Megathread The Lara-Su Chronicles and Ken Penders topic - READ PAGE 164, POST 4096

[G-Force]

I don't even understand what his weird obsession with Flynn is. He sounds pathological and should see someone about it. 

I get the feeling it has something to do with Flynn's role in the comics.  From what I gather, Flynn does the same job that Penders used to do, except he's, y'know, BETTER.  "Actually good at it," better.  And he gets recognition for it.  I don't think Penders can take the idea that someone else can get more recognition than him for doing the same job, so he minimizes everything Flynn does while raising his own work on a stupidly high pedestal.

 

FAKE EDIT:  And horridus beat me to it because I didn't write it fast enough.

[horridus]

I get the feeling it has something to do with Flynn's role in the comics.  From what I gather, Flynn does the same job that Penders used to do, except he's, y'know, BETTER.  "Actually good at it," better.  And he gets recognition for it.  I don't think Penders can take the idea that someone else can get more recognition than him for doing the same job, so he minimizes everything Flynn does while raising his own work on a stupidly high pedestal.

 

FAKE EDIT:  And horridus beat me to it because I didn't write it fast enough.

 

It happens man ID

 

But here's putting it into a microcosm; Flynn took one of Penders' ideas, Evil Sonic, and made Scourge. Scourge was a breakout character and enemy who experianced a HUGE surge in popularity. Penders still refers to him as Evil Sonic almost exclusively. I think it must have *stung* for him for Flynn to take an idea of his that was never that popular and suddenly get huge amounts of accolades from the fandom for it.

[Osmium]

Well, then maybe Penders should put some effort into something for fucking once and he'll have something nice so he won't have to be jealous. 

[G-Force]

Well, then maybe Penders should put some effort into something for fucking once and he'll have something nice so he won't have to be jealous. 

 

That's a lot to expect from a man with no talent.  Or drive.  Or humility.  Or passion.  Or basic competence.  Or respect for the medium.  Or respect for other people's input.

[Osmium]

That's a lot to expect from a man with no talent.  Or drive.  Or humility.  Or passion.  Or basic competence.  Or respect for the medium.  Or respect for other people's input.

 

What was I thinking?? 

[King Scoopa Koopa]

I almost feel like these are subtle digs at Flynn's ability as a writer. It's almost as if he's claiming "Hey, clearly if Ian isn't working on these properties, maybe he's not as good as you all say he is?" Never mind this is REALLY easy to turn around on him. Dude's a clown.

 

Dude is so clown shoes that Ronald, Bozo, Krusty, and Binky all go to him for fashion tips.

 

 

Well, then maybe Penders should put some effort into something for fucking once and he'll have something nice so he won't have to be jealous. 

 

Nah. He puts a ton of effort into his Twitter, and look how that's turned out.

[Osmium]

I would just like to post this picture to show how cool "Penderized" characters can be... 

 

 

 

And let's not forget this gem from Penders' second story he wrote in the comics.  

 

[Zaysho]

I can't speak for the Vector, but I wouldn't be surprised if Penders were to blame Kanterovich for bad jokes in that Tails panel (even though Mike K. was the guy who basically checked Penders).

 

Though speaking of bad dialogue, I was flipping through #88 the other day, and read the Knuckles back-up that Penders wrote. Since this is just part one of a longer back-up, I can't really speak for how bad it really is as a story, but I can say the dialogue is just really bland. A common criticism I see of Pen's writing is that characters don't have a distinct voice, and that really stuck out to me without even trying to look for things to complain about.

 

Knuckles, of course, effects a bit of that wiseguy/tough guy tone, and Penders really exaggerates Rob's Middle English and Bunnie's southern drawl ("Shoah glad yoah heah..."), but he completely drops Antoine's accent and mannerisms, making him not very distinct from even Knuckles. Which is really bad because part of Antoine's character are his mannerisms and how he misuses certain English phrases or words. And then I realized you could strip all these characters of their accents and they'd all blend together. Even when other writers, and I don't just mean Flynn, wrote a lot of these characters, accent or no, the voices seemed distinct and clear. When Penders writes them, the only real separation is some mangling of an accent or dialect, with little understanding of how it should actually sound.

