2330: Sonichu — Issue 0, Episodes 3 and 4, and Sub-Episode 1

 

Title: Sonichu
Author: Christine Weston Chandler, aka. Christopher Weston Chandler, aka. Christian Weston Chandler, aka. Chris-Chan
Media: Webcomic
Topic: Sonic The Hedgehog / Pokemon / IRL
Genre: “Parody”, apparently.
URL: Cover and Issue 0 Template Box
Critiqued by AdmiralSakai

Hello hello all you patrons, and welcome back to Sonichu!

Previously, we were treated to a rehashing of the boss battle against Perfect Chaos at the end of Sonic Adventure, although this time a Wild Boy Pikachu caught a conveyor belt into Station Square and got himself body-checked by Super Sonic. This somehow caused the Pikachu to take on Sonic’s body plan, superspeed, and capacities of speech, and also to sprout a magical rainbow which, apparently by sheer divine coincidence, struck a Girl Raichu and morphed her into a nigh-identical copy of Amy Rose. The latter, now christened RosechuZapbud by her horrifying turkey leg of a Trainer (named Kel), then moped a lot about being lonely and/or sexually frustrated, and the former, now christened Sonichu, moped a bunch about being hungry. Then Sonichu spotted Zapbud staring at a stream for no reason, got his sleazebag on by following her to Kel’s cabin and insisting that he be allowed in for dinner, and then… I guess they fell in love because the last few panels of the comic had them making out in front of fireworks.

We were also introduced to Chris-Chan’s in-comic persona, who shows up in the middle of the comic at random times in an ugly shirt to spout legal disclaimers, exposition, and other asinine nonsense. There was also some exposition on the city(??) of CWCville where everything is supposed to take place. Yes, it is indeed named after Chris, who also claims to be the Mayor despite also acknowledging that the place is fictional and located within a comic he is the author of. Not since Popo, Star-Spawn of Cthulhu put H.P. Lovecraft’s books inside the Cthulhu Mythos have I encountered a ‘fic this ontologically confusing.

There were also a bunch of other characters in the big infodump, but I want to address them when they actually appear in the comic continuity proper so I didn’t spend a lot of time on them.

Typo Cunter: 7

We resume Issue 0 already in progress.

This is supposed to be another Episode splash/title page; you’d be forgiven for thinking this directly followed the makeout scene in the previous episode because the “Episode 3” and “SOANKV VS. NAITCIRHC” (Hello again unreadable ‘electric’ font (Typo Cunter: 8)) headers are tiny and crammed way down at the bottom, and also because both of the previous Episodes had panels underneath their titles that actually were part of the story instead of splash pages.

And what a splash page this is! I think it’s supposed to be shot at an angle, but it looks like the ground is actually tilted because the water in the fountain and/or dog bowl is sloshing in the same direction. We’ve got Sonichu appearing to cough lightning bolts at Naitsrhc (Giovanni of Team Rocket’s goggled, afro-sporting son) as he sits on a Zapdos above an outdoor shopping center, with an incredibly tiny Zapbud clutched in one claw. Although the doors to what I can only assume are stores are also really short compared to Naitsrhc and the general perspective of the scene, so it’s possible he, the Zapdos, and Sonichu are just gigantic for some reason.

Good to know that stores in CWCville are required to forgo any form of branding or attention-getting typography in favor of plain, black, all-caps Arial. Not sure why the K B Toys store is instead spelled “Kay-Bee”, I figured it was an attempt to not use the actual trademark except that 1) the Gamestop next door is unaltered, and 2) literally everything about this comic shows that Chris has never given a fuck about copyright or trademarks before.

NAITSIRHC: …Naitsirhc, son of Giovanni!

Yes, we know, we read your bio last time!

 Team Rocket, brighter than light!  Surrender now, or prepare to fight!

SONICHU: Release Rosechu, now!

NAITSIRHC: Then, we will fight!  Zapdos!  Go!

SONICHU: I can’t believe this, even after what happened…

Wait, that last page actually was a story panel and not a splash page! It’s some sort of in medias res thing. You sure fooled me, Chris.

On an unrelated note, I had to go and look up what ‘Suncoast’ was, and there’s a bunch of different businesses with that name but none of the ones that would conceivably operate stores in a shopping center are in Virginia so I don’t think it’s anything.

SONICHU: …Earlier, when Kel had to run some errands at Cwcville Mall, and allowed Rosey to borrow her credit card…

Oh dear sweet bear in Heaven, what is up with that Dragonite? It looks like it’s got two partially-conjoined heads or something?

And Kel’s face has become that of Herobine, as her ponytail lifts entirely off her head.

At least Zapbud has the decency to appear completely, rigidly aghast at the spectacle.

Kel entrusted me to make sure Rosey didn’t spend over $100!

Har dee har har, ’cause get it, chicks and shopping amiright?

