Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[KnucklesDontChuckle]

You could've just asked this in the Archie thread, ya know.

 

To answer your question, your best off starting with #252 as that's when things were reset. As for Sonic Universe, yes and no. It helps to read the on-going to get the whole picture and vice-versa, but it's not absolutely necessary. The stories in SU don't always directly concern themselves with the stories of the main book (it happens, though). "Shadow Fall" for example can be read independent of the main book, as it's all about Shadow and fighting the Black Arms, though the events take place in roughly the same time as the events of the on-going. In any case, there are plenty of editors' notes and summaries in the books themselves that give a decent overview if you miss something. Hope that helps!

Whoops, sorry! I just was in a frantic panic to ask! 

someone told me to start around #170, but i'll see #252 too!

Thank you SO SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Linkabel]

I know I'm late to the party but I just saw the variant for 265 and oh my god can the Werehog be anymore stiff?

 

It's ironic that the original adventure pose is stretchy as hell with normal Sonic, but the werehog having the ability to stretch more gets to be stiffed in that pose.

[anna]

Um...why is his hand coming from his crotch...?

[Eitarou]

Um...why is his hand coming from his crotch...?

 

It isn't.

 

Compare to the original.

[biznizz]

Hey guys. Remember that time that Ken wrote Evil Sonic macking on Bunnie & implied they slept together during 150?

 

 

Why does it look like Bunnie's second speech bubble in the top panel has different looking lettering? WTF were you thinking Ken?

 

Yeah. Sorry. Windows 7 isn't letting me drag files for Google Image search on Firefox right now and I can't for the life of me figure out why, so I'm pretty pissed off.

[anna]

It isn't.

Compare to the original.

Oh! Well yeah, that still looks really awkward...Rafa's Werehog looks great though!

As for Bunnie and anti-Sonic, I...I don't think I really wanted to remember that. What was Ken even doing?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Well, he certainly got crap past the radar, I'll give him that.

[biznizz]

It's a recurring theme that Ken has: to try to do stuff, but not think things through.

 

He wants to do a female empowerment issue with Bunnie & Sally foiling one of Robotnik's schemes to catch them? They go to a mysteroiusly appearing shopping mall so they can splurge.

 

He thinks Sally is unpopular with the fans? He decides she's a weight around his neck, decides to try to kill her off and try to replace her with a robot when that was denied, and when the book is going to continue past 50, introduce a male version of Sally (Elias) which was presumably supposed to phase out Sally (which never got off the ground given that Ken became fully absorbed into Knuckles stories).

 

Evil Sonic-As-Sonic and Bunnie sleep together well into the night to show how "evil" he is and ruining Sonic's reputation? Apparently not realizing that making a woman who's still grieving for her broken relationship with an ex sleep with someone is messed up. And even moreso when it wasn't even the real guy that she thought she was sleeping with to push it all the way into terrible, terrible areas that is out of depth of not only the comic, but Ken as a writer in general.

[Delta Starfire]

It's a recurring theme that Ken has: to try to do stuff, but not think things through.

 

He wants to do a female empowerment issue with Bunnie & Sally foiling one of Robotnik's schemes to catch them? They go to a mysteroiusly appearing shopping mall so they can splurge.

 

He thinks Sally is unpopular with the fans? He decides she's a weight around his neck, decides to try to kill her off and try to replace her with a robot when that was denied, and when the book is going to continue past 50, introduce a male version of Sally (Elias) which was presumably supposed to phase out Sally (which never got off the ground given that Ken became fully absorbed into Knuckles stories).

 

Evil Sonic-As-Sonic and Bunnie sleep together well into the night to show how "evil" he is and ruining Sonic's reputation? Apparently not realizing that making a woman who's still grieving for her broken relationship with an ex sleep with someone is messed up. And even moreso when it wasn't even the real guy that she thought she was sleeping with to push it all the way into terrible, terrible areas that is out of depth of not only the comic, but Ken as a writer in general.

 

Yeah, that's outright straying into rape territory. Not fucking cool. 

