The American Sonic comics do suffer significantly from a bunch of stories that completely miss the point and appeal of the series (most of these being written by Ken Penders), but those are so insane that they're somewhat entertaining, and when the current writer, Ian Flynn, eventually took over, he took elements from those stories and made them actually good. Absolutely terrible as a tie-in to the games, but now that it's over and you can read it all in one shot, instead of slowly over the course of 25 years, it's pretty cool. This gets discussed a lot so I imagine people here already know enough to know if they wanna read it or not. Notably, Ken Penders tried to sue Sega for doing a story about evil echidnas from ancient times surviving until modern day and doing villain things. Not only were those characters referenced as early as the manual for Sonic 2, three years before Penders even began working on Sonic, but an actual story about the evil echidnas surviving until modern day first appeared in a french graphic novel (or I guess bande dessinee) called Sonic Adventures. I don't have much to say about it but the story is alright and I like the art. Sonic Underground is the greatest TV series ever made, and a part of all of our childhoods. Bartleby is the best character in the franchise. The Chaos Emerald Saga is the highlight of the series, especially the finale with Chaos Dingo, but the series becomes even better than that after Episode 40. Sonic X kind of sucks in Seasons 1 and 2, with the only highlight I really remember being when a reporter goes to interview the solider that shot Maria, now an old man who regrets some of the shit he had to do in the service. An incredibly dark scene in the middle of a series that otherwise tries to be significantly more lighthearted than the games. Season 3 of the series was then a bit darker and better in general, largely due to doing a cool new story arc. Sonic Boom has an episode about Chris Chan. Chris doesn't believe it's about him, but go watch it. I swear to god, it's about Chris Chan. It's called "The Biggest Fan." Sticks could have been a funny character but isn't. Her conspiracy theorist bit should have been played more effectively. She should have never shut up about how the Space Colony ARK was an inside job. The writers were too pussy to go through with it. The IDW comics are effectively a continuation of the Archie comics only now with all the stuff not from the games removed, then replaced with OCs that blatantly fill the same roles but at least sort of fit in the game universe, since this is supposed to be canon. That's a fine premise and all, and a couple arcs are cool, but the series is increasingly feminized, with many stories now just being about girl OCs (all the heroic OCs are girls) doing girly shit. And since they're replacements for Archie characters, I don't care about them. I don't care about Surge as much as Scourge or Finetivus as much as Snivley because the new characters lack the history of the old characters. How about telling stories about the game characters instead? The first arc did that and it was cool as hell, with Metal Sonic getting the Master Emerald and all that. But no, instead we gotta get more OC girls to do tumblr-esque bullshit. I mean, I don't wanna overhate it, because it's not super bad or anything, but it could be a lot better. Sonic Prime is boring as sin. Nine is sort of a cool character but he doesn't really do shit until 2/3rds through the series, and by then I'm already bored out of my mind. Funny that they say this series is canon to the games. Not like it matters. But it seems very obvious that the series was originally supposed to be about going to other universes from other adaptations. They basically only have three universes that they go to over and over. There's a universe where Robotnik already took over, which is just SatAM, complete with Rouge acting as Sally. There's a jungle universe, which was probably gonna be Sonic Boom. Then there's a pirate universe, and Sonic Rush Adventure already established that Blaze is from a pirate universe. They had just hired Ian Flynn to help write more than the comics, and I would bet he suggested this idea, but then execs meddled with it and removed anything that made it interesting. Also, it bugs me that Birdie is pink. There was already a Flicky called Birdie in Sonic Adventure, and he was blue. There's also a pink Flicky that's an important character, and it's Gamma, the best damn character in the whole series. I know they just said "Birdie" as a generic name, and didn't intend it to be the same bird (or an alt-universe version of the same bird), but if they had played Sonic Adventure they would have made him blue. Or maybe Birdie from Sonic Prime is an alt-universe version of Gamma. That would be cool I guess. But they clearly never intended that. The movies are bad and I'm tired of pretending they're not. Yes, it's funny that SJWs got mad when the design of Sonic actually got fixed, but the actual movie never got fixed. The movies are still about Sonic living with his interracial human parents. And the Knuckles TV show is the worst show I've ever watched in my life. Well, at least the worst show I've watched all the way through. I've tried to explain the plots of various episodes to people and they're so bad that people think I'm lying. There's a whole episode about Knuckles going to a jewish ritual dinner, followed by a flashback episode of him fighting Iblis from Sonic '06 (by far the most powerful villain in the franchise), only they couldn't afford to animate it, so Iblis is a puppet and Knuckles is a fat gay jew (who is the real main character of the series) in a Knuckles costume. All that said, I've increased my Sonic autism a thousandfold, eventually as I was reading all the comics I made an autistic spreadsheet of how I could try to fit everything into one continuity while changing as little as possible. Now I appreciate all these stories and characters, and wish they could all be canon. If I was in charge, they would be. But that's outside the scope of this thread. Instead, I'll go on about other video game spinoff media that I like.

>I've increased my Sonic autism a thousandfold Yeah, i can see that.

The Wizardry OVA is good and the Ys one is decent. The Sonic one is a lot of fun too. The Earthworm Jim cartoon is about as good as any of those self-aware 90's cartoons, like Animaniacs or Freakazoid.

>Ratchet & Clank comic Another video game comic I really like is the Ratchet & Clank comic. It's by the guy who writes the games, and is a loose tie-in to All 4 One, but you can enjoy the comic without the game and the game without the comic. In the game, Qwark is now president of the galaxy. You can just accept that as a joke, it makes enough sense for the character and the world, but the comic is about how that happened. It's a cool and funny adventure, with the humor and action the series is known for. Each issue's title is taken from a rejected title for All 4 One. Sony was getting increasingly censorious at this time, but they could get away with comic issues being called things like "Multiple Organisms," "4Play," and stuff like that. This really feels like a perfectly natural extension of the series, and I wish more adaptations were like this. >Uncharted comic, InFamous comic Around the same time as the Ratchet & Clank comic, Sony also did comics of Uncharted and InFamous. They also fit very well with the games. Uncharted's is mostly standalone, but that's fine. InFamous tries to fill in some blanks between 1 and 2, but as this is a superhero series, really it's just another story with the character, and it feels very natural for the character. I don't like these series as much as Ratchet & Clank, so I don't have as much to say, but they were pretty good. >Super Mario movie I mean the 1993 one. At least that one is so bad it's good. Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis Hopper are all funny. That new Mario movie, though? That one sucks. Sure, the graphics at least look like Mario, and they had some music from the games and all that, but the plot is fucking stupid. Peach having to be tough means the entire plot has to be stretched in stupid directions that make no sense, making Mario effectively redundant in his own movie. People try to say it's about the bond between brothers, but due to Peach not being allowed to be the damsel in distress, Luigi is, so Mario and Luigi are never together, so their bond falls flat. Sure, Mario gets the final action scene due to sheer luck taking Peach out of the action, but then that just feels like it flies in the face of the movie's own logic, since she's supposed to be so awesome, and is even stated to be better than Mario, effortlessly doing stuff on her first try that takes him a long training montage. I can almost overlook Sonic 2 being about Sonic's interracial human parents going to a sassy fat black woman's wedding, but this is somehow even worse, maybe because here it's clearly that the politics dictated the plot, whereas in Sonic it's that the producers just didn't give a fucking shit about the games and just did random garbage. I'd rather random garbage than an entire plot ruined to appease SJWism. >Mortal Kombat movie That first movie from 1995 is awesome. I know people complain about it not having the gore the game is known for, but it's a well made movie, so when I'm watching it, I don't feel like I'm missing that. Sure, it's a little lame that Scorpion and Sub-Zero don't get to show off their usual roles, but the plot is packed as it is, and it does make sense to focus on Liu Kang and the other heroes. Has anyone seen the awful CGI prequel to the movie? Now that is so bad it's good. I remember liking both the live action TV series and the cartoon as a kid, but I'd need to watch them to get a better opinion. And I know there are comics actually by John Tobias. I gotta check those out. I honestly don't think Mortal Kombat Annihilation is one of the worst movies ever, like everyone says. It's pretty standard B-movie quality. Maybe I'd feel differently if I watched it in theaters, but I missed it the week it came out, and by the next week, all my local ones had pulled it. I understand why. I haven't watched the modern Mortal Kombat adaptations on account of modern Mortal Kombat games being shit. I'd like to hear they're good, but I doubt it. I'm surprised WB doesn't just make Mortal Kombat canon to the DC Universe. They cross over a lot in the games, and frankly, the magical ninja demon stuff would all fit in the DCU pretty well. >Street Fighter I'm not even that into the games, but Raul Julia gives a great performance in that first movie. The famous "It was Tuesday" line is legitimately awesome. I know they did that other movie like 15 years later starring that girl that played Lana Lang on Smallville, but with no other knowledge than that, I'm gonna assume that movie isn't very good. I hear the anime is good but I'm not even into Street Fighter so I haven't gotten around to watching it. >Mega Man comics I know there are many, I hear the Mega Man X manga are basically canon, so I gotta check those out. But I have read the Archie comics and like those. I don't love how much original stuff they try to do as they go on, but I do like their adaptations of the games, and I love the crossovers with Sonic. The first one, especially, where they cut out all the original shit from both comics and make it so it's effectively just the games crossing over, is excellent. I also love the Mega Man X story they do, which is actually a prequel to the first Mega Man X game, taking place before The Day of Sigma. That's an original story that fits well with the game, serves as a good intro to the character (which is what it is), and ties in well with the main Mega Man comic (as the story is about Rock doing stuff in the present and X dealing with repercussions in the future). It's a very good comic overall. >Digimon Does this count? Digimon is so multimedia that it's hard to tell if the cartoons count more than the games or the games count more than the cartoons. I guess the toys come first, but virtual pets are sort of video games. Fuck it, I'm counting it. Everyone knows that the first three seasons of the Digimon anime are awesome. And if you don't know, now you know, nigga. Excellent characters, very tight plotting, very interesting world, fascinating lore. What people don't realize is that the game, Digimon World, actually came first. It was released in the west later, causing some confusion. It's actually the same universe as the first two seasons of the anime, but it takes place long before. Digimon World 2 (which has totally different gameplay and feels like a different world at first), Digital Card Battle, several games on the WonderSwan, are also the same universe, and the WonderSwan games in particular are essential to the anime's lore. Also Next Order is a sequel to Digimon World 1. Is Re-Digitize the same universe? I haven't played that one yet. There is also the manga, V-Tamer 01, which starts even before Digimon World and is really the start of important Digimon lore. It runs so long it crosses over with three different universes in four different seasons of anime, and later they brought it back for one chapter to cross over with the anime from 2020. Anyway, really good manga. Definitely underrated, even among fans of the series. Right up there with the first three seasons of the anime. >>975578 Aw damn, I forgot to mention the Sonic OVA. It's great. I love the animation and the soundtrack. Plot is weird, but that was par for the course for Sonic adaptations. Still is, really. Earthworm Jim was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid. The creator of the character, Doug Tennappel, got the rights to make Earthworm Jim comics, and I know he's made at least one so far. It's great. It also makes SJWs very mad, because the creator isn't one of them, even though he didn't make it political or anything. It's just exactly like the series always was, which is great.

