Megathread The Lara-Su Chronicles and Ken Penders topic - READ PAGE 164, POST 4096

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

NOTE: Accidently clicked the publish button before I was going to type what I wanted to type ^^;

 

LONG POST BOMB INCOMING!

 

 

Being totally honest, every time I read the Archives series and read an issue by Penders, I actually chringe a little when I see his attempts at outdated slang, in fact, I even had a review of the Sonic Adventure arc that got wiped in the forum wipe but I should redo it. That had one of the single most awful lines ever muttered in the comic.

When Sonic is fighting Perfect Chaos, the Freedom Fighters including Sally and Knuckles are fighting as well. Sonic goes to help Sally and what does he say?

"SALLY! GET OUT OF THE WAY GAL PAL!"

Where do I even start with that? Firstly was the phrase "Gal Pal" ever cool? I mean could you ever imagine anyone saying to one of their friends, "so what's up gal pal?". It sounds like some 45 year old man trying to sound "hip"and "cool". It sounds like something Technus from Danny Phantom would say (Big difference there is its meant to sound uncool). It's most certainly something Sonic the Hedgehog would never say.

Secondly, why Gal Pal? Why does Penders feel the need to make the distinction that this isn't just a pal of Sonic but a female pal of Sonic? I mean, why not just "Sally! Move out of the way pal!" Or just "Sally! Watch out!". It makes it sound ever more idiotic that for whatever reason, Penders believed he just had to distinguish Sally as one of Sonic's female friends.

On another note, I hate the way that whenever Penders talks about characters or franchises, he always does it in all caps. For example "SONIC" and "KNUCKLES". Is this how he would do it if he was talking to someone in real life? Would he just shout the characters names at the top of his voice and then just return to normal conversation level?

Gal Pal? Really? I was thinking 'Heads up Sal!' would be fine but "Watch out!' would be better too...

 

Which as I'll mention again, Penders confirmed recently that by the time of Sonic #44, Geoffrey was in his early 20s (About 21, 22) and at the time, Sally was 16. Which means Penders knowingly paired up a 21/22 Year old with a 16 year old girl, which is made even worse considering Sally never made any advances towards him, that was all Geoffrey who usually appeared on the scene and just up and kissed Sally without her permission,

[biznizz]

"Your average person doesn't pick up a video game for the story. They pick it up for the game-playing experience. No one picked up the first Sonic game for the story. There wasn't any. I actually don't advocate deviating from the source material as long as you have something substantive to work with. When I first started working on SONIC, neither he or Knuckles had a viable story to work with."

 

Sources: (x)(x)(x)(x)

 

>People don't play video games for the story.

 

Ever heard of RPGs? A popular genre that's celebrated for storytelling and how it works as part of the gameplay experience? You'd probably know that if you took a few seconds to research.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

Hell, he TWICE completely overshadowed his books' main characters for his own creations with Sonic & Knuckles. And the latter is still being used to help prop up his blowup doll of a main protagonist in this book. F*cking K'nox my ass; I can't wait for the C&D order from SEGA to come when he finally annouces a release date.

IF he announces the release date, to which it'll take a looooooooooong time.

[biznizz]

 

 

BONUS:

 

Soo, is it true that the fan art was better than the whole comic back at that day?

 

Sadly, for the most part.... yes. Espeically if the artist in question was Ron Lim or Pen himself.

 

Early Mawhinney was great,

Late Mawhinney was tired and sad (it's telling his only energetic post-Adventure story was a fairy tale which used the old SatAM designs)

Manny Galan tried (having to draw so many echidnas...),

Frank Strom's concepts were better than his art which clashed with the SEGA style of Sonic & Tails,

Early Manak was (personally) servicable but awkward and got complaints,

Late Manak was really kinda sad to see,

Scott Shaw did work on the original mini which lead to Sonic's ongoing and a story here or there and was very Kelly's Pogo-esque (tho even he got invovled with Pen's crusade, which led to both of them over-inflating Shaw's importance to the book),

J. Axer was great but he oversexualized female characters like Sally & Mina which didn't help the accusations of "furry comic" and "furry drama" back then,

Ron Lim seemed to have gotten his tenure due to an admittedly sharp looking pinup but his regular pencils were garbage (Eggman was his only consistantly on-model character, Sonic became a literal cyclops),

Dawn Best was rough around the edges but for a fanartist turned professional she wasn't too bad,

Spaz was alway great but almost never around (and his SA2 art seemed shockingly bad and off model for some reason IMO),

Many Hands... hopefully those interns they used never drew professionally again,

and Pen himself was nearly bottom of the barrel; nearly impossible to tell whether his art or his scripts were worse.

