Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Kuzu]

2 hours ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

Depends on what you mean by playing a similar role.

If you mean play a more minor role, the problem is that when he is a minor character people think he should be left out regardless of how much he contributed. Otherwise, it’s not hard to imagine.

That depends on what he contributes. But Shadow is kind of the type of character you go big or go home with.

 

That said, I thought his role was fine enough in this arc. So I don't get the complaints.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

59 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

That depends on what he contributes. But Shadow is kind of the type of character you go big or go home with.

 

That said, I thought his role was fine enough in this arc. So I don't get the complaints.

He’s only a go big or go home if you pigeonhole him as such. He doesn’t have to be that way, and Ian’s shown this multiple times in Archie when he’s present but not the most important character in arcs like Treasure Team Tango or Shattered, or the time he stalled Knuckles when he went Demi-god and threatened the world until the others could depower him.

It’s honestly the same here, so I too don’t get the complaints. Shadow wasn’t around doing nothing, he came in when Metal Sonic had Knuckles and Sonic on the ropes and saved them, in spite of how much doing so was a screw up that actually gave Metal what he wanted.

Shadow can be used in moderate or lesser roles and share focus with other characters. So I don’t see why that’s a problem for him when he can still make an impact. 

[Shadowlax]

2 hours ago, DabigRG said:

To be fair, Blaze did more than Shadow or Rouge did. 

Probably would've did more with them absent.

I don't think so. But I guess that's an issue with the writing.

Like When you are writing a sort of " A bunch of people going to do different stuff " you write that to make it feel like each person is doing a thing, I don't feel like a lot of people... did things. Or the things they did felt like they contributed something, they just... blew up some shit.

Like in sonic adventure 2, at the final battle, the goal wasn't to just blow up stuff each character used their abilities to contribute to the greater whole. I would have prefered a story with less character where it felt like each character did something specific to them besides blow up robots to contribute to the whole.

5 minutes ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

He’s only a go big or go home if you pigeonhole him as such. He doesn’t have to be that way, and Ian’s shown this multiple times in Archie when he’s present but not the most important character in arcs like Treasure Team Tango or Shattered, or the time he stalled Knuckles when he went Demi-god and threatened the world until the others could depower him.

No one is pigeonholing him, its just how the character works. And your examples aren't great?

Tresure team tangle is cool, and that works but he's still very much a large part story. Shattered, he's not even there and does not show up in the last battle, and if you mean the Sonic universe stuff, he's litterally on the face of several universe arcs doing that. Which supports the original point, and a lot of people don't like shadow's characters in archie.... before like the reboot... so Kinda playing into how people do not like him when he's not around actively contributing to something

Go big or go home is the name of the game with this guy, and its not unique to him its a fairly common thing in comic books and stories in general. Its why the X-men books tends to separate their bigger name characters onto different X-men teams

5 minutes ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

It’s honestly the same here, so I too don’t get the complaints. Shadow wasn’t around doing nothing, he came in when Metal Sonic had Knuckles and Sonic on the ropes and saved them, in spite of how much doing so was a screw up that actually gave Metal what he wanted.

He did nothing, nothing contributed to anything. The story could have been exactly the same without his contributions. He got a cool scene, that's it. I don't care about him being cool, I want him to do shit that matters.

5 minutes ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

Shadow can be used in moderate or lesser roles and share focus with other characters. So I don’t see why that’s a problem for him when he can still make an impact. 

Eh, You didn't really prove anything. You used bad examples that actively work against what you are trying to argue. Two things where's the face of arcs, and a period where people weren't fond how his character was being used.

[Kuzu]

48 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

I don't think so. But I guess that's an issue with the writing.

Like When you are writing a sort of " A bunch of people going to do different stuff " you write that to make it feel like each person is doing a thing, I don't feel like a lot of people... did things. Or the things they did felt like they contributed something, they just... blew up some shit.

Like in sonic adventure 2, at the final battle, the goal wasn't to just blow up stuff each character used their abilities to contribute to the greater whole. I would have prefered a story with less character where it felt like each character did something specific to them besides blow up robots to contribute to the whole.

No one is pigeonholing him, its just how the character works. And your examples aren't great?

