[Aesculapius Piranha]

Tylinos, on 06 January 2012 - 04:10 AM, said:

Okay, either Ken was really, really bad at wording that post that basically said his Echidnas had nothing to do with Archie or Sega, or he's now completely pulling things from his ass to try to cover his mistakes:

Ken Penders said:

Where do I say the characters had nothing to do with the comic? By the same token, that doesn't mean Sega or Archie had anything to do with the development of the characters or set-up that took place in the series.

The reason I ran with the KNUCKLES series as opposed to continuing as the head writer of the SONIC book is precisely because I had a blank slate to work with. There was nothing viable to make a series work until I went in and assembled the whole operation. Knuckles could have just as easily lived in the arctic at his fortress of solitude guarding the last power chip and you're still going to have to do something in order to make the character viable on an ongoing basis. The games certainly don't supply enough of anything to go beyond one 48-page special.

If people like Julie-Su, Locke, the Brotherhood of the Guardians, Lara-Le, Constable Remington, Kragok, the Dark Legion, Lien-Da and Dimitri, to say nothing of Archimedes, Harry the Cabbie, Gala-Na and Lara-Su, that's my work work they're enjoying, not something created by Sega or Archie. Nor can Ian lay claim to the material, either because he isn't allowed to do anything with it or he has yet to show a clear understanding of the characters. The Dark Legion I know, especially Lien-Da, would've had Eggman in any incarnation for breakfast. That doesn't mean he doesn't have the ability and talent to do something well. It's just that he doesn't have the same stake in the characters that I do.

The characters and set-up can easily exist outside what people consider the Sega Universe because it literally has nothing to do with the Sega Universe as Sega itself sees it. That's what people don't seem to get.

If someone doesn't like what I do, fine. That's their choice. They should support what they like. But don't act like there isn't an audience for my characters and the world they inhabit. SONIC UNIVERSE proves that. As a Star Trek fan and someone who actually worked on the comics themselves, I attempted to launch an official Klingon series back in the 90's. The only reason Paramount wasn't sold on the idea at the time is that they didn't think anyone would be interested in a Klingon film or TV series, and if they couldn't make it work, no one could. I still believe I could have made it work, based on the response I've received over the years on my Trek work.

When I discuss what I'm up to with anyone, I never treat the other person any less than how I expect to be treated. I may not agree with you, but I don't insult or belittle anyone. And I let people have their say. All I ask for is some courtesy when engaging in the conversation. Thanks for listening.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt this time that he just screwed up his wording.



EDIT: Also, something in there that made me roll my eyes:

Quote

The Dark Legion I know, especially Lien-Da, would've had Eggman in any incarnation for breakfast.

Ken, have you already forgotten that the reason that doesn't happen is because of Sega? And was that a "My characters can beat that guy; I know it because I made them!" ? Really?

I thought his lawsuit was as dumb as the next guy, but I don't understand what is wrong with this quote. He is right, you know, and he is more talking about characterization than he is the type of character he is using. From his eyes, and the thing he wants credit for, is the characters in the comic are more the writing than the design. The comic series has little to nothing to do with Sega's interpretation of it, and most of the universe's story is based off whatever he decided it should. Knuckles doesn't exactly have an involved back story, and he was able to take a lot of liberties with it.

And he is talking about how characterization and story is more important than the universe it takes place in, and that is what his Klingon example meant. The people making fun of him for his base material he had to work with are exactly the kind of people he is talking about who thought a Klingon series couldn't work. It's more about the writing than the base material. I'm not a huge fan of Ken Pender's writing, but he didn't say anything wrong at all. >_>

TL;DR his mind is on the writing, not what the characters look like, in this case being Enchidnas.. It doesn't matter much to him if they were Enchidnas or Ambercrombie Boys.

This post has been edited by Aesculapius Piranha: 07 January 2012 - 11:49 AM

[SpeedStarTMQ]

The whole issue is being worded and reworded entirely wrong. Ken's coming off as an absolute arsehole, and the whole thing sucks. Basically, Ken says the games didn't have a decent backstory, so he created one, and introduced characters not seen in the games. He's trying to argue that he can reuse these characters because they are thus not tied to SEGA, having been created by Ken and never being used by SEGA outside of the comics.

That said, the designs are clearly Sonic-like, even if the particular style is very different to what it is with the games. The point is that he's using characters based off Echidnas from a Sonic comic, which is now affiliated with SEGA and Sonic, and trying to use them himself. He created the work under a company, so he should not have any rights, the way other comic book characters are owned by the company and not by the creator. He'd have known this when he created them and wrote them in to a Sonic comic, and he knows this now. No amount of pretty words and bitching like a little dick on some forums nobody cares about is going to change that. If he's just talking about the characters personalities and writing, them I'm sure he can use them, as there wasn't a lot to seperate the Archie comics side stories from other comics anyway. It was all random stuff not linked to actual Sonic anyway.

Also, I say they're echidnas. Your joke wasn't funny. It was stupid Ken. I've never even read the Archie comics, only handfuls of pages or minor issues, so I can't say I actually care either way though.

- My thoughts on a topic, purely because it seems to be a hot topic at the moment.

