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

[Zaysho]

Hmm his recent comments have been interesting to say the least. He has recently seen the Paddington trailer and thinks if they use that level of quality CGI in the Sonic movie then it could work. Shows he obviously doesn't know a thing about Marza if he's still wondering what the quality of the CGI will be like.

He then goes on to wondering why Sony Pictures and Sega haven't announced that they are using the comics as source material for the movie. Saying that the games lack the steady fanbase of the 20+ years of subscribers the comics have and it would be a better place to start, and that the games have little to no real usable material or emotional stories which would be needed to bring in a wider audience.

Sounds to me like he just wants another chance to sue or get involved if they start mentioning using the comics as a source...which they wouldn't considering all the trouble recently and the reboot. It would be like going backwards if they all of a sudden decided to use any old universe stuff as a basis for the movie. Not to mention Sega is all "has to be like the games" these days. The guy is obviously busting at the seams to get involved or have some miracle phone call where they ask to use his material. Ain't gunna happen.

It doesn't surprise me he doesn't know who Marza is, though, in fairness, how many people would outside of people who follow this stuff closely? They're a SEGA-owned studio (last I checked). That said, he should do research before opening his danged mouth or taking to Twitter with his nonsense. Then again, considering he and BobR think Sonic Boom looks like shit, they'd probably think "Night of the Werehog" is awful too.

And, seriously? He expects SEGA to use the comics as source material...? Why? Even I know that's the last source SEGA would look to for further spin-off material. The games are the base from which all things Sonic are sprung. I expect them to build off that universe in a unique way before going to other branches of the Sonic tree. He may as well be surprised SEGA hasn't announced the film is the exciting conclusion to Sonic Underground.

And even if SEGA wanted to use the comics as a base... they'd use the new continuity anyway.

Seriously, Penders, just get back to work. You got what you wanted, why do you care anymore? This is why people are still talking about him and all the shit he's done; it's not because anybody holds him in high-esteem or anything. It's because of his "Small Name, Big Ego" attitude that makes him think he's hot shit in comics. It's comics, ego has no place in comics. If he thinks SEGA is going to call him up to make some exciting things happen, he's dead wrong. They may have considered playing ball with him seven years ago, since apparently he did have contacts with licensing (but they obviously never wanted to move forward on his ideas), but now? HAHAHAHA. That bridge has been burnt to ashes, and there ain't no fixing that, not after the huge stink he caused.

And as I think more about it, Penders has absolutely no respect for the comic medium. He seriously believes that comics' only value is a springboard for movie deals and multimedia? What an asshole (oh look, another one of my red buttons!). He's so desperate to be a big deal like Stan Lee, he's lost sight of everything else. I'm really beginning to think LSC is his last ditch effort, considering everything else has already crumbled around him. It's genuinely sad seeing what he's been reduced to, but it's hard to feel sorry for him when he continues this petty, passive-aggressive shit-stirring instead of keeping quiet now that he's got his toys back and rolling up his sleeves to do some real work.

[biznizz]

Once again, I don't have anything else to say. What else can I say about his opening his face hole about this movie? It's a waste of time.

 

Being forced to have part of my toenail removed and dealing with the infection that precepitated it was less painful than listening to this moron speak. (Sorry for the TMI, but I wanted to show I'd rather deal with a constant physical pain for a week than have to take two minutes of reading his garbage).

[Salamander]

He then goes on to wondering why Sony Pictures and Sega haven't announced that they are using the comics as source material for the movie.

 

Really?!  The man has so much deluded self-belief that he just flat-out assumes they're using the comics with no other possibilities?!  And as per the further comments, I wouldn't be surprised if this is, furthermore, him flat-out assuming that they're using his material for a movie.

 

Yeah, wow, he really does think that, just look at the exact exchange on Twitter:

 

@KenPenders

@LienDuh Except for the comics and SatAM series, the games mythos doesn't carry the emotional elements needed to attract general audiences.

 

@AdamisFox

@KenPenders @SonyPictures They won't use the comics as source material mainly because of what happened between you, Archie and Sega.

 

@KenPenders

@AdamisFox @SonyPictures What separates the grown-ups from the kids is that reasonable people can always do a deal when $ is the bottom line

 

That last remark is Penders saying, to Sony, that it would be childish for Sony not to pay him to use his comic material for the movie.

 

Penders and his actions aren't personal to me the way they are to a lot of people in this thread; I never read the Archie comics.  But it doesn't need to be personal for me to think this guy's awful.  In all honesty, what I really want is for him to sue again, and get flattened totally and unambiguously.

