What do you think?
Sonic the Hedgehog Archives #14
Sonic The Hedgehog Archives: Volume 14
Victory! Sonic and his heroica friends, The Freedom Fighters, have finally defeated the evil Dr. Robotnik! The world is safe and it's time to relax, right? WRONG! Side-effects from Dr. Robotnik's ultimate weapon are affecting time and space, leading Sonic to a wild other-worldly romp!
- GenresComicsScience Fiction
112 pages, Paperback
First published December 28, 2010
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 14, 2018
I've never been a big fan of Sonic video games; I was always more partial to Nintendo's franchises, particularly Mario and Pokémon. Even when Sega started making games for the big "N," the only ones I ever played were the Super Monkey Ball series.
Still, over the past year or two, I've had a blast reading about the speedy blue hedgehog's comic book adventures...and that's just what I did with this one! The artwork, the dialogue, and the action were all fabulous!
Still, over the past year or two, I've had a blast reading about the speedy blue hedgehog's comic book adventures...and that's just what I did with this one! The artwork, the dialogue, and the action were all fabulous!
April 27, 2017
Issue 51 is the first issue post-Robotnik. Sonic ends up in a terrible dream where all his friends are robots and Robotnik has taken over for real. It's actually quite a strong story until the end when the dream is revealed as caused by... an award that had a virus in it? Whaaaaaaaat? So yeah, that happened? At least it was only a few pages out of the entire book.
Hooboy... I forgot about this part of the Sonic series... the fallout from End Game is really weird. Odd pockets of alternative realities keep popping up, throwing readers into this weird one... Casablanca Sonic. So this is weird. But not actually terrible? I mean, it's not good. But it's not terrible. I can deal with that! The secondary story shows Sally contacting FFs around the ground. Good to see the series start thinking a bit more globally! It explains the weird zone things. Well, perhaps not explain, but acknowledge that they are popping up everywhere. Huh... I didn't hate that issue! It deals with a long term plot issue, but in a sensible manner!
Jumping to the next issue, the FF are working in Robotropolis when Knuckles and Julie-Su appear. We flash back to the godawful Sword of Acorns plot. This book does not do fantasy well. Turns out the sword was fake! Umm... why? WHY?!?! That stupid quest was entirely useless? Thanks Ancient Walkers... Well, at least Sonic and Knuckles didn't immediately punch one another. Huh... that was... boring and pointless. Penders needs to learn how to introduce important info as a STORY not just exposition. Now jumping to the next story, Sonic and Sally have a cute moment of character development and then BOOM! NEW VILLAINS from the zone of silence. Nagus the Wizard, Kudos the Warlord, and some weird spiderlady. cue a battle! Also, the revelation that the King not only swore fealty to Nagus, giving him right to the kingdom, but did so in exchange for the ability to become crystal at will. So, an explanation that only took like... 2 years! Sonic manages to outfit Nagus in a clever moment and he disappears. But this might be our new big bad! Not a bad installment. Things get explained and no one is being super obnoxious. I could get used to this!
Rounding out the book is issue 54. It takes an interesting approach to its story. Uncle Chuck is trying to test Sonic's speed, but our hero is distracted, thinking about all the recent changes in his life. Work is full speed ahead on restoring Mobotropolis, but Sonic is terrible at this type of work. It's all diplomacy and sacrifice, and over and over again things keep changing in ways he's not ready to accept. I appreciated the comics team taking some time to think about how their hero would react to such a seismic shift in his life. It's thoughtful and in character. Props to Boller!
Hooboy... I forgot about this part of the Sonic series... the fallout from End Game is really weird. Odd pockets of alternative realities keep popping up, throwing readers into this weird one... Casablanca Sonic. So this is weird. But not actually terrible? I mean, it's not good. But it's not terrible. I can deal with that! The secondary story shows Sally contacting FFs around the ground. Good to see the series start thinking a bit more globally! It explains the weird zone things. Well, perhaps not explain, but acknowledge that they are popping up everywhere. Huh... I didn't hate that issue! It deals with a long term plot issue, but in a sensible manner!
