well cheerful isn't the right word probably every other word opposite of cheerful that was that's probably the best way to describe how they're all looking right now sonic scopes the perimeter to see who needs help first and uh takes a look at sbo and says yeah i probably could use a little bit of assistance and as a zombot horde begins to overwhelm sbo sonic comes in and saves the day once that's cleared the two boys have a moment to catch up sonic joking hey you fighting the whole town by yourself and that's feels like well our numbers have grown thin and espio basically lays out what all the other characters are doing to help get survivors out of this town but as espio goes through the list of folks sonic notices that he doesn't mention vector and that's where sbo catches sonic up on that let him know that vector got infected back at restoration hq and begins to blame himself saying that he should never have let vector bring charmy back to restoration it's my fault and sonic tries to console him saying no man you can't but espio snaps on sonic because he isn't blaming himself for vector coming back with charming to restoration hq he's blaming himself for letting sonic convince him to leave eggman in windmill village sonic responds saying that that was mr tinker there's no way to know that starlin would bring him back to his eggman persona and espo responds and if we had dealt with him then we wouldn't have anything to worry about sonic quips back so what we have to assume the worst about everyone and everything show no mercy to anyone no second chances and the two just look at each other this is not the time or the place for this particular debate espio is pissed as hell but as he says there are people to save sonic turns his back saying yep see at the shuttle sonic gets back to work taking down zombots and containing them and notices a little back up from whisper the wolf good to see you here and they give each other a thumbs up he then carries on over to finally catch up with amy and uh if you'll notice here a few of the survivors are looking a little pissed at him i wonder why they have their cute little back and forth but long and short of it sonic just wants to know where he's needed amy basically again lays out what everybody else is doing which we've already done and sonic summarizes it pretty shortly so he's gotta cover the escape out of the town gotcha he's gonna go find tangle and see if she's got any ideas this is her hometown after all so she's obviously the first person to talk to about roots for evacuation stuff of that nature but before he goes tails and cream catch up to him tails desperate for any kind of hope as sonic if he still has the data recorder stashed somewhere and sonic and tells him what happened with eggman the data analyzer is destroyed and tails trying his best to hold back tears says it's fine without his lab or the headquarters he wouldn't have been able to synthesize a vaccine anyway so our heroes are uh about as hopeless as they've been so far in this story but we're not done here amy exhausted does her best to tell tales to focus on the now tail says it's whatever we couldn't find anybody else anyway everyone's become zombots we see a little more amy die on the inside well then it's time to go signal the retreat we gotta get out of here and sonic gets back to his original plan he's gonna at least find tangle and coordinate with her tails is going to go off and find spo and whisper and as the boys rush off general approaches amy who says amy rose i performed a scan on sonic and amy just poor kill so exhausted she says yeah i know he's infected we've known that for a minute and he says correct however he's run calculations on the level of infection he's exhibiting and it's higher than the previous estimates should allow amy just had it she's like what are you getting at man and general reveals that sonic's speed is losing its ability to hold back his own virus so even if sonic could miraculously stay awake forever the virus is mutating to a point where even his speed is not going to matter for much longer and uh now we cut over to tangle because you know we really we really need a little bright bit of sunshine at this point and you can't do much better than her and she's cleverly holding back zombots by using little stools to protect her feet from infection i don't know why the soles of her shoes can't do that but whatever doesn't matter so yeah she's just talking until sonic finally arrives and asks her hey anyone need a rescue and tangle says yeah i'm fine sonic informs her that amy's calling for a retreat but the minute we stop causing a ruckus in town and tangle finishes the sentence the zombots will head for the big noisy shuttle not good but restorations manage to cover just about every avenue except for this one sonic asks her does she have any ideas on how to plug this particular bottleneck and tangle everth optimus says yeah sure do step one you pick me up step two i wrap my tail around one of the lampposts step three you wind us between the lamp posts and i use my tail as a tripwire look how she's drawn here i love how expressive this is god look at this art this is amazing and sonic points out the one and only flaw of this plan if they do that she'll get infected but tangle hey she ain't worried about it she says already got it covered she went and checked on jewel the instant she arrived in town and she was already infected and got the jump on her and casually points out that she's been infected and she really doesn't have a whole lot longer and sonic just apologizes to her tangle says why it's not your fault song's like isn't it if i just listen to shadow or spo or if i hadn't let metal sonic go but tangle interrupts him by punching a zombot with her tail and says that you didn't bring eggman back that was starline you made sure metal was harmless eggman weaponized him again song says yeah and i haven't been able to protect my friends or anybody tangle says yeah and nobody's guarding that shuttle full of nothing and sonic response you're not going to let this thing get to you are you and she has a triumphant never because you're sonic the hedgehog you'll set this right i know you will now less moping and more moving so with that he picks up tangle she grabs a lamp post and they criss-cross between a whole set of them to create a tripwire and tickle says that should be enough to at least get the shuttle out of there and says tell the others i'm sorry especially whisper song says thanks for everything and they give one last hug and something we've never seen from this character before a tear rolls down tangle's face and then turns her face before sonic can see saying hey get a move on told you i got this and sonic understanding turns his back to leave it to ting who then wipes away that tear and gets back to fighting zombots sonic catches up with the rest of restoration hq saying let's get going i'll ride on the outside and amy asks where's tangle sonic says she got infected she's staying behind to cover all of us she said she was sorry but heroes have nothing to be sorry about and while we will pick that particular line apart later the more important takeaway for the rest of the crew is that tangles infected and we see the reactions of amy cream tails espio and whisper and our quiet little wolf completely breaks down and again we all know this is all gonna wrap up just fine good guys will win in the end there's no actual violence or death it's a kid's story but it's moments like this that really hit you to your core where you see these fun cartoony colorful characters react in the most human way possible to pain and loss and the grief of whisper is so severe that her namesake no longer applies her closed eyes are wide open with tears flooding freely her mouth a gap with her fangs bared screaming for her friend let's give it up for the art here again because the emotion is so raw she stops looking like any other cartoon character she looks almost animalistic in her pain and after everything we've seen between those two characters and the relationship form especially with the miniseries this this one is really hard amy tries her best to hold whisper back telling sonic to help and he can't he can't touch anybody he can't do anything and that's when whispers wisps come shooting out of her wispon and drag her onto the shuttle i gotta tell you 10 years ago playing sonic colors i never would once think that one of the most emotionally raw moments of the sonic franchise would contain the wisps it's um man this is rough they drag her on board with amy giving one last command to get out of there and sonic silently jumps on afterwards we cut back to the perspective of tangle who is still holding on as long as she can she gives a little smirk and says don't keep me waiting too long and then gets right back to it by punching zombots in the face and the virus begins to creep up her tail and right onto her booty she's like oh that's unpleasant and she looks onto the horde even though the virus still spreads she says that she's still standing still fighting still and as she throws out one last punch it falls short just an inch before a zombot's face and tangle finally has turned joining the rest of the mindless zombot board that were once her neighbors and sonic just looks on and cream despite losing everything despite being dead on the inside holds a grieving crying whisper as the most optimistic cheerful member of the idw sonic crew has fallen so yeah through all four of these issues you keep feeling like it just can't get worse but then it's one emotional gut punch after the other and it all happens at the same time we had to wait month after month to watch all of this happen but all of these losses happened to sonic and his friends all in one bell swoop and we're not done just yet as we cut back to starline and eggman starline says doctor i have found a solution to the ongoing problem of not being able to control the zombots and eggman says i told you i would figure something out stop pestering me and with that final dismissive comment we see starline's resolution to enact his own plan and activates the warp topaz to bring in the worst skull band to ever hit the world that's right kids the characters that nobody ever wanted to see again have finally returned we're just about at the finish line folks but we have another crazy set of events to cover before we wrap up this story and things kick off with issue 25 and i gotta tell you it's so crazy seeing another sonic comic reach the coveted 25 issue mark that was such a big deal for me as a kid with the original archie series but that's a topic for another time we start off the story with the character we have not yet seen once during this entire storyline and that's knuckles the echidna standing guard next to the master emerald as per usual and he looks up in the sky to see a restoration shuttle and sonic drops in front of him and he is not looking good goodness gracious yeah his virus has almost completely overtaken his body as all that's left is just half of his face and a little bit of his chest which is a little inconsistent if you remember that comic way back where we saw somebody turn before they were even finished being covered but whatever that might be more artistic interpretation anything else this is a awesome piece of artwork i love knuckles why do you look like metal sonic sonic weighs them off the long story stay back i don't want to touch the grass knuckles what's wrong with my grass look i gotta go on a run don't worry about it the other two will explain it for you there's been like many many issues about this just just talk to them love amy's face as she comes to land yeah knuckles is giving them a look usually treble shows up whenever sonic does so he's gonna be in for one hell of a story but then we shift perspectives back to eggman and starline and if you remember from the end of the last video the platypus has brought the deadly six aboard the face ship iggy is pissed and immediately sends metal sonic out to take out the deadly six destroy for daddy but if you recall how they operate in the games you know this is not going to go well zavok immediately takes control of metal sonic and then condescendingly lets the reader and eggman know don't you remember this is kind of a whole shtick and starline backs them up which is precisely why i brought you here u6 will keep the zombots under control while eggman researches a better way to contain the metal virus so starline believes he's doing eggman a favor he's making up for his lack of foresight with and then excuse me blows into the conch to get the deadly six back in line but unfortunately they are very familiar with this thing and they are ready to go on the attack as the purple one i forgot what his name is headbutts starline and it just oh man it looks so brutal then green grabs it from them i'm not going to pretend like i remember their names i don't care so yeah we are three pages into this comic and immediately the deadly six have taken over the entire situation but before we leave this scene they shift their focus over to orbot and cubot who take a look at a screen that just appeared before them a screen with a somewhat familiar looking icon i wonder who could that be but shifting back over to the focus of eggman and starline who is very confused about what just happened is quickly informed by eggman the conch only works as long as your lungs last and i love this because it shows starline is not above eggman's own failings he is very