Penders Begins Sale of First Lara-Su Chronicles Merchandise

44 Comments

1. Meh.

2. Kinda pricey for a patch. I wonder what the next merch would be, Lara-Su’s sunglasses, Knux…i mean…whoever is Locke’s son’s hat, Moonwatcher’s Not-Star Trek emblem? Personally, I want Ken to make a 300 paged graphic novel Weekend at Bimmy’s. That’s right, Bimmy’s still asleep and he snores louder than ever!

3. as i said on DA ITS TOTTALY NOT A RIP OFF OF SONIC NO SEIRUSLY ITS NOT ITS TOTALY NOT
   i cant say it with a stright face
   also 8 bucks for a patch thats bull

4. So… now Archie can sue him for using stuff from the Sonic universe like the Acorn thing?

   1. That’s right, he *doesn’t* own the Acorn name. What the hey, Penders?

      1. Oh, no it’s okay I asked him about this on Twitter. It’s okay to sell it because designed the emblem for Sally’s Data-File in the comics.

5. AHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

6. Penders is selling some rinky-dink Sally Acorn badges for an unusually high price? Let me just reach into my bottomless bag of fucks and…

   Oh….What’s this?

   I seem to have run out of fucks to give to Ken Penders. Not a single one to give…………

7. Disgusting! Pricey and disgusting!

8. I never cared about the Secret Service before, and I certainly don’t now.

   I wonder if he thinks he owns Heavy and Bomb because he wrote their backstories and they had different designs from their game appearance.

   1. If he’s convinced he owns Robo-Robotnik and Evil Sonic…

   2. I wouldn’t surprised in the least to be prefectly honest.

9. The nightmare begins….

10. He needs to stop hyping his shit. No one wants to looking into his toilet of ideas.

11. I’m sorry. I just can’t like the man who is trying to end Sonic Chronicles. The game was so much fun, so challenging, so new, so nostalgic, so story-rich, so interesting, and most importantly… so full of gosh darn potential. A sequel would serve Sonic Chronicles wonders. The ending to Sonic Chronicles plus the fact that a sequel was actually being worked on at the time was so comforting, but that wouldn’t last long at all thanks to EA. Although, not all hope was lost! Bioware still does exist after all. Then Penders came along. We may be forever denied Sonic Chronicles 2 if Penders gets things his way. Even if the comic is by some astronomically small chance good, I just won’t budge until Sonic Chronicles is given what I believe it deserves. On the bright side, he looks like a nice, jolly guy so I’ll give him that.

    1. “The game was so much fun, so challenging, so new, so nostalgic, so story-rich, so interesting…”

       You and I must have been playing very different games because I found it dull, easy, alien, cliché, and boring. That game blew chunks, easily up there with Labyyrinth and ’06 in Sonic’s Hall of Shame.

       1. It was my first RPG experience, and I was only nine years old when I played the game so I am sure that the game impacted me a lot more when I first played it than it impacted you. Personally, I don’t feel it belongs anywhere near Sonic the Hedgehog 2006’s standards and Sonic Labyrinth should just be forgotten all together. I sorry you didn’t enjoy the game, but that is exactly what the sequel is supposed to do. It is supposed to fix the “dull, easy, alien, cliché, and boring” aspects of the game for a much more enjoyable experience. It was given a better rating from IGN than Sonic Lost World (both versions) got so that certainly means something.

          1. I’m sorry this was your first RPG, just like I’m upset this was my first Bioware game. Also, the games are different genres and were reviewed by different people, the scores aren’t in any way comparable.

          2. 😉

12. This was my reaction to this.

    http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/710/6337/original.jpg

13. The Great Intellectual has spoken….http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/207/a/a/the_great_intellectual_by_shadowbane2009-d6f94ua.png

14. I laughed a bit when I saw this. Has Penders lost his mind. Wouldn’t he have been better off starting to market his biggest IP through a fantastic “pilot” comic book where he tries to show people that him taking the reigns of these characters was for the better and that he is planning fantastic stories for them. I do not see how an overpriced patch with a thinly veiled connection to Archie would bring any positive attention to his IPs.

