#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 64 - 65: Two Multi-part Finale (part 7: Sonic X #40)

Welcome back to my investigation of how Archie Comics’ Sonic the Hedgehog series was actually a syndicated cartoon from the 80’s and 90’s! 

Let me tell you - after six posts talking about the Endgame saga, the end of the Knuckles spinoff comics, and the death of the super special series, it’s a relief today to finally get to talk about something not written by Ken Penders. So you guys remember Sonic X, right? “Got ourselves a situation, stuck in a new location”?

It was a fun little anime based around the adventures of our favourite blue hedgehog, which suffered unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the localisation team at 4Kids Entertainment. The show was about the Sonic cast being sent to Earth in an accident and befriending poor little rich boy Chris Thorndyke. The show would feature them fighting Dr. Eggman in a robot of the week format, and in the second season ran arcs adapting Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2. They also sort of did an adaptation of Sonic Battle. At the end of the second season Sonic and his friends returned to their own planet, and the third season kicked off with an older Chris Thorndyke travelling to Sonic’s world, regressing back to childhood, and joining his friends on a series of adventures in outer space fighting the dreaded Metarex. 

Debuting in September 2005 (around the same time the third season began airing in the US) was Sonic X the comic book, which was a companion book to the anime telling new stories with the same cast and setting. There were all sorts of wacky ideas they were able to do in the comic using the setting of the anime, such as Eggman selling Chao to everyone as pets that would turn vicious and attack, Sonic and friends being trapped in the Sonic 1 video game, Vector being briefly mutated into a kaiju, and Eggman becoming a mexican wrestler named El Gran Gordo!

The majority of this comic was set towards the end of season 2, before Sonic and friends returned to their own world. However the earlier issues played around earlier in the timeline, and we got to see things like Emerl being initially discovered and Eggman in jail following the Egg Moon incident.

Uniquely from the other finales I’m focusing on for this series, the end of the Sonic X comic was actually planned. The creative team wanted to end Sonic X before they risked jumping the shark, and launch a new spin-off - one not limited by the restrictions that the Sonic X setting and characters presented. They wanted this new spinoff to be set back in the main ArchieSonic canon, where they could have more space to explore other characters while Sonic’s adventures continued on in the main book. Essentially, it would be a return to the era of the comic when Sonic and Knuckles both had monthly comics coming out, only the new book, Sonic Universe, wouldn’t be limited to just Knuckles and his companion characters.

Arc #1 was focused on Shadow and the formation of Team Dark, then there was one about Mobius 30 Years Later, then one about Knuckles and the Chaotix, and so on. So when the time came for the Sonic X comic to end, Ian Flynn and the rest of the team did so by making it part of a crossover story that began in Sonic the Hedgehog #195 and 196, continued on into Sonic X #40, and was completed in the first issue of Sonic Universe.

The crossover began with Hedgehog Havoc, a meeting of hedgehogs that has never been matched before or since. Travelling to the Anti-verse, Sonic and Amy were on a mission to kick Scourge the Anti-Sonic out of Freedom HQ and send him back to his home dimension. While there, they’d also had an unfortunate encounter with Rosy the Rascal, the psychotic Anti-Amy. Next to show up was Shadow, who was now an Agent of GUN and had been helping Hope Kintobor test a device that was supposed to send him into the special zone to get a Chaos Emerald. Then Metal Sonic showed up. Having been rebuilt by Dr. Eggman, this newest model had been fitted with a special engine that allowed him to travel to alternate zones. Having not detected Sonic anywhere on Mobius, Metal Sonic travelled to Moebius to find him and join the fight. Finally Silver the Hedgehog made his first appearance, on a mission to kill the traitor that destroyed the Freedom Fighters. He was guided by Amy’s cousin, the archer Rob O’ the Hedge. And so…

Eventually Sonic had the bright idea of convincing everyone to turn on Scourge first, and then they could all sort out their other issues after taking care of the threat he presented. Unfortunately Scourge didn’t want to go quietly, and he used some hidden “Anarchy Beryl” to transform into Super Scourge.

Welp, that escalated quickly. Rationalising that he had no chance against Super Scourge, Metal Sonic returned to his initial directive of trying to murderise Sonic instead.

Shadow stepped in to help, using Metal Sonic’s interdimensional engine with his own Chaos Control to warp them both out of there. So that was one less threat for Sonic to have to deal with. And that’s where the beginning of Sonic X #40 comes in.

Now this next part is interesting to me. When Shadow and Metal Sonic crashed Cream’s tea party, there was a Sonic right there, ripe for the murdering. And that was Metal’s objective, right? To disembowel Sonic and leave a trail of squishy hedgehog organs scattered across the landscape? But no, apparently not:

I guess the implication here is that Metal Sonic changed directives because he was now in an unknown dimension, as opposed to when he landed in the Antiverse. It raises the question of just how much Eggman knows about Scourge’s home planet, but considering that prior to his initial takeover of Mobius he travelled to Anti-Mobius to recruit Evil Sonic to locate the Giant Borg pieces scattered across the multiverse, it’s reasonable to assume that Eggman has documented it. Certainly if not then, then he might have been motivated to further research the Antiverse after Scourge invaded Freedom HQ and warned Eggman he’d also be conquering Eggman’s territories in due time.

So after bonding over having arrived here from other planets (I love the look on Shadow’s face when Sonic told him he was dead xD), Sonic gave Shadow a tour of Station Square.

Yeah, that kind of thing happens in Sonic X. Just smile and nod. The next stop on their little tour was Chris Thorndyke’s school, as Sonic wanted to give Chris a treat. Unfortunately he didn’t really prepare Shadow for this moment.

I love that third panel. xD Chris: This is mine now. See you later, Sonic. Sonic: Bye, Chris! Shadow: Help… me…

Meanwhile, Metal Sonic managed to locate the local Eggman’s base and came knocking at his front door. Bokkun, Bocoe and Decoe were all terrified of their visitor, but Eggman was giddy to be presented with a robotic version of his greatest enemy that he could boss around.

Shadow got to meet Sam Speed next, and ask him the question that I think all of us had been asking since the first episode of Sonic X:

I dunno, it still seems like overkill to me. Let’s just hope that police forces here in the real world don't start doing this too.

While Sam and the hedgehogs were catching up, they were unaware that the shadowy organisation S.O.N.I.C.X. (the same one that had turned Vector into a kaiju) were spying on them. 

Well that was a lucky break for the good guys.

Sonic and Shadow then went down to the beach and this is where Eggman caught up with them. He ordered Metal Sonic to attack, but it was a very brief battle.

In a panic Eggman raced back to his tower to check if he still had Shadow contained, puzzling over what he’d just seen when he found him right where he was supposed to be.

Sonic went back to Chris’ house and reconnected with all his friends, with Rouge and Chris both disappointed to find that Shadow had left.

And that’s where Sonic X, the comic, ended, with Sonic and friends anticipating their next adventure. 

As for Shadow and Metal Sonic, their story continued in issue #1 of Sonic Universe. Shadow found himself teleported to the Sol Dimension via Chaos Control, and teamed up with Blaze and Marine to take down Metal Sonic once and for all*.

*..well, sort of.

But that’s another story. As for this one, it’s fine. Certainly not the greatest thing Ian Flynn has ever written, but it’s a hell of a lot more enjoyable than any of the Ken Penders stories I wrote about recently. It’s got a few funny moments, and the stuff with Chris is genuinely touching, which isn’t easy to pull off with a character that the majority of the fanbase loathes. I never really got into the Sonic X comics, unfortunately. I think I read the first 15 issues before I got bored and stopped buying them. Which is a shame, because I’ve gone back to look at the other issues more recently and there were some fun stories in there, especially the ones about El Gran Gordo.

But this one feels like a nice way to end the series (in comic form, at least - the anime has a whole season left chronologically after this issue) as well as being the springboard to the new Sonic Universe series. Man, I miss Sonic Universe. I really hope we can get an equivalent side series to the IDW Sonic comics one day.

Speaking of the next adventure, next time I’ll be returning to the main Sonic comics as I look at a much darker time in the history of the series - the death of pre-boot ArchieSonic. I’ll be covering Sonic the Hedgehog #247 and Sonic Universe #50, but at this stage I’m not sure whether that will be one post or two. I’ll see how I go. See you then!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 56: The Writer's Barely-Disguised Fetish (part 1)

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon!

…sigh. Buckle in, kids. This one is going to be a bumpy ride.

Episode 56: The Writer's Barely-Disguised Fetish (part 1)

I mean, where do I even start with this one? Over its 23 year long run, there were sooooo many different fetishes that popped up in the comic at one time or another. I’d even go as far as to say that if you have a particular favourite fetish that it probably showed up in ArchieSonic at some point.

Are you into magical girls?

ArchieSonic’s got you covered, fam.

Are you into furry love triangles?

ArchieSonic’s got you covered, fam.

Are you into feet pics?

ArchieSonic’s got you covered, fam.

But maybe you’re more into cannibalism.

ArchieSonic’s got you covered, fam.

How about tickle torture?

ArchieSonic’s got you covered, fam.

What about leather and whips?

ArchieSonic’s got you covered, fam.

Or maybe asphyxiation and/or drowning?

ArchieSonic’s got you covered, fam.

How about vore?

ArchieSonic’s got you covered, fam.

Whatever the f*** this was?!

ArchieSonic’s (clap) got (clap) you (clap) covered (clap) fam.

But hey, no kink shaming here. I’m all for encouraging the kind of things you sick, twisted readers are into. 😀 But what about the writers themselves? What kind of weird stuff are they into? Well… look, I’m not going to say that Ken Penders has a fetish for tickle torture, but I will point out that he wrote that Tails scene I showed you earlier, and also drew this... “political statement.”

I’m just going to let you come to your own conclusions with that information. 

There is other stuff we could look at as well though. I’m not sure whether or not the rest of this stuff technically counts as “fetishes”, but considering the number of times it got written into the comic, I don’t think we can completely rule it out. For this section I’d like to concentrate on the three writers who contributed to ArchieSonic the most: Ken Penders, Karl Bollers, and Ian Flynn.

Ken Penders is first up, and there’s a lot to explore here during his time on the comic from 1994 - 2006. First of all, he had a habit of introducing zillions of new characters (usually echidnas). But as was pointed out by former ArchieSonic writer and colourist and current awesome person Aleah Baker, that topic might be a little too broad. So let’s break that down into several smaller categories. The first one is “Introducing secret family members that no one knew about and/or were supposed to be dead.” There were so many instances of this!

Sonic’s long-lost parents!

Sally’s long-lost brother and mother!

Antoine’s father!

Knuckles’ father!

Knuckles’ mother!

The League of Extroadinarily Racist Grandpas!

This is in stark contrast to both post-reboot ArchieSonic and the current IDWSonic run, where very few of the cast have family members making appearances.

Another one Penders loved to pull out was introducing unnecessary new characters who were there for the single purpose of replacing already established characters, usually those that were introduced in the games or SatAM. ‘Wait, who did Penders want to replace?’ you may be asking. Quite a few people, actually. For starters, he wanted to get rid of Princess Sally. Do you remember this infamous moment from the Endgame saga?

Sally eventually recovered from that fall, but Penders’ original intention was the death fake-out to be for realsies. Ken wanted Sally gone, as he felt that having King Acorn back gave us a character that served the same purpose as leader of the Freedom Fighters, and that Sally, in Ken’s own words, “cramped Sonic’s style.” Fortunately SEGA intervened and demanded that Sally live, partially because they were using her for marketing SEGAWorld Sydney. I got to visit that place as a kid, fun times. 

It wasn’t long after this that Ken pulled Sally’s long-lost brother Prince Elias out of his hat, whom I can only assume was also designed to serve a similar purpose to Sally.

Is that not bad enough? Well then how about the time when Ken killed off Dr. Robotnik and planned to replace him with this guy?

Meet Dr. Ian Droid (ugh, I hate the pun), a guy who basically boils down to “Dr. Robotnik but cooler because he was made by me, Ken Penders.” Who is this guy? What are his motivations? Buggered if I know. He was supposed to be the villain of Ken Penders’ original series, The Lost Ones (which only ever had a single issue released), and Knuckles: 20 Years Later (which was scrapped and replaced with the Mobius: 25 Years Later storyline).

Dr. Droid was implied to be a time-traveller who had fought Sonic and Knuckles in the past… or future… or whatever! We didn’t really find out anything else about this guy in the single issue he showed up in - a crossover with Image Comics. We should all be grateful that this bland knock-off never showed up again.

Lastly, whether or not he intended this, Ken Penders largely replaced the Chaotix. With whom? Why more echidnas, of course! The Chaotix may be an independent team nowadays, but back when they were first introduced ArchieSonic established that these guys were Knuckles' crew. I’ve talked about this before, but as the Knuckles series progressed the Chaotix tended to make fewer appearances, often becoming background characters whose page time was eaten up by Julie-Su, Constable Remington, and the League of Extroadinarily Racist Grandpas. Even in a three-issue arc called “The Chaotix Caper,” the Chaotix spent a large chunk of it hospitalised while Julie-Su and Remington investigated the case they had been working on.

Penders even used this arc to write Charmy out of the story for the next few years aside from a few brief cameo appearances.

Were there any other “fetishes,” Penders constantly wrote about? Well yes, and it’s a big one: daddy issues. There was King Max of course, a jerk mostly known for making typical boomer calls such as demanding Sally agree to an arranged marriage with Antoine or lose her right to the crown, or calling for all the robots who used to be Robotnik’s mindless slaves to be disassembled.

Obviously, Sally’s relationship with him was rather strained. But it was Knuckles’ father Locke, introduced and mostly written by Penders, that was quite possibly the most controversial character in the entire series. On the one hand, he was something of a guardian angel (pardon the pun) to Knuckles, watching out for him from afar and secretly helping him in his most desperate times. But wow, did he ever go about it the wrong way. Locke took Knuckles away from his mother at a young age to train him to be the next guardian of the Floating Island, and when that training was complete Knuckles had to watch his father yeet himself into a wall of fire, leaving him completely alone.

Obviously Locke didn’t actually kill himself but instead took up residency in a secret base called Haven where he could spy on his son all day long. But Knuckles didn’t know that and was left alone to suffer. When Knuckles finally reunited with him and wanted to know everything he’d been kept in the dark about up to this point, Locke was surprisingly forthcoming and finally came clean with the big secret.

Before Knuckles was born Locke had a vision of him in battle against forces he couldn’t comprehend, so Locke decided the only way to ensure his future son’s survival was to pump himself full of steroids before impregnating his wife and then blasting Knuckles’ egg with radiation from a Chaos Emerald. You all know the meme:

Penders was famously upset by other writers’ interpretations of Locke, especially when Ian Flynn became head writer of the comic and killed Locke off.

