Sonic the Comic

Why was the Archie Sonic comic so bad compared to the Fleetway Sonic comic lads?

Autism: origins

because it was Americans

that makes everything about 30% shittier

Ken Penders.

Fleetway super is best super.

Clever way around having super sonic be a shitty deus ex machina, something the games are still struggling to deal with to this day was solved by a couple of blokes in a tiny office in the 90s.

Isn't Super Sonic a massive jobber in the games? Like 3 and the werehog one where he shows up in the opening just to get Sonic's shit slapped and the chaos emeralds stolen from him

Because the UK comic had the best Amy Rose in the entire franchise.

>pop pop pop watchin motherfuckers drop

Every single game since SA1 has had super be the mandatory final boss fight of every game. So he's definitely a Deus Ex Machina.

Colours was the first one where they actually showed Eggman slap his shit. Up until that point it was ridiculous. EVERY GAME it's the last stage. It used to be optional, or unlockable but then it became mandatory, shit sucks man.

I'd love a stage where you play as sonic's good side trying to reign in the unstoppable super. where you're moving too fast and destroying fucking everything, but you can swerve him out of the way of knocking over a building and instead slam yourself into a mountain to slow yourself down and save hurting innocents or something.

but no. Super is just a tunnel and a boss firing random projectiles for like 8 games. Sigh.

These two niggas were underrated as fuck

Fleetway Sonic is alright, but Sonic being a massive cunt to Tails really brings it down. I could see him acting like that with Knuckles, but not Tails.

For some, it's out of character. For others, it's the main attraction.

That's how big brothers act to their little brothers.

Shortfuse was a pretty neat original character, so was the scientist bird that teamed up with Amy alot.

Also the humanoid soldier bots that made up most of Robotnik's occupation army had a cool design too.

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>Sonic being a massive cunt to Tails really brings it down.
I prefer Sonic to be a smarmy cunt to his "friends". At least it gives him a personality. But I grew up reading Fleetway so I'm biased.

>Every single game since SA1 has had super be the mandatory final boss fight of every game.
Only one out of three games in the last nine years did this.

Well, in the end, now we have Sonic that's at least somewhat cunt to Tails and the rest. The letter section was a bonus attraction.

Giving everyone a super form gets kind of laughable.

It wasn't.

It was mostly mediocre with a few cute stories. Archie's comic, due to a longer publication history, had higher highs and lower lows. Neither is better, they're just different.

Princess Sally a shit

a shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

Porker Lewis and Johnny Lightfoot a shit.

It's all the same in the end.

Storytime when?

Having a Super Sonic final boss started with Sonic 3 & Knuckles though.

In that game you unlocked it by beating all the special stages. In Adventure 1 and 2 you unlocked it by finishing every story. In Heroes you had to do both, acquiring the seven emeralds from the special stages and completing the game with every team.

I don't know how the post-06 games handled it though, haven't gotten around to those

>higher highs
Wrong.

I understand your nostalgia blinds you, but even at its best Fleetway never really broke "pretty good," and the artists not being allowed to draw in any sort of kinetic, fluid style is a part of that.

Archie has a number of one or two issue stories that are standout gems while Fleetway thrived on being serial. Sonic's multiverse antics and Robotnik's last stand were strong, but never as strong as self-contained stories like Thicker Than Water or some of DeCesare's oneshots.

Metal Sonic Empire

Also while we're talking about the british comic, their Chaotix Crew was waaaaaay better than the game version.

>Metal Sonic Empire
was pretty much on par with the lead up to #100. It was novel, but in no way outstanding.

Less of a push on drama and teenage problems and more of a "Hey, this guy is going around harming our world and its people, let's stop him!". The stories were shorter and less convoluted, and a considerably less amount of OC nonsense. Fleetway is superior, and this is from an American who has no nostalgia for Archie. None whatsoever. The art is better, too.

>The art is better, too.
...It varies.

Even then, Elson's work, which is invariably what people mean when they say StC had good art, was undermined by Sega's demands to keep things "on model." He did a splendid job rendering the characters, but it was all very stiff and nearly copy-paste at times. Even at his best, his work wasn't as good as Stanley, Hesse, or even Skelly's. To say otherwise is as silly as praising Axer's work at Archie; rendering ability is worthless without flow and substance in comics.

