Kazhnuz

A simpler, more character-centred arc to breath after the big event. And after that another thing a bit unexpected for a Sonic comic.

I'm pretty interested to see what they'll do with this issue, what will arise from this battle. It wouldn't be the first time that Sonic talked to something that can't understand or really react to him though (and I'm not talking about the "Sonic is talking to a dead robot" joke from Colors). I feel that it's pretty in character to him to talk to someone even if that person can't understand him. Like Shadowlax said, I think it's kinda him talking to reassure himself.

She actually fit the Sonic franchise pretty well, and give something that the other character don't entirely give : true pacifism. I agree that she is a non-fighter (that's her whole story), but that's what make her a good fit for this franchise. Trying to have only "fighter" character is a bad idea, same for thinking that they should only be "NPC". I'll go about each point quite fast, because I'm still not sure about if it's just a troll or a real start of a discussion : 1) It's a good thing that she don't fight. 2) How is that a young character cry a bad thing ? It's a part of what make her good for this universe, by being more of a "normal person for her age". I would even say that they are a lot of character that I would prefer if they cried more when they are on the break point, or acted more emotionally. 3) Kids are an easier target, especially in the Sonic world when you have too much nuclear-powered characters. More seriously, she doesn't have that reputation that much. Many people see her like a kid, or like "Amy's sidekick", but not that much as the "damsel in distress". And you argument could be said for Amy too : she was captured in Sonic CD, her whole story centered about a robot trying (and managing) to kidnap her in Sonic Adventure, she was taken hostage in Sonic Adventure 2. 4) She is just polite. It's not a big tropes or anything, it's basically that she is more polite that the bunch of adolescent that is the Sonic cast xD. You may not like that, but that's not a problem in itself, and you don't have seen a lot of stuff if you are thinking that she have a quirky way of talking. Seriously if you are annoyed by any kid that use the mr thing, wow. 5) Innocence and cuteness are good. And this innocence have been broken at least one. Having innocent characters is a good thing for a story, because you can confront them to different stuff, and engage readership with wanting to protect them. The "break the cutie" trope is centered around that. I could also go on and on about the number of fictionnal characters that are innocent and/or cute, too 🤔 TBH, she is more usefull to the universe than all the "fighter-type, capable" character that we have actually have. She is interesting with her pacifism, the idea around her of "being a kid, but being brave" is especially well done in that she have been SHOWN before to be afraid, to cry easily and stuff (because with Charmy... Welp as he is always goofing around, she isn't as much interesting). And without her, we wouldn't have got one big heartbreaking page from IDWSonic. You mean, the slogan they tried to say while making at least three clones of Zelda ? I've heard of it.

Welp. I can't really say that I'm that dissapointed, because I didn't even knew when they were gonna be released xD (the power of online subscribtion, not having to care about release dates). I forgot that when you have two comics a month, supposedly you have to wait less (because basic math are hard xD) More seriously, delay don't annoy me much (for a lot of reason, the first one being that I've got so much things to read/watch/listen that it's not some having delays that would annoy me), but I would be interested to know why there are as many of those in IDW. Was that Archie that was more regular than other companies ? Is some differences in the creative process that produce that ? Is that related to US having only one comic distributor ? I would be pretty interested to know. Twice you say to us about how you are quitting the comics in just a month, be careful you are transforming into a cat I think 😛

The problem is for me what we define by "competent", and how much we old on that point. I don't think that they were "defenseless" in Sonic Forces - especially with Diogene last point that even with Sonic and the Avatar, it's mostly the Phantom Ruby prototype that saved them (and basically Silver intervention from the future ? We can assume that in his first timeline, without him coming and fighting infinite, the Avatar wouldn't got the Phantom Ruby and they would all have been burned to death). There is a big difference for me between "being able to stand on their own two feets" and "being able to fight a god-level threat".

