#su(2)

The Shadow Saga (Part 2 of 4): Time & Again

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

So, do you remember how way back when we got the single-issue incomplete "adaption" of Sonic Adventure 2, I mentioned that the events of the incident would be clarified by Ian Flynn in a later issue? Well, this is the one! Interspersed within the events of the modern story are flashbacks to what happened during Sonic Adventure 2, heavily modified to fit within the comic's world. However, I've elected to tackle the modern half of the story first, and explore Sonic Adventure 2 afterward, mostly because though Ian seems to be trying to draw parallels between the latter story and the former, they don't really… work all that well, nowhere near the level that they did in the first arc of KtE anyway.

The modern story opens with Shadow approaching the Freedom Fighters' camp not far from the Eggdome in the middle of the night, waking Sonic up to invite him along to a little bonus mission.

I mean, while I can understand wanting to invite Sonic on a mission against Eggman, 1. he's already on one, and 2. you'd think Shadow would realize he'd need some sleep before the final battle against his arch-nemesis. What, you can't handle this alone, Shadow? Well, as it turns out he's not actually alone, as Sonic reaches the rendezvous point first (zooming off ahead of Shadow, of course), and finds Rouge waiting for him. Apparently, Eggman's been working on a sneaky plan to turn a telescope in the city into a massive laser capable of wiping the Freedom Fighters' little camp off the map, shield or no… as well as half of the rest of the city. Sonic thinks this is overkill even for someone like Eggman, but as Shadow catches up he explains that GUN doesn't quite think so.

To be fair, Sonic, you haven't been seeing the behind-the-scenes insane ramblings of his that Snively's been subject to recently. They break into the laser control room, and Sonic and Shadow deal with the smaller security lasers while Rouge hacks into the control system, trying to disable the thing. The cannon is already moving into position to fire, and worse still, the console then fries itself, Rouge having accidentally triggered a self-destruct command. Sonic and Shadow try to destroy the cannon directly, but no amount of spindashing or Chaos Spear-ing will pierce its armor, so Rouge suggests going for the bolts holding it in place, hoping it might throw off the shot.

Brilliant job, guys! Shadow, seeing no other choice, removes his inhibitor rings and climbs onto the top of the cannon just as it begins to fire. He uses all of his power to force the shot to misfire outwards instead of straight ahead, wrecking the barrel but saving the Freedom Fighters. This is really the only place where the parallels Ian tries to draw make sense, as then we see a flashback of him using his power a year ago to force the ARK back into orbit, and subsequently falling back into the atmosphere.

Aww, look at 'em! As the sun begins to rise, the three walk back towards the camp, and Sonic asks if they want in on the invasion. Shadow refuses, saying that he believes this is Sonic's fight considering how long he's been fighting against Eggman. As Sonic leaves, Rouge smirks at Shadow, and remarks on how far their relationship has come from before. Shadow, of course, has to defend his ego and insists he merely respects Sonic, to which Rouge teases him even more about how of course he can't admit he's made a friend.

Now, time to take a look at what their relationship used to be like, in the very-condensed Adaption 2.0 of Sonic Adventure 2! Instead of following exactly how it's portrayed in this issue, I'm just going to explain how exactly everything went down starting from the beginning, relying on context clues from this issue and previous ones. In case you've forgotten, during the events of the incident, both Tails and Knuckles were otherwise occupied, Amy was chilling in Mercia with Rob, and basically no one was even aware of where Sonic was at the time, as he was apprehended while sneaking back into Knothole while he was still supposed to be confined there. StH#98 covered what happened leading up to his arrest and subsequent breakout, but naturally, after the GUN truck chase he was rearrested and taken to Prison Island. Meanwhile, of course, Shadow had been released from his pod by Eggman, stolen a Chaos Emerald from Station Square, and presumably explained how the ARK's Eclipse Cannon worked to Eggman. Like in the game, Rouge also showed up at this point to offer her support in procuring more Chaos Emeralds - though as you might remember, at this point in the comic's history the emeralds still hadn't been combined into their distinct seven forms yet, so the Eclipse Cannon only required seven random emeralds to fire. Conspicuously missing is the entire plot point about Rouge stealing the Master Emerald from Knuckles, and the both of them subsequently searching for its shattered remnants all over the world, but if we're being quite honest the entire story still makes perfect sense without Knuckles and the Master Emerald, which I suppose is lucky for Ian trying to make sense out of all of this.

