'Spiritus ex Machina,' Part 1. Mega Man joins Dr. Light at the Advanced Robotics Trade Show to address the future of thinking machines.
New faces abound - who are Drs. Cossack and Lalinde? What sinister forces lurk behind the scenes? Meanwhile, Dr. Wily searches for something to give him the edge deep in the forbidden Lanfront Ruins. All this plus the debut of Rush!" Writer: Ian Flynn, Artist: Gary Martin & Various, Cover Artist: Patrick Spaz Spaziante
A possible love interest for Dr. Light? Uh, I guess that could be interesting. But more importantly, it sounds like we're headed into Super Adventure Rockman territory, what with Wily's mischief in the Lanfront Ruins. Sounds like a pretty exciting issue. Definitely one to lookout for!
Source: BumbleKing Comics
Wow, I really don't know what to think about that cover... Actually was expecting Mega Man 3's story instead of Super Adventure Rockman or a side-story.
ReplyDeleteWe're going into SAR territory already? :)
ReplyDeleteDr. Lalinde, eh? Hope she turns out to be a decent character.
Didn't Ian Flynn just say in one of the two interviews the other day the arc starting in Issue 13 would be an original "world building" arc? Pretty sure he did.
ReplyDelete"The next story arc will be completely original with a bit of world-building and fleshing out some new characters – all to the benefit of Mega Man‘s adventures, of course."
Source: TMMN http://www.themmnetwork.com/2012/01/20/mmn-interviews-archie-mega-man-scribe-ian-flynn/
Of course that isn't to say Wily's involvement can't be a set up for the arc afterwards but unless Flynn flat out lied I doubt this is going to be straight up Super Adventure Rockman.
Dr. Light in love with someone? Scandalous!
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I don't exactly approve of this relationship. Comic endorsed by Capcom sure, but that's still leading into Mary-Sue territory.
Forcing Rock and Roll to deal with the concept of their single father dating? They're really pushing this family reationships thing.
ReplyDeleteI know Megaman doesn't exactly have a lot of material to work with, but OCs are touchy territory--especially love interests. Especially when you consider Archie's STH and its dozens of female characters who all invariably want the Blue Blur.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I have faith in Flynn. I just want to see how it pans out before I make any calls.
On a lighter note, it's nice to see the Cossacks getting some love. MM4 alongside 6 and the Gameboy games seem to get substantially less exposure than the rest of the Classic series. And props for the Ruby-Spears gag too.
Actually, I just had a pretty wild thought: almost all characters in the primary Mega Man universe have normal, real-world ranges for natural hair color. What do the exceptions to this rule (possibly barring Aero) have in common?
ReplyDeleteThe Good:
ReplyDeleteUh... Rush, I guess?
The Bad:
Won't it look bizarre when Pharaohman and his seven friends go berserk a few issues from now if Dr. Cossack is introduced during this "pause in the action" story arc?
The Ugly:
The fans' reaction to Dr. Lalinde and Dr. Light. :P
Also, given all the stuff on the cover, it sounds to me like there's some groundwork being laid for the first-annual Battle & Chase competition, among other things. I'd think it'd be a little too early for Super Adventure Rockman to start up, since it has Mega Man 5 enemies and the Super Mega Buster. But that's just my opinion.
Pharaoh Man already?! We haven't even seen Enker or the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters yet.
ReplyDelete@ Dr. Jerk
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I don't exactly approve of this relationship. Comic endorsed by Capcom sure, but that's still leading into Mary-Sue territory.
If mankind ever discovers the secret to time travel I swear I'm going back in time and relentlessly murdering the person who came up with that term.
Original character featured in a licensed comic book series /=/ Mary-Sue. By such a loose definition, Reggae would be considered a Mary-Sue, except he is now recognized as a legitimate series character.
I know Megaman doesn't exactly have a lot of material to work with, but OCs are touchy territory--especially love interests. Especially when you consider Archie's STH and its dozens of female characters who all invariably want the Blue Blur.
ReplyDeleteTwo. Two current love interests, Amy Rose and Sally Acorn. And Sally's a robot now. There aren't even dozens of female characters in the book to begin with.
I personally think it would benefit the series more if the "elements" required to build Gamma came from an ancient ruin rather than outer space.
ReplyDeleteNot that Megaman in outer space is a bad thing (MM V, eh?) but the last time the Blue Bomber had a close encounter, the fans got Duo (PUKE!)
Also, it's gonna take a lot of pepto bismol for me to stomach all these Archie-born characters that are going to be needlessly forced into the plot. I can't say those two detectives enhanced the first two story arcs in any significant way.
And I know it's Archie's forte (no pun intended) to write about horny teenagers, but there are no such characters in Megaman so we could reaaallly do without the romantic sub-plots.
@Dr. Jerk: They will have a kid and call him Yuichiro! XD
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteYou must have missed the stories around 2005 where Amy, Mina, Sally, Bunnie and Fiona all had things for him.
