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The Penders stuff always eclipses actual discussion of the comic. I don't think it's unreasonable to want to avoid that.
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May 2, 2019 07:53
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Nodosaur posted:The Penders stuff always eclipses actual discussion of the comic. I don't think it's unreasonable to want to avoid that. Agreed.
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May 2, 2019 19:43
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The Penders stuff is hilarious to discuss
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May 2, 2019 19:49
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No ones telling you you can’t. But there’s places where it’s more relevant and doesn’t derail or overshadow the actual subject of the topic. IDW isn’t the comic Penders worked for. Take it elsewhere.
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May 2, 2019 20:07
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The problem is if we don't allow Archie stuff to be discussed than this thread will probably see maybe four or five posts a month tops as there isn't really all that much to actually discuss regarding the IDW comics
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May 2, 2019 20:29
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Yeah, this thread is pretty dead most of the time. It's normally three or so posts every time an issue comes out and then no discussion. Personally I think it would be better served as a general Sonic comics thread.
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May 2, 2019 20:34
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Veotax posted:Yeah, this thread is pretty dead most of the time. It's normally three or so posts every time an issue comes out and then no discussion. Agreed
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May 2, 2019 21:39
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I can tell when the overall opinion is against me, so I'll drop it. But I am a bit disappointed.
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May 2, 2019 22:25
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https://twitter.com/the_kochalka/status/1124063154160459778
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May 2, 2019 22:58
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Can a goon summarize the whole Penders thing? I'm new to it, just reading this comic with my kid who loves Sonic.
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May 3, 2019 16:01
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In short: Basically ran Archie's Sonic series for years by virtue of being there the longest. He had no interest in the actual Sonic characters and mostly wanted to tell his magnum opus with his echidna characters. His stuff is mostly considered awful these days and Sega didn't give a poo poo what was going on so long as the comic made money. Until they were getting ready to launch the 360 Sonic game and wanted to see how the brand was being represented, the issue they saw had Sonic on the cover crying in the fetal position clutching a wedding invitation. Depending on who you believe Penders was either fired or quit after that (probably the former) and after that the comic started getting better with a new creative staff in charge. Jump forward a few years and Penders found out that the awful Sonic RPG that Bioware put out on the DS before they were brought by EA borrowed some elements from his precious echidnas and raised a stink about not being consulted or paid, saying that he owned his creations. Archie couldn't prove that he signed a contract saying that anything he created for the comic was owned by Sega & Archie because they're incompetent. They must have settled out of court or something because not long after he started making original stuff with those characters and the Archie comic rebooted to remove any character from the Penders era, even the ones created by other writers. Years later another writer started talking like they were going to sue or something to try to get the rights to some characters they created for the comics during the Penders regime, Sega then promptly pulled the Sonic license from Archie and IDW picked it up. Penders occasionally posts some bullshit from time to time that get people talking about him (most recently he said he wanted to do a story about Princess Sally losing her virginity in a children's comic about a speedy blue hedgehog). I probably got some of the specifics wrong and there is more bullshit surrounding the guy that I probably don't know.
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May 3, 2019 16:49
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In addition to his echidna magnum opus, Penders went into all sorts of inappropriate grimdark and gritty poo poo, traded in weird racial stereotypes and holocaust analogies, and sexualized his talking cartoon animal children characters. And somehow also made it all incredibly boring. Other Archie Sonic creators had mixed records, but Penders was many tiers worse even before he split off and started doing his own horrifying indie echidna thing and tweeting his secret plans for the sonic characters with a hand in his pants. Archie hosed up because the building they never digitized the contracts with their creators and the place they were stored in got flooded/burned down, I forget which. This is the part where people post: a) nonsensical echidna collection 1 b) nonsensical echidna collection 2 c) 13 generation echidna family tree d) crying sonic cover e) SSJ3 Tails f) pin-up future timewarp female characters g) any of the horrifying images of stuff penders worked on after leaving h) all of the above Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:04 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 01:02
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As I mentioned in another thread, editor Justin Gabrie was arguably even more to blame for the comic being the way it was in the late 90s/early 00s than Penders: he was very asleep at the wheel and did a terrible job of coordinating the different creatives (thus allowing the Penders/Bollers feud to become A Thing), and when he did meddle it was always stuff like "make the art look more anime" and "throw in love triangle stuff" and "have sonic and friends in school". If we had the same creative team but a more competent editor from early on, the comic probably would've been a lot better during that era.
