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

[King Scoopa Koopa]

9 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Uh-huh. Alright Ken. I'm sure that's how it works.

Wow, I want to laugh so loud, so long, and so hard at that.

[Zonic 2099]

12 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Uh-huh. Alright Ken. I'm sure that's how it works.

This right here might be another tweet that deserves to be in Ken's Hall of Shame.

Ken, you really don't want to showcase your ability to do mental gymnastics publicly. The really sad thing though is I feel like this tweet is a tease for how he'll celebrate the "Success" of the first volume if it ever see's the light of day within our lifetime

[King Scoopa Koopa]

At this point, I think it seeing the light of day within our lifetime would be a kind of success in itself, though how much it'll be worth celebrating is another question entirely.

[SBR2]

On 11/5/2020 at 5:58 PM, horridus said:

 

 

so apparently the reason Julie-Su is naked here is because it's her "preferred way of sleeping". Which sure whatever but like c'mon. The real reason is because you wanted to draw her naked. Be honest man.

Also since she's crying over her husband's death I kinda doubt that preferred sleeping arrangements would matter at that moment. She just stripped down to cry into her pillow, huh?

[horridus]

On 11/7/2020 at 11:17 AM, SBR2 said:

so apparently the reason Julie-Su is naked here is because it's her "preferred way of sleeping". Which sure whatever but like c'mon. The real reason is because you wanted to draw her naked. Be honest man.

Also since she's crying over her husband's death I kinda doubt that preferred sleeping arrangements would matter at that moment. She just stripped down to cry into her pillow, huh?

One thing I will never understand about Penders is his tendency to act as of his creative decisions are somehow out of his own control. Like, the way he phrases the answer to that one he makes it sound like Julie is somehow NOT a figment of his imagination and that her actions are independent of his will. 

You know, the warped thing is? I could see how that COULD work- you could have a stunned Julie maintaining her usual nightly ritual of preparing for sleep, numbly going through the motions and replicating the normalcy that no longer exists. Then she finally lays down, and the crushing reality of what just happened finally comes down, and all she can do is weep. 

Of course, all of THAT is dependent on demonstrating several things before hand- namely her sleeping habits, her close relationship with her husband, and so on and so forth, and we all know that this absolutely is not gonna happen. Because this whole thing of her sleeping naked is not being done in service to any higher idea of how her character is- it's being done purely so that Penders can show off how 'mature' his book is. It's the same pretense a lot of crappy 'mature' comic books from the 90s had, that merely including 'forbidden' things was enough to make a work mature regardless of how it was actually implemented. 

Also, while we're on the topic of Penders and worldbuilding-

Dude, I hate to break it to you, but simply switching their living space from the surface to the underground doesn't magically make them more ecologically minded. Disrupting and altering the surroundings by artificial means to the extent implied by the existence of a technologically advanced, urban culture is not eco-friendly by any means. You're just trying to make your pet culture seem 'better' without putting any real thought into the actual implications behind their lifestyle. Much like every other hack Utopian science fiction writer with an inordinate amount of emotional investment in their own creations. 

And finally-

 

'Echyd'nyians'?? So, what, that's the plural for Echyd'nya now? Geezum crow that's a mouthful. And really, I'd think twice about mentioning all that old Sci-Fi when trying to promote your Totally Original New Series. You invite people to draw comparisons to those works, and it only makes your various acts of outright theft from your influences that much more obvious. Like, if you really had to name names, 'Star Trek' would've sufficed.

[AlienBunny]

I think an easier explanation for Echyd'nyans living in caves would have been echidna live in caves, so Echyd'nyans do too.

That or he could've said he likes Coober Pedy. Though Coober Pedy is underground because of hot summers and such.

Also remove the I from Echyd'nyians. Nyan is better.

[Rabid-Coot]

Unless they happen to have a natural cave network digging underground homes will despoil the surface because that material will have to go somewhere and even if that material does get reclaimed by nature there can be other unintended consequences.

Also probably doesn't want to draw buildings and cant do the photo cheat.

