Wall Banger/Comic Books/Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)

Throughout its history, Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comic has had quite a bit of stupid moments.


 * Much of the Sonic the Hedgehog Archie comics after they became "As The Mobius Turns", but specifically gems such as these:
 * The Reveal that Mobius is a future post-apocalyptic Earth created by vengeful, Cthulhu-esque aliens. Even with Foreshadowing, that's hard to swallow.
 * The whole Love Dodecahedron between Sonic, Sally, Mina, Amy, Fiona, Tails, and Scourge finally ending with Sally and Tails (temporarily) disowning Sonic as a friend and Fiona doing a Face Heel Turn.
 * Which was started by a single, solidary Out-of-Character Moment for Sally; trussed up to be the new ruler of Knothole, and confronting Sonic for his year-long absence, she tries to guilt him into giving up his position as head of the Freedom Fighters to join her side in the monarchy, and when he refuses, she slaps him, calls him selfish for not wanting to be with her, and breaks up with him permanently. Yes, because it is so selfish to put aside your personal life to fight against a tyrant that is still gunning for your and your peoples' death than to force your beloved to give up the fight to be with you in a royal arrangement. This, not surprisingly, is the moment most Sally-haters deem to be when she dropped off into Jerkass Sue territory.
 * The mass-deroboticization wouldn't work on Bunnie because she upgraded her robotic parts and they were not her original limbs; but it could work on Eggman and Snivley, who we know had their minds transferred to at least two bodies, neither of which were their original roboticized forms.
 * The "25 Years Later" What If storyline, which started promisingly with the discovery that the heroes' constant use of Chaos energy threatened to destroy the planet but then degenerated into ten issues of Sonic and Knuckles talking about family life while their wives and daughters spent an entire installment at a slumber party.
 * Oh, and in the 30 Years Later follow-up, where Bunny and Antoine's kids have cybernetic limbs when there's no explained reason for them to have them (the implication is that they were born with them).
 * Shadow the Hedgehog, a villain in the "30 Years Later" timeframe, gets easily frozen by Chaos Control from Knuckles' daughter despite Shadow's having direct control over the primordial forces of Chaos itself in the universe without the need for a Chaos Emerald. When he's unfrozen later on, he decides to wipe out the world and rebuild using an Artifact of Doom comprised of the water god Chaos and Tikal from Sonic Adventure.
 * Rotor and Cobar's torture. Turning Shadow into an insane dictator and having him beat up on the Hollywood Nerd of the Freedom Fighters? Dickish, to be sure. Following it up with hints of Shadow killing a clearly aging and enfeebled echidna? Having Rotor Demoted to Extra in the main comic, afterward, via a crippling neck injury? You, sir, have just entered Jerkass territory.
 * The Word of Gay is a major Wall Banger, in and of itself. Originally, it was meant to give the walrus some much-needed Character Development to offset his perpetual Demoted to Extra status; but suddenly making an underused character a Token Minority for "character development" is not only lazy and stupid, but also offensive to that minority (especially when the Word also claims it was to explain away his social awkwardness. Hey, Ken, gays aren't all social misfits!). Also, making a chubby Non-Action Guy Hollywood Geek a Pet Homosexual raises a host of Unfortunate Implications about geeks in general and Sonic fans in particular. This could have been mitigated with deeper exploration in a future story... except there's a lot of Flip-Flop of God going on with it; everything from whether Sonic and Archie was on board with the Word, whether it would actually be explored in the main comic, or even what the backstory for the Word entailed. Hell, when asked if Tommy Turtle was his life partner, he claimed not, because "Tommy was dead", but at the time the series was being written by him, Tommy was being revived in the main comic.
 * Even worse, Ian's attempt to rectify this by declaring the whole thing "irrelevant", combined with his treatment of the duo as mentioned above, has given some readers the Unfortunate Implication that he hated the pairing for what it was. Whether or not this is true, it seems like neither writer can do anything with the Word that won't screw it over.
 * Knuckles' dad, Locke, is dying of cancer. How did he get the cancer? Word of God says he got it from the genetic engineering he performed on himself to make Knuckles superhuman (super-echidnan?) interacting badly with the radiation from the Master Emerald. Considering he also said Locke's death was a tribute to his own father's passing, this is incredibly stupid, considering Knuckles should've gone through the same hazards as he did, sharing the same genetically-engineered DNA.
