I read the Sonic comics literally when they were first released... like, I remember black-haired Sally and "Scott Shaw!" running the series. I was curious about going back and trying to read everything... but Panders' run now makes me hesitant to do so.
I think I only read only a magazine or another from the comics, and that's it. If anything, I only saw the other comic covers in Sonic Mega Collection, and it all looked fucking weird to me. I figured out that I wouldn't probably be missing much, and it turns out I was right.
My earliest memories of the Sonic comic were Robotnik and Sonic trapped as pet hamsters pretty much for this gigantic alien robot overlord thing. Rediculous and fun. Though personally I'm fine with them killing Robotnik (Julian)...IF that'd been the end of the series. Storywise I don't see it getting more complete than that and the dude was like pure fuckin' evil. But then it got REALLY confusing to me. Cause they introduce that whole "other dimension" Robotnik that's actually a robot that then comes back as Eggman as his new body Which made me think "oh...so we're eventually going to get to see him use all these bodies like that rediculous "wrestling" body. And holy shit what the hell was he thinking when making some of those?". At the time Sonic Adventure had just been released if I remember right, or at least that's when I was exposed to it, so I was thinking, with my younger mind, that the comic was filling in the gaps of the story. Then I started questioning it. First off, I looked back and realized "hey...Robotnik in the comics and cartoons looks NOTHING like he does in the games". And then there was the whole matter of Station Square, the setting of Adventure 1, being contained INSIDE A VOLCANO WITH A HOLOGRAM SKY AND SHIT in the comics when it's clearly an actual place on Sonic's Earth in the games. And it just kept getting more and more confusing as time went on with them constantly shoving in the actual story elements of the game universe alongside all that Mobius crap until I eventually realized "oh...they're not the same thing...AT ALL...there's no Mobius in the games, there's no Julian, no Freedom Fighters, no Echidna society...none of that shit. Just Sonic and his pals on Earth stopping Eggman". Long story short, Penders took part in confusing the hell out of me and probably most other kids growing up with that stuff along with Archie. But since this topic's about Penders I'm layin' the blame on him right now. Also, holy shit. Are you fucking kidding me? Like...REALLY?...
Thing is, Ken Penders only shows a modicum of skill when it comes to drawing humans in their cape comic stylization - like what takes place within his "Lost ones". As soon as he has to tackle heavily stylized cartoony humans and cartoony furries, his workshop breaks down completely, as if Ken was a cape comic reject that washed ashore in the cartoony land that took him in. Of course, that led to Ken making a crossover between Sonic and his own 'succesful comic series'.
Good god, that Sonic picture looks like a picture you would find on deviantART... what's up with the lips? And the huge eye pupils? And which one of them is Sonic? I swear to god, that picture has about the problems as of his new recolor comic, which just further proves that he cannot yet move on from drawing his shitty Sonic art style. To think that he actually put effort into drawing his own humans, but ultimately ruined their designs by merging them with his shitty Sonic art style. I mean, like, look at their fucking chins, specially... is that Spawn? And is that a metallic Wolverine? Please, don't let them be what I think they are... Penders truly reminds me of Dobson. He might have not completely lost the ability to draw people, but he sure as well ruins it when it comes to "cartoonizing" things. And just so this actually shows something new regarding Penders: Holy fuck, he really is Dobson. Whining about religion just like Dobson used to and all.
This man has no respect for something he didn't create: Short introduction for non-Penders characters, complete with reference boxes instead of tangible personality. . . . . .And back to the only story that mattered to Ken.
For the sake of keeping shit in one place; - Review with the man himself. Good mostly for getting a glimpse of his style of interaction, but still, first two minutes have this Dobson-esque "I was a special artist right since the highschool" trope. - Recount on Ken's helpfulness with the corporate issues of others; - Ken's concept art for a Sonic movie; - Assortment of Tweets and Twitter conversations:
Not to go too far on a tangent here, but, a couple things: First, the link Dan Slott: * http://timemachineyeah.tumblr.com/post/58648290519/this-is-a-jar-full-of-major-characters That tumblr post is fucking stupid because it only covers characters from an Western (American?) POV. It's almost like the person didn't do ANY fucking research on what kinds of characters exist and just assumes that ALL major characters ever written are white. Too bad they're forgetting (from a classical literature POV): * Everyone from "The Book of Five Rings" * Everyone from "Journey To The West" (ok well, apart from the animal characters) * Everyone from "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" * Everyone from "Water Margin" * Everyone from "Dream of the Red Chamber" * Everyone from "Prithviraj Raso" * Everyone from "Ramcharitmanas" * Everyone from "Sohni Mahiwal" * Everyone from "The Epic of Gilgamesh" There are quite enough established literary characters who are all kinds of race or ethnicities or cultures, etc. But the asshole who wrote that tumblr post makes it sound like these guys don't exist and that the ONLY non-white characters that exist in literature are... Orthello, Dr. John Prentice, Aang (wait... AANG? You're counting Avatar?!) I just... I'd argue it's racist to assume that there AREN'T many non-white characters EVER, and thus we NEED the help of writers to race-bend existing characters to make things more even. Instead of, I dunno, simply creating new characters of whatever race you want them to be. But back to Ken Panders. Of course we're going to keep Luke Cage black. That's part of his identity. Just as much as "white" is part of Peter Parker's identity. Now "Spider-man" can be anyone. And so could any particular "Hero for Hire". Neither of those roles need to be limited to a race, simply because the key identity for "Spider-man" is that he's a spider... man. Likewise, as long as a new "Hero for Hire" is a hero AND they're for hire, that's it. I don't understand why this is such a hard concept for people to understand.
