Sonic Thread 10/19

Open it up with the mini storytime, "Stress Test."

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Tyson Heese?

Adam Bryce Thomas

Bump

Remember: SEGA forced Sonic Mania to be a Forces prequel to explain where the Phantom Ruby and Classic Sonic came from.

Is this like a dry run with Sega and IDW before going public with their own?

I knew there was a connection, but was it really 'forced'?

Seems to be.

looks like ABT trying to ape Diana Skelly's style

And why not?

It's a fun and dynamic one.

Has anyone even heard from Diana in awhile?

Her tumblr has been inactive since March so...

RIP

Well it is called Sonic Forces

RIMSHOT

Finally taking lessons from Wily, I see.

I don't follow...

I'll never comprehend why people are so mad at Mania's plot being a prequel to Forces.

You know that the original story was entirely boring?

>"Eggman got depressed after Sonic 3&K and build the Hard Boiled Heavies who then felt Eggman wasn't a competent boss and started doing their own thing!"

Its super boring and gives no reasoning behind revisiting old stages.

>B-but its a Classic Sonic game, story don't matter.

Then why does it bother you that it connects to Forces then? If Classic Sonic plots don't matter, JUST IGNORE IT. Imagine Sonic comes out from the wormhole at the end back to his world and there.

I don't understand how does someone can get so triggered over a game that they'll probably not even play be connected to a game that can be played completely separate.

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is this an archie comic or IDW?

Neither, it seems to be a direct release from Sega to raise hype for Forces, like that ooold-ass comic strip released in Disney Adventures to set up the story for Sonic friggin' 1

The comic that I think was taken from Fleetway's canon.

is that how that works? Ian flynn and etc can work outside their own companies?

Ian works freelance so yes.

>I knew there was a connection, but was it really 'forced'?
Not forced, but it felt very much like an after thought in Mania and I suspect that'll be the same in Forces. Classic Sonic in general feels very "tacked on" as it is in that game.

It doesn't trigger me, but it does annoy me for how unnecessary the whole Mania/Forces connection is. It even required Iizuka to come up with more bullshit about how Classic Sonic from Generations isn't the same one as from Mania just to explain the tie-in thing. Why even bother? I doubt people who are going to buy Mania will buy Forces just because of that little plot point. It would have been way easier to simply not do this at all and the profits for both games would have remained exactly the same.

Wasn't Mania just a big fat apology from Sega because of Boom? But Sonic Team was sick of making 2D shit, which is why Sega hired someone a more nostalgic team?

So from what I can gather, the Phantom Ruby doesn't just travel through space/time, it can also create copies/ilusions of things from different eras, which is how Eggman colud recreate so many of his "Final Boss" robots, like the Death Egg robots and the Egg Dragoon.

Also, Silver seems to be like in Archie pre-reboot, where he was desynched from time and can tell when the timeline changes everytime some time/space warping shenanigans happen.

>It doesn't trigger me, but it does annoy me for how unnecessary the whole Mania/Forces connection is. Why ever bother?

Because someone found it cute and doesn't really affect any of either game's story. You yourself say it doesn't affect anything so why not just ignore it. Just act as Classic Sonic is the same from Generations, hell, considering we see the Phantom Ruby messing up with time in this very comic, maybe he IS the same Sonic from generations and that's simply a small script mishap or just Izuka not able to word it right.

I haven't really seen anyone coming forth and yelling THIS IS NOT SONIC FROM THE PAST GUYS beyond that throwaway line from Eggman in that one boss fight.

Again, the ONE GOOD THING about this is that most of those annoyances are just that, and completely ignorable. Unlike other big dumb plot choices across the Sonic history.

No. IDW was not involved with this at all.

Not even close. Sonic Team has been working on Forces ever since they finished DLC for Lost World. After that game was dud they went back to the boost game formula, and in the mean time they had hoped that Boom would be successful as a game series. The handheld games did okay, but the sub-series fought an uphill battle agasint the reputation of the console game, which everyone's introduction to Boom.

Years in Forces' production, Sega gets the guy behind the iOS and HD remasters to make a new 2D game to appeal to Classic fans and to help hype up Forces. Sonic Team and Sega honestly did not seem to expect that Mania was going to overshadow their newest 3D game online.

Both the 3ds games sold like shit.
The second one even moreso after Rise of Lyric.
Which is a shame because the second one was actually good.

If I recall, the Boom games were also sabotaged by the reveal that the cartoon was a total comedy. They tried to unify with the cartoon some with the second game, but it just didn't work out very well.

Speaking of ABT, have you guys seen the Archie sketches and inks he revealed?

Boom Antoine?!

eh, I liked Rise of Lyric. it was a generic platformer witk a Jak and Daxter attitude. The cartoon being a comedy was unexpected, but i never thought itd be good.

ABT?

