Trivia / Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)

• Accidental Downer Ending: Thanks to the comic's legal lawsuit between Archie and Ken Penders, the whole continuity had to be rebooted. Pretty much every remaining plot thread is left hanging on a very sour note, the entire echidna race has been banished to another dimension by Thrash, Naugus still has large influence over Mobotropolis and has now possessed his assistant Geoffery, Antoine is still in a coma and Bunnie is MIA, NICOLE and Mina are left trying to alleviate the stigma the former has, Snively has been disowned by Hope and imprisoned by Eggman after a failed coup, and while Sally has been neutralized and is back in the Freedom Fighters' hands, she is still roboticized (and likely in a state difficult to reverse due to Eggman heavily modifying her). The only plot that gets some resolution is Sonic letting go of his grudge against Silver, which happens just before the Cosmic Retcon. Since this was the swan song for several characters under the copyright concern, needless to say they bowed out in the most miserable way possible, in favor of the new continuity that came after, and would later be succeeded by IDW's game-based continuity.
• Alan Smithee:
  • Former writer Karl Bollers would sometimes write under the name "Benny Lee", usually with stories that were lighter in tone that his usual fare. Bollers would even create a fake interview with Benny Lee in Issue 108 to trick readers into believing they were two separate people.
  • Two stories were also credited to an artist (or artists) known only as "Many Hands"; these stories are often considered to have the worst art in the series, with the first having four pages of complete darkness except for Sonic's eyes and Sonic's six-page fight with Naugus being completely covered by snow.
  • Romy Chacon, the writer who introduced Tommy Turtle, and Jay Oliveras are both believed to be pen names for other writers. Chacon in particular is widely believed to have been former editor Justin Gabrie since the name matched up with his wife's maiden name and because Chacon disappeared without a trace shortly after Gabrie left the series.
• Bad Export for You: Various attempts were made in the early half of The New '10s to bring the series to other countries, to varying degrees of non-success.
  • Delcourt began publishing the series in French in 2012, beginning with the comics' temporary Cosmic Retcon via the "Genesis" arc, and continued even after its return to the normal continuity, without any attempts to catch readers up on the storyline up to that point. Combine that with new instalments being released at a snails pace (two books a year, containing a measly two issues worth of content apiece), their decision to abruptly skip straight to the "Endangered Species" arc after the issue in which Antoine sacrifices himself, and it's no surprise that the series was inevitably cancelled in 2015 after the aforementioned arc.
  • Panini started publishing the series in German not long after, beginning with a bimonthly magazine that reprinted, oddly, the first eight issues of Sonic Universe. It was then cancelled in favour of an also bimonthly comic that reprinted the main series, beginning again with the "Genesis" arc. The series, in which two American comics were combined into a single release every other month, consistently published everything up to mid-way through the "Endangered Species" arc before it was quietly cancelled. The series first eight issues where also released via a localisation of the first two Sonic Archives volumes.
  • Some of the non-canonical "another time in another place" game tie-in stories also showed up in a couple of UK publications. One these was an interactive annual released by Pedigree in 2013, which included two of these stories as well as, for no apparent reason, the entire issue 231 story "Lost in the Moment".
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: In SSS #9, Tails, Rotor and Antoine sing "Whip It" by Devo. Their lines are "Whip it!", "Whip it good!" and "You must wheep it!" respectively, although the song doesn't have those lyrics in that order.
• Billing Displacement: After Ken Penders' lawsuit, Archie Comics began giving the former head writer top billing on the covers of every graphic novel release in which his work appeared. This included books in which his contributions were incredibly minimal, such as The Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia, where he was just one of literally dozens of former artists whose old illustrations were used, and Sonic Sagas Volume 2, where his sole contribution was the lettering for a single backup story.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: For almost two decades, the Sonic comics were Archie's highest selling series.
• Creative Differences:
  • Ken Penders and Karl Bollers, came to butt heads very badly at the end of their run, leading to both of them to quit, though it's said that Karl was the only one who quit and Ken was "let go". Their fighting got so vicious and resulted in so much Kudzu Plot and Aborted Arc that the next head writer, Ian Flynn, had to spend the entire first year of his run untangling the insane mass of plot threads the two left in their wake.
  • To better understand this: Ken Penders was head writer for a time but then following issue 50 went to focus on the Knuckles comic. Karl took over and the two seemed to be out of each other's hair until the Knuckles comic was cancelled, putting the two head writers together. For awhile, Ken had Knuckles back-up stories to Karl's main Sonic stories, but when the back-ups were abandoned, the two ended up working together and the messes began, as the two writers, alternated between ignoring, retconning, and, in a few cases, outright actively undermining each other's storylines.
