I never knew that Ken’s son being into Sonic helped start this whole thing. I’m trying to imagine what would be going through my daughters’ heads if 30 years from now I was spending all my time and money fighting for a bunch of weirdly sexualized Paw Patrol OCs, and it’s a very bleak image.
I love that Ken, in a position where he can write whatever the hell he wanted for Sonic with barely ANY oversight, with the only request being "hey, incorporate the new characters" leaves for MORE creative freedom. Like, my guy, my dude you got away with rewriting holocaust poetry how do you not have enough creative liberty in your job?
I love how Archie couldn't just quietly retcon the characters. Nono, instead they kicked them repeatedly in the shins several times, threw them out the window, then called goddamn MEGA MAN to finish the job. That was a flex and a half.
@@jakethedragonymaster1235Basically the Sonic Mega Man crossover comic retconned the whole sonic comic universe out of existence. Then they almost did it again in the second one. Archie really wanted them dead.
*THIS* I’m all for writers & artists getting the credit they deserve for their work, but Penders was completely entitled & threw everyone under the bus.
Well, abusing the system isn't inherently bad, the problem's that a good chunk of the characters he now owns are extremely slight variations of pre-existing characters. He put a hat on someone else's character and said they were his own.
Eh, There were some strong ideas he had back in the day, and some writers would use those characters well. Zilla was a flop, and has only been used as a punching bag since, to the point I feel sorry for it.
@@e2011ugdianope, Tristar's Godzilla was it's own trademark, and Toho bought it for Godzilla: Final Wars just to have Godzilla 2004 violently kill it by knocking it into the Sydney Operahouse and cooking it.
To be fair, it should be amended... "Anyone who constantly TALKS ABOUT the age of consent in random States". Just knowing them doesn't mean a whole lot.
@@octogonSmuggler Japans Prefectures (just think of them as states) age of consent is at minimal 16, the national of japan is 13 and the only location that technically uses it is some tiny island in the middle nowhere with like 5 people on it.
The funniest thing about the Penders lawsuit is that some of the characters he now owns are pretty much unusable. What's the point of owning the rights to "evil Sonic" when you don't own Sonic? You might as well have nothing. Also, Knuckles' Dad from the movie with his one minute of screentime was infinitely more likeable than Locke "had a bad dream, better microwave the baby" the Echidna.
Let's take a moment to stop focusing on Penders and note that Ian Flynn is a national treasure. At one point, he was writing multiple Sonic comics AND Mega Man, and they were all great.
No, no he isn't. He's an asshole who ruined multiple Sonic comics and the one he's on now isn't performing well, Mega Man fans also didn't like his comic.
You're right! We need to STOP focusing on the negative aspects, like Penders, because that's what's powering him at this point; Attention! It's like any other internet troll!
You wanna know the irony of Ken’s art skills? Before Sonic, he worked as an artist for companies like Marvel and his work on those comics confirms that he’s actually pretty decent at drawing human characters. That’s what really gets me, how can someone be good at drawing something as complexed as human beings but couldn’t draw something like a simple cartoon hedgehog for the life of them?
I think the skill of being a cartoony artist is a different type to being good at drawing realistic human beings. Although the current sonic comics are way way way way better at Sonic’s style atm
The mindset and philosophy. Ken probably thought that more detail means quality art, that's the reason why he probably thinks of Yuji Uekawa as "lazy".
I'd say his main problem is the fact that he draws the sonic characters too human-like. He's giving human anatomy to characters that were never supposed to have it.
It's not easy for some to jump styles like that. I used to draw a lot more humanoid characters for a comic + commissions. I moved on to a more cartoony style and it took me a while to get it down- heck I'm still learning. As for Ken? He probably relied on a lot of references to make art he did for Marvel which is totally fine and normal. But, he can't do that for these characters, there's no reference anymore because that'll get him in legal trouble so he has to do something else. If you look at the human characters that he's shown in that comic? They're very, obviously referenced and possibly traced, but all the other characters are nightmarish blobs, cartoon characters squeezed into [LEGALLY DISTINCT] Sonic molds and they are just, yikes.
Ken Penders may be completely nuts, but Archie basically sealed the Sonic comics’ doom due to their incompetence, while Sega just got themselves dragged into this nonsense.
@@SudrianTales Imma be real, Sega still being around and even successful is immensely surprising, any other company would have gone bankrupt, but Sega just kinda stumbled onto luck enough times to survive this long.
@@schemar17 A Billionaire on his Death Bed deciding to save their sorry asses. No other company in the entertainment industry can probably claim that. And they still squandered it for the longest time, hell they STILL make stupid decisions that they should have learned from years ago.
@@ShadowWolfRising yeah I wished they went bankrupt but since that save from the billionaire they made other ips that can make them money so they don't need to make good sonic games anymore
ken penders is a theif there is proof now that he traced segas and dics characters artwork and needs to go to jail for stealing so people need to act and put this man where he belongs and that is in prison and for the characters he stole to give back to sega and let idw use characters from now on the thief.
I used to think I liked the Penders era sonic comics. Then I realized that all the ones I read were by Ian Flynn. Truly, Flynn is the real hero of the series.
I think the fact that Penders is trying to get into NFTs really is the cherry on top of this shit sundae, because his characters have the exact same characteristics as most NFT "art"
I don't have a problem with nft artists because I would definitely sell pictures of monkeys for millions if I could, I think its the people that buy them that are stupid
Ken Penders, the Sonic Fandom’s worst enemy, the person killed the chance of giving Sonic SATAM a proper conclusion, and the man who created lore for Sonic and especially Knuckles that is truly bizarre that his own brain is forever a mystery. P.S. With how derivative Ken Penders characters are, he created NFTs before NFTs were a thing.
@@cville991 As an outsider to the Archie stuff, why is that exactly? I'm genuinely curious since the hate for Flynn seems to come exclusively from the Archie Sonic fanbase.
@@AkumaKristian The guy just have really annoying personality. Imagine guy from high school who just made comic you give valid criticism and he shouts out that you are hater.
His hypocrisy actually hurts me! He's always whining about people stealing "his" characters, and yet he is literally stealing Knuckles for his comics! And Shade as well! You did not create Shade, Penders! And you know it!
"Shade is Lara-Su and I totally own Lara-Su so you can't use her in that game." "No no, K'nox is totally a different, completely original character. You can't sue me."
No wonder that Lara-Su Chronicles he has been planning for has not been released. He's too busy on Twitter considering suing Paramount (which I never heard more about, making me believe he didn't go through with it, meaning either he didn't have a chance or he is trolling people) and going into the controversial NFT market.
Comic companies before Ken: Oh? You wanna take a poem about the Holocaust and make it about funny animals? Sure! Comic companies after Ken: You want Sonic to cry over his loved ones dying? No! Sonic is not legally allowed to cry!
Jesus Christ died for your sins on the cross. Repent and believe in him or you will be separated from God The Father for all eternity and face hell forever. Never ending.
It sounds stupid as hell, but there are actually some Penders fanboys on Twitter and they are usually pretty dumb and crazily loyal. Have they been following him since he started the romantic political furry drama back in the 90s, are they the forum dwellers that used to exist on his website? Where do they even come from, lol. Sorry, but I gotta be bluntly honest. To be that blind to all the wrong he's done and mindlessly shill for a niche controversial creator who doesn't produce any significant content anymore, that's just plain idiocy. They deserve the block and mute. People are actually giving him real money at SDCC right now as of this comment and for that I question their sanity, especially when it comes to that Lara-Su art.
Now that I think about, a lot of the accounts that always reply to his posts are the same guys and they don't usually have Sonic pfps or anything implying they're one of those bigger Sonic fans.. so they're probably just fans of Sonic from the comic or other media and that's it. So they're not really gonna be upset when he tears other Sonic stuff apart like the other comics, I guess.
The lack of guidelines is insane. This is why having some control over your brand is a good thing. I agree don’t be like Disney and Nintendo and be totalitarian, but some control is good.
@@L1701 No, Sega basically has a ball and chain for their writers. It's like anything that could be seen as interesting and showing depth just gets tossed aside. All the new rules just makes it all so dumb.
@@grizzakaful I agree that some restrictions should be set aside, but some control has to be applied. Due to lack of control we have been given Penders, 1993 “Super Mario Bros” movie, that horrendous original Sonic movie design, and god who knows how many other god awful examples that could be brought up.
Now it's almost the opposite problem for comics, with there now being a weird list of mandates and restrictions that feel like they've been thought up on a dime.
One thing I find hillarious is that Ian Flynn created a evil green speedster character and named her "Surge". Pretty sure he is just baiting Ken Penders while wearing a shiteating grin at that point.
Deserved. As covered in the video, everything people like about Scourge, including his design, was salvaged by other people out of Ken's cesspool, not his creation.
The cherry on top is that Ian wrote Surge as a tragic character and made her one of the best Sonic villains in a long time. I don’t know much about Scourge from Archie, but I assume he written in the most nonsensical way, knowing Penders.
I actually just met him in person at San Diego Comic-Con 2022. He had a small booth at the very end of Artists' Alley, and I'd never heard of him, but I was just so taken aback by the, frankly, hideous Sonic style artwork behind him I had to stop and chat. He seemed nice enough, and unfortunately I didn't have much chance to talk in-depth with him, but I could tell there had to be some wild backstory involving this guy.
I also met him in artist ally, he was very passionate about his story but what drew me in was the art style. After showing me his comic with voice acting and everything for 10 minutes i simply told him it was "cool" just to get away from the table and took his buissness card.
I like to think that with enough resources Sega could have won the lawsuit against Penders but they just let it slide because they never planned on using his awful characters anyways.
@@yourfathersinferioritycomplexNah, Sonic is in a really good position now. Who knew that hiring people who are invested in the characters would lead to better games, stories and media?
@Talessaga2 true, but Sega could've crushed him even then if they handled the thing better. And If it was any other big japanese company they would have had their own copy of the contracts, and yet another copy in their lawyers' office. Something like one of their licensees just having lost the contracts should've not happened. The thing is Sega is owned by a company that -for a long time- didn't care much about how Sonic products were handled.
So insane how much Ken reminds me of Chris-chan. These creators are so narcissistic about their awful ripoff art and constantly demand from their "fans" and the companies they ripped off. It makes me sad that the word creator is even associated with the 2, because at the end of the day they're just jealous and can't move on. Don't live for something you wish you made, everyone.
they’re both very weird and wrote comics with Sonic in them, but that’s really where the similarity stops. CWC’s work was autobiographical and totally outsider-art. Ken’s stuff was a lot more in line with the general landscape of bad 90s comics
@wesshiflet2214 ehhhh there's other similarities Knuckles being a god and having a family tree so big its to the point of self parody Sonichu/Chris having eighteen thousand different kids and Chris' random family members Knuckles is a self insert just like Sonichu Sonic and Sonichu both have entirely too many waifus in general The comics meandering into self insert stories that lose the plot for the sake of making the author satisfied Insane levels of obsession with ownership of "his" characters And also Nazi anthropomorphic animals...
Jesus Christ died for your sins on the cross. Repent and believe in him or you will be separated from God The Father for all eternity and face hell forever. Never ending.
@@invertedcolors9881 eh, it's a good way to spend a toilet break, if you like making everyone mad, or starting a fight between two groups and then leaving.
I remember being so baffled by the Sonic comics as a kid. The often tragic world-building felt aimed at a more mature reader which, as Sonic's younger target demographic, was frustrating. Mainly I just kept asking "Why isn't it about Sonic?"
