YMMV / Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)

A-H

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Going through the book's history, it seems that many of the problems could have been avoided had certain people learned to live and work better with others, understood that their value systems need to change over time, or just let go of their grudges with certain characters. Sally follows this when she talks to the Prowers and forms the council, but many of the councilors didn't let go of their grudges with the royal family or Freedom Fighters, and thus even their more valid criticisms don't get treated seriously enough by them. Similarly many arcs involve the heroes making Fire-Forged Friends with previous adversaries or being forced to let go of previous grudges, a lot of which were formed by hubris and poor communication (eg. Sonic with Knuckles, Monkey Khan and Silver). Reading the pre-reboot setting encyclopedia has another great example, as it openly theorizes that the first Freedom Fighters team were betrayed by one of their own members who represented the losing side of a civil war that the Mobians had fought before Robotnik conquered the planet.
  • Similarly a lot of the more tense situations in the comic lead to key Freedom Fighters suffering from a Moment of Weakness and betraying their usual ethics, leading to fallouts or other bad consequences (eg. Sonic holding vindictive grudges, Sally having reckless or aggressive episodes, Rotor's fluctuating approach to fire arms), emitting the message that it's a lot harder to practice than it is to preach, especially in very pressuring and stressful situations, and it benefits to try and empathize with the fallible qualities of others instead of badgering or spurning them in ways that can make you look hypocritical or Holier Than Thou.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • In issue #36, when Sally is fighting a brainwashed King Acorn, there's a rather unfortunately posed panel◊ which is supposed to be depicting King Acorn making a hard jab into Sally's stomach with his lance, but the awkward positioning of the lance unintentionally makes it seem like he delivered a particularly brutal Groin Attack on her instead.
  • Issue #81 has a very awkward drawing of Amy Rose◊, with her skirt drawn so lumpy and wrinkly that it makes it seem like she's getting a hard-on. Archie seems to have been aware of this, as the lump was edited out in reprints of the story.
  • Overlanders call Mobians "furries" as a racial slur.
• Adorkable: Phage is amusingly polite and bumbling towards allies, which makes her vicious attacks on enemies all the more frightening.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Tommy Turtle was liked in his debut appearance, where he apparently died, but after being brought back and used again nobody liked him. Despite this, his second, permanent death won some fans over.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Some of the dramatic character turns, reveals, and retcons caused by the change in writers can lend a couple of interpretations of earlier dialogues and character actions, even though they weren't written with these later twists in mind.
  • Geoffrey St. John's reveal as Naugus's minion throws all of his appearances into question, some acknowledged by the narrative (the Secret Service being made of potential people to shift blame onto), and some up to interpretation by the reader.
  • In the Knuckles miniseries, the Chaotix discuss Charmy's departure from the group following his ascension to his kingdom's throne. Espio, in particular, accepts Charmy's decision as a sign of his maturity. He notably disagrees with Mighty's belief that Charmy didn't have a choice in the matter, by saying that Charmy ultimately did have a choice and he could have renounced his heritage. With the reveal of Espio's own issues with familial obligation and heritage, it seems that he was lamenting on similar circumstances and thinking of what he would have to end up doing when placed in a similar situation.
  • Issue 134 has a rather conflicting one. While one can argue that Sally was indeed out of character after smacking Sonic across the face and accusing him of being selfish after choosing to save the world over settling down with her (as well as going on about their future), she isn't entirely wrong when she calls Sonic selfish. For one thing, Sonic had nearly lost his life TWICE, and Sally had to spend an entire year without his presence around the first time he nearly lost his life, thinking he was dead. Not to mention that Sonic's arm was now in a cast due to nearly losing his life a second time, meaning he was in no condition to even be fighting in a war. He was willing to die by throwing himself in the war against Eggman. He put his own desire to be the hero of the world over his own health (never mind the fact that there were many fighters of different teams that were just as capable of taking down Eggman as well). It actually does make sense that Sally would call him selfish at this point. On top of that, Sally also needed Sonic's help to rule the kingdom, since her parents were taking an impromptu vacation with no cognizance of their daughter's stress. When you look deeper into this, it does make sense that Sally would react like this in a way, turning this into a case of Both Sides Have a Point.
  • Sally as a whole fluctuates in terms of ethics. In many stories she is the cautious opposite to Sonic, while in others she makes even more reckless or emotional-based decisions as he does. This sometimes makes Sally's attitude to their dynamic a case of frustration over Opposites Attract, while in others it's easy to interpret Sally as venting at Sonic for having the same personal vices as her, wanting to be a practical leader but not always being able to practice what she preaches.
  • Why exactly did Scourge remove Patch's eye? A flashback from Miles suggests he simply did it to make Patch more distinct from Antoine, yet Patch's dialogue during a conversation with the Suppression Squad about betraying Scourge suggests Patch may have angered Scourge and the latter gouged the former's eye out as punishment. It's possible it might be a combination of both. Scourge got angry with Patch and used it as an opportunity to make him different.
  • How evil is Naugus actually? His creation by the Order of Ixis turned out to be accidental, and besides a temporary alliance with Mammoth Mogul, he never seemed to be truly loyal to the Order of Ixis in the first place. Yes, he tried to break apart the Freedom Fighters and banish NICOLE once he became King of New Mobotropolis, and he lost to the Battle Kukku Armada, but the fact that he puts up a fight to protect the kingdom at all, coupled with the fact that he wields all-powerful Chaos magic, seems to imply that he could potentially handle outside threats that the Freedom Fighters had difficulty handling, such as Eggman, leading to the citizens of New Mobotropolis willingly taking his side. In addition, besides the Freedom Fighters, NICOLE, and, to a degree, the Council of Acorn, Naugus never actively antagonized any of his subjects who pledged loyalty to him, which was most of the Kingdom of Acorn.
• Alternate Self Shipping: Sonic and Scourge showed popularity within the fandom. Scourge is Sonic from a Mirror Universe who eventually Took a Level in Badass and wore cool leather and had cool scars, along with being very popular with the fanbase (and fangirls especially), so it's unsurprising the fanbase made Slash Fic of them.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • The first 50 issues of the comic are quite possibly the Darkest Hour of the entire comic, with Robotnik not only having near-complete control over Mobius, but also tearing families apart, having his minions secretly invade the lives of innocents, causing mass ecological damage, and driving multiple Mobian species to the point of extinction. However, the problem is that, unlike SatAM, where the comedic writing goes hand-in-hand with the dark undertones, the early issues of the comic are presented as being entirely a children's comedy, with Cerebus Syndrome not kicking in until around 20 issues in. Even then, the fact that the issues leading up to "Endgame" constantly flip between Mike Gallagher and Ken Penders means that the comedic writing and the darker writing are never consistent, which only serves to distract from the trauma and despair Robotnik has caused.
  • Despite the fact that he was essentially fooled by his dad into believing the latter was dead for years, Knuckles is otherwise rather cool with Locke and only cares about having a normal relationship with him, never really questioning all the lies, spying and trickery involved in his own upbringing as a "lone" guardian.
• Anvilicious: Ken Penders hates firearms and his tenure on the comic features many stories where it's repeatedly established that Mobians hate guns and are loathe to use them even during times of war. One of his final issues on the comic had Rotor snapping at Fiona that Freedom Fighters never use guns, despite the fact that Rotor himself designed a giant gun to fight Robotnik during "Endgame". Similarly, Issue 31 of the Knuckles spinoff comic features the villainous Hunter firing a gun on the cover and there's a large no symbol overlaid over the weapon.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • A plot hinting at Tails being The Chosen One who would bring about a new era known as "The Great Harmony" via a prophecy by Ancient Walkers started taking shape a few years into the comic's run. Unfortunately, the plotline would, for the most part, trudge along seemingly aimlessly for years and years on end, with only the occasional vague hint ever so often to remind the reader that the plotline still existed. When the plotline finally took center-stage in the comic, through a story where Tails combined with his other selves from parallel dimensions and transformed into Titan Tails, and had a supposedly epic showdown with a superpowered Mammoth Mogul in order to save the multiverse, the execution was not only considered underwhelming for a story so long in the making; it effectively become one of the comic's most infamous moments of Narm, almost to the point of Memetic Mutation. Although it was afterwards hinted that there was still even more to the storyline, Ian Flynn would put an end to it early on in his tenure.
  • The Knuckles the Echidna spin-off is often accused of creating 25 issues of false suspense by having all the characters keep Knuckles pointlessly Locked Out of the Loop regarding his past and his father.
  • "Mobius: 25 Years Later" is often criticized for how little actually happens over the course of its 13 issue run and how the story doesn't reveal much about how the future status quo came to be. The main focus is put on parties, get togethers, and Lara-Su nagging Knuckles to let her become the next Guardian. Even the revelation that the planet is going to explode takes a back seat to the main cast meandering around.
  • It's generally agreed that "Iron Dominion" overstayed its welcome due to its length and Idiot Ball moments from heroes and villains alike that only seemed to prolong the arc even further.
  • "Shattered World Crisis" went on for nearly three years. The "Worlds Unite" crossover popping up in the middle of the story and delaying things only compounded this. Ironically, after "Worlds Unite", the general consensus in the later issues was that the arc was rushed due the Strictly Formula format in Key Guardians part of the story, the Master Emerald subplot taking up around half of each issue and the lack of development of the Sonic Unleashed characters, especially Chip.
• Archive Panic: It can be hard to get into the comic at first because of its vast, complex backstory developed over 200 issues, any one of which can be referenced at random in a newer issue. Though thanks to the Cosmic Retcon, it provides a good jumping on point without having to worry too much about history.
• Ass Pull:
  • Across all eras of the series, writers would often make stuff up on the spot, change story direction, or retroactively change some aspect of character or plot. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. The reveal that Patch had replaced Antoine during the time-skip was a major one as the story line was conceived by Karl Bollers as Antoine having undergone Character Development to become more cynical and angry, before Ken Penders changed it to be Patch all along. At one point Antoine reflected on a past crush that he ultimately moved away from when he met Bunnie; the reveal that it was Patch having that flashback makes no sense.
  • Before it was decided to reboot the comic, Ian Flynn had to quickly and clumsily write out the characters created by Ken Penders. The most notable example of this would be the Endangered Species Arc, where Thrash successfully banished Mobius's entire echidna population except for Knuckles to another dimension in what is implied to be only a couple of hours.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Many readers felt the comic entered into this at some point after the "Endgame" arc and the comic went into Post-Script Season. Opinions on exactly when it happened tends to vary. Quite a few do, however, point to the return of Dr. Robotnik (well, Robo-Robotnik) and the adaptation of Sonic Adventure, as it came across as a major case of Status Quo Is God after the comic had gone through the effort of very definitively killing Dr. Robotnik off. This marks the point where the comic began getting seriously caught up between both Bollers and Penders' respective (and often conflicting) ideas and Sega's mandated storylines. The comic would struggle for years in trying to follow these plans all at once.
  • Fans can't quite agree about the overall quality of the era either, but several of its elements and plotpoints were seen as the worst and most overt symptoms of bad writing in this period. These include:
    • The subplot focusing on the prophecy of Tails being The Chosen One that had already stretched out for years on end, came to a very underwhelming and anti-climatic conclusion with the "Titan Tails" story, which quickly became infamous as one of the comic's most primary examples of Narm.
    • The Freedom Fighters being reenrolled in high school, which was seen by many a reader as a blatant attempt pander to a teenage audience by making the cast more "relatable".
    • Sonic getting involved in several Love Triangles due to a mix of "wacky" misunderstandings and several instances of interference from Evil Sonic.
    • Sally suffering serious long-term Chickification, going from being a headstrong Action Girl and the frontline tactician of the Freedom Fighters, to a rather meek shadow of her former self who was religated to the sidelines and constantly forced to defer her parent's wishes.
    • Knuckles transforming into "Chaos Knuckles" for about two-and-half-years; a form which was considered rather unimpressive, as he looked pretty much like regular Knuckles, except he was colored green. And despite being ascribed god-like Reality Warper powers, like time and space manipulation, Knuckles never got to use these powers for anything particularly impressive, before he returned to be regular Knuckles again. Effectively the only thing he achieved during that time was a Heroic Sacrifice... or, to put it another way, the only accomplishment Chaos Knuckles ever had was dying.
    • The anticipated and hyped "Mobius: 25 Year Later" storyline turned out to be a borderline Dom Com, rather than an exciting sci-fi adventure.
    • The much reviled Tommy Turtle character was introduced, and then gradually made a peripheral member of the main cast. And despite frequent pushback from the readers, who several times took to the comic's mailbag section to complain about Tommy's continued prominence, which they saw as undeserved for what by all means was a pretty bland and uninteresting side character, the writers kept responding to these complaints by insisting that the readers would come around on Tommy sooner or later, and they also kept giving him even more screentime and even a set of superpowers in a pretty transparent attempt to endear him to the readers. This, however, only ended up creating more antipathy towards the character amongst the readers.
