I can't see how Penders could have possibly won. I'm pretty certain the licensing deal Archie has, makes all Sonic comic book characters automatically the property of SEGA. It really makes no sense, either. What the hell is he even going to do with them? None of them are worth anything outside of the Sonic comic book, and it's not like Archie is going to give enough of a crap about them to buy them back.

About the SDCC thing. He should do it. It would be hilarious seeing a video him getting booed out of the room by a horde of angry fanboys.

He won because they lost his contract. Maybe in a fire. Maybe someone in editorial accidentally ate it in a fit of incompetence. But basically they have old photocopies of his contract, that aren't admissible in court, and can't find the real contract. So even though in the past he said he knew he was working as someone making characters other people owned, they now can't prove in a court of law that he signed over the rights.

As long as Robo Fiona is still ok I'll be happy.

Nobody "won", technically; Archie and Penders settled out of court. What's in question is what the terms of the settlement are. Technically these terms never need to be revealed, so the only way we'll know is when or if we see characters have been permanently removed from the comics. Even that may not be the entire settlement.

I actualy sent Penders an email saying how i loved his characters in the comic and hwo upset i am he wants to turn them into star wars wanna be trash. And he responded to me, saying he apologizes for th eproceedings and that he's not preventing Archie from using any characters .

I would like to believe him, asi want to see the real version of the characters and not just his star wars wanna be trash rip off bullshit.

Also he know has his to fight SEGA directly and then EA/Bioware. And SEGA has much deeper pockets and better lawers then what Archie had.

He's "not preventing them" in the sense that they can use the characters... if they pay him for the right to use them.

But they're already paying SEGA for the right to use Sonic.

And his court case actually got SEGA so angry they almost shut down the book (that was a big part of the lawsuit).

So he's going "they can use the characters!" while leaving out "if they pay me for the right, which they won't."

It's a crucial detail he leaves out because he knows it gets people angry at him and not Archie.

They reached a settlement though, What would be the point of settleing if theyre not going to use the characters?

He announced he had the characters copyrighted, and could use them.

They sued him saying "no you don't, and no you can't. They're ours. It's in your contract."

He sued them back saying "yes I do, and you owe me money for their appearances after I left the book. And reprints. What contract?"

Archie then could not produce the original copy of the contract, which they needed to be sure they would win. Had it gone forward Ken would likely have won in the courtroom, but not before building up considerable legal fees.


Rather than go through the lengthy and pricey courtroom battle they arrived at an agreement. We don't know the terms, but most likely they agreed to give him ownership and said he would receive a royalty for the characters' appearances in reprints and any future stories. But they're almost certainly never going to use the characters in future stories. They hate the man's guts now, and none of his characters are absolutely needed, strictly speaking. They're already paying SEGA for the rights to Sonic characters, it would strain the book's profits to pay Ken for his as well.

So most likely they'll never show up again, because Archie doesn't want to give him one penny more than they have to.

Okay, seriously, someone needs to start a petition to ask SEGA to intervene in Archie's favor here.

And before someone speaks up about "Creator's Rights", stop. I'm all in favor of creators having a right over their own creations, BUT in this case, the characters were all created under a specific license, which legally makes them the property of the license-holder.

And worse part is, Penders likely knows this. And he doesn't even need to use those characters, either. He could've just taken ALL of his Echidna ideas, shaved off the Sonic references, change the species, and repackaged the whole damn thing as a New Intellectual Property. BUT HE DIDN'T. He deliberately went out of his way to try and get his Echidna creations back, because he knows he can get more publicity that way.

Worse still, it's working. We're definitely all paying more attention to his upcoming "Chronicles of Lara-Su" projects then we ever did his "The Lost Ones" project (seriously, is that even still a thing?)

Please read my post above above yours, but yes i agree it was dickish, but it's nto over cause as ive stated he still has SEGA to fight in court now, then EA/BIOWARE but SEGA will probably nip that in the bud in theyre procedding claiming that Bioware was hired by them to make the game so it's theyre responsibility to handle it now.

