Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Kuzu]

I'm pretty much at the point where I really don't care one way or the other when it comes to character screentime, at least in regards to Knuckles. He'll show up when he shows up so I'm fine with it so far. 

Sonic & Tails are the franchises main faces whether people like it or not, so they're always going to get higher priority and their overall simplicity just makes it easier to insert them into any type of narrative without disruption. And Shadow is always going to be a huge draw no matter what. Wish the latest arc focused more on the other characters, but it is what it is. Hopefully the next can actually deliver without the main stars taking over. 

 

I actually do wanna see how the girls handle themselves without needing to be bailed out by Sonic.

[Meta77]

Just read 43 and 44.

43 was ok. I just really wish sonics homing/ball attack seemed to deliver more impact when fighting. Most the time it simply comes across him bouncing into people which is fine but just does not seem impactful. Seeing tangle  get her butt slammed was pretty funny if not a little brutal. But otherwise it was an ok issue. I enjoyed seeing sonic and tails at the end tired with tails being the one to use his"tricks" to win.

44

Spoiler

was probably the best. I enjoyed seeing Starline tinker with Belle and in turn Belle showing anger at him for taking Mr Tinker away from her and how the people turned on her. That said also seeing Starline show the "mad" scientist in him at the end with him finding data he could use on "the imposters we all know at this point that is who he meant" as interesting. His facial expressions were perfect as well as his escape from team choatix. As for the Deadly Six hopefully we do not see them for a long time and new villains get the spotlight more. The comic has written them better but still do not care for them as long term threats.

 

[Sonictrainer]

The new Spider-Man game looks great.

(Pic by ig6cc1 on Twitter)

[CertifiedNobody]

5 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Also, ya know, Sega seem to have made it pretty clear that they have no plans to actually do anything with Knuckles or the Master Emerald for the foreseeable future, so Knuckles fans have to pretty much be told "Fuck you, your character isn't allowed to do anything unless its related to a plot point we have no intention of utilizing"  so I'm not really surprised its a plot device that people just want to see go away. 

Sega hasn't made anything about their plans clear. The state of the franchise and Sonic Team as a whole have changed so much after Forces and the Movie that we won't know where the series is going until Rangers releases and soft reboots the series like Colors and Adventure did. Given his crucial role in Sonic Movie 2, they might be trying to make Knuckles relevant again, after all, Iizuka did say they were working closer with Paramount this time.

[MetalSkulkBane]

10 hours ago, Mauro Fonseca said:

making a replacement character for knuckles misses the point

guarding the emerald isn't a job, it's a duty and part of his identity

he could have tails devise the best safe ever to protect it, but his duty isn't "make sure master emerald is safe", it's "be there to protect master emerald, the last element you have of your culture"

 

I get wanting to see more of knuckles but this is the sort of thing where like with shadow openly talking about his emotions, is "fixing" a problem that doesn't exist by just making the character entirely different. "man, darth vader is cool, it's so bothersome he's evil so he can't have adventures with luke. what if the emperor made a new darth vader to take his job, and darth vader's a good guy now and always around to be in adventures?"

Yeah, that is a great way to describe it.

Kuzu has a point, we're going in circles on this topic. Not just today, but like in years. I think we must just accept that this problem doesn't have a clean solution.

[Endy]

the videogames ignore the master emerald all the time because their tone is light and continuity is entirely secondary so it stands to reason the comic can do just do that too

or, they can just say that his pet dinosaur from sonic underground is guarding it. your move, sega

[Kuzu]

4 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Sega hasn't made anything about their plans clear. The state of the franchise and Sonic Team as a whole have changed so much after Forces and the Movie that we won't know where the series is going until Rangers releases and soft reboots the series like Colors and Adventure did. Given his crucial role in Sonic Movie 2, they might be trying to make Knuckles relevant again, after all, Iizuka did say they were working closer with Paramount this time.

There has been no soft reboot of anything, this is just a cope fans tell themselves to deal with the franchise changes. Adventure is the only real hard split.

 

There's no reason to believe Sega are just going to suddenly change course after so long and nothing recently has suggested such. 

[CertifiedNobody]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

There has been no soft reboot of anything, this is just a cope fans tell themselves to deal with the franchise changes. Adventure is the only real hard split.

 

There's no reason to believe Sega are just going to suddenly change course after so long and nothing recently has suggested such. 

Uhh,,, No, I'm pretty sure Colors fits the description of a soft reboot. And there absolutely is reason to believe that they're suddenly changing course, because Iizuka himself outright stated in interviews that they were going in a new direction and that Rangers was going to change the direction the series would go. On top of that, after Forces, Sega restructurings resulted in the CS3 division being merged with CS2 (Sonic Team), And Iizuka and Sonic Team are now back in in America, and the team moving countries has consistently brought a new direction for the series. It happened with the Adventure and Dark Age games when the moved to America originally, and it happened with the boost games when they moved back to Japan after 06.