  • What is definitely more agreed upon, however, is that the end of the Audience-Alienating Era happened with issue 160, at which point both Bollers and Penders had left the comic due to Creative Differences. Ian Flynn took over as head writer and started a much needed, year-long clean-up of the comic's by then very tangled plot threads and a streamlining of the comic's rather bloated mythology. He made the comic mythology Truer to the Text by bringing it more in line with the games, pulled a Make Room for the New Plot on several of Penders and Bollers' by now rather draw-out storylines, and began to re-rail several characters (making his intentions in this area especially clear by making Sally undergo an Important Haircut by ditching her long-haired look, which at this point had become synonymous with her Chickification, to return to her original shorter haircut). Flynn also more or less managed to solve the problem with the games' tie-ins interrupting the plot by relegating most of them to side-stories set in "another place, another time".
    • Not that Flynn's own run is entirely spot free though. The "Iron Dominion" arc is seen as at least a minor example of this trope, especially in how it got bogged down with quite a bit of Arc Fatigue due to both the villains and the heroes frequently passing the Idiot Ball between them. This is a criticism shared even by people willing to overlook some of the story's flaws.
    • The Reboot is also seen by some as this; after a somewhat promising (if also quite melancholic due to the circumstances) prologue arc to establish the Reboot universe, the comic got into the "Shattered World Crisis" arc. It was a very loose adaptation of Sonic Unleashed, that suffered from even worse Arc Fatigue. It ended up lasting for nearly three years, although mostly because "Worlds Unite", the second crossover storyline with Mega Man (Archie Comics) happened in the middle of it and effectively put it on hold. Then the comic ended shortly afterwards without much fanfare, due to Sega unceremoniously ending their decades-long partnership with Archie and pulling the license.
• Awesome Art: While the quality of the comics artwork can be rather erratic at times, if there's one thing you won't find people complaining about with these comics, it's the covers and issues drawn by Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante, who gives his all in every drawing and puts the same effort into a Funny Animal comic as a Marvel Comics artist would for any A-list superhero title. Tracy Yardley's comics also tend to be well regarded for his expressive and loose style that really captures the fun look and feel of the games in drawing form. Scott Shaw and Dave Manak's early comics, while not as polished as later entries, likewise have very fun and creative cartoon art in them.
• Badass Decay:
  • Metal Sonic got hit with this hard in this series; he is much less powerful than in other series, and got curbstomped every time he's encountered, and the fact that there were multiple Metal Sonics rather than one didn't help. Even Sega got tired of this and told series writer Ian Flynn to knock it off, and he admitted to wanting to avert this with Metal in the future.
  • Sally went through this as the writers struggled to come up with ideas for her after King Acorn returned and the first Robotnik was defeated. She went from the take charge leader of the Freedom Fighters to an angsty daddy's girl who sat around pining for Sonic and allowed her father to force her into an unwanted arranged marriage with little resistance. She started returning to her former characterization once Ian Flynn began his tenure on the comic.
  • Blaze the Cat. This sentiment mostly stem from "Pirate Plunder Panic", where Blaze got captured and had to be rescued from captivity twice and actually spent the entirety of one issue in a cage. Due to her often facing only lower-deck threats and her speed and powerset making her too effective, Blaze commonly gets knocked unconscious, usually by getting caught off-guard from behind.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog was a serious character in the games and earlier comic appearances, while in later comic appearances he's been used more as The Comically Serious and often had to be knocked out or otherwise incapacitated because his powerset would resolve the conflict too quickly.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Princess Sally Acorn. Depending on who you ask, she's either the absolute best female Sonic character, if not the best overall character in the franchise, who is the perfect foil and love interest for Sonic, a proactive Action Girl, has a loving personality, and a positive influence on all the characters; or a very boring and unlovable character whose influence has a very negative impact on the other characters (especially Sonic and Cream), reeks of Flawless Tokenism, and a Faux Action Girl. Not helping matters at all is Sally’s prominent usage, which has increased even further ever since Ian Flynn took over as head writer of the comics, causing detractors to label her as a blatant Creator's Pet, while supporters in turn defend said prominence as a necessary move to undo the damage the late Penders/Bollers era had done to the character. And that's without getting into the shipping side of things.
  • Geoffrey St. John. Some people see him as a sympathetic guy who was fed a bunch of lies as a child which led him to making the biggest mistake of his life which he regrets wholeheartedly. Others see him as a boy who was fed a lot of lies as a child but should have known better than to trust Naugus. Naugus was a known villain. Geoffrey is seen as a jerkass who crosses several moral lines by betraying and/or manipulating his friends. They are citizens in the country he is trying to protect. Added points for the latter seeing how he knew his wife would be against any of this from the start. The on-off romance he had with Sally in the early issues certainly didn't help matters for several reasons. Firstly, Geoffrey came across as more than a bit aggressive and touchy-feely in his advances towards Sally, who was comparatively much more reserved about her feelings for him. Secondly, the age difference between Sally and Geoffrey (her being a teenager and him being somewhere in his mid-to-late twenties) added quite a few uncomfortable undertones to the whole thing. Thirdly, Geoffrey becoming incredibly jealous towards Sonic to a point where he was acting constantly petty around him and starting conflicts for no real reason. Having this romance jettisoned was seen as a huge step forward for his character by many readers.
  • Scourge the Hedgehog, despite taking off with a passionate fanbase, is split between the fans who Love to Hate him or just outright dislike him. Those who like him tend to point to his character arc of going from a joke Bizarro Universe character to a genuine threat, his Joker-like punk attitude in comparison to Sonic, and his absolutely absurd accomplishments in his path to gaining glory. Those who view his popularity as overblown however find his attitude more mean and obnoxious than endearing (with some arguing that his behavior towards Fiona whenever she displeases him even comes off as emotionally abusive), argue that being such a Mirror Universe character in itself prevents him from properly being Sonic's Shadow Archetype through sheer difference in personality, and find his supposed Freudian Excuse hard to stomach given how Sonic himself had a worse childhood of war and hopelessness. His character design is also contested upon, with some viewing his "recolor" look— one that has some resemblance to certain infamous fan-character designs— as either elevating his core character concept or making its flaws all the more egregious. Fiona Fox and the rest of the Suppression Squad, by association to Scourge, are placed under similar scrutiny.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In the first solo Knuckles story, Knux encounters a cockatoo named Catweazle that he is implied to have a long, mostly antagonistic history with. Catweazle makes a handful of minor appearances after this, but who he is and why Knuckles hates him so much is never explained.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • "Sonic Live", in which Sonic and pals travel to the real world and interact with real kids, and Super Special #7, a crossover with characters from Image Comics. Neither is considered canon by fans or the creators.
  • The Sonic/Sabrina crossover is also this.
  • The two-part "Freedom Fighters of the Galaxy" story.
• Broken Base:
  • Seasonal Rot is largely the cause of this. Where did the Audience-Alienating Era start? Where did it end? Did it end? Was Sally's Chickification justified, or was it a hideously huge breach of established character just to sink the fanbase's largest ship? The typical benchmarks are that the series started to decline after "Endgame", took a full-on nosedive during the Bem/Xorda arc, and would first, in many readers' eyes, first start to recover after issue #160 with Ian Flynn taking over as head writer.
  • The reboot's set off a whole new schism among fans between those who like it and those who don't.
  • There is a notable split growing between fans in regards to "Shattered World Crisis" and how it fares as the comic's adaptation to Sonic Unleashed. There are fans who don't mind the changes made to the story of Unleashed or its elements, with most finding them an acceptable way to integrate the events of Unleashed into the comic's universe. Some of them even view "Shattered World Crisis" as an Adaptation Expansion of Unleashed, namely with the inclusion of the Sonic cast (the majority of whom couldn't appear in the game due to the immense backlash against their existence). However, there are plenty of other fans who have expressed disappointment or outright disapproval of most of the changes made to the plot and elements of Unleashed, finding them either unnecessary or even disrespectful to the original game. There are also those who view "Shattered World Crisis" as an In Name Only adaptation of Unleashed, citing how the elements and characters of the game have vastly reduced roles and prominence, most particularly Chip, while more focus is paid to comic-exclusive characters, world building, and stories that tend to have little to do with the original game (such as the "Champions" arc, which is also the adaptation of a completely different game). It doesn't help that Ian Flynn admitted on a few occasions that "Shattered World Crisis" is meant to be an incredibly loose adaptation and is only being done as an excuse to set up the Reboot world, prompting some fans to question why he did not just make a completely original plot if that was going to be the case instead of speeding through the event and the characters of Unleashed in the comics.
  • The relationship drama that gets focused on a lot throughout the series. Some people like that the comic focused on something the Sonic franchise usually tries to avoid and added interesting tension to the series when things started to get serious. Others view it as a massive Romantic Plot Tumor that caused most of the cast to behave either incredibly out of character for the sake of the plot and caused nothing but Wangst among the core cast. (Most infamously, the cover where Sonic is crying over Sally getting married to someone else.) You're very unlikely to find someone who is neutral on it.
• Catharsis Factor: Some modern readers of the Return to Angel Island arc view the echidnas having had their home destroyed and being curb-stomped by Eggman to be this, since among other issues, they refused to do anything about him despite having taken over a good chunk of Mobius, treating him as beneath them. Needless to say, this story showed that mindset biting them in the ass hard.
  • Sally slugging Fiona Fox in the stomach for trying to manipulate Tails' feelings (and for her sadistic and cruel rejection of Tails some time before that).
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • Penders' take on Knuckles was once well received by the fanbase, seen as good enough to star in his own miniseries and ongoing. In fact, it was once believed that Knuckles was more interesting than Sonic himself at that point, as the former was stuck in rather underwhelming stories. However, around the same time as the backlash against the Echidnas fans went back and found Knuckles to be sorely lacking as a protagonist, finding him boring, a Spotlight-Stealing Squad for Sonic, and having needlessly convoluted stories surrounding him, in particular, an incredibly large extended family tree. Reports that Penders himself bragged about being responsible for the character's popularity in the games did little to help, nor did the Adventure games fleshing out the original version of Knuckles, which only made this version seem even more bland.
  • Geoffrey St. John was once one of the more popular characters of Ken Penders' run, thanks to his badass skills as a spy, his introduction in the Princess Sally mini-series which saw him play off Robotnik for Sally Acorn's benefit, his love triangle with Sally and Sonic, and him appearing in several of the comic's most notable stories, including EndGame. Conversely, his revisioning by Ian Flynn, in which he was Retconed into being an apprentice of Naugus, and saw him openly side with the Ixis wizard after his wife's apparent death, proved to be divisive at best, with many seeing it as an attempt to fix something that wasn't broken. However, he faced significant backlash in the wake of the legal issues surrounding Penders, with many retrospective readers coming to find severe flaws with his character. This included his relative lack of depth outside being a James Bond-like spy, the fact that he turned out to be more important to the Princess Sally mini-series than Princess Sally herself, him believing in Sonic's guilt during EndGame despite all evidence to the contrary, and, most infamously, his aforementioned relationship with Sally, despite later stories indicating he was 20 and she was 15^note This does not appear to have been Ken Penders' intention, but he has almost completely glossed it over when he secured the rights to him. This, in turn, caused a reappraisal of Flynn's take on Geoffrey, seen as him trying to breathe new life into an otherwise unusable character, helped by greater knowledge of his plans for the character had he been able to. These days, with Ken Penders continuing to flaunt his ownership of the character, almost all praise Geoffrey gets comes from how Ian Flynn wrote him, with any discussion of how he was before either holding him up as an example of how bad Penders' characters could get, or just flat out overshadowed entirely by the extreme Values Dissonance in his relationship with Sally.
  • The comic's version of the Echidnas were once relatively popular, seen as expanding one of the more interesting bits of backstory in the games into a unique culture and piece of worldbuilding. By The New '10s, their popularity diminished, thanks to Sonic Adventure offering their own take on the Echidnas, and the general backlash against Penders and his run on the comic. This led to a far more critical look at his creations, with many viewing his version of the Echidnas as uninspired, both in writing and in design, and that the comic focused way too much on the lore surrounding them at the expense of everything else. As a result, they're now one of the least popular elements of Penders' run, to the point where many praised Ian Flynn for heavily downplaying and ultimately removing them.
