COVER

Going back to the other multi-part comics, these covers are also pretty basic, but this time I made better use of space and had the covers dominated by the large title, large character groups, and remaining white space took up by the vertical text. This is, of course, Team Sonic standing all bad ass.

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So, we don’t get a Prologue recapping the last few comics and bringing us up to speed, instead it’s just a brief caption describing Mobius and Eggman’s evil, this caption is used in every part of this comic except the Last one but with subtle changes to the text. This is one of a few little things I used to have each Part be its own separate story and for the characters not to all meet up until the very end to make things a little more basic compared to the branching storylines seen in TTSS and the long, complicated plot seen in the Chaos Ring Saga. Anyway, we open with the opening from Team Sonic on Sonic Heroes, with Sonic running and Tails and Knuckles swooping in to meet him. Sonic is thinking about the Golden Rings, giving us that vague history link I am now aiming for, and Knuckles sounds a bit annoyed at having had to leave his Island, just a small taster of his now Sonic X-like aggressive personality that I was injecting into him.

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I didn’t want to even try spriting Sonic running backwards at high speed like he does in the game, so I left him going forewords, which is why the screenshot is reversed and the words are blurred out (because they were backwards). Speaking of blurring, the speed blur looks particularly good here, though it is used a lot in this comic. The dialogue is taken mostly out of the game in this comic but, as a change, they all fly over to Egg Island because it’s faster.

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Another one of those flying scenes, this time we see the transition from their Island to the polluted skies of Egg Island and they land in a brand new location that uses backgrounds I ripped from Sonic CD and later edited and customised specifically for this comic to highlight the speed aspect that I am going for. I love this back-and-forth between Sonic and Knuckles, featuring an edited Knuckles sprite by me and the “indigestion” line that I was especially happy with, I thought it was funny.

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Taking another page out of the game, Sonic and his friends are referred to (but only in this comic) as Sonic Heroes more often than “Freedom Fighters”. That big ship is from Sparkster, I think, but it’s dropping Sonic Advance 2 bombs and showing off my new explosion effects and lasers. The running is interesting as it is a mixture of blurs and we see that Sonic is the fastest, Tails is second fastest and Knuckles is third, though Tails and Knuckles are often running neck and neck. Sonic does the Super Peel Out here for the first time, something I just wanted to put in because he hasn’t done it yet, which he learned from fighting Shadow in Perfect Chaos.

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I added the running jump on the fly to break up the monotony of the straight run and had to edit in that wall myself, which was actually pretty tricky to do. Here we get the Flying aspect of Heroes for a brief bit as Tails lifts them out of the way of those cool fireballs, which were used again and again because I liked them so much and it was so rare to find diagonally shooting fireballs.

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Now it’s the Strength part as Knuckles lobs them over to the ship against another slightly edited background I made. I love how they escaped just in the nick of them and then the ship is instantly there, like in TCRS when Knuckles bumps into Sonic and Tails on the mountain top. Oh and here are the first uses of Sonic Battle sprites being used. Sonic Battle sprites look very similar to Advance sprites but they are noticeably different so whenever I use Battle sprites I try to have all characters in Battle sprite poses so that it fits well, but it’s not always really needed.

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Here they are on top of the ship, giving me a good excuse to splice in a foreground from Flying Battery Zone. That interruption by Knuckles (“it’ll take ages”) is from Fleetway and was originally said by Sonic to Knuckles: Knuckles: I could burrow through and… Sonic: It’d take ages! Just stand back… I liked it and thought it fit Knuckles’s new arrogant attitude I was tweaking in. This of course leads to Knuckles’s Battle sprites smashing down into the ship, making a much better effect than when Nack smashed up out the ground in TCRS. This is partly from an episode of Sonic Underground, where Knuckles digs into Eggman’s flying ship-thing but that looked daft as he actually did burrow through metal, here he goes ploughing through it. This interior was made by me also and was, at the time, my way of making up for the crapping interiors used for the Air Ship in BFTCE and it looks very unique and clear here. Also, note how Knuckles doesn’t take praise from Sonic too well? Got a little huff going on methinks.

