Author's Commentary: Part One

COVER

Okay well, with this four part series, it’s very clear that my spriting skills have developed into a whole new style since the days of BFTCE, as everything is clear, presented well in every panel for the first time and I am more serious about what I’m doing, with the approach and method and everything. These covers are like the ones from the Time Stone Saga in that they’re very simple and very similar. Sonic is diving through the Chaos Ring in a big enlarged sprite picture. Were I to do it now I would probably use artwork from the game instead, as opposed to sprites.

Now this Prologue is only on one page and marks the last time I ever do a real Prologue outside of the Tales Of Shadow series. I’ve always considered the Chaos Ring Saga to be a very controversial entry to my comics, as it’s the longest comic I’ve ever done, is very complicated and pretty dark. It’s a huge step away from the game-atmosphere I was originally hoping to stay true to and takes the series in a more dramatic Dragonball Z-like atmosphere. So, after I finished this Saga, I toned things down a bit with Sonic Heroes, which was to serve as a brand new start to everything with a vague reference to what we’d already seen happen, which was why I stopped recapping all the previous comics. Nevertheless, this Prologue is the best designed one so far, much better than what we saw in TTSS or Perfect Chaos.

Now, here’s a few interesting points to note. This Prison that Eggman is in is actually a completely new Prison background based on the one I did for the last shot of Perfect Chaos. The layout is different and Big is now on top of it, and there is a reason for that which I’ll talk about in a bit. Big is a fantastic sprite made by Samurai, I managed to make a few custom animations for him later on but his role is small in this comic so it wasn’t needed here. Froggy is a nice little sprite too. Big is never given a real origin or explanation, he’s very much a cameo character with lines and a more prominent role than, say, a cameo by Bark or Bean. It is assumed that Big has lived on South Island all his life and has grown up with Sonic so they’re all friends; at least that’s what I aimed for. His character and personality isn’t exactly like what it is in the games here as I don’t think I’d played Sonic Adventure yet when I did this comic, so he sounds a little generic, but not too much that it was implausible for his “dumbing down” later on. That shaking effect was the first time I’d ever done something like that, as this comic really shows my exploration and playing around with Paint Shop Pro 7.

Now this page is taken almost directly from Sonic: The Movie. Sonic is relaxing under a parasol, listening to music (his Sonic Adventure theme no less, I love that song) whilst Tails practises on his board. Although Tails’s boarding skills never really come into play ever again, it was a nice little homage.

Here we show again the assumed friendship and bond between Sonic and Big, it is obviously there because Sonic must have a lot of faith and trust in Big to choose him to guard Eggman. I couldn’t actually smash open the ground at this point, I might be able to do that now, so I covered it up with the word art and the dust and stuff. Now, the reason Big is on top of the prison is because I originally wrote for Amy and Big to be stampeded by Nack’s craft as Eggman escapes but there wasn't really enough room in the background to fit it in and it would’ve looked odd if Big were on the ground because the speech bubbles would be all over the place. Nack freeing Eggman was the only plot I had for this comic originally following Perfect Chaos, it was all I had. Then I wrote out the rest of the comic and had a big gap between Nack freeing Eggman and the search for the Rings, which took me a bit of time to fill in. Nack is shown here as a bit more of a henchman, moving away from his treasure hunter character, which I really didn’t want, so I tried to keep him in character as much as I could, but it was needed in this comic for him to be more than a treasure hunter, he needed to be Eggman’s henchman. Later on I managed to salvage that and bring him back to his proper roots whilst still having him be an ally of Eggman, but his character here is a bit out of character sometimes. I really like the laser-explosion-effects on the doors, it looks so crisp, so much better than the stuff I did in BFTCE or even TTSS.

This is pretty interesting, as the field generated by the Rings is electrocuting Sonic, but he’s so desperate not to let Eggman escape that he keeps attacking. Indeed his frustration at Eggman escaping is best shown as Sonic utters another profanity, “Damn it!!!”, and then shows to be frustrated by it with his impatience. Originally, Amy’s line was to be spoken by Tails, but I wanted Amy to do something other than just stand around in that panel.

I love that background, it’s from another Megaman game, I forget which one, it looks very cavern-like and is so suitable for what it’s meant to be: a hidden underground laboratory underneath Egg Island that was known only to Eggman and never found by Sonic and the others. Those deactivated Eggrobo/Gamma Robots are hiding the Sonic 2 Mecha-Sonic Robot, which I slipped in as a little bit of fun. I like that swirling effect to emphasis the flashback, but I had the flashbacks in black and white to emphasis it better. That flashback to Perfect Chaos was the exact scene from the comic with all the speech bubbles carefully edited out, because I never saved the smashed-window background I had to re-do it from scratch. Nack is doing his own little Batman thing by running away and falling into the underground lab, or Batcave. This is a kind of loose explanation about that scroll from TTSS, as Nack found the Golden Rings in the lab, so we know that Eggman acquired them and studied them but never got round to finding the others, so it’s also assumed that he stumbled across that scroll.

