Captain Sorzo

I don't see this as a good thing for Archie. If anything, Sega will likely tighten its noose, writing off the contested characters (which, being comic exclusive, do not advertise their games) as more trouble than they are worth. I wouldn't be surprised if additional mandates are put in place that require greater focus on the Sega cast, perhaps even to the point of rebooting the series and giving everyone else, SatAM gang included, the axe.

Sega's hurting financially right now, and any decisions they make will be based on what they think will generate more profits, not what is best for the characters or story of an overseas comic*. If the misappropriation of the Aliens: Colonial Marines budget by Gearbox has taught Sega anything, it's to keep greater oversight on its partners.

*-For example, one of their only mandates that actually benefited the comic was requiring Sally to survive Endgame. Yet even this was because they wanted to keep merchandise possibilities available, not out of any consideration for the character.

The broader one extends the width of a fictional universe, the more difficult it is to extend its depth. Archie may have a large cast of characters, but very few of them are terribly complex or all that interesting. Those Wolf twins that joined the Secret Freedom Fighters, for example, have no personality at all. More significantly, even many major characters like the trio of morons comprising "Team Fighters" are incredibly bland in part because everything is stretched so thinly. There's so much going on that the comic rarely gets a chance to slow down and focus on characterization.

Focus has to go somewhere, and its benefits will always come at a cost. In SatAM, for example, the bulk of character development amongst the Freedom Fighters was spent on Sonic and Sally, and it shows. Those two became fantastic characters as a result, but Bunnie, Antoine, and especially Rotor were left without much characterization in comparison. They're likable, mind you, and still managed to have a solid foundation for fan expansion through stories like "Me and My Shadow", but there's no question that they were secondary to the two protagonists.

Increasing cast size thus just results in attention being diluted away from the core characters of the story, and should be done sparingly. Properly executing a vast universe with hundreds and hundreds of major, developed characters requires an enormous amount of writing that most series simply cannot produce. Something on the order of the Star Wars Expanded Universe can get away with it, but a two book comic series written by one author at a time can't, and a fan-made web series that only puts out a comic page every week and/or an episode every year certainly can't.

And that's fine. Heck, it's a good thing. SatAM was always relatively small in scope to begin with, at least as far as cast size. Frankly, I'll take a tiny cast of extremely complex, compelling characters over a huge cast of moderately developed ones any day.

Making the show darker would have to be treated very delicately. For the most part, SatAM had a fantastic tonal balance, remaining ever optimistic despite the bleak, twisted setting and tragic circumstances that the protagonists were forced to contend with. It's certainly possible for a substantially darker take on the series to work, and indeed I prefer it that way, but I consider it absolutely paramount that the optimistic core be preserved.

Sea3on is a great example of a well done darker direction. The heroes are portrayed as far more emotionally fragile and vulnerable, making the strength they draw from their loved ones and ultimately themselves all the more important. It grants a deeper look at the characters and their struggles and relationships, yet remains ever hopeful. Rather than being its own end, action in the comic is frequently used to set up and direct these dynamics, as when Naugus partially freezes Tails in Chapter 2. The inherent act of a villain nearly killing a child is dark, yes, but the later scene in which Sonic attempts to comfort Tails, only for both to remain haunted by the latter's mortality, is far more meaningful.

Action for action's sake can be entertaining, but it often isn't very interesting upon examination, especially when the action is "dark." Lighthearted action can be used to provide a sense of fun and adventure, a key component of SatAM's tonal balance. Darker action lacks this advantage, and if it also lacks sufficient purpose, such as setting up plot points or character dynamics, illustrating themes, or creating appropriate levels of tension, it runs the risk of being boring and, if graphic, needlessly unpleasant. The majority of the action in the latest Archie Sonic arc falls victim to this. It is wholly superficial and pointless, yet robbed of the chance to at least be fun by the dark plot. It thus becomes boring and tedious very, very quickly, feeling like a cheap substitute for meaningful storytelling.

While I liked Sonic's characterization in Endgame better than how he's currently being written, and the actual final confrontation between him and Robotnik was fantastic (the cover of 50 is hands-down my favorite in the series), I thought the rest of the arc was quite convoluted and poorly executed. Sally deserved better, at the very least a noble "death" ala 230 rather than being victim of a cheap shot...especially one tied to such a contrived conspiracy. Even then, it just wouldn't feel right (in my eyes, at least) if she didn't see things through to the end, as thankfully happened in The Doomsday Project. It's no better than putting Sonic out of commission for the culmination of the war and having Sal face down Robotnik in the end. Had Penders actually left her dead as planned, it would have been a terrible injustice to the character. Admittedly, she's my favorite character in the franchise, so there's probably some bias on my part, but still...

As for the rest of the arc, issue 49 just felt like padding, honestly, and having Dulcy serve as a DEM was a terrible idea. I'm glad that Bunnie and Antoine received a fair amount of focus, but tacking on the Downunda FFs and Croc-bot of all things was just pointless and went nowhere. The arc needed to remain squarely focused on the core cast (though giving side characters like the Wolf Pack a supporting role in 47 was fine). Similarly, Hershey should have been introduced long before if she was going to play such a pivotal role in the plot; same with Drago.

