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Comic book series From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sonic the Hedgehog is an American comic book series published by Archie Comics, in partnership with Sega. Although this continuity was based on Sega's video game franchise, its nature had much more in common with the American 1993 animated series of the same name. After initially beginning with a four-issue miniseries from February to May 1993 (with issues appearing on newsstands three months earlier), the first full-length issue of the comic was published in July 1993. The series ran for 290 issues for over 20 years, earning a place in the 2008 Guinness World Records for being the "longest-running comic series based on a video game" in U.S. history.[1] It became the longest-running franchise-based comic series in 2015 (surpassing Marvel Comics' 275 issues of Conan the Barbarian) before it was confirmed cancelled in July 2017, following Sega and Archie Comics' decision to discontinue their business relationship.[2][3] The series features a cast of hundreds of characters, consisting of both those derived from the Sonic games and those original to the comics, with stories focused on a crime-fighting organization called the Freedom Fighters, led by Sonic, as they face off against series antagonist Doctor Eggman alongside a variety of other villains.
| Sonic the Hedgehog | |
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Sonic the Hedgehog No. 0 (February 1993) | |
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| Publisher | Archie Comics Sega of America |
| Schedule | Monthly |
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| Publication date | November 22, 1992 – December 28, 2016 |
| No. of issues | 290 |
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While the series largely consists of its own continuity, certain issues implemented aspects of the Sonic video games into their plots and settings. Following a lawsuit in 2013 between Archie Comics and former writer Ken Penders, Archie rebooted the series, removing several characters from the comics' continuity and moving it closer to that of the Japanese games and media. Over its history, the series had a number of spin-off publications being created. These include Sonic Universe, which focuses on stories revolving around different side characters from the main series; Knuckles the Echidna, focusing on adventures involving Knuckles and his friends the Chaotix; Sonic X, a comic series based on the 2003 Japanese anime of the same name; and Sonic Boom, a comic series based on both the cartoon series and the video game series of the same name. In addition, the comic series had crossovers with Image Comics character Spawn, and Archie's Mega Man comic-book series, based on the Mega Man video games from Capcom.
A succeeding series of Sonic comics by IDW Publishing began serialization from April 2018, following IDW's acquisition of the SEGA license through SEGA of America. Ian Flynn, who formerly worked on the Archie series, was recruited by IDW to help with producing stories for the new series.[4][5][6]
The Sonic the Hedgehog comic debuted in the US as a four-part miniseries running from February to May 1993.[7][8] The first issue (#0) was previewed in a free six-page Sonic the Hedgehog #¼, released November 1992. The miniseries was followed up two months later by the series Sonic the Hedgehog (July 1993 – December 2016).[9] Numerous one-shot specials and several reprint series' followed.[10]
The comics follow the adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends, called the Freedom Fighters, who battle against the evil Doctor Robotnik. Initially based on the plot of the 1993 animated series, the comic later incorporated elements from the games and other media. When Ken Penders, former head writer of the comic got sued by Archie Comics because he allegedly breached his contract with them, the comic led to a continuity reboot with all established characters created by Penders and other writers being removed, save those of current writer Ian Flynn, who penned the new continuity, and those created for assorted animated series, to which Sega retains the rights. The new continuity is a world much closer to the world depicted in Sega's games.
The original universe, which remained canon until the comic's 247th issue, is set on the planet Mobius, an alternate version of Earth where animals were mutated into the anthropomorphic Mobians. Dr. Robotnik is depicted as a tyrant, ruling from Robotropolis, following a coup d'état against the Kingdom of Acorn. A small band of heroes, the Freedom Fighters, fight back against his forces from the secluded village of Knothole. Amongst the group are Sonic, his best friend Miles "Tails" Prower, love interest and team leader Princess Sally Acorn, French-accented Antoine D’Coolette, cybernetic Bunnie Rabbot, technician Rotor the Walrus, and Sally's handheld computer Nicole. Other allies like Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose, and Sonic's Uncle Chuck join them in later chapters. Robotnik in turn is aided by his nephew Snively.
Robotnik meets his demise in the fiftieth issue, erased from existence by his own superweapon. An alternate version of Robotnik from a parallel world becomes the lead antagonist, first introduced as "Robo-Robotnik", but later takes on the name of Dr. Eggman. New antagonists were introduced, including the evil sorcerer Ixis Naugus; Scourge the Hedgehog, Sonic's evil counterpart from a parallel universe; and the Dark Egg Legion, a union of other factions like the Iron Dominion and the echidna-led Dark Legion. Game storylines like Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 were adapted, introducing Shadow the Hedgehog as a recurring character.
