Ken is now saying he owns the rights to the Sonic Chronicles characters. Epic way to start the new year.
The comments are fucking glorious. And yes, most of them include Donkey Kong in some form or fashion. I'm pretty tempted to jump in myself, but I'm trying to restrain myself. I also know for a fact Ken will block me.
https://twitter.com/SpinStellar/status/1345533166790950912?s=19 I didn't fully understand this until coming here today
I've had a private conversation with him about this. Basically : - He claims that since neither SEGA nor EA/Bioware fought for the rights of Shade, he can use her. - One of his arguments is that SEGA never have gone against Archie for losing the rights to the comic material/assets, so obviously they wouldn't go after him about Shade. He uses the case of DeCarlo as the basis of this argument. - He claims he has no plans to use her other than a couple of sentences in Julie-Su's bio and a 2 or 3 panel sequence in a story. - His reasons : "protecting The Lara-Su Chronicles" - "Because it took so long to fight Archie, it created complications in my case against SEGA & EA, resulting in essentially a dismissal. But because the dismissal was without prejudice, that meant the lawsuit against SEGA & EA could be refiled if SONIC CHRONICLES or any elements from it became an arguable issue." - "From my perspective, my lawyers have always cautioned that if THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES were to become a success, there was a chance SEGA might want a piece of the action. What precludes that from happening is the passage of time as a result of my taking so long to get it done. For SEGA to file anything against me raises the question and my defense via the fact they never sued Archie for the loss of a valuable asset such as the ARCHIE Sonic series. By not taking action against Archie, or against me over the years as a result of my selling Lara-Su merchandise, SEGA has placed themselves in the same position as Dan DeCarlo with Archie. When they had the chance to fight back, they choose not. Thus Dan lost his case against Archie because he never fought Archie over the Josie opyrights." - "My actions regarding Shade and also the Archie SONIC & KNUCKLES stories are more in line to protect not only my interests, but that of the other creators and to keep the work from falling into public domain."
ahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaa This is fucking hilarious in itself, but it also implies it's ever going to be released.
I think the funniest thing, besides the fact it's never going to come out, is that Ken, for some inexplicable reason, seems to think there's a fucking audience for his shit. That being said? Yes, I do hope The Lara-Su Chronicles is released someday. Why? For several reasons. First, it'll be a spectacle to behold. It will be so aggressively awful that it will become the next All-Star Batman, an absolute masterclass of unintentional comedy that will create countless memes and parodies. Second, what will become of Ken? I doubt it'll make money because (A) there's no audience and (B) Ken faces potential legal action from any one of the following: Sega Archie EA Anthony Mackie Artists/photographers whose art was traced/stolen by Ken for the comic
It would be absolutely wild if it did release. I don't even know what would happen. The universe might end. I could actually shed a tear of joy. It would be the most hilariously incompetent and possibly the least-financially successful thing to ever be associated with this franchise or this fandom. Like, he's not even going to get much of anything from his weird twitter stans. I'm sure some of them are just trolls who would never give any money to him, but the unironic ones all have this air of thinking Ken is the cool alternative to the "nasty SJW writing team" of Flynn, Stanley et al. and would be turned off by his hamfisted political writing being diametrically opposed to theirs (one of the few examples of his failure at subtlety I wouldn't mind). They'd lose their fake hero who we also don't like. And as for us...well, I think this is going to be the first bad Sonic product that not only kinda deserves to suck, but which I think people would actively intentionally parade around as a paragon of badness for even non-Sonic fans to make fun of. I would genuinely celebrate how terrible this comic book was. It would be a piece of so-bad-it's-good media to rival Neil Breen or Tommy Wiseau, I would actively want to spread news of it around to any youtube bro who could make a hilarious review of it. Hell, I might literally make a real youtube video for the first time in a decade myself just to do it. But no, it's not going to happen. Ken is going to sit on this property and the characters within until he either dies or else leaves the public eye forever due to losing the will (or ability) to work. I have no doubt that if the latter happens, he will 100% blame anyone but himself. He's already compared us to Trumpers, I see no reason he wouldn't say this is the fans' fault too, while also claiming it would have blown the market sky-high if he had released it. It will be amazing, and terrible.
Know what's ironic? In the early 00's, I got kicked off of a Sonic forum a few times for criticizing Kenny-boy here. Apparently he was a member there and got in good with the mods based on his position at Archie. I didn't even say anything derogatory, just stuff along the lines of how 'there was so much text and no action in an issue that it might as well be a novel instead of a comic book.' And another time when a user was excited that a post that he made a few months back happened in an issue, I suggested that he may've read your post, liked it and stole it. And yeah, Kenny sues Archie for IP and wins. In my opinion if anyone should've sued anyone over IP with the comics, it should've been Ben Hurst. He did an interview where he revealed what he would've had in store for a season 3 of SatAM, and how much of it did Ken use? F'in all of it. But Ben's gone and Ken's still around. Lewis Black was right. The good die young and pricks live forever.
