Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 459: Sonic the Hedgehog Comics

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

You know Sonic from his video games, but did you know he has also appeared in the most debased medium known to mankind: Comic books? In the interest of science, Stuart Gipp assembles a crack team of Sonic comic experts (Bobby Schroeder and Dave Bulmer). Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week in Retronauts, the fastest thing alive meets the slowest thing alive. I'm talking about reading. Hello, everyone, welcome to another disastrous episode of Retronauts, presented by me, Stuart Jip. This time we're going, now I've been wanting to do Sonic episodes for a long time, but it felt like it would be cheeky to just dive straight in with Sonic and then persist, because people would eventually say,

sure, we're bored of Sonic now. We'd like to hear about something else, and they would be forced to insist that they shut up and put a sock in it and never email us again. So here we are talking about something quite controversial. Is that right? There's a bit of a furority around these things, isn't it? There's a very obsessed sort of fan base

who are very upset about almost every aspect of all much. Yeah. so I couldn't do this alone despite the fact I've read so many Sonic comics that I have neglected almost all the great works of literature in favour of them it's

as you can hear I'm going to introduce him first because he's geographically close to me that's how it works and it's Dave Ballmer again as you'd probably guess Yeah we have trouble getting guests

No but this time I've got like qualifications to bring it there. Well, I had to get him because we're going to be talking about the UK comic and this man is one of the hosts of what was it called again, Dave? I'll try and remember. It's Sonic the comic, the podcast

is what it's called. Oh, that's a really, that's good name. It's the film of. You know what? It took us so, not a joke. It took us so long to think of that. Why? Why would it take long to think of that?

We were like, but what shall we call it? And we were trying to come up with like clever name. Oh, a funny, clever name. I go. Yeah, and we were trying to go, or we were like, oh, we'll call it the retroorbital chaos cast. And we're like, no, nobody will know what that means. I would have, I would have known, but I would have still been bad.

That's the thing. The coolest people in the world would have known. And then three people in the whole world would listen to. The coolest people in the world. Yeah. By whose standards. By me and Chris's standards. And nobody else.

You guys are kind of cool. That's fair. No, the real reason we didn't call it Sonic the Comic, the podcast is we were absolutely sure that, someone had already done that and they had we did me and luke and some other people did one called sonic the podcast no exactly that's totally different that's we having heard of that we thought that was called sonic the comic the podcast and it wasn't and that was where we were confused you see i can see yeah well you know at this point i'm prepared to say that you guys have the definitive something like a podcast having covered how many issues now loads we're up to i'm i'm i think

I'm about to release episode 78, but we've recorded up to like 80. Blimey. You're right in the good stuff now. Oh, yeah. But anyway, that's enough of you and me talking. You know how it is. Okay, our other guest is a first time on Retronauts, I believe, unless there's been some of the choose time that I've forgotten.

I'm not sure where she's from. Where are you from? I'm from sunny, Florida. Oh, what? That's so cool, man. That's a holiday place. I know, there's Disney. Yeah, actually, I'm from Daytona Beach, so it's just a name from games.

Yeah. Anyway, yeah, it's, well, don't you introduce yourself, actually? That would probably be that. Are you from the miracle planet? So, hi, I'm Bobby Schroeder making my debut here on Retronauts. I am here because, mostly because I run the blog, thanks Ken Penders, which before anyone gets any ideas, the name is sarcastic. it was a joke and now I can't change it

because Tumblr doesn't let you change your URL without breaking like every single link to the blog ever but anyway it's a retrospective blog on the Archie Sonic Comics that I've been running since 2014 It's extremely good

You're a sonic comic superstar as far as we're concerned Apparently I've read all of it Not all of it because I haven't read some of the recent stuff yet I apologize But it turned I mean it particularly switched me on to how fun

the Sonic X comics were because I just ignored them. The only one I didn't ignore, and this makes me sound like a terrible deviant, is the hilarious one where the cover is just a really anatomically like detailed drawing of Ruge's bottom.

What? Like, yeah, seriously, it's like the artist just went, here we go. It's not just a close up, but it's like it definitely stands out. Yeah. I was like, what is this? I got to that issue. I own, that's the only one I own

because I saw it on the shelf and I just was so incredulous but I had to buy it. That's right. And did you make that noise you make when you were feeling incredulous where you go, yeah,

I did my incredulous, incredulity noise face and, and actions. And leg rub, yeah. And yeah, I did the Vic Reeves leg rub as well. That's one for the old Americans a reference to shooting stars.

You're going to love this. They've complained that it's too British, you know. Have they good. Oh, good. Yeah, that's what we want. Anyway, yes, as we have our sort of respective comics geniuses here, and me to make them seem all the more intelligent by comparison,

I think that because we're going to cover the Archie comics, we're going to cover the UK song at the comic, also known by some people as Fleetway for some reason. It's because it's made by Fleetway, but, yeah. I suppose we call the other one Archie, so. Yeah, that's a fair point. Actually, yeah. Which is a stupid thing to call it, because that is itself an existing comic that they make.

Yeah. Well, they just tell it's Sonic the Hedgehog, so. Yeah. Exactly. And then also we're talking about the also called Sonic Hedgehog IDW comics of recent years. I want to say 2018 start. Yeah, yeah. But we'll get into all of that.

Now, it's best, I think, to kick off with Archie, because I want to say that was they became first with the Sonic miniseries. I think so. I haven't actually checked this. I made some notes and I didn't check possibly the most important thing of all, whether it came first. It comes first alphabetically. There's my justification. There's my justification.

Archie being the first letter of the alphabet. The letter Archie. The letter Archie. But just as a potted sort of a potted history, my favorite kind of history. And it's, yeah, February

in 1993, it started, which I think might have been around the same time as Sonic the comic actually Sonic the comic was May 1993 although I can't tell you when the little preview issue came out

And that was in 2000 AD Was it? Sorry, genuinely for a moment there I thought you meant the year I'm like no no 19993 No no the preview comic Was it with 2000 AD?

Well it may have been My copy came with a came staple to Thunderbirds Oh wow Thunderbirds Now we're talking Maybe with Thunderbirds episode later, but I digress.

Yes, there was a sort of a gag series of these Archie Comics back in February 1983. I put down in the notes to test the waters, but I have no idea if that's true. It must have sold decently because it started

its first proper monthly issue in July, 1993. That's just a few months after the last one, or just a month after the last one, if they were February, March, April, or May, you know? Now, was that when Scott Shaw was was drawing them? I don't actually recall.

Yeah, so Scott Chow was drawing the original mini-series. Yeah. And I thought the work was pretty good. I really like Scott Chow. Yeah. I used to read Simpsons comics obsessively, and he turned in some really absurd stories for them with really odd off-model drawings, but they were a lot of fun. Yeah, that original miniseries, did they introduce any of the continuity that were at all, like the Freedom Fighters? were they in it or was it

well they started to introduce it but it was kind of a weird mishmash because apparently they were told include the freedom fighters from sat a.m. I'm assuming we don't have to introduce that cartoon. Anyone who's listening to this will know probably but they were told to

match the tone of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog so for right from the start because I think Sega thought or whoever thought that that would be the more popular cartoon because it was airing weekdays instead of once a week. So like, oh, kids will be watching that more.

So they'll want that more. So it was like this gag comic, lots of short stories and like one page gag strips in between and like all sorts of goofy things. There were like puzzle activities sometimes. Sounds brilliant. Genuinely, I would love to read that again. Yeah.

I think I do have it. There's like a trade called Sonic Beginnings and I think it's got the whole mini series in it. I have that looking around somewhere. The only other archie trades I had I got rid of. And then now I look at the prices of the money, and I'm sort of like... I know.

I tried to get them recently, and I was kind of boy. Mistake. They waited a long time to start making the trades, and then they had to cut it off because, well, you know, but I guess we'll get to that. I do wonder if it's ever going to see the light, again, even in reprint form, like omnibus form or something. There's, there's like rumblings.

I mean, I'll avoid getting into a million tangents about things. Ken Penderson said on Twitter, but he has been saying that he is trying to put together a series of hardcover omnibuses of the series with the original creators but I mean we have no idea if that'll ever actually happen yeah I'm inclined to believe that might not be true yeah I've inclined to believe he just said to get attention yeah it's supposed to be the reason that he says a lot of things nowadays good old Ken we've even got to Ken Pandas yet and we're already talking about Ken Pandas but no

I would say basically 290 monthly issues I think there were two more either completed or scripted or lined but they didn't get released because I remember seeing the covers for them in what's it called solicitations

that's it. And I think that 290 is still the longest running comic based on a third party like franchise I think it's the record. They beat Conan the Barbarian because that was only 275 or something. I'm not sure if it's being beaten by anything, probably if it has, it's probably by like some Donald Duck thing or like in, in Europe or something, because that's really unpopular. But I guess we'll never know. If any of the retronauts listeners know whether or not a European Donald Duck comic has beaten the record for the Archie comic, please write in and let me know. You know, every time I say these things and I say write and let me know, no one ever does. They just don't respond to my absurd requests. I don't consider it

I would argue before we get into our own no you know what actually we should get into that before because I originally planned to open with this so we're just going to do it now this is how this is what we call expert level planning. I'm going to ask, yes, I'll start with you, Bobby, because you're here for the first

time. How did you discover Sonic comics? And like, how did you get into them or when did you get into them, et cetera, et cetera, what's your history with these comics outside of, you know, blogging them extensively? Well, I have kind of a weird route into getting into Sonic in general because I, it was the summer 2002. I was eight years old, which dates me compared to you two. But yeah, same same age. Yeah. But I didn't really have a lot of game consoles at the time. I had like my mom's old SNES. So I wasn't playing the games or anything, but I caught the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

and reruns on tune Disney, I think. And I don't know what it was, but somehow the later year old me was like, oh, this is the best cartoon I've ever seen in my life. It's pretty great cartoon. It's good. It is a fun cartoon, but I don't know. I think these days I'm mostly fond of it for it reminding me of various YouTube poops. But that was all

I knew Sonic from at the time. And then one day I was at a flea market with my parents just randomly and I stumble across Archie Sonic the Hedgehog issue number 13, which was very old at the time. And I had no idea that this existed. I'm like, oh my God, I have to have this. I can't believe they make

comics about Sonic, this character who's from this cartoon. And it was an interesting coincidence that my first issue was, in fact, the issue where Ken Penders introduces Knuckles. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. But that was a really old issue at the time. So then after that, I picked up, well, I didn't know if they were still making them. I just had this one random issue. And so my dad went to a comic store later, like a week later or something. And he picked up a hundred issues later issue 113 I'm like oh my god they're still making these so I started reading from there

and I had no idea at the time that that was one of the worst issues they ever released may I ask which one that was so yeah so issue 113 is infamous for being number one it's just a straight adaptation of an episode of sad a m the one with the wolf pack if anyone

remembers the show they did that as late as 113 that seems odd. It was odd. It was pretty blatantly filler. But number two, it was drawn by the beloved artist, or artists, many hands. Many hands.

Is it the many hands one? Or is it more than... There's two many hands issues, and this is the second one. I think I must be thinking of the earlier one where there's a whole pages go by without anyone really drawing anything. Yes. Yeah, the issue where it's a battle in snow.

So it's just all white with dialogue and like a snow pattern. Yeah, but this one, so it was like cobbled together by whoever in a rush seemingly. It's got the ugliest art you've ever seen of Sonic. Like literally, this isn't the only issue where you can say this, but like if you compare the art that the kids were sending in to the fan art page, it was better. Not a joke. Wow. But I had no idea.

I was just like, wow, look, another comic was Sonic in it. See, I would have thought if you had many hands, you'd be an excellent artist. Yeah, it'd be better. Yeah. No, there's a lot of speculation about who many hands really was, but the consensus seems to be it was the editor at the time, just cobbling together, whatever. Some other people were probably involved, but.

I thought initially that you were saying mini hands. No, this is an actual Alan Smithy-style signature. Yeah, a thing they used to do with Archie when they were proud of what they'd done. Oh, my God. Yeah, no one wanted their name on that. But you never really saw that on Reggie and me or like any of those comics, which are obviously incredible. Oh, wow, I didn't know about this Alan Smithy thing. I should know because I've read that whole book, but in my defense, it was a long time ago.

So, so sorry, following that, did you just pick it up monthly from that point on, or was it just a sometimes comic? Yeah, so at that point, I started following months to month, and it was an odd time to start following it. But I guess it kind of worked out because the two issues I started with were like throwbacks to the early 90s stuff that they were kind of experimenting with at the time kind of going simpler after a long period of much more complex and at times dark stories. But then they went right back to that, of course. Yeah, I was going to say they absolutely did. Yeah. So they kind of weaned me on to it. Wow, that's almost cruel of them.

