#sth 80

[fyeahsonicthehedgehog]

what do you wish we got to see more of in archie?

Knuckles calling out his dad and the grandpa brigade.

[thankskenpenders]

They took his frog... now, Big’s gonna take their lives

[fyeahsonicthehedgehog]

[thankskenpenders]

Yep. After the cliffhanger in the previous issue, here we are. The part everyone remembers from Archie’s Sonic Adventure adaptation, which would have unfortunate implications for years to come

To explain the difference in age and appearance between Classic Amy and Modern Amy, Bollers had Amy use the Ring of Acorns to wish she was older

The obvious impact on the current storyline is that, uh, Elias and Sally kind of needed that supercharged ring to heal their comatose mother who might only have like a week left to live. While an observant reader will notice that they already hinted that the Super Emerald might also be able to heal the Queen, this is still really rough, and also incredibly unfair to Amy. The first thing Amy did as a part of the main cast was something incredibly selfish and childish that caused great pain to Elias and Sally

This made it very, very difficult for Archie fans to see Amy as anything other than the stupid new kid who cheated her way onto the team and messed things up for YEARS. Seriously, a lot of old school Archie fans (especially Sonally fans) just HATED Amy. And that sucks, because Amy’s great in Adventure! Some stories would paint her as a ditz later on, but in Adventure she’s brave, compassionate, and more emotionally mature than people give her credit for. Really, Amy represents the moral compass of the Adventure games. There’s a reason why she was the one who convinced Gamma and Shadow to become heroes! It’s a shame that so many fans were unable to see this for so long due to poor writing choices like this

But let’s also get into the weeds with her transformation here, because it gets weird. For one thing, they’ll later establish that Amy DIDN’T wish she was her canonical age in Adventure (12). She wished she was the same age as Sonic! So that would currently make her 16! Or rather, as they point out... a 10-year-old in the body of a 16-year-old. Good lord. Eventually they kind of stopped bringing up this fact about her and quietly retconned this, implying that she had grown up a lot and “mentally aged” or something. So in the later Archie comics, she’s functionally just the same age as Sonic. But before then, we’re gonna get a lot of comics where she’s still treated like a little kid

And then eventually, Sega’s gonna start pushing for SonAmy content in the comics, and... yeah..............

I won’t give Bollers too much grief for the age thing, I guess. Archie had really written themselves into a corner by consistently depicting Amy as a little kid like in the classic games, and then they had to age her up for Adventure. Honestly, I doubt he was even thinking of the implications this physical/mental age disparity would have on shipping, because for the longest time Amy’s affection for Sonic was treated as nothing more than an unrequited crush

Overall, it’s. Yeah. It’s unfortunate that Amy’s depiction in the Archie comics was so rocky for so very long

[thankskenpenders]

Big is so cute on this cover...

[thankskenpenders]

Immediately after we find out that Amy wasted the Ring of Acorns on a makeover, we get this scene with Sally and her mom to really twist the knife

[thankskenpenders]

Surprise! The “Hidden City of the Ancients” has nothing to do with the Mystic Ruins. It is, in fact... Station Square!

Yes, in the Archie comics, Station Square isn’t just any old city. It’s a hidden underground city, where some humans managed to ride out the apocalypse that wiped out the rest of their kind thousands of years ago. (It’s also located under a mountain that looks exactly like Sonic’s home in the OVA, just for fun)

Now, this might seem a little needlessly complicated at first glance. Why did they need to make this human city a secret This might have been necessary in SatAM or something, but there were already Overlander societies on Archie Mobius, and those guys are just slightly mutated humans with four fingers. Isn’t that close enough? But actually, the citizens of Station Square being a separate faction from the Overlanders makes a lot of sense, considering, you know... the Overlanders have been at war with the Mobians for generations. Sonic and friends would have a hard time running around in the open in an Overlander city

[thankskenpenders]

Locke’s mad because he knows Knuckles is right. They’ve been treating Robotnik like someone else’s problem for years and it’s repeatedly bitten them in the ass