horridus

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, whom are renouncing their royal titles and leaving the royal family of the UK. It's been on the news for a while now.

I'm not sure what's more eye-rolling. Him trying to convince us this was something that never occurred to him before, or the fact he feels a need to justify it as being 'inspired' by the lives of a pair of celebrities.

Penders tends to have some really weird storytelling priorities in general. Just look at Chaos Knuckles and the entirety of 25YL. Beyond that though, when he wasn't trying to make these books into an "Epic" Sci-Fi Drama/Soap Opera? He pretty tried to write it as being your typical Superhero comic, in particular one from the times he was growing up. One of the things prevalent in 'his' era of comics was this idea that Archnemesises hold this weird place in the hearts of the various Superheroes, almost like a 'frenemy' sort of deal- and that if they were gone, the absence would in fact sadden said superheroes. Penders tends to copy tropes from stuff he likes without really giving much thought to the context, so in all likelihood he figured it was a similar deal- Snively is one of the constants in Sonic's life, so clearly, him being gone means it'd have an emotional impact on Sonic. Obviously this all falls apart pretty much for all the reasons mentioned by everyone else in this thread. This isn't a Superhero book, and Snively isn't a supervillain- he's the right hand of a genocidal dictator and an active participant in the events that destroyed Sonic's life along with the lives of his friends. While I doubt Sonic actively wishes anyone dead, it'd be REALLY difficult to justify him feeling all that torn up over Snively going bye-bye. But Penders has never allowed a little thing like characterization and context get in the way of Drama, nor has he ever really been able to process the book or its characters on their own terms when it was always so much more convenient to box them into genres he personally found 'acceptable'.

People have brought up these concerns to Penders on his twitter, and each time he's basically said 'trust me, I got it covered'. Either there's some part of his deal that DOES allow some sort of exemption, or Penders is deeply misunderstanding the situation at hand, or is certain that he's altered things to the point where its legally distinct. Either way though, we're not gonna know til Comic-Con of next year. Supposedly.

Whelp, it's been a long, long while, but we've gotten our first update of substance in a long, long while... of sorts. Well, there you have it- an announcement for something to be ACTUALLY printed at Comic-con of next year. Given his track record of announcements, we'll see if this amounts to anything. History teaches 'no'.

For what it is worth, he DOES pay @Adamis to do translations. So, there's that at least... granted, I'm not sure what THAT rate pays compared to a professional service, so who knows really.

According to the Archie Sonic Wiki, a mark is approximately 1.4 centimeters or so. This seems fairly reasonable, as it would mean in that bio that Sonic is around 3'2 or so... an inch smaller than his official stats, but not an unfair guess to make. Though that said, Penders' applications of these heights and weights are kinda all over the place, ESPECIALLY the weight- the data file for Robotnik, both the original and the then-robotic 'Eggman', are BOTH listed as being 12.7 stone... which in pounds, is merely 177 lbs. Evidently Robotnik really IS a human hot air balloon....

Penders has repeatedly stated how he envisions his current project as a 'continuation' of his work on the comic (or... SOMETHING), and him replicating the format he used for those stupid datafiles (right down to using 'Stone' and 'Mark' as units for weight and height) is pretty par the course. As you have observed, it's just another way that he continues to cling as much as he can to the old book despite his various claims to the contrary.

Penders has stated he doesn't own Finitevus, so, he can't use the guy. I wouldn't doubt though that he included that particular bit as a dig against the characte, given that he pretty much took the place of Dimitri and the Legion as Knuckles own 'personal' nemesis. That said, given that this looks half-completed, it may be that he simply hasn't colored in whoever that is. Wouldn't be surprised though if that IS a lawyer friendly cameo of Finitevus, tho. Ha! Knew it. Ten bucks says he'll claim it's a deliberate change from here on out. From the looks of it? Yeah, I'd say so, given the flats on that dead (?) Echidna.

So, Penders has posted a panel from the prequel comic, this one featuring the newly revealed Dr. Zephur. Coulda swore it was "Zephyr"... in any event- So, Zephur STILL looks grotesque, but the real story here? Is Penders not only continuing to use photographs in place of drawing stuff, but actually going so far to use photographs of HUMAN anatomy and physiology despite this being a surgical/medical examination of his supposedly alien Echyd'nya. Like, good grief man, it's bad enough when he uses this crap for backgrounds, but this is really taking it to another level given how much he's screamed about this being 'hard science fiction' and crap.

Just like the last seven years or so. It's RIGHT around the corner!

I would make a comment about how hilarious it is that he can't even bother to keep his lies believable, but if you're going to lie to people who already know you're prone to it, you may as well pretend that things went the way you wanted rather than the way they actually did.

I keep saying this- the guy REALLY needs to ditch digital coloring and inking and shading. Like, he's much better at all these things with the traditional methods. I wouldn't call his art good, but it is WAY more pleasing to the eye BEFORE he applies all the digital crap. The fact he insists on doing it this way despite it clearly not being his strength is just baffling. Then again so is everything else, but this is one of those things he could fix WAY more easily than the other things wrong with his work.

And it would seem there was a more significant update- a preview of the app proper. In the name of fairness I should point out that those are stock voices from a computer, so you can't blame their terribleness on Penders. ...though the likelihood of whoever he hires to do the voice roles being much better is slim to nonexistent. Soo yeah, feast your eyes... at the motion comic... of the PREVIEW that he has been working on for eight years... with no actual sign of the PROPER book being anywhere near complete in sight.

Boy. If there was ever any doubt (all but impossible at this point) about what Penders REALLY wanted to be working on, this kinda obliterates it. I mean really, the man constantly whines about the crap that gets slung his way over how closely he's tried to maintain the Knuckles connection, insists on the originality of his work, and then... boom. Art that demands people pay attention to the Knuckles connection.