Following a highly anticipated release, bolstered by an extravagant marketing and release schedule, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Technical Institute, 1992) not only improved on every aspect of its influential predecessor but also became the second best-selling SEGA Mega Drive game of all time. Expectations were high for the equally-anticipated third entry, a game that ended up being so big that SEGA split it in two, birthing perhaps the greatest 2D Sonic adventure in the process.
Story Title: “The Death Egg Saga Book One: Scrambled”
Published: September 1996
Story Title: “The Death Egg Saga Book Two: Poached”
Published: October 1996
Story Title: “The Death Egg Saga Book Three: Over Easy”
Published: November 1996
The Background:
When Sonic the Hedgehog blasted onto the videogame scene in 1991, he was an immediate hit thanks to his debut title being bundled with the Mega Drive and SEGA’s aggressive marketing campaign. His popularity exploded with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Technical Institute, 1992), however, and Sonic merchandise was suddenly everywhere; not only did he feature in the Macy’s Day Parade and in cartoons but he also starred in a number of comic books. Following the initial four-part miniseries, which mashed together narrative elements of Sonic’s cartoon adventures, Archie Comics began regular publication of what would become the longest-running videogame comic book ever. In time, to capitalise on Sonic’s continued popularity, a number of spin-off comics were produced, including limited issue releases such as this one designed as adaptations of various Sonic videogames. While the videogame lore often clashed with Archie’s unique continuity, and later led to a series of convoluted retcons, these did introduce popular franchise characters like Knuckles the Echidna into the comics and helped to broaden Archie’s continuity.
The Review:
Since I wasn’t able to get my hands on Archie’s Sonic comics over here in the United Kingdom, I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with them, despite how complex their narrative eventually became with a whole mess of original lore and characters clogging up the pages. Still, one of the first priorities for me when these comics were collected in mini volumes was to pick up the “Death Egg Saga”, which was published in one of those Sonic the Hedgehog Select collections, primarily because Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favourite of the classic Sonic games but also because I was intrigued to see the Death Egg, and Knuckles, looped into Archie’s quasi-continuation of the notoriously popular Sonic the Hedgehog/SatAM cartoon (1993 to 1994). For context, “The Death Egg Saga” picks up shortly after the long-lost King Maximillian Acorn was finally rescued from the Zone of Silence after being trapped there around about the same time Doctor Ivo Robotnik conquered Planet Mobius. While the Freedom Fighters celebrated their liege’s return, this would come to upset the balance of power and focus of their crusade against Dr. Robotnik as the out of touch King Acorn undermined the authority of his daughter, Princess Sally Acorn, and favoured the likes of the abrasive Geoffrey St. John over Sonic. Consequently, the story begins with St. John (one of my least favourite Archie characters) skulking around the Freedom Fighter’s hidden haven, Knothole Village, at the crack of dawn; he’s spotted by Sonic and the two get into a war of words that almost comes to blows before Sally intervenes and reveals that her father is slowly losing his mind and body to a bizarre crystalline infection.
As best as Knothole’s resident physician, Doctor Horatio Quentin Quack, can figure, this is a result of the King’s extended stay in the mysterious Zone of Silence; in order to keep the Freedom Fighters from panicking, King Acorn’s condition has been deemed top secret and Sally orders St. John to stand guard over the King while they explore their options. Their trusty mechanic and science expert, Rotor the Walrus (occasionally called “Boomer”), is at a loss but rookie Freedom Fighter Miles “Tails” Prower hits upon a possible solution when he observes that the King’s crystalline skin resembles the texture of Chaos Emeralds. This prompts Sonic to retrieve his recently-acquired “one-billionth Magic Ring” to try and use its Chaos Emerald powers to reverse King Acorn’s condition, though it proves to be a fleeting solution. Rotor theorises that the Ring is unique to Sonic and suggests gathering as many others as possible to try again, prompting Sally to send Bunnie Rabbot and Antoine D’Coolette out to the mysterious Lake of Rings in the forest and Sonic and Tails to the Ring Grotto outside Robotropolis, Dr. Robotnik’s industrial, mechanical city. This area has been irrevocably changed and damaged following a recent fight between Super Sonic and Hyper Knuckles, and Dr. Robotnik’s attacks, and the two are stunned to find the Ring Grotto has been sealed beneath an impenetrable steel dome. Sonic leaves Tails to watch over the area while he races off to recruit a bruiser named Carl Condor to help bust it open, and the young fox-boy is shocked when the dome suddenly opens up and the Grotto’s entire supply of Magic Rings is sucked up into the clouds courtesy of a giant vacuum tube, which also takes Tails along with it! At the Mobian Cliffs, Sonic is shocked by a sudden and unnaturally faster solar eclipse, almost as if something artificial were crossing the Sun’s path, and horrified to find that Carl has been robotocised; caught off-guard, Sonic is rendered unconscious by the mechanical vulture and carried into the sky towards an ominous, egg-shaped superstructure.