arrogant very full of himself which is the exact same thing and that blinds him to his own shortcomings and aegie despite being a chaotic mess of a man still knows what he's doing that doesn't mean he isn't above his own shortcomings but there are reasons why he would not recruit the deadly six there are reasons why he does not revisit plans after they fail he is at the end of the day a smart man with a lot of failings and a lot of shortcomings but he is a consistent threat for a reason but unfortunately there is an even bigger threat in zavok and the rest of the six as he sends metal sonic back on his creator to attack starline and eggman starlin opens a portal metal chases after them and they all transport out of the face ship leaving the deadly six alone with the entire ship and all seven chaos emeralds now i know a lot of us are not the biggest fans of the deadly six and i'll get into more critique about their use in this comic but just generally as a sonic fan even if i can't remember all of their names off the top of my head i still recognize these characters and i still love seeing parts of this franchise come together the deadly six were so isolated from everything else that had happened in sonic's world because they were literally on a different continent floating in the sky so it was cool to see metal and zavok have that quick interaction and it's even cooler to see these characters interact with the coveted chaos emeralds as zava takes the purple one and attaches it to his chest saying like all things we take their power as our own yeah get ready kids for the first time ever we're going to see the deadly six be a legitimate threat orba and cubot just start simping for zavic immediately saying brother a plus plan new boss and orbee quickly takes qb aside and tells him look i'm kind of saving our hides here let's just play kiss ass now otherwise he's just gonna take control of us and the plan works zavok says you're gonna serve me freely and orbot's like yeah of course man i'm spineless literally and figuratively now that's kind of uh just a hand wavy motion i really don't know why zavok would not just put them under his control anyway just to be on the safe side this is still a robot programmed by eggman but maybe it spends too much of his energy even though he's got a chaos emerald on him now i don't know we're gonna move on past it point is orbot is clearly working with rouge the bat who makes her return to the comic she's clearly made her way aboard the face ship and is watching from the rafters zavok at this point takes the rest of the chaos emeralds and hands it off to his commanders sending each of them off to different parts of the world to take command of the zombots his plan is to organize all of them and send them off to do his bidding and once every living thing has been infected neither eggman nor sonic will have anywhere left to run they are just gonna remove any hiding spot those two have they're gonna go this far for their revenge we finally shift our focus back to angel island where knuckles has clearly been caught up with everything that's been going on with the surface below he's not having a good time and it's about to get worse as it turns out that star online has sent eggie and metal and himself to angel island and if you recall everyone's been through a nightmarish mess and so far sonic is the only one of the heroes that has made direct contact with eggy this is the first time the rest of the cast has seen the villain who's responsible for everything going on and amy is pissed but sonic tells her to chill out saying that eggman has had every advantage so why would he come to us without his army or his egg mobile or anything i mean he's got metal sonic there so i mean there's something there and again i don't really know if i like sonic taking the role of everything be it leader tactician everything else i like him being a little more reactionary but this is this interpretation of sonic and again we'll save that analysis for a little later point is he knows there's something way off with what's going on with the zombots and eggy needs to start explaining himself otherwise sonic will infect him himself and quickly says that idiot boy over here brought the deadly six to the face ship and they've taken over everything knuckles asks the obvious question why should we trust them and spo is there to respond he just got reward from rouge who will of course corroborate eggy's story so they all reconvene inside the shuttle and love everything happening in this first panel here we have starline being watched by both espio and knuckles general is facing down with metal which is rad nothing we've ever seen before this is what i'm talking about i love seeing these little bits and pieces of sonic history come together and this sheep girl who we've seen time and time again looks very terrified of sonic who is just sitting right above her and considering she's looked pissed off every time we've seen her prior to this point i'm sure she's gonna be a pain in the ass for our heroes somewhere down the line just calling it right now she hasn't made a peep but these are very expressive pieces of art but back to the topic at hand rouge is playing the spy here giving our heroes information about what's happening aboard the face ship zavik's battle plan things of that nature tails is pissed and this shows just how different these two characters are in terms of their intelligence and their view on science tails found a cure for the metal virus he sorted it out but he's not worried about his own brilliance he's not worried about his own accomplishments all he cares about is saving people and he tells eggy to give us a cure for the metal virus he's not worried about how he stacks up to eggman in terms of intelligence he just sees somebody who has a means to solve this issue where he's fallen short and he wants a cure now and actually amazingly in this tiny panel this is understated but this is very important eggman says that he has not come up with a cure for the metal virus now it could just be because he didn't feel like it but this is something tails has managed to accomplish and he didn't have eggman's notes he had to sort it out all by himself but while i would love to appreciate how much love tails is getting in this comic we do have to focus on the more important problem that was the metal virus as eggman says that his research has found that the metal virus mutates and it becomes unsustainable and basically explains in science jargon that eventually the infected are going to disintegrate they'll take about 200 years but he'll have evacuated to a different world by then so he's not worried about it and this is where silver comes in to confirm this because in his timeline all that was left was ruins metallic plants this is why his future looks the way it does it's because the metal virus will eventually take over every living thing and eventually they will disintegrate that's why nobody was left in his timeline and silver is obviously looking worse for wear if you remember he was which i originally assumed was on his own over at ice paradise but turns out he had a whole crew there a shuttle and everything and well zombots took it down and he couldn't save anybody and now he's feeling a lot of guilt he's worried that his failures here is why his future looks the way it does just love eggy just responds to his like is he always this melodramatic but as you can see we are looking at him through a sniper scope which is then blocked off by a rather adorable forehead as it turns out whisper was pointing her wispon right at the face of eggman wasn't that a lovely call back to fleetway sonic huh yeah as you can imagine whisper is pretty pissed with eggman but cream as always jumps in and asks for the route of non-violence whisper tells her to move and cream tells her i understand why you hate him i really do but we need him whether you like it or not he's a means to stop this entire mess and regardless of how upset she is with him ultimately what matters to her is seeing her mother again and her chows and everybody else and you know i've given her some slack for being a bit too lenient here or there but i gotta give it up for this little girl despite all of her pain she's seen through this as reasonably as possible what matters more than however they're feeling in the moment is saving the people they love and whisper pulls her little mask back and with a dribbly face it's obvious as painful as it is she agrees so it's another touching moment between cream and another one of these characters i love that old vegas there the whole time just talking to eggman he's like you can't kill him i gotta kill him i love it creams was like thank you will stay with you so you won't be lonely i'm not lonely i am enraged we cut back to the rest of the crew there has been a makeshift treadmill for sonic to run on so he doesn't get infected and everyone comes together to make a plan to tackle the deadly six starline suggests that they implement the master emerald as that could potentially neutralize the deadly six and tails says we can't move it without risking the whole island and we certainly can't lure them here it's too much of a risk and of course knuckles also chimes in saying you're not touching it espo comes up with chaos control silver says that shadow was much better at it than he was and it only moves a target over a limited range can't change things and amy suggests well maybe if sonic was transformed into super sonic and sonic responds i don't think so super sonic means the chaos emeralds give me unlimited power but that doesn't mean i can just do anything with it we'll get back to that eggy also points out that all the emeralds have been scattered to the winds because the deadly six are now dotted all over the planet i was waiting for all of you to exhaust your bad ideas it's actually simple we're going to use the warp topaz and he goes back to what starline told him about it yes as dismissive as eggy was of starline again he's a very smart guy and he is always scheming he was paying very close attention to what starline was telling him and he points out that the topaz can cause massive changes with just a little charge and if you pump the power of super sonic through it he could warp the virus away in one fell swoop now i don't exactly know how all of that works together especially since we were just told that super sonic can't just let you do anything and we also know that the virus changes you on a cellular level and i know that super sonics managed to do other things we'll get to it point is that's the battle plan they're going to go with but the next step is figuring out how to track down all the chaos emeralds and bring them back to this point but unfortunately starline does not agree as he's pointed out plenty before the warp topaz is a very dangerous little gem as the only expert on the warp topaz he states that eggie is being excessively reckless and he's proven that to be the case this entire time starline gives us a little bit more information here saying that creating and directing warp portals is difficult and the components of his glove were built after countless hours of careful testing supersonic using the war of topaz recklessly could undo the virus or it could warp space-time so badly that the entire planet collapses here on angel island they have a safe haven they have resources they can put in the work and find a safe responsible way to regain control of the situation which i agree with with storyline but then he ends with we can still win so no he still wants to take over the entire planet with the virus and aggie points out that sonic is on borrowed time it's not gonna be safe forever and he'll take any risk to ensure that the zetty don't use his own genius against him you don't have any better option we're ending this but starline has had enough and says no i will figure out a way to finish what you started and you can thank me later and begins to open a warp portal but as quick as those portals are they are not as quick as metal sonic who rushes up behind starline and grabs his arm god this art is so brutal without showing any actual violence damn eggman snatches the gauntlet off of starline's battered hand i like that little detail it shows he's actually done a lot of experimenting with this stuff damn i never noticed that detail before but yes at this point eggman has had enough of starline and says you're fired and with that metal sends him into the now open portal and it closes behind him damn and tails just confirms with sonic that they're not gonna move on eggy after that altercation starline's a dick we're not gonna worry about and basically the rest of the plane is formed from here with the warp topaz they're going to build a multi-portal generator and with rouge and orbot's counterintelligence they can find the exact locations of all of the zetty from there they're going to split up into teams of two except for espio and retrieve the emeralds but unfortunately their numbers are running a little low so amy has to call in reinforcements and those reinforcements come in the form of the babylon rogues now if you have not read the first annual and you're not super familiar with sonic the hedgehog you might not know who the hell they are so you just kind of have to go forward just accepting that these characters are now here again if you're familiar with the franchise it's not a big deal this is kind of an interesting way to bring them back into the fold as this is technically