Growing up in the early days of Nintendo and Sega, I have seen the many ups and downs of early gaming, but probably none so volatile as that of Sonic the Hedgehog. In 1990, Sega president Hayao Nakayama decided that their company needed a flagship series and a mascot to be able to compete with Nintendo’s own Mario franchise. The recently released Super Mario Bros. 3 had, at that time, been crowned the best-selling video videogame ever while Sega was still porting arcade games over to their Sega Genesis system. To solve this issue, Nakayama held an internal contest to find the flagship game that they could use to promote their system and finally compete with Nintendo (Harris, 2014, p.386). Development on the game focused on speed to highlight the movements that could be accomplished through the use of an engine that allowed scrolling to happen far faster than before (Sheffield, 2008). When the developers agreed to focus on utilizing one button instead of Mario’s use of two, they quickly realized they needed to find a way to allow the characters to deal damage so they settled on the idea that they could roll into a ball while in the air. The concept of a hedgehog character by designer Naoto Ohshima was quickly scribbled out on some paper and a few small adjustments later the world would have their newest video game mascot: Mr. Needlemouse (Meyer, 2020).
As often is the case, early development on these types of series led to lots of things being thrown at the wall and Sonic’s name was no different. The original name written off to the side of the sketches was Mr. Hedgehog, but this is often translated literally into English as Mr. Needlemouse.
Sega of America CEO Michael Katz was certain that Sonic the Hedgehog would not be popular with American children- something that you would think would matter, but because he had done so poorly pushing the Genesis to American audiences with catchphrases like “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” he was let go and replaced by someone who would hopefully have better sense than base a marketing campaign around a bad pun (IGN Presents the History of SEGA, 2009). “Hopefully” is the operative word in that statement because at the same time Sega was pushing their Genesis in America, the same system was marketed as the MegaDrive in the rest of the world and in England in particular it was advertised with incredibly sexual innuendo. One of the most famous adverts read “The more you play with it, the harder it gets” and features a hand holding a joystick in a very suggestive manner (Kuchera, 2008). This same advertisement goes on to describe the scenario:
“You sit there, eyes glued to the writhing, arcade-quality graphics, pulling and squeezing your knob. Now you're breathing heavily over the digital stereo sound. Now you're shooting all over the place, but it's no use... "GAME OVER." (Kuchera, 2008)
THE TV SHOWS
Debuting in 1991 as a pack-in game for the Sega Genesis, Sonic’s speed, innovative platforming and catchy-as-hell music brought a dynamic new method of gaming to home consoles, making Sonic a household name. The massive success led to Sega of America partnering with DiC Animation City to produce two TV shows simultaneously, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog, better known as SatAM (Inoa, 2020). This is where the writing on this episode becomes difficult to manage because the story of how Sonic ended up with two different shows at the same time with two wildly different tones is fascinating in and of itself, but there are so many other rabbit holes to fall down and we haven’t even reached the main topic. For instance, the voice actor for Winnie the Pooh was also the voice actor for Dr. Robotnik on one of these shows, but musician John William Baldry, who toured with the Rolling Stones and The Beatles as well as being in bands with Elton John and Rod Stewart voiced the same character on the other show. The actor who played Steve Urkel on the hit sitcom Family Matters portrayed Sonic on both Adventures and SatAm, adding another fun voice actor to enjoy, but perhaps my favorite piece of trivia is that Dr. Frank-N-Furter himself, Tim Curry, played King Acorn on the Saturday morning show.
THE COMICS
The proliferation of Sonic across multiple media would find the blue blur gracing many comic books at the time as well. Each iteration would have their own takes on the character, like a Japanese Manga that followed a hedgehog named Nicky that could turn into the superhero Sonic the Hedgehog, even though he was unaware of this transformation and believes the hero is someone else (Nuckles87, 2021). Chasing the American market, though, Sega would license out their character to Archie Comics, famous for publishing Archie, Betty & Veronica, Josie & The Pussycats, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (Was SatAM Based, 2009). Having only the barebones from the games to create a story, Archie was forced to rely on the cartoon shows. As Paul Castiglia, former editor at Archie states:
"In the beginning, SEGA instructed our editorial team to reflect the art and story styles of the syndicated series, but it soon became apparent from fan reaction that the Saturday morning series was the one striking a nerve. The comic soon followed suit with a mix of the two styles, but a heavier emphasis on the dramatic . . . As the comic series and the animated shows were simultaneously developed, the tight, advanced scheduling of the comic industry kept us from keeping up with last-minute changes made to the shows. This resulted in Sally being printed in various color schemes that didn't match her TV counterpart as well as Rotor being referred to as Boomer." (Was SatAM Based, 2009).
