#Archie Sonic Ongoing

[sonicpanels]

Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Ongoing) #4: "Tails' Little Tale"

Writer(/possible uncredited layouts): Michael Gallagher Pencils: Dave Manak Inks: Henry Scarpelli Letters: Bill Yoshida Colors: Barry Grossman

Editor: Victor Gorelick

[flightyalrighty]

i hope ur enjoying how the entire crowd of people are cheering on ivan for committing a crime

yes yes crime bad but Consider

Drago Wolf Shouldn't Have Been An Ass

I can only hope I'm living up to Mr. Ian Flynn's legacy of having Drago eat shit every time he shows up in any issue of Archie Sonic ever after Flynn took over

[sonknuxadow]

is it like a law of the universe that every sonic comic series has to have a pair of besties who are actually semi canonically gay . i just realized that this has happened 3 times once for each comic

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Archie Sontails Moments: Part 0

Disclaimer: This post/series does not claim to contain every single Sontails moment in the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics, only as many as this user has on hand. Some of the moments presented may be arguable (as in, some may argue that they do not count as sontails moments). As this series focuses on their relationship as presented in the comics (albeit as fuel for others who ship the pairing, but nevertheless), there will be images included which describe/denote the two as being "brothers".

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Part 1 >>

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Sonic the Hedgehog Issue #0 (Miniseries)

Description: After a bout of fighting Dr. Robotnik and his "evil androids", Sonic dives into the secret entrance to the freedom fighter hideout. After loudly announcing his return, Tails runs up to him, eagerly calling Sonic "my hero" and asking about his exploits. Sonic prepares to brag to Tails about it before Princess Sally cuts in. Then, after Sonic describes how his feet never touched the ground after he took off at warp Sonic speed, Tails says that he knows exactly how Sonic managed to do it as he's been practicing the same move. After Tails tragically trips over a rock, failing to show off his skill, Princess Sally (Sonic's love interest) points out that Tails idolizes Sonic "just like we all do". To note, just after this page, Sally plays off the fact that she implied that she also idolizes Sonic by play acting that it's unthinkable, with the framing of the scene implying both Sonic and Sally knowing she does idolize Sonic but neither will admit it.

Description: Sonic bids the other freedom fighters to stay back as they near the source of the water leaking into Knothole. Regardless, Tails volunteers quickly to check it out for Sonic, but Sonic holds him back, allowing Antoine to march ahead and into a deep puddle.

Description: Just as Sonic suggests everyone get back to the forest due to how exposed they are out by the weeping willow trees, Tails cuts him off, calling, "Attack!" Sonic chastises Tails, reminding the fox that he's asked Tails not to finish his sentences already. Although Tails was not intending to finish Sonic's sentence in this case, these panels suggest that Tails perhaps previously (offscreen) would finish Sonic's sentences.

Description: After Princess Sally praises Sonic's idea of planting tree saplings so the weeping willows will stop weeping, Tails says, "He's my idol!" while looking back at Sonic.

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Sonic the Hedgehog Issue #1 (Miniseries)

Description: The issue begins with Sonic and Tails running together. Sonic bids for Tails to keep up as he's just about to jump into hyper-sonic speed, and Tails lets him know that he's right behind him.

Description: After Princess Sally angrily blows Sonic off, demanding he leave her alone and go back to what he was doing, he and Tails begin to run together again. The two swing on the vine into the entrance to Knothole together (at Tails' request). Unfortunately, since Antoine happens to be leaving Knothole at the same time, the three crash into each other.

Description: After Sally thrashes Sonic, only Tails panics, worrying over Sonic's health.

Description: Tails cheers for the Sonic Spin.

Description: Rotor and Tails arrive just in the nick of time to save Sonic from having his throat between the teeth of Dr. Robotnik's robot fish. As Sonic continues to struggle for lack of air, Tails asks Sonic if he's okay.

Description: Tails greatly enjoys the Sonic Spin.

Sonic the Hedgehog Issue #2 (Miniseries)

Description: Tails calls "My hero!" as Sonic the hedgehog passes by. Sonic says "hiya" to Tails, but lets him know that he's currently on an underwater mission and can't chat. When Sonic dives into the water, he accidentally (and unknowingly) gets his right ankle tangled in Tails' fishing line, thus pulling Tails into the water behind him.

[thankskenpenders]

Part1: Thank you for the reply! Sorry if I keep pushing the subject, but what I don't understand is Penders' disdain/hate for Chronicles. For someone who always boasts about his contributions to the Sonic IP, one would have thought he would have been elated to be the inspiration and starting point for what would become a plot and setting of the IP's core media, games. Plus, you said it yourself, to everyone's knowledge (Even Penders, maybe?) they were seen as fair game at the time of production.

Part2: I would understand if he was asking for acknowledgement/compensation, but his ownership claims seems to be made out of malicious spite, rather than a proper sense of injustice. Like if DC would have dressed Superman in a red & white costume for a few issues after the Fawcett case (I know it's not exactly the same legal case). But why do you think he acts like that? I would love to read your thoughts as you are one of the few capable of reaching unbiased conclusions when it comes to him.

So the thing with the Sonic Chronicles case is that by that point Ken had discovered Archie had lost his contract, cooked up the story that it never existed, and started filing for copyrights for his work. As such, he argued that Sonic Chronicles taking inspiration from his work was an instance of copyright infringement. In his eyes, Shade literally is Julie-Su, and the Nocturnus Clan literally is the Dark Legion, just with the names changed, and if he never signed a contract then that stuff wasn't fair game for other Sega projects to touch. To him, it wasn't uncredited inspiration, it was theft.