@@lucre113 I'm not against a more darker sonic story or even Kids media featuring darker subjects I love it when they do that but the Way Ken did it was just so Fucking Weird and perpelexs the fuck out of me
Shrews are shaped kinda like mice, but lack the gnawing incisors iconic to rodents, often have longer heads and smaller eyes/ears, and are also venomous
I will never forgive this man for destroying any chances of Dark Brotherhood ever getting a sequel and Shade getting axed. It wasn't a perfect game but the echidna lore was executed far better than those of the comics and it finally gave Knuckles and the fate of his kind some closure.
I find it so interesting what's currently going on with IDW. After the "pendering" as you put it and Sega's new restrictions for the comics, I thought that it would permanently handicap them. However, that's not what's happening. Things I thought impossible with how cautious Sega was being have happened! They gave a Sega character a daughter (Something EXPLICITLY banned. She's not his biological child, instead being built by him, but she STILL refers to him as her "father"), managed to build a heartfelt & emotional story, somehow got away with the METAL VIRUS ARC, have reworked old penders-era characters like scourge & that one evil echidna into excellent characters like Surge the Tenrec (clever, I know) and Dr. Starline, and most shockingly to me... THEY STRAIGHT UP MENTION A COMIC ORIGINAL CHARCTER (Tangle the Lemur) IN THE NEWEST SONIC GAME. Nature (and Sega) is healing.
And for me, I'm planning to reboot Shade and her tribe to instead be this lost tribe of heroes and researchers as I always like that concept better and using them to connect everything in the main series together, and it seems like with everything you've explained here plus more like IDW finally bringing back G-merl from Sonic Advance 3 and make him part of the main cast, it seems like my ideas for the Sonic series finally have a chance to be a reality and offical. But I'm not qualitied to go work at the big companies yet. I don't care if Penders is going to rant about me for my version of Shade and the Nocturnus Clan or not. If he does end up doing so, it's obviously because he still refuses to let the whole thing go.
@TequilaMockingBird91 The ban on adding additional family members is primarily for the comics and was added after Kenders left (somewhere around 2006), where as Vanilla is a game-original character added in 2002, the same game Cream was added in!
Ken penders is like the prototype modern sonic fan, weird ass obsession with OCs, fanfictional writing that could make a plant grow crack and scares people who are not familiar with Sonic.
@Formarotica even if you don't draw for years, if you knew how to draw before, you'd still have the same skill level as when you stopped drawing, somewhat shittier but the fact that Ken's drawings became that shitty makes it more hilarious
If Ken Penders had a time machine, he’d travel back in time to before the Echidna was discovered, trademark it, and charge for royalties whenever anybody refers to the animal.
Ken Penders: Makes up bullshit on the fly, copyrights characters he made for a series belonging to SEGA, bitches about characters from video games being to similar to his recolors, and constantly acts like he owns Sonic. Ian Flynn: A writer who actually writes stories fitting for the lore of Sonic, doesn’t post bitch-fits about characters on Twitter, and not only has he written Sonic comics for 2 comic publishers, but is also writing a story for an official 3D Sonic game. Clearly, getting Ian Flynn attached to the franchise was the best move SEGA made.
@@beauwalker9820 Honestly the only bad thing I can say about those comics was World's Unite and those massive flaws aren't mostly his fault because those were because of executive meddling.
Honestly, seeing how Ken has evolved into the man-child he is today makes me appreciate Ian Flynn more. I know he has his haters, but me, I have so much respect for the guy. And I'm thankful that someone who isn't spending all his time ranting on Twitter about days long past has been an official part of Sonic for so long. Ian has proven that he's a fan of Sonic, and loves writing for the series, and has respect for the characters he's working on. Even with Sega breathing down his back more than ever with IDW, he still gets the job done, and does his best. Compare that Penders, who I feel like has become the living embodiment of pettiness.
@Edwin Nah Becaue he is a lesbian fetishizing hack who tried cancelling others and isn’t that much better than Penders, as a person or content creator.
You forgot the part where Kenders would also go on massive anti-Asexual rants because he can't figure out how a person can't be completely obsessed with sex.
@@glauberbispo8922 It ties into his obsession with romance and how his mindset was affecting his writing. Not SOLIDLY mind, but it is kinda wild that he was probably wondering How Thems Do Be Fuckin'
My favorite part is when Ken Penders exclaimed in one comic "IT'S PENDIN' TIME!!" But no seriously Penders was the worst. His starting ideas weren't too bad don't get me wrong. I even like some bits of his reconstruction of Knuckles own origin and lore but yeaaaa he went really off the rails in no time.
My boyfriend sent this to me knowing I am way too deep in Ken Penders lore , and you just earned a subscriber my friend. You’re entertaining, funny, and informative. Good work.
saddest part about this lawsuit to me is that, even tho we didn't lost anything meaningful when pen left with his characters, the super genesis wave also took away really cool characters, my favorites being fiona fox & mina mongoose, because archie and sega didn't anyone else trying to follow on ken's steps
Sad because Penders admitted even after that nastiness that Fiona Fox belonged to Sega and Archie since he just created a different version of the same character, which is ironic since he tried to claim Scourge later on. As for Mina Mongoose that character was created by Karl Bollers, a co-writer who Penders forced to leave Archie and also created Hope Kintobor and Dr. Finitivus.
I feel the same with Scourge and Fiona. Hell, they couldn’t e kept both of them cause Ian Flynn made the green Scourge. Penders was only responsible for “evil-sonic” Which to be fair was literally just sonic with a leather jacket and sunglasses, so he shouldn’t have logically been able to get ownership of him in the first place.
@@insanehiker5587 Turns out, not only did they not have Penders' contract, they couldn't find ANY of the contracts for the people who wrote the Archie comics and had to purge *ALL* the characters introduced in the Archieverse except for the ones from SatAM...😭
it is not over just tell everyone that ken cheated the lawsuit you people have a enough proof now.by just look at his comics to tell if he traced and thing sega or dic related that way you can go to the court and tell them that he lied and can be put in prison for lieing and stealing .also back then finding out in 2013 if someone traced there official art it was hard to prove.now in 2022 we have the technology to prove if someone did the traceing and stole the artwork. we have the technology to prove that ken penders traced officeal artwork from knuckles the echidna or sonic the hedgehog or other d.i.c characters that sega owned Like Sally acorn or bunnie rabbot and and others as well. if you give that proof to the court then you can say he lied about working for Archie comics and the characters belong to sega and he is a thief and he used the traceing to create his own characters you can put him in jail and get the characters back where they belong and put ken penders in prison and get his characters in idw sonic comics and get the Lara su comic cannsled but you guys have got to show that he traced segas offical sonic artwork to the court and that he lied that he worked for both sega and Archie comics. do this and ken penders will go to prison for lieing and stealing and the characters he stole will go back to sega ok.
@@kenpenderstheechidnalover8820 Definitely a Contract. Stan Lee is pretty much the only man to not be bound by the For Work Contract. Penders was a nameless shlub being hired by a Comic Company with a Pedigree on par with Marvel. Archie has fallen far, but they are still old hands at the Writer's game. What happened to the contract? Well, when the spiteful manager has access to the records room...
Ken Penders is the real-world equivalent of that one Onion article; "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point." He's a weird, petty egotist who had a single noteworthy project in his career that he continues to ride the coattails of despite burning the rest of the coat and who's main claim to fame these days is bad twitter takes and worse art. His work on the Sonic comics themselves has, in retrospect, been derided as some of the worst in any of the comics' runs. He's got nothing to cling onto except the fading relevance of books he wrote years ago that weren't even good, and yet that's all he ever wrote that people care about so he insists on not letting go. And yet, I have to give him props for sticking it to a notoriously creator-unfriendly publisher who thought they could get away with gross incompetence just because they were big and prolific. That's peak creator's rights advocacy right there! It's just a shame about literally everything else.
Isnt ken actually a part of that type of corporate culture? I remember reading that he would throw out other peoples plotlines so he could just continue to copy star trek. Since he was the senior member, he would always get his way.
I like the little "easter eggs" in Drakes outfit for this video. The ring tie is an obvious one, but the jem stone on the "Heist Con" mug could be a nod to the Chaos Emeralds. Also the grid pattern on his shirt could be a reference to the box art for Sega Master System games, which is the detail that made me want to comment this in the first place.
The thing about Penders suing over Sonic Chronicles is he really didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. You can’t copyright an idea, only an execution. And if any half decent copyright lawyers had actually looked at the case they’ed know his claims were bullshit, even is he did own the stuff he made for Archie because they didn’t use the actual literal Archie characters and stories in Sonic Chronicles. Penders should have been buried in court but instead he “won” and has all these massive bragging rights. It’s ridiculous.
He "won" in the sense that SEGA don't care enough about Chronicles to fight for it and are just going to ignore Penders in the hopes that he goes away.
This guy right here, Ken Penders. He introduced all of his weird, horny obsessions into the comic, alongside a bizarre tone about death and other melodrama, which a lot of Sonic fans grew up reading. I think he's directly responsible.
@@CaylexT Honestly, this would explain why the Sonic fan base can be really out there sometimes as Clement points out when going over Sonic Mega Collection in the finale video for his Sonic retrospective when he goes over the Archie comic covers Sonic Mega Collection shows off and mentions how some of the covers are very strange and makes you wonder what the heck is going on in the stories. With this whole Ken Penders thing, it all makes sense now.
Sonic the Hedgehog was a beacon for autism for some odd reason, I think it was the soft color schemes that did it, those childlike minds were attracted to it.
Penders is literally AU Chris Chan that was able to get a job with a comic company/Sega and strictly focused on Sonic instead of every franchise out there
Yet Ian Flynn write shitty stories. Have you seen half of the bullshit in the IDW Comics? Less memorable characters that'll be gone when Sega pulls away from IDW.
I'm going to make a bold claim here and say that Ken Penders is directly responsible for the melodramatic, poorly drawn and deeply, horribly sexual segment of the Sonic fanbase, of which Chris-chan is just the most well-documented.
@@CaylexT You're probably not wrong. And the other problem is that now Sega is resistant to any ships, even the good canonical ones (Sonamy) and the good non-canonical ones (Taismo) because of Kenny.
@@nikotheanubianjackal9114 what with how Penders is widely regarded as the worst person alive by the Sonic fandom, I find it hard to believe it's just a bot.
Lmao I got into the sonic comics literally just before the World Collide MegaMan/Sonic crossover. I had no idea what was happening during that event, I just thought it was a cool crossover.
Ken penders is exactly the type of person that comic book publishers will crack down on artists to avoid. He probably set back artists publisher relationships by several decades with his confirmation of the publishers predicted notions of what will happen if artists get off the hook.
Few things you got wrong here: - The comic was never a "solo project" of Penders, he was always just one writer among many, and for most of the years he wasn't even writing the Sonic stories. He was completely focused on Knuckles' storyline, while Karl Bollers wrote the Sonic stories. Bollers was actually a pretty great writer when he wasn't being interfered with by the editor J. Gabrie, who I think is really responsible for the "dark age" by having favoritism for Penders, letting him write whatever he wanted, while interfering with other writers like Bollers. Even after the Knuckles solo comic got canceled, Penders was still mostly just writing Knuckles as the B stories in the Sonic comic for years. He was only the solo head writer for a single year after Bollers quit in 2005, then Penders quit in 2006 and was replaced by Ian Flynn. - Most of the wackier stuff that happened in the later comics were 1-offs done for B-stories or the separate Super-Special comics, or because they were behind schedule on the main story and needed to release something that month. Also, Penders didn't write either appearance of Verti-Cal or Horizont-Al, and their 2nd appearance as robotic demigods was actually done as a joke at Penders' expense, pointing out how he'd taken these characters who started as silly cartoons and made them overly serious in just a few years, especially in the Knuckles comics. - The plot of the Lara-Su Chronicles isn't a reworking of his plans for Sonic Armageddon, it's a continuation of his personal pet arc "Mobius: 25 Years Later", widely considered one of the worst, most boring arcs in the comic's run, where Sonic and Knuckles are adults and married to Sally and Julie-Su and have kids and go do dinner parties and there's hardly any real conflict.
