https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/the-lawsuit-that-reshaped-sonic-the-hedgehog-comics.html Doesn't add anything new but NY Magazine wrote a really good writeup about the Penders fiasco
Midnight's Edge is going to be releasing a 3 part interview with part one arriving some time soon. They didn't say exaclty when. Edit: Make that now Part 1
https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/1231969379018952704 Spoiler: Spoiler for the Sonic Movie Penders finally saw the echidnas in the Sonic Movie, and his reaction is to try and weld them into his own lore. Reportedly he claimed he was joking when called out on it, but since it's Penders, I'm certain he was serious.
I haven't watched the movie yet. But I just looked those echidnas up, and the only similarity I can see between them and Penders' echidnas is that they're the same species and aren't extinct. They look closer to the Knuckles Clan than the Dark Legion, with the tribal theme and all, rather than being cyborgs in black robes. I gotta ask, has no one ever told Penders that he wasn't even the first person to depict an echidna civilization in Sonic? There was that obscure French comic that did the very same thing years before him. And that's not even accounting the fact that "ancient echidna civilization" has been implied to be a thing in the games ever since Knuckles and Angel Island were introduced. Fleetway was another comic that ran with that idea before Penders, and even did the "villainous cyborg echidna" thing.
If I recall correctly he said something like "they were published first but that doesn't mean they had the ideas first" as if that fucking counts.
His initial idea didn’t even have anything to do with echidnas. If I recall correctly, Penders’ Knuckles mythology was originally this idea he’d come up with for a comic about an advanced Native American civilization that no one wanted to publish. He just dumped it on Knuckles because Sega didn’t have any guidelines on what could be done with him, he was sort of a blank slate.
Wow, really? Geez. I can imagine nobody wanting to publish that, it sounds vaguely racist at best, even by 90s standards. Some of that shit seeped into his comics anyway, it would have been horrible with humans.
Wait, Penders thinks he has greater claim to authorship of a concept others used years before him just because he loosely based his take on a random idea he had long lingering in his head? Am I reading that right?
I just watched this and I feel like I shouldn't have because now I understand Ken Penders perspective. To him it was never about getting the characters he made back. He didn't sue them initially with a deep seated desire to write Laru-Su adventures without Knuckles. It was not about making sure no one else altered his comic vision. It was about something way more simple. Business. When he left the comics he did so without looking back, he knew Archie would continue using his characters with new writers and that was fine. That's just how it goes there with the Work for Hire. The problem came when SEGA did it. He had no problems with the ideas still being used in the comics but when they progressed to video games, a much more financially profitable venture it changed. This meant now SEGA could make millions off his ideas and not have to give him a dime. What if they started taking storylines directly from the comics next (Don't tell me they wouldn't have, I know that, just imagine)? They're just going to rip his ideas now and not have to pay him a dime? That's wrong. We commend Ian Flynn for not doing things like this but honestly comics don't pay well. Ian Flynn is rewarded for his loyalty by being allowed to continue writing the comics as long as they go but one day, maybe even a decade from now, he's going to be done with the comics and some other writers are going to join his playground and use his characters and SEGA will continue to make money off of them without ever having to pay him a dime. It's unfair especially because they can afford it with all the money they'll be making off his ideas. It was never about ruining the comics so many people loved dearly to stroke his own ego (and we know he has a big one). It was about creator rights. And honestly...I don't have much of a problem with that.
"Creator rights" is a pretty odd way of spelling "cash", which seems to be your primary reasoning as to why he sued about it. Copyright law is also far too restrictive and needs an overhaul, as a sidenote.
Yeah, most Creator Rights issues ultimately comes down to people wanting money off their ideas that still makes these companies millions of dollars yearly. They realize themselves its better off to leave the characters as part of a larger world but if those characters are now making a ton of money in other fields they start feeling entitled to a little of the profits. As they should be. When you read about the poor state a lot of these creatives end up in, like the Superman creator being completely broke and only getting a decent deal because his wife made DC realize how bad they'd look if the creator of Superman starved to death in a cramped apartment or how the creator of Ghost Rider got so desperate he tried suing Marvel and saying he had the copyright to the character so he could make SOME money off the character because he was in his late 60's and unable to work only to be sued by them over it for $17,000 which he didn't have despite the popularity of the character...you can't help but sympathize in my opinion. Now I know things have gotten better in this regard for most companies since the 80's. Most Marvel and DC creators ARE given royalties for use of their characters and story elements in adapted media. Not a huge amount but it's better than the nothing it used to be. Archie however has remained as stingy as ever. This really was an eye opener to me.
I'm no legal expert, but I'm pretty sure you can't own an idea. Reboots, adaptations and such reuse ideas and concepts all the times; that's nothing new. What's more, Mr. Penders tried to take claim for concepts he didn't originate. The fact he keeps acting like the series revolves around his work doesn't help. From what I've read, he even seems to believe that he was the one responsible for making the Sonic franchise a success. He comes off more egotistical and delusional than sympathetic in my eyes.
Love how you ignore how I said the entire issue was with how comic companies treat their creators as a whole because something about not being able to copyright ideas. If that was the case how did he win over 170 copyrights to his characters and stories done with Archie? Also if that was the case several creators wouldn't have been able to successfully sue Archie and get their characters and stories back. Also it's pretty obvious now he's had to drive that point home so he could win the lawsuit by making the success of the Archie Comic's tied to his storylines and characters that kept it going even when Sonic had that long hiatus from the end of 3 and K until Adventure. Until you can justify to me how these comic companies make millions off stories and characters made by artists and writers they barely pay, I'm not going to reply to your hyperfocused on one word response. Especially because the fact that he won the lawsuit against both of them and got his characters back invalidates your "you can't copyright ideas" post. Pretty sure Sonic himself is a copyrighted idea, no?
From what I understand, he won for the use of his characters, not his basic ideas. Big difference. Also from what I read, he tried to claim ownership of Tikal and failed. If I wrote what you called a "hyperfocused on one word response", it was because I wasn't trying to debate your whole post. I was only focused on whether Penders' actions were sympathetic or out of line.
That doesn't change the fact that ideas, or rather specific renditions of them, can be copyrighted or we wouldn't even have copyrights to begin with. Watch the video yourself before making any further opinions, if you check a few pages back I was still on the "Screw Penders" wave myself. His entire fight was mainly against Archie who was notorious for regularly refusing to give even the smallest amount of royalties to their biggest creators like the guy who made the Archie house style, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Josie and the Pussycats. His actions were done in response to mistreatments that company had given dozens of others over the course of their existence. He also speaks of his attempts to resolve things before they got to the point they did and how Archie outright refused to do so. I think you should really watch the video yourself, might change your mind too.
