So this series is dead right

So this series is dead right

Not yet
only delayed until April I think?

Archie's solicits for May have just been released and there are not any Sonic titles listed.

It was announced last week that Ian will begin writing for Jughead. He posted on Twitter today that he plans to continue writing Sonic as well.

Either the comic is on hiatus again or Ian doesn't know/can't say what's going on.

Not officially, but the outlook is not good.

It's now missing from May solicits.

>hiatus again

Why does it keep going on hiatus? What is preventing it from being published on time?

Legal shenanigans. Yes, really.

SEGA paying Penders to fuck off has inspired other ex-Archie writers to chucks lawsuits at them as well. Many people are speculating SEGA will axe the entire thing rather than deal with any more bullshit.

>293 issues
Where the fuck should I start?
What do I skip?

Start post-reboot with the Flynn stuff. So... around 250 or so.

There was a reboot starting in issue 252. Good place to start.

Just start at issue 252. That's when the continuity was rebooted and everything before was more or less made irrelevant.

#252 is the beginning of the reboot.
Another good point is the beginning of Ian Flynn's run, which starts somewhere after 150
skip anything from after #50 to roughly near #175

I imagine he knows what's going on (other freelancers say they know) but doesn't want to say much.

Last year it was supposedly a printing issue (or maybe a money issue). This year, it appears SEGA has had them halt all production on Sonic titles. The current lawsuit is what many think the reasoning is.

There's a reboot at 252, which is good to start at for new people.

I do recommend reading what came before it, though. Regardless if it is irreverent now, because a lot of the best the book has to offer came before 252.

Probably.

Oh well.

Issue 1. The whole thing is a crazy weird experience to behold of amazing highs and hilariously bad lows. If you are really keen on skipping the bad stuff, I'd recommend reading from 1 and skipping to 160 whenever you stop enjoying it. Read on from there to the current issue.

There's a reboot that happened, but honestly it hasn't been as good as what came before it. Not to say it's bad, it just hasn't had the time to fully explore the new universe and characters and has had a lot of trouble regarding things in real life like poor editorial decisions, interuptions, crossovers, etc. That and it'd honestly be a shame to just ignore the pre-reboot.

Sega ain't renewing their license until they can promise less BULLSHIT.

Honestly, I can't blame them.

>all these people suggesting he skip the puntastic Gallagher/Manak years
Come on, now. The guy at least needs to read 1-50.

Do what this guy said. Everything from 1-50 is absolutely worth reading, with issue 39 kicking off what I think is the series' best arc. After that, issue 160 begins Flynn's initial run, which was pretty stellar at times. Unfortunately it sets up a lot of ideas that don't get paid off because of the mandated reboot. Since the reboot, it's been pretty meh. You can tell they're under a lot of pressure from Sega to make the books read like kid-friendly, zero-risk advertisements for the franchise instead of actual storytelling.

>Legal shenanigans. Yes, really.
>The current lawsuit is what many think the reasoning is.

Archie has been around for, like, 60 years. Why are they suddenly NOW so utterly incompetent?

It's a long story. Basically, Penders trademarked a bunch of his characters and stories after Sonic Chronicles (the Bioware cashgrab-I mean RPG) used concepts very similar to them. Eventually, he sued Archie for reprinting his stories without compensating him. Penders SHOULD have been hired under "Work For Hire", but the contracts were not there (either he didn't sign them or they were lost in a fire), only copies. Things escalated from there before eventually dying down after the reboot. Then Scott Fulop also launched a lawsuit which might've been settled by now. Sega has made it very clear in the past that they don't want any more legal trouble, hence the worries.

Is there porn of the Sonic-Man Heroes yet?

>Creators fighting tooth and nail over characters with names like "Tommy Turtle", "Fiona Fox", and straight up "Evil Sonic".

That's worse than fighting over scraps. That's fighting over feces.

honey couldn't be more cute

>Why are they suddenly NOW so utterly incompetent?
They've been incompetent since the comic fucking started. Did you know that apparently Sega was supposed to approve new additions to the book from the start? Neither did any of the creative team.

The only reason this comic survived for 20 years is cosmic luck. It survived in spite of Archie, not because
Penders is a desperate man with nothing else to his name. He thinks he's hot shit and desperately wants to appear relevant, and this is how he does so.

You do not know of the pettiness and ego of the one we call Ken Penders.

>Not to say it's bad, it just hasn't had the time to fully explore the new universe and characters and has had a lot of trouble regarding things in real life like poor editorial decisions, interuptions, crossovers, etc. That and it'd honestly be a shame to just ignore the pre-reboot.
And 90% of that, including the current legal bullshit, can be chalked up to 1 really shitty editor: Paul Kaminski. He's the one that pushed for the memories thing at the start of the reboot because he wanted to sell trades with characters they didn't own, including Mogul

Was he the editor who would put an editor's note on nearly every page advertising the trades and would end most of his messages with "PLUGPLUGPLUG"?

