Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Shadowlax]

36 minutes ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

Babylon Rogues seems like an odd comparison when they've barely appeared in any games in quite some time, and rarely outside of Riders.

I brought this up before, but the problem with most of the SEGA cast is that they're literally designed to not be hanging out as a group unless you do like SEGA and ignore key aspects of their profiles, like Knuckles guarding the Master Emerald. 

Worlds Unite was made to be more directly in-continuity than Collide (I.e. no rewriting reality/history/time hijinx), and since it apparently came up as a "we're doing this now," Ian was working with who was on hand, as they were, on both the Sonic and Mega Man sides. 

So yeah, it made sense for the Freedom Fighters to be there. Their absence and the lack of direct continuity were the two big complaints the first time around, so they tried to address it.

Under the circumstances and restrictions imposed by the IP holders and editors, Unite probably went as well as it could have. I'm not saying whether it's good or bad (I liked it, even though it obviously felt really shackled), but I doubt anyone else would have been able to pull off much better under executive meddling, and the FF were probably the least of the problem there.

In marvel vs capcom it doesn't make sense for Dormamu and Dante to be on the same team but they can because that's the point of a crossover. You ignore that stuff and do a dream fights, that's the point. 

Its a crossover event you throw the people, folks wanna see in the fray and see what happens. In a crossover event that's when you ignore such things. 

[knuckles20]

As far as "These stories are advertisements" I never had that feeling with the Archie comic. The only thing that the stories were trying to sell was "get the next issue".

You want stories that are blatant ads trying to get you to buy their crap, 4 words: Tandy Computer Whiz Kids.

[DaddlerTheDalek]

9 minutes ago, knuckles20 said:

You want stories that are blatant ads trying to get you to buy their crap, 4 words: Tandy Computer Whiz Kids.

Ah yes.

I have to watch some Linkara again.

[RictalRose0]

5 hours ago, SonicComicFanboy said:

Though the book might still be salvagable if they just ditch the blue hedgehog and make Amy & Blaze the main characters. XD

i would give an arm and a leg for a female leading comic but thats soo far off... still would be super cool if the girls got more arcs to themselves in the new book. And please, PLEASE Sega stop whater weird restrictions you have with Blaze and allow the writers to use her more.

[SonicComicFanboy]

13 minutes ago, RictalRose0 said:

i would give an arm and a leg for a female leading comic but thats soo far off... still would be super cool if the girls got more arcs to themselves in the new book. And please, PLEASE Sega stop whater weird restrictions you have with Blaze and allow the writers to use her more.

Agreed.  Blaze has so much wasted potential. Comics would be a great place to explore and expand her world/character/history more!  Say what you will about the other mandates, but restricting the ability to tell amazing stories about Blaze & her world is a flat out crime!!

[RictalRose0]

its one of the only mandates i actually have a problem agaisnt. partly due to the fact that it's the less explained one. they don't really say what's the deal with the use of the Sol Dimension, Eggman Nega, and Blaze herself.

Obviously they can use Blaze, but apparently not that long? And who knows what othe restrctions regarding her and her dimension exist. They are so hush-hush about it....

 

[KoDaiko]

42 minutes ago, RictalRose0 said:

its one of the only mandates i actually have a problem agaisnt. partly due to the fact that it's the less explained one. they don't really say what's the deal with the use of the Sol Dimension, Eggman Nega, and Blaze herself.

Obviously they can use Blaze, but apparently not that long? And who knows what othe restrctions regarding her and her dimension exist. They are so hush-hush about it....

Hmm, do SEGA want to develop stuff about the Sol Dimension and Blaze by themselves? Maybe they didn't want Archie to develop things first...But they did let Archie do whatever they want with Silver's timeline (but then, his world is all over the place and changes so much).