15. He can’t really do that, can he? While Geoffery St. John is his character, he can’t use ‘Acorn’ as their header, he didn’t freaking create the Acorns, for god’s sake.
    God I hate this guy.

    1. His reasoning is, wait for it, “Who says it’s a reference to the Acorn family? Neither SEGA nor Archie created acorns.”

       Yeeeep.

16. But California is 770 miles long. Not every Californian can easily reach him.

17. No se de que se quejan si nunca hubiera salido Julie-Su en los videojuegos mucho menos Lara, Lien-da, Dimitri, etc ya que Sega se queda muy estancado con los personajes, no quieren y no pueden trabajar con mas porque tendrían que invertir mas en tiempo y dinero ademas quieren un mercado donde hallan pocos personajes que explotar deberían ver el cementerio de Sonic Team donde hay muchos personajes como Mighty, Marine, Shade, Ray, etc, lo único que podríamos ver a futuro es solo un cameo cuando mucho nada tan importante como ser caracteres jugables.

18. Someone should make a petition to get Penders to scrap the Lara-Su Chronicles and give up the rights to his characters permanently.

19. Can I just go ahead and say it? I know everyone’s thinking it.
    Penders is such a loser.

    also pedostache.

20. I wonder why Penders even continues on this sales campaign when no one in their right mind wants his peddled goods. Its marketability is crazy low, the crazy undesirable, and crazy weird, it will never sell except among one or two and it won’t even cover the cost of design and marketing. I really wish he would just give up the character rights and help further the Sonic comic series, not mock, parrot or downright disgrace it.

    1. Guys–I just had to ban a user on account of making a serious and credible threat.

       Can we all keep cool heads around this? Please?

       -T

21. well uh.. thats ‘interesting’ I guess if it was cheaper then maybe it would be a little bit okay?

22. Seriously? Selling the spin-off products before even selling the main work? I thought he was trying NOT to seem pretentious.

23. When this whole deal started, as with any issue that doesn’t concern myself, I looked into the Penders vs. Archie case, and if anything I can understand Pender’s perspective a little better.

    Yet anytime I read the comments for an article about Penders, it’s like I’m re-reading Lord of the Flies. What will it take for everyone to calm down? Getting our third-rate supporting cast back for the Archie comics?

    Don’t get me wrong, I loved Rob, Lara-Su, Geoffrey St. John, and a lot of the other characters that Ken arguably holds rights to, but it’s not worth threatening and talking behind the man’s back just because you’re butt hurt over losing those characters.

    Here’s a link to the same forum post on Ken’s website that has been around since April: http://kenpenders.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2539

    Basically it states Archie sued him first. Now will everyone get off their high horse and stop cutting the guy’s head off?

    And before anyone asks, no, I’m not a Pender lover, I love the Archie Comics and again really wish the characters could have stayed(and who knows, maybe they still can..maybe), but I’m just disgusted with all the demonizing/finger pointing.

    1. “but it’s not worth threatening and talking behind the man’s back just because you’re butt hurt over losing those characters.”

       I’m sorry, but “talking behind his back?” What is this, elementary school? I thought this was the internet.
       While yes, some comments are dumb, unfounded, or just plain mean, and threats should be discouraged, the fans have the right to criticize him, and there HAS been very good criticisms discussed. Let’s keep the grade school vernacular to a minimum.

    2. Well, the thing of it is, people have every right to criticize him as they would criticize anything else that has an article on the internet. Yea, some of it is a bit mean-spirited, but there is legitimate criticisms here like Charlotte said. I mean look at this article, he’s selling a cheaply made Boy Scout badge for 10 dollars (you can get a bundle of them with any design you like for less then that). If that in and of itself isn’t worth criticizing to some degree, i don’t know what is as it seems like a big rip-off for merchandise to a product not yet made( not that that hasn’t stopped the likes of TMNT or Transformers, but those are established franchises with a ton more revenue and recognition).

       I mean, at the very least the criticism may get Ken to lower the price, wasnt that the point of Black Friday; getting a GOOD deal?