• Creator's Apathy:
  • Ken Penders claimed that in stark contrast to how mandate-riddled the later comics got, Sega were very hands-off with the early comics and gave him very little direction on what to do with them during his run (not that they didn't lay down rules, such as how to handle Sonic and Sally's relationship, or reject many of his Sonic-centered story ideas, they just didn't give him much instruction on what to do besides that save for pushing for things to be more focused on the games later on) and were reluctant to share any reference material that would have helped him out story-wise (for example, the Archie staff had to import their own untranslated Japanese copy of Sonic Adventure for story reference and wing it based on whatever they could make sense of from the game's footage) — he was effectively given carte-blanche on the Knuckles solo comics specifically because of this lack of communication on their part. He said the closest he got to it was receiving a copy of the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) series bible by the time he was writing the Endgame story arc. One of the major factors in him quitting the comic (besides just wanting more creative control) was with Issues 157-159, which were supposed to be an adaptation of Shadow the Hedgehog, but Sega barely gave Archie any info to work off of as usual, and Penders had to make up something else on the spot. According to him, this was when he decided it was time to move on, and he left after #159. He's also gone as far as saying Sega didn't give a crap about the stories in Sonic at all.
    "--all the different versions of SONIC exist because SEGA NEVER CARED ABOUT STORY PERIOD. FULL STOP. I know this having personally dealt with Sega. Keep in mind that when my team approached SEGA to do a Sonic The Hedgehog movie we had the show runner of FOX-TV’s animated X-MEN series involved who was attracted to the project because of my work on the comics, and he was there to hear SEGA express concern over look, not story."
  • Sega's indifference to the comic notwithstanding, most of the comic's writers prior to Ian Flynn have admitted that they weren't fans of the Sonic franchise and that implementing characters and story elements from the games wasn't a priority for them, only doing so either because due to fan demand or because of orders from the higher ups.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Ian Flynn later admitted his attempt to revert Charmy to his game counterpart persona^note an eight-year-old, half the age of his comic counterpart via an injury from the Egg Grapes was a case of Didn't Think This Through, and was left unable to do anything with the character without inflicting an unsettling undertone due to the implication of brain damage until the Cosmic Retcon allowed him to completely remake Charmy's history.
  • Ian started the book wanting to undo the damage caused to Sonic and Sally's relationship and get them back together, which he did. But by the time of the soft reboot, he was tired of the shipping wars and made them just friends.
  • Ken Penders was known to be very adverse to other creatives changing or interfering with his stories. He nearly quit the series after the comic's higher ups made him have Knuckles lose his Chaos form and return to his original design in Issue 124, only returning when he was given the greenlight to write Mobius: 25 Years Later.
  • Ken Penders' only official remark on Ian Flynn's tenure as writer was in an interview where he flat-out called Flynn a hack who was just using story ideas he came up with before he left Archie, even though he admitted that he refused to actually read any of his stories, and swore to dismiss all of Flynn's issues as Canon Discontinuity if he was ever head writer again. In response, Flynn's only official remark on Penders was to rebuff his predecessor's claims and establish that all his stories were his original ideas.
  • Ken Penders is very critical of the Sonic franchise (albeit mostly with the comics), often insulting and criticizing Sega for stealing his concepts (which heavily implies that he sued SEGA multiple times), most of the pre-reboot comics he didn't write, many of his rival writers, particularly both Ian Flynn and Evan Stanley, most the post-reboot comics, characters that Ken thinks were copying from his characters that were from the IDW series and Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) on his Twitter account.
  • Per word of Aaron Webber, Archie in general seems to pretend that their Sonic comics never existed once they lost the license, due in part to them and Sega apparently departing on sour terms and Archie wanting to move on from the series anyway.
  • Though not the writer on the story, Jonathan "WB" Gray, one of many a Promoted Fanboy, absolutely regrets being the guy who drew "The Slap," stating in his own personal commentary on the page that the scene "single-handedly encapsulates what was wrong with the Sonic comic both verbally, artistically and editorially" at the time. He has expressed similar resentment towards the "Sonic's Angels" story, a story which infamously depicts what can only be described as borderline Torture Porn being performed on poor Bunnie.
• Creator Killer: Because of Ken Penders trying to make his Mobius: 25 Years Later the official future of the comic, the problems he had with Bollers and Ian Flynn and the whole legal mess with Archie and SEGA over the characters he created for the comic, his reputation has taken a bit of a dive and he's had to resort to self publishing since then.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • Several writers have admitted that Princess Sally Acorn is their favorite character.
  • In one Q&A, Ian Flynn described Guru Emu as his favorite Downunda Freedom Fighter to write, given that his peace-loving, mystic ways are such a departure from the other members of the group.
