Sonic the Hedgehog: Winter Jam

Sonic the Hedgehog: Winter Jam

Publication Date: December 13th, 2023

Now that 2023 is in the rear view window, we can reflect on IDW's decision to trade out the usual "Sonic" comic mini-series with several seasonal one-shots. The "Endless Summer" special was delightful while everything else, the Halloween special and the various anniversary issues, proved far less memorable. The year ended with, naturally, a winter themed one-shot that tied in with the holidays in its own way. Did "Sonic the Hedgehog: Winter Jam" live up to the weird standard of "Sonic"-themed Christmas entertainment? Now is the time to determine just that...

"Winter Jam" begins with Eggman obsessively watching reality TV on a Thomas Newton Jerome-style wall of monitors. This points the villain towards his newest evil scheme. While Sonic and his friends are chilling on the beach during what must be an unseasonably warm December, Eggman drops a giant robot fish on them. The group wakes up inside a studio, where Cubot and Orbot force them to participate in a series of wintery, holiday-themed competitions. Sonic is teamed up with Tails, Amy partners with Cream and Cheese, Rouge is in cahoots with Omega, and Big trails along with Froggy. The prize is a single Chaos Emerald, causing everyone to take this silliness a lot more seriously. 

"Winter Jam" is the IDW "Sonic" debut for a writer named Iasmin Omar Ata, whose graphic novel work I am completely unfamiliar with. Our blue hedgehog franchise has supported a wide variety of tones over the years, from the fairly serious to the totally farcical. Which means different people can have totally different impressions of what "Sonic" is, based on which game, cartoon show, or comic was their first exposure to the series. If I had to guess, I would wager Ata is most fond of the goofier "Sonic" installments. "Winter Jam" most resembles the sitcom-like writing of the "Sonic Boom" TV show. In fact, it's extremely easy to imagine a "Boom" episode with the premise of "Eggman sticks Sonic and friends inside a competitive reality show." Which is not something you can picture so much in the mainline Sega games, the later Archie comics, or even IDW's on-going book. I'm pretty sure "SatAM" Robotnik would just roboticize the Freedom Fighters if he had them under his thumb like this. 

This "Boom" connection is most evident in the way the characters are written. First off, Cubot and Orbot get flashy roles as the presenters of the show, something much more akin to "Boom" than the main IDW book, where they are usually as merely incompetent lackies when they are remembered at all. Secondly, Ata's script really cooks all of the heroes down to their most essential characteristics. Sonic is defined by his fastness, even if that means he leaps into situations without thinking them through. Tails is brainy to the point of being eggheaded. Amy is the girly straight woman, Cream is an enthusiastic but inexperienced kid, Rouge is all about those gems, and Omega just wants to blow shit up. Big is a weirdo comical anomaly, described in-universe as "inscrutable." I'm sure if Shadow and Knuckles were in this issue, they'd be a gruff loner and a super-strong nincompoop. 

You'd probably expect me to be critical of these characters being written in such one-note fashion, especially since the IDW comics works best the more complex everyone's interactions are. Yet, in this case, it works. "Boom," when it was at its funniest, used its sitcom structure and Flanderized characters to subvert the typical expectations of the "Sonic" universe and push the absurdity of its scenarios as far as possible. Unlike the "Halloween Special," where the simplified characterization felt like the material was being dumbed down, everyone here is still very much on-note. They are just a little goofier than usual, which fits a light-hearted holiday special anyway.

This is most apparent in "Winter Jam's" best reoccurring joke. Sonic's super-fast abilities and personality proves to be an ill-fit for these contests. He tangles himself and Tails in Christmas lights. He tears an Eggman doll to pieces with speed friction when he's supposed to be protecting it during a snowball fight. By the time the super cute ice sculpture he made collapses for no reason, this has become a hilariously cruel running gag. During the "Survivor"-style between-games interviews, Sonic grows increasingly neurotic about his failures. Seeing hyper-confident hero Sonic repeatedly humbled, largely through his own quickness, is a good joke. It's subverting what we know about these guys for comedic effect and Ata's dialogue plays it dry enough to make these reactions even funnier. Good job!

