Earlier Penders compared cancellation of the Knuckles book with cancelation of Sonic the Comic, which is frankly laughable Forgive me if I'm wrong but Penders had pretty firm control on the Knuckles book even up to the end of it's run, the only reason it was canned was because of poor sales and "lack of interest. Nothing else. I assume Archie never got much demand for more Knuckles Fleetway's cancellation was a slow and painful inside job by Egmont-Fleetway. The heads simply decided the comic had been running too long and gradually poisoned it, starting with reprints slowly taking over the comic - and when the last original story ran, was still selling reasonably well. It took stripping the comic of original storylines, and reprinting most of the classic strips (I believe they even made it up to the horrid Shaznarr storyline) before the sales got low enough for them to justify cancelling it! (even then they at least recognised this by letting one last goodbye editorial slip into the final issue after years of no real editoral input) I guess it's similar in that Penders wanted to continue (and by all accounts so did Elson and Kitching) but people loved Fleetway enough even to keep it going in reprints for a good 2 years. Far as I know people were pretty indifferent to the Knuckles storyline or didn't care enough to see it again until years after the fact. (that and Fleetway wrote a far FAR better adaption of Sonic Adventure than Archie could muster at the time) If people love Ken's Echidna stories so much, where's the fanfiction or the webcomics based on his stories? I realize I'm sort of arguing against a man who clearly has invented delusions and is living in his own special bubble where he's right about everything. But I don't much care for him using Fleetway to in any way justify his stupid crusade.
Bloody hell, this thing is still going? Just cut to the chase, when's the date, what does Ken think he has which is so important, and why can he only ever create confusion? It's not a difficult thing. You created a character which looks like Knuckles, is meant to be a counterpart to Knuckles FOR the Sonic Universe within SEGA's and Archie's comic which you now say they are using illegally. Sifting through this wardrobe of shit I have come to the conclusion that Ken is scheming, wants publicity, doesn't have a leg to stand on and is incredibly childish. I also spent 15 minutes downloading some fan character of his called Lui or something which was a massive 8000 pixels big or something, and the drawing was crap. The shadowing was awful, the art was uninspired, and everything else sucked too. I really can't see him winning, and if he does, I really can't see him going somewhere with the concept, considering people liked Knuckles and only read Ken's stories because of the association. In turn, people only liked Knuckles because he is a SONIC universe character. His work isn't all that interesting, and I read back slightly and found something about Rotor being gay? Seriously? Are you fucking high? He's a childrens comic book walrus. Get a life.
No idea anymore. It was supposed to be at the end of this month, but Ken recently announced a "small victory" of having had the trial date vacated. I had a headache with this stuff all day yesterday. Ken was being even more obnoxious than usual. He said his reason he believed Sega would let him take over the comic is "I didn't say Sega would come to me. I said I would offer better terms than Archie," which is really stupid. Even ignoring the fact that Sega's unlikely to hand the reigns over to a guy suing them over Sonic Chronicles, what he's claiming would only be likely if Sega was prone to just handing the license over to anyone who came up to them off the street and said "Hey, I'll make a comic under better terms than you have with Archie." It isn't going to happen. The closest thing to an actual argument he had was that "a library such as the SONIC series is to valuable to just lie dormant." Yeah, I agree, but why does that mean it'll be allowed to continue under you? Of course, he doesn't care. And you're basing your assumption that Sega would even care at all if you offered them a deal. You're not a publisher. You're some random guy off the street who sued them. What really gets me is the guy just won't stop with the hypocrisy. He keeps twisting people's words after having criticized people in the past for what seemed to him like twisting his words, and he keeps going on about how he's a master of law when he previously criticized people for acting like they knew the law despite not being lawyers. (And the comment about how even lawyers don't understand copyright, even though he keeps claiming he does.) EDIT: A quick little blurb from Ken's friend BobR: Yes, they're still trying to claim Ken's loss of credibility isn't his own fault. How can he even try and still claim that at this point? Those who are siding with him don't need more convincing, and those who are against him aren't going to believe that for a second. EDIT: Ignore that. Bob says that wasn't what he meant. (I kind of jumped the gun on that one. Bob tends to be a lot more reasonable than Ken, so I probably should've expected that wasn't what he meant. My fault for making assumptions.) Also, nice new topic title.