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May 4, 2019 01:08
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Veotax posted:Penders occasionally posts some bullshit from time to time that get people talking about him (most recently he said he wanted to do a story about Princess Sally losing her virginity in a children's comic about a speedy blue hedgehog). First part, Penders stated that in the comic, skunk dude, Penders OC, and full adult Geoffrey St. Johns HAD actually hosed teenager Princess Sally Acorn, and that Sonic may be fast, but he wasn't fast enough on the draw there. You know, for kids. Secondly, some of the "fun" Penders stories: He was well known for hating having to work with anyone else, and had an ongoing feud with fellow writer Karl Bollers during the times they had to share duties on the comic. For instance, the comic wanted to introduce Knuckles' little brother as a newborn in a story arc. Penders wanted to name him "Mace", because Penders has the naming sense of a wet paper towel, and Bollers wanted to go with "Kneecaps", because why not. The editor at the time was basically a useless lump, so it became a "first to the post" for who got naming rights. This resulted in Knuckles' little brother being introduced in Penders' canon future stories (we'll get to this) as being named "Mace", as he got to run his story first. Bollers, who had his own faults but at least had a sense of humor, was the one who wrote in the little kid's actual "first" appearance chronologically, and thus had his full name be "Knecapeon Mace", because gently caress Ken Penders. Another fun story: The "canon future stories" I alluded to, basically, were Penders writing what he wanted to be the canon later years of the comic. So, as back ups in the book, he got to run "Mobius 25 Years Later", a series of stories that set up a bunch of future events: Sonic and Sally got married and had kids, Sonia and Manik, a chipmunk and a Hedgehog respectively Sonic and Tails had an unspecified falling out at some point Dr. Robotnik stole the Master Emerald and enacted some sort of big evil plan Knuckles went magic green Hulk mode and used Chaos powers to wipe out Robotnik and his Empire. Permanently. Like, Eggman super mega dead Knuckles went power mad and had to be stopped, and Sonic was tasked with using a device to depower him, but because he's not an Echidna and can't do anything right, he messed up and Knuckles lost an eye during the depowering Knuckles is mostly OK with this and has a cyber eye, and a daughter named Lara-Su Angel Island is now a republic and also the center of all culture on Mobius because Echidnas All former villains are now kinda just chill and have kids and all heroes are also chill and have kids and they have lots of sleepovers where they talk about how chill they are and how lame their parents are Also time is breaking down, it's all Sonic's fault, he's tasked with fixing it, and oops somehow he fucks it all up because, again, he's not an Echidna Now, that's a whoooooooooooole bunch of bullshit, especially trying to set the comic's future in stone as some sort of magnus opus. Penders never got to resolve the whole story thing before he left (I'll get to this, it's funnier than him getting fired), but part of his proposed terms for allowing Archie to keep using "his" characters was that they would declare that his Mobius 25 Years Later was THE de facto canon future for the comic. You know, because THAT'S sane. In terms of Penders deciding he knows better than everyone else how Sonic's world should go, well, the comic killed off Robotnik in issue 50. Sega was alright with this because the writers at the time double pinky swore to bring him back. The writers were ok with this at the time because they were pretty loving sure the comic wasn't going to be around much longer. They were wrong. The original Robotnik himself only returned once in a throw away plot over fifty issues later, and the concept of Robotnik was gone from the comic for 25 issues before a confusing mess of old plot mashed together to bring back a robotic version of Robotnik who soon after changed to the Sonic Adventure "Eggman" design, and a while after that was turned flesh and blood. I told you that story to tell you this one: Penders didn't want Robotnik back. No, he had a far better idea. He was setting things up to introduce his own, totally original villain, Dr. Droid, as the new big bad. Penders has had this project he hasn't been able to get off the ground for years called "The Lost Ones", a sort of generic mishmash of sci-fi tropes and poo poo, and he wanted to basically try to have it play out in the Sonic comics. The thing is, if you haven't noticed yet, Penders doesn't like Sonic. Penders is proud of not liking Sonic. Penders is, in fact, proud of not even playing a Sonic game. Sonic is only allowed to be in Penders stories because his name is on the cover; the plot happens AROUND or TO him, but the most important characters are his original ones, and because he got to create Echidna civilization from whole cloth, they're basically his pet project. Thus, Dr. Droid was finally going to be defeated by Knuckles, the true hero all along. If that sounds familiar to you, well, look a few paragraphs up and swap a name. Anyway, my point in that story: Penders was super proud that he had managed to have Robotnik