Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Geeks explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Archie Comics Part 2: The Sonic Boom
Ever wonder how a blue video game hedgehog became the star of the longest-running licensed comic book in history? The saga of Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog series offers a fascinating glimpse into the intersection of gaming culture, corporate licensing, and passionate fandom.
Born during the heated console wars of the early 90s, Sonic was Sega's answer to Nintendo's Mario. As we journey through the comic's unexpected evolution, we uncover how what began as a simple promotional tie-in for a Saturday morning cartoon grew into a sprawling universe with its own distinct mythology. The Archie Sonic comics survived for over 20 years through video game booms and busts, multiple animated series, and even Sega's exit from the console hardware business.
The podcast explores the three distinct eras of the comic, from its lighthearted beginnings to the chaotic middle period where multiple writers with conflicting visions created a narrative roller coaster. We dive into the controversial "Endgame" storyline that nearly killed Princess Sally and sparked massive fan protests, and the later "golden age" under writer Ian Flynn that many consider the creative peak of the series. Perhaps most dramatically, we unpack the unprecedented legal battle with former writer Ken Penders that forced a complete continuity reboot, erasing 150+ issues of storylines.
There's so many different types of gravy and it just adds so much flavor and nuance to things. No, I raw-dogged that stuff.
Speaker 2:Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.
Speaker 1:Are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Negative All weapons Now Charge the lightning field. In that vein, I'd like to quote something here so that we get everything on the record. This comes from the Ariana Grandeana grande song, side to side, which, if you didn't know, is about getting fucked real hard and not being able to walk afterwards I didn't.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna look this up while you're, while you're telling these in.
Speaker 1:It is a drop-in from nikki minaj who says quote yo this, quote Yo. This is the new style with the fresh type of flow Wrist, icicle, ride, bicycle, come through, yo Get you this type of blow. If you want a menage, I got a tricycle. All these biflows is my mini-me Body smokin'. So they call me Young Nicky Chimney Rappers in they feelings, cause they feel in me parentheses, murder. I give zero fucks and I got zero chill in me. Poignant, I think, and timely, classic. Really, it's the great bard. You know, it's like treading the boards at the globe, you know what does she mean, though?
Speaker 2:I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't understand we really need to break it down in a scholarly fashion to interpret.
Speaker 2:We could then get into the desire to have intercourse, either duration or depth of field, or fervor, that thus causes pain afterwards. Is this a desirable after effect?
Speaker 1:right, yes, and is it actually pain, or is it sort of like the the desirable, you know, exhaustive? I mean, this is a rich text it's like the jungle ulysses, ariana grande it's definitely ulysses for whom the bell tolls, and then and then side to side Ketrin and Leroy. But so far no beetles have been killed because of side to side. But you know, the day is young.
Speaker 2:Ringo watch out.
Speaker 1:Ringo's still out there.
Speaker 2:Glad we got it. We got that squared away.
Speaker 1:In case there was a deposition later. Sausage salad and side to sides.
Speaker 2:The three S's really. That's the name of the episode yeah, and side to sides the three S's really that's the name of the episode. Yeah, welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. This is Jake, I'm Skip. We are coming back to this. Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, no, you go bro.
Speaker 2:No, no, go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't have anything. You have an idea?
Speaker 2:This is Midwestern podcasting no, you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:So our last episode we were getting into the history of Archie comics and we're kind of slowly making our way through them, getting a sense for who and what they are and why they have been so impactful and so long lasting. At the end of last episode we came up to the tail end of the 80s, so we're going to jump in to the 90s and follow along here. So in 1990, we got adult versions of Archie and his pals starring in a live-action TV movie. This was Archie to Riverdale and back.
Speaker 1:I remember these movies coming out. I forgot these existed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, that was a TV movie directed by Dick Lowry, who did all that stuff that you love Of the Spice Empire. You know, the guy who did Smokey and the Bandit 3. Oh the third, best, one Second assistant director pickups on Piranha.
Speaker 1:So you know, wow, exalted Just the best of the best. Tommy popped it on that one.
Speaker 2:Indeed, I need to get rid of the side by side stuff. So that featured grown up versions of the Riverdale gang and aired on NBC Right Did not do well. No, surprisingly.
Speaker 1:I remember that being a really interesting thing, because this was in that very specific period in which Tim Burton had very successfully adapted Batman, then Warren Beatty tried to do his Dick Tracy thing, and so they thought this strange sort of surreal nouveau technicolor onscreen adaptation of these properties would work. Only Tim Burton seemed to be the only one that figured that out would work. Only tim burton seemed to be the only one that figured that out. So maybe the flash tv show, maybe, but they were so weirdly grotesque sort of pantomime versions like of archie. I remember thinking it was like so bizarre that nobody looked real, everything seemed artificial, like they took actors and then did them up to be these characters without them looking that way, naturally, you know well, not as much as like a dick tracy of the same time.
Speaker 2:But uh, there were no flat tops well, no, there were.
Speaker 1:No, there were no little faces or or anything. But I felt like it was in that same vein. It was like the made for tv version of that, where it was like badly conceived trying to to make these people look the way they look in the comics but in real life, through makeup and prosthetics, instead of just casting a redhead, you know, which you could have done very easily, you know, that kind of thing. That's what it felt like. I remember it was just really grotesque and trying too hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it also didn't help that they were dealing with. They made them all embattled and unhappy characters who were dealing with stuff like divorce, struggling with their jobs, like real adult issues, things that would will come back on this pod dealing with Archie in a bit Right, but it didn't ring true to the longtime Archie fans at the time.