[horridus]

Another progress pic from Penders-

 

I gotta say, that text has me somewhat concerned. He's only NOW found an approach that he's comfortable with? In the last nine years, it's only NOW he's found something he wants to go forward with this insipid project?? The hell has been doing all this time then???

[SatAMhog]

13 minutes ago, horridus said:

Another progress pic from Penders-

 

I gotta say, that text has me somewhat concerned. He's only NOW found an approach that he's comfortable with? In the last nine years, it's only NOW he's found something he wants to go forward with this insipid project?? The hell has been doing all this time then???

He fell asleep for nine years, woke up, looked at some old trashy art and called it "inspiration".

[OnyxCrimsonBlur]

I've been semi-seeing his updates every once in a while and I'm just wondering why he hasn't hired a better artist than him if he's so gung-ho on writing these stories. His art is just terrible. I can't even with these designs. There are so many other creative ways to make aliens than what this is. I just feel that he should quit while he's ahead and stop riding the curtails of Sonic. It's not working in his favor at this point since there is no comic yet and it was supposed to be released, what, 8 years ago now?

[horridus]

1 hour ago, OnyxCrimsonBlur said:

I've been semi-seeing his updates every once in a while and I'm just wondering why he hasn't hired a better artist than him if he's so gung-ho on writing these stories. His art is just terrible. I can't even with these designs. There are so many other creative ways to make aliens than what this is. I just feel that he should quit while he's ahead and stop riding the curtails of Sonic. It's not working in his favor at this point since there is no comic yet and it was supposed to be released, what, 8 years ago now?

By the time 2021 rolls on by it will have been 9 years, actually. The first announcement was done in late December of 2011. 

Everything you suggest is quite valid, but the problem is? Penders does not inhabit the same universe as you. I'm not even exaggerating there- he's made it abundantly clear that his knowledge of how popular the Sonic series is as a VIDEO GAME series is incredibly limited. He doesn't see that Archie was a niche spinoff made primarily to promote the games and ANOTHER spinoff of said games (SatAM). In his view of things, Sonic the Hedgehog is far better known as a comic book franchise with a huge international audience, one whose best days were overseen by him personally, with HIS contributions being what allowed it to attain that glory. He refuses to confront or acknowledge anything that runs counter to this narrative.

Adding to this? He knows he has nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing going for him but his work on Sonic and in particular Knuckles the Echidna. His designs are not simply ugly by accident- its the end result of him doing everything in his power to maintain that visual connection while making it just distinct enough to not be flat out plagiarism. He's flat out admitted he wants to do his Knuckles stuff again, even absurdly suggesting that he and SEGA could come to an arrangement. As such? We get a bunch of truly hideous, uncanny valley inducing aliens that look like unsettling and utterly incompetent attempts to translate SEGA Echidna into real life. 

Finally, and most mundanely, Penders is unwilling to accept criticism of his work or acknowledge flaws in his design work. He's repeatedly defended his Echyd'nya designs as 'But Star Trek!'. There's just no getting through to the guy. He's insisted that 'comic store owners' that he know have told him that his work is 'as good or even better' than the Archie Sonic book. This guy has completely cocooned himself in his delusions, and there is nothing that's going to get through that. 

It's astounding to witness, but it is what it is- a truly baffling mixture of willful delusion, insecurity and arrogance, and any question you have will have an answer in one or all of those things. That and him being straight up incompetent. 

 

[AlienBunny]

I can't complete this until Penders finish his. I don't do background much so it's sloppy, but my main focus was fixing the characters.

Basically the eye shape, flatten the hair more to the head, and the profile. I changed Julie Su's colors because where did Lara Su get her colors from? Also I like to simplify things. I did use Penders sketch for this when fixing the characters.

Also who lays on a hard ground? At least have some kind of bedding.

[Leebo4]

Do you know what I find funny

 

for this pseudo reboot of his characters that is somehow still connected to the continuity of his run

 

he made the echidnas a space travelling alien species

 

wasnt the backstory in the comics that the echidnas abandoned most of their advanced tech and it was the bad guy echidnas that refused to let go of their tech ways 

[Silvereyes]

Is it bad that I would probably respect Penders a tiny bit more if he just went "Look, I like sexy naked women, and I will put them in my comic because I want too." Rather than all this endless swings and roundabouts trying to justify it.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

It’s amazing how he never fails to make things about him.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

3 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It’s amazing how he never fails to make things about him.

