Glitcher believes everything online is free....

Some interesting news in the comic world today. Polygon has reported that Archie are having their two blue heroes join forces once more. Next year, Archie plans to release another Sonic/Mega Man crossover!



This is just a preliminary announcement and more details will be revealed at NYCC. Apparently Archie were so pleased with the last "Worlds Collide" crossover that they want to try it again. As usual, Ian Flynn will be writing the story while Pat Spaz returns to draw the covers.

Overall, this announcement has left me.... extremely dubious. To tell you the truth, I wasn't terribly impressed with Worlds Collide. I wrote a few reviews last year on the story arc, and the best thing I had to say about it was Ben Bates' artwork in the last four issues. The writing, unfortunately, was 100% exposition. Archie tried to cram in as many Sonic and Mega Man characters as possible with little consideration to the narrative structure. It was a relentless twelve issues of ACTION! ACTION! ACTION! that overstayed its welcome by about eight issues. Not one bit of character development was present, and the characters that were there felt dumbed down for the sake of the plot. Eggman and Wily have never been more obnoxious, flattering and backscratching and doing everything short of sleeping with each other. The artwork started off poor too, with Jamal Peppers delivering some very minimalistic panels that felt extremely rushed.

But I guess Sonic fans will always remember the crossover as the event that effectively marked the end of the original timeline in the comics. Granted, the change was inevitable after the lawsuit, but it's a bad memory I'd rather not revisit. Moreover, crossovers essentially put the storylines of both series on hiatus, and the last time was particularly aggravating when Sonic was on the verge of rescuing Sally. Finally, all the characters lost their memories of the event after the crossover ended, so it's going to be awkward having to reintroduce themselves for another one-off crossover that will probably erase their memories again. It's pointless and it distracts from the main storyline.

The more I think about it, the more I believe this crossover is a bad idea. Nothing about the previous crossover made me long for another, and I think Archie is doing this just because of strong sales. However, there is an outside chance that it may lead to further changes in one or both series. Perhaps X could get his own comic in the new Mega Man timeline, or perhaps some elements from the old Sonic timeline could be restored - or new ones added. What do you think so far? Are you looking forward to this crossover, and what kind of effect will it have on the two storylines?


PS. Does anyone know how to disable the way DA converts my local links into thumbnails? It's really annoying.