Archie Sonic: End of the Line.

[Mike Arcade]

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/01/16/archie-comics-dropping-sonic-hedgehog/
http://www.tssznews.com/2017/01/16/sonic-subcriptions-disappear-from-archie-web-store/
https://www.sonicstadium.org/2017/01/archie-sonic-comics-very-likely-cancelled/
http://segabits.com/blog/2017/01/17/rumor-archie-comics-cancelling-sonic-the-hedgehog-comic-series/

As of late the option to get a subscription for Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog Series has strangely vanished, with many sources speculating that all Sonic comics may have or are going to be dropped. It's no secret that Archie Comics and Archie Sonic has had some difficulty for the past several years with lawsuits and mandates, could this be the end of the line for Archie Sonic? What happens to the Freedom Fighters? Does Ian and other current writers move on to other Sonic projects like The Games and Sonic Boom are move away from the series?

Let me know what you guys think as we'll keep and eye on future updates regarding this.

UPDATE: As it turns out Subscriptions for Archie Sonic are temporarily down, there are also rumors of a 3 month hiatus popping up, we'll update as soon as more information is released.

Update: Old News but it's long gone, have fun with IDW Sonic or the Archie Sonic fan continuations out there!

[WarTraveller]

Like I keep saying, this isn't something really to get sad by. The comic has good elements and I like SOME of the characters, but it's been put through so many lawsuits, structural changes, rewrites, rectons and mandates, it is little more than a shell of its even-then-not-that-great older self. All you can really do at this point is ensure that its passing is as smooth and painless as possible...unless SEGA steps in and blows its brains out to hasten it.

I think the problem is, like Sonic Runners and Sonic Boom, I should be glad that it's gone, IF it goes away. It's something I personally consider a complete blotch on Sonic's already-disreputable reputation, and something that wouldn't be personally missed. 

HOWEVER.

There's a classic saying in the world of business; If the Product Doesn't Sell, the Product Doesn't Get Made. And in the case of Sonic, SEGA has more-or-less made it clear that they are happy to milk that Classic Sonic gravy train for as long as they can get away with, using the failures of alternate media Sonics to prove why Classic is, for lack of a better internet term, bae. Nevermind the fact that most of the various problems with Sonic THEY have perpetrated, repeatedly and often without shame or even pause for thought. But lord knows that a publisher cannot deem themselves responsible for anything that would cause their focus-tested, paint-by-numbers, merch-fuelled games to not meet the profit line their calculators told them they would. It MUST be something else in the franchise, something to be removed at once.

And this is what I'm sort of annoyed by. SEGA will, in this passing of something truly toxic to the franchise, probably learn the wrong lesson. They failed to learn it with 06, they failed to learn it with Rise of Lyric and they failed to learn it in Runners, too; don't screw your own games over to keep them marketable. Instead, they learned different lessons; in the same way the failure of 06 and RoL have probably told them that non-Classic Sonic titles that try something a little different don't work, and making Sonic 4-2 is a better use of their time. Sonic Runners probably told them that Sonic's Worthless Friends^TM are still not popular, so just keep it Sonic and Tails for uber-profits. And with the potential failure of the Archie Comics, I fully predict that they will just go, "Oh. So We guess that characters with personality, backstories and love lives don't work that well" and continue with the bland, uninspired, empty, hollow, happy-crappy Pontac-and-Graff bullcrap we've had to put up with for the past six years, that have made Sonic games annoying and unmemorable and has demoted SEGA to "that what company who keeps making crappy Sonic and football games" in the eyes of both those toxic gremlins within the gaming press and the gaming community at large.

And SEGA will sit there, in their ivory towers, wondering why the Archie comics died. Not with a bang, but with a restricted, disgraceful whimper.

[TheRedStranger]

8 minutes ago, WarTraveller said:

And SEGA will sit there, in their ivory towers, wondering why the Archie comics died. Not with a bang, but with a restricted, disgraceful whimper.

 

[ByTor, Prince of Ro’den]

You guys remember: I called it well over a year ago. Issue 100 for Universe and 300 for the main comic would be it.

I point my finger straight at the I.P. owner for this one; they meddled and micromanaged the comic into oblivion. Nobody wants to read about the crappy games which had about as much substance narrative wise as an air sandwich and were so childish that even my 10 year old found them too kiddie. If they would've only learned that Sonic only became popular through the team at SoA and not their fruitless micromanaging. People have been playing games like Sonic Unleashed; we already know wot happens; don't make our one good thing become nothing more that a vehicle for advertising decades old games and Mario/Sonic Olympics. I feel bad for the people at Archie who will lose their jobs when it should be the brass at the top of the I.P. owner's company that should. The micromanaging all started back at about issue 75 and they've been tightening the noose around the comic ever since with culmination of the 252 reboot. People want deep stories, not to see their favourite comic become a bad advertisement and their favourite characters become gutted.

