/sth/ - Sonic The Hedghog

>>52

I started with the Archie comics, didn't bother to read much of the Sonic X ones. I've screenshots of the Fleetway comic but never found any issues to read. Is STC-O any good?

I've read a lot of Archie, but hardly all of it. Most people these days say to jup in at issue 160, when the new writer (well, he's hardly new anymore really) took over and the art style became more in line with Sega's style. I started there and generally enjoyed what I read up to around 235 where I took a break. Sonic Universe was pretty good too, other than the Mobius 30 Years Later issues.

The earliest Archie comics are fine if all you want is a series of puns strung together by sub Saturday Morning cartoon plots, and once Penders starts getting more control it turns to shlock.

>>132

> The filename on that 1st image

>>131

It's on hiatus now isn't it?

>>135

It was cancelled due to financial reasons following Archie's failed Kickstarter.

>>136e

Failed kickstarter?

>>137

Archie is dying.

>>138

Not really dying, they just don't have enough funds to support all of their comics which is why they are axing everything except their top selling titles.

>>145

I wonder what his backstory's going to be.

>>150

Boom and MM died. What else did?

Archie, by exclusion of parts, is the best modern-era Sonic-like comic. The closest to an actual good SEGASonic comic. Remove the Sonic element, it's not as good as hailed, though, I feel. Even in the new streamlined version it feels too convoluted, too "connected", as if the plot's trudging along instead of characters interacting. Like the blandest Superhero comics.

When it hits, it's great though. I wish we had more self-contained stories that aim for greatness instead of being hijacked by a larger arc. There's a reason people keep remembering Thicker than Water at this point, it's pretty much the best story the comic's had in years.

StC at the start was the best Sonic comic, in the sense of being an adaptation. It kept true to the lore given to them by SoA until circa the Saturn era.

As a comic itself though, it had a rough start (focusing on Sonic strips here). The Mark Millar stories are just random nonsense, and it took a while until Nigel Kitching managed to make something worthwhile out of it. Once he does though, I feel it's generally a good comic for kids, independently of the Sonic connection. It's got the British cynical humour, it's got a very 2000AD-ish look to it, the action, the somberness, and then to avoid going full grimdark, you got Lew Stringer writing nicely-painted rhyming stories about Grimer causing bananas to rain.

StC-O flounders a lot more, but I also cut them a lot more slack- it's a fanzine, it's not a professional rag, floundering is to be expected. There's an annoying pattern of unsatisfying climaxes building up, though, as seen in the latest issue.

>>145

I'm not gay, but dayum

>>175

The Shadow arc was okay, but the rest are a bit average. STC-O haven't got their memorable shit yet.

Archie seemed like it wanted to incorporate some of the STC elements into it at points. Have STC Super Sonic in one issue, and some of the characters making a cameo in another issue. It'd be great if they took some of the ideas and ran with them, like the Metallix faction.

Didn't Kitching make an issue for STC-O?

>>182

He wrote a story that doesn't really connect with anything StC-O specific- you can read it after the Adventure arc and it works. It's about Johnny being a martyr and Sonic having matured.

>>184

Still great he contributed to the adaptation. Eventually maybe he'll assist more and give a sense of direction.

>>189

It'd need him getting too involved, the man has better stuff to do. And the problem isn't a lack of sense of direction, there IS a direction things are heading to and it is quite cool, the only problem is managing to sell those directions with the necessary punch- hard to do on a 6-issue-a-year schedule, harder still when the writing seems to be afraid to go entirely on a climax, maybe for fear that the consequences of it would then also last years.

>>202

>6-issue-a-year schedule

It'll eventually pick up. Hopefully.

Still appreciate it since it's fans continuing it.

>>52

As a hardcore Sonic autist since the beginning, I always wanted more than the games. But the first two shows got cancelled, Sonic Underground was shit, and as a young kid who wasn't allowed to wander into seedy-looking backroom stores, I wasn't even aware that comic books were still being actively produced.

As a side note, by the time Sonic X aired, I hated it because instead of being about Chaos and Project Shadow and shit like that, like the games that were relatively recent, it was about going to another world and hanging out with some kid appeal character. I was aware they eventually tried to adapt a few games, but I was still mad that they were changing it so much to incorporate the alt-universe and Chris Thorndyke stuff.

It wasn't until around '06 that I finally found a place to get comics. So I wander in and I see that there are actually Sonic the Hedgehog comics. I grab an issue off the stands along with an issue of Superman and some other Marvel and DC stuff that had characters I was into.

I get home and I start reading, and I don't understand a single thing that is going on in any of these comics. I knew there were tons of issues before, but I thought each issue would be like a sequel. Like how I can still understand Sonic '06 well enough even if I didn't play Sonic Adventure 2. Or how I can understand Superman Returns even if I haven't seen the first four. But no, each one begins in the middle of a story, and ends in the middle of a story. No sense of beginning, middle, and end. No sense of conclusion. But most importantly, no sense of a beginning, leaving me utterly confused. You'd think Sonic would be better with this than most comics, but not really.

But the Sonic comic in particular left me very bewildered. Aside from Sonic and Robotnik (actually, I don't remember if Robotnik was actually in the issue), I didn't recognize a single one of these characters. Then I thought way back and realized, oh yeah, I do vaguely remember these guys. They're from that show I used to watch. Well, some of them are, at least. "Didn't that show end over a decade ago? Funny that the comic is still about these guys. But maybe it will be interesting to see them interact with Knuckles and other newer characters." But no, they don't. These characters don't share the spotlight with Knuckles and the rest, they just take the whole spotlight. The comic isn't about the concepts or even the characters from the games that made me pick it up in the first place, it doesn't feel like Sonic at all. So that was the last Sonic comic I picked up for a few years.

Years later I heard about some "Sonic Genesis" thing where they go back and actually adapt the first few games. The covers looked awesome and I waited for months to pick these up, only to be met with total mediocrity. And aside from this short story, which wasn't even important overall, the comics still had almost nothing to do with the games. But by this point I was becoming a pretty big comicfag, and if I could understand the DC Multiverse and Hypertime, I can understand this. So I read a lot of older Archie comics (even though they were shit) and kept going with the new ones, which were at least okay, now, since I found a good jumping on point, I could understand a bit more, but I was still very disappointing that I wasn't seeing stories that had anything to do with the games.

Sonic/Mega Man: Worlds Collide is by far my favorite Sonic comic, largely because they cut the SatAM and Archie original shit and it feels like it could actually fit in with the games, it actually feels like part of the same series. And after Worlds Collide they got rid of most of the Archie original shit and we're just left with SatAM stuff, which is not nearly as bad, and they try to make it so SatAM happened in the games universe, rather than some of the games sorta kinda happened in the SatAM universe. So I like the comics a lot now. But I still wish the Freedom Fighters weren't the actual stars of the book, but were instead supporting characters like Team Dark or The Chaotix, maybe getting their own arcs in Sonic Universe now and again. If they did that, this would finally be the Sonic adaptation I always wanted.

Actually, no Shadow Fall is my favorite Sonic comic. That shit was the absolute best. It felt like a legitimate sequel to one of the games, built the world in a way that they had more characters to use in the comics, but didn't contradict anything from the games. It doesn't distance itself from the source material, for once, it only adds to it. Plus Flynn is generally a good writer and makes even concepts I don't like into comics I can stomach reading.

>>290

The pink one totally looks like a prototype Amy though, or at least like she helped inspire Modern Amy's design. I mean look at her. She's just Amy without the Sonic nose.

>>280

> blue arms

CWC would throw a fucking fit.