THE 2000 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG COMIC BEST/WORST LIST!

The year 2000 was not the best year for Archie’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” series. Most of the year was preoccupied by the “Sonic Adventure” adaptation, a mediocre affair that carried over from the previous year and lasted, in one form or another, for six different issues. Once the Freedom Fighters got back to Knothole, Sonic and friends suddenly got mired in story arcs that went nowhere, building apathy in the reader. The back-up stories focused on Knuckles had much of the same problem. Among many stories that weren’t worth reading, there’s one or two that were above average. Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.

The Archie “Sonic” material covered in this retrospective is:

Sonic the Hedgehog: #81-91
Sonic Super Special: #12-15

BEST COVER STORY:
Karl Bollers, “Family Matters” (Sonic the Hedgehog: Issue 88)

There weren’t too many stand alone cover stories I really liked this year. In this environment, even a flawed story liked “Family Matters” can rise to the top. Those flaws – a little too much time spent setting up future subplots – can be overlooked. Like Bollers’ best work, “Family Matters” balances emotion and action. We get some bad-ass sequences devoted to Sonic, Tails, King Acorn and others tearing up some robot ass. Yet what really speaks to readers is Sally’s anxiety over her mother’s condition and Sonic confronting the monster his uncle has become. This would soon spin out of control but, for a brief single issue, it was good.

WORST COVER STORY:
Ken Penders, “Naugus Games” (Sonic Super Special: Issue 15)

Well, this was an easy decision. “Naugus Games” is, without question, the worst “Sonic” story Archie published up to this point. It serves no purpose in the grand scheme of things. Sonic accidentally frees Naugus, they fight for a few pages, and then the wizard is vanquished again. The dialogue is inane. The action is weak. There’s no reason for this comic to exist. If that’s all they were going to do, why bother bringing Naugus back for one issue? The likely answer? A deadline had to be filled. This makes “Naugus Games” filler in the truest sense. Reprints would’ve been preferable to this.

BEST BACK STORY:
Don Slott and Karl Bollers, “Zone Wars: Giant Robotno” (Sonic Super Special: Issue 12)

Don Slott’s Zone Wars concept rarely produced truly great stories. “Giant Robotno,” a collaboration with Bollers, is probably his best work. Sonic and a horror-esque sci-fi kaiju concept don’t sound like they would mesh. Slott makes it work, by genuinely emphasizing the horror of the grotesque mutant Freedom Fighters. Rooting the outrageous premise in some reality is a decent sense of emotion. Sonic is traumatized by fighting off monstrous versions of his friend. Among them is a monster version of his dad, which disturbs Sonic even more. He doesn’t feel like a hero at the end but a murderer. This is one of the rare, gimmick alternate universe that might have been worth revisiting.

WORST BACK STORY:
Frank Strom, “Against the Haunted Past: Part Two” (Sonic the Hedgehog: Issue 87)

Monkey Khan, you’ve come once again to ruin my good mood. Both parts of “Against the Haunted Past” were deeply lame but part two is especially shitty. Strom continues to write Monkey Khan as an unstoppable superhero, who easily bests Robotnik and his forces. Yet he doesn’t earn this action, Khan escaping thanks to a random plot device while someone else blows up the base at the end. Meanwhile, Khan speaks almost entirely in lame clichés and cornball one-liners. Robotnik is reduced to a generic bad guy. Strom thinks Khan is awesome but does the worst things possible to convince us of that.

BEST STORY ARC:
Danny Fingeroff, “Heart of the Hedgehog” (Sonic the Hedgehog: Issue 86-87)

Newcomer Fingeroff makes an impressive debut with “Heart of the Hedgehog,” one of the year’s few bright spots. By focusing on Sonic and Tails’ friendship, he makes a standard “hero rescues his sidekick plot” more meaningful. He also grasps how heroic Sonic is, willing to do anything to save his best friend. He creates a memorable villain, allowing Metal Sonic to grow a personality, becoming a cocky and resentful bad guy determined to humble his name sake. The story’s tension builds, the villain providing more obstacles for the hero, further trying to delay from achieving his goal. Considering Tails’ life is at stake, that’s a big deal. The ending, meanwhile, redeems the villain in a surprisingly touching manner. It’s really good stuff and a shame that Fingeroff would never write for the book again.

WORST STORY ARC:
Karl Bollers and Ken Penders, “Sonic Adventure” Tie-In (Sonic the Hedgehog: Issue 81-84, Sonic Super Special #13)

The overlong “Sonic Adventure” tie-in earns the Worst Story Arc award mostly thanks to how deeply awkward it was. What Sega wanted Sonic to be and what Archie’s Sonic was up to this point were two very different things. The attempt to merge the two – involving hidden cities, multiple Chaos Emeralds, magical ghosts – was awkward. Stopping the ongoing plot we care about in order to devote half the year to this frustrated the reader. The build-up seemingly went on forever. When the meat of the adaptation came, the book both stretched the game’s story out for too long and rushed through it. Archie’s “Sonic Adventure” just wasn’t satisfying to anyone in any way. I honestly wish the comic could’ve skipped it altogether.

