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THE KEN PENDERS CHRONICLES: a man you Ken DePenders on

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by The KKM, Jul 7, 2010.

  1. Glaber

    Glaber

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    He may have been right to go after Archie, but he also want after Sega and even screwed over Ben Hurst. He may have been wronged, but you don't right wrongs with more wrongs.

    He also acts like he owns the entire concept of the echidna race, possibly even the lore with the master emerald.

    However wronged he may be, he doesn't own the Echidna race nor the lore behind Knuckles.
    2 wrongs don't make a right still.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2020
  2. Aesculapius Piranha

    Aesculapius Piranha

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    Besides the obvious social failings, these are works he made under hire for a company. Its sheer luck on his part Archie was lax enough to not clearly define the scope of his employment to where whether or not he signed a work for hire contract even mattered. Moreso that for whatever reason Archie wasn't able to produce said contract. Penders is a tool. Plain and simple.
    Add: Okay, even watching the video now it speaks volumes that his excuse is that he was assmad over Sonic Chronicles similarities crediting but Archie are the ones who got the brunt of it. He didn't sue Bioware because he didn't have anything resembling a viable claim over those similarities and he didn't sue EA. He sued Archie and Sega.
    Inb4 he starts trying to think of a way to sue Paramount.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2020
  3. Mana

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    The fact that you're defending something as horrid as these Work for Hire contracts that have screwed over COUNTLESS creators in the past and I posted examples of how creators who got companies MILLIONS were left starving and destitute due to them speaks volumes on how you feel on this entire issue. The entire Work for Hire system under comics is very flawed and it's honestly disgusting more isn't being done about it, other than DC being nice enough to give out royalties these days, and Marvel making sure to credit their creators for their efforts (as well as giving royalties to the bigger ones).

    I don't know what assmad is but yes he was upset that the Chronicles games took his ideas, acknowledged they took his ideas, and were using them in a more lucrative medium. It was NEVER ABOUT GETTING HIS CHARACTERS BACK IT WAS ABOUT CALLING ARCHIE AND SEGA OUT FOR USING HIS IDEAS IN OTHER MEDIUMS WITHOUT EVEN CREDITING HIM AN ISSUE COMIC WRITERS HAVE BEEN FIGHTING ABOUT FOR DECADES.

    The issue goes beyond what we know of SEGA and Archie and goes deeper into how horrid the comic industry is to their creatives. It really hit me how he saw SEGA when he kept talking of them solely as a buisness and not this thing of magic and wonder we see them as because we play their games all the times.

    If you've somehow missed that when he never said "Oh and I really wanted to write some new stories with my characters so I wanted the rights back" because it was never the issue then I don't know what to say.
     
  4. Dark Sonic

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    Except Penders IS making a comic with all of his old Archie characters now. And even if he made up the characters, it shouldn't matter, because they should all belong to the Sonic property and not himself as they are all characters based off said property. Yes, work for hire is scummy, but don't start defending Penders because he's not exactly a saint.

    That said I'm not exactly letting Archie off the hook either. They deserved this with their shitty contract keeping. They literally couldn't find it, like ya, if that's the case you don't have a leg to stand on. I still wonder who pulled the plug on the Archie comic though, Archie or Sega? Or maybe both? Sega must have been fed up with Archie at that point and Archie seemed to be wanting to move on to making their edgy teen versions of their extremely dated 50s characters.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2020
  5. Mana

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    I'm not defending Ken Penders as a person, I have not said anything about him as a human being in any defense I've given over his stance in the lawsuit. I even called him out on his ego a page ago.

    And yes he is making a comic with his Archie characters, I mean there's no use having won the rights to them and just let them fall into limbo right? If you watched the video actually having his characters back was the LAST resort when just getting a settlement and moving on was what he wanted at first.

