Happy Monday, folks! Welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread. I’ve decided to open this an hour early and see how it goes after the fairly positive reception my accidental half-day-long release last week. I know things out there are pretty stormy, but I’m gonna do my best to make this part of the Avocado fun.

And “fun” is certainly there to be had when looking at Sonic the Hedgehog’s latest crossover appearance. SEGA and DC have decided to team up for some silly merch and comics that feature Sonic and his furry pals as members of the Justice League. And despite the fact that I’ve apparently built a reputation as someone who doesn’t like Sonic—although I am interested in the Generations remaster to which this is cross-promotion, though I’ll probably wait until it’s on sale—and as someone who hasn’t bought a comic since, like, Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8, I was beaming reading this news.

See, here’s the thing. You know me as Wolfman Jew, undisputed biggest Nintendo fan on the site. But back in the day, from the mid-2000s to the early-2010s, I was actually an avid comics reader! I was a hardcore Grant Morrison fan! I read through a crazy, eight-layer Seven Soldiers fansite and spent way too much time reading a British comics blog that gave Marxist analyses of characters like Bane and Darkseid. Though I eventually did give up in the early 2010s once I found the scene less exciting, less imaginative, and more beholden to the whims of men like Geoff Johns, leading to my current state as “man who debates on which Balatro screenshots would be best in an article.” Which means that with my knowledge of these characters and the most fun ways to have them interact, I am, in fact, possibly the perfect person to write the Sonic the Hedgehog DC adventure, and SEGA and Warner Bros., you both owe it to me to let me write it! You have both inflicted pain on me! We can also ignore that my Snyder Cut and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric pains were entirely self-inflicted.

…Okay, so maybe that was a lot, but c’mon, let’s do this. Our prompt today is “give me a completely off the rails crossover featuring at least one gaming icon, and actually map out the plot.” You can do this one, or, I dunno, write me an abstract about Frasier and Niles getting isakei’d into Persona and fighting over the validity of the Jungian archetypes. As for me, I’m gonna give you, SEGA and DC, the best way to tackle this. We’ve got six folks: Sonic (Flash), Shadow (Batman, natch), Knuckles (Superman), Amy (Wonder Woman), Tails (a truly hideous Cyborg design), and Silver (Green Lantern). No trunks on their outfits, but whatever. We can deal with it. After decades of fans complaining that Batman doesn’t kill people except for all the times he does, our Shadow Batman is gonna off some goons. Because he’s also science space Batman, with a tone that leans closer to Batman Beyond, and his quest for science space justice is racked with anxiety over the fact that he was built to kill. But he can’t not use these evil powers, even if they are for good! So he struggles to contain his darker impulses, questions his existence, fears the people he’s chosen to protect, worries his dutiful butler Omega, and at times feels an odd kinship with his greatest foes: master of the Lazarus Pits Black Doom, maniacal killer Mephiles the Joker, and delightful catbat burglar Rouge the Bat. Sonic‘s roster of villains is a bit small, so I’ll realize that by using these three—all of whom are admittedly closer to Shadow than any of the other characters—we’ve already making this very Batman-centric. But I’m sure the parent companies would be happy that way.

Oh man, this treatment is rocking! Eggman has pretty obviously gotta be Lex, but Lex should have his hands in as many 40 cakes as possible, so he’ll be everyone’s villain and just prioritize Flash more to keep Sonic the center of this universe. But I don’t like Sonic or Flash, so let’s skip ahead to Knuckles because he’s my boy Superman (and perhaps this week’s phenomenally stupid prompt should’ve been “Wolfman’s secret skate and Bayonetta-inspired Superman game pitch). Instead of Superman’s backstory as an immigrant from a dead world, we’ll use the cloistered Emerald Isle as a divergence point and have Knuckles be a stranger in a strange land, always having to weigh his new home and his old one for every situation. He’s way stronger physically than he is in the games, but how much does that actually matter? Will he stray from the ideals of his mentor Tik-al? And wouldn’t it be delicious if Kryptonite, the rare stone that kills Superman, was also the Chaos Emeralds, the rare stones Knuckles is always supposed to be guarding? It hurts him and he needs it, and he can’t let other people exploit the power of his home. As a side note, Knuckles’ belligerence and Shadow’s edginess actually work really well for having a classic Marvel-style situation where the heroes are always close to beating on each other. Like, by this point having Batman fight Superman is beyond boring, but Shadow and Knuckles are both better suited for it.

Silver can be Hal Jordan. They both bore me. With the other two, it’s a bit harder; I’ve never had much time for Amy (other than her granola girl parody in Sonic Boom, which doesn’t really fit this as it is), so harder for me to sincerely map Wonder Woman onto her, and I feel like outside of bringing in Cyborg’s disability backstory Tails would basically just end up as Tails. Same is true with Sonic. And that’s fine, maybe for the best in Sonic and Tails’ case, but this pitch is giving short shrift to these four and that’s not ideal. And I don’t really want to just fully throw their characterizations out. Though I am committed to fusing Amy’s hammer and Wonder Woman’s lasso so that she’s throwing it around and swinging it really far. I think that would add a lot of fun comedy, because first and foremost this would be an at least slightly tongue in cheek experience.

Anyway, quick additions. Vector the Crocodile’s hard boiled sensibilities make him a great Question and also Martian Manhunter. Vector rules, so he gets to be two great characters in one. Fang the Hunter is Deathstroke. Orbot and Cubot are Rob and Don from The Dark Knight Returns. Solaris from Sonic 2006 is just the actually good Solaris, the Tyrant Sun from All-Star Superman. Blaze is Starfire. Cream is Robin and Cheese is Bat-Mite. Erazon Djinn is Mr. Mxyzptlk. The gormless “insert fanfic” protagonist from Sonic Forces is Dial H for Hero. Since the Speed Force is boring as hell, let’s have Sonic class it up with his Excalibur Form in Sonic and the Black Knight when he uses it. By the way, Classic Sonic is a also different person, since we have to make sure this story is impenetrable to anyone but me. The birds from Sonic Riders can collectively be Batman, Inc. No one is Darkseid because no one in Sonic is as cool as Darkseid. Maybe we can just have Darkseid in this sight unseen? Oh man, I’m late for this pitch meeting, and I haven’t even figured out… oh god, I completely forgot about Espio and Charmy and Mighty. God, “Charmy Bee.” Not even good enough to get a “the” in his name. He can be the Red Bee, this super-obscure Golden Age guy who symbolized the death of fictional characters in Morrison’s seminal Animal Man. Uh, can I get away with having every form of Chaos as a different baddie to pad out the roster and just figure them out later as well? And, um, Big the Cat as Bibbo Bibowski, the Nineties Superman supporting character whose gimmick is that he’s just Popeye. It sounds like I’m being dismissive, but Bibbo rules. Big would rock that.

Look, I’m having a bad time right now. We all are. Just let me indulge myself and find a way to pass one miserable hour and a half by, and if you have some time and wish to inflict this on me, please do so as well. Also, if you talk about what you played this weekend instead of this nonsense, I’d love to hear it. I have three damn things to talk about.

Oh, also, the latest GamesCast is out, featuring pornographic games, 50 Cent, and a lot of melancholic discourse about the life and death of Concord. I always forget to link to these ones. Maybe I’m thinking about it as shameless self-promotion since I’m in it.