It is very interesting to know that Ken didn't even make Scourge and ,according to what the actual copyright claim says, technically doesn't even own any of these characters.
Yeah, he does not own Scourge, he’s only deluded himself into thinking he does because Scourge is an “evil Sonic” character, and for whatever reason he believes that the concept of an evil Sonic belongs solely to him. But Scourge looks and acts nothing like Penders’ evil Sonic, so he has no legal right to him. The reason Sega has not taken action against Penders it’s because he’s really not worth the trouble. Penders neither has the money nor the clout to really launch another successful comic series with the characters he now owns (and claims he owns), so he’s not really a threat. I’d like to see him try though and watch as Sega’s lawyers destroy him lol
The reason why he can't actually own the characters is because they are basically the legal equivalent of fanart and Sega just let's him do what he wants because they can't be bothered to deal with him anymore
A minor correction: Penders didn't write the story with Al and Cal returning as spiky death robots. That was Mike Gallagher, their original creator. Otherwise, excellent video! The best I've seen on the topic.
Penders may have won, but anyone who was a fan of the Archie/SatAM verse lost in the end. Because of him, Sega will make sure we never see Bunny, Antoine, Rotor, Nicole or Princess Sally ever again. Despite how good the IDW run has been, it still feels empty without them. That and the lawsuit went down right in the middle of the Mecha-Sally arc. One of the more tragic ends to a beloved comic character and we never got a proper conclusion.
@@SBaby To be fair, Archie Comics were supposedly tired of making comics of licensed media, so they didn't _really_ want to make Sonic comics anymore either. At least that's what I heard. I might be wrong.
@@robertlupa8273 No, it was more that Sega wanted to have more direct control over their IP after Archie lost all those characters. So Ian Flynn basically hard rebooted the series with the IDW comics, which isn't too surprising since Kenny's tantrum basically destroyed half the original world..
Geoffrey St. John: A character who, in Flynn’s hands, became a tragic and compelling character who found himself in a situation he couldn’t get out of until it was too late. Rough: A thug who causes trouble with his brother, and the two of them often end up as the lackies to other big bads. How are these two similar, exactly? They’re *nothing* alike aside from the fact that they’re skunks.
It feels so weird learning about this now, kind of like a PTS vibe. I remember collecting the Sonic comics when I was a kid at the local Vons. Every month I would rush to the rotating stand, look for the new Sonic comic, and beg my mom to buy it for me. O ne day, at the age of 10, excited to see a new issue, I scanned through the book to get a first read while my mother got her groceries. It was normal business as usual and then "BAM"! I am hit with the panel of Geoffrey forcing a kiss from Sally. I felt very uncomfortable and even ashamed at what I just saw. I didn't understand why. I closed the book at that point and put it back on the rack. My mother finished her shopping and came to pick me up. She asked if I would like to get the new issue. I told her "No, thank you" which confused her. She later went back to see what I saw in the comic and pointed out the kiss panel asking me if that was why I didn't want to comic. I stopped collecting the Sonic comics that day. I have not seen that panel of the kiss since that day over 26 years ago until this video. I oddly I feel like I am that kid again, standing next to the birthday cards, trying to undrstand what I just saw. Now with contexts maybe it wasn't me that was the problem.
The most tragic thing from my perspective is that becoming Ken Penders was probably the best possible case for Chris Chan: Ken basically made his name and fortune, such as it is, making laughably derivative characters and utterly bizarre lore in the Sonic world, which was essentially Chris's dream, but Ken couldn't escape his own creepiness and tendency to make trouble through his foolishness. The tragedy is in the fact that "Ken Penders" was the potential GOOD ENDING missed out on.
I mean when the worst people from the most depraved and morally fucked part of the Internet decided to just make your life a living hell for their twisted entertainment. No one is getting out of that in anyway good
the main difference is that chris chan is clearly not neurotypical and people used chris chan as their own personal punching bag. the things people made chris chan do .. those people are just as deplorable.
@@LocalGooberGoobs like, you want to know about what people did to chris-chan? they convinced her to rape her disabled mother w/ alzheimer's( i think?), for starters. that happened within the last three years and is the reason why she's in jail / in court now (idk where the case is at, havent checked in a while). there was a recorded phone call between chris-chan and one of the tormentors where the person asks prodding questions about it framed/said in a way that just proves they're all just goading her on. chris-chan's life has been an absolute shit show the entire way through and i guarantee it will be until the day she dies. there was no going back when she shoved glass up her ass because horrible people demanded it. chris chan is a deplorable person, but i guarantee her life would be very very different if she grew up in a different family and/or never got into posting media online. also chris-chan is clearly not neurotypical so people dont even see her as a person anymore. she's a fucking spectacle. a garbage fire and people just kept pouring on more gasoline.
A big win for creators at Archie and a big loss for Sonic fans. It's frustrating when the worst people make the biggest and most important changes too. Like Hans Asperger for another example. A very important yet very problematic problematic figure in the history of Autism research.
it wasnt a "big win" for creators at archie, the only one who benefited from any of it was panders, and archie and publishers just closed the loopholes that he used.
So today I learned that Sabrina the teenage witch, a cartoon series of my childhood, wasn't actually based on a live action series of the same name, but on a comic of the same name.
I had a friend who read these comics and seeing them the first time at his house was completely bizarre, I really struggled to believe they were official , I'd played Sonic games from Sega to GameCube so reading them was like "wtf is this, who are any of these characters, what is happeneing and where is Sonic?".
Ian doesn't because it's not worth spending money and time on. Ken will never get money from the characters he claims to own. And the only attempt he was about to make with Scourge was called off.
Considering how much SEGA now has such a strong hold on the Sonic property, I think that would be an issue that only SEGA could go to court for. I doubt Ian could sue even if he wanted to. But I bet it’s such a none issue at the moment, they’re not going to bother with it. Pender has no real claim on Scourge no matter what he says, and any court nowadays would see that plain as day.
A friend exposed me to his art for the first time recently and it is no understatement to say he has the most unappealing style of drawing ever to exist.
Some characters didnt even feel like they belonged in the same universe as Sonic, do you think of Sonic and the next thing you think about are those dudes named horizontal and vertical
@tajini817 sure... as the pong paddle and the blockball paddle if you consider sonic's universe to be the video game universe. I mean, back when video game media first came out they didn't have much to go on and it was mostly in another langauge. Reminds me of Captian N.
Remember that one SNES ROM of "Sonic The Hedgehog" which was actually just the Speedy Gonzales game but with Sonic and Mario shovelled in? That is Penders' work in video game form next to the official Sonic games
I've read some of these comics. The Sonic/Megaman crossover was really cool, and they managed to work the reworking of the universe in in an emotional way despite the weirdness.
I'm pretty sure my first exposure to Archie Sonic was through reading about random bits and pieces from the Sonic/Mega Man crossover on MMKB. Never actually read either comic by the way.
Gonna say it again but listening to Drake talk about something videogame related is super nostalgic. Also thank you for going into detail on the legal stuff, most videos I've seen on Penders always talk about the before and after the lawsuits but never go go into what happened in court. Keep up the awesome work man!
Drake fucking roasted Penders for half an hour exclusively to get the guy watching the video, so he could deliver that message at the end. What a bloody legend!
Solid coverage! As someone who was a huge fan of Archie Sonic, it’s lore and characters, the lawsuits and eventual cancellation hit like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t able to buy the comics cause I didn’t live in the US, but I remember going on other websites to keep up with the stories and talking about it with friends and other community members. It still bothers me that both continuities of Archie Sonic never got proper conclusions and the fans of those books most likely won’t get any kind of closure. It’s sucks that Ken just won’t shut up or move on, cause you can’t even mention Archie Sonic without someone brining him and his stupidity up.
I like the take of "I don't like this guy, but he got one over on this thing which is worse, so alright". I had no idea the sheer mindfuck this trial was, and how apparently incompetent everyone was about it. But most surprising to me, SatAM came first??? I always thought it was an adaptation! Insane!
I thought SatAM came first too. Weirdly enough, those early comics almost feel like SatAM's story and characters mixed with the tone of "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog"
They were made around the same time. I think it was meant as like a tie in thing. The Sonic comic technically started before SatAM. Obviously there was no memo given on what the tone was supposed to be.
Well the show started out being fairly similar to the comics initial issues. They deside to change during production (to stand out more from other cartoons) but since assets had already been made for the comic and show those were finished and published. The comics being quicker to make and thus further along had the least changes, the assets completed for the lighter hearted version of the cartoon ended up becoming adventures of sonic the hedgehog (th wacky twin to satam)
This guy is the reason we don't get many new characters and genuinely different things happening in Sonic. It's like with Mario RPGs and Miyamoto, except Sega actually has a good reason to do it.
Thank you so much so much Drake for covering this terrible history. Wow it’s alot madness, I can see why all the hatred. Can’t lie that the artwork is disgusting… I thought I seen bad artwork…
I remember watching the Scourge comic discourse happen in real time. Ian Flynn must have the patience of a saint to not engage with that whole debacle.
Ian has dealt with some trash regarding his interactions with Penders, and given how much I respect and admire Ian as a person and creator it has been one of the major reasons that made me and many others see Pender's absolute true colors and despise him and his behavior. I think Ian blocked him on Twitter. It all started when Ian sent multiple detailed and enthusiastic letters into the Sonic book when he was younger in the very early 2000s and before he got hired for the job, and I believe Penders even had some notes below commenting on his letters there. It was all fine there but then it quickly devolved into disrespecting Ian and his work years later (and like with other creator's work, refusing to acknowledge it and respect it, and even simply read it if it didn't involve the lawsuit). He's implied or stated something like Ian's a corporate monkey or something along those lines because he got involved a little in the lawsuit instead of being neutral, and he's also said that he doesn't insult him or encourage his fanboys to yet occasionally has called him names behind his back, being the pathetic loser he is. Ian doesn't mention his name or anything involving him on his podcast the Bumblekast and I believe he intentionally does this. He really doesn't like drama and conflict and I can relate to and respect that. He's a very chill dude, a refreshing, good contrast to a personality like Penders (where in his case he tries to output this fake polite and respectful persona online but is actually just as eager to be sassy, rude and spit out bad takes often; he's also known to be a Twitter addict and posts a bunch of stuff that barely gets a few likes or engagement). Ian does sometime vaguely hint at things regarding the lawsuit and the other issues but that's only when provoked with submitted listener questions he talks about. It's funny when you know what he's saying but yeah you have to know the details to understand the context clues.
@@PigDan the sad thing is Ian is a fan of Penders' work, (especially the Knuckles comics) so it's kinda sad he is disrespected by his "hero." I remember Ken accused Ian of stealing his idea of Antoine (the French dude) and Bunnie getting married. When asked about this on his forum, Ian stated he has no access to Ken's notes or ideas, and came up with it on his own. And honestly... It's not an original idea only Ken could think up... Antoine and Bunnie have been dating for so many years in the comic canon, honestly what person hasn't thought of that being a possibility?
Ah, Penders. History’s Greatest Monster in the Eyes of the Sonic fanbase. I imagine that if the dimensional merge occurred (albeit on a less chaotic scale), some of us are going to be telling Surge, Kit, Scourge, and the Destructix about Penders.
