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My STC Archive - Final Day

Exit: Sonic (Part 2) from STC #275 (2018)

It took a little longer than expected but here we are, the conclusion to Exit: Sonic!

I spoke about the genesis of getting the story together in the previous post so I'll talk about the art this time:

Most of the "big" STC stories that everyone talks about were usually written by Nigel Kitching and drawn by Richard Elson - there were so many other incredible talents on the comic but a lot of discussions always come back to those two because of stories like 'The Sonic Terminator', the Knuckles and Death Egg stories, 'The Brotherhood of Metallix', 'Running Wild', the Drakon Empire stories, the final run featuring Chaos...

Those stories are what first drove me to *really* start drawing comics and I always hoped I'd be able to come close to the incredible talent that Elson showcased - in fact, to this day when writing a Sonic story, it's Elson's art style that I see in my head while I'm putting it all together.

I knew for this final STC story from Nigel Kitching that I needed to pull out all the stops and push myself to produce not only the best work I've done for the comic, but also to give it as much classic Elson style as possible.

From the character designs and poses to the background style, I researched the Elson STC back catalogue extensively to consider how he would have put the scene together and then merged that with my own style to create something that's hopefully still unique but the homage and influence is clear.

Beyond that, I also attempted to find ways to homage certain scenes from the comics history too. Page 3 is one big homage in the scenes. Panel 1 being based on the infamous scene in STC #35 where Robotnik had been captured and Porker Lewis is attempting to interrogate him for information while panel 2 recreates the camera angle used in STC #123 when the Drakons invaded the Emerald Chamber! 

Page 7 recreates the iconic Super Sonic pose used in 'Running Wild' through to 'The Final Victory' in STC #100 only using the more modern character style from later issues such as STC #184.

Page 8 takes inspiration from both STC #184 and the incredible splash page of Sonic fighting the Knuckles Metallix. 

There's even a homage to Nigel Kitching's cover from STC #86 on page 12!

What else is there to say about Exit: Sonic?

Originally Nigel K had asked for an entirely new look for Amy Rose, and I did begin sketching some ideas (I should've asked Richard Elson as the look he created for the STC25 exclusive poster was incredible!) but after we lost a beloved member of the team, Matt Dittmer, earlier this year - Amy was his favourite character so I decided to keep the classic look only make the top black instead of white as a mark of respect. That splash panel of Amy kicking Robotnik's butt is my tribute to Matt.

The final pages had to have panels modified and re-drawn as after I'd quizzed him, Nigel K realised he'd forgotten to include a key plot point in the script so the ending as originally drawn didn't make sense, oops!

I was originally going to draw the epilogue but Nigel K really wanted to so how could I turn him down? It looks stunning and is a perfect cap to the tale!

The story as originally pitched turned out quite differently to what I thought it was originally going to be - I knew there was a misdirection over Sonic's "illness" but I had no idea Kintobor was returning (for good this time!) until I got the second part of the script just a month before we were aiming to launch the story - it certainly gave me a shock!

It was an absolute privilege and honour to get to draw a (second) story written by Nigel Kitching - As I've probably said many times before, so many of his stories from Sonic the Comic are still etched into my mind 25 years later and had so much influence on my formative years, I still hold Decap Attack single-handedly responsible for my twisted sense of humour! With 'In Memory' it was a more straight-forward affair of receiving a script and drawing it so to get to commision 'Exit: Sonic' and collaborate with Nigel on it was a super rewarding experience - certainly one I never imagined I'd get, so thank you so much for not only taking the time to come back to STC for one more epic tale, but allowing me to come along for the ride!

Even though he didn't directly collaborate on Exit: Sonic, I have to say a huge thank you to Richard Elson - his art in the comic inspired me so much and was such a major influence on this story.

Another STC artist whose work inspired me so much (I have a page of his original art from STC #66 on my wall) and deserves a huge chunk of praise is Nigel Dobbyn - who took my inks and elevated them to a whole other level with his amazing colours. I can't thank Nigel enough for being willing to take the time to colour Exit: Sonic!

