sparkFLAME Announced by Scrapnik Island Writer Daniel Barnes
excited to announce an all-new project from the IDW Sonic Comics Crew:
sparkFLAME -- a black & white, Shonen Jump-flavored, comic book anthology featuring 11 all-new, original, 5-page stories created by the writers and artists of IDW Sonic!
this project was started as a way of forcing all of us to develop and work on all of our original, non-Sonic concepts and ideas.
all of us, on the book, love Sonic. but, we wanted to take this chance to really flex or comic booking muscles beyond just the blue hedgehog!
more details to come, in the very near future!
get hyped!
Currently known stories include:
Endless Fantasia: written by Daniel Barnes, art by Mike Luckas, screen tone by Reggie Graham
Drogune: written by Ian Flynn, art by Adam Bryce Thomas
The Nine Lives of Klaws McGee: written by Ian Flynn, art by Jonathan Griffiths (@greliz)
Ensouled: from Evan Stanley (@spiritsonic)
Virtuablu: from Aaron Hammerstrom (@aaronhamm)
Evalla: from Reggie Graham (@ziggyfin)
as well as stories from Miles Arq, Gigi Dutreix, Rik Mack (@rikdraws), Natalie Haines (@lightningstar1389), and Mauro Fonseca (@maurofonseca).
Logo Design by Tracker_TD
sparkFLAME is an independent project with no involvement from IDW
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So my co-worker and friend Daniel Barnes' long-cooking project, Endless Fantasia, a comic book about adventures in a cool fairy-tale reinterpretation land, is now on Kickstarter for funding of its first book- and I'm set to pencil it! To celebrate, here's a doodle of the characters.
Danny doesn't post on tumblr I don't think, so I'm posting his Kickstarter announcement too!
My ENDLESS FANTASIA @Kickstarter campaign is now LIVE! To kick things off with a bang, here's an exciting new reveal -- we tapped the legendary PATRICK SPAZIANTE to make an exclusive poster for us! Go support the project and secure yours NOW!
I know this couldn't have been intentional. But it's SO FUNNY that this issue comes out while the main story of the comic is in the middle of introducing this lame stupid new jester thief villain. While Stanley is once again making some dumbass new antagonist who sucks but we're all supposed to be hyped because they're sooooooooooooooo much better and cooler than the actual video game cast especially Eggman - meanwhile Daniel Barnes writes a one shot comic with a character who is the exact same archetype and pulls it off A MILLION FUCKING TIMES BETTER!
Enigma is FUCKING COOL! Actually cool design. Has a cool fight scene with Espio that ends in a believable way and DOESN'T put the canon games cast down just for the sake of propping up the new OC. There's actually a cute little twist reveal (I mean there's no way anyone reading this wouldn't have seen it coming but that's not what makes a twist good or bad) and she has a measure of personality despite how little screentime and dialog she has. And the conclusion of her story is basically saying that the Chaotix are cool dudes! As an OC, she exists to PROP UP and CELEBRATE the Chaotix, not undermine them for the sake of shilling this "cool new character" like the OCs in the rest of the IDW run.
Seriously, compare and contrast. Lunar so far has been making the Video Game Characters look like chumps all for the sake of going "EVERYONE LOOK AT OUR NEW CHARACTER AREN'T THEY COOL AND AWESOME AND SOOOOO MUCH BETTER THAN THESE LAMEOID SONIC CHARACTERS, LOVE THEM!" to the audience.
Meanwhile Enigma here is concluding her story by going "The Chaotix, the only ones who ever bested me. They're such cool guys, truly for as awesome as I am they are even better."
Seriously, the difference is night and fucking day. The canon cast written like Out Of Character Idiots for the sake of making the New Character look good. Versus the canon cast being written accurately authentically and competently and the New Character praises how great they are. Flynn and Stanley obviously hate Sonic, and they're writing to an audience that also hates Sonic. Daniel Barnes likes Sonic, and wants to write to an audience that also likes Sonic.
Daniel fucking Barnes once again makes a good fucking Sonic comic. I don't wanna say shit that'll splash back on him in a negative way. But I just can't help myself. It's so crazy to me how Barnes absolutely blows Flynn and Stanley the fuck out. And it's not like he's even trying to! He's just writing a GOOD STORY. And in doing so, he makes Flynn and Stanley look like chumps and idiots because they are INCAPABLE of writing good stories.