 * It got so bad that, when a new head writer was brought on, many of his early issues had the principal purpose of trying to resolve the problems that had built up. Unfortunately, this new head writer was Ian Flynn; thus, he created about as many problems as he solved.
 * You want a wallbanger? Issues 200 and 201. Sure, the fight (in which Robotnik is finished once and for all...probably) was awesome; and it was an interesting twist to show the full effect of Robotnik's Villainous Breakdown. But this doesn't excuse the aftermath. At the end of the issue, Sonic tries to talk to Sally about what happened to Robotnik, which obviously affected him greatly. Sally brushes it off, giving a generic sentence about new challenges on the horizon, or something like that. Next issue, there's a victory celebration over Robotnik's defeat; however, Sonic is still feeling glum. He tries again to talk to Sally about it, who then tells him something along the lines of "Suck it up and quit being such a drag; you're harshing our mellow." Later on, when Robotnik escapes, Tails calls Sonic out on his concern for Robotnik, flat-out saying that the tyrant "didn't deserve sympathy," and only stopping short of telling Sonic to get over it and beat Robotnik's flabby ass, with a rationalization about Sonic not wanting to "be cruel" to him like he supposedly did when he "broke" the guy. Someone doesn't want our Badass speedster to be tainted by something as way past uncool as emotion. That, or writer Ian Flynn is just a bit too obsessed with making sure the reader knows the villain is evil and should be hated and not liked.
 * If that doesn't convince you, then maybe this will. You'd think that, with Eggman, for all intents and purposes, neutralized due to his insanity, neither Snivley nor the Freedom Fighters would want him to regain his mental faculties, as that would mean having him back in charge of the Eggman Empire, booting Snivley back down to second banana (which he hates) and continuing his rampage against the Freedom Fighters (which they hate). Furthermore, after he escapes his cell and gets captured by the Freedom Fighters, Eggman's mind regresses back to a time before the Great War, essentially deluding himself into thinking he's still mild-mannered Dr. Julian Kintobor of the Kingdom of Acorn, and on good terms with the Mobians; with this level of mental regression, you'd think the Freedom Fighters would take advantage of that in order to "re-educate" him into a good guy. But what do both sides do instead? They keep reminding him of his persona of Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, ruler of the Eggman Empire, thus ensuring he'd regain his memory and his sanity. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero/Villain.
 * More problems from the comic post-issue 200:
 * Snivley hands his newly acquired power over the Eggman Empire to the Iron Queen. Granted, they're in love and plan on ruling the empire together; but so far, he seems to be perfectly comfortable as her second in command, the same position he had under Eggman's rule. Worse is that recent issues have shied away from the "We Can Rule Together" plot, booting Snivley back to abused flunky status. This is so obvious that it was Lampshaded in-comic; when Snivley tells his (mentally-insane) uncle about how he found love with Regina, the fat man laughed at him and told him Regina was using him to gain more power and vice-versa.
 * The Iron Queen, monarch of the Iron Dominion and new ruler of the Eggman Empire, is a technomage on a planet with a severe lack of mechanical items she can control. The Bem have de-roboticized nearly every Robian on the planet and ensured that the roboticization process can never happen again. Knuxerjak all but wiped out the cybernetics of all the Dark Legion factions -- not that she ever tried to control any of what's left (she claims that she can't control the Eggtech that the Legion used to replace their missing cybernetics, and even needed them to install specialized computer chips to allow her to do so). Sonic himself pointed out during Eggman's Villainous Breakdown that his empire had shrunk to an almost negligible size, and one of the things Snivley boasted about to Eggman after his insanity break was how he and the Iron Queen were more successful in defeating the Freedom Fighters than he ever was by using a fully non-robotic army. Unfortunately, her Magitek is constantly used as a Diabolus Ex Machina. Virtually all of the Empire's recent victories over the Freedom Fighters coming from her taking control of the cybernetics of one of the FF (once with Bunnie, once with Monkey Khan, and once with the nanite city under control of NICOLE...all of whom contain the same kind of Eggtech the Dark Legion now has which the Iron Queen supposedly couldn't control) and beating them senseless with their controlled comrade (or, in the case of NICOLE, disabling her defenses, defenses that not even the Iron King could penetrate after multiple smacks of his famed Tremor Mace). So, In a World where her special abilities should be rendered near-moot, they're what guarantees her victory!
