Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 46: Unusually serious "drugs are bad" episode.
Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Well friends, it’s finally time. Today we need to discuss A Very Special Episode.
Episode 46: Unusually serious "drugs are bad" episode.
I have three words for you: Lemon. Sundrop. Dandelion. Yes, we’re finally going to talk about one of Ken Penders’ more infamous stories. But then again, does the word infamous become redundant after a certain point? Does anyone have a count of how many infamous stories Penders wrote? A lot. There’s a lot. Anyway, let’s talk about The Chaotix Caper!
Taking place in Knuckles #13 - 15, the Chaotix Caper chronicled the Chaotix’s efforts to keep the Floating Island safe while Knuckles was busy on the planet's surface, guiding the Lost Tribe to the promised land (long story). Our favourite detectives (pre-detective days) had their hands full investigating cases of food poisoning, while also having former Dark Legionnaire Julie-Su thrust on them. This put a lot of stress on the team as Julie-Su had supposedly betrayed them to Kragok several issues prior during the return of Enerjak. While Espio and Mighty were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, considering that Kragok had ordered her to execute them and she’d left them alive with a chance to escape, Vector was not having it and took every opportunity he could to pick a fight with her.
The story opened with a cab driver named Harry discovering Charmy in an alley screaming for help, as his best friend Mello was having what appeared to be a seizure. Harry rushed them to the hospital as quickly as he could but the doctors were unable to save Mello. Constable Remington and the Chaotix showed up quickly afterwards, hearing that a patient resembling Charmy had been brought in. To their surprise, they discovered that Charmy had been able to change his size to that of a typical (albeit short) Mobian this entire time, but had never done so around them for some reason.
…that's suspiciously retcon-ny, but okay, whatever.
In Remington’s office, Charmy explained that his friend Mello had convinced him to go to the newly reopened Happyland amusement park with him. The rest of the Chaotix were surprised to hear this, as Happyland was where the Chaotix had first been formed after Renfield T. Rodent and Dr. Robotnik had used it to imprison the Freedom Fighters and depower Knuckles. But Charmy explained:
After Charmy had told his story, Remington explained that Charmy had been a number of similar cases to what had happened to Mello recently, with numerous children being found with Lemon Sundrop Dandelion poisoning. Yes, subtle.
…okay, admittedly it was subtle enough that I didn’t notice it back when I first read this at the tender and naive age of 15. :P
Don't ask me why Jughead Jones is a doped-up echidna child now, because I have no idea.
At any rate, Remington asked the Chaotix to go investigate Happyland, and all of them except for Julie-Su showed an astounding lack of common sense when they decided to eat something at a place where they suspected the food was laced with drugs.
The results are predictable:
And thus the titular Chaotix were effectively written out of the rest of the story as they were all admitted to hospital.
We even got to see a rather gory page of Charmy in surgery.
Thanks for that, Kenny P.
The story then became about Julie-Su and Remington tracking down the bad guys who were lacing the chilli dogs, with Mighty, Espio and Vector only recovering towards the end, just in time to join the fight against Downtown Ebony Hare’s forces.
As for Charmy, he was busy having flashback lore dumps.
Turned out that he was actually the Prince and heir to the throne of the Goldenhive Colony, who ran away to the Floating Island because he didn’t want the responsibility. At the end of the story he returned to Goldenhive to accept his birthright and return Mello’s body to his parents.
And thus Charmy was written out of the book completely for six whole years, except for one story where Knuckles asked him for help after everyone on the Floating Island was trapped in another dimension by the Dark Legion.
…no, I’m still not going to explain why Knuckles is green.
So look, I don’t want this to devolve into another Penders rant, especially since I did that in the previous post. …but that’s pretty much what’s going to happen, so let’s all just try to come to terms with it. :)
So, the whole drugged chili dogs plot point in this story. Was Penders intentionally trying to make A Very Special Episode? If he was then he really didn’t accomplish that. My understanding of the A Very Special Episode trope is that the point is to highlight the dangers of drugs and show the character struggling to overcome their addiction. But none of the characters ate the laced chilli dogs knowing what they were, and despite Remington saying that the unnamed victims had become addicted to Lemon Sundrop Dandelion overnight, we didn’t actually see anyone struggling with addiction. Granted this is a Sonic the Hedgehog comic book for kids, so that kind of thing would have been bizarrely out of place. ...more than what we got already was.