  • Locke, Knuckles' father, was at one point viewed as an imperfect but well-intentioned father motivated by making sure his son was ready for whatever crisis came his way. His Heroic Sacrifice in the "Enerjak Unleashed" Story Arc, as well as Penders admitting to basing him partially on his own father, further cemented him as a tragic figure and a fairly popular character among fans. However, as greater knowledge of emotional abuse came about in later years, many fans found his actions towards Knuckles, ranging from endangering his son's life over what most people would write off as just a nightmare, to flat out abandoning him after making him believe that they were the last echidnas alive, to be much worse in hindsight, not helped by how easily Knuckles forgave him. He's now widely considered to be one of the worst characters Ken Penders ever created for the comic, if not the worst.
  • Drago Wolf was always a hated character, but the reasons for why have changed considerably. At his debut around the "EndGame" arc, Drago was viewed as one of the most despicable characters in the entire comic, thanks to selling out his comrades in the Freedom Fighters and the Wolf Pack, getting Princess Sally nearly killed and Sonic framed for it, using Hershey the Cat, his own girlfriend, as a pawn in his scheme and then hitting her when she starts to suspect him, and generally being a greedy, arrogant Jerkass. As such, many enjoyed seeing him getting his comeuppance at the hands of Hershey. By The New '10s, a combination of fatigue from his continued appearances as a member of the Destructix, most of which gave him little to actually do^note Ian Flynn did try to address this by making him one of the Grandmasters of the Dark Egg Legion in Soumerca, but this is seen as too little, too late in light of the Super Genesis Wave, and the more negative reappraisal of "EndGame" as a whole, caused the fanbase's reception of him to shift to a poorly written villain. Many soon found his reveal as the traitor to be lacking in actual impact, as he's only introduced in the issue immediately prior to the story arc, acts immediately suspicious when he shows up, and is given little development or fleshing out. In addition, his means of taking out Sally, convincing Hershey to wear a lifelike Sonic suit that, unknown to her, has eyepieces that cause her to see Sally as Snively, was also heavily criticized, being viewed as needlessly complicated and utterly ridiculous. To sum up, Drago went from being seen as a truly heinous villain who furthered the story to a mishandled nuisance who actively dragged it down.
• Character Rerailment: Many fans feel that the early Flynn era managed to do this to quite a few characters. Most prominently, Sally was re-established as the tactician and Frontline General of the Freedom Fighters, after the Penders/Bollers era, especially the latter end of it, had seen her undergoing a serious bit of Chickification and becoming a more passive character who was often relegated to the sidelines.
• The Chris Carter Effect: The latter half of the Penders/Bollers run got this bad due to the two constantly fighting over the story direction. Ian Flynn had to spend the first year of his run cutting through the Kudzu Plot the two left behind.
• Common Knowledge:
  • All Overlanders have Four-Fingered Hands, which is how you tell them apart of regular humans. Except this is wrong. Whilst some Overlanders had only four fingers on each hand, most of them do in fact have five. He whole "Overlanders have four fingered hands, normal humans have five" thing was a retcon from Ken Penders in a failed attempt to distinguish the two groups. Older comics introduced Overlanders (like Athena and Ariel) who have five fingered hands, whilst Ian Flynns era would retcon characters like Snively to have five fingers. Making Penders point moot.
  • Many people took Breezie the Hedgehog's childhood sob story at face value, assuming the comic was unironically indicating that Breezie was a flesh-and-blood Mobian thanks to the photographs Breezie has of herself as a Heartwarming Orphan living in a Cardboard Box Home^note Admittedly the tell is more subtle than most—the main clue that Breezie's backstory is nonsense is the sheer unlikelihood that Breezie would have such photogenic pictures of her orphan self at all. Series writer Ian Flynn has confirmed on Twitter that Breezie's backstory is supposed to be Blatant Lies and she's still a Robot Girl.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Condemned by History: "Endgame" was the four-part supposed-to-have-been Grand Finale for the comic. At one time, it was a popular storyline. It earned praise for being a Darker and Edgier storyline where the stakes seem to rise, culminating in a one-on-one No-Holds-Barred Beatdown between Sonic and Robotnik. However, time passed and there was bad blood garnered towards writer Ken Penders. The lawsuits led to the Archie series first undergoing a Continuity Reboot and then being canceled entirely. The reputation of this story by Penders began to rapidly turn sour, with the plot becoming widely lambasted and having few defenders.^note  Hershey is tricked by Drago Wolf into wearing a Sonic costume under the guise she'd be killing Snively. She somehow doesn't realize, until Drago gloats about it, that the eyes of the costume make anyone look like Snively, and that she was the one who almost killed Princess Sally, getting the real Sonic blamed for Sally's attempted murder (in spite of Sally being Sonic's Love Interest, Sonic having no reason to want Sally dead, Sonic's repeated insistence that he had nothing to do with it, and the fact that characters had been mind-controlled and/or impersonated multiple times before this happened). The plot line is resolved when Dulcy, thanks to her status as a Living Lie Detector, appears and confirms that Sonic was framed. No explanation is offered for why no one waited for Dulcy to arrive before putting Sonic on trial.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Archie Sonic has always had a daunting amount of continuity made worse by creative clashes and retcons. Though fortunately whenever a plot point was referenced, editorial usually added a blurb to tell readers which issue it occurred.
  • Early Sonic had a lot of tie-ins (character miniseries and the like) and if one was reading the series on its own, they might miss certain plot points (i.e. the appearance of Crocbot, a major supporting antagonist in "Endgame", one would need to have read the Tails miniseries to know who he was). It didn't help that the trades often didn't include them and some were only reprinted in harder to find collections.
  • The first couple of issues of Sonic Universe have this problem. #1 gave such a quick summary of Sonic Rush Adventure that only people who played the game knew what was going on. Also, #1 continued from Sonic X #40 (a whole different series), which continued from Sonic the Hedgehog #196, which was part of a large story arc from the main series. #2 was an adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2 (probably an attempt to explain how it did fit into the continuity, as the original adaptation didn't really tell the reader much of anything about the game's story or how it fit into continuity), but would probably be pretty confusing to anyone who didn't play the original game. It should be noted that they can't get too into the Sonic Rush side of things, as they're apparently forbidden from using Eggman Nega beyond a few ominous references. ...And one "Off Panel" strip.
  • This is the fate of the pre-Nu252 comics because it relies so much on characters and concepts created by Michael Gallagher, Ken Penders, Karl Bollers, and others.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Omega. The enthusiasm with which he enjoys destruction mixes perfectly with his impossible ordinance load.
    But I still have five more salvos!
    Yippie-ki-yay, pastel-colored resistance!
    What? She left trees standing.
  • Bean The Duck, an insane Cloud Cuckoolander duck who throws bombs at everything and loves shiny things, and Captain Metal, a crazed version of Metal Sonic who has become a stereotypical pirate that makes hilariously bad jokes and puns and plans to take over the world using the dimensionally displaced Wily Egg (renamed the Egg'O'War).
  • Dr. Eggman developed into this under Ian Flynn's pen, similar to his game counterpart.
• Creator's Pet:
  • Tommy Turtle, a childhood friend of Sonic that had never been mentioned before, but had once taught him a valuable life lesson. He died in his first appearance while performing a Heroic Sacrifice to save Sonic, but about a year later was revealed to not have actually been killed and was brought back. Unfortunately, after bringing him back, the writers didn't seem to have any real idea what to do with him, and attempts to make him more relevant (such as having him become infested with nanobots, causing him to develop Transformers-esque abilities) ended up just appearing ridiculous and making fans despise him even more. In Sonic Grams while Archie staff admitted that they knew a lot of their fans hadn't liked the character, they'd hoped they could change their tune, showing the clear divide between the staff at Archie at the time and the people actually reading the book. In the end, writer Ian Flynn said when compiling a list of the comic's most unpopular characters, Tommy still ranked very high among the fanbase despite efforts to make him popular by previous writers. Tommy was therefore killed off (performing another Heroic Sacrifice) and hasn't been seen since.
  • Rather infamously, Knuckles and his whole clan of similar-looking Echidnas. It's quite well-documented that author Ken Penders had a weird fascination with the character and the lore surrounding his civilization, using it as a dumping ground for his original ideas that he could not work into the main comic (not helped by Sega giving him unconditional control over Knuckles' stories, where many of his ideas were going to be given to Sonic before Sega vetoed against it). This led to Knuckles, his dad, his ancestors of the Brotherhood and any other Echidnapolis inhabitant receiving more importance to the overall plot than they had any right to, making even the main conflict of Knothole vs. Robotnik look relatively minor in the grand scheme of things (as Knuckles would go on to become a God essentially).
    • Of special mention when it comes to the Echidnas is Locke, Knuckle's dad in the comic. Pender's used him as a way to deal with his own strained relationship with his father, and the results are rather... Questionable, to say the least. For many Locke comes off as a downright Abusive Parent and a horrible husband, but no matter what he does, it'll always be justified "for the greater good" or such, regardless of how heinous it would come off to the readers. One of the things he did to Knuckles prior to him even hatching was pumping his egg with horrible amounts of Chaos radiation, and his attempts at guiding Knuckles can come off uncomfortably as manipulative Gaslighting. Yet in the 25 years later special, Knuckles is not only grateful, but considers his dad a great man. Notably, when Ian Flynn took over and started to have characters actively calling Locke out for his actions and how he's treated Knuckles in the entire comic so far, which cumulates in him sacrificing himself to bring back Enerjak-Jumping Off the Slippery Slope-Knuckles to sanity after realizing how badly he fucked up in regards to his son, Penders was furious.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Omega, being a Comically Serious murder machine, does this often with his violent reactions and casual disregard for life.
  • In one spinoff comic, Charmy the Bee's best friend, Mello, gets addicted to a drug called Lemon Sundrop Dandelion, and overdoses on it after a drug dealer laces his food with it. This leads to the police apprehending the dealer and ending with a funeral scene where Charmy's friend is lowered into a grave. The fact that the story takes itself so seriously despite the main character being a 6-year old anthropomorphic bee makes the situation far too funny for its own good.
• Die for Our Ship: Relic the Pika got hit with this the moment she was introduced, both by Knuckles/Rouge shippers and fans of Julie-Su, who felt that introducing another potential love interest for Knuckles so soon after Julie-Su was purged from the comic was hitting a nerve. Notably, she and Knuckles aren't actually romantically involved, and despite some noticeable Ship Tease, Ian Flynn stated he had no plans to make them a couple.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Minor characters based on obscure or popular animals usually become this, such as the Downunda Freedom Fighteers and Pirates of Setting Dawn.
  • The fandom rejoiced when Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts were revealed to be returning after more than 100 issues of absence.
  • One of the few major Brotherhood member to get any big artwork was Spectre, who has one of the most imposing appearances of anyone in the comic.
  • Nicole, Sally's handheld A.I., had been an ancillary character since almost the beginning of the comic. Then along came Tania Del Rio's "Stargazing", which gave her a Mobian form and sent her popularity right through the roof — and Nicole subsequently catapulted to Major Character status, overtaking even longstanding characters in the fanart department since her debut and never halting since.
  • Shard the Metal Sonic became pretty popular as well, from his design to his personality.
  • From the new reality, Eclipse the Darkling has become rather popular as well, primarily thanks to being an Evil Counterpart to Shadow, along with his distinctive design and personality.
  • When Breezie the Hedgehog made a triumphant return after near 20 years of absence, the fandom's reception was overwhelmingly positive.
  • The Metal Sonic introduced in issue 50 of Sonic Universe was massively popular for having a personality, bringing Metal closer to his canon portrayal, and being a One-Man Army that made the character scary and badass again.
  • Honey the Cat already had plenty of dedicated fans stemming from the game she was planned for, but thanks to her fun personality, cute design, and unique role in the series' universe, her comic debut made her an immediate fan favorite despite her only real appearance being in a single arc. Even Flynn's wife, Aleah Baker, seems to be quite the fan of hers.
  • Hope Kintobor, for being the White Sheep of the Robotnik family, a member of Team Dark, and an overall cutie. The fact that she even manages to bring out some humanity in Snively also helps.
  • All of the Egg Bosses since the reboot. It helps they're written as being far from one-dimensional villains, being morally complex and having their own reasons for joining the Eggman Empire.
  • Razor the Shark maintains a small, but steady following, despite only appearing in two storylines. Fans love him for his gruff, yet friendly personality; sweet relationship with fellow aquatic Mobians Coral the Betta and Pearly the Manta Ray; and for being a rare example of a heroic shark. Also, he’s a former pirate.
  • Razor’s Chao, Crusher, is similarly loved for having his own distinct personality and his love of biting anything he can sink his teeth into.
  • Initially, Elias Acorn started out as a stock Separated at Birth character who served to take focus away from Sally once he officially became acting Prince of Mobius, but it didn't take long for him to develop his own character, and Elias instantly became a fan-favorite afterwards, even up to his title being usurped and becoming a member of the Secret Freedom Fighters.
