INFO BURST

Format: Comic strip
Initial Release Date: December 1992
Feature character: Sonic the Hedgehog
Other characters: Uncle Chuck
Locations: Mobotropolis, Uncle Chuck’s home
Continuity: Archie Comics
Synopsis: Sonic looks through a photo album of his earliest childhood memories, showing the moments her learned to crawl, walk and ride a tricycle and the day he graduated kindergarten. Unfortunately, even as a child Sonic moved too fast to be photographed, leaving little more than a trail of dust in his wake to show he was ever there.
Notes: This story does not bear an official title

CREDITS

Writer: Michael Gallagher
Artists: Scott Shaw, Bill White

Review

Yet again, here’s a quick strip (appropriately enough) focusing on how fast Sonic is. As with other examples of this, there’s nothing particularly challenging here, it’s all pretty well the same joke repeated four times. Sonic is fast, that’s the gag. It does become redundant after a while trying to critique these shorter strips when they’re all making the same joke but, if you’ll forgive us for sounding like a stuck record, they’re all making the same joke. Given the longer strips in these issues have so many great jokes in them, it’s honestly just a shame to see the same gag repeatedly wheeled out with a only a very superficial different coat of paint to differentiate them.

Unfortunately, this time even the art doesn’t get to save things as the joke hinges on what’s not caught in the frame. There’s also a strange little wrinkle- if you’ll pardon the pun- creeping into more and more of these early strips that looks particularly odd here, specifically Sonic’s mouth wrinkle at the corner of his smile is oddly detailed. It makes him look strangely old, which is no easy feat on a page featuring Uncle Chuck whose design is really little more than “old Sonic.” Ultimately, as with most of these up to now, it’s difficult to get truly annoyed with these since they’re over and done with so quickly, but it does make you wish that instead of spending multiple pages per issue on featurettes that amount to basically nothing, perhaps editorial could have seen fit to expand the issue’s larger stories- or maybe even supply a single, shorter tale better focusing on Sonic’s pals?