[Meta77]

More to the sheep than meets the eye.   I forget her name but the new character in idw the sheep. Is it just me or is she giving off future villain vibes. Also to add to this ABT drew a picture last week of her either jumping up in surprise or shaking while smiling., and in the second panel her eyes shift (while her body does not) to sorta give a glare at the viewer while still having the same smile. Ive tried everything I can think of to find the picture he deleted but pretty sure its gone now.

[CertifiedNobody]

1 hour ago, Meta77 said:

More to the sheep than meets the eye.   I forget her name but the new character in idw the sheep. Is it just me or is she giving off future villain vibes. Also to add to this ABT drew a picture last week of her either jumping up in surprise or shaking while smiling., and in the second panel her eyes shift (while her body does not) to sorta give a glare at the viewer while still having the same smile. Ive tried everything I can think of to find the picture he deleted but pretty sure its gone now.

You mean Lanolin The Sheep? I'd be interested in seeing her go villain but I think Ian said that Sega hasn't even approved of her yet.

[Meta77]

Thats her. I want to say he posted the drawing around thursday-saturday. Several people commented was he hinting was she evil from the way he had drawn her staring but after that he deleted the picture. i assumed cause he may not have meant to give it away or that so many were thinking it.

[Razule]

Lanolin's been approved now actually.  

[CertifiedNobody]

1 minute ago, Razule said:

Lanolin's been approved now actually.  

Didn't know that!

Sooooo... Lanolin in Sonic Forces Speed Battles when?

 

[bingboomer]

so crabby lanolin turning evil huh? crikey. i wander what orson and his friends would think of that. 

[Meta77]

lol it would expand the villains a bit more and her looks several time in the comics do not make it seem like she is just super happy or that shes playing off but becoming tired of holding up the facade. I just wish there was a way to find that picture. i knew i should have snipped it.

[CertifiedNobody]

2 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

lol it would expand the villains a bit more and her looks several time in the comics do not make it seem like she is just super happy or that shes playing off but becoming tired of holding up the facade. I just wish there was a way to find that picture. i knew i should have snipped it.

I'm sure someone has it saved. It might be tough finding it though.

[MetalSkulkBane]

I though Mimic was impersonating her, but after longer observation her palms are clear. So no.

And turning her evil would be pretty weird move.
Most people won't even know who she is.
Those who do know and care might be disappointed she turned evil.
But Lanolin has no personality so it's not much of a twist or character development.

It would be Fiona Fox all over, only on much smaller scale.

[Meta77]

Examples would be like this. Her reaction to them and saying she would announce them just felt weird.

[DaddlerTheDalek]

She seems to be annoyed and somewhat wary now.

[IWriteAlright]

I'm really glad a lot of the approved characters are girls in a series where the people who ultimately hold the keys are still operating under very sexist logic in how they represent these characters its nice that this series is diversifies in a way. I don't expect sega/Sonic Team to do anything with them seriously , and if i'm being honest I don't want them to I don't trust them to do anything right with them, but they are nice to have.

As far as knuckles goes it does feel like a bit of an excuse yes. Because most of the audience does not care that knuckles is the guardian of the M.E. Its irrelevant to how they see the character and the restrictions Sega have placed on knuckles are baffling because they are the main reason people don't care about the master emerald. Primary because it doesn't have effects on knuckles character, it even stopped being a main character motivation for why knuckles leaves the island and occasionally he just leaves. It isn't quite the same as shadow being more " open " because people wouldn't like Takeover shadow being shadow either, his personality and how he carries himself is pretty important and people would quickly turn on that interpretation if that became how he carried himself. As opposed to knuckles where you can just remove the master emerald right now and nothing would change. Even in sonic boom knuckles had a warmer welcome because most people aren't thinking about why knuckles is around, he's just been around since heroes.
In knuckles's case why he is around isn't a fact so it is just an excuse to not use knuckles, sega's excuse. Why they have decided to become so strict all of a sudden who's to say.

The other characters not being used as much falls on the writers themselves, well as far as we know. I often see this argument " Well sonic and tails are the stars " , ok who cares? There are entire issues not about them, use the characters and tells stories with them. It also doesn't help that the best stories and the best parts of stories in the run don't involve sonic and tails. There's this focus around arcs than characters and I find it results in a much less interesting book. And the most interesting parts of this book focuses on the characters.

I know the issue at its core is " This book needs a 'sonic universe' " and it does. But IDW doesn't want to invest in that, because of their own ongoing financial woes and they just don't want to hire the staff for that right now. I think that's a bit silly considering how well this book does, or so they report. But none of us are in charge. So if we are going to have this book, I think its time to start embracing that the best part of this book is the character interactions and it would behoove the book to use more characters, so they can interact. As long as no one else has weird mandated story restrictions and knuckles and shadow, they can theoretically just show up. Just make up a reason, it wont make sense all the time. But if its in service to a better story. why not?

11 hours ago, Kuzu said:

There has been no soft reboot of anything, this is just a cope fans tell themselves to deal with the franchise changes. Adventure is the only real hard split.

 

There's no reason to believe Sega are just going to suddenly change course after so long and nothing recently has suggested such. 