I am genuinely so happy with the way this story has turned out, it may have exploded from the original 7 pages to 17 but I poured so much of my love for STC into the art and I hope it shows. I devoted every ounce of time I had outside of my job and sleeping (oh, and STC #275 and 'The Battle for Drak' and the STC25 convention!) to put this story together over the first half of the year and I think they're the best pages I've ever produced.

I hope everyone enjoyed reading it as much as I did making it! 😃

My STC Archive - Day 23

Exit: Sonic (Part 1) from STC #275 (2018)

A few years ago I started thinking about STC’s 25th anniversary coming up and wanted to make sure the occasion was marked with something incredible.

For the 20th anniversary, STC writer extraordinaire Nigel Kitching agreed to write a special anniversary story “In Memory”, I pencilled it and the great Nigel Dobbyn did inks and colours - I thought it would be fun to do something similar (though I was angling to do more of the art this time as I knew it would be my final STC story) so I approached Nigel K with a couple of ideas:

1) A Sonic the Comic fortnightly! This would be a 65 page epic, releasing over 52 weeks (7 pages during week 1, week 26, and week 52, with 2 pages releasing each fortnight) - collaborating with me on the story (and potentially others) and having a huge roster or artists helping out.

Obviously, this was hugely ambitious - but this was being planned a couple of years in advance so there was potential for it to be possible.

2) Given 7 pages and the title “Exit: Sonic”, what would you do? This would the final STC story that would ever be told - how it all ends at some point in the future (after many other adventures in the meantime).

Nigel went with option 2, obviously - as option 1 he wasn’t sure he’d be able to commit to such a large tale as the weekly and admittedly I had concerns about getting the art all sorted - option 2 was definitely the better choice!

So, Nigel headed off to have a think about it. I knew he had some STC stories he was still interested in telling - he’d actually pitched an arc to us a few years ago but it didn’t happen for various reasons, unfortunately.

I met Nigel K the next year at Summer of Sonic 2016 and he’d started to put together ideas, and also involved Nigel D who volunteered to do the colours.

Time passed and by Jan 2018 I knew STC #275 would be released for the 25th anniversary on 29th May 2018, and I’d begun planning for the STC25 convention in early June - so we knew we were on a bit of a tight schedule.

At this point, I also wanted to do something as a surprise farewell gift for the STC Team.

See, for all of us working on the comic, a lot of us haven’t been able to enjoy a brand new Sonic the Comic story that we didn’t write, or draw, or discuss, or contribute to in some way for years. For me - the last STC story I didn’t have any prior knowledge of was waaaaay back in STC #184 for the last new story the print!comic published - that was in the year 2000!

So, as the story was set in the far future and wasn’t going to impact any future plans (I was pretty sure the next STC Team wouldn’t be killing off any of the main characters!) I decided this would be a really cool parting gift. I mean, for an STC fan what’s a better gift than a brand new epic written by Nigel Kitching? If there had ever been the opportunity for that to happen to me I’d be thrilled!

More time passed and then early 2018 a script for the first 7 pages was completed - with a massive cliffhanger!

Obviously, the plan only was 7 pages (I’ve become a little more realistic in my artistic output over the years and figured that was my limit in the time we had!) but if this story needed more, then it would have more - so I set to work!

Reading the script was such an exciting experience - and Nigel deciding to make this his final STC story was a huge surprise to me so seeing it written on page one of the script gave me a shock! I wasn’t expecting this to be both of our swansongs!

So, that’s the background!

The story is massively exciting, and I can’t wait for everyone to see how it ends. Not even the rest of the STC team have seen part 2 yet! Nigel Dobbyn is almost finished with the colouring of the final pages so hopefully, it will be released very soon!

I’ll talk more about the story and my art when I get to post the pages for part 2!

