Sonic the Hedgehog IDW/Current Western Comic Megathread

It's the Fiscal Year of Shadow, clearly.

 

Don't know about these anti-IDW types but issue75 is one of the worst they've done so far, everything got rushed.

 

I've got to reason the arc over again, but I don't think I enjoyed this as much as Battle for the Empire.

 

Humble Bundle is currently running a sale on the Sonic IDW comics.

12 bucks gets you the digital releases of 30th anniversary collection, Volumes 1-8, Scrapnik Island, and 2 mostly redundant volumes.

 

Got around to reading issue #75 today. Not bad on its own, but compared to the last big milestone arc this one came off a bit flat. I still need to reread the whole thing, but my memory is telling me that most of the opportunities for big moments didn't lead to anything.

Spoiler: ramble

Mimic's identity is finally revealed, not through Tangle and Whisper's probing, or Lanolin's own deduction, but by complete accident. And then he just leaves, with the actual consequences of that getting buried for "later" (per Tangle). Hopefully that actually does come up in the following issues. The Mimic minisode in the annual was really good, but I thought that was a sign that his arc in the main book would go somewhere.

Sonic's whole moonlight as the Phantom Rider mostly gets glossed over once the stakes raise. Considering that it fits the themes of deception and trust as seen with Mimic and Clutch, I was hoping that all of those beats would come together somehow. Maybe they still will.

Surge and Kit have dropped the pretense of friendship, riding off into the distance and threatening to beat Sonic some other time. I thought the decision to have them just... reappear all buddy-buddy had potential, but that whole saga seems to have had no lasting impact on them or anyone else.

Compare this to issue 50. Surge and Kit were still figuring out their dynamic, and they both had moments of interplay (and crises of identity) with/against their counterparts, Sonic and Tails. They also had a complicated relationship with Starline, but in #50 he was busy going up against Eggman, who he was still simping for right up until Eggman revealed he'd been playing him all along. Meanwhile, Belle and Metal Sonic were working out their shared legacy as creations of Eggman, complicated by the fact that Metal kept trying to kill her. On top of all that, there was the looming threat of Eggman corrupting the planet, playing off Surge's self-conception as an experiment gone wrong, making her wonder why Sonic spares him when he causes this much damage, reinforcing the "Sonic Cycle" philosophy that was Starline's whole deal. All of those themes and relationships had been building throughout the arc, and when the time came for the double-length issue, they paid off. The game characters didn't change much, but everyone else either learned something about themselves, showed an element of their personality that was latent before, or died.

This most recent arc's stakes seemed like they were going to be similarly character-driven, but they ended up getting mostly shafted in the climax, in favor of the physical/action-based danger of the ship crashing and other smaller fires to put out. None of that is bad, but when the comic has already shown a similar level of immediate danger before, and delivered a bunch of character drama at the same time... then that becomes my benchmark going forward.

I do think this arc had a good amount of good, small moments. ("Eggstreme Gear" still makes me chuckle.) The quality floor remains relatively high. But I kind of expected the big arc finale to have more big, impactful moments.

One thing that does feel like a significant development is the Resistance base being destroyed. As we get further away from Forces, it feels less and less relevant. It also frees up Jewel, Lanolin, and the Diamond Cutters to potentially be in more interesting places going forward. There are definitely enough plot threads set up in this issue (what does Eggman need Clutch for? Who took the Chaos Emerald? etc) that could pay off in interesting ways. But are they going to pay off? Or are they going to linger through most of the next arc and then fizzle out again?

 

Alright, so not everything about these comics is terrible. Towards the very end of my time with them (Because I stopped reading around issue 59) there actually were a few things that I appreciated here...

...but my overall impression of them is still not exactly the greatest thing in the world, and this is basically just a summation of SOME of my issues here, just the ones that actually stuck out to me as I was reading and not in restrospect. A good number are pretty small. Others bother me greatly. And outside my complaints here, very little of IDW made any impression on me whatsoever.