their very first appearance in the mainline book and amy also points out that i mean they are thieves they'd be perfect for stealing chaos emeralds and i do love that jet is just being a little when he sees sonic sonic the hedgehog you're looking more pathetic than ever the song's like yeah charming you can help us or what and sonic plays into jet's arrogance saying that we need the help of the legendary windmaster which is kinda telling him that i accept that you're better than me with your stupid wind skateboard whatever and that is enough for jett to agree to hell and i do love that amy says i don't worry i won't tell knuckles sonic has a lot of rivals out there and he's exhausted his ego has been taken up beating for a while he's fine with it we then spend a little time with each of the six as we see the reign of destruction between all the different cities they are invading the fat yellow ones demanding more food the one on the moon things just causing chaos that weird emo one is on the back of that stupid owl from lost world and is just enjoying all the misery taking place before him the green one which i guess is named xena i will forget that again it's just having the zombots carry her through the town picking up different accoutrements and stuff of that nature now what's interesting for this one is that the zombots are indeed under their complete control as we see other civilians completely unaffected and completely ignored by the zombots so clearly the six have complete control and for some reason they are still using the threat of the zombot infection on the civilians just shows how cruel and terrible these characters are they could just turn them immediately and just put them under their control or just make them suffer why not and the old one is sending off zombots to do whatever basically the invasion is going very very well and soon they will be taking over the entire world as issue 25 ends on the zombotified silhouettes of all of the casts that we've lost so far as well as like a pig dude is his nose glowing does i know his eyes are is this what's going on there now the last set of heroes and eggman and metal sonic have all converged onto angel island their last safe haven as the world's been consumed by the metal virus and is now under control of the deadly six we kick things off with this episode with a very interesting and rarely seen team up we've got eggman and tails working together on a project as we already know the warp topaz is a very unstable gem starline so far has been the only character that's been able to manage to carefully control the thing but with the combined intelligence of eggy and tails here they've managed to put together a multi-portal generator with this up and running the heroes are going to split up and take on the deadly six all at the same time and capture their chaos emeralds now technically there are more than enough characters here to take on the deadly six with two or maybe even three characters but they aren't without their handicaps sonic for instance is not gonna be able to join them as he has been just run ragged through this entire event and knuckles flat out refuses to join in because this is angel island and he's not gonna leave eggman and metal sonic alone on here the only defense for the master emerald would be a worn out and infected sonic the hedgehog and that's a problem because obviously sonic is a very important aspect for the team especially since he's fought the deadly six before and knuckles is one of the biggest bruisers in the universe of sonic the hedgehog so that's a massive handicap on their behalf still sonic knows his friend's abilities and he knows the abilities of a deadly six so he helps split them up accordingly and while i do love to joke that i don't know the names of the deadly six i am still here to help guide you through these comic books so it is only fair that i tell you who these characters are and why they're gonna be so much fun in these fights thankfully ian flynn also thought the same thing as he uses sonic to explain to the characters and in turn to the reader who these characters are and what their abilities entail sonic starts off saying that tails and amy are going to take on zamon he's a bruiser and well i mean tails has dealt with these guys before and if you've played the video games you already know that tails and amy are a powerhouse set of characters let's be real here even with a chaos emerald that big yellow dude doesn't have a chance against them espio is gonna take on zazz he's the lanky purple one who's basically a berserker think of a kid-friendly carnage silver and whisper i'm gonna take on zor the emo flavor his thinking is they have abilities that can let them attack from a distance and that's the best way to take on this guy and that unfortunately leaves the most confusing pair up i've seen so far because general is going to be taking on xena alone xena is the green girl of the deadly six and if you recall the deadliest are here to begin with because they can control machines and robots so sonic sending out general to take her on himself is a very confusing move to say the least whisper is used to working by herself and she should be able to take on even a chaos emerald fuel emo kid that shouldn't be an issue and silver or for god's sakes he's about as op as it gets in this universe but whatever it's for story purposes and it's one hell of an intense fight so we'll deal with that in a second the last setup here is actually gonna be between master zick the tiny old band guy and the babylon rogues now again three on one might not be the most fair in terms of a setup here especially when you have one robot that's supposed to take on one of these guys but i do think it makes sense to have jet and his crew work together it's not like they're used to working with any of these other characters so might as well keep them together and coordinated as a team especially against zik who is a very crafty dude but before they all go off to take on their particular flavor of zetti we have amy and rouge discussing things while zavic doesn't know where the heroes are he isn't an idiot and he's using all the resources at his disposal on the spaceship to figure out where eggman is including getting a detailed list of all the places he's had faces before both on and off world and this is actually another little bit of world building here because he sees the name angel island listed and he has no idea what that place is which is kind of cool because again we've never had these characters really and truly interact in the games so this is the first time the zetty really interact with a lot of these iconic elements of the sonic universe and that's really cool how can it is i don't know but it's nice to see this actually take place here in the comic book now orbot and cubot do their best to distract him in the meantime but he is at least aware of it on the list of places where eggman's had bases before so it is really only a matter of time before he makes his way over there and switching our focus over to knuckles and espio and it really is only two panels but this is still a really cool moment for me as someone who really loved knuckles chaotix and despite the problems i do have with the archie book and the way penders wrote those particular characters i still always felt like knuckles and the rest of the chaotic should have more of a brotherhood considering the entire knuckles chaotix video game you know but unfortunately in the last couple decades they really haven't had a whole lot of interaction with each other but here in two panels we get knuckles and espo chatting with each other and we do get a little more to knuckles as a character we already know that he's the guardian of angel island and the master emerald and he's very very protective of both of those things but he also has a huge heart as we see them walking through the campsite of the survivors from the surface below and sbo is worried about what's gonna happen to them if they fail and knuckles reassures them that regardless of whatever else happens if worse comes to worse he's gonna watch over these people and again this is more characterization than knuckles has gotten the last decade or so in the video games and despite whatever else you want to say this is showing growth of his character because the knuckles prior to meaning sonic and all of his friends would probably never allow anything like this and yeah it kind of sucks that we finally get knuckles in this storyline and the first thing he does is say nope i'm not gonna do anything this quiet little moment does mean a lot for me as a long time knuckles fan but i've gone on about it for far too long we've got a lot left to cover the last interaction here is probably the most memorable for a lot of people who read through this story as we see eggman tweaking the portal generator and we see metal sonic standing at attention next to sonic on a treadmill and this is an interaction we don't really get anywhere besides comic books this is sonic worn down and just he's had it you know he's done sassing he's beyond that point and this gives you insight to how he views metal sonic and other robots he says the metal in a way eggman really didn't get a chance to stay reformed thanks to starline but you you had a chance and you just had to go back to him didn't you you couldn't be like general or omega you had to be a one note jerk and see if you go back to when sonic let metal run free i still think that was a pretty stupid move and i don't know if that's really in line with what i know him to be as a character but if you go back to the ova or if you go back to all this other satellite media and again you use the references of these other robots that can think for themselves and make their own decisions you can see that sonic sees metal as his own person and holds him accountable for his actions even if he is a robot programmed to serve eggman and speaking of he jumps into this and this is where he just starts talking crap to sonic reminding him that yeah he's a robot and even if you neutralize the hardware his software still demands battle and conquest if he was made safe then his sole desire would to be made dangerous and while i do think it is important to talk about who's at fault for what and the larger moral implications of this entire event we do know that this is at the end of the day a licensed comic book and they can't really do too much different from the status quo it will always have to go back to that these comics can't make drastic changes for the canon even if this isn't part of the game canon still they do take the time to discuss these as probably as deeply as they can with eggman reminding sonic that whether you like it or not you're still kind of responsible for all of this happening and sonic retorts like look man i didn't dump all this goo all over the world that's on you and iggy responds sure that is the case but thanks to you i was able to get restored metal was able to get restored and even putting that aside considering that you're fighting off the infection how much of it has mutated from all those failed attempts to run it off and how much of that mutation has spread from him hitting other zombots how many miles of infected grass did he cross or pelt help spread and sonic is sonic we've already dealt with that character arc with tangles sonic is not gonna let eggman get in his head and aggie's like look man even if we clear all of this up i've still infected you with that germ of doubt and even if you shake off the metal virus you will not be able to shake that off and again it goes to show you the relationship between these two characters yeah eggman is used to losing he's used to having sonic clean up his mess and getting things back to order but considering how far things have gotten sonic can't fix things without eggman and addressing sonic's actions and decisions as indirectly as they may be still affected the world in some way and leaving sonic with that little shred of doubt that hit to his confidence that's enough for eggman even that little thing is a victory for him and i guess he has to take what he can get so whatever it's a very interesting back and forth between these long time rivals but then we cut over to the face ship and i already told you about zavok and discovering angel island and orbot and cubot trying to throw him off base distract him and all this other stuff but qb tells zavic that the metal virus is making an alert thingy something's going on and it sends zavok running and this is like what is that drawing it's it's just so goofy i don't know whatever the point is to get zavic out of the room and rouge enters two robots ask when rouge plans to grab the emeralds away from zappos and she will deal with that within her own time what's more important is that orbot and cubot send the coordinates of the rest of the six to amy's team it's now or never they have to attack right now and they all have to attack together they can't give them the chance to group up and use the emeralds to their full capacity and that's exactly what they do they open up the portals sonic wishes them luck and the teams head off to face off with their opponents tails and amy espio silver and whisper the babylon rogues i just realized this franchise has both the word rouge and rogues i'll always get those mixed up oh my god that's so confusing anyway we have the sweet moment between general and cream who gives her a hug and says that he will be back soon and cream says that