Not necessarily Sonic the Comic.
I continue to be cynical about crossover shit but it’s clear that the people making the comic are having a lot of fun while mashing together their different dolls. Like, yes, this is largely an excuse to sell really awful looking toys where Sonic wears the Flash’s costume, but also Lex Luthor sleeps with Rouge the Bat and that’s really funny.
Really enjoying this arc so far. I am glad that Sage has finally been allowed to join the comics and also that they immediately used it to explore some Eggman family drama with Belle’s resentment. The use of damaged asterons as both little robo-Starros to take control of badniks and as a mask to give them mechanical Cthulhu tentacles is a really nice touch and presumably calls back the hooded figure’s real identity as well.
Continues to be fine if not that interesting. I’m not fond of Metsli’s sexy native design.
Reckless use of tech for your own gain… That isn’t compatible with life.
The environmentalist themes of Sonic the Hedgehog feel more like a point of trivia now than anything else. Something to reference about the birth of the series rather than anything still core to its identity. This comic brings environmental messages back to forefront very direct way, but it also feels as much as a nostalgic reference, like throwing in Giga Thomas “Pen”, the giant penguin robot boss from Sonic Triple Trouble, as it does an attempt at sincere messaging.
Perhaps I am being overly cynical. It’s still a delightful little comic and I love seeing the bright, colourful version of this world that they do in these throwback anniversary comics and using younger version of these characters lets them be a bit cuter and a bit sillier while still being in keeping with their current personalities. Sonic is a bit less sure-footed, Knuckles even more full of himself while still being very inexperienced, Amy being shown growing from a damsel in Sonic CD to a hero herself, and Tails still looking to Sonic for validation.
Vols.: Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ, Ⅳ, Ⅴ, Ⅵ, Ⅶ, Ⅷ, Ⅸ, Ⅹ, Ⅺ, Ⅻ, ⅩⅢ, ⅩⅣ, ⅩⅤ, ⅩⅤⅠ
I keep accumulating links in a drafts for these roundups and forgetting to every post them! Whoops!
I am nearing the end of Furuhata Ninzaburō so in honour of that the musical accompaniment this time will be this remix of the main theme from Dance Dance Revolution 4th Mix.
The first people annoyed by basket weaving were not students or faculty but soldiers returning from World War II. Basket weaving was one of many activities used in the relatively new field of occupational therapy. Weaving, knitting, and other crafts were (and still are) believed to help people with mental disorders, which included traumatized soldiers.
I have seen a few people linking to this blog now but I think I may have first saw it mentioned by Laura Michet. Davis dives into the history of terms and jokes that have become so cliché as to fade into the background of culture, their original origin or point unclear. They’re all worth reading but this one in particular shows a fascinating lens on how industrialisation changes culture and the perceived value of skills and how different assumptions that arise from those changes can clash.
The whole design of the traditional English house was based on this peculiar form of life and its associated norms of thermal comfort and management. The English preference for single glazed sash windows and open hearth fireplaces over European-style double casements and stoves was, among foreigners, a baffling but charming eccentricity, generally understood as an adaptation to the wet oceanic climate.
I am a simple girl. Give me an article on how societal conditions shape culture over time and I will probably read it.
Today, virtually every single claim about psychopathy has been either thoroughly refuted or failed to find empirical support in experimental settings. Psychopathy may not exist at all.
It is very difficult to kill an idea, even if that idea has little foundation.
How would an anarchist society enforce traffic laws?” and “how would an anarchist society deal with rapists and other violent criminals?”, and similar, are perennial questions in “anarchism 101” type spaces online. I read an interesting answer on the former question recently. If the goal is increasing public safety, simply demanding that people obey certain rules is not very effective.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a book I have never really known anything about except its title, but I enjoyed this view into it and comparison of it to The Dispossessed and how they illustrate the difference between left- and right-libertarianism.
Another big part of the problem here is the way people engage with stories like this. (Especially young men in their teens or early 20s.) They treat it like it's not a story with ups and downs, but a sport. You root for your favorite characters, and when bad things happen to them that means you're losing.
