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


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Dear goodness, the digital coloring, shading and overall craft is just atrociously bad and nowhere within a million miles of being remotely professional-looking. Just look at those hands! (And I just noticed that there's a pack thing on his back which is barely even shaded at all.) Even if the "celebrity cameo" didn't rear its ugly head, this just isn't presentable. The ridiculously simplistic (and not in a good way) graphic design at play in the speech balloons and "narration" (well yellow boxes normally means narration in comics, but here it's just someone else talking to him...go figure) is also amateurish.

Even if Penders was fine at anatomy, faces, character design, not tracing other people's work, etc., the absolutely horrible digital coloring disqualifies his work from having even the shadow of a professional appearance.

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And here comes the defensive line-up.

If you ask me they could do with a substitution, that offensive line is really giving them the run-around.

Edited by therealfalconpawnch77
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Translation: What?! I, Ken Penders would never trace! I may pinch photos from Google with out the owners knowing for a profit... but I would never trace! Besides if Marvel can use a celebrity's likeness why can't I? What do you mean Marvel asked permission? I don't need to do that, my silent fans all ready think it's O.K.!

Edited by Mightyray
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It's funny that he's boasting about how great his likenesses are. Even though it's obvious he copied the face, his likenesses is still off. The mouth is small and the eyes are wrong.

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He's not very good with this whole "damage control" thing, is he?

He traced a photo, basically exactly, and is using it in his work. The image doesn't even line up with the pose or the dialogue. It just looks slapped on and awkward. And this is before we even get into the permissions, or lack thereof, he doesn't have to either use the photo (I'm not sure if these sorts of photos that are on IMDB have some sort of fair use so they can be circulated around the Internet as they are) or the likeness of the actor in question. And who even knows where those background images came from.

But no, we're all just hating and are purposefully refusing to acknowledge his artistic prowess.

Seriously, I don't know how editors not Gabrie put up with him in the first place.

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Pffft... even if you entertain the possibility that he didn't directly trace the guy's face, he makes literally no attempt to deny he straight up copied it. Shameless. Pathetic. Even working from a reference shouldn't result in a knockoff that bad.

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I find it hilarious that he's bringing up his work on Star Trek as 'proof' of his skill; he's done only a handful of work for them, as outlined by his Star Trek wiki page, and that further he blames 'scheduling issues' when said wiki outlines, and I quote: 

He was originally intended to be the primary artist on the Next Generation line, but deadline pressures and art approval requirements forced Greenberger and DC to work with an artist based in New York City.

Bolded for emphasis, but methinks it's rather clear why he didn't last at a company with an actual set of standards to be met. 

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"We come in peace, but shoot to kill?" Really?

After seeing this, the only reason I can believe that Ken Penders is his real name is because he'd have gotten it from someone else.

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Wait, that's page 2 of the actual comic right? The one he's selling, not the web comic? So what's stopping someone alerting Anthony Mackie that someone is using his likeness and going to be profiting from it?

 

Bingo! This goes way beyond using public domain images of space because you can't be bothered to fucking draw. This is an actor's image he traced and is using without the man's consent. He could get into legal trouble.
JUST FUCKING DRAW CARTOON CHARACTERS! WHY IS THAT SO HARD FOR YOU?! (Oh wait, I forget he can't draw worth shit.)

 

So we just need to find this guy's Twitter and/or just tag him in it?

 

After suing SEGA for having a few similar concepts in Chronicles, he is tracing over the face of an actor.

 

EDIT: Should we tweet at the guy that Penders stole his likeness? I just typed his name in and found his account on Twitter.

Edited by juliejo2001
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This is laughably bad. The dialogue doesn't even work with that weird beaming face!

It would be hilarious if Mikael's face was traced on every single panel of the comic. And each one would be a different person! Certainly wouldn't surprise me if Penders did that.

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So he's back into the Archie case, claiming his side wanted to negotiate while they wanted 250,000 plus court costs from him. Why is this all being brought up again? Because of Tom Brady. He is using his case to defend the judge involved, which while a good intention isn't really a point in the judges favor. Saying "When I went to court the Judge did his job."  isn't something that will make people OK with what happened, and tying yourself to it won't help either.