  • Among the multitude of Echidna characters, the three who're the most beloved are Julie-Su, Lien-Da, and Dr. Finitevus. Julie-Su proved to be a great foil for Knuckles, with many believing she works better as his love interest than Rouge does, Lien-Da has a surprisingly attractive design and acts as a Well-Intentioned Extremist among the rest of the Dark Legion, and Dr. Finitevus is an absolutely insane mad doctor who fans loved seeing in action, especially when serving as acting boss for the Destructix.
  • One character who has always been a fan favorite, even considering she was created during the comics' Audience-Alienating Era, is Mina Mongoose. Her design and personality scream Moe, she serves as a strangely realistic depiction of the difficult lives of idol singers, and fans loved her story arc of how she grew to stop shaping her life off of her crush on Sonic and became her own individual person as a result.
• Epileptic Trees: There are many fans who believe that Lien-Da and Finitevus were involved at some point during the X Years Later timeline, and that he's the father of her son Rutan (this being mostly due to the fact that the tips of Rutan's dreadlocks are white, like Finitevus' fur).
• Estrogen Brigade:
  • Zonic the Zone Cop has a surprisingly large female fanbase, to the point that he's a popular character choice for female fan artists, who often depict him as more demure than he is in canon.
  • Elias Acorn, Sally's Pretty Boy brother and literal prince, has an enormous collection of fanart.
• Evil Is Cool: Notable stand-outs are Dr. Robotnik, Scourge, Mammoth Mogul, the Dark Legion, and Dr. Finitevus.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • No, Ken Penders never sued Archie Comics. They sued him after Ken obtained copyright protection on his characters after he left Archie and they were informed of it.
  • Claiming Ken Penders was the mastermind behind everything in the pre-SGW Archie Comics is a good way to get Archie Sonic fans agitated. Yes, Penders created a lot of bizarre and contentious material, but from day one, there were multiple writers on the comic, and Ian Flynn was hired to write for the comic before the reboot even happened.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Fleetway's Sonic the Comic.
  • Clashes also tend to erupt with dedicated fans of the games' continuity. There are many arguments over which incarnation of the franchise is better and more definitive.
  • For rivalries with series outside the franchise, fans of the comics hold resentment over Riverdale, since Archie's focus on it played a big part in Archie Sonic's hiatus and eventual cancellation.
  • Fans of the IDW Comics are primarily migrants from post-Super Genesis Wave Archie, resulting in IDW fans often butting heads with the pre-SGW fans. More often than not, debates stem from whether IDW's consistency or pre-Super Genesis Wave's highs provide a better reading experience.
• Fan Nickname: The "Nu252" for what happened to Sonic's world after Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide, the fact that it starts in the 252nd issue, and the New 52 reference. The Mobius Encyclopaedia wiki also gives it the name "post-Super Genesis Wave", akin to the Post-Crisis timeframe.
• Fanon Discontinuity: There are a good number of people that refused to read the comic after the reboot for three main reasons:
  • The first reason is the removal from this series of every character not owned by Flynn or created by Sega or the cartoons. Some of these characters were very popular with the fanbase, such as Mina Mongoose, Scourge, and Elias.
  • The second reason is for how it was executed. The final storyline before the comics' reboot was not given a proper ending and so many questions and problems were left unanswered. Things would have worked better if the final storyline had a proper ending instead of giving it a combination of No Ending and Cliffhanger. Since it didn't receive one, many people wish that they would have finished the old storyline instead of ending it the way it ended.
  • Finally, for all of the Executive Meddling Sega has done with the comic ever since its reboot. To name a few examples, the characters cannot have any Character Development unless it is approved, Sonic always has to win no matter what, and the characters no longer have any parents or relatives. Before the reboot was forced, the comic was able to have all of that and even more creative liberty. Post-reboot, it was much more restrictive.
  • There are also more than a few fans who disown the "Endangered Species" arc (primarily issues 244-246). Due to Archie's lawsuit against Penders, the story had to be rewritten at the last minute. Knuckles' love interest Julie-Su along with the rest of his echidna kind were Put on a Bus to Hell offscreen. The main antagonist responsible for their disappearance (Thrash the Tasmanian Devil) got away with it. This ended Knuckles' last major story in the old continuity on a massive Downer Ending.
• Fountain of Memes: E-123 Omega is certainly popular, and out-of-context panels with his dialogue became popular in social media.
  E-123 Omega: Urge to maim: rising.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • A lot of the problems with Ken Penders and Karl Bollers's run (too many plot points, too much focus on people other than Sonic, inconsistent art, etc.) later down the line can be traced back to their critically acclaimed earlier days. The difference is that back then, the two weren't engaged in constant petty fights with each other over the comic's story direction and the Echidnas weren't Ken's pets. That coupled with the lack of a solid threat or plot now that Robotnik was dealt with, caused the comic to slip into its infamous Audience-Alienating Era.
  • Archie's infamous overdosing on large numbers of characters is near-universally attributed to Ken Penders, with some fingers pointed at Karl Bollers every now and then. However, most of these overdone character insertions can be attributed to the comic's first writer, Mike Gallagher. During the early days of Archie, while Penders was able to throw in an Anti-Sonic here and a Geoffrey St. John there, Mike was creating more outlandish concepts that would become relevant further down the line, such as the Krudzu. The issue stems mainly from the Tails miniseries, where in one fell swoop, Mike was able to introduce Fiona Fox, the Forty Fathom Freedom Fighters, the Downunda Freedom Fighters, and even Knuckles' great-grandpa Athair. (Yes, the first Echidna character besides Knuckles made for the comic was a Mike Gallagher creation, and not Ken Penders) That said, Mike was able to get away with it because he was a well-established Nice Guy, and most of these creations were limited to just miniseries. On the other hand, Penders was much more egotistical, and most of his creations were the result of the Knuckles the Echidna comics, which were a full-blown side series like Sonic Universe, as opposed to just a miniseries.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Despite the fact that it never saw a translation or release over there, the comic does indeed have a dedicated following of Japanese fans who love it for how creative the comic, especially pre-Super Genesis Wave, was able to take the Sonic license. Some Japanese fans have even taken to making their own Fan Translations.
• Growing the Beard:
  • It's generally agreed that the comic started to become genuinely good between Issue 17 (where a two-part solo story featuring Sally started an actual plot) and Issue 25 (which introduced Metal Sonic to the storyline).
  • After Ken Penders and Karl Bollers left the comic following 12 years with some rather controversial stories, the series was considered to have significantly stepped up its story and art game from #160 and on, due in part to the arrival of writer Ian Flynn and artist Tracy Yardley.
  • In regards to the rebooted continuity from #252 and onward, there's the 4-issue "Champions" Arc. The reception has generally been positive as most readers note that it's probably the best the comic has been in a while. Highlights include a revamped Ensemble Dark Horse in Breezie, amazingly expressive and vibrant art, and a more character-driven plot than what the series usually tries.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • From his first introduction, Silver mistakenly thought the Freedom Fighter Traitor was Sonic to counter his first Sega in-game appearance. His second guess was really made in Sonic Universe 6 where upon realizing the Freedom Fighters disbanded because Queen Sally thought they were no longer needed. Silver guessed this but for the first and only time, he thought he was wrong. Fast forward a couple hundred comics later and it turns out he was somewhat right.
  • Issue 3 had everyone think Robotnik got hold of atomic bombs and went over the destruction the weapons could cause. While it turned out he had only gotten a bomb to be used against bugs, later on, Robotnik did get atomic bombs. Robo-Robotnik wiped out Future Mobius with them, and Robotropolis got nuked by missiles.
  • Just looking at how many changes happened after the second Genesis Wave, with brighter colors and more focus on the main cast... then the series ending rapidly afterwards because that's almost all the cast they had left.
  • Sonic Forces, the first Modern Sonic game released after the comic's cancellation, featured Eggman taking over the world and Sonic's friends formed a resistance group to stop him, essentially making the concept of the Freedom Fighters canon within the games.
  • Sonic Universe Issue 49, one of the final issues of the old continuity, ended with Beauregard Rabbot musing about how he understands "the pain of a broken family". The series would soon be rebooted and later cancelled due to Archie and Sega's relationship becoming severely strained because of the comic's many legal issues. Likewise, said legal issues would also see the majority of the comic's cast removed from the rebooted continuity, including Beauregard Rabbot himself.
  • The Metal Virus from Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) was originally conceived by Ian Flynn as Eggman's new roboticizer after Archie Sonic was rebooted. Starting around Issue #300, the virus was planned to be the subject of the comic's second post-reboot major story arc; however, with the old comic's cancellation in 2017, Flynn ended up retweaking the idea for the new comic instead. In retrospect, the Freedom Fighters might as well have dodged a metaphorical cannonball, but in their place, other cute and fan-favorite game and comic characters—including Cream, Shadow, the Chaotix, newcomers Tangle the Lemur and Whisper the Wolf, and ultimately Sonic himself—ended up suffering instead.
  • Chip saying goodbye to the Freedom Fighters in issue 287. While it's meant to close out the Sonic Unleashed adaptation, it becomes extremely bittersweet once it was revealed the comic was cancelled. In a way, it feels more like a goodbye to the readers as well. The Freedom Fighters all gathered together (save Knuckles and Amy who were dealing with their own problems at the time but still heard Chip's goodbye) and Chip hugging the Earth at the end just added on to that notion.
  • In 2017, the comic was abruptly cancelled due to Sega taking the license away from Archie. Sega had lost faith in the publisher after they had to strong-arm them into reaching to a settlement with Ken Penders, and after they had repeatedly fumbled the ball in court. As such, Issue 290 was never intended as the final issue. But it still boggles the mind that the unintentional finale of the legally battered comic is titled "Sonic's Cease and Desist".
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The images of Knuckles turning into Super Knuckles in issue 141 are similar to the final boss transformation montage in Mega Man Zero 2. While they never got to that point, Archie Comics would go on to publish Mega Man (Archie Comics) comics.
  • In Sonic Colors, Sonic lets out a Badass Boast that no copyright law in the universe could stop him. The comic managed to survive for almost a decade after Ken Penders first lawsuit, in spite of all the subsequent lawsuits and story mandates from SEGA. And when the comic did get cancelled, the license was almost immediately picked up again by IDW.
  • In issue 161, Scourge has a shot much like the one that years later Moriarty would use in the promotional pictures. Inspiration from one Manipulative Bastard to another, perhaps?
  • In October 2013, we saw the release of The Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia, which pretty much tells us everything that has happened in the comics since its release and information on the characters. Unfortunately, it was released five months before the comic's reboot due to the lawsuit. So the encyclopedia covers almost everything that happened in the comic before its reboot, making it a good way to remember the old comics' story.
  • In issue 19, Sonic teams up with several of his alternate counterparts from other worlds to stop Robo-Robotnik; one of the counterparts is a Batman version. Nearly 20 years later, Sonic's current voice actor becomes Batman.
  • Megabeatman, a Youtube reviewer who reviews the Sonic and Mega Man comics, jokingly called King Acorn of the new universe "Nigel" based off his speech in Sonic Universe #87. Come Sonic #284, we find out that really is his name in this universe.
    Megabeatman: (during his Sonic 284 review) I WAS JOKING!
  • One early issue featured Tails temporarily becoming a genius. Most later depictions of him, as well as the original, show him as a Child Prodigy, capable of building planes and even a translator for a language he doesn't understand.
  • In Issue 10, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles make a cameo during a panel with Sonic in a sewer. With Michelangelo commenting that they're "in the wrong comic". Over 20 years later, IDW Publishing, the company that does the current Ninja Turtles comics, announced that they will be the future publisher for Sonic comics.
  • In Scourge's Sonic Universe arc, he has his spines shaved short by prison guards. In Sonic Forces, the hedgehog custom hero is designed to have short spines, making Scourge one of the easiest comic character to recreate in the game's character creator.
  • Mighty and Ray were used in the comics long after the games forgot about them, with people wondering if they would ever be remembered. Cue them appearing in the DLC to Sonic Mania. Mania also gave Ray a Super transformation, something he bluffed about being able to do in the comics nine years prior.
  • Issue 92 saw Sonic tell Monkey Khan that he "had enough of Pokémon" during their fight. As seen in the World of Light trailer for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, he didn't let it stop him from trying to save a Pikachu.
  • The title for issue #75 is "I Am The Eggman". Two years later, Eggman would have a theme song that has those words in the lyrics.
  • One early issue's cover promises a "grittier, darker Sonic", while showing a picture of him covered in soot from sweeping a chimney. Later issues would become Darker and Edgier in the more conventional sense.
  • One of the recurring objects associated with Sonic's free-spirited nature during the pre-SGW comics would be his race car bed. Come the 2020 movie, and Sonic would once again have a race car bed.
