Sonic and Sally are “Changing Tempo” Inside
On Wednesday, Archie Comics released a preview of January’s main Sonic issue, heading out to subscribers now and in comic book stores shortly.
In Changing Tempo, Sonic and Sally rock out at Mina Mongoose’s concert, but Geoffrey St. John and Ixis Naugus are still around, waiting to make their next move. There is also a secondary story that continues to explore the fallout from the Iron Dominion arc, with Nicole and Espio featured. Ian Flynn penned the script, with a variety of artists on duty inside the issue. Ben Bates handled the cover.
That cover and the first five pages of Sonic 221 follow Archie’s official synopsis.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #221
“Changing Tempo”: Sonic’s eager to hear the new sound of Mina and her band – but will he like what he hears? Tensions are running high, and that’s before an evil presence starts lurking in the shadows! Then, in “Second Impressions,” Nicole and Espio deal with the fallout from the Iron Dominion invasion- along with a surprise third party!
SCRIPT: Ian Flynn
ART: Ben Bates, James Fry, Terry Austin, John Workman & Matt Herms
COVER: Ben Bates
Shipping Date: 1/19/11
On Sale at Comic Shops: 1/26/11
Newstands: Week of 2/8/11
Comic, 32 pgs, 40 lb. glossy stock, Full-Color
$2.99 US
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I luvs me some Sonic comics. As much as people hate Sally for being the “face that launched a million furries”, I hope she and Sonic get back together. And I’m digging Nicole’s new duds.
Loving this and I love Nicole’s look =)
how cute about Nicole’s new look…
but ugh… they need to stay away from each other.
I’m sorry but geez…. Sally’s a sue.
The face of a million furries.
@Tom Cole
Yeah, what you said.
These comics have very good art.
That being said, they also embody everything that’s wrong with Sonic today. Shitty friends. Crap stories. “Way past cool”. Furry romance.
And if there are 100 animals with super powers in the world, why is Sonic even NEEDED? All those characters only serve to make the protagonist irrelevant.
Batman doesn’t have a LOT of sidekicks. No superhero that I know of does. When there’s a group of heroes, they call the comic by the group’s name, like “Justice League” or whatever. Because no one’s actually “better” than the other, really. They just have different abilities.
So it would be much more logical to just stop calling these comics “Sonic” and just rename them to “Furry Squad” instead. Would make them much more honest and true to what they really are.
The colors looks like the Garfield stickers.:)
Tell that to Mario, all he can do is jump high, throw fireballs, and eat crap. Just like Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Birdo, Yoshi, Bowser Jr., etc.
And by the way.
Have you ever met anyone who was genuinely cool brag, all the time, about being cool?
I agree with you Andre.
basically this isn’t even a Sonic comic… this is furry/mary-sue/super powered animal comic.
@Andre: Oh boy, here we go with THIS complaint again:
As much as I would like a comic that consisted entirely of nothing but Sonic all the time being a loner, that would also get pretty boring pretty fast. I’m not sure why everyone suddenly equates having side characters in an ONGOING SERIES with ‘shitty side kicks’. Sure, some of the characters are lame, and the whole Sonic and Sally thing is annoying at times, but it’s not touched on that often and when it is it’s one, two pages worth tops. Nothing to jump up and down about and hey- guess what? You can actually SKIP pages in a comic book! I know! Crazy right? You can completely ignore that crap if you so wish and still get the gist of the plot.
Oh, and antrho cartoon animal characters are not ‘furry’ by default. I swear, if it’s one thing that gets me a ragin’, it’s the blatant misuse of this word. ‘Furry’ implies that they’re humans in fursuits. Prrreeetty sure they’re not. (It also means a plethora of other things I’d rather not delve into for somewhat obvious reasons.) Basically what I’m saying is I think you need to choose your words more carefully, because I don’t think you know what they mean.
Now, had you said ‘sappy romance’ or something to that effect, I’d be more inclined to agree with you. Sonic’s not the type of character to get into the mushy stuff, so to see it brought to the spotlight can be jarring at times. Granted. However…
>implying Ian Flynn’s work is bad by any stretch
Best be trolling. That man single handedly fixed the convoluted mess left behind by the previous writers, and made the comic interesting again by leaps and bounds. What we’re experiencing right now is a bit of down time in between plots, all comics do this. Yes, even Batman. Not every single issue is pure gold and action packed, sorry! But as long as it doesn’t get into DBZ levels of filler story, (God forbid) I think we’re fine.
