Sonic Comics

Why was he such a bitch?

>I thought this was a custom character from Forces for a second
How did nobody know that that was the worst idea ever?

I liked him in the early comics, when he was basically just a furry version of Carlton from Fresh Prince. No idea when he stopped wearing clothes, though.

>How did nobody know that that was the worst idea ever?
Forces custom character feature or Antoine?

>No idea when he stopped wearing clothes, though.

He stopped wearing clothes when Ian Flynn decided it was necessary to alter the designs of all of the old characters and make them look like they were created using Sonic Forces' custom character maker.

Because they stopped publishing the book pretty much right before the issue where he'd stop being a bitch.

What, no scar on his cheek?

They were probably thinking about it yeah. Interested in seeing the rest?

It was necessary because the comic's sole reason for existing was to promote the games.

Even if a character wasn't from the games they still need to look like they were.

Honestly, no.

the custom characters

Hell yeah, dweeby Antoine was the best. His goofiness only made him more endearing.

He was a bitch because of an off screen stress induced mental breakdown. Lire wise he was a bad ass up until just before the comic started. Then towards the end he got almost cool when fights started only to retroactively piss himself when he realized what had just happened. His character was really going places until the collapse of the comic.

Pretty much yeah. Like it got bad for a while with all the standard anthro characters clashing with Sega's "rubberhose with attitude" aesthetic, even when Yardely and other artists who knew actually knew how to draw Sonic characters came aboard.

That is pretty much the only thing Forces has going for it that I've seen the vast majority of people say they liked.

It wasn't the standard anthro characters clashing with Sega's characters that was the issue. It was Archie hiring nothing but trash-tier artists that was the issue.

It's shocking to me that a comic book can last for over 200 issues and have almost *no* genuinely good art.

Comic relief.

Scott Shaw was the only professional-level talent they ever had. And he only did the first three issues.

>he was basically just a furry version of Carlton from Fresh Prince

That is eerily accurate. They even have the same mustache.

He was an American's stereotypical view of France at the time. I.e. a coward, panzy, etc.

I like thinking of Antoine as not even being actually French. I just see him as somebody who's so aloof that he puts on a phoney accent to make himself feel superior to others.

Cringe.

I am, actually.

Indeed.

Everyone I know who used to be into the comics stopped reading around the same time. Looks like we dodged a bullet.

You can't dodge a bullet if the gun is cancelled.

>Everyone I know who used to be into the comics stopped reading around the same time.

When did you stop reading? I dropped the book right after they rebooted it.

Broke his dick against a metal pelvis.

Yeah, you dodged a design that's wasn't in the comics. Amazing

Right around here. I liked these particular comics for the nostalgia, I just felt like it was a good jumping off point.For a few years, I just felt like I had outgrown the comic (or maybe it just outgrew me *shrug*).

Forgot pic. There was a short arc where the comics were doing tribute to the Sega Genesis games. Those were pretty neat.

Imagine all the Sonichus.

That's what was meant by "dodging a bullet". It never happened.

Though 'Twan was ruined long before the comics got shitcanned anyhow. It wasn't the first time they attempted to make him into an edgelord. As I recall, they retconned the original edgy 'Twan by saying it was an alternate reality version masquerading as the original. GG, Archie.

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>they retconned the original edgy 'Twan by saying it was an alternate reality version masquerading as the original

Ah, the old "Dark Beast" cliché.

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You can't make Sonichu (for obvious reasons), you can't even make a yellow copy of Sonic.

You're really overselling Scott.
He was the only "pro" artist aside from Butler and Lim, who absolutely were not suited for that book, but "amateurs" like Bates and Hesse were much better artists. I'd even say Skelly and later-day-Yardley were doing better than Shaw on the whole by the 90's, and Dave Manak --despite just being an editor copying Shaw's style -- trumped Scott's Sonic work a few times.

He was better than his contemporaries, but he wasn't the best artist on the comic.

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>Why was he such a bitch?

Because when he was created for SatAM he only existed to be a counterpoint to Sonic. Not a villain, just someone who was there to be a stick in the mud and for Sonic to humiliate. Sonic was brave, Antoine was cowardly. Sonic was powerful, Antoine was weak. he was literally created to be the guy that was wrong all the time.

Initially the Archie comics stuck to this idea. The early Gallagher era almost exclusively used Antoine as the comic relief character (in a whole comic filled with gags and slapstick). It was only when other writers started trying to make the Archie series more serious that they changed him, giving him some tragic backstory that explained his cowardice and making him actually skilled as a swordsman. Of course this also came with a big heap of bad writing and forced drama, such as him discovering his father was still alive as a robot and the Sherriff of Snottingham (yeah). And it paired him up with Bunnie because everyone was getting paired up at the time.

