Hey so, I tried to get into the comics a year or two ago, but I was really sluggish about it. In the time it took me to get through a few Archives books and a couple of miniseries, the comic imploded. Penders sued, the cast was gutted, a barely-counts-as-a reboot happened, a prequel to the reboot got cancelled, then the reboot got cancelled and the series moved. Uhh?? Someone told me to skip the early stuff and just read from Flynn onward. Some say start with the reboot. What do you think?
That’s a very good question. There are actually a number of jumping on points that you can consider depending on how much of the series history you want to try and absorb.
There’s definitely Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog (ASH) issue #252 and Archie’s Sonic Universe (ASU) issue #55 that bring you into the series after the Genesis Wave event. Thankfully Sega didn’t pull the plug until just after Ian finished the huge Sonic Unleashed adaptation so that can almost be considered the only important arc of the whole series.
The next most recent that makes sense to me is issue #160. That’s when Ian started and when almost all the old writing staff got the boot. Not surprisingly, that also meant a major tone shift for the comics, pushing almost endless action where before there was maudlin drama and way too much politics. And then you can also pick up the beginning of ASU that would start a couple years later.
Going further back, you could try starting at #130. That was the beginning of a one year timeskip that was also meant as a softer reboot and radically changed the politics and many characters within the book to try and create intrigue, though it mostly fell flat. It’s also significant, at least for me, because it was the developments of and fallout from that decision to radically change the series that finally pushed us to start Power Rings.
Further back still is issue #72 where the first steps into Sonic’s modern incarnation started in a story that was touted as the return of Dr Robotnik. From there, all the characters got their Sonic Adventure design updates and book started its shift into a heavy emphasis on character drama and political issues.
Before that I would say issue #36 is another good place to start as the continuity, the lore, the characters that every fan either loves or hates with nothing in between started to take shape here. This is when the series started publishing several miniseries, the Sonic Super Specials, the short lived Knuckles series and the book actually did start to feel like an adventure series rather than a gag series with no real narrative.
And then, of course, there’s always issue #1. The flat jokes, the bad puns, the colouring errors, the multiple disjointed stories crammed into every issue that made it feel more like an adaptation of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog than ABC’s Sonic the Hedgehog. But it was still the beginning of everything else that followed.
Actually, that’s not a bad way to read the series if you wanted to read everything. Large chunks in reverse chronological order. That way you could have the future stories in mind when you start to pick up the introductions of everyone. Then you can judge for yourself if the book got better or worse over time. Or just stick to post Genesis Wave stuff. There’s no wrong way to be a fan.