THE SONIC BIBLE
So now Archie comics is publishing Sonic the Hedgehog and following the cartoon series being produced at the time, but any guiding principles outside of “just make it more like the shows” didn’t exist. This is where I think it’s important to discuss the breakdown between Sega and Sega of America. We already know about the difficulty the Genesis had in making any headway against the Nintendo in America and how Michael Katz was replaced when they weren’t performing well, but it goes much deeper than that. Next-to-no information about the story of Sonic the Hedgehog was relayed to Sega of America before its release, and what was made was so contradictory that there was no brand cohesion (Noah, 2020). This meant that the company would have only the basics of gameplay and character designs to craft a story that was marketable. Thus, Sega of America decided to create a “Sonic Bible” to detail what they believed was the way forward with the story of Sonic the Hedgehog. Three different versions of this document have been released and it’s interesting to see just how they change as they’re revised.
The first document created was around 13 pages in length and details Sonic’s history.
Sonny Hedgehog was born on Earth in the early 21st century, in the town of Hardly, Nebraska, population 1,226. He and his mother and five sisters live underneath a scraggly hedge beside the local burger joint, and subsist on burger scraps, milkshakes, and the occasional slug or bug that crawls their way. They are a poor and happy family (Noah, 2020).
The document continues to describe how Sonny’s father died due to toxic waste, Sonny’s pranking of others by pretending to be a bowling ball, and how he hangs out at local quilting circles to hear the latest gossip (Noah, 2020). When he leaves home in hopes of earning an Olympic gold metal, he befriends Dr. Ovi Kintobor, who would quickly become a father figure. This doctor would lead a team of researchers on a project meant to restore Earth to its former glory until his funding was cut and he was forced to continue his research under a radioactive dumping site. Wanting to use the Chaos Emeralds, which were emeralds infused with pure evil, to reverse the effects of man-made industrialization, he enlists Sonny to help him. When Sonny eventually breaks the sound barrier on a treadmill, his normally brown quills turn blue and he is nicknamed Sonic. Sometime later, a bolt of radiation strikes one of Dr. Kintobor’s machines and releases all of the evil from the Chaos Emeralds into Kintobor, fusing him with evil and a hard-boiled egg that he had been eating as a snack. The doctor is reborn as Doctor Robotnik.
In the next version of the document, Sonic’s history is changed and he is instead an orphaned hedgehog who lives on the planet Mobius with his animal friends: Sally Acorn, Johnny Lightfoot, Joe Sushi, Porker Lewis, Flicky, and Tux (Noah, 2020). Almost all of these characters, and even the name of the planet, would be later used in the Saturday morning cartoon show, and, thus, Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comic. Sonic, in this version, would accidentally spin dash into Dr. Kintobor’s lab and decided to hang out because it's cool. Essentially the same accident plays out and Kintobor becomes Doctor Robotnik again.
Sega of America eventually scrapped these concepts in favor of the broad backstory detailed in the games, but these elements were recycled for several different properties down the line (Noah, 2020). The U.K. version of Sonic, though, decided to adopt the second Bible as the backstory for all of their Sonic-related media. Fleetway’s Sonic the Comic uses the story from this almost entirely. This means that by 1993, just two years after his debut, there was a loose storyline in the handful of games produced by Sega (which itself is slightly confusing since some are canon and some aren’t), two different TV shows that follow their own continuities separate from each other and the games, a manga that ditches absolutely everything that came before it, a British comic book based on the American series bible that was eventually abandoned, and a comic book series published by Archie that is loosely based off of one of the TV shows.
ARCHIE’S EARLY DAYS
Archie’s licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comics began with a four-issue miniseries in late 1992 that would be followed up by the longest-running comic book based on a video game and the longest-running franchise-based comic book. Lasting over 290 issues of the main series and with dozens of spin-off comics focusing on different parts of the new universe they were building, Sonic the Hedgehog was an immense success that grew far beyond what the games were doing at that time. Taking its cue from the Saturday morning cartoon version of the show, Sonic would team with the Knothole Freedom Fighters to fight Dr. Ivo Robotnik. These freedom fighters would be made up of various characters like Sally Acorn, the princess of the former kingdom that was overthrown by Robotnik. Sonic, himself would be changed from the official Japanese portrayal who only fought against Eggman for fun into a freedom fighter with a deep sense of duty and important ties to his family and friends. Throughout the series Sonic would even have multiple love interests and engage in several relationships, something often forbidden in the games. At the beginning of the series, the year was 3235 and Sonic had been living on the planet Mobius, an alternate future reality of Earth. In fact, going by the current calendar, it would be the year 14,015 AD. As time would move forward, several characters and elements from the games would be introduced, such as Knuckles the Echidna, to follow a tweaked version of the games. This was the status quo for 247 issues of the original series before continuity was changed to bring them more in line with the video game counterparts.
