Knuckles the Echidna (Archie)

Knuckles the Echidna is one of the main characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog and its spin-off comic series' published by Archie Comics. He is the last anthropomorphic echidna known to inhabit Sonic's World and the Guardian of both Angel Island and the Master Emerald. While his primary concern is protecting his home from invaders, certain threats-particularly those posed by Dr. Eggman-have been enough to persuade him to leave the island.

Appearance
Knuckles is a red echidna with purple eyes. He bears a white crescent mark on his chest, a trait tied-in the original continuity-to his station as Guardian. Officially, he's slightly taller than Sonic. He wears white gloves similar to boxing gloves and has two spiked knuckle-claws on each hand. He wears green, yellow and red footwear with a metal "Lego" plate atop each shoe.

Early Adventures
Knuckles spent most of his life living alone on Angel Island, keeping watch over the Master Emerald. This isolation came to an end when Dr. Eggman arrived on the island following his latest defeat at the hands of Sonic the Hedgehog. Knuckles was soon persuaded that Sonic and his sidekick Tails were out to steal the Master Emerald, and opposed their journey across the island. Unbeknownst to him, however, Sonic and Tails were looking to stop Eggman, who had decided to steal the Master Emerald for himself. After a brief scuffle, Knuckles eventually befriended Sonic and Tails after Eggman stole the emerald himself. Knuckles, worn from the battle and from Eggman after trying to stop the thief, showed Sonic and Tails the path to reach Eggman. After Eggman was defeated and expelled from the island, the Master Emerald was safely returned. Dr. Eggman then dispatched his lackey, Julian Snively, to steal the emerald once again, with the diminutive villain employing an Eggrobo to do so. However, Knuckles successfully recovered the Master Emerald, putting a stop to the doctor's plan for good.

A number of adventures later, Knuckles was once again keeping watch over the Master Emerald when Dr. Eggman hatched another nefarious plan. This time, he shattered the magic gemstone in order to release Chaos, an ancient water elemental long imprisoned inside the stone. With the fragments scattered across Mobius, Knuckles was forced to leave the island in order to recover them. Along the way, he learned about his heritage and the ancient Knuckles Clan through visions imparted to him by Tikal, a member of that group who had imprisoned Chaos. Working together with Sonic, Tails, Amy, and others, Knuckles succeeded in restoring the Master Emerald, and Chaos was pacified and returned to its home inside the Master Emerald.

At some point after these events, Knuckles made the acquaintance of archaeologist Relic the Pika, who had came to the island after it fell near the Mystic Ruins and convinced Knuckles to let her stay on the island. The next female visitor to the island was nowhere near as friendly: the thief Rouge the Bat attempted to steal the Master Emerald, only to be beaten to the punch by Dr. Eggman. In order to prevent the mad doctor from using the Emerald's power for his latest scheme, Knuckles shattered the Emerald himself. He then proceeded to search Mobius for the shards yet again, clashing with Rouge on a couple of occasions. Eventually he managed to recover all the Emerald shards, and participated in Eggman's defeat yet again before returning home.

Knuckles was one of the many heroes to be caught up in the Black Amrs invasion of the planet, where he and his allies where paralyzed by a toxic gas released from the Black Comet. Prior to this, he faced Metal Overlord alongside a number of other heroes, and worked together with the Chaotix-and their mutual friends Mighty and Ray-on multiple occasions. Another adventure found the Master Emerald threatened yet again by Eggman, this time piloting his diabolical Hyper Eggrobo.

The Great Chaos Caper

 * Note: From the readers point of view, this picks up from where Knuckles' original timeline ended.

The Shattered World Crisis affected Angel Island as it did the rest of the planet, and Knuckles was caught in the middle of it. As he watched, Chaos was thrown from the Master Emerald to Mobius' ravaged surface. Immediately thereafter, Tikal addressed him from within the Emerald and informed him of the situation, which she assured him was a phenomenon meant to occur. However, she also informed him that a powerful spirit was meant to participate in restoring the world, and that she sensed a weakness in that entity. As such, Knuckles determined to seek out the spirit so that Tikal could aid it. Fearing to leave the Master Emerald unguarded, he reluctantly approached Relic and her assistant Fixit to watch over the gemstone. Making his way to the surface, he traveled through the Sky Rail Zone, where he spotted Eclipse the Darkling's escape craft plummeting as it fled the destruction of the New Black Comet.

Continuing his journey, Knuckles ended up in Pumpkin Hill Zone, where he ran into some old allies: the Chaotix. Learning that they had been hired by Sally Acorn to help locate the Chaos Emeralds, Knuckles agreed to help them, as he sensed an Emerald nearby. The group were forced to deal with the minions of Dark Gaia, and then ran into another opposing force: the Hooligans. The two groups initially battled, but halted their conflict when Bean pointed out that they were attacking each other over a Chaos Emerald that neither side had. Nack and his teammates then departed, while Knuckles was able to determine through his Emerald sense that the gem was underground in the Aquatic Mine Zone, which he had previously visited. However, the pressures of his quest to find the spirit, his concern over Angel Island, and Vector's impatience grew to be too much for him, and he announced his intentions to leave. However, he then sensed the Emerald nearby-and the heroes found it in the hands of the spirit he had been looking for.

