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

[biznizz]

I think that picture of Xero is at least 2 years old; it certainly isn't new.

It's hard to even see him and Lara as even the same species. Maybe in the same familial taxonomy, but definitely not in species.

[horridus]

Fool, have you never heard of sexual dimorphism? CLEARLY YOU KNOW NOTHING OF HARD SCIENCE!

Buuut yeah, Xero's head seems to be more human proportioned than LAra-Su's or any of the other Echyd'nya we've seen so far, not to mention his face is uniformly purple whereas all the others have a peach muzzle. In fact, his facial hair is eerily similar to at least one of the Mykael Taelor's up there. 

Also, you gotta love the sheer variety of clothing demonstrated between the three Mobians here; tunics and boots and belts, and all of them fairly nondescript at that. 

[Tenko]

I realize different people have differing opinions, obviously, but it always amazes me when people post on Penders page with open statements like "Ian isn't treating the Sonic comic fans with respect" or something of that nature without a reason or follow up, just that one remark in regards to his writing or how he's handled the mandates from Sega and the comics new direction.

Personally I think he's done a damn good job considering what he now has to work with, and his adaptations so far have been far superior to the ones back in the day, dark on info or not. Bringing in old characters and repurposing them for comic use and giving fleshed out versions of their history in universe when there was little to work with for some of them from an official standpoint. All while still keeping within Segas new rules and regulations. I would take Ian and Sega's new version of the comic over the older one any day.

Like I said tho, I realize some wouldn't share the same opinion. I just like a little more reasoning behind blanket statements like "Ian doesn't respect the comic fans"..tell me how and maybe that statement won't seem so idiotic.

[horridus]

Penders has decided to enlighten us as to whom this project is aimed for. 

I should point out that what makes a 'good story' is ultimately up to the buyers, and proclaiming it a 'good story' beforehand doesn't really tell us much. And given that the recent bio of St. John explicitly made it clear that he viewed Sally as a 'conquest', I'm not sure 12 and Over is a really good assessment either. 

Ironically enough, he initially said this was meant for 'young teenage girls'. THAT didn't last too long. 

[Tenko]

So the dude insisting Ian has no respect for the fans is citing things like, "Middle Eastern stereotypes, and a Ferengi Fiona Fox" (whatever that means). As well as apparently being "blatantly contradicting" via his actions I guess? Anyone know what he is on about?

[The Tenth Doctor]

I think the Ferengi thing is talking about the Star Trek race who are underhanded and you can never ever trust one.

[Tenko]

21 minutes ago, Detective Tenth Doctor said:

I think the Ferengi thing is talking about the Star Trek race who are underhanded and you can never ever trust one.

Erm... pretty sure Fiona has been like that since the "real" one was found, long before Ian took over the writing, pretty sure she hung out with Evil Sonic before the change to Scourge and while Penders was still on writing duties too. So if thats what he means i wouldntbe blaming Ian for that character trait.

[horridus]

1 hour ago, Tenko said:

So the dude insisting Ian has no respect for the fans is citing things like, "Middle Eastern stereotypes, and a Ferengi Fiona Fox" (whatever that means). As well as apparently being "blatantly contradicting" via his actions I guess? Anyone know what he is on about?

Pretty certain he's talking about The Shamar Freedom Fighters. As for the 'Ferengi Fiona Fox', beats me; Ferengi are known first and foremost for being greedy and cowardly. 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

No one's really done anything particularly troublesome yet, but I'm just going to head this off at the pass: this is the Ken Penders topic, there's no need to start going on about what Penders' fans or other random people are saying. That's just going to derail the thread, and complaining about things other fans say is just not a productive conversation to be having in general.

To be perfectly clear, I think everyone's done basically okay so far. It's not a problem just to mention other people's responses or talk about them briefly. I simply want to make sure we don't get lost in another tangent, like what's happened in the past with Naugus, for example.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

4 hours ago, horridus said:

Penders has decided to enlighten us as to whom this project is aimed for. 

I should point out that what makes a 'good story' is ultimately up to the buyers, and proclaiming it a 'good story' beforehand doesn't really tell us much. And given that the recent bio of St. John explicitly made it clear that he viewed Sally as a 'conquest', I'm not sure 12 and Over is a really good assessment either. 

Ironically enough, he initially said this was meant for 'young teenage girls'. THAT didn't last too long. 

Yeah, I mean, how many writers are going to come out and say "the audience for my work is people who enjoy absolute trash"?

[DaddlerTheDalek]

14 hours ago, horridus said:

Pretty certain he's talking about The Shamar Freedom Fighters. As for the 'Ferengi Fiona Fox', beats me; Ferengi are known first and foremost for being greedy and cowardly. 

Fiona never seemed cowardly to me.

[Tylinos]

Not super on-topic, but something that's really confusing me: In the latest set of tweets between Ken and some other people regarding one of the Knuckles stories, they're all spelling Adolf Hitler's first name as Adolph.  Was that actually an official spelling of it somewhere?  I've never seen it spelled that way before now, but multiple people are using it here.

[DaddlerTheDalek]

34 minutes ago, Tylinos said:

Not super on-topic, but something that's really confusing me: In the latest set of tweets between Ken and some other people regarding one of the Knuckles stories, they're all spelling Adolf Hitler's first name as Adolph.  Was that actually an official spelling of it somewhere?  I've never seen it spelled that way before now, but multiple people are using it here.

