IDW Sonic Comics Will Have The “Two-Worlds Canon”

38 Comments

1. I don’t think it’s a bad thing in itself, they just have to use it to make interesting stuff.

   Both settings can have the potential for both bad as good things. With the “two world” canon, it’s possible to write interesting stories about the relation between the two worlds, and the fact that the “animals” can be seen as “aliens” in the human world. And I hope that they’ll use it, because such a setting is pretty useless if they don’t play with it, and make it a part of some stories. That’s why I hope they don’t take the road of “it’s two world, but it’s never really addressed so it doesn’t matter”.

   Sure, there are some problems to solve like the Echidna tribes, or that Shadow is a hedgehog, but both can be solved.

   But if they (by they I don’t think only about IDW, but about the ST too) use the two-world canon, I hope it’s not for changing their mind again in five years :V

   1. I’d really rather they change their minds anyway because I think the idea of keeping them separate is stupid and needlessly complicated on it’s own. Really the only story I’d like to see come out of this is just seeing the two worlds getting fused into one and staying that way. Cause the way I see it, it’s literally a problem waiting to be fixed, and it ironically started as a solution to a non-existent problem in the first place. Maybe there are still some interesting stories you can make work with this but I honestly can’t think of any and I really don’t even want to. I just want everything in a simple easier to follow format since building one world is tricky enough on it’s own, let alone two. And like I mentioned before, it just raises more questions and problems than it answers.

      1. Why not 1 world?

         1. My thoughts exactly. 1 world seemed to be working just fine on it’s own, there’s really no need to try and make 2 worlds just to justify varying art styles and humans existing in some games but not all of them.

         2. > Why not 1 world?

            Because SEGA seems to have decided too, it’s as simple as that. The question isn’t “what they’ll choose” anymore but “how to make the better of the setting they have chosen”.

            I didn’t say that it was better than the other (both have potential and shortcoming), but that this setting have potential and that I hope they’ll use this potential.

2. I would love if Sega could just define Sonic’s world and its rules, I guess a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals have coexisted for thousands of years ago would make sense, all games considered.

   Regardless it would be awesome if they play with the notions of diversity and inclusion that a world like this entails, though hope most of the main characters are mobians.

   1. IDW won’t say MOBIANS anymore.

      And I hope IDW and Sega can still agree on using the Freedom Fighers in IDW Sonic before 2018 ends, unless Freedom Fighter leader Sally Acorn just makes the IDW Sonic cut without the rest of her Freedom Fighter partners.

      1. I’m not IDW.

         Also I didn’t say anything about the Freedom Fighters, I would really appreciate if you stop bringing them up in every replay you make.

         1. *reply

         2. Let the REAL IDW and Sega agree on the Freedom Fighter fate for IDW Sonic anyway, Axis!

         3. @DTH1971

            Again, stop. I didn’t say anything about the Freedom Fighters, you should take your own advice and let Sega and IDW decide so you can stop harrassing people about the Freedom Fighters, this article is not about the Freedom Fighters, the Sonic IDW Comics are NOT about the Freedom Fighters so please stop being a nuisance.

            1. Sorry…

               But off topic: Did you know former Sonic writer Karl Bollers became editor of Valiant comics?

      2. Shhhh! Shh shh shh shh! The adults are talking, DTH1971.

         1. That’s enough. I’m tired of every damn article turning into a war between DTH and you guys. I’m putting my foot down.

            I’ve warned DTH multiple times not to use all-caps, and to avoid bringing up the Freedom Fighters in non-comics articles. For IDW posts, it is perfectly understandable to bring up the Freedom Fighters. While he did get obsessed about it at times, never did he use any insults. He wasn’t hateful, he didn’t attack anyone. All he did was repetitively bring up a subject. And to be honest, considering it’s the only thing IDW hasn’t addressed now, that’s understandable too. Nevertheless, he still didn’t listen to my warnings to drop the caps, so he’s been banned.