[Osmium]

The problem when Penders wrote is that characters would either have nothing resembling a character whatsoever or they would try WAY to hard to be cool and then you get shit like that Vector picture or "Rad red".

[horridus]

Beyond the lack of voice, Penders characters tend to be extremely wordy, even when their character likely wouldn't be. Sonic himself uses a vocabulary that wouldn't seem out of place on a stuffy english professor, save for when he occassionally uses a bit of slang... this weird, overly formal and wordy way of talking, it makes everyone seem like they're robots honestly. 

[-blank-]

What was I thinking?? 

 

It's okay man. We all make this mistake at first. But we all soon see the light and realize it's hopeless to believe Penders can change for the better.

[Salamander]

Cringeworthy though it may be, what little I've seen of Penders's early work on the comic's gag-a-day beginnings reads a lot better than his later po-faced "serious" stuff.

[Osmium]

Cringeworthy though it may be, what little I've seen of Penders's early work on the comic's gag-a-day beginnings reads a lot better than his later po-faced "serious" stuff.

 

I MIGHT like the campier style of the comics before it got all melodramatic, but they were both pretty bad in my eyes. They were both in completely different directions. 

 

 

 

It's okay man. We all make this mistake at first. But we all soon see the light and realize it's hopeless to believe Penders can change for the better.

 

I'm too optimistic XD. All, the same I was just being sarcastic, but you can probably tell that. 

[Osmium]

Beyond the lack of voice, Penders characters tend to be extremely wordy, even when their character likely wouldn't be. Sonic himself uses a vocabulary that wouldn't seem out of place on a stuffy english professor, save for when he occassionally uses a bit of slang... this weird, overly formal and wordy way of talking, it makes everyone seem like they're robots honestly. 

 

I remember that.. It was honestly very strange and off-putting. Sonic's dialogue like you said was especially strange and wordy. Everyone talked in what I call technobabble. I remember a lot of issues from those days particularly issue 36 which the majority of was strange over analysis of the zone of silence and what Robotnik was doing to it. And then we get Robotnik talking about the zone of silence and how he threw the king in there. It goes on forever and no kid would be interested in it.

 

And then there's a Knuckles story in the same issue which is just more exposition and Knuckles wandering around muttering to himself. Knuckles talked WAY too much to himself. 

 

A special mention goes to how strange Sonic talks.

 

What? Who even says that?? Why can't he just say "No wonder I got out so easily !" or something?

 

Here's another example from Sonic Quest #1 

 

 

 

Sonic. Can you shut up for like 5 minutes? 

 

Something else that really bothered me was the overuse of text boxes everywhere. Seriously, we don't need your fucking text to know that this is supposed to be serious. It would actually probably have a better tone if you weren't trying to hammer in how serious this is supposed to be. 

Just let the panels explain themselves. This is a comic book, not a fucking novel. 

 

 

I could probably go on forever but these are just some examples to how weird and annoying Penders' writing was.

[biznizz]

Ugh, those Endgame pics. Reminds me how Sonic escaped only because Robotnik's SWATbots shot it down for no reason, which actively went against their creator's plans. Reminds me that aside from a great Spaz fight scene, Sonic was completely unnecessary to his arch-enemy's downfall; how it would have ended the same way even if Sonic was in jail.

On one hand, understandable for Snively. On the other, absolute stupidity for everyone else.

Pen's theme of his heroes being utterly acrophical to their own stories just makes me think he's gonna do it to Lara-Su herself. Like despite being as Sue-tastic as she already is, Lara will be upstaged by her long lost sister from another time (like the aborted 20 Years Later plot), Dawn-Su or Summer-Su or something equaĺly stupid.

That and I'm wondering if the Lost Ones and Dr. Droid will be introduced at the end of book one or for yet another second installment which will never be started, let alone see the light of day.