NON CHARACTERS
I am talking about the npcs, the background characters, the regular people. I don't know what this is supposed to add to the story. But all it adds for me is annoyance.

- In issue 1, every single one of them is incompetent, pathetic, and completely helpless. They constantly fail to do the most basic of things like swinging the hammer that is literally in their hand, opening a freaking door, and so on.

- In issue 22, it is one of the background characters being stupid and selfish that leads to the HQ's downfall, amplifying my dislike for characters of this kind. And no, we're not going to do anything with this, like having a cool arc where he tries to redeem himself or something because of the mess he caused because this is Sonic IDW and therefore most helpless, incompetent background characters can only be helpless, incompetent background characters that I don't like.

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MAIN CAST
- In issue 1, Sonic and Tail's are insufferable. Cockiness and arrogance do not automatically make a character unlikable. But it's really overdone here, they come across as really full of themselves, and for the most part that is all they are.

There were multiple times throughout the issue that I wanted to put duct tape around Sonic's mouth. What probably makes it super bad is that none of his quips are even funny.

- Issue 2. The very first line that Amy speaks to Sonic suggest a history of people who fought alongside each other as equals. Which is obviously not accurate.
- Also in issue 2, Amy is taking charge, giving orders, enforcing tactics and what not. She's really matured by this point and become super capable...

...off screen. Awesome way to do "character development."

And she doesn’t show any of the spirit or energy that made the character likeable originally for most of IDW’s run.

- 3. Sonic goes from being cocky and overconfident in the previous issues, to suddenly genuinely worried about a town's fate at the beginning of this one, only to immediately be cocky again the first time he actually speaks with someone. ("Problem? What Problem?" is his assessment of the city he was just worried about) The implication almost seems that Sonic fakes his confidence for the sake of his friends.

Which is not what he does.

- Sonic is also really goofy in 3 with hyper exaggerated expressions.

- In 7, Metal is impossible to take seriously. His lines are goofy and kiddish and/or cliche with stuff like when he yells, "COWARD" when he sees Sonic retreating or when he for some reason feels the need to correct Sonic over getting his name wrong. The deadly robot warrior that carries out his mission without word or hesitation as seen in the OVA, who truly challenges Sonic in a direct way and forces him to really exert himself and go all out to win, is nowhere to be seen in this issue.

Or most issues.

Or really any issue outside the one where he becomes super neo metal and fights Sonic and Knuckles.

- All of the Deadly six still suck in IDW, including Zavok. In 22 he demonstrates incompetence by shooting down Zeena's pefectly valid concern about the opportunity to join forces with Eggman in reality being a trap in disguise. (Which it was) And then in 25 he does not take control of Orbot and Cubot who are there to sabotage his work on Eggman's behalf, believing them for no reason like a gullible idiot when they said they'd serve him freely. And in 30, after spouting completely goofy and generic villain dialogue, Zavok immediately get's beat all the way down by Sonic's friends with little effort.

I don't see how anyone takes this dude seriously in IDW.

- In 23, the old Deadly Six guy who is supposed to be the wise one or whatever spouts stupid, cliche, and inconsequential nonsense instead like, "iT wAs wIsE oF yOu tO hAvE uS bIdE oUr tImE, lEtTinG oUr hAtReD aNd aNgEr fEsTer." And then he encourages Zavok to go along with his idiotic "plan" of sabotaging Eggman's forces from the inside out, completely ignoring the possibility Zeena earlier mentioned that this is a trap. Also has some stupid dialogue in 41 as well.

- In 28 I actually recoiled at the last line from the purple Zeti, the sad one, before he is taken over.

- Throughout the Metal Virus arc we appear to be testing Sonic's desire to see the best in people, directly attacking it for some reason in a way that the games do not.

And it does not go anywhere.

