Sonic the Comic



A British comic that ran in the 1990s (but has recently seen an internet revival). Although Sonic the Hedgehog is in the title, originally it was sort of a British, Sega equivalent of Nintendo Power, (although not to be confused with the more straight-laced Official Sega Magazine which ran at the same time, more or less until the launch of the Saturn) showcasing strips about other Sega games and sections including game reviews, cheat codes and walkthroughs, and so forth. As time went on, various factors (including a Sonic version of Wolverine Publicity) meant that most of this gradually disappeared in favour of more Sonic stories.

Along with Sonic, other games to spawn their own strips included:


 * Decap Attack: Longest-running of all the non-Sonic strips, reimagined as a loopy piece of surreal humour complete with Hurricane of Puns that somehow managed to make the original game, itself wacky, look normal by comparison.
 * Streets of Rage: Typical Nineties Dark Age adaptation of the fighting game, with the memetic line "AND I WANT A HELICOPTER!"
 * Ecco the Dolphin: Fairly straight adaptation of the first game.
 * Kid Chameleon
 * Shining Force: For some reason, the original straight-fantasy-RPG setting was converted into one After the End In a World where nuclear war has caused the downfall of civilisation and the resulting mutations created fantasy races of centaurs, elves and so forth.
 * Golden Axe
 * Wonder Boy
 * Mutant League: No relation to the animated series.
 * Marco's Magic Football
 * Revenge of Shinobi
 * Eternal Champions: Popular enough to get its own summer special.
 * Rocket Knight Adventures: An original storyline set after the games, with Sparkster returning to find his people brainwashed by a new set of invaders.

The Sonic continuity was distinct from all others, chiefly by being the one piece of Sonic media, above any and all of the other comics and cartoons released at the time, which actually strove to accurately translate the world of the games into serial story form. It included the Zones, the rings, the PCs, Star Posts, Badniks, the animal friends and more, and used them as they appeared in the games. At the same time, it acknowledged Sat AM Sonic the Hedgehog and its American comics spinoff with occasional magazine features but did not take any of it into account (though StC may have influenced the American comic back - both series have an Enemy Without plot featuring Super Sonic going on a rampage). It grew its beard after a storyline where Sonic ended up accidentally time-traveling half a year into the future, in which time in his absence Robotnik has conquered the planet: the next ninety-odd issues consisted of stories based around Sonic leading Freedom Fighters against the occupation, until Robotnik was finally toppled in the 100th issue. At this point many fans believe it Jumped the Shark due to the loss of this story-generating setting.

Some changes from other continuities include the fact that Sonic's friends mostly live in the Emerald Hill Zone (not the Green Hill Zone), Knuckles' home is called the Floating Island (not Angel Island) and Nack the Weasel (Fang the Sniper) was introduced as a member of Chaotix - some of these are attributable to poor communication between Sega and their media outlets in the UK. The comic created many Canon Foreigner characters, such as Captain Plunder the Sky Pirate, Robotnik's assistant (and The Igor) Grimer, Shortfuse the Cybernik and Tekno the Canary. The comic redubbed the "Metal Sonic" character/concept as the more distinctive "Metallix" and created a storyline where multiple Metallixes are built, eventually breaking free of Robotnik and turning on their creator. This rapidly led to a Does This Remind You of Anything (or possible deliberate Shout Out) when these metal robots with the chest blaster built a larger version on a floating hoverchair as their "Emperor" and went around shouting "Exterminate!"

The comic continuity was not linked to the earlier British novel continuity (which, for example, had Sally Acorn as a character, while the comic did not except in some of the earliest issues), but the novels did appear to influence the comic - for example, both had a time-travel storyline which involves Sonic being forced to instigate the accident which created Robotnik, as the alternative is even worse: Mobius being conquered by the Metallixes in the comics, and the whole universe being infected by Chaos in the novels.

After the printed title's demise, the comic (as well as some of the articles) were continued on by fans of the original mag as Sonic The Comic Online.

Not to be mistaken for The Archie Comic.

Now the original comic has its own site and the issues are being uploaded weekly!

