Author's Commentary: Part Four

COVER

Ooh, scary! Eggman dominates the Ring and the cover, foreshadowing the events inside, but the Freedom Fighters stand ready and willing, so you know this is the final part.

Another multi-layered insert Prologue to sum everything up nicely and when we rejoin Sonic and the others, they are decidedly less grim than we last saw, now they’re ready to go kick some ass!

Another series of fly-through-the-air-to-get-there panels, these are recreated most prominently in the Tales Of Shadow series and in Sonic Heroes, but it’s good to show how fast they travel and how determined they are and to show off the new Egg Island, which is mostly made up of more decent backgrounds from Megaman.

First time we see the outside of Eggman’s Control Tower, but they recognise it because they went into it in Perfect Chaos. I love it when they come smashing through walls, doors and windows, it’s decent. As they do, they power down so I can cut back on the Super’s for a bit, they only use their Super powers to get things taken care of quickly, but their own natural abilities can handle most things, so they rely on them first and foremost. This is another Megaman background that allows Eggman to appear on a giant monitor, originally his text bubbles had a light grey background and blue words to make it seem more digitised but it didn’t show up well on the page so I re-did it. You know this is a trap, it’s so obvious, but they know it to and it’s their only choice to take care of Eggman. This is taken right out of the Babidi Saga in Dragonball Z when Goku, Goten, Vegeta and Supreme Ki have to fight their way through several levels to reach Babidi.

First thing they meet is Nack in a Megaman armoured suit-thing, really stepping up as a formidable threat and walking a dangerous path to becoming a stereotypical henchman. I put him in here at the last minute, I think, I’m not sure if he was meant to turn up again but I am glad he did, ties things up nicely. See, Knux takes the machine on by himself but gets annoyed quickly so he blasts it to shreds with his powers, then knocks Nack out with a good old fashioned uppercut. Easily done.

This was a neat little idea I came up with to have the first ever real test of strength energy blast battle in my comics, as Tails takes on the giant laser, commanded by a custom made Robot sprite I found at the Leaf Forest Zone. Tails is nimble enough to weave around the beam (a difficult blurring effect to do) and I even put impact explosions on the wall that the beam is hitting!

Of course the Robot has its own cannon, so Tails powers up whilst hovering and almost gets a face full of laser, but he counters and we get this spectacular laser-explosion sequence and even smoking ruins. I love this scene for Tails, shows him to be so powerful and getting used to wielding such power.

I’m not sure where this Robot is from, it escapes me right now, but it looks big and badass and has lots of decent attack animations. Sonic uses his speed and attacks to fight this giant Robot, but it’s very big and powerful so he just powers up when he is being crushed under the giant’s form and eradicates it in one blast, with barely any movement.

It does seem to be too easy, that’s a little shifty isn’t it? Eggman obviously has a plan. That blacked out scene was hard to do because I had to get the eyes at the right height for each character’s positions and I also added those steps myself so they can actually reach the doors. This is Metal Knuckles (though it’s meant to be Mecha-Knuckles) from Sonic R, a great sprite that I just had to use, even though it seems odd that there are two, but this is clearly the prototype model. Nevertheless, Knux is mad at being copied again already so he steps up and we get a neat little Anime moment again as they stand facing each other in mirror images, then simultaneously attack, with Metal Knux beating on Knuckles (that running fists sprite of Knuckles I edited myself, and I’m particularly proud of how Metal Knux’s eye beams look so good yet were done so simply).

Knuckles can’t make a dent in his counter part and is taking a hell of a beating, so he resorts to his Emerald powers again and swats Metal’s energy ball back at him, blowing him apart and ticking Eggman right off. We’d never again see a Metal Knuckles, mainly because I thought that would be a bit too contrived after the multi-appearance of a Metal Sonic.

Again we get a Metal Sonic and Sonic rolls his eyes, that’s no surprise, hell he just destroyed one a little while ago. However, this Jet-Black Metal Sonic is (as the actual sprite is) a Shadow Robot, it is the basic, prototype design for what became the biological replica android in Sonic Heroes that was called Shadow but this is uploaded with Metal Sonic’s personality, so that’s a little neat. Also neat? The Wing Fortress energy bar cutting Sonic and Knuckles off from Tails and Metal, leaving Tails all alone in there! Didn’t see that one coming huh?! Also, the beam is generated by the Golden Rings, so Super Sonic is just repelled by it, but Tails sucks it up and takes up the fight, eerily similar to Goten Vs Daborah and Goten Vs Perfect Cell from Dragonball Z.

That chest energy beam is based on the Metallix’s death ray from Fleetway and I never actually saved the effect, if I had I would have used it again (I also added a subtle impact effect where the beam hits the energy beam that traps Sonic and Knuckles). Tails isn’t actually strong enough to beat this Metal, it’s natural powers and the powers of the four Rings make it stronger, plus Tails is suffering from continuous fatigue, but he puts everything into his energy ball, only to fall right into Eggman’s trap. Metal shoots a special ray that sucks the Ring energy from Tails, knocking the Super out of him, and captures the two Rings, reducing Tails to a heap.

Sonic gets overcome with emotion again and, together with Knuckles, they combine powers to breach the barrier, reducing the ceiling and floor areas to smouldering rubble. There’s an interesting point, Tails retains the powers of the two Rings and can access it as freely as Sonic and Knuckles can access their powers, this is due to his body adapting to the Rings and being exposed to them for so long. Eggman’s final room is also a Megaman background, but he has all the Rings and is victorious.

Sonic makes a point here and eradicates Metal again in a display of power equalled only by the impressiveness of the explosion I put together for it. However, we get a sequence that I’m sure you never thought was coming, as Eggman brings together all the Rings with a cryptic statement.

