68 replies to this topic

[Uncle Ben]

He does 3?? Yea he needs help

[blue]

At any moment, Ian could collapse from fatigue from writing 3 monthly comics.

[Uncle Ben]

hopefully he does so we can get a better writer for the comic.... Wow that was mean... im never like that...

[Gojira007]

You guys serious? Juggling three or more books at a time is standard for a LOT of big-name Comic Book writers....

[PuffinGrandeur]

Also it's 4. Sonic, Sonic Universe, Mega Man and New Crusaders. But no writer could survive off the proceeds from one ongoing serial. You guys really don't know how little it pays.

[Prime]

You guys serious? Juggling three or more books at a time is standard for a LOT of big-name Comic Book writers....

Also it's 4. Sonic, Sonic Universe, Mega Man and New Crusaders. But no writer could survive off the proceeds from one ongoing serial. You guys really don't know how little it pays.

Exactly this. Being a comic writer and artist isn't a high paying job. Oh god, I'm having flashbacks to the Dreamwave days! But hey! It's obvious that fans know what they are talking about since they can write a better comic then the professionals themselves...


ANYWAY!

There's an advantage to having one person work on a comic series and any spin offs linked to it and that's tight continuity. I think a perfect example here would be SatAM itself. In the first season each episode was written by a different writer or writing team and followed the simple Saturday morning cartoon premise of "Evil villian has a new dastardly plot, heroes defeat villian and he retreats only to come back next week with another new evil plan. Wash, rinse, dry, repeat." While the second season (excluding the Antoine shorts) only had Ben Hurst and Pat Allee writing the entire season. It was an arc, each episode linked to the other and had a pay off.

The disadvantage to this though is, yeah, you are bound to run out of ideas sooner or later if it's just one person or a team working on a series all by themselves.

So having multiple writers on your comic? Yeah, that makes it easy on the workload, but there's a disadvantage to this as well and that disadvantage is confliction between the writers about where the story should go. I think it was revealed that Ken "rapist glasses" Penders wasn't exactly a team player during his days at Archie, not working well with other writers and refusing to read anything they had written. This automatically is a problem because continuity and all. I'm pretty sure it was Karl Bollers who had the idea of wiping out a huge number of Echidna characters in issue #141 and Ken Penders was raging hard about it because the Knuckles series was pretty much his baby. How dare Bollers go as far as to kill off his original characters (do not steal!) in such a manner!

So one way or the other, there's gonna be problems.

[RedAuthar]

You guys serious? Juggling three or more books at a time is standard for a LOT of big-name Comic Book writers....

Also it's 4. Sonic, Sonic Universe, Mega Man and New Crusaders. But no writer could survive off the proceeds from one ongoing serial. You guys really don't know how little it pays.

Exactly this. Being a comic writer and artist isn't a high paying job. Oh god, I'm having flashbacks to the Dreamwave days! But hey! It's obvious that fans know what they are talking about since they can write a better comic then the professionals themselves...


ANYWAY!

There's an advantage to having one person work on a comic series and any spin offs linked to it and that's tight continuity. I think a perfect example here would be SatAM itself. In the first season each episode was written by a different writer or writing team and followed the simple Saturday morning cartoon premise of "Evil villian has a new dastardly plot, heroes defeat villian and he retreats only to come back next week with another new evil plan. Wash, rinse, dry, repeat." While the second season (excluding the Antoine shorts) only had Ben Hurst and Pat Allee writing the entire season. It was an arc, each episode linked to the other and had a pay off.

The disadvantage to this though is, yeah, you are bound to run out of ideas sooner or later if it's just one person or a team working on a series all by themselves.

So having multiple writers on your comic? Yeah, that makes it easy on the workload, but there's a disadvantage to this as well and that disadvantage is confliction between the writers about where the story should go. I think it was revealed that Ken "rapist glasses" Penders wasn't exactly a team player during his days at Archie, not working well with other writers and refusing to read anything they had written. This automatically is a problem because continuity and all. I'm pretty sure it was Karl Bollers who had the idea of wiping out a huge number of Echidna characters in issue #141 and Ken Penders was raging hard about it because the Knuckles series was pretty much his baby. How dare Bollers go as far as to kill off his original characters (do not steal!) in such a manner!

So one way or the other, there's gonna be problems.

I completely agree with Prime that it causes problems, and I know how the comic book industry is not as well paying as we'd hope.

