Welcome, one and all, to my continued run of reviews on IDW’s Sonic Comics! This one is a little late on my part, but hey, it’s a cool issue, so that’s okay. Let’s get to it!
• Sonic the Hedgehog #10
• IDW Publishing
• Story: Ian Flynn
• Art: Tracy Yardley & Evan Stanley
• Colours: Matt Herms
As always, I’ll start with the cover. I got Cover B this time, which is by Tracy Yardley. It’s a nice piece featuring Neo Metal Super Sonic. I would say though that Adam Bryce Thomas’ Cover A is the better of those available for this issue.
Tracy and Evan do a great job with the art again. The backdrops range from atmospheric colours to high detail pieces, with the nature of each panel changing depending on where the focus is. This is a thoroughly action packed issue too, and the team deals with this brilliantly. The set pieces are kept relatively short, allow for us to see the heroes at their strongest, and giving each enough focus for us to remember what they’re capable of. Blaze comes out of this the best on the hero side with her pyrokinetic powers proving gloriously powerful. Meanwhile, Neo Metal Super Sonic is shown to be a major threat, dealing with the dual assault of Sonic and Knuckles with relative ease.
Both of the new characters, Tangle and Whisper, get a chance to shine here, working together during the main battle. It’s Tangle’s background shenanighans that really caught my eye though. Her brief appearance alongside Vector was full of great facials, and her body language in her final appearance of the issue is just plain adorable. It’s at the point that, while I look forward to the next time she gets to be the focus of an issue, I’m enjoying her issue stealing minor moments enough that it wouldn’t matter if it takes a while to happen.
From a story standpoint, things are moving nicely. Things are advancing pretty much along the lines that you would expect, and we now appear to be heading solidly towards Mr Tinker returning to his nefarious ways as Eggman. The final twist with Neo Metal Super Sonic also puts the pieces in place for an epic encounter in the next issue. The only unfortunate thing here is that while Neo Metal Sonic’s appearance when he starts shifting into his final form is truly creepy, his final design felt somehow less threatening to me. Yes, it’s big, but it looks far too cartoony. Now, I know that that’s an odd statement given that this is a Sonic comic, but the sheer power Neo showed in the early part of the issue made him seem ridiculously powerful, and part of that was in his cold appearance. This form makes him look more like a toy than anything.
Even with this minor problem though, this continued the quality of the last issue, and the shift towards action meant that we got an exciting run of pages the break up the story moments. In all, I’m really looking forward to the next part of the arc, and don’t hesitate to give this another 5 out of 5.
Matt Doyle Media 
It can suck when a villain changes forms. Take for example DBZ. I thought that Cell’s early form was more menacing than some of his later transformations.
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I’m still yet to see an episode of DBZ. There’s just so much of it now that I’m not sure I’d ever get through it. Looking at some shots of his various forms though, I can see what you mean. It’s the face for me. The more human it gets the less intimidating he gets.
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