The case was dismissed in court because the Archie v. Penders case to determine who actually owned the copyrights for his work was still ongoing, and then by the time that was settled the statute of limitations for the Chronicles case had passed. (In basic terms: it had been too long since Sonic Chronicles came out to sue over it.) So it ended in a stalemate, with both sides still arguing ownership, and Ken would only be able to revive the lawsuit if Sega did something new with Sonic Chronicles or those characters - a sequel, a port of the game, Shade appearing in new stories, etc.

Since then, it's basically turned into a game of chicken with the copyrights. Ken believes Sega has just washed their hands of Chronicles because they don't want to deal with the legal trouble, which is honestly probably true. Meanwhile, Ken has been testing how far he can push his claims of ownership over Shade before Sega does anything, such as when he announced that Shade NFT that declared she was literally the same character as Julie-Su. (Or at least it would have if he'd ever released it.) If Sega doesn't do anything about it, then they're at risk of forfeiting the copyrights, which Ken will take as a sign that they've fully abandoned Sonic Chronicles as their property and therefore he can do whatever he wants with its elements.

So, basically, yeah, he's still just bitter and spiteful over the plot of Sonic Chronicles being based loosely on his Knuckles comics without his involvement. And to a certain extent I'd get that. Comic artists and writers are paid in table scraps and get no benefits, then they see the companies who own their work turn it into billion dollar movies and video games and mountains of merch, and they don't see a penny of those profits. They don't even tend to earn royalties off of their comics' sales. It's unfair. But while I think he deserved some form of credit and maybe some form of compensation, there's a difference between adaptation and inspiration, and Ken's just being a copyright troll here.

There's immense irony in Ken believing that Bioware's homage to Julie-Su should be seen as the same character as Julie-Su in the eyes of the law, while he's out here publishing a comic featuring K'Nox, The Legally Distinct Character Who Is Totally Not Knuckles. Also, like, one of his pet characters has always been a blatant homage to James Bond. He was out there basing Archie Sonic stories on Star Trek episodes and Superman comics and shit. My favorite Sonic story of his literally just ripped off the plot of "For the Man Who Has Everything." I don't see him out here cutting Alan Moore a check. He's nothing if not a hypocrite.

[egg-emperor]

Does Eggman actually have dark red eyes? I wanted to hear your take on that!

Nah that was just an ongoing thing in non canon media. Likely due to how the US box art Eggman for classic games looked like he had black voids for eyes, then 90s shows seemed to take inspiration but gave him red irises, which the Archie comics then adopted- well pre reboot, as he was later depicted with white sclera there even.

In the games he's always had regular white sclera instead. Even before we knew his actual iris color, he was consistenly depicted with white sclera long before and it was always Sega/Sonic Team Japan's vision. Here I'll compile some times they've appeared in the actual games

This was an unused animation for the Egg Poison boss but it's still a sprite made for a game that depicts what they envisioned his eyes to be:

They should've kept it because it was very cute and funny, spilling Mega Mack over himself XD

But with that, it dates his white sclera all the way back to Sonic 2, despite what Western classic box art and shows depicted at the time

The Sonic Advance games and Sonic Battle have his eyes very comically pop out when he takes damage:

He's literally one of these keychains where you squeeze them and the eyes pop out, they need to make an official Advance/Battle Eggman keychain like this lol

The 2D animations like Sonic Mania Adventures are considerably canon as they take place after the game's events and are in an actual game now through Sonic Origins' museum. You can see them there too:

You can also see them again in the character sheet art that was also used as reference for the Origins 2D animation:

Trio of Trouble, which also should be canon as a prequel and promo for Sonic Superstars, also shows his eyes briefly:

The only time he's been shown with an iris color in a game is Sonic 06, where we finally see that they're blue

While 06's events were erased from the timeline, Eggman's eye color obviously wouldn't have just randomly changed just for these events and then been some other color after, so this solidly confirms what color his irises are

I really love the light gray-blue shade they went with specifically, suits him best for it makes them look cold and intense which I think works as a much better way to give him a sinister look than much more cliche red and black eyes

And a bonus which perhaps might not be the case but that one CD sprite has always appeared to give a peek at the whites of his eyes behind his glasses to me at least too:

There are also non canon depictions with white sclera as much as there are of him with red and black but I wanted to compile the appearances within actual games and tie-ins specifically. And as you can see, he has white sclera in all of them and blue irises in 06

Red and black is purely non canon. A lot of people have theories about his eyes changing or looking different because of non canon media but if he took his glasses off in a 3D modern game, he'd absolutely just have blue eyes and white sclera

I really hope they do at some point because they'd be fun to see on his regular model outside of 06 and would look very pretty hehe 🩵 I love to imagine them all the time and I'm very happy that they're the canon look because they're the best!

[popculturebuffet]

Valentine's Comic Wedding Special IV: Archie''s Revenge: Bunnie and Antoine

Happy Valentine's Day all you Happy People! So for those new to this proud tradition, I love a good wedding episode, issue, what have you and so for the past 3 years i've had my patreons each pick one from the massive pile there is in comics, many of which I haven't read, and then you fine folks vote on the winner. In previous years it's been oops all superheroes, but this year I added a few non superhero weddings to the list my patreons, and yours truly could pick from. And this one, like last years Wally and Linda Wedding, was a landslide.

Yes by an overwhelming margin, WeirdKev's pick of Antoine and Bunnie won. It's honestly nice as it not only shows how strong the love for the Archie Sonic comics still is after nearly a decade out of print, beating out marvel, dc and the other archie option. On the bright side archie at least got a sponsorship deal on the wedding

I was pleased with these results: Antoine and Bunnie are some of archie's best characters and some of the main reasons i'm mad Sega won't let anyone what use them because their bitter lemons.

