RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE

Oh hey, guys. Zack from Hedgehogs Can’t Swim here. So.... it’s been a while. Some of you have left comments asking whether I was still alive, a totally valid concern considering the year we’ve all had. After I let Halloween come and go without any sort of update, you probably assumed I really was gone for good. No, I’m not dead. I’ve even been blogging consistently through the pandemic, over at Film Thoughts. My life has not been untouched by the apocalypse we’re living through these days. I’ve had friends and family come into contact with COVID. There have been some close calls but, thankfully, nobody I love has died. 

Physically, I’ve been okay. My mental health, on the other hand, has been pretty tattered and frayed this year. Ya know, nothing like a global pandemic and a government teetering towards full-blown fascism to make your anxiety flare up. I’ve been an essential worker through these end-times and it got to the point recently where I had to make the choice between my sanity and my paycheck. I chose my sanity, a decision I may or may not come to regret eventually.

Anyway, this might explain why I haven’t updated my cartoon hedgehog blog in seven months. I really didn’t mean to disappear for so long. It was not a planned hiatus. I just lost the ability to focus for a while, my ADHD and OCD fucking up my life in new and exciting ways. I considered following in the footsteps of fellow Sonic person Cybershell and totally disappearing for years on end but, ultimately, the fact that I was leaving a project incomplete was nagging at me. How am I supposed to be a fully developed and functional human being if I haven’t reviewed every episode of every “Sonic the Hedgehog” cartoon? 

So, I guess I’m back. I can make no guarantees that this project won’t immediately go back off the rails. As I write this, the future of the world is still totally uncertain and terrifying. I’ll admit, I’m feeling a little saner these days but that could change tomorrow. I know my writing isn’t as exciting or incisive now that I’m discussing the old “Sonic” cartoons and not the old “Sonic” comic books. But, for the time being, I’m re-committing to rambling nonsensically on the Internet about blue hedgehogs that run fast and fight robots for a little while longer. 

Here’s the plan: I’m going to devote most of December and part of January to catching up with IDW’s “Sonic” comic, a series it seems like I’m always perpetually catching up with. This is primarily so I can do another Best/Worst at the start of next year. Afterwards, I shall resume my reviews of “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.” I may throw in some other stupid bullshit from time-to-time as well, just to keep y’all on your toes. 

Again, I’ll make no promises that I’ll stick with this. But, for now, I’m going to give this one more shot. Yes, I’m back on the three days a week updating schedule. I hope you’re a fan of run-on sentences, faulty formatting and reading way too much into children’s media, cause Hedgehogs Can’t Swim is back. Maybe. Probably not. But possibly. 

Archie Sonic Reviews: Conclusion

Well over nine years ago, I had a dumb idea. I decided I was going to create a blog devoted to Sonic the Hedgehog, due to my frankly baffling lifelong love for the multi-media franchise. I finally created Hedgehogs Can't Swim in August of 2010, updated it a few times, and then promptly stopped. Five years after that, I got a wild burr up my ass. One of the things I wanted to do with this blog was review my way through the entire Archie “Sonic” comic universe, as that collection of books was the cornerstone of my “Sonic” fandom.

My unwillingness to drag out all my dusty back issues, read them all, and scan images myself was what had prevented me from doing this sooner, I told myself. By 2016, I had discovered that pretty much every issue of Archie’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” comic book was available digitally (in both legal and, uh, extra-legal formats), making it easy for me to re-read and grab images for online reviews. I no longer had any excuse. I had made up my mind. This was happening. I wasn’t going to rush into this willy-nilly, knowing I would never see things through to the end otherwise. Deciding upon a reasonable three-times-a-week update schedule and banking about six months worth of reviews before I began posting them to this blog, I formally began the journey on January 1st of 2016.

This was, once again, a dumb idea. Archie’s “Sonic” books had been running since November of 1992 and had spawned five spin-off books and numerous one-shots, mini-series, specials, and related publications. The book was still running at the time I started my retrospective, so no end was in sight. This meant I was going to have to re-read, review, and post write-ups for well over five hundred comic books with yet more to possibly come. Who would ever do such an insanely nerdy, totally unnecessary, and frankly ridiculous thing?

Me apparently. Several Archie “Sonic” fans have attempt to review the entire run of the series, such as “Thanks, Ken Penders” and cool dude RobotnikHolmes, but it looks like I’m the first person to actually complete the journey. I had doubts. In my introduction, I flat-out asked myself if I’d be able to finish this thing. This was a momentous amount of effort for a totally trivial cause. And yet, here I stand, on the other end of the quest. I did it all and I have the 1108 page,  662,593 Word document to prove it.