My STC Archive - Day 22

The Battle for Drak STC #275 (2018)

So, I was never actually supposed to be drawing anything for “The Battle for Drak” beyond the final panel, but due to a few delays and art disasters I had to step in a week before it was due to go to print and rush out four pages in the space of a couple of days along with colouring a few others, yikes!

This really was down to the wire, with the final pages literally coming in only a couple hours before we had to send the comic off to the printers to get it in time for STC25.

Artwise I can say I’m happy enough as I got to draw some cool stuff and plenty of Sonic and Amy - who are my favourites to draw. I’m particularly happy with the inventive ways the Drakon super Sentinels were dispatched - one by bubbles (this was way before Infinity War did it, btw!) and one via Mobius Ring portals. 

The page involving the destruction of the Emerald Alter (bet you never thought you’d see that again once the Emerald Chamber was introduced, right?!) was only ever meant to be one panel but had to be bumped to it’s own page so I thought I’d better draw it rather than trying to cajole someone else into doing it! It was also fun to have a scene similar to in 250 where the Control Centre got blown up - I drew that page too, I must enjoy blowing things up I suppose!

Huge thanks to Chris G for shading most of these (bar the final panel and the Emerald Alter destruction) - I only just managed flat colours and they simply wouldn’t have been done in time otherwise.

Unfortunately, my final panel also got a bit rushed in the shuffle so thankfully I still had one more story to draw to put out my “finale” panel for STC.

Story-wise this was a massive undertaking...

I knew 275 would be my final issue, I decided that years ago, and started figuring out what it needed to do:

Wrap up the Drakon involvement on Mobius

Wrap of the Sonic fugitive arc and make him the hero again

Repair Sonic and Amy’s friendship

Put all the toys back in the box for whatever comes next

Originally there wasn’t much of a build up to 275, as the aim was also to keep it relatively self-contained so as to not interfere with other stories in the works.

I’d laid the foundation of the Drakon resistance in a Blaze story, and everything else was set up in my own stories (other people were free to use these concepts but no one picked them up, alas!) so I knew that they needed to be involved and by the end of the story the Drakon Empire essentially needed to be dismantled so they’re no longer a threat to Mobius - a decisive victory the type of which you can never have with Robotnik as he always has to come back. I had great fun writing Haggra’s insults!

The Sonic fugitive story was always meant to be more interesting than it was, and our release schedule simply meant it took longer than planned to get through it all (275 was never meant to coincide with the 25th anniversary, I had originally hoped it would be released in 2015 or something, haha - crazy!) and we thought about ending it sooner but cementing Sonic’s place as hero of Mobius once again required something huge - a true planet save. So we waited until 275.

Robotnik had been finished off in the previous story but he needed his moment in the spotlight especially after all the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of the Drakons since 250 - hooked up to their machines and essentially used as a puppet - so I was happy to give him the killing blow rather than Sonic. The Drakons never respected Robotnik or considered him a threat so for him to have used that to his advantage and take them down appealed to me. Who knew Robotnik would save the day, right?

Amy and the Miracle Planet had been lost in #270 and I always knew they end up on Drak (an early idea for 275 included all our main cast ending up on Drak) and decided to drop in a reveal that the Miracle Planet is actually from Drak - explaining why it needs to be chained to Mobius to stop it floating back there. I’ll leave it to other writers if they want to dive into how it ended up chained to Mobius...

Amy needed a big role in the story - for me, she’s always been the 2nd role after Sonic, and also a uniquely STC character, so she became a general and took the Drakon resistance to the next level - which I thought was great. If I’d had more pages (I decided 32 was enough!) I’d have liked to give Amy more to do and more of a payoff at the end but there was no way we could add more.

(Oh, if you’re wondering why Amy is holding her jacket on page 15 - it’s because she was wearing it in her previous scene but not in the next one so to fix the continuity gaff I added in the jacket to my panel, the attention to detail, folks!)