Its so funny because its such a pointless lawsuit. Its identical to making your own Simpson and sueing Fox for the rights? Is he so uncreative that he truly believes the most incredible design in the world is Knuckles in a cowboy hat?
You know what’s a bummer. My grandma bought me a couple Knuckles comics when I was a little kid. Years later, I Thought I’d buy a collection just to relive reading them with her. Alas, this Ken goof made it so I can never own a physical copy lol
First three volumes made it into a collection fourth was done but never published, volume five and six were planed but are never gonna happen. Good luck getting all the issues.
"...SEGA had to come in and destroy the entire universe TWICE." All I can see is the Living Tribunal appearing in the sky over Moebius, hand out-stretched, wearing a SEGA T-shirt, saying in grim finality, "Again." And I honestly think something not entirely unlike this ACTUALLY happened in the Archie Comics run of Sonic.
A little update about the comic book of Penders, it came out, and we all wish it didn't, it's horribly bad... And Penders also said he's going to try to re-release the whole Archie comics era of Sonic, he even sended some issues to people that ordered his comic, with some stuff and names changed, and signed by Ken himself, he's probably going to get sued again
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
I am so sorry you did this to yourself. The saga of Penders isn't for the faint of heart.
It’s rabbit hole with in a back hole inside a work hole
Now he definitely has to cover Chris Chan.🤣🤣🤣
@@mttylerdurden9 Please, nooooo! Others have already made that sacrifice. Some of the stuff he's done is hideous, yiiikes.
Same
At the time of this reply being posted this comment had 666 likes. The only number fitting for Penders.
I never knew that Ken’s son being into Sonic helped start this whole thing. I’m trying to imagine what would be going through my daughters’ heads if 30 years from now I was spending all my time and money fighting for a bunch of weirdly sexualized Paw Patrol OCs, and it’s a very bleak image.
Top tier comment
God this is just a gem
"This is Snivelpaw and she is MY character, _I_ own the rights to her, NOT PAW PATROL!!!... *AND NO I'M NOT A FURRY, STOP CALLING ME ONE!!!"*
@@Dcfan200 "Ugly detected, opinion invalidated." ~ you
Imagine asking your son to explain Sonic to you.
I love that Ken, in a position where he can write whatever the hell he wanted for Sonic with barely ANY oversight, with the only request being "hey, incorporate the new characters" leaves for MORE creative freedom. Like, my guy, my dude you got away with rewriting holocaust poetry how do you not have enough creative liberty in your job?
In case you haven't noticed, Ken is pretty obviously a mentally challenged narcissist.
because they can't bone in Archie comics 😂
@@gentlemandemon
I- no that’s probably a legitimate point to Ken given his tweets.
The simple answer is, he's not normal.
The complicated answer is, he's an artist.
@@Aflay1
There was certainly some kind of art in his mind when he wrote a Sonic the Hedgehog themed paraphrase of that Holocaust Poem
I love how Archie couldn't just quietly retcon the characters. Nono, instead they kicked them repeatedly in the shins several times, threw them out the window, then called goddamn MEGA MAN to finish the job. That was a flex and a half.
In terms of believing a source about Sonic, a series I have never played before, I will gladly believe my boy Mega Man over Ken Penders
@@jakethedragonymaster1235Basically the Sonic Mega Man crossover comic retconned the whole sonic comic universe out of existence. Then they almost did it again in the second one. Archie really wanted them dead.
@@megagamernick9883 if the retcon means that Mega Man characters are in any stretch of the imagination ""canon"", I'll take it!
@@jakethedragonymaster1235 No kidding. Plus I’m going to say I am still bummed they cancelled led those comics
@@megagamernick9883 Yeah , it's so sad they cancelled the mega man comics series , i loved it.
BREAKING NEWS: Ken Penders sues the ecosystem of Australia for having echidnas in it!
Heh you joke, but based on this guy's ego I'm willing to bet he actually did try that.
bro thinks that God copied echidnas from him
I’m surprised that Ken did not sue the creators or Ugandan knuckes
BREAKING NEWS: Ken Penders sues a local zoo for having echidnas in it!
@@Spongyboi897 breaking news: man with blue shirt sued for 10 trillion dollars
I believe in creators rights too. But he just abused the system, not a win for anyone.
Yeah, he really doesn't deserve the rights to the characters he created for LICENSED comics.
*THIS* I’m all for writers & artists getting the credit they deserve for their work, but Penders was completely entitled & threw everyone under the bus.
Ken is just a filthy cheater.
the one time we WANT the "little guy" to lose
Well, abusing the system isn't inherently bad, the problem's that a good chunk of the characters he now owns are extremely slight variations of pre-existing characters. He put a hat on someone else's character and said they were his own.
Legend has it if you look in a mirror and say "Echidna" three times, Ken Penders will appear and sue you.
Echidna echidna echidna
WHY ARE THE POLICE ON ME DOOR
They're asking why you even mentioned him in the first place
guys i did this and it actually works i am currently being dragged to court against my will by ken
@@Not_black_imposter
Did you win the lawsuit case bro?
Killing all of Ken’s characters had the same energy as when Toho bought the rights to the 1998 Godzilla only to violently kill it on screen.
Eh, There were some strong ideas he had back in the day, and some writers would use those characters well. Zilla was a flop, and has only been used as a punching bag since, to the point I feel sorry for it.
You mean TriStar
@@e2011ugdianope, Tristar's Godzilla was it's own trademark, and Toho bought it for Godzilla: Final Wars just to have Godzilla 2004 violently kill it by knocking it into the Sydney Operahouse and cooking it.
Only good thing to come out of Zilla is the cartoon tbh lmao
@@Dalek59862 zilla and TriStar are the Same Character practically
"I don't trust anyone who knows the age of consent in random states off the top of their head" THATS SO FUCKING TRUE MAN
To be fair, it should be amended... "Anyone who constantly TALKS ABOUT the age of consent in random States". Just knowing them doesn't mean a whole lot.
it's like all the guys on twitter that haul out the thesaurus for every word that resembles but is not explicitly "pedophile"
Vaush
I know the age of consent in Japan off the top of my head because it's an insanely shocking number. It's 13 in Japan. They need to change that...
@@octogonSmuggler Japans Prefectures (just think of them as states) age of consent is at minimal 16, the national of japan is 13 and the only location that technically uses it is some tiny island in the middle nowhere with like 5 people on it.
The funniest thing about the Penders lawsuit is that some of the characters he now owns are pretty much unusable. What's the point of owning the rights to "evil Sonic" when you don't own Sonic? You might as well have nothing.
Also, Knuckles' Dad from the movie with his one minute of screentime was infinitely more likeable than Locke "had a bad dream, better microwave the baby" the Echidna.
My brother in christ Knuckles' father in the movie basically wasn't a character
@@Peasham 0 is still more than -5
@@Peasham I mean there's only so much you can do with a minute of screen time.
@@shadenox8164 Yeah, which is why you really shouldn't praise that kinda character lol
@@Peasham Point is, the bar is low. Not hard being a better father than Locke.
Let's take a moment to stop focusing on Penders and note that Ian Flynn is a national treasure. At one point, he was writing multiple Sonic comics AND Mega Man, and they were all great.
Now he’s writing the comics AND his own game. A true master indeed.
No, no he isn't. He's an asshole who ruined multiple Sonic comics and the one he's on now isn't performing well, Mega Man fans also didn't like his comic.
@@Gemnist98 he have his own game?
and now he helps writing for the game ...
thank you Ian for existing
You're right! We need to STOP focusing on the negative aspects, like Penders, because that's what's powering him at this point; Attention! It's like any other internet troll!
You wanna know the irony of Ken’s art skills? Before Sonic, he worked as an artist for companies like Marvel and his work on those comics confirms that he’s actually pretty decent at drawing human characters.
That’s what really gets me, how can someone be good at drawing something as complexed as human beings but couldn’t draw something like a simple cartoon hedgehog for the life of them?
If a design is simple, it's a also easy to screw up. I think. Ken should've still done better.
I think the skill of being a cartoony artist is a different type to being good at drawing realistic human beings. Although the current sonic comics are way way way way better at Sonic’s style atm
The mindset and philosophy. Ken probably thought that more detail means quality art, that's the reason why he probably thinks of Yuji Uekawa as "lazy".
I'd say his main problem is the fact that he draws the sonic characters too human-like. He's giving human anatomy to characters that were never supposed to have it.
It's not easy for some to jump styles like that.
I used to draw a lot more humanoid characters for a comic + commissions. I moved on to a more cartoony style and it took me a while to get it down- heck I'm still learning.
As for Ken? He probably relied on a lot of references to make art he did for Marvel which is totally fine and normal. But, he can't do that for these characters, there's no reference anymore because that'll get him in legal trouble so he has to do something else. If you look at the human characters that he's shown in that comic? They're very, obviously referenced and possibly traced, but all the other characters are nightmarish blobs, cartoon characters squeezed into [LEGALLY DISTINCT] Sonic molds and they are just, yikes.
Ken Penders may be completely nuts, but Archie basically sealed the Sonic comics’ doom due to their incompetence, while Sega just got themselves dragged into this nonsense.
Sega must've been confused when something going wrong wasn't their fault.
for once
@@SudrianTales Imma be real, Sega still being around and even successful is immensely surprising, any other company would have gone bankrupt, but Sega just kinda stumbled onto luck enough times to survive this long.
@@ShadowWolfRising it's cause a billionaire bailed them out back in 2003 and they still chose to mistreat sonic lol
@@schemar17 A Billionaire on his Death Bed deciding to save their sorry asses.
No other company in the entertainment industry can probably claim that.
And they still squandered it for the longest time, hell they STILL make stupid decisions that they should have learned from years ago.
@@ShadowWolfRising yeah I wished they went bankrupt but since that save from the billionaire they made other ips that can make them money so they don't need to make good sonic games anymore
Ken Penders is the definition of that meme where the guy is cheering and celebrating wildly only for him to actually be 3rd place on the podium.
Nah even third place is something to be proud of, I'd say he's more like the guy who barely put in an effort and then whines that the race was unfair.
He is the dude who tripped and got a concussion and is hallucinating his victory in the race while the paramedic lift him in the ambulance.
Third is a respectable position, especially in worldwide competitions. He's the drunk guy in the parking lot.
ken penders is a theif there is proof now that he traced segas and dics characters artwork and needs to go to jail for stealing so people need to act and put this man where he belongs and that is in prison and for the characters he stole to give back to sega and let idw use characters from now on the thief.
This dude is at dead last and is popping champagne into his face man
Killing off all of the characters that Ken wrote was such a pro gamer move.
They didn't die they are fully alive in what we refer to as the Penders Zone.
@@WaterKirby1994 sounds like a fate worse than death tbh
@@WaterKirby1994 Hell is cannon in the Sonic universe?
The time has come... Execute order 66
@@ExplorerOfSky good Soldiers follow orders
I used to think I liked the Penders era sonic comics. Then I realized that all the ones I read were by Ian Flynn. Truly, Flynn is the real hero of the series.
His expertise also helped Sonic Frontiers a shit ton.
Archie were also made by Ian Flynn?
@@nexusetmiaouss He took over the comics around 2005 or so, and actually made them good.
@@camerondodge2070 oh thanks!
the dude sounds like the Dave Filoni of Sonic
I think the fact that Penders is trying to get into NFTs really is the cherry on top of this shit sundae, because his characters have the exact same characteristics as most NFT "art"
And his "art" fits in so well!
