So I've been reading sonic comics from issue 1 and now I'm at 15 it gets very boring with all the older stuff like the ugly art style and it doesn't have too much plot going on.
When does it good? where should I started reading?
Archie Sonic
So I've been reading sonic comics from issue 1 and now I'm at 15 it gets very boring with all the older stuff like the ugly art style and it doesn't have too much plot going on.
When does it good? where should I started reading?
Keep going. If you want to understand why we hate IDW, you need to read the whole thing.
Most people who shit on IDW are bandwagoners with no actual opinions of their own. Same for a lot of the fans. It's sad, man.
There are two types of people who hate IDW:
Segagays who don't want any story at all, and ex-Archie fans who know better things are possible.
Where is:
>Wow this is literally less eventful than the stories in the games which are pretty much carried by the gameplay anyways.
I only read far enough into Archie to get filtered hard by Penders crap, but the IDW comic feels like it's not allowed to do anything fun. I guess it's a step up comparatively but I still have a hard time motivating myself to stay current with the comic.
I gave IDW a chance after good word of mouth but wound up hating its interpretations of the game characters and drawn out arcs. I do like OCs though.
Yeah that's fair. All I meant was a lot of the discourse is from people not being honest about it, on both sides.
I haven't started on IDW, I'm planning to start reading until I finish Archie, anyway why do people think it's bad? I heard they reduce silver's whole character into "cute lil bean" Instead of Freedom Fighter Jihadist that is on Archie
They're literally repeating an arc from Archie with him, the "silver suspects one of the freedom fighters being a traitor" one.
Shouldn't it be good tho? I mean if someone wants to read Sonic Comic but doesn't bother checking Archie
It wouldn't be as bad if this were the only instance of IDW taking influence from Archie. But they've already taken several arcs and characters from the previous iteration of the comics by this point. The Zombots, Starline, Surge.
Ah i see so they just repeating the Archie comics
Even worse, they’re repeating it with a thousand mandates. You still have the worst aspects of archie like the ocs taking priority and relationship with said ocs, but now they can’t make them be actual couples even if they clearly are. The non ocs have it even worse. They’re like cardboard cutouts who can barely show any emotion besides basic shit and can’t evolve as characters, making them incredibly static, which is probably why they focus on the ocs to begin with. Also, I hope you weren’t expecting anyone besides the new ocs and the modern sonic cast because that’s pretty much it, no mighty, no ray, no scratch, no grounder, no bunnie, no sally, no honey, no nack, no bean, no bark, none of them, not even as cameos. You’d think if they weren’t gonna allow non game characters besides new ocs, they would at least ALL THE GAME CHARACTERS, but no. The only time anyone not already on the modern cast can be in a comic is in classic comic, which happens about once a year if that much. There’s also pretty much no worldbuliding despite constantly going to random towns. I could get into more but frick, I hate how safe this comic is while still suffering from the exact problems archie had.
The mandates they have are no different from other licensed material. If Flynn can not write under those stipulations, then that's a failure on him.
Is there any good sonic writing written under those stipulations?
Again, that's a fault on the writers for not having the necessary skill level to write for licensed material.
I can only give you my personal opinion, so don't latch on to it, but the biggest problems are:
>Awful pacing
>Not utilizing tools well - characters tend to not matter much and exist to fill spots in the story instead of having an effect on them
>Too much long term focus with little payoff
>Reliance on fandom pandering
It's not all bad, but these issues keep coming up. If you're here for Sonic rather than good comics, you'll probably be fine with them. Even if you're not, there's a couple good stories, just not a lot.
The fandom response is a handful of people with reasonable opinions on what they like or dislike and a tidal wave of reflexive haters and sycophants who just echo what someone else said. It's a serious problem.
>Reliance on fandom pandering
Like what?
It's more approach than subject. Ian in particular leans heavy on references to other Sonic media. The problem isn't references as much as a lack of substance to scenes beyond them at times, so it works to hype up the fandom but makes things flat and boring if you don't care or dislike haphazard references, or if you don't recognize the referenced material. It's the difference between a character saying something memetic in a context where it makes sense and other stuff is going on VS setting up a whole page just to quote song lyrics.
More of the writers have a problem with writing in response to online discourse and fan mail instead of what's in the book. This leads to stuff like the comic not introducing characters very well, not doing a lot with them because engagement is assumed from existing Sonic fan status, and two characters going from besties to implied lovers off screen. Them being a couple isn't the problem, it's that it just kinda happened because the fandom shipped them hard. This kinda stuff happens a lot and it's weird.
Basically a whole lot of quotes and song lyrics from the Adventure-era games.
>If you're here for Sonic rather than good comics, you'll probably be fine with them.
Thats literally the reason IDW Sonic still has readers.
160 and in my opinion it's terrific. You might as well skip to there with a wiki open in case you need it because otherwise you have to sit through hundreds of issues of torture
People have their own reasons. Most of the kids reading it will probably like it. Still I think for many it's a totally defanged late archie where everything intriguing, interesting or exiting just to leads to a bunch of wet nothing. Makes it feel like nothing ever happens despite things happening all the time. Plus all the characters are heckin friendly bean people
>Still I think for many it's a totally defanged late archie where everything intriguing, interesting or exiting just to leads to a bunch of wet nothing. Makes it feel like nothing ever happens despite things happening all the time. Plus all the characters are heckin friendly bean people
this sums it up for me exactly
Because instead of trying to be it's own thing, it's constantly trying to continue where Archie Sonic left off despite that making zero sense. One of the first major arcs was something Ian was planning for Archie, the Metal Virus, and it's also the worst arc in the series by a country mile.
It doesn't help how the comic relies so hard on references as a crutch. People b***h about the "meta era" of Sonic games, but I find characters randomly spouting song lyrics as a replacement for actual dialogue FAR more obnoxious than a lame joke.
Liked more Sonic X Rogue speech about how Eggman and Sonic are just two sides of the same coin.
By the way OP if you are reading this, then just read Archie Sonic because it IS a journey and probably the most "depth" we will get on any Sonic's character by far followed by Sonic X and then Dark Knight.
>it's also the worst arc in the series by a country mile.
Meanwhile outside of here it's still the most popular one.
>our own styles that we won't change
Oh God, somehow I'd forgotten about that one. That's painfully bad.
>First post is fricking seething about IDW.
Good grief and what's this "we" shit?
>we
Who's this we? I loved the IDW metal virus story. That part where some of the victims pretended to be clean just because they didn't want to be left behind was something else.
I feel like the metal virus arc is the last time idw had any big stakes, which is sad since it was one of the first arc and was a holdover from archie, anyways
Metal Virus fricking sucked. Everyone was extremely OOC while Sonic held the idiot ball the entire time solely so the plot could even function. It tried to be angsty and serious when the franchise never dwelled on that kind of shit, and none of the grimdark shit even mattered when they just Super Sonic Ex Machina's the whole thing anyway.
It was just a waste of time for everyone involved.
Not to mention, it lasted like twenty fricking issues, of a currently 60-issue comic. And when you consider that the Mr. Tinker/Metal Sonic arcs were setup for the Metal Virus arc, that means we spent HALF THE COMIC'S RUN on this one fricking arc.
How much longer is idw gonna run anyways?
I'd say "probably not much longer," but who knows? Could be years yet.
Zoomers on Twitter who mindlessly consoom Sonic products.
Compared to Archie, it was better. All they did in the Archie comics was tried to hook Sonic up with various girls. Sonic has never been "tactical" so not sure why you'd think he was ooc. At least in the metal virus saga, Sonic couldn't stop running or else he would turn so he had to be heroic while being encumbered. Its like what they did with Frontiers which really turned him into a shonen protagonist. Which is what Sonic really is. He is a japanese character archtype.
>Compared to Archie, it was better.
That's not saying a whole lot. I wanted to give IDW a chance because it was a fresh start, and I wanted to judge it by its own merits instead of the asinine Sonic fanboy logic of "well at least it wasn't [insert previous thing here]", so it must be good!"
But no, instead we just got all of Archie's dirty laundry into the main canon without anything to clean it up.
>But no, instead we just got all of Archie's dirty laundry into the main canon without anything to clean it up
The problem lies in both Sega and the creative team behind IDW Sonic, in my opinion.
Sega refuses to give clear directions, other than mandates about what they should not do, instead of what they could do.
On the other hand, the creative team is trying to recreate Archie, instead of actually coming up with something good, or even better.
And then we have some of the hacks inside the creative team, who are just waiting for the chance to push all their twitter/tumblr/DA spawned Sonic headcanons into the comic.
In other words, Sonic's really up Shit Creek
>Sonic has never been "tactical" so not sure why you'd think he was ooc
Well no, but he still had basic common sense, something that is missing entirely in IDW. There's no fricking excuse for Sonic to instantly trust Tinker while putting under no supervision. There's no excuse for him to suddenly want to repair Metal Sonic, a goddamn badnik. The same badnik he left for dead in Heroes, which is what the comic was aping from for most of Neo Metal's screentime.
He's just a complete moron in IDW.
Kind of like makes Sonic sound like Goku when he healed Freeza in DBZ the first time he went Super Saiyan. A heroic absolutist type of character. I wouldn't say your examples are Sonic being dumb. That's just him wanting to give bad guys a chance.
Thing is, he ISN'T that in the actual game canon, which is what IDW is supposed to be part of. Sonic isn't Goku no matter how many elements he may have taken from him, he's not some shonen hero that prioritizes a good fight over all reason. If the comics were its own canon then this would be fine as its own interpretation, but it's not.
Also, he isn't even consistent about this shit. The first thing he did when he saw Belle was try and destroy her on sight, despite her looking nothing like a badnik and obviously isn't hostile. Giving bad guys a chance my ass, it's just bad writing.
Almost like it was written by two different people.
If two people from the same writing team can't communicate with each other basic characters traits of the damn MC of the book, then there are some serious issues going on at IDW.
>Fastest thing alive
>A literal wooden puppet dodges his attacks
While I found the Metal Virus arc a little too overdramatic, it certainly felt like one of the few times IDW really went all out with a story.
My only gripe with that story was it was way too soon. No worldbuilding up to that point and would have hit a lot harder and more memorable if the MV didn't happen so soon in the comic. Hell the Zeti came first in the comic near the end of it and I argue they don't get enough time in the light.
It seemed (to me at least) that the Metal Virus arc was an attempt for the IDW comic to make a strong impression on the readers and it pretty much did, but you are correct saying it happened too soon. It felt more like a third or fourth major arc in a story, not the first one.
It's less that they did it too early and more that most of the arc is dead air. A lot of IDW arcs are like that. The outline of the story is fine, but the characters don't do anything so it all comes off flaccid.
>If you want to understand why we hate IDW, you need to read the whole thing.
You hate IDW because you're a butthurt little gay. Nobody cares your OCs are gone. Nobody cares that Sonic is written 'wrong' now. This is a series for 10 year olds and they're the target audience. Your squirrel waifu still exists in archie, she's just not getting any new stories. Deal with it.
Sally still exists in IDW, she’s just wearing a sheep costume. She’s still leading the freedom fighters, giving orders to Sonic and everything.
Then you have even less to complain about.
Are you seriously so delusional that you think the only people capable of hating IDW are Archiegays?
IDW haters rarely go five seconds without mentioning Archiegays so the two kind of go hand in hand. They're both irritating fricks who need to shut up and frick off.
>Hurrrrrr you need to down an entire bowl of shit before you get to those few tasty morsels!
I smell a soiled diaper.
