These are the first panels of Kitchingâs pages for the comic, but this is obviously not the first page of the comic, so letâs get the lay of the land before I dive into this:
Sonicâs 900th Adventure was a collaboration between many different creators whoâve worked on the series over the decades. Itâs specific that it counted all of Sonicâs English language adventures to reach the 900th mark, so stuff like the French Sonic Adventures or the various Sonic manga didnât count for this total, but they acknowledge at the start that they were only basing this on the English language comics. For me, those are the ones Iâm most familiar with, so this is hardly a problem
The premise of the comic is that while Sonic & Tails are reminiscing together about how many adventures theyâve been on (Tails is the nerd who counts them up to 899, I love the âdonât think too hard about itâ nod to everything being canon lol), the Warp Topaz appears out of thin air, still super-charged from the last time that Sonic used it and ended up in another dimension (and briefly without his memories). For those of you who donât follow IDW Sonic (itâs great by the way, would highly recommend it), the Warp Topaz is a gem that was used for a time by a villain called Dr. Starline - itâs a crystal with the power to warp. The point of this story is that itâs highly unstable and Sonic needs to deal with this by playing a game of hot potato with it across space with various of his friends, before he can put it back where Starline originally found it and hopefully neutralise it
After the introduction with Sonic & Tails, which was written by Ian Flynn, we jump to Sonicâs first zone-hopping location, where he teams up with Amy, for a section of the story written by Evan Stanley. When youâre reading through this comic, each writer is teamed up with different artists, so itâs easy to keep track of whoâs writing what as the art styles hop around a bit
All of this comic is enjoyable and Iâm obviously not diminishing anyone elseâs work on it, but for the sake of this post, Iâm only going to be covering Kitchingâs scene in any sort of detail. There are two reasons for this, the first being that I wanted to cover anything âStC adjacentâ for this blog and that includes other Sonic work that StC writers or artists did. And the second, bigger, reason being that Iâm just not sure if itâd be okay to post a large amount of images for the currently published Sonic comic the way that I do for all these old 90s comics that SEGA doesnât acknowledge any more. No one who worked on StC, Archie Sonic or La Sirène Sonic is getting paid for those comics any more (sadly), but people are getting paid to work on IDW Sonic and I want that to keep being the case. So while Iâm probably splitting hairs here, this is where I draw my line in the sand. My hope is that just including a few images from the five pages of the comic that Kitching wrote will be okay. Because I like this comic and wouldnât want to skip it entirely
All that aside, in the comic itself, when Sonic parts ways with Amy, he meets up with Knuckles, which brings us to Kitchingâs part of the story. The art for this section was provided by Mauro Fonseca for pencils, Rik Mack for inks and Reggie Graham for colours. You can check out this cool and interesting post here from Fonseca talking about how the art team worked to capture the feel of StC for this part of the comic. The post talks about studying Elsonâs art and translating it to modern Sonic, paying attention to how StC was coloured and the sorts of location designs it used, ending with a mention of another StC panel that was recreated as a homage in IDW Sonic and a note about how wonderful Kitching was to work with. I just love to see this level of dedication and respect between art teams and feel that it really shines through here
Anyway, thatâs a lot of talk to get to the events at hand, where we see in the panel at the top of this post that Knuckles has turned up to help Sonic on his quest. Sonic canât hold onto the Warp Topaz for too long without it affecting him, so he needs to pass it to his various friends to get a break from it before moving onto the next location
But Knuckles doesnât make it in time to take the Warp Topaz, seeing Sonic teleport away faster than the SEGA mandates can stop any of those beloved SonKnux flirty rival moments that used to be in Kitchingâs StC stories from happening. Now that would be an entirely different kind of man date. Get it? Man. Date. âŚIâll show myself out
Sonic is instead teleported to a lab, where heâs found by Metal Sonic, who immediately tries to take the Warp Topaz off him. You can see from the heavy dark shading and the vibe of the lab that this is very StC and Fonseca talks about this part specifically in the post Iâve linked aboveÂ
I do wonder if Kitching chose to write about Knuckles and Metal Sonic or if these characters were given to him to work with on the basis of his Metallix stories being one of the better known of his StC work. Indeed, Ian Flynn has mentioned a few times on the Bumblekast in years gone by that Brotherhood of Metallix is his favourite arc in StC (just donât ask me to link it - Iâm a regular Bumblekast listener, but there are hundreds of those eps. I swear he brings it up sometimes)