written out of the comic for over two years. Other than Knuckles and his supporting cast the Chaotix, he seemed to HATE Sonic characters, and shoved them to the side as soon as he could. The Chaotix got hosed over too, but since they were Knuckles-adjacent it was to a lesser extent. Dude was super petty. If he was in an argument with other creators on the book, he would casually out their nome de plumes online. He literally claims to have created and own, from whole cloth, Evil Sonic, who is literally Sonic, but evil, and in a leather jacket and shades. He autographs DVD sets of Sonic SatAM, a show he had nothing to do with, but that he claims the (late) writer of, Ben Hurst, told him "you carry (SatAM's) torch now". The actual story there is that when asked if there would be more SatAM, Hurst basically said "at this point, the comics carry the torch now" and Penders has been riding that ever since. When there was talk of a movie being made, Penders went out of his way to poison the well for any pitches but his own, calling up executives and bad mouthing his "competition". All this poo poo came to a head when the new mandates and such from Sega came down after the whole "who the gently caress OKed a cover of Sonic crying his rear end off holding a wedding invitation" thing, and Penders, who had regained his status of sole writer on the comic, was being told he had to work with newcomer Ian Flynn. Penders, who had been able to pull rank and get what he wanted in the past by sheer virtue of tenure, told his current editor that he was quitting, assuming that he would be given what he wanted to keep him on. This time, however, he was told "You're quitting? Ok, bye" and was left empty handed, and Flynn became sole writer. I could go into the legal cases or such, but the meat of that is simply that Archie was, as was said, abso-loving-lutely incompetent and apparently pretty corrupt, too, and hosed themselves over in numerous ways around the same time. Penders took advantage of that, and actually people would probably have been on his side for things like "I want royalties" and the like, but he was always, ALWAYS a self-righteous rear end in a top hat who managed to come off as a tone deaf jackass. Fun fact: After Flynn took over, one of his early story arcs was clearing up Penders' Mobius 25 Years Later mess. He did so with a story called Mobius 30 Years Later, which I'm not going into. The relevant part is that during the story, in a throwaway panel and line, it's pretty clearly implied that Rotor the Walrus' fellow scientist, a generic Echidna seen with him in Penders' work, had been tortured and killed by the villains. Penders then popped up and was like "oh by Rotor and that guy were both gay and in a relationship", something that had never been hinted at before, the implication being that Flynn had done it as some sort of homophobic thing. Multiple people confirmed there was no evidence Penders left of that in the offices or anything, and the only "undertones" of it were that at one point the two were talking science on a bench. These are just the stories I remember off the top of my head, and of course, some details may be wrong, but yeah. That's Ken Penders.
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May 4, 2019 01:34
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Penders was also going to have Eggman out Rotor in the present day, and Sonic would reject him as a friend, which is so out of character it makes my teeth hurt.
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May 4, 2019 01:39
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Nodosaur posted:Penders was also going to have Eggman out Rotor in the present day, and Sonic would reject him as a friend, which is so out of character it makes my teeth hurt. That's the first I've heard of that, but it sounds very Penders-esque. I'm going to assume Rotor would've gone to and been accepted by the super-progressive Echidnas, who also had something called a "soul link" that is literal love-at-first-sight-forever-we-are-soul-mates-it-is-automatic-and-destined. This happens the very first time Knuckles meets his soon-to-be-girlfriend, Julie-Su, because writing relationships is hard. I'm sure Penders would have been VERY even handed with that Rotor storyline, though.
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May 4, 2019 01:42
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I mentioned it earlier, so I want to emphasize the 25 years later stories were also in service of getting full body shots of the suddenly bizzarely hourglass female characters in flimsy nightgowns and full leather catsuits. The whole thing was like a glimpse at some sort of perverse meld of this children 6-12 video game comic, transitioning into the nightmarish future IP Penders really wanted to make:
Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 02:20 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 02:17
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Honestly the thing that most amazes me about Ken Penders is that he hasn't gotten stabbed or shot by a crazed fan yet* *heck I'll fully admit that if I were to find out tomorrow that I had terminal cancer, I'd be very tempted to do it myself
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May 4, 2019 02:25
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Dude. Not cool.
