List of Sonic The Comic Characters - Sonic The Hedgehog Comic Strips

Sonic The Hedgehog Comic Strips

Sonic the Comic began its run with a series of fairly inconsequential one-shot stories, and only established its identity and ongoing storyline and setting with issue 8's "The Origin of Sonic". The comic adopted a version of the "Kintobor origin" of Sonic and Doctor Robotnik, which had originally been featured in a promotional comic for the first Sonic game printed in Disney Adventures and had been elaborated upon in Mike Pattenden's book Stay Sonic. Like other UK Sonic publications, STC used the Stay Sonic version as its basis. This origin story established that Sonic was originally a normal brown hedgehog on the planet Mobius, who burrowed his way into the underground laboratory of Dr. Ovi Kintobor, a scientist who wished to rid the planet of all evil through the use of powerful gems called the Chaos Emeralds. In addition, he helped Sonic increase his running speed with the gift of red shoes designed to handle the incredible friction he generated, until the hedgehog eventually broke the sound barrier with a sonic boom which turned him blue. However, an accident involving the unstable Chaos Emeralds and a rotten egg transformed Kintobor into the evil Dr Ivo Robotnik, leading to the events of the games Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

"The Origin of Sonic" led into a storyline in which Sonic, Tails and their friends were sent forward in time six months. During their absence, Doctor Robotnik had successfully conquered the entire planet of Mobius, and Sonic and co. were forced underground, operating as "freedom fighters" attempting to bring down Robotnik's rule of the planet. This situation remained until issue 100 (1997), when Robotnik was deposed.

In the comic's early issues, three of the four strips in each edition were based on popular Sega video games. As time went on, these strips dwindled and were phased out entirely in favour of other stories about Sonic and related characters. The first of these was a Tails solo series which saw him return to his home in the Nameless Zone, where it was believed that he, not Sonic, was the great hero of Mobius. In addition to Tails and Sonic, other members of the Freedom Fighters included Johnny Lightfoot and Porker Lewis, characters based upon the generic rabbit and pig sprites freed from Badniks in the video games. The team soon added the "Kintobor computer" to their ranks - an artificial intelligence based on the brain patterns of Doctor Robotnik's former self - and were later joined by Amy Rose, a female hedgehog infatuated with Sonic, whose lies about being his girlfriend had made her a target for Robotnik's forces. Robotnik himself was later redesigned to match the appearance of his counterpart in the animated series Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog; and he gained a close ally in the green-skinned scientist Grimer, the comic's equivalent of Snively from the cartoon Sonic the Hedgehog. Grimer was instrumental in creating Metallix, the Metal Sonic, an enemy that featured prominently in Sonic the Comic's first major multi-part Sonic story, an adaptation of the video game Sonic CD entitled "The Sonic Terminator".

Knuckles the Echidna and the Floating Island soon made their debuts as Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were adapted, and Knuckles subsequently featured in his own storylines in which he attempted to learn more about his lost race of Echidnas and their relationship with the Floating Island and the Chaos Emeralds. The comic also introduced original characters such as the sky-pirate Captain Plunder, rebellious super-Badnik Shortfuse the Cybernik and engineering genius Tekno the Canary, who occasionally featured in their own dedicated strips. The comic's incorporation of characters from Knuckles' Chaotix established the alternate dimension called the Special Zone as a major location, and also introduced the Brotherhood of Metallix, an army of Metal Sonic robots who rebelled against Robotnik and embarked on a plan to alter the timeline and take over Mobius.

One element of Sonic the Comic that was distinct from other Sonic fiction was its depiction of Sonic's powered-up form, Super Sonic. In STC, Super Sonic was a monstrous, inhibitionless alter-ego, the Mr. Hyde to Sonic's Doctor Jekyll, into which Sonic transformed in times of stress or exposure to the Chaos Emeralds. The appearances of Super Sonic were few and far between in the first eighty or so issues of the comic, although he became a prominent threat during the build-up to issue 100. Following a storyline in which the Chaos Emeralds' energy was transferred out of Sonic and into the Special Zone, Super Sonic continued to exist as a separate entity, forcing Sonic into to pursue him. After Super Sonic was defeated by being frozen in time within the time-travelling, dimension-jumping Omni-Viewer, Sonic was left isolated in the Special Zone; on Mobius, Shortfuse joined the Freedom Fighters, and Knuckles ended a long quest back to the Floating Island. Super Sonic's subsequent escape from the Omni-Viewer triggered a planet-wide electromagnetic pulse that the Omni-Viewer shunted to Mobius, deactivating all of Robotnik's robots and computer systems. With no technology or troops to protect him, Robotnik was finally deposed as Mobius' ruler in the comic's 100th issue.

