Alright, it's been a while since I did that Paint Drying Post where I asked if you guys would be interested in me discussing the IDW Sonic comics. Well, now I'm going to go in depth with it once a week in order to share my thoughts on the stories they tell and how much I love them as well as the characters and their interactions. And yes, while I will be diving into spoiler territory, I won't be covering every little thing. I won't give away all of the minor details or funny gags in these comics, and I won't be going over a lot of the annual stories since it's pretty much all filler. I will mainly be going over a lot of the major story beats in these multi-issue arcs. However, I'm only going to do a relatively brief summary of the first twelve issues that I'll be going over today. The first handful of comics are mainly setup for the characters and the world they inhabit. But before we dive into these comics, we have to talk about the context of how these comics came to be.

For the longest time, Archie were the ones to publish American Sonic comics which lasted from 1993 all the way to 2017! The comics started off mainly as a wackier version of the SATAM cartoon, but later issues told darker and more mature stories. Though, that doesn't mean that they weren't any less ridiculous a lot of the time. If anything, a lot of the more "epic" storylines were arguably even more insane and nonsensical than the goofy, inconsequential stories from the early issues! It wouldn't be until Ian Flynn came along as head writer where these comics finally found their footing in terms of incorporating the lore from both the games and previous Sonic comics. But long story short, a former writer for the comics named Ken Penders filed multiple lawsuits against Archie for very stupid and petty reasons, yet they ultimately lost and managed to reboot the timeline in order to erase all of the comic exclusive characters for a more streamlined, game-accurate timeline that still had the Freedom Fighter characters from SATAM as well as new characters being introduced for this particular timeline. And yes, it is every bit as messy as you think. Well, for the most part. Ian Flynn managed to write some of the best Sonic stories during Archie's run, even when he had to give up on the previous continuity and start over by adapting Sonic Unleashed with the Freedom Fighters. His writing for these characters and stories were still really strong. But unfortunately, not long after the Unleashed storyline was wrapped up, Archie cancelled the long-running comic. It was especially sad because this meant that while Sega still technically own the rights to Sally Acorn and the rest of the SATAM cast, they just don't seem to have any interest of ever bringing them back in any way, shape or form, especially since they're currently trying to make most of everything canon to the games, which is mostly a good thing in my opinion, but it doesn't seem to leave any room for these beloved characters to become relevant again. It makes me sad whenever I think about this, but that is a potential topic for another day.

Thankfully, the same team behind the Archie comics came back to work with IDW, including Ian Flynn himself! Flynn is now the current go-to writer for the Sonic games after having to put up with a couple of writers before him who weren't even very knowledgeable about Sonic in the first place, which led to some very uneven or straight up bad scripts. Sure, Colors and Generations were great, but the stories were very lacking, and a lot of the humor was juvenile (can't wait to see how Ian Flynn rewrote the cutscenes for Sonic X Shadow Generations). Lost World was already a weird deviation from what came before gameplay-wise, but again, the writing certainly didn't help either. And Forces is one of the textbook examples of wasted potential! Now, I am not a hater of Sonic Forces. I had some fun playing the game, I liked customizing my own character, and the music was pretty good for the most part. But not only were there many aspects about the gameplay that could have been a lot better, but the story just straight up sucks! Sure, nothing in it was as cringey as certain parts of 06 or Shadow The Hedgehog, but the whole entire plot was extremely rushed and barely amounted to anything! What makes it worse is that the whole premise centered around Eggman taking over the world, and Sonic and pals have to fight together in order to take him down (kinda like SATAM). There were some great ideas for what could have been an amazing game, and yet everything just felt so half-baked, even the parts that I did enjoy.

I bring all of this up because it was up to Ian Flynn to start off completely fresh and having to follow up on Forces in order to continue the narrative. He had to reintroduce old characters, introduce new ones, find a proper way to follow up on Forces while building up to some new deadly threats, and had to make sure that everything was cohesive for both fans and newcomers alike. That is A LOT of baggage for him to carry, and yet he miraculously pulled it off! The first issue may be standard at face value, but every fan was disappointed in Tails for acting like a total coward in Forces, so seeing him acknowledge it and telling Sonic that he'll try to do better on his own was very reassuring. This first issue alone showed that Tails is going to be back on track, and the next couple of issues managed to fix Knuckles and Amy's characterizations. Sure, Ian Flynn has wrote these characters well before, but these comics are actually canon to the games, so with him being the eventual writer for the most recent games, this was the first sign that things were going to go back on track. Amy is still shown to have a major crush on Sonic, but she's also matured and doesn't get annoying like she did in Sonic X. She's now a capable leader of the Resistance since Knuckles stepped down from being the general. Oh, yeah! They finally remembered that he's supposed to guard the Master Emerald on Angel Island! And he's no longer a total idiot! He's now tough and serious again, and the comedy comes from him being overly serious or getting angered easily at times! Yes! Thank you!