I can't believe that. I mean, the odds of picking up those particular issues, man. Wow. Dave, Bulma, you who is here also. Please regale us with the story of how you discovered Sonic Comics and your history with them. But please take less than half an hour. Okay.

Everyone, you know, I say that with love in my heart. I love in my heart when I say these things. No, fully accurate. The simple version is that Manana used to come round with a comic and some pick and mix for us on what I believe was Fridays or maybe Saturdays. And this one time she happened to bring a Thunderbirds comic that had this little comic stapled to it, which was what it was was it's a preview version of the first issue of the upcoming Sonic the Comic. And so it had the first page of all, I think, four or three strips that were going to begin that issue. Just the first page without any, you know, not, they hadn't put any thought into where those pages end.

It's just literally, there's the first page. If you want more, come and get the comic. Here's like one fifth of the comic. And I really, really wanted more. Like, it really did the trick. I remember, I remember saying out loud, oh, now this is just what I need because I'd, because I, I knew about the game. I didn't know the game well.

I didn't have it until ages later. Of course you said that out loud. Yeah, and I was right to. Yes. No, you were not wrong. You were not wrong. And my interest in Sonic up till that point was just like, oh, yeah, he's the new thing.

You know, the new game thing. I'm interested in that. That's the future. I want that one day. And I'd played it in a shop, you know, and when I'd played it in a shop, I got so excited that I went running round around the shop faster than I'd ever.

run before. And I do have somewhere a couple of drawings of Sonic that I'd done just in, just at school when I was bored, just remembering like, oh, I reckon he looks a bit like this and now here he is as an old man, just like variations on a theme. Were they

drawing of Sonic having sex with a girl version of Sonic with a big sensor bar over the middle of it so that you couldn't see what was happening? Bobby, I assure you he's making a call back to something we've talked about before and not just being

really weird. I'm introducing continuity. I'm introducing continuity to retronauts like Archie Comics. It's that I did that with Zool and it was very funny of me. His geography teacher saw it and thought it was funny and cool. And there you go.

And after that, when the comic came out, that was it. I never missed an... I may have missed one issue ever in the entire run. That must have been devastating to miss an issue. It must have been. I think it was, I must, I don't think I really noticed. So it must have been one of the really late on ones where it was reruns or whatever. Well, you're still getting it even when it

was doing reprints. Up to a point, I think I stopped when the Sonic Adventure adaptation happened and it was clearly over, do I mean? Yes. Oh man, that adaptation, we'll have to talk about that in more detail. But, yes, I can't believe you missed an issue. That makes me feel so sad. Well, I think I've got it now because, of course, I now have a happy, collection in the house as well. So if we put the two together, I think we've got a complete run. I sold all my STCs to someone for a very low price. And sometimes I think, well, I wish I hadn't sold those STCs. I have a version of that, which was that just when, like, I think issue two came out, I had... Robber Fox. That was my first issue. I had two copies of issue one,

because we bought our own and then Nana showed up with it the next week. So I gave one of them to my friend. And I remember, because he'd missed it and he was interested in issue two. And I remember getting it out of my bedroom drawer where it was pristinely laid out and handing it over to him carefully. And of course, the thing is my copy of issue one, you know, the covers come off and it's a little bit ripped and it's like, oh, I should have kept the good one. Would you like to hear my story about something like the comic issue one?

I went to Sonic the Comic Con a few years ago. It was a convention for Sonic the comic. It sounds like it was, yeah. Richard Elson. No, it could have been some kind of heist. Yes. But you don't know that. I don't.

A great Sonic heist. Anyway, some of the artists like Richard Elson, et cetera, were there. Richard Elson was at the convention that I was at. I didn't even bother saying hello. What? How arrogant? Oh, God. Am I?

I met everyone else, but not Richard Elson, who was the main. one that you'd want to me. Do you have an explanation? What was going through your head at the time? I don't know. Were you shy? I think I just didn't want to queue. I just didn't want to queue. Anyway, the story, yes. They had a huge

table downstairs that was completely covered in something like all the issues all over the place. And nestled within them was issue one, a copy of issue one. Not the best condition copy, but a condition, a copy nonetheless. less. And at the end of the day, I was one, I was like, I was like volunteering their

technically. I was one of the organizers. I was helping, but I didn't really do much to help. At the end of the day, they sort of said on the, on the thing, yeah, this is kind of winding down now. So, you know, if anyone wants to take in one of the issues from the table, feel free. And I actually, like, more or less, like, did a sort of action roll to my feet, ran and, like, slid down the stairs. Yeah. Did you know? your feet go round and round and make a kind of in what noise. Into the super peel-out, yeah.

And skidded downstairs, like, leapt over to the table and grabbed the number one, shoved it in my bag, and just booked it. And I, and no one was following. Like, no one was in any hurry whatsoever. And I was the only person who was just like, I'm getting that issue. That is happening. That is going in my collection today. Yeah, but you still rolled under, like, any time you saw something that could

have emitted a red laser that you would break if you ran. I don't normally action roll because I just don't, I'm just a bit too, there's just a bit too much of me. Do you know what I mean? To do an action roll. The only times I've ever done an action roll other than that was when I saw a sausage dog in Oxford once and I wanted to pet it. So I did the action roll and ran at full speed towards this sausage dog and its owner and the sort of dived on the floor in front of them. at the dog like you'd seen a grenade

pretty much yeah but I mean it was just an exciting sort of thing dog yeah just it was a sausage dog of all things you didn't used to see them until a few years ago

and now they're everywhere they're the new hotness well do you remember a few years ago when that guy went around stretching dogs ever since then yeah they must have been there I never put two and two together

Blue streak speeds by Sonic the hedgehog Too fast for the naked eye Sonic the hedgehog Sonic He can really move Sonic

Sonic he's got an attitude Sonic He's the fastest thing of life Well now we've got some very informative It's a good episode so far isn't it? Yeah it's great It's going really well I haven't done my entry to Sonic comics

so I'll do it really quickly I saw it in the shop and wanted it in issue two, Robo Fox and I got it and then it was deemed not for me so it was taken from me and I never and I was not allowed to read it anymore so then I just read

the odd issue that I would see at my friend's house and then my friend became an adult and he threw away all his comics and I said are you three? wearing those comics in the bin, Matthew? And he said, yes. And I said, why don't you put them in this bin bag

that I've got, and I'll put them in the bin for you? So I loaded... Is this true? No, that's a lie. I just asked if I could have them. I wish it was true. I wish I was that clever to have. No, I just, I think he just said, do you want these comics? And I was like,

of course I do. He had about over 100 STCs, for God's sake. The whole of all of the good arcs, you know? Yeah. So I had them, and then I sold them like a fool. Oh. But, yeah, that's how I read them. I got them many years later.

And, of course, I read the illegal scams that are available online. And I don't see that there's any kinds of pointing that out, because there's no way to buy or see these comics unless you read these scans. What I'd like to say, though, is I wish someone out there would do some better scans because the current ones are shit. Thanks. And yes, I know you do it for free, and it's completely voluntary, but you should have done a better job. I think the job they did was okay when they did it. It's just that now it's like 20 years later and it's not okay anymore. Yeah, it was fine.

They should just get it out in a book form. In a book form, you know. They didn't put the adverts in. That's unforgivable. How are you going to see the advert for the now more zingies rip pastels? Yeah, it is forgivable. See, for the Archie Comics, I have this very exclusive fan site that you need to sign up. and they count for just to see the scans for the Archie Comics.

But they've got like marginally better quality scans where they also have all the ads intact. So it's great. So you'll be reading like the soap opera melodrama of whatever that's going on with Knuckles family at the time. And then you turn the ad, turn the page on an ad for Twizzlers. It's like, it's the pure experience. I will be asking you about that website in due course. Moving forward.

That was the, I seem to remember that Archie Comics happened during, the era of, like, comic adverts where everyone was a weird photo-manipulated child to have a very big face and hand holding the product for advertising, you know those ones? Yeah, very much, yeah. Angela Anaconda style, is that we're talking about here. Oh, good ref, I believe we are, yes.

I don't really know. It's like the sort of thing where it's like, our tootsy pops are so good, they're turning my head into some kind of weird helter-skelter, and then they have like a third-flict related... twirley head boy going whoa or like this cap and crunch is so crunchy my whole head has exploded

revealing my brain and skull yeah a lot of fish eye lens shots is there any are there any of those comments where it's like tobacco is wacko if you're a teen there might have been

some Archie specific like Archie and Jughead comics like one page in the back oh where it's like Junkhead's about to blaze one And Archie's like, no, don't like, don't blaze that fat chronic chughead. And Jackhead said, oh, geez, I guess I'll just stick with burgers, huh, Archie? And then everyone goes, yeah, yeah.

I should let you write forever, Dale. Oh, thanks, yeah. There's five whole panels and they're going, yeah, yeah. And then the last panel, Veronica walks in with a baggie and she's like, I got some Eckies. And everyone's like, yes. And then the final panel is them all going mental in a field. Anyway, let's talk about things that actually appeared in Archie Sonic, because that's what we're here for in part.

So, yes, Archie Sonic the Comic. I would argue, personally, that this comic is sort of defined by drama, both within the stories and behind the scenes. Very much so. So it is, you know, you read it, and it's like, why are these things happening in the story? Why the sudden change of tone? Why did this character disappear out of nowhere? Why did this one disappear?

All these things. And then you hear all the stories about, oh, the writers were bickering at the time, and they couldn't decide on the direction. And, oh, the editor decided to do this insane thing. So it's kind of impossible for me, especially, to look at them without thinking about. thinking about all the behind the scenes drama what do you think sort of taking that aside

as best as one can what do you think is good about these comics because I think there is good there. I think there is stuff I like even prior to its issue 160

Ian Flynn coming in and basically going right let's fix this as definitely as he could I mean What kept you reading other than, you know,

Slavish Devotion to Slime of the Hedgehog? Yes, well, there's definitely that. As a kid, it's probably not worth taking into account what I thought of it as a kid because I just read and watched whatever. If it was on Nickelode, you know, I'd be like, yeah, this is great. I'll watch Super Dupor Sumos and But Ugly Martians. Like, yeah.

Those are drawings. I'm in. Yeah. But I think if I'm going to compare Archie Sonic to something more recent, to kind of contextualize what's fun about it I might compare it to adventure time which I don't know if you're really with it

but I've seen a bit of it and I thought it was very good but I'm not familiar I know it got a bit more law heavy and I sort of stopped watching it not because of that but because I forgot but I can see where you're coming from to an extent yeah

yeah just this something about having this fantasy world where they can kind of throw in whatever they want and it'll work. Like they can do medieval fantasy, they can do sci-fi, they can say it's post-apocalyptic Earth, they can go off and they can do a loose adaptation of a journey to the West. Why not? And it just all kind of fits into the world somehow, but also having this focus on character development and kind of this the personal lives of the main teen characters and things like

that although i would definitely say adventure times execution is much better the on average than the older uh archie sonic comics uh you know i'll say i do like the series it's very easy to rag on it and i as we talk about them or i'll probably bring up several more insane things that make people wonder why i like it at all but it's it's a fun series from my perspective I find even when it's at its weakest, there's something there to enjoy or even just an issue away. Some of the worst ones that I read

were illustrated by Jonathan Gray and like every single panel was just beautiful like cartoony insanely hyper-detailed in places but always pop, you know? I thought I should talk about my first issue of the Archie comic.

I can't remember where I got them from, but I got a small stack of issues. And the first one I picked up was the, I don't know if it was called this, but it was like the girls special or something. Yeah. Yeah, the the girls rule special. Yes. But the thing is, and now I'm not going to get into a quagmire

here, the first thing that happens in that comic is Sally Acorn is completely nude. Oh, yeah. And submerging herself in, I mean, you know, featureless. but not that featureless depending on the artists but basically the first thing you see is Sally's sort of bottom

as she goes into this submerges herself from this pool and you can't see that's the stuff that from the perspective of someone who grew up on STC is weird about Archie is how some of the artists render the body of Sally Acorn

sometimes oh I won't deny that No, I'm not going, I'm not going to immediately lean into any kind of deviance here. Uh-huh. At once. Thank you for that, Dave. Yeah, why don't you reminisce about Trumpton? Yeah?

Shut up. Um, the, uh, he's throwing me off now. Yes. Completely got my number there. That was an extremely jarring issue to read. Now, because it's very odd that an officially licensed Sonic comic would present such an image to me. And then the story meant nothing to me, because obviously I had no context for it. I don't even think it made much sense even with context, but...

Oh, it's terrible if you know the context. Okay. But then it was followed by, I believe, stories about Lupe, Lupe, Lupe, and some of the female characters. And it was dreadful, but it was fine. And, you know, a part of me saw that first page and went, okay, well, I guess this is what we're doing. I guess this is what's happening now. Because there must have been the jumping off point for a lot of people in terms of... Yeah.