After establishing the new state of play on Mobius - including the now-amnesiac Super Sonic's befriending of magician Ebony and psychic Pyjamas - STC's next major move was its adaptation of Sonic 3D Blast, which proved to be the last game adaptation for a prolonged period of time. Although it ultimately amounted to little more than use of the different elements from the game (Flickies Island, the birds used for Badniks and dimensional travel via Mobius Rings), with the added introduction of a new Metallix villain (with its design based on Knuckles this time), it was a key stepping stone in shaping the direction of Sonic stories right up until the conclusion of the series. The story introduced the interdimensional alien race known as the Drakon Empire (spun out of a dangling plot point from nearly one hundred issues prior), who allied themselves with Doctor Robotnik in an attempt to acquire the Chaos Emeralds, revealing their previous ownership of the gems ages prior. Alliances, betrayals and double-crosses culminated in Robotnik's successful capture of the Emeralds and a 4-issue epic in which he had god-like powers & reshaped Mobius entirely, but when his body was drained of Chaos Energy, he vanished into a sub-atomic dimension.

A series of dimension-hopping adventures by Amy and Tekno resulted in Mobius being briefly invaded by Earth military forces, after which Sonic pursued Grimer and Nack the Weasel in their quest to recover Robotnik. Trapped on the sub-atomic world of Shanazar, Sonic found it hard to adapt to the local culture, and when Amy's adventures led her to join him on the planet, the two explored the world's numerous vastly different zones, combating myriad threats. Robotnik had his own plans, however, using the dimensional technology that brought Sonic, Grimer and Nack to Shanazar to enlarge the world, fusing it with Mobius in a Crisis on Infinite Earths-style event. Shanazar's zones could now be accessed from portals on Mobius, and various doorways had also opened to various points in Earth's history. Infuriated with yet another failure, however, Robotnik decided to bring his long war with Sonic to an end by destroying Mobius once and for all. Entering into a partnership with the living plastic alien hive-mind, The Plax, Robotnik used their technology to absorb elemental energy from both Mobius and Earth, forcing both worlds into total ecological collapse. His scheme was again foiled, however, by Shortfuse, who wired his armour into Robotnik's machine, undoing the damage and draining the energy from the villain, with the added bonus of the feedback finally liberating him from his armour.

This proved to be one defeat too many for Robotnik; retreating physically and mentally, he languished in darkness until Grimer, desperate to snap his master out of his depression, initiated the events of the comic's final storyline, the adaptation of Sonic Adventure (although in practice, this would prove to be the loosest game adaptation yet, as the game's wildly different approach was largely incompatible with the STC universe). Discovering a canister containing a creature of living chaos energy, Grimer unleashed the fear-inducing "Chaos" upon the Freedom Fighters, leading to the death of Johnny Lightfoot. Rampaging out of Grimer's control, Chaos then attacked the Floating Island, intending to absorb the Chaos Emeralds; however, Knuckles jettisoned the emeralds before he could absorb more than one, causing the island itself to plunge into the ocean. While Robotnik then set about gathering the emeralds to lure all the players to his fortress that they might all die together, Sonic was transported into the ancient past of Mobius by Tikal and Pochacamac, two of the planet's race of echidnas, where he witnessed the beginning of the war between the Echidnas and the Drakon Empire, the origins of the Chaos Emeralds, and the creation of Chaos, who proved to be a Drakon prosecutor mutated by exposure to the emeralds. Returning to the present, Sonic arrived just as Chaos absorbed the remaining emeralds and became Perfect Chaos. Robotnik's suicide plan was thwarted, however, by the unexpected appearance of Super Sonic, dying due to depletion of his own chaos energy. Absorbing Chaos's energy, reverting him back to his Drakon form, Super Sonic became his old evil self again and turned on the Freedom Fighters, until Ebony used her magics to fuse Sonic and Super Sonic back together again.

Sonic the Comic's original stories came to an end at this point with issue #184, but the comic continued until #223 with reprinted material from throughout the magazine's life.