My Sonic, not yours
I am not a typical Sonic fan. I was a SNES kid. I got a Dreamcast before a Mega Drive and the first Sonic game I actually owned was Sonic Adventure. But I have been with the franchise from the beginning, just not with the games. First and foremost I was a fan of the licensed comic.
No, the other comic.
Sonic the Comic (StC) was made and published by the UK-based Egmont-Fleetway, hence the moniker 'Fleetway Sonic'. It ran between 1993 and 2002 (but issues after 2000 were just reprints of older stories) with a canon that took the existing material and added a few touches of it's own. It's not very widely acknowledged, probably because it is usually eclipsed by Archie's more famous American-made Sonic comic, but it has a devout fanbase. StC's endurance can be seen in how after it was canceled an irregularly-updated webcomic called StC Online was created by the fans to keep it's universe alive. StC-O is distinguished from other fanworks by having the blessing of the original StC staff and copying the format of the comic as closely as possible.
So to raise awareness of this little-known corner of the Sonic franchise (and because LJ provides generous image hosting space) I'd like to give you a tour of a little part of my childhood.
Until about 1999 or 2000 this was my understanding of the story behind Sonic the Hedgehog. It's based on a one-shot comic that promoted the first Sonic game in the States, which is ironic because the US-made Sonic canons that followed it would ignore it and do something completely different. [EDIT 12/03/09: this story was actually written by Sega after all, read about it here.]
I don't know whether I became aware of this or the SatAM cartoon first but I came to the conclusion this was the 'real' story and the plot of SatAM was just made up for the cartoon because this story seemed to be more accurate to what little I saw of the games. There's still a part of me that's sad this isn't the real canon behind the games.
Sonic is explaining his origin in flashback here because StC didn't cover it at the start of the comic. The earliest issues, by the way, looked something like this
Not inspiring, but has a great potential to mess with people who know a very different 'Sally Acorn'.
After a few issues the writers had used up all the concepts from the games they could make stories out of so a drastic change of setting was in order. Sonic was warped six months into the future and discovers Robotnik has conquered Planet Mobius in his absence.
The influence of SatAM Sonic here only becomes more obvious after Sonic forms a group of Freedom Fighters and Robotnik gets a redesign that makes him look more like he did on SatAM.
From this point on the game Badniks were downplayed in favour of a new grunt, the Badnik Troopers.
After this came a few straightforward game adaptations, starting with Sonic CD (Sonic goes to the Miracle Planet to save Amy, fights Metal Sonic, travels through time).
Then an equally faithful version of Sonic 3/Sonic and Knuckles (Sonic finds the Floating Island, fights with Knuckles who Robotnik has convinced that Sonic is the villain).
You'll see the names Nigel Kitching and Richard Elson in the credits here. They were the main writer and artist for the comic who are considered to have turned out it's best material together.
Knuckles Chaotix is where Sega either gave StC free reign or stopped caring. Here a giant thronebound Metallix Emperor created to oversee automated Metal Sonic production decides it can do Robotnik's job better than he can and makes it's move to turn Mobius into a planet of robots.
Flickies Island was even more of a departure, starting with the elements of the game and ending with Sonic fighting a Metal Knuckles to the death in Star Trek TOS-style arena combat on an alien planet. Seriously. After that StC was left to it's own devices for a few years until the final issues, which were a very liberal adaptation of Sonic Adventure.
Sonic himself is actually one of my lesser-liked characters in the games, especially when it comes to the version in the new games that wants to think he's cool but really comes off as an arrogant one-note character you can't help but dislike for being so smug. StC, on the other hand, freely admits that Sonic is an asshole. That makes all the difference.
Over the years Tails must have taken more verbal abuse than any of the villains.
This Sonic still comes down on the side of good but even his allies admit he's not the easiest person to work with. He's crude, impulsive, quick to snap at anyone who doesn't satisfy him and sometimes fond of pranks of questionable taste.
