Okay, it’s time for the main event here. Poster Mags 1 and 2 were just promotional material and the like, but #3 has a new Sonic strip.
Honestly, I forgot what the strip in this one was even about. I was looking forward to reading it to see if it was a forgotten gem from the comic's early years, and uh
Oh no no no no noooo it’s this one
Yeah, so this is an explicit racial caricature in a Sonic comic for little kids. Like, there’s no excusing or defending it, it’s about as in your face as you can get
And very sadly, it was the work of Nigel Kitching and Mike Hadley. I don’t know if Hadley was solely responsible for the appearance of this guy, or if Kitching had any input, but does it even matter? If you read the story, it’s clear Kitching wrote the character as a black stereotype, so it was already pretty bad before Hadley even put his pen on the paper. I’ve never heard Kitching discuss this strip anywhere, and I really hope it’s because he’s ashamed of it. It’s undoubtedly the worst thing he’s ever contributed to STC, and probably the worst thing he’s ever done. I almost wish I forgot about this one entirely because this is the only real blemish I can think of on Kitching’s reputation. And it goes without saying, but Mike Hadley should have known better to have drawn this rubbish.
Should we even discuss the plot of this one? No, I’m not going to. I’ll leave a link to the Grabber Zone scans if you want to tear it apart yourself, but I’m not bothering. I’m going to save you the five or six posts I could make going “oh isn’t this wacky, those boomers amirite?”, because it doesn’t even deserve that, and I’m not going to further exploit some racist nonsense to fish for likes or reblogs. Fuck that.
The Rodgriguez art on the back is nice, but that’s it for Poster Mag #3. The sooner this thing is out of my sight, the better.
Tomorrow we’ll be back to normal and covering Issue 21.
