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

[Ryannumber1gamer]

The way Patch worked was in Issue 134, Bunnie mentioned that ever since Sonic was thrown into space several issues back, Antoine changed in the year Sonic was gone. This went on without explanation until Issues 154-155 where King Max was being killed by Antoine who was revealed to be Patch. Since King Max just assumed his health was going on his own, he wanted Sally to marry Patch. Sally at first objected to it only to go through with it a few pages later. So the only time a explanation comes for Evil Antoine is at the arc where he is thrown back into Moebius and the real Antoine is returned to Mobius.

 

I'm not sure if anything else happens between those issues as throughout that arc, I've only read Issue 134, Issue 150, Issue 154 and Issue 155 through the Sonic Comics App and from what I've been reading from the Archie Sonic wiki. 

[biznizz]

For the record: Karl Bollers had originally planned that the Source of All, corrupted by Naugus, would have emerged in another location after it was originally nuked to sh*t in Robotropolis. Antoine would've gotten possessed by this, explaining his personality change, and when he was bodyguard for King Max & Queen Alicia, he would hijack their plane to the new Source's location. Then Max, due to his exposure to it as a child, would slowly start changing into Naugus, who at the time was trapped in the Zone of Silence/the Void/both. This would show why he apparently dropped all interest in Bunnie, and focused on his royal duties since the corrupted Source would have also forced Sally to bond with it for real like her father did.

 

But Ken, petty as sh*t and pissed off at Karl for how Return to Angel Island completely decimated the little world he had set up more than he could have thought, introduced the "Patch replaced Antoine" storyline behind Pellerito's back, probably lying to the editor that Karl would've been cool with it.

 

Karl also wanted to have Snively disguise himself in a mech suit and antagonize Eggman after he was kicked out of the Empire; Ken was the one to bring himself into the Brain Trust, where he would have sacrificed his life to save the FF's and get killed off for real since he wasn't interesting enough anymore or some such.

 

Ken had no respect for any of the other creators (the writers, Ken liked the artists who illustrated his stuff) or characters he didn't create.

 

P.S. This little exchange. https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/479849260599373825 Piss off, you two. Nevermind the fact that the cover in question has "Pending Licensor Approval" at the bottom and isn't the final cover...

[Ryannumber1gamer]

That was another thing that pissed me off but didn't Ken at one point mention that if something wasn't written by the original creators or him for example in terms of Sonic, that he considered it non-canon. For example didn't he mention that he considered only the issues of Fantastic Four written by Stan Lee were canon? Didn't he also mention this as a reason why he didn't use Mina until the awful issue 150?

[Zaysho]

That was another thing that pissed me off but didn't Ken at one point mention that if something wasn't written by the original creators or him for example in terms of Sonic, that he considered it non-canon. For example didn't he mention that he considered only the issues of Fantastic Four written by Stan Lee were canon? Didn't he also mention this as a reason why he didn't use Mina until the awful issue 150?

He did say that if Archie had brought him back, he'd have disregarded Flynn's run and picked up where he left off, so it's not surprising how little he cared about anyone else's works or developments.

@biznizz: Thanks for the clarification, Antoine turning evil at least makes some sense in that context. I don't disagree with swapping Patch in, on principle, but given what I know of the execution (I have the tail-end of those stories and I never understood what the hell I was reading), I think Bollers's take would've been interesting. Though, I'm not gonna lie, I'm glad that stuff was all done away with after "Darkest Storm" (even though "Darkest Storm" had some of its own dangling bits that were just ignored for the remainder of the old continuity, such as the Neo Walkers, but that's a separate issue).

[Big Panda]

The last minute "Antione/Patch" swap still caused plenty of damage.

Remember "Tatiana"?

[biznizz]

That was another thing that pissed me off but didn't Ken at one point mention that if something wasn't written by the original creators or him for example in terms of Sonic, that he considered it non-canon. For example didn't he mention that he considered only the issues of Fantastic Four written by Stan Lee were canon? Didn't he also mention this as a reason why he didn't use Mina until the awful issue 150?