While the happy couple may not be superheroes they do have a history as vast, rich, weird and often exausting as them. Sonic's ongoing lasted for 24 years so it had plenty of time to build up as much continuity, good and chunky, as possible. A few years back I read through EVERY issue of Archie Sonic. It was.. truly exausting for reasons that will become clear as I dive into these two's history, but ultimately worth it. So join me for a deep dive into these two and their nuptials under the cut.

For starters Bunnie and Antoine actually debuted in SATAM, one of two sonic cartoons at the time each taking a diffrent approach. It's sister series Adventures was a wacky looney tunes style series where Sonic foiled Robotnik's wacky schemes and robotnik posed naked or near naked a few times, one of which my friend Mars proudly owns a cell of.

SATAM on the other hand took this shit seriously and took a turn that worked far better than it had any right: In the world of SATAM Robotnik isn't a goofy guy in various contraptions, but a cruel horrifying dictator voiced deftly by Jim Cummings. He still does schemes of the week at times, but instead of stuffing animals into cartoony robots he horrifyingly turns furries into milndless roboticized slaves. The only line between him and total world Domination are the freedom fighters, Sonic and his amazing friends who do daring raids on Robotnik's nightmare city of Robotropolis.

The Freedom Fighters exist because back then sonic's supporting cast was .. just Tails. There were sketches of characters, but with CD and Knuckles only on the horizon, early stuff had to get creative. Hence the freedom fighters: Leader, stratigest supreme, love intrest and princess Sally Acorn, Rotor the tech savy walrus (Tails hadn't picked up that trade yet), and of course Antoine and Bunnie. Bunnie was the muscle of the team, a rabbit who'd been partially roboticized but could use her cursed gift to help others. She wasn't in the show as much as she should've been but was well loved.

Antoine was more prominent.. and also an obnoxious asshat. Antoine was a self important twit who while deftly voiced by Rob Paulsen, pritoitsed trying to get into Sally's non existant pants over their life or death struggles and constantly resented sonic for having her affections and being cooler and actually doing his job. Antoine seemed to be only on the team because shut up. He was a coward, and while it's okay to have fear given the odds their against, he seemed really not cut out for this and given they had a villiage base, should've stayed there. Tails was protrayed as a tagalong kid here but he should've easily taken Antoine's spot as despite being greener, he had far more pasion and bravery than his older counterpart.

So while SATAM and Adventures were in development Archie Comics, they of the never ending love triangle that should really just be a polycule now, came a knockin. They TRIED to get the rights for adventures but instead got SATAM.. and being archie proceded to make a comic that had the premise of SATAM but stuck to their comedy wheelhouse. The comics would evolve past this as they went, largely thanks to MIcheal Gallagher (Who was still good with sticking in gags) and well.. Ken Penders

Who slowly grew to suck , but that's a story for another time.

Back on point the cast was transplanted as was. Antoine fit better here as being the douchey comedic foil works better in a comedy. He still had exactly no shot with Sally. For a while though he mostly stuck around as panicky comic relief and didn't really change much from SATAM, the only big change being he was less obnoxious... apart from his prosecuting sonic for treason, which he turned out to be innocent of. Again story for another time.

Bunnie however got fleshed out a bit. For starters she got a proper origin story, as rather than be with the team from day one with the initial mini or ongoing, she joined in issue 3. Sonic and Rotor got word of use of a portable robtocizer, via Rotor's Little Mermaid Camera, yes really, and found a rabbit farmer being captured by swat bots. Calling them a yankee did nothing and she was chucked in

Exausted for obvious reasons, Sonic ran Bunnie back, not carring if robotnik tracked them: saving someone in distress was more important. Sally agreed and Bunnie joined the team, proving to be an instant asset and the series break out star. While most of the focus was still on Sonic , as you'd expect, Bunnie got a consderable number of backup features. She never got a mini series like Tails and Sally, weirdly enough, but she still got more than enough spotlight to flesh her out and add a new dimension: While her robotic limbs made her super poewrful.. they felt like a curse. She wanted badly to be herself again and even had a nightmare one issue where robotnik hacked her cybernetics to slowly reoboticize her. It was the cornerstone of her character. And if you thinka southern accented hard hitting southren belle who has a tragic condition sounds familiar... your right. Bunnie was made more like Rogue from the x-men with time, even getting a leather jacket in the strips later years.. also a neat cowboy hat.

As the comic went on more twists turned, things got more serious, and as things escalated. And with all this Antoine's jealously MOSTLY disappeared, replaced as Sonic's rivarly by prized asshole and 19 year old Geoffery St John, because 19 was okay for a 15 year old back then as far as fiction was concerned.

Geoffery fucking hated sonic, partly out of jealously and partly because Sonic never gave the prick respect, constantly calling the freedom fighters "Ameturs" as he'd been fighting robotnik longer.. despite them having way more success. If he sounds punchable your extremley correct.. and it's someone acting on that that lead to Antoine's finest moment. After close to 50 issues, he got some character development when the freedom fighters, their allies the wolf pack and Geoffry all had a tense camp out.

