Sonic the Hedgehog Comic

When it came to general comics like super heroes and action, I never really read that kind of stuff except for the tv or movie adaptations to them. So when somebody asks me if I knew about Batman and the different multiverse versions of him or something along the lines of that, I wouldn't be a good person to ask. Granted, whenever I went to a comic book or Barnes and Noble, I would skim through the comics to see what they were about. However, there was one comic I did read when I was younger that I absolutely loved and it was the Sonic the Hedgehog comic created by Archie comics.

You may be thinking that a comic based on the video game character would be a stupid idea. Well I thought that as well until I started reading it and then thought completely different about it.  The plot basically is about a group of humanoid creature called "The Freedom Fighters" that live on a planet called Mobius and they have to protect themselves from an evil anti nature fat scientist bastard called Dr. Robotnik. To help the Freedom fighters is a fast blue hedgehog by the name of Sonic who always finds some ways to thwart Robotnik's evil plans. At first, this seems like a perfect replica of what the games plot was about, but as soon as you start going through the issues, the plot gets a lot more complicated and more in depth about the world itself.

Yes, the characters from the game are there like Sonic, Tails and Robotnik, but a truckload of new characters are introduced exclusively in this series such as Princess Sally, a chipmunk princess who used to rule over a kingdom before Robotnik took over, Antoine, a stereotypical french coyote who guards the princess despite being cowardly (Really subtle about the French being cowardly Archie) and cyborg bunny girl with a western accent. These might sound like pretty goofy characters that you would see in a typical children's cartoon, but the way they flesh these characters out is quite impressive and all the backstory you see of these guys makes them feel like really people, or animals. I will say though that the comic sometimes introduced some shitty characters in the later issues when the first writer started to get a bit strange with the story telling.

There was one issue where Sonic was being blasted into space and then he ends up on a planet where these ant aliens are being attacker by giant bees or wasps and Sonic had to save them and then a couple issues later he meets up with an AI which he freed from Robotnik a long time ago who has now become some kind of space god and helps him get back to earth. But the craziest part is after that, the space god lands him on some kind of space courtroom where Sonic meets Tails's parents who somehow got into outer space.

There is some reason for why some of this stuff happens but I forget sometimes because the plot sometimes gets too complicated, I forget this a kids comic. Then later in the life cycle of the comic, somewhere after 225 issues, there was a dispute between the first writer and the new one where there was some kind of lawsuit which ended up having Archie retcon a whole bunch of stories and characters from before, therefore simplifying the comic.

But the reason I wanted to talk about this comic though. It shows that Archie took a character like Sonic the hedgehog and turned him into an epic tale of sci fi and fantasy with a whole bunch of insanity mixed in between. I know it's not for everybody, but I think it's worth looking at for the stories and the awesome comic book covers.

Web Comics

So for this post, I am going to describe all the webcomics I have read and what I think of them and the medium in general.

Ever since I got my first computer, I have always loved searching the internet looking for places to play games and look up interesting stuff. MY curiosity eventually led me to multiple sites which hosted comics you could read online for free.

 One of the first of them I read was one called Kid Radd which was a webcomic based on the life of a video game character who gets sucked out of a game and enters a worlds filled with characters who were also pulled out from there respective games and live a normal life without being controlled by human players. Think of it as Wreck it Ralph before Wreck it Ralph but somehow a lot deeper in terms of the characters and story telling. It was a sprite based comic, so everything was created in pixels and some of the panels were animated which I thought was very creative.

Later down the road, I discovered other kinds of webcomics that focused mostly on video game based humor like Penny Arcade and sadly, Vgcats. When I say sadly, I mean that I enjoyed Vgcats when I was younger but now looking back at it, I kind of feel ashamed. The humor is poorly done and the jokes are sick and gross just for the sake of it being sick and gross.

Penny Arcade on the other hand, still holds up pretty well and there are times where I found myself laughing at the strips really hard, especially some of the earlier issues. Granted, I haven't found myself checking that site anything soon recently, it's one of the more successful webcomics I read. I have met he creators once at a con, but they were kind of jerks, which is what other people said about meeting them. I suppose that's the way some people like to be, especially when they are incredibly successful millionaires like them.

There is a website I usually check out called The Bad Webcomic Wiki which consists of a shit load of terrible webcomics and this one guy reviews them all. I have to say, I did not realize what kind of horrendous stuff was out there until I saw this site. You even learn about the authors and you just wonder what in the fuck went on in their brains to create ungodly material such as this. There are some articles that are literally disturbing to read like for example, the Sonichu article which almost caused me to become blind and bleed out of my eyes.  It's like a damn David Lynch film, in fact, the history on the guy who made that comic is more fucked up than the lifetime of Robert Crumb. There are other memorable awful comics on there, but if you want to see the bottom of the barrel, there you go. Maybe a more appropriate terms is the bottom of the internet.

