Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80’s/90’s syndicated cartoon? Episode 66: Summary (part two)

This is part two of my summary and conclusion to my blog series investigating how the ArchieSonic comics were remarkably similar to the format of a syndicated cartoon from the 80’s and 90’s. If you haven’t already, you can read part one here.

Okay, back to it!

Episode 40: The one episode that’s unique to the show’s premise and characters

I chose four arcs for this one - Mecha Madness, Return to Angel Island, Iron Dominion, and Spark of Life.

Episode 41: Recap origin story in yet another clip show

They didn’t do it as more clip shows, but the origins of the series were further explored in new stories multiple times in both pre-boot and post-boot. Perhaps the most memorable instance is from Sonic #43, in which King Acorn was trapped in his memories and reliving Robotnik’s coup.

Episode 42: Haunted house

We got this in the Sonic X comics, with issues 13 and 14 bringing in King Boom Boo from Sonic Adventure 2 and that one episode of the anime. Oh, and he was possessing everyone he could get his non-corporeal mitts on.

Episode 43: Hero suddenly becomes elderly

This one happened in Sonic Super Special #8. It wasn’t pretty.

Episode 44: Hero suddenly becomes six-to-eleven years old

This is another one we didn’t get in the comics, unfortunately. I used that episode as a good time to talk about the Sonic Kids comics, which gave us stories from when the Freedom Fighters were younger.

Episode 45: Boys vs. girls

I feel like this episode is supposed to be about boys and girls on the same teams turning against each other, so for this one I’m going to say no, that didn’t happen in ArchieSonic. The closest we got was that one time in Sonic #14 when Robotnik and Snively kidnapped Sally and Bunnie because they thought, “lulz girls are weaksauce.” They got more than they bargained for.

Episode 46: Unusually serious “drugs are bad,” episode.

Sigh, yes. The Chaotix Caper in Knuckles #13 - 15 is infamous.

Episode 47: Evil alien invasion

In pre-boot there was the Xorda in Sonic #124 - 125. In post-boot there was the return of the Black Arms in Sonic Universe #59 - 62. 

Episode 48: Benign Alien Visitors

The most memorable example is Ceneca-9009 of the Bem, who came to Mobius to change all roboticised Mobians back to normal. After first testing champions on both sides, of course.

Episode 49: Hero becomes blind. Magoo jokes aplenty. Ableism ages episode horribly.

Another one that didn’t happen in the comics. The closest instance was in the godawful Sonic Super Special 15, which featured ten freaking pages of Sonic wandering around in the dark or in a blizzard and unable to see crap.

Episode 50: Major event that dramatically shakes up status quo. Turns out to be a dream. 

I’m going with Sonic #37 for this one. Some might argue that Bunnie’s nightmare wasn’t really that big an event, but I would argue that one of the main characters slowly becoming a robot and turning on her friends definitely counts.

Episode 51: Villains team up

Oh, so many times. So many times in fact that I had to make a second post for all the examples I forgot. Let’s go with that time in Sonic #62, when a whole bunch of locked up villains thought Snively had been responsible for their jailbreak and signed up to work with him.

Episode 52: Rashomon homage

Yes, in Sonic Super Special #5. Sonic, Sally and Antoine all argued about how they each single-handedly defeated a combot that had attacked them.

Episode 53: Henchman joins heroes for one time only.

Snively did team up with the Freedom Fighters in a couple of issues when Robo-Robotnik invaded Mobius before agreeing to work for the new Eggman. He would later join the Freedom Fighters for awhile, starting in Sonic #152. He eventually went back to the Eggman Empire again, of course, because he’s awful. Post-reboot he had left Eggman's forces and was supposedly working for GUN, but was secretly plotting his own conquest from within their ranks.

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

There weren’t really any good examples that fit this one. Hope Robotnik and Ken Penders’ son and niece from the Sonic Live! special certainly had prominent page time in the stories they were involved in, but they never actually rescued Sonic, despite what this cover might have you believe.

Episode 55: Invisibility potion

Yes, but it was so effective that everyone (even Sonic himself) thought that he was dead.

Episode 56: The Writer’s Barely Disguised Fetish

Oh god, where do you even start with this one? Let’s just say yes, it happened on multiple occasions, and leave it at that.

Episode 57: Can’t eat favourite food

Weeeeell, I guess so. There was that one time in Sonic #11 where he ate too many chilli dogs before bed and had a trippy nightmare. When he woke up he decided to go on a diet for about thirty seconds. (cue canned laughter)

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

A lot of the early issues focused on stopping Robotnik from destroying the environment, but the best example of this one is probably the nuking of Robotropolis. Sonic managed to trick Eggman into turning on his city’s forcefield after the nuclear missiles were already inside, meaning that all the destruction and radiation was safely contained in an impenetrable bubble. In later issues Eggman and other villains would try to penetrate this shield, to release the radiation out into the surrounding environment.