    That thought process is why so many creators have been calling out DC and Marvel and Archie in the last few years, by the way. There was a character used in the Flash TV show named Caitlin Snow based on a character from the comics named Killer Frost. This character was the newest incarnation. But DC said they didn't have to give royalties for her being used in the TV show because she was based on a derivative character. So when the creators argued that they HADN'T used the Killer Frost persona for her in the show and she was just their creation, Caitlin Snow, especially because they had no plans to turn her into the supervillian in question DC decided the character belongs to no one and no one is going to get royalties from her now, neither the creator of the Killer Frost persona or of the new Caitlin Snow character.

    I'm going to keep bringing this back to creator royalties within the comics world because that's ultimately where the issue is. I should also state it's going to be hard to convince me those work for hire contracts that allow for these big companies to pick on little guys who aren't any richer than you or me and ensure they can make lucrative franchises based on their characters without giving them any money have a valid place in the modern world, or should be defended.
     
  6. Overlord

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    Copyright law should still be a max of 20 years before everything is released into public domain, though. It's been perverted far beyond the original intention. If you're not making money off it after 2 decades you never will, and if you have been then 2 decades is more than enough time.
     
  7. Mana

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    My thing is, I really DON'T care if these companies keep the rights to these franchises for as long as their using it for the mere sake of quality control and preventing brand saturation. This is just on comics because of how they go out of their way to not support their creators financially.

    Notice that no other industry goes out of their way to have to fight for creator royalties the way that comics do. Big TV shows, Musicians, and Movies can all be entitled to royalties with the right contracts everytime they air. There's several interviews with small Seinfeld bit characters who still talk about getting small checks in the mail when the episode they were in airs again. Why can't comics do this when they're an equally big and lucrative business especially companies like DC, Marvel, and Archie?

    Especially as comic book movies have become the biggest media business in the world as the 21st century has continued on. It's an issue with many angles to think about but I'm still on his side if it all began because he realized they could use things he created in the comics to make money in other mediums and there was nothing to do to stop it, when that has hurt many of his peers financially in the past.
     
  8. Antheraea

    Antheraea

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    Ken Penders lost any sympathy for me when he tried to claim that he owned the idea of "the echidna race", Knuckles, and Tikal, and constantly shitting on the current comic work that has nothing to do with him. On top of...all the other really gross shit he has going on with characters that still aren't his, like this thread's current namesake.
     
  9. Mana

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    I guess this will be the last thing I'll say on this because no one's really arguing against my view point and I'm not the type of person to try to get people to just bluntly say I was right but I want to make this clear : I am *not* defending Ken Penders as a person, a writer, or a creative. I don't like his comics.

    I am defending his viewpoint that companies like Archie, DC, and Marvel SHOULDN'T be able to pay him peanuts for his ideas and then turn around and make millions off of them. I'm not even saying his ideas had that potential but in theory it was there, and that IS a problem.

    Marvel and DC have gotten better with this overtime, with Jim Starlin the creator of Thanos and a huge part of why Infinity War, Endgame, and the entire MCU worked, receiving royalties for his use in those movies but Archie hasn't budged on the issue in decades. He thought by standing up to SEGA he would also be standing up to them...and he did. They just made sure absolutely no one won from it.

    Someone needs to stand up for the creators of these characters that make these companies millions. And saying "but he signed a work for hire" when these characters DO hit billion dollar movies and high toy sales is something I'll always speak out against because it was their character and the passion they put into them in the first place that helped make it into a lucrative franchise. I'll even just say its evil really.
     
  10. Glaber

    Glaber

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    look, you may be right, but Penders is really not the person to use for your position. Penders hurts your argument more than he helps.
     
  11. Mana

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    I get that. But I'd argue that reminding people that even someone like Ken Penders deserves to get a check when they decide to use his ideas in formats that make FAR more than comics do, actually strengthens it.

    Anyone who disagrees is defending a company who doesn't care about you and uses it's creatives, who make the wonderful stories and characters that make us happy and are honestly just average joes at the end of they day, until they've gotten everything they need from them and drop them without concern for their future or ensuring they get royalties for their ideas being used later on, no matter how much potential money they can make from them.