This tweaking and slight reboot of the series was actually the original intention for writing this episode, but there turns out to be an insane amount of information that is far too interesting to not at least comb through. So we are going to hold off on talking about that until another episode. What’s important to know, though, is that the reboot comes off of several behind-the-scenes issues that stem from problems with Sega, Archie, and one particularly infamous writer named Ken Penders.
KEN PENDERS
Kenneth W. Penders II started his run early in the Archie universe, making his debut in Sonic the Hedgehog #11. From there forward, Ken was the main writer and architect of the series all the way up through issue #159 and the many spin-offs and one-shots. In particular, Ken seemed to have an intense interest in the Echidna characters that were introduced to fill in some of the backstory of this new world, going so far as to write several Knuckles the Echidna spin-offs (Schroeder, 2020). While Sonic was a comic book predominantly written by Penders, it was helmed by multiple writers. The sister series, Knuckles the Echidna, however, was entirely plotted by Penders and was heavily serialized to slowly unravel the secret origins of Knuckles and the Echidna race. We will get much more into Penders obsession with the Echidnas in the follow up to this episode, but it is important to note that they were extremely weird. Several of the story arcs would try to cover the subject of fascism, which led to the infamous rewording of Martin Niemöller’s “First they came…” poem. Quoting from Issue 22 of Knuckles the Echidna:
"During Dr. Robotnik's takeover through roboticization, the SWATbots came for the foxes, and I did not speak up because I was not a fox. Then they came for the rabbits, and I did not speak up because I was not a rabbit. Then they came for the squirrels, and I did not speak up because I was not a squirrel. Then they came for the hedgehogs, and I did not speak up because I was an echidna. Then they came for me, and by that time nobody was left to speak up."
Shortly before this story, Penders wrote a comic about Charmy Bee’s friend dying as a result of eating a “Lemon Sundrop Dandelion” or “LSD” laced hot dog, which led the Chaotix team to investigate a shady amusement park where they all accidentally overdose on LSD and cause havoc (Schroeder, 2020). These comics are all wild compared to similar books aimed at preteen kids. So the question needs to be asked: How did we get here?
Originally, the Sonic comics were helmed by Michael Gallagher and focused primarily on puns and silly fourth wall breaks (Schroeder, 2022). After Penders took over, he continued this trend before slowly pushing for a more serialized structure. Even when Penders was considered the main writer of Sonic, he was never the only writer on the series. With many different writers and artists coming and going, the series had a varied quality and style, but built off the strange events from before to create newer and weirder stories. It wasn’t until 1997 that the Knuckles spin-off was created and Penders was able to create a consistent and serialized tone for the series that he clearly wanted. From the beginning, teases of the future were shown to entice readers to stick around in the hopes that it would pay off. The entirety of the comic was broken into three-issue arcs where every issue and arc would lead directly into the next while keeping mysteries running as to how anything would be resolved.
As his tenure would stretch on the books, Penders began introducing dozens upon dozens of characters like Sleuth “Doggy” Dawg, a parody of Snoop Doggy Dog, or the unbelievably insane amount of Echidna characters that are essentially Knuckles, but a girl- or Knuckles, but with a beard (Schroeder, 2022). The Sonic universe was ripe for molding considering there was very little story so early on in the franchise’s history. With the introduction of the Echidnas, Penders had a space where he could fill out the universe without much oversight, meaning he was free to change the tone of the series into something more in line with what he particularly liked, such as Star Trek or Dungeons and Dragons. This meant there was a slight tonal irregularity with what the games and comics were putting out and sometimes between issues of the comics themselves. For instance: Sonic’s birth name was revealed to be Olgilvie Maurice Hedgehog and Penders convinced Archie to allow him to kill off Dr. Robotnik, the main antagonist of nearly every Sonic installment. This caused a bit of a problem when the comics had to adapt Sonic Adventure, which featured Dr. Robotnik as one of the main villains. Penders still wanted Robotnik to remain dead, but writer Karl Bollers reintroduced an alternate universe counterpart named Robo-Robotnik. This Robotnik had robotocized himself and traveled to the main Sonic universe after conquering his own. When his body was destroyed in a battle with Sonic, he transported his consciousness into a new, more-advanced body and renamed himself Eggman. This allowed the comics to be able to use an Eggman character, firmly establish the preferred name of Eggman, and finally adapt the Sonic Adventure game. This also had the side effect of making two distinct versions of Sonic’s main nemesis and creating a very confusing backstory for a younger Derek to try to understand.
