Sonic Adventure 2 Era Fan Comic - "Chao Fan World"

Digging through my old image files, I came across these remnants of Sonic fandom past: my old Sonic Adventure 2 chao fan comic "Chao Fan World". Dated August 20th, 2001, these Sonic Adventure 2 inspired comics began when I frequented the forums at The Sonic Foundation . As forum members began to raise their chao, they shared photos and drawings of their weird creations. Thanks to SA2's hero/dark theme, players were able to raise some pretty crazy looking chao. From angels and rabbits with pumpkin heads to legless bat creatures with skull heads. At the time, I had wanted to create a Sonic fan comic, but wanted to create something a bit more offbeat. So, I ignored the main characters of the Sonic universe and instead focused on the chao. After putting out a call for forum members to share their chao, I put together a short lived fan comic called "Chao Fan World".

After the break, check out the four episodes of the comic along with a comic cast page!

click to enlarge

This page introduces the stars of the comic, including a Sonic cameo. The nerd at the top named "EatMyDust" is me, "EatMyDust" was my forum name.

What happened next? Who knows! I never finished it. But I'd like to think I could have finished the story after three or four more episodes. I'm glad I finally got to share this strange artifact of my Sonic fandom and I hope you all enjoyed reading it!

Let's Take a Look at Sonic #226 - The Genesis Saga Part 1!

Just a day until Sonic's 20th, and this arrives in the mail: Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog #226. This issue is better known as being part one of the hotly anticipated Genesis saga, which throws the main cast of the Archie continuity back into the SEGA Genesis days of Sonic. In the previous issue, #225, the Eggman of the Archie continuity (who looks like the modern Eggman of the games but has a back story so complicated I've yet to wrap my head around it) unleashed a resurrected Death Egg on the Freedom Fighters. After a bit of fighting, Eggman killed a well known character from the SatAM days and powered up a device that enveloped the universe in white (hmm, sounds like something that is happening in Sonic Generations) and rebooted the entire universe. As such, when issue 226 kicks off Sonic is acting as though he is from the Genesis era (with a modern design), running through Green Hill and bopping badniks which he seems to be encountering for the first time.

The staff of Archie have yet to reveal if this reboot is permanent, or if we are to expect a more SEGA Sonic video game world inhabited by both the game characters and SatAM characters who have been stripped of more than two hundred pages of back story. When Sally, Boomer (Rotor's original name in the Archie comics) and Antoine appear in the issue, they act and look like their earliest counterparts as seen in the cartoons and first twenty issues of the comics. Could this be Archie's goal? Personally, I would love a Sonic comic more rooted in the game world, but would welcome the SatAM characters returning in their original less complicated forms.

Even Snively appears in the issue, though this time he refers to himself as Dr. Eggman's nephew. No longer the nephew of the overly complicated Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Seriously, not to rag on the old Archie comics, but Robotnik was a human named Kintobor who was corrupted and then became Robotnik and then died and then was replaced by an alternate universe Robo-Robotnik who took over and then was destroyed and then downloaded his consciousness into a robot body that looked like modern Eggman and then was de-roboticized and became human. Ugh! I'd much prefer an Eggman who was born a human and simply does what he does because he wants to create his own robotic paradise. Thankfully thats what the Genesis saga gives us and I hope it sticks. Even better, the comic gives us Eggman in his classic costume! Way past cool!

All this talk about continuity and I forgot to mention the great art of Patrick Spaziante. Spaz is known best for his many cover art contributions to the series, though he has also done an occasional story and was the artist behind the NiGHTS into Dreams mini-series which I covered over at the Saturn Junkyard. Spaz does an awesome job on pencils and nails the classic badniks and environments.