Tresure team tangle is cool, and that works but he's still very much a large part story. Shattered, he's not even there and does not show up in the last battle, and if you mean the Sonic universe stuff, he's litterally on the face of several universe arcs doing that. Which supports the original point, and a lot of people don't like shadow's characters in archie.... before like the reboot... so Kinda playing into how people do not like him when he's not around actively contributing to something

Go big or go home is the name of the game with this guy, and its not unique to him its a fairly common thing in comic books and stories in general. Its why the X-men books tends to separate their bigger name characters onto different X-men teams

He did nothing, nothing contributed to anything. The story could have been exactly the same without his contributions. He got a cool scene, that's it. I don't care about him being cool, I want him to do shit that matters.

Eh, You didn't really prove anything. You used bad examples that actively work against what you are trying to argue. Two things where's the face of arcs, and a period where people weren't fond how his character was being used.

I don't want to accuse you of anything, but your complaints can basically be boiled down to "Shadow needs to be super important whenever he appears or he's wasted" which is the exact rhetoric you argue you aren't for.

You know who else isn't super important in this arc? Silver, the Chaotix, Tangle and Whisper. So it's not like Shadow is unique in that regard. And even then, he still gets paired with both Sonic and Knuckles against Metal despite that.

Your thing is that you feel Shadow needs to be important to justify his presence, which isn't true at all. Like, I get that he's a major character and all, but he doesn't need to be that important anytime he shows up.

 

If you say he's not relevant enough to justify his appearance, then the opposite is true too; his presence doesn't hurt the story either. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

If your issue is Shadow being in a minor role, that’s a personal problem to deal with. There’s nothing wrong with Shadow being present as a minor character for a story when he still has an impact.

[Dr. Detective]

Anyone can play a supporting role. Anyone can play the main one. I feel like all their characters are strong enough to handle those roles. You'd have no choice but to be versatile enough to handle those roles in my eyes. I don't understand why anyone would feel any character who appears needs to only be positioned in one of those slots all the time. If there's a story you can tell that would make it work, then tell that story.

The situation with the last arc is a bit different in that, it didn't make room or use for almost any of them. It either needed to beef up the story it was telling or, if it wanted to keep this story the way it was, then they should have removed some of the cast. 

If you keep things too simple but have a bunch of characters around you do run the serious risk of having people wonder why everyone's around, even if it's a plot that could very easily justify all of them being there. Like Forces. 

[DabigRG]

18 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Anyone can play a supporting role. Anyone can play the main one. I feel like all their characters are strong enough to handle those roles. 

 

Really now?

19 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I don't understand why anyone would feel any character who appears needs to only be positioned in one of those slots all the time. If there's a story you can tell that would make it work, then tell that story.

 

Agreed.

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

Really now?

Of course. If they decided to tell a story where the focus was on Tails, Sonic could and should be able to play the supporting role just fine if he was necessary to whatever plot they were telling.

The same can be said for all the other guys.

The only one I have a bit of trouble figuring out is Cream but that's kind of the issue with Cream in a nutshell. As a character she doesn't really have anything going on. 

[DabigRG]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

The only one I have a bit of trouble figuring out is Cream but that's kind of the issue with Cream in a nutshell. As a character she doesn't really have anything going on. 

That thing with Cream is that, like many other characters, she was conceived with a particular purpose in mind--a supporting one and a gameplay one. The trip up is the fact that they never really did much with it or, to an extent, her narratively speaking. That in turn limited her in-game development character-wise, which again is arguably where she'd be the strongest when it comes to storytelling.  

There's also Big, should they decide to use him, but he's just simply natural. What about Espio and Charmy?

[Zaysho]

3 hours ago, Shadowlax said:

Eh, You didn't really prove anything. You used bad examples that actively work against what you are trying to argue. Two things where's the face of arcs, and a period where people weren't fond how his character was being used.

In the two examples for Archie CSS cited, Shadow is a supporting player in both cases. He still does something, but he is not the focus of those arcs. His main contribution in "Treasure Team Tango" is telling Rouge to give the Sol Emerald back to Blaze (the star of that arc) at the very end. Knuckles is the star of "Shattered," and most of what Shadow does is either call Knuckles an idiot or get to stay back and fight Naugus while Knuckles and Amy go save Angel Island. Like, did we read two different comic books here?

Like I'm not sure how what was brought up doesn't count or why we're dismissing an example because some Shadow fans got mad he wasn't enough of a star or whatever when citing those examples was the point.