I almost forgot about one of my favorites, Metroid. Part of the reason I love the Metroid games is that they're very subtle with their stories. Now, some Metroid fans might realize that there is a Metroid manga that is canon, with panels of it even being in some endings of Zero Mission, but what fewer people recognize is that the Nintendo Power comics are also canon, and are the source of much lore regarding the Chozo and stuff. Very cool. I also went back further than that and read this one strategy guide/manga that came out for the original Metroid game. It's a manga, but the stuff that happens is so accurate to the game that it is essentially a strategy guide. It was fun. I suppose technically skippable, I don't recall if any lore was dumped here, like the Nintendo Power comics, but it was cool. I also read some of the Zelda manga, and they're alright, but I haven't read any that really hooked me and felt like stuff I'd care about if not for the games. I haven't read all of them, though. Maybe if I read them all in order I'd feel differently.

The Halo book series is a fun read that provides some deeper backstory leading up to and during the events of the games. Pic related are the only ones that are important. Also, Halo Legends is a fun watch if you're looking for something to "round out" the series.

>>975583 Did any of the comics get referenced in the games?

Caligula had a nice TV anime. I still rewatch it from time to time.

>>975569 They are all shit. Video games are superior to all other mediums due to being interactive, instead of a retarded/passive medium.

>>975595 It's been a while, but if I recall, the Nintendo Power comics are the first place any Chozo are treated like actual characters, and introduce backstory stuff like how Samus lived with them or whatever. I think there are more specific references to the comic in the manga, maybe one character carrying over or something. I don't remember. But if you look at the whole series in order (which is what I did) a lot of stuff is introduced in the comic which seems weird relative to earlier games, but ends up being canon in later games.

>>975578 >>975579 I felt like the earthworm jim cartoon did great until the later episodes in season 2; that's when it started to really fall off to me, but it was still worth watching those episodes too

The Devil May Cry Anime is actually a great slice of life story about what Dante's Life is actually like, it just so happens that since it's Dante's Life there is gonna be some action now and again, although some people are disappointed that there isn't enough action for "DMC" I say there is already tons in the games, so it's better that the Anime explored something different. It's only 12 episodes long so it doesn't overstay it's welcome, it's a fun watch. You can actually watch the entire thing on youtube here, and it is actually canon to the DMC games, although figuring out DMC canon can actually be kind of messy, so it doesn't matter that much in the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWkea7Vjp9I Interesting story about the English dub, Reuben Langdon has stated that as he was recording his lines for this dub, the dubbing studio was going out of Business and everything was getting shut down around him. If he felt he was doing a bad take, he had to intentionally make it unusable by coughing or something, since they would always just do the one take and try to move on otherwise. Shame that the Netflx anime is probably gonna suck, It's already non canon, and it's gonna overshadow this one, and the fanbase it's gonna bring into DMC is gonna be annoying as shit, just like the tourists DMC5 brought in.

It's the year 1997, and Capcom could have made a damn MegaMan Legends tie in show ala Pokemon.

>>975989 What about the episode that is entirely dedicated to Princess Whatshername successfully overthrowing her sister and how badly that backfired on her? Or where Jim, not only meets the Great Worm Spirit but also, meets God (Who takes on the form of Doug)?

>>975569 So which actor was the most recurring to appear in these videogame cartoons? Jim Cummings?

>>975569 >>975570 I appreciate this write-up very much anon. You did a great job with your review. >My favorite characters are Antoine and Snivley, though. Those guys are funny. If there are two characters that I actually wanted to become canon to the games, it would be these two. I actually love Antoine and I hated how Sonic was such an ass to him in the comics and in the show. > I can't recommend this series enough. I know fewer people have read it than the American comics, and that's a damn shame. Sonic the Comic has to my favorite out of the comic series for being unique in its own way. It has a lot of personality in a good way and it really is the only one of the comic series that I actually recommend to people. >Bartleby is the best character in the franchise Tamers is that you? >Sonic X kind of sucks in Seasons 1 and 2, with the only highlight I really remember being when a reporter goes to interview the solider that shot Maria, now an old man who regrets some of the shit he had to do in the service. That's the only real highlight from the first 60 or so episodes, which sucks because Sonic X could have been so much more. And even though the 3rd season had an interesting premise, it wasn't executed that well at all. The poor pacing was the biggest problem for me. >She should have never shut up about how the Space Colony ARK was an inside job. Would have actually watched that show if she was like that. >but the series is increasingly feminized, with many stories now just being about girl OCs (all the heroic OCs are girls) doing girly shit. Yeah, this is also one of my problems with IDW too. It could of been a great opportunity to flesh out the game's canon but these new OCs are taking up a lot of the storyline. I hate to be negative, but to me this is just blatant waifu-faggotry even bigger than how you would see it in the /sth/ general on cuckchan. Actually, I'd be surprised if at least of the people working on the IDW comics weren't one of anons that post there. Another problem I have with IDW is that the character's personalities seemed toned down, but I think that's just more of an Ian Flynn problem that I have. >Sonic Prime is boring as sin. You said it. While it wasn't good, I can admit that Sonic X was at least somewhat entertaining. Sonic Prime is just totally stale. The 3D Americanized caroony style doesn't help, neither does the twitter-esque, passive-aggresive, self-aware humor, and the concept (that is the whole multiverse thing) is also pretty bad (or should I say badly executed). Toning down Rouge doesn't help either (appearance and personality wise). >The movies are bad and I'm tired of pretending they're not I never watched the second one, but the first one was 'cute' I guess. Didn't take it too seriously because it's obvious this is for kids and not for pessimistic adults like my self. Still, me being an elitist autist even as I child, I don't think I would have liked it too much. I probably thought it was too corny. Also I am aware that it is its own canon but it being so different from game Sonic lore would have also triggered me as a child. Also the humans are annoying and I would have enjoyed it more if they weren't there. I watched the Knuckles spin off a little bit too, and all I have to say about that one is 'What were they thinking with this?'

I can't consume spinoff media without knowing the original material. This has kept me from enjoying many, many porno doujin that look very nice.