 

What Ken said was that what other creators did with his creations like Julie-Su or Geoffrey was what he considered non-canon. RtAI was an exception because that was quite literally too big to ignore like he had always done. And in 150 or so, he was already trying to fast track Echidnopolis' restoration so it'd be back to normal, despite it getting so razed to the ground, even Ian had to have them living in makeshift huts during his run.

 

Also, yes. Ken did say that he only considers what the original creators of characters' work to be canon, such as the Lee/Kirby run on Fantastic Four. It only showed that: 1) he is a terrible candidate to be working in a collaborative field as comics, and 2) he felt he owned the Sonic franchise much, MUCH more than SEGA did.

 

 

The last minute "Antione/Patch" swap still caused plenty of damage.

Remember "Tatiana"?

 

Oh, yeah. Somehow Patch had complete knowledge of an event that only Antoine would have known and that Patch couldn't have possibly been around for. Ken didn't even give enough of a sh*t to even TRY to handwave that off.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

It was Penders who came up with the whole Destiny Titan Tails crap right?

 

Exactly why did every single character need something magically and important. Tails was ''The Chosen One'' and somehow led to a story where Tails was randomly kidnapped for months and replaced by a fake which just randomly revealed in one issue without any build up. Knuckles had the whole Chaos Knuckles stuff, Sonic was destined to be the hero of the multiverse (Heh that's kinda funny considering what happened in Countdown to Chaos Part 4), Sally had the Source of All etc.

[Big Panda]

I don't think the actual Titan Tails part was his doing. That dishonor goes to Romy Chacom.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

As for the whole canon thing. 

 

Penders. That just can not work. You can't have Bollers writing for example Mina getting killed in one issue and have Mina in the next issue you write where she's alive and well.

 

As for Penders coming back to the comic, Exactly how does he think that will work. First he's what caused the comics going into a complete reboot, took characters away that have been in the comics for years after he left. On top of that most people just flat out don't like his writing style, his art style etc. Why would they let go of Ian Flynn who most people consider the person who saved the comic. That's another thing that pisses me off, how Penders keeps claiming to be the savior of the series.

 

 

The one thing I can give him is making it more serious and go on the track of getting a more interesting story put into the comic but after a stream of crappy stories, crappy writing, and far too many characters, Ian came in and still managed to clean it all up and make more interesting arcs like Eggman Empire which is a far better Eggman wins arc than EndGame.

 

Sorry for the mini rant there

[Tenko]

Huh..in reply to someone asking about doing some artwork for Scourge he replied with "You mean Evil Sonic", and said he finds nothing productive in the character of Scourge at all. He really doesn't like that someone else actually made his rubbish evil doppelgänger of Sonic better than he ever did huh >.<

Also that remark he made recently about games having little to no strong story elements or enough to make a decent movie and that's why they fail as a medium made me wanna hit something. Obviously he has never given much attention to the medium, because as we all know they can tell stories people remember for years, stories that make people say, "hey why isn't this a movie?".

There are plenty of games that have more character, world and story building than some films manage to do, and having you actually involved in the world and interacting with the characters via playing the game and being in it can be a lot more gratifying than any movie.

I guess the guy just isn't a gamer.

[horridus]

For the record: Karl Bollers had originally planned that the Source of All, corrupted by Naugus, would have emerged in another location after it was originally nuked to sh*t in Robotropolis. Antoine would've gotten possessed by this, explaining his personality change, and when he was bodyguard for King Max & Queen Alicia, he would hijack their plane to the new Source's location. Then Max, due to his exposure to it as a child, would slowly start changing into Naugus, who at the time was trapped in the Zone of Silence/the Void/both. This would show why he apparently dropped all interest in Bunnie, and focused on his royal duties since the corrupted Source would have also forced Sally to bond with it for real like her father did.

Okay, while Bollers has made plenty of mistakes during his run (I will never, ever forgive him for the alien stuff), I would have vastly preferred this over the 'replaced by Evil Version' nonsense given how little sense it made.... before THAT particular revelation, I had thought Antoine's change in attitude had been because of some kind of trauma occurring during the time Sonic was gone. As has been elaborated, Penders ensured it would be nothing so rational or interesting as THAT. 