Flynn immediately dropped that after taking charge but you can't deny it happened.
This looks awesome!
ReplyDeleteAn OC female scientist who might be romancing Light?
Calling it now, she's a villain.
(@Professor Megaman) Well, it's kind of hard for them to enhance the first two story arcs when they weren't even in the first.
ReplyDelete(@Joseph Collin) I prefer Cossack being introduced prior to MM4. Saves the trouble of introducing him when that arc rolls around. Also, is it really a "pause in the action" story arc just because it's not based on a game...?
You must have missed the stories around 2005 where Amy, Mina, Sally, Bunnie and Fiona all had things for him.
ReplyDelete*AHEM*
"Two. Two current love interests, Amy Rose and Sally Acorn."
You must have missed the part where I didn't say anything about past love interests. And Bunnie had a thing for the imposter Sonic, and Fiona never had a thing for Sonic to begin with since it was revealed that she was using him, not that that has any bearing on the point that I was trying to get across.
@Blue84: I don't see what's so wrong about the usage of that term.
ReplyDeleteMary-Sues or Marty Stus can apply to ANY character of ANY medium. They can exist anywhere.
I love the talk of Dr. Light having an original character as a love interest as being unprecedented and contemptible.I guess The Protomen also screwed up and things were RUINED FOREVER when they created Emily ;p
ReplyDelete@Blues84
ReplyDeleteMary Sue was the name of a self insert in a Star Trek fan fic back in the 70s or so some fans back then mocked it in their magazine and that's where the term comes from.
Best pack some funky accessories in your time machine.
@Alice Vulcan
ReplyDeleteThey did as a matter of fact, Protomen is overrated trash, a rock opera by people too lazy to come up with an original concept an instead just threw Mega Man on it even though it doesn't fit.
@Alice Vulcan: Emily who?
ReplyDelete@Alice Vulcan
ReplyDeleteYes, the presence of a distended fanfiction set to new wave music utterly destroys that viewpoint.
Maybe it's the image of an established character fawning over a young, attractive new character we've never seen or heard of before that hits a little too close to home? The purple hair is just icing on the cake.
@ Anonymous
ReplyDeleteWhy does it even matter whether it's a young attractive character we've seen before or haven't seen before?
@ Dr. Jerk
You are in fact using the word Mary-Sue incorrectly because, as one of the Anons pointed out, the term originally referred to a self-insert, whereas you seem to think that a Mary-Sue is any original character that is given an important role in a licensed comic book. At this point you can no more accuse Ian Flynn of making a Mary-Sue out of Dr. Lalinde than he did out of the two detective characters he introduced in the previous arc.
And I don't see anyone complaining about Hitoshi Ariga's original characters: http://megaman.wikia.com/wiki/Manga_characters
To groan at Flynn introducing a new character in a Capcom USA-licensed comic but turn a blind eye when Ariga does the same in a Capcom Co. Ltd.-licensed manga reeks of elitism.
@Blues84: What original characters created by Hitoshi Ariga?
ReplyDeletethe wiki only has 3 entries, one being pretty much just an yellow devil, other being a newscaster with no real relevance to the plot (not to mention, just a nod to Street Fighter), and the ''robot mob'' being just a bunch of fan characters submited to be destroyed.
That's a pretty weak comparison :P
@Dr. Jerk
ReplyDeleteThere's a big difference here, one's a series that has been around for years the other is a new series from a company that had a sketchy past of OCs a few years back.
It's easy to see why some people would be concerned about this.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue
ReplyDelete@Blues84:
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't call it elitism so much, more like "reverse weeabooism" (can I coin that term?)
When it comes to the Japanese adapting video games into manga, we don't validate it so much as we've grown accustomed to it. From the fighting game anime that has to write in a love interest to the non-fighting game anime that involves the series protagonist jumping off the TV screen to babysit a generic child character.
In America, we're used to the "one-shot" characters who come and go before they can do any serious damage to the status quo. I think a boom in Japanese-inspired fan fiction has brought with it the popularity of creating recurring characters into a franchise series.
It's not a new idea, I remember I first saw it when the '78 Fantastic Four cartoon gave us H.E.R.B.I.E.
That's why most of us knew better.
@Blue84: Eh, say what you will then. However unlike the Archie Comics, Ariga didn't really outright pair anyone with canon characters.
ReplyDeletePeople have used the term to refer to fan characters when they are paired with canon characters, and this is really no different to me. There's even a term called "Canon Mary-Sue".
Goodness, I'm not quite sure if its my mentioning of the Protomen that sparked some anons to spit venom or if it was my implication that an OC love interest isn't a bad thing at all. The internet is so unpredictable! XD
ReplyDeleteAnyway, getting upset over new characters is to me quite silly. We're heard these stories before time and again. Getting something new is refreshing and I enjoy the unpredictable nature of how things are being presented, especially with this level of quality and consistency.