This Chaotix Anniversary issue was REALLY GOOD! But it wasn't written by Flynn or Stanley so I suppose that was to be expected honestly.
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I'm interested in hearing more about your point of "having real writers" when Flynn came along. I know Kenders in the comics and Maekawa were a case of "artists with no writing experience writing something", but what about the rest? What about Pontac, Evan Stanley and Daniel Barnes? And Toyoda? Likewise, a youtuber named Pariah made a crÃticism of the IDW comics and Flynn as a writer in how he seems to "not say anything with his stories", theme-less tales that say nothing, and while I respect Flynn I do feel thats a valid crÃticism of his craft at times.
I mean to some degree this is splitting hairs. Ian Flynn's first official issue for Archie was March 2006. That predates a lot of the people you mention. I bring him up in that context in part because he's the first real name like that of that prestige.
Obviously, yes, nothing but respect for folks like Evan Stanley and Daniel Barnes. If it came off that I didn't think they were real writers or that I was somehow saying they weren't worthy, that couldn't be further from the truth. For example, Daniel Barnes' Scrapnik Island is probably my favorite IDW story so far. The Metal Virus Saga is pretty good but in my opinion it takes a while to get going and get to the real juicy stuff. Scrapnik hits the ground running and is all killer no filler.
It's been a few weeks since this topic came up, but I also was more than likely talking about Ian Flynn in context of the games. Most of the Sonic games are written by game developers; people who are not writers by trade. Shiro Maekawa did voice work on Panzer Dragoon before joining Sonic Team, and even when he wrote the story for Sonic Adventure, he still wore multiple other hats and was a systems designer as well. He was a game developer with writing skills.
Ian Flynn is a writer. Full stop. That's what he does. That's what you employ him for. To write. And yes, you do that with Evan Stanley, too, before that becomes a problem. And Daniel Barnes. Those two are also accomplished artists on top of being writers. So it is possible to wear multiple hats and be good at multiple things.
But I don't feel like it's controversial to say a specialist might be preferable, depending on the circumstances. A toaster that also makes coffee might not be as good as dedicated machines to those operations. And I come at this from indie and fangame developers who try to do a little bit of everything, when a specialist would serve them best. A dedicated writer is usually better than an indie developer who is also just okay at writing. Again: Not really a controversial thing, I think.
And I don't take a lot of stock in most of Ian Flynn's critics. The crazy people have kind of poisoned that well for me. Like the "theme-less" complaint rings completely hollow for me when so many of Ian Flynn's stories in the IDW book have been about characters getting upset at Sonic's deficiencies and Sonic constantly trying to show mercy for characters that might not actually deserve it.
The book literally opened with Dr. Eggman effectively being "cured" of his villainy, with Sonic and Shadow debating on what should be done with him.
Over 75 issues later, this is still very much a theme. Everything with Surge is undoubtedly leading up to either being for or against Sonic's philosophy that everyone deserves acceptance and freedom. Sonic's beliefs are extreme, Sonic's beliefs cause problems, but nobody can really tell him that he's wrong, because ultimately he does more good than harm. Eggs and omelettes.
Is every story a winner? No. But as we've established, Sega's been stealing some of these folks away to go work on games or youtube videos or whatever. Something's gotta give, corners are going to get cut, and IDW's on their third or fourth wave of layoffs in the last five years, so I don't think they have a lot of funding to spread around for backup writers.
For Pontac and Graff, and to some extent this even applies a little bit to Ian Flynn's work in the games, it's always important to mention they were simply part of the localization team. They were provided a Japanese script and basically had to make it read well in English. A lot of the plot holes in something like Sonic Lost World were not their faults, though awful puns like "Baldy Nosehair" definitely were. I am almost entirely on board with the fact Sonic fans were a little harsher on those guys than they deserved.
Sonic The Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island Review (Patreon Review/Comission for Brotoman.EXE)
Happy halloween all you happy badniks! It's almost halloween and while that means spooky season comes to it's sad end soon it also means there's still time for a few tricks and treats. Today we've got both as we look at the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog series Scrapnik Island.
Before I can get into what this series is a brief history of IDW Sonic as this is my first time covering the Blue Blur's IDW adventures and some of you may be coming in from the games or only passingly familiar with the comics.
