In 2013, Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) went through a legal battle with a former writer that, following a crossover with Mega Man, resulted in a reboot of the comic, with the continuity before that point being erased and altered. While some were happy with the post-reboot continuity, others were dismayed at seeing years of history undone and wished for a more conclusive ending.
In response to the reboot, Chris "Glitcher" Reavey created Sonic Retold to continue the comic where Archie left off and recapture the days before Executive Meddling became obvious, such as Sonic not being able to cry or characters made by other writers being put offscreen.
The story began at issue 243 of the original comic with a retelling of the Cut Short Endangered Species arc. New pages could be found at Glitcher's DeviantArt page
on a semi-weekly basis, however, the comic has been on indefinite hiatus since April of 2023, with Glitcher's present whereabouts unknown. Five issues in total have been completed so far.
This comic is not to be confused with Archie Sonic Online, another fan attempt to continue the comic pre-Super Genesis Wave.
Sonic Retold contains examples of:
- Back for the Dead: After unceremoniously vanishing in the original comic, Gae-na returns in Retold only to fall to her apparent death after appearing in only two issues.
- Call-Back: Tails contacts Knuckles using Julie-Su's cybernetics, something he himself had previously done to contact him and Sonic.
- Call-Forward: Silver has a vision of the Worlds Collide event at one point. He successfully manages to prevent it and the ensuing Cosmic Retcon from occurring.
- Darker and Edgier: While the original could get pretty dark at times, Retold plays up the Body Horror aspects of Roboticisation, such as Eggman weaponizing Sally by tearing her limbs off and leaving just her head and heart active while he reconstructed them.
- Death by Adaptation: Maximillian Acorn is murdered by Mecha Sally in Issue 4.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In issue # 3, Cream starts to scold the Tails doll for how it always goes missing, only to realize, mid-sentence, that its disappearances always coincide with something going wrong with the Knothole nanites. She shares this epiphany with Rotor, and they manage to lure the Tails doll into an ambush and trap it.
- Fan Disservice: In what might be a reference to the image on that page, we see Eggman naked in a bath with Mecha Sally scrubbing him at one point. Many readers' comments were along the lines of crying for Brain Bleach.
- Grand Theft Me: Naugus does this literally with Geoffrey, re-forming in his own form not long after when out of prying eyes. Naturally Geoffrey isn't happy about this.
- Heroic BSoD: Mecha Sally has completely shut down after her last mission which can be interpreted as the real Sally going through this due to killing her own father.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Shard gets hit with this hard when he realizes that disobeying Rotor's order to protect Max & Alicia, just to show-off to the twins, resulted in the former king's death.
- Oh, Crap!: Tails has one when he discovers rows of gas turbines underneath the Death Egg and Guntiver having just activated a bomb.
- Spiteful Spit: done so by Lara-Le into Lien-da's face after the same taunts into having her family watch her being legionized in front of them.
- Tears from a Stone: Mecha Sally's optics get cracked from a blow to the face during issue 4. When she gets back to the Death Egg after killing her father, those cracks start to leak copious amounts of oil as if she were crying.
- Tears of Blood: Or oil in this case. Eggman suspects a simple repair work for Mecha Sally, but it actually implies the real Sally crying following her robot self killing her father.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Lien-Da doesn't think very highly of her alliance with Eggman and the only reason she is doing it is because of convenience...and because he’ll detonate her Explosive Leash if she doesn’t. When the Death Egg starts exploding she seizes the opportunity and crushes Eggman under a pile of rubble while she escapes the exploding station.
- Wham Shot:
- Remmington finding Komi-Ko on surgery table after she died from an experimental Leigionization procedure. Her death sets the darker tone of Retold to the source material.
- Mecha Sally killing King Max.
- Villain Override: Doctor Eggman does this when Mecha Sally has her father in her grasp and hesitating at the moment, forcibly making her stab her father through the chest.
- When Mecha Sally isn't responsive following her attack on King Max, Dr. Eggman takes control of her by using a Sega Genesis controller.
- Villain Team-Up: As per the original comic, Eggman and The Dark Legion (led by Lien-Da) as the Dark Egg Legion.
