Is there still a place for edgy characters in comics, or do they exist only to be ridiculed?

Is there still a place for edgy characters in comics, or do they exist only to be ridiculed?

Meh, Proto Man's not edgy. He's just angsty. You can be angsty without being edgy (though not the other way around).

But to answer your question, no. Edginess deserves to be ridiculed.

you can ridicule edgy characters but still have them be every bit the 12yo wish-fulfillment with lots of badass scenes. Its one of the few cases where you really can have your cake and eat it too. see: Haseo in .Hack.G.U. nobody takes his edginess seriously because they thin he's just a hardcore roleplayer

Batman is still a thing.

Batman isn't edgy, most of the time he's just gothic.

>Wearing sunglasses at night

Isn't Protoman a flawed prototype with a defective power core, that is always slowly dying and in horrible pain because of it?
That is pretty reasonable reason to be angsty.

I miss the Mega Man comics so much. Relaunch when, IDW?

The last 3 issues are so fucking good. You could tell they were ready to go all-out for the MM4 and MM5 adaptions.

Is there a given reason that Dr. Light (or Wily, even) can't just repair that? Are a robot's memories also stored in the power core in the Megaman universe, or something?

daddy issues

>Are a robot's memories also stored in the power core in the Megaman universe

They hint at that sort of thing in the games. It also doesn't really help that Blues just refuses to be fixed without giving a clear cut reason why. It's weird and dumb.

Gosh I love this page. I miss the Mega Man book.

He's not in pain, but other than that you're pretty right

Protoman doesn't trust them to fix him (iirc he's afraid that they might shut him down for good or alter his personality while he's under).

I didn't like the Archie comic. Hated the two-page boss fights and how Mega man had an emotional crisis every arc.

Yes, edgy characters are only good to be mocked, but you can have your cake and eat it too.

Like Overwatch's Reaper, he's as edgy as they come and plays it completely straight for people who are into that, but every single character around him thinks he's a tool and talks shit about it.

>emotional crisis
The problem was he was such a whiny pacifist. The protagonist in an action book can only whine apologetically for so long to the bad guys he takes down before that shit gets infuriating.

Man, Ian really loved to jam wordswordswords into this book even when it hurt the flow.

Why did the Mega Man comics sell so poorly? It's vastly better than all the licensed shit being pumped out by Marvel, IDW and such.

1. Archie distribution is primarily book stores and the like, not comic shops, and Sonic was an irregularity for them in terms of sales.
2. Adaptations without any new outside media to create a feedback loop almost always bleed sales over time, and MM was no exception.
3. It was annoying to read if you were a fan. MM2 and 3 were handled terribly, and there was way too much build up/regurgitation of things people already knew. If more of the series had been like Rock and Blues' final issues, it would have been far more palatable.
4. X shilling.
5. When's Bass?

Mega Man's fanbase is old enough to recognize most of the tropes, and to get a chuckle when you poke fun at them.

>Isn't Protoman a flawed prototype with a defective power core, that is always slowly dying and in horrible pain because of
No. Initially he had a flawed power core. However, he overheard Dr. Light talking about redesigning him and so ran off before Light could fix his power system. Wily found him and fixed up his power cell, and so it hasn't been a problem since. (Although Protoman might still be nuclear powered, I don't recall.)

Like here, he has a major paranoia with the idea of anybody potentially messing around with his memories and personality.

>in horrible pain

That's the other Proto-Man. The one who's an edgier brown girl.

>he's just gothic
What do you mean?

>Mighty No 9

You could have been a force for good, dammit.

If they made an MGS comic it would run on edge

>Mega Man's fanbase is old

Makes me sad to realize this, but yeah it's true. Even the Zero and ZX series are way past what younger people have played at this point. Maybe they've done some of the DS games.

Knowing Flynn, he was probably building up to that scene in Megaman 7 where he tries to kill Wily. The issue that set up megaman 4 was all about him getting used to being a fighting robot.

>Wily found him and fixed up his power cell, and so it hasn't been a problem since. (Although Protoman might still be nuclear powered, I don't recall.)
Are you talking about the games or the comics?

I haven't played Mega Man 9 or 10 but Protoman dying from a defective power core is still a plot point in Mega Man & Bass (takes place between 8 and 9) as well as during Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (not sure when this takes place but I think it's after 10 since it shows Wily working on Zero).

I just realized this book just portrayed Rock as a kid version of X. I can dig it

Also, Tempo is great, and it's a shame that she'll never ever be in the games. That is, if there ever are any new Mega Man games. Fuckin' Capcom.

user's mistaken: in the comic Wily "fixed" him but actually made the problem much worse, to the point that Light likely won't be able to fix the core without destroying Blues' self.

