Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

Yeah the first annual got delayed from March to May. Wouldn't be surprised if the second one follows suit

[VO.SUPER]

Why not just push back the entire schedule man? If these delays are basically going to keep happening, why not just push it all back and just operate from there?

[shdowhunt60]

19 minutes ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

Why not just push back the entire schedule man? If these delays are basically going to keep happening, why not just push it all back and just operate from there?

Or you know, fucking commit to them in the first place. Issue 25 got delayed 3 fucking times. That's fucking ridiculous.

[Zaysho]

Man, could be worse.

At least IDW gives y'all a heads up. Compared to Archie keeping quiet, collecting money from subscriptions (and doing everything in their power to keep them), and only admitting that they don't have the license anymore a month before the new publisher is announced.

[VO.SUPER]

What are even the causes of these delays? Is it problems with the printing? Is it the artists not finishing the work on time? Is communication between team members just that terrible that people constantly need to redo art? I just wish we knew. 

[Meta77]

Usually printing delays. As usual IDW is known to have delays with issues here and there. Many comics do sometimes but 25 being pushed back three times is odd. Only big reason i can see is cause its a bigger issue than usual. Plus comics are more expensive on the material they print these days than in the past.

[DabigRG]

There is also that thing about the comic industry being in trouble that may also be a factor, if not a result.

[caitash]

They said with issue 25 it was because of the Christmas holidays hitting at the worst possible moment in the production cycle so it all got delayed. Whether that was the truth or a convenient excuse I don’t know. 
 

David Mariotte (IDW Editor) said on the Facebook IDW Sonic Comic group:

“We're working very hard to have it [issue #26] done and out the last Wednesday of February, but it may be the first week of March. However, things will absolutely be back on track by issue #27.”

Whether that comes to pass or not we shall see.

[Marco9966]

1 hour ago, caitash said:

They said with issue 25 it was because of the Christmas holidays hitting at the worst possible moment in the production cycle so it all got delayed. Whether that was the truth or a convenient excuse I don’t know. 
 

David Mariotte (IDW Editor) said on the Facebook IDW Sonic Comic group:

“We're working very hard to have it [issue #26] done and out the last Wednesday of February, but it may be the first week of March. However, things will absolutely be back on track by issue #27.”

Whether that comes to pass or not we shall see.

They should take a year break and take their time to finish as many issues as possible

[SBR2]

4 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

They should take a year break and take their time to finish as many issues as possible

That's not how comics work dude. 

[Celestia]

Even if that was an option, I doubt the problem is the comic's staff getting the work done. As far as I know we haven't heard about any issues on the artists' side (or Ian's), though of course they might just not be talking about it.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Personally I think they should still do it: make several issues ahead and  keep them in case of troubles.

That way when Diana Skely STARTS the arc she would also have time to END it as well. Of course security would have to be tight, since if some idiot could leak the issue and plunge sales. But it's worth the risk (well for use )

With that said, from what I get current delays are caused by printing, so that wouldn't help us one bit.

[Kazhnuz]

The problem isn't a question of leak and stuff, it's - like usual - money. The more you create issues ahead, the more you pay for stuff you can't get money from now. And it means that if SEGA pulled the plug, a problem happenned, anything : it's less money in your account that you might not recover. It's a situation really problematic for most company.

Generally, a company doesn't really like waiting too much time before getting back money they put into the production of something (my company have to deal with that, and it's basically several times the size of IDW). The delay already create the problem, but making some issue ahead would simply make it even worse.

 

TBH, if they had a possible clever solution that would stop that, they would do it. I don't think that they like this situation, it mean less money for them, it's annoying for the people that have to announce it...

[SBR2]

I will admit there's a part of me that kinda wishes companies would drop floppies and just go for trades. I mean they've been writing for the trade since like 2000-2001 anyway so they might as well make it official and just release comics as Graphic Novels alone.

I mean they won't because Diamond wouldn't allow it but still.

[VO.SUPER]

I mean, we should be heading in that direction. The rise of trades and the continuing popularity of manga is basically sending messages throughout the whole industry. 

