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Post by Michael on Jan 26, 2014 22:09:20 GMT
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Post by The Stiv™ on Jan 26, 2014 22:12:54 GMT
And a massive thank you to Michael for all the stuff you don't see (and most of the stuff you do see, come to that!)
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JJ
Script Hume
Bit of a hack, really.
Posts: 4,902
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Post by JJ on Jan 26, 2014 22:17:34 GMT
Lovely issue guys! Great to see Hog Hunt out there, it's been a long time coming. ^^
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Post by The Stiv™ on Jan 26, 2014 22:30:04 GMT
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Post by Hevs on Jan 26, 2014 22:41:06 GMT
Oh excellent work so far guys! Only read the first strip but Yay Death Trap! I loved Shanazar, it's really good to see these guys back ^_^ Also the artwork is really neat in this issue!
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BM
New Boomer
Posts: 32
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Post by BM on Jan 26, 2014 23:27:49 GMT
Excellent issue! Top notch writing, with a lot of ideas and action balanced perfectly. Loving the huge amount of Chaotix here, it's nice to see them take a super active role with sonic and Knuckles again.
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Post by patches on Jan 26, 2014 23:33:20 GMT
Just thought I'd say I really liked Amy's hair in the SOnic World strip... she should sport that style more often! Heheh! Really enjoyed the issue, and it was good to see the story moving on again. I liked the 'Tom, Mike and Ed' cameos... brilliant!
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AoNoChaos
New Boomer
*Insert witty Sonic pun*
Posts: 41
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Post by AoNoChaos on Jan 26, 2014 23:45:53 GMT
Terrific issue! All three stories ended with annoyingly great cliffhangers and the reintroduction of Death Trap and the Knuckles Metallix got me really excited. Actually, I kinda squealed when I saw Death Trap...heh... All in all, awesome build-up stories made with amazing art to boot! Cannot wait until the next issue!
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Post by Fools in Miru on Jan 27, 2014 0:07:24 GMT
The re-introduction of Death Trap gave me a smile to my face. I was always anticipating Windy Wallis becoming a serious threat down the line, could this be the beginning of such a thing happening?
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Post by Tanner / Ogilvie on Jan 27, 2014 7:15:35 GMT
First thought: oww, that tongue yank HAD to have hurt.
Great work to all involved! I'm especially loving Emmy Roll's artwork.
The plot is definitely looking to be interesting, with quasi-roboticisation making SPEAR a lot more menacing as an organisation. The only question is if this is actually Gold's idea or he's being influenced somehow, given that it was said he's acting weird lately. It is definitely nice to see that some of the minor villains have found their way into the employ of another antagonist, as well. A lot of them may be "losers" (as the New to StC feature so politely put it) when working alone, but when coordinated by someone more competent...
With all these Metallixes, I can't help but wonder if we're going to see Robotnik have a Metallix Army face off against SPEAR'S Cybernik army at some point...
Overall things are looking to be fun to follow!
Commenting on things besides the actual story: I was thrilled to see Sonic Revolution made it onto the affiliate list! SR's affiliation section is up and we hope to have StCO added there soon (details on button size were sent as a message to the StCO Facebook page).
Keep up the fantastic work, everyone!
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Post by quakehollow on Jan 27, 2014 10:12:14 GMT
excellent story, wonderful art. I'm really looking forward to the next issue spoiler: I am intrigued to see how death-trap recovered from being turned to stone by the Medusa in issue 163.
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Post by Badly-Drawn Manchild on Jan 27, 2014 13:05:29 GMT
Wow, talk about the issue of picking up dangling plot threads! Now let's see... SonicI hate to say it for the second time, but this strip really did leave me cold. There just doesn't seem to be any point to it, which is a problem I have with this story arc as a whole; Sonic doesn't seem to have an overriding goal, it's not like he's out trying to prove his innocence or anything like that. It makes this whole "Sonic on the run" story feel very directionless. What really pissed me off about this story though was Sonic's attitude itself. Not that I want or expect him to be a generic goody-good, nor did I expect that Chaotix would immediately believe him given the mountain of evidence against him (though one still wonders why they've never had Omni look into Sonic's story to see if he's telling the truth), but frankly I was on Chaotix's side the whole time during the fight. This whole fight scene should have been harrowing; good people on opposite sides, characters who were essentially brothers-in-arms in a war against evil, now torn apart by fate and ill intent... and Sonic's treating it as if he was fighting Generic Villain of the Week #365. There's no indication that he's regretting the fight, nothing to say that Chaotix haven't left him with any other option; instead he wise-cracks and belittles them constantly. Yeah, that's kinda what Sonic does in a fight, I get that, but on this occasion it sounds highly inappropriate, even downright grotesque. See, this is one of my major problems with the comic lately; Sonic's characterisation is horribly inconsistent. Sometimes he's the more mature Sonic that started to emerge at the end of the Chaos arc (though still with enough of an ego to make him still seem humanly flawed), but other times he's an arrogant, overemotional douchebag that treats his friends like crap. In this story, he veers way into the latter category, and made this story really hard to swallow with such a prick of a "protagonist". One thing I will say though, to be fair; the twist at the end definitely reignited my interest in this story arc again. I actually really want to know how Death Trap survived their encounter with the Medusa, and I'm hoping this is leading to something like the original plans for the Shanazar arc. Hopefully they'll be done justice this time. All in all though, really not a fan of this strip. It felt like nothing was accomplished in it at all. KnucklesNow this is more like it; a good fun strip. I also really liked how it picked up that particular plot point about the other Metallixes from the print run; it's great to see STCO explore seemingly abandoned plot threads like this. The dialogue was sharp, the action flowed smoothly and there was some great fight banter that felt true to the characters; the moment with Charmy is classic Chaotix humour, which put a huge grin on my face. Plus it's great to see Team Mobius back on art duties; their art really suits the Knuckles stories, and I hope we see more from them in the future. Sonic's WorldI had to admit that I had to do a lot of reading to refresh my memory over what was going on and who these side-characters were. There's been an awful lot of them in this story arc, and that's made it a bit hard to follow. That said, I'm assuming this strip is meant to be leading towards the payoff of all this building up, and it's a heck of a payoff. I like the idea of there being an antagonist who's fighting for good, but has crossed the moral line in his methods and become as villainous as the villains; that's something we've not seen often in STC up to this point, and I'm intrigued to see Amy matching wits with him. The art throughout is, once again, of a really nice standard. While the Sonic strip really drags this issue down, both of the other stories have enough good qualities to them to offset it. So I'd say this issue rounds out to being about average.
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Adamis
Artist Hume
Yay
Posts: 1,339
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Post by Adamis on Jan 27, 2014 14:01:01 GMT
IIRC, it's their last story :/
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Post by Charles on Jan 27, 2014 21:16:41 GMT
I kinda squealed when I saw Death Trap...heh... Kalus is a handsome beaut!
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Post by Supermorff on Jan 27, 2014 21:20:06 GMT
Sorry guys, I wasn't bowled over by this issue. SonicArt in this strip is fantastic (really some of the best of STC-O,and I didn't even notice the switch in artists until writing this review), but the story doesn't go anywhere. We've seen Sonic fighting his friends since being framed. This story hasn't added anything to the arc. Just because Sonic is fighting different friends this time, and there are more of them, doesn't make me any more invested in what happens. The strip is one long fight scene, and it's got good moments, but no weight. Plus, here is Omni, the one being who can prove Sonic's innocence pretty damn easily, and nothing happens. Sonic just breaks out of Omni's force field (how?) and Omni's out for the rest of the fight. The twist at the end... is okay. Please can the fugitive story arc actually go somewhere now? KnucklesArt is decent. The colouring on the first page is a bit strange, but it's fine from the second page. It's just a shame that the Metallixes are such a dull colour. And what's with Vector's neck? It's not bad, just different. But noticeably different. There's another fight scene, which falls into a common trap of everything being too up-close to the action, which looks nice in the detail but leaves me struggling to follow what's going on. And, yeah, it's one long fight scene with no stakes. The Metallixes go down so easy considering they were so tough before, and this is hand-waved a bit by saying that they aren't fully charged. There is a very nice character bit once the fighting stops, when Vector suggests getting Porker to reprogram the Metallixes and Knuckles points out that this is a bad idea. Great insight into Porker's ongoing, ahem, difficulties, and it's portrayed well... but Porker isn't in this story, and I'm not sure why he gets the main character focus. Sonic's World (should really be 'Amy') This is the best of the bunch. Art ticks all my boxes for narrative storytelling (although everything seems a tad flat; but that might be stylistic choice). Special mention for page 4, which does a lot with very little, and page 3, which has Grouchio's face on the side of a van. Mr Gold seems interesting for the first time, so it's a shame that none of the previous SPEAR stories have captured my interest. I should have been looking forward to this revelation. If I had been looking forward to it, it would have been superb. But I wasn't, so now I'm just left hoping that this story arc will wrap up soon and go out on a high-note. (This strip has at least encouraged me about the possibility of the latter.) Minor niggles in this strip, though: - Blue arrives abruptly, with no real context of who he is (not even a mention in the Data Zone).
- The Kanetalk segment is awkward. Why does Mr Gold say that Spear is not monolithic when that has nothing to do with anything? Monolithic, in the context of an organisation, means that the organisation is internally united.