There is also a series of retrospectives covering classic STC, which are posted on youtube, as well as short reviews of new STCO issues as they are released. The first of the retrospectives can be found here!

The article for the online continuation of Sonic the Comic can be found here.

Tropes:
"Tails: Wow! The Death Egg!
 * Aborted Arc: Johnny was supposed to gain a crush on Amy, but writer Nigel Kitching felt that it would end up taking up too much of the already-limited page space to develop. Similarly, the conclusion of the Agent X arc was meant to reveal
 * Acid Trip Dimension: The Special Zone.
 * Action Girl: What Amy eventually managed to become once she outgrew her & Distressed Damsel character. Also applies to Morain in the Nameless Zone stories and Tekno the Canary to a lesser extent.
 * Adaptation Distillation: Sonic Adventure's storyline was radically changed to fit into the comic's continuity. Despite being rushed, the end result was a fitting end to the original run.
 * The Sonic 3D Blast adaptation became one with the introduction of The Drakon Empire near the end.
 * Adaptation Dye Job: Eye variation: Once the Sonic Adventure adaptation came around, the only character with their game eye color was Sonic (and, in his case, it was due to a side effect of prolonged exposure to Chaos, so it's not his natural color). Amy and Tails both had brown eyes, as in the Genesis titles.
 * For whatever reason, Knuckles has a metal ring around his neck instead of his trademark fur marking.
 * Adaptational Villainy: Applied to both Chaos and Robotnik. Chaos is an evil Drakon villain with no sympathetic past in this comic, while in the games he witnessed the massacre of Ridiculously Cute Critters. In the comics, he tormented the Ridiculously Cute Critter he was trapped with, while in the games she was his friend. As for Robotnik, he's a ruthless tyant, possibly worse than the SATAM version.
 * A Day in The Limelight: Robotnik had his own one-shot comic strip a few times. Megadroid too.
 * A God Am I: Dr. Robotnik in the Robotnik Reigns Supreme arc.
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: The Brotherhood of Metallix, Commander Brutus.
 * An interesting variation in Citizen One, a computer program capable of creating Zones. Even though Robotnik made it, he abandoned it because it only wanted to make happy Zones.
 * Ambiguously Human: Grimer, Captain Plunder and his crew, the inhabitants of the Special Zone...
 * Anticlimax: The Brotherhood of Metallix are defeated with the press of a button. Gets a Lampshade Hanging from Sonic.
 * The ending to the series.
 * Anthropomorphic Shift: Most noticeable in the case of Johnny Lightfoot and Porker Lewis, but in general all the animal people of Mobius start wearing more clothes and looking more human-like suddenly over the course of a few issues.
 * Applied Phlebotinum: Many, but primarily the Chaos Emeralds.
 * Ascended Extras: Johnny Lightfoot and Porker Lewis originated as being among the names of the small furry animals Sonic breaks out of the Badniks in the games.
 * Ascended Fanboy: Amy starts off as a fanatical fangirl of Sonic before being forced to join the Freedom Fighters for her own safety. This led to a series of events which saw her toughen up, gain a much more subtle respect for (and love of teasing) her hero and eventually become the leader of the Freedom Fighters in Sonic's absence.
 * Demoted to Extra: Expect them from any animal friend that wasn't apart of the Freedom Fighters.
 * Art Evolution: Originally the comic had many artists of varying skill levels, however around the middle it started coming more into place. The series looks dramatically cleaner and different just before Adventure, in comparison to the beginning. Eye colors tend to be inconstant at that, often switching between their game colors and Fleetway colors depending on the artist.
 * As You Know: Shortfuse tends to mention his backstory in each appearance he makes. Always goes something like, "Remember me, Robotnik? The badnik you created who turned on you?" It's become a bit of a Running Gag with the fans of the comic.
 * Back for The Finale: Ebony and Super Sonic reappear in the last two stories.
 * Badass Damsel: Princess Shelly in the Rocket Knight Adventures comic.
 * Badass Mustache: Dr. Robotnik. Kintobor had one before becoming Robotnik as well.
 * Badass Santa: An interesting case, in that STC's Father Christmas' badassery comes from his ultimate pacifism. He will not, and implicitly cannot fight, nor does he involve himself in the fighting. He's one of Mobius very few 'true' magic users, as it were, and cannot be touched except in good will. Attacks pass clean through him, and Robotnik's automated defences and robots quietly stop working while he's around.
 * Sonic did once assume he was Robotnik and flung him through the air by his beard. It didn't slow him down at bit, not to mention giving him the chance to burst dramaticly from the snow.
 * Brainwashed : Tails in the very first issue he appears in (he quickly turns back, though).
 * Canon Foreigner: Most of the cast if you take a strict definition of the Japanese continuity. Also several original zones were created as locations, such as the Nameless Zone, Grim Zone, Pleasant Zone and Stone Tower Zone.
 * Canon Immigrant: Possibly; and by somewhat circuitous proxy. Dr. Zachary, an evil white-furred echidna scientist, was an invention of Sonic the Comic, but the American "Archie" Sonic the Hedgehog comic later introduced an evil white-furred echidna scientist of its own, by the name of Doctor Finitevus. In late 2008, almost a decade after Sonic the Comic went into full rerun, the videogames finally incorporated Imperator Ix, another evil white-furred echidna scientist. The changing names make this a kind of in-franchise Expy.
 * Captain Obvious: Tails. Lampshaded by Sonic in issue #005