• Creator's Pest:
  • Princess Sally actually became this to the writers (particularly Ken Penders) in the early stories, mainly because Sega's restrictions on what could be done with Sonic and Sally's relationship made her a very hard character to write for, and the return of King Acorn diminishing her story roles considerably didn't help with this at all. And beyond that, Penders simply thought the character "cramped Sonic's style" and kept him from reaching his full potential as a character. He actually tried to have her permanently killed off and replaced with a robot doppleganger with the Endgame arc, but fan outcry and an Executive Veto from Sega forced him to keep Sally alive (though Penders admitted in hindsight that this was a good call).
  • Ken Penders didn't like Mina Mongoose, only including her in the Mobius: 25 Years Later storyline because the head writer at the time, Karl Bollers, happened to be her creator. As a result, she's only briefly seen during a flashback partially obscured by her family.
  • Ken Penders also wasn't fond of Robotnik, as he preferred to focus on villains he created and he repeatedly rebuffed his editor's suggestions of reviving Robotnik following his death in "Endgame." As a compromise, Robo-Robotnik would be reintroduced as the new main antagonist by Karl Bollers in Issue 74, over two years since the death of the original Robotnik, after Sega complained about his absence.
  • The reason Sleuth "Doggy" Dawg left the Destructix in Sonic Universe #15 was because Ian Flynn found him uninteresting.
  • Flynn also wasn't very found of Drago Wolf, and had him beat up as much as possible. He got tired of bashing him however, and eventually made him one of the Grandmasters of the Soumerca Dark Egg Legion.
  • Flynn had a problem with a number of extraneous characters that contributed very little to the story and would debate killing them off. Though he took fan criticism to heart for some, he singled the Arachne out as being particularly useless and having no personality to them. They were killed off fairly early into his run.
  • Karl Bollers admitted that disliked the character of Nate Morgan.
    "I freely admit that Nate Morgan has turned into a walking plot device. About a year ago, I confided in Ron that Nate was one of my least favorite characters in the book, and perhaps because of that, I haven’t used him to the best of my ability."
• Dear Negative Reader: Ken Penders would on more than a few occasions use the letters page to address fan mail criticizing the comic's story or art, regularly deflecting complaints by claiming that most fans were enjoying and complimenting the comic. Notably, a young Ian Flynn, under his "Ian Potto" pseudonym, would often write in to give critical opinions on the comic's direction.
• Disowned Adaptation: Judging by God Never Said That below, it seems that Ben Hurst, the writer for Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) seems to have a dislike towards the comics, or at least how the comics handles the show’s characters and style. The fact that Ken Penders cheated him out of a SatAM revival around that time didn’t help.
• Dueling Works: According to Ken Penders, many comic sellers stopped ordering the Knuckles solo series in order to make more room for The Phantom Menace comic book adaptation.
• Executive Meddling: The series had numerous mandates imposed over it by Sega in the later part of its existence. According to most reports, Sega had been somewhat laissez-faire towards the comic's creative direction for much of its first decade of existence, being mostly content to let Archie run the show more or less as they saw fit, to the point of their attitude towards the comic bordering on Creator's Apathy at times. However, as Sonic as a brand started to flounder after it started suffering humiliation after humiliation in the tail-end of 90's and well into the 00's, Sega all of a sudden became extremely concerned with how their mascot was perceived by the public, and put new, stricter rules as to how Sonic and friends could be depicted in media, and set out to enforce them. As part of the process, Archie was wrangled in by Sega, who from then took a much more hands-on approach to the comic. However, as with the later IDW comics, writer Ian Flynn has frequently stressed that there was never a set-in-stone list of rules for the comics to work under, as everything was done on a case-by-case basis and that rules could and did change over time.
  • Due to the lawsuit between Archie and Ken Penders, the latter's characters, locations or events cannot be used, mentioned or named beyond vague references.
  • Elements from the game Sonic Chronicles are also off-limits because of the legal mess between EA, Sega, and Penders, since the game took many elements from Ken Penders stories and was part of what provoked his lawsuit against Sega, EA and BioWare in the first place. Note that according to Ian Flynn, Sega themselves were fine with them being used, and it was Archie that forbade them.
  • Certain characters, including certain ones from the games, are off limits for use, such as Eggman Nega (who is not only barred from unobstructed appearances, but can't even be fully named on-panel) Mephiles the Dark and Black Doom (although the latter is still allowed to cameo in flashbacks and the Black Arms race is free for use) due to being dead. It also took years for characters like Cream the Rabbit and her mother to be allowed to appear in the comic, same with Emerl and Omega. Certain characters like Blaze the Cat and Marine the Raccoon had so many restrictions with what could or couldn't be done with them that the most they could do was just make cameo appearances (though they did get starring roles later on, suggesting these mandates relaxed after a while).
  • Game characters can not have comic-exclusive parents or relatives. This also caused the Continuity Reboot to change things up, such as the fact that Uncle Chuck isn't blood related to Sonic anymore, and that the title is honorary. In later pre-reboot comics, Sonic and Tails weren't even allowed to address their parents properly, only by their names.