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You know, it's at least a little weird how, in both of the released pages for this thing so far, neither actually show (or even mention) the title character. 
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The saddest fact of KP's miserable existence is that eventually, even his hatedom will grow bored and stop caring. It may just be me, but I feel like that process has already started. I mean, just think back to how much we talked when the first page of The Storm came out as compared to how much we're talking about the "first" actual page of the story. It just seems like it's...y'know...less.

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It's so unbelievably funny seeing Penders trying to justify and defend tracing the picture for TL-SC. He's stating such stuff as...

 

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That's just freaking hilarious. Especially that last tweet.

 

It just speaks for itself.

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The saddest fact of KP's miserable existence is that eventually, even his hatedom will grow bored and stop caring. It may just be me, but I feel like that process has already started. I mean, just think back to how much we talked when the first page of The Storm came out as compared to how much we're talking about the "first" actual page of the story. It just seems like it's...y'know...less.

You can only lose so much faith in one person. When someone is a constant disappointment there's only so many ways you can say "this guy is a constant disappointment".

The funny thing is I actually did have some kind of hopes in regard to LS-C, but now seeing the first page I don't know if anything like that is justified.

That's just freaking hilarious. Especially that last tweet.

It just speaks for itself.

He's missing the point as per usual. He's actually said before that he wanted Anthony to act for LS-C prior to this. So I guess now he's forcing the matter by putting the guy into his comic if he likes it or not.

He's either dense or deliberately ignoring the fact that Samuel L Jackson wanted to play the character while he's just including Anthony's likeness without a word. The thing about Pen is that it's so hard to tell when he's being dense or deliberately dancing around a subject. I've noticed this time and time again.

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I just don't see how this character, flying around randomly in space, is the best way to introduce the world of Lara-Su.

While The Lara-Su Chronicles is definitely meant to pick up where Mobius: 25 Years Later left off (which is supposed to be the true ending to his previous Knuckles work, not to mention have it all come full circle with prophecies and Robo-Robotniks travelling through space and time and fighting the cast of The Lost Ones), he also talks about how people who are unfamiliar with the Sonic comics seem interested in this. Indeed, while the Sonic fanbase is of course part of the target audience, the general public is also the target. People who are into comic books but would never have thought to pick up a licensed book, but now see this independently-created work sitting on store shelves, or hiding out in their app store.

From what script segments Ken released on his message board, the plot seems to be that Mobius exploded, the Brotherhood of Guardians somehow prepared for this by allowing certain cities to be encased in bubbles and shoot off intact (ala Argo City from the Pre-Crisis origin of Supergirl), and now the survivors must deal with this new situation. However, launching a brand new series with an apocalyptic event caused in prior material you can only half-reference and somehow having it new reader friendly just...doesn't work. Post-apocalyptic fiction can work without much set-up because generally it based on our world, be it modern times or "the not-too-distant future," where it isn't hard to piece together everything. The people of Mobius is, especially how Ken wants to proceed, an alien civilization. Sure, there are very familiar elements that one can identify with right away, but the way the Brotherhood or the government of the Island or even whatever becomes of the Knothole Kingdom? Those are things that need to be established to some degree before you throw everyone into chaos.

If Michael Taylor (or however you spell it) was used as the character we're meant to identify with, who will show us this strange new world? That could possibly work, but he would indeed have to be a main player in the story. He would need to arrive well before the planet decides to explode, interact with people that we're going to get to know as the series progresses. But I don't think we're going to get that. I feel like he's going to stumble upon Mobius right when all hell breaks loose. Either he'll watch the planet explode from above, or he has somehow been called in to help out the survivors of an alien race, even though they don't seem to know anything about them.

It might work if it was a two, three page prologue that then jumped into a flashback where we get to see the set-up with our main cast and eventually loop back to that point, but I also doubt we're getting that. The early pages of the script seem to be right after Sonic 144, which does not instill a lot of confidence. We are going to be dropped into the deep end of the pool, and unless you are familiar with Mobius: 25 Years Later, as well as the larger Archie Sonic mythology, you are going to get lost.

Really, the best character to introduce us to the world, to show us how things work? It should be the title character. She's a teenage girl, and while she's grown up on whatever the Floating Island will be called, she has reached an age where she would naturally question everything about how society functions. She wouldn't necessarily disagree over every aspect, might not need to fight with her parents nonstop, But that is the best place to be. Let us discover who her character is supposed to be, since we didn't get much sense of it in the preceding material as the former M:25YL chapters were far too interested in world building instead of letting the story progress.