Speaker 1:It kind of felt like a weird cynical writer who's upset about his station in life and was like what if they were like how I've gone through my life, you know? Or like, yeah, I bet today he'd be all divorced and he'd be unhappy and his job would suck, Just like all of us. It doesn't have anything to do with the actual characters, and also not one of those like, well, we have to make it sort of like a realistic, grounded update, Like they tried to do with Christmas Story.
Speaker 2:Christmas Story, yeah it did not work, as many things in the 90s were panning out for Archie were panning out for Archie. Another thing that didn't quite land was despite what was going on around them in the 40s and in the 90s. John Goldwater had said that Archie comes in as sort of the antithesis of the Superman, as Archie should be a champion of the everyman. But superheroes at the time that Archie was created and in the 90s were the thing dominating the market and the comic book shelves. So it didn't really raise any eyebrows when Archie had licensed their MLG superheroes in 1981. And DC then launched its imprint Impact Comics, using these heroes, as Archie was like looking like.
Speaker 1:Let's's stay relevant, let's give the kids what they want right now I'm really glad you brought that up, because I wanted to talk about impact. In the previous episode we had talked about how these characters do pop up every like couple of decades, or every decade or so. It's funny that they throw it all out there and be like okay, fuck it, dc, you do it yeah, similar.
Speaker 2:In the early 90s they were looking for again more ways to boost sales and like what else can we do with archie? Let's do some weird sci-fi stuff. Kids like that right now. So let's do things like archie 3000 or jughead's time police, which give you some whoa really, really bizarre storytelling I have never heard of this.
Speaker 1:This is a period I am oblivious of. Okay, well, it didn't last long. No shit lasted about as long as cherry 3000, cherry 2000 is pretty good say jughead's time police lasted a whole six issues. Can we get john claude van damme to star in this?
Speaker 2:and archie 3000 ran from 1989 to 1991, a total of 16 issues.
Speaker 1:Over two years Wow, or three years.
Speaker 2:Really banging it out. And if you ever happen to find any of these the stuff's weird, all right, it's just out there. But this is kind of what you know Archie was doing. It was trying to like moving away a bit from comics. We're kind of like getting into new ways of selling these things, you know with our digests, you know on different shelves, but we still need to stay relevant. We need to try and find something, a hook that's going to last. And when those didn't pan out, they went with licensing. First you had a small run of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now this is licensing.
Speaker 1:The cartoon show. Not the Laird and Eastman stuff, but the cartoon.
Speaker 2:Okay, no, it's the cartoon version of the characters and the show done in comic form. It's kind of this weird comic turns to cartoon, turns back to comic Weird Ouroboros.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the high school musical, the TV show, the musical movie, yeah. But I mean you could see why they wanted to do that Kid-friendly, sanitized version of the comic of Ninja Turtles turned into that cartoon, and so you could see why that would appeal, they would think, to the base of people who liked the sort of kid-friendly Archie aesthetic in Gestalt Stoltz. But I think their biggest problem in this point is that they're sticking too much to the aesthetic and framework of Archie as it had been and trying to shoehorn different stories into that framework instead of sort of rethinking the whole thing. That's possible.
Speaker 2:And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that Archie did did last 72 issues so it ran a while. That worked well and it did well. They didn't do a whole lot of print so they're kind of tough to find On the secondary market. They do pretty well but it's nothing in comparison to their biggest licensed property, that would be Sonic the Hedgehog. We're going to go down our little furry blue rabbit hole for a bit as we get into Sonic the Hedgehog.
Speaker 1:Let's refrain from using the words furry and hole in the same sentence from now on.
Speaker 2:As I get further into this Archie, Sonic stuff. That's going to be impossible.
Speaker 1:It is explicitly in there. At some point, Jake literally becomes a furry.
Speaker 2:It's not my thing. I've got friends that are furries. You know that. Have at it, you know.
Speaker 1:Apparently they party hard.
Speaker 2:Tough to clean up up. But that's not my thing, it's not for, it's not for us to know. It's like the different barbecue sauces.
Speaker 1:I may not agree, but you know, enjoy your meat however you like it if you're using that analogy to be like I prefer my mascot sex this way instead of the way that they do it. Maybe it's just more like hey, it's a spectrum and good luck. Luck and Godspeed.
Speaker 2:Godspeed. I mean that's pretty fast. Let this thing last Sonic the. Hedgehog man.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a different type of ring that he's going for.
Speaker 1:So many things we could say there. I'm not going to worry about it.
Speaker 2:So we're in the early 90s Right now.
Speaker 1:Whoa, everything's neon. All of a sudden, wow, jake and I are in the early 90s.
Speaker 2:It's pretty bodacious.
Speaker 1:Everything is teal and tastes like blue raspberry.
Speaker 2:Oh, I've got to open up my Trapper Keeper so I can tell you the rest of the script here.
Speaker 1:Then I drew a yin and yang symbol on it in Magic Marker. Yeah, we haven't moved on to that S. That was on everything. I was literally thinking that too. It was either that or the NNY. It was the next step. I got to get home to my beanbag chair and a clear plastic inflatable recliner. I bought it at 7th Heaven. Babylon 5 is going to be on soon.
Speaker 2:Got to jump in there. The arcade systems are coming into the home, so we have Nintendo. Right now is the only game that's really kicking ass in town. They've been doing really well, and Super Mario Brothers 3 is the best-selling game of all time when it comes out.
Speaker 1:As seen in the Wizard. Yeah, Do they do Super Mario 3? It premiered in that the first footage of first gameplay anyone had ever seen from that game. It was a tie-in with that movie. They showed in the trailer. We need to put a pin in that.
