[TheKazeblade]

Is it really plausible to assume that Archie would forge a signature for a contract rather than just write up a new one for its current employees? If they did, that's the most stupid move they could have possibly made. Seriously, the crap being revealed about both sides in this debacle is just ridiculous.

[NeonZephyr]

You know something? Penders has stated from the beginning of this sickening debacle that the contract copy Archie has produced is a fake, but has never given any proof other than just his word (and his word isn't exactly unbiased... or consistent). Why wouldn't he hire an expert, someone who can analyze signatures and tell if there's a certain likelihood that they were written by the same person or not? I know that they probably aren't as good as crime shows on TV make them out to be, but they could still give a bit more credibility to that argument. I mean, he has four lawyers, after all (what.).

Then again, if Penders is lying/not remembering correctly, and that really IS his signature (which I think it is), then the expert might conclude that. Which would end his case in a hurry. And rather badly so for him.

Or, if you want a crazy conspiracy theory (to use the term lightly), maybe Penders paid the incompetent employee to lose his contract so that he could exploit its disappearance like this, along with others' to increase the instability of Archie's claims. Probably after Archie denied his request for royalties. In 1996. Hrmm... (I'm not being serious, here, obviously. But it would still be really amusing if this turned out to be the case.)

Seriously, though, I still doubt Archie would fake that. It's legal and financial suicide to forge a document like this, especially since it could very easily be found out (granted, it also easily could *not*, but why risk it?).

[Kampfer]

What exactly are the contents of the contract?

As for the signature, Zepher, whether or not it is his is a trial issue, and both sides will hire an expert and the so-called "dueling experts" will fight over the same evidence and come to opposite conclusions and the jury would be the one to decide.

[Tylinos]

Well, I was going to post about how someone found a backup directory of posts from Ken's old forum, but I had to change it a bit because a minor problem came up.

http://www.kenpender...ssages/?C=M;O=A

Okay, so these are the saved posts, but when I checked it again before starting this post, I saw something was missing. Yesterday there was a subfolder named "legal", with just posts from Ken himself on various subjects. Some of them were Ken discussing legal stuff way back around 2005 and 2006, and others seemed to be just random (but sometimes interesting) posts. And now that folder has vanished, probably because Ken or Bob didn't want those in particular spread around. (Although I think a lot of the posts that were in there might be among the other backups as well, but they'd be a lot harder to find.)

Anyway, since I can't link directly, I'll just quote a few things I found amusing or interesting and managed to save before they were taken down (With links to the ones I could track down among the other posts.):

Ken Penders said:

Someone I forget the name of said:

Which was your favourite member of the Brotherhood?

That's like asking a parent who's your favorite child.

what
are you serious

Ken Penders (2005) said:

Actually, part of the problem is the current audience being unable to find and acquire back issues past a certain point, so in writing recent stories I had been given a directive not to refer to anything past a certain point. For example: I actually had a storyline that used Eddy the Yeti, but because he appeared and was killed off way back when, he had no relevancy to the new stories.

That's certainly one character I would have never expected someone to have any plans for. (Especially Ken, given that Eddy wasn't his character.)

Ken Penders (December 2005) said:

Let's get one thing straight right up front and that's this: Like DC and Marvel, Archie is a business, and in order to stay in business, making a profit is a reasonable expectation on their part. Compare cover prices and you'll see Archie has kept their prices lower far longer than have DC and Marvel. Furthermore, until recently, Archie's story and art page count on a per issue basis consistently exceeded anything Marvel or DC were producing, plus they had a letters page, a fan art page and sometimes even extra features.

And I speak from experience when I say Archie has responded to fan reaction numerous times on various issues, so to say the company's attitude is simply one of "we got ours so bug off" is hardly justiable, especially in light of how other publishing houses conduct their business.

Compare that to what he says of the company now.