Penders’ long run included more baffling moments that can really be included here, but I’ll stick to some of the more egregious- like how he would consistently have Sally Acorn make out with Geoffrey St. John, a clear James Bondesque character that is at least 20 or 21 while Sally was 15 (Schroeder, 2022). He followed this up in 2019 by stating on Twitter:
“The one story I couldn’t tell was Sally losing her virginity to Geoffrey. Sonic may be fast, but Geoffrey was faster on the draw in that department.” (Penders, 2019b)
After this tweet caught some attention, Penders began arguing about the age of consent on planet Mobius and how if Geoffrey didn’t sleep with Sally then he would have turned to the kingdom’s red light district (Schroeder, 2022). Sexual misconduct did not stop here as in Sonic #150 and #151 the evil Anti-Sonic posed as the real Sonic and wood Sally’s best friend, Bunny. It is heavily implied in the comic that the two slept together while Bunny believed herself to be with the real Sonic.
Penders would go on to describe his understanding of the character, especially in relationship to women, after reflecting on the death and resurrection of Princess Sally by stating:
“While I no longer believe Sally should be killed off, I'm no longer certain if Sonic is a one-girl guy. When you stop and think how Sega looks at the character, he's all ego and attitude. He thinks about number one. He can accept Tails because Tails is the subordinate junior assistant to his main act. He'd consider Sally nothing more than a fun to be with every now and then (if that) and a drag the rest of the time. His attitude towards Sally, and females in general, in probably much like that MTV-character in the movie She's All That. The way he ditches the girl is so Sonic-like. ("You think all I want to do is spend my life with you? That's cool and all, but I gotta go fight Robotnik! Later, babe!")
I know I'm going to get into a lot of disagreement with people over this, but I've yet to hear anyone ever say "Y'know, he can be such an arrogant jerk, but he's really quite lovable under all that!" They usually stop the comment after the word "jerk". People who are conceited and full of themselves generally aren't likeable. Check out most entertainers and athletes as my prime example. There are
exceptions, but there are few and far between. (And I can't tell you how many times I've been accused of being arrogant if I dare disagree with anyone's opinion, or not answer their IM or e-mail. It has nothing at all to do with arrogance, and everything to do with lack of time.)” (Lurker, 2012)
As other writers would come into the fray, including fan-favorite Ian Flynn, they would attempt to change some of the strange romance plots or advance the comic closer to the games’ continuity (Schroeder, 2022). This, unfortunately, upset Penders. He railed against one major story arc by saying it was written to undermine his work and the moment he was able to follow up on this story, he did everything he could to make it as though it never happened. This is the other side of Penders, one who wanted to be in control of the entirety of the content. When he found out Ben Hurst was in talks with Sega about creating a Sonic movie, he called Hurt to discuss the details (Saturday Morning Sonic, n.d.). Ben was one of the writers for the Sonic SatAM show and he offered to bring Penders on board the proposed project. Shortly after, Penders went to Sega and convinced them it was a way for Hurst to get paid to develop their product and then announced on his message board that “Ben Hurst doesn’t know how movies are made in Hollywood.”
Penders would go on to pitch his own concept for a movie in September 2003 (Penders, 2019a). His movie, titled Sonic Armageddon, would include Mobius being destroyed and many of the cast would have had major redesigns (CAEON, 2017). Absolutely nothing came of this, but according to Penders, it is only because of massive corporate upheaval (Penders, 2019a). Ultimately, though, Penders cites Sonic Armageddon’s possible creation as the reason he left the Sonic comics behind. This is possibly true, as he was also becoming very annoyed with Sega’s lack of reference material for upcoming games that needed to be tied into the regular comic book series.
This isn’t the only time that Penders would focus on Hollywood, though, as he created a political drama called The Republic that never made it past the pilot and a movie adaptation of his indie comic The Lost Ones that was canceled after one issue while the feature film has, as of May 2022, never even finished a demo reel. (Ken Penders, n.d.; Penders, 2022; The Lost Ones #1 - The Hunt Begins (Issue)., n.d.).