The comic moves from Green Hill to Marble Zone, skips Spring Yard and concludes at Labyrinth Zone. The next issue hints at the arrival of Tails and based on interviews, the series will cover the first two Sonic games. Overall, I found Genesis part one to be a breath of fresh air! As somebody who got out of the comics due to them being overcomplicated and relying too much on SatAM characters and locations, I was happy to see game environments and simplified characters. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy deep characterization, but I'd prefer a fresh start and would like to see characters like Sonic, Tails and Eggman develop in a fresh continuity. Here's hoping part two is even better than the first, and that Archie sticks with this plan. I'd hate to see issue #230 tell us that it was all a dream.

Archie's Sonic Genesis Part 3 Cover Revealed

While Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis arc has yet to begin, with the prelude issue #225 just hitting stands, the cover for the third part of the saga has just been revealed! Issue #228 is inspired by the American cover art for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, just as the pervious two issues were inspired by Sonic 1 and 2. Here is the official description:

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #228
"Genesis" Part Three:
The most talked-about story in Sonic comic history continues as Sonic brings a curious new face into his adventures: Miles Prower, the boy genius! As Sonic and his friends continue the good fight against the evil Dr. Robotnik, the perils get more perilous, old memories begin to resurface, and the Death Egg orbits. Don't miss the penultimate issue to this anniversary special event!
SCRIPT: Ian Flynn
ARTIST: Tracy Yardley!, Terry Austin, John Workman and Matt Herms
COVER: Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante
Shipping Date: 8/17/2011
On Sale at Comic Shops: 8/31/2011
Newsstands: Week of 9/6/2011
Comic, 32 pgs, 40 lb. glossy stock, Full-Color

I've just started up a subscription to get my hands on these, so stay tuned to SEGA Memories as I delve into each issue as it releases.

Archie's Sonic #227 Cover Revealed

While the Genesis Saga has yet to kick off in Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog series, the cover for the second part of the arc has been revealed! The mini-series will kick off with issue 225, check out the cover here, followed by part one with issue 226 and part two in issue 227. The four part arc, continuing in issues 228 and 229, looks to be paying homage to the four original Genesis games. However how Sonic and friends enter those classics has yet to be revealed. All that has been said is that somebody's life (probably a SatAM character) depends on the outcome of the Genesis arc. I could care less who dies, as long as we're getting more awesome artwork from Spaz!

After the beak, check out a preview page from Sonic: Genesis!

[source: SEGASHIRO]

Archie's Sonic #225 feeds of our SEGA memories

I'm on to you Archie! After losing me as a reader by not doing a Sonic Adventure 2 adaptation, you try to reel me back in with fancy double sized covers, anniversary logos and the promise of a return of the Death Egg. Well guess what, it's working. Recently revealed over at IGN is the super sweet cover art for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog #225, which shows the current cast (what happened to Rotor?!) running from the (DUM-DUM-DUMMM!) Death Egg. My guess is that the cover was done by longtime Sonic artist extraordinaire Patrick Spaziante. The story arc is titled the Genesis saga and will play out over the summer during Sonic's 20th anniversary.

Looks like I'll be picking up a few Sonic comics over the summer! And then come winter they'll lose me again by starting a story arc involving Julie-su and Mina the Mongoose creating a girl band.

[source: Sonic Stadium]

Dreamcast Doujinshi Manga Comic

Cross posting this from the Dreamcast Junkyard, seeing as it is a Sega related comic though not an official one, and may be considered a not very common collectible to find on Ebay.

Probably the weirdest thing you'll ever see me feature for DCJY InsideOut, and actually a bit NSFW although unlike most Doujinshi (fan comics) it's not a flat out hentai porn comic, but it is in places a tad perverted with quite a few er..well you'll see. You have been warned.

The comic features short stories based on Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Code Veronica, Soul Calibur and many others, but they're pretty much all resort to rubbish and just plain weird jokes. The art is mixed, sometimes pretty decent and other times wonky.