Archie and the saturday morning cartoon are even worse than IDW and gave us tards like Penders
>it's bad
>doesn't explain why
let me guess, you wanted zany bullshit that we can get from hundreds of other cartoons?
I mean, its pretty simple no? Archie is basically the star wars prequels (insane political auture wankery by guy with an ego and an agenda) , followed by the original trilogy (classic adventure series that gets all the important stuff right).
And idw is the new trilogy ( sovel-less drivel with one or two halfway decent ideas buried under an avalanche of corperate meddling, existing primarily as a way to perpetuate the franchise rather than actually shake things up). The very start, however, is the christmas specials.
>sovel
Please speak like a human being.
Sovl? Sovlless? Don't you pronounce it like sovel in your head?
No, because I'm a human being who thinks in words and terminology, not buzzwords and dead memes.
And yet here you are on Cinemaphile talking about dead media from a meme franchise.
I have nothing else to do with my life. I have no friends, and I have no work this summer. The hell am I supposed to do with my time?
Obtain a sovel
Frick you stop posting like this
SOVELLESS post
Well if being on Cinemaphile makes you mad, maybe get a hobby outside of it? Like woodworking? Or drawing? Kids still have hobbies, right?
The whole thing?
Frick that I'll just keep liking IDW.
Define "good."
I guess what I mean by "good" Is the modern sonic one y'know? Like the better art style and like the emphasis on the plot, I want to skip the newspaper strip part where the story is now a little more important. Like I want to start playing sonic games but I start with Sonic Adventure 1 because the whole (most of the) gang is already there
That won't be until around issue #70 or so, and it will be a mind-boggling miserable experience.
>a mind-boggling miserable experience
Before or after #70?
Both, but worse after #70 when they start redesigning the characters to match their new Dreamcast appearances.
Do people actually dislike that? I think it's an improvement on the design, or maybe you're just a boomer?
They mainly dislike the in-universe reasons why they redesigned them.
I line the adveture redesigns but the archie explanation was pretty fricking stupid. So unnecessary, they just needed to change the artstyle without an explanation at all. If you want to be autistic about it, archie could have used a timeskip or something like that.
>Remembering Art Mawhinney and how he "adapted" Sonic's Adventure redesign to his own style
Those hairdos are whack
Depending on the story, Sonic's quills could potentially hang all the way down to his feet because Art refused to break from the SatAM character design.
I was talking about the shaving cream sticking out of their heads but I've seen panels of what you're talking about and those are too long
Yeah, that's pretty wacky, too. It really feels like Art did not like the mandated redesigns and drew SatAM Sonic with overgrown quills out of spite for it. If I remember right from the Ride, he outright refused to draw Dr. Eggman and so another artist would have to add him in.
Looks just like Adventure 1 Sonic.
Except shorter and with so many quills that his head might fall over.
>"good" Is the modern sonic one y'know?
That's an oxymoron and you know it!
Who ever heard of a "GOOD" Modern Sonic?
>I want to skip the newspaper strip part where the story is now a little more important.
I can tell you where all the good arcs to find in Archie.
I can tell you about stuff like The Sonic Super Specials, Mecha Madness, World Tour, Return to Angel Island, etc or even just the rare good single issues.
But you're not asking for Good Stories.
You're just asking for when Archie gets to go into Adventure Era homosexualry. Sorry, but as soon a Sonic gets green eyes, quality goes down hill quickly until an actual Sonicgay takes the writer's wheel.
Just do what the other Sonicgays do and head to #150 since you're too obtuse to read the comic and make your own opinions.
You know why I called you that?
Because you came asking when does the Archie Sonic comic book get good.
But your only metric for "good" you have is just whether or not it matches the video games.
What kind of idiotic homosexual expects a comic book to be like a video game?
So either go read IDW instead, watch some YT cutscenes or go play the fricking video games instead, you Cinemaphiletard!!
>You know why I called you that?
>Because you came asking when does the Archie Sonic comic book get good.
>But your only metric for "good" you have is just whether or not it matches the video games.
>What kind of idiotic homosexual expects a comic book to be like a video game?
>So either go read IDW instead, watch some YT cutscenes or go play the fricking video games instead, you Cinemaphiletard!!
>Doesn't appreciate newspaper strip misadventures.
I feel bad for you, man.
You'll probably like the later stuff.
Okay I suppose i will try to read all of it and appreciate the newstrip era sonic comic
Its True, i've now actually read the early issues without skipping too much of it. I now understand and appreciate the silly and wacky misadventures of early sonic the hedgehog comic with dumb and funny puns its filled with SOUL, especially when you read the "sonic gram" Part at the end of each issue where the early sonic fans would send dan mails to their favourite blue hedgehog almost like nostalgic feeling although i myself a zoomer. There just something about it cant really explain it but just teeming with this childlike joy and pride. You just had to be there
The vibe is nice, yeah.
It never gets good, the beginning is the only readable part and it only constantly gets worse and worse from there. Quit right at Endgame
>Stopping at Endgame instead of the Mecha Madness finale in #40
Why? There's only one good story from 41-50 (a leftover DeCesare script). Endgame is terrible. Bollers' comics immediately after were better.
I'm not very familiar with ken penders Gallagher stuff and whatnot, I've only heard that ken penders makes very unappealing sonic drawings and that he tried to sue Archie for using his characters, also he caused sonic Archie comic reboot??
General consensus is that Ken's stories weren't very good. Read if you want it not, he shows up around issue 11. I think he had a handful of decent ones, mostly when collaborating with other writers, but on the whole he's pretty bad. Gallagher is one of the early writers who liked puns.
If you wanna talk about this stuff later, just make a note when you find a story you really like or dislike and check who wrote it.
>I've only heard that ken penders makes very unappealing sonic drawings and that he tried to sue Archie for using his characters, also he caused sonic Archie comic reboot??
Yes and no. Here is a very short version:
>Years after departing Archie, Penders hears about Archie reprinting some old Sonic comics
>Penders asks if he is going to be paid any royalties for that
>Archie says "no" because it was not in his WFH (Work For Hire) contract
>Penders asks for the contract, they don't give it
>Under advice of his lawyers (aka his wife) he starts copyrighting his work in Archie (i.e. the stories he wrote, but not the characters directly)
>Archie doesn't do anything about that (they could have contested), but sues Penders once the copyright procedure is done
>The lawsuit ends being settled outside of court, with Penders keeping the rights to his stories, but not Sonic-related content itself (obviously) leading to this huge gray area nobody really understands
>Penders hopes that by having taken hostage many characters pivotal to the current storylines, Archie and Sega will negotiate with him. Instead, they frick him over by rebooting the whole thing
>Penders is left with 200+ unusable characters unless they are butchered to a point they have no relation to Sonic
>Around the same time, Penders tries to sue EA due to Chronicles, but the case is dismissed
>Penders decides to steal the Chronicles content by using "estoppel" meaning: "If I lie enough about Shade and anything from Chronicles being legally mine, without Sega ever contesting the claim, then it becomes true"
>After 10 years or more, Penders is almost ready to release his (in)famous Lara-Su Chronicles, whose first volume is literally reprintings of Archie Comics (the Mobius 25YL arc) sans last page which is "original"
While Penders may be one of the reasons Sega became fed up with Archie, he is not the sole reason for the cancellation. If I got any info wrong, or someone wants to add something, feel free
you forgot when he tried selling his characters to sega for 10k
Wasn't the comic's cancellation actually because of the last crossover where a bunch of Sega and Capcom IP bled cash out of Archie and they decided to abandon licensed comics and bet all their money on Riverdale (which succeeded)?
Probably? I'm not entirely sure what drove the final nail in the Archie Sonic's coffin. But it wasn't just one single thing.
The Penders, and subsequent writers/artists', lawsuits for sure didn't help Archie's stance with Sega.
You forgot Archie trying to focus on their own IPs with Riverdale.
Yeah, the funny thing is even after all the shit that archie comic pulled, it was the archie company themselves that ended the comic, not sega.
and Riverdale goes *tthhttpt* in 2 episodes and Archie is in the ocean of meh
>the beginning is the only readable part
I hate these moronic fricking memesters who pretend anyone cares about gag comics
Yeah cause I'd much rather read Ian and penders' dramatic Tails-shitting ntr cuckshit than funny silly strips of the goofy cartoons annoying the big Egg shaped moustache-twirling villain like Sonic is supposed to be
Your character is literally designed off Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat and here you gays want him to be some dramatic cuck trash like Darling in the Franxx
I'm just pissed we'll never get to see Chronicles of the dark brotherhood again or at least revisited. It had potential and with how big the cast of sonic is, it could have worked.
I wanted to see knuckles old tribe, or some other mechs, the zeti, lots of other game characters interact. Heck for some reason that game has gizoids like gemeral emeral and scylla and chyub and SatAM swatbots in the same setting. Just mad Penders threw his fit and now we can't have any other echidnas or chronicles back.
What angers me the most is that, after certain tweets he made (specifically, the one about the trademark/copyright of Chronicles being expired) and after reading his response to the guys of Did You Know Gaming, he practically admitted to have no real ownership over Shade, and that all his claims of it are based on a stunt that can be described as: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth".
The man seriously has no shame.
The one thing that caught my attention is that mention he did of Shade showing up on Archie. But that doesn't make any sense to me as she was part of the EA lawsuit, not the Archie one (the one he, arguably, "won"). Then again, I have no idea what mental gymnastics went through his head... or Archie's lawyers' when they made their settlement.
I just want Sega to try that idea again, or at least with their new characters/old cast. Bring in all the game characters for a RPG like since Mario's doing one (even if its a remake). It could work bar Penders meddling and crunch on devs.
>trademark/copyright of Chronicles being expired
Could Penders trademark/copyright it again in his name of some shit like that?
I have no idea how those laws work, but if he does/can, I suppose either Sega or Bioware/EA will be informed to see if they contest, and if they not... then Penders would legally own them.
Or not?
Penders knows he can never actually sell anything from Chronicles, that's why he never attempts to do it. On the other hand, I actually think Penders wants to go to court with Sega because he always remarks about how he'll take action if they violate his copyright (which doesn't actually exist) so he can reopen the case and actually somehow win and gain full ownership because the original case was dismissed and he doesn't actually own anything. He even one time tried to say he was willing to "sell" his characters to them and others.
>He even one time tried to say he was willing to "sell" his characters to them and others
Worse, he is willing to "license" them, meaning they would still "belong" to him and he is just being a "magnanimous gentleman easy to deal with".
Man is either the biggest troll on Twitter, or absolutely delusional.
The lesson here is to never hire writers with zero knowledge of the series they're working on or video games altogether.
Nah, I would argue you can hire those writers. The thing is, keep an eye on them, and make sure they play the games and understand what you want for the story.
It is no secret Penders used the Knuckles mini-series to dump all the "original" storylines he had came up but where rejected here or there, because Sega and Archie were only keeping eye on Sonic (he has admitted that himself).
I liked the main antagonist of the game, Imperator Ix. I think he could've become a real cool recurring villain the series. The dude didn't even die at the end of Chronicles, he just ran away.
I liked a lot of the characters designs, like Imperator and Shade. That and it gave knuckles an interesting angle that he might not be alone and gave him someone else to talk to who isn't tikal (whos gone now). The music was also pretty alright for a DS game (the tracks what were finished and not midi-fied old themes).
That and I want to see the Gizoids again. Heck they could have cream and Gemeral be playable again. The zeti, or Sage. Maybe bring the comic characters into the mix since tangle, whisper, etc. were namedropped in Frontiers. There's a lot to play with in RPG's but a lot of misfortune hit chronicles so it lost its potential.
