Komatiite

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[archaeankomatiite]

Sonic the Blog

I'm the same guy from Sonic the Blog. This is just my primary that I tend to save exclusively for reblogging stuff that I like so I don't clutter up the feed over there (that's totally the reason, and not the fact I made STCB a secondary by mistake lmao).

[samobservessonic]

Sonic Sunday Strips

Above is the first issue of what is unofficially known as the Sonic Sunday Strips. This was a series of weekly newspaper comic strips that ran in the now defunct News of the World between 10th October 1993 and 2nd April 1995

You might recognise the art as being somewhat similar to that of early StC or even more closely to that of the Sonic yearbooks from a similar period and this is because the majority of the series was drawn by Richard Elson, one of the main artists for both StC and the yearbooks. It was written by Barrie Tomlinson, who while wasn’t involved in StC, had been the editor for the yearbooks. Some of the colouring later on during Elson’s strips was also provided by John M. Burns, who was a colourist for StC. For the last stretch of the series, an artist called Sandy James would take over the Sonic Sunday Strips, perhaps because Elson was doing more work for StC by that point

I’ve been asked repeatedly to cover the Sonic Sunday Strips (let’s shorten that to SSS) on the blog, so now I’m going to do that. But it should be noted that any information I’ll be posting about them actually comes from @sonicsundaystrips which is the primary source for these scans. Yes, I know you can find them in other places, but they’re actually in the right order on this blog. Many of the scans themselves were kindly provided by Richard Elson himself, so they could be preserved for the Sonic community, with a few strips provided by other members of the fan community

At time of posting, there are only two of the strips that are missing: 29th May 1994 and 13th November 1994’s issues, which I guess both qualify as lost media? Hey, if you see this and search your old News of the World Sunday magazines (which I’m sure you have, person reading this who possibly wasn’t even born in 1994 lol), maybe you could help them track those down. For the blog itself, the missing strips are clearly marked in the correct places where they would’ve appeared in the reading order

Basically, full credit goes to that blog for all the scans and information here. I’m just providing my usual reading and commentary

That’s the lay of the land for SSS. Moving on to the above strip itself, the series starts out as it means to go on, with some silly Sonic vs. Robotnik antics. Since this is the first one, they explain for the sake of the reader who these characters are and what they’re doing, with some leaning on the fourth wall about them knowing they’re in a comic strip. It’s a lot of dialogue crammed into a small space, but this doesn’t hinder the art from selling the situation we’re being shown. It’s worth keeping in mind that, unlike StC, which was targeted at existing Sonic fans looking for more Sonic in their young lives, SSS would probably largely be being read by an audience who might not have even heard of Sonic and are less-likely to have played his games, so I can hardly blame them for going heavy on the explanations here

While SSS obviously doesn’t have the same level of on-going stories that StC did, it does actually manage to work some short story arcs into the newspaper comic strip format. They probably knew that they couldn’t go too in-depth with it, given that much of their traction would be coming from one-off readers with no chance of looking back on the older issues, but at the same time, some parents would be tossing the comics in the Sunday magazine at their kids to read, so they could garner an on-going readership that way. Which in time, whether intentionally or not, could push those kids in the direction of StC and the yearbooks, which provided even more than the slither of Sonic they were getting here

The second strip also gives us the small animal friends, in this case Sally Acorn and Porker Lewis. Probably. I mean, it doesn’t directly say that it’s them, but given the time period, it most-likely would’ve been them. Sally is missing her pink bow here, but would appear with it in another issue soon after this

While I’m mostly just going to be covering some highlights here and not going over the series as a whole, it’s worth noting that as early as the third strip, the series starts to include an on-going story, beginning with a simple arc where Robotnik makes a series of traps for Sonic and in each issue we see how Sonic evades them. This is light enough that it can be read as stand-alones, but there’s definitely a link between each strip - at the end of this one, Robotnik says that Sonic is heading for trap number two and then in the next issue we see badniks holding up a sign saying “Trap Two”, etc.