But let's not dig into that too deeply. And, you know, I only started reading again after their 160, when people sort of nudged me and went... At Jude, the guy's gone, the comic is good again now. And for the record, having recently revisited that first reboot, it's not a reboot, but you get me. That first changing of the guard when Ian Flynn came in. issue 160, it doesn't immediately get good because there's still about 30 issues or so of tying off crap. 30.

It's a lot. It might not be 30. That might be unfair, but it felt like a lot of issues where it was just, okay, let's deal with this. Let's get this garbage that was set up completely excised, like as efficiently as possible. In some pages, there will be up to six asterisks worth of boxing, saying, Refer to this issue, refer to this issue, refer to this issue. But once that stuff was essentially done, he was able to make a really rather good comic.

But that's getting a bit ahead because that's not even talking about people like Patrick Spassianti. Is that how you pronounce it? I think so, yeah. And even the early Ken Pender's stuff, I didn't think was terrible. but is it did it all kind of really kick off with the what was it the metal madness special

I want to say issue 50 yeah well Mecca Madness was I think it was 39 and then it was a special issue after that that's definitely the story everyone remembers best and I think honestly

I feel like a lot of people just picked up Mecca Madness and that is like their main memory of what Archie Sonic was in the early days and it's not representative but it is a fun story. You know, that's funny because when I first got online and started being an online Sonic person,

which I find myself being again, and I've had like 20 years where I wasn't, so I was just like an either end of my internet time. That had happened quite recently. So all the talk about Archie was like how great it was, and those were the shots that you saw. And you're like, oh, yeah, wait, that does look good. Yeah, okay.

that was that was drawn by Patrick yeah that was a Patrick Spaziante who was mostly known as the main cover artist for a very long time and there were a lot of issues many many issues where the cover art was way cooler than what was inside but I think people like mecha madness because that's one of the issues where you can't say that because it's just fun action and these giant splash panels of the roboticized sonic fighting various characters And it's like, yeah, it's just a fun time. It doesn't have the soap opera love triangles and everything that so many other issues back then got bogged down with. Yeah, it wasn't the first one that was more serious following the gag strips, but it was, I mean, did it sort of create the direction for the series kind of going forward? I don't know. I mean, I remember issue 50 being quite significant in that respect, but I don't remember exactly when it started to get more soap opera issue and more continual. focused after a lot of not whole gag

episodes basically well so the first it kind of went back and forth between the gag the old style gab comics from the earlier writers like Michael Gallagher and then the more serialized either action adventure

or like soap opera that's not necessarily to disparage it but it is a soap opera very much and Penners was basically the one who steered that direct I believe he literally just was like looking at the letters from fans and watching some of sad a.m. and saying, oh, this is what the kids are responding better to as opposed to the gag comics. Just like, okay, we'll like start to incorporate more of the backstory and we'll get

more into, you know, Sally as a character and things like that. And fans seem to like a lot of it. So they just kind of seared more towards that over time. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like a I'm no expert obviously I have only read through it the once and even then I was skimming quite a lot of it I have to be honest

I don't blame you it was a gradual like more and more sort of weight added to the stories and sort of eventually obviously it had to kind of break because so many characters like so many characters

and the most baffling thing of all for me is the I mean I kind of like it in a sick way but it's the reuse of really obviously one-off gag characters from the old gag strips that suddenly come back and they just don't fit anymore what are the vertical and horizontal or something oh my god they're like a beano story

they're just what was that again please remind me because that sticking in my head is just being insane yeah so like issue two I think yeah they were already wearing out of ideas for what to do with Sonic I think so it's like all right here's some new characters kids write in if you want to see more of vertical and horizontal or these two little bald cartoon comic strip guys who just kind of it's supposed to be like wacky cartoon logic stuff and they're like they're like tricksters and they're kind of messing with sonic and they live in this dimension where it's all colorful and things keep shifting around but it's really just like they stand on the sides of panels around the top of a panel and then the gravity changes and Sonic falls and it's like whoa there's a fun gag idea you know yeah yeah It's like, they could have had a little fun with it, but they disappeared. And then they came back, didn't they?

They brought them back for one of the much later issues for some reason. Yeah. So I swear them coming back was also a joke. Right, right. Because it was like around issue 60 after things had very firmly gotten more serious. Yeah. And the original writer is back with a new story about vertical and horizontal. And now they're evil killer robots who just, they don't, there aren't friends anymore.

or they want to kill each other and they're like cruel demigods and I swear it was just a joke about the state of the comic industry at the time. Well, that makes it funny then. I'm glad that they did that. I should reread this.

I really feel like I should reread Archie and all improperly for my sense. It's like on one level, I want to think it's funny at the jab at the Dark Age of Comics, but it's also like, why is this happening now? Why are we devoting an issue to this?

Which is a lot of things. and that period what stands out to you as the better stories of this period or was handled best do you think I mean do you think

there was anything that wasn't mishandled ultimately in some way I mean I am being positive because I do like these comics it's just it's very difficult not to criticize them

no I mean if anyone's in my blog you know I have torn many of these to pieces not literally I would never I think that they're even handed but you're not afraid you know, you'll praise them when they're good, but, you know, it's not just a mean sort of thing. I think early on it's kind of difficult. I think Mech of Madness definitely stands out as just a fun action-adventure story.

And it's like kind of a little bit of interesting character work in there, maybe. So that's like pretty good. Some of the early stuff from Penders was before he really got bogged down in his own continuity was pretty decent. Whereas it's like, here's like a little bit of character development for this character. there was a story early on with Sally that was striking to me where after so many pun-driven comics it was just like here's Sally like on a mission like snooping around and there was like a bomb about to go off and there was no dialogue and it was just all conveyed through the action and I'm like wow

this is like slightly more mature and like interesting occasionally there would be like a game adaptation that they'd throw in which was always not fit because it was such a different world but it would be like this is fine this is like they're just having a little fun with it

but it's it's a little difficult for me to find stuff in the early issues that's like oh this is what's great because so much of it is just like it's okay comic for kids it's not like blowing me away but it's like this is fine

this isn't the worst thing I've ever read I quite like the early issues particularly because it is just a silly comic and I like the drawings and I think it's just it's it's sort of

honest about what it is, isn't it? Yeah. Here's some cartoon characters. There you are. They're doing stuff. It's a lot more comforting for the British to have an anthology comic, I feel. because that's what we were used to. Right.

I want to briefly discuss what did sync the comic in the end. Because there's something I really, I don't feel like I can be part of a archie discussion without bringing it up. And I'm going to say at this point that I'm officially issuing a content warning because this is not good. Oh, boy. I'm sorry. I just can't not bring it up because it, to me, exemplifies everything that went wrong. There's an issue where there's a sequence where the side character, this feudant fighter bunny rabbit, one of my favorite characters, by the way, is, I'm doing air quotes, but you can't see me hanging out with evil Sonic or anti-sonic, who is, I don't know if it was actually evil Sonic or if it was a different kind of character, but anyway,

It's an evil version of Sonic who looks exactly like Sonic, who is messing with his friends, basically. Now, they're lying down together under this, under a tree in the night. And there's some dialogue that's been very clearly rewritten because there are wrong fonts in it. There's some stuff that is the original font, and there is some stuff that is in the, we have replaced this, you know, the benevolent general crawl kind of thing, like the Simpsons, you know. but it's like oh our little nap went on for longer than I thought something like that yeah and it's like

really really obviously coded as they just had sex um Sonic the hedgehog just yeah no no evil evil Sonic yeah okay still though now hang on

that's what makes it worse though okay because evil Sonic oh no in the guise of Sonic who Bunny Rabbit thought was Sonic it sort of canonically did that's you know that's the crime that that's the crime of rape by deception

you know it's not a great thing to put in a kid's comic or any anything at all and to me that sort of characterizes a lot of the struggle like the fact that Penders thought that that was even one atom

of that was appropriate for the comic to the point that it got to lettering. I was going to say, we don't know, do we know what it said before? I don't know what it said before, but I think that he has officially come out and said, yes, that was my intention. Oh, I'm sure.

Well, he didn't say in so many words, but it was like people asked him about it. And he made some comment about like, oh, Bunny betraying her boyfriend's trust or whatever there. It's like, okay, that's one read on that situation. but I'm not saying that was a common occurrence in Archie but I think it sums up the distance between editorial and creative to some extent that it could get that far and even get even with the edits

that even made print is astonishing to me now that was I want to say that was quite close to 160 when they just went right no we're doing this over because it was quite a lot of romantic drama in that comic especially towards that point there's that very famous very memeable panel

of tales screaming I hate you at Sonic and then running off frying because Sonic is in a relationship with Fiona Fox which is another character from the very early gag strips

who is now back as this sort of variously femme fatalish kind of character I think am I not sure if I'm correct on that one I mean they brought her back

and she was kind of another girl for a while And then she got paired off with Sonic for a little while to extend even more of the soap opera web of relationships there. And then she kind of got reinvented as a villain by Ian Flynn kind of digging back into some of her previous appearances. Ian Flynn had that had Sally punch her in the solar plexus though, which made me really laugh on it. She's just talking about, I think she's said talking about, I don't know, she's talking about, but Sally, there's just this great panel sequence of Sally just walking over to her and just, like, biffing her.

I don't, I don't quite remember the context. It's very unexpected, but it's also very funny. Now, speaking of all these characters, do we have any particular favorite characters who are exclusive to this comic, who we'd like to see either return or at least see a statute in their honor erected somewhere, you know? Well, she's not exclusive to the comics, but she's basically known for it now. I definitely like Bunny Rabbit a lot. I mean, she's the avatar on my blog side when he reads it knows that.

But I think for a long time, she was kind of refreshing compared to how much the other girls got bogged down with the romantic drama and the love triangles, where she was this kind of this positive character who was good at fighting and pretty strange. forward and just like a fond addition to the team, but there was also this story that really stood out to me early on where she has a nightmare about her roboticized parts taking over the rest of her body. It was just this really interesting look into, oh, she's like so positive and like here to fight and help and use her roboticized parts to help her friends all the time. But deep down, she's like terrified that the thing, gives her her fighting abilities

is making her a liability to her friends and I thought that was interesting of course then the thing about the early comics is that there will be a one-off backup story like that that's like oh that's like some interesting character work and then it never gets brought up again for over 100 issues until Ian Flynn comes along and it's like hey I remember that

yeah associated attached to to Bunny Rabbit to some extent I was very impressed with what happened with Antoine now what's his full name again Antoine Antoine de Coulette. Yeah, DeColette, that's it.

Because originally in Sataym and in the original comics, he's just this milk toast sort of loser kind of whiny, like, awful character. But then as the comic went on, especially with Ian Flynn, he sort of made him kind of a badass in a way. He was not afraid to stand up and fight for, you know, who he loves. And I remember, like, holy crap. They made Antoine awesome. This is great.

How could they do this? And the best part is, his name is already cool as hell. He didn't have to do anything, really. Just slightly change it. It's like that bit in Superman where where Christopher Reeves stands up, takes his glasses off,

and suddenly he's Superman. It's like that, except Antoine. Yeah. To call that. And it's the humorous, the humorous French, you know, that sort of thing. Rob Paulson doing a bad friend Jackson. in the cartoon.

Of course, that was Rob Paulson. It's always Rob Paulson. But apparently with Antoine, the thing is that for years, they would get letters from kids asking to kill Antoine off because they didn't like him.

So all the writers took it on themselves, like, okay, we got to fix his character. We got to make him like the underdog, like he's cowardly, but he overcomes it to help his friends, that kind of character,

instead of just a bunch of French jokes. Yeah, I just think he ended up being one of the more interesting characters in the series. I was really impressed with his evolution, honestly. Yeah. Anytime Antoine was serious, I was just like, now we're talking. Right, so the, basically, eventually, I'm realizing we're spending a lot of time. I'm here for three things to cover, so I'm afraid I'm going to slightly speed through this part.

Mr. Ken Panders, upon having been booted off and or left the comic, he got a bee in his mind about believing that he owned most of the cast, I believe. Or at least enough of the significant cast were attached to those characters in some way or connected to them. Yes. But he wanted to own, I would, I believe, Knuckles and his entire extended family, basically. Or at least the extended Knuckles cast, Locke and et cetera. And Julie Sue and all of the echidness. Well, thankfully, he's never tried to claim ownership in Knuckles himself, although he does, he does think Sega should license Knuckles back. to him to keep using him.

So, uh, it's only reasonable. But, um, basically as a result, there was some, there was a lawsuit from him. Uh, I'm not actually sure on the exact details of the lawsuit,

but there was a lawsuit. And the long and short of it, to my understanding, is that Archie couldn't produce the contract. So they couldn't disprove what he was saying or something. I'm not sure how it worked. Because he won the lawsuit. Right.