Shadow isn't any more or less important than any other supporting character at this stage of the franchise. The only thing that makes him stand out from the rest of the cast is a slightly more developed (if convoluted) backstory and character arc, but even then, Sega closed the book on that. Just like they did with Knuckles being the guardian of the most powerful artifact in the world and reduced him to dumb hanger on that doesn't even do the job anymore.  I'm not saying he can't have bigger roles (and I think this comic will give him more stuff to do later on, year one was clearly about establishing the ensemble), but he I'm not seeing any negative effect if he does just show up without being the focus.

[Marco9966]

It's likely we'll get a second book like Sonic Universe and there the secondary characters can be more fleshed out

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

That thing with Cream is that, like many other characters, she was conceived with a particular purpose in mind--a supporting one and a gameplay one. The trip up is the fact that they never really did much with it or, to an extent, her narratively speaking. That in turn limited her in-game development character-wise, which again is arguably where she'd be the strongest when it comes to storytelling.  

There's also Big, should they decide to use him, but he's just simply natural. What about Espio and Charmy?

Cream and Big tend to only get used when something is taken away from them. They don't really lead lives that go out in search of any general conflict so it's gotta be, "Oh no, Cheese was taken." or "Oh no, my Mom was taken." or "Oh no, Cheese's... brother... was taken." or "Where's Froggy gone off to THIS time."

Big I suppose you could say works a bit more in that regard since that would likely BE the point to his character, in that, he's a fisherman who doesn't have anything to do with a lot of what's going on but gets roped up in it anyway. That's kind of what they did to make his story in Adventure stand out.

Espio and Charmy are detectives. Same as Vector. I'm not sure why it'd be hard for them at all. Especially since Espio's a ninja-detective and Charmy's a kid-detective like Detective Conan except way less smart due to actually being 6. So that's intrigue upon intrique right there.

[Shadowlax]

2 hours ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

I don't want to accuse you of anything, but your complaints can basically be boiled down to "Shadow needs to be super important whenever he appears or he's wasted" which is the exact rhetoric you argue you aren't for.

If you wish to look at them that way yeah, but considering I strait up said that " I don't actually require him to be the most important character of the arc " and said " I would like the characters who are there to do things of note and to focus on that " and then named other characters. I think I made my point , but Sure I can explain... again

While I do want shadow to be important, I like him, my issue is more so he does... nothing. And I acknowledged that a lot of this is simply because they only have one book , but at the same time, if you understand that why not get the cast down to a more reasonable size and focus on those people.

2 hours ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

You know who else isn't super important in this arc? Silver, the Chaotix, Tangle and Whisper. So it's not like Shadow is unique in that regard. And even then, he still gets paired with both Sonic and Knuckles against Metal despite that.

I also think that's bad? My favorite issue of this year is the sonic silver and whisper one. Its only 3 people and those 3 people do work, get to express themselves and have a fun time.

Maybe its not about who he's paired with, its about what he's doing. And as a shadow fan, he's done nothing of note. And as a fan of the series as a whole, during this last arc, a lot of people did nothing of note and I wish the story was smaller in scale to work with the one book they have.

I don't need to see shadow, shadow is popular. You can have him, and a few others sit out while you establish a year one and actually tell a decent story , instead of " EVERYONE IS HERE DOING.... NOTHING BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY HELPING  "

Yeah, I like shadow. I think he's a cool guy, and have issues with how his character is. But it seems like a lot of you are kind of missing the forrest for the trees, or ignoring a lot of what i'm saying, or just not reading or a combination of things. And i've made my issues with the narrative .... clear

2 hours ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Your thing is that you feel Shadow needs to be important to justify his presence, which isn't true at all. Like, I get that he's a major character and all, but he doesn't need to be that important anytime he shows up.

I... don't think I said that? I just need him to be doing a thing? My favorite shadow arc in the last book , is the one about knuckles. Knuckles is the primary character in that series of books, and shadow and team dark are just happening to be in the area, but its cool because shadow allows for knuckles to grow as a character. After KNuckles got shadow to understand people more.

That's what I mean by DO SOMETHING. Even if it isn't fighting, he caused... someone to grow... and that's interesting

2 hours ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

 

If you say he's not relevant enough to justify his appearance, then the opposite is true too; his presence doesn't hurt the story either. 