- It is only very rare instances that we actually see glimpses of Sonic's true characterization peak through, of his "cool" laidback vibe. He's usually either making quips or acting really goofy. What's funny to me is that Sonic at times reminds me of the exact things people complain about in games like Colors. Perfect example is seen in the beginning of issues like 34.

- It takes until like issue 42 for an action scene to take place that put's emphasis on Sonic's main ability and thing he is known for, his speed and agility, rather than fighting.

And after this there aren't very many other ones like this.

- Shadow

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE OCS
- In issue 16, Starline sucking up to Eggman of all people is just annoying and cringy. And that's what his character is initially until we get to 18, where we get to see that his blunt and sharp criticism of a character that actually commands a degree of respect in a way is not enjoyable to read either.

He just sucks starting off.

- They do some nice stuff sometimes with Tangle. Abd they sort of try with Whisper to mark her interesting. But overall, Tangle's just kind of annoying (though I found her dialogue and disposition less so second go round) Whisper and Jewel are just kind of boring personality wise.

MISHANDLING OF TENSION/UNSATISFYING STORYELLING
- In Issue 11, we go from Metal absolutely dominating for the majority of the previous chapter, having a small hiccup before getting a supposedly even more powerful form, only to almost immediately start losing in this chapter even though it nothing really changed.

That is...

...extremely lame.

And how things work out from this point just makes Metal seem incompetent and the opposite of a threat that can be taken seriously.

- I can't really point out examples of things that aren't there. But truthfully, all throughout, even through THAT arc, IDW completely fails to generate a genuine feeling of tension, that there is a real possibility of failure.

RELIANCE ON FOREIGN OUTSIDE MEDIA FOR CONTEXT FOR DIALOGUE AND DECISIONS
Especially if that is media you have not seen, but even if it is media you have not seen in a while or just didn't care about when you did see it. It makes it hard for such dialogue and decisions to really resonate.

- Issue 1, Tail's makes a pretty good argument as to why the upcoming threat can't be Eggman, noting that the current attacks don't resemble his style. An argument that falls completely on its face if you aren't already familiar with said style. This is what we call "tell, don't show." (IDW does a lot of that when it comes to this point)
- Also in issue 1, Tail's holds back from going along with Sonic. The way the scene is done is to make it feel like some big character moment for Tails. A moment that again falls flat on its face when we aren't familiar with how he was before.
- Thankfully this is something they got away from as the comic went on.

FORCED REFERENCES IN DIALOGUE
- only one I made note of was in issue 23. But yeah. This is definitely an issue in these comics, and I die inside a little every time I see it.


But honestly…

besides all of this? If I am going to be honest my BIGGEST issue with IDW….

it’s that it’s just boring, man. Like, really, REALLY boring.

 

You do realise this is the same robot that once, before actually doing anything, evilly chuckled and boastfully declared "all living things kneel before your master/The time has come for all creatures to kneel before me!", then loudly argue with the cast as they kicked him into retreat with Super Team Sonic in pursuit?

This one I agree with fully, and mentioned in the Unpopular Sonic Opinions thread. I'll quote it over.

This one is a mandate by SEGA, so I can't fault the IDW comics, however.

 

Are Ian Flynn fans in The Room with Us Right Now?

 

Yes I am.


And while I think the concept of what is happening in Heroes is interesting, (Metal’s inability to accept he is a mere imitation of something else lighting the fire of a hatred that drives him to destroy the original no matter what, trying to gaslight himself into thinking he is the original) overall I don’t like what they do with him there either exactly because of stupid stuff like that.

The OVA’s portrayal of the character is like the sole reason I like him.

Upon closer inspection, the post you quoted from the unpopular opinions thread is a related issue stemming from the same source (that these are a follow up to the games rather than their own continuity) However, that is not the same one I pointed out.

However, in any case, I agree.

Also, it’s been too long for me to say anything with certainty. But I do remember liking Flynn’s work in Archie. I remember it just being fun.

