2016 is Sonic the Hedgehog’s 25th
Anniversary and I’ve been around since (almost) the start, in celebration of
Sonic lasting so long I’m going to be posting a Long Look At Sonic the Comic
issues 1 to 100, my favourite time period on one of my favourite comics and one
of my favourite things about one of my favourite things – that’d be the Sonic
the Hedgehog franchise- and this is that Long Look At.
Right, I was going to do
the Sonic 3 adaptation story-arc next, but I reconsidered and decided to do the
odds and ends instead because a) I realised I’d forgotten to do a strip b)
Pirate STC ends pretty much as that adaptation starts so it wouldn’t make much
sense to do it later c) If I keep putting off reviewing Pirate STC I’ll never
do it and d) Sonic Poster Mags.
We’ll start with what I
forgot: I realised when writing the BARF strip, the second Sonic’s World strip,
that I’d forgotten to do the first
Sonic’s World strip, which is just called Sonic’s World with no story
title.
Sonic’s World (Sonic’s World strip, issues 25-27)
I don’t know why I forgot
about this, I‘m going to say it was because of the Sonic Terminator but it
could also be because it isn’t really a story, it’s sort of a recap. Quick Summary: part 1 introduces us to
Mobius (which is 117, 63222 light years from Earth), introduces us to its
landscape, once again says that South Island is home to the Emerald Hill Zone
in this reality, introduces us to Sonic and Dr Robotnik and it also explains
about the Miracle Planet wherein Mike Hadley draws the Time Stones correctly,
then draws the Chaos Emeralds wrong, the mysterious narrator is revealed to be
the Kintobor Computer. Part two is more of a story, Kintobor recaps what
happened between Eggman’s transformation and the events of Sonic the Hedgehog
1, we see Porker Lewis discovering the Kintobor Computer – who is stored on a
Mobius ring, and the arrival of the Badniks in the Green Hill Zone, before a
very nice montage of the levels of Sonic 1. In Part 3 the birth of Super Sonic
leads to Sonic meeting and saving Tails, before Mike Hadley draws the Death Egg
Robot and I squee. That’s about it.
I don’t dislike the strip,
in fact I think it’s quite nice, it’s just Kitching doing some world building
really, but as the comic began (in its timeline) between Sonic 2 and Sonic CD
it’s nice that some time and pages was put into making up for that and showing
the events of Sonic 1 & 2 rather than just referring to them and assuming
you’d played the games all the way through to know all of what happened. The
same goes for the birth of Super Sonic, when we meet him in ‘Super Sonic’ he
can already transform, it’s not new to Tails, so seeing the events of the actual
first transformation makes up for it just being thrown at you the first time
out of nowhere, which it was, even if that story rocked. It also gives us a
good look at Kintobor’s personality for the first time and that’s pretty nice
in itself, showing us what a nice bloke Eggman was before he transformed just
adds an additional piece of tragedy to the monster he’s become. If someone ever
reprinted STC (yeah like that’ll happen) this should be the first strip in the
first volume. I am surprised that Hadley got the art job though, if you haven’t
noticed I like Hadley’s art, quite a bit, but with a project like this you’d’ve
thought Elson would have gotten the gig, maybe because he was drawing the Sonic
strip at the time? But these strips aren’t very long, even drawing both
wouldn’t equal one monthly 22 page American comic.
The Kid Cruel Caper (Sonic the Poster Mag issue 3)
StC had a short spin-off in
the form of Sonic the Poster Mag, Poster Magazines were a big thing once over
here, lots of franchises had them (I had Gladiators ones, for instance) they’re
a large poster folded so it looks like a magazine, one side has the poster, the
other has articles and in some cases, a short comic strip. The first two Sonic
Poster Mags didn’t have a strip, but the first issue did include the shots of
the ‘infamous’ (in certain Sonic circles anyway) Mystery Cartoon:
I was fascinated by these
as a child btw, I drew Sally in this style from this issue coming out until I
started getting into the Archie comics heavier and had some
physical reference for how to draw her SatAM look, a good few years later. Anyway Issue 3 was the first
Poster mag to have a strip and its… racist. Quick
Summary: Walking, talking (possibly unintentional?) racial stereotype Kid Cruel
is taking kids and making them into Coconuts (which are actually Monkey Brains)
so Sonic’s called in. He tracks down the racial stereotype who has turned the
Coconuts into suicide bombers by strapping dynamite to them, Sonic grabs all
the TNT off them at super speed but is too slow to stop them exploding, he
appears to blow up. BUT THEN in a complete Crowning Moment of Awesome he jumps
Kid Cruel, still on fire, and kicks his arse, leaving him for the Eggman ship
that was coming to get Sonic and co.
Yeah, Kid Cruel is
just…just…you know what, have this picture:
I very much doubt Mike Hadley
is a racist or meant to draw him to look like something out of a 1940s Captain
Marvel comic but…how could he not know? How could no one look at this and go…”wow
that’s not on”? How? Also (and far more importantly, obviously) Hadley draws
the wrong bloody Badnik again, this time drawing Monkey Brains instead of
Coconuts, still at least they look something similar, unlike Buzzbombers
(flying wasps) and Motobugs (non-flying lady bugs). So other than that one
moment of awesome, this story should be really avoided, and I’ve posted that
awesome moment here, so you can avoid this. Oh, yeah, this issue was published
between issues 20 and 21, meaning it takes place after Hill Top Terror, which
is forgettable, while this just should be forgotten, forever.
