The Blue Ink Reviews Sonic Universe #54 – Worlds Collide Part 11: Kitchen Sink Mode

“He starts monologuing! Telling me… how feeble I am compared to him, how the world will soon be his!” -Lucius (Frozone), The Incredibles
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It’s very hard to try and put together your ultimate fighting vehicle when crap is happening all around you. T-Bone and Razor from SWAT Kats know the feeling: They were still putting together the revived Turbokat with its new Sub-Orbital boosters and Speed of Heat function when Mutilor showed up to suck the world’s oceans dry, and that smoking hot Deputy Mayor wouldn’t quit calling them while they were riveting the armor plating on.

Now, Wily and Robotnik are getting a taste of the same as they try to put the finishing touches on their final boss robot whose-name-really-doesn’t-matter, and the Wily Egg’s shaking itself apart with Duo and the Chaos Devil taking Greco-Roman wrestling to new, Kool-Aid Man approved, wall-busting extremes. The bickering has reached new extremes, and both plot silently to eliminate the other once this mess is done with. Ah, evil, we can always count on you to never share…

They still have a little time left to them, thankfully. Metal Sonic and Bass have always been trouble, but putting them together is nearly overkill. They prove to be more than a match for their direct rivals, which is when Sonic has the bright idea to switch dance partners. Well, on the surface, it sounds like a perfectly valid idea. How does it work in practice?

(Wince) Oooh, Sonic. I really hope you didn’t want kids, because that looked awful painful. Mega Man also proves to have his own problems, with Metal Sonic proving to not only be faster, but to have the deflective capability to neutralize the good ol’ Mega Buster’s punch.

Rock, Paper, Scissors. It worked for Mega Man boss weaknesses, why not try it out here? So with Mega Man throwing the winning sign (Rock, as we all roll our eyes at the joke), they focus their attention on Bass. A suitable mash-up of Mega Man’s new Roboticized Master weaponry proves to be the winning edge in the fight, and with Sonic running interference, Mega Man’s able to drop a boatload of hurt on Bass, ending with the Piko mallet he got from Amy.

Question: How do you nail Bass? Answer: You drop the hammer.

With his tag team buddy down for the count, Metal Sonic goes all out, even hitting Overdrive, but it’s juuust not enough, and with a combination of stinging hornetlike blasts and some more homing attacks, the second robot is down for the count. One bro-fist fistbump for the victory is all the heroes have time for, because that’s right when Wily and Robotnik decide they’ve had enough of sitting on the sidelines.

Enter the big damn robot through a big damn hole in the wall. One superbeam blast later, Sonic and Meggy are down for the count… but not out.

Proving that even guys as intelligent as they are fail to go for the obvious solution, Wily and Robotnik don’t kill their wayward opponents, instead opting to stuff them in prison capsules so they can watch their arch-nemeses achieve victory. This is particularly unsettling after Robotnik’s previous act of cold-hearted pragmatism towards Dr. Light… what, you’ll toss a human out the airlock towards certain doom, but you won’t stomp on the blue guy’s head while he’s out cold? It seems that their mutual “hidden” animosity towards one another is causing Robotnik and Wily to make some crucial slip-ups… they won’t even high five each other.

So, monologuing as all villains do, Wily and Robotnik reveal that the first Genesis Wave was merely Stage One of the grand plan: They needed all seven emeralds to do it for reals. Oh, and yes, they have all seven now.

This is naturally a problem, but we know they’re planning on stabbing each other in the back. It’s just a matter of waiting for the Cosmic Joke to hit the punchline. And it’s coming.
Because I sure as heck don’t want to pray to these guys at night. However, I can see myself doing Gregorian chants to Mega Man…

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The running theme behind this crossover has been the Cosmic Joke (trademarked me), and how it inevitably leads to evil failing. Sure, things seem dark here, but we know better. For instance, we know that Mega Man and Sonic will go Super in the last issue, since Archie’s been promoting them all gold and shiny for months now, which is particularly surprising seeing as Rush isn’t around for Meggy to fuse with.

We know that Wily and Robotnik both have “backstab buttons” tucked somewhere away in their respective flying saucer thingies. Some of the readers of this series have predicted that there’ll be some sort of a double-double cross which results in the chaos power flowing towards our blue heroes, and that’s beginning to seem like a real strong possibility. The further we got into this story arc, the fewer surprises they had left to throw at us. The last one, and the biggest one, as far as I’m concerned, was Robotnik’s failed murder of Light. For things to be restored back so the three comics can get out of this crossover and return to business as usual, a complete Cosmic Reset is needed. We can plan on it coming hard and fast.

Really, the end of this crossover will basically write itself. Evil Guys: “Ho noez, our double crosses have unintended consequencez!” Good guys: “I PUNCH YOUR FAKE UNIVERSE!” And then Duo waves his magic hand, a secondary Genesis Wave restores the multiverse, and I go back to only having to review one comic a month.

I’ve enjoyed this crossover with varying degrees of chuckles: Some at the start, few in the middle, and a boatload from Part 9 and on. Most of all, I’m glad that my predictions about the Cosmic Joke, which I developed at the start of this crossover arc, are proving to be right on the money. Hear that, Ian Flynn? I’m in your head.

So now, like the rest of you, I will sit back, wait, put on my Proto Man-worthy sunglasses, and watch the fireworks. It may not be surprising, but like all Fourth of July firework celebrations, it’ll certainly be satisfying.

For the Blue Ink.

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When he isn’t writing “The Blue Ink” reviews for The Mega Man Network, Erico (The Super Bard) spends his days keeping track of the “Legacy of Metal” fanon, dabbling in cooking and tea-brewing, and exploring the human condition from his Iowa stomping grounds.

The views expressed here reflect the views of the authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mega Man Network.

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