Seen here is the original Fleetway Freedom Fighters lineup: Sonic, Tails, Amy, Porker Lewis (pig) Johnny Lightfoot (rabbit). The last two were the pig and rabbit that Sonic freed from robots in the games expanded into more detailed characters, like the treatment Sally Acorn got elsewhere. Porker was the Freedom Fighters' tech guy, seen in this scan having a nervous breakdown and quitting the group after he was held captive by the Brotherhood of Metallix by a month. Afterwards he moves to the Floating Island to study the ruins of the Echidna civilisation and became Knuckles' advisor on their ancient technology. Johnny's distinguishing characteristic is that he lasted almost the whole of StC's lifespan without developing a more distinguishing characteristic than being a rabbit.
Like most other Sonics this one is unfalteringly self-assured. He won't be stared down by anything he faces (unless it's a spider. He's arachnophobic for some reason) but he's surprisingly clever too, having defeated as many enemies with his wits as his speed. This comes in handy when Robotnik becomes a reality-warping god who takes revenge for all his defeats by letting Sonic live in the twisted new Mobius he creates just to watch him break as he spends the rest of his life fighting an impossible battle. In what might be his finest hour Sonic refuses to give in to a being who could destroy him with a thought, won't stop fighting for a world where no-one knows he exists and his friends have become his enemies and manages to successfully bluff an omnipotent Robotnik.
From the perspective of someone new to StC the origin for this Tails is incredibly random. Unknown to anyone else he comes from a faux-medieval village of foxes in another dimension called the Nameless Zone and he moved to Mobius to look for fame. Wanting his family to be proud of him he writes back to tell them he is the hero of Mobius who fights Robotnik and Sonic is his sidekick. Being so impressed with this the foxes decide to call him back now and again to have him deal with conflicts arising between them and the neighboring goblin kingdom, which they decide should be trivial business next to him protecting a whole planet. The Nameless Zone stories usually involve Tails bumbling his way to some sort of victory with the help of a more capable supporting character. The Nameless Zone was phased out over the years but Tails was still the go-to character for backup comedy one-shots. As he's my favourite Sonic character it's actually kind of disappointing to see how little he grows or changes here.
StC Amy, on the other hand....
It took me quite a while to realise how rubbish the Amy of the games was, and the reason for that is because I had to stop associating her with this Amy. Smart, determined and sensibly-dressed, she shames what Sega have done with the character.
Her weapon of choice was the bow and arrow. Sometimes she used a string-drawn bow but she mostly settled on small handheld crossbows later on. It's a distinctive weapon for her, unlike the seems-like-characterisation-at-first-but-is-really-just-a-dumb-anime-cliche giant hammer.
StC Knuckles is pretty close to the game version. His basic motivation is still 'do not fuck with my island' but he's more outspoken (and a LOT smarter) than his game equivalent. But since he's still a hermit who spent most of his live alone on an island the writers could put him in situations the more street-smart Sonic wouldn't work in.
Unlike Archie Sonic, which has about fourteen million Echidna characters, StC stayed true to the concept of 'Last of the Echidnas'. Later the ancient Guardian Robots of the Echidna civilisation were introduced to give him something else to interact with. Having watched a little more anime since then I can see where they were inspired by the Laputa robots. Someone on the staff had been brushing up on their floating island lore.
Unlike the recent games, where he's been demoted to Sonic's other sidekick, Knuckles stays a rival and equal to Sonic throughout the comic's history.
And if Sonic's greatest moment was outsmarting a god Knuckles' is probably this:
StC Robotnik had a makeover early on to look more like his SatAM self. Different Robotniks have been comical or threatening but this one leans towards the latter. What makes him unique is as the series goes on being foiled repeatedly by Sonic takes it's toll on his sanity. Later on after failing to kill Sonic despite having the powers of a god (twice) he has a fit of depression followed a nihilistic decision to just destroy everything so he'd never have to deal with Sonic again.
From here StC added it's own characters in the mix.
Because everything is better with pirates.
Especially ones with admirably loyal undead first mates.
Who give us gems like this.
Fun fact: Ken Penders, who wrote for Archie's Sonic comic, proposed a story that spoofed Mario and had the idea shot down, which is curious because the Genesis marketing at the time was famous for taking low blows at Nintendo.
Fleetway had no such inhibition.