1. This is all settled already. The lawyers already signed everything nothing SEGA can do.
2. SEGA is NOT HAPPY about any of this. They almost shut down the comic. They do not WANT to intervene in Archie's favor. They're so annoyed that Archie let this mess happen, they seriously considered just pulling the plug on the book so they'll never have to hear about this again.

The Archie case is over, he also had SEGA and EA/Bioware cases that were awaiting the outcome of the Archie trials. SEGA is going to court with him.

True, but that just reinforces my point. SEGA has to be absolutely furious with Archie right now. Archie is probably tiptoe-ing around. I don't think they'd like annoying SEGA by asking for more help, even if the case wasn't already settled.

I think he wants to protect his characters. It's not like Bollers and Flynn are/were doing good jobs with them. I don't know about the fan comic stuff and frankly I wish the comic would reboot so that all characters originating outside the games would be retired so as not to be miswritten. I thought Penders was a damn good writer for the comic.

It doesent matter how good a writer he is, the problem is us who love his characters as they are in the comic are being shitted on by his horrible sci fi bullshit versions, his redesing of Lien Da looks absolutley hoirrible, i wanna vomit.

I know nothing of what you're talking about. You may need to give me some details.

KenPenders.com, he shows his " New look " for the characters and Lein Da is an ugly shade of something that isnt her sexy red, ehr dress is atrocious, and her hair is nasty.

You were wrong.

Hey, if you're going to state your opinion of Flynn and Bollers as fact, I'll state my opinion of Ken's writing as fact.

I'm not getting into an argument about these things and I'll thank you not to confront me about my opinions. And no opinion can ever be stated as fact. Goodbye.

Merely following your lead. You believe Karl and Ian don't write his characters well. I maintain that Ken sometimes had decent ideas for characters, but never executed them well, and Ian greatly improved many of Ken's creations.

Beyond that, Ken endangered the livelihood of everyone currently working on the book, in order to seek ownership of a large number of characters, including many that it would be almost impossible for him to use outside of the context of a Sonic comic book (such as Sonic's parents and the evil Sonic).

When Flynn spoke about Ken at all (before this started) it was always with respect shown. The respect was not returned; Ken spoke quite unfavorably about Flynn and the others working on the book, despite the fact that he had not read their work.

I would also point out that Ken himself was writing a large number of characters created by others (including all the game characters, and the SatAM characters) and many would say that he deviated greatly from what their creators intended. If it is wrong to go in a different direction than was originally intended for a character, Ken has done exactly that on numerous occasions.

Bollers took away and destroyed Mobotropolis undermining everything they'd ever fought for, making Mobius be Earth (blecch!), and wrote the much reviled Slap Heard Round the World story that they've since semi-apologized for due to fan backlash. Flynn on the other hand is a hack who uses shock to serve as drama. Ex. Charmy gets a personality shift to be like the games through brain damage, makes Geoffrey a traitor despite Return of the King undermining any logic that would explain Geoffrey believing Naugus was right for the kingdom, turning Knothole into The Great Wasteland, making Espio a bit of an arrogant douche, having Sally date Monkey Khan despite everything she's experienced with him and Heavy & Bomb's betrayal saying he's not someone to blindly trust, and finally all the things surrounding Mecha Sally and the means to which she and the others will get horrendous facelifts.

I do not like Bollers and I despise Flynn's crap. Penders is normal by comparison.

