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IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread


Dejimon11

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I considered whole arc and this is how I few small changes would make it much better (Umm, spoilers for #9-11)

Part 1: Leave it like it was BUT
1) Burning Blaze is revealed when she transforms, not before.
2) Sonic and Knuckles get slow down by badniks. Issue ends with Metal assuming they came to fight him, only to be attack by Shadow "Sorry to disappoint".

Part 2: It starts with quick look at Resistance, then we go to proper fight between Metal and Shadow. Shadow tries to keep Metal away from ME, but Metal isn't even trying to use it. You see, Metal can't access Master Emerald's power. He lacks something to do it and that annoys him (if Sega allows it, Knuckles left some kind of "magical lock" which explains why he left ME unguarded in the first place. If not, I'll leave it vague). Metal hopes copying Knuckles data would fix it.
But then he starts hinting about Shadow's problems. Is it his clone in Forces or sting-eye Whisper gave him, we know Shadow has SOMETHING bothering him. Shadow looses his cool and Metal uses that to whip the floor with him, taunting how inferior 'emotional meatbags' are. But Sonic and Knuckles are coming and he's weakened by the fight. So he takes a gamble, copies Shadow data and uses Chaos Control. Metal turns Super in front of Sonic and Knuckles. He obviously has upper hand until Blaze burst in.

Part 3: Start by showing some people want to talk to "Mr Tinker". Then we go to Super Metal fighting Burning Blaze. We have some awesome punch-up of super forms, until her limit runs out. (And he won't cause he's powered by ME.) Then Charmy distracts Metal with his shenanigans. Whole Resistance  throws themselves at Super Metal. He realizes that they just trying to keep him from ME. Metal charges back to to ME altar, but thanks to "super-power of friendships" everyone slows him down (Silver grabs him, Tails crashes a ship at him, etc) juuuuust long enough for Knuckles to release Master Emerald from Metal influence. All is left for Sonic and Knuckle to deliver cathartic smashing at Neo. Roll credits, everyone is happy. Shadow wakes up, he's goes away sulking. Sonic thinks 'he's in bad mood cause he missed the big fight' but Shadow is thinking about whatever Flynn planned. And of course ends with Dr. Starline introduction and him "fixing" Eggman.

PROS
1 We're not wasting Burning Blaze. Over all Resistance does a little more than in first script.
2 Shadow's failure has more weight, plus Future Plot Points are seeded in organic way. Starline shows only at the end, so he doesn't disrupts the flow of the story.
3 Metal doesn't comes out as an idiot. Knuckles and Sonic actually get to punch him.
4 No Giant Dragon with belly piercing.

CONS
1 Arguably Sonic would be a little out-shined by his allies, but he gets to beat Metal at the end.
2 "Metal can't use Master Emerald" is a little vague idea... just like his transformation into Overlord was.

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I kind of wish a bit of a bigger deal was made out of Tails ramming the ship into Metal Overlord like that. (I've already forgotten the new weird name he was given.)

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Reading the reactions on facebook, twitter and especially reddit made me reconsider the issue, it's refreshing to see positive reactions, because these comics are really good and deserve their success honestly, it's nice when quality gets appreciated!

Everyone bar Shadow contributed to the fight, especially Tails, hilarious expressions by Knuckles, Sonic taunting Master Overlord, a nice conclusion overall and a great introduction for the next arc. It's hard to write a good story and characters but Ian managed to do it again. I'm comparing it to Panic in the Sky as a standard and expectations, and that arc was pretty underwhelming, everything was so predictable sadly. This one had not many characters but they all had their moment, a smaller but well used cast is a good idea. I also really appreciated the decision to have brand new forms for Neo, better than using his Heroes form at least... I still believe the twist in issue 7 was not interesting because already done before. But this arc was a nice surprise.

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Just a positive video just to put things in perspective. Saying that adults will not enjoy this is very close minded. Unless people who enjoy this are not " true" adults.

