Other-M, "Rematch"
issue #13, 26 pages
Review written by Matthias Johnson, a.k.a. Tergonaut
tergonaut@aol.com
Summary: Sonic and Fiona have a run-in with the Chaotix, but
the mission's success itself is what troubles Sonic when he
reports back to Bean.

Credits:
Cover: RONE
Story: Ian Potto
Art: Gina
Lettering: Ian Potto
Other-M logo design: Jeffrey "Z-Kara" Houston

Plot: It looks like a normal day in the city for some echidnas
in front of a building, but an explosion dispels that innocent
perception quickly enough.  Running from the explosion is
Sonic with Fiona in his arms, and he puts her down long enough
to look back at the damage they had caused.  He happens to see
and hear an echidna child trying to wake up his mother, who
died from the explosion.
     He hesitates, but he manages to get a hold of himself,
and the two rebels make a run for it.  After dodging into an
alleyway and barely escaping being detected by a police car,
they make their way through some streets and alleys before
making a wrong turn...right into trouble.
     It's the Chaotix, all five of them on hovercycles:
Vector, Espio, Mighty, Ray, and Julie-su.  According to them,
Sonic and Fiona are not only guilty of terrorist activities,
but martial law has just been established.  Any non-echidna
not wearing a Worker's Patch is to be shot on sight, which
doesn't bode well for our heroes.
     Sonic gets out a taunt before sweeping Fiona up into his
arms and dashing off at super speed.  With the Chaotix in hot
pursuit, Sonic runs head-on into oncoming traffic in a move
that is both risky and clever.  This forces the Chaotix to
follow, and they simply aren't maneuverable to dodge all of
the traffic that Sonic is breezing past.
     Then Ray taps a button on his console and his bike is
synchronized to Julie-su's.  Leaping off of the bike, Ray uses
his natural flying squirrel ability to glide and actually
comes extremely close to catching Sonic...before the hedgehog
weaves aside to dodge an incoming car.  Ray isn't fast enough,
and he gets splatted off-screen.
     Julie-su gets real ticked by losing a teammate, and she
goes in close and uses her blaster to shoot Ray's bike out,
knocking it out of control and crashing in a fiery heap in
front of Sonic, forcing him to make a hasty stop.  With the
Chaotix on one side and a flaming pile of scrap in the other,
it looks like our heroes are in a bind.  Julie-su leaps to the
ground and fires off a few rounds of laser fire, but Fiona's
roboticized hands come into play again to absorb and redirect
the energy shots, taking out a hovercycle and giving Vector an
arm wound.  It's at this point when Sonic takes the
opportunity to skedaddle right up the side of a building,
dodging more of Julie-su's shots.  Vector, gripping his arm in
obvious pain, angrily tells Espio and Mighty to get after
them, and the two Chaotix comply immediately.
     Sonic is bouncing across the rooftops, but as Fiona
quickly discerns, he isn't really paying much attention to
where he's going.  This lands them into more trouble when they
get stopped on top of one of the rooftops by several Legion of
Justice hoverpods reminiscent of the hoverpods that Robotnik's
robotic troops used in Sonic's original universe.
     With no charge left in Fiona's hands, the situation looks
pretty dim...until Sonic gets a grin on his face and tells
Fiona to hang on.  Good thing too, because he dives into a
Sonic spin and crashes right through the ceiling of the
building!  Mighty and Espio stand over the hole, give each
other meaningful looks, and then they dismount and drop down
the hole after the rebels who had slipped out of their grasp
yet again.
     Outside the building's front door, a dingo standing
nearby is startled when a blue buzzsaw tears right through the
wall and drops down.  Fiona is temporarily dizzy, and Sonic
obviously put some effort into his spinwork, but then Espio
flips out of the same hole while Mighty simply drops down, his
incredible density damaging the cement that he lands on.
     It looks like a little game of two-on-two when a few
smoke grenades are dropped in by Predator Hawk, who swoops
down and graciously offers to give Fiona a lift, allowing both
himself and Sonic to get back to base before the smoke
grenades lose their effectiveness.
     Then it's back to base, the action's over and Sonic comes
into a room where Bean is hard at work making their next
plans.  Bean seems cheerful enough at first, but Sonic is
definitely not feeling too happy.  He's angry because the
attacks that have been made so far have been mostly against
civilians, not actual military targets.  Bean reasons that
civilians are far more limited than soldiers, but Sonic points
out that the rebellion's actions have only given the Guardian
excuses to build his military might and enforce martial law.
     Sonic is adamant against killing more innocents, but Bean
asks whether he can still trust Sonic to fight Legionaries. 
After all, the soldiers are people too.  Sonic retorts by
saying that soldiers are ready and armed to kill rebels on
sight, and it's either the soldiers or the rebels.
     Bean then points out that isn't it the same with
civilians, now that martial law is in effect?
     Sonic silently leaves, and Bean is left alone underneath
the single harsh lamp.