This post has been edited by SpeedStarTMQ: 07 January 2012 - 11:57 AM

[Kaosu Reido]

Wow, seeing a post I made on the Penders forum reposted here, out of the blue, and praised? That's... an odd feeling. A very nice one though. Thanks guys.

Though, could you edit the first quoted line there, the one that goes "How many times have you been proud to say you've never read a single issue past your reign? No, fans whining to you doesn't count as a full and unbiased view on the matter."? Antarctic Deity was the deepest nested one and who the poster of that line, not me.

Oh, and I was banned right after that, too. Apparently posting macros insulting Penders' designs and calling him a liar are completely fine. Creating a long, thought-out post or two criticizing how he's acting, and how he's dredging up crap from over ten years ago? Banned, right there.

Of course, registration on his forum is locked right now. They have 65 members, probably including banned ones like me, and something around like four or five mods and admins, and yet they're afraid of new members. I guess they realize that Ken's a douche, too, and he would get flooded with insults and rebuttals if they didn't keep the hug-box mentality going as long as possible.

I don't really have the energy for a long tirade or anything right now; I just wanted to say thanks for the compliments on a post I made, that I found completely out of the blue; and offer the information that, yes, I was immediately banned. The stated reason? Calling Ken Penders a jackass who draws furry comics.

I still don't see how stating the truth like that is an insult.

This post has been edited by Kaosu Reido: 07 January 2012 - 02:28 PM

[Lanzer]

No problem. Welcome to Retro, enjoy your stay.

[Mike Arcade]

Okay Ken, if they are NOT Echidna's then what are they? huh, what!? This was stupid from day one, The whole Klingon series idea sounds pretty legit but instead of doing that you're going to sue to MAJOR companies for characters you made FOR the companies over 10 years ago, I don't see any other comic writer doing something this stupid.

Also along with SatAM, Sonic The Comic's Robotnik was downright Crazy, and only got crazier as time went on. Really though for the sake of whatever little merit of a professional career he has left Ken should cease these actions at once, maybe one of us should give Penders a link to this topic?

[Tylinos]

Kaosu Reido, on 07 January 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

Though, could you edit the first quoted line there, the one that goes "How many times have you been proud to say you've never read a single issue past your reign? No, fans whining to you doesn't count as a full and unbiased view on the matter."? Antarctic Deity was the deepest nested one and who the poster of that line, not me.

Oh, whoops. Fixed.

Mike Arcade, on 07 January 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

Really though for the sake of whatever little merit of a professional career he has left Ken should cease these actions at once, maybe one of us should give Penders a link to this topic?

Well, I did make a post suggesting to him to take the time to look around the internet to see people's actual opinions of him if he hasn't already. If you search his name on Google, the top result outside of his forum and Wikipedia is this topic, so if he listens, he'll see it.


EDIT: Okay, Ken posted, and, well, it seems he ignored everyone except for one guy. Granted, it was one guy who made some reasonable points, but still.

Ken Penders said:

At a minimum, I will prove Archie owns nothing beyond the right to publish the comic books featuring new adventures of SONIC. Whether they'll be able to continue using anything created prior to Ian's run will also be resolved at my trial. Should I win, unless some agreement is made between Archie and I, at a minimum they also won't be able to reprint any of my stories as well as any stories based off of my work. And if I win, there will be ramifications felt beyond Archie.

Bold emphasis by me. Anyone who still believed what he said a while back about not being interested in hurting the current comic and merely wanting his rights and royalties can stop doubting.

Ken Penders said:

One last note: anyone posting ©Archie after any of their drawings based on anything published in the Archie SONIC series, please stop doing that. Either credit ©Sega if it's their material, ©Ken Penders if it's mine, and even ©Scott Fulop (AKA Kent Taylor), ©Karl Bollers or ©MIke Gallagher if it's their characters. But whatever you do, there is no such thing as ©Archie regarding anything related to these books. That is a fact.

...Except that isn't the case, Ken. Didn't you yourself claim that the ONLY reason your stuff isn't copyright of Archie is that they screwed up your contract stuff? Stuff made by people such as Ian, for instance, would be copyright of Archie because it would be work-for-hire. I recall that Ken tends to be dismissive of people and tell them they know nothing of how the law works, and yet he messed up something basic and central to his own trial.

This post has been edited by Tylinos: 07 January 2012 - 03:30 PM

[Mike Arcade]

*bangs head on the keyboard*

Alright, that's it. Ken's done, finished, it's fucking game over for his carrier, hell this trial is a farce to begin with anyway! I liked the man's work on the comic sometimes when he was on it, and he made a pretty cool cover for SatAM's DVD case, but no...

He just had to go and FUCK everything up!!!!!! The only way Ken is gonna win this case is if a miracle happens (and by miracle I mean human sacrifice), because that's the ONLY way I can see this case not being a goddamn landslide.

[TheKazeblade]

My only worry is that Sega won't feel like working with Archie is worth the legal crap they're going through and pulling licensing from the comic altogether. 19 years of publication would certainly be a sad thing to see go just because this guy developed a crush on characters he made for it.