The problem with bringing up Archie's history of original Sonic characters doesn't is that it hold much water these days. Ian Flynn is often credited with SAVING that series and to my knowledge has done a wonderful job with it since. I'd assume that he is privy to the mistakes made my his predecessors and would avoid them. But I find it more healthy to hope for the best and expect the worst, rather than. Maybe he'll screw up, but I doubt it. He's proven himself competent.
*is that it doesn't hold much water these days.
ReplyDeleteUgh, embarrassing typos >_<
@Blues84
ReplyDelete@Alice Vulcan
Look, the long and short of it is this: the cover resembles the all-too-familiar image of someone setting up a canon character with an OC solely created to enact a romantic fantasy.
While Flynn is a seasoned writer and no doubt can and will take this in a fresh direction, that it looks like the aforementioned wish-fulfillment scenario is more than enough to get people riled.
Those are the facts, nothing more and nothing less.
"It looks like the aforementioned wish fulfillment scenario..."
DeleteOkay. Guys.
I can see this with Protoman. Rock. Quick Man. Zero. X. Axl.
But what fangirl or fanboy has romantic wish fulfillment involving DR. THOMAS LIGHT?!
I mean, we DO know who we're talking about here, right?
the cover resembles the all-too-familiar image of someone setting up a canon character with an OC solely created to enact a romantic fantasy.
ReplyDeleteYes, it does resemble it; that is, until you realize that the person writing this comic is a heterosexual male with no romantic fantasies of being with Dr. Light.
They're grabbing every bit of the side-materials that they can and incorporating it into this comic. That's kinda neat.
ReplyDelete@Doc
Seriously, just because an original character comes along, doesn't mean it's a mary-sue. Now, if she makes a super robot that can single-handily take on megaman and every single one of Wily's RMs at once, then she'd be a mary-sue. Oh no, she has a love interest with Doctor Light! Doesn't mean she's a mary-sue, just means she's being used with a main character. She isn't gonna steal the spotlight, she's not gonna take down Wily by herself, she's just there to add some extra story to tell for Light, that's all. Make sure you know what a mary-sue really is before accusing characters of it.
@ ^ Anonymous
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU! That's why I've been trying to say all along: a Mary-Sue is a glory-hogging original character, usually a manifestation of the writer him/herself, but Dr. Lalinde will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not be that.
And to anyone who asks "How do YOU know that for a fact?"; we'll see he who'll be laughing at whose overreaction when this story arc is through.
Honestly I don't think anyone would care if Lalinde was a bit older looking but she looks young enough to Light's daughter... and that's kind of creepy.
ReplyDeleteActually, the easiest and most likely solution is this:
ReplyDeleteDr. Lalinde will be...a robot. Made by Wily to distract Light from what's going on around him. That's just the sort of thing he'd do and it easily means she won't be around for long.
@Razorsaw
ReplyDelete@Blues84
That. Was. My. Fucking. Point.
I'm not saying that's what it is, I'm saying that's what it looks like and that's why people are getting antsy. It goes without saying that these feelings are unfounded and dumb.
I can't make myself any more clear:
I'm not justifying any of these reactions. I'm just explaining them.
There's a larger version of the comics cover at Bumbleking now if you're interested.
ReplyDeleteRight. So... Who's got their money on the Emerald Spears being a human anti-robot activist group?
ReplyDeleteThe MegaMan comic has been doing lots of things right up until this point. But honestly, I can't imagine a love interest for Dr. Light being anything but shoe-horned and completely superflous. Especially not one with that design. It's the kind of thing I'd expect in bad fanfiction, and nothing which the games ever made suggestions about. I'm pretty unhappy about it.
ReplyDeleteHopefully this works out somehow and isn't the beginning of shark-jumping.
Although Light appears to have no (human) family in the original series, he had a son (Yuichiro) and grandson (Lan) in the Battle Network series. Can't see why he can't have one here too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Wily has 57 years in MM&B. Assuming Light has the same age, the docs may have around 40-54 years after MM2, depending of the time passed between MM1 and MM&B (over 2 years and 8 months).
Dr. LaLinde may look younger than she really is, tinting her white hair to hide it.
Is "Mary Sue" really an appropriate term for Dr. Lalinde? I mean, last I checked that applies to a self-insert character, and I doubt many people would self-insert themselves into a love story with Dr. Light (no offense to the good doctor, of course).
ReplyDelete"Mary Sue" is never an appropriate term for any character. These days use of the term just tells us that the person using it has nothing worthwhile to say and couldn't be bothered to explain what they actually dislike about the character.
ReplyDelete"Original characters are touchy territory"? What rot. Flynn already put in a superb reminder of why that sort of nonsense is so ridiculous. Detectives Rosyln Krantz and Gilbert D. Stern, a pun on the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Of course, Shakespeare's Hamlet was based on an existing legend that had been told and retold many times before he wrote his play, and he made up those two characters to put in it. They were his "original characters".
If Shakespeare were around right now people would be insulting him for putting so many OCs in his plays. Which tells you all you need to know about the sort of person that complains about new characters being added to retelling of a story.