 

I can see how people who preferred the Archieverse would feel this way, but personally I think it's better than the alternative, given the way IDW mirrors the games. In the absence of an Archie-style back catalog of comic lore, this is a decent way to make the world feel more fleshed-out. And I think that the comic handles it in a way where you can kind of infer the broader context even if the reference is lost on you. If you don't know what is and isn't Eggman's style... well, now you do, and you can now apply that knowledge to both game and comic. And I don't know how that could be shown instead of told.

Though I haven't read most of Archie, the way references to past events are handled in IDW doesn't seem all that different to how they were handled there, except that this time the references are to decade-old games and not decade-old comics.

 

A solution, a way they can show and not tell, is to simply not make references like this this early on in the comic. You can tell self-contained stories without making references to previous ones without contradicting those previous ones. That is possible.

Have things…

HAPPEN first, showing how Eggman is. And then LATER ON we can have a conversation in a DIFFERENT scenario where Tails makes an argument like this and it actually works.

We see an example of this very thing in IDW. Issue 44, Zavok threatens to return and be just as much of a menace as before if Sonic lets him and the Zeti off easy. Sonic actually struggles with this internally for just a moment, a struggle that is motivated by experiences showing what could happen if he sticks to what he has been doing.

Those experiences, what is going through his mind, are referenced and related through flashback images…


…And get this, all those flashback images are from things that we the audience had seen happen previously IN THE COMIC. We had built to this.

So they CAN do it.

And they should.

And while you can write things to where we can inference things like that sure, the bottom line is that it just doesn’t make for very satisfying and engaging storytelling to just be told things like that.

And honestly, I don’t really think it makes the world feel fleshed out. I think it just makes things feel weird and awkward as we reference things that feel like they didn’t happen in this continuity as if they did, referencing history we have not seen.

Despite all the surface level references they make and despite the stuff LITERALY taking place right after the events of one of the mainline games, IDW doesn’t really feel like it takes place in the same world as the games to me.

But that’s just a feeling. I cannot articulate why.

 

The comics are literally built upon the consequences of Forces and continues straight from there so i don’t see the issue referencing the games honestly if the whole setup is from a game in the first place, there is no pretense it’s some brand new continuity that starts from scratch

 

I think it's fair to judge the IDW series as not being the smoothest self-contained direct introduction to the Sonic franchise in general, but it's also worth recognizing that it's not completely trying to be. Sonic is a game series and IDW was only ever designed to be a companion piece to the games. But as a piece of the broader series, every single IDW story is in the upper tier of storytelling. Sonic fans don't know how good they have it, honestly. The way I see people talk about the 2000s and even 2010s stories these days while dumping on Flynn or Stanley or whoever is frankly baffling.

Archie is...well, it was Flynn being given the keys to an insane wonder labyrinth of terrible decisions made by his seniors for a decade and a half. It got to go places because it literally had to to keep from collapsing in on itself, it was a damn mess. The status quo of the game universe, especially now that they've axed all the time travel and two worlds crap, is perfectly serviceable to the kind of series it's trying to be. Pre-reboot Archie was always changing, in part, because it was always dumping out its garbage.

Post-reboot Archie comes close to being the best possible continuity for the series. It mixes a whole bunch of different continuities together with the games, has a polished and SEGA-accurate visual style, doesn't go overboard on the tone and still retains a lot of the variety of pre-reboot. But the talk of prior baggage is more pronounced here than any other continuity, since it's trying to reboot the comic, follow-up plotlines from before the Megaman crossover and reincorporate the games and the old cartoons all at the same time. It frankly doesn't surprise me that it wasn't selling well by the ending, it had too much stuff to keep track of, and introduced it in rapidfire fashion throughout the Shattered World arc before being cut off before any of those seeds could actually bloom into anything. It's the vision for Sonic's world that I like the best, but as a story, it suffers from having no real beginning or ending.

