Archie Sonic General Discussion

I will give him some due and while I don't think he should've sued, the Nocturnus Clan is similar enough to his own echidna ideas that if Bioware said it was a coincidence I wouldn't buy it

It makes me wonder how the other Archie writers would have handled it.

I don't think the other writers would have caused such a big stink like Penders did.

It also makes me wonder what would have happened if Penders hadn't made a stink about the Echidnas? We would still have Archie Sonic for a little before it would had gotten cancelled.

Archie Sonic's final cancelation was, as far as I know, all on Archie. They simply didn't renew the license when it ran out

Ian might have done the Metal Virus saga early than he ended up, I’m not sure how long he had it cooking.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Nov 6th 2022 at 12:39:32 PM

That is more of a case for the Mega Man comics. When both Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Universe released their last comics, there were previews for more issues to come. What is more likely the cause would be Sega pulling the plug when Scott Fulop sued Archie. The lawsuit was announced in the same month the last comics were released, which was when the six months of no news at all happened before the back to back announcements of the Archie series getting canceled and IDW announcing its own series.

Its also when they were downsizing and rebranding to focus on the Archie reboot and Riverdale.

Yeah, I honestly can't blame SEGA for wanting to cut ties with Archie. I mean, Archie pretty much messed up everything with the lawsuit, that would have been an easy win for them if they had taken better care of the documents.

Too bad they couldn't arrange a clean ending. Maybe end it on issue 300.

I mean ending 3/4 into a story arc that celebrates the hero's longevity is the most awkward way to end. (Although still better than if arc was actually telling some ongoing story. We really dodged the bullet here)

From how it was described by Ian Flynn and the other creators at the time, the comic's cancelation was out of no where. People who were subscribed to the Sonic comics would eventually received the Cosmo comics Archie had released shortly afterwards. If they didn't try to cancel the subscriptions, which was hard to due at the time. The cancelation of the Mega Man comics, on the other hand, wasn't unexpected, so they had the time to end it the way they did.

Looking back on the Archie comics I'm finding Beauregard Rabbot a lil awkward in hindsight since he was created solely to explain a "The South will rise again" quote from the comic's gag-strip days. (Technically Mike Gallagher named him, but Ian Flynn made him an actual character.)

The fact that most of the Gallagher gag strip stuff remained canon is insane.

The canonical reason Bunnie got part roboticized is because Sonic and Rotor accidentally got themselves tied together and couldn't save her in time, and they never went back on that.

And it was all thanks to a quick stop at the sporting goods store for rollerblades. The "Bot on the Spot" machine makes me laugh too XD

Edited by lalalei2001 on Nov 7th 2022 at 1:20:11 PM

I'm surprised that they allowed the more comical centric stories to remain in canon despite the fact that the comic started changing tones midway through.

TIL that Spider-Man writer Dan Slott created a Sonic character from the Archie era: Zonic the Zone Cop. And even now, Sonic nerds STILL ask him about Zonic.

Not only that, Slott acknowledges Quack Ponders is a quack about being protective of his Sonic OCs and he (Slott) does not have the same hang-ups that Quack does. Seriously. No fooling.

If Penders didn't exist I would laugh at the implication that anyone might be possessive of Sonic in a space cop suit with one letter changed.

Slott also wrote for the NiGHTS into Dreams… comic series. (At first I thought he made the Iron Queen and King but that was Frank Strom.)

Sadly it's not going to happen. See Sega will have to make some effort to work out the paperwork and pay him money to get access to Zonic so they can attract a few fans to their new product with Zonic. Or they can, get this: just keep using vast amount of characters they already own that have way bigger recognition or introduce new characters that won't require extra work and costs. Guess which they will pick.

That is the fate of for example, reprints of Fleetway's Sonic The Comic. Surely Sega has easier ways to make bigger money with Sonic so they're not going to bother.

Yeah, he'd be more likely to just get a one-off story to guest-write for the IDW comic, and maybe whoever's doing the artwork for it can slip Zonic's silhouette somewhere in a screen or a photo on the background, or have him as an extra in a crowd (similar to how Spider-Boy managed to make a cameo appearance in Spider-Verse despite being partially owned by DC), as a nod to Mr. Slott's previous work for the franchise.

Yeah, I don't see SEGA bringing back any characters from the Archie comics, no matter how many writers and artists who used to work for the comics, want them to. There's going to be a lot of paperwork involved in bringing these characters back and SEGA might not want to do all that. Also, SEGA already got a load of characters made for this franchise, so why use characters from parts of the comics that they didn't create themselves?

Edited by Rabbitearsblog on Nov 15th 2022 at 9:45:35 AM

That is true. I do not see Rob'O the Hedge or Sir Connery appearing in any Sonic game.

Yeah, like with Rob'O the Hedge, we already got a lot of Hedgehog characters in the main cannon and Sir Connery is a character that a lot of people don't really care about.

Reading the Knuckles Echidna series issues 26th through 28th is an experience.

Echidna cleavage, hormonally confused Knuckles and Julie-su, Vector dancing with a swan, and that's not even getting into the bizarre proportions and trying to figure out the side stories.

I remembered how weird Vector looked in that series.