*Having been given ample warning, Sakai easily dodges the black-leather fedora ejected at great velocity from inside the ‘fic. It smashes against the far wall and disintegrates, leaving only a faint whiff of AXE to mark its passage.*

SONICHU: At first, it was easy, due to her willpower, but then with all the sales and coupons…

ZAPBUD: Hmm… $20, for this lovely bracelet…wait!  75% off?  All right!

SONICHU: …well, I’m not Superman!

What store sells $20 bracelets for 75% off, anyway? What are they made of, recycled disposable cups?

This is another case where multiple different versions of Sonichu exist for no clear reason- on Annotated Sonichu, the stores behind Sonichu and Zapbud are labeled “ABERCROMBIE & FITCH” and “PAC-SUN”, but here they are just…. blank. This is probably a result of Chris going back through his comics and removing trademarked materials from it, but if so he did a pretty shitty job both because the storefronts are now conspicuous absences of brand names and because he also forgot to remove the ‘GAMESTOP’ one (and, you know, the Zapdos, and Team Rocket, and Sonichu himself).

Thankfully, Kel gave me cash for lunch.

Which is odd because they already had her credit card so why not just use that?

But how was I to know that cheeseburgers had pickles?!

What did he assume was in a cheeseburger?! Hell, most places that serve cheeseburgers with pickles include the pickles on their advertising materials.

ZAPBUD: Ahh…that salad was great!  What’s wrong, sweet bolt?

SONICHU: I…I… h…hate p…p…pickles!

Sadly, this is not a one-off thing. Chris had, like, a serious phobia of pickles until relatively recently.

…The bun is in your mind…

Wow, it feels kind of weird to be SBAHJifying something that’s already intentionally shitty.

It also disturbs me that the whole clumsy-white-background-with-comic-sans thing SBAHJ does is actually better than Sonichu because at least there some things are lowercase and the dialogue is often colored.

SONICHU: And then….

His Zapdos snatched my love!

Odd that although this whole recap thing belabors a lot of obvious and just plain irrelevant points it never once mentions who Naitsirhc is, how he got here, or what he wants. It’s just assumed that since Naitsirhc was mentioned in the infodump last episode no other introduction is necessary, despite the fact that he and Sonichu have actually never met before.

I guess the “*shatter*” sound effect is supposed to indicate that this was in fact an indoor mall the whole time and the entire top half of it was made out of glass. I like how Chris specifically drew an arrow connecting it to the glass the Zapdos was flying through, as if there was a real danger of our otherwise getting confused and assuming Zapbud was shattering in a completely different panel or something.

 Which brings us up to date.  Please excuse me while I save my girlfriend♥̌̌

Was ‘date’ supposed to be a pun? I really hope that wasn’t supposed to be a pun.

Ooooh, another action sequence! I particularly like the part where Sonichu abjures the Zapdos’s Drill Peck with a giant orange catcher’s mitt, the part where Naitsirhc vanishes off of its back for no reason, and the part where “*CONFUSED ZAPDOS!*” is itself a Pokemon move!

…

Double Team increases a Pokemon’s evasiveness stat, it doesn’t actually cause confusion.

I have no idea what is written on that solitary storefront; it sort of looks like “B Moss”, which is indeed a store so I’m going to just go with that. Which means Chris failed to scrub the trademarks from his comic AGAIN.

Are Sonichu, Zapbud, and Naitsirhc the only people in this mall, or did everyone flee when the Zapdos showed up?

And is it just me, or are the panels here getting more and more spaced-out?

And the “FINAL BLOW COUNTDOWN” involves… Sonichu jumping up to the now morbidly-obese Zapdos, punching Zapbud out of its stubby little claw, shoving his spine weirdly forward in order to carry her Frankenstein-style, and then… running away while his Double Team duplicates emanate the number ‘2’?

I am disappoint.

Also Zapbud is fucking worthless and could literally have been replaced with Sonichu’s cheeseburger here without changing a single element of the story. She looks more relieved than anything when the Zapdos releases her and she plummets to her presumable death.

And then…. all of the Double Team clones electrocute the Zapdos even though they’re just illusions?

Did Sonichu suddenly run back to join in, or was the Sonichu that punched Fatdos and rescued Zapbud itself a clone?

That Zapdos does look about like I feel right now, though, so there is that.

Wait, Naitsirhc had a Raikou with him as well the whole time? Why didn’t he use it?!

I also think that his being thoughtful enough to retrieve his Zapdos before the Clonichus’ lightning can finish it off is a decidedly un-villainous move. In that top panel he actually looks legitimately concerned for the thing before directing his somewhat cross-eyed fury on Sonichu and absconding the fuck out of Blanksville (the stores here were originally named CVS Pharmacy, Hallmark, and American Eagle, in case you were wondering).

And then Sonichu’s head splits in half again as he is cheered on by a collection of noisy bowling pins and Zapbud…. shits herself? Her hands are pressed up against her ass and she has a really appalled expression, so I’m just gonna assume that’s what’s happening.