[RictalRose0]

Yes that is exactly what I questione once. How come Silver and his time shenanigans get a pass but Blaze's dimension shenanigans don't? Who knows. Maybe they do plant to eventually revisit Sol, but I doubt this is the case of the existence of the mandate because they've been restricting Blaze's appearance in the comics since Rush came out and that was long ago now. And since then, no new Sonic Rush has been made or revisit to Sol in other games.

[Big Panda]

Here's a thought: what if IDW went on to make comics of other SEGA games? Like, considering how much more competent they are, as well as the sheer amount of stuff they could churn out, it's a hell of a lot more likely than it was under Archie.

[RedFox99]

30 minutes ago, RictalRose0 said:

Yes that is exactly what I questione once. How come Silver and his time shenanigans get a pass but Blaze's dimension shenanigans don't? Who knows. Maybe they do plant to eventually revisit Sol, but I doubt this is the case of the existence of the mandate because they've been restricting Blaze's appearance in the comics since Rush came out and that was long ago now. And since then, no new Sonic Rush has been made or revisit to Sol in other games.

Wasn't there Rush Adventure? Anways that mandate is hard to understand. Like why restrict use of Blaze and anything pertaining to the Sol Dimension?

[BlueSky]

6 hours ago, Shadowlax said:

Those are yes, all ads for other products. You don't think the the disney books, MLP and transformer books aren't toy and merchandise commercials, you need to think again. Yes these stories may have depth, be well written , and you make like them. But that's what they are, they are to get you to potential engage with another product, its a company trying to get you to give them more money by providing a you a service you make like and may interest you in another product to give them more money. They are not your friends, and artistically driven as some maybe, they are businesses and businesses run on money. 

You shouldn't probably stop reading most comic books, from about... the 80's forward.  And stop watching most cartoons from about the 80's forward. Especially the ones now. Because that's what a good chunk of them are. The mlp cartoon is a fine show, that lauran Faust helped make because she liked MLP as a child, it is also a toy commercial. Being ad doesn't mean that you can put care or interest in your work. People pay thousands of dollars to go to college just to learn how to create add's correctly. 

You sound like you have an attachment to businesses who don't really care about you. Just your dollerydoo's. And that's no good.

Sonic boom is also a toy commercial/ad. Along with being a cartoon. And you like it, its almost as if that's totally fine.  

Oh, yes, there was this one thing I forgot to go tangential about! So, it's nothing personal, this just gave me some inspiration to geek about one thing I like.

The thing about Disney comics. All right, story time.

We have this, most likely, licensed comic series about Disney. It has many books; Donald Duck ("main book", weekly, everything goes in there, distribution in 2013 was about quarter million it seems), it's "extra-version" (bit more than monthly, Dutch-only stories (?), has more other Disney comic-appearing characters than the others) for only subscribers to subscribe, Uncle Scrooge (bit less than monthly, mostly Italian stories), and then there're the pocket books (mostly Italian again) and god knows what else, all these miniseries in pocket-book format, these hardcover collections (I have the coolest thing ever, hardcover Don Rosa collection that's got freaking bigger pages and all!) and all other stuff. To put it shortly, Ducks are all over the place. So all over the place they can advertise the main book on TV!

Advertise something someone could consider being only ads.

Something your parents pick up for you as an ongoing subscription when you're young, and you might even keep on reading, even when you grow up.

The continuity exists and doesn't exist at the same time, there're so many writers with their own ones and what else it could be impossible to have it purely continuity-driven! Some stories are simple, some are complex enough to get adults puzzled how much effort the script has got (I'm looking at Don Rosa here as an example).

The translations are something people continuously praise the books for, though since it's a teamwork they can't get the names of the translators in the stories, sadly.

So, they put so much effort into these books, the longest running/main book has been around over 60 years, and about anybody here knows of it! Numerous people have learned to read with it's help and it has the rich language and has lots of care behind it.

This is an example about lisenced comics gone wild. These aren't ads anymore, actually. They're their own little world I too keep reading about. Every single Wednesday (if the mail can make it) it comes to the mailbox. Or Thursday if it's extra, or Friday if it's Scrooge...