Speaker 2:Let's come back to oh yeah, the wizard sometime with a power glove and everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's something I'm surprised we haven't talked about very much.
Speaker 2:Well, you know it's out of sight, out of mind, but come back, gentle listener, and you may just hear about it sometime soon.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting turning point. This is when the console wars start, where we're trying to enter the home market. Autority's already had several iterations of their home consoles the Commodore 64, intellivision, coleco. They're all sort of on the same plane. But this is where the moment where Nintendo starts separating itself from the rest.
Speaker 2:At this point, Nintendo's the dominant force in the market, but there is a young upstart that may try to challenge them, a little company called sega or, most appropriately, in their commercials it's just not picking up on the microphone.
Speaker 2:I never know what you're saying I'm not falling for this again, jake so, like I said, nintendo's big on this scene, but sega, sega's coming out. They have this killer hardware that they think can beat Nintendo. They can beat them in speed, they can beat them in graphics, but they don't have something to really sink their teeth into and sell to the masses. That's when they get a pitch from the tech team, these artists Naoto Oshima and programmer Yuji Naka. Now they had an idea, so Sega snapped them up and, with some refining, created their new mascot for the system Sonic the Hedgehog.
Speaker 1:Because Nintendo had Jumpman, which was the character in Donkey Kong, who then later became Mario. It's a me Mario, An Italian plumber ridden by a Japanese guy. Is it cultural appropriation or just stereotypes? I couldn't tell you. The latter, I think, but that's fine.
Speaker 2:Sega found its Mario in Sonic, yeah but their Mario with their upbeat music, the bright visuals. Sonic's design and his cocky attitude were really like that, pushing the boundaries of what video games could be in the home. But it was done in a way that parents were okay with. It didn't make him uncomfortable and you know, like some other games that we spoke about before, if we're comparing it to mario, both you know side scrollers on the platform. But this was slick, it was poppy, it was an upgrade from what Mario could do. It was fast, adrenaline-based and exciting, which a lot of people felt Mario wasn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't play much Sonic. I don't really know much about Sonic, so this is kind of a bit of a rabbit hole for me to try to decipher this and then regurgitate it to you guys. I do not know. Sonic didn't play. It was a little too fast for me as a little kid and I didn't have friends that had Sonic. The few people I knew that had Sega systems. They were more like I was talking to Skip earlier about Earthworm Jim or Altered Beasts. It was more that stuff Didn't really play Sonic, the Genesis stuff.
Speaker 1:As it goes along, it gets increasingly more complex and graphically intense. It gets increasingly more complex and graphically intense and you still have your what they now refer to as Metroidvania side-scrolling adventures, which is a pretty common standard thing during this era. They really start playing with that form and like Earthworm Jim would be later Genesis stuff, Altered Beast would be early Genesis stuff or leftover from Master System. So like there's this moment where they finally realized Are we talking like no?
Speaker 2:Jack Required kind of vibe, or is this?
Speaker 1:Well, basically, like they finally realized what the capabilities of the hardware are and they really started and game developers really started pushing, expanding what that could do. Right, yeah, I was just making a Phil Collins show. Yeah, I know I don't like Phil Collins.
Speaker 2:Oh good, Just no selling. Appreciate it. You want to chop me up with an axe while we're at it? Do you read Sutter?
Speaker 1:Cane Do.
Speaker 2:I.
Speaker 1:It'd be a sledgehammer.
Speaker 2:Skip likes to think that he's cooler, I was. What they did think was cool was Sonic, as they had a number of spinoffs that would be produced for American audiences. They did games, merchandise, books, cartoons, anything they could license. Sega did it. And this starts for DIC's first outing, which is simply titled the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. This was a cartoon that began airing on september 6th 1993. Again the starred sonic along with his buddy tails and they would fight dr robotnik and his goons scratch and grounder. Now this is kind of a sonic looney tunes kind of vibe to the show. It did well enough to inspire a spin-off game dr robotnik's mean bean machine tails they introduce.
Speaker 1:His name is Miles Prowler, as in miles per hour. Ah, man.
Speaker 1:In the beginning of each of those games he's credited as if he's a real person and he had two tails and he could do helicopter stuff.
Speaker 1:But he was the companion to Sonic, also in the original version, dr Robotic. His name is Dr Eggman, translated from Japanese originally, because he is egg-shaped, and the origin story, as printed as a comic book insert, was that Dr Robotnik was doing some sort of experiment. He experiments on animals and he did some sort of experiment where he gave this hedgehog some enhancing drug or whatever, put him on a treadmill and then he actually ended up going so fast that, like all the stuff exploded and he quote went cobalt and became blue, and then it also caused Dr Eggman slash Robotnik to go insane and then use all of his scientific rigmarole to create cybernetic creatures out of normal animals. And so the point of those games is you have to like save the animals and turn them back into organic animals, from being cyborgs, like they're Borg or something. Well, you need to know that, because now we get into Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, which is literally just Dr Mario, but a more fun game.
Speaker 2:Right. So there are many things from this show that stuck around, things like sonic's love of chili dogs, uh, which has stayed around with the franchise ever since. Such a weird thing. Yeah, you know, adventures was originally supposed to be the only dic show but apparently they had some problems with their network and needed to create another show. This show eventually became Sonic the Hedgehog yeah, or Sonic the Morning, sat AM for fans on the message boards and whatnot. This always confused me. This began airing the same they were at the same time.
Speaker 1:Sat AM. No, just the fact that there were two shows.