Can I get into the Mega Man comics when I don't remember anything from the games?

>LOLcat image
You can fuck off. That's certainly something you can do.

You could, but it's so repetitive and reference heavy you probably wouldn't like it.

>That is, if there ever are any new Mega Man games.

Sure there will be. IOS games

Protoman should've been the MC, no joke. He's the only character with an outside perspective on everything.

Probably. They were pretty good (not GREAT).

Mainly the issue was focusing on uninteresting OC for very long stretches of the run. Ideally they would've just covered the main 7 as quickly as possible.

Wily was exerting THE master plan in the comic.

>the comic should've been nothing but a bunch of fight scenes
Sometimes I wonder why anyone bothers adapting video games to other mediums since the primary audience is a bunch of simpering retards who hate story.

Protoman won't stop being a bitch and just let his dad help him

Protoman’s not edgy. He was designed more as Megaman’s aloof older brother than as his “cool anti hero” equivalent.

That's what I wanted to know, thanks.

Haven't you heard? Any character who isn't happy go lucky every second of every day is EDGY AS FUCK. Every character must be gumdrops and rainbows and can never display any emotion other than joy. Otherwise they're edgelords or crybabies. There is only room for extremes.

Mega Man didn't get EDGY until the X series.

Green Hill fags don't buy comics regardless of content. They just appear in discussions and guh "MUH GAME CANON" and bitch at anyone who might possibly support the franchise.

When you're not adapting the game canon for mega man, what do you have? Xander? Quake Woman?

Edgy characters in general are forever ruined by 13 year olds who think that spouting lines about death, violence, and rape is the coolest shit in the world because they're too immature to understand why those things are generally not things that people talk about.

It also doesn't help that a lot of edgy characters are poorly written to boot or never actually grow into better people as a result of experiences that they've gone through.

>Getting so worked up about people who like the source material that you misread the argument entirely and insist they said things they actually didn't.
Christ, simmer down and actually look at the two points user made.

>focusing on uninteresting OC for long stretches of the run
This is a perfectly valid complaint, especially given the key words [uninteresting] and [long stretches]. A lot of page time was devoted to original content that didn't provide much more than reference humor and setting up for flacid payoff. Characters like Krantz and Lalinde and Pedro are fine and dandy...but why are they here exactly? Krantz is here because "haha, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern, I get the reference!" and to set up foreshadowing with Xander's lackeys, but like... what is she adding when she's around for more than a page or two? She doesn't have a personality really, she doesn't offer a fresh perspective more than any cop would (not that they utilize that anyway), and she doesn't have any agency in the stories.

It's okay to have a character or two like that, but almost EVERY character was this and they were getting more face time than characters like Fire Man, who are supposed to be major supporting cast members. Of the two original characters who got substantial screen time instead of just more-than-the-robots, only one was actually interesting and her whole THING was being listless. There was a glaring lack of meaningful original content through the whole run and it really hurts the book. And the weirdest part, which gets brought up frequently in these threads, is that one of these OCs got positive feedback from fans...and Ian's response was "No you just don't get it" and pushing Xander harder.

Cont.

Their other point was that it should have more quickly pushed through the game plots and gotten to a stronger extended cast to play with, and that's also pretty reasonable. The game arcs tended to drag, mostly because of the repetitive fight scenes. If they were streamlined to cover the plot points without three pages spent on every single RM intro, the book could have gotten to a point where it could better explore those robots in original situations and expand on them. The idea that "they should have sped things up" = "this should be endless fight scenes" is ridiculous, especially given the longest adaptation was the one most focused on fight scenes.

Like seriously, think before you piss blood over FUCKING GAMEFAGS REEEE. The comic has serious flaws regardless of where you're coming from.

Mega Man is dead. Capcom killed him.

The OCs manage to be far more interesting than any of the canon robot masters, all of whom had basically no character, and only exist as obstacles to be shot at. Mega Man is kind of a shite franchise. Heaven fucking forbid it have some substance injected into it.

Again, this is a comic book, which has to have a story. If you want a shallow boss rush for you to live out your "badass" fantasies, go play the games.

The OCs had just as much character as the robot masters were given. The difference is the robot masters got a couple pages each, whereas the OCs got several issues worth of pages. Rockman Megamix proves that you can 'inject substance' into the series just fine and still have your fight scenes and philosophical-waxing. And that's spoken from a person who liked the Archie comics and thought they were a refreshing change from the usual Marvel/DC superhero schlock.

