There's a bit of irony to this... SatAM ended on a cliffhanger that has not and probably never will receive a proper, official conclusion. And since the IDW series is going to be rebooting stuff, this now means that the Archie comic has also ended on a cliffhanger that will likely never receive a proper, official conclusion. I'm starting to think anything involving the Freedom Fighters is cursed. :v: Regardless, I'm interested in where this series will go.
What was the cliffhanger really post reboot? Everything seemed to be wrapped up after the world was put back together.
I knew IDW was going to be the perfect home for Sonic. They already know dang well what we want and are delivering in spades. Beyond thrilled to see Ian back where he belongs! If we can just at LEAST keep the SatAM crew around somehow, this comic will be a dream come true. But I'm reluctantly understanding of Sega wants to distance themselves from the non-gaming universes... For now anyway.
Mega Drive. The third part was never released, with The Next Level ending on a cliffhanger intended to lead into Overdrive.
I think a complete do-over is for the best. The Archie comics have a truckload of baggage going back to the 90s that was never properly offloaded even after the reboot, from a mixture of SoJ not giving a shit for a long time about how Sonic was adapted to bizarre worldbuilding ideas from writers before Flynn came along... The entirely of the Archie run is a messy, messy thing, even if a lot of people have nostalgia for it.
Having a complete do over is kinda needed, I agree. But my biggest fear is still that this will be restricted to the mainline canon cast only. With all the baggage and problems that came from all these original characters I honestly can't blame SEGA if they want to keep it simple, it just stinks that it might have to be that way. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
IDW did state there would be some original characters. Nothing else specific was said. But from everything I heard in the panel, Sega does have it's restriction, but IDW does seem like they know their boundaries and wouldn't say that if they didn't mean it.
It also sounds vaguely like they may not be as restrained as they were under Archie. For now anyway. But that's just gleaming loosely, and could very much be untrue.
Yeah, the panel supposedly said that the restrictions for IDW will be slightly more lax because for once all of the paperwork will be in order, they know firmly what they can and can't do, and have a head writer who knows what he's doing.
It helps that they have 26 years of Sonic to work with now, instead of tagging along from almost the very start and thus being subjected to as much a crisis of identity as the series itself had.
I'm just ecstatic that IDW (and by extension Sega) understand the lightning in a bottle that is Ian Flynn to this series. They would be hard-pressed to find another writer that have his degree of experience/passion for the series. Desperately hoping this means that the next main-series game will utilize him as the main writer instead of him being lost in the shuffle under Graff.
I'm excited about Flynn being on this as well, but does this mean that he'll be working on Cosmo from Archie and IDW Sonic simultaneously?
Yeah? You do realize comic book writers are juggling multiple books almost their entire career right? They don't make enough off one book to make a living and there's always the risk of a book being cancelled. Being committed to two books is lightweight tier.
My bad, I knew artists worked on multiple projects at once but not writers. I kinda have a basic understanding of freelancing where of course it's project to project and not away stable, so you're right in that it would be perfect for writers like him to work on multiple projects at the same time. Especially considering that he has an amazing track history with the Sonic, Mega Man and TMNT among others.
If the panel Q&A was any indication, Sonic fans don't know shit about how the comic industry works. I'm sure tons of people have this same question.
Just a little clarification: I kinda thought comic writers worked in a similar fashion to the TV industry where let's say Flynn works on 7 issues of Sonic in one go, then goes to Mega Man for 7 issues and then returns back to Sonic. Not in the sense where it's work on one Mega Man issue, then work on one Sonic issue, then work on one TMNT, then back Mega Man. Either way I could be entirely wrong about everything.
"Transformers-level freedom" is a pretty good sign, though - IDW has been pretty free with the Transformers side of things, including making Megatron and Starscream good guys (well, as good as Starscream is ever gonna get, he's as manipulative and power-hungry as ever, but his amibitions are at least directed towards a tangibly positive cause). Granted, I doubt we'll see Eggman ever switch sides long-term or anything like that, but it seems IDW and Sega have an understanding that flexibility is good.