 

Anyway, yeah; Penders sheer disrespect for he other contributors is phenomenal, even more so given that he continues to be snide about them considering they spoke at his trial on his behalf, even Bollers. Yet he still continues to downplay their role in things while elevating himself above and beyond his actual importance. And that's not even beginning to touch on how little he actually respected the franchise, whether it be the games or the cartoon it was spawned from... so much of his stuff really amounted to trying to dismantle everything Ben Hurst had worked on while ignoring everything SEGA produced as best he could. 

 

It was Penders who came up with the whole Destiny Titan Tails crap right?

 

No, that one was Michael Gallagher; whereas Knuckles was Penders personal project, Tails was his.... while I can appreciate him trying to give Tails an important role to play beyond being Sonic's sidekick, that storyline really did become a tumor of a plotline. On the other hand, his story about what became of Tails parents was pretty good and heartbreaking, even if Bollers explanation for what happened next rendered it ridiculous... you know, it's interesting Penders is so insistent about the Echidna, given hat it was Gallagher who created Athair, the first Echidna other than Knuckles to appear. Last I heard he was still trying to get permission for his use. 

 

I guess the guy just isn't a gamer.   

 

This guy couldn't even be bothered to play any of the Sonic games when he was on the comic, despite having a kid the right age for it who was allegedly a fan. He even boasted about this. Just remember that every time he talks about the games, their value, their popularity and anything else, because he literally does not know crap, and willfully did everything in his power to be ignorant of them and not use stuff from them.

 

You know what's kind of funny though? I decided to look into his work elsewhere, do some research... most of his work is inking and lettering, outside of Sonic, and in all the info I could dredge up about his work for companies, he only ever seemed to get work due to having friends on the inside. He was brought onto the Sonic comic via friend Mike Kanterovich, his brief stint on the Star Trek comics was due to a friend, and his similarly brief time with Marvel was because he was friends with an editor. Not once have I heard anything about him getting in due to skill or talent, but because he knew people. Even getting The Lost Ones published was due to him stringing Jim Valentino along. 

 

I find this all notable, because a post on his website waxes philosophic about getting into the comic business nowadays... its full of crap and betrays just how out of date he really is, but he makes special emphasis about having contacts in the industry, and I think this is why; HE never was able to go anywhere other than Archie, and from what I read about his time on Star Trek (via the wiki), he just can't hack it in a work environment with actual standards. His success with Archie was done solely because the company was incredibly lax at the time, didn't give much of a crap about Sonic, and served under a string of editors who didn't really do their job. Once that went away, HE went away. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I think he said he did get permission for Athair. If I remember right, he also said he can't be credited for Fiona because Gallagher came up with Robo-Fiona (Which was a pretty damn sappy and corny storyline) But since Penders has permission for Athair, I'm guessing that means It's possible that Fiona and his other characters could be gone from the comics for good as well.

 

Honestly, the characters I hate to see go is Mina,Ash,Julie-Su,Saffron,Lara-Su,Khan,Iron Queen,Hope, The Downunda Freedom Fighters and a lot of others.

[horridus]

I think he said he did get permission for Athair. If I remember right, he also said he can't be credited for Fiona because Gallagher came up with Robo-Fiona (Which was a pretty damn sappy and corny storyline) But since Penders has permission for Athair, I'm guessing that means It's possible that Fiona and his other characters could be gone from the comics for good as well.

 

Honestly, the characters I hate to see go is Mina,Ash,Julie-Su,Saffron,Lara-Su,Khan,Iron Queen,Hope, The Downunda Freedom Fighters and a lot of others.

As I said, last I had checked he was still negotiating, so as far as I knew it was all up in the air. Given that Penders dismissively spoke of how Gallagher had 'bailed' on the comic, I can only surmise that the guy doesn't have a twitter or follow Penders. 

 

I regret seeing everything go for a number of reasons; I had felt Penders had some ideas that were interesting in theory, but executed so poorly by him that it would never seem that way. I had liked the world that was constructed, even if he botched so much, and under other writers characters and concepts he devised were given far more distinction, as was the case with Evil Sonic getting upgraded into Scourge. 