[horridus]

Pen's theme of his heroes being utterly acrophical to their own stories just makes me think he's gonna do it to Lara-Su herself. Like despite being as Sue-tastic as she already is, Lara will be upstaged by her long lost sister from another time (like the aborted 20 Years Later plot), Dawn-Su or Summer-Su or something equaĺly stupid.

 

Technically he already did that; in the first storyline that Lara-Su appeared in, she was time travelling from a future where Knuckles went bad and was trying to prevent it from happening. She... did not achieve this, and basically her entire subplot was a waste of time. 

 

It's not the only time. If 25YL had continued, King Sonic would have just floated around as a kind of time spectre unable to really do much of anything and thus verifying that HIS big plot was a waist of time as well. And then there's the fact that Knuckles first victory against Enerjak was due to his father intervening, or the fact that many of his plots involved him ultimately being directed by others... if it weren't for the fact that Penders does not begin to possess the kind of skill needed to pull it off, I'd almost suspect it of being a recurring theme rather than a recurring *flaw* in his work. 

[Osmium]

Ugh, those Endgame pics. Reminds me how Sonic escaped only because Robotnik's SWATbots shot it down for no reason, which actively went against their creator's plans. Reminds me that aside from a great Spaz fight scene, Sonic was completely unnecessary to his arch-enemy's downfall; how it would have ended the same way even if Sonic was in jail.

 

Only Penders could make such a huge story in a comic that had nothing to do with it's main character. Endgame pretends that it's about Sonic while it's really about everyone else, especially Sally who is barely seen throughout the whole story. 

And then there's the fact that Knuckles first victory against Enerjak was due to his father intervening, or the fact that many of his plots involved him ultimately being directed by others... if it weren't for the fact that Penders does not begin to possess the kind of skill needed to pull it off, I'd almost suspect it of being a recurring theme rather than a recurring *flaw* in his work. 

 

Completely forgot about that. Yeah, for a comic that's supposed to be about Knuckles, he doesn't really do anything outside of wandering around and muttering to himself while everyone else did the real stuff. He just seemed to be there as a sort of blank slate. 

[Verb & Noun]

Cringeworthy though it may be, what little I've seen of Penders's early work on the comic's gag-a-day beginnings reads a lot better than his later po-faced "serious" stuff.

 

That's probably because his co-writer (Mike Kanterovich) helped him out. Once Mike left and Pendejo was left to his own devices things started to get shakey.

 

And if you want to see Sonic not talking/acting like Sonic, go no farther than Sonic Live where Sonic begins dropping sentences like this:

 

 

Coalescing, really? It's a perfectly valid word that explains the situation just fine but it would also probably never come out of Sonic's mouth, ever. I mean it's not in his character. And secondarily, he's talking to two kids that he's trying to explain the situation to. If he's trying to explain something to them, why use words that they're not going to understand? It's not even as if it couldn't easily be replaced with 'gathering up'. Is he trying to impress them?

 

But no- that's just what occurs when your dialogue is written by Pendejo.

[Osmium]

That's probably because his co-writer (Mike Kanterovich) helped him out. Once Mike left and Pendejo was left to his own devices things started to get shakey.

 

And if you want to see Sonic not talking/acting like Sonic, go no farther than Sonic live where Sonic begins dropping sentences like this:

 

 

Coalescing, really? It's a perfectly valid word that explains the situation just fine but it would also probably never come out of Sonic's mouth, ever. I mean it's not in his character. And secondarily, he's talking to two kids that you're trying to explain the situation to. If you're trying to explain something to them, why use words that they're not going to understand? It's not even as if it couldn't easily be replaced with 'gathering up'. Is he trying to impress them?

 

But no- that's just what occurs when your dialogue is written by Pendejo.

 

Oh, sweet jesus, Sonic Live. That whole thing was nothing but technobabble and rubbish. 

 

Of course Sonic ends up in some random "in between zone" between his dimension and Kenders' offspring's dimension. It's nice how Kenders tries to shoehorn his kids into a comic. It seems that his self obsession also means that he feels he has to put his family into it as of course, we all wanted to see Penders' kids. 