            However, those of you who have been attacking him, like this “adults are talking” line? You need to stop this right now. I don’t care how much he brings up the Freedom Fighters. You are not helping your case at all by condescendingly telling him “adults are talking”, all because he’s frequently talking about the Freedom Fighters. A lot of the “harassing” and flaming has been coming from you guys, so enough. If you don’t have anything to say about the Freedom Fighters, then just don’t say anything at all and move on. And you don’t need to berate him every single time he mentions them, as if it’s a crime to talk about the Freedom Fighters often. Again, you are not helping at all, and it comes off rather hypocritical.

            This DTH flame war ends now. I’m not afraid to give out more bans if this continues. This has gone on long enough.

3. Did the 1992-3017 Archie era Sonic the Hedgehog have a 2 wor;ds canon at one point?

   1. I meant 1992-2017 Archie era Sonic. Sorry I misnumbered!

   2. No it instead has a confusing mess of alternative realities. They started calling these zones even though zone still referred to areas in the same universe to make things extra confusing.

      1. This was mostly back during the Penders run of the series, by the time Flynn had taken over it wasn’t used that heavily as a plot point anymore so after a while he just slowly solidified everything into just one common world with different areas called “zones”, with the only actual alternate dimension being the Special Zone.

         The only time alternate realities got brought up again was whenever there was anything involving Blaze’s dimension, Silver’s timeline, Moebius (the anti-Mobius where Scourge came from), and the No-Zone (the place the Zone Cops came from).

         But because of the Genesis Waves and mandates and such, everything eventually got focused on one reality, the one Sonic and the main cast existed in. And even then, Sonic’s world always had humans and animals coexisting on it. It was just given it’s own complicated origins, again mostly due to the Penders era.

         Mobius used to be Earth, stupid government humans probed a member of an aggressive alien species, said species wiped them out with gene bombs, all Earth life pretty much got rebooted in the primordial genetic soup, with two dominant evolving life forms being the Overlanders (4-fingered slightly more aggressive humans) and the Mobians (anthropomorphic animals like Sonic and Sally). It was later revealed that there were a few select colonies of original Humans (5-fingers, pretty much behave like the humans in the games) hiding in self-imposed isolation around the world who were able to survive the gene attack with their advanced shielded cities. Once Sonic and friends discovered them in the Adventure arc, they pretty much fostered an alliance between the United Federation and the Kingdom of Acorn, which led to the Humans literally emerging from the shadows and living side by side with the Mobians in a much more peaceful manner than the Overlanders.

         By the time Flynn was forced to reboot the series the world pretty much existed as if it had always had Humans and anthropomorphic animals coexisting side by side in a mostly peaceful manner, resembling how the games world worked right up until Iizuka claimed the whole “2 worlds” thing.

4. Nnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooo. I’m sorry but I HATED that idea the second Iizuka made it up in that Q&A session, it just makes NO SENSE. It just needlessly complicates Sonic’s mythos and world, just say that everyone lives on the exact same freaking planet and that there are various nations out there that just happen to have more humans than anthro animals on them, THAT’S ALL YOU NEED!

   There’s no point in trying to come up with this convoluted “sometimes Sonic is in the human world, sometimes Sonic is in the animal world” BS, because as the meme goes: “It just raises too many questions”.

   Where is Tails’ house, in the “human world” of Station Square or in the “animal world” where everyone else “like Sonic” is supposed to live? How does Sonic travel between both worlds? Do his friends follow him so that it’s always convenient that everyone just happens to be there as well? Which world does Unleashed belong to, because every human is stylized like hell, and that was to make it look like they BELONG in Sonic’s world in the first place! Which world does Eggman belong to, does he have to keep moving between “worlds” too? Are these different planets, timelines, or dimensions altogether, EXPLAIN!!

   And most importantly, does making them “two worlds” actually solve any problems? Really, what does it fix, what does it address? Because it seriously wasn’t that much of a problem before, people were just fine with just accepting that it’s one world with different looking people and art styles every other game. I mean for Pete’s sake, Mario didn’t need to come from a different planet to meet realistic humans, they just happen to exist in a kingdom he didn’t explore until recently, WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH THAT!?

