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the man's wiki page posted:Ken Penders is an American comic book creator and writer. He makes his living as a freelance writer and artist, accepting assignments involving screenplays, storyboards, character design, backgrounds, website graphics, and some the magazine covers, portraits or commissioned work. Penders illustrated the cover of the complete series DVD set of Sonic the Hedgehog. This is technically an accurate summary, but it also severely undersells just how batshit insane the story of Ken Penders is. Ken Penders, in essence, is the ur-Sonic Fan. Not in the sense that he was the first to like the series, or launched its fandom in any big way, but in the sense that every single awful tendency of the Sonic fandom, from the proliferation of absolute garbage "original characters" to the bizarre sexual fetishism and insistence on grim darkness that pervades many fan works, can be easily traced back to him. This post, over in the Good Sonic Thread, does a much better job than the Wiki page at summing up why people care about Ken Penders: Kurui Reiten posted: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. Ken Penders is legitimately, honest-to-God, bugfuck crazy and awful. And this is a man who had, essentially, free rein over the Sonic the Hedgehog IP for over a decade. And the results are exactly what you'd expect: a bunch of horrifying batshit nonsense. Oh, and that thing the last paragraph of his wiki page mentions? Firstly, as mentioned in the effortpost, it only exists because Penders managed to win the rights to his terrible OCs in court. Yes, this actually happened. It also happened, as mentioned, because Archie is incompetent to almost a hilarious extent and somehow managed to lose his contract in a fire. Secondly, holy gently caress, THIS is what it looks like Discendo Vox posted: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: Anyhow, I don't really know how to end this, I'm mostly making this thread as a way to get Penders discussion out of the thread for Good Sonic because (while I think Penders discussion is loving hilarious) it has a way of taking over the thread and drowning out discussion of comics that don't suck incredible amounts of rear end.
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# ? May 4, 2019 23:14 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:20 |
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God imagine how different the whole Ken Penders situation would've been if we had an editor far more competent than Justin Gabrie.
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# ? May 4, 2019 23:41 |
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Imagine if Archie had made backups of their contracts.
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# ? May 5, 2019 03:46 |
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Discendo Vox posted:Imagine if Archie had made backups of their contracts. They did. The photocopies they presented were ruled inadmissible in court. What they SHOULD have done was made everyone sign new contracts as soon as they found out about the burning, or something. As has been said though, Archie was incompetent in many ways. That and Sega was just like "what the poo poo is this crap you're dragging us into" because Penders didn't just sue about the comics, he sued about the Sonic RPG.
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# ? May 5, 2019 04:24 |
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Can you believe BioWare made a DS-only Sonic RPG? That poo poo's still wild.
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# ? May 5, 2019 07:15 |
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Endless Mike posted:Can you believe BioWare made a DS-only Sonic RPG? That poo poo's still wild. *glances at Mass Effect and Anthem* .. yes. Yes I absolutely can believe that.
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# ? May 5, 2019 07:39 |
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ImpAtom posted:*glances at Mass Effect and Anthem* Say whatever else you want about the Mass Effect series, but Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was amazing and it's a shame that there hasn't been much imitation of it
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# ? May 5, 2019 09:48 |
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quote:the difficulty he has seen with people pronouncing the word echidna. If nothing else does it, the fact that he thinks "Echyd'nya" is easier for people to figure out the pronunciation of than "echidna" should be enough proof that he's a loon. I could see changing it to "ekidna" or something to clarify that it's a hard K, but other than that there's really nothing difficult about it - and he kept the CH!
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# ? May 5, 2019 10:33 |
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Wow, I never got a full breakdown of just how crazy the Penders story got. It kind of sounds like that Brazilian Megaman comic where the writer created his own original character and had planned to have her kill all the other characters and take over the book, except in that case the editors caught on and fired him (the fact his pet character apparently talked about doing it in the comic might have been a clue).
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# ? May 5, 2019 10:42 |
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Ken Penders is amazing. Apparently he was gonna he in charge of a Sonic movie in 2003? https://twitter.com/kenpenders/status/1124175639966146561?s=21 Bonus:
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# ? May 5, 2019 14:25 |
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Yvonmukluk posted:Wow, I never got a full breakdown of just how crazy the Penders story got. It kind of sounds like that Brazilian Megaman comic where the writer created his own original character and had planned to have her kill all the other characters and take over the book, except in that case the editors caught on and fired him (the fact his pet character apparently talked about doing it in the comic might have been a clue). Penders wasn't caught until a Sega exec saw a cover with Sonic crying over a wedding invitation, just completely at random in the grocery store checkout line In 2005 That's how little of a gently caress Sega gave about what Penders was doing to their IP
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# ? May 5, 2019 23:10 |
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The world's most way past cool comic!
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# ? May 5, 2019 23:18 |
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I mean to give Penders a small amount of credit, 2005 was one year before: this. One could assume Sega was perfectly fine with weird melodrama poo poo in their Sonic games!