No one will want to deal with him anymore in a professional capacity, that's for sure. He's stretched this out too far to be worth the liability of being connected to a project not of his own devices.

Also, perhaps someone should directly link him here. Even if this is high on google, I doubt he would like to go to a page titled "Ken Penders is a douche" if he's not directly sent here.

[Tylinos]

If he doesn't address what I said about it in my latest post, I'll just directly link here in the next one.

[Aesculapius Piranha]

Mike Arcade, on 07 January 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

Okay Ken, if they are NOT Echidna's then what are they? huh, what!? This was stupid from day one, The whole Klingon series idea sounds pretty legit but instead of doing that you're going to sue to MAJOR companies for characters you made FOR the companies over 10 years ago, I don't see any other comic writer doing something this stupid.

Also along with SatAM, Sonic The Comic's Robotnik was downright Crazy, and only got crazier as time went on. Really though for the sake of whatever little merit of a professional career he has left Ken should cease these actions at once, maybe one of us should give Penders a link to this topic?

The lawsuit is crazy, but again, the point he is making with the klingons is that you can build a decent story around any type of character. He is more or less writing off the fact that they are enchidnas as irrelevant, and from a storytelling standpoint he is right. Furries are what he was given to work with and he made and built furry characters for Archie. He is not at all in the wrong there. I mean if the characters were humaniod, the cyborg changes and armor in the character designs for characters such as Enerjak and the dark legion would be quite a deviation from your standard normal character, and to me it seems rather evident that he made variations on the way the characters look as different as he could given the base character design for Sonic characters.

Where he is in the wrong is acting like Archie owes him any more than what they commissioned him for. He gave up his rights to his characters by accepting payment to write for them, and while it seems he did strive for some degree of originality, he is kinda glossing over how dependent his designs were on the source material. He was the one who had to develop the story, and while I'm not a fan of the story he developed, it was his work, and he wants recognition. He just isn't grasping though that when you agree to make a comic for a company, you don't gain the rights to the stories you write for them. They paid him to make comics that they could publish and make money off of, and they did. He doesn't retain the rights to his works, nor does his absence strip Archie the ability from basing further works on the works he made. I don't see why he thinks they should? He is kinda just being a crybaby. He should cut his losses and read the fine print next time.

This post has been edited by Aesculapius Piranha: 07 January 2012 - 05:21 PM

[Blivsey]

Now, I've never read the comics, but this interests me nonetheless. What's happening here is simple: Ken decides his loving and loyal fanbase, built magnificently through singlehandedly reinventing the beloved Sonic comic, wouldn't mind if he crushed his legacy by preventing any of his defining work from ever being sold ever in the hopes of a little cash. And he expects people to continue reading his works. And when you point out any of those mysterious flaws in the idea, he attempts to OC:DNS. Ladies and gentlemen, it might be a stretch, but we might have a little silver lining in SOPA.

All we need is for Ken Penders to pull a Redigit. (For those of you not in the know, Andrew "Redigit" Spinks got a C&D from Nintendo and had to take his "Super Mario Bros. X" engine off the internet. He was forced to join some forums that had taken interest in the engine, so he could clear things up. You might know Andrew as the guy who made Terraria.)

[Clutch]

I find it funny that it trying to stress how distanced his characters are from the Sonic franchise he's essentially admitting that he had no business writing a Sonic comic. And holy heck, those designs do not work. The heads are proportionally and stylistically out of synch with the bodies and Julie looks like her hair has techno-herpes.

I haven't read much of Archie, but from what I gather I'd only care about Pender's characters relative to Knuckles. Knuckles' love interests, Knuckles' friends, Knuckles' enemies. Because Knuckles is an appealing character.

[CesspoolofHatred]

Blivsey, on 07 January 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

Now, I've never read the comics, but this interests me nonetheless. What's happening here is simple: Ken decides his loving and loyal fanbase, built magnificently through singlehandedly reinventing the beloved Sonic comic, wouldn't mind if he crushed his legacy by preventing any of his defining work from ever being sold ever in the hopes of a little cash. And he expects people to continue reading his works. And when you point out any of those mysterious flaws in the idea, he attempts to OC:DNS. Ladies and gentlemen, it might be a stretch, but we might have a little silver lining in SOPA.

All we need is for Ken Penders to pull a Redigit. (For those of you not in the know, Andrew "Redigit" Spinks got a C&D from Nintendo and had to take his "Super Mario Bros. X" engine off the internet. He was forced to join some forums that had taken interest in the engine, so he could clear things up. You might know Andrew as the guy who made Terraria.)

Except I'm pretty sure it was later revealed Redigit never got a C&D and just quit because he was tired of working on Super Mario Bros X.

[Falk]

Mike Arcade, on 07 January 2012 - 04:09 PM, said:

it's fucking game over for his carrier

Was he playing Battleships by any chance? I love me a good game of Battleships. I should hit him up.

[Aquaslash]

Here's the "HQ" version of his Julie Su pic Now I warn you, this here is a 10 meg image, and is a ridiculous 7200 x 10800 image, but worth looking at to get a load of the "quality" being put into his upcoming project.

Why he would do this to himself, I have no idea.