Trivia / Sonic the Comic

• Creator Backlash:
  • Writer Nigel Kitching has shown dislike for Amy Rose's development in the comic, resenting not having the freedom to develop her and making her a Flat Character compared to her male friends due to the higher ups insisting she be a more suitable female role model.
  • Mark Millar wrote the first half-dozen or so issues of STC, and for a long time he insisted that he only took the job to pay for his wedding. In this video, he apologises for inflicting his issues upon us.
  • In the final print issue, Nigel Kitching acknowledges that Sonic No More, a bizarre strip where Robotnik steals Sonic's powers and turns blue in the process, didn't go as well as had been planned.
• Early Draft Tie-In:
  • At least one early comic showed Splats, an unused rabbit Badnik from Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • Sonic the Comic — and the majority of other UK-produced Sonic media — adapt the "Doctor Kintobor" origin story that had been produced to promote the first game in the US, to the point that until Sonic Adventure, the "Kintobor" backstory was considered by British fans to be the canon since the world presented matched the games and most media agreed on the backstory.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Amy being changed into a tomboy was mandated by the higher ups; Amy as a tomboy was supposed to be a part of her nature in the games, but the comics emphasized it far more. It's often considered a good change. Any negativity towards this direction was less towards turning her into a tomboy and more the writers were directly asked to make Amy the most mature and least flawed member of the team, and completely desposing her crush on Sonic). It's especially ironic considering how similar their original rendition of Amy was to how the games would later develop her.
  • Amy's debut story, "Girl Trouble", appears have to have had a minor editorial tweak, as fan podcast Sonic the Comic the Podcast received a copy of Nigel Kitching's original script and noted that Sonic's reaction to having to get Amy out of a mess she got herself into had been changed from an annoyed "What a drag!" to a less in-character "Women!"
  • During a fan made series of videos detailing the history of Super Sonic, the creator of the videos had an opportunity to meet with some of the writers for the comic and asked why Super was given amnesia in Issue 100. The writers explained they did so because all of them were having trouble figuring out how to write around such a powerful character.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Unlike its American counterpart, it's unlikely it will be officially archived into books. The comic officially left print in 2002 after a year of reprints, and only eight of the early Sonic strips were collected in the very obscure and very short paperbacks Sonic the Hedgehog Beats the Badniks and Sonic the Hedgehog: Spin Attack.
• No Export for You: The comics were only released in their home Europe.
  • Subverted specifically for the Rocket Knight comic. John Fairhurst of Limited Run Games reported that he managed to get the license so it can be added as bonus material for copies of 'Rocket Knight Adventures: Re-Sparked!, a Compilation Re-release of the classic games.
• Truer to the Text: To the Western backstory Sega had provided, and to the visual style and concepts shown in-game, with a large number of Zones being direct translations from the games to the comics.
• What Could Have Been:
  • After Sonic the Comic went reprint-only, writer Nigel Kitching posted some of his intended ideas for stories on the STC mailing list - here and here for example. Some of those ideas were later adopted by the STC-Online Fan Webcomic.
  • Kitching also suggested that Robotnik should have another redesign after he was transformed back into Kintobor while on Shanazar, this time using the design used for Eggman in Sonic Adventure.
  • Nigel Kitching was originally going to use Snively as Robotnik's assistant, as he thought that he was required to use the character as the television cartoon was debuting around the same time. When he discovered he didn't have to, he created Grimer instead.
  • Kitching's original description of the Kintobor Computer, as related in a message to a fan podcast, made note that the character was to be a father figure to Sonic that he may eventually rebel against. Such a rebellion never occured.
  • In a message on a fan podcast, Kitching recalled that an early idea was that Sonic would be written as a comedic character, due to having a cute design, however Kitching instead wrote him as "an action hero type".