He doesn't seem to realize that he's the Trump of the Archie Sonic Comics.

[Polkadi~☆]

7 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It’s amazing how he never fails to make things about him.

Does anyone want to tell him that his characters and stories were supposed to belong to SEGA (something that even Penders admitted in old interviews), and that he only managed to claim his characters because Archie Comics were shockingly incompetent?

And that he equates world events to his own nonsense really shows his narcissism on full display. Narcissists make everything about them.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Just now, Polkadi~☆ said:

Does anyone want to tell him that his characters and stories were supposed to belong to SEGA (something that even Penders admitted in old interviews), and that he only managed to claim his characters because Archie Comics were shockingly incompetent?

And that he equates world events to his own nonsense really shows his narcissism on full display. Narcissists make everything about them.

This isn't even the first time he's done it. He's done it a shocking number of times. He has this ridiculously idiotic need to either A. somehow equate current events to be about him, or B. talk about how he's gonna be super relevant by adding in recent events to TL-SC (already SEVEN, nearing EIGHT years in production hell and counting right now). 

Hell, just earlier this year, we had him talking about how he was going to somehow bring in the fucking COVID-19 pandemic into TL-SC. He's pretty much admitted to retroactively changing his story to fit this stuff, which makes you really take time to stop and consider how focused this story is when you can just slot a worldwide pandemic into the mix.

[Polkadi~☆]

11 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

This isn't even the first time he's done it. He's done it a shocking number of times. He has this ridiculously idiotic need to either A. somehow equate current events to be about him, or B. talk about how he's gonna be super relevant by adding in recent events to TL-SC (already SEVEN, nearing EIGHT years in production hell and counting right now). 

Hell, just earlier this year, we had him talking about how he was going to somehow bring in the fucking COVID-19 pandemic into TL-SC. He's pretty much admitted to retroactively changing his story to fit this stuff, which makes you really take time to stop and consider how focused this story is when you can just slot a worldwide pandemic into the mix.

It should be obvious that he has sat on his arse for several years, which is why he feels he has the freedom to put recent events in his comic. Anything can happen when you (hardly) write by the seat of your pants.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

One has to wonder if he's getting a general flow of income somewhere, given how he seems to have thrown a lot of bank into this comic....a comic which has been in the works for nearly a decade now, with not even one single comic to show for.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

17 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

One has to wonder if he's getting a general flow of income somewhere, given how he seems to have thrown a lot of bank into this comic....a comic which has been in the works for nearly a decade now, with not even one single comic to show for.

I think his wife's a lawyer or something.

[Zonic 2099]

Except unlike the Lara-Su Chronicles the Mandelorian is under the legal Star Wars umbrella. The Lara-Su Chronicles is not, and not only is it not, what it's trying to connect to is dead copyright tangled mess.

This just makes me wonder exactly how baffled do you think Penders will be when SEGA sends him a cease and desist when this thing comes out. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I haven’t seen the Mandalorian myself, so I’m not sure what the alien design is, but given that they attempt to kill the protagonist, I’m guessing they’re intentionally designed to be ugly, and comparing Ken’s designs is essentially like comparing shit to vomit.

Although frankly, I’d be willing to bet that these aliens in Mandalorian look better, and Penders is pathetically comparing his shit to something better once again. The idea that he thinks TL-SC is going to be on the scale of Mandalorian is funny in of itself.

TL;DR about Penders comparing something popular to himself:

[horridus]

14 hours ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

I think his wife's a lawyer or something.

Nothing has ever been outright stated and as such that's just a rumor. Allegedly though whatever she does for a living is high paying enough that Penders can.... well, be himself while seemingly having no consistent source of income of his own. 

4 hours ago, Zonic 2099 said:

Except unlike the Lara-Su Chronicles the Mandelorian is under the legal Star Wars umbrella. The Lara-Su Chronicles is not, and not only is it not, what it's trying to connect to is dead copyright tangled mess.

