So after posting a few arts expressing my displeasure with what Flynn has been doing with the comic lately, a few people made the point that I should try flat out contacting him myself instead of just flailing around here with arts.

I decided to do just that and sent him an e-mail essentially telling him everything about my fears and concerns about what he's been doing to the comic as well as what that could mean for his future as well. To my surprise and shock, he actually answered back the e-mails remarkably fast, with responses to everything I said. Posted above are the responses to the two e-mails I sent to him, the second being a response to my response to his.

In it Flynn even said to try and make this stuff public instead of just keeping it hidden in e-mails, so here we go. However, bumbleking.com is a hotspot for his supporters so instead of being bombarded by people that only support him and nobody else, I figured I'd post them here instead.

My first thoughts? Yeah...Flynn is a very nice guy. I can see why anybody would like him who meets him in person. He not only answered back to me quickly, but he treated me with full respect and didn't just brush me off as the random Sonic fan that I am. That impressed me and I have to give him a few marks as a human being for it and I can see the Sonic fanboyism in him. It certainly is hard to demonize someone after actually talking to them and not simply go by what's in your head. However, does being a very nice person mean I have to like everything he ever does and publishes? Nope! So let's move on to the actual stuff about the comic shall we?

The first point to mention is Other-M. At first I was concerned by the fact that he wanted to make no connection to them at all and tried to say they were totally different, but with the second e-mail he was able to at least admit that, yes, in a few ways they're similar in a few ways, if not by mere coincidence if nothing else.

Now things going poorly for our heroes? That I can handle, sure, that's what is going on. But then you toss in the fact that Hershey might be dead (but probably not based on 233) and the fact that something horrible is probably going to happen in 234 (not proven yet but greatly implied) and that statement starts to lose a little credibility. Once you kill off someone for any reason, it stops being "going poorly" and more the Other-M route. If he doesn't start killing people off though, then yeah going poorly I can handle.

I was also a little concerned by the usage of "cleaning house" to describe the 8 characters Flynn killed off during the early years of his writing for the comic. Sure, a lot of them were obscure characters or one shots that only appeared once or twice, but Lock, Knuckle's father? I think he deserved a little bit more then a mere house cleaning by a new writer, especially with how things were left off when he died. This also makes me worried that he might decide to do another "cleaning house" later on with other characters he doesn't deem worthy of living any longer (Hershey maybe? Probably not based on 233. Nicole? This one is getting dangerously close to being possible in 234, but nothing proven yet). In short, my fears were more for the deaths he was planning to do up to 250 and not so much the ones he's already done, even though Lock was a big one.

As for Bunnie, I still find his reasoning a tad weak, since it all boils down to "A Wizard did it" T_T If his plan is to show her deal with losing her power, can't it be done in a much more believable way? Heck, even having her turn back to normal due to the time reversal in 230 would have been more believable then how he did it, regardless of the magic and emeralds Ixis has in his possession.

As for #175-177, it might be guessing more then anything, but I think the problem was more that it only took like 4 of them to bust into Robotnik's layer and to free everyone from the grape eggs. If say a comic or two were spent in having Sonic and the remaining FF travel around to find friends and allies to help them in their time of need, that could have been pretty epic and made Sonic try using diplomacy and stuff to get what he needed. Then, with an army behind him, they could have busted down the defenses and saved the day in a more believable way.

In a sense, it goes back to what I keep saying about Flynn not having a good payoff to his stories. It started with Robotnik destroying the kingdom, zapping everyone but 4 or so people into captivity and leaving Sonic broken on the ground by a mocking Robotnik...pretty epic right? Well how does it end? The 4 of them alone bust in and save the day ...*cough*...

Did we need someone to die in there to make it more epic or interesting? Nope! More buildup mixed with a bit more believable of a rescue could have done plenty and made it all the more satisfying.

