Sonic the Hedgehog Mega Drive #1

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Great work user.

thanks. didn't enjoy it as much as everyone else online apparently did, but it's still fun.

Fuck.

Man that was a fun read. It felt very Tyson Hesse-y

That's becase it was made, or penciled, by Tyson.

Goddammit, Knuckles, you are retarded.

I like it, it's the right balance of the old fact that Knuckles was seen as a gullible fool while not being full on retard like the BOOM version

Automatic fail.

Also, big book reprinting the Sonic story from the IPC comic fucking when? The first hundred issues, at least.

No, I like it too, but this makes me remember how dumb Knux was in the older games.

What do expect from a guy who lives alone on a floating island with nothing but nature to guide him? He was Sticks before Sticks minus the lolsorandum "humor".

Good point.

that smug ass knuckles

Damn I hope Tyson fistnipples Hesse sticks around. His sonic art is brilliant

BUT HE'S ALSO A TREASUREHUNTER TOO NOW BECAUSE THAT MAKES SENSE

He was a treasure hunter in the OVA (he had a hat).

What else is there to do on Angel Island? There's probably all sorts of stuff there.

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Considering this is the guy who did Boxer Hockey, it's pretty gud.
Have some OC from the third page here:

Might have to share it with Holla Forums tho.

Which is weird, considering the artists have said it's harder to draw in the Sonic art style than the kind of art style used in most comics.

could be worse, considering the current state of comics, pretty good read so far

It's not that weird. Archie has real incentive to hire talent artists. They're serious about keeping the Sonic license.

Mainstream comics don't have that threat so they produce shit. CN even outsourced their Cartoon Cartoon comics to IDW and BOOM! because their lack of fucks.

Between this and the KFC comic, I think we can call this THE WEEK Holla Forums FOUND COMICS THAT WEREN'T SHIT.

Amy a qt

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It also happened in Sonic Adventure you doofus.

Yeah, I've heard some artists that do well in drawing realistically say it's harder to draw cartoon characters because you have to learn backwards. Of course that would explain why the comic had such atrocious art before Ian Flynn came along.

WHY MUST COMICS REMIND ME THAT THEY CAN BE GOOD?

Drawing cartoon characters is harder because it takes all of your artistic mastery to do right. Imagine taking all of your education in illustration, form, shape, anatomy, gesture, figure, and reducing it It's difficult, as you have to take all of the rules you've learned and strategically break them to produce a simpler, more cartoony style.

This is why you can tell there is fucking leagues of difference between an amateur drawing in cartoony style, like Kate Leth, and fucking professionals.

It's happening again right this November you dolt.

It's a trick question. There's a lot of artists who learn "realistic drawing" but in truth are learning as much symbol drawing as dA fanartists, just different symbols- "leg must have realistic knee like this, head connects to torso realistically like this" and so on.

So then they reach a cartoon character, which is built of simpler shapes, and crash head on. Instead of thinking "leg" like "bendy tube", they think "leg" and thus "needs knee" and you end up with Sonic looking like this.

Who is that red Sonic in the corner? I recognize all the other clones except him.

Yeah, I doodle sometimes. (Honestly I want to learn to be decent but that take willpower and motivation I don't have.)

And since I'm a Weeb, I try to draw chibis because they're easier in theory, but the whole time my brain is screaming about how wrong the proportions are.

Being guardian of the master emerald and a treasure hunter at the same time is fucking impossible.

Its not really harder per se. Tons of early disney animators had no backround in art until Disney itself had art lessons during the evenings.

The problem with the likes of Kate Leth and whatever Tumblr-artists get employed to draw her abortive comics is the same problem you have with Deviantart:

They're learning things ass-backwards, They think "cartoony" is just a style so they dont need to learn anatomy. That would be like saying that just because you want to make decorated windows to a house, you dont want to learn how to do the framework and the base of that house. And as a result that house looks like shit when proportions are all over the place and it looks like its going to collapse any second.

Cartoon characters are simplified by necessity, animation takes a long time and cartoon characters are compromises or balances between appealing and easy-to-draw design. And really thats the only real challenge with cartoon style, how to make something aesthetically pleasing to look at, despite cutting corners everywhere.

