Dr. K's Waiting Room

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When Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (SEGA Technical Institute, 1994) released on this day in 1994, gamers were introduced to Knuckles the Echidna. Takashi Yuda’s mischievous, dreadlocked antagonist is my favourite of Sonic’s supporting cast so excuse me while I celebrate his debut throughout February.

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Quick Facts:
Following their initial four-part miniseries, Archie Comics began the longest-running videogame comic book and capitalised on Sonic’s popularity with a popular Knuckles the Echidna companion series. Before that convoluted lore and a bitter lawsuit forever changed Sonic’s comic books, Knuckles featured in this loose adaptation of the largely under-rated Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble (Aspect, 1994).

The Review:
Not unlike its videogame source material, “Tttriple Tttrouble!!!” sees ruthless cybernetic dictator Doctor Ivo Robotnik in possession of a Chaos Emerald. Rather than having one of five after his experiments scatter the others across the planet, Dr. Robotnik has one of many Chaos Emeralds, though this is sufficient to power his “mega-engine” and pollute the entire planet Mobius. However, this plan gets dashed due to an oversight by his robotic assistant, Crabmeat, who miscalibrated the machine. The imbalance causes an explosion that breaks the Chaos Emerald in two and rockets each part into orbit, prompting Dr. Robotnik to call “Bounty Hunters ‘Я’ Us” to hire a bounty hunter to retrieve the gems (again, not a million miles away from the videogame). While making a messy chili dog snack (or four…), Sonic is brought to the Freedom Fighters’ control room, where their resident mechanic and scientist, Rotor the Walrus, has detected the erratic energy signature of a Chaos Emerald. The three then watch as the Chaos Emerald shard crashes into the Great Forest, its unstable “magic” creating a “new Zone” (apparently, this is how the game’s environments are integrated into Archie lore). Excited to explore a new area, Sonic speeds off, refusing to wait for Rotor’s analysis and unaware that he’s being stalked by a mysterious, wolf-like figure. Meanwhile, Knuckles finds a rare moment of relaxation under the sun interrupted by the other Chaos Emerald shard, which streaks overhead and crashes into Mount Osohai, the Floating Island’s unconquerable mountain range. Undeterred, Knuckles glides over and is stunned to see the shard burrowing into the mountain, then ends up unconscious and plummeting to certain doom after being struck by a piece of rock.

When Sonic arrives at the crash site in the Great Forest, he’s greeted by a bizarre, fairground like portal leading to “Triple Trouble”. Naturally, he enters without a thought, completely oblivious to his mysterious stalker, whom Dr. Robotnik orders (via “2-way, 3-D holo-wrist radio”) to follow. Exasperated by the rotund dictator’s blustering, the mercenary mutes his employer and heads into the Zone in his sky-cycle, which has been programmed to mimic Sonic’s moves! In a change of pace for most Archie adaptations, we get to see Sonic racing through Triple Trouble’s Zones, but this is reduced to a simple montage of panels that literally just show him bouncing, running, snowboarding, or adventuring across the game’s locations before bopping Dr. Robotnik on the head and reaching the exit. There are no battles against Dr. Robotnik’s enlarged Badniks, none of the game’s power-ups (except the snowboard), and the comic just blasts through them all rather than taking place in one or two of the game’s locations. The snowboard panel is essentially a rip-off of the game’s artwork, there’s no explanation as to how or why Dr. Robotnik or his Badniks are there, and the Chaos Emerald shard is bizarrely housed within a futuristic chamber, which Sonic races into to deactivate before the Zone presumably closes behind him. However, as soon as Sonic retrieves the shard, he’s blasted by his stalker, the infamous bounty hunter Fang the Sniper Jet the Jerboa Nack the Weasel! With Sonic successfully captured, Nack demands Dr. Robotnik pay him double the price to retrieve the other half of the Chaos Emerald and the tyrant, eager to mount Sonic’s head on his wall, begrudgingly agrees.

Oblivious to Nack’s impending arrival, Knuckles wakes in a hidden cave and is cared for by the Ancient Walkers, mute, masked, enigmatic figures from echidna lore. Astonished, Knuckles interprets their cave drawings as a warning that the Emerald shard will cause Floating Island to explode if it reaches the island’s Chaos Emerald power source. Returned to the surface, Knuckles spots and summarily knocks out the passing Nack, unaware that he’s just knocked Sonic into a lake. This wakes Sonic and, pissed at being blindsided, he bursts from the water looking for payback and immediately assumes that Knuckles attacked him. Attacking without thinking, Sonic is easily overpowered by his super strong rival, who’s driven into a fury after Sonic kicks him in the nose. Going “Hyper-Knuckles” (which sees Knuckles turning his fists into buzzsaws rather than adopting a Super form), Knuckles sends Sonic flying with a haymaker, leading to them flying at each other in a rage. Their scuffle ends, however, when they recognise Dr. Robotnik’s voice coming from Nack’s communicator (…despite him muting it earlier…) This clears up the misunderstanding and sees Sonic direct Knuckles to puppet Nack’s unconscious, battered body to deceive Dr. Robotnik. Retrieving Nack’s Emerald shard, Sonic joins Knuckles in intercepting the other half in the island’s crystalline Chaos Chamber, where they just barely reunite the two in time to save the island. The two frenemies almost come to blows again when the restored Chaos Emerald mysteriously vanishes but part on mostly friendly terms, unaware that the Chaos Emerald teleported into the possession of the mysterious Ancient Walkers.

