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

[DaddlerTheDalek]

I wish he actually would had written a script for Sonic Armageddon. I'm sure it would have been... interesting.

[MGA_Gamer]

Is this damn thing ever gonna be finished?!

Not that I'm particularly looking forward to it or anything! This still looks terrible!

[Promethean0416]

2 hours ago, MGA_Gamer said:

Is this damn thing ever gonna be finished?!

Not that I'm particularly looking forward to it or anything! This still looks terrible!

That's the mystery between the waiting game he's supposedly playing with Sega as well as any possible legal hurdles he'll likely face depending on how he releases it (if he releases it). I am mainly referring to his "re-mastered edited M25YL story, of course.

Also, "update" on commission showing Tails with slingshot, getting ready to cause some mischief for Mr. 'Botnik...

 

 

[babsiwuff]

On 7/11/2023 at 2:37 PM, Promethean0416 said:

Oh look, a new banner. Looks generic as ever:

https://kenpenders.com/look-for-my-new-display-banner/

Anybody going to Comic-Con?

No, but I am going to Fan Expo Canada.  I'm torn between actually seeing this mess for myself, or avoiding him like the plague.  

[Promethean0416]

Okay, after reading this, I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like he is comparing the current writer's strike to his own legal battle once again:

https://kenpenders.com/a-strong-sense-of-deja-vu/

He must really want some attention before the beginning of SDCC...

[King Scoopa Koopa]

On 7/10/2023 at 3:38 AM, King Scoopa Koopa said:

Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet (yes, it's quite relevant to the topic).

So, for anyone who hasn't seen this -- or even some who have -- Thanks, Ken Penders went through some of Ken's walls of text and pulled out a few interesting tidbits: https://www.tumblr.com/thankskenpenders/722859292347269120/1-perjury?source=share

[StreetSonic2022]

Holy Mother of God... on Shade's part:

Quote

 

Yes, Penders still claims he legally owns Shade, and under advice from his lawyer still intends to put out an NFT of her to put his claim to the test. Yes, it’s incredible that he still hasn’t put out the damn NFT. It only needs to be one image, which he already drew! The market has collapsed!

Anyway, building an argument off the legal concept of estoppel, he says that if Sega continues to not do anything about his claims that he owns Shade then, in the eyes of the court, they’ll be forfeiting their claims to Shade altogether. But they aren’t going to do anything because they never wanted any part in the copyright battles in the first place, and to them Chronicles is a long dead asset not worth fighting over. Why bother trying to use Shade again and giving Ken a reason to take them back to court when they can just move on? It’s not like this franchise is short on characters. And so Ken can say that Shade and Julie-Su are literally the same character, and if he owns Julie-Su then therefore he also owns Shade.

Our copyright system is, indeed, a nightmare. Chronicles should have been halfway to the public domain by now.

 

And I know the reason why Sega don't want any part of the copyright battles in which Penders failed to mention because he doesn't follow any video game stuff: EA's involvement due to the company bought out BioWare (Sonic Chronicles' development team). Many people forgot that Sega and EA's relationship is... not good, ever since the Sega Saturn era. 

So, that's the f***ed up part of this situation. A character that WASN'T even created by a person but somehow have that stupid mindset that this = that in terms of similarity and technically owns it, when in actually, both are different and WITHOUT even thinking the meaning of the word, "expy". Whomever worked at BioWare at the time that created Shade even hears about this would have been PISSED off. And I feel sorry for that person.

Also, Archie, y'all f***ed up big time. 

Edited July 16, 2023 by StreetSonic2022
Fixing post

[Leebo4]

5 minutes ago, StreetSonic2022 said:

Holy Mother of God... on Shade's part:

And I know the reason why Sega don't want any part of the copyright battles in which Penders failed to mention because he doesn't follow any video game stuff: EA's involvement due to the company bought out BioWare (Sonic Chronicles' development team). Many people forgot that Sega and EA's relationship is... not good, ever since the Sega Saturn era. 

So, that's the f***ed up part of this situation. A character that WASN'T even created by a person but somehow have that stupid mindset that this = that in terms of similarity and technically owns it, when in actually, both are different and WITHOUT even  thinking the meaning of the word, "expy". Whomever worked at BioWare at the time that created Shade would have been PISSED off. And I feel sorry for that person.