  • Sonic had to be on every cover of the comic (with the exception of the Sonic Universe sub-series),
  • Sonic cannot get overly emotional (which is often paraphrased or misinterpreted as "Sonic can't cry."), since Sega considers it completely out-of-character for Sonic to act like that. A couple panels in #166◊, where Future Sonic is grieving over the loss of his children, were toned down because of this.
  • From at least late 2012 and on if not earlier, the name "Mobius" cannot be spoken or mentioned as the name of the planet, and it is not allowed to be called "Earth" either—Sega says it is now just "Sonic's World".^note They still call themselves "Mobians" though.
  • None of the game characters can have a steady relationship, and Amy cannot like anyone but Sonic. Sonic and Amy cannot date at all as they would lose their dynamic.^note Yes, this sank Sonic/Sally, not Ian Flynn.. It bears noting that this mandate actually goes as far back as the earliest comics, as Sega heavily restricted what could be done with Sonic and Sally's relationship, much to the writers chagrin.
  • The game characters cannot undergo character development that goes against their canon characterizations. SEGA Characters cannot be changed in any way unless approved.
  • No SEGA character can die.
  • The heroes always have to win. Even if Eggman does get the upper hand for a short period, They have to immediately overcome him in a subsequent comic. ^note The Sonic Unleashed arc had to have Sonic arrive after the world began to break up, and Sonic Forces had no chance...
  • None of the cast are allowed to change their wardrobe or wear any different wardrobe at all, no matter what the story context would demand. (However, there are some instances near the end of the comic's run that avert this.)
  • Originally, the SEGA cast couldn't be implied to have aged to the point where they are now or age further. The Classic forms of characters couldn't be implied to be younger forms of the characters either. This mandate has been officially lifted as of the comics reboot, as the Sonic: Mega Drive comic uses the Classic designs as the characters younger counterparts (and not long before that, a post-reboot issue featured a flashback to the proto-Silver Sonic that used Sonic's classic design).
  • Characters originating from Sonic Underground, the OVA, and Sonic X cannot make an appearance. According to a Q&A by Ian Flynn, this is due to Sega not being keen on giving attention to any past incarnations of the franchise. As such, they forbid the use of any character from the aforementioned pieces of media. Curiously, Underground was barred from being included as early as 1998.
    Ken Penders: I know enough that Archie wants no part of incorporating anything from that cartoon into our series. In fact, if we did, I might as well have really killed off Sally, because she doesn't exist in this new version.
  • Part of why Knuckles and the echidna race had so much build-up back in the day is that Sega vetoed ideas that were originally meant for Sonic, yet went through with no problem when applied to Knuckles.
  • The idea of Metal Sonic being a series of robots devoid of personality, rather than one individual recurring robot, and being much easier to defeat than the canon Metal, was eventually nixed by Sega, who got tired of it and told Ian Flynn to cut it out. This led to Metal actually gaining a personality and becoming a much bigger opponent than before, to the joy of fans.
  • With the reboot, every non-Sega, SatAM, AoStH, and Ian Flynn character has been removed. While he hints that he can use Sonic Underground, he didn't use characters like Manic and Sonia without their in-series background of being Sonic's siblings in the end, mostly because he knows the Underground fandom would get up in arms.
  • Ian originally wanted the arc leading up to Issue 250 to be about the Freedom Fighters rescuing Sally with her being de-roboticized in the milestone issue. However, due to the Worlds Collide crossover and the reboot, these plans were aborted and Sally was returned to normal by Cosmic Retcon.
  • According to Ken Penders, Archie Comics forbade him from ever depicting religion in a bad light due to the Archie brand being very popular with Evangelical Christians.
• Executive Veto: Despite the excess mandates mentioned above, the writing team were sometimes good at finding loopholes:
  • While Sonic wasn't allowed an unnegated defeat by a bad guy, he was allowed extremely bittersweet victories. The Mecha Sally arc just before the reboot seemed devoted to showing Sonic could still suffer an onslaught of terrible blows, beatdowns and losses even without a mission being a straight up failure, to the point that Sonic suffers a borderline Heroic BSoD after the long string of Downer Endings that make up the first half.
  • As mentioned above, the term "Mobius" was nixed as early as 2013, it being asked the name of Sonic's home planet be kept ambiguous (in fact, Sega themselves only ever refers to it as "Sonic's World"), but its civilians were seemingly still allowed to be called "Mobians".
• Exiled from Continuity:
  • All of the 170+ characters created by writer Ken Penders have been permanently removed from the series due to a major lawsuit that Archie filed against him, including several major characters and series mainstays. This also included characters created by other writers pre-issue 160 like Karl Bollers as SEGA didn't want to risk anything similar to the Ken Penders legal case happening again in the future. In some cases, even unrelated characters of writers still at Archie (like Angelo Decesare's characters) got removed.
