Luke Owen reviews Mega Man #27, part 10 of the Worlds Collide crossover…
We enter the final assault as Sonic, Tails, Mega Man and Rush storm the Wily Egg to end the dastardly duo of doctors’ plans! Speaking of “duos,” what’s that entering Earth’s atmosphere? Can it help Sonic and Mega Man fend off the Mega Man Killers? How about a Chaos Devil?
After last week’s action packed Sonic the Hedgehog #250, Ian Flynn and his team have delivered a more balanced, but equally as brilliant comic in the form of Mega Man #27. Even though we’re 10 issues in of this 12 issue run, Flynn is still pulling surprises out and it’s yet to get boring.
Last week saw Dr. Eggman show his true colours to the Wily Egg team-up as he and Metal Sonic threw Dr. Light out of the ship to plummet to his death. As seen in our exclusive preview of the comic, Dr. Light is saved by Shadow to aid some support for the blue bomber and blue blur as they head into the Wily Egg – where they face down the Mega Man Killers and the Chaos Devil.
There are several stand out moments in this issue, one of the biggest being the dissension between Eggman and Wily – who are now seeing each other’s ‘weaknesses’. While Wily wants to defeat Dr. Light, he doesn’t want to see him dead which doesn’t work with Eggman’s need to destroy things – both figuratively and literally. It’s an extremely well-written moment which we’ve been building up to since the first part of this story, but there could have been a few panels had been dedicated to it. Within a moment’s notice, they’ve gone from best friends to enemies working together. The comic did need to skirt over it for issue pacing, but more time spent developing it could have made it one of the strongest moments of the entire run.
As always, there are some cute moments thrown in there for fans of both games, as Sonic and Mega Man argue over who designed the layout for the Wily Egg citing their past experiences as evidence. There’s even a couple of lines in there that refer to a moments in Mega Man 4 on the NES and Sonic 3 on the Mega Drive. Flynn is a writer who knows his source material and he embraces every facet of it to ensure it feels coherent to fans of both franchises.
Mega Man #27 does feel like the perfect balance of the more story and character driven issues and the action packed Sonic the Hedgehog #250. There is some wonderful action set pieces and it all looks great, but the story also moves forward here as well as lead to a fantastic final page tease.
Ben Bates again provides the artwork and, once again, it’s fantastic. He captures every character perfectly from their initial design right down to their facial expressions when in certain situations. The colour and inking from Gary Martin and Steve Downer supports Bates’ brilliant work to once again show why this is such a great comic to read.
And Mega Man #27 really is a lot of fun. Issue after issue, the Worlds Collide series performs (with a couple of exceptions) to be one of the most enjoyable comic runs of 2013. The writing is superb and the artwork is gorgeous to look at. There’s a great tease into the next issue, and with just two more issues remaining, things are about to get really interesting.