 * This makes how they get back into New Mobotropolis in issue #208 even stupider. Snivley had to tell the Iron Queen that the city was one big Grey Goo scenario. Remember, she got into the city the first time by using her Magitek to disrupt the city's defenses. Surely she should've known by then that the city was one big target for her powers? Apparently not -- she must've been distracted the first time.
 * It also makes Nicole's takeover a Wall Banger for the Freedom Fighters; despite having seen first-hand what kind of damage Regina's Magitek could do, and knowing how to disrupt it, none of them do anything to barricade Nicole against it. In fact, when she does get taken over, Sally outright calls herself useless for not thinking Nicole was in any danger, despite the living computer program being her closest companion since long before she advanced herself past Star Trek tricorder Expy. And this is the same Nicole whose control of the city and, thus, the Pool of Rings, was able to regulate the emergence of said rings in an emergency, the same rings that had been proven effective against Regina's Magitek twice before. To add further insult to injury, the whole "Nicole is taken over" storyline lasts a grand total of two issues, with the second issue resulting in her being freed merely by Sally forming a firewall around her program, isolating her from Regina's control. So, not only did the big twist of Nicole turning into a Dominion pawn fall flat (even though it evolved into a pointless "Heel Face Mole" storyline), but it turns out Magitek can be take down by Norton Anti-Virus?!
 * In a similar scenario as above, Bunnie refuses to leave New Mobotropolis, despite the fact that she's in the most danger around the Iron Dominion (being partially robotic and all). However, the next time we see her, two issues afterward, she's stuck in a bunker bemoaning how useless she is.
 * Issue #209: Sonic, Sally, Tails, and Monkey Khan go off on a mission to disrupt the Iron Dominion's forces. Issue #210, they return. The problem here? The mission in question is portrayed in a four part miniseries in a side comic, a miniseries whose first part came out on the same month as issue #210, essentially ending the miniseries before it even began. What's worse, issue #211 is supposed to be the end of the Iron Dominion arc. To steal a gag from Linkara, Let's Do The Time Warp Again!
 * There's also Espio's Face Heel Turn; except for his off-panel ninja training, there is virtually no indication that he has allied himself with any ninja clan (in fact, none of the ninja clans in question are even mentioned until the Iron Dominion story arc); yet, once it's learned that the Iron Queen had united all the clans under her, Espio is forced to work for her simply because he's now a ninja. Even worse, his first assignment is to hunt down and kill Knuckles and steal the Master Emerald. True, he eventually aborts it...but only after he's got Knuckles, his best friend and closest ally, by the throat at kunaipoint. My Master, Right or Wrong should not work that way! Goodnight! Besides, having the only Freedom Fighter ally with ninja training train the others in how to fend off no less than four ninja armies would've made more sense.
 * Later given justification when it turns out that
 * Which puts a triple-whammy of stupid on top of the current stupid of the plot hole;
 * 1) Espio was established as having "ninja training" (not as a ninja, but just gaining training) a full year in-series before this reveal; this is like saying someone is forced into helping Japan invade America because the dojo he went to to learn Jiujitsu at allied themselves with the invaders, and then justify it a year later by revealing his grandfather was the sensei; not only was there no reference that he was even a member of the clan, during that time, but there was no mention that his family were the leaders.
 * 2) As stated above, Espio only got "ninja training" a year prior to the events of the Iron Dominion saga, but he's been a member of the Chaotix for far longer than that. Yet, we're supposed to expect that he has secretly been a full member of the clan, and that his assignment to the Chaotix was established solely to oversee Knuckles? Did Ian ignore Espio's entire timeline for this Ass Pull?
 * 3) Espio's clan swore fealty to the Iron Dominion. That means any order the ID gives them overrides any previous or current order assigned by the clan heads themselves. So, if the ID ordered Espio to kill Knuckles, and he was previously ordered to keep him alive, the order to kill him should've superceded the order to let him live. So, basically, his mother actively defied the ID's orders, and no one caught on to this? What, did the ID not care enough about that assignment to check to see if it was actually followed through? Apparently not, because it's never followed up on.