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I want Shadow to train to become more confident. He was shameful these last few issues. He shouldn't have gotten so sloppy against metal to the point where sonic was basically taunting him.

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11 hours ago, Diogenes said:

Archie Sonic wasn't following up on decades worth of material, with a bunch of staff already firmly experienced with the series.

And regardless of Archie Sonic, a good comic should be able to hook you with just one issue. We're already flooded with more comics and games and shows and so on than we can handle; if something doesn't make a strong first impression, who's going to want to wait years to see if it gets better rather than move on to something else?

I'm just going to say it a lot of Comics first years aren't that great. Mega Man wasn't quite the fantastic book it'd become in it's first 12 issues, I've been trying to read the first year of IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and honestly outside of some cool tidbits it's kinda dull in that first year, the Boom Power Rangers Comics were still pretty good when they started but there was sort of this weird feeling of "Legitimizing" it and a lot of the writing felt closer to mainstream Comics than Power Rangers, Transformers didn't just start as the highly praised title(s) it's become some of the first Miniseries weren't super well drawn and had stupid shit like Arcee's forced Sex change as an "Experiment to introduce gender".

My point is starting a new continuity of anything takes time. It might not be perfect now but you don't know what the future holds.

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I mean I'm not expecting perfection straight off the bat, and obviously a lot of comics get stronger over time as they get past the setup and can really start working with the concepts they've introduced, but I don't think IDW Sonic is just "not as good as it could be"...I honestly think it's kinda actually bad. I think it's a comic that is extremely reliant on being an established series with an established fanbase and I'm not sure if it works at all from an outside perspective, and even as someone who knows the series thoroughly I'm struggling to stay interested in it.

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8 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I mean I'm not expecting perfection straight off the bat, and obviously a lot of comics get stronger over time as they get past the setup and can really start working with the concepts they've introduced, but I don't think IDW Sonic is just "not as good as it could be"...I honestly think it's kinda actually bad. I think it's a comic that is extremely reliant on being an established series with an established fanbase and I'm not sure if it works at all from an outside perspective, and even as someone who knows the series thoroughly I'm struggling to stay interested in it.

What should it be like? (any good modern game story or archie comic arc to give an example?)

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I don't think it's bad. I wasn't all that impressed by the last three issues. This climax, overall, was rather predictable and felt thoroughly rushed. However, I was enjoying everything leading up to it. Didn't have much of a problem at all aside from the noticeable recurring pattern it was taking with the fights. Even then, though, Issue 7 is probably still my favorite and that was nothing but one big fight. 

As for an outsider's perspective... I don't have one since I'm not an outsider. It's apparently selling gang busters so I assume the outsider's perspective either isn't that huge a concern or it's working fine for them.

Of course, there's nothing stating that it HAS to be all encompassing. If the intent actually IS to just cater to people who are already fans and that still sees books flying off the shelves than so be it. Whatever. 

I do think that with more original characters (who actually have something to contribute) being introduced and hopefully more of a chance to flesh things out, it'll get better. That's not me being blind with hope or anything. Ian's typically fairly good when it comes to that. I don't like the characters just being shoved together through the gauze of this Resistance bullshit. The stories you can tell would be much stronger if they were just off doing their own thing and the plot weaved them in naturally. I want that more than anything. I don't need another Sky Patrol or Freedom Fighters system. It was too restrictive even back then but now everyone's apart of it? Not happy with that, should that be the case.

But we'll see. I've been wrong before. He may be able to make it work. 

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 I think calling the comic straight up bad is underselling it, but I read a lot of actually really bad stuff just by following the Big 2 so my perspective is skewed.
 

11 hours ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

The stupid people like us who continue to indulge in something that we actively do not enjoy.  :V

 

On the real tip though, like I said; I'm almost positive this comic is mostly to drawn in younger and newer fans to the series, who let's be real, likely do not care about things like story structure and proper characterization and all that and are mostly fine with just watching flashy fight scenes. The only people I can see being really turned off by this are adults who went into this comic expecting it to be more thought provoking.