Another page, another blanked-out storefront. This one read “Kay-Bee”, which if you recall correctly was also at the beginning of the comic and thus signifies not only that Chris failed again to wipe out all of the brand names but also that this is how he thinks the official name of the store is spelled.

ZAPBUD: Thank you, Sonichu!  You’re my hero, sweet bolt!

KEL: I was astounded with how you battled, Sonichu!  You rock!

CRUMBLING SECTION OF THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA: Thank you, Sonichu!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: As mayor of Cwcville, I congraduate you on your victory, and I thank you for saving the day!  Good job, Sonichu!

SONICHU: Thank you!

Typo Cunter: 9

As Mayor of Cwcville, why did you not invest in any kind of police force or security to keep some random dude on a Zapdos from going all Seal Team Six on a crowded shopping mall? Naitsirhc was pretty focused on capturing the ‘Chus and only the ‘Chus (I would assume since he didn’t just fly away once he got ahold of Zapbud he was only using her for bait and his real objective was Sonichu… which adds yet another layer to Zapbud’s general worthlessness), but if he’d wanted to I have no problem believing that a Legendary Pokemon like that could’ve become a very effective weapon of mass murder in such a populated environment.

Also, it seems like a small detail to harp on, but Sonichu’s free hand is behind his tail in that big panel and it looks damned odd.

Epilogue…

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Well, Sonichu, I feel this comic book is my best work yet!

That’s because it’s your only work yet.

And it’s still not very good.

SONICHU: I think so too, Father!

Sonichu calls Chris “father” because Chris wrote the comic, even though the two of them just met and on the previous page Chris had to introduce himself. I honestly cannot decide if that’s creepy in a confusing sort of way, or confusing in a creepy sort of way. Do the other inhabitants of Cwcville know they’re fictional? Do they know Chris was the one who created them? Do they blame him for creating Naitsirhc? Do they all call him ‘Father’? Or does Chris just think it’s appropriate to call anyone with the title of Mayor ‘Father’???

And why can’t the comic be answering those questions instead of wasting five pages on Sonichu and Zapbud making out?

But, wow, all this creativity, and you still are girlfriend-free?!

Joke A: Gosh, I wonder why!

Joke B: Yeah, ‘creativity’ is certainly one way to put it.

Joke C: This entire comic is Jokes C through about L or M because the simple fact that it exists is far more absurd and mind-boggling than anything I could ever say about it.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: It bothers me too, but I never give up!  I’ll find a boyfriend-free girl, around my age yet!

Well, I gotta go to Fashion Square Mall to try again!

SONICHU: Good luck, Pop!

…

Once again, we will get into the hilarious, horrifying explanation of what exactly these seemingly incomprehensible sentences mean when Chris himself explains them. You might be thinking that Chris attempts to pick up girls/women who hang around his local mall, which is already depressing enough, but while that does technically explain what he does it is about as informative of the sheer awfulness of it as it would be to call the Hindenburg disaster “a fire”.

And yes, Chris did indeed drive a blue sedan with a Sonichu license plate IRL.

There he goes… with a grin on his face.  In the end, he’ll say, “One girlfriend, please.”

Because he’ll probably fail again… I’m proud to have a brave father!

You’re… proud that he fails?

Finished comic book, March 15, 2005

Only it’s not finished because there’s a bunch of other random garbage afterward.

Classic Sonichu strips

*Sonichu comic strips drawn before the comic book!*

Technically all of the Sonichu strips up to this point were drawn before the comic book because the comic book was compiled from them, but whatever.

Sonichu (25 years later) by. Christian W. Chandler

Drawn June 13, 2004

INTRODUCING

METONIC & VAMPROSA.

– SONICHU + METAL COAT + TRADE = METONIC

– ROSECHU + HIGHEST FRIENDSHIP + LEVEL-UP IN MIDNIGHT HOUR = VAMPROSA

 

 

 

 

 

I was actually going to remark on Chris having predicted the existance of time-based evolutions in Pokemon, but then I remembered that those had actually been introduced in Generation II so it’s just the regular kind of unoriginal.

Sonichu evolving into a cyborg regular old Sonichu wearing armor which nullifies his Sonic spin dash abilities so why even bother kind of makes sense in that it’s a generically-badass thing for him to ascend to, but why is dear, sweet, sugary, useless Zapbud transformed into a vampire of all things??

VAMPROSA: Wow, honey, you are quite the hard worker!  Hmmm…

METONIC: Thanks, sweetheart!

I could cut 100 logs before breakfast!

That sounds like some kind of horrible euphemism, but I have no idea for what.

Also, ‘Vamprosa’ sounds like an ineffective allegy medication.

METONIC: But I ate lunch a couple of hours ago!

And then… that’s it. The strip just ends.

