Post by Lucky on Aug 9, 2016 21:12:43 GMT
It's been a long time since I've posted here, but thought I'd come out of lurking as I've just completed a little project that's STC related...
A couple of years ago, SSMB user -Mark- found a couple of Sonic comics that most of us hadn't seen before.
These comics turned out to have originated from the News of the World "Sunday" magazine in the early nineties, but unfortunately it was near impossible to track any others down as they were printed in the supplement and not the actual newspaper. A couple of us did eventually manage to get a few strips together, but the magazines were so hard to find and very expensive when they did pop up, so it was starting to look like we'd never get a complete series of them together, if it was indeed still out there.
Around the same time I was in touch with Richard Elson who confirmed that he was also the artist on these strips as most of us had suspected. He also provided some additional information and it turned out that a few people who worked on the UK Sonic the Hedgehog yearbooks were also involved with these; all of the strips were written and edited by yearbook editor Barrie Tomlinson, and the last chunk were drawn by artist Sandy James. Many of the later Elson strips were coloured by John M Burns who also worked on STC.
Even more interestingly, he told me that he did in fact have an almost complete collection of these in his personal archives and that he would be happy to loan these to me under the condition that I scanned them in and shared them with the community as we thought it would be cool if people were able to see more of them considering how obscure they are.
Richard was missing a couple of strips from the collection he gave me, but through the issues that myself and Hogfather had managed to collect, along with Mark's original scans and a few that were uploaded later by Tumblr user hypermikey, we've been able to get an almost complete collection together... so behold...
The Sonic Sunday Strips Archive
We believe that we're now only two issues away from a complete collection and the episodes that seems to be missing are from the 29th May 1994 and 13th November 1994 magazines. On the off chance that anyone here may have them or know someone who does, we would love to add them just to finish off the archive so everyone can have a look through them.
The comics are quite interesting as it ran alongside STC and there are a few little things that seem to link both universes together, despite most people-- even those who were involved with the comic-- not knowing of its existence. For example, we have a strip from 10th April 1994 where Robotnik's new AoStH-inspired design debuts. This was the week after his AoStH design was introduced in the April 1st issue of the comic printed that same year, which also happened to be drawn by Richard Elson.
Another episode has Sonic being shrunk by one of Robotnik's inventions and during one part of the strip, he's trapped in a spider's web while miniaturised. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a little nod to this somewhere later in STC when Sonic encounters a giant spider and is trapped in its web during the Shanazar arc (all the way forward in issue #152 in 1999) and mentions that it's his worst nightmare, even though it's something that had never been brought up in the comic at all before. This was also in a strip drawn by Richard Elson.
On the whole the comics are generally silly little things without much too detail put into them (as a lot of newspaper comics are), but as a Fleetway fan it's cool to see some small references that may have been nods to my favourite Sonic universe.
A couple of years ago, SSMB user -Mark- found a couple of Sonic comics that most of us hadn't seen before.
These comics turned out to have originated from the News of the World "Sunday" magazine in the early nineties, but unfortunately it was near impossible to track any others down as they were printed in the supplement and not the actual newspaper. A couple of us did eventually manage to get a few strips together, but the magazines were so hard to find and very expensive when they did pop up, so it was starting to look like we'd never get a complete series of them together, if it was indeed still out there.
Around the same time I was in touch with Richard Elson who confirmed that he was also the artist on these strips as most of us had suspected. He also provided some additional information and it turned out that a few people who worked on the UK Sonic the Hedgehog yearbooks were also involved with these; all of the strips were written and edited by yearbook editor Barrie Tomlinson, and the last chunk were drawn by artist Sandy James. Many of the later Elson strips were coloured by John M Burns who also worked on STC.
Even more interestingly, he told me that he did in fact have an almost complete collection of these in his personal archives and that he would be happy to loan these to me under the condition that I scanned them in and shared them with the community as we thought it would be cool if people were able to see more of them considering how obscure they are.
Richard was missing a couple of strips from the collection he gave me, but through the issues that myself and Hogfather had managed to collect, along with Mark's original scans and a few that were uploaded later by Tumblr user hypermikey, we've been able to get an almost complete collection together... so behold...
The Sonic Sunday Strips Archive
We believe that we're now only two issues away from a complete collection and the episodes that seems to be missing are from the 29th May 1994 and 13th November 1994 magazines. On the off chance that anyone here may have them or know someone who does, we would love to add them just to finish off the archive so everyone can have a look through them.
The comics are quite interesting as it ran alongside STC and there are a few little things that seem to link both universes together, despite most people-- even those who were involved with the comic-- not knowing of its existence. For example, we have a strip from 10th April 1994 where Robotnik's new AoStH-inspired design debuts. This was the week after his AoStH design was introduced in the April 1st issue of the comic printed that same year, which also happened to be drawn by Richard Elson.
Another episode has Sonic being shrunk by one of Robotnik's inventions and during one part of the strip, he's trapped in a spider's web while miniaturised. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a little nod to this somewhere later in STC when Sonic encounters a giant spider and is trapped in its web during the Shanazar arc (all the way forward in issue #152 in 1999) and mentions that it's his worst nightmare, even though it's something that had never been brought up in the comic at all before. This was also in a strip drawn by Richard Elson.
On the whole the comics are generally silly little things without much too detail put into them (as a lot of newspaper comics are), but as a Fleetway fan it's cool to see some small references that may have been nods to my favourite Sonic universe.