Once they’ve found their feet with this first arc, the next one gets a little more involved, showing Robotnik building a weather machine to fight Sonic with (no sign of Windy Wallis though)

During this arc we get to see Sally with her bow (you can just make it out there, though it doesn’t seem to be coloured). Not only that, but we get one of Sonic’s catchphrases from the series, “You cheesed it!” People rightfully call StC out for its British dialogue, but SSS goes even harder with this. Though honestly, even as a British person who’s almost 40, most of the slang here I haven’t heard. Which means it could either be from before my time, not particularly used in the North East of England compared to wherever this was written, or maybe it was invented slang the writer was trying to push to make Sonic sound cooler. Maybe all three?

Regardless, it’s funny how quite often there’ll be a caption added to explain what Sonic’s slang actually means. Such as in the above strip “flail” is cited as meaning “leave” in this context. Which is… not at all what flail means to me, but oh well

“Total baffle time” is another one of these quotes that Sonic comes out with. I grew up as a council house kid: if I said “total baffle time” to the other kids on the block, then I’d have been bullied even harder lmao

The weather machine arc actually goes on for quite a while, starting on 14th November 1993 and wrapping up on 13th February 1994. For a weekly magazine strip, that feels like ages. We also get appearances from a lot of the small animal friends, including Johnny Lightfoot, Joe Sushi and what I think is the third and final appearance of Sally Acorn above here. Porker Lewis and Tux Penguin are also popped out of badniks on a later page

The next arc begins with a fake Johnny! The fake Johnny tricks Sonic into yet more traps from Robotnik, mostly involving lava. There isn’t much to say about this one, but Sonic does reprogram the fake Johnny to go against Robotnik at the end. There was no Tails at this point and in the absence of inventing their own tech genius character like a lot of the older spin-offs did, I guess it was just easier to have Sonic be able to do everything

Starting after this, Robotnik’s design would be updated from his classic games look to the AoStH version of him that was pushed in the west back then. A change that they fully acknowledge in the comic with another fourth wall lean. This issue was from 10th April 1994, which was around a similar time to when StC also updated Robotnik to the same design. It was fair to say that despite these being separate publications, they were probably following the same set of guidelines. I mean, they literally have the same artist, so I doubt it would’ve been hard for Elson to keep this consistent across both the Sonic comics he was drawing for at the time

Beyond that, this arc is focused on shrink/growth rays, with both Sonic and Robotnik falling victim to them. StC also loved doing this, although they kept those plots mostly focused around Nack the Weasel. I’m personally not super fond of them, especially when they’re used a lot like they were back in 90s kids stuff, so I’m just gonna skip through this one

This arc also ran for quite a while, starting in April, like I mentioned above, and finishing 10th July. That’s exactly three month’s worth of weekly comic strips. It’s also one of the arcs that contains a missing strip, so there’s a bit in the middle where we don’t know exactly what happened

The next arc shows Robotnik trying to make super badniks, which are basically his regular badniks, but beefed up. You’ll also notice that Robotnik is going hard on his egg puns here, which is very funny to me, because this was also something he did in early StC, but writer Nigel Kitching hated it and made a conscious effort to stamp it out, so that Robotnik would be taken more seriously as a villain. While some editors would edit egg puns into Kitching’s scripts, eventually Kitching’s determination won out and they stopped trying. I personally feel that Kitching made the right call for StC, but for these short, silly comics that feel closer to AoStH, the egg puns work. They’re fine. I have no strong feelings on them. Let the man be passionate about eggs

October 1994 would see both the start of a new arc and a new artist who’d replace Elson for the rest of the series, Sandy James. This was around the time when StC was shifting to become more specifically a Sonic comic than a catch-all comic for SEGA games and they were deep into their Sonic 3 adaptation, which Elson provided the art for. So perhaps at this time StC was a big enough commitment for him that he didn’t feel he could juggle two Sonic comics? Whatever the reason, the art we get from James is also great and consistent enough for the rest of the series. No one else can be Richard Elson, but I feel like James does well enough that I doubt I’d have noticed there was a switch if I’d been a kid occasionally picking up the odd issue of this here and there

But while StC might’ve been making strides ahead with the new Sonic games, which the comic always seemed keen to adapt, SSS was still stuck in the Sonic 1/AoStH territory of just Sonic vs. Robotnik antics. Indeed, this arc is basically more of that, with Robotnik having stolen the rings and Sonic setting out to find them. It also contains the second of the two missing comic strips, again from somewhere in the middle of the arc. So thankfully we don’t miss the conclusion where Sonic would find the missing rings

