Now that Sonichu #3 is wrapped up, I'll be answering some questions before I get into Sonichu #4. If you're just joining us, you can send in questions whenever you want, but I tend to only answer them between issues, in no particular order.
Speaking of Sonichu #4, if you don't already know, the first 42 pages of Sonichu #4 are reprints of the sub-episodes from issues #0-3. Reprints in a webcomic are pretty pointless, since you can always go back and click a link to read them, but that's what Mr. Chandler did and that's the way it is. With that in mind, I will be following suit and re-posting those 42 pages, in the interests of providing the most accurate examination of Sonichu #4, redundancies and all.
In other words, The Annotated Sonichu will be doing summer reruns for a few weeks before we get back to the gripping conclusion of Chris's battle with W-M-Manajerk. I realize this may be inconvenient, to have to slog through stories you've already seen on your Tumblr dashboards not that long ago, but I'll try to make it as quick and painless as possible.
No problem; I can see why you'd want to get it over with.
Sonichu was originally posted on two websites, "CWC's Sonichu Site!" and later "Cwcipedia." The first was repeatedly hacked and taken over by online trolls; the second was created for him by online trolls in order to manipulate him. Both sites were ultimately abandoned and shut down, but they're currently archived on Sonichu.com a troll site dedicated to preserving Mr. Chandler's works. All 11 issues of Sonichu are available to read here, in a section of the Cwcipedia backups.
There are three problems with that link, though. First, the layout for navigating from comic to comic and page to page is atrocious. Second, in 2009 Chris made numerous edits to issues #0-7 (renaming characters and so forth), apparently discarding the original pages. Third, the "Sonichu Special" issues, four stories that were leaked to the public, are not on Cwcipedia, so you have to dig around elsewhere on Sonichu.com to find them.
Although a lot of effort has been made to preserve this material, there hasn't been as much of an effort to organize the comic pages into a comprehensive, easy-to-use site where you can be sure nothing is being left out. That's one of the reasons I'm doing this blog, to fill that need. For now, if you hunt around Sonichu.com you can read ahead. But hopefully in about a year or so this will be the best place to read the comic.
For those who don't know, Sonichu #8 features Episode 17, which depicts a lengthy, graphic love scene between Sonichu and Rosechu, as well as other explicit sexual content. Up to that point the series had been only slightly more "adult" than the average Sonic the Hedgehog comic book, so Mr. Chandler created three different versions of the story. The adult (TV-MA) version is the whole, unedited story; the teen version (TV-14) is largely unabridged but heavily censored; and the kiddie version (TV-Y7) simply omits about half the pages.
Almost immediately after the comic was released to the public, trolls seized upon the obvious attack vector of pretending to be outraged that a comic for children would even approach the subject of sex. At the time, Chris's internet fame was taking off and he wanted to believe at least some of the people obsessing over him were legitimate fans, so he quickly caved in by pulling the issue and re-editing it into a single, less raunchy format.
This is a perfect example of what I was saying above, because over the years it has been fairly difficult to locate all three versions of Episode 17. I can't just say "The whole thing is available to read right here." All of the pages are in tact in the archives of Chandler's first website, but you have to know which filenames you're looking for. I had to collect all those images for this project, naturally, and it proved to be somewhat more challenging than I expected.
The uncensored, TV-MA version of Episode 17 is a whopping 71 pages long, and my plan is to write a post for each of those pages. Where a particular page has multiple variations, I'll include them so that the reader can easily see the differences. (Unlike Mr. Chandler, I think we're all adults here and we can handle seeing Rosechu's badly drawn nipples.) I'll probably tag each page according to which versions of the story it was included in, so that you can see how much shorter the TV-Y7 edition was, if you like.
Lately I've been pretty struck by my realization a couple of weeks back that the all the Sonichu characters know they are Chris's creations and revere him like a god...except the villains, whom Chris didn't create in the first place. The only bad guys I can think of that are not a) based upon real people, b) lifted directly from some other work of fiction, or c) redeemed by the end of the series are Count Graduon and Beel. In fact, even Beel gets a little speech in issue #10 where it's made clear he resents the evil he serves, and only does so because he is literally a devil. That just leaves Graduon, who would be utterly helpless without the aid of the others.
So that fits into what I think is the broad theme of Sonichu--it is the purest expression of Chris's desire to play God in a world of his own making, and to make the choices he would have God make. As the creator of Cwcville, Chris does not permit disease or wickedness to flourish among his children. The only way that bad things can happen to good people in Sonichu is when people who exist apart from his authority invade and disrupt his world, and even then they can do very little that he cannot immediately repair. In this comic, Chris has complete control, which is in sharp contrast with his real life where we frequently see him as a man who is often raging impotently against forces beyond his control.
That's all for now, but I'll be responding to questions for the next few days. Feel free to send in more.
