Sonic the Hedgehog IDW Comic Megathread

In Mecha’s flashback in Issue #2, Sonic and Knuckles’ eyes are conspicuously corrupted, preventing the reader from seeing if they are Classic styled or not. Likewise, Eggman’s appearance is in silhouette so as to obscure his outfit.

I suspect this was a deliberate effort on the part of the writer and/or artist to include the classic designs (i.e. how they “should” look in that time period) without compromising Sega’s preferred branding. The same often occurred in flashbacks with classic Eggman in Archie post reboot.

No, their quills and body sizes don’t quite match that of the classic designs, but I think the intent is apparent.

 

They also missed an instance in Issue #4, when Mecha Sonic remembers Robotnik trying to use the device, but they used his modern design despite, as far as we know in the timeline, Mecha Sonic was lost before the design change (however you view it).

 

That doesn’t necessarily need to be a memory of Mecha’s, rather a flashback for the courtesy of reader. Mecha could have gotten the information about the Egg Noggin secondhand. It would be a bit weird for Eggman to be experimenting on and eventually discarding this side project during the events of S3&K.

Alternatively, Mecha might have been recovered and rebuilt by Eggman after S3&K before being fully discarded sometime in the modern era.

 

Am I misremembering or wasn't mecha sonic in the egg carrier during SA1
If that's so then when the egg carrier ended up on scrapnik island it could've just had him in it.

 

MKIII was on the Egg Carrier, this is MKII. That said yes, that flashback isn't a literal Mecha Sonic memory, and there's no indication it has to have happened before Adventure.

 

I've been thinking a lot about this issue and particularly Mecha Sonic within the past 24 hours and man I really appreciate the parallelism between Metal Sonic, Mecha Sonic and Surge, intentional or otherwise.

Spoiler: Overpowered arc, Scrapnik Island 4

Of course, all three are made as imitations of Sonic and are attempts to improve upon the original, and Sonic has tried to give each of them a chance at a new life. With Metal, he failed because Metal's so unfailingly loyal to Eggman (hardcoded or otherwise); with Surge, it was because she couldn't see a future for herself where she existed in Sonic's shadow, even if she had managed to break free of Starline's control; finally, he succeeded with Mecha, who was originally willing to die, but saw hope in Sonic's encouragement to live for himself and free of anyone else's control. Metal cannot waver and will never reform, Surge was able to rebel but can't bring herself to reform on Sonic's terms, while Mecha has rebelled against the will that once controlled him and has reformed to become someone finally able to live for tomorrow.

I just think that's really neat, y'know?

 

Just wanna say congratulations to Mr.Barnes and the entire IDW crew.

 

Sonic Adventure's Mecha Sonic Mk. III was in the entrance to Final Egg, situated in the Mystic Ruins jungle, not the Egg Carrier.

 

Am I the only one who gets rubbed the wrong way by this miniseries? (I'll assume no, but I'll pretend like I am for the sake of a ramble)
To me, it feels way more awful for all these robots to still be alive in this particular way than even just being mindless or mostly mindless servants or straight up destroyed. On top of that, it almost feels like "trampling over sacred ground" in a sense. Like the bad part of having "recognizable" stuff in the Sonic series. I understand why writers would want to tell a story like this and "progress the flow of time" but it just feels like it's too far gone to the point I was genuinely expecting it to be all just a dream. It isn't and it's kind of a living nightmare that gets brushed off as a positive thing.
But whatever - it's out now, it exists, and I'll just have to sit with it. At least I have something to channel arguments against in a COMPLETELY different robot-related story idea (not Sonic)

 

In what way, may I ask?

Like, why is it worse for them to live instead of being destroyed? And how does it trample over sacred ground?

 

Wait, was that retconned in? I'm trying to remember if they've specified that the robots now run off the animals instead of being used as CPUs as they originally were, outside of Sonic Prime saying so...