[Delta Starfire]

You know what? Penders is right. The games do not have the emotional weight to carry a cinema audience. That's fairly plain to see. They're action adventure games without much plot, and no real continuity between titles.

 

That is why the movie will be a film based on the Sonic the Hedgehog videogames. Y'know, like how SatAM was a cartoon based on the Sonic the Hedgehog videogames, and how Fleetway's Sonic the Comic was a comic based on the Sonic the Hedgehog videogames...? And they had even less to work with back then, but they still managed to come up with compelling stories that built upon the basic foundation the games provided. Does Penders actually think that nobody today has the talent or the imagination to take the basic idea of Sonic and create a decent story? What was so special about the people who did it back in 1993? 

 

Personally, I have no expectations about this movie being good. What I've heard so far has made me cringe, and I think about other franchises close to my heart that have been butchered by modern movie adaptations (Transformers, anyone...?). I have no hope whatsoever that this movie will be anything other than unmitigated crap. But it won't be crap because Sega didn't fall to its knees and beg el Grande Pendejo for permission to make it The Adventures of Lara-Su, guest-starring Knuckles with maybe a cameo by Sonic.

 

 

Ok, so, holy shit i have absolutely no life, i just spent the past maybe three days reading this whole thread all because of a freaking echidna plush i got at a theater festival making me remember my childhood love of Knuckles and his family from the comics.

So uh. Yeah. My nostalgia lense has been utterly shattered by Ken Penders stupidity. Granted, i'm still a fan of our resident mary sue, Lara Su, but thats because i read 25YL at probably the hardest time in my families life and child-me thought of her as the coolest damn thing.

But yeah. This topic and its treasure trove of Penders nonsense have destroyed many a childhood memory, probably for the better. Now i'm excited for the Lara Su Chronicles, just to see it fall on its face.

I'm also getting back into sonic now. Woohoo! If only i were good at the games or had money for comics.... in any case, i will offer my two cents from here on out, be it on the topic of horrendus 3D models, idiotic tweets, or just general Penders shenanigans. Yes i signed up just to join in, what of it?

 

 

Welcome! And I know exactly how it feels to learn that a writer you've admired for years is a bit of an asshole. I used to love Simon Furman's work on the various Transformers comics, until I found out a few months ago that he's a colossal misogynist. Oh, and he's surprisingly similar to Penders, insofar as he thinks of himself as the God of All Transformers Comic Writing. I'm so glad IDW elected to distract him by allowing him to re-live his glory days by writing another twenty issues of the classic Transformers comic, rather than allowing him to continue writing their modern stuff, which is going from strength to strength and has completely thrown out his god-awful entitled dudebro idea that the only way there can be a female Transformer is if she's created by a mad scientist and she's fucking insane.

 

Grr! Rant! ARGH!

 

But, really, thinking about it, Furman is very similar to Penders... His writing is overly serious, unnecessarily epic at all times, and has very little humour in it. Plus, he gets pissed off at more recent writers for abandoning his ideas... Maybe they should start a club for burned comic writers with a massive sense of entitlement.

[Jolt_TH]

I so have to question just how sane Penders actually is, having sued SEGA and their business partners a few times (not just once!) and having tried to sue them in the past, he actually thinks that they will want to have ANYTHING to do with him?

How can he seriously think that SEGA would come crawling back to ask him to write for the movie? The man must be delusioned! Besides they want an action movie, not a bloody soap opera omnibus!

[Delta Starfire]

I so have to question just how sane Penders actually is, having sued SEGA and their business partners a few times (not just once!) and having tried to sue them in the past, he actually thinks that they will want to have ANYTHING to do with him?

How can he seriously think that SEGA would come crawling back to ask him to write for the movie? The man must be delusioned! Besides they want an action movie, not a bloody soap opera omnibus!

 

I wouldn't like to play armchair psychologist with him -- especially since my degree is in media and philosophy, not psychology -- but he does appear to be incredibly deluded. 

[Blue Swallow]

Even if they did use the comics for the movie, it would be what's going on now, what Ian, Aleah, and Tracy (did I forget any other writers?) are doing, not what Penders or anyone else did in the past.

Is there even a release date for this, or is it still to soon, it feels like it's been a long time since he announced this, but I guess it hasn't been. He certainly seems to be counting his chickens before they hatch, apps and movies and he hasn't released one issue, but he's so sure Lara-Su is going to be a huge multi media franchise. I don't to mean to be mean to the man, but does he not know that, outside of his little forum, there are many many people who can't stand his work.