All in all, this is a big part of why I kinda scoff at the idea of rebooting Sonic. Everything I like about other Sonic continuities and would want to take from them doesn't really need a whole new world to be reestablished. Maybe some of the various echidna stuff is kind of a lost cause? But most of it could be put in right here at the end of the current timeline and wouldn't miss a beat, unless they really suck at storytelling (which, I guess, is a legitimate concern).

 

Can you elaborate a little more on why it is that IDW is in the “upper tiers of storytelling” here? Because from characterization to the themes to the dialogue and all that I do not see even a little bit how it could possibly be so.

The only thing I could think of is that it least sort of, kind of, follows traditional storytelling structure I guess. And tends to not have glaring issues as far as plot holes and inconsistencies and stuff or go off into weird directions…

…Those things doesn’t really mean anything to me if the comic is boring, though.

You kind of need to do more than not have stuff that is bad. You also need to have stuff that is…

…Good.

The art is nice, I guess. And some of the more comedic characters like Omega and honestly even Rouge as well are kind of fun. But uh….

 

I mean, most of that is just your opinion. Different people have different tastes and yours don’t seem to align with the majority. That’s fine! But let’s not pretend you’re some objective arbiter of Sonic story quality.

I have my own issues with parts of it (it feels a bit more aimless under Evan Stanley and the Riders arc fell flat for me) but stuff like Imposter Syndrome + issue 50, to me, is some peak Sonic.

 

I haven't kept up well with IDW post-issue 50 (I'm just bad at keeping up with comic releases in general) but I'd feel confident in calling it one of my favorite little bits of the franchise overall, from what I do know. I think it's strongest point writing wise may be it's consistency, honestly? Especially compared to the previous comics- It's not bouncing between a half-dozen different writers and artists of varying qualities like StC and Pre-Ian Archie* often were, so you aren't taking a gamble each issue (or sometimes within the same issue) as to whether or not you'd even enjoy it. Hell, even the games are kinda like that.

I'd also call characterization a strength, unsure if that would be controversial. Everyone acts how I'd generally want them to, in specific Ian/Evan's ability to make me utterly hate Surge and make me feel extremely bad for her at the same time is a very weird combo I'm not sure I've experienced before, so kudos to that.

*(StC suffered a lot less from this than the Penders/Bollers era of Archie, not that it was perfect or anything. It helps that the writers of StC weren't in a very one-sided war over continuity and characters and such like those of Archie were)

 

The standards for Sonic storytelling are generally pretty low. Like I said, people are absolutely brainalyzed about the 2000s (and sometimes 2010s) eras of Sonic. I lived through the period of everyone hating the Shadow and 06 stories, then I lived through the era of everyone hating the Lost World and Forces stories, and now we're in the era of everyone dumping on Frontiers and whatever comes after that. And as someone who experienced all those, I formed my own opinions. Namely, that the Adventure games have ambition and atmosphere but sloppy execution, Heroes and Shadow are spinning their wheels without saying much and saying it badly, 06 is Really Fucking Stupid, Unleashed/Storybooks strike the right tone but fail to center the cast I actually care about, and the Pontac/Graff stories are a Saturday morning cartoon with the occasional line of dialogue that makes me want to kill something. 2020s Sonic is striking somewhere between Adventure and Storybook, but is written by people who actually like and maintain interest in the core cast, so I'm not about to start gassing up the guys who thought "Shadow made fun of me one time" was a good motivation for the dark brooding villain.

But the thing is, Sonic's comic book runs have been around through all of those eras and kept an incredibly consistent level of good artwork, good characterization and good pacing the whole time. IDW does not have a distinct identity from the games as a world, but it really hasn't missed a beat in those other aspects when compared with Archie, except in the instances where SEGA literally forces it to, I suppose. The games have been all over the place in terms of quality and storytelling for the series entire history, and I'm tired of acting like there's any one point in time you can pick out where everything was clear and dandy and fit together and made perfect sense and functioned. Sonic is fun, but it's a mess. The comics are the least of its problems. It drives me up the wall seeing Twitter kiddies complain that Ian Flynn isn't writing Amy accurately to a 22 year-old cartoon that, frankly, spent a lot of time demeaning her.