 * Finally, when Espio's deception is finally revealed, the Chaotix are less appalled by the fact that he betrayed them to the enemy, than the fact that he was spying on them. Yeah, finding out an embarrassing secret about your teammate's "street" personality is much more detrimental to your friendship than knowing he was actively working against you and trying to kill you on orders from the enemy.
 * For the queen mother of all Wall Bangers in the Archie Sonic comics, look no further to the main storyline of issue #108: thanks to a machine he built and the residual effects of Chaos Knuckles' unintentional reality-warping powers, Eggman (then still robotic and able to roboticize people by touch) finds a way to reconstitute the original Robotnik. Yes, Eggman finds a way to revive the original Robotnik, the one who died during the events of "Endgame," the one Eggman ultimately replaced. Surely, something so groundshaking, something so unexpected, something so epic simply couldn't be ruined, right? Somehow, it could, and it was. Instead of using their combined 600 IQ to come up with some mass-roboticization machine or plot out the location of Knothole for a surprise attack, they decide to indulge in an Idiot Plot involving Robotnik "escaping" from Eggman and gaining the Freedom Fighters' trust, so he can eventually lure them to the machine that brought him back, and use it to disintegrate them. Unexpectedly, and defying all logic (this is Robotnik, after all), their ploy works; for the next month, the Freedom Fighters give Robotnik shelter in Knothole itself, with both parties completely ignoring that having Robotnik in Knothole is in itself a serious security risk, because he could relay not only the village's location, but also its defensive capabilities and weak points back to Eggman! Neither the Freedom Fighters nor Robotnik seems to realize this, and it's heavily implied in future comics that this breach in security never happened. Robotnik is eventually able to go into the machine and have it turned on on them.... but it's okay; the Freedom Fighters already knew what Robotnik was up to, something that he and Eggman should have seen coming when they formed the plan in the first place, and they only went along with it so they could destroy the machine. It was established earlier that the process that brought Robotnik back was only temporary; he only had about a month to live... which makes one wonder why they even went along with the plan if they knew about the machine when we've seen, several times before and afterward, that they're capable of sneaking into Eggman's base and sabotaging his machines, without having to resort to playing the villain's game. It also makes one wonder if Eggman knew about the revival being temporary, and why he didn't offer to roboticize Robotnik as a safety precaution. The worst part of this whole mess? It all happened in a single half issue, not even taking up that much of the comic it was featured in (the other pages being reserved for shoehorned Knuckles- and Sally-specific stories), and it was never referenced again in the comics. What could've been the most epic turning point in the entire comic ended up being reduced to a half-issue pissing on the grave of the legacy of the comic series in general, and its depiction of Robotnik in particular.
 * The "Anonymous" storyline. It turns out to be Robotnik's "son", A.D.A.M. What makes it a Wall Banger is that it was originally going to be the original Dr. Robotnik. Hell, they even drew his silhouette in one issue!
 * Eggman gets a whopper of a Wall Banger in issue #210. After he regains his sanity (see above for details), he tells Snivley (who's gloating to him from the outside of Eggman's jail cell) that he's figured out why Sonic always beats him. It's not because Sonic is tenacious, or that it's Sonic's destiny as the hero or whatever; it's because he's absorbed so much chaos energy - more than anyone else has - that he's become a living Deus Ex Machina able to warp reality to give him Super Luck. Not only is that completely ignoring the above instance with Chaos Knuckles and the original Robotnik, among other living chaos gods (such as Shadow, Enerjak, Mammoth Mogul, etc, all of which Eggman's encountered at least a couple times in his life), but it also blatantly states that Sonic will always win because his chaos powers will forever stack the odds in his favor. Could this be the start of a possible Black Hole Sue transformation?
 * Back in the four issue miniseries that started this comic, before Cerebus Syndrome kicked in: In the second issue, Princess Sally goes to the edge of the Great Forest. At Knothole, Sonic and the others find a proclamation from her that she's going to bargin with Robotnik over her father's life. Sonic and others suspect that Robotnik will go back on his word (he does) and go rescue her. They stop Robotnik just before he roboticizes Sally, and they take her back to Knothole. Once there, she yells at them for screwing things up. Apparently, she intended for Robotnik to roboticize her because she was wearing machines in her boots that would have analyzed the machine and told them everything they needed to reverse the process. Sally angrily blames them for screwing up the plan. No one points out that Sally could have told them the plan before she did it. In fact, before things go wrong, Sonic asks her what she's doing out on the edge of the forest only for her to yell that it's none of his business. Yeah, Sally, a plan that involves your getting roboticized is definitely not the business of a high-ranking Freedom Fighter... It's lucky she gained some IQ points before the comic proper started.
