IDW Sonic the Hedgehog #18

Thanks for the storytime

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Gemerl's a dick.

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I've noticed the background characters in this issue are really detailed. I would have these two were someone's OCs.

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Remember Chocola?

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Those zombots sure are polite to let Sonic just stand there and finish talking to Cream.

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And that's it for today.
Next month we get Omega, I guess.

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Nice cover.
Cute recap.

Good art too. Shame this long zombie storyline is being handled terribly. Putting aside how the pages use paneling and visual direction that evokes comedy rather than horror (even kiddie horror like Tower of Shadows/House of Mystery) and the lack of urgency/pacing like
said, the writing's been pretty lousy. Characters are strangely verbose despite not saying much. Way more is told than shown even when showing would be easier. Conflicts don't really progress or have twists during individual issues, instead opting to stall until something actually happens at the end. It's a mess. If you want to tackle a story like this, at least make the individual issues entertaining.

God, Eggman is such a fucking dumbass for all his supposed genius.

He's just doing what he thinks is the most logical course of action. Besides, it's not like the infected can actually die.

Surely this wont come back and bite Eggman in the ass later.

>"Restoration Ally"

Is this their discount version of "Freedom Fighter"?

I have no idea why he doesn't account for shit like this. The number of times where one of his plans backfired because the thing he created or manipulated turned on him is downright staggering.

Basically.
Ian's too attached to how things were to just call her Sonic's pal.

How long is this robotic virus zombie storyline going to go on for? I'm already so bored of it.

So instead of "Roboticization" we have liquid metal that turns characters into not-robots but zombie cyborgs. And instead of "Freedom Fighters" we have "Restoration Allies".

This is really fucking lame. Sega won't let him use the classic terms so he's just making minor tweaks and changing the proper nouns but ultimately doing the exact same thing anyway. What's the fuckin point?

Until around issue 24, I think.
The comic is divided into 12 issue seasons.

Easy money from autistic foreverally-Sonic fans.

December. It's the plot of "Year 2."
Hope you enjoy every single year being one long, boring story while we get one or two decent short stories in the Annual.

Roboticizing was a major storyline in the Archie book for like 50 fucking issues. If the IDW only spends 12 issues on this "totally not the same thing as roboticizing" shit, we should count ourselves lucky.

I just want more stories like that one with Rough and Tumble raiding that pyramid. That was great fun.

Eggman may have screwed up a few things but his Respect Monologue protocols are infallible.

You'll have to wait for next year's Annual to have fun one-shots, user. Or you can pick up the Tangle & Whisper miniseries. At least that arc is only half a year long.

Because Ian gets stuck on shit. He's too busy working on long term plans that won't pan out (again) and finding ways to bend the rules to write the same thing (again) that he isn't paying attention to per-issue output or letting himself be creative (again). He's becoming what people mock Ken for. Worst part is he can write just fine if he focuses on one/two issues at a time, but he keeps getting stuck in the MUH DEEP LORE PAYOFF swamp.

You misremember. Roboticization was just a lazy plot device that barely showed up from 1-50, was referenced a few times in 89-119, and was retconned out by ~120.

>they’ll fix it with a day one patch

I'm glad others are also partial to it.

Wasn't it sunset in the previous issue?

They're fun characters. Obviously reminding me of Hooligan/Chaotix hijinx but this time it's two brothers. Plus that pyramid heist story is pretty much the best we've gotten out of the two since they appeared.

Boy I haven’t caught up with Sonic comics in a long, long while.

Where is Tails? Is he safe? Is he alright?

ARE YOU STILL FOLLOWING THIS AWFUL SERIES

ARE YOU SERIOUS

WHY

It's a storytime, so why not.

I ain't paying, but I'll criticize if it's free.

Why have Sonic's condition get worse if SEGA mandates won't have Sonic actually succumb to the virus before the end?

Illusion of tension.

The tension here isn't that sonic might be fully zombified. We know he won't The problem is that he has to waste time stopping himself from being zombiefied, which means more of his friends get zombiefied because he can't help them.