It wasn't always easy. Some of these comics were terrible. But I worked through it, trying to maintain a consistent level of insight and quality of writing even when discussing the most boring and abominable issues. That has always been my goal with Hedgehogs Can't Swim, to write about Sonic in a funny and smart way. I have no idea if I succeeded on that level but I do feel a sense of nerdy pride as I type these words. Through it all, I have also been shockingly consistent about updating too. I can count the number of times an update was late on one hand. Sometimes, it was three o'clock in the morning before a review went up but I almost always posted on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as promised.

So what have I learned, over this not-quite four year long adventure? Mostly, I really do love this silly comic book an awful lot. The minutia of its world, its weird mythology, sprawling cast, and the central themes at the center of it all are all things that mean something to me.

Is it just nostalgia? The series ran for most of my life, the book being a constant companion through my childhood years, my adolescence, my awkward teen-age, my college days, and into whatever passes for adulthood. I certainly favor those early issues over the later ones, especially those after the reboot. I know I made excuses for earlier stories that probably aren't that good in actuality, just because I loved them as a kid. So maybe.

But nostalgia doesn't really seem like it would be enough to power me through such an extensive project. For better or worst – almost definitely for worst – I am a Sonic the Hedgehog fan. It is part of my identity, a love for this character and his world residing deep in the nerdiest part of my soul. I am still no closer to understanding the exact reason why I have an emotion attachment to a fucking blue hedgehog that runs fast and all the furry weirdos he hang out with. But if we look at Archie “Sonic” as a united work, certain themes do emerge. The power of friendship, freedom versus tyranny, never giving up, living in peace with the natural world. Robots are cool. Going fast is awesome. These are universal truths and they speak to me. They must or else this entire fucking thing has been a waste of time.

(It's almost definitely been a waste of time.)

But enough self-aggrandizing. Now comes the section of the conclusion where I thank you, the reader. See, I've been posting my writing on the internet since the late nineties. I've been consistently updating my other blog, Film Thoughts, since 2008... Which I am aghast to realize was eleven years ago. Through all that time, I have never attracted much of an audience. I put a lot of time and effort into my writing, many great multitudes of hours, and usually get rewarded with less than a hundred views and zero comments. This is my own fault as much as anyone else's, as I am very lazy at promotion. When I started working on Hedgehogs Can't Swim again in 2016, I knew the odds of anyone reading this bullshit was low.

Yet, somehow, people were reading this bullshit. I'll be the first to admit that my following is humble, at best, but the fact that I have a following at all is staggering to me. I have regular readers, regular commentors, people who have been joining me on this journey from the very beginning. Fans, even. That's so crazy. I never expected writing about “Sonic” of all things would finally be what it takes to make people start engaging with my words.

So, it is with the most heartfelt reaction I can muster, from the bottom of this black and hardened heart of mine, that I extended the sweetest and most grateful thank you. Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thank you for appreciating the stupid things I say about a blue hedgehog that runs fast and fights robots. I probably wouldn't be doing this still if it wasn't for you guys. Thank you for massaging my ego. But in all seriousness, thank you for choosing to spent time on reading my writing. It really means the world to me.

Now that I am done re-reading and reviewing every single issue of the Archie “Sonic”-verse, what is next for Hedgehogs Can't Swim? A break, first off. Don't freak out. This will not be an extensive hiatus. Having worked on this thing consistently for four years, I decided I'm taking the rest of September off. Once October rolls around, Hedgehogs Can't Swim will be back, embarking on my next ridiculously nerdy “Sonic” project.

And what is that, you ask? I will be reviewing every single episode of every single “Sonic the Hedgehog” cartoon, starting with “SatAM.”

Until then, thank you once again for reading. I will see you all very soon.

Archie Sonic Comic Reviews: Introduction

As a kid, I was obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. I don’t know why. I can’t remember why. All I know is that the character and the world he inhabited was fascinating for me. One aspect, especially, captivated me. The Saturday Morning cartoon show, known by fans and henceforth as “SatAM,” became my favorite thing ever. The show premiered in September of 1993, which means I must have been around six years old when I first saw it.