Then there's the ending...ugh. For all its many flaws, the arc managed to reach an incredible high with the final confrontation, but everything afterward was a mess, with much of the plot being conveyed in an exposition dump after the fact. I knew Snively would be the one to kill Robotnik, but having it mentioned in passing by someone else was a waste of what could have been a great scene. To cap it all off, Sal's revived in the most cliche way possible (though I do enjoy the scene in light of the fact that her survival was unlikely from a real-world perspective).

The Doomsday Project might have been far simpler and less climactic than Endgame, but I much prefer it as a finale. It made sense, had proper buildup, and in the end gave the fourmost developed characters sufficient focus, with plenty of great interaction between them. Endgame would have been better off as two entirely different arcs rewritten from the ground up, one dealing with Sally nearly dying and Sonic being blamed, and the other depicting the conclusion of the war between the Knothole Freedom Fighters and Doctor Robotnik.

This isn't Flynn's fault. While the characters could have been written out of the comic in a better manner (assuming they're never heard from again going forward; Endangered Species itself isn't even over yet), it sounds like a lot of these alterations were last minute, so it's understandable that proper build up wasn't an option. Blame the publisher and the hack former writer that started this mess, not the guy having his own plans ruined by forces beyond his control.

It's sad that several characters who have been around for years are being axed on such short notice for petty reasons, but it's not going to doom the series. As far as pure sales go, they could drop everyone but the Sega cast and likely do fine for awhile (whether that model would be sustainable in the long run is debatable). Would many fans, myself included, be outraged and stop reading the comic? Absolutely, but we're sadly in the minority.

On the bright side, the void left by Penders' characters might result in the SatAM gang receiving extra emphasis in the long-run. They're certainly due some right now.

On a side note, things like this make me all the more thankful for works like Sea3on. No legal drama, desire for profit, rigid deadlines, or pandering to the lowest common denominator. Just a story that a handful of very hard-working, talented, and passionate fans are focused on conveying. It's genuine art, while the official comic is doomed to forever be nothing more than a product. Thanks again to everyone involved.

It sounds like this project is coming together rather nicely. I'm starting to become much more optimistic about it than I was initially. I want to help, but I'm just not sure how I could effectively contribute.

-Voice acting is out of the question, while I don't know anything about sound design. Speaking of which, how will music factor into the project? Laura alluded to musicians. Will the adaptation feature solely original compositions, or will existing works be used as well? I can't imagine rights would be an issue; if they were, a project like this (and Sea3on itself, for that matter) couldn't even exist to begin with. At the very least, I would think that the surviving SatAM tracks (Robotnik's theme, Season 1 medley, and Robotropolis) would be included.

-In terms of art, I'm limited to 3D work, which would be very difficult to seamlessly integrate into 2D animation, especially as I'm still quite inexperienced. I suppose creating a 3D background, rendering a still image, and tweaking it in Photoshop could conceivably work, but it seems unlikely. Even if I was able to produce some solid assets (most likely Robotropolis buildings or something similar), it would likely clash with the 2D foreground characters. The Sonic OVA had a similar problem, with characters that were obviously slapped in front of matte paintings, while SatAM's art style was entirely unified.

-I'm somewhat familiar with editing software like Adobe Premiere, but it's hardly my area of expertise. There's doubtless far better editors on the site.

-What exactly will the additional writing incorporate? Entirely new scenes? Bits of dialogue to flesh out existing ones? There are also potential complications with having other writers expand a story that's both in progress and written by a single author behind closed doors. The motivations of both Knuckles and Naugus, for example, are still largely unknown to us, so only Gojira could truly say whether any additional dialogue they were given would be in character. His oversight would help, of course, but the prospect of altering the narrative itself leaves me somewhat apprehensive. Probably just my normal pessimism asserting itself...At any rate, I'd be happy to help with writing, though there are already ample volunteers.

A few hours ago, I finished reading George Orwell’s 1984, during much of which I found myself drawing rather intense comparisons to a certain Saturday Morning Cartoon. Major spoilers for the work will invariably follow, though I’ll try to be vague. If this is rather incoherent, I apologize; I spent the entire night reading and am exhausted, but want to get this off my chest before going to sleep, which will likely muddle my thoughts and quell any desire of even writing this.

Most fictional works I experience, classics or no, fail to elicit a strong emotional reaction from me, but 1984 was an exception. It was horrifying, due not so much to its bleak dystopic setting, which I doubt will reach any great semblance of realization within the foreseeable future, but to the utterly pessimistic conclusions it drew about human nature. The novel postulates that, given enough pain, any person can be so completely broken as to disavow reality, not just externally but to themselves, that one’s belief in truths so basic as two plus two equaling four can be altered to suit the whims of another. Even love, Orwell seems to argue, that most treasured of emotions, is not exempt. Except it’s not a forcible change at all; the ultimate, damning act of submission, of betrayal, comes from within. And it always occurs.