this isn't goodbye because i'm going to and she breaks free from the hug and leaps into the portal with general following behind her whatever the plan was it's out the window as cream just lands right in front of xena just hey you're you're being mean you give me that gem right now i'm gonna beat your ass and then immediately xena takes control of jeff alright so that's not going well and it's not going well for the rest of the team as we switch over to tails and amy and they just walk right up to zamom and just try to trick him he is dumb as a prick they basically say hey zavox sent us they said we're gonna need that chaos emerald and zombie basically says no man i'm gonna eat you or squash you i don't know something like that stupid potato head we switch over to espio who logically makes himself invisible and then attaches himself to that weird moon mech but unfortunately he's smelled out by the zetty who just grabs him by the arm and chucks him into a swarm of zombots and over in orchardville we have silver and whisper hiding out figuring out a plan of action against emo boy and the battle plan is silver's basically gonna just attack directly whisper's gonna cover him he approaches saying that hey i'm from a ruined future thanks to you so give me that emerald anima boy is like uh nope and well just waves off silver's psychic abilities rut ro and then we switch on over to winterberg where we have zik commanding different squads of zombots he's gonna spread the infection as quickly and effectively as possible but just then the babylon rogues arrive and immediately get knocked off of their extreme gear and jets specifically is taken over by master six which is just who's just airboarding now so yeah he's basically clipped these birds wings and they drop into the center of a zombot horde he sends the two extreme gear back to their respective owners and just knocks them on their ass but jett leaps up and knocks zick off his board and takes it back and jet of course brags but zick reminds him well hey man that's not gonna save your friends so yeah things aren't looking super great for our teams but we're not gonna stop here let's just keep on rolling through and see how these particular fights play out starting with tails and amy who are on the run from zamom who's just waving his arms around but again remember this is tails and amy they've been in more than a couple of scuffles as amy turns around and just takes a hammer to his fat but even with both of them attacking he's not going down so tails is gonna have to get a little clever here and it's not gonna take much this guy is an idiot he basically just tells him hey i dropped my lunch over there why don't you go get it it sends them running off like with a character this stupid you have to wonder how effective he actually can be as a team member but i guess he shows his worth when he's hungry and pissed that he's not getting food as he sends zombots after our heroes tails and amy head up to get higher ground zamom starts rumbling and chasing behind them and just starts bringing buildings down to get them back on his level he chases them underground and they head on over to a gate tails tells amy to wait for her command and at the right time she smashes a wheel with her hammer and it sends the gate crashing down onto zama which good thing he's stretchy because man that that does not look fun yeah they had to get real creative and find something real heavy to get this guy to stay still especially with a chaos emerald powering him and tails grabs his chaos emerald leaving him to the zombot and um i don't know why they're coming up on him now or any of these characters i thought that they could control robots i don't i don't know dramatic effect i guess back over at sunset city we see xena just sitting in cackling as she sends general off to take care of cream and cream once again pleads to general reminding him that he wanted her to be safe and the general she knows is too tough to be pushed around you have a kind heart so yes it's cheesy it's corny but you know general's a sucker for it and he sends his fists into the side of his head and this is interesting because i don't think we've ever had any of the robot abilities of the deadly 6 ever explained in the game and this tells us that there's got to be an electromagnetic signal that they can send out to take control of machines that's why general smashed the side of his head he destroyed his wireless receiver and in turn freeing himself from the control of xena who is now irritated that she's got to get up and actually get her hands dirty and thanks to the power of the chaos emerald she's not completely without extra abilities as she takes direct control of general's hands and feet swinging him around like a puppet he can't do anything about it and general just tells cream hey i can't do anything about this you need to get out of the way and cream i've seen this in a minute she revs up into a spin dash and rockets off into xena directly she's a smart kid she understands to take out the puppet master not the puppet and i guess she's smashing like the energy tether between her and she's stomping it with her foot and she's just mad as hell she hates fighting and she hates seeing her friends hurt and scared she hates how mean xena is and she just whips general around knocking cream to the ground and sending him off into a pile of zombots to be torn apart she then turns her attention back to cream and just straight up kicks her in the gut and holds her up by the ear and she just talks she holds her arm behind her back while holding her up by the ears and presents her to the zombots i mean look we're gonna take a look at the other fights but i'm telling you right now this is the most brutal of all of them now in the comic itself this is where we cut to amy and tails but since we already explained how that fight went we're just gonna keep going with cream and xena but it's important to note that a little time has passed here as she says her arm is starting to cramp this has been cathartic but we're done here just then general frees himself from the zombot as she can no longer focus her control over him and he rockets to her grabs her by the hair and this straight up loki's her man like just sensors crashing into the ground like like over his head into the ground he takes a hold of cream and begins to make his escape but xena's not done with them as she once again takes control of his arms and legs but again it is important to note that these are physical energy beams because general begins to fly around xena and ties her up with her own energy telling cream to grab the emerald which she does which of course frees general from the energy beams i wonder if that's a reference to knuckles chaotic i don't know anyway he pulls up right behind xena and says you hurt cream and uh it's moments like this why you understand why sonic will see robots as their own beings because general is pissed and he once again grabs xena by the hair flips around and sends her flying into a pile of zombots as they grab her from all directions and infect her while she screams general goes to console an exhausted cream and this is why it's important to point out that there was a little time that had passed because um xena said that we're done here and from the reader's perspective it could mean that she's gonna hold her up to the zombots get her infected and then we're gonna be finished but she meant that literally because as it turns out she was already exposed to the zombus as she says to general i've got sick she holds out the emerald to the robot saying that i don't want to make the other sick so you're gonna have to go back on your own and she just has his most heartbroken face that even a robot is gonna feel something looking at that face you know what i mean she covers her eyes and says that she'll be brave it's just like watching a scary movie she'll be fine a portal opens up and general just chucks the emerald in that's the most important thing to get back to the rest of the group he then picks cream up and flies her over sunset city just in case this is the last thing she'll ever see and tells her i will stay with you until you are well and look i'm gonna be honest with you guys i uh the rest of the fights do not hit like that one does cream's been an mvp through this entire arc this is the first time we've seen her in this cannon she's lost her mom she's lost her child she's been through a lot and she flat out face a chaos powered zetty basically on her own she is hardcore and this has been one hell of an arc for her and man it is ian you just had to throw one more heartbreaking moment before the end of all this didn't you crying out loud man i can't take this now let's just let's just get to the rest of them like look you know silver and whisper are bad asses this emo kid doesn't stand a chance and silver just fights him head on and unfortunately emo boy is holding his own while talking trash to him and this is an interesting setup because remember this depiction of silver is an overwhelmingly positive got and he's facing off a guy who revels in misery but fight plays out exactly like you'd expect whisper has her wisps set up the different diamonds and they shoot off and just knock the emerald off of this annoying hot topic reject silver takes a hold of it and just crushes his owl bot and they head on back to angel island leaving the emo boy to the zombots and again i don't understand why they're not responding to him i mean even without the emeralds maybe i missed a throwaway line i don't know again this is more for dramatic effect but we'll get to it we then turn our attention back to riverside with espio we got zazz basically just blasting everything apart trying to hit this dude and just reveling in all the chaos but espio keeps a cool head and throws some ninja crap around gets a pot to a roof and while the purple zetty is busy just destroying this house espio just steals up behind him and just beats his ass down i mean i'm talking like purple on purple violence here man and zazz says that's not bad but zavic's done way worse again flat out stating that zavok straight up beats his team and zazz is like ready for round two and espio is like no need i've already won and then just whooshes off daz calls him a coward but then he looks down and sees that the chaos emerald has been replaced by a note saying that justice is served signed the chaotix detective agency given a little symbol for each of the three members espo hops back into the war portal saying that while he was the only one here in body you were here in spirit and it shows a reflection of his two missing comrades and finally we return our attention to jet and zip we have wave and storm holding off the zombots best they can with zik talk and crap to jet's leadership abilities again we're going with some great setups between all of these characters here ziggs says you don't sacrifice your own unless you gain the advantage all he needs to do is utter a single command and jet will have lost everything he asks jet to humor an old man and just begged for mercy it's been so long since he's crushed an enemy under his own heel what a dirty old boy my goodness and jet man he says we're the babylon rogues we don't beg we don't give up and we don't lose and just blast the crap out of master zick sends a rocketing over the storm [Laughter] dude just his entire fist takes up his entire body he just jacks his entire body and wave just grabs the green emerald off of his body as he's rocketing into a pile of zombots wave tells jett to take the emerald and go she's lost her extreme gear storms has been smashed the bits he's the only one with a working one so take it and go and jet instead attaches the green emerald to his green board and sends it flying back in to the portal and back to angel island standing with his crew he says didn't you hear me say it to the old man we're the babylon rogues and we don't lose that means all of us sonic will get the emerald and do his hero thing until then let's show these zombots a real challenge and look i gotta tell you i've never been a big fan of the babylon rogues or the deadly six part of that's because i've not played through all the writers games i heard the stories are a lot of fun so i'm excited to do that eventually but my point is i've not given these characters a lot of attention myself but just reading through these stories and these particular face-offs it's just been a wild ride and when you see these characters in such a dire predicament predicaments put together by the deadly six of all characters and we get to see jet really show what he's worth i just man taking some of the most mock characters characters that have literally never interacted before part of completely different generations of games in this franchise and just merging them together so well and telling such exciting stories and fights with them is man bravo this is a lot of fun but yes everyone has been on some level or another successful in retrieving the chaos emeralds and we return our attention to angel island as everybody is returning around the same time as per the plan and let's pay special attention to the ones that don't have their teams returning i like this little bit of art here showing metal sonic grabbing the extreme gear i mean it's really a nothing thing but i do like that they pay enough attention to know that an extreme gear would be rocketing off and metal songs really the only one that could retrieve it quickly i do love that little bit