38 replies to this topic

[chief]

So as we are all aware Ken Penders claimed that everything he ever created while he was a writer for Archie Comics is his property and not theirs. You can read more on all of that here.

Now things have been fairly silent in the past few months. No news on either front in till now. Archie Comics has filed a federal lawsuit against Ken Penders. Get the details here.

Okay so why did I put this in the news? Well its not every day you see a federal lawsuit due to Sonic characters.

So what are your thoughts on all of this? Should Ken just shut up and stop bitching? Is Archie the bad guy? Well.. I guess that is up to the courts now. However I'm sure I can get all your view points before we hear from the courts. So spit it out. What are your thoughts on this whole mess?

[Bakuda]

It all depends on the contractual agreement. The works belong to whomever holds the rights to them, and that should be part of the contract agreed upon between Archie Comics and Ken when he began working there.

[furrykef]

*snerk*

All I can say is, "Don't say I didn't warn ya, Ken."

[Shadow]

To me, this guy is just trying to give Archie a hard time for firing him so he wants to drag the whole ship down with him.
Way I see it, the only thing he should be credited for is the Knuckles comics and he's long been payed for his work on that. I do miss the complexities he brought to some of the stories but on the other hand, he made alot of boring and odd choices that hurt things more than Ian ever did...lest we forget the lovely Karl Bollers.
Does every writer for Marvel and DC have automatic claim over the characters they create? No. Because its a character your handing over to the company you work under. End of discussion.

[Vlad Yvhv]

I suggest we stop potentially feeding his ego with topics about him...

[Vampfox]

I still don't get how Penders thought that trying to get the rights to his characters was a smart idea. He's looking to lose a lot of money on this case, and I can't see him winning this.
I kind of feel bad for Penders a little bit. When he started his run on the comic, he was pretty good. His work on Knuckles was awesome. He made Knuckles into an interesting character. But by the end of his run, his work had really gone downhill. At the end it didn't feel like Penders even wanted to tell Sonic stories anymore, it felt like he wanted to tell Ken Pender stories that just so happen to have Sonic characters in them.

[Ratty Randnums]

Does every writer for Marvel and DC have automatic claim over the characters they create? No. Because its a character your handing over to the company you work under. End of discussion.

And that's one of the biggest problems with American comics, why pour your heart and soul into creating something that ultimately won't be yours at the end of the day? That someone in management could just snatch from you on a whim? Not to sound like a weeaboo but the Japanese (and I think the Korean is similar) system where the original creator retains creative control is just superior when you think about it.

To me, this guy is just trying to give Archie a hard time for firing him so he wants to drag the whole ship down with him.
Way I see it, the only thing he should be credited for is the Knuckles comics and he's long been payed for his work on that. I do miss the complexities he brought to some of the stories but on the other hand, he made alot of boring and odd choices that hurt things more than Ian ever did...lest we forget the lovely Karl Bollers.

Sorry, I can't see how anyone who's been reading the comics for as long as you could say that. Ian completely mischaracterizes and marginalizes the Freedom Fighters to the point that they're not even the same characters anymore.

And personally I'd rather read the complex, well thought out storyline with twists and turns than a monthly slugfest even if it did take a lot of curious creative turns it at least wasn't boring.

[furrykef]

And that's one of the biggest problems with American comics, why pour your heart and soul into creating something that ultimately won't be yours at the end of the day?

Well, let's think about it. Ken was writing for a comic called Sonic the Hedgehog, a series that was created by Archie based on a property created by Sega. That's two ways Ken didn't own the series he was working on, and that's not even taking its SatAM ancestry into account. So then the question becomes, "Why pour your heart and soul into creating something for a property that was never yours to begin with?"

In other words, if you want to own your stuff that bad, create it for your own property and not somebody else's. That's all you gotta do.

[Inhibitor]

Oh well. Such much for the Mega Man comic is all I can say.

[Ratty Randnums]

And that's one of the biggest problems with American comics, why pour your heart and soul into creating something that ultimately won't be yours at the end of the day?

Well, let's think about it. Ken was writing for a comic called Sonic the Hedgehog, a series that was created by Archie based on a property created by Sega. That's two ways Ken didn't own the series he was working on, and that's not even taking its SatAM ancestry into account. So then the question becomes, "Why pour your heart and soul into creating something for a property that was never yours to begin with?"

In other words, if you want to own your stuff that bad, create it for your own property and not somebody else's. That's all you gotta do.

Yeah, but Ken claims the characters he created. I was making a general statement mostly applying to the big two, Marvel and DC. But in a lot of ways (everything but the extra factors of Sega and DiC) this is just like what would happen if a writer created a character for one of THOSE company's canons and had it ripped away from them. Which has happened for decades, but Ken was pretty much the soul creator and only writer for his characters until he got rudely taken off the comic, so s'a tad more personal.
It would be like Steve Ditko not getting credit or royalties for creating Dr. Strange/co-creating Spider-Man, or Bill Finger not being credited or given any rights/royalties for most of the work in creating both Batman and Robin, oh wait...

