Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[DabigRG]

16 minutes ago, KoDaiko said:

If it is StC Sally with the bow, the head looks so weird. If it's a bow tie on the head, where are her ears? Given we can see the fur on the side of her head, she's either looking side way or at a quarter view. In both cases we should be able to see her ears. 

Flopping in the other direction?

Honestly, I can't tell if that's just the back of the character's head or not.

[Detective Kaito]

I don't wanna be that guy, but what's the point of this teasing? They've been doing it for a while now.

First, it was with the Deadly Six, Sonic and co's new designs in Sonic Boom, then the Avatar in Forces.

Why make us wait 5 days? Just reveal it.

[KoDaiko]

4 minutes ago, Detective Kaito said:

I don't wanna be that guy, but what's the point of this teasing? They've been doing it for a while now.

First, it was with the Deadly Six, Sonic and co's new designs in Sonic Boom, then the Avatar in Forces.

Why make us wait 5 days? Just reveal it.

Maybe as a way to keep people interested/thinking/discussing/remembering about the comic. If they gave away the information in one go, there will be a big initial reaction, then it will die down and forgotten.

 That's the point of teasing, right?

[Your Vest Friend]

8 minutes ago, Detective Kaito said:

Why make us wait 5 days?

Because that's when nearly every company will release their solicits for April (some will do it Tuesday instead). 

[Multikaris]

2 hours ago, Pengi said:

 

Kind of, sort of, but not quite.

 

Here's the history of it.

Sonic 1 had seven types of animals in it. Flicky, from the 1984 arcade game, and six new characters - Picky, Pecky, Pocky, Rocky, Ricky and Cucky.

When Sonic 1 was being localized by Sega of America, they created their own names for the characters (either because they didn't know the Japanese names, or because they wanted to do their own thing). 

Picky - Porker Lewis
Pecky - Tux
Pocky - Johnny Lightfoot
Rocky - Joe Sushi
Ricky - Sally Acorn
Cucky - Chirps

Flicky was an established character, so remained Flicky. 

They kept the same designs as their Japanese counterparts, except Sally Acorn was given a red bow in her hair and Tux (the penguin) was given a black bow tie.

None of these names made it into any of the games themselves, or even the instruction manuals. They were however, used extensively in merchandise, children's books and so on. The American Sonic 1 promotional comic is probably the earliest example. Notably, they all appeared in early issues of the UK's "Sonic the Comic", but only Porker Lewis, Johnny Lightfoot and Sally Acorn were ever called by name. Sally was quickly dropped, whereas Johnny and Porker became core cast members and were redesigned to be more humanoid and wear clothes.

When the "Sonic the Hedgehog" cartoon was in development, one of the earlier ideas was that it would feature Sonic and all seven of his friends, drastically redesigned, as the "Freedom Team". http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Early_Sonic_the_Hedgehog_cartoon?file=Freedom_team.jpg

The idea evolved to the point where the Freedom Team became the Freedom Fighters and only Sally Acorn remained. (Though Boomer/Rotor was likely an evolution of the Joe Sushi character.) The early Archie comics were based on this show whilst it was still in production, which is why it had some oddities. In #0 Sally is a reddish colour with blonde hair. Rotor is called Boomer. From her second appearance onwards, Sally is pink with dark hair, which is how she appeared in the pilot episode of the cartoon. Eventually the comics switched over to how Sally looked in every other episode of the show. Boomer's name was changed to Rotor in the comics, but he continued to have his design based on the pilot episode. (Rotor had three designs in the show - the pilot design, the season 1 design and the season 2 design. The Archie comics bulked him out a bit and later had their own takes, but they never fully embraced how Rotor looked in season 1 or 2 of the show.)

Once the Sonic cartoons were out, western Sonic media started to reflect them, so Tux, Chirps, Johnny Lightfoot and co were phased out.

By 1997 Sonic tie-in media had died down. When Sonic Jam was released they used the Japanese names for Sonic's friends - Ricky, Rocky, Pocky, Picky, Pecky, Cucky and Flicky. They continued to use these names when they returned years later in Sonic Generations, Sonic Runners and so on.

The Archie comics series ran for an unprecedented length of time, so Sally Acorn remained a known quantity, having really taken on a life of her own within the franchise.

But essentially, all Sally Acorn was ever originally intended to be was the squirrel from Sonic 1.

The design document for Sonic the Hedgehog on DIDJ continued to use the Sally Acorn, etc. names. This implies the names didn’t die until Generations or even Mania, given that they’re nameless in Generations, the Olympics, and Lost World. Even the “Robotnik” name seems to be on its last legs as well. 

[Detective Kaito]

9 minutes ago, KoDaiko said:

Maybe as a way to keep people interested/thinking/discussing/remembering about the comic. If they gave away the information in one go, there will be a big initial reaction, then it will die down and forgotten.

 That's the point of teasing, right?

True, but it really gets annoying when they use the same trick over and over.

[Pengi]

5 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

The design document for Sonic the Hedgehog on DIDJ continued to use the Sally Acorn, etc. names. 

What's that?

5 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

This implies the names didn’t die until Generations or even Mania, given that they’re nameless in Generations, the Olympics, and Lost World.

4:32.

[Multikaris]

9 minutes ago, Pengi said:

What's that?

4:32.

http://hotironproductions.com/sonic/doc/SonicDesign.pdf

oh, And sorry for forgetting about that detail. 

[DabigRG]

24 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

The design document for Sonic the Hedgehog on DIDJ continued to use the Sally Acorn, etc. names. 

I thought this said DJJ at first.

