Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28986801-20170123071057/@comment-679780-20170331194551

Genesjs wrote: Mystic Monkey wrote: Genesjs wrote: Mystic Monkey wrote: Genesjs wrote: Mystic Monkey wrote: Genesjs wrote: I'll just leave the short version of my opinion of this matter: Regardless of whether the comics are going to be cancelled anytime soon or not, I know I won't be buying them because I refuse to due to so out of principle, because I am unable to justify any desire I may have to continue buying them when I think about the issues currently surrounding how the comics (and by extension, their the creative liberty of their staff) are being handled after the reboot had occurred. Because of my current stance of the status of the comics, I am of the opinion that the Archie comics may ultimately be better off being cancelled outright in case no company can purchase them and acquire a license to make Sonic comics, and be able to make them without having an unreasonable amount of limitations being placed on them (and that's not getting into the nature of the limitations themselves...), because I'd rather see the comic series get cancelled ASAP so they can hopefully maintain some of the dignity it has left instead of seeing it die a needlessly slow and painful death.

I could explain in detail, but only if you want to suffer reading through an essay's worth of rambling by me. I would miss the fact Sonic had his own comic series, regardless if it's this one or that one. And I doubt Sega would look for other comic companies to continue Archies work or a successor series. Unless they personally fund or buy out Sonic the Comic Online and Mobius Legends.

If Sega did decide to make a brand new Sonic comic series and want it to take place in game canon, I hope they make the stories take place in between the games than the need to make comics based on the games. I'd miss seeing Sonic having his own comic series too, but (at least when it comes to western markets) I often hear that the comics industry in general isn't doing too well these days. A lot of even the big-name comic companies like Marvel, DC, Darkhorse, etc. have been seeing a decline in their general readership, and a lot of these companies are only able to make a stable profit by branching out into other forms of media like movies and television (don't forget the merchandise). I could go into detail on why I think that this is the case, but the short of it is that a desire of these companies decades ago to form a monopoly on the comic book industry and essentially kill off most of their competition from those earlier days, is starting to seriously bite them in the butt financially, all the while strangling a once profitable market to death and blaming it all on the little guy who'd dare to not buy their comics for any reason. Bottom line, if we're going to see a new comic book series that actually tries to last, SEGA would need to find a company that isn't in financial straits and can guarantee to them that they (the comic company) will draw in enough of a readership to at least cover whatever investments they make into the comic itself. Ideally this comic company would also need to not be currently swamped in some form of controversy, because like a moth to the flame a lot of companies will avoid anything that would put their brand at risk with consumers, and a controversy is arguably one of the worst things a company can find itself in. I'm not saying that seeing a new comic series by a different publisher is impossible, but currently I think there's too many factors at play to where seeing an ongoing series being made is all that likely. At the very least, I think something should be done about the comic book industry as a whole before SEGA, a company that isn't doing too great financially these days either, considers taking any risks with the comic books industry.

Personally, I've been happy with with the comic book series I've been reading taking place within their own canon and distinguishing themselves from the game canon, and I wouldn't mind seeing a new series do exactly that like it's predecessors before it. It adds more variety to the kinds of stories the franchise can have. If they did make a comic series based in the games' canon, then I'd prefer SEGA/Sonic Team to make some visible effort to try to incorporate the comic's stories into the games' stories somehow (like with tie-in products) so it'd give people more incentive to buy the comics as a companion to the games, and do their best to avoid contradicting the comics' canon and vice versa. Way I see it, if they're going to make a tie-in comic series to the game they should at least put in the necessary leg-work to make it all fit together, otherwise I don't see the point in even bothering with it. IDW Publishing would perhaps be an ideal choice for making a successor comic series. Perhaps. Another idea is a manga that can easily be made into a comic for western audience. Like, maybe the pages reversed for westerners to read from left to right and the speechbubbles translated. I wouldn't really be on board with a format change for a Manga series, since the vast majority of art in Manga is drawn with the right-to-left format in mind. It wouldn't have the same appeal to regular consumers of the medium if the format was changed in this way, especially for western audiences since doing something like this may give off the implication to some people that consumers of the media from their side of the pond don't like reading Manga in it's original format, and would come off to them as being handed a "dumbed-down" product made with them in mind. Not saying that I personally would automatically make an assumption like this on the spot (although I will feel insulted if I find out some behind-the-scenes information that some people over in Japan who may be working on a Manga series I'm interested in do make it clear that the possible implications I just mentioned aren't just people imagining things, and that western audiences are being given some dumbed-down product because the people behind the product in question think they're morons or something. I typically don't like supporting a product when I know that the people behind it hate their audience, doubly so if they go out of their way to anger them in really stupid and petty ways.), but some people with fragile sensibilities might, and if current events in the world are anything to go by it often really doesn't take a whole lot of people to start a controversy that can make many a company shake in their boots.

Besides, if they made a Sonic Manga with the right-to-left format first before deciding to try and reverse it for other markets, they would need to either heavily edit a good portion of the artwork or have it redrawn from scratch to better suit the right-to-left format preferred in western markets. But if they did make it in the right-to-left format from the get-go and just released it in eastern and western markets with the only changes made is the language for localization purposes, then yeah, it'd be a bit strange to regular consumers of Manga (those that would be willing to read/buy it, anyway) but at least it'd decrease the work load for the localization team. But like I said before, it would be a Manga series, so I think a change to a left-to-right format would be ultimately unnecessary since the right-to-left format isn't what most consumers of Manga read anyway.

If they did make a Manga series though, I'd be on board with giving it a try if the premise sounds interesting enough. I suggested if they did make a manga, for non-japanese audience they could simply reverse the pages so they could be read more traditionally.