Honey the Cat (Archie)

Honey the Cat is a character who appears in the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series and its spin-offs published by Archie Comics. She is a mobian cat, fashion designer, and the founder and CEO of Honey Brand Clothes And Accessories. The mind behind her Honey Clothing label, she works to promote her products in any way possible.

Concept and creation
According to Ian Flynn, Honey's design was made to not only simplify her more complicated and armored design from Sonic the Fighters, but also keep her in line with the modern Sonic look.

Appearance
Honey is a mobian yellow cat that has close-lying orange-yellow fur, a peach muzzle, and long black hair that she keeps in two voluminous ponytails. She also two triangular perked ears with peach inner ears, a small black nose, large orange eyes, thin arms and legs, and a slim two-tone tail.

For her headwear, she wears a red hairband and elaborate white laced cloth-like hair barrettes around her ponytails. She also wears a red dress, black straps on the cuffs, a pair of white wings on the back, and white laces on the lower rim. Her dress also has black outlines around the waist, and a black area on her front skirt with white fasteners. Additionally, she wears white gloves with red backs and laced cuffs, black arm wrappers around her wrists and black and red boots.

Act One
Honey took part in Breezie the Hedgehog's Chaos Emerald Championship in Casino Park along with the Hooligans and several of the Knothole Freedom Fighters. Unlike most of her fellow competitors, Honey was interested mainly in promoting her new fashion line, and agreed to give the Freedom Fighters the Chaos Emerald if she won in exchange for them modeling for her. This was particularly thrilling to her long-time fan Amy Rose, whose outfit was an old piece of Honey's from the "Dreamcaster" line. Honey was also thrilled to see Amy sporting the look, and determined to re-release it in Amy's honor as part of the "Rose Collection." While having good chemistry between them, it was somewhat unnerving to both Sonic and Tails, the latter of whom was even more creeped out when Honey suggested that he could "accessorize".

Honey ended up facing off with Tails in the first round of the Championship, and proved to be quite the opponent for the young Freedom Fighter. She eventually used a trick to knock him out of the ring, and upon being accused of cheating by him replied that "all is fair in love and war." She then attempted to cheer him up-and failed miserably-by giving him one of her bow ties to wear. Following Knuckles the Echidna's victory over Bark the Polar Bear, Honey informed Amy that she was set to face Knuckles in round two, while Honey was going up against Sonic.

Honey offered to throw the fight against Sonic, knowing that he needed to stop Eggman, but Sonic wanted to give the crowd a show, so they fought anyway, with Sonic winning by throwing her sky high; despite having lost, Honey thought it was a cool experience. She then excitedly watched Sonic and Knuckles brawl in the championship round, but the match was cut short when the Hooligans knocked out the power in Casino Park on Dr. Eggman's orders. His servant, Metal Sonic, then burst in and attempted to steal the Emerald. Honey and the others tried to stop the robot, but he managed to keep going until finally being stopped by Tails and forced to retreat. Later that day, Honey started a business partnership with Breezie to design clothes for her robot staff. Here, she took the opportunity to question Breezie as to how Metal Sonic and the Hooligans were able to get by so easily despite Breezie's defense system, nearly costing Sonic's team the Emerald. Breezie thought nothing of it, since she still profited from the incident. Honey was disturbed by the extent of Breezie's deviousness, but the hedgehog reminded her that she herself used trickery to defeat Tails. Told she would one day understand Breezie's way of thinking, Honey left the office, albeit visibly conscience-stricken.

Act Two
While in Spagonia, Honey met Sally Acorn, who was trying to book a table at Restaurant Swa for Lucia's family. Honey was willing to trade her own reserved table in return for Sally giving her a royal design job. Sally responded by saying that when the time came she would let Honey wardrobe her entire coronation in exchange for the table.

Personality
Honey is upbeat and friendly, but also a determined businesswoman; going to such lengths to join a fighting tournament and hire the Freedom Fighters as modelers in an effort to advertise her products. Even when facing a problem, she has enough confidence to somehow get around it. However, while she has noble intentions, she can be quite devious in battle, though until Breezie pointed it out she seems to have thought little of it.

Powers and abilities
Honey is quite the agile fighter. She can move fast enough in short bursts to create the illusion of producing multiple copies of herself to confuse her opponent. She was able to go toe to toe during her match against Tails and eventually won once outsmarting him. She was even able to match Sonic the Hedgehog himself for a time before he finally defeated her.

Trivia

 * Honey was originally a scrapped character from Sonic the Fighters, an arcade fighting game developed by Sega in 1996. However, she was restored as a playable character in the Xbox Live Arcade and PSN port of the game. Her design is based off of the character with the same name from the game, Fighting Vipers, and the comics portray her as a fashion designer like her inspiration from that game.
 * Prior to appearing in the actual comics, Honey appeared on the cover of Sonic Universe #40, which featured a "Fighter Select Screen" cover where Honey appeared as one of the options, as a nod to her role in Sonic the Fighters. An advertisement of Honey's clothing also made a cameo in Sonic the Hedgehog #264.
 * Aleah Baker has confirmed that there are "long-term plans" for Honey.