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

[SenEDDtor Missile]

If Ian Flynn gets to the point that he ends up helping to write the third Sonic movie, Penders’ jealousy would go through the roof since he’s all about that “movies are real art and have all the prestige and glory” shit.

[VO.SUPER]

That "big deal" is the first time I feel like Penders cracked his facade of "righter than thou" attitude. He's always been a jerk, but a jerk with the facade that he's above these conversations.

Love to see it.

[Rabid-Coot]

Oh he's under the impression people were told to dig dirt on Rush because people don't do it unprompted.

 

[Rabbitearsblog]

3 hours ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

That "big deal" is the first time I feel like Penders cracked his facade of "righter than thou" attitude. He's always been a jerk, but a jerk with the facade that he's above these conversations.

Love to see it.

I think he started cracking a bit when news about Ian Flynn writing Sonic Frontiers broke out.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

3 hours ago, Rabid-Coot said:

Oh he's under the impression people were told to dig dirt on Rush because people don't do it unprompted.

 

He really has no idea how the Internet works, does he?

[The Tenth Doctor]

If I hear about a group doing work on a series I enjoy, I take a look at what they've done in the past to try and get a feel for what they can do to the brand. If you do this and find pretty sketchy stuff out in the open, it paints a bad picture.

Kenneth really needs to leave his bubble. Its not a conspiracy theory that the current staff are out to get him. They aren't. He's a nuisance to them and a joke to some. If he believes in it so much, he should sue them. Then Ian can put a restraining order on him in retaliation.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

In terms of throwing nonsense and accusations at Ian and the rest of the creative team, sometimes I feel like we've hit the bottom of the barrel. 

And then, as if by some Christmas miracle, Penders somehow manages to break open that bottom and reveal a whole other rabbit hole for us to go down to reach the end of some new barrel that's buried in the ground, and somehow by the time we get to the bottom of that barrel, he'll surely break through that bottom and continue the trend.

Is this truly the point we're at? The point where he's trying to not only make up conspiracy theories about Tracy and Ian having absolutely ziltch, nada, nothing better to do with their time than to take down a fan-comic because 'ken penders is involved', manipulating whole schemes and controlling people like a Persona 5 boss, all to take down poor innocent Ken Penders? Really? Your first thought when realising that one of the people you're working with has some extremely shitty views isn't about the person with those views, but instead thinking about how a completely unrelated third party making silly memes is somehow masterminding the fall of a project that you barely have anything to do? 

It's genuinely baffingly how far this man continues to stoop, just how low he will go. And there's exactly one situation this reminds me of to a tee:

For a short version, Digital Homicide was a game studio that made asset flips on Steam, and when James Stephanie Sterling posted a review calling them out on it, Digital Homicide not only tried to go on a huge brigade on Jim, but ultimately also decided to sue them, claiming that they were conspiring to destroy their studio, and was intentionally ruining the profitability of their games. A lawsuit that didn't work out particularly well for them. 

[horridus]

I'm just giggling at his harping on Yardley and others being unprofessional for making fun of him and his work. As if he hadn't repeatedly denigrated the work of his co-workers and successors and as if he hadn't repeatedly accused Flynn of being a thief. I mean holy god, this man has skin of paper and backbone of jelly. 

[King Scoopa Koopa]

13 hours ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

If Ian Flynn gets to the point that he ends up helping to write the third Sonic movie, Penders’ jealousy would go through the roof since he’s all about that “movies are real art and have all the prestige and glory” shit.

Just whipped this up real quick. Might redo it later, unless someone else does. Anyone can feel free to use it as it is as you see fit.

[Leebo4]

5 hours ago, Ryannumber1Santa said:

Sometimes I feel like we've hit the bottom of the barrel. Like the very bottom of the barrel. Like, the barrel has a titanium bottom, and it's impervious to destruction.

And then, as if by some Christmas miracle, Penders somehow manages to break open that bottom and reveal a whole other rabbit hole for us to go down to reach the end of some new barrel that's buried in the ground, and somehow by the time we get to the bottom of that barrel, he'll surely break through that bottom and continue the trend.

