Ever notice that Ian Flynn writes characters either being turned into something evil, or just being a full blown traitor. Like Mecha Sally, Geoffrey, Mimic, and the Zombots. I can't be the only one who noticed this, right?
Ever notice that Ian Flynn writes characters either being turned into something evil, or just being a full blown traitor. Like Mecha Sally, Geoffrey, Mimic, and the Zombots. I can't be the only one who noticed this, right?
Some people like his writing, some people dislike it.. but we can all say his is way much better than Ken Penders'.
Ken ultimately sucked at the writing the serious tone.
I don’t find faults in his writing during the Toon era. It was the Toon era, after all.
However, Ken Penders, while superior to Ian in creating original concepts and world building, couldn’t write them in a truly meaningful way Ian Flynn could.
Thats my take.
Yeah, I thought his writing was alright during the earlier, more comedic-styled issues too.
It's his later issues, especially during the shift to Modern and onward from 1998-2006 when his writing became really bad. The art during that period didn't help matters.
My big opinion thing:
Sonic fans seem to have a double standard when it comes to penders and flynn. excusing flynns mistakes and scrutinizing penders mistakes. i think the one thing that sets them apart is that ken penders wants to tell stories in his own universe and ian flynn wants to tell stories in the games universe these are the core mindsets that appear most frequently and often tie in to the tropes that each of them often use.
Penders tropes:
Large amount of original characters
Darker storytelling
Various forms of inserting his ideas from outside sonic.
Flynn tropes:
Mass killing / removing of characters
Turning characters evil or having them turn out to be traitors
Obvious disrespect to other writers original characters
I feel like when reviewing the writing of these two it is important to remember what the motivation behind these tropes is as well as keeping these tropes in mind in general. in my opinion these tropes are [mostly] harmful to the ecosystem of the comics universe.
Now i will talk about what i like from these two writers. my [very unpopular] opinion is that penders writing is most enjoyable when he is given just the right amount of control. for writing to be enjoyable the writer needs to want to write it. penders wants to tell his stories in the knuckles comic and that is why it works ok.
Ian flynn in my opinion is at his best when he does not have as many places to put his tropes. worlds collide is one of my favorite sonic comics and the pre-metal virus idw comic was pretty good. these are the only times where it seems like ian flynn actually wants to write the story because he is free of his long term goal of making the comic universe a carbon copy of the game universe.
I love Ian Flynn writing
I hope he'll make it to the games
The zombots arc is fantastic
And he knows how the characters are not like the games writers (they turned tails into a complete spineless cowrard but in the comics he was brave and confident I can see the tails that we know in him)
You hit the nail right on the head. Those are the exact things that I always had problems with when it came to Flynn's writing too.
While I personally disliked most of Penders' later work on the comic for being too weird for my tastes (high-school soap opera romance drama, anyone?), Flynn's run wasn't exactly 100% peaches and cream either for me, even if I like it better overall.
Heck, he wanted to kill off Antoine for some reason originally until he got so many complaints about it that he decided to make it so that he was put in a coma.
It's actually kind of funny because some of the things that Flynn wrote and people complained about was stuff that Penders was also writing as well. And at the same time, I did not see what was so wrong about that. Writers have similar concepts all the time but it was obvious people made it out more to be about preference of the writer at the time.
A very fair point
Well, the zombots were based on roboticization from Sonic SatAM while throwing The Walking Dead into the mix.
What do you think?