Penders had already previously written Locke’s death to take place during the future events of the Mobius 25 Years Later arc - and dedicated the story to his own late father - but despite his insistence otherwise, this was not considered to be the canonical future of the series but rather and "elseworlds" or "what if?" story.

It’s quite possible that this incident was the reason Penders decided to copyright all of “his” characters and start writing The Lara-Su Chronicles. But no matter what Ian wrote for Locke, nothing can be as bad as what Penders himself wrote for him:

Ick. I’m sorry, I thought I got all the gross stuff out of the way at the start of the post.

Tumblr has a limit to the number of images you can put in a single post, so I’m going to have to save Mr Bollers’ and Mr Flynn’s fetishes for next time. I’ll try to have that one out for you tomorrow. 🙂

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 63: Clip show to set up two-part finale 

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Well it’s taken me a long time to get here - I first started this series back in December of 2022! But we’re almost at the end of our investigation at long last.

Episode 63: Clip show to set up two-part finale 

This is a trope you see in media from time to time - they’ll make the second-to-last story of the series a clip show, recapping what happened earlier in the season. This serves two purposes - to catch viewers up on what’s happened so far, and also to save the crew time and budget that they can put towards making a spectacular finale instead. That said, the first purpose is probably a little rarer these days as almost all shows that have a serialised story will have a “Previously on…” segment at the beginning of each episode, and a longer one that recaps the entire season for the finale. Some shows really lean hard into this - take Supernatural for example, which set all 15 of its season finales to the music of, “Carry on My Wayward Son,” by Kansas.

In my opinion, the best ever pre-series finale clip show was done by Avatar: The Last Airbender. Instead of doing a typical clip show that re-used footage from previous episodes, Team Avatar attended a play that retold the story of their adventures up until this point. This episode leaned heavily into a lot of the show’s memes, such as the play acknowledging that it would be best to skip over The Great Divide, what most fanss feel is the worst episode of the series. Aang and friends were upset with the way the actors on stage were portraying them, with Aang being outraged he was being played by a bald woman, Sokka annoyed that his actor’s jokes weren’t funny, and Zuko and Katara insisting that they don’t spend all day long talking about honour and hope, respectively.

The only exception was Toph, who was delighted to be portrayed by a gigantic buff dude who overcame his blindness by using echo-location screaming.

But what about in ArchieSonic? Sure, we had clip shows. And we had a number of different stories one could count as series finales. But we didn’t really get a pre-finale clip show episode. So what did we get instead?

While it wasn’t in the final ever-published issue of Sonic the Hedgehog, the story “Panic in the Sky,” which ran in issues 284 - 287, more or less serves as a finale to the series. I’ll go into that more when I get to it. Today I want to talk about the issue that came before those, Sonic #283. Taking place right before the climax of the Sonic Unleashed adaptation, at this point of the story the Freedom Fighters had managed to get their hands on all the Chaos Emeralds and Gaia Temple keys, and were preparing to launch their plan to restore the planet. Rather than visiting each of the Gaia Temples across the world one at a time like in the game, the Freedom Fighters planned to take advantage of the Gaia Gate to access all the temples at once from a central location. The idea was that they could quickly slip inside via the gate, avoiding Eggman’s armies that were guarding the temples and restoring the planet before Eggman even realised what was happening. But to do this they needed help, so Sonic and Sally did a Discord call with their friends and allies around the world. 

This had the benefit of also acting as an almost-clipshow for the readers, catching them up with what had been happening and preparing them for the climax. 

Everyone in the call agreed to help and the Freedom Fighters signed off in good spirits, confident that they had managed to pull one over on Eggman. However…

Tails Doll was able to spy on the broadcast without the Freedom Fighters realising it, and so Eggman quickly found out about their secret plan.

While initially furious that the Freedom Fighters had tried to trick him, Eggman quickly realised he could turn their plans against them and got to work hosting his own secret Zoom call.

How did this turn out for everyone? I’ll get into that next episode!

There was of course another story that was originally intended to be the grand finale for ArchieSonic, and that was the Endgame arc that took place in Sonic #47 - 50. While the series obviously didn’t end there, I feel like we should have a look at that one too. So did we get a clip show in the previous issue, Sonic #46? Well… not really. 

The closest we got was Uncle Chuck presenting video evidence to the Freedom Fighters that Robotnik had sabotaged his original roboticiser design. Notably this included footage of Sonic’s own father being roboticised, which bizarrely Sonic didn’t seem to notice or comment on.

That seems like quite an oversight. Who wrote this anyway? Three guesses it’s-

…oh. Well, I was partially right at least. 😛

While this issue wasn’t really a clip show, it did have a lot of set up for the Endgame arc.

This included the resolution of Knuckles’ quest to find King Acorn’s missing sword that could supposedly restore his health…

…the introduction of the Wolfpack Freedom Fighters (who had previously only been seen in SatAM and were making their first appearance in the comics)...

…and the revelation that there might be a spy among us.

Sorry, I had to. 😛 Seriously though, the suggestion that someone among the various Freedom Fighter groups might be a traitor was a pretty serious allegation, especially right before the big Endgame event the readers knew was coming. And there were numerous candidates for who the traitor could be.

Geoffrey pointed the finger at Uncle Chuck, whose spy network had failed to notice the coming of the Death Egg and had already had one confirmed traitor working for them.

Antoine accused Geoffrey, who he claimed had stolen the D’Coolette family’s legacy of the Rebel Underground.

Also, the way he attempted to execute Sonic just for punching him in the face certainly didn’t make him look any less suspicious.

And then there was Drago, a new character who had been introduced in that same issue, who wasn’t even part of the SatAM Wolfpack, and who apparently had a habit of wandering off unsupervised. Hmmmm…

HMMMMMMMM.

But wait! The following issue hit us with the possibility that Sonic himself might possibly be the traitor! …more on that later though. For now, let's finish our discussion of #46 with my very favourite moment:

Leave it to the dragon to have the sick burn! :D

One other clipshow that I wanted to address - and haven’t previously in either of the other two episodes I dedicated to this topic - comes from Sonic #72.

I think I did bring this one up at some point in a different topic, but not in the context of a clipshow episode. This story was about King Max making a broadcast to his people only for the airwaves to be hacked to instead show a pirated broadcast telling the life story of the late Dr. Robotnik.

This clipshow wasn’t set prior to a finale, but rather just before the beginning of a new era in the comic - the rise of Robo-Robotnik (or as he would later be called, Dr. Eggman). This was very cleverly done if you ask me.

It not only reminded the readers of Robotnik’s backstory but also of his encounter with Robo-Robotnik back in Sonic #22, hinting at who the new villain’s real identity so that the big reveal in #75 didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. On top of that the clipshow also foreshadowed things to come in the next year or two in the comic, such as the return of Overlanders to the planet, and specifically, Robotnik’s brother.

Well played, Karl Bollers!

Are there any other clip shows that I missed, in this episode or any of the previous ones? Let me know in the comments! Next time I’m going to start wrapping things up, because it’s finally time to talk about the two-part four-part finale! See you then!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Well team, looks like I forgot some stories again and so now I need to do another part 2!

Episode 60: Stranded in the desert (part 2)

Alright, so you may recall that last time I talked about how Enerjak stranded Knuckles and Archimedes in the Sandopolis zone. Well HappyTimes reminded me that it seems like stranding people in the desert seems to be part of the package of being Enerjak, no matter which echidna you are under that mask. Another instance of this happening is one I’ve talked about before - remember when Enerjak and the Dark Legion left the Chaotix for dead in the desert during the Dark Vengeance story in Knuckles #7 - 9?

One might assume, “Well, maybe that’s just a Dimitri thing?” But nope, Knuckles did it when he became Enerjak too! Tricked by Dr. Finitevus into taking on the mantle of Enerjak and becoming corrupted by it, Enerjaknuckles’ first order of business was to liberate his fellow echidnas of the dingos that had been terrorising them.

First he removed their cybernetics and weapons and yeeted the mooks into Sandopolis, and then he wiped out their city and their leader, General Kage Von Stryker, from the face of the earth. Or island. Whatever.

I wonder if Ian did that deliberately when he wrote that story, and if so, what does that imply? Was it a case of Enerjaknuckles trying to be like his predecessor? “I saw Dimitri do it, so I guess I should do it too”? Or is the motivation to yeet enemies into deserts just an instinct that’s hard-wired into the Enerjak curse? Was it something the other Enerjaks that came before Dimitri also did? Hmmmmm...

…honestly, it’s probably none of those and I’m just looking too hard into something that was just a coincidence. xD

Out of all of the people that either Enerjak stranded in the desert, the dingoes actually seemed to be the ones who got the best deal. Helmut, would you care to explain?

I can't help but wonder if that's the same disappearing oasis that Knuckles and Archimedes found, and if so, what made it actually stay in place this time? My best guess is that after Knuckles had gotten everything he needed from it that Locke camouflaged it with his magical Brotherhood Haven technology. When the other guardians and Haven fell, maybe that camouflaged or cloaking wore off? Who knows?

Are there any other stories I missed from ArchieSonic that involved being stranded in the desert? Let me know in the comments! Next time I’ll be looking at yet another story of being stranded somewhere inconvenient, this time the snow. See you then!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 57: Can't eat favourite food

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! We’re getting close to the end of the series now, so what classic cartoon trope are we looking at today?

Episode 57: Can't eat favourite food 

Ahh, okay. I feel like this one’s a little less common in mainstream media, to be honest. When it does show up, it’s often used to signal to either the audience or the other characters that there’s something seriously wrong with that character. They could be sick, or under the effects of a curse or spell, or could even be a villain disguised as the main character.

That being said, I can think of two instances when Sonic couldn’t stomach the idea of eating his trademark favourite food (and one instance when everyone else couldn’t stomach it either), and none of them were used to hint that there was something wrong with Sonic. In fact, our first instance went in the exact opposite direction. That would be when Sonic and Tails wound up in Sandblast City in issues #62 and 63. I’ll be covering this one in a bit more detail in an upcoming episode, but the long story short is that Sonic and Tails found themselves in a city full of people who idolised Sonic for defeating Robotnik, and were hoping to trick him into staying with them full time to fight the constant robot attacks on their city. How did they go about trying to convince Sonic to stay?

By pampering him with around the clock massages and chilli dogs, of course!

At first Sonic seemed thrilled at all the attention he was getting, while Tails was eager to just leave Sandblast City and get back to their mission of hunting down the evil wizard Ixis Naugus. However at some point Sonic realised that he was being played, but kept up the charade so that the Sandblasters wouldn’t figure out that he was on to them. 

When even Sonic the Hedgehog thinks he’s had too many chilli dogs, that’s when you know you’ve crossed a line.

An earlier instance of Sonic not being able to stomach the idea of eating chilli dogs happened way back in issue #11.

This extremely trippy story once again saw Sonic gorge himself on too many chilli dogs, and this time it caused him to have a bad dream.

Like, really bad.

When Sonic awoke he solemnly vowed to eat more responsibly.

…that vow lasted all of thirty seconds. xD

I’m reluctant to bring up this last story again, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t. You may remember in a previous episode that I discussed how Sonic #33 is an issue that lives in infamy, and its plot kicks off once again because of chilli dogs.

Yup, the Freedom Fighters were so sick of chilli dogs that they fell for the most obvious trap ever. Seriously, Team Rocket had traps that were more subtle, and the Freedom Fighters still fell for this. That said, I would like to acknowledge that this comic was decades ahead of its time, showing both the importance of wearing masks to help prevent spreading disease (although Rotor really ought to be wearing a mask too) and the dangers of ordering from fast food delivery companies like Doordash and Uber Eats. 😛

Now if Tails or Rotor had been spared from the French Fryrus, they probably would have gotten to work trying to synthesise a vaccine. Sonic isn’t really brainy enough to do that, so he settled for the next best thing:

Yup, shrinking himself down to a size small enough to run down Rotor’s throat and try to punch the virus into submission. And it was here that he met…

…I can’t. I can’t with this stupid issue, I just can’t. 😛 The puns by themselves are bad enough, but the idea of all the Freedom Fighters’ immune systems being sentient creatures who just couldn’t be bothered fighting this disease annoys me.

Anyway, Sonic was able to fight off the grunts easily enough, but struggled a bit more when he got to the boss fights, Paris-site (sigh) and Fever.

Fortunately for him, Rotor’s (SIGH) Auntie Bodies was inspired to take up the fight again.

She also called her counterparts in the other Freedom Fighters and told them to get off their lazy butts and do their jobs too.

So in the end the day was saved, and Sonic gave everyone the perfect food for when you’re sick:

Well, close enough.

Were there any other instances of Sonic or other characters in ArchieSonic not being able to eat their favourite foods? Remind me of any that I missed in the comments! The next episode I'll be looking at is one that arguably fits the entire Sonic franchise: “We have to save the environment, and so do you!” See you then!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 58: We have to save the environment, and so do you!

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Hey kids, did you know that saving the environment is a totally radical thing to do?

Episode 58: We have to save the environment, and so do you! 

Environmentalism was a big part of cartoons in the 80’s and 90’s, which often would have episodes dedicated to telling kids about the dangers of pollution or the importance of recycling. There were some cartoons whose entire premise even revolved around this, such as Captain Planet and the Planeteers, and Widget the World Watcher. 

Many ArchieSonic stories used environmentalism as a plot device, especially in the early issues. But that’s to be expected when the main villain of the series likes polluting just for the sake of polluting. Honestly, Dr. Robotnik would have fit in quite well with the Captain Planet villains. 

Let’s start by looking at issue #3’s story, “The Bomb Bugs Me!” where Sonic overheard Robotnik planning to wipe out his enemies with a bomb. The Freedom Fighters decided to set up a fake protest to keep Robotnik and his forces occupied while they stole the bomb. 

This led to a pretty funny sequence where Rotor attempted to sneak into Robotnik’s office in disguise. 

But when they got the bomb back to Knothole and attempted to disarm it, it turned out to be not what they were expecting:

Whoopsie doopsie.

Then there was issue #7’s story, “Uncle Chuck’s Treasure.” After coming across a treasure map belonging to Sonic’s Uncle Chuck, the Freedom Fighters headed out to the Natural Park to track the treasure down. Things didn’t exactly go to plan though.

To make matters worse, a pair of patrolling Swatbots overheard the Freedom Fighters were on a treasure hunt and informed Dr Robotnik, who came roaring in with a bunch of badniks to ruin the day. 

Sonic cleverly turned the toxic environment against the robots, but Robotnik managed to get away with the treasure. 

For all the good it did him. 😛

Issue #11’s story, “The Good, the Bad and the Hedgehog,” started out with Robotnik trashing the environment again, but took an unexpected turn when Sonic tried to take a shortcut to get there quicker and accidentally wound up on Anti-Mobius, encountering his evil twin for the first time. 