Like fuck. Is this truly the point we're at? The point where he's trying to not only make up conspiracy theories about Tracy and Ian having absolutely ziltch, nada, nothing better to do with their time than to take down a fucking fan-comic because 'ooo, ken penders is involved', manipulating whole schemes and controlling people like a fucking Persona 5 boss, all to take down poor innocent Ken Penders? Really? Your first thought when realising that one of the people you're working with has some extremely shitty views isn't about the person with those views, but instead thinking about how a completely unrelated third party making silly memes is somehow masterminding the fall of a project that you barely have anything to do? 

It's genuinely baffingly how far this man continues to stoop, just how low he will go. And there's exactly one situation this reminds me of to a fucking tee:

For a short version, Digital Homicide was a game studio that made asset flips on Steam, and when Jim Sterling posted a review calling them out on it, they not only tried to go on a huge brigade on Jim, but ultimately also decided to sue Jim, claiming that he was conspiring to destroy their studio, and was intentionally ruining the profitability of their games. A lawsuit that didn't work out particularly well for them. 

Just so you know Jim has come out as Trans

Plus what’s funnier in a sad way was that years later Digital Homicide still thought they were the victims in all this.

[Leebo4]

Plus I think that Ken actually knows how to handle a lawsuit and you can argue that if he ever does his reprint of the comics he’s setting himself up to be sued or the case against sega and ea or whatever you think of when he was sued when he copyrighted his characters

 

but I don’t think Ken would sue for the time spent dealing with the case he brought himself up for, asking for outrageous money for grievances, didn’t add the amount correctly and would have actually gotten himself a lawyer for legal matters 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

4 hours ago, Leebo4 said:

Just so you know Jim has come out as Trans

Went back and fixed the wording on that, thanks for letting me know.

[CertifiedNobody]

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1Santa said:

Went back and fixed the wording on that, thanks for letting me know.

I don't think you really need to. Jim was male at the time, so it's not exactly disrespectful.

[Leebo4]

2 hours ago, Ryannumber1Santa said:

Went back and fixed the wording on that, thanks for letting me know.

Your welcome

What do you think of what I brought up how Ken still knew how to handle a court case better than Digital Homicide

[Zonic 2099]

16 hours ago, Rabid-Coot said:

Oh he's under the impression people were told to dig dirt on Rush because people don't do it unprompted.

 

13 hours ago, King Scoopa Koopa said:

He really has no idea how the Internet works, does he?

Wow, this right here is the kind of hate felt paranoia I'd expect from a young child but from Ken, a literal old man that is just a very sad kind of pathetic.

The Scourge Rush comic was doomed from the start. Not only would it have not been likely to sell well but it's very likely that legal action could have been taken that would have had Penders dragged in regardless. While it is true that there are people who would love to see Scourge again, they want to see him in the IDW comic once more not in some disconnected comic, especially so if anyone on the staff's production isn't on the up and up.

The fact that he's just blindly accusing Ian and Tracy of playing a part in the comic's cancellation is as I said pathetic. Ian has not once behaved in any kind of way that would make anyone think for even a single second he would to throw a wrench in anything that has Ken's name on it. In fact he's literal Ken's polar opposite. And while Tracy is poking fun at Penders he has no reason to interfere either.

Besides, if they really wanted to interfere something fierce they could have taken Penders and Rush comics to court over Scourge's name and retooled design being effectively stolen.

[Razule]

1 hour ago, CertifiedNobody said:

I don't think you really need to. Jim was male at the time, so it's not exactly disrespectful.

I don't want this thread to go in a wildly off-topic direction, so all I'll say is that the polite thing to do is always refer to a trans individual by the name and pronouns they use now, even when you're talking about them in the past. 

[Leebo4]

20 minutes ago, Zonic 2099 said:

Wow, this right here is the kind of hate felt paranoia I'd expect from a young child but from Ken, a literal old man that is just a very sad kind of pathetic.