I am disconnected from fandom spaces in general. Sometimes I catch site of a post, it often involves the phrase “it’s okay to”, that is clearly in response to some utterly baffling piece of internecine drama that reminds me that this is the correct path to follow. Similarly here, but in much greater detail, Bobby Schroeder outlines how angry fans made the character of Lanolin in the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog a central point of hate that I had no idea of. Lanolin was not my favourite character (though I do quite enjoy Adam Bryce Thomas’s little side comic with her and Shadow bonding over coffee) but the level of toxicity outlined here sounds exhausting. I do think that Schroeder might be ascribing more force to angry fans on Twitter than is warranted in motivating certain creative decisions, but it is easy to see why getting personally dragged into this stuff constantly would colour your perceptions of its impact.
The core problem was this: because it was so difficult to figure out how to do anything at runtime in these games, the only thing the mod was really able to influence was the moment the player received an item. They could see which items the player was getting and replace them with something else. What's more, this didn't work with items purchased from a shop.
Interesting high-level description of making a randomiser mod.
Mapping time to space to make a subjective real time that spans a greater period than is temporally possible. Making time hyper-real. That is beyond Oscar bait. That is Golden Lion. It's not quite Palme d’Or, but it’s definitely Grand Prix. But in video games it’s basic literacy.
I am including a video and you can’t stop me! Danskins puts into coherent words some thoughts that I have had about games, and specifically about Half-Life 2, for years.
I think this gets at the fundamental threat we pose to fascism, and to authoritarian structures more broadly. Authoritarianism relies on classification and stratification, on strict social order. Yet here I am, not only telling everyone in the world that I’m a girl, but having everyone either believe me or politely accept that I see the world differently than they do.
We are going to keep going.
Starmer's Government followed a plan by FG transplant Morgan McSweeney, to tack hard to the right to chase Reform on immigration, bigotry towards trans people and, weirdly, flag-shagging.
This so upset its voters that they got up and left, going to the Green party or just staying at home. It won them precisely zero votes from people who wanted Reform-style policies, who just voted for Reform.
An Irish look at British politics.
Compress the time and the friction does not disappear. You just stop noticing it. Clausewitz called what unfolds when you refused to notice friction a “war on paper,” a plan that proceeds without resistance because everything that connected it to the world it was supposed to act on has been taken out.
Really good read on how automation is actually being used, the ends it is being used to justify and the failure to talk about these things correctly.
It’s a promotional comic. It’s fine. I enjoyed Jet, Sonic and Shadow flirting.
Issue #84 of IDW’s Sonic the Hedgehog is out and features Sage from Sonic Frontiers in the comic for the first time. I have been looking forward to getting to see her interact with more of the cast and in particular Belle.
I like to keep my Sonic reading order page up to date and with Sage being added to the cast I decided to add a new little touch to it: Icons to show when major characters were introduced, mostly pulled from Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, with a couple borrowed from fan mods and a few drawn by myself as well. There’s still a few characters I’d like to add but I wanted to share it so they will have to wait till I have time to doodle again.
Comic looks great as always. Very funny that the first issue in this has a bunch of Sonic the Hedgehog’s friends celebrating killing a guy.
Shadow continues to be frustrating in these comics, stuck doing the same bit of being an egotistical dickhead who fucks things up by rushing in without thinking.
The Soleil/Lunar plotline felt a bit rushed.
It’s because we run at different speeds that we were able to look after everyone.
Interesting to see Sonic in a story where he’s mostly interacting with humans again when the series has avoided it for so long outside of the live-action films. It’s been fun so far but has also felt like a fairly by-the-numbers adventure story and I don’t really love how Sonic looks in Imada’s style a lot of the time.
I was disappointed that the Knuckles’ Chaotix designs weren’t used here in line with the the other 30th anniversary comics. Still a fun a little story using the different art styles and character voices to pleasing effect and putting in a bit of light de-colonial subtext on a type of story that generally does not question the institution of the museum itself. Also I feel that the title should have been styled as Chaotix’ 30th Anniversary.