Golden for him because no one will want to screen shot them
I don't have a problem with nft artists because I would definitely sell pictures of monkeys for millions if I could, I think its the people that buy them that are stupid
@@user-zm7zl9lc6j fucking sellout
nft arts are intangible and non-fungible because they are beyond the comprehension of human minds.
Ken Penders, the Sonic Fandom’s worst enemy, the person killed the chance of giving Sonic SATAM a proper conclusion, and the man who created lore for Sonic and especially Knuckles that is truly bizarre that his own brain is forever a mystery.
P.S. With how derivative Ken Penders characters are, he created NFTs before NFTs were a thing.
Thank god for the fans for making a revival series
@@JackedUpEntertainment don’t forget stolen characters as well like shade.
Let’s not forget Ian Flynn. The second most hated enemy of the fandom.
@@cville991 As an outsider to the Archie stuff, why is that exactly? I'm genuinely curious since the hate for Flynn seems to come exclusively from the Archie Sonic fanbase.
@@AkumaKristian The guy just have really annoying personality. Imagine guy from high school who just made comic you give valid criticism and he shouts out that you are hater.
His hypocrisy actually hurts me! He's always whining about people stealing "his" characters, and yet he is literally stealing Knuckles for his comics! And Shade as well! You did not create Shade, Penders! And you know it!
"Shade is Lara-Su and I totally own Lara-Su so you can't use her in that game."
"No no, K'nox is totally a different, completely original character. You can't sue me."
Penders trying to get into NFTs is really fitting tbh. His characters look like an NFT
No wonder that Lara-Su Chronicles he has been planning for has not been released. He's too busy on Twitter considering suing Paramount (which I never heard more about, making me believe he didn't go through with it, meaning either he didn't have a chance or he is trolling people) and going into the controversial NFT market.
He looks like an nft
@@yourfathersinferioritycomplex Exactly. All his characters seem to have the Ken Penders mouth. He created them in his image.
Oh man he's gonna make a FORTUNE off of Bored Echidnas!
Bored Echidna Yacht Club
I honestly think Ken Pender is the reason why comic companies want to screw over comic book artists even harder
Comic companies before Ken: Oh? You wanna take a poem about the Holocaust and make it about funny animals? Sure!
Comic companies after Ken: You want Sonic to cry over his loved ones dying? No! Sonic is not legally allowed to cry!
Wasn't that only for archie and not IDW?
Jesus Christ died for your sins on the cross. Repent and believe in him or you will be separated from God The Father for all eternity and face hell forever. Never ending.
@@treek10k commit sewer slide.
@@treek10k Glory to Yeshua!
For as divided as Sonic fans are, I think well all unanimously cannot stand Ken Penders.
This is a really great video about the whole Penders debacle
It sounds stupid as hell, but there are actually some Penders fanboys on Twitter and they are usually pretty dumb and crazily loyal. Have they been following him since he started the romantic political furry drama back in the 90s, are they the forum dwellers that used to exist on his website? Where do they even come from, lol. Sorry, but I gotta be bluntly honest. To be that blind to all the wrong he's done and mindlessly shill for a niche controversial creator who doesn't produce any significant content anymore, that's just plain idiocy. They deserve the block and mute.
People are actually giving him real money at SDCC right now as of this comment and for that I question their sanity, especially when it comes to that Lara-Su art.
Well… most of them are united on that end. But there are a very few in number who side with Penders.
Now that I think about, a lot of the accounts that always reply to his posts are the same guys and they don't usually have Sonic pfps or anything implying they're one of those bigger Sonic fans.. so they're probably just fans of Sonic from the comic or other media and that's it. So they're not really gonna be upset when he tears other Sonic stuff apart like the other comics, I guess.
@@geoffreyrichards6079 Yep. And be careful with that name around these parts, Geoffrey. Penders might get weird, lol.
@@PigDan the people who seem as a good person are either zealots or people who have been duped by him.
The lack of guidelines is insane. This is why having some control over your brand is a good thing. I agree don’t be like Disney and Nintendo and be totalitarian, but some control is good.
Yeah, Disney and Nintendo don’t want another Penders.
@@L1701 No, Sega basically has a ball and chain for their writers. It's like anything that could be seen as interesting and showing depth just gets tossed aside. All the new rules just makes it all so dumb.
@@grizzakaful I agree that some restrictions should be set aside, but some control has to be applied. Due to lack of control we have been given Penders, 1993 “Super Mario Bros” movie, that horrendous original Sonic movie design, and god who knows how many other god awful examples that could be brought up.
Now it's almost the opposite problem for comics, with there now being a weird list of mandates and restrictions that feel like they've been thought up on a dime.
@@L1701 I don’t support how controlling those companies are. But at least they wouldn’t allow something like this to happen.
One thing I find hillarious is that Ian Flynn created a evil green speedster character and named her "Surge". Pretty sure he is just baiting Ken Penders while wearing a shiteating grin at that point.
Surge looks more like the ashura glitch than Scourge ever did.
Yep.
Deserved. As covered in the video, everything people like about Scourge, including his design, was salvaged by other people out of Ken's cesspool, not his creation.
@@grimsonforce7504 I think I heard this being confirmed, but either way I bet kenders is still gonna be mad lmao
The cherry on top is that Ian wrote Surge as a tragic character and made her one of the best Sonic villains in a long time. I don’t know much about Scourge from Archie, but I assume he written in the most nonsensical way, knowing Penders.
I actually just met him in person at San Diego Comic-Con 2022. He had a small booth at the very end of Artists' Alley, and I'd never heard of him, but I was just so taken aback by the, frankly, hideous Sonic style artwork behind him I had to stop and chat. He seemed nice enough, and unfortunately I didn't have much chance to talk in-depth with him, but I could tell there had to be some wild backstory involving this guy.
Were you like, is this Chris Chan's brother? haha.
@@KingofCrusher Nah more like "Is this Chris Chan's incest baby?".
I hope you bought something.
@@connor3284 would you?
I also met him in artist ally, he was very passionate about his story but what drew me in was the art style. After showing me his comic with voice acting and everything for 10 minutes i simply told him it was "cool" just to get away from the table and took his buissness card.
I like to think that with enough resources Sega could have won the lawsuit against Penders but they just let it slide because they never planned on using his awful characters anyways.
Fun fact: the only reason Sega lost that lawsuit was because Sega lost the contract they had with Penders.
@@Dragonpit More like Archie lost the contract...TWICE
I wonder if the franchise would be better now if they won that lawsuit
@@yourfathersinferioritycomplexNah, Sonic is in a really good position now. Who knew that hiring people who are invested in the characters would lead to better games, stories and media?
@Talessaga2 true, but Sega could've crushed him even then if they handled the thing better.
And If it was any other big japanese company they would have had their own copy of the contracts, and yet another copy in their lawyers' office. Something like one of their licensees just having lost the contracts should've not happened.
The thing is Sega is owned by a company that -for a long time- didn't care much about how Sonic products were handled.
So insane how much Ken reminds me of Chris-chan. These creators are so narcissistic about their awful ripoff art and constantly demand from their "fans" and the companies they ripped off. It makes me sad that the word creator is even associated with the 2, because at the end of the day they're just jealous and can't move on. Don't live for something you wish you made, everyone.
I think the two should team up and make some crazy shenanigan comics together.
Imagine Sonichu in Ken’s art style.
No he's an AU version of Chris Chan if Chris was actually successful.
@@_Chessa_ That would be amazing, I don't know if they'd get along very well though lmao
At least Ken didn’t rape his mom
@@thejman5683 ...you sure?
Ken Penders is literally Chris Chan but with ACTUAL power over the Sonic Comics
He's who CWC thought he was himself.
Yeah, he somehow pulled a fast one against not one but two corporations.
The less that name is said the better.
they’re both very weird and wrote comics with Sonic in them, but that’s really where the similarity stops. CWC’s work was autobiographical and totally outsider-art. Ken’s stuff was a lot more in line with the general landscape of bad 90s comics
@wesshiflet2214 ehhhh there's other similarities
Knuckles being a god and having a family tree so big its to the point of self parody
Sonichu/Chris having eighteen thousand different kids and Chris' random family members
Knuckles is a self insert just like Sonichu
Sonic and Sonichu both have entirely too many waifus in general
The comics meandering into self insert stories that lose the plot for the sake of making the author satisfied
Insane levels of obsession with ownership of "his" characters
And also Nazi anthropomorphic animals...
Ken was the originator of "Original character, DO NOT STEAL!"
** My oc, do not steel**
Sara-Lu walked so Coldsteel could run
That saying is littered all over DeviantArt.
Donut steel
Jesus Christ died for your sins on the cross. Repent and believe in him or you will be separated from God The Father for all eternity and face hell forever. Never ending.
The biggest badge of honor for a Sonic fan - getting blocked on Twitter by Ken Penders
Meme war veteran reporting in: pretend to mistake him for the original creator of _Sonichu._
After action report: Terminal buttpains.
Or just having no interaction with him.
@@passingrando6457 But they are just the same person.
Alternatively: Not own a twitter account
@@invertedcolors9881 eh, it's a good way to spend a toilet break, if you like making everyone mad, or starting a fight between two groups and then leaving.
I remember being so baffled by the Sonic comics as a kid. The often tragic world-building felt aimed at a more mature reader which, as Sonic's younger target demographic, was frustrating. Mainly I just kept asking "Why isn't it about Sonic?"
Fr lmfaooo the writers read watchmen once and thought “yo I can do that too”
@@lucre113 I'm not against a more darker sonic story or even Kids media featuring darker subjects I love it when they do that but the Way Ken did it was just so Fucking Weird and perpelexs the fuck out of me
@@Dcfan200 Lol. Well, as a child I was childish. I did eventually mature as I matured.
Ken Penders was trying to be for Sonic what Chris Claremont was for X-Men.
@@jadenbryant9283 There's an prudent, intelligent way to introduce dark subjects in media aimed at children, then there is the Penders way.
Fun fact: hedgehogs aren’t even rodents, they’re related to shrews which look like mice but are a totally different ball game
So what are they- if not a rodent?
@@iancasleton6356Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae
Shrews are shaped kinda like mice, but lack the gnawing incisors iconic to rodents, often have longer heads and smaller eyes/ears, and are also venomous
And moles too
I will never forgive this man for destroying any chances of Dark Brotherhood ever getting a sequel and Shade getting axed. It wasn't a perfect game but the echidna lore was executed far better than those of the comics and it finally gave Knuckles and the fate of his kind some closure.
I actually rather enjoyed it and it would have been cool to get some more Sonic RPGs.
Imagine a sequel that didn't get rushed and was allowed to get polished.
Hey Shade is still Canon, She was in the Sonic enciclopedia
Is Dark Brotherhood the RPG one? Always wanted to play it.
Me too man me too
Shoutout to Ian Flynn. My man saved the franchise that is the true heart of a Sonic fan. To the IDW Team, to the next 50 issues and beyond.
Ian Flynn ain't no god.
@@kenpenderstheechidnalover8820
Bu he ain't no KenPen either.
All the more too him, even if I think his comics are a bit on the horror side, at least to me. I like the Fleetway comics myself.
@@kenpenderstheechidnalover8820 That Not-A-God was hired to write the anniversary encyclopedia and is writing the script to the next game though.
@@BrandontheAwesome Oooh, I like a good horror story, might check him out.
I find it so interesting what's currently going on with IDW.
After the "pendering" as you put it and Sega's new restrictions for the comics, I thought that it would permanently handicap them. However, that's not what's happening.