  • While Eggman Nega technically does exist in the Archie series, he is not allowed to make an unobstructed appearance or even be fully named (only being referred to as "Doctor Nega") because of unexplained hangups with Sega. Also affected by unusual hangups are Tiara Boobowski and her father Gazebo, from the canceled video game Sonic Xtreme.
  • Black Doom and Mephiles are off-limits for similarly unexplained reasons (though it could be because they are both dead in canon). The former caused Ian Flynn to create Black Death.
• Follow the Leader:
  • In the early 2000s, anime and manga were skyrocketing in popularity in America and the comic tried to take advantage of it by adopting a more manga-like art style. The most notable example of this was Issue 94 cover being redesigned to be much more Animesque. They also had Sonic and the Freedom Fighters go to high school and placed a lot more focus more on teenage angst and drama.
  • In 2006, Marvel's Civil War was dominating the sales charts and Archie decided to jump on its bandwagon by having Ian Flynn rework his planned political arc into the "House of Cards" two-parter, a storyline that was criticized for having all the characters involved firmly gripping the Conflict Ball in order to have Sonic and Tails fight each other.
• Gay Panic: Rotor and Cobar's relationship was approved of by Sega, but with the condition that it be kept low-key to prevent public backlash. Sadly, it was made too subtle for readers, forcing the reveal to be made as Word of Gay, and a later change in head writer has pretty much assured the relationship will never crop up again.
• God Never Said That: Ken Penders claimed that Ben Hurst, the head writer for Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) passed the torch to him to carry on with Sonic after the cartoon ended. This turned out to be not the case:
  Just for the record: Ken has often said (paraphrasing here) that "Ben Hurst says the torch has been passed to me for Sonic the Hedgehog" - usually expressed in a way to make it appear that I passed the torch to him. Not true. I was just trying to be nice. What I said was that since the comic was ongoing and the animated series was over, the torch had been passed [by default] to him. I was just trying to prevent a flurry of inquiries from fans pitting his opinion against mine on how the Sonic Universe should be sculpted after SatAM ended. The way he has expressed it in the past seems to convey the impression that he has my approval of his work. He doesn't. I've not read a single comic.
• He Also Did: The original head artist and writer, Dave Manak and Michael Gallagher, also contributed to MAD on many occasions. The two even did a few Spy vs. Spy strips together! In fact, the duo even collaborated again to do a Spy vs. Spy parody comic in issue 127, with Sonic and Knuckles taking the place of the duo (and with significantly toned down violence, of course).
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • During the series' run, this was double subverted. Despite fears of the result of Screwed by the Lawyers down below, Archie was still releasing reprints of the old issues... then stopped due to Scott Fulop suing for reprinting rights.
  • The Sonic/Image crossover was at best unlikely to be reprinted, and so was the first story in Sonic Live.
  • Ditto the crossover with Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
  • With Archie losing the Sonic license outright, the entire series became this, as Archie lost the rights to reprint or sell issues or volume collections of the comic. The only way the series will ever will be if IDW, the new license holder of the comic, decides to reprint the comic. While IDW is known for reprinting or even reviving old licensed comic book series from previous and concurrent licensees (The Transformers (Marvel), Doctor Who Magazine comic strips, etc.), it's doubtful that they or SEGA would want to risk possibly reopening Archie's legal problems.
  • Ken Penders gained reprinting rights in his settlement with SEGA and Archie and he intends to digitally release the "Mobius: 25 Years Later" stories alongside The Lara-Su Chronicles in the form of a motion comic.
• Missing Episode:
  • While the comic was abruptly ended at Issue 290, the comic had solicits promoting Issues 291 to 294. Likewise, Sonic Universe ended at Issue 94 but was solicited through Issue 97. The pencil art for a few issues have been released and it's likely that at least one or two of them were fully completed before SEGA took the Sonic license from Archie.
  • Tyson Hesse confirmed that Sonic: Mega Drive's third and final issue was completed before it was canceled and he hopes that one day it will get released.
  • Archie had advertised a Sonic comic for Free Comic Book Day. It would have depicted the first fight between Sonic and Dr. Eggman in the post-reboot universe. Due the comic's cancellation, it was quickly swapped out with a Riverdale comic.
  • Throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, Ian Flynn ran a blog on Archie's website where he answered fan mail as both himself and as characters from the comic. It also hosted a prose style prequel and epilogue to the "Dark Mobius" story line. Due to the website getting redesigned, the blog and all its entries were deleted.
• No Export for You: Due to the legal mumbo-jumbo the whole comic has suffered along the years, the comics aren't translated in Latin America. For a long time, it was impossible to find the series in the United Kingdom as well, because the license didn't cover the territory. Instead, Fleetway used to produce Sonic the Comic.