Annotated Sonichu tells me that the joke here was ripped off from a show called Excel Saga; I have never seen it and now that I know Chris likes it I am disinclined to seek it out, but without context the line is robbed of whatever humor value it might have once had, so it’s just a meaningless conversation that accomplishes nothing. And there’s no reason why Sonichu would need to be chopping logs or tree stumps or whatever to begin with. And there’s no reason why this needs to be set 25 years in the future other than to fast-forward to the Vamprosa and Metonic evolutions, except the story doesn’t in any way need them to be in their Vamprosa and Metonic evolutions to happen and the evolutions themselves are useless, so the whole thing is just a fractal of abject pointlessness on every single level.

Sonichu by. Christian W. Chandler

Drawn: January 3, 2004

SONICHU: Hey, Rosie, what’s new?

ZAPBUD: Well, Sonichu, I’ve been living my life and being beautiful!

But, seriously, I wish I didn’t have to work so hard; I’m tired of it, but being with you, a great friend, makes me feel much better!

SONICHU: Me too, Rosechu!

ZAPBUD: Anyway, I’m…

…And that’s how it has been!

What order is this dialogue supposed to go in? There’s not any way you can organize the panels to make it make sense.

Although I do believe this is the only time Zapbud ever mentions something that could be construed as holding gainful employment. Weird.

Her arms are completely doubled up behind her back in that first panel. That’s not a particularly difficult pose to make, but it’s not comfortable and I can’t think of there ever being a reason for it.

SONICHU: I understand your feelings, Rosey!  Here, happy Valentine’s Day!

ZAPBUD: Aw, you’re so sweet!

SONICHU: What?

ZAPBUD: Black Sonichu, quit following us around!

Was he even following you around, though? He was just angrily humping a tombstone in an otherwise empty green field next to a vertical wall of water when you happened to walk by and do that thing Chris likes where another head grows out of the side of your existing one.

Also,

At least the panels have reasonably straight borders this time, even if the whole thing is tilted at some ungodly angle.

And… that’s it. Yet another strip that is, in fact,

Sonichu by. Christian W. Chandler.

Drawn: March 18, 2004

Christian + Sonichu vs. the Mastermind!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Since you will not leave me alone on my love quest…

Love. Quest.

LOVE.

QUEST.

We will cover this in more detail later on; there’s only so much abject nonsense I can field in one sitting.

SONICHU: …We have no choice but to fight you…

Mary Lee Walsh!

MARY LEE WALSH: Hee!  Hee!

That weird thing behind her is supposed to be a window with lightning in it, in case you weren’t sure.

It’s interesting to note that in these older strips, Chris draws every human’s eyes as the ‘Yellow Peril / Grey Alien’ ovals he will later reserve for Mary Lee Walsh and Punchy Sonichu (is this supposed to imply that Walsh is of Asian descent? Weird.). Only later, presumably once he started watching anime, did Chris begin drawing most humans’ eyes as squares.

SONICHU & CHRISTIAN: (in unison) One shot is all we get!

Umm…. why? Walsh doesn’t seem to actually be doing anything that could be construed as harmful here, just laughing at the ridiculous image the duo presents. Maybe that colored aura around her is intended to represent some kind of building magic?

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Curse-ye… ha-me…

FAT SONICHU: Hhmmm…

MARY LEE WALSH: Hee!  Hee!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: …Ha!!!

Or maybe the laughter is itself harmful in some way?

This is supposed to be an energy blast, by the way, which is inferrable from the bastardized rendition of Dragonball Z’s “Kamehameha” spell. Visually, it looks like Chris is throwing some kind of discus.

SONICHU: Thunder!!!

♫Na nananaaah nanah naaa nah!♫

MARY LEE WALSH: Hee!  Hee…aaaahh!!!

MARY LEE WALSH: Aaaaahhh…!!!

SONICHU AND CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Yes!!!

CAPTION: The end?

We never actually see what becomes of Mary Lee Walsh here, so it is entirely possible that the kamehameha outright disintegrated her.

Sonichu by. Christian W. Chandler

Drawn May 8, 2004

CHRIS-CHAN SONICHU: Sonichu, Naitsirhc has my mom!  We have to save her!

SONICHU: I’m with you, Chris-chan; he won’t get away with this!

CHRIS-CHAN SONICHU: I just hope that she’s all right…

NAITSIRHC: Ha, ha, ha!  When those hedgehogs learn of your capture, they will run into my trap!

And then some kind of monster with glowing yellow eyes glares out of a darkened room, I guess.

Also, Chris, great work in spoiling the oh-so-mind-boggling revelation that yourself and Chris-Chan Sonichu are one and the same person. I suppose maybe it’s supposed to be like Batman where the reader is in on his secret identity from the very start, but that might be giving Chris way too much credit.

Oh, I guess the cave with the monster in it was actually a pair of wooden double doors with golden handles. That’s just the cost of drawing a comic with ballpoint pens and Crayola markers.

