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Fleetway always looked like that, really. The art was basically done well in terms of quality and such, but character designs were very much hit or miss. Not the Archie was much better; it seems that most of the artists who tried to draw the Sonic comics in the UK or the US were more familiar with Looney Tunes styles, and thus you got a lot of that.
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Apr 14, 2018 11:02
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:should i just make a Penders mock thread so this dingbat doesn't keep crying about how ~this is the IDW thread~ and saying people should go to Games to talk about old comics Do it, I love making GBS threads on Ken "I created Evil Sonic" Penders.
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May 1, 2019 23:54
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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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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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Dude. Not cool.
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May 4, 2019 02:27
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These mandates aren't coming from Sega as a monolithic company that is of one mind. They're coming from the marketing department handling a licensed comic, with the addition of a legal department that has already been burned due to negligence. The point of the comic to Sega's side of the equation is not to tell deep, meaningful stories. It is to have another way to market Sonic to kids. Saying Sega is being dumb is completely ignoring what the situation actually is. These are very clearly the rules of a marketing rep protecting the marketable characters' images. To have Sega tell IDW "do whatever you want" would be just inviting trouble, because the purpose of the comics is to sell Sonic, and sell his merch, and sell his games. This isn't a Transformers situation where the primary purpose is to provide fiction for a toyline. This isn't a Megaman situation where the franchise was all but dead, and the comics were essentially retelling the story of the franchise but expanded. The Sonic comics are part of a living franchise, with a cast of characters that Sega wants to keep reasonably consistent across media. He just had a movie that made a gently caress ton of money, they don't want to rock the boat.
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Apr 2, 2020 08:05
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drrockso20 posted:Nah they're still being morons, besides the comics have honestly been really lovely at being advertisements for the games basically their entire existence, often because SEGA wouldn't allow Archie, Fleetway, or IDW to do it right So, uh, what exactly do you consider to be "right", when it comes to Sonic comics? It sounds like none of the companies' approaches have appealed to you. Considering the massive coverage of the styles of all three combined, I honestly have no idea what you want.
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Apr 2, 2020 10:08
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Shadowlyger posted:I think Ian's stated that the two worlds thing has been SEGA internal canon since Sonic Adventure. Pretty sure Sega themselves have stated that, too.
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Apr 3, 2020 02:19
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Blockhouse posted:Penders isn't even responsible for Scourge! Yeah, but he 100% believes he owns Scourge regardless, and Sega probably isn't willing to drag his rear end back to court to prove otherwise. Though I'd absolutely love to see a Cease and Desist thrown at this, considering at least one of the artists is a white supremacist. https://twitter.com/Caldroids/status/1460349048452435978?s=20
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Nov 16, 2021 09:40
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I sort of wonder if they're setting it up like this to show why Sonic is kind of right: While Eggman doesn't win, he has massive access to resources and is incredibly petty. As he says, without lying, he could win by simply carpet bombing Sonic at any time. The Metal Virus got out of hand, but he didn't go out of his way to infect everyone all at once. He let it spread slower than he had to because it caused fear and panic. He enjoys the "game", and part of that seems to be that he gets away to play again. He doesn't want to just drop a bomb on Sonic and win, he wants to make it clear the Eggman Empire is superior. Sonic trying to actively capture and imprison or execute Eggman would very likely be the point where it's no longer a game. If Eggman actually thinks he's directly targeted, as opposed to just a plan going belly up, we've seen that he stops playing around. Starline tried it, to show Eggman the "error of his ways", and got completely taken apart. When Eggman is serious, he has a lot of strings he can pull and resources he can use. Eggman and Sonic playing a game is dangerous, but manageable. Eggman actually serious is far, far more dangerous because if he stops holding back, he pretty much just wins.
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Jul 30, 2022 05:03
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TwoPair posted:Kinda ridiculous but I like that after the Starline fight it seems like Eggman is way more efficient without any mechs at all. I like how it's basically been established that Eggman is incredibly dangerous but it's also understandable how Sonic beats him, because Eggman doesn't WANT to win through massive, overwhelming force or subterfuge or assassination. He wants to win with weird little animal robots, egg-themed battlebots, and just showing off his own genius and designs. The one time Eggman unleashes something unstoppable, the Metal Virus, Sonic gets nearly immediately infected and is effectively on a time limit. At that point, and with Starline to impress, Eggman DOES go scorched earth and nothing can hold him back. The only thing that stops him is Starline loving up with the Zeti. Eggman doesn't care about having a cure or anything to the Metal Virus, with Sonic basically hosed, he's content to let everyone else die and find another planet to live on. Eggman could basically do poo poo like that any time he wished. That he doesn't is just because he doesn't want to, because it's not as fun. Which is a good direction to go with him to keep him dangerous and yet still letting him lose constantly.
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Dec 10, 2022 19:28
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TwoPair posted:when Sonic's on the verge of his weird cyberspace not-death, there's only tension for like 2 seconds before all his friends break him out and he has basically no reaction besides "cool, thanks!" and when Sage dies (I mean, she doesn't, but as far as Sonic knows she does) and there is literally zero acknowledgement from him. Again, I didn't expect (nor want) an emotional breakdown, but we got all the characters to give a poo poo about Shadow I think a large portion of this is just plain what happens when you write for a video game like Sonic. The longer scenes with Sonic and his friends have time to breathe as part of the game, but the ending has been chopped up a bit; there's quite a bit of lost story content spread through the last act, voiced lines and text lines that just don't line up with what the actually game ends up being. The ending was probably done quickly to give the game a denouement when they couldn't get the entire thing done in time. It doesn't matter what story you write if gameplay and development circumstances make portions of it impossible to implement.
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Mar 7, 2023 04:19
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Didn't they do continuations of the Mirage TMNT run, too? Though I think that had at least one of the original two creators on it.
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May 17, 2023 02:47
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It's just an excuse to get everyone together for a big All Star issue while there's still money and sales to be made. Don't think too deeply into it, just enjoy it.
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May 19, 2023 21:58
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