  • Super Special Issue 10 features a ghost counterpart of Sonic as part of the Multiverse. 8 years later, there would be a Sonic fancomic taking place in an alternate universe, starring Sonic's ghost, and featuring a Multiverse as part of its premise, and 4 years later, the creator, Evan Stanley, would eventually be the official artist for the Archie comics. This did not go unnoticed by Stanley at all.
  • The Issue 8 story "Bot's All Folks" sees Sonic go up against robots based on different pop culture figures, with one of the robots being based on Steve Urkel (setting up a nod to Sonic's then-voice actor Jaleel White in the process). Decades later, the real Steve Urkel would have his own encounter with an Urkel robot during his guest appearance on Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?
  • The extra large Off Panel story in Issue 126 was centered around editor Justin Gabrie facing off against Deadline, the embodiment of all the trouble that comes with getting a comic out on time. Deadline is also presented as being a critical reader of the comic who regularly sends in bad story ideas, likely to make fun of readers who did just that. Less than three years later, Ian Flynn, who regularly sent in story ideas to the comic, would find himself being offered the position of lead writer because Ken Penders had quit and the comic needed to meet its deadline. Additionally, one of Deadline's "bad ideas" for the comic was a story arc that consisted of six issues of Robotnik burning down Knothole and dancing in the ashes, which was mocked as "drivel" by Gabrie. Ian Flynn would have Eggman burn down Knothole in the Issue 175, one of the most popular issues of the series.
  • "BAMF!" was often used as otomonopeia years before it became an acronym for "badass motherfucker." (Mind you, even before Sonic comics, it was used in X-Men as a sound effect whenever Nightcrawler teleported.)
  • Whatever you think of Anti-Sonic, before and/or after his redesign into Scourge the Hedgehog, it's hilarious to know that Fleetway's Sonic the Comic actually did it first! An evil clone of Sonic that fans have dubbed "Extra Life" due to being based on the 1-up mechanic appeared in the 1993 story "Double Trouble" in issue #13. In 1994, shapeshifting villainess Metamorphia would assume the form of a green Sonic doppelganger to lure Sonic into danger called "Cosmic" in issue #31's "The Pretender" — she'd also go on to disguise herself as Sonic's fictitious twin brother "Tonic" in 1995, issue #51, "Face From The Past, Part 1".
  • Issue 130 introduces us to M and ADAM, who are Eggman's artificial children. Sonic Frontiers brings us Sage, who Eggman would end up growing to see as a daughter. If Sage and Metal Sonic's cameo in The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is to be believed, Eggman also came to see Metal Sonic as a son. The main difference between the duos is that, while in case of ADAM and M, ADAM, the AI, is male, while M, the robot, is female; in the case of Metal Sonic and Sage, Metal Sonic, the robot, is male, since he's, well, an Evil Knockoff of Sonic, and Sage, the AI, is female, what with her being a Rei Ayanami Expy. May cross over to Harsher in Hindsight for ADAM and M due to Eggman's obvious Parental Favoritism of Sage.
  • One of the residents of the Zone Jail in Sonic Universe issue #32 is shown to be an Expy of Red from Angry Birds with talons. Beyond the fact that this predates the Angry Birds Epic crossover with Sonic Dash in 2015 and Sega's purchase of Rovio Entertainment in 2023, Red having feet is strangely prophetic in light of The Angry Birds Movie released five years later, as that film gives him (and the other characters) arms and legs.
  • In Sonic Universe Issue #37, the comic would debut a Metal Tails and Metal Amy, who joined with Metal Sonic to form Team Metal. Several years later, Sonic Superstars would have its own version of Metal Tails and Metal Amy, albeit based on their classic counterparts instead of their modern ones.
    • Incidentally, Tails in the climax of Issue #284, "Panic in the Sky," asks why he got the creepy Tails Doll, which was shown to be able to shapeshift into a mechanical abomination, instead of a Metal Tails. Eggman has now built both a Tails Doll and Metal Tails.
      Tails: (with a disgusted face as T-Pup drags Tails Doll to them) I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Sonic gets Metal Sonic. I get that?
  • Hope Kintobor, the White Sheep of the Robotnik family and eventually Shadow's living human friend, debuted on Issue 92, just 3 months before the NA release of Sonic Adventure 2 which introduced Maria Robotnik. Given how comic production works, she was effectively conceptualised before or around the same time as Maria.
• Ho Yay:
  • Knuckles and Sonic's bro-y interactions have always been read like this, from games to comics. Their pet names for each other "true blue, rad red" only add to it.
  • Though not as widespread due to their lack of screentime together and the comic's cancellation, the post-SGW era gave us Tundra the Walrus and Akhlut the Orca on the villain's side. Despite the two being sworn enemies, their muscular builds and Akhlut's love of antagonizing the walrus has led fans to believe that there's something else going on behind the scenes.

I-W

• I Knew It!:
  • Tundra's true identity was guessed by quite a few people.
  • Once the the comics hit a delay at the start of 2017, many called that the comics were likely cancelled. On July 2017, that was indeed confirmed.
  • When Sega announced that the comic was seeking a new publisher, many guessed that IDW Publishing was be a likely candidate due to having hosted many a property (Hasbro, many Cartoon Network series, etc). Sure enough, Sega announced that they had signed a deal with them. 2 days after their announcement of the cancelled Archie comic.
• Informed Wrongness:
  • Pretty much any character who calls out Sonic or the other Freedom Fighters for being reckless. Compared to other interpretations, Sonic is more fallible because of his cockiness and his failures have much more dire repercussions. He sometimes accepts this shortcoming, but only whenever it falls straight on his head and even then it never lasts. Otherwise Sonic is actually pretty ignorant towards criticism, and in some cases is even hostile to those who try to handle things their own way (be it more stable or not).
  • In an early story of, Sonic, Tails and Antoine find Sally leaving the safety of the forest. When they ask the reason, she responds rudely and refuses to explain herself. After they keep insisting, she claims that she's planning to meet with Robotnik in order to strike a deal with him to release her father, and lets a Buzzbomber take her away. Knowing that Robotnik would backstab her, they give chase, and barely manage to rescue her before Robotnik roboticizes her. After they're back on their place she angrily reveals that she was counting on Robotnik trying to robotocize her, as Rotor had equipped her with boots designed to jam the roboticizer and collect its data, allowing them to analyze it; and blames them for botching the plan. This ignores the fact it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't refused to confide said plan with them beforehand, even lying about what she was trying to do for no good reason.
  • Hamlin is conveyed as a smug weasel who uses a long-lived grudge against Sally to try and get the Knothole Council to persecute her for disobeying orders. However, Sally was the one who created the Council in the first place, and then nonchalantly ignored them when they attempted to do something she personally didn't like. When Hamlin pointed out she was undermining their entire purpose (with some other Freedom Fighters even agreeing with him), Sally outright blackmailed the Council into siding with her. While Hamlin was acting out of spite, moaning about suggesting that Sally was not acting entirely professionally is valid.
  • Mina is depicted as being overzealous and Innocently Insensitive for making a public statement about how dangerous NICOLE is and indirectly starting a mass paranoia. However, as sympathetic as she is, NICOLE was shown to be extremely dangerous as a result of the Iron Queen corrupting her programming, leading to Mobians being enslaved and mutilated with cyborg implants. The Freedom Fighters are outraged by Mina's actions and labelled the public as being vindictive, but as she angrily pointed out, people had suffered because of NICOLE, and largely because they were cocky enough to make a huge oversight. It was implied they were taking precautions by that point, but that was closing the proverbial barn door after the horse had bolted. In short: Mina was pretty reasonable that the Freedom Fighters should have done and should be doing way more about NICOLE being a potential threat.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Sonic himself. He never lets any of the crap that he gets put through keep him down for long. Even the absolutely brutal Darkest Hour in issue 175 doesn't stop him and he manages to flip it back onto Robotnik 25 issues later.
  • Sally is also this. Her position as a princess and leader of the Freedom Fighter is very stressful since she has many responsibilities to take care of, and at age five, she dealt with loss and death as the world collapsed. Her father was trapped in a void while her mother was presumed dead. Also, she actually witnessed many of her loved ones getting robotocized and/or killed.
• It Was His Sled: At this point, if you don't know that Sally was roboticized in issue 230, then you have been living under a rock. Not that it matters, since in the Retcon, she isn't roboticized anymore.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Of the many complaints the reboot received, one of the notable ones was that the comic had become too similar to the games due to the new rules being enforced by Sega. ^note Sonic can't get over-emotional, he always wins no matter what, no character development, etc... Before the reboot, there weren't any restrictive rules; so as long as an original Sonic character had something to do with the plot, the comic could go into any story direction it wanted to and readers liked things that way. With the reboot restricting the comic to not having anywhere near as much creative liberty as before, it was seen as too similar to the games. Many readers had read the comic for many years decided to stop reading it altogether.
  • Similarly, Sally's new fully-clothed design in the reboot — following many years during which she wore nothing but boots and a sleeveless jacket — was also met with this reaction. Fans of her original appearance felt that the reboot's attempt to match the games more closely by imposing the Pantsless Males, Fully-Dressed Females rule on her was not only arbitrary. It took away the main aspect that set Sally apart from most of the cast. Her previous design went against said rule. The change made Sally look too generic as a result.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Strange as it sounds, you could actually make the case for Fiona. She really does have serious abandonment issues and her self-esteem is such that she'd sooner stick by an abusive, womanizing creep like Scourge over Sonic when the latter started to question her loyalty to him. Even Word of God has hinted that she's still not all bad.
  • Scourge himself gets this treatment toward the end of the "King Scourge" arc, even to the point of shedding tears.
  • Snively is also a classic example. Nothing in the poor guy's life goes right for him, so he does earn some pity...but he brings so much of these problems upon himself due to his treacherous nature, so you also think he's an asshole.
  • Dr. Robotnik during the "Darkest Storm" arc where he's tricked into murdering his own surrogate daughter Mecha Robotnik, the only person he ever truly cared about. At the end of the story, he actually lets Sonic walk away sadly commenting that "I've lost a lot today".
  • Geoffrey St. John felt that working with Naugus would help the Acorn Kingdom in the long run. When he first met him, he had no idea that Naugus was evil because he was a kid and his father had just died so he wasn't emotionally stable. When he does learn that Naugus was Evil All Along and that he wanted to control the council, he hated the idea and he wanted to back out, but Naugus reminded him that there was no way he could stop him. When Silver sits to talk with him later on about how working with Naugus is bad, Geoffrey agrees with him but he says that it's too late for him to change. Geoffrey had good intentions and he believed working with Naugus would have good outcomes. It's too bad things didn't work in his favor. Even worse, because of the comics' reboot in 2013, which removed all characters not written by Ian Flynn or SEGA characters, he will never get a chance to redeem himself.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: While this series' biggest Jerkass characters are usually the villains, they can still create this impression since their actions can render them more as typical bullies rather than typical villains. And while they are supposed to be painted as hate sinks, their actions can make them a little too unlikable and possibly kill any sympathy or any Evil Is Cool from them.
  • Scourge and Fiona are two big examples because even though they are villains, their villainous actions make them look more like petty, thuggish bullies. Even Sonic points this out after he defeats Scourge.
  • Several heroic or neutral characters can even fall into this territory such as Sonic as his entry due to how bad they can get with their Jerkass Ball moments.
  • Pre-Super Genesis Wave Rouge due to her being more of a jerk than her game counterpart: such as are smugly telling Julie-Su that she's gonna take Knuckles from her.
  • Admitted to some degree by Word of God. While Ian Flynn frequently writes limelight stories or arcs for even the most monstrous of Love to Hate villains, he admitted to generally only writing in Domestic Abuser and turncoat Draco Wolf for the purpose of having the slimeball get beat up in humorous and satisfying ways. Dulcy's abusive boyfriend Zan, was also treated with heavy disdain in and out of universe, with Flynn at one point confirming his demise and adding a "good riddance".
• Les Yay:
  • Between Sally and Nicole in the Spark of Life storyline. Sally seems to be closer to Nicole than to anybody else, and gets extremely pissed off at Nicole's creator for considering her a failure. Nicole, meanwhile, constantly makes glances at Sally, teases her, and specifically wanted to see the stars the way Sally did in a flashback. Ian Flynn confirmed that this was intentional... and then backpedaled on the idea during an episode of the 'BumbleKast podcast, clarifying that the foundation for the couple was set during Spark of Life but they weren't officially together by that point.
  • One issue features Sally being entraced by Mina's singing, with Nicole sounding oddly jealous about it.
  • This rather... unfortunate panel involving Sally, her mother and her elderly nanny.
