Ok, since 1992 Archie
Comics held the licence to produce comic books based on Sonic the Hedgehog in
the US (Fleetway had it over here), until they lost it last year in a confusing
mess that we still don’t know all about but know that a lawsuit from Scott Fulop
(aka Kent Taylor)1 - a former Archie editor and Sonic the Hedgehog
writer - filed in the wake of Archie’s old settlement with Ken Penders3
seems to have been a contributing factor. The licence was picked up by IDW
because of course it was because IDW are on a quest to have all the licences
ever. They did a good thing though by keeping writer Ian Flynn on the book.
Flynn has been writing Sonic for years now and is a fan favourite, critical
success (though I still slightly prefer Nigel Kitching3) and is seen
as the man who turned the old Archie comics around.
As a special
event/promotion the first four issues of Sonic
the Hedgehog Volume 3, IDW’s first Sonic Book, shipped weekly. All four
issues are now out, this is a big thing for the Sonic franchise – the first
American Sonic comics not produced by Archie, and I’m a Sonic the Hedgehog
obsessive so I’m having a Look At them. So
are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin:
Sonic the Hedgehog Volume 3 #1
Ian Flynn, Tracy Yardly,
Jim Amash & Bob Smith with Matt Herms (colours).
Wow, it’s an Archie!Sonic
reunion up in these credits. Quick
Summary: in the wake of Sonic Forces Dr Eggman has vanished but his Badniks are
still spread out all over his former Eggman Empire. Sonic arrives at a town (no
towns will be named because fuck that shit right?) under assault from a
surprisingly organised Badnik attack, his saving the day goes awry because this
assault force has four Super Badniks, all Egg Hammers4. However with
the help of Tails who happens to be in town, Sonic defeats the robots. Tails
deduces that the Badnik force was too well organised and someone must now be in
control of the Empire but that it’s not Robotnik (because he’d never come back
without fanfare, so true), but decides to stay and help the town rebuilt
itself. As Sonic runs on to issue 2, this mysterious new leader of the Eggman
Empire tells Orbot and Cubot to make sure word of this issue’s events reach Amy
rose and implies that this is all some sort of trial.
This issue felt very…empty.
I was feeling a little forgiving for how decompressed this arc is because it
was purposefully designed for four weekly issues, so effectively the whole
thing ads up to 1 regular issue but then I remembered that for over 80 years
hundreds of British and European writers and artists turned in multiple weekly
strips that lasted a little as 1 page each and still managed to get more story
into them than this issue. If Leo Baxendale could tell a complete Grimly
Fiendish story on just the back page of Smash!5
then I would really like to think that Ian Flynn could get more into a 22 issue
comic. It’s an issue Flynn’s been
struggling with on-and-off since World’s Collide6, I personally
think it comes from trying (and succeeding) to ape the style of the video
games, this whole story feels like one level of the game with a cut-scene
either side; while I don’t find that an issue in terms of pacing I do find it
an issue when it’s all the issue is (play on words?). And here’s the thing,
it’s not like this is all three panel pages, there’s five panel pages
throughout, meh, maybe it’s just me.
Elsewhere everything
is…functional but with an injection of awesomeness that I expect from Monsieur
Flynn – it introduces us to the current set-up and does NOTHING to alienate new
readers who might only be familiar with the games or in fact only familiar with
Sonic through cultural osmosis: if you stopped playing Sonic with Sonic &
Knuckles, if you stopped playing with Sonic Adventure 2, if you haven’t played
everything up to Sonic Forces of if you have - you’ll have no issues with this
issue (play on words II?). It’s Sonic & Tails fighting Dr Robotnik’s
robots, people who’ve never heard of Sonic know that’s what Sonic is all about.
So ultimately I guess it’s a good choice for a story for the first issue of a
tie-in comic, especially for a comic tying into a franchise with a stigma for
being full of characters and for having tie-in media – ESPECIALLY American
comics – that have the stigma of being filled with impenetrable continuity and
being nothing like the video games. Sonic the Hedgehog Volume 3 Issue 1 goes
“nope, all that’s bullshit, here’s Sonic and Tails smashing Badniks, no worries
here, just like you (erroneously) think/remember Sonic is”. And it gives us a ‘keep reading’ hook with the
mysterious new head of the Eggman Empire, I’m genuinely intrigued: my first
thought was that it was Metal Sonic but the speech bubbles imply an organic
character, I’d be over the moon if it was Snivley but I doubt it is and I
honestly can’t think who it might be – Fang, maybe? Or the Battle Bird Emperor?
