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

[Rabbitearsblog]

5 hours ago, horridus said:

They're still around doing their thing. I can't speak for how they're doing as a company but as they haven't folded and are still chugging out books, and Riverdale is still a thing on Netflix, I'd say they've more than moved on from the whole thing with Penders. Much like.... well, everyone BUT Penders. 

And evidently Scott Fulop, but other than that cringe inducing website he doesn't really seem to be active at all on the net. 

I guess the Riverdale series is keeping the company afloat.

[KingMario05]

14 minutes ago, horridus said:

Words... can't really do it justice.

http://narrativearkent.com/MAMMOTH-MOGUL/

Gaze upon it, and despair.

 

Dear God.

[CertifiedNobody]

2 hours ago, horridus said:

Words... can't really do it justice.

http://narrativearkent.com/MAMMOTH-MOGUL/

Gaze upon it, and despair.

 

That website is honestly kind of sad. I never really cared about Mogul but he deserves better than that. Fulop clearly has no idea what to do with Mogul when he's disconnected from Sonic. At least Penders had a little bit of Echidna lore to work with.

And oh god that shop is depressing. He's ACTUALLY trying to sell this.

[PC the Hedgehog]

7 hours ago, horridus said:

Words... can't really do it justice.

http://narrativearkent.com/MAMMOTH-MOGUL/

Gaze upon it, and despair.

 

Can't deny I'm intrigued (in a bad way) with some of what ol' Scott has "planned" for Mammoth Mogul.
 

Quote

AFTER A UNIVERSE-SHATTERING DEBUT IN THE PAGES OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG COMIC BOOKS, FOR ALMOST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS MAMMOTH MOGUL, OFTEN ACCOMPANIED BY HIS SUPER-POWERED COHORTS, THE FEARSOME FOURSOME, HAS CONTINUED TO THRILL READERS AS THE STAR AND CO-STAR OF A WIDE VARIETY OF COMIC BOOKS, GRAPHIC NOVELS, MAGAZINES, AND MANY OTHER PUBLICATIONS!

Uhhh...not sure in what universe Mogul was a "star" in any form of media, but ok.

I mean, I have a heck of a lot more faith in Scott to put together a decent story than Ken. At least Scott was a pretty decent writer in his few Sonic comic stories.

[Kazhnuz]

When I look at the design of this website, i'm torn between laughing and crying from pain.

And when I look at how this webpage is styled I'm even more depressed. They load a css framework that they don't even use.

Why, just why.

[SBR2]

If I ever start a review show I'm going to 100% always refer to Mammoth Mogul as "Comic Book Superstar Mammoth Mogul TM".

[horridus]

17 hours ago, PC the Hedgehog said:

Uhhh...not sure in what universe Mogul was a "star" in any form of media, but ok.

Therein lies the million dollar question. With Penders and his Echidna crap you can at least see a kernal of logic behind his actions- the Knuckles series had its fans, the characters introduced in it had its fans, and there was a good deal of (bloated) lore and worldbuilding attached to it. Wrongheaded as Penders precise reasoning for doing what he's doing is, he's not wrong in that there WERE fans who WERE interested in all that. I should know, I was one of them. 

Mogul on the other hand... he's never been a popular character, even in Archie circles. It'd be wrong to suggest he had no fans at all, but they were very, very small in number compared to what the Echidna crap managed to attract in its heyday. There is absolutely nothing to support even the delusion of Mogul being some sort of big draw with a huge fanbase eager to see more of him, and to top it all off? Fulop didn't even DO all that much with the guy- off the top of my head all I can think of is the story that introduced him and the main story for the first Super Special. And that's it. That's the sum total of Fulop's work on the character. 

It's just... mind boggling in ways I cannot begin to describe. 

[King Scoopa Koopa]

I don't think I cared much for Mogul until... I'll let you fill in the rest.

[Zaysho]

I always liked Mogul because I felt there was something cool about him. He's more or less depicted as a chess master moving pieces around on the board to get what he wants. And he's immortal so it presents a very unique challenge to Sonic and friends. It's admittedly a case of the concept superseding the execution, but I was, what, 9 when he was introduced? I ate this stuff up as a kid. And issue 56 is one of those iconic issues from when I was a kid because of that big fight between Super Sonic, Hyper Knuckles, Turbo Tails and Master Mogul (Spaz's cover is extremely memorable). Made me happy to see him still around at one point when I was out of the loop on the book for a few years, and I felt like Ian was actually delivering on the thing Mogul represented to me.

But even saying all that, even I think Fulop is vastly overselling this character's importance even to just the Archie book. Even I know he's just furry Vandal Savage.

8 hours ago, horridus said:

Fulop didn't even DO all that much with the guy- off the top of my head all I can think of is the story that introduced him and the main story for the first Super Special. And that's it. That's the sum total of Fulop's work on the character. 

To my knowledge, Fulop in general didn't do much with the book. He wrote a stray few issues, and more than a few of them were with Penders. His most major contributions were as editor and you can probably blame him for seeding "End Game" into Ken's head (iirc, Ken said Fulop was used to licensed books ending pretty quickly and with no Sonic games at the time it was just the expected pattern) or for bringing in Gabrie. He kinda came and went as a writer as far as I know. The people who did most of the heavy lifting for Mogul were like Bollers, Flynn, and even Penders (granted Penders had Mogul sealed in the Master Emerald for I don't even know how long).

