Not real life, Not fantasy.

On the other hand, pileated woodpeckers

Silence in green

"Disney has no plan!" Neither did George Lucas. "The shows/books/games/latest movie suck(s)!" You've been saying that since the Special Editions released in the 90s. I know. I've been listening to your barrage of perpetually negative bullshit for roughly three quarters of my fucking life at this point. "If they just listened to us-" They did, it's how we got the version of Rise of Skywalker that's a serial-numbers-filed-off, half-assed version of the forgettable Dark Empire comics.

I can say the exact same thing to the Star Trek "fandom". Y'all have been bitching non-stop since the casting announcements for TNG. And it's almost word for word the same stupid "They changed it now it sucks" sets of arguments the Star Wars

Maybe, just fucking maybe, the problem isn't the shows, the books, the games, the folks making it. Maybe the problem is you, the fan, acting like an entitled, spoilt child who needs things their way and only their way and throws an even bigger tantrum when the companies try to give you what you say you want. I was the same way, once. I was part of the push for Bioware to change Mass Effect 3's ending. 13 years on, I'm happy to admit I'm fucking ashamed I was part of that effort because it did so much to encourage the insufferable, entitled shit in fandoms online today.

So let me share with you the epiphany I've had:

project hail mary + space

SUPER SONIC VS HYPER KNUCKLES #1: “CRASH OF THE TITANS”

TIMELINE: 3235 (1 YEAR AFTER SONIC #1)

Welcome back to ArchieSonic 101, my friends, where we ponder the eternal question of why comic book release order is not the same order they are chronologically supposed to be read in. Take today’s textbook - the preview for it was in Sonic #33, but according to the timeline written by Ken Penders, it’s supposed to take place prior to Sonic #30. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Wow, we haven’t even looked at the cover yet and I’m already ranting about Ken Penders. And he didn't even write this story! Whatever, let’s move on to the topic of today’s event, shall we?

In fiction there are certain battles between the forces of good and evil that are majorly built up to, over the course of several years or sometimes even decades. Obi-Wan Kenobi vs Darth Vader (Episode III Vader, to be clear). The Avengers vs. Thanos. Avatar Aang vs Fire Lord (aka Phoenix King) Ozai. Heck, even James Bond vs Ernst Stavros Blofeld (Sean Connery’s Bond, mind you - there really wasn’t a good build up to Spectre for Daniel Craig’s Bond). The fight we’re going to be looking at today may not have been anticipated quite as much as some of the others I mentioned, but I think there was still a certain amount of hype when it was announced:

Back in the day I was looking forward to this one, especially since the last fight between these two lasted all of two pages. And what a fantastic cover! Spaziante has captured how epic it feels when you’re playing a Sonic game and get to transform into Super Sonic, right down to the poses and expressions Sonic and Knuckles do mid-transformation! 

Now this is more like it. No splash pages or giant walls of rambling, self-important text. After the credits page we get straight into action! I'm not showing the credits page due to Tumblr's image limitations, but I'm sure the creative team of Gallagher and Mawhinney is no surprise here.

Is Tails having met Athair really relevant to the conversation about what Knuckles is doing on Freedom Fighter turf? If I’d been there, I’d have given Tails an exasperated side eye, ala Sonic Adventure:

Okay Knuckles, calm down and get off your high horse. You have some good points about pollution and climate change, but saying it’s the fault of all “landlubbers,” is a bit much. You do know there’s an evil tyranical dictator responsible for all that, right? We’ll even find out in later issues that Mobotropolis was run on clean energy prior to Robotnik’s takeover. And while the “Floating Island” may be tech-free at the moment, it ain’t gonna stay that way.

Also, did Knuckles really need to explain to himself who Mighty was? When you're thinking to yourself, does your thought process go, "I should call Dave, my co-worker from my day job, and see if he wants to go to the movies"?

Beware, echidna lore is coming - Ken Penders demands it.

Also, I never expected Mighty would be a book nerd. “Gasp! Is that a signed 1st edition?!”

See? Knuckles has proven my point - he knows that Robotnik is the cause of all the pollution in Robotropolis. Much like in the real world, it’s a few greedy industrialists that are condemning everyone else to hell.

It's neat that they're bringing up the Lake of Rings though. SatAM nerds like myself had been wondering where it was all this time, but in fairness comic Sonic doesn't have the dependence on power rings that his SatAM counterpart has.

Okay, two things. First, what the hell, Sonic?! You’re really going to sneak up on a guy and sucker-punch him when he’s done nothing wrong? Maybe he still has some pent-up rage and suspicion over what happened in Triple Trouble, but considering that the two of them were being civil to each other (at least… you know, by their standards) when they last came face to face in the Chaotix special, this kind of feels like it came out of nowhere. I suppose there’s a couple of different explanations for that though. Maybe Sonic didn't want to pick a fight in front of his friends back in the Chaotix special? But it's more likely that what we're seeing here is due to a lack of communication between the different writers of these specials.