This is, of course, the Death Egg, Dr. Robotnik’s newest and most dangerous creation. After leaving his nephew and whimpering subordinate Snively in charge of overseeing Robotropolis’s reconstruction (a position he immediately and amusingly abuses), the cybernetic dictator revels in his glory as he powers up the Death Egg with the Magic Rings and prepares to use it to roboticise every living thing on the planet! However, while the Magic Rings ensure that the Death Egg is effectively invulnerable to external attack, Dr. Robotnik still needs a Chaos Emerald to bring the station to full power; additionally, he sucked up some unwanted additional weight that’s keeping it from reaching its proper orbit, but has no idea that Tails is in amongst the trees and debris. Thinking quickly, Tails jams himself into the discarded wreckage of a disobedient SWATbot so he can explore the space station undetected, while Sonic escapes the talons of the Condorbot and defies the laws of physics to pinball his way onto the Death Egg just as Tails jettisons the crap that was weighing it down. With the Death Egg scrambling their communications signal and the King’s condition worsening, Dr. Robotnik guides the Death Egg towards the Floating Island (as it was then known), which naturally attracts the attention of the island’s hot-headed guardian, Knuckles. Swooping up to intercept the Death Egg, Knuckles is hit by a laser blast from the satellite’s “eye”; luckily, this simply stuns him and he falls into the arms of his friends, the Chaotix (Mighty the Armadillo, Vector the Crocodile, Charmy Bee, Espio the Chameleon and…*sigh* Archimedes the Fire-Ant). The group watch as Dr. Robotnik drops a squadron of gigantic Burrobots to dig up the island’s Chaos Emeralds, which they race to stop to keep the island from plummeting from the sky. While the Chaotix attack the massive drilling mechs, Sonic tears his way through the Death Egg but arrives too late to keep Dr. Robotnik from ramming the satellite into the Floating Island! The Chaos Emerald is able to keep the island aloft, but the sheer weight and thrust of the Death Egg causes it to tip to one side and forces it into the sea below!
Naturally, Sonic leaps into action, only to end up attacking Tails by accident. To make matters worse, Dr. Robotnik shields himself from Sonic’s attack with a thick wall of plexiglass and then chokes him out with a spew of poisonous gas. Luckily, Tails recovers from his assault and uses his SWATbot suit to break through Dr. Robotnik’s defences and destroy his control panels, saving Sonic from suffocation and sending the satellite uncontrollably hurtling into space. Thanks to a “stabilising field” built into his “Gravi-Gauntlet”, Dr. Robotnik staves off the sudden drag of inertia and escapes to his auxiliary control room; he then sics a massive robotic Sonic doppelgänger on the two. While a far cry from his sleeker, more popular counterpart or even Sonic’s more versatile Mecha Sonic form, this “Silver Sonic” has the muscle and armour to shrug off Sonic’s attacks and manhandle (or should that be hoghandle?) him with punches, kicks, and slams but proves disappointingly susceptible to an electric shock from some conveniently-placed severed cables. Despite the failure of his Silver Sonic, Dr. Robotnik resorts to another back-up plan, donning his “most sophisticated battle armour ever”, the Eggs-O-Skeleton, which augments his physical strength by drawing power from the Death Egg itself! Sonic evens the odds by (…somehow…) commandeering Silver Sonic’s mechanical body and battling the rotund dictator on equal ground. The melee escalates but, ultimately, Sonic hurls Dr. Robotnik up through the ceiling and out of the Death Egg; during the fight, Tails was somehow able to rig the Death Egg to explode and the two beat a hasty retreat, swiping the stolen Magic Rings and making it safely to the surface before the Death Egg’s destruction (which, while somewhat anti-climactic on paper, is “seen and felt” all around the planet). While Snively faces the wrath of his uncle and master and the mad cyborg swears revenge upon Sonic and the Freedom Fighters, Sonic and Tails race back to Knothole to see if the Rings will cure the King, which is a plot thread left unresolved in this miniseries.
The Summary:
As ever, one of the main appeals of Archie’s attempt at a Sonic 3 & Knuckles adaptation is the artwork; Archie Comics, especially at this time, did a great job of emulating the character designs and locations seen in SatAM, with Patrick “Spaz” Spaziante being their standout artist. Manny Galan is no slouch here, though, and there are times when his version of Sonic evokes the character’s more dynamic and streamlined Japanese presentation; Archie’s original characters, like St. John, don’t fare too well but SEGA’s characters all hold up quite nicely, though I’m not massively onboard with the artistic shortcuts taken to basically show Sonic and Knuckles flying simply because they need to get up to the Death Egg. Everything is still early Archie, though, meaning the Floating Island doesn’t look that great, the Death Egg has an ugly and needlessly “busy” design, and there’s an element of daft childishness in some areas as the comic still hadn’t quite shaken off the influences from SatAM’s more slapstick sister series. As if often the case, the first few pages are bogged down with recapping the events from previous issues and even prior Archie stories, but it’s not too invasive.
