Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

As you may have gathered, James, Seb and I share fond memories of “the UK’s official Sega comic“. Not to be confused with the US series published by Archie, STC was a fortnightly anthology book, published from 1993 to 2002. The title was closely modelled on 2000A.D., with which it shared an editor. Each issue was built around a seven-page Sonic strip, supported by three or so other stories based on Sonic’s supporting cast or other Sega franchises. But what made the title so endearing?

With global franchises so tightly controlled by their owners, it comes as something of a shock to reflect on the situation a mere fifteen years ago. Sega Enterprises were caught on the hop by the success of Yuji Naka’s creation, allowing their global subsidiaries to handle the character as they saw fit. This divergence, with the company’s three main territories each devising their own conceptualisation and tone for the franchise, resulted in some surprisingly different interpretations. Although striving to be consistent with the other UK holders of the Sonic licence, Fleetway had authority to portray the character as they saw fit, giving their creatives a surprisingly large amount of freedom. Although a number of writers contributed to the title, Nigel Kitching and Lew Stringer were the book’s mainstays. Their differing approaches complimented each other well, with Stringer’s self-contained episodic tales punctuating Kitching’s more in-depth epics. The artistic side was more varied, but Richard Elson’s clean and energetic style deservedly secured him priority for the lead strip, which he drew for most of the book’s life.

For a title with a bi-monthly publishing schedule, reaching the fiftieth issue mark is less of an achievement than might be initially supposed. Regardless, some sort of celebration was in order, and Nigel Kitching structured his ongoing “Day of the Death Egg” main-strip saga accordingly. He and Elson here serve up a showdown between Sonic, Knuckles and fan-favourite enemy Metallix. Although the writer has expressed pride at the emotional content he was sometimes able to introduce into the series, with one character experiencing a remarkably convincing nervous breakdown, the focus here is very much on action, with most of the instalment a straight fight sequence between Super Sonic and his robotic counterpart. In an example of the surprisingly loose control which Sega displayed over the property, the book portrayed the hedgehog’s alter ego as a bloodthirsty psychopath, who here decapitates his opponent before attacking Knuckles. Kitching first played this bold stroke in the early in the book’s life, and retained the concept’s power by carefully rationing Super Sonic’s appearances. The other strips in this issue are something of a mixed bag. While the short-lived Shinobi series adds some unexpected variety to the book, the team was never really able to find a way to make Tails an interesting character in his own right, and the fox’s strip here is distinctly weak. The high point of the trio of back-up strips is the Captain Plunder series, rounding out a comedy character first introduced in the main Sonic story several issues before. The writer’s affection for his own creations is obvious, and Plunder and his crew made several appearances throughout the book’s life.

After the book had reached the five-year lifespan which Fleetway’s management had always envisaged for it, they began winding the title down, replacing back-up strips with reprints and eventually axing new content altogether. For dead licensed comic, however, it’s enjoyed a surprisingly active afterlife, and most of its creators still work in the industry today. The one exception to this, however, is Kitching. The book’s lead writer sadly never found another home for his scripting talents, and these days works mainly as an illustrator in the children’s book market.

With hindsight, the key to the book’s success lies in its ability to treat the characters as its own. Normally only licensed comics with direct input from the franchises’ original creators have the confidence to up-end concepts without descending into fan-fiction. However, Kitching and Stinger’s effective ownership of the European iteration of Mobius, together with a near-instinctive feel for the tone of the series, still leaves a warm glow in many of their readers’ minds.