Compilcated. We have a copy of that book - guess SatAM must have been in production for a while. Those images need mirroring and write-ups need re-writing, but I'll leave it to someone who is more interested in these things.
In this business, you have to learn to care. Brazillian edition. Undocumented. It's quite clever - there only seems to be a small handful of issues, but they still managed to print two No. 4s.
"Editora Escala" (publishing company... books, mags, etc... founded in 1992 in São Paulo ... parent of the Grupo Escala de Publicações (Escala Publishing Group)... do you have more details?
Speaking of SATAM, I've made an accidental discovery of Dr. Robotnik's theme from AOSTH. Turns out the Synthesizer used is the Kord M1 and the instrument used is the 'Busy Talk' instrument: From 0:03 on-wards. Same with the hits, used in the Drum Kit.
I've collected cover scans for half the universe - it looks like Archie may have redeemed themselves in later years. They put out a side-series that didn't always feature their original characters, and tied everything closer to the games. I mean there's still tons of annoying baggage but it's a damn sight nicer than the last time I paid attention, when it was all about bug-eyed furries and love triangles. I have no intention of reading any of it but I commend their efforts all the same.
Guess I shouldn't have expected any better. Hiding variants in toys, because why not. I'd hate to be a hardcore comics collector.
Top: American "Newsstand" version. Middle: Canadian"Newsstand" version. Bottom: The one you would get sent in the post if you had a subscription, hence two prices and saying "Direct Edition" at the bottom Newsstand just means it isn't getting sent to you. So the others would be in a store or some such. Please also note that Newsstand versions and Direct Editions have different barcodes, thus making them different and all needing to be documented.
You also lose the number "46977", which I'm sure means something. Possibly brain cells I've shed during the last week. I would hazard a guess that it's not just covers. While I'm not expecting Archie to have bothered going through and adding Us to "colour", I would bet that the Canadian versions feature different advertisements and legal text. Possibly different numbers of pages as a result. The fact that there's at least two, very possibly three variants of every single Archie Sonic comic is crazy. And that's before they started actually publishing "real" cover variants. It's no wonder this stuff was left untouched for so long.
The problem that would arise for someone wanting to buy all these would just be the sheer amount of comics there are. I believe the Direct Editions would be more common since it's easier to get a subscription instead of going to a comic shop every month or whatever. The same would have to be done for the IDW comics as well. But I assume serious sellers would say it's a newsstand edition of whatever they are selling. For example, I have two copies of all six NiGHTS comics. I've set is Direct Edition and the other are the Newsstand versions. This happened by pure happenstance though. I actually have a third set that are all mint condition Direct Editions, bar an issue #3 for that set.
Comic book stores would also get the "Direct Editions", since they are the direct market, and the comics they buy are non-returnable.
Apologies if this has been mentioned before, but the Marza staff have been posting cute artwork of their characters over on Twitter. In fact, a lot of them are of the ghosts from the Night of the Werehog short. https://twitter.com/marza_staff/status/1169869550403215360?s=19 https://twitter.com/marza_staff/status/1172002943400169473?s=19 https://twitter.com/marza_staff/status/1172430450045771776?s=19 https://twitter.com/marza_staff/status/1174248922392518657?s=19 https://twitter.com/marza_staff/status/1174917236873498624?s=19 Marza Staff Twitter: https://twitter.com/marza_staff?s=09 Marza Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/marza_official?s=09