 

I think back to Gamma. We saw every bit of his life. He didn't know anything but what Eggman told him to do and a very vague sense of the need to preserve others like him until the will of the animal inside him overpowered him with the urge to search for and destroy each of the E-Series to free other animals and search for its family. Without Eggman and without that animal, there is no purpose to him. It's hardly free will. He would have nothing to do if he didn't have to die to complete his own directive. It's life without meaning.
What happens when all these "Scrapniks" have no mission to complete? All they care about is getting off the island and finding others like them. Presumably they will live indefinitely and eventually there will be no more Eggman's Robots to create more of them... what happens then?
This is the problem with every "free-willed" Robot in the series. Metal Sonic wants to kill Sonic to be the "real" Sonic. Then what? Omega wants to prove he's the most powerful Eggman creation by eliminating every other Eggman creation from the equation - then what? Gemerl now lives to protect Cream the Rabbit - one day she'll die. Then what? They might as well all go sit in a cave somewhere if they all have ideas of self preservation beyond that. Otherwise, they should self-destruct.

Like this, most of the units that woke up and "repaired" had absolutely no way to think for themselves in a real way and are now just... powered up from nowhere, as if they have souls. It implies that could happen to litterally any of the mass-manufactured robots we slaughter endlessly. We're now committing genocide on this sentient species because their hearts were animals and that's no good. (And think of all the ones that were made during Sonic Forces...) Everything IDW does just makes the world even harder to feel positive about the future for.

As far as "sacred ground" goes, I guess it just feels wrong to use the characters they did in the ways they did to me. As I said I understand why a writer would go there because nothing can be the same forever but the life without purpose as I explained above is pretty much my personal nightmare and it feels like what they were given even if that's not the way they intend for it to come off. It's the same fate Shadow is living with now because I guess he decided nothing matters in shadow, never did anything after doing GUN training and just waits for Sonic to come in rage so he can beat him at whatever the fuck he's doing today.

 

Sonic just gave them that answer with Mecha Sonic.

It's the problem with free will in general.

Tell me, if you didn't set your own goals, what is your purpose? Why do you exist beyond your mum and dad had a fun night and here you come months later?

Life is meaningless, which is what makes it beautiful. We set our own purpose in life, and now those robots can as well. Life is meaningless so we can give it meaning. Their existence is meaningless, so they can give it meaning.

 

Not originally, but with the recent continuity changes I've no idea.

They were originally used for AI, according to Sonic Adventure's promo, which makes so much more sense since lifeforms are notoriously energy inefficient and require far more input to maintain when compared to the energy output, but the brain is the most advanced computer in the world:

Also why I find The Matrix laughable with the "human batteries" concept they had.

EDIT: Just got shown TailsTube #2 where Tails says they're caught and used as Living Batteries. So yeah, they've overwritten it. Won't get into my thoughts on that here though.

 

Spoiler: Scrapnik #4

Aside from the SMBZ reference, I love the apparent reversal of Metal Sonic's death scene from the OVA mixed with a little of Toy Story 3's climax. The whole "I can hear your thoughts" thing actually feels inspired by the OVA now that I think about it, which is not a bad way to build off a redemption story for Mecha since it worked in a way for Metal in that episode.

 

Honestly, despite having been with the franchise for…god, almost 20 years now, I don’t think I have ever come across the animals being CPUs as an official explanation in all that time, and the animals being batteries is an easy and entirely reasonable assumption to make. In fact, I remember this being specifically referenced as far back as Archie’s Genesis arc for the 20th anniversary, when Rotor fixes a destroyed Buzz Bomber but the gang still has to ask a Flicky to power it.

This is all to say that it’s hardly a new thing, and the idea of the animals being CPUs was apparently scarcely brought up after the turn of the millennium (assuming it was an oft-mentioned and well-known fact before then, which I doubt).

 

https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic_Adventure_Stylebook.pdf&page=46

Gamma's Japanese profile in the Sonic the Hedgehog Character Manual/Official Stylebook, circa Sonic Adventure 1, says that Eggman's robots extract bio-energy from the animals inside them. So the explanation was inconsistent back then.

The bio-energy explanation is also on Gamma's Sonic Channel profile: https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/character/gamma.html

 

Hmmmm…while the last issue of the main comic was underwhelming a bit to me -it’s not bad, it was the direction I expected it to take and makes sense, but kinda went a bit too…fast? Doesn’t help that the first Surge confrontation was the best comic content ever and it’s peak - , i find the last Scrapnic Island issue to be the extreme opposite , it was such a satisfying conclusion, really really cool, with some of the best drawings-this whole run in general had such a great artstyle and coloring- , I think this storyline and those 4 issues are just my personal favorite sonic comic period , it’s perfect, and can’t wait to see how they will weave it into the main comic , but it’s perfect standalone story