The Xorda, an extraterrestrial race whose past actions led to the creation of Mobius and evolved anthropomorphic animals, try to destroy the planet. Sonic defeats them, only to end up lost in space, but returns home a year later. Sally's father, King Maximillian, is poisoned by Antoine's evil counterpart, Patch, and hands the throne over to his son Prince Elias. For a brief time, Snively defects to the Freedom Fighters only to betray them, bombing Knothole with the Egg Fleet. The citizens are imprisoned in the Egg Grapes, but Sonic frees them. Nicole uses nanites to create New Mobotropolis. Tails’ father Amadeus tries to bring democracy to the city against the monarchy, Sally preventing a civil war by establishing the Council of Acorn, consisting of royal and public officials.
Eggman suffers a massive mental breakdown due to Sonic foiling his plans for world domination one too many times and is temporarily institutionalized, allowing Snively and the Iron Queen, Regina Ferrum, to take over his empire in the interim, leading to a lengthy war against the Freedom Fighters. Naugus comes to rule New Mobotropolis as king, due to a deal Sally's father made with him. Eggman returns to power and sanity, unleashing the Genesis Wave, altering Mobius, but Sonic reverses it. Sally sacrifices herself to stop Eggman's superweapon, the World Roboticizer, and becomes a robot. The Freedom Fighters reform as Team Freedom, Team Fighters, and the Secret Freedom Fighters to combat Eggman and Naugus.
Eggman activates a second Genesis Wave, transporting himself, Sonic, and other characters into the world of Mega Man, leading to the crossover Worlds Collide. A second crossover Worlds Unite happened in 2015, featuring characters from other Sega and Capcom titles.
The original multiverse ceased to exist when Dr. Eggman launched the Super Genesis Wave in conjunction with Dr. Wily, causing the Prime Zone (Sonic's World Dimension) to be irreversibly rewritten and the multiverse surrounding it to collapse in on itself, destroying every prior known reality (with the exception of the Special Zone and the Sol Zone, Blaze's World Dimension, the latter due to the Jeweled Scepter) and creating new ones in their place.
In the new continuity, Sonic and Dr. Eggman retain their memories of everything they both knew before the Super Genesis Wave, which are later restored onto Nagus, Tails, Rotor, Antoine, Bunnie, Sally and Amy when they make contact with Nicole. However, Earth is split apart, awakening Dark Gaia, leading to the events of Sonic Unleashed. The comic also introduces Naugus' sister Wendy, a witch who pledges allegiance to Eggman and plots to gain the Cacophonic Conch.
The series was originally published as a four issue mini-series, with the first issue labeled as "issue 0". At the end of the fourth issue of the series, it was announced that Sonic would return in a regular series, and the next issue was published as "issue 1" of the regular series.
Alongside the main Sonic series, Archie Comics published various special issues. Longer than typical issues of the comic, these specials feature stories involving Sonic and other related characters. Several miniseries have also been published, featuring characters such as Sally Acorn, Tails and Knuckles.
Because of the popularity of the specials and Miniseries featuring Knuckles, in 1997, Knuckles the Echidna became an ongoing series. Knuckles' stories featured its own cast of characters, including the Chaotix. In 2000, the series was cancelled, but the stories were continued in the pages of Sonic the Hedgehog until it was phased out completely by Sonic issue 125. In this form, a typical issue of Sonic included a Sonic story and a second, shorter Knuckles story afterwards, though eventually this phased out as well.
To allow for stories that focused more on side characters than primarily on Sonic-most notably the other characters featured in the Sega games-the Sonic Universe comic line was introduced. This series has included a wide range of characters previously introduced in other comic issues, as well as allowing for the introduction of additional characters to the comic cast. Typically, the series is broken up into four-issue long story arcs focusing on a select character or group of characters, though one-issue stories have also been released.
Archie has also produced two Sonic series based on other branches of the Sonic franchise, namely the Sonic X anime and the Sonic Boom cartoon. The Sonic X series began in September 2005, and ended after forty issues in January 2009, the last of which featured a crossover story with the main Sonic the Hedgehog series that served as a prequel to the first Sonic Universe issue. The Sonic Boom line began in October 2014, and was later incorporated into Worlds Unite before concluding with its eleventh issue in September 2015.
The Archie Sonic series has also produced several Free Comic Book Day issues, which typically feature either reprints of older issues or new stories that fit into the series continuity. Since 2013, these issues have served as a combination free comic special with the Mega Man series; a free Sonic issue serving as a prequel to Sonic Lost World was also released in 2013 for Halloween Comic Fest. Various compilations have also been put together, such as the Sonic Saga Series, Sonic Archives and Knuckles Archives, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Universe and standalone graphic novels, Sonic Legacy, Best of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Super Digest and Sonic Super Special Magazine. Following Worlds Collide the latter two series and the Free Comic Book Day issues began featuring stories in a series entitled "Sonic Comic Origins", which detailed the histories of various characters in the post-reboot continuity.