 

I really would give a lot to see the comic rolled back to what it once was, but not if it would mean Penders getting anything at all out of this. He does not deserve sympathy or compensation, not for what he pulled, and not for his actions afterwards, nor does he deserve to profit from his actions in any way.

 

My only real hope by this point is that eventually, Flynn will be able to have his say about all this without getting into legal trouble. That's the most infuriating part; Flynn can't say crap about Penders, but Penders can mouth off all he likes, it seems. It ain't fair. 

[goku262002]

After reading nearly every post in this thread, it has become painfully obvious that Penders has no love for the Sonic series, or its fans.

You read every single post in this thread?!

Dear god man.

 

P.S. This little exchange. https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/479849260599373825 Piss off, you two. Nevermind the fact that the cover in question has "Pending Licensor Approval" at the bottom and isn't the final cover...

Even Ken is telling his pet monkey to cool his jets, huh. how about that.

[biznizz]

I still find it blatantly ridiculous that Ken can have any claim to "Evil" versions of characters created by other creators.

Let's look at an UR Example: Bizarro from the Superman books. Theoretically, who ever created him could have easily changed it to be a Captain Marvel/Shazam character, and its purpose would largely still be the same. Or hell, he can be totally divorced from any character and exist as a parody of the Cape archetype by being the exact opposite in everyway.

 

The Evil/Anti characters are quite literally the same characters as the main characters in the comic, except they wore shades & biker outfits. And even after Ian restructured them, they are still (even Scourge) highly identifiable as alternate versions of SEGA owned characters.

 

The fact that it seems that Penders is more than happy to make his case by saying the characters "are now" more diverse from their original purpose, building off what Ian made to take them away, makes him totally makes him one of the worst pieces of scum to be working in comics; personally only beaten out by Frank Miller for his bigotry & misoginy.

 

To quote StarBomb (about Ken from Street Fighter): "F*** you Ken, your such a little f***ing b*tch".

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I agree on how stupid it is that Ken can even claim Evil Sonic and Robo-Robotnik.

 

Even at that point, It feels like he's just taking them and Moebius just for the point of rubbing it in fans face. I mean what use does an Evil Sonic or a alternate universe Robotnik going to do in his book? The second those characters are seen and recognized as a version of Sonic and Robotnik, I doubt Sega would just sit down and do nothing about it.

 

As for him thinking Evil Sonic is better than Scourge.

 

You...You have to be joking Ken. Your Evil Sonic was nothing other than a generic playboy jerk who tried to act cool and hip. He failed big time. When he was turned into Scourge, he was turned into a villain that could hold a major threat to Sonic. With Scourge and the updated Surpression Squad, the crappy generic and awful writing for them was removed. No more stupid 90's terms to try make themselves sound cool and hip. They were a threat. They had power, and they could hold their own against The Freedom Fighters.  

[biznizz]

Unless Ken is REALLY adamant on keeping Dr. Droid a version of Robo-Robotnik in another body, I have no idea why he would want to try to claim him. I mean, Droid is already a Robotnik-ripoff, but that's still going too far.

 

Take away the fact that Robo-Robotnik is made of black steel... you can't use the design (that's trademarked, and unless it can be classified under a Fair Use Clause, you'd never be able to show it beyond a vague silloutte), you can't use half of the name (even though the world is now phasing out the Western name in favor of the original Japanese Eggman surname, Dr. Ivo Robotnik is still a trademark of SEGA, whether they want to use it again or not), you can't connect him with anything Sonic related (since even on Ken's part, getting the Image crossover to be canon, if only for Droid's participation, is never going to be possible).

 

As Zaysho has pointed out, the expectaion that Ken could ever have even once been led to believe that he could possibly own the characters of Evil-Sonic the Hedgehog and Robo-Robotnik, outside of the Sonic licence is next to nothing and was only done in a mad dash ploy by a bitter, greedy jackass who wants to use the in-many-ways-broken U.S. copyright laws to stick it to the two companies who fired his ass for being incompetent.