The 2024 annual feels a little insubstantial, mostly being setup for upcoming storylines, but I always appreciate some more of Surge and Kit and Sonic flirting with Knuckles was fun. A lot issues #76 to #78 is also setup but in a way that is picking up the pieces after the big bang in #75 and setting up new directions for things a bit more. Lot of cute moments here too. Belle in her wagon house with Motobud, Amy thinking Blaze is so stoic standing stop the Tornado while she’s actually shitting herself, the big group hug with the girls and the gays and Silver the Hedgehog. All the locations are, of course, gorgeously rendered and I love the race sequence between Blaze and Surge, and the way they use the trails to contrast Surge’s chaotic nature with Blaze’s careful control.
Even putting aside my dislike for the naming scheme that simply labels it as a cross promotion and nothing else—art is ever more stripped to branding exercises not even trying to promise substance—I find it so strange that the title uses the brand name DC itself and not the Justice League. Is the name of the company really more of a draw or recognisable than the actual Justice League themselves? Do people get excited just hearing “DC”?
Still, this is about as good as it could have been. It’s very pretty (other than the superhero costumes the Sonic characters end up in which look atrocious on them), it has a snappy pace with each issue establishing a new set of ideas to play with before quickly moving on to set up the next one, and it has a few good gags and some charm to it. I especially like the bit in the first issue of the Justice League asking how the hedgehogs got their powers only for Sonic and Silver to say that they’re just normal men.
Incredible that today’s Sonic comic ends with the heroes teary-eyed celebrating a successful revenge-murder and no one suggests that this might be a bad thing.
lesbian couple going on revenge-murder mission and also their supportive friend Silver the Hedgehog is there
the vibe here really comes off as lesbian couple going on adventures and also their supportive friend Sonic the Hedgehog is there
which is, frankly, the ideal relationship dynamic
What voice I hear when I read dialogue in these comics varies a lot. When I read the mainline Sonic comics I usually hear Roger Craig Smith’s voice in my head as the hedgehog, but if it’s something where he’s a bit more immature it’s often Bryan Drummond. For Seasons of Chaos it’s Martin Burke from the O.V.A. with a matching Lainie Frasier Tails, but when I turn the page over to Sonic Learns to Drive he’s Jaleel White now. Sonic encompasses a bunch of different tones and styles and this book is a nice collection of some of the lighter stories with the younger versions of the cast.
Seasons of Chaos itself feels like it delivers on the promises of the Mega Drive miniseries that got cut short by the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic’s cancellation with an expanded, post-Sonic Mania cast who are also captured so perfectly in Aaron Hammerstrom and Reggie Graham’s art.
Sonic Learns to Drive is goofy fun that feels like it is hitting every single obvious joke to make but it lands them well.
Dr. Eggman’s Birthday and Amy’s New Hobby are two cute stories to end it out on, particularly the latter with its celebration of making your own little comics, which feels particularly meaningful given how much of the staff of the comics came from fan communities in the first place, and stands in stark contrast to how Sonic Boom and that era of Sonic media handled the idea of fan fiction with disdainful self-mockery.
The story is straightforward but effecting and it is brought to life wonderfully in the art, especially Nathalie Fourdraine’s colouring and it’s a masterpiece in the use of light and darkness and it’s just lovely to revisit in in paper. And there’s just so many little details: The boarders changing based on the lighting throughout the comic, getting darker as they venture into the depths of the Death Egg and glitching out in time with Mecha Sonic.
There’s lots of great little moments throughout. I love when it briefly turned into Aliens everything turns green. And Mecha Sonic is just so cool.
I do think Sonic’s injured leg is something that he seems to just get over far too easily in the climax and really nitpicking things a small detail I noticed on reread: Sonic consistently walks putting his weight on his injured leg. I guess this is to make it more visible and prominent, and maybe easier to draw, but once I noticed it bothered me for the rest of the book.
I was in Forbidden Planet and decided it would be nice to have physical copies of some of the prettier Sonic one off stories and then I was told there was a 3 for 2 so I grabbed a random volume of reprinted Doctor Who Magazine comics as well
Because I like to keep my ebook library organised and American comics are a mess when it comes to sensible making a series straightforward to follow I have been maintaining my own reading order for the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comics for a while. I have intended to add this to my site for a white and the current Sonic comic Humble Bundle seemed a good excuse to finally do it.