While I’m here, I may as well go over the other  stories also included in this 48-page special. The first is a solo adventure for Sonic’s two-tailed buddy, Miles “Tails” Prower, which features his Sea Fox submarine from Triple Trouble and laid the groundwork for Archie’s Tails-centric miniseries. Unfortunately, “Submersible Rehearsal” takes place in the waters near Knothole Village rather than, say, Tidal Plant Zone and sees Tails confront an enlarged Octobot rather than one of Triple Trouble’s bosses. Though amazed by the Sea Fox built for him by Rotor, Tails is outraged to learn that Princess Sally Acorn has forbidden him from taking it out to sea because of concerns about his age. However, Tails improvises when an injured sea gull washes up warning that Dr. Robotnik is rebuilding his “submerged, waterproof robot maker”, draining the oil from the bird into his tank and setting off to help. When Tails finds the underwater facility guarded by Octobot, he doesn’t hesitate to ram to mechanic cephalopod, rescuing the marine life it held captive before destroying the roboticizer with the Sea Fox’s missiles, making an enemy of the besmirched Octobot in the process. The second story sees Knuckles once again tested by the mysterious Archimedes on the Floating Island, making this story even less connected to Triple Trouble. In fact, “First Contact” has more in common with Sonic & Knuckles (SEGA, 1994) as Archimedes sends one of Dr. Robotnik’s Fire Breath units after him and then makes him battle a Hey-Ho. At first, these robots see Knuckles believe “Archimedes” is Dr. Robotnik pulling another trick, but a plunge into the Chaos Chamber sees Archimedes dispel these accusations and aggravate Knuckles with cryptic taunts about his hot-headed nature. Challenged to solve Archimedes’ puzzle, Knuckles later contemplates the lesson with his friend, rocker Vector the Crocodile, and the mystery of who or what Archimedes is and what he wants.

Final Thoughts: 
As always, Archie’s adaptation of a videogame leaves a lot to be desired and takes the barebones, basic suggestion of the source material and reconfigures it into one-and-a-half semi-original stories set within their convoluted canon. I tried really hard to cut this 48-page special some slack, especially the main story, as it almost mirrored the videogame in a dysfunctional way but then it completely dropped the ball. Although I’ve read all the Archie Sonic comics, I don’t recall it being established that the game’s Zones spring out of thin air (or “magic”), though even if that was established it’s a pretty stupid idea. Mobius is a planet, for God’s sake! You just have the Zones be places in the world, which is what Archie usually does, so this weird-ass funfair-like portal…thing…was ridiculous. It also appears to be temporary, as Sonic must race to the Chaos Emerald Chamber and “shut [it] down” with a lever. How that lever, the chamber, and the technology surrounding it appeared is anyone’s guess (more “magic”, I suppose) but it’s nowhere near as ludicrous as Triple Trouble’s Zones conveniently having Badniks, traps, and even Dr. Robotnik in them. Normally, I complain that these adaptations are limited to a single, barely recognisable location from the videogames but this time, I’m complaining because Triple Trouble’s Zones are reduced to a montage. Sure, it emulates the 2D action of the videogame but it’s very lazy. Why not have Dr. Robotnik’s “secret lab” be in Robotnik Winter Zone or Atomic Destroyer Zone, the Emerald shard land in Great Turquoise Zone or Meta Jungura Zone, “Submersible Rehearsal” set in Tidal Plant Zone and “First Contact” be reconfigured into having Knuckles be tested in Sunset Park Zone? There’s really no excuse for these stories not to be set in the game’s locations and it’s kind of insulting that they’re limited to Knothole and the Floating Island.

As ever, the art is passable, resembling the main Sonic comics and the cartoons that inspired them, except for “First Contact”, which sees Knuckles rendered painfully off-model and Hey-Ho looking like its melting! I can’t say I was massively blown away by the Ancient Walkers, who didn’t seem necessary to the story, but I did like the introduction of Nack the Weasel. It took a little too long for him to be revealed and it’s a shame to reduce him to Dr. Robotnik’s lackey, but it’s a role that suits him and he’s always been a visually interesting character. Although we never get to see what his sky-cycle is capable of, it’s not insignificant that he got the drop on Sonic and was well on his way to succeeding when Knuckles clobbered him. I quite enjoyed the fight between Sonic and Knuckles, which is thematically similar to the videogame and sees them go at it with a bit more gusto than in previous encounters. I do think this special issue suffers from not devoting its entire length to the source material to depict a literal three-way chase for the Chaos Emerald (or its shards, or whatever!) between Sonic, the opportunistic Nack, Knuckles, and Dr. Robotnik. Had Archie done this, we could’ve seen at least three or four locations from the game in more detail, seen Sonic battle Dr. Robotnik’s giant Badniks, and had a more action-packed adventure rather than a middling story that essentially acts as a shameless advertisement for the game. Ultimately, this was a very frustrating issue to read as it came so close to being at least tolerable and was very promising but, once again, the covert is the best thing about this special (aside from Nack) and the backup stories aren’t really worth your time unless you’re really invested in Ken Penders’ awful plans for Knuckles and getting a prelude to Tails’ later solo adventure.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Did you enjoy Nack’s debut in Archie’s Sonic comics? Were you also disappointed by how poorly this adaptation represented Triple Trouble? Did you enjoy the fight between Sonic and Knuckles? How interested were you in the riddle of Archimedes? Did you enjoy Archie’s Knuckles lore or did you find it to be overly complicated? How are you celebrating Knuckles this month? Let me know your thoughts on Archie’s Triple Trouble adaptation in the comments and donate to my Ko-Fi if you want to see more of Knuckles’ Archie adventures on the site.