[jungle_penguins]

"furry Vandal Savage" ohhhhhhhh why do I keep forgetting that part.

[SBR2]

2 hours ago, jungle_penguins said:

"furry Vandal Savage" ohhhhhhhh why do I keep forgetting that part.

It's because everyone makes Kingpin comparisons due to how he wears a suit.

But he's absolutely Vandal Savage's fursona. Though I don't think Savage is usually as verbose as Mogul.

[AlienBunny]

Just a gentle reminder to stay on topic. If we should talk about Fulop and Mogul, we should start a separate thread.

[Zaysho]

I don't think that's necessary, personally; these two's lawsuits are connected by similar circumstances and it's not unlikely they will be working together in the future for both their projects because they've collaborated officially in the past. As a moderator, I'd rather not clog this message board with a separate thread dedicated to Fulop's equally stupid project.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I wouldn't call it equally stupid. It's got about as much chance of ever actually coming out as Penders's dumb thing but Fulop has not spent a decade making a complete ass out of himself and attacking the current staff on social media. That doesn't mean I have any particular fondness for him, but I can't imagine him being a more insufferable personality than Ken on the face of it.

That said, my impressions of Mammoth Mogul were always scant mentions on forums (and maybe old official sites talking about the comics? did Sonic Central have a place for that stuff? I don't remember), and when I finally did get the chance to read the Archie comics, I kept waiting for what would finally, truly be the issue where he made his mark on the franchise. And then it just...didn't happen. The guy always felt like a side character in his own issues, even when Flynn was writing him. I kept thinking there was gonna be some deeper lore behind him, but most of what I left with was "he's just some asshole".

So not only can I not see that character leading his own comic, I don't even fucking remember the fearsome foursome's actual names. I guess maybe Fulop should have been an asshole online all these years, Penders has gotten so good at it he's inadvertently made me understand his awful stories.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

On 8/19/2021 at 4:34 PM, horridus said:

Words... can't really do it justice.

http://narrativearkent.com/MAMMOTH-MOGUL/

Gaze upon it, and despair.

 

This is why I commission artists to do my visual art work—I can’t do shit beyond sketching with a pencil.

At least this gives me hope in designing my own website.

[KingMario05]

So... ah... Ken's posted his terms on Twitter now.

Thoughts on this? (I was expecting this jackass to ask for millions, so that's a start.)

 

[Zaysho]

There is literally no benefit Sega or IDW have from licensing his material back when they can create other things or use things that aren't tied down with hasbeen writers, and this is just another attempt of his to hide behind fans of Archie. He's been weaponizing that shit ever since the reboot happened and it only ramped up with the cancellation.

I personally don't believe he's being entirely honest. He says he doesn't care as long as he gets his money, but keep in mind he has, in the past, been extremely unhappy with how any of his creations are handled and was constantly fighting with the only other contemporary writer (Bollers) on creative direction until that guy quit. And then constantly ragged on younger creatives that took his place when he eventually quit because their work on his characters was better received. I don't have any reason to believe he'd ever have a change of heart and that he wouldn't try to use this against anyone. His conditions for Archie to keep using some of his characters were that they couldn't interfere with LSC, and to effectively split the licensing between Sega and himself, something that Sega wouldn't allow. For nearly a decade he's been parading around acting like Archie and Sega want to keep the good stuff from us when he is a part of the reason (with Archie's incompetence and Sega's own negligence also being a factor) this happened in the first place.

So in short, no, I ain't buying it. There is no good faith here.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I'll sum up my thoughts with a brief musical excerpt:

I'll just start with the obvious point - $10,000 for such well-known characters like Dylan the Porcupine, Doctor Quack, Scumbag Pervert the Skunk, and Harvey Who - available for an entire 24 issues?! Sign me the fuck up!!

Why on Earth would SEGA want to take ten grand every two years for the sole purpose of licensing a list of characters that 95% of people could give less of a rat's ass about. Literally the only ones I can see people wanting to see here are Scourge and Elias, and the chances that Penders can even dictate Scourge's rights at so utterly low that you'd have to think that copyright law is absolutely broken if all it takes to steal a character is give them a slight costume change, and call them *description* *preexisting character*. 

Beyond that, there's also what Zay said - Penders is just doing this as a pathetic attempt to keep this stupid rivalry with Ian going. It's his attempt to 'one-up' him, and the only people who'll buy it are the only ones who don't know the actual context behind the situation. Like the fact that Penders has been on point before about what he'd want for licensing (Full creative control, M25YL Canon, Royalities, a fucking MOVIE etc). This is just nothing but a pathetic attempt to make Ian look like the bad guy.