 

I mean, hell, I could think up nearly a half dozen ways that Lara-Su could be remade into a completely divorced, standalone project that could justify (in a small, very small way) his court case & claims that his world can exist in a way that is completely divorced from the Sonic comic. But Ken Penders is not that smart, not that not-lazy, and not not-greedy enough to even try that; to start from a true square one.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Oh but you forgot the legions of fans who never want to say they are excited for Lara-Su Chronicles. You know, those ones Ken keeps talking about.

 

Honestly the only thing I can even see that Ken is trying to do by taking Scourge (That's right, Scourge the freaking Hedgehog, aka Evil Sonic) and Robo-Robotnik is anger the fans further and take another villain away from the comic. Let's face it, no matter what changes he does to Evil Sonic, he can't use him. If he changes him so much he's a completely different character then what's the point of even trying to take him? 

 

If he shows him and even use the name Evil Sonic or Scourge then people will call him out and I very much doubt Sega will stand by and do nothing. The name Scourge can't be used because Evil Sonic being turned into Scourge and having a name change is a Ian concept not Ken's so what possible purpose could there be making such a complaint about a evil version of Sonic the freaking Hedgehog, the main character of the series?

 

One more thing. Evil doubles wasn't even a original concept back when he was writting Sonic back in the 90's considering several other things already did that story like Star Trek for example in the episode Mirror Mirror.

[biznizz]

I wonder if Jerome Bixby had any expectation to the use of the Evil Enterprise crew or the Terran Empire outside of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek show, based on and including Gene Roddenberry's characters.

 

Yeah... piss off Ken. For such a big fan of Star Trek, I wonder if he knew that Roddenberry didn't write or have a hand in the story for the large majority of TOS episodes. Yet Kenny boy expected everything he made for a license comic to belong to him.

 

For a guy who stabbed Ben Hurst in the back and accused him of having bad business sense, Ken continually proves he in inept in nearly everything he does including his own business sense, outside of inking, lettering, and having connections to more successful people that he's sure to burn on Twitter.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Him claiming that the evil double concept is a original idea is something that really pisses me off. I mean what if the person who wrote that Star Trek episode suddenly decided ''Hey! Since I came up with that evil double concept then Evil Sonic should be my character because It's my concept''

 

That's another thing I don't understand. Ken waited years after he left before doing anything about his characters. I mean back then It was around when Shadow The Hedgehog was coming out when he left wasn't it? That was when Sonic's popularity was starting to go down and he left so why did he wait years before doing anything about his characters? I'm actually curious here.

[Wittymations]

From my understanding (and I can probably be absolutely wrong on this, so feel free to correct it), it was actually Chronicles that got his attention, the vague similarities between the Dark Legion and the Marauders was shown to Ken. He got a hair up his ass and decided to sue SEGA and Bioware.

 

Well, I guess he wasn't happy suing those two companies, so he decided to go all out and take on Archie.

 

or something.

 

Again, could be wrong, this is just what I gathered over the past few months I decided to see all the Pendering that I could see.

[antyep]

In the words of Yugioh Abridge...

 

Ken: I have my ego under control!!

 

 

Yeah, I hate to see out of control....

[horridus]

Well, I guess he wasn't happy suing those two companies, so he decided to go all out and take on Archie.

 

He didn't sue Archie; they sued him. It's a bit of a misconception that he 'went after' Archie, as they were the ones who, in the midst of his efforts against SEGA and Bioware, decided to join in and hit him with a lawsuit... a very stupid move on their part due to the fact that past administrations/owners had committed some very shoddy bookkeeping, and what should have been an open and shut case wound up being a fiasco that led to The Pendering. While Penders didn't exactly win as totally as he likes to portray, it's pretty clear Archie felt it easier to just not deal with him or open themselves up to potential lawsuit by other creators, and so junked their previous continuity in favor of the reboot. 

 

Worse, they nearly lost their right to publish Sonic because of it, and SEGA now takes even more money from them in order to allow them continue publishing... they were justifiably ticked off by everything that had happened. This is also why they clamped down extra hard on the comic... and I can't really blame them. 

 

That said, even knowing it was Archie who had tried to sue Penders first, I still cannot view the situation favorably when it comes to him. Archie only was ever allowed to publish under the agreement that everything they make would belong to SEGA, to say nothing of how badly Penders legally owning his stuff would screw up things for them given how intertwined everything was. Even now Penders likes to claim that they CAN use his stuff, provided certain things remain utterly unchanged... him trying to force the comic to conform to his vision even after leaving. 

