New article about Sonic the Comic on Eaglemoss's website, HeroCollector.com: https://www.herocollector.com/en-gb/Article/sonic-the-comic Eaglemoss are known for their partwork publications, mostly figurines and graphic novels, including the recent Sonic the Hedgehog Figurine Collection. In other news, here's STC:O's 2020 Sonic the Comic Fan Survey that "may prove important": https://twitter.com/LTDangerous/status/1290644923033755654 https://t.co/4ewrzWzXyk?amp=1
Love reading how Burton related the series to 2000AD and it's success - quite personally interesting to me considering the very first issue of 2000AD I actually bothered to pick up myself had the A.H.A.B. story by the combination of Kitching and Elson.
So I found out something interesting the other week which I always suspected but had a first hand account now from someone who I'll have to keep annon. Apparently. Sega owns the rights to STC. Apparently they retained all the rights including the publication rights after the comic was cancelled. A while ago Rebellion effectively bought Egmont Fleetway's entire back catalogue and it seems STC isn't included in it. Edit: OMG!! https://twitter.com/mikeoholic/status/1291054266556137473?s=19
God yes I would buy the shit out of StC compilations. I have hope considering hints that are in that survey.
I don't think the survey and this tweet are related. I did once ask the STC guys if they would ever consider kickstarting a physical compilation of some of the STCO strips and the response was that they had discussed it but since they're on good terms with Sega they wouldn't want to risk it with something like that. But I'm not sure Sega would do anything since there have been other Sonic comic style books released. Either way... Gimme an official STC omnibus please.
I would adore a physical collection - bot how to do it? Even just just the main Sonic strips would be amazing... Although personally the Knuckles side stories were my personal highlight. This needs to happen Edit when i re-read the article linked above: LOL!!!! Even back in the early 1990s, THEY KNEW ABOUT THE TEETH The Sonic Movie early designs last year have no excuse
The big question I have regarding STC reprints today is.... Do they have the original scans? Because STC pages were not done digitally and whilst the art was returned to the artists, Elson has sold off tons of his work. Carl Flint has sold tons of his. Mick McMahon has sold off all his artwork. Casanovas has died and his original art hasn't been found. And Nigel Dobbyn sold around 95% of his work before he passed last year. If they don't have the original scans, the only way I can see them doing it is from scans of physical issues which.... Good Lord would be slow expensive and have a host of problems in itself!
I would hope so. Egmont-Fleetway had a seemingly complete archive of the necessary assets in 2001, since they'd spent years reprinting the old stuff. If Sega truly does have the rights to STC, these assets should, in theory, be in their possession. Unless they lost them, or never asked for them. In the case of Star Wars, LucasFilm owned all the rights to the 1970s Marvel comics, so when Dark Horse got the license they had access to all of those old assets and were able to reprint them. The same thing happened again when Marvel got the license back and started reprinting Dark Horse's Star Wars comics. Similar things have happened with comics like Transformers, G.I. Joe and Ninja Turtles over the years. I know IDW did a reprint book of the UK Transformers comics, for example. But this is all counting on Sega (Europe? Japan?) having their shit together, which isn't always a safe bet... It's viable. It's absolutely less than ideal, but it's viable. You can buy facsimile editions of old Beano annuals, which are produced from scans. They can get away with having a bit of a "worn" look to them though, given the old-timey nature of it. STC reprints would probably need to look more pristine, so might need some touch up if scanned from the printed page (being able to see the other side of the page on white areas due to thin paper, etc). But glossy paper comics from the 1990s should scan "cleaner" than 80 year old Beano books anyway. I know that when Marvel were putting together some of their Marvel Masterworks hardcovers (working from old film) they'd put a call out to the art collector community, to see if anyone owned the original art and could scan them at the appropriate dpi. Anyone who did so would get a special thanks credit in the book. Richard Elson would digitally colour his later Sonic work, so it's possible he might still have those files on a hard drive somewhere. I really want these books to happen, even if some compromises are necessary. I'd certainly pay a premium price for them.
... You know Elson actually might still have that info. I spoke to him a lot a few years back and he still has the invoices for the Sonic Yearbooks. Including who did all the other unknown artwork and scripting. I really need to ask him about that again since it would be good for the wiki completion.
