this is what i've been thinking about for awhile,i Remember during the home arc that i was really excited for it. i thought it was really cool that sonic came back a year later. but what i really liked about it was that i had no idea what happened in that missing year.
Almost every character changed, almost all of them became more interesting. Antoine seemed really cool and they alluded (sp?) to a possible back up story that lead to him being Traumatized (in a sense.) into being a stone cold soldier.
you had Dr.Quack with his own story of how he lost his eye giving him a little more depth and you felt bad for him.
Then when RTAI came around i was really shocked to see how Angel island had changed, it went from an all time low of boringness to "omg wtf happened?" hell even Dr.finitevus was supposed to be dimitri! which was another WTF thing i encountered.
but when the issues afterward came around, i kind of lost that feeling. and now it's to the point that Sonic doesn't even question anything and it's like that missing year never happened.
my basic point is, could this have been handled better? i feel like all of these plotlines are being handled by a small footnote in every issue and that the comic is becoming slow and stable again whereas during Home and RTAI i got the feeling that "woah, what's going to happen now?"
with ian's stories, he's thrown in a couple of curveballs like the enerjak thing. (honestly i never would've predicted that.)
but some of the things he's done like anonymous just didn't seem so surprising, when i found out who anonymous was, i thought to myself "wow that's REALLY unexpected (sarcasm)"
but i feel that ian's writing is kind of predictable.
i know this seems vague, but does anyone else feel the same way?
The Home Ark could have been handled a bit better, but it was quite good on it's own.
The "missing year" was far from lackluster and without it, so many things aren't possible that have gone on.
For those like you (and myself) that liked the shakeups in "Home" & "RTAI" as they happened, for it to be handled in any manner than how they currently are would've pretty much required behind the scenes stuff to have gone differently. ;p
Though, yeah, I lost that "awesome" feeling--hence my lack of subscribing. I realized how badly I've lost it when my recent batch of comics came in and the only thing (not counting Sonic X) that I could even manage the energy to read was the Chaotix/Nicole story in #169. But I do realize that for me, my highest point with the series spanned from #117 to #141. It was followed by my lowest point spanning from #142 to #155. Right now, I'm in la-la/indecisive land and waiting for the story that truly grabs me back in.
As for being predictable, rarely is the comic not predictable if you're reading carefully. Treasure those moments where a curve is thrown if that's what makes the comic most worthwhile for you. 😉
I've always felt that if you look at it in the grand scheme of things, not a lot happened during the missing year at all.
Think about it this way. Sonic has been back on Mobius for... how long? Let's say about two months. More has been shaken up in those two months than was shaken up in the year Sonic was away entirely. Yeah, a lot happened, but not as much as you'd really expect when you consider that it's meant to have been an entire year.... that's a really long time in terms of the comic's continuity.
That said, I always felt that the year gap was a really cheap storytelling cop-out.
The deaths of characters aren't that big a deal, particularly since none of them did much that died. Anonymous wasn't a big deal either. The "break-ups" & "reunions" (love, family, or otherwise) aren't shakeups that can equal what happened while Sonic was away: the takeover of Angel Island with the dingoes in charge and Eggman taking over half the planet & controlling the lives of some Mobians living at his mercy (even if I do think this bit from "Home" has either been ignored or dropped).
The closest thing to a shakeup that I see matching what happened during the year away is Enerjak returning because it has the chance of changing the status quo in a big way.
Yeah, the missing year could've been handled a hell of a lot better. I'm still scatching my head over the botched Antione story. For the first time in the history of the comics, I was actually interested in learning something more about Antione. And for all that excitement only to lead to "No...it's not really Ant, but his evil twin" cliche leaves me mondo disappointed.
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I've always felt that if you look at it in the grand scheme of things, not a lot happened during the missing year at all.
i feel the same way, we had a pretty big build up, but then it was just kind of left alone.
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The closest thing to a shakeup that I see matching what happened during the year away is Enerjak returning because it has the chance of changing the status quo in a big way.
this was probably the most shocking moment in the last 5 years of the comic. like i said before, i never would've thought of it.
also, Dirk when did you become a mod? i haven't been on in awhile so it's a surprise to me. Congratulations.