of art with him he looks so interested like later dad i'm gonna go be a pro skater sonic in turn catches the red emerald and the realization hits them that cream is still back there with the zombots and sonic tells him to focus up generals with her she'll be all right because we're gonna make things right silver looks on for lorne says that with only two more emeralds he can become super sonic and save us all but sonic says he's been thinking about that in the future everything had been infected and sonic reasons that all this must have happened already but there's something different now than what happened then the difference is silver is with them and they're gonna have to rely on that one difference to pull this off and sonic says he's going to need silver's help to do this but whatever they're planning on doing they better do it fast because as it turns out zavic has found angel island and is preparing the face ship to attack [Music] okay so the face ship is now face to face with angel island zavok has found our heroes we got tails freaking out and hey crazy yeah obviously rouge we're out of time whatever you plan on doing do it and on the ground level behind the faceship we see all of our characters that we've lost during this saga roaming up on to the island falling behind zavic's ship so even from there he's got total command of this zombot army and he's got them converging on angel island and let's take a moment to once again appreciate the fact that zavik one of the most joked about characters in the sonic franchise is just full-on terrifying right now and man he's gonna go big and go hard quite literally get ahead of myself i love this moment here where we see zavic overlooking angel island you gotta remember he comes from lost hex this is the first time he's seen this landmass and he shows a bit of respect for it he says it looks smaller than lost hex but it's no less beautiful and he cannot wait to bathe it in the metal virus but something's gone awry with the ship he turns around and sees rouge just admiring the grey chaos emerald she says goodness does this one emerald power this whole ship she says that she wanted to pull this off a little bit more elegantly but you do what you got to do and says tuck and roll boys and we see orbot and cubot take the shape of an orb and a cube as they hop on off the faceship the original plan was to grab both the chaos emeralds but since that's not currently an option the next best bet is just take down the entire face ship and that's exactly what rouge does with one fell swoop it goes crashing into the earth below and our heroes look on we have eggman who's just lamenting the fact that he's lost his best ship to date at least that's what he says and again there's been a lot of zombots surrounding that spot right there right below them we have sonic just going ugh wow the zombots can survive something like that rouge touches base with the rest of the team sonic asking you knew the zombots could survive that right and rouge yeah i actually believe her when she says that she did her research you're welcome by the way now the plan from here is to just go through the rubble and pick up the last chaos emerald from zavic once you know the fires and everything calmed down unfortunately as eggy points out that's not going to be an option as we see zavic pull himself from the wreckage and uses his chaos emerald just go kaiju size on us here that's right kids we got fury zavic now and he's now at eye level with angel island just standing up and he just shoots fire at the island itself just rocking the entire thing and knuckles and knuckles like did you just spit on my island now everybody else has done their part it's time for sonic to get to work they're out of options he hands off the emerald to silver who holds up the other six and he gets his friends in gear telling tales and rouge that he needs air support and tells silver to tag along but before they can do anything else zavok picks up a handful of zombots and just chucks them at angel island now again things have been a little inconsistent here because he just full-on grabbed zombots without showing any kind of infection but i think that goes to show us subtly that the emeralds and their energy aren't affected by this plague and that will be very important very soon but right now zavic is just lobbing zombots onto angel island the last place for sonic and his team to recoup and recover is gone and the heroes are now faced off against their turned zombified friends so yeah that's where issue 28 ends that's the part i left off from last time we're jumping straight into 29 and they start off basically just telling us what we just saw there give us a little clarification turns out the chaos emerald has amplified zavik's electromagnetic powers so that helps him navigate the zombot chucks straight to sonic and his team and they point out that there's literally nowhere else to run sonic's zombot infection is no longer being pushed back by his speed this is do or die knuckles is frustrated telling sonic that he always brings trouble to his island masonic as exhausted as he is tries to reassure him saying yeah things look bleak but don't worry i got a plan trust me and this i just this just goes to show how much these two have grown as friends over the years i go back to sonic 3 and knuckles where knuckles just wanted to kill this guy and now like this is like knuckles best friend and as furious as he is for sonic bringing another problem to his island he does trust him because the first thing he does is knock zombot shadow right in the face and he tells sonic you better do what you gotta do or else i'm gonna haunt you and yes this is a desperate moment and yes this is knuckles doing whatever he can to protect his home and the master emerald and the refugees this shows you how much trust this guy has in sonic even if he goes down he trusts sonic to take care of his home yet again he trusts sonic to take care of this world and he tells him they're gonna hold off these zombots as best as they can so get out there and save the day already and sonic wastes no time as him and silver come rushing off and as he zips by metal he tells him yo dude we're gonna need you to come along and eggy gives him the go-ahead saying that this is the only way to save him activate your defensive measures and just do what sonic says and we have sonic being held up by metal sonic as him and metal and silver go leaping off of angel island to face off against giant zavok and even at that size he has his eyes dead set on the hedgehog and he's just talking the whole time this is your last show of resistance this is all you can do you may have destroyed by means of creating more metal virus but i still command the zombots and with them i will infect everything i will see your world grow sick and perish and just lunges zombots at the trio and we got metal sonic dipping and diving he is really all that's keeping sonic alive at this point he tells metal to head straight for the chaos emerald that is all that matters and zavok is just blasting everything left and right shoots right at metal and sonic and nettle puts up his dark shield being oh my god yes yeah even with chaos emerald powers his stupid fireballs got nothing on that shield sonic says boy i'm glad me and tales didn't deactivate you when we had the chance which we'll get to it zavic reaches for the shielded hedgehogs but is blocked off by silver's psychokinesis sonic thanks him for the assist but reminds him to keep a hold of the six emeralds and silver tells him you focus on the one in zavik's chest sonic then commands metal get him in close but unfortunately zavic just gusts a bunch of wind at them and sends him fine to the earth below sonic picks himself amongst the rubble it's actually with orbot and cubot good to see they survive their fall and orbee just tells him hey man you're not looking good you probably should start running and sonic tells him and again the reader unfortunately that doesn't seem to be working anymore and orbot says no you you don't get me man i don't mean for yourself i mean run away from them as the zombots who were caught in that rubble begin to crawl up out of the ground zombies man i love that imagery and sonic is just he is worn down dude he is exhausted there's not much left he can do and he says if i could just get enough speed i can run up to the emerald but yeah man he's not looking good and his friends aren't looking good either we got tails trying to shake off the two chow we got knuckles who's getting more and more infected fighting off zombot shadow we got whisper crying her gun shaking in her hand pointing it directly at the zombified tangle we got espio dodging the other two of the detective agency and we have eggman crawling away in fear from a zombified big the cat but he's saved at the last second by amy who takes a hammer to big's chest and she says oh man that didn't do anything and eggman the piece of garbage he is boots amy into big getting her infected saying on the contrary you actually slowed him down from me and he takes off towards their own shuttle to save himself but then he slips on the zombot froggy [Laughter] who leaps up into the air and that is what takes eggman out that silly little frog and knuckles our boy goes down like a champ fighting kill the lass against zombot shadow just pummeling him into his precious island below but unfortunately that can only go for so long as knuckles is turned and we see tails in everybody's favor position holding his head in the fetal position begging for sonic's help but unlike sonic forces this is actually earned tails has been fighting to the last this entire time and we see that the chow have grabbed onto his tails he is infected he is being turned there is nothing left for him to do all that's left is in the hands of sonic and i'm sorry i know you guys get upset when you see tails cowering and in fear but he's still a kid and eventually that bravery is going to wane and at least we can justify this unlike being a coward in front of chaos zero out of nowhere like a punk but yes this is here to show us that things are not going good for our heroes everybody's been infected and sonic out of energy looks like he is about to go down as well as he is swarmed by zombots but then is saved by metal sonic are you kidding yes oh my god dude this team up holy cow metal comes in saves the day and gets sonic back up into the fight zavic again turns his attention to sonic and reminds him machines are his to control and sends metal flying sonic drops onto zavok himself and blasts his way over to the chaos emerald cutting it loose and throwing it into the air to silver as his last bit of consciousness begins to fade as the metal virus finally takes over his body but in that last sliver all seven chaos emeralds are combined not only do we get super sonic we get super silver boosh and after all of this time we see the metal virus once and for all flake away off of sonic's body he is finally cured and now it's time to save the world but before he does zama comes in with the fists and with the last of my strength i will crush you but super sonic is having none of it and with half a panel just beats his abs it just takes him down half of a page that is it for zavic scott is dead get your nick junior designed ass out of here you bowser wanna be piece of garbage you're out and silver says i was a little anti-climatic but sonic points out yo talk we don't have time they got the chaos emeralds and the warp topaz is not reacting great to all of this energy so they gotta do what they gotta do and with silver's now amped up abilities the warp topaz and the purifying energy of the chaos emeralds they begin to cure the world and one by one we see our characters celebrate and reunite tears of joy streaming down their faces whisper finally embracing her best friend again team chaotix finally together chanting along their dope ass theme song froggy sitting on top of an embarrassed eggman knuckles and shadow very confused to see each other pissed off at roosh who just who has not been helping look she took down the faceship all right like if she's going to go down she's going to hang out with the master i love her she's the best we even see scruffy return to normal we see vanilla back in action and we see cream reunited with her mother because general's been with her this entire time and brought her back the moment it was safe i just man happy endings all around but we then turn our attention back to sonic and silver they've been flying around the world absorbing all of the metal virus and sonic is going to send it into the sun through the warp portal where it can never do damage to anyone ever again but the warp topaz is becoming unstable so they gotta kick it into high gear and we do just that and as silver finally confirms that the metal virus is once and for all destroyed the warp topaz has hit its breaking point and lets off a blinding explosion in the sky and sends silver rocketing back down to angel island tails knuckles and amy go to his location asking if he's okay asking what happened and he confirms that the metal virus has been removed it has been destroyed the nightmare is finally over but unfortunately sonic tried to ditch the warp topaz into the super warp portal but ended up going along with it so yes we are finally free of a metal virus but it looks like it's come at a hefty cost but how hefty is it going to be i mean this book's titled song that joey and we've seen this particular thing happen a