• LGBT Fanbase: The series has always had a strong queer following, especially surrounding Sally and Nicole's relationship. Rotor and Bunnie also have their gay fans.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Pre-Genesis Timeline: Mammoth Mogul is a cultured, ancient wizard with a persistent desire to Take Over the World. It is he who founded the Order of Ixis as one of many attempts in gathering an army to serve him in his conquests. A mammoth with powerful rhetoric, Mogul is not above convincing people to his side through words alone while simultaneously planning on how to use them for his own ends. This is best displayed when Mogul led Mighty, Tails, and Mina to suicidal situations to make Sonic submit and become part of his new Fearsome Foursome. Even so, Mogul is all too willing to make the universe bow to his will, shown when he becomes the all-powerful Master Mogul and tried to take over alternate universes. After one too many defeats despite his variety of schemes, Mammoth Mogul contents himself with living the life of a businessman, patiently waiting until Sonic and his allies grow too old to oppose an immortal wizard like himself.
  • Post-Genesis Timeline: Breezie the Hedgehog is the flirtatious yet cunning former apprentice of Dr. Eggman. Originally, she pretended to be a helpless hostage of Eggman for Sonic, using her situation to feed intel to Eggman to launch surprise Bandik attacks on Sonic. She then left Eggman to build a global entertainment industry and secret criminal empire, along with taking in forgotten Bandiks and caring for them as her employees. After finding a Chaos Emerald needed to save the shattered planet, she devises a scheme to take advantage of the broken state of the world. She creates a fighting tournament for ownership of the Emerald, taking advantage of Sonic and Eggman’s desires for the Emerald to make them part of the show. She manipulates the brackets of the tournament, taking advantage of Espio adding Knuckles to the roster to make him Sonic's last opponent, along with turning Eggman’s bounty hunters against each other. Anticipating Eggman’s attempt to have Metal Sonic steal the Emerald, she uses lackluster security to force the heroes to fight Metal and create a grand finale to the tournament that would put the eyes of the whole world on her, and increase her wealth and influence to the point of making her “worth half a planet”. At the end of the day, Breezie does not take sides, but will do whatever it takes to profit herself.
• Memetic Badass: This iteration of Sonic (particularly the Pre-Super Genesis Wave version) is considered so powerful that Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny shows often put him on their ban list due to him making fights too one-sided in his favor.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • No fun allowed◊.
  • "Alone on a Friday night? God, you're pathetic" ^Explanation A photoshopped panel from issue 9 where Sonic sits down and mocks the viewer for being single. The original panel features Sonic firing off a dozen puns about trees in rapid succession.
  • "For the first time in his life, Sonic understands the meaning of war."^ExplanationOne of the lines that marked the comics turn into Darker and Edgier stories; the sheer seriousness it's stated in juxtaposition to this imagery◊ makes the whole thing unintentionally hilarious. It was also written by Ken Penders.
  • Eddie and Sally looking at each other quite suggestively from the Super Sonic Special #7 has become a minor joke in the fanbase. Also, written by Ken Penders.
  • Had a bad dream? Better microwave the baby. ^ExplanationA laconic version of the backstory involving why Knuckles is apparently The Chosen One: Locke had a prophetic dream and proceeded to shoot Knuckles' egg full of Chaos Energy. It not only highlights the ridiculousness of the whole thing, since there was no way he could have been sure it wasn't just a nightmare, but because it also sums up Locke's character in a nutshell. Also written by Ken Penders.
  • Hot Pocket of Destiny ^ExplanationIan Flynn's description of Knuckles' backstory in an interview has caught on.
  • Shadow's angry face.◊^note From Issue 1 of Sonic Universe, upon realizing Marine the Raccoon blew up his only way home and he was stranded. It's such a ridiculous expression that it has becoming a defining moment for Shadow even outside the Archie Sonic fandom.
  • Titan Tails^ExplanationA powered-up form that Tails acquires after combining with various parallel universe versions of himself during a fight against Mammoth Mogul. The form, which is simply an extremely muscular version of Tails, was widely mocked online thanks to its resemblance to the kinds of fetish art that the Sonic fandom is infamous for, and the panel that introduces Titan Tails became a common subject of reposts both in and out of the fanbase in reference to some of the stranger events in the comics (especially those written by Ken Penders, who created Titan Tails).
• Moe:
  • Cream, Aerial, and Athena are cute and adorable.
  • Hope Kintobor to a lesser extent, along with the young Regina Ferrum.
• Mis-blamed:
  • Most fans of the comic blame Ken Penders as the cause of the Cosmic Retcon, the comic's reboot, and the removal of many characters. While he did have some involvement in these changes, in actuality, it was pretty minimal. Penders filed for copyright protection on his characters in 2009, receiving it in 2010. He said that he would do whatever it took to protect and preserve his characters. After Archie Comics was informed of this, they sent him a cease-and-desist, as they felt that they owned his characters and that they were in the right. This started the fire that was the legal case. Had Archie not sent him the cease-and-desist, the comic likely never would have been rebooted, Penders would have probably never sued EA/BioWare over Sonic Chronicles and all of his characters would remain in the comic.
  • Prior to Ian Flynn, Archie Comics never had anyone who worked on the comic sign a contract which explicitly states that the company owned any new characters they created. This is likely why Ken Penders was able to file for copyright protection on his characters. For the record, Archie claimed that they made Penders sign a contract back in the day, but the company was unable to a produce a valid copy of said contract. They claimed that the original was "lost in a fire", while Penders claimed that there was never any contract to begin with. Even if we might not ever know which side is right about the contract, the bottom line is that it was Archie's own fault for not checking their policies regarding a creator's ownership rights. Karl Bollers has stated that he technically owns the characters which he created while working on the comic, and that he could file for copyright protection on them just like Penders. This most likely contributed to the older characters not created by Penders to get the axe as well for the reboot except for Ian's, as Archie wanted to prevent a repeat scenario with their other older writers.
    • To make matters worse, it eventually revealed that even during the early days, Archie actually had to inform SEGA about any new characters created which had to go though their red-tape for approval, which will make them under the latter's ownership. Archie ignored that and just let any new writer come up with all sorts of characters willy-nilly as if they are writing fanfics. With this in mind, the fallout and subsequent cancellation is no longer a matter of "if" but "when". Ian Flynn even stated that the lawsuits just made the cancellation come faster in a BumbleKast.
  • Former writer Scott Fulop also sued Archie Comics over reprinting rights for the same reasons. Archie won the case against him. That said, some fans think the fact that this lawsuit even happened played a part in Sega ultimately pulling the plug, feeling the comic wasn't worth all the legal trouble, though this has never been confirmed.
  • Some likewise blame Bioware for apparently sparking this for making characters based on some of Penders' characters for their Sonic Chronicles. This got him riled as they greatly resembled some of the characters he created. Conversely, some view Bioware's characters as not outright copies of Penders' characters, but simply a tribute to the comics' cast.
  • Sega doesn't get off scot-free either as they were the ones to enforce the new rules once they settled with Penders. They forced the retcon and in turn lost a good chunk of the cast, neutered most of the character development, and limited what could be done with characters created by them.
  • When the title was officially announced as cancelled, a few fans blamed Sega due to them trying to enforce special rules on what Sonic can and cannot do. But in actuality, most of the fault lies with Archie Comics. First, they filed the cease-and-desist against Ken Penders when they honestly had no real reason to do so. Ken Penders merely claimed that his characters were now owned by him. Archie did not have to file a lawsuit against him. They could have ignored his claim, but they chose to file a lawsuit against him. Because of it, Sega got involved with the lawsuit since it was based around their characters. When they found out what Archie Comics was doing with the comic, they told them that if they wanted to keep making it, they will have to make numerous changes. In other words, Sega never approved of a majority of the events that happened in the comics and likely never would have approved the direction it went into. But Archie Comics never bothered to get Sega involved in the comic for who knows how long. They likely knew that Sega would not approve of the way it was written. To add more of how they are at fault, Archie caused other problems involving the title. Such as their mismanagement, frivolous spending, the "Riverdale Reborn" initiative (which lead to an aborted Kickstarter attempt), their focus on Riverdale, and their initiative to get away from the action-adventure series in general.
  • Some recent developments seem to suggest that the legal issues may not have even been the main cause of the book's cancellation, with some saying the book was always in danger of being cancelled even before the legal issues reared their ugly heads, especially as Archie themselves admitted the book doesn't line up with their other library and most Sonic readers are unlikely to be interested in anything else the company has to offer. Though it's safe to say the legal issues certainly couldn't have helped, either.
  • As far as the characters go, Sally, unsurprisingly, suffers this in issue 134, where the fans who despise her for her actions in the issue (and even for many other absurd reasons before the issue came out) have called her a bitch and claimed that she was trying to keep Sonic from being a hero. While yes, her actions were uncalled for in the issue (the part where she made Sonic choose between defeating Eggman and staying with her, that is), the same readers who try to put only Sally at fault here neglect saying a single word about her parents, who were the ones who kept her on the sidelines and put her in charge to rule the kingdom of her own. The parents completely ignored the fact that they were only putting their daughter in more stress. They actually considered taking a vacation while their planet was at war. So, if anyone deserves the blame for what happened in the issue, it's Sally's parents for not only stressing their daughter out by assuming she could handle the kingdom on her own and neglects the fact that her main priority is to fight alongside her friends in said war, but for also taking a vacation while their planet was at war.
  • Surprisingly, Ken's hyper fixation on the Echidnas and Knuckles was partially the fault of SEGA and Archie themselves, as a lot of plotlines and ideas he had for Sonic and the main plotlines for the comic would often be shot down by them, but they were usually okay with him recycling them when he was using Knuckles and the Echidnas.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Warlord Kodos crossed it when he murdered a pair of teenagers, a young Mobian and Overlander who planned to bring false reports to their sides in the hope of stopping the war. He sent their bodies back to their people in hopes that the act of pointless cruelty would be blamed on either side and finally ignite the tensions into a full blown war.
  • Sleuth "Doggy" Dawg crosses this in issue #47 when he decides to betray the Freedom Fighters, revealing to them in an ambush that power Robotnik promised him was a better deal than helping the heroes, with his treason resulting in one of his comrades being roboticized and the main heroes being put in harms way by a group of SWAT Bots.
  • Drago Wolf crosses this during the "Endgame" arc when he betrays both his pack and the residents of Knothole to Robotnik and his forces, with him also playing a heavy role in the plot to kill Sally and frame Sonic. The fact that he abused his then girlfriend Hershey and knowingly dragged her into the regicide attempt further hammers the point on what a monster he is.
  • Zan, Dulcy's love interest at one point in the old continuity, ended up crossing the line in issue #106 when he brutally attacks Station Square and puts many innocent human lives in danger. Add to the fact that he continued to do many other things to earn a Hate Sink feel (displaying Fantastic Racism towards Dulcy's friends and threatening to fry them, having a dangerous temper mixed with a mean spirited demeanor and abusing Dulcy to the point of hitting her (as well as leaving a negative impact on her emotional well being long after his death)), it's safe to say he managed to earn a spot on this list within the span of the two issues he appeared in.
  • EVE crossed it when she reappears with the revelation that in her desire to "liberate" artificial intelligence she'd embarked on a path of genocide, exterminating countless sentient species under the flawed idea that they were enslaving computers.
  • Eggman has a number of potential crossings ranging from nuking his planet to trapping the Overlanders in a city that was slowly poisoning them. The Egg Grapes, however, are probably his most clear cut especially because the comic put a lot of emphasis on just how cruel, unnecessary, and deadly they were. Eggman wiped out hundreds of people in what was shown to be a very agonizing process, sucking the Life Energy out of them to power his machines. To drive the point home, when questioned as to whether or not he could find a more efficient energy source, Eggman openly admitted that he could, but Where's the Fun in That?
  • ADAM tricking Robotnik into killing Mecha Robotnik. Even with how evil Eggman is, that was just pointlessly cruel.
  • Thrash has definitely crossed this when he literally made Knuckles the last of the echidnas.
  • Metal Sonic finally crosses it for good when he seemingly murders Shard.
• My Real Daddy:
  • Ian Flynn is considered this for Scourge for giving him a cool and distinctive new look and making him into a more intimidating and complex villain instead of the stereotypical Evil Twin he was before.
  • Flynn's portrayal of Amy Rose is also very well-liked, as many fans felt he managed to strike a good balance between the Girly Girl, Action Girl, and Sonic Fangirl aspects of her character. Amy's crush on Sonic is still central to her character, but not to a degree where she comes across like a Stalker with a Crush like some of her other incarnations (most notably her Sonic X counterpart). The occasional Ship Tease aside, her and Sonic mainly come across as a steadfast friends with a lot of mutual respect for each other.
  • Some fans go further with this and consider Flynn the real daddy for the comic in general, though this view is very far from universal.