The text is overlapping

[Ryannumber1gamer]

11 hours ago, StreetSonic2022 said:

Holy Mother of God... on Shade's part:

And I know the reason why Sega don't want any part of the copyright battles in which Penders failed to mention because he doesn't follow any video game stuff: EA's involvement due to the company bought out BioWare (Sonic Chronicles' development team). Many people forgot that Sega and EA's relationship is... not good, ever since the Sega Saturn era. 

So, that's the f***ed up part of this situation. A character that WASN'T even created by a person but somehow have that stupid mindset that this = that in terms of similarity and technically owns it, when in actually, both are different and WITHOUT even thinking the meaning of the word, "expy". Whomever worked at BioWare at the time that created Shade even hears about this would have been PISSED off. And I feel sorry for that person.

Also, Archie, y'all f***ed up big time. 

I still wouldn't be taking this as gospel as this still all comes from Ken's own mouth. Ken's been claiming for ages that he owns Shade, it's nothing new. SEGA has used Shade in the Sonic Encyclopedia that came out last year, and there was a big farted out excuse by Penders trying to run around about why somehow it actually really doesn't count. 

Penders claims he's planning on selling that as a NFT. He hasn't yet. Much like he's claiming to print out reprints of comics that he legally should not have the right to do so, but hasn't yet. Until Penders actually makes a move and actually decides he's going to any of this into a purchasable product, it's all a moot point. Everything he's done of Shade/Julie-Su at the present moment is glorified fan-art at the moment until it becomes something he actively attempts to sell for profit. 

The way Penders describes this, literally anyone could walk in, claim ownership to a character, and if by some miraculously hope - they don't respond, they are immediately granted it. It doesn't make any sense, and frankly - it'd be comically inept of a company to do so. 

Penders is relying on SEGA not wanting to deal with court cases to let him get away with it, but given it could set a pretty damn bad precedent for them to just let copyrighted characters slip out to people who blatantly didn't create them, and possibly create more trouble in the future, I sincerely doubt it'll be taken so easily, especially when SEGA clearly were allowing use of her last year in new works (Even if it is a history book of the franchise).  

This is all running off the assumption that A. Ken is right, and B. SEGA wouldn't bother fighting because "chronicles is long since dead". Meanwhile, I think it would go without saying SEGA really don't want to start setting up a precedent of people just being able to randomly claim their owned characters. By this same measure, Nack, Bark, Bean, or any Sonic character who hasn't appeared in years could've been claimed by anyone else in hopes it would slip under SEGA's radar because "they aren't interested". 

[Promethean0416]

The man's take on WFH contracts:

https://kenpenders.com/work-for-hire-contracts-need-to-be-re-evaluated/

Not sure what to make of this, as I don't think the man has been under WFH in a while (especially after the debacle with Archie), so unless he is going off his connections...

[StreetSonic2022]

11 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

This is all running off the assumption that A. Ken is right, and B. SEGA wouldn't bother fighting because "chronicles is long since dead". Meanwhile, I think it would go without saying SEGA really don't want to start setting up a precedent of people just being able to randomly claim their owned characters. By this same measure, Nack, Bark, Bean, or any Sonic character who hasn't appeared in years could've been claimed by anyone else in hopes it would slip under SEGA's radar because "they aren't interested". 

I honestly don't think that someone who had work in the video game industry would had the guts or common sense to "sue" a company they had work with to claim fictional characters to get royalties or copyright them (if I hadn't heard of). We knew that Sega hadn't use the examples (Fang, Bark, Bean, Mighty, Ray, etc.) at the time because they were "simply forgotten" sort to speak. The actual answer was they did not create an official modern design for those characters.

Although there was one incident that many people thought it may include legal matters on using one character to appear in a video game again. If you followed the Street Fighter franchise, you may have heard of Karin Kanzuki, Sakura's rival who appeared in the Sakura Ganbaru! manga and officially debuted in Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3. While she did appeared in other media (Namco X Capcom but that was only a Japanese release and then the Street Fighter UDON comics), she wasn't used again until Street Fighter V. Many people thought that she wouldn't appear again because she was owned by the manga creator, which wasn't the case because Capcom officially stated they do own the character. This also applied to Satsui no Hado/Evil Ryu because he also debuted in another manga (Street Fighter Zero Manga) before officially appearing in Street Fighter Alpha 2, ironically the North American version first, not the Japanese version of Zero 2.

