#118 – Brass Ring

Kevin

9 March, 2024 31 March, 2024

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COMIC NOTES

SW #118: “Brass Ring” was finalised on March 9th 2024.
This is a storyline comic, which follows directly on from #115: “You’re In The Army Now”.
This comic is, in effect a confirmation of where our heroes are in their lives in SW story continuity at this time, and an acknowledgement that potentially a lot of (human) time has passed. Effectively getting everyone into position before we move on towards the story ending.
The Star Trek: Enterprise dog in question is Captain Jonathan Archer’s pet Beagle, Porthos. The dolphin from seaQuest DSV was called Darwin and they could talk via a piece of technology. They were naturally voiced by Frank Welker.
Knuckles turning green due to chaos energy happened in the ‘original’ Archie comics universe.
The discussion between Shadow and Knuckles about the latter’s ascent to a leadership (“grabbing the brass ring”) parallels what happens to Knuckles in Sonic Forces.
We have a ‘bomb-off’ as Bean and Bomb compare armaments, with Knuckles Chaotix’s walking weapon holding Angry Birds’ Bomb – or at least a facsimile.
Amy is shown to have changed out of her Patton-inspired outfit from SW#115, and is now wearing a more functional military outfit. It’s actually a khaki redesign of her outfit from the Sonic Riders series.
The young female Amy is seen shaking hands with is actually a Mobian ladybug version of Marinette Dupain-Cheng from Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir. We couldn’t fit Adrien in this time – sorry Cat Noir fans! – but we at LMC are DEFINITELY in the ‘that boy deserves better’ camp. So he’ll probably turn up at some point.
Sonic is continuing to play the hero, and his ego is a threat as seen in… err… the whole comic to date, frankly.
There are two boards: Missing and “Upstate” – as in ‘sent to live on a farm upstate’. So everyone on that right side is at least understood to be dead in the current Sonic Wrecks continuity. There was a LOT of discussion about who would go where.
Speaking of war, as someone will probably think this is (or even should be) a commentary on the very visible wars taking place at the time of publishing, it is not. The war in SW has been going on since #048: “Ragnarok Pt 3: Deus Ex Machina”. That was created in 2006! War has been going on all this time somewhere in the world. Those lost and those gone here are, however, a deliberate mix to show war plays no favourites.
On the “Upstate” side you can probably assume that characters like Silver The Hedgehog, Gemerl (Sonic Advance 3), Monkey Khan (Archie), Sticks (Sonic Boom), Zonic the Zone Cop (Archie) and Sir Connery (Archie) went out fighting but relative innocents like Lanolin (IDW), Marine (Sonic Rush Adventure), Trip (Sonic Superstars), Barry the Quokka (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog) and Lady Walrus (Sonic Boom) have all paid a price in some form. As has someone not nice at all – Dixon from Sonic Boom.
We see Bomb earlier, but his partner Heavy is missing. Leeta Wolf and twin Lyco Wolf are both gone, but Lyco is M.I.A. whilst Leeta is confirmed as “Upstate”.
Marine and Silver’s fates might explain the barely-suppressed tension in a certain character’s posture.
Belle The Tinkerer (IDW) is indeed dead, or as it was put in discussion during production: “86 the puppet.” Sorry Evan!
Rotor was an 11th hour sparing after it was decided the poor fella had suffered enough.
Big was the only character to be confirmed 100% of the time to being killed off. A topic we might actually come back to during the rest of the story. If you want to know what happened to Froggy it’s SW canon that he just upped and left as soon as Big was no longer in the picture. If he IS sentient/intelligent then if Sonic Adventure is anything to go by Froggy’s kind of an asshole!
We get EVEN more tributes to SW’s fellow Sonic fan comics of the past: After Tennah appeared in SW#115, Power Rings characters Kamal, Gear X. Machina and G3OFF the Gizoid Turkey are all classed as missing. As is Cloud from Sonic Style. PRDarkfox/Project Dark Fox from The Mystical Forest Zone and There’s Something About Tails is the only creator shown as “Upstate” – but only because they are known as Project Shadowcat now. They are very much alive!
INFACT, there’s a sneaky cameo from PRShadowcat’s character Tyra Lancaster – they’re the one painting the Knuckles graffiti.
Several other Sonic creators missed out this time, but we’ve got plans!
You actually see Vanilla pointing out Shadow and Knuckles to Vector in frame 2. Those two have been seen together quite a lot in modern SW. More on that next time, perhaps…
Speaking of frame 2, the characters in the bottom right are lemur-like background characters from Archie’s STH#223. The two at the bottom are a couple of Doublexxcross’s original creations, Goldie the Bear and Kicks the Hyena.
Despite already being shown to be alive in SW#115, Johnny Lightfoot (STC) cameos again in frame 2, too. You know. Just to make sure he’s okay.
Beth the Shrew from Sonic Boom is standing next to Antoine D’Coolette, in line to speak to Amy.
Waiting to see Sonic are orphans Sasha the Cat, Rory the Bear and Snaggle the Tiger from the Archie comic series. They’re alongside one-time Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog character Sonnette. (“The Mystery of the Missing Hi-tops”, S1 E19).
Onto the disclaimer and more Star Trek! The discussion about truth in the disclaimer is a reference to a classic Jean-Luc Picard speech dressing down Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: TNG. (“The First Duty”, S5 E19).
“An unforgivable sinner, playing my game” is a double reference to Norwegian singer Lene Marlin. Unforgivable Sinner and Playing My Game are both a single and the title track respectively off her 1999 album.
In The Owl House, Lilith Clawthorne is shown to be a big fan of staircase balusters designed in the Boiling Isles’ Deadwardian Era. (“Elsewhere and Elsewhen”, S2 E12).
The last line makes reference to the actions of Warner Bros. (and others) who had been writing off complete or near-complete projects for tax purposes, locking them up never to be seen again – if at all.

Kevin

Writer of words and comics, streamer of games, presenter of radio shows and eternal 'just a guy'. LMC's boss-man has worked on projects for SEGA, Square Enix, Konami, Capcom and more. Once co-created and hosted an international fan-convention because he can do that sort of thing. Used to be known as AAUK/ArchangelUK.