Sonic: Tails, what is it with you and stating the blatantly obvious?"

"Tails: Sonic! You're alive!
 * And later on in the same strip

Sonic: And you're still stating the obvious, I see."

"Tails: They... they're joining together!
 * And in issue #115:

Sonic: Tails, you always were an expert at stating the flipping obvious!"

"Sonic: Change reality any way you like, Robotnik! Whatever you do I'll still fight you, and somehow I'll win! Because no matter how ridiculous the situation, I'll never give up, Robotnik! I'll never give up!"
 * Card Carrying Villain: Dr. Zachary ("Knuckles never expected that I could be evil!").
 * Clingy Costume: Shortfuse.
 * Cloudcuckooland: The Special Zone.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Even in an universe full of them, Charmy Bee really stands out (his persona amusingly similar to how the games later wrote him).
 * Simpson The Cat is a bigger example due to being similar to a Tex Avery character.
 * Comic Book Time: The series is explicitly in the 90s. Several issues mention the years in-series being the same as the year the issue was written in. So we have one issue is set on New Year 1997, and a few issues later we have an issue set in 1998.. But no one seems to age throughout the comic. Amy does get a bit less-childish in terms of looks though.
 * Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: "Tails?! I'd rather have been saved by Sonic!"
 * Covers Always Lie: Some covers prominently featured conflicts that were resolved within a couple of pages in the comic itself (examples: Sonic's long-lost brother Tonic and Knuckles vs. Shortfuse ).
 * Cowardly Lion: Tails.
 * Depending On the Artist: Whether or not Johnny and Porker wear shoes and/or gloves (once they have clothes).
 * Dull Surprise: The Adventure arc often does this, especially with Amy who can't pull off a proper expression.
 * The Empire: The Drakon Empire, also creators of Chaos energy.
 * Enemy Civil War: This was a prominent storyline in the middle part of the comic's run, when Dr. Robotnik had to contend with the rebellious Commander Brutus.
 * Enemy Without: Eventually, Super Sonic manages to separate himself from Sonic. His first priority becomes killing Sonic to remove the risk that they might be rejoined.
 * Evil Albino: Dr. Zachary
 * Expository Hairstyle Change: Averted strangely, with Amy. Her quills are downward at the start of the Adventure arc without any explanation for the decision, but nothing has changed unlike her game or Archie counterparts. It made her look more mature which could have foreshadowed the arc to come.
 * Expy: The Lawyer Friendly Cameo's listed above. Also, though not in this comic, Jet from Sonic Riders has been noted for looking a lot like Tekno.
 * Turbo is an obvious Expy of Sonic.
 * Face Heel Turn: Nack starts off a member of Chaotix before he shows his true colours.
 * Fake Ultimate Hero: Tails in the earlier Nameless Zone stories. Subverted in that, while he didn't think of himself as the hero his friends and family believed he was, he always managed to save the day in the end.
 * Family Unfriendly Death: Although Sonic The Comic was aimed at kids, the death of the Big Bad Hawk in the first Streets of Rage story was particularly gruesome:.
 * Fanime: There was one failed project already, however there's a new one.
 * Feather Fingers: Porker could hold things in his hooves for a little while before they were replaced with hands.
 * Five Man Band: The original Freedom Fighters and the Chaotix Crew when they were teamed up with Knuckles.
 * The Hero: Sonic
 * The Lancer: Amy
 * The Big Guy: Johnny
 * The Smart Guy: Porker
 * The Chick: Tails
 * After Porker left Tekno often filled the Smart Guy role, and when Sonic was AWOL Shortfuse got the Big Guy role (with Amy as The Hero and Johnny or Tails as The Lancer).
 * Footnote Fever: All done by Megadroid, usually referencing a previous issue when something important to the plot was carried over.
 * Four Point Scale: Mild example. The game reviews didn't pull many punches (notably lambasting the soon-to-be-infamous Shaq Fu) but the percentage score rarely dipped below 50%.
 * Fourth Wall Mail Slot: Initially, the comic's editors' responses to readers' published letters were presented using the persona of the comic's mascot character Megadroid. In later issues the responses were presented as coming from Sonic.
 * From Nobody to Nightmare: Chaos was a regular Drakon Prosecutor before exposure to the Chaos emeralds turned him into an Omnicidal Maniac with the power to back it up.
 * Fun With Acronyms: The Badnik Army Repair Functionaries, or BARF.
 * Furry Confusion: More or less averted. Sonic is shown to be vegetarian, humans don't exist on Mobius, and almost all animals that weren't completely anthropomorphic got shifted to it.
 * Green Aesop: Much less commonly seen than in other Sonic adaptations. Shows up most prominently when Sonic goes to our world and is horrified by the level of urbanisation and industrialisation.
 * Heroic BSOD: Sonic had/came close to having one of these a couple of times. Mostly when something seriously bad happened to his friends. Finding out
 * Robotnik also played with this at one point, by
 * Heroic Resolve: So long as something existed to menace Mobius, Sonic would never give up. Best exemplified by the speech he gives to Robotnik when the latter has absorbed the power of the Chaos emeralds to attain reality warping powers, while they're fighting through a series of increasingly bizarre scenarios.

