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

  Well, folks, we finally made it, so here it is. The very last "completely irrelevant gag" cover.  Seriously, it's about dang time. Good riddance.  I know I've probably made WAY too big of a deal about this and you're probably sick of reading about it, but I just never liked these. The entire point of a comic cover should be to catch your eye with a tease of what you'll find inside, but these just... don't do that. They're just random, forgettable joke images that have nothing to do with the comics themselves. And I know this was the Gag Era and all, but you start to lose that excuse when you randomly DO advertise stuff like Spinball and Pseudo Sonic while neglecting titans like SUPER SONIC and KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA. But now, at last, with the possible exception of the "In Your Face" special (hey, at least it's relevant to the title of that one if nothing else), they're officially gone for good. Now of course, this doesn't mean we...

  What's this? Doth my eyes deceive me? Is this... a cover that's actually RELEVANT to the issue at hand? AND it's well drawn? So, it IS possible after all! WHY WAS KNUCKLES NOT ON THE LAST- No, no. We're not reopening that wound while it's still fresh, let's just be happy we've only got one more of those "irrelevant gag" covers left to complain about before they're FINALLY dead and buried. And we're officially in countdown range of Spaz's introduction, so we've just got to hold out for a little longer... Anyway yeah, our first story for this issue is indeed going to be another crack at a Tails-centric story, albeit without the framing of a solo adventure this time around. Which, honestly, after how his LAST "solo" adventure went in Issue 4 thanks to Gallagher, I appreciate our returning friend Angelo just being upfront here today and not trying to gaslight me with blatant false advertising. But does that mean this story w...

  *sigh*... OK Dave... you are really testing my patience with this one. Yes, I suppose this cover is one of your more well-drawn so far artistically, but... where the heck is Knuckles? Are... are you kidding me? We can advertise SONIC SPINBALL just fine, but when it's time for a Sonic 3 adaptation, we can't show KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA on the cover of the book!? WHY!? "Look, I've been nice, I praised your Flash of Two Worlds homage, analyzed EVERY SINGLE gag cover you've pushed at me, but THIS-" Bleh. Whatever. At least it does have Knuckles's name along with the Sonic 3 tagline attached to it... even if it's shoved into the bottom right corner instead of, again, PROMINENTLY DISPLAYING IT because this is the issue's ENTIRE SELLING POINT, but... fine. You did the bare minimum of advertisement for my boy, I guess. (Spaz will be here soon, Spaz will be here soon...) All that ranting to say, yes, this issue marks our second video game tie-in, with the re...