INFO BURST

Format: Comic strip
Initial Release Date: 5/3/94
Feature character: Sonic the Hedgehog
Villain: Kid Cruel
Other Characters: Badniks (Coconuts), Miles “Tails” Prower, Porker Lewis, Doctor Ivo Robotnik
Locations: Mobius, Forest Hills
Continuity: Sonic the Comic
Synopsis: In the gold-mining town of Forest Hills, the sinister Kid Cruel enacts a fiendish plan. He’s amassed an army of Coconuts Badniks and is using them to kidnap the townsfolks’ children, using them for organic batteries in the Badniks. Cruel intends to extort the townsfolk into giving over their gold in return for the children. Sonic, Tails and Porker are called in to help. The heroes soon find themselves attacked by the Coconuts, but Kid Cruel warns Sonic not to attack the Badniks as they’re wearing bombs – and any kind of impact to them will detonate the bomb and kill the hostage inside. As Kid Cruel contacts Robotnik, hoping to earn the sizable bounty the doctor has placed on Sonic’s head, Sonic decides to take action, moving at super speed to tank the bombs off the Badniks while busting them open and freeing the hostages. Unfortunately, this now means Sonic is holding several active bombs and he’s only able to get a short distance away before them explode. Kid Cruel is delighted that he’s blown Sonic to smithereens, but Sonic emerges from the fiery aftermath of the bombs, singed and very annoyed. Sonic ties Kid Cruel up with a vine, then leads his friends and the rescued children everyone away as Robotnik’s ship warps in from the Special Zone, with Kid Cruel fearful of what will happen when Robotnik finds there’s no Sonic waiting for him.

CREDITS

Writer: Nigel Kitching
Artist: Mike Hadley
Letterer: Elitta Fell

Review

Sonic the Poster Mag was a semi-regular spin-off sister publication to accompany Sonic the Comic. Its first two issues featured a look forward to the two then-upcoming Sonic animated series (Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog) and a walkthrough for Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos and, as the name suggests, the magazine folded out to reveal a huge poster. From issue 3 onwards, however, the reverse side to the poster would feature a six-page comic strip, either starring Sonic or a selection of the Sega Superstars (specifically, characters from Shinobi and Streets of Rage). The downside to this is there was only room for six pages of comic strip, which worked out fine for the Sega Superstars as those strips usually only had five pages, but Sonic ended up losing a page.

The first Sonic story to appear in the pages of STPM, then, was The Kid Cruel Caper, and there’s definitely something missing in the lack of a seventh page. The story’s pacing somehow feels rushed yet, at the same time, never particularly ramps up to an exciting climax. We open on a flashback, which takes up most of the first third of the story, Sonic manages to encounter and be surrounded by the villain and his henchmen in the next two pages and then the story rushes through the climax in the final third. It’s probably the best writer Nigel Kitching could have gotten out of this particular story in only six pages, as later STPM issues show he was more than up to the task of utilising the lower page count.

The story, then, is one of the larger problems with the strip. Certainly, we have reason enough not to like Kid Cruel, but he never feels especially big time. His plan is undone by the old favourite of Sonic running really fast, which by this point is tired and, frankly, beneath Kitching.

Mike Hadley’s art is a mixed bag on this story as well. The Coconuts Badniks have a redesign from the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit) video game and it’s actually a pretty good one! Instead of looking purely mechanical, the robots have realistic monkey heads and they’re quite fascinatingly gruesome as a result, particularly as they don’t match the obviously robotic bodies and limbs. Unfortunately, the rest of the characters are wildly inconsistent, not only with how some of them are drawn from panel to panel, but in terms of how some of them don’t even look like they came from the same story. We do have to address the elephant in the room, which is Kid Cruel’s design. I have no doubt there wasn’t a single hint of anything untoward in Kitching’s script as Kid Cruel and the Coconuts are a parody of musical act Kid Creole and the Coconuts, which is a pretty delightful tribute which makes use of the Sonic series having a Badniks called Coconuts. However, whereas the real Kid Creole wears a hat, Kid Cruel has a large, Don King-style hairdo, which pairs rather unfortunately with his gold tooth, snappy suit and cane and, unfortunately, needlessly large lips (what possessed Hadley to do that I will never know) to make Kid Cruel – who is an ape, by the way – an astounding racial stereotype. It’s probably for the best he never returned to STC’s pages.

Sadly, this is one caper that’s probably best left forgotten. It’s not Kitching’s best submission and the art does it no favours – sorry if that sounds a little “Cruel.”