Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[SchemingMinor]

Already knew about Ian banning people who did not align with his ideas, and when the freedom of speech is compromised, something is really wrong, especially when the idea of a forum is to exchange and discuss ideas, not to kiss someone's rear end.

Proof please. I have been on Bumbleking since the beginning and have not seen Ian pull that kind of stunt.

I have only seen people get banned for being out of hand, acting like assholes and spouting fan ideas.

[Illuminous_Orb]

Proof please. I have been on Bumbleking since the beginning and have not seen Ian pull that kind of stunt.

I have only seen people get banned for being out of hand, acting like assholes and spouting fan ideas.

This pretty much. I've lurked the place a bit, but the only times those rumors are thrown around are from the people who have been banned from overall, having a bad showing of behavior -- something that other forums would have not tolerated either. It's also from the same three people who have been banned from many other Sonic fan sites and have displayed the same level of insufferable intolerance, eventually get banned because they argue ad-nauseum, then start making rumors about the place because they never seem to learn their lesson.

[Flyboy Fox]

Adding a third. I don't post much on Bumbleking, but I've lurked there for at least a year and have never seen anyone banned who wasn't a complete waste of space anyway. And by waste of space, I mean people who refused to abide by the rules, ignored fair warnings, or typed consistently like an idiot. So I have no idea where "everybody knows" came from, because clearly most people don't feel that Ian is unfair in his treatment of fans on the forum.

[Adamis]

Adding a fourth! I'm on Bumbleking since 2006 and I've never seen Ian or the mods banning people because their opinions didn't "align with Ian's ideas". I've often contradicted Ian on some points, I've never recieved any warning or been banned. Never. That's a false rumour started by people who's been banned for valid reasons (but for them, these reasons are invalid) and/or who don't like Ian. Hello Sega forums.

In the case of BW, I don't see why he's complaining that he's been banned...He didn't respect the rules! The mods gave him numerous warnings and he didn't listen. Don't talk about "freedom of speech" (lame excuse) when you can't even respect the rules on one forum. It's easy to make a video, complaining about the fact that you've been punished without explaining why you've recieved that punition!

[Your Vest Friend]

Fifth'd, and I AM a SEGA forum user. I've not had any warnings at my stay during Bumbleking for a dissenting opinion, and my dislike of Sonally taking up so much page time is well known on their parts, amongst other decisions I feel weren't exactly for the best.

[The-Master-Board]

Already knew about Ian banning people who did not align with his ideas, and when the freedom of speech is compromised, something is really wrong, especially when the idea of a forum is to exchange and discuss ideas, not to kiss someone's rear end.

Also agree that the Genesis arc should had been a different story of it's own, heck they could had taken from there to make a comic that appeals more to the fans of the games, saddly they are using the 20th anniversary of Sonic to do a soft reboot that has the only purpose of introducing Sally and company to new readers instead of developing the characters from the games, which again pretty much shows where their priority lies. (honestly the only place where derivatives can take precedence is on fanfictions, not on a comic endorsed by Sega that barely resembles the product it is supposed to advertise, like pretty much any of the other media does)

Edited July 5, 2011 by The-Master-Board

[dirupti]

Well by that logic, Classic Eggman shouldn't make any form of appearance in the entire arc

[Skull Leader]

You do actually know that the comics have had to put up with SEGA's handling of Sonic don't you? Like trying to feed an indecisive child whose favourite food changes every two minutes; the early games in each region and origin stories are so varied and different not to mention the cartoons (of which Archie first drew inspiration from) mix together all that and you've got a pretty convoluted mess. I'd like to see you try make a Sonic comic that covers all that - from the lighthearted slapstick comedies of AoStH to the dark and gritty SatAM to the Japanese version of "Eggman" combined with the West's "Robotnik".

[Your Vest Friend]

And now to lighten the mood, Pur-Rulz presents: Pur Ruins Battle Royal.

Sally: So...you think Sonic and I are meant to be now?

Pur: Sure do, Sally! All the proof needed is in Battle Royal!

Sally: Oh, lovely! I'll bring it out and you can show me where the evidence is!

*IN THE COMIC*

Mogul: Yes, this was all part of my brilliant plan! I've been waiting to steal the Sword of Acorns from those miserable heroes, so I hired you fellows, the Fearsome Four, to do my dirty bidding. With my sorcery, I created an illusion that conjoured you into the image of the most equivalent Freedom Fighter and Chaotix member!

...Actually, I can't quite remember; who were your equivalents again, Predator?

Predator Hawk: Tails and Charmy, sir.

Mogul: Hmm...you sure? Pass me the conversion chart, Flying Frog!

Flying Frog: Mu-hu-hu-hu! Sure thing, boss!