• Narm:
  • Tails fulfilling his Chosen One prophecy by transforming into Titan Tails, a gigantic, overly muscled version of himself who defeats Mammoth Mogul by pointing his rear at him and uses his twin tails as a suction fan to drain Mogul of his chaos powers. It is made little better by the scene's dialogue pratically dripping with cheese and clichés (Mogul responds to Tails' transformation with a "No! This Cannot Be!", to which a serious-faced Titan Tails melodramatically proclaims "But it is. It is our DESTINY!"). It was supposed to be an unironically cool moment for the 150th milestone issue but it immediately became the laughingstock of the Sonic fandom at the time.
  • The infamous cover for issue #155, with the lonely, heartbroken Sonic crying over Sally's Arranged Marriage in a dark corner. The sheer amount of Wangst displayed is palpable, with the "...Alone" in fancy cursive writing on the corner being the cherry on top. Finally, the comic's good old tagline of "The World's Most Way Past Cool Comic!" remains a prominent element, making for some serious Mood Whiplash. The cover itself has been frequently referenced by the fanbase as an emblematic visual of the Audience-Alienating Era's prevalent romantic melodrama issues, especially those involving Sonic himself.
  • Issue #41 has Sonic, Sally and Geoffrey venturing into the collapsing Zone of Silence to save King Acorn. However, the way the three of them are depicted on the cover ruins the drama of the story. They're each drawn with wide eyes and screaming mouths, expressions of terror too exaggerated to take seriously. Sally's right eyeball is near the side of her face, making her look derpy. Geoffrey's head also appears disembodied as he reaches out for Sonic who has his left hand extended towards the reader.
  • A lot of the artwork from the post-Endgame era. Weird, inconsistent proportions, abuse of Animesque designs (especially when next to the very noodle-limbed Sonic) and exaggerated anthropomorphic figures were rather commonplace, to the point characters would come off as stupid-looking or unnecessarily sexy◊ in certain cases (not helped by the fact most of the main cast consisted of teens). The Dip story in particular is infamous for this, as it sexualizes Sally, otherwise a cartoon teenage chipmunk that does avert Pantsless Males, Fully-Dressed Females, to an ungodly degree, making it nearly impossible to "appreciate" the story with any degree of seriousness.
• Narm Charm: Some people have this opinion of the comic's comedic early days, which mostly consisted of pun-filled, Fourth Wall-breaking, zany stories carrying a similar tone to the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog despite using the more serious freedom fighter setting from Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM). Those stories were completely at odds with the dramatic tone that would dictate the comic from Mecha Madness onwards and thus are really insane in hindsight and hard to believe they happened, but they can be genuinely fun, memetic and entertaining (especially when taken out of context).
• Never Live It Down:
  • Many fans aren't willing to let Sally live down the time she slapped Sonic in anger. It didn't help that the issue where it happened came only two months after Sonic Heroes was released, meaning that "The Slap" was the first major impression of Sally for many new readers who had jumped onto the book unaware of the events building up to it. Even after repeated displays of remorse from the character, and even a Cosmic Retcon rendering it Canon Discontinuity, there are still fans who will hold it against her. Her "vest and boots and nothing else" outfit from the cartoon and pre-reboot comics is also what a lot of people remember about her despite the reboot changing this, as it made Sally a notable exception to the otherwise omnipresent "dress code" used by the Sonic games.
  • Amy's tantrum in the opening page of "I Wanna Be A Freedom Fighter" (which she exclaims herself) is frequently used as a prime example of how badly she was flanderized in this period of the Sonic franchise. The context where this scene is a flashback which an Older and Wiser Amy is clearly embarrassed by, and that it was intended for her to be depicted unfavorably, is often overlooked.
  • Within the long list of questionable actions Locke followed through while raising Knuckles, his very first one (pumping Knuckles' egg with deadly, mutagenic radiation without consent from his wife) tends to top it due to its sheer immorality. There's also the way he tricks Knuckles into believing he is dead by staging a holographic fire, which just comes across as horrifyingly manipulative, regardless of it being a tradition among the Brotherhood like he claims.
  • Titan Tails. As stated under Narm, this form for Tails has become the poster child of what people think of when they think of Archie Sonic; even among those who have read the comic prior to and after it happened.
• No Yay:
  • Evan Stanley, the writer of Sonic Universe's "Silver Age" arc, expressed this reaction towards the shipping of Silver and Gold. (She wrote them Like Brother and Sister because Gold is romantically attracted to and prefers females, prefers confident and efficient people, and is supposed to be Silver's Alternate Self.)
    Oh, there’s been a fair bit…I’m glad that it didn’t get out of hand, I tried to write them with a more sibling-like friendship and most folks picked up on that.
  • Geoffrey x Sally, mostly due to the former being an adult while the latter a minor and Sonic's main Love Interest. It was later augmented by author Ken Penders' claims that they had offscreen sex at one point, ignoring the fact this was a children's comic. To say fan reaction was negative would be a strong understatement. ^note It is worth noting that in the earlier issues, the characters didn't have a clearly defined age and Geoffrey was a potential love interest to Sally, making him a rival to Sonic until he was married to Hershey.
  • Locke and Lara-Le, Knuckles' parents. The relationship was clearly toxic and dysfunctional, with Locke coming off as rather abusive sometimes. Not helping this is the scene where Locke forcefully kisses Lara in an attempt to prove he "changed" (ignoring that Lara was already engaged to another echidna). Thankfully, it does nothing to change Lara's opinion on him.
  • When initially hinting at his Word of Gay for Rotor on his (now defunct) message board, Ken Penders asked fans who they thought he would reveal as a gay couple; many fans correctly assumed it would be Rotor, but thought he'd be paired up with Tommy Turtle (who, at the time, had just been killed off in a Heroic Sacrifice in the main comic, and had previously been partnered with Rotor as his protege in his Brain Trust). Penders nixed the idea, precisely because of Tommy's death, instead going with original Echidna character Cobar.
• Older Than They Think: It should be noted that Hope Kintobor was created before Maria.
• One-Scene Wonder: The infamous "Titan Tails" from issue #150, where Tails becomes ridiculously buff and gets multiversal powers in order to tie up a decade-long plot thread, only for all of it to go away and never be mentioned ever again. The transformation was so memorably absurd and conceptually ridiculous that you will have a hard time finding any sort of discussion or review about the series without a mention of it in some capacity.
• One True Threesome:
  • The comics had already had the Canon Foreigner Sally Acorn as Sonic's love interest when Amy was introduced. The over 5 year age gap between Amy and Sonic meant that that Amy's crush wasn't initially an issue, but then Amy got a Plot-Relevant Age-Up and the Ship-to-Ship Combat really began. To resolve this, Sally/Sonic/Amy is one of the most popular OT3s in the franchise.
  • Knuckles had a Canon Foreigner girlfriend, Julie Su, when Rouge was introduced. Rouge and Knuckles have a lot of Ship Tease in the games. As a result, people began pairing up Julie Su, Knuckles, and Rouge.
  • Shadow, Rouge and Amy also has a decent following based on many arcs about Shadow, maybe due to Amy and Rouge playing as Shadows guides to help him do what's right.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • One of the most remembered aspects of the Knuckles the Echidna spinoff book is the fact that Ken Penders appropriated a number of World War II era quotes and poems without crediting the original sources and rewrote them to fit the narrative of the comic book. The most infamous example would be in Issue 22, where Penders took the "First they came..." poem by Martin Niemoller and replaced the ethnic groups oppressed by the Nazis with species of Mobians enslaved by Robotnik. Not only did many find this to be in poor taste but it doesn't even fit within the context of the comic as Robotnik's conquest was a sudden military coup that gave no quarter to anyone, not a methodical assault on minorities.
  • Many people are probably aware of the whole legal battle that happened between Ken Penders, Archie Comics and Sega in the early 10's, even if they might not be familiar with the comics themselves besides its most bizarre moments. Since then, Penders would go on to feature in various incidents that would put the spotlight on him, like his announcement of "The Lara-Su Chronicles" that so far consists of nothing but strange artworks done by himself and implying a possible offscreen sexual encounter between a 20-year old skunk and 15-year old chipmunk, somewhat painting the comic he once wrote in a worse light for those unfamiliar with its actual contents.
• Popular with Furries: As with the main Sonic series, the comic has a huge following among the furry fanbase, especially Mina Mongoose who in particular is featured in a lot of fanart.
• Remade and Improved: "Naugus Games", the fifteenth and final Sonic Super Special, was infamous for its rushed, low quality art and because it had over ten pages that were blank aside from dialogue balloons, including a six page fight scene between Sonic and Naugus that was completely obscured by a snowstorm. In 2011, for Free Comic Book Day, the series released an issue that recreated "Naugus Games" with much better artwork and it showed the previously hidden fight scene in full.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Silver of the much maligned Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. His comic version is liked a lot more because his personality has been changed to a well-meaning bumbler who can be The Comically Serious at times.
  • Antoine through Character Development for many who considered him The Scrappy in the cartoon.
  • Fiona Fox wasn't popular as a love interest for Sonic. Once she pulled a Face–Heel Turn, sexy Evil Costume Switch, and hooked up with Scourge, though, she became much more liked.
  • Shadow and Rouge. For the longest time, the comic had no idea what to do with either of them after the Sonic Adventure 2 adaptation. As Sonic Heroes was rendered moot due to comic events, using them for that was out of the question and the two would make sporadic appearances afterwards, Shadow working on his own and Rouge with Evil Sonic. It wouldn't be until Ian Flynn took over that both performed a Heel–Face Turn and led into the creation of the much beloved Team Dark.
  • Ian Flynn rescued Princess Sally, mostly concerning her Flawless Token accusations and trying to present her as a more flawed character. Flynn would also put quite a bit of effort into undoing the long-term Chickification she underwent during the Audience-Alienating Era, and instead try to rerail her character into being Frontline General of the Freedom Fighters once again. While it's not a universal case by a long shot, most fans agree that Flynn was largely successful in this endeavor, and even have let go of her infamous outburst in the Home arc following displays of remorse from her and getting in on action scenes again. invoked
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Plagued the comic for quite a long time, particularly around the time where Sonic went from dating Sally to Mina to Fiona. Luckily, the comic has since moved on.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Sally gets portrayed as a selfish brat at times by the fandom, especially for Die for Our Ship reasons as well as the infamous slap in #134. The same fans even portray her as an irredeemable villain who commits certain acts that causes her to cross full-on Hate Sink territory that would make even Eggman look more sympathetic in comparison.
  • Sonic/Mina and Tails/Mina fics (or just Mina/anyone but her canon boyfriend fics) tend to make Ash into at best a cheater and at worst an outright abuser. In canon, he's mostly just a jealous prick and even then, Mina's typically the only one he's consistently nice to. It's also quite ironic that one of the most common plot devices to get Ash out of the picture is to depict him as cheating on Mina when his defining character trait is that he's constantly paranoid that Mina will leave him for Sonic.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • The Great Desert Dark Egg Legion were turned into mindless Robian mooks thanks to Unwilling Roboticisation and forced to fight the Sand Blasters, an extremist group of Freedom Fighters. After being turned back into Mobians, they tried to make peace with the Sand Blasters, but were instead hit with Fantastic Racism for being former Robians. In order to survive, they went to Eggman for help, who legionized them. When The Baron, leader of the Great Desert DEL, was confronted about this by his niece, Bunnie, he responded that being in the DEL isn't so bad. Being legionized means cybernetic upgrades, which in turn make for an awesome health plan.
  • The DEL's post-reboot counterpart, the Egg Army, also falls into this. While many Egg Bosses, such as Thunderbolt and Maw, are evil, others, like Clove and Nepthys, are treated sympathetically. Both only joined the Eggman Empire out of desperation rather than loyalty to Eggman. Clove joined so that Eggman could save her sister from a debilitating disease, while Nepthys joined to keep the Eggman Empire from completely taking control of Shamar by locking her division of the Egg Army into a stalemate with her longtime friends, the Shamar Freedom Fighters. Even Conquering Storm, who falls very much into evil on the alignment scale, is shown to be somewhat reasonable compared to the people she's fighting; whereas the different clans of Yurashia are highly antagonistic of one another and refuse to work together, she welcomes anyone and everyone into the Egg Clan, provided they pull their weight.
• Salvaged Story:
  • Ian Flynn's fans believe he has managed to pull off a lot of these, especially regarding plots left dangling or concluded unsatisfactorily by the previous authors. For example, during Penders's run, at one point, Rotor shuts down Fiona's suggestion that they should use guns. He simply claims that guns are wrong and not the Freedom Fighters' way. Flynn later explained it as Rotor feeling guilt over accidentally hurting a civilian while using guns, with Rotor admitting that he might have overreacted to gun usage a few times as overcompensation.
