Commentary

COVER

Back to the drawn covers and I was really going for something epic here with this picture. I wanted Super Sonic, Eggman, Shadow and it was when drawing this cover that I decided to have Super Knuckles, even though he really could have been left out and it was handled a little clumsily in the story. The cover is shown smaller because it’s frigging big but I love this cover. The Super Sonic is from the Archie Comics Sonic Adventure spin-off.

You know your Prologue’s too long when it takes up two pages, but now we can see how my sprite skills have improved, as things are placed with purpose and reason and a lot of these pages are presented as GIF files this time.

Okay, the stuff on this Prologue page looks a little odd. Incidentally, when making this comic, as with Tales Of Shadow #1: Chaos Control, I didn’t number the page file names, instead I named them, pretending they were like Dragonball Z episodes. It was fun and new, but it made it pretty hard to keep track of which page went where so I never did it again.

Onto the story and we’re thrown into it right away as Eggman, Nack and Metal (Zonik, taken from a Sonic Adventure Gamebook with a replica Sonic Robot called Zonik. I wanted Metal to be called Zonik from the start, then later found it to be a pretty daft name, so it switched briefly to Metallia then to simple Metal) return from Little Planet, with a nice little scene from Sonic CD just thrown in there and my first large-size Advance background. It’s too big.

Who’s that falling out the sky? It’s SHADOW!! Actually, it’s Knuckles posing as Shadow, as Shadow has had the whole Sonic-Is-Evil-I’m-Not manipulation thing we saw between Eggman and Knuckles in Sonic 3. This is actually presented in a very vague way, as Eggman is consciously manipulating Shadow, but Shadow seems aware that Eggman wants to use this mysterious Perfect Chaos (only Shadow knows what it is and how terrible it would be) to conquer, but at the same time he seems unaware. It’s a blurry line, and it takes extended reading into Tales Of Shadow #2: Marooned and "I, Metal" to understand the exact specifics of it. Either way, it sets Shadow up as very complicated, mysterious and very powerful.

Teleporting in again and we see here that my Shadow doesn’t require a Chaos Emerald to do Chaos Control. Odd? Read on. Interesting here, backing up what I just said, Eggman clearly states he wants to rule the Planet, perhaps Shadow is too distracted by being with the Emeralds again to be listening? Also, Shadow says that using the Emeralds powers simply to levitate the Island is insulting and a waste, yet it was he who raised the Island. This could now be interpreted as a scoff at Pachacamac, who is a disgrace to Shadow. Knuckles and Chaotix speedily leap in to get things really cooking.

Back to those Action Scenes, but here I am moving away from the blank-colour background style (later on I returned to it to give an “old-school” feeling), or at least trying to. This is the first time I used my speed-blurring technique that became a recognisable quality of my comics since. Interesting thing to note is that I intentionally had Shadow perform the Super Peel Out before Sonic did, and had Sonic use it only after fighting Shadow, as if he learned the skill from Shadow.

Knuckles tries to make a bold statement by attacking Metal, but (surprisingly) he doesn’t do any damage and we see that first of my bright-light attacks, as Shadow fells them all in one move. He is pretty freaking strong, but we don’t know why yet. Mighty’s come up with an idea that is straight out of Fleetway…

…KICKING HIM RIGHT THE FUCK OUT OF THE SHRINE AND OFF THE ISLAND! LOL! Here it takes Knux, Espio AND Vector to do what Amy and Cream did so easily and pin down Metal. An odd thing with this was that I wrote for Nack to follow Charmy off the Island. With what? I didn’t have the hover craft sprite he uses, nor did he have a way to produce it, and he can’t fly. So I had him simply, grab that bee and tumble off frame.

Bless Tails; he admires Eggman’s genius. This control room is a far cry from the later extensively created backgrounds I would produce and I never actually saved this background, so in later comics which had flashbacks to this point I had to piece it all together, even that damn smashed window.