Things I thought impossible with how cautious Sega was being have happened! They gave a Sega character a daughter (Something EXPLICITLY banned. She's not his biological child, instead being built by him, but she STILL refers to him as her "father"), managed to build a heartfelt & emotional story, somehow got away with the METAL VIRUS ARC, have reworked old penders-era characters like scourge & that one evil echidna into excellent characters like Surge the Tenrec (clever, I know) and Dr. Starline, and most shockingly to me...
THEY STRAIGHT UP MENTION A COMIC ORIGINAL CHARCTER (Tangle the Lemur) IN THE NEWEST SONIC GAME.
Nature (and Sega) is healing.
And for me, I'm planning to reboot Shade and her tribe to instead be this lost tribe of heroes and researchers as I always like that concept better and using them to connect everything in the main series together, and it seems like with everything you've explained here plus more like IDW finally bringing back G-merl from Sonic Advance 3 and make him part of the main cast, it seems like my ideas for the Sonic series finally have a chance to be a reality and offical. But I'm not qualitied to go work at the big companies yet. I don't care if Penders is going to rant about me for my version of Shade and the Nocturnus Clan or not. If he does end up doing so, it's obviously because he still refuses to let the whole thing go.
Belle crying after being rescued by the chaotix broke my heart, she loved Mr.Tinker and him becoming Eggman again was so sad
Most sane sonic fan
(Nah that's great to hear...I liked sonic but the weirdos when I was growing up ruined it fir me but sonic pinball is still dope)
How are daughters explicitly banned when Vanilla The Rabbit is confirmed to be the mother of Cream The Rabbit?
@TequilaMockingBird91 The ban on adding additional family members is primarily for the comics and was added after Kenders left (somewhere around 2006), where as Vanilla is a game-original character added in 2002, the same game Cream was added in!
"One thing Sonic can not outrun is the law" as demonstraded by Yuji Naka getting arrested again.
"I'll fight this in court, but I don't think they'll accept 'gotta go fast' as a medical condition"
@@danishfarrell4653gotta love sonic boom
For what?
Again?
@@snakezase2998 H e was arrested in Novrmber and December 2022.
Ken penders is like the prototype modern sonic fan, weird ass obsession with OCs, fanfictional writing that could make a plant grow crack and scares people who are not familiar with Sonic.
I sometimes wonder if his behavior and general... "uniqueness" ended up influencing a lot of modern toxic fandom culture.
@@rclark777 we are often shaped by the folk of our childhood, and that includes writers and directors.
headcanon: he is chris-chan's and liquid chris's clone-father.
@@BobbinRobbin777 he's an AU version of Chris Chan if Chris was actually successful.
if Chris-Chan is solid, and Liquid Chris is Liquid...
then Ken Penders is Big Boss himself.
One of the greatest mysteries in the history of comics is how did Ken Penders just forget how to draw?
@Formarotica even if you don't draw for years, if you knew how to draw before, you'd still have the same skill level as when you stopped drawing, somewhat shittier but the fact that Ken's drawings became that shitty makes it more hilarious
@Formarotica What did he say?
I think part of it was that he was trying to differ the style from Sonic, but then it looked like...that.
A greater mystery is how Ilya Kushinov still gets given lead roles in art projects, when he's a known plagarist and tracer.
@Formarotica either that or his art style just looks like the ass of a soggy decaying old lady
Ken Penders is a sad, strange little man. That guy has no humility in him whatsoever.
"sally is 32 in squirrel years" is an absolutely derranged take
If Ken Penders had a time machine, he’d travel back in time to before the Echidna was discovered, trademark it, and charge for royalties whenever anybody refers to the animal.
This is just what would happen if any capitalist got a time machine.
@@PlebNC I'm socialist actually.
@@kenpenderstheechidnalover8820 Союз нерушимый республик свободных,
Сплотила навеки Великая Русь.
@@kenpenderstheechidnalover8820
H
@@kenpenderstheechidnalover8820 holy shit
Ken Penders: Makes up bullshit on the fly, copyrights characters he made for a series belonging to SEGA, bitches about characters from video games being to similar to his recolors, and constantly acts like he owns Sonic.
Ian Flynn: A writer who actually writes stories fitting for the lore of Sonic, doesn’t post bitch-fits about characters on Twitter, and not only has he written Sonic comics for 2 comic publishers, but is also writing a story for an official 3D Sonic game.
Clearly, getting Ian Flynn attached to the franchise was the best move SEGA made.
Ian Flynn casually being one of the most godblessed sigma males of the Sonic Franchise
@@justposeidon3810 he's not perfect, but I loved his Archie and IDW Sonic comics. His Megaman comics were good too. (Sad Capcom cancelled them...)
@@beauwalker9820 CAPCOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@beauwalker9820 Honestly the only bad thing I can say about those comics was World's Unite and those massive flaws aren't mostly his fault because those were because of executive meddling.
Actually he Is only supervising the dialog I believe the story was already writen
Honestly, seeing how Ken has evolved into the man-child he is today makes me appreciate Ian Flynn more. I know he has his haters, but me, I have so much respect for the guy. And I'm thankful that someone who isn't spending all his time ranting on Twitter about days long past has been an official part of Sonic for so long. Ian has proven that he's a fan of Sonic, and loves writing for the series, and has respect for the characters he's working on. Even with Sega breathing down his back more than ever with IDW, he still gets the job done, and does his best. Compare that Penders, who I feel like has become the living embodiment of pettiness.
And from what I’ve heard, Ian knocked it out of the park with Frontiers.
@@paperluigi6132 dude frontiers is fucking amazing
@@paperluigi6132
Ian is the main writer of Frontiers? Because man, it is an amazing game.
people hate Ian Flynn? Why? How??
@Edwin Nah Becaue he is a lesbian fetishizing hack who tried cancelling others and isn’t that much better than Penders, as a person or content creator.
Ken looks like the kind of guy that would memorize the age of consent from all countries. No reason.
Yes
And travel to Thailand every Christmas
He'd memorize those laws just to break each one
@@samp.8099and argue they were 32 in squirrel years
The physiognomy always checks out.
You forgot the part where Kenders would also go on massive anti-Asexual rants because he can't figure out how a person can't be completely obsessed with sex.
Say what?
Uhm okie dokie like why did he have to rant against asexuals though it's not like their lack of a sex drive affects him.
lol what do this have to do with sonic, is sonic asexual ?
the video is about him and hq, not about his opnions about other things
Damn he's THAT mad people are willingly getting no bitches?
@@glauberbispo8922 It ties into his obsession with romance and how his mindset was affecting his writing. Not SOLIDLY mind, but it is kinda wild that he was probably wondering How Thems Do Be Fuckin'
Ken Penders is the origin of "Original Character, Do Not Steal."
Behold my brand new and original character: Geo-Fray San Jo-An
HOLY SHIT YOU'RE SO RIGHT
I just realized the reason all his higher detail stuff is so unbelievably cursed is because he's using his face as a reference oh god
Oh god 😨
Good catch 🫠💀
Penders is literally the Robotnik of our reality. Except he didn't have a blue hedgehog to kick him down.
That's an insult to Ivo ngl
Nah, Robotnik is more threatening...... and also less creepy.
@@costelinha1867
Least not in a sense of Penders creepy
Aye don't do Robotnik/Eggman like that, atleast he's a threat to be taken seriously.
@@flarestriker2005Eh, he hasn't really been a threat ever since Colors came out.
My favorite part is when Ken Penders exclaimed in one comic "IT'S PENDIN' TIME!!"
But no seriously Penders was the worst. His starting ideas weren't too bad don't get me wrong. I even like some bits of his reconstruction of Knuckles own origin and lore but yeaaaa he went really off the rails in no time.
I like when he started Pendin' all over the place.
@@ComicDrake it was a Pendening for all to be had
I consider him to be a deranged and disfigured alternate universe version of Yuji Naka.
@@Deepkeel he’s the Anti-Naka. Tried to do “It’s Naka Time!” But it fell short
Wonder how he'd handle the Morb.
My boyfriend sent this to me knowing I am way too deep in Ken Penders lore , and you just earned a subscriber my friend. You’re entertaining, funny, and informative. Good work.
saddest part about this lawsuit to me is that, even tho we didn't lost anything meaningful when pen left with his characters, the super genesis wave also took away really cool characters, my favorites being fiona fox & mina mongoose, because archie and sega didn't anyone else trying to follow on ken's steps
Sad because Penders admitted even after that nastiness that Fiona Fox belonged to Sega and Archie since he just created a different version of the same character, which is ironic since he tried to claim Scourge later on. As for Mina Mongoose that character was created by Karl Bollers, a co-writer who Penders forced to leave Archie and also created Hope Kintobor and Dr. Finitivus.
I feel the same with Scourge and Fiona. Hell, they couldn’t e kept both of them cause Ian Flynn made the green Scourge. Penders was only responsible for “evil-sonic”
Which to be fair was literally just sonic with a leather jacket and sunglasses, so he shouldn’t have logically been able to get ownership of him in the first place.
Which ended up happening anyway with Scott Fulop... ☹
@@insanehiker5587 Turns out, not only did they not have Penders' contract, they couldn't find ANY of the contracts for the people who wrote the Archie comics and had to purge *ALL* the characters introduced in the Archieverse except for the ones from SatAM...😭
it is not over just tell everyone that ken cheated the lawsuit you people have a enough proof now.by just look at his comics to tell if he traced and thing sega or dic related that way you can go to the court and tell them that he lied and can be put in prison for lieing and stealing .also back then finding out in 2013 if someone traced there official art it was hard to prove.now in 2022 we have the technology to prove if someone did the traceing and stole the artwork. we have the technology to prove that ken penders traced officeal artwork from knuckles the echidna or sonic the hedgehog or other d.i.c characters that sega owned
Like Sally acorn or bunnie rabbot and and others as well. if you give that proof to the court then you can say he lied about working for Archie comics and the characters belong to sega and he is a thief and he used the traceing to create his own characters you can put him in jail and get the characters back where they belong and put ken penders in prison and get his characters in idw sonic comics and get the Lara su comic cannsled but you guys have got to show that he traced segas offical sonic artwork to the court and that he lied that he worked for both sega and Archie comics. do this and ken penders will go to prison for lieing and stealing and the characters he stole will go back to sega ok.
He didn’t kill Sonic, he stabed him, punched him, broke his bones, and disposed of him inside a plastic bag, all while he was alive
I heard about how crazy the Archie-Penders lawsuit was, but I didn't know Penders basically won due to how completely incompetent Archie Comics were.
Not really incompetent, there was a fire that ate his contract.
@@quesocoatl21 There was no contract.
@@kenpenderstheechidnalover8820 Definitely a Contract.
Stan Lee is pretty much the only man to not be bound by the For Work Contract.
Penders was a nameless shlub being hired by a Comic Company with a Pedigree on par with Marvel.
Archie has fallen far, but they are still old hands at the Writer's game.
What happened to the contract? Well, when the spiteful manager has access to the records room...
Ken Penders is the real-world equivalent of that one Onion article; "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point." He's a weird, petty egotist who had a single noteworthy project in his career that he continues to ride the coattails of despite burning the rest of the coat and who's main claim to fame these days is bad twitter takes and worse art. His work on the Sonic comics themselves has, in retrospect, been derided as some of the worst in any of the comics' runs. He's got nothing to cling onto except the fading relevance of books he wrote years ago that weren't even good, and yet that's all he ever wrote that people care about so he insists on not letting go.
And yet, I have to give him props for sticking it to a notoriously creator-unfriendly publisher who thought they could get away with gross incompetence just because they were big and prolific. That's peak creator's rights advocacy right there! It's just a shame about literally everything else.