The Adolph spelling exists. But in Hitler's case it's Adolf.

[Salamander]

I did some digging around, and it seems that "Adolph" is a separate name in German, while exchanging "f" for "ph" when transliterating into English is a holdover from various classical language practices which have nothing to do with twentieth-century onwards English and German.  My understanding is that nobody ever switches the two names over in German, but people do sometimes in English because they think the "ph" looks more sophisticated, even though it is completely wrong.  You can see how this fits right in to a discussion about Ken Penders.

[MetalSkulkBane]

2 hours ago, FFWF said:

I did some digging around, and it seems that "Adolph" is a separate name in German, while exchanging "f" for "ph" when transliterating into English is a holdover from various classical language practices which have nothing to do with twentieth-century onwards English and German.  My understanding is that nobody ever switches the two names over in German, but people do sometimes in English because they think the "ph" looks more sophisticated, even though it is completely wrong.  You can see how this fits right in to a discussion about Ken Penders.

Low blow man. That last comment was completely unnecesary.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Wrecking a comic book series isn't comparable to murdering thousands of people

[King Scoopa Koopa]

In FFWF's defense, when I read that line, I took it to mean "who cares about facts and how words/spellings are really used?" by way of English just sort of saying "whatever" and using whatever they think looks more "sophisticated."

I mean, FFWF never mentioned Hitler, and there are people who still use that name, right? No need to assume the worst.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

2 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Low blow man. That last comment was completely unnecesary.

It's usually better to use the report button if you have a concern.

1 hour ago, Inspector Shaddy said:

Wrecking a comic book series isn't comparable to murdering thousands of people

...I'm pretty sure FFWF was saying that Penders is the type of person who tries to look sophisticated and fails utterly, not that he was comparing him with Hitler. That's how I read it, and it makes a lot more sense.

[Salamander]

I'd just like to confirm the following interpretation:

5 minutes ago, Monkey Destruction Switch said:

...I'm pretty sure FFWF was saying that Penders is the type of person who tries to look sophisticated and fails utterly, not that he was comparing him with Hitler. That's how I read it, and it makes a lot more sense.

Godwin's Law is not yet in effect in this thread.  Let's keep it that way.

[horridus]

Yeah, 'trying to be sophisticated and failing horribly' is pretty par the course for Penders, so I can't really say I'm shocked that he'd use the wrong spelling for Adolf. This is the same guy who honestly thinks 'Dark Alliances' (AKA The Story Where He Stole the Holocaust Poem) is a deep, meaningful commentary on the rise of Nazism in Germany. You know, the storyline where the Legion kidnapped and brainwashed a guy into backing them and used a candidate who was really a robot? Totes the same thing guys! 

[Hiki]

[removed]

[Tenko]

I wonder what the Penderman would think of ths new echidna mentioned in the recent comic solicits, Nixus. I mean we all assume its not really an echidna due to Sega's new mandates to stick to the game story lore and all that more closely etc, I am personally in the Thrash camp currently. 

If you all remember tho, there was that point where Penders pretty much went about claiming he owned the concept of any and all post Knux echidnas. So would he see this as a breach in his deal with Archie, or a threat to his weird space echidna graphic novel. I dont think anyones brought it up with him yet..but im wondering if we are possibly in for another round of anti Archie rants soon.

[horridus]

Given that it's 99% probable that that's just a bad guy disguised as an Echidna, Penders'd just be getting worked up over nothing. And even if by some insane miracle that it WAS an actual Echidna, he doesn't have a leg to stand on given that at least two pieces of media before him utilized the idea of 'other Echidna being around'. 

[Tenko]

You would think so huh, but even back then he insisted that not knowing about those other media and the fact they were in other countries etc some how kept his claims valid. Like you said tho he shouldn't have a leg to stand on. You can't pay claim to inventing the lightbulb just because you hadn't heard of it before you came up with the idea yourself.

This is the guy that out and out tried to claim on his old forums that Tikal's creation was due to his other characters in the comics and that she should really be considered one of his influences on the main series.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

Acting as though he owns the idea of another echidna other than Knuckles is obviously ludicrous, even by Penders' standards (I hope so, anyway). Even if he (stupidly) considered Tikal to be a product of his influence and "legacy", that doesn't mean he feels like he has any real claim over her. I mean, don't get me wrong - there's certainly a possibility he could complain about the introduction of this new (supposed) echidna, but he couldn't do anything about it, so who really cares?

On 3/14/2016 at 4:43 PM, SonicEkkusu said:

I'm honestly pretty excited for TLSC. Even if the art is bad, I think it'd be an interesting read.

I used to feel this way myself. I used to think I liked Penders' writing in a significant amount of places, but over the course of his extremely slow development of LSC, I've just grown more and more jaded. I used to think Penders had some really cool ideas, even if there were some faults in the execution, but now, in part because I've realized just how poor the execution was, I just don't really care about them much anymore, sadly. Even with all this said, I could theoretically still be interested out of sheer curiosity, even morbid curiosity, but seeing the project moving at a snail's pace has very significantly dulled even this source of interest. I kind of wish I still cared; I mean, really, the Lara-Su Chronicles could be interesting. But at this point, I'm wondering if he's ever going to release it...and if he eventually does, there's a high likelihood he'll take so long that my interest will die even more. Ah well, hopefully you'll be able to keep your enthusiasm and something will eventually come of this.