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If he is going to keep attacking zombots and not ever succumb to the virus then it is an illusion of tension.
Because at some point attacking zombots isn't really going to make things worse from a story standpoint.

That's just a bad excuse for things to happen that he should be able to stop without actually giving a good reason because he needs to be in every issue.

We've established he can make it stop by running in place. He could literally just spin a big hole in the ground and push the zombies in.

That's actually a good point. The zombies can't climb over cars, so just shove them in holes.

Why can't Vanilla fly yet somehow her daughter can and also lift someone twice their size?

>Roboticizing was a major storyline
No. It was the background set-up scenario that carried the main plot of each issue. Only some issues did they focus on roboticization itself, and even at that, they were still written competently, well and sweet.

>in the Archie book for like 50 fucking issues.
There's a major difference that you're somehow missing here: the Archie issues had, again, main plots contained to each one issue, with some of them beginning a continuity, and ending in just 2 or 3 issues (and also spawning side mini-series). This is nothing like IDW Sonic, which is focusing to have a main plot to endure for 12 issues, and rinse and repeat.

>we should count ourselves lucky.
Lucky? You mean, we are lucky to have Archie Sonic be terminated abruptly, and be replaced by a shallow, boring, slogfest comic that has stripped off charm, and even more new characters unnecessarily to (increase the clogged and bloated Sonic's cast and) replace the roles the previous Archie characters filled?

You call this luck?

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She's fat.

>We've established he can make it stop by running in place.
This page says otherwise

Kind of ironic you call the Sonic cast bloated and yet pine for Archie that had way more characters that stuck around consistently.

Cause his ego won't allow him to account for major failures.

>we are lucky to have Archie Sonic be terminated abruptly

The 252 soft reboot run had been lousy and boring and often full of lengthy, meaningless arcs (like everything questing to get their memories of the old continuity back just to lose them immediately afterward).

Cancellation was a mercy kill.

New development based on Sonic touching too much. Point was that distance doesn't matter so much as speed.

It got cancelled right on the eve if Ian learning that one offs were fine. Worst time to die.

>like everything questing to get their memories of the old continuity back just to lose them immediately afterward
That lasted barely two issues and was designed to placate a readership that had their previous continuity of 20ish years yanked out from underneath them. It's hardly unreasonable.

>It got cancelled right on the eve if Ian learning that one offs were fine.

If he had truly learned that, he'd have carried that lesson with him into his IDW run. Don't kid yourself.

>That lasted barely two issues
Six.
>and was designed to placate a readership that had their previous continuity of 20ish years yanked out from underneath them.
aka, it was an emergency filler tactic that was rescinded by management once they realized it might be a liability.
>It's hardly unreasonable.
It was very unreasonable, especially since they could have been honest with their readers in a show of good faith instead of trying to string them along for half a year.

Apparently this isn't like the boost games where he can go to top speed instantly

Fine, on the eve of him trying to do that again. Maybe one day he'll get his head out of his ass and realize that his writing style might have played a role in every series he touches for more than four issues getting cancelled.

But Forces is a boost game and we've seen him 0-to-fast multiple times already. Even old Archie Sonic could do stuff like that.

I know. I'm aware that Archie had way more characters that stuck around consistently, and that's not my point. What I'm trying to say here is that this IDW comic is not helping at any case with the problem of Sonic's cast being bloated. Instead of bringing back and re-utilizing deprecated both old and dead characters, we just keep receiving new characters, which theses are going to probably to be left aside and eat dust for years too, so why bother?

>Instead of bringing back and re-utilizing deprecated both old and dead characters
Only modern characters are allowed.

>But Forces is a boost game
And Ian isn't strictly following game mechanics
>we've seen him 0-to-fast multiple times already
There are different levels of "fast" apparently.
>Even old Archie Sonic could do stuff like that.
This isn't Archie.

