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

[Zaysho]

Is it possible he may not own Kragok? The story he premiered in was penned in part with Scott Fulop.

He did have his co-writers sign their rights over to him, though I'm not entirely sure how things got split or what exactly the others signed over. It seems odd that he'd ignore or forget something like this since what he's shown for LSC so far appears to be consistent with his previous plans.

[Tylinos]

Well, that clears it up; Ken forgot his own lore.  Which is kind of sad.

[Mad Convoy]

11 minutes ago, Tylinos said:

Well, that clears it up; Ken forgot his own lore.  Which is kind of sad.

He really should keep notes on this. Most writers for big projects compose a guidebook containing everything they need to remember to write effectively, but even small time writers can take advantage of note-taking software to keep everything organized and ready for reference at any time. Granted, Sonic lore can be confusing, but he should at least try to find some details and stick to them. The Lara Su Chronicles-- heck, most of his work-- would be a lot more coherent if he organized himself better.

[horridus]

 

15 minutes ago, Tylinos said:

Well, that clears it up; Ken forgot his own lore.  Which is kind of sad.

"Kind of" sad? After how much time he's put into screaming about how dedicated he was to his stories and characters, and how he has planned EVERY little thing from start to finish and knew exactly every detail about everything with 'no retcons' needed? It's not 'kind of sad'- it's just flat out pathetic. 

Makes you wonder what else he's forgotten.... assuming of course he wasn't really doing this by the hem of his pants the whole time and only came up with that detail then and there to entice the people who were chatting. 

[Tenko]

I'm just going to exit the conversation with him at this point.

When it was brought to his attention his reply started with "If I said that", perhaps im reading it the wrong way but to me that partially implies that he has some doubt as to the claims, othersise why use the word "If". But then when I repeated the point to make sure he understood it wasn't an "if" situation he says that he isn't "denying it"...

His use of English confuses me at time >.<;

But yes, it seems that regardless of what he said just before about no retcons, that Remington's Dad is no longer Kragok due to him forgetting he had planted those seeds.

[Agie]

Look, if you're not gonna be consistent with other writers, that's one thing, but at least be consistent with yourself!

Oh, right, the great and powerful Penders always has a plan, and forgetting his own details is just a part of it. Clearly.

[QuantumEdge]

Oh my god, he actually forgot his own lore.  If there was one thing I could always count on him for, it was remembering all his "Contributions", but now we can't even rely on that any more either!  And then (though this is likely just a poorly constructed message) he suggests in some vague form of doubt to the claims he came up with the idea!  However, this development only makes me even more fascinated at this project.  I mean, what the hell did he also forget?  Because I'm almost certain this isn't just the one thing that's slipped his mind after all these years. 

At this point, we can also add "Poor planning" onto the list of things already wrong with TL-SC before we've even read the damn thing.  Odd, considering how many years he's spent developing this on the side, while trying to verbally duel with people on twitter.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

It almost makes me wonder if he's going to forget the lore of the first chapter by the time he writes the second chapter of the TLSC.

[Sunwalker]

Ken Penders is walking in circles around The Lara Su Chronicles for years now. There is some new art once in every blue moon, but truth be told there was no considerable progress since the settlement with Archie. This makes to imagine that his whole legal brouhaha was never about making his story, but rather about making a point. Though which point exactly is anyone's guess. Or it could be just that he works better when he is under the direction of an editor and deadlines, when he is on his own he seems to not know how to manage time and resources in an effective manner, and never gets anywhere.

Better advice that I heard about witting is to write often and prolifically, and also to read a lot. By the time in which an amateur writer have spent years polishing a single chapter of his "magnum opus", a professional writer have already published lots of stuff and made lots of money.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

Hm, if he's forgetting the stuff he came up with, then I wonder how long before he starts claiming credit for things Ian wrote.

You know, besides the ways he already does.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

So, here's a video about Penders fucking up the comic.

 

[LargoDELLZ]

5 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

So, here's a video about Penders fucking up the comic.

 

A very informative video that's basically a summary of what went down without looking at everything. Only thing that I don't agree with is the title of the video which says that the Sonic Comic world is dead. For sure it's different from how it used to be since it's a lot more like the games now, but dead is where Archie Sonic currently is very far from. 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

15 hours ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

Hm, if he's forgetting the stuff he came up with, then I wonder how long before he starts claiming credit for things Ian wrote.

Probably never, because he doesn't even pay any attention to or care about anything in the Sonic comics (or Sonic in general) that he didn't write himself =P For the most part, he probably doesn't even know about things Ian wrote, unless it's specifically brought to his attention or particularly offensive to him or something.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

Or so he says. He's clearly owned issues Ian has written and boasts that his new canon won't contradict anything, indicating that maybe he has, though he'd probably never admit it. Heck, who knows how many things people have brought to his attention over the years, even if he wasn't actively seeking it out?

I can imagine a situation where his attempt to remain oblivious muddles details in his mind about who came up with what, like with that whole Remington thing.

Not saying it will happen, just that with Penders, anything is possible.

[Tenko]

Ugh..he always brings up his precious sales figures when someone makes mention of Ian's success and the current state of the comic. Never taking into account that his high selling points were during the height of Sonic's popularity and fans would come back each month even if the comic was trash..which arguably it was in parts for quite a while.

It also irks me when he repeatedly spouts that he created all the mythos in the comics, even when people are clearly talking about the current issues and arcs post SGW when they mention how well Ian is doing on the current comics. I've pointed out to him many times they don't use his building blocks anymore, to which he generally responds that the past still matters in the present stories. You could argue it does from a long time fans stand point, but in universe all the past events are different, they just lead to a similar outcome, and fans picking up the comic recently don't need to know anything at all from the old continuity to follow the new universe the comics are now in.

Grievances aside it is rather befuddling to see him talking about how nothing in the comic shops stand out to him now, and covers and artists these days are so generic, nomr of the covers made him want to pick up and look at anything etc, followed up by another totally not implied plug of his choice of format being far more value than a small page count comic that runs over itself every month.

Perhaps he's never heard of the old saying "don't judge a book by its cover". I'm expecting the LSC  cover art to really blow me away now...oh...wait.

[Tylinos]

To be fair, while the way he's putting it just comes off as incredibly self-centered, I think what he's trying to say is that if he (and the other creatives on the book in the 90s) hadn't helped to keep the comic alive, it wouldn't have lasted long enough for the new continuity to have come around in the first place.  Granted, the way he's saying it definitely makes it sound like he's trying to take credit for Ian and co.'s work, but that's probably not his original intent.  (Though the pointless sales figures mention is just plain bragging.)

Also, funny thing: There was one time where Ken actually did factor in Sonic's popularity to the book's survival.  There was an interview in 2010 (transcript here) where he admitted that "once the cartoons went away and the video games were coming out very irregularly, that the comic book became the only game in town…and the sales went up".  So it isn't as if he's completely blind to the fact that Sonic's popularity was a pretty major factor in the comic staying around.  He just seems to prefer to put himself first.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

Of course, there wouldn't be a new continuity in the first place had he not decided his contributions to the book were really just loans, and he wanted his stuff back.

[horridus]

Whatever sense of self-awareness Penders might have possessed about why the book was so successful has long since replaced by his need to promote himself first and foremost, ESPECIALLY if he can use it in any way to imply that Flynn and the current creative team are inferior to himself and the teams he workd with. And that means, these days, no admitting that the star power of the franchise had anything to do with, nor the fact that comics were selling better in the 90s. It also means ESPECIALLY not confronting the fact that despite those advantages, the Knuckles series was cancelled after 32 issues, while Sonic Universe, which came into the game with none of the advantageous circumstances Penders enjoyed in the 90s, is still going strong. 

I think part of the reason he has begun pushing this narrative is due to the fact that the reboot betrays a very terrible reality he does not want to confront- namely the fact that for all the years he spent on the book and all that he contributed to it, it was never as essential as he had liked to think it was. If it were, Archie might have actually capitulated to him. But they didn't. And in doing so, they revealed that ultimately his work, his contributions, all of it was utterly disposable. So long as the book keeps going on without the materials he and the various others made, it's just a constant declaration that he was never as important as he liked to imagine. 

As for his insights regarding modern comics, I find it incredibly difficult to take his criticisms seriously when it sounds like he didn't actually READ any of those comics, and having had his non-Sonic work inflicted upon me and thus witnessing how he is 'unfettered', he is really in no position at all to criticize the visual storytelling skills of others given how abortive both his writing and sense of pacing and art direction is. His complaint seems to largely boil down to him whining about the fact that comics are no longer the way they were when he was a kid.

His invokation of Jack Kirby is similarly laughable, given that Jack Kirby was actually very insightful about the potential comics and how they change and grow, to say nothing of his legendary work ethic and encouragement of others to pursue their own styles rather than emulate him- Penders is complaining about things being different from when he was a kid, has very little work ethic or ability to see things through, and peppers his work with so many 'homages' to other franchises and authors and the like that it becomes a flat out substitution. Then again, I've long been amazed by how Penders seems to utterly miss the mark when it comes to his claimed 'influences'. 

[Agie]

Kenny boy really does like to inflate his importance. Seriously, how long has he had to get over his superiority complex?

Those two idiot coworkers I had to deal with had a better work ethic, and they also belittled people for the horrible crime of existing. Which only makes him look worse, really.

And Penders discouraged people from getting into comics. Jack Kirby encouraged people to use their own styles.

I actually saw an interview with Peter Laird over the box office failure of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. His opinion seemed to be negative, but he still tried to be fair, and acknowledged that the team behind it still put hard work into it, and even said wishing it to fail is a bit of a dick move itself. 

Penders, not so much. He wishes the Sonic comics to fail under Ian's rule, and denies the hard work he does.

[Tylinos]

Sorry, maybe I just read in the wrong circles, but isn't the lead story of Knuckles 26 to 28 usually considered some of the absolute worst of that era of the comic?  If there are people who like it, or Ken himself personally finds it a crowning achievement, then more power to them, but I don't generally see it being touted as "one of the series' most popular stories."

For those who don't remember, this was the three-parter about Knuckles' love life, where Knuckles talked to his father about sex, and then attacked Vector because Vector said he was shit at dating.  The art was also pretty...unique, but that wasn't Ken's doing.  (Honestly, aside from the substantially better SegaSonic Arcade backup story, it was really just three issues of filler.)

[Zaysho]

The Mighty and Ray storyline was the only redeemable thing about those three issues, and, in my opinion, the best thing Pen wrote around that time period when the book was heading into the Sonic Adventure era.

Incidentally, I believe it was around this time Pen had actually gone on and encouraged people to buy two copies in an effort to boost the Knuckles book's sales, as it was on its last legs around then, too. From what I recall of the sales figures (and because the book was cancelled anyway), that didn't happen. The story certainly has some notoriety, but not for the reasons he thinks.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

...

...

...

Nope, gonna need another one.

I mean, seriously? Fucking seriously? If anyone needed proof. Any kind of proof whatsoever to how much shit Ken Penders shouts, if anyone needs proof of just how far he's in denial, here it is. He literally just stated that one of the stories that is one of the most hated stories in the series, is in fact beloved. I could get maybe EndGame due to somewhat positive reaction at the beginning, it was more as the years passed that it was recognized as shit, but this story doesn't even have that. I have never seen anything positive in regards to this story. Never. I've been reading Archie since Worlds Collide, and knew a lot of the series before that. I at least have accounts from people who said "At the time, EndGame was alright, but now that we look at it again, it was always terrible. First Date did not even have that. I'm pretty sure every single account of the story has said it was terrible, it's always been terrible, and was likely the story that killed Knuckles to begin with. 

But sure, let's spectate why he probably thinks it's one of the series' most beloved. The answer is actually simple. Think about it. What does the picture truly show (other than shitty artwork to collide with a shitty story, and shitty writing). This character:

I'd like to take a moment to remind you of this. Most people though JulieXKnux was fucking awful until Flynn got his hands on the two, and even that didn't win over some people. Penders couldn't even come up with a tangible relationship, or reason for them to get together. He literally stated every single reason why these two shouldn't be together. His reasoning for getting them together was a fucking Deus Ex Machina by some bullshit Echidna love touch. Almost everyone thinks this was stupid. It's likely the reason Julie got as much flack as she did. But Penders is so egotistical and so far in denial that the fucking idiot likely believes that Julie is more beloved than Knux himself, and the reason why this story is so "popular" in his eyes, is because it features the moment that Julie got together with Knux, despite the fact the relationship under his pen (kek) was hated to begin with.

But it's such a perfect representation of this entire project, and is the solid proof we needed about his so called "fanbase". In that his fanbase is limited heavily to a few people, while everyone else riffs and hates on his pieces of shit projects for being awful, low budget, and overall mediocre. I feel absolutely no more doubt in my mind. He's in denial, and he has barely any fans and barely anyone excited for this piece of shit. At this point, I have only one thing to say about Penders.

Mr. Penders. This is you:

You are the Video Brinquedo of comics. You rip off other series, without shame (Hi K'nox!), and you produce nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. But low quality rip offs in a sad desperate attempt to get some money. You're so egotistical, and so full of shit that you can't take any negative feedback. You can't accept that you were never apart of Sonic's popularity. You were never a cause of his popularity. You had absolutely nothing to do with it. You didn't make Knuckles popular. You didn't help SEGA sustain Sonic. They sustained your ass for years. You go on about how if you weren't there, the comic would've failed long ago. The sad little truth my friend is you did one positive thing. You got the series to stop being Adventures of Sonic. That's it. Your characters were shit, and the ones that had any potential only got it when your mitts was removed from them. Your stories are seen with nothing but spite and laughter. The comic didn't survive by your stories. The comic survived by brand name alone, especially in a massive dry spell between shows and games. That's. It.

Wow...bit of a tangent there.

[Big Panda]

"Check out Knuckles 26 through 28"

...which you'd have to hunt down online or pirate because there are no reprints of them.

[horridus]

1 hour ago, Tylinos said:

Sorry, maybe I just read in the wrong circles, but isn't the lead story of Knuckles 26 to 28 usually considered some of the absolute worst of that era of the comic?  If there are people who like it, or Ken himself personally finds it a crowning achievement, then more power to them, but I don't generally see it being touted as "one of the series' most popular stories."

For those who don't remember, this was the three-parter about Knuckles' love life, where Knuckles talked to his father about sex, and then attacked Vector because Vector said he was shit at dating.  The art was also pretty...unique, but that wasn't Ken's doing.  (Honestly, aside from the substantially better SegaSonic Arcade backup story, it was really just three issues of filler.)

No, the 'absolute worst' was the very last storyline, the one with Hunter and Monk and the lovely revelation that the Brotherhood was perfectly okay with attempting to murder kids for the crime of bullying Knuckles (something he has defended in the past).

It is, however, one of the most complained about storylines. Seriously of all the things that come up, this one is the most frequent due to a *number* reasons- the nonsensical plot, the shoddy character development, the fact it was boring... this is not one of the 'best' storylines, and I really do cannot grasp why Penders would think it was given how frequent the complaints were about this one. 

1 hour ago, Zaysho said:

The Mighty and Ray storyline was the only redeemable thing about those three issues, and, in my opinion, the best thing Pen wrote around that time period when the book was heading into the Sonic Adventure era.

Incidentally, I believe it was around this time Pen had actually gone on and encouraged people to buy two copies in an effort to boost the Knuckles book's sales, as it was on its last legs around then, too. From what I recall of the sales figures (and because the book was cancelled anyway), that didn't happen. The story certainly has some notoriety, but not for the reasons he thinks.

Ooooh yeeah, he DID do that. I almost forgot about that.... kinda ironic that he's touting this as being really popular, given that from the timing of things, this storyline was precisely the one that signalled the death knell of the comic. 

1 hour ago, Ernest-Panda said:

"Check out Knuckles 26 through 28"

...which you'd have to hunt down online or pirate because there are no reprints of them.

Maybe he's got a few issues and is hoping to entice the guy to his ebay?

[Ryannumber1gamer]

2 hours ago, horridus said:

No, the 'absolute worst' was the very last storyline, the one with Hunter and Monk and the lovely revelation that the Brotherhood was perfectly okay with attempting to murder kids for the crime of bullying Knuckles (something he has defended in the past).

It is, however, one of the most complained about storylines. Seriously of all the things that come up, this one is the most frequent due to a *number* reasons- the nonsensical plot, the shoddy character development, the fact it was boring... this is not one of the 'best' storylines, and I really do cannot grasp why Penders would think it was given how frequent the complaints were about this one. 

Ooooh yeeah, he DID do that. I almost forgot about that.... kinda ironic that he's touting this as being really popular, given that from the timing of things, this storyline was precisely the one that signalled the death knell of the comic. 

Maybe he's got a few issues and is hoping to entice the guy to his ebay?

Just checked his EBay. Issues 26-28 is indeed there.