  • Sonic Universe 50 and Sonic the Hedgehog 256 are deliberate salvaged stories in regards to Metal Sonic since they both address the character's Adaptational Wimp status in the comic. SU 50 gave Metal a rematch against Shard. He effectively won, albeit by self-destructing. 256 had Metal Sonic fighting against Amy, Cream, and Sally at once without damage. He was only defeated after Tails dropped a missile on him, which even then only destroyed his legs—the rest of Metal was perfectly intact.
  • 267 and 283 are salvaged stories for Cream the Rabbit, who had been underutilized throughout the comic and rarely shown taking action or contributing. 267 having Cream leading the rescue for the rest of the Freedom Fighters from a death trap and 283 having Cream as the central hero for the story.
• The Scrappy: See here.
• Seasonal Rot: The post-"Endgame" stories were this due to the fact that they had intended issue 50 to be the end and when it turned out to still be popular, they were forced into a Post-Script Season, but without their main villain. Things improved following said main villain's "resurrection", but it's generally agreed that the comic hit another period of Seasonal Rot following issue 125, ending only once Ian Flynn took over writing duties in issue 160.
• Shocking Moments: High during the wham episodes and milestone issues, but the "Endgame", "Eggman Empire" and "Countdown to Chaos" story arcs stand out in terms of sheer HOLY SHIT inducing moments.
• So Bad, It's Good: The early comics were this, being funny due to how lame the jokes were at best. Once it started developing an actual plot, the comic became straight up good or remained this for different reasons.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • After some small Ship Tease moments in issue 3 and 23, Antoine and Bunnie Rabbot were thrown together in "Endgame" with almost no build-up beyond the same issue they got together revealing that Antoine had once saved Bunnie's life. Thankfully, the relationship was well handled after that point, and it was easier to accept than most examples because neither of them had any romantic chemistry with other characters.
  • Echidnas have what is called "the Soultouch" — a Sixth Sense that also acts as a literal Red String for them and that once they've found their soul mate, they pretty much stay together, although there are some exceptions. This is why Knuckles and Julie-Su hooked up only after 24 issues and why he hasn't dated anyone else.
• Strawman Has a Point: Thrash the Devil tossing every last echidna into an alternate dimension as revenge for what their ancestors did to his people was supposed to be unfair especially considering Thrash admits he doesn't know why the echidnas did so ^note it was to fight Mammoth Mogul's Order Of Ixis, viewed as a horrible crime by echidna society, and would've been reversed had one of the Knights of Albion not turned into the second Enerjak and crippled the civilization at the time. However, while they weren't responsible for what happened to Thrash's people, his point that the echidnas sat there and did nothing concerning Dr. Robotnik/Eggman and allowed beings like the Dark Legion and Enerjak to wander freely kind of makes sense. You can't help but wonder if Thrash was right about the echidnas deciding that Robotnik/Eggman wasn't their problem, even if he was going about it wrong.
• Sweetness Aversion: Bunnie and Antoine have an obnoxiously perfect relationship at times. Having silly accents perfect for nicknames and cutesy talk only exacerbates it. Though for some, that's what makes it charming, but this isn't a universal view.
• Take That, Scrappy!: The only reason Drago Wolf was kept around as long as he had been was to be the Butt-Monkey of the cast, in stark contrast to the reaction Tommy Turtle got.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • A major problem with the comic, especially during the Penders/Bollers era. Because of how these two men operate, established Sega-based characters and characters created by other writers tend to get knocked to the wayside or not even introduced. For instance, Ensemble Dark Horse Bean the Dynamite Duck and Bark the Polar Bear were first introduced game-wise in Sonic the Fighters in 1996. It would be 10 years later, in issue #160, that they would appear in the comics. There is also the Bird Armada for 'Tails Adventure, which didn't show up into the comics for 15 years. Comic wise, for example, the Iron Queen. She first appeared in issue #60. She is not heard from again for 140 issues. With issue #268, it seems that Flynn was reaching back further with the first appearance of Breezie the Hedgehog from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • Shadow is this even in Sonic Universe, while Shadow showed massive improvement in the series prior to Penders or Bollers. Ian always felt that he had to restraint Shadow from being heavily involved with main Sonic plots with threats in order to keep the stories from easily wrapping up, this became evident even in Sonic Universe stories, Shadow was the biggest powerhouse yet is somehow second fiddle in plot progression to Team Dark in advancing the story. Making him feel more a plot device that is used for the characters building the story like Rouge, Hope, Eclipse and Knuckles. Also, Shadow was always treated with off-handed disrespect in a joking way by Sonic and Rouge without the former being quick to being as to retort and be funny to exploit banter, making this Shadow a push over and a passive loser.
  • Many fans agree that Chip was seriously wasted in the Sonic Unleashed adaptation. Chip's friendship with Sonic, which was a core element of Unleashed, is completely glossed over until the very end of the saga. Things wouldn’t have been so bad had Chip got to meaningfully interact with the rest of the cast to compensate. He doesn't get to do much with Knuckles before he is inevitably given to the Freedom Fighters. Chip's bonding with them is only shown in a single page flashback. Chip's whole Identity Amnesia sub-plot is also removed as Tikal informs Chip of his true nature as Light Gaia the instant she sees him. This takes away the impact of the scene where Chip regains his memories, which is instead used for more Worldbuilding.
  • Patch, the anti-Antoine, was much more of a presence in the Prime Universe than Scourge ever was and his actions had far reaching consequences for the heroes. After being exiled from his own universe by Scourge, he spent almost two years masquerading as Antoine. His attempts to take over the Kingdom of Acorn led him to fatally poison Antoine's father and attempt to do the same to King Max, resulting in him being becoming crippled and accelerating his senility. However, when Patch returned to the Prime Universe as part of the Suppression Squad, his past actions are only given a few throwaway mentions and he is pushed into the background in favor of Miles.
  • Cream the Rabbit was heavily underutilized after being officially introduced, though this was changed late in the comic's run.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Issue #108 had both the original and the new Dr. Robotnik together in the same reality... only to have them dink around for a third of the issue before the old one disintegrated.
  • This is a big complaint about Flynn's post-cleaning up works, up to and including the Iron Dominion saga; many plot points he brought up during this time had lots of potential for interesting stories of their own, but were pushed aside for a Snap Back rather than being delved into.
  • The time Antoine spent trapped on Anti-Mobius was never explored.
  • The Mecha Sally arc, due to the fact that she never won a fight and some outside circumstance got in the way of her rescue every time. Also not helping is that it only seemed to happen to explain her redesign. This redesign could have been easily explained as a result of the first Genesis Wave having residual effects on some people, like it did on Naugus.
  • The introduction of opposing heroic fractions, such as members of the Acorn Council. Having characters who call out or cause alternate conflicts for the main Freedom Fighters could have made for an interesting grey dynamic within the team. However, they are mostly limited to Strawman Political types with Hate Sink personalities, only appearing as a minor frustration in a handful of issues.
  • With the soft Continuity Reboot, Sega insisted on having the main crew regain some of their memories from the previous continuity, to better tie the two eras together and keep from alienating fans of the latter as they headed into the former. This never stuck or was explored in any real detail, was dropped almost as soon as it was brought up, to the point where at one point, Sonic acknowledges his old memories were starting to be subsumed by the new continuity.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Issue 268 features Breezie from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Likewise, issue 79 features Professor Von Schlemmer.
  • The following issue introduces Segata Sanshiro and Wes Weasley.
  • Madonna, Sonic's cut human girlfriend from before the first game came out, was featured in Super Digest #12 as an agent of GUN and as an apparent expy of Agent Topaz from Sonic X due to her appearance and last name, Garnet.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • According to Ken Penders, readers are supposed to sympathize with Locke as someone who did what he had to do, and a great father at that. However, many a fan instead saw him as an abusive dad who was willing to put his unborn son's egg through experiments because of a dream, and even fake a suicide right in front of him. Needless to say, both the fans and even other writers on the book didn't see Locke the way Penders did.
  • The Brotherhood of Guardians were supposed to be a group of mysterious ancestors of Knuckles who aided in the defense of Angel Island and opposed the Dark Legion, but they claimed to be anti-technology while using technology to spy on the entire island and its residents, were openly racist to the Dingo Regime and ultimately isolationists who refused to help the Kingdom of Acorn in fighting Robotnik unless they agreed to use weapons of mass destruction.
  • The Dingo Regime were originally presented as being an allegory for downtrodden minorities while also being a society of untrustworthy, fascist jackboots.
  • A lot of Sally's moments of weakness are empathized with as forgivable or uncontrollable, with her regularly portrayed as the team's Straight Man and overall Nice Girl. However, in many cases, Sally bases detrimental actions on high emotion and at times can be outright reckless, complacent and standoffish, often the very traits she relentlessly pontificates Sonic or other members for having. Ironically, the first time another member called out Sally on being reckless in the "Spark of Life", they were made to face a Hypocrisy Nod, something Sally herself never underwent throughout the 20+ year run. That Sally's whole personality can sometimes fluctuate from writer to writer does not help her contradicting ethics one bit.
  • Similarly pretty much any time Sonic screws up due to being overconfident or reckless, we are often meant to be on his side and view anyone (besides Sally) who tries to condemn him for it as an Ungrateful Bastard. This is especially glaring because given the Cerebus Syndrome nature of the comics, some of Sonic's worse decisions have far more dire and long-term consequences (a reminder that this is an interpretation where villains can kill or mutilate characters without it always being reversed), making Sonic's Aesop Amnesia and frequent refusal to accept any blame look far worse.
  • Amadeus and Rosemary Prower are meant to have a reasonable argument of distrusting the monarchy due to the blunders King Max had caused in the past. The problem is they had barely given the current king Elias a chance to prove himself and the Prowers picked the absolute worst time to stage a protest against the monarchy (right after Knothole was destroyed, the citizens were nearly killed by the Egg Grapes and just enduring an Eggman attack on New Mobotropolis). If anything, their poorly thought-out actions justify the kingdom locking up Amadeus in response to his protest.
  • We're supposed to sympathize with Hamlin's spite over the neglectful treatment that his old team received from the Freedom Fighters despite being an actual team that Sally personally trained. It falls apart because that team was the Substitute Freedom Fighters so by definition their job was to only go into action only when the regular Freedom Fighters couldn't. Also, the team was led by Larry Lynx who had volunteered to help Rotor in the past, so Hamlin and his teammates could've had more active roles if they had simply asked.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Princess Sally's role in the main books being largely to play The Straight Man to Sonic, leaving her supporting cast to provide most of the conflict and foibles while Sally simply progressed through the mission. It should be noted that this transition occurred around the same time as the comic's Cerebus Syndrome, beforehand Sally had more of a comically pernickety personality, which became harder not to justify as the threats and vulnerability of the Freedom Fighters became more and more serious.
• Vindicated by History: Karl Bollers' stories, with some exceptions. Back in the day, many disliked or outright hated Bollers' stories, especially the infamous issue 134 where Sonic and Sally broke up. While that story is still hated and his reputation still isn't perfect, he is held in much higher regard than he was. Many of his stories, like "Return to Angel Island", have received more respect.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • Most of the stories end up as this. Way back in the 90s, Sally’s mentor Julayla dies of old age. Pretty tame, right? Nothing too bad except for how horrifying Eggman aka Robotnik looks. Fast forward over a decade later, and you have Scourge (formerly Anti-Sonic) implying that he murdered his own father and gouged out Patch’s eye. Also, we get plenty of fanservice in the later comics from characters like Bunnie, Fiona, Rouge, Sally, and the female echidnas like Julie-Su, Lara-Su, and Lien-Da.
  • Sonic “hooking up” with Fiona before she became evil. Said characters are 15 and 16 years old respectively. How did THIS make it past the censors?!
  • Some sex jokes involving Scourge, Fiona, Bunnie, and Rouge have been thrown in. Most of them will probably go over a kids head, but issue 8 features a very explicit one:
    Sonic: That's where I found my guitar, Freedom Fighters! In the abandoned concert hall! There are enough instruments inside for us to form our own band!
    Bunnie: Great! Can ah play cymbals and a saxophone!
    Rotor: Why, Bunnie?
    Bunnie: 'Cause ah'm the sax-cymbal of this team, sugah!
• Win Back the Crowd: Some feel that Ian Flynn taking over as head-writer greatly contributed to restoring the comic's respectability after the long Audience-Alienating Era. The simultaneous introduction of quite a few new staff artists, most prominently Tracy Yardley, was also seen as a breath of fresh air and stability after the comic's general art quality had been shaky for years.
• The Woobie: Post-"Shattered World Crisis", it's really hard not to feel for the nobler members of the Egg Bosses, namely Nephthys and Clove, who are just doing their damnedest trying to stake out an existence of some dignity under Eggman. Clove is effectively a case study of a Broken Bird as she breaks.

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