couple times so issue 30 picks up right where 29 ended with super sonic getting himself yeted along with the warped topaz into well somewhere we don't know and this is something i like about comics usually once the story ends in other media they'll do a quick little something and then roll credits but since comics have to keep going month after month sometimes you just gotta sit in it the story has hit its climax but the camera's got to keep rolling and now you get to watch all the exhaustive cleanup and that's the point of these next few issues it's here to clear off the play mat and get things nice and organized so the next set of stories can take place and also in this case so evan stanley who takes on the role as head writer going forward doesn't have to deal with a lot of loose ends but not everything is tied up quite so neatly and in certain cases we will see characters used to tease different stories that ian flynn will work on down the road tails amy and knuckles are back to normal but obviously concerned for their blue buddy and only knuckles is feigning any kind of confidence sure that sonic will come floating down any minute now and we will see that running gag as his confidence starts to waver as this issue carries forward now all three of them are confident in sonic's ability to recover and return but all of them are worried nonetheless they're practically family after all eggman on the other hand has no doubt in his mind that sonic will make his return he has known sonic longer than any of his friends have and he knows it's only a matter of time before the rodent returns to ruin his fun so while all of sonic's idiot friends are busy looking skyward for any sign of the sparkle hog he makes his move and rushes off towards the resistance shuttle to make his escape and plot his next attack while the little boy blue is m.i.a he still has to get it back up and running but thankfully he was playing 4d chess while everyone else was trying to save the world and only use non-essential components while they were creating the multi-war portal to you know help stop the metal virus and while the heroes are spacing on the threat of eggman they're also spacing on zavok and the rest of the deadly six but unlike aegie big red isn't the type to slink away if he has any fight left in him then that's exactly what he'll do battered and beaten he makes his presence known and cream basically speaks for the entirety of the sonic fandom when she tells him to get lost already but it should come to no surprise as sonic fans that zavic tells her flatly no and raises his hand to attack the little rabbit but she quickly reminds him who is going to win a popularity contest in this fandom and six heard ciao after the bowser faker and anyone who's played sonic advance 2 will tell you that you do not want to be on the bad side of cheese the child but he's not alone in his attack as we have the chaotix and silver jump in as well despite whatever you may think of zavic after everything he's endured he's holding his own pretty well granted nobody in this fight is in tip-top shape at the moment but still gotta give it up for the gumption here thankfully this story doesn't have to continue to keep its focus on zavok for too long as he's finally held in place by silver's psychic abilities but is taking everything silver has to keep him in check i also love that we have shadow just not partaking at all he just walks by all this nonsense he didn't like lost world he ain't bothering with this so yes xavic is captured for the time being and might as well let you know now i'm not gonna waste a lot of time going over every member of the deadly six long and short of it they're still on the loose in the world below and flynn will handle that in a different story arc as far as we're concerned their participation in the metal virus story is done we also get this quick scene between knuckles and rouge by the master emerald nothing major but it's always fun to see them play batman and catwoman or well i guess more batwoman and echidna man she scolds her for not watching eggman as they just discovered that he escaped and tells her to get off his emerald rouge basically tells him to chill and rustles his jimmies as she takes off which ah it's always fun to see and leaves knuckles to stare up at the sky waiting for his friend to pop back any minute now we then shift our focus over to general who has been trying to track down the source of an eggness signal which happens to be coming from orbot and cubot who alert their boss that they've been spotted eggman who almost has the shuttle up and running commands metal sonic to retrieve the duo and metal decides to do this by shoving his hand through the back of general [Laughter] wow basically he's using the robot like a drink carrier i mean i get it it's very efficient you get three robots instead of two and you're only using one hand to do it how convenient yeah this is very brutal it's one of those unwritten rules in kids media you can't show extreme violence against any of the fleshy friends but robots well anything goes with robots they're just metal and circuitry after all no way this will be scarring imagery for children this attack as you would expect sets off the rest of the cast whisper fires off a shot metal deflects it but in turn loses his grip on general so metal returns the original mission and just snatches the shapebots midair and rendezvous with the shuttle silver has his hands full containing zavok and nobody else is quick enough to cover the distance between themselves and eggy except for shadow and before silver can even ask for assistance shadow is rushing straight towards the shuttle but just as he's about to catch up he's intercepted by metal sonic and this goes to show why eggman keeps this robot around as he not only holds his own against shadow but technically wins a fight against him this just isn't your arc is it shadow still this is a lot of fun to see these two square off we don't get it too often and a couple of these panels definitely give me some sonic ova vibes but yeah metal's goal isn't to destroy shadow it's simply to delay him so eggman can escape so he sends out a shockwave that temporarily buries shadow under a bunch of pine trees and while shadow gets himself loose from that mess that gives metal and eggman enough time to make their escape with omega's head in tow oh dear and while they touch upon it later let's just get it out of the way now dr starline who if you remember was unceremoniously kicked into his own warp portal and out of the story we get a quick page showing that he clearly still adores eggman but believes that iggy can only truly succeed with the help of starline and his focus we see him hanging out in an eggman warehouse surrounded by egg ponds so maybe they still see him as an ally i don't know we don't get that explored until the bad guys mini-series the point of this page is just to let you know that the platypus is still around and still plotting but like the deadly six we are done with him for now and let's keep wrapping things up they show this off a little bit later once all the craziness of angel island is sorted out but silver finally returns to his home in the future and once again they don't show how he time travels but oh well and if you recall way back when he first showed up in issue eight silver was around in the present during sonic forces and while ian did his best to explain why silver was there at all in that prequel comic the game itself never really bothered to explain well anything but the comic uses that opportunity to do something interesting with the trunks wannabe once silva returned to his timeline after the war his world was empty and all the plant life had turned to metal something was off about his future so he once again returned to sonic's time to figure out what happened as we discovered it was the world overrun by the virus but now we bookend silver's story by confirming with the sonic cd reference that they have indeed saved the world as we see for the very first time in any sonic media what silver's future actually looks like when it's not in the middle of an apocalypse they keep it vague we don't see anyone just a city skyline and you can tell it's the future because there are holograms dotted around the skyscrapers it's not a really big deal but it's nice that it's here and then we shift our focus over to a character who has not once appeared during the metal virus and that is blaze the cat as long time sonic fans know she is actually a princess in a different dimension so she's not always present in sonic's universe and that's that's its own thing but again we're seeing something we've never seen before in sonic media and that is her palace in the soul dimension and i should note while earlier archie could get away with pretty much whatever they wanted all of this stuff now needs to be approved by sega so this is as close to canon as these locations are gonna get at least until sonic team changes their minds on a whim but hey if they ever bring in silver's future or blaze's palace well that's a good problem as far as i'm concerned but we cannot keep all of our attention on the pretty architecture as a meteor crashes onto the palace courtyard blaze ever the dutiful princess yes i said princess despite not ever seeing a king or queen anywhere she heads on over to investigate only to discover that this isn't a meteor it's sonic the hedgehog thankfully he did not warp along with the metal virus into the sun but he has instead landed himself into the soul dimension ruining blaze's lawn in the process and while we did jump around a little bit that's basically where issue 30 ends and we're going to cover the next couple i'm going to pick up the pace a little bit because the point of all this was just again to get the characters back into a default position to provide closure or provide teasers for upcoming stories and they continue to do just that as we transition from the immediate aftermath on angel island to the restoration efforts going forward as you can imagine the metal virus has left quite the impact on the world of sonic starting with amy who hands off the leadership position of the restoration effort over to jewel the beatle who has thoroughly established herself with her organization skills and this serves two purposes one this will free up amy to go on future adventures as crunching numbers and organizing release efforts is tedious strenuous work and it doesn't make for great reading so we can't stick amy behind a desk for too long she needs to be front and center with the rest of the main cast and two this is gonna give jewel a sense of purpose in the wider world of the comic universe so far she hasn't had much to do outside of run a museum in a tiny town and play sidekick to tangle but now that she's on the world stage with sonic's crew it's time for her to step up her role as well jewel is not someone who's ever going to get a great deal of attention in these stories she does play a supporting role but every time we check in with her we're going to see a bit of growth in her character and literally the world itself this is a nice way to get one of the core game characters back into default position while not dropping everything that's been built up with the resistance turning into the restoration so on and so forth you know the games are never gonna bother explaining why knuckles became a general or what happened with the resistance once some war was over none of that stuff that's why idw sonic is going to hopefully make a great companion piece to the series may or may not be technically canon but it's never going to get in the way of the canon of the games hopefully anyway we've had zero mainline games release since forces came out and this book was based off of the aftermath of that game but back on track point is the restoration effort is now needed more than ever as there are a lot of missing folks since the metal virus has been destroyed and the usually quiet chaotix detective agency is quite busy with missing persons cases unfortunately they're not super organized they can't keep up with all of these work requests especially when it's just these three boys trying to take care of everything thankfully cream the chows general and vanilla all come in to relieve the pressure as vanilla goes all boss mama as soon as she walks in the door as she has general take in the missing person's database the child organized all the paperwork and putting herself and cream onto the phones leaving the chaotix free to go out there and help people out all while making vector quite hungry for rabbit lovely not a sonic x there lola bunny wished she had this kind of boss lady power go get em mama yes it is indeed rabbit season but it's not the only time adam's ark quenches some thirsty fans we'll have a couple more instances a little bit later we now have to turn our attention to a set of characters we have not seen since the very start of the saga rough and tumble who while cured from the metal virus have been trapped at the bottom of a mine this entire time that is until tangle drops her tail down to rescue the duo leaving the poor tailless tumble a little jealous and heartbroken but as soon as they're rescued they promise to go back to their rotten ways and the duo runoff only to get themselves lost and spoilers they're going to be in jail very soon but another important point of this scene is showing how tails is handling the loss of sonic as tangle asks him how he's doing directly and he reassures her