A later addition to the Freedom Fighters was Shortfuse the Cybernik, StC's most popular original character. Originally Shorty the Squirrel he became the test subject for Robotnik's new super-Badnik armour but kept his free will because of a glitch. Sealed permanently inside the suit, but packing enough heat to make him a one-Squirrel army, he becomes a major advisary to Robotnik. His personality varied a little between stories; sometimes he was a straightforward hero and other times he was a tempermental lone wolf who became addicted to fighting.
The roster was filled out by science chick Tekno the Canary who replaced Porker Lewis as the tech support for the Freedom Fighters. She rarely ever interacted with Sonic or Tails and mostly hung around with Shortfuse (because she maintained his armour) or Amy (to form StC's long-running girl power duo).
And the one that takes people getting acquainted with this Soniverse most by surprise: evil swirly-eyed Super Sonic.
Super Sonic became a super-powered alternate personality triggered by stress that Sonic developed after his first exposure to the Chaos Emeralds.
In the beginning he was just aggressive but as time went on he became more psychotic and indiscriminately destructive (and subsequently a lot more popular with readers). Sonic's friends tried to get rid of him by splitting him apart from Sonic but that just made him a full-time problem instead of a part-time one.
And this answers the question, why does Sonic have to stay so cool all the time? Because if he loses it bad things happen.
StC is fascinating because of the mix of influences that formed it: it's a uniquely British take on a character that was made in Japan but developed more extensively in the West.
The below is an example of StC at it's most laid-back. It's also funny to me because it's about as far from the popular claims of SONIC WAS SO XXXTREME AND IN YOUR FACE as you can get.
Speaking of Britain, that's where he ended up on the token visit-to-Earth episode. Unlike Archie Mobius, which was confirmed a while ago to be a far-future Earth, Fleetway Mobius is Earth's 'sister planet', which made arranging a visit much easier.
Since I seem to be out of commentary I'll just put the rest of the images I prepared in a highlights reel.
That face gets me every time.
what
StC has nothing to do with the games that inspired it now, aside from a few shared characters and concepts. The comic, and it's fans, exist in a little self-contained bubble cut off from the modern Sonic. Even when the reputation of the Sonic games was at it's worst I was never bothered by the idea of the series 'going bad'. In my mind this is the real Sonic, not the games. This is my personal Sonic and he doesn't let me down.
No, the other comic.
Sonic the Comic (StC) was made and published by the UK-based Egmont-Fleetway, hence the moniker 'Fleetway Sonic'. It ran between 1993 and 2002 (but issues after 2000 were just reprints of older stories) with a canon that took the existing material and added a few touches of it's own. It's not very widely acknowledged, probably because it is usually eclipsed by Archie's more famous American-made Sonic comic, but it has a devout fanbase. StC's endurance can be seen in how after it was canceled an irregularly-updated webcomic called StC Online was created by the fans to keep it's universe alive. StC-O is distinguished from other fanworks by having the blessing of the original StC staff and copying the format of the comic as closely as possible.
So to raise awareness of this little-known corner of the Sonic franchise (and because LJ provides generous image hosting space) I'd like to give you a tour of a little part of my childhood.
Until about 1999 or 2000 this was my understanding of the story behind Sonic the Hedgehog. It's based on a one-shot comic that promoted the first Sonic game in the States, which is ironic because the US-made Sonic canons that followed it would ignore it and do something completely different. [EDIT 12/03/09: this story was actually written by Sega after all, read about it here.]
I don't know whether I became aware of this or the SatAM cartoon first but I came to the conclusion this was the 'real' story and the plot of SatAM was just made up for the cartoon because this story seemed to be more accurate to what little I saw of the games. There's still a part of me that's sad this isn't the real canon behind the games.
Sonic is explaining his origin in flashback here because StC didn't cover it at the start of the comic. The earliest issues, by the way, looked something like this
Not inspiring, but has a great potential to mess with people who know a very different 'Sally Acorn'.
After a few issues the writers had used up all the concepts from the games they could make stories out of so a drastic change of setting was in order. Sonic was warped six months into the future and discovers Robotnik has conquered Planet Mobius in his absence.
The influence of SatAM Sonic here only becomes more obvious after Sonic forms a group of Freedom Fighters and Robotnik gets a redesign that makes him look more like he did on SatAM.