Anyway, there is a little more to me when it comes down to webcomics but I just wanted to talk about the ones I knew the best.

Tezuka

Back in my early days of High School, I was introduced to many kind of japanese animation that wasn't on channels like Toonami and Adult Swim. One of the shows I watched was Metropolis which was a japanese animation based on the old 1927 black and white film. The animation was so colorful and vibrant and the backgrounds were incredibly detailed and varied. I learned that the films was based off the manga of the same name and the author of the novel was a man named Osamu Tezuka.

For this assignment I took at look at some of his works that includes Astro Boy and Adolf. Adolf was about 2 boys named Adolf who live in Japan during WW2 and the troubles that come to them. Tezuka's other works is Astro boy is undoubtedly his most famous work and is about an android who was designed after a father's deceased son who saves the world from evil robots.

From reading both works, I realized that he sometimes reuses character designs throughout his works. For example there is always a character with a large nose and a tubby body that usually plays a detective in his works despite the stories being completely different in terms of design or time.

Despite his cartoony styles, his stories are usually very serious usually with a lot of character depth and emotional scenarios. I always thought that his works were mostly for more mature audiences than for younger ones although I watched his stuff when I was younger because his works reminded me of Disney's cartoons, but with fighting robots.

So for this reading I decided to look at the Big Kahn which was one of the many choices that involved Stereotypes and the Racism of Ethics. The story is about a Rabbi who has passed away and his family found out that he has been lying about being Jewish his entire life. This leads on to people questioning their religion and the rest of the story is about how this affect their lives. The story itself is well told and

I was fascinated with how it unfolded and how each family member had their issues and how they it tied with there faith on being Jewish. The art style isn't my favorite but it works well for it telling the story although I felt like some of the emotions some of the characters expressed could've been drawn better. But it wasn't too much of a problem considering how much I was interested seeing want would happen to the end.

Maus

Maus is one of those Graphic Novels that you have to read for it's influence throughout Comic and Graphic Novels. Created by Art Spiegelman, the book tells the story of his father stories of what it was like to be in the holocaust as a Jew in World War 2. One of the ways that makes this story interesting is the way the characters are portrayed. The Jews are envisioned as mice, the non Jewish community as pigs and the Nazi's as cats.

I was given this book as a Chanukah  present and since my family and I are Jewish, they thought it would be an important read for me. This was a time I was getting into Comics Books and Graphic Novels and after reading it, it was probably one of the more eye opening books I have read considering on how it expanded on how Graphic Novels convey stories. The art style may have not been my favorite out of all the graphic novels I have read, but it definitely fit the mood of the story it wanted to tell. The pen work is thick and scratchy, the aesthetics are wonderfully gloomy for the atmosphere provided for the setting. The story itself is incredibly well done and has kept me interested all the way to the ending with its pacing. I also liked the way the creator implemented himself in there and how his character shows more connection with his father as the story progresses.

I also learned a lot about the books influence on the Graphic Novel industry. This was one of the stories that defined the term "Graphic Novel" and was one of the ones responsible for the transition from underground comics to graphic novels. These new kinds of books were able to tell longer stories that felt more like a complete story than just a typical elongated comic book strip. After looking back on it, I think it has held up rather well and would be something that I probably make my kids read when they are young (Assuming if I ever have kids).

So go check this out for yourself if you are ever interested with seeing the graphic novel that started it all.

For this week, I decided to look at an old classic, Bloom County. Created by Berkley Breathed, it was strip that focused mostly on creating satire of politics and culture while taking place in a small town called Bloom County. The strip was also the start of one of the most popular (Or should I say, the most popular) character Breathed has created, Opus the Penguin.

What made this comic strip so unique was the fact that despite that fact the comedy was based on real world happenings, the main characters were not, for example, the majority of the main characters of the strip were either two kids who often acted a lot older than their age and more mature than their parents and animals. These character would often make fun of these mature discussion, even though the time this strip was out it was usually the characters in other comics who would make the jokes about politics and such were the adult character who were more grown up.
 In a way, the whole town of Bloom County can be seen of a place that has been turned upside down, you have kids discussing politics, a group of animals developing a rock band who's main singer is a mentally ill cat who somehow gets all the women and fame, and you have a man in a wheelchair who role-plays Star Trek while speeding down hills at fast speeds.

