Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Issue 28

Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Issue 28
Publication Date: July 1999

Despite the fact that I’ve been reading Archie’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” comics nearly my entire life, I’ve never had any interest in their other flagship characters. I’m referring to the character the company is actually named after and his supporting cast of love interests, friends, and spin-offs. I’ve never felt the need to read the adventures of the Riverdale gang. However, there is one Archie character I have some familiarity with. Or at least, a version of her anyway…

Archie (the company) first started publishing comics featuring Sabrina the Teenage Witch back in the early sixties. She often crossed over with Archie (the character) and got her own series in 1971, which ran for thirteen years. In the mid-nineties, for some reason, ABC aired a sitcom based off Sabrina’s comic book and starring Melissa Joan Hart. Watching now as an adult, I now know the show is incredibly dumb. As a kid, I rarely missed an episode. Starting in May 1997, Archie began to publish a “Sabrina” comic book again, obviously to tie in with the successful TV show.

Why the hell am I talking about this? For some reason, in the summer of 1999, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sabrina the Teenage Witch met in issue 28 of her comic book. The cross-over would continue in issue 10 of the Sonic Super Specials series. I can’t figure out the narrative reasons why Archie thought these two drastically different characters should meet. But I can take a guess at the financial reasons. This particular incarnation of the “Sabrina” comic book would end in December of 1999, a few months after this issue was published. That suggests Sabrina’s sales were starting to flag, even with the successful sitcom on the air. Archie probably hopped a cross-over with “Sonic” – whose popularity was supporting three separate series at the time – would help sell a few more “Teenage Witch” comics. Obviously, the plan didn’t work. (Archie has subsequently rebooted “Sabrina” at least two more times.)

Sonic and Sabrina don’t encounter each other until the second story in issue 28 of “Sabrina.” But I’m a professional and, thus, will review the entire comic book. “Thor Loser” – get used to puns on that level – begins in whatever alternate realm witches come from in the Archie-verse. Some sorcerer named Enchantra is pissed at Sabrina. After helping her get an A+ on her history report, Sabrina failed to properly credit Enchantra. Yes, a missed citation is all it takes to ensure the wizard’s wrath. Anyway, Enchantra’s secretary, Della, is ordered to sic the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse on Sabrina and her aunts. Because of a typing error, the Four Norseman attack Sabrina’s home instead. The witches stun the Norsemen, which includes the god Thor, and wipes their memories. Aunt Helga and Zelda take three of the Norseman to Florida. Sabrina takes Thor for a walk through the park. After raining thunder down on Sabrina’s friends, Enchantra realizes the mistake and zaps all the four guys back to Norway.

Man, if you thought the humor in the early “Sonic” comics were pedestrian, get a load of this shit. What passes for jokes in “Sabrina” are the broadest of sight gags. When Thor meets Sabrina’s friends, he launches their croquet ball into orbit, crushes the dude’s hand during a handshake, and creates a thunder storm. Aside from the handful of painful puns, that’s pretty much it. The sitcom might have actually had more sophisticated humor then this. No, the implications of memory wiping and mind control are not explored. Neither is why seemingly omniscient witches have to use typewriters. Dan DeCarlo had been drawing “Sabrina” and many other Archie series since the sixties. His artwork is fairly flat, jagged, and overly cartoony. But I also suspect this shitty comic book doesn’t represent his best work.

At the end of “Thor Loser,” Salem – that’s Sabrina’s talking cat – mentions how he collects “Sonic the Hedgehog” comic books. That takes us to the first half of “Some Enchantra Evening,” the cover story. Still pissed at Sabrina, Enchantra uses the internet to search the multi-verse for another character to send after the teenage girl. She discovers Mobius and Sonic the Hedgehog. While Sonic and Sally are arguing about their relationship in a desert, Enchantra lures Sonic away. She zaps the hedgehog to her world, takes over his mind, and flies him to Sabrina’s house. While the teen girl sleeps, Salem – who is, remember, a house cat – fights off the violent, brainwashed Mobian. The fight wrecks the house. Eventually, Sabrina and Princess Sally get involved, hoping to stop Sonic’s path of destruction.

Mike Gallagher wrote both of these stories. Gallagher wrote some decent “Sonic” stories in the past but, if this issue is any indication, his work on “Sabrina” was strictly phoned in. The short segment set on Mobius suggests that Mike hasn’t been keeping up with the changes that have affected Sonic’s world since he left the book. Sonic and Sally argue about their romance in a non-descriptive setting. They make vague references to lots of crazy shit happening in Mobius but no specifics. Nicole, meanwhile, yells cliched catchphrases. I don’t know why.

Once Sonic runs into the Spellman house, the comedic tone remains dire. Salem the Cat fights Sonic by zapping him with a magic ray and tripping him up with kitty litter. Considering Sonic has tangled with some serious threats, this suggests that Enchantra’s mind control is seriously lessening his abilities. There are jokes in the story, I think, but they are only of the lamest variety. Even as a simple comedic story, it’s full of plot holes. Why isn’t Sabrina awoken sooner by Sonic reaping destruction on her house? How the hell does Sally cross into an alternate universe?