Fred Moore (The main animator of Mickey Mouse) had the most natural talent of making something simple yet visually appealing and natural-looking to the eye so the simple but pretty cartoony style does come more naturally to some people.

you have to know anatomy to draw, and you need to know it to know what the most important bits are and what you can leave out. You see a lot of amateurs keep in the wrong details.

Drawing anatomically correct is "easy", there's a host of references and the real human body to use as a reference, if it doesnt follow that it is wrong.
There is no perfect guide or reference on how to do cartoony shit, it really just comes down to knowing and sort of eyeballing it.
Ofcourse there's tools and tricks, but they will only get you so far.

OH HEY! It's the lumberjack robot boss from Sonic 3, or at least one built with the intention of gardening this time.

The Game Shark Genie… oh my pleb years are coming back to me. Back when I just wanted to mess around with the game and not worry about actually getting good. Now I look back at that and scoff.

That's Penders art, isn't it?

Zonic maybe? I dunno that might be the other bottom one. Maybe young sonic?

That's Solar Sonic, an alternate version of Super Sonic influenced by a desert environment due to the power of a Super Emerald. I'm more confused as to why he and Metal Sonic are there. They're not even Sonic's alternate selves.

Was Penders an artist? I'm pretty sure that's just the guy who drew for him.

that off panel

sonic 3

HAHAHAHAHA DAMN, IS This a new comic becuase i have to say, i really like this, compared to the edgy shit of some of the other sonic comics

Penders does art. To this day, it is terrible.

I fail to see how the writing was mediocre OP. Shit was a ton of fun.

Didn't he do the cover art for the DVD release of SatAM? I remember hearing something about how so many people complained about it that the publisher actually gave people refunds.

Yes, by telling the people doing the release that he was beloved by the community.

Yes.
I'm pretty sure he lied about working on the show so he could get his art on the cover.

Well, what else is new?

The sonic comics haven't been "Edgy" for fucking years

Yeah, a lot of the classic Disney artists had fine art training before becoming animators or cartoonists, so they were pretty well versed in anatomy.

Strangely enough, I heard Fred Moore was an animator with no fine art training, and pretty much learned everything in house. But not everybody is Fred Moore.

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The gwenpool comics were pretty good as well

I liked it.

Well, if you're surrounded by people with good art skills, then it's probably easier to learn.

But a lot of cartoon art suffers from art schools being massive scams and people learning to draw cartoons first rather than anatomy. Same problem with a lot of fan artists- people who learned to draw from imitating cartoons, anime, and other fanart tend to have tons of anatomical mistakes and other problems even if they have technical talent because they never started from the baseline of reality.

Fergy (the guy who created Pluto) had no art school backround either. He was a cameraman until one night he decided to fix some of the errors of some sequence by himself, and got hired as animator immediatly.

So Fred Moore wasnt the only odd natural talent there. Bill Tytla was the more traditional art school graduate out of all of them.

Relatively speaking.

It is good for CURRENT YEAR crap (IE. Squirrel Girl, Hellcat, Etc) and shows some potential, but it isn't actually THAT good, just plain water in a sea of piss as opposed to vintage wine.

Starvation is the best spice and all that crap.

was expecting something less "haha funny memes". Like, it's not outrageously bad or anything, but I'm seeing it praised everywhere when it really feels like it's mediocre-trying-too-hard-to-be-funny to me. I'd probably ironically be more kind to it were it by some other artist- being by Hesse, it looks too similar to me to Hesse's dumb amusing fancomics, which makes the whole thing feel less like "grand old classic Sonic adventure celebration!" and more "Archie hires writer to try and crib on popular internet memes! EMERROWDS"

This was great, thank you, user!
How is it that the comics and cartoons Sonic's been producing can be so great, but the games are still mediocre? It proves it's not a hard balance.
Also I wish Amy didn't get redesigns so often. She's perfect in that cute classic outfit and as a clingy but precious girl instead of some annoying STRONK girl.

which tbh, is more in tune with the early 90's sonic.