• The Pete Best: For the first few issues, Michael Gallagher and David Manak were the main writer and artist respectively, giving a zany, No Fourth Wall, Hurricane of Puns flavor very much in the style of the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog show. Over time, they were phased out in favor of several different artists and head writer Ken Penders, who gave the comic its somewhat darker tone that it's been known for ever since.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Outside of his work on Sonic, Karl Bollers is best known for writing and editing comics that are much more dark and mature in nature. He was brought onto the comic to infuse it with the gritty tone that was popular throughout the 90s and when that failed to catch on with readers, Bollers attempted to write in a more lighthearted style under his "Benny Lee" pen name that also received a lackluster reception from readers.
  • Dave Manak is known for his distinctly cartoony art style and his work on Sonic was mostly limited to its more lighthearted early issues and its comedic backup stories. However, he was also the artist for Issue 132, which was an action packed battle against Dr. Eggman.
  • The entire comic could be considered this by Archie, a publisher best known for producing slice-of-life comedies and dramas. Around the time of the comic's cancellation, Archie CEO Jon Goldwater was reported as wanting to get away from the Sonic franchise in part due to him considering it "not really Archie." An Archie Comics customer service representative around this time also admitted that most of Sonic's subscribed readership would likely have been uninterested in any of the publisher's other titles.
• Print Long-Runners: The longest-running comic book based on a licensed property, video game or otherwise, ran from November 1992 to July 2017; 24 years.
• Post-Script Season: The comic effectively was in this state after the "Endgame" arc in issues 47-50, with Sonic emerging victoriously after a climatic battle with Dr. Robotnik, resulting in the death of the latter. This was supposed to be the Grand Finale of the comic, as the writers at the time expected that it would soon be cancelled, but due to great sales numbers, the cancellation order never came down upon on the comic, and it continued onwards. How long exactly the comic was in this state is the subject of some debate; some would say that the return of Dr. Robotnik (or rather Robo-Robotnik) in issue 72 in preparation for the comic adaptation of the Sonic Adventure was were this stopped being the case, while others are of the opinion that this first truly happened when Ian Flynn took over as headwriter with issue 160 and effectively ended the Audience-Alienating Era many readers felt the comic had been languishing in for years at that point.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Several examples, most prominently 2006-2017 head writer Ian Flynn who was known as the author of a popular fan comic Other-M. He originally became known to Archie Comics by sending unsolicited story proposals, and one of his scripts was eventually accepted as a backup story in the Sonic X comic, but when Ken Penders abruptly quit Flynn was offered a promotion to head writer of the main comic, meaning he went from being a fanboy to having creative control over his favorite comic overnight. Since then, he has gone on to become one of the better known names in gaming comics, regularly being hired by both SEGA and Nintendo to make comic adaptations of their games.
  • Other examples include Jay Axer, Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante, Dawn Best, Evan Stanley of Ghosts of the Future Fandom VIP fame^note Fun fact: She only got the opportunity by simply entering a fan art contest. She was only 17-18 and didn't even win!, Jennifer Hernandez, and Jonathan "WB" Gray.
• Quietly Cancelled: Both this and its companion series, Sonic Universe, abruptly stopped at its 290th and 94th issue respectively, before likewise "going into hiatus". Unlike Mega Man, there was some hope this would continue, but as things stretched into months and with no word from Archie other than "they were still in talks" with Sega, and with several members of the creative team having moved to greener pastures on at that point, it was looking doubtful more and more. Eventually the long-standing problems between Archie and Sega hit their boiling point until, unsurprisingly, Sega pulled the rights from Archie. They confirmed breaking ties with them in 2017 and that the series would be rebooted again at IDW. What stings for many fans of this one is that, unlike Mega Man, the Archie Sonic series was never given a finale after being such a Long Runner (unless you count the ending of the Sonic Unleashed adaptation). This also resulted in the cancellation of the last of the Sonic Mega Drive trilogy.
• Recursive Adaptation:
  • The comic had already started to incorporate some plot elements from Sonic Chronicles, which itself had seemingly borrowed and modified some of its echidna lore material from the comic.
  • "Ghost Busted" from SSS#8 is a rewrite of the SatAM episode of the same name, told from Tails' point of view.
• Schedule Slip:
  • The trade paperbacks. Most recent ones have been pushed back at least once, and some have been outright cancelled. The last one came out in April. Read more in this (very long) thread.
  • Between late 2015 and early 2016, issues of the main series and Sonic Universe were taken off of their original release dates and postponed for undisclosed reasons.
  • Early 2017 likewise saw a slip in the schedule of both series as well as the "Mega Drive" mini series.
