Recap / Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Fang the Hunter

Maybe the real eighth Chaos Emerald were the Hooligans we met along the way.^note Issue #1 Cover A by Aaron Hammerstrom.

Written by:	Ian Flynn
Year:	Seven
Set Between:	Sonic the Fighters and Sonic Superstars
Issue Count:	4

Sonic's resident hooligan adversaries, Fang the Hunter, Bean the Dynamite, and Bark the Polar Bear are on the hunt for a glamorous treasure, the eighth Chaos Emerald! At least, that's a rumor that Fang is following up on.

Determined to get riches, the jerboa looks to squeeze the information out of those most closely associated with said Chaos Emeralds, Sonic the Hedgehog and Knuckles the Echidna. However, his two cohorts think that Fang has been a rather inept leader of the Hooligans, leading to contention between all three.

Meanwhile, Sonic and Tails follow a lead about a mysterious "Ghost Battleship" which has appeared and disappeared over the horizon, which they have reason to believe is due to Dr. Eggman.

This miniseries was released to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Sonic Triple Trouble, Fang's debut game. This is also the first miniseries distinctly set in the Classic Era of the franchise, unlike the past four that took place within the Modern Era and mainline continuity.

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Tropes involved with this miniseries:

• Abandoned Area: The Newtrogic High Zone has become this after Metal Sonic's battle with Knuckles and the Chaotix, with the Hooligans visiting it to find intel on the eighth Chaos Emerald. However, Eggman insists it's still part of the Eggman Empire's territory despite the damage his star creation's Kai form caused in the ensuing battle.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Bean lists some of the Hooligans' past misdeeds, which include working with Eggman, twice, and stealing a pie from Amy Rose, who left it on the windowsill to cool. This act apparently distresses Bean, as they had absolutely no reason to steal it, with Bark in the flashback panel being nervous about this being a line-crosser. When Fang remembers how they ended up being chased by Amy and her Piko Piko Hammer, he admits that one was his fault.
• Blinded by the Light: When two Hyudoros attack Fang in Sandopolis Zone, one of them gets blinded by Fang shining the Marvelous Queen's headlights in its face.
• Call-Forward:
  • Fang voices his intention to give his Marvelous Queen the upgrades it deserves if he's able to cash-in that eighth Chaos Emerald. While getting the emerald itself is pretty futile, he does get to upgrade the Marvelous Queen with all sorts of weaponry in Sonic Superstars.
  • Similarly, the longer the story goes on, the more Fang, Bean and Bark squabble about the jerboa's leadership, with Fang openly admitting the idea of some time apart is becoming acceptable, explaining why only Fang is in Sonic Superstars.
  • The Hard Boiled Heavies explain that they discovered the Warp Topaz in a remote island cave, which is exactly where Starline had found the gem the first time, and Sonic would later put to rest in 900th Adventure.
• Canon Welding: Up until this miniseries, the Classic Era IDW comics have mostly been disconnected but continuity-adjacent stories that took place within Sonic's past. Issue #3 of this miniseries is the first one to directly link IDW's Classic canon with IDW's Modern canon, revealing that the Hard Boiled Heavies found the Warp Topaz, previously used by Dr. Starline.
• Continuity Nod: When Bean argues with Fang over his inept leadership and how they keep getting hired by Eggman, he recalls the "Seasons of Chaos" one-shot where the doctor hired the trio to hunt down the Chaos Emeralds after he lost control of his robots. The panel of Bean recalling this incident is accompanied by the brief brawl between Bark and Knuckles. They also acknowledge they did keep the purple emerald after the events of the one-shot, but Bean lost it before they could pawn it off for cash.
• A Day in the Limelight: The series is called Fang the Hunter after all, with the jerboa and his two compatriots getting the spotlight over the conventional heroes, though Sonic and Tails are following their own B-plot involving a disappearing battleship that the Hard Boiled Heavies are using to test the Warp Topaz on Eggman's behalf, despite the doctor ordering them to return to port.
• Didn't Think This Through: When Fang, impressed with the Hard Boiled Heavies' plan of keeping the Warp Topaz and Eggman's new Heavy Wing for themselves, offers to give back the Warp Topaz in exchange for allowing the Hooligans to leave and pretend they never found the ship, Heavy King points out that alternatively, they could instead "dispose" of them, and claim they never made contact at all.
  Heavy King: After all, who would correct us?
  Fang: Yeah... I'd do the same if I were you...
• Discontinuity Nod: Sonic the Fighters had a weird depiction of the Chaos Emeralds, with there being eight of them that were each protected by the eight playable characters in the game and the colors also being different than the ones introduced in Sonic 3. In the Arcade mode's story, getting them all was required to power Tails' one-seater rocket in order to fight Eggman in his space station base. The number of Chaos Emeralds and their colors would then become consistent after Sonic Adventure. This comic nods to this inconsistency by having Fang searching for the "rumored" eighth emerald from Fighters, with Sonic and Knuckles both saying Fang and the Hooligans are chasing a fairy tale, as there are only seven. In Issue #3, when Fang finds the Warp Topaz on Heavy King's Heavy Wing, he asks if there is an eighth chaos emerald alongside the Topaz to King. The latter bluntly shuts down the idea of an eighth emerald existing.