Imagine having lawyers so shit that they lose that lawsuit. Yeah, they had to fire their entire legal team in the middle of it because it was going so bad, loot. Astonishing. I don't understand how you can, like, all you would need to do is walk up to the front with a copy of Sonic 3 and Knuckles or something and just go, look at this. He didn't invent them. It's this. Look, look at it. Play it sometime.

It's really good. You shouldn't give it a go. anyway and the longer short of it is a character named Thrash shoved all the cast into a big ring was it called Thrash I think it was called Thrash

I haven't gotten there yet on my blog but I think it's thrash well I know what happened and spoiled it You're not spoiling it's fine I think it's thrash I think it's like a Tasmanian devil yeah yeah

it's very jarring because it almost literally between two issues there are suddenly no more of those characters they've been bodily shoved into a warp rain to nowhere to copyright limbo learned

yes there was basically a period where they were still in the middle of the lawsuits but for a long time they'd been telling the creative emo it's fine it's fine we'll work it out and then it just hits the point where they're like oh god we're not going to work it out you guys got to get rid of these characters fast so in a couple issues

it would be like they suddenly introduced these new characters who were suspiciously similar to these other characters like when they first like when they first brought in what's obviously going to be the next set of power ranges. Yeah, but with the whole

massive ekinna cast that had been introduced for the Knuckles stories, literally an arc was rewritten so that they were shoved into a warpring to nowhere, yeah, like you said, so they were just erased from his existence,

effectively all of Knuckles's family. To Ian Flynn's credit, he sells the emotion of that. He does make that work, I think, when you get to it. Because I remember thinking it was a particularly well-done story, considering that there is a lot of emotion there. I mean, people must have really liked some of those characters. I mean, at least one person must have liked one of them. Well, there were like a couple that people like, especially throughout Ian Flynn's run as they were written better.

They were rehabilitated to some extent. Well, I mean, I liked Dr. Finitivas because when I saw Tracea Yard, at one of the summer of the summer of sonics, I demanded he draw Dr. Finitivas for me, and he did. Tracy Ardley, lovely chap, by the way, lovely chap. I should want to declare my bias at this point.

He has done a few of guest trips from my webcomic. Yeah, but that's because he's a lovely chap. He has liked some of my swearing jokes on Twitter, so, yeah, good, good, good, good, good, good, great bunch of, great bunch of lads, Tracy Yardley. And then,

Shortly after that, there was a more sort of direct reboot took place. But it wasn't immediately because I think there was the whole Genesis Mega Drive story or something that set it up. I don't remember exactly how this went down. They kind of tied it into that, but that was just kind of a, I think that was the time of Sonic Generations where it's like, oh, right, here is like an alternate timeline where it's a retelling of Sonic One. Yeah.

But like the Freedom Fighters are there. Yeah. And multiple shockingly long Mega Man crossovers, I believe. They were very lucky because the news that they would have to reboot came during the first Mega Man crossover, which had none of the comic exclusive characters in it to begin with. So they had like, it bought them time to figure out what the hell they were going to do when they came back from the crossover.

I mean, the reboot issues, they're the ones that I had trades of. And I liked them. I mean, I did miss some of the characters. I did miss the richness of the world they'd created. But I thought Ian did as about a good a job as you could do of being told, right, all your plans have to go down the toilet now. Make up some BS, please. And he made up some rather good BS, I have to say. I really did enjoy it.

And I believe they were right smack in the middle of a Sonic the Fighters adaptation when the Axel. came down. I might be wrong. Maybe slightly after that, actually. It was a little after. I think they were, but they did do a Sonic the Fighter's adaptation in the middle and that was very well-way. They introduced Honey the Cat, who's a lovely character. They also were bringing in characters like Scratch and Grounder and Breezy from Adventures in Santa

the Headchogs, they were still legally allowed to use them, which is really odd. Really odd to see them around, see them mingling. I just, I don't want, I love scratching grounded, but you've got to have Long John Baldry robotic there for it for them to be especially funny. So he can say, one of his classic pinger slines, you know?

So that was the rather unceremonious death of Archie Sonic at issue 290. It stopped coming out for several months, but they didn't officially cancel it until in 2017, one day they just went, yeah, it's canceled. Yeah, that was it. One of the longest-running franchise comic ever, just died because a stupid man

had an idiotic idea about a lawsuit and by the way if he's thinking of listening to this and then suing me for calling him a stupid man please don't

I have nothing I can't I'll lose and I'll lose every all of the nothing that I have and then I'll be

anyway I'm going to pretend I was talking I wasn't talking about you I was talking about Dave Balmer Yes that's that's fine yeah

Dave you've ruined Archie Sonic. I know, I did. We already have an agreement between me and Stuart that I'm allowed to take any of his things that I want. So it makes no difference. I don't remember that agreement, but I'll honor it. I wrote it down somewhere. I see. I remember the anguish of those last days, you know, when, because I wasn't an Archie reader, but Abby worked at a comic shop at the time. So she got to hear from a lot of readers of that comic. And they were, this particular shop had a good sort of kids section. So there was. There's a lot of Sonic there. And just the people would be like, but it was in previews. Like, we know there's another issue, but why aren't we hearing about it? And then it was like, why isn't it in previews anymore? And to me, the real tragedy of it was that we got all but one issue of the Megadrive miniseries. Oh, yes, the second one, right?

The brilliant. And it was Tyson, right? Drew that was Tyson has. Yeah, there was the second one, wasn't it? Megadrive next level or something. And it looked so good. And it was a comic that was sort of like, how about we do a classic Sonic miniseries,

as if they just kept making Sonic games. Here's the story of another one. And it's about magic cogs instead of Chaos Emeralds. And this is pre-Sonic Mania as well, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, that was the thing. And it really, really, like, everything that Tyson did about Sonic Mania really slotted in to what he'd been doing

on this comic. And it's all, as I understand it, it's drawn he just legally is never allowed to show anyone. Yep. I mean, there's a few issues from the tail end where like the inked line art got released and fans would go back and they'd color it

and they'd try to piece together from the art and the solicits like what the story would be and like reinsert dialogue back into it but they never were able to release it. God, I love Sonic fans and that's not ironic. I actually love Sonic fans. They get so much shit, they don't deserve it. Some of them

deserve it. A handful of them deserve it, but by and large, in any group as large as the online Sonic fandom, you're going to get a number, and it's going to be quite a high number of really silly people. The stuff they make that's good is so good. I like a lot of things that are things that the internet likes. I'm a fan of many things, and I've never known a community like make so much stuff, just like the insane amount

of produced art, hacks, just writing everything huge fan site blogs all sorts online continuations of obscure British comics

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can be found at most fine retailers, as well as online at Target, Best Buy, and Amazon. Or you can shop for them directly at hyperX.com and HP.com. Speaking of Obscure British Comics, I think we should talk about STC now. Sonic the comic. Dave, should we declare our biases at this point? I mean, yes.

Well, as you may have established, I'm English. Yes. And I liked the English Sonic comic as a result. Yes. I stand by my love for that comic, and we will get into why. Now,

my notes for this part have are complete ass. They're just nothing. I ran out of time. No, that's fine. I was too busy, eating an entire pizza but I think that there's enough knowledge here and you can't really... Yeah I was trying to type and it was just like oh my keyboards oh this is disgusting

I'd wash my hands but I'm just so busy yeah um anyway yes so I'm the comic British Sonic comic from Fleetway got started in 1993 in May as you have so gave me informed us now let's try and keep this reasonable length um yes yes it's going to be very difficult

uh now as a British comic from Fleetway, Egmont, whatever you want to call them, it took on the typical British comic anthology approach. We do not do comics with 18 pages of story or 16 page stories. We don't do that. We do comics with a seven-page story and up to three, five-page stories with bits of news and trivia and things around them.

That's how it's, that's how the comic was. But generally, it would be more along the lines of a series of, one-page strips, occasionally a two-page strip, some strips that are just half a page, and a huge number of characters. Well, this is the thing, and this is why there's such a difference between the character of the American comic, the Archie Comic, and ours, is that I think it both of them... See, we talked a lot about how, like, the Archie Sonic is sort of a soap opera, and, like, it's about Teen Love Triangles, but, like, of course it is.

It's published by Archie, a company whose whole thing is doing that. Well, I take issue with that, minor issue with that, because I think that Archie Comics, as in the, you know, Archie Super Digest sort of thing, are the closest thing on American shelves to things like the Bino and the dandy in terms of the way that they're structured. Because you will get like one page strips, then you've got like a three page strip, then you've got like 10 page strips. It is a lot more like that. I quite like the Archie Comics. Should I explain why, or is that an unnecessary deviation? I'm going to explain why. I think it's fascinating that comics ostensibly aimed at young children

feature so many drawings of women in swimwear. I can't, drawn by known erotic artists at times as well. Like Dan DiCallo used to draw. He's like one of the main archie artists, and he used to draw tunes for, like, Playboy and stuff. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying it's odd. No, it's, and it connects up with, like, when I went, the same year that Sonic the comic started,

that was the year Channel 4 happened to show Saved by the Bell, more or less in its entirety, which is a similar thing. It's like a show for kids that, like, way too often focuses on the girls being in swimwear. Right. I've never seen Safe by the Bell because I was like, oh, this isn't cartoons, they turned it off. Because that's the thing. It kind of is, but just with real people. I watched the opening, because the opening was cartoons.

tunes and the song was nice then it was just like straight off yeah not for me but anyway so archie made comics that concerned themselves with like sort of a silly version of and a kid's chased version of like which of the yes kiss one another or whatever they did do like they did do serious like life with archie which is like two different parallel timelines one of which were archie has married veronica one or his married betty right so what you've got there is a sci-fi concept used only to illustrate, what if they kissed a different person? Archie gets shot and dies at the end of it. He gets shot and dies, and it's not a fake out.

He fucking dies. Depending on which woman he married in the end. I forgot, you can't say swears on this, but I think it's worth it for Archie Andrews being shot to death. My point is... I'm going to allow myself one of those every show. It's like my PG-13. Yeah.

But my point was that when we... made when we the English because you wouldn't know this to listen to me but I am also an English man yes What? Yeah, it's true. And when we made a Sonic comic, we just continued making the kind of comic we were used to making

but yes, those are the two things that Stuart has just described, the sort of the like one page per character gag comics and then that was one kind of comic that was your main 10p 20p every child reads these, picks them up when your mum

Whopoos to the supermarket. School fun. These are all real. Yeah. And then... Toot. Hoot. Hoot. Who's one. Hoot's a real one. Yeah. These are the names of the real ones. Yeah.

But then you also had things like 2000 AD, which was what STC kind of followed more along the lines on, even though that was for much older kids, where it is. Here's five pages of this, you know, fascist regime situation. Judge Dred, basically, was from 2000 AD. I'm sure everyone knows that. but bring it out of her anyway. Still going to this day, 2008, still running strong.

I had a subscription a couple of years ago and I couldn't keep up with it, so I just had like 50,000 issues of 2008 that I just didn't look at. I'm not saying it was bad, but I just didn't get it until we're time to read it. No, that's the thing.

Oh, is there anything you'd like to plug from Rebellion while we're here, Dave, from Rebellion publishing that you may use? Is that allowed? I don't know. I mean, you probably should. So I'll tell you why it's allowed in this It's because my wife happens to be one of the artists

For the current Sonic Comics over at IDW And between us we are we have now infiltrated The very British gag strip world that we're talking about And we're working on something called Monster Fun Which I happen to have Oh he's actually holding up here He's actually holding up You shill

You're disgusting shill Who prompted this You did a minute ago You heard yourself It was on the record And yes, we make these... Boy is my face, Brett. We make silly strip comics of this exact sorts together.

But that's not really what STC was. It had that livelihood to it. It had that kind of... Because all the characters in those are some version of naughty boy or naughty girl does misbehaving in some way in things like the B-No. Trows things at the dad usually. It splits their father. Yeah, so that's why you have this...

When Sonic has an attitude, It's that he is, you know, he's got a, it means a different thing than when Sonic has an attitude in America, I think, because it comes from that Dennis the Menace sensibility. Of course, America has their own Dennis, the Menace, but that's not the one I was referring to a second ago. And then, I was so confused when I found that out. Yeah. Because over here they did everybody was. I think the people who made the comics were because they didn't know they were each doing it. Well, they aired Dennis, the Maness, the cartoon, the American Dennis, the Maness. But they called it, they just called it Dennis. So when I found out he was actually, actually Dennis the Menace, I was like, but if he's Dennis the Menace, then who's, oh, oh, no, full on, like, just destroyed my microphone. Carry on. That's what he did. I've actually pulled my headphones out, so. Oh, dear. I know. I was so amused by Dennis that I destroyed the podcast as a joke. We haven't even started talking about STC yet. This is what we want. It's not very well, is it? No, me and Dave cannot not do this. Sorry about this. So we're going to shut up, Dave, for God's sake, you're ruining the podcast again. It's only you doing it and no one else, and definitely not me. No.