As for the injection of
awesome? Well the fight as a whole is damn awesome, with Sonic & Tails
busting out combo moves from Sonic Advance 3 and Sonic Heroes for us long-time
fans – and RANDOM POSING:
It feels like two old
friends doing something together, which is delightful. The top scene for me
though was how Flynn handled Tails staying behind, Flynn wants these first four
issues to be Sonic + X team-ups and so Tails can’t come, but by having Tails
decide to stay, to turn down nostalgia and fun adventure to help out, a ‘because
the plot demands it’ decision becomes a great showing of how much Tails has
matured since Sonic 2, giving us character development for characters that
really aren’t allowed to develop too much.
If you’ve noticed I haven’t
mentioned Tracey Yardley’s name at all so far, it’s because all I have to say is this: Tracy Yardley is awesome and has long since become one of the best
Sonic artists ever.
Sonic the Hedgehog Volume 3 #2
Ian Flynn, Adam Bryce
Thomas
Quick Summary: Orbot & Cubot did their job, Amy
Rose arrives just in time to help Sonic defeat a Super Badnik at the next town,
but that ‘bot was only a distraction, a whole Badnik army is flooding in from
the other side of town. While Sonic combats the robots head-on, Amy rallies the
townspeople, organizing them, protecting them, directing them and once
assembled, using them to bring down most of the army. She and Sonic the team-up
to take down the drop ship spewing the mechanical bastards. Amy wants Sonic to
return to the Resistance but Sonic says it makes more sense for him to fly solo
and because he’s such a free spirit that cannot be tamed, he’s like the wind
yadda yadda yadda vomit. Sonic runs off into the next issue, where Amy has told
him Knuckles is waiting.
Fuck me Amy was awesome in
this issue.
And I think that may have
been the whole point, in fact I could suggest that every part of this issue was
specifically chosen to make readers think of Amy as more than ‘the chick’ or
‘the psycho stalker’ - transparent? Yes. Effective? Definitely. Better still this issue felt a lot ‘fuller’,
still not as ‘full’ as I’d like but there was more than one thing happening in
it at one time and it felt a lot less like a level from Sonic Colours and more
like an issue of a comic book, as the next issue will feel even more like that
I can’t help but feel that Flynn is easing in new readers, taking them from
what they’ve become accustomed to in the games to what a regular comic book
reader is accustomed too, and if that sort of hand-holding is necessary then I
feel like I hate the modern world, still better safe than sorry eh? Especially
with – again – Sonic’s stigma of being wildly different when in comic books and
cartoons.
Adam Bryce Thomas’ art is
great, it’s very modern, very digital art in feel but it fits the Sonic style
well and he can sure lay out a dramatic page so I’m not going to complain, just
passively-aggressively mention how modern feeling it is again.
I’m not so sure about Sonic
refusing to re-join the resistance, I think it’s there to ‘make statements’; it
feels like it’s there to say ‘this isn’t Archie (don’t worry)’ and ‘Amy doesn’t
need Sonic nor want to change him, she’s not the lunatic you might think she
is’ and it left Sonic seeming a little bit selfish, which is doubly annoying as
I just said how good Ian Flynn’s take on Sonic is. I agree that pursuing this
mysterious new Eggman Empire commander is important and that Sonic has a habit
of rushing in alone but it just felt like him being a bit prickish and, well, thick as the whole issue proved how
helpful working with the Resistance – or just other people – is: Sonic
literally couldn’t have saved the town so efficiently without Amy and the
townspeople, the issue makes that clear in It’s mission to prove how useful Amy
is.
So yeah, good issue for
Amy, not so good for Sonic. Also, wasn’t Croquette
Bomber from Sonic Battle? Are we
allowed to talk about Sonic Battle?7
Sonic the Hedgehog Volume 3 #3
Ian Flynn, Jennifer
Hernandez, Heather Breckel (colours).
Woo! Knuckles! Quick Summary: Knuckles has been feeling the
need to cut loose as the Resistance is a lot less fighty these days. Sonic
arrives just as Knux is smashing Super Badnik, but the town won’t let them in,
turns out two mercenaries, the skunk brothers Rough and Tumble, took over the
town before the war and no run the place, hording all the Wisps and Wispons8.
