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

  What a dumb, silly cover. What a sweet, innocent, ADORABLE little cover. If it only knew the horrors it was about to unleash upon the world... If you're just joining me for the first time, you may well be asking, "what's the big deal? Looks like just some goofy old Sonic comic to me." And on some level, I suppose you're right. The issue we're looking at today is pretty par for the course in terms of the Archie Sonic Gag Era that it's a part of, with just a couple short stories filled with cartoon silliness and little in terms of deeper storytelling. But make no mistake, this ISN'T just any other Sonic comic. For you see, my friends... "He's here." "Who?" "The Penders..." Yes, this issue marks the writing debut of none other than Ken Penders, the single most notorious Sonic comic writer even to this day. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Archie Sonic has no doubt stumbled on his name at some point, and heard...

  Hello there! We're going to be doing something a bit different today. I've really been enjoying the Archie Sonic reviews I've been doing so far, but from the moment I started this project, I knew I wanted to do something special every once in a while to kind of shake things up, and maybe make things a bit easier to follow for any potential newcomers who don't have the time or energy to sift through every single review to get my view of this series. I've had a couple different ideas bouncing around in my head, and what I ultimately settled on was a combination of 2 things: 1. A brief recap of the major events in the book that have transpired recently. Pretty straightforward and self-explanatory, just a way to make sure no one gets lost as the book's lore gets increasingly complicated. 2. A rundown of my favorite and least favorite moments of each major section, structured as a sort of goofy awards show. This one requires a bit more elaboration, so bear with me:...

Looking at this cover on a surface level, you might think it's just another one of Dave Manak's silly gags that has nothing to do with the comic inside. But when you examine it on a deeper level, you quickly realize it's actually an apocalyptic warning of the Sonic franchise's downward spiral in the 2010s. Notice the Green Hill style loop-de-loop in the background? The way Sonic is permanently frozen in the past by those who never liked him to begin with? The incredibly cringeworthy attempt at a joke in the top left corner? Clearly, Manak was trying to prepare us for something truly terrible, and we should all be ashamed of our failure to heed his dire warning. All joking aside, I'm starting to get tired of these. I need Spaz to get in here pronto and start showing Manak how it's done. Sadly, we're still not there yet... but there is SOME good news on the art today. For the first time since Scott Shaw's departure back in the original miniseries, we have ...