Nack’s a bit of a wimp as well really, but Charmy managed to deliver that message. Lucky that he came crashing through the control room of Eggman where Sonic just happened to be…

Sonic leaps right into action, he’s been waiting for this, you can tell. See now, in the year Eggman was gone, the Freedom Fighters managed to restore a lot of Crystal Island, stripping away Eggman’s influence, and it took them a lot of hard work that was both undone and redone in a simple blink of an eye later.

That Floating Island is bland because I lost the Floating Island panel I had in BFTCE and had to made that crappy one, but I “made up for it” by adding little spray paints of light grey around the Tornado and Charmy to show puffs of air and flight. Chaotix got totalled, but this time Knuckles is faster on his feet than Sonic.

Because Shadow only looks like Sonic to the visually impaired, there is no confusing the two in my comics and only subtle references to the “faker” thing, I always found the idea that Sonic, Tails, Eggman and Amy could all mistake a black Hedgehog with red, jaggered spikes and completely different shoes and gloves for a rather plain looking blue Hedgehog. Anyway, Shadow is actually using his powers to stabilise the Chaos Emeralds to prevent Chaos from being unleashed. When he says the power yearns to be free, it’s true, and it’s not what he wants, but it’s what Eggman wants because he believes it’s an energy he can use to conquer the Planet. It’s a case of crossed wires, you see. Sonic is smart here, as Knuckles was earlier, and goes right for Metal.

Taking both Metal and Shadow out, Sonic then proves that Eggman’s a weakling without his machines by pouncing on him. But then we get the obligatory Sonic Vs Shadow fight, which is eerily similar to Sonic Vs Knuckles from BFTCE at this point.

As if fighting one Sonic clone wasn’t bad enough, Metal joins forces with Shadow to take Sonic on together, in some odd looking Action Scenes which are easily the basic techniques I later refined for my other comics for more impressive battles, but this holds up quite well I think.

I love this, I was thinking Mortal Kombat here and it shows so well. Now, while Metal’s destruction was pretty easy, it’s worth noting that I purposely left Metal’s ruins on the floor of the Shrine so that people would remember them for later. I guess if Metal can be destroyed by running into a wall in Sonic CD then being tossed onto ceiling spikes works just as well.

Now we see that Shadow has a few energy attacks up his sleeve, exactly what gives him this unique power? As he blasts blue energy, erects a protective shield and produces a Sonic-whirlwind-like blast of green energy. As Sonic and Shadow continue their fight, Eggman gets overzealous and starts revealing his full intentions, and we also see here that Eggman’s gone a bit insane at being away from Mobius for so long. Frankly why Knuckles and Tails didn’t thrown HIM up into the ceiling spikes I’ll never know.

Oops, Shadow heard and now he’s confused. Eggman calls upon what I said earlier and assumes that Shadow was aware that Eggman wanted to conquer and, in the first of many huge text boxes (funny how they usually all come from Shadow), Shadow explains that he is a lifeform born from the Chaos Emeralds, the physical manifestation of good, basically he is the biological Super Sonic. Now, I know this is totally not what Shadow really is, but it allowed me to create a counter-balance to Chaos, who is the physical manifestation of evil and as such he should have a counterpart (not Super Sonic, Super Sonic is a conduit for the positive energies, energies made physical as Shadow). Plus, I was able to make this Shadow everything the real Shadow is with subtle alternations. I had a base for Shadow’s personality and basically worked backwards, establishing how he became what he is, and mixed in my own ideas as well. Shadow is probably the most unlike his game character than anyone else in my comics but that’s what makes them unique and it works, he has his whole own story to tell beyond just being created on a Space Station and stuff. Oh yeah and Eggman cracks the Emerald…

But never mind that, because Charmy and Nack have recovered! Interestingly enough, I had Nack run off here and intended never to use him again, because his sprites annoyed me and it seemed pointless and out of character to have him hanging around and standing side by side with Eggman. Luckily this afforded me the opening for my following comic and Nack made a few decent returns and became a character in his own right, rather than some henchman like I feared.

