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Sonic the Comic

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File:Sonic fleetway.jpg
Sonic the Comic Issue No. 1, released on May 29, 1993.
Elements of this promotional comic were used in Issue #8.

Sonic the Comic was a UK children's comic published by Fleetway Editions between 1993 and 2002. It was the UK's official SEGA comic and was released every fortnight at 95 pence, later rising to £1.35 before the final issue.

The comic would usually contain four stories, each usually following different storylines and being written and drawn by different writers and artists. In the earlier issues at least one of these stories would be about a different Sega game (see below), the most notable exception being issue #100, where the whole comic told a single story in four chapters.

The comic featured the adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and his motley crew of freedom fighters as they struggled to liberate the planet Mobius from the control of the evil dictator, Doctor Ivo Robotnik.

The comic is a departure from the SatAM series, having a few characters that were different or altered. For example, SWATBots were replaced by Troopers, which had a renegade general called Brutus, who fought against Robotnik and Sonic at the same time.

Sonic the Comic had a few other original characters like Johnny Lightfoot, Tekno the Canary, Shortfuse the Cybernik, and Porker Lewis. Snively was replaced by Grimer, a old green scientist that also hated Robotnik by the last issue.

The Chaotix appear in StC. Nack the Weasel was once a member of the group, but he betrayed them at one point. In StC, Vector the Crocodile, Charmy Bee, Espio the Chameleon, and Mighty the Armadillo are the Chaotix members. Many other sub-plots and storylines have appeared in the STC comics, such as Tails' adventures in his hometown of the Nameless Zone, Knuckles' quest for his ancestors, Shortfuse's adventures, the exploits of Dr Robotnik himself, and Amy Rose and Tekno the Canary's adventures through time and space.

Seemingly, StC did do better game adaptations than Archie, mainly because Fleetway had much more in common with SEGA than Archie ever did, despite the fact that the Archie comic has numerous characters. Covering the Knuckles' Chaotix with the Brotherhood of Metallix Series was really StC's peak of writing. (Other popular long-running stories included the Super Sonic Saga, The Drakon Empire saga, The Shanazar Saga and the Floating Island saga, which depicted the events of the Mega Drive games Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic and Knuckles.) After that point, Fleetway went into decline. It couldn't keep up with Archie, or SEGA with the Sonic Adventure adaptation (although its final 10 issues ran The Chaos Saga, their loose adaptation), and it failed to portray or adultize with SEGA. StC went into reprint, which ended by 2002.

Other stories featured were based on various other SEGA video game titles, which included:

The face of the comic was Megadroid, a cartoon robot built out of Sega Megadrive parts. He answered reader letters and acted as a liaison between the readers and the 'humes who think they're in charge'.

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