   And now that it’s being adapted in the comics, despite the fact that Flynn was able to make ONE WORLD just fine before, this tells me that it’s an official mandate from SEGA. GAH, this is just so stupid and convoluted, Sonic’s mythos doesn’t need to get this complicated, it was already getting complex enough on it’s own before Iizuka made up a bunch of excuses for the smallest of things! XP

   I love Flynn’s work and have great faith in him as a writer, he’s been able to write around dumb Sega mandates in creative ways before, but I honestly don’t know if this is an idea that can successfully be saved, it just feels too stupid all the way down to it’s DNA. I doubt even Flynn could make this idea work, I hate it that much. It’s rare that I ever rant on anything this level, that’s how much it irks me. XP

   1. ^ dis

   2. So you think the human/Sonic worlds to be canon in IDW Sonic is fake from Ian or not?

      1. No, I am pretty convinced hFlynn means that, considering how he straight up says it in the podcast. Really the impression I’m getting from all of this is that lately when it comes to the mythos Iizuka just kind of randomly makes up whatever comes to his mind on the spot. Between the moon explanation, the Super Emeralds, and now this whole 2 worlds thing, it feels like he just kind of made these up by the seat of his pants and all it really does is give them the convenient excuse of never having to address them in any meaningful or interesting way. In the emeralds’ case, it just feels like a lazy excuse to never have to bring Hyper Sonic back.

         Not only that but it heavily contradicts the loose nature the series has always had. You could have always played the games assuming that you’re still in the same world because Sonic is just literally in a new location each time, you could have countries of humans and then countries of anthro animals somewhere else and never have to question it because their world just seems to be that diverse. Now they’re trying to categorize and segregate stuff when really it never needed to in the first place, it’s literally trying to solve an almost non-existent issue by making the solution more complicated than the issue itself.

         Ian Flynn likely has little say in the matter, this sounds more like one of the several mandates that SEGA and Sonic Team gave for the comics, both now and during his run with Archie. If Iizuka never said the 2-worlds thing, he probably would have stuck with a 1-world setting like he did before, because naturally that just makes the most sense to a viewer and is a lot simpler to write for.

         The only incentive you would have to purposely make it 2-world is if you wanted to make actual stories and plots that hinged on that. So it’s certainly possible that he could try to make the best out of it as he can, but in my personal opinion I just don’t think it’s favorable. The ONLY story I would ever want to do involving Sonic traversing between a “human world” and an “animal world” is if it resulted in the two getting fused into one world like it was always implied to be.

         Because again, having just one world to work with is much simpler and for a new series that you’re going to have to start world-building from the ground up, introducing the concept of hopping back and forth between two already similar worlds is going to be very confusing for the reader within their first year, or even the second.

         1. Hyper Sonic? What was it like?

         2. @DTH1971 Iizuka pretty much said that the Super Emeralds and Hyper Forms weren’t cannon anymore, trying to use it as a convenient excuse as to why Hyper Sonic was never brought back after S3K and why they would likely never try to bring him back again. It wasn’t even something that he had to retcon, he could have just said that “Sonic didn’t feel the need to use Hyper again since he’s doing such a good job with his base and Super forms, he needs a bigger threat to rely on Hyper again” or something along those lines, anything that doesn’t shut the door on future possibilities. It’s pretty much why the Super Emeralds got scrapped from Sonic Mania, because Iizuka told them to get rid of them or the crew saw what he said and figured they probably shouldn’t step on his words and omitted them themselves.

5. I feel that this was done to write off humans after the soft-reboot of sorts that happened after Unleashed. this didn’t even need to be said considering how inconsistent the modern games have been in their world. The actual games haven’t even acknowledged the idea of two worlds so I doubt the comic will meaning no human world.

6. Ok. That’s cool with me.

7. As much as people hated this series, Sonic X’s lore actually made sense.

   It just didn’t FAITHFULLY adapt the events of the actual modern Sonic games (Adventure, Adventure 2, they didn’t even try with Heroes, but especially Sonic Battle).

