Tyson Hesse

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, Sonic finally gets something better than a gun.

Tyson Hesse's Diesel is a bright and accessible steampunk series featuring flying cars, airships, and adventures starring a plucky young girl out to prove herself worthy of her father's legacy. Later this month, Boom Studios will publish the series' first original graphic novel, Diesel: Ignition and the publisher has provided us with an exclusive first look inside!

So remember how a couple weeks ago, I said that Sonic the Hedgehog continuity was so weird that you could pretty much tell me anything about it and I would have no reason to doubt you? Well buckle up, kids, because our friends at Archie just sent over a preview of their next paperback collection of Sonic stories, and it's a weird one. In this particular story, Sonic becomes a werewolf. Er, werehog? Werewolfhog? Listen, it's probably for the best if you just check out the preview below!

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!

Did you start reading Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Universe during the latest crossover event? Curious how all the characters you recall from the fast and furious video game franchise have ended up where they are now? Archie's got you covered with the Sonic Super Digest. Reprinting classic Sonic stories from the various comics under the Archie Action imprint, the Super Digest offers you a way to get caught up on the antics of Sonic and friends without hunting down back issues at your LCS. Courtesy of Archie Comics, we've got a preview of the latest collection, which is due out tomorrow. Featuring tales from Sonic Universe #75, zany antics from the Sonic Boom universe, and Eggman's robot henchmen messing around while they think the big bossman isn't watching, Sonic Super Digest brings things together from the time just before "Worlds Unite" kicked off.

Tyson Hesse's Diesel is the story of Dee Diesel, a young aviator who loses her father's airship to a rival and receives a serendipitous invitation to adventure --- that she may not be ready to accept. Diesel promises to be a beautiful and thrilling coming-of-age story. It started out as a webcomic, but it's been revised and relaunched for print courtesy of Boom Box, and we have an exclusive preview of next week's debut issue.

Welcome to the eleventh installment of True Blue, our weekly recap of Archie Comics‘ crossover event between the Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man series, “Worlds Unite.” Each installment, we’ll recap the notable moments of the latest chapter in “Worlds Unite” with Archie Action Editor Vincent Lovallo, and take a look at what lies ahead for the next chapter of the crossover event. Previously in “Worlds Unite," Sigma, major big bad from Mega Man X's future, traveled through a Genesis Portal to the world of Lost Hex in Sonic's universe. There, he forcibly teamed up with Eggman to create an army of robots and to have Sonic's nemesis aid in the creation of the Unity Engine. To that end, Sigma also brought in Dr. Wily from Mega Man's world, and together with both doctors, Sigma was able to quickly put his plan to sap the power from all the known (and unknown) universes to fuel his ascent into godhood.

Boom Box, the imprint from Boom Studios that encourages creators to let loose with their wildest ideas, has been on an incredible roll recently. New comics from artists and writers like Noelle Stevenson, John Allison, Ryan North, and Jake Lawrence have seen the imprint go from strength to strength, in many cases taking some of the best webcomics talents out there and bringing them into print. That streak looks set to continue, as ComicsAlliance can exclusively announce that webcomic creator Tyson Hesse will brings his series Diesel to Boom for a four-issue miniseries in September. The story of a young girl and her airship, the series follows Dee Diesel in a coming-of-age story set high up in the skies. The daughter of a world-famous pilot, she's grounded when her greatest rival takes her father's airships and zips off into the clouds. All seems lost until, from nowhere, a mysterious new ship crashes down in front of her and offers her the chance to fly. It's a beautiful, brilliant story, and ComicsAlliance got to speak to Hesse about how it got off the ground.

The days of Sonic the Hedgehog being confined to his own, Sega-centric universe are long over --- he's met Mega Man in comics and done Olympic events with Mario in games --- but the speedy blue guy has quite possibly never been to a world as expansive as the one he's going to experience in August's Sonic the Hedgehog #275 from Archie. Not only is Mega Man involved in part eleven of the huge "Worlds Unite" event, but lots of other Capcom and Sega worlds will be part of the story, too. Street Fighter, Billy Hatcher, NiGHTS into Dreams and Monster Hunter are among the other franchises in the mix. Check out our exclusive reveal of covers by artists Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante, Edwin Haung, Lamar Wells, Tracy Yardley, and Rafa Knight!

Back when it first started up, I wrote a review of Archie's Mega Man comic where I called it "the smartest superhero comic on the stands," mostly because of the way that it took on some pretty serious ideas without detracting from the accessible, all-ages adventure that made it such a fun read. That bit in the first arc where Mega Man starts to withdraw from his family, becoming cold and, well, robotic because of the psychological toll of destroying other robots like himself is still one of my favorite scenes in comics from the past few years. Forty issues later, I can still stand by that statement. Mega Man hasn't just continued building one of the most enjoyably action-packed stories around the bare-bones plot of "go right, shoot robots" that it got from the video games, it's also having conversations about ethics, forgiveness and what it means to love someone that nobody else in comics is coming close to. And it's great.