Ken Penders (December 2005) said:

...you're assuming the writers, in this case me, have a free hand in deciding what will and won't take place in the stories. Without going into detail or telling stories out of class, everything I wrote since SONIC #144 has been pretty much with one hand tied behind my back for one reason or another. I couldn't plan anything long-term because no one knew what long-term meant. There were a lot of scripts that were written BEFORE Mike came aboard that had to be accounted for as well as plot points that resulted in a LOT of complaints that required cleaning up (Antoine and Bunnie, to name two). Not only that, but I had to deal with a lot of rewriting to accommodate the constant rescheduling of stories.

Brought this one up because it ties to something he mentioned recently about having his hands tied in the #144 to #159 era, and gives a bit more information on it.

Ken Penders (January 2006) said:

I've gotten requests from a few of you - and you know who you are - about what I had planned for upcoming issues. Despite my lack of response so far, I have not been ignoring your e-mails. Rather, if I care to share that information, I'll either do so here or at my online chat. However, I'm of a mind to say what I planned is irrelevant, as it's Ian's, Joe's and any other writer's ballgame from this point on.

Personally, I think for me to say anything would result in some people questioning whether Ian or Joe or anyone else stole ideas from me, very similar to how I was accused after Karl had stated his plans. Speaking from experience, I didn't appreciate that particular uproar, and I don't think Ian, Joe or anyone else involved would either.

And then he went and did it anyway.

Ken Penders (January 2006) said:

I leave at this point pretty much laying the groundwork for the overall arc I had envisioned for the characters, having charted their history to their eventual future. What happens afterwards is for others to chart.

Sure stuck to that line of thinking, I see.



Links to the ones I quoted which I could find backups of:
http://www.kenpender...3000/73562.html (Third quote)
http://www.kenpender...3000/73738.html (Fourth quote)
http://www.kenpender...3000/73865.html (Fifth and sixth quotes)
(Couldn't find the original sources on the first and second quotes because I only had the text pasted over in #comics. The others I still had the post numbers on, which made things easier.)

This post has been edited by Tylinos: 11 March 2012 - 07:13 AM

[Retroman]

He's not gonna win, no leg etc.

[Tylinos]

Small update on the missing folder from BobR:

BobR said:

There was a folder in there named “legal” that I moved to a nonpublic portion of the website. It was created by me at Ken's request during the discovery phase of the trial to list all of the messages created by Ken, which have been turned over to his attorneys. If you wish to go through every message still there and find those written by Ken, then you'll have what was in that directory. But why should I let others benefit from the work I did pulling everything out? Let them do their own search and discovery. Hah!

Wow, because that sure isn't jerkish or anything. What a pal.

[TheKazeblade]

The site-that shall-not-be-named has reported that apparently Scott Shaw has filed for copyright on his works as well. Has also claimed Archie never had him sign a work-for-hire contract. Penders made it obvious this was coming, but I wonder if this was Pender's best defense, the fact that there's someone else who's doing this. I wonder ho this'll play out.

[Greg the Cat]

I hope he's joining in on this case for Captain Carrot instead of Sonic. At least, then he'll have a leg to stand on.

EDIT: Oh shit, that's Marvel comics, not Archie. Never mind, guys.

This post has been edited by Greg the Cat: 20 March 2012 - 01:49 AM

[Tylinos]

This brings up something that's amused me about Penders' arguments: He's gone before and said that Ian having a contract has no bearing on whether or not anyone else has a contract (and also infamously twisted Ian's words in the process to make it seem like Ian was outright lying), but then says that things like Scott Shaw! claiming to not have a contract does have a bearing on whether or not he has a contract.

I can see what Ken's trying to go for by claiming it, that Scott was around at a similiar time to when he was first employed, but that doesn't mean a damn thing. If he wants to argue Scott left around the time Ken joined, and the proximity of times means any argument by Scott about it applies to him, you could easily point out that Ian was hired at the same exact time Ken left.

I'm not saying that means Ian having a contract means Ken does, but that Scott claiming to have no contract also doesn't mean Ken wouldn't either. It's incredibly flimsy and hypocritical logic.


