“What’s Old, Is New Again” Sonic: 30 Years Later III - Sonic Universe #7
This is our first foray into the Sonic Universe title, and outside of a few brief mentions, this is also our first time touching upon the Mobius XX Years Later plot. As such here’s a quick run down of the story thus far.
25 years into the future Knuckles’ and Julie-Su’s daughter, Lara-Su, wants to become a guardian. Knuckles eventually agrees to train her but things soon go haywire when King Sonic and Queen Sally come to visit. Rotor and his partner, a member of the Dark Legion, discover a space time anomaly that threatens to destroy all of reality. It’s agreed that Sonic must travel back in time to advert the disaster. Unbeknownst to all of the adults however Lara-Su sneaks along.
Sonic does go back in time and prevents the universe from ending but alters the timeline; erasing himself from existence. Now only those who were near Sonic when he went back in time remembers the original reality, including Lara-Su, Rotor, his partner, Knuckles, Tails, and Lien-da the leader of the Dark Legion.
Since then Shadow has become dictator of the whole world after defeating Eggman himself. Sally married him to try and regain peace. Sonic and those who remember, fight to over throw Shadow and convinces Sally that Sonic was someone she really once knew and loved.
Flash forward another 5 years and Sally and Sonic are married with kids, Lara-Su has become a guardian, and Lien-da is trying to assassinate the royal family and place Shadow back upon the throne.
One such assassination is thwarted by Silver who is still trying to prevent his timeline from becoming a reality. However Lien-da uses subterfuge to kidnap Tails and his wife Mina, sending Sally, Silver, and the kids into hiding, and forcing Sonic to flee with Lara-Su and recruit help from a bunch of former Freedom Fighter’s children.
Got all that?
No? Well never fear as next to none of it is really relevant to what I’ll be discussing today.
Which is Bunnie’s and Antoine’s kids!
What about them?
Well they…uh… exist…
Yeah, there’s not much to them as individual characters. Outside of both having cybernetics and briefly flirting with other members, they get next to nothing to do and zero panel time to establish or develop their personalities.
(Well that, and we now know for sure that Ant is still alive in this timeline.)
In fact the most interesting thing about them is a coloring error.
In the above panel they’re colored the same as Bunnie and Ant, but in the next issue and reprints their color palettes switch.
In fact here is the same picture above from the trade that I own for comparison.
Yeah my phone is crap. So here’s a recolored version I personally did because the inconstancy bugs me.
Oh and while I was at it, I gave Melody black hair cause I think it looks better and helps to distinguish her from her mother.
So outside of wasting hours of recoloring digital copies so I can make AMVs, what else is there to talk about?
Well, Jacques does manage to save Melody when Chaos attacks. Which leads into the next issue.
Oh sorry “Tikhaos” because apparently Ian ran out of interesting villains.
Look, I actually enjoy the various XXYL arcs, warts and all, but even I’ll admit that King Shadow is perhaps the dumbest idea Flynn ever had.
For starters making Shadow the big bad of the story undermines all of the character development he’s gone through both within the comic and in the games. Unless this is an outright alternate universe where Shadow’s story didn’t happen then none of his actions make sense.
Now add in the fact that instead of a multidimensional anti-villain, with complex moral ambiguity, he’s written as any other generic would-be conquering asshole.
In fact he kills off the actual interesting and multifaceted anti-villain of the Years Later series, Lien-Da.
Once done with that he releases a fusion of Tikal and Chaos, (who behaves just like Perfect Chaos anyways so what was even the point) only to fuck off afterwards without doing anything himself.
Ok I admit it, I like the XXYL arc more for it’s potential rather then its execution.
Which is exactly what we’ll cover in two weeks, after popping back into the main book first. So get ready for head-cannons and fan theories galore.
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