Also present was Uncle Chuck, sonic's uncle who had been roboticized but got freed of it earlier in the comic and had since served as their spy on their inside, a kingsman who might let some things slide. Geoffery being nature's biggest dickhead, wasn't convinced Chuck was on the up and up, and figured he was a traitor. Sonic understandably popped the arrogant prick and certified pedophile one, and Geoffery less understandably prepared to kill sonic... till a hero emerged

Not only does Twan stand up to the asshole but he points out his DAD founded the underground Geoffery leads and accuses him of being a traitor. Sadly the skunk isn't but the issue does flesh out Twan considerably. He's revealed to be the son of King Acorn's most loyal soldier, wearing his father's uniform in his honor and actually starting as a hero, having apparnetly saved bunnie in backstory, a retcon I don't hate. His decline is blamed on his crush on Sally: his loyalty turned to love she never reciprocated and the depression over it broke him a little. But clearly seeing his dad's legacy coopted by this prized asshole relit his fire and from here on Antoine is a certified badass and master swordsman and all the better for it.

He's also no longer alone

It's not super sudden either: an earlierr backup had her protecting him when he did a solo missoin, showing off both his growing bravery and hinting at her crush on him. With this the two became a solid couple, the war soon ended and the comic... forgot about them.

The comic largely forgot about Bunnie, Antoine and also Rotor during it's post-robotnik era. Sally's father tried to get her to marry Antoine or give up her crown, yes really he was a right asshole, but when it came to the main plot the two were largely left out. It's a mixed bag: on the one hand seeing two of the series best characters benched, especially since Antoine had just hit his stride as one, is depressing. I didn't realize till writing this review just how little they did between robotnik's fall and the time skip. Their still on the team but Sonic, Sally and to a lesser extent Tails get all the focus.

There were two big developments: We found out what happened to Antoine's father Armand.. he became the evil high shierf while roboticized, terorizing Mercia, a small forest villiage protected by Rob O Hedge, amy's cousin. All stuff I didn't make up. They eventually got him back and eventually his mind was restored like all other robians.

The other was a bit more distressing: in a side story Bunnie found out her cybernetics were no longer working with her nervous system and had a choice: undergo upgrades, or die. She choose, with Antoine's support and love to go through with it. She'd never be free of her limbs, but she accepted them.

This also meant when some random ass aliens deroboticized almost everyone, Bunnie couldn't be, but it's something she accepted.

So yeah not much happened for the two. They were happy, they were stuck playing support in various nonsense overcomplicated plot lines I thankfully don't have to get into, things were good.

Sadly there IS a nonsense overcomplicated plot line I do have to get into. So Mobius what got invaded by starfish aliens and sonic seemingly died but instead spent what felt like a few months but ended up being a year to everyone else making his way back across the galaxy. This lead to a time skip. Which would be a great idea, I love a good time skip and after years of the status quo being kind of wobbly we were back to Eggman having the upper hand and our heroes on the backfoot, which could be seen as regressive but honestly worked.

The problem is most of Boller's other ideas.. didn't. He decided to shake up the main couples and had antoine don an eyepatch and break up with Bunnie, while Sally broke up with sonic because he woudln't stop fighting which she screamed at him for and slapped him.. despite the war being at it's worst again and badly NEEDING him and part of the deep shit they were in was due to his absence. It felt horribly selfish and out of character. Sally was the general for the rebellion previously. She knows the sacrifices needed. Sonic isn't doing this for the thrills like she thinks but because people need him and like a true hero he can't let good people get hurt.

This felt like an excuse to get Sonic and Bunnie which while sadly brief.. actually kinda worked. The two had chemistry before, it created tension and we could eventually find out WHY Antoine broke up with Bunnie. Instead this lasted maybe a second, and instead Bunnie ended up making out with Scourge, sonic's evil alternate universe counterpart who at the time looked just like him. If this sounds fucking gross it was. He made out with a bunch of people while pretending to be sonic. It's gross as it sounds and somehow gets more fucked up as he ended up kissing supporting character fiona fox.. who then started going out with sonic. Whose best friend tails had a crush on her and...

Eventually the comic imploded: Bollers left having trouble working for Ken Penders and Penders was fired for being impossible to work with and kinda nuts.

On his way out though he DID clear up the Bunnie and Antoine thing. And shockingly for Late Stage Ken Penders.. it was suprisingly simple. Antoine had been replaced by his Anti-Counterpart from the same evil universe as Scourge, who wanted the crown and started poisioning people: He poisned antoine's dad then poisoned Sally's dad so he could trick her into marrying him. Thankfulyl Antoine's dad had figured it out, Sonic stopped the wedding and got the real antoine back.

Thankfully after Ken and Karl... came Ian. Ian Flynn, as mentioned is a massive sonic fan, and already loving archie took a similar approach to superhero writers of the time: fix the mess he'd been left with while reminding people whyt hey loved these comics. He spent the first year largely playing clean up, tying up the various tangling threads left by the previous teams. He ended Sonic and Fiona with the whole "She was actually hot for Scourge thing", turned Scourge into scourge in the first place going from a greaser sonic to a real true evil counterpart, refocusing sally's character, and brought tails parents back from space. All mostly done by just.. writing a story around it instead of trying to hastily retcon all the stupid shit.

Naturally that ship writing included Antoine and Bunnie, who were back to being prominent and got a subplot leading to their nuptials. It was a small one and moved fast, but it was nice to give them something, and lead to a full honeymoon arc I already covered some time back . It also implied as hard as an all ages comic could they what did sex to each other

Which let's be fair here: their both hot , their both 18 and over respectively, why not? He knows the fanbase. Their both smokeshows. Let bunnie use those special attachments while Antoine shows off his swordplay. Before we get to the consumation of the marriage we had the marriage itself. The buildup started with a tragedy: Due to all the evil doppleganger shit, Armand died. The story is deeply touching, and seems to be pulled from Flynn's own pain as he dedicated it to his late mother. Armand tells his son how proud he is, not to be ashsamed or blame himself, and to hold onto bunnie. It's a truly wonderful story and a good way to send off the character.