Speaker 2:Right. This began airing the same month as Adventures, but it was a huge departure from the wacky tone of the other show. Instead, dark Robotnik is a real, legitimate threat. He had taken a hold of the planet and was converting most of the inhabitants into mindless robot cyborg slaves and, instead of Sonic being a solo hero, he was now part of a rebel uprising, part of the Freedom Fighters who are working to fight Robotnik. Despite the intense and unfathomable odds.
Speaker 1:Put those two shows on paper side by side. Which one do you think appeals to you and I more? The Terminator-esque futuristic, post-apocalyptic thing, or the one where they run around and talk about how flowers are pretty or whatever?
Speaker 2:Yeah, with the chili dogs, With the chili dogs Behind the tasty freeze.
Speaker 2:Oh, jack, you don't know nothing. He's a cougar, so this also. That's the cougs. This also introduced other beloved characters, including the first prominent female character of the franchise, sally and Bunny, and it is still thought well of today. This ended after a couple seasons, but it teased potential continuation with a new villain and a third. But a third season never came to be. Many of these unused third season concepts did trickle down into the next iteration of Sonic storytelling. Next iteration of Sonic storytelling.
Speaker 2:Now, the show was popular with fandom, but the creators still had plenty of stories to tell in the world. According to one of the show's writers, ben Hurst, at least part of the blame can be laid on the redheaded stepchild of the 90s Sonic cartoons, sonic Underground, now Sonic Underground. It was the last of the DIC cartoons and aired at the very start of 1999. Underground differs radically from its predecessors in both tone and plot and bears very few of the hallmarks of the franchise, save for Sonic. Right, sonic is depicted rather differently here than other stories and the world burning around draws very little from the games around the time. There's magic amulets and prophecies and class inequality and a band and identical siblings and trying to find a lost mother, there's a lot going on whether or not it's a cartoon on paper.
Speaker 1:That's a show that, like you and I, would have watched in syndication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's possible, but you know I don't know how much of like the gem and the holograms inspired Sonic band I'm super into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kind of lame yeah.
Speaker 2:According to Hearst, who is recounting his time on the show Underground, was cooked up by DAC in an attempt to capitalize on music royalties and potentially profit from the show's songs. Hence the creation of the band.
Speaker 1:So this is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coming out of their shells.
Speaker 2:tour of Sonic, archie did it first, then the Turtles did it, hanna-barbera did it many times. Archie leads the way, carries the torch, forges the path. Apparently this show was creatively bankrupt churn job with a bunch of inexperienced freelancers hired on the cheap to produce and bulk with no enthusiasm or vision, perhaps not without all merit, but it seemed to lack creativity and execution. But this wouldn't be the definitive version for many kids at this time of the character. No, that would come in a licensed deal with Archie Comics. That would prove so strong it would make Archie's version of Sonic the longest running comic based property of all time.
Speaker 1:Licensed property into comics?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, licensed property into comics. Yes, yeah. This series, this comic series, was originally designed as promotional tie-in to drum up hype for the upcoming cartoon. Now.
Speaker 1:Gardens of the Galaxy writer, mike Gallagher, who had just wrapped up a three-year stint at Marvel, was at the time penning ALF. That is a resume that I wish I had.
Speaker 2:I mean, think about that for a second yeah, he was writing a comic based on the ALF sitcom. Now Archie Comics had picked up the license to Sonic and seemed to think that Gallagher would be a great fit here.
Speaker 1:But he kept smashing watermelons.
Speaker 2:They contacted him to see if he'd be interested To hear him tell it. He was a little thrown off by it. To see if he'd be interested To hear him tell it. He was a little thrown off by it. He'd never heard of Sonic before, but he was excited to work with Scott Shaw who they had already gotten nailed on to do the pencils and he was hungry for work, being a freelancer, so he agreed.
Speaker 2:Archie Comics said hey, great, you have one week to send us a finished script. Here's three page Bible about the characters in the series. So hey, go make it happen. Gallagher did manage to make it happen. He turned it around in time and they began a four issue miniseries that was later collected into a volume called Sonic, the Beginning. Now this is kind of a weird collection of stories. Most part you get what you'd expect a handful of zany episodes with the gang kind of battling Robotnik's scheme. But then you'd get. But then the final issue was kind of a what-if-else world where Robotnik grew up with Sonic.
Speaker 1:Aw, they're doing the old Daniel Craig Spector thing, come on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah Weird. But you know that. You know, guy had the three page. You know here's like what Sonic is and he made up, you know, four issues on the spot. So you know, you know, doing all right. The miniseries did pretty well. Archie Comics officially started publishing full length monthly Sonic comics starting in July 1993. Now Archie Comics Sonic first shipped out then, meaning it actually predated the show that it originated from. That's pretty funny. Make that make sense. Yeah, yeah, sense, yeah, yeah. Now the comic was a continuation of gallagher's work on the miniseries in a lot of ways because gallagher himself stayed on writing the stories. Unfortunately, scott shaw did not migrate with him to the book. He was replaced by dave mannick.
Speaker 2:Uh, and sonic morning cartoon shows storyboarder art mawini, among many other people, of course, his name is art yeah, many of the early issues are again zany, episodic things, you know, vehicles for puns and kind of some mean spirit of humor. It was kind of like you know, blue elf in a lot of ways how it started.
Speaker 1:Now I really want to go down a rabbit hole about what blue elf would be like.
Speaker 2:So many different ideas here hey, can we get a blue elf for the table please?
Speaker 1:oh man, I can barely walk today.
Speaker 2:I got a blue elf last night he's walking side by side and I can barely walk today. I got a blue elf last night.