I agree that's a bit of a false question, because there are a lot of other options and that "standing on their own two feet" is vague enough compared to the real problem that you are describing (as basically they fight against a whole army, the clone are supposed to be quite strong). About Infinite, he is supposed to be one of the more powerful creature with the help of the gameshark phantom ruby. So it makes sense that the only ones that fight against him are the nuclear powerhouse of the Sonic Universe : Sonic, Silver and Shadow that ARE supposed to be the most powerfull characters (Silver displaying fantasic powers in all the time he appears, Shadow being the ultimate life form, and Sonic being the hero and having already stand against both of them. And strangely Omega that seems to be classified in a similar level power). So I haven't a problem about "we need the most powerfull character to stand against that powerful ennemy". I wasn't happy though that they said that the world was invaded because of the absence of Sonic : they should have said something about how it's Infinite powers that are the source of the easiness of the invasion. TBH, my problem in Forces, isn't that Tails isn't a fighter, or wasn't able to fight against Chaos 0 (because Chaos 0 not being quite strong in Sonic Adventure was gameplay-wise, he is supposed to be quite powerful even without emerald in his other apparitions), it was more the writing that was painful. But Tails not being a battler ? Tails never fought alone a Chaos form, each time it was a way to basically say that "he was there and helped" during the battle, because without that the game would have had to use cutscene for each battle. He even during his cutscene said some of the stuff instead of Sonic. So I don't have a power with him being afraid of Chaos, if the frightening is well written and less cartoony because if he was actually terrified, reasonably thinking that that's it, it's over, with a well written cutscene, it would have made us more afraid for Tails (that is a young child trying to save a robot and being attacked by a replica of the god of destruction). That's actually more interesting imho what Forces tried (especially as he was quite the better strategist of the gang in Sonic Forces, as he was the one doing all the strategy that actually worked), to give him other kind of specificity. The problem is that as the writing wasn't good, we only percevied the nerfing (him being as a really lower level of fighting than other character), without perceiving the other type of change (because strategy wasn't that of a point before in the character). Thus the character arc of Tails wasn't visible, which is problematic as it's half of the character arcs of the game (the other being the avatar). And also making him having to cope with the loss of someone by giving him a "replacement"… NO, JUST NO, but that's another whole story xD. TBH, I would really be happy if the actually continued that with a better writing : for me, they should continue having different level of power and some character not being able to hold-up power-wise with the most powerfull, that's not the problem. But they should make other kind of competences actually useful inside the story. Reusing other kind of stuff the character are able to do. They tried to do that a bit with Forces (as Rouge is the one discovering that Sonic is alive, all character helping plot-wise during the mission and discovering stuff, Tails doing all the smart strategy, Knuckles' charisma, the different missions that worked), but as the writing wasn't quite clever at showing stuff, everything wasn't obvious and was a bit drown in the most problematic stuff. And that would be a better message, imho, and it would have especially in Forces make the message of "we need to work together to win" better, by showing how we need even people that don't fight to win a war. They tried to do it - and the Resistance did a lot of stuff without Sonic, with Sonic being more their "heavy weapon". Generation was really bad on that point, though, with other character being relegated to just cheering Sonic. So, TL;DR : - I don't really agree that they are that "defenseless" without Sonic. - Many of them not being able to treat some menace without Sonic/Silver/Shadow/Omega is quite logical. - They should be able to do things of their own, but their OWN kind of things. - Sonic Team are actually trying to make them stand on different ground, but the quality of the writing (and that fanbase are often more thinking only about big flashy attack instead of actual contributions) doesn't help to make that obvious and to 100% use this potential. - Tails is cute so break it, but write these scenes better to make us empathize more with him. ( Gameplay-wise of course, especially if they are making a new RPG, Battle game or stuff like that, they should nerf probably powerful character and make less powerful more adapted xD. But there is a difference between gameplay and story )

If it was the "Mobius 25 Y.L." panel, after the edit, in the first one he looked way more in shock, and the second he looked kinda depressed, especially in context. It's a tad more for me that just "slightly discomforted". Sonic have shown in the ArchieComics a lot of different emotion, especially during the Mecha Sally arc (that was way after that panel edit). That's why I'm criticizing the "mandates" stuff, tbh, because a lot of time, it's just using one or two big symbolic example instead of looking at the whole comics and it's history.

About something that is quite annoying in many discussion about the comics book each time the question of "SEGA's influence on the comic" come. Each time, it'll have a lot of this vision everywhere and I've seen a lot of that in the last pages : the vision about the "mandates", often with a lot of lack of basic understanding. And as I'm an old man that yell at cloud each time I can, I took the opportunity to be angry because even if it wasn't 100% here last page, we were pretty close to it and it was enough to ramble about. ( Basically, I wasn't discussing about the "Flynn is writing better than SEGA" parts - I don't care about that kind of discussion - but more about the "he won't be able to really do that because SEGA". I've added yet another disclaimer if it wasn't clear enough )

So we can drop a bit the "SEGA's evil mandates are restraining the poor Flynn by making him unable to make Sonic really loose or be wrong" when the reality is more complex that that. (I personally don't care about the rest of "how much Flynn's writing is better than Sonic's"). Just a note : I'm not saying that you, as a person, said that (If I wanted to be totally honest, I would say that I don't really remember what message you wrote, I'm that bad to remember people), I'm just using that to ramble about a subject that is often… quite badly handled by fans. And I didn't say that EVERYTHING that have been said about that is what I'm rambling about. And I've written more disclaimer than actual post content. But anyway, I've read the new Whisper and Tangle #1, and… it is pretty cool. Sure, it doesn't have the tension and the "how they'll overcome that" that I think that the Metal Virus have, but it's interesting nevertheless. Mimic have quite an interesting concept, and we have the first clues about Whisper. I'm interested to see how it'll play out.

