Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Big Panda]

Off-topic but I love how nobody here can spell “Gemerl”.

[DabigRG]

6 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

Flynn needs to do that as soon as possible, Sarline is just bland

I think it's less that he's bland and more that he's not really doing much right now. The previous issue ended on a note that sets up something, though.

6 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Random thought, but I really hope if IDW does a second round of Deviations, we get a bad ending version of this arc. That variant with all the characters turned into zombots is way too interesting not to explore in a what if. I’d love to see Silver trying to survive in the zombot future he mentioned in a previous issue, could be like his fight against the Prelates in Sonic Universe.

Deviations? Second round? 

3 minutes ago, Forgetful Panda said:

Off-topic but I love how nobody here can spell “Gemerl”.

To be fair, that itself was just Mr. Flynn buckling down on something, as he's been alternatively called G-merl and Gmel beforehand.

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

22 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Deviations? Second round? 

A limited series similar to Marvel's What If series where IDW creators took well known stories and changed a huge detail to make a new story, and in many cases - took scenarios where the villains won. For example, the TMNT issue had a twist on the milestone City Fall arc where for the sake of context, Shredder brainwashed Leonardo into a loyal foot soldier and turned him against his family, and this shift in power allowed him to take over the city. Instead of Leo being broken of foot brainwashing, and the Turtles with Splinter, April, and Casey escaping to the countryside to plan their next move, and recover from the affect Shredder's plan had, the Deviation features a world where all four Turtles were brainwashed into Foot Soldiers and were hell-bent on killing Splinter on Shredder's command. 

Ghostbusters also had another story where Gozer won at the end of the first movie, turning New York into hell, and unleashing ghosts everywhere, which ironically causes Gozer to join forces with the Ghostbusters because he hates being stuck in the form of the Staypuff Marshmellow Man and is bored of his destruction

[DabigRG]

18 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

A limited series similar to Marvel's What If series where IDW creators took well known stories and changed a huge detail to make a new story, and in many cases - took scenarios where the villains won. For example, the TMNT issue had a twist on the milestone City Fall arc where for the sake of context, Shredder brainwashed Leonardo into a loyal foot soldier and turned him against his family, and this shift in power allowed him to take over the city. Instead of Leo being broken of foot brainwashing, and the Turtles with Splinter, April, and Casey escaping to the countryside to plan their next move, and recover from the affect Shredder's plan had, the Deviation features a world where all four Turtles were brainwashed into Foot Soldiers and were hell-bent on killing Splinter on Shredder's command. 

Ghostbusters also had another story where Gozer won at the end of the first movie, turning New York into hell, and unleashing ghosts everywhere, which ironically causes Gozer to join forces with the Ghostbusters because he hates being stuck in the form of the Staypuff Marshmellow Man and is bored of his destruction

Okay, that second in particular sounds amazing.

Yeah, it'd be nice to see something like that. Maybe even give other writers something to do.

[Big Panda]

There have also been less drastic scenarios, like the MLP one, where a different character came to Ponyville to be Celestia’s student at the beginning of the series instead of Twilight Sparkle.

I wouldn’t mind seeing scenarios like, say, what if Tails was the one who singlehandedly brought down the Death Egg instead of Sonic (basically the solo Tails playthrough of Sonic 2 with a narrative) or even Knuckles (Knuckles in Sonic 2).

[HywelAtTheMoon]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

Okay, that second in particular sounds amazing.

Yeah, it'd be nice to see something like that. Maybe even give other writers something to do.

Say if Eggman's Zombot virus did turn everyone, including Sonic. Be careful what you wish for! 

[SBR2]

1 hour ago, Forgetful Panda said:

There have also been less drastic scenarios, like the MLP one, where a different character came to Ponyville to be Celestia’s student at the beginning of the series instead of Twilight Sparkle.

I wouldn’t mind seeing scenarios like, say, what if Tails was the one who singlehandedly brought down the Death Egg instead of Sonic (basically the solo Tails playthrough of Sonic 2 with a narrative) or even Knuckles (Knuckles in Sonic 2).

Honestly a bunch of the endings of Shadow The Hedgehog would be really interesting to see done in a Deviations issue too.

[Shadowlax]

It wouldn't be the first foray into that  sonic comics would make. The future arcs were that, just...awful

But the idea of the characters in what if futures doesn't in inherently have a weird shipping mess and subsequently a weird story trying to fix the previous gross shipping mess and being a different kinda mess. But his don't have to be! Its a clean slate, you can do all kinds of cool shit. I would love a buncha stories about what ifs and alt futures and what not. Maybe they can even pull like an adventure time and have an entire gender flipped special. It would be cool

[DabigRG]

1 minute ago, Shadowlax said:

Maybe they can even pull like an adventure time and have an entire gender flipped special. It would be cool

Oh boy, can't wait to see a Spear Counterpart of Amy get a fanbase!