And then there's SEGA/IDW. Why would they bother, lol? Penders is a petty child who can't go a few months without insulting their current writer in some way shape or form. He's someone who will try to claim Ian is vindictively going against the fanbase when Ian has said he likes these characters too, and he's just as free as the rest of us to make speculations on what SEGA/IDW would do given the chance. Penders has dragged SEGA through spurious lawsuits, and has proven himself to be an awful writer, creator, and collaborator, and he's a writer that almost no one in this fanbase likes.

If SEGA won't even use the popular characters that they do already have access to legally, with no issues whatsoever (Freedom Fighters, Post-Reboot Archie Characters, SatAM/AoStH characters), why on Earth would they pay to use even less popular characters with like literally one exception, and said exception almost definitely doesn't below to Penders anyways. 

But at the end of the day, people don't buy the comic for Dylan the Porcupine or Doctor McCo--quack, they buy it for Sonic the Hedgehog and the characters involved with Sonic the Hedgehog. Why would SEGA/IDW take a chunk out of their own profits that most certainly won't be repaid to buy back the D-list fan characters of a hack writer?

[Wraith]

I could actually believe that he's willing to secede full control over his characters. The Lara Su universe hasn't had any return yet so he's probably feeling desperate.

The problem is that the Sonic series has functioned perfectly fine without his material for a long time now. Why buy his extended cast for any price when you have a team talented enough to make a new cast that can fill whatever role scrouge or julie su can? No one needs it, so it'll remain a hard sell.

 

[Rabbitearsblog]

He's getting pretty desperate, isn't he?  Anyway, I don't see any need for SEGA or IDW to implement these characters because they are doing just fine without these characters.  And they might find themselves in trouble with Penders anyway, so best not to deal with this situation again.

[horridus]

I'm sure SEGA is just banging at the door to include a character whose most noteworthy trait these days is his ephebophilia... 

[King Scoopa Koopa]

How many of his characters would even work in the IDW comic in such a way that their past would be relevant without multiversal nonsense?

I mean, Scourge could work, since that is precisely his thing -- same shtick, new universe -- but anyone else?

[Rabbitearsblog]

28 minutes ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

How many of his characters would even work in the IDW comic in such a way that their past would be relevant without multiversal nonsense?

I mean, Scourge could work, since that is precisely his thing -- same shtick, new universe -- but anyone else?

And his characters would only complicate the established universe in IDW anyway.  And, he would probably start complaining to SEGA about how his characters are being treated in this new universe, so it's best to leave his characters alone.

[SBR2]

Ten Grand every 2 years for his frankly not at all unique characters?! This man is officially delusional. 

[Mr Silvia]

Shit, as much as as like to see a few of Ken's characters back, there's no way in hell this is going to work. I mean... it's been nearly 10 years since these characters were used. Even before anything else, how would you even use them? Archie Sonic is as dead as fried chicken, and we're years into the run of IDW. You'd probably  absolutely need to treat them like entirely new characters from the perspective of introducing them into the world and establishing who they are, what they're like. Starting fresh might help leave some of that Penders uhh, "flavor" behind, but as all of you are saying, why not just make new characters that don't have legal labilities or April 2019 associated with them? And Ian and company don't need to license new characters for $10000 every 2 years? Shit, I can only think of 2 reasons why I can think of using anything ken made nowadays;

1- Drawing in old fans, problem is, how many people are left after all this time who would be sold on IDW by the return of Ken's best characters? Most of the old comic fanbase has either kept reading the comics, scattered to the winds after years of bullshit, and like half of the remainder are radicalized against Ian and probably wouldn't buy the comics even with the old characters back. Then you have the problems of pissing off people who hated original continuity Archie Sonic and especially Ken's characters...

2- Dunking on Ken by using his characters better... actually by using them at all now LMAO. But really, wizard Geoffrey vs creeper Geoffrey, who're you gonna pick? Only problems are that that alone doesn't bring in bank, and doesn't get rid of any of the reputation from Ken's actions... Oh, any Ian already did it. Wait, Ian probably couldn't even wrap up the old stories (in IDW, not accounting for LHT standalone) if he started fresh with everybody. Motherfucker!

Anyways, how many of these characters are even worth using for free? For anything? Just skimming through I'm only seeing like 1 in 10 that are really useful, and like half them, Jesus Christ, these are some, uhh, "great" characters 

 https://archiesonic.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Loony 

https://archiesonic.fandom.com/wiki/Toady 

https://archiesonic.fandom.com/wiki/Vermin

 

Oh, and if Sega of Japan are even aware of what's going on here, they're probably still pissed of by Ken copywriting intellectual property their subordinates and contractors were using, and demanding payment for using shit they didn't care about. Fuck, SOJ really seems to hate even the idea of using Sonic IP that wasn't made by them, maybe they really did want to just eject his shit out from the franchise and this was a convenient excuse to do so, maybe they were just insulted by the idea of paying him, a ransom, essentially, after he started fucking with their franchise, maybe they just told Archie to deal with it and Archie went "We can't/won't pay you the licensing fees, goodbye", maybe SOJ were just clueless about the shitstorm going on at Archie, but I don't foresee any of those possibilities leading to things being settled amicably. Such a shame too, I want to see wizard Geoffrey again. Not Bond wannabe Geoffrey. I haven't seen ANYBODY who wants that shit back!