Weird that Chris and Sonichu break through the center of the doors, but both of their handles stay intact. Maybe they’re the kind that have a locking mechanism that goes all the way into the top and bottom of the frame.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Naitsirhc, release my mom, or we will give you the shock of your life!

Oh, hey, it’s another weirdly-deformed speech bubble!

SONICHU: Yeah!

NAITSIRHC: Take one step closer, and I’ll press this button, which will make your mother’s cell explode!  You don’t want that, do you?

Ha! Ha!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: A step, huh?… How about a spark?!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Sonichu!

SONICHU: Got it!…

NAITSIRHC: Oh, no!

I am a little unclear on what exactly is happening here, specifically what Chris-Chan Sonichu is actually shooting at. It’s not Naitsirhc since he seems fine in the next panel, and it’s not an attempt to disable the bombs on the cage because those go off anyway (I would assume that Sonichu was just fast enough to outrun the explosion and that’s why Mom Chandler is not a diffuse vapor, so it doesn’t really matter if the bombs go off at all). Did Chris deliberately detonate them with that spark? Why?

If Naitsirhc was actually a competent villain he’d take this clear telegraphing of an attack as his cue to set off the bombs, but at this point I am less questioning Nait’s competence than I am his status as a villain at all.

Chris, for whatever reason, really seems to like that Frankenstein-style carrying pose, but is completely unable to draw it correctly. Every time he does, the woman in Sonichu’s arms (and I think it always is a woman, I can’t recall Sonichu ever carrying a male character in the entire run of the comic) appears too small.

Change back!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Are you all right, Mom?

MOM: I am now, thanks to you and your son!

SONICHU: Happy Mother’s Day!

Yeaaaah the whole ‘Sonichu is Chris’s son’ thing is still creepy.

Also, it’s worth noting that not a single extant photograph of Barbara Weston Chandler shows her with long, dark hair (is is in fact reddish-brown and always cut short) or that hideous striped shirt. Chris, writing a Mother’s Day special for his comic, could not be bothered to draw anything remotely resembling his mother.

Oh, uhhh….. hi again, random scribbly storefronts. Literally half of Sonichu seems to take place at a mall for some reason increadibly stupid and vaguely terrifying reasons.

Sonichu by. Christian W. Chandler.

Drawn December 5, 2004

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Mary Lee Walsh…?  This was a trap!

The trap being… waiting for Chris to go to the mall? A trap implies bait, this is at best an ambush.

MARY LEE WALSH: That’s right, Chris-chan, there’s no escape from my magic, and my Jerkop squad!  Want a girlfriend?  Tough lightning!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Bring it on!

Ow!

Oohhh… dirty…rats…

Well that was quick. Just one glancing blow with a sap (or possibly a badly-drawn caveman club?) is enough to bring the mighty Chris-Chan Sonichu down?

ZAPBUD, BEING USELESS AS ALWAYS: Oh, no!

I am not entirely sure what the “Z-95.1” in the red circle behind Zapbud signifies, or for that matter where it is physically placed in the scene. Is it a speech bubble? Part of a storefront? Z-95.1 is a radio station in Charlottesville, but what’s it doing written on the bottom of a door (?) in a shopping mall?

It’s worth noting that while the previous comic (drawn in May of ’04) has the Grey Alien eyes, this one was drawn in December and already has the pseudo-anime square eyes. Curious.

SARAMAH ROSECHU: Chris!

I’ve got to save him from those fiends!

MARY LEE WALSH: Oh… shoot!

And then shooting an arrow through Mary Lee Walsh’s rocket-propelled pitchfork… causes all the Jerkops to be overcome with nausea??? I’m lost again.

Even assuming that Walsh was somehow controlling or summoning the Jerkops with her magic (since, despite claiming that Chris was no match for it, she does nothing else with said magic here), why would hitting her pitchfork have any effect?

The ‘I’ in “J. C. PENNIES” is oddly  malformed; it looks like Chris was originally spelling it “J. C. PENNYES”, which isn’t even intuitive.

Also, while the store names here are for the most part once again scrubbed in the CWCKi version of these pages, Chris apparently decided that “VICTORIA’s” wasn’t recognizable enough on its own to merit the purge… despite this apparently being a kids’ comic.

After changing backs…

Which, again, sounds like some kind of Prohibition-era euphemism for financial crime.

Also

SARAMAH ROSECHU: Chris, are you ok?!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Oh… Sarah? You saved me!  Thank you!

SARAMAH ROSECHU: Well, tyranny and opression is against your quest, huh?

The two are posed really weirdly in this panel; it almost looks like Saramah is humping Chris’s butt.

Also,

 

 

 

 Let’s rest for a while, then I will help you!

Want a girlfriend?  You got it, best friend!!

End

So is… this supposed to indicate that Sarah is going to pity-fuck him?

Oh wow and then it’s over.

