By Mark Rodriguez
One thing I noticed is how similar Dr. Robotnic and Dr. Wiley are. Both are evil mad scientists, ruling the world with robots of all sorts, and both are helpless in actual combat with their enemies. Once Sonic destroys the Death Egg, or Mega Man blows up a giant robot dragon, the scientists make a break for it. But what happens when these two team up? That's what this 12 part crossover goes into as these SEGA and Capcom characters, both appearing in comics published by Archie cross paths.
Now to get you up to speed somewhat... Sonic is one of the longest running comics based on a videogame until it finally ended and now IDW is working on the blue blur. The Sonic comic has character and stories based on the 90's Sonic cartoons, the classic games, original stuff during the period where there were no Sonic games, and finally the newer stuff from the Dreamcast games and Sonic X. They even killed the original Dr. Robotnik only for a more evil version from an alternate universe to take his place and decide to use a new body that just happens to look like modern day Dr. Eggman. The current story during this crossover involves Princess Sally being turned into an evil robot.
On the Megaman side, the comic was a lot newer on the time and was basically retelling the stories of each game, one by one. They still added some new Robot Masters not found in the games. The current plot deals with Protoman still being his evil Break Man persona and the Robot Masters have been turned back into good guys as some of them were originally intended.
This comic is a mix of the last few pages or so of the last issues of both Sonic and Megaman before their universes started to merge and their old realities were phased out in favor of this new one. Let's check them out.
On the Sonic side, out hedgehog hero alongside Tails, Amy, Silver, some new guy named Guntiver and a whole bunch of others plan an attack on Eggman’s base, with Sonic focusing mainly on rescuing Sally. Amy asks Silver just how he happened to know they’d be in the Arctic at that time, and he quickly tells her he’s psychic. Silver is some sort of time traveling hedgehog from a horrible future to warn them that one of the Freedom Fighters will be a traitor and ruin everything… much like Bishop from the X-Men.
One thing I noticed is how similar Dr. Robotnic and Dr. Wiley are. Both are evil mad scientists, ruling the world with robots of all sorts, and both are helpless in actual combat with their enemies. Once Sonic destroys the Death Egg, or Mega Man blows up a giant robot dragon, the scientists make a break for it. But what happens when these two team up? That's what this 12 part crossover goes into as these SEGA and Capcom characters, both appearing in comics published by Archie cross paths.
Now to get you up to speed somewhat... Sonic is one of the longest running comics based on a videogame until it finally ended and now IDW is working on the blue blur. The Sonic comic has character and stories based on the 90's Sonic cartoons, the classic games, original stuff during the period where there were no Sonic games, and finally the newer stuff from the Dreamcast games and Sonic X. They even killed the original Dr. Robotnik only for a more evil version from an alternate universe to take his place and decide to use a new body that just happens to look like modern day Dr. Eggman. The current story during this crossover involves Princess Sally being turned into an evil robot.
On the Megaman side, the comic was a lot newer on the time and was basically retelling the stories of each game, one by one. They still added some new Robot Masters not found in the games. The current plot deals with Protoman still being his evil Break Man persona and the Robot Masters have been turned back into good guys as some of them were originally intended.
This comic is a mix of the last few pages or so of the last issues of both Sonic and Megaman before their universes started to merge and their old realities were phased out in favor of this new one. Let's check them out.
On the Sonic side, out hedgehog hero alongside Tails, Amy, Silver, some new guy named Guntiver and a whole bunch of others plan an attack on Eggman’s base, with Sonic focusing mainly on rescuing Sally. Amy asks Silver just how he happened to know they’d be in the Arctic at that time, and he quickly tells her he’s psychic. Silver is some sort of time traveling hedgehog from a horrible future to warn them that one of the Freedom Fighters will be a traitor and ruin everything… much like Bishop from the X-Men.
Anyways, the heroes, now called Team Fighters, walk through an underwater pipe to sneak into Eggman’s base. Taking a cue from the games, Sonic is afraid of water and wants everyone to hurry and get the pipewalk over with. Just then, they are attacked by evil talking killer whales, with their, leader named Akhlut, wanting revenge for the last time Sonic defeated him (see how much I’m missing here??). The whales shoot at Silver, and Sonic and the rest fight them off. They manage to get into Eggman’s base, but Akhlut can still shoot them from the pool. The killer whale calls for Eggman’s troops and it’s time to fight.
Eggman finds out about Sonic and his gang busting up the place (due to one of his robots speaking in a Jamaican accent, mon) which pisses him off since he built that bunker as an early warning base. He calls for Mecha Sally to attack them leaving no prisoners. Panicking, Eggman wants to unleash another Genesis Wave, but has to hurry before Sonic can ruin everything. He tells his robots to get his inter-dimensional portal ready and says ‘Albert better be ready to go’. Mecha Sally arrives and starts attacking Amy. Sonic tries to stop her, while everyone else continues to fight Eggman’s forces.