- In the stealth scene, the first panel shows two spotlights but Amy only shoots one. And why is the security guard's first assumption when his spotlight [censored]ters that it must be a malfunction?
- When Amy is zapped my Mr Gold, his voice is muffled. I get that she's just been zapped, but the effect doesn't work. He just seems to have an accent.
- When Amy wakes up, her hairstyle has changed. Who did that?
OtherThe addition of 'Go small' and 'Go large' is very welcome. But why is the smaller version the default? The lettering in the Knuckles strip was so small as to be nearly illegible in the smaller version, and I didn't notice the new button until I'd finished reading. I recommend that the banner for the Data Zone and the info about writers and artists be included on every page of a strip, not just page 1. I recommend that in the Anniversary Zone, the whole buttons are links not just the text bits.
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Post by Supermorff on Jan 27, 2014 21:22:25 GMT
Oh, and someone might want to fix the swear filter to let through the word s h a t t e r s
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BM
New Boomer
Posts: 32
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Post by BM on Jan 27, 2014 21:48:58 GMT
Oddly enough I actually felt this issue was a fresh change of pace because we got back to Sonic's friends fighting him. Since issue 250 I've never quite felt that Sonic was really in exile- he's never really had to deal with what happened through Grimers plans in any way that feels gut-wrenching or trapped, especially with Tails visiting him with alarming frequency. Was nice to see the whole 'my friends think I'm bad' issue properly come back after far too long.
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Adamis
Artist Hume
Yay
Posts: 1,339
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Post by Adamis on Jan 27, 2014 22:24:45 GMT
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Post by L. T. Dangerous on Jan 28, 2014 0:53:13 GMT
Okay, I’m going to be frank because it’s what I’d expect anyone else to do for me: I’m not entirely taken by this issue.
Right, let’s get this one out of the way first off: Omni-Viewer has been explicitly stated to be omnipotent. He is established to be able to travel to any point in time and, we can reasonably assume from past adventures, space.
So why does he not pipe up about Sonic’s innocence? He is one of Sonic’s oldest friends. Do we have a reason for this not being covered? Is it safe to assume this will be addressed in the near future? Because, honestly, it’s going to have to be a good one considering the last time Big Om appeared in a Sonic story, he was HELPING Sonic. I can just about buy the explanation I was given about Vector in that story being a Vector from the past who trusted Sonic but, that being the case, it makes the issue of why Omni isn’t helping Sonic here about fifty-thousand times more confusing because he has literally no reason not to.
The art is really lovely and Pete’s amazing colours help to make the transitions between Stiv and Adamis all-but undetectable.
Really liked the Mighty fight, very dynamic art. Don’t understand for one moment why he called Espio a ninja, though, that’s not what he is in STC and it never has been. If he said it as a snarky aside then I’d get it but it was played straight.
Bottom of page six, I got chills… I was hoping against hope that we’d get Death-Trap… and we did! Really, REALLY excited about this one!
Overall, though, I have to echo sentiments that I’m not sure what this achieved. Chaotix are no closer to believing Sonic than they were before. This was 14 pages spent on throwing away the Bob Beaky disguise and reviving Death-Trap in the last page or so. Sometimes a big superhero scrap story can be fun but this was just fighting for the sake of it- nobody has grown and the central plot has not moved forward.
And where did the Rogues go? They just gave up?
Not much to say on the Knuckles one, the art is nice, just a few notes and niggles:
Did I seriously read a story where Charmy Bee defeated a [censored]ing Metallix? I realise the story says they weren’t on full power but [censored]ing hell. Charmy Bee! A Metallix!
What exactly led them to Flickies’ Island? “Suspicion”, we’re told. But what made them suspect? What happened to Doctor Zachary? Isn’t that a bit more pertinent to Knuckles than titting around on Flickies’ Island?
I’m keen to see where the story goes with the army of Knuckles Metallix.
Ultimately, and this may sound brutal, I don’t think this needed to be a full story. A flashback panel or a bit of exposition could have covered this as the Metallix being collected is the only thing that happens.
Lastly, SPEAR Stories. This is the first entry in this plotline I’d say has been particularly good but it still has its weak moments. The opening bit with Kane is a bit higgledy-piggledy, but it at least keeps the character of Kane fresh in our minds so good work there. I quite like Amy being really good at the “training” and the other characters obviously being envious of her.
“Ed, Mike and Tom” is incredibly masturbatory.
Dr Genius and Windy were quite interesting here, I liked how it wasn’t clear exactly just what their feelings to SPEAR are, Windy obviously isn’t entirely happy.
Gold being a good guy in public and a bad guy in private doesn’t really work when he’s so obviously bloody evil, as is the entirety of SPEAR.
