This is just a quickie of Nicole I threw together today. In case you can't tell, it's inspired by a story that happened in a certain issue. Can you guess which one?
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If you said "Sonic #1", you'd be wrong! It's actually based on the story "Circuit Me" from Sonic #146 - in my opinion the WORST story in the history of Sonic comics!
![:angered:]( "Angered")
(WARNING: Another rant! You can skip to the bottom if you wish.)A quick recap for those who haven't read it: Sally is visiting Rotor in his lab when she trips over some wires and switches bodies with Nicole. (Don't ask.) Nicole manages to take about ten steps out the door to marvel the world before the effect wears off and she switches back. And those five pages represent the full extent of the story!
So why do I feel this is the worst Sonic story? I'm sure many of you can name worse ones like some of the inane antics from the very early issues or Sonic's misadventures through space. But this story just
annoyed me to no end because it takes a brilliant concept and exhausts it before you can bat an eyelash. Granted, the body switching trope is nothing new in fiction. There are literally
hundreds of series where the idea has been used before, and I always enjoy them because they open new venues for humour, awkwardness, romance, existentialism, drama, and the best one: character development. Probably at the top of my list would be the
Star Trek: Voyager episode "Body and Soul" where the Doctor inhabits Seven of Nine's body and discovers the thrills of human sensation. It's a close example to how the artificial being Nicole inhabits Sally's body, and the highlights of the episode just threw into contrast everything Circuit Me lacked.
Simply put, five pages is
nowhere near enough to do the Sally/Nicole swap justice. That is a story that could have filled a four issue arc in itself! This is the first time that Nicole has experienced what it's like to live among Mobians, and it served as the embryo for her holographic form. There is just soooooo much potential for character development showing Nicole experiencing her first sensations and how she interacts with other characters in physical form. Even simple things like eating a meal or feeling the wind or just enjoying life with others can offer unseen opportunities for expression in a character who was previously just a faceless automaton.
How she relates to Sonic in Sally's body would be one of the key themes of the story, which was only
barely touched upon in Circuit Me in the super-condensed final page. Not forgetting the other half, there's also plenty of opportunity to show things from Sally's perspective, stuck in a Gameboy and coping with being an invalid of sorts. So many questions arise: Would Nicole try to explore the full extent of her sensations through Sonic? Would she be called upon in a fight? Would Sally force Nicole back into her handheld form? What kind of effect would that have on Nicole after having experienced so much? This concept is just
bursting with storytelling goodness that was squandered in a mere five pages. Now that Nicole has her own holographic body, it's unlikely this plot device will ever be visited again.
I truly despise Circuit Me because of what it wastes. I feel Nicole is underutilised in the comics, and I refer again to the Doctor from Star Trek, whose holographic form offered different approaches to exploration, technology and even combat, but always developed his love of arts to establish his humanity. Most of the time Nicole is treated like the city janitor or Harvey Who's toolkit, but Circuit Me just epitomizes how badly writers can mishandle her character. (Oh, and Al Bigley's art sucks too.)
If you have a Sonic story you absolutely cannot stand, write it in the comments!
