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

[CertifiedNobody]

Penders is the exact type of person to write stories for a series that copied Super Saiyan and the Death Star as central plot points, make skunk James Bond, turn Echidnas into Kryptonians, and then get pissed when Sega/Bioware make characters similar to stories he wrote in a licensed comic that Sega owns.

[Guergy]

The funny thing is, some fans like some of those characters but Penders ruined it for himself and other. 

[Rabbitearsblog]

Isn't it kind of ironic that Ian Flynn is practically running the Sonic franchise, while Ken Penders is rarely doing anything these days?

[SkyHorizon]

6 hours ago, Guergy said:

The funny thing is, some fans like some of those characters but Penders ruined it for himself and other. 

True, but actually people usually like the characters only after Ian started writing them. In fact, if Penders had just shut up, he probably would be remembered as the one who introduced some fan favorites like Scourge. Instead, he decided to play the greedy asshole and the result is that his characters disappeared from the comic books (which, in the end, was probably for the better) and he will be remembered as a greedy asshole.

 

6 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

Isn't it kind of ironic that Ian Flynn is practically running the Sonic franchise, while Ken Penders is rarely doing anything these days?

Poetic justice 

[CertifiedNobody]

6 hours ago, SkyHorizon said:

True, but actually people usually like the characters only after Ian started writing them. In fact, if Penders had just shut up, he probably would be remembered as the one who introduced some fan favorites like Scourge. Instead, he decided to play the greedy asshole and the result is that his characters disappeared from the comic books (which, in the end, was probably for the better) and he will be remembered as a greedy asshole.

From what I've seen, Penders wasn't the worst writer ever, at least not at first. But he's better at worldbuilding and complex plots than dialogue or characters.

Penders is like George Lucas in that he as ambitious ideas but you need someone else to keep the madness in check. It's why his work has only gone downhill the more freedom he has.

[SkyHorizon]

2 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

From what I've seen, Penders wasn't the worst writer ever, at least not at first. But he's better at worldbuilding and complex plots than dialogue or characters.

Penders is like George Lucas in that he as ambitious ideas but you need someone else to keep the madness in check. It's why his work has only gone downhill the more freedom he has.

Eh, let's say that he had a few good ideas (the ones he didn't stole, at least), but he's pretty subpar. Not to say that he wrote for a property he didn't even understand... or knew...

His dialogues are plainly atrocious, though.

[CertifiedNobody]

1 minute ago, SkyHorizon said:

Eh, let's say that he had a few good ideas (the ones he didn't stole, at least), but he's pretty subpar. Not to say that he wrote for a property he didn't even understand... or knew...

His dialogues are plainly atrocious, though.

He could be lying, but in an interview with Midnight's Edge, I believe he said Sonic was his son's favorite favorite character and he was trying to make the comics more serious like SatAM was.

His efforts to expand Sonic's world were decent back when he didn't really have anything to go off of but the shows and manuals, but when the games started actually having lore, the stories got pretty bad.

[Kazhnuz]

I disagree with that Penders is that good at complex plot and worldbuilding, tbh. I would even say that's when things become complexe that what he make fall pretty short. Most of his complexe plot rapidly become convoluted (the whole backstory of the echidna), nonsensical (Endgame, which I was baffled when reading with how it was dumb) or suffer from him trying to change his own stuff to make it more "mature" (the Dark Legion is a friggin mess because of that, changing from absolute monster to badly-made "morally grey").

( And TBH, sure he was trying to make the comics "more serious"... But mostly in a superficial way. There is IIRC a great article that talked about the issue and tackled it with pretty interesting arguments, I should search it )

He was good at adding some concepts that could be reused later by other creator (sadly he hate when his work was reused by other author), but for me as a "worldbuilder" he really lacks in making his lore cohesive (we could say that the ST as the same issue, but they were a team evolving with time with different people involved). Oh, of course, not everything he made was an absolute disaster and I really like some elements he added, but most of the time… it was already sub-par before the IP got more "lore". All in all, most of his lore was some good impulsion that needed to be refined.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

2 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

He could be lying, but in an interview with Midnight's Edge, I believe he said Sonic was his son's favorite favorite character and he was trying to make the comics more serious like SatAM was.