that he's doing just fine sonic's beaten the odds more than a few times and at this point tails know he's going to return and in the meantime sonic is going to be counting on him to keep the peace this just like way back in issue 2 feels like the comic addressing how poorly tails was handled in sonic forces sonic would not keep tails around on adventures if he had to constantly save him or keep him out of trouble tails is there because he can do what few others can he can keep up with sonic and the two of them have grown a lot together tails is more than capable on his own and sonic himself has grown to rely on him and they display all of that within a few panels good on them and tango points out that sonic probably wouldn't want them sitting around worrying and moping either he'd want them to celebrate so they plan to do just that and start sending out invites and that leaves rouge to deliver shadow's invitation and to noah's surprise he declines but the scene is here to address how shadow was handled during his brief time during the metal virus saga realizing that he goofed up misinterpreting sonic warning him to run as cowardice instead of advice to maintain control of the virus he thinks to himself that it's unacceptable form of the ultimate life form and i think most everybody agrees i know this particular scene sits super well with me it does feel a little jarring and i don't think shadow was completely in the wrong with everything that sonic was talking about back then but it's nice to know that they are listening and the nice thing about this comic book it's a continuing storyline this isn't the only canon you're gonna find shadow the hedgehog and this certainly isn't where his story ends at least the writers understand that fans are frustrated with his interpretation and they're doing their best to let you know they are aware and i do think rouge plays something as an audience surrogate because she seems exhausted and somewhat irritated every time she interacts with shadow here going forward but after shadow tells her that he owes sonic but he's gone now she gives him a quick smile i think she knows that deep down the shadow that we know and love is still there just you know critique where you have to and be patient the long and short of it this is not his story and i'm not gonna be reading through any more essays in the comments about this guy i get it you don't like how he was interpreted whatever it's time to party despite all the work left to do despite sonic still being missing they all have accomplished quite a lot and they've earned a celebration we get a well-deserved splash page of pure joy something we have not seen for quite a long time and while vector's proportions look a little off while he's dancing this is a damn sight better than the last time we saw him cut loose at a party and like i said earlier adam's art further fuels this thirsty fan base with a cute little back and forth between tangle and whisper the wolf is carefully keeping an eye on the babylon rogues who spoilers attempt to steal jewelry but it's not there thanks to rouge i'm not gonna waste my time with that it's their point is they don't see themselves as heroes and they're not gonna be interacting with the rest of the cast but they were still invited all the same because they did help save the world and i do think it's precious that they showed up at all and while this is a kids comic they can't show you anybody drinking but the rosy cheeks of tango tell a different story no way she's not a party girl she is sloshed and with an arm around whisper which gets her wagging her adorable little tail tangle tells the pup to chill out and have some fun but unfortunately before they can do that eggman crashes the party and while i just i love that silhouette on the last page of issue 31 it's just fantastic art i'll get into that in just a second but i do want to address a few comments i've been seeing as this coverage has been going on something i've been pushing in these episodes and that is that the metal virus arc would make for one hell of a video game and it wouldn't be much of a sonic game without one final boss fight with eggman and no i know perfect chaos and biolizards and solarises exist i know there are different final boss encounters but aegie has shoved in one last boss fight into the last set of games fairly regularly and he's not about to stop now as he attacks in an oversized omega mech oh egg there's an egg pun in there somewhere sort it out amongst yourselves but yeah this isn't just a giant omega robot eggman is using omega himself as the core omega apparently is a very valuable bot and his combat routines could cause quite the havoc when used in the wrong hands and eggy doesn't stop there because as general attacks he launches off a set of wires that incorporates general into this giant neck this further amplifies the capabilities of these machines and this has two of eggman's most powerful wayward robots backed under his control and they're gonna show how potent of a force they can be combined and just to deviate for a moment this dynamic pose adam draws for general immediately made me think of spazz's art back in the early days of archie his mecha sonic stuff specifically now spazz is one hell of an artist he can emulate pretty much every official sonic art style out there but early on he really had a style unlike anything else in the franchise bringing in a lot of detail while adding a sense of dimension to these characters they don't look like just flat drawings they look like they're taking up a 3d space and yet some of it looks a little weird nowadays but the talent is undeniable and his insane skills kept me coming back month after month even with stories i didn't particularly like even as a kid and they sure as hell inspired me all the time as an artist and i would not be surprising the slightest to learn that adam bryce thomas also drew inspiration from spaziante either way adam is easily one of my most favorite artists currently working on sonic this is fantastic stuff and in some fun ways it's cool to see what i used to think was just a treat that being the covers of sonic comics actually carry forth into the pages themselves i can't tell you after growing up with early archie how nice it is to see consistently fantastic art in sonic comic books because that was uh that was not a thing for a very long time and also to stick on the art like i said adam knows how to get sonic twitter all hot and bothered i think it's time we finally turn our attention back to sonic himself and to a set of pages that just got all of those shippers up in a tizzy for a couple of days with these shots of sonic as for what's actually going on in this scene basically sonic's lost his memory he has no idea who he is and blaze is trying to figure it all out and while this is a fun call back to mr tinker and a fun premise that we could really expand upon this was really only here to delay the inevitable return of the hedgehog we spend most of our time with the supporting cast in these three issues we really only get this one scene at t time and the next time they focus on sonic blaze is pulling out her set of magical macguffins the soul emeralds and uses them to help sonic it back to his senses yes we really had two sets of emeralds and a warp topaz helps sort out all of the issues of this saga so yes while they spread these scenes apart this is really sorted out in no time flat and blaze's short cameo comes to a close as she sends sonic back to his home dimension but not before sonic speaks for the fan base and tells her to stop by from time to time everybody misses her and with that he's sent off in a blaze of glory and just in time too while his friends have been holding their own against the omega mech things aren't looking good thankfully they at least managed to cut general loose after tails and rouge tracked down a port so tails could hack into the program wasn't too hard to find because as they assumed eggman built this bot in a rush and it is a little janky in design but it is still a threat but with general now loose it does cut down the capability of the robot but eggman isn't defenseless as he just pulls out a glock and tries to ice tails everyone gets shadows so much for packing he yeah you got eggman here packing a very powerful pistol [Laughter] on top of this omega himself is doing his best to fight against the programming of the larger mech so caught between being forced to attack his friends and wanting to kill eggman the bot stalls leaving an opening for the characters to attack again i appreciate how flynn writes this like a proper video game boss fight even sets up how the weak points would be laid out this is awesome unfortunately all of this is not quite enough as eggman reigns in omega and renews his attack against the exhausted heroes in spiral hill village only to be interrupted by the returning sonic and let's appreciate this cool little doodle of him brushing off ash while standing in the middle of a gigantic fireball like it ain't no thing this might be the closest we ever get to an official burning sonic form so soak it in and of course with the arrival of sonic this battle is wrapped up nice and quick sonic just cuts loose omega who then turns back around and takes out his giant doppelganger in a barrage of bullets and missiles but once his armory is depleted omega falls to pieces again this leaves eggman once again cursing sonic seeing that he'll be back again with yet another scheme and sonic while in a jojo reference tells him to bring it on because he will always be ready to take him on and as eggman flies off sonic looks on hoping that someday robotnik will come around it's a tall order to be sure but sonic's a hopeful one and after seeing what he can potentially be with mr tinker he can better understand where sonic is coming from and of course amy runs in for a hug followed by tales followed by everybody as tangled grabs them all and brings them in for a giant group hug but unfortunately a hero's work is never done as spiral hill is still on fire after the eggman attack so they spend the rest of the night quelling the flames and getting things back in order as the morning sun peeks over the horizon sonic finally takes a moment to sit back relax and reflect appreciating how good it is to be back to be healthy again and hoping that he can someday see his friends silver and blaze without the need of a world ending event to bring them all together but even after everything he has just gone through sonic's not the type to lay around for too long and with a stretch he hops off the roof and runs towards the morning light excited for whatever adventure this new day brings and with that i am finally done summarizing the metal virus saga was it perfect nah not by any stretch there's a lot to nitpick here why were the gloves effective if the virus can only affect living tissue why didn't the characters just cover themselves from head to toe and hazmat suits the characterization of shadows certainly rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way and a lot of the time it felt like ian was writing himself into a corner trying to tackle every possible solution for this virus only to squash it so they can continue to raise the stakes which inevitably just left us once again returning to the chaos emeralds to fix all the problems here and on top of all that i can't help but consider sonic's morality here like i get it i know we have to go back to a default status each and every time but at the end of the day if eggman is causing this much carnage and drama at some point you have to ask yourself when is it morally okay to keep him alive as opposed to just getting rid of him once and for all and obviously we know the real world answer it's the same reason why batman won't kill the joker even though at this point it's obviously the more morally justified thing to do not even out of revenge we just know time and again he's going to escape and he's going to kill a lot more people and you could save a ton of lives if you just took him out of the equation and that is the same case with eggman who literally caused a zombie apocalypse now ian is not oblivious to the situation they bring this up time and again this is an obvious thing that sonic has to tackle and deal with through this entire saga this has been building since his first encounter with mr tinker and by the end of it i still don't know if i think that sonic is right here we use that conversation with tangled to kind of justify everything he's been doing saying that he is not responsible for eggman or what he does and also you know he can't really waste time lamenting what has happened they're in the middle of this now and they gotta get it sorted out which i do agree that is far more important than having a pity party but at the same time i don't think espio was wrong in criticizing sonic shadow certainly wasn't was he sloppy and got himself zombified yeah that was a dumb move i really do think shadow should have been used as a counterpoint to how sonic handles the situation who got himself infected just by spinballing into an infected shadow should be more precise he should be used again as a counter argument to sonic's morality and if he was taken out i really don't think it should have been his own fault i don't think shadow should have been the central focus as a lot of fans seem to want him to be but at the same time he's a far more efficient fighter than this him not knowing that sonic was infected or how he was holding