Inos
| Sonichu character | |
|---|---|
| |
| Inos | |
| Date of birth | 1929/30 |
| Gender | Male |
| Nationality | Jamaican |
| Race | Black |
| Species | Human |
Inos (born 1929/30) is a human inhabitant of CWCville, first appearing in Sonichu #10. Possibly in a response to demands from fans for a more diverse lineup, Chris chose to depict this particular token character as a homeless, addled, drug-pushing, diseased junkie with filthy dreadlocks styled like a Sonichu's ears.
In the comic
Talking to Sonichu with a vaguely Jamaican accent, he uses dottled wordplay to explain that he is a seventy-eight-year-old "Jamaican Veteran" (of what war is never mentioned, but considering his age, it could be the Korean War) and professional bum who has suffered from a cold for five years. Chris stops short of having him sing "Buffalo Soldier" and join a bobsled team. After Inos offers him some dige, Sonichu recoils in disgust, lectures the half-dead man on his drug abuse, and has him arrested, cautioned, and admitted against his will into one of CWCville's soup hotels. His deadly wares are also appropriated and sent to the tobacky rocket.
The character makes a poorly-hidden reference to Sonichu in the dialogue of the above picture: "Sonichu, Eclectic Hedgehog Digimon." The "Sonichu" part comes from Inos's name in reverse (Soni) combined with the "chu" of "wha' chu".
Inos later appears in Sonichu #11, unintentionally causing Blake much distress by assuming he's a fellow brother and wishing him a happy Kwanzaa.
Life history
Chris gave a backstory to Inos in March 2021, in a Twitter post.
The youngest sibling in a family of five, Inos was neglected and performed poorly in school, falling in with the wrong crowd. It can be assumed that he was selected for military service due to his delinquency. In the years since coming home from the war he fought in, Inos's situation has hardly improved: he resides in the soup hotel of a CWCville slum with a few friends.[1]
Creation and design
Chris has revealed in a video that Inos is actually based on a troll creation made to mess with Chris using international copyright law. The creation is known as "Soni-chew, the eclectic heeedge. Hog. Poké! Mon of London, England," or at the least, that's what Chris calls it. At this point it's not clear how much of the character's appearance is based on the "original" character, but Inos's dialogue is inspired by Soni-chew's character description.
Inos's red, yellow and black braids may be a conflation of the pan-African colors (red, green and black) and the Ethiopian national colors (red, yellow and green) popular among members of the Rastafari.
See also