And then we get to the fourth issue, which Sonic gets a brief encounter with Blaze the Cat (who still needs to appear more often), and a new character called Tangle the Lemur! Finally, I get to talk about this highly beloved yet still underrated character! Tangle is now one of my absolute favorites! She's super energetic, very friendly and sociable, funny, brave, and even uses her tail as an extra arm that can extend to who knows how long! She's just a very fun and wholesome character who needs to be playable on a mainline Sonic game! A mobile running game doesn't count (though it shows that Sega are willing to acknowledge her). She would be so fun to play as in an actual Sonic game, and it would be a dream come true of she makes it in!

Another female character who made their debut in these comics is none other than Whisper the Wolf, who would become Tangle's best friend. Whisper is this shy Wolf who often works alone, at least prior to meeting Tangle. I'll get into her tragic backstory in next week's post, but there's a reason why she tends to work alone. She doesn't want to see others get hurt, and forming a close relationship with someone only makes those feelings worse for her. She gets very emotional at times, but it's through Tangle's upbeat attitude that she starts to regain her confidence. An energetic lemur brings out the self confidence in this shy wolf. These two are great characters, and are amongst my favorites in the whole franchise!

There's also the reintroductions to Shadow, Rouge, Silver, and Team Chaotix. But the next character I want to talk about is Dr. Eggman...or rather...Mr. Tinker! After Eggman's defeat in Sonic Forces, he apparently lost his memory and a nearby village briefly held him hostage before finding out that he doesn't have a clue who he is. He then decided to help the village by repairing things for the citizens, and he even tries building a fun little amusement park! He's not the evil doctor now! His amnesia has led to him being a kind and helpful person! But of course, Sonic and the Chaotix were very skeptical at first. And even after they've come to terms with this new persona, Shadow and Rouge had to show up with the former being very hostile against Mr. Tinker! Sonic does eventually snap him out of it after a brief fight, and so he apologizes to Tinker, and it looks like he's gonna remain as a kind and generous person...for now.

In issues 9-12, Sonic and pals team up to defeat a certain enemy that has been controlling the badnik robots after Eggman's absence: NEO METAL SONIC! Sonic's robot doppelganger has once again gained his more powerful form from Sonic Heroes! He has taken over Angel Island, and it's up to our heroes to steal back the Master Emerald and take down Metal Sonic! And yes, he does go super in order to fight against Sonic and Knuckles! And then later, he transforms into Metal Madness, which is essentially his robot dragon form! It's an absolutely amazing battle where we get to see Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, Silver, Blaze, Rouge, Vector, Espio, Charmy, Tangle and Whisper team up to defeat this loathsome copy!

After defeating Metal Sonic, the real deal himself offered his robot double a chance to live free on his own. He wanted him to be his own self instead of having to be a servant for Eggman and forever being a bitter rival. But of course, Metal chooses otherwise and blasts off. Some things never change. This leads us back to Mr. Tinker, who was kidnapped by these two skunk thugs named Rough and Tumble, who were introduced in issue 3. They were hired by an evil platypus named Dr. Starline, who is major fan of Eggman's and wants to fulfill his dream in working with him. They tried everything to make his memories come back, but it wasn't until Metal Sonic came back when Eggman finally snaps out of his Mr. Tinker persona and becomes evil once again. And now that he's working with Starline, he's got something planned. A certain virus that would spread fear across the world!

So that was the basic gist of issues 1-12. Next week, I'll talk about the Tangle & Whisper miniseries, followed by the Metal Virus Saga in its entirety, then the Bad Guys miniseries, then a few more story arcs before getting into Imposter Syndrome (where we're introduced to Surge and Kit), and then we'll continue covering each arc as we go along. So this is like my version of the Sonic Speed Reading videos from Game Apologist. Not as in depth as his videos, but I wanted to take this opportunity to share these stories with you guys since I feel like a lot of you haven't read these comics. And if you're a Sonic fan like me, then I highly recommend you giving them a shot! Once again, here's a link to a website where you can read them. Though, if you want to buy any of the actual comics themselves, by all means, they're worth it!

grabber.zone/comics/sonic-idw/