This feels like the big push towards it... though earlier in the story he was already considering it before sonic told him to go to his father. The final push comes after Fiona's betrayal: with a bunch of their enemies loose, one of their own having betrayed them, and things getting more and more dire Antoine decides to do something about it..

After some talking with Sally, who put the two on a mission right away but really just wanted a chance ot talk with Bunnie and apologize for being so distant, the wedding is soon on the issue after the proposal. After all the whole reason he proposed was they don't know how much time they have left. Why wait?

So we've finally come to the actual wedding. Sonic is getting tuxed up in his house, happy to go STAGGGGG after the whole fiona debacle, and heading off to in his words "Go bug the groom". Never change man, never change.

Sonic is going with Tails, who isn't living with his surrogate brother as his parents, as I will never get tired of saying, came back from outer space something the little guy is overjoyed about. He actually likes thier fussing over him like Sonic's Mom does asking him not to run in his nice suit. Maam that's his thing and he has two genuises in his friend group and one for an uncle. If none of them could make fabric that won't roll around at the speed of sound that's on them.

Tails isn't all smiles though as he's still going through some stuff.

Now Fiona and Tails.. is a pretty sad tale all things considered. He fell in love with a robot copy of her.. but that copy was the same age as him. Tails is ten, fiona is 16 and never remotely took his crush seriously, brushing it off when he finds out about her and sonic and when betraying everybody, making sure to hit the poor kid in the face. This is also nice build up for later: Sonic just kinda brushes it off.. and that's part of the problem as Tails is still understandably feeling betrayed his big brother went out with his crush, and this all boils over soon in the excellent house of cards arc. Rather than just milk shit for drama, Ian milks shit for drama.. but couches it in the characters. Sonic SEEMS uncaring because he's laid back and chill and dosen't realize how hurt his friend is or how much tails has grown.

So they go to someone's basement where the Chaotix are trying to help Antoine's nerves.

Why Rotor is absent I have no clue. The Chaotix in this continuity were Knuckles best friends, allies and squad, all coming from angel island themselves.

It is kinda nice vector is trying to help as he's a bit of a playboy in these comics, while Charmy is indeed married. Or at least engaged. It also makes his words here tragic as after this he suffers severe brain damage to put him in line with his child counterpart from heroes.

Espio is absent as he's on a mission, sneaking into the Eggman Empire to find out what he's up to. We'll cut back and forth to him all issue and it's a ncie contrast: the truly happy day at the wedding with everyone in good spirits and reflecting on their own romantic troubles.... while Espio uncovers a terrifying secret: Eggman is gearing up for a massive assault complete with fresh body armor and easily incapacitates him. As our heroes have one of the best days of their lives.. one of the darkest is coming. Again though..

It's one I really want to cove ras the fight between Eggman and Sonic next issue is fucking brutal. Truly fantastic. I honestly might need to cover ian's run after giant days. May have to find someone to sponsor it.

For now though Sonic's bored and goes to the bride to bug them instead. Rosie, Sally's old baby sitter and mother figure while her mom was in a coma tube, decides to use another rose to deal with this

It's a fucking great gag. And yeah Amy at this point is still in her obessive fangirl mode. She's also 12, her body just got what aged up to a teenager. I ship her more with Tails for that reason and because it's always been a ship in my back pocket. NOt against Sonamy mind now she's stopped making stalker rooms or trying to force him into marriage, it just does not work in this continuity. She's too young and he's interested in someone else.

We get some really sweet interactions here as Sally brings up how in her first apperance Bunnie wanted to be her hair stylist. And she will be... it's just now as a side thing for her friend inbetween time with her husband and beating up badniks. They even have a giggle when Rosie and Bunnie tease Sally about Sonic. Sally, like her ex, is happy riding solo for now. Sure hope she dosen't get turned into a robot before anything happens and dosen't get freed because of rights issues> That'd really suck.

It's time for the Wedding as Sonic arrives with Knuckles and runs into Knuckles girlfriend, soulmate and sonic character I dearly miss Julie Su. Julie is a had scrable former soldier and that's why he loves her. She also hates formal wear and how she looks in it, though knuckles he er.. tries to make her feel better

I love this scene, the little banter and the fact neither really want or need to get married. It's neat for a sonic comic of all things to have such a progressive stance for it's time. It's also understandable from a character perspective; both are highly indepent and both's parents had... less than stellar marriages. Knuckles parents divorced while he thought they were dead, with his mom remarying and having another son Kneecaps, and Julie Su's birth parents abandoned her. Her foster parents are doing fine but I get maybe not wanting to get married with all that baggage.. or you know just because you don't want to.

So sonic arrives to meet the royal family. Max, the asshole I mentioned whose left in a wheel chair after the poison, his wife Alicia, and sally's long lost brother I mentiond Elias. I joked about that but while his introduction is needlessly convoluted Elias is a fascinating character and Ian will use him well. He never WANTED the crown, and in fact ran away, finding his wife Megan and soon marrying her and adopting her daughter. He only returned when the kingdom needed him to lead as things got worse with Max, but does a stellar job. He later gets to run my faviorite incarnation of the freedom fighters, the secret freedom fighters.

Despite all the lingering tension... Sonic and Sally still fall back into their old routines.. and the spark is still there.. even if both are.. not exactly ready to reignite it.