Because  Maken X features in the Doujinshi I also decided to show off a Official  Maken X manga I bought years ago, which is just a tad more gory than I  recall the game being. So yeah, this one is defiantly not for the younger lot or easily offended this vid. :P

Streets of Rage Fleetway Comic Original Artwork

Hogfather on Youtube has got to be one of the most hardcore Sonic collectors on Youtube, it's a real shame he doesn't have a blog with photos of his stuff too. Not only does he own a massive collection of Nigel Dobbyn's Sonic the Comic artwork, but just recently he has uploaded a video of a collection of original artwork from S.T.C's Street of Rage comics, and had a chat with the artist Peter Richardson about them too! Jammy sod. Anyway, here's the video:

Make sure you check out Hogfather's Youtube for many more videos of rare and one-of-a-kind Sonic and Sega stuff.

SOS '10: The Swag

Instead of making a couple huge articles like last year, I'm going to be posting a bunch of shorter articles about last Saturday's brilliant Summer of Sonic convention. Safe to say they really outdid themselves this year. To kick off, here's what I brought back from there. A bit silly that I'm starting my coverage with the last photo I took but never mind!

So a bulk of it is from the goodie bag that was given away to the first few hundred entrants with tickets (people without tickets couldn't even get in until an hour or two after it opened! Sucks to be them I guess :E). My girlfriend also got a ticket just before the registration ended because she wanted to tag along even though she's not that big into Sonic (she enjoyed it though, so that's a relief lol) and when we entered from the HUGE queue we got the last bag! However they did have hundreds more of the highlight of the bag; the Metal Sonic figure, to give away to people that entered (tickets or not I believe) right through till about 4pm. More after the jump..



The goodie bag also had a Sega All-Stars door tag, an Archie 'Free Comic Book day' comic (there was two different ones randomly given out, the one i got has the story from the very first issue of the long running comic in it, which is neat), a strap thing with the SOS logo on it, and some leaflets. The other free stuff I got that day was a bunch of Sonic X trading cards that one of the stores were giving away and we both also won a Sonic PC game each (not pictured) for bumping into SEGASHIRO's DarrenIndeed and shouting a quote for him that only listeners of their first podcast would know to say to him! He even uploaded them to YouTube! You can check out the article here.

(Check out that majestic mustached guy behind me! Was he casting damnation on my soul for doing that silly impersonation?)

So over than the stuff that i got for nothing what did I buy? Well there was a lot to buy but i didn't actually grab all that much this year, though I'm still pleased with what a brought back. Nigel Dobbyn was selling 3 large prints of some new artwork he has done of Knuckles and some of the other S.T.C characters. I brought two of them: one of Knuckles and Dr.Zackay having a scrap and another that Dobbyn coloured up bout Nigel Kitching illustrated of the cast of Decap Attack! I couldn't NOT come home with that! He was also selling the remainder of his beautiful original pages from the comics (I can imagine they sold out completely this time), but I will get back to talking about Nigel in another article!

Other things for sale across the convention included original pages from recent issues of the Archie comics, a whole bunch of Sonic the Comics which were selling like hot cakes at £2-3 a pop, more Archie comics both old and new, and even some Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cels (though to be fair they weren't as impressive as the ones Barry owns). There was also Crush 40 merchandise like shirts and CDs.

Stay tuned as i have a LOT more to write about! If you want to check out all my photos in advance though they are already up at this Flickr set.

Summer of Sonic is imminent!

Summer of Sonic kicks off in The Pavilion, Shepherd's Bush, London this Saturday and you can expect to see coverage of the event throughout next week (providing I get time as I'm currently rather busy for this and next week) including plenty of photos and videos. For those not in the know, here's some of the excellent stuff to expect:

 Free Metal Sonic Toy!

Last year the freebie as we got in the door was a neat little Sonic art book, but this year they have really outdone themselves. The first 750 entrees with a ticket will be getting this yet to be released mini Metal Sonic figure from First4Figures! This is one of the three new 3" toys they will be releasing later this year to sit along side the Sonic, Knuckles and Tails ones they made last year. There will also be a box set of all six in the near future if you have not picked up the others yet. The other two new figurines consist of Super Sonic and Amy Rose!