I'm doing the podcast right. Anyway, some of the comics, so what you had essentially, this did chop and change a little bit as time went on, but mostly it was you would open with a seven-page sonic story. Initially, relatively self-contained, I'll get to that. you'd have some news you'd have some reviews of new Megadrive or MastersDem games not exactly extremely good reviews I must state

but they were there nonetheless you'd have the thing called QZone which was Cheats or here's how to beat Sonic 2 or more memorably here's how to do a football game with loads of nonsensical advice from football man

from someone who was talking more about football than he was the Mega Drive game. It was supposed to be. It was something. David Gibbon. I want to say Dave Gibbon. He's one of the people. I couldn't tell you which one it was. Anyway, yes. So other than these features and letters called, as they called speed lines at the back

of the comic, you'd have your seven page one next story, you'd have a five-page golden axe story, a five-page wonder boy story. And I want to say a five-page Shinobi story back at the beginning. At the beginning, yeah. Now, not, people don't usually talk about the backup stories because they were very varying in quality, I would

argue. Yes. The Shinobi ones were pretty good, I thought. Yes. Oh, yeah. But Golden Axe and Wonder Boy didn't leave much of an impression on me. But the thing is, if you didn't like a backup story, they were only around for what, four or five weeks at a time. Yeah, and then it would move on.

Then they would move on and swap them out. It would come echo the dolphin, in would come streets of rage. And the way it sort of worked out, it would be generally that every so often there would be in all change. so you could jump in you know at least every five weeks you were more or less

guaranteed a jumping on point I say more or less because there were some longer form stories later down the line but the Sonic stories with they started off very very basic like as in

Sonic jumping and going yo I'm the cool hero I'm going to get some rings oh there's a bad Nick I'm going to smash it open and get and rescue the animals inside and robotnik would go

do oh yeah boy have i worked up an appetite time for 40 burgers yeah they hadn't established the chili dogs at that point so it just be one of the sonic yearbooks he's just lying there eating what appear to be maltisers which i found really odd it was a really weird book he was just lying there about up against a palm tree eating multisers with cans of kowl around him and i was just like that's i mean he must have been the metabolism for a fast hedgehog you know because I don't think that's a very good example for the kids, does it? No, but that exactly.

Sonic was who we wanted to be. He was the dream. If you were Sonic, you'd get to lie around and eat sweeties and burgers and Coke and you'd be a hero in everyone. My mum never let me run around big loops ever. She wouldn't let me do it.

No, mine didn't. And I begged and I begged and I begged. Mm. I didn't go anywhere. Anyway. Be it. So you would get characters such as sparkster from Rocket Night, you'd get Marker's Magic Football,

you'd get shining force of all things, for God's sake. Very inaccurate adaptation of shining force. Yeah, an entire JRP, they had to adapt to six episodes of five pages. Very memorable, though. Memorable. I thought that went great. Yeah, memorable, I would say, because of the really, really cool bit

where they suddenly reveal a nuclear bomb. Yeah. That's memorable now. I didn't remember it until I did a podcast about it. Now I'll remember it, maybe, we'll see. But eventually, the stories based on other games other than Sonic disappeared, with one notable exception, which we will get to, we're more talking about Sonic hit.

And they were replaced with backup stories about more Sonic characters. So you get a Tales solo story, or Knuckles solo story, or chaotic's crew solo story, or that's pretty much it, actually. Oh, Amy, Amy and her girlfriend, Techno. Yeah, oh, of course, yes, very important. And that's canon now, because the original writer Nigel Kitching made them a couple in the story that he did. So it's official. And all the people who keep putting angry reactions on the things that we write on STCO about it.

Do they? Sod off. Do they really? Yeah, they too. I thought the world was fully in favour of Amy and Techno as a couple because it's so awkward. No, the world is a terrible place to tell them. I'm sorry. But no, they would do those adventures where Amy and Techno would get magically walked to a different world every week so that the comics legend, Lou Stringer, could create for five pages a world of puns of his very own making.

I can't wait to get to that thing. Oh, I want to meet Lou Stringer. I want to meet Lou Stringer. I apologize for harassing him so much. I have done that. He's a good guy. Oh, what? When did you meet Lou Stringer?

I've met Lou a few times. I hate you so much it hurts. Am I lying? I think I have. Are you lying? Well, think about it. Did you meet a bald bloke who said, I done Tom Thug?

No, it was definitely Lou Stringer, and I've met him at Conventions. Conventions, okay. That story checks out. He does go to those. Lou Stringer, for those not versed, he is a British comics royalty. Yeah.

And he contributed the backup stories. Yes. He contributed backup stories to something like the comic, about all manner of characters but he mostly did Amy and Techno I think that's fair to say he did lots of Sonic backups and Tales backups as well

it's what he's thought of as having done the most latterly I haven't run the numbers and of course I'm four years now into a or I'm entering the fourth year of a podcast about it and there hasn't been a single Amy and Techno

from him we've had loads and loads so he's a prolific creator of different things for the comic and he was doing the lead strips at some points as well. He had a lot in there. But the backup strips were not always, but usually gag-based,

or at least the Sonic one, the Sonic ones were. There were exceptions, because what they did with Tales, which was make him a hero of the nameless zone, which was like a fantasy dragons and dungeons and elves and... Yes, that didn't really last for very long. but it leaves a strong impression

because it's what they did with him first. Yes, and it was a lot of fun, but it didn't really feed back into the main stories in any way. It would just be, he would go there, he would put some armor on, and he would hit some goblins with the sword. Yeah. And then he would leave and no one would ever talk about it.

Yeah, pretty much the joke was, the joke was initially that, like, Tails had this secret double life that he came from. It was one of these things where it was like, oh, I don't mention my family or whatever, except in Tales's case, his family lived in a fantasy dimension and he'd convinced them that he was a hero over on Moby.

It was that thing. It was that all my parents think I'm the manager, let's all pretend or whatever. It was like that. But he'd pretended he was the hero of Mobyus. So now he got in all these scrapes. We had to save things. And then that didn't really go anywhere

and they stopped doing it. Well, they had knuckles go as well. Yeah, that was great when that. Because he was just ripping the piss. Well, that was when they were getting Nigel Kitching to draw. it as well and Nigel Kitching drawing is always a treat

we'll get into that again shortly as well see this we're going into so much unnecessary detail this is a bit too granular let me let me there's something I want to say

to introduce the concept of STC to people listening because there are misconceptions about what Sonic the comic is and what the context of it is oh don't get me started don't get me started

well and the reason is that like the when right the early days of Sonic fandom on the internet consisted of a load of kids who were just old enough to get all balshy. You know, we were

14, 15, 16, 17 at the high end. And we were still in the 90s console war, basically. And that, and not just Sonic Phantom. I'm still in it now. Well, yeah. But the establishment of like

what we now, what people now think is the history of video games and still pass it around and still do YouTube video. The way was propaganda written by children who were marks for these corporations that were making these like fake rivalries for the playground and so this is why you know people think that like Sega didn't do very well in the console war for instance yes they did it's just that there was more Nintendo fans on the early internet than Sega fans

I've been told like now I'm not going to rag on Americans like I usually do The history of retro gaming, as presented online in particular, is extraordinarily US-centric, as it would be when it's being made by people who live in America. That's fine. That's absolutely fine. However, there was no video game crash. In England, we kept making games and nobody talks about them. Or it makes me sad. Or indeed, sort of more or less anywhere. That was a local issue. But yes, so in the same vein,

the character that the world thinks that Sonic the comic has was written by propagandists during what was genuinely a sort of light rivalry going on on the internet between American Sonic fans and British Sonic fans that was happening at the time. And the thing is, the key difference between American Sonic fans and British Sonic fans in the 90s when all this law was being written

is that we had to pay per minute and our dads didn't let us on for more than about 10 minutes a day. And meanwhile, the Americans are out there writing FAQs and doing all this stuff and getting all of the history foundation written down. So I think Sonic the comic is that first of all, it's thought of as Fleetway, and it's thought of as this odd thing where like, oh, I don't know, a couple of guys somewhere that doesn't matter made a weird Sonic comic. Here's what I think is a more accurate context for it.

Just as Sonic 2 was happening, basically Sega went, right, let's really get this promoted, let's really manage our brand here. And for whatever reason, here is what happened next in different regions. In the UK, the brand was just really, really, really, really well managed. We had novels, we had like this handbook that was just like information about Sonic and who he is. Stay Sonic. And it all followed the backstory that Sega of America, oddly enough, had come up with that tied everything together. Here's the story of it.

Sonic is blue because Sonic and his friend the scientist were trying to rid the world of evil and then various things went wrong and to cut a long story short, Sonic ran so fast he turned blue and the scientist got all the evil of the world gone into him and he turned into Dr. Robotnik. And in various ways, this kind of propped up the world of the games, which unlike in, say, the Mario games, where it's like, here's some iconic stuff, mushrooms, question marks. in Sonic it was all really really weird and left field

but had this sort of it kind of felt a bit more like a place and like things were connected together in some way for me the use of a very early issue the origin of Sonic the one you're talking about right now I want to say issue 7 or 8 8 8 that wasn't the first Elson one was it because the Mega Mac one was before

the Megatox was earlier right I couldn't tell you which was I think it's the supersonic one might have been his first one yeah yeah but I remember having this book when I was a kid called Sonic the Hedgehog Spin Attack and they collected four Sonic stories and first one was Death Egg Summit something by Ferran Rodriguez

Danger at the Death or some stupid thing like that I can't remember the name but I know the one you mean Attack of the Death I don't know Anyway it was it was fine But the next story was the origin of Sonic And it's like what the hell is this art What's happening to my mind It's like when you first listen to

like duke or dark side of the moon that's what it was like yeah it was at another level it was like the first time I heard future sex love sounds I was yeah anyway it's insane Richard Elson at his just absurd detail

absurd depth of color just incredible cartooning like you can't fault it he didn't need to work as hard as he did and make as good of a thing as he did later he didn't go that hard and it was still amazing. But that's the thing.

Because after that moment, the comic kind of swerved in that direction and became well drawn. Yeah, because after that story is the one where Sonic comes back from the Omni viewer and finds out he's missed like a few months or something. Six months.

Six months and robotics's taken over the world in the meantime. Thus setting up the entire arc for the next 94 issues. Yes. Anyway, listen, I'm trying to finish my sentence, Stuart. I don't want you to. I want this to ask forever.

What happened in this country is that for some reason, it was really, really well managed, and we had those novels, and we had those comics and everything. And then for some reason, what happened in America is they just didn't tell anyone about any of this stuff, even though it was their idea. And so there was this little mini comic that came out that had the story in. And I think some of which, or like the key bit of which was then rerunning a Disney comic or something like that, Disney Adventures, maybe. Yeah, and then after that, that was it

because then Deke made their cartoon, and for whatever reason, the Archie series that, the mini-series that was, like, based on that, was the one that took off, and so that Archie happened there. So... Were Adventures and Sat-Am running concurrently?

That's so confusing, though. I know. I was confused when I was watching Adventures as a child on Channel 4 at 625am, I believe, every Saturday morning I never missed one and all of a sudden one day after the episode

Super Robotnik it was suddenly set a M with no explanation and I was like but where's the jokes see that didn't surprise me at all why is Tales acting like this what's happening

Sonic the comic had warned us that there was not warned us like excited us about the fact that there were going to be two Sonic cartoons me I wasn't reading it no but I was so I knew that after the

that there was a series too. So I was waiting for the day. When's it going to switch over? And then it did. And I was all excited. But that is what it did. They played like through adventures or at least loads of it. And then they switched to Satay-Eam.

No announcement. No announcement. No continuity announcement. Not even like coming up next on Channel 4, your childhood ruined. I favour adventures over Satay-M. I'm not a fan of Sat-A-M. Although I do. do respect to some extent the people who are, but only a very small extent.

When I ought to declare as well, we have this running gag. If you've only even listened to my podcast or are going to after this, we have a running gag where we're like anti-archy, but it's kind of a, well, what it is, is it's a bit, but also it's us accurately reflecting how we used to feel and making fun of ourselves for our ridiculousness. So it's a joke, but it's also exactly what you actually think. Yes. But yeah, so please nobody feel offended when you hear me refer to the archists.