I didn't say I thought Karl was good. Too many terrible stories were by him. But I'm not that impressed with Ken either. He strikes me as being too much like his hero, George Lucas. He can come up with decent characters and concepts, but usually they end up working better under someone else's pen. He could do worldbuilding, but would spend so much time on it the tone became stilted, sterile, and bland. His plots became increasingly convoluted. I love complex stories, but he strayed into making things convoluted, adding so many unnecessary elements that he himself seemed to lose track of his point. The Dark Legion's foray into politics was a prime example. For that matter, so was the entire conflict with the Legion, who had been banished for using technology, then came back to find everyone using technology, something which seems like it should be an important plot point but instead never got addressed. And to get the others to like their ideas about technology they kidnapped a major politician, lobotomized him, and got him to appoint a new candidate that was a robot. So... why not just keep controlling the politician? Why the robot? Convoluted. For that matter he couldn't decide if the Legion were pure evil or tragic victims or whatever, because his characterization was either inconsistent, or, too often, nonexistent. And when it was nonexistent that was often because he had an atrocious habit of creating redundant characters. Rather than flesh out the decent cast he had, he just kept throwing more and more and more characters into the books until it started getting ridiculous, particularly since he seemed to have no plans to explore any of the characters in depth down the line. Near the end he was getting particularly dry, and badly needed to either step down or at least share the reins.

You say Flynn does shock to serve as drama? How about the time Tails wasn't Tails? Or the time Knuckles joined the Dark Legion? Shocking turns of events that should have led to interesting character-driven drama wherein the characters question their identity and ideals... only they didn't. At all. Tails wasn't Tails and it never came up again. Knuckles "joined" the Dark Legion, and that got some gasps, and then he never DID anything that looked like a "Knuckles trying to be in the Dark Legion" thing. Charmy getting a personality shift was bad, I agree (as does Flynn). But honestly, was Ken even USING the Chaotix that often?

There was no conflict in Return of the King. Geoffrey is motivated by his hatred for Overlanders and Max. He thought that Naugus would be a better leader (especially with someone there to get him to show some restraint), but he thought Naugus' plans to get the throne were stupid, so Geoffrey didn't blow his identity as an undercover agent to help.

I really don't see your problem with him creating the new Knothole or with him trying to use Heavy and Bomb while acknowledging their checkered history in the book... but as to the "horrendous facelifts"? That's Ken's fault. Ken soured the relationship with SEGA so badly they were considering shutting down the book. They'd expressed a desire in the past to make the book just game characters. Redesigning the Freedom Fighters in the Sonic Team style is an attempt to make them look more acceptable to SEGA, because there was a genuine concern during the trial that SEGA might just decide to cut the team entirely. If Ken hadn't gotten SEGA angry, the redesigns wouldn't have been necessary.

First off I'm not saying Penders was flawless. And frankly, I'd rather see the non-game characters retired and left somewhere happy than see them continue in the increasingly discontinuous story this comic has gone into.

Now for where you're dead wrong. There was DEFINITELY conflict in Return of the King because that's where Naugus was puppeting King Max to kill the Robians. Sonic discovered the conspiracy and surely would have told Geoffrey who would NEVER think Naugus was better than Max.

Knothole being destroyed is a shit idea what with Mobotropolis having been double lost. I site Picard's speech from Star Trek: First Contact regarding just falling back since New Mobotropolis is just a means to not be homeless.

I'd rather see the non-game characters retired

Penders has no intention of "retiring" the characters. He wishes to use as many as he can in his own comic, "The Lara-Su Chronicles". This comic will also feature a character named "The Praetorian" who will be Julie-Su's husband and Lara-Su's father. Praetorian is, of course, a reference to the Praetorian Guard, making it essentially a fancy way of saying "Guardian". In other words, he is hypocritically using Knuckles (only with a name change) in his book.

As for your fundamental complaint that the characters were going in a direction that was contrary to Ken's original intentions, Ken took the SEGA and SatAM characters in directions contrary to what was originally intended. And a year ago I would have said that his influence had been for the better, since he did a good job of building a more complex world, even if his own use of it had been dry. But then Ken childishly decided that if he couldn't play with the toys, nobody could.

discontinuous story

Without knowing exactly what you are referring to, I can point out that (1) much of the discontinuity is due to Ken's actions. Storylines were set up and then abandoned because of the legal proceedings, and (2) Ken had a bad habit of setting up potential plot threads only to never reference them again or resolve them in an anticlimactic way. This goes back to what I was saying about his stories being unnecessarily convoluted.