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# ? May 5, 2019 23:20 |
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drrockso20 posted:Say whatever else you want about the Mass Effect series, but Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was amazing and it's a shame that there hasn't been much imitation of it What do you think Anthem is? Like, Anthem is literally a team based MMO shooter that has basically no PVP. It was always the endgame of including multiplayer in ME and Dragon Age, because that's what EA wants.
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# ? May 6, 2019 19:33 |
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Gaz-L posted:What do you think Anthem is? Like, Anthem is literally a team based MMO shooter that has basically no PVP. It was always the endgame of including multiplayer in ME and Dragon Age, because that's what EA wants. I meant the specific gameplay that Mass Effect 3 had
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# ? May 6, 2019 19:47 |
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hey this is the Ken Penders suck zone there's an Anthem suck zone over in Games Sonic Chronicles sucks rear end though and the music is hilarious
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# ? May 7, 2019 00:53 |
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Has Penders ever actually done anything with his lovely comic or is it just a never ending "COMING SOON GUYS (PLEASE GIVE ME MONEY AND ATTENTION)" ?
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# ? May 7, 2019 02:07 |
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Did he ever do something that was comicgate adjacent?
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# ? May 7, 2019 02:20 |
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I do t get the impression he's racist or sexist. Just incredibly petty and really, really loving attached to this dumb storybhe's decided NEEDs echidnas.
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# ? May 7, 2019 02:53 |
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The way he's framed the sexuality of the characters and relationships (setting aside all the furries and children's comic and age stuff) is still pretty darn problematic. Penders has also used cartoon animal species as a race metaphor in really disgusting ways. That said, I think he's got comicsgate-equivalent beliefs, not that he's actually a participant in any way. I am...actually morbidly curious about how he would interact with a woman comics creator.
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# ? May 7, 2019 03:08 |
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on twitter he's pretty liberal, though the "unknowingly hypocritical liberal" kind. Anti-trump certainly
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# ? May 7, 2019 03:16 |
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# ? May 7, 2019 03:52 |
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Good Listener posted:Has Penders ever actually done anything with his lovely comic or is it just a never ending "COMING SOON GUYS (PLEASE GIVE ME MONEY AND ATTENTION)" ? At least up until he blocked me on Twitter, he'd never done anything beyond pin ups and claiming stuff was going great. Fun note, I was blocked on Twitter not because of critiquing his art, telling him to his face he was wrong, or arguing against his points, despite doing all that. No, I was blocked because when he kept going on about how he was having an app made for this, and all the money he was supposedly putting into his original comics do not steal stuff, with the level of amateurishness he was showing constantly, I was like "Wait, is this a tax scam or something?" Somehow, THAT got him to block me immediately, with his reply being "Why do you care?" Not people openly talking about how to pirate his work, or defending piracy or the like; that he was fine with. Asking "hey, wait, are you trying to somehow take an intentional monetary loss to scam the IRS?", though, WHAM. Blocked, instantly. Kinda feels telling to me. Remind me at some point to do an effort post on early Echidna civilization and history as told in the first few Knuckles comics and backup stories. I have a lot to say about how the entire loving story is massively, massively wasted potential AND insulting to anyone with a brain.
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# ? May 7, 2019 04:00 |
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Now that i think about it, Penders is the type to be like "well of course Echidnas are more athletic and aggressive than Hedgehogs and Squirrels they have more fast-twitch quill fibres and it's well known that urban 'na culture..."
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# ? May 7, 2019 04:04 |
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Honestly, upset at the lack of Frank Stallone Knuckles
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# ? May 7, 2019 04:04 |
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Good Listener posted:Has Penders ever actually done anything with his lovely comic or is it just a never ending "COMING SOON GUYS (PLEASE GIVE ME MONEY AND ATTENTION)" ? Every few months he'll tweet "I have just about finalized the [menu design]/[graphics]/[programming] for my Lara-Su app. Here is the same preview page I showed last time." Same for once a year tweeting "I'm working on the final touch-up of the [color correction]/[audio]/[opening logo] of The Republic" about the live actions series he filmed like 10 years ago.
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# ? May 7, 2019 05:26 |
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That's kind of what I thought haha. Thanks for the replies and letting me know. I remember a bit of the early Knuckles comics since I read them at the time so it's always amusing to me when he comes up.
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# ? May 7, 2019 07:01 |
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Sonic Chronicles sucks rear end though and the music is hilarious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbbUPBDXMcU
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# ? May 7, 2019 08:33 |
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Don’t forget the Knuckles family tree!
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# ? May 7, 2019 11:06 |
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Taintrunner posted:Don’t forget the Knuckles family tree! I think that might actually beat out the Summers/Grey family tree for sheer insanity.