And boom, in a flash of light, we have the legendary Chaos Ring, and Eggman proceeds to absorb its powers into himself! How? Well, he was dosed in the negative energy of the Chaos Emeralds when they were spirited away in BFTCE, it turned him evil and insane, so the Rings have the same effect on him as they did the others. I like this transformation effect around Eggman, took ages to do it and it looks really spiffy and ominous.

Now this may seem a little odd but it is based on Fleetway, where Eggman absorbed the Emeralds powers to become an all powerful God about three times and became a giant, glass and hugely muscular. What has happened here is not that Eggman has exactly transformed into this giant Robot, more it has been formed around him, his real physical form is inside it but he is a part of it at this point. He gets his own digitised speech boxes to show how different he now is too, as if his energy powers immediately knocking the Super out of them all wasn’t enough to show his dramatic new powers. And, almost immediately, he transforms again into the Robot from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, because the script called for him to fly and the Sonic 2 Robot couldn’t do that. It works all right though, despite the fact that it might've been better if Eggman had used the Chaos Ring to power the giant battle armor and then took control of it, rather than "becoming" that armor..

And there he goes, crashing through the wall in the most impressive wall crash I’ve ever done! I love that, and there’s even smoking ruins left afterwards. Tails needs time to recover so Sonic and Knuckles fly off into Doomsday Zone IN THE SKY!!111!! And recreate some Sonic 3 & Knuckles classic stuff.

Sonic and Knuckles fire off mini-Hadoken’s and use their Dragonball Z-like instant speed, something I didn’t do much at this point but later used about as often if not more often as the blurring effects to convey speed. Hell, even the giant-ass Super Mecha Robotnik does it right here, smashing them about with his bulky power and drawing a fat-related quip from Sonic.

I love the effect of seeing them both trapped in those giant hands, being crushed, helpless. But it’s Super Tails to the rescue again, as he blows off the Robot Eggman’s arm! He always was a feisty one that Tails. And they all attack at once, none of that actually doing a damn thing.

As seen here with the Ki-blast effect once more, rocking them all and invoking the spirit of Shadow in Knuckles as he calls for a distraction to buy him some time for his plan. A plan that involves that Emerald he got earlier and the recital of the Chaos Oath to dispel the Chaos Ring’s powers. Now this is neat, because that Emerald beam is unique, never used it again, and we can clearly see the separation of the Ring from Eggman, dissipating the giant Robot and reverting Eggman back to his original form, and then all six Rings being absorbing into Tails, charging him up with energy. Nice.

See now, Tails is the bearer of the Chaos Ring, all its powers are his to use, but he can’t actually draw power from any other source, like the Emeralds, he is limited to his Ring powers, but that still brings his powers on par with Knuckles’s. Tails really was destined to be a great and powerful hero, as he is the only one who can use the Ring powers now. Eggman makes a run for it and Sonic goes through with the judgement he made earlier and blasts Eggman, blowing him out the sky and ending it all once and for all, with the others knowing it was necessary.

And, finally, for the first time since BFTCE, we’re back in Emerald Heights with these all-new Sonic CD backgrounds that became available around this time. This is also a good excuse for a bunch of cameos by Ray (yay), Bunny, Sally, Mina, Bean, Billy Hatcher (love that sprite) and Antoine. Also, if you notice, Cream, Big and Amy are standing in a group, as is Chaotix, who are dressed in their Sonic Heroes outfits (the ones I quickly edited at that point) as a foreshadowing to Sonic Heroes, which came next. Everyone seems hopeful that Eggman is gone, sure that Sonic did the right thing, and Tails is set in place as a powerful character, his abilities not to be taken lightly any more (though, because he’s a bit more reserved and less confidant, he rarely resorts to his Ring powers).

Eggman dead? Of course not! But, didn’t he get blown out the sky? Well, yes, but at the last second Sonic pulled his power, knowing he could never kill, even someone as evil and despicable as Eggman, it’s not Sonic’s nature. Of course, this is never said, only hinted at slightly in Sonic: Liberty, but here it is for you all to see.

OVERALL

Great ending, very action packed and fast paced with a set up for the next comic (again) and some interesting character developments between the central characters (perhaps Sonic’s actions here are what cause Knuckles to be a little more aggressive in following comics, as though he lost a little respect for Sonic? Could be). I had Sonic Heroes planned as my next comic so I included the first ever “James Bond Will Return”-like tease at the end of this comic, as well as the Heroes teams and outfits for the cameo stars at the end. This comic is very dark, very gritty, taking things a big step further and you can tell from reading it that it is long, complicated and epic, with lots of manipulations and subtle things happening that have important parts to play later. I was smart and never had Eggman resort to absorbing the energy to make himself powerful again, returning him to using machines and his intellect to harness that power instead. I love this comic, it was a lot of hard work and was very satisfying and I hit my stride with this comic, it allowed me to know what my skills were, gave me a basis for what might be maybe a little “too much” and built some good foundations for later comics with characters such as Nack, Rouge and the on going sub-plot concerning Metal Sonic. But, following this, my comics became a little more lighter, even later ones where the situation is quite dark, it never became as dark as this and this also marks the last time I did a comic (outside Chaotix: Roots) that didn’t focus entirely around the Chaos Emeralds. Also, the Dragonball Z stuff became focussed solely on the Super forms, which I kept for extreme circumstances (or, like most new Sonic games, for the very end fight) to keep them special and not just power for the sake of power. So this really marked a culmination for me and would have been the last comic had it not been for Sonic Heroes, which led to Sonic Battle: Metal Ragnorak being conceived and, in turn, Sonic: Liberty, all due to this rarely referenced, but extremely vital, entry to my series.

Thanks for reading.

- SkSpAwN/Stuart