Jumping to the next issue, the FF are working in Robotropolis when Knuckles and Julie-Su appear. We flash back to the godawful Sword of Acorns plot. This book does not do fantasy well. Turns out the sword was fake! Umm... why? WHY?!?! That stupid quest was entirely useless? Thanks Ancient Walkers... Well, at least Sonic and Knuckles didn't immediately punch one another. Huh... that was... boring and pointless. Penders needs to learn how to introduce important info as a STORY not just exposition. Now jumping to the next story, Sonic and Sally have a cute moment of character development and then BOOM! NEW VILLAINS from the zone of silence. Nagus the Wizard, Kudos the Warlord, and some weird spiderlady. cue a battle! Also, the revelation that the King not only swore fealty to Nagus, giving him right to the kingdom, but did so in exchange for the ability to become crystal at will. So, an explanation that only took like... 2 years! Sonic manages to outfit Nagus in a clever moment and he disappears. But this might be our new big bad! Not a bad installment. Things get explained and no one is being super obnoxious. I could get used to this!
Rounding out the book is issue 54. It takes an interesting approach to its story. Uncle Chuck is trying to test Sonic's speed, but our hero is distracted, thinking about all the recent changes in his life. Work is full speed ahead on restoring Mobotropolis, but Sonic is terrible at this type of work. It's all diplomacy and sacrifice, and over and over again things keep changing in ways he's not ready to accept. I appreciated the comics team taking some time to think about how their hero would react to such a seismic shift in his life. It's thoughtful and in character. Props to Boller!
July 1, 2022
Following the series changing Endgame story arc, this volume starts to expand the world of Sonic the Hedgehog.
The storytelling continues it's upward climb in quality, but none of the stories here are truly memorable. We start to see King Acorn and Princess Sally forge a new dynamic, and Sonic finds himself bored while not being able to be a hero. This is a great start to the world building, and I really look forward to seeing where things are going, but at this point it's still suffering from some growing pains. The biggest gripe is that most of the stories feel like fun diversions, leaving the true character moments to be a little too spread out.
All that said, these are still fun, and I'm loving the weird world they're building for Sonic and Friends.
The storytelling continues it's upward climb in quality, but none of the stories here are truly memorable. We start to see King Acorn and Princess Sally forge a new dynamic, and Sonic finds himself bored while not being able to be a hero. This is a great start to the world building, and I really look forward to seeing where things are going, but at this point it's still suffering from some growing pains. The biggest gripe is that most of the stories feel like fun diversions, leaving the true character moments to be a little too spread out.
All that said, these are still fun, and I'm loving the weird world they're building for Sonic and Friends.
February 20, 2011
For now, the storyline is still pretty good in the old series of comics, but after "Sonic" #50 is when the downfall of stories (and art!) started in the book. With the next few archives editions, new readers who have collected the archives to see the old stuff may probably suffer the same disappointment that many fans of the series suffered through for years...but this volume has the big wrap up and final explanations from the "Endgame" saga and is worth reading if you've kept up to this point.
May 12, 2024
Archie Sonic is absolutely bonkers. A weird mix of moody, hyper-emotional characterisation and Star Wars-like storytelling where a team of rebels have to fight back against a dictatorship. This set of stories comes from issues 51 to 54 where the comic has taken a turn into more “serious” storytelling in a similar vein to the SatAM cartoon it continues on from. It’s all over the place. Characters don’t act naturally and generally overreact to absolutely everything to create unnecessary drama. New characters are constantly introduced for no reason and families are expanded for no reason other than someone thinks it makes for interesting lore. But it’s bizarrely intriguing. It’s this weird, ungoverned pocket of Sonic history that was just allowed to run wild with no real supervision from SEGA themselves and that will always make it a fascinating thing to revisit. It’s not great, but it’s not bad either. A real mixed bag.
May 20, 2012
Makes sense that things would be pretty down and slow after the climax. W/o any existing mythology to ground the plots, the writers try too hard.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews