Ever wondered what would have happened if the Super Genesis Wave hadn’t happened? This behind the scenes look will shed some light!
There is now a dedicated webspace for Lost Hedgehog Tales, and the first chapter has been uploaded. For those who are unaware, the Archie Sonic comic faced a rollercoaster of events around the #225-250 both within the comic pages and in real life. The result of these changes ranged from slight delays to reformatting to the most famous result of initiating the Super Genesis Wave that essentially reset the multiverse. Lost Hedgehog Tales is an unofficial document, being written by official head writer Ian Flynn, about the original plans for that period, and for the road all the way down to #300, as well as some specific points that need a bit more detail to cover.
The first chapter is a sort of prologue to ease us into the general changes made between #225 and #247 (and before the future issue plans became completely shelved). To summarise the points briefly;
- Foreshadowing to the Death Egg came as early as #183; the Bunker Eggman retreated to after Enerjak destroyed New Megaopolis was the site of its ongoing construction.
- He wanted the #225-275 period be about breaking up the team and watching them pull themselves back together slowly, as the heroes hadn’t been too set back before that point.
- Sally was originally to be roboticised by the end of #225, but SEGA wanted an arc for the 20th anniversary, and “Genesis” was put between #225-229 instead. There were talks of that being used as a point to reboot the comic, but that obviously didn’t happen.
- Antoine could have been outright killed off in #234 instead of badly injured for his sacrifice to be a rallying point for the team, but the fan reaction to Mecha Sally and his injuries was bigger than expected, so it was agreed that he was best left alive.
- Team Fighters were originally going to meet Hershey St. John in #237-238 to gear up for “Secret Freedom” in Sonic Universe; she would have faked her death, infiltrated Razorklaw’s Dark Egg Legion chapter, but not been able to report the fact she was alive to Geoffrey. She would have learned of Geoffrey’s alliance with Naugus from the Fighters and headed home.
- “Heroes” was originally going to be between #239-241, because the editor wanted a bigger push for the three teams (Fighters, Freedom and Secret) and to have Patrick Spaziente do a triptych cover. Parts 1 and 2 would have been about the missions of Fighters and Freedom going exceptionally well with events mysteriously happening in their favour, while part 3 would have shown how the Secret Freedom Fighters were behind said good events in those missions. Then the Olympics loomed and Archie, SEGA and McDonald’s needed a tie-in for their promotion, so this got condensed to two issue with the Secret stuff being mixed in with the Fighters and Freedom mission stories.
- #241 ended up being a mix (all in one story, “Unraveling”). Part of it was a story that was planned to be a series of 5-page back-up showing the scenes Naugus went through as he tried desperately to hold onto power. Originally, Naugus would have simply tricked Geoffrey by playing on his sympathies in his dire situation, but the editor felt that too be too weak a resolution and had him possess Geoffrey instead.
- Ian originally wanted the #242 Olympic promotion to feature a main comic tie-in story, for a small obstacle for Team Fighters to fight before getting to the “Endangered Species” arc. The Krudzu Hybrid Hydra was selected to tangle with them (having last appeared in the Free Comic Book Day 2010 issue). This didn’t pan out as the Olympic story ended up taking all the pages, so the story was transplanted into #241 to provide the other part.
- “At All Costs” was originally going to be a consecutive 2-issue story marked the beginning of the upswing to the Freedom Fighters’ plight. But then the legal settlement meant critical characters and plot points were inaccesible which nulled much of the build-up, and Archie were asked by Capcom and SEGA to do a crossover (At All Costs ended up being 2 issues either side of said crossover, and there was no upswing as the second part showed Sonic first getting to grips with the new reality).
- Ian had 4-5 months to both plan out the crossover and plot out the new universe by this point. Meshing these, and the differences between Sonic’s convuluted lore and Mega Man’s under-developed lore, was the big challenge until he recalled the Genesis Wave he’d introduced way back in “Genesis”.
But this is hardly the end of the line. With so much planned before all the shenanigans in real life happened, this is only the tip of the iceberg. I implore you to read the document fully for yourself for some insights not covered by this summary, and be on the lookout for more juicy updates as Ian hopes he can update Lost Hedgehog Tales on a fairly steady basis. Certainly something to look forward to!
Source: Bumbleking
I must know what the original plot line for the Endangered Species arc is.
In a way this is like reading a “ghost arc” of Sonic Universe, seeing how the fate of an alternate universe could have gone as we try to learn more about how this new universe came to be.
F*****g Finally! Been waiting to read some of this!
So other than The Pendering and regular editorial messups, the biggest obstacle in Ian Flynn’s tenure as writer Sonic was…promotional product tie-ins?! What is this, the 80’s?
Jesus, working on a licensed title sure can be a bitch. It’s hard enough that you have to curb your own creativity in order to balance presenting a compelling story while keeping the elements of the license intact. But to have your arcs and ideas tossed aside so you can promote a fucking Happy Meal tie-in? Com’on!
Big ups to Ian and anyone else out there writing a licensed comic, they don’t enough credit for having to deal with bullshit like this all the time.
totally agreed!
Man, working on the sonic comic sounds like hell. I just glad Ian pulled thought to write a comic consitely good comic!
So far it’s been interesting to know what the original plans were going up to the World’s Collide arc. Even though we might never have seen Flynn’s master plan come out the way that we were all hoping, at the very least we can learn of how this all would have panned out “in another time, in another place…”.
I just hope Penders’ statements don’t herald even more legal red tape BS again, it was bad enough the first time Flynn was caught in the middle of the unholy trio that is Penders, Archie, and Sega shouting at each other, the last thing we all need is a repeat that makes things even worse.
On a personal level, this is interesting tidbits to see but I doubt having this extra space/material would have done much to save what was a train wreck of a story line.
IMO, the mecha-Sally arc was an endless collection of the worst stories Ian pumped out, from the Secrets team taking over too much of the comic, rehashed plot lines featuring the wolves and cats. (Two groups I have zero love or respect for) and finally Sonic and Co reduced to second stringers for far to much of the time. I recall constantly getting PO’d at seeing Mecha-Sally described as the biggest evil ever in the lead in when in the actual comics she was as flat as tin foil and just as interesting/dangerous.
It’s telling when It’s the dou of Ian Flynn and Tracy Yardley who had me experience actual wall banger moments after reading their stories in issue 251 and Su 55 and 56(Comics don’t acutall make a bang nose when they hit a wall).
I mean I sat through the comic from issue 78 and the whole Karl vs Ken cluster muck without having a mental breakdown from the storm of idiocracy they shoved out the doors. Contrast that with Ian’s dynamic Sally Sue and meme flooded stories having me considering cancelling my subscriptions on a regular basis from issue 197 and onwards.
But the price has to go to Yardley whose Pirate plunder storyline resulted in me cancelling my subscription after leaving a massive f-bomb of hatred over on the Sega forum from the massive case of OCCness presented in it.
Um…okay then, sorry to hear that you don’t care for their work. I personally loved their contributions to the series, it’s what helped solidify my interest in the comics. To each their own I guess.
Don’t say sorry, it is not your fault that Flynn and Yardley ruined it for me. I actually liked Ian’s first few years on the comic but then he started to slip into what I call the Sally Sue mess, when 11 out of 12 comics featured Sally as the main star or co star, memes and call backs popped up everywhere and the characters started having sliding personalities. it’s a bit of stretch when you have Sonic going from friend to everyone to egocentric jackass in just two short issues.
But as I said, it was Yardley who took the cake and smashed it into my face, not Ian.
Still, what’s done is done. I don’t read the comic anymore. I tried to read the Boom comic, but man O man, I just couldn’t handle how Ian wrote that, no offense intended but it felt to me like he hadn’t seen the show or played the games. Hmm it kind of makes him sound a bit like Ken Penders when I word it like that, which is… I’m shutting up now before this becomes a bash Pender’s party.
Um, well I was just saying sorry because in my eyes it’s a shame when you don’t like something. But tastes will be different, so there will be differences in opinion. I personally love what they’ve done for the series, I don’t find Sally’s depiction too “Mary Sue-ish” or anything, I don’t mind the memes that much (it’s consistent with the Sonic social media side of things), and I feel that it’s been doing a decent job depicting Sonic among everyone else, especially lately. If you don’t like their contributions then that’s fine, I’m just letting you know that those same things you listed had an opposite effect on me.
I did truly enjoy his earlier stuff like the Knuckles/Enerjak story like, the final showdown with Adam and the destruction of Knothole, but as I said, in my opinion it all went downhill after he started to use Sally so much that everyone else but Sonic and Eggman wound up being reduced to just cameo’s.
But it is most likely best to just drop this here.
Well if it’s any consolation Sally hasn’t been as much of a central focus lately these days. The odd side story with other characters or two, sure, but so far things have been pretty heavily Sonic Team based.
It kind of bugged me though that he said that this was going on during Sonic’s “fifteenth” anniversary when really this was going on during the TWENTIETH. I mean that’s kind of a reasonable mistake to make, but there’s a huge gap of 5 years in there and they both turned out WAAAAY differently when you pair them up together.
I’m more confused when I read his statement that SEGA wanted a tie-in comic to the Sonic Generations game release which gave us the Genesis plotline, a plotline that had nothing at all to do with the Generations game at all. I always felt it weird that this story arc was set in a game like verse located either in Sonic 1 or 2, yet diverted from it almost as fast as it could to focus on the Sonic x Sally shipping. (Kind of hypocritical of Flynn to claim he wants to end the shipping wars when he was responsible for it blowing up in the 2008 to 2013 period by always hinting and teasing at Sonic and Sally’s romance in each issue.)
I recall being utterly puzzled at how they could call it a tie-in, but I gave up asking Flyn about it since the Bumbleking forum doesn’t like anyone who questions his “genius” and took to leaving messages that read. “U don’t like it, u don’t read it.”
Sounds more like Mr. Penders forums to me.
It wasn’t tied into Generations, it was tied into the 20th anniversary in itself, so it celebrated that by adapting the only two classic games that Archie hadn’t touched upon yet, having already done Sonic 3 $ Knuckles, Sonic CD, Knuckles’ Chaotix, and Sonic 3D Blast: Flicky’s Island. It felt nice, and I don’t really mind the Sonic x Sally shipping, and to be fair it has been a significantly much less advertised pairing now than it used to be back in the day where every second they tried to convince you it was a “secret” between the two. It feels like a much more mutual dynamic going on now, especially since we don’t know to what extent their relationship goes in this universe and the old one is all but forgotten by everybody at this point. And plans change sometimes anyway, it’s not hypocritical to change your mind about things.
And as defensive as that does sound, it does speak the truth. If you don’t like or agree with the direction it’s going in, then why trouble yourself reading it? I mean didn’t you say you stopped subscribing to the comic years ago? And why trouble other people either? I mean your opinion is your opinion and you can express that if you want, but I don’t think it’s ever called for to “drop a massive f-bomb of hatred” on a Sega forum or challenging somebody on their own site.
I get the idea that you don’t like or agree with Flynn or Yardley or their contributions to the series, but the fact is that a lot of people do like him, and that isn’t without good reason. For one reason or another, they feel that their work has helped make the comic feel more like a SONIC comic than it had been for the last 10 years before 2008. And I feel that way too. Maybe that’s just because that was the era I jumped on board with and I might have a bit of a bias because of that, but there were lots of parts of every era of the comic to love and enjoy, and I feel that despite some twists and turns here and there the way the comic has been now under their lead has been the best I’ve ever seen of the series.
Does Flynn have some flaws? Yeah, but who doesn’t? He still does a pretty good job as far as I’m concerned and it allows me to enjoy the comic even more. But if it’s just not for you I understand, some people don’t like chocolate chip cookies but that doesn’t make them heretics or anything. I can kind of get why you don’t like his style, I just hope you can understand how I and others might like it anyway though. Understanding is what ultimately brings fans together, not necessarily common tastes.
* WHOOPS! Meant to say Sonic 3 & Knuckles. But that game did make some serious $, lol. ^_^”
you forgot Spinball as well.
Oh right. Well I didn’t count that because I was sticking with main titles, but that was one of it’s first major adaptation stories, so I guess it is worth mentioning. Although it’s a shame that they left it off on a cliffhanger like that. But that’s just how they did stories back then I guess, it was up to reader input to see what what certain things happened and what didn’t, which is kind of nice, except for when you introduce a plot thread and are depending on the viewers to want it to continue. It would have been a better idea to have asked people if they wanted Spinball to be adapted in the first place and then do it, otherwise just wrap up what you already started.