Are you crazy, anons? Don't you see Ix, Shade and everything from Chronicles are carbon copies of Penders characters?
Can't you see Shade's pink fur, her metallic dreadlock, her gun weaponry, or her choleric (and definitely not melancholic) temperament?!
The funny thing about Ix is that he's the only Echidna from Chronicles Penders can't claims he owns.
Ix isn't like anyone Penders created, and Penders never mentions him when he starts babbling about his copyright, only Shade mostly. At most, Ix is like Finitevus -- who was obviously based off Zachary from Fleetway.
Penders will claim Ix is a rip-off of Doctor Finitevus, based solely on apperance alone (His fur is white/pale!).
Which is funny, because on the other hand, the only reason he can claim Shade as a Julie-Su rip-off is due to her role in the story (female defector of evil organization), because other than that, they are nothing alike, not even personality-wise.
>Zachary from Fleetway
I wouldn't be surprised if Penders believes that character is another rip-off of his work (Even if he predates Penders' echidnas by two years, I think).
Penders didn't create Finitevus, it was Karl Bollers, I believe.
I think you are right, even so, he would still search for another echidna of his to make the claim.
Bollers did. The only connection to Penders is that Ian wrote some random echidna in one of his stories as him.
I find it ironic that despite the obvious influence from the comic, the Nocturnus clan managed to look a lot more original and interesting.
People remember Namek because of the fights, Freeza, and Goku becoming a Super Saiyan. Nobody actually gives a rat's ass about the "collecting" part, they care about whatever new character shows up to start shit, that's what every (coherent) dbzgay talks about. Collecting the dragon balls has become a footnote in it's own story which is why it's always slideshows or they have someone who's already gathered them up.
>the Nocturnus clan managed to look a lot more original and interesting
I believe this is another reason Penders went against Chronicles.
>he's gone off saying that the reason why Knuckles was popular was because of his series
Wait, really? Is that statement even accurate? Or just inflating his own ego?
>I believe this is another reason Penders went against Chronicles.
That's because the folks at BioWare were (bio)aware of what they were doing. They managed to take crap and twist it into something that could fit into the game world so much so that Shade and Argus were liked enough by Sonic Team to be included in more games. Such a shame but the damage is done, I'm content with knowing that Penders is now stuck reaping what he sowed after failing to get what this was really about: the moolah.
>Wait, really? Is that statement even accurate? Or just inflating his own ego?
>https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/442571390508466176
Yes. Incidentally while finding this tweet, I did find another bold claim about him saving Sonic.
>https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/447194793043447810
Pretty sure he's taking the piss here but his other comments make me pause. >https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/447815452014542848
Gotta feel bad for Ben, the one chance he had to conclude his story only for some asshat to ruin it all.
>First tweet: "I have never said I owned or created Knuckles, but arguably one can say I brought value to the character."
And what "value" would that be? If we are being honest, even during the time when the miniseries was being released, how many Sonic fans (not just Archie, all of them), knew anything about his particular take on Knuckles? How many fans value or even consider his take, now?
>Second tweet: "I was the savior of the series. And you're welcome."
What was the context here? Cause that's one hell of a bold statement, even for someone who's usually as delusional as he is.
>Third tweet: "I was the savior of the series. And you're welcome."
Another bold claim, considering HE was the one who ultimately screwed up the deal, or rather, the possibility of one, that is.
>What was the context here? Cause that's one hell of a bold statement, even for someone who's usually as delusional as he is.
After finding the deleted tweet on the archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150728163724/https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/447194793043447810 it kinda does sound like he was taking the piss but probably not all things considered. His first tweet was about him potentially aiding Sony with adapting the Endgame saga since apparently the fans wanted dark and edgy as well as seeing his characters again. The deleted tweet mocked him for his ego and he responded as such. I think what he meant was how Archie was originally slated to end by #50 but they decided to keep going after seeing the sales.
>And what "value" would that be? If we are being honest, even during the time when the miniseries was being released, how many Sonic fans (not just Archie, all of them), knew anything about his particular take on Knuckles? How many fans value or even consider his take, now?
I don't think it's wild to assume hardly any. These days and even during the soft rebooted preboot I'd bet if you ask someone who Knuckles' girlfriend is you're more likely to hear Rouge or even Tikal (I wanna say Shade but maybe not) despite Julie being the first love interest for him. The only characters I hear about are Archie Sonic but that was more recent because people don't like how Ian is handling him in IDW but I see more comparisons with his game counterpart than Archie and then there's Shadow. I think Shadow may be the only one who truly fits the bill here since even Ian and Evan prefer that version but of course for those who don't care about the comics or are aware also talk about how he was written better in past games or in the JP version.
I just want shade to come back so Knuckles can have someone else to talk to and have a cool story to himself about something besides "protect shiny rock" and form a relationship with another echidna and explore that.
Chronicles was the closest we ever got to seeing knuckles be more social or at least SEGA exploring more of the echidna tribe and its past; at worst more playable characters like how you got to play as eggman which is rare, Imagine playing as Sage, Eggmans robots, the Zeti, anything else. Just wish SEGA would experiment like they did with Shadow the Edgehog.
I was in a bliss when I realized that Bioware grabbed the concepts of the 4th Great Civilization and the Gizoid, and tied them with the Nocturnus. Sonic Battle is my favourite Sonic game, and I was so happy that the story got some sort of spiritual sequel.
Regarding the Chronicles content, I like Shade a lot, she was a nice character that served her role just fine in the story. She was not even portrayed as a love interest for Knuckles just then (even if Bioware did thought of that for the sequels), but it was nice seeing Knuckles being happy interacting with a non-dead member of his species.
>I just want shade to come back
I don't even need Shade to come back, after all that has happened, I don't mind her staying dead, but in peace.
What angers me is Penders desecrating her corpse out of sheer spitefulness because she apparently became more memorable than Julie-Su.
First by undermining her as a character by saying "she's just a Julie-Su alias", and then outright trying to steal her not only in name, but also in design (at least, when it comes to the armor).
The exact same thing that happens with Scourge. If Penders truly was so proud of his Evil Sonic... then why use the design and name coined by his "rival" Ian Flynn (and Spaz)?
>Nobody actually gives a rat's ass about the "collecting" part, they care about whatever new character shows up to start shit
Correct, but the point is that the Dragon Balls provide the necessary context and motivation required for any of that to even happen to begin with. It's like saying no one cares about tournament arcs, only the fights that happen in them. It's missing the forest for the trees.
>which is why it's always slideshows or they have someone who's already gathered them up
That only ever happens in the later arcs of Z and Super, which also correlated to the steep decline of those stories.
What I found the most funny (in an ironic way), is that, it is no secret that Penders has this strange (even obsessive) one-sided rivalry with Ian Flynn. If Penders would have just left Chronicles alone, he could have claimed 15 years ago, he was the first American writer whose work is reflected/portrayed in an official Sonic game, clearly "owing" Ian Flynn (who in 2021 wrote Sonic Frontiers, something that probably made Penders' blood boil).
Now Penders keeps claiming he did all that to protect his work as an author, and doesn't understand why people side with the "evil corporation" instead of supporting the small artist. But he truly thinks people can't see the root of his actions: Greed.
Before the lawsuit, and before the copyright move, Penders knew Sega could do whatever the heck they wanted with the work he did under Archie (he stated, prior to the lawsuit, that he signed the work for hire contract, and all claims afterwards of no such contract have been proven as blatant lies).
They didn't even owe him a mention in the credits. It wasn't until he got the copyrights, that he decided to make his move against EA, probably out of sheer spite and pettiness (despite the Bioware people and Sega, at the time, not having any contractual obligations towards him).
He also claims how some Bioware people wanted to talk to him in a 2007/2008 Con (i.e. before or during Chronicles development), but he wasn't available. He could be lying, but let's assume he is not.
Does he honestly believe they were coming to ask permission to use his stories as base? At most, they were to hire him in as a writer, and, at the least, they just came to thank him for the inspiration.
>it is no secret that Penders has this strange (even obsessive) one-sided rivalry with Ian Flynn
I'd rather read your fricking obituary
Honestly, aside from a couple scattered stories, I had more fun with Gallagher and DeCesare cracking jokes than I did with the rest of the book. They're not all winners, but the stories were better on average and knew how to pace themselves. For every "Bunnie fights Sonic at Oil Ocean" and "Sonic gets into a fighting tourney" story, you had like 5x as many "Hamlin gets pissy about politics" and "Let's pretend anyone cares about the cat tribe" issues in Ian's half of the book. The stuff after it started taking itself seriously was more about the incremental updates to the world instead of any given story being good.
I guess the problem is I don't have a developmental disability so someone going "ROBOTNIK? MORE LIKE SNOREBOTNIK!" doesn't really move the needle for me but you do you
>I don't have a developmental disability
You read and defend Sonic comics, who the frick are you trying to fool here?
I'll set the passive aggressive barb aside and point out that the rest of the book doesn't really change at its core. Writers just swap out bad jokes for lore, ridiculous melodrama or callbacks. They keep the skeleton from the start intact, which is part of why fights rarely get any more complicated than they did back when Manak was drawing the book and stories remain as straightforward as ever
The reason that Sonic turning into a ghost for an issue works better than the storyline where he's dealing with high school angst or the one where he's contending with Naugus' right to the throne comes down to the early writers having a better grasp on how to sell ideas and how many pages an idea is worth. It's not just "later stories too long" because even Gallagher did multi part story arcs. It's that Karl and later Ian (and ESPECIALLY Ken) have a hard time gauging just how much should be in a story and how to guide their reader.
TL;DR, it's all the same childish shit. Wanking lore is just as dull as a dad joke. The rest of the comic was just written by people moving out of their comfort zone and struggling to hit a similar level of consistency in execution.
Imagine an adult showing a funny Garfield strip to someone from work
Now imagine an adult showing this to that same person
The latter is you. You very much do have a developmental disability, just like all Post-Gallagher gays.
I would go as far as saying liking any of the stuff after the comic got serious means you're moronic. There's good comics after that. It's just that the good issues weren't as common. I always thought DeCesare put out the best stories. You could feel his Archie experience in the way he handled character interactions.
*I wouldn't go so far
Archiegays would defend this panel with all their cope and post it on their pride flag twitters saying it's "peak" if Ian Flynn wrote it (and he would)
I'm with you it's tripe. Just read a fricking beano or something or the British sonic book if you want that kind of thing.
You can apply the same logic to Ken's wannabe Star Trek, Karl's wannabe Spider-Man and Ian's wannabe shonen manga. Dismissing something entirely because better versions exist is stupid.
I'm saying I think it's bad. Also it's really not like Shonen manga if you've actually read a shonen manga.
>But it's bad!
Yeah. The Sonic comics are bad on the whole. At best they reach acceptable and very rarely they hit "hey, that was pretty good!" Nobody would give them the time of day if not for the brand.
I'm saying your comparison is stupid because everyone who took a shot at Archie was basically just writing worse versions of existing comics. You're just singling out the ones with bad jokes and a campy tone. It's very silly.
If you've got a proper criticism of them compared to the later stuff I'm all ears. So far you're just talking shit.
I think the 2nd age AKA 160 onwards is Phenomenal and I don't think it's a 'worse versoin of an existing comic.' I just think the early stuff is ugly and unfunny and post that, absolute torture until 160.
Yeah real "phenomenal" alright.