>>978518 Then learn the original material. Like how I finally made myself read Dracula because I wanted to play Castlevania but was too autistic to do so without actually reading Dracula. Of course, other novels and films are canon to Castlevania as well, like Frankenstein, and Carmilla, and I haven't actually read the latter yet. But she doesn't appear until Castlevania II, and I didn't even realize it was a preexisting character until recently. So I got tricked. But uh... I lost track of my point, which was to just do it, faggot. I'm also pretty sure that due to crossovers like Konami Wai Wai World, The Goonies is also canon to Castlevania. I just thought that was interesting.

>>978518 Ditto, they practically have to be Michael Angelo just to make an enjoyable porn based on the most cancerous shit that only attracts redditors, Overwatch comes in mind: >Faggier TF2 clone that it's on autopilot for the journalists >Produced by the most soy induced developers who spend their working hours on whatever it's trending on socials >Trailers are nothing but a star-spangling footage of rejected Pixar tech demos with flashy colors with bug-eyed character design <Yet every lewd artist I used to follow went apeshit and drew porn of it because that was the new trend, gotta get that clout from the dead brain somehow and stay relevant for the next few seconds.

>>975569 I've heard the various Legend of Zelda manga are pretty good I know Darkstalkers had an anime/OVA that I've heard was good, much better than the godawful American tv show that makes Morrigan look like a square jawed spinster. The TF2 comics are famous because they establish the "Lore" of the game (and are actually pretty funny in most cases)

>>978546 I'm trying to think of a specific source for the Vampira mask but I'm drawing a blank. I don't think it's from any of the Hammer movies.

>>975569 Did Ken Penders establish what was to come on Sonic fanfictions?

>>978661 Carmilla. It's a vampire novel that predates Dracula. Of course, in Castlevania II, where she is just a mask, you'd never know that unless you read the manual and saw her name. Except her name was changed in the localized manual. So you'd never know at all. But in Rondo of Blood they reveal that there is a skull behind the mask and a sexy vampire lady riding on the skull, and that's the real Carmilla. Also in the novel I think she wears a mask.

>>979467 Stories that are really just about the author's real life and have nothing to do with Sonic, making you question why they're pretending to be Sonic stories at all? Yes. He was a pioneer in that field. But ironically, he did not invent the thing he sued over, stories about the evil rivals of knuckles' ancestors. Those were in the manuals of the genesis games and in a French comic from 1994.

>>980884 Does that mean Fleetway Sonic is the better take? I just find it surreal how they brought AoStH Robotnik. >>980978 Greatest Mistake Ever!!!

>>981158 >Does that mean Fleetway Sonic is the better take? I just find it surreal how they brought AoStH Robotnik. Fleetway is better. Again I can't stress enough that at first the art sucks and can be a turn-off, but it gets a lot better. There are artists on later issues I don't like very much, but they're better than the worst of the artists on ArchieSonic. It's hard to compare the execution of the writing without just reading it, because a lot is in the execution, but you mention the weird design of Robotnik. So okay, let's talk about the weird stuff both comics do. >ArchieSonic non-game lead characters >Sally, Antoine, Rotor, Bunnie, Nicole, Snivley The Freedom Fighters are the main characters, rather than game characters. Particularly Sally. The entire story revolves around Sally. Even in the arcs where Sonic leaves the kingdom, the story still revolves around the kingdom. I gotta give these characters (except Geoffrey) points for being from the cartoon, but if you just know the games, you won't have any idea what the fuck is going on in this comic unless you read it from the beginning. Also, Sally being Sonic's love interest becomes very weird once Amy becomes important (they try to brush her under the rug after Sonic CD, but can't do that after Sega forced them to adapt Sonic Adventure). Notably, they did have Sally and Sonic break up in 2003 (but they did it in a horrible way that made Sally very unlikable), but for some reason Ian Flynn decided it was a good idea to have Sonic and Sally start getting back together in 2011, which was really fucking stupid. Luckily Sally immediately gets turned into a robot for the next two years, and when she gets better, it was at the same time Sega made them erase their entire relationship from history. Still, it's really weird to see Amy get cucked well into the 2010s, when she was a major character in the games that the comics that are supposed to be based on, while the girl cucking her was only in a cartoon that ended 20 years prior. >ArchieSonic non-game secondary characters >Dulcy, Naugus, Geoffrey St. John, Mammoth Mogul. I'm excluding Knuckles and his related characters here, because they'll get their own discussion. I have to mention Geoffrey specifically because while he isn't in every story, when he does show up he's very important. He's also notable because the very first time Ken Penders was allowed to be the lead writer for a miniseries (so he'd have much more control than in earlier issues of the regular series), the first thing he did was introduce Geoffrey, a character specifically designed to cuck Sonic. And while I'm at it, I should mention that while Dulcy only shows up occasionally in the comic, she's notable due to the issue that revolves around her being domestically abused by her dragon boyfriend. Naugus is alright, I suppose, but Mammoth Mogul sucks. He's a blatant ripoff of Vandal Savage, but the story keeps acting as if he's the coolest thing ever, to the degree that they reveal Naugus was nothing but his minion all along, which is fucking stupid since at least Naugus was in the cartoon, and at least he's not a blatant ripoff of a B-list DC Comics villain. >Fleetway Sonic non-game lead/secondary characters >Johnny Lightfoot, Porker Lewis, Grimer, The Omni-Viewer, Shortfuse, Tekno There are far, far less OCs in Fleetway Sonic, and none of them are as important as the OCs in ArchieSonic. Johnny Lightfoot and Porker Lewis are around since the beginning, back when Sonic 2 was the newest game, but they're never as important as Sally or the Archie Freedom Fighters. Johnny is a bit boring, not much to him, but he only shows up now and then. Porker is a nerd, and they eventually do a story about how he's not built to be a fighter, and he feels ashamed, but Sonic tells him it's fine because he helps in his own ways, so he goes off to live on Angel Island and sort of be like Knuckles' assistant, doing maintenance on the Floating Island (so all the ancient traps and such). The story never revolves around Johnny or Porker. This means that when Amy is introduced, she actually remains important the whole time, and doesn't drop in and out depending on how much the story is trying to focus on Sonic being in love with some other girl. In the final arc, Chaos punches Johnny Lightfoot in the stomach and he fucking dies of internal bleeding, like Houdini. This is treated very seriously by everybody including Sonic. Grimer is a blatant replacement for Snivley, because they found out at the last second that they weren't allowed to use Snivley, after writing a story that used him. He's about as good as Snivley, but since he's not in the cartoon he's a bit lamer. The Omni-Viewer is a near-omnipotent god computer thing, but Sonic is so cool that he's just buddies with Sonic. I like him. He's later sort of part of the Chaotix, but really I'm overstating how important he is, because the Archie Chaotix will have OCs much more important than this guy. Shortfuse is a super-badnik who retains his free will and thus becomes edgy because he hates what he is, so he dedicates himself to fighting Robotnik, but he's a bit too edgy to be a regular Freedom Fighter. So he's a bit like Bunnie, and later Gamma and Omega. I like the concept, and I like Bunnie too, but this guy's personality is a bit cooler. I also like that he's not as important and only shows up now and then, so you don't get sick of him. Tekno is a girl mechanic that is initially a supporting character in Shortfuse backup stories, but she does become much more important over time, and is definitely the worst part of the comic. More on that later. Really, I couldn't separate the lead and secondary characters for Fleetway because while Johnny and Porker seem like they might be lead characters at first, they never really become that. Tekno seems like a secondary character when she's introduced, but does become a lead for a long time. >ArchieSonic origin Endless drama with his mom and dad. Uncle Chuck (from the cartoon, so he gets points for that) invented the Roboticizer, and his first test subject was his brother Jules, Sonic's dad, who was injured in a war against the Overlanders (humans). It turns him into a robot, but Robotnik (at the time known as Julian) sabotaged the machine to remove his free will. He then took the Roboticizer and took over the kingdom, turning almost everyone into robots, including Sonic's mom, Bernadette. Sonic was raised by Uncle Chuck, who escaped and ran a chili-dog stand, later explained to be because he was now afraid to use his scientific talents lest more horrible things arise from them. But one day Robotnik arrested and roboticized Chuck too (even though why wouldn't Robotnik have been after Chuck the whole time?), so Sonic joined Princess Sally's Freedom Fighters.