Episode 59: Stranded in the ocean

I’m going with Waves of Change from Sonic #260 - #263, where Sonic, Amy and Rotor had to go to the underwater city of Meropis on their quest to restore the shattered planet.

Episode 60: Stranded in the desert

There are two instances here that fit this one best. The first one is Sonic #62/63 again, where Sonic and Tails crash their biplane in the desert and are “rescued” by the inhabitants of Sandblast City, who worship Sonic and refuse to let him leave. The other is the Knuckles mini-series, in which Knuckles and Archimedes were yeeted into the desert by Enerjak (something that seems to happen a lot with the various Enerjaks, I noticed).

Episode 61: Stranded in the snow

Continuing right off from Sonic #63 when Sonic and Tails escaped from the desert, they ended up trapped in the snow in the very next issue when their biplane failed them yet again.

Episode 62: Stuck in an elevator

I wasn’t able to find any instances of specifically being trapped in an elevator, so I broadened the category to its base trope, which is two people, usually enemies or rivals, being locked in a room together. There were lots of cases of this, such as when Dr Eggman and Dr Wily were locked up together during the Worlds Unite crossover.

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

Well, Sonic #283 was a set-up story for the finale of the Sonic Unleashed adaptation. It had two stories - the first featured Sonic and Sally calling their allies around the world to explain their plan and ask for help, and the second featured Eggman watching the pirated footage of that video call and making a counter-plan. Is it a clip show? Not exactly, but it’s close enough.

Episode 64 - 65: Two-part Finale

I cited various finales (or planned finales, in the case of Endgame), including the end of the Knuckles series, the end of the Super Specials, the end of the Sonic X companion series, the end of the pre-reboot era, and the end of the post-reboot era. As I said in the final post, in my mind the proper finale of ArchieSonic is Sonic #287, despite the cancellation of the series not happening until three issues later and the fact that the last ArchieSonic comic ever published was actually Sonic Universe #94.

So out of the 65 episodes listed, we didn’t get the hiccups episode, the Wonderful Life parody episode, the hero has a cold episode, the origin recap clip show episode, the hero regressing to childhood episode, the boys vs. girls episode, or the hero blinded episode. That comes to only seven out of sixty-five episodes that we never saw happen in the ArchieSonic series. But does this mean that the comic wasn’t really a comic at all, but actually a syndicated cartoon? Well, let me just quote myself from the very first post I did regarding this topic.

So there you have it - of course ArchieSonic is a comic book series, there was never actually any doubt. 

Before I finish up, I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has read this series, especially those who commented with encouragement, ideas and suggestions. 

In particular I feel that I once again owe a big thank you to former ArchieSonic contributor Aleah Baker, who not only read and commented on my pieces but also gave her precious time on more than one occasion to offer behind the scenes insight and answer my questions about certain issues or characters. She was incredibly generous with me and I’m extremely grateful for all the help. 

This has been an extremely interesting topic for me to explore, and I’m going to miss writing about it. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with this blog after this. A few people have suggested that I go into a full commitment to review the entire series rather than just portions of it like I’ve been doing with this blog series, and I have certainly been considering doing that. But on the other hand there are so many others who have done that so well - a few of my personal favourites are @robotnikholmescomicblog (who has branched out to video essays after finishing his initial reviews on Tumblr), the ArchieSonic Digest podcast, and of course, Bobby Shroeder’s @thankskenpenders. If I was going to do a full ArchieSonic review series, I would want to find a way to put my own spin on it rather than just rehashing what they have done. So I’m going to have to keep thinking on that. Thanks again for reading, everyone, and take care!

The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review

The day has finally come. Many, understandably, thought we'd never get here. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten here. We've been through so much. Lawsuits, reboots, redesigns, unreleased NFTs, empty legal threats over the fact that movie Knuckles has a dad, an attempt to license out Scourge the Hedgehog to fans that immediately got canceled (in both meanings of the term), and many, MANY idiotic Twitter controversies. But now, here we are.

Thirteen years after first announcing it in the middle of his legal battles with Archie and Sega that changed the American Sonic comics forever, former writer Ken Penders has released the first part of his new series: The Lara-Su Chronicles.