It does, that... that's not how that works at all? You can totally have characters there, not contributing things and it makes the story worse, especially if you dedicate time to the story to that nothing, which they did. At the end of the day, shadow's actions in the narrative did nothing but " Make shadow look cool " I don't... care about that.

I mean Yeah I want my favorite guy to look cool, but I would rather have him .. do something as stated above. And if he couldn't do that, why not give time to someone to focus on... and make them look cool

Hopefully that explains my stance and I don't have to explain myself , literally a fourth time because i've been extremely clear about this at this point

[DabigRG]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Big I suppose you could say works a bit more in that regard since that would likely BE the point to his character, in that, he's a fisherman who doesn't have anything to do with a lot of what's going on but gets roped up in it anyway. That's kind of what they did to make his story in Adventure stand out.

Espio and Charmy are detectives. Same as Vector. I'm not sure why it'd be hard for them at all. Especially since Espio's a ninja-detective and Charmy's a kid-detective like Detective Conan except way less smart due to actually being 6. So that's intrigue upon intrique right there.

True

6 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Cream and Big tend to only get used when something is taken away from them. They don't really lead lives that go out in search of any general conflict so it's gotta be, "Oh no, Cheese was taken." or "Oh no, my Mom was taken." or "Oh no, Cheese's... brother... was taken." or "Where's Froggy gone off to THIS time."
 

Well, Cream is generally more of a support role in most of her appearances, so the ones that don't rely [heavily] on that type of thing generally just have her hanging out with the other characters.

So I guess you could say she could fall into that, providing backup, wanting to help people, and in a few things, simply wanting to go explore once in a while.

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

True

Well, Cream is generally more of a support role in most of her appearances, so the ones that don't rely [heavily] on that type of thing generally just have her hanging out with the other characters.

So I guess you could say she could fall into that, providing backup, wanting to help people, and in a few things, simply wanting to go explore once in a while.

Yeah but that doesn't really provide her with anything though. Any character could provide back-up or generally act as a support character, like I said. The thing they have over Cream is that they all generally have something to latch onto that would make it fairly easy to have them as a main character in their own stories too. Why use Cream when you could use anyone else in that case?

They need to figure something out for her. I suppose the fact that she's only good for a support role would be fine on its own in a series that had way less characters than this one does... but this series has a lot of characters. If she's gonna hang, she's gonna need something.

[Shadowlax]

13 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

In the two examples for Archie CSS cited, Shadow is a supporting player in both cases. He still does something, but he is not the focus of those arcs. His main contribution in "Treasure Team Tango" is telling Rouge to give the Sol Emerald back to Blaze (the star of that arc) at the very end. Knuckles is the star of "Shattered," and most of what Shadow does is either call Knuckles an idiot or get to stay back and fight Naugus while Knuckles and Amy go save Angel Island. Like, did we read two different comic books here?

OH That's what they meant buy shattered. That's my mistake, I thought they were talking about like, the whole uh... unleashed thing. I commented on that above, and how I feel on that.

 

13 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

Shadow isn't any more or less important than any other supporting character at this stage of the franchise. The only thing that makes him stand out from the rest of the cast is a slightly more developed (if convoluted) backstory and character arc, but even then, Sega closed the book on that. Just like they did with Knuckles being the guardian of the most powerful artifact in the world and reduced him to dumb hanger on that doesn't even do the job anymore.  I'm not saying he can't have bigger roles (and I think this comic will give him more stuff to do later on, year one was clearly about establishing the ensemble), but he I'm not seeing any negative effect if he does just show up without being the focus.

I'm saying that I feel like they could have told a better story with a smaller cast because I don't feel like... they established much, a lot of things were kind of rushed, and maybe other characters could have been focused on. Whether you feel shadow is more or less important at this point, is ... irrelevant to me? Not to be rude, my whole point is that " Hey this character is problably gonna get shine... a lot of it people like him, maybe save him for something else I don't need you waving " remember shadow " infront of me all the time. Focus on a smaller cast a and tell a better story." the only reason I focus on shadow because... well I like him, but two he's sort of the king of these problems. Nothing he does contributes to anything, even in the issue about him which you could just throw the fuck away, and even now... I dunno I feel like any number of things could have caused metal sonic to transform. I would have rather gotten a Sonic and Knuckles throw back fight with Metal sonic for a while than " SHADOW"S HERE LOOK AT HOW COOL HEIS, HE"S GONE " . Not only that , paired down some of the others so that the supporting story had fewer people doing very important things, and you could go into them and their own adventures.