Knuckles and Sonic break and confront the two. The skunks are a match for True
Blue and Rad red - no small feat - but then Sonic reminds the Wisps all the
good he did for them in Sonic Colours and they turn on the two, allowing them
to be arrested. Our mysterious foe is not unhappy though, this proves that
Knuckles is still on the surface, leaving Angel Island and the Master Emerald
vulnerable…
Sonic mentioned the
Hooligans in this issue! Bark, Bean and Fang’s place in the new continuity is
safe? I mean I know they appeared in Sonic Mania so it wasn’t such a concern
but I like in-comic confirmation and this seems like it might be it? Maybe?
Hopefully? And with Mighty and Ray set to appear in Sonic Mania Plus hopefully
they’ll be ok to appear too!
Holy shit, I just realised
I’m going to be able to use Mighty to beat up Fang the Sniper…my Total Chaotix9
inspired dreams are going to come true.
Anyway back to this comic
– fuck the art on this and fuck the
choice of putting these artists (Hernandez & Breckel) on this issue, this
happened last time Flynn had a ‘go around and re-introduce characters’ arc10,
the issue focussing on my favourite of them (Bunnie Rabbot in this case) got
lumbered with the shit artists. Yes that is a childish thing to say. The art
is, simply, not professional, it’s fan-art level digital artwork, mid-tier
Deviantart submissions (so admittedly a lot better than my Deviantart
submissions), it’s the sort of art that would appear in Sonic the Comic Online
and there it’d be fine because that’s a fan project - this is an official and
professional work, I expect better than this. The line-art, the colouring
style, the backgrounds, it’s barely web-comic level. I’m reading from the
digital editions though so maybe it doesn’t look so obvious in the printed
version.
Still nobody wants me to
rant about the artwork, let’s talk about the focus of this issue; Rough and
Tumble! The first original characters introduced in this new series, the first
of the characters who’ve got to be as good as the Archie cast we can’t have11
and the SatAM and Adventures cast it seems we won’t have. My thoughts? They’re
bloody great! Sonic needs more lower-level bad guys, more smaller threats, more
professional criminals, one cannot subsist on Team Hooligan alone and these two
are fantastic, they’re clearly a threat, and their ability to put up a fight
against Sonic & Knuckles is more than proof of that, they have unique (now)
smell-based powers (I’ve heard they’ve got a big brother called ‘Stink..kor…’,
something like that) and they’re so funny: the rhyme! The rhyme and Sonic &
Knuckles reactions to it are the best thing in this series so far:
They’ll come back and be a
regular pest and I can’t wait, a Rough & Tumble vs Bark and Bean fight
needs to happen, Flynn! Get to it!
Sonic the Hedgehog Volume 3 #4
Ian Flynn, Evan Stanley,
Matt Herms (colours)
Quick Summary: fourth issue, fourth unnamed town, and
this time Sonic is far too late, a larger (Buzzbomber-shaped!) drop shit has
rained down robots and ruined the place, luckily local hero Tangle is around.
Sonic and Tangle the Lemur join forces but they’re still a little outgunned,
until Blaze turns up in a blaze and ups their firepower (puns?). however the
drop ship is out of reach, but Tangle has an idea and uses her tail as a
sling-shot to get the speedsters of two worlds up there, where they blow that
shit up. Turns out the Sol Emeralds told Blaze to come to Sonic’s World (I miss
the word Mobius so much, it’s so much shorter) because a great threat is
coming, one that isn’t the war with Eggman from Sonic Forces, Blaze agees to
stay in Tangle’s town (NAME THESE PLACES IAN!) until they figure out what it
is. Meanwhile in another unnamed town (GOD DAMN IT! PLACES IN THE SONIC UNIVERE
HAVE NAMES IAN! I CHECKED AND EVERYTHING!) Eggman is hiding out, but about to
make his grand re-entrance (so it isn’t him running the Empire and driving this
story).
So I was going to do this
joke about how IDW managed to go four issues without introducing a minority
character, not because I disagree with diversity in comics or diversity in
general just because IDW are so
committed to diversity, it’s gotten to the point that you can tell who’s going
to be a main supporting character in a new IDW book because they’re not white,
it’s become a fucking running gag. HOWEVER: maybe I’m just now trained to
expect any IDW characters to be minority characters, maybe it’s just wishful
thinking (Blaze is about 14 though so maybe not), maybe it really is impossible
for IDW to not introduce a minority in the first story-arc but did it seem that
Tangle was a bit… into Blaze? Again this isn’t a complaint – a gay Sonic
character is more than welcome, especially after the whole Rotor/Kobor debacle
(thanks Ken)12, but it’s not just me right?