Analysis/Opinion: This is the point in the story when it is
clearly demonstrated that not all of the rebel's doings are
purely good.  For Sonic, it is especially painful because not
only does he have a just heart, he has already participated in
other rebel missions which might have included the death of
innocents...and he did not notice until now.  To have his eyes
opened in such an abrupt and personal way to what he was doing
certainly couldn't have been a pleasant experience.
     Fiona didn't appear to have the same reaction as Sonic,
probably because she did not see the same thing that he did. 
She had been born and raised in a world where the echidnas
were oppressors, while Sonic had only recently come to this
world from his own.  I doubt that she is completely unaware
that not all echidnas are bad or evil, but perhaps she has
seen far too many examples of oppression against non-echidnas
for her to see the few among the many.
     Sonic recovered quickly, though, and that was a good
thing because the Chaotix were hot on their tail this time. 
Obviously they've been waiting for a chance like this after
the incident at the parade (issue and review #12! -Tergonaut),
and it's not hard to assume that the reason they were equipped
with hovercycles this time around was so they could rapidly
deploy at the next sign of rebel activity.
     Sadly enough, during the chase, Ray the Flying Squirrel
died by getting himself flattened into an oncoming vehicle. 
But before that, he was actually catching up to Sonic.  Does
this mean that Ray is faster at flying than Sonic is at
running, even with roboticized feet enhancements, or was Ray
using the momentum from the hovercycle that he leapt from to
propel him fast enough to catch up to Sonic?  Perhaps another
factor was that Sonic was slowed down by carrying Fiona in his
arms, and he had to dodge traffic as well.
     Especially interesting to see among the Chaotix was the
emotional reaction of Julie-su to Ray's death.  She in
particular seems to have been affected by seeing Ray die more
than any of the others, as was demonstrated by first her wide-
eyed surprise, then her snarling anger.  I wonder, did Julie-
su consider Ray to be a closer friend than the other Chaotix? 
Or would her reaction have been the same if it had been any
other member of the Chaotix who had gotten killed?  The death
of Nack back in issue #9 didn't seem to have affected any of
the Chaotix as much as Julie-su's reaction in this issue, save
they did look pretty uncomfortable watching one of their
comrades get burned alive by the powers of the Guardian.  Then
again, perhaps that death had been earned by Nack by
displeasing the Guardian, and Ray's death had been during the
course of duty.  There are many factors to consider here, but
ultimately it is clear that Julie-su was affected by Ray's
death, whatever relationship she had with him in the bounds of
the Chaotix.
     Now, a critical question: why didn't the hoverpods
immediately fire once they had surrounded Sonic and Fiona? 
Wasn't martial law in effect at the time, thus meaning that
shooting on sight was the order of the day?  One could try to
assert that not all echidnas agreed with the idea of martial
law, and Sonic and Fiona were lucky enough to be surrounded by
a squad led by a sympathizer.  Or perhaps Remmington or Mighty
made private arrangements to preserve the lives of the rebels
for as long as possible.  But, as some of my justifications
are, this sounds somewhat farfetched.  Still, I'm willing to
leave it at cinematic prolonging of the story.
     Personally, I found the part near the end of the chase
when Predator Hawk intervened to be a little funny.  Here he
is, the same guy who flew off with both Sonic and Bean in the
previous issue, and suddenly he conveniently can only carry
one person (the girl, of course)!  Although it is clear that
Predator Hawk was being practical, it is so easy to twist it
around in one's head so that it sounds like he's using this as
an excuse to pick up a girl (pun intended).  At the same time,
as I look back at page 24 of the previous issue, it looks to
me like there were no problems for Predator Hawk to carry two
people out of danger.  One way to justify it, however, might
be that Predator Hawk would only have been slowed down by
carrying both Fiona and Sonic, thus increasing the chance that
all three would have been shot.
     Now that I think about it, Fiona is being carried for the
majority of the issue.  Just a little tidbit that I noticed,
not really a problem unless you are seriously insulted by
females being carried around by males, in which case I can't
help you.  Sorry.
     The confrontation between Bean and Sonic over the issue
of current rebel strategy is surely not going to be the end of
the matter.  It is as highly controversial a topic as any
modern-day issue, and in this case it is to determine who gets
killed by the rebellion.  Bean gets set in a different light,
a light that is not as flattering as the tough, capable leader
of the rebellion.  Who is wrong, and who is right?