That is a joke. No, I was very excited when I heard about Archie on the internet in those days. And people, like, fellow teenagers sent me a few issues. I'm like, wow, there's another Sonic comic. Anyway, but yes, the Sonic comic we got, and this is the point, was not based on the cartoon. It was based on Sonic the Hedgehog. And we think it's weird that the American comic wasn't based on Sonic the Hedgehog. Whereas ours was

And that makes sense to us It's not weird When our comic adapts the games It's very weird When ours did Yeah Yeah it is And it shouldn't be

But Bobby Did you ever encounter A comic How did you answer A lot more respect Than I let on Yeah so I can kind of be The voice of the American

Perspective on STC There's some people out there I have some really warped ideas of what happens at STC on this side of the pod. Can't we still? Yeah, I know we can go on a long tangent about this. I didn't have that much exposure to it online except for like two things.

Number one, it's the one where Supersonic is evil. And people thought that was like the coolest thing. And number two, people complain about Sonic being too mean. And I know we can have a discussion about this. I don't know if we will. I don't think that's fair it's out of context just like how you can take

Sonic is such a jerk in the early Archie comics too it's not It's just I mean In England that's just as you've seen That's how we communicate We just mean to each other Yeah We'll just bust each other's balls

About everything I've I never understood that idea Because I always find like So what You want something just to be the guy who goes like, yo, I'm cool. I'm going to save the planet.

Hi, I don't like you, Amy, bye. Like, what do they want? Why do they not want Sonic to be interesting? What's the problem with that? I mean, there's always the issue that they take out of context where poor Kluis is leaving the team because he's got too much anxiety. It's really mature.

It's a story about anxiety. And Sonic is acting out because he's, doesn't want his friend to leave and he's sad, so he's busting his chops. Yeah, but he can't, because he's a boy, he can't show his emotions. So he starts out by by like being mean to him. And then if you keep reading,

because he's Sonic, he can't show his emotions. Yeah. Well, because we actually, we covered that one recently and it's actually an amazing piece of writing. And it's, it's about like, Sonic the Hedgehog is like the er hero of the time where he's, So he's cool and he's got this attitude and he has to appear aloof and he has to appear in charge and not needing anyone's help.

And that is a, that's toxic masculinity, we call that now. And we struggle to make people see that a lot of the panels that do get shared around and do appear to be like a mean sonic saying something mean are often either the start of a story arc which, and again, lasts four or sometimes five, sorry, seven or sometimes. times only five pages. Or, now, to be fair, in a couple of cases, are either a, you know, the way British male friends talk to each other, the bit where Sonic turns to camera and says, I don't much like the look of your face either, but I don't say of your face either, but I don't talk about. That is a joke and it's a kind of a mean joke, but that's how we, that's how we joke. There's always that panel that me and you fast to disagree on and you're wrong and I'm right about.

And you're wrong and I'm right about. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that, in fact, you're wrong. Yes. And I'm going to allow you to be right, because this is your podcast, and I can be right about it on mine. Okay, well, you can be right about it on yours, but you'll be wrong about being right. Hmm.

It's a panel where Tails says, like, saving you, SotTales was just until there's a bonus and so I say, it's not when I think about it, no. Because Dave thinks, because he's insane, that he's saying, not when I think about it, no, and saying, even like a bonus nothing. But what is actually true

is that Sonic has realized that he's gone too far and he is backpedaling and saying, uh, not when I think about it. No. Yeah. The way that anyone in history has ever said, not want to think about it. He's out of his mind. He's out of his mind.

I can't understand this. I promise you, at some point in the future, because of this, disused car park on fire bins. me and him, no shirts, knives, starving each other to death. And as we die, I will say, you know what, Dave, you're probably right. This doesn't really matter anyway.

Yeah, and I'll say not when I think about it, no. And then immediately it would ignite the hate once again. The thing is. But now, to be, so we do have that, that is a brain thing that we have. The remainder of this podcast is going to be this feud. Like, this is all we're talking about that. The actual reason that that one is significant. as one of the propaganda pieces posted around

to show how SDC writes Sonic wrong is that that one's just not that well written it's not that good of a panel like it's not it's just not that good there are there are ones that aren't that good and we have to admit that some of the air well let's talk about early ones written by Mr Mark Miller

Mr Mark Miller of the first several episodes of excellent comics the unfunnies nemesis the cop killing cyber goons. I made that one up. Kick

kick ass. And it's many sequels. And that's it. He's not... Oh yeah. Kingsman. The Secret Service. Although when he made it, it was just called The Secret Service. In bloody Hollywood. Never mind any of that, because his best work is the adaptation of Streets of Rage in Sonic the Comic. It just is. It's so good.

Have you read Trouble? No, the comic about Mary Jane. No, not Mary Jane. No, I have not. Aunt May. Aunt May, yes. As a teenager. Should I?

There's a panel of Aunt May with like, no, never mind. Let's not talk about it. It's discussed. It's a dreadful work. Yeah. It is a bad work. Anyway, so what,

because we're already nearly two hours in, and we haven't even talked about IDW. STC, what did it offer us in terms of memorable arcs? We had, I mean, let's face it, the best arc of Return of Chaotics. I don't think anyone can delay that. That was the story in which, Now, let's see what happens in that story.

The Metallics go back in time. The Metallics are Metal Sonic, by the way. Yes, beg pardon, yes. When Metal Sonic was introduced, for whatever reason, they called it Metallics instead of much cooler name. Just a cooler name. And we admit that that is weird. The Sonic, you see the adaptation, the Sonic Terminator.

Yes. Yeah. And that was a great art. A very good arc, very good arc. And then there was, then there was the sort of next in the arcs was the Sonic 3 and Knuckles run, which was a long time of the comic, was dedicated to just doing bits of that story, and it came to a big head, and it was amazing. What about that big double splash page of the Death Egg crashing?

Come on. Oh, it was amazing. The only time they'd done a double-page spread, and it was Sonic falling through the sky, clutching onto the Master Emerald, I think, while in the background, the Death Egg and the Floating Island shoot at each other, because in this, the floating island can shoot big beams of energy and stuff, and a load of egg robos flying. And Richard Elson, of course. It was amazing.

Brilliant piece, yeah. Just amazing. Like that. And it's big, the thing is. FTC physically quite large. Quite a big comic, yeah. More like a big magazine than a little comic. Anyway.

Yeah. And then, yes, there was the brotherhood of Metallics story in which the, in which Metallics was Daleks now. And there was loads of them and an emperor one. And they went back at the time. The Emperor Metallics is Project Chaotics from Chaotics, basically. The big red Metallics. sort of. It doesn't look much like it. It's a slightly different design.

It looks almost exactly like it. Yeah, does it? It does look a lot like it. It hasn't got the big jaw. It doesn't have the big chair, but you don't see its legs anyway, so it could be in the chair. I suppose it could be. In theory. But yeah, it's that. Anyway, it's that. But what they do is they go back in time, and the chaotics are there for this. They don't really matter. But the metallics go egg time.

And they steal the egg, right? That's what they do. They steal the egg that all the evil went through and hit Robotnik or hit Dr. Kintabor and turned him into Rotting in the first time. So in the first place, so Sonic, the Hedgehog has to go back in time, put the egg back, and just for good measure, pull a cable on the floor so that Robotnik, so that Kintabor trips, turns into Robot like Sonic has to do it. He has to create his own arched enemy. Dr. Robotnik to save the world from a worse thing in the form of the Brotherhood of Metallics. That was amazing.

And then you have Running Wild, which is the one that I think the internet knows best. That's the one. Because it's all dark and edgy where Sonic as Supersonic. He loses control of Super Sonic, stays Supersonic for ages, and wants to kill everybody.

And seems to do so. There is that sequence where he shoots the tornado out of the skull, but it was not called to Tonyo at the time, is it? Seemingly murders Johnny Lightfoot, Big Rabbit, and Amy Rose, small hedgehog. And then there's a full page of him laughing maniacly as he changes back into your normal Sonic.

And then the last page of him standing in the middle of the wreckage and going, oh no, what have I done? What have I done? And then the next panel is him in a pub. Yeah, because he's given up. What would you do if you murdered everyone you loved you go down the pub? Well, I think he's gone down a pub far away Where he's sort of undercover, isn't he?

He's like hiding away, drinking himself to death That was an experience reading that All that stuff And then after that, you Flickie's Island happened Sonic 3D happened So they had that happened Oh yeah, oh yeah We can't not talk about the final victory

I skipped over. Issue 100 Yeah Was where for the one A big long story Sorry I'm talking over you I'm really, I'm sorry. Well, you were going to say the same thing.

For the first time ever in the comic, the fact that they've been running multiple different strips about different Sonic characters, you started to get the sense that, wait a minute, these are all heading in a direction. Yeah, they're all converging slowly. Yes. Yeah.

And when you get to issue 100, it's a whole comic of which, that's normal to Archie readers. We've never had it before. A whole comic of one story. They had the different stories like Sonic. knuckles. But they were all just a continuation of this story, the final victory, in which they liberate Mobius. Is it called Mobius in this world? I forget. Yeah, yeah.

They liberate Mobius from Robotniks. He doesn't no longer rules. They capture him. He's been the dictator there for a long time. And during that time, those first 100 issues, like, there's a lot of, they don't shy away from the sort of fascist regime imagery. There was one issue that we've covered recently where some big trooper Badnicks, which are just like soldiers. They're like Wolfenstein robots. Wolfenstein robots, I would say. They kick down the door of these innocent villagers

and they're going, and the village are going like, what, we've done nothing wrong? And the robots go, everyone is guilty of something. Take them away. And you're like, well, okay. And, yeah, so that, they sorted that out. They liberate the planet from Robotnik. Yeah.

And then after that, the comic spends its wheels for a while. No. But it does a bit I loved it though Yeah because Archie They killed him didn't they They sure did Yeah I won't get into that too long

Because we've already talked about Archie No because I know that there was a lot of silliness going on around that It's one of the different One of the major differences between STC and Archie That I feel like I have to address In Archie there's always a convoluted reason For everything that happens Like Amy needs to change to her

modern design. So they have her touch the master amort or something or a chaos emerald and transform. It was a special ring. And it was all this drama where it's like,

oh, Sally's mom is in a coma and they need that ring to save her. And then Amy uses it up to wish that she's older. It's like, oh boy. Yes. I love that because all that Amy needs to do to have her new look is comb her hair and put her different clothes on.

Yeah. But the problem was that like they'd ridden themselves into a corner because I guess they were like, oh, Sonic Adventure's coming up. We need to bring back Amy, who had never been in the comics, like it all, except occasionally as this little kid who likes Sonic, and now they're like, oh, crap, she's supposed to be older now.

They retcon that. We need to magically age her up. Why didn't they just have her come back the number of years older that she would have been in real, because years had passed since then? You can't do that because then it implies that Morris, the Hedgehog, has gone older. Right, yeah. But then the main one I want to point out, because it fascinates me. in order to

don't don't you can actually feel for your jumping on this day because you know what I'm going to say Phil in order to transform

Robotnik or Eggman into his Sonic Adventure form Archie has him go into an egg am I wrong

and rejuvenate and hatch as the new robotnik is that correct something along those lines no

it's not I'm mixing it up with Sonic that's SDC isn't it yeah what is it what is it

how does they change him for a robot Nick Tagman in Archie. I'm sure it was convoluted. It was. In the Archie comics, he had died at issue 50 at the climax of the end game mark, which was supposed to be the end of the series because they're like, well, Saturday

was canceled a while ago. Why are they still letting us make this comic? And then it didn't get canceled after all. So they're like, crap, what do we do? So they spent like 25 issues kind of exploring alternative story options. And then it gets to where they're going to have to adapt Sonic. venture. And it's like, oh, Eggman's in that. We need him back. And Sega's like, you got to add him back. So what they did was they brought in this previously introduced alternate timeline

version of Robotnik from a timeline where he actually won. And basically they're like, well, he won. He killed Sonic and everyone. And now he's bored. So he comes over to the main timeline to do it again and then but he's like roboticized in that version so he uploads his consciousness to a backup body which just happens to be

yeah Robo Robo Robotic which is a character that Tenders now owns due to the lawsuits and everything it's why you better not use rubber robotnik well I don't think they're gonna yeah but I mean the point I suppose for me that I wanted

to make is that the way they transform Robotnik into Eggman in the comic is they had him put a jacket on. Yeah. It was one panel, incidental detail in the background he is putting on a jacket. Because they only had seven pages.

Now this is what it's called Expedience. And because that's the main difference. It's like, he's just dressed differently. One of my favorite things that I've ever done and I'm sorry. No one's going to care about this. I edited that panel so that he was wearing an NWO shirt.

That to me is hilarious. Oh, God. not to anyone else. Speaking coincidentally, in the Archie comics, in the shot of all the different backup bodies they have for McMahon, one of them is Hulk Hogan. Amazing. Amazing.