Metal Sonic grabs the Warp Topaz and Sonic appeals to him to give it back, saying that the risk it poses is bigger than all of them
After a pause for effect, Metal Sonic responds in about the way youâd expect, evoking another glorious StC tradition of Sonic being knocked around
After this, Sonic reveals that heâs only been pretending to be down and out, when the truth is that he knew Metal Sonic was more likely to grab the Warp Topaz if Sonic acted like he didnât want Metal Sonic to have it. This has given Sonic the chance that he needed to recover, so he can now safely handle the Warp Topaz for a little while himself again
But Metal Sonic is no fool and uses the Warp Topaz to, well, warp. Sonic only just manages to get there in time to go along as well
Back to Knuckles! And with the good news that Tails has narrowed down the location that Sonic needs to get the Warp Topaz to as well
Metal Sonic looks pretty beat up now and Sonic just sort of sends him on his way, which is very funny to me. But more importantly, this means that we do get the olâ StC-style SonKnux teasing after all! Iâm so glad that it survived after all these years, like a beacon in the night. Sonic will always tease Knuckles ;A;
Kitchingâs section of the story ends with Tails telling Sonic off for making Knuckles worry and Sonic saying that he will tell Knuckles the truth⌠eventually! His wink at the audience is actually another intentional reference to an StC panel from Elson that Fonseca added. Hereâs the original:
âŚAnd with that comes the end of Kitchingâs most recent contribution to the Sonic franchise. It seems wrong to not give a quick run-down of what happened in the rest of the comic after this. So Iâll add here that after leaving Knuckles, Sonic next gets warped to where Eggman, Orbot and Cubot are waiting in a giant mech that I assume is a homage to the Sonic OVA maybe, which was written by Daniel Barnes. After dealing with them, the next duo that Sonic meets is Blaze & Cream, in a section written by Aaron Hammerstrom. This part makes me so happy, because I love Sonic Rush and Blaze & Cream are one of my favourite duos in the series, even if they donât get teamed up together much any more. The Warp Topaz is getting more unstable at this point and rapidly warps the three of them to many different locations, before Sonic feels like heâs starting to get a handle on it and again moves on. This leads us to Caleb Goellnerâs section of the story, which gives the Babylon Rogues, Rouge and Shadow a look-in. They all unsuccessfully try to take the Warp Topaz off Sonic for keeps, before he evades them and heads on his way
The story ends with another section by Ian Flynn, where Sonic finally finds the cave where the Warp Topaz was taken from and returns it to its rightful home, the exact location of which he discovers due to Starline having left some Eggman fanboy graffiti. Sonic is then able to escape before a cave-in that should prevent the Warp Topaz from falling into the wrong hands again, unless a future story requires it to come back. Now that theyâre in the clear, Sonic asks Tails to thank everyone whoâs helped them today, before cheerfully running off into the night. A closing caption thanks the audience for sticking with them through the various Sonic comics as well. Makes me wonder if weâll get a Sonicâs 1,000th Adventure comic someday?
Anyway, that about wraps it up. The next comic being advertised at the end of this one was IDW Sonic #65. Itâs wild to think that weâre getting closer to IDW Sonic #100 at time of posting!
I think Iâve already said about everything that I wanted to say about this one: I enjoyed the ride and all the contributions made by the massive team to this book and Iâm especially grateful to get to see Kitching & Elson make a comeback, with both of their own styles coming through in both the cover and the writing that they did. Iâd like to think that maybe we could see work from both of them or even other StC creators back in Sonic again in future, but even if not, itâs wonderful that we got to see this much after over two decades without them
Now, even though this is chronologically the last contribution that any StC creators have made to the Sonic franchise, itâs not actually the final comic that Iâll be covering for this blog. There are two more Sonic comics that Kitching made with a direct connection to StC that I havenât covered before now, because they felt like an appropriate way to round out my StC coverage. So join me again next time, when I look at the two stories that Kitching wrote for StC-O, which while released as fan-comics, absolutely stick within the framework of his canon StC stories and feel like direct continuations on his own terms. The first gives Sonic (and the readers) some long-needed closure on Johnnyâs death, while the second is set many years later and shows how Kitching wouldâve ended StC if heâd been able to do that the way he wanted. Also, my favourite ship gets canonised. I mean⌠I guess itâs not technically canonised, since it happened in a fan-comic, but even so, I take my wins where I can get them
stormborns
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
blakekathryn
germansingergirl
prguitarman
