Archie Sonic General Discussion

Ive now read up to issue 40. I like how the comic has been subtly building up the world of mobius. Its also kinda bittersweer to see Nack the Weasel/Fang the Sniper get so much prominence. As cybershell pointed out in his video on Fang, Bean, and Bark the character was more or less the eigth most important character in the franchise before getting dropped faster than Knuckle's role as guardian of the mast emerald when Adventure came along. Speaking of knuckles Ive heard the stories about how pender's echidna obssession gets out of hand and ends up taking over the book but so far I find this pre sa1 take on the echidna lore to be interesting Im both dreading and looking forward to how Penders will try to reconcile it with the echidna backstory introduced in SA 1 (and also the ultimate life form project-echidna connection that is heavily implied in SA 2). Its also interesting because this isnt my first time with the comics. A friend of mine had a collection of the very early archie stuff as well as assorted issues of the Flynn era which is how I first experienced the series. So when Dimitri shows up in the knuckles miniseries and is going around as enerjack Im intrigued as to how he goes from a virtual demigod to a head in a ball. Another detail I liked is how Knuckles and Sonic constantly butt heads... a character dynamic that was dropped from the games from Heroes onward.

Well there's only so many times you can do "Eggman tricks Knuckles into fighting Sonic."

Finished issues 41-46 as well as Sonic Blast, the sonic quest miniseries, Sonic super special 1, and Sonic Live

The artwork in in 41 was some cursed shit. Story itself was decent though a bit trippy, it was nice that they followed up on getting Sally's dad out of the Zone of Silence. 42 is mainly just setup for the knuckles secondary story of getting the mcguffin which was a fine story with a neat sword and sorcery gimmick but very unimpressive. 43 was some nice on Robotnik. Issue 44 was the return of evil sonic and the alternate earths pretty unnoteable except for the really clumsy retcon of Sally and Knuckles knowing each other beforehand. Issue 45 was also pretty forgettable. 46 was interesting as we got some good backstory for Uncle Chuck and character development for Antoine but its also the point were my patience is growing then with Geoffery. I liked him well enough in the Sally Miniseries but he seems to have devolved into being used for stupid love triangle shit and creating conflict.

The Sonic Blast Special was pretty forgettable. Sonic Quest was a fun recreation of S Onic 2 though with some oddities. For one thing its odd that Silver Sonic is the last of the metal sonics to debut despite him being the least memorable not being a series mainstay like metal or an ensemble dark horse who was the big bad of a cult sprite animated series like mecha. Silver S Onic was just kinda there and is foreshadowed by the boss fight immediately after him. Speaking of which I was dissapointed that Eggman didnt use the death egg robot or whatever the final boss of s3 & K was called (I cant recall) instead using some stupid looking power armore. Hell I wouldve settled for Big Arm. Super Special 1 was another sonic vs knuckles story only this time with the chaotix. While its always a joy to see the chaotix, the comic has already done the sonic vs knuckles fight more than enough times and the last time (Mecha Sonic vs Mecha Knuckles) was the peak. That being said I think mammoth Mgul is a solid addition to the rogues gallery and the backup story with Antoine was pretty badass.

I've saved the worst for last. Ken Pender's magnum opus a work that rightfully deserves its place alongside sonic Chronicle's soundtrack, The Sonic movie's first design, and Sonic's Ultimate Harem on the wall of cursed: SONIC! MOTHERFUCKING! LIVE! This whole comic is just the epitome of cursed. Every page every panel had me wandering if what I was experiencing was real. It gets even better once you know some of the behind the scenes shit of the comic. Those kids? Those were Pender's kids. First of all imagine Ken Penders being your dad. Second of all imagine being known for having photographs of you appearing in a creepy ass Sonic comic. If for some reason Pender's kids are reading this all I have to say is Im sorry.

Am I the only one who didn't mind Sonic Live? It's weird but not terrible like Super Special 15 was.

Then again I liked the Sally Moon parody-verse, so... XD

Edited by lalalei2001 on Oct 23rd 2020 at 3:00:49 PM

Calling Bean and Bark 8th most important characters sounds insincere to me. Who is less important then? That's like saying that Omega is the third most important Team Dark member.

finished the endgame arc. Overall I felt it was a solid finale to this era of archie Sonic though Sally still being alive felt like an asspull.

She was supposed to be really dead but Sega changed their minds cause they wanted to promote her as a toy. She was also supposed to be revealed as really dead later on and replaced with a robot double, but that fell through too.

Honestly.

Sega should have ended the comic at that point, and wiped the board clean for Adventure.

It was a mistake to keep the canon of the original comic while trying to incorporate the canon of the games. Things got kinda nuts, and is just one among the many reasons there's so much division in the fandom.

Finished issues 51-55 as well as Super Special 2 and the first six issues of the knuckles series. Overall these issues were a nice breather after the intensity of endgame. They appear to be setting up Ixis Naugus as eggmans replacement rather than Sniveley which is an interesting contrast going from a technology based villain to a more technical one. Sadly the love triangle shit is back and in full force. Sally's dad is also kind of a fucking asshole. As for the Knuckles comics uuuuuuggg. Theyre not the worst thing and theres some interesting stuff but overall theyre a mess. The whole thing feels Penders is straight up stealing concepts from Superman and Black Panther and mashing them together with no thought of why people like those characters and stories. Knuckles getting his hat from the Sonic OVA was pretty neat though. Also two things stuck out to me. First of all Knuckle's dad kind of comes off like a dumbass for locking his son out of the loop for seemingly no reason. Secondly why are the Dark Legion the bad guys. Seems to me they only wanted to keep their technology from the other Ec hidnas who decided to go all anprim for reasons I dont quite get

Which parts feel like Black Panther? Because I bet it feels like this now that he's popular but back when they were written, no one really made that comparison.