So, that thing with Sonic, in the first basic draft of ideas I got to this point and then had to write myself out of the hole, haha! How does Sonic get out of this one? And then I thought more about Chaos energy and how it’s worked in the comic and it kind of all just made sense. Sonic was originally exposed to chaos energy that Kintobor was using to store all the evil on Mobius - so an evil Super Sonic when that chaos energy asserted itself within him makes perfect sense. But we purged all that evil energy in “Unleashed!” so what happens when he absorbs pure Chaos energy that’s neither good or bad, just neutral? Why, Sonic can use it however the heck he likes! And so we got a new version of Sonic - but I did write in the script that this should be a one time deal, it only happens because pretty much all the Chaos energy in the planet/galaxy/universe/whatever is currently flowing through Sonic. Having him get this powerful and being in control of his actions wouldn’t be that interesting if it kept happening. How to do you write villains that will challenge him at that point? It’s like the problem writers can have with Superman - you either underpower him to serve the plot or keep giving him more powerful enemies and neither works that well.

As it is, Sonic got a splash page to destroy some Drakon ships and things, but at the end, his powers were needed to help return the families who had been trapped on the Miracle Planet to Mobus, to re-attach the planet back to Mobius, and to send the newly free Drak back to where it came from. All positive uses of his power rather than destructive ones.

I’m super happy with this story - it does all the things it was supposed to, it gives almost every character in the comic a chance to shine (or at least appear) and is a great big adventure that lets our heroes be heroes and save the planet without any grim!dark getting in the way of the fun.

It was an absolute nightmare to manage as Editor though! Originally all of it was going to be drawn by one artist apart from the splash panels - which would each be drawn by others. But as things worked out the art chores kept having to change as we went through. 

Huge thank you to everyone who stepped up to help out, with a load of us doing all-nighters leading up to the deadline! 

After 15 years and 52 issues, this was my final statement on Sonic the Comic as a writer and as Editor-in-Chief/Hume-in-Charge, I hope people enjoyed it as it was a fantastic experience making it happen! :)

My STC Archive - Day 21

Rouge: The Boss of Me from STC #274 (2018)

My penultimate story for the comic, and the penultimate issue on my run as hume-in-charge! This also gave me the opportunity to draw one of Chris G’s stories for a change - his first work for the comic was drawing some of my stories so there’s a fun symmetry there I suppose.

Oh boy, those first two pages look ages as I was not used to drawing any of those characters. Plenty of Sonic Boom cameos to check out though!

Rouge’s outfit in the first two pages is inspired by Joan Collin’s character from Dynasty - all shoulder pads and fabulous power suit!

Once we got to page three and Rouge was wearing her regular outfit and interacting with Master Scholar things got easier at least.

I also tried to make sure Rouge looked more in proportion than she does in some of her other appearances in the comic, oh my!

In keeping with the Sonic Boom refs I tried to keep the style of this tale a little more cartoony

My STC Archive - Day 20

Super Sonic Unleashed! Part 3 from STC #268 (2015)

I was originally meant to draw 1-2 pages of each of the three parts of Unleashed but, yeah, life had other ideas so thankfully the incredible India Swift stepped in to help out as I only had time to do one page in the end! As with the rest of the story (and so much of the comic), the super talented Pete Murphy provided colours.

While it was only one page there was plenty of fun stuff to draw, Super eclipsed by the Floating Island, and then him invading the Emerald Chamber!

I’m particularly happy with the splash panel of Super Sonic with the fake emeralds. Always reminds me of a scene from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where a character discovers something had been faked:

“It’s a faaaaake!”

My STC Archive - Day 19

Sonic vs Silver from STC #265 (2014)

The encounter between Sonic and Silver had been built up for almost 10 issues at this point so when we needed an artist to step in and take this story I jumped at the chance to play with such a fun battle!

I didn’t have the time to colour it so the amazing Kim Sato stepped in at the last minutes to colour it all.

I’d never drawn Silver at all so it took me a little while to get to grips with all that hair! His powers were a lot of fun to draw though, the script had some great visuals.

I’m also pleased STC got the chance to have it’s own (much more dramatic) take on the Silver/Sonic fight from the 2006 game. 