His efforts to expand Sonic's world were decent back when he didn't really have anything to go off of but the shows and manuals, but when the games started actually having lore, the stories got pretty bad.

I made a post here a while back showing how much of what was actually in the games went unused or underutilized.

I can't remember if it was a problem beforehand, but they couldn't even keep the number of Chaos Emeralds faithful.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Let it never be forgotten that Ken is arguably the reason that Sonic SATAM never got the closer that Ben Hurst had in mind.

[CertifiedNobody]

25 minutes ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

I made a post here a while back showing how much of what was actually in the games went unused or underutilized.

I can't remember if it was a problem beforehand, but they couldn't even keep the number of Chaos Emeralds faithful.

To be fair, the American game manuals themselves implied there were multiple sets of emeralds.

24 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Let it never be forgotten that Ken is arguably the reason that Sonic SATAM never got the closer that Ben Hurst had in mind.

Never forgive, never forget.

[SkyHorizon]

3 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

He could be lying, but in an interview with Midnight's Edge, I believe he said Sonic was his son's favorite favorite character and he was trying to make the comics more serious like SatAM was.

His efforts to expand Sonic's world were decent back when he didn't really have anything to go off of but the shows and manuals, but when the games started actually having lore, the stories got pretty bad.

Nazi Dingoes, someone?

[King Scoopa Koopa]

1 hour ago, CertifiedNobody said:

To be fair, the American game manuals themselves implied there were multiple sets of emeralds.

I think even having sets could have been more interesting/faithful than just having nigh-limitless emeralds.

Sonic The Comic incorporated that very idea by having sets of emeralds and then fusing them later.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

2 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Let it never be forgotten that Ken is arguably the reason that Sonic SATAM never got the closer that Ben Hurst had in mind.

I think you meant closure.

And yeah, let's face it. this guy has frankly played a big part in damaging the Sonic comics and much of the old western branch of Sonic.

[HywelAtTheMoon]

On 10/24/2021 at 11:48 PM, KingScoopaKoopa said:

I think even having sets could have been more interesting/faithful than just having nigh-limitless emeralds.

Sonic The Comic incorporated that very idea by having sets of emeralds and then fusing them later.

I seem to remember the gray emerald acting like a master in its own right. It had some calming power over the others, if I remember correctly. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

On 10/24/2021 at 2:29 PM, Kazhnuz said:

I disagree with that Penders is that good at complex plot and worldbuilding, tbh.

Maybe not “good,” but to give credit where it’s due, he did show that you can develop plot devices and characters into something greater—Knuckles during the 90s didn’t really have much to him outside of S3&K, so the fact that he could even make a whole echidna society should be a lesson to others that if he can do it, there’s no excuse for anyone else to say it can’t be done. So I’ll say he’s simply “capable” at worldbuilding.

Complex plots tho? Yeah, no he sucks at that.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

7 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Maybe not “good,” but to give credit where it’s due, he did show that you can develop plot devices and characters into something greater—Knuckles during the 90s didn’t really have much to him outside of S3&K, so the fact that he could even make a whole echidna society should be a lesson to others that if he can do it, there’s no excuse for anyone else to say it can’t be done. So I’ll say he’s simply “capable” at worldbuilding.

Complex plots tho? Yeah, no he sucks at that.

I dunno, I kind of feel like taking someone whose whole deal is being the last of their kind and then saying "yeah, but what if not?" without really even exploring the idea in any meaningful way is... cheap?

Maybe not cheap, but kind of unearned?

At least when Superman has done it, he's kind of had a history there. Plus the bonus of "what if there were a TON of Supermen?" Which has exciting and terrifying possibilities.

Meanwhile, almost all of the echidnas were everyday Joe Shmucks with dreads. Knuckles is pretty mild when it comes to special abilities, but his people didn't even share any of them.

I guess there's the tech angle, but that wasn't very well utilized to any degree beyond what we'd already seen in issues and episodes of SatAM before Knuckles appeared.

When it comes to Knuckles, I feel like less is more. But Penders just kept piling on more, and made the character less.