[Shadowlax]

The issue with trades or trying delay releasing in this scenario is that a lot of idea's books including sonic are licensed. And in the particular case of sonic heavily monitored and can change when sega wants it to. Having it be a month to month thing allows sega to dictate and watch some of it but on the other end doesn't result in large chunks of the book having to be redone if they want to go in another direction.

Also the mention of manga is disingenuous,  because manga does have floppies. There are bunches of collection books like jump that have weekly releases of chapters for manga. It's actually excruciatingly brutal for a lot of mangaka causing them to burn out or worse. The dudes releasing weekly wish their chapters could be a month worth of work and they could operate on delays. And the guys doing monthly  are releasing 4 weeks worth of that content at the end of it. How western and eastern books are being released really arent comparable especially when this is a licensed property with its ip owner to keep pleased. This isnt even mentioning the Japanese comics industry despite their success maybe shoulder be the thing you want to model yourself after due to...the tendency to overwork

[Celestia]

Pretty sure delays would be at the very bottom of the list of "most concerning problems with the western/NA comics industry."

 

There are problems such as companies caring too little about trades (a series can perform "badly" monthly but incredible in trade and Marvel will have already canceled it anyway) and the industry is kind of clueless to how unappealing floppies are to a lot of potential new readers, but I don't think the solution to any of that is doing away with monthly releases entirely.

[SBR2]

On 2/7/2020 at 9:11 PM, Zaysho said:

Man, could be worse.

At least IDW gives y'all a heads up. Compared to Archie keeping quiet, collecting money from subscriptions (and doing everything in their power to keep them), and only admitting that they don't have the license anymore a month before the new publisher is announced.

That experience has honestly totally soured me on Archie as a company. Doesn't help they've kinda always been incompetent. 

Not just with Sonic either as far back as they're TMNT comic where for the original miniseries and first few issues of the ongoing they adapted episodes of the cartoon...except they actually legally couldn't do that and had to abandon adaptations mid arc.

[Polkadi~☆]

If we're talking trades and using manga as an example, most manga don't release trades whenever it's most convenient. Trades, tankobon, whatever you want to call it, is a collection of chapters released over the last, let's say, three or four months (usually). And before they're collected in trade, these chapters are printed in magazines to a schedule, whether it's weekly, biweekly, monthly, or just a special one-off. And if all these manga weren't in magazines, then they'd be in the exact same format as floppies.

Western comic book publishing already does that. Now, I don't agree with the paperbacks IDW sell, as it's more costly than manga for far less pages. But if a trade of IDW Sonic collected a year of comics in a 192-page volume were to be sold at the same price as their current volumes, I'd be very enthusiastic about collecting them. That, however, wouldn't happen if the comics themselves wouldn't sell, and everyone switched to only picking up the trades, but... I'm at a loss, and I kinda forgot where I was going with this.

[caitash]

Apparently some comic shops have started selling issue 25 early so please be wary of spoilers appearing if you don’t want it spoiled.

 

Also the 2 extra preview pages are out:

[Marco9966]

Spoiler

So Starline is still faithful to Eggman, he only wanted the zetis as a temporary solution

 

[SBR2]

Man Starline's plan went south so fast. Boy needs some cardio or something. 

[Marco9966]

Just now, SBR2 said:

Man Starline's plan went south so fast. Boy needs some cardio or something. 

Zazz's punch was so solid

[DabigRG]

1 hour ago, caitash said:

Apparently some comic shops have started selling issue 25 early so please be wary of spoilers appearing if you don’t want it spoiled.

 

Also the 2 extra preview pages are out:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

Good to hear.

Spoiler

 

Well that didn't last long. Interesting little nuance there.

What is that symbol?

 

8 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

  Hide contents

So Starline is still faithful to Eggman, he only wanted the zetis as a temporary solution

 

He said as much at one point, if I'm not mistaken.

7 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

Zazz's punch was so solid

Or headbutt anyway.

[SBR2]

29 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Good to hear.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Well that didn't last long. Interesting little nuance there.

What is that symbol?

 

 

Spoiler

I think it's supposed to be Rouge.