  • With Archie losing the comic license and being given to IDW, it's unlikely any stories that were caught in this will ever get out of it.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • According to an interview Ken Penders did with Did You Know Gaming, Archie's original licensing agreement with Sega stated that they needed to get approval for every new character the comic introduced and have it put it in writing that Sega owned that character. Archie failed to enforce this and supposedly didn't inform their writers about this stipulation either. Likewise, Sega didn't pay attention to the comics and were either unaware or apathetic towards their rules being ignored. Penders remarked that had this agreement been properly enforced then he likely wouldn't have made as many characters in the comic as he did.
  • The lawsuit between Archie Comics and Ken Penders led to the vast majority of the cast up and disappearing. As of #252, the entire universe rebooted, with 256 establishing that the whole multiverse imploded on itself and was rebuilt. The new universe gradually but completely overwrote the old, including memories, so the old world was completely gone.
  • Sega getting directly involved Archie's case against Penders might have swung things in their favor but the game developer had no interest in fighting their licensee's legal battles. In fact, they made it clear that to Archie that if they had to intervene in the case on their behalf then their licensing deal would not be renewed.
  • While SEGA had always been prone to put restrictions on what the comic could and couldn't do, the chaos surrounding Archie Comics' lawsuit caused them to take a much more active role in managing the comic and they issued many story mandates after the comic rebooted.
  • These legal problems came to a head in July 2017, when they led to the outright cancellation of the comic.
• Sequel in Another Medium: A rather odd and complicated example. The comic book came first before the TV series but was more light-hearted against the darker themes of the TV show. After the TV series ended, the comic ended up taking on the more mature theme of the TV series as well as using some of the plotlines that were intended for the show's proposed third season. Thus some fans consider the comic a continuation of the TV series in a fashion.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: A lot of storylines and characters came about due to various mandates, for better or worse.
• Shrug of God:
  • When asked about the fate of Robotnik's parents, Flynn posted two ideas. One was that Robotnik "did away" with them. The other was that they migrated to the United Federation. In either case, the writer leaves it up to the reader. Flynn also took this attitude with the Word of Gay the previous writer gave for Rotor Walrus, neither confirming nor denying it and eventually calling the whole thing "irrelevant".
  • In regards to Ian's plans for the comic prior to its cancellation, he's decided to stay quiet about it. The reason for that is he doesn't want to reveal what his plans were in case he finds a way to repurpose those ideas for the IDW series down the line.
• Troubled Production:
  • The comic always had a problem when it came to converting video game storylines into its largely different setting. However, two of the biggest screw ups came about via Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2. For Sonic Adventure, the story goes that the only material the Archie team had to go off of was an untranslated Japanese copy of the game. Which Sega didn't even give them. Apparently Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante, one of the comic's regular artists, had to import the copy of the game himself and played through it, passing along the info he could garner from it to the writers along the way, meaning that they had to fudge a lot of the story. The original plan was to have the storyline run through then-all three titles — Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles the Echidna and Sonic Super Special. However, just before the storyline started, the Knuckles comic got cancelled due to low sales, forcing Archie to cram all of the Knuckles stories into the Sonic issues as back stories.
  • For Sonic Adventure 2's story, the big problem was that Sega was insistent on Archie creating a tie-in into the game. Archie's solution? Just do enough to whet people's appetite and go get the game. Still was enough to ruin a side-by-side storyline that had a cosmically-powered Knuckles altering Mobius drastically.
  • From Sonic Adventure 2 onwards, most adaptation storylines ended up just usually being backup short teasers following the issue's main story. The teaser game stories have boxes that clarify whether the game in question is to be taken as canon in the comic's universe or not.
  • And then, there was the problem with Ken Penders and Karl Bollers. Around 1997-98, Karl Bollers took over the Sonic comic as Penders focused on the Knuckles comic. However, Ken would end up shuffling back over to Sonic due to the Knuckles comic getting cancelled. At first, things weren't too bad, as Penders could focus on the Knuckles back up stories. However, come #125, those were done away with and the two were working together. Suddenly, the two men were trying to pull rank over one another over story elements and which way they wanted the story to go. Ultimately, Bollers quit while Penders stayed on for a few issues longer before also ending up quitting, with newcomer Ian Flynn being asked to go from simple one-story back up writer to Head Writer. A few years down the line, Penders decided to reclaim his characters and storylines, copyrighting them all with Archie and Sega being notified of this. Archie sued Penders, claiming that the characters he created were owned by them via a contract, Penders counter-sued and we're off to the races.
  • In the end, both sides kept shooting themselves in the foot and, ultimately, they settled, going so far as to have Archie utterly reboot the series from the ground up.
