>Flynn spends a few months getting rid of all the stupid fucking OCs.
>Stanley comes back, first issue, introduces a new OC.
JUST DO SOMETHING WITH SAGE, GODDAMNIT. Stanley needs to remember that this is a video game tie-in comic. Things should always resemble the games, and focus on characters from the games. I'm so fucking sick of Clutch. He's even more lame than Mimic. At least Surge and Kit have something to do with Sonic and Tails, but Clutch doesn't have anything to do with anything from the games, nor do any of the other characters Stanley always introduces and focuses on.
Maybe Starline is back, and I guess I don't hate him quite as much as most other IDW OCs, but even then, that's just because my massive autism led me to watch all the shows and read all the comics, so I have an affinity to Snivley, and understand that Starline is just replacement Snivley. This is obviously not reasonable justification for him to continue to be a main character in this video game tie in comic. While I'd still argue this is better than the Archie comics, it's having a similar problem of focusing on characters that aren't in the source material. If you take an issue and show it to a kid who played all the games, they likely won't have any idea of what's going on, and that's a massive problem.
At least the world does resemble the world from the games, a bit (assuming they stop fucking talking about The Restoration), but the characters do not. It would be one thing if the occasional OC was directly tied to game characters (Surge and Kit are evil copies of Sonic and Tails), but instead they're just random nothings. Clutch is a gangster. Lanolin is a soldier. Tangle is just a random DA OC. Whisper seems like she was originally intended to represent the Buddy from Forces, but that idea was ruined basically immediately with how she was actually written. Belle could have been kind of cool for a single arc, but even then she was only tied to something that happened to Eggman in a single arc, which fans of the games wouldn't recognize. And Starline is really only tied to Snivley, not any game stuff. His being Eggman's sidekick for a while felt redundant since he had Orbot and Cubot, and now Starline is so far from that that he lost tangible connection. He's just a second mad scientist in a series where the source material involves fighting a recurring mad scientist about ten times every game.
There have been OCs who make a lot more sense before. I always say the best example is Eclipse. He is an original character, but stems directly from the events of a game. They could do more like that, but that would require more creativity than just making up an OC that has nothing to do with anything but is drawn in a vaguely Sonic-esque artstyle. Do a story about the archeologists from Sonic Adventure discovering some ancient monster (there are other ancient gods alluded to in old manuals, and I'm sure Sega wouldn't notice, but fans would), or about Planet Wisp being menaced by some other aliens (obviously the Black Arms, but there are other aliens too. The Babylonians are from space, after all). Do something where Eggman manipulates the United Federation into fighting a war with Soleanna, or manipulates GUN into trying to take over South Island. I'm coming up with this off the top of my head, but if I was tasked with being the official Sonic fanfiction writer, you can damn well bet I'd at least try to make sure that it all relates closely back to the source material, that being the games.
Or why not just do more with characters they have? Flynn brought back Mecha Sonic II and Mecha Knuckles, added significantly onto their stories, and then never did anything with them again. I'd much rather read about them than Starline. Or just do more stuff with the actual game characters. They couldn't even be bothered to have Omega show up with Shadow and Rouge in the newest issue. Instead of doing more miniseries about OCs like Tangle and Whisper, or Starline, just do an arc about Team Dark, or a whole spinoff arc about Team Chaotix. Archie could do this, but IDW can't? Granted Archie also did tons of arcs purely about OCs, but the point remains that stories can be told about the actual game characters, or at least things closely related to them.
And I already said that I read ALL the comics. I've watched ALL the cartoons. Me personally? I'd enjoy it most if they went all out and referenced everything ever made, not just the games. Give me a whole spinoff miniseries about Sleet and Dingo. I'd fucking love it. But obviously that's retarded, and if you're going to do anything about Eggman's minions, then it has to be about Orbot and Cubot, because they're actually in the games.
I enjoyed that in the Post-Super Genesis Wave Archie Comics, they were allowed to use characters from the cartoons. So having Silver's mentor, Future-Mammoth Mogul, replaced with Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog character Professor Von Schlemmer, was cool. It at least was a step up from continuing to use a comic exclusive character who was a blatant ripoff of Vandal Savage. But yeah, it does make more sense to focus just on game characters. But that isn't what they'd doing. Using old cartoon characters would be a lot better than using brand new comic exclusive OCs. If you need a second mad scientist, it would be way cooler to use Doctor Warpnik than it would be to use Starline. (Of course, yeah, Snivley is better than both.) But okay, I do believe that this part is Sega's fault. They don't want the cartoons referenced, and that makes sense. But then they need to tell the writers to knock it off with the OCs.
If Sega is actually seriously still pushing that thing where certain characters are "Classic Sonic only," then that's really stupid on their part as well. I'm sure Flynn would do tons with Witchkart, since he was already turning her into Naugus II at the end of the Archie comics. And sure, having Sonic fight an evil witch sometimes would make sense for a secondary villain, and since she's actually in a game, she would be better than Naugus. They did get to do a lot with Fang as a secondary villain, and honestly it didn't even feel like all those comics with him were "Classic Sonic," so just let him show up more in the main series. They could be using the Hard Boiled Heavies more, and the Battlebirds. But why would they? They don't even use the Babylon Rogues as more than occasional cameos. Even a whole arc about Extreme Gear racing ended up mostly being about The Diamond Cutters. It's fucking bullshit. And where was Dodon Pa in that racing arc? I thought the whole point of that character was so the racing related stuff could have a story. Not that the story in his game was any good, but still.
>>40090
>Gamma's story is ambiguous about whether the source of his personality was or not the flicky anyway, i like to think it wasn't, or maybe it's a bit of both.
The bird inside Gamma shows up at the end to bring Sonic a Chaos Emerald, so I think the bird was at least aware. But clearly there is robot programming going on that gives Gamma an affinity for the other E-100 series robots. So yeah, it's probably both. Or rather, the bird is the core personality but there is a shell program on top of it. But once the animals are freed, this one single scene with Gamma seems to show that they're aware of what happened when they were robots.