Fleetway was pretty shit too. It just had the advantage of being shorter and a few good arcs.

Thats what I always imagined Sonic to be. He has more personality rather than being the video gaming equivalent of Tony the Tiger. I love that hes done with everyones shit in Sonic Boom

So what's happening to Archie Sonic anyways? I heard it hasn't gotten anything out lately and someone else sued.

Is it getting pulled?

We never know the answers to these things because Archie thinks any admission of fault is worse than keeping mum.

It looks like Sega refused to renew the license, as the comics are on hiatus for 5 months minimum.

>le generic action girl

Nah. Say what you want about the other Amy's, but at least they weren't that.

Worst Robotnik short of Sonic Underground. He's AoSTH Robotnik with a permanent scowl and none of the flair.

And I don't get why people say this. It's completely unfaithful. It's not all that clever making him a brainless berserker, it's just "wrong."

>implying that reading StC!Robotnik's lines in Baldry's voice isn't the best
>implying STC!Super Sonic wasn't a conniving psychopath capable of tricking people in order to get what he wanted i.e. to kill everyone for funsies

Normally I'd agree, but Fleetway takes it too far. Tails is a kid who looks up to Sonic, it's been that way since the Sonic 2 manual. It doesn't really make sense that Sonic would be a COMPLETE dickass to him. Though thoughtlessness through his own arrogance is expected.

His entire amnesia arc is terrible.

>Hesse has a better grasp of the character than a dude who was drawing him the year the character debuted almost 25 years ago.

Yeah no fuckin shit.

>And I don't get why people say this. It's completely unfaithful. It's not all that clever making him a brainless berserker, it's just "wrong."

They don't make him brainless, he's just incredibly vicious and bloodthirsty. Basically he's carnage.

Also they win major points in my book for subverting the super form because it makes it more it's own thing than just LEL DRAGNBALLS W/ HOGS I mean they were sorta ripping off hulk but it's still a nice change when you're an older fan of the franchise with all these jesus super mode scenes.

The problem is just reading it as Baldry doesn't make the writing as good.
>kill everyone for funsies
So did they ever resolve this psychotic behavior in the comic? Because having a super mode where he just wants to murder everyone is pretty useless.

I like Shortfuse, but his handling was pretty garbage. All that brooding over his suit, all that status quo.

>So did they ever resolve this psychotic behavior in the comic?

Yeah the emeralds absorb evil basically and can transfer it, so you can control people's will to a degree. When Sonic fucks up and absorbs too much of the evil he flips out and loses control when he gets stressed.

They split the form out of him to cure him, but rather than dissipating the energy back out into the world it transforms into a separate entity which then goes out into the world and becomes more chill and alzheimer-y as his charge runs down.

fuck what am I doing with my life.

...Yeah?

I never said Elson was a lesser artist or this was a "fair" comparison, just that the art most certainly is not better than a good share of Archie's pencillers. We're talking about quality, not comparing eras.

It's hardly a fair comparison at any rate, archie by virtue of having ran so long already has a higher base average, especially considering that it's still running, and using digital artists and shit.

Both books have had had garbage art, and great work. But the book that died nearly 20 years ago is never gonna stack up against the rest. This is like a beatles/elvis #1's conversation. If you want to compare them then don't use any archie issues that came out after STC ended. Otherwise what's the point of comparing them at all?

I mean besides the fact that archie ended up outright ripping off a bunch of concepts from fleetway you can't even say it was better written the dark ages of both are just as bad in different ways.

>I mean besides the fact that archie ended up outright ripping off a bunch of concepts from fleetway
I don't doubt this happened, but do you have any examples in mind?

Behold the hypercrisis.

STC was hella corny at times and the art varies by artists and slowly dropped a lot of the non-Sonic stripes over time, but man. Growing up with this shit was the best.

Archie was pretty good after Penders left too, to be fair.

>muh edgy super sonic

Fuck off fedora, fleetway is shit.

I can't recall most of them off hand but there were a few. Like Dr. Finitevus being pretty fucking close to Dr. Zachary, a white echidna that ends up with cyborg parts coming out of nowhere on his own to fuck up knuckles day.

I think sonic getting lost in space might have been another one (they even directly reference Fleetway Super as much as they can with some bullshit jargon, but a seperate entity super sonic bent on killing everyone shows up.)

