You Had to Open Your Big Mouth

[Crazy Penguin]

Mike McMahon was a case of poor casting. He's a very good cartoonist (who Richard Elson insists he's not even close to being as good as) but was completely unsuited to Sonic, both in general and the series aesthetic Richard Elson had established. His work on STC's Decap Attack strips was much better received.

STC's other great artist was Nigel Dobbyn. He did a handful of short Sonic stories, that he didn't quite fit well with honestly, but he really blew it out of the water when he was given the Knuckles back-up stories. Whilst he couldn't quite grasp the sleek and energetic look required for Sonic, his rich and atmospheric style perfectly suited the more somber and reflective Knuckles series.

Check out "The Graveyard" for a good example: http://www.knuckleschaotix.info/comics.htm

Sonic the Comic is a different beast altogether, it was made to resemble the then-official game plotline from day one. Archie meanwhile was a loose adaptation of the cartoon show, a completely different setting/history/characters/whatever. Whenever any idiot tries to jam the games into that round hole you end up with abombinations like the Sonic Adventure adaptation.

How much has really been taken from the games the past few years? Artistically it's fallen in line much more, with Yardley's art becoming the de-factor house style - prior to which the art direction was terribly inconsistent. But in terms of actual stories it's still very much doing its own thing, otherwise they wouldn't be spending a full year on storylines like A Bold New Moebius or The Iron Dominion. They used the Egg Fleet, Silver, Team Dark, the GUN Commander and very briefly Blaze and Marine, but (aside from the occassional non-canon promotional teaser) there's been no Werehog, no Chip, no Cream, no Shade, no Ix, no Gizoids etc etc.

Karl began that story arc, but it was Ian that declared the death count.

He had the choice of running with the storyline that had begun in Return to Angel Island, or sweeping it under the rug. Running with it allowed the superfluous echidna cast to be streamlined. They were overwhelming enough when Knuckles had his own series and even more so when Knuckles had back-up stories in Sonic's series. By the point of RTAI and beyond Knuckles didn't even have regular back-up stories any more. The goal was to make Knuckles important again in the context of being a supporting cast member for Sonic, and to make the Dark Legion fit the context of being villains for Sonic. It didn't run as smoothly as it could have, mainly due to nothing being done with everything set up in RTAI for such a long time, but in the end the mission was accomplished.

Was it handled the way Ken Penders would have handled it? Absolutely not. Did it tear down the status quo that was present in the old Knuckles series? Yep, sure did. I don't see either of these as inherently bad things, given that they were done with a clear purpose in mind and an eye for long-term direction.

or god forbid, this monstrosity:

Evil Sonic's been a recurring villain since #11. Why shouldn't he have a super form? I'm honestly surprised it hadn't been done earlier.

[CM August]

Evil Sonic's been a recurring villain since #11. Why shouldn't he have a super form? I'm honestly surprised it hadn't been done earlier.

Way to intentionally misread the point. Along with glossing over all that other shit.

[Crowbar]

STC's other great artist was Nigel Dobbyn. He did a handful of short Sonic stories, that he didn't quite fit well with honestly, but he really blew it out of the water when he was given the Knuckles back-up stories. Whilst he couldn't quite grasp the sleek and energetic look required for Sonic, his rich and atmospheric style perfectly suited the more somber and reflective Knuckles series.

Check out "The Graveyard" for a good example: http://www.knuckleschaotix.info/comics.htm

Oh man, I always loved Dobbyn's art. It had this awesome gritty feel to it without clashing with the cartoony Sonic characters. His colouring style was very distinctive and varied, too.

There was another good artist who did a fair few Sonic stories. His style was a bit looser and cuter than Elson's, but I can't remember his name.

[Crazy Penguin]

There was Mike Hadley, who was pretty much Richard Elson Lite. Not that there's anything wrong with that. He clearly recognised that Elson was the definitive artist on the series and followed his lead.

I quite liked Carl Flint, who mostly did covers in the earlier issues. He had the "cutest" art on STC, very bold and clean. He did a few Tails stories, which worked quite well. It's kind of a shame nobody really did anything with The Nameless Zone when Kitching stopped being assigned the Tails stories - I think there was only one of those that Nigel Kitching didn't write. The two "Zonerunner" stories didn't really work, and the others were pretty generic. Taking Tails out of the sci-fi world and into a fantasy world really helped distinguish his stories from Sonic's, and were done in a way so as to never interfere with the continuity of the main feature.

[Frieza2000]

I'm a little baffled at how much criticism the romantic aspect of the series gets. Maybe it's because I read them all in one shot over the course of a few weeks - if you read one issue a month for 12 years running I guess you get more time to dwell on things like that. But if you actually stop and count, there's a maximum of, like, 3 panels per comic that allude to romance at all, and it's never especially heavy-handed. The only possible exceptions I can think of are the Sally vs Mina arc (I can't believe they actually just counted letters like they were votes), the mini story that WB drew that was a recap of everyone's love lives, the issue of Knuckles where he finally gets together with Julie-Su, and Say You Will (that writer must've hated WB for turning his big dramatic breakup script into this), but even those are very brief, played out in the necessary downtime between plot advancing scenes, and never got in the way of the action. I'd venture that at least 95% of the comics have no mention of love at all. I know that the prepubescent/adolescent fans will never cease to dwell on it; any series that includes characters where there's any hint of a potential relationship will end up with incessant speculation and fantasizing about all possible pairings, and I'm sure they're annoying, but for all its other faults I don't think it's fair to call the series a soap opera because it never really was.