Artwork: RONE, who has proven to be one of Other-M's more
prominent artists, drew up the cover for this issue.  In the
upper left corner are Vector and Mighty on hovercycles with
some city buildings in the background, and to the right of
them is a close-up picture of Julie-su with a tear coming out
of her eye and her mouth agape.  Below her visage is the
shadowy silhouette of Predator Hawk (with smoke appearing
behind him), and below him is Sonic and Fiona, Fiona
discharging an energy bolt at Ray, who is flying just above
the fires that are a part of a secondary background, in front
of which is the echidna child trying to wake up his mother. 
Sonic's eyes are diverted to the scene of the echidna mother
and child, and Fiona's expression is one of terrible malice. 
Although Fiona never shot off a blast at Ray (primarily
because he got pasted before she ever absorbed a charge from
Julie-su's blaster), the smoke effect behind Predator Hawk and
Sonic's look of concern at the echidna mother and child are
both subtle foreshadows of what will go on in the issue.
     Gina was the artist for this issue.  I personally thought
that, throughout the issue, she made effective use of the eyes
to express emotions.  Despite the different varieties of eye
shapes and types that she had to use (Sonic's eyes, for
example, are jointed together; Fiona's are two separate eyes),
she was able to convey several emotions through each pair of
eyes.  Anger, concern, fury, insight, sadness, all of these
and others were well described by the eyes alone.
     Also, I particularly noticed her use of lighting effects
in the issue.  The blast on the first page, the fire on the
second and third pages, and the entire sequence at the end
between Bean and Sonic all made definite use of lighting to
not only be realistic but to accentuate the mood of the
moment.  If you'll notice, Bean seems to move back into the
shadows when he is making his darker points against Sonic. 
That in itself seems to paint the flaws and darker side of
Bean very well.
     Now, I've ragged RONE about this, and it's a rather
superficial thing, but I noticed that many of the characters,
especially the Chaotix, were anthropomorphized one or two
steps too many.  I dunno how to describe it, because I'm not
asking for the same style that is generally used in the
official representations of him, and I'm certainly not asking
for every artist to Super-Deform every character.  But it just
strikes me that some of the characters seem to have very
human-like proportions.

Final Word: It is easy to see that the troubles of the
rebellion only started with the destruction of their secret
base.  Even after the tremendous effort that the rebellion has
put into holding things together despite the tragedy, it
appears that Bean and Sonic are bound to draw against each
other into conflict over the issue of terrorism.
     Yes, terrorism.  For that is what the rebellion is doing
now in an attempt to fight the Guardian, to force him to give
in.  And yet as Sonic pointed out, the Guardian can use these
attacks as a reason for building up the military and
oppressing non-echidnas even harder than before.  There does
not seem to be any clear way out of this pit of darkness that
the rebellion has sunken into, and it is only a matter of time
until the Guardian fills in the hole.
     Fortunately, hedgehogs are known for their ability to dig
out of tough situations like this.  Sonic should not merely
give up in the face of the new turmoil that is sure to affect
the rest of the rebellion if it continues.  Things are
difficult, but if he fights through this, he will be that much
stronger for the ties ahead.  And there will be other trials.