Geoffrey who would NEVER think Naugus was better than Max

Why not? Did Naugus get Geoffrey's father killed by Overlanders? Did Naugus make an Overlander the new Warlord? And not just any Overlander, Robotnik himself, who wasted little time in taking over... exactly as Naugus predicted.

There's only conflict if you assume that Geoffrey would disagree that the Robians were a potential threat, and there's really nothing there to support that assumption. He may very well have had qualms about Naugus' plan, but he could be quite ruthless about potential threats. And once Max was cured, how good a ruler was he? Dire. In fact, he endangered the entire planet by preventing the Freedom Fighters from aiding Robotnik in repulsing the Xorda, until he had Robotnik's word that lands would be returned to the Acorn Kingdom. And then, surprise surprise, Robotnik didn't keep his word. It's very difficult to be a worse ruler than King Max (as bad as Naugus has been, he's yet to endanger all life on Mobius in a bungled attempt at political maneuvering, like Max did), and Geoffrey was so caught up in Max's glaring flaws (blinded, in part, by the death of his father) that he didn't see how bad Naugus could end up being.

Regarding your Picard quote, you seem to have forgotten what he said moments later. "Evacuate the Enterprise." It was a very good speech that had a ring of truth, that got the blood pumping, and that would probably have convinced a lot of people to lay down their lives. And Picard was a big enough man to realize that what he had just said was rubbish, and that the symbolic victory of preserving his ship wasn't worth the lives of his crew. Knothole had poor defenses and Robotnik knew exactly where it was. So did they cling to a symbolic site out of nostalgia for an old Kingdom (that we had learned was actually pretty crappy)? No, they made a new home. New Mobotropolis is not "just a means to not be homeless," any more than the Enterprise E (the ship Picard was talking about) was "just a means to not be homeless" after the destruction of the Enterprise D (the ship they had in the TV show).

Flynn said the designs were niche

Flynn also said the redesigns were intended to keep the characters viable in the long term, and that the redesigns were like making a left turn onto a rocky path after noticing you were about to go off a cliff (you might not like what you see out the window, but it's better than not changing direction and going off the cliff). And he was correct about the designs being niche. I'm part of the niche they catered to, I'm sad to see them go, and there's a lot that I hate about the new designs. But they were not in SEGA's Sonic Team style, SEGA had previously shown a preference for using their characters more prominently than the Archie-exclusives, and Ken had made SEGA so furious they were thinking about cancelling the book completely. Unfortunately, thanks to Ken, it made sense for the book to take steps to make the Freedom Fighters look more tolerable to SEGA.

I don't give two shits about the Lara-Su Chronicles. The End. I just had less problems with Ken's writing. And Penders wasn't doing anything to make them worth retiring. It's the later stuff after he left where it went to shit.

But Naugus did try having half the kingdom killed. And considering Geoffrey has ultimately regretted his actions by seeing Naugus do crazy magic shit, I'm sure he'd have definitely dropped him when he wanted to kill a bunch of victims. And Max didn't get Ian killed, the Overlanders got him killed. And even Max wasn't stupid to trust Robotnik Prime when he returned to try and stop the current Robotnik. What's more is, Elias was already King when Geoffrey said let's get some new leadership. So frankly, he should have waited to see what Elias, who had the People's will acting as an oversight, would be like first.

There's only so many times Robotnik can take one's home before you stop letting him. The point of the speech is to stop giving in and take a stand. In the film, no, there didn't seem like a chance for victory. But this is a different story with a similarly parasitic villain. New Mobotropolis represents the notion: Don't worry kids, so what if your home was destroyed by some fat guy, you'll just get a new one and never care about the old one. Why even fight for Mobotropolis if they could just live in Knothole? And after it was destroyed, they accepted Knothole as their home since it's been more a home for most of the young characters anyway. But then Knothole, which had risen above being a refuge point to a full blown kingdom is destroyed. Do they bat an eye? Not really. Just get a new home and all is dandy.