The Scourge Rush comic was doomed from the start. Not only would it have not been likely to sell well but it's very likely that legal action could have been taken that would have had Penders dragged in regardless. While it is true that there are people who would love to see Scourge again, they want to see him in the IDW comic once more not in some disconnected comic, especially so if anyone on the staff's production isn't on the up and up.

The fact that he's just blindly accusing Ian and Tracy of playing a part in the comic's cancellation is as I said pathetic. Ian has not once behaved in any kind of way that would make anyone think for even a single second he would to throw a wrench in anything that has Ken's name on it. In fact he's literal Ken's polar opposite. And while Tracy is poking fun at Penders he has no reason to interfere either.

Besides, if they really wanted to interfere something fierce they could have taken Penders and Rush comics to court over Scourge's name and retooled design being effectively stolen.

I am still kind of wondering how this could have gone to court if the scourge comic was made since you can’t copyright artstyles or designs and they would need to show it was a direct rip off

 

and a scourge comic with original characters and settings beyond scourge would that be enough for Sega to sue?

 

since you don’t see them trying to sue the makers of freedom planet

[Razule]

11 minutes ago, Leebo4 said:

I am still kind of wondering how this could have gone to court if the scourge comic was made since you can’t copyright artstyles or designs and they would need to show it was a direct rip off

 

and a scourge comic with original characters and settings beyond scourge would that be enough for Sega to sue?

 

since you don’t see them trying to sue the makers of freedom planet

It's a really weird legal grey area. If it was just a green hedgehog unconnected to anything I think it'd be fine even if it was loosely based on Sonic, but.. Scourge is a preexisting character made to be Sonic from another dimension.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

On 12/12/2021 at 8:28 PM, Ryannumber1Santa said:

Is this truly the point we're at? The point where he's trying to not only make up conspiracy theories about Tracy and Ian having absolutely ziltch, nada, nothing better to do with their time than to take down a fan-comic because 'ken penders is involved', manipulating whole schemes and controlling people like a Persona 5 boss, all to take down poor innocent Ken Penders? Really? Your first thought when realising that one of the people you're working with has some extremely shitty views isn't about the person with those views, but instead thinking about how a completely unrelated third party making silly memes is somehow masterminding the fall of a project that you barely have anything to do? 

You know, for all Kenny Boy talks about detesting these sort of low-lifes, he sure seemed in a hurry to bat for them against the "witchhunt" of daring to do a background check of them.

Huh. The moment it's connected to something that could've made him money and/or boosted his ego, he raises a stink about the bad people rightfully getting caught and called out for their crap.

Funny how that works out. 

[GentlemanX]

1 hour ago, Leebo4 said:

I am still kind of wondering how this could have gone to court if the scourge comic was made since you can’t copyright artstyles or designs and they would need to show it was a direct rip off

 

and a scourge comic with original characters and settings beyond scourge would that be enough for Sega to sue?

 

since you don’t see them trying to sue the makers of freedom planet

Warning: LOOOONG post.

The biggest issue is that we're talking about a character introduced as "Sonic the Hedgehog" and that the design and name that were intended to be used weren't created by the individuals involved in the new comic. Let me try to use some examples to illustrate my point. If you've followed Ian's interaction with fans over the years, you'll know he has a policy against not only accepting but even reading fan submitted ideas. This is because the idea, the concept of a character or story decision, doesn't originate with him, but the one submitting the idea. If Ian used a fan idea, even if he changed it up in someway, the idea is still the product of someone else and they have the ability to sue due to that idea being used without proper compensation. If I wrote a comic featuring Shadow the Hedgehog, I couldn't profit on it because it features a character owned by Sega. But at the same time, IDW couldn't take my script and make an official comic out of it because the script, the idea of it, originated with me, I would own that. IDW could of course come up with a similar comic idea to mine without any knowledge of my work. That's just a coincidence then and they can't be sued for that.