Point is; licensed does not always equal ad. This isn't "Mickey's Clubhouse" or something, this is something that people really appreciate. Oh yes, there's stuff that's clearly kind-of adapting other Disney-stuff in on it, probably as a way to make kids/people reading in general curious, but then again I've read that House MD. parody and it was an interesting case, which actually makes the adapting-point a bit not-so convincing.

And it's probably that exception that verifies the rule, but still, I wanted to point this out so much, I'm such a geek.

Sonic, after all, isn't going to become like this one. It's about as certain as it can be.

Taking off the "Archie stuff" though, well... it's a bit (not exactly but in a way) like if you'd tell the Italian Disney comics artists to cut off every each of their "OC"'s. Those characters do have a point to exist I think.

Though Disney seems to give more personality to their "main" characters than Sega (as far as I can tell) so the mandates aren't too visible in this case. That's maybe the biggest thing they have as a differing factor that actually is somewhat comparable.

...

Actually, maybe if Sonic would have somewhat of a same kind of an approach considering the continuity, it could work, with some "OC"'s here and there. It could make it, though I dunno if I myself would buy it though...

Or, if they make it like BD's usually do, they could make it even more interesting! I could see some recurring Archie-cast fit in there for couple of pages/album, not all at once though! Or not, could maybe work in a way without them but then again it could work with them in it for me a tad bit better if done right...

Gee, I wanna see a BD-ish Sonic miniseries, like 5-album long or something! They could make it as the last pages of the book (keeping it faithful in here), like one or two last ones until they got the album-space done! 1 album = 1 storyarc! That'd be nice way to try!

Of course the drawing, pacing and writing needs to be done as autenthically as possible... Now, how do I pitch this idea... where was that e-mail adress again... I could maybe even pick the book up if this'd happen! Now then, how to start... Ooh, ooh, now I got the best! Twan's supposed to be French!

Oh gee, I actually managed to get this post about Sonic comic's ideas after all! Yay!

Make BD-Sonic a thing, hey! At least as a miniseries!

[RictalRose0]

It's been a long time since Rush Adventure too. And i'm sure that if he was allowed, Flynn would have already done stuff with Blaze and her world since he's a sucker for lore and Blaze's dimension is a whole new plane for it, plus Blaze is quite a popular and well liked character (probably one of the least divisive sonic characters too) that people would like to see on the comics. Yet she has in all these years, only managed to appear as a side character in two arcs and didn't really get to do much and her apperance in the first one didn't really make much sense and was (no pun intended) really rushed. It's like, there she was, and then there she wasn't. The reboot gave her a bigger role in Pirate Plunder Arc, but again, she didn't get to do much. And we didn't actually get to see Sol, just the ocean...

[RedFox99]

2 hours ago, RictalRose0 said:

It's been a long time since Rush Adventure too. And i'm sure that if he was allowed, Flynn would have already done stuff with Blaze and her world since he's a sucker for lore and Blaze's dimension is a whole new plane for it, plus Blaze is quite a popular and well liked character (probably one of the least divisive sonic characters too) that people would like to see on the comics. Yet she has in all these years, only managed to appear as a side character in two arcs and didn't really get to do much and her apperance in the first one didn't really make much sense and was (no pun intended) really rushed. It's like, there she was, and then there she wasn't. The reboot gave her a bigger role in Pirate Plunder Arc, but again, she didn't get to do much. And we didn't actually get to see Sol, just the ocean...

Yeah I never see any anti-Blaze fans. She really didn't really or do a lot in the comics after the reboot which is confusing since (like you said) she's a fairly popular character. I think I heard from the tweet last night that Sega is more liberal with its franchise then at the time of reboot. Of course I should take it with a grain of salt.

[Your Vest Friend]

You have seen an anti-Blaze fan, I'm right here. 

