Name: Sonic the Hedgehog Archives
ISBN: 9781879794245

Mike Pellerito

Sonic battles his nemesis, Robotnik, as the villain traps him with plants, attacks him with a mechanical bomb-throwing monkey, and kidnaps Sally.

Sonic the Hedgehog Archives

Victor Gorelick

Maggie Gordon

This was certainly a mixed volume, and also the dawning of an era where the covers totally lie. Spaz is a fantastic artist and his action-filled splash pages often look a lot more interesting than what you actually get inside. Take Sonic 33 for example. It's a callback to the earliest days of the comic. The Freedom Fighters are sick because they ate fast food from Robotnik... really? Sonic has to shrink himself to activate their "auntie" bodies. Overdone plot line that relies on pure silliness. The side story in this volume is a repeat of another story from earlier: a sports challenge against Robotnik. Definitely not the strongest issue :l

34 is a bit more serious with a spy plot involving Uncle Chuck, and 35 hints at some secrets involving power rings. Neither are really standouts. 35, in particular, suffers from over reliance on humour when it's trying to do something weird and mysterious. 

36 is the strongest issue of the book because it gets back to the SatAM style-stories, sending the Freedom Fighters into the Zone of Silence where they discover that the king has lost his memory. This starts off a plot about the king that will last quite a long time later on in the series. It's also illustrated by Art Mawhinney, an artist who emulates the cartoon style perfectly, injecting a lot of emotion and movement into the characters. 

Finally, each issue has a short (often VERY short) Knuckles side story. As a kid, I much preferred the world building with Knuckles. There's little to no information about him in the games, so Penders was free to do what he wanted. As an adult, I see his stories as the mishmash of Superman, Star Wars, and other scifi tales that they are. Fun, but rather derivative.