Female Furries Special Part Two:
"Hershey Solo"
Reviewed by Chaos Theory T. Echidna.
October 8, 1999.
This story was both written and DRAWN by Ken Penders, and he did a decent job on the artwork. (Wish I could say the same for the story--I couldn't tell what the HECK was going on most of the time...!) His style is much less detailed and texturey and shiny than Jim Valentino's, but it still gets the idea across and it's much more what I expect the Sonic comics to look like.
Anyway, we start off with Geoffrey St. John sending Hershey into Robotropolis on a...mission, of some kind. He wants to do it himself but Hershey explains that she'll be able to crawl around the ductwork easier than him. (Well, yeah, she's a CAT, duh. Of COURSE she's totally awesome at everything she does. Whoops, let my natural cat-person tendencies slip out there...) She tells him that she has "nine lives" so what can go wrong?--and climbs into the shaft. (Can ya dig it?)
She WHUMF!s onto the floor RIGHT BEHIND Robo-Robotnik, who looks just like his SA look. I am aware they showed him this way before but it's the first time seeing it for ME. And if you ask me, it's a big IMPROVEMENT over the real Robotnik's comic look. I think they should have gone with this in the first place! None o' this "robotic arm" nonsense. Anyway...
He doesn't hear her but is standing right in front of the objective of their mission--WHATEVER IT IS! (Everything is so generic in this story--"something" blows up. "A robot" is destroyed. "The mission" succeeded. Arrrggh....) Anyway, Robo-butt is talking to a robot he refers to as "General DeCoolette", who I take it is Antoine's father, and says something about sending reinforcements in (where?) while Hershey thinks that she needs a distraction. She then calls Geoffrey on her Dick Tracy-style wonder-watch and he, from outside, blows up a random building of some kind.
This convinces Robo-butt that "the rodents are getting frisky!" (hey, a cat is NOT a rodent! Take that back!) and he sends out two SWATbots to go get the Shadowbots (ANOTHER B5 reference. And after reading Sonic #50, I know for certain now: No, it's NOT just me. KEN IS A FIVER!) but stays there himself. Hershey doesn't like that so she throws a "hand-mine" (geez, a whole PLANET of people who can't say the word "grenade"--"hand-mines"..."whachamacallems"...) down the shaft (can ya dig it?) behind her, which FINALLY distracts him away from the computer.
This was evidently their goal, as Hershey looks up the files on Valdez the Chameleon, who as you may recall is another member of their mysterious group of some kind. By some miracle, the security codes weren't activated (yeah, RIGHT, now THAT'S a plot contrivance if I ever saw one!) and Hershey is able to look up his files right away.
And she finds out that Valdez is NOT dead--
--instead, it's even worse. HE'S ROBOTICISED!
Now, I ask you, was there really ANY reason or point to killing him off like that? None that I can see! What would be the harm in keeping him alive and free? ARGH!
Back outside, Geoffrey is getting quite worried that she took so long in there, and she tells him what happened to Valdez and also says she "left a message" for Robotnik that payback would be coming.
The message?
BOOOM!!!
(Like you expected anything different.)
Well, well, well. A generic action story that could have been written for almost any comic and almost any characters, with a needlessly sad ending and WAY too many explosions for only six pages. All in all, not the best.
But at least the artwork was cute. There are two closeups of Hershey in particular where she looks so adorably CATlike! And it's obvious, from his concern about her wellfare, that Geoffrey St. John is NOT the total jerk most fans make him out to be. He CARES about her, and I can really see them making a good couple now.
At any rate, a rather mediocre offering.
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tourists have stopped by to read Hershey's solo-story since October 8, 1999. Of course, she blew them all to Kingdom Come with a "hand mine", but hey...