 * Issue #215. Everything associated with Silver. He attacks Rotor for being the traitor of the Freedom Fighters because he dropped his nickname of "Boomer" when he grew up. That's right, he was once known as "Boomer", so when he chose to go by by his real name later in life, it meant that he replaced the "original" Boomer. This makes Silver seem like he's never heard of the concept of a nickname. It also confuses the issue when you realize Rotor's evil twin is also known as Boomer. After this "realization", Silver goes off to kill Rotor without confirming his suspicions with anyone, rejecting the notion of speaking with his mysterious master or Rotor about it, which makes Silver the biggest idiot this side of Knuckles' Flanderization. Finally, he disables Rotor's nanite battle suit with his telekinesis, saying that the TK "trumps technology". Um, no, that's not how telekinesis works. That's how cyberpathy works. Or is Ian Flynn under the impression that any magical or supernatural power is superior to science?
 * After the suit is disabled, Rotor still manages to blast Silver with its weapons, claiming that "disabled" doesn't mean "doesn't work". Yes. It. Does. If you disable a machine, then it no longer works. Seriously, even an amateur mechanic should know that, and Rotor's supposed to be the third smartest machinist on the planet, behind Eggman and Tails. Is Ian trying to make Rotor irrelevant? (Don't answer that.)
 * How do the Dark Egg Legion control the Walrus Herd? Through sonar. Sonar isn't even remotely related to psychic powers, and shouldn't put people under Mind Control. Also, Silver admits that his powers are strictly telekinetic in nature, and that his experience with using telepathy is limited to "maybe giving someone a headache". Yet he's able to give the entire DEL a Psychic Nosebleed-inducing Mind Rape with his psychic powers. Yes, they were enhanced with technology, but if he has that little experience with telepathy, no amount of technological enhancements should give him that kind of result.
 * But that pales in comparison to the biggest Wall Banger of the mini-arc; the "revelation" that Rotor retired from Freedom Fighting after two incidents in the past there his attempts to "replace" Sonic in the event of his disappearance backfired. The incidents? A well-documented case where he and Uncle Chuck build an army of Metal Sonics that gets controlled by A.D.A.M before they were even activated, and an undocumented case where he built a mech-suit and nearly killed his friends attempting to be the hero in it. Do you see the problem with this? If not, here's a hint: This is not at all like Rotor. He is shy, modest, and in no way hungry for glory - he knows he works best in the FF as their Mission Control and Gadget Guru, and he prefers it that way. He would never attempt to actively be the hero, let alone be so reckless in his attempt as to risk the lives of his friends in the process. Yes, he would defend himself and his friends, when necessary, and yes, he is noted as being a bit clumsy with a brief history of his projects blowing up in his face, but it's completely unbelieveable that he'd just throw himself into action willy-nilly without thought to the consequences. As for the Metal Sonic army, as mentioned, Uncle Chuck shares part of the blame for its creation, and it wasn't their fault that A.D.A.M got a hold of them, anyway, so having him blame himself for that incident is also unlike him. In short, Ian just ruined Rotor's character just to make it plausible for him to be the traitor. Thanks a lot, Potto.
 * Of course, there is a possible explanation for this, which goes back to yet another Wall Banger performed by Ken Penders on the walrus; Rotor, once listed among the best marksmen in Knothole and once created a gun that could "punch a hole through zones, if need be", suddenly became anti-firearms after the missing year, with no explanation except possibly that it as Ken's political sensibilities, at the time. Even so, using one Wall Banger to explain away another is itself a Wall Banger.
