A Journey Through Archie Sonic: My Favorite, and Most Frustrating, Story

As we transition over to the main Archie Sonic series, we settle into a pretty familiar rhythm for about the first year or so of the new comic's run. Mike Gallagher officially settles in as the de facto head writer (although we will start to see other writers emerge before too long), and Dave Manak takes over not just as the main penciler inside the book, but also as the sole cover artist all the way until Issue 20, after which a certain "Spaz" shows up and becomes one of the all-time Archie Sonic greats. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's just focus on this issue for now. While I'm not too big of a fan of most of Dave Manak's covers down the road, I have to admit this one is some really solid stuff. It's chaotic and dynamic, without being overwhelming. It shows off Sonic and Robotnik's nemesis dynamic perfectly, and makes Robotnik's Badniks seem genuinely imposing and threatening, something that, as we'll soon be reminded in a minut...

Well, I've got some bad news, folks. This cover is where we officially have to say goodbye to Scott Shaw, who up until now has been the singular artist on pencils duties up until now. There will be one small story in a special issue down the line where he makes a very brief comeback, but other than that this is where he exits the book. The cover itself is nice, though, with a good use of the classic loop-de-loops from the games. Definitely a better cover to go out on than Issue 2, that's for sure. Our primary artist for the next several issues is going to be Dave Manak. In that Sonic Archives foreword I mentioned in my Issue 0 review, Mike Gallagher talks briefly about his work with Dave, with the 2 of them having a history over at Marvel Comics for years before they reunited over here at Archie. According to him, they had become really good friends, and their previous work helped them fall right into sync with each other as they worked on Sonic. Going forward, these 2 are goin...

  Where last issue's cover was easily my favorite of this miniseries, this one was always the weakest to me. Which isn't to say it's BAD, necessarily, but I don't know, this one just always bored me for whatever reason. It's a lot less dynamic than most of Scott Shaw's art, and the actual scene being depicted just seems really generic. It also doesn't help that this is where we officially start the trend of "covers that have nothing to do with the stories inside", which will be a consistent annoyance for the next dozen or so issues.  As I dive into this issue, there's one thing to note immediately that makes it stand out not just within this miniseries, but much of the early book as a whole. Rather than dividing its page count between 2 short, simple stories, we have our very first full-length story!... sort of.  Yeah, something I've been neglecting to mention up until now is that, in addition to the main stories, this early "gag era...