*He passes the chart to Mogul, who reads it*

Mogul: Ah, yes, Tails to Predator to Charmy. And those lovebirds, Sonic and Sally, go through you and Lightning to--

*Blinks in shock* Oh no, oh, no no no! Pur-Rulz, I am a GOD! I am not playing a pawn to your silly propoganda machine! You ruined the writing of Ken Penders!

Pur: But I thought he'd ruined his own writing.

Mogul: I refuse to go further with this conversation, good day!

*OUT OF COMIC*

Sally: ...Ahuh, so you never supported Sonic and me at all, it was just more fuel for your fire! >:/

Pur: Well, I have to do SOMETHING while I wait for chances to see Charmy and Cream meet again in the games. :3c

Sally: Ooh, you make me SICK!

...Well, you would do if I wasn't already dead.

*End feature presentation*

So, anyone know if the preview for SU#30 comes out tomorrow? Not sure if it's then or next week, to be honest.

[BakingBluePotatoe]

so... just read 226.

What's up with Antoine's last name being "Depardieu"? I thouight it was D'Coolete!

I really like Sonic design there.... in fact, I love EVERYTHING going on. The tone.. the simplicity... I wish it could STAY this way!

So any idea what could be going on? so... Sally's "Not dead, but she is but... well, you'll see" and someone also asked if the cast would change and he said "No.. well a little. But not really. You'll see."

[Onyx Leo]

because if that were the case then why don't we see characters like Scratch and Grounder? I mean let's be honest, the comic is SatAM 2 with elemnts from the games

Edited July 7, 2011 by Onyx Leo

[Kuzu]

Just going to step in and mention that Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts are all bouncers in Mammoth Mogul's casino in issue 220.

As for my opinion on 226... I despise it. Everything that's been leading up to it, all the subplots between issues, the double crossing, the TRIPLE CROSSING... We've had about 30 issues of epic storytelling, leading up to an amazing climax... and then... The end. Green Hill zone, using the same, boring and rushed plot of Amnesia-vu, retconning the Freedom Fighters... There are multiple things they could have done with this, and ALL of them would have turned out better in my eyes. This entire plot is stupid, and I can't wait to see it over so we can get back to Nagus and the Death Egg. (Or at least have Eggman build a time machine that wouldn't make him forget his OWN MASTER PLAN WHEN HE WENT BACK TO THE PAST, CAUSING HIM TO DO THE SAME MISTAKES ALL OVER AGAIN.)

[Your Vest Friend]

Well, there's no reason one has to like that if they think what we're getting is intruding into the story in a negative way.

[Onyx Leo]

So the story sucks because its celebrating its 20th anniversary?

Edited July 7, 2011 by Onyx Leo

[SchemingMinor]

Don't you think it's a little harsh to judge a story before the whole arc starts?

I would figure that a comment about it being boring and uninspired would be suitable if this was the last issue or in the middle. Some things happen to start out slow.

But, I'm the type of person who gives things a chance until they are played out. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

At least we get classic Eggman.

Edited July 7, 2011 by Kintobor

[Marcello]

Technically the arc has started.

[The Tenth Doctor]

So, any sign of the previews for Universe yet? I'm looking forward to Scourge's story again.

BTW, at SoS I asked Ian Flynn and Tracy Yardley about Mephiles in the last one. According to Ian Flynn it wa all Tracy's idea. I asked if he would keep popping up in prison. He then said something like "Not for the next few ones but hey its a prison break."

[Your Vest Friend]

Nope. Looks like it'll be next week.

When was the last time we got some Archie Sonic news, 2-3 weeks ago?

[The-Master-Board]

What changes? the only ones I can recall from the early era was the ages of a few characters (which Archie tried to adapt in a very half-assed way, like Amy "wroging up using the ring of Acorns, giving already a bad impression of a character they never liked, or Charmy being made into a retard via brain damage). Other than that the franchise already had a very basic cast (hero, villain and side-kick), with other basic roles being covered as the years went (love interest, tough technically this one already existed in 1992, and rival). Finally when the first Adventure game came the franchise had the main cast finally established, yet the comic never managed to adapt to this change and instead continued using a cast that had already overstayed it's welcome. As for me doing that, I'm not a writer, however before the SoA forums went down we had one of the forum users (Theadvisor1234) write a series of well developed (and entertaining)stories that easely put the ones in the comic to shame for not only covering all the aspects you mentioned, but also another very important one you left out: character development (even more when the guy had an actual understanding of all of the character's personalities and how they worked and interact with each other, even Sally, whom he potrayed in a way I have not seen in years, making her likeable without having to resort to cheap shots against other characters, let alone bending the story in her favor like Ian does)