But let's look at it this way:
Ian is the head writer, he writes pretty much every story in every issue anymore. People already complain they don't like his writing. He seems to be running low on ideas. What is the financially best thing Archie can do that isn't just fire and replace him? Hire someone else. Sure that might cut into Ian's writing time. And sure that may cost him some of his paycheck. But last time I checked Archie Sonic wasn't to appease Ian and provide him with income, it was to make money by selling comic books based on Sonic the Hedgehog.

And no matter how little it pays, 4 comic books that are published monthly means he's got about a week per story (4 weeks in a month). Sure he's writing ahead, but he also has to propose the idea and submit drafts that potentially are going to get denied. So he'll have to rewrite, and edit, take out things, add things, not send it to the wrong comic by mistake, and still juggle his personal life (he has a wife, he has a personal life).
Sure writing comics may not pay way, but it's not a matter of money here, it's a matter of work load. Writing 4 comics is a lot.

[Uncle Ben]

Replace him. Hes running outta ideas, the need someone fresh with newer ideas (that doesnt suck). Random questions but why did they get rid of Penders and whats the deal with Archie V. Penders???

[LogiTeeka]

Replace him. Hes running outta ideas, the need someone fresh with newer ideas (that doesnt suck).

Getting a new writer can be a bad thing as well. For one thing, the newer writer may end up being worse than the previous.

Worst case scenario: he/she may end up changing the entire comic into a SegaSonic-only series by getting rid of everything related to SatAM and Archie. By doing so, it would make the series easier to write without much continuity and would also make it more "official" to Sonic Team's vision. But to the fans, this would be a complete stab in the back because most of their favorite characters and events are long gone. Most would probably leave the comic and the series will eventually fail due to the lack of subscribers.

[Uncle Ben]

The backlash would be huge. Well they should get a team of writers to do this

[PuffinGrandeur]

But let's look at it this way:
Ian is the head writer, he writes pretty much every story in every issue anymore. People already complain they don't like his writing. He seems to be running low on ideas.

Things 'people' have said from the beginning, and yet the book is still selling well. Sales aren't dipping at all.

And no matter how little it pays, 4 comic books that are published monthly means he's got about a week per story (4 weeks in a month). Sure he's writing ahead, but he also has to propose the idea and submit drafts that potentially are going to get denied. So he'll have to rewrite, and edit, take out things, add things, not send it to the wrong comic by mistake, and still juggle his personal life (he has a wife, he has a personal life).

Is that really different from writing one issue a month with a forty-hour job on top of it? If anything, by writing all four he can devote more time to each by being a full-time writer. Every issue is written at LEAST three months in advance, and multiple issues can be submitted within that month for a single book. Who says it's completely unfeasible that a writer could handle multiple titles? And since when did SONIC THE HEDGEHOG get too complex for one man?
Now, art duties is a different matter. But we're not talking about that.

[RedAuthar]

But let's look at it this way:
Ian is the head writer, he writes pretty much every story in every issue anymore. People already complain they don't like his writing. He seems to be running low on ideas.

Things 'people' have said from the beginning, and yet the book is still selling well. Sales aren't dipping at all.

Yet all we hear are complaints about him right? Personally I like a lot of the stories he has written. I'm just seeing a lot of missed opportunities and stories that just seem to pop in outta nowhere and seem utterly pointless at the time. I call that running low on ideas. He's not out yet, but he's not exactly at a high point either.

And no matter how little it pays, 4 comic books that are published monthly means he's got about a week per story (4 weeks in a month). Sure he's writing ahead, but he also has to propose the idea and submit drafts that potentially are going to get denied. So he'll have to rewrite, and edit, take out things, add things, not send it to the wrong comic by mistake, and still juggle his personal life (he has a wife, he has a personal life).

Is that really different from writing one issue a month with a forty-hour job on top of it? If anything, by writing all four he can devote more time to each by being a full-time writer. Every issue is written at LEAST three months in advance, and multiple issues can be submitted within that month for a single book. Who says it's completely unfeasible that a writer could handle multiple titles? And since when did SONIC THE HEDGEHOG get too complex for one man?
Now, art duties is a different matter. But we're not talking about that.

