The Antoine and Bunnie Retrospective - 126

“Say You Will” Home: Epilogue - Sonic the Hedgehog #134 

The epilogue for the Home arc is one of those character driven, “lets slow down and focus on establishing the new direction” type stories in the same vain as “A Brave New World”, “A Day in the Life”, and “Changes.” I’m generally fond of these types of stories and personally feel some of the above issues are some of the best in the comic. However, while I did still enjoy today’s issue to some degree, I can’t help but feel something was slightly, well, “off” about it. 

For starters the pacing has problems. The previous stories had the whole of the comic to tell their tale. This story has to share page space with a second running arc. (I’m beginning to resent M25YL a little more than I did before) The story has so many characters to catch up with that as soon as it feels like we getting somewhere with one we’re suddenly off to see about another. It’s kind of jarring. 

The second problem is more behind the scenes driven and revolves around a certain writer not understanding a certain character and their relationship with another certain character. More on that later. 

So what do we learn about the characters, well… 

• Sonic can understand his dog Muttski due to a babelfish implant he got during the Tossed in Space arc. This is a plot point that won’t go anywhere. 
• Doctor Quack lost an eye
• Jules finds out he is still a robot due to his injures being too severe
• Tails learns about his parents, and is crushing on Fiona again
• Rotor has become less of a field agent and more of an inventor though that’s really nothing new
• Knuckles and the Chaotix retreated to Knothole when Eggman took over Angel Island
• Mina is now a full time singer and is dating her manger, Ash 
• Geoffrey and Hershey leave to go on their honeymoon 
• King Max is going on a world tour to gain support from neighboring nations leaving Sally in charge while he is away 
• The king also wants Antoine to accompany him as his personal bodyguard

And Bunnie explains why her and Antoine broke up……. Well, sort of. 

Ok so here is the deal, the writers are trying to create a mystery around Antoine’s sudden change in behavior. He’s all brooding and serious now; standoffish in a way he never was before. Cutting ties to the people closest to him. The idea was to slowly reveal how he came to be this way and what events unfolded in the missing year that effected him so. The problem with this? The writers can’t agree on how this development should unfold!  

Both Karl Bollers and Ken Penders were in disagreement over Antoine’s character arc during this era. They were openly feuding with each other, and while I don’t know if this is what started the argument, I do know that Antoine’s story became the major battle ground between them. Permanently ending their partnership and eventually leading to both leaving the book altogether. 

This makes reviewing this particular era difficult. I can’t discuss character motivation without revealing the ultimate twist that would explain Antoine’s behavior. And I can’t discuss the big reveal without going into the behind the scene politics and the alternate ideas that everybody was throwing around at the time.      

However, since there is a lot to cover, I’m going to try my best to drip feed you the details so that I’m not just info dumping on you all at once. So I’ll leave you pondering a little longer and let you guess your own theories before jumping into the nitty gritty.  

In the meanwhile I need to address the biggest criticism of this issue, The Slap. 

So some context first. All through out the story Sally had been trying to pull Sonic aside and have a talk with him about their future together. Only for other people to continually interrupt her before she could. During a photo opt. for the press she tried to bring it up again only for both of them to blow up at each other, in front of everybody!   

There’s three main things wrong with this. 

1. Sally could have waited until after the party or right before it to have this conversation. Making a scene and slapping someone in front of the entire city on a stage is forced drama on the part of the writer.   
2. Said writer, Bollers, is deliberately writing Sally OOC in order to assassinate both her character and her established relationship with Sonic. A relationship that he never understood how to write for to begin with. Either making them uncommunicative jackasses or sickly sweet “lets plan our wedding” lovely dovey. Seriously, Sonally isn’t the type of couple who would use cutesy pet names, just saying. 
3. The reason why Bollers is doing this is to cash in on the shipping wars that were running rampant in the fandom. SatAM and comic fans were mainly pro-Sonally, while Sonic X and and game fans were mostly for Sonamy. Unfortunately, Amy’s a ten year old in the comic and Sonally has been around since the comic’s beginning so none of this makes any sense continuity wise. But Bollers doesn’t care about continuity, even his own, and that is perhaps the most aggravating thing about him as a writer.     

However, despite all of the bullshit reasoning behind this, I’m going to try to defend this development from a in-story character stand point. 

If you’ve been following my reviews, you’ll know by now that Sally is clearly an abuse survivor. Her controlling dick-weed father has tried time and time again to ostracize her from her friends. Keeping her locked in the palace, forcing her to be home schooled away from her friends, preventing her from going on field missions ect. He did finally relent and allowed her to be acting ruler/heir to the throne but only because Elias ran away. There’s nothing to indicate that he let up during the past year. In fact without Sonic around, I dare say Sally would have been even more reclusive and a perfect target for a her dad’s manipulative abuse.  

Now add in the fact that Sally’s been known to deflect her frustrations with her dad onto others and has a real problem opening up to people, there was bound to be a angry blow out sooner or later. Her not being able to protect Sonic on missions just happened to be the breaking point. She suffered from depression for a year due to losing him and taking a page from father’s book decided to try and keep him close to her and “safe” through manipulation. Only Sonic of course wouldn’t go along with it. He hasn’t been conditioned like Sally has. 

Yeah it’s stupid and irrational, and probably not conscious on Sally’s part. Abuse survivors can pick up on manipulation tactics and other such learned behaviors and fall back on them as a defense mechanism. Sally may be in charge, but she’s not in control. She’s still doing daddy’s bidding rather than following her heart. 

Unfortunately, the writers aren’t self aware enough to make this into a plot point and to build character off of it. This could have led into Sally realizing she needs to escape her father and get help rather than just being a break up for the sake of cheap drama.   

  

In short I don’t hate the slap itself, I just hate what came after it. 

Oh an there’s more M25YL in this issue, but it’s not important.