The biggest issue with Sonic Quest is that it’s not much of an adaptation of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Much like in their other videogame tie-ins and those seen in Fleetway’s publications over here in the UK, Archie’s writers pick and choose elements from the videogames to incorporate, almost as if they were drip-fed footage and details of SEGA’s upcoming games rather than being privy to full details ahead of time. Thus, elements of Sonic 3 & Knuckles are spread out across different stories and one-offs, such as introducing Knuckles and even the Chaotix before the Death Egg. While the Death Egg is at the centre of Sonic Quest, it’s not really the narrative focus; the satellite doesn’t appear until the end of issue one and is destroyed before it can really do anything other than steal some Magic Rings, blast Knuckles, and almost submerge the Floating Island. On the plus side, the story does a great job of building the threat of the Death Egg; hiding it, seeing it on computer monitors, and especially the “eclipse” sequence all add to the anticipation of the space station’s big reveal and it’s portrayed (on paper) as being a serious threat as it’s allegedly capable of roboticising the entire planet. However, since it lacks a Chaos Emerald, it cannot actually do this and it’s one attack is enough to simply stun Knuckles, significantly diminishing its menace. I think the story would have benefitted from being five or even six issues long and seeing Dr. Robotnik successfully attack the Floating Island with the battleship and steal a Chaos Emerald to robotoicise large areas of Mobius, which would have greatly raised the stakes of the narrative.
As presented, Sonic Quest doesn’t even require Sonic to begrudgingly join forces with his hot-headed rival; Knuckles’ involvement is more of a glorified cameo and, while he and the Chaotix do fend off the gigantic Burrobots, he does nothing to help destroy the Death Egg. Indeed, since Sonic and Tails do all the work from inside the space station and sabotage its controls, there was never any danger of Dr. Robotnik acquiring a Chaos Emerald so Knuckles could’ve been entirely absent from the story. Additionally, we don’t really get a sense of the interior of the Death Egg; we only see a few corridors and rooms, with the bulk of the story taking place in a confined control room, and the main concern of the plot is more about getting the Magic Rings to cure King Acorn, with the Death Egg presented as more of an inconvenience since that’s where the Rings are being held. Things pick up a bit once Dr. Robotnik unleashes Silver Sonic but, while I enjoyed this fight and the artwork here, this mechanical monstrosity is defeated with a ridiculous amount of ease, exhibits no personality, and is somehow easily controlled by Sonic after it’s defeated. Even the showdown between Sonic and Dr. Robotnik ends up being quite disappointing; not only is Dr. Robotnik’s Eggs-O-Skeleton a weak design and a poor substitute for his more imposing Death Egg Robot, we never get a sense of what he’s capable of while wearing it beyond “being stronger” and he’s easily trounced by Sonic piloting the remains of Silver Sonic. There’s almost an intriguing element to this in the panels where Sonic is so fixated on ending Dr. Robotnik that he briefly considers risking his life, but it’s swept under the rug by a quick word from Tails and wouldn’t really resurface until the comic’s fiftieth issue. In the end, this was an enjoyable three-issue adventure; the art is good, the writing isn’t too hammy, and there’s some fun visuals whenever the Death Egg is looming over the Floating Island. However, it just reads like another Archie Sonic adventure; the Death Egg should’ve been a massive event, one stretching across multiple issues, but just comes across as another of Dr. Robotnik’s many maniacal schemes. As soon as we see it, it’s destroyed without really doing anything except threatening the Floating Island, something easily solved by Tails being a bit trigger happy, and there’s never a sense that this is truly the final victory for Dr. Robotnik in his war against the furries. It’s a shame, really, as this could’ve been a great way to build bridges between Sonic and Knuckles or even have the Chaotix team up with the Freedom Fighters, but it just comes across as a throwaway tie-in with little impact on the ongoing narrative beyond finding a cure for the King.
My Rating:
Could Be Better
Did you enjoy Sonic Quest? Did you collect the miniseries when it first released or, like me, did you pick it up in a later collection? What did you think to the depiction of the Death Egg? Do you agree that it was neutered compared to the videogames or were you impressed with its appearance? Were you disappointed that Sonic and Knuckles didn’t team up to fight at and by how easily it was brought down? What did you think to Silver Sonic and Dr. Robotnik’s Eggs-O-Skeleton armour? Which of Archie’s videogame tie-ins was your favourite? How are you celebrating the anniversary of Sonic 3’s release today? Please feel free to share your memories of Archie’s Sonic comics and Sonic 3 & Knuckles below or on my social media.
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