I think I lost interest in the comic a long time ago. I don't like shake ups when it comes to couples(I don't like all the drama) or shake ups of any kind now that I think of it. Also, I don't mind predictablity, maybe I am more afraid of the results if things were unpredictable. Archie, I think, has made plenty of mistakes besides how they have handeled relationships. Some examples, I believe they probably got rid of the orginal Robotnic too soon and brought back the royal family too soon. Archie took the characters too far away from what they were in Sonic Sat a.m., or in directions I didn't like.
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I think I lost interest in the comic a long time ago. I don't like shake ups when it comes to couples(I don't like all the drama) or shake ups of any kind now that I think of it. Also, I don't mind predictablity, maybe I am more afraid of the results if things were unpredictable. Archie, I think, has made plenty of mistakes besides how they have handeled relationships. Some examples, I believe they probably got rid of the orginal Robotnic too soon and brought back the royal family too soon. Archie took the characters too far away from what they were in Sonic Sat a.m., or in directions I didn't like.
there's a problem with that though. if Archie sonic was a carbon clone of satam, then it would have died shortly after the show died.
from what i understand you want the comic to be exactly like satam, and change seems to scare you. but without change this comic wouldn't sell. Ever.
Could'nt have said it better, HyperShadow.
Ditto
You guys are forgetting that the tossed in space reboot was being written by Karl Bollers, and he DID have a bunch of backstory planned. Ken Penders threw a tantrum, turned war Antoine into Anti-Antoine, did who knows what other retconning, probably drove Karl Bollers to quit due to the total stupidity he was being subjected to, developed the inane plots introduced by Romy Chacon, and turned the comic into crap until he was fired. Ian came along, and I'm sure he didn't want to rip off Bollers (even if he could, due to the retconning) and also wanted to write the comic in his own direction. So what you're seeing is basically a comic that rebooted around #125 but the reboot only lasted for a few issues because of Romy Chacon and Ken Penders, and then the comic went into another reboot of sorts with Ian taking over.
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You guys are forgetting that the tossed in space reboot was being written by Karl Bollers, and he DID have a bunch of backstory planned. Ken Penders threw a tantrum, turned war Antoine into Anti-Antoine, did who knows what other retconning, probably drove Karl Bollers to quit due to the total stupidity he was being subjected to, developed the inane plots introduced by Romy Chacon, and turned the comic into crap until he was fired. Ian came along, and I'm sure he didn't want to rip off Bollers (even if he could, due to the retconning) and also wanted to write the comic in his own direction. So what you're seeing is basically a comic that rebooted around #125 but the reboot only lasted for a few issues because of Romy Chacon and Ken Penders, and then the comic went into another reboot of sorts with Ian taking over.
i think that sums it up really well, in truth i WANTED to see karl bollers version of the comic to this point. Ken's temper tantrums really hurt the comic badly.
Yeah...that reboot was so botched.
I admit that I am afraid of change, when Sega and Archie are handleing it. For me, the comic doesn't have to be 100% like Sonic Sat a.m., I just wish the comic would have kept the spirt of Sat a.m. in it in some ways(Sonic and Sally, the closeness of the FF's). I also will admit I would not have minded if the comic ended at "Endgame" or soon after, considering some of the things that have happend since. What it comes down to is that, I am pretty sure I would rather have had the comic have a shorter lifespan and have good quaility( which as I see it means having things/events that I like), than the comic have too long of a lifespan and having poor quaility and things I don't like.