Ocean of Horror (Sonic the Poster Mag issue 5)
The forgotten Super Sonic
story! (Issue 4 had a Shinobi story, not a Sonic story, btw.) Quick Summary: Sonic and Tails return to the
Oil Ocean Zone to stop The Pump, a huge oil pump, but it’s just a set-up,
Eggman has installed a Super-Bomb in the zone with a 30 second count down, and
it’s been activated, with time running out Sonic actually isn’t fast enough to
search every nook and cranny and the stress turns him to Super Sonic, who stops
the bomb.
A straight-up sequel to
‘Super Sonic’ and Elson’s on art for it in a rare team-up with Lew Stringer. The
Chaos Demon returns to the Oil Ocean and Stringer actually concocts an
appropriate sized menace – a bomb may not sound too special, even when it’s
called a Super-Bomb (it’s also egg-shaped, which is wonderful), but a bomb in
the Oil Ocean Zone, a Zone filled with so much flammable oil that it actually
makes up a land-locked sea? Imagine a huge bomb setting fire to that. Super
Sonic does something straight-up heroic this time out, I was a little iffy when
I re-read that but Super Sonic usually does finish up whatever Sonic was doing
before his transformation, it’s afterwards he smashes anything he can find, and
as Sonic was trying to find a bomb and smash a bomb, it makes sense that Super
Sonic would do that, and it involves smashing, Super Sonic likes smashing.
Pirate S.T.C. (stand-alone strip, issues 28-33)
Oh god, I’ve put it off
long enough, time to do Pirate STC. When I decided to do these Look Ats I
decided I’d do both Megadroid strips and the Pirate STC Strip because although
they weren’t Sonic’s world strips, they were ‘STC originals’ and thus closer to
them than the Sega Superstars strips that made up the rest of the content in
the series (which I’m not doing). Actually Pirate STC is kind of based on
something, two characters – Fez Head and Skull - are based on some telly
adverts that were running at the time but I still felt it ‘counted’. The
Megadroid strips are harmless; Pirate STC may actually be dangerous to your
health. It’s a…surreal parody of video game and TV advertising tropes by
Stephen Bliss, know him? No, how about I tell you that he’s the senior artist
for Rockstar Games now and is the bloke who’s drawn all those famous Grand
Theft Auto covers, the ones with all the panels? Yeah, those. He drew those.
But this was a long time ago and everything he draws here looks like it’s being
squeezed out of a toothpaste tube (or perhaps, a bubble bath container). Ok,
let’s go, I’m so sorry:
Quick(ish) Recap: Skull, a liquid metal skull who lives
in cyberspace eats some TV viewers during a… Poodle Noodle commercial. He then
communes with his creator Fez Head who tells him to bring the chosen ones, the
most worthless, lazy, stupid Couch Potatoes he can find, because…satire? So he
goes and eats some more people via their TV set, this time teens (I think?)
Sackhead, Flame, Bob and Grrr (who’s a girl) and Dog, who’s a talking chicken
because of course he is. Once inside Cyberspace inside a TV they’re sent inside
a Mega Drive (get all that?) once inside they hit some cute animals who they
turn into bubble bath containers (when struck they metamorphose), some obvious
knock offs of Blanka and M. Bison think they’re there for a tournament but
Granee 8 Ball arrives, a giant geriatric who drinks bubble bath – and the M.
Bison-knock-off talks really strange, a comment on bad dialogue in video games?
Racism? Whatever. Grr, Bob and Dog deal with Granee, who also spits 8-balls
when she drinks bubble bath because… I don’t know, they get her to slip on
Bubble Bath and she cracks her head on a giant egg. Sack Head and Flame Boy
meanwhile are part of this fighting game tournament and Fez Head (who’s
‘playing’ them via the Mega Drive they’re inside) upgrades them with, amongst
other things, a Space Hopper, some chips (fries) and some y-fronts. All of this
is interspersed with ‘satirical’ adverts for a cardboard box and a metal band.
 |
| Sackhead, Bob, Flame, Grrr, Dog, Stupidity |
Two fucking paragraphs!
Two! On that shit! I’m sure Bliss thought he was writing some great indie comic
piece of satire there but…it makes no fucking sense. Maybe that’s the point, or
maybe I just don’t get it, maybe a giant old person who drinks bubble bath,
spits 8-balls and turns into pigs when hit with a space hopper is actually a
biting comment on…something and I was too young to realise it when it was
published and the meaning is now lost to time or maybe it’s just a series of
‘ran-dumb’ things that the bloke who draws the GTA covers thought was funny.
Actually it can’t be that I don’t get it, because I do understand what a lot of
the things are parodying (because they’re obvious as fuck) they’re just not
funny and often completely nonsensical and come at points completely
inappropriate to the narrative, and even if Bliss was a comedy genius (he’s
not, which I guess is why he works at Rockstar) the story isn’t very
interesting, the characters are unlikable and it makes no fucking sense. I think the ending is a jab at happy
endings?
I was all geared up to
write a big long rant about this but after re-reading it (I haven’t read it in
years for the very reason that it makes my head want to explode) but I’m just
so… exhausted by reading it, it’s like Bliss put me, a bunch of cliché anti-commercialism
statements, a crap Sunsoft video game and huge kaleidoscope in a tumble dryer
and spun us all ‘round while throwing Ren & Stimpy cartoons, Y-fronts and
ice cream at me. Sorry did that make no sense? Was it unfunny? Now you know what
it was like reading Pirate fucking STC!!
Anyway next time we’ll have Knuckles and good stories, promise.
Part 6 >
*
there’s a type of soft ice cream sold in the UK called Mr Whippy, hence the
play on words: ‘whippersnapper’ and ‘whippy’
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