Review of Sonic The Hedgehog #287 (Panic In The Sky Part 4)/The Shattered World Crisis Finale
Overall, This final part was pretty good. I mean if you played Sonic Unleashed, with the execption of the location of the fight with Dark Gaia, it somewhat followed it closely to a "T".
I did like how Bunnie, Tails and Antione were able to convice Sally that they and she did everything they could and that so far they got a minor victory out of it with Eggman losing a majority of his super-badniks and his EggmanLand base, which she did agree with and in turn said all they need to do now is lend their faith and support to Sonic and Chip who are battling Dark Gaia.
Now Eggman's reaction I did enjoy, because he did acknowledge that his plans had gone down the tubes, and that he can't really do anything in the way of striking fear into his enemies with his Death Egg so low on power and basically running on fumes, which Bunnie did note on eariler in the issue.
I will give credit for the subtle hints at a possible Sonic Lost World Adapation by Eggman, before he retreated to the Death Egg, so he could be out of range of Dark Gaia and the Freedom Fighters, if they started to rally.
The final act in the issue was done very well. I did feel the emotion coming from it as Chip was saying Goodbye to all the Freedom Fighters, thanking them all for they gave to him and thus helping him to remember what he's there to protect and watch over. The reaction by Relic, was priceless.
I did enjoy the what seems to be a splash page of Chip restoring and the happy reactions from everyone, well except Eggman, who had a look of "Oh, Phooey, It's Not Fair" on his face, while Obot and Cubot tried to console him, as if to tell him "Well, better luck next time boss".
The final panels of the story I did enjoy, because it was the main SatAM Freedom Fighters celebrating and the sun rising over a restored world, with the last page being Chip hugging a restored world.
So overall, the final part of Panic in The Sky, the Shattered World Crisis Finale was done very well, and does lead into a much needed break for the characters before their next big adventture.
Overall, I do recommend reading The Panic In The Sky Mini-Series, although it may seem rushed in some issues, it does do a decent job of wrapping things up.
Rating 8.5/10 for Part 4 and 8/10 for the entire Mini-Series Finale.
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Now let's talk about this near 3 year arc (over 3 years if you include Some of the Sonic Universe Arcs).
First of all, this is a storyarc that could have easily been done within a year's time, just like the Iron Dominion arc was done in, or even within the span of 6 issues. But did Ian want to do that, nope, instead he wanted to make his masterpiece that he didn't get to make with The Mecha Sally arc, due to the behind the scenes lawsuits and thus wanted to achive it with this one, and he did.
But you see the one problem with this, was the fact that it ran for too long, which was the main complaint of sereval fans/readers who kept wondering when it would finally end.
I mean Ian and those helping him to write this overall arc, could have ended it at anytime before this, but they didn't , and again because Ian wanted to create his masterpiece to be remembered by, should he ever decied to step down as head writer of the Sonic Comics.
Now you can say he wanted to take his time to restablish the world and the characters to everyone, and that might be true, but it shouldn't take this long to do so.
Even Marvel, DC and IDW don't do this and even if they do, they seperate it by chapters, for ex. 6 issues can equal 1 chapter, and so on. They also don't interupt said storyline to do a crossover that really doesn't have nothing to do with said storyarc, and is only there to promote games that no one remembers that well, espeically if they're of this new generation.
Point Blank, Ian Flynn wanted his Endgame story. And despite the length of it, he got it. But one has to remember, when Ken Penders did Endgame, which many may consider his masterpiece or not, he did it within the span of 4 issues, and it worked fine. Because it accomplished what it set out to do, and folks still talk about it to this day.
The one thing that I believe kept this storyarc from ending alot sooner, was the aformentioned Crossover between Sonic and Mega Man. Let's face it, we all knew a follow up/sequel to their first crossover Worlds Collide was going to happen, whither we wanted it to or not. But I don't think we thought it would happen in the middle of the freakin' Shattered World Crisis Arc, but yet it did. And as I mentioned earlier, didn't really have nothing to with Shattered World Crisis after it was all said and done.
I mean when you face the fact of it, what Archie and Ian are doing now with The upcoming Mega Drive book, Next Level, they easily could have done with 6 48-page comics, centered around this side story of a crossover, thus they wouldn't have to interupt the main flow of the Shattered World Crisis Arc, or any arc in the other 3/4 comic books that were used for it.
In the end, this crossover was nothing more than a mandate by Archie, Capcom and Mostly Sega, and those that wrote the crossover know that's the truth.
Let me close this out by saying this, I really did like Shattered World Crisis, I thought it was a decent way to attempt to fix the mess that the lawsuits left behind, as well as reintroduce the SatAM Cast to long-time fans and introduce them for the first time to newer fans.
I was one of many that did enjoy the moden redesigns for the SatAM characters that done for this soft retconned/rebooted world, and did enjoy how some of the SatAM cast got additional characteristics added to them, like Sally not knowing how to cook well, or Bunnie knowing how to sing and play gutiar, those I did enjoy.
So again, overall I did enjoy the arc and some of the side arcs, like Spark of Life, which gave some much needed background and character development to/for Nicole, which many, like myself did enjoy and I will admit, some didn't.
But the overall take-away with this discussion, along with the review above/before this, is that this entire arc could have been done and over with a lot sooner than it was. I mean if Ian can get his point across with his Iron Dominion arc within the span of 11 months (14, if count the Journey to the East Arc in Sonic Universe), then he could have done it here. I mean even his #175-#177 arc got the job done within the span of 3 issues.
So in the end, let's just hope he doesn't go overboard again, he says he won't, well let's pray he keeps his word.
And that's may overall take on Shattered World Crisis. Good, got the job done, but was way to long for it's good.
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