You're either a shitposter or really fucking stupid, because you're not reading what you're replying to.

>Heaven fucking forbid it have some substance injected into it.
The complaint was that the characters lacked substance and purpose. Not that OCs shouldn't exist, but that the ones we got were very poorly used.

>Again, this is a comic book, which has to have a story. If you want a shallow boss rush for you to live out your "badass" fantasies, go play the games.
Again, the criticism was levied at repetitive fight scenes taking up space, not an abundance of non-fight content. You're arguing at nothing.

But my favorite piece of bullshit is this
>The OCs manage to be far more interesting than any of the canon robot masters, all of whom had basically no character, and only exist as obstacles to be shot at.
Ignoring how incredibly fucking stupid it is to say someone with plenty of screen time like Tempo has more character than someone with no screen time like Bubble Man, let's ask a few questions. Do you really think there are people who think Pedro Astil is more complex and interesting than Quick Man? Can you describe Dr. Lalinde without bringing up her looks, job or broad relationships? What does Gil Stern add that any other character couldn't?

Character is all about execution. The Robot Masters can be as deep or shallow as the writer pleases. There's nothing wrong with original characters, but if you're going to adapt a video game you may as well use the major characters, some of whom are considered the hero's family, more than "guy who created Plant Man and exposits and nothing else."

But seriously, if you just wanted (You)s you could just ask nicely.

Both Ridiculed and be developed into something less edgy.

OR go the angsty route which is not all to good in itself but presents further story.

The comics are pretty acurate to the games. Dr. Wily DID fix the power core, so he's not dying, but he's pretty still unstable.

If Proto Man ever received a direct hit , he'd die, and mayble also blow up. Canonically, he's pretty fragile, but he's so good that he's never gotten a direct hit.

Not once did I ever give a flying rat's ass about any of the robot masters from the games. They had nothing to them, well, except Splash Woman, but that's only because she's from 9.

>can you describe Dr. Lalinde
Personality wise, she's calm and melancholy, with a repressed maternal streak. She hates herself for what she did to Tempo and tries to make up for it anyway she can, even going so far as to make her a sister.

>what does Stern add
He's there to serve as a nuanced voice against the idea of sapient robots, bringing up legit good points without being a villain. Hell, dude even straight up predicts the Maverick Virus as a what if scenario.

Also, Quick Man is a fucking idiot who is trying WAY too hard.

You can go ahead and eat my taint now.

I like how you intentionally ignored every counterpoint and the Pedro part since he has no character despite getting more page space than like 1/3 of the robot masters.

If you're not going to even try, why should I even bother? You may as well be shitposting.

>Also, Quick Man is a fucking idiot who is trying WAY too hard.

I presume you're speaking from experience this is the part where you get mad about the post misrepresenting you and not refuting the rest of your rebuttal/counterarguments despite having been equally reductive in the first place

Well, Pedro fill the role of a character that had always been implied, but never been directly refernenced in the games. Obviously SOMEONE built Plant Man, but it was never important as to who. That must of been a interesting concept to explore.

It also serves the purpose of fleshing out unexplored robotic community. There's only, like, four humans we get to see in the original games, three of which are old men. That's simply not enough to build a comic on. Mega Man's lore is highly underdeveloped.

Krantz is supposed to contrast with Guilderstein to present how the events of the comics are viewed by society, with one being justifiably scared of progress and the other optimistically embracing it.

Bass is our resident edgelord.

ty, I hate people that strawman my argument.

I don't care how badly it ruins the canon, he should've been in the story earlier.

I don't need to address your other counterpoints, because they're fuckin' wrong, mate. The OCs are used just fine, especially since some of them have better stories than some of the canon characters. Or were you really invested in Ice Man's attempts to fuck his sister?

I think you're just one of those people who thinks adaptation should equate to carbon copy. If this comic was just a retread of all the games, it would have no value whatsoever, since they'd be nothing but a series of boss fights.

It's impossible to deny the OCs are underdeveloped but I never really minded. I didn't go into a Mega Man comic expecting super deep and thoughtful characters, so I wasn't disappointed. Of course, 'dude you just have to set your expectations low' isn't a good defense of shallow characters, but I thought they were just fine as goofy little Mega Man characters.
I also agree with . Even if the characters weren't very deep they did a good job of populating a world that otherwise consisted of robots, three doctors and Kalinka. Personally I fucking loved Stern and I thought Xander was a great villain, and wasn't expecting the Mr X twist at all.
The actual robot masters from the games definitely needed some more love at times though. Stuff like the comic where Guts Man meets Concrete Man or Ice Man's crush on roll were absolute gold.