Yeah. He gets around at Elkogen, doesn't he? Just ask his best friend. Sorry. Anyway, yeah, so STC, that was good, wasn't it? It was a good comic, wasn't it? The people who made it were, we don't have any, we don't have any controversial ones. We've just got bangers.

They're just all really good. Can we, before we move on to IDW, which I think would be fairly fleeting, is that fair to say? I would like to talk about Nigel Dobbin a bit who recently passed away but three, four years ago now now he would do the most and I'm not saying this lightly spectacular painted

water-colored knuckles strips that had a European touch of brightness of use of space like use of white space mystical adventures that just in my opinion were the highlight of the comic. Whenever they would appear, whenever you got

a knuckle strip, you were like, cool, I'm getting something atmospheric and incredibly imaginative now. And that's not just Dobby. That is on Nigel Kitching as well. He was writing. Oh, yeah. But... But in terms of the art, you couldn't have... You couldn't have found a more appropriate artist. No.

Unless you got Mobius to do it or something. You know what I was? I wasn't going to mention Mobius because I thought maybe that's a bit too much to compare him to, but it's not, is it? He is that good, isn't he? That's the sort of art that Nigel Dobbin did, there was a, on his very first one that he did for STC, which was one of the poster mags, there's a bit where there's just a sort of a, like a kind of a carriage that some animals are being led into to be turned into badniks. And it is the most ornate, the way he draws it is incredible and he did not need to.

Same as with when Richard Ellson came out of the gate with what he does. It's like, wow, this comic, what we've had up till now, which was just this like anyone draw a little. mouse guy running around. It didn't need this level of quality, but now it's always going to have to have it, and it did. Yeah, what Nigel Dobbin was doing was he was the, you couldn't have found a more appropriate artist for the concept of there is a flying island that's a bit anime, but we're going to make it a bit European comic album as well.

And we don't know what's on it. Let's explore it. He's from there. There's places to go and things to see. It's strange and it's ancient and it's mystical. That's what Nigel Dobbin had in his blood, and he was able to just do that. Yes. And it was, yeah, there was no point at which his work was disappointing or lazy or spinning wheels.

He was perfect. Five pages of perfection. Yeah. And it sounds like we're overselling it because he's died. We're not. No, because we used to talk this when he was all like this. This is how we used to talk about him anyway. Yeah.

I'm very glad that I met him. at one of the Sonic Commons before, you know, I was pretty privileged to have met him. I got a sketch from him, and I can't remember what... No, I didn't get a sketch from him. He just signed something. I got a sketch from Nigel Kitching. But yes, he was incredible.

I want to... See, I want to talk about Decap attack, but it's not Sonic, so I felt it should be really brief. There was also a Decap attack strip that was... That's a game. You won't remember it. It's a terrible Mega Drive game. A really crap Mega Drive game.

And people are going to be like, It's not crap. It's terrible. Come on. It's like psycho fox. It's uncontrollable. It's Halloween a game. It's Halloween a game.

So basically what you had, the characters, which was Chuck D. Head, which is a pun, obviously. Chuck the Head. Because that's what he did.

He threw a head at people. Which was a skull. He was this big, yeah, a big bandage-wrapped like fella and his little orange head poking out of the bandages, like a little hench fella.

There was Igor, who was this little green sidekick to Dr. Frankenstein. Yeah. And then there was head, who was the skull, who would sit on top of Chuck's back, basically, or his head, essentially.

Because in the game, you threw the skull, or you punched things with your face. With your face, yeah. And what it essentially was, was a five-page humor strip that really got out of hand. Yeah. Because they stopped caring about the game at all, and we'd just write some...

The very first strip was basically, Nigel Kitching, who was the writer of the really, like, big epic sonic stories, also happens to be an absolutely brilliant cartoonist. and he was just able to do this hilarious Halloween like it was just basically a take on the Frankenstein story but the characters from this game and then quickly after that

they you know they wanted another strip of that so he's like well all right now they're going to the monster of the year competition but but to get there they have to go on a train and we're just going to have like a young one's style five pages of jokes about being on a train and then that's what it ended up being it was just this like we'd all forgotten there was a game it was just the backup strip

in STC, where it was just these Halloween characters mucking about and being silly and Nigel Kitching being brilliant. There's a strip and I forget which you issue it's in and it's called Chuck's Savings and to you this day I believe, I consider it one of the single funniest comic strips ever written. When you get to it, it will bring you so much

joy. It's quite late. But it is five pages of flawless brilliance. It's about these two crooked solicitors turn up at the castle and start taking it or insisting that everything must be like paid for. But what it essentially amounts to is just Chuck getting hurt a lot

in funny ways. How many things thrown at him? Oh, is that the one with a whole page of stuff? Yes. Where he says, oh, you hit me with everything, but the kitchen sink and the last pan of the kitchen sink hitting him full force in the phase. Yes. Yeah, it's an incredible comic strip. But yeah, I mean, the weirdest thing was in one of them they actually brought back Max Decap, the villain, from Decap Attack.

And it was really weird and jarring. I was like, get this out of the comic strip. Don't bring back the villain from that. This is too confusing. Go back to like the Maltese Budge's or something. We're having to think about the game again. Yeah, don't make us think about this horrible game. But anyway, yes, STC, so not the comic.

Oh, that were good. Yeah. Oh, before we end that, I implore you listeners. Please read it. Please just read the comic. You can download it illegally from almost anywhere. It's barely illegal. You have no legal recourse to read this comic.

besides going on eBay and buying all the issues which cost about £8 an issue and there are hundreds of them and the publishers don't make any money from that and nobody involved in it makes any money from it so for God's sake just pirate it

is the only way you're going to be able to see it and it's worth it and if I may say I'm doing a podcast that you can listen to while you read it that you might enjoy details at the end of the episode that's really pushing it that day

that's really pushing it first you hold up your your comic and that's right now you're holding up my podcast yep So anyway, after Archie got cancelled, just a year later, IDW too much cheering within the fandom picked up the reins and they immediately set on the right track by saying, oh yeah, we got Ian Flynn and yeah, Tracey Yardley's going to be penciling, you know, two of the fan favourites from Archie. But now, let me preface this by saying, I like IDW. I have bought every issue of this comic.

I think that the issues with IDW are largely issues with IDW and not with the actual stuff of this comic. Because my understanding is that they almost enforce decompressed storytelling editorially. Because everything in every IDW comic that I have read has been clearly written for trade and spaced out as such as well. now that's not abnormal for the modern comics industry but in Sonic because there was so little dialogue in some of the issues I felt like it was more than usual

like the metal virus story arc really did seem to go on forever months and months and months I was given the impression that that was a very very long story presumably by people who'd read it in that way and I read it in the trades And it was surprised to find as bad in the trades No, I was surprised to find that it was like

Oh, it was a couple of books and there you know That seemed like a fairly easy length Do you do you read Bobby did you read much of IDW have you got any Yeah, I've been I've been reading it since it came out Cool Yeah I mean I think I'll definitely go to bat For the metal virus art personally

I can see the complaints about the length And I definitely think that The series is being written for the trade I mean you can see everything is like a four issue arc or a sequence of four issues arcs it's we're only now starting to get stories where it's like here's just one issue and this is the story in that issue that's very that's very much an editorial thing um but personally i thought well okay cards in the table i read one piece so i am used to extremely long serialized comic yeah yeah i'll be like oh yeah this arc is

140 chapters. It's great. It's perfect. But I thought they were able to sell the stakes of the metal virus arc better because it was longer where they had compressed it to like four or eight issues. I think it would have been, oh, well, here's this thing that's over. I think it is a case of perspective in a way because I was reading it months to month and it did feel like because you've read the issue in like 10 minutes max. I'm a very fast comic reader. And I wouldn't really pour over it that much. I felt very much like, oh, my God,

please get on with this story because you've got multiple issues that were essentially just a character gets turned into a robot, like something bad happens. It was almost depressing how often they did that. But then, of course, you need that to establish why aren't these characters coming to assist? Why aren't these characters here?

And, yeah, really in trade or reading with that kind of perspective. I can totally see that. That makes total sense to me. I mean, I'm just like that they introduced Tangle and Whisper, because I really like Tangle and Whisper. Oh, for sure. They're great. They got their own miniseries that was genuinely very entertaining

as well. But they're just a lot of fun and they really fit in with the other established Sonic characters, I think. They're great, aren't they? Yeah. The IDW comics, I guess we kind of forgot to say what they are. Yeah. They pick up from Sonic Forces, which is the latest new Sonic games. Yes, but they can't say that.

Am I right? They can't let me say that. They can't reference too much from forces because Sega, we could go in a million tables about Sega Band-Aids because that's what everyone exists in a bubble. Is that fair to say that they want the comics to be their own bubble? Oh, well, perhaps I shouldn't have said Sonic Forces then. I don't mean to undermine them in it.

No, it is set after Sonic Forces, but it's more like Sega kind of use each Sonic thing as its own thing, and then they kind of move on from that. So, like, it's set after the takeover of the planet in Sonic Forces, but they don't want to reference specific events from the games too much. And it's partially just like, well, it's a comic for kids. They don't want to be like, oh, did you not play the game? Well, then you're not going to know what's going on. So, yeah, but, yeah, there's some oddities there.

Well, what it does do is it, unlike Archie, and even, you know, even more than STC, it is like, here is the world the way it was, you last, or it's in a Sonic game, basically, including something that I think of as uniquely forces, which is that there's, like, resistance cells and things like this. And this metal virus was basically after a few, you know, a few tradesworth, after three or four tradesworth, they started doing the Walking Dead, but Sonic. Yeah.

And but with, like, roboticization. I just found it, like, I mean, I'm not saying I found it upsetting, but the one where Cream's mum gets roboticised is genuinely quite harrowingly. Well, that's the thing. It's very, it doesn't shy away from being quite harrowing the way you see characters being engulfed while their loved ones are having to be held back

by their friends from diving in and getting infected themselves. This is why I said, Walking Dead, it's... Yeah, well, that's the thing is, it is Walking Dead because the only difference is that no one's getting their neck munched. It's essentially the same thing. just turning into robots because there's a virus that robot... I'd say it's probably better than the Walking Dead. Yeah. Well, I don't know if that's say much of this

point, but... I mean, I'm talking about... I mean, I read the whole of The Walking Dead comics and I can't say I am glad that I did. I got a certain way and then went, that'll do. Yeah, it's a good 40 or 50 odd issues that were worth reading for me. But then same thing over and over again, really. Anyway, not walking dead

I would say personally as far as IDW is concerned I would say that it's hit its stride now but it took a long way it tied again like the last issue I read number I want to say 49 Yeah that's the way Is leading into

An interesting climax with the new character Surge and Blue Guy Kit Yeah Because they've really sold the whole Surge is going to beat up Sonic's face thing with some really cool covers and stuff

of them facing each other down. And the only sad thing is because I know that as editorial mandate directly from Sega Sonic can never lose. I mean, he was never going to lose, obviously. It's Sonic. But I just really hope that there is

some kind of good fight. You know, I would like to see it developed nicely because it's built it up really nice and it built it up really well the last issue I read the one with the

I don't want to spoil it with what happens to the puppet character the Pinocchio character Bell I thought was interesting if telegraph that's still interesting

and I just wanted to keep the stride that they've got I'm just really hoping that it will continue you Now, overall, I would say that even when I wasn't feeling the story, the art's being consistently good. I'm not just saying that because Abby is involved.

Yes. What the IDW comic did for the modern Sonic designs, nothing else managed to do, which is that it me really like them. I was one of the people who was very skeptical about the modern Sonic designs. I never quite thought that I liked them. And then IDW went round and just sort of rounded up the people in the world who can best represent those designs and go like, look, look what we can do with them. It sort of brings a kind of, like we were talking earlier about how like the Sonic fan community creates amazing things. In a way, IDW can be thought of as sort of like the cream of that. Like, they've gathered

some of the best people from that crowd and gone like, there. There's a lot of modern Sonic that is ascended fans, you know, like Tyson, Tyson has working on the Sonic movies, and he was drawing, I mean, I remember when he was making your Sprite comic

called Sonic R A-R-G-H. I remember when he was making boxer hockey, and I loved it. I mean, you'd never think that guy would go on to be one of the leading creative forces. And I'm so glad that he did.

One of the best people that's ever drawn Sonic the Hedgehog. Like his drawings of Sonic are some of the best ones anyone's ever done. It's amazing what he does. But I mean, he did that meme comic about Nipples the Enchalado. Yeah, I was going to read that up. That was kind of where it came from, right? That was when he crossed over and everyone started thinking of him as a Sonic guy. Yeah.