If you're a cuckold fetishist maybe
That part was Flynn cleaning up the mess that Bollers and Penders left him to deal with. He had to resolve that dumb love triangle in some kind of a way.
I think it was for the better that it ended like that. Pairing Fiona up with Scourge made a lot of sense for her character and made her more interesting.
"cleaning it up" by making it 10x worse and shitting on Tails even further
Well done you obese testosterone-impaired blob, you literally are a worse writer than Penders
>Broad, substanceless statements of "X good, Y bad."
Thanks for the discussion.
gg
>Ian's Sonic isn't like a shonen manga
What would you call it?
his fanfiction
i agree it's not shonen at all, because that implies sonic can even grow or develop as a person
I doubt it
Form your own opinion instead of b***hing with literal strangers on the internet.
In a neutral way, I think is was good. But prepare to see the most awful comic front #50 to 158, thanks to Penders fulop and galaggher.
Everyone shit on flynn in modern times but is a fact the books was at his best when he became the main writer from 160 and onwards.with Tracy Yardley being the gold standard for good on model sonic art.
But as I said form your own opinion.
>'"Form your own opinion!"
>Parrots the "stop at 50" thing, ignores Bollers entirely, pretends everything between Endgame and 160 was terrible.
I feel like I'm going crazy. Do people just point to 50 because it's a "milestone" issue? Do Sonic fans have trouble with complicated opinions? This shit's weird.
OH you think bollers is worth a mention when he was as awful as everybody else.
is parroting when you just have the same opinion as everybody else, without looking the book at all, is a goddamn fact if you actually read the book, anon is right.
I want you to type out "Return to Angel is worse than Endgame" with a straight face.
Like come on. You're saying every single thing Karl Bollers wrote was shit while giving Ken Penders a pass on Endgame, as if it's not the same quality as most of his stories. You're telling someone to make up their own mind while regurgitating common consensus even if it's nonsense. How am I supposed to believe you can make up your own mind when you have no unique perspective whatsoever?
RtAI is like, the ONLY good story Bollers wrote, and it still doesn't make up for "The Slap"
You're conflating stories with fandom discourse. If you actually look at the return from space storyline without knowing what people already think it's just melodrama soap opera shit with Sonic and Sally being fricking buttholes. Like they had been for nearly a hundred issues. Slapping him and breaking up for not humoring her need for his emotional support is WAY less terrible than the ghosting, othering, verbal abuse and general petty bullshit Sally had done prior, ESPECIALLY around the 90s-110s. Those moments just get glossed over because there isn't a convenient panel to repost in order to create a net forum narrative.
Like please, actually go read these stories without paying attention to what Sonic fans think. The fandom will definitely prop up RTAI, but you know what consensus won't say?
>The Rob'O/General D'Coolette story is great!
>I love the Mecha Mk 2 fight!
>The Casablanca parody was funny.
>I really like Hope's character arc.
>The Sandblaster two parter was fun.
>Mina was great!
>The space arc was a lot of fun.
Because this stuff doesn't win online arguments or help to demonize or elevate a writer. I've seen individuals say each of these over the years, but never all. I agree with some of them. Everyone's gonna have different opinions on this stuff.
I don't care what your opinion is, but if you're going to tell people to think for themselves, fricking do it. I'm so tired of people regurgitating bullshitm it's why you can't discuss these comics. Talk about your takeaways and actual thoughts instead of broad strokes nonsense you can't even back up.
>Do people just point to 50 because it's a "milestone" issue?
More or less, yeah. The issues start piling up before that, but 50 is just a decent enough stopping point before things get REALLY bad.
You're literally reading the good part.
Am I? Why is that?
Because once it stops with the stupid comedy and tries to get serious, it will only get worse.
We used to have a really good pic where it explained the whole quality of the book.
But we lost it trough time.
Sad
Careful now. We don't want that schizo shitting up the threads woth ramblings of "Richmunk"s and "diapergays"
You should start gaining reading comprehension skills first.
Once you've learned how to read, go read the sign that reads, in plain english:
/V/TARDS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!
Once you comprehend that, crawl back to the bowels of /sthg/ where you belong.
>says something about the lack reading comprehension
>thinks the thread about a comic is Cinemaphile material
moronic or merely pretending?
Take a look at this, it might help.
>the ride™
Man, it was such a fun time, I genuinely enjoyed reading the full comic here it was hilarious, remember when titan tails appeared? Never in my life I have laughed that much reading post until that day.
The drawgays were tops too.
Never knew the name of the artist of pic related, he was so good.
>10 years have passed since the ride™
It hurts so bad anons, where does time goes?
I hope someone rides again soon. There's something magic about it every time.
Does anyone have links to all the Cinemaphile storytime threads? Archived.moe doesn't allow searches, but they still have the threads saved somewhere. I wanna read how people reacted to stuff like Endgame, Return of the King, the pisspool, the turducken, Robotropolis getting nuked, the alien bullshit in the 120s, The Slap, and Sonic's Angels.
I was on the second Ride and definitely enjoyed my little running gag of mentioning Hot Pockets during much of the Knuckles-centric arcs after the whole bit with Locke nuking his son's egg.
>Never in my life I have laughed that much reading post until that day.
Glad I made you laugh.
I want Bunnie to give me a reach around with that arm.
What is the difference between Sonic 50 and the Super Sonic #6 version of the issue?
Added extra pages
What did it add? An epilogue to keep shit going because they thought #50 might be the last issue?
No more in the actual story. They're important if I remember right. I think all reprints include these buy if you're reading online you might end up reading shit old scans that don't include them.
Some scenes have extra panels or pages added. They're mostly scenes involving supporting characters. Like for example Bunnie and Antoine doing more during fight scenes, or Hershey and Drago getting an extended scene. The confrontation with Eggman is longer and restructured. There's a Sonic/Sally kiss added near the end. The original story in Sonic #50 was 27 pages long, while the Super Special version is 41 pages.
Cool, do you have the one for IDW too?
Does IDW even need one?
No, it doesn't have nearly enough to need one.
IDWgays are lucky, they have their Collection volumes that contains everything in order, mini-series and annual stories included
Archie Sonic became more popular and less mocked after it died
Kind of funny when you think about it
You never know how good something is until it's gone
Apparently every IDW comic has to be checked by Sega of Japan during every single step of the process.
the japanese do not understand sonic
Sonic was co-created by Oshima and Naka
>tripgays
Are you saying that IDW got more restrictions from SEGA than Archie?
Yes. You can actually blame Archie for that one, if I remember right, based on what came out of that DYKG video about Lost Sonic Games, at first, Archie was monitored by Sega.
So anything the writers wrote, had to be sent to Sega for revision. At some point, they stopped the practice, leading to writers like Penders doing whatever the heck they wanted.
The following are my conjectures, so take them with a grain of salt:
>Sega of Japan was not involved at all, and Sega of America, at some point, probably got too lazy with the comic and left it to Archie's whole supervision
>Then, when Penders started what led to the "Pendering", Sega (of Japan?) finally realized just how truly separate the comic had become to the games
>This lead to the first mandates to be implemented, maybe as a ground test
>Because Archie Reboot proved to be more akin to the games (and more popular than Preboot with game fans?), by the time the IDW deal was reached, Sega increased the mandates, probably hoping it would help the comics stay in tune better with the games
I feel like post reboot archie was the perfect balance in being like the games while also being able to do its own thing. Fleetway came close to that perfect balance but missed the mark in some areas.
Man frick Penders
The early comics are the only genuinely good part of Archie Sonic.
>fun one off adventures that does a good job of combining the tone of both AoSTH and SatAM into sonething enjoyable
>decent wordplay and jokes
>surprising amount of character growth, particularly with Antione and Bunny
>knows it's a comic and uses that to its advantage, with fourth wall breaks and novel gimmicks like posters and cutouts
It was an irreverent celebration of what it was like to be a Sonic fan at the time, and aged better than pretty much everything that came after Endgame. Post-Endgame is outright undreadable until the Genesis Reboot. Even then, the Reboot era is only serviceable when compared to the decades of insanity that came before.
Really depends on you
Archie Sonic is a wild ride of varying quality. The best the earlier comics have to offer is Mecha Madness, RtAI but I also thought that the fight against M was great. Ian Flynn era gets better but it's pretty overrated because he comes right after the slog that is the Penders only era; he's the janny we needed to make sense of all the bullshit the earlier writers came up with. He still has his issues though, like his pacing and decompression or how he spend more time setting up stuff than getting to it. The comic is also bogged down by a lot of the politics stuff that slows down the action see the fricking council and sometime straight panels of words words words. I did like some of it though, #175 is a great milestone issue and the King Naugus/Secret Freedom Fighters were pretty good but they never get concluded thanks to Penders. But really the best stories are in Universe. The Reboot lose a lot of the magic and once again spends most of it's time setting up the world and infodumping the new backstories for the FF. Anyway I think all of it is worth reading at least once, this is really just the tip of the iceberg and there's quite nothing like it out there, getting to the Pendering was fricking surreal
>t. someone who finished reading Archie for the first time 2 weeks ago
I really need to read Achie again.
>need to read Achie again
Just skip to the Sonic Universe era.
>too sterile and mandate-heavy to please archie fans
>too similar to archie to please game fans
What was the audience for the idw comics?
Coomers that like all the female OCs
6 year olds who don't buy comics
I liked Archie more often than not
Agreed, I really enjoyed Flynn's work on Archie. Even the dark age had some fun stuff, like Return to Angel Island or the Space Arc.
Agreed, it's really a shame that Postboot Archie got shitcanned so soon. It was free of all the Penders crap and closer to the games than ever, and the people writing still seemed to have enthusiasm and creativity.
Now Ian Flynn just seems utterly burned-out and Evan is more interested in Whisper than she is in the game characters.
Fire Potto. We'll never be able to move on from Archie for as long as he's in charge of writing.
Evan has been in charge of writing since the end of MV.
Hence why the carpet munchers, er, the Diamond Cutters are now the lead characters.
They're just the Freedom Fighters again.
>No funny french swordsman
>No sexy southern cy-bunny
>No chill Walrus techy
>No cute hologirl
>Spergy Dyke with clumsy tail
>Furry version of Quiet from MGS
>Beep The Sheep doing a poor Sally impression
Yep, those are the Freedom Fighters allright.
In function they're the same thing.
>er, the Diamond Cutters
UUUUUU YOU CAN'T SAY THAT WORD IT'S TRIGGERING I DIDN'T GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO SAY MY TRIGGER WORD UUUUUUUU I'M TRIGGERREEEDDDDD!!!!!
No she hasn't. She's been given copious notes from Potto as to how he wants the comic to go, and she's following them. He's still in charge of direction even if Stanley makes a couple one-offs.
>No she hasn't.
Yes she has and you have that backwards. Ian has been the one doing mini-series or the occasional 1-2 issues in the mainline.
?t=2368
>Q:How does a Writer vs Head Writer work? I'm an outsider looking so sorry for the ignorance?
Ian: Now this is not a universal answer, this could be very different from project to project, production to production, studio to studio, this is just my personal experience within the confines of IDW Sonic. Evan is lead writer right now on Sonic which means she is pitching the main storyline. She is doing the bulk of the series writing and I, as a contributing writer, fall in line with that. Like when doing Imposter Syndrome, I checked with her and with the editors to make sure that what I was doing didn't disrupt her writing because she's setting down the groundwork. I'm doing the spin-off. The spin-off should not overshadow the main thing. Mostly just communicating back and forth so that whatever I'm contributing is fitting within her greater vision. She's super cool to work with, very easy to work with, we both grew up at a time where we could see what happens to the comics when creatives aren't cooperative with each other and we both adamantly want to avoid that. Head writer establishes the main stuff, is the driving force for the greater narrative, and the contributing writers are adding stuff on the side to contribute to that greater narrative.