I intend to keep this as a live document that I update as new issues come out and have it as something that I can point to people when I try to convince them to read it and they don’t know where to start. If you want to start from the beginning that Humble Bundle has the first eight volumes for €12.38 and for €1 it has Scrapnik Island which is a great self-contained story to get a taste of the series with.
If you looked at my reading order you might have noticed I had the Tangle & Whisper miniseries in the middle of the eight volumes offered in the bundle but rest assured that they are perfectly understandable without it. It’s not until further along in the series that the story of that miniseries is really built on more.
This page was last updated .
I love the IDW Publishing Sonic the Hedgehog comics but they bear the marks of a common pox amongst American comic books: Little boxes containing editors notes telling you to go read something else if you want to know what’s happening. It isn’t a sprawl of crossovers with a shared universe like most cape comics but it still has spawned a bunch of miniseries and once-off comics that make reading it less straightforward than it should be.
If you want to dip your toes into the series without committing to a long, ongoing storyline I recommend Scrapnik Island, which was released as a four-issue miniseries or a single, paperback volume. It’s a standalone story with some neat horror vibes and absolutely gorgeous colouring and it only features Sonic and Tails from the main cast so you don’t have to know lots of characters going in. Seasons of Chaos is also a cute, standalone volume featuring the younger versions of the cast.
If you do want to jump into the series I keep my own reading order, shown in the big table below. This is not strictly by publication date or chronology, but trying to keep things in manageable chunks of numbered issues with occasional breaks to slot in the side stories, some of which do tie heavily back into the main plot.
If you want a reading order that is more faithful to release order there is Bobby Schroeder’s.
The IDW comics and mainline Sonic games take place in the same setting as each other with Ian Flynn being the head writer for both since Sonic Frontiers (2022). The comics start in the aftermath of Sonic Forces (2017), with the events of Sonic Frontiers happening sometime before issue #84.
The first column of the table divides the comic into broad story arcs. These are not official names and are mostly there to show useful jumping-on or -off points. The second column lists all the individual monthly issues and the third and fourth are the paperback volumes and hardback collections the stories are collected in, respectively. There are also “On the Go” books that fit each of the big collections into a smaller printing.
Due to my reading order differing from the way that IDW have bundled issues together some volumes appear multiple times in the third column. If you are reading the volumes and following this guide just ignore the volumes when they appear crossed out.
Little icons of characters appear next to the issue with their debut appearance, not counting small cameos or teasers. These are mostly pulled from Sonic Racing: Crossworlds. Orbot and Cubot are edits of an official sticker pack for Line. The icons for Kit, Jewel and Marine are pulled from the mods linked. And I drew the icons for Surge, Lanolin, Belle, Motobud, Mimic and Starline.
The names of unreleased titles appear in italics.
| Arc | Issue | Volume | Coll. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fallout | #1   |
1: Fallout! | 1 |
#2  |
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#3  |
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#4   |
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#5     |
2: The Fate of Dr. Eggman | ||
#6     |
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#7  |
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#8   |
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| #9 | 3: Battle for Angel Island | ||
| #10 | |||
#11 
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| #12 | |||
| Tangle & Whisper | Annual 2019     |