 

If I missed any pre-Flynn & Yardley artists, let me know; those were the only ones I can remember off the top of my head.

Edited May 11, 2015 by biznizz

[King Scoopa Koopa]

On the Ken Penders newsfront, we have some random guy asking Penders why he took Jules and Shard away and Penders taking a potshot at both Archie and Sega.

For the antics

^Interesting tidbit

First off. Go fuck yourself Penders, and stop telling this fan bullshit. YOU DID TAKE JULES AWAY. Along with Julie-Su, Scourge, and all other non-Sega characters. You were the one who set up impossible rules. You are the one who's taken them away you lying prick.

Secondly, why should Arche and Sega have to answer for your lies? The comic has clearly erased all non-Sega characters, you clearly know what went down and how it went down so don't you dare for one fucking second try to play dumb and blame it all on Big bad Archie and Mean Old Sega, you lying piece of shit.

Wasn't there an NDA on the settlement? Do you think he's trying, however passive aggressively, to get them to break it?

[horridus]

Wasn't there an NDA on the settlement? Do you think he's trying, however passive aggressively, to get them to break it?

 

Yep, there indeed was. And it really would not surrprise me if THAT was the reason for his constant need to needle and link to Archie and SEGA in those tweets. He'd be perfectly capable of complaining about them without alerting them, but for some reason wants their attention... granted, he also tends to do that for various individuals and companies he has no real business bothering, but in the case of SEGA and Archie it's particularly glaring given his sordid history with the two.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

Yep, there indeed was. And it really would not surrprise me if THAT was the reason for his constant need to needle and link to Archie and SEGA in those tweets. He'd be perfectly capable of complaining about them without alerting them, but for some reason wants their attention... granted, he also tends to do that for various individuals and companies he has no real business bothering, but in the case of SEGA and Archie it's particularly glaring given his sordid history with the two.

Soo does this mean he's up to something? Besides this LSC thing he's doing? 

[horridus]

Soo does this mean he's up to something? Besides this LSC thing he's doing? 

 

This is just speculation and a tinge of conspiracy. More then likely he's just a miserable, petty jackass who doesn't know when to leave well enough alone. 

[Agie]

He should have let it go a long while ago. I think Archie's smart just ignoring him, or at least barely acknowledging him, if at all.

[biznizz]

I just constantly feel sorry for the people who grew up idolizing Pen, like Paul Agnew, Ian and Dubs Gray. It sounds like there were there at the beginning of Pen's online life with his forum. All three of them managed to make it into their childhood dream jobs in comics, yet not only did their idol not want to encourage them, but was either indifferent or completely disparaging. And the latter two are already becoming more successful than Pen, while I'm sure Paul will make it big as well; all the while Pen wastes away in the social media wasteland, talking shit while his "dream project" progresses at less than half a snail's pace.

 

I know I've said it before, but I know how soul crushing it can be when someone you look up to turns out to not only have feet of clay, but is actually a completely awful person. I barely read the book when Pen was backupping Bollers, and I still can't believe the guy who I saw write Knuckles dying and then becoming Echidna Jesus (tho I didn't make that connection at the time) would lead to so much drama, jackassery, and the worst IP I've heard of in a good long while.

[horridus]

Welcome to my world. That comic was a constant in my life. I had quite the collection. I loved all of it. The Knuckles Books, the stuff he did for Sonic... the Archie continuity was something I was truly and wholly invested in, and it was my favorite version of Sonic. Even as I got older and realized the flaws in the work, I never stopped loving it. I even defended Penders, in ways that eerily mirror his current defenses for his indefensible behaviour. Heck, I even wanted to become a writer for the comics some day, all because of him. And then came the lawsuit. Then I finally took a look at his forum and his social media. I finally got a look at the real him, and the real nature of his work.

 

Years spent on his work. Years spent loving what he made. And in the end, it was all the lazy hackwork of a mind that could not be bothered to even half-ass things... and he was a horrible excuse for a human being, as horrible as one could get without having committed a major crime. I had contributed to that fuckwit's paycheck for years and sung his praises, all the while being totally unaware of the kind of person he was.

