⚠️Spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog Issue 86 (and the IDW comics as a whole)⚠️
To get this out of the way, I really enjoy the Sonic IDW comics, and Metal Sonic is one of my favourite characters in the entire franchise, and Issue 86 has some of my favourite artwork in the comics as a whole.
However, for a while now I’ve been feeling slightly let down with how the comics handle the game cast, and this is most prevalent with Shadow and Metal Sonic, but today I’ll only be focusing on the latter.
When I first saw the synopsis for Issue 84 I was very excited, as the synopsis was “Metal Sonic has gone missing! In his desperation, Dr Eggman promises Belle the Tinkerer that he'll remove her connection to the ruthless robot if she uses it one last time to find him. Not trusting the mad scientist, Belle agrees only as long as Sonic comes as protection.” So when I saw that I was (naively) expecting some much-needed development for Metal Sonic's character, and I was very disappointed to see that instead of a Metal Sonic storyline, he just turned out to be mind-controlled, and once again relegated to a goon for Sonic to punch, just to set up the antagonist of this next story arc.
This is IDW Comics' biggest problem when it comes to the game characters, and it is, ironically, not even their fault: it’s an issue of IDW Comics being canon and how Sega wants to handle these characters. The game cast isn’t allowed to undergo any significant development that would permanently change their characters, as Sega wants to maintain the Status quo for said characters, which is why we have so many original characters in these comics, since the IDW writers are allowed to do whatever they want with them.
And no one suffers more from Sega's status quo, than Metal Sonic and Shadow. Metal Sonic does have some good moments through, and he steals the show whenever he shows up, one of his best moments being in Sonic Annual 2020 Reflections, and despite not a single word being uttered by anyone (until Starline shows up at the end) it adds so many layers to Metal Sonic.
But those moments for the character feel so far and in between, from the usual Metal Sonic moments of being a punching bag for whoever he’s fighting, and it feels like such a waste, as Metal Sonic has so much potential when it comes to the options you have when writing this character.