Yes, yes he was. He's also the one that pushed for Worlds Unite and Dawn of X (I think. I know he pushed for Unite and Xander's heavy role in that). Also he's the one that started the variant cover pushing, but unlike Lovallo, most of the variants were just official art put onto generic backgrounds, with a few exceptions.

I love Honey

If it's cancelled, just FTGE...
a friend knows some of the Idw staff, wonder if they would try to raise this from the ashes. I should ask them.

I'd be down for the license going to IDW if and only if it's the same creative team and they somehow get to pick up where they left off. Iirc, Sega owns everything made post-reboot so it shouldn't be too hard

I like Flynn, but we could get others this way too. Idk, guess we just cross our fingers and hope.

I dunno, I think having some consistency when going over to IDW could be a good thing. Last thing we need is another reboot, especially with another creative team who may or may not have the same Sonic know-how as IAn and co do.

Actually, I think you could do this, and then, just maybe, bring back Boom and make Mega Drive an ongoing. So you'd have
>Mainline and Universe written by Ian, Aleah, and Evan for Silver stuff
>Boom with a rotating creative team with writers mostly coming from the tv show
>Give Mega Drive to Hesse. Just give all of it to him and let him do what he wants

Start at #1, the people telling you to start at 252 are continuity-loving assholes.

1-40 is mostly high quality gag comics. Seriously good stuff.

Is this still coming out at least
They cant just not finish it

>1-50
41-44 and 46-50 have absolutely nothing to do with the strong parts of 1-40. They're mostly lore wank and setting up for Endgame/Endgame itself, which is a train wreck of a story.

When you say "everything from 1-50 is absolutely worth reading," you're saying pic related is worth someone's time as anything but a guide on how not to write or draw comics.

It's still slated to come out March, but considering Archie hasn't released anything I don't know if that date will hold.

>They cant just not finish it
Sure they can.

Ian has written Ninja Turtles comics for IDW so he does have some history with them.

If they are legally withheld from releasing it, then they won't be releasing it.

>41-44 and 46-50
You thought 45 was that good?

252 for the current stuff. People will say read the preboot & you can, but there's a ton of garbage you have to go through before & after Ian came on board.

This is it.

The pissed off Sega for the last time.

They're yanking it from the dumpster fire of a publisher and giving it to some other company.

The lawsuit was against Archie. Sega had little to do with it.

No, it's the only one that has a lead story that isn't complete dreck.

41's a meandering story about King Acorn with bad art and empty dialogue that really does nothing except flop his ass into the status quo.

42's quite literally just the editor taking over the book for a month to set up the next few one-shots and prepare for Endgame, and it is terrible.

43 is relentless backstory wank.

44 is a bad Anti-Sonic story.

46 is a god damn abomination of a story, consisting of characters expositing for 15 pages about FUCKING NOTHING and Antoine inorganically getting jerked off to try and make kids like him.

47-50 is Endgame.

45 is a cute little story about Mobie the caveman, Sonic, Rotor and Snively. It's completely inoffensive and silly. It's not good, but everything surrounding it is fucking garbage.

I'm not really sure why so many people on co hate pre-reboot and have a hard on for the reboot.

It's a result of Sonic character ownership and was directly inspired by Ken Penders, who encouraged Fulop to do it. Even if Sega themselves aren't directly involved in the lawsuit, it's more bad PR for a company handling their license and a sign that the Penders issue may have opened the legal floodgates.

To be completely, 100% honest?

Ian's incredibly overrated. His strong stories are outliers, not the norm. He does OKAY on a monthly basis, but he doesn't really write anything terribly interesting most of the time, and even when he did back then it was usually really reliant on a bunch of other bad stories.

With the reboot, you get about the same ratio of meh to good, but you don't need context.

Because there was a ton of crap OCs (Penders echidnas, Scourge, Fiona, etc.), characters like Sally was an absolute trainwreck, & even after Ian came on, you still had some shit stories. The reboot isn't perfect, but the OCs are more entertaining, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles & Amy fit the new universe much, much better, & the stories have been more entertaining, imo.

Pretty much. Sega's been on the outs with Archie for so long that I think right now they're probably just looking for any excuse to cut ties, no matter how flimsy.

45 comes across as an inventory script

This is a very probable explanation for what's happening. SEGA has made it clear that they don't want more drama, & only more drama has been coming out with Archie. That being said, I'm not entirely sure whether or not SEGA would go to another publisher if they take the license away from Archie.

>Issues reaches 299
>Gets cancelled

I can agree with this, but the thing is, at least for me, that his strong stuff is really goddamn strong. Stuff like Champions and Thicker than Water and Eggman's Dozen are goddamn great, and while they're not the best comics ever, they're still fun. Ian's not a great writer, he's fairly mediocre, but he can produce a legitimate gem once in a while

Kind of like the sonic series as a whole really

There's hardly any room for doubt. It's plunked down right at the final point they could possibly print it in continuity, DeCesare had been absent for nearly a whole year and never contributed another story, it's one of those convenient little tales that doesn't really require anything other than "it happened after issue xxx," etc.

Really, you may as well take your marker and scribble "32.5" on top. Aside from the shitty Knuckles backup you shouldn't read, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.