Which made him less dangerous actually. He wasn't armed anymore and thus not a threat by himself. Eggman was supposed to be replaced by Tinker, so basically NOBODY could use him as a weapon anymore if, as you say, he could just obey Eggman. He was just able to walk free, and maybe evolve (in a good or bad direction). That's what Sonic did with any other characters. Sonic couldn't predict what happenned. That Metal Sonic will magically restore Eggman, or that both had a plot armor. Sonic was doing the compassionate choice that he always did, and this time even managed to make sure that he couldn't be dangerous anymore. It's a good thing to show that sometimes, even a choice made according to good principle can have dire consequences. A "good choice" isn't necessarily a choice that only have good consequences in the future, because they always will be factor that can influence the final outcome.

Mmmh, I kinda disagree with that Sonic wasn't shaked ? He seemed felling pretty guilty, and it's not because he have brushed it off (for the second time, actually) that he mean that he reached a conclusion. He seemed to have been pretty affected by Shadow words, and it looked more like a way to reassure himself to go back to action (because a city was in danger) and not a definitive conclusion to the "I didn't do the bad thing". It's pretty visible to me that the last part of this substory ("Should Shadow have killed Eggman") is still missing a conclusion, because it really didn't look like that Sonic was sure that he did the right thing. For me it's quite the opposite : after that he isn't sure at all, and maybe later something will show that Sonic was "right" to do what he did or that they'll go further to the "even if the right thing have dire consequences, it can be the right thing") It's kinda like how Sonic acted when he was contamined : he said that "I will be fine I already have dealt with that kind of things before", and the next issues actually showed that he wasn't 100% sure of himself after that (with this very issue showing that he is really starting to have problem keeping with the need to constantly run)

Welp, if that's the actual goal, seems that the Shadow stuff was way more successful to that with how much it was discussed, I'm pretty sure that was more than the double 😛 /jk

TBH, I don't get the feeling of Sonic and Shadow being really "ennemis" in this comics book any more than the circumstance making them disagree a lot. Shadow actually was able to listen and finally accept what Sonic said (even if reluctantly) and give a chance to Mr Tinker in the #6, and here... I still stand that Shadow had (in his state of mind) all reason of being angry and dismissive against Sonic. As I said, not only he see Sonic as the cause of that, but Sonic is basically the only one that happen to not being fully infected. And yet Sonic crack a joke at him and say that he is one of the victime of all that… I really can understand why he is here more hostile directly to Sonic. I think that in future issues where the world will be less in immediate danger with everybody being nearly doomed, they'll be in better terms. Not in all "friendship"-y term like he his with Knuckles and Tails, but less hostile and with a bigger respect for each-other. And I think that Shadow having been infected might be the best way to rebuild their relation, especially if Shadow infect other people. I can see Shadow feel a bit guilty and being more introspective about that, and Sonic being empathetic about the whole "the world was nearly doomed and I'm not 100% innocent"… It could also evolve if Eggman happens to be a part of "helping" to save the world (maybe with Shadow explaining that "that doesn't change him being the one endanger it").

The video isn't at all relevant. Here the "problem" is that we don't have the understanding of "why" Shadow have acted, and many theories, but no (for the moment) any "definitive answer". (and tbh for me it's a lot of stuff) Honestly, having one technological virus doesn't mean he need to drop the label. With how much "normal" life forms are pretty weak and easily destroyable compared to him, even having some virus weakness while being ageless and nearly-immune to nearly all normal illness is kinda ultimate for me xD Yeah, that's exactly why I love with this map. The map explaining a friggin Zombie Invasion, drawn by a little 6-yo girl ? That's pretty demented xD I mean, having the cute little map with locations and character with big red cross. That's so horrible that's awesome.

TBH, Maria happening and Shadow being more of a jerk isn't really incompatible to me. That's a huge case of "good is not nice" tropes, but that's not really incompatible, especially with things in Sonic X, where he tended to shut himself a lot from other and stuff. Maria can still be his drive to protect the world and too fight for the goodç, but what he suffered might make him less open to other, and way more unforgiving. (It would for me make even more sense about why he is way more radical than Sonic : because protecting the world is more "personnal" for him). And that's a tropes we see in a lot of fiction : people that are really harsh, edgy and kinda anti-heroïc, but have a "morality pet" (alive or not) that make them do the "right choice". (something that bother me sometimes, when it's used to excuse horrible stuff, like for Severus Snape where his relationship with Lily is often used as a way to say "looks he is not a bad guy" #AngryHPFanRambling.) Maybe you should elaborate more about how this would invalidate the "Maria" part of his backstory, because I really don't see it, and I would be pretty interested to understand better.