Knuckles the Echidna

Knuckles the Echidna, originally published as Knuckles: The Dark Legion, was an action-adventure comic book series published by Archie Comics. The series starred Knuckles the Echidna, a main character from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series of video games. The book was a spin-off of Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog, with both series sharing narrative continuity. The series served as a successor to Sonic's Friendly Nemesis: Knuckles, a three-issue limited series from 1996. Knuckles was almost exclusively written by Ken Penders, the former lead writer of Sonic. Running from 1997 to 2000, the series had 32 issues in total. The first 21 issues were eventually reprinted alongside the Sonic's Friendly Nemesis miniseries in the Knuckles the Echidna Archives series of graphic novels, which ran from 2011 to 2013. The series consisted of four volumes, with two more left unreleased after numerous delays. Focusing on Knuckles' exploits of fighting evil and seeking answers about his past, the series was notable for heavily expanding upon the Sonic series' fictionalized echidna race's history. After the series' cancellation, its storyline was continued in the form of supporting stories in Sonic the Hedgehog, sometimes even tying in with the issues' main stories. Knuckles wouldn't get a leading role in comics again until 2009 with the Sonic Universe anthology comic series, and by 2013 all characters, locations and other elements introduced in Knuckles had been erased from all of Archie's Sonic books through a continuity reboot. Background Knuckles' first appearance in Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog came in This Island Hedgehog, a loose comic adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 featured as the main story of issue #13. Following his debut, Knuckles instantly became a fan favorite character, with Archie ending up receiving a lot of fan mail demanding for more stories featuring him. This feedback gained Knuckles appearances in several one-shot specials as well as Sonic's supporting stories. Sonic issues #34-#36 featured a particularly significant three-part Knuckles story, A Sense Of History, which was the first Sonic story to explore Knuckles' heritage.