If it ain't broke don't fix it. Frankly, I'd rather see them retired rather than continue on with bad redesigns. Most of the people this comic caters to these days don't even remember the show anyway so why try and make them hip and fresh when you can let them have their rest. Just put everybody in whatever place they're living in now and use that device that hid away Echidnopolis until Eggman is defeated and leave only the game characters to remain and stomp out evil so that the others can come back and live on a peaceful Mobius that has not nor ever will be Earth (I don't care what anybody says, that was a retarded idea).

And regarding Heavy, Bomb, and Khan...it's because Khan always acted like an ass when he appeared and could be an unwitting sleeper agent. Sally isn't that stupid as to blindly trust Khan that way.

As for the new looks, Flynn said himself they were "niche" and needed new looks.

Seriously me and you Croc, We need to do a rule 63 universe of Sonic the Hedgehog, time to make some damn money.

Sonic+breasts=profit. you know it,

LOL That is a hilarious idea. It's also somewhat true. XDD

What baffles me is that nobody has apparently taken him aside and explained to him that he's doing two things that are working completely at cross-purposes.

He's attempting to claim ownership of as much of the book's content as possible. And if he was just trying to make money off of royalties, that would make sense. By his logic (which sadly it looks like Archie has bowed to) he owns Scourge, "the real Fiona," Sonic's parents... and should get paid for every reprint featuring them, and receive royalties for any future appearances. Of course that means there WON'T be future appearances, but if he just wants royalties, he can live with that.

But he's also trying to make the Lara-Su comic. And to sell that, you need people to not loathe you. And by claiming as many characters as he can, effectively cutting them from the book, he's not going to find many fans of the Sonic comics that don't hate his guts.

I really hope someone at the convention runs into him and explains to him that he can't have his cake and eat it too.

Also, because of Penders the comic is now going to suffer an entire reboot. Goodbye years of Dark Egg Legion, Lien Da, Julie Su, Fiona Fox, Enerjak/Dimitri, Elias, Rob'O the Hedge, Geoffry, etc...
Without these plot driven characters, everything has crumbled. The entire comic is having everything grind to a fucking halt over this manchild's schemes that he can somehow swing a buck off this. This isn't the first time Penders has damaged the Sonic community. Back some years ago he once again screwed over the Sonic fans by doing the cover work for the SatAM DVD for Shout! Factory. Why is this bad? Penders lied on his resume, and merrily cherry picked screenshots from the FUS gallery and traced over the poses, did a half assed color job, and by the time they figured out what he'd done it was too late to find someone else. The motherfucker even tried selling his own autographed copies for an extra fee.
But his worst offense of all was he royally screwed over Ben Hurst and SatAM fans, sabotaging the chance for a SatAM TV movie Sega of America had considered in the early 2000's. The man was generously offered a partnership in the pitch, and due to outright jealousy of not having full control he went over Ben's head and made sure SEGA wouldn't have anything to do with the idea at all.

There you have it, this man is the anti christ of the western fanbase.

Pointed out many a time, Geoffrey was never created by Ken Penders, he was a character that was made for the SatAM series that Ben Hurst created but sadly due to the 3rd series never being created was never developed, but the scripting is there of said character occurring plus the detailing of his nature.

It would appear that Geoffrey was made by Ken and plans to incorporate him into the show developed while Hurst was attempting to strengthen bonds between the book and tv show. This would be consistent with the fact that Ken seems extremely sure that he has sole claim to the character at the moment.

I disagree to the point of saying that Hurst had previously mentioned his intention of using the St John character even before Ken's first involvement in #10, so would make it hard to simply say Ken was upto anything before that point in time.

It's also safe to say that because of him it's unlikely that SEGA will ever again consider using input from Western contributors. It took them a long time to warm up to the idea of doing Sonic Chronicles, and the end result was a lawsuit.

It was always very unlikely that SEGA would put comic characters into their new games, but Ken has most likely made them absolutely positive they shouldn't.

So. To sum up. Penders broke Wheaton's one rule.

He was a dick.