THE KEN PENDERS CHRONICLES: PendersCON Alert level 5- something actually made it to sale

While the rest of us were busy with all the Shadow shit, this creature has risen from his bog again.



This time, he's announced the release date of his Knuckles Omnibus (2027 lmao) and revealed that it'll feature Knuckles: 20 Years Later, an unfinished story of his from 1999.

Also, there's some ramblings about how much he loves The Beatles and how he's indirectly responsible for the success of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.

 

It’s certainly interesting that Knuckles: 20 Years Later is being resurrected when M25YL effectively took its place. On first glance I’m not sure the two are even compatible - Julie-Su is pregnant 20 years from now, but Lara-Su is a teenager five years after that? Maybe Penders will hand wave it with time altering shenanigans. That art though… it’s certainly Penders.

I think it’s uncharitable to say Penders attributes the Nolan trilogy’s success to himself. He’s just noting a perceived similarity between the two works, at worst a humble brag for having written like Nolan.

I find Penders’ boomer appreciation for the Beatles and Star Trek endearing. They’re interests that we share, and I wish he spent more time discussing other works he loves than, well, doing what he does with Sonic.

 

Someone should tell Penders that in an alternate universe, where he's not a pariah who burned every single bridge, he, not Ian, would be writing for the DC x Sonic comic.

 

Okay, three things about this:

1. Do not engage with Penders. It's not worth it and doesn't do anything helpful.

2. Penders would not be in the place Flynn is. If he weren't an asshole, he would simply be another figure the fandom has normal opinions about instead of being universally hated. His writing isn't strong enough to make him a star, where Flynn's success came as a direct result of cleaning up a lot of Ken's messes and being damn efficient at taking a Sonic story from point A to B, something the Archie writers almost universally struggled with.

3. Maybe you could argue that being less of an asshole would make Penders more receptive to criticism and therefore a better writer, but I just kinda doubt that. At best, he might still be allowed to contribute to projects the way some of the old Sonic the Comic guys got to. But SEGA picked their people for a reason, and it wasn't just because they were nice.

 

Still, it's kinda funny to think about what a vastly differently fate these two former Archie Sonic writers ended up having. One is creating ugly fanfiction and ranting madly about how Christopher Nolan's Batman was all thanks to him, while the other is working on an actual official Shadow Batman comic book (and also on other Sonic games and animations).

Ken won't say it out loud, but jealousy is absolutely eating him up alive. Just look at how he's lately brazenly infringing on SEGA's copyrights. It's a desperate cry for attention (and I'm enjoying how SEGA continues to ignore him).

 

Not to mention how he's going on and on about IDW Sonic's imminent death while it continues to break sales records.

 

In fairness, that's more about IDW the company itself running on a shoestring at the moment. They've clearly made a lot of smart money decisions to keep going in hot water this long, but either way it ignores the fact that if IDW itself went down, the team would mostly just move over to whatever the next publisher is without aborting the story like Archie did. SEGA owns all the material, it's not going down in sales like Post-Reboot Archie did, it's never going to die the way Pendies wants it to.

 

I don't perceive anyone in this thread trying to do so. I read Volphied's post more as a rhetorical comment, like "So who's gonna tell the emperor he has no clothes?" type of deal. As for my dumb wall of text on the previous page, I was just yabbering to amuse myself, I don't expect Ken to actually see it or even if he did for it to make any difference. I certainly have no desire to actually interact with the guy. I just think it's sad that he wastes his time on chasing infamy rather than getting off of the internet and finding something more positive and constructive to spend time on.

 

It's like addressing whydidyous to someone else while ranting to your friend. Of course they won't see it (they aren't in the room )

 

^^This.

You'd think that after decades spent working on them Ken would know how comic book panels work. It's truly amazing how he keeps finding new ways to un-learn how to make comic books.

That's another point that I find hilarious when comparing Ken to Ian. When Ian started working on Archie Sonic, he was the newbie to Ken's veteran status (IIRC Ian even looked up to Ken way back then). Yet, while Ian keeps improving and rising in status, Ken continues his fall from grace and his skills are regressing on every front.

 

If the trend continues uninterrupted, someday we'll be staring down the barrel of a loaded Ken Penders comic book called "K'nox: 50 years later" that he wrote while in hospice and the art would resemble that of a kindergartener's scribblings.

 

I can’t believe I’m about to defend Penders on anything, but least in the layout the middle row is position in a descending order that at least suggests the reading order. Like sometimes you try something new with a format and it just doesn’t work, but at least he tried…?

Don’t debate me over this, I’m shedding dead skin on this hill, let alone dying on it.

 

Wait, the sales went down post-reboot? That sucks, they deserved better than that.

 

Yup. Turns out that when you abandon 20 years worth of storytelling, no matter how necessary it might've been, you tend to lose fans.

Come to think of it, Post-Reboot probably got the shorter end of the stick as far as the two Archie Sonic universes go. It sold less, got little to none omnibuses and is likely never being continued in any capacity, as Flynn has explicitly stated that he's never bringing back the characters he created for it. At least Preboot is getting... something... thanks to Penders.

At least all the staff got to move on to IDW, with Tyson Hesse practically becoming a superstar in these past eight years.

 

It might be viewed internally as something of a bloodied nose: to Archie it's them losing what should've been an easy case due to their own incompetency, to SEGA it's a reminder of their flagship brand being forced to change due to the actions of a narcissistic fool.

That's presuming they even care and it's not more likely just a case of it being the end of a transaction between two companies.

 

https://xcancel.com/KenPenders/status/1848139742333800957?t=VHEHQFF8lyWHHUsBY_a0Aw&s=19

tfw the Sonic fandom's sudden hatred for Ian Flynn has done the impossible and made Ken Penders right about something.

 

I hate this perception of a fanbase being some sort of unilateral entity.

The fanbase doesn't have a sudden hatred for Flynn. The group who are screaming like psychotic lunatics would have hated Flynn had he remained in the comics rather than working on the games, or even if he just wrote a couple of issues then left.

Fanbases are a collection of individuals whom each have their own likes and dislikes on things. I hate Sonic Origins' story, most other people like it. I think Sonic Adventure is the better of the two Adventure games, most people prefer Sonic Adventure 2.

The 'sudden hatred' is just the minority of those people screaming the loudest, so becoming what everyone sees first when looking at the fanbase.

The perception in question is ridiculous, and it annoys me when I see people seeing "the fanbase can't make up its mind!" Well no s + - hi   t, it's almost as if 1,000,000 people are going to have different points of view on something... crazy...