Why the show fascinated me so much is a question I created this blog, back in 2010 and rarely updated since then, to answer. I could read into it. The show, about a group of rebels fighting against an evil empire for control of their own environment, appealed to the budding anti-authority, left-wing commie in me. Maybe the stark divide between heroes, on the side of nature, and villains, on the side of industry, spoke to me. Maybe I was just happy to see my favorite pop culture character running around in animation. Maybe I was a baby furry and thought Princess Sally was hot. Who knows?

But I’m not here to talk about SatAM.

As a seven year old kid, I wasn’t entirely aware what “cancellation” meant. So many of the shows I watched ran forever in syndication. The still new Cartoon Network provided my young brain with reruns of shows from the seventies and eighties. The idea of something leaving the airways forever wasn’t a concept I easily grasped. All I knew is my favorite hedgehog was on TV every weekend. And the next weekend, he wasn’t. I don’t even remember seeing the cliff-hanger the series ended on at the time. All I remember is wondering what the characters were up to. I wanted to see the adventure continue.

At the time, my sister, who is a decade older then me, was dating some nerd. He worked at our local comic book shop. One day, he brought over two issues of the “Sonic the Hedgehog” comic book published by Archie Comics, issues 17 and 18. My mind exploded. There was Sonic, along with Sally, Bunnie, and the rest of the crew, having new adventures and continuing their fictional lives. SatAM wasn’t on TV anymore but my favorite characters lived on.

I was elated. I already knew how to read but I think those comics taught me to read, if you understand my meaning. I grabbed them as often as I could. I had a subscription at the comic shop for a while. Some years down the road, I even had a by-mail subscription. Mostly, I remember picking the series up from the comics rack at my local Waldenbooks. Ironically, that tiny comic shop has outlived Waldenbooks and other big chain stores by many years.

The series has had many ups-and-downs over the years. The quality has varied wildly. I think my fandom for the series ran its hottest during the post-“Endgame” arc, when it seemed like things were really changing for the first time. During the doldrums of the Bollers/Penders years, when Sonic (who was actually Anti-Sonic) was screwing around with a bunch of different women, I nearly dropped the book. But I could never bring myself to stop reading. The Archie Sonic series has been a part of my life for twenty years. Things would just be weird without it.

When I first started this blog, before I abandoned it, one of the things I really wanted to do was go to the beginning of the Archie series, re-reading all of it. ALL OF IT. All the mini-series, one-shots, and spin-offs. All 283-plus issues of it. I plan to re-read all of these and review them all, hopefully bringing some sort of insight to the various changes the series has gone through over its unprecedented run.

Is this crazy? Yes. Am I committed to do it? Yes. Will I see the project through to its end? I have no idea. Will Hedgehogs Can’t Swim end up going back to not being updated in a few weeks? Probably. We’ll see. Through it all, maybe I can figure out why this series means so much to me.

Devious plans...

So what exactly am I going to do with this blog, besides not update it? Hedgehogs Can’t Swim was originally planned as a daily blog, something I’m sure you can see has worked out extremely well.

Despite the fact that I’m a pretty big Sonic nerd and there’s tons of shit to write about concerning the series and it’s fandom, I’m not really sure there’s that much to actually talk about. I don’t want this blog to become just another news site. Instead, I had intended it to be a much more in-depth look into the peculiarities of the fandom at large. Explore the weirdness within your average “Sonic” fan.

But that shit is creepy and I’m lazy. So, there are a couple of things I plan on doing with this here blogspace.

First off, I’ve been collecting Archie Comic’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” series since issue seventeen
and have only missed two issues since then. (#25, because it’s hard to find, and #105, because I wasn’t caring at the time.) What I plan to do is sit down, reread each issue, and post reviews up here. This should be interesting for me for a few reasons. First off, this comic has formed the backbone of my fandom for the better part of seventeen years. I haven’t read many of these comics since I was a young child, so revisiting them should be worthwhile. Finally, it’ll be fun to see how this universe evolved.


Naturally, I also plan on rewatching “SatAM” in its entirety and reviewing each episode that comes along. That should be less interesting, since I rewatched the show when the DVD set came out a few years ago and rediscovered it. However, I do plan on revisiting the Sonic anime OVA, select episodes of “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog,” and even plan on stopping by “Sonic Underground” and “Sonic X” a few times because I’m a masochist.

Another feature that might show up, assuming I can pull myself away from Happy Wheels and other internet based distraction for five minutes, would be occasional news items and a reoccurring feature about weird fanart I found on DeviantArt. I might, God forbid, actually talk about some of the fan fiction authors I believe need exposure.

But whatever, there you go. Expect to see some of that stuff eventually.