Of course they're rallying, man. 
After all, it's SegaSonic's golden cast that makes up the main 3 of Team Fighters. Ian can't do anything to harm them thanks to Sega's absurd mandates, thus there's no suspense that they'll do anything but start winning now. 
I never implied they always won.
I said Ian cannot bring serious physical harm to Sonic, Tails and Amy. Sega just won't allow him to.
The worst he can do is have the blue blur beaten up, and even that is limited I'll bet.
Anyway, as for Sonic being launched into space, that ironically was before Sega went insane with their mandates, which is really sad because I really liked that Xorda story. It showed Sonic doing something heroic that could have killed him.
From what I heard, when the comic first started and for the best part of about 12 to 13 years during it's run, Sega didn't really give two shits about it, they just saw it as a way to whore out their product and pretty much left Archie to do whatever they pleased, the only conditions they had to follow was the comic had to be based off the cartoon (to which Archie used an early bible) and they had to do adaptions of games when Sega demanded (which in all fairness is understandable).And in all fairness, while there is a lot of good stuff from the 90s era of the book, around the early 2000s, before Sega took an interest in the book, it had gotten pretty terrible (which was why I stopped reading) and alot of the really crap stuff was produced around that time.
It wasn't until around the time that the series was being recognised as being the
longest running comic book based off a video game franchise by the Guinness World Records that Sega suddenly realised they had something here. That's a pretty big deal. It could also possibly do with changes in business practices over the years. Example would be back in the 80s and 90s, Hasbro pretty much let Marvel Comics and Sunbow do as they pleased with the comics and TV shows of
The Transformers and
G.I.JOE. The only thing that Hasbro wanted them to do was to feature the latests characters and vehicles (AKA action figures, vehicles and playsets) which were realised at the time. Today however, Hasbro are very, very involved in what is happening on both of these franchises, over seeing what happens in the comics, TV shows, movies and everything else.
Sega are pretty much doing the same with the Sonic franchise as this is their baby. They need to protect this franchise and their intrests in it.
So yeah, it makes sense that they don't want to see anything bad happen to their poster boy and all of the major cast members of the games. By doing this, it does limit what Flynn can do with these characters, but at the same time, Flynn has to be creative in getting to do these ideas he has proposed to Sega only to have been shot down. I heard from someone that Flynn wanted to do something with Amy which would have had the girl have a a nervous breakdown and go batshit insane. Sega wouldn't let him do it, flat out refused. How does he get around this? He creates Rosy the Rascal. Doesn't get to do the idea with Amy, but gets to do his idea with
another version of Amy. He wants to do interesting things with the video game characters, but it ani't really going to happen.
So he needs to find ways of doing dramatic storylines involving the cartoon and comic, or to be more precise, the spin-off characters. Yes, this also means our beloved SatAM characters (even though this is the ARCHIE versions of those characters) and they are a prime target because they've been with the comic since the beginning. They are a big part of this comic, long time readers care deeply for these characters (and even a fair share of newcomers to the book) so these characters are important. Flynn has free reign to use these characters, so he has put these characters in the thick of the shitstorm because he can't do it with video game lot. Bottom line is what he has currently done has been effective because people seem to care what is happening in the comic and what is happening with those characters. People actually care about the book.
And people may say he is ruining the series, but it's funny how once he took over, sales of the book tripled. So either he must be doing something right or everyone who hates this book is still buying it.
Despite what a lot of people may believe or "I know for a fact!", I don't think Flynn hates the SatAM characters at all, it's just he wants to tell his story and giving the strict (not insane) rules Sega are putting on him, Ian has to use other means, or characters, at his disposal.
It's pretty clear at this point that the freedom fighters are gonna start getting things together and getting some victories under their belt. No doubt Sega had said they want the heroes to start winning again, but we've had around 7 or so issues of the freedom fighters getting teabagged by Eggman, so that's the best part of 7 months which is a long time. And if you include the 'Scrambled' arc in
Universe as another victory for Eggman, then it's around 10+ issues of fatty cakes winning. I think the first real victory will be #238 where they are successful (or at least I'm hoping) in saving Lupe from being legionized.
I've been enjoying a fair share of what Flynn has written. It's not a masterpiece, but he writes a hell of a lot better then Ken Penders and karl Bollers were doing 10 years ago.
Although seriously, he needs to calm down with Silver. That guy has had enough of a spotlight in
Universe as it is, let some other characters have a chance to shine.
