#i very much doubt that characters from the comics like sally or bunnie will make it in

[multicolour-ink]

I just realised what the whole "tribe" that Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails formed together could mean for the Sonic Movie Verse.

It means that other beloved Sonic characters from the games (who at this point Sega have been treating as bland NPCs) can have a chance to be more active by joining this "tribe". A group who promises to look out for each other, and protect the Earth and galaxy from threats.

[thankskenpenders]

I don’t know if there’s any information on this. But where would nicoles lynx form fall under this? We later see that major elements applied to a character would go back to the creators after the lawsuit, hence sallys family members getting completely replaced and ray losing his stutter. But nicole was allowed to keep her lynx form, would sega/idw be able to use that form in any revival of the freedom fighters or would she be stuck as a computer/need a new animal and design?

I think you’re a little confused on how the copyright stuff works there. Sally’s family got replaced not because Ken contributed elements to their characters, but because he created them. (Max filled the same role as SatAM’s unnamed king, yes, but the two are pretty different.) And any personality discrepancies between versions of the remaining characters is probably more due to the fact that they were trying to stick closer to the games after the reboot, as opposed to Ken owning Ray’s stutter or something like that. I mean, Bunnie and Antoine were still a couple after the reboot, and that was a thing made up by the old Archie writers in the early years

Anyway, as for Nicole: we don’t know! There was no problem letting her remain a holo-lynx after the reboot, so that might just be a thing that comes packaged with the character forever now. There’s a very good chance Nicole the Holo-Lynx is not considered a distinct entity from computer Nicole at all, especially considering she had already been growing more and more sentient prior to Stargazing and the SatAM writers even planned on eventually giving her a body. HOWEVER... Tania del Rio, the writer of Stargazing who gave us Nicole’s holo-lynx form in the first place, seemed to still be doing work with Archie around the time of the reboot, judging by her Comic Vine page. (They even reprinted her Sonic Rush story in a Sonic Select book in 2014.) I’m not sure whether or not that was a factor. But they also made Ian get rid of pretty much all of his old characters even though he was literally still writing the series, so... yeah, who knows

Regardless, if Nicole ever returns, she WILL have to get redesigned to some degree, like the rest of the Freedom Fighters. She might get to stay a lynx, she might not. But in my opinion, if the holo-lynx thing was considered off limits, they could probably get away with making her a different animal, or making her a robot instead of a hologram, or something like that. Again, there were plans to give her original SatAM incarnation a body, too, and her post-reboot origin story is based on scrapped plans from SatAM. So if she did ever come back, I doubt she’d be stuck as Sally’s computer

[rachelbethhines]

The Antoine and Bunnie Retrospective - 130

“Love and Loss” - Sonic the Hedgehog #144

So first off a real life update. I’ve taken on extra shifts at one of my jobs and business is picking up on my art/graphics side. Therefore reviewing will have to take a backseat for a while. This series will still be getting priority, but reviews will come out once a week rather than the three or four a week. So be on the look out on Fridays/Saturdays for the latest update. As for my other review series I’ll get to them whenever the time permits me to. 

Now on to the review.... Where we take a break from all of the Antoine drama and look at Bunnie’s feelings during all of this mess.

This story follows five women in the comic and their romantic entanglements thus far. See, the Knothole newspaper has a “Dear Abby” type column called “Dear Ally” and this week’s theme is relationship drama. Theses people are as follows, Bunnie, Mina, Amy, Sally, and Rosie at the very tail end. (Apparently she has a crush on Uncle Chuck, which we’ll sadly never see come to fruition)   

Of course we’ll be focusing on Bunnie for this review, but I’ll give a brief overview of the others at the end. 

Regardless of who wins out concerning Antoine’s character development, Bollers or Penders; this breakup really effects Bunnie deeply. Weather it’s Evil- Antoine or Anti-Antoine she broke up with, she’s still lost the real Antoine. The man whose been the emotional rock she’s leaned on for years. 

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Read this letter in her own words. 

“I miss...knowing who loved me regardless of my appearance. I feel like my whole world has fallen apart”.

That line pretty much sums things up. There’s a level of co-dependency in the Bunnie and Antoine relationship that is both immensely endearing and arguably unhealthy. And make no mistake it can be found on both sides of the relationship; as Antoine needs Bunnie to reassure him of his worthiness, and Bunnie needs Antoine to constantly help her through her identity issues.  