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Manak was trash. He never even approached Shaw's work. It was often an imitation of it, but it was clear that his skill level was dwarfed several times over by the work Shaw did. And Yardley and Bates were Deviant-Art tier. Above average Deviant-Art tier, but still. No company would hire those artists to do professional-level artwork. Except for rags like Archie comics, of course, where the only things that mattered were deadlines and keeping costs way, way down.

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>Though 'Twan was ruined long before the comics got shitcanned anyhow.

>References a story from the early 00's that was quickly retconned.
>Twan's best story was ~2 years before the reboot and he was pretty consistent after this point.
>The "second" attempt to make him edgy is to just give him a cape and a fancy pants sword while keeping his character the same.

????

Noice. I love check draw studies, help me to study perspective and composition.
I would appreciate an Antoine arc, since he evolved in the comic, graduating from useless to a coward lion and finally to a full hero.

>No company would hire those artists to do professional-level artwork.
Bates works for Disney right now you fucking moron.

I would argue they would definitely be hired to do professional-level artwork, as long as the material in question was cartoon animals and not anything realistic. Like I'm not sure all but the best of the best artists have mastery in all styles.

Is that supposed to be Sonic and the Black Knight adaptation?

>Bates works for Disney right now you fucking moron.

What does he do, clean the toilets?

It's really a shame. Like from what has been indicated, once Flynn and the rest were -finally- done warming up with Shattered World, and without the distraction of another crossover, things were gonna really get moving after the flashback arc. But by that point, and for reasons that were at least mostly not Flynn's fault, it was too late.

Sort of? It's more saying that medieval times in the comic were kind of Black Knight-esque, though I'm not sure if the Hedge Knight is meant to be a time traveling Sonic or merely a distant ancestor/an unrelated hedgehog.

Though I think the general idea for the arc was
>wouldn't it be cool if the Sonic characters who use swords could do stuff that was in the Sonic game that featured swords?
And in my opion, the answer is yes.

He's a lead animator at Marvel animation.
He moved from Archie to IDW and was apparently going to do some Marvel stuff, but dropped comics because of the pay-grade and swapped into animation, where he got picked up by Marvel anyway.

Seriously, what's with the hateboner?

He's the costumed Olaf.

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That snowman has some nice tits

I will admit that I am getting mild Buddy vibes from Antoine in these pages. Maybe it's just because he's also vaguely lupine.

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>No company would hire those artists to do professional-level artwork

You overestimate the standard of quality of most of these companies you speak of. Turn on Cartoon Network right now. Whatever is playing, I guarantee the average Deviant Artist could animate it.

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More like he's overestimating Shaw. The dude was already washed up by the early 90's. His only real success was in Captain Carrot (which early Archie Sonic emulated rather closely) and Hannah Barbera adaptations. He was an okay cartoonist, but nothing more.

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>He was an okay cartoonist, but nothing more.

Even if that were true, that's better than anything else Archie ever did in terms of art.

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Not really.
In Sonic you've got Hesse and Bates, who are pretty damn great cartoonists, and outside of that you've got the fucking legend that was Dan DeCarlo. Even with extremely discerning standards Shaw was just good, not the best, and that's not getting into how sub-par his Sonic work was compared to Zoo Crew. Dude half-assed it. It wasn't his best.

While I agree that Archie is historically awful, especially concerning licensed books, Sonic is at IDW now. There's a much better opportunity now for the comics to attract better talent. IDW's standards are much, much higher than Archie's.

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>DeCarlo

I was only referring to the Sonic book. There have been plenty of great artists who have worked for the Archie company, on other books.

No doubt. There's some real trash artists at IDW, too, tho. Some of those Back to the Future books are unreadably ugly.

For those who read through this the first time
>Is this the color scheme you expected him to have
>What the fuck was his deal, and why did Antoine let him just walk away after presumably vandalizing what is presumably the Antoine family estate?

Here's the original version of the page, can you tell why it was edited?

You're likely going to get the same modern stable (Yardley, Stanley, Skelly, ABT, and an occasional Hesse) with a few newbies to test the waters. Like seriously, ABT is almost tied to Ian's hip the last year or so, he's gonna be there.

You likely won't get Butler-tier mismatches again...although one of the last cases of that they had was an IDW artist coming in for the Mega Man crossover.

Given how highly he's praising Shaw, I'm pretty sure he thinks all those artists you named are garbage for some reason.

Well again, if you're only talking about the modern book I'd say Hesse and Skelly easily trump the OMS art even given Diana's weak points. ABT is finally growing past his stiffness and Yardley is respectable if not entirely excellent.

I don't see why you feel the need to trash the other Sonic artists. There was plenty of bad art for the book, but most of the artists for the last several years have put out good work. They're the best part about the book.

Personally, I think Butler and those others are all in the same ballpark in terms of skill level (with the exception of Hesse). I'm less interested in avoiding "mismatches" and more interested in looking at genuinely appealing artwork (of which Butler and the rest of his ilk don't provide imo). I'm not looking at it from a 'Sonic fan' POV, and more from somebody who enjoys decent cartoon/comic art.

how could something from 2017 affect the designs introduced in 2013?