I love how Ken refuses to comment on his court dealings, except to say that documents (that he won't link to) are public, and we should go find them for him. However, when it comes to trying to sling mud at Archie, he'll go right for it and start criticizing a trial he's not even a part of. Poor little Penders.
He had the trial date vacated... DEAR FUCKING GOD I JUST WANT THIS SHIT TO END!!!!! No really, I'm sure Penders KNOWS he's gonna lose and just wants to delay the enevitable from happening, sooner or later it WILL happen Penders, like it or not. Also as for the Knuckles comic, it lost it's reason to exist after the Dark Legion and Ernjak (However you spell it) story ended, after that 4 issues were like a soap oprah and after that with the ape that was it. I think after the main story Penders didn't know where to take the book after that, hence why it was canned and Penders "Simply lost interest". Also on a side note I just started reading Sonic the Comic (Found the whole series online, issues, specials, and all!), great series, sad to know that Fleetway poisoned it with reprints, but hey we got STCO so it still lives on.
I don't think we can fully count Penders out yet, we'll have to really wait and see what happens but he may actually have some leverage here If I'm not mistaken, the situation is that Sega owns Knuckles, but the other echidna characters/storied were Ken's creations (based on Knuckles' world, but original characters in their own right). At the end of the day, he did create these characters he's talking about, Sega didn't create them. Sega owns Knuckles; Ken's characters are based on Knuckles' world of yes, but he created these new characters and their stories himself. For example, Crush 40 sang the City Escape song. It was made for a Sonic game, and it was made about Sonic, it's a Sonic song! On the business side of things though, they get paid royalties for every use of that song. Now if Sega said "Hey guys, fuck off. Oh, and we're still using your songs" then Crush40 would have some basis for legal action. Not sure if this is how the Archie situation is but just saying. Even if Ken was the douche and said "Hey Archie, pay me now" the legal system may grant him that right, also note he does have witnesses siding with him aswell From a fan point of view we see everything Sonic related as outright owned by Sega, but it may not be 100% the case here. What sucks though is that these situations really hurt the fans experience, we get so used to these characters and to have them ripped out of the series would kind of suck (I dropped out of the series way back, but I still remember when Julie-Su first appeared, I really liked that character)
Yeah, I doubt that. Even if there was some shocking revelation about the secrets of the running of Archie Comics at the end of all of this, it still wouldn't change that Ken's been acting like a prick. And honestly, what could possibly be as shocking as he's implying? What, did Archie CEOs murder some baby seals and use their remains to print the books with? Oh dear. Also, in response to upg: Archie argues that Ken was under a work-for-hire agreement, which does legally give them all of the stuff he made. Ken argues that either the agreement documents are fake, or if they aren't that the people at Archie messed up some details with them.
Yes, do tell: I've been looking for a while, STCReruns hasn't updated since the 13th issue, knuckleschaotix.info doesn't have them all and The Sonic Zone removed all the issues they had.
This is really, really a stupid idea, but... Let Penders win. Seriously. He wants the rights to his characters, so if that's the case, let him have 'em. Flynn is already gearing up to totally re-vamp the entire narrative of the book anyway, if Penders winning means that we won't have to deal with those characters again being awkwardly placed as major players in the book, I can honestly say that'd be an improvement. Archie has bigger things to worry about currently than to allocate even further funds to a trial that really is a joke. Even if they win, they're staring down the barrel of a gun with this whole threat of the company being dissolved thing.
Nah don't give this douche the satisfaction. Just kill off his characters and then win the case, so that he can't do anything with them and they'll never be used in any context again.
If Penders has a chance to win, he probably has scuttled it by assuming he will win. Even when people who have the upper hand lose if they get too cocky. Given Penders doesn't have the upper hand to begin with, his delusion seems to just be the foreshadowing of a very depressing defeat for him. Since while the attitude of 'Try your hardest to win' is good, mixing it with a delusional 'Outside events will randomly change it in my favor' and 'I don't need to worry, I just have to keep arguing over settlements to get what I want' is probably not the best way to get it. To be honest, though, even if he wins, he loses. His assertion of his characters being the most popular is patently false, and nothing would be more hubristic than watching him lose hordes of money desperately trying to sell his comic premise and failing.