 

If you don't see any negative effects, Sure cool do you. I think the story's not that great and the primary reason is too many characters and too much real estate. Its not as bad as world's unite or anything. But its bad enough to which I feel like the quality of the book actively takes a hit for it. And kind of a big on.

[DabigRG]

33 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Yeah but that doesn't really provide her with anything though.  The thing they have over Cream is that they all generally have something to latch onto that would make it fairly easy to have them as a main character in their own stories too. Why use Cream when you could use anyone else in that case?

They need to figure something out for her. If she's gonna hang, she's gonna need something.

For some reason, I'm having a hard time finding a prompt here--what is it you're referencing here?

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

For some reason, I'm having a hard time finding a prompt here--what is it you're referencing here?

I'm not referencing anything. 

If she's going to stick around, she needs something to her character. 

That's it.

[DabigRG]

1 minute ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I'm not referencing anything. 

If she's going to stick around, she needs something to her character. 

That's it.

Okay--what is something? Examples for the other characters from your take would be nice.

[Zaysho]

23 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

I'm saying that I feel like they could have told a better story with a smaller cast because I don't feel like... they established much, a lot of things were kind of rushed, and maybe other characters could have been focused on. Whether you feel shadow is more or less important at this point, is ... irrelevant to me? Not to be rude, my whole point is that " Hey this character is problably gonna get shine... a lot of it people like him, maybe save him for something else I don't need you waving " remember shadow " infront of me all the time.

I mean, I agree that you can do more with less, because I haven't been a fan of the book's first year because it was just one character of the day after another for eight issues and not really getting to the point (I've already argued that half of those issues could have been cut or spliced together to quicken the pace and I still feel that way). But your entire argument is that Shadow is just too big of a character to relegate to a smaller role once in a while, and that's not true just looking at what the franchise is nowadays. You're not obligated to like what they did with Shadow here, but I don't think they did wrong by him (certainly could have been a lot worse). It's not like this reflects all they'll ever do with him or any other supporting character.

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

Okay--what is something? Examples for the other characters from your take would be nice.

...?

She needs a point of development to work off of, something that motivates her to do something, or an occupation. Do you just want me to list off all the characters and say what motivates them or what personal occupation they have? 

I'm actually not sure what it is you're confused about. I'm sorry. 

[DabigRG]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

...?

She needs a point of development to work off of, something that motivates her to do something, or an occupation. 

I'm actually not sure what it is you're confused about. I'm sorry. 

Okay, motivation was what I was hovering around, but given your way of phrasing things sometimes(not here, though), I couldn't help but wonder if there was more to it than that.

9 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Do you just want me to list off all the characters and say what motivates them or what personal occupation they have? 

Eeh, it could've been helpful in knowing where this was coming from personally on top of comparing with other characters, but that's no longer necessary.

[SBR2]

4 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

...?

She needs a point of development to work off of, something that motivates her to do something, or an occupation. Do you just want me to list off all the characters and say what motivates them or what personal occupation they have? 

I'm actually not sure what it is you're confused about. I'm sorry. 

I know I'm going to get shit for this but I kinda agree. 

I was shocked so many people didn't like how Ian was using Cream in Archie when honestly her role seemed pretty fitting for a helpful but otherwise non-combatant character. I mean she's cute but I never really thought Cream needed a super active role. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

It would’ve been nice to see Cream in an active role, but honestly, I thought she was fine in Archie.

I can name several things she’s done compared to her appearance in the games or even Sonic X, even minor things that made her stand out by comparison.

[DabigRG]

51 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

I know I'm going to get shit for this but I kinda agree. 

I was shocked so many people didn't like how Ian was using Cream in Archie when honestly her role seemed pretty fitting for a helpful but otherwise non-combatant character. I mean she's cute but I never really thought Cream needed a super active role. 

Yeah, funny how outside of Battle apparently, it feels like Cream gets better focus in other medias despite not being openly touted as a major character half the time. 

Then again, I did just say she functions better from a character interaction standpoint compared to the more action-oriented nature that most of the other characters possess.