Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Marco9966]

I love the Heroes influence on the comic! (team-ups, badniks)

I hope we get some Adventure influence also (Chao!) and Riders (Extreme gears)

[PublicEnemy1]

OK, so I said I liked the first issue, but I'm worried about something: what if SEGA is at fault for making the book simple, like they don't want a deep story? What if they are like Miyamoto and think that story doesn't matter, and only use the comic to sell games?

[StaticMania]

1 minute ago, PublicEnemy1 said:

What if they are like Miyamoto and think that story doesn't matter, and only use the comic to sell games?

This logic makes no sense. You think they'd go the bare back route after all their attempts to make interesting Sonic stories?

[PublicEnemy1]

10 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

This logic makes no sense. You think they'd go the bare back route after all their attempts to make interesting Sonic stories?

Yeah, exactly. "Attempts." What if they look at Mania's success and try to drop the story entirely? Plus there are mandates like the character development one, the emotional one, and the "Sonic always wins" one, which aren't the best for storytelling. They could have changed those, so we'll see. Sorry for mentioning mandates again, and I'm sure they won't affect the book greatly. I just think they're fucking stupid.  I'm just playing the what-if game here, and it's likely not to happen, but it does give something to think about

[Marco9966]

55 minutes ago, PublicEnemy1 said:

Yeah, exactly. "Attempts." What if they look at Mania's success and try to drop the story entirely? Plus there are mandates like the character development one, the emotional one, and the "Sonic always wins" one, which aren't the best for storytelling. They could have changed those, so we'll see. Sorry for mentioning mandates again, and I'm sure they won't affect the book greatly. I just think they're fucking stupid.  I'm just playing the what-if game here, and it's likely not to happen, but it does give something to think about

I hope Mania's success doesn't backfire on us.

I want LORE, and STORIES, and EMOTIONS

+the action and fun and everything.

Side note: As much as Sonic Lost World was silly, I think it's the only game that got actual development for Sonic (every other game was revolved around other characters like Knuckles or Shadow or Chaos...)

[GOAT]

Is there a way to subscribe to the new comic?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

7 hours ago, PublicEnemy1 said:

Yeah, exactly. "Attempts." What if they look at Mania's success and try to drop the story entirely? Plus there are mandates like the character development one, the emotional one, and the "Sonic always wins" one, which aren't the best for storytelling. They could have changed those, so we'll see. Sorry for mentioning mandates again, and I'm sure they won't affect the book greatly. I just think they're fucking stupid.  I'm just playing the what-if game here, and it's likely not to happen, but it does give something to think about

It does, and it would show that Sonic Team/Sega have no idea the medium they’re in regarding comics.

I know some of the past mandates raised eyebrows, even if they were made with good intentions (although some of them like the “Sonic always wins” seemed ridiculous even considering the pre-Flynn era of Sonic), comics are entirely about story. Regardless of how it’s told, you literally cannot have a comic with a story of some kind. 

[SpongicX]

The preview doesn't look too bad, but I really hope it cuts back on focusing on all these obscure avatar characters. It's bad enough the Archie comics were flooded with characters who had nothing to do with the video games, so it would kind of be a bummer if the new comics once again put less focus on the characters from the games. 

To be fair, this is only the preview of the first issue, so it might be too soon to judge. But honestly, do we really need a bunch of panels of a bunch of obscure characters being outmatched, only to focus on them boasting about how great Sonic is, what is this, Sonic X? Come on, we're Sonic fans, we already know how great he is, we don't need to see a bunch of panels about minor characters praising him, like we don't already know how great Sonic is. 

Sorry that I'm being nit picky, I'm just really sick of how underused the actual characters are. Sure, it's confirmed that Tails will have a role in issue 1, while Amy will have a role in issue 2, but we still don't know how they're going to play out, or how well the characters will be handled in those issues.  While the artwork looks nice, I was hoping the preview for issue 1 would show more than just avatars being saved by Sonic, and acting like fanboys/fangirls over him. 