What he wants to happen is pretty obvious: One, he wants Archie to give him a settlement. Failing that, Two, he wants a judge to declare that he gets royalties every time his characters are used, and also to backdate them so he gets a bundle of money from Archie. Failing THAT, Three, he wants to sue Archie for defamation and emotional distress, because they have CLEARLY been egging the internet on in calling him a douche all these years. Poor Ken Penders. I really hate his constant claims of "no, you see, if you were at the trial with me, you would agree I'm in the right!" Since, you know, he seems to be implying that Archie is a slimy company that works hard to ruin him. Which isn't news to anyone. Who actually thought Archie was sunshine and lollypops? Yeah, Archie is probably screwing him over as hard as they possibly can. They have a team of lawyers dedicated simply to crushing the "little man" beneath their heels. There probably were some inconsistencies with how Archie dealt with him legally, and he might have a legal foot to stand on. So they're pulling out all the stops to roll him over. This is child's play to them, even with the Co-CEO fight on. Doesn't that show that Archie is a company with internal strife over who's in the right, and probably run by childish people? See, Ken's the little guy here, don't you all realize Archie is a mean corporation looking to profit from his suffering? Yes, Ken. We do realize that Archie wants to smash you flat and take your hard work. We all know that. Thing is, you're such a douchebag, WE'RE CHEERING THEM ON.
I wouldn't say we all "realise" that at all. We have no idea how Archie works internally as a company, and our views are skewered by Ken's incessant bullcrap. Ken and Archie had a contract a long time ago, and things change within laws and processes are redesigned. Did Archie have him sign documents which sign his creations away? Who knows! What we know is that Ken isn't being just a "douchbag", he's being immature and showing a complete lack of understanding of his own audience, SEGA, and the basic principles of morality. He's making out that SEGA will come and take him on because they're in it for money and have no soul, but he's talking to the wrong crowd. Whether he knows there's a 27 page topic on Sonic Retro- the closest voice to SEGA- calling him a twat I don't know, but he's not making any friends in thus, and the only people who really care about his characters are his previous readers, not any new audience. Lastly, his creations are crap. Nothing more than fan characters. Thing is, they've been used in a Sonic comic book, and have a likeness to existing characters, so surely SEGA should say whether he can use them again, now being canonically attached to the Archie Sonic Universe. Ken, as a comic book writer, should surely have new characters up his sleeve instead of relying on old used property anyway.
Well, it's kinda known that Archie isn't exactly the nicest company to its content creators. Josie and the Pussycats creator Dan DeCarlo, for example...
Sorry this goes off topic with the whole Penders issue, but anyway guys I found a torrent of everything from Sonic The Comic on thepiratebay, that's it, it's not hard to find really. Also back on topic poor DeCarlo, unlike Penders you gotta feel for him, I hope he gets Royalties one day...
Oh man. This just keeps getting better and better. So, someone linked the blog about bad Archie Sonic art on Ken's forum. Ken's response? Another rant about people criticizing his copyright claims. In other words, the guy didn't even look at the blog, because it's criticizing the book's past art, not his current claims. The only time the blog talked at any length about his claims was a neutral explanation about them, not a criticism. Way to go Ken.
I am so tempted to actually write something about this. I have talked in other circles about how Ken Penders' stories really don't have much to do with the concept of Sonic the Hedgehog, that he misinterprets the title character's of his stories and all that (especially ironic when you consider how he thinks of Ian in terms of everyone he created). But...if we were to look at the stories, ignore the main character as being Knuckles and any other Sega element, and just tried to critique it as a standalone piece of fiction...oh man. Because a lot of his work, even if there is a good idea hiding out in there, is buried under so many flaws. Of course, I get this strange feeling he'd just assume that he wouldn't listen, either saying its just my opinion or that I would still be reviewing it as a piece of Sonic the Hedgehog fiction and not anything else. ...so when someone creates a character for a comic like Superman or the X-men, they usually create a character that would fit in that universe. Not a separate civilization that years down the line they try to steal back claiming that they never intended it to fit in the world of where it originated.
