“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sonic Super Special #13

“Why aren’t you playing our new game?”

Sonic Super Special #13

Archie Comic Publications (2000)

“Sonic Adventure” adaptation

WRITER: Karl Bollers

CO-PLOTTER: Ken Penders

INKER: Andrew Prepoy

COLORISTS: Josh D. & Aimee Ray

COVER ART: Patrick “Spaz!” Spaziante”

LETTERER: Jeff Powell

EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie

We built up to it in the main comic title, and now the adaptation proper. Learning about the ruins, Sonic and Tails head out to find a clue about Chaos while Nate and the SatAM cast are given things to do that keep them out of the story. (We already “got rid” of the rest of the comic -only additions.) Our duo meet up with Knuckles and barely manage to chase Chaos and Eggman off. Knuckles looks for more Chaos Emerald shards, but Tikal soon teleports him to join the others on Robotnik’s “Egg Carrier” for a last stand with the villain and his new pet. Amy has to stop Sonic and E-102 from fighting each other, and Sonic has Tails fly Amy to safety while he and Knuckles have their final battle with Chaos. Big eventually rescues Froggy and then steals Tails’ plane, making him and this plot thread completely useless in this adaptation. Robotnik escapes, but there’s a piece of Chaos left on his plane.

Trying to get rid of the non-game characters is the least of this story’s problems. Adapting a movie to comic form already requires more truncating than a movie has to do adapting a book. Video games tend to be longer than a movie, at least as long as a TV series, minus the gameplay time, of course. That’s why you can adapt a game into a series (and none of the recent game adaptations bothered with that), but it means this story goes by a bit too fast (I know, it’s Sonic) to really get into. It’s basically a set of events without any real drama. Not having played the game, I can’t comment on the accuracy to the game, but as an individual story the art is good but the story just isn’t given time to be engaging.

Unless you want a full collection of Archie stories you’d probably be better off playing the game, or watching a playthrough online. A novel adaptation might be able to do more with this than a comic did, but the effects of this story will continue into the main series when we get back to it.