Both characters that only work properly if Sonic is written out of character, because a big part of their characters are built off that mischaracterization.
"I love Surge because she's the proof Sonic makes mistakes in the name of his Principles! He harms people in his heroism!"
"I love Lanolin because she rightfully resents Sonic for not being good enough of a hero! He harms people in his carefree attitude!"
I don't want to say "you just hate Sonic" lol. But, it says something that both characters owe their popularity to a badly written "commentary" of how Sonic sucks as a hero that isn't even true in canon.
I like Sonic. I think he's cool. I didn't need IDW to have Sonic stroking himself while preaching about principles he never showed in canon for me to understand why Eggman is still alive and kicking. Surge doesn't owe her pain to him, she owes it to Starline and no one else because Sonic didn't even give a shit about the guy when he met him, so the entirety of #50 and its "philosophical debate" crumbles like a sand castle, leaving us only with that terrifying line of the problem of giving people choices that makes Sonic sound like Eggman. Lanolin's (non-canonical to the comics) ramblings about Sonic treating the world like an amusement park are simply not founded, so I can't admire her oh-so-complex world view that apparently justifies her tyrannical tendencies towards her friends. I want to repeat that Lanolin doesn't even have beef with Sonic in the comic people pay for! The only time the two interacted on the pages were in the city arc, where Lanolin mildly butted heads with him over the best way to approach the issue but was otherwise civil, and at the end of the Cleansweep arc, where she lost her damn mind and treated his going behind her back like a queen accusing a knight of treason while the castle was on fire. Lanolin blaming of Sonic for everything wrong with the world, the Punic Wars and the extinction of the dinosaurs was never, ever, an element in the stories people have read, and it only exists in the ABT Extended Universe that should not be required reading for me to understand what the hell is her deal! What do you mean there's a whole Lanolin mommy issues lore on his account fans use to defend her??????
Ahem. Back to the topic. I don't hate Sonic and everything he stands for, and I, having played the games, know that he's not some failure hero with Silver Age-era "principles", so for me Surge and Lanolin have no appeal whatsoever - not helped also by how boring, one-note and wasted they both are. It doesn't make me some illiterate moron who hates women. I just think IDW is badly written at its core because it egregiously misinterpreted its main character, and to this day we're still suffering because of it.