If we're gonna give the "yeah, but the author says so" route we may as well not discuss it at all. It's about the way it's being handled, not if it can be handled that way (the answer is always "yes").

The soft reboot memory shit was an editorial decision and Ian was the one who dropped it as soon as he could.

Backwards. Ian said he was pissed when Kaminski told him to drop it after they built it up for months. Maybe he changed his story since, but that was the angle at the time.

>we may as well not discuss it at all
I guess you can I just don't see the point. Either you like Sonic going top speed instantly or he gradually gains it.

He didn't want to do the memory thing but he also didn't want to drop it in one page either.

And this just worsens it all, damaging and enlarging more the problem of Sonic's cast. No classic characters to bring back, no AoStH characters, no OVA characters, no Archie ones (excluding theses created by Penders, of course), no Fleetway characters, and more.

Again, why bother? What's the point, especially when Ian is a janitor, not a writer?

a third of a year long you mean

Reminder that this'll probably be Yardley's final issue in a long while, as he's taking a break from the book to deal with personal stuff

>Reminder that this'll probably be Yardley's final issue in a long while, as he's taking a break from the book to deal with personal stuff

Trump Derangement Syndrome again?

twitter.com/yardleyart/status/1144699981514911744

The way that's worded makes me think he's not gonna be let back on at all, ever.

Was that actually established? It looked like they were climbing over cars in 17.

>especially when Ian is a janitor, not a writer?
He's a professional, published author.

Don't play dumb with me. You know EXACTLY what am I talking about.

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Where is Shadow

They are. Yardley doing random fancharacter cameos to cheer some venezuelan kid

Yeah Yardley's a cool guy but the way user's wording it is much kinder than what Yardley himself made clear, which is "IRL made me work too slow, so I got fired"

The editors won't care if fans get upset over it, either. It was fun while it lasted, Tracey.

What does Yea Forums think of this?

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>A female Sonic character who doesn't wear pants

L-LEWD!

>Grown man who apparently does IT work misses the point and thanks the guy who fired Tracey for being "understanding."
>Blaze the Cat gay rights poster totally gets it.
Twitter's weird.

>22 things or so in 13 years
Pretty good.

Wow that's a lot nicer than how /sthg/ took it.

I actually don't.
Ian's a published author, not a janitor.

DCeased sure took a strange turn

Some of those things havent even been started yet.

Never list the same thing 3+ times to pad your resume. It makes you look desperate.

It’s nice that they are introducing Cream to be more of a player than she was in the other incarnations, this is keeping her more in line with the games. Gemeral is a bit simple but it’ll grow on me, I get the feeling that they are going to build him up as the series goes on then break him for max emotional weight.

I imagine he means Ian's better at tidying a continuity, a story, so on, than writing his own new content. Put less condescendingly, if I get what he means at least, is "Ian's an editor, not a writer".

Leave for a year then come back fag.

user, he doesn't need an existing property to succeed, look at Cosmo.

Cosmo was an existing property, and that comic died after like 5 issues.

Real question is how hard is Ian going to to make shadow job this time.

Nice sarcasm, user

That was boring and episodic, just watch the sonic boom cartoon if that’s what you want.

Apparently the twitter for Ian's new original comic only has 6 followers, two being Flynn and ABT themselves.

Man Yardley was one hell of a juggernaut back at archie. in the 42 issue span from 160 to 201, he did at least some interior art for all but 2 issues, and the number of issues where his interior art contribution was "he only did the shorter backup story or did breakdowns that a different artist did finishes for" was pretty scant (a mere 7 issues), so most of his stuff was doing over half of an issue's worth of pages, if not the entire issue, AND during that time he did the art for 9 issues of sonic x (not to mention the 2 issues he did right before he began work on the main book) , the FCBD 07 issue, that sonic and the secret rings promo comic, and the first arc of Universe (which would be where he would continue to do art for a long while)

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Damn it is better to talk about Sonic here than /sthg/.