But of course Sonic managed to defeat him and get home in time to save the day.

Issue #12’s story switched gears a little bit with Robotnik being savvy enough to use his anti-environmentalism to lure Sonic into a trap. When Robotnik started cutting down the Great Forest with his new mobile monster chainsaw, Sonic of course raced to stop him. 

But the chainsaw secretly housed a time teleporter that was able to zap Sonic when he got close enough and send him back to dinosaur times. …and then this happened.

Bleh.

There are probably other issues from those early days that I could cite, but you get the idea. After the comics had been around a couple of years there was less focus on stories about pollution, but they still popped up every now and then. One of the most significant stories to focus on saving the environment was in issue #110. In a prior issue, Princess Sally had turned over all intelligence they had on Dr. Eggman to their allies in Station Square. Unfortunately Station Square’s defense systems were run by an AI, and after that AI had analysed all the data it had decided that Dr. Eggman was a threat that had to be taken care of immediately. Thus it decided to go full Skynet and launch nuclear missiles at Robotropolis. That was great news in that Eggman would be wiped out, but not so great news for the residents of Knothole, who would get poisoned by the nuclear radiation.

Sonic and Tails raced to Robotropolis to warn Eggman of the incoming peril so that he would shoot down the missiles before they got too close, but Eggman smugly reminded them that he didn’t need to do that - his impenetrable forcefield would keep his city safe while the surrounding environment got wasted. Luckily Sonic and Tails were able to interfere and made sure that Eggman only activated the forcefield after the missiles were already within its radius. 

Eggman and Snively were robots and so they were eventually able to download themselves into new bodies, but they had to set up a new base of operations because from this moment onwards Robotropolis was a nuclear wasteland contained within a radiation-proof bubble. 

You would think that after getting nuked that that would be the last we’d hear of Robotropolis, right? Well actually no - that radioactive wasteland actually came back as an ongoing plot point. When Sonic returned home from space in issue #130, Eggman decided to give him a homecoming present. And what does one get the hedgehog who has everything? 

Why, more nuclear missiles of course! One was aimed at Knothole, and the other at Station Square. And deciding that overkill was just enough kill, Eggman decided to throw in a bonus gift by sending his robotic armies to destroy the forcefield keeping Robotropolis’ nuclear radiation safely contained. While Sonic and Tails led a team to Old Megapolis Harbour to stop the missile launch, King Acorn’s forces, led by Antoine’s father General D’Coolette, defended Robotropolis from the incoming horde of Swatbots. 

Knuckles, Julie-Su and Mighty came to lend a hand too, and they were also joined by Rouge and the forces of GUN. But play of the day goes to Vector and Amy Rose, who single-handedly took down the first waves of invaders.

The ruins of Robotropolis wouldn’t come up again for awhile, until after the AI ADAM attempted to take over the planet with self-replicating nanites. After that plot was thwarted Nicole took control of the nanites and used them to create the city of New Mobotropolis, which was incredibly convenient when Eggman bombed Knothole and everyone needed a new place to live. 

New Mobotropolis got its energy from a power plant that siphoned radiation from the ruins of Robotropolis and converted it into safe, clean energy. So in issue #207 the Iron King attacked Robotropolis with the intention of taking away the Freedom Fighters’ power source. 

King Acorn’s armies tried to fight him off unsuccessfully, and Sonic and Monkey Khan also struggled to slow him down when they showed up to join the fight. Sonic managed to outsmart the Iron King though, talking him into sparing the shield protecting the environment if Sonic and Monkey Khan allowed him to smash the power siphon that powered New Mobotropolis. 

The forces of evil were not happy when they later found out they’d been played.

After Eggman returned to power he also tried to strike at New Mobotropolis’ power source, this time by sending in an undercover agent to strike from within: Operation: Deadly Cuddles.

I will never for the life of me be able to figure out why Evan Stanley decided to design the Tails Doll’s monster form to look like a… that, but I guess I get the genital… er, general idea of what she was going for. 😛

In the post-reboot era of the comic, one could argue that the entire series became about saving the environment. With the entire planet shattered in the Sonic Unleashed adaptation, the main goal of the heroes became to save the planet and put the pieces back together. But there are two environmentally-focused stories that immediately spring to my mind, both of them taking place from issues in issues #260 - 263: Waves of Change and Light in the Dark (and its immediate follow up, Consequences). 

Sonic, Rotor and Amy were sent on a mission to locate a possible Gaia Temple on the coast, presumably somewhere in Soumerica. What they found instead was an underwater shrine that was being used as a chao garden, under the care of the priestess Coral, along with her apprentice Pearly and friend Razor. 

Coral’s job was to care for the chao, in particular Aquarius, who helped to maintain the shield that protected the nearby city of Meropis. Coral was still somewhat new to her position and under a lot of pressure, facing prejudice from the royal family and armies of Meropis who were blaming her for everything that was going wrong and thought that Princess Udina should have gotten the job instead. One of the problems Coral was being blamed for was pollution being washed into the city that was only being kept at bay by the shield. When Aquarius the Chao failed to be reborn from her cocoon on schedule, the King and Queen threw a temper-tantrum and stripped Coral of her title as priestess. Things got pretty bad as the devastated Coral was unable to keep the shield up, letting the dark gaia monsters into the city. 

It took the intervention of the Freedom Fighters, Chaos, Tikal, and the newly reborn and now-immortal Aquarius to save the day.

Thankfully with the God of Destruction Water vouching for Coral, the King and Queen saw reason and restored her title. The cause of the pollution plaguing their city was also discovered:

While Sonic, Amy and Rotor were busy in Meropis, Sally was leading Tails, Bunnie and Antoine on a mission to recover a Chaos Emerald. Sally had managed to hack Dr. Eggman’s files, and she and Nicole discovered a mine where Eggman had his forces digging for one of the mystical gems. The plan was to disable the security sensors, get in, find the emerald, and get back out without Eggman ever knowing they were there, so that he would waste his time and resources drilling for something that wasn’t even there any more. However that plan changed when they got inside the mine and saw it for themselves. 

Deciding to do their bit to save this environmental wonder, the heroes let the security sensors detect them and fought off badniks and an E-1000 robot to escape the mine with their prize, giving Eggman no more reasons to continue drilling there. 

The Freedom Fighters knew that there would be consequences for letting Eggman know that they'd stolen something he'd already called dibs on, but they decided they could live with that.

Are there any other environmentally-focused stories in ArchieSonic that I missed? Let me know in the comments! Next week I’ll be covering episode 59: “stranded in the ocean.” Sonic’s favourite episode, clearly. :P

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 46: Unusually serious "drugs are bad" episode.

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Well friends, it’s finally time. Today we need to discuss A Very Special Episode.

Episode 46: Unusually serious "drugs are bad" episode.

I have three words for you: Lemon. Sundrop. Dandelion. Yes, we’re finally going to talk about one of Ken Penders’ more infamous stories. But then again, does the word infamous become redundant after a certain point? Does anyone have a count of how many infamous stories Penders wrote? A lot. There’s a lot. Anyway, let’s talk about The Chaotix Caper!

Taking place in Knuckles #13 - 15, the Chaotix Caper chronicled the Chaotix’s efforts to keep the Floating Island safe while Knuckles was busy on the planet's surface, guiding the Lost Tribe to the promised land (long story). Our favourite detectives (pre-detective days) had their hands full investigating cases of food poisoning, while also having former Dark Legionnaire Julie-Su thrust on them. This put a lot of stress on the team as Julie-Su had supposedly betrayed them to Kragok several issues prior during the return of Enerjak. While Espio and Mighty were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, considering that Kragok had ordered her to execute them and she’d left them alive with a chance to escape, Vector was not having it and took every opportunity he could to pick a fight with her.

The story opened with a cab driver named Harry discovering Charmy in an alley screaming for help, as his best friend Mello was having what appeared to be a seizure. Harry rushed them to the hospital as quickly as he could but the doctors were unable to save Mello. Constable Remington and the Chaotix showed up quickly afterwards, hearing that a patient resembling Charmy had been brought in. To their surprise, they discovered that Charmy had been able to change his size to that of a typical (albeit short) Mobian this entire time, but had never done so around them for some reason.

…that's suspiciously retcon-ny, but okay, whatever. 

In Remington’s office, Charmy explained that his friend Mello had convinced him to go to the newly reopened Happyland amusement park with him. The rest of the Chaotix were surprised to hear this, as Happyland was where the Chaotix had first been formed after Renfield T. Rodent and Dr. Robotnik had used it to imprison the Freedom Fighters and depower Knuckles. But Charmy explained:

After Charmy had told his story, Remington explained that Charmy had been a number of similar cases to what had happened to Mello recently, with numerous children being found with Lemon Sundrop Dandelion poisoning. Yes, subtle. 

…okay, admittedly it was subtle enough that I didn’t notice it back when I first read this at the tender and naive age of 15. :P

Don't ask me why Jughead Jones is a doped-up echidna child now, because I have no idea.

At any rate, Remington asked the Chaotix to go investigate Happyland, and all of them except for Julie-Su showed an astounding lack of common sense when they decided to eat something at a place where they suspected the food was laced with drugs.

The results are predictable:

And thus the titular Chaotix were effectively written out of the rest of the story as they were all admitted to hospital.

We even got to see a rather gory page of Charmy in surgery.

Thanks for that, Kenny P.

The story then became about Julie-Su and Remington tracking down the bad guys who were lacing the chilli dogs, with Mighty, Espio and Vector only recovering towards the end, just in time to join the fight against Downtown Ebony Hare’s forces.

As for Charmy, he was busy having flashback lore dumps.

Turned out that he was actually the Prince and heir to the throne of the Goldenhive Colony, who ran away to the Floating Island because he didn’t want the responsibility. At the end of the story he returned to Goldenhive to accept his birthright and return Mello’s body to his parents.

And thus Charmy was written out of the book completely for six whole years, except for one story where Knuckles asked him for help after everyone on the Floating Island was trapped in another dimension by the Dark Legion.

…no, I’m still not going to explain why Knuckles is green.

So look, I don’t want this to devolve into another Penders rant, especially since I did that in the previous post. …but that’s pretty much what’s going to happen, so let’s all just try to come to terms with it. :) 

So, the whole drugged chili dogs plot point in this story. Was Penders intentionally trying to make A Very Special Episode? If he was then he really didn’t accomplish that. My understanding of the A Very Special Episode trope is that the point is to highlight the dangers of drugs and show the character struggling to overcome their addiction. But none of the characters ate the laced chilli dogs knowing what they were, and despite Remington saying that the unnamed victims had become addicted to Lemon Sundrop Dandelion overnight, we didn’t actually see anyone struggling with addiction. Granted this is a Sonic the Hedgehog comic book for kids, so that kind of thing would have been bizarrely out of place. ...more than what we got already was.

Even ignoring the weird drugs angle, the story has plenty of other problems. The biggest one to me is the way the Chaotix are used (or rather, they were are not used) in a story named after them. They very stupidly ate food that they knew might be drugged - seriously, that has got to be one of the dumbest choices any character ever made in the entire ArchieSonic series, and it’s an insult to their intelligence that the writer thought any of them would do that.

…okay, maybe modern day Charmy would be dumb enough, but this story came out before he was retconned back into childhood. Anyway this is a problem we saw a lot with Penders’ writing, where he sidelined the SEGA and SatAM cast in favour of using his own original characters instead. The Chaotix were definitely some of the characters who got the most neglect under his pen, in my opinion. But don't just take my word for it - this is a list of the Chaotix’s appearances from their introduction in 1996’s Knuckles’ Chaotix special up to this story, which came out four years later:

In the Knuckles’ Chaotix special the team was introduced (although Vector had already been introduced prior in the Triple Trouble special). They helped fight Metal Sonic and then played a game of tag.After that they were kidnapped by Archimedes. They remained in his custody until the first issue of the Knuckles mini-series, which came out five months later, and immediately afterwards they were captured and brainwashed by Enerjak until Knuckles saved the day.

In the Super Sonic vs. Hyper Knuckles special, Knuckles discussed his fears of the Floating Island falling out of the sky with Mighty, and asked him to guard the island while he tried to get another Chaos Emerald as a backup power source.

In the Sonic-Quest mini series, the Chaotix helped Knuckles fight off the giant Burrobots that tried to steal the two Chaos Emeralds on the island.

In Sonic #50 Espio used his stealth to restrain Sonic, who had been framed for murdering Princess Sally. After that misunderstanding was cleared up, Knuckles asked Espio to gather the rest of the Chaotix and guard the island while he went to help Sonic.

In Knuckles #1 - 3, Knuckles and the Chaotix were captured by the Dark Legion. They escaped and foght the Legion in their underground base.

In Knuckles #4 - 6 Vector fought a Legionaire that turned out to be Julie-Su. Knuckles, Archimedes and Julie-Su went to investigate seismic activity nearby while the Chaotix were told to stand by and wait for Knuckles to call them if he needs help.

In Knuckles #7 - 9, the Chaotix were captured offpage by the Dark Legion (or Enerjak himself, probably). They attempted to escape but were knocked out by Julie-Su and left tied to stakes in the desert to die before being rescued by Knuckles.

In Knuckles 10 - 12, the Chaotix discussed whether or not Julie-Su had reformed. They were then summoned by Constable Remington, who told them that they’d been deputised to guard the island in Knuckles’ absence and that Julie-Su would be working with them.

Can you see the problem? While they got to take part in a few battles, the Chaotix as written by Penders mostly existed to either be kidnapped or to play offscreen guard dogs. At the time it came out I was really looking forward to The Chaotix Caper, because I thought that we’d finally get to see them get a chance to properly shine. But no, they were once again taken out of the action and the comic became The Adventures of Constable Remington and Julie-Su.

If you want another example, scroll back up and look at the covers for these three issues. Remington and Julie-Su are both front and centre on the cover of issue #14 - they've hijacked the story from the Chaotix. Also, while Julie-Su is featured on the covers for both issues 14 and 15, Espio doesn't appear on any of the three covers.

And then there's Charmy being written out of the story entirely. I have no idea why Penders decided to get rid of him - the only explanation I can think of is that maybe he thought Knuckles had too many friends and he (Penders) didn’t know what to do with them. But instead of cutting back on his precious OCs, of course he decided to get rid of an official SEGA character. A SEGA character who’d only appeared in one game at that point, but a SEGA character nonetheless.

Things wouldn’t really get any better for the Chaotix after this story either, with them mostly being side characters only making occasional appearances as the focus shifted more and more to Penders' beloved Brotherhood of Guardians. Mighty and Espio would eventually get their own backup stories in the book, but by then it was too little too late and the Knuckles series was cancelled around that time.