From this point on the game Badniks were downplayed in favour of a new grunt, the Badnik Troopers.
After this came a few straightforward game adaptations, starting with Sonic CD (Sonic goes to the Miracle Planet to save Amy, fights Metal Sonic, travels through time).
Then an equally faithful version of Sonic 3/Sonic and Knuckles (Sonic finds the Floating Island, fights with Knuckles who Robotnik has convinced that Sonic is the villain).
You'll see the names Nigel Kitching and Richard Elson in the credits here. They were the main writer and artist for the comic who are considered to have turned out it's best material together.
Knuckles Chaotix is where Sega either gave StC free reign or stopped caring. Here a giant thronebound Metallix Emperor created to oversee automated Metal Sonic production decides it can do Robotnik's job better than he can and makes it's move to turn Mobius into a planet of robots.
Flickies Island was even more of a departure, starting with the elements of the game and ending with Sonic fighting a Metal Knuckles to the death in Star Trek TOS-style arena combat on an alien planet. Seriously. After that StC was left to it's own devices for a few years until the final issues, which were a very liberal adaptation of Sonic Adventure.
Sonic himself is actually one of my lesser-liked characters in the games, especially when it comes to the version in the new games that wants to think he's cool but really comes off as an arrogant one-note character you can't help but dislike for being so smug. StC, on the other hand, freely admits that Sonic is an asshole. That makes all the difference.
Over the years Tails must have taken more verbal abuse than any of the villains.
This Sonic still comes down on the side of good but even his allies admit he's not the easiest person to work with. He's crude, impulsive, quick to snap at anyone who doesn't satisfy him and sometimes fond of pranks of questionable taste.
Seen here is the original Fleetway Freedom Fighters lineup: Sonic, Tails, Amy, Porker Lewis (pig) Johnny Lightfoot (rabbit). The last two were the pig and rabbit that Sonic freed from robots in the games expanded into more detailed characters, like the treatment Sally Acorn got elsewhere. Porker was the Freedom Fighters' tech guy, seen in this scan having a nervous breakdown and quitting the group after he was held captive by the Brotherhood of Metallix by a month. Afterwards he moves to the Floating Island to study the ruins of the Echidna civilisation and became Knuckles' advisor on their ancient technology. Johnny's distinguishing characteristic is that he lasted almost the whole of StC's lifespan without developing a more distinguishing characteristic than being a rabbit.
Like most other Sonics this one is unfalteringly self-assured. He won't be stared down by anything he faces (unless it's a spider. He's arachnophobic for some reason) but he's surprisingly clever too, having defeated as many enemies with his wits as his speed. This comes in handy when Robotnik becomes a reality-warping god who takes revenge for all his defeats by letting Sonic live in the twisted new Mobius he creates just to watch him break as he spends the rest of his life fighting an impossible battle. In what might be his finest hour Sonic refuses to give in to a being who could destroy him with a thought, won't stop fighting for a world where no-one knows he exists and his friends have become his enemies and manages to successfully bluff an omnipotent Robotnik.
From the perspective of someone new to StC the origin for this Tails is incredibly random. Unknown to anyone else he comes from a faux-medieval village of foxes in another dimension called the Nameless Zone and he moved to Mobius to look for fame. Wanting his family to be proud of him he writes back to tell them he is the hero of Mobius who fights Robotnik and Sonic is his sidekick. Being so impressed with this the foxes decide to call him back now and again to have him deal with conflicts arising between them and the neighboring goblin kingdom, which they decide should be trivial business next to him protecting a whole planet. The Nameless Zone stories usually involve Tails bumbling his way to some sort of victory with the help of a more capable supporting character. The Nameless Zone was phased out over the years but Tails was still the go-to character for backup comedy one-shots. As he's my favourite Sonic character it's actually kind of disappointing to see how little he grows or changes here.
StC Amy, on the other hand....
It took me quite a while to realise how rubbish the Amy of the games was, and the reason for that is because I had to stop associating her with this Amy. Smart, determined and sensibly-dressed, she shames what Sega have done with the character.
