Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[bingboomer]

why has jewel got her fists clenched? 

[DabigRG]

2 hours ago, bingboomer said:

why has jewel got her fists clenched? 

It's an occasional girl gesture, especially at the sides there.

[HywelAtTheMoon]

On 12/19/2020 at 7:29 PM, Sonictrainer said:

Evan admits that Christmas Belle's costume is inspired by Jingle Bell Amy.

She also confirmed that Tangle used glue to keep her decorations on her tail...

 

All we need now is a follow-up pic of the pain on Tangle's face as she attempts to remove said decorations. Rrrrriiipppp!

[Sega DogTagz]

Lanolin gets a ton of burn for a background extra. Pretty soon she'll be giving Big a run for his money in the cameo department.

 

I don't mind because she's adorable.

[caitash]

Issue 36 supposedly back to releasing on 30 December, preview pages below:

[dbzfan7]

Spoiler

Ah Shadow being garbage and Rouge just chumping Starline. Good times.

 

[Razule]

Spoiler

This Shadow is just painful to watch sometimes, man.. I'm going withhold my judgement because this is a preview. Maybe he's being pragmatic. If he tried to untie Rouge and Tails, Starline might try to interrupt him, so he's going for Starline so Rouge and Tails can handle themselves. He's just.. unable to do anything in a way that doesn't make him come off as a complete ass.

 

[Kuzu]

I just don't fucking care anymore man...

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Spoiler

Oh lord, this is blatant character assassination at this point. I genuinely am starting to feel bad for the Shadow fans who've been forced to witness their favourite character reduced to this jackass discount Vegeta expy.

 

[Kuzu]

Spoiler

If I honestly had to guess, this is only to make Sonic look better by comparison I suppose. He goes off to save the day, while Shadow will probably get his ass kicked by Starline and bailed out by Tails and Rouge for being so uncaring. Except, he won't actually learn anything from it and he'll just do it again and again and again.

 

[Sonictrainer]

Oh hey, we finally have that full model sheet of Belle

 

[StaticMania]

I'm sure something interesting can be done, but it's pretty funny.

[Kuzu]

5 minutes ago, Sonictrainer said:

Oh hey, we finally have that full model sheet of Belle

 

Wasn't this posted already?

[Empire88]

I am guessing specifically, the mandates say Shadow can not show concern or an interest in others even as an ally.

I know we all pretty much assumed that through past issues through his attitude alone, but you can clearly tell right here that Shadow's behavior is so forced and inorganic. So much so that you can almost see the mandate written out and see what they don't want Shadow to do. Anyone who is not a sociopath would have even a small reaction, even if they stay cool and collected. 

But like others also said, I am just really tired of talking Shadow in general. I just felt like saying something this time because this instance here more than the others is so clear that I think I can imagine the specific mandates in my head. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I think what really annoys me is the fact SEGA want to turn Shadow into Vegeta without realising why people like Vegeta.

When Vegeta was a straight up villain, then sure - a lot of these aspects fitted then, and worked well throughout the Saiyan and Namek sagas.

However, when Vegeta returned after the Frieza saga, and became one of the Z-Fighters (technically at least), he was at his most infuriating because of how many awful and idiotic decisions he kept making. He was on a steep downward decline following his battle with Android 19, and it got to it's peak of stupidity with allowing Cell to achieve Perfect Form.

However - the stark difference is that Vegeta has a narrative arc planned. He went to levels of utter idiocy, yes - but they serviced a point, redeeming him via the Buu Saga, and forcing him to admit that he cares for other people, enough to place his pride over them. From the end of Cell where he felt fury at Future Trunks' death to his reasoning for allowing Babidi's mind control to turn him into Majin Vegeta, the core of it was always that Vegeta had to admit he cared for his family, and for other people, and the raging vengeful sayian he once was had gone. By the end of Buu, he agrees to fuse with Goku, and even nearly risks non-existence solely to help others.

People don't like Vegeta because he just acts like some prideful dumbass. In fact, many people call out that specific period of Vegeta's life as one of the worst for all of the infuriatingly idiotic mistakes he kept making. But at least he had an arc planned that gave that period of his life service to the plot. What are the chances that SEGA have enough sense to even want a plot arc for Shadow? They already threw away literally everything that made Shadow who he was originally so they could turn him into this crappy Vegeta expy.

Spoiler

This is fucking baffling to me. His entire motivations literally rest upon fulfilling Maria's wish to help others. He literally nearly died to fulfilled that risk, and now he's been reduced to far to a pathetic Vegeta knockoff that he's literally just letting his so-called allies die so he can get into a power-level fight with Starline. It's beyond pathetic.