There’s other things I could talk about too, such as Knuckles being mostly absent from his own comic book except for brief cameos when his father and grandfather spied on him fighting a biker gang...

...or how on the nose the gangster Downtown Ebony Hare was...

...or the creative team's weird pitch for an echidna Rugrats reboot.

...no, I don't know what they were thinking either. Perhaps they were taking some of that Lemon Sundrop Dandelion themselves. :P Anyway, I think I’ve probably ranted long enough. 

Were there any other unusually serious “Drugs are bad,” stories in ArchieSonic that I missed? What did you think of The Chaotix Caper? Let me know in the comments! Next time we’ll be going into space again for episode 47: evil alien invasion!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

A follow up to yesterday's post about the Iron Dominion...

Hey folks, just one quick thing. I forgot to include one of my favourite things from the Iron Dominion arc, so let's get right into it!

Oh HELL yeah! I am totally here for Sally beating the ever-loving snot out of Fiona! ...and apparently I'm not the only one!

:D

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 64 - 65: Two Multi-part Finale (part 8: The lead-up to the death of pre-boot ArchieSonic)

Welcome back to my investigation of how Archie Comics’ Sonic the Hedgehog series was actually a syndicated cartoon from the 80’s and 90’s!

Well friends, it’s finally time for me to talk about the moment that changed the ArchieSonic comics forever. Almost, at least. Before I talk about the final issues of pre-boot ArchieSonic, I think a brief summary of how they got to that point is in order.

Hahahahaha! Brief! Oh, that’s rich! Let’s be honest - there was so much that happened leading up to the activation of the second Genesis Wave that it really deserves a post all of its own to catch everyone up to speed.

After the Iron Dominion was ousted from New Mobotropolis, Sonic and his friends had a bit of a respite. Well it was a respite compared to what they had recently gone through, anyway. Sonic and Sally caught up with their friend Lupe, newly crowned chieftain of the Wolf Pack Nation, and helped her negotiate a peace with a rival tribe. Bunnie was reunited with her long lost Uncle Beauregard, only to find that he’d had to join Eggman’s forces out of desperation to survive. Antoine and Bunnie finally got to go on their honeymoon courtesy of Tails and his submarine, but the happy occasion was rudely interrupted by the Battlebird Armada. Just your everyday shenanigans for the heroes of New Mobotropolis. The real problems began when Geoffrey St. John asked Sonic to help him retrieve a Chaos Emerald from the Special Zone, at which point Geoffrey left Sonic incapacitated and took the Emerald for himself.

It was then revealed that the entire time the Freedom Fighters had known him, Geoffrey had secretly been an apprentice to the wizard Ixis Naugus, who was currently an insane, drooling shell of his former self. Geoffrey used the Chaos Emerald to restore Naugus’ mind, and together they started plotting to take the throne from King Elias.

While the former King Max had been trapped in the Zone of Silence he had sworn fealty to Naugus for his own protection, so Naugus felt he had a legitimate claim to the throne. To help in his takeover, Naugus used his magic to increase the fear and mistrust the citizens of New Mobotropolis had for Nicole, who had been mind-controlled (albeit briefly) to help the Iron Queen take control of the city during the recent invasion of the Iron Dominion. When Naugus came to the city council claiming that he could protect everyone from Nicole, some of the councillors were scared enough to think he was worth listening to, as was a large chunk of the public. 

Before the rightful King could be determined, Eggman launched his new Death Egg and the Freedom Fighters scrambled to try and stop him. Sonic and Sally managed to infiltrate the battleship, but Sally got gunned down while Sonic was distracted fighting a new Silver Sonic.

At this moment Eggman activated the Genesis Wave, rewriting the entire world to become an adaptation of Sonic 1 and 2 but with the Freedom Fighters along for the ride. Super Sonic was able to undo the Genesis Wave and restore the world to normal, even rewinding time enough to be able to save Sally from being BLAM-BLAM-BLAMed, but unfortunately this didn’t last. Eggman had a backup weapon ready to roboticise the entire planet and Sally sacrificed herself to destroy it, becoming a robot herself.

Things quickly got worse from there. Eggman escaped with his shiny new Mecha Sally, and Naugus was able to seize the throne. Bunnie was accidentally crystallised by Naugus when he was deflecting a laser attack on the city, and when Naugus tried to reverse the crystallisation he also accidentally removed her cyborg parts, restoring her to a fully flesh and blood rabbit. While Bunnie was initially ovejoyed, she she soon became concerned that without her bionic parts and special abitilies, she would no longer be able to be a Freedom Fighter. The city was devastated in an attack from the Battlebird Armada, with King Naugus forbidding Nicole from helping to rebuild. Geoffrey was put on trial for treason against the former King Elias and found guilty, but was officially pardoned by Naugus and continued to serve him. For the safety of his family Elias left New Mobotropolis, and while protecting his convoy the Freedom Fighters came under attack by Eggman.

Antoine valiantly saved Elias and his family from Metal Sonic but was blown up in the process. He survived but was left comatose, and Bunnie, wracked with guilt for not being able to protect him, also left the city, “To make things right.” Nicole was also overcome by guilt and grief at being unable to protect her friends, and with the citizens and the council both demanding her removal, she agreed to be exiled to Freedom HQ.

With the team at their lowest of lows and only himself, Tails and Amy remaining, Sonic dejectedly declared that the Freedom Fighters were finished. Tails and Amy weren’t going to stand for that though, and helped Sonic to not give in to his despair.

At the same time Rotor had resigned from the city council in protest of their treatment of Nicole, and so he worked with Sonic, Tails and Amy to figure out their next move. Rotor ended up staying in New Mobotropolis and becoming the leader of a new group of heroes with the mission of protecting the city: Team Freedom.

For this team Rotor recruited Big the Cat, Cream the Rabbit (and Cheese the Chao), and Heavy and Bomb, two robots that had formerly served on Geoffrey’s Secret Service team but had had to be destroyed after Eggman had captured them and reprogrammed them to take the Royal Family hostage. Meanwhile Sonic, Tails and Amy formed Team Fighters, and flew off in the Tornado to take the fight to Eggman. 

Unbeknownst to Team Freedom and Team Fighters, there was a third team operating from the shadows to keep the people safe. Elias’ departure from New Mobotropolis had actually been a ruse, and he soon returned to subvert his successor’s regime. Working together with former intelligence head Harvey Who, Elias found himself the leader of an extremely unlikely group of individuals. First on the roster was Silver the Hedgehog, who was back from the future to try and prevent the end of the world (again). On a quest to root out a “traitor” that had destroyed the Freedom Fighters, Silver had accused first Sonic, then Rotor, and now on this most recent trip back in time, Antoine.

As you can see, that didn’t exactly go well. But afterwards Silver had met Harvey Who, who had offered to help him discover and prevent the real cause of the destruction of the Freedom Fighters. Leeta and Lyco of the former Wolf Pack Freedom Fighters travelled to New Mobotropolis to sign up, and former Substitute Freedom Fighter Larry Lynx the super jinx also joined, hoping to make a difference for his city after having been absent from the comics since the 1990’s (aside from a small cameo where Rotor had accidentally blown him up). But perhaps the most surprising member of this team was a newly rebuilt model of Metal Sonic - specifically, the one that had tried to murder Sonic and Tails immediately following the Sonic Adventure arc. This model had been powered by a… power gem (really creative name there, Ken Penders) that had enhanced his speed, given him the ability to repair himself, and also caused him to develop a personality. Sonic had fought this Metal Sonic atop an active volcano and tried to reason with him, telling him he could live his own life rather than being ruled by a thirst for power and vengeance. Metal Sonic had been unconvinced at first, but when Tails refused to abandon his friend despite the volcano starting to erupt, something clicked in the robot’s programming.

Metal Sonic sacrificed himself to hold back the lava flow long enough for Sonic and Tails to escape, and was reduced to a molten husk. Much later back in the present day, Uncle Chuck had gotten his hands on the power gem that still contained Metal Sonic’s personality and programming, and combined it with the parts of other previously destroyed Metal Sonics to create a new robot, Shard.

And so after all the lows and losses they’d recently experienced, things finally seemed to be looking up for the heroes.

Team Freedom worked well together, managing to save the city from an attacking Eggman as well as several bizarre “accidents” that could have seen many people hurt if they’d not intervened.

Team Fighters managed to intercept Eggman at a number of locations where he was causing trouble, and while they were unable to capture Mecha Sally on any of those occasions, they were at least able to save the local citizens and disrupt Eggman’s plans. With with some help from Mina Mongoose, Nicole was able to overcome her grief and guilt and start working with the Secret Freedom Fighters. These masked heroes secretly provided backup for Team Freedom from the shadows, as well as stopping King Naugus’ plot to take over the city council with a mind control spell.

Surprisingly they got some help in this mission from none other than Geoffrey. Naugus’ apprentice had been aiding the wizard because he legitimately thought he would be an improvement over the rule of the Acorns and would provide stability, but started to turn against him when he realised Naugus was still a moustache-twirling villain with plans for world domination. 

But while things were getting better for the comic characters, there was a big problem behind the scenes at Archie Comics, and that problem’s name was Ken Penders. I won’t go into detail because it’s a long and tedious whole thing, and many others have written about it better than I. But to cut a long story short, Ken Penders was trying to claim copyright ownership of the characters he’d created back when he was working on the Sonic series, and he and Archie Comics eventually wound up in court because of it. As Penders was hired under a work for hire contract, everything he’d written under that contract should have been the property of SEGA. However Archie were unable to provide that original documentation, and so the whole lawsuit debacle was eventually brought to a close with a settlement. The details of this settlement weren’t exactly public knowledge, but the fans reading the comics noticed a number of changes and were able to read between the lines that things hadn’t exactly gone well for Archie. 

While there were a number of little indicators that made the readers theorise about what was going on behind the scenes, the first massive red flag came with the Chaotix Quest arc in Sonic Universe #46 - 49. The solicits for the first two issues of this arc had said that Vector, Charmy and Espio would be linking up with the Mercian Freedom Fighters, and everyone assumed that would include Rob o’ the Hedge (especially as he was shown front and centre on the originally advertised cover for Sonic Universe #47). However when the issues came out both Rob and his wife Mari-An - two of the many characters that Ken Penders had been trying to get copyright for - had been written out of the story, and in their place were two new characters with similar appearances and roles, Bow Sparrow and Thorn the Lop. 

Things got even worse in the main Sonic series because the now-infamous arc called Endangered Species was kicking off in Sonic the Hedgehog #243. This four-issue arc originally involved Team Fighters travelling to the echidna homeland of Albion to aid the locals against an invasion by the Dark Egg Legion. Unfortunately, the majority of the comic-exclusive characters in this arc were also ones that Penders had been trying to get copyright for.

While the first issue survived mostly intact aside from some dialogue and minor art changes, the rest of the arc had to be tossed out and completely rewritten at the eleventh hour. Issue #244 picked up a few hours after the climax of the previous issue with Knuckles arriving on the scene to find every last echidna was gone, banished to another dimension by Thrash the Tasmanian Devil.

Thrash was on a quest for revenge against the species that had doomed his own to near-extinction, and was taking great pleasure in returning the favour. Now instead of fighting against the Dark Egg Legion, Knuckles and Team Fighters found themselves dealing with Thrash and his devil-dog siblings, as well as a previous enemy called the Krudzu Hybrid Hydra, who was now inhabiting the robotic shell of a wrecked Metal Knuckles. Shard, who also wasn’t originally planned to be in this arc, showed up to lend a hand too.

Jesus bloody christ, what a nightmare. Mad props to Ian Flynn, Tracey Yardley, Steven Butler, and everyone else on the Archie team who had to scramble to make all those changes with little to no warning. I can’t even imagine what must have been going through Ian’s head when he was told that on top of the numerous changes he had to make to the scripts for those Sonic Universe issues and the first issue of Endangered Species, that he would also have to throw out and entirely rewrite three entire issues at the last minute. Not to mention the frustration he must have felt to have multiple stories planned around so many characters he could no longer use. Both Geoffrey St John and Elias Acorn were central figures in the plots for the Secret Freedom Fighters and King Naugus arc, and they were now off limits. Most of the other Secret Freedom Fighters were also now banned, as was the New Mobotropolis council, the Freedom Fighters’ parents and other family members, Chaotix members Julie-Su and Saffron Bee (who were written out of the story in Endangered Species by having them among Thrash’s victims), and hundreds of other characters. Some readers theorised that Ian had let his frustration with Penders find its way into the dialogue of the comic.

At any rate, the Endangered Species arc ended with Team Fighters once again in pursuit of Eggman’s Death Egg while Knuckles mourned his losses and had to come to grips with once again being the last echidna.

But now Ian and the team at Archie had a giant mess on their hands. With such a large part of their cast and planned plots no longer usable, how were they supposed to move forward? That’s what I’ll be looking at in my next post, when I discuss the final two issues of pre-boot ArchieSonic: Sonic Universe #50 and Sonic the Hedgehog #247. Stay tuned!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 47: Evil alien invasion (Part 2: The Black Arms)

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Last time I talked about how the Xorda tried to annihilate the planet (twice!), but today we’re moving on to their rivals - the evil alien race that actually appeared in one of the games!

Episode 47: Evil alien invasion (Part 2: The Black Arms)

The evil alien omnivores linked to Shadow’s origins made several appearances in the comics, but their presence in the pre-reboot era was pretty limited.

The first mention of them came in Sonic #170, when Tails’ uncle, the wizard Merlin Prower, took Sonic, Tails and Knuckles on a mission to another planet to rescue Tails’ parents. I’ll be getting into the story behind that a little more next episode. Do you remember the Xorda, those angry, genocidal squids I mentioned in my last post? Over a year had passed in the story between Sonic #125 and Sonic #170. So why hadn’t they returned to try and destroy the planet again after their failed attempt in Sonic Adventure 2.5? Well, we got the answer here - they were too busy waging war on none other than the Black Arms.

This was great news for Mobius, as they didn’t have to worry about the Xorda coming back to try and blow them up again. Less great for the inhabitants of Argentium though, where the Xorda and the Black Arms were having their battle. 

The Black Arms were brought up again in the very next issue, Sonic #171. Shadow had been searching for answers about his past, and after bullying Snively was able to get his hands on the diary of his creator, Professor Gerald Robotnik.

The disc containing the diary was damaged during his escape as well as corrupted by age, but Nicole helped Sonic and Shadow use a digitiser to interface with the remaining data directly. Coming face to face with the digital representations of Gerald and Maria, Shadow got the expedition dump he needed to finally learn of his origins and his connection to the Black Arms.

This gave Shadow the push he needed to find a purpose in the world, joining the forces of GUN to protect the planet.