Sonic 4 and Sonic Colours (Wii and DS) Playable!

Yep, not one but all three of the currently known upcoming Sonic releases will be there to test out! This includes the much awaited (and debated) Sonic 4 and both the DS and Wii versions of Sonic Colours, the next in the main line 3D Sonic games. I'm personally looking forward to trying both out: Colours looks like it's taking everything that worked in Unleashed and ditching all the annoying stuff to give us a simple fun new Sonic with no werehogs, no medal collecting and no need to endlessly boost everywhere! The DS version appears so far to be essentially Sonic Rush 3. Sonic 4 is well, Sonic the Hedgehog Number 4.

All-Stars Racing Tournament!

All-Stars was playable in an early form last year at SOS and since then the game has been released (and was awesome btw) and this year you can see if you can be hailed the All-Stars racing champion! I bet most people will be playing Alex Kidd, Ryo, Shadow....bascilly anyone on bikes. We shall see!

Crush 40 Performing!

Jun Senoue and his band are one of the major players in Sonic's musical history, producing the soundtracks to a large portion of the franchises existence, and at SOS this year we will get to hear them live, ask them questions in an interview and even a instrumental jam session with Jun at tea time! For me at least this sure beats seeing that Bentley Jones guy performing, who I'm not a fan of by any means (I'm trying to be polite here lol).

Nigel Dobbyn returns!

One of the leading artists from the UK Sonic the Comic, Dobbyn was at SOS last year selling many of his original artwork. Unsurprisingly most if not all of it sold out, so this year he will be selling newly drawn prints like this little beauty here (above)! He will be there like last year for a chat and to get whatever you like signed. The guy is a mega talented artist so even if you never read the comic you should check him out!

That (in my opinion) the highlights for this year, and there is bound to be more surprises too so if you're going to be there I might see you there (just look for this git on the left, above) and if not look forward to checking out our coverage! :)

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.

My Big Fat Sonic Comic Book Collection

Over the past week I had been on vacation in my home state of Minnesota. Whilst there I did a lot of things that are unrelated to this blog, however I did make it a point to find as many of my Sonic and SEGA collectibles that I could. I found a lot of goodies, and will be featuring them here at SEGA Memories over the next week. The first of these many posts will be of my Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Adventure Series) comic book collection. Let's have a look at these suckers!

While the UK had Sonic the Comic, the US had Sonic the Hedgehog published by Archie Publications. The US comic series began with a 4 issue mini-series, with issue 0 kicking the seires off and issues 1-3. Following the success of the mini-series, a continuing series began with another number 1.

The mini-series and issues 1 to 36.

I got into the series at the very beginning, picking up the premiere issue while on vacation. When I reutrned home I searched out the next issue and found issue number 1 of the continuing series, completely missing the mini-series issues 1-3. Thankfully, I was able to order the issues through Archie and I also started a subscription for the series. I had that subscription all the way up to issue 110. I'll explain why I stopped collecting, but first lets look at the rest of the Sonic series.

Issues 37 to 76, you can find my name printed in issue 76. 

Issues 77 to 110

I began to lose interest at issue 99 and stopped collecting at issue 110. It wasn't so much that I was growing out of the comics, it was more that I didn't like the direction that the series was taking. When the series began things were lighthearted, with a dash of drama, and the comic's universe was a blend of the AoStH cartoon series, the SatAM cartoon series and the Genesis games. While the blend wasn't perfect, I wasn't much of a SatAM fan, I liked the occasional video game adaptation as well as original plots featuring characters such as the badniks, Metal Sonic, Mecha Sonic and Nack/Fang. The Sonic Adventure adaptation was a real fun read. Not the perfect adaptation, but they did a good job fitting it into the comic storyline.