For the final arc in the series, Tails would appear at last! But with him comes the amount of page-space given to these comic strips see a reduction, perhaps as a prelude to their upcoming conclusion. But Tails is here, so let’s enjoy that while we can. You might also see there’s a note under the comic saying “Sonic the Hedgehog appears in his own fortnightly comics”, which refers to StC. This has been present for many of these comic strips, it’s just particularly noticeable on this one. So again, when kids read this and want more Sonic, they know they can go out and buy a whole comic about him, then maybe play his video games, watch his cartoons and perhaps sell their souls to him. The circle of mascot advertising continues

Anyway, there’s no actual introduction to Tails in this series. He’s here now and maybe he’s been around this whole time and just not been mentioned. Perhaps Tomlinson assumed that by this point Tails was unanimous enough with the series that anyone picking this comic strip up would probably already know of him and not question his inclusion

Then again, on the next strip we do get a very direct piece of exposition about who Tails is. Not only that, but a helpful textbox telling us that Sonic has lost his memory. This is one time where I don’t think either the art or writing made that clear enough on the previous page. We literally see Sonic getting hit by a stone pillar and then immediately skip to this page with a textbox telling us that Sonic has lost his memory. I assume Tails already figured this out, because he immediately gets to trying to help Sonic get his memory back, but I feel like this story would’ve benefited with one more strip between these two, establishing that Sonic has lost his memory and having Tails realise this

But that’s just a nitpick. This is a silly comic strip and it was approaching its conclusion at the time, so I’m not going to hum and haw about a little detail like that

When Robotnik finds out that Sonic has lost his memory, he of course moves to try to take out both Sonic & Tails, but is ultimately defeated and Sonic gets his memory back. The above strip is the last one in the series, showing Sonic vowing to become a headache for Robotnik again, while Tails cheers him on. I love the art of Tails in the last panel

The comic wrapped up on 2nd April 1995 and for anyone curious, this was around the time that StC was getting into its Sonic & Knuckles arc. So while one British Sonic comic was coming to a close, the other was hitting its stride and had many years ahead of it

I don’t know the circumstances behind why SSS concluded at this point, given that Sonic’s popularity was strong enough at the time. There is very little actual explanation around these comics and they were seen as something of an enigma even in the fandom until @sonicsundaystrips achieved them in 2016, so the best we can do is speculate. Perhaps SEGA didn’t feel they were necessary any more and that StC itself was providing enough traction to the brand in the UK. Or perhaps News of the World felt that the space would be better given to another series besides Sonic. Whatever the reason, this was it

Of course I think it’s a shame that the comic got cut before Knuckles made it in. I assume that if they had continued, we may have seen Knuckles and perhaps even Amy in time, but given how long it took them to get to even just Tails, I wouldn’t have expected that any time soon. The plot for these comic strips had to be kept so light that they’d have to come up with a way to throw in new characters that wouldn’t require much explanation

My overall thoughts are that, while I enjoyed these comics and am grateful to even be able to read through this almost forgotten piece of Sonic history enough to form an opinion on them, I'm not all that upset that we didn’t get more of them. But what makes them a bit less interesting to me is exactly what I know will make them more interesting to other people:

When I read or watch Sonic spin-offs, I’m primarily interested in the new characters that they introduce. That’s why I was so excited about Princess Alucion. A little-known echidna girl from the 90s who bites people? Sign me up! It’s the same reason why Tekno, Tangle and Sally are amongst my favourite characters. This kind of stuff is fun for me. I want to see what different characters who aren’t in the games will be added to an adaptation. I want to see all these different designs of characters from people throwing their hat in the ring to see if those characters will gel with the game cast, no matter how successful that ends up being. I applaud their efforts. That’s fun for me. It’s the enrichment in my enclosure