The Black Arms didn’t appear again in the original continuity - presumably the Xorda were putting up a really good fight against them. But they came out of the gate swinging after the reboot, returning as the antagonists of the second arc of Sonic Universe following the Super Genesis Wave. This story, “Shadow Fall,” was published in Sonic Universe #59 - 62.

In the newly reset world of the comics, the stories of most of the games had already played out. The events of Shadow the Hedgehog were included (which path? Yes.), and so Black Doom and his contingent of carnivorous cronies had already been wiped out by Super Shadow and the Eclipse Cannon. Following the shattering of the world a new Black Comet came to visit, and Team Dark were sent in to destroy it with a bomb, escorted by a squadron of GUN troops. This contingent of the Black Arms were led by Black Death, and had been off conquering another world when they felt the death of Black Doom through their hivemind. Vowing vengeance, Black Death made preparations for a second invasion of Sonic’s world, starting by engineering a being who would be a direct counter to Shadow, Eclipse the Darkling. 

Eclipse was interested in finding new and original ways to prolong their species, including a pet project he had to breed Black Arms/Wisp hybrids he called the Dark Arms. He also considered Shadow to be his brother and wanted to bring him onto the side of the Black Arms rather than eliminating him, especially considering how few remained of their species.

Working together with Black Death, Eclipse was able to psychically overwhelm Shadow and convert him to their side, turning him against the forces of GUN. However after an epic fight against Rouge and Omega they were able to help him shake off Black Doom’s mind control and bring him back to his senses.

Shadow went to take on Black Death while Rouge and Omega went to rescue the GUN troops Eclipse had captured, as well as arming the bomb he’d confiscated. Eclipse obviously wasn’t happy about this turn of events and transformed into a “Monster Form,” to battle Omega.

Omega was damaged during this battle, but luckily for him Eclipse could only maintain his powered-up form for a brief amount of time. Weakened from exertion, Eclipse was unable to prevent Rouge and Omega from escaping, or from Death’s Eye dragging him and the Dark Arms eggs to an escape pod to evacuate.

Meanwhile Shadow ended his battle against Black Doom by removing his inhibitor rings and wiping him out with a Chaos Blast, which also killed the last of the remaining Black Arms that were connected to him through their hivemind. 

However Eclipse, while able to tap into the Black Arms hivemind, was not dependent on it. He had been designed to be able to operate independently to allow him to be more creative and unpredictable than your average Black Arms mook, so that he would be able to fight Shadow on a more equal level.

So Eclipse made a clean getaway from the exploding comet in his escape pod, able to return for the next two Sonic Universe arcs, The Great Chaos Caper and Total Eclipse (which along with Shadow Fall formed a set of stories that came to be known as the Dark Trilogy). His luck didn’t hold out though, as he crash-landed on Angel Island and most of the Dark Arms eggs died in the crash.

Four did survive though and hatched unscathed, so Eclipse set about growing some Black Arms plants to feed them with. However this fruit tree was found by Knuckles’ friends Relic and Fix-It, whom he’d asked to keep an eye on the island while he was off on the mainland helping the Chaotix find Chip and one of the Chaos Emeralds.

They analysed a sample of the plant and quickly came to the conclusion that it was alien. When Knuckles found out that alien plants were growing on his island he wasn’t entirely sure what to do, but Team Dark showed up at that point, on the hunt for Eclipse. Knuckles reluctantly agreed to help them, taking Rouge and Omega to the mountains where a spaceship would have been most likely to arrive unnoticed, while Shadow watched over the Master Emerald with Relic, Fix-It and Dr. Snively, who was observing via livestream from Gun HQ.

I never would have picked Snively as a Twitch streamer, but okay, why not?

Eclipse spotted Knuckles’ team hunting for him and overheard them talking about the Master Emerald.

Realising it was the magical mcguffin he needed to make himself and his babies unstoppable, he immediately sought it out and ambushed Shadow, trying to “reason” with him one last time before attacking him. With his abilities to fog Shadow’s mind and block his Chaos Control, Eclipse had Shadow at a disadvantage, and even more so after Eclipse transformed into his monster form.

But Shadow used the Master Emerald to induce Chaos Control instead, freezing Eclipse in time and kicking his ugly butt right out of his even uglier butt. Eclipse retreated back to the Dark Arms, who convinced him to try to take the Master Emerald again, but with their help this time.

About this time, Shadow and Knuckles got into an argument, as Snively wanted to move the Master Emerald to a vault “for safekeeping”...

…sus. Still having not totally shaken off Eclipse’s mind fogging, Shadow agreed with Snively. So Knuckles threw down to stop Shadow from moving the Master Emerald.

While they were away punching each others’ faces in, Eclipse took advantage of the chaos and was able to use the Dark Arms to overpower both Omega and Rouge.

Eclipse threatened to kill Relic if no one told him how to get off the island, and so Rouge told him where to find their GUN shuttle in the Launch Base Zone. Eclipse took the Master Emerald and ran for it, and Knuckles finally realised that something was wrong and called Rouge to find out what had happened. Relic suggested that they could turn the island’s traps against Eclipse to delay his escape, which gave Shadow and Knuckles enough time to catch up with him.

With both Shadow and Eclipse wanting to take the Master Emerald, Knuckles realised that no matter which side won the fight, he and Angel Island would lose. With only one solution remaining to him, Knuckles once more shattered the Master Emerald and scattered the shards across the planet to keep them out of anyone else’s hands. Luckily this happened during the Shattered World Crisis, so Angel Island remained aloft just like all the other planetary pieces. Infuriated that he’d had to once again do the thing he’d swore not to, Knuckles started beating Eclipse to a pulp.

But the Rhygenta Dark Arm fused with Eclipse and they were able to briefly knock Shadow and Knuckles out with their sonic cannon. Too weakened and battered to continue fighting, Eclipse decided to just get himself and his Dark Arms out of there.

The last we saw of them, they had crashed the stolen shuttle into a swamp somewhere on the broken planet below. Unfortunately, that was the last we got to see of Eclipse in the comic, which was cancelled before he could make a return appearance. What havoc would he and the Dark Arms have gotten up to after the Shattered World Crisis came to an end? Only Ian Flynn and his knowing smile knows for sure!

Were there any other evil alien invaders who appeared in ArchieSonic that I missed? Let me know in the comments! Next time I’ll finally be talking about that other alien race I’ve been avoiding for so long for episode 48: benign alien visitors. See you then!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 40: The one episode that's unique to the show's premise and characters (part 4: Spark of Life)

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon. Today I have one last story arc I want to look at for the “episode that’s unique to the show’s premise or characters,” category. It’s the fan-favourite story arc Spark of Life, published in Sonic Universe #71 - 74!

Taking place during the Shattered World crisis adapting Sonic Unleashed post-reboot, Spark of Life saw Sally, Nicole, Tails and Big travel to Isolated Island (from Knuckles’ Chaotix) to answer a digital distress call from Nicole’s creator, Dr Ellidy. Venturing into the digital world, Nicole discovered Dr. Ellidy was being threatened by a rogue A.I. that was interfering with the reprogrammed badniks Ellidy had turned into his housekeepers, and which also tried to get its hands on Ellidy himself when he digitised himself to investigate the problem in Cyberspace. Combined with the continuing threat of the Dark Gaia monsters appearing at night and a shocking revelation about Nicole’s origins, the Freedom Fighters had a lot on their plates for this story.

Spark of Life is one of only a handful of stories written by Aleah Baker (with Aleah writing the script based on her husband Ian Flynn’s plot). Aleah regularly contributed to ArchieSonic for years by doing character designs, colouring, and working on the letter pages’ gag strip, Off Panel, as well as writing a number of stories for the post-reboot era. As well as Spark of Life, this includes the stories Light in the Dark in Sonic #260 - 262, Consequences in Sonic #263, Hidden Costs in Sonic #277 - 279, The Case of the Pirate Princess in Sonic Universe #91 - 94, and Knuckles vs. Break Man in Sonic: Worlds Unite Battles #1. Aleah has unfortunately not been able to write for IDW Sonic yet due to poor health, although last year she did colour an absolutely gorgeous cover for issue #50. I’m sure that I speak for all of us when I wish her all the best and hope that she gets better..

So what makes Spark of Life so special? Well a lot of it has to do with Nicole, and the relationships she has in this arc. By the time of this story Nicole had come a long way from the talking handheld computer she was first introduced as, developing into a real person with feelings, hopes, and dreams. Nicole and her development as a character was a large part of the Iron Dominion arc and its aftermath, but that was partially lost after the comic was rebooted and the Freedom Fighters’ backstories were all rewritten to be similar to the old canon but different enough to be distinguishable. Nicole’s awakening as a sentient being is shown as a flashback in this story, and it’s very similar to how it was pre-reboot, with Nicole creating a hard-light holographic avatar for herself and stargazing with Sally.

But how she got to that point was the big difference, as this time she didn’t have wacky body-swap shenanigans with Sally. She also wasn’t sent back in time to be Sally’s friend by a future Rotor - instead she was given to a young Sally as a present by Dr Ellidy. But it’s only during the events of this story that we find out why Dr Ellidy created Nicole in the first place.

Nicole was actually a failed attempt at creating a digital existence for his daughter Nikki, who was dying of a chronic disease. The idea was that he would be able to preserve Nikki’s mind in the digital world, but all he was able to create before Nikki passed was an A.I. that seemed emotionless and did not have any sense of identity or personality. Heartbroken, Dr. Ellidy decided to leave Mobotropolis and retire to Isolated Island, leaving the AI (now named Nicole by King Nigel) with Sally as a gift. However Dr. Ellidy was apparently more successful than he realised, as over time Nicole developed into an actual person - going from JARVIS to Vision, if you like. Dr. Ellidy lived up to the name of his new home and stayed isolated from the rest of the world for the most part, although he would occasionally make contact with the Kingdom such as when he sent Sally the ring blades that had become a part of her new design post-reboot. But Dr Ellidy wasn’t aware of how much Nicole had grown over the years and so he was naturally shocked when she came to his rescue in the digital world, and harboured some resentment towards her because she reminded him of Nikki.

The other main relationship that was focused on in this story was that of Nicole and Sally, as this issue was the first step on the road for the two of them becoming a couple. More like Spark of Romance, amirite?

…

…anyway! It was subtle and sadly not able to be followed up on before the series was cancelled, but the seeds of the romance that was supposed to come were there. With Sally, we got to see that she cared about Nicole very deeply and was very upset by how Dr Ellidy was treating her as if she were not a real person.

And for Nicole we got to see some character growth for her, as she started out chastising Sally for putting herself at risk at the beginning of the story but later realised she would do the exact same thing for her.

Nicole totally had an, “Oh… she just like me. She just like me FR!” moment there!

Aside from Nicole and how the other characters relate to her, there’s a lot of other great stuff in this story. Another one of my favourite moments from all of ArchieSonic is this incredibly wholesome talk that Sally and Big had.

In this house we stan Big the Cat. I'd go to him if I needed someone to talk about girls with too!

We also were introduced to Phage, the afore-mentioned malicious AI making everyone’s lives difficult.

Phage was a very curious AI who was fascinated by what she did not understand, and had an interesting speech pattern which indicates she may have assimilated a thesaurus at some point. We didn’t find out her whole story at this time, but we did discover that she was created by Eggman and seemed to be looking for a way to get back in his good graces. After Nicole foiled her first attempt on Dr Ellidy, Phage took Nicole hostage instead and demanded that the Freedom Fighters bring her the red star ring and the chaos emerald hidden on the island. 

Speaking of, red star rings now became a thing!

While they had technically been introduced the previous year in the Sonic Super Special Magazine, that was only in a five page story of dubious canonicity adapting the mobile game Sonic Dash, and the red star rings hadn’t been seen again since. This story served as their proper introduction, with Dr Ellidy explaining that the island’s Lake of Rings had one day created this instead of the usual standard rings and that he had been researching the increased power it generated compared to them. It was later revealed that the reason the Lake of Rings had started producing red star rings was because a chaos emerald had landed in it.

The best (and most unexpected) thing about the red star rings though is that they granted Nicole a super form!

But if SEGA asks, it’s not a super form, okay? It’s an overclocked form. Totally different. ;)

Dr Ellidy later gave both of the red star rings he’d obtained to Nicole as an olive branch, showing that he did actually want to have an ongoing friendship with her despite how the painful way she reminded him of his lost daughter. It was a nice gesture.

And the last thing I’d like to talk about in Spark of Life is the location. It was really neat to see the Knuckles’ Chaotix game get a shoutout in this way. It’s one of the classic games that is often overlooked (it doesn’t help that unlike most of the classic era games it has never been ported to modern consoles), and considering how different the modern Chaotix are to their classic counterparts, it’s hard to say whether it’s even canon any more. So for a long-time Sonic nerd like myself, it was nice to see it get this kind of representation. We get to see some of the badniks from the game and also the sling-rings, which actually make sense to be in this story.

This is in contrast to the pre-reboot adaptation of Knuckles’ Chaotix where they just came out of nowhere. Dr Ellidy was explained to be a scientist who was researching ring technology and had actually created them (presumably Knuckles and the Chaotix came across them during the events of that game and used them to get around the island). Considering the sling-rings were Chekov’s gun-ed early in the story, it felt a lot more natural for Sally and Nicole to use them against Phage than the way the Chaotix adaptation just jammed them into the story without any setup. 

So those are my four choices for most unique story arcs of ArchieSonic: Mike Gallagher’s Mecha Madness, Karl Bollers’ Return to Angel Island, Ian Flynn’s Iron Dominion, and Aleah Baker’s Spark of Life. I’d also like to shout out a couple of other Ian Flynn stories I considered for this category, but that didn’t quite make the cut:

#1: Enerjak Reborn. Ian gets his hands on Ken Penders’ echidna mythos, and like Karl Bollers before him, puts his own spin on it. Also like Karl Bollers before him, he really pisses Ken Penders off in doing so. xD

#2: The Tails Adventure. A very unexpected adaptation of the Game Gear game of the same name, introducing the Battlebird Armada! Tails takes Antoine and Bunnie to Cocoa Island for their long overdue honeymoon and hijinks ensue.

#3: Scrambled. It’s the big showdown between Snively and Eggman! With interesting cameos from the Egg Bosses and Omega, the introduction of Orbot and Cubot, and the long awaited return of the Iron Queen!

#4: Champions. A Sonic the Fighters adaptation in the middle of a Sonic Unleashed adaptation! Reintroducing a bunch of characters from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon! Only Ian Flynn would be so bold!

Well as much fun as it’s been writing for this topic, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved to be moving on to some shorter topics now. Hopefully this’ll mean there’s a shorter wait for you between posts too (but I am rather preoccupied trying to find a new home, so no promises).

Next time I’ll be looking at episode 41 of our theoretical 65 episode syndicated cartoon: “Recap the origin story in yet another clip show.” See you next time!