[Shadowlax]

2 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Oh boy, can't wait to see a Spear Counterpart of Amy get a fanbase!

I always imagine boy amy having an axe personally.

[DabigRG]

27 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

I always imagine boy amy having an axe personally.

A what?

[Shadowlax]

1 minute ago, DabigRG said:

A what?

axe ...?

 

[Diogenes]

Where's a 12 year old gonna get an axe from?

Should be a bat or something.

[DabigRG]

10 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

axe ...?

 

 

3 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Where's a 12 year old gonna get an axe from?

Should be a bat or something.

Yeah, actually. He'd be quite the Lil Slugger.

[Shadowlax]

5 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Where's a 12 year old gonna get an axe from?

Should be a bat or something.

 It would also at least in my mind be a guitar.

Like how amy is also a magician that never really does magic often. Boy amy, or maybe armie in this case would have a axe guitar and never actually play music.

The Baseball bat thing is a good idea as well, but I would rather normal amy just...get that.

[Big Panda]

Aww the hammer, classic girl equipment...

[DabigRG]

1 minute ago, Shadowlax said:

 It would also at least in my mind be a guitar.

Like how amy is also a magician that never really does magic often. Boy amy, or maybe armie in this case would have a axe guitar and never actually play music.

The Baseball bat thing is a good idea as well, but I would rather normal amy just...get that.

Oh, of course.

Why be in a hardcore rock band when you can just skip to the violent part?

Just now, Forgetful Panda said:

Aww the hammer, classic girl equipment...

.

 

[Silvereyes]

That IDW Deviation line does sound pretty cool. I am very curious if IDW in general would want to utilise Sonic outside the main book, either in terms of crossovers, or more event stuff like that. I mean I guess it would all need to be approved by Sega, and how they feel about cross promotion. I do wonder if we'll see a crossover down the line, certainly while I don't read TMNT or MLP, it seems like Sonic would be a decent fit to crossover with those franchises. Just hopefully if they do do that, they'll just make it a mini-series, rather than interupt the main book for a crossover.

Personally I like the idea of an alt future scenario. One of my favourite stories from Archie (that I've read) is Mobius: 30 Years Later, with Shadow being an insane evil king, and Tikal and Chaos being corrupted into some fusion doomsday weapon. I wouldn't mind something in the same vein, ableit with it being made clear that it is a non-canon future, rather than Archie which seemed to try and make M25YL/M30YL canonical.

[StaticMania]

34 minutes ago, Forgetful Panda said:

Aww the hammer, classic girl equipment...

Amy's personality doesn't suit having a bat, having a hammer is much more fitting

Unsurprisingly there's a decent amount of female characters whose main weapon is a GFH.

Visually, they all look like they're in Amy's character type.

[Rosaleia]

On 9/20/2019 at 8:02 PM, Red said:

Another cover for #24! I love this one!

 

Maybe its the red eyes and deranged faces, but I'm getting major Sonic.exe vibes from this picture. Its interesting in that it's horrifying. However, I don't feel like this is going to raise the stakes as far as it could to maximize the effect of the virus. The metal virus has the potential to be a very intruiging plot device, but when none of the major characters are expected to endure the full magnitude of its effects for a prolonged period, it takes away the threat level. One of the bonuses of Archie was that it had enough prominent characters who lacked plot armor that could be utilized for these purposes. This is probably one of the major criticisms I have towards focusing the series almost entirely on game characters.

[DabigRG]

12 minutes ago, Rosaleia said:

 

Maybe its the red eyes and deranged faces, but I'm getting major Sonic.exe vibes from this picture. Its interesting in that it's horrifying. However, I don't feel like this is going to raise the stakes as far as it could to maximize the effect of the virus. The metal virus has the potential to be a very intruiging plot device, but when none of the major characters are expected to endure the full magnitude of its effects for a prolonged period, it takes away the threat level. One of the bonuses of Archie was that it had enough prominent characters who lacked plot armor that could be utilized for these purposes. This is probably one of the major criticisms I have towards focusing the series almost entirely on game characters.

Now that you mention it, the only named IDW originals that has been transformed thus far are Rough n Tumble and Scruffy; the former two are MIA courtesy of a pit and Scruffy hasn't been seen since his infection.

