Bad dads

Penders had a love of introducing secret family members. Sally had a long lost brother, Elias, who everyone had conveniently forgotten about. Sonic had his parents, Jules and Bernie (the latter of whom is named for Penders’ wife), who had gone missing during Robotnik’s takeover. But two family members have always loomed large over Penders’ stories. Those characters are Sally’s father, King Maximillian Acorn, and Knuckles’ father, Locke.

To explain Locke and his whole deal, I have to talk about the Brotherhood of Guardians. You know how I said that Knuckles was the descendant of the previous Guardians of Angel Island? You probably assumed that meant the previous Guardians were gone, right? Nope! Knuckles has grandpas who are still alive like eight generations back. Possibly more — most of them are interchangeable, so it’s easy to lose count. They refuse to die for hundreds of years because of Chaos Emerald magic. On the rare occasions one of Knuckles’ racist grandpas managed to actually kick the bucket, I was ecstatic.

This secret cabal of racist grandpas has almost complete control over Angel Island. They’re essentially royalty. They still let Echidnaopolis act like a democracy, but the Brotherhood rules from the shadows, operating above the law however they see fit with no one to hold them accountable. This is never presented as a bad thing. So yeah, all of the previous Guardians were assholes. But Locke is a very special breed of monster.

One night, before Knuckles was born, the echidna God showed Locke a vision of his adult son battling a giant robot. Locke was so spooked by this that he decided he had to perform dangerous genetic experiments on himself to turn his offspring into a mutant superweapon. After his wife, Lara-Le, laid Knuckles’ egg (they’re echidnas, remember), Locke took the egg and blasted his unhatched son with dangerous Chaos Emerald radiation in the hopes that it would give him superpowers.

This whole backstory is lovingly summarized by fans as “had a bad dream, better microwave the baby.” This story is also why Knuckles has mutant knuckles.

Pictured: Locke, microwaving the baby.

It gets worse, though! See, Locke did all of this without telling his wife. She was completely left out of this decision making process. Then, when Knuckles was an infant, Locke decided that he was going to take him to live in the wilderness and train to be the next Guardian. Again, Knuckles’ mother Lara-Le had no say in this, and was visibly distraught over having her infant son taken from her.

Out in the wilderness, Locke trained and home schooled Knuckles, but he also told his son all sorts of lies. He lied about Echidnaopolis being destroyed, and told Knuckles that the two of them were the last of their kind. He let him believe that his mother was dead. And then, at the age of 10, Locke abandoned Knuckles. He jumped into a wall of fire and convinced Knuckles that he had killed himself, leaving the 10-year-old Knuckles as the sole protector of Angel Island.

In reality, the fire was merely a hologram. Locke watched over Knuckles through his network of spy cameras and continued to control his life from the shadows, but his son believed he was alone. At one point, Locke and the Brotherhood also tried to murder another kid who was picking on Knuckles. They literally threw a gorilla off of Angel Island in the middle of the night.

Fast forward to the early issues of Knuckles, and the titular hero has been monitored by his “dead” father nonstop for several years. Knuckles starts to meet other relatives he thought were dead, like his mom and a few of his racist grandpas (all of whom know that Locke is still alive), but Locke remains out of sight. Knuckles grows increasingly frustrated with his family’s secrecy and the pressure put on him, and it looks like his destiny might be to confront the Brotherhood and break from their horrible traditions.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, you’re probably reading all this and thinking “so Locke is a villain, right?”

Nope!

We hit Knuckles #25, and Penders decides it’s time for Knuckles and Locke to reunite because it’s a milestone issue. How does this happen? Knuckles spots Locke in the city completely on accident, and Locke doesn’t manage to get away fast enough. So he just… gives up, and lets his son catch him.

Does Knuckles confront his dad for all the lying and manipulating? Is he mad when he realizes his dad faked his own death? Does Locke apologize for anything? Nah!!! Knuckles is just happy to see him! Even after Locke explains that he used Knuckles as a guinea pig and forced him into the role of a savior from birth because he had a vision one time, Knuckles seems cool with it. He immediately forgives his dad for everything, starts pretending they have a normal father-son relationship, and never questions him again. Years in the future, Knuckles reflects on how good of a parent he thinks Locke was.

Locke never has to pay for what he did. The fact that he meant well is good enough. We’re supposed to like him. Ken sure did! Hell, we’re even supposed to think he’s cool! Towards the end of his run, Ken did baffling things like having Locke beat Shadow in a fight and having him get kissed by Rouge the Bat. Rouge was just using him to get the Master Emerald, but she still seemed to think he was the hottest stud on Angel Island. (Penders allegedly did not know that Rouge was only 18 when he wrote this arc.)

Locke never apologizes to Knuckles, or his ex-wife for that matter. Oh, and speaking of her, there’s also this absolutely dreadful part where Locke forces a kiss on Lara-Le, even though they’ve been divorced for years and she’s engaged to someone else. This even immediately follows a flashback to Locke being horrible to Lara-Le in the past. It is putrid.

Locke wasn’t alone in this, either! Under Penders, Sally’s father, King Maximilian Acorn (who we’ll discuss in a moment), was just as bad. And in his final arc before quitting, he almost turned Sonic’s Uncle Chuck into another father figure who fucked up catastrophically but “meant well.”

I don’t personally like to psychoanalyze Penders through his stories — at the end of the day, I don’t know the man, no matter how many comics of his I’ve read — but with the topic of shitty dads, it’s hard not to.

See, Penders has been very open about the fact that Locke was based in part on his own father. As Ken has explained, he had a rough relationship with his dad, and only really made amends with him at the end of his life. A flash forward story about Knuckles mourning his father’s death (the cause of which was pancreatic cancer, a side effect of Locke’s experimentation on himself) was dedicated to Ken’s own father. And you know, on some level, I sympathize with the guy. Growing up with a shitty dad is tough, and leaves you with a lot of baggage and complex feelings after he’s gone.

The problem is that the feelings characters like Knuckles and Sally have about their awful abusive dads aren’t complex. On the contrary, they’re incredibly black and white. They’re frustrated with their dads at first, but they always have “good reasons” (usually “God showed me the future”) for the horrible things they do. After the shitty dads explain their reasoning, their kids forgive them unconditionally. In their eyes, the behavior was justified by the fact that their dads “had their best interests in mind.” Father knows best, after all!

This recurring theme is honestly one of the most sickening parts of Ken’s body of work to me. The message it sends to kids is loud and clear: “you must love your parents unconditionally — they only hurt you because they love you.”