Everything else...true. I recall when I was young I thought it was interesting how mature Knuckles comics were, with a focus on the history and echidna society (and I give props, I can name very few heroes with divorced parents) but on closer inpection behind a wall of taking itself very seriously, writing is a total mess with too many needless complications and extra characters.

Dark Legion is the most obvious example because the whole thing is idiocy and hypocrisy.

- Scientists save Echidnapolis from being destroyed by raising it to the skies.

- Later one of them decided to force island to land despite council voting against it and accidentally turns into crazy Chaos Energy god.

- After he's defeated, council decides that all tech is bad and bans it.

- You can even see Sega Genesis being confiscated.

- Some rebel because they want their tech back.

- Son of scientist master chaos powers like Enerjak had and banishes all rebels forever to another dimension.

- Later technology gets unbanned anyway.

- Dark Legion/Guardians confict continues to this day.

Instead of banning technology, wouldn't it make more sense to lock Emerald Chamber and ban messing with Chaos Energy? You know, instead of approving a regular line of people with dimension-banishing powers, directly related to original Enerjak?

The part that resembled Black Panther to me was the hyper advanced isolationist society aspect. Anyways from what I understand the Echidna lore was Pender's way of using ideas and characters from his Native American Science fiction comic no one wanted to publish

Finished issues 56-63, Knuckles 7-18, and Super Specials 4, 5, and

So it turns out that King Acorns whole out of nowhere Robot Racism was due to Naugus's manipulations which kickstarts the world tour arc. 57 Was filler but did its job well as a recap of the story thus far. To me this section of the comic was kind of dissapointing. I was hoping for a sort of road trip story where Sonic and Tails hunt down Ixis Naugus but end up getting dragged into a series of one or two part adventures. We do get that but not enough of it. The stories themselves are mostly interesting. Like we get a return of the two mr Mxyzptlk knock offs introduced waaaaaay back in Issue 2 I believe, some weird story about a buch of characters inspired By Robin Hood, Bestiality before 06 made it cool, and a story where Sonic runs into a fanatical cult that worhips him... and them leaves them to die (I said it was interesting not necessarily well written). Meanwhile theres also a series of backup stories about King Acorn and his magical piss pool and.... Geoffery ugggggghhhhh (though he was actually tolerable this time).

Meanwhile in the knuckles comic, things were actually starting to pick up a bit. It still wasnt good but the third and fourth story arcs were a step up from the first two

And then Charmy's friend dies from an LSD overdose.

https://youtu.be/FNIeQDP37Nc

A 3 issue story about Super advanced magical echidnas... dealing with the drug trade and substance abuse. Why... just why. What in the actual fuck was Penders thinking. No forget Penders... WHAT WAS THE EDITOR THINKING WHEN HE APPROVED THIS. I have no words. The arc after this was fine but the last storyline was so out of left field and insane that I dont think the comic will ever top it.

Anyways all thats left are the super specials. 4 pretty much kickstarted the World Tour arc So that just leaves 5 and 7. 5 was utterly forgettable filler and 7 was a crossover with Image comics. Early image is not something Im interested in so I was only half paying attention while reading it. I thought that Spawn's cameo was amusing though especially sense way earlier in the series Robotk=nik sent a Spawn robot against Sonic.

> Bestiality before 06 made it cool

What. Oh, Iron Queen, completely forgot about that. Apparently, letters claimed that she was a badger or something but current canon is that she and Iron King aren't together romantically and their titles are just honorary because they share the power.

ah ok

In other news Penders posted more artwork for his shitty fanfiction (Im actually looking forward to it mainly because it like such a fucking trashfire that'll be a lot of fun to roast. If he releases it before I get to 160. Im gonna read it it before getting into the Flynn era as a sort of Coda).

Edited by Zeldalover on Oct 30th 2020 at 11:33:51 AM

The only way I can imagine Penders getting to put out his bullshit after how his reputation currently is is by vanity publishing, and even then I imagine this thing bombing hard. His name is basically mud in the comics community.

at this rate the only sales its gonna get are from his handful of diehard simps, people who want a good trashfire, and reviewers for sites like Bleeding Cool and CBR that are unfortunate enough to be assigned the task of reviewing his book.

I wonder what Hulk Hogan Eggman◊ would've been like. XD

Ken Penders sitting next to a fan dressed as a sexy female Sonic

Aight, where'd I put my holy water? I need to splash some into my eyes right now.

So, is anything going on with Archie Comics at the moment?

As Sonic comics? Nothing, really. There is Archie Sonic Restoration but they released one issue on Jul 10, 2019, and nothing came out since then. Shame, I've hoped they would finish Genesis of Hero.

I wonder if Archie is still releasing the Reader's Digest version of the comics. I had a couple of those issues when they were selling them.

Jesus christ I have no idea whats going on with knuckles now

Which part did you reach?

Is he green yet?