By the way, does anyone know where to subscribe to these comics? It's kind of ridiculous how the main IDW website doesn't offer a way to pay for a subscription for these comics, despite having a page for the Sonic comics.

[Marco9966]

Why is the second page white, while the rest of pages are blue??

[King Scoopa Koopa]

12 hours ago, GOAT said:

Is there a way to subscribe to the new comic?

ComiXology, probably.

Physical copies would have to be handled by an online retailer or LCBS that does that sort of thing themselves.

I think you might be able to order from IDW directly, but I don't think a subscription is something they offer.

[Dr. Detective]

Okay, so all throughout the run of the Archie Comics, once I finally got around to collecting them regularly, everytime I managed to get my hands on one at the Books store and read it, it was always after everyone here had already read it and reacted to it. For IDW I'd like to actually be in on the conversation while it's happening and I'm not exactly sure how to make it happen.

I'm thinking the reason might be because everyone had subscriptions or something and got it earlier than me. If that's true, does anyone know if I can do that for this?

[Fletch]

23 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Okay, so all throughout the run of the Archie Comics, once I finally got around to collecting them regularly, everytime I managed to get my hands on one at the Books store and read it, it was always after everyone here had already read it and reacted to it. For IDW I'd like to actually be in on the conversation while it's happening and I'm not exactly sure how to make it happen.

I'm thinking the reason might be because everyone had subscriptions or something and got it earlier than me. If that's true, does anyone know if I can do that for this?

Yeah, everyone had subscriptions with Archie, but from my understanding with IDW, there isn't a subscription that you can do for Sonic. So everyone will have to hit up their local comic book store day 1 (or grab a digital copy) and come into the topic and discuss it. 

 

So you should be much more fine being in the loop this time around with IDW Sonic discussions compared to Archie Sonic discussions. (Unless you can't get the newest issues day 1/week 1 or something.)

[Eurisko]

46 minutes ago, Fletch said:

Yeah, everyone had subscriptions with Archie, but from my understanding with IDW, there isn't a subscription that you can do for Sonic. So everyone will have to hit up their local comic book store day 1 (or grab a digital copy) and come into the topic and discuss it. 

 

So you should be much more fine being in the loop this time around with IDW Sonic discussions compared to Archie Sonic discussions. (Unless you can't get the newest issues day 1/week 1 or something.)

Forbidden Planet offers a subscription service. They are very reliable and are stocking all the new IDW Sonic goodness.

https://forbiddenplanet.com/

[Marco9966]

Do you feel that when we have new characters more scarcely, it adds more value to the new characters?

In year 1 they say we're only gonna get 4 new characters.

Compare that to Archie post-reboot where we had many many new characters, and few where used to full potential!

[RedFox99]

3 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

Do you feel that when we have new characters more scarcely, it adds more value to the new characters?

In year 1 they say we're only gonna get 4 new characters.

Compare that to Archie post-reboot where we had many many new characters, and few where used to full potential!

It is probably best to restrict how often new characters are introduced as it cause an imbalance in focus of the cast. 

[DabigRG]

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

Do you feel that when we have new characters more scarcely, it adds more value to the new characters?

In year 1 they say we're only gonna get 4 new characters.

Compare that to Archie post-reboot where we had many many new characters, and few where used to full potential!

The thing with the Archie reboot was that they were using the Unleashed plot to mostly establishing a number of new locales with their own local supporting casts in addition to telling the current story in that area, many of which were introduced with the intention of being long-term characters with story arcs and subplots.

With IDW, this status quo concern is mostly ignorable in favor of just telling fun little stories building off of Forces's events rather than adapting it to set up a brand new format. As such, three of the new characters are incredibly basic action-oriented guest characters, only two of which are intended to have any real relevance in the long-term, but will just play basic antagonistic roles for now. The other is just a shallow publicity stunt to create buzz for IDW's acquisition in the first arc.