I do agree that IDW has a lack of cohesiveness post-Metal Virus, at least in terms of the macro storytelling. I haven't read the Riders arc yet, but I think about how Enerjak or Iron Dominion or Mecha Sally or Shattered World played out in Archie, and how if that was the story, that was the thing the story was gonna be about. I had trouble distinguishing where one arc ended and another began up through Impostor Syndrome and Urban Warfare.

 

To be fair I think the book has (had) genuine problems. The beginning of the starts with warping the characters to fit the narratives rather than using these characters people love and crafting narratives around them. This causes a lot of the front end of the book to be, not great. I don't think year one aged that well or the MV saga or some of the stuff afterwards. The book I think finds itself once surge and kit get introduced. This was mentioned on the bumblekast but the MV was not meant to happen, it was kind of a "filler" arc because the team felt like introducing surge and kit to early would be too much. And you can feel it , one surge and kit are introduced the story telling and the themes that were introduced and used poorly on other characters starts making sense become engaging to read. I think it says quite a bit that IDW's more recent series of enjoyable don't really acknowledge that the first few years of the book happened. Some of the characters were so warped to facilitate story telling that they are now fundamentally incongruous with how they are being used or the stories being told currently.

That it isn't to say that i agree with all of the critiques of the characters in idw. I think the aforementioned amy issue is , to be honest a bunch of teens and adults learning how a sausage was made and learning the history of said sausage and rejecting it entirely. And those people due to poor story telling or lack their of were allowed to imagine all manner of thing in relation to her character. And sega being more serious about story telling in this series these days ripps them from their perceptions. I know this is a bit vague but I feel like amy discussion is so vast in terms of scope and in honestly is so relevant to so many other characters and series i'm just going to leave it there.

But generally yes there are quite a bit of characterization and character use issues that caused people to be turned off and are the sort of origin point of a lot of the critique of this book and despite the book getting better those flaws still frame the book for so many people. For example the elephant in the room you all are avoiding, shadow. Shadow is the bar for which a lot of people will declare a piece of sonic media good. If he's good people will defend it to this day, if he's bad a lot of people will declare a thing has little merit. IIzuka said that he and sonic were holding up the brand and that's accurate. Shadow being a microcosm of every issue people have with the book along with being one of its biggest problems doesn't help discussion online. IDW thought time might help with their recently released shadow compilation but it was meet with disdain. The twitter "kiddies " as you call them aren't happy. I think to make them happy and more willing to engage with the book, addressing some of those issues directly, particularly with shadow, is needed.

I'm not trying to say idw is a terrible publisher or what have you. That said, I do think its unfair to say the disdain the book gets is solely because of people really liking sonic x and not the myriad of issues the book had that the book itself is kind of acknowledging, by not acknowledging those things happened in the book. There are issues and while conversation on twitter , reddit, what have you can be annoying I don't think that comes from nowhere.

 

Gaslit. Gatekept. Girldeath - Past the smiling facade the issue puts on, #76 is a real bummer for women, man. The nigh-entirety of the side cast, particularly Lanolin, deserved better than this. It's gonna be a bit before I can really parse the problems I have with the treatment of the latter.

 

It is a bummer for both Lanolin and Jewel that they've suffered such a crushing defeat, especially since neither of them have been around as major characters for long. It's also disappointing (at least to me) that they seem to have given up on the restoration so easily. Of course getting a shuttle crashed into your HQ is a big setback, but they still have the most important part of the restoration, the people, so why not use them to make a new restoration? Though the new one could stand to be more shuttle-proof than the last.