EDIT: By the way, when was the exact time Scott left the book? Was it before or after the claimed December 1996 contract for Ken? If before, then Scott has absolutely no bearing on the argument anyway.

This post has been edited by Tylinos: 20 March 2012 - 03:13 AM

[Tylinos]

Sorry for double-posting, but recently I've been seeing some posts about the Ken stuff that have been annoying me. I'm just going to see things get worse and get more annoyed if I don't speak up, so there's something I want to say about it:

People on both sides of the argument, whether you're in support of Ken or against him, could you please try to keep your posts at least somewhat respectful toward each other? I know that Ken strikes a lot of people as a jerk, and I feel that way about him myself, but when I see posts between people where they're treating each other like crap just because they have differing viewpoints here, it just makes you and the side you're trying to support look bad.

I'm not talking about any one side here. I've seen people on both sides acting like this. I've seen people against him saying that Ken fans are idiots for liking him, and people supporting him saying that people who don't like him are childish and do nothing but throw baseless insults. If we keep this up, it's going to end up with people on each side in a loop of saying things that makes them look worse and worse to the other side. It's only going to annoy people.

I may not like Ken, and I think he's acted like a prick, and I'm going to still voice that opinion, but I'd like to at least keep it with some sense of respect. And yes, I've acted disrespectfully myself before (The "Pen Kenders" thing, even though I was just trying to joke around with it, was a step too far, and I'm sorry for that), but I'd rather try to avoid doing stuff lke that. I know I definitely don't have any say over anyone here, but I want to at least ask you guys to do the same and not do stuff like that.



Also, on a related note that apparently needs to be cleared up for some people yet again: The topic title was changed to how it is because of how Ken's acted over the past year or so, not simply because he made copyright claims in the first place. The original title from when this was simply about his claims and not his actions was much kinder toward him.

And on the other side of things about that, just because someone wants royalties for their past work doesn't make them a greedy jerk. I'm starting to see some people insulting Scott Shaw! just because he's claiming copyright and nothing more. I think some of us on both sides are forgetting that's not why people are annoyed by Ken.

[David The Lurker]

Hey, we haven't had a Ken Penders update in ages! What is the ol' mustached man doing this time?

Quote

I've been getting a lot of e-mails asking what's next after I had stated there's more to come. As it is, I've been sneaking previews of the story of THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES to a select few to see if I've been accomplishing what I set out to do. All I'll say is that I'm encouraged that new readers will not feel left out and longtime readers will see a lot of questions answered.

As for more character designs, they're coming, but the project had to take a back seat while I took care of business on other fronts, such as the forthcoming release of THE REPUBLIC film project I've been working on.

The one new item to look forward to is a sneak peak at the Director's Cut of the very first solo-Knuckles story I wrote and illustrated titled "Fire Drill". This will be the first of several stories I both wrote and illustrated and will be making available to readers available everywhere for free via a specially-designed app. The idea is to help establish the relevant chronology to get readers of THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES up to speed on previous events.

As an added bonus, I'll also be making available the stories I did for the SONIC LIVE! and BRAVE NEW WORLD specials available for free as well. There's some Director's Cut material that never saw the light of day back then that will now when this is released.

The biggest extra will be the release of the unpublished KNUCKLES: TWENTY YEARS LATER material, which set the stage for the MOBIUS: 25 YEARS LATER, which finally sees resolution with THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES. Showing the evolution will allow readers to see how this storyline was always part of the plan.

So stay tuned as new material is definitely on its way.

I don't exactly know what Ken is expecting here. Even if he wins his case, I'm sure his legal woes would not be over. While providing "Free Samples," he would still be unable to use Knuckles or anyone else in his future tales...even though it looks like he really, really wants to link everything together. So at the end of the day, for all the "I don't need to use Knuckles or any Sega elements to tell my story," he sure wants everyone to think of Knuckles and all the Sega elements in his story. The Knuckles: Twenty Years Later material...that might have been something I would have been interested in ten years ago. And to be fair, it would still be cool to take a glance at if it was including in an archive release or something...but it feels like that in his mind, that story still took place, and is just the first part in his three act FUTURE KNUCKLES STORY. The second being what he wrote and published, the third being what he wants to write but will likely never be published...