Elsewhere in Sonic’s home town, Cream follows a Tails doll she has, which turns out to be some sort of robot spy for Eggman. The doll heads towards the New Mobotropolis Power Station, where he is surrounded by Cream and her group of Freedom Fighters. The toy says his mission is to destroy the power plant and spread radiation throughout the city and transforms into a giant Men in Black-type monster, surprising our heroes.
Back to the Death Egg II, Tails saves Sonic from being blasted point blank by Mecha Sally. She is about to fire again, but Silver blasts her from behind with his magic powers (or whatever). Silver is glad to have saved Sonic, but he tell him to not let it go to his head. Just then everything starts fading to white around them. Silver wonders if it’s another time shift… and Sonic braces himself for the Genesis Wave.
On the Megaman side of things, the story starts out in Mega City where everyone is celebrating Mega Man’s birthday until Break Man starts an attack. As they shoot it out, Break Man manages to shoot Mega Man’s trusty robo-dog Rush, which he was using as a flying hoverboard. This sends them both crashing to the ground. As Mega Man tends to his buddy, Break Man shoots him in the back. Mega Man says he’s eager to continue their fight, but he asks for him to at least let him take care of his dog. Break Man seems to hesitate, but then manages to block an attack by Bomb Man.
Three Robot Masters, now reprogrammed to be good (or rather re-re-programmed since they were originally good before Wiley messed with them), Cut Man, Guts Man and Bomb Man show up to help. Break Man easily dodges all their attacks, while Mega Man repairs Rush enough so he can teleport back to his lab.
Break Man makes short work of the Robot Masters. He easily dodges a punch from Guts Man that went to Cut Man instead… tosses Cut Man’s scissors to slice Bomb Man’s arms off, and tosses Bomb Man’s bombs at Guts Man. Mega Man turns to see that Break Man ‘broke’ the Robot Masters and tells Bomb Man to get help. The Blue Bomber is pissed at Break Man’s disregard for innocent people and is ready to take him down without holding back. As Mega Man and Break man shoot it out, Bomb Man tries to help his buddies.
Back to the fight, Break man manages to blast Mega Man with his version of the Mega Buster. Defeated, Mega Man begs Break Man to at least spare his Integrated Personality Chip, since it’s what make him who he is and it would break Dr. Light’s heart. Break Man has flashbacks of his own time with Dr. Light (for those that don’t know, Proto Man used to be a normal robot named Blues, much like Mega Man was once Rock). Break Man tries to run away but Mega Man manages to grab him by the scarf and pull him to the ground. Mega Man pins him down, determined to pull off his helmet and find out who Break Man really is, when just then they are also hit by the Genesis Wave.
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| should we call this the Capcom Wave? |
My opinions
Like I said before, this comic seems to grab the pages of the last issue of both comic series before this event started. The Sonic comic took a lot of liberties with the story at a time when the game's only story was Robotnic captures animals and turns them into robots, and Sonic and Tails stop him. This forced the powers at be to give Sonic a bunch of new friends, like Princess Sally and Bunny Rabbot and give Robotnic a more sinister and complicated design than his original design from the SEGA Genesis games. Couple that with original villains that were used during the period that they killed off Robotnic and there were no games to base stories off of, and all the new stuff from the Dreamcast games, I really had no idea what the hell was going on with the Sonic comics at the time.
The Megaman comics though were closer to the games, since even though they were somewhat simple, they did have a story from day one, and it seems they're in the middle of the Megaman 3 story where Protoman was still Break Man. It's cool seeing the Robot Masters as good guys now because they were originally meant to be helpful to humanity before Dr. Wiley reprogrammed them to be evil.
The art is cool and flashy, making the heroes look cool and the villains look dark and menacing, no matter how goofy they can be at times.
Now in case you're wondering what happens to Mecha Sally.... two things got in the way, namely this crossover, and as lawsuits by one of the Sonic artists Ken Penders that wanted to claim several of the characters as his own, despite them still being somewhat based SEGA characters and games. Like if I worked for Shonen Jump and created a new Saiyan character for a Dragonball chapter.. I still wouldn't be able to claim this new character as my own since the idea of a Saiyan ultimately belongs to Akira Toriyama. So whatever big plot or whatever they had planned was erased by this event, because when things get back to normal, Sally is magically back to her normal self with no memories of being a robot, but I will expand on that at the end of this.
This 12-part will be drawn out over issues of Megaman, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Universe. Will I bought the older issues through Amazon, once I got caught up I made sure to never miss an issue thanks to Bent Wookee. The several hours it takes to get there are always worth it.
I own all 12 issues, so let's get started. This series is going to be fun.
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