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May 4, 2019 02:27
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Kurui Reiten posted:Dude. Not cool. Yeah, why wait for cancer? Live your best life, assault a delusional comics artist, that's a fantastic use of your time.
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May 4, 2019 02:40
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Kurui Reiten posted:Dude. Not cool. I was joking, admittedly I probably should have made that more clear Besides Penders is a jackass
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May 4, 2019 02:42
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I can see why Nodosaur didn't want us talking Penders in this thread; Lord of Booty we need you to make your separate thread Plus this is a very busy month for IDW sonic: issue 16 comes out next wedensday, while issue 17 comes out 2 weeks after that.
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May 4, 2019 05:24
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https://twitter.com/KenPenders/status/1124175639966146561
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May 4, 2019 14:18
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"It was always pitched as a 3D CGI animated project with all assets made available to @SEGA for a companion game release as part of the deal." Oh my god. I am now so sad we don't have a Penders-helmed Sonic movie animated with all the love and care that went into the Donkey Kong Country show.
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May 4, 2019 19:17
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alright I'm gonna make the Penders mock thread so this one can be about Flynn/IDW/Sonic The Comic/good sonic comics in general
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May 4, 2019 22:57
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alright I made the thread go laugh at Penders here
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May 4, 2019 23:14
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Back on the topic of good sonic comics, I'd say the Rough/Tumblr/Rouge story was the overall best one of the annual, great art courtesy of Skelly, and it would be neat if we could get Cavan Scott to write more stories in the future if they're all as good as this one
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May 5, 2019 00:23
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The Silver and Blaze gardening part of the annual made my heart happy. That was seriously the cutest poo poo. Those two always make a good duo.
Flytrap fucked around with this message at 01:30 on May 5, 2019 |
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May 5, 2019 01:23
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https://twitter.com/Scourgey/status/1126119702336540673 (for those who need context) Digamma-F-Wau fucked around with this message at 00:23 on May 9, 2019 |
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May 9, 2019 00:16
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I totally read that in Mike Pollok's voice.
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May 9, 2019 01:31
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New issue is out. 
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May 23, 2019 00:07
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Honestly this is probably Eggman's most evil plan yet.
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May 24, 2019 07:13
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MonsterEnvy posted:Honestly this is probably Eggman's most evil plan yet. I dunno, The Egg Grapes are kinda a hard thing to top in terms of evilness
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May 24, 2019 07:19
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drrockso20 posted:I dunno, The Egg Grapes are kinda a hard thing to top in terms of evilness I forgot about the Grapes, but this is also pretty bad, right up there with them.
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May 24, 2019 07:30
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MonsterEnvy posted:I forgot about the Grapes, but this is also pretty bad, right up there with them. Honestly I'm not really seeing it, it's basically just a repackaged version of Robotification from the Archie/SATAM universes, not to mention it is definitely going to get undone by the end of this arc anyways(they made it too virulent in nature to be a long term threat)
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May 24, 2019 08:24
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This is basically grey goo which is pretty terrifying imo. Also the whole future being completely barren of all life, only metallic plants and water left if he isn't stopped.
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May 24, 2019 08:34
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That being said, them Big air quotes “Offing” Charmy like that was something I didn’t expect out of this comic.
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May 24, 2019 10:31
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When did the Egg Grapes first show up and what do they do? I don't remember hearing about them until Eggman tried to put Knuckles-as-Enerjak in one and he destroyed all of them. Sonic The Hedgehog Zombie Apocalypse has been surprisingly affecting so far, hopefully they can keep up the quality through the comic.
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May 25, 2019 13:52
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The Egg Grapes were a Power Source he created. Person goes in and their life force is drained to power his machines until they die. Also they get poisoned and memory wiped while in the grapes.
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May 25, 2019 14:38
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MonsterEnvy posted:The Egg Grapes were a Power Source he created. Person goes in and their life force is drained to power his machines until they die. Also they get poisoned and memory wiped while in the grapes. Notably Charmy got stuck in one and came out literally retarded, in a really hamfisted way to reconcile their version(who was a teenager) with Sega's version(who is like 6), at least until they retconned everything after the second Mega Man crossover
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May 25, 2019 20:26
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