Of course sometimes this situation can yield hilarious results. Like when Rob Liefeld loudly protested when one of his characters was turned gay like a decade after they (the character) had been taken off Liefeld's hands*. If only this didn't happen to good artists as well. *sigh*

http://www.comicsall...-him-a-not-gay/

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

I'm not surprised in the slightest. I remember one TV pilot I was a part of where once of the freelance camera guys got his personal computer stolen on the set. (It was one of those live audience things, and someone just took his stuff.) Personal items were not insured by the producers, so the camera guy (being fresh out of film school) refused to submit the footage he shot to the producers of the show. I think he even tried to file a law suit. So the producers are suing him for stealing the footage, even though it was shot using the student's camera.

Ken, stop acting like a dick. You run around under contract to create and develop characters for Archie's comic book series. Like the film student, none of this stuff belongs to you, even if you were the guy who drew it. That's just how the contract was written, and that's just how you signed it. Take what you've learned writing for Sonic and develop your own series and make up your own characters for it. We'd all love you for it.

[RedAuthar]

Personally I thought Penders trying to copyright stories about characters owned by a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT COMPANY (SEGA) which he made characters for for the company he is taking said characters from is stupid.

If they were his own stories featuring only his own characters yes, he was in the right, but it is SEGA's characters and Archie Comics hired him to write FOR them so the characters are Archie's.

[LaserX5]

So as we are all aware Ken Penders claimed that everything he ever created while he was a writer for Archie Comics is his property and not theirs. You can read more on all of that here.

Now things have been fairly silent in the past few months. No news on either front in till now. Archie Comics has filed a federal lawsuit against Ken Penders. Get the details here.

Okay so why did I put this in the news? Well its not every day you see a federal lawsuit due to Sonic characters.

So what are your thoughts on all of this? Should Ken just shut up and stop bitching? Is Archie the bad guy? Well.. I guess that is up to the courts now. However I'm sure I can get all your view points before we hear from the courts. So spit it out. What are your thoughts on this whole mess?

Ken Penders should be glad Archie doesn't sue him for all the nonsense he caused as writer of the comic during his time.

I'll give him credit for some of the things he wrote about because not all of his ideas were bad, just most of em.

But in my opinion, they're both bad.

[chief]

In my opinion. Ratty, it doesn't matter if he is trying to lay claim to characters he created. The whole universe is copyrighted and isn't his. There for anything he puts into it follows that same thing.

I do know what you mean with how Japanese get full creative credit on their stories and so on and I think that works out there. However the Sonic comic that is based off of so many things to start off with.. No. He knew going into it that Archie, SEGA, and whoever else have full copyrights. You don't see the artists doing this after they draw a new character from scratch. Ken was nothing bet a pen for higher and he should realize that. If he wanted those characters he should have gone independent and done things his way in order to bypass whatever copyrights are there.

[acstrife]

Its simple, the characters belong to Arche/Sega. He signed a contract knowing that information, whining later on about it only makes him look foolish.

[hedgehogfan162]

i say ken is getting what he deserves, you know what goes around comes around rember that old saying that fits pefectly her. i mean he brought sonic and sally together just so he could break them up in the worst way. he effectively pissed off probably close to 100% of their fan base with one issue and now he is the one who is pissed

in my judgment this is justice

[John Roberts]

I liked what he tried to do with Sally (End Game stuff). Well, not LIKE like, but I appreciate it from a story telling perspective. I'm not quite sure how this law suit is 'justice' in that sense; he was doing his job trying to write something interesting, not physically walk around and punch fans in the face and rape their pets. And I think he single single-handedly created and established the best Knuckle/Echidnas mythology to date (I want to read that Locke graphic novel of his, dammit!), so on those merits I can't not like him. Really not sure what he had hoped to achieve by starting up this whole mess in the first place, however. What, Archie was just gong to sign over all those characters to him?

At the end of the day I just hope this is all settled outside of court. No single person deserves to have their arses sued off by an entire company that can, more often than not, afford to nail 'em to the wall to the point of ruin. Good luck to you, Ken.

[furrykef]

No single person deserves to have their arses sued off by an entire company that can, more often than not, afford to nail 'em to the wall to the point of ruin.

Not even if they jump around waving a giant flag saying "Nail me to the wall"? 'Cause that's pretty much what he did.

Anyway, as I understand it, the lawsuit isn't to punish him so much as to settle the matter of who owns what once and for all. So any punishment for Ken is more of a side effect (legal fees, time wasted) -- but I still can't help but feel schadenfreude for the punishment he does get.

[Ratty Randnums]

but I still can't help but feel schadenfreude for the punishment he does get.

Why?

i say ken is getting what he deserves, you know what goes around comes around rember that old saying that fits pefectly her. i mean he brought sonic and sally together just so he could break them up in the worst way. he effectively pissed off probably close to 100% of their fan base with one issue and now he is the one who is pissed

in my judgment this is justice

Hah what? As John Roberts said he was just trying to be a good storyteller. And he was.
See you're obviously still affected deeply by the Endgame storyline, and apparently his others relating to Sonic/Sally, all these years later.
The drama in the story drew you in so much it actually affected your life.
Personally I'd rather Sally had stayed dead in Endgame, than become the grotesque marionette Possession Sue she is now. As I understand Flynn has even written a blog confessing his feelings that Sally is "just about perfect in every way". But consider it, if she had really died in Endgame it would have been a poetically powerful, realistically bittersweet ending to the war and the Freedom Fighter's struggles.

[furrykef]

Why?

'Cause like I said, what he's doing is akin to wearing a bullseye saying "shoot me", then acting surprised when somebody shoots you.