Speaker 1:He's walking side by side, Two side but yes, yeah, again, totally.
Speaker 2:It was odds at odds with the cartoon. Now, that was going on, but the higher ups wanted to be silly and lighthearted. That was going on, but the higher-ups wanted to be silly and lighthearted as the story goes. Despite barring characters and story elements from the Saturday morning cartoon, the writers were instructed to stay more in line with the comedy and overall vibes of the first cartoon and the first comic miniseries. This is how we ended up with stuff like the series opening on Robotnik, the heartless military dictator who enslaved an entire planet, beating up a piñata of his teenage nemesis, grumbling about how much he hates Sonic the Hedgehog.
Speaker 1:Is it a piñata in that sense or an effigy? I would imagine an effigy, unless it literally candy falls out.
Speaker 2:I think literally candy falls out.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. Well, that answers that on it with a yeah no, it's his kids in the era.
Speaker 2:And yeah, okay, fair so by september 93 the saturday morning cartoon was airing, but people immediately gravitated towards that. The saturday marketing was the first bit of sonic media available to American fans to actually have a story. The next closest thing to that was a minimalist cut scenes in Sonic 3. That wouldn't hit shelves until February of 1994. Now, while the Saturday morning cartoon isn't exactly grim, dark, it's definitely considered more serious in tone to the early Archie Sonic. Now it's really impossible to talk about Archie Sonic in any way without eventually circling back to Ken Penders. This is where we get. If anybody knows about Archie Sonic, ken Penders is a lightning rod, we might say a touchstone.
Speaker 1:Is he the Jim Shooter of Sonic?
Speaker 2:comics. You'll find out in due time. But but you know, coming back to a recent episode where we discuss the life and times of one jim shooter, we kind of eulogized recently deceased now ken pender started working on archie, sonics and issue 11.
Speaker 2:He was a writer and contributor all the way up to issue 159. Good, he also yeah, he also wrote various of the special issues and most famously all of the Knuckles, the Echidna solo books, which ran for 30 issues themselves. We will get further into some of the legal issues with Ken, but we'll just kind of like we'll work a little bit through Ken's ideas for the series here Now. As Ken tells it, his start at Archie was uneventful. A collaborative of his, mike Kantrovich, had been tipped to write the comic, having never again, never heard of Sonic the Hedgehog. But he did give it a shot In the interest of brainstorming. Mike called Ken, who recognized Sonic as his son's favorite character, and he decided he'd pitch a few stories too.
Speaker 2:Kantorovich departed the series and Kenders, for whatever reason decided to stick around. That's not quite clear. What made him decide to stay in the book. Kenders has famously admitted to never having played Sonic the game and not caring about him in the least. But Kander's stuck around for obviously a great long while. Now I don't think Archie never had a formal lead writer until later down the line when Mike Gallagher unofficially filled that role for a decent stretch of time.
Speaker 2:Following his early time in the book, gallagher's relevance to it would sharply decline. The rate of his contribution to the book took a nosedive following issue 50, with stretches up to 20 issues with the story showing up outside the off-the-panel gag comic that appeared on the comics letter page. Officially Gallagher's final story was printed in issue 185 as a backup story. Now this is generally accepted as something that archie itself would do. Publisher wide archie in the early days were known for buying up stories in bulk and just publishing whenever they needed a little bit of filler for their comics cheapskates.
Speaker 2:Again kantrovich, who brought penders on. He stayed up until issue 38 and he'd work pretty close with penders. But when he left pend's kind of took the reins. And this again is when kind of some of the controversy and stuff starts to pop up. Now he did write many of the solo series Sally, a popular Sonic character, back in February 1995, tales in October 95 and Knuckles in May of 96. October 95 and Knuckles in May of 96. Sally or Princess Sally. Alicia Acorn was initially drawn up as the female lead of the cartoon and a love interest for Sonic. She was voiced by Kath Soucy and she served as the leader and the tactical.
Speaker 1:She was the man at arms of their rebellion. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Of the of the freedom fighters. So she was kind of like the head. She was in fact the franchise's first female lead character, just barely beating out Amy Rose. Sally was portrayed as being competent and clever and really, at least by the fan base, thought of as a great character. But Ken Penner's didn't really think so. So when Ken Penner's took over he started to deteriorate the way she was characterized. He didn't want to commit to having her be Sonic's love interest and wrote her as both kind of clingy and nagging and standoffish. The feminist perspective yeah well, in the three issue series that he wrote about, Sally, away from the main, cast on a side adventure with yet another group of freedom fighters, she was accompanied by the infamous Jeffrey St John, a character he wrote and Penders came up with that he would later claim that this character took Sally's virginity, quoting it as the one story that he could never tell.
Speaker 1:Uh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't good and fan reception reflected this. The comic sold pretty poorly and no one ever officially explained why. But Sally was a popular character. She was also a girl which, in a largely male-dominated demographic, you know, maybe caused some hesitancy by they also kind of like drew Sally to kind of look up like a generic furry. I don't know if you know what Sally looks like, but here is Is she not the pink one? A picture of Sally.
Speaker 1:I remember the pink one, oh, okay, what Really?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think Sally was kind of like a chipmunk furry kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I mean, she was sally acorn she's like a, like a chip, and dale's character yeah what? Uh, I don't know this is bizarre era for sonic too. It like this is what a weird, what a weird time all right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So when we get to 1997 and things weren't looking too good for archie sonic, the cartoon really the, the mother series for the, the book in a lot of ways was canceled back in 94 and dropped syndication by its home network.