#archiesonic syndicated #Youtube

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 53: Henchman joins heroes for one time only

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! In most cartoons the contrast between the heroes and the main villain is pretty black and white. Good is good, bad is bad, and never shall they be able to find common ground. But what about the lesser villains? The henchmen, the mooks, the hired help? Sometimes those guys are portrayed in shades of grey instead…

Episode 53: Henchman joins heroes for one time only 

There could be any number of reasons a henchman might temporarily team up with the good guys. They could be a victim of memory loss or brainwashing, they might have had a disagreement with their boss that drove them into the arms of the heroes before they decide to go back to being a bad guy, they might need the heroes’ help to defeat an even bigger bad that’s usurped their boss, or they might join up with the heroes while claiming to have been reformed but secretly planning to stab them in the back. 

So what about in ArchieSonic? The best example we have here is a scheming little weasel of a man (not literally) named Colin Kintobor Jr, but who is better known as Snively Robotnik.

Hoo boy, now here’s a guy whose loyalties seemed to change at the drop of a hat in ArchieSonic. Let’s take a look at this guy’s history, shall we? 

During the Great War Snively came to Mobotropolis to join his Uncle Julian, supposedly in service of King Acorn. But they were actually plotting a coup and successfully took over the Kingdom, exiling the King to the Zone of Silence and transforming most of the populace into robotic slaves.

Snively remained in the service of the newly rechristened Dr. Robotnik afterwards as his right hand man, although that role was often seen being fulfilled by the badnik Crabmeat in the early issues before Snively was introduced (and sometimes even afterwards). As the years went by Snively started to become more disillusioned and less trusting of his uncle, as Robotnik suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the Freedom Fighters and started growing more abusive towards Snively. Snively longed to take control of Robotnik’s empire and prove that he could do better, and took full opportunity to try and do so in Sonic #30 when Robotnik was accidentally trapped in another dimension called the Void.

Robotnik soon returned though and the status quo returned to normal (aside from Uncle Chuck having regained his free will and joined forces with the Freedom Fighters). Snively started scheming about how to once again remove his uncle from power and was finally given the chance in Sonic #50 when Robotnik tried to use his superweapon, the Ultimate Annihilator.

The device was programmed to erase Knothole Village from existence, but Snively sabotaged it so that it instead fired on Robotnik himself. Snively didn’t have long to enjoy his self-promotion to CEO of All Things Evil though, as he was captured just a few days later when the Freedom Fighters came a-knocking at the front door.

Snively was imprisoned in the Devil’s Gulag, which led to the stuff I mentioned in one of the recent previous episodes. First there was the mysteriously engineered prison breakout, after which the other escapees put Snively in charge as they believed he was one who had freed them. Following that came the kidnapping of Nate Morgan, and Snively’s supposed death from a giant squid explosion when Nate’s rescue team barged in to save the day. However what actually happened was that at the last possible second he was teleported away and ended up in the clutches of none other than his supposed murder victim.

Maybe he would have been better off with the squid.

So, here’s the bit where I get to the topic of the day. In Sonic #73 the Freedom Fighters finally figured out someone was using a series of satellites to wreak havoc on the planet - causing meteor showers, earthquakes, prison breaks, the re-enslavement of all the formerly freed Robians, fun stuff like that - and went into orbit to investigate. This led to them discovering that the satellites had now combined to form a large space station, run by none other than the very much not-dead Dr. Robotnik. Except surprise, it was a trick!

After taking an accidental acid bath and melting off his fake skin, the big bad revealed himself to actually be Robo-Robotnik, the alternate dimensional counterpart of Robotnik who had tried to rule over all of reality with the Giant Borg. The Freedom Fighters were captured in an electric prison forcefield, but to their surprise Snively released them.

He explained that he needed their help to escape, as Robo-Robotnik intended to roboticise him too. The Freedom Fighters weren’t exactly keen on teaming up with Snively, but they let him escape with them before blowing Robotnik’s space station up and heading back to the surface. Once back on the ground, Snively pointed out that their plan to evacuate back to Knothole Village was doomed to failure, as Robo-Robotnik would have escaped the explosion by downloading his memory into a new body back in Robotropolis (giving birth to his modern Eggman design) and would have a file telling him Knothole’s exact location.

In exchange for keeping him safe from Robotnik’s shadowbots, Snively reluctantly agreed to join Sally and Sonic to sabotage Robotnik’s database and infect him with a virus (literally). 

After that Snively disappeared for awhile, going out on his own and not reappearing until after the Sonic Adventure arc. Robotnik’s army recaptured Snively in Sonic #94, and he agreed to go back to working for Robotnik when he was offered the chance to deal with his previously unmentioned daddy issues.

Having gotten that out of his system - and again, I mean that literally, as Snively willingly let himself be robotocised until the Bem intervened and deroboticised him - Snively stayed in his uncle’s employ until the Xorda invasion of the planet in Sonic #124, during which he mysteriously vanished. For awhile it was believed that Snively had been roboticised again, but this turned out to just be a duplicate that Eggman built for… some reason?

He got bored of it pretty quickly though and had the “Silver Snively” project scrapped. The real Snively resurfaced in Sonic #152 though, when Sonic and his “Angels” (ew) were investigating a city made of nanites that had popped up overnight and was rapidly spreading across the land.

Snively had developed some EMP detonators to halt the nanites, and after he explained himself to Sonic he worked with them to try and end the threat. Surprisingly, after this incident he actually joined the Knothole “Brain Trust” and continued his work on nanite experiments with them for a time.

But he soon wondered what he was doing there and felt that it really didn’t suit him that well. So it was no surprise that when Eggman came sniffing around Knothole and offered Snively his old job back that he accepted the offer.

But what was surprising was that this opportunistic, back-stabbing, power-hungry little man actually did have a moment of hesitation, because he was concerned for the well-being of his “step”sister Hope, who had been living in Knothole as a refugee ever since Eggman had roboticised her father and grandmother.

Snively actually caring about anyone other than himself was something that hadn’t really been seen in the series before, but here he was trying to convince her to leave Knothole so that she didn’t get wiped out with everyone else when Eggman attacked, although of course he didn’t tell her that was the reason. After ensuring Hope’s survival Snively returned to the Eggman Empire, and this time he got a spiffy new uniform to go along with his new position.

Snively stayed on the side of evil all the way through the rest of the pre-reboot era of the series, and ended up paying the price for that when he tried to break from the Eggman Empire and begin his own evil regime.

Following the reboot Snively eventually showed up again, now sporting a beard (possibly to prove he could at least grow hair on his face? LOL) and working as a scientist for GUN.

Commander Tower was rightfully suspicious of his motives, as Snively and Eggman had both previously worked for GUN as a step to creating the Eggman Empire and overthrowing King Acorn while trying to prevoke a war between the Kingdom of Acorn and the United Federation. In this timeline Snively left Dr. Eggman’s service much earlier than in pre-reboot. In fact, he returned to GUN right after the events of Sonic and Knuckles, claiming he’d been forced into working for Eggman and that he had in fact been spying on him the entire time and looking for an opportunity to escape.

Commander Tower let him come back to work for them, expecting that he was planning something shifty and that he would try to stab them in the back, but hoping to catch him in the act. Sure enough, Snively did have some sort of evil plan in the works.

Unfortunately the series was cancelled before we got to see exactly what he had cooking.

I would also like to give a brief shoutout to Bean and Bark for this segment. It’s true that they weren’t part of the Eggman Empire, but they did take on jobs for Eggy as mercenaries for hire - in fact, they were working for him for almost the entirety of the post-reboot series. But there were a couple of times where they briefly joined forces with the heroes too. In Sonic #187 Mammoth Mogul put out a bounty on Sonic, and pretty much every scruffy ne'er do well Sonic had ever fought joined forces to try and take him out.

During this battle Sally offered Bean and Bark double whatever they were being paid to take out Sonic if they helped her fight back against the other mercenaries instead. They quickly agreed and started attacking their former allies, but when the mercs managed to capture Sonic Bean and Bark decided to cut their losses and quickly switched sides again, figuring they might as well get paid by someone. Bean and Bark later also briefly joined forces with Blaze, Marine, Amy and Cream in the Sol dimension to take on the dreaded Captain Metal. Having been sent to the Sol dimension during the second Genesis wave that came with the comics’ reboot, Bean and Bark had initially joined forces with Captain Metal.

But after they stole Captain Metal’s Sol Emerald they came into conflict with both his pirate crew and that of Captain Whisker, and so they ended up working with Blaze’s team against their common enemies.

Are there any other instances of henchmen briefly joining forces with the good guys in ArchieSonic that I missed? Let me know in the comments! Next time I’ll be looking at - what is it again? Let me see here… “Random child rescues hero. The episode’s all about him now.” Hmmm, that’s another tricky one. I’ll have to think hard on that one and see what I can come up with.

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 64 - 65: Two Multi-part Finale (part 10: Sonic the Hedgehog #247)

Welcome back to my investigation of how Archie Comics’ Sonic the Hedgehog series was actually a syndicated cartoon from the 80’s and 90’s!

Last time I discussed Sonic Universe #50, where Shard made his heroic final stand, Metal Sonic went from being a repeatedly blown up chump to a very, very scary robot, and Eggman implied that he had something big in the works. This brings us to Sonic the Hedgehog #247, the final pre-boot issue of the series. Team Fighters had chased the Death Egg all the way to its fueling station in the Arctic, and joined forces with the Arctic Freedom Fighters (who thankfully were NOT characters that Ken Penders was claiming copyright for). 

The heroes smashed their way into the base and were surprised to be joined by none other than Silver. At the end of the Secret Freedom Fighters’ arc in Sonic Universe, Harvey Who had told Silver that he’d figured out who Silver’s supposed traitor was, and offscreen he explained everything he’d found out. Then at the end of Endangered Species, Shard had contacted Silver to tip him off that Team Fighters were heading to the Arctic, hence him showing up here. Sonic really didn’t have the patience for any more of Silver’s shenanigans, which is fair when you remember that Silver tried to first kill him, then Rotor, and then blamed the comatose Antoine, all in the name of stopping his supposed traitor. But Tails put together that Silver was part of a team working with Elias (or “the true king,” as they were now forced to refer to him as), and convinced Sonic to give him one more chance. 

If Silver was trying not to get Sonic angry again, he was failing abysmally.

Back in New Mobotropolis, Nicole and Team Freedom were officially presenting the newly rebuilt Castle Acorn when the latest in a series of accidents involving the city’s nanites occurred.

Fortunately , Cream and Cheese had finally managed to figure out what was causing all these problems around the city. And so Cream took her theory to Rotor.

Meanwhile back up North, Silver was explaining to everyone why Sally was his “traitor.” 

When Sally saved the planet from the world roboticiser only to fall victim to it herself, she inadvertantly kicked off a series of events that would doom the planet anyway. Sonic still wasn’t thrilled to have Silver there, but since the time traveller had now dedicated himself to saving Sally like the rest of them, Sonic let him tag along. Their first task was to infiltrate the Death Egg from below via an underwater tunnel.

Whoops. Well that didn’t work - Eggman’s forces attacked and sounded the alarm. And Eggman, who was busy getting ready for his next big move, was not pleased with this new development. 

“Albert,” you say? Well if there was any doubt left that Eggman had already met Dr Wily - and after hinting that Metal Sonic would be working with Bass, there really shouldn’t have been - it seemed pretty clear now.

Back in New Mobotropolis, Team Freedom had laid a trap for the Tails Doll, expecting it to try and destroy the city’s power plant when it was left unsupervised. Sure enough, the creepy little jerk took the bait. There was just one small problem. …well actually, it was a large problem. 

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again anyway - I don’t know what was going through Evan Stanley’s idea when she was drawing the Tails Doll’s kaiju form, but I guess I get the genital general idea of what she was going for. 😛

Back in the Arctic, things were looking pretty grim for Team Fighters and their friends. Mecha Sally had been authorised to shoot to kill, and she and her brain laser (called the “Boom Fant” by Ian Flynn) were on a rampage. Tails knocked Sonic out of the way of her point-blank shot, but both of them were hurt in the process.

Amy tried to protect Sonic and Tails as Mecha Sally moved in for the kill, and I feel like in the original timeline that Silver’s future was a result of, this is where all three of them died. However in this time an injured Silver swooped in at the last possible second and used his psychokinesis to disable Mecha Sally. 

Unfortunately they only got a few seconds to enjoy their win before another Genesis Wave went off and the world faded to white. 

And… that’s it. That’s how the preboot era of ArchieSonic ended. With the creative team facing the incredibly daunting task of having to take the story in an entirely new direction, the incredibly well-timed Sonic and Mega Man crossover gave them an extra few months to figure out where to go afterwards. So this latest Genesis Wave was set off by both Eggman and Wily, who used it to reshape both of their worlds.

Sonic’s world was changed to one more like the games, set after the latest game in the series, Sonic Generations - wow, that makes me feel old - while Mega Man’s world was catapulted forward in time to after Mega Man 10. Combining their technology and robots, Eggman and Wily captured all of Sonic’s friends, transformed them into “roboticised masters,” and tasked them with retrieving all seven Chaos Emeralds. This would allow them to set off one last Genesis Wave that would essentially make them gods. Just like last time, Sonic transformed into his super form - this time with Mega Man joining him - and attempted to restore their worlds to how they were. While Mega Man was successful, Eggman threw a hissy fit and got in the way of Super Sonic, which… well… broke reality.

The end result of this was a rebooted world for Sonic, absent of not just the characters that Ken Penders had claimed copyright over, but all the characters created by anyone who wasn’t part of the current creative team at the time. I guess that Archie wanted to play it safe and prevent any further copyright snafus from happening, and considering that Ken Penders wasn’t the only former employee who gave them trouble, I think this was probably the right decision. But it was nonetheless a decision that had a heavy impact on the pre-crossover storylines, most of which were either quickly resolved or just discarded entirely. The Secret Freedom Fighters no longer existed (except for Silver, who was doing his own thing), and neither did Geoffrey St. John. Naugus was still around and causing mayhem in Mobotropolis, safe from the purge due to him having originally been introduced as a character in the SatAM cartoon.

But he quickly ran away with his tail between his legs and didn’t return for quite awhile. Team Freedom and Team Fighters were dropped in favour of bringing back the Freedom Fighters, who had been scattered across the planet so that they could be reintroduced one by one.

Rotor had gotten buff and was busy building the team’s new mobile flying base, the Sky Patrol.

Antoine was no longer in a coma and had been assigned guard duty of “Uncle” Chuck, who was now no longer Sonic’s literal uncle but more of a “uncle to all.” I believe that was one of the dreaded SEGA “mandates,” as the Sonic cast were no longer allowed to have relatives (except for Cream, of course). I hated that, but at least Uncle Chuck survived the purge. As did Sonic's former pet dog Muttski, who had undergone what was probably the most dramatic change.

