March 1994
"Bot's All, Folks!" is the first story. Robotnik's got a new weapon to destroy Sonic...Botman! Yes it is a Batman rip-off, complete with a bat signal (although here it's a silhouette of Robotnik's face). Sonic gets his ass kicked for a bit but then he uses his speed to take apart Botman. However, Robotnik's got a Wolverine ripoff ready to go, but something goes wrong, and out comes a Wolvurkel bot. Yes, it looks like Urkel, and definitely a small nod to Jaleel White, who voiced Sonic in the shows. Next bot ripoff...Spawnmower! Sonic removes the spark plug wire and pushes it off a cliff. Then we get Magbot, Captain Marbot, and Mighty Bot, all quickly disposed. Robotnik escapes as usual, and that's it.
Sonic bowling pin-up.
"A Little Sonic Goes A Long Way" is next. First issue of Sonic playing the guitar I believe. He plays his music which somehow reaches all the way to Robotnik, so he makes a device that makes things shrink. Snively makes an appearance here (his first was in the Christmas Carol story, but his name was Snarley there). Robotnik has a monitor that can track the FF outside the Great Forest, so he has to know Knothole is somewhere in there right? Of course, every plan he makes to destroy the Great Forest fails miserably, so yeah. Anyway, the FF head to the abandoned concert hall to play as a band. Bunnie wants to play cymbals and saxophone, because she's the sax-cymbal of the team. Heh, nice.
They get ambushed and shrunk by Robotnik, who now has a roboticizer vacuum. Sonic clogs it up by cutting open a box fill with music programs, giving them a chance to hide. Robotnik crashes into a stage which wrecks the vacuum, but he still sucks Sonic up in a dust buster. The others FF save him by using a violin as a bow and arrow, and the effects finally wear off and they're big again. The shrinking device's effects last only an hour, which means these last few pages took an hour, and Robotnik still failed. They drive Robotnik away by playing music, and then shrink the invading army of badniks to save the day. End.
Much better issue. Both stories were good in their own way, and for the first time Robotnik had a significant advantage that required all the FF to help each other out to defeat him. You can argue that using music was a cheap way to end the fight, but Robotnik has always canonically hated music throughout all Sonic media, so it works here. One of the best issues so far.
I'll end tonight here while it's on a good note.
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HBJ Dubs
~Project 1000~