The robot master fights definitely should have been a part of a more comprehensive storyline, like what MSPA did for No Future, rather than the storyline being nothing but one robot master fight after another like the games.

What hurts me is that we never got to see Quint in action.

Yeah, user, we know why they're there, that's not the point. It's about the focus they get relative to characterization. Like fuck, Ian tried to establish some kind of history between Krantz and whatsherface, Simone? And it's like...that doesn't fucking mean anything when we barely know either character.

There is so much space dedicated to OCs in the book without actually saying anything about them and too little bleed between the OCs and the Canon. I was kind of pissed they didn't show up in MM2 after being featured on the cover of one of the issues; it was the perfect place to use them. Gil was already wary of Light in the previous arc and having Mega Man corrupted by Wily's Malware could have made for a supremely interesting shift in perspective while also furthering the comic original content. Instead it was the same shit as the first arc again. Instead Stern gets to tell us things fans already know as fact so we can explore Dr. Light more thoroughly without actually getting anything out of Gil, which was redundant anyway because a version of this already fucking happened in the fourth arc. And the guy Light argued with there was bumped off the comic and replaced with a completely boring nothing character because GUYS REFERENCES.

This was the consistent problem, the book introduced original characters for obvious reasons but didn't take advantage of them. It's even worse than how the Freedom Fighters were used in the Sonic books.

I understand you can't expect too much, but I think Ian got way too wrapped up in "muh foreshadowing, muh deep lore" to properly pace and execute...well, anything. He was just certain the comic would just keep rolling along.

I really wanted to like a lot of it, and there are parts I do like, but when you write a monthly you have to consider "how do I keep little Suzy invested for the next three months," not "it's okay, she'll like it in 10 years when it's finished." I'm just happy he seems to have finally realized this

They're still all over the place, user, just not in kid's comics like Mega Man. Also it's hard to be edgy for decades without some of that novelty wearing thin.

>and I thought Xander was a great villain

Literally how? I got sick of his ham-fisted attempt halfway through his first appearance, let alone the other 8.

I don't care about his motivations. Take Wily and Eggman, their motivations make no sense yet they're both ten times the villain because they have personalities. When Wily first loses to Mega Man, he doesn't grovel and beg but instead resigns himself to his fate and makes one last shout of defiance. It shows that there's something to him instead of just being a sniveling villain archetype.

Ideally they would have honestly skipped most of the game adaptations and just gone back to them when we had need of them. The comic barely focused on original characters, and the game adaptations were easily the worst arcs.

I agree Xander wasn't great, but it stems even more from the lack of any sort of unique offering as a villain more than his lack of personality.

If you've ever read a story about robots, you know EXACTLY how "guy with a gun" characters like Xander play out. Human enemies without big mechs in kids books can only really work if they have a twist - politics, wealth, idealogicsl disputes and defamation, crime, superhuman abilities, overlapping goals, etc. The human who hates robots and will kill human and robot alike is so played out that we really only needed to see Xander once as a minor villain to get the same effect from the Mr. X reveal.

No, but the deep lore, guys!
We'll string it out to 2020!

The game adaptations were easily the best arcs. If you want the generic melodrama of Quake Woman & Friends you could just read regular Archie.

Yeah, the Mr. X reveal helped, but as you mentioned earlier, it's all foreshadowing which doesn't really amount to much. His goal is a world without robots so we know by default that he fails pretty fucking hard, unless he kills the original series characters which just steals the thunder from way more worthy characters like Zero.

See, this shit right here is why video games and their adaptations are fucking trash. ANY semblance of story or world holding, and retards like you come out of the woodworks to shit on it because you're offended by any attempts at investment beyond how many things you can kill. Kill yourself. Jack Thompson was right.

To be fair pretty much every Mega Man adaptation starts at Mega Man 1, and fans love seeing those stories adapted. If they hadn't tried to be SO close to the games that they would sacrifice story at every turn, it'd be fun. Hell, the build-up to the games were quite entertaining when you had Wily doubting whether being villainous was what he really wanted, or Quick Man and friends deciding whether they want to be alive or evil. But it needed to be less like Ikehara's manga, and more like MegaMix's adaptation of 3. Or just skip all that, and get to the point where everybody can see their favorite characters without waiting ten years.

The OC's were honestly okay. Xander sucked hard, but aside from him they were the least of the comic's problems.

Yeah Blues has every reason to distrust and be touched by the flesh bags, even if it's clear Light wouldn't do such a thing intentionally.