Dragune? That'll probably be more due to the fact it's publicly dead. I don't doubt ABT's working on it when he can, but it was supposed to be out like a year ago. We don't even know what it's about.

as someone interested in Ian's new original comic, there's a twitter for it?

Well yeah, they announced it years ago and haven't advertised it at all.

Ian linked to this twitter for his original comic on his main twitter account. Is it safe to assume his fanbase doesn't want original content from him?
twitter.com/drogunecomic

Going by what he's saying, he still counts as a juggernaut now. Imagine managing to still do an ongoing comic relatively on time (yeah they've had to do a couple delays but not as much as other more celebrated artists) while dealing with like 10 adopted kids, an old widow aunt, AND kind of adopting even more kids

People here actually read comic books (sometimes) and aren't as attached to Sonic. We arent going to get very angry if someone feels differently and we're less likely to care about fan service.

It's safer to assume most people who buy Sonic don't read his twitter.

Probably because the account has only been mentioned like 3 times ever and has literally one tweet.

>The Prophet Jekt didn't craft the Realms in a day.
Oh boy, it's one of these.

That’s not true at all, in Archie comics we had arcs that lasted many issues. You’re delusional, trying to find reasons to hate on this arc when you can simply say it’s not interesting or something. Don’t make up shit.

Shadow might not fight. Ian prolly doesn't give a shit aboutnShadow outside of using Rouge and Omega though.

He is talking about it again.
twitter.com/IanFlynnBKC/status/1143285221363728384
twitter.com/IanFlynnBKC/status/1138982732120428546
twitter.com/IanFlynnBKC/status/1140813133533126656

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>Spending one or two panels an issue going over the memory merge while the rest is used to establish the world and it’s coming demise.

Getting a little emotional over some callbacks are we?

YOU GONNA CRYYYY BOYYYYY

The core thrust was literally "we gotta merge their memories! because it'll fix Nicole! Somehow!" Don't be a bitch.

Good on him, doing that in one page seems disrespectful to everything before.

Gonna be honest, the little I've seen looks like shit.

Have you seen Flynn's other original work? Drogune is probably the best original comic concept he had.

What even is the concept? All I know of this comic so far is "something to do with airships and also furries, seems likely it'll be Skies of Arcadia mixed with 2006-era Archie Sonic"

>Third panel.
>Vanilla is so done with this shit

>Have you seen Flynn's other original work?

Will have to add MLP to that.

That was just a couple anons pretending to actually care. Notice how quick people stopped mentioning it.

He is really proud of his MLP work.

Generic JRPG all i heard is that they apparently want to keep the premise secret for some reason.

>The duck at the bottom there
Bean?

It's still great to see him again, even if he can't be Shard's second coming anymore.

Bean's a woodpecker, user

He is from Dynamite Dux though.

No, he's from Sonic the Fighters. Bin and Pin might be ducks (depending on whether düx is meant to refer to ducks, which you can never be sure of with old Japanese games), but Bean's a woodpecker

So, is this comic good now?

Nope.

And it might never be. You're really better off re-reading Archie Sonic.

Oh, I already read IDW Sonic. Obligation, mostly.

Just wondering if anyone's changed their minds on it yet.

I want the freedom fighters fuck this gay shit

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that's cute

I'm sure some do here as well, including me, and there's no need to remind that. It's just that, now, it feels hopeless for them, despite what did Ian said in regards of them in his site, about if they will come back.

Even those fans aren't THAT autistic. You'd show them Bootleg FF getting Bootleg Robotocized and they'll just go REEEEEEE.

The only ones Autisic enough to buy this are ForcesFags and Modern Sonic fans who go on and on about MUH SERIOUS STORYLINES.

Hell, I'm pissed off this book is still going despite being nothing more than. weak sauce version of Archie made to SEGA's boring standards.

>The only ones Autisic enough to buy this are ForcesFags and Modern Sonic fans who go on and on about MUH SERIOUS STORYLINES.

I take offense to that.