Speaker 2:Abc's entire animation block had gotten a chop in favor of churning out disney cartoons which they don't make anymore yeah, sonic was trying to hold off against the marketing god of mighty morph and power rangers, but it wasn't enough. Now it had also been some of the last major sonic release for sega, being sonic 3 and knuckles, it seemed that sonic mania was beginning to die out as the sonic comic was careening towards cancellation, which seemed inevitable. Archie lost a good deal of its creative team's contracts in an unspecified warehouse accident.
Speaker 1:What, what.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know. So they all drew up quote replacement contracts which were hastily rewritten without much thought put into what went down on the paper and was signed.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I understand. If it was like a labor dispute or something, a warehouse accident, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:That's the craziest thing I've ever heard, I assume there was some fire in their warehouse and they lost the contracts that they had, all of their comic staff.
Speaker 1:And nobody had any digital copies or Well we're dealing with the 90s. You store everything in one file folder and then, when your dog eats it it's gone like yeah, but the other party didn't have their own copy of the contract I do not know, but this will what the fuck?
Speaker 2:we'll come back up later what are the other possibilities?
Speaker 1:That is the craziest thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 2:I think we need them. Contracts to fall off a truck. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:It's stuck in the middle with you playing. They've got the artist tied to a chair, put a pin in that. That's going to come back to that later.
Speaker 2:So these Archie Sonic comics aren't doing well and some of the writers at Archie made a decision Rather than sitting around waiting for the axe to drop, they were going to try to give this big, dramatic series finale and let the characters and the creative team go out on their own terms. Everybody wanted the comic to keep running, but at least this way, if and when the Sword of Damocles does fall, the fans will have the ending and some closure before things wind down. At least that's what Ken Penders had in mind. This arc is largely acknowledged as being primarily his baby, and pretty much everyone in the know says that he is the only writer to have worked out on every issue in the arc. Major plot, beats and arc were written by him, save for one big change, which again we'll we'll discuss later now.
Speaker 2:I was hyped up in previews and later pages. The in-story build-up was pretty minimal, if not completely non-existent. Archie number 46 had some vague, ominous foreshadowing, but then smash cut to archie 47. They were launching into the four issue arc about the grave final battle that was going to be happening. Almost like if you were reading you'd be like wait, did I miss something? Uh, it just kind of jumped into it, the freedom fighters and their allies. Sally goes on ahead as Sonic rushes off to go do something else, blah, blah, there's God. As Sonic rushes off to go do something else, blah, blah, there's God. I'm just looking at my notes and, man, there's no way I'm getting through all of this. There's so much that I don't even know. There's a lot of these characters that I don't even have any grasp of, so I'm just like talking about them.
Speaker 1:This sounds like a weird Reign of Fire type or like some sort of Terminator Apocalypse thing rain of fire type, or like some sort of terminator apocalypse thing.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so in this end game, which is what they called it sally dies jesus.
Speaker 1:I imagine a comic cover of sonic holding sally's broken body crying like the crisis on infinite earths number what was it sick yeah, imagine that, at least the way that ken wrote it.
Speaker 2:Nobody really cares, fair enough. The fandom was very unhappy and voice of displeasure. Some fans took action and protested. Archie and sega were bombarded with letters, fan protests and petitions of varying tones, from angry to heartbroken, but all were unified in the desire to see sally return to life. In the pages of archie sonic there have been multiple explanations for Sally's death. The consistent throughline, though, seems to be that a discomfort Sally's ability to take Sonic down a peg which Ken didn't like. He killed Sally off because she quote cramped Sonic's style and made him a second banana.
Speaker 1:Wow yeah, mm-hmm, somebody's a divorced dad, dad yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 2:He also reinstated sally's father, king maximilian acorn, to the comics, which usurped sally position and made her unnecessary well, she's a woman, so she's usually unnecessary according to this logic ken would then spend most of his time the next year working on the in-production knuckles comic, which left him very little time to progress his story, which we will get to, you'll hear about in a mini episode about the replicant sally that he wanted to make what is this lore we're dealing with here?
Speaker 2:I know. So this left the story to the other archie sonic writers, who already had their hands full with their own plans, and was eventually smashed and gotten rid of by editor justin gabrys requests that the end game have a happy ending, or at least one that didn't ruin a year-long mislead. There are also rumors that sega were at least responsible for saving sally, starting citing marketing plans for her down the line, which does make sense. Sally was the mascot for Sega World Sydney, where she also starred in a live stage show called Sonic Lives in Sydney, and so they didn't want their fursuit mascot done away with. Oh, wow, ok, before they could utilize her.
Speaker 1:This alone is a lot.
Speaker 2:A live stage performance, oh boy yeah, okay well I so many things I'm curious about now despite end game essentially being seen as awful by the fan base, it did stir up a lot of attention for the sonic comic and sales numbers began soaring in. An an ironic twist, that very comic was intended to serve as the series finale had instead given the book the boost it needed to become a fandom and industry mainstay for the next two decades. But this sales boosting explosion finale was a bit of a double-edged sword. They'd drawn a lot of press attention but they'd done so by killing off their main villain and changing the comic status quo. Robotnik dead and a whole lot more to come. This allows us to break up Sonic Comics into three big parts. You have the early section a lot of one shots around 20 to 25.
Speaker 2:The comic started to become a larger storytelling vehicle Around Sonic. Issue 25, Amy joins the comic. This builds up to issue 50, which is Endgame. Also, this is where they start having arcs and spinoff comics. At this point this is essentially supposed to be the end, but Sega wanted to fix things, so afterwards they kept expanding the stories and side characters into more complex stories.