Her weapon of choice was the bow and arrow. Sometimes she used a string-drawn bow but she mostly settled on small handheld crossbows later on. It's a distinctive weapon for her, unlike the seems-like-characterisation-at-first-but-is-really-just-a-dumb-anime-cliche giant hammer.
StC Knuckles is pretty close to the game version. His basic motivation is still 'do not fuck with my island' but he's more outspoken (and a LOT smarter) than his game equivalent. But since he's still a hermit who spent most of his live alone on an island the writers could put him in situations the more street-smart Sonic wouldn't work in.
Unlike Archie Sonic, which has about fourteen million Echidna characters, StC stayed true to the concept of 'Last of the Echidnas'. Later the ancient Guardian Robots of the Echidna civilisation were introduced to give him something else to interact with. Having watched a little more anime since then I can see where they were inspired by the Laputa robots. Someone on the staff had been brushing up on their floating island lore.
Unlike the recent games, where he's been demoted to Sonic's other sidekick, Knuckles stays a rival and equal to Sonic throughout the comic's history.
And if Sonic's greatest moment was outsmarting a god Knuckles' is probably this:
StC Robotnik had a makeover early on to look more like his SatAM self. Different Robotniks have been comical or threatening but this one leans towards the latter. What makes him unique is as the series goes on being foiled repeatedly by Sonic takes it's toll on his sanity. Later on after failing to kill Sonic despite having the powers of a god (twice) he has a fit of depression followed a nihilistic decision to just destroy everything so he'd never have to deal with Sonic again.
From here StC added it's own characters in the mix.
Because everything is better with pirates.
Especially ones with admirably loyal undead first mates.
Who give us gems like this.
Fun fact: Ken Penders, who wrote for Archie's Sonic comic, proposed a story that spoofed Mario and had the idea shot down, which is curious because the Genesis marketing at the time was famous for taking low blows at Nintendo.
Fleetway had no such inhibition.
A later addition to the Freedom Fighters was Shortfuse the Cybernik, StC's most popular original character. Originally Shorty the Squirrel he became the test subject for Robotnik's new super-Badnik armour but kept his free will because of a glitch. Sealed permanently inside the suit, but packing enough heat to make him a one-Squirrel army, he becomes a major advisary to Robotnik. His personality varied a little between stories; sometimes he was a straightforward hero and other times he was a tempermental lone wolf who became addicted to fighting.
The roster was filled out by science chick Tekno the Canary who replaced Porker Lewis as the tech support for the Freedom Fighters. She rarely ever interacted with Sonic or Tails and mostly hung around with Shortfuse (because she maintained his armour) or Amy (to form StC's long-running girl power duo).
And the one that takes people getting acquainted with this Soniverse most by surprise: evil swirly-eyed Super Sonic.
Super Sonic became a super-powered alternate personality triggered by stress that Sonic developed after his first exposure to the Chaos Emeralds.
In the beginning he was just aggressive but as time went on he became more psychotic and indiscriminately destructive (and subsequently a lot more popular with readers). Sonic's friends tried to get rid of him by splitting him apart from Sonic but that just made him a full-time problem instead of a part-time one.
And this answers the question, why does Sonic have to stay so cool all the time? Because if he loses it bad things happen.
StC is fascinating because of the mix of influences that formed it: it's a uniquely British take on a character that was made in Japan but developed more extensively in the West.
The below is an example of StC at it's most laid-back. It's also funny to me because it's about as far from the popular claims of SONIC WAS SO XXXTREME AND IN YOUR FACE as you can get.
Speaking of Britain, that's where he ended up on the token visit-to-Earth episode. Unlike Archie Mobius, which was confirmed a while ago to be a far-future Earth, Fleetway Mobius is Earth's 'sister planet', which made arranging a visit much easier.
Since I seem to be out of commentary I'll just put the rest of the images I prepared in a highlights reel.
That face gets me every time.
what
StC has nothing to do with the games that inspired it now, aside from a few shared characters and concepts. The comic, and it's fans, exist in a little self-contained bubble cut off from the modern Sonic. Even when the reputation of the Sonic games was at it's worst I was never bothered by the idea of the series 'going bad'. In my mind this is the real Sonic, not the games. This is my personal Sonic and he doesn't let me down.