Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Classic Sonic comics online for all to read!

Some recent developments in the Sonic fan community have lead to some rather brilliant content involving old Sonic comics. First off we have a website dedicated to bringing us translated scans of the rare Sonic Manga series that kicked off to advertise the first game and went on to feature lots of odd characters including early versions of Amy Rose and Charmy Bee, or all things.
A new page is being uploaded every day and while the translation can sometimes leave a bit to be desired (Did those badniks really just tell Sonic to f*ck off? MegaDora, really?), just the fact that someone has gone to the effort to hunt down these much sought after old Japanese comics and probably pay big money for them, and rather than keeping them to his greedy little self has scanned them for all to see with a translation too, is a rather honorable feat.The art in the comic is nice, and there are many things in it that originate from early Sonic concepts that got axed from the game, like the band of animals and the fact Sonic has fangs in some drawings amongst other things.


Next up is an even newer website that has popped up to give us a weekly dose of Sonic the Comic, the UK published series that was going from 1993 to 2001. You guys already know about my love for this comic seeing as i grew up with it, and there has been scans available online in the past of just about every issue (and fans have been keeping the comic going with the Online continuation), but this is a much more convenient way of just checking out the issues without having to download a torrent or something. An issue will be posted on the website every week and only one issue is up so far but especially if you have never read this comic before you should defiantly keep an eye on it every week.

What made Sonic the Comic so excellent in it's first few years was that it not only had stories about Sonic (which to be honest take about 10 issues to really get any good), but also stories about many other Sega games such as Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Ecco and many, many more. Each issue also had news, previews, reviews and cheats for the latest Sega games at the time, so it was like a fortnightly mini-magazine as well. So make sure you check these two websites out on a regular basis if you want some Sonic and Sega comic strip goodness outside of the only still-running series that is the American Archie series.