BEST COVER ART:
Sonic the Hedgehog: Issue 85 – Patrick Spazinate

Issue 85 contained a pretty lame story, which would’ve been a candidate for worst story if something far more wicked didn’t loom. The cover, on the other hand? Pretty great. Patrick Spazinate illustrates Sonic as if he’s in a Capcom fighting game, laying a Shoryoken on Silver Sonic. The artwork moves, sucking the viewer right in. The expressions on the characters’ faces are vivid. The little details, in the background and health bars, tie the cover together.

WORST COVER ART:
Sonic Super Special: Issue 14 – Patrick Spazinate

For all his talent, Spaz sometimes had the bad habit of shoving too much stuff onto one cover. Issue 14 of the Sonic Super Special series – which also contained a pretty lame story – is one such example. Giant versions of Julie-Su and Dimitri’s heads take up the background. The characters from Litigopolis melt together up front, Robotnik’s face twisting into a disturbing sheet of body horror. Sonic and Knuckles leap forward, seemingly unrelated to everything else that’s happening. The colors are a bit too bright, as well. The combination is rather ugly.

BEST STORY ART:
“Menace to Society” – Steven Butler (Sonic the Hedgehog: Issue 83)

Steven Butler and James Fry contributed good work to the book all throughout 2000, often being the best things about these issues. I single out Butler’s work on issue 83 for several reasons. First off, he provides my favorite moment throughout the entire “Sonic Adventure” tie-in. That is Perfect Chaos rising out of Station Square, flooding the city over several panels. There’s also some good stuff when Sonic and gang are swooped up by a waterspout. A great sense of motion takes over, once Sonic goes Super and fights against Chaos. As always, Butler balances character details with background details to great effect.

WORST STORY ART:
“Naugus Games” – Many Hands (Sonic Super Special: Issue 15)

Obviously. “Naugus Games” is not just the worst artwork of 2000, it might be the worst artwork of the entire series. Honest to God, some of the fan art published in the back of the book is better then this stuff. Naugus looks like the scribbles of a second grader. Sonic often shifts size and shape. The colors are over-bright, the backgrounds lacking detail. All of this is ignoring that half the story is panels of blackness and snow flakes. It’s infuriatingly bad.

BEST NEW CHARACTER:
Metal Sonic v2.5

Since E-102 Gamma and Big the Cat technically debuted in 1999, they couldn’t qualify for this category or the next one, respectively.

Metal Sonic v2.5 isn’t technically a new character either, being a new variation on a prior version of Metal Sonic. But version 2.5 is so distinct from the previous Metal Sonics that he counts. He’s cool, happily mocking his opponent. Even though he’s single-minded in his quest to humiliate Sonic, he has a lot of comedic energy. He’s a great bad guy but he also earns his change of heart by the story’s end. This Metal Sonic would prove so memorable and interesting that Ian Flynn would resurrect him many years later, as fan-favorite Shard.

WORST NEW CHARACTER:
Tikal

There were multiple candidates for this category. Silver Sonic II was such a lame, forgettable character, peppering his speech with embarrassing surfer slang. Yet I didn’t want both character categories to be dominated by robotic hedgehogs. All of the Litigopolos characters were embarrassingly dumb jokes. Yet useless, one-shot joke characters have won this dubious honor too often in the past.

Which brings me to Tikal. A Sega character originating in “Sonic Adventure,” in the video game her floating fairy form existed to inform players of stage features. Even though games and comics are deeply different mediums, Archie’s Tikal served a similar function. She would drop in from time to time, to expound on the back story of various things. This was at its worst during Super Sonic’s fight with Perfect Chaos, where Tikal appeared to awkwardly move the story forward. Unlike the above mentioned characters, Tikal would also return from time to time, never growing into someone we could actually care about.


BEST IDEA:
Finding the Emotion Among the Chaos

Normally, placing beads of character development and emotional resonance among big action stories would be standard stuff. It should be anyway. Sadly, in the year 2000, instances like this were harder to find. So little interactions between Sally and her brother, Sonic and his parents, or Tails and his hero became the reasons to continue reading. When the book worked this years, moments like that balanced out against the constant action and plot machinations.


WORST IDEA:
Make Way for Mediocrity

This year, the book began a long creative slump that would more-or-less go on until Ian Flynn came onto the series, six years later. What composed this slump? Awkward attempts to adapt Sega’s latest video games, as in the “Sonic Adventure” arc. Knuckles being green and glowy for a long time, while the reader wonders when he’ll get back to the shit we care about. Knothole being torn apart by missing swords, love triangles, injured backs, new characters dropping out of the sky, and stories that just never go anywhere. Dark days are ahead.