[Tenko]

Where did Archie get skin coloured eyelids from? Sonic's winking art assets etc from all the way back to classic Mega Drive days had him with blue eyelids...not what I was spose to take away from those panels I know but it irked me none the less.

[Marcello]

I'm pretty sure Sonic had skin-colored eyelids until Sonic Adventure 2. Classic Sonic in Generations did, too.

[Celestia]

I was about to say it was just SEGA of America always portraying Sonic with the skin eyelids, but Google tells me I was wrong (grr). It's actually sorta the other way around. The cartoons had it so the iris seems to be what blinks/closes. But what's even weirder is that only Sonic (and maybe some others?) had this, everyone else seems to have normal, and non-skin, eyelids.

 

 

 

And yes, I used the weirdest screencap possible as an example up there.

[Marcello]

Knuckles also had skin colored eyelids.

 

I believe Sonic Underground gave Sonic blue eyelids.

[Tenko]

Hmm seems there was a rampant mix. I was going from memory but upon looking it up the old Sonic emotion sketches from around the Sonic and Sonic 2 era from Japan when officially coloured give him blue eyelids, but the later ones up to around 3D Blast have the whole iris blinking thing that Celestia mentioned. Seems even Japan had no constant for this. I can't find any Japan stock art from the earlier period with skin colour eyelids tho (granted I just did a quick search tho), so maybe the skin eyelids was an American thing?

[Sparky]

Hmm seems there was a rampant mix. I was going from memory but upon looking it up the old Sonic emotion sketches from around the Sonic and Sonic 2 era from Japan when officially coloured give him blue eyelids, but the later ones up to around 3D Blast have the whole iris blinking thing that Celestia mentioned. Seems even Japan had no constant for this. I can't find any Japan stock art from the earlier period with skin colour eyelids tho (granted I just did a quick search tho), so maybe the skin eyelids was an American thing?

Skin eyelids was NOT AMERICAN.

 

America had BLUE EYELIDS. 

 

In the games, up until Sonic Heroes where it was changed to blue eyelids, Sonic's eyelids (as well as Amy and Knuckles) were skin. 

In America, the eyelids were blue in promotional material and the cartoons and comics and stuff (well... mostly the comics). But the comics adapted the skin eyelids around the Adventure era. 

[Tenko]

No no, I know he has skin colouring in the games at that point. I meant in the old official art. The main one that pops up is that classic wink merch, but I don't know what area that originated from (possibly USA or UK) and if it was old or newer classic merch. The other emotion stock art of classic's head (which appears to be Japanese in origin) seems to show the iris blinking when he's laughing etc, the OVA also had the iris blinking rather than the eyelids, same as on 3D Blasts Japanese cover art etc. Where as the USA and UK art of the time with classic Sonic showing emotions, seems to have him with blue eyelids.

I was just trying to gather what was the standard outside the games at the time and if it was the same in each area but it seems its all over the place. While the games seemed to keep it standardized with the in game sprites at the time.

Also as far as the games wasn't it Sonic Adventure DX that originally changed their eyelid colour and it stuck after that, Heroes releasing around a year later. SA2 still had the skin colour didn't it?

[Dejimon11]

Here's the Tracy Yardley interview that was posted on his charity livestream this past April

[MykonosFan]

I've gotta ask, are the Amazon dates for the trade paperbacks usually good to rely on, or do those usually change a lot? I was looking forward to a few trades coming out today, but looking at their pages now pretty much every single one coming out got pushed back. In particular I was looking to grab Sonic Saga 5 to continue reading there, but now it's coming out at the end of July. I guess I'm just wondering if I can trust that date, or should I be weary of it being pushed back again? 

Thankfully I've still got a few Universe trades I can catch up on in the mean time either way.

 

Here's the Tracy Yardley interview that was posted on his charity livestream this past April

 

 

FTA's so weirdly formal when he does these  

It's a good listen, I really like how open the Archie team can be when talking about certain things, his interview with Ian in particular was really great for that reason. Speaking of, his 2nd interview with Ian should be uploaded not too far from now. I don't remember if he live streamed that one or not so maybe everyone here already got all the info from it haha

[Big Panda]

Worlds Collide #3 get!