>Archie Robotnik origin Oh boy, here we go. As the cartoon previously established, Robotnik was originally Julian, Minister of Science in the Kingdom of Acorn, but one day he betrayed the Kingdom and banished the King and the royal wizard, Naugus, into The Void (basically The Phantom Zone from Superman), then used Uncle Chuck's roboticizer to turn everyone else into robots, and he declared his new name was Robotnik. (Actually, here they specify Ivo Robotnik.) The comic expands upon this significantly. Robotnik was originally Julian Kintobor of the House of Ivo. His maternal grandfather was Professor Gerald, whose last name is never stated in the comic, though the comic acts like Sonic Adventure 2 is canon (it just introduced the story then tells you to play the game, and the next issue takes place after the game. So oddly enough, his mother's maiden name, Robotnik, was his father's name backwards. Julian was an Overlander, which means human. But it doesn't quite mean human. See, tens of thousands of years ago, in our present, there was nuclear war, and humans mutated into slightly cartoony forms. Animals mutated into anthro furries like Sonic. But some humans hid underground in a mountain and made a city, Station Square, so the people of Station Square are regular humans and distinct from Overlanders. Basically, Overlanders only have four fingers on each hand. They sometimes look cartoony, but basically every Overlander except for Robotnik, Snivley, and Nate Morgan look normal, and are indistinguishable from Station Square people except for the one finger difference. Anyway, Professor Gerald immigrated from the Overlander city to Station Square, explaining how he could do stuff from Sonic Adventure 2's backstory. Later, all the remaining Overlanders from the city Robotnik was from move to Station Square, and Station Square starts making diplomatic ties to other Overlander cities, though no mention is made of them technically being mutants. They're just treated like more normal cities, and this stupid Overlander shit is never mentioned again. This is done to explain the existence of the United Federation from the games, since otherwise Station Square was established as the only human city. Oh yeah, they also establish that The King and Naugus weren't really in The Void, they were in The Zone of Silence. The Void is also a thing but it's not important and they only ever go to it once. Basically they're like "Sonic visited The Void once but escaped too easily. That must mean it's not the real prison dimension the king is in. The Zone of Silence is exactly the same but even better." It just makes things needlessly confusing, and separates things from the show for no reason. Later they say that Naugus uses magic to fuse The Zone of Silence with The Void. >Fleetway Sonic/Robotnik Origin Sonic was originally a brown hedgehog who was kind of fast but not that damn fast. Robotnik was originally the kind and skinny Ovi Kintobor. Sonic was Kintobor's friend and helped him with experiments. Kintobor invented a machine called the Retro Orbital Chaos Compressor (ROCC) which would absorb all the evil in the world and put it in the Chaos Emeralds. In a separate experiment with Power Sneakers, which Kintobor invented, Sonic ran so fast that he broke the machine and he turned blue. I think he was infused with chaos energy or whatever. Anyway, later Kintobor went to the fridge to grab a snack, but only found a rotten egg. He didn't care and was gonna eat it anyway. On his way back, though, he tripped over the power cord of the ROCC (which actually was tugged on by Sonic from the future, who came back in time to create Robotnik so that he could later defeat an army of time travelling Metal Sonics). He fell into the ROCC and the evil from the Chaos Emeralds flowed into him and fused him with the rotten egg, and also jumbled up the name tag he was wearing so the letters were now backwards, so he was now a big fat evil guy named Ivo Robotnik. I should also mention that prior to turning evil, Kintobor made a copy of his consciousness, the Kintobor Computer, which assists Sonic and his friends, kind of like Zordon from Power Rangers or something. The only other times Kintobor is really important are in the aforementioned story with the rogue time travelling Metal Sonics (honestly maybe the best story in the comic), and a much later story where Sonic and Robotnik go to a microverse but Robotnik turns back into Kintobor for a bit due to dimensional energies or some other shit I forget. That story was alright too. >Fleetway Robotnik gets a new body In one issue, Robotnik, who previously looked like the game version, puts himself in a giant egg and mutates, and when he comes out, he looks like the version from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. This is never mentioned again. It's clearly done just for the sake of making him look like the cartoon, for brand synergy. While I prefer the game look from the earlier issues, you just don't have to worry about this. It's a weird way to do it, but you can even miss the issue and just think the artist went for a design change. I should also note that in the last arc, an adaptation of Sonic Adventure, Robotnik simply changes his clothes into an outfit like the one from Sonic Adventure. He still has the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog body, but with the Adventure clothes. By this point you'll be used to the Adventures design. You do get used to the fucked up art in ArchieSonic, too, but at least here it's well drawn, just with a strange design from a comedy cartoon (even though the comic stops being very comedic after a while). >Archie Robotnik gets a new body So let's keep going with the retarded Archie Robotnik lore. So in 1997, both Sonic cartoons had been cancelled, and the Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn had all turned out to be failures. It had been three years since the last truly successful Sonic game. Everyone was pretty sure the comic was going to be cancelled. So Ken Penders did something he tried to do two and a half years earlier. He killed off Robotnik. Now, two and a half years earlier, he was forced to bring Robotnik back, though seemingly begrudgingly, because it was only in a backup story. In that backup-story, a villain called Robo-Robotnik, a Robotnik from an alt-universe where he won by turning himself into a robot, used his more advanced tech to bring Robotnik back to life. This will be important later. Robo-Robotnik appeared like three issues earlier, when he tried to collect pieces of a machine called The Giant Borg which would let him take over the multiverse, and all the Sonics of the multiverse had to team up to stop him, except for Anti-Sonic from the backwards universe, who was hired to work for him. However, when Robo-Robotnik appears this second time, Penders fucked up and accidentally made his backstory slightly different. It's clearly intended to be the same guy, and later issues would treat it as such, but much later, the current writer, Ian Flynn, would begin acknowledging that they had different backstories, and treat them as different guys. The first one just wasn't as important. But really they're supposed to be one guy. Anyway, in issue 50, Robotnik fucking dies, and it's real this time. They figured the comic was gonna end soon anyway, and Penders wanted to get away from all that pesky Sonic stuff so he could just do whatever he wanted. But somehow the comic didn't get cancelled. For the next 25 issues, Robotnik is just dead. A lot of this time involves Sonic travelling around fighting Naugus, a villain from one episode of the cartoon, who was mentioned in like two others, and was intended to be a bigger deal in the third season, if the show wasn't cancelled. This era is also when the stuff about Overlanders is all explained.