 

I feel worse for Flynn, Dubs and Agnew though, and a few other fans from the olden times who dedicated themselves to his work. Flynn in particular. I can't begin to imagine what it was like to finally make it into comics, into Sonic, only to get THAT response from Penders and then the whole mess with the lawsuit. That he had the will to continue afterwards amazes me. 

[Osmium]

>No story in the first Sonic.  >Sonic and Knuckles didn't have viable stories.

[Salamander]

What kind of a storyteller is Penders if he thinks the original Sonic didn't have a story?  Does he think there's no plot unless there are dialogue boxes and cutscenes?  There's a great story in Sonic 1 that's absolutely perfect for expansion into a wider universe, and was used in exactly that way - Sonic 2, Sonic 3, these expand directly on the ideas and formula establsihed in Sonic 1.  There's loads you can do with Sonic and Knuckles without deviating from a word of canon.  This guy's meant to be a writer; how can he not see this?

[Komodin]

What kind of a storyteller is Penders if he thinks the original Sonic didn't have a story?  Does he think there's no plot unless there are dialogue boxes and cutscenes?  There's a great story in Sonic 1 that's absolutely perfect for expansion into a wider universe, and was used in exactly that way - Sonic 2, Sonic 3, these expand directly on the ideas and formula establsihed in Sonic 1.  There's loads you can do with Sonic and Knuckles without deviating from a word of canon.  This guy's meant to be a writer; how can he not see this?

[Osmium]

What kind of a storyteller is Penders if he thinks the original Sonic didn't have a story?  Does he think there's no plot unless there are dialogue boxes and cutscenes?  There's a great story in Sonic 1 that's absolutely perfect for expansion into a wider universe, and was used in exactly that way - Sonic 2, Sonic 3, these expand directly on the ideas and formula establsihed in Sonic 1.  There's loads you can do with Sonic and Knuckles without deviating from a word of canon.  This guy's meant to be a writer; how can he not see this?

[Gabz Girl]

Sadly, for the most part.... yes. Espeically if the artist in question was Ron Lim or Pen himself.

 

Early Mawhinney was great,

Late Mawhinney was tired and sad (it's telling his only energetic post-Adventure story was a fairy tale which used the old SatAM designs)

Manny Galan tried (having to draw so many echidnas...),

Frank Strom's concepts were better than his art which clashed with the SEGA style of Sonic & Tails,

Early Manak was (personally) servicable but awkward and got complaints,

Late Manak was really kinda sad to see,

Scott Shaw did work on the original mini which lead to Sonic's ongoing and a story here or there and was very Kelly's Pogo-esque (tho even he got invovled with Pen's crusade, which led to both of them over-inflating Shaw's importance to the book),

J. Axer was great but he oversexualized female characters like Sally & Mina which didn't help the accusations of "furry comic" and "furry drama" back then,

Ron Lim seemed to have gotten his tenure due to an admittedly sharp looking pinup but his regular pencils were garbage (Eggman was his only consistantly on-model character, Sonic became a literal cyclops),

Dawn Best was rough around the edges but for a fanartist turned professional she wasn't too bad,

Spaz was alway great but almost never around (and his SA2 art seemed shockingly bad and off model for some reason IMO),

Many Hands... hopefully those interns they used never drew professionally again,

and Pen himself was nearly bottom of the barrel; nearly impossible to tell whether his art or his scripts were worse.

 

If I missed any pre-Flynn & Yardley artists, let me know; those were the only ones I can remember off the top of my head.

 

Who was the artist from that issue where Sonic saves Bunnie from something or other and kisses her full on the lips, I think it was an issue from the 150's? God it looked awful! Awkwardly proportioned, weird faces and like J. Axer's work it made Sonic the hedgehog look like a furry comic.

 

Now that I think about it, that particular comic was drawn by two separate artists! The first was done by Jon Gray, the second by whoever created those off model abominations. So jarring.

[biznizz]

I dunno who that was, but I think they only did one or two stories.

I forgot to mention Butler, who was less detailed than Axer, but had many of the same pros and cons.

One one hand, he also oversexualized females and went more furry than SEGA.

On the other, he did his duty so that at least the art on his stories at least looked nicer than others.

I mean, just imagine: 25 Years Later with art as done by Lim or Pen. It would have been a failure on EVERY level and not merely most as it really turned out.

[Neon Zephyr]

I was never a big fan of Butler's female bodies, his art was generally pretty competent if not on-model, and I liked the rest of what he did. Heck, even his detailed female bodies were well-drawn, they were just extremely out of place. If he'd drawn the males with the same attention/similar approach to anatomy, I don't think it would have been so jarring. I still like his art (I admittedly prefer a bit taller of proportions than the on-model Sega style, though I openly admit I prefer artists like Yardley, Bates, Hesse, Skelly and the rest being the modern crew to keep things more on model), but I will more than openly admit it's flaws. 

 

Mawhinney did that Dulcy story, which made me realize, even then, how much the comic's style had changed. Anything involving a character other than the Dragons (or a few Swatbots) looked either jarring compared to the other stories at the time (though not bad per se), or were Sonic. Mawhinney never seemed to quite grasp how modern Sonic's spines worked.

 

There were bits of 25 Years Later drawn by Penders. A couple of pages and the Locke story. Gee, I wonder which bits I almost never reread (and I really only ever reread 25YL for Butler's art, regardless of previously-mentioned flaws)...

 

(EDIT: Beating ya'll to the punch to say, yes, I know about Boom's designs being a bit taller-feeling. I greatly adored Evan Stanley's work on those first two issues. Haven't had time to read much else.)

[Osmium]

I never liked Axer or Butler's art. They both had this weird oversexualized style that doesn't belong in a Sonic comic.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

Who was the artist from that issue where Sonic saves Bunnie from something or other and kisses her full on the lips, I think it was an issue from the 150's? God it looked awful! Awkwardly proportioned, weird faces and like J. Axer's work it made Sonic the hedgehog look like a furry comic.

 

Now that I think about it, that particular comic was drawn by two separate artists! The first was done by Jon Gray, the second by whoever created those off model abominations. So jarring.

[Gabz Girl]

I'll have to check my selection of comics again to see who it was. I got a couple of those Dork Age issues and I think the one with Sonic kissing Bunnie (eurgh) is one of them.

 

You know, I really like J. Axer and Butler's artwork. It's great, but probably not so suitable for something like Sonic the hedgehog. All the female characters are curvy and sexy looking and the rest of the characters just don't look very Sonicy. Like biznizz said, it was all very furry and not like a proper Sonic comic what with all the soap opera drama.

 

EDIT: Just found it. It's #152, the infamous Play on Playa issue. The artist in question is Al Bigley and it's so disgusting I can't even bear to look at it. 

[Zaysho]

Sadly, for the most part.... yes. Espeically if the artist in question was Ron Lim or Pen himself.

 

Early Mawhinney was great,

Late Mawhinney was tired and sad (it's telling his only energetic post-Adventure story was a fairy tale which used the old SatAM designs)

Manny Galan tried (having to draw so many echidnas...),

Frank Strom's concepts were better than his art which clashed with the SEGA style of Sonic & Tails,

Early Manak was (personally) servicable but awkward and got complaints,

Late Manak was really kinda sad to see,

Scott Shaw did work on the original mini which lead to Sonic's ongoing and a story here or there and was very Kelly's Pogo-esque (tho even he got invovled with Pen's crusade, which led to both of them over-inflating Shaw's importance to the book),

J. Axer was great but he oversexualized female characters like Sally & Mina which didn't help the accusations of "furry comic" and "furry drama" back then,

Ron Lim seemed to have gotten his tenure due to an admittedly sharp looking pinup but his regular pencils were garbage (Eggman was his only consistantly on-model character, Sonic became a literal cyclops),

Dawn Best was rough around the edges but for a fanartist turned professional she wasn't too bad,

Spaz was alway great but almost never around (and his SA2 art seemed shockingly bad and off model for some reason IMO),

Many Hands... hopefully those interns they used never drew professionally again,

and Pen himself was nearly bottom of the barrel; nearly impossible to tell whether his art or his scripts were worse.

 

If I missed any pre-Flynn & Yardley artists, let me know; those were the only ones I can remember off the top of my head.

