Archie Sonic Issue #15

 

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're out of the woods just yet. There will still be some unfunny quips and the like on some of these moving forward, and our comic cover king Spaz has yet to arrive, but for a good while, we're definitely going to be on the upswing as far as the quality of these covers for the most part.

But what about THIS issue? Is it good enough to make up for the rather lackluster cover? Let's find out, starting off with our first story:

"Rockin' the Bot!"

Thunder, rain and lightning! Danger, water rising!

Alright, so we're back with Angelo DeCesare as writer once again, and Dave Manak on pencils... and maybe it's just me, but I feel like Manak's work is a lot rougher around the edges this time around. Not BAD or anything, but it's way messier than how he was with Knuckles's debut just 2 issues ago. Maybe it's the different inker this time? I don't know.

But yeah, Sonic is traveling through a thunderstorm when he sees a frog crying out for help until a mudslide threatens to bury him, after which he tells Sonic to run and save himself. This prompts Sonic to reply, "did YOU SAY RUN?" before saving him, which... alright, let me stop you right there, Angelo. I suppose it's TECHNICALLY appropriate since Sonic is rescuing someone, but come on, this scene isn't nearly based enough for you to reference THAT theme decades before its existence. Pipe down.

Real talk, MHA has some questionable stuff in it every now and then, but I relate to this child on a spiritual level.

Anyway, this frog (we never learn his name, sorry) is amazed at Sonic's speed and deduces that he must be "a magical being" like himself and decides to reward him with magic stones summoned from the heavens that will endow the user with super strength, elasticity, and super jumping ability. He then hops off to parts unknown and is never seen again for the rest of Archie Sonic history.

And now it's time for yet another round of "I am definitely thinking way too hard about this and have SO many questions":

1. If this frog is magical and can summon stones from who knows where on command, why didn't he just do that to rescue himself from the tree trunk earlier? I have to imagine SUPER STRENGTH and ELASTICITY could have gotten him out of there with ease.

2. Why do these stones have those powers specifically? Can he CHOOSE what powers they have, or is it completely random?

3. Related to 2, we know later that these are each a single use only, so how does this frog know what powers they have without testing to be sure? Are there MORE of these stones out there, or are these the only 3? 

4. Why is Sonic so skeptical about the legitimacy of these magic stones in a world where Power Rings and Chaos Emeralds exist, ESPECIALLY when this frog did a chant that, again, SUMMONED THEM ON COMMAND!?

5. Who the heck IS this guy, and why is the incredibly bizarre, potentially world-shattering reality of his and these stones' existence in the world of Archie Sonic NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN!? This issue gets referenced in the Issue 57 recap, so we KNOW it happens!

My goodness, this era of Archie Sonic. Almost every single one of these stories is so dumb when you stop and think about them for 5 minutes, but it's kind of delightful in a sick, twisted way. I will NEVER get tired of poking holes in this stuff, it's great.

A few days later, the Freedom Fighters travel out to the "Mobian Badlands" to... *checks notes*... give this story a unique location for Robotnik to attack them, I guess? This is a pretty common recurring theme with Angelo's stories I've been noticing lately, but this is the first instance I can think of where he doesn't even bother with an explanation for why they're so far out from Knothole. Between this and the ridiculousness of the magic stones, this story feels a lot more thrown together than his usual output.

And why is Antoine still catching strays from Sonic here? He hasn't even DONE anything this time! Give the man a BREAK!

But yeah, shock of all shocks, Robotnik immediately catches wind of this and ambushes them inside of a giant "Beetle Bot", with their vehicle getting wrecked and sending them down into a pit. Tails points out the stones that Sonic gave to him, which Sonic told him were lucky charms because... *checks notes again*... we needed a reason for Sonic to not throw them away so they can still be in the story. Sorry, that's the best I got. 

Unfortunately, Sonic wasn't really paying attention to which stone does what when the frog gave them to him, but he proves to be a much better person under this kind of pressure than I am by immediately grabbing the red one and just hoping for the best. My stupid indecisive brain would have had me frozen there anxiously trying to sort them all out and gotten squashed flat, but thankfully that won't happen to-

OH. Never mind. That is... unfortunate.

No, of course, Sonic ended up accidentally using the "elasticity" stone instead of the "super strength" one. I do find Robotnik's reaction to be mildly entertaining, if for no reason than the sheer ridiculousness of trying to blame Snively for this. Like, how is he even supposed to respond to that? "Sir, he was a giant blue blob 3 entire seconds ago, I literally don't know what to tell you. Also, with all due respect, we're piloting this thing TOGETHER, so how about you worry about YOUR side of the controls for a minute?" No wonder these 2 end up at each other's throats so much later.

Side note: does this robot seem familiar to anyone else? Let me just check something real quick... 

Yeah, this comic predicted the "Egg Scarab" from Sonic Rush (had to look that one up, couldn't remember the name). Add that to the ever-growing list of things Archie Sonic foretold in days of yore, I guess. Seriously, this is getting absurd. 

And... actually, come to think of it... Sonic using magic stones to get special abilities he doesn't normally have... did this story predict the gems in 06 too!? They even kind of predicted the Purple Gem's infinite jumping with the yellow stone here! I mean, it's not 1-1 exactly, but STILL!