I've been saying it before and I will still say it again; there are many great writers and artists out there that blow all the "official" stuff to shame. I say put it down like a sickly animal and focus on the real Sonic; us fans and our work; to me this is great news, hopefully more people will read the fan works and they'll become more people's "mind cannon." I pray that the I.P. owner is next to go the way of the dodo.

 

*edit* And even if the I.P. owner goes to another publisher, 5-6k issues sold per month is terrible and unless they quit micromanaging them I don't see sales improving; new writers or not.

[TheRedStranger]

10 hours ago, Prince By-Tor said:

The micromanaging all started back at about issue 75 and they've been tightening the noose around the comic ever since with culmination of the 252 reboot. People want deep stories, not to see their favourite comic become a bad advertisement and their favourite characters become gutted.

Cheap and childish material  like "The Sonic Men" and this protracted plodding arc around the generally storyless Sonic Unleash remind of the days Sonic was racing around in glitchy Sonic R on The Saturn and Sonic Team were giving us dissonant pop-songs rather than an answer to Mario 64 and Tomb Raider. This is just more of the same spiel: sappy overcommercialized material we never wanted rather than a progressive narrative that matures alongside its main demographic. Such desire, for Sonic to perpetuate and grow with us and out evolving tastes, is souring into a tsunami of utter frustration (three guesses why Ian silenced Bumble King). The last time we lacked so much Sonic in Sonic it even killed the hopes of the Dreamcast and two rather cutting edge games for their time, SA & SA2. Sega is still mismanaging it's IPs like it did during this era and salting the fields for content creators like it did with its own software design teams and third party games. The SoA cannon material, Tom Kalinski, and Madeline Schroeder gave Sonic life and subsequently over 50%+ of the game Market share in the mid-1990's. Yet Sonic Team and Sega of Japan tried to obstruct them and continues to do so with American creators even to this day (who sell Sonic to their largest market), frankly envious of what SoA did with their IP and all of Sega, SoJ gave us this to work with and in their ethnocentricism demanded this is what Sonic should be (and yet never even really broke deep into the market in their own nation in comparison to SoA or SoE). SoA made this out of it. 

This comic is now filled with hollow men, characters whose breath is but a dry hiss like a windy field. If this is how Mobius ends, it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. Betrayed by its aloof, ethnocentric, and inept developers, hamstrung by and egotistical maniac in court, and divided into Procrustean factions by its utter lack of brand continuity. Sega is struggling to now (after years of bankrupting themselves by over-focusing and over-investing in hardware) homogenize Sonic as an IP to the world, yet in the process they have severed and gutted all that made Sonic marketable, unique, and endearing to its fans.  Maybe Sega should not try to market to 10-15 years olds (who mostly like GTAV and CoD because they are trying to be "mature because it's got blood, bad-words, and boobies.") but make Sonic standout beyond demographics to appeal to people beyond age and trend on various different levels the way Star Wars does. When I watched Star-wars when I was a child, I loved the dogfights and lightsabers, but now 25 I love Rogue One and Empire Strikes Back for more than that, I love the struggle of the characters, delving into their relateable issues, and the deeper political and spiritual subtext. Another good example is Batman the Animated series, a cartoon that I watch years later and it gives me something new as I gain perspective through age to enjoy its deeper layers. Yet another example is Undertale, which never gives easy answers and has you discover its narrative through grave moral actions and thus gives you agency and the chance to actually think about the material rather than giving forced and final answers.  Sega has no idea what consumers want in a market that is progressing beyond it in both narrative and game design. They have an inherent bias and prejudice against us fans as they stare across the oceans, beady-eyed and covetously clutching at their age-segregating charts and quick-dated, trend-groveling analytics as their own personal Titanic sinks around them (kind of reminds me of NC's critique of the Lorax at the end; replace Seuss with Sonic and you get an understanding of Sonic Team). [Language warning]. 

[Ishapar]

Well, if the comic is done, what do you think the fans will do?

[Akessel92]

Well it seems they might drift, do their own thing, or fort some I had the displeasure politics. Though it seems to have become a hiatus.