 

As Zaysho has pointed out, the expectaion that Ken could ever have even once been led to believe that he could possibly own the characters of Evil-Sonic the Hedgehog and Robo-Robotnik, outside of the Sonic licence is next to nothing and was only done in a mad dash ploy by a bitter, greedy jackass who wants to use the in-many-ways-broken U.S. copyright laws to stick it to the two companies who fired his ass for being incompetent.

 

Oh, that's the beautiful thing. He wasn't fired. He LEFT. Of his own accord. Because the editor at the time actually started to try and make him do his job... see, as we all know, 25YL was a storyline that had failed to live up to the hype and potential. Enormously so. There were numerous complaints both online and directed towards the comic itself, and it wasn't difficult to see why. All that speculation as to what the future of Sonic would hold, and what we got was... Lara-Su being a teenage twit, Sonic having a midlife crisis, and an endless string of dinner parties. 

 

And yet Ken wanted to persist with this, despite the enormously negative reaction to it. Mike Pellerito put his foot down and basically said that Penders was not permitted to revisit the concept unless he made more use of SEGA characters, even going so far as to suggest Shadow turn up as an evil king. Rather than do that, Penders decided to quit, evidently convinced that they'd come crawling back for him. 

 

While having someone interfere with a story you are working on can be annoying, the fact remains that what Penders was making wasn't only not selling but drawing all kinds of anger and ire from the fans. And stupid as the Evil King Shadow thing was, at least when Flynn took a whack at it, stuff happened rather than just rambling on and on and refusing to get o the point. 

 

Personally... even if he hadn't left, I think he would have been fired eventually. Penders was far too use to being allowed to do virtually whatever he pleased by this point, and from what I have heard he was not the most gracious of co-workers or employees to be had. Even if he hadn't quit then, sooner or later he would have become too much of a liability to keep around any longer, I feel; between his attitude and his shoddy story telling, there would be little reason to keep him around for too long. 

[biznizz]

Oh, really? I had thought that Karl quit on his own merits (due to SEGA clamping down a bit, Pellerito's then inexperience as editor, and the feud he had with Ken), and that Ken was fired for, like, insubordination for not listening to editorial & SEGA or somesuch but was able to spin it as him leaving on his own terms.

 

And I'm also somewhat surprised to hear that 25YL was just as despised then while being published/just finished as it is today. I mean, obviously Archie had pretty much stopped printing the really negative letters in the letters page (I think that at worst they picked letters that, despite having some criticism, were still largely positive), and I wasn't around to see any message boards during this time (hell, I stopped reading the book about 2 years prior to that point), but I thought that was was sorta like the Endgame reaction: mostly accepted by a good portion of the fanbase, but started to sour over the years.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

He seriously thought his story writing was so good that Sega would be forced to crawl back to him in order to keep the comic running and give him free rule of the comic universe? At least when Ian gave a shot at the M25YL arc and was better able to include the Sega cast. He made Evil Shadow work by Shadow's wishes becoming corrupted.

Ian did so such a good shot that he even managed to get a follow up arc despite the negative reaction to 25LY.

I seriously don't understand how Penders can keep thinking his writing is brilliant when almost everyone is negative about his projects. He constantly blames other factors for why his projects don't do too good as mentioned earlier about the sales numbers of the Knuckles series.

Apart from Sonic, his original works didn't do good either, The Lost Ones for example was cancelled after one issue and yet he keeps saying It's a smash hit.

It really makes me wonder how The Lara-Su Chronicles will go because most people who know about the project are Archie Sonic fans. Apart from that, I think almost no one knows who Penders is as a comic writer (although maybe I'm wrong, idk) and when they see a book with characters who look like cheap Sonic rip offs, I honestly doubt anyone will pick it up (Again maybe I'll be proven wrong) but the one thing I wonder is if Lara-Su Chronicles fails and given all the time and other things he went through to get the characters, would it finally be a reality trip for Mr.Penders or will he be claiming it as a smash bit again? Eh I guess only time will tell.