This volume is basically what you'd expect: all four parts of the "Chaos Clash" story arc, each with their opening credits and ending "READ *series and issue here* TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT" messages removed.

Special features wise, it's a pretty light affair, most likely because of how Sonic #250 and #251 take up more pages than usual. They spreaded the pages showcasing the variant covers throughout the book this time, clearly so they could adjust the page positions so as not to screw up the many double-page spreads that appear in the story. We also have a continuation of Spaz's explaining of the covers, which includes a slightly different (and, in my opinion, unintentionally hilarious) version of MM#27's cover, and a completely different cover concept for SU#54 (which is apparently an homage to the coverart for "Mega Man Soccar"). And we finish off, of course, with the Off-Panel/Short Circuits strips.

Also, the upcoming graphic novel section still acts as if the delayed books have already come out >_>

[Delta Starfire]

Right, that's me through Endgame for the second time. It was passable, as I've previously said, but it suffers majorly from asspulls -- things like the appearance of Hershey, the fact that dragons cannot lie and can sense the truth, etc. It's also a massive shift in tone from almost everything leading up to it, where the hitherto clownish Robotnik is now a genocidal maniac and genuinely threatening. But, because he's only been like that for... well, basically the run of Endgame and a few issues before, his defeat just doesn't feel that important. Not like Robotnik's defeat in StC #100. Anyways, that's Robotnik Prime done with (with one very minor exception). Just need to play silly buggers with Naugus for a bit and then finally I'll be up to the point where StH has a decent main villain!

[biznizz]

Why would Robotnik make his robots shoot down Sonic's prison plane?

Why make Hershey an unwilling co-conspirator by giving her goggles that renders everyone as Snively?

Why did Dr. Quack put so much faith in Snively ONLY killing Robotnik and not anyone else, like Sonic and the Freedom Fighters?

[Sunwalker]

I've gotta ask, are the Amazon dates for the trade paperbacks usually good to rely on, or do those usually change a lot? I was looking forward to a few trades coming out today, but looking at their pages now pretty much every single one coming out got pushed back. In particular I was looking to grab Sonic Saga 5 to continue reading there, but now it's coming out at the end of July. I guess I'm just wondering if I can trust that date, or should I be weary of it being pushed back again? 

Thankfully I've still got a few Universe trades I can catch up on in the mean time either way.

 

It seems to be a something at Archie's side instead of Amazon's.

 

In the last year I have preordered the Smallville Season 11 trades of DC comics and their dates were always reliable. But for whatever reason Archie's date are being moved along. I guess that, since Archie is not as big as the "Big Two" comic publishers, printing/distribution problems can affect it more.

 

The release date World Collide Super Deluxe was changed to 2017 . It should be either just a typo or a placeholder date until they figure when it can be released.

[Big Panda]

That's definitely a typo. It's been corrected now from what I've seen.

[Delta Starfire]

Why would Robotnik make his robots shoot down Sonic's prison plane?

Why make Hershey an unwilling co-conspirator by giving her goggles that renders everyone as Snively?

Why did Dr. Quack put so much faith in Snively ONLY killing Robotnik and not anyone else, like Sonic and the Freedom Fighters?

 

All legit questions.

 

1. Robotnik sabotaged himself by doing that, since it's unlikely Sonic would have escaped the Devil's Gulag in time to stop him. I see no motivation for doing that.

 

2. He could have just as easily used robot duplicate. We know he has them, and it would've meant no need for stupid Snivelyvision.

 

3. No idea. It's plausible that Snively would do this, but we, the readers, know how much he hates Robotnik -- he hates him more than anyone else, and he wants to rule Mobius in his place. But those are pretty personal feelings that have only really been revealed to us at this point, through his inner monologue. No one else -- not even Robotnik -- should know this.

[Big Panda]

1. Robotnik sabotaged himself by doing that, since it's unlikely Sonic would have escaped the Devil's Gulag in time to stop him. I see no motivation for doing that.

My best guess is that we intended for Sonic to die in the crash.

...which doesn't change the fact that he's incredibly stupid.