Anyway, I was always fond of these comics and it's a shame that finding collections of strips is pretty expensive. Although I can't say paying around more than a hundred dollars for the books is worth it, I recommend at least trying to find some strips online to see if it's your kind of thing.

For this week, alongside reading Battle Angel Alita, I took a look of Winsor Mccays Little Nemo. I have had experience reading his comic strips a while back and remember looking at the way he designs his characters and environments. The amount of imagination he puts in each strip is incredible and puts a good amount of effort in each panel while it's either the way he sets up the perspectives and linework.
Since the comic takes place in a kids dreams, Mccay went wild with the designs for the characters and environments. Each comic seems to take place in a different world whether it's a world with large mushrooms or a massive ice cave ruled by an ice king. The majority of each strip ends with the main character waking up with his parents always scolding him to stop having bad dreams (Can't blame the kid, not his fault his dreams go fucking crazy with him always put into danger before he wakes up.) I'd recommend reading this if you are into seeing the history of comics.

The film is not a bad watch either if you are into animation, shame the movie was a bit of a cluster fuck to put together, isn't that right Miyazaki?

This week, I decided to read myself a Manga because I haven't read a good one in years because to me, it's really hard to find one that interests me. My roommate told me about this series called Battle Angel Alita and told me that it had a neat retro and unique style. Of course, having nothing better to do, I decided to check it out. What I saw was some of the most beautiful pen work I have seen in Japanese comics (Alongside Berserk) and some of the craziest characters that I ave seen in the media. Since I know Steling doesn't care about the story too much, I will briefly say what the plot is.

Robot girl has amnesia and is rebuilt by a scientist and finds that she has a hankering for fighting, so he puts her head on a powerful battle body and fights evil cyborg mutants in a post apocalyptic world setting. That's the gist of the plot, but there is a lot of batshit insane things going on there that I will leave the reader to find out for themselves. There were four things that made me want to go read the entirety of the series.

1. Unique setting
2. Great artwork
3. Fun and interesting characters
4. Good pacing and a story that makes you care about the characters.

Also, it's one of the only manga I have read where I leave satisfied because it actually had a decent ending for once. I can't complain enough for how many time I finish a story and the ending comes off half assed or rushed because of deadlines or the series being cancelled. The amount of detail on each page in terms of the artwork is astonishing with plenty of crosshatching on each character and backgrounds which help liven the movement and immersiveness of the story.

Also, a theme that was recurring in the story was the fact that do you need a human heart and organs to be human or is it something else? The majority of the characters are either cyborgs or androids, so they usually talk about what it takes to be human and how one can lose their own humanity.

I also wanted to mention that James Cameron is interested in doing a live action version of the the first 3 volumes because of his love for the series. He said he'll get to doing that after doing the second and third Avatar movies (which means he'll never get around to doing it considering how long it took for the first movie to come out).

Overall, I think this is a manga worth reading because of its great artwork and insane story that I think the majority of people would enjoy.

For my first article, I will be talking about one of my favorite Graphic Novel which introduced me to the media, Bone. I don't know what caught my interest in reading this but if I recall correctly, I remember being in a large comic book store when I was young, in High school and looking through monstrous shelf of large volumes of Graphic Novel collections. Looking through the books which had a majority of violent, dark and gritty themes, I found one that had a rather simplistic character on it called Bone.
I was intrigued and decided to skim through the book a bit. For some reason, I had no opinion on it but the image of the book cover and title stuck with me until the day I decided to ask my parents to get the complete collection for me. After getting it for christmas, I read that book ever day, looking at the pen work of Jeff Smith, the creator of the series, and getting immersed in the stories world with its vast and interesting characters.

One of the things that always made this series interesting is that the titular characters are very cartoony and would fit in a very stylized newspaper cartoon while the area they go through is sort of a high fantasy Conan the barbarian themed land with dragons, rat creatures and princesses. The contrast between the characters always stood out to me but it never felt like they were to out of place. I also was surprised to see how dark this story got near the end, there's a couple of deaths of some of the main characters, there's a major war happening and the story is not afraid to show blood and gore. There's also quite a number of twists and turns that did catch me off guard although there was was one that I did kind of expect (Like the girl being a princess, pretty cliche in my book)

Overall, after reading it again, I still think it's a graphic novel worth reading. With it's attractive art, unique characters and large and epic story, I kind definitely recommend this to anyone looking for something interesting to read.

Testing the blog.