But yeah, that just leaves the green stone as the "super strength" one by process of elimination, and after a couple of pages of setup, Sonic makes quick work of the Beetle Bot and rescues everyone. He then realizes how foolish he was to doubt the frog's magic before and desperately searches to find him again to no avail, much like when I was slowly buying those Archie Sonic graphic novels as a kid one at a time before I realized just how quickly they would vanish from the shelves in the span of a couple of years. Not that I'm BITTER about how annoying that whole ordeal was or anything.

And so ends our first story for this issue... which is certainly a Sonic story that exists. I sort of hinted at this already, but more than any of his others so far, this one really felt like Angelo was just going through the motions this time around. It has all of the usual hallmarks of his stories (different locations, Robotnik being semi-threatening, a silly little gimmick thrown in to make it stand out), but they feel a lot less... I don't know, structured? Planned out? It's not his WORST story ever (you already know what that was), but it's definitely one of his weaker entries.

Speaking of weaker entries, that brings us to our next story, which... has honestly so little to say about it that they may as well have done another Do-It-Yourself fill-in-the-blank deal instead. It's a Kanterovich/Penders story called "What's The Big Idea?", and literally all that happens in it is the Freedom Fighters standing around for 6 pages speculating what new invention Rotor is going to pull out (to the 3 people who care, it's a thermos). The only interesting thing to note here is on the first page, where yet ANOTHER bit of future Sonic content was unwittingly foreshadowed:

Yeah! Penders predicted Endless Possibilities! Man, he should sue Bowling For Soup next, he'll be ROLLING in cash if he pulls that one off! (Sarcasm aside, yes, THAT Bowling For Soup, the one that wrote the Phineas and Ferb theme. I just learned that about a month or so ago, CRAZY!)

I suppose if I HAD to, I could say something about how these characters standing around speculating the answer to a rather disappointing and mundane mystery is a haunting echo of future Pendering to come, with mystery box meandering that would make even JJ Abrams himself blush in shame... but nah, I'll save that tangent for when it's more relevant... 

 ...Well, OK, just ONE joke, to wrap up my Dark Knight Trilogy thing I had going with Ken here:

"Oh, you think the MYSTERY BOX is your ally? But you merely ADOPTED the mystery box. I was born in it, MOLDED by it. I didn't see true storytelling until I was already a man, and then it was nothing to me but BLINDING!"

Wow, I am a ridiculous person sometimes. I would apologize for that, but hey, you chose to read this far in, this one's on you, pal. 

But anyway, that just leaves us with one more short one from our buddy Angelo today, but this one actually DOES stuff, so let's quickly wrap up with:

"Animal Magnetism"

Yeah, we have a story centered around Bunnie this time, and we've got Art Mawhinney on pencils again, so already we're off to a better start than the previous 2 (OK he drew the second story, but that was honestly a waste of his talent). I do have to chuckle a bit at this exchange between Robotnik and Snively about their lack of footage of her, though. It almost feels like meta commentary on just how often the writers keep forgetting her existence, Angelo included. 

We cut over to the Freedom Fighters having an outdoor barbecue (seriously, first a picnic in Issue 10, now a barbecue? What happened to trying to find a way to stop Robotnik, or find Sally's dad?), when suddenly all of their metal tools begin to fly away, along with Bunnie. Sonic runs off to see what happens, only to find Robotnik piloting a giant "MagnaBot", which is exactly what it sounds like.

No, sadly, it doesn't have the power to reverse the rotation of the earth (technically, neither did this one lol), it's just a way for Robotnik to snag Bunnie since she's half robot so he can bring her back to Robotropolis and finish the roboticization process, which... is something the early issues talk about from time to time, but a certain revelation about how roboticization works in this universe before too terribly long kind of makes that impossible, but whatever. 

Still, props to Robotnik. This plan isn't exactly world shattering, but sometimes it's the simple solutions that work, and he's actively choosing to focus on someone OTHER than Sonic for a change-

*sigh*... nope, of course not. Sonic IMMEDIATELY starts playing mind games with him, and he takes the bait hook, line, and sinker, chasing Sonic until the hedgehog runs Robotnik straight over to Robotropolis to rather predictable results:

Actually, I take it back, Robotnik's plan here makes no sense. If the goal was to make sure Bunnie was subdued, the only way to really ensure that would have been to keep the magnet on at all times... but then, you just run into the same problem, because you HAVE to go to Robotropolis anyway, right? Sonic could have done nothing, and the end result would have been the same. So... this story was just as pointless as the Rotor one after all, great.

And that's Issue 15, I guess.

Yeah, sorry, this one was just one big nothingburger. It didn't have anything infuriating like smug Tails or... the entirety of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!", but it forgot to replace that with anything of substance. Yet another entry in our increasing list of examples for why the Gag Era just isn't really my thing, aside from the fun of poking holes in its complete and utter lack of logic. 

Next time, though... prepare yourselves. We're about to have our very first issue that is entirely run by the Kanterovich/Penders duo, and not to give anything away, but if memory serves, it's... surprisingly, not bad. In fact, it's actually a lot better than these last 2 have been. See you then.

Oh, also something, something, Tootsie Pop commercial. There's your video tease.

Genuinely how is this commercial still regularly airing in 2026. What.