Where he wasnt supposed to be all that serious (thank you SATAM for fagging that up)

Classic Amy > Modern Amy > Boom Amy

Modern Amy > Pink Sonic in girly clothes

Modern Amy is basically pink Sonic, though. Classic Amy was a Minnie Mouse type character. They did to her basically what Looney Tunes did to Lola in that 'new' Looney Tunes cartoon.

HOW FUCKING SURPRISING.

Has Penders gotten anywhere based on his own merits?

Doing cover art for those 90's collector magazines that told you how much your First Edition Charizard card was, I suppose, but even that's a stretch. In the past 20 years, I can't think of anything.

No. He even only got the job at Archie because a friend of his worked there.

There's a difference, though. You can be lightertoned than SatAM without going full idiocy like how this one dips into.

I think literally all it'd have taken would've been Eggman not just being Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace, and Knuckles not just being WHO TAEK MY EMERROWS, and I'd have taken the tone better. Remove the internet memes about giant enemy crabs, and I'd have been even more endeared. Give it an actual conclusion of sorts instead of just "it continues in the sequel we supposedly might've not made", and it'd have been a solid 8. Give Hesse some commands to dial it back just a touch with the crazy webcomic expressions, and it'd have been a solid 9.

How should Eggman act then? He seems be following the usual Sonic game routine; Sonic and friends go through a zone, run into Eggman, battle, and he flees. Its formulaic, but not broken.

Knuckles came out fine in this comic. There's more to him then being one-track minded on the "EMERROWS" He's gullable, but its understandable in context why he thought Sonic would go power-crazy with the chaos emeralds, that or the writers were trying to make a small reference to the Sonic Fleetway comics Also, Knuckles being a bit of a narcissist is explainable due to his lone responiblity of guarding the emeralds. If you were guarding the most powerful ancient gems in the world, you would think you were top-shit too. Eggman was able to trick Knuckles not once, but twice (and three times counting SA1) due to his gullabilty, ego, and short-temper. Does that make Knuckles stupid? To some people, sure, but its a whole lot more subtle than Boom Knuckles.

That's a slightly obscure meme, so it doesn't seem forced either since Eggman is known for buliting gaint robots.

This is a one-shot series of comics, not a one-shot comic. Its not "supposedly might've not made", its gonna happen in November.

They're not that crazy, Hesse could've gone a whole lot more extreme with his expressions, but it looks like he kept it to a level that fits.

Before that was confirmed though, the official word was always "if it sells enough, we'll make more". Which'd indicate a sequel, not a #2. Now, imagine it HADN'T sold enough- the comic'd end with just what we have here?

They seem to not be pushing their luck for Next Level at least and giving it double the pages, hopefully so it can conclude, instead of going "IF THERE'S ENOUGH SALES, WE CAN MAKE NEXT-NEXT LEVEL (actually just issue 3)!"

I'd like Eggman to have a bit more meat than just a literal repeated "oooh those rapscallion kids!", Knuckles may have his idiocy rooted in gullibility here but it's still sold as just pure idiocy (again, count how many panels he has where he's not going WHOAH WACKY!!), and Hesse could've gone crazier, but he could've also maybe gone a touch less crazy.

I'm not saying it was shit, user, I'm explaining why I feel it was mediocre. But I feel Archie's Sonic comics often are regardless, and get lauded due to fandom politics instead, similarly to how Sonic CD was lauded for years as the best thing ever simply because it wasn't easily accessible.

Do you have aspergers?

I'm seriously asking you. You're arguments are made of nothing but nitpicking, based on very tiny, minuscule shit nobody but you cares about. Normal people would brush that shit aside.

I'd really like to know what caliber you're basing your observations on. Considering you think referencing a ten year old meme in way that doesn't alienate the audience is "cribbing on popular internet memes", I think you need to share with us where you're getting that idea from.

Are you really this offended someone would find this comic's writing mediocre, and dislike how editorial dealt with its publishing?