Saying they have done their best is stretching it considering how Amy's and Charmy's age retcon was handled, let alone how they contributed to the mess by messing around Sonic himself for the sake of only one character (Sally). As for trying to incorporate everything in Sonic's history that is a big lie because if that were the case then why don't we see characters like Scratch and Grounder? I mean let's be honest, the comic is SatAM 2 with elemnts from the games (like characters who only appear to be there and to comply with Sega, even when they are used as nothing more than extras/canon fodder and only given spotlight whenever they remember they exist). And lol at the stories being deeper when if anything they come off as pretentious for trying to make Sonic into something the franchise is not (like politics... WTH?), let alone when conflicts can be solved with ridiculous stuff like tea parties, or end up with very predictable scenarios, while on the other hand the games can implement more interesting stories like the one in Sonic & the Black Knight, where the notion of what is right is put into doubt. As for endorsing it, it's done by SoA, try having the thumbs up from the japanses staff at ST, considering how protective japanese people are towards their own creations and how they always made sure Sonic's character was never compromised in the media they supervise.

Changes? Ok well lets have a look.

When Archie was first licenced the games were.....for lack of a better word. Not all that much. I loooove the classics, don't get me wrong I'm pretty much a classic fanboy, but to be fair how much story could you scrounge out of the first few games? Not enough for an ongoing monthly comic. So what else was there? There was the cartoons. Archie had a choice between the Aosth cartoon (which the early issues style was very much adapted from) or the SatAM series (of which they took the characters from and later added a darker undertone to the series).

What changed? Well for one thing the backstory for Sonic was always ambiguous. In Japan "Robotnik" had apparently always been Eggman, there was no such concept as "Mobius" and Sonic's attitude was I guess less "RAD DUDE early 90's" toned than it was advertised in the West. In the UK Sonic had some convoluted backstory about Sonic being a regular brown hedgehog who only got his speed/shoes/and blue looks after he encountered a kind scientist called Dr. Ovi Kintobor. The rings and moniters and special zones were all created by him and the Chaos Emeralds were apparently a siphon for evil. Some mishap with a rotten egg sandwich and an explosion later and we had the evil "Robotnik".

Now in the US we got a backstory of Sonic always wearing out his shoes and his Uncle Chuck creating him a pair out of indestructable power rings. Chuck also adopted a young Robotnik who was a troublemaker and eventually rebelled and became the dictator from the satAM series, Sonic also meets up with Sally and the Freedom Fighters.

In Aus we had a mixture of the two and things were really confusing looking back on it. I guess I never really noticed why Robotnik was all these kinds of different guy in the stuff I owned I just knew Robotnik was Robotnik.

Back then there was no real "rules" that anybody had to stick to so each region kinda went wild with what they created for Sonic canon. Archie had to sort out that stuff, make it into what the comic was and stick with it.

When SA came about it brought with it an abundance of humans. In the Archie Sonic universe humans or "overlanders" as I understand had all but been wiped out. The solution? Was to create the Station Square setup to be an isolated community in a huge self contained eco system underground.....yeah odd but how else would you have done it? Keeping in mind retcons are shitty and how often do comic book series actually throw away all their history to start from scratch? Not all that often cuz it pisses off long time loyal fans is what!

Soooooo you think that when Adventure came around they should've just thrown out all the previous SatAM characters?? Lol. Riiiiiiight Besides a retcon (see previous piss off long time readers point) why exactly would they do that? Adapting SA and just dumping all the old characters like Sally and the FF's the characters who had "overstayed their welcome" would make no sense, and to make it make sense you'd have to write in a reasonable story explaination.

Ok Mister so how exactly would you have handled Amy and Charmy's age change? Back when they were introduced into the comics Archie had no specific ages given to them so Charmy was way older than the later mandated official age now states he is and Amy was younger. How exactly is that Archies fault? They made the characters like they wanted at the time because they had no other information saying otherwise.

Lol well Scratch and Grounder AND Coconuts actually appear in- oh wait somebody already rebuttled that. They appear as bot's Robotnik used to use but were abandoned and now they have been put to use by Mammoth Mogul in his casino.

Wait...you think Sonic and the Black Knight was a good story!? BAHAHAHAHA! oh wait let me soak it in! AHAHAHA sorry I couldn't help myself.

Who's to say what Sonic is and is not? I bet you're one of those people who get pissy at Big the cat or Treasure Hunting being "not Sonic" and therefore a sin against the games too right?