It's light reading that's ALSO meant for fans of the series. It just so happens that a lot of Sonic fans ARE pretty fucking young, so this will work for them. It may feel this way lately, but not every piece of Sonic media is trying to throw the cynical 20somethings a bone.

If it's too light for you at this point then fine, but Sonic media has been kind of on the lighter side for long enough that I question why you don't just roll with it and read something else for something more dense. This isn't meant to be dismissive, either. I feel like I'm getting what I signed up for for the most part. My favorite archie books that I read were Treasure Team Tango and Mega Drive and this is in line with that light, character driven "friends on a journey" feel.

 That's not really getting into how much I've been loving the artwork in this series, but I guess not everyone is super into that kind of thing and is just here to see how the story develops.

I think there's potential that hasn't gotten realized yet but emphasis on "yet". Obviously it'd be nice if it was flame right away but there's been too many times where a comic run has hit it's stride later on for me to expect that every book lands on it's feet. We'll see what happens in year 2. Even if it's more of the same I enjoyed year 1 enough to not be so bothered. 

I kind of hope they pick a tighter group to focus on going into Year 2 since the resistance is kind of large. They've actually done a pretty great job juggling everyone and giving them all moments I enjoyed, but characters like Tangle that are new are a bit starved for attention right now. 

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It's not like I don't want the series to improve either, I do agree that this arc was pretty boring overall outside of a few moments.

But saying its outright "bad" feels like intentionally accentuating the flaws to make them bigger than they are. 

Which I suppose is the natural thing to do when you've been in the series long enough after being burned so many times, but at a certain point, it's good to just take what you can get.

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5 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

Just give her the 700$ and be done with it IDW !!!!!

They are only doing this scam because they can, without any consequences. If she was american, or lived inside the U.S. they would had paid long time ago, afraid of any legal troubles.

She is not, so it is very, very difficult to sue while living in a completely different country.

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So, did anyone else notice that

 

the place Eggman was being held was his Mystic Ruins base/the Final Egg entrance from Sonic Adventure?

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14 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

What should it be like? (any good modern game story or archie comic arc to give an example?)

I really don't have any kind of specific plan in mind. But the first thing I'd change is to slow way the fuck down. IDW Sonic seems so set on having everything that it hasn't taken the time to say anything with it. It's character introduction after character introduction after character introduction, references (both direct and indirect) to past games and general Sonic lore, and then rushing into a big huge fight that amounted to little more than "there was a bad guy and he was strong but everyone fought hard and they won".

Like, the Mega Drive comic only got two issues and I feel it accomplished more than IDW Sonic has in 11. The first issue is mostly setup but immediately in the second we're getting in Sonic's head. He's not so comfortable working with this bigger team and not being able to show off as much, so he runs off on his own to have some fun. But then he realizes all this adventuring isn't as fun without some friends along, and then he gets stuck at an obstacle he can't beat, and he's glad when everyone catches up and helps him and he decides not to run off ahead again. It's not some super complex story, basic "friendship and teamwork" stuff at the core, but like...there's an actual point to it. We get to learn about a character, see them grow a bit, and get a nice little message out of it.

Plus with only 4 main characters instead of over a dozen the characters can actually interact with each other and the action scenes actually feel deliberate, instead of constantly jumping around and doing wide shots to try to give everyone fair time.

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I don't think the book is bad but I agree with all that. I'd like a tighter cast of 4-6 going forward instead of this big resistance thing. Just cycle characters out depending on who you feel like focusing on for the arc. 

I feel like Sonic's position as a character means there's not as much room for development as there is in Mega Drive, though.

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1 hour ago, Korke said:

They are only doing this scam because they can, without any consequences. If she was american, or lived inside the U.S. they would had paid long time ago, afraid of any legal troubles.

She is not, so it is very, very difficult to sue while living in a completely different country.

Who should we contact, maybe they'll listen to their costumers.

