INFO BURST

Format: Comic strip
Initial Release Date: 29 May 1993
Feature character: Sonic the Hedgehog
Villain: Doctor Ivo Robotnik
Other Characters: Animal Friends (Chirps the Chicken, Sally Acorn, Tux the Penguin, Joe Sushi, Flicky the Bluebird), Badniks (Moto Bug, Buzz Bomber, Caterkiller, Burrobot, Ball Hog, Batbrain, Spikes, Orbinaut, Roller, Splats, Newtron), Johnny Lightfoot, Porker Lewis
Locations: Mobius, South Island, Green Hill Zone
Items: Flying Egg, Rings, Neutrino Accelerator
Continuity: Sonic the Comic
Synopsis: Sonic catches wind of Doctor Robotnik’s latest plan: Robotnik intends to use his neutrino accelerator to pollute the atmosphere of Mobius forever. To buy himself time to get the machine up to power, Robotnik sets a horde of Badniks on Sonic, but the hedgehog overcomes them easily. One super-powered Spin Attack is all it takes to shatter the neutrino accelerator, but Sonic can’t stay to party with his friends as he’s on the search of Tails, who’s been missing for days… and Robotnik claims to have a surprise waiting for the hero.
Notes: First Sonic the Comic story

CREDITS

Writer: Alan McKenzie
Artist: Anthony Williams
Letterer: Tom Frame

Review

Sonic the Comic is almost inarguably the most beloved Sonic continuity to come out of the United Kingdom, so you’d expect it to start on a high note, right? Well, you can expect that all you like but, unfortunately, this isn’t that. As a matter of fact, the comic seems to take the concept of humble beginnings as something of a mission statement, serving up a relative nothing for its first slice of Sonic action.

Let’s start with the good: the story hits all the beats you’d expect it to in introducing Sonic and his world to a reader in 1993 who was likely already familiar with the character. In addition to Sonic and Robotnik, we see almost all of the Badniks from the first Sonic video game and all of the Animal Friends from the same. We have a familiar location in the Green Hill Zone and the only notable piece of iconography conspicuous by its absence is Tails, and even that’s fine as we’re told in the hook for the next issue’s story that Tails is missing and Sonic is in search of him. So far, so good, right?

The first major problem is how the story puts all those pieces together. In expending effort in ticking off a checklist of things Sonic fans in 1993 may recognise and expect to see, the pacing of the story is rendered a mess. The lead strip in Sonic the Comic enjoyed a larger page count than any other in the comic, but still only had seven pages to play with. While it is certainly far from impossible to tell a satisfying story in such a small number of pages, one really has to let the story breathe and there’s so much jam-packed in here everything feels inconsequential.

The art doesn’t help matters either, unfortunately. There are rare panels that capture a fun mischief in Sonic’s character, but there are far more which don’t and, as an even worse sin, there are multiple instances even on the same page of art directly copied, if not outright traced, from official Sega art of Sonic. The colour choices throughout are absolutely bizarre to boot, with the Green Hill Zone sporting a weirdly murky purple sky and a number of characters being coloured incorrectly, seemingly as a stylistic choice. One scene sees Sonic tumble down one of the Green Hill Zone’s infamous collapsing ledges, only to launch himself up the other side of a hill at a trio of Buzz Bombers. With clearer art this could have been an excellent display of Sonic’s speed and cunning use of his skills, but the art sort of has Sonic fall, hover in midair and then somehow launch himself up an almost vertical hill. There are some cool parts, however, with the panel of Sonic falling into a spike pit being very dynamic and the neutrino accelerator itself looking really menacing – it’s a shame it gets such little page space as the story gives so much away to Sonic doing the most generic jog through Green Hill Zone’s hazards you could like.

I’m willing to let the characterisation slide somewhat as this is the first story in the continuity, so the characters’ personalities hadn’t really been figured out yet. That said, there’s not too much here that suggests any particular interest in making Sonic stand out as a unique hero.

Sonic the Comic would go on, even before the end of its first year, to be a standout iteration of the character. Unfortunately, there’s no hint of that in this first story.