God took offence to your existence and put us in this accursed timeline as a result but you don't see us complaining about it, Boco

>Look, Up In The Sky!
>It's a Bird!
>It's A PLANE!

>No! It's the joke that went over your head!

Touche.

But Boco, the most important question isn't that have you read it....but have you paid for it?

And here I thought you were one of the good ones.

Thanks Boco, for using that monkey's paw and wished Sonic had a comic again.

Enjoy your SEGA propaganda. I'll spend my $4.99 on sophisticated entertainment.

>buys Snyder's Justice League
>it's the Clark and Bruce learns the Fusion Dance of Brotherhood issue

Fuck off, Alex.

>complains about a bloated cast
>mad characters from every sonic continuity isn't allowed

As much as I hate to admit it, I doubt the State of the Comic will improve. Ian's just adequate enough, just like Sonic has been for the past few years, and apparently that's good enough for Sega. They're both too hidebound to their formulae to improve, but Ian's been writing for so long and has so much goodwill left over from his relative glory days that Sega probably hasn't thought of getting a successor, or even a co-writer.

The IDW/Sega cabal needs another professional writer, but unfortunately none has so far been forthcoming. And the Fans don't count; Mania got produced because Christian et al. already had a foot in the door with their remakes of the old games. They won't just hire Slashy or AAR or AWF or whoever just because 10% of /sthg/ likes them. So if not him, then whom? I don't have an answer and neither does Sega, so here we are.

Characterfags are fags. Who knew?

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Look man, like I said, its obligation.

Sega isn't going to give IDW the rights to NiGHTS, Ecco, Vectorman, and all their other IPs if this book flops, now will they?

lmao at orbot

... yes? I'm pointing out that Sonic has a bloated cast, which it's because more new characters keep being created, but that are only used for one moment, and then, immediately shelved off, and still are shelved for several years. Fang, Mighty, The Babylon Rogues, Honey, everyone that has stopped to appear altogether: they got affected by that, and recently, we now have Archie characters that may never appear again. This habit harms and bloats further the cast of Sonic, and it still does. It's serious problem.

And my suggestion to this, is to stop creating new characters for once and all, because, again, Sonic's cast is already REALLY bloated, and perhaps this has been the case since Adventure 1. In my opinion, I think the solution for this, is to eliminate any ridiculous mandate that prevents any character to come back, and focus on the deprecated and old characters, to bring them back, and to try to make them be regulars and veterans, or side-characters. In that way, this will satisfy both the old fans, for obvious reasons, and new fans, because they will be surprised at it and believe it's a "new" character.

I'm not sure if I'm following you. What are you trying to imply here?

>Characterfags are fags.
Oh, geez, dude. I'm so sorry if I just think that the deprecated characters, especially in a franchise like Sonic where one of its appeals lie in the characters themselves, have potential to explore, be written better, and begin to appear regularly.

Well, since I'm acting like a fag, then okay, I will stop being like a fag, and just sit and watch comfortably, forever and always, more and more new characters being created and then threw away, in a infinite looping, continuously bloating further and further the Sonic's cast until God knows when it will it stop, and never stopping.

No practice I guess.

No stake in this argument but that second reply made me cringe.

If that really made you cringe, then I guess that means I'm awful at appearing sarcastic while still argumenting. Whoops, sorry.

My second reply, all it is trying to say, is that it's silly to be labeled as fag because I worry about the bloated Sonic's cast and its continuous increasing in size year after year, and that I think old and obscure characters should be brought back and be used more regularly and better. Especially, when this is Sonic we're talking about, that has one of its appeals being in the characters themselves. In fact, it's not far off to claim most franchises DO have part of their appeal on their characters, is it?

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>Chocola
Had to look him up, funny how they kept building characters and adding little additions in every game back then, I kinda miss that.

So how likable is Shadow in this comic?

>You'd show them Bootleg FF getting Bootleg Robotocized and they'll just go REEEEEEE.
>Even those fans aren't THAT autistic.

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Read issue 5-6 and 9-12 and decide for yourself.