Sega cancels Sonic Comic series
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Sonic’s twenty five year run has ended.
Over Comic Con weekend Sega announced the termination of their licensing deal with Archie Comics to publish books featuring Sonic the Hedgehog. Those rights will now be shared with comic publisher IDW, a company that mostly publishes comics featuring licensed characters.
Archie had been publishing Sonic comic books since 1992, far longer than most license deals last in the comic industry. The long duration actually played a part in the series demise. Longtime series writer Ken Penders filed lawsuit against Archie Comics for ownership of characters he created while working on the comic. Typically in a licensed book those rights would be forfeit as detailed in the contract with the writer, but when the case was brought to court Archie Comics could not produce the original contract. The judge refused to accept a photocopy as evidence and Penders won his case. In response Archie rebooted the Sonic series and removed any characters created by Penders.
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All this sent the red flag to Sega. The judge set a precedent for past creators to come a pick the series apart, so Sega decided to protect the brand and axe the long running series and partnership. The Sonic franchise had changed in the twenty five years the comic ran. Originally Sonic didn’t have much of a supporting from the games, so other characters had to be created for the comic. Years later, and the game series has created a supporting cast of characters all completely owned by Sega. So a fresh start makes sense for them. It does leave a noticeable hole for Archie, who has had some issues recently with getting their books out on time.
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