Speaker 2:Starting with issue 60, things kind of go off the rails. Archie contracts out positions instead of a standard writing and drawing team. So every three to four comics the story and art are significantly different. It's also here that the comic has some of the wildest and most unique plots and art styles. The three or so main writers wanted the comic to go in vastly conflicting directions. So in one comic we are doing one thing. Two comics later we abandon that arc entirely. Characters are here one day, die the next when someone else takes the wheel. Then the original writer is back and boom, they miraculously survived secretly and are back. The longer the narrative gets, it gets super confusing and most of the game tyrants are crammed in, only making things worse.
Speaker 2:Now here we get some arcs. Sonic and team go to school with humans. Okay, that happens for two issues and then is never talked about again. You, you get a whole lot of multiverse Sonic stuff, also trying to explain how humans live in Station Square with the Starry Night but are never seen on the surface of Mobius. Sonic has a bunch of different girlfriends. Then we see Sonic be banished to a distant planet for five comics and then sent back. This kind of goes on and on like this up until the second kind of big break in the comics is around issue 160. So about issue 150, the writing just gets off the wall. Plus, Ken Penders has his series canceled, Archie stops the multiple captains nonsense and promotes Ian Flynn, the permanent writer.
Speaker 2:The next issue is used to stabilize the comic storyline as well as bring in what many readers consider the best of archie comics. Characters like shard and scourge become mainline. Several song story arcs, including one of the most memorable ones, the rise of mecca sally, are put in here. It then starts getting really intense and you get on the brink of major turning points in the story when the lawsuit which we'll talk about in just a minute forces Archie to make major adjustments to the comic. Everything gets hardcore, rebooted, Hundreds of characters are dumped from the lore and everyone's backstory gets reset Again. Put a pin in that. We will be back to it in just a second. I just want to get through this last thing.
Speaker 2:The third big change is what's called New 252. The comic has good writing and art from peak Archie and gets back to the Freedom Fighters core and the characters plot out right out of the games, as requested by Sega. Archie made a good job trying to get the comic to work again with Sonic Unleashed and Lost World storyline. But the more lawsuits and lacking sales mean the comic kind of stops suddenly around 190. You get Sonic Universe that starts up alongside this. Now this has a lot of the stories from the main comic characters that are given screen time while not clogging up the main comic line. It's like Shadow and Team, Dark Stories, Chaotix, Silver, a lot of concurrent stuff that ties in with the main Sonic thing storyline. The sonic universe then reboots at the same time and equally ends at the same time that the main comic does. Why does the main comic end and why do we get all these reboots? Most of this is because of the lawsuits. Online you're going to find a whole lot of people discussing about ken penders and these lawsuits and you get it like back and forth, depending on which sides of the fandom that you find yourself on.
Speaker 2:Essentially, Ken Penders had been working on the comic and essentially Ken saw that they were utilizing some of the stuff that he had written and the characters that he had worked on and were putting him in the Sega games and using them in different licensed properties. And he had looked at his newish quote contract not the original one he signed but the new one that he had signed after when they hastily wrote one up and was like, wait, no, all of these things are mine. I own the license to all of these and I should get royalties for all of this stuff. And if Sega or anybody wants to use this, they need to pay me. Now they went through a protracted legal battle that lasted a while and man, there's so much about that. But Archie sued him when he tried to collect royalties for all of these things. Archie ended up losing and had to settle with Ken Penders.
Speaker 2:Now there's a. There's a lot like he was trying to get money from Sega and Bioware and Archie Bioware there's a lot in there, Go check. Yeah, they were working with Sega at the time. He claimed a lot of stuff, a lot of the stuff with Knuckles like he claimed it as his own. He then tried to take some of those characters he had made or written the definitive versions of and make his own stuff outside of Archie Comics or Sega's thing. But after the lawsuit Archie was out.
Speaker 2:We don't know exactly how much money Ken got from this, but it must have been somewhat significant or cost prohibitive and they were kind of in legal limbo with some of the stuff they did. So that's when you get the big reboot, up until like that, 150 issues that Ken had been writing, they erased all of that, all of the characters, all of the backstory, 150 issues that Ken had been writing. They erased all of that, All of the characters, all of the backstory, everything that he had been involved with. They essentially wrote out, so they wouldn't have to deal with any of that.
Speaker 1:That's a Sonic drama right there.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh yeah. There's a whole whole lot of that. Again, archie were unable to produce original copies of the contract with Penders, nor those of any other artists they had worked on Sonic, with, which owed them up to future lawsuits and are in after the 2013 lawsuit with Penders was ended in 2016. Scott Fullop, who had been a writer on the Sonic comics after Penders, he started suing for the same stuff. Eventually, his claims were dismissed in the defendant's favor, saying that they didn't have sufficient evidence for their claims against archie. That's fucking crazy. This is a ton of stuff going on um at this time. So they rebooted all that stuff, got rid of ken pender's weirdness, his weird Nazi influence stuff, his weird Knuckles, jesus allegory stuff. Oh wow, his weird furry sex stuff that he had kind of put in there you should never let forum posters run an actual franchise.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's what it is.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is basically just like 4chan or like reddit, like like fan fiction in nutbags running an actual franchise yeah, after the fact he got pissed, that like, uh, eventually another company takes over and pender's says you know, that's all derivative social justice warrior vomit that they're writing. I mean, you kind of get an idea of what he's all about.
