The first was always a seven-page story about Sonic himself (except for #148 which began with the Tails strip), and in the earliest issues, the remaining three would involve a different Sega game character (see list below).

Later, the Sega backup strips were supplanted by stories focusing on supporting Sonic characters such as Tails, Knuckles, Amy and the Chaotix.

Speedlines returned in 2000, though it was no longer a regular feature and instead of Megadroid, the letters were supposedly answered by Sonic himself (actually editor Andy Diggle and later Steve MacManus).

Mark Millar, who wrote the first Streets of Rage storyline and some Sonic strips, has since written major titles for DC and Marvel Comics such as Wanted and Civil War; editor Andy Diggle has since become a comics writer; and Road to Perdition illustrator Richard Rayner contributed to Decap Attack scripts.

Neither Mobius nor any of the main characters bar Sonic and Amy featured, and the lack of ancillary strips meant no other stories could be told.

After Andy Diggle became the comic's editor, Stringer's run concluded with an apocalyptic final storyline, and Kitching returned with issue 175 for a ten-part adaptation of the videogame Sonic Adventure.

This happened at short notice – even Kitching was not aware that issue 184 would be his last until he requested an extension for the ten-issue storyline he was in the middle of writing, having apparently already made plans for future stories that would follow it.

The first of these was a Tails solo series which saw him return to his home in the Nameless Zone, where it was believed that he, not Sonic, was the great hero of Mobius.

In addition to Tails and Sonic, other members of the Freedom Fighters included Johnny Lightfoot and Porker Lewis, characters based upon the generic rabbit and pig sprites freed from Badniks in the video games.

The comic also introduced original characters such as the sky pirate Captain Plunder, rebellious super-Badnik Shortfuse the Cybernik and engineering genius Tekno the Canary, who occasionally featured in their own dedicated strips.

The comic's incorporation of characters from Knuckles' Chaotix established the alternate dimension called the Special Zone as a major location, and also introduced the Brotherhood of Metallix, an army of Metal Sonic robots who rebelled against Robotnik and embarked on a plan to alter the timeline and take over Mobius.

Although it ultimately amounted to little more than use of the different elements from the game (Flickies Island, the birds used for Badniks and dimensional travel via Mobius Rings), with the added introduction of a new Metallix villain (with its design based on Knuckles this time), it was a key stepping stone in shaping the direction of Sonic stories right up until the conclusion of the series.

Alliances, betrayals and double-crosses culminated in Robotnik's successful capture of the Emeralds and a 4-issue epic in which he had god-like powers & reshaped Mobius entirely, but when his body was drained of Chaos Energy, he vanished into a sub-atomic dimension.

A series of dimension-hopping adventures by Amy and Tekno resulted in Mobius being briefly invaded by Earth military forces, after which Sonic pursued Grimer and Nack the Weasel in their quest to recover Robotnik.

Robotnik had his own plans, however, using the dimensional technology that brought Sonic, Grimer and Nack to Shanazar to enlarge the world, fusing it with Mobius in a Crisis on Infinite Earths-style event.

Entering into a partnership with the living plastic alien hive-mind, The Plax, Robotnik used their technology to absorb elemental energy from both Mobius and Earth, forcing both worlds into total ecological collapse.

This proved to be one defeat too many for Robotnik; retreating physically and mentally, he languished in darkness until Grimer, desperate to snap his master out of his depression, initiated the events of the comic's final storyline, the adaptation of Sonic Adventure (although in practice, this would prove to be the loosest game adaptation yet, as the game's wildly different approach was largely incompatible with the STC universe).

Robotnik's suicide plan was thwarted, however, by the unexpected appearance of Super Sonic, dying due to depletion of his own chaos energy.

After Johnny Lightfoot's death at the hands of Chaos, Sonic blames himself and disappears for a short while, returning from his self-imposed exile with a less egocentric attitude and a stronger will.

This depiction of Tails does not have the genius-level intelligence of his video game counterpart, but is capable of flying the Tornado on his own, and coming up with cunning schemes to triumph over his enemies.

Amy first appeared in a two-part story where she was arrested by Dr. Robotnik's Trooper Badniks for the criminal offense of association with Sonic; she had been saying she was his girlfriend.

While annoyed at the fact she had been lying about them being an "item", Sonic still had a duty to rescue her and did so, but to his horror realised that she was now a fugitive and would have to stay with the Freedom Fighters.

At a later part of the comic's life, Amy would be mostly written by Lew Stringer as a straightforward adventurer and had a long series of back-up strips teamed up with her best friend Tekno.

Nigel Kitching originally planned for Amy to be more of an irritant for Sonic, influenced by 1930s and 40s "Hollywood screwball comedies" like It's a Wonderful World, but while still being a capable fighter.

The strip contained a very absurdist and manic sense of black humour, dealing with the daily life of Chuck, Head (the talking skull who, to Head's annoyance, gets thrown at enemies), the evil-minded Igor (who is constantly trying to kill Chuck) and the stereotypical mad scientist Professor Frank N. Stein, who is actually putting on his German accent and really comes from Cardiff.

In the first story, he was chased away by the horror of Stein's newest creation, a creature cloned with half a brain ("...a Blockbusters contestant!

The strip was set in a city ruled by Mr. X and his organised crime group The Syndicate, who were opposed by the video games' player characters Axel, Blaze, Max and later Skate.

In 1993, Virgin Publishing released four Sonic novels, written by James Wallis, Carl Sargent and Marc Gascoigne under the collective pseudonym "Martin Adams".

Amongst the points raised in the article included the following: • Unlike a number of other comics (such as those made by Marvel) any artwork was drawn only after STC was written as a full script.

Robert Corona noted that he couldn't say “how impressed I am at the dedication and talent that goes into STC Online," feeling that it was great that "those guys refused to accept the end just because the publisher decided to pull the plug."