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February 09, 2019
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Commentary for February 09, 2019: Okay, so this is a story I’ve been planning for literally a decade at this point. But is it wrong if it’s not so much the big idea this chapter represents that I’m excited about so much as the little details and character moments like this? What I was especially looking forward to with this chapter was truly bringing some of my re-imaginings of characters from the classic Sonic comics to life in Eon's World Vol. 2. If you’ve seen some of the work-in-progress on the Vol. 1 remake, you may already be aware of my decision to include these characters. But if not, I’ll give a brief (lol) explanation here. I had to remove a long established OC from Eon’s World last year for reasons I’m not going to get into. But the result was a gaping hole in the story. Now, I could have just filled it with an expy of my own -- doing so would’ve been much simpler, really -- but I took the opportunity instead to do something I’d kinda wanted to do since I was 15. I’d always wanted to write a Sonic fan comic that was kind of an all-stars universe, a big melting pot of Sonic lore, mainly based on the games, but also including content, characters, and places from all versions of Sonic. In the end, Eon’s World just became a loose fan comic based on the games, and eventually drifted away from having much to do with Sonic at all. Some of the characters from SatAM made a couple of brief guest appearances in Eon's Comic, justified by hopping between realities, but I never indulged in more than that. Well, last year, I re-read the classic Sonic comic by Archie, and finally got to read the post-reboot saga in its entirety. While it wasn’t quite the all-stars melting pot I’d envisioned as a kid, it was pretty damn close. It was based mainly on the games, but with a heavy dose of the classic cartoons thrown in, and it was amazing. I loved it. Yes, of course, I missed the classic continuity, but this new one was so good and had so much potential, but was tragically cut short. The one silver lining is that it didn’t end on a cliff hanger at least. But anyway, it was reading that book that gave me the inspiration to do what I’d wanted to do more than half a lifetime ago. And, since I’m not under any restrictions from Sega, there’s no limit to what I can throw in or how I can re-imagine characters. And that’s when it occurred to me. Rather than create an expy just to be that nixed OC in all but name, I would completely replace them with a re-imagined Sally Acorn. As a kid, I’d got as far as concept art for Sally as she would’ve appeared in my all-stars comic, so I dug out that art, updated the design, and started figuring out who Sally was in Eon’s World. And from there, I also re-imagined the Freedom Fighters and their role in this world. (And I didn’t limit myself to just Archie Sonic, because there were also Freedom Fighters in Fleetway’s Sonic the Comic. So, why not merge the two? There’s much more of this in Vol. 1 and as my work progresses on that, you’ll hopefully see what I mean. But I digress). My re-imagining of Sally merges her designs from both the Archie and Fleetway books; although, her Archie design is by far my favourite, which is where most of her design here comes from -- I really just gave her a longer tail like her Fleetway design to make her be unambiguously a squirrel. Also, this version of Sally, while largely based on Archie’s Princess Sally (in personality at least), is not a princess. Her backstory is something I will go into, in both Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, I expect; but what matters most right now is that she led the Freedom Fighters once upon a time and then went into politics, eventually ending up as President of the Terran Union. [Addendum for August 4, 2020: I've since retconned Sally's design in Eon's World Vol. 1 to cleave far closer to her appearance in Archie Sonic, making her unambiguously a chipmunk, like she was in the post-reboot continuity, and have shortened her tail accordingly. Frankly, I just like her better that way and that's how she'll look when we see her again in Vol. 2. I'd like to return and make alteration to her in this chapter, but it would be a lot of work, so I may just let it ride in much the same way I don't plan to ever remake pages of Vol. 2 that use the old, outdated model of the Invincible.] Still, as much as I love Sally (and I do -- she’s, honestly, my favourite Sonic character), I haven’t actually drawn her all that often over the years. So, this page was a good bit of fun. I’ve drawn Antoine even less and, aside from one piece of concept art I did for this very chapter, I’ve never drawn Nicole before this page (hell, until I read Archie Sonic through for the first time about five years ago, I didn't even really know that Nicole ever got a body). Still, I’m happier drawing these characters than I would have been drawing a bunch of generic, forgettable suits, which I would’ve been doing if I hadn’t chosen to replace that old OC with Sally. It’s funny how things turn out, isn’t it? It was very important for me on this page to not only “re-introduce” Sally and her advisors, but to establish the very good friendship between her and Silky, a friendship which is supposed to have developed over several years. Of course, I apologise to any long time readers for whom this all will come across as a massive retcon. It is and I won’t pretend otherwise, but please be assured that it will all fit together once Eon's World Vol. 1 gets underway. I’m confident the whole series will be better for it. |
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Eon's World is a fan comic created by Bethany Turner. All characters are copyright
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