#stc issue 65

[samobservessonic]

One thing I think is neat in StC that I keep forgetting to say is that in their fan art section, Graphics Zone, they have a theme in most issues and all the fan art will be focused on that theme. This time it’s characters on motorbikes and I’m sharing this one of Amy because she looks adorable on her badass StC bike

[samobservessonic]

New Knuckles story and I’m over the moon because Nigel Dobbyn has finally joined us in the main comic as an artist! Look at how pretty this looks! With Kitching on the writing that means we’ve got a double Nigel comic

Yeah, I’m going to count “I’m shattered!” as another coin the in British jar

Knuckles heads off to Megopolis to check out the disturbance, which he equally thinks could be dust in the system, but wants to be safe. Also, they bring up Knuckles’s people coming back more than I remember them doing. I always thought they just said that when Knuckles was introduced and then dropped it until the Sonic Adventure arc, but I guess not

Future robot friend! I really like the design of these robots. I know I’ve said before that a lot of the non-game robot designs were misses for me, but these ones really do look great

Still, for the moment they are not friends

“Masonry can’t speak!” really tickled me for some reason. But more importantly, from the look of that fist, we’ve got a bigger matter to focus on right now…

…It’s Dr. Zachary!

If you don’t know of him, then you probably will know of how the echoes of his character influenced the franchise. It’s speculated that he may have been the inspiration for the Archie Sonic character Dr. Finitevus, who in turn was possibly the inspiration for the Sonic Chronicles character Imperator Ix. And while he’s based on an entirely different egg-laying Australian mammal, it’s possible that IDW Sonic’s Dr. Starline was inspired by a soup of all of the above characters. So there you have it! A lot of stuff in different parts of the Sonic franchise have (admittedly unconfirmed) origins that could stem back to this one echidna guy There’s also something on the wiki about how he might be associated with the Wechnia glitch, which I don’t really know enough about to comment on. I always just thought he was coloured white to show he was an older echidna, along with that face scruff. And I’m not sure if Kitching knew about the Wechnia glitch? There’s probably a lot of folks out there more knowledgeable on that than me tho But who exactly is Dr. Zachary? He’s only just turned up, after all. Given that all those other characters I’ve mentioned who might’ve been inspired by him are villains, you can probably guess how this is going to go. Regardless, we’ll get back to these two next issue

[samobservessonic]

From now on I’m gonna start all my bad new with “A sad day on Planet Mobius”

Tensions continue to rise between Brutus and Robotnik. By now, I’m just waiting for the two of them to reach boiling point and see how that fallout goes

Brutus really does continue to be like Robotnik in every way

I normally point out when a Sonic character has been given a gun in these comics, but Amy always has a crossbow anyway, so it feels less funny in this example. She’d easily have the best aim out of all of them all, since she’s Aim-y

And off they go, in their bid for freedom!

So much for that option

I’d love to know what Amy’s response to that remark was going to be

The bridge is out and under normal circumstances, that’d probably grant our guys the win for this adventure

But Brutus can fly. So much for that

The stress of their situation, combined with not being free to spin-dash around without hurting Amy and Johnny, gets to Sonic. With the last straw being Brutus deciding to ignore Robotnik’s orders and just kill him. You know what happens when StC Sonic gets stressed…

Oh yes, you know…

It’s Super Sonic time!

I was about to make a comment that I realised was very “modern Sonic fan” and now I’m going to analyse that. Because while I’m always happy to see StC Super and it has been a while since he last appeared, my knee jerk reaction was “Is Brutus really enough to warrant Super Sonic?” And that question really does come from the perspective of a modern Sonic fan, where from Sonic Adventure onwards, Super Sonic is mostly just trotted out at the end of a game to fight some world-ending kaiju. Brutus is clearly a big threat, but he’s no Biolizard or Perfect Chaos But the thing is, back then he didn’t need to be. In all the games of the time that featured Super Sonic, he was mostly a reward for collecting the emeralds that you can use at any point in the game, so long as you had 50 rings. While he did have the final battle in S3&K, that probably wasn’t what most fans at the time thought was the main point of Super Sonic

With this in mind, StC’s use of him is actually a lot more reserved than it could’ve been. I think it’s pretty common knowledge that Kitching didn’t see the point of Sonic becoming even more powerful when he’s already the fastest thing alive, so that’s why he decided that turning Super Sonic into Sonic’s own worst enemy was more interesting and, since the team was working together a lot more collaboratively than the Archie Sonic writers of the time, this would carry over into all the other stories, like this Stringer story here. I think this mindset might’ve been what helped stop StC from using Super Sonic too much, since you have to come up with a whole situation for Sonic getting stressed enough to bring him about and most situations Sonic can handle without that happening

So while I still don’t think Brutus is the most amazing StC villain ever or anything, he really has put Sonic in a situation where it came to Super Sonic coming about

Thank you for listening to this pointless debate I had with myself in my head

[samobservessonic]

Rejoining Shortfuse & Tekno, the duo have about four minutes to escape from Metamorphia and get out of here. Which is the runtime of part 3 itself

Most of this issue is a big fight scene between Shortfuse & Metamorphia, with the panelling making it not the easiest to crop. So I’m just going to post the ending of the fight, where Metamorphia grabs Tekno just as the timer runs out

We end on the explosion, with Shortfuse dramatically narrating his own downfall in his head. I wish I’d had more to say about this one, since Tekno is my favourite character in StC, but I’ve been quite transparent before that I generally don’t have much to say about fight scenes. And I feel like I had a lot to say about the other stories in this issue, so I hope that makes up for it?

[samobservessonic]

Wait, I have to know what this award in recognition of standards of excellence in Sonic merchandise is. Is that just a thing SEGA gave out? I mean, StC did give away loads of cool free gifts that are directly related to Sonic It was definitely more the norm to give away free gifts with comics back then - there’s a whole bigger discussion about the difference in the comic market in the UK and the US that I’m not gonna get into right now and “kids are more likely to buy a comic if it has stickers with Sonic’s face on free with it” is part of that. But what I am saying is: I wish IDW Sonic gave me free stickers with their issues, dudes. Genuinely, I’d love to have some stickers of Tangle, Surge and everyone else

[samobservessonic]

There’s a new Knuckles story in this issue and so he gets the cover spotlight. Not only that, but we get to see the first appearance of the Guardian Robots on this cover! Even as a kid, I remember finding these robots cool, so I’m glad they’re appearing There’s also another big StC character appearing in the Knuckles story, but we’ll get to him