I was especially looking forward to the now deeper video game universe to impact the comic universe. When Sonic Adventure 2 was announced, I eagerly awaited another epic adaptation. Issue 98 was to be, I had thought, to be a multi-part epic concluding with issue 100. Instead, Archie gave SA2 a F.U. and featured an odd adaptation of the City Escape level followed by a "Hey kids, buy the game for the rest of the story!" Cheap. The next issue returned to the ho-hum SatAM plots and Archie had lost me as a reader. SatAM had been off the air for 5 years, and yet Archie was still putting the characters of the show at the forefront of their comics. Meanwhile, Sonic Team had introduced a far deeper Sonic universe with the Dreamcast games and Archie was basically ignoring it. After issue 100, I let my subscription run out and I was done with the comics. But that doesn't mean we're done looking at my collection!

Knuckles appeared in a rather successful series of his own:

The mini-series and the main series, issues 1-32.

Outside of the main Sonic series, there was a slew of spin-off mini-series and special issues. Most cover adaptations of Genesis games while others feature bizarre crossovers (Sabrina the Teenage Witch meets Sonic!?). The best of these special issues have to be the Death Egg Saga trilogy, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Vs. Knuckles and Mecha Madness. After so many special issues labeled #1, they decided to simply number the specials and title them "Sonic Super Specials".

The Sally and Tails mini-series, the Death Egg Saga trilogy, many stand alone specials, the numbered Super Specials and a promo version of issue 0 numbered issue 1/4 (one fourth).

Of all my Sonic comics, my favorite would have to be the issue 50 that I had series inkers Rich Koslowski and Andrew Pepoy autograph. Nice guys! They even sold me some original art from issues 48 and 50 of Sonic and issue 25 of Knuckles. I have yet to find those pages, but when I do I'll share them here.

Aside from Sonic, Archie Comics tried to kick off a NiGHTS series. It only lasted 6 issues, but it's a good read. Artist Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante, who also did many of the awesome Sonic covers, did the pencils for NiGHTS. I also found a Shinobi comic published by Dark Horse.

And there you have it, my Sonic comic book collection! Hope you enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed seeing them again. :)

Notes: Following my leaving the comics, the Sonic series has continued to publish issues, with issue 213 being the most recent. The specials and Knuckles series had ceased to be published while I had still been collecting. So despite having been out of it for ten years, I still have a complete collection in that regard. The only issues I have yet to own are the now canceled Sonic X series, the recently debuted Sonic Universe series and Sonic issues 111 onwards. Conveniently, back issues of nearly all the issues I missed are only a click away, should I feel the need.

Sonic the Comic Video Retrospective

There is a lot online to be read about the history of the American Archie published Sonic comic book series, but the British Sonic the Comic series that ran between 1992 and 2001 is rarely talked about outside of a small percentage of the gigantic Sonic fan base. Luckily Youtuber BlackDogBrew has gone out of his way to give us a massive video retrospective of the comic for those who have always been intriged about it. When I mean massive I mean massive, got a couple hours to spare? If not, the very first video gives you a nice summary of the comic's history, before it gets into the stories of each character. Either way I've embedded the entire playlist above.

S.T.C Streets of Rage Comic Online

One thing I quite enjoyed about Sonic the Comic in it's early days was how there was stories based on a whole slew of Sega's most popular games at the time (and even a few based on third-party games from EA and Konami). One of the earliest to appear in Issue 7 was Streets of Rage, which went on to receive a three stories (one for each game I presume) and even a book collection.

This website called Geekenvy has some great Sega related articles and has also uploaded scans of the first Street of Rage story in all of its glory, written by Mark Miller and Illustrated by Peter Richardson. Considering the game's simplistic story and the fact that they could only get away with so much in a children's comic, they did a quality job on this.

If you want to download any of the S.T.C comics in their entirety, there is a complete archive over at a website called Tails.Kicks.Ass.net, though you have to sign up to download anything.