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Kill it! Kill it with fire!

I'm sorry, but as much as I respect Ian's talent as a writer and don't doubt he'll do a competent job even when making a silk purse from a sow's ear, I have no desire to see even more of Penders' bloated ego child than I already have and I don't see the point of going over all this again.

It feels like that whole continuity does nothing but cause trouble - and as much as a comic about alternate universes is a fair enough place to put it, I still doubt that it's going to stop the obvious confusion over how real this future could be when we're back into it yet again, with what feels like indecent haste. As much as I'd like to see the story told competently, it feels like it'll only ever stir up 'shippers and take up space.

If this isn't going to be yet another blather about possible futures to stir up the main continuity again, it feels as though we're going to blag that this is another alternate universe and basically turn the arc into a fancy variation on Zone Wars (something I've been a little afraid of with Universe from the get-go), to possibly fix the bits where Penders got silly. And one pointless alternate future's bad enough without there being potentially millions to tweak every daft editorial decision.

Lara-Su (note how she gets centre stage) feels like Shadow's role in SA2 for me most of the time: a passable idea within the scope of what she was originally created for, but something that just keeps coming back and back and back out of fanservice or sentimentality long after its narrative purpose was served, rather than because there's any point to it. I don't want or need yet another story about how she's oh so tomboyishly awesome that she could kick another echidna's tail (please, can we at least have some variety in the villains?) and be smart enough to save every previously competent FF we already know on her lonesome if anyone gave the poor, misunderstood diddums a chance - and she's great with little kids, too!

I thought that Universe was supposed to have a degree of independence from reading the main book - so why, after the four issue blatant attention-grab with the character popular with tweenie fanboys, are we shackling it firmly back to not just the Archie cast but a bucketload of back-story and off-panel politics that only the old Archie fans'll know fully?

And yes, I know that Universe is ultimately a tool for marketing the main book and vice versa - but trying to bridge the two for new readers with a continuity relevant only to itself out of almost two hundred issues is just coming off as confusing.

Echidnas: 25 Freakin' Issues Later has had its chance multiple times and was a legend in nothing more than its creator's head. If Universe was supposed to be about alternate Sonic universes and expanding the canon, let's just stop beating the dead horse and show something we haven't seen before, like Silver's dystopia or more of Blaze's dimension - I'd rather see world-building for even Elise or Sera than yet another steaming load of this.

Sally's expression in 201 bothers me slightly. Might just be because the thumbnail is small and distorts her face a little to make it only appear that she looks smug when she's actually smiling like everyone else. Another part of me thinks that it's because she's a wicked wench who's secretly planning Sonic's demise.

After the feeling of #51-related deja vu already expressed, I can only look at this, think of the original post-Endgame plot outline and keep my fingers crossed...

A forlorn hope at the moment, I know.

We can but hope.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who feels justified in using inverted commas when talking about what an original idea Lara-Su is (although yes, any blend of the parents would look spectacular against Sonic and Sally's two mini-clones, who've missed an opportunity for an image revamp as well as an age retcon) - although I freely admit that when it comes to speculative fan fiction in any series or continuity (and what is Archie if not semi-AU SatAM fanfic with a Sega stamp on it? :P), I've always been allergic to kidfic.

This feels a bit more than that, though - again, the whole continuity just bugs me.

And as far as Julie-Su goes: it seemed to me as though the only reason we got to see as much of Queen Sally wandering around simpering and being angsty as we did before was because she was a queen and wife of the monarch/alleged protagonist. If Julie's still the same prissy little housewife that Penders devolved her into (and please let Abby either've been retconned out of existence in this AU or met with a nasty accident in the five intervening years!), then I can't justify a reason for her to be there, either.

Although I'm now having thoughts about Lara doing the whole Chibi-Usa time travel schtick because Daddy won't let her be a Guardian and she wants to learn from the best one way or the other when Daddy doesn't know that he's told her "No!" yet... Again, as much as I'd actually be curious to see that as a fanfic, I don't like possible futures in canon for the paradoxes and predestination (and resulting bickering) they potentially throw up. The readership's divided enough.

Almost all kidfics boil down to the same thing. For one reason or another their parents aren't competent enough to handle the situation so it's up to the kids to save the day, usually on their first outing.

Either that, or the kid is a pointless window dressing rather than anything to do with a plot, and their only function in the story is for the canon characters to remark on how cute/naughty/mysterious/unique/better than their parents/[insert adjective here] they are whilst they slow the narrative down.

Or maybe I'm reading the wrong kidfics.

That was even how the Knothole Freedom Fighters got their start after the Original Freedom Fighters were beaten.

True, but that doesn't mean that I want to see the characters we've seen develop over so long seemingly devolve as they get older. It's one thing to lose youthful vigour, but it's another to have them become the exact same stuffy, blinkered, incompetent adults that you privately hoped they'd be smart enough to remember how much they hated as kids. It just seems to defy common sense at times.

It just seems more " right " to have Julie-Su pictured with the rest of her family then to exclude her entirely. I don't care much of a pull Julie-Su has in the upcoming storyline once we actually get into the book. I imagine it'll be about on par with how much pull say ... Sonia has had in any one of these stories that's been published so far.

Given the available evidence, I'm inclined to agree.

That's more up Silver's alley. If I had to choose between the two I'd say give the newbie a chance. At least he's investigating what's bound to be an important plot point one of these days.

As I've already said above: ditto for the same reasons. M25YL still feels like a vanity project that won't die for as long as it's mystifyingly allowed to bimble along in its own little bubble.