This just makes me wonder exactly how baffled do you think Penders will be when SEGA sends him a cease and desist when this thing comes out. 

It really is amazing that Penders feels such an overpowering need to validate himself via media works that have nothing to do with him or his work, while simultaneously bending over backwards to re-interpret things for his own vindication. As you said, thouse shout-outs are appreciated because everything is under the umbrella of the Star Wars franchise. Thanks to Penders, his Lara-Su crap is officially excised from Sonic, as is the work of everyone who was a part of the Archie Sonic comic. His work is no longer a part of Sonic, nor can he directly use or reference anything from Sonic, and his half-assed attempts to do so while pretending his work is unique isn't going to cut it. 

Though as I've said numerous times, given his utterly skewed and self-serving understanding of what Sonic is as a franchise? It's not really THAT surprising. 

3 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I haven’t seen the Mandalorian myself, so I’m not sure what the alien design is, but given that they attempt to kill the protagonist, I’m guessing they’re intentionally designed to be ugly, and comparing Ken’s designs is essentially like comparing shit to vomit.

Although frankly, I’d be willing to bet that these aliens in Mandalorian look better, and Penders is pathetically comparing his shit to something better once again. The idea that he thinks TL-SC is going to be on the scale of Mandalorian is funny in of itself.

TL;DR about Penders comparing something popular to himself:

Yeah no, Penders is once again refusing to actually address why people find his designs ugly. It's like the Lien-Da thing all over again. He claimed that she was meant to be 'creepy looking' because she was a 'bad guy', but it fell utterly on its face because of him playing up her (ugh) 'Diva-isnous' from the start and conceiving her as a femme fatale to begin with. That's without getting into the fact that the biggest complaint people have about his Echyd'nya designs (his abortive art nonwithstanding) is the fact they STILL look too much like SEGA Echidna, but then this is Penders- anything that runs counter to his personal narrative and desires is verboten. 

And yeah, Star Wars has some ugly, ugly aliens, but what Penders ain't getting is that they were created that way from the start. Like, let's take a look at one of the most famous Disposable Evil Goon species in the franchise, the Gammoreans-

Look at this thing. Its a space orc- a hideous, pig faced, horn headed wretch with a face that only a mother could force itself to love. And yet everything about it is so much better put together than what Penders has shown- you can tell this guy is MEANT to look like an ugly brute. There's a visual competence at work here that Penders can only dream of possessing, and no matter what he says or does, his 'Echyd'nya' look like horrendous attempts to make 'realistic' versions of Disney dogfaces with tentacles coming out of their heads, existing in the uncanney valley of realism and cartoonishness while clearly being neither. 

You'd think a guy who spent ten friggin' years in comics would be able to recognize that, but then that would have to discount the truly staggering amount of bullhead incompetence Penders has displayed over the years. 

As for Penders' need to compare his trial to pretty much every relevant legal/political issue of the moment, I think he does that because ultimately? It didn't matter nearly as much to the world as it did to him and the Sonic fandom. At the end of the day, he won not because he had a great legal strategy or because he found a chink in Archie's armor- he won because Archie completely misplaced the armor and simply never bothered. There's no great lesson for other comic creatives to follow there- you can't replicate that kind of dumb luck. And in the end, while Penders got his copyrights, they aren't worth anything at this point. He didn't get the big royalties. His work was excised from Sonic with no problem, and while Archie eventually lost the license, they're still doing their own thing while IDW continues to work on Sonic without Penders in any form. His former co-workers have moved on to better things, and the only person who really talks about it anymore is Penders himself. That whole fiasco hasn't gotten him anything approaching notoriety or acclaim, because in the end it hinged on Archie being super duper incompetent, enough so that any idiot could have succeeded under those circumstances. As such? He NEEDS it to be seen as something important and legendary, because if it isn't, then the most important event of his life, his 'greatest triumph' is ultimately meaningless. 

That and, y'know, raging narcissism. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Something that slipped through the cracks of all this, the finished version of a page:

As per usual, once finished, it looks horrendous with all of the effects and so on. Lara-Su looks absolutely fucking horrendous. The shading and all of that just makes it look terrible.