If Hurst had sued Penders, I wouldn't be surprised if this one defended himself by trying to claim that somehow Hurst stole from him. As we know from the whole echidna fiasco, he has a thing for appropriating others' ideas and then accusing everyone else of copying him, including the original creators.
Speaking of echidna fiasco's, I find it funny that Penders didn't try to sue Sega for including an echidna tribe in Sonic Adventure. I wonder if he'll try if there's ever a remake. Sure, an echidna tribe may've been done by Penders first, but Sega made it work by basing them off of the ancient Mayans, where Penders based his off of his rejected comic idea about super intelligent native americans from the future. That's why all the Penders echidna's look the way that they do. That's why if you look at all the echidna's from Kenny's Archie run, you know which one of them stands out and looks like he doesn't belong? Knuckles.
Did Penders ever depict his echidnas as a tribe (not counting the Knuckles Clan in the SA1 adaptation) to begin with? If memory serves, while he depicted Athair and the Ancient Walkers as shamanistic, Knuckles' people were shown to be basically a modern civilization (despite their hi tech) in his stories. They wore modern clothes, lived in a modern city, had modern jobs...
Sucks you got banned from that forum but based on what I saw of the community back in that era, not too surprising. I looked into the stuff Ben posted on the Sonic newsgroup back in the day and holy shit... pretty crazy that he came up with the "It was Earth all along" thing too, only to have Penders conveniently lift it. I remember Ben also saying something about an idea for a love triangle but I think that was quite a while after the Sonic/Sally/Geoffrey love triangle. Man... I wish he was still here. Yeah, the echidnas in Penders' stories were basically Kryptonians. Right down to the "we're gonna get destroyed plz do something" thing, but unlike the Elders of Krypton, they actually listened to the warnings and did something about it. They used the power from the Chaos Emeralds to separate their city from the ground (somehow), which is how the Floating Island became a thing. Then centuries later Dimitri absorbed all but one of the emeralds, became Enerjak, and the rest of the echidnas blew up the city, renounced technology, and made Knuckles' great-great-whatever the first guardian. Not sure what became of the echidnas between that point and the comic's present day (can't remember a whole lot) or if there were any tribe-like depictions that predated the SA1 tribe.
Wasn't too bad, back in that era, you just made a new account and continued. Maybe your first account or two, you came up with the cool name and had dreams of being a big shot, but you realize that it's not going to happen, and before long, you're eggbot223 or something, knowing you're going to lose that account for a Penders comic critique. Then you get bored, and stop coming to the forums all together, and the forum dies and so does the site because mods ban just about everyone but themselves. I stayed away from forums for years, and coming back to one, it's nicer, yes. The nicest people I've met I can't help but to wonder if they'd be banned in the 00's. It's nice to swing by, read, learn things, share knowledge of your own, I even shared a rom hack that I made. But I still feel like an outsider. There's something you should know about Geoffrey. He is actually Ken Penders' Mary-Sue self-insert fan character. When Ken wrote, he put himself in Geoffrey's place. That's why he was pushed as a top character and got to hook up with Sally. Think about that. Things starting to make sense? Now consider this tweet from Penders on Apr. 8 2019 "The one story I couldn't tell was Sally losing her virginity to Geoffrey. Sonic may be fast but Geoffrey was faster on the draw in that department." So that's what Ken thinks about when he's alone? Also, Sally is 15 and Geoffrey is 27. I'll try to go into more detail than what I said before. When I said super intelligent native americans from the future, I didn't mean a couple guys in a delorean. I'm talking about an entire city from the future transported back in time. (which happens to be our present) They close themselves off from the rest of the world, while trying to save the world at the same time. That's what I can remember of the concept, and hearing the Kryptonians thing, yeah, I can see that too. To sum it all up, Ken sued Archie for his dreamworld and his fursona back.
Honestly, I'm not really surprised. He kinda seemed self-inserted but I never tried to think about it too much (probably cause I didn't WANT to). And yeah, that Tweet about Sally/Geoffrey sex was fuuuuuuuucked up. Dude, keep your fantasy shit out of the comic. To sum it all up, Ken sued Archie for his dreamworld and his fursona back.[/QUOTE] Hmm... I can see Echidnopolis kinda being like that. It's not a bad concept, but it was really weirdly done. Too bad we can never see anything like it again in any Sonic continuity because Ken owns it all now. -_- Here's hoping any potential movies can do something with the echidnas without stepping on Penders' toes, or worse, him trying to get involved (although I'm thinking even Hollywood would see what a loon he is and kick his ass to the curb).
Never underestimate the loons in Hollywood. Turns out Penders did work on some TV. He was a storyboard artist for King of the Hill. And a Director/Producer for some weird project called 'The Republic.' Oh! And he did try to make a movie using the story that he based his Knuckles story on, it didn't seem to get off the ground... But he did make a trailer!