Comics and Sonic too are not all about action or just Sonic running. Hell I'd get bored of the comic if it was non-stop fighting. Fact is a comic world is a huge world, much like our own we don't just have one thing going on in it. I like the fact the comic is fleshed out and we get to see stories about Sonic's enemies, or little emotional stories like Sally chatting with Nicole, or relationship arcs and yes even politics. Hell the Marvel universe delves into talking and politics somewhat in issues and I bet you're gonna tell me Marvel who? Do they make well selling comics?

A huge deep universe is about ALL aspects of life. I could read a comic about just Sonic punching out badguys all day but without some dialogue and reasoning behind it, it fails to make me care for why Sonic is fighting. The Chaos and the crown arc is good because I actually feel some of Sonic's frustration that the council are even considering letting a villain they've previously fought take rule of their kingdom and it adds intrigue to the story to see what Sonic will do.

The fact you said SatBK has a good story and you'd rather see that adatped just makes me think I've wasted however long it's taken me to write this post. Obviously it's wasted on you. SatBK was in NO way a good story, and a terrible game at that. If you're gonna argue the point that Sonic comics need to be more like the games (which they don't) at least use a good game to make the point!

I think I'd literally vomit if the comics were denegrated to the level of making something as utter crap as Sonic and the Black Knight rather than the good writing they've got going on now.

SoA SoJ, what's the difference? SoJ seem to have the final say in most things so I doubt they would be shocked at such "blasphemy" as the Archie comic. The fact that they have made some pretty terrible decisions themselves would make them pretty big hypocrites aswell if they did.

And once again; it's a comic. It's not the games. It's never said that it's trying to be the games. If you read the start of the comic these days (have you even read the comics or are you spouting out the same generic hate for them just read from other people's posts?) they start with something along the lines of: "In a world beyond what you know from the SEGA games"

They are clearly not trying to replicate the games exactly and I say that's a good thing. Personally I like the huge deep world of Archie Sonic, I'd like them to incorporate a bit more from the games like zones and stuff, but I'm perfectly happy not seeing every game SEGA release crammed into it and the comic retconned like you want it to be everytime SEGA decide to change aspects of game Sonic.

Edited July 7, 2011 by The-Master-Board

[Marcello]

Wait...you think Sonic and the Black Knight was a good story!? BAHAHAHAHA! oh wait let me soak it in! AHAHAHA sorry I couldn't help myself.

Black Knight had a good story and was written great. One of the best in the series in that regard.

[Jason Berry]

Black Knight had a good story and was written great. One of the best in the series in that regard.

[-Mark-]

Whilst I'm not really a fan of the Archie canon, I will say this in its defence;

If you think about it, Sonic is a very difficult series to write any kind of long, ongoing story for. Considering the games themselves are pretty much entirely episodic, one-shot stories, that at best have a few small overlapping or continuing plot points between them, and that Archie are never going to have too much freedom in terms of the official, game-canon characters, they would be pretty limited with what they could do.

I mean, nobody could ever be killed off. Sonic can never really 'beat' Eggman (and still doesn't, even in Archie); Sonic is, at its core, the kind of story where, by the time the end credits roll, everything is exactly the same as it was at the start. Sure, every now and then a new character will show up, but the only characters who ever get 'killed off' are ones who were introduced for that purpose to begin with, and usually do so in their debut game (see Shadow, although we all know what happened with that).

So yeah, in that respect, I can see how the Archie universe has turned out the way it has. Yes, they certainly could have done a better job of staying true to the source material (I mean, let's face it, the comic has never been particularly faithful to neither the classic nor the modern game canons), although I suppose that's largely the fault of SatAM's blatant disregard for being faithful to the game canon itself- as little more than a continuation, Archie has of course kept that tone and style.

When the comic started, there wasn't much established within the game canon anyway- of course they were going to have to take some creative liberty with the series if they wanted the comic to last more than a handful of issues- all early adaptations of Sonic did. And by the time the game canon started to flesh itself out a bit more properly with Sonic Adventure, the comic had already been going for 5-6 years. They could hardly up and ditch more than half a decade of established continuity just to match the games (well... they could have, but I'm not sure how well-received it would have been). Yes, they tried to integrate parts of it in, but that didn't work very well either.

So yeah. I can fully understand why the comics have become the way they are, but at the same time, I still think they're a convoluted mess, for the most part. They don't really resemble Sonic that much. I'll admit, I'm very curious as to how things will continue after Genesis though. I will be a little disappointed if they literally just pick up where #225 left off, especially since they've been hinting at at least some kind of change to the overall setup of the comic.

[Your Vest Friend]

Huh, from what I've heard of SU#30, it sounds like it's retreading Journey to the East, in a way.

[King Frosty]

I heard that the series is going to end at Issue #250. Is this true? How will Ian wrap up the comic's story if this is true? ;w;

[Toby]

As long is the comic is making money, it isn't going to end. Someone's pulling your leg.