 * Ever notice how speciesism seems to be creeping into the comic, nowadays? In issues 213-214, the Wolf Pack and Mysterious Cat People are mortal enemies, in issue 215-216, the Orcas and Walruses are fighting over control of the northern areas, Sonic Universe issues 17-20 has the Battle Cuckoo get pissy with Tails for being a non-bird Mobian that can fly without assistance, etc. Seems rather odd, doesn't it? Not only do these prejudices seem arbitrary (none of these conflicts have any history to them from past issues), not only are most of them stereotypical (really, cats and dogs and walruses and orcas being enemies? Yeah, maybe in real life, but in Sonic?), not only does it undermine the purpose of the Freedom Fighters (being groups of mobians coming together to fight Eggman despite their differences), but when you consider the kind of prejudices Ian had for the characters in his "Other M" fan comic (including a genocidally racist Knuckles), one can't help but wonder what Ian's thinking with this.
 * Also notice how most of the bad guys in the above are members of the "Dark Egg Legion"; this is because Ian, in his infinite wisdom, decided to strip everything that made the original Dark Legion interesting and Flanderize the group into generic Cannon Fodder meant solely to undo the de-roboticization debacle listed above. Here's a hint, Potto; it isn't the cybernetics that made the Dark Legion interesting, but the reason why they have them, which is less "we want power" and more "Machine Worship political prejudice''.
 * Lien-Da, former Kommissar and current Grandmaster of the original Dark Egg Legion, had her head blown up by a bomb put in her by Eggman and detonated by the Iron Queen. Before this, she had betrayed both individuals for her own gain, promting said bomb implant and detonation. Eggman is perfectly aware of this. So, what does he do? Fix her up, puts a new bomb in her, and offers her another chance to work under him. His reasoning? He fully expects anyone under his command to be a Reliable Traitor. Read that; he always expects all of his minions to betray him, sooner or later, but expects them to work for him to their fullest, until then. To paraphrase, Megatron: "Why, that's what they always asked me. Why them? Why Snivley and Lien-Da? Why, out of all of my minions, do I take back the ones whose history of treachery is legend? Because I'm an idiot, that's why!". But that's not the end of it; after being told this, Lien-Da accepts the offer. I don't care if Eggman was in the nut house for twelve issues, or that Lien-Da had part of her brain vaporized, neither of them should be this stupid.
 * This stupid or this Genre Savvy? If you think about it, anyone competent enough to be a Grandmaster is also going to have the ambition to not settle for being second in command. If Eggman gets rid of Snively and Lein-da, he'll be forced to either settle for incompetent mooks (Scratch and Grounder, anyone?) or train a whole new group of Legionairres that will ultimately turn on him anyway. Better the devil you know.
 * That could be a good point...had it not been established that Eggman (and the Iron Dominion, which Eggman has since taken control from) had established multiple factions of the Dark Egg Legion elsewhere, not just relying on the Echidnas. Should the Echidnas have gone against him, he could've just wiped them out and replaced them with a faction that he KNOWS would do a better job at following his orders. It's not as if, to our knowledge, any of them have bombs in their cybernetics to keep them in line, like the Echidnas do.
 * Issue #221. Just...the level of hate and bigotry in it is sickening. In case you're wondering, it deals with two basic themes:
 * 1) Espio, NICOLE, and Dimitri all sulk about how they "betrayed" their friends and countrymen to the enemy, angsting about how they wouldn't be trusted, in the future. The thing is, none of them actually did any betraying; all three were forced into their position by the bad guys (Espio through his aforementioned connection to the ninja clans loyal to the Iron Dominion, NICOLE through the aforementioned Magitek, and Dimitri through an Enemy Mine situation against Knuxerjak and the backstabbing of Lien-Da), and not only were those stints very short-lived, they actually used their positions to work against the enemy, afterward (NICOLE as a Reverse Mole, Dimitri as a Spanner in The Works, and Espio...by dropping off the face of the arc, altogether. Oh, he did get the MacGuffin that finally defeated the Iron Dominion, though). Like the Rotor example above, Ian is using a Fake Defector stoyrline they had no control over and actually used to the good guys' advantage as the source of a Conflict Ball Hackey Sack game between them.