Sweeping franchise changes that completely change how sega wants the characters to interact with the audience and how they are represented, is a soft reboot. That isn't a cope its an accurate view of the scenario. Sega for quite some time has been flirting with the idea of rebooting elements of sonic as a franchise but they have openly admitted at least to Ian that nostalgia sells. So they aren't committed enough to actually do a reboot so sweeping changes have been made. Sounds like a soft reboot to me.

Though if these movies continue to do well, we might be in for an actual reboot at some point. Which would be fascinating.

 

[Wraith]

Reboot is kind of just a buzzword. They've made changes that a decent chunk of the fanbase didn't like in every main game.

I don't really care to weigh in on the Knuckles thing because I think people are coming at it from the wrong angle. The Master Emerald should absolutely be important to Knuckles...but I don't think anyone was suggesting otherwise, or at least I wasn't. It's just not that hard to implement the Master Emerald into a Sonic story.

Anyway, I don't think that Knuckles's appearances started being so limited because Sega suddenly figured they needed to honor their own lore. They just wanted the brand to remind people of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 so we got that Sonic/Tails/Eggman trio for a while. When they wanted Knuckles in forces they just crammed him in with no real mention of the emeralds at all, like the old days.

[CertifiedNobody]

37 minutes ago, IWriteAlright said:

I'm really glad a lot of the approved characters are girls in a series where the people who ultimately hold the keys are still operating under very sexist logic in how they represent these characters its nice that this series is diversifies in a way. I don't expect sega/Sonic Team to do anything with them seriously , and if i'm being honest I don't want them to I don't trust them to do anything right with them, but they are nice to have.
 

I'm going to have to be careful about how I say this, but I feel like the majority of new IDW characters beings girls is a double edged sword for me. Sure, it's good to have a few more, but the girl characters in the series often just have a different style to the male characters that I find a lot less intriguing. I wouldn't call them worse but they don't hook me nearly as much as characters like Dr. Starline, Knuckles, or Gemerl have. So far Lanolin is the only one that I've really liked a lot, and she's not much more than a glorified background character.

Also I disagree with the idea that Sega or Sonic Team are sexist, and haven't seen much evidence for that at all, but I'd rather not start that argument here after dealing with a thread that discussed that not too long ago.

[Razule]

I think it was said that the reason a lot of the new characters are girls is to balance there already being a lot of male characters in the main canon. There's only, like, three canon female characters who are able to appear regularly without a caveat (never mind that Cream can't fight). Wave is tied to the Rogues, Blaze (and Marine) is in another dimension, Tikal is dead, Sticks is in limbo, the rest are one-offs. Searching up "Sonic characters" on Google, and wow, there really isn't that many.

[IWriteAlright]

5 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

I'm going to have to be careful about how I say this, but I feel like the majority of new IDW characters beings girls is a double edged sword for me. Sure, it's good to have a few more, but the girl characters in the series often just have a different style to the male characters that I find a lot less intriguing. I wouldn't call them worse but they don't hook me nearly as much as characters like Dr. Starline, Knuckles, or Gemerl have. So far Lanolin is the only one that I've really liked a lot, and she's not much more than a glorified background character.

Also I disagree with the idea that Sega or Sonic Team are sexist, and haven't seen much evidence for that at all, but I'd rather not start that argument here after dealing with a thread that discussed that not too long ago.

"Male Hedgehogs can only go super " I think is proof enough.

Think about this, instead of providing an actual explanation justifying why maybe she wasn't quite ready yet to go super. Even if they were never going to commit to at least provide a gateway for those in the future to allow that sort of transformation for her. They would literally rather have it be canon that the chaos emeralds, objects that have no sentience, are sexist and detect if you are not the correct gender to use the emeralds.

This rule likely exists to justify why silver a character who at his debut wasn't the most popular guy could go super and she couldn't.  Said character also for a period changed blaze's canon in a way that did not fit her own so she could play second fiddle. Despite that being retconed the effects of this persists to this day where as he can show up in games without her and not vice versa.

I don't know about you, but to me that seems like the people in charge of the games value one gender so much that they made a rule about it that has to be followed to this day. You don't make that kind of rule if you aren't sexist, its in the wording.

 

4 hours ago, Razule said:

I think it was said that the reason a lot of the new characters are girls is to balance there already being a lot of male characters in the main canon. There's only, like, three canon female characters who are able to appear regularly without a caveat (never mind that Cream can't fight). Wave is tied to the Rogues, Blaze (and Marine) is in another dimension, Tikal is dead, Sticks is in limbo, the rest are one-offs. Searching up "Sonic characters" on Google, and wow, there really isn't that many.

There really isn't much there when you look at it plainly. I feel like sticks would help, but they have decided she doesn't exist anymore. Even though her voice actress shows up on the japanese sonic streams very often? I guess she's a celebrity in general and cool to have around maybe. But the point is sonic as a series doesn't have a lot of women and a lot of it is due to how sega still seems to only see sonic as a boy focus series. Or at least some of sega, there's been a very clear push for ladies in the mobile games and in western material like this very comic book. So at least to me , it seems to just be sonic team

[Ricochet]

Concerns about gender representation over a bunch of cartoon characters?. Cringe.