[CertifiedNobody]

1 hour ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

I dunno, I kind of feel like taking someone whose whole deal is being the last of their kind and then saying "yeah, but what if not?" without really even exploring the idea in any meaningful way is... cheap?

Maybe not cheap, but kind of unearned?

At least when Superman has done it, he's kind of had a history there. Plus the bonus of "what if there were a TON of Supermen?" Which has exciting and terrifying possibilities.

Meanwhile, almost all of the echidnas were everyday Joe Shmucks with dreads. Knuckles is pretty mild when it comes to special abilities, but his people didn't even share any of them.

I guess there's the tech angle, but that wasn't very well utilized to any degree beyond what we'd already seen in issues and episodes of SatAM before Knuckles appeared.

When it comes to Knuckles, I feel like less is more. But Penders just kept piling on more, and made the character less.

Back then, it was really just a small line of backstory in the manual and wasn't as ingrained into the character. As someone who's currently only read like 5-6 issues of KTE, it doesn't necessarily seem like a bad idea, even if it did get pretty messy.

One concept I really liked was Knuckles (and Tails as well) essentially being a chosen one, rather than the obvious choice of Sonic. Though I've not read much of the Chaos Knuckles stories so I can't comment on the quality.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

15 hours ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

I dunno, I kind of feel like taking someone whose whole deal is being the last of their kind and then saying "yeah, but what if not?" without really even exploring the idea in any meaningful way is... cheap?

Maybe not cheap, but kind of unearned?

Note that I didn’t say it was meaningful, just “capable.”

The fact that someone like Penders could do it should clue people that it can be done. It being good isn’t exactly the point I’m making, because we already know Penders isn’t a good writer, and that other writers have shown to be much better at taking his own ideas and actually doing them in a meaningful way much better than he ever could.

At most, Penders did the bare minimum of setting things up, but just laying foundations for something isn’t a unique skill.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

15 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Back then, it was really just a small line of backstory in the manual and wasn't as ingrained into the character. As someone who's currently only read like 5-6 issues of KTE, it doesn't necessarily seem like a bad idea, even if it did get pretty messy.

For what it's worth, I was thinking of how Sonic the Comic handled it all, and they had about as much to work with there.

[Leebo4]

Seems that Ken has struck a deal to license some of his characters to an indie comic company

 

will probably be some talking animal comic

[CertifiedNobody]

2 hours ago, Leebo4 said:

Seems that Ken has struck a deal to license some of his characters to an indie comic company

 

will probably be some talking animal comic

I hope something comes of this so Sega will just sue him or buy his characters off of him so he'll stop. The franchise just dug itself out of the 'Sonic was never good " ditch with Mania, IDW, Colors Ultimate, and the movie. They don't need Lara-Su Chronicles making them look bad.

[Leebo4]

42 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

I hope something comes of this so Sega will just sue him or buy his characters off of him so he'll stop. The franchise just dug itself out of the 'Sonic was never good " ditch with Mania, IDW, Colors Ultimate, and the movie. They don't need Lara-Su Chronicles making them look bad.

They wouldn’t be able to sue since legally he does own the characters and when He meant kingdom of acorn characters he meant characters like the duck doctor and Sega can’t sue every media that uses talking animal characters

[CertifiedNobody]

Just now, Leebo4 said:

They wouldn’t be able to sue since legally he does own the characters and when He meant kingdom of acorn characters he meant characters like the duck doctor and Sega can’t sue every media that uses talking animal characters

Yeah but Penders is trying to put Sonic in his stories as "The King", Knuckles in as 'K'Nox" and Eggman in as "Warlord Kintobor/Robo-Robotnicus". It'll depend on how much he changes the characters for sure, but if Penders can sue over the Nocturnus Clan, I'm sure Sega won't have any issues. At the very least we could see the Sonic Chronicles mess get sorted out (if it hasn't already been).

[Slashy]

1 hour ago, CertifiedNobody said:

I hope something comes of this so Sega will just sue him or buy his characters off of him so he'll stop. The franchise just dug itself out of the 'Sonic was never good " ditch with Mania, IDW, Colors Ultimate, and the movie. They don't need Lara-Su Chronicles making them look bad.

Colors Ultimate brought it back into that mindset by being an awful port.