Taking both the spirit-whom Charmy dubbed "Chip"-and the Emerald into their custody, Knuckles and the Chaotix headed for the exit to the mine, only to run into the Hooligans again. To make matters worse, the biggest minion of Dark Gaia yet, the Dark Gaia Titan, appeared to attack them. The Hooligans took advantage of its appearance to seize Chip and the Emerald, blasting all the exits to the mine except the one that they took to escape before sealing it behind them. Left with only a flooded tunnel-too long to swim through without an air supply-to escape through, Vector reasoned upon a scheme that carried them along with water current to escape the cavern. They then intercepted the Hooligans, only to be attacked by the Titan again, but managed to trick Bean into attacking it. Recovering Chip and the Emerald, they sent the Hooligans fleeing with a sabotaged Chaos Emerald sensor. Knuckles then finished off the Dark Gaia Titan, and suggested that he take the Chaos Emerald and Chip back to Angel Island for safe-keeping. He and Chip return to Shrine Island and were met by Tikal, only for Relic to arrive with dire news: the island had been invaded.

Total Eclipse and Champions
After examining Relic and Fixit's findings regarding the invaders, Knuckles determined that the invaders were definitely not native to the island, meaning they had to be expelled. This led to a brief awkward moment with Relic, which was interrupted as Team Dark arrived-resulting in another awkward moment for Knuckles as Rouge believed Relic to be his girlfriend and Relic questioned what he had told people about her. After being informed by Team Dark of the presence of Eclipse and the Dark Arms, Knuckles reluctantly left Shadow with Relic and Fixit at the Master Emerald Shrine while he led Rouge and Omega to Red Mountain Zone to search for the aliens. Along the way, he had to restrain Omega from blasting various parts of the environment, and was confronted by Rouge about whether he wanted anything else from his life besides protecting the island. The trio then came upon Eclipse's wrecked shuttle, but before they could enter, Fixit contacted them to warn them that Eclipse was attacking the shrine. Arriving after Eclipse had been driven off, Knuckles was enraged when Shadow informed him of his decision to move the Master Emerald to a G.U.N. facility for safe-keeping. When his and Relic's protests fell on the deaf ears of Shadow and his teammates, Knuckles resorted to force. Throwing Shadow from Shrine Island to the main island, he charged him, declaring that the Emerald would stay and Shadow would leave.

After briefly fighting him near the Master Emerald Shrine, Knuckles used his considerable strength to throw Shadow to the Azure Lake Zone and pursued him there. While the fight proved difficult, Knuckles refused to give up, reflecting on the many misfortunes that had befallen the Master Emerald on his watch and vowing not to let it happen again. Unfortunately, his fight with Shadow allowed Eclipse and the Dark Arms to seize the Master Emerald. Breaking off their fight, the two heroes moved to intercept Eclipse and engaged him and his Dark Arms in battle. Though they gained the upper hand in the fight, Eclipse managed to escape defeat with the help of the Dark Arm known as Rhygenta. Ultimately, with the only other option being allowing Eclipse to escape with the Emerald, Knuckles shattered it for the second time in his life. Fortunately, Angel Island was kept aloft by the same forces holding the shattered planet in place, and Knuckles set off to recover the Master Emerald fragments yet again.

After recovering an Emerald shard from a mine, Knuckles-accompanied by Chip-ended up in Casino Park, where he sensed a powerful Chaos energy signature he believed to be a cache of shards. However, it turned out to be a Chaos Emerald that served as the prize for the Chaos Emerald Championship being held by Breezie the Hedgehog. After locating another shard that had been made into a necklace-and stealthily recovering it from its would be owner-Knuckles and Chip discovered that several of Knuckles' friends were taking part in the tournament. They were then approached by Scratch, who informed Knuckles that he was going to be late for his first match-unbeknownst to him, he had been added to the tournament roster by Espio. Realizing that this would allow him to secure the Emerald, Knuckles accepted and entered into a tough battle with Bark. The two fought fiercely, well-matched in terms of strength, but Knuckles managed to knock out his larger opponent. This moved him on to the next round, where he would go up against Amy Rose. After Nick won against Amy and Knuckles began their fight. Amy gets pumped to take down Knuckles and face Sonic in the finals, but starts over-analyzing the situation and worrying about disappointing or hurting him. While she's distracted, Knuckles lands an explosive punch that sends her flying into the spectator seats. Sonic and Tails glare at Knuckles, who is slightly ashamed by his friends' disapproval. After he defeated Amy his next match was against Nack the Weasel. When the match begins, Nack who was following Bark's adviced to psychout Knuckles taunted Knuckles by calling him a failure, insulting him for hurting Amy and failing to keep the Master Emerald safe. Knuckles stands still in the center of the arena and Nack starts whacking him with his tail, trying to get his attention. Knuckles grabs his tail, revealing that he was just waiting for Nack to stand still, and slams him into the ground a few times before throwing him into the spectator seats. Knuckles next opponent for the championship title was against Sonic. Sonic and Knuckles enter the ring for the championship match. The two heroes tease each other, joking about past fights and getting ready for a real fight. Just out of sight, Nack sets up a sniper rifle and takes aim, ready to take out the heroes from afar.