Somehow Amy has learned to fly a plane, but not just any plane: the weird little one for Sonic Spinball!! Oh, I mean, the prototype for Tornado 2. I think it’s cute. Cuggacugaachuggachugga…

Chaotix recovered, at last, and join the others just in time to see the coming of Chaos Zero. Eggman seems happy about this, knowing now what Chaos is and content to let it destroy Mobius. These Chaos Zero sprites are pretty good but the Sonic Battle ones are so much better, which was half the reason why I brought Chaos back later so I could use them.

Man, at least when they hit Shadow it did something, but not with Chaos. It was hard to show the characters going through Chaos’s liquid form, so I utilised a lot of those water-force field effects to show it has a power far beyond theirs. It’s even more powerful than Shadow. These Action Scenes look a little better.

Sonic’s a glutton for punishment all right, as Chaos shows off some of its basic energy attacks, which are more like water-energy. Shadow managed to splash into Chaos a bit there because of my misleading blurring techniques, but it’s a far cry from the effect seen in Tales Of Shadow #3: The Return Of Chaos. Again, they can’t hurt Chaos, and Chaos has the stretchy arm of Kid Buu, one of a few Buu traits I put into Chaos, who is already quite Buu-like.

Knuckles’s flaming punch? Ineffective. Shadow’s air-born sneak attack? Ineffective. Emerald paralysis eye beams and water attacks from its body? Check. Shadow is wrong there, Chaos’s powers are infinite, but Shadow’s are not, nor is Shadow exactly like Chaos, for Chaos is energy in a humanoid form, whereas Shadow is solid, using energy as his ally rather than his body. See, even here Shadow knows the way to destroy Chaos. He’s never seen Perfect Chaos but knows it will be much to powerful to stop, hell they can’t even stop it now. The only way to stop Chaos is to use Chaos Control to seal it away, but if Sonic or Shadow (or, I guess, Knuckles) had turned Super right now, their powers would have eclipsed Chaos’s. That’s why the combined force of Super Sonic, Super Shadow and Super Knuckles can’t destroy Perfect Chaos at the end; because it’s powers are so much beyond theirs. But right now, it is comparatively weak, yet strong enough to crush them in their regular forms. Oh and excuse me: HERE comes Chaotix to join the fray.

However, they jump right into the Buu Saga of Dragonball Z as Chaos absorbs them into itself and transforms. Now, Chaotix and the Freedom Fighters are all stronger individuals than the usual run of the mill Flickie’s or other Mobians, because of their gifts (speed, strength, flight, etc) which is why absorbing Chaotix is enough to transform Chaos, but in Tales Of Shadow #1: Chaos Control, it takes a lot of regular citizens to transform Chaos. Like Buu, he eat all those people but only became more powerful when he ate/absorbed himself, Piccolo, Gotenks and Gohan. Super Chaos is a Genesis sprite of Chaos Zero, but it much bulkier and bigger and looks far stronger so, in the absence of Chaos 1, 2, 4, 6 and Perfect (more on that later) sprites (though I have now found some, dammit) I used this Genesis sprite to show Chaos goes through these transformations and becomes visibly stronger. Now it would take Super Shadow, Super Sonic and Super Knuckles to destroy it, in a pinch, but they’ve missed their best chance to destroy it.

And again, their attacks do little to Chaos, whose powers have increased so much. Eggman’s happy so he’s off, presumably to watch from a hole somewhere (this is taken somewhat from Fleetway, for by the coming of Chaos Eggman was quite happy to let the Planet die and did nothing to help fight Chaos). Chaos is pretty mad with power now and wants to ascend to its final form and, obviously, Knuckles can’t stop it. Oh yeah, I also started using those bright-light transformations in this comic. Can’t get enough of those.