Artwise I’m really pleased with everything, I’d not drawn the main story in a while and was raring to get back to drawing Sonic, plus Silver’s powers gave me the opportunity to play with panel layouts, which I do love to do.

My STC Archive - Day 18

Mouse Compatible from STC #264 (2014)

I think this was the first time I got to draw Shadow and Chaotix in the comic, that took a while!

I was thrilled to take on this story to play with the contrast between the real world and the digital world - I loved the digital levels in Shadow’s game way back when so wanted to recreate that style in some form and use actual CG for it and so all the digital background were built using Autodesk Maya. Actually creating a Shadow and Robotnik model would have been too time-consuming so I decided it would be best to just draw them as normal.

This was also (and very aptly) my first story where everything was done digitally. The pencils, inks, and colours were all digitally done using Clip Studio Paint. Before now I’d always worked on paper for my pencils and inks but from this point on I have no paper versions of any of my art, which still feels odd.

Great story by Jamie J that also introduced Iggy the Mouse (you may recognise the reference from the old Sonic adventure books from the 90s!) giving me the opportunity to design a new character, it took a few goes till I settled on a look:

I even got to get an Adam West Batman and Robin cameo in there thanks to the first page scene of Espio walking up a building wall!

My STC Archive - Day 17

In Memory from STC #261 (2013)

And here’s the pencils from my other post from this amazing 20th anniversary story. Story by Nigel Kitching, Inks and Colours by Nigel Dobbyn.

My STC Archive - Day 17

In Memory from STC #261 (2013)

Oh boy, this was incredible! Original STC alums Nigels Kitching and Dobbyn agreed to return for a 20th anniversary story and allowed me the honour to draw it - achievement unlocked, right?!

I only pencilled these pages, Nigel Dobbyn did the inks, colours, and letters and really gave them a fantastic finish to make it really pop! 

I tried to keep the two Sonic’s as distinctive as possible by referencing Elson’s style from the story this references (”Girl Trouble” from STC #20 and #21) to contrast him with his more modern look. The eye colours helped too!

All of this was on top of a wonderfully bittersweet story by Nigel Kitching. To get to work with two of the people responsible for a major part of my formative years was a dream come true - I never thought I’d get the chance to work with them again, let alone collaborate so much more with them for the 25th anniversary!

My STC Archive - Day 16

Master of All I Survey from STC #256 (2011)

Another big jump since drawing my last story, but this story really stood out to me as a chance for some cool visuals - I’ve never really drawn Robotnik much in the comic and I’d not drawn Knuckles and his crew since the early issues so it seemed like a great match.

I took some artistic license with Robotnik’s machinery to make it creepier than the helmet we were using elsewhere. 

I enjoyed playing with page and panel layouts here and am still really happy with the end results.

My STC Archive - Day 15

The Battle for Mobius from STC #250 (2009)

Issue 250 was so much fun! It was a massive story and pretty much every member of the STC team at that time contributed to it in some way and it was brilliant!

Ed and I had spoken about what we’d want from STC 250 for a while and the Drakons kept coming up, as did the return of Robotnik so we combined them, and began leading to this moment during both the Syndicate/Shadow arc and again with the Sonic the Fugitive arc.

The story was broken down into individual scenes and was then up for grabs for artists to pick which scenes they’d like to draw.

I really wanted to blow up the Control Centre so I picked that one, and I don’t think I’d ever got to draw a Sonic and Tails scene at this point so picked that too. I also enjoyed the symmetry of both scenes including the Control Centre.

I can’t remember if there was a specific reason I chose the Casino Night splash for the montage or if it just hadn’t been taken/someone had dropped out.

I really enjoyed playing with panel composition with these pages - having them all intertwined and different sizes.

My STC Archive - Day 14

Tekno & Shorty - Twilight from STC #249 (2009)

This is pretty much always where I’d wanted Tekno to end up. I’d always loved the idea of Tekno going dark - having one of our main characters being pushed into anti-hero status or even outright villain.