Tangle & Whisper | 2 |
Tangle & Whisper #1 
|
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| Tangle & Whisper #2 | |||
| Tangle & Whisper #3 | |||
| Tangle & Whisper #4 | |||
| Metal Virus | #13 | 4: Infection | |
| #14 | |||
| #15 | |||
| #16 | |||
| #17 | 5: Crisis City | ||
#18  |
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#19  |
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| #20 | |||
#21  |
6: The Last Minute | 3 | |
| #22 | |||
| #23 | |||
| #24 | |||
Annual 2020  |
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| #25 | 7: All or Nothing | ||
| #26 | |||
| #27 | |||
| #28 | |||
| #29 | |||
| #30 | 8: Out of the Blue | ||
| #31 | |||
| #32 | |||
| Operation Remaster, Part 1 | Bad Guys #1 | Bad Guys | 4 |
| Bad Guys #2 | |||
| Bad Guys #3 | |||
| Bad Guys #4 | |||
| #33 | 9: Chao Races & Badnik Bases | ||
#34  |
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| #35 | |||
| #36 | |||
| #37 | 10: Test Run! | ||
| #38 | |||
| #39 | |||
| #40 | |||
| #41 | 11: Zeti Hunt! | 5 | |
| #42 | |||
| #43 | |||
| #44 | |||
| Operation Remaster, Part 2 | #45  |
12: Trial By Fire | |
| #46 | |||
| #47 | |||
| #48 | |||
| #49 | |||
Imposter Syndrome #1   |
Imposter Syndrome | ||
| Imposter Syndrome #2 | |||
| Imposter Syndrome #3 | |||
| Imposter Syndrome #4 | |||
| #50 | 13: Battle for the Empire | ||
| #51 | 6 | ||
| #52 | 14: Overpowered | ||
| #53 | |||
| #54 | |||
| #55 | |||
| #56 | |||
| Scraps | Annual 2022  |
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| Free Comic Book Day 2022 | |||
| Scrapnik Island #1 | Scrapnik Island | ||
| Scrapnik Island #2 | |||
| Scrapnik Island #3 | |||
| Scrapnik Island #4 | |||
| #1 5th Anniversary | n/a | ||
| Diamond Cutters | #57  |
15: Urban Warfare | 7 |
| #58 | |||
| #59 | |||
| #60 | |||
| #61 | |||
| #62 | 16: Misadventures | ||
| #63 | |||
| #64 | |||
| #65 | |||
| #66 | |||
| 900th Adventure | |||
| Endless Summer | |||
| Halloween Special | |||
| Winter Jam | n/a | ||
| Spring Broken | |||
| #67 | 17: Adventure Awaits | ||
| #68 | |||
| #69 | 18: Extreme Competition | n/a | |
| #70 | |||
| #71 | |||
| #72 | 19: Collision Course | ||
| #73 | |||
| #74 | |||
| #75 | |||
| Scattered Pieces | Annual 2024 | 20: Cause & Effect | |
| #76 | |||
| #77 | |||
| #78 | |||
| #79 | 21: Reprise | ||
| #80 | |||
| #81 | |||
| #82 | |||
| #83 | |||
| Chaotix’s 30th Anniversary | |||
| Road to 100 | #84  |
22: Stealing the Show (December) | |
| #85 | |||
| #86 | |||
| #87 | |||
| #88 | |||
| #89 | 23: Smoke & Mirrors (June) | ||
| #90 | |||
| #91 | |||
| #92 (December) | |||
| #93 (January) | |||
| #94 (March) | n/a | ||
There are a few comics that feature the “classic” versions of the characters that form their own separate prequel era, taking place somewhere between the Mega Drive Sonic games (and more recent games that use those designs like Sonic Mania and Sonic Superstars) and when the cast received their “modern” redesigns in Sonic Adventure. These are all pretty standalone and don’t need to be read in any particular order.
| Issue | Volume |
|---|---|
| 30th Anniversary | Seasons of Chaos |
| 30th Anniversary: Free Comic Book Day 2021 | |
| Tails’ 30th Anniversary | Tails’ Anniversary Special |
| Amy’s 30th Anniversary | Amy’s Anniversary Special |
| Knuckles’ 30th Anniversary | Knuckles’ Anniversary Special |
| 35th Anniversary | 35th Anniversary Special |
| Fang the Hunter #1 | Fang the Hunter |
| Fang the Hunter #2 | |
| Fang the Hunter #3 | |
| Fang the Hunter #4 |
Sega also publishes promotional comics for upcoming games. These are generally released for free and act as prequels for the games they are promoting.
An independent comic anthology by the team who make the IDW comics.
An ongoing manga published monthly in Coro Coro Comic. It is drawn by Yuki Imada, who also made Jet Black Hedgehog, a loose adaptation of Shadow Generations. No official English translation of either comic has been published.
A promotional comic for the second Paramount Sonic the Hedgehog movie.
Everything has to media cross promotion shite now so Sonic has met the Justice League and Godzilla.
A comic adaptation of the Netflix cartoon Sonic Prime using stills from the show as panels.