[Promethean0416]

I don't think this is a new one, but he's attempting to sell this again. He co-owns this with Spaz, am I correct?

https://kenpenders.com/sonic-limited-edition-first-come-first-served/

Also, judging from this recent post, looks like he might be selling "survival" iPhone cases soon:

https://kenpenders.com/getting-ready-for-san-diego/

Hope Ernie Hudson doesn't notice...

[babsiwuff]

Well, Ken's staked out his spot at SDCC again.  Boy he does NOT look well these days.

 

[DaddlerTheDalek]

9 hours ago, babsiwuff said:

Well, Ken's staked out his spot at SDCC again.  Boy he does NOT look well these days.

He looks really tired on that picture, I hope he's okay.

[Promethean0416]

And so ye olde Penders formula begins once more:

https://kenpenders.com/and-theyre-off/

And yeah, hope he is feeling better, I imagine he is tired from traveling/setting up.

EDIT: Dawn of the First Day:

Guess we will see what "updates" he will show this time...

Edited July 20, 2023 by Promethean0416
Adding.

[Promethean0416]

Looks like he got another "commission" doing "Knuckles Live!"

 

[babsiwuff]

6 hours ago, Promethean0416 said:

Looks like he got another "commission" doing "Knuckles Live!"

Yeesh.  The anatomy on that kid’s legs is making my brain hurt.

[Shade Vortex]

TBH basically no part of...pretty much any of his drawings have any consistency or sense, just some mish-mash of strange realistic and surrealistic anatomy. I'm not a good artist either, but then again, I'm not...attempting to produce commercial works?
IMO the faces are pretty creepy too. Like, that straight up isn't selling me as a kid's face. It's more like, an elderly elf's head plastered on a small  mannequin's body...

I'm not even sure what I can say about Ken Penders' works that hasn't already been said a billion times, though. Thankfully, at the rate he's producing his work, we'll never have to see it on store shelves- not that it'd ever get popular, anyways.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

Quote

Finally finished the commission drawing a father asked me to do of his son posing with Knuckles...

"...and I said, 'no problem,' and they walked away. When I started the picture, I realized that I couldn't remember what his son looked like, but then I realized 'a son is a son,' right? So I used my phone to look up a pic of America's favorite son, Macauley Culkin, circa HOME ALONE in 1990. He was surely somebody's son. I figured that was good enough, and put him in the picture. A job well done, if I do say so myself. And you know me, I always do."

[Promethean0416]

Dawn of the Second Day:

Also, they sell used video games somewhere in there?

EDIT: Here comes the usual parts of the advertising equation with "sell back issues/art" and "promote unreleased product":

If anyone is there, wonder if this can be debunked or confirmed?

Edited July 21, 2023 by Promethean0416

[Promethean0416]

And here we go with more of the man tooting his own horn as usual:

Pretty sure there is a 99.9% chance of that not happening with the secondary licensor fees, so-called "guidelines" on certain characters, etc.

The easy way around is that they will simply create new characters to fulfill similar roles (Surge/Scourge), (Clutch/Mammoth Mogul), to name a couple of examples.

[horridus]

3 hours ago, Promethean0416 said:

And here we go with more of the man tooting his own horn as usual:

Pretty sure there is a 99.9% chance of that not happening with the secondary licensor fees, so-called "guidelines" on certain characters, etc.

The easy way around is that they will simply create new characters to fulfill similar roles (Surge/Scourge), (Clutch/Mammoth Mogul), to name a couple of examples.

Don't pay it mind. Every year he basically says this, that its amazing and that people are supportive and that he got a standing ovation and blah blah blah, and every year there's never any increase in positive chatter anywhere, be it on his social media or on his forum. Its the same as when he claims that comic book retailers believe his work is 'as good or even better' than anything Archie is putting out.

I'd also like to remind everyone that whenever Penders talks about SatAM, he only does it so he can pander to a rather specific group of SatAM fans who are willing to ignore all the crap he did to try and phase the SatAM stuff out of the book, just because he appeals to their fantasies of the book returning to the way they liked it. This man sincerely tried to permanently kill off Sally, has repeatedly tried to tout his Dark Legion as superior to Robotnik (and the later Eggman at that), openly talked about wanting to kill off Antoine and Rotor because he couldn't figure out what to do with them, and repeatedly mentioned his inability to accept teenagers as being Freedom Fighters and his pressing need to include Adult Authority Figures in their lives.

