Knuckles the Echidna, originally published as Knuckles: The Dark Legion, was a 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 and shared continuity with that title. 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. The series ran from 1997 to 2000 and 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 graphic novel series, which ran from 2011 to 2013. The series consisted of four volumes, with two more left unreleased after numerous delays. After the series' cancellation, Knuckles' stories returned to the position of serving as 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. 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, Archie was receiving large amounts of fan mail demanding for more stories featuring Knuckles, gaining him 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 story in the comic's continuity to explore the echidna race's history. Knuckles got his first own comic series in 1996 with Sonic's Friendly Nemesis: Knuckles, a three-issue limited series which followed the events of A Sense Of History. A second limited series followed in 1997 as Knuckles: The Dark Legion, which was also meant to end at three issues. However, due to demand from readers, Archie chose to turn The Dark Legion into a full comic series, changing its title to Knuckles the Echidna by issue #4. Most of the series' cover art was done in a triptych style, where placing three issues of specific storylines next to each other would form a singular image. Overview The series follows Knuckles' adventures on his home of the Floating Island, a floating landmass on the planet Mobius.