The Sonic Sunday Strips didn’t have any of that. And that’s exactly the reason why I know they’ll be perfect for a lot of other people, even if they’re not for me. Because one of the most common complaints I hear about almost all Sonic spin-offs is that people wish they’d focus on just the game characters and not any of their own creations. If that’s what you’re looking for, then SSS is right here and thanks to the dedicated work of both the fans and Richard Elson, it’s free for you to enjoy. It’s not that long. Heck, you could probably read the whole thing in about as much time as it took you to read this post. And in it you’ll find some fun comics about only Sonic, Robotnik and Tails based on the early games, with silliness akin to that of AoStH, but with the badniks and small animals mostly being the ones from the games instead of the wacky designs that AoStH had. This could be the perfect Sonic comic for you, even if it wasn’t for me

And honestly, I think a lot should be said for the efforts that went into making them available for us. Gonna wax lyrical for a second, but I feel like, within the Sonic fanbase, there’s sadly a lot of talk about how negative and toxic certain parts of it can be. I try to keep that kind of talk off this blog as much as possible. Though I do think that it’s right to stand up and say that harassing comic creators over stuff you don’t like is never okay. But at the same time, instead of bogging ourselves down with the bad parts of the fandom, it’s equally important to praise the wonderful things that Sonic fans can do. These comics are only available to us because of the people who went out of their way to make that so. They could’ve remained lost as disposable newspaper inserts forever. But some Sonic fans not only loved them, but wanted to give others the chance to love them as well. That’s beautiful. You don’t get that in every fandom. We should be proud sometimes of the good things we do in our community as well

…Well, I think that’s as good a place as any to sign this one off. Thanks again to the people who made me aware of these comics and then showed enough interest in my covering them on this blog until I finally got around to doing it. I’m glad to have finally read something that was so close to StC that I’d never checked out fully before

[ramalamacreatures]

HANDMADE Polymer clay Armadillo sculpture.

[ateacupdraws]

The eggs go racing

[archaeankomatiite]

Omg you love sonic the hedgehog? Could you draw Sally acorn in this pose? (Also, I Love your drawing it is so peak!)

#asks #requests

Here ya go! Sally's got the trench coat on, which is my style.

[doncastersdarlingkittengresley]

Did some holiday baking. Made cookies and shop fly pie. Why yes the cookies ARE Gordon shaped! Lol

Also, yes they r slightly different shaped. I have a FEW Gordon cookie cutters. Because of course I do.

[thesuperzzero]

Why of all things did he describe Sonic as 'cute'? Does he think Sonic is 'cute'?

[fleetwaylass]

[cubewatermelon]

the old Sonic cartoons keep coming up on strem so uh here have an og cartoon Bunnie Rabbot happy easter???

[rosemine24]

Sonictober! :)

day 18: fav!

[greliz]

It's Carrot's birthday so naturally I drew her partying with her Best Friends

[fuc370]

Tekno the canary fanart

Here is a fanart, made with gouache paint of Tekno, which I based on an artwork by Belle the tinkerer made by Evan Stanley

I ended up not saving it, so it's not here, but when I find it I'll put it here.

[archaeankomatiite]

This is awesome, mate. Tekno looks badass, and I believe she's riding one of the Niceniks, which is a cool touch.

[fuc370]

Tekno the canary fanart

Here is a fanart, made with gouache paint of Tekno, which I based on an artwork by Belle the tinkerer made by Evan Stanley

I ended up not saving it, so it's not here, but when I find it I'll put it here.

[bad-comic-art]

The UK's Sonic the Comic has some of the best art to ever hit official sonic media but in the early years they'd have artists who didnt have the best grasp on sonic style characters

The Tails solo stories are the best example. Why do they look like that

submitted by @aranaehere

[fyeahsonicthehedgehog]

[pretzsq]

finished the chaotix files

[isbergillustration]

Prideful Awooing

[milolunde]

Bunny body hating herself because she believes shes 'ugly' because shes half a body having no arm and no legs but antonie and Sally are helping her drink her love yourself juice sonic the neighbor block throwing kid gives her a flower and we all love bunny while she feels v appreciated she cries and Sally at first gets mad at sonic until she explains they are tears of joy

Friendship forged between sonic antonie Sally and bunny bond upgraded

I don’t think I really stuck to the request exactly, but I do want I want.

Next (because of the image limit)