Damn, Archie was THAT incompetent? Just because they thought they were hot shit?
It's actually a Clickhole article
When the dickhead meets the douchebag and get into a slapfight.
Isnt ken actually a part of that type of corporate culture?
I remember reading that he would throw out other peoples plotlines so he could just continue to copy star trek. Since he was the senior member, he would always get his way.
Fuckin wish he didn't drag Bioware into it and steal their character though lol
I like the little "easter eggs" in Drakes outfit for this video. The ring tie is an obvious one, but the jem stone on the "Heist Con" mug could be a nod to the Chaos Emeralds. Also the grid pattern on his shirt could be a reference to the box art for Sega Master System games, which is the detail that made me want to comment this in the first place.
I'm glad that my little details don't go unnoticed!
The thing about Penders suing over Sonic Chronicles is he really didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. You can’t copyright an idea, only an execution. And if any half decent copyright lawyers had actually looked at the case they’ed know his claims were bullshit, even is he did own the stuff he made for Archie because they didn’t use the actual literal Archie characters and stories in Sonic Chronicles. Penders should have been buried in court but instead he “won” and has all these massive bragging rights. It’s ridiculous.
He "won" in the sense that SEGA don't care enough about Chronicles to fight for it and are just going to ignore Penders in the hopes that he goes away.
I'm confident that if Sega had taken that lawsuit (Same with Archie) to a higher Court Ken wouldn't have stood a chance
Why does Sonic only attracts the worst kind of people? This isn't as messed up as Sonichu but still.
This guy right here, Ken Penders. He introduced all of his weird, horny obsessions into the comic, alongside a bizarre tone about death and other melodrama, which a lot of Sonic fans grew up reading. I think he's directly responsible.
@@CaylexT Honestly, this would explain why the Sonic fan base can be really out there sometimes as Clement points out when going over Sonic Mega Collection in the finale video for his Sonic retrospective when he goes over the Archie comic covers Sonic Mega Collection shows off and mentions how some of the covers are very strange and makes you wonder what the heck is going on in the stories. With this whole Ken Penders thing, it all makes sense now.
He's not that only one sadly...
Fandoms attract these types of people because of how childish the subject matter is.
Sonic the Hedgehog was a beacon for autism for some odd reason, I think it was the soft color schemes that did it, those childlike minds were attracted to it.
Ken Penders is the Sonic equivalent of Billy Mitchell, a sad pathetic bitter old man who would sue even a cloud for giving him the wrong shade.
To me, Ken Penders is the John Kricfalusi of Sonic.
More like a Todd Todgers honestly
I see what you did there.
Penders is literally AU Chris Chan that was able to get a job with a comic company/Sega and strictly focused on Sonic instead of every franchise out there
@@mayborneflower I don't remember Toggers processing people out of nowhere.
Meanwhile Billy? The guy is insane.
If you ever feel like you can't write good stories, remember Ken Penders exists
I feel compelled and motivated now to write my own original series.
Heh. Good advice.
Yuh it's hilarious how terrible writing can be more inspirational than quality writing ..now I think I can write a successful comic 🤣
Yet Ian Flynn write shitty stories. Have you seen half of the bullshit in the IDW Comics? Less memorable characters that'll be gone when Sega pulls away from IDW.
I think he is a good writer though
I will never get over that despite everything Ken Penders is still only the second most controversial person to make comics about Sonic.
I'm going to make a bold claim here and say that Ken Penders is directly responsible for the melodramatic, poorly drawn and deeply, horribly sexual segment of the Sonic fanbase, of which Chris-chan is just the most well-documented.
@@CaylexT Chris chan literally fucked his elderly dementia ridden mom but go off i guess
@@CaylexT You're probably not wrong. And the other problem is that now Sega is resistant to any ships, even the good canonical ones (Sonamy) and the good non-canonical ones (Taismo) because of Kenny.
@@CaylexT I'm gonna be honest, that side of the fandom is my absolute favorite, it's so absurdly funny
i mean, he isn't a literal motherfucker lol
I sort of recently designed an echidna character, and my friends were like "don't let Ken Penders get a hold of this!"
Now I understand the joke lmao
Delete this comment and immediately put your talent towards better things. Sonic /any other OC's are cringe, period. Write a book.
@@treek10k my man, he is talking about nothing to do with jesus, heaven, hell or god.
@@nikotheanubianjackal9114 what with how Penders is widely regarded as the worst person alive by the Sonic fandom, I find it hard to believe it's just a bot.
So basically... Ken Penders is a failed artist who constantly brags about his glory days.
Pretty much.
Oh yeah totally his “glory” days.
I wouldnt call him a failed artist by any means.
He's more of a self destructive artist.
Dude could EASILY make bank doing comms if he wanted.
Like most artist on Deviantart
Because according to all of you Ian Flynn worshippers. The best artist is Ian Flynn despite the fact he's garbage.
Lmao I got into the sonic comics literally just before the World Collide MegaMan/Sonic crossover. I had no idea what was happening during that event, I just thought it was a cool crossover.
Ken penders is exactly the type of person that comic book publishers will crack down on artists to avoid. He probably set back artists publisher relationships by several decades with his confirmation of the publishers predicted notions of what will happen if artists get off the hook.
Few things you got wrong here:
- The comic was never a "solo project" of Penders, he was always just one writer among many, and for most of the years he wasn't even writing the Sonic stories. He was completely focused on Knuckles' storyline, while Karl Bollers wrote the Sonic stories. Bollers was actually a pretty great writer when he wasn't being interfered with by the editor J. Gabrie, who I think is really responsible for the "dark age" by having favoritism for Penders, letting him write whatever he wanted, while interfering with other writers like Bollers. Even after the Knuckles solo comic got canceled, Penders was still mostly just writing Knuckles as the B stories in the Sonic comic for years. He was only the solo head writer for a single year after Bollers quit in 2005, then Penders quit in 2006 and was replaced by Ian Flynn.
- Most of the wackier stuff that happened in the later comics were 1-offs done for B-stories or the separate Super-Special comics, or because they were behind schedule on the main story and needed to release something that month. Also, Penders didn't write either appearance of Verti-Cal or Horizont-Al, and their 2nd appearance as robotic demigods was actually done as a joke at Penders' expense, pointing out how he'd taken these characters who started as silly cartoons and made them overly serious in just a few years, especially in the Knuckles comics.
- The plot of the Lara-Su Chronicles isn't a reworking of his plans for Sonic Armageddon, it's a continuation of his personal pet arc "Mobius: 25 Years Later", widely considered one of the worst, most boring arcs in the comic's run, where Sonic and Knuckles are adults and married to Sally and Julie-Su and have kids and go do dinner parties and there's hardly any real conflict.
nerd
@@rodrigoalves-cg6xv you’re in the comment section of a video discussing sonic the hedgehog comic books. don’t be too surprised
🤓🤓🤓
i like how they call you a nerd under a video about a grown man drawing talking animals
Cool. So get didn't get anything wrong, and you're just being an arrogant correcting dick for no reason. Good to know 😊
It is very interesting to know that Ken didn't even make Scourge and ,according to what the actual copyright claim says, technically doesn't even own any of these characters.
Yeah, he does not own Scourge, he’s only deluded himself into thinking he does because Scourge is an “evil Sonic” character, and for whatever reason he believes that the concept of an evil Sonic belongs solely to him. But Scourge looks and acts nothing like Penders’ evil Sonic, so he has no legal right to him. The reason Sega has not taken action against Penders it’s because he’s really not worth the trouble. Penders neither has the money nor the clout to really launch another successful comic series with the characters he now owns (and claims he owns), so he’s not really a threat. I’d like to see him try though and watch as Sega’s lawyers destroy him lol
The reason why he can't actually own the characters is because they are basically the legal equivalent of fanart and Sega just let's him do what he wants because they can't be bothered to deal with him anymore
A minor correction: Penders didn't write the story with Al and Cal returning as spiky death robots. That was Mike Gallagher, their original creator. Otherwise, excellent video! The best I've seen on the topic.
As a British Sonic fan who grew up on Fleetway this was pretty eye opening and explains the strange stuff I used to see American Sonic fans drawing.
Yeah, a lot of the female background characters that Penders made (the ones that only appear for one or two panels) had rather sus proportions.
@@Cowboycomando54 those this explain why the sonic fanbase has a slightly higher proportion of weird people?
Penders may have won, but anyone who was a fan of the Archie/SatAM verse lost in the end. Because of him, Sega will make sure we never see Bunny, Antoine, Rotor, Nicole or Princess Sally ever again. Despite how good the IDW run has been, it still feels empty without them.
That and the lawsuit went down right in the middle of the Mecha-Sally arc. One of the more tragic ends to a beloved comic character and we never got a proper conclusion.
It also killed the Archie Sonic comics completely. They had to basically restart the comics under IDW.
@@SBaby To be fair, Archie Comics were supposedly tired of making comics of licensed media, so they didn't _really_ want to make Sonic comics anymore either. At least that's what I heard. I might be wrong.
@@robertlupa8273 No, it was more that Sega wanted to have more direct control over their IP after Archie lost all those characters. So Ian Flynn basically hard rebooted the series with the IDW comics, which isn't too surprising since Kenny's tantrum basically destroyed half the original world..
i miss the freedom fighters
Throwing out all of Ken's characters like that has got to be one of the biggest middle fingers I have ever seen. Just, wow!
Geoffrey St. John: A character who, in Flynn’s hands, became a tragic and compelling character who found himself in a situation he couldn’t get out of until it was too late.
Rough: A thug who causes trouble with his brother, and the two of them often end up as the lackies to other big bads.
How are these two similar, exactly? They’re *nothing* alike aside from the fact that they’re skunks.
Ken Penders invented skunks
@@CaylexT Ken Penders is God confirmed
To me, St. John looks more like Tangle than Rough. As far as personalities go, I never really read the Archie comics so I can't say.
It feels so weird learning about this now, kind of like a PTS vibe. I remember collecting the Sonic comics when I was a kid at the local Vons. Every month I would rush to the rotating stand, look for the new Sonic comic, and beg my mom to buy it for me. O ne day, at the age of 10, excited to see a new issue, I scanned through the book to get a first read while my mother got her groceries. It was normal business as usual and then "BAM"! I am hit with the panel of Geoffrey forcing a kiss from Sally. I felt very uncomfortable and even ashamed at what I just saw. I didn't understand why. I closed the book at that point and put it back on the rack. My mother finished her shopping and came to pick me up. She asked if I would like to get the new issue. I told her "No, thank you" which confused her. She later went back to see what I saw in the comic and pointed out the kiss panel asking me if that was why I didn't want to comic.
I stopped collecting the Sonic comics that day. I have not seen that panel of the kiss since that day over 26 years ago until this video. I oddly I feel like I am that kid again, standing next to the birthday cards, trying to undrstand what I just saw. Now with contexts maybe it wasn't me that was the problem.
The most tragic thing from my perspective is that becoming Ken Penders was probably the best possible case for Chris Chan: Ken basically made his name and fortune, such as it is, making laughably derivative characters and utterly bizarre lore in the Sonic world, which was essentially Chris's dream, but Ken couldn't escape his own creepiness and tendency to make trouble through his foolishness. The tragedy is in the fact that "Ken Penders" was the potential GOOD ENDING missed out on.
Hello my brother.
I mean when the worst people from the most depraved and morally fucked part of the Internet decided to just make your life a living hell for their twisted entertainment.
No one is getting out of that in anyway good
the main difference is that chris chan is clearly not neurotypical and people used chris chan as their own personal punching bag. the things people made chris chan do .. those people are just as deplorable.
@@pillboys Um, source?
