Mighty Lips

About

“Mighty Lips” is a Photoshop meme, which originated from oddly styled lips originating from an old Sonic the Hedgehog comic book. These “Mighty Lips” would replace the mouths of the original images the meme would photoshop, leading to comical results. It has since circulated across mostly the Sonic fandom in Tumblr. While usually used on Sonic related images, on occasion the meme was used on other non-Sonic related images.

Origin

In 1993, Archie Comics released a comic book series starring the video game icon Sonic the Hedgehog. “Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog” currently holds the record as longest running comic book series based on a video game.^[1] However, around the early and middle era of the comic’s run, it had different artists on board the series, some of which ranged from decent to bizarre. Some of the artwork would range from overly cartoonish to Rob Liefeld levels of forced realism.^[2] Luckily, newer issues now have a more consistency and came with an appealing art style, which is closer to the cartoonish art style of the video game series itself. But by coincidence, one early comic art stood out the most.

Spread

The odd art styles of the early issues would later be collected in a Tumblr blog called “A Moment of Archie Sonic.” ^[3] It used to receive many scans of old Archie Sonic panels showcasing these artwork. On 2012, the above panel was posted on the blog, with the mod of the blog noticing the way the lips were drawn on the red cartoon armadillo on the left named “Mighty” ^[4]

At first, it became an in-joke for the blog, but it soon spread from the blog to the rest of the Archie Sonic fandom, when more Archie Sonic panels were photoshopped with Mighty’s oddly drawn lips. Soon, “Mighty Lips” (named after the character and as a pun) became a popular image macro meme within the Archie Sonic fandom on Tumblr, to the point where it even trickled down to other Sonic related images. ^[5]