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# ? May 7, 2019 14:52 |
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Discendo Vox posted:The way he's framed the sexuality of the characters and relationships (setting aside all the furries and children's comic and age stuff) is still pretty darn problematic. Penders has also used cartoon animal species as a race metaphor in really disgusting ways. That said, I think he's got comicsgate-equivalent beliefs, not that he's actually a participant in any way. I am...actually morbidly curious about how he would interact with a woman comics creator. Yeah I don't know, I feel like Penders is a little different from them because... like... he's visibly trying to be progressive he's just also rock gently caress stupid Comicsgate people do their poo poo very deliberately and "deliberate" is a word that is not in Penders' dictionary, dude is one of the biggest bumblefucks in comics
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# ? May 7, 2019 16:34 |
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Yeah I don't know, I feel like Penders is a little different from them because... like... he's visibly trying to be progressive he's just also rock gently caress stupid Hardly. I mean have you heard of the gently caress ups who were running Archie comics in the 90s?
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# ? May 7, 2019 16:53 |
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I feel like Ken Penders is the comic book counterpart to wrestling's Vince Russo in terms of batshit writers who somehow got way too lengthy a stay in charge and are fun to make fun of in retrospect. Hell, Penders treats the Sonic part of Sonic the same way Russo treats the wrestling part of wrestling.
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# ? May 7, 2019 17:33 |
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Also, if you want to see unfiltered Penders poo poo, here's his trailer movie pitch for The Lost Ones, the story he's basically decided he has to use the echidna's to tell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsdTPUy4sNI
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# ? May 8, 2019 09:59 |
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"creative"
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# ? May 8, 2019 10:20 |
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Calaveron posted:Hardly. I mean have you heard of the gently caress ups who were running Archie comics in the 90s? the funny thing is, from an exec perspective, all of this basically makes sense, though. if Sega isn't breathing down your neck about sticking to the established IP, and this weirdo's actually managed to find an audience with what would otherwise be a throwaway licensed book, why wouldn't you just let him go hog wild? i mean, this is pre-2010s Archie we're talking about. like, through the 90s and 2000s (arguably starting in the 80s), Archie desperately wanted to a) not be Archie and b) start bringing in the kind of money that not-Archie companies were making. there was little to nothing more desperately uncool than the Archie comics themselves in that time period, so they were pretty much scrambling for any other IP they could get or make that would possibly bring people in. Sonic in general is an obvious good call for the time period- the IP was hot as gently caress basically from 1991 straight to 2005 (and is still viable enough for IDW to immediately snap the license up the second Archie dropped it, keep in mind), and was especially hot with Archie's traditional demos. it's blindingly obvious why they made the decision to start making Sonic comics in the first place, and it was a straight up good idea. past that, Penders' ideas, on paper, would have looked like a sure sell in the 90s. firstly, his work was pretty clearly drawing shitloads of influence from the SatAM cartoon, which had just ended in 1994 as a critically acclaimed show with an almost stupidly devoted fanbase; you could honestly say he was basically writing fanfic for that show. secondly, I'm assuming we're all familiar with 90s comics as a whole; edge was in, so the work being weirdly dark for Sonic/Archie probably worked in its favor, and a lot of the overly unwholesome aspects of Penders' work probably just straight up went over everyone's heads since nobody knew what the hell a furry was. thirdly, a lot of his worst narrative flaws are more present in whole story arcs than individual issues, and I don't think the execs really cared about the former as long as everything looked fine issue-to-issue. like, the contract situation, sure, but really, nothing about Penders is their fault. Penders is a monster entirely of his own creation.
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# ? May 8, 2019 19:29 |
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:secondly, I'm assuming we're all familiar with 90s comics as a whole; edge was in, so the work being weirdly dark for Sonic/Archie probably worked in its favor, That's an interesting point. Come to think of it, we're also talking about the era of Archie that had that infamous panel of the Mutanimals all burning in hell in TMNT, and I remember their attempt at a modern reboot of The Mighty Crusaders coming out around then and reading a lot like some of Mark Gruenwald's angrier work on Captain America.
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# ? May 8, 2019 20:04 |
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The 90s Crusaders stuff was a DC initiative. IMPACT Comics.
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# ? May 9, 2019 07:55 |
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One for the forum historians, but didn't a Sonic writer post here for a while?
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# ? May 9, 2019 10:47 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:20 |
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An Taoiseach posted:One for the forum historians, but didn't a Sonic writer post here for a while? Ian Flynn was a member for a bit back in '07-'09. He did two little retrospective videos for Cybershell's Sonic megathread but had to quit because he was too busy working on the actual comic. He joined the staff a bit before Penders quit, and was head writer for the remainder of the Archie series and continues to write for IDW. IMO the Archie reboot had the best writing across the franchise. Penders has a weird, mostly-one-sided, hatred of him. E: Also, this might be handy for the OP: https://thankskenpenders.tumblr.com/facts
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# ? May 9, 2019 11:29 |