Remember Metal’s broken body? Well, Chaos is super charged with the Master Emerald’s powers now and is just pure energy, it wants a physical form, so it absorbs Metal into itself, takes Metal’s power, and assumes a quasi-Sonic physical form for its power to be manifested as. This creates Perfect Chaos (in name only mind, because the huge dragon is the true Perfect Chaos, but here we witness the birth of Perfect Chaos as an ordered rage, rather than an out of control, rampaging hulk of a beast), who is streamlined and ready for battle. This sprite is, apparently, a Genesis sprite of Void from Sonic Shuffle, though it looks very little like him because it’s the wrong colours. A lot of the Void sprites seen later in this comic were edited by me because the Void sheet was pretty sparse.

Amy shows some attitude and knocks out Eggman, she also effectively captures him and defeats him and wins the war against him in this comic, but it’s lightly touched.

Okay, see this? See it? Perfect Chaos goes crashing up through the Emerald Chamber, destroying the ceiling and basically ripping it open for the world and his wife to peer into. Although I never mentioned this, this is why, in subsequent comics, the Emeralds are all outside on an Emerald Shrine similar to what we saw in Sonic Adventure, because the Chamber was wreaked by Perfect Chaos. I hand made the Emerald Shrine background and wanted to use it but, at the time, was content not to explain it, but that’s why the Chamber is never seen (and often hardly ever mentioned) again (as well as the fact that I print my comics out and the Emerald Chamber takes up loads of black ink). Anyway, we finally get some real action as Sonic leaps up to harness his Emerald powers once again, something he should have done a little earlier.

Transformed again, now as the kewl Advanced Super Sonic, Sonic knows that Shadow can do the same, and urges him to. This is the first time Shadow has ever turned Super, he’s never had to before and, to be truthfully, probably didn’t think it was possible. Doubting that the two of them will be enough and considering the fact that Knuckles has been around the Emeralds his whole life and is the natural Guardian of them so he has enhanced abilities that he didn’t know about, they get him to transform too.

Okay so, Super Sonic is about five times stronger than Shadow is normally. Super Shadow is about three or five times stronger than is usual form. Super Knuckles is about three or five times less as strong as Super Sonic, because Sonic is the chosen conduit for the positive energies of the Emeralds. Now, Sonic tells Tails to stay behind for a few reasons. One, he doesn’t believe that Tails can access the Emerald’s power as they can, and he’s right, Tails can’t do that. Two, even if Tails could, Sonic doesn’t want Tails to be involved and get hurt. Three, he has a sudden strong belief (as strong as the sudden understanding that Shadow and Knuckles can turn Super) that Tails will one day be the only hope of Mobius, that he will grow up to be strong and the Planet will need him. Also, if they all fail, then maybe Tails can find a way to ascend and finish Chaos off. Not a lot of this is said, it is implied here and in later comics. Here it looks as though Tails is being excluded and that Tails accepts that, but that’s not the case at all. However, I wouldn’t extend the dialogue to include this extra stuff, because it’s something I wanted developed so that Tails could gain power and confidence slowly and prove his worth in a way that would seem special. But now we’re starting the biggest battle so far…

Perfect Chaos is charging a Spirit Bomb of sorts here, against this lovely space background, and this is where all the attack sprites I’d got from Dragonball Z sheets really came into play. See how it takes all three of them at once just to nudge Perfect Chaos enough to make him stop? That’s how strong Perfect Chaos is.

But now he’s pissed and they have to go on the defensive, but Perfect Chaos does the first ever energy wave effect of my comics (here it’s called an atmospheric shockwave, but it’s essentially like during the Cell games Saga when Hercule’s protégés were whisked away by Cell’s power without Cell even moving). Perfect Chaos is so streamlined, ordered and fast that it can instantly dart about and attack each one of them as though its fighting them one on one, despite their valiant attacks, it is just too powerful.

