Since they are so short I do find them quite easy to binge. Also, my Disney+ was about to renew for the month and I decided I wanted to cancel it, so wound up binging Season 3 so I could cancel it in time.
Anyway, Bluey is such a great show. I love the humour, style, music, cast of characters. Its just so wholesome. Funny how many characters it makes me love, even if they only get featured for one episode.
“What, Chloe’s dad gets an episode? Who cares about him?” One episode later: “He’s great, I hope he gets to come back at some point.”
Will be nice when the last 10 episodes of Season 3 make it on to Disney+. From what I understand, Season 3 has three more episodes to go, and then the show will basically be on hiatus as the creator’s are taking a break before they start on Season 4. There’s going to be a 28 minute special, and its rumoured that it’s going to be about Uncle Rad and Frisky’s wedding.
So yeah, great stuff. Kept crying too, Season 3 has some real doozy’s. “Onesies” and “Space” hit very hard.
The story of Archie Sonic is a saga all by itself. Quite frankly, I don’t know all the details, as far as I’m aware there isn’t any one place or video that sums everything up conveniently.
Basically, Archie Sonic begins in the very early days of Sonic when there wasn’t much story or continuity to work with, only a series bible. The comic begins life as pure comedy, mimicing the cartoon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Penders joins on quite early, writing stories and sometimes doing artwork, with several other writers. He is one person who helps transisition the comic from being comedic to being more action focused and serious, similar to the other cartoon show SATAM.
Between the release of Sonic & Knuckles in 1994, and Sonic Adventure in 1998/1999, Sonic goes through a dry period of releases. Sonic doesn’t even get a main title on the Sega Saturn, one of many reasons why that console wasn’t so successful. Because of this, the comic basically does its own thing for a while since there isn’t much to adapt. This sees Dr Robotnik being killed off and dead for over 2 years. (Guessing the writers didn’t realise he was always going to stick around in the games but hey ho.) Knuckles would get his own monthly series that would last 32 issues and that was Ken Penders baby where he had full creative control. It’s where alot of the stuff that gets pulled from Archie to mock Penders is pulled from, such as the weird thing of obsession of Knuckles’ ancestory, that time he quoted a poem about the Holocaust, the three issues about Knuckles’ hitting puberty, the fact that Knuckles’ dad is terrible and deliberately irradiated him when he was an egg to give him chaos powers because of a premonition, etc.
Eventually, Sonic Adventure happened. For the games, Sonic Adventure is really when the mainline continuity starts. Sure, stuff did happen in previous games, but Adventure is when the mainline series would carve out its own stories, tone, identity, as well start to introduce alot of Sonic’s core secondary cast. The Archie writers and especially Ken Penders, had very little interest in the games. They did give Sonic Adventure a big 6 issue tie-in. (Which humourously, in the letters sections has them state that they basically sent the one staff member who did play video games to get a copy of Sonic Adventure and play the game, then relate what the plot is to the writers so they could write the adaptation.) But after that, they made very little attempt to align the continuity of the comic with the video games. Sonic Adventure 2 gets a one issue tie-in that reeks of obligation, and they didn’t even bother for mainline games like Sonic Heroes. It meant that Archie, in comparison, just became more and more of its own bizarre weird thing in comparison to the games that actually had stories now.
Penders would leave after issue #159, after overseeing what is generally seen as the worst era of the comic from around issue #130, with bad plotlines, melodrama, and just bizarre priorities. Penders only left because a new editor came in who wouldn’t let him do what he wanted. Ian Flynn took over from issue #160 to the book’s end. His tenure, especially the first couple years, can be seen as him trying to help correct the book’s trajectory, keeping the uniqueness of Archie’s history and continuity and unique characters whilst trying to make the comics at least have some resembalance to the video games.
Years later, Penders would sue Archie over the ownership of his characters. Generally speaking, whenever you work for an existing comic, TV show etc if you create a character for it, that character is kept by the company. Archie actually lost the paperwork and couldn’t prove Penders even signed it, which is why Penders won. It also meant other Archie writers also got rewarded the characters they created in the process.