So, I'm probably coming across as really off topic right now, what does this have to do with Sonic/Evil Sonic/Scourge? As Penders frequently reminds folks of on social media, Penders holds the copyright to every story he produced for Archie Comics (Note, this is specifically for the entry on "The Good, the Bad, and the Hedgehog" where the character that would become Scourge was introduced. What's interesting is that only Penders is listed on the credit, whereas it should also include Mike Kanterovich who collaborated with Ken on the story as he did with other issues which are correctly credited.) Whether Penders deserves to hold these copyrights depends on if you believe that Penders signed away his rights when submitting stories to Archie or not. For our purposes, we'll assume he didn't since to debate the topic would involve unnecessary details such as the Archie fire and the document produced in court that Ken claimed was fraudulent, it's not worth getting into here. What that means is that the stories themselves, both the script and the ideas presented within, belong to Ken. It doesn't give him the rights to Sonic the Hedgheog obviously, but it does give him the rights to the stories he wrote and characters and concepts introduced within them such as Geoffrey St. John or Julie-Su. Does it give him the rights to "a character named Sonic the Hedgehog from another dimension who wears a leather jacket and is bad instead of good"? That's up in the air given how blatantly derivative and dependent the concept is on Sega's character.

But let's assume for now that Ken, in fact, does own "a character named Sonic the Hedgehog from another dimension who wears a leather jacket and is bad instead of good". Let's assume that Ken's copyright for "The Good, the Bad, and the Hedgehog" gives him that right. Does that give him the rights to Scourge though? The Scourge redesign was created by Patrick Spaziante upon the urging of Mike Pellerito to revitalize the character at the time known as Evil Sonic. While the new design was still the established character, the new design and name were produced without Penders involvement: the name Scourge isn't based on any story Penders wrote and the green color scheme, torso scar, and emphasis on flames on the jacket were new concepts added to the design. Even his shoes were completely redesigned from the boots he had before, getting a brief red design that was never seen after the transformation. These concepts were created for "Birthday Bash! Part One: Giving and Receiving" from STH #160 written by Ian, the first story after Penders was off the book. These concepts don't give the team at Archie ownership of "a character named Sonic the Hedgehog from another dimension who wears a leather jacket and is bad instead of good", but it's the same the other way around too. Like how IDW can't knowingly use my ideas for that Shadow story, Penders can't knowingly use the ideas produced by other writers and certainly not after he was off the book. Penders would own "a character named Sonic the Hedgehog from another dimension who wears a leather jacket and is bad instead of good". He does not own "a character named Scourge the Hedgehog from the planet Moebius who is green, wears a leather jacket, and is bad".