No one's offended, but user is right. You sound like you're autistic. This is as classic Sonic as it gets.
What internet meme, even? Maybe I'm retarded but I don't even see it. It's not like it's Nintendo Treehouse-level 'LELZ RAWR MEANS I LOVE YOU IN DRAGON XD'

1) Amy hasn't really changed. She lusted after Sonic's dick in Sonic CD and she lusts after Sonic's dick now
2) Minnie Mouse is shit

You niggas can't just tell this story and not post the cover

Not Disney, but Bruce Timm basically has no formal art training. He said he learned to draw from copying comic books and that, eventually, managed to get him hired at Filmation. Even then, he claimed his art was still terrible so obviously he got a lot of on the job training.

Man I just genuinely disagree with "as it gets". It's not a bad comic, but it's getting lauded in a way it doesn't deserve, as far as I care. Compare, say, with the OVA, which IS "classic Sonic as it gets". One immediate thing jumps out- there's no danger here. Knuckles is the silliest character in the OVA but he gets to do more than being silly. Eggman spends most of it being silly with Sera too, but is also deceiving the heroes and unleashing a murderous robot with the mission of destroying the world. So on.

As for memes and references, I realise this is a bit of a background deal too though. The writer for this, Ian Flynn, has an addiction for references. Not to Treehouse-levels, but still noticeable - whenever he writes Bean it's to make internet jokes, his "insane Robotnik" spent an issue being a YTP quote machine, even in non-comedic contexts like having a villain return to form after years by quoting Davy Jones from PoTC. So when seeing "You dun goofd" and the like here, it's just getting me going "why? can you really not help yourself and need to shove internet memery from 10 years ago in anything you write?" If it helps you understand, I'm not just seeing the three or so references he made in these 24 pages when reading this, I'm seeing the tendency he's had in the last 10 years.

here. pardon the tumblr filename, result of quick google search

That cover's not that awful. Certainly yards better than this

should add, I also agree with the "compared with everything else in the market it's a masterpiece" sentiment to a point, though. It's just, that's a bit too easy, no? A comic can't be utterly amazing just because everything else is shit, there has to be some inherent quality to it. Which as far as I'm concerned this has, just not enough to raise the writing above "mediocre kinda-auto-pilot-for-Ian" and "good-but-not-great-for-the-writing" for the art.

She was sweeter. Now she's obnoxious. Like I said, she's basically what Lola from Looney Tunes has become. Embed related.
She's clingy and obnoxious rather than just being a cutesy. Compare embed related to something like youtube.com/watch?v=0kd5ChP7w4E
She's just into him because she's a cute girl that gets saved by him. No fangirling or anything like modern Amy would be doing.

Ah, halfway through writing this I forgot which embed I had up.
Here's the embed related you can compare the Sonic CD thing to.

Yeah, it's decent and since I don't care for SatAM I don't care much for how awful this is artistically. The way he got to do it was pretty hilariously scummy though, and IIRC the publishers ended up apologising to the fans over it.

Man, you should listen to what we're saying. You sound autistic. I still don't see that other internet meme, and 'you dun goofed' isn't much of a meme. The rest of your complaint lies in specific crap that I'd say is more a part of the more serious crap Sonic you've seen since it's made its way to 3D. The original was always fun and silly.

I just used the OVA as an example. Like, that's the original. I specifically used a Classic Sonic example. Different continuity, whatever, it was overseen by Sonic Team and the character writing all fits the internal documents of how they're supposed to be written.

The originals were light-hearted, yes. I have much more disdain for how the main Archie Sonic comics are written in that regards- but goddamn, I really don't like the idea of "you don't like this kind of shit, so have this other kind of shit instead and shut up". This comic is better than the main one, but now the tone's whiplashed too drastically away. The original games still had menacing machinery, animals trapped inside robots, giant space stations and characters showing cool personality and attitudes in every bit of animation they could get. They were fun, but I'd argue that at least as far as the main games go (so ignoring things like "Eggman attacks a popcorn factory" from other games and stuff), they weren't really silly at the time. I do believe it's not too much to want something that's not as souringly serious/grimdark as SatAM/Archie Sonic most times, but that also doesn't fall into complete Sonic Boom-like comedy, which is how this feels.