 

Later on, we see some comic book staff, just because. And then the kid puts in some random code, because he a Sonic fan. 

 

And also, the art was extremely creepy. Sonic's expressions were vapid and he seems to be way too over sized next to those kids. Sonic's only like 3 feet tall, and those kids are probably at least 4-5 feet tall.

 

It was like Sonic X, except it was even more lazy and horrifying. 

 

Oh yea, and here's another picture for you. 

 

 

Sonic should never say decipher. Ever. I think that's even more out of character than coalescing. 

[QuantumEdge]

I can't speak for the Vector, but I wouldn't be surprised if Penders were to blame Kanterovich for bad jokes in that Tails panel (even though Mike K. was the guy who basically checked Penders).

 

Though speaking of bad dialogue, I was flipping through #88 the other day, and read the Knuckles back-up that Penders wrote. Since this is just part one of a longer back-up, I can't really speak for how bad it really is as a story, but I can say the dialogue is just really bland. A common criticism I see of Pen's writing is that characters don't have a distinct voice, and that really stuck out to me without even trying to look for things to complain about.

 

Knuckles, of course, effects a bit of that wiseguy/tough guy tone, and Penders really exaggerates Rob's Middle English and Bunnie's southern drawl ("Shoah glad yoah heah..."), but he completely drops Antoine's accent and mannerisms, making him not very distinct from even Knuckles. Which is really bad because part of Antoine's character are his mannerisms and how he misuses certain English phrases or words. And then I realized you could strip all these characters of their accents and they'd all blend together. Even when other writers, and I don't just mean Flynn, wrote a lot of these characters, accent or no, the voices seemed distinct and clear. When Penders writes them, the only real separation is some mangling of an accent or dialect, with little understanding of how it should actually sound.

Ah, you're talking of the beginning to the Chaos Knuckles Saga.  Oh, how I remember the happy days in forcing myself to read start to finish just to understand how terrible it truly is.  I know Endgame and Mobius X Years Later get more flak, but this is even worse in my opinion.  I've never seen something drone on so miserably for over TWO years!  All for a story that induces nothing but deathly boredom, facepalms and some sad artwork.

[Sunwalker]

Before reading this thread I had not noticed how many times Penders uses bold words. Now I cannot stop noticing... [emoji13]

[Osmium]

Before reading this thread I had not noticed how many times Penders uses bold words. Now I cannot stop noticing... [emoji13]

 

You're welcome ! 

 

Now you will see the whole world like this !! 

[Verb & Noun]

You're very welcome!

[QuantumEdge]

I've been reading aloud your bolded posts and I think it's official Pen has a Star Trek obsession.  It really does make you sound like Shatner!

[Zaysho]

I feel like y'all know how to emphasize better than Penders does.

 

*beat*

 

 

Ah, you're talking of the beginning to the Chaos Knuckles Saga.  Oh, how I remember the happy days in forcing myself to read start to finish just to understand how terrible it truly is.  I know Endgame and Mobius X Years Later get more flak, but this is even worse in my opinion.  I've never seen something drone on so miserably for over TWO years!  All for a story that induces nothing but deathly boredom, facepalms and some sad artwork.

 
Oh God. I'd actually forgotten about that for a second. Crap.
 
I actually haven't read the entire saga before... when I was a kid I sometimes missed a month or two, and the book was so difficult to access when you picked it back up that I ended up dropping it after putting up with it until Sonic #125 or so. I just remember opening an issue and Knuckles was suddenly green... and, yeah, nothing was happening. Like, it was Knuckles moving Julie-Su into a new apartment or something and something was happening with Dimitri and Mogul, but I still have no idea what.

 

It's like Flynn wanted to erase the bad memories of this with "Enerjak Reborn" or something, because it retained the same premise, but was far more readable and easy to get invested in--this is roughly when I got back into the book, so I actually didn't expect to get hooked back in so quickly and easily.

 

...Even though it's the stuff that drove me away, I do still want to read that particular era, just to experience it for myself, even if I already know what I'm in store for.