This might be getting confusing, so let's use some similar examples to illustrate how legal stuff like this breeds necessary changes. The DC Comics characters Superman and Superboy have been the center of various legal conflicts over the years and at one point were owned by the heirs of Jerry Siegel rather than DC Comics themselves. At the time, DC was using a variant of Superboy, Superboy Prime, who, like Scourge, was an alternate version of Superboy from another dimension. Superboy Prime was affected by the Siegel lawsuit, and while DC retained ownership of the character, elements owned by Siegel's estate had to be changed such as his name, now referred to as SuperMAN Prime, and his design. Things have since changed and DC now owns the name and other elements associated with Superboy and he's been changed back, but at the time this was a solution to the problem of ownership. Another example are licensed characters Marvel has utilized over the years including ROM and Godzilla. ROM is based on a children's toy produced by Parker Bros. and now owned by Hasbro and has inspired two notable comic book series: one my Marvel that ran from 1979 to 1986 and another by IDW that ran from 2016 to 2018. The ROM toy had a design and backstory that would inform both comic books: ROM is a space knight that travels the universe searching for dire wraiths that transform into other species. However, as Marvel utilized the character in their main continuity, once they lost the rights to ROM changes were made to integrate the concepts Marvel introduced away from the ROM IP. ROM's love interest was referenced and the Spaceknights adopted the name Galadorians based off the name of the home world that Marvel introduce them to. The Dire Wraiths also remained, renamed the Nazgoth. For IDW's version, elements from the toy remained and the Marvel comic inspired the series' tone and direction, but the original characters and lore from the Marvel comic were gone. For Godzilla, Marvel's series focused on the Toho character with his iconic design, but with human supporting characters created by Marvel or interacting with Marvel's established stable of characters such as the Avengers. After Toho and Marvel's deal ended, Marvel continued to use the characters introduced in the series and in fact even continued to use Godzilla himself with a redesign attributed to a mutated appearance and eventually a rename to Leviathan.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread when the Scourge comic was first announced, Rush Comics was clearly aware enough about this sort of thing to take steps to try and differentiate their Scourge from the Spaziante design by changing his quills, removing the flames from his shirt, changing his shoes, altering his scar etc. Problem is, that's backwards from how this is supposed to work. Rush shouldn't have been trying to take the Scourge design and make it legally distinct, but to take the "a character named Sonic the Hedgehog from another dimension who wears a leather jacket and is bad instead of good" design and making it legally distinct. Problem is that the original design is just Sonic in leather, hence why the Scourge name and design were considered better. But that's the problem, Evil Sonic's name and design are legally compromised from both ends of the spectrum. Scourge and the redesign are the product of Spaz, Pellerito, and Ian. Evil Sonic is clearly just Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog. It's damned if you do damned if you don't. Which is why Penders really should not be trying to utilize the character outside of something like a parody. Problem is, Scourge was the most popular Archie original character by a country mile and that didn't happen until after the redesign and Ian's characterization.

So that's everything with Penders, but can Sega or IDW use Scourge? Potentially. It's unclear who came up with the name Scourge - if it were someone other than Ian like Mike that's not employed by IDW it might not be on the table. The design by Spaz could be given that IDW has now worked with Spaz on the cover for the 30th anniversary comic. He might need some redesigns in they want to be extra careful about Penders - getting rid of the glasses and jacket specifically, but given how generic they were beforehand and how much more stylized they were made by the redesign they shouldn't have to. The biggest thing needing changed would probably be the fact he's Sonic from another dimension, since that story point runs up against Penders copyright for "The Good, the Bad, and the Hedgehog". That said, the fact he is Sonic including in name also strengthens the defense of the character clearly being too derivative of Sega's character, so they might not need to.

Will Sega or IDW use Scourge? I doubt it. I think the opportunity to do so has largely passed with the introduction of Surge, who fits similar archetypes and design traits that Scourge would have filled without the potential of Penders throwing a legal fit they'd have to sort out.

TLDR: It's unlikely that Penders can use the Scourge design or name even if he somehow owns the right to Evil Sonic. If he wants to use the character in the future, his best bet would be to either make him a complete parody of Sonic or change the character's appearance to something unrecognizable as either Evil Sonic or Scourge.

[Rabbitearsblog]

On 12/12/2021 at 11:39 AM, SenEDDtor Missile said:

If Ian Flynn gets to the point that he ends up helping to write the third Sonic movie, Penders’ jealousy would go through the roof since he’s all about that “movies are real art and have all the prestige and glory” shit.

Especially ironic since Penders wanted to do a Sonic movie, but it never took off the ground, while the studios did a Sonic movie anyway without his involvement.

[Adamis]

Penders has been working on that Republic movie for a decade and it's still not released.

The man is obsessed by the idea of making movies.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

1 hour ago, Adamis said:

Penders has been working on that Republic movie for a decade and it's still not released.

I'm sorry, in addition to his magnum failure of a comic, he's STILL been working on that movie?

[Leebo4]

1 hour ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

I'm sorry, in addition to his magnum failure of a comic, he's STILL been working on that movie?

Pretty sure it’s a series and not a movie

[King Scoopa Koopa]

33 minutes ago, Leebo4 said:

Pretty sure it’s a series and not a movie

One that's going to need to be completely recast, in the highly improbable scenario where it actually gets made.