For long-time readers of The Contrarian Corner, my love-hate relationship with Sonic has been well-documented. I think many of the games are flawed and I’ve discussed their failings in game design. And yet at the same time, I absolutely adore the soundtrack for basically every Sonic game, many of my earliest gaming memories involve Sonic games, and I still find myself playing the new releases and revisiting the old ones even while I still gripe about them.
In short, I truly am a big fan of Sonic, and have been for my entire life.
This has extended past the games as well. As a kid, I watched a ton of Sonic X and Sonic Underground, two animated shows I’d make sure to catch every time they were on (even if that one ghost episode gave me nightmares for weeks). I played with these little LCD Sonic gaming toys they used to give out as fast food restaurant kids’ meal goodies. And more recently, I’ve really enjoyed the live-action Sonic movies (with Jim Carrey as Doctor Eggman). They are entertaining, really funny, and demonstrate a surprising amount of love for the franchise.
One thing that I haven’t done much of is reading Sonic content, however, despite the plethora of it. Sonic and pals have been having adventures in comic form for decades at this point, with various storylines and arcs. More pertinently, the Sonic comics have had different publishers too, and it gets a bit messy when it comes to what is canon and what isn’t.
To make a long story short, Sonic and his friends are now in the hands of a publisher called IDW, which started a brand-new series of comics colloquially known as Sonic IDW, a series of stories that moves in a linear progression format, with character development and plot reveals moving from one beat to the next in a big long order (instead of being random anthology bits, or unrelated stories).
As of a few weeks ago, I bought and read through the entire Sonic IDW library (getting caught up to the currently-releasing story arc)…and it would be putting it lightly to say that I fell in love.
Helmed primarily by the exceptionally talented, Sonic-adoring author Ian Flynn (alongside a cadre of other skilled writers), Sonic IDW manages to accomplish the herculean task of presenting a unique world with brand-new characters, antics, and storylines that is ALSO canonical with everything that happens in the games.
It’s not an envious position, in theory. Any time a game introduces some new worldbuilding detail, a tweak to the lore, or reveals a new important character, the Sonic IDW team has the task of integrating that into the comics. Not that everything that happens in the games needs to have a featured mention, just that if it does happen in a game the comic needs to be the one to adapt. And yet, Ian and his team pull it off wonderfully, and it all ends up feeling so natural that a casual reader might not even notice.
Amazing what you can accomplish when everyone on the creative team is passionate for their love of the end result, huh?
Anyway, it’s hard to paint the Sonic IDW series with broad strokes, since it goes so many places across it’s multitude of storylines (and it is still actively ongoing). However, I’ll try to do just that.
At its core, it doesn’t stray too far from what you would expect. The Blue Blur himself, Sonic the Hedgehog, works together with his buddies to battle the nefarious Doctor “Eggman” Robotnik and a host of other vile baddies. Almost every notable canonical Sonic character makes an appearance in the pages of this comic, whether as a cute little nod or easter egg, or as a full-on character who contributes to the plot. If you’re a fan of someone in this universe, chances are that you’ll be happy while reading!
A cynic might call the references and easter eggs ‘forced‘ or something else disparaging, but I always try to choose to have a bit more whimsy in my life. Did I roll my eyes once or twice when Sonic quoted himself from the games, or Eggman showed up in a classic vehicle from an ages-past boss fight? Yeah, I did, but I had a smile on my face while doing so. The references are fun, and it’s okay to have fun. Plus, they aren’t suffocating. Entire storylines aren’t dedicated to callbacks, or retreading past ground. Sonic IDW keeps things fresh.
Actually, if I boiled my thoughts down to the three major things that the Sonic IDW series excels at, the first point would be freshness. While the crux of Sonic might boil down to ‘blue hedgehog jumps on egg-shaped doctor until he wins‘, the comic is so much more than that. One storyline involves an island of robotic rejects learning to form their own lives outside of Eggman’s orders. Another storyline involves a duo of bumbling baddies getting put in their place by a very stern momma after they accidentally make her daughter cry. And then there’s another storyline that heavily features a planet-wide hoverboard race.