I'm divided on Karl's One Year Later ideas. It seems he really knew how to write for some characters but was way-off IMO on much of the old cast. I don't see Bunnie with abusive family (and the 'real name' makes me cringe), that could've happened to Ant earlier in the comic run but he's grown too much to become puppet-villain, Monkey Khan can keep journeying to the west and stay the fark outta the comic, GalaNa made a bad choice regarding Green Knux, but I felt she was doing it for the right reasons and thus can't see her as EBIL etc. He seemed to have a good read on Mina, Amy, Sonic, and the Chaotix tho. It was good to see the plan at any rate and more than having the ideas come to play I just wish the massive in-fighting coulda been avoided. It seemed like half the time Ken and Karl were writing delibrately to throw a wrench in the other guy's plans. :/
Bunnie with abusive family? do you have a link? (e.g: a link to a scrapped story, artice or interview)
This page contains Karl's overview of his original plans for the reboot. It really doesn't say her family was abusive, just that she had problems at home.
Oh, and Vec...
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Ken Penders threw a tantrum, turned war Antoine into Anti-Antoine, did who knows what other retconning, probably drove Karl Bollers to quit
Not really. Karl quit because the plans linked above got turned down by Mike. Ken did all that stuff AFTER Karl left.
Bear in mind that for it all to've happened after Karl left, Karl must've known when it was thrown onto the drawing board in advance, just like Karl's plan for the reboot was.
What I think we saw was Ken use his own portion of the writing to try to make it so difficult for Karl to do what he wanted with the main plot that he'd have to tow Ken's line (aka M25YL as canon) because anything else'd be too much like hard work - and Gabrie completely fail to do his job and do anything about it.
And THEN Karl left.
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Knuckles will play the loner for awhile and leave Knothole City and the Chaotix on a pilgrimage to Mobius' far eastern continent where he will study martial arts at Monkey Khan's Temple; it is while there that the Master Geode, buried deep beneath the surface is unearthed by an earthquake orchestrated by the evil Iron Queen; the MG imbues Knuckles with an ancient, primal chaos energy that transforms him into a cosmic, temporarily omnipotent version of himself who single-handedly liberates Angel Island from Robotnik; after that, the MG will shatter and be dispersed across the globe, and Knuckles will be able to draw upon power from these shards wherever he travels
where exactly does this come into play?
EDIT: okay nevermind, who's idea was it to have Dimitri be finitevus? just out of curiousity
It doesn't come into play. Mike turned down the plan.
Sam, Karl knew everything that was going down because it was all his project. Karl wrote the Xorda Arc, the Tossed in Space Arc and the Home Arc. This document was probably in the works at around the time Karl was writing. the Home arc-- ie, MONTHS before Home even ran. At that point, Ken had no control over the main Sonic continuity and it was always Justin's position that M25yl was a POSSIBLE future. I'm sure Ken had some say and some influence, but Karl was free to do whatever he liked as long as he didn't do anything MAJOR with the Knuckles cast without Ken's guidance. It wasn't until nearly a year after "Home" that Ken took the book's steering wheel. By that time, Karl was gone, and the only one of his stories left to run was "Songoose." Karl left because he didn't agree with the direction Mike wanted to take the book.
It seems to me that what really happened was that Karl wrote the above document and Justin was all right with it. When Mike became the editor, he decided that he didn't like some of the plans. Karl and Mike couldn't see eye to eye on it so Karl turned over the duties to Ken. Mike didn't like where Ken was going either so he took Ian off the back bench (where he'd been sitting for some time, without any of us even knowing it) and made him the head of things, offering Ken the opportunity to continue working for the book which Ken turned down.
i'm guessing you wrote that while i was editing my post, but it's information i didn't know regardless. so yeah, does anyone know where karl's at now? is he doing anything with the Xmen?
One thing you're forgetting, Dirk, in your timeline. Karl wrote RtAI and Ken took over only a few months after that. Home isn't exactly the best starting point to use if you want to discuss how long it took for a switch to occur.
Anyway, it's moot because the end result is Karl started something, Ken changed it a bit, and it became Ian's to do with as he saw fit. Personally, other than doing something similar to what Charles mentioned in another topic (ignoring some of the plot points raised), Ian couldn't really handle what he was given much differently than he has. I don't nit-pick dialogue unless I think it was totally OOC or it made me groan. ;p
I don't know what Karl's doing right now. I haven't spoken to him in awhile actually.