We get some omnious setup for a future arc as Tails dad Amedeaus talks about how it's an honor to serve Elias.. and then behind his back admits he soon won't have much more power anyway. This leads to the whole house of cards arc. Seriously while this issue is good it is very hard to talk about a single piece of Ian Flynn's sonic. Like Chris CLaremon'ts x-men it's really one big ongoing story nicely chonked up into arcs and what not.

And so the two are married in a touching ceremony as Espio nearly dies overlaid with it. And we end on.. er Eggman preparing to kill a whole lotta people. See what I mean?

This issue is decent. The sentiment is nice, the sally and bunnie scene are nice and I really do like the contrast between this very happy day.. and the impending doom awaiting our heroes. It's a solid issue with some good moments... but on re-read it's not nearly as good as it was the first time. On Re-Read I noticed just how.. little Antoine and Bunnie play into their own wedding issue: we get a really nice moment of Bunnie and sally.. but Antoine dosen't get anything like that with Sonic, just him being really sweaty while Vector and Charmy of all people try to calm him down. I get their not as close but you could still pull on their long rivarly and it was clear fromt he previous issue just how much Antoine had grown. Instead most of the focus is on Sonic's love tornado, tails depression and setup for later. The setup is damn good.. but it feels like this could've been two issues instead of one but Ian wanted to continue the tradition, upheld to this day, of every 25th issue of sonic being a big deal. A huge story turning point. The resulting story feels great but it rushes the wedding out as a result. There isn't reflection on how they got here, not enough hyjinks.. it just happens really fast and it's over and time for the horror show to start. It's easier to notice in isolation as before i'ts sandwitched betwene Fiona's brutal betryal and the big wham episode that's the next arc.

Thankfully the two would get more spotlight in a tails adventure adaptation of all things, because Ian unlike the writers before him gave a shit about these games and noticed they missed one. The marriage would mostly just be really happy and the two would get used more often.. until tragedy struck and Bunnie was deroboticzed while Antoine was left in a coma, both not resolved as Ken Penders and rights issues meant a reboot came.

Thankfully in the reboot both got plenty of stories, stayed married, and reflected on things, ending the second continuity happy. And we have fan comics to pick up the slack elsewhere. Still this was a nice milestone and with Sega being anti-relationship, I don't see the lemur and wolf wedding we all want and deserve coming anytime soon, so this may be the last sonic wedding. I mean there was that one in Sonic 2 but I don't think traps to catch our heroes count... I mean for these polls they do but we won't be doing that one. Thanks for reading , have a happy valentin'es day and remember, i'm pullin for you, we're all in this together and if you liked this consider checking out the Giant Days retrospective I did yesterday.

[sami32e]

Following on my Genesis/Mega Drive Snively sprites post. I wanted to continue that with another Classic Sonic game, so here you go:

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (MS/GG) Extended Cast

So yeah, this is based on the flashbacks from the Champions arc in the Archie Sonic reboot. I mean, the designs aren't 1:1 with those comics, it's little details here and there that have been changed (and in Breezie's case it's a slight redesign). I also resprited Silver Sonic to tweak some of its proportions.

This is part of that ongoing Sonic AU I'm making, although as always you can also use these for general Sonic thing (with credit, obviously)

[julie-sufan]

The In-Depth Look at Julie-Su Part 9: Sonic the Hedgehog Issues 80, 81, 82, 84 and Sonic Super Special #14

After the Knuckles comic ended, he and the other side characters from his series were regulated to short backups in the Archie ongoing Sonic comic. Unfortunately this lead to a drop in quality as the stories went from 22 pages to around 5-7 each month. Which made the overall storylines progress much slower then before.

Since the Chaotix would not get reintroduced in the game's series canon until after the Dreamcast era (And Julie-Su only existing in the comic.) They're on their own for a while as Knuckles is in his own story based off of his path from Sonic Adventure 1.

They get kidnapped by some cat people who were made for the comic and are not part of Sonic Adventure's game storyline.

Locke shows up so the story can focus on some echidna lore which includes Pachacamac from the ancient echidna tribe from SA1.

Sometime after that (Off panel I assume) the Chaotix are freed and are reunited with Knuckles following the SA related events from issue #84.

With the game canon story over Penders is now set to resume his lingering plot threads from the Knuckles comic in Sonic Super Special #14 which for the most part feels like the actual ending the ongoing series should have gotten.

The story starts off with Knuckles and Julie-Su together at Knux's Mom wedding to her boyfriend Wynmacher.

It's kinda odd that no one got dressed up for the wedding.

The Chaotix all ride on those evil looking horses to search a abandoned Dark Legion complex.

Enjoy seeing the Chaotix while you can because they won't be in the story much longer.

I've always hated how easily she gets kidnapped in this part. I would think why didn't she bring her gun but then again they did just get back from a wedding.

I'm so glad Lien-Da did not stick to wearing yellow. It makes her look way too similar to Lara-Le. Note I believe this is the first time that Julie-Su interacts with Lien-Da face to face.

Throw in the garbage and discarded that's a apt metaphor for her role in this story and for upcoming issues. Spoiler coming up is the Green Knuckles saga (Sonic 92-118) and it is truly the epitome of meandering.

[archiesonicforever]

Archie Sonic Forever cover

Here's the cover for Archie Sonic Forever #0. This special prologue chapter releases on our website, May 6th.

This issue picks up right before the cliffhanger ending of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog #241, and begins a new course for the ongoing Mecha Sally saga.

When it drops, you can read for free at https://archiesonicforever.com

[randomthefox]

Do you think Ian Flynn will still be with the Sonic franchise even after IDW collapses? My biggest worry about Sonic is that Flynn will still stay with franchise and just go to who ever else gets the license for Sonic comics; or on the possibility that American Sonic comics stop entirely with IDW's demise, stay with the video games English localized versions and keep shoving in aspects of Archie and other western continuities into them.

