Ian Flynn

With almost 300 issues in the core series, Archie's Sonic The Hedgehog stands as the longest-running uninterrupted American monthly comic book that's currently being published. In Hedging Your Bets, I attempt to get up to speed on Sonic the Hedgehog, challenging the odds to hopefully make it all the way to the finish line. This week, it's the shocking death of --- wait, no. Looks like he's not dead after all. Sorry to worry you.

Last summer's Mega Drive one-shot celebrated Sonic's 25th anniversary with a classic style adventure that serves as a showcase for the book and its creative teams. Now Archie is doing another one, in which Sonic and his pals head off on an adventure through a delightfully snowy winter wonderland and a spooky, scary forest. Check out a preview!

With Hedging Your Bets, Chris Sims attempts to get up to speed on the Sonic the Hedgehog comics, challenging the odds to hopefully make it all the way to the finish line. This week, we get a look at Sonic's origin with Genesis, and I'm even more confused than I was when we started.

In Hedging Your Bets, Chris Sims attempt to get up to speed on Sonic the Hedgehog, the longest running uninterrupted American monthly comic on the stands, in the hopes of making it all the way to the finish line. This week, we get started at Sonic #221, and folks... I have questions.

The Sonic comics seem pretty good at celebrating big milestones with a jumping-on point, and in next month's Sonic the Hedgehog #288, Archie Comics is giving us another one in the form of "Genesis of a Hero," a story that flashes back to Sonic's first battle with his rotund, mustachioed foe, just in time for his 25th anniversary.

"The Shattered World Saga" has been running through Archie Action's Sonic The Hedgehog for over two years and has redefined the kind of stories that can be told with everyone's favorite furry speedster, but this week the epic multi-part storyline is finally coming to an end. Ahead of the release of Sonic The Hedgehog #287 by Ian Flynn, Tracy Yardley, Terry Austin, Gabriel Cassata and John Workman, Archie Action has provided us a look at the final part of the biggest Sonic story ever.

I may not know much about Sonic The Hedgehog, but there's one interesting little piece of trivia about the comics that I am absolutely fascinated by. Despite the fact that DC has recently returned Action Comics and Detective Comics to their original numbering, placing them somewhere in the mid-900s, the core Sonic the Hedgehog comic stands at 285 issues and counting as the longest-running monthly American comic book that has not been rebooted,renumbered, or otherwise restarted. It's been on the stands every month since 1993! Throw in all the spin-off titles, and that means that there's a lot of Sonic content out there. So much so, in fact, that with Sonic Universe hitting #89 next week, there's enough Sonic content out there that the reprint-focused Sonic Super Digest is on its 17th issue. So why not celebrate the continued reign of a blue hedgehog who runs fast with a preview of both titles?

The last time we talked about Sonic the Hedgehog, when the current "Panic in the Sky" storyline was just getting started, I mentioned my almost total unfamiliarity with the franchise. But as a potential new reader, one thing I can definitely appreciate is that even here, in the second part of a four-part story, they're still giving everyone identifying captions so that I can at least sort out the characters by name. Fortunately, it doesn't take a deep knowledge to get the basics: There's an attack by an evil army and Sonic's crew of good guys are falling out of the sky --- and someone's very upset that their computer's not working. Check out a preview!

The current Sonic The Hedgehog title by Ian Flynn, Aleah Baker and a host of amazing artists --- plus John Workman on letters! --- is one of the most fun all-ages titles on the stands right now and Archie has provided us with an exclusive preview of the third volume, "Waves of Change," which sees Sonic and the gang travelling the world looking for the mysterious Gaia Temples.

I've been pretty up front about the fact that I know very little about the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, but I do know that it can be pretty shockingly complicated. I know, for instance, that Sonic likes to run fast and is always ready to party, but when it comes to figuring out how the world he lives in was shattered by a global cataclysm, or why he's hanging out with cyborgs and a sentient AI who takes the form of a holographic lynx, I'm a little more hazy. But if you're in the same boat, good news. The next issue of Archie's long-running Sonic the Hedgehog starts off with a series of quick captions to explain everything --- and a More Than Meets The Eye/Arrested Development party to celebrate something that they actually have not accomplished yet. But will the answers themselves become more questions? Decide for yourself with the preview below!