"Tails: But Sonic, shouldn't we have some kind of plan?
 * In one story, Sonic fights a robot that can predict his every move and counteract it. So Sonic gives up. Since the robot was programmed to believe that this circumstance would never happen, it malfunctions and blows up, which is exactly what Sonic intended.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: Amy and Tekno. Probably.
 * Highly Visible Ninja: In keeping with the games, Joe Musashi of the Shinobi stories was a ninja dressed all in white.
 * Hive Mind: The Plax.
 * Humans Are Bastards: In one arc human soldiers invade Mobius and try to conquer it and sell the land to industrial developers. Earth is also portrayed as being noisy, polluted, and way overcrowded.
 * Human Resources: The use of characters as organic batteries for Robotnik's Badniks. In addition, Robotnik's plot during the buildup to issue #100 involved connecting the Emerald Hill Folk to a machine to form a gigantic Wetware CPU.
 * Humans Through Alien Eyes: Mobians are "aliens" to humans.
 * Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Initially thought to be the case with the Special Zone, given the laws of physics seem to arbitrarily decide the manner and extent of their application in that dimension depending on location, and which side of the bed the sky got up on this Easter. The heroes are shocked to learn at one point that it is, in fact, inhabited in some places, having originally thought it a bad place to remain for any extended period of time. Though the claims of the inhabitants that they live in the 'normal' parts of the Special Zone are rapidly proven to be subjective.
 * Hypercompetent Sidekick: In a notable difference to other continuities where Robotnik surrounds himself with idiots and backstabbers, his right hand man in STC is his chief scientist Grimer, who is loyal, dedicated and professional. As well as being the primary designer of many of Robotnik's most dangerous war machines, he personally comes to Robotnik's rescue on several occasions. His finest moment came when he was jailed after Robotnik was apparently destroyed by the Chaos Emeralds, where he.
 * I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Sonic went into a deep depression after.
 * The Igor: Grimer embodies this trope - the hideous goblin-like appearance, the frail build, the intense and possibly undue loyalty to his boss (who, naturally, he refers to as "Master"), and the deep fondness he has for his work.
 * Jerk With a Heart of Gold: Knuckles, Sonic is more of a 'heroic Jerkass.'
 * Killed Off for Real:
 * Knight in Shining Armour: Tails in the Nameless Zone stories.
 * Lawyer Friendly Cameo: When Sonic was trapped in the Special Zone he met parodies of the X-Men and Spider-Man among others.
 * There's also the Take That at Nintendo with their Super Mario Bros expies.
 * Leeroy Jenkins: Sonic's natural tendency is to just rush straight into battle without thinking, and rely on sheer force to plow through anything in his way. This often causes him to be overpowered by stronger enemies, or overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Best seen in this quote where Sonic leaps out of a plane to take on hundreds of robots:

