>>220584
By that logic, Sonic, Hood, and Sally shouldn't be in the book either. Simply being linked to Ken's characters doesn't mean squat. As long as the terms "Uma" and "Arachnis" are never mentioned again, there's nothing stopping the Gossamer from showing up again.

>>220518
I'd say the gals got hit harder than the guys by this reboot just in general. There's just way more good male chars in the games and SatAM, which is what we've got confirmed for now.

>>220588
There's generally more male characters in everything unless it's specifically targeted at girls, so that's not saying much.

WELP.

>>220579

People knew full well who she was before she got hired. There was a prelude to this stink during the campaign itself.

But the rest of that is on the money. Moving on.

>>220612
He's right that she's not in a position to really have an impact on the game, but he's wrong about her never playing anything Megaman. Before the kerfuffle, someone on twitter said he wasn't really into MM, and she tweeted back that she'd never been a MM player but wanted to help the people she knew. From this the self-appointed "investigative journalists" concluded that she'd been lying about liking X, because getting the wrong impression from short informal comments is what twitter is FOR. Later she clarified that she'd played X way back years ago and liked it, but never really got much into the franchise.

Life's too short for this shit.

>>220569
Mighty Number Nope: The Dina Disaster

>>220579
>A minority of people are demanding their money back. They will not get it.

Amazon allows you to charge back for MN9 up until Dec 30th

>>220619
>Credible proof u guiz!
Yeah, that guy's not only an arrogant condescending fucktard, he's also wrong about several things. He jumped to conclusions, assumed she's doing art and designs for this (nope), and assumed when she casually said on twitter to someone that she'd never been a MM player that she meant she'd literally never even played any of the games (nope). And you know what? I doubt he'll record a retraction. Not the style of guys like that.

Remember when we talked about Archie comics?
Neither do I.

Either way, preview for the end of Shadow Fall is out. I find the implication that Archie, in its current state, would kill off characters hilarious.

Finally got MM#32, highly enjoyed it. Some panels made me wonder if Capcom has the same "no crying" policy for Megaman that SEGA has for Sonic.

Concerning the MMN9/Dina stuff: It's only tangentially related to the Archie series an issue about an individual hired by a company making a spiritual reboot of a franchise that Archie has a comic series of and from the fervor I've seen elsewhere it will quickly eat up threads, so please keep it out of this thread.

>>220632
It's kind of hard for machines to cry.
[spoiler] That one time with Blues /conveniently/ takes place on a cloudy day with his face obscured.

>>220635
and wearing shades under a helmet

>>220635
I'd agree, but he's definitely tearing up in a few panels. Sonic has done the same, but, to my knowledge, neither has full-out cried. (We've even seen artwork of Sonic full-out crying (M25YL) that got turned into just tears building because of SEGA.)

>>220641
Tearing up is like those weird blush stickers: visual shorthand.
Robots dont cry...yet.

Speaking of tangential Mega Man content, how about that board game kickstarter?

>>220632
Didn't Rock cry in Gigamix? And that was kind of recent.

>>220647
Already put my money down.

>>220631
At least one named character will be dead by the end of the arc. Not "fallen into a convenient pit," not "sent to another dimension."

Dead.

>>220661
Hope confirmed for being reintroduced for one panel to be killed off for shock value, you heard it here first.

>>220661
You act like being dead has ever stopped comic book characters who weren't either Uncle Benseses or mostly disliked from coming back. In 160 years when you stop writing Sonic, the new writer/our benevolent alien overlord might just bring them back for nostalgia purposes.

>>220661
If this turns out to just be Black Death or Eclipse, I will be disappointed.

>>220665
I don't see the point of them BOTH sticking around unless it's another type of Robotnik/Snively thing.

Of course, I'm also willing to wait to see what the damn characters are actually like. If you told me that Metal Sonic was going to come back as a redeemed secret agent with G-mel's paint scheme, I probably would have written it off without actually seeing how much fun Shard turned out to be.

>>220666
Oh, no, I wouldn't be surprised at all if one or both of them died. I just mean that I'd be disappointed if the death Ian's talking about is one of them.

>>220661
Who the hell do we have that can be killed? A SatAM character? A character you introduced? Sega sure as hell not won't let you kill off a sega character, and if you could, doing so would be catastrophic!

He's going to kill Tommy Turtle again, I can feel it. There's going to be an unnamed turtle in an egg army outfit, and he's going to get sucked into a jet turbine.

>>220695
>Knuckles dies and becomes Green Knuckles again
or alternatively
>Shadow dies, becomes Green Shadow.

http://benbates.deviantart.com/art/Sally-Redesign-Part-1-419696823

Mecha Sally

With some recent activity regarding Sally's redesign I thought it might be fun to go through the development process and show some production stuff.

In early 2011 editor Paul Kaminski asked if I would be interested in redesigning Sally and I jumped eagerly at the opportunity. I was intimidated but honored to mess around with such a prominent character.