Speaker 1:Oh, god damn it too woke, you also get uh around this time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, archie sales are are declining. They do a big when worlds collide. That is this big crossover with sonic universe and and sonic gives them a boom, but then they, they crash. So eventually sonic ends with, I think, issue 275 and, due to the lawsuits and the sales dips, you have archie focusing their time and money on different things and it's also rumored that sega's was asking too much money to re-up their licensing deal with Archie. So Sonic then moved to IDW and if you look at the sales charts, they massively overperformed the best of what Sonic was doing. Sonic generally, you know, in its best of times in the 2010s through 2015,. In its best of times in the 2010s through 2015, maybe they'd get up to 12,000, 15,000 issues sold. When IDW Sonic started, it shot up to around 22,000. Wow, it did come back down to around the 12,000 to 15,000 mark.
Speaker 1:But in general they were doing much better than Archie was able to do for much of their run, which explains why now, why you see idw trying to do the sonic justice league crossovers and all that, yeah, in 2008, sonic the hedgehog was outselling many of the core archie titles.
Speaker 2:They even were able to do into the 30 000 unit range, according to some websites. That's a big number. I don't know if I saw that archie comics digest Digest, which again we're targeting different fan bases. They were generally outselling Sonic and the main Archie Comics, usually doing about 10,000 units. Again, pretty big numbers.
Speaker 1:But when IDW?
Speaker 2:started.
Speaker 2:They're selling around 21,000 copies, really kind of blowing old Archie sales, which had been declining over years, to dropping under 10,000 copies an issue by 2014.
Speaker 2:So legal disputes, loss of focus and declining sales and IDW freshness took Sonic out of Archie's hands.
Speaker 2:But Sonic was a big mover for Archie comics for many, many years. Again lasted over 20 years of giving them consistent sales, maybe not always hitting the highest highs that they wanted, but it was, like I said, the longest ongoing licensed property in comic form, really killing it and, I think, allowed Archie to sustain in some of its leaner times through the late 90s and early 2000s, before they had some big changes, which is what's coming up. Yeah, sonic was never like industry leader or a flagship necessarily for the book, but it did provide them with a consistency and a fan base fan base. I think it allowed them to tap into a fan base that may not have been as aware of archie comics before them and allowed them to keep sales consistent enough to stay afloat as a larger entity and I do think that is kind of ironic because as much turmoil and lawsuits and drama that mired that franchise, that that series, and still it was the only constant thing in Archie sales.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, there were, Archie still was selling other things, and we'll get to a little bit of what else was happening with in the 90s into the 2000s, before Archie really turned a corner and did something completely different. It certainly does do that. It certainly does, yes, yeah, we will finish up our what was supposed to be a single episode look at Archie Comics. History, as we so often do, became at least a three-parter.
Speaker 1:Because the stuff's there, the material's there. Yeah, we didn't plan on it being this long, but when we dug into it, there's a rich history here and it's more, much more complex and complicated than everyone gives it credit for, unless you really understand the industry. So it's an interesting deep dive. It goes from family drama, nostalgic stuff to pseudo scott mitchell rosenberg stuff, mixed with jim shooter and stan lee, and and then now we haven't even gotten into the renaissance of Archie yet, which is the next and final phase of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah and dear listener, we will cover that on next episode, yes, of Dispatch Ajax and we hope that you have enjoyed this weird, weird offshoot deep dive into Sonic lore.
Speaker 1:But mostly Sonic comic lore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, mostly Sonic comic lore, yeah, lore, yeah, yeah, mostly sonic comic lore. Yeah, we essentially didn't touch the video games at all and offhandedly discussed the cartoons. Not even like the movies. That's probably the biggest thing about sonic.
Speaker 1:now you got the movies and live action yeah, but the movies are like the thing I care about the least, so whatever yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I don't really have any affinity for Sonic, much in general.
Speaker 1:It's a whole universe in and of itself that has literally nothing to do with the video games. We'll address that later. It gets deep and dark.
Speaker 2:And we're not even in Ken Pender's search history, so I don't really have much of a skin in the game. It does seem like he may be more of a negative influence.
Speaker 1:He sounds like Zack Snyder in that sense. Yeah, he encouraged a huge fan base, but it may be against what everyone else thinks about the franchise.
Speaker 2:Just like Zack Snyder, Like yeah, yeah, not good, not good at all, but you know, what we do hope is good was this episode and the next episode that will hit your earwaves quite soon.
Speaker 1:And, quite frankly, we hope that most of our episodes are good. Just like to throw that out there.
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Speaker 1:The Russian neo-Nazi bots. That's our biggest demographic apparently.
Speaker 2:I love how they've officially come out and said that officially, there are more bots on Twitter now than there are humans.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely Everyone knew it. Now they just can't deny it.
Speaker 2:Well, I know. But like now they like officially. If they're like officially saying they've crossed over, like the 50% mark, then you know it's like 90%, 90%, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's great. It's great. The world's great Doing great. Everything's going really well. The world's great Doing great. Everything's going really well.
Speaker 2:We're loving it, but until AI, which is also a podcast, truly takes over and ruins your feed and all of your podcasts. We're here for you, fellow human. We're still people, we promise we're not replicants. I promise.
Speaker 1:So are we human or are we dancers? Dancers, I mean, that's tough, that's tough. I'm going to go with human.
Speaker 2:You would, though. That's why we can't trust you.
Speaker 1:Hey look, I may be more human than human, hey hey.
Speaker 2:I got a dragula. All right, yep, why not All right right dig through those ditches before, um, before you slam into the back of my dragula, what should the rest of the audience, the second dirtiest thing you've ever said to me, twice, two things in this one recording.
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Speaker 2:No, I want to see. I want to see it. Please go away.