Then why are they both writing the entire cast like garbage? You can't even say it's for the sake of the OCs, because they're also written like garbage.
Come on anon, this isn't rocket science. Obviously THEY don't think they're writing the cast like garbage, including the editors and Sega and the people praising the comic outside of here. They wouldn't otherwise just because people here think so. The only character they aired grievances about is Shadow. Ian has practically given up writing him while Evan still tries to but gets pushback every time she does try to include him in stories.
>Obviously THEY don't think they're writing the cast like garbage
Potto has to know, though. He has to realize that he's been writing the entire extended cast like Indiana Jones-esque loads while Sonic is the only character doing anything that matters.
That doesn't change much considering how she's just as much of an archiegay like Ian
. I genuinely think we need some new blood here, it's pretty clear that the both of them want to insert Archie wherever they can but are restrained by Sega (Shadow is an egregious example) so they're forced to compromise. I remember how Ian said something about wanting IDW to be it's own thing yet he and several others can't help but insert Archie stuff whenever they can.
>Ian said something about wanting IDW to be it's own thing
It can't anymore, not with IDW being canon to the games. It'll never have the opportunity to form its own identity, it's strictly advertisement now. There's still a chance for good stories, but it'll never be anything more than "more Sonic content".
>not with IDW being canon to the games.
Are you still believing that marketing tactic?
What marketing tactic? The one where Tangle's name was mentioned in game i Frontiers?
Monica the mouse from the manga somehow did a background cameo in a class sonic idw comic so I have to wonder if the mandates are exclusive western made sonic properties and anything made by japan is fair game as long as it corresponds to the era it was made in (ie classic sonic can have stuff from the manga and ova and modern sonic can have stuff from… just x really) , which if so, is kind of pathetic since that just makes it seem like they don’t want any stuff used from outside japan despite it being a western made comic. Either that or Monica was snuck in without anyone from sega noticing.
The artist is a weeb tard and pretty sure he did admit he snuck shit in for “MEMBER THIS LITERAL WHO” points. Entire story became shit for me afterwards
Why is this wierd when this is literally all Jap made media. 99% they hate western shit and will allow their stuff over anything else. The archie shit was basically a anomaly, only allowed to existed due to events that will never be repeated ever again.
Ironically the reason the stories play it so safe is the same reason why Penders stories we're so meandering. They both feel like the series can be canceled at the drop of a hat. Ian response is to make mostly safeish story so inoffensive that it could take place in-between nearly any recent game while Penders response was to make stretch any of the ongoing mysteries he made to the point where none of their answers could be satisfying
I think in Ian's case it's more appearant, since he's been burnt twice with Archie. Once with the SGW and then the comic's cancellation. his ideas got shelved before they even got to truly blossom as a result, like the eggbosses or the other OCs he introduced which must really fricking suck as a writer. I can't blame him for being a bit more reserved just in case idw doesn't pan out.
The problem isn't that Ian's playing it safe, it's that him and the rest of the IDW crew are woefully uncreative WHILE playing it safe. There's so much stuff from the Modern games they can pull from as a backdrop for a setting, or as a plotline they can play with.
Even restricting themselves to just Forces would be more than enough. Why not use the Casino Forest as a setting where Sonic and co. take down a crime lord? Why not use the the Metropolitan Highway in Capital City for a Riders arc?
Hell, even the stuff IN IDW is bafflingly unexplored. Sonic was stuck in Blazes dimension for only a few pages before being unceremoniously kicked out. Why not have him explore her dimension for a while, flesh it out a bit. Have Marine and Captain Whiskers show up again because why the frick not?
There's so much potential being squandered because this book simply isn't interested in being a Sonic comic. It's a Freedom Planet comic with Sonic in the background.
Ian and Evan want to do their own thing instead of calling back to the games, which is why the Diamond Cutters are the leads now. This is their comic, not Sonic's.
Captain Whiskers is dead.
He's a robot, if Metal Sonic can be rebuilt than so can he. Hell, he doesn't even need to be the antagonist of Blaze's dimension, just bring back Eggman Nega.
>just bring back Eggman Nega.
Ian hates Eggman Nega so that's not happening.
Of course he does. The more I hear of Ian the more I'm convinced he's a glorified fanfic writer that hates fun.
Didn't Sega mandates say no Eggman Nega? Not only that but he makes no sense at all? Eggman but evil but its supposed to be reverse? He should have been a good Eggman. Same way it seems they mandated no other echidnas (Ala Ken Penders & his OC's & Sonic Chronicles)?
Nega is actually supposed to be a "dark" version of Eggman. While regular Eggman is a bad guy, he doesn't possess the, well, NEGATIVE traits Nega does. Eggman is willing to play ball with the heroes when the stakes become too high. Eggman Nega, so far, is the opposite, and is shown to be way more egotistical than Eggman, to the point where he'd go scorched Earth killing himself, his allies, and his enemies just because his ego is more fragile than Eggman's – who would usually just throw in the towel and try again, but not Nega, he has a complete meltdown. Our Eggman is, in a way, the Eggman Posi to Eggman Nega.
Why would Nega be off-limits when both Silver and Blaze are fair game? That makes no sense.
Nobody here is saying they're diehard fans of Nega, only that he fits the role Ian is trying to force Eggman into far better. He can't keep trying to have Eggman regularly pull irredeemable stunts like the Metal Virus while still trying to portray him as sympathetic and worthy of redemption, it doesn't work. At least with Nega, Ian could've had his cake and eat it too.
They should fix that problem by admitting eggman won’t change his ways because eggman is c**t to his core. He’s evil and knows it.
>Didn't Sega mandates say no Eggman Nega?
I remember that there was a time back in Archie that Ian wrote Nega into the story but for some reason couldn't actually show him so they just left him obscured in his eggmobile. I don't think that's an issue anymore at this point though.
Which baffles me since Ian basically wants to write Eggman like Nega. Archie Eggman was basically Eggman Nega, but with less mock politeness.
It really sucks, Nega would've been the perfect replacement for Eggman while he was still Tinker. Ian could've had the best of both worlds, exploring what Eggman would actually do while good while having an irredeemable bastard Eggman to shit up the place.
But NOPE, gotta bring back Neo so we can rip off Sonic Heroes for a few issues! Christ, the more I think about IDW the worse it gets.
>Which baffles me since Ian basically wants to write Eggman like Nega.
That's the point though anon. Ian sees Nega as redundant because he wants OG Eggman to have that kind of intimidation and threat on his own. Nega requires for Eggman to be more harmless for him to work and Ian hates that. Also because saying Nega outloud makes him uncomfortable.
>Also because saying Nega outloud makes him uncomfortable.
Imagine hearing and saying the word Nega making you think of the n-word.
Eggman says the gamer word. Tune in next week for when Eggman has a gamer moment!
He could have wrote Nega like the Eggman(s) from SatAM and/or Underground.
>Ian sees Nega as redundant because he wants OG Eggman to have that kind of intimidation and threat on his own
But that doesn't work when he's so wishy washy about Eggman being redeemable. Either Eggman isn't as bad as he seems or Sonic is written to be a braindead idiot in IDW, which is it Ian?!
Ian said in his podcast that he doesn't want to put too much thought into locations because it would be a waste since they probably won't go back there again. That's why ever place the cast go is just bland towns, forests, generic Eggman bases, and the occasional city.
>modern games
don't mean anything. they're random and uninspired. if robotnik is a bad guy, then that means cities might resist him, which means military action, which means government responses, then sonic is just a hedgehog cop
Archiegays and IDWgays both KNEEL to the Fleetwaychads.
Tell me what you like about it other than Super Sonic being a psycho.
>Super Sonic not being a deus ex machina 'get out of trouble free card'
>Instead it's dangerous
>Super Sonic can make the problem go away, or make it far worse
>It's like the Hulk, shit could go south very fast.
Fleetway Super Sonic is infinitely more interesting a concept than Dragon Ball Z's Golden God super form bullshit. Sonic just getting a magic power to end any problem is boring. Fleetway Super Sonic is when a bad situation gets worse and the characters have to think their way out of a problem. It's more interesting story wise. And when Sonic and Super Sonic are the same being it not only adds a new threat it actually takes Sonic out of the equation meaning his supporting cast are brought to prominence and get something to do.
It's just a straight up fricking upgrade for Super Sonic to be a seperate, chaotic evil being. Plus he looks cooler.
But he’s not like that for most of the book. He’s what you describe for most of his early stories but quickly Super Sonic separates from Sonic entirely and becomes an edgy solo villain. Hell, he even goes through a bit where he loses his memories and becomes one of the good guys.
I swear basically every Fleetway fan has never actually read Fleetway.
I'm talking about Fleetway Super Sonic at his core. Not what they did because they ran out of ideas and needed a villain/redemption arc for the kids. At the beginning the original idea was solid. Of course I've fricking read fleetway but considering how the comic moved that's like complaining about genius banner hulk when discussing the hulks origin you goalpost moving homosexual.
>when you finally beat the last Special Stage after a billion fricking tries
but he was a deus ex machina since he usually showed up to deal with problems Sonic was, he'd still beat the frick out of his ally once he's done dealing with it though
Never read Fleetway, couldn't get past the artwork.
Sonic being an overimpulsive moron has been a thing ever since Sonic Lost World, they tend to teeter back and forth between sensible Sonic and too-fast-to-think Sonic who just makes everything worse. Prime Sonic especially is an unbearable idiot.
Oh, it's definitely not a problem exclusive to the comics. But at least in stuff like Lost World his implusiveness had a veneer of believability to it. Him freeing the Zeti is consistent to his character, he sees unknown creatures enslaved by Eggman, he frees them. It just so happens that those creatures were also cartoonishly evil.
But here he's just genuinely out of character solely to get the plot moving. None of his "redemption" antics ever really work due to the nature of the book, so he just looks foolish every time it blows up in his face while he learns nothing from it.
Here’s comes the stc “fan” again. Like clockwork
Holy shit Sonic.exe got into a comic?!?
people only talk about STC because of super sonic.
Not that Anon, but I liked Fleetway a lot.
>Sonic's butthole personality is at least intentional, and gives him some character. It's not like IDW where he repeatedly lets depraved villains escape and expects a round of applause
>Knuckles is more clever than usual; gets great feats like punching off a chunk of the Floating Island or piloting the Floating Island like a mech and blasting the Death Egg with a lightning cannon (pic related)
>modern characters like Team Dark, Blaze, Silver, Cream, etc. hadn't been introduced yet, so the OC characters like Tekno and Shortfuse are less redundant and don't crowd out the main cast as much
>OCs do things other than just cry. Most new OC characters are fun villains like Brutus and Metamorphia
>lots of fun gonzo adventures with Knuckles fighting dinosaur-ghosts and Sonic fighting pirates and dimension-hopping and miniature Arabian worlds and shit. You never knew what was coming up next issue
>No Penders insanity, only other Echidnas are Tikal and Dr. Zachary
I won't say it's perfect, but I enjoyed it a lot as a wacky adventure comic.
thank you for an actual answer.
You're welcome! I realize that Fleetway doesn't get expounded on in great detail as much, so people might be confused, lol.