• Et Tu, Brute?: After Fang utterly fails in getting information from Knuckles about the eighth emerald they're searching for, Bean calls him out by saying they're wasting their time over this quest, threatening to leave him if they don't find a "real gig." Fang is surprised to see that Bark is taking Bean's side, where he then threatens to dump them both in the ocean if they want to leave.
• Evil vs. Evil: Fang and the Hooligans face off against the Hard Boiled Heavies in issues #3-4, ironically both looking to seize command of a power that has eluded Eggman and backfiring under his orders.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Fang begins playing on the security console of Newtrogic High Zone, while Bark and Bean notice the water flowing in the room. As Fang notes he's seeing only static, he realizes as he's explaining that the only thing he sees is a flooding room, which turns out to actually be their room that is also flooding.
• Foreshadowing: A cross-canon one. The rogue Robotnik battleship the Hooligans and heroes encounter makes a distinctive "VOIP" sound when it teleports, just as the Warp Topaz does in the mainline comics when it opens a portal.
• Forgot Flanders Could Do That: To one of Knuckles' earliest personality and traits in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, where he laid out a variety of traps to impede Sonic and Tails. Knuckles would lose this trait as he became (and was sometimes flanderized) into the aggressive "punch first, ask questions later" kind of Echidna. In the first issue of the miniseries, while Fang, Bark, and Bean are searching for him in Mushroom Hill Zone, he successfully manages to capture Bean and Bark in a variety of traps he laid out, even smugly smiling to himself as they get caught.
• Funny Background Event: Heavy Shinobi can be seen watching from the background as the Hooligans infiltrate their ship in Issue #3.
• Fun with Subtitles: After Bean gets knocked on his posterior, he crosses his arms and quips at Sonic's bragging by saying "Big talk for someone we knocked upside down," while he himself is upside down, and his text in the speech bubble is also flipped vertically.
• Hero Antagonist: On the virtue of the miniseries being from the perspective of Fang the Hunter, the heroic characters like Sonic and Knuckles are their opposition in their adventure to obtain fortunes.
• I Have Your Wife: Or I Have Your Motobug. The Hooligans hold Jimmy hostage and threatened to blow him up with a bomb planted on his head if Heavy Rider made another move on them, causing her to stand down out of fear.
• Idiosyncratic Cover Art: All four RI covers form one image when put together, where the Hooligans have to fend off Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Eggman while riding in the Marvelous Queen.
• Implied Death Threat: When Eggman decides to make use of the Hooligans, he claims that he's going to have them do him a favor for "saving their lives". When Fang demands Eggman hire them instead, Eggman nonchalantly presses a button, revealing the Combi Catcher cage they're being held in is above a tank of Masher Badniks.
• Interquel: According to Ian Flynn, this miniseries takes place after the events of Sonic the Fighters and before Eggman hires Fang in Sonic Superstars. The miniseries also takes place after "Seasons of Chaos", as Bean references its events.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: It's only after learning about the Warp Topaz, and being explicitly told by Heavy King that there is no eighth Chaos Emerald, that Fang reluctantly concedes that may actually be the case.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Fang stating that "getting [the Chaos Emeralds'] number and colors accurate has been a challenge across the ages" is a not-so-subtle jab at how inconsistent the colors and number of Chaos Emeralds had been in the early days of the franchise. The player could only collect six Emeralds◊ in Sonic the Hedgehog, seven in subsequent games (with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 establishing the seventh being violet), and Fighters suddenly bumping that number to eight◊, which are different colors than the set established post-Sonic Adventure.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the previous four miniseries, with Imposter Syndrome and Scrapnik Island bordering on psychological horror at times, Fang the Hunter is much sillier and less melancholy than the others, since it is set in the Classic era.
• Loophole Abuse: The Hard-Boiled Heavies use a lot of it to justify their going rogue (again). Robotnik ordered them to report back with any powerful gemstones they found, but the Warp Topaz requires an external charge to work and thus has no power of its own, meaning there was "no need to report it". They then cut off all communications so that they technically didn't hear Robotnik's orders to return.
• Metaphorically True: Zig-zagged. Technically Fang and the Hard Boiled Heavies did find an eighth golden/yellow gemstone that is like the Chaos Emeralds by the third issue, ignoring the fact that it's not actually the rumored Chaos Emerald that Fang was searching for and is instead the Warp Topaz. When Fang asks Heavy King if they found an eighth emerald along with the Warp Topaz, he bluntly shuts the idea down.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The rumored eighth emerald is described in a variety of ways from Fang's sources, which reference different iterations of the Chaos Emeralds.
    • One says it is either orange or gold, which are two colors used in Sonic the Fighters (Orange held by Tails and Yellow held by Bark).
