Archie Sonic Limbo/Hiatus/Speculation Thread

1 more week until Comic Con where Archie will have a panel. Think we'll get Sonic comic news finally? Ian Flynn says we might. Personally, I'm thinking they'll go for a full actual reboot this time with SEGA only characters after those fucking lawsuits.

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sonicthehedgehog.tumblr.com/post/162724333243/its-back-to-school-for-eggman-upon-learning-he
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They'd really only need to get rid of the characters that were created during the comic, so if they already existed in AoStH or SatAM, they're probably not going anywhere.

Why you acting like the comic isn't cancelled? You know it is.

I want to beliieeeevveeee!!

20 years is a long time for it all to end over a petty lawsuit...

But I liked some of the characters they came up with for the comic after the reboot, like the various egg boss characters for instance. Wasn't it the penders stuff that was the problem? If they make a whole new comic without penders it shouldn't be a problem to make comic exclusive characters.

I don't think they'll actually have news, but just reiterate that them and SEGA are in talks if it's brought up at the panel.

That said,I wouldn't be surprised if they did a full reboot bringing it fully in line with the games. Honestly, that's what they should've done at the first reboot, maybe then SEGA would actually give a fuck about it and advertise it.

They already did?

Haven't nearly all the artists and writers that worked on this show have Sonic Comic under "previous works" and are looking for new jobs?

They're in the dark regarding the current situation. They've been out of work for months so they're looking for new work, since they don't know if the comics are dead or not.

the sonic social media pages actually DID advertise the comics. the werehog issues to be exact

that's because literally everyone working on it is a freelancer. they don't really work at archie, they're given work when needed. many times the artists know less about what's happening than us

Shut up Boco

I've been dancing every day in joy that this shit comic's finally going under

What is the appeal with this comic? Nostolgia? Childhood memories? Not shit posting generallt curious as I see people, adults, talk about it being good all the time, but it is a kids book. It being good is not going into detail about why it is good.

Kids don't read the Sonic the Hedgehog comic.

It is strictly 100% for autistic people. They alone have kept it on life support for two decades.

you'd be surprised by how many kids actually read it, user. go to your local comic book store and ask how the sonic comics were selling before they got into limbo

it's a fun, easy to follow comic with good art and pretty good writing given its source material

They're clearly passing Excitement by, but I'm unclear if they're headed towards Action or Adventure.

>good art

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

A freelance artist recently started looking for work, saying that Archie cancelled Sonic. No ambiguity there, she straight up used "cancelled".

What did I do this time?

nice b8 with your dark age panel there. i was clearly talking about the reboot issues, since they're the ones being sold now and relevant

>freelance
yeah. they're just speculating like the rest. it's not like they have insider info or anything. they were just never called back for work and they assumed the worst

It's not ending because of a petty lawsuit. It's ending because of TWO petty lawsuits.

>No ambiguity there, she straight up used "cancelled".
She's also ESL.

Barely. The only thing they really advertised the fuck out of was the Mega Drive stuff since it was solely featuring game Sonic stuff. Outside of that, they never put much effort into advertising them. Sure, there'd be a spare post every half a year or so, but they treat it like the red-headed stepchild of the franchise. They advertise Boom episodes all the time, there can't be a post once a month for the comics? I mean, they advertise Game Grumps more than the comic starring their character.

Maybe if the comic actually starred their character instead of the 20-year-old-irrelevant-furry-brigade, they'd advertise it more. After all, they did it with Mega Drive, the comic that for once was actually about Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, etc.

The comic since the reboot has been about Sonic, genius. The FFs have far less relevance in the comic compared to Sonic, Tails, Knuckles & Amy now.

Then a reboot from a different publisher eliminating them entirely shouldn't bother anyone. What's the big deal?

That's exactly what I'm saying. If another reboot is coming, a full Game Sonic only cast would at the very least probably get SEGA to come out of their shell when it comes to advertising it. The problem comes to how you would keep a Game Sonic only comic going.

They pulled a half-measure in regards to bringing it closer to the games. They are still very highly prominent in the comic.

There's people who still like the FFs & there's people who like the post-reboot exclusive characters like the Egg Bosses, Razor etc.

They still have relevance, but not as much as before.

I hope IDW gets it. Not so much for a new Sonic, but so they can maybe use some of Sega's other IPs.

>The problem comes to how you would keep a Game Sonic only comic going.

Every SatAM character has an appropriate Sega analog that renders them completely irrelevant.