Fleetway was fun until Robotnik was removed from power, and then the book struggled until its finale with the Adventure arc.
I'll agree with that, the one-shot post-Robotnik villains were pretty uninspiring. I felt like the Drakon Empire and the Adventure arc did help it to end on a high note, though.
By that point, there was a significant drought in Sonic content. There was no major Sonic games after S3&K until Sonic Adventure. There were a few spinoffs, of course, but Fleetway didn't adapt those.
The Saturn Dry Spell where it was more Panzer Dragoon and Virtua Fighter than Sonic
don't forget about the Chaotix kino
it still had some fun stories here and there but I agree, #100 is a great send off
These comics are going for $20 a pop minimum even for every random ass issue and I have the complete set with all miniseries and annuals up until the first MegaMan crossover. I think I'm just missing 182 and sonic universe like 11 or something. Should I sell them or hold. Figured with the penders legal shit they'll never ever get reprinted
I want Scratch and Grounder back. They were cool.
>All this constructive and non-constructive criticism of IDW sonic
Genuine question: how do comics like IDW listen to their readers? I mean whinning on Cinemaphile is cool I guess, but how are you going to take these feedback back to IDW? Twitter interaction? Do they even still use things like "fan mail" stuff?
t.moron who doesn't understand how comics work
>how do comics like IDW listen to their readers?
In the case of the most radically woke of the creative team, they listen to Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit... that basically become echo chambers for all the progressive shit they want to force into the story.
Controversial opinion, I'm sure, but the only thing that has stopped them so far is the mandates, believe it or not. If not, Sonic would already be trans.
>woke creative team
This. Like man what's stopping them from making Sonic and Tails gay and in love already?
The post already answered, anon. The mandates.
Nevermind I just want to post cute fox boy
>I just want to post cute fox boy
/co/'s Sonic Gener- sorry, I mean, Sonic Unofficial Storytime is two threads down, anon
>Like man what's stopping them from making Sonic and Tails gay and in love already?
The staff not being pedos.
that's hilarious since pedos are overwhelmingly heterosexual
>Do they even still use things like "fan mail" stuff?
yes
>Genuine question: how do comics like IDW listen to their readers?
no other than for shipping shit
Unironically, send them fan mail. Both the book and the writers. They respond better to stuff presented like that than you pestering them on Twitter or bugging Ian with weasel word questions on his podcast.
A ton of fanmail praising + critiquing the book (and some very bad applications) are how Ian got a job in the first place.
Well have YOU guys done it? It seems like IDW can read a paragraphs of these threads
Unrelated but wtf is that image?
Ian said that if you're in your 20s or 30s you shouldn't be complaining about the structure of the plots since it's not for you because Sonic is a kids series and to go read a adult series.
They always say kids media can be intelligent and worthwhile when they want attention and praise but as soon as the criticism mounts they immediately revert to "it's for kids" as an excuse.
You also get people who say Sonic is just about a blue cartoon hedgehog who fights a giant egg whenever anyone attempts to do anything close to serious with it.
Ian says whatever sounds best on the moment. He's always been like this.
I still remember when he kept insisting that the old continuity mattered and wasn't actually going away for like half a year.
Archie was holding out hope that the mess with Penders would blow over and they could go back to how it was before.
This was after they had published issues of the reboot and writing up the new stuff. He later said he wanted a "nice farewell" but got cucked from it.
He was full of shit and just saying what kept fans happy in the moment.
But he was right though. That's why they bothered with all the memories shit. Not everyboyd is lying to you anon
I thought Ian said he wanted the reboot to be a clean slate with no reference to the old world, but his editor wanted the Nicole thing with their memories.
Yes anon that sounds very reasonable but fanfiction about why every artist is actually bad is so much more interesting or something.
The editor(s)? were making shit takes post reboot though
Both Megaman crossovers took valuable time away from both the preboot and reboot
Hey the first one was necessary, Penders had fricked them over with lawsuit making continuing the story as it was totally impossible and Mega man just wasn't pulling numbers. Unite on the other hand did exactly what you said, hell if anything Mega Man got the short end of the stick on that one. it forced them to introduce X made their impending Mega Man 4 adaptation take that much longer to get to.
The failure of the second one is rumoured to have partly been responsible for killing the book since it cost so much to license everything and it didn't sell since it came so quick after the previous one.
That was likely a factor, but I doubt we'll ever know the whole story behind the cancellation. I think it was the editor at the time who insisted on republishing old issues that included content "owned" by Scott Fulop, who had jumped on the legal shenanigan bandwagon by that point. Given Sega's dim view of Archie's handling of Penders, that might have a stomp on thin ice that finally brought the license down.
Remember that it was Sega, not Archie, that announced the cancellation. I'm speculating, but Sega probably wouldn't have bothered doing that if pulling the plug wasn't their own idea. It also seems unlikely that Sega cared about Archie's licensing bills, unless they failed to pay up or something.
Archie is the one who pays Sega for the Sonic license, so they had more a reason to cut the comic than Sega did.
I never quite understood the Strike Man gag on this page
I think it's a 'you call that a fastball?' thing.
Yeah, they're like
>"Dude, seriously?"
>"You are correct. I am shamed."
I think it's more Sonic being confused that out of all these nearly hundreds of robot masters with practical or menacing theming there's a robot themed after Baseball of all things
That's what I'm saying. His answers depend on when he's asked. It's a bad habit of his.
Nice schizo babble. I'm just pointing out a thing he does, not calling him Satan.
But Avatar the Last Airbender does this too
Does what?
He was specifically talking about people saying "why doesn't Sonic simply KILL his enemies?!?" He was clearly avoiding the implicit question ("Why is Sonic in this situation in the first place???"), but he's right that people who can't accept that they aren't going that far aren't the target audience.
They really shouldn't bring it up if they don't want fans to question it. Shadow, Espio, The Zeti, Tails, even Surge at one point all bring it up.
Say what you want about Batman and Joker but at least it has the balls to actually debate this subject when it's brought up. Ian is bringing it up then chickening out of having to defend his puppet.
Part of me thinks Ian actually just wants to write a Batman comic because he likes turning Eggman into some kind of Joker wannabe and now Sonic is starting to have softcore Batman morals.
He is voiced by Roger Craig Smith
Top Ten Surge moments in comics:
>10. Surge killing Tails’ wife on Christmas Day then turning herself in, and Sonic having to plead Tails not to shoot her in front of the police cars
>9. Surge tricking Knuckles into murdering Shade and nuking Angel Island, sparking a 5-year war between him and Sonic that ends with Knuckles locked alone in a cell until the day he dies
>8. Surge poisoning Amy with the only antidote being her blood, then Sonic watching as Amy flatlines after Sonic stops Shadow from trading one for the other
>7. Surge getting Vanilla to hang herself, just by calling her over the phone and threatening what she will do to Cream if she doesn’t
>6. Surge grooming Cream into a murderous gore fetishist psychopath after the trauma of losing her Mom
>5. Surge giving all the Sonic Junior Fanclub free Sonic icecreams. Covered with sweetened Strychnine.
>4. Surge creating a stitched-together human tapestry of still living victims into an artwork to commemorate all the times in the past Sonic has enabled her and Eggman’s atrocities
>3. Surge psychologically manipulating Sally for twenty years just to convince her at the end to abandon Sonic at the altar then have sex with Shadow behind Sonic’s back
>2. Surge crippling Blaze then having Kit rape her and displaying all the pictures of her rape to Silver
>1. Surge beating Sonic’s son Manik to death with a crowbar, then resurrecting him only for Nikky to declare his disgusted hatred of Sonic for having chosen his self-righteousness over his own son
Why doesn't Sonic just rape Surge?
He's building up to it
>Sonic rape Surge already, unlike with this last guy I had this time it won't be gay
Please make fanfics with these.
What do you mean going that far? There are many Sonic characters willing to kill their enemies(including Whisper who tries to kill Eggman herself whenever she sees him, introduced in IDW). It's pure plot contrivance that Sonic refuses to kill Eggman but goes "BIG OOF" when Starline dies.
Sonic is not supposed to kill anyone. I know in the games he would sometimes leave an enemy in a situation where they could potential die, but he never is supposed to outright go for the kill (except for King Arthur from Black Knight, but he wasn't real).
Characters like Shadow is more made to kill other people (He was allowed to kill Eggman in a few endings in his own game).
Sonic won't kill Eggman because he has stockholm syndrome from being prison raped for 6 months in Forces
I can't think of the mention of Sonic's torture without thinking of Sonic Shorts.
I seriously doubt Sonic's keeping him alive because eggman tickled his foot for 6 months in space.
Dude looked totally fine with no bruises. Also why did they use metal sonic instead of Gamma as a phantom clone?
To be fair, the torture thing was a bad localization. However, I was talking about this:
>It's pure plot contrivance that Sonic refuses to kill Eggman but goes "BIG OOF" when Starline dies.
I don't see the parallel. One is a bygone conclusion.
Nega is total dogshit. Can’t believe he has people wanting him back and even has fans somehow. Regular Eggman is just better.
It's pretty obvious that Sega dislikes most of the cast from the Rush games. Blaze only barely gets any use because she's a fan-favorite, while Nega, Marine, Whiskers, and all those lame koalas are treated as if they never existed.
>Sega dislikes most of the cast from the Rush games
I would argue Sega prefers to have certain characters limited to where "they belong", rather than simply "dislike them".
Example:
>Main games: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman, Metal
>Modern games: Shadow, Rouge, Big, Cream, Silver, Chaotix
>Rush: Blaze, Marine, Nega
>Riders: Babylon Rogues
>Boom: Sticks
So, it's not that they don't like them, they don't like "outside" where they are supposed to be. So game migration is not an option in their heads. Now, don't get me wrong, if that is the case, I think it is an even shittier way of thinking than just outright disliking them, which I can at least comprehend.
So, if want more Blaze, Nega and Marine? We need more Rush games.
If Sega actually did insist on that rule, they would not have bothered to rewrite Blaze's story for the '06 game so she could be included without that whole "alternate dimension" part from Rush. Her fanbase is the only thing that lets her remain in use.
>they would not have bothered to rewrite Blaze's story for the '06 game so she could be included without that whole "alternate dimension" part from Rush.
I don't think that was on purpose/intentional, I think it was just Sega handling things poorly.
Blaze showing up on 06 has always been a "controversial" topic, but I would argue that, around the early 2000s, Sega was not still set on those rules I mentioned, which I think came more strictly during or after Generations when the whole "two timelines/dimensions" (whatever the Modern and Classic stuff is called) was brought up.
Let's not forget that, up to that point (2006), Blaze and Nega had only shown up on the first Rush game, whose sequel didn't happen until the next year. Despite that, Nega showed up on Rivals, which was released alongside 06.
Sega has changed the way they do Sonic a lot over the years (mostly for the worse, in my opinion), so it is important to consider that as well.
>So, if want more Blaze, Nega and Marine? We need more Rush games.
I doubt that'd be the case even if we do get that. It's not like we're getting Frontiers content despite it being months since that game came out. We're pretty much stuck in this post-Forces limbo.
Oh definitely. I was just illustrating how I think Sega trapped their own characters in specific scenarios that makes them "unavailable" for other games.
Going back to IDW, which were the conditions that allowed them to make Marine show up? That the story was set on the Sol Dimension.
Meaning, if they want to make a story with the Babylon Rogues, they have to make a Riders story.
Blaze, seems to work as the exception that proves the rule, because as
said here and you
said here, she is too popular to just limit her to Rush stuff.