It is precisely this idea, that two people so broken can fix each other through love and understanding, that makes the audience so invested in their relationship. That when something inevitably goes wrong, we are concerned for their well being. We know that one can not live without the other, and so we want to see them together always. That’s good story telling. That is good drama born of natural character development. 

Unfortunately its not sustainable. Eventually either life and/or death will separate us all. And since Archie Sonic is an ongoing series without a definitive ending, there’s no way they can remain together forevers and evers. Even if the separation is only temporary, it’s still an inevitability at some point. If only for the sake of story progression and preventing the comic from stagnation.   

That means at some point one or both characters will need to learn to function without the other. In order to progress as people, they’ll need to break away from the band-aid solution of constantly having someone else reassure them and learn to be confident for themselves.  That point is not today however as we see Bunnie’s reaction to Ally’s response letter. 

We see her preparing to leave, either to find Twan and confront him or to run away as she usually does. (I’m betting it’s the latter) Only to break down into an emotional wreak unable to do anything because she is just that lost without him. That’s how dependent upon Antoine she really is. That’s not healthy. But it is understandable, given what we know of her and her former relationship. 

I know we all like to joke about how Buntoine is the perfect couple and yes they are near perfectly written imo, but relationships aren’t perfect and their’s is no exception. Co-dependency is a problem, but it’s a flaw that makes them interesting. 

As for Ally’s advice for dealing with this problem, it is fairly sound. (except for that whole “males can’t communicate their feelings” thing. We all know Ant is better at doing precisely that than Bunnie ever was) But we all know it doesn’t apply to this situation because outside forces are manufacturing this particular breakup. Weather Evil or Anti, simply talking to him wouldn’t have done anything productive, so I guess it’s for the best she never tried. 

PS: I translated Antoine’s note at the bottom of this picture. It means;  “I will always love you my beautiful flower forever - Antoine”  

Antoine calls Bunnie his beautiful flower!

This is an accurate representation of my reaction to this particular news.

As for the other girls; Mina decides to give up on Sonic for good and pursue a more serious relationship with Ash, Amy rejects Ally’s advice to keep herself open to other possibilities as oppose to single mindedly chasing after someone who is currently uninterested in her, (remind me why Bollers wanted to push for SonAmy again?) and Sally is told to go talk about her feelings to Sonic in a more mature manner instead of blowing up in his face constantly. Good advice she promptly ignores. Which is all the more stupid when you realize who “Ally” was meant to be all along. 

no. No. NO. NO! NO! NOOOOOOO!

This is BULLSHIT! and let me explain why;

Sally is the last person who needs to be giving relationship advice to anyone. Even before Daddy Dearest went and fucked with her head, Sally was terrible at communicating her feelings and had a continuing “will they, won’t they” relationship with Sonic for years. To hear her go on about “honesty” and “you need to talk” is hypocrisy of the highest order. 

Sally apparently took up this hobby to deal with her grief over Sonic’s “death”. She wanted to help others rather then focus on her own loss, which is fair enough. That’s a very Sally thing to do. But she’s already a princess in a war torn country! She already helps people every fucking day! And she no doubt has more important things to do then write letters to random strangers about love! Especially now that her dad is gone and left her in charge as acting ruler.

This smacks of a last ditch attempt to rescue Sally’s character after “the slap” by acknowledging that she was wrong and showing how she is still a helpful, wise, and likable character but it backfires horribly. Mainly because she never acts upon this sound advice she gives herself, making her come across as a self-righteous jackass as oppose to the selfless heroine she’s meant to be. 

The only way I can accept this ending is that it’s really Nicole who is writing all of this advice. That “Ally” just transcribes it all down for her cause she doesn’t have hands to do it herself. 

PSS: Can we call Anti-Sally Ally now? It’s short for both Sally and Alicia and separates her further from the Queen. So you can talk about both without contusion. Also we can spell it like Ali. 

Anyways the other story this issue is the finale chapter for the M25YL arc. Hurray! 

Next time on the Retrospective we finally reveal who won the custody battle over Antoine’s character development, Bollers or Penders.  

[thankskenpenders]

screenrant /sonic-continuity-archie-idw-comics-games-sega/amp/ I would love to hear your thoughts on this write up over on Screen Rant about the comics.

