Check out the latest S.T.C Online!

For Sonic's Anniversary Sonic the Comic Online have released a new issue featuring a fantastic story where Sonics and Robotniks from the past, present and future clash! It's full of fan service to both the original S.T.C run as well as the games series too: take note of what Kintobor is wearing in it for example, if you get that reference then you know your stuff! There is also another chapter in the House of the Dead series: it's great to see more sega franchises represented on this fan created comic, it's harkens back to the earlier days of the Fleetway comic. :)

Long Overdue Plug: Fuck Yeah Sonic the Comic

Sometime late last month I joined Tumblr and along with my personal tumblr blog for my art and junk, I decided to set up a blog dedicated to Sonic the Comic. In true 'fuck yeah' tumblr blog tradition, there won't be long articles like you get here but rather regular single image updates of random panels, art, letters and more from the history of the comic. Everything from Decap Attack references Richard and Judy, a love letter to Amy by a kid in Graphic Zone (of whom has grown up and found the blog, stating he hid it under his bed and his mum must of sent it in!), a scratch and sniff STC sticker I found in my shed, STC mistaking Sally Acorn for Tails in a wig and much more daft stuff like that.

The site has only been up a few weeks but it has already got it's fans, including Sonic Retro who gave it a glowing review. By the way I have a big Sonic the Comic related post coming here soon!

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.

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! :)

Summer of Sonic '09: Meeting the S.T.C Artists

Dobbyn to the left, Kitching to the right. What a pair of Nigels!

One of the highlights of the event for me had to be meeting two of the artists/writers of Sonic the Comic, Nigel Kitching and Nigel Dobbyn. I grew up on these comics and they had a big influence on how I draw, in particular Kitching's artwork for the Decap Attack comic, who was also the writer for a majority of the entire comics lifespan, everything from the crazy Super Sonic all the way till the comic's last story ark where Johnny Lighfoot died and Robotnik lost his mind They did a Q&A session which I caught on (very wobbly) video, which I might upload later.

A whole folder full of painted goodness. There's nothing quite like seeing the originals.

This one was gone first I think. It was framed and used as a front cover.

For most of the day they were in one of the corners signing things for people and drawing them sketches too. Naturally this was one of the first things at the event I wanted to do, and while in the queue my eyes were drawn over to Dobbyn's portfolios laid out, all featuring the original paintings of the pages we illustrated for the comic. If that wasn't enough just seeing them in the flesh (er...ink?), they were for sale at £20 a page! Apparently he was selling them to fund a independent comic he wants to set up. When he drew you something/signed something, you could take a note, write your name on it and reserve the pages you want, so you could pick them up later in the day.

Take note the pages are much bigger than what they appeared in the comic, many A2 size and on card. Getting the thing home was a game of paranoia as I had nothing to carry it in, so i was holding it all the way home ready to murder anyone that would damage it. It's beautiful though, isn't it? This is one of many reasons why the British comics were much better than the American ones: hand painted art vs computer gradient coloring (well at least until the later years).

When I met Kitching I gave him a piece of artwork of Chuck D.Head I did, and he drew me a sketch, on which I requested an afro on Head noggin for some reason, just to make it unique! What surprised me when I was talking to him was finding out that he is currently illustrating pages for a Decap Attack story on Sonic the Comic online! He had a piece of art of it on his table. Sweet!

When I met Dobbyn he signed a page from one of the comics i brought with me, and I bought a page from his portfolio. I probably should have bought two now I think about, but that would have involved leaving the building to find a ATM and draw more money out. I wasn't expecting there to be anything to buy here, to be honest! One thing that made me squeal like a school girl in my mind was when talking to the pair of them: they both mentioned that they belive they've seen my artwork online before! Gleee! :D

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.

Sonic 6th Birthday event in Hamleys, 1997

Sonic the Comic were good to me. Hell, Sega in general have been good to me as a fan, but Sonic the Comic really did throw some good stuff my way when I was a wee lad. Not only did I win a Sonic 2 patch from them when I sent in some self drawn Sonic comics, get my artwork in an issues Graphic Zone section which won me a watch, but I also manged to win a competition they held in 1997 for a exclusive 6th Birthday party event in London. Only 100 invites could be won and you could take a mate along with you, so there was a total of 200 of us (excluding parents) going to this one-off party.

Here's the invite they sent me when I won. Yes, I still own it. How sad is that? I also have a letter they sent along with it..

 

Photos of the event after the jump! Whoopie!

Hamleys as you may already know is a huge toy shop in London on Regent Street with floors upon floors of the stuff. On the below ground bottom floor was a gaming section called Metropolis, which was Sega branded and had a bunch of arcade cabinets and a snack bar of some sort. My memory of the place is pretty fuzzy and I don't believe it's still there, and if it is I doubt Sega still has their name plastered everywhere (much like how Segaworld became 'Funland'), but it was further evidence that Sega were huge in the UK. You never saw anything like this run by Nintendo, that's for sure!