>Going back to IDW, which were the conditions that allowed them to make Marine show up? That the story was set on the Sol Dimension.
And the one time Sonic actually gets to go there in IDW, she doesn't show up at all.
The question is... was that because Sega said they couldn't use Marine? Or was it because the writers didn't want to?
>Or was it because the writers didn't want to?
Or didn't think of her, that is also an option.
NTA, but it's not like going to the Sol Dimension MEANS all Rush characters need to make an appearance.
>The question is... was that because Sega said they couldn't use Marine?
According to Ian, yes. They didn't them to put a "new" character at the end of a story, so Ian just made a vague reference to her instead. She didn't show up until Blaze's story in the annual. So she's not off-limits just had a weird rule.
>Going back to IDW, which were the conditions that allowed them to make Marine show up? That the story was set on the Sol Dimension.
What kills me is that Sonic WAS in the Sol Dimension, but IDW did absolutely squat with that. They could've easily had a small arc where Sonic and Blaze recover the Sol Emeralds to regain his memories while going over the Rush series content. But NOPE, just give Blaze all the emeralds immediately to resolve the conflict as fast as possible.
This is the second time this happened with the Emeralds, and it only reinforces how little IDW seems interested in actually exploring things from the games, and it's squarely on the writers at this point.
sonic isn't dragon ball. collecting magical macguffins is fricking boring and you know damn well ian isn't going to explore any game locations, we'd just get "generic island village" or "non-descript jungle location"
>sonic isn't dragon ball.
No, but it has been inspired enough by it to the point where it's a complete waste to not use them as an excuse to go on adventures. Why even have the Emeralds at all in this comic if they're only going to be pre collected and only used to start and resolve the current conflict?
The way the Emeralds are implemented feels like they're only in this comic out of obligation, which is a running theme with IDW.
>collecting magical macguffins is fricking boring
Clearly it isn't if Dragon Ball is so popular. It's a story structure that works, and one that Sonic is more or less completely rooted in. Nearly every Sonic game pretty much boils down to that exact thing, why not take advantage of that? What, you actually PREFER this boring OC angstfest the IDW run is?
dragon ball moved on from collecting them to just tournament arcs and the king piccolo, and then just became about protecting earth from villian of the day shit.
also frick you for putting words in my mouth homosexual, no shit i want a good comic but your ideas also fricking suck.
>dragon ball moved on from collecting them to just tournament arcs and the king piccolo
Except part of the King Piccolo arc revolved around getting the Dragon Balls to bring back Krillen, and they moved wholesale back to collecting Dragon Balls with Z, dishonest jackass. One of the most popular Dragon Ball arcs of all time is Krillen, Bulma and Gohan collecting them on Namek.
>no shit i want a good comic but your ideas also fricking suck
I've never implied these ideas are anything more than spitballing. The point is that there's so much the IDW comic can do, yet they staunchly refuse to be even mildly entertaining or faithful to the franchise it's fricking based on.
And after Namek, Dragon Balls only get collected when it's time to revive the people who died in the latest villain rampage and are mostly treated as light filler.
>people remembered it because of the dragon balls
ok that confirms it, you're moronic. i guess frick the ginyu force and fricking FRIEZA
The plot literally wouldn't even fricking WORK without the Dragon Balls, you moron. The point isn't that the glorified plot devices are what the arc is remembered for, it's that they work as a vehicle to get to the stuff people actually like.
Popular = shit, fyi. Modern people are fricking stupid and extremely saddening to live with the knownledge "these fricks are our future, why did it end up like this"? Anime is a real shit medium and the state of the west is heavily thanks to it since it didn't exist until it became normalized in western culture. It's like a oil split, it was clearly never meant to exist in the west at all to keep the west how it was pre 2000s.
The more Sonic removes the 2000+ out of his DNA the better he heals.
Please don't tell me you're actually blaming anime for the western industry being complete crap now?
Do you seriously think a world without anime would have had the us magically transformed mentally over what was meant to be liked media wise? Everything pre 2000s was like how America always thought about the world over 300 years. Nothing like today ever hinted at, ever. Not a single period even was like a "spark" to what lead to the state of today.
Then all of a sudden the same indoctrinated "real women bad 2D fantasy land women good" that has plagued jap men since the 2000s suddenly had zero influence over the state of American men falling for the same shit?
That sounds like a deeper problem than anime, bucko.
>sonic isn't dragon ball. collecting magical macguffins is fricking boring
Meanwhile Frontier's entire plot loop is basically "see titan, collect the Chaos Emeralds, beat its ass, repeat".
That's written for gameplay. Unless you have other developments that kind of loop doesn't work in other mediums
>Unless you have other developments
Why do you assume that wouldn't be the case? Are you autistic you literally can't imagine anything else between point A to point B?
She's literally the guardian of them. If she didn't have them all safely stored she'd be terrible at her job.
She pretty much is terribel at her job, seeing how she didn't have them at the start of either Rush game.
>They could've easily had a small arc where Sonic and Blaze recover the Sol Emeralds to regain his memories while going over the Rush series content.
Evan was set to take over and Ian wanted to give her all the freedom to pitch whatever so that wouldn't have happened anyway. That's why he didn't settle the Zeti matter until later.
IDW is heavily limited by everything having to be approved by Sega. The Sol Dimension and Silver's future can't be explored beyond glimpses because the games haven't gotten to them yet.
We saw Blaze's dimension. It was pretty much just Waterworld with dumb koalas and an annoying Aussie raccoon.
I know but they can't flesh it out any further than that. IIRC we were lucky to even see Blaze's castle.
What's the point of going to a few empty islands in another dimension when you can get the same thing in Sonic's dimension with even more locations?
Having fun, mostly. Two well-loved Sonic Universe stories took place in Blaze's dimension of vague pirate stuff.
People who blame bad stories on the lack of solid locations are gullible. Most of the well loved Archie stories took place in poorly established locations.
The pirates can't be used anymore. Captain Whisker is canonically destroyed and Johnny is MIA.
>The pirates can't be used anymore.
Pirates didn't show up in the first SU Sol Dimension story. Whisker and Johnny were just two among many OC pirates in the Blaze arc.
Again, people like blaming restrictions instead of writers.
I'm talking about now.
And my point was you don't need well defined locations to write fun stories. Nobody gave a shit that we only got "Blaze has beaches and sometimes pirates." We've gotten MORE about her world from IDW than we did in Archie.
What part do you not get?
>you don't need well defined locations to write fun stories.
Good for you, IDW does just that and look what we got.
Merlina should be Blaze's nemesis instead of Eggman homie and his robot pirates
>When does it good? where should I started reading?
The issues around Mecha madness are the only good ones. Everything else is of mixed or bad quality
Accurate
Same Knuckles, same...
You know, big breasts sheep
It tends to be a misadventures, so usually it doesn't have plot and it's just there for fun. But when it does, it's pretty good. At least with the archie series sonic doesn't go on a rant of being "muh hero" like idw sonic. When he sees a bad guy he kick the shit out of them by gut checking them across different parallel dimensions
Continuity doesn't occur until close to Endgame. It gets good later, but still has it's moments. Ignore Knuckles spinoff cause it's a clustered mess.
It's paratisized and plagiarized Byrne stories. Also Penders is prolapsed over Sonic Adventure 1.
>Penders is prolapsed over Sonic Adventure 1.
I can imagine.
>His plans to reincarnate Robo-Robotnik as "Dr. Ian Droid" get ruined by Sega's mandate that he HAS to appear as he does in Adventure now
>Pissed that Sega's history for the echidnas doesn't match his headcanon; he rectifies this by turning Tikal's people into moronic exiles
>Pissed that Sega's history for the echidnas doesn't match his headcanon
I'm fairly sure Penders had the delusion that Sega loved the backstory he came up for Knuckles and company, back in those days. He probably went through all sort of stages (denial, anger, depression, bargaining, etc... everything but acceptance) when they broke him the news of Sega coming up with their own echidna backstory.
His main delusion, up to these days, is that he absolutely believes HE, not the entire creative team, "made Sonic popular in America" (I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that), and while we can't deny Archie Sonic did play a part on Sonic's popularity, or at the very least, it's widespread in the US of A, he gives himself too much credit.
Fair, but the whole Robo-Robotnik thing was even more laughably ridiculous.
>Penders creates an alternate-universe Robotnik who's SOOO EVILLLL that he roboticized himself and nuked everybody on his planet. This was back in the early books when Robotnik was the dopey-and-dumb AoStH Robotnik but in SatAM Robotnik's body.
>Years later, he creates "Dr. Ian Droid" for the painful Sonic/Image crossover which doubles as the backdoor pilot for his own X-Men ripoff The Lost Ones. Fittingly, Ian looks like a dead ringer for Mr. Sinister, and it's teased multiple times that he's a new incarnation of Robotnik. However, Robo-Robotnik ends up becoming the Adventure-era Dr. Eggman instead and throws a wrench in that plan.
>Reveals on his website that Ian was going to be the shared villain of both the Sonic books and The Lost Ones until the end of his multi-book magnum opus, when he reveals that Ian was always Robo-Robotnik before being destroyed forever by Knuckles.
>Penders creates an alternate-universe Robotnik who's SOOO EVILLLL that he roboticized himself and nuked everybody on his planet. This was back in the early books when Robotnik was the dopey-and-dumb AoStH Robotnik but in SatAM Robotnik's body.
But that part was actually good.
The thing that baffles me about Penders is not only how much he has stolen from other franchises, but how much of a narrative genius he believes himself to be.
I remember some posts, don't know if they were baseless or not, commenting on how Penders believed himself to be so much superior to be writing for something like Sonic. If true, it only makes it more laughable that, after supposedly getting the rights to his stories, he just can't separate them entirely from Sonic, even coming up with bullshit names like "Echyd'nya" or "K'noox".
It should be mentioned that as part of the Image crossover, Ian has a SWATbot named Issac who appears to be a trusted subordinate. In his last arc before being fired, a recolored E-100 robot named Issac talks about how the true rulers of Mobius were about to return. Ken was clearly still bucking for his magnum opus to the very end.
He's basically a predecessor to the modern reboot writer: A glorified fanfic writer who's more ego than talent.
I hear narcissists deep down KNOW that all their bullshit is just a facade, so that's why they work so zealously to maintain it. They feel like shit inside, so they project this image of perfection to compensate for their insecurity.
Deep down, Penders knows he's a worthless derivative hack who wrote insane garbage even by the standards of a kiddie franchise, but he can't bear to admit that, so he keeps up his facade.
I mean, he's gone off saying that the reason why Knuckles was popular was because of his series.
On that DYKG vid where he includes some more info about the lawsuit. Sega was just about through with Archie at the time so they very well could've ended the licensing but they didn't. They wouldn't have gotten Archie to continue with the reboot (with their watchful eyes) if they were ultimately going to pull the plug anyway unless Archie failed to pay up the fee or Archie themselves decided to let it go. There were rumors about Archie management wanting to move on from Sonic since it was a licensed comic about a video game and didn't fit with their brand. That and how they were banking on Riverdale succeeding, which it did.
That's funny, the first handful of years of the comic are pretty much the only ones I ever liked. If you take your Sonic seriously (lol), you'll probably like the later issues.
Is no one going to bring up the fact that the likely reason that Tails wasn't allowed to cure the metal virus via vaccine/cure was because of anti-vaccers (Other than SEGA mandates saying sonic must always be the hero).