Boomer/Tails = Inventor/tech guy
Sally/Amy = Boring, serious love-interest
Bunnie/Knuckles = Muscle character
Antoine/Shadow = Sonic's rival

The SatAM characters were only created because the Sega games were only 2 strong and had no characters to speak of. They outlived their usefulness long ago.

Time to get rid of them.

Antoine's more of a joke character than an actual rival, & Sally hasn't been a love interest since the reboot. I wouldn't exactly be pissed if the Freedom Fighters were axed, but I would at least like a somewhat proper send off for them.

>Dancing every single day for six months because a children's comic might be cancelled.

wew lad

hell no. look at IDW's trainwreck when it came to other licensed properties. they spout out new spin offs and reboot their comics every 6 or so issues now. not to mention the hell they've made out of their disney comics line. they just cancelled the standalone mickey and donald titles (which both had hundreds of issues) to just make a new series merging them and starting from #1 again, then cancelled more titles and made everything quarterly aside scrooge. apparently due to money problems such as publishing costs. they likely won't be even able to handle a sonic comic on a financial level, and if they did, expect a reboot every half to 2 years from them.

>There's people who still like the FFs

And absolutely none of them are children (Sonic's core audience). Only a handful of adults even remember who those characters are and have any affinity for them; what they want is irrelevant when it comes to both profitability and quality of storytelling. Catering to THEM is what got us the Dark Ages.

>apparently due to money problems such as publishing costs
Gooks printers are a major factor.

Also, Sonic Boom arguably has Knuckles as a joke character as well.

>They still have relevance, but not as much as before.
It's still there at the end of the day. I don't think SEGA will really ever go up to bat for the comics so long as Sally and crew are there.

While true that they fill roles already established by game characters, their actual purpose is for development. SEGA doesn't allow the game characters to be developed as much.

keeps me trained in the cha cha cha

My nephew read these religiously a year ago, so there's at least one kid that likes them.

The way they've been cancelling their mainline Archie books, I don't know why anyone would think Sonic has a chance

>Gooks printers
literally wat

>Catering to THEM is what got us the Dark Ages
No, Ken Penders having a job is what gave the comics the Dark Ages.

I don't think characters like Sally are keeping SEGA from promoting the comic, since (IIRC) they do own her. I think it's just a matter of SEGA being incompetent, especially since the same social media account promotes a YT channel that shits on their franchise.

A machine where you put in rice and it spews out gooks

>No, Ken Penders having a job is what gave the comics the Dark Ages.

And Ken Penders is exactly the kind of autistic manchild who still insists the FF characters are relevant and wants them to be starring characters.

Remember, for the book to have survived the Dark Ages, there had to be a considerable number of people READING the book. And Penders was giving those sorts of people exactly what they wanted.

Just telling you to shut up in advance

They own her, but she's completely irrelevant. Remember that the comics are ideally, for them, an advert. If what they're advertising is shit that's got nothing to do with the games, why bother calling attention to it? Again, not a coincidence that the comic they responded the best to was Mega Drive, the one with only the core game cast in it.

No, Ken Penders wanted his shitty OCs that not even comicfags liked to be the starring characters. It's no wonder why he's considered to be far & away the worst writer among Archie fans and why no one cares about The Lara-Su Chronicles.

>adventure
>action
>excitement
>character isnt running in any of those directions

Sally and the SatAM cast do not fit in with the brand SEGA actively promotes. That's why the don't promote them, nor use the characters they own in other things like games, cartoons (the writers have specifically said they are not allowed to use them), or even social media posts. Seriously, they'll meme coldsteel or Sanic before they even put a comic reference. It's why they wanted them gone when the reboot happened and had to be fought for by Archie to keep using them.

Oh. Yes sir...

>No, Ken Penders wanted his shitty OCs that not even comicfags liked to be the starring characters

And yet people still bought the book because it never got cancelled during his run.

I guess the spergs really fucking moved Mina Mongoose and Julie-Su...

I'm kinda confused by that since according to Webber, SEGA keeps the FFs out of the games because they want the games & comics to be different things. But why not promote something you've licensed at all because it's not similar to the games?

People bought the book because during that time period, people bought anything with Sonic's name on it.

>People bought the book because during that time period, people bought anything with Sonic's name on it.

Ah yes, who could forget that late 90s/early 2000s era when Sonic was at his peak popularity with the mainstream masses...

When I say people I mean Sonic fans, user. And tbf, a lot of current fans didn't get into Sonic until the early 2000s.

The FFs aren't in the games because Sonic Team neither knows nor cares who they are. So does 90-plus percent of Japan.

