Commentary
for July 14, 2022:
Can I just say how
satisfied I am with Jupiter in panel 4? That’s an asset I created
way back in 2009. But if it ain’t broke.
Now I’ve said this before, but one of my favourite character moments
Sonic has ever had in all of his thirty-one years of extended
fiction is in the AoStH episode, ‘Tails’ New Home’, where he says,
“I love you, little buddy,” to Tails. There was also an episode of
SatAM, where Sonic broke down and cried after failing to save Uncle
Chuck from Doctor Robotnik’s control. And there was a moment in the
Archie comics where an alternate future Sonic, who had changed
history by travelling back in time to prevent a future cataclysm,
broke down and cried when he confronted the reality that the family
he had raised in his previous timeline had been erased from
existence.
But Sega doesn’t like it when Sonic is emotionally vulnerable, and
has asked the creative teams behind licensed fiction to tone stuff
like that down. Sonic’s never said “I love you” to any of his
friends since AoStH. He never cried again in SatAM or any of the
subsequent cartoons. And the art had to be redone in the Archie
comics to seriously tone down the visible emotional anguish Sonic
was obviously feeling in that story. But I don’t answer to Sega and
I like to let Sonic have feelings and show some vulnerability now
and then, which is one of the reasons for this scene with his
family.
The other reason is that I didn’t want Sonic to have an ongoing
dispute with his parents, so this fight needed to be resolved here
and now. I didn’t want to give Sonic parents who don’t understand
him, disapprove of his choices, and are constantly on his case to
make something more of himself. That’s too much of a cliché, whereas
a loving and supportive family, parents who’ve always got their
kid’s back, that is something a bit more refreshing and a lot more
wholesome. Oh don’t worry, there’ll be more dysfunctional families
in Eon’s World in due time, but Sonic’s isn’t one of them.
His family can have an argument, but none of them are too proud or
too stubborn to admit when they’re wrong and apologise. They will
always make up, even if they have to blow off a little steam by
going on a small space adventure with a wayward time traveller,
first.
But since this is the final page, I really ought to say a bit more
about this chapter overall, hadn’t I? This is a very loose
adaptation of the story told in Eon’s Comic #155-156. In the
original, Kathy and the OC I created Black Sabre to replace came to
Earth to abduct two OC’s who had come back from the future with
Sonic and send them back to their own
time, and it was Eon and CJ (with the help of Zero from Mega Man
Zero) who came to their rescue, because the travellers didn’t
want to return their own time. The original wasn’t a great story,
and this version is quite different. The only character in both
versions is Kathy, and aside from the time traveller being captured,
taken aboard the Potentia, and rescued by a main character,
there are few similarities.
Interestingly, the original story took place quite a bit later in
the timeline, after some of the upcoming events. Indeed, the
previous chapter was a remake of Eon’s Comic #139-141 and
#144-145, so there had been a whole ten pages of content (a
substantial amount for Eon’s Comic) between them. It’s been
two years since I wrote out the plans for each chapter and decided
the order of events, so I don’t recall exactly why I moved
this story back to this point, but I imagine it had a lot to do with
narrative flow. |