IDW picked up the license after Archie callously threw it into a ravine after breaking it's back, due to a combination of the reboot NOT quite getting numbers and Archie's restructruing. While I love Archie Comics i'm still livid with how they treated one of their longest running titles. And Ken Penders for making things bad in the first place but not everything with Archie Sonic is Ken Penders fault. More about.. half.
IDW and Archie Vetran and Sonic Expert and super fan Ian Flynn faced an uphill battle with tons of dumb regulations from no romantic relationships to "Shadow's vegeta now we guess" to one relevant to this comic: The Classic and Modern continuities were sepreate realities. Now if you ask questions like "Wait then how did sonic meet knuckles?" , "Isn't sonic generations about time travel?", "Why would you do this?", "Who asked for this?" or "Seriously SEGA get your finger out of your ass" you put more thought into this than SEGA did, and I still hate the draconian regulations they've put on the comic.
Despite these the comic was a massive success, still runs today, and rather than do a full on ongoing with rotating plots like Archie, IDW instead does mini series. Granted i'd prefer a succesor to sonic universe, but publishing times change and the minis mean they don't HAVE to do another story and leaves room for things like the various holiday specials, anniversary specials or to do a classic era mini starring Fang the Hunter... will NEVER be used to that name but it's awesome he got a spotlight after all this time.
These two things intersect here: Scrapnik Island is one of these minis and tells a contained story that so far hasn't been picked up by current writer Evan Stanley but hopefully will one of these days as the characters it introduces are great.
The big thing though is that Scrapnik was the first IDW comic to get to refrence events from teh classic games. The Scrapniks, who you'll meet soon enough, are all classic era badniks, and one of the main characters is Mecha Sonic from Sonic 3 and Knuckles, while it's implied the Death Egg from that pair of games is the one used in this comic. They don't refrence a ton outright, probably still on a tightrope, but it's clear by now Sega's walked back the alternate dimension thing for Classic Sonic. They still seem to keep the two time periods seperate, with Fang probably still confined to classic model stories sadly, as I'd love to see him and the other hooligans interact with Tangle, but it's more resonable than "Their not the same sonic because shut up" so i'll take it. It allows sonic's whole history in the games to be accessed both on page and screen, and means the scrapniks could even show up in the games one day. I have doubts but i'd love that. It's a milestone in the sonic comics and a great story on it's own merit
So who are the scrapniks? What pieces of the past will haunt Sonic on a dark and stormy night? and will this involve a weird brain machine Robotnik just had? All this and more can be found under the cut if you dare
Scrapnik Island comes to us from Writer Daniel Barnes, who published the graphic novel black mage, and did a spec pitch bible for a sonic animated series, which likely caught IDW's attention. Especially since Ian Flynn, Sonic's Real Dad, got started with a fan comic before saving the archie unverse, creatd a new archie universe, creating a new universe fit inside the games universe, and now writing the games themselves. While Barnes hasn't blown up that much, it's clear form his writing the man loves sonic deeply and snuck in a few easter eggs.
Artist Jack Lawrence is a vet at IDW, having drawn more than meet's the eye's final act, Lost LIght, something I hadn't realized but means we'll be seeing him again in a few years. He's also drawn Transformers/MLP, a wreckers mini for the second idw continuity, and a few issues of sonic including a previous Mini, Bad Guys. Also he drew some Jackie Chan Adventures comics, something i'm somehow JUST NOW finding out exists.
Both do a top notch job here, with Lawrence in paticular matching the horror vibe of the first issue and certain other parts of the comic very well while keeping it sonic.
So kicking off the comic proper..
And Sonic and Tails are rolling around at the speed of sound, got places to go gotta follow their rainbow. It's a simple setup that works: the guys are just on their plane when adventure happens. Pretty standard sonic setup and one that allows the series to be as standalone as it is: Unlike the previous two, which gave everyones faviorite couple the spotlight and focused on the big bad of the series forming his own suicide squad, respectively, this is just a fun side adventure. It's one I WISH would come back as it introduced an intresting concept in the scrapniks, and it'd be neat to see how other characters react to them, paticuarlly Belle.