(link to the article)

Boy this one made me frustrated, as this wall of text no doubt implies

So while I agree with some points this article makes about the Archieverse having a lot of elements to like, I also think it’s built on a wildly flawed premise. For one thing, they’re comparing a decades-long series that was able to build up its universe over the course of over 500 issues to a new series that just crossed the 30 issue mark. And in the article itself they argue that Archie’s shift to a more serialized story started around 40 issues in with Mecha Madness (which is wrong, but hey), but they... don’t make the connection there? The Archie comics get a pass in this article for taking 3-4 years to start giving a shit about continuity, while all the great narrative work that the IDW comics have done in their first two and a half years is glossed over

A lot of the article also feels like it’s just saying “the Archie comics had a lot of lore, which made them better.” This is an extremely common thing people will fall for when it comes to nerd media, confusing a large amount of lore and a big wiki and a world history that stretches back thousands of years for a good story. Having just finished reading all the Archie issues released before Ian’s run last year, most of those plot threads went nowhere with their original writers and were thematically shallow. You cannot tell me in good faith that the Ancient Walkers or the Order of Ixis or all those different super transformations or whatever really added all that much to the narrative. They just didn’t. Having all that lore is meaningless if it doesn’t prop up a strong central narrative, which the Archie comics struggled with for years

They touch on stuff like Bunnie’s arc as a half-Robian, and y’all know Bunnie is my fave. But it took them years and years to actually do anything with her. There is exactly one story in the first 50 issues of the comics that actually touches on her internal struggle regarding her robot parts. And I think that little backup story’s fantastic! It’s stories like that that make me love the Archieverse. But if the series had ended with Endgame like it was supposed to then that would’ve been it for her character arc. There were so many stories like this in the first 13 years of Archie comics, where more complex ideas would be teased and then the story would be dropped because there were too many characters, too many conflicting storylines, and too many cooks in the kitchen

And while Ian was eventually able to pick up all those disparate pieces from his predecessors and start telling really cool stories with them (as I have highly praised in my coverage of his first year at Archie), that complex continuity also made the Archie comics very hard for new readers to get into. It’s a double edged sword. It’s okay to like that lore-dense approach to storytelling (I mean, I do), but it’s not objectively better than the alternative

This writer also conveniently avoids saying much at all about the nearly 30 years of video game lore that the IDW comics are drawing from. All that doesn’t count for some reason. They claim that the canon of the IDW comics only starts with Eggman’s takeover in Forces. And they repeatedly say Sally is a faun? What??? And they keep referring to the Archieverse as the “official canon,” which... what do they mean by that?? This article is a mess

[mobius-prime]

73. Sonic the Hedgehog #46

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Countdown to Armageddon

Writer: Ken Penders and Kent Taylor Pencils: Nelson Ortega Colors: Barry Grossman

This is maybe one of the first issues without much substantial action. Instead, there's a lot of talking, but luckily, it's very interesting talking. For example, the very first page gives us some major backstory on the roboticizers that we didn't even realize we were lacking until now.

That's right - Uncle Chuck was the one who invented the roboticizers! They were originally meant to be used to save those gravely injured, but when Uncle Chuck tested it on his own brother - Sonic's father - it instead turned him into a mindless machine. It wasn't quite his fault, however - it turns out that Robotnik, back then Warlord Julian, had deliberately sabotaged his machine to have this effect, ensuring that Uncle Chuck would resign from his position as a scientific advisor in shame and that Julian could have the device all to himself for more nefarious purposes.

Uncle Chuck is reminiscing about all this to the Freedom Fighters after having received old security footage that showed these events taking place, and Sally, seeing his guilt and regret and deciding that he could use some cheering up, decides to take everyone out for a night camping in the trees. However, he only continues to doubt himself and his abilities as a spy, citing multiple Robotnik plots that almost worked because he didn't detect them in time. As the others try to reassure him that he's invaluable to their cause anyway, there's a rustling in the bushes… and some friends show up!

We have another Dulcy situation, guys! (Fitting that she's in this issue as well.) The Wolf Pack, and Lupe specifically, were characters that originally starred in the SatAM show, and have taken seventy-three whole issues to make their first appearance here. They all decide to join the Freedom Fighters around the campfire, but one of their members, Drago, begins to take an instant dislike to Uncle Chuck due to his robotic appearance.