The way I remember it. Well, I mean, I'd always thought that because I read his Sprite comic. back when it was new one on the Syguy the disgraced paedophile cygoy's website Oh god

Yeah Yeah Yeah Discrased paedophile Cygai Yeah I used to talk to him on IRC in 1997

or whenever it was You used to talk to the disgraced pitiful sci guy I did talk to Oh gosh Yeah Okay Sorry we have to say it every time

I assume it's the same one But he was a green sonic With Swirley Yeah that's him That's him His character psycho Yeah Don't look up his stuff

He's bad, but he is important, unfortunately, to Sonic Fandom. Yes, Sonic are the Sprite comic, good Lord. So glad I wasn't involved in Sonic Fandom during that era. I only have vaguely heard about this in retrospect, and it's like, really... I was involved in Sonic Fandom during that era. Yeah, I was out there making Spray Comics at the time, so... I made Sprite comics and made many hundreds of issues of Sprite comics, and I won some incredibly specific forum-based awards.

for them so huh and if you want to buy them from an online shop you can and I put the price up every week because I don't want

anyone to buy them anyway moving on other Sonic comics what are there because there is that the one you stated a promotional one the original

American promotional one there is manga I'm not sure if there's an ongoing specific manga or just the occasional odd Sonic manga but other than

I mean those are pretty much only game in town I mean, you mentioned prior to the record that there was, sorry, Bobby, you mentioned prior to the record that there was a French Sonic comic or something. Yeah, I was going to say that wicked French one. Yeah. And that comes out what, once every, whenever they feel like, I don't know.

Comes out. Is that an ongoing thing? I have absolutely no idea. It was just like a one-time thing, I'm pretty sure. Oh, really? Okay, just a one-time thing. I did not realize. Was it like one of those band Desnay, is what they call them? Comic albums, like a, yeah, yeah, I know, but I was just trying to get some culture into this. Oh, sorry.

I torpedoed it, but yeah, sorry. It's okay. It's fair enough. When I try in some culture, it's embarrassing. You know, it's like if a walrus went to the tape modern or something, this wouldn't be wanted. They'd have to hose them until they left. Then someone walked past and they were going,

that's a really interesting exhibit. They go, oh no, actually, that's just a walrus that we're hosing down. It's not actually art. See, what I did there is I did a humorous bash at modern art in a very boomerish sort of way. boomer, boomer, like the walrus boomer who became...

Oh, Jesus. See, it's good, it's a good reference. You ever seen that story book where Rotter walks out of a door wheel holding Robotnik's clothes? No. Oh, it's really funny because it implies that he's just stripped Robotnik.

Taking all of Robotnik's clothes off. Yeah, I mean, who wouldn't want to? Robotnik is pure confidence. I mean, how is that not sexy? But anyway, moving on, again. So there aren't really any other. the major Sonic comics other than the fan works

of which there are several trillion Tales gets trolled one of the best fan comics on the internet I sort of not to bring it up I sort of lost it I got a bit to a point where I was like

yeah I get it I get the joke now I think I'm going to stop reading this yes now you say that I realize I stopped reading and it continued on so maybe it's maybe it's full of bad things now

and I shouldn't endorse it but those first before I was good at first It was very funny As far as I got, it was really good The one where Shadow and Tales and Sonic Barrier Body is still one of the funniest things I've seen Oh, high shovels is one

I don't recall, yeah, high shovels, that was the one That was the one Amazing moment I don't recall whether it contains copious amounts of slurs though No, it probably does, doesn't it? I just remember those panels Where Kermit the Frog is increasingly small

With the huge speed balloons coming out of him It was so good yeah tells us troll the best comic we've discussed today I'm from my son distance yeah unless it's full of slurs that we've forgotten yes and which case I'm barely sure it probably is I would have thought that it came from the edge lord era of the internet

didn't it yes it did yes um hang on I've got someone to shrug on on my notes oh there's nothing okay um I would say that that caps off this episode at uh quite a long time again sorry listeners um Unless we have any sort of final thoughts at all that we want to put out there about the future of Sonic Comics, do we have any of those? Well, it's very difficult to know because although, apparently it's not ever specifically stated, the IDW world resembles the last game that they brought out. And the thing about Sega bringing out Sonic games is that every time they do it, it's like the other games never existed these days.

They're all so different to each other. And we're just now, as we record this, starting to see the first images and brief snippets of animation and whatnot from what the next Sonic game is going to be, which looks like it's going to be a sort of Breath of the Wild type Sonic game, which probably isn't going to resemble the one before it. So we don't know what has to happen to comics with that, whether Sega will suddenly go like everything has to look like this now. Well, of course, the interesting thing there is that Ian Flynn is the one right. the new game. So it's a question of, will they allow him to kind of, will he even want to see it in a direction where the IDW comic status quo will be safe? Or will it be like, no, we want to go in this direction. So you should write a script that allows us to do that. Yes. And he has experience of steering a Sonic series in a sudden new direction. So he may well be able to

pull that off. I'm excited, no, I think it could be good. Yeah. He might introduce Tang and Whisper into the game

continuity. Now, wouldn't that be something? It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Well, it could. You know, they've appeared in the Sonic

stupid crappy phone game that sucks. They have to pay for everything. It means that legally they've crossed that barrier. So they could. They could appear. Yeah,

yeah. Don't know. That's the thing. We don't know the reality of it. We don't know how much of, we don't know much about how games are made. What we don't know is, is Ian Flynn,

writing this game in the sense that they go to him and say, what should happen next Ian? Or is he writing the game in the sense that here's the game, put a write down some words for them to say while this level goes on. What does it mean to write a game? Well, it means different things per game. Then you're

right down like, now Mega Man does a jump and he lands on a girder. So like, you know, there are games. And there's a little construction hat on the girder. Like, I mean, think about Sonic colours. You know, the quote unquote writing. No, I'd rather not. Okay, but the quote unquote, I hate the writing in that game.

It drives me crazy. Is robotic doing quips over a level? And you can't hear them. You can't hear them over the music. No. But you know what I mean? That's a sort of games writing, and we don't know which one this game is going to have. Or it could be that Ian Flynn was the first person at the top of the team to say, like, here's what this game's going to be about.

We don't know. It's different for every game. You know, Sonic Colors, I played that on the Wii, and I was like, hey, this is pretty good. how I like it is a shame that it's not on one of the other consoles so it could be like HD in like 60 frames per second et cetera et cetera and then they released it in HD 60 frames per second on the other consoles and I was like oh this is actually shit I was just distracted by the fact that it was on the way

yeah but didn't they not get it right in some way no well I mean there were some errors but by and large it was the same game and I feel like making it all sparkly really highlights some of the shortcomings I'm not saying, it's not a shit. It's okay. It's okay. I guess.

I guess it's okay. But I'm not here to review Sonic games. Why would I ever do that on Retronauts? I'm absurd. We're talking about comics, and now we have officially done that. Yes. And I feel like we should bring things to a satisfying close. So I'm going to now ask you individually about what your things is.

So Bobby, hello. Thank you very much for being on Retronauts. I'm sorry that me and Dave talked so much. No, it's totally fine. Thanks for having you. What do you do that listeners can go and look at? So, I'm on Twitter at PONET Plus. As previously mentioned, I run the blog, Thanks, Campenders, which is relevant to what we've discussed where I go through all the Archie Comics and write way too many words about all of them. But that blog is on hiatus because I am currently finishing a video game, which is that later this year. Yes. I can't wait for that. that what's the video game you must tell us so the video game is titled and nobody listed again the ideas about the title it's titled super lesbian animal RPG is totally PG 13 don't worry about

it uh i always get comments uh and i think if people enjoy uh the archie sonic comics they might enjoy my game with this little blend of fantasy and ethromorphic animals and all that stuff so yeah there's a demo isn't there right that you can access from you Yeah, there's a demo on itch.com. You can find the links on my Twitter and everything. So I will drag out a plug, a logger. It's, uh, I haven't played it because I just wanted to wait for the full release because I was essentially sold when I saw the visuals.

I was like, that looks like great. That looks colorful and just fun. And I assumed it would be good anyway. Um, and I'm sure it will be. I'm very much sure it will be. Uh, Dave. Hello. Tell us all the things that you do, please.

And where people can find you on the internet. Well, I do. Sonic the Comic, the Podcast. It's out every two weeks, and it's about the comic that we talked about from Britain today. And you will probably enjoy that. You'll find that at STCTP. Sonic, the Comic, the Podcasts. STCP. Dot Wigglehe.com. But just look for the name. You'll find it. Sonic the Podcast. Try not to get it off one of the weird websites that rehosts people's podcast. You don't even find it. It's at Sonic Podcast on Twitter. Weirdly enough, we're the first people to register that. And we did it. in 2019. I don't know why nobody had got that before. But I'm there as at Demon Tomato Dave and that's where I post everything else that I do. You'll see the rest of it there. Oh, it's an exciting video, man.

Yeah, yeah, Demon Tomato Dave on YouTube, things like that. But listeners to this episode will be most interested in some of the comic pocket. Bobby's blog is like the definitive look through the Archie comics. We're trying to do the definitive look through the British comics.

I definitely sent some people your way. I really, really want to... I'm going to have to reread that blog. I need to get it in some kind of form where I can read it sequentially. A.k.a. clicking on the last page and going backwards, I guess. But, yes, it's very good. As for me, I'll keep it brief.

You can find me on Twitter as Tupacabra, but I don't recommend reading my tweets because they are in one of two genres, bad or mental. The... I do a webconic of Maryhell as a Maryhellcom. It's on hiatus. it's coming back in June and also I do retinauts

which are listening to right now so yeah cheers I also do the podcasts anime chat which is about me watching animaniacs which is I hate to death so I just get angry every episode basically though spoiler alert in recent episodes I have come

to begrudgingly appreciate it for what it does so there was definite character development on my part there I also do a podcast called the Dillcast where we review every single Dill book comic ever one Dillbert comic per

episode for the rest of our lives. You may be thinking, shoot, why don't you do podcasts about things you like at some point? You know, that's a very valid question. I have no good answer for it. So thanks. And if you enjoy Retronauts, as you've surely enjoyed this one,

you would like, maybe you would like to become a Patreon, a Patreon of Retronauts, where you can get all these cool things for just $5 per month, which, you know, I want to get this from you guys. $5 a month is not that much money, right?

It's quite a small amount of money. I mean, not, okay, not for everyone, obviously, there are exceptions here, but would you say, generally speaking, that $5 per month is a lot of money? Because I objectively would say it's not. No, it's an incredible value for money. Thank you, Dave.

What do you think, maybe? Would you say it was a small amount of money, broadly speaking? Yeah. There we go. Anyway, $5 per month gets you, not one, not three, that would be ridiculous. two full-length Patreon exclusive episodes per month. That's insane about you.

That's so much, especially when you consider how long these podcasts can get. Well, none of them were as long as me as my ones ever. It just doesn't happen. But that's because they don't have as interesting stuff to say. Yeah, exactly. But also for those $5, you will be accessing a mini podcast and column by Diamond Fight,

who is excellent. and they are doing this week in retro, which is a series of extremely interesting essays that they've written. I highly recommend that you go and put $5 into the Retronaut's Pot because if you don't, you're not going to get those exclusive episodes. Oh, and also you get early access to the weekly ones as well, so you can get in the conversation early before everyone's tuned out. Like, you come into this and you can be, you can be,

the end of the day it comes out and you can be like oh yeah here's my thoughts about sonic comics oh those are interesting thoughts here's some of my thoughts to tie into your thoughts etc etc you can't see it but i'm doing typing but then a week later comes out for you know the free scrubs who don't pay the five dollars a month you know the people who i would cross the street to avoid quite frankly and uh they're all like oh yeah here's my thoughts about sonic comics and and the cool people who paid five dollars a month they're like yeah we're talking about something else no, actually, because the new episode's out. We're talking about the new episode now, actually,

yeah. So maybe don't come to us with this. You know, it's a bit cringe. And, you know, most people's sales pitch for the Patreon must be positive. Not me. I shame people until they pay up. Five dollars a month. That's not even... That's less

money than a bagel, probably. I don't know. I'm not American. Probably in New York. Let's less money than a Rubin. A pastramian rye. I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know what those are. Yeah.

See, Dave doesn't even know what Bastramian Rai is. If someone said that to him in the street, he'd start crying. No, yeah, I'd fall apart. Pure logical disconnect. That's why. What I can do is I can tell you it's cheaper than a fish and chips. Oh, yeah, absolutely is, especially with the price of cod these days.

Anyway, yeah, so that's the end of yet another ramshackle episode of Retronauts, which I think has been rather good and enjoyable. And I would like to say thank you again. Schroeder for coming on the podcast. Perhaps we'll see you again sometime. That would be lovely. And thank you again, Dave, for coming on the podcast. Yep.

We brought you out on the old Will Barrow, and you drunkenly joined them. Yeah, with me. With me comics. Thanks very much. Thanks again. We'll be back soon. And I love you so much, listeners. You don't even know.

Thank you.