his virus in check none of that made sense to me like shadow should have all that ready to go and in turn he should be used to further sonic's guilt starline as well was a great counterpoint to eggman who directly addresses this unhealthy cycle these two characters seem to be in and it's just frustrating because i guess we all know as long time fans that this always has to go back to the set standard especially nowadays where they can't be as bold as the archie series just let them be before again i do at least appreciate that ian is aware of this and is at least directly criticizing this unhealthy cycle that these two seem to be in at the end of the day sonic still has to be seen as a hero that's why tails couldn't come up with a solution that's why sonic himself couldn't have been infected because he technically was the one that screwed up let tinker go let metal sonic go and in turn made everything nice and convenient for starline to get all of this mess in order and sonic being the hero here he still has lessons to learn and he still had to clean up this mess he somewhat helped create and in that sense i think the story works very well i do have some other gripes but another major one i have is that the saga just happened way too soon in the life of this book this world feels empty it doesn't feel like we spent enough time building this particular universe or spend enough time with these characters both old and new and i am seeing elements that were used from ian's run on archie we can see desperate story ideas from the world robotization stuff and i know that this was just the seed of an idea back in his mind back then nothing was really planned out but this really feels like this would have had a lot more impact in a more expansive world like archie post or pre-reboot but on that particular front i think part of the blame lies at the feet of sega themselves 30 years of this franchise is more than enough time to have a more defined universe at this point and whether or not it's canon this comic is based on the world of modern sonic and while we've had the term modern sonic for a grand total of 10 years now we're still not even sure what's going on with him in classic sonic are they the same person are they from two different worlds we don't know you can tell they still have to remain vague on elements like how silver can time travel and i get it it leaves more room for crazy random adventures for years to come in the games how else can they explain why lost texts just suddenly appeared out of nowhere they can't just show off the entire world oh well never mind i guess they can show off the world they just keep the maps inconsistent from game to game perfect on the other hand though i do think this book relies a little bit too much on the readers having a general knowledge of recent sonic games ian does his due diligence with introducing the deadly six before they properly make their grand appearance but this still feels a little rushed again if we had a little bit more time expanding this universe maybe had a story arc featuring the six prior to the metal virus this could have gone a long way then again you can't leave eggman out of the picture for too long and you need to establish him as the big bad in a big way and they kind of did do just that look this particular criticism only works from the perspective of somebody brand new to all things sonic and even in that sense they do a fairly good job telling you who these characters are and if you're really that curious you'd know where to go back and find more content featuring them as it stands for what's been previously established the six not only work just fine they're far more realized as characters than they ever have been before and this story does make for a fantastic introduction to them if this is your first time with zavik's crew they are well defined in a legitimate threat their vague abilities are fully utilized and for the first time in my life i'm actually interested to see what's next for them that's something sonic lost world failed to do with the hours i gave that game this was a great time for a lot of other characters to shine this is where we first meet cream and general in this comic and their story especially the battle of zena was absolutely incredible vector firmly establishes why he's a respected leader as goofy as he can be and even when he's finally taken out in the metal virus he goes down in one of the most memorable scenes of the entire story tangle as well keeps a smile firmly planted on her face even as she's turned in the visceral reaction of whisper having to learn that yet again she's lost somebody she love it's incredibly powerful and outside of the deadly 6 i also need to give a shout out to how the rest of the villains were handled metal sonic who was technically the first major baddie to be taken down in idw had a lot of characterization for the brief moments we had him and that's amazing to me i found him far more interesting here than when he had a mouth and a super form his struggles to compete and replicate the real sonic and then being his savior in the last desperate moments of that final battle i mean they were just that that moment was glorious people are frustrated with shadow because we've watched him grow into something more than just a clone of sonic but metal that's his purpose that's his design that's who he will always be whether he likes it or not so seeing these fleeting moments with the bot have been very impactful starline of course being a villain new to the series has immediately established himself as a far more engaging right-hand man than the likes of snively ever was and that's thanks to his very well-defined pompous attitude and his meddling that helped eggman return to form and it is starline's particular mcguffin that helped clean up this mess that he helped create and as for eggman himself yes i would have liked some more time with mr tinker and yes i would like the saga to take place after a little more world building but you gotta admit the doctor knows how to make an entrance when idw stopped teasing us with neo's copy ability or mr tinker once the real deal stepped onto the field he was quick to show the world that he was not messing around and even if you never played sonic forces before you can see how this dude managed to cause such a ruckus in such a short amount of time then again forces didn't really bother showing us that either they kind of left out the most important chunk of that story but whatever and really it was a risky move to spend this much time exploring this one idea it got a little tedious waiting from month to month especially when it was ironically delayed by a real world pandemic but i do think this really pay into the impact the metal virus had on this world we could see the character's exhaustion and desperation you got to feel the impact it had on these characters that we've come to know in some form or another for decades now seeing them torn down physically and emotionally yet still continue to fight on even when all hope feels lost and made their victory at the end all the more rewarding things felt a little rushed with super sonic and silver and i really would have liked to explore why sonic speed had such an impact on the metal virus i saw one commenter mentioning that it was probably sonic's crazy metabolism that was helping keep things in check again working just like a real virus but a quick throwaway line would have been nice there and also i know us hardcore fans understand that the master emerald is a little loosey-goosey in terms of what it can do but the idw book itself confirms that it can charge super forms and even if it's technically only robots we need that explained because they all meet up on angel island and for some reason they're desperate to grab the rest of the chaos emeralds when if you've just read this book you have to wonder why doesn't sonic just rush over the master emerald and use that to cure himself and even then this same book establishes that robots can go super so what's to say that the chaos emeralds don't just fuel a zombotified sonic what if we just got a super zombot sonic instead of him being cured and again this is one of those times where i know more hardcore fans are going to comment and saying well super blah blah blah blah blah none of this is explained in the comic book that is my problem here you need to have all of this make sense within the established universe and every now and then this is requiring you to go really deep into the hedgehog's lore when the lore itself is wildly inconsistent and i still couldn't quite wrap my head around the logic of clearing the world of the virus with the warped topaz and emerald power please don't eggman explain it to me in the comments i read the book i know how it works it just feels flimsy to me i appreciate how desperate things were getting as they shot down every solution but again if you shoot down everything else you better have a damn good solution at the end of all this and at the end it was just chaos emeralds again and ultimately they're still very vague about how any of these gems actually work i mean that topaz could only make portals at first but then they get very loosey-goosey on what the term warped actually means and by the end of it i wasn't really sure how it was actually all that different from the emeralds or the phantom ruby it can open portals or it can warp memory or it can warp reality like sort that out you can't just drop that in out of nowhere whatever this is a larger problem with sonic stories and in terms of the warp topaz they at least do a better job explaining some of the more specific abilities and power constraints i just really would like this stuff a little further defined still i'm not gonna lie you heard me scream i had a great time with that finale because it really isn't all that different from other sonic game stories and that stayed consistent through the entire run this felt like an elaborate pitch for a sonic game not only laying out the general narrative but also going so far as to explain mechanics everything from sonic having to run to keep the virus in check even potential stealth sections with tails and letting heroes and villains shine in that final stretch for the fight for the emeralds having a lot of these characters interact for the very first time all that would make for one hell of a story and video game leading up to that final rush of sonic metal and silver against the giant xavic and then having the supers clear the world and of course cherry on top being that brilliantly designed omega mech boss fight flynn has a lot more restrictions and a lot less to work with when compared to his time on archie which already had a lot of restrictions after sega had to tighten things up after all that lawsuit drama and even with these constraints flynn hits it out of the park this is a zombie story done sonic style not just in terms of narrative but making the reader desperate to live out this story with a controller in hand even in the modern booster interpretations of these characters watered-down and vanilla being something more akin to a mario cast even in this setting compelling emotional stories can be had when given to the right writer it shows despite the many complaints fans have these days why we still love these characters and yes you can have emotionally engaging intense narratives that's still safe for kids that doesn't sound like it's talking down to its entire readership and it doesn't feel out of place in a world full of colorful cartoon animals now how they can ever top that or keep things compelling i don't know but i'm certainly sticking around to find out this was ian flynn's last story as head writer of sonic comics he's still around and he's still working on other sonic projects but staying on as the consistent head rider ended with the metal virus and that was one hell of a high note to bow out on well done but yeah both good and bad those are my thoughts there were flaws some fairly glaring ones but some i felt the writer himself was very aware of and trying to address with the constraints he had and at the end of the day i loved what this story was and i think it stands out as one of the most compelling narratives in the history of the sonic franchise and it does all this while making a brilliant pitch for a video game i would love to play taken in things i've known and wanted will bring in brand new ideas i could never even thought of that's what a good sonic game should do but yeah let me know what you thought in the comments down below it's finally time for us to put the story to rest thank you all for sticking with me through this crazy ride and thank you to the patrons who've been supporting me now what i cover next well you'll just have to stick around and find out but until next time 2-2 sonic warriors [Music] you

Channel: Game Apologist

Views: 23,046

Rating: 4.9673319 out of 5

Keywords: sonic, sonic speed reading, metal virus saga, complete story, metal virus story, metal virus ending, metal virus shadow, zombot, zombot sonic, metal sonic, starline, eggman, shadow, zombot shadow, idw sonic, sonic comic, ian flynn, annual, 25, 26, 27, finale, zavok, deadly six, super sonic, super silver, tails, chao, cream, sega, sonic 30 anniversary, metal virus game, complete saga, silver sonic, metal virus reading, game apologist, sonic forces, silver, gemerl, big, chaotix, vector, espio

Id: eNL_Dl7u6DU

Length: 213min 38sec (12818 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021