The idea was to do a three stage process, she would be roboticized, weaponized, and (due to Eggman's tinkering) restored with a new design. At the time I believe the plan was already in motion to do a huge story arc with her, keeping her roboticized until 250 or somewhere around there. I recall thinking it was going to be a year or two with her as a robot, and that it could be pretty cool. Knowing that I was going to do so much with the character right from the start allowed me to make certain design decisions during each stage that would eventually be reflected in her new "normal" design (the closed vest for example).

Stage 1- Roboticization

This is where I spent the least amount of time. The only specific direction I was given was to use Patrick Spaziante's design from the cover of issue 29, which was totally fine with me.

Issue 29 is one of the comic's I purchased as a kid and I recall being bitterly disappointed by her interior design. Spaz's cover made her look cool! I don't recall what the story was about at all, I guess it wasn't very good, but I spent a lot admiring that cover.

I wanted to capture its essence as much as possible, but also ensure it fit into the current look and feel of the videogame's visual robotic presentation. I've stated this before, but the videogames are what I like. They're what inspired me to read and eventually draw Sonic comics. I want comics that fit perfectly with the games, and I think all of my design choices and philosophy come from that interest. I don't care what's been done in the comic, or how things look in the comic. It's gotta be like the games!

So decisions had to be made to flesh out this full design-

Removed the tech patterns across her body, along with additional muscular bumps and bits. Too much detail and incongruous with the games.

Removed the shoulder pads. I knew I was going to design a second form of Mecha Sally and those shoulder pads were looking pretty wicked. I wanted to bring those in later to help sell the idea of her upgrade making her tougher.

Solve the problem of her hair. What Spaz drew on the original cover looks neat, but it unfortunately covers the bulk of her hair and just what happens up there. How do those pieces connect and what does it look like as a 3D shape? I drew this a lot, you can see tiny little Sally heads from different views trying to figure out exactly how she works, and eventually managed to get a basic idea for the layered bangs and at least one of Spaz's downward spikes in the back too!

Keep the blue eyes! At least for this form, I think there's something more unsettling about her blue eyes. Like she's so close to being the close friend you've known for the last 15 years, the similarities highlight losing her.

After settling on a general direction, I did the 01 and 02 sketches and sent off to Paul and writer Ian Flynn for review. The only difference between the two is the dark red band of metal at the base of her hair on option 02. Paul and Ian decided to go with 01, but I got really into this band of darker red and brought it back for the weaponized stage, which I'll post later.

I recall Paul wanted to give her thicker thighs and he may have sent a quick doodle my way for the additional metal plates added to her legs in the turnaround at the bottom. It's been two and half years so I can't be certain, but I think that was his idea. If they weren't then I guess I came up with it but either way I liked how weird and slightly difficult they were to draw. I didn't want to just thicken those parts of her legs, I wanted this piece of metal coming off and acting as a type of guard.

Ideas that didn't get used-

Up top in the sketches you can make out a quick doodle where I toyed around with the idea of including an actual saw at the base of her hair. That could have been fun.

Next to the cover for 29, you'll see a doodle for a potential body design with boots that widen at the bottom. I think that looks pretty cool and might have been a good path to go down.

And finally the examples of Mecha Sonic doing wild stuff with his robot mouth. I always liked how imaginative Spaz was and would have loved to see Mecha Sally do more stuff with her mouth.

My favorite details-

The wrist detail from Spaz's original design.
Her little tail spike.
And those buckles(?) on her boots!

Why is the writing in the fox so good but the art so terribly terribly awful?

>>220704
Because Mark Waid is writing words while Dean Haspiel is doing the actual plotting and artwork.

Some panels are really good, but others...not so much. They could use a better artist, but then there wouldn't be a comic, so...

You can tell he's trying to make the queen of diamonds sexy but it just isn't working

>>220695
My bets are on Commander Tower.

>>220711

Tower has the benefit of being a Sega character (though whether they actually care about him is up in the air). Much more likely to be Black Death or Eclipse. I'd put money on the former, Eclipse is too badass-looking not to keep around.

>>220722
>"though whether they actually care about him is up in the air"
Which is why I'm thinking it's him. He's the one character we know of in the arc who has any chance of dying where his death would actually make an impact on the reader. Teasing the brand new characters dying just feels kind of weak. If anything, I'm thinking both Black Death and another not-new character will be going.

>>220729
And its not like Ian can use whatever Great War Overlander backstory he had for him now. He's essentially a cardboard cutout of a character now.

At least he got to name him (but let's see how long that lasts)

Seeing how we lost like 60% of characters already, it seems a little early for killing

Everything not made by Ian confirmed gone forever, everyone start panicking and shitposting as much as possible.

>>220739
Please let's not. Shadow Fall is looking awesome so far, it really doesn't need to be dragged down by the lack of Replacement Maria.

>>220740
No, let's panic and shitpost as much as humanly possible.
That'll solve everything.

>>220740
Does it count as Replacement Maria when she came first and did more in about five issues than Maria ever did?

>>220740
Was the potshot really needed?

>>220744
Yes, because Hope was barely used and not very effectual.
Not the guy you just replied to, but still.

>>220743
Insofar as she was a little girl who became Shadow's morality pet/support.

>>220751
Yeah, but by that logic Marine is just Replacement Cream.

New thread, feel free to continue your doom and despair there >>220754