And secondly, Tails' prediction that these two idiots would get into a fight by page 6 was impressively accurate. But I don’t think we should be encouraging Tails to gamble.

I’m no legal expert, but I feel like Sonic should have read that BEFORE sneaking up behind Knuckles and attacking him for no good reason.

Knuckles ate it alright.

Holy crap, this is a sick move - absolutely worthy of using a full page! Nice one, Knuckles!

I had to cut a page here because of Tumblr's image limits, but Sonic manages to yank the tree out of the ground and whack Knuckles with it. Which is a cool move, admittedly.

Uh-oh, the kids are in trouble. Mum is here to put them in time out.

Ooooh, a zone with Chaos Emeralds just lying around to find? We haven’t seen that since the Master System games, and even then there was a limit of one Chaos Emerald per zone!

Also, this habit the writers have of beginning every story (or in this case, chapter) using the title characters' logos in dialogue is starting to get old. It just feels so unnatural at times.

And so the truth finally comes out! We already knew about this of course, because by reading the series chronologically, we’ve already seen Sally and Knuckles hanging out together as kids in the Sonic Kids 2 special. But at the time this special came out, this was brand new information and the readers were shocked! I do wonder how long Mike Gallagher had been planning this, and if Ken Penders was aware of it at the time he was writing the Sonic & Knuckles special, where Sally pretended to have never heard of Knuckles or Angel the Floating Island before.

...no, that was not a typo. Get the name of the bloody island right, comic!

Also, I quite like Sonic and Sally giggling in that last panel. They’re downright adorable together sometimes.

(sigh) Is there any reason why these two couldn’t just work together and split the loot between them? No, of course not. Because they’re both idiots. :P 

Sonic tells Knuckles to stop, Knuckles rightfully tells him to go stick it up his pointy butt, and so Sonic decides to resort to drastic measures and either beat him to a pulp or just intimidate him into submission by transforming into Super Sonic. Seriously - “unconditional surrender”?! Why are you trying to arrest this man, Sonic? What crime has he committed?! I am not on board with corrupt cop Sonic. ASAB.

“Hyper Knuckles” is an interesting choice, as the hyper forms for Sonic and Knuckles are unlocked by using the Super Emeralds in the games, not the regular Chaos Emeralds. This form really should be called Super Knuckles, so the question is if the creative team for this special didn’t know the difference between the super and hyper forms, or if they just wanted to use a different name to make Hyper Knuckles stand out more from Super Sonic.

Either way, it still looks cool AF. I like how Art Mawhinney has drawn Hyper Knuckles with longer dreadlocks than usual, despite the fact that he's now in danger of tripping over them.

Hell yeah, Knuckles! Fight the power! 

It’s a little weird to see Super Sonic with his quills pointing downwards like they do when he’s not powered up, considering that the games were establishing Super Sonic as having upwards-pointing quills all the way back when he was first introduced in Sonic 2. Heck, Super Sonic even seems to have upwards-pointing quills on the cover of this issue.

This fight is getting ridiculous. …

Okay guys, come on, let’s keep it clean. No dreadlock-pulling, crotch-punching, or immature name-calling, please.

Can we get a fact-checker for this fight, please? That is not a spindash, super or not. That’s just… running.

Here it comes, the big finale…

I remember reading a Dragonball thingy some years ago that said Goku and Vegeta, when they were old and near the end of their lives, went out into space to have their final battle, and while they were never seen again, the light from the supanova their battle caused reached Earth years later. This page feels kind of similar to me.

I wonder if Robotnik is using the same agent as he had back in the classic Sonic mini series? You know, the one who got him a similar cameo in Sonic mini #2?

Meanwhile, Sally wakes up an unconscious Sonic on the shore of the grotto where he started.

Pfft, Sonic is a bad liar. Of course he was going to ask about Knuckles.

So this is cool, it’s great that Knuckles was able to smuggle an emerald out of there without Sonic finding out about it. I’m just wondering how the gossip of this battle was able to reach the island before Knuckles even got back. As Knuckles pointed out at the start of the story, the island is mostly free of technology. The only thing I can think of is that maybe Vector was able to tune in to a radio station on his headphones, but you’d think that would still require the island to be in range of a broadcasting tower.

Okay, let’s be honest - this story is just an excuse for Sonic and Knuckles to have a big, dumb fight. That said, I love this big dumb fight! The stakes are extremely low, there’s no concerns about stopping evil to worry about or anything like that - it’s just Sonic and Knuckles being ridiculously overpowered and beating the crap out of each other. It really does feel like something out of Dragonball, it’s that over the top! It’s not the best-written story we’ve seen so far in ArchieSonic, but the art is fantastic and it’s just extremely fun to read!

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.