Belle is a puppet like robot made of wood that Dr Eggman built while he had amnesia and became a kindhearted toymaker before his obessive fanboy kidnapped him to snap him back to his awful usual self, then realized he made a huge mistake. It's a long story I may get into one of these days. But given the cast here are reformed badniks, more ont hat in a bit, it'd be intresting for Belle to meet other eggman creations who aren't evil.
At any rate our heroes soon crash into the death egg, what's strongly implied to be the FIRST death egg from sonic 2 through knuckles. Which is neat to see. One dramatic crash later and Sonic wakes up alone, in a creepy unlit hallway on a table with Tails missing and surrounded by badnik corpses.
He also finds a weird metal club on his foot and can't move it without pain.. which I like as a tension device. It's hard to have a horror premise when your hero has super speed and has kicked ass since he was 12, so this helps level things. Sonic faces things brave as he can, noting how much the Death Egg has degraded. Which at first I thought wa sweird considering this was the first model but I mean.. how many could eggman have built?
The answer.. is 5 total. 6 if you count sonic drift. There was the original, the death egg II from sonic the fighters, the death egg from sonic battle he somehow had, the death egg mk 2 from sonic 4 which I know I know but it sadly is still canon, and the death egg from sonic forces that makes the most sense out of any of these for him to pull out of his ass as he at least had an illusion magic thingy. So the bigger question is why isn't mobius littered with these. And yup still calling it mobius. If Sega wants me to not call it that, then come up with a better name than "Sonic's World".
I love the atmosphere here thougH: Sonic's forced to slow it down so we get him wandinerg around, finding a single flower. This is one of the ones from sonic CD it seems. Why it's here... is easily handwaved: this island seems to be a dumping ground for all of Eggman's old inventions, and thus him leaving this here makes sense. It's also canon for IDW/Games eggman to move from projects way too fast. Can relate.
Eventually sonic finds a bunch of badniks... who are a bit.. diffrent than normal
I love the designs here and recognize some of these, the bulk coming from sonic 2: we've got that octopus from oil ocean, a buzz bomber with one eye from a crab meat and a claw from one, one of those mole things from sonci 3, the dragon fly from sonic and knuckles also given crameat claws, and one of the stinger enemies from sonci 21 grafted to that fucking spider asshole from checmial plant zone. And leading them all.. is Mecha Sonic, a neat return after far too long. I'm baffled why sega defaults to metal sonci more, as I love mecah sonic's bigger design, cool visor and use of the master emerald in his boss fight with knuckles.
He gives chase and Sonic super fucking runs away, not helped by his leg. While the sequence is tense we do get a really great joke as Sonic hides in one of the capusles from sonic 1
It's a nice tense sequence.. and hilarous once you know these guys.. aren't trying to harm him. In fact they were helping and their leader apologizes for spooking him. Their leader is E-117 Sigma, one of the e-series robots and apparently either made after gamma or somehow missing out on adventure and thus getting to live. Either way he's the only one that can speak and helps bring Sonic up to speed: He's sorry abotu spooking them and also sorry about the crash and offers to help repair the plane while they wait. Turns out the weather disruptor, because of course Eggman had a weather machine on his doomsday device, on the death egg is glitching. While tails geeks out sonic TRIES to apologize to mecha.. who brushes him off and struggles with their body. And I like the tonal contrast... the island itself.. is warm, full of rusted tech but safe and welcmoing.. yet still contrasted with a danger lurking on the death egg: mecha knuckles.
Specifically, and this is a deep cut I love, this is the Mecha Knuckles from sonic advance.. possibly the same one from Sonic R too bu the has the eyes of the advance one. Mecha Knuckles was my faviorit eboss fight of the game, starting as an off color knuckles before his skin exploded revealing a silver knuckles who had missles. He wasn't super hard but he's so far one of the best attempts at making a boss the same size as sonic ans friends. He's also wearing Knuckles hat from the OVA which i'm pleased is making a comeback: first this then the Knuckles mini series. Knuckles in a hat is dope and i'm glad it's getting more traction.
So issue 2. We begin with a flashback to Sigma and the Scrapnik's as a whole's origin story: he woke up on the shores of scrapnik island and is shown slowly repairing the bots best he can, hence their whole sid from toy store deal minus the need for therapy from their creator. It's a heartwarming sequence I wish I could show in full
You see the pure joy sigma has for his "creations", how much he cares.. and see Mecha wash up.
