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

[Dr. Detective]

Penders is just mad that 

Spoiler

it took Paramount less than a minute to make a more likeable father character for Knuckles than he could ever do with multiple issues of a comic and an entire second series under his belt.

Seriously, they have no reason to pay attention to or care about anything this weird space alien says or thinks. If he thinks the stars are going to align for him a second time when it comes to this then screw the third film. THIS'LL be the sequel I can't wait to see.

[Dr. Detective]

... OOOOH! I get it.

He's insane.

This man is just bonkers.

It all makes sense now.

[Edward850]

I'm sorry what. He thinks he owns a character because he has the publishing rights to some books? That just not how... What?

He did it. He finally managed to deliver psychic damage through the internet. He also managed to stumble onto something that I'm actually qualified to say he's wrong about 100%, feel free to directly quote me on this, this comes up in game publishing and IP rights all the time; just because you own the rights to publish something, that can't mean you have the rights to create new content for all properties the work contains or is adjacent to, because each thing is under it's own contract that exists solely for the work it contained. His characters are one thing (if they are even actually his), but SEGA's characters can't suddenly loose their IP rights just because they were licensed to a comic book at one point.

Maybe he needs to read up on the legal pretzel that is No One Lives Forever, or heck any car racing simulator with licensed cars (though watch him weasel his way into claiming games somehow are magically different because they aren't important in his viewpoint). Or a comic book example, any crossover! You think SEGA own Mega Man now? Because it's the exact same logic.

Why am I even saying this here? He ain't reading this.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I never thought he’d top claiming he gave Knuckles value as a character, but having the nerve to claim that he has some form of ownership over him is one of the most utterly idiotic statements I have ever seen from this man, and this is the man who claims to have legal experience.

God would it be so good to see him try only for the sake of seeing him smashed by a cease and desist.

[Leebo4]

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

I'm sorry what. He thinks he owns a character because he has the publishing rights to some books? That just not how... What?

He did it. He finally managed to deliver psychic damage through the internet. He also managed to stumble onto something that I'm actually qualified to say he's wrong about 100%, feel free to directly quote me on this, this comes up in game publishing and IP rights all the time; just because you own the rights to publish something, that can't mean you have the rights to create new content for all properties the work contains or is adjacent to, because each thing is under it's own contract that exists solely for the work it contained. His characters are one thing (if they are even actually his), but SEGA's characters can't suddenly loose their IP rights just because they were licensed to a comic book at one point.

Maybe he needs to read up on the legal pretzel that is No One Lives Forever, or heck any car racing simulator with licensed cars (though watch him weasel his way into claiming games somehow are magically different because they aren't important in his viewpoint). Or a comic book example, any crossover! You think SEGA own Mega Man now? Because it's the exact same logic.

Why am I even saying this here? He ain't reading this.

I think he meant his praetorian character

2 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

... OOOOH! I get it.

He's insane.

This man is just bonkers.

It all makes sense now.

 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

No, because he already believes he can use that guy. He's talking about Knuckles here.

[Edward850]

Thinking on it more, this might not be him claiming he owns Knuckles yet, rather what he intends to be the outcome of the court case. Which is absurd for so many reasons, including first him openly broadcasting his legal strategy, but moreso you can't be awarded IP from a court case, and any lawyer knows this. He can at best get money but they can't arbitrarily award property. In the strictly hypothetical scenario that there's any kind of settlement at all

Spoiler

(because I can't fathom an angle where he can argue that Knuckles having a dad can only be his idea)

, they aren't going to give him something that would be impossible for him to get through any other means.

[Zonic 2099]

You know, maybe it won't be so bad for him to use Knuckles. I mean, at least that way SEGA can drag him kicking and screaming back into our reality with a cease and desist.

[Dreadknux]

6 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Why am I even saying this here? He ain't reading this.

I wouldn’t be so sure..! I met him in person once at a Sonic Revolution convention some years back and when I told him that I owned Sonic Stadium he immediately went “oh, you’re those guys that hate me…” 

Cue an awkward ten minute conversation where I had to basically calm him down and, [a] say that shit people say on a website forum isn’t representative of what the actual website (especially it’s owner) thinks (even though I don’t necessarily disagree, lol) and [b] gently suggest that maybe people won’t dunk on him if he doesn’t do dunkable/self-owning things.

We kind of got on after that, levelled things out and then went and spoke to a bunch of other people… until I was about to leave about a half hour later and he ran up to me to complain that we retweeted a photo of him meeting Takashi Iizuka (the one that people were meme’ing was about them having an argument) and wrote something that supported that misinterpretation. 🫠 So yeah, nice enough guy in real life but definitely spends a bit too much time online worrying about what people think… and I think he definitely reads this forum (or at least, used to).

Anyway, if I was being generous I’d say that Penders was mostly talking about the ‘mythology’ of Knuckles (ie. his backstory and family tree etc) rather than owning the character Knuckles himself. But it kind of ignores that a Knuckles mythology of similar (but not identical) note also exists in both the games (Sonic Adventure) and other comics (Sonic the Comic)… that and Penders’ Knuckles Mythology basically extends to:

Old Knuckles
Knuckles With A Beard
Knuckles With A Hat
Knuckles With A Scar And A Broken Leg Or Something
A Slightly More Pink Knuckles
Knuckles With A Coat. And A Beard, But Not The Same Knuckles As Knuckles With A Beard

And so on. I’m not sure he can lay a huge claim to originality here, at least in the design department.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Judging by things so far, I'm worried he'll get away with this.

You can't sue Penders for putting Knuckles in his book, if Lara-Su Chronicles never comes out. Clever bastard.