But yanno what, hey, it’s cool. I can accept that you don’t like this comic. I’m by no means trying to convince you to participate in it. But to say that this comic encompasses everything that’s wrong with the series as a whole? You’re a little off the mark, friend. The Sonic series always had much more daunting issues to deal with besides a stupid story and some lame side characters. (And if I have to go into THAT, you clearly don’t know much about Sonic, do you?)
Oh, and why would anyone even consider this comic not a ‘Sonic’ comic? I didn’t realize that having supporting characters with some depth to them means we have to go and change the title of the comic! I’ll inform the editor right away, we wouldn’t want any false advertisement would we?
Seriously though. He’s rarely not on a page, and in this very preview he’s in all but ONE? Being on page 4 times out of five is a pretty good average, I think. I mean, I didn’t realize in order to be a Batman comic, you have to have Batman in every single page otherwise it’s ‘Side Kick: The Comic’ (Also, comparing Sonic to Batman is not a very smart thing to do. They’re kinda on two separate ends of the spectrum, wouldn’t you agree?) This complaint is utterly silly in this case.
tl;dr: Sonic comics have nothing to do with the games and have very little if not at all to do with what’s been wrong with the series recently.
Yes, I mad. Congrats.
[]Told
[]F’n told
[xxxxxx]NOMAD TOLD
Anybody want to try to debate what he said in a sensible manner or are we just going to bring more “baaaaaaw some Sonic continuities aren’t carbon copies of the games” into this?
@Nomad: I agree with you 100%. Just because this comic has a few cringe-worthy side characters and the plots aren’t ripped straight from the games or don’t always have Sonic fighting some obligatory rival or clone character every page doesn’t make it a bad comic. And besides, just be thankful this comic isn’t written by the bad fan-fiction writers you see all over deviantART.
@Nomad
Breathe, man. Really.
Though I can’t relate to someone being this emotional about comic books (not a fan myself, I don’t read comic books at all), I’m not gonna argue with you. I’m just gonna reply to some points.
First, your comment about being able to skip page sucks. I don’t want to ignore stuff, specially when the whole experience is about the story. I played Dragon Age and I didn’t have to skip anything. Why? Because the story was rock solid. If you actually have to use that as your defense, then I would never want to even give those comics a chance.
Also, I certainly don’t agree with the “loner character makes things boring” part. Not with the statement per se, but you misunderstood me. One thing is to have other characters. Another thing is to have other characters, all with special abilities. A bunch of them, too. For example, Lobo comic books. Lobo pretty much solved everything on his own, and other characters were there just as bystanders. And it was NEVER boring. It was actually the only comic book that could keep my interest. It all depends on the competence of the writer.
Third, the whole mythology of the comics wouldn’t be a problem if the games themselves weren’t infested with shitty friends left and right. In Sonic’s specific case, yes, it’s a problem, and yes, it embodies all that’s wrong with Sonic. The Classic Sonic, from the original games, didn’t have this “way beyond cool” attitude. Yes, he was created to be better and faster than Mario, but the modern Sonic is freaking awkward in his “coolness”, has too many sidekicks and is usually seen in romance situations that are far from needed.
The thing is: companies capitalize on their brands. And Sega has been, for years, using the Sonic brand in the most whorish way possible, licencing him left and right. So now we have all these different views on the character, that yes, are different from the games, which are his original and most important incarnation. Character development and coherence are essential to games, specially nowadays when games are more than games. Sonic’s mythology nowadays is just one big mess thanks to all the way the brand has been exploited freely, and that translates to the games as well.
I always try to drive this point home: that Sonic’s original mythology is rich on its own, enough to make the games work beautifully. Sega has insisted, though, on flooding us with crappy friends, shitty romance and bullshit cool attitude in the games. If the comics didn’t stink of all this mess, I wouldn’t have a problem with them. But yes, they do embody everything that has been done wrong to the franchise.