Another story in this era involves Sonic going to the east and they do a Journey to the West story with a character called Monkey Khan, who is basically just Goku, but here he is Robotnik's first creation, a cyborg from before he got roboticization. They eventually fight a version of The Ox King and his wife, The Iron Queen. She will be important later. But then Sonic Adventure was about to come out, and Sega forced both Sonic comics to adapt it. Ken Penders claims they didn't give him much material, like an English copy of the game, for example, but I call bullshit on that because the comic quotes very specific lines from the game. Anyway, most of what Archie advertised as an Adventure adaptation was actually all backstory. The actual events of the game are almost all in the last two issues of the six issue adaptation. This backstory was necessary because the plot had gotten so far away from the games that they had to spend a lot of time bringing things slightly more in line with the games so that Adventure would make any sense. So quite a while before the Adventure adaptation proper, a mysterious villain started putting satellites in space. In one story that crosses over with Sonic Underground, the TV show, that villain hires Anti-Sonic, the backwards Sonic from the backwards universe, to gather the pieces of the Giant Borg, but Anti-Sonic accidentally delivers the pieces to Underground Robotnik, because he looks like the guy who hired him. Shortly after this issue, the villain reveals himself to the heroes to be Robo-Robotnik. Now, Robo-Robotnik did look like Robotnik but was made of black chrome metal, so it's a little weird that Anti-Sonic wouldn't notice that. But whatever. He is bored because he completely dominated his universe, so he's gonna go mess with the Sonic who led the fight against him when he tried to take over the multiverse that one time. He learned that Sonic actually beat his Robotnik, and he doesn't like that. Shortly after revealing himself to the heroes, Robo-Robotnik puts himself in a new body that looks like the Robotnik design from Sonic Adventure. He then plays out the role of Robotnik in Sonic Adventure. He's technically a robot, though, and also he gives himself Roboticization powers, so he can roboticize people just by touching them. He does this to Snivley and the rest of his surviving family, except for his niece, Hope, who escapes and tells the Freedom Fighters. He also gets Nate Morgan. Then his city gets nuked and all those characters die except for him and Snivley. Then aliens called The Bem showed up and had a de-roboticizer, so they de-roboticized everybody, including Robotnik and Snivley and all the remaining robot people, but not Sonic's dad, because he was the only guy who was actually roboticized for medical reasons, and would die if he got turned back to normal. There is also an issue where Robotnik, the original Robotnik, comes back to life, and briefly interacts with the new Robotnik, at this point going by Robotnik Mk. II. But he dies again and then is never mentioned again. Eventually they start establishing a little more clearly that as far as Robo-Robotnik is concerned, his timeline was exactly the same as regular Robotnik's, except when regular Robotnik died, Robo-Robotnik turned himself into a robot instead and survived, becoming powerful enough to defeat the Freedom Fighters and take over the world. So they try to get us to act like he's literally the same guy, and sure, I get it, but we all know that technically he's not. He even met the other Robotnik on several occasions. There is eventually a long story arc where Sonic defeats Robotnik so hard that he has a mental breakdown. Snivley takes over and invites The Iron Queen to be his girlfriend. I guess they're just cucking her husband now, who is a literal bull, by the way. Anyway this goes on for way too fucking long, with The Iron Queen being the main villain for like a year, but eventually Robotnik gets better and Snivley cucks out and goes back to him. But it's all part of a plan to take over again. But after he openly betrays Robotnik to save The Iron Queen, Robotnik captures Snivley and sends the Iron Queen home, pretending to be a gracious ruler and allowing her to run a vassal state or whatever. And to break Snivley, he makes a Mecha Snivley and sends it to the Iron Kingdom to fuck his girlfriend, so the Iron Queen doesn't even notice anything is wrong, but Snivley knows his girlfriend is fucking a robot. Shortly after this, Robotnik and Dr. Wily change history, and in the new history, they don't mention anything except the stuff that was established in the cartoon, but instead of Robotnik being Science Minister Julian, the Science Minister was now Julian Snivley (Snivley's name before the history change was Colin Kintobor, Jr.), who was taking orders from Robotnik behind the scenes. Robotnik was previously a high-ranking United Federation scientist working for GUN, and Snivley worked under him. Snivley was supposed to be helping the Kingdom of Acorn as their science minister, but secretly Robotnik was getting him to set things up so he could take over the Kingdom. Snivley claimed that he was actually being threatened into obedience by Robotnik, but was always loyal to the United Federation. He was secretly piloting the Eggrobo from Sonic & Knuckles, with the goal of stealing the Master Emerald, claiming that he planned to bring it to the UF because he didn't trust Knuckles to protect it from Robotnik, given that Robotnik had almost stolen it just then. But Mecha Sonic got him and destroyed the Eggrobo, so he escaped back to the United Federation and has been working for GUN ever since, but nobody trusts him and everyone knows he's still really evil and would probably work for Robotnik again if Robotnik pressed him. This story therefore sort of invalidates a lot of the retarded shit from before, but only if you look really closely and technically, and even then, a lot of it could still happen. Maybe Snivley did still kill Robotnik, and then Robotnik got replaced by Robo-Robotnik, who is the current guy. But they at least have the decency to never mention it ever again. Really, if you aren't looking really close, it looks like it picks up from where we last saw Snivley, and he is just mad that Robotnik sent a robot version of himself to fuck his girlfriend. You're intended to see it as one continuing story, even if elements from history changed. But technically, I do think the Robo-Robotnik stuff got erased in the last 40 issues. >Fleetway Knuckles Knuckles is the last of his kind and he protects the Master Emerald on the Floating Island. One notable plot includes a time when he fought the ghosts of a dinosaur race that previously inhabited the land before the echidnas wiped them out. Another time he fought a surviving echidna scientist named Doctor Zachary, who tried to lean on Knuckles' wish for family, and also knew how to use all the ancient tech around the island. Lame name, yes, but reasonable concept for a character. There was a very long arc with Knuckles being hired by pirates to help find a treasure, with the promised pay of a bunch of ancient documents about the Floating Island. Knuckles then takes forever getting home with the documents, having many adventures along the way. The biggest twist that doesn't fit easily with game lore is in the very final arc. When Sonic goes back in time to see the ancient echidnas in the Sonic Adventure arc, he sees Knuckles is there, implying he is immortal. This never gets resolved because the comic got cancelled at the end of this arc. The fan-continuation, which has had stories contributed by the main writer from the actual comic, later established that Knuckles reincarnates, and the last time he died, something happened that made him forget his previous lives. So pretty much he's Hawkman.

>Archie Knuckles/Chaotix/Tails Aw shit. Where to begin? Knuckles is kind of normal in his first couple of issues, but then he and the Chaotix start getting messages from a mysterious behind the scenes figure named Archimedes. This is also all tied up with Tails stories, where he is also getting messages from someone named Athair and The Ancient Walkers, and all of these mysterious beings seem to know each other. Turns out Archimedes is a fire ant, and the fire ants have an arrangement with the echidnas where every echidna guardian has his own guardian fire ant. Athair meanwhile is Knuckles' great-grandfather from five generations ago, but for some reason he's mostly tied up with Tails and Tails' own prophecy of being the chosen one. The Ancient Walkers are effectively a trinity of gods, but later lore will explain their backstory of being mobian dinosaurs who were among the first to ever discover the chaos emeralds and learn their power. This all happened after nuclear war wiped out our society. Dinosaurs developed again out of new primordial soup. The backstory of the floating island is given. "The White Comet" was going to land in the echidna homeland in the continent of Downunda. Now, echidnas were hyper advanced scientists even in the ancient past. They were super-scientists when hedgehogs were cavemen. So they used the power of something like twelve Chaos Emeralds (oh yeah there were like infinity Chaos Emeralds in this continuity) to lift their land into the sky, creating the Floating Island. In the middle was their city, Echidnopolis. There was also a population of Dingoes on the Floating Island, though, and they didn't get along. Anyway a few generations two brother scientists named Dimitri and Edmund came up with a way to slowly drain the Chaos Emeralds' power so that the island would slowly and safely go back to the ground. But the echidna government wouldn't let them, so Dimitri got mad and used the machine to drain the power into himself, becoming a godlike supervillain called Enerjak. They sealed him in a mountain, but this leads into the first Knuckles miniseries, when he escaped in modern day and fought Knuckles. Knuckles then got his own regular series, not just a miniseries, and in the first arc it was revealed that the echidna government responded to Dimitri's supervillainy by banning technology. Obviously a lot of people in this super-science society didn't like that, so Dimitri's son, Menniker, started a cult of "tech-obsessed zealots" who wanted to overthrow the government so they could keep living like they were. Obviously it's fucked to call the people who DON'T want to radically change their society the zealots, but that's Penders for you. Anyway, Menniker kills Dimitri's brother, Edmund, who helped defeat Dimitri, and Edmund's son, Steppenwolf, took it upon himself to become the Guardian of the Floating Island and its chaos emeralds. This position then becomes hereditary. The government, meanwhile, banishes the pro-tech people, called The Dark Legion, to The Twilight Zone, which is a separate Phantom Zone ripoff dimension to The Void and The Zone of Silence. They get out in modern day and Knuckles fights them with the help of a girl one named Julie-Su because it turns out that they are soulmates (which isn't just figurative for them) so she just has to betray her people for him. The next arc is where things really go off the rails, though. So it turns out that it's not that the city was just slowly dismantled and the jungle took over. No, it turns out that the war with the dingos went nuclear, so the echidnas banished themselves and their city to yet another dimension. Only the guardians were left behind, with the goal of protecting the island and cleaning it up so that eventually the echidnas could return. Then they do, and now Knuckles is walking around a super advanced city full of echidnas, including his mother, who got divorced from his dad because his dad was determined to raise Knuckles in a strict fashion, to instill the discipline needed to be a guardian. There is then an extended arc about Knuckles' mom getting remarried. She and his stepdad then have a baby called Kneecapeon Mace, AKA Kneecaps. He has the middle name Mace because of a future story where they had a kid named Mace. But I haven't even talked about The Guardians. So The Guardians were left on the Floating Island but could still go back and forth to the Echidnopolis dimension when they wanted to. But they didn't want to, because they were very dedicated. It's established that Guardians are extremely long lived, so there have been like twelve generations of Guardians before Knuckles, and most of them are still alive. At first it's just his dad, Locke, and it seems like Knuckles' dad is secretly around and trying to protect him from behind the scenes. But then we learn Locke is part of a massive club, and they're all each others' dads, but that basically never comes up. But there are huge plots about their schemes. Also, each one has his own Fire Ant, so that's important, too. You know Knuckles' cowboy hat from the OVA? Actually it's from his great-great (idk how many) grandfather, Hawking. But I previously mentioned Athair. He's a former guardian but he quit and isn't part of the Brotherhood of Guardians because he found The Lost Tribe of Echidnas. They were looking for their original homeland (pre-echidnopolis), Albion. He felt helping them was his calling, so he did. Then he got involved with the Ancient Walkers, and his modern role isn't even really to do with Knuckles, it's trying to help Tails with his destiny as The Chosen One. But Knuckles is also a chosen one. Locke had visions of Knuckles defeating the biggest threat ever, who is sometimes implied to be Robotnik. So Sonic isn't destined to finally beat Robotnik, Knuckles is. And yes, Snivley killed him, but that's part of the story. I'll get to that. Anyway, Locke took Knuckles' egg and bathed it in the Chaos Energies of the Chaos Emerald chamber, mutating him. This is why Knuckles has pointy knuckles. The other guardians have them too, but they're only gloves. Knuckles' are real. Anyway after Snivley killed Robotnik, Penders did a comic called The Lost Ones. It only had one issue, but before that, it crossed over with Sonic and Image Comics, including Spawn and Savage Dragon. Archie got the rights to have Sonic cross over with Spawn and other big (at the time) properties, but Penders wrote it, so he made it about his own shit comic that wasn't even out yet. The villain is a mad scientist and he's never named except for in the copyright info, which says "Dr. Ian Droid copyright Ken Penders." In the comic, Droid makes reference to knowing Sonic, even though Sonic doesn't know him. The implication is that Droid is Robotnik, reborn in another universe after being destroyed by his Ultimate Annihilator in Issue 50. Knuckles' destiny is to be the one to REALLY defeat Robotnik/Dr. Ian Droid. There's a story where Charmy Bee turns out to be a prince. It's interesting because Fleetway Sonic also reveals that Charmy is a prince. Anyway that's not the important part. The important part is that he gets married to a girl named Saffron. Also, it's not important, but there is an issue where his childhood friend overdoses on LSD and dies. It's just notable as an example of the retarded shit that happens in this comic. Charmy does leave the Chaotix for a bit, but eventually he and Saffron both come back. So the Chaotix is Knuckles, Vector, Espio, Charmy, Mighty, Ray (who also joins eventually), and also Julie-Su and Saffron. There's also an arc much later where it turns out Espio was a spy for a ninja clan and was intended to be a double agent, but he changes his mind and really becomes friends with them. That story is actually alright though. But I'll mention it while I'm on weird Chaotix shit.

