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Title: Sonic The Hedgehog: The Beginning
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents have nothing to worry about with this one. "Sonic The Hedgehog: The Beginning" doesn't have a single curse word, the humor is clean, and there is not a shred of violence to be found here. Hard-core fans of Sonic The Hedgehog may find these old issue's of the Sonic comic to be fun to read (as they will fondly remember how Sonic used to be before he went mainstream), but except for these few fans everyone else will find this book to be completely disposible. |
When you think of Archie Comics you think of two things: "Archie & Friends" comic books and children books. Another thing Archie is known for is for their very famous "Sonic The Hedgehog" comic book, which has been Archie's #1 seller for years now. If you've ever read the Sonic comic before then you know that it's not too difficult to see why this series is so popular: The series has great characters, layers of depth, and a great story that has a strong continuity to it that most comic books lack these days (or in other words, the story has managed to open up and wrap up many key story twists while staying on track most of the time). Over the years we've seen the characters grow, change, and the story has gone in directions no one ever thought it would go. With the popularity of Sonic climbing to an all time high these past couple of years, and with back issue's of the comic in high demand now, Archie has decided to release graphic novel compilations of the hedgehogs famous series. So with this book we get a compilation of the original four issue mini-series that eventually was turned into a regular monthly series. Here we get the chance to see the origin of Sonic, how the Freedom Fighters came together, and how Robotnick went from being a goofy to be being the most evil monster you've ever seen before...okay so that last part is a lie, but two out of three ain't bad right? I'd talk about the story at this point, but to tell you the truth this mini-series doesn't really have a story.
You see, the Sonic mini-series was created as a pure commercial for the Sonic games and the two TV series that were going to air on ABC and syndication. There was no plans for this to be a monthly comic book what-so-ever, so the writers didn't bother to give us much of a story to work with here. Instead they made the comic world have many items from the games (including power rings and the giant brown ball that Robotnik use's to name a couple), it included the characters from the ABC Sonic cartoon "Sonic The Hedgehog" (sometimes referred to as SatAM), but the tone of the stories were more related to the humor and story style of the dreadful "Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog," which ran in syndication (channel 58 where I lived). All this mixed up styles of art and characters make this mini-series somewhat of a mess. It's clear that the writers had no idea what they were doing with the material, there was no long term plan for the series, Princess Sally changed hair color's several times through out this book, and the artwork is primitive even for a series that came out in the early 90's. So is there anything to recommend about this book then? Well there are a few things that make this book worth checking out, but the reason's are very minor. For starters I'm glad this book was made as it shows that Archie may (finally) be getting serious about releasing their series in graphic novel format, which means that if sales are good enough then Archie will finally get around to releasing compilations of issue's 17 and beyond (issue 17 is where the series started to take on a life of its own and become really worth reading).
It's also an interesting release for people who read the Sonic comics now, as they now have a chance to see just how far the series has come since it premiered. People who read the new issue's may be shocked to find that some characters had different names originally (Rotor is called Boomer in these early issue's), they may find it amusing to see Robotnik being such a fat wuss (creating what is arguably one of the worst contraptions to ever be seen in comic book pages), and for people like me, this collection gives me a glimpse back to my childhood. See folks, as much as it pains me to say this I have to admit that it was these original issue's that got me into the comic book. I still have every issue of the comic since it first came out, and finally re-reading these early issue's after all these years brings me back to the good old days when Sonic was a simple comic and a simple character, and all he really made you do was laugh while you were hyper on sugar coated cereal. However the nostalgia in these early comics won't work for everyone. Since this WAS a commercial for the games this comic incorporated a bunch of the games sceneries and items into the story, and I have to wonder whether or not these things will mean anything to kids who have only played the 3D Sonic games. Will the brown checkered ball mean anything to kids nowadays. Will kids get the underwater scene where the artist draws a Sega Genesis controller on the page and asks the kids to steer Sonic and Tails to safety?
Not only that, but will kids know who all the old school robots are from the old classic 2D Sonic games? And will kids get the crack where Tails looks at a video screen with Sonic fighting a robot dinosaur and says "I didn't know 'Jurassic Park' was out on Genesis yet!" (just for the record, this comic book was released in 1993, the same year all this JP merchandise became popular) The answer to most of these questions is most likely no, as Sonic has just come too far since these early issue's for this stuff to be of any real value. So ultimately I can't really recommend this book to anyone except to the hard-core Sonic fans. It's nice that Archie is getting around to releasing the comic in graphic novel format for everyone to enjoy, but they may want to temporally skip ahead of the series for their next book with something more interesting. Like the "Endgame" saga maybe?
- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -