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


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8 minutes ago, Tylinos said:

If I recall (and I could be wrong here), Ian mentioned at some point that he did some of the writeups in the Archives, mostly in the extras sections at the end.

Aaaah. Hmf. Seems like a flimsy premise for him to get top billing in those books, but eh. Penders gets top billing in the Sonic Archives regardless of how many of his stories they actually contain or what his actual position on the book during the various print runs. 

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I have the first two volumes of the Knuckles Archives, Flynn is credited, in small writing on the credits page, as a "compilations consultant/features writer". Basically he just wrote the additional copy, stuff like the book and chapter summaries, similar to how (I believe) he wrote the character bios and stuff for the Sonic Archives. So Flynn's name is not used as a draw at all, compared to Penders getting top billing on the covers for both Sonic and Knuckles Archives, even on volumes of Sonic where his work isn't featured or he's not head writer.

 

EDIT: Actually, correction. Volume two DOES have Flynn's name in the credits along with Spaz, Penders, Galan, and the others for some strange reason (along with his "compilations consultant/features writer" credit) I'm not entirely sure why they did that. Could be banking off his name, could be editorial error, so admittedly it is strange for him to get credit at all beyond whatever he did for editorial in the first place.

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Being fair, I don't think Penders would be happy if anyone had billing, apart from himself and maybe the artist. 

On top of that, it wouldn't surprise me if he wanted top billing on GNs where his characters only make an appearance and nothing else.

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Thought I would try and settle his concerns a bit, said it was likely in error and pointed out the observation made that some of the Archives with issues collected he didn't work on still had his name in the credits etc.

Silly me. I got this in return..

Oh the irony in those words.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hooo, has it been a while. Time to dust off this thread a little, with a wee little debate; Chicken or the Egg, Penders Style!

Okay it's not quite that, but here it goes; over on yon twitter, somebody brought up the differences between the Nocturnus and the Dark Legion. One thing led to another, and it was pointed out to him how other sources have used similar ideas to his own before he did, most notably the concept of evil echidna and the ancient Echidna being a more technologicallly advanced civilization. During this time the precise dates were brought up, and Penders countered with this:

So evidently, Penders is claiming firsties based upon the fact that he evidently submitted the story earlier than the Fleetway stories that were published, while the actual story he submitted was published AFTER the Fleetway stuff. 

Personally I think it's grasping at straws, at best, but I'm curious; what do the rest of ya'll think? 

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I agree with you - he doesn't seem to stop to consider that if he's claiming he "goes by when the work was actually created", then Fleetway would have submitted their creations even earlier than their publish dates that he's going by. And that's without mentioning the fact that the StC echidnas being technologically advanced predated Zachary's appearance by years, or the fact that Zachary being the first cybernetic echidna or not is somewhat irrelevant to the Nocturnus that he was discussing as... they aren't cybernetic. I'm not convinced he's aware of this latter fact.

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Ugh, yeah, I was following this as it happened, and talked with Tenko a bit about it in PM.  Tenko outright proved, based on the date and information that Ken himself gave, that StC beat Ken to the punch on Echidnas with advanced tech.  Ken, however, just took it as Tenko trying to claim Ken stole from StC, which Tenko never said at all.  When Tenko pointed that out, Ken shut up instead of apologizing.  It's absurd, but far from the craziest thing Ken's said or done.

Also, on the note of who the first cyborg Echidna was, here's an amusing little fact: Zachary was first shown as a cyborg in an issue released in February 1997.  Kragok, Ken's first actual Cyborg echidna, first appeared in an issue released in January 1997.  Ken beat them to the punch on that point, yeah, but what I find impressive is that both companies came up with the idea of cyborg Echidnas at roughly the same time, before either could possibly know the other was doing the same.

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To be fair, the original game manuals implied an "amazing" civilisation for the echidnas (although left the exact extent of this fuzzy), so both companies going the tech route wouldn't be too unusual - what's more unusual is that by his own admission Ken never looked at the source material and so by pure coincidence ended up in a similar place. Bearing in mind his love of 70s comics and sci-fi, along with his work on Star Trek, it isn't surprising that he went this direction, just amusing that it by chance kind of fit somewhat with the source.

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3 hours ago, horridus said:

Hooo, has it been a while. Time to dust off this thread a little, with a wee little debate; Chicken or the Egg, Penders Style!

Okay it's not quite that, but here it goes; over on yon twitter, somebody brought up the differences between the Nocturnus and the Dark Legion. One thing led to another, and it was pointed out to him how other sources have used similar ideas to his own before he did, most notably the concept of evil echidna and the ancient Echidna being a more technologicallly advanced civilization. During this time the precise dates were brought up, and Penders countered with this:

So evidently, Penders is claiming firsties based upon the fact that he evidently submitted the story earlier than the Fleetway stories that were published, while the actual story he submitted was published AFTER the Fleetway stuff. 

Personally I think it's grasping at straws, at best, but I'm curious; what do the rest of ya'll think? 

I don't think I'm allowed to post what I think... not in its entirety, anyway.

55 minutes ago, Nestor said:

To be fair, the original game manuals implied an "amazing" civilisation for the echidnas (although left the exact extent of this fuzzy), so both companies going the tech route wouldn't be too unusual - what's more unusual is that by his own admission Ken never looked at the source material and so by pure coincidence ended up in a similar place. Bearing in mind his love of 70s comics and sci-fi, along with his work on Star Trek, it isn't surprising that he went this direction, just amusing that it by chance kind of fit somewhat with the source.

Yeah, I was going to bring this up. I always thought the comics were expanding upon what was in the games/manuals when he started bringing in all the high-tech stuff.

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Yeah, I was also a part of the crowd that assumed Penders was just building up what was already hinted at in the games. Ah, such simple, naive days those were. 

Buut yeah, Penders rather blatantly ignoring evidence and facts in favor of his own narrative isn't exactly unprecedented, but it's still astounding to see time and time again, along with his refusal to accept that some of his ideas just aren't as uniquely 'him' as he wants them be within the scope of the Sonic Franchise. It's particularly ironic (irony being applied rather euphemistically here), given that Penders himself has all but admitted that his ideas were originally never meant for the Sonic franchise to begin with, even somehow considering it a defense of their originality that his characters could exist in places like Panem or in Star Trek. And that's without getting into the fact that a multitude of his 'unique' concepts are a grab-bag of ideas better used from various science fiction and comic book media, his 'homages' having long ago crossed the line into flat out substitution. Even in Lara-Su Chronicles he can't stop himself from referencing Planet of the Apes and Terminator ("SkyWeb" still makes me gag) within the first given page of the book. 

 

 

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I don't see what's a big deal. I'm pretty sure both Penders and creators of Sonic Chronicles didn't read Fleetway Sonic. It's just a coincidence, like Charmy being prince in both books.

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4 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

I don't see what's a big deal. I'm pretty sure both Penders and creators of Sonic Chronicles didn't read Fleetway Sonic. It's just a coincidence, like Charmy being prince in both books.

If I'm understanding it correctly, the deal is that what you say is true, but Penders won't agree to that, instead stating that basically he is the originator and source of these ideas, refusing to concede that anyone else might have had the same ideas without seeing his material, much less having them first.

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4 minutes ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

If I'm understanding it correctly, the deal is that what you say is true, but Penders won't agree to that, instead stating that basically he is the originator and source of these ideas, refusing to concede that anyone else might have had the same ideas without seeing his material, much less having them first.

I'm reminded of the time when Ken claimed that he was the first one to introduce alternate timelines in Sonic, and that the games never had them, despite the fact that Sonic CD predated his work on the comics.

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2 hours ago, Tylinos said:
2 hours ago, Tylinos said:

Ken's once again claiming that Archie is breaching their settlement agreement with him.

 

Oh my god, is he trying to make a trending hashtag thing? Who's to bet he's the only one who'll use that?

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6 hours ago, Tylinos said:

Ken's once again claiming that Archie is breaching their settlement agreement with him.

It'd be nice if he would at least explain how they've done that. I seriously do not get this; he's deliberately vague about what he's going on about, yet wants to get people on his side. And if he's not meant to be talking about it, then why is he bothering if he couldn't give the whole story to begin with?

3 hours ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

If I'm understanding it correctly, the deal is that what you say is true, but Penders won't agree to that, instead stating that basically he is the originator and source of these ideas, refusing to concede that anyone else might have had the same ideas without seeing his material, much less having them first.

Yeah, that's precisely it. It's not that others had ideas before him, it's the fact that it happened and Penders has pretty much shoved his head into the dirt in response, demanding to be viewed as the sole originator of the ideas and no-one else. 

3 hours ago, Tylinos said:

I'm reminded of the time when Ken claimed that he was the first one to introduce alternate timelines in Sonic, and that the games never had them, despite the fact that Sonic CD predated his work on the comics.

You know, I realize the guy made a point of not researching any of the games, but you'd think he would at least be vaguely aware of that one given that issue 25 was an adaptation of the game. Then again, given that he seems to enjoy ignoring his co-workers works as well, maybe that WOULD be asking too much of him.

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Seems like whatever his issue is this time is digital based. I rambled off all the names of cancelled reprint material, as well as the current releases that have materialized like Sonic Digest and Sonic Spectacular. Made special mention the main pre-reboot Rogues story that featured in the recent release has his characters names etc edited out, then asked if they haven't used his material in over a year, what could possibly be up this time.

This was the as always vague response..

So what a been released digitally recently that has his work or characters on the Sonic/Archie app? Did they release some more pre-reboot digital issues or something? I thought they stopped releasing the older issues along with the cancellations and hiatus's of the physical collections?

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He once hinted at some kind of underlying issue with the Archie Sonic App when it was first released, but didn't mention precisely what was wrong. He hinted that there was a change or an alteration of some sort, but didn't elaborate much further than that. 

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Apologies for the double-post. We have yet more vagueness about this 'violation'.

You know, I could have sworn that the exact terms of that agreement were mutually agreed to not be publically disclosed or discussed, so yet again, I gotta wonder what the point of bringing it up is if he can't or won't elaborate.

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9 hours ago, horridus said:

It'd be nice if he would at least explain how they've done that. I seriously do not get this; he's deliberately vague about what he's going on about, yet wants to get people on his side. And if he's not meant to be talking about it, then why is he bothering if he couldn't give the whole story to begin with?

Yeah, that's precisely it. It's not that others had ideas before him, it's the fact that it happened and Penders has pretty much shoved his head into the dirt in response, demanding to be viewed as the sole originator of the ideas and no-one else. 

You know, I realize the guy made a point of not researching any of the games, but you'd think he would at least be vaguely aware of that one given that issue 25 was an adaptation of the game. Then again, given that he seems to enjoy ignoring his co-workers works as well, maybe that WOULD be asking too much of him.

In fairness, issue 25 ignored 90% of the game, so you could read that one back and forth and still have no clue about Miracle Planet, the Time Stones, or the time travel aspect.

Hell, if Penders DID know about any of that stuff, I could easily imagine him commandeering and bastardizing it for his own ends.

The fact we didn't end up with a time traveling planet of echidnas and billions of single-colored Time Stones almost serves as evidence that he didn't have a clue about it.

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You don't think he's finally seen the recent solicits and noticed Thrash..I mean the "mysterious Echidna" and thinks this is breaking some kind of area of this agreement of his? I can't see any recent digital releases that would have used his works myself to be breaking any agreement, must admit being at work I haven't looked very hard tho.

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Maybe he

Spoiler

sees the shillouette of Sally's mother in the latest issue and considers that to be Alicia. 

 

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Perhaps, but surely he can't try call foul on a character that isn't his, and isn't under the "no parents" mandate, in having mother. Unfortunately Penders, Mother Nature trademarked and copyrighted that idea first.

As long as it isn't his character, which it obviously wouldn't be, then surely he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

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