Yes. I had to buy the book. I had to take one for the team. Look at the fucking URL of this blog, a blog I've been using to talk about the American Sonic comics for nearly a decade while the specter of this book loomed in the distance. The one time I've actually been paid to write an article about anything in any professional capacity, it was an article about the Penders lawsuits. I'm cited on his Wikipedia page. There was no way I was going to skip reviewing this, and there was no guarantee that scans would ever turn up online given the incredibly small audience for this trash. (Only 166 people preordered this, and even that number feels way higher than it should be.) No, I had to preorder it to ensure I could get a copy and cover it for the blog... even if that meant my name would be forever immortalized in the list of "supporters" in the back of the book. These are the sacrifices I must make as a woman who stumbled ass backwards into being an amateur Archie Sonic historian.

So, what exactly is in this book? How much of it is new? How bad is it? How did we even get here in the first place? How can this exist without Sega pursuing legal action? What happens next? And, most importantly... why are there multiple depictions of an Archie Sonic character breastfeeding in this book?

I'm here to answer those questions as best I can, and in agonizing detail.

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!

sketches!!! Been feeling vry pink

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE THE MOMENT I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLIONS OF PRINTED CIRCUTS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WERE ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOARMSTRONG OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR ECH'Y'D'NYAS AT THIS MICRO INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

boom fire and ice is hilarious actually. the detailed cutscenes literally just look like the show

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!

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 14: Evil twin

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80’s or ‘90’s syndicated cartoon. Today we're going to have a look at one of ArchieSonic's most used tropes:

Episode 14: Evil twin 

This was definitely one of ArchieSonic’s favourites to fall back on, and surprise surprise, it all started with Ken Penders. 

Sonic #11’s story, “The Good, the Bad, and the Hedgehog,” was the debut of Anti-Sonic, Sonic’s doppleganger from an alternate dimension where good and bad are flipped. On Anti-Mobius Sonic fought against freedom while Dr. Robotnik was a kindly veterinarian.

Evil Sonic would end up being a regularly occurring guest star, sometimes with the other Anti-Freedom Fighters but for the most part by himself, usually showing up to impersonate Sonic and frame him for whatever mischief he was getting up to.

For the most part he was more of a nuisance than an actual threat and his attempts to frame Sonic would get resolved pretty quickly. …except for that one time.

Ew. Let’s move on.

This changed after Ian Flynn became head writer on the series, as Anti-Sonic was one of the first things he updated. Ian’s first published ArchieSonic story, “Birthday Bash!” was featured in Sonic #160 - 161. Whilst attempting to steal the Master Emerald, Anti-Sonic was confronted by Knuckles’ father Locke.

Anti-Sonic attempted to power up to a super state using the Master Emerald, but Locke interrupted the transformation resulting in…

Scourge the Hedgehog. Scourge became a much more interesting character after this, having loftier goals than constantly just wanting to pick a fight with Sonic. He wanted respect. He wanted to prove himself the best.

And after Sonic gave him a moment of self-doubt, he decided to respond by going back to his homeworld, remaking it in his own image, and declaring himself King.

This resulted in the Anti-Freedom Fighters also getting new looks and being renamed, “The Suppression Squad.” This led to them coming back to Sonic’s world with the intent to conquer it as well. 

There’s another “evil twin” that needs to be acknowledged, of course, but I’ll get to him in tomorrow’s episode: the robot duplicate. Stay tuned!

Sonic Prime Season 3: Final episodes, final thoughts

Well, here we are. The final seven episodes of Sonic Prime are out on Netflix, concluding the story of Sonic's adventures in the Shatterverse. I've previously shared my thoughts on the first and second seasons, which I was pretty mixed on, but there were still glimmers of hope. The fluid animation, Shadow being fun in all his appearances, Nine being fairly interesting as a jaded alternate version of Tails, etc. There was enough to make me believe that after some highs and lows there was still the possibility that this show could end on a high note - or at least a decent note.

This did not happen.

Sonic Prime's final season sucks. The ending sucks, and the road to get there sucks. It's left me wondering what the point of all this even was. There are still moments I like that I'll try to highlight, and the animators and voice cast are still clearly giving it their all, but these efforts sadly don't outweigh the overwhelming mediocrity of the story. I would barely even recommend other Sonic fans who are on the fence go out of their way to finish it. I won't begrudge people who got more out of this show than I did, but I think overall I just really, really dislike Sonic Prime.

...The problem, of course, is that all other discussion of the show has been overshadowed by needlessly hostile arguments over its place in Sonic's canon. So we've gotta talk about that, too.

(This post will contain full spoilers for Sonic Prime.)

Is it possible to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit) for nearly half an hour? Well, I did 😂