@@LocalGooberGoobs like, you want to know about what people did to chris-chan? they convinced her to rape her disabled mother w/ alzheimer's( i think?), for starters. that happened within the last three years and is the reason why she's in jail / in court now (idk where the case is at, havent checked in a while). there was a recorded phone call between chris-chan and one of the tormentors where the person asks prodding questions about it framed/said in a way that just proves they're all just goading her on. chris-chan's life has been an absolute shit show the entire way through and i guarantee it will be until the day she dies. there was no going back when she shoved glass up her ass because horrible people demanded it. chris chan is a deplorable person, but i guarantee her life would be very very different if she grew up in a different family and/or never got into posting media online. also chris-chan is clearly not neurotypical so people dont even see her as a person anymore. she's a fucking spectacle. a garbage fire and people just kept pouring on more gasoline.
A big win for creators at Archie and a big loss for Sonic fans. It's frustrating when the worst people make the biggest and most important changes too. Like Hans Asperger for another example. A very important yet very problematic problematic figure in the history of Autism research.
it wasnt a "big win" for creators at archie, the only one who benefited from any of it was panders, and archie and publishers just closed the loopholes that he used.
@@Iris_Spring It's honestly a joke xD
So today I learned that Sabrina the teenage witch, a cartoon series of my childhood, wasn't actually based on a live action series of the same name, but on a comic of the same name.
True. Loved Josie and Pussycats cartoon but that also from Archie comics.
I had a friend who read these comics and seeing them the first time at his house was completely bizarre, I really struggled to believe they were official , I'd played Sonic games from Sega to GameCube so reading them was like "wtf is this, who are any of these characters, what is happeneing and where is Sonic?".
I swear, Ken Penders looks different every time I see him based on Photos of him used in Essays like these.
I knew he stole Shade, but I didn't know he stole Scourge as well. Surprised Ian Flynn didn't try and sue Ken for that.
Ian doesn't because it's not worth spending money and time on. Ken will never get money from the characters he claims to own. And the only attempt he was about to make with Scourge was called off.
Considering how much SEGA now has such a strong hold on the Sonic property, I think that would be an issue that only SEGA could go to court for. I doubt Ian could sue even if he wanted to. But I bet it’s such a none issue at the moment, they’re not going to bother with it. Pender has no real claim on Scourge no matter what he says, and any court nowadays would see that plain as day.
We do get Surge the Tenrec instead of Scourge. And Surge is just adorable.
A friend exposed me to his art for the first time recently and it is no understatement to say he has the most unappealing style of drawing ever to exist.
Todd McFarlane: Creators Rights!
Ken Penders: Creators Wrongs!
Fuckin' love Ian Flynn's work. Ken Penders was an insane psycho hellbent on creating the worst sonic rip offs youve ever seen
Some characters didnt even feel like they belonged in the same universe as Sonic, do you think of Sonic and the next thing you think about are those dudes named horizontal and vertical
@tajini817 sure... as the pong paddle and the blockball paddle if you consider sonic's universe to be the video game universe. I mean, back when video game media first came out they didn't have much to go on and it was mostly in another langauge. Reminds me of Captian N.
Remember that one SNES ROM of "Sonic The Hedgehog" which was actually just the Speedy Gonzales game but with Sonic and Mario shovelled in?
That is Penders' work in video game form next to the official Sonic games
@@tajini817to be fair, it did reveal that there was a multiverse and zones being the reason for these
@@aaamogusthespiderever2566 Yeah, but it's a feeling i can't describe well, they feel like different franchises Even with the corresponding art style
I've read some of these comics. The Sonic/Megaman crossover was really cool, and they managed to work the reworking of the universe in in an emotional way despite the weirdness.
And it was the rise of Ian Flynn.
I'm pretty sure my first exposure to Archie Sonic was through reading about random bits and pieces from the Sonic/Mega Man crossover on MMKB. Never actually read either comic by the way.
@@robertlupa8273 Honestly, 100% would recommend. You can find them online for free if need be.
Gonna say it again but listening to Drake talk about something videogame related is super nostalgic.
Also thank you for going into detail on the legal stuff, most videos I've seen on Penders always talk about the before and after the lawsuits but never go go into what happened in court. Keep up the awesome work man!
Kenders shouldn't even expect a pot of gold since Chronicles didn't even sell that well
Drake fucking roasted Penders for half an hour exclusively to get the guy watching the video, so he could deliver that message at the end. What a bloody legend!
Solid coverage! As someone who was a huge fan of Archie Sonic, it’s lore and characters, the lawsuits and eventual cancellation hit like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t able to buy the comics cause I didn’t live in the US, but I remember going on other websites to keep up with the stories and talking about it with friends and other community members. It still bothers me that both continuities of Archie Sonic never got proper conclusions and the fans of those books most likely won’t get any kind of closure.
It’s sucks that Ken just won’t shut up or move on, cause you can’t even mention Archie Sonic without someone brining him and his stupidity up.
I like the take of "I don't like this guy, but he got one over on this thing which is worse, so alright". I had no idea the sheer mindfuck this trial was, and how apparently incompetent everyone was about it. But most surprising to me, SatAM came first??? I always thought it was an adaptation! Insane!
I thought SatAM came first too. Weirdly enough, those early comics almost feel like SatAM's story and characters mixed with the tone of "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog"
They were made around the same time. I think it was meant as like a tie in thing. The Sonic comic technically started before SatAM. Obviously there was no memo given on what the tone was supposed to be.
Well the show started out being fairly similar to the comics initial issues. They deside to change during production (to stand out more from other cartoons) but since assets had already been made for the comic and show those were finished and published. The comics being quicker to make and thus further along had the least changes, the assets completed for the lighter hearted version of the cartoon ended up becoming adventures of sonic the hedgehog (th wacky twin to satam)
Love that Sega asked Ken to incorporate new characters from the games ONCE and he immediately left cause he didn't have enough creative control.
This guy is the reason we don't get many new characters and genuinely different things happening in Sonic.
It's like with Mario RPGs and Miyamoto, except Sega actually has a good reason to do it.
Miyamoto is an actual snake
@@Auchaser643 No, he just thinks that the Mario games don't need story. (Which they do.) It's the dumbest mentality I've ever seen.
It’s not just Miyamoto, it’s Nintendo’s executives in general. But the point is correct.
Hey at least it's not Pokemon, where everything new get introduced, but everyone just prefers the same thing anyways lol.
@@ammagon4519 And new ideas are also wiped out of existence every three years…
My god, Ken is like a “successful” Chris Chan. Couldn’t help but read his tweets in Chris Chan’s voice.
I was getting “Chris Chan with discipline” vibes for sure. His weird hatred for autistic people reads as projection.
@@jamesgraham1772 Penders hates autists? What kind of stuff does he say about them?
He reminds me more of Spax3.
I still want to imagine Chris was mentored by ken penders
Id kill for a sonichu comic in ken penders style, it would be so cursed
Thank you so much so much Drake for covering this terrible history.
Wow it’s alot madness, I can see why all the hatred.
Can’t lie that the artwork is disgusting… I thought I seen bad artwork…
Thanks for making this video. The issue with Penders throwing Hurst under the rug REALLY pissed me off. Hurst had some of the BEST SatAM episide.
I remember watching the Scourge comic discourse happen in real time. Ian Flynn must have the patience of a saint to not engage with that whole debacle.
What did he do
Ian has dealt with some trash regarding his interactions with Penders, and given how much I respect and admire Ian as a person and creator it has been one of the major reasons that made me and many others see Pender's absolute true colors and despise him and his behavior. I think Ian blocked him on Twitter. It all started when Ian sent multiple detailed and enthusiastic letters into the Sonic book when he was younger in the very early 2000s and before he got hired for the job, and I believe Penders even had some notes below commenting on his letters there.
It was all fine there but then it quickly devolved into disrespecting Ian and his work years later (and like with other creator's work, refusing to acknowledge it and respect it, and even simply read it if it didn't involve the lawsuit). He's implied or stated something like Ian's a corporate monkey or something along those lines because he got involved a little in the lawsuit instead of being neutral, and he's also said that he doesn't insult him or encourage his fanboys to yet occasionally has called him names behind his back, being the pathetic loser he is.
Ian doesn't mention his name or anything involving him on his podcast the Bumblekast and I believe he intentionally does this. He really doesn't like drama and conflict and I can relate to and respect that. He's a very chill dude, a refreshing, good contrast to a personality like Penders (where in his case he tries to output this fake polite and respectful persona online but is actually just as eager to be sassy, rude and spit out bad takes often; he's also known to be a Twitter addict and posts a bunch of stuff that barely gets a few likes or engagement). Ian does sometime vaguely hint at things regarding the lawsuit and the other issues but that's only when provoked with submitted listener questions he talks about. It's funny when you know what he's saying but yeah you have to know the details to understand the context clues.
@@PigDan the sad thing is Ian is a fan of Penders' work, (especially the Knuckles comics) so it's kinda sad he is disrespected by his "hero."
I remember Ken accused Ian of stealing his idea of Antoine (the French dude) and Bunnie getting married. When asked about this on his forum, Ian stated he has no access to Ken's notes or ideas, and came up with it on his own.
And honestly... It's not an original idea only Ken could think up... Antoine and Bunnie have been dating for so many years in the comic canon, honestly what person hasn't thought of that being a possibility?
We've been waiting a long time for this one, buckle your seats everyone, cause y'all are in for a very wild ride.
Ah, Penders. History’s Greatest Monster in the Eyes of the Sonic fanbase.
I imagine that if the dimensional merge occurred (albeit on a less chaotic scale), some of us are going to be telling Surge, Kit, Scourge, and the Destructix about Penders.
When was the dimensional merge supposed to happen? 2018?
Scourge: so your telling me he denied MY fans to have more of ME?! OTHER ME AND LIL BLUE WE GOTTA MOUTHERFUCKER TO KILL!!!
SURG: YES!
kit: yes sir
@@EggFighterXB- could be 2019. Not sure
@@jiggityjack8113 hate to be that guy but is could have been.
@@jiggityjack8113 Strange, Chris- No wait I’m sorry, Christine, Said that it was coming in 2021… Maybe it will come in December of this year…?
Its so funny because its such a pointless lawsuit. Its identical to making your own Simpson and sueing Fox for the rights?
Is he so uncreative that he truly believes the most incredible design in the world is Knuckles in a cowboy hat?
You know what’s a bummer. My grandma bought me a couple Knuckles comics when I was a little kid. Years later, I Thought I’d buy a collection just to relive reading them with her. Alas, this Ken goof made it so I can never own a physical copy lol
First three volumes made it into a collection fourth was done but never published, volume five and six were planed but are never gonna happen. Good luck getting all the issues.
As long as you don't buy them new he wont get a dime. Or you can pirate and printem
You could always find the comics online, right? Read 'em digitally and for free?
"...SEGA had to come in and destroy the entire universe TWICE."
All I can see is the Living Tribunal appearing in the sky over Moebius, hand out-stretched, wearing a SEGA T-shirt, saying in grim finality, "Again."
And I honestly think something not entirely unlike this ACTUALLY happened in the Archie Comics run of Sonic.
This mad man about to turn knuckles extended family into NFTS 😂😂😂
They already look like they belong on one.
@@theshenpartei oof
I cannot believe this hasn’t happened already
A little update about the comic book of Penders, it came out, and we all wish it didn't, it's horribly bad...
And Penders also said he's going to try to re-release the whole Archie comics era of Sonic, he even sended some issues to people that ordered his comic, with some stuff and names changed, and signed by Ken himself, he's probably going to get sued again