Sonic: I have a plan.[leaps out of plane] I plan to win!"

"Robotnik: I keep on telling you, Grimer, my faithful fool... I don't have a plan. This is the end for us all!
 * Let's You and Him Fight: A common way of setting up crossovers. Usually the formula would be that the two heroes would encounter each other and start fighting out of a misunderstanding, then at the end of issue one of the series the real villain would make an appearance; the second issue would then begin with them teaming up to fight it.
 * Logic Bomb: As mentioned above, one strip featured Predicto, a robot that had been programmed with encyclopaedic knowledge of the Freedom Fighters' personalities and battle tactics, allowing it to take on Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Johnny and Porker all at once, and win...until Sonic surrendered. Boom.
 * Mad Scientists Beautiful Daughter: briefly aided Sonic and the Chaotix Crew when her insane father (Lord Sidewinder) tried to steal Super Sonic's powers, and only stays with his group because she feels obliged to do so as his daughter.
 * Made of Indestructium: Robotnik makes a badnik out of Megatal and it promptly turns on him. He made two more attempts later in the comic: Brutus, created with a copy of Robotnik's own brainwaves which worked out about as well as you'd expect and Vermin who, in contrast to his predecessors, was actually an extremely loyal and formidable minion.
 * Malevolent Mugshot: Citadel Robotnik.
 * Mordor: The Grim Zone.
 * Mundane Fantastic: One storyline saw humans from Earth invading Mobius and Sonic travelling to London to stop them.
 * Never Recycle Your Schemes: Averted by Robotnik with great success. The original Metallix Project results in rogue killbots that nearly take over the world; the second results in Robotnik's strongest, most reliable Badniks which can take Sonic in a one-on-one fight. The first Cybernik is an ultra-powerful Phlebotinum Rebel that is a persistent threat to Robotnik; the second Cybernik is loyal and a useful foil to the first.
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Marxio Brothers, an obvious parody of both the Marx Brothers and the Mario Bros.
 * Worth noting that one story opens with Sonic playing a video game featuring the Marxio Brothers as electricians and dismissing it as lousy - obviously a Take That directed at Super Mario Bros.
 * And Fridge Logic kicks in when you notice that - thanks to Sega product placement - Sonic's playing the Mario expy game on a Mega Drive.
 * Never Say Die: Averted.
 * No Export for You: The comics were only released in their home Europe.
 * Non Standard Character Design: The strongly stylized Sega characters often contrast sharply with the designs of STC's original characters.
 * Many of STC's animal characters have quite realistic animal faces and/or human proportions. This is often put into stark contrast - for example, Ebony the Cat is much taller than Super Sonic but has a much smaller head, while Vector sticks out like a sore thumb next to his scientist friends, who all wear clothes, and have more standard crocodile faces and human-like bodies.
 * In addition to animals, STC is populated by a range of gonks entirely unlike any Sega characters - deliberately ugly goblin-like creatures with human proportions, expressive faces with prominent cheekbones and eyebrows, bulging or tiny eyes (sometimes both), and no obvious species-identifying traits. Notable examples include Grimer, Lord Sidewinder and Captain Plunder.
 * Only Sane Man: Sonic, whenever he's in the Special Zone and how he feels while in Shanazar.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: Appeared to be the entire motivation of Knuckles' arch-enemy, the evil echidna Dr. Zachary. When he first appeared, he boasted of his plans to locate and destroy the other echidnas after he had destroyed Mobius as a warm up, and quite happily acknowledges the fact that he's evil.
 * The only character who manages to be even more omnicidal than Zachary is Sonic's Super Powered Evil Side, Super Sonic, who had no real plan beyond destroying whatever was at hand when Sonic transformed.
 * Outside Context Villain: Chaos appears randomly in the middle of Metropolis City, uses his ability to induce extreme fear in his opponents to catch the Freedom Fighters off guard completely and.