Fine, I guess I'd better also mention Ray. Ray isn't in the actual Chaotix game, so he isn't one of the original members here. But eventually they figured they'd use him. They say that years ago, before the series, Mighty, Sonic and Ray were all captured by Robotnik (essentially the plot of SegaSonic the Hedgehog). Also there was Fiona Fox. In an early issue, Tails met Fiona and fell in love, but it turned out she was a robot made by Robotnik, just to mess with him. It broke his heart. Anyway turns out Fiona was based on a real girl and Mighty and Sonic managed to escape, but Ray and the real Fiona didn't make it. In modern day, Mighty rescues them, but I think there's a thing where time didn't move as fast for them or something, so Ray is younger. Anyway Fiona is all dark and edgy from being locked up this whole time. More on her later. But Ray joins the Chaotix and is a pretty regular member from then on. Oh yeah at one point Mammoth Mogul absorbs the power of the Chaos Emeralds of Floating Island and becomes super powerful, but eventually the heroes manage to trap him in his own Chaos Emerald that made him immortal thousands of years ago. This emerald then becomes The Master Emerald, which previously never existed. This means Mammoth Mogul is trapped in the Master Emerald, but Chaos isn't. In the Sonic Adventure arc, since the Master Emerald was a new thing, they had to say Chaos was trapped in "The Black Emerald," which was in the Mystic Ruins. After (Robo-)Robotnik frees him, though, Chaos does smash the Master Emerald to get energy out of it or whatever, and this frees Mammoth Mogul, though he isn't important in this particular story. Knuckles then has to gather the shards, like in the game. I guess they had an idea for a thing where Knuckles and the Chaotix go on an adventure in the Mystic Ruins, but then Knuckles was busy doing his stuff from the game. Anyway there's a b-plot in the Adventure arc where Locke and the Chaotix go to the Mystic Ruins and meet Big the Cat's people. It kind of sucks. Shortly after the Adventure arc, Knuckles gets overloaded with Chaos Energy and turns green. He can only do this because he's the chosen one and because of Locke's experiments on his egg. It's like what Enerjak did but way more powerful. This remains for a long time, with Knuckles being a green god. It even covers Sonic Adventure 2. In the comic, they just show the intro to the game, then say to play it, then in the next issue, it's done. So the game is canon but Knuckles was a green god during it. Later Knuckles sacrifices himself to save the world, and he's a ghost for a short arc, but he gets better and is regular again. They later make a few references to him having wasted his god power. That was his Chosen One power, and he didn't even kill Robotnik/Ian Droid with it. The Lost Ones only ever got one issue, and Ian Droid was never mentioned ever again. Robotnik did come back to life for one issue, like I mentioned, though. Sonic got shot into space at the end of that story when Knuckles came back to life. He was gone for a year, and everyone thought he was dead. At this time, Fiona Fox joined the Freedom Fighters, as seeing Sonic sacrifice himself made her forgive him for not being able to rescue her during the events of SegaSonic the Hedgehog. When Sonic gets back, Sally demands he never put himself in danger ever again, and since he can't do that, she breaks up with him. Actually she throws a tantrum and slaps him in the face in front of the whole kingdom. Turns out that when Sonic was in space, Anti-Antoine kidnapped Antoine and swapped places with him, and Anti-Sonic pretended to be Sonic. Anti-Antoine dumped Bunnie and put the moves on Sally, in a plot to marry her so he could become King. Anti-Sonic, meanwhile, put the moves on every other girl in the kingdom and pretty much fucked all of them. Like they don't say it explicitly because it's a kids' comic, but they get as obvious about it as they'd be allowed. Remember that Ken Penders says that in his head, Princess Sally lost her virginity to Geoffrey St. John. Anyway one of the girls Anti-Sonic put the moves on was Fiona, and this made her like Sonic. When the real Sonic gets back, and Sally breaks up with him, he starts dating Fiona. Tails doesn't take it well, because he's madly in love with Fiona even though the real one he loved was a robot that was destroyed years earlier. But she was his first love. Fiona, meanwhile, is a stone cold bitch, and knows exactly what she's doing. Sonic is enough of a bro that he at least doesn't keep fucking Tails' childhood love, so he breaks it off. Fiona realizes she just likes being bad, and the guy she really loves is Anti-Sonic, and becomes his girlfriend for the rest of her appearances. Anyway around this time, after Knuckles was dead and Sonic was in space, the Dingoes took over Angel Island (they renamed the island to Angel Island eventually to match with the games. There was an in universe reason but it doesn't matter), allying themselves with Robotnik. Actually, The Dark Legion had allied themselves with Robotnik. Menniker was replaced with a lady called Lien-Da, who turns out was Julie-Su's sister, and also sort of Knuckles' great-aunt, which is weird because it means Knuckles' soulmate is his great aunt, but whatever. Anyway the Dingoes became part of the Dark Legion and were put in charge of Angel Island. When they took over, they managed to banish The Brotherhood of Guardians (except for Locke) to The Twilight Zone, and they were never spoken of again. Sonic and Knuckles saved the day, but the Brotherhood was gone. Echidnopolis has also been destroyed, so its inhabitants all move to Albion. So Angel Island is now free of Echidnas except for Knuckles and his dad. But Tails is also a chosen one. He was destined to defeat Mammoth Mogul. He does this by fusing with all the other Tails from throughout the multiverse and becoming a big buff Tails, and he looks like a Super Duper Sumo, and he beats Mammoth Mogul, who sort of becomes a bitch after that and decides to work in the background until the current generation of heroes is dead, since he is immortal. He buys Casino Night Zone and acts as a "legitimate businessman" for the time being. But in future stories involving Silver the Hedgehog, Mammoth Mogul seems to have sincerely become a good guy. After Robotnik and Wily changed history, Mammoth Mogul was never referenced again, and the casino was now owned by Breezie the Hedgehog, that hot robot girl hedgehog that tried to molest Sonic in that Adventures of Sonic the Hedgheog episode. They say that after that series, around the time of Sonic Heroes, Neo Metal Sonic put her in charge of Casino Park, and after the game, Robotnik let her keep running it as an independent business. Now, that's a different casino from Casino Night, but the same employees, notably Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts, who previously worked for Mogul now work for Breezie. Of course, you could just assume they went to work at a different casino eventually. So nothing says Mammoth Mogul isn't canon anymore, but he's never mentioned again.