They probably see the comic as such a small slice of the pie that I don't think they'd bother. They'll reason that the Sonic franchise will be just fine without a comic and honestly they'd be right. The comic needs Sonic, Sonic doesn't need the comic.

the same probably applies to DeCesare's backups in sonic blast (from around the same time)

Sadly, you're right. I do hope that SEGA gives the comic to IDW still.

Even moreso, the fan community kind of legitimizes ignoring the comic.

They don't want to deal with conflicting storylines and other interpretations of the character, but the offset is that the comic is free advertising. Paying fans chump change to produce art (which they've apparently already been doing) and boost the franchise via social media provides the same benefits with lower risks and costs in a more effective way.

I don't think we have to worry about a "Nintendo" type situation where they sit on the franchise out of response to past media damaging the brand. Sega doesn't have the integrity to hold out like that.

>go back to zero, have to deal with another new universe
>takes several more years to build it
please no. I really fear this happening.

>"Building" a universe instead of just telling good stories from the start.

This is the real problem.

While I'm definitely not eager to wait years for a new universe to build up plot to a place where interesting things can start happening, I am a little curious how a fresh universe would handle things.

There are a handful of Archie characters I'd be sad to lose, but we've been through that before.

No matter how great original situations are, more often than not, things just tend to be more interesting once those elements start to intermingle.

Because if you don't look sweet, you're not wearing Honey!

Yeah, sure.
You know how you do that?

By writing stories and progressing a plot, not by wasting the reader's time for several months planting seeds without delivering entertaining stories.

Someone post the image of Amy & Honey saying that.

There's a balance to be struck. You need to plant some seeds unless you're just plain incredibly lucky that later plots manage to be interesting and have decent direction. A good writer can't depend on that kind of luck though. It's usually all too easy to recognize when a writer didn't plan.

Yeah, you're right, a good writer plans their stories out.

That isn't the same as the kind of "worldbuilding" you're describing. You don't need "several years" to hit the quality of any of Ian's best stories. You need one issue. The entire idea that starting over would mean having to wait to return to an established level of quality is absolutely moronic.

I'm sorry user, I just vastly prefer when story elements come together over most spontaneous plots. That's just personal preference I guess.

There probably isn't much overlap between the comic's audience and the games' audience, either.

>Knuckles was black the whole time

I fuckin knew it

Who's the qt cat thing?

It would be kind of silly for him not to be, what with the dreadlocks and rap music.

Honey the Cat. Cut character from Sonic the Fighters
I am like this too holy shit. Finally someone else who actually likes the slow build up

gotcha

One can only hope "Recolor: The Series" is finally over.

My nigga.

That hasn't been the comic since 2012. Unless you mean TLSC.

A character with a rather strange origin...

Honey the Cat. Meant to be in Sonic the Fighters, ended up getting scrapped but people messing with the game found some stuff for her. Was later made a playable character in the re-release of Sonic the Fighters, and eventually made a character in the comics, appearing in the tournament arc.

But Scourge hasn't been in a Sonic comic for 6 years.

Cutest duo.

That's what they get for taking something from Sonic 06.

It's been so long but I still miss him so much.

Sad when being turned into a Sonic OC is a positive direction for your character...

I wish pseudo-cameo characters was more of a thing.

Well an expy of another Fighting Vipers character and Segata Sanshiro showed up in that arc

>not yet
fuck outta here

you FUCKS it's not canned. it just got delayed. the next issue comes out in march. we had 3 issues supposedly coming out that month due to schedule fucks ups so now if starting from march we get a new issue, we're covered for solicits until may/june. if anything we'll see sonic again in the june or july solicits.

the comic tossed in one or two more sonicfied Fighting VIpers charcters

That was actually Segata Sanshiro though. Not quite what I'm referring to.

Yeah, I got a kick out of that.

this might be a slippery slop but I want to see more AM2 characters come in as sonicfied characters.

Imagine he Virtua Cops showing up as like I dunno german sheperards

Oh, in that case Sonic X expies have shown up throughout the comic. Madonna is basically a Topaz expy, and one of the men from 280 was basically a Danny expy

Archie's Madonna is actually a cross between Topaz and Madonna, Sonic's original intended love interest.

I'm glad Sonic 2006 followed up on this old idea of Sonic with a real woman.

The next issue is 291, which just got delayed to the end of April.

>glad
But why? To prove it was a bad idea?

I guess this means the comic really is in peril.

well shit i didn't notice that extra delay. my comic shop notified me it'd be coming in march. maybe they haven't updated their database yet? if that's the case then we might not see a solicit until august

I love that bat

I was just pretending to like a gross idea! You've been tricked! Ha ha ha!

You and everybody else. It makes posting her little risky.

Whether it's in danger of ending or not, this hiatus has given me the perfect excuse to snatch up as many issues as I can from what I missed after my last subscription ran out three years ago.

I'm glad you can at least admit that you just want a bunch of "worldbuilding" issues instead of insisting that they have to be a thing.

The funny thing is that almost all of Ian's good stories are largely spontaneous.