I'm curious how he's going to advertise this, he's going to have to, because I'm pretty sure no one outside of the SONIC fandom even follows his work. And with folks like BoBR and FurherMustang, I don't think word of mouth is going to work, I wouldn't listen to them.

[Big Panda]

Is there even a release date for this, or is it still to soon

No. And considering he first announced the project in 2009(ish), having a release date would be anything BUT too soon.

But hey, this whole stupid venture has just come off as one massive pipe dream anyway.

[Delta Starfire]

Am I alone in doubting that el Grande Pendejo's wee project will ever actually result in an actual published work...?

[Blue Swallow]

My goodness, I didn't realize it had been that long. Considering he's using tons of old material, what is the hold up? I guess he's spending too much time with lawsuits and twitter arguments.

Am I alone in doubting that el Grande Pendejo's wee project will ever actually result in an actual published work...?

I think it will, it'll probably be like his Lost X-Men, one issue and that's it, but years later for his next project, he'll be saying what a success "The Lara-Su Chronicles" was.

[goku262002]

My popcorn has gone stale waiting for him to release this travesty, Someone might as well ask the old delusional idiot what is taking him soo long...

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

So for those who don;t know, apparently Penders parries legitimate complaints about the character models,

 

Re: Lien-Da Is Now Ready For Her Close-Up

by Ken Penders » Fri Apr 25, 2014 8:30 pm

@Gally:

[Tenko]

What I find amusing is how often he ends up saying one thing and then in the same damn paragraph contradicting himself.

As an example, he's not solely catering to the Sonic comic audience, fair enough, you will get a bigger audience that way, makes business sense. Yet it was his main goal to finish the stories of these characters....whose previous stories were in the Archie Sonic Comic. Which would mean his main goal is finishing the stories only the people that followed the Sonic comic would know about. Sounds to me like his main goal would imply he is mainly catering to the Sonic comic fanbase >.<

[Delta Starfire]

Obviously, el Grande Pendejo is not the most rational individual. He seems fairly detached from reality and his ability to completely contradict himself demonstrates that he may well lack certain reasoning skills... or he just chooses not to use them, which is even worse. 

[anna]

Maybe he refuses to acknowledge his failure. It's the only thing keeping him from snapping. He knows the truth deep, deep down.

^{_{That got kinda dark.}}

[Willsy]

So first it was:

"Fuck you SEGA I'm suing you cause' I want your money even though I'm ripping off your intellectual property!"

No it's:

"Fuck you SEGA you can't make a movie without my rip off of your intellectual property!"

I'm honestly thinking he wants in on the movie just so he can advertise Lara-Su Chronicles through that medium. At the end of the day, what a cock. I'm honestly struggling to see who's worse: Christian Weston Chandler or Ken Penders. The two should become business partners.

[Gabz Girl]

Lol I wouldn't put Ken Penders on the same pedestal as CWC. Penders is a really nice guy IRL, creepy stalker Chrischan is not!

Also, if Lien-Da and the other characters are meant be aliens and NOT furries, then why on earth do they still have the Sonic like muzzles and small black noses? Those are Sonic characteristics, they don't look different enough! I mean obviously they do look taller and crap but they need to look MORE different than that! They still look too much like mutant Archie!echidnas.

[Lara-Sunders]

As much as i hate myself for it, i'm gonna play devils advocate for a moment and say how hard it can be to turn copyrighted material into original material. I'm in the middle of writing/ designing a video game with a small group of friends, and while the plots vastly different now, the characters are imported, redesigned, and updated from a variety of old Zelda, The Slayers, Super Paper Mario and other fanfic and RP we did when we were younger. While they're all updated, original, and well written now, it took about 2 years to remove, replace, and let go of the elements from when we were kids.

All i'm gonna say is that i can sympathize with Penders attachment to old elements, as stupid as it is.

[Delta Starfire]

As much as i hate myself for it, i'm gonna play devils advocate for a moment and say how hard it can be to turn copyrighted material into original material. I'm in the middle of writing/ designing a video game with a small group of friends, and while the plots vastly different now, the characters are imported, redesigned, and updated from a variety of old Zelda, The Slayers, Super Paper Mario and other fanfic and RP we did when we were younger. While they're all updated, original, and well written now, it took about 2 years to remove, replace, and let go of the elements from when we were kids.

All i'm gonna say is that i can sympathize with Penders attachment to old elements, as stupid as it is.

