Sonic the Hedgehog IDW/Current Western Comic Megathread

I think appreciating Surge as a character is something you need to read Imposter Syndrome to do. On a surface level she’s just another dark counterpart to Sonic, but in practice I think she and Kit are really well-done.

 

Surge is extremely good and I think just writing her off as a other dark Sonic is doing a disservice to her.

 

Surge is different , and really good and fun to see

however, the similarities/parallels are clear to scourge, the name, the green color, even the “evil sonic” thing, it’s there and it’s intentional, she even have an “evil tails” with her to drive this point home

So really, I can’t blame anyone who compares her with scourge as the same thing and hate both, i get it

 

Surge and Kit never even remind me of Sonic and Tails while reading the book. I wouldn't know that they were copies if Starline didn't say that was his goal. I love the characters tho.

 

“Kit” comes from “Kitsune”, a Japanese fox deity in their folklore, that happens to have multiple tails, something he does achieve with his hydro powers

also he is a fennec, which is a small kind of fox

the similarities were immediate to me

 

They're also based on glitches. All of them. You know your glitches, you know the characters.

For those whom don't know of the conceptions:

Surge is based on Ashura, the Green and Black Sonic glitch in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive).
Kitsunade is based on Blue Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles: he's a copy of Tails because the Tally Screen says Blue Knuckles is Tails. This is why he's got the droopy hair and ears, they his 'dreads'.
Dr. Starline is **********, more commonly known as Wechnia, the white Knuckles from Chaotix. Hence his name, a literal starline.

They're literal glitched variations on the characters, hence being 'close enough' species: tenrecs look like hedgehogs, fennec is a species of fox and echidna and platypus are the only two monotreme (read: egg-laying mammal) species on Earth.

A Tenrec, for those whom have not seen one:

Spoiler: Images of the glitches in play

 

Kit is actually based on a more obscure actual blue Tails glitch that I’ve never seen but apparently exists.

 

I’ve not heard that myself, I think Ian’s only ever made reference to Blue Knuckles.

 

He mentioned it on one of the earlier Bumblekasts but I haven’t listened to them in a while so maybe he made a mistake back then and it was the Knuckles thing after all?

 

Y'know, I've just realised the irony:
Kitsunami is based on a glitch of Knuckles... and Starline is based on a glitch of Tails.

 

Kit is based on a glitch Ian saw as a kid where he managed to somehow turn Tails blue by messing about with debug.

 

Yeah I know, but he doesn't look anything like Tails to me. I'm not sure I would have picked up on his connections with Tails if the plot wasn't Starline trying to replace Sonic and Tails with imposters.

 

I think I found the glitch Kit is from:

 

There was some twitter drama so I feel weird finally posting about this, but, even back in the Archie days, something about the way Evan Stanley drew the characters just seems off. Like, not bad, but just off. Like I look at their face and I don't know what it is, but it just sticks out to me. Like, she's a good artist, but when I look at the face, it sets something off in my brain that says "hey, this looks a little off" and for the life of me, I still can't figure out what it is.

I figured I'd post from 3 different points in her doing Sonic comics to show what I mean. Archie, early IDW, and current IDW.

Spoiler: big images

 

I've seen these images before and I felt the same sentiment. It's really hard for me to adequately explain why, but Tails's mouth at the bottom of the second image and many of the faces in the third (Silver and Sonic's in particular) just seem very wrong.

 

Is it the middle brow between the eyes? I feel like the issue you're having is the middle brow between the eyes, specifically the angle it's coming down and how far it comes down.

Like an uncanny valley effect, where you know the eyes look off, but can't quite place it.

EDIT: Quick, terrible edit of Evan Stanley's Sonic face to see if this is the issue. It think the eyes are also sometimes in play, the way one's just ever so slightly curving while the other isn't looks strange, but you don't notice it due to the brow in Evans:

 

I’ll be honest, I didn’t like Evan’s work when it first started showing up just before the Archie reboot. I think I was dissatisfied with how she accentuated the characters’ brows (though I get the feeling the inker for that Archie image doesn’t really complement her style), but she’s developed her style since then and, while she’s still not my favourite artist (call me, Hammerstrom, let me buy you dinner!), I do think she’s a rock solid artist whose work is very consistent and just a different flavour of Sonic to me (compared to, say, Jack Lawrence, whose take on Sonic I unfortunately just can’t vibe with).

 

Evan's faces always looked somewhat weird to me, but it's as @Starduster said: she's such a solid artist I can't really hate her art, I just can't say I love it haha

 

Alright, I think I've got it figured out.

Evan Stanley's got two things happening that's throwing people off her faces:

First is the middle brow, as noted above. She tends to draw it quite the way down Sonic's face, and the angle of the descent is very steep, compared to the game where even when it's nearly touching the muzzle, it's still got a fair angle on it.

Second is the mouth. Evan tends to draw exaggerated mouths, which is fine itself, but where she places them tends to be off. For instance, in the picture with Sonic and Silver, they're at the top of the muzzle, which looks off when we're so used to it being mid-way down. And sometimes, the exaggerated mouth takes up so much muzzle space it looks like Sonic is The Thing.

Here are edits of the three examples provided, including the one above, editing the brow, mouth position and mouth exaggeration:

Spoiler

@KingOfBunnies do these edits address what you're finding off about the face you mentioned?

Now, I'm not saying I'm a better artist than Evan, just that these little factors might be the reason people are being thrown off the face.