Blaze not appearing much after the reboot makes sense considering that it was focusing on Sonic's world being in pieces, and she wasn't exactly there. You don't want to spend too much time away from it when all the action is unfolding there, which is why Pirate Plunder Panic and Shadow Fall were very early on. They would have made more use of her once Sonic's World wasn't torn apart (as proved by SU#96), but by the time the Shattered World Crisis was over, they took a break to do some classic adaptations and a Chaotix romp and got canned before moving on from that. 

[SBR2]

15 hours ago, Ernest-Panda said:

Here's a thought: what if IDW went on to make comics of other SEGA games? Like, considering how much more competent they are, as well as the sheer amount of stuff they could churn out, it's a hell of a lot more likely than it was under Archie.

I'm honestly expecting this TBH. I almost wouldn't be shocked if they did a Sega Universe like they're doing with Hasbro. Then we can get people talking about how it's ruining everything while they're still buying the books. XD

[SonicComicFanboy]

1 hour ago, SBR2 said:

I'm honestly expecting this TBH. I almost wouldn't be shocked if they did a Sega Universe like they're doing with Hasbro. Then we can get people talking about how it's ruining everything while they're still buying the books. XD

 Depends on how well the Sonic book does.  If it bombs, no way they will expand to other SEGA properties.  If it does well they might slowly expand to a few more IPs over time, maybe test the waters with some mini-series.

But yea at the end of the day it would depend how Sonic does that first year or so.

[Shadowlax]

7 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

You have seen an anti-Blaze fan, I'm right here. 

Blaze not appearing much after the reboot makes sense considering that it was focusing on Sonic's world being in pieces, and she wasn't exactly there. You don't want to spend too much time away from it when all the action is unfolding there, which is why Pirate Plunder Panic and Shadow Fall were very early on. They would have made more use of her once Sonic's World wasn't torn apart (as proved by SU#96), but by the time the Shattered World Crisis was over, they took a break to do some classic adaptations and a Chaotix romp and got canned before moving on from that. 

It makes sense, it was just bad. You talk about the story focus being on whats happening with sonic's world, but it was never made interesting enough for it to be worth anything, just years of terrible world building. 

The much more interesting stories were in universe, because they made those plights how small, large, or even internal they were , actually interesting. And a lot of those never actually got to finish. But the boring uninteresting unleashed plotline limped to finish line. 

[Red Hot Jack]

Maybe Sega likes Boom show more than the Archie comics because Boom focuses on the core six, even Orbot and Cubot are just cameos this year.

[Korke]

Re-commenting something that I posted in other forum...

With or without the FF's, there is something that I wish to see more in the new comics - character interactions. I felt this element was really lacking in the post-reboot. The completion of a bunch of generic missions per issues feels kinda empty. I do get that this is a action-oriented comic, but mindless beat-up scenes just feels pale considering that we have better kinda of media to toy with that idea. I do want a reason to care about those main characters, not just my two or three ever favorite ones.

[Shadowlax]

13 hours ago, Korke said:

Re-commenting something that I posted in other forum...

With or without the FF's, there is something that I wish to see more in the new comics - character interactions. I felt this element was really lacking in the post-reboot. The completion of a bunch of generic missions per issues feels kinda empty. I do get that this is a action-oriented comic, but mindless beat-up scenes just feels pale considering that we have better kinda of media to toy with that idea. I do want a reason to care about those main characters, not just my two or three ever favorite ones.

I feel you, there are a lot of interactions that could be genuinely interesting if the comic before its end wasn't so content to leave everyone in their groups. Its why the shadow blaze comic is so good even know, those two barely if ever interact and marine, seeing shadow out of his element was interesting

[RictalRose0]

14 hours ago, Chameleon94 said:

Maybe Sega likes Boom show more than the Archie comics because Boom focuses on the core six, even Orbot and Cubot are just cameos this year.

Cubot and Orbot get plenty of episodes. Hell I think together they have just as many episodes as the main four and Eggman.