Any and all behind the scenes info would be inherently interesting. It would be neat to know the time frame he worked on the Yearbook, since they're usually given a big lead time.
There's an interview with Deborah Tate in the second half of this episode of Panel Borders: https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/panel-borders-7-october-2020-ladies-of-the-lakes/
STC 30th anniversary convention in York this weekend, Saturday 20th May! The Kickstarter for the event was a couple of months ago, but general tickets for it are available via the Google Forms link in this tweet: https://twitter.com/SonicTheComicUK/status/1658026636623618048 Nigel Kitching, Richard Elson, Carl Flint, Lew Stringer, Ferran Rodriguez, Richard Burton, and Deborah Tate are all due to attend. There's also going to be a video Q&A with various people from the IDW comics. Unfortunately due to Behind The Scenes Drama, the Sonic the Comic the Podcast team (Dave Bulmer, Abby Bulmer and Chris McFeely), and Stuart Gipp from Retronauts won't be attending. Spoiler: Drama details From what I saw from what was said publicly, that happened because the organisers had a heated discussion about whether a particular person deemed to be unsafe (I don't know who but AFAIK it wasn't someone involved with the comic) should be allowed to attend as a trader or even as just an attendee, and who had responsibility for informing them that they weren't welcome. That person ultimately won't be attending but those guests withdrew because of how it was handled. https://twitter.com/sonicpodcast/status/1642854045575528453 https://twitter.com/ShayMay_/status/1642631373381935106 The organiser posted screenshots of their group chat on Twitter, but they've since been deleted.
Nigel Kitching is returning to the Sonic series! He is writing a story in Sonic the Hedgehog's 900th Adventure! https://twitter.com/IDWSonicNews/status/1659570095453257730
I started Sonic the Comic but did not make it very far before quitting. That, combined with the fact that was some time ago, makes it to where I have no idea what this means for comic, but it is intriguing. If you had to describe to someone who had never read Sonic the Comic it's appeal and why it should be read as briefly as possible, what would you say? EDIT: reading the first page of the thread answered that kind of well, so never mind.
It's not just Kitching, Richard Elson is one of the artists. We've got the Sonic the Comic duo back for what I suspect is one last rodeo, since Kitching noted in the Exit: Sonic of Sonic the Comic - Online! that that would be his last story. That turned out to be a lie, but a lie I am fully onboard with! Still, I suspect this will be his actual final Sonic the Hedgehog story, unless we get a Sonic the Comic 2. Unlikely, but how likely was this?
To be fair, when Kitching said that Exit Sonic would be his last Sonic story he probably thought there was no chance of returning for an official product. I highly doubt we’re getting a Sonic The Comic 2 from IDW but maybe he’ll pen a story or two in the future.
I was at the STC convention (it was great!) and Nigel Kitching confirmed that although Richard Elson is doing a cover, he won't be illustrating his interior story pages - that will be done by one of the IDW artists. And he also said that this will be his last Sonic writing. While I was there I got to point out to Richard Elson how much I love the panel in my avatar. Although I think I made a bit of a faux pas: he said something about how rare it is to have a comic with a fixed ending, as they did with the SA adaptation, and I replied "Sandman is probably the biggest example of a comic having a fixed end point", to which he replied that he never finished Sandman because he stopped when Sam Kieth stopped drawing it soon after it started. Oops! Lew Stringer, Ferran Rodriguez and Carl Flint also seem lovely. I asked Richard Burton about how he went about hiring people to do the video game news and reviews when launching the comic, since his experience was more the comics side of things, and it sounds like he was more into video games and knew more about the people in that scene than I'd always assumed. (He also seemed a bit confused when I mentioned David Gibbon (the STC/Ceefax reviewer) and thought I meant David Gibbons (the Watchmen artist), which I thought might happen!) Also thanks to the person in the queue behind me - whose name I never got - who helpfully snapped photos of me with Ferran Rodriguez, Richard Elson and Nigel Kitching! Edit: Wonchop posted a nice side by side comparison of the Yearbook and its original art here: https://twitter.com/Wonchopmonkeyma/status/1659993685096820739