Issue #252 would see the New Genesis Wave causing massive changes to the Archie universe, as all of Penders’ characters were wiped from existence, and alot of characters were redesigned to meet Sega’s guidelines. (Fun fact, Sonic female characters have to cover their chest and groin areas, but male characters can never wear trousers, only shoes and socks from the waist down.) Sega wanted to take the opportunity to reset the comic entirely to issue #1, but Ian Flynn fought to keep as much of the original continuity, as well as keeping things like Antoine and Bunny’s marriage.
But eventually, Sega ended the comic, and certainly not because of low sales considering the main book and the other monthly book Sonic Universe were still going strong. As far as I’m aware it’s never been explicitly stated why the comic ended, Sega did the crappy thing of basically saying the comic was on “hiatus”, and then only ever confirmed it had properly ended like a year later after everyone had already figured out the truth. Probably a mix of things like the Penders debacle, Archie’s general incompetance, and perhaps wanting to have a comic that was actually close to the games and followed the same mandates, which is what the IDW series would do.
With Penders himself, I imagine there are fans who would never forgive him for the lawsuit no matter what. But I think he would have alot more people on his side if ever showed any humbleness or respect or humility about the situation. Even just something along the lines of “I’m sorry for the trouble this caused the comic but the characters I created really meant alot to me” or something. Penders is just one of those guys who really shouldn’t have access to a Twitter account because he just keeps posting stuff that makes him look bad, bad ideas, bad political takes, and generally just being an unpleasant person who has no respect for anyone bar himself. He especially dislikes Ian Flynn and seems to resent him massively.
Probably the most infamous example of this is when he revealed on Twitter that in his canon, Geoffrey St John, a character he created, took Sally’s virginity. Problematic since it’s clear that St John is an adult and Sally a teenager, meaning staturary rape. And ignoring that can of worms, also very much clear of how much Penders puts his own creations over everything else. Ofcourse his awesome James Bond inspired character would take the virginity of Sonic’s primary love interest.
It doesn’t help that Penders hasn’t done anything with the characters he owns. He keeps talking about and releasing a book that would serve as a sortof quasi-sequel to his storylines with the characters he owns, but not one issue of it has materialised, whilst Archie fans had to contend with the fact that characters they liked just got ripped from the book.
At the risk of stating the obvious, but I wouldn’t take too much stock of what the Sonic fandom thinks. (Well, except for this Sonic fan’s opinions ofcourse.) I don’t like to dunk on the fandom since the fandom has been an easy punching bag for eons, for a lot of stuff that is equally prevelant in lots of other fandoms. But there are alot of kids and teenagers, there is toxic elements, and lots of different opinions on what Sonic should be.
What happened with Boom is that when it was announced, I don’t think anyone in the fandom was wanting from a TV show. After the failure of Sonic '06, Sega decided to stop trying to do serious plots and feature alot of Sonic’s characters due to criticism. Games like Colours and Lost World especially really had very simple plots, few characters, and really tried to be quite comedic, almost like Sonic being more Mario-esque. Then Boom is announced and it seems to be more of the same. I think for fans, what they want from a Sonic TV show is something like Shonen anime, action scenes, seriousness, proper storylines, like Sonic X and Sonic Prime. Whereas Boom is an episodic sitcom that has little in continuity.
It doesn’t help that the Boom cartoon was part of Sega’s Boom brand initiative, which was basically a failure. The release of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric on the Wii U. (Which started life as Sonic Synergy for the other consoles at the time before Sega forced them to be Wii U exclusive because they signed an exclusivity deal with Nintendo, then remaking it be Sonic Boom themed, and putting in an impossible deadline.) I don’t believe the toy line did too well. The redesigns were controversial, I’d say the decision to give everybody sports tape was… a choice. Knuckles is basically the same character in name only. By the time Season 2 started airing, Cartoon Network had put the show in a terrible slot, and for some regions like the UK, it was actually very difficult to even watch the show. I’ve still not seen Season 2 actually since UK Netflix only has Season 1, and the only way is to buy the Blu-Ray really, which only finally came out a couple years ago.
All that said though: Boom is a funny sitcom, it gives the characters alot of personality, and the meta elements is just a part of the charm of the show. I personally think once more time has passed and all people remember is just the show itself, it will gain more appreciation. But I would recommend you watch it yourself to see what you think. I think it is available on Netflix most places, at least the first season?