Knuckles encourages them to use heart and desire, but that’s like an adrenaline boost, it only gets you so far, but they don’t realise this, they believe there’s a way to out-power Chaos so they pour it on and let me say, those multiple explosions and multiple cloud effects are a staple of mine (like the blurring techniques) but they are a right bitch to do! Anyway, Chaos survives, of course and blasts them all individually. Shadow is shocked but then he can’t know everything he thinks he does if he didn’t realise they should have powered up BEFORE it became even Super Chaos.

However, it comes back to him, the tried and tested quick-fix way of getting rid of Chaos, but it requires Sonic and Knuckles distracting the beast, something that with all their mighty powers they really can’t do, because Perfect Chaos has very little to worry about at this point.

Knuckles channels his rage and manages to nudge Chaos, but Chaos actually ran through Knuckles there, though it really doesn’t look like it. Chaos suspends them in those energy beams and is charging up his power to absorb their Emerald powers and add to his own, but Sonic and Knuckles bought Shadow just enough time.

He grabs him, tears him up and with one flash of brilliant light and two words, Chaos Control, it’s all over and undone. Chaos is transferred back into mindless energy and kept trapped inside the Master Emerald, its powers emanating only as a beacon of evil. The Chaos Control effect is one I kept ever since introducing Shadow, it’s had a few tweaks but is basically the same effect, even the same sound effects, each time. Continuity, I think so.

Now this is Limbo, this is what it looks like inside the Master Emerald (Sonic is briefly back here at the end of Sonic: Liberty). Sonic and Knuckles’s powers are stripped away again for now and Shadow bids his farewell. I wanted Shadow to go out definitively and with a sacrifice and that sacrifice is that now he has allowed himself to become energy like Chaos and he will be trapped in the Master Emerald to keep a balance between Chaos’s evil so that it won’t get out of control like it did when Shadow was trapped on the Little Planet for a year. It was, at the time, what I believed to be the last time we would see Shadow outside of the Tales Of Shadow prequels, because he died in Sonic Adventure 2 and, though I did leave the door open, he was pretty much history after this. However, he came back and I managed to work that into my future comics quite well, pretty much rolling with the punches as they came.

Chaos’s evil was undone when it was sealed away, reviving Chaotix and Metal (who is in complete form, if you notice) just like Buu spitting out Fat Buu or Cell vomiting out Android 18. They have no memory of what it was like to be a part of Chaos, just a vague recollection of disturbing images. And, here’s the subtle hint that Amy isn’t just a pretty face, because she gets kudos from Sonic for capturing Eggman. This is like the real end, though obviously it was the beginning of something much worse, because it looks like they’ve won it all and there’s even a nice little ghost of Shadow posing with them all.

Think it’s over? Well, remember Nack? Sonic sure does. And well he should. But it’s over for now and here we have another tribute to Fleetway as Eggman is incarcerated just as he was during the Knuckles Saga in Fleetway. Metal is held in an electromagnetic force field with him and Big The Cat gets his cameo (well this story is based on Sonic Adventure, after all) as a guard. Big himself went through a rocky character progression too, but that’s a story for later. That Big sprite was made be me, I made a small sheet from Tails, Eggman, Cream and other assorted sprites. It wasn’t bad but the sprite I finally found and used was much better. It took ages to find a decent Big sprite.

OVERALL

I like this comic, I think it is a return to the dark tone I was aiming for in BFTCE, perhaps actually hitting a darker tone, and it is a set up for so many things: Shadow’s back story, the following comic which takes place shortly after this, Chaos, all these things that are intertwined in the history of these characters in my universe. Things really pick up and get serious and epic after this, so much so that I had to try to bring it back to a basic fun ride a bit a little later, but then I found a balance and was able to tell stories that needed to be told and tell them pretty well.

Thanks for reading.

-SkSpAwN/Stuart