 * Phlebotinum Rebel: Shortfuse the Cybernik
 * Physical God: Super Sonic seems to verge on this, especially towards the end of the arc where Sonic was trapped in the Special Zone. Besides his immense strength and speed (both enough to easily annihilate enemies who Sonic was all but helpless against) and flight, he's also so powerful that the Omniviewer was unable to stop time for him (only slow it enough to ensure that crossing several inches would take years) was able to remain fully aware even while in a state of slowed time, and was able to gather enough charged particles to turn an asteroid into a miniature sun (which then exploded with enough force to bathe the entire surface of Mobius in a powerful electromagnetic pulse). It's occasionally said that he is powerful enough to destroy a planet.
 * Positive Discrimination: According to Word of God, Amy was enforced as such later on due to Executive Meddling, insisting she be rewrote as the most mature and intelligent Freedom Fighter in contrast to the more childish and (supposedly) lovesick admirer of Sonic. The original writers reverted to their intended characterization for Amy in the Sonic Adventure adaption.
 * Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow: Issue 149, Tails actually said it...
 * A few other times too. Throwing the Alpha Device that the Brotherhood of Metallix used to transform the Miracle Planet into reverse restored its former grassy glory.
 * Retcon: The stone Sentinel that appears in issue 29 is clearly not a fish in robotic armour. You can see its knees!
 * Rewarded As a Traitor Deserves: After Nack, they tell him he has outlived his usefulness. Nack was Genre Savvy enough to bring along a Disruptor in case this happened, but he didn't pull it out quite fast enough . ..
 * Samus Is a Girl: Lightmare.
 * Schizo Tech: Particularly prevalent with the ancient Echidnas. Their empire was in many ways tribal, savage, and mystic, but at the same time developed technologies that sometimes surpassed Robotnik's creations. For instance the Guardians, combat robots-cum-mecha battlesuits designed to protect their facilities (such as the Floating Island). Oh and the Floating Island itself.
 * Secret Test of Character: Tails had one of these of the What You Are in The Dark variety in a later story.
 * Shout Out: Oh quite a few. Even British daytime television, for instance. Apparently, Richard and Judy were failed artificial life experiments by Decap Attack's Doctor Frank N. Stein.
 * There were plenty to all kinds of popular culture. Marvel Comics, for some reason, attracted several writers' ire with Take That parodies of their characters living on Planet Meridian in the Special Zone. More unusually, according to Word of God, is that Grimer was named for Gr Ã­ma Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings.
 * One of the more obvious shout-outs appears in the 1995 summer holiday special. In Sonic's biography it outright says his favorite shows are Beavis and Butthead and Ren and Stimpy.
 * Sky Pirate: Captain Plunder.
 * Stable Time Loop: Sonic giving himself a Time Stone on the Miracle Planet.
 * Super Powered Evil Side: Super Sonic, who has all the powers the form gives in the games with the addition of laser eyes, and is pretty much the most powerful thing on the face of Mobius. He's also a sociopathic murderer, and sometimes destroys a Badnik, only to loop back to try and kill the animal released. This monster only emerged out when Sonic was immensely stressed, and eventually had his energies sealed away. Twice.
 * This monster also has plushies. That's right, official mass-produced plushies of a Sonic comic-book character... and a villain, to boot.
 * And in what's probably the most bizzare twist this editor's ever seen,
 * Teeth Clenched Teamwork: The Chaotix Crew. Mighty and Espio can barely stand each other, while Charmy Bee's sunny personality occasionally grates on everyone.
 * Those Two Bad Guys: Cam & Bert (of B.A.R.F.), Hobson & Choy.