14 hours ago, Chameleon94 said:

With or without the FF's, there is something that I wish to see more in the new comics - character interactions. I felt this element was really lacking in the post-reboot. The completion of a bunch of generic missions per issues feels kinda empty. I do get that this is a action-oriented comic, but mindless beat-up scenes just feels pale considering that we have better kinda of media to toy with that idea. I do want a reason to care about those main characters, not just my two or three ever favorite ones.

There was plenty of interaction between the characters. What do you mean it was lacking? Hell there were characters in the reboot that interacted more that they did in the pre-reboot, in more memorable ways at least.

I don't even remember that much interaction happening between the characters in the old continuity. Well, not in the Flynn continuity at least, since he spent a good chunk of it trying to fix the mess the comic was in at the time and setting up a bunch of action and drama packed arcs that really didn't left much space to breath in and just... Chill.

Also it always bothered that when there was time to "chill" it always was with OC characters and almost never game characters. I just don't care you know? It would be nice to just see the game characters chilling without OCs butting in tbh. 

[BlueSky]

5 hours ago, RictalRose0 said:

Also it always bothered that when there was time to "chill" it always was with OC characters and almost never game characters. I just don't care you know? It would be nice to just see the game characters chilling without OCs butting in tbh. 

Isn't that Boom in a nutshell? At least in some episodes I've seen it's mostly this, or...

...the OC's being annoying. Yeah. Whatever...

I don't get that show to be honest.

And somehow just chilling makes me want to either go to bed OR go and grab some One Piece instead of reading about Sonic chilling. There's the action I seek!

And again this is just my personal, as-humble-as-possible, opinion. Stupid as anything, I know I know.

...

And interaction, well.

There's interaction and interaction.

Like, you're interacting when you're talking to someone and such, but when you're interacting, it isn't just "would you pass the salt, please" type of talk.

I myself found the latter being very small potatoes in the comics after "Worlds Unite" compared to the "salt-passing" interacting.

I dunno if that's what you all meant/were after, but well... this is how I feel about this thing of a topic at hand.

[SonicComicFanboy]

Kind of insulting to call the FF OCs.  They've been around since 1993. (92 if you count the mini-series)

 

Honestly the whole mindset that if itd not a game character that modern fans and SEGA seem to have is asinine.  When the cartoons & comics were giving depth and meaning to your character to your franchise years before you were trying to in set games it is pretty telling.

 

The FF and any other characters are just as much "real Sonic characters" as the game characters.  Cause Hell, at the end of the day they are all fictional!

[BlueSky]

8 minutes ago, SonicComicFanboy said:

Kind of insulting to call the FF OCs.  They've been around since 1993. (92 if you count the mini-series)

 

Honestly the whole mindset that if itd not a game character that modern fans and SEGA seem to have is asinine.  When the cartoons & comics were giving depth and meaning to your character to your franchise years before you were trying to in set games it is pretty telling.

 

The FF and any other characters are just as much "real Sonic characters" as the game characters.

I suppose some of them are against comic characters because they've heard horror stories about "loads of echidna clones" and all that stuff.

Some of them seem to also consider the comics as if they existed like they used to till the very end, every issue including some "furry drama" or something.

But honestly, I don't know, sometimes I just feel as many game fans don't know/care and the ones shouting are just a very loud minority.

A very loud minority.

Though I can be loud too so I'm not trying to accuse or anything, some just are louder than the others, I suppose.

(In a way, every character is an OC, so let's just pretend the term has no nasty feelings attached to it... everyone would be... eh, nevermind, who am I kidding, others than myself?)

[Your Vest Friend]

18 minutes ago, SonicComicFanboy said:

When the cartoons & comics were giving depth and meaning to your character to your franchise years before you were trying to in set games it is pretty telling.

Uh, Sonic Team were doing that from the start, the problem was that it wasn't localised, hence how we ended up with the mess in the West. 

If anything, Sonic Team would be even more against it for that reason.