The comic tied to show Tempo as the example that he should forget and forgive, but actually she's the perfect example of why he's justified in being scared shitless of being tweaked. She got completely mindwiped and she wasn't allowed even a chance to resent her creator because she lost all memory and feelings about the matter and who she was prior to the reset. Whether Tempo would forgive her mother or not we will never know because the Tempo that had the right to pass that judgement is gone.

Blues really fucking cares about his identity and soul, and apparently he's the only robot like that. Some Wily bots recognize their lack of freedom but just resign themselves to it and Rock seems keen on avoiding the issue altogether and think of other stuff, meanwhile Blues actually went and escaped from Light, which now that I think about it would be breaking the second law of robotics, making the entire protoplot be born from a plothole...

A decade is still way too far ahead to be planning, man. Getting a comic to last five years already takes a lot of doing, let alone getting there as the sole writer. We really didn't need 8 issues of Mega Man 3.

>The game adaptations were easily the best arcs.
No fuck that, they were awful. 2's only redeeming scenes were Quick Man's (which had a lame climax) and Crash Man's. The virus didn't land at all, the bosses were so formulaic it hurt, and the first batch of Robot Masters invading Wily's castle was so rushed over it might as well not have happened. Mega Man 3 was even worse by the end, the Robot Masters got SLIGHTLY more variety but were still a set number of pages, a joke, and then an explosion with even less of a subplot going through it. Doc Robot's scene was cut painfully short to make room for a Wily boss that everybody forgot about the second the scene was over. They were complete messes, where the team was trying to fit in obscure details of the fucking level design and completely pointless bosses for no reason but that the first game did it.

When the comic focused on game characters, but wasn't doing game plots, it was very interesting. But the actual rundowns of Mega Man 1, 2 and 3 are all low points.

Man, some people just really fucking hate Mega Man. Why read his comic?

>which now that I think about it would be breaking the second law of robotics, making the entire protoplot be born from a plothole...

Nope. He was the only robot created to have free will.

No, they were the high points, disregarding the first crossover. What else could possibly be considered the high point?

Because it's the only thing of note to happen to Mega Man lately.

Unless you count Legends 3 getting cancelled out of spite, which led to Mighty No. 9, that piece of shit.

But then what would be the point of X? No robot Master type robot should have freedom if X is the first one.

Thank you, holy shit.

Every Protoman issue?
Seriously.

Spite, as well as a complete lack of interest from the general public and hostilities from the so-called fans.

8-bit DM got an updated storymode a few months ago, shit's amazing. Now that's how you adapt the mega man games.

The 3 laws of robotics aren't in Proto Man.

The 3 laws of robotics being removed doesn't give a robot free will. It just means that Proto Man is allowed to do some things other robots can't: he's still just as limited when it comes to changing and growing as any other Robot Master. But honestly, Classic's Robot Masters might as well have free will, the three rules are only in the comic version anyway.

The issue where they decide whether to reprogram the Wilybots or turn them off.
The issue that explores Proto Man's backstory.
Worlds Collide, as you said.
The entire Redemption arc.

X fucks over the Classic cast that way, so honestly, we can just forget about him. Unless it's a Mega Man X story, he doesn't need to factor into the plot. That's what Mega Man 9 and 10 clearly did.

>Recognizing the potential danger presented by a prototype with such advanced abilities, Dr. Light included a failsafe feature in Proto Man's design that would prevent him from breaking the Three Laws of Robotics. It was this unfinished failsafe that would later have an unexpected effect on his power generator. Eventually, his "free will" led Proto Man to leave Dr. Light's side, disappearing without a trace. The next time he showed up, he was a combat robot working for Wily.

Did you not play Mega Man 3?

There's something funny about a robot prototype with justified angst issues sporting the biggest and goofiest anime hair he can.

If you got it, flaunt it.

Also sunglasses UNDER his sunglasses

How fucking augmented do your eyes have to BE to be able to see through that shit?

He was originally going to run around helmetless, but they felt if he had flowing hair it would be like "Rockman was beating up a human". Which is why he got the helmet.

...

I don't remember this character on the final game
What was his shtick?

You misunderstand where his eyes are.

She's the DLC/day-one character/boss, who's basically a malfunctioning prototype of the Mighto No. series that needs to keep eating Xels to live, like a predatory robot vampire. She's also playable, fighting with swords and playing like a Zero in speedrun mode that has to keep absorbing enemies to live.

At least enough to watch you, and breath your story lines.

At bare minimum enough to keep track of visions in his eyes.

Ah, the expansion, I didn't pirate that one and I don't want to go back to the game now that I know this

>They lost me!
>Forgot me!
>Made you from parts of me!
>If you're the one; my father's son
>Then what am I supposed to be?