I am fairly certain some of the writers for Archie Sonic had to have been in drugs. They had to have been to come up with some of the batshit crazy storylines they came up with.
Drug use is kind of a lazy explanation for bizarre creative decisions, in my opinion. People have plenty of reasons (not necessarily good, mind you) for why they do the things they do. Sometimes they're also just naturally odd. My own stuff used to be pretty surreal until I gave up and stopped making anything, but I've never used drugs or had any desire to. According to Frank Oz, Jim Henson was also naturally peculiar with his creative ideas but never used drugs.
From what I've gathered, it seems Penders had his own weird daddy issues he was working with as well as being bitter about working on something as silly as Sonic and wanting it to be cool and edgy like the James Bond stories he liked to read. Again, not good reasons for going so insane in a family comic, but there you have it. Peoples is peoples.