[SBR2]

11 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

... OOOOH! I get it.

He's insane.

This man is just bonkers.

It all makes sense now.

I want this to collapse on him so bad. This has the makings of a total clusterfuck and I'm here for it.

[Shiny Gems]

I just thought of something. While it may be a little obvious, in the Archie lawsuit, he was fighting to get the characters he made back. In this scenario with Viacom, he is possibly plotting to sue them for using echidnas, including giving Knuckles a father. Those are two different kind of lawsuits. Maybe not entirely different, but you should know what I mean. He was only lucky that Archie screwed up in the lawsuit he made against them. He is not going to have the same kind of luck, for this is a different scenario, with a different company. If he is thinking he will win like with Archie, he is daft. If he does this, I do believe he will become a laughing stock for trying to win against Viacom/Paramount.

[Mega]

Most likely, Ken loses it all. Going up against Paramount would be shooting himself in the foot big time. Even with the ugly redesigns, his characters are still blatantly derivative of Sonic echidnas.

[Candescence]

Oh for the love of... Is he really going to dig another hole for himself? Who am I kidding, of course he is.

Cripes, this whole Penders affair seems like such a waste. One man's ego and Archie's inability to keep their shit together has robbed this series of a whole collection of viable and interesting characters, and while I'm normally sympathetic to creator's rights, the man has squandered his gains and spent how long not making anything of actual note beyond teasers.

And he's basically blacklisted by the whole industry for the shit he pulled and burned his remaining goodwill with anyone who isn't a diehard fan. What a joke.

[SkullPirateMike]

Honestly, I think if Sega's lawyers had gotten involved in the Archie lawsuit, they could've easily won and kept the characters Ken has ownership of now. Sega told Archie to settle because they weren't interested in spending money fighting for characters they had never used and were never planning on using, and Ken couldn't do anything with them anyway because they're largely unusable without infringing on the Sonic trademark. Thanks to him designing so many characters by adding hats to existing Sega characters.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

5 hours ago, Dreadknux said:

And so on. I’m not sure he can lay a huge claim to originality here, at least in the design department.

If he’s reading these forums, then he should read this:

Pender’s hire a character designer, and completely redesign all your characters. No seriously, after 10 years of this going on, I know for a doggone fact you have the money to afford one, they can make them stand out separately from Sonic characters, and you have something much more visually appealing to look at.

I was perhaps the only person in this forum to actually compliment one of your designs, the one for Salma, which was the only good one out of all of them. And I truly believe you could have been much further along, and would have avoided this altogether had you done that from the start.

Talking from personal experience. If you were able to lead a comic team before, you can lead a new one with no ties to Sonic. Would work out a helluva more in your favor than what you’re doing now.

 

[Rabbitearsblog]

As Sonic would say...

[Zaysho]

Honestly, I don't know if there's anything Sega's lawyers could have done that Archie's couldn't (bear in mind Archie had to hire a new legal team in the midst of this because they were already floundering the case). The crux of the whole case was that he went behind their backs and filed copyrights the moment he discovered Archie didn't have the contracts, and Sonic wasn't in a poor position in 2010 when he made that Wily-esque announcement on his website. Without those contracts, and with the copyrights already filed (for those characters and scripts) in his name, it looks like dismissal and Archie just getting rid of his shit (and effectively everyone else's if they didn't work at Archie anymore) was the only course.

 

 

That, of course, doesn't entitle him to make stupid claims like he can use Knuckles, but him clearly not having a firm grasp on this stuff because he got lucky on a technicality isn't surprising.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

13 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

God would it be so good to see him try only for the sake of seeing him smashed by a crease and desist.

I don't think we need to crease him. Too gory XD.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Ken, honey. Speaking to your imaginary friends this much can't be healthy for you.

Seriously speaking, he does not have as big a base as he'd like to imagine.

[Rabbitearsblog]

40 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Ken, honey. Speaking to your imaginary friends this much can't be healthy for you.

Seriously speaking, he does not have as big a base as he'd like to imagine.

Yeah, on Twitter, he's only got like 2,000 followers while Ian Flynn and Evan Stanley have like over 20K followers?

[horridus]

2 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Ken, honey. Speaking to your imaginary friends this much can't be healthy for you.

Seriously speaking, he does not have as big a base as he'd like to imagine.

Well, to be fair, I wouldn't discount the troll factor- people telling him stuff purely to get a rise out of him. That's what set off this entire farce, after all. 

Otherwise, yeah. It smacks of the same desperation of his insistence that he's been told by multiple comic shop owners how his Lara-Su crap is TOTALLY equal or superior to whatever Archie puts out. Funny how people's reactions off Twitter are always tailor made to be favorable to him, ain't it? 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

6 minutes ago, horridus said:

Well, to be fair, I wouldn't discount the troll factor- people telling him stuff purely to get a rise out of him. That's what set off this entire farce, after all. 

Otherwise, yeah. It smacks of the same desperation of his insistence that he's been told by multiple comic shop owners how his Lara-Su crap is TOTALLY equal or superior to whatever Archie puts out. Funny how people's reactions off Twitter are always tailor made to be favorable to him, ain't it? 

At this point, I'm honestly wondering if his most die-hard fans are really just trolls who enjoy the cyclical show we get from his ego trips.

[Shiny Gems]

1 minute ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

At this point, I'm honestly wondering if his most die-hard fans are really just trolls who enjoy the cyclical show we get from his ego trips.

I can imagine some of them are. If they are doing this to enjoy the show of his ego, I can imagine that they are just building and adding to his overconfidence.