Another weird thing about this story is the art work. Dan DeCarlo continues to draw the Sabrina characters. Sonic and friends, meanwhile, are drawn by Dave Manak. It’s clear that Manak is a student of DeCarlo, as their style is similar. Considering this, I don’t know why they didn’t have Manak just draw the whole story. Manak’s artwork is as angular and cartoony as always. He adapts awkwardly to the characters then current designs. Sonic’s green irises just make his eyes bulge. Sally’s more anime-esque physique is barely carried over.

“Some Enchantra Evening” ends on a cliffhanger, the story concluding in Sonic Super Special number 10, which we’ll cover next time. If this stunt was meant to draw Sonic fans to Sabrina’s book, I can see why it didn’t work. Issue 28 of “Sabrina” is extremely dumb, a comedy book with jokes so lame a child could’ve written them. And we don’t even have peak-hotness Melissa Joan Hart to look at! [4/10]

In the beginning... There was Sonic

“Does the Internet really need another “Sonic the Hedgehog” website?” I ask myself now. Over the course of nearly twenty years, over fifty games, and myriad of multi-media merchandise, crossovers, and spin-offs, the “Sonic the Hedgehog” franchise has inspired a lot of inane internet babble. So, is more necessary? You could fill several very large, spelling error riddled tomes with all the message board chatter concerning the little blue hedgehog. Is the internet really big enough for two twenty something man-children obsessed with Sonic? Isn’t it enough that I all ready have one blog I ignore?

Yes. Yes, it is. While many have gone where I am about to go before, few have done it well. That’s the mission statement here at “Hedgehogs Can’t Swim.” To be nerdy about Sonic in a way that’s at least halfway coherent, occasionally intelligent, and maybe clever or insightful every once in a while. Inspired by William Tsutsui’s “Godzilla on My Mind” and Rob Kelly’s “Aquaman Shrine,” both literate, thoughtful, sincere fan boy homages to two other, perhaps equally maligned pop culture icons, I set out to blaze my own path in the world of nerd brain housekeeping.

But let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?

I am a “Sonic the Hedgehog” nerd. Obviously. I’ve been since I was three years old and, like a cartoon hedgehog racing towards a goal post, I’ve never stopped. Despite what you may have heard, it was never cool and it was certainly never "way past cool." I was there before the internet subcultures adopted the franchise to their own seedy uses. I was there before the games became awful, before the fan base became unpleasable, before video gaming itself became a massive pillar of pop culture. Before all of that, I was a “Sonic the Hedgehog” nerd.

Honestly, my fandom for the furry blue one goes back so far, I don’t even remember how it started. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t a Sonic fan. My first vivid memory of him involves catching the 1993 ABC Saturday Morning Preview the Friday night it premiered.

I remember the kids from “Step By Step” sitting down to watch an episode of SatAM and being glued to my seat. It’s tempting to say my mania for everything Sonic started with SatAM. It certainly intensified my growing fandom, but it wasn’t the beginning. Why would I be so excited for a “Sonic” cartoon unless I was all ready a fan? When I asked my mother about this, about why, when, and how I first became a fan, she simply said, “You just always liked that fast, little blue, cool guy.” That may be true, but it’s not exactly insightful.

It wasn’t the games that hooked me first. I grew up in a part of the country that has been in an economic freefall for the last fifty years. As a child, my mother worked very hard to make sure my sister and I never went without anything we needed. But money was tight, at least in the beginning, and we often went without things we wanted. Video gaming consoles were, and still are, an expensive hobby that we simply couldn’t afford. I didn’t get a Sega Genesis and my first Sonic game until 1996, when that generation of console gaming was well on its way out. Yes, I played the games and experienced the Blast Processing first hand at friend’s houses, but, to tell the truth, I wasn’t, nor have I ever been, particularly good at video games. I fail pretty hard in that department.

So the How and When of my fandom’s genesis (Har.) remains a mystery, lost in the hazy mist of childhood days long since past. But what about the why? Why Sonic? Why not Mario, an even bigger video game icon whose current games are certainly better and arguably always have been? We had a Nintendo Entertainment System and a copy of “Super Mario Bros. 3” long before I ever got my sweaty little hands on a Genesis controller. Why not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Ranges, Spider-Man, comic books, anime, Universal Monster movies, action figures, Ghostbusters, Highlander, Transformers, Star Trek, or any number of other things I enjoy as a child? Why does Sonic get the blog and everything else I’ve loved get left to other people to chronicle and obsess over?

Was it the contempt for authority and ecological subtext that appealed to me? The bright colors, fast graphics, and intentionally simple character designs? Did I enjoy being a part of a quickly growing, now sprawling, fictional universe? Was it just me getting swept up in the kid friendly zeitgeist of the moment? Probably all of those things. But why am I still a fan? Why do I still play the games, read the comics, and spend way more time then any adult male should ever spend thinking about these things? Am I just being nostalgic for simpler childhood days? Does my lack of legitimate life experiences force me to go over again and again the pop culture debris I’ve consumed over the course of twenty-two years? Am I just a really massive Aspie nerd who relates to a cartoon animal way more then he does to other people?

Yes, yes, and probably, a little bit, yes. However I got here, I’m here to stay, at least for a while.

My name is Zack, this is “Hedgehogs Can’t Swim,” and I’m here to talk about goddamn Sonic the Hedgehog.