Game wise, they had a few Saturn cabinets set up with Sonic R running on them, about a month before the game was due out. There was a raffle to win a couple copies of the game early, along with some other Sonic stuff I can't remember exactly. I also remember there being a contest involving getting best scores on the arcade cabinets they had there, of which I only remember the Scud race machines which i gave a whirl and got no where in. There was goodie bags that came with a bunch of badges of Sonic running about on a Hamley's logo which I still have somewhere) as well as Sonic Jam and Sonic R posters. Neat.

The highlight of the event was a guy wandering about in a rather impressive Sonic costume (far better than the one that stumbled around SegaWorld), who was being helped around by some woman presumably due to not being able to see very well. I remember one moment when she disappeared for a bit and he manged to walk into a wall, causing Sonic 3D posters to fall all over him. How embarrassing. but I kind of wished we got that caught on camera, could of sent that to Who's Been Framed. He practically had to shove his face into the cake to even see it.

Aww, why so sad, Sonic? Maybe he just had a vision from the future of how far his games were to plummet. That or he just played Sonic Labyrinth on his Game Gear.

Haha, he's nicked my mates hat and....what the hell is that?

Oh god, is this really the Sonic fan base of the 90's, or is she just there for the ice cream?

What would a birthday party be without a cake? The cake was plain white with a picture of Sonic's head ala the Sonic 3D artwork that was on posters everywhere that got his spikes all wrong. Not exactly an amazing cake, but big enough to be cut up into 200 pieces for all the guests.

I didn't really want to post this photo as the public domain like nature of the Internet would possibly jump on this like a pack of hyenas, so I hid my face to save the embarrassment of a generally unflattering photo. What I really wanted to show off however was the bad-arse jacket covered in Sonic patches. When I grew out of the original jacket they were on, my nan knitted them onto a new bigger jacket. Oh hey, I just noticed my Tamagotchi watch I'm wearing too. If that doesn't throw you back to 1997 I don't know what will.


Photos not enough for you? Then how about some home video footage? Yeah, that's what I thought. If the kid above wasn't enough to scare the feck out of you just wait till you hear some of them. Watch as a kid goes ape shit mental while Sonic is helped to cut his cake. Feel the urge to punch the annoying twat of a parent giving Sonic instructions on how he wants a photo taken with his kid. Cringe as I honk Sonic's nose, which I'm pretty sure he probably didn't like and worst of all; feel your ears bleed as everyone sings happy birthday. You'll also see Sonic do a little dance then go into a strop for some reason. Maybe he doesn't like the Sonic 3D art on his cake. I blocked out most of the noise at the start with some Sonic R music to save your ears a little.

When the event was over, we popped over to SegaWorld, which you'll also see alittle bit of at the end of the video. This was the second time, and this time instead of paying about £12 each to get in with the rides included, it was only about £5, but you had to pay about £3 for the rides individually. (those photos I showed in an older Segaworld article must of been from a 3rd visit, as they're clearly laterThere was another guy in a Sonic costume walking around there, although that one wasn't quite as convincing: he had the hugest gob that looked like a tumor on his face. The highlight of the whole video, though? Mum filming some huge screen footage of the Spice Girls to show my sister, only for me to shout "Spice Girls, but not for long!" Take note this was a couple months before they split up. Ha ha ha!

S.T.C Scans: Videos, Yoyo's and Milky Way Bars

I've made a start at scanning anything that people may find interesting (or not) from my collection of Sonic the Comics, starting with the many Sega and Sonic tie ins advertised. These first 4 are all the adverts I could find for the VHS releases of the cartoon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Much better box art than the lazy work on the recent DVDs.

More after the jump.

Next up is a scan of a Frosties promotion for Sonic Yoyos. The Yoyo's wen't packed in the cereal box: you had to send off for them with coupons. There's also a competition on here that includes a Multi-Mega. Oooh. I wouldn't really want to see Tony Tiger in a video game, though.

Here's one for another Sonic promotion/competition, this time involving Milky Way chocolate bars, and promoting Sonic & Knuckles. I do remember buying a good few Milky Ways to attempt to win the game.

Finally here's one from a much earlier issue of S.T.C (one of the first, I think) of a Sega Game Gear carry case/ Lunch box type thing that also comes with a neat set of pins. I think the promotion was long over when I finally got my hands on this issue, as I started collecting them around issue 20.

My Sonic collection is fairly moderate

Gaga's not the only one who can arrange a decade's worth of Sonic related stuff and take photos of it, clearly. Now, one thing that is obvious is Gaga has far more stuff than I ever will, partly because he's older and was around for slightly more of the stuff, partly because I have lost a handful of things on the way and partly because he has deep issues that have materialised in the form of blue hedgehog memorabilia. Of course, if that's what having issues entails, I'm all for it. Now, I was far less comprehensive about this than Gaga, so I know I've definitely omitted a few things and I've generally just been quite lazy about it. Also, I know there are few things I used to have that have gone walkies, but are ultimately around my house somewhere. I remember specifically having the Sonic pencil cases and two different Sonic rulers(!), the staples to any nerds stationary needs.