 * Temporal Paradox: The series features the kind of sloppy time travel apt to give a detail-orientated young reader a headache. For example, the Metallix change time so that Kintobor never became Robotnik, creating an alternate future where Grimer still built the Metallix but without Robotnik's addition of failsafe shutdown programme. However, in this alternate future, no one recognises Sonic, not even Kintobor who was there at his creation. So if Sonic was never a well known threat, why on Earth would Grimer still build an advanced Sonic-killing robot in his image exactly as he did in the 'real' timeline?
 * Terms of Endangerment: whenever Robotnik has the upper hand, he'll refer to Sonic as 'my dear Sonic'.
 * Took a Level In Badass: Slower than usual, but brutally obvious if one re-reads a bit. Amy is the most obvious example, with her transition from girly to outright dangerous, however Johnny Lightfoot and even, to a limited extent, Porker Lewis. Johnny and Porker began as cute, clothes-less little Mobians, and eventually gained rather badass outfits, and in Johnny and Amy's case, a combat staff and a repeating crossbow.
 * Totally Radical: The stories usually avoided it, but a lot of the other features didn't.
 * The stories avoided it aside from the occasional item of clothing, though if you looked at anything else in the comics (especially photo-related) then you notice how Totally Radical it was.
 * Trademark Favorite Food: Bean burgers for Sonic.
 * Unlimited Wardrobe: Amy, unlike her original continuity counterpart, has one different outfit for each story she appears in.
 * Vague Age: Past events are often stated as happening "years ago" later in the comic implying it's been quite a few years since the beginning of the comic. No one seems to have aged though (Art Evolution aside), except possibly Amy (though she still looks young when her quills are pulled up). The comics also began before Sonic had an age conformation in the West so it's unknown what age he was at the start. Being a UK comic, Knuckles and Sonic are probably over eighteen near the end due to the fact they've both been shown at bars. Sonic and friends are listed as "young" instead of an actual age in their official bios too. Amy doesn't seem to be the "eight years" old she is in the games, maybe just a bit younger than Sonic, though at times she does look childish early on (though this could just be because she's an anime hedgehog). The only hint at Sonic's age is from an early issue where Sonic is a human, and he looks like a prepubescent boy of around 8 or 9.
 * Villainous Breakdown: After constantly losing to Sonic for years Robotnik undergoes this as well as becoming an Omnicidal Maniac in the original comics' last two story arcs.
 * Wetware CPU: Robotnik's plot during the buildup to issue #100 involved connecting the Emerald Hill Folk together to form a gigantic computer.
 * Wham Episode: Quite a few infact; Robotnik taking over Mobius and his defeat in the 100th issue,
 * When All You Have Is a Hammer: Averted: Sonic's natural tendency is to just plow through his enemies with shear force and speed, but when faced with an enemy who this doesn't work against he tends to get more tactical and use his powers more creatively (grabbing hold of them and super-vibrating himself, creating cyclones with his speed, angling his attacks so that his momentum is transferred to the enemy, or timing the attack to strike at the point where the enemy is most vulnerable).
 * We Want Our Jerk Back: They actually did this the other way around with Tails in one story. Inverted because he actually turned into a jerk and they wanted their Nice Guy back.
 * What Could Have Been: After Sonic the Comic went reprint-only, writer Nigel Kitching posted some of his intended ideas for stories on the STC mailing list - here and here for example. Some of those ideas were later adopted by the STC-Online Fan Web Comics.
 * With Friends Like These: The Chaotix Crew.
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity / Super Powered Evil Side: Super Sonic. So very much.
 * Your Size May Vary: Even within a single story, Robotnik's volume apparently expanded and contracted in response to dramatic tension, going from 'averagely-sized obese guy' to 'colossal looming giant' as the situation demanded and panel-space allowed.
 * You're Insane: Grimer to Robotnik after Chaos absorbs the Chaos Emeralds;

Grimer: You're... you're mad...

Robotnik: So what?"