The majority of Japan doesn't care about Sonic at all. Not to mention I have seen some Japanese Sonic fans do fan art of Sally Shut up.

Even Sticks is considered more legitimate a Sonic character than the FFs. She got a Sonic Channel profile image, which is something no other US-original character has ever gotten.

Plus, Sonic Boom is about to be released in Japan, so they're going to be familiar with her. If you showed art of Sally or Bunnie or Nicole to a Japanese Sonic fan, they'd likely think it was fanart of some OC (which is what those characters look like; even after the reboot, they barely fit the Sega aesthetic).

>they barely fit the Sega aesthetic
I could see that with their preboot designs, but I don't see how they don't post-reboot. Especially post-reboot Antoine.

See, I don't really know SEGA's logic either. The best I can come up with is keeping on the down low to avoid having brand confusion considering the comics feature many many elements not featured in other aspects of the franchise. But at that point, why not just put the comic fully in-line with the rest of the franchise and promote it? They originally wanted to with the reboot, but they gave into Archie's wants to keep them. You'd think they'd want to promote something that would come out every single month and keep fans looking at Sonic.

They need to ditch the hair to fit in fully.

I think it was more the writer's desires to keep the FFs around than Archie's. But then again, after hearing the shit SEGA & Sonic Team did with Sonic Boom, I just think they're idiots when it comes to handling the Sonic brand.

Sally's still overdesigned, for an instance. Nicole's completely off. Antoine looked better in his earlier redesigns but then got changed. Bunnie and Rotor are the better off of the gang, but Bunnie's mechanics are too simple for Sonic mechanic design. There's also the simple question of artists themselves. When Bates or Skelly draw these characters, they generally manage to make them feel more accurate to the games.

More to the point though, Sega of Japan absolutely HATE HATE HATE HATE the SatAM cast with a passion. Simply due to them being created by Sega's US offices, due to the longstanding super-duper hate fest that exists between the US and Japan branches of Sega.

The FF would have been long long long purged if not for their popularity with US fans, which has allowed Archie to basically exploit loopholes in their contract with Sega to basically keep them around/in high profile roles in their comic.

It's also why a lot of people REALLY REALLY don't want to see anyone else get the license to Sonic: any move to another company like Boom or IDW will most definitely include Sega of Japan EXPLICITLY banning whoever gets the license after Archie, from ever using the FF or any of the SatAM cast, ever again.

I have to imagine it was a joint effort of the writers and staff. Probably at least regarding the writers and editors. We know they fought to keep them from Jon Gray who was Assistant Editor at the time, IIRC

Sega of Japan has never been smart. Or cooperative. Or humble.

Its also worth noting that due to a bunch of weird legal laws, using any characters from outside the games isn't ALLOWED, even if someone remembered them at all.

When it comes to Sally, the only thing I would say is too much on her design are her ring blades.

So what would happen to the rights for them? If SEGA still owns the FFs & doesn't want them to be used ever again, will they just let it, opening up the chance for some autists to come along & get the rights to Sally & the others?

Given how petty and spiteful SOJ is, they will sit on the rights forever, never letting anyone use them again, until the heat death of the universe.

The rights situations with these characters from licensed media is always kinda sketchy. Like, isn't Sara from the OVA, Cosmo from X, and everyone from Underground in some sort of weird copyright situation?

I don't think the Underground characters are since they were gonna be used again in Universe until the reboot happened, but I do think the Sonic X characters are in some weird copyright situation that doesn't allow them to be used.

>I don't think the Underground characters are since they were gonna be used again in Universe until the reboot happened
SEGA killed that idea before the reboot. It got replaced with a different pre-reboot story.

...

Underground stuff might not be used since the show incorporated a Penders character from the comics into it.

Gallagher. Athair is Gallagher, not Penders.

Yup. Remember back in issue 101, when they showed the OVA world? They never got Sega's approval for that, and Archie got a nasty dressing down.

As for Sonic X, allegedly ownership isn't 100% Sega's.

Ah, you're right. Though, can you blame me for thinking an echidna recolor wasn't from Penders?

Athair actually had a decent design compared to all the other shit (he was visibly older, longer dreadlocks, weird tribal outfit, etc), being fair to Gallagher

He was also a more rustic red-brown to contrast with Knuckles' vibrant crimson while still establishing him as family.

Athair is a good design given circumstances, as he's visually distinct and all of his similar features exist to inform you that he's a relative.

>They advertise Boom episodes all the time
When it first started. Now they never mention it and it's only the people working on the show that are spamming about it in a desperate struggle to keep it relevant.