Same, Sonic and Tails. Same.

Bunnie was undercover among the Egg Army, and had gone back to being a cyborg.

And Sally was no longer a robot, and was infiltrating the Death Egg but had to leave in a hurry when Eggman sent Metal Sonic after her. Within a few issues the team were all reunited, along with Big and Cream, just as everything went to Hell. Remember how I said that Eggman broke reality?

Yeaaaaaaaah. This led into a massive adaptation of Sonic Unleashed, which went on for almost the entirety of the rest of the series. This was a pretty brilliant idea in my opinion, as a game that was so heavily focused on travelling the shattered planet was the perfect way to re-introduce Sonic’s new world. We got to visit a variety of different locations and meet friends and enemies both familiar and new. Mighty, Ray, Lupe and Dulcy all returned with new looks and backstories, as did the former Super Special Sonic Search and Smash Squad and most surprising of all, Breezie. And a bunch of new characters quickly became fan favourites, such as the pronghorn sisters Cassia and Clove, the underwater mobians Coral, Pearly and Razor, and Shadow's new dark nemesis, Eclipse.

The reboot era of ArchieSonic lasted for over three years, but eventually it came to an abrupt end when SEGA pulled the plug. This leaves the last two (completed) arcs in post-reboot ArchieSonic for me to talk about: Terror in the Skies, the end of the Sonic Unleashed adaptation in the main book, and The Case of the Pirate Princess, a Chaotix arc that ended Sonic Universe. Even though it came after the Unleashed adapation ended, I'm going to be talking about the Chaotix arc first. Terror in the Skies feels like the best way to end this series. However I will be taking a bit of a hiatus, as I’m currently preparing to move overseas. So please be patient and wish me luck, and I'll be back with these three goobers before you know it!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 64-65: TwoMulti-part finale (part 2: Endgame parts 3 and 4)

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! 

…One year in and I’ve finally realised that re-stating the episode title when I’ve already used it in the blog post title really isn’t necessary. Well done, Matthew. 😛

If you haven’t checked out part 1 yet you may want to do so, as I talked about the first two chapters of Endgame there. All caught up? Cool, let’s move on to chapter 3 of Endgame in Sonic #49 then.

The issue opens right where #48 left off, with Sonic doing a Peter Pan right here off of this dam waterfall right here.

Rather than just going into the water like Dr. Richard Kimble did though, Sonic came up with a very… unique solution to his problem.

…okay. Sure. I guess that works? So Sonic ran to safety across a landing strip of... shoe grime... and safely faceplanted in the grass.

While that was going on, Robotnik was in full gloat mode with the Freedom Fighters as a captive audience. What evil deeds did he have planned? Well, he was sticking hard to the classic villain schtick of not killing all of them right now because he wanted them all to die when his ultimate weapon was ready. Oh, and the King was a fake.

Surprise! So where was the real king? Well, Snively had him. Why? What was he going to do with him? I ‘unno, Kenny P never bothered to tell us. But we did find out why Dr. Quack had been acting strangely - Snively had taken his family hostage and threatened to kill them if Quack didn’t cooperate.

He’s okay, the Combot was using his non-lethal bullets. 😛

Meanwhile Sonic had been making his way back to Knothole, but realised that even if he did get there in his exhausted state that he would likely just get arrested again. So he called a friend for help.

Well this is new. Dragons can sense the truth now? Okay, sure. Well that should have solved the problem, right? Dulcy could have just told Geoffrey what she knew, and Sonic would have been in the clear. Hook Sonic up to a dragon polygraph test if necessary.

Geoffrey: Did you hold a grudge against Princess Sally Acorn?

Sonic: No!

Dulcy: Bzzzzz!

Sonic: Alright, maybe I did. But I didn’t kill her!

Dulcy: Ding!

Fleming: Story checks out. Okay sir, you are free to go.

Sonic: Good, because I’ve got a hot date tonight.

Dulcy: Bzzzz!

Sonic: A date.

Dulcy: Bzzzz!

Sonic: Dinner with friend.

Dulcy: Bzzzz!

Sonic: Dinner alone.

Dulcy: Bzzzz!

Sonic: Watching TV alone.

Dulcy: Bzzzz!

Sonic: Alright! I’m going to stay at home and ogle the ladies in the Rouge’s Secret catalogue!

Dulcy: Bzzzz!

Sonic: … (sigh) Foofi’s catalogue.

Dulcy: Ding!

Sonic: Now would you unhook this thing already?! I don’t deserve this kind of shabby treatment!

Dulcy: Bzzzz!

If anyone outside of Aleah Baker and Puppy the N’Oni remember what a Foofi’s is, I will be very surprised. xD

But no, Sonic and Dulcy didn’t do that for some reason. Instead Sonic asked Dulcy to take him to the Floating Island. Even if Sonic didn't want to deal with Geoffrey, then why go there? Why not stick with his original plan to go back to Knothole? From a meta-angle I guess this made sense as Knothole was currently occupied by Robotnik’s forces, and hey, any excuse for Kenny P to bring Knuckles into the story, right? But Sonic didn’t know that Robotnik had taken over Knothole. Did Dulcy know? Possibly. It had happened at the same time as Sonic jumping off the waterfall, so would Dulcy have had time to find out about it before Sonic whistled her up? Actually now that I think about it, why hadn’t Dulcy been captured with the other Freedom Fighters?

…well instead of answering any of that, the story went back to Knothole. Here we finally found out Princess Sally’s real murderer was none other than Hershey, the nothingberg character who had been introduced as little more than a cameo in the same issue as Sally’s fatal fall. And if you don’t think that’s weird enough already, wait until you get a load of the explanation.

…wut. 

Are you kidding me?!

Okay, I feel like I have to channel my inner CinemaSins here and go through everything wrong with this. 

Oh come on, it was too good for me to NOT use.

First of all, Hershey is approximately the same height as Drago, who is a good head taller than Sonic. How was she supposed to convincingly fool anyone into believing she was Sonic? If you want to justify that by saying Antoine was the only one who properly saw her, and that was only through binoculars, then you still have to justify why Hershey was in Robotropolis that night anyway. Why was she there? Is she a commando? A spy? Does she have any kind of combat training? I’ll answer that for you now - no, she does not. While later issues would see Geoffrey recruit her to undergo training for his new secret service team, it was clear in that arc that she was a civilian who didn’t really seem to have any prior experience with that kind of thing. So how did Drago convince her that of all people, she had to be on top of that fortress in Robotropolis, wear a Sonic the Hedgehog costume, and send Snively to his death? On top of that, could he have talked her into murdering someone, even a high-ranking officer of the enemy army? None of the Freedom Fighters would have cut that rope, so what indication do we have that Hershey would have that kind of killer instinct?

…okay, fair point. That’s getting ahead of ourselves though. And okay fine, the lenses in the Sonic mask made her see everyone as Snively, sure. But then logically, if she’d been spying on Sonic and Sally, she should have seen two Snivelys grapple up to the top of Robotnik’s fortress, after which one Snively went into an air vent and the other Snively started climbing down the wall. Even if she hadn’t seen any of that, then shouldn’t Hershey have logically wondered what possible reason Snively would have to  be climbing down the outer wall of his own master’s fortress? Did Drago tell Hershey that Snively was doing maintenance on the wall or something? They have robots for that! Even if Snively had been forced to go out there himself for some reason, he’d have never relied on something as flimsy and low-tech as a simple rope. He’d have a jetpack or a hover platform or something like that. 

Even if you can find a bunch of excuses to justify why any of this made sense, the fact still remains that the writers introduced two brand new characters for this arc - Hershey and Drago - and didn’t really take the time to tell us anything about them, just to facilitate a plot twist where it looked like Sonic murdered Sally. You know who could have filled that role instead? Evil Sonic. 

He’d impersonated Sonic and framed him for crimes before, so there’s no reason why Evil Sonic couldn’t have done it again. Instead of this elaborate thing with Drago and Hershey, Robotnik could have gone to Anti-Mobius and recruited Evil Sonic to cut Sally’s rope. Maybe even have him infiltrate Knothole when the real Sonic was out, to spy on the other Freedom Fighters and learn their plans. It would have been a lot easier and made a hell of a lot more sense than this nonsense. I mean really, what do we know about these two characters? We know Drago is a member of the Wolf Pack and that Lupe was suspicious of him because he had a habit of disappearing without checking in. But that’s about it - we don’t know jack about what drove him to work for Robotnik or anything like that. And we know even less about Hershey - just that she’s some person who lives in Knothole and is Drago’s girlfriend somehow, despite the fact that the Wolfpack doesn’t seem to have had much contact with the residents of Knothole prior to issue #46. This is a prime example of Ken Penders introducing completely unnecessary characters when there were others already established that would have worked just as well.

Anyway, let’s get back to the story otherwise I’ll be ranting about this all bloody night. Across the planet, Bunnie and Antoine had arrived at a prison camp in the Downunda crater and were locked up with two of the local freedom fighters introduced in Tails’ mini series, Walt Wallabee and Barby Koala. They clearly weren’t doing very well, as they had been roughed up quite a bit and reacted with complete terror when their jailer, Crocbot showed up to introduce himself to Bunnie and Antoine. Crocbot, you may remember, had been defeated in the Tails mini-series when he had been knocked into the crater in his nuclear tank, which had then exploded. But it turned out that Crocbot hadn’t been entirely destroyed by this and had eventually managed to build himself a new body. He’d also managed to salvage enough materials and robot soldiers from the destroyed supply blimp Robotnik had sent him to be able to amass a force large enough to ambush and capture the Downunda Freedom Fighters. 

Wow. An exposition dump is one thing, but if it’s taking up entire panels then you’ve got a problem there.

Except for when it’s done for comedic purposes, of course.

This issue ended with Sonic and Dulcy arriving on the Floating Island and, as usual, being attacked by Knuckles without any warning. Never mind that the last time the Freedom Fighters were here they parted on good terms with him - if you come to his island unannounced, Knuckles is going to deck you no matter who you are.

Dulcy was knocked out and Sonic and Knuckles went at it, but were interrupted by an explosive arrow fired by Geoffrey St. John, parachuting in from above and demanding Knuckles let him take down Sonic himself.

I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say about this issue. I’m not a fan of Sam Maxwell’s art in ArchieSonic, and there’s a lot of holes in the plot. Let’s just move on to the final act, Sonic #50.

That is a really cool cover, I’ll give them that. And another cool thing about this issue is that it is a major collaborative effort between the entire ArchieSonic team - I think pretty much everyone who had written or done art for the series up to this point got to contribute to this issue. 

The story opened with Robotnik exploring the depths of his memories while asleep. Many years ago, Julian Kintobor committed an (at the time) undefined crime against his people, and was hunted down by them. He managed to escape and was found by two young hedgehogs - Sonic’s dad and Uncle Chuck.

They took him to King Max, who named him warlord and asked him to lead their army into battle against the Overlanders in the Great War. 

So this is interesting enough, but it kind of comes out of nowhere. What did Robotnik do to become wanted by his own people? And why was Mobotropolis at war with the Overlanders anyway? Why are Bean, Bark and Astal there? Why does Robotnik sleep in that weird stasis tube? Some of these things would be answered in later issues, but for now the story went back to Geoffrey once again trying to capture Sonic.

When Geoffrey told Knuckles that Sonic was wanted for Sally’s murder, Knuckles was absolutely enraged by this and tried to kill Sonic extra hard. Sonic was able to fight Geoffrey and Knuckles off for a little while but quickly got nabbed by an invisible Espio. Fortunately at that point Dulcy regained consciousness and was able to convince everyone that Sonic had been framed.

So now not only can dragons sense the truth, but they are also physically incapable of lying? And this is well known enough that even Knuckles, who lives alone on a giant rock in the sky, knows about this? Once again I have to ask - why didn't Sonic and Dulcy just confront Geoffrey with this in the previous issue and save everyone some time and drama? There was no need to go and involve the world's angriest introvert in any of this!

Dragons cannot tell lies and can sense the truth. Geeze. I kinda feel like the writers were pulling this stuff out of their butts at this point. It’d be like suddenly saying that echidnas are so big-brained that nature has to slap them in the face and put the whammy on them the instant they meet a compatible partner, otherwise they’d spend their entire lives science-ing rather than making babies. Good thing that never happened, right?

>.>

<.<

Anyway! Back in Knothole, Tails and Rotor managed to slip away unnoticed and tried to escape in their water vehicles, only to find that Drago was already waiting for them.

Well shoot, so much for that. But why were the citizens of Knothole being rounded up for roboticisation? In the previous issue Robotnik specifically said that he wanted to wait and wipe them all out with his secret weapon. Speaking of, back in Robotropolis, Robotnik was calling the prison camp in Downunda to get an update on the ore he needed for his Ultimate Annihilator. Crocobot was dealing with an uprising at the time but assured Robotnik that his ore was on its way. An uprising, you say? Sounds like the Downunda Freedom Fighters had been able to escape, but what about Antoine and Bunnie? We’ll get back to that.

Tails and Rotor were facing imminent roboticisation until Sonic, Geoffrey and Knuckles came soaring in from above to save the day. Working together they destroyed the Swatbots and freed the prisoners, and then Sonic announced his desire to take down Drago, who made a break for it.

…how did Sonic know that Drago was a traitor? Geoffrey couldn’t have told him, he didn’t know either. Did Sonic spot Drago working with the Swatbots from above as they were parachuting down? Did Tails or Rotor tell him off page while they were freeing prisoners? Buggered if I know. I guess it doesn’t matter that much though. Drago didn’t make it very far (further than you’d expect with Sonic the Hedgehog chasing him though) before he got beaned in the head by a rock thrown by Hershey and knocked unconscious. 

…yeah, that fake Sonic plan is still ridiculous. But it was nice to see Drago get his comeuppance, and Hershey get to redeem herself and have the satisfaction of bashing his brains in.

Sonic decided he was going to storm Robotropolis alone, but Robotnik was unconcerned, confident that he was ready for him.

Heh okay, that was a pretty good line. xD

So it turned out that Sonic wasn’t the only Freedom Fighter in Robotropolis after all - Bunnie and Antoine had also arrived, hiding in the rafters and planning to sabotage Robotnik's plan. It seems weird to me that they were able to get back so quickly from the other side of the world - seriously, have you ever flown from Australia to North America? I have. A lot. It takes FOREVER. And then you have to allow for layovers and going through Customs and all that stuff and it’s really all such a hassle…

…where was I?

