It’s awesome to see so many Sonic fans here! Opinions on the character and series are so varied, it’s great to hear why everyone enjoys them.
I realise I’ve never actually said why I love the character so much, so I thought I’d give a brief explanation;
Originally playing the Mega Drive games as a kid it was just the “cool” factor. For whatever reason, SEGA really managed to grab that 90’s attitude with the character better than pretty much anyone else. He was the epitome of cool, at least for we 10-12 year olds in Australia.
After the “death” of the Dreamcast I moved away from console gaming and Sonic. I didn’t want to side with “enemys” Nintendo or Sony, so started PC gaming. As there wasn’t much Sonic stuff on PC - apart from the Adventure re-release and the odd compilation of 16-bit games - my interest wained.
This continued until 2011 or so. Completely on a whim I picked up and issue of Archie’s Sonic comic. I had read it before but not though much of it, so not really sure what enticed me to grab it, perhaps the artwork?
Anyway, it was issue #168 and early into Ian Flynn’s career writing the character. Well, I absolutely LOVED it! The characters were well rounded, the dialogue actually intelligent and the story lots of fun. I continued picking up issues from that point and have followed Flynn’s work ever since.
Honestly, I credit Flynn almost exclusively for my current love of Sonic. I was very much a lapsed fan when I read that first comic and his writing utterly captured me. He presented these characters that I knew from old in a way that was intelligent, interesting and respectful but also heaps of fun. He didn’t treat them as “just for kids” as others have done (looking at you, Penders, you bastard!). He gave us a peek behind the cool, as it were, and showed the humanity of the characters, as much as SEGA would allow anyway.
I thought the series showed just why Sonic does what he does better than any of the games. In the games Sonic is the hero because he’s who you play as. Flynn showed what drove Sonic, and it really resonated with me. I also really clicked with how he depicted Sonic and Tails’ relationship; kind of brotherly. Not sure why it clicked with me so much, maybe because I don’t have a brother or maybe because I was always the “weird” one at school, but I loved it.
Anyway, after this I started getting heavily into the serie again. I also became interested in retro gaming at this time so that helped; revisiting the older games and reading up about them.
Now, I find Sonic to be interesting because of the kind of hero he is. I guess the closest example would be Spider-Man. He does what he does not because he has to, but because he believes it’s the right thing to do. He fights for people’s freedom not based on any ideology, but because he believes people should be able to decide for themselves what their life should be and, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, is happy for them to do so. He does what he does not out of a specific world view, or a quest for vengeance, or to right some wrong, but because it’s right. To me that is the best kind of hero.
Wow. This got really long. Sorry everyone. 
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