>Ian say we might.
Sauce?

Literally less than a week ago.
sonicthehedgehog.tumblr.com/post/162724333243/its-back-to-school-for-eggman-upon-learning-he

Also not long ago
twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/877691369749266434

>The problem comes to how you would keep a Game Sonic only comic going.
I think there's enough characters within the games to maintain an ongoing series. You just might have to drop Sonic Universe if you don't want to overuse the side characters.

You could do what the Mega Man comic did and adapt the games' storyline from the beginning and that's at least 100 issues right there.

tssznews.com/2017/07/01/archie-update-ian-flynn-ive-heard-we-should-get-sonic-news-by-end-of-july/

They also hid a possibly new render of Boom Knuckles in this post at 15 seconds.

twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/883860130680389636

Thanks m8

They'll never admit to it, and that's what's gonna kill them ultimately.

>The problem comes to how you would keep a Game Sonic only comic going.
It's easy, replace every comic character with a game character, which is easier done than said. Make up stories around each of the game locales, from Genesis, Gamegear, and so on. There's plenty of things to work with, and I'm sick of comic-onlyfags saying otherwise.

Then you run into the question of what game characters can be used. How does Sega feel about the other characters?

Naga is banned cause reasons.
Its doubtful any 06 characters will return.
Wisps would probably be spammed. On the other hand we still get chao and omacho so maybe there is hope.

And do the anti FF people here just hate any non game chars? Or is it only ones that have a reoccurring role?

>Sonic
>Tails
>Knuckles
>Amy
>Eggman
>Cream
>Shadow
>Rouge
>Omega
>Team Chaotix
>Silver
>Blaze
>Babylon Rogues
>Professor Pickle
>Deadly Six

fuck sonic i need my megaman X comic damnit

Problem is that Sega licenses each character separately rather than in a package, so paying for them all is extremely expensive.

They even license "classic Sonic", "classic Tails" and "classic Eggman" as separate characters from the contemporary Sonic, Tails and Eggman (the Archie book had to put "classic Eggman" in silhouette for a flashback to avoid having to pay an additional licensing fee to Sega for his 1-panel appearance).

Sega nickels and dimes the shit out of their licensees. It's also why the Sonic Boom cartoon hasn't included more game characters and both Metal Sonic and Shadow have been 1-episode guest appearances. They've got to pay bonus licensing fees for every game character they include.

Nega banned because the games never elaborated on his history. (Iizuka confirmed he is from the future, like Silver, and causes trouble in Blaze's world for his own reasons.) So he's basically in limbo until that is cleared up, which technically means never, since Sega hasn't used him in a game outside of the Mario/Sonic Olympics in years.

Is there source on that? I've never heard that before. Makes more sense than them just being random assholes but still.

That villein line up sucks balls. At least with Eggman's bosses you get a range of comedy goof balls, to tragic evil, or even mustache twister. Maybe gun fractions could fill that in?

But other than that give it a run and see how long it lasts.

And that makes even less sense but ok

The only reason you people give half of a damn about this comic being canned is because of the OCs. Seriously, this fanbase is embarrassing. No wonder Sega gave in and finally let you create your own donut steels in an actual Sonic game -- It's all you guys care about.

>Maybe gun fractions could fill that in?
1/8th of a Kalashnikov is my favourite Sonic character.

Assuming this is true, it's not that uncommon- look at any Godzilla merchandise, you'll see the logos indicating how each monster had to be licensed individually.

I don't know how IDW can afford to license all those monsters from Toho. They're the first comic publisher to ever do so; even Marvel and Dark Horse couldn't afford it.

What's the appeal of any comic?
That's your answer.

>Sally and the SatAM cast do not fit in with the brand SEGA actively promotes.
It wouldn't really be that hard to give them a cameo/references to the characters.
Maybe there's a sign, in a stage somewhere, and it's got Sally on it saying "JOIN THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS TODAY!"

Honestly, that's all I would fucking need.

>More to the point though, Sega of Japan absolutely HATE HATE HATE HATE the SatAM cast with a passion. Simply due to them being created by Sega's US offices, due to the longstanding super-duper hate fest that exists between the US and Japan branches of Sega.

...Is SEGA of Japan still beefing with SEGA of America?
I mean, isn't that the sort of infighting that sunk the ship? They didn't let that go after losing the Dreamcast and having to step out of the console market?

Never happening. Generations would've been the perfect time to do it and they didn't. They do not care about those characters.