Even ignoring the weird drugs angle, the story has plenty of other problems. The biggest one to me is the way the Chaotix are used (or rather, they were are not used) in a story named after them. They very stupidly ate food that they knew might be drugged - seriously, that has got to be one of the dumbest choices any character ever made in the entire ArchieSonic series, and it’s an insult to their intelligence that the writer thought any of them would do that.
…okay, maybe modern day Charmy would be dumb enough, but this story came out before he was retconned back into childhood. Anyway this is a problem we saw a lot with Penders’ writing, where he sidelined the SEGA and SatAM cast in favour of using his own original characters instead. The Chaotix were definitely some of the characters who got the most neglect under his pen, in my opinion. But don't just take my word for it - this is a list of the Chaotix’s appearances from their introduction in 1996’s Knuckles’ Chaotix special up to this story, which came out four years later:
- In the Knuckles’ Chaotix special the team was introduced (although Vector had already been introduced prior in the Triple Trouble special). They helped fight Metal Sonic and then played a game of tag.After that they were kidnapped by Archimedes. They remained in his custody until the first issue of the Knuckles mini-series, which came out five months later, and immediately afterwards they were captured and brainwashed by Enerjak until Knuckles saved the day.
- In the Super Sonic vs. Hyper Knuckles special, Knuckles discussed his fears of the Floating Island falling out of the sky with Mighty, and asked him to guard the island while he tried to get another Chaos Emerald as a backup power source.
- In the Sonic-Quest mini series, the Chaotix helped Knuckles fight off the giant Burrobots that tried to steal the two Chaos Emeralds on the island.
- In Sonic #50 Espio used his stealth to restrain Sonic, who had been framed for murdering Princess Sally. After that misunderstanding was cleared up, Knuckles asked Espio to gather the rest of the Chaotix and guard the island while he went to help Sonic.
- In Knuckles #1 - 3, Knuckles and the Chaotix were captured by the Dark Legion. They escaped and foght the Legion in their underground base.
- In Knuckles #4 - 6 Vector fought a Legionaire that turned out to be Julie-Su. Knuckles, Archimedes and Julie-Su went to investigate seismic activity nearby while the Chaotix were told to stand by and wait for Knuckles to call them if he needs help.
- In Knuckles #7 - 9, the Chaotix were captured offpage by the Dark Legion (or Enerjak himself, probably). They attempted to escape but were knocked out by Julie-Su and left tied to stakes in the desert to die before being rescued by Knuckles.
- In Knuckles 10 - 12, the Chaotix discussed whether or not Julie-Su had reformed. They were then summoned by Constable Remington, who told them that they’d been deputised to guard the island in Knuckles’ absence and that Julie-Su would be working with them.
Can you see the problem? While they got to take part in a few battles, the Chaotix as written by Penders mostly existed to either be kidnapped or to play offscreen guard dogs. At the time it came out I was really looking forward to The Chaotix Caper, because I thought that we’d finally get to see them get a chance to properly shine. But no, they were once again taken out of the action and the comic became The Adventures of Constable Remington and Julie-Su.
If you want another example, scroll back up and look at the covers for these three issues. Remington and Julie-Su are both front and centre on the cover of issue #14 - they've hijacked the story from the Chaotix. Also, while Julie-Su is featured on the covers for both issues 14 and 15, Espio doesn't appear on any of the three covers.
And then there's Charmy being written out of the story entirely. I have no idea why Penders decided to get rid of him - the only explanation I can think of is that maybe he thought Knuckles had too many friends and he (Penders) didn’t know what to do with them. But instead of cutting back on his precious OCs, of course he decided to get rid of an official SEGA character. A SEGA character who’d only appeared in one game at that point, but a SEGA character nonetheless.
Things wouldn’t really get any better for the Chaotix after this story either, with them mostly being side characters only making occasional appearances as the focus shifted more and more to Penders' beloved Brotherhood of Guardians. Mighty and Espio would eventually get their own backup stories in the book, but by then it was too little too late and the Knuckles series was cancelled around that time.
There’s other things I could talk about too, such as Knuckles being mostly absent from his own comic book except for brief cameos when his father and grandfather spied on him fighting a biker gang...
...or how on the nose the gangster Downtown Ebony Hare was...
...or the creative team's weird pitch for an echidna Rugrats reboot.
...no, I don't know what they were thinking either. Perhaps they were taking some of that Lemon Sundrop Dandelion themselves. :P Anyway, I think I’ve probably ranted long enough.
Were there any other unusually serious “Drugs are bad,” stories in ArchieSonic that I missed? What did you think of The Chaotix Caper? Let me know in the comments! Next time we’ll be going into space again for episode 47: evil alien invasion!