   Niceto know that Flynn isn’t just condensing the worlds again.

   But where does Unleashed fit into all of this, especially since that cast of humans (as well as Sonic Chronicles) look far different from the ones in the Adventure games and Sonic 2006.

8. Why exactly did we NEED two worlds again? It’s not like Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse needed some convoluted dimensional wank to explain why they could do things with humans. Just let them be. Maybe work on an art style that gels with the Sonic style(I feel like the anime-esq style of the Adventure series would work with a bit of tweaking to proportions) and move along.

   It’s like they say, it’s only weird until you try to explain it.

   1. Does the DC Universe have many earths?

      1. Yes but most of them still consist of humans that all still resemble each other. The only reason they did that in the first place was to try and find a way to keep the Golden Age versions of their superheroes alive in some form or another while keeping Silver Age and onward characters in their own on-going continuities. It was a decision that made a little more sense because they were trying to explain why they had to reinvent so many superheroes for more modern ages, and why say 60’s Batman feels like a different character from 80’s Batman.

         Here it’s pretty much trying to solve a tiny barely-existent issue by making it more complicated than it needed to be.

         1. No. “Complicated” is having humans whose society/geography are similar to ours, live in the same world as Sonic-like characters, rings, item containers, checkpoints, special stages, chaos Emeralds, Angel Island/the Master Emerald, Chao, Wisps, the Lost Hex, Zeti, and hover-boarding bird-versions of Babylonians, with no rhyme or reason.

            I wonder what their 16-bit games were like.

9. I’m still baffled to the reason why exactly Iizuka wants to keep them separate. It’s quite obvious that the human world seen in “Unleashed” and other games isn’t our Earth (as evidenced by the regions named Mazuri, Chun-Nan, Spagonia, Holoska, and Empire City) so why have it and the Mobian world be apart? It’s a fantasy world for crying out loud.

   I’m beginning to see why the IDW series won’t be following the game continuity because there’s no way you can apply the two-world matter to the context of their narrative.

   1. Did the first few – several -many- more or less years of Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics not be game canon or something like that? The first few years of Archie Sonic leaned into the ADVENTURES OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG cartoon.

      1. To a degree yes, the first few years of the comic did lean more towards the Adventures Of and SatAM cartoons as influence, as there weren’t too many games to draw upon yet and all they had to go on was maybe a few things SEGA said and whatever the old series bible used to say. As more games started to be released over time, they would have an effect on the comics, like having a quick little tie-in story that adapts part of the game, usually ending in the old “find out how the story ends on your Sega Genesis” trope, though sometimes they got a bit more of a proper adaptation or nod. Sonic 3 and CD were probably the first games to get actual stories or arcs dedicated to them in a small manner, but the Adventure arc was probably their most ambitious one.

         Up until the end of Penders’ run the games were pretty much homaged or referenced in small ways here and there, but by the time Flynn took over they started drawing on them for influence a lot more. This resulted in “another time, another place” stories that teased the next upcoming game with an intro story or story arcs and elements that borrowed bits and pieces from the games.

         Once Flynn had to reboot the series, he decided to use the games to replace a lot of the old lore they had to retcon, so in the Post-Genesis-Wave era it’s implied that most of the games had already taken place before where the story picked up, with the exception of Unleashed which became the final main arc of the series.

         Sorry for all these paragraphs by the way, I just like to be thorough.

10. Makes sense to have the “two world canon” or else they’ll have to come up with some story as to why Shadow exists 😛

11. Yeah, I’m okay with the two worlds idea from Sonic X.

    At least now we don’t have to deal with the question of: Do the humans and furry humans fuck and is this a normal thing in this world?

    Goodbye stupid Mobian term. It was fine back then but not in an age when googling “mobian” takes you to the porn site of the same name.

    1. Typing just about anything on Google is bound to take you to a porn website.

       1. Carpet doesn’t.

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