But it turns out that that isn't really why Tails is the Chosen One. The prophecy of unification wasn't about unifying the Tailses of the multiverse, it was about unifying the chaos emeralds. Remember how there were like infinity chaos emeralds? Well a villain called ADAM, a sentient virus created by Robotnik, used super tech that was already in the ground (which was later revealed to be The Ark of the Cosmos from Sonic Riders 2) to summon all the Chaos Emeralds from throughout the universe. There were seven colors of emeralds from several planets. All the ones shown before were green, except for one time when Sonic was in space and got red ones that turned him into an evil Super Sonic (in an obvious reference to Fleetway Sonic). Well now they show emeralds coming from those two planets plus five other planets we've seen before, and Tails merges them all into just seven Chaos Emeralds, now more powerful than before, and he beats ADAM and saves the day and puts the Chaos Emeralds in The Zone of Silence, which turns it into The Special Stage. There was previously a Special Stage but Super Sonic and Hyper Knuckles (who is really just what they call Super Knuckles) destroyed it in a random fight. Now there's a new one. Oh yeah, in that fight, they killed The Ancient Walkers. Athair becomes a Neo Walker. I also need to explain Aurora. The echidna characters, and occasionally even non-echidnas, use "Aurora" like the name of a god. When Knuckles died, he met her and she guided him before he came back to life. She said her echidna form was only because it was comprehensible by him. Anyway now they're acting like she was somehow below the Ancient Walkers, and she becomes a Neo Walker. The Sonic Comic Encyclopedia later says she was an ancient echidna scientist, and she and her husband, Enerjak, studied the Chaos Emeralds. Enerjak went mad, but she defeated him. Apparently his spirit was actually possessing Dimitri. Aurora, due to the Chaos Energy, was immortal, so she distanced herself from the physical plane and over time became very detached from humanity. None of this is stated in a story. It's only in the encyclopedia. Right after the encyclopedia, Robotnik and Wily changed history and none of these characters were ever mentioned again. And oh yeah, the third Neo Walker is Tails' uncle, Merlin, who is a wizard. He's sort of Athair's buddy. They do similar stuff. So around this time, Robotnik was doing this thing where he took people and put them in "Egg Grapes," capsules that sucked out their energy. But after Tails defeats ADAM, everyone is freed. But the people who got it the worst are left brain damage. Naugus is one of these people, and he's left as a mindless beast. Another one who got brain damage is Charmy Bee. He now has the mind of a child. The logic is to make him act like he does in Sonic Heroes and later games, but really he never acted that mature before, he was always the annoying one in the comics. Well now he explicitly has brain damage. And they can't even ignore his past entirely because he also has a wife. Saffron essentially becomes his caretaker. It's horribly sad. They try to gloss over it, but there are occasional times when Charmy mentions that he has difficulty thinking, and any attempts to act like he's just a kid are ruined by the fact that his wife is there. There's a period where Knuckles felt that he had to help the Freedom Fighters fight Robotnik, which meant not staying on the Floating Island. Locke thus effectively became Guardian again. This happened right at the end of Penders' run. In the very first issue off the current writer, Ian Flynn's, run, Anti-Sonic tries to steal the Master Emerald. He jumps on top like Mecha Sonic in Sonic & Knuckles and begins to power up, turning green, like Knuckles did, remember? Now Knuckles could only do that because he was a mutant Chosen One, but uh... fuck it. Anti-Sonic can be a Chosen One too. He's a Sonic, after all. Anyway Locke is defending the Master Emerald and he punches Anti-Sonic, leaving a big scar on his chest that some artists are smart enough to draw like the number "II," because the whole bit from here on out is that Anti-Sonic, who now declares his name is "Scourge," is still just a poor imitation of Sonic who is overcompensating. This is the precise issue when the comic becomes good. (#160, btw.) Anyway shortly after this, an evil echidna scientist from Albion, named Doctor Finitevus, who previously attended to Knuckles when he became a green god, put a spell on Knuckles to make him go mad with Master Emerald energy, becoming the new Enerjak. Archimedes determined that in order to defeat the spell, someone would need to sacrifice his life. Locke sacrificed himself to save his son. So now Angel Island is pretty much like the games, except it has a retarded backstory. But Albion is still out there. So eventually they do a story where Eggman attacks Albion and pretty much wipes it out. They show that Knuckles' mom had become leader of Albion, btw. This story really seemed like it was already designed to remove the remaining echidnas, but halfway through, Ken Penders' lawsuit over ownership of his OCs got far enough that they had to suddenly remove all appearances of all those characters. So one issue ends with Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles getting knocked out in Albion. When they wake up, a relatively new character named Thrash the Tasmanian Devil, who was previously established as a recent member of the Downunda Freedom Fighters, revealed that he hated the Echidnas for doing experiments on his people in the ancient past, messing with their genes and making them give birth to beastial non-anthro tasmanian devils. Today, Thrash is the last anthropomorphic one. So he came to Albion and used some machine to knock everyone out (as seen at the end of last issue), and while knocked out he managed to send literally everyone in town except for our heroes to The Twilight Zone. He also mentions that he stopped off at Angel Island and threw Julie-Su and Saffron in there, too. The rest of the Chaotix were off on their own mission looking for Mighty's sister at the time. Also Thrash couldn't say Julie-Su or Saffron by name, so he just has to say "those girls," because Archie wasn't allowed to even say their names anymore. Anyway Trash is happy even though he didn't beat Knuckles, then he fucks off. And now, finally, Knuckles was the last Echidna. He had a tortured past with his dad sacrificing himself, and his wife, mom, brother, and 7 generations of grandfathers, being thrown into the shadow realm. Then in the very next issue Robotnik and Wily change history, and none of this is ever mentioned ever again. Even after changing history, though, Sally and the Freedom Fighters are still the main characters, and that's fucking stupid.

>Fleetway Amy Amy is good in Fleetway originally. They fucked up and drew her hair almost always swooshed up like on the cover of Sonic CD, because they just didn't look at the game, I guess. But anyway it's fine. She's an alright character in the comic. But eventually some feminist editor got in and demanded they change Amy to suit her politics. She stopped ever showing she had a crush on Sonic, and sometimes even just acted like she did it just to tease him. She started acting like much more of a "tough girl." Eventually they started teaming her up with Tekno for "girl power" stories, and they're the worst part of the comic by far. An extended arc has Amy and Tekno meet The Ring of Eternity, which sends them through time and space, and this goes on for a super long time. In fact, the comic started losing sales and they started cutting the original comics pages and replacing them with reprints, so it got to the point for a while where, while there used to be four stories per issue, now there were only two and reprints. One new one was always Sonic, which made sense, but the last backup stories they ever did were Amy & Tekno. It fucking sucked. But I mean by Sonic the Comic standards. Still better than a lot of Archie. After Amy & Tekno ended and we were left with only one story per issue (so only one quarter of each issue was new), it was then Sonic & Amy for a while, until the last couple of arcs. Anyway, they never went as far with Amy's feminist representation as we'd see these days, but they went decently far with it as far as the '90s were concerned. Also she started wearing weird clothes, jeans and various t-shirts, after a while, trying to make her look grunge or something. I don't even hate it, but it's kind of dumb. In the final arc, an adaptation of Sonic Adventure, she gets a haircut so that she looks like the game. It's literally just a haircut. Simple enough. But Archie made it much more complicated. >Archie Amy Amy is introduced as a kid who is just Sonic's biggest fan, to keep her from stepping on Sally's toes as a love interest. She's a minor character until the Sonic Adventure arc. In it, she makes a wish on The Ring of Acorns to be older so that Sonic might find her to be of romantic interest. By the way, this was right as Sally's brother, Prince Elias, was about to use the ring's magic to save the day. Now he couldn't because Amy used it in an attempt to pedo-bait Sonic. Anyway she's still not a love interest to Sonic after that. Even after Sonic and Sally break up, he goes and fucks Fiona for a while, and Amy just doesn't even react. While Amy wasn't as feminist as Fleetway Amy, Sally pretty much had that role covered. Eventually Sega demanded they straight up erase Sonic and Sally's relationship from history, and after that Amy sort of acted like the game version for a while, but ever since Sonic Adventure, she was always played as heavy muscle, like Knuckles, which is fucking stupid. But it got worse, as modern Sonic stuff straight up acts like Amy has no attraction at all to Sonic, and her role is purely as the tough guy of the group, except for when she needs to be a smarmy voice of reason (since of course that's a designated woman role). Idk. I wasn't even aware of Sonic the Comic until pretty recently, so it's not like I have nostalgia for it, but I find modern Amy so much more annoying than Fleetway Amy, even though they're the same general concept of "change Amy to suit feminism." Maybe just because feminism is even worse now than in the '90s, so at least then having her act like a girl was a bit less smarmy, even if it was annoying that she had to be tough and not openly attracted to Sonic. >Fleetway Tails I mentioned Archie Tails and couldn't really separate him from Archie Knuckles, but I can separate Fleetway Tails, and he's a bit weird. They reveal that Tails is actually from a place called The Nameless Zone. "Zone" in both series is kind of used interchangably as both a word for another dimension but also sometimes just another location, and I'm unsure if The Nameless Zone is another country or another dimension. Anyway it's medieval sword and sorcery themed. Tails wrote letters to home about his adventures with Sonic, but he made it seem like he was the hero and Sonic was his sidekick. So then they start summoning him now and then to fight goblins and stuff. It's not that bad, except for this one other feminist warrior character that shows up in a few stories. Still, it's not as dumb as Super Duper Sumo Tails being led about by Knuckles' great-great grampa. And it doesn't clash with the lore so hard that you need to care about it. When Tails gets back home, his adventures are secret, so you barely need to acknowledge them if you don't want to. It's not like Archie lore where you're expected to understand all this esoteric shit. >Fleetway Super Sonic I also need to mention one weirdness Fleetway has that's unique. Super Sonic is an evil demon. They literally refer to him as a demon regularly. See since in the Fleetway backstory the Chaos Emeralds are filled with evil, when Sonic uses them he is overcome with evil. They also say that after he got the ability in Sonic 2 (which happens immediately before the first issue), he just could turn Super Sonic practically whenever, but of course he doesn't want to because he's a planetary threat whenever he does. In issue 100, due to several massive schemes and storylines converging, Super Sonic is separated from Sonic and becomes his own guy, but he gets amnesia, so it's like "oh shit, if this guy ever remembers, shit's gonna go down." He befriends these two witch ladies and they eventually determine that he's gonna die if he doesn't merge back with Sonic, but Sonic doesn't want to because Super is evil, even though he isn't evil anymore. But like maybe once he's back merged with Sonic he'll get his strength and memories back. And he does. So the series ends with Super Sonic still being evil, but sort of under control by Sonic. Anyway it's weird but it's awesome. >Fleetway Metal Sonic Might as well talk about this because I've mentioned it. In the Sonic CD adaptation, he's called Metallix, The Metal Sonic. In the later Sonic & Knuckles adaptation, they call Mecha Sonic Metallix as well, saying he's an upgraded Metallix. In the Chaotix adaptation, they introduce Emperor Metallix, the big red version from the end of Chaotix. He makes an army of Metallixes called The Brotherhood of Metallix, and they use Little Planet (here called The Miracle Planet) to go back in time and mess with things so they rule everything. Also notable, at one point they make a Metallix Porker Lewis, which is hilarious. Anyway, Robotnik eventually makes a Knuckles Metallix which actually predates Metal Knuckles from Sonic R, and after that he uses those guys more than he uses the Metal Sonic Metallixes. I should also mention that the Sonic 2 Sonic Robot appears in one of the very first issues, but it's treated as an unrelated thing. There's also a separate Sonic Badnik in one of those first issues, again unrelated.