 

I think we can all sympathise with his attachment to his creations. Where we disagree with him is in the way he's tried to regain control of those creations when they were specifically made for a licensed Sega comic, and in doing so, he has forced that comic to completely re-invent itself. I totally get where Penders is coming from, but he should never have expected to be able to keep the characters he made for the Archieverse -- he should have made them all on the understanding that they now belonged to Sega and that someone else would continue writing them after he left the comic, and that, yes, the new writer may well take them in a direction he never intended and does not approve of. But that's comics. It's purely down to poor bookkeeping that he's been allowed to walk away with those characters at all. If Archie and Sega had been less lax about contracts, there'd be no question as to who owned those characters and places.  

[Salamander]

All i'm gonna say is that i can sympathize with Penders attachment to old elements, as stupid as it is.

 

I don't think we really have a problem with Penders doing that so much as with him trying to coast on Sonic's successes in doing so.  If he has such an amazing story, why couldn't he just have changed all the characters' names and call it an original idea?  If TLSC has nothing to do with Sonic, why do the characters all very conspicuously still have Sonic character head designs?  Why does everything have the same name and appearance as it did when it was Sonic-based material?  You and your friends updated your ideas from fanfiction plots into something original - great!  Nothing wrong with that.  But Penders has refused to do it.  He's not even doing the absolute bare minimum needed to present his ideas as something original.

[Crash]

I asked him on Twitter when it would be released and he said he was 'finalising stuff'. Yeah right.

[Lara-Sunders]

Oh i was referring to the slow transition away from the sonic art style, which seems to be a common point brought up here.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

So first it was:

"Fuck you SEGA I'm suing you cause' I want your money even though I'm ripping off your intellectual property!"

No it's:

"Fuck you SEGA you can't make a movie without my rip off of your intellectual property!"

I'm honestly thinking he wants in on the movie just so he can advertise Lara-Su Chronicles through that medium. At the end of the day, what a cock. I'm honestly struggling to see who's worse: Christian Weston Chandler or Ken Penders. The two should become business partners.

I can't help but imagine SEGA taking him up on such offer, if only as a clever plan to bankrupt him into submission.

[comic321]

Ugh. More Penders nonsense. He has the nerve to brag about SEGA getting more flak about Boom than about LSC? At least SEGA has something produced, Penders! That moron still doesn't even have a single book out yet, while Sonic Boom already has 2 games, a ton of figures ready to be shipped, & a television show ready to be released! WHAT DO YOU HAVE, PENDERS?!?!?! NOTHING!!! & Frankly, I'd take Sonic Boom anyday over LSC/Lara-Su '06. 

 

 

...I'm sorry I lost it there but that egotistic maniac makes my blood boil. I can't wait for Sonic Boom to be a major success over his crap.

[Tenko]

He seems to have this flawed logic that most or a good portion of Sonic fans read the Archie comics and know all the characters and stories from them, and that it's 20 year history should be used as a base for this movie. (Note that this would include his stories or characters).

Now his statements by themselves aren't technically wrong, "not all the comic fans would have played the games" for example, tho I would assume a greater portion of them would have, or at least tried one after becoming a fan of the comic, as generally once you become a fan of a series you would try out the other mediums that series has to offer or buy some of the merchandise etc etc

Then there's the recent "...the UK Sonic comic isn't well known in the USA and would therefore not be a candidate for material for the movie". Again not wrong, as if they were even remotely thinking of using another branch for material it likely wouldn't be the UK comic.

But the crux of the problem is when putting his reasonably correct statements together he somehow comes to this flawed conclusion that MORE people have read the Archie comics than have played the games, that MORE people have been exposed to the Archie comics than the games. That the install base of these comics is WIDER than the games, and so on and so on.

How on earth does he come to this conclusion, most people that have only had a minor exposure to Sonic didn't get it via comics, much like Mario its through the games or media around the games, they were and are well known icons, even before the comics came around. I would hazard a guess most people that aren't big fans wouldn't even know anyone outside Sonic, Tails, Eggman (some still refer to him as Robotnik) and perhaps Knuckles. I would even go so far as to say you would be lucky for most, especially the new fans via its main game medium to even know who Sally or Bunnie are, let alone all his characters or stories. He really REALLY overestimates how important the comics were or even today are. They may have a few million subscribers, but that ain't got nothing on the games or their exposure rate or its iconic history stretching back to the Mario vs Sonic wars etc.

Bottom line the guy is still certifiably nuts >.<