[Rosaleia]

3 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Now that you mention it, the only named IDW originals that has been transformed thus far are Rough n Tumble and Scruffy; the former two are MIA courtesy of a pit and Scruffy hasn't been seen since his infection.

As much as people complain about Archie creating original characters and them taking spotlight from game characters, this is what happens when you have too many game characters in the main cast: The series gets boring after awhile, because their plot armor makes outcomes too predictable, with losses being barely consequential at best. None of the characters infected so far have gotten a particularly strong reaction from veiwers. Either because its a game character, and we already know the virus isn't going to do anything long term to them, or the character wasn't established enough, due to the fact the focus was predominately on game characters.

I kind of feel though, that Ian blundered a bit with Rough and Tumble. There was an opportunity to do something interesting with them through this experience and he missed it. It would have made more of an impact if only one of the brothers got infected, leaving the other to reluctantly team up with Sonic. We could have learned more about the brothers through one of them tailing Sonic, with potential character development through their efforts to save the other brother.

[DabigRG]

18 minutes ago, Rosaleia said:

As much as people complain about Archie creating original characters and them taking spotlight from game characters, this is what happens when you have too many game characters in the main cast: The series gets boring after awhile, because their plot armor makes outcomes too predictable, with losses being barely consequential at best. None of the characters infected so far have gotten a particularly strong reaction from veiwers. Either because its a game character, and we already know the virus isn't going to do anything long term to them, or the character wasn't established enough, due to the fact the focus was predominately on game characters.

Yeah,we've lost Charmy, Cheese, & Chocola and until Shadow, it's the second that comes closer to being of a significant impact. And at the very least, we know he will join Shadow in being a significant threat in upcoming issues.

That's about it though.

18 minutes ago, Rosaleia said:

 

I kind of feel though, that Ian blundered a bit with Rough and Tumble. There was an opportunity to do something interesting with them through this experience and he missed it. It would have made more of an impact if only one of the brothers got infected, leaving the other to reluctantly team up with Sonic. We could have learned more about the brothers through one of them tailing Sonic, with potential character development through their efforts to save the other brother.

[Diogenes]

30 minutes ago, Rosaleia said:

As much as people complain about Archie creating original characters and them taking spotlight from game characters, this is what happens when you have too many game characters in the main cast: The series gets boring after awhile, because their plot armor makes outcomes too predictable, with losses being barely consequential at best. None of the characters infected so far have gotten a particularly strong reaction from veiwers. Either because its a game character, and we already know the virus isn't going to do anything long term to them, or the character wasn't established enough, due to the fact the focus was predominately on game characters.

I don't think the situation's quite as bad as that. There are restrictions on what they can do with the game cast, sure, we all know Shadow isn't going to to get killed off or remain permanently zombied or whatever, but they've still got room to do interesting things within the arc, before things snap back to the status quo. The comic's already reaching for some meaningful impact; it's had Sonic questioning if he's to blame for the whole metal virus thing, and the scenes in the bunker showing how everyone's burnt out and several characters are dealing with losing someone to the virus. I don't think it's landed nearly as well as it should, but if written well it can still matter now, even if it probably won't in a year or two.

[Shadowlax]

41 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I don't think the situation's quite as bad as that. There are restrictions on what they can do with the game cast, sure, we all know Shadow isn't going to to get killed off or remain permanently zombied or whatever, but they've still got room to do interesting things within the arc, before things snap back to the status quo. The comic's already reaching for some meaningful impact; it's had Sonic questioning if he's to blame for the whole metal virus thing, and the scenes in the bunker showing how everyone's burnt out and several characters are dealing with losing someone to the virus. I don't think it's landed nearly as well as it should, but if written well it can still matter now, even if it probably won't in a year or two.

I wish I had your confidence.

The last book proved that sega isn't going to let shadow be characterized enough for that beef to matter.  So to, it kinda just renders the entire thing sonic pointless. He never had to consider shadow being write because shadow's just a jerk so he can disregard what's he's saying. That isn't to say they can't pull something out of this of value, they can. But it kinda just seems like the nature of the restrictions on the comic itself doesn't fit the story that's being written. Like for that story about sonic's compassion to be right, they are going to actually have to dwell on sonic kinda of being wrong and that's it. No this character is a jerk so i can disregard them, no pushing past it. Sonic's just gonna have to be wrong. And I don't know if the people writing this, or sega is willing to let that happen. The characters are to protected and guarded for the actual consideration that sonic might be wrong.

You can make this thing work, Sonic just has to just... have to actually dwell on a thing. And I don't know if that's possible. Because if he can't , the problem will be solved and we will just move on and all tension will be gone.