Nominally yes. Although I think any perceived value he brings in being associated with the brand will very swiftly deteriorate once there's no longer an ongoing comic that he's attached to. Especially now that he's muzzled and isn't allowed to even talk about Sonic on his podcast anymore. The scales would start to tilt very quickly into his name on a project bringing far far far more controversy than it does positive reception. We're already seeing soured discussion against games he's credited as being involved with, and the ONLY people pushing back against that are the comic cultists. With no comic those cultists aren't even going to pretend to stick around anymore.

[sonicpanels]

Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Ongoing) #80: "Big the Cat in: Swallowing Trouble"

Writer(/potential uncredted Layouts)/Inks: Ken Penders Pencils: Jim Valentino Colors: Frank Gagliardo Letters: Vickie Williams

Editor/Art Director/Outline Writer: Justin Gabrie Managing Editor: Victor Gorelick

[samobservessonic]

The main story of this big issue is the second part of Countdown to Disaster, brought to us by the usual Kitching & Elson dream team. To be fair on Knuckles, this would also be my first question if I saw a robot duplicate of some guy I knew

Sonic has no idea how a robot he previously trashed is back, but I’m more concerned with the swing and miss he’s had with giving Knuckles a nickname here. But don’t worry, Sonic will indeed keep calling Knuckles “Red” from now on

It’s a coincidence that I’m blogging about this one the day after the trailer for the third Sonic movie has come out, but damn - Knuckles is having a bad time being beaten down by Sonic doppelgangers lately!

Oh, that was your brother! The family resemblance is striking!

I thought it was probably a good idea to include the first mention of the Brotherhood of Metallix, because that’s certainly going to be a big plot point that I know a fair few people cite as their favourite part of StC (I don’t have the sources, but current writer of the games, Ian Flynn, has mentioned a few times on his podcast, the Bumblekast, that it’s his favourite part of StC)

We get a fight scene between Sonic and Metallix, before Sonic figures out that he can get a boost from the Master Emerald as well. But this is StC, so you know what that means…

…It’ Super Sonic time! And with him comes an instant KO!

We cut back to our two villains, with Grimer managing to effortlessly deflect a Robotnik tantrum by pointing out that, even if Metallix lost, they still got the Master Emerald out of it

This continues to be a bad day for Knuckles meeting new(ish) hedgehogs who want to beat him up

That’s pretty embarrassing to come around and realise that your alter ego was punching your crush who already isn’t that into you

But Knuckles brushes off this explanation, because the two of them falling to their death takes priority right now. Not only that, but I’m sure we’ve all got a pretty good idea what that ominous something that’s about to break through the clouds is

…This story was epic! Even if it’s the second part of an ongoing story and may or may not have intentionally been put here for the 50th issue, it feels very worthy of it. We’ve got an iconic moment from the game being illustrated and adapted beautifully, featuring some big fights between hard-hitters from the games themselves. Fleetway Super Sonic was even there! These are the kind of stakes I want to see in a big milestone issue. I feel like StC’s 50th issue isn’t talked about nearly as much as Archie’s End Game is, but I’d definitely recommend it for this story alone. It truly feels like a love letter to the Sonic series at the time!

[also-fours]

i want an idw shadow the hedgehog ongoing

come on, sega, you gave him his own game again, he's getting all this attention, clearly you've changed your tune about shadow just being sonic's dark rival that loses all the time and can finally allow ian and the others to cook with him for the first time since archie ended, let's get a shadow ongoing!

[thankskenpenders]

As I'm sure many of you are already aware, Did You Know Gaming (who have been doing some really great investigative work lately) recently put out a video on canceled Sonic games. The whole thing's worth a watch, but I have to bring it up here specifically because they talk about the plans for Sonic Chronicles 2 with a LOT of new info directly from the lead designer.

The section on how the story of Sonic Chronicles 2 would have went starts at 9:45. It's very interesting! He outlines the whole plot, including the fact that they were going to end with ANOTHER obvious plot hook for a sequel in the hopes that they or some other studio could keep the Sonic Chronicles series going indefinitely. Sonic Team even claimed they were interested in using Chronicles characters like Shade in other games. It's crazy to imagine a timeline where this might have become a pillar of the franchise.

I refuse to mourn the loss of the sequel, though, because y'all saw me stream the original. It was miserable. And with the original game selling and reviewing decently well, they would have had little reason to go back to the drawing board and overhaul that game's bizarrely hateful design.

Of course, DYKG also had to talk about the reason why the game was canceled. I was dreading this because of how often people tend to get the basic facts of the Penders cases wrong or downplay the obvious Archie Knuckles inspiration in Chronicles. But no, they did their homework! And they got the details right in part because, well... they asked Penders for comment directly. And he sent them back a MASSIVE wall of text about the whole ordeal, including some fascinating details that I don't believe I've heard before!

You can go to 15:19 in the video and scrub through to read the many, MANY screencaps of their emails from Ken, but here are the most interesting and/or hilarious tidbits to me:

#1: Perjury!

As we already knew, Ken claimed that the incomplete, photocopied contract Archie presented in court was a forgery, and that he had never signed a work for hire contract.

The judge obviously knew that one side had to be lying here, and thus was more than willing to present the case to a jury to let them decide the truth... and send whoever was deemed the liar to jail for perjury. (The judge apparently looked Ken directly in the eye when he said this, which... well, make of that what you will.)

Archie's lawyers knew that they didn't have a completely airtight case and obviously did not want to go to jail. So they decided to settle instead of going to trial in front of a jury.