 

Until you mentioned Galan, I hadn't really thought a lot of his contributions. I liked his work, but come to think of it, the Knuckles book must have been BORING to work on. All the Echidna look the same, with maybe some occasional new hairstyles or outfits, but not much else, and half the time they were just indistinct blobs in cloaks (the Dark Legion). Not to mention the Dingo army, with the exception of von Stryker. It must've been really refreshing for him the couple times he got to draw Sonic and the Freedom Fighters and even Mammoth Mogul. Can't really blame him for walking away when Archie wasn't giving him particularly stimulating work (at least he did the Mighty and Ray back-up, which was a surprisingly good story considering who wrote it--I was going to say it didn't rely on a new character, but then I remembered Penders shoved Nic, Nack's sister, in).

 

If I had to mention another semi-regular artist pre-Flynn (and he's still contributing), I'd probably go with Fry, whose style changed at the drop of a hat. I personally think his really early work blended very well with Butler's, maybe with more of an anime-influenced flair, but it was still detailed and much "rounder" looking. Then about a year later, he starts going for more angular and simplified forms, but still keeping the hallmarks of his early style. He might have emphasized the anime look a bit more. And then at some point (most notable with "Darkest Storm") he's made everyone really stretchy and rubbery looking, probably broke model a few times. Nowadays his stuff is in the same category as Butler, being more of a poor man's Yardley, since he conforms to the enforced house-style, though the way he draws expressions and faces still reminds me of the way he used to draw early on.

 

Flipping through a random issue, I also remembered Chris Allan worked on this comic. Now, Allan penciled that infamous storyline ("The First Date") where it seems like he was still coming off TMNT and everyone was big and muscly and defined, and it's such a poor showing of his ability as an artist (everyone looks like a human wearing Sonic costumes). He did some of Penders's Tales of the Great War stories, before and after he worked on Knuckles, and his stuff actually looks pretty good. It's not too off-model or out of place, and it seems it was mostly the humans/overlanders looked like his TMNT work, which made sense.

 

There may be others, but if we're talking regular contributions, I think they fit on there. I suppose there's Jim Valentino, as well, who worked on the Image crossover and that really misguided Knuckles storyline with the Nazi imagery. His stuff was... kinda just there. I just remember the Image crossover was particularly stiff looking, and everyone, Sally especially, had a perpetually bored look on their face (and so did the reader).

[biznizz]

I remember Valentino. Even overlooking the Image crossover, he was also an odd duck when he did his few pieces. He drew Sally's story in Girl's Rule where Pen had her bathing in the Source of All.

Of all the sexualized Sally's I can think of, that was perhaps the only censored in reprints (with her wearing her vest), if only because Ken wrote a story where it appeared that 16 year old Sally Acorn was SKINNY DIPPING IN A POOL OF MAGICAL HONEY.

Pen, what the hell is wrong with you?

[Zaysho]

I remember Valentino. Even overlooking the Image crossover, he was also an odd duck when he did his few pieces. He drew Sally's story in Girl's Rule where Pen had her bathing in the Source of All.

Of all the sexualized Sally's I can think of, that was perhaps the only censored in reprints (with her wearing her vest), if only because Ken wrote a story where it appeared that 16 year old Sally Acorn was SKINNY DIPPING IN A POOL OF MAGICAL HONEY.

Pen, what the hell is wrong with you?

 

In some ways, I find it odd that people take issue with Sally not wearing her vest when... she didn't for the first year of the book (due to working with the old designs), and in 20 years, nobody complained that that was all she wore. They only reason for her update was because Archie wanted their cast to conform to SEGA design conventions (the complaints that followed are something else, though). I just find the reprint an odd case of censorship looking at the big picture.

 

That said, thinking about it the way you described (after laughing my head off)... yeah, it sorta makes sense when you put it that way, especially if this story had no ties to Sonic.

[Jason Berry]

In some ways, I find it odd that people take issue with Sally not wearing her vest when... she didn't for the first year of the book (due to working with the old designs), and in 20 years, nobody complained that that was all she wore. They only reason for her update was because Archie wanted their cast to conform to SEGA design conventions (the complaints that followed are something else, though). I just find the reprint an odd case of censorship looking at the big picture.

 

That said, thinking about it the way you described (after laughing my head off)... yeah, it sorta makes sense when you put it that way, especially if this story had no ties to Sonic.

 

Not true. There were constant jokes made about it too. 

 

Butler's gotten better, but now he just copies Yardley's art style as best he can. His Sonic Boom #5 issue was very on-model.