And shit like Sonic beating robotnik who then goes crazy and ends up a blubbering mess with PTSD until he snaps out it better than ever and just tries flat out murdering everyone while sonic emos about how maybe he went too far with robotnik.

There were more than a few cases of very similar specific instances not vague shit like 'robotnik has two henchmen' etc, but more like 'hang on a minute...'

Archie took down Sonic subscriptions, books are being delayed, and for the first time in a long time Sonic was completely missing from solicitations released for May.

We don't know if it's cancelled, but it doesn't look very good.

I'm not sure that robo robotnik was a pull, but fleetway did an early story of robotnik's mind in a robot badnik body that ends up challenging him for his rule and sorta winning, which is similar to robo but I know not the same.

Yeah. Cost cutting.

Expect idw or dc to get the rights.

Robotnik snapping was really well done in Archie. I don't remember reading the Fleetway equivalent to comment on similarities though.

It might be legal trouble related. We knew Archie was in dire straights with SEGA, and now someone else is attempting legal action against Archie over Sonic. This probably ended SEGA's good will.

>muh edgy robotisation

Fuck off fedora, archie is shit.

>Archie
Based on shitty cartoon.
>Fleetway
A comicbook from a country that gave us Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and The Original Writer.

Why was Super Sonic arbitrarily evil? That was never suggested in the original games.

Archie also rebooted because they lost the rights to certian comic created characters.

Expect another reboot.

This likely isn't Archie's doing. It looks more like SEGA's decision.

>crediting a comic with its country's accomplishments, and not anyone actually tied to the comic

Soon to be finished anyways.

Probably why they're branching out to marvel for digests.

No chance. The only options here are "Archie loses the rights" or "Back to business as usual." There's no reason to believe Archie would reboot AGAIN.

To be fair, SEGA could absolutely make them reboot it.

Say if they did something harsh like tell them to only use game characters from here on.

STC lore.

Basically, a kindly scientist named Kintobor accidentally crash-landed on Mobius after falling into a black hole. When he beheld an apparent paradise planet, he decided to use his science to protect it from evil.

He found six of the Chaos Emeralds, which are extremely good at absorbing energies and emotions, and used them to absorb all the negative energies and bad feelings on the planet. Problem was, he couldn't really control Chaos energy. He needed the seventh Grey Emerald to really neutralise the bad vibes. Keeping them at super-low temperatures was moderately effective, but without that seventh Emerald, it's a ticking timebomb.

But fuck that, right? We've got science on our side! The Emeralds were now automatically absorbing all the bad juju, it's all good, right?

There was an explosion where Kintobor, a rotten egg and a whole ton of Chaos energy and bad vibes got swirled together, creating Robotnik. Later on, Sonic was caught in a similar explosion and got super-charged with chaos energy and a planets worth of negativity. Thus was born Super Sonic.

The evil absorption was actually used to beat Captain Plunder and his sky-pirates once.

Fair enough, but if I were SEGA, I'd just pull the rights and be done with it. Archie has caused them so much grief. If they legitimately want a sterilized, fresh start without all the issues Archie gave them, it would make more sense to hand it to a new company and let THEM start fresh instead of allowing Archie yet another chance.

But that's from a purely business perspective. I don't really want to see Archie lose Sonic. But I don't think SEGA would be as much of a softy for the comic as I am.

>if I were SEGA

You wouldn't be here.

It's somewhat implied by a hypothetical situation that I'm not actually SEGA.

Or is that just what you want us to think, Mr. Yuji Naka?

Most opinions I've seen want Sonic away from Archie and onto another publisher. I think kills the current continuity, though, which is something most of those people don't want.

Really it's a bad situation all around.

If it did start fresh with someone new, hopefully SEGA would be more active, advertise it, and treat the thing like a proper extension of the franchise instead of the red-headed step child like they mostly have in the past.

Something else to note: I'm pretty sure Super Sonic wasn't really covered in the old Western canon material, so all the writers had to go by was what the games themselves depicted, specifically Sonic 2 (3 wasn't out yet). So they chose to essentially make him the Hulk.

Not exactry

But, user, Naka isn't with SEGA anymore.

There was Cinos in one of the books.

Clearly he's teamed up with Penders in a Legion of Doom-eqsue plot to reclaim ALL the rights!