  • On the subject of Sonic-related works connected to Ken Penders, there's the exhausting story concerning what became The Lara-Su Chronicles. The original story was initially called "Knuckles: 20 Years Later" and was meant to be an issue of Sonic Super Special. However, SSS got cancelled with issue 15. The story was refined and rebranded as "Mobius: 25 Years Later", serving as back-up stories in the main title. However, Penders left the story on a cliffhanger and soon quit Archie due to Executive Meddling (they wanted him to add more Sonic characters to it). He regained usage of the characters thanks to the lawsuit and promised to tell the tale he wanted to with a release date of July 2015. As of this writing, it hasn't been released with the excuse of "wanting to translate it to other languages" being the reason.
  • The problems for Archie wouldn't end with the reboot. Mega Man's title was flagging sales again and Archie decided it was time for a second crossover. Enter Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite and Archie decided to make it bigger - not only did they involve both main titles along with Sonic Boom (though relegated to just Sticks the Badger, Fastidious Beaver and Comedy Chimp) and the main heroes of the Mega Man X series, but a dozen other franchises from SEGA and Capcom, which cost Archie millions in licensing costs. Unlike Worlds Collide, Worlds Unite was a mixed bag and given a lukewarm reception with Archie barely recouping the costs. This lead to Sonic Boom and Mega Man to be shuttered afterwards as a cost-cutting measure (Though Boom was more due to the backlash from Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric's failure.) and the Sonic titles were hit hard as the crossover interrupted the ongoing Shattered World arc. The title would go into a brief hiatus soon after, a result of Archie rebooting their entire main line and go on a second, much longer hiatus that would lead to the title's cancellation and the license being sent to IDW Publishing. The exact reasoning for Archie losing the license isn't known, but hints from various sources seem to hint that the Archie reboot drained them financially and their focus on Riverdale lead to Archie to be very lax on the idea of keeping the series despite it being one of their best-sellers.
  • Prior to Ian Flynn, the series lacked a proper lead writer. Instead, the comic ran on a freelance system where writers would pitch individual scripts and storylines and Archie would buy whichever one they liked best. So while there were "main" writers such as Michael Gallagher, Karl Bollers, Ken Penders and Mike Kanterovich, there was no established outline to guide the ongoing plot and none of the writers were coordinating with each other to keep the story cohesive, leading to the aforementioned conflicts between Penders and Bollers. Furthermore, Archie would often buy stories in bulk and sit on them for years until they needed a script to meet a printing deadline, resulting in many filler stories that felt out of date in terms of tone and characterization.
  • Like all Archie publications, the Sonic titles were available in grocery stores and retail locations, with a large number of sales coming from kids casually picking up the comic while shopping with their parents. According to Ken Penders, sales numbers took a significant hit when Walmart and Kmart stopped selling individual comics in the late 1990s.
• What Could Have Been: Here.
• Word of Gay:
  • Ken Penders got around the CCA somehow by hinting at one of the characters in the "Mobius: X Years Later" storyline being gay... and doing this while showing the life partner, threading the relationship into the text. Once fans started searching, it became obvious (and confirmed by Ken) that the hinted couple was Rotor and Cobar, the latter an echidna scientist from the Dark Legion.
  • In the new continuity, Gold the Tenrec was confirmed to be either bisexual or lesbian (her creator, Evan Stanley hadn't decided yet). Professor Von Schlemmer is asexual.
  • According to Ian Flynn, the Homoerotic Subtext between Sally and Nicole was entirely intentional on the writers' part, with an interview on The BumbleKast clarifying that post-reboot Sally was bi, had dated Sonic in the past but it didn't work out, and would eventually enter a committed relationship with Nicole. It's worth noting that Sally is trademarked and copyrighted by Sega, meaning that she falls under Sega's mandate to not have any of their characters in a romantic relationship.
• Word of God:
  • Current writer Ian Flynn has organized his own message board, where he and other creators interact with fans and answer their questions. His predecessor, Ken Penders, also kept up a message board while he was writing for the comic, which is still active and occasionally talks about the stories that he had planned for the series.
  • The events of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) occurred in the comic as they did in the game, including the Cosmic Retcon. Soleanna has been mentioned a few times and issue #246 has a brief appearance of White Acropolis. The Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia describes it in more detail, including entries on Iblis, Mephiles, and Solaris.
• Writer Revolt: Very narrowly subverted. After "Endgame", Penders, furious at how Sega had forced him to change Sally's ultimate fate (even if he would later admit that, in hindsight, Sega made the right call), made it clear that he would walk out if he was ever made to change his stories again. And since he was still considered a popular, valuable writer at this time, Sega agreed not to interfere from then on until his departure from the series. In fact, Penders' eventual departure was, according to most sources, caused by Sega beginning to exert increased influence over the comic's creative direction, due to their concerns over the damage the Sonic brand had suffered by the early 2000s, and Penders, once again, threatening to quit over this. The difference this time was, with the comic being deep in its Audience-Alienating Era and sales having declined, any leverage Penders might once have had was greatly diminished by that point, and this time he ended up being the one who blinked first.

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