These ‘classic’ strips are, I think, the worst episode of Sonichu we’ve seen so far; possibly the worst in terms of quality out of the entire comic run. They’re smaller and harder to read than the main ones, the art is somehow even more amateurish, it’s even harder to figure out what the fuck is going on because they’re so short and jumbled in terms of continuity. More to the point, they include concepts and elements that will only be introduced later in the comic’s continuity, including THE VERY NEXT EPISODE IN THIS SAME ISSUE, simultaneously spoiling the future issues and making absolutely zero fucking sense in the current one since we have no idea who anyone is or what’s going on. If anything they should have been moved to the very back of the comic after the spoiled next episode, although honestly since all of them are either completely plotless or early versions of things we will later see in more fleshed-out form, the comic would be infinitely better off without them (even if it was still infinitely terrible).

Drawn March 24, 2005

Sub-Episode 1: Christian Chandler in JERKOP-TASTROPIE

Typo Cunter: 10

I don’t know if this counts as a typo in the literal sense, as I very strongly suspect this is actually how Chris thought “-tastrophe” was spelled and pronounced. It’s still terrible, though, especially since Chris didn’t even bother to try to center his title or fit it on one line- it’s the little touches of complete and utter laziness like this that give this comic the special Chris-Chan touch.

And now we’re in a Sub-episode which has a different numbering system from the regular episodes and the issues. Grand. And the title has switched from “Sonichu in [whatever]” to just straight-up “Christian Chandler in [whatever]”. This is an extremely ominous sign.

 *sigh* Well, it’s been over 1-year and 7-months, and…

…I still have not attracted a boyfriend-free girl!

This love quest makes me suffer some frustration…

…And the other things that add to that are my lonliness, so many failures, and all those men, other than myself, because they have taken all the pretty girls, leaving me with none to choose from!… *sigh*

So, I guess this is it, then.  Arguably the most (in)famous plot thread in Sonichu, possibly better-known than the comic’s later crusade against gay internet trolls (yes, really; we will get to this in due time): the “Love Quest” and Chris-Chan’s battle with the “Jerkops” and “Manajerks”.

As we go on, just keep in mind that I am not making any of this up and this comic is in fact based on real-life events that Chris actually experienced.

Now, Comic-Chris is being kind of vague on what exactly is going on here other than that he’s single and horny and “men, other than [him]self” have “taken” all the pretty girls, leaving him with none to “choose from”. It’s possible this is obfuscatory of his true intentions by design, although I think that gives Chris far too much credit for subtlety. Even then, Chris comes across as talking about the female half of Charlottesville the way I talk about the supermarket when they run out of Barbecue Pringles™.

One might infer from the fact that Chris is expecting to score a walking fleshlight lifelong commitment in a shopping mall while wearing headphones and a red-and-white-striped polo shirt and carrying a Nintendo DS that his skills of seduction leave something to be desired, but that doesn’t even begin to cover it.

This is Chris’s collection of ‘attraction paraphernalia’, which he would deploy around the Fashion Square mall in lieu of actually attempting to make conversation. Of particular note are the various nigh-illegible signs Chris would hold like some horrible new variety of panhandler; a construction paper heart taped to a string which he would throw at women and then drag back towards himself like one might bait a particularly dumb wild animal into a snare; and this curious business-card-like object on the upper left which describes Chris as

AS SAD, LONELY AND SINGLE AS A 22oz BOTTLE OF PEPSI!

I never really thought of Pepsi bottles, in any denomination, as particularly sad, lonely, or single, but what do I know?

Oh yeah, and also:

Typo Cunter: 11

So how did the other patrons of Fashion Square Mall react to this behavior?

Welllllll……….

And those evil Jerkops won’t leave me alone either!  I’m just a lonely, frustrated virgin, looking for true love! *sigh*

JERKOP: Hey!  I’m calling you out!

Yeah, they called in mall security to deal with Chris.

Technically this large, brown-shirted fellow with an ambiguously-shaped badge is a Jerkhief (and yes, we will learn what the distinction is in far more detail than we ever wanted to), but Chris just calls all of his enemies ‘Jerkops’ indiscriminately here and I see no reason to question him.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER, EMITTING A SIDEWAYS QUESTION MARK: Huh?

JERKOP: I’m so sick of your complaints and tears!  On and on about how lonely you are, and how you need a girlfriend!  You’re nothing but a lowly liar, you solicitor!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Shock!

I love how not only does Chris draw an anime sweatdrop on his effective if amateurish depiction of a shocked expression, he also just straight-up labels it.

Also all of the panels are connected by arrows for some reason even though to be perfectly honest it’s not to hard to infer a left-to-right ordering.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: How dare you, you jerk?!  I am only looking for true love and trust!

By throwing things at people and waving a sign around.

We don’t actually know exactly what went down at the IRL Fashion Square Mall to inspire this section of the comic, but even in Chris’s distorted version of events the Jerkops ask him to leave and he refuses before they resort to force.