His interest in SatAM is purely for what he think it can get him, and when he says "Archie" he just means himself. Everything else in Archie has no value to him. Much like Sonic itself has no real value to him beyond it being the vehicle for a story he'd never be able to get made on his own.

[Guergy]

36 minutes ago, horridus said:

Don't pay it mind. Every year he basically says this, that its amazing and that people are supportive and that he got a standing ovation and blah blah blah, and every year there's never any increase in positive chatter anywhere, be it on his social media or on his forum. Its the same as when he claims that comic book retailers believe his work is 'as good or even better' than anything Archie is putting out.

I'd also like to remind everyone that whenever Penders talks about SatAM, he only does it so he can pander to a rather specific group of SatAM fans who are willing to ignore all the crap he did to try and phase the SatAM stuff out of the book, just because he appeals to their fantasies of the book returning to the way they liked it. This man sincerely tried to permanently kill off Sally, has repeatedly tried to tout his Dark Legion as superior to Robotnik (and the later Eggman at that), openly talked about wanting to kill off Antoine and Rotor because he couldn't figure out what to do with them, and repeatedly mentioned his inability to accept teenagers as being Freedom Fighters and his pressing need to include Adult Authority Figures in their lives.

His interest in SatAM is purely for what he think it can get him, and when he says "Archie" he just means himself. Everything else in Archie has no value to him. Much like Sonic itself has no real value to him beyond it being the vehicle for a story he'd never be able to get made on his own.

I can only imagine how effective it is as there are people who unironically like those ideas. Do not get me wrong, I do not think the old Archie and SATAM was perfect in every way. It is just that nostalgia is a very effective tool to lure those fans who do not like the newer stuff. From what I had seen so far, Penders doesn't really care about the old stuff as much as he wants to lure those fans who do.

[Promethean0416]

54 minutes ago, horridus said:

Don't pay it mind. Every year he basically says this, that its amazing and that people are supportive and that he got a standing ovation and blah blah blah, and every year there's never any increase in positive chatter anywhere, be it on his social media or on his forum. Its the same as when he claims that comic book retailers believe his work is 'as good or even better' than anything Archie is putting out.

I'd also like to remind everyone that whenever Penders talks about SatAM, he only does it so he can pander to a rather specific group of SatAM fans who are willing to ignore all the crap he did to try and phase the SatAM stuff out of the book, just because he appeals to their fantasies of the book returning to the way they liked it. This man sincerely tried to permanently kill off Sally, has repeatedly tried to tout his Dark Legion as superior to Robotnik (and the later Eggman at that), openly talked about wanting to kill off Antoine and Rotor because he couldn't figure out what to do with them, and repeatedly mentioned his inability to accept teenagers as being Freedom Fighters and his pressing need to include Adult Authority Figures in their lives.

His interest in SatAM is purely for what he think it can get him, and when he says "Archie" he just means himself. Everything else in Archie has no value to him. Much like Sonic itself has no real value to him beyond it being the vehicle for a story he'd never be able to get made on his own.

Pretty much, yes. I imagine he's not getting much attention at his booth there (maybe a few people, give or take), so he's just doing "the business as usual" with Twitter posting (I imagine this will change if/when he leaves the site), doodles/sketches, and whatnot.

And in other news, he's confirmed for FANEXPO Boston (one may have to scroll down a bit to find his name and "Data File"):

https://fanexpohq.com/fanexpoboston/comic-creators/

Edited July 22, 2023 by Promethean0416

[horridus]

39 minutes ago, Guergy said:

I can only imagine how effective it is as there are people who unironically like those ideas. Do not get me wrong, I do not think the old Archie and SATAM was perfect in every way. It is just that nostalgia is a very effective tool to lure those fans who do not like the newer stuff. From what I had seen so far, Penders doesn't really care about the old stuff as much as he wants to lure those fans who do.

That's pretty much it exactly- it's Nostalgia Baiting in its purest form, and it ticks me off because I really legitimately would LOVE if all the old Archie and SatAM stuff could come back. Hell, if I could make it so? There'd be no corner of the Franchise that would be untouchable. I'd kill to see what the current creative team on the IDW book could do if they were given unfettered access to all Sonic stuff.

That's why it particularly grinds my gears to see him spout off like this, when I know for a fact he absolutely does not care, while that same contingent will gleefully chug down his crap because it appeals to their fantasies of the 90s never ending. Even in the face of his blatant disdain for the show, Ben Hurst, and really any facet of Sonic he didn't create... including Sonic himself.