[CM August]

And it turns out Ian Flynn is far from done with romantic curveballs anyway - Sally x Monkey Khan (...) has been strongly hinted at in the latest story.

[Senbei]

To be fair, Khan's original appearance involved him kidnapping Sally to make her his bride. It was kind of silly, though, like Monkey Khan himself.

Far as Sonic's love life, I'd always been fine with what had been alluded to: Sonic and Sally had a thing, but any mention of commitment sent him running for the hills. It was when they started dedicating whole story arcs to the relationship that things got messy, then worse when Sonic became a single swinger... which apparently was because he was actually Evil Sonic or something? I don't remember; it was about that time that I stopped reading.

[Ngangbius]

Then the first thing Penders did was decide that Knuckles isn't the last of his race and that there are other people who'll protect the emeralds. Turns out his parents are alive, and his grandparents, and his cousins, and his second cousins twice removed, and their next door neighbours, and their in-laws. The echidnas went from extinct barring one to having more named characters than any other animal in the series. Penders took the ultimate introverted lone wolf character and turned his continuing adventures into an ensemble cast political drama. The action was still there, but Knuckles was suddenly surrounded by heroes and villains who could do everything he could but better.

This is one of the many reasons why I never really got into the comic or its spin-offs sans Sonic X. I'm not fond of the idea of Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and the rest of the main Sega game characters having living relatives. I always like the idea that most of the cast were orphans, and that Sonic himself was this wild, street smart urchin(no pun intended) who was free from parental supervision.

[Crazy Penguin]

Then the first thing Penders did was decide that Knuckles isn't the last of his race and that there are other people who'll protect the emeralds. Turns out his parents are alive, and his grandparents, and his cousins, and his second cousins twice removed, and their next door neighbours, and their in-laws. The echidnas went from extinct barring one to having more named characters than any other animal in the series. Penders took the ultimate introverted lone wolf character and turned his continuing adventures into an ensemble cast political drama. The action was still there, but Knuckles was suddenly surrounded by heroes and villains who could do everything he could but better.

This is one of the many reasons why I never really got into the comic or its spin-offs sans Sonic X. I'm not fond of the idea of Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and the rest of the main Sega game characters having living relatives. I always like the idea that most of the cast were orphans, and that Sonic himself was this wild, street smart urchin(no pun intended) who was free from parental supervision.

Giving Knuckles relatives was the worst, since it was the polar opposite of everything the character was about, but I would agree that giving Sonic and Tails relatives were bad moves too. It's harder to justify kids running off and risking their lives having adventures when parents are brought into the fray. It removes an element of escapism. Sonic in particular works better as a slightly enigmatic character, he's all about running forward and living for the day, so trying to elaborate on his past in any way, shape or form misses the point, as does giving him a permanent home. The introduction of Sonic's parents was even more redundant, given that the comic already had his Uncle Chuck (from the cartoon show) as an established character.

The same goes for Tails. He already had a family and an authority figure, and that was Sonic. Giving him an uncle and parents just diminished his relationship with Sonic. It's the same way that Batman's sidekick, Robin, only really works as an orphan (they tried to do something a bit different with Tim Drake, to distinguish him from the previous two Robins, but eventually followed form and offed his dad).

Almost every character in the comic has been given a family, and they've usually served little to no purpose, even the non-game characters.

But if there's any Sega character who wouldn't be damaged by having a family it's Amy Rose. Sure, she's inadvertantly gotten herself into a few adventures, but she's essentially an ordinary girl who only dreams of being whisked away by a dashing hero. She serves purely as a foil to Sonic, so adding in a few characters who'd serve as foils to her only seems fair play! A family would keep her more grounded, it would further illustrate the mundane life that she wants to escape but almost assuredly never will. Poor Amy lives with her head in the clouds, the more force trying to drag her down from there kicking and screaming (but ultimately failing) the better!

Naturally the comic did give Amy Rose a family member. A cousin who's a green Sonic Robin Hood parody. Yeah...

[Ngangbius]

I think it would be odd at this point in time to suddenly give Amy living relatives also. She seems nearly as reckless as Sonic, we usually see her chasing him around the world in nearly every game for the past 10+ years, and it's been established in various incarnations sans Archie, I presume, that she lives alone. Though truthfully, I thought it's even more odd that the only character in the games who officially has a parent is an even more ordinary 6 year old who fight dangerous robots/monsters along with other heroes, and her mother seems to not have any qualms about it. *shrugs*

I think the only other characters who slightly could get away with having live relations without making it seem that awkward would be for newer characters like Blaze, Silver, and Marine. Even then...eh...

[Crazy Penguin]

In the context of the Sonic video games there's no reason for Amy to have a family, granted, but adapted into a purely story-telling medium it would do no damage to the premise or integrity of the character. Marine already has a "family" in the form of the Coconut Crew. Ditto for Charmy, Espio and Vector, who already function as a family of sorts.

When video games with stories as loose as Sonic's are adapted into story telling mediums I'm all for adding and expanding stuff, so long as they're not redundant and don't interfere with or intrinsically change what's already there.

[Ngangbius]

^Well, seeing how Archie gave her some goofy Robin Hood parody that looks like Sonic for a family member(in addition to all the other crap with STK), I don't think they can pull it off without me groaning at another "lame Archie Sonic character".

[Crazy Penguin]

I think we can all agree that he sucked entirely of his own accord.