>Archie Metal Sonic Introduced in the Sonic CD adaptation, he comes back in the Chaotix adaptation and turns big and red like in that game. In these issues they establish that he's powered by a special Power Gem made by Robotnik. I don't think he appears again for like 60 more issues until a time when he attacks Sonic and Tails near a volcano and meets an end somewhat like the OVA. Robotnik just replaces him with many other Metal Sonics in succession, who I don't think have Power Gems. Sonic Heroes doesn't happen in this continuity, but when Sonic is in Space, Uncle Chuck does make an army of Neo Metal Sonics to protect everyone. They predictably turn evil. Anyway Robotnik is still just making a new Metal Sonic whenever an old one dies, and one of them fights Shadow across dimensions in a crossover with Sonic X which then leads into the Sol Dimension, and that one later gets fixed up and becomes a pirate called Captain Metal, which is notable because Captain Metal first appears after Eggman and Wily changed history so that the story where he ended up in the Sol Dimension should never have happened, but I guess it did happen on some level of reality and the Sol Dimension was slightly protected from the reality rewrite. Anyway just before the reality rewrite the original Metal Sonic was rescued from the magma by Uncle Chuck or someone like that, and he was after seeing the value of friendship between Sonic and Tails, so he was a good guy now. He got a new paintjob and looked like Metal Sonic 3.0 from Sonic Rivals 2, and he started going by the name Shard. He became a Secret Freedom Fighter, secret to everybody except just this team. Sonic did find out about him at one point, and didn't trust him at first but then did. He also seems to be attracted to Nicole, Sally's sentient Game Boy from the cartoon, who eventually started making a hologram form for herself so she could walk around and stuff. The very last issue before Eggman and Wily change history is a special issue of Sonic Universe about Metal Sonic. In it, the latest Metal Sonic fights Shard. At the very end of the issue, they kill each other. Eggman can just build a new Metal Sonic, but Shard's Power Gem is destroyed, so even if they rebuild him, his personality is gone. Nicole is seemingly the only one who knows what happened to him. This is the very last page before Eggman and Wily change history, so none of this is ever mentioned again. In this case it actually kind of works, because the whole bit with Shard is that he's trying to redeem himself even though nobody will ever know what he did. And after he finally does, not only does nobody know what he did, but it maybe never even happened anymore. But it did to him, and that's what matters. Anyway I like Shard even though the actual stories he is in are only so-so because they're mostly about characters I don't give a shit about, like Prince Elias. But Shard himself is a cool concept, and that final issue with Metal Sonic is cool. Shard and Scourge are pretty much the only good Archie OCs, but both only get good right at the end. After Eggman and Wily rewrite history, Sonic Heroes did happen, by the way. So Metal Sonic is then treated like more of a distinct character instead of a throwaway robot that can just be replaced. Neo Metal Sonic is referenced as having happened, but Metal never really does anything cool or has much of a personality or anything. Until the IDW comics, where he is really cool in the first arc and then lame after. The IDW comics could sort of be considered a continuation of Archie. But whatever. He's just normal Metal Sonic now, just in a sort of neutered series. >Fleetway Sonic Adventure adaptation I went on about how weird the Archie Adventure adaptation was, so I should mention the Fleetway adaptation. It has nothing to fucking do with the game, but at least it's so unrelated that you can just look at it as its own story. Previously the story had introduced aliens called the Drakon Empire, who were revealed to be fish-like creatures. Just prior to the Adventure adaptation, Robotnik had done shit with Chaos Energy to become a god, but he still got beaten, so now he was so broken that he just wanted destruction, so he unleashed Chaos, The God of Destruction, who he apparently found sometime earlier. He was just in a box or something, not the Master Emerald. Sonic gets sent back in time at one point, which I guess was meant to mirror the flashbacks in Sonic Adventure, but it's only a little like that. In the past, he sees that the Drakon Empire was invading and fighting the Echidnas. Chaos was actually a Drakon who got infused with Chaos Energy, but they managed to seal him away after much destruction. Also Knuckles was there, but they never got around to explaining that because they didn't know this was gonna be the last story arc. But yeah, this has almost nothing to do with Sonic Adventure except Amy gets a haircut before the first part of the story, and they fight a water monster called Chaos. But he doesn't even look that much like Chaos. I guess he sort of looks like Chaos 0 for most of the arc, and when he gets all the emeralds he looks a bit like Chaos 6, but not Perfect Chaos, for some reason. Honestly it's an alright story. I'd take this over the fucked up adaptation of Archie, which tries to be more faithful but really just results in more weirdness. You could basically say the Fleetway Adventure adaptation just happened after actual Sonic Adventure. They could almost happen as separate stories in the same world. Archie, in being slightly closer but still really fucked up, ends up just feeling like the original story was butchered. >*Disclaimer: I'm remembering all this off the top off my head. This includes about 900 issues, plus other manga I'm trying not to mention, and about 300 episodes of tv shows, and that's not even getting into the games. I might be getting some small details wrong, but nothing important.

>>981714 >>981715 >>981716 >>981717 >>981718 >>981719 >>981720 >>981721 I still think you should be a video game/comic book writer, which is something I think you would be good with.

>>981728 Yeah but I need someone who would be willing to draw my shit, because I'm not good enough at that. What I really need is to just steal Ian Flynn's identity. Then I'd be set.

>>981746 We have a few drawfags here. Why not partner up with them?

>>981824 If I find one who wants to, then I will send him my reams of autism that don't even fit here. We would make a masterpiece. But finding one who has the dedication to draw someone else's script is hard. People wanna draw comics until they realize that means drawing the same characters over and over. Most just wanna draw different cute girls in sexy poses.

Were there any Metal Slug comics?

>>982597 No. How would you adapt Metal Slug to comics anyway?

>>982766 Wacky sci-fi military stuff. Could go in many directions with that.

>>982597 >>982766 >>982812 Would have made a good 90s ova.