And I'm listening to what you're saying, but what am I supposed to do with it? "You sound autistic", ok, so what? Am I supposed to force myself into liking the comic more then? Ashamedly walk away for having my opinions? "Normal people would brush that shit aside", user said atop. So we care about what normal people would brush aside now, on the Holla Forums board on 8ch? Oh boy, glad I can enjoy capeshit again, anons have told me I should just shut my brain down or be an autist! Come on.

this…is actually fun and a bit funny. Its not laugh out loud funny but its sweet and….well just pleasant. I'm gonna watch this show now.

Gotta say, I'm looking forward to more of this. I find the art style adorable and a lot of fun to look at.

Look at your life, user. This is autism. Why do you care so much, anyway? Mario had a fucking monster kidnapping a poor princess from a disturbing kingdom of sentient mushrooms, doesn't mean it wasn't lighthearted still. Why even bother using the OVA as an example? That's not the games. That's what the comic is based off. The comic is based off the games, that were always fun and silly. The music and colors of the original games says that well enough.

Is this just going to be a continuing string of posts where I'm asked to justify shit, do so, and am accused of autism for replying? Especially when the shit I'm being asked to explain, I already did?

Let's switch it up instead. Re-read the post you're replying to, I already answered your shit in it. Answer me this now- without falling into absurd "if it has colours it's for babies" arguments, explain how the original games were silly. Not fun, silly.

You're called autistic because you take paragraphs to complain about a good comic not being exactly as you envision classic Sonic. You care too much about something to the point of autism. That's why you're autistic.
Sonic isn't dark or dangerous. You played as a finger-wagging fast hedgehog. Do you even remember the games themselves?
Take a look at this concept art. Does none of this scream 'silly' to you?

Sorry I'm verbose, I write about anything in a long-winded way.

You seem to be thinking I'm demanding the comic be something like fucking Watchmen or whatever. Again, I keep pointing you to the OVA. You already have the example there of the tone classic Sonic was intended to have, in an animation overseen by the actual people making the games. You get silly animations, you get nice colours, you get jokes and dumb shit, but you also get high stakes and a sense of "there's an actual danger and something that the characters care about". THAT's what I wanted from this comic, not whatever you seem to think I want going by how you keep mentioning things like "the original games were lighthearted" (never said they weren't) or "Sonic isn't dark or dangerous" (never said it's dark, said the opposite in fact).

One thing there SCREAMS silly to me- Eggman in a pyjama. You'll recall it never made it to actual games. Everything else, though? It's fun stuff, fun designs, lighthearted, but not outright silly. In the context of its own world, we can take it seriously enough. Can you take this comic seriously enough in the context of its own world? Eggman's doing something we don't know with pieces we don't know that the heroes are getting with no effort, and everyone in the "antagonist" side is busy looking as silly as they can.

I'm not asking for fucking Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic 2006 here, user, despite what you seem to think. Just something with more to it than an average Sonic Boom episode.

Why don't you fucking write a letter to Archie? I'm sure they'd be happy to take your input that their comics should be more like a two episode direct to video animation that hasn't been in print since 1999, heavily edited, filled with anime cliches and poor attempts at slapstick, and appealing purely to autistic Sonic the Hedgehog fans.

Such as yourself.

Man, what's the edits have to do with anything (did I mention dubs or subs at any point), what's the fact it's out of print have to do with anything (the comic's staff have watched it anyway and I was regardless just bringing it up to counter your "classic sonic was meant to be retardedly silly"), what's any of your post got to do with anything by this point but you being mad someone didn't like a comic you apparently loved?

Christ, man. Get over yourself. I've just been replying all along to people asking me things, if that angers you that much, you might need some time off.

1) How did you manage to extrapolate this from ~3 seconds of video in which Amy appears?
2) If you'd actually played Sonic CD you know that the reason Amy even gets kidnapped in the first place is because she's a total Sonic fangirl, stalked Sonic to the little planet and got abducted by Metal Sonic

Tails confirmed indestructable elder God

It's a conundrum.

Well he is part kitsune.

That's another thing Sonic Boom got wrong with Knuckles.

They have been trying to tone Amy the fuck down in recent games, I think. Sonic Boom Amy actually has her crush on Sonic a SECRET and is otherwise more the voice of reason. (which works with crazy-ass Sticks to play off)