Oh right, the comic. In fairness, Robotnik was waiting for the ore to be delivered to him from Downunda before he could make his next move, so I guess you could justify this by saying the plot was waiting for Antoine and Bunnie to arrive. 😛

Sonic mostly made it past the outer defences but got… tangled in robot parts? I guess? I never really understood what happened there, and the director's cut doesn’t really make it much clearer either (but more on that later). Snively showed up in a jetpack (See? I told you he’d have a jetpack rather than climb down the side of the building with a rope!) to confront Sonic but was dispatched easily, after which Sonic literally ran into Bunnie and Antoine.

They explained their plan to sabotage the Ultimate Annihilator with a bomb they’d conveniently found, but Sonic still wanted to kick Robotnik's generously proportioned butt himself. Unfortunately Sonic wasn’t fast enough to stop Robotnik activating the Ultimate Annihilator, wiping Knothole off the face of the earth. Planet. Mobius. Whatever.

This was followed by several pages of absolutely amazing art of Sonic and Robotnik in their final duel by the legendary Patrick Spaziante.

But how was Robotnik fast enough to punch Sonic in the face, you ask? Well his explanation was that, “This relatively confined space prevents you from making optimum use of your speed.” A bit of an asspull if you ask me, but I’ll allow it because Spaziante’s art is just that good. 

Sonic and Robotnik were so busy fighting that they barely even noticed the Ultimate Annihilator being destroyed, taking them with it. But Sonic got better. This is another thing that never really got explained, but chances are it was due to the protective aura he got after grabbing his billionth power ring in issue #35. It was a plot point that had come up several times, so perhaps the writers didn’t feel it needed to be explained again. 

Sonic eventually woke up back in Knothole, stunned to find out that instead of being vaporised, the village had been warped into a pocket dimension that existed three hours in the future. …why three hours in the future? Isn’t “pocket dimension” enough by itself? How does that even work? So let’s say it’s 4 pm in Knothole, but as soon as you leave Knothole’s boundaries it’s suddenly 1 pm? Does the sun just shwoop back across the sky three hours when you leave Knothole? Is there any point to this at all? God, it’s almost as confusing as Australia’s policies on Daylight Savings time.

Dr. Quack then filled Sonic in on everything that had happened. One issue I talked about a long time ago was Sonic #43, where Sonic had gone inside King Acorn’s mind and visited his memories in an effort to try and wake him from his coma and stop the crystallisation process. Well it turned out that when that happened, Robotnik had noticed the signal from Dr. Quack’s dream watcher thingy and been able to trace it to finally find Knothole. Dr Quack’s family had been kidnapped and he’d been forced to do Robotnik’s bidding, which included working on his Ultimate Annihilator. 

I have a few things to say about this wacky doomsday weapon, but I’ll save them for my next post. I agree with Sonic - what about Sally? Well it turned out that she actually survived her fall and Dr. Quack was able to fake her death. He’d placed her in a stasis tube that was disguised to look like a memorial, where she had been in a coma ever since.

Sonic revived her with true love’s kiss, and there was a fancy full page epilogue.

#50 was a big event issue, but despite featuring so many contributing artists and writers, victory for the Freedom Fighters, and the death of Dr. Robotnik, I don’t think it’s the strongest issue of the Endgame arc. I personally think that award goes to the first chapter, issue #46, but that’s just me. Don't get me wrong, seeing Sonic be vindicated and the big fight with Robotnik was cool and all, but Snively’s sabotage of the Ultimate Annihilator made Sonic’s role in this story largely redundant. Think about it -  aside from liberating Knothole and waking up Sally, did Sonic actually accomplish anything in this issue? He didn’t save Knothole from being wiped out via space laser or actually defeat Robotnik himself - those were both done by Snively. 

The end of issue #50 did introduce us to an interesting question though - what does a world without Robotnik look like for Sonic the Hedgehog? Over the next two years, Snively, Mammoth Mogul and the newly introduced Ixis Naugus (repurposed from SatAM) all attempted to fill in the role of primary villain. There was also a mysterious figure in the shadows who was slowly building up his resources and causing distractions until he was ready to make his move (spoiler alert - it was another Robotnik). Knuckles also got off the ground with his own ongoing monthly comic around this time, and that resulted in the introduction of his own rogues’ gallery. It was an interesting time despite there not being any Robotnik around, even having occasional crossover events that allowed more interactions between Sonic and Knuckles’ casts.

Normally I would end my review here, but the Endgame story doesn’t end with just issue #50. The following year after issue #50’s publication, a “director’s cut” edition of Sonic #50 was released in Sonic Super Special #6. I’ll be covering that one in my next post, so stay tuned!

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 56: The Writer's Barely-Disguised Fetish (part 2)

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Yesterday I went over some of the bizarre fetish-y type stuff that appeared throughout the series, and tried very hard not to kink-shame everyone. I also covered the more vanilla stuff that might not be typically considered fetishes, but were written enough by Ken Penders to at least be worthy of discussion. Today I’m going to continue to go over some of the tamer stuff, but this time looking at the two other guys who wrote the most for ArchieSonic: Karl Bollers and Ian Flynn. Hopefully today's discussion will not leave you wanting a shower like yesterday. xD

Episode 56: The Writer's Barely-Disguised Fetish (part 2)

Moving on from Ken Penders, our next writer is Karl Bollers, who wrote for the comics from 1997 - 2005. Bollers was a little harder to pin down any fetishes or writing habits for. A lot of people criticise him for the romance triangle between Sonic, Sally and Mina that made up a large chunk of his time on the book, but that apparently came from editorial mandate. I asked for some help with this one too, and the only real suggestion I got was once again from Aleah Baker (thanks Aleah): “90’s slang, especially overuse of the word, 'like.'”

This makes sense given that Karl was actually writing for the comics during the 90’s, and back then Sonic was very much a character who frequently used that kind of slang and had a bunch of catchphrases. Have you ever watched Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, or the fan-named SatAM cartoon? Those versions of Sonic had a barrage of cool-guy-90’s-slang. “Let’s go, bro! Let’s speed, keed! Let’s buzz, cuz! Let’s do it to it! It’s juice time! It’s juice and jam time! It’s jelly and jam time!”

…you get the idea. So yeah, it fit the time. Mostly. There were instances where that kind of language didn’t quite fit right, and one example Aleah pointed out was Eggman referring to his brother Colin Kintobor as “See-Kay.”

Again, this wasn’t entirely uncommon in the 90’s - there were any number of “hip” or “cool” characters in 90’s media who’d refer to a character by their initial or initials. Faith the Vampire Slayer comes to mind, who often called Buffy “B.” Or one-shot character Roy on The Simpsons, who called Homer “Mr. S.” I think in this case it might have been less noticeable had this been printed as “C.K.” rather than “See–Kay.” Printed as it was, I’d say it’s possible some readers had no idea what it meant (it certainly took 2001-me a few reads to figure it out). So yeah, this one isn’t entirely a bad thing and I think it was appropriate enough for the time it came out, but looking back at it sometimes it feels like Bollers was channelling...

That just leaves Ian Flynn, who wrote for ArchieSonic from 2006 all the way up to the series’ cancellation in 2017. And we all know the sick, twisted stuff that guy is into… 

…that’s right. References. So. Many. References! Truly, Ian is the greatest monster of them all. :P Some of these references are extremely obvious...

…while some are more obscure, such as Bean calling out moves from Sonic Riders...

...or Sonic asking Tails and Amy to do their “spinny thing” attacks from Sonic Adventure.

One particular type of reference Ian is known for is sneaking song lyrics from Sonic music into the dialogue. He’s done this A LOT more frequently in IDW Sonic, but he snuck it into ArchieSonic occasionally too.

Another “fetish” that Ian had while writing for ArchieSonic was reintroducing old, long-forgotten characters and finding new purposes for them. Some of these were from the old ArchieSonic days, such as the former Substitute Freedom Fighters...

...Monkey Khan...

...the Iron King and Queen...

...and pretty much everyone on the Secret Freedom Fighters team, including Shard the Metal Sonic.

Shard was an extremely interesting case, as he was reintroduced with a different design - that of Metal Sonic from Sonic Rivals 2. Another neat reference! Ian also introduced characters from Sonic’s past that had never been seen before in the comics, such as Bean and Bark from Sonic the Fighters...

...the Battlebird Armada from Tails Adventure..

...and even Breezie from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog!

And each time Ian brought back any of these long-forgotten characters the readers responded with delight, because we’re all just as sick and twisted as he is. 😀

(Also, the cojones on that man for being nerdy enough to dare to put a Sonic the Fighters adaptation inside a Sonic Unleashed adaptation? Mad respect, my man!)

Alright, I think we’ve covered more than enough on this topic. Were there any other fetishes (or "fetishes") I missed? Let me know in the comments! Thanks again to Aleah Baker for her suggestions on this one - I honestly had nothing for Karl Bollers. I hope I haven’t traumatised all of you too much with this episode, because it was a lot. And unfortunately I’m not entirely finished with it either, as I’ll be bringing back one of the previously mentioned fetishes for the next episode: “Can’t eat favourite food.” I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

#archiesonic syndicated

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 54: Random child rescues hero. The episode's all about them now

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Alrighty then, what have I got for you guys today?

Episode 54: Random child rescues hero. The episode's all about them now 

Ahh, another tagalong kid trope. The best example I can think of in this category is Zach from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, a nuisance kid who wanted to be just like the Turtles but was mostly getting in their way.

But then he helped them save the day and was named the honorary “fifth turtle.”

I struggled to find a good match for this one within ArchieSonic. Tails doesn’t really count, as he’s an established character in the series. I did consider Tommy Turtle, a character whom I’ve had the displeasure of writing about here many times.

He does fit the category for saving Sonic and then seeing a massive rise in page time. But he was around the same age as Sonic and also was explained to be a childhood friend of his, so he doesn’t really fit being either “random” or “child.” 

Hope Kintobor, someone I discussed briefly in the previous episode, is another one who came to mind. Hope was part of a colony of Overlanders (humans) who had taken a journey into space following the Great War and landed back on Mobius in Sonic #91. Unfortunately for them they landed right on the outskirts of Robotropolis and were quickly attacked by Eggman’s forces.

Sonic saved Hope’s grandmother, Lady Agnes, from combots, but Hope’s stepfather Colin had a deep mistrust of Mobians as he’d fought against them in the Great War. In a classic example of terrible timing, that was right when Monkey Khan showed up looking for a fight. His village and its people had been taken by Eggman, and he was out for revenge. Eggman took advantage of the chaos to appeal to Colin - who coincidentally turned out to be Eggman’s brother - and the Overlanders all fled and took refuge in Robotropolis.

Ugh, they really went for it with that episode title, didn't they? :P

Eggman was a gracious host for a while, having a master plan for them that was never really explained. But in Sonic #105 Eggman’s true nature was uncovered and he roboticised Colin and Agnes, with Hope narrowly avoiding the same fate when Sonic swooped in to save her.

He and Sally evacuated Hope and the rest of the remaining Overlanders to Knothole, where they were treated for radiation poisoning and were later accepted to live in Station Square as refugees. “So where’s the part where Hope saves Sonic?” you’re probably asking at this stage. Well… she didn’t. Unless you believe the cover art for #105, anyway.

I did mention I had trouble finding good examples for this category, right? xD

Actually, there is one character who probably fits this one pretty well. That would be Marine the Raccoon, who made her debut appearance when she “saved” Sonic and Tails in the Sonic Rush adaptation in Sonic #180.

The only problem here is that this was barely a story at all - just a five page preview retelling the opening of the game. So while the game itself became this trope, this story in the comics didn’t really go long enough for Marine to become the star of the show. Although I guess you could argue that her showing up to save Shadow in Sonic Universe #1 also qualifies.

Since I wasn’t really satisfied with any of the kids I came up with for this category, I went to Ian Flynn’s Bumblekast Discord and asked for suggestions there. Former ArchieSonic writer and colourist and current badass Aleah Baker suggested Larry Lynx kind of qualified for this one.

Debuting in Sonic #12, Larry was discovered by Sonic when he was rescuing woodland folks from Robotnik’s Swatbots. Larry had a bizarre power he couldn’t control that would cause bad luck to occur to those around him, and because of this he was trying to isolate himself from other people. While initially doubtful of Larry’s claims, the Freedom Fighters were quickly convinced due to…

…overwhelming evidence. But Sonic had the idea to turn Larry’s power against Robotnik, which caused Larry to actually have good luck for a change and broke his bad luck streak.

Larry seemed to get slightly better control of his power after this, suggesting that perhaps the problem was a lack of confidence?

Larry later returned in the Sonic Live! special, where he casually dropped into Knothole only to discover that the Freedom Fighters had all been captured by Robotnik. After initially panicking and wondering if his bad luck jinx had caused this, Larry pulled himself together and rallied his own team of Freedom Fighters to help save the day.

Sally rewarded Larry by giving him leadership of the Substitute Freedom Fighters… and then Larry vanished and was not seen again in the comics for 16 years. :P

HappyTimes had what is probably the best suggestion for this category: “Those two kids from Sonic Live.” 

Uuuuuuuuuuggggghhhhhhh. Thanks, I hate it. But sadly, HappyTimes is right. I hate this abomination of a comic, so let’s just push through this with a quick summary of events, shall we?

#1: Sonic is killed by Robotnik.

#2: Sonic’s death is revealed to have been actually part of a video game, and caused by skill issue by two real world kids: Steve and Jessie (Ken Penders’ real life son and niece). Get gud, kids. 😛

#3: Sonic’s “death” left him stranded inside a tv.

#4: Sonic yanks the kids into the tv with him, which allows them to escape back to Sonic’s world.

#5: Sonic has wacky adventures with his two new sidekicks, stopping Robotnik from launching the other Freedom Fighters into space.

#6: Everyone gets sucked through a portal to another world, with the kids getting new designs without any explanation as to why.

#7: Sonic has more wacky adventures with the kids, stopping an army of Robotnik robot clones and meeting his supposed creators.

Apparently this was going to be done with photographed backgrounds of Sega HQ, but the creative team couldn’t get their hands on the necessary photos. As this is apparently the real world, the kids getting new designs makes even less sense.

#8: Sonic is sent back home and the kids play his new game.

I really don’t like this issue, but I cannot deny that it fits this category pretty well. The kids “save” Sonic from his imprisonment in the tv and then the story is all about them going on wacky adventures with Sonic. It is the very definition of the tagalong kid trope. They didn’t help that much in the story and in fact turned out to be a liability when Robotnik took them prisoner. Great idea, Sonic, taking kids into a battle. But Steve helped save the day at the end because he knew the code to turn off all the robotic Robotnik clones - the level select code from Sonic 1.

Because of course it was. :P Still, Steve was at least more useful than Jessie, whose main contribution was being in danger over and over.

Thanks, Jessie. 😛

Are there any other random kids who became the star of the story that I missed? Let me know in the comments! Next time I’ll be looking at another classic cartoon trope - the invisibility potion! See you then!

#archiesonic syndicated