I’d just like to note that while Chris’s attraction paraphernalia weren’t in some way drugged or contaminated and Chris himself was unarmed, the security personnel at the mall and the patrons who called them had zero way of knowing that. This was, after all, only a few years after the anthrax-letters scare, and Chris was leaving laminated and taped paper doodads around the mall.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: So, just leave me alone, you villanous Jerkop!

JERKOP: No dice!  My fellow Jerkops will fight you, and force you to leave!

I don’t want to fight, but if necessary I will defend myself!

JERKOP: Cuff him!

I would assume it’s Chris saying that “I will defend myself” line, but it actually looks more like the Jerkop is saying it.

This whole section of dialogue is both uncomfortably macho and weirdly expositional, which is strange because Chris never bothers to explain any other fucking thing in his comic.

I’ve just noticed that while the shots with Chris either have the background omitted entirely or show a crudely-drawn collection of storefronts, the Jerkop is always drawn against a dark grey background. This makes it seem like they aren’t even in the same part of the building while they are talking.

I think that after Chris dodges the handcuffs that were thrown at him (are these some kind of magical handcuffs that neutralize Chris’s superhuman abilities or seek out targets or something? Seems odd that security guards in a world inhabited by entities like Perfect Chaos and Sonichu would throw mundane handcuffs), he is supposed to have incapacitated the white-shirted Jerkop by kicking him in the groin; however Chris’s continued misuse of the ‘wavy lines’ visual effect and complete inability to portray motion makes it look like the Jerkop was simply overcome with nausea by the smell of Chris’s sneaker.

And then Chris just straight-up punches a Jerkop in the face. Remember, kids- if the police ever try to mildly inconvenience your entitled ass as you go about soliciting sex in a public mall, you are perfectly within your rights to respond with violence! Because this is America, goddangit!

And then that doodad on Chris’s chest is finally revealed to be a Sonichu-head medallion. Yes, Chris wears such a thing IRL, yes, it is no doubt a big hit with the ladies, but I’m more concerned with how Sonichu himself might react to the thing. Wearing a model of your son’s/best friend’s head on a chain around your neck seems as though it would make things pretty awkward.

*Ye Olde Shock’de Gasp*

You mean…

Chris-Chan Sonichu was Christian Weston Chandler THE WHOLE TIME?!?!?!

I’m not sure why there are two shots of Chris’s head transforming here, nor why the bottom one has no hair. If anything, Chris just looks constipated.

And I was going to cook up another “THIS IS WHAT THE REFRANCE” image for Chris-Chan LOLRANDOMLY shouting “Everybody Dance Now!’, but it seems the Chan-Man already beat me to it and I’m not at all sure how I feel about that.

Odd that Chris seems to be making a joke about lengthy transformation sequences in the middle of the Jerkop’s relatively short one when his own was far longer; it’s possible he just was for some reason unwilling or unable to draw the Jerkop getting into his armor and put the Daliesque melting pocket watch there to show that it was being skipped.

I am likewise uncertain exactly what Chris is doing with the Jerkop’s “*ROCKET PUNCH*” in the middle of the page; there’s some sort of a fireball at the very bottom of the third panel on the right so I think he just dodged it and let it explode against the wall (nobody in this comic seems to give a fuck about collateral damage) but the panel before that make it look like he is reaching out to swat or punch it back. He also failed to color in his nose in that panel and it’s weirdly obvious.

And I’d like to think that the Jerkop asked whatever engineer designed his “metal armor” (which in fact appears to be powered armor) what the purpose of putting a dedicated large-caliber missile launcher on his back was, and that engineer is now telling him “That seems like a silly question now, don’t it?”

I think the purpose of the “*DOUBLE TEAM*” was to confuse the missile, since it never appears again in the comic and some sort of grey and red thing is barely visible under Chris’s armpit in the panel where Double Team is used. After that, Chris deflects the Jerkop’s *LASER BEAM* with *MIRROR COAT* to destroy his powered armor and also uses *THUNDERBOLT* to… no real effect at all that I can see.

I want to make some kind of joke about the Jerkop’s armor design here, but it’s so blobby and undefined I am left with nowhere to even begin.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Give up now, leave me alone, and we can end  this battle!

JERKOP: No way!  I’m not done with you yet!

This guy’s willingness to take one last shot at the crazed metahuman with a small (if phallic) handheld firearm is honestly kind of commendable.

Unfortunately it’s all for naught as Chris blocks the bullet with *BARRIER*. That’s an odd choice of a move since Barrier only raises a Pokemon’s Defense two stages (meaning Chris should still have been hit and taken some damage) while a different move, Protect, blocks all damage for a single turn. This also means Chris has now used five different Pokemon moves in one battle, when most Pokemon can only know four at a time. I suppose one could argue that as a transformed human-hedgehog-whatever Chris-Chan is not bound by the same restrictions, but such is the long and slippery road towards Mary Suedom.