[PublicEnemy1]

Aww, damn. This is gonna be a LOOOOONG 3 days...

 

[DabigRG]

16 minutes ago, Pengi said:

What's that?

4:32.

That ending and musical cue was perfect. 

Just now, PublicEnemy1 said:

Aww, damn. This is gonna be a LOOOOONG 3 days...

 

Why is your text black around the borders?

Also, don'cha just love when people snipe you in the process of merging?

[Pengi]

10 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

http://hotironproductions.com/sonic/doc/SonicDesign.pdf

 

That very much looks like they grabbed names from the first wiki they found, rather than something provided to them by Sega. Joe Rotor??

[Big Panda]

Hmmm...

(mockup by me)

[Shaddy Zaphod]

39 minutes ago, Pengi said:

 

That very much looks like they grabbed names from the first wiki they found, rather than something provided to them by Sega. Joe Rotor??

And why does it say "Star Wars: Clone Wars design document" on it?

[Razule]

1 hour ago, Ernest-Panda said:

Hmmm...

(mockup by me)

Ooooh, people are gonna be livid if one of the first images of IDW Sonic has Sonic holding hands with a Sally counterpart

[dylan tix]

It would be funny for them to have a Ricky derivative who is actually named Ricky the Squirrel just to troll the Sally fans, and then have Sally show up for real later. 

[DabigRG]

30 minutes ago, dylan tix said:

It would be funny for them to have a Ricky derivative who is actually named Ricky the Squirrel just to troll the Sally fans, and then have Sally show up for real later. 

Ch'yeah, that would be something.

Especially since Sally is a chipmunk anyway.

 

[knuckles20]

8 hours ago, PublicEnemy1 said:

A little more has been revealed here. Any guesses?

With the knee facing the the opposition direction of Sonic, it looks like Sonic is dragging his/her tail as if the new person is reluctant to get into action.

[Your Vest Friend]

7 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Especially since Sally is a chipmunk anyway.

Well, that really depends which era they'd be ebbing off. 

She was a Squirrel/Fox in SatAM, Ground Squirrel in most of pre-reboot Archie, Squirrel/Chipmunk near the end of pre-reboot Archie and Chipmunk post-reboot. 

[Marco9966]

Bumblekast: Ian Flynn insists that not everything is gonna appear by issue 1. If a character or an element doesnt appear doesnt mean he hate a character. Give him time. He doesnt want to frontload the book with so much stuff that it becomes unreadable. It's still issue 1 and it's still the beginning, we don't want 20 years worth of complicated lore shoved in one issue.

 

He also stresses that any characters that are not game-canon can only appear if Sega agrees.

 

So if a certain character doesnt show up on the first issue, don't spam! Wether it's on the facebook group or here. (I'm looking at you Sally fans).

[Big Panda]

 

1 hour ago, VEDJ-F said:

Well, that really depends which era they'd be ebbing off. 

She was a Squirrel/Fox in SatAM, Ground Squirrel in most of pre-reboot Archie, Squirrel/Chipmunk near the end of pre-reboot Archie and Chipmunk post-reboot. 

She's a plain squirrel in StC.

[DabigRG]

2 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

Well, that really depends which era they'd be ebbing off. 

She was a Squirrel/Fox in SatAM, Ground Squirrel in most of pre-reboot Archie, Squirrel/Chipmunk near the end of pre-reboot Archie and Chipmunk post-reboot. 

...What? With that short little tail?

Also, I thought Ground Squirrel was the same thing as a Chipmunk.

[Your Vest Friend]

3 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

...What? With that short little tail?

Yes with the short little tail. I wouldn't have guessed it myself but I wasn't the one calling the shots in 1993. 

3 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Also, I thought Ground Squirrel was the same thing as a Chipmunk.

Not exactly. A chipmunk is a ground squirrel, but ground squirrel is the catch-all name for the Marmotini tribe so can be a variety of different animals in it. In fact, in terms of common names, chipmunk, ground squirrel and prairie dog/marmots are often used to denote different sized rodents in that tribe, with chipmunk being the smaller members and ground squirrel being more medium sized. 

18 minutes ago, Ernest-Panda said:

She's a plain squirrel in StC.

I wonder if they'd even look at StC Sally in terms of inspiration given how she's basically identical to Ricky Squirrel's Western named self as opposed to the character everyone associates with the name. 

[Salamander]

3 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Yes with the short little tail. I wouldn't have guessed it myself but I wasn't the one calling the shots in 1993. 

Not exactly. A chipmunk is a ground squirrel, but ground squirrel is the catch-all name for the Marmotini tribe so can be a variety of different animals in it. In fact, in terms of common names, chipmunk, ground squirrel and prairie dog/marmots are often used to denote different sized rodents in that tribe, with chipmunk being the smaller members and ground squirrel being more medium sized. 

On that note, incidentally...

2 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

She was a Squirrel/Fox in SatAM

I traced this back to an apparent original Ben Hurst quote describing her as a "fox/squirrel"... but surely that has to be a misinterpretation of the fox squirrel?

[Your Vest Friend]

Nope, the full quote from my link explains it.

"Sally was a fox/squirrel. At least that's what we told ourselves. There was a bit of ambiguity around the office on that one. But we were so preoccupied with the master storyline, that those kinds of questions sort of fell by the wayside. the important thing was the character, not the design. She's one of my favorite characters. Not half and half, just nebulous. We weren't really sure either, but it didn't seem important at the time. In hindsight, we probably should have decided. Her father, I think he was a Fox. So - mom might have been a squirrel. "

She's literally a Fox/Squirrel hybrid, with King Acorn being the Fox parentage.