Adam Bryce Thomas

The artist on these Forces comics and former Archie Sonic artist.

is this the IDW stuff or something completely seperate?

The storytime comic looks a lot better than this

Completely separate. Sega put it together themselves. They got a former Archie artist and the former Archie/upcoming IDW Sonic writer for it, but it's nothing to do with IDW's Sonic.

It's like they're channeling both Mega Drive Knuckles and Boom Knuckles in this issue. I love it.

Generally they would use to Archie to hype upcoming releases with a short story, seems they doubled up on that idea this time.

>is that how that works? Ian flynn and etc can work outside their own companies?

Pretty much only Marvel and DC force people to sign exclusive contracts. Most people just work freelance.

>6 months since the last comic
>Thread constantly rubbing page 8

OP should've made this about gender equality or something

Maybe love for Sonic comics has died a bit.

>one of the achievments in Sonic Forces is called "Freedom Fighter"

We've had a lot of Sonic threads over the past few weeks. Probably a bit of burnout

This comic is pretty good, much better than the last one which was just alright. Makes me want to see where Forces is actually going to go with their plot, seems like an actual return to Adventure-styled stories mixed with SatAM.

>but the historical records are sparse or make no sense

Something about a fat manchild and his army of echidnas bringing about the apocalypse?

>Magic sword

That could work to make him relevant. Wait, has Antoine never had a magic sword before?

Nope, apparently he had like two-and-a-half issues of Sonic Universe inked before the comic died, and one of them was giving Antoine an upgrade.

It was dumped on /sthg/ a couple days ago, but I could post it here if there's any interest? You can glean most of the story, and the art is solid.

Of course, do it. Can't believe I missed that.

It seems like an obvious move to make, especially after Sonic and the Black Knight but no.

Maybe they had a "only one magic sword" allowed thing before the reboot?

So, are they making a resistance based game just to give Penders the middle finger?

fgdsgd

In that case enjoy the last embers of Archie Sonic and bitterly lament what might have been with me!

So Antoine's upgrade was to get a magic sword and then stop wearing pants? They literally just put pants on Sally in the reboot!

Well, with the sonic general on /vg/ and the comic not actually having that much in it, it's not surprising that it's not booming.

Oh damn, that actually looks pretty cool

cue flashback

Cute?

I'm pretty sure Antoine literally never wore pants in his life, and in the reboot he ditched the jacket for a pair of bandoliers. I mean he is a male Sonic character after all.

Can you spot the reference(s)?

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who's this asshole?

It probably would look a lot better in color, but when I look at this bad guy it kind of feels like he's wearing a Sonic-shaped hood.

Is that the big Metallix?

Nah, it was a Sega original, Fleetway just followed the Sega-of-America bible more closely than American Sonic productions of the time, ironically.

Yeah my bad, I got the numbers mixed up. We'll get there soon though.

And back to the present.

i genuinly doubt SEGA and Sonic Team even knows or cares what that man did or is doing with Sonic or any proxy therein

What's the letter say, Sup Forums?

Looking pretty cool Antoine

Though I feel that Sonic not even seeming to be pressed kind of takes away from the moment

I fucking love how Chaos is drawn in this.

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I've been able to follow pretty much every part of the story, but I can't really decipher the details of what's happening here.

Yep, cute.

Sega makes comics to promote specific games on their own sometimes.

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Looks more like she's riffing off of Hesse, and it's an improvement. ABT's biggest problems were that her paneling was cramped and her action was static, both of which Hesse's practically mastered.

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Exclusive contracts are very rare in comic books.

Weird to see a Flynn OC with a name that's actually a... name.

>she
Might I direct your attention to the name written on the top of those pages?

And that's it for this issue, what did you think of Antoine's new shit?

And now for another issue

Not the color scheme I was expecting.

I conflated Adam Bryce Thomas with Adamis, my bad.

That's right, it's everyone's favorite character!

That banner would have been a much better look than the bandolier. The X-Shape made his torso look really goddamn awkward all the time and just emphasized his nakedness.

I don't really remember the past couple of Sonic Universe issues, is there a reason why Bunnie and Marine are hanging out?

Teal is a surprising choice

>Weird to see a Flynn OC with a name that's actually a... name.

Well it kind of make sense since he was sort of rival character to Antoine and he also has a normal name.

Well, that's not normal!

Yeah that's a fair point, it was worse than nothing in a way.

Fair point yeah

And now this is happening

They don't have any connection to each other before this. I'm honestly surprised so little seems to be happening in this planned issue, but I'm kind of happy for that. The reboot was able to bring scale of events very small sometimes, and some of the best stories were things like Bunnie talking to a guy who lost his house or Rotor learning how to help with errands. The lack of political drama and constant world ending threats meant that when the Sonic characters weren't dealing with immediate threats, they could just life out their lives with strangers and friends. It helped the tourist aspect of SegaSonic.