Damn, I remember trying to get into the comics as a kid and being confused by all the characters I'd never seen in the games before. So this is the guy responsible for all that. Wasn't there also an echidna tribe in the Sonic Adventure games? Was that the same thing?
Yes there was Knuckles tribes in Sonic Adventure game and Knuckles being the last surviving descendant of his race. But I guess Ken Penders pretty much disregard Sega materials and replace them with his own race of futuristic Echidnas.
Like FuanasEdan said, there was such a tribe, only to get wiped out before the actions of the game. However, Ken Penders by then has already crafted an entire elaborate race just because almost anything about Knuckles was a blank slate before SA1 has been released. Ken wasn't the first, as Archie Sonic staff couldn't help but cram characters and concepts without much implication from the official material, but Penders pretty much designed a whole world out of a single character with next to no backstory just because he could. When SA1 came around, Archie's Knuckles still could be seen taking a tour through gigantic echidna-filled cities. Apparently there was an arc that tried to deal with this surplus. . . Through a holocaust-like genocide. But that still left Dark Legion - Ken Pender's pet villain faction which he implied to be above official Sanic villains in terms of power.
You know what I also REALLY hate about this post? It implies that I can only appreciate a character if it represents me and that I'm able to identify myself with it... like, really? I'm Hispanic, yet you don't see me crying over how there are not many Latin actors or anything of the sort, because I actually have the common sense to... like, let's play along this stupid ass analogy of chocolate raisins. If I'm going to distribute sweets to children, I'm not going to just give the ones that I think they should identify themselves with, because from my point of view, you can appreciate all of the major characters in the jar, no matter what race you are. If a white kid really tried to eat one of the raisins and was like "ew, it's black, I hate black", then THAT would be racist. But if any of the kids told me "excuse me, there isn't enough black in here", I think I'd probably say something like "of course there is, you're just not looking hard enough" (in the analogy, I would probably just throw more raisins from another jar into their bowl). But even then, I'd think that the kids would be able to eat their raisins without whining about which one is what, otherwise that would just be being unnecessarily picky. It's also hilarious how the analogy is done with children, because as far as I know, children are known for the inability to give much of a damn about some things, be it raisins or movie characters. And this is why the whole "REPRESENTATION MATTERS" deal is fucking retarded. Not to mention that in these tumblr posts, it's always only black and white, and by their same logic, I could just say that the industry is clearly racist towards the Hispanic people, right? Wrong, because I'm not some self centered idiot who needs to neglect every other race for the sake of appreciating a movie. I'm not going to be like "WHAT??? This movie doesn't has MY race in it! It has to be MY RACE, because I need to be able to identify myself with the characters, because representing me in everything matters! Fuck this stupid story!", because I'm able to just eat the fucking raisins and judge them based on whether they are good or not, and that's it. ...holy FUCK, I did not know about this, and that was probably for the best. Looking at it at first, I thought that Ken wanted to make a movie of his Sonic Live comic. What gave me the impression is that he kind of made it all about himself and his kids again. I still can't the thought out of my head because with that stupid ass intro, it just makes me imagine this monstrosity as a movie: (is that kid literally playing with a TV remote control) Is Sonic supposed to be really young in that trailer or did they just use some random kid? And what gets me the most is that this was at the time Penders still thought drawing gigantic pupils was hot stuff. He's able to look at the shit he draws and say "oh yeah that looks good", yet I can't believe that a human being can possibly draw only so many times and not think even for a slightly second that the eyes could be drawn smaller. Also, I love how Sonic only appears to ride some flying board and then get shot in the ending. You'd think that he would be doing something cool, like... you know, running, beating robot ass, or whatever the hell. If it's about some sort of origins story on the trailer, and there are really robots everywhere, then the kid would realize that going outside is too dangerous. How you can write "Sonic flies on a hover board and then gets shot" and think it's a good story for a trailer is beyond me.
When I saw "Aang" I thought I saw wrong. Because I find it hypocritically hilarious that they count Aang, but nobody else from AtLA/LoK, who are all non-white, because it has long been established that earthbenders=Chinese, waterbenders=Inuit, airbenders=Buddhists and firebenders=Japanese. Sure, in the movie they were anything but that but let's not bring the movie up. But by all means, the best way to prove a point is to exaggerate it like a retard. Also, I'm preeeeeeetty fucking sure there's way more than 5 people of color in media, and the ratio is probably way better than 5 to 300 or whatever a full bowl of raisins would have. But carry on. This is a tangent. Return to the lolz of Ken Penders.
Sonic attemted to drag those kids right into their TV set. Why? Because he got killed by Robotnik on a previous page: At least Action 52 held some degree of context given how insane and pointless anything else was.
Buddhism is not a race. Airbenders are probably actually Thai, or some combination of other mostly Buddhist countries. The different temples have different architectural styles, so it's hard to pinpoint. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they just used the various architectures as a general reference point and went from there, without much concern for the specific countries. After all, airbenders are meant to be cut off from the rest of the world.
Still, it is A-class writing when compared to PR disasters produced by professional CWC such as this gem.
Ken Penders, along with Bollers, went into that territory, actually: And these are from issue 138, written by Penders and Bollers, but drawn by other artists: Apparently there was a severe death toll with efficience surpassing the real deal, but I have no idea if it occured before Penders left or after. http://archiesonic.wikia.com/wiki/Dingo_Regime
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