#super excited to see where lanolin goes as a character tbh

[thenokistation]

How the Archie Cast Lives On in IDW Sonic (Mini Essay)

Archie Sonic happened and we all just have to live with it.

While the series ran for nearly 300 mainline issues, this was only because it spun out of Sonic's earliest days. Long before he had a more concrete world and cast.

I go into it more here, but Archie Sonic's cast of Freedom Fighters has had their identities and purposes lost as the canonical cast expanded and the roles of these Freedom Fighters were overlapped by more interesting characters. Despite the reboot giving the chance to reinvent the Archie cast, these problems still largely remained.

However, that isn't to say that there wasn't some good to be gleaned from these characters. And the team behind the IDW Sonic series has recognized this by using these bits and pieces to invent new characters from the ground up and show the true potential of these characters if they were invented in the modern day.

This is how some of the Archie cast lives on and is improved through the IDW cast.

Whisper the Wolf

Whisper has been hurt. She is obviously traumatized and deals with the mental wounds inflicted on her by Eggman everyday. She lost the people closest to her and is terrified of the people she has now grown close to.

This is much in the same way that Bunnie Rabbot was half-roboticized by Eggman. Some of her most memorable stories in the original Archie run have her dealing with her roboticization. Her fear that it will fully take it over, that it will kill her and possibly harm her friends.

Both of these characters use part of the trauma inflicted on them to fight. Bunnie with her mechanical parts while Whisper uses a modified Wispon with aid of her former team's wisps.

However, these characters aren't the same. Whisper is so much her own character that these bits of inspiration easily slip through the cracks.

Bunnie is a joyous character, despite everything. Hell, she survives the reboot with her marriage intact because the joy it brings her is so intrigal to her character. Whisper, though, is still sore. She usually works alone, lashes out when her trauma is triggered, and nearly actually murders Eggman.

As a bonus, Whisper's wisp weaponry seems to be taking a few notes from Eclipse the Darkling. Eclipse raised dark, corrupted wisps and used them to fight much in the same way Whisper now fosters her former team's wisps. This could be the rare time in an action series a character is a light reflection of an established one instead of the other way around.

Surge the Tenrac

This is absolutely the most blatent of the bunch with its inspiration, but the parallels can be a bit harder to nail down.

Sure, S(co)urge is a green-furred rival to Sonic who is dead-set to best him and essentially take his role in the world, but is that really where the similarities end?

Scourge is just Evil Sonic. Same moves, same speed, etc. Before he turned green, he was literally just called Evil Sonic.

Surge is more complicated. She and Kitsunami don't know their past. They feel abandoned by the world. They've been cybernetically enhanced and have the undying desire to best Sonic instilled in them.

But between them, there is still that lust for power. Scourge's motivation may be fairly Joker-esc while Surge literally cannot stop herself, but both still want to essentially end their respective worlds.

Jewel the Beetle and Lanolin the Sheep

It may be a bit odd to put these characters together, but there is a good reason for it. Why? Because we need to talk about Sally Acorn.

Sally has always been a strange character that never really worked. While the Freedom Fighters did need a leader, she usually just became someone keeping Sonic on a leash while also being his love interest despite the two never seeing eye-to-eye.

The problem is, she never really evolved from that. As the franchise grew, a powerless leader-type grew more and more worthless. So she mainly fell into the role of bringing drama to the plot. Will Sally die during the Endgame arc? Can Sally rebel against her own father now that he has returned? Is she a good enough leader? Is it Wednesday and she has to break up with Sonic again?

Even worse is the identity crisis of Sally's character. A question asked and never really answered is if she belongs in the field or leading the free world. An attempt at stirring drama from this is still being raged about by Sally's fans and mocked by just about everyone else. Even the IDW comics made an intrinsic promise to not go anywhere near the character drama Sally lived in.

(For the record, this entire issue is basically a long conversation between Sonic and Amy about the same dilemma that caused The Slap™)

The reboot tries to solve this by having her simply be the commander of the flying airship the Freedom Fighters worked from, but it still led to her being mostly pointless. At best, Sally was inoffensive and boring while at worst she caused drama that is still being debated to this day.

So when it came time for IDW to replace her, many thought Amy would fall into this role. She was head of the Restoration and naturally fit into the role.

However, Amy may love the world, but she's no leader. Like Sonic, she values freedom. Enter Jewel the Beetle.

Jewel ran a jewelry store and then got promoted to basically running the free world. She has no combat abilities but isn't supposed to be in combat situations to begin with. Jewel is an improvement on Sally's confidence issues and her role as a more political leader. She organizes the Restoration and the defense groups much in the way Sally was the political face of the Freedom Fighters when dealing with the Acorn Kingdom.

Lanolin, meanwhile, is a newcomer and very much an improvement on Sally in the field. Instead of being powerless or a basic melee-brawler like in the reboot, Lanolin focuses on defense and more specialized situations thanks to her Magenta (Music Note) Wisp. While she also exhibits some confidence issues, she is given more focus on the flaws that Archie left mostly ignored.

While she's only just been introduced, the IDW team acknowledging these faults is already giving her far more potential than Sally ever reached in nearly 300 comics.

Even better, both of these characters have actual motivations and histories. While Sally's motivation is mostly just a vague 'I was the princess so I guess I'm a leader now', Jewel just genuinely wants to help in a way she can while Lanolin was inspired by Sonic to help others and eventually found herself as a combatant.

Archie Sonic was mired with a long history that only allowed one chance for change: the reboot. However, too much change and the fans would be mad. Too little, it would feel like a wasted opportunity. Unfortunately Archie Sonic took the route of doing too little. However, the IDW team took the removal of the Archie cast as a chance to do more with them and they succeeded.