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I'm not about to get involved with some cover drama honestly.  last thing we need is creating another legal poop like archie.

 

Still I doubt neo will be back and thar disappoints me. But hopefully starlight is very twisted I hope

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I think a lot of people are saying it isn't right to call it bad, and I personally don't think its going to far to call it bad.

Do I personally think this is outright terrible? Despite my misgivings, no. Do I think its the worst sonic, jesus god no. Its not the worst of archie, and sonic the comic still exists. And by being closer to the game in a myriad ways already makes this better than a lot of supplementary sonic material.

But I would argue that over the course of ( at the moment ) eleven issues a lot the individual issues and the book series as a whole fail at alot. I said this about the previous archie reboot when I called it overall sort of a failure, I may have enjoyed some of it but I have to judge whats there. And this book fails to execute well a lot.

The story overall isn't that isn't interesting, isn't much a story and is kind of predictable in a bad way.

But I don't think it properly introduces a few characters, for a year that's supposed to be introductions. I don't really feel I got some of them proper, particularly rougue and shadow. Nothing with those character properly serves as an introduction they don't get to act like themselves , and are missing a friend for... a reason. But its not just them, even though I like the issue blaze just... kinda exists. Like she gets a blurb but she just...kind of exists. And then doesn't really get to do much with that fire. And I don't feel like you get enough time with the chaotix to really get a feel for em.

And these two are ontop of various individual comic failings like pacing and such.

If someone came back with opinion that the new book is bad, I couldn't argue them. It just fails to set out to do what it wants to do, and even the action a lot of times isn't that great nor is the story for most part.

I came into this book with low expectations, I was fully aware this was gonna be a book for a lot more casual folk, I was aware it would take a while to start up, I was ware not everything was gonna be the same. I have been reading comics for years, i'm used to it, but even with those acknowledgements it still failed in a lot of ways and I cannot deny that. I think/ hope it will get better but I have to judge whats in front of me and its not great. And i've been pretty generous to this book, but even things that happened to exceed my extremely low expectations failed for the most part.

I think its an OK book, but I feel like people shouldn't really go crazy if people say its bad, because it fails... a lot.

And I don't think its gonna stop failing untill they focus on a smaller cast, or there's other books, or both

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4 hours ago, Korke said:

They are only doing this scam because they can, without any consequences. If she was american, or lived inside the U.S. they would had paid long time ago, afraid of any legal troubles.

She is not, so it is very, very difficult to sue while living in a completely different country.

Realistically, I don't think whatever IDW owes Rafa outweighs any legal fees she'd incur fighting over it. It's not on the same scale as questionable ownership that Archie got slapped with multiple times. I don't think IDW really give a shit because they could easily just remove her artwork from future reprintings of the trades if that cover did become a problem. It's definitely disappointing this was never resolved, especially since IDW always struck me as pretty reverent of creators and artists, but I doubt she's the first freelancer a major publisher has screwed over too.

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4 hours ago, Zaysho said:

Realistically, I don't think whatever IDW owes Rafa outweighs any legal fees she'd incur fighting over it. It's not on the same scale as questionable ownership that Archie got slapped with multiple times. I don't think IDW really give a shit because they could easily just remove her artwork from future reprintings of the trades if that cover did become a problem. It's definitely disappointing this was never resolved, especially since IDW always struck me as pretty reverent of creators and artists, but I doubt she's the first freelancer a major publisher has screwed over too.

It was like requesting a commission for someone and never actually paying for it, according to her. So yeah, if she was american and had signed an actual contract, she would had the measures to sue them. Since she's brazillian (iirc) though, she can't be protected either by our own worker laws, much less by american laws. So, yeah, she has no means to reclaim...

What is truly intriguing though is... why? Why scam that artist at all? What is the reason behind that? I can't imagine the price being high.

Also, most alternative covers after #4 really, really sucked. Looking worse than dA stuff. I wonder if there is a connection...

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