Luke Owen reviews the first issue of the 12-part Worlds Collide series…
“Worlds Collide: Part One” – The crossover event of 2013 starts HERE! The Mega Man/Sonic the Hedgehog epic kicks off with a bang as the Blue Blur and Blue Bomber meet for the first time! And considering how hard they’re fighting each other, it might be the last! Why are the heroes trying to take each other down? Drs. Eggman and Wily know, and they’re loving every minute of it! You cannot miss this historic first meeting of two of the biggest video game icons in the entire world!”
Frankenstein meets The Wolfman, Freddy vs. Jason, Scooby Doo meets the Harlem Globetrotters…
There have been some great crossovers in the history of film, TV and comics, but this is one that I have been really excited for. I grew up a Sonic kid due to my Mega Drive obsession and I was able to love the Mega Man games from afar via my cousin’s SNES, so the idea of these two iconic characters coming together is like some sort of dream come true for me – and this first issue did not disappoint.
While I loved it, those who were looking forward to seeing Sonic and Mega Man throw down could be feel short changed as Mega Man #24 is nothing more than a set-up for the next 11 parts of the story. The entire issue (save for a few pages) ties up the closing panels of Mega Man #23 and Sonic The Hedgehog #246 and explains the meeting of Dr Eggman and Dr Wily as well as their plan for their arch rivals.
But, for me, this isn’t a bad thing – in fact it’s nothing short of awesome. Ian Flynn has crafted a wonderful script full of hilarious banter between these two iconic villains with plenty of laugh out loud lines. These two are now best friends and close colleagues but they still want the limelight – Eggman still wants everything to be in his image while Wily is not willing to give up his naming conventions. I don’t want to spoil all the fun of the issue, but it’s all great.
And that is the key word of this issue – and I imagine the series as a whole – fun. This is a really fun comic. The script is fun, the artwork is fun, the colours are fun and the overall presentation of the story is fun. It’s not often you get to read a comic with a massive smile spread across your face – but Mega Man #24 is one of those.
However, I do have one problem with Mega Man #24. The set-up for the main plot is a little messy and a lot of the comic’s logic is never truly explained. In one panel, they explain that they are going to wipe out the current timeline of Sonic’s world to replace it with a new one – akin to Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder – and then a few panels later the deed is done. The problem lies in that everything more or less looks the same and we’re given no history to our changed reality. Imagine watching Back to the Future Part II and you never saw that video explaining Biff’s rise to power in the alternative future with no other explanation offered – it would be a touch messy wouldn’t it? I’d like to think that perhaps this is something that will be addressed at a later date…
Aside from that little niggle, I can’t recommend Mega Man #24 enough – something tells me this is going to be a really fun ride and that final panel reveal is awesome. If you have any attachment to these characters or fun crossovers in general, you are going to love this comic.
Luke Owen is one of the co-editors of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published April 11, 2013. Updated November 6, 2019.