What Penders spends most of his time working on now, though, is a comic book continuation of his Echidna series titled The Lara-Su Chronicles. How Penders is able to continue this when the characters were created under a work-for-hire contract with Archie and use characters that should be owned by Sega is what we will discuss on the next episode as we dig deep into how one man ended the longest running licensed comic book.
CONCLUSION
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We will be back soon with another deep dive into the world of comics, but until then you can find more exciting adventures at your local comic shop.
REFERENCES
CEAON. (2017, January 8). Sonic Armageddon - Ken Penders Movie Pitch [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNteN_qlHp0
Harris, B. J. (2014). Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation. It Books.
IGN Presents the History of SEGA. (2009, April 21). IGN. https://web.archive.org/web/20141202192145/http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/04/21/ign-presents-the-history-of-sega?page=4
Inoa, C. (2020, February 19). How 2 wildly different Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons happened in the ‘90s. Polygon. https://web.archive.org/web/20200312042057/https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/18/21140375/sonic-90s-cartoons-streaming-satam-jaleel-white-adventures-of-sonic
Ken Penders. (n.d.). IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2492989/
Kuchera, B. (2008, July 1). Sega ads from UK comic show wankier side of classic gaming. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/07/sega-ads/amp/
Lurker, D. T. (2012, December 28). Mobius: 25 Years Later: The Review, Part 7 – The Mental State of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic Retro. https://sonicretro.org/2012/12/28/mobius-25-years-later-the-review-part-7-the-mental-state-of-sonic-the-hedgehog/
Meyer, E. (2020, October 10). Sonic The Hedgehog Just Changed His Name. . . to Mr. Needlemouse. CBR. https://www.cbr.com/sonic-the-hedgehog-mr-needlemouse-concept-art/
Noah, R. (2020, February 27). Sonny The Hegehog: Inside Sega’s Forgotten “Sonic Bible” From 1991. CBR. https://www.cbr.com/sonny-the-hedgehog-sega-forgotten-sonic-bible/
Nuckles87. (2021, June 28). Sonic’s Way Past Cool Comic Legacy. The Sonic Stadium. https://www.sonicstadium.org/2021/06/sonics-way-past-cool-comic-legacy/
Penders, K. [@KenPenders]. (2019a, March 12). Amazing what bullshit gets spread over the Internet. This was NEVER pitched to Dreamworks. It didn’t even exist in 2002. It was 1st pitched to SEGA - and ONLY SEGA - in Sept 2003. (I have the documents to prove it.) The ONLY reason it died in 2007 was massive corporate upheaval. Twitter. https://twitter.com/kenpenders/status/1105647131438673920?lang=en
Penders, K. [@KenPenders]. (2019b, April 8). The one story I couldn’t tell was Sally losing her virginity to Geoffrey. Sonic may be fast, but Geoffrey was faster on the draw in that department. Twitter. https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/1115328007357358081?s=20&t=RAUCKHL0pBYQX1OvSXjBHg
Penders, K. [@KenPenders]. (2022, May 5). This is a shot from a LOST ONES demo reel that’s undergoing revisions for an upcoming presentation. At some point, my focus will be on films, painting & writing. I simply can’t see myself creating comics beyond THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES. Twitter. https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/1522229159367376897?s=20&t=WvO6FeHfuiLcGcGoTeYdbg
Was SatAM based off of the Archie comic book series? (2009). Saturday Morning Sonic. https://www.saturdaymorningsonic.com/faq/archie/
Saturday Morning Sonic - Features - Ben Hurst on SatAM. (n.d.). https://web.archive.org/web/20201113070038/https://www.saturdaymorningsonic.com/features/ben_hurst/
Schroeder, B. (2020, February 11). How a Legal Dispute Wiped Hundreds of Sonic the Hedgehog Characters From Existence. Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/the-lawsuit-that-reshaped-sonic-the-hedgehog-comics.html
Schroeder, B. (2022, May 5). I read every Sonic comic by Ken Penders, and they’re wilder than you could ever imagine. Medium. https://ponett.medium.com/i-read-every-sonic-comic-by-ken-penders-and-theyre-wilder-than-you-could-ever-imagine-1f9dd05ae433
Sheffield, B. (2008, August 25). Game Design Psychology: The Full Hirokazu Yasuhara Interview. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/game-design-psychology-the-full-hirokazu-yasuhara-interview
The Lost Ones #1 - The Hunt Begins (Issue). (n.d.). Comic Vine. https://comicvine.gamespot.com/the-lost-ones-1-the-hunt-begins/4000-172087/
