Evil Sonic...always a fun character to throw into the comic series (though I very much dislike the modern comics' transformation of him into a green critter called Scourge), probably why a lot of my fan-fics used and re-used him as an adversary for Sonic and Knuckles! The timing of this volume coincides with the "Scourge: Lockdown" story-arc of the "Sonic Universe" comic series, so that modern readers know who Scourge was and what the Zone-Cops were. The collection of stories are all really fun ones from the past, though not ones with the depth of story that some of the regular series had.
Can I go back to reading Sonic Select 3, because 4 is so freaking terrible...
Zone Wars compiles all the Zonic issues. Greeaaaaaat. Zonic is a zone cop, responsible for zapping Sonic Prime around to various catastrophes in other universes. So first we get the Sally Moon universe which only annoys me because it is like 4 pages and I want an ACTUAL Sailor Moon crossover. Sally Moon didn't even do any magic :l
Then we get the Sonic Underground crossover that not even the writers wanted. It is very phoned in and the Underground characters explain their show in two pages and... that's about it. Anti-Sonic is here as well, before he got cool. Waste of good paper :l
Then there's a generic Sonic and Knuckles trade bodies. Cliche, but also the only somewhat decent thing in this trade. Well, the following story actually isn't that bad. Sonic goes to a universe where all his friends are mutated Godzilla creatures and he has to kill his father. It's actually rather dark and would have been a good comic if it had some decent art and a bit more time to sink into the story. Sonic gets like... one panel of being sad. Then we're done! Whatever! Moving on!
Finally, we end with an Ally McBeal crossover. WTF. No one wanted this. NO ONE WANTED THIS. The art is terrible, the plot is dumb, and why the hell did this even happen??!?!?
Oh! I forgot there was actually one more story in this volume: the Sonic Blast one. It's a cute comic, probably great for kids, but it also seems so at odds with the comic at the time. Robotnik is incompetent and everyone jokes around. The Archie Sonics often feel torn between humour and drama, and it leaves readers feeling a bit whiplashed. However, I can definitively say this is the best entry in this volume (sorry Godzilla entry) with some strong art by Art. But it's not enough for me to recommend reading this tripe. None of the stories have lasting effects on the plot, so feel free to skip and move on.
This collection didn't do a whole tun of referencing different stories which was nice for a change, it was still there but yeah not as bad in my opinion. The first story was amusing, I don't believe I own that actual comic because I don't remember the whole Sailor Moon take off. While I've mentioned I don't like their silly puns this was actually done rather well.
You'll get to meet a lot of different Sonic's, one being a "bad boy" and Robotnic has turned good..They also have a story where Knuckles and Sonic switch bodies. One story annoyed me because the comic had to be read vertically WHICH made the quality of the comic degrade and every go fuzzy in areas besides the text being all jaggity. And right at the end the text coming from Sonic was all pixely.
A suitably unhinged selection of multiverse stories from various Archie Sonic specials. The storytelling in these earlier comics is far more straightforward and the cast hasn’t bloated out of control yet. Lots of silly genre parodies in this one as well. The Sailor Moon stuff got a big laugh from me. I’m also a fan of how off model everything is, with Sally’s body being so thin and spindly while her head and eyes are absolutely gigantic. Nothing in here is particularly essential, but as Archie Sonic goes it’s very entertaining just because of how wild it gets. The book is only let down by some minor stuff like dodgy art, a story about Monkey Khan (who cares about that loser) and the usual fat-shaming that comes with insulting Robotnik.