But I guess you could say that maybe the plot got resolved in the actual game itself, after all that story was meant to be a promotional tie-in to the game and nowadays most tie-ins typically just cover the intro of the games’ stories to get the reader interested in playing to find out the rest. Just for me though, I prefer stories that get wrapped up once they are started or introduced, which is why I like how Unleashed is getting a full arc treatment and why we’re getting the Lost Hedgehog Tales to finally get some closure as to what could have happened.
Spinball technically got revisited when Sonic and Tails ran afoul of Metal Sonic 2.5 (later becoming Shard) on Mt. Mobius, the setting of Spinball.
Eh, I read that more as a loose adaptation of the Sonic OVA…what with the lava and everything. There wasn’t really anything that suggested a return or a conclusion to the Spinball arc.
A-Are you legitimately blaming a writer of a licensed comic book for the decisions of the license holder he has to work for, just because you’re salty about the direction the comic went?
At what point is that remotely logical?
You know all this twisted logic and bitching and moaning makes me nostalgic for some reason….Johnny2701, Is that you?
It wasn’t tied into Generations.
@ Kim
So basically everything you just said about getting angry at Flynn for not basing Genesis off of Generations is wrong, utterly wrong. It’s no wonder they don’t reply because you are asking a redundant question.
“we took a detour into “Genesis” for the Sonic franchise’s fifteenth anniversary.”
No Sonic Generations here.
“we took a detour into “Genesis” for the Sonic franchise’s fifteenth anniversary.”
Doesn’t that mean it should be considered a tie-in, cause if its not connected to a game release there would be zero reason to interrupt the already ongoing story line?
Not necessarily, it was done for the sake of honoring the game franchise’s 20 years of history by adapting the starting points of the series. From a narrative standpoint it is satisfying as it allowed them to more directly adapt the plots of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, seeing as how they didn’t do so back in the early days when it was more focused on adapting the two cartoons at the time, more or less, with the occasional tie in to coincide with whatever release was coming out.
Other than that, I believe the current policy at the time restricted them to only adapting the games as short one-shot promotional tie-ins, as seen with Sonic Shuffle – Sonic Lost World. So even if Flynn wanted to do a full on Generations story adaption to come together with the set story plans he had (which probably would have been a nightmare for him to figure out at that point anyway), he probably wasn’t allowed to do more than the typical one-shot tie-in like every other game promotion. So to have a nostalgia trip like the Genesis saga at all was a treat in itself, and it certainly helped cater to the nostalgia-hype that Sega was building up with Generations, culminating in a typical one-shot tie-in as per usual.
If that is the case and it was a policy, clearly things must have changed over the years since then, what with that whole McDonalds thing that resulted in the Olympics tie-in being a full on issue and Sonic Unleashed’s main premise being a huge part of the current story. It kind of harkens back to the time when the game adaptations actually became part of the story (well they were still special issues that didn’t necessarily affect things too much, but they still were able to be a whole story nonetheless), particularly when Sonic Adventure was adapted into a full arc that integrated with the various plot points that were still going on in the series. Personally I kind of hope that this is a trend that continues, although it will likely be with current releases considering how in this new timeline most of the games have already taken place, save for Unleashed and Chronicles, with Lost World being integrated into the Crossover.
It’s a shame for the comic that it happened like this. I really liked the comic before all the Megaman crossovers, but when the world changed and basically made everything I had read so far irrelevant it did disappoint me quite a lot. . I liked it the way it was and really wanted that universe to continue. But I guess that’s life…
I find it really dissapointing that most of the world nowadays is run by idiots. Everything was going swimmingly and was really tense, then Penders had to walk in for a stupid reason.
He’s sort of the Anikan Skywalker of the series if you think about it. He was one of the founding members of the team that got the comic as far as it did until around 2006, then he left and Ian picked up the pieces. Then things just sort of silently progressed with no issue until he became an active force again. Maybe that affiliation is a bit far-fetched, but I guess it’s just funny how we look past all the contributions that he made to the series back in the day for the sake of vilifying him nowadays. I mean, not everything he did was good (as much as I like exploring the characters’ domestic and personal lives, I don’t think having a whole 3-issue arc on Knuckles and Juli-Su FINALLY dating was that necessary, especially since it didn’t really further anything beyond that), but it still laid the foundation for Flynn and other team members to touch up on and improve little by little. The guy in a sense is both a blessing and a curse.