Lew had considered having Tekno betray the team during the original run, but that got vetoed so became Johnny (but not actually Johnny) during the Agent X stories. I still thought Tekno could still viably explore that path at this stage - but would always return to the hero fold eventually. 

A lot of people forget that Tekno did work for Robotnik - she’s very pragmatic when it comes to her survival - and caused untold amounts of trouble for people across Mobius before she was caught out during the “Amy vs. Tekno” flashback story in our first online issue. I remember being very concerned at how Tekno dispatched Set in STC #269 - by booting him into an endless void - and decided that was worth picking up again. Sonic, Amy, and Tekno could have defeated Set and imprisoned him given the chance - but Tekno may as well have murdered Set by leaving him floating through an endless void forever (or until he starves, or if he doesn’t need to eat then till he dies of old age, or if he doesn’t age then truly forever!) - which shows Tekno to still have quite the ruthless streak when it comes to protecting herself and her friends.

Being stranded on Solstice was a chance to break down both Tekno and Shorty and take a look at them when they’re not in their comfort zone. For the first time in his life - Shorty found peace there, living a more simple life without all the stress and terror of his existence on Mobius and being trapped in the Cybernik armour. Tekno didn’t fair so well - she’s always been our gadget girl and she had to go cold turkey on all technology with no way to return home.

After finding out it was all a plot by Set, it’s no wonder Tekno sees red. Set manipulated her, manipulated Shorty - hacked the new armour she made for him, pitted the two against each other, sabotaged the Eternity Ring and dumped them in a desert hell, and then manipulated them on Solstice too! I’d be annoyed too!

So after a all-out fight that wrecks half of the pyramid they were in, Tekno makes a final decision that looks like she killed Set.

Spoiler: she didn’t. But we didn’t know this at this point.

I’m super happy with my art in this story, especially the splash panels. I struggled to get the big panel of Tekno “killing” Set right so somewhere there’s a photo of me that I took in that pose to use for reference!

The final page I felt it important to not see Tekno’s face, leaving it up to the reader to decide how she’s feeling.

My STC Archive - Day 13

Tekno & Shorty - Sunset from STC #248 (2008)

The first two parts of this tale (and the rest of the Tekno & Shorty stories so far in the comic) had been wonderfully drawn by Chris G - but he was unable to complete the last two so I stepped in to finish off this arc.

This story is all setup really, putting all the pieces in place for the finale - I enjoyed writing the slaves - trying to give them all distinct personalities even though there’s little detail to their design.

Shorty being out of commission also leaves a very distressed and angry Tekno without someone she trusts to talk with about it all.

My STC Archive - Day 12

Amy & Tekno - Revolutionary Part 3 from STC #249 (2009)

Now, I still like Revolutionary Part 3! While I was never too happy with the first two parts of the tale due to some writers block here and some last minute rushing there - part 3 I’m happy with the story and art.

I spent more time on the art so I was able to do some more interesting page layouts - ink them, and play with a brighter colour palette compared to the previous parts.

Story-wise I took a bit of a step back at what had come before and pretty much re-wrote this on the fly. Ocean Falls wasn’t very involved in my initial ideas and yet they’re the whole reason Amy and Tekno get called in the first place so I added them in - again aimed to give our leads some fun interactions, put Nack in his place and make the whole story a little more fun.

Hopefully, that is reflected in the final product! 

My STC Archive - Day 11

Amy & Tekno - Revolutionary Part 2 from STC #248 (2008)

Oh, Revolutionary part 2,  I knew vaguely what I wanted to happen here but it was so rushed in the end I didn’t even have time to ink it. 

By the time I lettered it I aimed to give Amy and Tekno a bit more banter to try and liven it up as the script was more-or-less just panel descriptions.

I regret not giving Nack something more to do - going through it again, I’d have had a page checking in on him and the General and giving the story more meat, some kind of secondary arc going on. Oh well!