Speaking of Tangle the
Lemur OHMYGODSHE’SSOLOVELYIWANTHERTOBEREALANDBEMYFRIEND *ehem* she makes a good
first impression, she comes across and a nice, likeable and realistic (for a
cartoon lemur) personality and I want to hug her. Her tail abilities were also
nicely done, she uses it like how The Doctor used his scarf and though it seems
like it may be a little prehensile it’s not in the usually level of (e.g.
Nightcrawler) and it gives her ‘her own thing’ in a medium where prehensile
tails are the go-to and where we have a character who already uses his tails
for his gimmick. These new characters have a lot of fan expectation to live up
to and it’s really nice that they’re at least living up to my expectations,
it’s 3-0 to the good new characters,
they might not make me stop missing Sally, Bunnie and Snively but they
do take the sting out of them not being here.
Story-wise this was another
issue that felt a bit light on the story, nowhere near as bad as issue 1 though
and the issues are feeling like comic book stories rather than levels with
cutscenes (scene, action, scene) but it was easily my favourite of the four, so much awesomeness happened in it that it pretty much had to be. Art for this issue was great, Evan Stanley is
just superb, again very modern but also very good, if I can say ‘has a great
sense of movement in your art’ then you’re in the right place drawing Sonic the
Hedgehog, he needs to embrace the art of backgrounds a bit more though - there
was a lot of panels where the bucket fill had been the only tool applied to
their ‘scenery’.
So…an ok start, a bit light
on story though. I’m hoping that with the ‘preview era’ out of the way and the
book switching to monthly with issue 5 Flynn and team will be see more of a
need to make each issue have a bit substance to it. The new characters are
great, the art is mostly great and I’m glad no-one reads this because I just
realise that I make a joke out of IDW’s commitment to diversity and the only
artists I slagged off were women: so let’s just clarify: the sex of the artists
for issue 3 was not a factor in forming my opinion, just their art; I am for
diversity in comics I just wanted to poke fun at IDW for doing something over
and over and apparently not noticing. Thanks for reading, please enjoy the
Sonic Fan Footnotes.
1
Fulop created Mammoth Mogul and the Destructix (under the pen name Kent
Taylor), his lawsuit was over unpaid royalties.
2
Ken Penders’ story is far too long for a footnote: basically he used to be a
main writer on the Sonic books, left, did nothing for a few year while Flynn
made the book good, found no other purpose in life, copyrighted his characters and
stories, the copyright people told Archie, Archie took him to court because as
far as they’re concerned he as working under a work for hire contract so
everything belonged to Sega, Penders said ‘no I didn’t’ I lot and acted like an
repugnant egotistical tosser online, Archie could only produce a photocopied
contract from Penders, a settlement was reached, ownership of the characters
created by everyone who worked on the book pre-issue 160 reverted back to the
writer who created them, Archie rebooted their whole Sonic continuity, Penders
continued to be a repugnant egotistical tosser online while working on a
graphic novel series called The Lara Su
Chronicles, that was 9 years ago - he’s almost got the preview finished.
3
one of the two main writers on the aforementioned British comic from Fleetway: Sonic the Comic
4
building size robots with huge hammers
5
in the UK most comic books were weekly, Leo Baxendale is the creator of the
Bash Street Kids and co-creator of Minnie the Minx
6
the story-arc that ended with the reboot of Archie’s Sonic continuity
7
poor Sonic Battle, so unloved by the
fandom
8
Wisps are little aliens that debuted in the game Sonic Colours and act as power-ups, Wispons are weapons that use
Wisps to power them, but voluntarily, not as organic batteries like Eggman’s
Badniks.
9
in Sonic the Comic Fang the Sniper
(known as Nack the Weasel back then) was a member of the team The Chaotix and
betrayed them in the story ‘Total Chaotix’ (Sonic the Comic 53-58), Mighty was
also a member of the Chaotix and is gonna have his violent revenge when Sonic
Mania Plus comes out, moo hoo ha ha.
10
‘Countdown to Chaos’ - it ran in
Sonic the Hedgehog Volume 3 253-256
11
any characters not created by Ian Flynn or Tracy Yardley for the Archie Sonic
comics are no longer owned by Sega and Flynn has already said he won’t be
bringing over any of his characters from that book.
12
Ken Penders revealed that he had planned for the character Rotor Walrus (from
the Sonic SatAM cartoon) to be gay and to be in a relationship with one of
Penders own creations: an echidna called Kobor. Of course he only revealed this
years after he’d left the book and after Flynn had already killed off Kobor
without knowing anything about Penders plans. I’m sure that Flynn looking bad
by having killed a gay character off was not at all what Penders intended and
he didn’t in any way take any pleasure in that happening.
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