INFO BURST

Format: Comic strip
Initial Release Date: 26/6/93
Feature character: Sonic the Hedgehog
Villain: Badniks (Newtron, Moto Bug, Crabmeat, Roller, Batbrain, Caterkiller, Spikes, Badnik Conversion Machine Badnik)
Other Characters: Tufftee Acorn, Tails, Sally Acorn, Animal Friends
Locations: Mobius, South Island, Marble Zone, Green Hill Zone, Special Zone
Items: Rings, Big Ring, Chaos Emeralds
Continuity: Sonic the Comic
Synopsis: In the Marble Zone, Sally Acorn’s brother Tufftee is being held prisoner by a group of Badniks who are intent on cruelly tormenting him before turning him into a Badnik himself. Sonic learns from Tails and Sally that Tufftee found a pair of Sonic’s old shoes and ran off to fight Robotnik. Sonic heads to the Marble Zone, though misjudges a shortcut and ends up taking an unplanned detour to the Special Zone. Fortunately for Tufftee, Sonic arrives just as the Badniks prepare to convert him into one of their own. The final Badnik attempts to flee but Sonic confronts it, only to have a spiked crusher weight trap plummet towards him. Tufftee shoves Sonic to safety, happy to be a hero after all. Sonic returns Tufftee home to the Green Hill Zone, but takes back his old shoes, reminding him there’s only one Sonic the Hedgehog.
Notes: Sally and Sonic refer to Sonic’s old “Power Boots” containing high-speed energy. This is incongruous with later established continuity which makes clear Sonic’s speed does not come from his Power Sneakers but is innate to him and seems to be a reference to the Power Sneakers’ function as a power-up in the Sonic video games.

CREDITS

Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Casanovas
Letterer: Elitta Fell

Review

Fortunately for Sonic the Comic, its third issue would show there was promise yet for the lead character’s adventures. For one thing, the reader can see instantly a huge leap in the quality of the artwork with Casanovas’ art being several steps up from that of the preceding two strips. To be absolutely fair, Casanovas did seem to struggle somewhat in rendering Sonic and Tails, and that’s certainly not unique to him around this time as plenty of western artists working on the series struggled to wrap their heads around how the characters worked on the page. But, that said, the other animals in the story look great, arguably because they’re close enough to your classic children’s storybook characters – certainly Sally and Tufftee could be dropped into a whimsical adventure starring talking woodland critters and you’d not bat an eye.

If Casanovas had any issue with drawing Sonic and Tails, however, he certainly had no such trouble rendering the Badniks. Each of them look fantastic here and manage to capture not only their wonderful, colourful designs from the games (and, as a bonus, almost all of them are coloured correctly here too, contrary to the two preceding strips!), but also giving them an innate air of menace. That’s no easy feat as most of the Badniks from the Sonic games are quite cartoonish and almost goofy by design, particularly the originals, but here they’re given the proper level of threat required to make you recognise them as the villains of the piece.

If the Badniks look suitably menacing, however, their actions are a bit more confused. Millar has Sonic meander a little bit in the middle of the story again, padding things out by having him run through the Green Hill Zone – which he did in the previous story. This is a real shame as the story would have benefitted from having another page of the Badniks bullying Tufftee to really drive home how much of a threat they are and to build the stakes. As it is, their repeated taunts always seem to terminate some point before they can be seen through, which robs the villains of some of their effectiveness. It certainly doesn’t help that they’re all disposed of in a single hit but, one supposes, that can’t really be helped as they’re still just the same Badniks from the game!

To Millar’s very real credit, it’s nice to have Sally be such a prominent feature in this story. Sally doesn’t end up being a particularly regular or long-standing fixture in Sonic the Comic outside of early appearances in the comic’s first year and that’s not exactly ideal as she’s the only female in the initial cast. It would certainly be easy to criticise the decision to have her spend most of the story crying but it’s justified – she’s a young girl, scared sick for her little brother as she believes (correctly) he’s in mortal danger. It’s a bit of a shame Millar stops short of utilising the built-in relationship between Sonic and Sally present in the series bibles of the time as it does mean she feels a touch more interchangeable, whereas in other early British continuities, Sonic was always keen to impress Sally as he has a thing for her (naturally, the American continuities ran with this). That said, STC never particularly concerned itself with romance so it’s no big problem that the story doesn’t utilise it here in the limited page space available.

While this is far from the greatest height Sonic the Comic would hit, it’s an early indication that, at the very least, there were legs in this comic beyond the preceding generic adventures.