Was the panel where Knuckles's ancestors were mostly Knuckleses the work of Penders as well? I can't really remember and I can't be arsed to read through the old issues again.
I dunno if he drew that panel, but he definitely wrote the issue. The only Knuckles relative he didn't make was Athair.
Penders did in fact draw this one. It was a mini-story for Knux published in issue 36. You know, I wonder what exactly Edmund is swearing on there. The Knuckles clan seemed to be a pretty scientific-based community, and no hints of religion really peak through in these issues, so why would they need the equivalent of a Bible to take an oath on. Maybe it's symbolic? A tie to the past? A real-world reference? I dunno.
One of the characters actually quotes the Bible (the book of Proverbs, in fact) at some point early on. I think it was the last issue of the original Knuckles mini-series. So, Ken might have just been letting the real world bleed into his comics.
I'm shocked by the fact that this 1996-ish Knuckles looks leagues better than that horrifying Sonic he drew some time ago.
I was thinking the same thing. At what point did he stop drawing the character's arms and legs on-model and decide to start giving them actual muscle tone? More importantly, why the fuck did he decide that was even a good idea in the first place? Looking at these early pages, and then looking at what Ken's doing now, it just seems like he wanted to turn everyone into muscle-gorillas. In a few more years Lara-Su and Not-Knuckles will resemble the Pillar-Men from JoJo. (there may or may not be a JoJo-Pender's edit in the near future from myself...)
Potentially, but at the same time, Ken needs to understand the significance of these events and why they're practiced before just tossing them into his book. In a society that doesn't seem to subscribe to any religion, even/especially one based on early Southern American tribes, swearing in on a holy text doesn't really make a whole lotta sense. I could see something like this happening for the Ancient Walkers, seeing as their entire shtick revolves around being these spiritual beings who appear to worship the Chaos Emeralds. But even then I'd doubt they'd have a holy text to swear in on.
Right. It's definitely an inconsistency in Ken's mythos. This was early enough that I wouldn't be surprised if his ideas for that story were in their infancy, though. Even so, having an Echidna quote the Bible comes across as a break of the fourth wall, and that wasn't the intent.
Don't forget this is a man who shoved in a quotation about the Holocaust into a story about anthropomorphic animals. He's not what you'd call deep, more thinks-he-is.
Pretty much this. People who remember the comic being deep are incorrectly attributing the work of Karl Bollers to Penders. Credit where credit is due, the main plot of issues 88-101 balanced a darker narrative without going grim-dark for the sake of it, which Penders had no involvement with.
We really shouldn't take this too seriously, but Mobius was a Post Apocalyptic Earth and the Echidnas were the first advanced race. It isn't a stretch to think that some human artifacts remained, especially considering how much of early Echidna society resembles that of humanity.
https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/904848887873134592 Why is he asking this, given he has zero input at current over the Sonic comics? Is he planning on attempting to muscle in on the IDW comic? That's the last thing that should happen.
I mean, if the alternative is Star Trek Knuckles The Bible, then yes, I'll take a comic based off just the games. I'd like to think a unique world can be built though without it turning into that.
Oh yeah totally. I think there's a brilliant way out there to do an expanded Sonic world that isn't embarrassing or just some sort of alternate premise that ignores the game backstory. Personally I just love how Penders presents his point as "You either pick my writing, or have no writing!!", as if Ian Flynn's work (or hell, any decent Sonic fiction that tries to resemble the game lore to a degree) doesn't exist to him. Edit: Also, whoever @HapticPanda is on twitter, thanks for replying to him with my above post. I would never dare poke that beehive myself I'm 99% sure Penders won't even understand what Mega Drive is and miss the point completely but ah well.