>They're the best part about the book.

I will agree with you there, even if our standards are obviously very different.

I guess I'm not really sure what your standards for "decent" and "genuinely appealing" are.

Like how would you rate the lineart posted throughout the thread?

He's mostly joking, but after the reboot it was either mandated or just in-house decided to make every character new or otherwise adhere to Sega standards as much as possible in that
>Everyone wears gloves and boots
>Females wear clothes
>Males mostly don't
>Proportions are mostly kept within known standards
>No separate hair and fur, at best you can cheat by having the fur on the scalp be hair-shaped and differently colored, but fur of that same color must be present elsewhere on the character's body
Ironically, I think they wound up even more stringent than the character creator.

>I'm not looking at it from a 'Sonic fan' POV, and more from somebody who enjoys decent cartoon/comic art.
Hey, same here; I only ever read this because it's the only proper cartoony animal book with a proper rotating stable of artists (TMNT is it's own weird, nebulous area), and I'd say the likes of Yardley, ABT and Skelly are goid cartoonists. They're not fucking Jack Cole or Wally Wood, they've got clear issues, but they are absolutely visually pleasing artists who put a lot of love into what they draw.

Like, I'm not sure what you're looking for. Skelly's a little too loose, Thomas is a little too stiff, Yardley's a little too static, but they all do pretty damn nice pencils. If anything I'm hoping they return so we can see them get better inks and colors.

It's fine. No, it's good, actually. The guy dumping the art might be the artist himself, and I already feel like a shitlord for bashing all those other Sonic artists, many of whom probably read this board. And my intention wasn't to throw shade at those individuals, just the awful Archie company. In honesty, these are all very young artists who are all still getting better and better while putting their skills to good use and making a decent living doing what they do. Good on 'em.

Please don't cop the "standards" excuse: if you wanna talk shit, say these talented pencillers are just mediocre or bad, actually discuss it. Where does the issue lie here, what makes Shaw supposedly grand, why are these others not even "okay cartoonists" in your book?

Because, buddy, I've been studying comics and caricature for years and I don't see whatever the hell it is you do in Shaw.

I think we can all agree Archie is a dumpster fire. Interest in the comic was always in spite of the company, and nobody's gonna disagree with the fact that like half the book's run was filled with awful art.

It is fun to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of artists, though.
Also Shaw is nearly 70, I doubt he posts here.

Not that user, and technically this isn't about the lines so much as the body language, but, my man, the number of "anime" expressions and gestures I was just subjected to can't be healthy.
Sweat drops (on fur no less) to show nervousness and embarrassment (and oh, I'm sweatin), line blush.

Now before someone comes at me pointing out how Sonic is Japanese in origins, ask yourself; are we in Japan right now?

This is more my speed, the expressions and body language have more personality and are more animated.

The artist whose roughs you were talking about actually does way less anime-isms than the one you said is more your speed, who goes so far as to add in goofs like a meme from Soul Eater.
She is generally more dynamic than he is, though.

That's a fair objection, even though I'd argue that it's almost certainly deliberate (Antoine even does the stock "humble/bashful" pose at ), that doesn't really make it "better" I suppose.

He looks handsome in this desu senpai

Nah I'm not ABT, I just liked the art, had nothing better to do, and this seemed like a contextually appropriate time to post them. I vaguely recall him posting on vg sometimes but I might be mistaken.

No.

One thing I noticed is it looks like the concept art has them workshop ditching Antoine's bangs, which I kind of like, but I'm not sure if it makes him unrecognizable.

Ian, Jon Gray, Evan (via prodding from a friend), Adam, and I think Leah have all posted pretty openly before. Tyson outside of Sonic threads, most notably when he showed Sup Forums how Gary Martin butchered his pencils for Mega Man. Tracey and Herms have acknowledged threads but don't post. There's no proof for this one, but it seems like Skelly's posted incognito a few times. She likely steers clear because there's a few dedicated spergs who hate her for how she acted/drew as a teen.

So yeah, all the current artists and writers.

The Acorn guy was originally based on the armor King Max got after being turned evil in the Zone of Silence. I'm not sure if that was legally not allowed or if they just decided it wasn't really an appropriate design.

Cute, thanks for sharing.

>I'm not sure if that was legally not allowed

-Written By Ken Penders

The hell do you think?

There's no endering to the Pendering.

Also this is a great example of what I'm talking about with why they needed to crack down on consistent proportions, because King Acorn is in that armor, but it's drawn as if it's definitely being worn by a realistic human.

Penders can't keep getting away with it.

In this case, I liked the second design better, honestly even if the way it was would have been a cute Easter egg. Generally agree with the sentiment though.