Almost as terrifying is the notion that such pain isn’t even required in most cases. Simple conditioning is enough to usually ensure complete obedience, in thought as well as action. People will be told to believe something they know to be wrong and they wholly accept it without hesitation, so that, save for in a fleeting, invisible objective sense, it becomes true.

The origins of the INGSOC society in which the novel occurs are never fully detailed (assuming that the book Winston read on the matter was indeed inaccurate), but there remains a sense throughout that it is inexorable, inevitable, both in its emergence and in its growth. I may be mistaken in the former point, if 1984 was indeed written as a warning against socialism (implying the possibility of prevention), but Orwell seemed to see the rise of such a society as unavoidable, or at least that the permanent loss of freedom for all people was a very real possibility.

I by no means entirely concur with Orwell on the matter; hours later, the emotions I experienced reading the novel have long since cooled, and I doubt I will consider the work life-changing in any meaningful sense. Yet the fact remains that, whether due to the quality of writing or my tired condition, I found myself gripped by the terrible hideousness of the novel’s final act, forced to confront these grim beliefs that, forged in the aftermath of the atrocities of the Second World War, are not easily dismissed as unfounded cynicism.

As I read the last third of 1984, my mind issued again and again an almost unconscious “NO!”, a rebuttal, grounded more in emotion and raw simple knowing than any coherent logic, that what O’Brien, what Orwell, was saying is untrue, that good can and will prevail, that there exists a part of the human soul that is unquenchable. Though this wellspring of bitter emotion was in part driven by my spiritual beliefs, it also stemmed from themes and concepts that I saw in other works and life in general, those few that are profound and beautiful enough to shape one’s identity.

As it happened, what thus personified this secular side to my insistence that Orwell’s bleak view of human nature was wrong was not the writings of some Greek philosopher, nor the message of a classic piece of literature. It was a young man and woman who dared stand against the monster that had enslaved their world…and won. It was Sonic and Sally.
It sounds ludicrous, I know. It likely is, using a children’s television program starring talking animals to mentally counter one of the most influential works of literature of the twentieth century. It isn’t as if SatAM’s this profound source of life-shaking philosophical wisdom, a source of inspiration that dwarfs all other works in my eyes. Yet I find beauty in it, have found myself pondering the show, its settings, its characters, its themes, a great deal ever since I was re-introduced to it last year. There’s something so.... compelling about them, that transcends those twenty-six episodes, a fair number of which I found mediocre or in a couple of cases flat-out terrible. When I began 1984, I was already looking forward to comparing the dystopian setting of the novel to Robotropolis, Big Brother’s indoctrination to the possible mental effects of roboticization.

And so, for whatever reason, SatAM was on my mind when I concluded 1984, watching with growing horror and eventual resignation as Winston’s soul was utterly violated, utterly destroyed, from without and ultimately within. The novel gave a great deal more understanding to one of the reasons I love SatAM:

It’s optimistic.

Though many dissimilarities between the two exist, the settings of SatAM and 1984 share a similar foundation: extremely controlled, ordered worlds governed by a ruthless and tyrannical figure, whether literal or figurative, whose inhabitants have been conditioned against any possible dissenting thought. Yet where Orwell believed escape from such a system to be ultimately impossible, Hurst and the other writers argued that it is possible for goodness and hope to exist amidst oppression and tyranny, that against all odds they can not only sustain people but, as illustrated through Uncle Chuck’s rescue, break through the webs of lies tyranny enthrones itself upon and even put an end to such evil (cliffhanger notwithstanding).

Sonic and Sally, though both flawed, are in a sense themselves embodiments of concepts that simply cannot exist in the Orwellian society once its noose has been tightened. Sonic is playful irreverence and unshakable self-confidence, a source of joy stemming from simply being, from living as oneself. Sally is selfless love and nurturing, a leader who does not seek power but places the weight of the world on her shoulders so that it will not have to be borne by those she cares for.

I suppose the ability of good to not simply exist but actually thrive in the face of evil is what makes SatAM so charming. Tails being read bedtime stories by his adoptive family; Sonic cracking a defiant one-liner toward Robotnik even as SwatBots close in; the playful bickering and banter amongst the Freedom Fighters; their taking pleasure in something as simple as the tree slide; the cheerful exclamation of “Let’s do it to it!”. All are elements that I find much more endearing, much more meaningful, than I normally would, due to the fact that they take place in the face of such hardship. To assert they even can take place in such a world is to reject the core of George Orwell’s 1984, to believe, as Samwise Gamgee mused, “that there’s some good in this world…and it’s worth fighting for.”
---

Well, that wound up being longer than anticipated, but I needed to get out of my system both some thoughts on how the novel related to SatAM and musings on the show in general. For those who have read 1984, would you agree that SatAM is fundamentally opposed to it thematically? What are your thoughts on why the series is so memorable and potentially thought-provoking?