Who is the fourth character, btw?

[Marco9966]

They said at least one new hero will appear before 2019 I think.

[DabigRG]

8 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

They said at least one new hero will appear before 2019 I think.

That sounds fair. Curious to see what this one will be.

[Salamander]

2 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

Do you feel that when we have new characters more scarcely, it adds more value to the new characters?

In year 1 they say we're only gonna get 4 new characters.

Compare that to Archie post-reboot where we had many many new characters, and few where used to full potential!

What measure a new character?  Not all are created equal.  Strictly speaking, all those animal villagers in #1 are new characters; if any of them happened to have names, would we seriously think they were detracting from the novelty of the big players?  I feel that Archie post-reboot wasn't in entirely a different situation to the new IDW continuity; both are concerned with world-building and character introduction, and it'll be a while before there's enough substance for the new pieces to be moved into new configurations.  It might be best to think of many of the new characters as one-offs, for the time being.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

4 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

Do you feel that when we have new characters more scarcely, it adds more value to the new characters?

In year 1 they say we're only gonna get 4 new characters.

Compare that to Archie post-reboot where we had many many new characters, and few where used to full potential!

No, because that’s not how a character’s value is measured to begin with.

And most of the time when people think a character should be used scarcely, it’s either because a] they in actuality don’t want to see the character at all and would rather have the goalposts leading to their appearance be moved further and further to the extent they never see them, or b] they conflate the less use of a character they like as them being much better they are to those they don’t like which have been used more often (I’ve seen this done on this very message board, believe it or not, explaining why Metal Sonic is much more awesome than Shadow because Metal hasn’t been used much).

None of which have anything to do with a character’s “value” and more to do with the usual cliche of “I like/hate this character.”

[MetalSkulkBane]

The number of new characters has little impact on quality of the series.

Marvel movies and cartoons make (almost) zero new characters. It doesn't stop movies from being great and cartoons from sucking badly.

[Marco9966]

1 minute ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

The number of new characters has little impact on quality of the series.

Marvel movies and cartoons make (almost) zero new characters. It doesn't stop movies from being great and cartoons from sucking badly.

But we need new characters to add to the comics its own identity. Make it IDW's Sonic.

SaTam and Archie has the Freedom Fighters

Sonic X has Chris and Station Square and the humans...

Fleetway has Porker and Johnny and Tekno...

Marvel always uses new characters and assets, the movie Black Panther had Shuri and the Dora Milaje which were new characters introduced in the comics in the 2000s.

 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

4 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

But we need new characters to add to the comics its own identity. Make it IDW's Sonic.

He never said we don’t need new characters, just that the number of them doesn’t have an impact on their value.

[Multikaris]

2 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

But we need new characters to add to the comics its own identity. Make it IDW's Sonic.

SaTam and Archie has the Freedom Fighters

Sonic X has Chris and Station Square and the humans...

Fleetway has Porker and Johnny and Tekno...

Marvel always uses new characters and assets, the movie Black Panther had Shuri and the Dora Milaje which were new characters introduced in the comics in the 2000s.

 

Which is to say, IDW should both add their own characters AND re-use older concepts. It’s not like in the past Marvel films have dumped comic characters in favor of new ones (New Goblin and virtually everyone in the Blade films, for example?)

[PublicEnemy1]

1 hour ago, Miragnarok said:

Which is to say, IDW should both add their own characters AND re-use older concepts. It’s not like in the past Marvel films have dumped comic characters in favor of new ones (New Goblin and virtually everyone in the Blade films, for example?)

Agreed. There should be a blend of old and new, to keep it both fresh and familiar. 
BTW, some reviews are already out, and they're looking quite positive.
https://bigcomicpage.com/2018/04/03/review-sonic-the-hedgehog-1-idw-publishing/
http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2018/04/03/sonic-the-hedgehog-1-review-idws-new-series-is-a-worthy-successor/