    • Fang mentions that he was told the emerald was "rainbow-y". This rainbow color could be nod to the Hyper Sonic transformation from Sonic 3 & Knuckles (which makes Sonic's fur flash through the Super Emeralds' colors like a rainbow) or the unimplemented Rainbow Gem from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), which would have allowed Sonic, Shadow, and Silver to transform into their super states.invoked
    • Another one of Fang's sources says that there are emeralds inside this eighth emerald, which is similar to the Master Emerald's depiction in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022). In the film's universe, the Master Emerald was forged from the seven Chaos Emeralds by the echidnas to be the ultimate weapon, which were later freed when the Master Emerald was broken.
  • Knuckles uses traps in Mushroom Hill Zone to imprison Bean and Bark, much like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, where he inconvenienced Sonic and Tails with Angel Island's traps.
  • Issue #1 Cover A has all seven Chaos Emeralds, along with the "rumored" eight emerald, which is hexagonal-shaped. The Chaos Emeralds were hexagonal in games like Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic Spinball, Sonic Drift and Sonic Triple Trouble, before Sonic 3 would establish the gems being a brilliant diamond cut.
  • Issue #1 Cover B is modeled after the character select screen of Sonic the Fighters, complete with the same background and style of character portraits.
  • In Issue #2, Fang leads the Hooligans to their last lead of the eighth Chaos Emerald, Newtrogic High Zone/the Island of Miracles (or Carnival Island) from Knuckles Chaotix.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Bean and Fang threaten to blow up Jimmy the Motobug, placing a bomb atop his head in order to get Heavy Rider to stand down. When Heavy King reveals himself and regroups with the other Heavies, Jimmy somehow immediately comes to Heavy Rider and King's side. Bean is utterly confused at how they got there so fast, with him staring at the outline that Jimmy was previously at and where he'd set his finger bomb to.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Fang and Eggman are both right to think that the sudden disappearances and energy shifts in the Hard Boiled Heavies' Heavy Wing are the result of another, undiscovered jewel, but it's not because of a secret eight Chaos Emerald like they're inclined to believe, but because of the Warp Topaz.
• Running Gag: When Fang fails to get relevant information about the rumored eighth Chaos Emerald they're searching for, Bean will pester Fang by calling him various demeaning nicknames.
• Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: Played for Laughs. Fang first pulls Bean away from the deck before they start running in, saying that they got to do this mission "quick and quiet-like." In traditional fashion, they are anything but stealthy, as they start chucking bombs and blasting through the Heavy Wing, catching the attention of the Hard Boiled Heavies during their storming of the battleship.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Bean utters something akin to this reaction near the start and end of Issue #2. Both times, he realizes that what he was cheering for initially are undesirable outcomes solely based on the circumstances.
• Trap Master: Knuckles is easily able to lead the Hooligans in circles, splitting them up with fake tracks and improvised defensive measures from Mushroom Hill, which include switches and pitfalls that manage to capture Bean and Bark.
• Villain Episode: Instead of focusing on the blue hedgehog, this miniseries is focused on Fang the Hunter and his relationship with his two cohorts Bean and Bark, as they search for a rumored Chaos Emerald together.
• Wham Episode: Issue #3 winds up being the one to officially connect the Classic Sonic era comics to the mainline IDW continuity, via the revelation that the so-called "eighth Chaos Emerald" that Fang was searching for is actually the Warp Topaz.
• Wham Shot: In Issue #3, Fang finally locates the rumored eighth Chaos Emerald, seemingly powering the Heavy Wing... and what he finds instead is the Warp Topaz.
• Wingding Eyes: In the IDW online exclusive cover, Fang's eyes become two four-pointed stars while he rings his hands over the possible fortune he can earn from the eighth Chaos Emerald.
• Worse with Context: Bean the Dynamite reacts twice about their good fortune in Issue #2, realizing things actually took a turn for the worse. They are both the first and last bits of dialogue from Bean in the issue:
  • The first time, while Bean and Bark are tied up and hanging above a pit of sand, Fang tumbles down after fighting Knuckles. Bean is initially happy to see him, until Fang berates them for getting captured.
    Bean: [happily] Hooray! He found us!
    Fang: You useless mooks! Do you know how much I've gone through to get here?!
    Bean: [dejectedly] Hooray. He found us.
  • The second time, Bean, Bark, and Fang seem like they're about to drown, until a claw comes down and saves them both. Bean cheers for them being rescued... until it's revealed that it was Eggman who came to rescue them.
    Bean: Hooray! We've been rescued!
    Fang: Aw, no...
    Dr. Eggman: What are you three doing in my territory!?
    Fang: Hey doc, fancy meeting you here.
    Bean: Hooray. We've been "rescued."
• Wrestler in All of Us: Bark uses a Suplex Finisher on Sonic, specifically a modified German Suplex that works with the hedgehog's smaller frame. Sonic is able to tank the hit, and then use his spin-dash to throw the bear into the other Hooligans.

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