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This control room was also made by me and the inclusion of the E-1000 Robot was also to have a homage back to the old Robots from BFTCE) this one was the first E-1000 to have a gun arm until Chaotix: Roots and the Remastered BFTCE. Knuckles’s line (“good I hate long waits”) is taken, of course, from Return Of The Jedi and, like the indigestion line, I just thought it would be a funny inclusion. That old E-1000 is no match for the Homing Attack of Sonic (the first and pretty much only time I used the Homing Attack) and we see Tails using his Battle sprites to destroy that control panel. Now, in Sonic Battle Tails has some odd ability to suddenly sprout mechanical limbs, and I never disputed that because he’s good with mechanics. In my comics, that mechanical punch seen here is just a device he has hidden on him and later (in Sonic Battle: Metal Ragnorak) he does indeed turn his arm into a blaster gun using some undefined technology.

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That burning up ship was done full size, with the explosions and all, and then shrunk down and I really liked it being in the background here, it really livened the scene up rather than just doing the explosion off the bat. Here we get some cooler new explosion effects as my all-new Metal makes his grand entrance. This Metal is a re-colour of a Sonic Battle Shadow sprite edited by Ryu to be Metal Shadow. I thought that re-colouring the strips and utilising Shadow’s oddly shaded spike structure and poses really created the proper Sonic Heroes look for Metal in this comic and, later, I re-coloured the entire Shadow Battle sprites myself to be the full sprite sheet for Metal Sonic Prime, but here it’s a nice shiny new Metal who forces me to create a few Sonic-dragging-Tails-And-Knuckles sprites and blur them nicely. On the left hand side of the fourth panel is a quick blank-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by Spikes, who has a cameo in every part of this series.

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That tube-thing is the entrance to Eggman’s new base, Metal lead them into it and Sonic, distracted by Metal, tripped and fell into it with the others. I made that myself using various props and backgrounds but the closing door and Clang effect is used in every other part of this comic (except the last story) and is the exact same panel re-used. The interior was made from these shiny new backgrounds I had picked up from Sonic Crackers and it really creates a new streamlined feel to the place.

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Also helping to create that new feel is, of course, Megaman backgrounds! The first two panels is just me being lazy and just flipping the same background to represent a long corridor. They then pass through an odd background (the first one I edited up for this comic) with a smashed tube. What’s that all about? Find out later. They end up in this other area, which isn’t as nicely edited as some of my other backgrounds, where Mighty, Vanilla, Froggy and Chocola-Chao are being held in that weird piece of machinery from Sonic CD. I wasn’t too pleased with SEGA’s omission of Mighty from Sonic Heroes so it was with great reluctance that I had him be held captive, but it eventually worked out. How did they all get there though? Again, find out later, all that matters is that they’re determined to confront Eggman.

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They walk right into another Megaman background, a control room I had had my eye on for some time and I got to use well here, editing in a view over Robotropolis and a new blue paint scheme for it (I think it’s originally pink). Metal’s itching for a fight, and Eggman knows that Sonic will probably beat it, but it’s all part of the plan. The Action Scene here is my first Multi-Shot, where we see quick cuts to each of the moves, focussing solely on the fighters and showing off Sonic’s new fighting sprites from Sonic Battle very well.

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Those shots are expanded on this next page to give them more space to react, like Sonic’s twisting in the air and landing in his cannonball attack, done with those familiar speed-motions rather than blurring, same as Metal rushing at Sonic and him leaping over his counter-part. The line “I’d forgotten how tough he is” was one I was reluctant to include, ever, because when you face something as strong as Metal as frequently as Sonic has, why would you forget how powerful it is? But Sonic re-doubles his efforts and becomes Goku again; to speed-motion and dodge Metal’s energy blasts just like in Dragonball Z. See, even now, the Dragonball Z stuff is toned back from the in-your-face way it was presented in TCRS, it is saved for the fights and used with effect so that it is more, well, effective.

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Sonic hits Sonic Wind, an attack that is re-created the same way every time I do it, with the same sound effects and everything (just like Chaos Control and Chaos Spear). This marks the first real time that Sonic has defeated Metal without turning Super, and it took his new move to do it (interesting thing to note is that later when they fight in Sonic Battle: Metal Ragnorak, the same move doesn’t defeat Metal). However, Eggman is only happy and their attention is turned to his gloating face, missing out on metal’s T-1000 impression as it reforms like it does in the game and we leave with that cliff-hanger and those spiffy new To Be Continued words.

Overall

I like this part, granted every part of this comic is pretty similar in many ways except the Last one, but this is both a homage to my old comics, based on the game story (with dialogue, motives and atmosphere as well as the plot) but also it’s own story, adding in the ship sequence, the chase form Metal and the re-match between Sonic and Metal. Each part is it’s own story leading to the end, and this one is effective at re-introducing the characters and showing how things have changed since TCRS and how I’m doing things now.