Five pseudo-Cyberniks debut in the same issue as a Metallix revival. I will assume that’s just an unfortunate coincidence of timing because the big reveal here lost a lot of its impact following the previous strip.
And then it just ends. How do you end on “THE END?” with a final panel like that? Of course it’s not the end. Amy has to at least get out, if not decisively win. It’s not like this is never going to be addressed again, surely to goodness.
Lovely cover, great wallpapers, kudos all round there.
Sorry if any of this seemed harsh at all, guys, but I’m afraid this one was, to me, a bit of a misstep in light of a good run of several really good issues. Hopefully it’s just a blip on the radar and we’re back to full power next issue.
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AoNoChaos
New Boomer
*Insert witty Sonic pun*
Posts: 41
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Post by AoNoChaos on Jan 28, 2014 2:46:34 GMT
Wow, talk about the issue of picking up dangling plot threads! Now let's see... SonicI hate to say it for the second time, but this strip really did leave me cold. There just doesn't seem to be any point to it, which is a problem I have with this story arc as a whole; Sonic doesn't seem to have an overriding goal, it's not like he's out trying to prove his innocence or anything like that. It makes this whole "Sonic on the run" story feel very directionless. What really pissed me off about this story though was Sonic's attitude itself. Not that I want or expect him to be a generic goody-good, nor did I expect that Chaotix would immediately believe him given the mountain of evidence against him (though one still wonders why they've never had Omni look into Sonic's story to see if he's telling the truth), but frankly I was on Chaotix's side the whole time during the fight. This whole fight scene should have been harrowing; good people on opposite sides, characters who were essentially brothers-in-arms in a war against evil, now torn apart by fate and ill intent... and Sonic's treating it as if he was fighting Generic Villain of the Week #365. There's no indication that he's regretting the fight, nothing to say that Chaotix haven't left him with any other option; instead he wise-cracks and belittles them constantly. Yeah, that's kinda what Sonic does in a fight, I get that, but on this occasion it sounds highly inappropriate, even downright grotesque. Maybe I'm reading too much into it all (I have a bad habit of that...) but I think I have a theory about Sonic. I feel like, originally, Sonic's intent was to prove his innocence. When he realised that he couldn't, he went to helping to protect Mobius from the side-lines. Now it seems more like he's trying to figure out how to stop Robotnik, prevent the seemingly increasing threat of Super Sonic, and trying not to get caught at the same time. As for his attitude, considering the stress of being caught and wrongly accused was getting a bit much for him on the first page, perhaps his attitude was to prevent it from getting worse? Maybe if he thought too much about the reason why he had to fight the Chaotix, the stress of it would ultimately be too much. Acting like a total ass and treating the fight almost like a game may of been a cautious act more than anything. Like I said, probably looking too much into it, but that's how I feel about that
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Post by Charles on Jan 28, 2014 3:03:28 GMT
And then it just ends. How do you end on “THE END?” with a final panel like that? Good point, in retrospect we should've said "Coming Soon [something something true believers something]!".
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Post by Mambo's Here! Look Busy! on Jan 28, 2014 19:26:35 GMT
I've been a bit on the poorly side so I've only had a quick read through this. I absolutely love the artwork, although in some panels of the Knuckles story I think Vector looks a lil bit too humanoid. :s In fact, shiiit they all do. :/ Ah well... just my personal taste. The Sonic's World story was probably my favourite; nice to see Amy doing a bit of ass-kicking, even though I suspect she's gone a bit rogue and possibly neither Tails/Kintobor nor Chrysalis know she's there... soo yeah. I get the impression she's on her own and is going to have to find her own way out! I did like her "disguise", even though I am sure she must be the only pink hedgehog on Mobius (if her and Sonic's backstories are anything to go by...) so of course she will be recognised! XD Sort-of Cyberniks is kinda scary, and next to the Metallixes in the Knuckles story. Eeeeeee. :s As for the Sonic story; the highlight is the art, but I've got to agree with LT...what the hell, Big Om?! I guess his reason for staying quiet is the same as Tails'?
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Post by Charles on Jan 28, 2014 19:45:10 GMT
What are you implying about Amy and Chrysalis?
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Post by Mambo's Here! Look Busy! on Jan 28, 2014 19:47:54 GMT
What are you implying about Amy and Chrysalis? That no girl should head into the field without consulting her stylist first?
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Tom
Ex-Hume
Hume-who-used-to-think-he-was-in-charge
Posts: 3,786
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Post by Tom on Jan 29, 2014 16:12:11 GMT
The only word we have for the alleged omnipotence of Omni-Viewer is Omni himself. In a story where he concealed the fact that he was under Robotnik's control. In a panel where he was trying to scare Sonic and the gang off. And he's missed things before…
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