You're the first person I see wanting that. It would've been clutter on a fight that worked great exactly because we got to focus on Bass and Metal for a whole issue.
http://swagmagnet.com/?p=428 http://www.halloweencomicfest.com/Home/1/1/78/1191?stockItemID=STK621221
That may actually be a mishap on SwagMagnet's part. SwagMagnet says it's the first issue, but Halloween Comic Fest doesn't list a number, so it may be wrong.
Heard about that right after posting. A lot of comics on the list were listed as #1s, so it didn't really surprise me either way. Promo comics tend to do that. Edited it anyway, though. Thanks. EDIT: Oh hey, this issue has the exact same art team as SSSM9, which has the Lost World story. So it's probably that.
So SDCC is going on, has anything leaked from archie's booth this year like with last years Metal Sally thing? EDIT: Oh and hello 12 level master troll!
Stadium has some stuff up from the Archie panel at SDCC, including some looks at new things on their way. http://www.sonicstadium.org/2013/07/images-from-the-sonicmegaman-panel/ Second shot has a look at 255's cover, showing Bunnie, Nicole, and our mystery glove man. Iron King, maybe? Really digging Nicole's redesign.
So any reasoning behind redesigning everyone all of the sudden? A lot of the designs worked fine I thought, like Nicole's or Uncle Chuck's. Even older Sega characters that never got an official upgrade have had their designs touched, like Mighty and Ray (Oddly they got redesigned randomly mid their Universe arc). Just seems kinda odd.
The logic that I'm seeing: make it more like official Sega designs. Is the character female and not wearing anything over their chest or crotch? Clothe 'em. (This mostly affects Sally.) Is the character barefoot? Can't have that! Shoe 'em. (This affects Rotor and Nicole, and even Bunnie's robo-feet look more like boots than paws.) Is the character Antoine? Make him more naked. (I... don't get this one.)
It seems that the second Genesis Wave has brought about the one fate worse than roboticization -- Uekawization! (What are those things in Nicole's hair? They look like electrical plugs...) Rotor looks like he was was left off the roster of Sonic the Fighters. I can actually live with Antione being shirtless... But what's the deal with that tail? Or what I assume is his tail... Sally looks like she could be Tails' literal Aunt Sally now.
Hm. I... am conflicted. A lot of it has to do with my own nostalgia, but a couple of designs rub me the wrong way. I like the Bunnie on the far left , but not the Sega-ified version to the right of it. I really liked Nicole's previous design; the prongs on this one is a little much. Antoine's design for me is the weirdest. His coat gave him a sense of class and separated him from the generic background characters. The way he looks now makes him look a lot less unique. Rotor's design is fine, though, it's similar to the re-design they gave to Vector to make him in-line with his Sonic Heroes design. Sally's new look I do like, though.
Ant's coat was the coat the guardsmen used before being replaced by homoerotic beavers and bears with bonnets. It's very generic.
Even if the design of the coat is generic, that's not what TheKazeBlade was arguing. Throughout the comic, male background characters are almost always shirtless, and most (all? It's been awhile since I've last read the comic) male main characters are shirtless too. Antoine's coat separated him from both of those aspects, and now that it's gone, Antoine now looks a lot more generic as a result. Basically, it was the mere existence of the coat that made Antoine stand out, not the design of the coat itself.
Exactly, that's a much better explanation than I gave KKM, I'm aware of the origin of his coat and how it's currently being used by the council, but the fact is, without it Antoine now looks like one of the countless generic background fur-covered mammals that the majority of New Mobotropolis' population consists of.
Fits his personality development truthfully. The polished soldier getup was largely a link to his pompous royal guard gimmick from before. Now he's 'developed' into a generic muscle limited to background scenes they evaluated an attire to express his personality and come up with...nothing. Most of the alterations here just seem kinda cheap attempts to make the Freedom Fighters flashier and the whole shock value with 'IT'S CHANGED!'. Reminds me what they did to the Crash Bandicoot characters. Granted their designs were always all over the place in the comics (Bunnie was already gratuitously overhauled for fanservice early in the comics run, so there's little more of her to tarnish) and unless this is the sign of a new writing method for Ian, their personalities will likely remain as generic as before too. I'm kinda left nonplussed about it.
I really can't understand your point about "French stereotype" being more interesting then "Character who fought to control his French stereotype-ism but is still a bit naive and pompous".
Largely because I rarely see the naive or pompous bit, at least outside very small ineffective jokes to remind us of what he formally was. The original Ant was very one note but at least his character was vibrant enough that he stood out and had affect on the plot (if usually negatively), his current form was made more competent, albeit to the extreme of having all his abrasive aspects diluted so he takes the form of another interchangeable soldier that rarely makes much difference to how things roll. In fact most of the Freedom Fighters par Sonic have more or less ended up the same. Their personalities are so 'normal' and bland now that they rarely seem to able to pivot any real change in the story, a probable reason for the recent complaints of repetition. Antoine's newer characterization is only depthful in hindsight. If you read the comics from the later points and had no idea he started off as Sonic's Straw Loser you'd likely think he was another flat extra. That's not 'character development' to me.