That's another reason I don't have much faith in what will happen of this work. The Lara-Su Chronicles is supposed to be seven volumes, correct? And even though it's going to start with a cataclysmic event, the pacing feels like it's going to be all over the place. You have a scripted sequence where Lara-Su is having a race with her friends who feel like the role of Guardian shouldn't automatically go to her, and that they will somehow "win" it by beating her at a race. While something kinda silly and definitely not an event where the results would suddenly be adhered to by Knuckles or the Brotherhood or the larger government of the island, it's not something that anyone should be doing right after their entire planet exploded. That scene works better as establishing who Lara-Su is at the beginning of her journey, even if it should be rewritten to a degree.

Ken doesn't want to go back, though. He wants to pick up right where he left off, and things like the scripts he has posted and the pages he has released feel like a hodge-podge of ideas, trying to appeal to those who have no idea what is going on and those who have been reading his stories since 1994. Really, all this tells me is that Ken works better under an editor who is willing to challenge him, willing to give him deadlines. Why does the buildup to Endgame work so well? There was a deadline, only so much space until issue 50. Even what happened after wasn't bad because he wanted to go through everything as quickly as possible before he finally settled into the Knuckles book and realized he could really tackle long-form storylines that built for years and years. That's why the first 15 or so issues of Knuckles the Echidna work better than what he made when the strip was just a backup and Knuckles was green.

Who knows, maybe I'll be delightfully proven wrong and that this grand narrative plan is all leading up to something satisfying, but I have my doubts. Especially with what we have seen thus far.

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Schadenfreude aside...

Could Penders be sued by Anthony Mackle for using his image on the comics?

Like I said in that tweet up above it's Greg Land level Tracing. Greg Land for those who don't know is an "Artist" on the Big 2 who is infamous for tracing off screen grabs of everything from Mainstream Movies to Porn.

He still gets work to this day so I doubt charges can be pressed.

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Just to get it out the way - i actually quite like the design of Meekhal, or Mykhal or Miiikhal or whoever it's spelt, it's generic space-man but with a few little touches that takes it above looking like a pound story toy, It would be happy to have a toy of him and I like that not-Sonic in human form (I guess that's this guy's role?) is black, seeing as how he was voiced by Jaleel White for three cartoons, I don't know if that's intentional but it's a nice nod. Anyway...

I see someone already found the flaw in his Samuel L Jackson/Nick Fury comparison and I see he completely missed the point, that point being that Jackson was asked prior to Hitch using his likeness and okayed it, whereas... whoever this guy is (Mackie?) was not and did not. I think someone should tell the bloke, shit-stirring maybe but I kinda think he has a right to know, hell he might be pleased, you never know.

He gave his son a drawing he did of Sonic for his wedding present? When you're trying to fight accusations of egomania Ken, publicizing this is probably not a good idea. He's compared his copyright case to the Woman in Gold case, compared characters created for a licensed comic book to Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazis? When you're trying to fight accusations of egomania Ken, saying shit like this is probably not a good idea. Actually on that - who's Tom Brady? Google brings up an American footballer - same guy?

And then there's the tracing and the unfortunate implications that goes with it - you watch you next page he'll look like Ving Rhames, then Lenny Henry, then Whitney Houston, then Will Smith's kid, because all black people look alike don't they?  

 

 

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While I know some of you are very passionate about the comics and their rarity, try and keep Ken's personal life out of the discussion. What he does with his prized comics and family members is no concern to any of you, regardless of how rare or sought after the item may be.

I'd rather not have that escalate to personal attacks.

I agree, I don't think his family has any impact on the comics, and it should stay that way. Besides, they never messed up the comics, it was mostly on Pender's part.

Also... When exactly is the comic coming out? I read the first few posts in the last page from this, and immediately decided to comment.

It seems as if it already did. If so...

Can I find a copy online somehow or something? I'm too curious now. If not, how bad is it?

Edited by CrystalGem
more reasoning
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Also... When exactly is the comic coming out?

He swore up and down it would be ready THIS year. Before that it was 'Coming Soon In 2012'. 

So in effect? Never. There is no set date. It'll get done when it's done. Which is never. 

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