More after the jump..

So you know, you've got your expected things. Figures, plushes, lots of games, books, videos and then some random other crap. Displayed are only the Archie comics I have because I have far too many Sonic the Comics to display. As you can see, there are a handful of StC related free gifts in the photo, like stickers, rub on tattoos, some rubbish little space disk flicker thing etc. There's also a Sonic I made out of those... bead things... you arranged them and ironed them together? I've forgotten the name. And the SA style plush talks. It's magical.



I think I have most, if not all my Sonic games in the picture. I'm missing a few that I actually want and I decided not to include the games I only have the cartridges for. Really, most of the stuff in the pictures is fairly self explanatory, however there are a few materialistic red herrings.

Firstly are these guys. I got them off eBay for about a fiver, they came in a nice box (that can be seen in the above photos) which was in scruffy condition when I received it. I think they were a small promotional item for Sonic & Knuckles, although I'm not sure if that's the right game. A nice little promo item, regardless.

Now this, I've never seen anywhere else before. I have cousins who are half Japanese and as a result, live in Japan. Once when they came to visit, they gave me this neat little clock. I think they had it sitting around their house and as a result, weren't really sure where it came from. But no biggie, it's a great clock, although currently out of battery. As far as I'm aware, it's quite the unique thing to have.

Of course, no self-respecting* British Sonic fan doesn't have a disgustingly large collection of Sonic the Comics? Although, rather than take my issues out and spreading them out in a neat display like the Gaga, I've kept mine all neatly filed away in order like the anal bastard I am.

*the term is 'self-respecting' is used rather loosely here

Anyway, so that's the bulk of my Sonic related merchandise acquired over the last 11 years ish. Things have been lost and things have yet to be picked up, because I love to nurture the nostalgic inner child within me, who sits around playing Sonic 3 and eating ice cream. So there we go - an unhealthy obsession with blue hedgehogs leads to a rather big amount of capitalist consumerism. Take that, Communism!

Oh and almost forgot, happy new year you crazy kids.

My Sonic Collection is Morbidly Obese.

I got bored yesterday and decided to climb back into the loft and shuffle amongst all the Sonic stuff that is stored up there, and somehow it led to me dragging it all down to take photos of it all together, just to see how much of it I've ended up hoarding onto. There's a few things missing: mainly all the clothing, a bunch of badges and obviously the games, but you'll get the idea that I generally have a feck load of Sonic junk, ranging from toys and books to odd junk like shampoo bottles and an air freshener. I took quite a few photos because this lot took bloody ages to set up. Click to see them in big ol' detail.

Most of this stuff was purchased back when it came out, and after time stored away so it didn't clutter up the place. There is some of the modern Sonic stuff but I don't generally touch any of that mostly ugly Sonic X stuff. A lot of this stuff is nigh on impossible to find now, so I'm glad I kept a lot of it. When I got a lot of this stuff I bought two sets so I could have one packed away brand new and one set to play with. I'm such a geek. =D

Many more photos after the jump.

I even have a bunch of old Sonic Promo posters and cardboard things, which were sitting in the loft so long that I almost forgot they were up there. I can't really remember how I got those but I know the Sonic R one came out of the window of Burger King with a little persistence to the staff. You can't just buy things like that, you have to offer to take it away when they don't need it anymore. It was only going to be thrown away anyway..

I have three of those Sonic 2 patches in total, and a big blue jacket that also has one on the back. I'm not sure how I ended up with that many, but Sonic the Comic sent me one once when I sent them some artwork. I'll have to take some photos of the jackets I've got up in the loft somewhere, they're amazing.

I keep searching for old Sonic stuff like this on Ebay but don't have a whole lot of luck finding any, which is pretty strange as Sonic was pretty darn popular in the UK. Hell, I haven't seen most of this stuff since it came out. But wait, there's more!

For starters, books! They made a lot of books back in the day, including story books, adventure game books, annuals, a sticker album, game guides and even some Where's Waldo style books. There's also some Sonic comic specials and the complete Sega Super Play Trading Card set there.

Next, the comics. Every pile there has 10 issues in it. I have almost every issue except most of the later ones when they had no new stories in them around 2000, just before it was canceled. I did start collecting the American comics soon after that, although I don't have so many of those, probably about 40. I recently ended up selling a bunch of those as I was getting about a tenner each for them from American collectors, and I'm not really that mad on them anyway. The British comics don't seem to be worth anything in comparison, but I like those a lot more.

Finally some other Sega related bits, including all my Sega Saturn and Dreamcast magazines (sadly I didn't keep my Mega Drive era ones), promo videos and...holy crap, SONIC POGS.

Oh, and I almost forgot this set of House of the Dead figures.

Now do you see why I started up this blog?