       1. Whether you consider it justified or not, threatening someone over a comment section indirectly when that person isn’t here to defend himself, yes, in fact, is ‘talking behind his back,’ though criticizing is a little different.

          Criticisms are a good thing, I never stated they were not. I’m not sure why suddenly this is about me saying something I never stated.

          1. I’m sorry, but I’m with the others on this one. Whether he likes it or not, he’s in the spotlight, and his actions are going to be discussed. Besides, there’s nothing keeping him from coming here and defending himself if he wants to. We’re not teenage girls gossiping in a bedroom, we’re talking in an open area where ANYONE can see what we’re saying. We’re not behind anyone’s back. If anything, we’re standing in front of anyone who cares to look, and all who want to are able to speak their piece.

          2. I’d be more inclined to agree with this if he showed that courtesy to others. But he’s criticized people that worked on Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog (both other creators that were on the title during his tenure, and those that followed him). Not long before he made his announcement that he owned the copyrights of his characters/issues (the “opening shot” of this entire mess), he posted a lengthy and frankly insulting review of Flynn’s work, in which (among other things) he generally accused Flynn of stealing stories from some an outline he’d provided Archie before leaving. But when he posted the outline that he claimed Flynn must’ve been swiping from, surprise surprise, it looked nothing like Flynn’s work except for one two-issue story that both Ken and Flynn said editor Mike P wanted heavy input on… and even then the similarities were minimal.

             While I’m sad to lose the characters, I can definitely agree that he was largely within his legal rights, and I have no love lost for Archie Comics Publications. Under different circumstances I’d cheer a creator managing to score one against them. But I’d argue that a good amount of the hostility stems from the way Penders has conducted himself throughout this mess, from trying to sell a comic blatantly piggybacking on the work of other creators (particularly unethical given that he’s been waving the flag of “creator’s rights”. Which apparently just meant his own rights), to how he’s spoken about other creators such as Flynn and Bollers, to the mental gymnastics he’s done attempting to justify the logic that he owns an alternate universe Robotnik and Sonic, but SEGA doesn’t own an alternate universe Julie-Su.

             The backlash he’s received is largely of his own making.

24. I would of been a little better off about the mass murders in the comics if it was someone else who should of killed them, that killed them. For example, Dr. Finitevus. He’s one of the main villains, as well as Knuckles arch enemy. He should of been the one to kill all the people Knuckles cared about, not some random character.

25. This guy is a joke.

26. I don’t really have an issue with him selling merchandise based on his characters it’s just that he had to drag the ongoing comic through character slaughter hell in order to do it. I don’t even see this stuff selling.

27. I said Ken would likely get sued for using things he has no rights to, and this proves my point… He doesn’t own the “Acorn Kingdom”…
    I have to wonder how far this will go before SEGA gets involved again. He’s going to be using the Echidna tribes, we know that, even though the Echidna tribe is SEGA Sonic dating back from Sonic 3.
    He’s going to be using the Floating Island, even though, again, that dates back to Sonic 3.
    I imagine he will use the Guardians, and Chaos Emeralds. How can you tell a story about Julie Su on Floating Island without even referencing them?

    Archie has to rewrite their entire history to avoid using his material, but he can write a comic in the exact same continuity using Archie’s and Sega’s stuff.

    Any credibility he had has just been lost.

    1. He won’t get sued. Arche is desperate to keep SEGA happy, and doesn’t want to make a scene, and the settlement he received included a guarantee from Archie that they wouldn’t sue him for use of the properties he’s been saying he owns.

       Archie wouldn’t risk making a scene that angered SEGA. They also wouldn’t risk losing in court due to a fickle judge deciding they broke the terms of their settlement.

       He’s safe to push his luck as to what he can get away with.

28. I say we should get a bunch of people with decent Sonic fancharacters to write a few stories, then say that they own them because they made the characters and whatever situations they’re in. If Penders can make money off of an obvious set of fancharacters, why shouldn’t the rest of us?

    #originalcharacterdonotsteal

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