This freshness extends across genres of storytelling as well, which is another strong point of Sonic IDW. The comic has its huge storylines that span across multiple issues, of course, but then it also has more self-contained stories that fit within a single volume, or single-issue anecdotes. These smaller moments tend to highlight individual characters, helping them to grow and develop in ways that they might not have had within the broader scope of the ongoing story conflicts.
The second strong point about the Sonic IDW comics that I want to highlight is its willingness to embrace darker, more complex, or more mature storytelling elements.
I’m not about to tell you that Sonic IDW is some grimdark, adults-only violent affair like that sort you’d get from the Invincible comics or something like that. I’m also not trying to say that these comics aren’t filled with jokes, bright colors, or happy and wholesome moments, because there are a ton of those too (even more than other moments, probably). I’m additionally not attempting to say that there’s some excessive violence, out-of-place darkness, or shock moments that come out of nowhere just to provoke a reaction or stir up drama or something.
But what I am going to say is that Sonic IDW isn’t afraid to let the story naturally progress in ways that feel realistic, earned, and consequential, which just so happens to me they can veer into that more serious territory.
Sometimes the villains do win in this comic, at least momentarily or for a stretch of time. Sometimes the heroes do take some pretty heavy hits. Sometimes these characters are having true arguments or moments of drama amongst themselves, which you’d normally never see in the games. Sometimes characters do die. The consequences of one arc can and will lead into the next, not only helping this all feel like one big story, but ensuring that the choices our heroes make, and the actions of the villains, have lasting effects and matter.
I’m not going to spoil each individual storyline (or, well, at least not in this article), but my point here is that these moments help the story become more engaging. Not only on a surface-level, because this sort of thing appeals to me and, I’d imagine, many older readers of the comic, but also just in terms of it being a really well-written and enjoyable piece of fiction.
Finally, Sonic IDW would not be half as amazing as it is without its third strongest point, which are the characters. From their designs, to their dialogue and writing, to their actions throughout these storylines, the characters in Sonic IDW are fantastic. If someone picked almost anyone in the comic and claimed they were their favorite character, I’d earnestly believe them.
All of the Sonic mainstays are here, and just as quirky and charming as ever. Sonic is a surprisingly compelling protagonist, Tails is a dutiful friend, Knuckles is the brash and straightforward guy with a sense of duty, and Amy is the beleaguered leader trying to hold it all together. The side characters, as I alluded to earlier, are all present too, from heavy-hitters like Shadow and Rouge, to significantly less prominent faces like Vector, Cream, and Blaze. Everyone gets a chance to shine, too, they aren’t just here to fill up the background of each panel.
For as awesome as those familiar faces are, though, the real stars are Sonic IDW‘s original characters. There’s a ton of brand-new characters created for this comic series, and nearly all of them are so fantastic that it feels like they’ve been a part of the Sonic universe forever. From the iconic duo of Tangle and Whisper, to the devious machinations of the rogue’s gallery like Doctor Starline and Mimic, to the exceptionally engaging arcs held by characters like Surge and Lanolin, Sonic IDW does not disappoint.
For as good as the story can be, the promise of more fun character moments is often the most compelling reason to want to keep reading!
At the end of the day, Sonic IDW is probably one of the best comic series I’ve ever read. It works as an excellent and exciting comic. It works if you’re a Sonic fan. It works if you like moments of humor, or more serious storylines, or cartoon action and antics, or memorable animal-adjacent characters living life one day at a time. It’s just fun, and a higher quality of fun than I think you’d give it credit for at first glance.
This wasn’t necessarily intended to be a straight-up review, but I can drop a score here anyway. I don’t imagine you’ll be surprised by what I put.
Please give this series a read sometime. It’s collected in paperback format both online and local book retailers…and as a little sneaky secret tip, a quick Google search will show you that it’s all collected digitally online for free on legit, ad-free archive sites. You have no excuse!
10/10
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