"Winter Jam" gets wackier as it goes along, in accordance with typical rules of cartoon escalation. There's unexpected laser beams, a gelatin monstrosity, and an implausible plot twist. The whole thing ends in a massive explosion, which sounds about right. Ata's script has cultivate a goof-ball tone quickly, allowing the comic to get away with increasingly broad sight-gags like this. Any pretensions of seriousness have long since passed by the time the ostensibly plot motivating Chaos Emerald – reality-altering power sources that usually are no laughing matter within this universe – is causally thrown in at the very end. The Emerald is a MacGuffin in the purest sense here. It exists to push the story forward but otherwise has no deeper significance, everything about it being completely unimportant. 

This comic reminds me of an episode of "Sonic Boom" in another way too. It's so quickly paced that there's really not time for anything but the comedic highlights. In fact, the rest of the winter games are relegated to a single panel, which one imagines would have been a speedy montage in a TV show. This "get to the jokes as quickly as possible" structure means the issue misses out on any depth. You'd think Eggman hyper-fixating on reality shows and creating one of his own would provide some sort of commentary on the shallowest of television genres. Nope! Beyond dismissing it all as trash TV – fair – this comic has nothing to say about reality shows. In fact, the contests resemble standard competition programs like "Holiday Baking Wars" or "The Great Christmas Light Fight" than far more tawdry series like "Big Brother" or "The Bachelor" that I tend to think of as archetypal "reality shows." Eggman could have just as easily been stuck on regular old game shows. 

With "Winter Jam" coming out so close to Christmas, this obviously fills the role of a "Sonic" holiday special. Which brings up another criteria to consider: How does this function as a celebration of end-of-the-year festivities? Loosely, to say the least. The first contest involves making a home look festive. Sonic and Tails string red and green lights, Omega blows up some wreaths, and Amy and Cream prepare a feast that prominently features a yule log desert. Eggman's wall of TVs include some easily missed candy canes and reindeer antlers, while a later collection of panels briefly features baubles hung on an evergreen. The end has everyone luxuriating in the magic of snow falling on the beach. Yet this being entitled "Winter Jam," instead of a more specific reference to any particular holiday, is fitting. Things are kept secular, in a way that reminded me of the first "Community" Christmas episode. Merry jolly, indeed. 

In fact, there's barely any reference to even the secular version of Christmas as we know it. There's no Santa, no exchanging of gifts, no decorating of a tree. Sonic doesn't ask Tails the true meaning of anything, prompting a speech about harking angels or being-not-afraid. Considering we open on our heroes unwinding on a snowy beach, outside of the title, there's no way to know if this issue is even supposed to be set during the winter. Maybe global warming has hit Sonic's world too. Or maybe they just live in their equivalent of California, where it's always sunny and breezy. 

This absence of explicit Christmas references makes sense, because why would Sonic and his friends know anything about an Earthly holiday anyway? (This is a question writers of previous "Sonic" holiday specials never felt the need to consider. Or even Sega for that matter, who have produced many images of Sonic doing explicitly Christmas-y stuff.) Yet compare this to the Halloween special, which actually named the October holiday and prominently featured traditions like trick-or-treating, dressing up in scary costumes, and displaying carved-up gourds on your front porch. Sonic and the gang celebrating Halloween as we know it but only participating in generic, winter-themed traditions forces me to come to one conclusion: Sonic the Hedgehog and all his friends are Godless pagans who have never heard of the story of Christ Child nor accepted Jesus of Nazareth as their personal Lord and Savior. My Southern Baptist grandmother would say they were all going to burn in Hell. But I bet Amy throws a bitchin' Beltane bonfire. 

Anyway, enough of my mostly-sarcastic analysis of this children's comic's setting that was clearly in no way intended by the artist. "Winter Jam" is fun! It made me laugh multiple times while maintaining a good grip on these characters and their world. It cooked up some clever and amusing scenarios I hadn't thought of. The art is from Min Ho Kim, who previously did the character designs for "The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog" and a few IDW covers. The line work is clean and crisp. The characters are expressive and bright. There's even some clever page layouts , such as the dissolve that reveals our heroes on are on the beach or the page where everyone is grabbed by the robot fish. It's not deep but I enjoyed. That's good enough to earn a [7/10] from me. So merry jolly to all you heathens out there. I hope you had a festive and bright December and I'm sorry I'm only publishing this review in January.