I’m not really sure why Chris felt compelled to draw the bullet next to his foot in that one panel; we would’ve been able to figure out just fine that he’d blocked it.

Needless to say, Chris’s actual fight with the forces of the law in Fashion Square Mall ended in the Jerkops’ favor long before the cops needed to even consider using their sidearms.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: “Fuzzy-wuzzys get you hugs; prickly-wicklies get you slugs!”

For those of you fortunate enough to never have been subjected to the early-childhood development programs of the 80s and 90s, this is a reference to something called A Warm Fuzzy Tale which was intended to teach kids about the Golden Rule and involved both “Warm Fuzzies” and “Prickly-Wicklies”. I don’t know, maybe they still teach kids with the thing, but if you’re under the age of, oh, I don’t know, 13, what the hell are you doing on the Library?

Anyway, just keep in mind that Chris was 22 when he wrote this.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: You gave me a slug, so you get my secret ultimate attack!

*Scribbles flowcharts* So if I give you a hug, do I get a prickly-wickly? What if I give you a secret ultimate attack myself?

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Curse-ye…ha-me…

Oh my God, Chris threw urine at him!

This big reveal of the Curse-Ye-Ha-Me-Ha is somewhat undercut by the fact that we just saw it used in the Classic Strips.

Once again it’s the little touches that make Sonichu for me, like how the brand names on the mall storefronts keep changing. When the Jerkop was was first incapacitated he was in front of a Sam Goody’s, when he fired at Chris it was a Suncoast, and now it’s a Gamestop. Also, the storefronts have turned from blue to yellow-orange- did the Jerkop’s lasers set them on fire?

JERKOP: Ha!  I didn’t feel a thing!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: Oh, you will!

Once again, I would like to remind everyone that Chris is supposed to be the protagonist of this comic.

*Getting up…*

Which of course we get a label for instead of just seeing it done.

JERKOP: Woah!

JERKOP, NOW SOMEWHAT RESEMBLING A MR. FRIENDLY OR POSSIBLY LONGCAT: Aw man!  My glasses!

OTHER JERKOP: Uh…chief?  Your wife just called…she has divorced and left you, she took all your things, and she took your children too!  Also, she loathes you for your filthy smoking habit!

At least I’d assume that’s another Jerkop because he has the main Jerkop’s wife’s phone number and Chris is currently transformed; it’s a little hard to say because Chris draws half of all the characters in his comic with closely-cut brown hair and it is impossible to make out any other consistant facial features.

JERKOP: Nooooooo…!!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: I have cursed you with bad luck and extreme misfortune!

Which makes the part where his wife left him a bit curious, since that was a conscious decision on her part (apparently influenced by the Jerkop’s unseen smoking habit) and not something that was up to chance. Additionally, her plans to do so would have had to have been set in motion before Chris ever used the Curse-Ye-Ha-Me-Ha.

*S-chu ball* – This is a special Poke ball used for capturing electric or hedgehog-type Pokemon.

Oh…….. kay?

No S-Chu ball is ever deployed in this comic, nor are any electric or hedgehog Pokemon involved in this fracas (not sure if Chris counts), so…. there’s really no point for this? I wonder if this was another place where Chris decided to add random drawings to fill up a section of the page for which he had no panels,.

CWC: This would not have happened if you had not challenged me and threatened me! As well as not leaving me alone with my ever-so-frustrating love quest, calling me a lying solicitor, picked on my methods of attracting a boyfriend-free, 18-(my current age)-year old girl, whom I can love and trust, and most importantly, handcuffing me on 9/11/2004 for no good reason!  I hope that you have learned to…

Never mess with a truly frustrated virgin when he is on a quest for a girlfriend to share true love and trust with!

JERKOP: My soul hurts!

Really that’s about the only sensible reaction to this rant.

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: So did mine!

CHRISTIAN WESTON CHANDLER: And my heart was previously shattered too!

 

End

So that was Sonichu 0.

Calling it a mess would be an insult to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, so I will just settle for saying that it had absolutely no goddamn coherency and made next to no sense.

Oh, wait, that’s an insult to Time Cube.

Ok, how about this? Sonichu 0 is incredibly poorly-drawn, poorly-organized and poorly-written in ways that even the most inexperienced comic artist would immediately recognize. The art literally looks like a five-year-old made it, without the context of the CWCki it would make absolutely zero sense (seriously, who are these uniformed guys and why do they keep talking about solicitation in a mall?), and perhaps most damningly it’s about three times as long as it needs to be since the entire “Lovehogs” arc is saccharine filler, the ‘classic’ strips are either utterly pointless or rehashes of stuff we will literally see again in later issues, and the Sub-Episode has nothing at all to do with any of the rest of it. It literally exceeds Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff in badness, and while it might not be the webcomic I hate the absolute most in the world I would easily consider it the worst.

As always, thanks to Salt Water Taffy’s Annotated Sonichu and the CWCki for transcriptions and reference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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