Sonic Select

Main Info

Sonic Select is a graphic novel series that would begin publication in 2008, and would run for a full series of ten volumes before it's end, with Select being one of the few coming to a natural end, rather than suffering the premature cancellation that most of the other Archie books would face by the loss of the Sonic license in 2017. While Archives focused on reprinting the main content of the Archie Sonic series, Select was more or less all of the material outside of the series, reprinting most of the one-shot issues, the Super Specials, FCBD issues, video game tie-in stories, and more.

While the first five books simply reprinted stories from the Super Specials, the other books would follow a theme after the sixth book onwards, becoming a fairly unique attribute to this series, as the other books primarily focused on reprints that followed a specific order. 

Release Dates:

• Volume 1: April 2008
• Volume 2: November 2008
• Volume 3: January 2011
• Volume 4: December 2011
• Volume 5: May 2012
• Volume 6: October 2012
• Volume 7: March 2013
• Volume 8: The Death Egg Saga: September 2013
• Volume 9: The Games: March 2014
• Volume 10: January 2015

Stories Collected:

• Volume 1: Stories from Sonic In Your Face!, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Live!, and Sonic Triple Trouble
• Volume 2: Stories from Knuckles Chaotix, Super Sonic VS Hyper Knuckles, Mecha Madness, and Sonic Live!
• Volume 3: Stories from Sonic Super Special #1, #2, #4, Mecha Madness, and Sonic Blast
• Volume 4: Stories from Sonic Super Special #8, #10, #12, #14, and Sonic Blast
• Volume 5: Stories from Sonic Super Special #5, #8, #9, #11, and Sonic Blast
• Volume 6: The Death Egg Saga - Sonic Quest #1-3, FCBD #10, Pages from Sonic #224, FCBD 2011
• Volume 7: Stories themed around Princess Sally - Princess Sally #1-3, A story from Knuckles #29, Pages from Sonic #222
• Volume 8: Stories themed around Tails - Sonic Triple Trouble, Growing Pains from Sonic #28-29, Tails #1-3, The Chosen One from Sonic #149-150
• Volume 9: The Games - Lost World (Halloween Comic Fest '13), Sonic Rush (Sonic #160-161), Rush Adventure (Sonic #180), Chronicles (Sonic #191), Black Knight (Sonic #197), Sonic and the Secret Rings (Target Exclusive Promo Story), Unleashed (Sonic #193), Colors (Sonic #219), Generations (Sonic #230), Sonic 4 Ep 2 (Sonic Super Special Magazine #3), Sonic Jump (Sonic Super Digest #5), Sonic Dash (Sonic Super Special Magazine #10), All Stars Racing Transformed (Sonic Universe #45). 
• Volume 10: FCBD 2007, Some Enchantra Evening (Sabrina #28/Sonic Super Special 10), Sally Moon (Sonic Super Special 8), At All Costs (Sonic #244 & #252), Sonic Comic Origins (Sally, Rotor, Bunnie, Antoine).

Cancellation:

Unlike the other graphic novel series that Archie was running, most of which got caught up in hiatus drama, and eventually cancelled due to the loss of the licence, Select was one of the few series that came to a natural ending, more or less at Volume 10. With later books having to start moving on to other reprints, such as game tie-ins, and various small stories not yet reprinted, with even some duplicate stories being reprinted, it seemed Select just ran out of material to reprint. 

There were a few stories that failed to see a spot in the Select line up, including the Sonic Adventure tie-in, Super Special 15, Sonic Live's main story, and the Image crossover issue. However, each of these likely have their own reasons.

With Adventure, that Super Special was reprinted in the Archives series to complete that arc's storyline.

With Super Special 15, it's main story - Naugus Games - was infamous for it's incredibly poor artwork done by the mysterious artist only known by 'Many Hands', who became known for their horrible art in the few issues of Archie they did. This became so well-known that FCBD '11 had a original story recreated named The Rematch, which was essentially a complete remake of Naugus Games, featuring remade artwork from Steven Butler, which was reprinted in The Death Egg Saga, which the other story in #15 (Sonic Spin City) was reprinted in Legacy and Archives.

Sonic Live has never received a reprint, not even on Archie's own comic app when it was up and running, so the lack of inclusion of it's main story in the Super Specials is hardly surprising. 

Finally, the Image Crossover is fairly obvious - with Archie not owning the license to the Image characters that appear in the crossover, they couldn't have them appear. 

With exception to those stories, it seemed Select had simply done the job it was created for. If the series had lasted longer, and more unique/original stories began to be run in the Super Special Magazines/Digests, it's anyone's guess if Select would have returned to reprint them (Ian Flynn at one point was hinting at more Boom stories showing up in both of those books, so who knows if those would have been given a Select book, or been published within Archie's incredibly short-lived Boom Graphic Novel series). Either way, Select never returned after Volume 10.