A short, three-panel comic strip similar to those found in a newspaper at the end of some issues called Off-Panel. It was originally found in the main series of comics, and was later continued in the spinoff series Sonic Universe. Earlier strips involved fictional version of staff interacting with comic characters. While later strips removed this element, it always retains elements of comical gags relating to the issues main story, often containing fourth wall breaking.
The comic book has had a large cast of characters, primarily originating from the video games, the 1993 animated series, and other media. A number of characters were created by various writers including Ken Penders, Ian Flynn, Michael Gallagher, Karl Bollers, Scott Fulop, and Dan Slott. Following Archie Comics' lawsuit against former writer Ken Penders, the continuity of the comic was rebooted into a new timeline, removing most of the characters created by previous writers, save Flynn. Due to the large cast, only major and recurring characters are included in this section.
The central protagonists of the comic, the Freedom Fighters are a resistance movement who battle against Dr. Eggman and various other antagonists for the freedom of their planet. The main faction are the Knothole Freedom Fighters, led by Sonic the Hedgehog and Princess Sally Acorn, who operate from the village of Knothole in the Great Forest.[11]
Shortly after Archie Comics acquired the rights to produce the comic series, editor Daryl Edelman approached writer Michael Gallagher (whom he worked with at the time on Betty and Veronica) via a phone call on July 23, 1992, to write stories for the comic. Edelman believed that Gallagher was well-suited writing for the comic for several reasons, among them his work over at Marvel Comics. After briefly discussing the series' concept and that the 4-issue miniseries would have 3 self-contained stories in each issue, Gallagher was told by Edelman to "establish the characters quickly through strong exposition" using "visuals from the game" (which would be faxed to him) and needed the first script in a week. After taking the job, he went to work and received a full page of "Sonic Line Art" (showing the character in various poses), 4 pages of model sheets showing illustrations of the characters, and 3 pages of character descriptions, locations, and the series' back story. He later recalled that the characters eventually became "very familiar to him and began to suggest their own stories". After the miniseries, he ceased being the only writer of the issues, though he continued to contribute throughout its run.[128]
In January 2009, three years after leaving the comic, former head writer Ken Penders filed for copyright over every story and character that he had created for Sonic the Hedgehog and its spin-offs during his run at Archie Comics, with the U.S. Copyright Office approving his claims in 2010.[129][130] Penders planned on continuing his "Mobius 25 Years Later" story independently, and declared that everything using his copyrighted works since issue #159 of the main comic[a] was "essentially unauthorised". He had been prompted to do so after fans contacted him asking if he had anything to do with the release of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which he did not;[129] Penders believed the game used concepts and characters similar to those he had written for the comic series.[b] That same year, Archie Comics filed a lawsuit against Penders, aiming to retain copyright over its stories and characters;[131][132] Archie alleged that Penders had violated his contract with them.[133] However, Archie were unable to produce the original copy of their contract with Penders, nor those of any other artist who had ever worked on Sonic, opening them for future lawsuits.[130]
In 2013, the lawsuit ended in prejudice, with Penders gaining the rights to an estimated over 200 characters from the comic in a confidential settlement with Archie Comics.[134][130] He would later turn the "Mobius 25 Years Later" continuation project into The Lara Su Chronicles;[135] Archie would initially write his characters out of future comics, rewriting issues mid-lawsuit to remove any references to them and not republishing stories involving them, before rebooting the canon entirely to retcon out not only his but any other former writers' original characters and concepts fully.[130][136]
In 2016, after seeing the success of the Penders lawsuit, former Sonic editor Scott Fulop filed suits against Archie Comics and Sega, claiming that he had made 15 characters for the comic series and was owed six figures in royalties.[137] He cited the Penders case as justification for his claims, and gave nearly a thousand examples of times Archie had allegedly wrongly used his characters or reprinted stories involving them. Fulop, through his company Narrative Ark, sought damages for copyright infringement by both Archie and Sega, as they had apparently failed to compensate him for his works; he also sought to invalidate copyrights on his characters filed by Archie in 2011 in response to Penders's own copyright filings.[138] However, the suits were dismissed in the defendants' favour, as Narrative Ark provided insufficient evidence for their claims.[139]
The comic has been received positively. Destructoid praised the comic series, especially the earlier issues during the 1990s, for adding more backstory and character interaction than was presented in the Sonic video games for the Sega Genesis.[140]
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