Exit: Sonic By Nigel Kitching (Epilogue to Sonic The Comic)

If you were a Sonic the Hedgehog fan growing up in the 1990s, you may or may not know there was more than one Sonic comic series, for the U.S there was the Archie series, but for British gamers, there was Fleetway publication's [I]Sonic The Comic[/I]. This fun little nugget contained comic strips based off not just Sonic, but a lot of popular SEGA games at the time too, as well as previews, reviews and tips on the latest games.

Eventually, the comic became 100% all about Sonic and his world however, and the strips focused on a mix of established and original characters. Yeha, you had Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Robotnik, Metal Sonic (or "Metallix" as he was known here) but you also had the Brotherhood of Metallix, the Pirates of the Mystic Cave, the Drakan empire, Shortfuze the Cybernix, Casino Night owners the Marixo Brothers, even Super Sonic was made his own independent character as a splinter of Sonic's dark side.

The comic came to an end around 2001 or 2002/2003, but was eventually resurrected by fans as an online continuation called STC Online. They recently brought the title up to it's 270th edition.

Now a special one-shot has been released, "Exit: Sonic", written by veteran Sonic The Comic writer Nigel Kitching, which is set in the far-off future, long after all the big battles and storylines left to be developed...and it's really engaging.

[url]http://www.stconline.co.uk/comics/exitsonic/[/url]

[spoil]Sonic is speeding along when Tails catches up to him. Sonic is feeling a bit under the weather but goes with him to meet up with the remaining Freedom Fighters. We learn Amy is now a mother to a son that she's named after Johnny Litefoot...but while the father of the child is unknown, she is in a relationship with BFF Tekno the Canary and Sonic is Johnny's godfather.

Sonic hasn't been feeling too well, and Porker Lewis has set up a chaos dialysis machine for him. Doctor Robotnik is a prisoner and is seemingly insane. Knuckles reveals Robotnik came through the group's Chaos Emerald Array, having been trapped in a Chaos vortex for many years. Porker explains the assembled chaos emeralds apparently drew Robotnik back to their world, since he too is made of Chaos energy.

Robotnik suddenly ambushes the freedom fighters, revealing that he had used a homing device hidden in his tooth to bring his faithful ally Grimmer to the headquarters so he could free him..and Grimmer brought a friend as well...Super Sonic!

Super Sonic destroys the diallisis machine, Porker traps him in a stasis field and attempts to repair what he destroyed and partially succeeds, but the effort drains all the power in the room, leading to emergency power being run. Robotnik cheers on Super Sonic, but the unstable hedgehog murders Grimmer and almost Robotnik as well. Super Sonic chokes out regular Sonic, Porker blasts him with chaos energy but it's seemingly too late and Sonic is killed

But...PLOT TWIST, the dialysis machine was siphoning chaos energy from Sonic and storing it within the chaos emeralds, Porker revealed this was the cause of Sonic's illness. Robotnik steadily recovers...but he's now reverted back to his old self, Doctor Kintober. He rambles on about phase fields and quantium frequencies, and Poker reveals that's exactly what he did to merge Super Sonic and Sonic together, restoring Sonic to full health!

The story's epilogue sees Kintober moving his equipment to the floating island, where it's revealed his old Robotnik persona has been saved to computer. Kintober shuts the computer down[/spoil]

The issue is free as it's a fan made publication