And no, I don’t need to touch on anything else. I don’t need to talk about bad controls, bad design, lack of polish and bugs in the games. We all know they are there, it’s just more incompetence on Sega’s history and we all know about that. Seriously, I don’t even know why people get excited when they see the “Sonic Team” logo anymore. But I’m not even touching this. Because screwing the original mythology is bad enough to make it a strong argument alone for the loss of quality of the series.
Also, that furry definition of yours is your personal opinion. You don’t even have to do a thorough search on the subject, just check the opening paragraph on the Wikipedia page about furries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furries
“Furry fandom is a fandom for fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics.[1] Examples of anthropomorphic attributes include exhibiting human intelligence and facial expressions, the ability to speak, walk on two legs, and wear clothes. Furry fandom is also used to refer to the community of people who gather on the Internet and at conventions.”
And I won’t waste any more of my time with this. Comics suck. Specially this shit. Bye.
Bravo good sir. Any new character that comes out of the comic now looks like they walked out of DeviantArt, specially any male characters wearing clothes and shit like Mina Mongoose.
Thhis comic needs to throw it’s canon and 75% of the cast out the window for me to care about it again.
Oh look, it’s the Sonic fanbase getting their knickers in a knot again.
But then again, that’s not too big a surprise.
Don’t like the comic? Then don’t read up info about it that’ll get you in a rage, or better yet…. don’t read it at all. Problem solved!
Anyone else noticed the mario cameo on the first comic page ?(the one with the crowd not the cover)
And Andre, i love you, i agree with 100% of your post.
lol, @ the comments. Sonic fans.. we can’t agree on NOTHING!!!
Both SEGA and Archie are guilty of makeing some pretty lame chars in this franchise but then again EVERY continuity has some shitty chars (Chris! cough Elise! Cough). I forgive Archie in this case as its the only continuity that’s actually, well, ongoing, lol. (Only continuity to last almost as long as the games, baby!!)
And a monthly series needs interesting chars and plots to keep fresh ( I swear if this book was based on the games 100% it would’ve ended in a less than a year) Not even gonna touch the furry argument, Sonic fans in general seem to have different views on this word and most are either wrong or exaggerated.
But no matter what the petty arguments I love this fanbase and this franchise, very few franchises are as emotional as the sonic fanbase. Oh, and comic looks good, lovin the Bates art, even if its a lil “chibi-fied”
@ Andre
I stopped reading once you fell back on the tired old “Sonic has shitty friends and that’s whats wrong with him” argument. When you gotta classify all his friends as being shitty without detailing why they are so shitty, it all but proves your ignorance in this matter. You and GoldenHedgy think Sally is a Sue? Hillarious! A sue is, by it’s very definition, a crappy fan-character with little to no depth, but Sally is neither fan-made nor a crappy character. Sally was created by DiC at the behest of Sega of America (who at the time had bigger plans for the SatAM characters; see Sally’s appearance in Sonic Spinball), and has been a character-in-development since 1993. What sue character has ever lasted so long…nearly two decades?
C’mon guys, I know you be trollin’, but you gotta do better than that.
How do you hate a comic all about Sonic the Hedgehog if your a Sonic fan? Yes, granted that SOME Archie characters are a little…. lame but, they by no means ruin the whole comic. People are so scared to see a little romance in Sonic comics these days. Sonic having relationships with other characters it what makes Sonic well-rounded. All action and no heart at all would eventually get old. I mean even Batman gets a little love sometimes.(Catwomen) Don’t hate on each other Sonic fans. He gets enough abuse all ready.
PS: Nomad you are THE man. Thank you for defending Sonic the Hedgehog.
( read all of Andre’s rant)
*yawn* Thanks I needed something to put me to sleep at 2am.
@ Matt
Guess what: you’re a moron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_sue
“A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as “Mary Sues” is that they are too ostentatious for the audience’s taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the “Mary Sue” character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an “author’s pet”.”
Keep talking about something you don’t even understand. Also, I don’t give a fuck if you read me or not. But at least go and read something beside comic books, so that next time you don’t look like the village idiot trying to look wise.
wow, u really hate comic books. Wonder what made you decide look at THIS article….>.>