I personally liked to imagine that in alt-universe because the real world pandemic, and tails cured it some mobians would refuse to vaccinate their metal virus infected friends/kids. Sega probably didn't want that anti-vax stuff because the real world pandemic happening around the same time metal virus was new. That and the thought of sonic anti-vaxxers is hilarious so I see why they went with the Macguffin emeralds and piss yellow hedgehog again.
The arc was planned and written way before the pandemic started.
Sure, but as it unfolded and was made I imagine that things changed as the pandemic came and went (God it's been 3 years since that happened already?). Regardless, I thought it was just a funny shower thought of why tails wasn't allowed to cure people via vaccine and if that would even work, if mobians would all want to take it.
I can totally see Eggman spreading misinformation via Eggnet to civilians of the mobian world about Tail's vaccine just to keep his zombot numbers up.
The fact this happened already is news to me but In ever played fighters. I could totally see them using that as a throwaway joke though.
I just want an excuse for playable Surge, Whisper, Zeti(s) or Gemrald/Emeral. It's a damn shame the only times we got to play as Eggman was in SA2, the Olypic games, and Sonic Chronicals (His running animation was fricking goofy, like SatAM goofy).
Could they not just use alternative universe or timeskip to "reset" him when convenient and tell more interesting stories? Heck I would have liked to see a universe with Good Eggman trying to survive dangerous or evil mobians having to rely on his robots like an RTS or a survival island game with like Big fishing to gather food, sonic scouting, Knuckles fighting off threats. SEGA tends to play it safe but Imiss when they did shit like Shadow the Hedgehog, unexpected, no one asked for it, but it was different and fun.
I mean archie basically an alternate universe that was like a giant Sonic crossover. They even did have their own good eggman. Though hey with all the weird Sonic fangames you could probably find some superautist to make that RTS idea as a fan game
So Ian never bothered explaining how Anti-Mobius Eggman went from SatAM Robotnik in a doctor's coat to a string bean take on his original Classic design?
Don't remember
Is it true that Sonic is number 1?
The restoration sucks.
I think they'd make a cool team
If it wasn't for legal bullshit Thrash would be the perfect third guy for Kit and Surge.
they'd be the big bros surge and kit need
I read Archie until it ended. Back then, everyone loved Ian. What changed? Most of the IDW stuff I've read wasn't significantly worse or anything, though I haven't gotten around to the entire thing yet.
The writing got more restrictive, more meandering, the pacing got completely fricked and the lesbianism became less subtle.
IDW being pants and current Cinemaphile. There isn't a single thing that is liked here anymore.
I guess more people came to know Ian's bad writing habits and Ian decided to only go places where he'd more likely be praised rubbed some people the wrong way.
I still remember the days on SonicCentral where the comment section during the Mecha Sally arc had similar complaints we see today most notably the major complaint of building things up for longer than need be and pacing out in the lame way.
Honestly though those complains are moronic. Especially during that arc the schitzo spergouts rivalled the blue arms shit
All the complaints about the Mecha Sally arc where from Sallygays piss-scared that Ian was coming up with some diabolical plan to either get rid of Sally or degrade her. I ignored most of it.
I always considered Ian a hack, but he was such a step up from Penders to most people and the comic started to introduce more game comic that everyone looked past his flaws. Nobody realized that Ian only looked good because he wrote other people's content, he's pretty trash when it comes to introducing his own.
>more game comic
more game *content
>where should I started reading?
From the reboot onwards, when all the unnecessary crap gets mowed down.
>So, it's Sonic's 28th on the 23rd. I have something different this year; some fan art from 2017 I was doing to celebrate Sonic's birthday, and the upcoming 300th issue of Archie Sonic. I was drawing this on the day I received the news that we were done.
>I could never finish it.
>This piece expresses my very personal sense of loss, and I consider its unfinished state to be an intrinsic part of its meaning. By all means do your own celebratory art, but just because something isn't complete doesn't meant it's free game. Do not finish it.
>Archie Sonic was my first job in comics and a core inspiration. Its ending was sudden and unexpected; it felt like a close friend of mine had died. I cried for 2 days without sleep, and couldn't talk about it properly for months afterward. I don't think I will every fully heal.
The feels are real…
What she did with Amy does paint her as more than a little biased here.
It's a great pic as well
I think the editor (forgot name) and spaz came up with scourge.
frick you. gag era comics are kino
>300 replies
Damn is this sonic general
No, that one is disguised as "Sonic Unofficial Storytime"
Trying to get a grip over the state of this thread really just makes me which SEGA never ever let the west do anything but advertise the games and never once redesigned him to double down on shit by SA1. Just one Jap Sonic and that is would have completely changed this IP from intolarable thanks to the fanbase to serviable fanfare. It's extremely tiresome dealing with the headcanon of what Sonic should be and being pissed this headcanon isn't canon. I usually just lurk and just enjoy the chaos but it's like "frick man, all this seething could never have existed if either these people moved the frick on from Sonic or SEGA just never enabled this frickwads by actually canceling anything SoA allowed to slip by.
It's like a trainwreak on repeat, the first few times you can't look away but after a while, you just want it to end and stop coming back.
Surge has nice cushion.
Was Archie Sonic ever Sonic? By basing itself on Satam, it immediately spin'd off into its own direction. Its further from Sonic than Sonic Boom. Its like if Tail's gets trolled fans were constantly arguing over the canonity, writing and characterization of the games and comics. It was a product of its time when it came out and there wasn't much to do with the Sonic IP, but even after including all the new games and settings as years went by, it never stopped being Satam comic.
>Was Archie Sonic ever Sonic?
To Muricans? Yes, precisely because their narrative base for Sonic IS SatAM.
To the rest of the world? Mostly no.
It started off as a combination between the two cartoons and games, before morphing into its own take on Sonic, while still being Sonic.
As you said it adapted to the times, adding more and more game elements as it went along. Updated designs, introduced more game characters, their little game adaptations they'd have, etc. By the end of the book it's all pretty far removed from SatAM, even moreso in the reboot.
>while still being Sonic.
I'd contest this, at least pre-Sonic Adventure. After Sonic Adventure happened and Sega began making a bigger effort to craft its own lore for Sonic, Archie had to try and find ways to blend it into what it had already built up for years, and I personally wouldn't call it successful, especially Station square.
Archie also tried really hard to lean more on political intrigue with most plots being tired to the kingdom of Acorn and other things tied to plot elements SatAM established. The only reason Sonic ever got to stay in focus was because he was the only with the the skills capable of actually doing anything most of the time.
With each new game Sega created, you could really feel Archie overall struggling for relevance.
the turducken railroaded Archie hard. Even with Spaz's help, they struggled with adapting Sonic Adventure while Penders gave frick all.
What was everybodys favourite moment. I can't pick one but I always loved the conclusion to the Moebius invasion.
How tf did he beat up metal let alone all of them?
Super Sonic is invincible.
So scourge is super here? Why's he a weird color? Why's he purple but green?
read the book lol
I'm not spending money on that from what I've read here. Given that, I don't want to give time to read it online either.
Dude read the fricking Archie series. It's good.
>Floating
>Super Sonic quills
>Literal caption next to his head that reads [KING SUPER SCOURGE]
>"WTF, he's Super???"
Is this a bot or something?
Stop enjoying Archie comics. Only read IDW comics.
>Crack open that IDW
>Dull looking art
>Favorite game characters sidelined for Restorationshit and its crying lesbos
IDW blew its load early on with Neo Metal and Zombots.
Not to mention the text is unreadable and the characters are drawn upside down.
What
The Enerjak Reborn arc:
>Finitevus turns Knuckles into Enerjak
>Enerjak deports the filthy dingos
>wrecks Eggman's fleet and the Egg Grapes
>kills off Locke
Dr. Finitevus was the REAL hero of the comic.
Gallagher's best was probably the Mecha Madness three parter or the Tails miniseries, but the final issue of Sonic Quest was also strong.
I always liked DeCesare's Bunnie and Antoine stories.
Ken's best story is probably the echidna pilgrimage. Mostly because it had enough going on that each issue had to focus on something different, stopping him from indulging as much in his usual hype bullshit and overlong conversations.
Karl's best was probably the Tossed in Space arc. His stories were really fun. Shame about the art.
I feel like ~171-196 was Ian's peak. Most of those two years were strong while the rest of his run has two good stories per year at best and focuses way too much on little updates to the status quo or repetitive tasks.
Tracey only wrote two stories and they were both some of the best the book ever had. I'm bummed he didn't write more.
Pre reboot
>Super Sonic Vs Hyper Knuckles
>Mecha Madness
>Ultra Sonic and Super Tails vs Nagus (which was really cool to me when I was younger but now I realized it's kind of dumb and boring)
>The Super trio vs Mogul (same as before)
>Scourge's first appearance
>Super Shadow and Turbo Tail's making the Special Zone
>Sonic vs Eggman's Egg Beater armor
>Enerjak Reborn
>Hedgehog Havoc
>Shadow crossing over into Sonic X and then the 1st Universe arc
>Mobius 30 Years Later
>Sonic and Bunnie fighting each other only to quickly make up and have a fake fight to frick over both parties that had them fighting in the first place
>Treasure Team Tango
>The Silver Saga
>Traitor Geoffrey holding back the rest of the Freedom Fighters on his own
>Scourge Lockdown
>The fallout after Sonic fixes the first Genesis Wave
>Scrambled
>The Secret Freedom Fighters
>Worlds Collide
Reboot
>Shadow Fall
>Eclipse using the Dark Arms to wreck Omega and Rouge
>Sonic going full Werehog for the first time
>The Champions Arc
>Knuckles "vs" Break Man in Worlds Unite
>Sonic and Megaman beating Sigma in Worlds Unite
>Scrambled Arc
>Shattered Arc
>the Sonic Unleashed adaptation finale
>The Case Of The Pirate Princess AKA the last Universe arc
>what we got outta Mega Drive
>
You left out how Eggman successfully destroyed a Multi-verse at the start of the reboot. His body count is near infinite.
You really like super forms, huh
That's kinda a coincidence but super forms in Archie were kinda of rairty, it wasn't like X which had a Super Sonic fight in a arc finale 3 times in a row
>Super Sonic fight in a arc finale 3 times in a row
To be fair, that was due to the SA and SA2 adaptations
Give me back my continuity.
Your continuity is dead and should have been put to sleep back in 1999.
Stop raping me
Look at this funny little sonic sticker cut out they made in the comic
Also they made this gag where they ask the reader to whip out their SEGA Genesis to help sonic on his adventures, really you can't get more SOUL-er than that like when was the last time 2000s video game comics did this? Truly a childlike joy
>At this rate we may never see Sunday morning!
Kek.
why did the French make 2 Sonic comics and then frick off into the underworld?
Not enough people bought them, I assume.
man frick the French populace, you get good comics and instead you go "wee-wee I du not want dis"
They had better comics to choose from.
I miss Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts.
One of my favorite bits in Archie Sonic was the 225/230 plot arc when the genesis wave happened. Starts off with Sally getting gunned down and most likely killed, then when Sonic manages to get back 10 seconds prior after the Genesis event, he manages to save her only for her to end up sacrificing herself to stop the world robotizer and becoming Mecha Sally.
Too bad that plotline ended up getting thrown away after the reboot.
>Too bad that plotline ended up getting thrown away after the reboot.
It was thrown away even before that. Mecha Sally was quickly reduced to a glorified Badnik that Sonic kicks around only slightly less effortlessly as the rest.
That shit got me emotional man
If you're 10 years old.
Post Genesis introduced some great supporting characters