The point at which this issue actually starts recapping prior events begins on Prison Island after Sonic had broken out of prison once again - without the help of Amy or anyone else, mind you, since once again, they were all elsewhere at time. Really, this version of events is so stripped-down precisely because half of the game cast is missing, which is why the events of the game were able to fit into a single day despite several days passing in the game itself. Sonic and Shadow had their famous "faker" exchange in the forest and began fighting each other, with Rouge's voice coming over Shadow's communicator and informing them she'd found the remaining six Chaos Emeralds they'd need. At that point, Eggman reminded Shadow the whole island was about to blow, and at the same time Rouge called for help as she'd found herself stuck inside the vault. When Sonic heard Eggman tell Shadow to leave her and that they'd come back later to "dig the emeralds out of the ashes," he was outraged and offered Shadow a truce so they could rescue Rouge together. Shadow accepted, and they raced back to the facility as the timer counted down, with Shadow Chaos Control-ing them off the island and into the desert just before the place exploded.

See, while I understand where Ian is going with this, I really don't like his rewrite of Shadow's motivations here. For those not familiar, in the game, Shadow makes the decision to go back for Rouge entirely on his own, because the thought of her dying alone in the facility made him flash back to Maria's death. Later on, when she tries to talk to him about how he saved her, he avoids her questions, giving a similar excuse to this one, but with it being pretty obvious that that's not the case, as he hasn't stopped thinking about Maria since the mission. Here, Ian makes it seem like Shadow actually didn't care and indeed was only after the Chaos Emeralds, and he only went to the trouble of rescuing her thanks to Sonic's suggestion. However, I understand why this was kind of necessary - with his main allies elsewhere, Sonic needed someone to ally with for the next part of the plot. He ended up teaming up with Rouge, who was quite offended at Shadow's attitude, to break into the pyramid containing Eggman's base, and she piloted the space shuttle within up to the ARK. As I've pointed out before, at no point in the comic is it even slightly hinted that Eggman broke the moon in half as he does in the game - the only indication we have of such an event would be in StH#197, when Sonic recognizes Mobius from orbit by its half-destroyed moon, but in all fairness, the issue doesn't actually state the reason why the moon is broken. Remember, it's canon that Mobius has one hundred moons - that wasn't even retconned! Ian just made up a story behind it and put it in the Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia afterwards, but with one hundred whole-ass moons, it's entirely probable that at least one got bodied at some point in the planet's history, and Sonic just happened to recognize that particular one as he was reentering the planet's atmosphere. But anyway, once Sonic and Rouge made it up to the ARK, Sonic and Shadow quickly got into a fight on the catwalks outside the station, presumably while Eggman slotted the emeralds into their positions in the cannon.

*sigh* One of the biggest problems I have with the preboot is its handling of Shadow's entire story. I don't think Shadow ever got an actual chance to shine from his initial appearance until StH#171, when he had his whole "This is who I am" moment after exploring Gerald's digital diary. Everything about him, his entire backstory, was horribly neglected compared to his actually very rich and deep character arc from the games. This, above, is exactly what I'm talking about. In the game, it's implied that Shadow actually wins his final fight against Sonic (though Sonic obviously doesn't die from it), and then once the Eclipse Cannon is up and running, he moves into one of the ARK's observation rooms to quietly reflect on the past and watch the station crash into the planet. He doesn't snap out of it until Amy enters the room and her subsequent words trigger a flashback of Maria's real final wish. Furthermore, he's the only person in the cast who doesn't actually see the video of Gerald's execution or read his final diary entry. In other words, in the game, he comes back to his right mind organically, by remembering what his purpose is, while in the comic he apparently just got to watch a video telling him outright why he's wrong without him actually having to do the thinking that brings him back to reality. Seeing as Shadow is my favorite character in the entire franchise, this brushing-aside of one of the most important moments in his character arc irks me a little. But then again, I will still acknowledge that Ian wasn't really left a lot to work with here, and if anything the fault lies more with Karl Bollers and Kenders carelessly brushing past Sonic Adventure 2 in favor of their ongoing story about Robotropolis getting nuked or whatever.

Anyway, in the end, Shadow and Sonic went to the ARK's internal chamber that housed the Biolizard, and when it fused with the ARK to bring it crashing down to earth anyway, he and Sonic went Super and defeated it out in space, just like in the game. The game actually doesn't give a very clear reason why Shadow fell from orbit while Sonic was fine, but in the comic, it's shown that the act of teleporting the ARK back into orbit exhausted all his energy, resulting in the loss of his Super form early. As one of the above images shows, Sonic actually reached for him but was unable to catch him in time, hence his remark of not wanting to go through that again (even though realistically a fall from a five-story cannon is hardly going to do the same damage to Shadow as a fall from orbit). And that's it! As I said, the comic's adaption is incredibly stripped-down from the events of the game, but with so much of the cast missing, it kind of had to be. While I don't agree with all of Ian's decisions on how to adapt the circumstances while still retaining the basic gist of the story, I understand his ultimate conclusions, and in the end, they do work pretty well given how different the history of the world is in the comics versus the game. And despite Shadow not having a clear history with Rouge in the comics as he does in the games, Ian's finally saw fit to bring them together as a team in this issue, and they remain as such for the rest of the comic, including through the reboot.