In present day Sonic's taking a nap when he wakes up to the scrapniks.. talking. Turns out Tails can translates though it's mostly "HELLO"... and is at least adorable. Sigma has good news and bad news. Good news they can mostly fix the plane bad news.. i'ts power source is cracked, and isn't easy to replace. Sigma thinks the death egg might ahve one and SOnic being sonic agrees to go get it, with Sigma and Mecha accompanying him.
The trip mostly goes well with it being revealed what the egg carrier is for: To get them off the island. The Egg Carrier comes from sonic adventure, being one of the games main settings and eggman's lair, and having sunk by the end of it, last seen being the spot for Amy's final boss fight with Zero shortly after Gamma's final battle. It's a smart pull as it makes sense it washed up here: it was in the ocean last we saw it and likely drifted to the island same as a lot of Eggman's creations. They plan to use it to leave someday, though it still needs work.
WE also get ane xplination for the sunflower: it washed up here and Mecha is carring for it, planning on taking it with them when they go. Sonic tries to offer his new friend a hand, bigones be bigones.. but while Mecha TRIES to accept it... they get attacked. Mecha Knuckles has made his move
We get some good action, solid stuff though I wish this four parter leaned more into the horror. Once we find out the scrapniks are goodniks... it's mostly a standard sonic story with a tinge of horror elements. It's a GOOD sonic story and the horror dosen't ever fully leave, but The MEtal Virus saga proved sonic can pull off horror well so I wish they'd went all in. That being said while I do hope for a story that does that, I get not doing it with these characters: they coudl've started with a horror story in mind.. but pivoted as the characters became more sympathetic.
Sigma explains the issue: he did rewawaken knux, who also has stretchy limbs, but eggman's programming was too deep to overwrite like he did for the others. He was designed to guard the master emerald shrine so the best Sig could do is retask him with guarding the death egg... problem is.. he can't convince him Sonic's a friend so a fight breaks out.. and we get the comics best sequence as poor Mecha has flashes of ptsd
It's a great horrifying sequence and not a stretch to see why the very being that destroyed him gives him nightmare or WHY it's been hard being around sonic: Mecha was made to destroy him.. and failed at it.. and Eggman simply.. forgot about him. He brought metal back, perfected him, made him better, something that other writers could explore, but he forgot Mecha. Assumed he was dead and moved on.
Mecha wakes up and easily finished Mecha Knuckles.. but then throat grabs Sonic. It's clear SOMETHING has gone wrong.
So we open issue 3.. with the goofy part. While the horror in this comic is mostly effective.. Mecha's Plan, while tragic and fitting.. is also.. pretty goofy.. see he has sonic hooked up to a brain machine Eggman abandoned for you see..
So yeah Mecha plans to put himself in sonics body and one of the scrapniks sees this and horrifdly runs off. Look sonic is a campy franchise. You know it, I know and I love it for that. It embraces coming from the video game and each of the comics does some fun weird shit with the lore given. The scrapniks themselves are a brilliant example of this.. but Mecah's endgame being "Put my brain in a non robot body" is just kinda silly. It fits and it's tragic, it's lack of sense makes all the sense with the state Mecha's in, but it's kinda goofy for what' sa pretty dark story abotu ptsd, self worth and abandonment. Sonic can do camp, but it has to fit the tone well and this story just isn't built for Robotnik's Mean Brain Machine.
We then get another flashback this time showing Mecha waking up.. with Sigma telling him his days as a tool of conquest is over. He's free now, finally free and we evne see a really great panel of Mecha.. happy
Sadly in the present Sigma wakes up to see his surrogate child.. has broken Mecha Knuckles and gone rogue. Thankfully the Badnik that saw all this got to tails, who quickly evil deads himself a scouter and some weapons
In the dark coridors they run into Sigma who explains waht the problem might be: He did his best to help mecha.. but like with Knux, his systems are way more advanced than sigma's used to, and figures the damage with Mecha Knux restored his old programming blaming himself. Sigma is a truly wonderful character, one of the best IDW has made and one I hope to see in the games or comics again. There's a LOT of potetial for this cast and i've been saying that a lot.. but it's true. It's weird to me two years out from this awesome mini no one's thought to bring these guys back. Maybe there's plans down the road for after Evan Stanley's run, we'll just have to see.