 

[Kuzu]

You know the backlash is bad when both Evan and Reggie had to step in.

 

 

 

[StaticMania]

Context will definitely fix this, I'm sure.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I'll wait til the issue to see the full context, but given Shadow's track-record in this comic, I'm more than a little doubtful how much the context will help here, unless they pull some kind of ass-pull like "Oh Shadow was in on the plan the whole time and we planned out all of this!".

[Empire88]

9 minutes ago, Ryannumber1Santa said:

I'll wait til the issue to see the full context, but given Shadow's track-record in this comic, I'm more than a little doubtful how much the context will help here, unless they pull some kind of ass-pull like "Oh Shadow was in on the plan the whole time and we planned out all of this!".

This is how I feel about it. I am not going to make a full judgment yet until I see it in context (and nobody should obviously harass anyone/throw a fit), but at the same time, it is sort of hard to justify this in isolation because it is sort of hard to do a 180 to make it somewhat okay.

[Kuzu]

I know Evan has her hands tied with having to adhere to Sega's mandates, and I honestly feel bad because she has to be the scapegoat for Sega's shitty decisions. But yea, I'm not really expecting much beyond lip-service. Sega have made it more than clear that this is who they want Shadow to be, controversy be damned. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 minute ago, Kuzu said:

I know Evan has her hands tied with having to adhere to Sega's mandates, and I honestly feel bad because she has to be the scapegoat for Sega's shitty decisions. But yea, I'm not really expecting much beyond lip-service. Sega have made it more than clear that this is who they want Shadow to be, controversy be damned. 

I do think it has to be made crystal clear that none of the writers should be blamed for Shadow's shitty portrayal in the comics. These guys are fans of the games, people who know how Shadow should be written. Even literally has a fan-comic running for years that has great portrayals of the characters and aren't constrained by SEGA's mandates.

Ian has gone over time and again about stuff he was forced to change with Shadow's portrayal. Between his more heroic method of getting infected during the Metal Virus arc, and how he was originally supposed to admit his faults in the epilogue of that arc. Ian has written some of the downright best stories with Shadow as well, such as the Shadow Saga in Sonic Universe.

Both Ian and Evan know full well how these characters should be written, and I assume they both keep pushing to do it the way they feel it should be done, only to constantly be shut down by SEGA's garbage mandates. 

SEGA are the ones at fault, and they're the ones who should be given the blame for the character assassinations at play here. The writers are stuck in a Catch-22 - Shadow is too major of a character to not include in stories (especially in this one, since the rest of Team Dark play such a large role), and his own popularity justifies his inclusion in stories, but writers just can't write him the way they want to because SEGA keep placing the nix on it.

SEGA want this crappy version of Shadow written, and writers can't give him any meaningful development to justify his shitty attitude, it's a awful cycle that SEGA has effectively trapped the comic's writers in.

[Kuzu]

What bothers me is the most is who is this aimed for!?? Who honest to god is reading this comic and is like "Yea, man go Shadow" and think this is organic characterization? He's supposed to be a hero at the very least, so what exactly are people supposed to root for about him if he only cares about stroking his ego? I'm one of the most lenient people when it comes to controversy, and always try to be fair. But there's quite honestly no justification for this that I can think of. I said this before, but it actually feels like some executives saw all of the meme parodies of Shadow being a vegeta rip off, but completely missed the fact that they were parodies and honest to god believed that this is how people actually saw Shadow and wanted him to be. This is beyond being out of touch, this is straight up being tone-deaf. 

 

This fucking sucks man. 

[StaticMania]

Vegeta's ego problems only popped up every time he got stronger.

Shadow's no different now than he was before because Sonic isn't that type of series..

[Natie]

Oh boy, as soon as I saw this preview I knew a storm was coming, haha.
 

Apparently it's setting up for something but lol, it feels like Sega had the same problem I did, where after 10+ years of fan content (and even some games) portraying him as a total brutalistic edgy Vegeta clone they forgot he wasn't actually supposed to be like that.

Hopefully the rest of the comic will make Shadow fans feel better.

[Leebo4]

I don’t really care for Shadow outside his starring game and sonic adventure 2, I know fans don’t like this adaptation but I don’t think much and wish he didn’t have as much a focus

 

Spoiler

I find it funny that when they get to him they have no trouble knocking him down, I hope they continue the track record of despite appearing and thinking himself more competent than his inspiration Starline doesn’t cut it as the big bad he hopes to be