...ignoring all of this, why the heck does he want people to remember Sonic Live. Of all the stories he ever wrote for the comic, why does he have to focus on that one so much? Just because he used his son in it? I would love to know what his son thinks of it now. Yes, Ken keeps on saying that kids gravitate towards it, but I think its because the cover continues to promise that you'll get this awesome story of Sonic stepping into the real world and interacting with a pair of real kids. Instead you get a poorly written story with awkward art and photographs that don't mesh with the story. It could have been so much better even with the premise of Sonic being in the real world, and I don't care how much he intended to be in that story that wasn't. There's no way a Director's Cut of Sonic Live is going to improve the story.

[Aquaslash]

Talk about being out of touch with reality. Everyone HATES MXYL. Even the folks at Archie Comics have all but abandoned it now. Does he really think that people are gonna spend money for more of that crap?

The man seriously needs to give up with all of his Knuckles remolds and move on to at least trying more original works. He's gotta be more delusional than the Aikbarangers if he thinks that SEGA will let him come within a 100 mile radius of any of their characters (including the ones created for the comic), especially after he singlehandely damaged their partnership with Archie Comics.

[Tylinos]

As I pointed out on Ken's forum, putting those stories out for free is a pretty risky move even if he did end up having the rights to the stories themselves. Since Sega licensed the use of Sonic characters to Archie and not Ken, putting the old stories out for free would make them fall under the definition of fan fiction. And it seems this use of it would be one that actually breaks the legal fair use of fan fiction under US law.

However, seeing bonus material actually does sound interesting either way. And as much as I hate the MxYL stories (Both the ones done by Ken and Ian), the 20 Years Later story might at least be worth looking at, if only because it's been teased for about 12 years now.

And then there's Sonic Live!. What really bothers me about his apparent love of Sonic Live! is that whenever he responds to criticisms of it, it's usually "Well, you're not the target audience." Except that most of us were the target audience when it came out and we still hated it even then. Or at least I did.

If there's anything from that post I'm actually looking forward to, though, it's that spectactular trainwreck known as The Republic. Anyone who hasn't seen the preview episode he put out last year really should. It's absolutely hillarious. "Dream on, moon unit!"

[Lanzer]

David The Lurker, on 15 May 2012 - 10:32 AM, said:

Hey, we haven't had a Ken Penders update in ages! What is the ol' mustached man doing this time?

Well look, the only reason we are not talking about this is because theres only 1 Sonic related news site thats posting news about it and if we even menction this site in casual convosation were banned for a month (Or in my case, 1 thin string away from being perma-banned). You're one of the people who can bump a thread like this because well your an admin and well you trump any rule made.

So unless the mods or admins want to keep this thread going or theres someone on the inside of Pender's forum willing to C/P any nonsense he posts, its not gonna get bumped much.

[Tylinos]

This thread hasn't had enough happy in it. Let's talk about something good that's come out of Penders' recent works.

Over at A Moment of Archie Sonic, along with discussing the Penders issues lately, the guy's been linking to some red line critiques of Penders' awful art, pointing out just what's wrong with the characters' anatomy and showing how to improve it:

http://amomentofarch...nic-answering-a
http://amomentofarch...-read-more-more
http://amomentofarch...es-her-skeleton
http://amomentofarch...-to-look-really
http://amomentofarch...llenge-accepted
http://amomentofarch...boy-cosmicremix

So, what's the happy here? Well, it turns out that the person who did the first of the red line critiquing landed an internship because of it:
http://cosmicremix.t...artwork-can-get
http://noseshark.dev...-NEAT-302559211

That's right, Penders' art is so bad that fixing it can get you a job. Congrats to noseSHARK/CosmicRemix on the internship!

This post has been edited by Tylinos: 18 May 2012 - 02:16 PM