    I'm not defending anything Ken Penders has done since, or even when he wrote the comics. This is just about this specific issue that, if its not clear already, I'm very passionate about.

    If SEGA and Archie had acknowledged they screwed up a decade ago, we wouldn't even be here. But when I am reminded of things like Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric being forced and rushed on a platform they didn't develop it for and rushed for a Christmas release, which ended up screwing over the developer, or all the Archie creatives that didn't receive a single royalty for their ideas in the past have made clear all they care about is their bottom dollar and not what's right.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2020
  12. Aesculapius Piranha

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    I guess you don't have to know to live it.

    You do realize that Archie and Sega didn't make Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, right? The reason he can't sue Bioware, a subsidiary of EA who has far deeper pockets than Sega is they didn't actually take anything from him that was copyrightable. Also, I'm not "defending" anything. Work for hire contracts allow companies to not get sued by opportunists who wish to take advantage of them after they have been hired to create art for them. When someone pays you money to create for them, they are paying you so they can use your work for THEIR project. You aren't entitled to that work after that. The fact Archie mishandled this is mind boggling, but I guess they never forsaw Ken Penders being the creep he is just as Penders never forsaw Bioware building off of his stories the way he built off of DiC's stories. This is of course Archie's second failing as you don't even need the work for hire contract if the scope of his employment was properly defined. I guess Archie just gave the Donutsteel king too much freedom.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2020
  13. Mana

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    SEGA published the game and had to have been asked by the writing staff if it was alright to use ideas from the comics in the game, that's why a work for hire contract that would have allowed them to use his ideas without further compensation, was mentioned by them in the lawsuit. They thought they were in the clear to screw him over but they weren't.

    We're not talking about being entitled to work for that company further after you've done your work for them. We're talking about them using your work to produce new things in different mediums and not paying you for it. Ideas and Stories that can be expanded into so much more.

    Like the fact that you can defend these contracts knowing how much they've ruined the lives of creators who made these companies millions of dollars because of your personal dislike of Penders says everything I need to know about you and I don't want to have any further debate with you on the issue because your mind is made up that these companies are king and their workers deserve to be mistreated in this way. I'm over it.

    I'm boycotting anything Archie makes from now on by the way, if I have to vote with my wallet so people like you can stop justifying these billion dollar corporations doing things like this then I'm more than happy to.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2020
  14. Thunder Bro

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    Have not watched yet, but next part of the interview is out.
     
  15. Antheraea

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    I would like to mention that my response was into the original post made, which was that a video of Ken Penders trying to explain what was going on changed your mind like it erased all the other gross/legally questionable/unreasonably petty stuff that the rest of this thread is about. Like, okay, there was a core injustice. That doesn't justify the rest of the stuff he has done and the continuing discussion into contracts and such kind of feels like a red herring given what this subdiscussion kinda started as?
     
  16. Mana

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    I don't think he's a great person either but if SEGA and Archie had taken responsibility years ago and hadn't manipulated everyone into thinking he was just suing to get his characters back so he could use them in new stories then we wouldn't be here.
     
  17. Stink Terios

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    What's with this "they took his ideas" talk? Anything in Sonic Chronicles is not Penders's in any way, shape, or form. The idea of a supposedly extinct society secretly living under the shadows with mega-tech and then resurfacing is painfully generic and I fully believe Chronicles's writers came up with that independently.
    Hell, that's just a trope. Nothing more, nothing less.
     
  18. Overlord

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  19. Antheraea

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    I'm literally playing Etrian Odyssey 3 right now and this is a plot point.
     
  20. Pengi

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    BioWare mentioned the comics before the game's release, when talking about creating a story with the Sonic lore. They had Swat Bots and rocoticised animals in the game, so they were definitely looking at and drawing from the American Sonic media.

    Ken Penders' stuff was very derivative, but the exact same combination of ideas being applied to the same set of characters (echidnas) in Sonic Chronicles was not a coincidence. They were doing Julie-Sue and the Dark Legion.