Wednesday, April 18, 2018

The Antoine and Bunnie Retrospective - 152

“Unwelcome Guests" A Bold New Moebius I - Sonic the Hedgehog #189

We’re finally here! This is my favorite story arc in the whole comic! 
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Let’s dig in shall we?

We start off with the anti-Freedom Fighters, now called the Suppression Squad, invading Freedom HQ. They get a quick reintroduction and new names. 
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Most of the name changes make sense, Patch wears an eye Patch, Miles is Tails’ real name, Boomer is Rotor’s old nickname and a play on his new power set. But Alicia? I get that’s her mothers name, but, it’s her mother’s name. Her mom is alive and well in the main comic so having two characters with the same name defeats the purpose of why they changed their names in the first place. This is why I often call Anti-Sally, Ali instead. It’s a play on both names while still differentiating her. I also head cannon that the rest of her peers call her this for short. 

Moving on. 

Sonic and the Chaotix are off fighting the new Dark Egg Legion in the B-plot. It’s entertaining but I won’t be covering it because it doesn’t have anything to do with Buntwan and there’s too much to cover in the A plot. 
Amy is the first person to confront Patch since his return while Bunnie gets the jump on Ali. 
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On the one hand it’s an amusing sequence. Who doesn’t love Patch getting beat up? But it is slightly disappointing that Amy is the one to do it as she was the one the least affected by his schemes. I mean one could argue that it’s showcasing how protective she is of her friends while the writer is merely teasing the bigger fight between him and Ant. But I’m not sure if it was needed. Especially as there isn’t a later scene involving Sally vs Patch, who also has a personal beef with him.    

As for why Bunnie isn’t the one to beat the crap out Patch instead. It’s because they wanted to set up her fight with Boomer. 
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Once again I understand why they went with this set up, as they have similar skill sets and are more evenly matched, but Amy could have taken him on just as well. Not to mention Bunnie and Boomer fight more later so yeah missed opportunity to have Bunnie confront Patch. 

What isn’t a missed opportunity and winds up being a surprisingly interesting match up, is Antoine confronting Fiona.  
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At first you might think, “why?” After all they’ve barely interacted before now and Fiona’s never personally hurt him. But then you realize, Fiona’s story is a subversion’s of Ant’s. Antoine became a better person over time, Fiona tried to and failed. Antoine found love and was inspired to be a hero by it, Fiona found love and it corrupted her. Antoine was forced to live on Anti-Mobius and made to play the villain against his will. Fiona chose to live in that hellscape and enjoys being evil.  Similar plot beats, different outcomes.  

And here’s the thing. Only Antoine knows what it’s truly like on Anti-Mobius. He’s the only one from the main world to understand just how shit that world is. Now here comes someone who not only went there willingly but even after staying there doesn’t appreciate how good the main Mobius is. Just how awful has life been to Fiona for her to think that living with Scourge, Antoine’s abusive tormentor, is the better option? He can’t wrap his brain around it. 

Though Fiona’s answer doesn’t make much sense either. The “lady in charge” is Sally and she knows full well that it was Patch trying to get close to her not Ant. I guess it’s meant to imply that Fiona is jealous of Sally? But that’s not her main motivation so why mention it?    

This is conversation is cut short by the B-plot and when we switch back things have progressed further. We get teases of some fights going on in the background while Sally strategizes and recalls Sonic back to HQ. 
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Issue ends with both Sonic and Scourge arriving on the scene. 
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This whole thing was more or less a teaser for the next issue where all the real juicy stuff goes down but we’ll get to that next week. 

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