(I will reiterate that Archie's arguments not working out is overall a GOOD thing, because we really do not want to set a legal precedent where corporations can "lose" a contract for a creator, make up a story about what was on the contract, and then have that hold up in court. They gotta get that shit in writing. And they didn't. They fucked up!)

#2: Sega was threatening to revoke the Sonic license!

As we knew, Sega wanted nothing to do with the comic copyright lawsuit. To them, it was Archie's job as licensee to deal with their freelancers. (Y'all watch Succession? You know how Logan loves lackeys who will eat shit for him without him having to even hear about the problem? Yeah.) And, in fact, according to Ken, Sega gave Archie an ultimatum: if they wanted their license to make Sonic comics renewed, they were gonna have to deal with Ken on their own, and cover all the costs.

Yeah, uh, this kinda makes me think that Sega being pissed about the ongoing Scott Fulop copyright case in 2016 may have been a bigger factor in Archie Sonic's cancellation than I previously thought. There was a lot going on at the time that could have contributed, but, y'know.

Anyway, Archie sued Ken for "damaging their business" largely because Sega was threatening to take away the Sonic IP. But because Archie couldn't ask Sega for help and they couldn't produce an original contract, they had to settle.

There's another detail I find funny here, though. Ken WANTED Sega to get involved in the comic copyright case, thinking that Sega would strongarm Archie into paying him the millions of dollars he wanted for "using his work without permission" so that they could be done with it. I mean, sure. I guess Sega wouldn't have cared about Archie's finances, but still. I'm not so sure that would've worked out for him.

#3: Shade!

Yes, Penders still claims he legally owns Shade, and under advice from his lawyer still intends to put out an NFT of her to put his claim to the test. Yes, it's incredible that he still hasn't put out the damn NFT. It only needs to be one image, which he already drew! The market has collapsed!

Anyway, building an argument off the legal concept of estoppel, he says that if Sega continues to not do anything about his claims that he owns Shade then, in the eyes of the court, they'll be forfeiting their claims to Shade altogether. But they aren't going to do anything because they never wanted any part in the copyright battles in the first place, and to them Chronicles is a long dead asset not worth fighting over. Why bother trying to use Shade again and giving Ken a reason to take them back to court when they can just move on? It's not like this franchise is short on characters. And so Ken can say that Shade and Julie-Su are literally the same character, and if he owns Julie-Su then therefore he also owns Shade.

Our copyright system is, indeed, a nightmare. Chronicles should have been halfway to the public domain by now.

#4: Sega's oversight on the Archie comics!

Ken says that in his first year on the series Sega only requested some dialogue changes here and there through the editor. They never requested huge script changes, and also never spoke to Ken directly. After that first year, they stopped asking for dialogue changes altogether, and Ken "had a free hand to do pretty much whatever he wanted." Yeah, no surprise there.

He does, however, say that Archie's original deal with Sega stated that they weren't allowed to create ANY new Sonic characters without informing Sega. They would've needed to make a contract every single time to get Sega's approval and make it absolutely crystal clear that Sega owned the whole cast. And then Archie just... didn't do that! And didn't tell any of the freelance creatives not to come up with new characters! Had Archie followed this rule, the trajectory of the comics would have been completely different, but there also never would've been a copyright battle in the first place.

What a shitshow. Truly.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

Your posts are making me excited for the sonic movie even though I’ve never seen or played a sonic thing in my entire life and my entire knowledge of the franchise comes from you. Tumblr has even started recommending me sonic fanart what the heck

Hell yeah! Special interests are magic.

If you wanna get into Sonic, a lot of the older stuff is pretty cheap on Steam- you can get the Sonic Adventure games for 10 dollars, for instance. Old consoles and games can be relatively cheap too depending on what they are- Wiis are like twenty quid, but Dreamcasts cost a fortune, It’s also really easy to emulate the old Mega Drive games if you’re okay with piracy and have a half decent computer. Hell, you could just play fan games if you’d like, there’s so many and Sega is extremely lenient with them (which is in part bc they’re incompetent as shit and mismanage their gaming division to focus on gambling but that’s beside the point) so it’s got a really vibrant community of very good programmers and rom-hackers. Hell, there are people developing actual official Sonic games now that got their start doing that.

Or, if you want content outside the games, there’s a ton of weird Sonic continuities out there that exist and most are like 20 years old and defunct so they’re super easy to find online bc no one cares to take them down anymore. There’s the old 90s sonic movie, which never gets enough credit it’s so good and it’s also in copyright limbo so you can find it super easy online literally it’s on YouTube. There’s the old cartoons, there was like three of them running at once for some reason some of them aren’t so great (sonic underground I am looking at you) but one of them was apparently really good? Idk i last watched them when I was literally six years old but like most decades old cartoons they’re not super hard to find on certain websites. on that note there’s the Archie comics, which are notoriously weird, very long, and also have been defunct for a decade so you can just find them online too. In Britain we had sonic the comic which was equally weird but finished way earlier you can find that one online easy as well. There’s also the IDW comics which are apparently genuinely amazing but they are ongoing so you might actually have to buy them. Then there’s Sonic X which is a genuinely really good anime that also has Sonic Adventure adaptations apparently? Which I never saw as a kid and I’m sad about. There’s also a show on Netflix I keep forgetting to watch L but if you have Netflix that’s there.

Anyway like. TL;DR there’s an absurd amount of sonic shit out there that’s all either really good, entertainingly bad, or both, and a lot of it’s really fucking easy to pirate and no one really cares. There’s probably something you’d like out there!