 * 2) Mina Mongoose, scarred for life from the events of the ID arc for the wrong reasons (misblaming NICOLE for terrorizing New Mobotropolis instead of the ID), rallies a mob of her fans against NICOLE. It's even hinted that her manager and boyfriend, Ash, had to do some Executive Meddling to tone the lyrics down, implying that her hatred toward the computer has reached Westboro Baptist Church-levels. Like all of Ian's other "Character Development", this is totally against Mina's core characterization and was not hinted at one iota until now. Even worse, it's explicitly pointed out to them by Sonic and Sally that it wasn't NICOLE's fault, that she worked against the ID during her "betrayal", and, oh yeah, she helped save their asses before, during, and after the invasion by teleporting them to a safe place, yet neither Mina nor the mob seem to accept that, and continue to berate NICOLE, after the Kirk Summation. Yeah, okay, it's explained away that Ixus Naugus was using his magic as a sort of Hate Plague on them (really, Potto? More Diabolus Ex Machina from you?), but that only goes for the audience, not Mina, and it does not excuse the sudden sadistic turn that they give against NICOLE (one of the mob actually asked her point-blank if she would feel pain if he stomped on a patch of flowers in the city, knowing it was made of nanites she controlled. Congrats, Ian, you've just introduced blatant threats of physical violence and unrepentant torture into a Funny Animal comic).
 * To be fair though, it ties into the previous Wall Banger that the Freedom Fighters had become overly confident about NICOLE and hadn't even bothered to take any precaution against obvious threats to her. When Mina calls them out on this, they act equally irrational and arrogant, not seeing any reason for her complaints and refusing to make any changes to their current status because "NICOLE is a nice person and might be upset by it". They knew horrible things had happened because of their recklessness about her, and still expected them to be okay with them doing nothing to prevent it happening again.
 * Let's talk about two unliked characters in the comic; Tommy Turtle and Drago Wolf. The former is considered the Creator's Pet by most fans, while the latter is considered The Load and a villain with Zero-Percent Approval Rating. The former died twice and was shoehorned into most shots involving the Brain Trust as an attempt to make him more beloved; the latter was beaten within an inch of his life constantly and was shoehorned into most villain group appearances in order to get his ass kicked. The problem? Both had potential to be really good supporting characters, mostly through their connections to other characters (the former with Rotor, the latter with Hershey Cat and the Wolf Pack Freedom Fighters), but the writers were just too damn lazy to do so, resulting in their hated status. Seriously, if we can give Robotnik's niece the same kind of love and respect we give the main characters, then why not these two?
 * "Reigning Cats and Dogs" is utterly stupid by its premise, mainly the Wolf Pack Freedom Fighters and Mysterious Cat Tribes being "mortal enemies". First, it's a blatant attempt at playing up the stereotype of dogs and cats not getting along. Second, there's no stated reason for why they're enemies. Third, their lands are too far apart to even BE enemies. Fourth, the Echidnas were already established as being the Cat Tribes' enemies. Fifth, as a result, the Wolf Pack had to downgrade their weaponry from being almost on par with the pre-missing year Freedom Fighters to spears and bows and arrows. Finally, the conflict that formed the war - the Black Onyx that featured in the comic adaptation of Sonic Adventure that was supposedly sacred to both the Cats and Wolf Pack - wasn't even hinted at in the Wolf Pack's history, before then. Oh, and to top it all off, Drago Wolf makes an appearance as the leader of one of the new Dark Egg Legion factions (a joined Cat/Wolf group, which makes no sense if they're supposed to be mortal enemies), yet gets beaten up and humiliated just like every other time he's appeared, despite Word of God saying he'd be taken more seriously and be less of a punching bag. Yes, this is an Ian Flynn story, why do you ask?
 * The "Chosen One" saga. Oy, if there were ever headaches about a story in the comics pre-Ian Flynn, this had to be it. Supposedly about a prophecy stated to have Tails destroy then-megaenemy Mammoth Mogul and use the Chaos Emeralds to bring about a "golden age", it wound up becoming a mess of writers having no idea what that was supposed to mean and clashing explanations for what Tails was supposed to do. It gave us the horror of "Titan Tails", spanned all three head writers (Penders, Flynn, and Karl Bollers), and wound up being an utter waste, as even after Flynn put an end to the nonsense, Mogul is still around as a villain and there is still no "Golden Age" for Mobius.
 * The implant bombs, if only due to how they're so poorly described, it's impossible to tell why the Legion can't just shut them off, themselves, or why they need the chips the Iron Dominion eventually give them to do so.