Now though, the Rings have importance to Eggman and he is going to use them to exact his revenge. This is good in many ways, specifically that the Rings give this comic a whole new plot device and it again takes the story away from the Chaos Emeralds, like in TTSS, something that other comics always had to go back to. I love these three insert shots of Knuckles climbing that mountain, I had Star Trek 5 and Mission: Impossible 2 in my head at that moment and thought it would be a perfect way to show how Knuckles relieves stress and spends his free time. This background is also from a Megaman game.

The mountaintop background was custom made by me using Megaman backgrounds and a foreground whose origin escapes my mind. I thought it would be funny to have Sonic and Tails just be there as soon as Knuckles reaches the top, as he has used all this energy and strength to reach the top and they just landed there. Also here we have my first influence of The Matrix seeping in with the “beejeesus” line. See, Knuckles knows that Nack is no threat; he finds it hard to believe that Nack could have freed Eggman by himself. That Tornado 2 is a great sprite; I think I actually got hold of it shortly after Perfect Chaos and it’s a good way to show how the prototype plane evolved into this bitching plane.

So far, Knuckles has been portrayed as hot headed, strong and easily confused, but also very clever and knowledgeable about Echidna legends and stuff regarding the Emeralds and the Rings and such-like, as you’d expect him to be. This is a mixture of all his different personalities, but it also took a step away from his rivalry with Sonic because I wanted the three of them to get along well and all be friends, but I later injected a bit more arrogance and aggravation into Knuckles to show him as being more of a loner but a team player who pulls through when he’s needed. Sonic makes a good point about how the sins of the past are always left up to him to stop (the Emeralds, Chaos, Shadow, the Rings) but, of course, this is because he’s the chosen conduit for goodness, like Link is always destined to be the bearer of the Triforce of Courage, Sonic has been destined to be the natural manifestation of goodness: he’s the biological Shadow, to be blunt. See because Shadow is energy personified, as is Chaos, but Sonic is a person born who naturally has the ability to be as strong as Shadow, same as Eggman was chosen to be the evil that is best personified as Chaos. This is stuff I never really addressed, only subtly threw into the series, based on that picture we see in Sonic & Knuckles Sky Sanctuary Zone of Super Sonic fighting Eggman, Sonic’s been destined to do everything that happens. I love this too: Knuckles can sense the Rings like he can the Emeralds, so finding them is going to be pretty easy for him, but Sonic’s plan is just to run around until he stumbles across them lol.

I like that blurred jump onto the Tornado 2, it was in this comic that my blurring effects really came together and worked well. Lying on the floor by Eggman is an endoskeleton (it’s hidden behind the Rings) that came with an alternative sprite of Mecha-Sonic that I was going to use (it was an Advanced version of the Sonic 3 & Knuckles Metal Sonic) but I decided to go with this lovely Megaman-edit Metal sprite made by Entrail, which looks strong and streamlined and has all these great animations to it. Of course, here I renamed Zonik Metallia, from Sonic: The Movie (Japanese version), which is a much better name, and introduced Mecha-Knuckles from Sonic Advance 1. However, this Knuckles Robot was actually supposed to be called Metal-Knuckles and the other Knux robot was Mecha-Knuckles, but I goofed up. See now, again, Nack gets his own Egg-O-Matic and is ordering the Mecha’s about, that’s very odd for him but I guess it kinda shows him as being pretty influential within Eggman’s Empire.

This running-through-the-Zone stuff was an intentional thing I did just to showcase those Zones and backgrounds that we normally don’t see in my comics so it broadens my universe and makes it bigger. I love that panel of Sonic running down the wall, it’s very Sonic Adventure. Speaking of which, we see the first of many dialogue and scenes based heavily on Knuckles’s levels in Sonic Adventure 2 as he wanders into the Mystic Caves, a background I never thought I’d use.

Those damn Bat Robots took ages to do, I had to make sure I never used too many but used enough and they don’t really have any special attacks or anything, but there’s enough of them to cause Knux some serious problems. Now, the reason these Bat Robots are here, even though it is hinted at that the Freedom Fighters wiped out all the Badniks and Robots and traps and stuff when Eggman was trapped on the Little Planet, is because Eggman released them from his secret base, but I never actually said this reason because I thought it worked better as a sudden occurrence. This To Be Continued monologue is very much Dragonball Z but I like the way it’s all slanted and stuff, looks unique.

OVERALL

Very good, I still like this comic; it really introduces this new plot well and gets things rolling in a dramatic way. It feels so different from anything I’ve done before or since though, I am not sure why that is, probably because it is such a new direction for it into more Dragonball Z-like territory, but it’s a solid opener.