At any rate our heroes are at a horrifying disadvantage: While Tails, and presumibly thea udience, assumed Mecha would be slower and weaker due to his rust.. that's not the case. He easily floors the search party and gives a fairly chilling monologue as to why he's doing all of this
The lighting in the last panel is perfect. I said the series went light on the horror elemetns and I stand by it, even by kids media standards.. but it keeps enough. But what makes the series stand out so well.. is it's characters. Sigma the father the badinks never truly had and Mecha, tossed aside, broken and wondeirng WHY it's parent never came for him.. and ready to tear him apart.
He's also ready to make tails go down the hole after a decent fight scene.. though it does feel like tails gets jobbed out slightly. I mean.. he's on par with sonic and knuckles. He can't FLY which may be part of the problem, butit's wrong to bend him to being this much weaker just to make the story work. I didn't like it when the games did this for a while I sure as hell don't like it now.
So Tails goes down the garbage chute, at least Veruca Salt the little brute can keep him company, and prepares to do operation put my brain in sonic's body to make daddy love me again as we end issue 3
So as we begin the finale, Mecha Sonci explains how the brain drain works: eggman made it, got bored and since Mecha has doubts they'll ever escape, he can use sonic's ability to run across water... which begs the question why he can't, but I assume i'ts because , as we've seen a few times, his limbs seize up. He claims the scrapniks were never his friends, etc etc, which sonic dosen't buy. Thankfully said scrapniks beg him to stop.. and thus stop the machine mid transfer. Which does the only think I like about this thing.. it gives them a psychic link.
This also leads to a damn good fight as Mecha Sonic taunts sonic who is slowed down.. but powers through the pain. This is something that COULD have come up in a later arc but given the big finale to the starline saga was going on at the time, I understand. And it's again where the horror feels undermined: when it counted.. .sonic's injury didn't really matter and we get a big gorgeous fight. My issue is less that it's not full horror as the story told is gorgeously drawn and compelling and more it was marketed as a hroror book.. when aside from the first issue and a few scenes in the second it really isn't. It's not bad, and horror can be a lot of things. I'm ont a snob who say s"Well this can't be horror" This is horror adjacent, but you shoudln't market something based only on it's first issue and it left a bad taste in my mouth reading it the first time... but reading it this time.. that taste's washed out.
The truth.. is that the main story is really that good, with the fight crescendoing in Mecha Sonic holding on.. and planning to just die. He's given up, having failed to be what robotnik wanted.. and failed his friends, having come to his senses on his return to villiany, Eggman never loved him and wouldn't care if he came back as he has metal now.. but hating himself so deeply he alomst well. .unalives himself feeling he has no purpose. Thankfully sonic has some words on that
It's an ending I Love and as someone whose struggled myself, words you need to hear; live for you, not selfishly.. but simply how you want to. Just living itself is purpose... and thus Mecha does take his hand He can't actually lift him because super strength isn't a thing sonic has and the foot thing did tire him out a bit... something I forgot in that rant earlier but still stand by shoudl've had more consequences. STill everyone else shows up, willing to forgive their brother.. and also tails is here. Because despite everything.. their family. And family forgives when you deserve it.
So now Mecha Sonic's lost that self loathin, excused himself and let hoppe in. He's also been cleared of any egg data which wasn't easy, but is something Tails has done before. Gemerl should really hang with these guys. Mecha Knux is also both fixed and freed, and is standing all abdass in the corner, so he too can come back. We end on a heartwarming speech, as Mecha has accepted himself, that the future is uncertain and scary.. but it's his.. and he'll face it.
God this ending makes me tear up. Scrapnik Island. is excellent.. even more so on re-read and in sitting with it for this review. Mecha's arc is heartbreaking, well paced and the action and little dabs of horror are brilliant. I do think the horror parts of it were overblown.. but the genius concept of an island full of old badniks and giving Metal a new personality and character arc was genius, and it ends on a massive high that makes me want to see these characters again yesterday. There is a LOT of potetial in these character sand IDW is foolish to not tap into it yet and will be damn idiotic if they never do. It's a wonderful character piece that despite it's flaws, moves mountains and is one of the best sonic comics period.