Yeah, it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, a fresh start could do wonders for them, and could even tie the games together with official canon if they so chose, by working closer with comic writers.

On the other, we lose a TON of built up lore and characters. And Archie was actually doing pretty OK with those in this latest reboot.

Reboot in another company.

I think it's early enough into it that losing the new stuff wouldn't be nearly as bad as losing the stuff they did 3-4 years ago.

However, I think the SatAM characters would be gone, which would have an unknown amount of impact and backlash.

I Feel like the people that made the Archie Sonic comics never even bothered playing the games. They never really adapted much, they just invented their own little talking animal world and made up a shitload of characters while ignoring a lot of the Sega ones. Then kept on going with that for a couple decades.

Fleetway was at least an adaptation of the games. That's something that the Archie crew never appeared to do at all.

>muh evil supersonic

Literally the only defense Fleetfags have for their shit comic. Archie > Japsanic >>> Fleetway

THAT reboot canned mostly shit nobody cared about. Yes years and years of lore were lost, but they were mostly holdovers from the dark ages that Ian tried his best to legitimize. But they were all still tainted by coming from stupid origins.

As for the SatAM characters, yes there would be backlash, but probably not that much. Fans of Sally and such are really very much in the minority, I'm sorry to say.

>I'd love a stage where you play as sonic's good side trying to reign in the unstoppable super.
That's what the Werehog should have been in all honesty.

>I Feel like the people that made the Archie Sonic comics never even bothered playing the games.
Up until Ian, they mostly did not.

There were plenty of characters and lore people had cared about, user. It's not like the comic had zero fans before the reboot happened.

That's basically what happened until the new crew took over and sprinked in as much game stuff as possible with the world they had to work with until the reboot. Though it was quite funny in hindsight that Penders was forced to integrate Sonic Adventure into his Knuckles bullshit.

holy shit is Sonichu cannon now?

Fleetway was dead around 80-90 issues I believe. I think it went into the 100s but those were reprints. I want to say Fleetway did a sonic adventure adaptation and then died.

The homages like evil super, finitevus, etc were clearly meant to be fan teases. A fair comparison would probably be the first 80-100 issues between the two. In which case archie has Mecha Madness and the early comedy era to stand on. Some specials are alright for one offs.

Fleetway I can't think of any great arcs outside death of johnny and the metal one. But I also only read the books once and dropped it. Will say their knuckles and amy were vastly supieor. Also liked the chaotix too.

The super sonic change was pretty clever and imo should be what happens to Sonic in archie when he stays super too long. Gets rid of the question of why doesn't he just gather the gems and fuck eggman's shit up.

>Fleetway was dead around 80-90 issues I believe.

Dead fucking wrong. Like, holy shit wrong. There were reprints, but they were slowly phased in (one story per issue) at 135. Three new stories every issue. Full reprints didn't start until 185.

I said "mostly." We lost a couple justified characters. But just because people are given enough time to like something, doesn't mean they actually had quality or are justified to continue existing.

>There were plenty of characters and lore people had cared about

Name three.

O noes user. Forgive me not being as autistic as you.

Then compare the first 184.

Your cutting wit has left me bleeding out. God forbid you fucking wiki something, retard.

...

The only thing people are going to miss from the Archie comic being cancelled is their precious donut steels.

>knowing issues numbers is autistic
>on fucking Sup Forums

Remember Amazing Spider-Man vol 1, issue 235? Will O' The Wisp's origin story.

Tommy the Turtle
Girl Knuckles
Red Sonic

As someone who grew up with Fleetway (and loved it), really, it's mixed. There was cool stuff but also some dumb stuff. People remember the best and forget the worst, and I think when you come off Archie you naturally compare the two and Fleetway looks better by comparison than if you did it the other way around. Like, half the non-Sonic comics in StC were dumb as hell, the other half often boring, and some of them never got finished, IIRC.

Like... each one had stuff that the other was missing? So when you start with one and then look to the other you go "oh cool why didn't my version do that" and you get a good impression of it.

Also StC drew its general sense of humor (and even a bunch of actual jokes and ideas) from other british media, so if you grew up watching the BBC and so on you were aware of when they were being unoriginal.

Are Sega's donut steels any better? Not really.

I don't think you know what that term means.

I don't think you know what hyperbole is. I'm placing them on level with a fan creation.

...

That's not how hyperbole works user.