I'm not too sure about the team dynamics or the mold either, in his point of view. For me, the team dynamic has been one of the best parts of the entire series. All of the characters play well off of each other and are good supports for each other. Take that away and I find it hard to believe it will be just as fun to watch...and I'm not too sure how you can fix the mold either, while not ruining the comic. I mean, pick any comic you want and that IS the mold. The X-men win. Always. Eventually; The TMNT Win. Always. Eventually. etc etc

The only way to break that is to...have Sonic die or lose a leg or something? I don't really see that happening ever, you break the mold and the comic dies. Now sure, you can make that eventually go on for a number of years, toss in a ton of drama and get to that eventually, eventually, but it's still the mold.

My concern has always been less about this mold and more about the characters Flynn plans to kill in order to reach that eventuality. Drama I can handle in doses, drama is fine. While it's possible for almost anything to end up happily ever after, you can't make a happy ending out of a death of a character. They are gone. Always. Forever. (at least according to Flynn who said anyone he kills stays dead) I really don't want to see that happen to Sally or Nicole or anyone else, just for the simple reasoning of breaking the mold, or cleaning house, or anything else in the Sonic universe.

It was nice to hear that Flynn won't make it one long drama trip up to 250, but it also got me worried that he said we haven't hit rock bottom yet...but as long as some of this rock bottom doesn't mean the death of Sally or some pointless death like that...I can live through it without trying to take Flynn out of the picture.

The editor response was kind of silly to me. The editor cleared the Sally slap and all the issues after that Bollers was in charge of. It was probably the editor that wanted the Genesis arc in there too. Heck, in Naruto, Sasuke is in the comic purely because of the editor wanting Naruto to have a rival (not a big fan of Sasuke <,<) when Sasuke originally wasn't in the manga. So the thing about the editor seems like a way to try and separate himself from his responsibility rather then anything else.

As for the Star Wars reference, I can see what he's trying to say, but it's still a movie that's for a different age and fan base. They knew what they were getting into off the bat and things started off with death and drama, it didn't simply come out of nowhere without any warning, starting off as a fun cartoon type of adventure with a lot of excitement and action.

Oh and who else is in Star Wars, oh that little known character, Darth Vader. Someone who started out as a good guy, got brainwashed into turning evil and got trapped into a full body metal suit for the rest of his life and did hoooooorrible things obediently for his master for years to come. At the end he sacrificed his own life to save someone he loved and to bring peace to the world...(stares at Mecha-Sally) ....yeah I hope the similarities with Star Wars aren't really as much as I'm thinking it is -.-;;;

Lastly, I can understand Flynn wanting to take the blanket away, and even getting excitement from knowing that so many people are worked up, upset and unsettled with his stories. Now taking the blanket away I can understand, but as long as it stays that way with a few injuries as the story moves on, I can live with. However, if he actually decides to have characters start to actually die as we get closer to 250, or heck, as early as 234, then the blanket isn't only being taken away but we'll be getting much more then most of us ever wanted or feared. I just really hope it's just a simple scare and suspense tactic and not a warning of the times to come.

So yeah, that's a little bit about what I've learned through contacting Flynn directly. He's definitely a nice guy with a lot of ideas...but I just worry about him getting a tad too "excited" with them and not simply staying on the edge but flat out destroying it.

For that reason, I'm betting everything on 234 more or less. If nobody dies in it, then I'll know I can trust him enough to at least not blow up at him till the actual comic comes out not go off simply from the descriptions for the comics to come, and I'll stop trying to make so much trouble for him unless he deserved it. However, if he actually ends up killing someone like Nicole or someone else, then I'll know he's not simply "taking the blanket away" and is actually doing what I feared he'd do from the very beginning, and I'll have to take actions to stop him from doing any more harm to the comic.

Essentially he's putting us on one of those horror rides at a theme park where every turn you take leads to another jump scare. The question is, will it stay as just jump scares, or will one of the attractions come out of the ride and actually stab someone through the heart?

Either way, guess we find out next month.