Sonic the Hedgehog’s comic-book foes could deliver a golden pile of cash for the Westchester artist who claims he created them.
Best known for racing around collecting golden rings in ’90s Sega video games, Sonic’s popularity has spawned everything from graphic novels and comics to dolls, television cartoons and movies.
But artist Scott Fulop, who says he originated 15 secondary characters for the Sonic comics released by Archie Comics, argues in a Manhattan federal-court suit that the publisher has no right to keep using his creations without paying him.
The rights could be worth several hundred thousand dollars, says Fulop, whose suit lists nearly 1,000 times Archie wrongly used or reprinted his stories and characters, including Sonic antagonist Mammoth Mogul, a 10,000-year-old wooly mammoth who stirs up trouble for the hero hedgehog.
Fulop was a staff editor at Archie Comics for years before freelancing on the Sonic series from 1996-1998. He says he registered works with the US Copyright Office in 2009 and 2010. Archie Comics filed their own copyrights in 2011, but Fulop says “they wrongly claimed all authorship credit” of his creations.
He says after “extended settlement negotiations” he still hasn’t received any royalties. He’s suing Archie Comics and Sega for copyright infringement, seeking unspecified damages.