Sonic the Hedgehog, Mega Man, and Young Crusaders (or whatever it's called).
Those three all totally count as Sonic the Hedgehog. They are completely the same subject matter and don't have any difference in genre. I don't know about you guys, but when I come from a Math class and head to an English class, it takes a few moments for me to switch to thinking words and not numbers. I can't see Ian being able to write for Mega Man, then suddenly switch over to Crusaders, and then Sonic all in one sitting. Also all these don't come out the same day in a month, so I highly doubt he doesn't have some scheduled time to work on each one individually. Also it really doesn't matter if he's writing them 3 months in advanced or 2 days. They still have deadlines. The comic just has a three month gap between the writing stage and the selling stage. He still has multiple comics to get written in a short time period. He still has the next issue after that to work on the next month.
First he has to propose the script idea. Then he has to write a rough draft, then he has edit the draft till it gets to the point he can submit it. Then he has to get a green light that it's good. He also has to have time for rewriting when the script is turned down. Now times that by 4. In theory, he has a weak to perfect a script for an issue for each of the four comics (course if he gets it right on the first try he has more time to work on others). I also know writing is a very hit and miss job and if it were easy a lot more of us would be writers.

I'm not saying he can't handle it. I'm saying as head writer, maybe one or two other writers under him.


Also if any of this comes off mean sounding (erm...reading?) I don't intend it to be. Sometimes I read things differently then others. For the record I am very much enjoying this debate.

[PuffinGrandeur]

Yet all we hear are complaints about him right?

In the places where it's usually always that? Yeah. You don't think complaining about the comic is NEW on the site, right?

In terms of the comic writing process, there's a lot more time than you're giving things (especially since a large amount of the stuff you're talking about aren't necessarily things HE has to do.) Say he's a year ahead (which on Sonic, he's stated he about is, not counting unapproved future plans.) The initial script writing is going to be the longest part (and in actuality it's not even the first stage, and script concepts can obviously be proposed in batches), but it's also the part where once he's done, if he's ahead he can sit on it until necessary (he's written several scripts in one day, after all.) Then he has to wait (no time off his schedule, especially since other scripts can be revised or written during that time) for it to get approved, do the edits that the editor didn't handle themselves, and send it in for the editor to greenlight. With one script, you get (maybe) two hours a day for the whole process, because your entire actual work week is taken up by a full time job. As such, when he was writing StH by himself, he had very little time to work. Now say he gets four scripts, MAYBE enough to get by on writing alone. That makes eight more hours free up, essentially quintupling his timeframe, while the amount of time needed to write the scripts doesn't really add up so linearly (especially since several of them are actually connected.)
Could it be too much creatively for someone? Maybe, but the amount of things happening certainly doesn't show a dearth of ideas (if anything "too many story lines popping in" would be a glut of them) and the sales haven't dipped at all just because he's supposedly "overworked." You're overemphasizing a relatively (very) small problem. Not that a little fresh blood once in a while isn't nice.

[LaserX5]

Getting a new writer can be a bad thing as well. For one thing, the newer writer may end up being worse than the previous.

Worst case scenario: he/she may end up changing the entire comic into a SegaSonic-only series by getting rid of everything related to SatAM and Archie. By doing so, it would make the series easier to write without much continuity and would also make it more "official" to Sonic Team's vision. But to the fans, this would be a complete stab in the back because most of their favorite characters and events are long gone. Most would probably leave the comic and the series will eventually fail due to the lack of subscribers.

You know, I never thought I'd say this, but I actually wish the Archie would just do that already and get it over with. I love the Satam cast, and some of those in the comic but this latest story proved to me how little of value this staff has for them in general. They're just expendable pieces of trash, using them to benefit SegaSonic whenever necessary.

Seriously, what is the point of having a cast of comic book only characters if they don't get any respect from even it's own publisher? I'd rather the they fade away into the limelight than be subjected to anymore reckless nonsense.

Besides, I doubt Sega of Japan and its hardcore of game fans would care at all. They'd probably be all for it knowing them.

[RedAuthar]

With one script, you get (maybe) two hours a day for the whole process, because your entire actual work week is taken up by a full time job.

If that is the case forget what I said. Writing must be the most easiest job on the planet. Heck if that's the case Archie must be screwin' with itself for not publishing more issues in a month.

No seriously, two hours? Where'd you get that number from? I know elementary school kids who spend more time writing 5 page stories then that.

[ILOVEVHS]

Don't be so harsh on the guy. Maybe he likes to do comics so much, that he's working on 4 of them.

[PuffinGrandeur]

Two hours a DAY, not a script. That would be the time available to work on the thing after considering a full time job and other responsibilities.

[RedAuthar]

Two hours a DAY, not a script. That would be the time available to work on the thing after considering a full time job and other responsibilities.

Oh.

Yeah that does make more sense.

[Uncle Ben]

didnt they used to do it like every other week at one point??

[RedAuthar]

I dunno.