DO-IT-YOURSELF SONIC

In the early years of Archie’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” comic, they would frequently encourage interaction with the reader. One issue presented multiple choices to a question, fans asked to pick the best answer. Stories written by Mike Gallagher that introduced new characters or concepts would often end with those characters directly asking if the readers wanted to see more of them. I can remember one future issue that left a magic spell blank, readers encouraged to think up their own. The only remnant of this “Hey readers, here’s a treat!” attitude is the fan art and fan letter columns that still appear in the book to this day. (Though the fan art sometimes gets the axe.)

Probably the most gratuitous use of this came in Issue 14. Sandwiched between two actually pretty good stories is a three-pager showing Sonic and Tails encountering Robotnik’s robotic whale. The main gimmick is that the story has no dialogue. The idea was readers would fill in the word bubbles, send them into Archie, and the best ones would win prizes. The winners would eventually appear in Issue 23, the lucky few winning subscriptions or signed artwork. The idea mostly strikes me as lazy page filler and, yeah, pretty much. However, we here at “Hedgehogs Can’t Swim” aren’t above lazy filler sometimes. Naturally, I couldn’t resist myself and had to make my own wildly inappropriate version of “Do-It-Yourself Sonic.” If this comes off as overly crude or obnoxious, I apologize. It’s all meant in good humor.

I present to you “Thank God the Internet Hasn’t Been Invented Yet,” my twenty-five years too late entry into the contest. For some reason, I suspect this would have been swiftly rejected by Archie’s staff. Embiggen to appreciate and probably download too, as I sure-as-fuck packed those word balloons with as much verbiage as possible.