Before anyone can really begin to argue in earnest, another player arrives on the scene - Geoffrey St. John, of course, here to make out with Sally for one panel before immediately insulting Sonic and also accusing Uncle Chuck of being a Robotnik spy! Geoffrey, bro, you really gotta work on your people skills…

Of course, Sonic doesn't take kindly to this at all, not in the least because he already hates Geoffrey's guts (and everyone else in the group aside from Sally is pretty hostile toward him as well, and can you blame them? He's acting like a total douche here), and they throw down for a second before Geoffrey releases some kind of wire from his wrist-mounted crossbow, pinning Sonic to a nearby tree, and then shoving a real crossbow bolt in his face while claiming he's about to teach him the "last lesson he'll ever learn."

JESUS CHRIST, GEOFFREY! Kenders, seriously, are you going out of your way to make Geoffrey seem like the most unlikable character in the comic?! Before he can execute his helpless comrade with a shot to the freaking head, Antoine of all people steps in and delivers one hell of a haymaker to Geoffrey's face, shocking just about everyone. Turns out Antoine has had a secret grudge against Geoffrey from the very beginning, and he's finally snapped. Antoine's father used to be the top general of the king's army, right around the same time that the Rebel Underground was being established, and when that general was one of the first casualties of the war against Robotnik, that was enough - along with Geoffrey's baseless accusations - to convince Antoine that Geoffrey is the traitor, not Uncle Chuck.

Hoo boy, this is getting heavy. At this point, we finally have our retcon to Antoine's age back in the very early issues of the comics, as in the wake of all the arguing and fighting, Tails expresses surprise that Antoine wasn't the general, but rather the son of the general, and the others explain to him that he was a child just like the rest of them. This is actually kind of an important point that I'll be bringing up later - that Tails was seemingly the only one mistaken about Antoine's age - so just remember it. Anyway, Bunnie goes on to explain how Antoine once saved her life before she ever became roboticized, how he wore his father's uniform in remembrance and trained so he could be as honorable as his father, but began to lose his way as he felt alone and unloved. Bunnie then heads off to the surrounding trees to find Antoine and reassure him.

Heeheeheeeeee, oh boy, this is a shipper's gold mine! Honestly, the beginning of their relationship is really very sweet, and out of the myriad of relationships that formed, broke up, and reformed over the course of the preboot, theirs is one of the longest-standing and most realistic, if you ask me. They're just… adorable, and complement each other so well.

Anyway, apparently in all the chaos Drago himself slipped away without telling anyone, and upon his return Lupe has become suspicious of him as well. Boy, no one trusts anyone tonight, do they? More arguing breaks out as Antoine and Bunnie return to the camp, and Sally ultimately shuts everyone up, yelling at them not to throw around accusations of treachery without any kind of evidence. She then sighs and talks more hopefully about Knuckles' quest to find her father's sword…

Knuckles Quest 4 (A Goat, a Raven and a Swan Song!)

Writers: Ken Penders and Kent Taylor Pencils: Manny Galan Colors: Barry Grossman

…which the issue immediately segues into! Knuckles has been exploring his island's catacombs, and happens upon a strange sanctum where a raven and donkey are performing some kind of ritual with a cauldron. Normal enough! Knuckles deduces that these must be the ones that Sir Connery warned him of, and promptly falls on his ass into the sanctum.

After his brilliant sneak attack, Knuckles is forced to fight against a mechanical golem. He's at first unable to make a dent in it, until Archimedes reveals that he's been chilling in Knuckles' backpack this whole time. Wait, this whole time? Does that include the week that Knuckles was the unwilling slave of a sorcerer and an enchantress? If so, what the hell, dude? You didn't think to step in sooner? I suppose that during the previous adventure Archimedes could have been off working with the Chaotix, or Knuckles' father, to survey the damage caused by the Dark Legion's recent invasion, but even in that case why did he just randomly wait until now to reveal himself to Knuckles? Aren't they friends?

Meh, whatever. With Archy's help Knuckles is able to destroy the golem, and after knocking out the evil raven guy, they turn their attention to the donkey only to realize that he's a fake, not a living being at all - and even more bizarre, some magical acid spilling on him melts his form, revealing the sword that Knuckles has been looking for all along! Great job on finding the sword and all, Knux, but uh… what?

I think my policy for reading Kenders material needs to be "don't think too hard about it" from now on. Whatever! Knuckles has the sword! Now that his quest is finally complete, it's time to see what he does with it!